by Simon Hawke
The so-called True Christians managed to maintain their composure pretty well throughout most of the abuse the callers heaped upon them, though Prescott did everything he could to bait them and provoke some kind of outburst. He played devil's advocate, no pun intended, and egged on the callers, but though Brother Marcus and Sister Ruth were beginning to show some signs of strain, Reverend Johnson and Brother Theodore kept cool and calm and none of them so much as raised their voice, despite considerable provocation. Perhaps they were coming off as being rather intolerant and inflexible in their beliefs, but it was the callers who were coming across like raving assholes.
I decided that the whole thing was a waste of time and so curled up on the floor to catch a little catnap. I had started to tune out the debate and drift off when Leventhal suddenly turned up the volume with his remote.
"... Perfect example of how magic is undermining the moral fabric of our society," Reverend Johnson was saying. "As if it weren't enough that thaumagenetic engineers have taken it upon themselves to play God by perverting Nature with their black arts, we are now being asked to give legal and moral sanction to this sinful perversion by granting equal rights to their shameful abominations. I say it's past time for God-fearing people to draw the line, once and for all!"
"Well, admittedly, the ERA proposal is highly controversial," Prescott responded, "and while a lot of people might not necessarily think of thaumagenes as sinful abominations, I think you'll find that many of them might balk at granting them civil rights."
"Perhaps," Reverend Johnson replied, "but the fact that such a proposal is even being made seriously is evidence of just how far our society has fallen. The Lord gave Man dominion over all the beasts of the field. He did not create them to be Man's equal. It's all fine and good to love animals and care for them, but to actually propose elevating them to equal status with humans is nothing short of blasphemy. It only goes to show how far these necromancers and their deluded supporters will go to corrupt humanity."
"Well, now, wait a minute," Prescott said, "you're playing a little fast and loose with the definition of necromancy, aren't you? Necromancy is legally defined as the practice of black magic-"
"All magic is black magic," Sister Ruth interjected vehemently. "This whole legal sham of defining black magic as something that entails murder is nothing more than a subterfuge to legitimize sin. Murder is murder, and black magic is black magic-whether you call it thaumaturgy or necromancy, it's all the same. Society has always had laws against the taking of human life, going all the way back to the Ten Commandments. And society used to have laws against the practice of the necromantic arts, as well, only now we're told that magic is only necromancy if it involves the taking of a life. Well, we already have a definition for that. It's called murder, and whether it's done with magic or with a gun or with a knife, it makes no difference. Killing an unborn child is murder, too, but if you call it something else, like abortion, then you start making people think it's more acceptable. It's the same with magic. It's a sin no matter how you look at it, or what you call it."
"I'm not sure most people would agree with that," said Prescott. "I mean, come on, you can't really compare magic with abortion. After all, where would society be today if it wasn't for Merlin-"
"Merlin Ambrosius was the Antichrist," snapped Sister Ruth, no longer sounding so composed. "I'm sick of hearing people refer to him as if he were the Second Coming! He was the Devil incarnate! The Collapse could easily have been Armageddon, but instead it was a warning from God. A. final warning. Humanity was given a second chance, and look at what we're doing with it! Instead of coming to our senses and embracing God, we have embraced the Devil, and there will be Hell to pay! Don't you understand, there won't be any more second chances!"
"Well, now you're being melodramatic," Prescott said. "Are you seriously suggesting that Merlin was Satan?"
"The Tempter comes to us in many forms, Sean," said Reverend Johnson, and somehow I knew that he was putting a restraining hand on Sister Ruth's arm as he spoke. I could almost hear it in his tone. "He came to us in the form of the wicked men whose folly led us to the Collapse; he came to us in the form of Ambrosius the Necromancer; and now he comes to us in the form of those who follow in the Necromancer's footsteps, his corrupt disciples, who seek to lead us astray from the teachings of the Lord. They would make the beasts our equals because they would have us be as beasts ourselves, and that way lies the road to our eternal damnation."
"Let's take a call," said Prescott. "Hello, you're on the 'Late Shift.' "
"I think these people are looney tunes," the caller said. "I mean, they're totally out of touch with reality. I don't even know why you're bothering to put these fruitcakes on the air, unless maybe you're going for some comic relief.
Somebody should just tell them to wake up and smell the coffee, you know what I mean?"
"I hear you," Prescott said. "Sister Ruth, this caller thinks you people are a bunch of yo-yos. How do you respond to that?"
"We're the ones who are trying to tell everybody else to wake up, before it's too late," Sister Ruth replied. "In flaming fire He shall take vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ!"
"Flaming fire, eh?" said Prescott, with a smile in his voice. "As opposed to fire that doesn't flame, I suppose?"
"You mock the Bible at the peril of your immortal soul," said Sister Ruth. "And those who will mock our Lord and blaspheme against His Word will be struck down and damned to everlasting Hell!"
"Well, if the Lord can't take a joke, I guess I'm in trouble now," said Prescott, with a chuckle. "And, on that rather threatening note, I see we're out of time, and so I'll thank our guests, even if they would see me damned, and hope you'll all tune in again tomorrow night for another edition of 'Late Shift,' assuming, of course, we're all still here. ..."
Leventhal stopped the tape. He sniffed once, grimaced, and tossed aside the remote control. "Well, what do you think, Cat?" he asked.
"Why ask me?" I countered. "You're the detective."
"I'm asking your opinion."
I got to my feet and stretched to get the kinks out after listening to that long tape. I glanced out the window and saw that it had grown dark. "Well, they're obviously not sympathetic to the ERA," I said, "but then it didn't sound to me as if there was a whole lot they were sympathetic to. They don't like magic, they don't like the Roman Catholic Church, they don't like people who don't love Jesus.. . reminds me of an old joke."
"Shoot," Leventhal said.
"Well, there were these two guys drinking in a bar," I said. "And one of them turns to the other and says, 'Hey, tell me something. What do you think about Jews?' And the second guys says, 'I don't really care for Jews.' So the first guy says, 'Well, then what about Catholics?' And the guy replies, 'I don't really like Catholics, either.' 'Yeah?' his buddy says. 'Well, what about Protestants?' 'Don't like Protestants.' 'How about Episcopalians?' 'Don't like Episcopalians.' 'Baptists?' 'Don't like Baptists, either.' 'How about Buddhists?' 'Ain't got no use for 'em.' 'Muslims?' 'Can't stand 'em.' 'What about Jehovah's Witnesses?' 'I hate Jehovah's Witnesses.' 'Well, goddamm it,' says the first guy, 'who do you like?' And the second guy thinks about it for a second and says, 'Well... I like my friends.' "
Leventhal snorted. "Where'd you hear that?"
"A rabbi told it to me once."
Leventhal smiled. "Well, I definitely see your point," he said, lighting up another smoke. He inhaled deeply and exhaled with a sigh. "They don't sound like a bunch of happy campers, do they?"
"They don't exactly sound like murderers, either," I replied.
"Well, maybe not, but if you could tell by just listening to 'em, my job would be a shitload easier, that's for sure," Leventhal said.
"The point is, we don't really know much more than we did when we started," I said. "It doesn't seem as if we're getting anywhere."
"The night's still young," Leventhal replied. He glanced at his watch
and got up, reaching for his leather. "Come on, Cat, I'll buy you a saucer of cream."
Nine
THE huge sign hand-painted on the wall in ornate script said, "Mudd's Occult Café' From the outside, the place didn't look like much. It was a rectangular, two-story building with a flat roof and a wooden outdoor patio attached to the back as if by afterthought. The patio was enclosed by a ramshackle wooden fence made of unpainted, flat boards, so that you couldn't see into it from the street. Behind the fence, there was a dumpster and a small parking lot, with another parking lot across the street. Standing in front of the place on the corner of twenty-second and Champa, you got a good view of the buildings of downtown Denver, all lit up in the night like Christmas trees. Turn around and you could see in through the windows, where people sat at small wooden tables, some with lamps casting a dim and sickly light and some without. The atmosphere inside the place looked dim and smoky. It sounded noisy, too.
The place wasn't exactly in one of the better parts of town. The streets down here looked foreboding, and so did the people wandering up and down. There were several young Rippers outside the front door, standing around or sitting on the sidewalk, leaning back against the wall and smoking, making a hell of a fashion statement in studded, hand-painted leather jackets, punky haircuts, ripped jeans, and clunky boots festooned with metal.
At first glance, they looked like a rough crowd, but a closer look revealed young and relatively fresh-scrubbed faces, some of them trying to look hard, but mostly it was just a pose. People who are really hard don't have to try to look that way. There just isn't any other way that they can look. You can always tell. Their faces have a lived-in look that smacks of the hard lessons of experience. Often, they look older than they really are. But the eyes are always a dead giveaway. They don't stare holes through you, like the poseurs try to do. They just watch with a sort of flat, noncommittal, disaffected gaze. And they don't miss a thing. No, these weren't tough characters, they were just kids. Probably nice kids. Maybe some of them had received a few hard knocks, and maybe a couple of them carried boot knives they probably didn't know how to use, but mercifully, they'd been spared life's tougher lessons. So far.
They knew Leventhal and a couple of them greeted him as we approached. He gave them a grin and a curt, "Hey, how's it goin'?" as we went in. The entrance was one of those alcove things, where you walk in through an exterior door and opposite you there's a wall with another door to the left. The wall had a bunch of leaflets and posters tacked to it, advertising bands playing in local clubs, poetry readings, and various used items for sale. We went in through the heavy black door and through the rest of the alcove, a short corridor ending in another wall festooned with leaflets and posters. There were ratty old drapes hung over another doorway to the right. Leventhal pushed aside the drapes and we went on through.
To our immediate left was a row of bookshelves crammed full of used books in hardcover and paperback. To our immediate right was a wooden staircase leading up to a loft where there were more shelves full of used books for sale.
On the other side of the stairs, to the right, was a small alcove containing more bookshelves. Directly in front of us was a small glass-fronted cabinet containing cigarettes and various items of jewelry. An old, antique cash register rested on top of it, and a bored-looking girl in shorts and a ripped T-shirt about eight sizes too big for her sat on a stool behind the register. Behind her was a partition that ended a foot or so above her head, and behind that was an espresso bar and soda fountain, elevated above the rest of the place. There was a short stairway leading up to it at either end of the partition. The main room was to the left, and to the right was a hallway leading back to the kitchen, the back room, and the outdoor patio.
A guy with a full, bushy, dark brown beard and shaggy hair sat on a stool in front of us, collecting the cover from people as they came in. And beside him, coiled on the floor, sat something that made the fur on my back bristle. It was a snog. The biggest, ugliest, meanest-looking snog I'd ever seen, and, fortunately, I hadn't seen that many. There weren't that many of them around anymore, largely because they hadn't been much of a sales success. They were truly vile creatures with spectacularly mean dispositions, and they were so ugly they were enough to put you off your feed. They'd largely been replaced by dobras, which were ugly enough all by themselves, but generally regarded as more manageable and efficient. This was the other side of the coin. It was another hybrid of a snake and dog, only, unlike dobras, which had the bodies of dogs and the heads of giant cobras, the snog had the body of a giant snake and the head of a dog. This one was an old rattler, with a body as thick as Leventhal's thigh and the head of a Rottweiler. It was covered with iridescent scales and it had a rattle on its tail the size of a man's fist. Coiled up the way it was, it was hard to judge its length, but it had to be at least twenty feet or more. Our eyes met and I arched my back and hissed.
"Hey, Dan," said the bearded guy on the stool.
"How's it goin', Steve?" said Leventhal, as Steve waved him through without bothering about the cover. I hung back. Leventhal turned around and saw me all bristled up, eye to eye with that big snog.
"Ahhhh," the snog said, throatily, as it licked its chops and stared at me malevolently. "Dinner."
Leventhal gave it an open-handed whack on the head that didn't even make it blink. "Cut it out, Smaug," he said. "The cat's a friend of mine."
Steve grinned and said, "Don't worry about ole Smaug. He just likes to rattle the newcomers."
"Steve, meet Catseye Gomez," said Leventhal. "Cat, this is Steve Wiley. And this ugly section of radiator hose is his buddy, Smaug."
Steve grinned at me and Smaug said,” Pleased to meet ya, little fella."
"Likewise, I think," I replied, bristling down.
"Don't worry about Smaug," said Steve, "he only eats dog food and the occasional hamburger. But he does help keep the customers in line."
"Yeah, I'm sure," I said, as I edged past him uncertainly.
"Heh, heh, hen," Smaug chuckled, throatily. "Cat's got spunk," he said to Steve. "Didja see that? He was ready to go for me. You're okay, Cat. Anybody gives you any grief in here, you just call old Smaug."
"Thanks, big fella, I'll do that," I said.
He gave me a little rattle with his tail and I returned the compliment by giving him a twinkle with ole Betsy. It caught him by surprise, the way it always does, and told him there was more to me than met the eye, that maybe I could take him, if it ever came to that, and he just grinned at me with that big, old Rottweiler maw of his and went "Heh, heh, heh" and shook his head, and I knew we understood each other. We were both old troopers who'd seen our share of scraps and if there wasn't any good reason for the two of us to dance, we wouldn't. I felt I'd made a friend, the first thaumagene Mend I'd made since I arrived to Denver, unless you wanted to count Princess, and frankly, I wasn't sure of that one at all. Pampered little society pussies have never been my dish. Smaug was a different kind of breed entirely. Him I could understand.
We entered the main room and it immediately became clear that Leventhal was a regular here. A number of different people waved and nodded and spoke greetings as we threaded our way between the tables, toward a booth against the wall, below the raised bar section where the wait station was. I had to watch myself to make sure nobody stepped on me, because it was pretty crowded. The tables were all crammed together and packed. The booths against the bare, brick wall were all crowded, too. There was artwork hanging on that brick wall, and I knew it was artwork because of the little labels with the prices on them. Otherwise, I might've thought that somebody had vandalized a perfectly good wall.
The air was heavy with cigarette smoke, which was in itself sort of unusual. Most places didn't allow smoking anymore, even though there was now a cure for cancer-in a manner of speaking. If you felt like trashing your lungs, you could always buy yourself a set of new ones, assuming you could afford it, since that was a procedure not covered by your health ins
urance. Still, most people found cigarette smoke offensive and smoking wasn't the big business that it used to be. However, here in Mudd's, smokers were in nicotine heaven. Practically all the Rippers smoked, maybe because it was self-destructive, or maybe because it allowed you to do all sorts of little physical bits of business with your cigarette. And the antique Zippo lighter was a coveted accessory, as well. I guess there was something satisfying in that little, metallic snick of its cover as you flipped it open. Or maybe it was just nostalgia, who knew? Humans get into all these little tribal bits of behavior that have always seemed incomprehensible to me.
There was a raised section at the far left of the room, and running all the way across to the back wall. There were some tables up there, but part of it, and the left corner, had been cleared to make a sort of stage for the live entertainment. There was an old piano pushed up against the wall in the corner, and there were some amps and microphones set up. At the moment, there were three people up there whaling away on keyboard instruments, making a noise that sounded like a twenty-car pileup on 1-25. A young woman dressed all in black stood behind a mike, and I suppose she was singing. Anyway, that was my best guess. It was hard to tell with all the processing the electronics were doing to her voice. She was doing a chant of some sort, or maybe she was reciting poetry, or perhaps having a nervous breakdown, take your pick. Her hair was black, her leather jacket was black, her sheer and skin-tight top was black, her tights were black, her boots were black, and her eye shadow was black, and she had enough rings on her fingers to make a punch from her seem like a decidedly unpleasant proposition, for all her ethereal and fragile appearance.
