Hazards (26 page)

“I cannot have all this bloodshed on my behalf,” she said. “What if I choose which of these two, your god or your emperor, shall have me?”

I looked at Jasper, and he looked at me, and I could tell he was comparing us feature by feature. I knew I had him beat cold on manly good looks, and I’m sure if I’d had a chance to shave or wash or change my clothes in the past few weeks I’d clean up pretty well, but women are a peculiar bunch, and you have to figure that a woman who walked around naked in the midday sun was a little more peculiar than most, and I decided that I didn’t really want to stake my godhood on her ability to make the obvious choice, and I could see that Jasper had pretty much reached the same conclusion.

“Well, that solves everything, doesn’t it, Inti?” said Giroba.

“Not really,” I said.

“Not at all,” Jasper chimed in.

“But why not?” asked Culamara.

“Ma’am,” I said, “in the course of my life I’ve seen two dogs fight over a bone a couple of hundred times, maybe more,” I said. “But man and boy, I ain’t never seen the bone choose who it wants to win.”

“That’s a telling point, Miss Culamara,” said Jasper. “He’s a tricky one, this Lucifer. If you were to vote, he might very well pull the wool over your eyes, and while that would still leave all the good parts in evidence, it would surely hamper your ability to make the right decision, which would otherwise be to choose me.”

“The fact of the matter, ma’am,” I said, “is that while you are the most perfect creature God—I mean
I
—ever made, when all is said and done you’re just a woman, and these matters are better left to gods and emperors.”

“Okay,” said Jasper to his followers. “The first one to bring me Lucifer’s head is the first one to share in the spoils!”

“I still don’t know why she can’t just choose and settle the war that way,” said one of his men.

“I already explained that,” said Jasper. “Right, Lucifer?”

“Right, false emperor,” I said.

“
I
have an idea,” said Giroba. “Since
she
can’t choose, why don’t
we
all vote?”

“Hey, that’s a great idea!” said one of the guys on Jasper’s side of the temple. “That way nobody gets killed!”

Jasper and I done our best to talk them out of it, but they were bound and determined to avoid a war by voting, despite the fact that it never did a bit of good in Europe or anywhere else, and pretty soon they were passing out ballots, and then everyone voted and handed the ballots in and then a bunch of men from each side started counting and double-checking while Jasper and I couldn’t do nothing but stand around and see which of us had won the election.

“I have the results,” announced Giroba, and we all leaned forward to hear. “There were three hundred and eighty-six votes cast”—suddenly he frowned—“and it appears that we have a three-hundred-and-eighty-six-way tie.”

“Just a minute,” I said. “I ain’t voted yet.”

“What difference will that make?” demanded Jasper. “I haven’t voted either. But you’ll vote for you, and I’ll vote for me, and nothing will change.”

“That’s what you think,” I said. “I am hereby issuing a heavenly decree. Gods get one and a half votes.”

“Then I’m issuing an executive order,” declared Jasper. “Emperors get two votes.”

“And I’m issuing a commandment,” I said. “Thou shalt vote for no other god but me.”

“And I’m writing a new constitution,” said Jasper. “From this day forward, Machu Picchu is a secular society and our first principle is the separate of church and state.”

“What does that mean?” asked one of his followers.

He pointed to me. “See that god?” he said. “He’s got a head and he’s got a body. Separate ’em!”

The man put one hand over his mouth and clasped his belly with the other. “I think I’m going to be sick!” he whined.

“Well, this has all been a lot of fun,” said one of my men. “I can’t remember when I’ve been so amused. But I still have fields to harvest. I’d better be getting back to work.”

“Yeah,” said another. “Entertainment is all very well, but we have to make a living.”

“And I promised my wife I’d pick up some spices at the market,” said a third.

“Let’s go over to the Urubamba,” said a fourth. “The fish should be biting in another half hour.”

Jasper’s army started saying the same kind of thing, and pretty soon they were all wandering off in twos and threes, and after five minutes the pair of us were alone with Culamara again.

“Well, Miss Culamara, ma’am,” I said, “come on along with me and I’ll get busy teaching you the white goddess trade.”

“He doesn’t know the first thing about being a god,” said Jasper. “Come with me and I’ll make you Executive Vice President and Social Director.”

“Ask him what the job pays and where he’s gonna get the money,” I told her.

“It’s an empire, isn’t it?” Jasper shot back. “We’ll plunder the treasury.”

“It’s a
forgotten
empire,” I pointed out. “It ain’t got no treasury.”

“How do you know?” demanded Jasper. “Maybe the folks who left forgot to take the money with them.”

“They’d have to be mighty forgetful to leave their money behind,” I noted.

He pointed to Culamara. “They left
her
behind, didn’t they?”

Well, I couldn’t come up with no answer to that, so I figured I’d better get my offer in fast.

“You come away with me, Miss Culamara, honey,” I said, “and I’ll give you the first ten stars you see tonight to practice your goddessness on.”

“Looks like rain,” said Jasper, staring out one of the Three Windows. “What if she can’t see any stars through the clouds?”

“Then she can choose ’em tomorrow night,” I said. “Stop complicating the issue.”

“If I can quote the false god here,” said Jasper, “ask him what the job pays.”

“I’m glad he brung that up, Miss Culamara, ma’am,” I said, “because if you put yourself in my hands, which is a distracting thought in itself, you’ll get ten percent of every poorbox of every church in Machu Picchu.”

“Hah!” said Jasper. “There’s
aren’t
any churches in Machu Picchu!”

“All right, then,” I said. “Ten percent of every church in all of Peru. We’ll work out the details later.”

Culamara looked from one of us to the other, a distressed expression on her face.

“I don’t know what to do!” she said plaintively.

“Jasper,” I said, “we been rushing this poor girl into making a decision before she was ready to. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves.”

“I agree,” he said. “Especially the part about you being ashamed of
your
self.”

“I ain’t even gonna argue with you. Culamara needs time to think and reflect on all the things she’s heard today.”

“Yeah,” he admitted, “that seems fair enough, especially since we’ve lost our armies.”

“Jasper, why don’t you go fishing for a couple of hours while the poor girl—make that the poor goddess—considers which of us she’s going belong to.” I turned to Culamara. “Let’s you and me go lay down under some bushes where no one will bother us and contemplate your problem.”

“Hey, just a minute!” said Jasper.

“All right, all right,” I said. “You don’t have to go down to the Urubamba to fish.”

“Damned right I don’t,” he said angrily.

“You can swim,” I said. “Just watch out for them pirhanas.”

“I’m not leaving the two of you alone!” said Jasper.

“You don’t have to leave alone,” I said. “You can leave with anybody you want.”

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll leave with
her
!”

“What’s come over you, Brother Jasper,” I said. “I thought we were friends and partners.”

“We were,” he said. “Until you got greedy.”

“You were the one who claimed you weren’t sharing no High Priestesses,” I pointed out.

“Well, you don’t seem all that anxious to share any white goddesses.”

I thunk about it, and finally I reached out my hand. “We can’t let a little thing like a voluptuous naked woman come between us,” I said.

“Right,” he said, shaking my hand. “After all, we’ve been friends for almost three days.”

“Right,” I agreed. “Share and share alike?”

“Share and share alike,” he said.

“Okay,” I said. “You can have her from the waist up.”

“Now wait a minute!” yelled Jasper and Culamara at the same instant.

“I hope our high-level negotiations haven’t upset you none, Miss Culamara, honey,” I said.

“I resent being treated as a piece of property,” she said.

“That’s not a fair thing to say, ma’am,” I told her.

“Why not?”

“Because you’re being treated as a piece of
female
property,” I said. “That makes all the difference in the world.”

“Not to me, it doesn’t,” she said. “I’m sick of gods
and
emperors!”

“Don’t listen to him!” said Jasper desperately. “I’ll make you Chief Operating Officer!”

“And what’ll you be?” I asked him curiously.

“Chairman of the Board.”

“Miss Culamara, ma’am,” I said, “if it’ll make you feel any better, I’ll give you twenty percent of all the poorboxes in South America.”

“Animals!” she cried. “You’re like animals!”

“Maybe so,” I agreed. “But he’s like a vicious jungle beast with bad breath what doesn’t never wash, while I’m more like a cuddly puppy.”

“Bah!” she said, taking off her headdress and throwing it on the ground. “You like to fight over things? Fight over that!”

“You sure you don’t want to reconsider?” I said. “I mean, don’t you feel kind of naked without it?”

But she just turned on her heel—an eye-catching sight in itself—and walked right out of the Temple of the Sun.

“Well, by Myself!” I said. “What a strange way for a sweet little woman to behave.”

“Lucifer,” said Jasper, as we both stared at the headdress, “I’m getting a little long in the tooth for battles to the death. What say we split the spoils and go our separate ways?”

“We ain’t got no tools for splitting the gold nor the diamond,” I pointed out.

“You take one, I’ll take the other,” he said.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll take the diamond.”

“I kind of thought
I’d
take the diamond, as a cherished remembrance of our friendship.”

“I’m right touched by that, Brother Jasper,” I said. “But every time I look at that diamond I’ll remember our three days together, and the fact that being men of good will we averted a war at the very last moment.”

“It’d help me remember the beautiful virginal Culamara,” he said.

“I ain’t met that one,” I said, “but it’d help me remember the Culamara we
did
meet.”

“I’m an old man,” said Jasper, “and we’re at altitude, and everyone knows gold is one of the heaviest elements. I don’t know if I could carry it back.”

“You won’t have to,” I said. “I’ll stick it in Equipause’s saddle bag for you.”

“I just
have
to have that diamond as a remembrance of my time in Machu Picchu!” he said.

He was so adamant that I knew he’d seen the gold flaking off the inside of the headpiece too, so finally I suggested we cut cards for it, and since neither of us had any cards we decided to roll my dice. He shook ’em and said baby needed a new pair of shoes, and I knew he wasn’t talking about Culamara because shoes were the least of what she needed when night fell and it started getting chilly out, and he finally rolled a ten.

“Hah!” he said happily. “I’ve got you, Lucifer!”

Then it was my turn. I shook them dice over my head, whispered a small prayer to myself, and rolled a seventeen.

“I guess you lose after all,” I said.

“Wait a minute!” he said. “You can’t roll a seventeen!”

“Two sixes and a five,” I said. “You got a problem counting?”

“There’s three dice there!” he yelled.

“See?” I said. “I
knew
you could count.”

Well, we argued back and forth for a few more minutes, and then a lady who could have been Culamara’s better-looking and less-dressed sister moseyed through the temple, and Jasper pulled the diamond off the headdress and tossed it to me, then picked up what was left and started walking after the demure young lady.

As for me, I hunted up The Dolly Llama and began retracing our journey. I figgered I’d pull out the diamond and admire it a little before the sun set, so I held it up and stared at it, and I saw what seemed like a little scratch on it, so I looked closer, and what the scratch said was “Manufactured by the Coca Cola Corporation.”

I flang that diamond just as far into the bushes as I could, and as I continued riding back to Cusco I joined the long line of folks what were doing their best to forget the kingdom of Machu Picchu.

Mother Scorpion’s House of Fallen Flowers

After what became known in local history as the Battle of Machu Picchu, I decided the time had come to take my leave of Peru. I took the path of least resistance which, when you’re a zillion feet high in the middle of what they call Andy’s Mountain Range, means down to the sea, and the sea to the west was a whole lot closer than the sea to the east. (You know, I never did meet this Andy, who either discovered or owned the mountains; I guess he had enough brains to stay down where the air was still thick enough to breathe.)

Anyway, I soon found myself in Chile, which when the sun was high in the sky was anything but, and I stopped in Santiago long enough to engage in a fine old game dealing with pasteboards, statistical probabilities, and the number 21. I even put back the couple of pounds I’d lost in Peru, courtesy of the Santiago constabularies, who were a pretty serious bunch and just couldn’t see the humor in them three extra aces what slipped out of my sleeve at an inopportune time, and while I wasn’t thrilled with my surroundings for the next five days they saved me the price of fifteen delicious meals, always providing you think moldy bread, brown water, and the occasional salamander or grubworm in one or the other is delicious.

Finally my time in durance vile was up, and as a longtime student of durances I got to say the Santiago calaboose was among the vilest. A team of gendarmes kept walking ten feet behind me, and as you can imagine this put a certain crimp in my style when I was finally freed and looking to negotiate price with one charming lady of quality or another, and finally I figured that their jurisdiction ended at the city line, so I made a beeline to it and crossed it, and found myself with no one to talk to except a herd of llamas, and when the king llama saw some of the lady llamas eyeing me provocatively he started bellowing like a politician at election time and chased me downhill until he ran out of interest and I ran out of hill. I figured as long as he’d chose my direction for me I’d keep walking in it, because there was no question that he knew the lay of the land better than I did.

So I walked, and like all them adventurers say in their books, I existed on a diet of fruits and berries (though I rescued mine from the occasional farmhouse I’d pass by in the dead of night), and once I rescued a beautiful senorita from an evening of boredom because just as things were getting interesting her husband showed up with a shotgun and believe you me
nothing
was boring for the next few hours, and the next day I found an even prettier senorita to remove the buckshot from my backside in exchange for my not singing any love songs beneath her balcony.

Finally I could smell the salt air of the sea, and I hit the town of Valparaiso, which was exactly like Santiago except for the waterfront and the ships and the buildings and the smell and all them churches and the fact that all the signs said “Welcome to Valparaiso” which none of the signs in Santiago had said.

I wandered down to the waterfront and took a room at the Castille de Oro Hotel, promising to pay them just as soon as I converted the eighty-three dollar bill in my wallet into local cash. They kept asking where my luggage was, even after I explained that us men of the cloth didn’t have much use for worldly goods, and finally, just to ease their minds, I explained that all my steamer trunks were coming in on the next passenger ship, that there’d been some kind of a mix-up whereby a Lucius Jones had wound up with my baggage and I’d wound up with his pretty blonde wife, and that seemed to please everyone.

I moseyed along the waterfront, getting the feel of the place (which seemed to go hand in glove with the smell of it), and finally came to something called O’Higgins Street, which sounded a little like home, as I used to go courting Lulubelle O’Higgins in Moline, Illinois back when I was fourteen and her husband was working the night shift. Anyway, I came to a restaurant called The Lascivious Llama, which, it turned out, specialized in dead stuff but hadn’t yet got around to specializing in cooking it none, and when I was done, which was about two mouthfuls after I started, I decided to go out and see if this was the town where I would decide to finally build my tabernacle. Being a sensitive soul what didn’t want to upset the chef by walking out in the middle of a meal, I stuck around until both waiters were in the kitchen before taking my leave and making a mental note to pay them someday and come back for another try just as soon as they bought a stove.

I was strolling down the waterfront when I looked into the window of a bar I was passing and did a double take, because sitting there was the prettiest Oriental lady I ever did see, and this wasn’t the first time I’d seen her neither. I could have mistooken them dark eyes and high cheekbones and long coal-black hair, but not the extra pair of lungs, and I knew right off the bat that if the Scorpion Lady was here in Valparaiso then there was money to be had in Valparaiso, and lots of it, and that meant that my Silent Partner had led me to the right spot on the map, and this was His way to telling me that this would be the right place for my tabernacle, because there wasn’t likely to be any shortage of money for the poor box.

I walked into the bar, went over to her table, and sat down across from her. And it
was
her, all right; now that I was close up I could see the little gold scorpions on her ring and necklace.

“Howdy, my little exotic flower of the East,” I said, flashing her my Number Three smile (the one that showed all the teeth). “Remember me?”

“I never saw you before in my life,” she said.

“Siam?” I reminded her. “We was almost lovers and sort of partners?”

“You’ve mistaken me for someone else,” she said. “Now please leave me alone.”

“You owned a gambling house, don’t you remember?” I said.

“If you don’t stop bothering me and go away, I will be forced to call for the police,” she said.

“You was gonna teach me all them Oriental love techniques what gets writ up in books no one in the U. S. of A. is allowed you read,” I said, standing up to demonstrate. “We were going to start with—”

“Oh, shut up and sit down, Lucifer,” she said.

“See?” I said triumphantly. “You
do
remember!”

“What are you doing here, anyway?” she said.

“It’s a long story,” I told her. “But it’s a really
good
story. Why don’t we go on back to your place and I’ll tell you all about it?”

“You haven’t changed,” she said.

“No, ma’am,” I said. “I’m still the same handsome lovable buck you lost your heart to back in Asia.”

“I was referring to your clothes.”

“I’ll slip out of ’em the second we hit your bedroom and you’ll never know the difference,” I said.

“You seem to be laboring under a number of delusions,” she said.

“It’d be a lot more fun for both of us, Miss Scorpion Lady, ma’am,” I said, “if you were laboring under just one: me.”

“Is that the way you used to knock them dead in Peoria?” she asked.

“Moline, ma’am,” I said. “A big city like Peoria was just for holidays.”

“I stand corrected.”

“You could lie down corrected anytime you want to leave this den of iniquity,” I said.

“I own it,” said the Scorpion Lady.

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“Then I presume the drinks are on the house?” I said, signaling the waiter over.

She sighed. “If I treat you to one drink, will you leave me alone then?”

I began to get the feeling that she wasn’t as glad to see me as I was to see her.

“All right, ma’am,” I said. “You cut me to the quick, but I’ll take one last drink and one last loving look at you, and then I’ll go back to my lonely room at the Castille de Oro.”

“Where?”
she shouted.

“The Castille de Oro,” I said. “I know it ain’t no luxury retreat like you’re probably living in, but it suits a humble man of the cloth just fine.”

“Damn it!” she muttered. “I
told
them the front desk was just for appearances! It’s impossible to get any competent help in this town!”

“I don’t think I follow you at all, Miss Scorpion Lady, honey,” I said.

“Shut up!” she said. “I have to think.”

“If we’re still partners, I could do half of the thinking for you,” I offered. “The hard half.”

She stared long and hard at me, so I poured a little of her beer on my hands and ran ’em through my hair to slick it down some. Then I guv her another great big smile.

“Don’t do that, Lucifer,” she said, frowning. “It reminds me of the expression on my mastiff’s face just before he tried to breed the hassock.”

“I don’t remember no mastiff back in Siam,” I said.

“Remember that dish you thought was veal?” she said. While I was trying to recall what it tasted like and whether there was any trace of a smile on it, she stood up. “All right,” she said. “It will lend verisimilitude.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Come with me, Lucifer,” she said. “I have a job for you.”

“Sounds good to me, ma’am,” I said. “But you should know I don’t do no heavy lifting, and I got to have Sundays off for preaching in my tabernacle once I get around to finally building it.”

“You were made for this job, Lucifer,” she said. “You’ll be preaching every day.”

“Well, that’s right thoughtful of you, ma’am,” I said. “I passed about twenty or thirty churches on my way to the waterfront. Which one are we setting up shop in?”

“You’ll see,” she said, heading out the door, and I fell into step behind her.

We hit the waterfront and turned right, and pretty soon we walked into the lobby of the Castille de Oro. There were two guys behind the desk who snapped to attention when they saw us.

“Which of you rented a room to this man?”

“I did,” said the one what did. “We have one room that’s not in use, and I figured a preacher man would give us good cover.”

“You’re fired,” she said. She turned to the other man. “Who hired that fool?”

“I did,” he said uneasily.

“You’re fired, too,” said the Scorpion Lady. “I will not have my orders disobeyed.”

“Ain’t you being a tad harsh on them?” I said.

“Shut up or I’ll fire you too,” she answered.

“You can’t fire me,” I pointed out to her. “You ain’t hired me yet.”

The two men guv her a wide berth and walked out the door.

“Follow me, Lucifer,” she said.

She led me down a hall to a wood-paneled room lined with books in some language what wasn’t English, and had a podium next to the far wall.

“Well?” she said to me.

“You want me to hire on as a librarian?” I said.

“Idiot!” she muttered. She walked over to the podium and patted it with a delicate little hand what probably hadn’t killed more than fifteen or twenty men plus her mastiff. “I want you to preach the word of the Lord right here.”

“What’s the job pay?”

“Why do you care?” she shot back. “You’ll be doing the Lord’s work.” She paused. “Well,
your
Lord’s, anyway.”

“I still got to eat,” I said.

“We’ll fix all your meals right here. You’ll never have to leave.”

“I got to pay for my room,” I continued.

“Gratis,” she said.

“Gratis to you too, ma’am, but that still don’t tell me how I’m going to pay for the room.”

“It’s yours for no charge.”

“Well, I still need money to—”

“There are perks, Lucifer,” she said.

“Oh?” I said.

She walked me to the doorway and pointed down the hall, where a young redheaded lady with a figure like unto Hedy Lamar was just moseying back and forth, dressed for extremely warm weather.

“That’s one of them,” said the Scorpion Lady.

“One of what, ma’am?” I asked.

“One of the perks.”

“Let me make sure I got this straight, ma’am,” I said. “She’s one of the perks?”

“That’s right.”

“And the Perks ain’t the name of no all-girl band nor women’s soccer team what’s just passing through and spending the night on its way to Santiago?”

“Would I lie to you, Lucifer?” she said.

Based on my previous experience with her, I was tempted to say only when her lips were moving, but then another perk showed up, wearing even less than the first one.

“I accept the job!” I said. In fact, I must have said it pretty enthusiastically, because three more perks stuck their heads and even nicer things out of the doors lining the corridor to see what the commotion was all about.

“Somehow I knew you would,” she said.

“What
is
this place, besides the Castille de Oro?” I asked.

“Mother McCree’s House of Fallen Flowers,” said the Scorpion Lady.

“Who’s Mother McCree?” I said. “Some local benefactor?”

“
I
am,” she said.

“Well, now that I think of it, that’s probably a pretty good idea,” I said, “considering you got warrants out for your address over most of Asia and probably half of Europe and America. You wouldn’t want no act of Christian charity ruining your business reputation.”

“I’m delighted to see that you are so understanding, Lucifer,” she said.

“Well, us men of the cloth are like that,” I said. “Always understanding, always forgiving. In fact, I could absolve you right now for any sins you’d like to commit with me in the next couple of hours.”

“I’m afraid I’m quite busy this evening,” she said. “One of my frail flowers has fallen from the path of virtue….”

“No!” I said in shocked tones.

“I’m afraid so. The police want to deport her, and I have to go down to headquarters and plead on her behalf.”

“Would you like me to come along?” I said. “Pleading at police headquarters is one of the very best things I do.”

“No, that won’t be necessary,” she said quickly. “You just stay here, get to learn your way around the place.” She shot me a knowing smile. “I’ll pass the word to the perks.”

“Right,” I said. “And look at it this way: if they’re with me, they won’t have time to fall off the path of virtue with no strangers what’s only thinking of their own pleasure.”

“How understanding you are, Lucifer,” she said.