Snake Oil - Waiting For The Galactic Bus - Snake Oil - Waiting for the Galactic Bus Part 44
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Snake Oil - Waiting for the Galactic Bus Part 44

"Not for anything. It exists."

Roy glared from one to the other. "I wanta go home. You said I could go home."

"You can." Barion nodded. "But there's a catch."

"Neat but nasty." Coyul struck an ominous minor chord.

"You'll remember everything, Roy. You'll see everything you were or wanted for its pointlessness, understand every motive for its cowardice and frailty. You'll know."

"Everything I just seen?" Roy faltered. "I gotta live with that?"

"You got it: everything. You won't know a day, an hour, a minute without that burden. You're not any more intelligent than you were, just more informed and defenseless against honesty. You'll spin out your life in an ordinary job with an ordinary wife dim enough to think you a blessing, until your kidneys or your heart fail or your cells begin to ad-lib with cirrhosis or cancer. You'll always know the meaning of what you've seen but never be able to express or accept it."

"It's - " Roy broke off, wincing as something happened in his head, like parts of his brain stretching to touch others. "It's insane."

"Oh, not as bad as all that." Coyul polished off " "Swonderful" with a flourish and bounced up, shooting his cuffs meticulously. "There's the good side. Allow me, Barion?"

"Please do. I wouldn't want our hero to think us inhumane."

"You can always come back Below Stairs - permanently this time - with no unpleasant memories at all," the Prince of Darkness offered. "No strings, even a Drumm to support you, armies of illusions to hail you, inexhaustible minorities to massacre, mountains of architecture to express your magnificence. Even Florence Bird to defile you cheerfully on demand, since you seem to need that. They won't be real but you won't know that - except now and then, perhaps, in dreams you'll never quite remember."

"Or quite forget," Barion finished reminiscently. "You're the underside of my errors. Char Stovall is what I meant by human."

"Which reminds me. Will you excuse me?" Coyul appealed to his brother. "I've grown very fond of the lass. Like to take her home myself."

"By all means, but don't dawdle. There's Sorlij and Maj."

"Dear Sorlij. Lovely Maj." Coyul's smile was small and cryptic. "We'll have to deal with them, won't we? Auf Wiedersehen, Mr. Stride." Coyul glowed, sparkled and was gone. Barion turned back to business, unpleasant as it was. "Well, Roy?"

"It ain't fair."

"No, it ain't. But that's the deal."

Still numbed by the horror of the indifferent universe, Roy felt himself lifted out of the chair and set on his feet before the huge man who was close as he'd ever get to God. Why you gotta be so big? Why do you always get to look down on me? Son of a bitch, you done that all my life.

"Size is irrelevant," Barion noted casually, shrinking and modifying to a new appearance - shorter than Roy, dark as Moonlight Jones. "You dig it better this way, white boy?"

The rage dimmed Roy's mind, blotting out even the fear. Even though he knew why the red sickness boiled up in him and that the black man was only a cartoon of his own fear, his fists balled around the hate. Roy sprang at the figure.

"You black mother -

34 - The catsup factor

- over and over again, Leon screaming about judgment and efficiency, Roy grabbing for fat Florence. Woody pushed her down behind a table and landed between her and the bomb just as it went off. God, the blast hit Woody all over and leaked through like a sieve Woody, Woody, don't die for real. And then, with his mouth close to hers, he simply kissed it to shut her up.

"Who's dead? It's catsup."

"Catsup." Her ears still rang from the explosion, too numbed to be sure she heard him right.

"And fake blood. It's all bullshit, Char. Just a little messy."

"Catsup . . ."

Charity sighed, close to waking. If Roy was the biggest asshole ever born, Woody was the biggest clown, with a nice kind of crazy in him. If she saw all this on the Late Show -

"Wouldn't believe it . . ." Charity's head lolled the other way on the seat, jolted by movement. She opened her eyes. Dark outside, shadows and fog blurring past the cab windows. She recognized the back of Jake's head, cap perched at a familiar angle. "Jake?"

Someone was holding her hand. "Well, Char?"

She blinked hard, rubbed the last sleep-fuzz from her eyes. "Simmy?"

"Even he. How goes it?"

"Don't know." Her stomach felt definitely odd. Misty limbo streamed by the car windows at great speed. "Where are we?"

"Almost to Plattsville," Jake tossed over his shoulder.

She tried to grasp the fact but failed, though one question formed itself loud and clear. "Simnel, where's Woody? What happened to him?"

"Waiting for you in McDonald's. I suppose I should clarify," Simnel offered in his kindly /careful manner. "The good news is, you're not dead."

"Not . . ." No, that couldn't be. "But I saw. I saw in the motel - "

Simnel looked slightly embarrassed. "Shameless special effects."

"I had a heart attack - "

"Real as the blood on your dress."

Dear old Simmy - laying a bolt of lightning on her in the same meticulous way he served champagne and strawberries. Charity was a very practical girl; she reacted in character. "That's why my stomach feels weird: I'm hungry." The backlash was swift and predictable. "Simmy, what the hell is going on?"

From the driver's seat, Jake reproved gently: "That's no way to speak to the Prince."

That took a moment to sink in before Charity rejected it. No way. She remembered the horned nightmare who got her number at the White Rose. "You are the - "

"Prince will do," Simnel/Coyul suggested. "We keep it nondenominational. "As for Simnel: from Lambert Simnel, another pretender. I wanted to look after you personally; you were very important to me."

"Thank you," said Charity, a little abashed. "You were a nice butler."

"We try to make it fun." Coyul nodded to the compliment. "Now and again things turn serious. Roy was serious. That's the bad news. He's not dead, either."

Charity struggled to comprehend, battling the last tatters of deep-rooted superstition. "But the - " She made vague pantomimic allusion to claws, horns and the unspeakable Damocles. They were exactly what she would have expected to see dying in sin. But that seemed a very long time ago. She could far more readily believe in plump little Simmy in his pinstripe suit, even liked the muted paisley tie.

"The night we abducted you," Coyul explained, "you were about to make a ruinous pact with your own scruples and marry Roy."

"No, I wouldn't" she denied vehemently. "I don't even hate him anymore. I don't feel anything for Roy but sad."

"You would have married him," Coyul was gently certain. "This is Plattsville."