Emperor of Gondwanaland (35 page)

“Satisfied now. Or shall I trot out Jenny and her new beau. I believe they’re attending a car show in Duluth at the moment. I could bring onstage that derelict from Penn Station as well. His name, by the way, is Arthur Pearty. A fascinating fellow once you really get to know him.”

“No. Not necessary. Just send these—these specters away.”

The editors and agent vanish. Life resumes. Stiltjack moves blithely onward. Corso numbly following. The world’s deceptive insubstantiality now confirmed. A thin shambles. A picture painted on rice paper. Corso sick to his stomach.

“It’s best not to cause such large-scale disruptions. The universe, whatever it is, is not our toy. We did not create it. We do not run the hourly shadow-show. We are unaware of the ultimate rationale for its existence. But a small tweak here and there. Aimed at personal betterment. Such little perquisites are permitted those of us who have come out the other side of the dicky fits.”

“But, but—but even if you decide to go on living, how can you continue to write science fiction! In the face of such knowledge.”

Malachi pausing. To signal importance of his words. “Well, as to motivation, now, Corso, it’s all a question of whose imagination is superior, isn’t it. Weird as the universe is when you finally comprehend it, a trained mind such as yours or mine demands that our own imagination be even more potent in its conceptions. If you’re a real science fiction writer, that is. Now why don’t we go enjoy a fine meal. I can guarantee that we won’t be interrupted.”

And Corso laughs

loud enough to cause strangers

to gape

for his appetite

is suddenly prodigious

and not just for food.

For Horselover Fat, Jonathan Herovit, and, of course, the Ginger Man.

Thorn Metyger is quietly, diabolically insane. Oh, you’d never know it just by meeting him. He presents a demure, affable face to the world. But I ask you this: What kind of fellow could write transgressive tomes on such topics as the history of opium and the history of the electric chair, as well as the landmark posthorror novel, Big Gurl, and then go on to write authentically affecting young-adult novels, under a pen name meant to spare wandering teens from discovering his Mr. Hyde half? Only someone with a massive alien brain whose neurons do not fire in conventional sequences.

When I tell you that Thom also invented the figure of the Hypmogoo- goopizin’ Man, the protagonist of the story that follows, you’ll have no choice but to acknowledge that Mr. Metzger does not inhabit the same continuum as the rest of us.

The Curious Inventions of Mr. H

1. 7000 b.c.

Setting out from their village one bright dawn for the day’s hunt, the barefoot tribesmen were half asleep. They scratched under their gamy furs, farted, belched, poked each other with the butt-ends of their spears. One loosed a practice arrow at a rabbit, missed, and was pummeled by the leader, a hulking male with arms the size of elk haunches. Hooting and laughing, the hunters trouped with maximum disorganization into the woods.

In a familiar clearing not far from their setrlement, they came to an unplanned halt. Clustering closer together, they gaped with astonishment at a disconcerting sight.

Across the patch of open grassy ground stood a stranger. Big as their leader, the newcomer was oddly attired. Instead of a single drape of clumsily sutured hide, he wore multiple pieces of clothing: a fur-trimmed top that covered his arms and back and shoulders but left his chest bare, tapered leggings, and tasseled square-toed foot coverings. Atop his head perched a wide, peaked, shade-making device of some sort. The stranger’s skin was dark, the color of sooty fire-scorched hearthstone, something never seen before. But the man’s weirdest, most disagreeable feature was his left eye, an enormously protruding, arterially crimsoned orb of commanding magnificence and eerie mana.

Now the stranger called brashly out, in the villagers’ own tongue, “Gen-tuhl-
men
! Heads up! This is your
big
day!”

He moved across the clearing, simultaneously reaching behind his back. Miraculously, he produced from behind himself an object much bigger than he could have hidden with his body.

Whispering among themselves as the black man approached, the tribesmen nervously divided their attention between the man and his out-held offering. The object, its like never before seen, was plainly artificial. Constructed of wood, it had no edges, as if it were some sort of miraculously flattened egg. In its center was a hole.

The newcomer was quickly upon them. Up close, he brandished the wooden thing proudly, as if it were a new child or freshly killed game. In a loud voice, he said, “Friends, will you kindly lookee here! What we got here is, we got a
wheel
. Can you say that?”

Several of the hunters obediently repeated the strange word. Their chief, however, only grunted his growing disapproval.

“Now I know you’re all asking yourself, what’s a wheel
do
? What’s it
good
for? How’s it gonna put a slab of cave bear on my table? Well, there’s hardly anything a wheel
can’t
do! But I don’t expect you to take my word for it. I’ll be happy to
demonstrate
this little charmer for y’all. Completely free, no charge of any kind, except whatever your generous hearts might be inclined to offer by way of minor recompense for my valuable time. So let’s forget all your half-ass chasing and jabbing plans for today. We’ll run your posse back to your crib, and I’ll put this baby through its paces. Believe me, you won’t regret one minute of this lucky day.”

The stranger took a step down the path that led back to the village, and the majority of the transfixed tribesmen fell in obediently behind him. All, in fact, except the chief. The village leader stood fuming for a moment, his bearded face flushing clay-red, before bellowing out, “No! No go!”

Everyone stopped. The headman bulled through his compatriots, coming right up to the stranger, brandishing his spear and thrusting his face nearly against the black hyperocular visage.

“Who
you
to say? Who
you
? I boss here! Only me! I say time to hunt!”

The stranger was unintimidated by the blustering man. “Well, friend, I’m glad you asked for my handle. Allow me to introduce myself. I’m the one and only Hypmogoogoopizin’ Man.”

With these words, the stranger’s throbbing bad eye seemed to swell a little and even to swirl. The weaker of the villagers held their heads and tottered. To his credit, the chief was mostly unswayed.

“I say you no good! I say you
die
!”

Preparing to thrust, the chief was stymied by the Hypmogoogoopizin’ Man’s raising the wheel like a shield. Into the wheel
thunked
the flint point, and the stranger’s eye flared like the sun on the sea, freezing the chief where he stood.

“Chief, I think you need a little demonstration of this here wheel’s cosmic
potency
!”

After easily dislodging the spear, with both hands the Hypmogoogoopizin’ Man raised the wheel above the stunned chief so that it hung like a flat stone above the frozen leader. Then the stranger began to bring it down. When the wheel touched the chief’s head, a very strange thing happened. The man began to disappear, as if being consumed by the center hole.

Within moments, the wheel lay flat on the ground. The remaining villagers stood hushed and stunned. As they watched, a tiny figure pulled itself out of the center hole. It was the chief, big as a mouse. The miniature leader capered and squeaked, waving a doll-proportioned bow. The mannikin shot a splinter-sized arrow at the Hypmogoogoopizin’ Man, causing him to laugh heartily.

Recovering his wheel, the Hypmogoogoopizin’ Man turned away from the minuscule man. “Okay, friends, back home!”

Bending slightly, the Hypmogoogoopizin’ Man tossed his magic wheel before him. Seemingly of its own volition, like a live thing it rolled all the way back to the encampment, negotiating every twist and turn of the path.

The women were startled to see the hunters returning so soon, without their chief and led by a stranger. Soon, however, every mother, wife, and sister, as well as all the children, were shyly clustered around the magnificent newcomer, who seemed to have earned the approval of their men.

“Okay,
ladies
! Break out the food and drink. We are gonna have us a par-
tay
!”

Within a short time, the entire village was on a festival footing. Meat crackled over fires, skin pouches of fermented fruit drink were circulating, and children were running and screaming delightedly in games of tag. After everyone had gorged themselves—the Hypmogoogoopizin’ Man taking first honors—the promised lecture and demonstration began. Moving from the simplest applications of the marvelous new wheel to others that would not be realized for millennia, the Hypmogoogoopizin’ Man decanted through the force of his speech and his mean ol’ pulsating eye all the pure knowledge of the innate masterful powers of human mind over brute matter that the villagers could handle. After many hours, his audience lay stupefied, their brains plainly stuffed with fecundly breeding ideas.

At this point the Hypmogoogoopizin’ Man held up the wheel and stuck a finger illustratively through its hole, waggling and poking it to make his meaning clear. His eel-like eye began to protrude and waggle also. The effect on the villagers was instant invigoration and concupiscence.

“Time for a little
sen
-shoe-uhl fun, folks!”

Dropping the wheel, scooping up seven of the prettiest women, four in one arm and three in the other, leaving the rest of the clan to shed their clothes and begin to rut in the dirt, the Hypmogoogoopizin’ Man made a beeline toward the headman’s hut.

“Damn! I am gonna
hate
to leave this place! But—duty calls!”

2. 2000 b.c.

The madam of the most exclusive whorehouse in Thebes came to the door of her establishment, summoned thence by an incoherent message passed down a chain of babbling servants who had made no sense at all.

“The giant Ethiop—his eye—flames—the glare—a wheel that knows time—”

Absolute blather, all of it. Probably some deformed beggar or soothsayer, even a harmless tradesman, dull of intellect, who had mistaken the customer’s entrance for the delivery door. What good were slaves if they couldn’t exercise a little intelligence? Perhaps she would have them all whipped.

In her slippered feet, skirted and bare-breasted, braceleted and kohl-eyed, the madam padded past the erotic wall paintings and into the front antechamber, harsh words ready to spring from her lips.

Framed in the doorway in an insouciant attitude was an alarming man who robbed the speech from her. Some kind of huge black barbarian, he wore an
outré
costume that escaped attention thanks only to the wrenching weirdness of his great goggling left eye, so vibrant it seemed an entity in its own right.

“
Shake
that moneymaker, girl,” the Hypmogoogoopizin’ Man called out upon spotting the madam. “Time is money, and money is time, and I’ve got plenty of both to share with you. If you’re interested, of course.”

The madam understood a business proposition, however unconventionally phrased. “What could one of your uncouth mien and savage cast have to offer a citizen of mighty Thebes, fount of all wisdom and material goods?”

“Just this little gizmo, sister.” From beneath his upper garment, the Hypmogoogoopizin’ Man whipped out a queer device. A flat disc with numerals running around its edge, and in its middle a slanted flange of bronze.

The madam snorted. “I prefer my sculpture to be representational. The least you could have done, considering my profession, is shape that pointer into a phallus.”

Stepping inside, the Hypmogoogoopizin’ Man seemed unabashed. “You don’t know what you’re looking at, girl. This handy gadget is gonna double and triple your profits. And my fee is nothing but chicken feed—nothing you haven’t given out before.”

Here the Hypmogoogoopizin’ Man winked, closing his normal eye. The effect of his lone monstrous orb shining fulsomely without counterbalance sent the madame staggering. Moving quickly, the Hypmogoogoopizin’ Man steadied her, with big hands on waist and elbow.

“Let’s go into the courtyard, honey, and I’ll show you the elephant. Oh, and let’s have us some drinks. This is one
dusty
burg.”

Dazedly, the madam signaled to the servants to bring beer. Half leading, half led, she accompanied the stranger to the atrium. Sunlight poured in, falling onto a stone bench. There they sat, and the Hypmogoogoopizin’ Man laid the odd device between them.

“How long your customers take with the gals, honey? No hard data, just a guess about the average fuck duration. You can’t say? Of course you can’t say! You got no good way of marking the hours! You know that if you tried to enforce a limit without solid proof, you’d get into endless hassles with the johns. ‘Shit, I only been here half an hour, whose ass you trying to burn!’ Am I right, or am I right?”