The Western Lands (14 page)

"The Pharaoh awaits! Come!"

No time to get dressed, just a hasty robe and here we go again.

They form ranks in front of the Pharaoh. His Palace guards, a caste of genetic eunuchs, move up and down the line, carefully searching for weapons. When the word is given, the Palace retinue parades past the throne very slowly.

"Stop!"

Each one stops at the Pharaoh's feet for the Examination. The Pharaoh, with his alabaster white face and black snake eyes, looks at you, around you, through you, looking for a dagger in your mind, listening for the whispered furtive words, smelling for the sweat of guilty fear. His guards stand ready, massed on both sides of the throne. Motioned on by a twitch of his staff, you try not to look too relieved. Now he points with the staff, and the guards move forward. Someone is dragged away.

Neferti knows the arts of telepathic blocking and misdirection. You can't make your mind a blank, for that would be detected at once. You must present a cover mind which the Pharaoh can tune into, and which is completely harmless: "For me the Pharaoh is a God." You can't lay it on too thick.

Needless to say, one's enemies attempt to take advantage of the occasion. There are telepathic ventriloquists who can throw disloyal thoughts: "How long must we endure this vile pig Pharaoh? Our time will come . . . soon, very soon."

And there are the Smell Throwers, who can throw smells onto the target in a crowded street. People hiss and start away, leaving him in a circle of eyes burning with hate and loathing. Sometimes a Smell Thrower will take advantage of the Examination to discredit a rival, causing him to appear before the Pharaoh reeking of excrement. It is a dangerous expedient, however, as a skilled practitioner can throw it back with double stink.

The sin of Secret Painting is rife, though punished by impalement on a white-hot bronze phallus. Secret Painters are divided into tribes. Neferti belongs to the Cobra Tribe. They keep with them at all times the means of suicide, and gather in their secret haunts to compare suicide and murder weapons. They are not averse to taking as many with them as possible.

Their haunts are not secret in the sense of being hidden. To the outsider they would appear as a perfectly ordinary house or inn. Should an unwanted stranger happen in, he will see nothing noteworthy, but rather an emptiness, a lack of anything that can engage his interest or pleasure. The food isn't exactly bad, but it is exactly the kind of food he doesn't like. If he ventures, on a sexual encounter, it will end in a grating climax, at once painful and disgusting. The sheets are not dirty, but they feel dirty and smell dirty.

One of the wise palates from the Good Guide Book came in here, and went out with his buds switched over—he moans and rolls his eyes like Crazy Horse impersonated by Jimmy Durante over the most appalling junk food for starters, and sardines eaten from the can with a shoehorn, washed down with Green River. The meat course is second-run rejects from premises closed by the Board of Health, doused in stale ketchup and anchored down with cherry milkshakes laced with gritty undissolved granules of cheaper-by-the-ton synthetic malt, then a canned pineapple and marshmallow salad with Postum.

They don't come back. And usually they can't get out quick enough.

A certain species of vampire which can take male or female form sneaks into the rooms of youths. The pleasures they offer are irresistible, and the victim is hopelessly captivated by these nightly visits which no lock or charm can forestall. The victim loses all interest in human contact. He lives only for the visits of the vampire, which leave him always weaker and more wasted. In the end he is little more than a living mummy.

These visitations have decimated rural areas, and the large estates are deserted. It has long been suspected that these vampires are the ghosts of mummies who immortalize themselves in this way and convert the energy required to maintain the Western Lands.

Revolution is spreading, and many of the large estates are deserted and have been taken over by partisans.

The Partisan Leader Mementot has uttered a terrible threat: "I am going to destroy every fucking mummy I get my hands on. The Western Lands of the rich are watered by
fellaheen
blood, built of
fellaheen
flesh and bones, lighted by
fellaheen
spirit."

Terrorized, the rich have brought in mercenaries from the South, filthy Ethiopians who delight in the torture of prisoners. A common practice is death by fire in muslin. The victim is wrapped in strips of muslin soaked in beeswax, to the semblance of a mummy, then set alight to divert his captors with the Mummy Dance, accompanied by flute music . . . hideous shrill mimicry of burning screams.

"Go! Go! Go!" they chant, pissing all over themselves with laughter.

A sibilant quivering hiss, and the partisans attack like silent hungry ghosts. One dispatches the dancing mummy with a sword slice that severs the charred head. Grimacing hideously, it bounces among the mercenaries. Sagging like unstrung puppets, their vile torture lust steamingly exposed to sharp steel, deserted by their employers who have shut themselves into fortified citadels, the mercenaries either join the partisans or retreat and disband to the Hot Lands of the South.

In the Hot Lands there are seven artesian wells, and the settlements cluster around the precious waters. The houses are completely sealed, except for ventilating screens impregnated with oils that kill insect invaders. The oil must also be worn on all exposed surfaces when venturing into the open, and suits with many layers of silk to cover the body, and boots to the knees. No one goes out except at night, when the temperature plummets to 120 degrees. The houses are cooled by layers of burlap and a constant drip of water, the evaporation giving off more coolness as the outside heat increases.

The wells are fed by underground rivers which sometimes change course. In Japan they get into baths so hot you have to stay absolutely still until the water cools. One movement and you would scald to death. Here it's the same with the air, and it doesn't cool. One quick movement and you start roasting. Takes an hour to cross a room. Talking will roast your lips and strangle you with your bursting tongue. Three months of that, and then the faint stirring of coolness around the edges, cool blue on your burning flesh, the winds of God bringing rain.

Certain highly prized minerals are found only in this area: a metal which can be molded like clay but will harden to the consistency of bronze, and the burning metal that glows with a soft cold fire, giving off a steady, silent rain of death. One exposure means death in a few weeks, as flesh and entrails wither and the brittle bones snap like dry reeds. A metal unguent gives protection from the deadly emanations of the Burning Silver.

Some Secret Painters of the Cobra Tribe have gathered in a squalid inn. They sip excellent wine served in earthen mugs. A "wrong one" would get the wine suitable to the vessel, a sour grit that sticks to his teeth and coats his mouth. They do not regard all strangers as undesirable, to be gotten rid of as soon as possible. But certain categories are definitely bad news they don't want around: informers, Palace spies, purveyors of gossip and rumors, lunatics and religious sons of bitches.

As usual, they are comparing weapons for suicide and murder, poison pins and rings and clasps and earrings and teeth, poison sewn under the skin, articles of clothing soaked in poison. For suicide, cobra and mamba venoms are quite quick and painless, rather pleasant in fact, and some of them are also cobra venom addicts.

The venom of the cobra, dried and administered in a carefully adjusted dose by blowing the dissolved venom into the flesh through a sharpened tube, produces a feeling of serene euphoria which lasts up to three hours. Repeated exposure leads to dependence, which confers upon the addict immunity to the venom. This is advantageous when using cobra as a weapon.

Cobra venom is now restricted to initiation ceremonies and the use of a few advanced adepts, who converse in sibilant hisses, reptilian purrs and sometimes the icy cold shriek of reptile hysteria. They slowly become cold-blooded, and cease to dream. The withdrawal symptoms are excruciating, the cold blood as low as 75° F heated back to 98.6° in a few hours. Patients must be restrained from suicide by any means at hand. Industrial doses of heroin are the only remedy if no venom is available and, since cobras are not always handy, few choose to contract this perilous addiction. Fortunately, dependence is not quickly established.

Turning now to some of the more deplorable files: hmm, yes, Reggie Carlton . . . anonymous features that are somehow very displeasing. In fact, one feels definitely queasy . . . a hideous member straining out from just below the navel, wrinkled purple black at the end. The shaft juts up, flat on top, with little nodules of purple-pink flesh around the crown oozing with deadly venom. The dead empty eyes, the hideous cock. Deformed children beg behind him. Every cock is deformed, some swollen and bulbous, some thin as pencils, two-pronged penises with tiny fangs strike at each other spurting venom, a rectum where the penis was, the penis now grows slowly from the navel.

These demons from Bosch are familiars of the Gaboon Viper, a bloated snake with symmetrical patterns of brown, white and black, thick as an average thigh, tapering to a blunt tail. The head is like a small shovel, translucent gray-pink poison glands on each side and on the snout, two little purple-pink horns that writhe and smell toward the target (replicas of the Gaboon's cock). Instead of wriggling along like a decent snake, your Gaboon Viper crawls along on his ribs, straight ahead, like a purposeful caterpillar.

Despite their bloated and torpid appearance, they can move with great rapidity to catch a rat in the air, or a horrified hand. The venom is both hemotoxic and neurotoxic, often leading to severe neural damage. The blood venom holds the nerve venom in place, and the nerve venom renders the victim liable to gangrene and other infections. If one does not die from the Gaboon's huge dripping fangs, he is often left a permanent invalid. One case is paralyzed from the neck down, another is slowly dying of encroaching infections. His arm has already been amputated, the infection is spreading to the brain.

To top it all, the Gaboon growls like a dog would, if a dog were cold-blooded. It's a growl dates back to some models that appeared at the end of the Reptile Age, about the size of a wolf, part reptile and part emergent mammal. May have been coldblooded, with fur and reptile teeth. Looked quite promising. Others were warm-blooded with scales and wolf teeth. What happened? Trouble with the thermostat most likely.

The Bras cultivate an alert, malevolent somnolence that can shift to the cold hysteria of deadly rage. The cult embraces many venomous snakes who chew and eat and live on death: the mamba, dropping from trees in a green streak, his little jaws open, for this long slender delicate snake, no thicker than a heavy walking cane, is six feet in length. "Very fast. Very good," as Hemingway said about General Omar Bradley. The fangs are small, and there is no local irritation or swelling. One may not even know he has been mamba bit, until his speech begins to slur and slobber, his gait to lurch and stagger and fall. DOA an hour later, if there is a hospital to be DOA at. No pain. 

The Bras find the Boons rather common.

A group of languid Bras have gathered in a Cheney Walk flat that attempts to capture the effect of an Egyptian garden in the drowsy noon heat. Unfortunately the storage heaters aren't working. The man from London Electric, who alone are authorized to repair a storage heater, muttered something about "the element" three weeks ago, and hasn't been seen since.

Sandun has them all spreading and hissing with his account of how three Boons emptied a gay bar in Chelsea:

"There they are at the bar, in full white tie like a 1920s Arrow Collar ad by E. C. Leyendecker, and without a frame's transition they are starkers from the shirt down, still being nonchalant with a Murad and sipping champagne while the hideous Boons growl and spurt deadly venom all over them. They trap fifty screamers stuck in the exit.

"The Boons are looking for a Receptacle that will fertilize their deadly sperm, so now and then they do a spot search like this. But the faggots is dropping like poisoned pigeons. The venom is corrosive, eats its own hole. The Boons draw themselves up:

"'Unworthy vessels. Let's toddle along and leave these chappies to stew in our juice. They're filthy.'

"Good show, that. Good enough to steal."

The area controlled by the Pharaoh's troops is dwindling. Beyond that line is a power vacuum, empty lands and palaces and villas that are anyone's for the taking.

"For the rich became poor and the poor became rich. This state of things continued for a hundred years," a chronicler states.

The landed aristocrats who fled to the city joined the ranks of the new poor, supporting themselves by menial work and charity from the Palace. And their estates fell to the partisans who, having no means to merchandise large-scale produce, turned to subsistence farming, fishing and hunting. . . .

Thirty men and boys are gathered in the room, their bows and spears stacked against a wall, sitting at a long table drinking distilled wine. They are discussing the various demons they can expect to encounter after their physical deaths, which they can meet at any time. Feuding tribes, disgruntled mercenaries and ex-soldiers roam the countryside like dog packs. They are referring to the Book of the Dead and other texts and maps laid out on the table.

The demon guards have made mummification a prerequisite for immortality in the Western Lands. Why, exactly? Obviously the mummies serve as receptacles to collect and store the plasma of the fellaheen needed to preserve their masters. In return, the sucking mummies are given conditional immortality, as vampires to be milked like aphids.

So the One God, backed by secular power, is forced on the masses in the name of Islam, Christianity, the State, for all secular leaders want to be the One. To be intelligent or observant under such a blanket of oppression is to be "subversive":