The Apex Book of World SF 2 (26 page)

Saviour froze,
stunned. He had expected to see something unbelievable here, but this
impossible world was anti-believable, and it had a hypnotising music of its
own, at that, a shrieking sort of music that can sound inside a happy lunatic's
mind; it jammed the low, quiet voice of conscience Saviour had always listened
to. This world looked him over with button eyes, grinned, let him in.

"I don't believe in
it," Saviour whispered.

"What about getting
paid?" the world asked.

"Oh. It would be
nice."

"Got dyspepsia?" the
lady asked, and Saviour started.

"No, I was just
thinking."

"Yeah, thinking
gives me gas, too," the lady said in a brain-shrinking voice.

"Hi," the boss said,
"Saviour? The one? Welcome."

He held out his hand
with five nails, and the Saviour shook it, feeling prone to cringe.

"Well, well, I know,"
the boss said. "Heard much about you, you're that tough guy who cast out all
them that sold and bought in the temple, and even overthrew the tables of the
moneychangers. It's my house! Ye have made it a den of thieves! Piss off
everybody! I can appreciate such things. But, you know,
tempora mutantur, nos
et mutamur in illis
. I mean, times change. Just in case, if you forgot Latin.
Today wine maketh us merry: and money answereth all things. By the way, want to
drink? No? Pity. I know everything about you because my people never lie,
though I don't believe them of course. So want to hear it from you. From the
horse's mouth, ha-ha. Don't be modest. Position yourself. Can fly? Or walk on
water?"

The boss took from
the table a forty-three-barrelled cigarette lighter.

"Yes," Saviour said.

"Cool. Will you fly
if I throw you out of the window, right now?"

The boss brushed
Saviour's cheek with his fingers, quick and spidery, incompatible with his
plump face.

"No, I'd be killed.
The ability to fly, uh…comes to me from time to time. I can try, though.
Maybe, if not very high…"

He flew up and
hovered, for a minute, above the table. The lady was busy putting a layer of
absolutely transparent powder on her nose. The coal-sweep had already lost the
game and given out all the curtseys. Being sick and tired of everything, he
pressed his stained face to the wall and charcoaled a self-portrait there.
Saviour was hovering. His face wore the dreamy look necessary for flights.

"That wasn't bad,"
the boss said. "Be my friend. Meet this girl. She's Denise. A female variant of
Denis. And don't meet the others. They are morons."

The lady with the
key slowly winked; she was aristocratic, like an oyster in spinach. Then she
unscrewed a stiletto heel and picked her teeth with it.

They spoke of this
and that, then the conversation turned to food and stopped at this
comprehensive point. The buffoon got tired of selling the lewd doves and, being
hungry, sucked at his saliva ejector. The nonentities kept doing nothing. Their
gazes moved up and down Denise's legs, polishing them to a mirrored lustre. The
words stirred in Saviour's mouth, losing taste like a wad of chewing gum.

"They say you can
live on spirit," said the boss in the voice of a business executive opening a
staff conference. "I hope that's true."

Saviour was about to
say something non-commercial but changed his mind and answered artlessly. "Sometimes.
But I eat, as a rule. Something low-Calorie. Austere repast, you know."

"Cook yourself?"

"Yes."

"By a fiat of will?"

"No. Prefer a
microwave."

The boss raised his
brow as if surprised at such an extravagance. "Now, you listen to me, bud," he
said. "I want, here and now, by a fiat of will. Make me something really
delicious and special to eat."

"I can cook cobra's
flesh for you. Is it okay?"

"Go on, man, go on."

Saviour took a porno
magazine decorating the table and flipped through. One of the women fitted
perfectly: snake-eyed and resembling a piece of meat. He decided to make the
dish from this picture. Tore it out, crumpled, and placed on the plate.
Intertwined his fingers over it.

The boss went out of
the room, not wanting to wait for at least fifteen minutes. The buffoon was
licking the paints off the pictures and shoving them into the proper tubes; the
dog watched him with a melancholic rapacity in its heart. Denise played with a
gold watch chain and moved her wonderful eyelashes rhythmically, so long and
dense that they could shovel humus.

"What else can you
do?" she asked and made the moment flinch.

"Everything,"
Saviour said.

"The most difficult,
I mean."

"With a single word
I can make a man happy."

"It's easy," Denise
said, "I can do it, too. Hey, guard, I order you to be happy."

The guard woke up
and burst out laughing, junked up with official delight. He was prompt to carry
out the orders to sob, to fall in love, to go mad and senile, to get prodigious
acne and, at last, to go to sleep again. The nonentities echoed, though not at
all concerned. Saviour was talking, keeping his mind intent. He developed some
arguments for Denise. She was listening to him with unflagging indifference. He
was so carried away that he didn't even notice the sudden appearance of a black
car smelling of expensive lubricant.

The guys in the car
started shooting, and a bullet ploughed through Saviour's spinal column. He
stooped a little more, trying to remain concentrated, but the smell of the
smouldering varnish distracted him. The bullet, which had popped out of his
chest, was spinning on the table before his eyes, a puffing lead corpuscle
scorching the polish. Denise fired back with an enviable sang-froid and picked
off two of the attackers: one of them died in the driver's seat; the other got
a bullet in his lung. This one fell out of the car and immersed into the green
shag of the carpet. The carpet liana crawled up to him planning to suck out all
his fluids except the toxins. Two non-entities were killed immediately; the
third tried to flee away but died of fright on the way. The moment wheezed and
wriggled on the floor. Time kept going, but away from the penal acts. Time was
accustomed to such scenes, it knew what to do.

Security guards came
in time, splitting their sides with belated laughter, and Denise shut them up.
She leant over the dying man and eyed with curiosity the incarnadine foam on
his lips. She looked like a preteen school-girl with innocent buds of breasts
under a T-shirt who, for the first time, had pressed her orbital bone against
the ocular of a microscope. Her face shone like a fluorescent lamp.

"Well, now," she
said in a voice of a virgin waiting for her first kiss, "we met at last, didn't
we? Oh, you want to die so much, no, no, don't cheat me, you're not dying yet,
want a drop of water, huh? Nuts to you…Gimme a rag."

A guard gave one.

She moistened the
rag in the aquarium where sharky-fish, shaggy with algae, finned
optimistically, and moved it over the lips of the dying man. A drop dropped.
The man moved, moaned, and she lifted her hand.

"Nope, no way, no
water today," she said in a voice of a yeanling jumping around a barn.

The boss appeared at
last, sat down at the table, and started peeling a sea tomato.

"What about my meat
here?" he asked, then noticed the blood and scowled at that unhygienic
nuisance. The blood washed itself off.

"Almost done,"
Saviour said. "Why is she torturing him? Let him die."

"I'd like to, dude,
but no. It's personal. He is the Denis. I mean, Denise is a female name made from
him. They rubbed shoulders, then, you know how it goes, rubbed not only
shoulders; now they're like a dog and a cat. I don't meddle with their lives.
If the torture bothers you, make him die."

"I can't make
anybody die."

"I can," the boss
said in a voice of inborn certainty. "Hey, you there, die!"

Three guards died
and the long dog turned his heels up. The fourth guard jumped out of the window
trying to escape his master's anger. The buffoon got stricken by paralysis. The
remote coal-sweep escaped with severe fright. In faraway Bonzibar, an epidemic
of crayfish distemper broke out. The carpet liana painted itself on the carpet,
simulating a black and white imprint. Sharky-fish, being deaf, didn't care a
cuss.

"It wasn't for you,
idiots," the boss said. "I was talking to Denis. Denis, die!"

And Denis died.

 

The
boss touched Saviour's jacket and shirt. The holes were real. The flesh had
already healed the wound.

 

"Nice," the boss
said. "Very nice. The rumours were true. Those guys in the car worked for a rival
firm; they wanted to blip you off. They thought I could use you. But you are so
difficult to kill, aren't you? Denise is also a cool wench, good for her."

"But if they'd
killed me?"

"Then what's the use
for me to buy you?" the boss said. "Well done, see? Have killed three birds
with one shot. Checked you up, wiped their dirty nose, and Denise gave vent to
her feelings. But you're a sly guy; they knew you're worth shooting at."

Saying this, the
boss looked so piercingly that he cracked in the meantime the Bermuda Triangle
mystery, and eight other mysteries not as big as that one.

"Well. How much am I
supposed to pay for you?" he went on.

"Seven hundred
curtseys a week… Pre-tax." Saviour breathed out.

"Pre-tax, well,
maybe," said the boss. "But first thing's first. Where's my dinner? Cobra's
flesh."

Saviour raised his
palms. The dish looked well-roasted and smelt delicious. The boss waved to one
of nonentities who waddled nearby.

"You try it first."

The nobody tasted
the dish. "Ummm," he purred so melodically as if he had practiced over-night at
a karaoke hall. His flesh got pimpled with goose bumps. He smiled with delight,
opening his mouth like a dead lizard.

"Enough." The boss
tried a bit, and chewed it with concentration. "Well, it doesn't taste like glue."

He paused, busy with
chewing and swallowing. His fork stirred the convolutions of noodles.

"My people can cook
better," the boss said slowly, with moments of leaden silence inserted between
the words. "You've put too much salt in it. Why?"

"For the lack of
concentration, maybe. The noise, the shooting, I was wounded…"

"Give him seven
hundred curtseys," said the boss in a voice of an electric meat grinder revving
up, "and get rid of him right away. Drop him somewhere outside. You think, boy,
you are the only one so omnipotent at my disposal? I receive eight guys like
you a day. The very archbishopissimus is at my command! Lack of concentration,
did you hear that? Well, I think it's the next saviour at the door. Just in
time. Let him in."

The door opened and
bent low.

The second saviour
entered and presented Denise with a bunch of red folios.

"I have a talent, a
wonderful thing!" the second one sang out cheerfully, positioning himself in
the proper way.

"Don't take it too
personally," Denise said to the first saviour, "you were a wonderful freak. But
we are highly competitive, you know."

The bodies had
already vanished; the cobra's flesh was eaten. The boss wiped his glossy lips.

"Saviour? The one?
You're welcome."

 

But, outside, the
last guard was still falling. In the very beginning, he had a hope of saving
his life because he was an all-round diving-into-shallow-reservoirs champion
who specialised in puddles. The rain had only just stopped and there were lots
of puddles in the streets. He flew, poising himself with his long hair. But
halfway down a cooling breeze gently kissed him, saying goodbye, turbulenting
the hair just enough to sweep him to the concrete wall. In a few seconds, the
guard hit the wall and turned into a wet blotch.

 

"
Sic transit gloria
mundi
," he mumbled instructively at the end. Thus passed the glory of the
world. But no, the glory did not pass with him: the sunset, dense and heavy
like a red-hot stone block, glared over the town. The town floundered in this
light like a blowfly in sunflower oil. Only this light was real; the
dishevelled policemen scared of anything real, fired into the sky with their
authorised slingshots. They closed their left eyes at that, or both, for
additional bravery.

Saviour saw all that
as he walked downstairs. At first he thought to save the falling guard but then
changed his mind; right now he didn't feel like saving anybody.
There's
something wrong with this world,
he thought,
or is it just me?
Millions
of people live in this flat universe as oblivious as moth-eaten scarves to what
is going on. No, I'm being too picky. Where has the glory of the world gone? Or
am I just an interesting freak?

He went out into the
street, looked up at the blackening sky, and saw the last drops of rain, which
caught the light of streetlamps; they were falling slowly like confetti. Then,
on buying a cheap advertiser for half a curtsey, he started perusing the
columns. But in vain: saviours were required for unqualified and poorly-paid
work. To gnash their teeth off-screen in dental prosthesis commercials for
example.

 

The New Neighbours
Tim Jones
 
New Zealander Tim Jones is the
author of one novel,
Anarya's Secret: An Earthdawn Novel
, two short
story collections,
Extreme Weather Events
and
Transported
, and
two collections of poetry. He also co-edited (with Mark Pirie) the anthology
Voyagers:
Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand.

 

High property values are the
hallmark of a civilised society. Though our generation may never build
cathedrals nor find a cure for cancer, may never save the whales nor end world
hunger, we can die with smiles on our faces if we have left our house a better
place than we found it, if we have added a deck, remodelled the kitchen and
created indoor-outdoor flow.