My universe is less stable than Don Juan's, sometimes I am an impeccable warrior and at other times I act like a timid suburbanite in a New Yorker cartoon. The present emergency finds me in warrior valence, so I swoop down on an invisible slide, get the gun away from her and carry her off kicking and screaming to a nearby hillside where I turn her into a rabbit and blast her with the shotgun and take the remains back and give it to the pension cook to fix for dinner.
At dinner there is this mealy-assed Bible fart with his hunched-over fat lump of a son, looks like he is sculpted out of rancid lard, and he is moaning, "Lord, Lord, where is my helpmeet?" And he glares at me, not suspicious, just the way he would look at anybody drinking a glass of beer all nasty and intemperate. I'd forgotten he is a vegetarian and I won't have the pleasure of watching him eat his other half. Any case, there is no time to lose. We must get to the Comisaría before he reports his wife missing and before Sister Willoughby starts talking in tongues.
"Sorry to bother you with neighborhood business, but that old Willoughby woman is going crazy and screaming at American schoolteachers with good American Express credit cards that they are Whores of Babylon, and the Riverfront Pension is losing its trade because the Reverend Norton preaches temperance sermons in the bar . . . they are bothering tourists."
The Captain looks up gravely, his face clouding over.
"But what brings us here is the fact that his wife has been missing for some time now. We strongly suspect. . . everything points to . . . witnesses heard a shot . . ."
"His gun is registered, of course." (Your Moroccan police do think of everything.)
"Captain, he has probably eaten the remains. It is only one of their vile customs. And the Willoughby woman . . . highly dangerous. Why, she might well physically attack a tourist on his way to the bank. Moroccans are enlightened and civilized people. Benemakada is famous even in America for promptness in dealing with the mentally ill before they commit some atrocious act."
(The sooner they get some heavy sedation into Sister Willoughby the better, I figure.)
So we all pile into a police car and whisk the Willoughby woman to Benemakada . . . right this way for the pearly gates. A young English intern comes out, peeling off his white coat.
"Just pumped enough Thorazine into her to sedate a rabid horse. Before she went under, she was screaming some rot about you swooped out of the sky like a Satanous vulture, carried off her sister and turned her into a rabbit." He cocked a quizzical eyebrow at me. "Did you actually, old boy? Good job and all. Aha, I think she needs another jolt. She just took the Lord's name in vain."
Now for the Reverend Norton.
"But my wife is only missing since this afternoon. I went back and she wasn't in the house, nor could I find Sister Willoughby, who was to have shared our evening prayers."
"Your neighbors tell a different story. They say Mrs. Norton has been missing for almost a fortnight." The Captain pulls out a paper. "Mr. Norton, I have here the certificate of registration for a shotgun. Where is this weapon?"
"Well, now, I don't rightly know. Usually I keep it over in that corner by the door. Maybe it was stolen by the Arabics."
A policeman stands there with the gun. "I found this buried under the house, Captain."
"Mr. Norton, it is my duty to arrest you on suspicion of murder. We are a civilized people. There is no capital punishment here. You may even get off with twenty years, pleading a crime of passion." He nudges the Reverend with a horrible leer. "She was fucking some Arab. You go crazy. Before you know what's happened, you've killed her. Must have been Satan took over your hands when you did it. Confess, man, and ease your soul."
"Killed my sainted Mary? You must be mad, or in the pay of the Communists!"
"Such talk will do you no good." He gestures to another policeman, who stands there with a skeleton in his arms. "How will you explain that?"
"It is a custom of our sect."
I look significantly at the Captain, who nods grimly.
"Like some folks just keep the ash ... we have the whole skeleton preserved, since it sayeth in the Good Book: 'Cleave ye to the bones.' Cost me a lump of money too, all dried out and sanitary. Now that there is Aunt Clara."
"That is the skeleton of your wife, Mr. Norton. You not only killed her, you ate her."
Well, the others was rounded up and summarily deported in the hold of a cattle boat, and that took care of that nest of vipers.
Few pilgrims reach the town of Last Chance. Sloth, self-indulgence, alcohol, addictions, old age, stupidity, all are obstacles. But lack of a special courage is the only insuperable barrier—the courage to confront your opponent, your final enemy. If you lack this courage, you will never reach Last Chance. Any pilgrim who has in life solved problems with violence must go through Last Chance or back to square one. No one leaves Last Chance without mortal combat. To be tested in this combat is to risk the second and final death. In Last Chance you play for keeps.
Some heavies ride in with atomic bullets, will take out the target and immediate environs like a saloon or half a hotel. These "A-boys" get a wide berth. This is an Old West section, false fronts, smell of tumbleweed in the wind, saloons, hotels, Chinese laundries and opium drops, cathouses and gambling joints. For pilgrims who prefer to shoot it out, the shooting kind . . .
"Come out from behind that A-shit and shoot it out like a man. What kind of a Honey Badger are you, endangering whores and schoolteachers and cute freckle-faced kids?"
"I'ma sorry. You're simply not ME."
And there is the Rule of the Duel can be adapted to eliminate knowed varmints no good from the day they was borned till the day they die and let it be today.
During the five Duel Days, corresponding to the Mayan week of Ouayeb, any challenge must be accepted. Sensible citizens cower in gun towers or cyclone cellars armed to the tits, but lunatics walk around screaming, "I know you're in there, you candy-assed richies. . . . Come out and fight!"
A distant crack from a gun tower. A 45-70 catches him square in his big mouth and takes out the back of his neck in a spray of blood and vertebrae.
And there are Open Seasons that spring up like tornados, and they are out in the street slapping every passerby. Duelists with their seconds and their surgeons strut through the streets, elbow into bars.
"Did you say something?"
"No, not me."
"Oh, I thought you said something. . . ."
"Warning to all residents of Douglas County . . . Open Season approaching. Residents are urged to take cover immediately.
The Rule of the Duel is considered to be an indispensable safety valve to abort mass riots and political revolutions. The intention is to keep the wars small, and individual. . . . Man to man; creature to creature. So anyone who feels disgusted can head for the nearest Duelin' Honky-Tonk and work it off one way or another. So folks stop bottling it up inside and the heart attack rate drops and drops, and by Pasteur and Lister and Doc Halsted! the cancer rate is dropping too.
You can take your pick here. Deadly correct duels with seconds and surgeons standing by . . .
"'Zounds, sire, what a gash is here. Why, a man could drive a coach and four into your guts."
Eighteenth-century dandies: "Ah yes." He looks at the challenger as if trying to focus his image through a telescope. "As challenged, I have the right." He strokes the other's cheek and clicks his tongue.
"Such a pretty face, and I don't find saber scars at all fetching. Your rapier, now, makes only a small hole but . . . it suffices." He sniffs some snuff.
"And shall we say a civilized hour . . . around noon? It will give me an appetite for déjeuner."
As swordsmen they are equally matched. A second consults the sundial. "I'll miss lunch with the Duchess," he wails.
The surgeon is drunk already. A hurried conference. The contestants retire into changing booths and emerge with push daggers in both hands, half-moons of scalpel-sharp steel projecting from the toes of their flexible boots and a l
ittle ridge of steel up the instep for crotch kicks. They explode in a blur of fists and feet and spurting blood. One, disemboweled by a crotch kick up to the navel, spitting hate like a dying weasel, throws his push dagger. Right through ribs into the heart.
It's a draw. There will be a return engagement.
A handsome Mexican boy faces an older opponent. Blade-to-blade machetes, eighteen-inch blades sharp enough to shave the hair off your arms or chest. The chico is quick. He catches the other across the back of the hand, severing tendons and veins. The other drops his machete without any change of expression, catches it with his bare foot, kicks it up into his left hand and splits the kid's head like a coconut.
A Junker student duel has gone wrong somehow. Starts off with the tall Saxon sweeping a cut into the face of the Student Prince. The seconds nod and smile . . .
"Ach ja, ach ja . . . "
But the Prince doesn't like it. He crouches slightly and swings from the hip, and cuts the Saxon's head clean off. It rolls across the grass snarling incredulously. The seconds look on appalled.
"Unerhört! Unerhört!"
"Mein Gott, Er hat den Kopf ganz abgeschutten!"
Many of these encounters involve almost certain death for both contestants, but any duel where both duelists are sure to be killed is ruled out, not by any formal decree, but by deep biologic disgust. To take a long chance is good. To kill yourself is a revolting act, like self-castration.
Two boys stripped to the waist face each other with flails, thin strips of perforated steel dipped in stonefish venom. One cut will cause death in a few seconds of hideous agony. Their eyes blaze with total hate. They are much alike. More and more alike. One boy utters a piercing scream and leaps forward— swish, a miss.
He jumps back. They circle, eyes narrowed to slits of calculation. (The flails have handles of flexible steel or springs. The exact degree of flex is a fine point of flail fighting.)
A feint to the face, then drop to a low crouch for a sweeping leg swipe .. . just a graze, but enough. The onlookers nudge each other.
"This is tasty!"
The boy is riding the pain. The ground undulates under his feet. Whack . . . a solid hit across the arms and chest. Swack . . . He gets one back across the face and neck. Both are dead before they hit the ground, faces swollen out of human semblance.
The flail lends itself admirably to the administration of poison, since instead of one dart or arrow you have only the question of choice: which poison?
Neferti is flail shopping . . . fountain pen and swagger stick flails . . . little curved talon knives in this umbrella model. The hollow undersides can be packed with goodnesses . . . ten centipedes and a cup of crushed brown recluse . . . the gangrenous sores rot to the bone in seconds . . . built-in poison dips . . . or you can spray it on from a tasteful atomizer . . . bits of sawblade sewn into leather. Or, if you prefer something folkloric, obsidian chips with deerskin thongs marinated in black widows, datura, aconite and blue krait venom . . . two-handed flails with scalpel blades and lead weights can take off a leg . . . ten-foot bullwhips with six-inch tips of double-edged steel tapered to needle points.
Neferti picks a cane with bamboo-strip flails steeped in curare and blue-ringed octopus.
Last Chance is a town where a high premium is placed on courtesy. Since the challenged has the choice of weapons, a barroom bully doesn't know what he might be getting into . . . a dogfight with World War I biplanes, a medieval joust or a motorcycle duel with bicycle chains. A contestant with no special skills may insist on the deadly 50-50: one gun loaded, one with blanks, the choice by lot. Both contestants fire simultaneously at point-blank range. Or two pills, one milk sugar, one cyanide. Both contestants swallow and wait.
The 50-50 is the most dreaded of all duels, since the factor of skill in combat is ruled out. Quite ordinary courage can sustain a duelist in a pistol or sword encounter; 50-50 is something else.
The antagonists face each other across a table. On the table are two cups of tea and two white capsules on a silver tray. The first choice is decided by a throw of dice or other random procedure. He selects one of the tablets and washes it down with tea. The other swallows the other tablet. Then they wait . . . it's the waiting that makes the difference. How long? You can rig the capsules to dissolve in a certain length of time. Can be anywhere from sixty seconds to twelve hours.
Here is a cigarette duel. Dissolving time is the time it takes to smoke a cigarette. They light up and look at each other.
"I aim to finish smoking mine!"
The other laughs, a dry, rustling sound like a scorpion eating its mate. "You know how it hits? Like a bolt of lightning . . . throws you right out of your chair."
"Throws me?"
"Who else? I'm a blessed cat."
"Famous last words."
The survivor pissed.in his pants from the relief.
Most people back off from a 50-50. A 50-50 can empty any bar.
"You say something?"
"Not me, mister. Gotta get home to my aged mother with an opium suppository."
Whether it's skill or 50-50 depends on who gives the challenge. And what constitutes a challenge?
"Why you 50-50 stumblebum, come out from behind that cyanide tablet and act like a man."
"Can't take a straight chance can you, pistol boy?"
"Fuck you, kamikaze kook."
Then suddenly a pistol man will challenge a 50-50, or a 50-50 will challenge a pistol. He is allowed ten days training. How many good pistol shots have had the experience of taking someone to the range who never fired a gun before and the novice does better than he does?
And sooner or later a 50-50 knows his luck will run out.
The atmosphere of Last Chance is polite, deadly, purposeful. For Everyman comes here to find his enemies, and Everyman who gets this far has deadly enemies to whom he can never become reconciled and who can never be reconciled to him. You will meet your enemies in Last Chance sooner or later. Meanwhile there are hotels and restaurants for every taste and pocket-book.
If certain rules prevail, they prevail only sporadically and in certain areas. There are fair-game slums where anything goes and the whole place teems with assassins, since a lot of richies don't want to meet their enemies on fair terms. Much easier to hire someone to grease him from ambush or call him out. But these professional duelists do not last long.
Right now Kim is looking for this Deputy Sheriff known as Zed Barnes. He was a crotch shooter, so they called him the Honey Badger. According to legend the Honey Badger always goes for the crotch in a fight.
Once Kim was out pissing in the early morning sunlight. Zummmmmm . . . he felt the wind of Zed's 30-06 miss by half an inch from three hundred yards.
"I'm going to get you, Honey," Kim vowed.
He gets out his short-barreled .44 Special and his double-barreled 20-gauge shotgun pistol, gets on his strawberry roan and starts looking.
And he puts on a steel jockstrap comes to a point in front.
Honey has fled to Mexico with twelve assholes like him. Some of them had worked in the Belgian Congo, where they turned in severed black genitals and collected the bounty, and there were Putumayo rubber-boom guards and foremen. He occupies a small Mexican town in Chihuahua, extending his territory by enlisting all the creeps from the area—boys who set cats on fire . . . now there's a likely lad to work for Honey.
He prospers and plants his informers everywhere. Those suspected of treachery were tortured to death for the pleasure of Honey and his sycophants who, if they fell from favor, provided future entertainment.
Now, when Honey finds out Kim is in Last Chance shaking the tree, he can't pass up this chance to rid himself of his most dangerous enemy. Zed knows he don't have a chance on equal terms. He plans a long-range shot with his telescope-sighted 30-06.
Honey comes into town disguised as a dirty old prospector and walks over to the counter in Scranton's Saloon and General Store.
"Ham and eggs!"
&nbs
p; He eats it.
"A pint of whiskey!"
He drinks it and rolls up in his filthy sleeping bag.
Got himself hid good.
Now Kim knew Zed would come out of his queréncia and try it, because Kim was becoming an obsession with Zed. Every time anything happened, like he gets the shits, Kim must have hired the kitchen staff to poison him. He had a loyal cook boiled alive in lard. His closest associates are moving back from him.
See, he has to try it, just as the opponents of Hassan i Sabbah had to try it. The Sultan can't get it up? It's the Old Man. And the Sultan threw all his good concubines to the crocodiles.
Zed has to come. And Kim will know him when he comes by the most distinct thing about a man: his smell.
Bloodhounds can trace a man through a city, through millions of other human smells. But Kim has a Pharaoh Hound. He can sniff through the centuries. He gives the hound a sniff of Zed's dirty underwear he got from Zed's houseboy, the only one Zed thinks he can trust at this point.