Viper wire, p.1
Viper Wire, page 1
Table of Contents
Dog Boys
Concrete Bouquet
Opener of the Ways
The Mad Hatter
Master of the Crossroads
The Silk Road
Black Neurology: A Love Story
My Exquisite Corpse
Mudrosti
Surfing the Khumbu
Chronalgia
Bad Blood
The Index of Refraction
Lotus Alley
Amnesia: Mist Memoir
Speaking Up
Interspecies Communication
Le Jardin des Os
Dark Jubilee
Second-Floor Girls
Jump Start
Kabbalah Cowboys
Still Life with Apocalypse
Mementos
Dragon
Growth Cycle
Larks’ Tongues in Aspic
Space-Time Collapse
The Night of the Drunken Heart
Patrimony
Necrophony
Crash Kiss
The Probability Box
The Magnetic Garden
Le Merdier
The Night Patrons
1000 Destroyers: A Machine Creation Myth
The Winter Haven Leviathan
Secrets of the Universe
The Last Great Kings of Earth
Outsider Art
The Tears of the Moon
A Cabinet of Curiosities
SETI
Ubiquitous Computing
Pembroke’s Saga
Zombie
Field Trip
Food Chain Blues
The Enigma Event
A Cautionary Tale
Herzog’s Benediction
Heat Island
Ice House
The Birth of Athena
Hall of the Phoenix Machines
The Götterdämmerung Show
Confessions of a Mnemonist
What Goes Around
Pleasure Cruise
Mouse Lights
Iron Wit
About the Author
Dog Boys
Setting down his drink, Cormac Thomas Garfield runs his fingers over a deep scar on his chest. It’s the site of his first harvesting, the reason he came to Austin all those years ago. No one speaks to Cormac as he sips straight Jack Daniels at a sunny corner table in the cafe’. Young men of Cormac’s profession tend to carry peculiar odors, and an old man such as Cormac positively stinks.
He began his career as a Dog Boy (officially, a hinterland Canaille), growing botulism toxins in polymer sacs installed in his gut. Later, he graduated to necrotizing venoms and exotic ion-channel neurotoxins. There were worse things, too. Tiny beasts, like crabs, but with teeth. He, along with a hundred other boys, had to vomit them out into stainless steel tubs while men in hazmat suits stood by with guns ready to shoot them in case it went badly and the animals began to eat their way out of their stomachs. There were always a few casualties during these harvests.
Boys didn’t last long in Cormac’s profession, which saved the royal family from having to pay for their many infirmities when they grew old. Cormac has stubbornly, rudely, refused to die, costing the Treasury a tidy sum. He is despised by both ordinary men and the government, but he is a hero of the State, with a medal to prove it. His assassination, even a convenient accident, is out of the question. His blood is so toxic that if he were wounded in a public place, he could contaminate a whole city sector.
Cormac has a mechanical eye — a retirement present from Prince Samuel Patrick Houston — but it hasn’t worked in years, except to intermittently show him flickering gray silhouettes lost in blizzards of static. Cormac has come to believe that these figures are the ghosts of the millions murdered in the Mexican Wars with the poisons manufactured in his body. The ghosts are trying to tell him something, but he can’t understand what. He speaks to the ghosts, and the other patrons at the cafe, already disgusted by his blackened teeth and stinking flesh, move away from his yammering.
Cormac orders more Jack Daniels shots. He is a hero. The cafe owner has no choice but to serve him. When Cormac starts to leave, the owner refuses the old man’s money. He leaves cash on the table anyway, but the owner sweeps it and his glass into a plastic container and burns them down by a canal in back of his cafe.
A few weeks later, when Cormac dies, the city secretly rejoices. Cormac’s body is incinerated in a special biohazard facility deep in the mountains beyond El Paso. Despite this, the winds change and an acid rain falls like metallic-smelling tar on the capital. The monsoon curdles roads. It ruins delicate building facades and dish antennae. It erases the faces from every public statue in the city. The runoff contaminates the ground water, and thousands die horribly, coughing up blood and flesh-eating spider-like things. The royal family flees the city as a strange plague moves through the streets, killing rich and poor alike. A new crop of Dog Boys is bought in from the provinces. The plague intrigues the kingdom’s scientists. It is a new flower to cultivate in the red gardens of the Dog Boys’ blood.
Concrete Bouquet
He’s in love, but doesn’t have the words to express it or the courage to say it. He smiles at his love. He buys her presents. He takes her to the most expensive dinners he can afford. She cares for him, he knows. She has no problem saying or expressing it. Now she’s waiting for something. She’s waiting for him, for the words he can’t get out.
After dinner, she doesn’t ask him up. Things are going wrong. They kiss, but he can feel her drifting away from him, sadly, but steadily. He stands in the street and watches the light go on in her apartment. He wants to shout at her window, but his throat is dry. His tongue feels like old linoleum in his mouth.
He trembles with cold and frustration. Tears fall from his eyes. Not tears. Flowers. Wounds open in his hands. Roses fall from his palms. Lilies, magnolia blossoms, tulips, birds of paradise land at his feet. He tries to call to her, but the words still won’t come from his dry throat.
Later, when she opens her window she sees him lying in the street. He seems to be asleep on a bed of fresh blooms. He’s so weak from blood loss, that she has to practically carry him inside. He leaves a trail of orchids and hibiscus all the way to her room.
Opener of the Ways
On a bright, crisp Saturday, Margaret walked through the dog park with Anubis. The jackal-headed guide of the dead, the prince of Magic, used his royal Ankh to scratch the parts of his back he couldn’t reach with his hands.
Margaret bought them ice cream from a vendor with a cart. Other dog owners crowded around with their animals. A Russian wolfhound sniffed Anubis’ ass. The god patted the wolfhound on the head and let it lick from his vanilla cone. The wolfhound’s owner nervously pulled the dog away.
“Why is it always seven?” Margaret asked. “Seven deadly sins. Seven virtues. Seven pillars of wisdom. Seven lines on a grave to erase the sins of the dead.”
“Seven segments of a rainbow,” said Anubis, in a clear very un-doglike voice. “Seven souls.”
“Is that why? Because we have seven souls?”
“Perhaps. Four parts of mortals are connected to Earth, three to Heaven. If you add up the numbers one through seven, you get twenty-eight, the same number as the cycle of the moon. Of course, it could be simpler. It could be that everyone in the universe hates six, so the gods just rounded up one.”
An old woman in a bulky plaid coat stood before them. “What kind of a dog is that?”
“Actually, it’s a god,” said Margaret.
“Is that like a Pekingese?”
“Your khu, your intelligence, is unusually small,” Anubis said. “This will not help you pass through the Judgement Hall of Osiris and into the Western Lands where worthy souls live forever.”
“You have a very rude doggy,” the old woman said, and stalked off, pulling her cocker spaniel behind.
Margaret called, “He’s not a dog. He’s a god. And, I suppose, a dog, too.”
“I’m a jackal. Canis aureus . Related to dogs, but a different sub-species.”
“Yeah. The kind that can talk.”
“All dogs talk. They just don’t talk to humans.”
“What do dogs talk about?”
“That’s a secret.”
Margaret pointed to a brown and white mutt touching noses with a dachshund. “What’s that one talking about right now?”
“It’s hungry and its human watches too much porn.” Anubis scratched his back again. “While I’m not a dog, I sure would like to chase the nice red ball that pitbull has.”
“I have a ball in my bag. Should I throw it for you?”
“No, but thanks. It’s undignified for a god.”
“I understand,” Margaret said. She took a last bite of her ice cream and breathed in the afternoon air. “This is nice. Being back in the park.”
“I thought you might enjoy it.”
“When you first knocked on my door, I thought it was a joke. I’m not used to meeting gods, much less ones who want to go to the dog park with me.”
“I’d seen you here before. After your terrier died, I knew you must miss the place.”
“I did,” she said, then hesitated. “I’m not dead, too, am I?”
“I don’t know. Did you feel dead when you bought the ice cream?”
“No. I guess not. I guess ice cream is confirmation of life.”
Anubis pointed his Ankh at a meticulously-coifed poodle who was being vigorously humped by a handsome German shepherd.
“See t
“What happened?”
“When she was killed, she was reincarnated as mold on the side of a tree in a mangrove swamp in southern India. It’s taken her ten thousand years to get back this far up the food chain.”
“Does she remember any of that?”
Anubis glanced at the busy dogs. “Not at the moment, I’d guess.” They walked on down the path. The god was very adept at pointing out dog shit before Margaret stepped in it. He said, “That man you don’t like. You should forget about him.”
“There are so many of them not to like. Which specific man are you talking about?”
“The one who hurt you. The one you bought the poison for. You shouldn’t use it. I’m the Opener of Ways. The one who leads souls to judgement. I know about these things.”
“It’s hard always being reasonable. Some people deserve to suffer.”
“I understand. I once flooded all of Upper Egypt to get back at my brother, Set. Everyone was very angry with me. My family wouldn’t speak to me for a thousand years.”
“I once stuck my sister’s Barbie in the garbage disposal. Not the same thing, I suppose.”
“Of course it is. Attacks on those we love are relative. And they leave us lonely and barren.”
Margaret let air out slowly between her teeth. “I wasn’t really going to kill him, I suppose. It just felt good to know I could.”
“And now you don’t have to,” said Anubis. He put his arm around her shoulder. It was warm and oddly comforting. “Remember that all debts are paid, in the end.”
“Does everyone really hate six?” Margaret asked.
“Gods and humans both. If we didn’t need something between five and seven, no one would put up with six.”
“Excuse me, ma’am,” said a Regional Park cop. “Are you aware of the new leash law that’s gone into effect?”
Margaret’s eyes narrowed. “Did that old woman send you over here?”
“Your dog is too big to run around on his own.”
“He’s not a dog. And he’s not running around.”
“He doesn’t seem to have a license. Has he had his shots?”
“He’s a god. He doesn’t need shots!”
“You’re going to have to leave the park, and I’m going to have to give you a fine.”
Anubis moved his enormous arm from Margaret’s shoulder and laid his hand on the park cop’s head. “You know, you bureaucrats were invented by Thoth, the scribe. But you were supposed to help mankind keep its affairs in order, not fill it with annoyance and fear.”
“Good doggy,” said the cop, and vanished.
“What happened to him?”
Anubis took Margaret’s arm and they walked on. “Since he didn’t want to act like a human, he won’t be human again for quite a while. It takes a long time to work your way up from tooth plaque.”
“Can you stay for dinner?”
“I’m afraid not, but—” Anubis stopped.
“What?”
“Maybe I will let you throw that ball for me. Just for a few minutes.”
The Mad Hatter
They found his body near a dumpster in the alley behind a club called CBGB’s. The place had been in the Manhattan Bowery for over a hundred and fifty years and was a kind of shrine to musicians from all the settled planets. People wondered if the dead man had been a musician in some previous life. Maybe he’d chosen to die in the alley as some symbolic act, perhaps of love for music, or as retribution for music having forgotten him.
Between the alcoholism that had killed him and the rats that had been working on him since, the man’s body was in bad shape. He was identified through DNA records, and his daughter, a water miner on the dark side of the moon, came down to claim the body.
It shocked the old-timers in the neighborhood to find out that the stories the aged drunk had been spinning for years, about his being an astronaut and explorer on the edge of the solar system, might have been true. His name matched a name in the old public space registries, and his age was right to be a Mad Hatter — a deep space explorer back before that kind of travel was safe or even reasonable.
Aside from being the first humans to visit the gas giants beyond the asteroid belt, that early group of freelance astronauts was also notable for the absurd doses of radiation and cosmic rays they absorbed. The whole generation had been pretty much wiped out by an variety of exotic bone diseases and cancers. The ones with the more benign growths merely went mad with inoperable brain tumors.
Nagesh Shah, the current owner of CBGB’s, had sometimes left coffee in back of the club for the old man. One night, just after New Year’s, Nagesh ran into the astronaut’s daughter as she was heading back to the moon.
“Is it true what they’re saying? Was your father once a space cowboy?” he asked.
The woman reached into an interior pocket of her bulky jacket and removed a small silver case, the size of a prescription pill bottle. She opened the case and poured a pile of glittering white crystals into her hand.
“In the extraordinary pressure of Neptune’s atmosphere, methane crystallizes. It rains diamonds all over the planet. Physicists predicted it. My father proved it.”
“He was living on leftovers in my alley, and he had diamonds in his pocket?”
“His ship wasn’t built for a flight that close to Neptune. None were back then. He killed his entire crew getting these. Then he left my mother and me soon after he got back to Earth. Swore that one of the diamonds had flown through the ship’s hull and lodged in his skull. I think that was just the brain tumor talking.”
“May I hold one of the stones?” asked Nagesh.
The woman handed him the largest of the diamonds. It was the size of Nagesh’s thumbnail. He held it up and looked at the clear winter stars through it. The crystal was an exquisite object.
As he handed the stone back, Nagesh said, “I wanted to go to space when I was a boy.”
The astronaut’s daughter poured the diamonds into their case and put it back in her pocket. “Space is like anywhere else,” she said. “It’s full of assholes.”
The two of them shook hands briefly and went their separate ways. It was very cold out, and a light snow was starting.
Master of the Crossroads
I went down to the crossroads to sell my soul to the devil. I was shocked to find my high school sweetheart there trying to do the same thing.
“Belinda?” I called. “Belinda Porter?”
She was catty-corner from me and looked around when she heard her name, which was kind of ridiculous as we were completely alone on a deserted country two-lane in northern California.
“Johnny Frankenheimer, is that you? Hi!,” she called brightly across the road. “Long time no see. What are you doing way out here in the middle of the night?”
I set down my bag and held up some of the cigars, candy, chicken and rum I was carrying. Not offerings to Satan, technically, but to the voudoun deity, Papa Legba.
When she saw what I had, Belinda grinned and held up an expensive bottle of 15-year old Demerara rum. We both laughed, seeing that we’d both chosen to invoke the powers of darkness at exactly the same time. She motioned me over.
“How long has it been?” Belinda asked. “Fifteen years?”
“More like seventeen,” I said. “But who’s counting?”
“What a funny place to run into each other. Have you been planning on selling your soul for long?”
“No, not really,” I said. “It was kind of spontaneous.”
“Me, too. That’s so funny.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“So, what have you been up to all these years?”
“I got married. Hooked up with some friends from college and rode the Internet bubble til it burst. Then, to settle some debts to some very questionable characters, I dealt guns for them to even more questionable characters. Turns out the whole thing was some kind of sting government operation. They seized my passport and froze all my bank accounts. My wife ran off with one of the loan sharks who got me into this mess in the first place. Oh, and I think the Mossad has a contract out on me. How about you?”
“Wow. Rough,” said Belinda. “What have I been up to? Remember how I always used to say I’d never end up like my mother? Well, turns out we both have the same bad habit of marrying alcoholic pedophiles. Who would have thought that’s something a parent could teach you with the potty training?”
