The Mask of Loki

by Roger Zelazny

  "A-men!"

  "Tempted by the devil who comes in a bottle, I gambled away a fortune of my own and started on another from my good wife. The mud in the gutters had more spine than I had. I was the companion of cutthroats and harlots, and finally of felons chained to their picks and spades along the roadside."

  "Amen!"

  "Every one of my former friends turned his face away to see it. And our Lord saw all of this, too—but did He turn His face away from me?"

  "No!"

  "No, He did not. He put out his hand and laid it on my mottled, blood-filled heart. Small and hard as a stone, was that heart. And yet, under the touch of the Lord, it expanded and filled as with a golden light, and the dark blood fell away to my feet. The Lord made me His own. And I was a drunkard no more!"

  "AMEN!!"

  That surge of feeling, the focused joy of three hundred hungry human beings, poured through Louis Brevet's ears and down his throat. The lift of it was better than any that wine or whiskey had ever given him.

  * * *

  "Son, you got a wonderful draw with that drunk story. Gets them rolling in the aisles, just hating and loving you so. 'Family known around here' and 'squandering gold coins'—they just eat that stuff up."

  "It's the truth, Mr. Limerick." Louis still had his hat in his hands after the service. Conscious of the appearance this made, he looked around to put the hat down and, finding nowhere suitable, at last stuck it on his head. It was hardly polite—the inside of the tent feeling like indoors and all—but he would not be holding his hat like a beggar.

  "Of course it's the truth, and you tell it so well."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "Too well for a smart proprietor like me to let you go. How does five dollars a week and found seem to you? Of course, on the road you eat with the family." Limerick nodded behind him, to where his daughter, Olivia, was patiently piling up the occasional greenbacks from the collection basket and sorting out the silver by size. Never stopping her hands, she lifted her head and smiled into Louis's eyes, cool as a country melon.

  " 'Found'?" Louis asked, puzzled. "I don't understand."

  "Whatever they stick in your pockets or hat, you get to keep. The rest comes out of the plate. Clear?"

  "That's very generous, sir. And what must I do to spread the word of Our Glorious Lord?"

  "Help my boy, Homer, set up the tent. Come to meeting, both sessions. And tell your story, just like you did tonight."

  "While you are here in St. Tammany Parish, I will certainly come."

  "And when we're on the road? You do want to spread the Word beyond these bayous, don't you, son?"

  "Of course, I'd like that."

  "Consider it done, then."

  * * *

  It was in Oklahoma that a moment of Enlightenment came as his former mistress, Claire, came to him and had a conversation with the Spirit and with Louis Brevet.

  "This man Limerick is using you to make money," said Claire. "For all his piety and his black clothes, he cares nothing for Christ and the Gospels. Why, he even drinks sourmash in secret! He is making a fool of you—a bigger fool than you are making of yourself."

  "Whatever his purposes," replied Louis, "he is bringing people to the Word and to the Lord. Mr. Limerick's ways may not be the most temperate, but he does work hard."

  "And the money?"

  "It will go to African missions, as he has promised."

  "Have you ever seen a piece of correspondence with those missions, or with anyone who represents them? Have you seen any drafts made out in their favor?"

  "No—but then, I am not privy to all of his finances. He gives money where it is needed."

  "And gets more than he gives, it would appear."

  "So long as he does the work of the Lord among the country people—and I can help him—what does it matter?"

  "It matters that the books are not square and neither is he. Should a good man surrender himself as pawn to a bad one?"

  "Livy does not think him bad. She loves him. And I have grown to love her and trust her simplicity and goodness in such things. Livy is wise."

  "You hit it right the first time: Livy is simple. The girl knows nothing but organ playing, which she does badly, and money counting, which she does slowly. The girl's entire life is in her fingers."

  "She does the Lord's work in her own way, as do we all."

  "Your faith is impossible. Call it blindness and be done with it."

  "Faith may needs be blind to the things of this world."

  "Then I am done with you."

  And with that, Claire got up and stamped out. Louis never saw her again.

  * * *

  It was in Arkansas, one sweltering night when moths and midges swarmed and dove around the lamps, that the dark stranger wandered into the tent.

  He did not come for prayer and the service, nor for the raw excitement of the confessions, as some did. He parted the canvas flaps with his horny hands and walked straight through the opening, like a man going to his gallows beam. His eyes, hard as stones lodged in his head, looked neither left nor right as he walked to the benches and, flipping his shabby coat-tails back, seated himself in the next to last row.

  Louis, on the bench next to him, felt the chill even as moist sweat trickled under his hat band and down into his collar, which had once been boiled white and starched stiff but now—after months on the road—hung wilted and gray. Cold menace rolled off the dark stranger like vapor off a cake of ice.

  The man's eyes were fixed straight forward, Louis noted, and appeared to take in no more of the light and the scene than would two glass marbles. At first Louis thought the man was asleep in the waking dreams of laudanum or some other fiendish drug, although he neither nodded nor wove in his seat, as an addict might. Fascinated, Louis found himself staring at the stranger, but the man did not seem to notice.

  What could those eyes be seeing? Louis wondered. He studied out their angle and the direction of the hard gaze: beyond the mingling of heads, hats, and bonnets in front of them; beyond the wide space before the benches, where the saved ones would soon be flopping and rolling; beyond the trestle-legged altar, with its open Bible and silver-plate candlesticks; to Olivia, seated at her traveling pedal organ, and the collection basket on top of it.

  Throughout the service Louis watched the man watch Olivia and the basket. His eyes were steady, almost unblinking, except for a slow, lizardlike sliding of the eyelids every five minutes or so. When the time came for the collection, then his eyes moved: up as Livy lifted the basket from the organ; down as she brought it to the level of her waist; left and right as she carried it from one end of each row to the other.

  As it went into the row, it was heavy with coins and wadded bills. Livy had to stretch her arms to pass it, and the ruffled calico of her frock pulled tight across her breasts. The man did not notice. He had eyes only for the basket.

  As she passed it under his chin, however, he did not move to open his purse. Instead, the stranger raised his eyes to the tent's ridgepole and shook his head, side to side, once. The basket went by him on the end of Livy's arm. Louis made his token contribution with a smile for her. The basket, Livy's arm, and her fresh, clean scent passed beyond him.

  Then the stranger moved.

  While she was at the point of maximum extension, his hand, independent of his eyes and his body, slipped beneath his coat lapels and came out with a horse pistol that had a barrel at least eight inches long.

  In one motion, like a dancer, the man moved beneath Livy's arm and surged to his feet. He spun around into the aisle, pulling her to his chest. The gun's barrel tucked neatly into the ruffles between her breasts. Through this dance the basket neither overturned nor flung its cash to the crowd. Livy held it tight and level, like a good waiter with a trayful of brimming glasses.

  Louis, who had also gone to his feet, looked into the stranger's eyes.

  Nothing there. Dead as stones.

>   Louis looked into Olivia's face, seeking a sign of what she wanted him to do.

  Her eyes, too, were blank: neither afraid nor angry. She did not struggle against the stranger. She did not look down at his gun.

  "Livy?" Louis asked.

  "Keep back, Louis," she replied. "This man just wants the collection money."

  If Louis had troubled to listen then, he would have known she spoke too evenly, as if she had rehearsed her words to the point of boredom.

  But Louis Brevet only saw the gun and the deadness in the stranger's eyes. He could read in those eyes a perfect willingness to pull the trigger and blow her chest open. Louis feared for the girl, and yet his gentle upbringing commanded that a man do something for a female in distress. He could not stand idle while the stranger molested her.

  In the present face-off, Louis could hardly bring his pugilistic skills to bear. So, raising his arms like a melodramatic actor playing the Ghost in Hamlet, he tried to reach around Livy and grapple with the stranger.

  It was a movement of inches for the man to tip the gun barrel forward and fire twice into Louis's chest.

  Livy screamed.

  Her scream was not one of terror or anguish, however, but of scorn: "Louis, you fool!"

  The things he would carry to his grave: the smells of fresh gunpowder and old sweat; the sight of moths dipping and weaving through a faded lamplight under canvas; the final comment on his character—"Fool!"

  Louis relaxed and succumbed to the cold in his limbs.

  * * *

  The van was broken down at the right spot along the turnpike, ten kilometers from anywhere, with marshes stretching for another twenty on either side. A dirty red bandana was tied to the van's antenna. That was the only incongruity: it was a cellular antenna, and the stranded occupants might have called for help at any time.

  Hasan shrugged as he changed to the drop-off lane. Americans were not so observant as the bright-eyed young Israelis who overran his homeland. This meeting place would never have worked in the Negev.

  He pulled his bright yellow Porsche out of the waveguide and rolled it, slowly, onto the gravel ahead of the van. He rolled down the passenger-side window as a dark figure ran up. In the shadows of his lap, he readied a needlegun.

  "You boys have some trouble?" Hasan asked brightly.

  "Nothing a bent paperclip won't solve," was the correct response.

  Hasan pocketed the gun, popped the driver's door, and stepped out into the flashwash of a passing tandem tow. He was still brushing the dust off his jacket and out of his hair as his men ushered him into the van.

  "Your pardon, My Lord Hasan. This is a most inauspicious place for a council of war."

  "Ah, but that it is not, Mahmed. The roadside is so conspicuous it is virtually unseen."

  "Until the state troopers come."

  "And then we will have the perfect cover. The mechanical failure of equipment in the hands of, how do they say, 'motherless Ay-rabs'. And one of their rich countrymen—who would be helpful but is likewise as incompetent."

  "Plus we have mined the gravel for fifty meters behind us."

  "Then I'll leave you to dispose of the police vehicle," Hasan replied coldly.

  "As always, My Lord. Now, how may the Brotherhood of the Wind serve you?"

  "I need a safehouse."

  "For how long?"

  "A week, perhaps two."

  "Just yourself?"

  "Myself, the Lady Alexandra, a team of select Hashishiyun, and a very special prisoner. It must be within one day's inconspicuous travel, no more than two, yet far from unauthorized distractions."

  "We have nothing."

  "Nothing?"

  "In this end of the New Jersey Municipal District there are few of our countrymen, My Lord. The Cubans, the Vietnamese and the indigenous blacks have tried the hospitality of this land, limited as it is, to the breaking point. The Homeless Ones have all sought a less hostile welcome. And aside from the heat, the humidity is not to our liking."

  "You have nothing on the list?"

  "I thought you wanted a safehouse."

  "And as you have none, I will take a target of opportunity, if I must."

  The leader of the stranded van riders pulled a notebook from inside his jacket. He flipped it open on the fold-down drinks-table and keyed it.

  "There is a fusion plant we've evaluated, the Mays Landing Complex on the river fifty kilometers inland of Egg Harbor. It supplies all grid power to the Intertidal Sector of the Bowash Corridor. Construction value about nine billion, in current dollars. Considering the cost of replacement power, we could collect twice that in ransom."

  Hasan pulled his lip—a bad habit but it helped thinking.

  "What's the tactical situation?" he asked.

  "The plant is vulnerable. It's semiautomated, so the operators don't have to stand watches 'round the clock. It's run like an American business office: a daytime rad lab and maintenance crews, and everyone goes home at night."

  "Nearby military?"

  "Nothing serious within about sixty kilometers—all by unimproved roads. The U. S. Army has a post at Fort Dix, north of the site. This was formerly a massive training facility but is now mostly a computer and coordination center. The abandoned McGuire Air Force Base is adjacent to Dix. Lakehurst Naval Air Station is some twenty-five kilometers east of that. The real activity at this field is New Jersey Air National Guard."

  "I love civilian soldiers," Hasan smiled.

  "Better yet, being isolated in the lowland scrub, the fusion complex is highly defensible once it has been taken. We could cover the approaches—overland, by the river and its marshes, and from the air—with two squads of missile men and a band of sappers."

  "Good. You do not disappoint me, Mahmed."

  "Thank you, my Lord Hasan."

  "Begin preparing your volunteers for the assault."

  "How soon shall we—"

  "I will give you date and time. Do nothing before."

  "Of course not, My Lord."

  * * *

  Sura 4

  Holy War

  They say the lion and the lizard keep

  The courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep;

  And Bahram, that great hunter—the wild ass

  Stamps o'er his head, but cannot break his sleep.

  —Omar Khayyam

  * * *

  General Saladin moved his knees slightly, invisibly to the men before him—hiding the twitch in the gesture of reaching for a cup of sorbet—and felt his hams sink deeper into the pillows. A military camp on the edge of the desert could only be made so comfortable by tents and hangings and cushions stuffed with horsehair. However it was covered, the cold hard ground was still just that and not the polished floors of his palace in Cairo, layered in white stone above the banks of the eternal river.

  And now these sheikhs of Sabastiya and Ras el-'Ain, with their womanish chatter...

  Saladin had come into this land with his Egyptian levies in order to turn back the Frankish invaders in the name of Muhammad—and to win glory for his own name, it was true. He did not come to cuddle the foolish vanities of rich traders and clan elders who wanted to break bread with the infidel and then take offense at his manners.

  "And what did this Norman say next?" Saladin asked with a sigh.

  "He likened the Prophet to a whoremonger!"

  "He besmirched the holy name of Khadija!"

  "And could this unholy insult," Saladin countered reasonably, "not have been fabricated out of your own ignorance of the Frenchmen's tongue?"

  "The insult was intentional, Lord."

  "And then, what did he say?"

  "He offered to lead an expedition to Medina and there ravage the tomb of the Prophet."

  "He was drunk on their wine," Saladin proposed.

  "He was sober, My Lord."

  "He was laughing at us, Sire."

  "The others laughed with him, My Lor
d Saladin."

  Saladin pinched his beard between thumb and forefinger and signed them to silence. Did the Franks truly have enough force of arms to carry off this preposterous scheme? To ambush a caravan or lay siege to a town here and there, yes, they had men enough for that—if you figured their own half-breed brats into the counting. Otherwise, the Franks kept to their walled cities and stone castles. They rode between these in full armor, with vanguard, flankers, and rearguard—and still they made communion with their priests and commended their souls to God before setting out. The armies of Saladin had achieved that much in this land.

  Reynald de Chatillon could only have been making idle boasts, fortified with wine. No such expedition was possible. These sheikhs in their foolishness had taken Reynald at his bare-faced word. A wise man would dismiss this taunt.

  And yet. The threat had been made at a public ceremony, the coronation feast of their self-styled king in this land. The circumstances made it a diplomatic matter. Saladin could dismiss it as a drunken boast, or he could take notice. He could even demand that all Islam take notice, if he chose. No other defender of the faith riding in this abandoned land—which was divided among the Abbasids of Baghdad, the Seljuks of Turkey, and the newly anointed Ayyubites of Egypt—had such stature as he. If Saladin took the insult into his heart and demanded vengeance, then all Islam must respond.

  With all Islam behind him, united in a holy war against the Christians, he might achieve the victory he had so long sought. And the Christians, in the person of Reynald de Chatillon, had given him the cause with their own mouths. What ninety years of armed conflict and occasional massacre had not impelled, a handful of drunken words could inspire.

  "Your honesty convinces me," Saladin said at last. "This insult to the Prophet, and to his faithful wife, goes too deep. It must be expunged at the point of a sword and cauterized with fire."

  "Yes, My Lord," they chorused.

  "In the spring of the year, at their festival of the death and rising of the Prophet Joshua ibn-Joseph, all of Islam shall make holy war upon this Reynald de Chatillon and through him all Christians. We shall drive them from this land for their share of this insult."