by E. E. Knight
He noticed a line at a kiosk on the edge of the park and joined the cluster of waiting men, almost all of whom wore assorted uniforms. An elephantine redheaded woman sold the white cards on chains to the lined-up men under the supervision of a cigar-smoking baldie with the watchful, sullen air of a pit boss. Valentine looked at the prices, which started at five hundred dollars a day. He extracted the pass he’d obtained from the Duke and passed it to the meaty hand of the redhead.
“Three-day pass, huh, boy?” the woman said, reaching under her counter for a card on a chain. “You one of the Duke’s couriers?”
The supervisor’s eyes narrowed as he evaluated Valentine.
“Sort of,” Valentine said. “What do I get with the pass?”
She did not really smile so much as smirk, but her eyes favored his with a friendly twinkle. “About anything your heart desires.” She peeled a covering off the paper and began to recite the rules in almost a singsong manner. “This card will stay green for seventy-two hours; that’s guaranteed. When it turns red, you gotta leave the premises. But while it’s green you can see any show, go in any bar, and get free coffee or iced tea on the Lady Luck of the Lake if you’re playing. That’s the gambling boat,” she added, breaking out of the recitation. “Real plush carpets and more lights than you’ve seen at once in your whole life, I’ll bet.”
A gruff voice broke in from over Valentine’s shoulder. “Hey, there’s people waiting.”
“Shut your trap, you,” she barked, “or I’ll start readin‘ to him outta the ’22 yellow pages.” She turned her attention back to Valentine, drawing close enough for him to smell the beer fumes on her breath. “You take my advice; just spend your three days here. The food’s cheaper than most anywhere in Chicago, and when you want to sleep just pay one of the girls for an all-nighter. You’ll get a woman and a bed for what you’d pay for a bed alone in one of them ripoff hotels by the Michigan Avenue Market. And a guy with your looks will maybe get another tumble in the morning, free of charge.”
Valentine slipped her a bill. She slid the toke into her udder-size bosom with a deftness that belied her size. “You got a map?” he asked.
“Listen to him,” the voice from behind grunted. “Kid thinks he’s in Dizzyland.”
“Naw, it ain’t that big a place. You’ll find your way around. Why, you lookin‘ for something in particular?”
“The Black Hole. I heard it’s really weird.”
She did not look surprised. “It’s always you nice-looking, quiet ones,” she mused. “You can’t miss it. North side of the Zoo, a big lit-up pit with walls all around. Last night the Grogs worked over this little beauty from Michigan. By the time they were done, she didn’t have enough blood in her to fill up a Reaper’s tongue. I hear the main attraction tonight’s gonna be some real cute young thing from your Wisconsin. Enjoy.”
V’Nattie, you got other customers,“ the cigar-chomper said.
“Okay, okay. Just talkin‘ to the Duke’s friend. The Duke would want us to make sure he got happy here. Geez, where’d he go?”
Valentine heard her expostulation as he strode off across Clark Street and into the Zoo, but the noise of music and shouting soon drowned her out. Bars lined the road on Clark, marching up north toward darkened high-rises. He glanced at a few of the names: Paradise Found, Jack Off With Jill On, the Gold Coast Grotto… Heavily made-up women enticed customers inside, strutting and promising greater delights within. He ignored the twinkling tableaux and moved into the cluster of old Zoo buildings. Women in assorted stages of undress challenged him with everything from a throaty “Hi, there,” to a bellowed “Best head in the Zoo, twenty bucks!—Over here, handsome.” A sickly stench struck him, and he stepped around a pool of vomit half covering the sidewalk. A shoeless drunken shape in bright orange overalls leaned against a boulder with the words everything goes scrawled in white paint across its chipped surface.
There seemed to be nothing preventing people from coming and going as they wished, but security troops mounted and on foot wandered the grounds, mostly looking at the colored cards dangling from the revelers’ necks. One of them motioned to an apelike Grog, pointing at the shoeless drunk. Valentine watched as the Grog hoisted the man into a wheelbarrow cart and trotted off, pushing the drunkard south on wobbly wheels.
A long lagoon filled with little boats bordered the Zoo. Couples got on and off in a steady stream. Far to the north, Valentine spotted a glittering wedding-cake shape of light, obviously the Lady Luck of the Lake. He circled back into the Zoo’s cluster of buildings from the north. A couple of small Grogs were picking up trash from the sidewalks and grass. Valentine walked up to them and pressed some very special toke into their hands before moving off toward another crowd.
A domed cage the size of a tepee stood in the center of a little depression. A ring of twenty or thirty laughing soldiers stood around it, hurling small stones and pieces of fruit through the bars. An extraordinarily tall man, dressed in a simple khaki uniform, stood before the crowd with a long pole with a metal club on one side and what looked like a noose on the other.
“Hey, let’s have him change shape again,” one of the men called, throwing a small rock into the well-lit center of the cage. He passed some bills to the khaki-uniformed man.
Valentine craned his neck to look within the bare cage. A single tree, barkless and dead as a piece of driftwood, decorated the twelve-foot circle within. A serpent lay coiled around the tree, hiding its head in the crotch between two branches.
“I can get him to switch, no fail,” the keeper said, and poked the metal end of the pole into the cage. He rapped the snake twice on the head.
A shiver seemed to course up the body of the snake, a shiver that turned into a blur. Before Valentine’s astonished eyes, the snake transformed into an orangutan, which hung from the tree by one long arm and then dropped to the ground. It thrust a rotten apple in its mouth and worked its jaws hungrily.
“How the hell did you do that?” a voice called from the crowd.
“I didn’t do it, he did,” the keeper explained. “What you have here is a relative of the Kurians. It’s the only one that’s been captured and put on display. They can change their shape at will, and they can practically go invisible. They’re the masters of some of the terrorists and rebels that hide out in the hills. The rebs worship them as gods. Only way to please them is to bring scalps, and the rebs aren’t particular about whose hair they take. They tell me this one had fifteen, twenty little blond scalps. God knows what the rebs did to them before lifting their hair.”
“Motherfucker,” one of the soldiers said, throwing a stone in at the seated figure. The rock made an impact in the sand next to the orang, kicking dirt up onto it.
The orang’s eyes gazed sadly over the crowd. A few more stones flew in, some hitting the illusory ape on its broad back. Its eyes met Valentine’s, and he jumped as if shocked by the spark that passed between their eyes.
Lee… lee valentine, a voice said inside his head. Please let this not be the madness again. Oh, Lee, is it you, can you be here? It’s Rho, the Ancient. Of the firstwalkers. By the Bonds and by the Gates, have you come to end my torments? Please say Paul Samuels is with you somewhere, and Ghang Ankor. The years… the years have sung their songs and moved the earth itself since we last met. Please say I will be finally free of their smacks and stares.
All this passed through Valentine’s mind in a flash. He responded. No, I am not the Valentine you knew. I am his son, David. My father has been dead for over ten years.
Son? Son? I can sense you are a Hunter. I do not know what brings you here, but I feel it is not I. You are anxious to be gone and fearful and worried and hateful and hopeful and… in love. Oh, I would cast myself into oblivion if I could, but they watch, always watch, with their dull eyes. You cannot know what i’ve been through. Years of abuse and bad weather and no food and torment. The orangutan stared at Valentine. Please just kill me if you cannot get me out. If my life runs its
course, I could be here for hundreds of years until these bars turn to rust and new ones replace it.
Something sought his mind. Valentine pulled back and into himself.
I’m sorry, so sorry, Valentine thought, breaking out of the ring and filling his mind with sorry over and over again. The agony of the trapped Lifeweaver had been palpably transmitted through its thoughts. Valentine could not let despair overtake his mind with Molly waiting in some cage and a Reaper hunting for his lifesign.
He hurried past the converted animal displays. Inside one, a nude woman cavorted upon an artificial tree, alternately hiding and exposing herself to the whistling admirers. A few men threw money into the cage, and she picked up a thick green cucumber and sucked on it. More bills littered the floor of the cage, and she began to move one end of the spit-moistened vegetable down across her breasts and belly.
He reached an open pit. Black paint covered the stone barriers surrounding it and forming the deep walls of a large hollow. A uniformed Zoo patroller sat on the wall, idly smoking a sharo-smellin' cigarette. Valentine approached the nit and looked in. A central mound, built up to the point that it was al-most level with the ground outside the pit, sported two stone lions facing each other. From the mouth of each dangled a long leather strap, and the ground between the opposing lions had badly stained rugs spread out, covering the dirt. A Grog was scrubbing at the broad back of one of the lions, trying to remove bloodstains. To the far south in the pit, a gallowslike structure had a pair of ladders leaning against it and numerous hooks embedded in the posts and lintel. To the far right on the north end, a simple pole lay buried in the ground, with four sets of shackles dangling from the top. Valentine took in this three-ring circus of de Sade and moved over toward the smoking patroller.
“Is there going to be a show tonight?” Valentine asked, handing him one of the few remaining cheroots.
“You bet your ass. In a couple hours. You lining up for a good view?”
“Maybe. What do they do?”
“Make the ladies here scream themselves to death,” the patroller said, putting the cheroot in his mouth and lighting it with the end of the hand-rolled cigarette. The scrubbing Grog paused in his work and watched the glowing red tip of the cheroot as the patroller inhaled.
A group of soldiers, civilians, and hookers walked by. Half-empty bottles dangled from their hands. While passing the pit, one of the prostitutes whispered something into her escort’s ear. “Yeah, I seen a Black Hole show before,” her John answered. “I’ve even seen Reapers in the audience.”
“I heard that private parties can be arranged,” Valentine ventured, after the party passed on.
The officer blew out the rich smoke with an air of approval. “If you’ve got the cash, just about anything is possible.”
Valentine slipped the officer a hundred dollars. He glanced at the bill for a second before it disappeared into his shirt pocket. “I’ll get you in to see the Head Keeper, sport. Wait here. He agrees to talk to you, you gimme another toke the same size.”
“Fair enough,” Valentine agreed. The patroller moved off toward a long brick building with a busy rooftop eatery.
Valentine looked at the Grog, who was similar in size to the one at the Miskatonic University. He lit a match from the tin and waved it back and forth. The Grog applauded with a childlike, patty-cake motion and waddled down toward the edge of the pit by Valentine. It looked up at Valentine expectantly.
“You want to see more?” Valentine asked. The Grog cocked its head from side to side like a woodpecker looking for termites. Valentine looked around, but the few Zoo patrons close by were paying no attention to the empty Black Hole.
The Wolf took out one of his tins of matches and rattled it for the Grog. The Grog held out both of its hands, just like the inhabitant of the Institute’s catacombs. Valentine tossed the tin down to it. The Grog gave a little hoot of pleasure and thrust the matches into a pocket in its tattered trousers. Valentine made a slow circle of the Black Hole and found another Grog changing lightbulbs on a lamppost. He tried to hand a few more matches to the low-caste worker, but it shook its head and put its hands behind its back. Perhaps it had been punished in the past for something to do with matches.
Valentine’s patroller, still smoking the long cheroot, returned. “You’re golden,” he said. “It’s getting toward the end of the year, and they’re not so busy anymore. You want to visit before or after the show? Sometimes it gets a little crowded after. Plus, there’s a few less girls to choose from, you know?”
Valentine forced a smile. “Thanks. I’ll see him now, if that’s okay with you.” Valentine handed over another hundred dollars in toke.
“Wise choice. After the show, Burt’s usually drunk and ornery anyway. He tries, but he’s just not smart enough to come up with new ways of killing people every week. Plus, he’s pissed ‘cause they’re making him do a show tonight. He’d rather wait until the weekend, advertise it a little bit and work up a decent crowd. They toss in money and tell him what to do. But I guess the management wants this girl done fast and dirty… ho now, button up a sec,” the patroller said, looking up at a Reaper moving down the path. It felt similar to the one who had pursued him to the alley. David assumed it was still searching for him. Or perhaps it was one of his siblings, animated by the same Master Vampire.
Valentine breathed slowly and deeply, letting his eyes go out of focus. Death passed in silence.
The officer led Valentine though a wooden fence screened by trees and overgrown shrubbery. The patroller rapped on the door and called, “Open up, Todd, it’s me. I’ve brought a customer for Burt.”
The brown-painted door swung open, and Valentine followed the patroller past a shotgun-toting guard and into a long brick building with a green peaked roof. It was half barn, half fort. The patroller brought Valentine to a metal door and opened it with a key from a small ring on his belt. He entered, holding the door open for Valentine.
They walked down a hallway and entered a linoleum-floored room. An unshaven man sat in a chair, legs extended and arms dangling tiredly. A few more chairs stood against the walls, and an empty desk at the corner shone under a hooded light. The cop gestured toward one of the open chairs.
“Take a seat. Looks like there’s not much action tonight. I’ll go get Burt.”
Valentine sat down opposite the rag-doll figure. The bedraggled man wore a jumpsuit, new and shiny, made out of what looked to Valentine like nylon. He had long, unkempt black hair and a mustache. A prisoner-like pallor made his skin seem anemic against his dark beard. A pair of comfortable-looking black sports shoes with new soles covered his feet. Obviously a favored Quisling, if a tired and dirty-looking one. The jumpsuit had a high collar, almost a turtle-neck, and Valentine had to look twice at the insigne in silver stitching just under the man’s chin: a reversed swastika. The twisted cross? Valentine thought.
The man, noticing Valentine’s stare, yawned and looked across the room at him.
“Howdy, pal,” the man in black said. “Burt’s kinda slow tonight. He’s probably in one of the bars on Clark drinking. I’ve been waiting almost an hour.” He had a drawling accent which Valentine identified as more western than southern.
Valentine looked at the pattern on the linoleum floor. It resembled a cross section of sedimentary rock strata. “I’m in no hurry. Got a three-day pass, and it’s my first night.”
“You in the Service?”
“Yes. In the patrols. Madison Triumvirate. How about you?”
“I get around. I’m on the General’s Staff.”
Valentine hazarded finesse. “You’re Twisted Cross, right? You guys work pretty tight with the Reapers. Where are you operating now?”
“Some people up here call us that. Can’t discuss it, though. You know, security.”
“Oh, I hear you. Looks like they work you pretty hard.”
The man smiled. “Depends on your definition of work. But it is exhausting, in its own way.”
V
alentine nodded. “You look kind of sick or something.”
“This is nothing. You should have seen me when I first got out of the tank. I’d been connected for six days. Couldn’t even stand up until they got some orange juice in me.”
Valentine nodded. “Sounds like tough duty. I’m sure it’s more interesting than driving around in an old car, though, making sure nobody’s hiding milk cows in the hills.”
“Funny, I’ve never been to Wisconsin, but damn if you don’t look familiar,” the man mused.
“ You been up in the north woods?”
“No.”
Valentine fought the urge to lower his face, but he looked the man square in the eye. “Then I don’t know where else you might’ve seen me. I’ve never been south of Indianapolis.”
The man shrugged. “I dunno. I never forget a face, and—”
A heavy tread echoed from the hallway, and the cop returned, escorting a shuffling man with the bulky build of a power lifter. He had a battered face that looked like he drove railroad spikes with it. “Burt, this guy wants to do some business with you,” the patroller said.
“Sure, sure. Be with you in a minute, kid. Hey, Jimmy King, you look tuckered. You need the usual?”
“A nice juicy one, Burt.”
There was a look of raw lust in the man’s eyes like nothing Valentine had ever seen. It sickened him, but he was glad of it; the mystery of Valentine’s face was plainly the last thing on Jimmy King’s mind at the moment.
Burt grinned. “Then follow. Pickings are a little slim this time of year, but I know you ain’t particular. Some of your friends have been through, and I have a lot of empty cells.”
As Burt and Jimmy King left the room, Valentine toked the cop yet again. “Thanks again,” he said.
