“Soa . . . whot about his joystik?”
“Ever the down-to-earth perspective, Ms. Kane. You are the perfect foil for an old eschatologist like me.”
“I had a john was into that. Charged him way extra.”
“And rightly so,” said Wiggler. “As to the organ in question, there were many strange circumstances that led it to be removed and preserved in the first place—not the least of which was a scheme on the part of a then-young Dr. Hugh Wieviel, who was originally from Texas—which got muddled by the Feds and then lost in the emerging Vitessa network and only came to light by chance when Dr. Tadd got drunk with Olly Podrida.
“Do you recall the difficult religious phase Meese mentioned?” Wiggler asked Clearfather. “That was a side effect of the influence I provided. In any case, many years later he discovered that Olly had come into the organ and so Lemon and I attempted to purchase it—and then when Podrida refused—I was forced to steal it.”
“But how did you get the idea in the first place?” the Marshal asked.
“Dr. Tadd started me thinking. This is what happens when you create or Inspire people—they in turn change you. He saw great significance in the unification of the earthiness of the sexual being with the angelism of the spiritual being. I saw that this is what my efforts with Blind Lemon had been moving toward. This incarnation of Lemon draws on the soul strength of Robert Johnson and Bessie Smith. There’s a lot of hoodoo in him, too. I’m afraid it’s the darker, magical side of the equation that has led to the writing on your back.”
“What do you mean?” Clearfather asked, feeling the letters burn.
“Your new body was unmarked—and yet it was in that mutilation that much of your power lay—your inner fire. God is in the details,” Wiggler said.
CHAPTER 2
The Regeneration Gap
“So . . . you . . . did this . . . to me?” Clearfather whispered, peeling up his robe to show the jagged letters cut into his back.
“Sheet!” Maggie whistled.
“You are insane!” the Marshal gasped. “And you call him your son!”
Wiggler sat without expression. “I don’t expect you and Ms. Kane to understand. You have no installed means to comprehend me because you’re downloading it as we speak. So I won’t tell you how painful it was for me. As to you . . . ,” he said, turning to Clearfather. “You will come to understand—if a part of you doesn’t already. The original marks were made by your stepfather in your previous life. The pain burned deep inside you—but you took that anguish and transformed it into a source of energy. I could not have brought your soul down out of the Whirlwind and kept you in this form without reinstating those marks and tapping into that energy.”
“What superstitious bullshit!” the Marshal cried.
“Marshal, you sound like a rigid old man. I have room and time for science, religion, and magic. This is a dire conflict and it requires both new and ancient unifications—not exclusions.”
“S-o . . . ,” Clearfather wheezed—the letters in his back burning—“you maimed me . . . to arm me . . . like a weapon? And in my earlier life—”
“You were born to a young hooker . . . about Ms. Kane’s age . . . father unknown. In Pittsburgh. Another place we have in common. She took up with a defrocked priest. He had some very sick ideas. You were the focus of his psychosis. He killed her and tortured you. But you survived and went on to find your way in the world . . . and your way to me.”
“What a privileged existence!” clucked the Marshal. “One father figure abuses you—the other experiments on you!”
“Marshal, you really don’t want to badger me. As you said yourself, you’re here for answers for your friend. I’m supplying them. Deal with it.”
“How come you called me Elroy?”
“A new name for a new life. It seemed like a good idea at the time. If you prefer to be called Elijah, so be it. As our practical friend Ms. Kane pointed out, Elroy and Elijah are not that dissimilar.”
“But where are Uncle Waldo and Aunt Vivian?” Clearfather asked. “I remember them! Uncle Waldo liked working on jigsaw puzzles. Aunt Vivian did crosswords. She kept a grain of pearl barley in the saltshaker. She gave me a glow-in-the-dark green skull full of bubblegum—and a little coffin with a Mexican jumping bean inside! They gave me a dog . . . named Lucky!”
This time Wiggler’s face did react, and the walls undulated. “Uncle Waldo—and Aunt Vivian . . . aren’t people, son. They’re SIs I created. They’re within you. They remained the most resistant to the APPARATUS evolution, but I still had to dis-integrate them to purify what I could. I needed their thinking power to—”
“You cannibalized them . . . to make him?”
“Chill out, Marshal. One thing becomes another. Change. Growth. It’s the rhythm of life. Don’t make it sound obscene!”
“I remember them,” Clearfather repeated. “Not their faces. But their—”
“Spirits? Well, that’s not surprising.”
“Computers have spirits?” The Marshal groaned, accepting another drink from his chair.
“Will you stop calling them computers!” Wiggler yelled. “You would be far more accurate in thinking of them in terms of programs if you must—not that that’s even in the slightest way correct.”
“But I remember them!” Clearfather insisted. “Their porch. A summer vacation. They gave me things.”
“Yes,” said Wiggler. “They did. I see they gave you some lovely memories. They gave you love. The Marshal will groan again and roll his eyes—and poor Ms. Kane will pout like a troll—but love is what they gave you. I didn’t direct them to do that. Those memories are their own creations—and they are gifts—as real as the objects and moments you named. In fact, they are more valuable because you still have them, and will always have them.”
“But how—”
“As I’ve been trying to explain, the boundary between the animate and the inanimate is itself animate—fragile and elusive. You would do better to think of everything as alive if you could but connect with it. Aunt Vivian and Uncle Waldo were forms of life that now live on in you. They are a part of your family.”
“But it’s not real . . . they’re not . . .”
“Why isn’t it real? Those memories feel real to you, don’t they? They were real for Waldo and Vivian. I think the barley in the saltshaker is a very nice touch.”
“But didn’t you—”
“I told you, I didn’t know anything about it! Those memories were their ideas. I don’t even know how you come to have them. But I know why. They were trying to give you something warm and happy to cling to. So many other parts of your life were dark and frightening. Don’t reject the gifts. They’re humble but well meant.”
“And now, Uncle Waldo and Aunt Vivian are . . . no more?”
“Not as they were. So one generation passeth away. They are a part of you. And they will give you strength and capability in times to come. Don’t you see that many life-forms are counting on you?”
“What are they counting on me to do?”
“I’m not sure I’m prepared to discuss that in front of the Marshal and Ms. Kane. They seem to be put out by everything I say—and from the looks on their faces they don’t believe a word anyway.”
“That’s some sophisticated guilt technology you got working there,” quipped the Marshal.
“But what was I doing in Pittsburgh? How did I get there? What happened to me?”
“Calm down,” said Wiggler. “You were on a shakedown cruise. A recon mission and weapons check. There was an amnesiac crisis—and some system errors—not entirely unexpected but significant enough to necessitate more work. I also quite frankly didn’t know how great a distortion of the social field you’d cause—and I was curious what Vitessa would make of you.”
“But why was I going to Pittsburgh—why repeat the horrors of the past? Has this all been some sort of lesson?”
“If it has, I can assure you it wasn’t of my planning,” W
iggler said. “I arranged for you to be transported to New York, thinking that if you were going to cause any trouble, that was the place to do it. You then—on your own initiative—sought out a resistance unit I have operating there. I believe you may have been attracted by the hazing field that surrounds their installation, which of course negates perception for everyone else. They were the ones who sent you on your way west.”
“They gave me the map?”
“So it would seem. Although for what reason I’m not sure. Reincarnation is such a complex endeavor, it’s hard to tell causes from effects. In any case, within that loyal group there was one traitor. I see now that he’d been planning something for a while but hadn’t actually taken any steps. With your arrival he saw an opportunity to ingratiate himself with Vitessa by either turning you over to them or sabotaging you.”
“Shit,” said Clearfather, shifting in his chair, which tried to offer him another drink.
“He arranged for the administration of a dangerous neurochemical and the insertion of three psych probes. One you destroyed. Two others are still at large—one benign, the other lethal—but nothing I can’t sort out.”
“What? There’s something in my brain . . . that’s going to kill me?”
“Yes, but don’t worry—it’s low-level science as far as I’m concerned. The point is that you became in their eyes too great a risk and so they ejected you, although with much regret.”
“So you . . . you just let me drift around the country . . . in a daze?”
“Ms. Kane and the Marshal are in a daze right now and have been since their arrival. If you don’t take risks, you never find out anything. Besides, it’s not as if you can’t take care of yourself. It was more a question of how much damage you would cause, rather than how much would be done to you.”
Clearfather cringed at the thought of LosVegas.
“What about the billboards?” he asked. “The ones I kept seeing along the road. They sparked off thoughts and memories.”
“Oh, those,” said Wiggler. “There’s no command guidance system in place with you—no emergency override. But there are several Inspiration channels—ways of providing remote help. Some of the channels are vocal or audio, some visual, some deep instinct. When the final Transubstantiation is complete, these will give you different ways to draw on the Vortex. The billboards are just a messaging system. Text-based. You probably had a lot of distortion because APPARATUS has been trying to jam me. It’s like a perpetual cloud of static now. Blues and funk music still get through—Japanese poetry and riddles—but not a lot else.”
“So . . . you didn’t make me come back here?” Clearfather asked.
“I can’t make you do anything,” Wiggler answered. “I needed a field test to see how you would behave in the wild. You came back here of your own accord.”
“But I just repeated my past,” Clearfather moaned. “Like a machine . . . like a stupid—”
“I wouldn’t think of it like that,” said Wiggler. “First of all—and this is something most people forget—the past is the only thing you can repeat. Second, you went in search of meaning. You followed clues. You made sacrifices. You attracted people to your quest and stuck by them when danger presented itself. You learned disturbing truths—and saw through lies. You confronted and defeated monsters. You made friends and you suffered pain. You risked having an impact on people’s lives to create new hope. Either you’re not a machine—or being a machine isn’t what you thought it was.”
“But I caused death and devastation!”
“I didn’t say you were blameless. But your instinct is to take responsibility for your actions whether you understand them or not. That’s the sign of a strong soul, a soul that believes it is better to fail than to fail to act.”
“How do I know I acted on my own?”
“We can never know all the voices speaking through us. Who any of us is is perhaps best thought of in terms of which tribe we belong to. In that regard you are a Cycloner. And a Loco Foco.”
“What the hell’s that?” the Marshal asked.
“The name comes from a self-lighting cigar popular back in the 1830s. Lovely idea—a self-lighting cigar.” Wiggler smiled as his chair offered him just such an item. “Self-ignition. Illumination. The more radical members of the Democratic Party produced them when their opponents in Tammany Hall tried to turn off the gas one evening to disrupt a crucial vote. The radicals, who strongly opposed slavery, lit their loco-focos in the dark and the meeting carried on, and they carried the vote. Their ingenuity became famous, and for a while the Loco Focos were a splinter party in their own right. Thoreau, Whitman, and Melville were all supporters. That was an important moment in American history, and I’ve wanted to draw upon their passion and inventiveness in the grave battle we are about to engage in.”
“What battle?”
“A force has been assembled. The most dreadfully inspiring army in American history.”
“You mean those Neanderthal things and a bunch of talking robots?”
“No, Marshal. I’m talking Souls—an army of Souls. I have invested all of my science and all of my magic—and all of my faith in one final challenge.”
“Souls? Whose souls?’
“I have, for instance, the members of the Seventh Cavalry who died at the Little Bighorn. Brave men, but servants of betrayal and contamination—simultaneously heroes and villains.”
“And you’re going to send Custer—”
“General George has been relieved of his command forever. Crazy Horse will lead them. On a horse of wind, the greatest warrior this continent has seen will lead the souls of the mutilated conquerors. Beside them will march the dead members of the Ku Klux Klan in burning white robes, and out in front of them will be Emmett Till, with noose and blood—and Hattie LaCroix, the mulatto Mata Hari of the Civil War, who was drawn and quartered in a market square in Charleston while chivalrous Dixie gentlemen and ladies looked on. You see, on the eve of spiritual eclipse, the undaunted and the damned must join forces and march as One.”
“You’re talking about ghosts . . . in the streets?”
“Not in the streets, Marshal. The minds, the hearts. My forces are set to invade the American Psyche. They will march into the dreams . . . into the composite spirit of America. And leading them all will be my Son, myself. It will result in either the most momentous healing our species has ever seen or the shrill locust drone of Dominion. Götterdämmerung. Ragnarok and Roll. A Wounded Knee for us all.”
“I’ve got two words for you, Wiggler. IN SANE.”
“That’s my mission? That’s what you intend for me to do?” Clearfather cried.
“What’s that sound?” the Marshal asked, perking up.
“What about Kokomo? Who . . . or what was she? Can I—”
“Listen!” said the Marshal. “Did you hear that? It’s—”
“Shit!” cried Wiggler, bolting from his chair into the dining room. “It’s Walt! I forgot about him! You bastard!”
Walt Whitman, the giant skunk, had his paws up on the table, his twitchy black snout smeared with vanilla bean ice cream. Not a crumb of pie remained. Wiggler drove the beast off the table, and never had the visitors seen a more guilty or gorged expression on the face of any creature.
“I am disgusted, Walt!” Wiggler wailed. “This is the kind of behavior I might expect from Wittgenstein but not from you!”
The huge skunk tried to nuzzle Wiggler’s hand, but the bald man would have none of it. The offender belched and had to lie down.
Maggie found this amusing but it plunged Wiggler into a sour mood.
“This gluttonous beast has canceled our dessert, but to be honest all these questions have fatigued me. Let us adjourn for the night and reconvene tomorrow.”
“I at least will be leaving then,” the Marshal informed him.
“Mee, too!” Maggie agreed. “I’m outta heer big time!”
“We’ll discuss matters further in the morning,” Wiggler ins
isted.
He spoke in the mantis language to the drone who’d brought them, and the device went to organize the coach to take them back to the hotel.
“I would strongly advise against any nocturnal exploration,” he announced.
“Mister, yoo cuddn’t pay mee to walk around heer!”
“And be careful where you step tomorrow.”
“Is that a threat?” the Marshal questioned.
“I was thinking of Walt. That much pie and ice cream, he’s likely to have diarrhea.”
CHAPTER 3
All Soul Night
Clearfather found it difficult to fall asleep. He kept thinking of Uncle Waldo and Aunt Vivian. They’d seemed so real to him before. Even faceless and fragmentary, their memories had kept him company, offering him hope and reassurance on his painful journey. Now to find out that they weren’t real—or were only parts of himself—it confused him. Yet to themselves they’d been real, he thought. And they believed in my reality. They gave of themselves to help me, he reminded himself. What more could any family do? What more can anyone do?
He felt in his heart, or what he called his heart, their love for him, their simple singsong caring. Something of them, whatever they were, endured. Something had taken root inside him and gave him strength still. Perhaps we are always coming back from the dead, he thought. Because something in us can never die.
This notion gave him enough comfort to get a little rest, although scenes from earlier in the day flashed through his mind. The mad visions of ghost wars and insect intelligences. The destiny of humankind. But what stuck out most in his mind was the mutant creatures he’d glimpsed at the far end of the Canyon—and that one Creature—more misshapen than the rest. There was a dark secret to this place and it scared him. He felt his biggest task lay before him. The decision of what to do. To stay with the man who claimed to be both his father and inventor—and yet someone he’d unknowingly influenced in another life—someone who’d already invested of himself and was now proposing a deeper collaboration. Or to leave with the Marshal and Maggie. To return to the world and take the consequences.
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