"I know what you mean." Dinah's lips were sore, and her jaw ached--not that she intended to stop the kissathon anytime soon. "I think we'll be okay if we just take a break for a minute."
"No," said Strayhorn. "It's time to switch." He started to get up from his chair.
"Really," said Dinah. "I'll be fine."
"You don't understand," said Strayhorn. "We need to switch."
Just then, Blakey let out a loud whoop. "We have a winnah!"
"Yay!" Mahalia grinned and applauded. "This is it, Captain! We found the real deal!"
Dinah had missed the latest flurry of negotiations. She looked over to see Blakey shaking the tentacle of a seven-foot-tall orange-furred squid-thing. "What is it?" she said. "What's the deal?"
"Kioska here will fix Earth's atmosphere." Blakey patted the orange squid's rubbery spear-point head. "He'll even terraform the planet to reverse the global warming damage to the ecosystem!"
Strayhorn walked around the table to Blakey and Kioska. "What'll it cost us?"
"You're gonna love this." Blakey threw an arm around Strayhorn's shoulders. "How would you like to be the first man to set foot on an alien planet?"
*****
Two weeks later, Dinah blinked as light flooded the darkened stage where she and Strayhorn sat. She found herself gazing out at a huge crowd of orange-furred squid people, packed into a vast, upside-down theater.
Thousands of squid dangled by their tentacles from rungs in the ceiling. Each squid had one giant eye, blood-red and unblinking, fixed on Dinah and Strayhorn.
A chill rippled up Dinah's back as she felt their eyes upon her. Yet again, she marveled at where she was, so far from home, on an alien world that no human being before her had ever visited.
Kioska had led them here, to his homeworld, from the space station. It was here that the humans would hold up their end of the deal and earn salvation for dying Mother Earth.
Suddenly, a familiar figure tumbled onto the stage--eggplant-shaped Heavy, Team Earth's self-appointed manager. Stopping in the middle of the stage, he inflated an
orange-furred squid face on one of his cilia and turned it to the crowd. While Heavy unleashed a stream of wild squeaks for the audience, he puffed up a human face behind him and translated his words through it for Dinah and Strayhorn.
"Love!" said Heavy. "The new sensation! The most iiincrediiible experiience iiin the galaxy!"
The crowd responded with a deafening blast of whistles and squeals.
"Are you ready to liiive the dream?" said Heavy. "Are you ready for love?"
The squid things squealed louder. They swung back and forth on their rungs and smacked their bodies against each other with abandon.
"Then let the love begiiin!" As the noise and motion of the crowd reached a wild pitch, Heavy hurtled off the stage, leaving Dinah and Strayhorn alone in the spotlight.
Backstage, Mahalia switched on her music player, which she'd tuned to broadcast through the theater's sound system. This time, instead of jazz, it played an opera piece--the Flower Duet from Lakmé, a sweet, soaring blend of two winding soprano voices.
That was Dinah and Strayhorn's cue. Smiling, Dinah leaned across the padded bench on which they sat. She slipped a hand behind Strayhorn's head, combing her fingers through his thick, dark hair, and pulled him close.
Their eyes met, and then their lips did, too.
They hadn't kissed since the end of the Worlds' Fair two weeks ago, and Dinah craved him. Returning to his lips felt like a fabulous culmination, an unimaginably perfect consummation. Every nerve in her lips flared with extraordinary sensitivity, magnifying every millimeter and millisecond of radiant contact between them.
Her pulse quickened, and her body warmed. Closing her eyes, she immersed herself in the building passion, the thrill of love on a grand scale, of legendary, history-making love.
Dinah was so caught up in the experience that at first, she didn't notice the change in the crowd. It took a few moments for the rising commotion to penetrate her romantic haze, to make her realize that the balance of the beautiful, dreamlike tide was shifting.
Opening her eyes, Dinah saw that the squid-people were jumping and bumping in the rafters. A growing racket rang out through the theater, a din of the shrillest,
highest-pitched squeals and whistles she'd yet heard from the orange-furred creatures.
As it got worse, drowning out the opera soundtrack, Dinah exchanged a look with Strayhorn. His typically blank expression had switched to one of fierce, alert intensity.
"What's happening?" said Dinah. "What do they want?"
Suddenly, Heavy jetted across the stage and jolted to a stop beside her. "What's goiiing on here?" he said with his bald human face.
"You tell us!" said Dinah.
"What are they saying?" said Strayhorn.
"'We want love!'" Heavy spun in a circle, every one of his heads and cilia quivering with agitation. "That's what they're sayiiing! They want love!"
The uproar from the crowd was so loud, Dinah had to shout to make herself heard. "I don't understand! We were giving them love!"
"Not liike before! Now try harder!" With that, Heavy whipped around and flashed offstage, leaving Dinah and Strayhorn alone.
As the crowd noise rose, Dinah gazed out at the hordes of orange-furred squid. "I guess we've got a tougher audience here," she said. "Necking isn't enough."
"We need to get out of here," said Strayhorn. "If they rush the stage, we're dead."
"No!" said Dinah. "Earth's depending on us!"
With that, she started unbuttoning her top.
"What are you doing?" said Strayhorn.
Dinah slid her arms from the sleeves of her blouse and tossed it to the stage. "What does it look like I'm doing?" With a shrug, she pressed closer to him, reaching for the buttons of his shirt. "If they want more, let's give them more."
Strayhorn grabbed her wrist, and Dinah pushed herself forward. With her free hand, she tore his shirt all the way open, then snaked an arm around his back and yanked him toward her.
"I say let's give them their money's worth," said Dinah, right before she lunged in for a ravenous, grinding kiss.
Strayhorn didn't get into the spirit of things at all, but Dinah kept working on him. She was convinced she could bring him around, especially once the squid-people started to settle down.
The problem was, instead of settling down, the squid-people grew more agitated. The clamor in the theater got worse with each passing second.
Dinah heard what sounded like falling bodies hitting the floor. When she looked out at the crowd, she saw squid dropping from the ceiling by the hundreds, bouncing to a landing on the theater floor on spring-loaded tentacles.
As soon as they landed, the squid started hopping toward the stage.
Yet again, Heavy zipped into the spotlight, spinning and quivering. "What iiis wrong with you two? They want love! Giiive them love love love!"
As Heavy darted away, Dinah shoved Strayhorn onto his back and pounced. Straddling his hips, she set to work undoing his pants while he gaped up at her in shock.
"I guess we have to take this all the way," said Dinah.
"No!" said Strayhorn. "Don't!"
"Give it everything you've got," said Dinah. "Remember, the future of humanity is riding on it!"
Before she could go any further, Strayhorn suddenly sat up and pushed her away. "I said no!"
Dinah fell back and rolled off the bench. She winced and cried out as she hit the hard floor of the stage on her side.
"Hey!" she said. "What was that for?"
"Even if we weren't about to be swarmed by alien squid-people," said Strayhorn, gesturing at the approaching audience, "I can't make love to you! I'm in love with someone else!"
"What?" Dinah leaped to her feet. "Who?"
"Look." Strayhorn pointed behind her, into the backstage wings. "That's who."
Dinah turned and saw Ben Blakey hurrying toward them. "Blakey?" she said. "You're in love w
ith Blakey?"
Strayhorn shook his head. "Not Blakey."
Just then, Dinah saw Mahalia charge out after Blakey. "Oh." Dinah felt her face flush. "I get it."
Mahalia rushed past Blakey and grabbed Strayhorn's shoulders. A million little memories suddenly fell into place in Dinah's mind--a jumble of looks and touches and words exchanged between Strayhorn and Mahalia that she'd always chalked up to simple friendship.
Only now she knew better.
Why didn't I see it before?
At that moment, Heavy bolted over among them. "Where iiis the love?" His voice was high and electric with fear. "Make the love! Make the love before iiit iiis too late!"
Dinah thought it was too late already. The orange-furred squid-people were hopping onto the stage, converging on the spotlight with deadly purpose.
"That's what we were doing!" said Strayhorn. "What else do you want from us?"
"No no no!" said Heavy. "No love! No love at all!" He flipped and spun and twisted in midair, giving off a smell like chocolate. "They want the sounds! The
dah-dah-dee-dah!"
"What the hell are you talking about?" said Blakey.
"You know!" Heavy flopped over and curled up, then uncurled and stretched out. "The sounds you made at the Worlds' Fair, when the two of you kiiissed! Liike
dah-dah-dee-dah-doo. The love."
Dinah shook her head. "I don't get it."
"Wait." Mahalia snapped her fingers. "You mean the music? The music I played in the booth when they kissed?"
"'Music'?" Heavy shuddered.
"Like this." Mahalia did a little scat-singing, improvising syllables over a jazzy snatch of melody. "That's music. Jazz music."
"'Music'?" said Heavy. "Don't you mean 'love'?"
Mahalia looked from Strayhorn to Blakey to Dinah, eyes wide with understanding. "Oh my God," she said. "This whole time, they wanted music, not love."
"They thought we made it when we kissed," said Dinah.
As the squid-people closed in, Mahalia dashed offstage. The squid were just reaching for Dinah and the others when the music playing over the theater's sound system changed from opera to jazz.
Just like that, the orange-furred squid halted their approach. As one, they swayed and squeaked in time with the music, tentacles rippling with the flow of a soaring, sparkling trumpet solo.
"Nothing like a little Miles Davis to soothe the savage alien," said Mahalia as she trotted back to the group. "And more where that came from." She held up her slim silver music player and tapped it with her fingernail.
Dinah let out a deep breath and slumped onto the bench. "That was close."
"You diiid iiit!" said Heavy, scooting around Team Earth in a jaunty circle. "You made the love again!"
"I still don't see what the big deal is," said Blakey. "Why don't you just make it yourselves?"
"We can't," said Heavy. "You are the fiiirst. Thiiis iiis something new to us."
"No kidding." Blakey laughed and clapped Strayhorn on the back. "I guess maybe humans are worth something out here after all."
"So now what?" said Dinah. "What next?"
"Contiiinue the Worlds' Tour, of course!" said Heavy. "Liiive up to your end of the deal!"
Blakey threw an arm around Strayhorn's shoulders. "So we'll just send around a recording, right?"
"Wrong," said Heavy. "We must have live performance. Live love on tour! The deal says so!"
"And us a bunch of non-musicians." Dinah blew out her breath.
"We'll just lip-synch." Mahalia shook her music player. "Play along with the recordings and pretend we're making the music from scratch."
"What happens when they get tired of the recordings?" said Dinah. "What'll we do then?"
"Same thing we always do." Mahalia grinned and winked at her. "Same thing Miles and Monk and Trane and all the rest always did.
"Make it up as we go along."
*****
Messiah 2.0
I sing the Our Father again and again as I hack the undead to ribbons with my atomic scythe. Praying with all of my might for every lost soul I send spinning out of this misbegotten world.
"Our father, who art in Houston, hallowed be thy flame..."
More zombies push in to replace them, clambering over the shredded corpses of the previous wave. Their bony hands clutch and claw at me and my faithful assistant, not that they can do much harm to a robot like Imago. A giant among them swings a crowbar dead-on at him, and it bounces off his unbreakable stained-glass skin without making the slightest crack.
I smile and keep slicing away at the horde. The stench of the creatures surrounds me. My hands on the grip of the glowing scythe are wet with blood. I feel the weight of my long black braid swinging behind me as I whirl to face another foe.
And I know that I will keep fighting. Because I know that Imago and I are the hope of the world. It's up to us to stop the Great Evil from rising up against the King of the World. Up to us to find and destroy the last possible seed of the Apocalypse.
The last possible manifestation of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
*****
Hours later, Imago and I sit around a campfire in the heart of the Brazilian rain forest. Through the bitter smoke, I smell the fragrance of night-blooming tropical flowers. I taste the sweet juice of the rich, red fruit I've just eaten, picked fresh from a spiny tree. The jungle shrieks and chatters and hoots with the sounds of nocturnal life. Through it all, I hear the Amazon River rushing past somewhere nearby.
We have come to a distant place indeed. For company, we have only each other...and the blinking white symbol projected on the blade of my scythe. A tiny oval symbol, pointed at one end, bisected at the other, top and bottom curves crossing, then swooping up and down, capped by a straight vertical line. It's the ancient symbol of a fish.
The ancient symbol of a certain so-called Messiah. In this case, a Messiah in the making, a computer-predicted proto-Christ.
"She's stopped moving." The glowing symbol holds steady over the yellow gridlines pulsing on the silver blade. My scythe serves as a tracking device as well as a weapon. "Resting for the night, I'm sure."
Imago rises from the log on which he's been sitting. The fireflies that are always burning in his belly flicker as he moves. "We could use this opportunity to catch up, Father Clement." Like all Squire-series robots, he has a voice that's soft and soothing and a manner that's unfailingly polite.
"Too dangerous at night." I shake my head and put down my scythe, leaving the blade to charge in the fire. "We could stumble across another nest of the undead."
"You know I can light the way." Suddenly, the fireflies in Imago's belly flare bright. Incandescent streamers cascade from the rainbow facets of his body, lighting it up in all its glory. He is like a walking stained-glass window, molded from panes of every color--glittering, flashing red and blue and yellow and green and white. Like a chapel in the shape of a man in the middle of the jungle.
I raise a single finger in the air. The white sleeve of my cloak slides down to my elbow. "Your light might not be enough if this is a trap."
Imago nods gravely. His features are like iron filings shifting in his faceplate, black metal fuzz aligning as eyebrows, eyes, nose, and mouth. "You are ever wise, Father Clement."
"We fought long and hard today. Better now to rest and start fresh again at dawn." I sit down beside the fire and cross my legs Indian-style. Instantly ready to fall asleep. Instantly ready to do anything, if it will help preserve the Kingdom.
Imago makes a soft chiming sound and begins the bedtime prayer. "Now I lay me down to sleep." The fireflies in his belly circle hypnotically as he speaks. "I pray the King my soul to keep."
Reaching into my mind, I begin to switch myself off. Like flicking off the lights back in the seminary, one at a time, with darkness all around.
And prayers. "If I should die before the morn..." Imago's soothing voice rolls onward, then does something unexpected. "If I should..." He stops.
> And repeats himself. "If I should die before the morn, to serve the King I'll be reborn."
I frown, wondering if Imago's glitch signals damage. But then I shrug it off and relax. I flip the last switch and drift down into darkness like a feather from the wing of a falling angel.
*****
Next morning, like all mornings in the Kingdom, there is ice cream.
As Imago and I march into the village of Cristobal, the locals are just opening the transubstantiator--one of the matter converters that can change anything into anything else. Even the tiniest town in the Kingdom has at least one, thanks to the King.
Freezing mist puffs out when they pop up the lids on the gleaming waist-high silver pods, pulling out white scoops the size of baseballs flecked with black and brown. Laughing as they pop them out with their bare hands and toss them to the crowd.
Children scramble away with armloads, melting ice cream running from their elbows. Old men cradle single scoops in wooden bowls, while young men steal licks between juggling and pitching the scoops at each other.
I wish I could pause to paint this scene. Everyone looks so happy to be alive. They're clad in filthy loincloths, living in squalid huts of bark and leaves, but they're happy. Happy to be living as their ancestors lived, as they choose to live. Happy to be living in the worldwide Kingdom of Free Will.
When they spot us, they launch into ecstatic prayer-song. Every last one of them gathers 'round to welcome the humble soldier priest to their village.
I bless them with the sign of the King, tracing upside-down crosses in the air with practiced ease. Hugging the old women, tousling the children's hair. Everyone smells like the sweetest of flowers; reverse B.O.'s another glorious innovation of the King's benevolent anarchotechnocracy.
Raising my arms overhead, I speak to them all. "Greetings, Earth Angels! The King's blessings to you all!"
The crowd claps and dances around us. Reaching into the transubstantiator pod, I draw out a scoop of ice cream
in my white-gloved hand. I bite into it, and my mouth fills with sweet, cold perfection.
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