Aware that to someone like him, the very furniture is spilling its guts about what it knows, I decide not to argue and simply turn and stalk from the room like the second-rate Nightwatchman I am. At the end of the booths, I stop and pause and hesitate and finally turn and look back at Streethawk with my “important business” face.
“The name Elvis mean anything to you?”
“Elvis?” He stares back impassively and slowly lifts a hand to scratch under one frosty eye. “No fucking idea.”
Outside, I clamber onto Loren’s bike and get it fired up on the second try, and a plane goes by overhead and by the time the jet roar has dimmed I am fishtailing away down the street and out of sight.
*
ANNIE BLACK TAKES longer than I would fucking well like to arrive. I am standing near Walt Whitman’s tomb in the cemetery at Camden listening to the Best of Vanilla Ice on the mp3 function I’ve just recently discovered on the Enercom phone. With one earpiece in, I am discreetly throwing my shit down as Miss Black turns the corner in her Matrix-style trench coat.
She peers at me standing in the shadows beneath trenchant vines and hisses, “Zephyr? Is that you?”
“Yeah. You OK?” I ask, aware it’s pure diversion. “Thanks for coming.”
“Jesus Christ, Zeph. Why are you calling me? I don’t need this shit,” Annie says and comes closer. “Synergy hears I’m speaking to you and I’m getting a one-way ticket to the Panama field office, ya know what I mean?”
“Settle down, Annie. It can’t be that bad.”
“Let’s just say it’s not the Lord’s name they’re taking in vain around headquarters these days,” she says in that worldly wise and weary way of hers I’ve always found fairly appealing. “Synergy’s totally pissed you haven’t called in. And Vanguard’s got a total hard-on for pressing Federal charges.”
“Well at least we solved one problem for him,” I mutter.
“Isn’t it bad enough you’ve got the State troopers on your case?”
“Annie, I don’t know anything about that. Will you listen to me? I need help. I need to talk.”
“Shit,” the one-time teen mystic replies.
“What?”
“I figured it must be something pretty fucked up if you’re asking for help.”
I consider this a moment and nod.
“I agree. It’s pretty fucked up if I’m asking you for help.”
“Not sure I wanna know,” Miss Black replies.
“Hey, thanks for fuck all, kid.”
“Aw Jesus, Zeph.”
She sighs and looks away, running fingers like a comb through her flicked-out blonde hair.
“Are you gonna tell me the problem or are we gonna fight like old times?”
“You seem to prefer making war to making love, Annie.”
“When it comes to you? Yeah. What gives?”
Having arrived at the critical juncture, I turn my back and start walking so my former teammate has to skip alongside to catch up. The festering tombs give way to slightly more pleasant grave sites, if you can use such a word for places where former people lay insensate, waiting for the heat death of the cosmos. We’re almost at the statue to Infinity, who fell in the Kirlian Invasion, when Annie loses her shit and grabs me by the shoulder.
“I’m not here to play hide-and-seek, Zephyr. What’s up?”
“I’ve lost my powers,” I tell her. “Had them stolen from me.”
“Jesus. Is that all?”
“All?”
My jaw works like a broken bicycle chain for several moments.
“Are you fucking kidding me? Yes, that’s why I asked to meet you. I need . . . advice. I was thinking there must be some kind of, you know, magickal solution.”
“And you called me?” Annie asks with uncalled for skepticism.
“Um, Annie Black, teen wizard-cum-FBI turncoat? Yes.”
“Whyn’t you call your pal, Twilight?”
“He’s, uh, probably not the right person for this one,” I tell her.
“Well, Zephyr. This one’s kinda out of my league, you know?”
“Yeah, I know,” I respond. “I was kind of hoping you’d do that thing, you know?”
“What thing?”
“Did you, um, bring a goat with you?”
Annie Black rolls her eyes and that’s how I manage to deftly move the conversation on to Simon Magus.
Zephyr 7.15 “Not Saussure”
“IT’S JUST A fucking goat,” I tell her, and not for the first time. “If it means that much to you, I’ll take it home and eat it later.”
“Yeah,” Miss Black replies without much optimism. “Because you’d hate for it die for nothing.”
“Well I don’t think little Betty here’s gonna die for nothing.”
I smile and gesture to the goat I have tethered near the base of Infinity’s statue. The little thing rolls its eyes madly, typical to most goats, and I try and transfer my enthusiastic grin back to Annie.
“Jesus. I can’t believe you’re making me do this,” she groans.
“This is life or death to me.”
“No pun intended,” Annie says.
“That wasn’t a pun. I’m not talking about the fucking goat. Can we get on with it?”
“I guess I only have myself to blame for this,” Annie says as she produces a knife from the small of her back that I’d love to call an athame, but really it’s just a nasty-looking butterfly knife Annie cavorts into form as quick as some gangbanger from South Central.
“For someone who’s pretty fried, you’ve got a good memory, Zeph.”
“A pretty girl sacrifices a goat in front of you, it’s something you remember,” I say.
“Okay,” and she motions in vague annoyance. “You’re standing in the magic circle. Get out of the fucking way, Zephyr.”
We’re in Whitman’s tomb again (or should I say, yeah, we’re in Whitman’s tomb – it’s hard to get privacy in this town), and Annie has already cut the goat’s rump to get the blood needed for the pentagram. Everything about her speaks of reluctance, but I’m pleased to see her carrying through with my request.
“I can’t believe you gave the goat a name already,” Annie mutters. “That’s sick. It’s almost deliberate. Where the frak did you get a goat from, anyway?”
“That Portuguese place,” I answer vaguely.
Annie only shakes her head and growls and I check out her ass as she peels off the leather coat and gets the goat in a headlock and starts muttering Satanic-sounded verses.
“You’ll get his name right, won’t you?”
“Magus and I go a fair way back. Shut up and let me do the talking here.”
Betty gives a tiny squeal as her throat is cut and Annie clamps her bare forearm across the small animal as it kicks and its life-force gutters away, blood spattered across the diagrams adorning the dusty tomb floor. It only takes a moment for the mystical miasma coalesce and Annie returns to her vexed mutterings. I pick a piece of corn from the corner of one of my teeth and refrain from humming, checking the time on the Enercom phone as Miss Black releases the goat carcass and lifts her hands and the knife over her head and says Simon Magus’ name three times aloud.
There is a powder-flash explosion that is total vaudeville. A moment later, a well-groomed figure in a white suit steps from the pure darkness beside me and I emit a tiny eek! before recovering.
The light gives Simon Magus a ghoulish appearance. The malefic smile doesn’t help. Before I really know what I’m doing, I poke the magician in the lapel just to be sure he’s real. He reacts with a typical Englishman’s annoyance.
“Oi! What was that for? For that matter, what’s this all about? I’m not the talking clock, you know.”
Magus pauses long enough to draw air and only then notices Miss Black. His demeanor changes markedly and he wiggles his designer eyebrows and crosses the floor not at all deterred by the fact Annie’s wearing a few quarts of goat’s blood on her H&M singlet.
“An
nie Black? Gosh, how long’s it been?”
“Too long, Simon. How are you?”
They air kiss and I mime throwing up, though perhaps mime’s not the right word since it comes with sound effects.
“Sorry, Simon,” Annie says and gestures to me like one might a particularly amateurish painting. “Zephyr asked me to summon you.”
“Note the word ‘summon,’ Zephyr. In the flesh. I’m quite real, you know.”
“Good,” I reply. “And thanks for coming. I’d hate to think you’re fake.”
Simon Magus snaps his arms away and fusses with his jacket sleeves like a man adjusting his cufflinks, except he’s not actually wearing cufflinks. Then he adjusts the plum-colored tie that is the only color in his monochrome outfit.
“What is it you want, Zephyr?”
“Right. Here goes,” I say and don’t quite manage a smile. “I need you to help me get my powers back.”
“And why would I do that?” Magus asks.
“Because I’m . . . I need my powers,” I tell him.
“Why?”
“What is this, fucking Twenty Questions?”
“And what is this?” the sorcerer says and gestures around. “I think you’ve mistaken me for the magic shop, old man.”
*
“I KNOW THIS isn’t World of Warcraft, Simon,” I tell the white-haired, trendy-looking motherfucker in a hurry. There’s an air of imminent departure surrounding the world’s foremost sorcerer and my desperation’s showing like a pink sock.
“The goat trick was cute, Zephyr. But as my father used to say, ‘Once is funny. Twice is a smack.’ Capiche?”
“Magus, I need help.”
“I get your air of ready pathos. The humility. I’m sorry. There’s an order to things, Zephyr, and I am a servant of that order. I won’t intervene.”
“Won’t? Or can’t?”
“I’m . . . not going to get dragged into this pettiness,” Simon says.
He runs bejeweled fingers carefully over his crinkly Spartacus-style hair-do, checking everything’s in place.
“I understand you’re disappointed. Deal with it.”
“I’m trying to deal with it,” I tell him.
“You’re a big boy,” the sorcerer replies in the most condescending tone possible. “You’ve been around the traps. You can handle it.”
“Some help from you and I won’t have to handle it.”
“Zephyr? Forget it. If it makes you feel any better, you’re right. Maybe I can’t do anything about it.”
He makes a snappy gesture and runs his hand down the air in front of me, starting at my head and sort of giving up around my balls.
“It’s an auric suppressant, if that makes you feel any better.”
“That’s not a lot of help.”
“Somebody’s messed with your biological energy signature,” he says.
“Others were hit too. And others seemed immune.”
“It can be done,” Simon replies.
“Will it . . . wear off?”
“Mate . . . Like I said, I’m not the magic shop, Zeph.”
“Christ.”
“Don’t be so dejected,” he says – he who is probably one of the most powerful men the world has ever seen, at least since Hitler. Or Charlie Sheen. “You need to look for the silver lining. Remember, the back door of a problem is often an opportunity.”
“Christ,” I say again, utterly dejected.
Simon puts his hand on my shoulder and winks to Miss Black while he thinks I’m not looking.
“Sorry my friend. Anything else?”
“Yeah. Who’s Elvis?”
“Ah,” Simon Magus smiles and puts his hands together. “The King.”
*
“ELVIS WAS NEVER born in this world. Not as far as I can tell,” Simon Magus regales us. “I’ve seen sign of him in a thousand other worlds. They call him the king, but of course that’s a title mankind has reserved for cryptonauts through all time.”
“Um, cryptonauts?”
“There are cryptonauts and semiophages,” the uh, well, wizard says. “Understand I am talking at the ideational level. These aren’t words you would’ve learnt at school. And I’m talking about world history and magic at a level that’s frankly probably above your head.”
“Your honesty is compelling,” I say drily.
Magus smiles. It’s a wan thing, like the rest of him. I get the sense he’s only really warming up, but as long as he’s spilling his guts for free, at least on this topic I am willing to let him run.
“How did you hear of Elvis?” he asks.
“It’s complicated.”
“Do you know how many possible actual worlds there are, Zephyr?”
“Ugh, infinity?”
Again with the tight smile.
“Close. About five hundred trillion. That’s in the long measure. So a trillion is –”
“I get it. The French system.”
“Yeah. And in all of that, how many versions of yourself do you think there are?” Magus asks.
“I think what you want to tell me is there aren’t as many as we’d think,” I reply, my desire to undercut his egotistical crap almost winning over my need to hear the actual answer to my question one of these days.
“That’s right.”
Simon looks at Annie and is set to say something, but then physically restrains himself.
“The probability of two people coming together to make a human being is one thing. The odds could be worked out on a high school calculator. Hey, maybe even by you, Zeph.”
He sniggers. Twat.
“But the probability out of a few million sperm and successful ova production in the womb, all it takes is an erratic heartbeat or a missed cab or a spot of bad weather and you can kiss yourself goodbye,” Magus says. “Of course, a child might be born. One of your imagined siblings. But it won’t be you. When you think about the powers there are in the cosmos – at least in the higher plasticity parallels – don’t you think we’d be flooded with versions of ourselves flitting about in the multiverse, fucking up time and continuity?”
“Plastic parallels?”
“The multiverse is tiered, Zephyr.”
He points up.
“There are parallels that would make even your head spin. And then of course there’s the lower plasticity realms where even I would be powerless, and some of us, well, we wouldn’t even be able to live. Their physics is far too classical and rigid. Magic is unheard of, and supermen, even simple mutations, are rare.”
“Sounds depressing. Not sure how this all ties in to Elvis,” I tell him. “Cosmonauts and copraphages, you said?”
“Cryptonauts and semiophages.”
Simon says it with another of those smiles I don’t like.
“The cryptonauts are few. Rare. Think of Jesus, Gandhi, Mohammed, Martin Luther, Bob Marley – people whole cultures organize around. And Elvis is one of those. In some parallels, he is a simple performer. In others, he is a king in truth as well as essence. A god-king. The golden child of a new age.”
“And semiophages, then?” I ask. “I get the –phage is eating, and semio- is what, like semiotics?”
“Yes. Meaning-eaters. Consumers in the truest sense of the word. That’s you and me, Zephyr, and sorry, you too Annie.”
“Hey, just forget I’m here,” she says.
“We’re like some exotic cosmic mollusks, shitting the very same substance which is the food source for others. Meaning. Ideas. Communication. Verbiage.”
“I’m not Saussure,” I say with a vaudeville shake of my open palms and a diagonal grin. It’s an oldie, but a goodie.
“That’s lame, Zephyr. We’re talking about the discourse of the cosmos, which is the very building blocks of what most people call magick. It’s about as divorced from Saussurean semiotics as an HP Pavilion is from Babbage’s difference engine.”
“How does this Elvis king guy fit into that?”
“Cryptonauts are more than ju
st cultural semaphores, Zephyr. They’re culture seeds. Or bombs, in some instance. Elvis has influenced the course of the Twentieth Century in every parallel on which he was born, even on those very basic and entirely non-plastic worlds I’ve described. If you’re after him, it sounds to me like you’re after something pretty big. So I’ll ask again: who gave you the name?”
“John Lennon,” I say.
“Ah, there you go,” Magus says. “From one cryptonaut to another.”
Zephyr 7.16 Coda
IN WASHINGTON, A man in a silver-and-black costume with a motorbike helmet tells me Hawkwind left for New Orleans back in the days after Hurricane Katrina. Hasn’t been seen in Atlantic City since. I thank him as best as my gruff new persona allows, my mustache grown out into what Loren teasingly says makes me look like a younger, smaller, darker Hulk Hogan, with the black bandanna even lower, holes in it for my eyes.
The guy in the spacesuit calls himself Timelord, though he stresses he has no actual powers and simply works alongside a few other masks who also have no real powers, their common aim to help in the quiet disaster the streets of Washington have become. I stay a whole five minutes, mute witness to the tragedy of lives coming undone in cardboard shelters, shipping containers in abandoned alleyways, homes made from spot-welded shopping carts, tarpaulins, dime store tents, every manner of impromptu structure known to man miraculously overlooked by the city council as each week serves even more human detritus upon the city’s streets. The disconnect and paradox between the black town cars in endless streams on the city’s motorways, as common here as yellow cabs were once in Manhattan, the capital’s expressways on giant concrete stilts for more than practical reasons, I suspect, rivers and estuaries of human misery beneath them as they snake their ways between the megaplexes of government, my cynicism ripe as I think of the wheels within wheels and how they grind on, sheltered from the underclass upon which the revitalized city quite literally has its foundations.
I phone Loren and tell her where I’m going and she agrees to skip work, albeit reluctantly. There’s some case she says she’s investigating that keeps her on at the club, though I haven’t really bothered to get across the details as I suspect she simply enjoys the attention, the Catholic schoolgirl thing in reverse or at least delayed a good few years longer than I’ve ever experience. All the same, an hour twenty later and I pull up to the corner of Matrix and Cane in Johnson and Lioness steps through the gasping crowd. I admit my heart gives a brief flutter at her leather loveliness, the tawny hair, flawless skin and cherry leather costume straight from God’s palette of the vision of paradise. Although it’s her bike, like so many things Loren has deferred to me, and she slides onto the back and puts her hands on my hips, giving me a gentle, sexy squeeze under the leather overcoat as I throttle the Triumph, painted black now, and cast away from the sidewalk like a Viking ship breaking anchor before the two cops who were chasing her can arrive.
Zephyr II Page 39