“I don’t know, Cable. I’m tired. I think I might go home for a while. There are other younger creatures of my own species who are anxious to fight the good fight. After Honey—and my killing Laggore and his strong arms—I rather lost my taste for it. I don’t think anyone can last long without love. It was my hope that you and Honey would bring me that delight, and maybe a grandchild or two—”
“—Joe! Please! It’s hard enough that we’re two grown men standing here with tears in our eyes, lamenting what might have been. Let’s get on with it, Mister. You know you can call on me anytime. I’m not so sure about the love thing, but I like you a lot, Joe.”
He wiped his eyes with his sleeve. “Thanks, Cable. But I think I’ll disappear for a while.”
We embraced and his driver let me into the back seat of the waiting car. “Thanks again, Joe, for helping out…I know Cass’s challenges aren’t over yet.”
He looked after me and smiled. “Even the gods have challenges, Cable. See you around…”
That night I was so exhausted that I collapsed on my bed with my clothes on. Bright and early the next morning I heard a key slide into the lock outside in the office. I drew my .38 out from under my pillow and crouched on the bed. Soon I heard a whistle and a feminine voice humming. It was Zelda Blodgett. She had come to check on things and water the plants that she maintained would help cheer up my rather bleak surroundings. Then she peeked around the corner and saw me lying on my stomach on the bed with my gun drawn. “Cable! It’s me! I didn’t even know you were back.”
I lowered my gun. “Hi, Zelda. Yeah, got back a couple of days ago. I had to do a few things before I jumped into business as usual.”
“I’m happy to see you.” She came up to me and hugged me. “God, you smell of tobacco and alcohol. Where have you been?”
“Oh,” I laughed, “with some beautiful redhead in a cave, making mad, passionate love and then sending her back to her native planet.”
She smiled. “Oh, you! I might believe the redhead part—because I know you never give brunettes like me a chance. But I’m still glad we’re friends and all. I don’t know how many times your phone has rung…. but a lot. I took down a few messages while I was here. There’s been one persistent lady who really wanted to know where you were. I told her I didn’t know. She left her name. Florida Heston, HOllywood 6411. How could I forget? She’s been a nuisance. Anyway, the plants are fine.”
“Thanks, Zelda. I’ll tell you what. Soon as I get a few bucks ahead, I’ll take you out to a nice dinner—and if you behave—maybe a few spins around the dance floor, eh?”
Her face lit up. “Really? That would be swell, Cable! Thanks!”
“It’s the least I can do for you, keeping up the joint like you do and bringing in the little touch of greenery.”
“So when can we go?” she asked anxiously.
Just at that second there was a commotion at my front door and in ran three women, clad in white leather jackets and black slacks with high heels! One of them pulled a gun on Zelda and me. “Who’s the female twerp, Denning? Lose her. My business is with you!” she demanded.
I was sitting on the edge of my bed with Zelda standing above me. “I guess you’d better go home, Zelda. Don’t worry. I’ll call you later for that date.”
“Gees, Cable—I don’t know about you—I mean, your life is exciting and all—but so dangerous and scary! Who are these people?”
“I haven’t got a clue, kid. C’mon, go home, we’ll talk later.”
Zelda walked slowly toward the door, the gal with the gun watching her. Then she turned to me. “Surely, you can do better than that. My mother tells me you’re the ladies’ lady’s-man…they just can’t get enough of you. And I understand my sister is smitten with you.” She looked me over. “Well, you’re alright for a youngish earthman, I guess. But you’re no Ramon Navarro, either.”
I slowly got up from the bed and walked into my office, still trying to shake the morning. “Want a cup of coffee?” I asked the women. I didn’t know what else to say. “By the way, that’s a pretty fancy gun you’re toting there. I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite like it.”
The three women looked at each other. They were all good lookers, one a blonde, one a kind of reddish hair and the boss woman who did all the talking had dark brunette hair. She had a hell of body on her, while the others were more modestly endowed. “No—no, uh, I don’t drink coffee. I get too excited on the drug. The gun? It’s a new design, from Germany. It’s called a Schnellfeuer. It means ‘Fast fire’. Produced by Mauser, with its own select-fire, detachable magazine.”
I looked at the other two women. “And you ladies?” They simply shook their heads in the negative, staring at me in amazement that I wasn’t frightened of them. “So…you aliens get the latest, I’ll say that.” I said as I placed some ground coffee in my old percolator. I walked slowly into my bathroom, filled the coffee maker with water, went back to the corner, turned the little hotplate on and then stood to face my company. “So what can I do for you rather energetic ladies, this early morning?”
“I am Hestia, but I prefer being called Vesta. I am the virgin goddess, first-born daughter of Cronus-Gor. I am also the first one he jealously devoured—and the last one he disgorged when my mother tricked him into—well, you know the story. I know Cassiopeia has told you a lot—maybe too much. But so has mother. Some thousands of your years ago I gave up my seat in the hierarchy of the pantheon of the gods on Olympus over to Dionysus. Just like my brother, I got bored playing Miss Home and Hearth and praying at the votary every day ad nauseam.”
I tried to control any humor I might reflect back to the dame. I found her very funny. Her dress, her mannerisms, affectations, the nervous way she presented herself, rattling on and on. “I see…so let me guess. You’ve come to good old planet earth to sight see and maybe look at taking over Dad’s operation—how’s that for starters?” I said, doing my best to wake up.
Vesta looked very surprised. “How did you know? Yeah, that’s what I’ve been thinking for a long time. We’re tired of male-dominated tyrannical rule.”
“To be sure, you’d rather see female-dominated tyrannical rule.”
“You have a smart mouth, as your gangster films say. How would you know that?”
“Because you Titans are war-like, aggressive, and when your kind gets bred with a mad-dog lineage like your father’s, all bets are off.”
She looked at me strangely. Then she whispered something to the two other women and they left. “Leave the parking meter running?” I joked. But she did not take kindly to my humor.
“You are a typical human male, your self-importance and monumental ego is drooping—errr—dripping from your conversation. Self-assured, aren’t you? You think you have your life in control, don’t you?”
“No…I wouldn’t say that, Vesta. But my patience with you is running a bit thin. So how can I get rid of you? You see, that doesn’t quite explain what you are doing in my office before ten in the morning when sometimes I’m only just getting to bed! So, I would urge you to declare your business with me—or kindly leave and play your little gangster gun scare tactics elsewhere. I’m a busy man with plenty going on just now.”
“Okay…” She thought for a minute. “Okay…so I’ll spill it to you. You are about to be summoned to my father’s not so kind presence.”
“So, tell me something new. I knew that was going to happen a few days ago when I agreed to help teleport your sister to an undisclosed hiding place, along with certain information I had previously possessed.”
“I know all about it, Mister. What I was really thinking…was that…at least I was hoping…we could help each other… I am not as clear in the earth ways as you are. You can help me overthrow my father—and I can help you protect whatever it is you are protecting….keep Father off your back—and even throw in my sister Cassiopeia for good measure, since I know she’s just dying to experience one of you primitive hormone-driven earth males.
”
I thought for a minute. Even if the babe was nuts, she had a point. If we could keep Cronus-Gor preoccupied for a few hundred years defending his Oculus from a powerful rival, I would sure breathe a lot easier. That would also take some pressure off Toggth and the Fen de Fuqin. I wasn’t sure of the Cassiopeia part. I just wasn’t ready for a doll between my sheets yet. I’d have to wait that one out.
“So, maybe you’ve got a point there, Vesta.”
“I know I do. But I can’t do it without—as much as I hate to admit it—without a strong male influence and a knowledgeable earthling to guide us. I have a complete order of my own already set up, modeled somewhat after my father’s.”
“But why would you think I’d help you continue this cruel and terrible trick you play upon the human race? Why would I support you in bringing misery through selective control to millions of lives?”
“Because I would change things. Just because my model is secretive and it’s functional and multi-tiered like my Dad’s, the methods would be different. I would introduce a very different content of procedure. Education…not indoctrination, that’s how you change things for the better. Educate everyone. Law and order are maintained because of universal rules—the self-same equity for everyone—must be observed. In this way, your species will outgrow ethnic cleansing, martial aggression over regimes and real estate, political or religious causes being the reasons for bloodshed—the individual could then assert his or her rightful place in the scheme of things.”
“You sure make a lot of sense, sister. I’d vote for you. But I think it’s a tad unrealistic. You don’t know my species the way I do. There are elements within the nature of humans that would scare off your grandmother. Humans stand on slippery ground. I’m not sure why, but I suspect they’ve been tampered with by ‘aliens’ other than yourselves. You see, there’s a fault line that runs the length of the species, nothing in them is deep enough, real enough, sincere enough—a few can really love, but a whole mess of them can really hate and destroy, take what the earth offers free and put a price to it. One minute they’ll kiss you and the other they’ll slap your face and put you in front of a firing squad with no regrets. Governments will lie, bankers and stock brokers cheat and defraud you until they’ve broken the back of the spirit that kept any ideals alive.” I stopped and realized my coffee percolator was running over. I turned off the burner and poured myself a cup of java. Vesta said nothing, but put her gun into her coat pocket.
“No, Vesta, honesty, truth, integrity, long-running loyalty without avarice or ulterior motive are still pipe dreams for humans. They set up puppets to give the illusion that someone out there cares, but in fact are too busy feathering their own nests to worry about the next guy. Everything’s dependent on business and the corporation; the new world of the consumer is upon us. Creatures like your father prey on this weakness and not only validate it, but increase it, turning brother against brother, who may never even meet in this world…so those flaws cracking the human psyche in two can be exploited until dooms day!” I stopped and breathed in. “And then nothing will have mattered, will it? Because when you’re dead the only calling card you left behind is pain, misery, memory and regret, that you met someone, maybe had a few kids and slaved the rest of your life to support what you yourself never had in the first place: fulfillment, creativity, peace of mind, true spiritual awareness that there really is something beyond this piece of shit we call man’s world. And in the meantime, you gave nothing back to the earth…..she who fed you, sheltered you, clothed you, and loved you through the dark night of men. You give nothing back to the Great Mother because humans are sponges, leeches, suckers, vampires whose only directive is to take, take take—none of us have a clue as to what it’s like to really give, balance out the world with good stewardship, honoring what we did not create but have the pleasure of enjoying.” I coughed and lit up my first cigarette of the day. “A perfect blue sky, a breath-taking sunset, a windy hot night on top of a hill listening for the sirens of eternity, the moon traveling slowly across the sea’s shimmering surface, an autumn walk when the leaves are so brilliant with reds, gold, yellows and oranges you have to believe you’re walking down a lane in some unending fantasy.”
Vesta stood there, her eyes wide with the wonderment of my words. “In all my thousands of years, I never heard someone speak like that, Denning—”
“—call me Cable—I hate formality…”
“Okay, Cable.” Then her body became very animated as she came toward me. “You could be the voice to end all voices, the human who thinks like a god. Join my cause and we’ll be ten times more powerful unseating my father. Someone from a higher place gives you those words you speak, Cable. I know that as fact. No one can speak like that unprompted by higher forces. You are special.”
“I don’t know about that. Look at your Dad. He’s a god and he ain’t doin’ that great in the positive department. Don’t you see, it’s what my friend Toggth once said…you’ve got to earn the best attributes that you can be. And frankly, I don’t even trust my own human nature. It stinks, it’s treacherous, deceitful, scheming—if given half a chance.”
“I don’t know if I believe all of that. If what you say is true, then there’s a stalemate in creation. Maybe nothing will ever quite evolve beyond whatever is endemic in its source. And we don’t know what the source really invested into the original seed.”
“No, we don’t,” I said. I was impressed with the brilliant head on this alien woman. She seemed sincere and maybe she would succeed in deposing old pop on his Cronus-Gor throne. Who the hell knows? “So we leave it at that. All the rest is speculation, the quest to build a better mousetrap with your own take on life and how the world should be run. But you’ve got to remember, a philosophy is just that—it too, has its terms of limitations. Just like your sister’s imminent return back to this dimension as humanized woman—plus the Fen de Fuqin.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard of that. That’s what the whole thing’s about, isn’t it? Some silly coded capsule or something? And funny, it was my mother who taught us many, many thousands of your years ago that everything we ever needed was right here—inside. Why didn’t my father remember that?”
“Because greed and lust for power are a disease, Vesta. And I suspect old Daddy Boy’s got it pretty bad.”
She began to walk toward the door. Then she turned back to look at me. “Be careful, Cable. You can only fool Cronus-Gor as long as he can’t read your mind. So say nothing about anything you might image, because he’ll trace the energy of the story right back to its origins. And then he’ll be really angry.”
“Thanks for the tip, Vesta,” I said, waving my hand from behind my desk.
“How old are you, Cable?”
“Well, by all accounts of weights and measures, I’m going to be thirty-three next September.”
“I think it’s more like thirty-three million. You’ve been circulating in the universe a long time…a long time…I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other soon. I’ll visit you after you get back from Father’s.” Then she was gone. The day had just begun, yet I was exhausted. The weight of these days was heavy on me and for whatever reasons I was missing Adora really bad just about now. I was hearing her gentle voice with that charming Spanish accent and maybe the radio was on and I could hear Honey singing. Oh, yeah, nothing says it like music and good memories…………
The next day was busy with phone calls and getting new cases lined up. I had called Zelda and told her everything was okay with me. I didn’t happen to mention that the three female personages who visited me were of alien origin. That may have been pushing the envelope, even with Zelda. This was Wednesday. We had made a date for me to take her out to dinner Friday night.
CHAPTER 11
PLAY ME ON A MISTY NIGHT
That night I got restless and felt like getting lost in one of those dark and noisy cabarets, where a pretty thing in a sexy dress and a good voice held court with a microphone and a
few great tunes. I checked the paper and was reminded that Misty Sheridan was still out in Santa Monica at the La Monica Ballroom. I had returned Elisa Moreno’s little black coupe and so I took the trolley out to Santa Monica.
By this time, Misty Sheridan was a pretty big draw. Of course she didn’t rival Honey in her heyday, but nonetheless, Misty was good and coming up in the world of entertainment. I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point, she’d get a recording contract, and like Honey, show up on a radio show or two. I walked in and the place was noisy with the usual din of people pretending to like each other, lots of laughter, drinking, smoking and a few couples out on that huge dance floor, smooching as they twirled around to Misty’s song. When I came in she was singing a nice version of Jerome Kern’s They Didn’t Believe Me—and believe me—the way Misty sang it, there were probably very few men in the room who didn’t have a bulge in their pants! Misty had the gift of sincere and steamy, the kind of gal you wanted to take home and ravage without mussing her makeup! I know that sounds strange, but it was the feeling I had. Her large, welcoming full breasts were having a coming out party in that wonderful black-satin dress of hers, the sensual lips and flowing hair, those blue eyes that looked at and through you before she even opened her mouth to utter her first notes. Yeah, that was Misty Sheridan. Even her voice was misty, a kind of breathiness that could melt you like a popsicle on a hot summer afternoon.
As soon as she saw me she brightened up with a smile and then directed one the verses of the song toward me: “And when I tell them….and I’m certainly going to tell them…that you’re the man whose girl someday I’ll be…they’ll never believe me…they’ll never believe me…that from this great big world…you’ve chosen me….” I applauded and whistled when she had finished. She took her bow and came down to greet me. “Hello, there. Long time no see. I always remember you, for some reason. The gumshoe detective who loves music—”
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