Pharaoh Hounds don't bark or whine. When they get the scent the ears and muzzle flush red. The redder they flush, the closer the quarry.
Kim walks into Scranton's with his Pharaoh Hound and it just so happens the Old Prospector wakes up and the hound takes one sniff of the prospector and his ears turn a bright rich red and so does his muzzle, and Kim says, "All right, Barnes, come out from behind that Old Prospector."
Zed's face is a thing to see: abject panic. His lips crawl back from his teeth and his eyes bug out and he makes a galvanic snatch for his Sidewinder, the .45 bullets loaded with diamond-back venom, enough to kill five men in each bullet. But he misses and hits a passing cow that gives one despairing mooooo and drops dead in its tracks. Kim disintegrates him with one shot that takes out a wall of the store.
Now, Mr. Scranton, the storekeep, has runned to the cyclone and vegetable cellar when he seen the dog's ears turn red. He asks Kim to pay for his store, plumb mint and about two hundred in canned goods vaporized right off the shelf, smells like beans and tomatoes right down into the timbers, he has to tear the whole place down and start over, and worst of all it stinked like vaporized Zed Barnes, the vilest stench a man could gag on.
So that was it with Zed Barnes, not really a worthy opponent, but that 30-06 whistling by Kim's prick, that had to be leveled out and evened up.
They say Adam was made out of clay. Well, Zed Barnes was made out of vulture shit. Ain't nothing too dirty for God to put his hands in it to make more creatures to buy his shit and produce it. "Increase and multiply."
They need more more more to fill factories and offices and more more more to consume the shit produced.
So he starts faking it. He is putting out human stock without the names. Literally Nameless Assholes, NAs. Their name is mud. Their name is shit. Without Angel, Heart, Double or Shadow. Nothing but Remains, kept operational by borrowed power overdrawn on the Energy Bank . . . physical bodies animated by bum life checks.
Knocking Zed out could start a panic, as the human stock drops off the board. They are selling short at gorilla level. It has already dropped to pigs and is going down fast.
7
The Road to the Western Lands is devious, unpredictable. Today's easy passage may be tomorrow's death trap. The obvious road is almost always a fool's road, and beware the Middle Roads, the roads of moderation, common sense and careful planning. However, there is a time for planning, moderation and common sense.
Neferti is inclined to extreme experience, so he gravitates toward the vast underworld of the Pariah Quarter, the quarter of outcasts, of the diseased, the insane, the drug addicts, the followers of forbidden trades, unlicensed embalmers, abortionists, surgeons who will perform dubious transplant operations. Old brain, young body? Old fool has a young body but not the sensibilities of youth. He has sold his soul for a strap-on.
It may be said that any immortality blueprint depending on prolonging the physical body, patching it together, replacing a part here and there like an old car, is the worst plan possible, like betting on the favorites and doubling up when you lose. Instead of separating yourself from the body, you are immersing yourself in the body, making yourself more and more dependent on the body with every stolen breath through transplanted lungs, with every ejaculation of a young phallus, with every excretion from youthful intestines. But the transplant route attracts many fools, and the practitioners are to be found in this quarter.
London, Paris, Rome, New York . . . you know where the streets and squares and bridges are. To reach a certain quarter, you have only to consult a map and lo, a string of lights will show you how to reach your objective on the subway.
In Waghdas, however, quarters and streets, squares, markets and bridges change form, shift location from day to day like traveling carnivals. Comfortable, expensive houses arranged around a neat square (all residents have a key to the gate) can change, even as you find your way there, into a murderous ghetto. Oh, there are maps enough. But they are outmoded as soon as they can be printed.
Neferti uses this method to orient himself and find the Pariah Quarter: place yourself in a scene from your past, preferably a scene that no longer exists. The buildings have been torn down, streets altered. What was once a vacant lot where one could find snakes under sheets of rusty iron is now a parking lot or an apartment building. It is not always essential to start from a set that no longer exists. There are no rigid rules, only indications in this area. Do you pick just any place? Some work better than others. You will know by certain signs whether the place you have chosen is functional. Now, get up and leave the place. With skill and luck you will find the location that you seek in Waghdas.
Neferti seeks out the vilest slums of the Pariah Quarter. He is dressed in the inconspicuous garb of a traveling merchant with a single bodyguard. They encounter an obstacle course of beggars. Neferti tosses a coin to an armless leper, who catches it in the suppurating hole where his nose used to be and hawks it out into a clay pot in a gob of pus and blood. Other beggars squirm forward, exhibiting .their sores. The bodyguard lashes out with a flail of copper weights and the beggars shrink back, spitting and drooling hideous curses. One turns and raises his robe and jets out a stream of shit, smirking over his shoulder. They turn into a wine shop where Insult Contests are held. These contests are illegal by order of the Board of Health on the grounds they pollute the atmosphere. But in this quarter anything and anybody goes. It's an art rather like flamenco.
One of the creatures who lounge about in female apparel is seized by the Insult Spirit. He leaps up and focuses on a target, imitating every movement and mannerism with vile hate and inspired empathy, thrusting his face within inches of his victim.
An English Major is reduced to hysteria as his monocled, frozen face cracks and a stream of filth pours from his mouth, words that stink like vaporized excrement. He screams and rushes out, followed by cackling laughter.
The victorious insult queen stands in the middle of the floor like a ballerina. He turns and looks at Neferti, feeling for a point of entry, like a questing centipede. Neferti hurls him back with such force that he flattens against the wall and sinks to the floor, his neck broken.
The others spread out in a semicircle. Neferti lashes out with his poison sponge flail. Faces and arms swell and turn black and burst open. He holsters his flail. (Flails are holstered by pushing the handle up through the bottom of the holster like an octopus retreating into its lair and pulling its tentacles after it.)
Neferti adjusts an imaginary monocle. "Let's toddle along and leave these rotters to stew in their own juice. They're filthy."
He stops in a cosmetic shop to rub perfumed unguents on his face and hands, and dusts his clothes with shredded incense.
They proceed to the Encounter Inn . . . bar along one wall, a few tables. The Bartender is a beast man, a baboon cross with long, yellow canines. When Mandrill vaults over the bar, prudent patrons take cover. Now he fixes his baleful little red eyes on Neferti. His glare glazes with reluctant respect. He becomes obsequious.
"How can I serve you, noble sir?"
Neferti orders an opium absinthe. His bodyguard tosses down a double mango brandy. Neferti sips his drink and looks around: some young courtiers from the Palace on a slumming expedition, a table of the dreaded Breathers. By taking certain herbs mixed with centipede excrement, they nurture a breath so foul that it can double a man over at six feet like a kick to the crotch. At point-blank range the breath can kill.
Every Breather has a different formula. Some swear by bat dung, others by vulture vomit smoothed by rotten land crabs, or the accumulated body fluids of an imperfectly embalmed mummy. There are specialty shops catering to Breathers where such mixtures can be obtained. They vie with each other for the foulest breath. The breath mixtures slowly eat away the gums and lips and palate.
Now a Breather exhales into the air above the courtiers' table and dead flies rain down into their drinks. The Breather lisps through a cleft palate, "Noble sirs, I
beg your forgiveness. I simply wish to prevent the flies from annoying your revered persons."
Neferti shudders to remember his encounter with an old Breather. . . .
The Breather bars his path. His lips are gone and there are maggots at the corners of his mouth.
"A pittance, noble sir."
"Out of my path, offal."
The old Breather stands his ground. He smiles, and a maggot drops from his mouth.
"Please, kind sir."
Neferti shoots him in the stomach with his .44 Special. The Breather doubles forward and such a foul stink jets from his mouth in a hail of rotten teeth and maggots that Neferti loses consciousness.
He came to in a chamber of the Palace, attended by the royal physicians. He shuddered at the memory and vomited until he brought up green bile. Worst of all was knowing that his Ka had been denied. Three months of rigorous purification, during which he ate only fruits and drank the purest spring water, restored him to health.
A beautiful young Breather with smooth purple skin like an overripe tropical fruit glides over to Neferti.
"Honored sir," he purrs, "I can breathe many smells." He exhales a heavy, clinging musk that sends blood tingling to Neferti's groin.
"I can show you how to pass through the Duad."
The Duad is a river of excrement, one of the deadliest obstacles on the road to the Western Lands. To transcend life you must transcend the conditions of life, the shit and farts and piss and sweat and snot of life. A frozen disgust is as fatal as prurient fixation, two sides of the same counterfeit coin. It is necessary to achieve a gentle and precise detachment, then the Duad opens like an intricate puzzle. Since Neferti had been exposed to the deadly poison of Christianity, it was doubly difficult for him to deal with the Duad.
So he nods and the Breather, Giver of Strong Smells and Tainted Winds, guides them through a maze of alleys, paths, ladders, bridges and catwalks, through inns and squares, patios and houses where people are eating, sleeping, defecating, making love. This is a poor quarter and few can afford the luxury of a private house with no rights of passage. There are many degrees of privacy. In some houses there is a public passage only through the garden. Others live in open stalls on heavily traveled streets, or in the maze of tunnels under the city, or on roofs where the neighbors hang clothes to dry and tether their sheep and goats and fowl. Some are entitled to exact a toll. And some routes are the exclusive prerogative of a club, a secret society, a sect, a tong, a profession or trade. Fights over passage rights are frequent and bloody. There are no public services in this quarter, no police, fire, sanitation, water, power or medical service. These are provided by families and clubs, if at all.
Neph is letting his far-seer scouts get too far ahead. Some call them spirit guides or helpers. It is their function to reconnoiter an area so that one knows what to expect, and to alert headquarters with regard to dangers, conditions, enemies and allies to be contacted or avoided. They are bringing him instead general considerations on the area . . . valuable and interesting, but not precisely applicable in present time.
Neferti is in The Golden Sphincter, an ultra-sleazy gay bar at the end of a long, crooked alley, no doubt hollowed out by generations of people sidestepping the human and animal waste that litters the worn stone, stained brown from years of urine and excrement. This bar is on the outskirts of Waghdas and jackals are as common as the feral cats. He sips his drink and looks around: three old queens at the end of the bar, pathic vultures writhing in carrion hunger and the frightful frivolity of the species.
"Do it to me, Death!"
Poisonous puppets . . . Neph recognizes a thin, red-haired man at the bar as a hit man he knows slightly. Good, too . . . does work for the Vatican.
As he walks by the three queens he breathes out, almost subliminally, "The animal doctor should put you to sleep."
A reproduction of the Belgian boy urinating and a seashell of pink papier-mâché stained by dirty years. As Neph was urinating a water closet flew open and a man popped out, a lean Turk with a goatee. From his fly protruded a steel-blue erection.
"You like?"
Back in The Golden Sphincter, he nodded to the Breather.
"There is a rear entrance."
The door opened on what looked like a museum corridor in a blast of stale, cool air. As he stepped into the corridor the door shut behind him. Neph felt a blast of black hate, utterly repulsive and at the same time sad and hopeless.
What hates him? That which is not him and can never become him. They hate him for what he is, because they must become what he is or die. A man is delineated by what he is not. So let their hate be the chisel to form a statue of dazzling beauty. With every curse, every spitting, drooling snarl, every apoplectic sputter, every poisonous snide-queen screech, his marble is polished, the blemishes cleared away, that little twitch of the mouth smoothes out as the worry wrinkles relax into smooth white stone. Shrieking, the attack subsides and withers away, like bacilli caught in the antibiotic dead end.
A dedicated Lesbian denigrator slinks back to vomit her stomach acids on my impeccable marble.
"It would be well, my Short Rib," I tell her, "to kiss my big toe . . . there is a slight imperfection, a protuberance ... a little of your acid just there. . . . Thank you, you can go now."
She spits out green bile.
"Self-contained heel. I hope you choke on yourself."
Neph experiences a cool, stony relief. They are gone . . . for the moment.
Neferti and the beautiful Breather are strolling through a flower market. An old hag rushes out and screams at the Breather, "You have sucked all the smell from my flowers. Voleur!"
"Only to give it back tenfold," and he breathes out such a smell of flowers that the market is covered by a smog of cloying sweetness.
They pass the Restaurant Notre Dame. "Voleur! My food tastes like beaverboard. You have sucked all the flavor out!"
The Breather turns and exhales, delicious garlicky cooking smells permeate the quarter. Everywhere people with the spit hanging down off their chins storm the Notre Dame.
"I can jet my way about like an octopus. You see, I'm a reverse vampire. Take a little, give back a lot. More than they can use, in fact. Keep moving is my motto. Only way to live. Now, one-way grounded vampirism, worst thing can happen to a man. I mean maintaining a permanent image with stolen energy. Some run it into the ground hot and heavy, moaning in a bloodless desert. Others take a little, leave a little, live and let live—but by the terms of the vampiric process they always take more than they leave. The error here is & fixed image.
"In fact, a fixed image is the basic mortality error, a ME that cannot be allowed to change, certainly not to change color. Remember the white man in Johannesburg was stung nigger-black by a swarm of bees? They take him to the nigger hospital and he wakes up screaming, 'Where am I, you black bastards?'
"'You is with yo' mummy and daddy, chile.'"
Neferti is dropping his Ego, his Me, his face to meet the faces that he meets. There is nothing here to protect himself from. He can feel the old defenses falling, dropping away like muttering burlap, dripping from crystal bone, burning out like a Coleman mantle . . . the black mantle shreds in the night wind.
In the 1920s, everyone had a farm where they would spend the weekends. I remember the Coleman lanterns that made a roaring noise, and the smell of the chemical toilets.... Khaibit, my shadow, my memory, is shredding away in the wind.
THE HONEY DOOR
Stoneworkers uncovered a stratum of fossilized honeycombs. The congealed sweetness sealed in over the centuries wafted out and the Pharaoh, Great Outhouse 8, whiffed it fifty miles away in his palace. It was said of Great 8 that he could tell when any of his subjects defecated and differentiate among them by the smell.
He dispatched his most skilled stonecutters to the spot. The stratum of stone combs was cut free from the surrounding rock and carried to the palace. Of an irregular shape, it measured ten by eight feet and in some plac
es was two feet in depth.
Great 8 was very old, and he gave orders for his embalming. After the preliminary procedures of extracting the internal organs and the brain and drying and curing the mummy, instead of being wrapped in linen, he would be placed naked into a sarcophagus cut from the combs, the sarcophagus to be filled with honey.
It is known that sugar does not spoil, and soon others are following in the sweet steps of Great Outhouse 8, having their mummies preserved in orange and strawberry, rose and lotus syrups, glycerine with opal chips ... the sarcophagus swings on a pivot so that the chips float about, and there is a little crystal window to observe the deceased in his final habitat.
The priests are disquieted and paw the ground like cattle scenting danger. A flood of unorthodox embalming methods could sweep away the fundamentals of our Thing, they wail. And their fears are not without foundation.
The embalmer, Gold Skin, has discovered a method by which a thin sheet of metal can be applied to a mummy by coating the mummy with charcoal and immersing it in a vat of gold, copper or silver salts activated by a device which was his closely guarded secret. Wrapped in the Golden Skin, one need not fear the encroachment of extraneous insects or scavengers, of time or water. However, the initial mummification must be doubly rigorous, lest one be sealed forever in the vilest corruption of liquefied flesh and bones and maggots.