In the Company of Thieves

by Kage Baker

  “Three hundred seventeen,” admitted the Police Captain.

  “I hid an onion in the middle,” said his son proudly, and was promptly cuffed by the Police Captain when Golescu had dropped him back into the crowd.

  Now grown men began to push through the crowd, waving jars of varied legumes as well as barley and millet. Emil guessed correctly on each try, even the jar of rice that contained a pair of wadded socks! At last Golescu, beaming, held up his hands.

  “So, you have seen one proof of my adventure with your own eyes,” he cried. “But this has been a mere parlor entertainment, gentle audience. Now, you will be truly amazed! For we come to the true purpose of my visit here. Behold the Gifts of Osiris!”

  He whisked a piece of sacking from the stacked boxes it had concealed. The necks of many medicine bottles winked in the torchlight.

  “Yes! Compounded by me, according to the ancient secret formulas! Here, my friends, are remedies to cure human misery! A crown a bottle doesn’t even cover the cost of its rare ingredients—I’m offering them to you practically as a charity!”

  A flat silence fell at that, and then the Police Captain could be heard distinctly saying, “I thought it would come to this.”

  “A crown a bottle?” said somebody else, sounding outraged.

  “You require persuasion,” said Golescu. “Free persuasion. Very good! You, sir, step up here into the light. Yes, you, the one who doesn’t want to part with his money.”

  The man in question climbed up on the planks and stood there looking defiant, as Golescu addressed the audience.

  “Human misery!” he shouted. “What causes it, good people? Age. Inadequacy. Inability. Loneliness. All that does not kill you, but makes life not worth living! Isn’t it so? Now you, good sir!” He turned to the man beside him. “Remove your hat, if you please. I see you suffer from baldness!”

  The man turned red and looked as though he’d like to punch Golescu, but the audience laughed.

  “Don’t be ashamed!” Golescu told him. “How’d you like a full growth of luxurious hair, eh?”

  “Well—”

  “Behold,” said Golescu, drawing a bottle from the stack. “The Potion of Ptolemy! See its amazing results.”

  He uncorked the bottle and tilted it carefully, so as to spill only a few drops on the man’s scalp. Having done this, he grabbed the tail of his cloak and spread the potion around on the man’s scalp.

  “What are you doing to me?” cried the man. “It burns like Hell!”

  “Courage! Nothing is got without a little pain. Count to sixty, now!”

  The audience obliged, but long before they had got to forty they broke off in exclamations: for thick black hair had begun to grow on the man’s scalp, everywhere the potion had been spread.

  “Oh!” The man clutched his scalp, unbelieving.

  “Yes!” said Golescu, turning to the audience. “You see? Immediately, this lucky fellow is restored to his previous appearance of youth and virility. And speaking of virility!” He smacked the man’s back hard enough to send him flying off the platform. “What greater source of misery can there be than disappointing the fair ones? Who among you lacks that certain something he had as a young buck, eh?

  “Nobody here, I’m sure, but just think: someday, you may find yourself attempting to pick a lock with a dead fish. When that day comes, do you truly want to be caught without a bracing bottle of the Pharaoh’s Physic? One crown a bottle, gentlemen! I’m sure you can understand why no free demonstrations are available for this one.”

  There was a silence of perhaps five seconds before a veritable tidal wave of men rushed forward, waving fistfuls of coin.

  “Here! One to a customer, sirs, one only. That’s right! I only do this as a public service, you know, I love to make others happy. Drink it in good health, sir, but I’d suggest you eat your oysters first. Pray don’t trample the children, there, even if you can always make more. And speaking of making more!” Golescu stuffed the last clutch of coins down his tights and retreated from the front of the stage, for he had sold all his bottles of Pharaoh’s Physic and Potion of Ptolemy.

  “What’s the use of magnificent potency when your maiden is cold as ice, I ask you? Disinterest! Disdain! Diffidence! Is there any more terrible source of misery than the unloving spouse? Now, you may have heard of love philtres; you may have bought charms and spells from mere gypsies. But what your little doves require, my friends, is none other than the Elixir of Isis! Guaranteed to turn those chilly frowns to smiles of welcome!”

  A second surge made its way to the front of the platform, slightly less desperate than the first but moneyed withal. Golescu doled out bottles of Elixir of Isis, dropped coins down his tights, and calculated. He had one case of bottles left. Lifting it to the top of the stack, he faced his audience and smiled.

  “And now, good people, ask yourselves a question: What is it that makes long life a curse? Why, the answer is transparent: it is pain. Rending, searing, horrible agony! Dull aches that never go away! The throb of a rotten tooth! Misery, misery, misery, God have mercy on us! But! With a liberal application of Balm Bast, you will gain instant relief from unspeakable torment.”

  There was a general movement toward the stage, though not such a flood as Golescu had expected; some distraction was in the crowd, though he couldn’t tell what it was. Ah! Surely, this was it: an injured man, with bandaged head and eye, was being helped forward on his crutches.

  “Give way! Let this poor devil through!”

  “Here, Professor Hades, here’s one who could use your medicine!”

  “What about a free sample for him?”

  “What’s this, a veteran of the wars?” said Golescu, in his most jovial voice. “Certainly he’ll get a free sample! Here, for yo—” He ended on a high-pitched little squeak, for on leaning down he found himself gazing straight into Farmer Buzdugan’s single remaining eye. Mutual recognition flashed.

  “Yo—” began Farmer Buzdugan, but Golescu had uncorked the bottle and shoved it into his mouth quick as thought. He held the bottle there, as Buzdugan choked on indignation and Balm Bast.

  “AH, YES, I RECOGNIZE THIS POOR FELLOW!” said Golescu, struggling to keep the bottle in place. “He’s delusional as well! His family brought him to me to be cured of his madness, but unfortunately—”

  Unfortunately the distraction in the crowd was on a larger scale than Golescu had supposed. It had started with a general restlessness, owing to the fact that all those who had purchased bottles of Pharaoh’s Physic had opened the bottles and gulped their contents straight down. This had produced general and widespread priapism, at about the time Golescu had begun his spiel on the Elixir of Isis.

  This was as nothing, however, to what was experienced by those who had purchased the Potion of Ptolemy and, most unwisely, decided to try it out before waiting to get it home. Several horrified individuals were now finding luxuriant hair growing, not only on their scalps but everywhere the potion had splashed or trickled in the course of its application, such as ears, eyelids, noses and wives. More appalled still were those who had elected to rub the potion well in with their bare hands.

  Their case was as nothing, however, compared to the unfortunate who had decided that all medicines worked better if taken internally. He was now prostrate and shrieking, if somewhat muffledly, as a crowd of horrified onlookers stood well back from him.

  Buzdugan threw himself back and managed to spit out the bottle.

  “Son of a whore!” he said. “This is him! This is the one who sold us the—”

  “MAD, WHAT DID I TELL YOU?” said Golescu.

  “He sold us the stuff that created those—” Buzdugan said, before the Balm Bast worked and he abruptly lost all feeling in his body. Nerveless he fell from his crutches into the dark forest of feet and legs.

  But he was scarcely noticed in the excitement caused by the man who had purchased both Pharaoh’s Physic and Elixir of Isis, with the intention of maximizing domestic feli
city, and in the darkness had opened and drunk off the contents of the wrong bottle. Overcome by a wave of heat, and then inexplicable and untoward passion, and then by a complete loss of higher cerebral function, he had dropped his trousers and was now offering himself to all comers, screaming like a chimpanzee. Several of those afflicted by the Pharaoh’s Potion, unable to resist, were on the very point of availing themselves of his charms when—

  “Holy saints defend us!” cried someone on the edge of the crowd. “Run for your lives! It’s another demon cock!”

  This confused all who heard it, understandably, but only until the demon in question strode into sight.

  Golescu, who had been edging to the back of the platform with tiny little steps, smiling and sweating, saw it most clearly: a rooster, but no ordinary bird. Eight feet tall at the shoulder, tail like a fountain of fire, golden spurs, feathers like beaten gold, comb like blood-red coral, and a beak like a meat cleaver made of brass! Its eyes shone in the light of the torches with ferocious brilliance, but they were blank and mindless as any chicken’s. It beat its wings with a sound like thunder. People fled in all directions, save those who were so crazed with lust they could not be distracted from what they were doing.

  “Oh why, oh why do these things happen?” Golescu implored no one in particular. “I have such good intentions.”

  The great bird noticed the children crowded together at the front of the platform. Up until this point, they had been giggling at the behavior of their elders. Having caught sight of the monster, however, they dove under the platform and huddled there like so many mice. The bird saw them nonetheless, and advanced, turning its head to regard them with one eye and then the other. Terrified, they hurled jars of beans at it, which exploded like canisters of shot. Yet it came on, raking the ground as it came.

  And Golescu became aware that there was another dreadful noise below the cries of the children, below Buzdugan’s frenzied cursing where he lay, below the ever-more-distant yells of the retreating audience. Below, for it was low-pitched, the sort of noise that makes the teeth vibrate, deep as an earthquake, no less frightening.

  Something, somewhere, was growling. And it was getting louder.

  Golescu raised his head, and in a moment that would return to him in nightmares the rest of his life saw a pair of glowing eyes advancing through the night, eyes like coals above white, white teeth. The nearer they came, floating through the darkness toward the wagon, the louder grew the sound of growling. Nearer now, into the light of the torches, and Golescu saw clearly the outstretched arms, the clawing fingers caked with earth, the murderous expression, the trailing shroud.

  “Good heavens, it’s Amaunet,” he observed, before reality hit him and he wet himself. The Black Cup had failed her again after all, and so—

  “rrrrrrrrkillYOU!” she roared, lunging for the platform. Golescu, sobbing, ran to and fro only a moment; then fear lent him wings and he made one heroic leap, launching himself from the platform to the back of the chicken of gold. Digging his knees in its fiery plumage, he smote it as though it were a horse.

  With a squawk that shattered the night, his steed leaped in the air and came down running. Golescu clung for dear life, looking over his shoulder. He beheld Emil, antennae wobbling, scrambling frantically from the coffin.

  “Uncle Barbu!” wailed Emil. But Amaunet had Emil by the ankle now. She pulled him close. He vanished into the folds of her shroud, still struggling. Golescu’s last glimpse was of Amaunet lifting Emil to her bosom, clutching him possessively, horrific Madonna and limp Child.

  Golescu hugged the neck of his golden steed and urged it on, on through the night and the forest. He wept for lost love, wept for sour misfortune, wept for beauty, and so he rode in terrible glory through water and fire and pitiless starlight. When bright day came he was riding still. Who knows where he ended up?

  Though there is a remote village beyond the forests, so mazed about with bogs and streams no roads lead there, and every man has been obliged to marry his cousin. They have a legend that the Devil once appeared to them, riding on a golden cock, a fearful apparition before which they threw themselves flat. They offered to make him their prince, if only he would spare their lives.

  And they say that the Devil stayed with them a while, and made a tolerably good prince, as princes go in that part of the world. But he looked always over his shoulder, for fear that his wife might be pursuing him. He said she was the Mother of Darkness. His terror was so great that at last it got the better of him and he rode on, rather than let her catch him.

  The men of the village found this comforting, in an obscure kind of way. Even the Devil fears his wife, they said to one another. They said it so often that a man came from the Ministry of Culture at last, and wrote it down in a book of proverbs.

  But if you travel to that country and look in that great book, you will look in vain; for unfortunately some vandal has torn out the relevant page.

  RUDE MECHANICALS

  Kage loved Shakespeare, and the Hollywood Hills where she grew up, and the Hollywood Bowl where we played all through our adolescence. When she learned that the MGM movie of A Midsummer Night's Dream had started out as a stage extravaganza in her beloved Bowl, she knew she had to write a story around it. Old (and real, by the way) tales of treasure in the Hills were incorporated into it. The crazy (and also real) story of Jack McDermott's Moorish Castle, plus some details from Hollywood parties in our mother's house, also add to the story. The rest of it seems to have arisen inevitably from the craziness that follows Joseph and Lewis around whenever they join forces. And Kage was able to explicate some weird old details of the original production for the Bowl's Historian, who had never climbed around in the Hills that Kage knew so initmately.

  —K. B.

  HOLLYWOOD, 1934

  ONE: FULL OF VEXATION COME I, WITH COMPLAINT...

  Lewis sat alone in his booth at Musso and Frank’s, smiling down at a perfect martini. The booth was dark wood, above which there was just enough light to make out the restaurant’s mural depicting a forest landscape. In this dim and cozy bower his drink shone out with a silvery light, its icy disk fragrant with aromatic gin, just a polite nod of vermouth.

  As he fished out the small olive and popped it in his mouth, Lewis murmured a prayer of thanks to the goddess Athena, bestower of the olive tree on mortals. Lewis generally prayed to Apollo, having been left, as an infant, by the statue of that deity in the temple of Aquae Sulis in 130 A.D; but he liked to give credit where credit was due.

  Little beams of light from the swirling gin danced on the table, subsided. All was calm. The universe was a rational and ordered place...

  There came a reek of sweat, thinly masked by Burma-Shave Lotion. Lewis lifted his head, frowning, looking about; a second later he nodded in recognition as another immortal slid into the booth.

  “Joseph, what on earth have you been doing?”

  The other man sighed, loosening his tie. The two immortals presented a striking contrast to each other. Lewis was slight, fair-haired and immaculately groomed; Joseph was stocky, dark, sloppily shaven and had a coffee-stain on his right cuff. It was displayed as he waved for a waiter. Lewis recoiled from the fresh wave of sweat. “And when did you bathe last?”

  “Yesterday morning. In the bus station,” said Joseph. He noticed Lewis’s martini and grabbed for it. Lewis raised it out of reach.

  “Get your own! What were you doing in a bus station?”

  “Tailing Wallace Beery,” said Joseph, in a weary voice. “You don’t want to know.”

  “Ohh.” Lewis nodded sympathetically. In his twenty-thousand or so years Joseph had worked as an Egyptian priest, a Roman centurion, a Byzantine spy, a Spanish inquisitor and a number of other difficult occupations, but seldom for so demanding an employer as Louis B. Mayer. “Pancho Villa’s on another rampage, is he?”

  “Yeah, the son of a bitch. Waiter! Scotch on the rocks. Make it a double.”

  “It’s not easy being a s
tudio dick, I suppose,” said Lewis.

  “You can say that again,” said Joseph, sagging back in the booth. His black eyes were sunk back in his head with exhaustion. “Goddam Hays Code. This week, I jumped through hoops so Gentleman Wally doesn’t do five to ten on a manslaughter charge. Last week, I had to dig through Jean Harlow’s garbage for a certain letter. The week before that, I was pulling Jack Barrymore out of a brothel in Ensenada at one AM to get him all the way back to a makeup chair in Culver City by five AM. Don’t let anybody ever tell you a Model A can’t do eighty-five. We outran five cops between Escondido and Culver City. And Garbo slapped my face. Again.”

  “‘What? And leave show business?’” Lewis quoted, chuckling.

  In silence Joseph transmitted: And on top of everything else, the Company picks now, of all times, to throw me a job.

  Lewis raised his eyebrows. The Company to which Joseph referred was better known, in cyborg circles, as Dr. Zeus Incorporated. Joseph’s orders came from an all-powerful cabal of research scientists and investors based in the twenty-fourth century, who had invented time travel and immortality. Having failed to find a way to make these inventions marketable, however, they had used them to create immortal cyborg servants based in the past, who could be used to retrieve precious objects lost in time and send them on to the future, there to command obscenely high prices from private collectors.

  What sort of job? Lewis transmitted back.

  Well, that was sort of what I wanted to talk to you about. Joseph straightened up and looked at Lewis with wide sincere eyes. You’re working with Max Reinhardt right now, aren’t you? The German theater guy?

  Lewis took a fortifying sip of his martini before replying. I’ve inveigled myself into a position as one of his assistants. He’s producing A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Hollywood Bowl.

  Company job, right? What are you after?

  Some billionaire up in 2342 wants Reinhardt’s notes and promptbook. Why do you ask?

  Can you get me a job on the crew?