The third strike was stealing the chocolate bar.

"My client is a hopeless alcoholic," said the public defender.

And by then it was true. Alcoholism: self-inflicted. But so what? Three strikes are three strikes.

"You're out," said the judge.

And he was, right out.

"No tomato sauce?" said Larry, in dismay. "Then what's that red stuff on the table?"

"Don't ask."

So he was in, for life. Productively in, picking up roadside trash in the chain gang, until the day the truck's tire blew out and the vehicle flipped, killing eight, maiming nine, and sending Larry to hospital with a bad case of concussion.

He didn't mean to escape. It was just that he needed a drink. Sure, prison had dried him out, but all those medicinal smells in the hospital brought back those old cravings. Somehow, Larry a.s.sociated all medical smells with alcohol, Something to do with childhood, and his mother, and cough drops, and Oedipus - - he could never quite figure it out.

"Don't drink that!"

But he already had.

The nurse yelled for a security guard, but that was when the disgruntled postal employee turned the corner. In the resulting confusion, Larry stole a wallet - - at any rate, he picked it up when he found it, and never had occasion to give it back - - and so was rich by the time he hit the nearest bar.

One drink, of course, led to another.

Six months later, Limbo Larry was walking along in an alcoholic haze when he tripped over something soft and soggy and fell flat-smash onto the pavement, breaking his last truth.

"Lursh aba," he muttered.

Lursh aba? What did that mean? It was too dark to see the answer. His brain was as shiny as beer bottles. There were c.o.c.kroaches inside it. He could feel the Hand of G.o.d stirring in the darkness.

Abruptly, a bright light shone on his face, illuminating the blood spilling down his chin and the dead dog he had tripped over. Larry put up a warding hand. Not again! Not the boots, I'm too old for this. Then, with a clink of keys, the security guard was moving on, and Larry's world lapsed into darkness.

"Sha," said Larry, groping for phonemes, morphemes, syllables, words.

Shame you died. Weep! For, alas, poor Fido is dead! Weh weh weh! Our Fido is dead! Who now will summon the soccer fans to the sauna to feast upon the pigeons?

"b.l.o.o.d.y Germans," said Larry.

A German was in his head - - fragments of a German, anyhow - - and no way to get the b.u.g.g.e.r out. But he could do something about the dog. The Hand of G.o.d was within him. He could feel it.

"Lazarus," said Larry, laying his hands upon the dog.

As he did so, he heard Madonna singing. It was a hallucination, and he knew it, but that blonde Hollywood voice rang out loud and clear. And the dog came shambling up to its feet, snorked, slurgled, wavered between life and death, then settled for life, and promptly attacked Limbo Larry. It was only the timely return of the security guard which prevented him from being savaged to death.

He healed his own wounds. He did a loaves-and-fishes with an empty can, drunkenly filling an entire street with rolling metal. He turned waste paper into money. He summoned up an erection. He paid for time with a prost.i.tute and, miracle of miracles, lit her up with an incandescent white o.r.g.a.s.m. Flashgunned by the light, her tropical fish darted this way and that.

The police tried to arrest him six hours later. By then, he was sitting in a park beside a beer fountain and a miraculous wedding cake as big as a house. Larry decided he didn't want to be arrested, and turned two of the police officers into pigs. Unfortunately, he was unable thereafter to reverse the change.

Hollywood. A blonde, but she wasn't Madonna. A big swimming pool, but he couldn't swim. Endless lawyers.

"I didn't mean anything," said Larry sulkily. "I don't see why I should pay them anything."

"Larry," said Chance, the chiefest of his lawyers, "they're pigs!"

"They were always pigs."

"No, Larry. There are thousands of millions of people on this planet. You've got to play ball, otherwise you're just not going to survive. Got that?"

"I am G.o.d."

"Someone nukes LA, we'll see how much of a G.o.d you are."

"They're talking of that?"

"They're afraid of you, Larry. Play ball, okay? Join the human race. Do what the court says."

So the police pigs got their thousand million each, and that's big bucks in anyone's language.

So much work, now. So many pressures. He no longer needed to beg just enough to buy a bottle of port. His needs had escalated to the point where he was going through millions daily. His legal bills were incredible. He needed serious money - - government money, military money, IMF money - - and that required precision work.

Bring rain to Australia. Abolish Ebola. Bring back the dodo. Heal the ozone layer. Cure malaria. End Aids.

"But why isn't the guy in jail?" said President Starr.

"He's appealing through the courts," said Intern Ombersley, speaking to him from the other side of the no-touch, the safety screen which these days protected presidents from their human frailties.

"But he's already been convicted!" said President Starr. "Three strikes are three strikes!"

"It's kind of a special case," said Intern Ombersley, stalling, as she had been instructed to.

It was, too. Though President Starr didn't know it, right then Limbo Larry was with the CIA, working on their new pet project: neutralise the North Korean nukes.

That last one was too much of a stretch. Where is North Korea? Even when they showed him on the map, Larry couldn't grasp it internally. Simpler if he could go there. But they said: No hope of that. He would have to do it remotely.

"I can't," he said.

"But you have to," said Chance. "You've already spent the money."

So he tried again, but it made his head hurt.

"The h.e.l.l with it," said Larry, losing patience finally.

And - - easy to do, since it needed no precision at all - - he detonated all nuclear devices on the planet. Simultaneously. Immediately, the earth shook.

"Nukes in LA?" said Larry.

"No, the nuke was just a threat," said Chance, who as yet had no idea what Larry had done. "This is just an earthquake."

Only it wasn't just an earthquake. It was the Big One, and Larry was. .h.i.t on the head by a piece of falling masonry when his mansion collapsed.

Afterwards, he realised that his miraculous powers had vanished.

Radioactive dust clouds. The sun screened out. Nuclear winter. People dying in their millions, their tens of millions, their hundreds of millions. The new ice age beginning. Larry went anonymous. A tough ten years, then he came out on top, the new shaman of one of the auto-auto tribes now fighting for control of the snowy Californian coast.

"All in all, it worked out pretty well," mused Larry.

Yeah. It had. He had kicked the alcoholism, pulled himself together, got a grip on himself, restored his self-respect. Just one last regret: now that Hollywood was gone, there was no chance of him ever seeing Madonna play the role of his girlfriend in the movie of the story of his life.

"Well - - now?" said Gibi Gibi, who happened to be Larry's designated observing demon. "Do we get to work on him now?"

"No," said Broblomov Zooz, who was Gibi Gibi's supervisor. "Just sit back and watch. I know these humans. He's only just started. Give him enough elbow room, and sooner or later he'll really screw things up properly."

[Originally published in Kimota 14, Spring 2001].

THE MURDER MYSTERY.

by Peter Tennant.

The crowd standing huddled in the rain outside the police station seemed unnaturally silent and tense, like mourners at a funeral. I could sense the undercurrent of feeling, an ugly mood that could easily erupt into violence if it were given direction. Something terrible had happened.

Several people recognised me and called out my name. I nodded to some and the crowd parted to let me through. A stern faced policeman ushered me into the building and took my coat. He directed me to the Prefect's office.

The Prefect of Police was standing in the corridor talking with an officer I did not recognise. Seeing me the Prefect broke off his conversation and gestured a curt dismissal to his colleague.

I had never seen my old friend look so grim. His eyes were bloodshot and his features bore a strange cast, the haunted look of a desperate man. It was as if he had aged twenty years since I saw him last, only three nights before at the house of Herr Werner, the cotton merchant.

"Herr Doctor."

"I came at once old friend, but what can have disturbed you so?"

"Am I that easy to read?" The Prefect shrugged. "A child has been murdered."

"Ah." I nodded. The Prefect's own son had died young, and though it had been over twenty years he had never reconciled himself to that tragic loss.

"We live in terrible times, when such things can happen."

I followed the Prefect down to the morgue where the child was waiting on a cold stone slab. He drew back the white sheet covering the body. It was a boy of ten or eleven, one of the local children. I had seen him many times before, though his name temporarily eluded me. Transfixed in death he had the shining features of an angel and I wanted to weep for all that lost beauty.

An examination would not be necessary as the cause of death was self-evident. The child's head had been completely severed from his body. The cut was clean; I had never seen better. There were no jagged edges or serrations of the sort even the sharpest cleaver would leave. The flesh showed signs of burning, as if some attempt to cauterise the wound had been made.

Gently I drew the sheet back over the child's body and head. There was a mystery here. I could not imagine how the boy had been slain.

"Do you know what sort of weapon was used?"

The Prefect nodded. "This is a strange affair. In all my years as a policeman I have encountered none stranger. I seek your opinion not only as a physician, but as a man who has travelled and seen a little of the world."

The Prefect turned to draw back another sheet and revealed a second corpse. The body was that of a man, covered from head to toe in a shiny black material that resembled leather but felt strange to my touch, warm like skin itself. I had never seen anything like it before. Only the man's head and hands were uncovered, and there appeared to be no way in which the garment might be removed, other than by cutting it free of his body.

The man could have been a foreigner; there was a slight Asiatic cast to his features. It was the face of an old man, but the lips were curled back in a smile that reminded me more of the carefree innocence of youth. This man had died happy. I could not tell the cause of death. The left hand was severely burnt but other than that there was no sign of external injury. An autopsy would need to be performed.

"Who is he?"

"The murderer." The Prefect pointed at an ugly lump of congealed metal lying on a table next to the wall. "And that was the weapon he used."

I reached forward to pick it up but the metal was too hot to touch. It burned and I hastily s.n.a.t.c.hed back my fingers.

"That thing, whatever it is, projected a beam of white light that was used to decapitate the child."

I shuddered, horrified that such a thing could be possible. "You have witnesses to the crime?"

"Several, but their accounts only make it seem all the more inexplicable."

"Tell me."

He pointed at the corpse on the slab in front of us. "The child was playing in the street with his friends when that man approached. n.o.body saw where he came from. They exchanged a few words and then the man pointed that metal thing at the child. He shouted something in a foreign language; one witness believes it was Yiddish but she is not certain. The weapon projected a beam of white light which the man swung like a sword and took off the boy's head. Death must have been instantaneous. Then the weapon appeared to combust and the man dropped down dead."

"At least the child didn't suffer." The words were empty, but I could think of nothing else to say.

"Franz, I'm at my wits' end. None of it makes any sense. It's an impossible murder. I feel as if I must be dreaming."

I looked at my friend's imploring face, but there was nothing I could tell him that would make sense of this brutal act. Instead I took a firm hold of his arm.

"Let's go up to your office. A gla.s.s of schnapps will do us both good. Doctor's orders."

The Prefect nodded. Solemnly he replaced the dead man's sheet and turned to follow me.

On the stairs a uniformed officer met us and informed the Prefect that the child's parents had arrived.

They were waiting in the Prefect's office. The woman was seated, staring silently into s.p.a.ce as tears rolled down her cheeks. The man stood next to her, his own face drained of emotion as he comforted his wife.

She jumped to her feet as we entered. "Why did they kill my son? Why?"

I shook my head and shrugged helplessly. There was nothing I could say to her. I did not know.

My friend the Prefect of Police pushed past. He gripped the woman firmly by the shoulder and clasped her to him. This was Klaus at his best, all fear and uncertainty forgotten in the face of this simple woman's need.

"Frau Hitler, you must compose yourself..."

[Originally published in Kimota 3, Winter 1995].