The Altonevers (14 page)

“
Right,” Cider
agrees.

“
Thanks,” she says
squeamishly. The city, a kaleidoscope of time rapidly passing by
the window of the speeding car. She fixates on the road ahead as
Cider fumbles around, soaking himself trying to add ice to his
drink. The Prime Minister silently sips his cigar and scotch
between each hand interchangeably, probably thinking of his
upcoming court date, Anna supposes she would be worried to near
death of it.

“
Down twenty decades and
across seventeen, to the east,” Edward demands of the driver before
asking, “thorn apple anyone? no taker's, suit yourselves,” before
either of the two can answer, then takes a swig from a clear flask
from his breast pocket.

A few intersections and a roundabouts
later they abruptly stop, tumbling the two toward the front and
swinging the limo doors open. The two then follow Edward diving out
his seat and up the courthouse stone slab stairs in one motion.
Wading through a swarm of journalists and photographers who're
tripping over each other’s words and feet to greet the Prime
Minister in his political pageantry. The courthouse is jam packed
with white clothed dining tables and the candle lit faces of
diner's eating luxurious dinners. Tapping their glasses with their
forks as Edward enters to jubilant uproar and polite applause. His
smile is sincerely spread across his overjoyed jowls, to be among
his own kind, under a large polished silver chandelier hanging like
a guillotine over the courtroom of criminals head’s.

“
We'll sit here by the left
podium, I'm next.”

“
Got good reservations?”
Cider laughs.

“
That's right. though my
turn has elapsed several times. I’m next, whenever I may appear,”
Edward says assuredly as a waitress brings them a tray of wines and
cheeses. The atmosphere is more of a dinner party then a day of
judgment. They have seats right behind the Prime Minister, sitting
at the left podium facing a wall decorated with demigods
demonstrating insurmountable power to those who stand before
it.

A vulture faced judge presides over
the court, who’s been sitting in this seat for so long his spine’s
bent to slouch in a way that permanently pins him by his shoulders
to his desk. His powdered wig and funeral home made up face grins
grimly down his long bent nose. His needling pupils peer out from
behind gold rimmed glasses at a man standing in a white suit
sweating as his lawyer elaborately explains his innocence, with
evidence and eyewitnesses. There is no jury box, and the witness
stand is grown over with the same mold as on the outer walls of the
station.

“
I have heard the case,”
the judge squawks, quelling the room to murmurs.

“
By the evidence placed
before me I have made my decision. You sir are…”

“
My client is..”

“
Innocent!” the judge
declares, then cuts the air with a chop of his gavel to a room
silencing gasp.

“
Innocent!?” the man shouts
in hysterics “No, no I'm not innocent, I, I can't be, I have kids,
a boy and girl and a wife.”

“
You should have thought of
that before this time of your life. Out with him,” his honorable
vulture face cuts the gavel and again clears the room of sound,
followed by an uproar at the verdict. The jackals eating jeer and
hurl food and wine at the man in white while he's being led away in
shackles.

“
If he's innocent why are
they leading him away,” she asks, interrupting Edwards boisterous
shouting of condemnation.

“
Don't you know anything
dear girl, this is justice.”

“
And what will happen to
him, I didn't hear a sentence.”

“
There needn't be, you see
the sentence for innocence, is death my dear.”

“
Next case.” the gavel
concurs the case.

“
That's me, I suppose,”
Edward says.

“
Good luck,” Cider says
laughing. The room rises to their feet in silence as an unabashed
Edward makes his way to the defendant’s podium. The honorable
vulture face judge then says, “The honorable sir Prime Minister
Edward Watertop,” smiling to a grinning Edward.

“
A lovely day is it?”
Edward says smirking.

“
For the multiple crimes of
kidnapping, extortion, bribery, blackmail, fraud, arson, operating
innumerable gambling dens, countless dens of thieves, brothels,
drug trafficking, larson, conspiracy to commit murder, murder,
public lewdness, misappropriation of public funds, endangering the
sweeps by use of supplying them with high powered military grade
armaments stolen from the barracks by the Prime Minister himself” A
mix jeers and lung heaving cheers rises after each crime
mentioned.

“
Those sweeps are good kids
I say,” Edward says to a clamor of laughter.

“
I continue,” the judge
continues “Snatching the crown off the Queen's head and playing
keep away with other members of the house. Knocking over three
jewelry stores and then further looting during a riot, that was
itself caused by civil unrest that some argue is due to your
rhetoric, that you yourself have fermented it for your own
political gain. Political corruption, espionage, and corruption of
hearts and minds of the masses.”
The judge
continues reading off a long unrolling scroll, making notes with a
quill pen until he finally comes to “Jaywalking and forty three
million worth of past due parking fines. What say you
Minister?”

“
Absolutely, without
equivocation, immeasurably, undoubtedly, without a shadow of one
actually. Duly and truly, I may add there is of course much more
that remains unsaid,” Edward boasts, punctuating his words and
gesturing grandly as though giving a speech at a rally, before
gleefully grinning and “Guilty,” spills from his drooling lips. The
vulture faced judge regretfully, with a single tear dripping from
his eye chops his gavel to the delight of the room.

“
I must,” he sniffles,
“regretfully accept your plea of guilty on all charges mentioned.
Well done Minister, you continue to be a beacon of justice and
moral virtue to your district and to the people of this Alto. May
you continue on your endeavors unimpeded.”

“
Thank you your honorable
sir vulture face. May your polished baldness reflect the
enlightened light cast upon you, upon us. A Round of rib eye for
the house, on me,” he says waving his hat to a standing applause.
The last slam of the judge’s gavel spills the octopus inkwell of
the peckish stenographer next to him, splashing black over the
counter and across the floor.

“
We'll be going now,”
Edward whispers to the two.

Anna baffled at the
reaction to the verdict, trails behind Cider and Edward out of the
courthouse. While the minister shakes hands, kisses baby's and hugs
political allies. Hamming it up for the flashing cameras and
answering questions for the press with long winded words. It takes
twenty minutes to descend the stairs to the car. The Prime Minister
drunk with power and on thorn apple blathers on about how the
future is hinged on whether or not the whole duck population be
placed in the ponds next to the poppy fields.
The limo doors clap shut, Edward is deflating like a
blowfish, losing a hundred pounds as he exhales, fanning air to his
fat hot face as she sits quizzically thinking of the
verdict.

“
At times it could be hard
to keep up the ol' public image, at times. I'm actually a
sweetheart ya know, soft to the touch.”

“
Filled with jelly I bet,”
Cider says.

“
So you didn't actually do
all those things?”

“
Oh yes, of course I have,”
Edward says dabbing sweat from his forehead and hanging
chin.

“
Then how? if you are
guilty and that man was innocent.”

“
Guilty of what? my dear
sweet Anna, innocent of what? of good intentions?”

“
All those crimes, that was
almost an hour of just naming them.”

“
Of which I am inexcusably
guilty,” the minister says smoothly “and gluttonously indulgent in
doing so. Caught red handed with the other hand in the cookie jar.
Why? would you rather be innocent with bad intentions?” The
minister asks the pondering Anna.

“
One can be guilty of good
intentions,” Edward adds wagging his finger at her as the limousine
cruises away with a police escort.

“
Right then, back on to
what we were doing?” asks Cider sipping his smoke.

“
I don’t mean to be
impolite in asking, but why would people want such a savage
criminal as their prime minister?” she asks.

“
Oh so naive. Innocent
people can't lead. They're far too, well, innocent you see, to make
the decisions demanded when the wielding of that sort of
power.”

“
I don't know if entirely
agree with that,” she says.

“
Whoever said you’re
supposed to agree with anything my dear. Opinions don’t matter much
to me, only what actually happens seems to have any point,” Edward
says, and Anna sits pondering his verdict vainly, but for making
vague her idea of virtue to herself.

The Soots

Stopped at a stoplight sitting in the
comfort of the spacious white leather interior of the minister’s
big black limousine. With silk drapes shaking as the windows and
seats tremor to the murmurs of far off instruments being played by
a four man band on a rooftop. Whose melodic sounds are as faintly
visible as they are heard, appearing as asymmetric semispherical
sound waves emanating from the their source. Growing as overlapping
spectral growth rings that are colored according to the chord
struck and the note played. Each reverberating far outward and
filling the air and streets, and rattling through the black whale
of a Saoutchik limousine as though it were its sub woofer as they
near.

Driving forward is to delve deeper
into an orchestral strum of guitars over a slow low bass backed by
ambidextrous drumming humming sweetly to their eyes. With each
consecutive pluck of their strings and tap of the skins, the band
is propagating their souls as sound in concurrent waves of
transparent color. Spilling from the rooftop to street level and
rolling through the city as ghostly glowing bubbles spreading for
miles in every direction. Transparently glazing every surface of
the city and the people and their clothes as they flow past. The
paint of all the walls shift with the strumming of bands nimbly
struck chords. Anna watches through the window, entranced by the
hue's bouncing off buildings and interacting with each other in the
open air.

The whole city is shaking and rattling
as the sound waves spread for miles in every. Dominating the
ambient with prismatic radiant amplifying resonance that begins
rippling into wave interference everywhere she looks. Illustrating
the heart melting melodies of the sixties pop music serenading her
ears, eyes and bones with good vibrations. The closer they come to
the band, the more the earth quakes, thunderously thumping through
their cushioned seats and rhythm swept swaying spines. A single
song mixes with the rhythms of another so frequently they become
another frequency all together. Then blending with another, and the
notes melding seems to be never ending as new tunes and tones
emerge and amplify with each passing second. Inside the limo is
filled with the smoke of Edward’s cigar. The smoke is acting as a
slowing medium, illustrating clearly the interacting notes and
merging melodies. The same is happening throughout the city and its
every surface, incessantly canceling and complimenting each other
while pullulating intensely. Rising in opacity as the waves
continually colliding, creating vaguely cylindrical vibrating nerve
like shapes infinitely intermingling, and destroying each other
while constructing powerfully pulsating flashes of eye staining
sound. The three sit mesmerized, as though snakes charmed by a
swami’s flute, unable to think of anything but the blinding chords
of the heart string hypnotizing sixties pop quartet permeating
through their perceptions. Blankly staring while bobbing their
heads to the bass and knowing of nothing but sounds of love to
their eyes and ears as they do so in bliss.

The car keeps moving until the ambient
blue disappears entirely to the sight of mixing melodies. Coal
black clouds start crowding closer together as they near the Soots.
Lightly dusting the windows and ground with soot falling like snow.
At first the soot moves to the soul resonating melodies of the
music, like dust dancing in the wind. Riding the layers of bubbling
growth rings of the band’s strumming hands, and taking on the
spectrum of glowing spectral colors. A few blocks later muting the
tones and smothering the songs until they are tattering whispers.
She watches sadly as the sight of sound vanishes in the rear view
mirror, snuffed out by the now densely falling soot, already
wanting to feel the sound of the music again and again.

Nearing their drop off in the slums of
the sweeps dwelling, the Soots, Edward breaks a long silence with
his slow, attention drawing sinister sort of speaking.

“
I'm letting you out here.
Watch your wallets and watches out there. Those Sweeps are crafty
ones. Remember not to forget it.”