by Mick Farren
My darling,
I beg you, for tonight, pretend that you don’t know me. The man that I am with would do terrible things to me if he discovered that we knew each other. It would be ten times worse if he should ever see that film! Even though, for my safety, we must act as strangers, don’t think I have forgotten that earthshaking night and all the awful and wonderful things you did with the DSVICE.!
Forever your slave and admirer,
Amber.
Jim read the note twice and then looked in this Amber’s direction. Heidelberg had now returned, and she studiously avoided his eyes. Either another time-shift was going down, or he was in a lot of trouble. How the fuck could he forget a night with that woman? and what the hell was the device? Since he obviously wasn’t about to go and risk Heidelberg’s wrath by speaking to her, he folded the note carefully in half and slipped it into the pocket of his tuxedo.
It was only moments after doing this that he saw someone he actually did know and recognize. Through the door, maple-syrup shoulders above a second skin of emerald sequins, had come Donna Anna Maria Isabella Conchita Theresa Garcia (but you can call me Lola). She noted the presence of Doc, who was warming his poker skills before he went to the big show with four black-tie rubes, one of whom resembled the Duke of Windsor, the abdicated English king, and another the perfect likeness of Nazi foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. Having checked out Doc, Lola turned and headed straight to the bar. Although she was diametrically different from the Viva Zapata! bandita Jim had encountered in Doc’s forgotten town, it was definitely her.
Unfortunately, she didn’t seem to know or recognize him. He smiled a friendly greeting, but was met by a blank stare as she passed him to take the tequila sunrise that the bartender had started mixing the moment she’d walked into the room. Surprised, but putting it down to the same time problem that seemed to be affecting Doc, Jim broadened his smile. “We have met, but perhaps you don’t remember.”
This time, her response was an expression of unbreakable Andean ice. “We have never met.”
“Donna Anna Maria Isabella Conchita Theresa Garcia, but you can call me Lola?”
Lola took a deep breath and then lowered her voice. “I’m not supposed to speak to you.”
Jim was mystified. “What is this?”
“Doc doesn’t remember the last time we met and I’m not supposed to, either, but I like you, Jim Morrison, so I’ll take a chance on breaking the rules. I seriously advise you to get out of here as quickly as you can. Take your Virgil and go.”
“Out of the casino?”
“Out of Hell itself.”
Jesus’ free hand moved to the remote, apparently of its own accord. The Irving Klaw porn had ended without too much denouement and was suddenly replaced by Zorro’s Secret Legion, a Republic serial that, in its whip work and leather costumes, ran with a distinct S&M undertow that was probably lost on the ten-year-olds for whom it was intended. Or was it? This Jesus didn’t look like a tenyear-old, but he did tend to behave that way, and he was continuing to jerk himself off while staring unblinkingly at the screen. Semple looked from screen to couch and finally at Mr. Thomas, the goat. “What do you mean, goats invented coffee?”
Mr. Thomas finished munching on a piece of cardboard. “The way I heard it, sometime around the thirteenth century an Ethiopian goatherd called Kaldi noticed that his animals were getting high as kites on the red berries of a particular wild shrub. Being of an inquiring mind and curious disposition, this Kaldi tried the berries himself. When he, too, not only got high as a kite but also remained awake for fifty-seven hours straight, Kaldi knew he was on to something. Of course, being Islamic, Kaldi’s first thought was that the said berries would be a way to stay awake and remain at one’s religious devotions longer than would have been previously possible. After chewing the berries, he decided this was a bit too much of a jolt. Soon he hit on the idea of stewing the berries in boiling water and drinking the resulting liquid. As you’ve probably guessed by now, the red berries were wild coffee beans and—”
Semple rather rudely interrupted the anecdote. “Is everyone around here totally crazy?”
The goat looked at her both surprised and a little offended. “Not really. Not when you consider that we’re living in the brain of an entirely fictional, massively oversized Mesozoic dinosaur.”
“One’s jerking off to an old Zorro serial and the other’s telling me how coffee was invented?”
“Strictly speaking, we’re not even in the brain itself. We actually occupy a tumor on that brain.”
Semple was horrified. “A tumor?”
“What do you think this dome really is?”
“Is it malignant?”
“Not for us.”
“I meant for Gojiro.”
The goat tore off another piece of packing case and started munching. In that he seemed to need to talk with his mouth full, a conversation with Mr. Thomas was not unlike ones she’d had with Anubis. “That’s something of an academic point. The Big Green has one motherfucker of a post-nuclear metabolism and I’d imagine it’s going to take a good uninterrupted ten thousand years for a tumor to hurt him.”
Semple was still uneasy. “I’m not sure I want to be in a tumor.” “After a while, you don’t even think about it. What are you doing here, by the way?”
Semple blinked at the goat. “You’re asking me that?”
“You walked in here of your own accord.”
“I hardly knew what I was doing. I just followed the directions of the three tiny women.”
“You always do what tiny women tell you?”
“Only when I don’t have a better idea.”
“You came in like the mote in Godz’s eye, right?”
“As far as I can tell. But you know what happened. You were there when Moses’ tribe got stomped.”
The goat avoided her eyes. “I have a bit of a problem with that.”
Semple frowned. “Either you were there or you weren’t.”
“It’s one of those cat’s-cradle time problems. Some of the time I seem to have been the lead goat for Moses and his stinking followers, sometimes I’m the companion of someone who may or may not be Jesus Christ and who thinks I may or may not be the reincarnation of Dylan Thomas.”
Semple glanced at the still-masturbating Jesus. “Can’t he hear you? He might not like his Jesushood being questioned.”
Mr. Thomas shook his head. “He’s totally in the zone. TV has that effect on him.”
An unpleasant thought struck Semple. “I’m not here to entertain you, am I?
“Not specifically, but if you were to offer, I’d be most pleased to—”
Semple cut him off. “Let’s leave that for a while. My sex life has been far too complicated of late. I really don’t feel inclined to go interspecies right now. I couldn’t take on a goat no matter how glowing his possible literary antecedents.”
Mr. Thomas chewed cardboard, apparently considering the rejection. “That’s a pity. ‘After the first death, there is no more.’ ”
“It really isn’t anything personal. I’m very fond of Under Milk Wood.”
“That wasn’t from Under Milk Wood.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s from something else.”
“Oh.” Semple covered her gaffe by looking around the dome. “How about, ‘it was spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black . . . ’ ”
The goat was mollified. “That’s better.”
The episode of Zorro’s Secret Legion had concluded in a seeming sudden-death cliff-hanger. Jesus’ hand twitched and a new movie was on the screen, Audie Murphy in Bullet for a Badman, picking up the story midway through the action. “I’m starting to feel that maybe the best thing I could do would be to get out of here. The possibilities seem a little limited.”
The goat swallowed. “Unfortunately that may be difficult.”
Semple’s eyes narrowed. “What are you telling me?”
Mr
. Thomas scratched himself with his left hind leg. “You came in animation mode, am I right?”
Semple answered cautiously, unsure of what was coming next. “Yes. That’s where I got this gun and the ridiculous costume.”
“But then, on the way in, you passed under the lights?”
“Right.”
“And you changed back to normal?”
“That’s right. I did. Apart from the beauty spot.”
“Then that’s it. You can’t go back out again. Not in human form. No humans in Toon Town.”
“What would happen to me if I did?”
“It’s hard to explain, but very nasty.”
“So how do I change back to a toon?”
“You can’t.”
“Why not?”
Mr. Thomas nodded in the direction of the prone and masturbating Jesus. “He’s forgotten how to do it.”
“Are you telling me I’m a prisoner of that bastard faux Jesus?”
“Does he really look like a captor?”
Semple touched the ray gun that was still strapped to her leg. “Maybe this might get his attention?”
“I really wouldn’t try firing that thing.”
“Why not?”
“There are two likely outcomes, look you. Either it wouldn’t work at all, or it would explode and blow your arm off.”
“How do I know you’re not lying?”
The goat looked a little sheepish. “You don’t, but I really wouldn’t recommend testing the point.”
Semple and Mr. Thomas seemed to have reached an impasse. Jesus eighty-sixed Audie Murphy and replaced him with Charlton Heston playing Michelangelo in The Agony and the Ecstasy. “He was very creative once. Before the TV got him.”
“Creative?”
“He built most of the stuff outside.”
“No kidding.” Suddenly Semple was thinking. An idea had arrived on the half shell.
The goat hadn’t noticed, however. “In fact, it was him who saw the potential of the Big Green’s brain in the first place. He even figured out how he could get inside here and make Godz do what he wanted him to do.”
Now two ideas were simmering side by side. “He can control Gojiro?”
“If someone could turn off the TV and get his attention.”
“So why don’t you turn off the TV and get his attention?”
“I already told you, didn’t I? My hooves can’t work the remote.”
Heads turned and even the fops stopped their banter. The Duke of Windsor folded his hand despite the fact he was holding three sevens and had yet to make the change. It wasn’t so much the man as the aura that entered with him. Jim could only imagine that Dracula might have a made a similar entrance. The tall man in the powder blue, narrow-lapel sharkskin suit, goatee beard, and porkpie hat looked nothing like the legendary count. In fact, he was an almost perfect double for Ike Turner; although Jim knew immediately that it wasn’t Ike—Jim had played ballrooms with Ike and Tina and, although Ike could be mean, even he didn’t spread the kind of malignancy, like a sulfurous miasma, that was rapidly filling the salon privèe. Lola was now noticeably nervous. “Go. Get out of here and stop being an idiot. You’re completely out of your depth here.”
Jim stubbornly shook his head. “I’m not running. I’m sick of having no flicking control over my destiny.”
Lola looked at him in way that made Jim glad he was already dead. “It’s not just your destiny, you moron. You could blow it for the rest of us.
Jim was going to continue to protest, but the Ike Turner doppelganger turned his head in Jim’s direction. The scotch had yet to slow Jim to the point of not being fast enough to avoid the evil eyes, but even the close pass he experienced was enough to send a glacial chill through his nervous system. In the instant, he knew that Lola was right. He had no clue what was going down in the private salon, and he certainly had no place there. “Okay, I’m going. But how will I hook up with Doc again?”
Lola fluttered her hands as though willing him away. She just wanted him gone. “Don’t worry about it. You’ll find each other.”
Jim moved as unobtrusively to the door as he could and quietly slipped through it. Out on the main staircase, he glanced at the nearest Napoleonic guard. “Some weird look-alike show back in that gold mine.”
The guard nodded stiffly. “It’s that time of the night, sir. Can I call you your Virgil?”
Jim shook his head. “No, thank you. I think I can find my own way.”
“Whatever you say, sir.”
Jim hurried on down the stairs, only to find himself confronted by yet another bizarre spectacle. Sid Vicious was coming through the casino’s revolving doors, swaying slightly, with a woman in a wedding dress who wasn’t Nancy on his arm. Just to make the picture a tad more off kilter, Vicious was wearing an outfit virtually identical to Jim’s—white tux, leather jeans, and engineer boots—except that Sid was lacking a shirt, and his trademark padlock and chain dangled on his scarred and scrawny chest. He immediately spotted Jim and his face twisted into a somnambulent sneer. “The Doctor’s looking for you. And he’s got some wicked gear.”
“Holliday or Hypodermic?”
“Which one do you think, you fucking hippie?”
Semple knew that she was trying Mr. Thomas’s patience, but she didn’t care. An awesome payback and an end to her adventure were almost within her grasp. “When Godz gets going, it’s usually bad news for the nearest city. Am I right?”
Mr. Thomas wagged his wisp of a tail uncomfortably. “He eats it.”
Semple hesitated, trying not to look too eager, but wholly failing. “So what would it take to get the Big Green to eat the a city like, say . . . Necropolis?”
“You want to see Necropolis eaten?”
“Just a hypothetical question.”
Mr. Thomas didn’t believe her. “You’ve got your reasons to see him eat Necropolis.”
“You have a problem with that?”
Jesus was still prone on the couch, but at least he’d stopped masturbating. Seemingly the Sistine Chapel didn’t turn him on. Mr. Thomas shook his head. “No problem at all. I’ve seen TV from Necropolis. The place would seem infinitely suited as a snack for the Big Green.”
“So what would get him to head in that direction?”
“Not much at all, if they’ve got the makings of nuclear weapons there.”
“He likes nuclear weapons?”
“He loves nuclear weapons.”
“The ones Anubis has are pretty small and pretty dirty.”
“He likes the small and dirty best of all. It was a nasty, dirty little bomb that thawed him out of the Arctic ice, don’t forget.”
“So it’s just a question of getting him started?”
On the screen, Michelangelo was complaining to the Pope about how he hadn’t been paid, but apparently doing little for Jesus, who jumped to an episode of The Newlywed Game. Mr. Thomas paused before he answered. “Only Jesus can do that.”
Semple looked hard at the goat. “The TV has to be turned off.”
“I really wouldn’t advise doing that.”
“It would be for his own good.”
The goat looked at her knowingly, calling her bluff. “You’re not interested in his good. You just want to see Godz eat Necropolis.”
“Okay, I admit it.”
“Turning off the TV just like that might traumatize him.”
Semple treated Mr. Thomas to her hardest stare of authority. “Are you going to stop me?”
Mr. Thomas seemed undecided. “I’ve a handy pair of horns, don’t I?”
“You want to spend the rest of your days shut up in a tumor with a terminal couch potato?”
Mr. Thomas thought about this. “You do have a point there.”
“So you won’t stop me?”
“I’m still not happy about you shutting down the telly.”
Semple knew she had the goat cornered. “But you won’t try and stop me?”
“I suppose not.�
�
Semple walked to the couch and took the remote from Jesus’ close-to-lifeless hand.
Jim was about to step into the revolving door when a worried-looking man pushed in front of him, elbowing him out of the way. Such rudeness hardly seemed in keeping with the ambience of the grand casino, but Jim could only suppose that the individual had his reasons. It took about forty seconds for those reasons to become abundantly clear. As Jim disengaged from the doors, the man had already reached the bottom of the steps. He halted and let out a soul-wrenching sob. “I’ve lost it all. She’ll never forgive me.”
With these words, he pulled a small chrome-plated revolver from his jacket, pointed it at his right temple, and pulled the trigger. The gun went off and a spurt of gray-pink brains was propelled almost to the other side of the wide flight of steps. Two Napoleonic guards hurried forward as the man’s body shimmered and vanished, taking its corporal leave for the pods of the Great Double Helix. The squirt of brain remained, though, and one of the guards quickly called for a cleaner.
“Brilliant. Blew his brains out just like that. Never thought I’d get to see it.” Jim turned. Sid Vicious was standing behind him. The punk had apparently followed him back out of the casino just in time to catch the incident.
Jim shrugged. “I guess it goes with the territory. This was once the section of Hell reserved for suicides.”
“You believe all that fucking bollocks?”
“A man has to believe something.”
“That’s the trouble with you fucking hippies. Always looking for shit to believe in.” Vicious laughed nastily and gestured to Jim with his right hand. “ ‘Ere, Morrison, catch.”
