Kalifornia (7 page)

He felt a light tap on his shoulder. “Mister Santiago?”

In the black glass, Cornelius’s reflection swam up suddenly.

“Hey, Corny.”

“I came to see how you were feeling, sir.”

“I’m fine, Corny, fine. I’ve been thinking.”

“Thinking, sir?”

“I know I don’t have much of a reputation for it, but sometimes it’s
hard to avoid. Maybe I will take over here for a while. I mean, I might as well
learn an honest trade, right? I’d make a pretty good executive. Dark suit,
conservative tie, Aramis. A new image. Let Dad go look for Calafia. It might be
good for him.”

He turned from the glass, expecting the news to please Cornelius.
But the sealman looked dejected; his thoughts were elsewhere.

“What’s wrong, Corny?”

“Nothing, really. It’s just that, well, being with all of you this
evening has made me nostalgic. I remember the days when we were together,
living out the show. It must be the tropes.”

Sandy
sighed, then clapped Cornelius on the shoulder.
“Guess memories aren’t part of a seal’s natural state, huh?”

“I wouldn’t know, sir, but they can be painful at times.
Unnaturally so.”

“You’re telling me?”

Cornelius stared at him, blinking back tears.

“Come with me, Corny, okay? While I talk to Dad? Remember, you
owe me one.”

“Certainly, sir.”

“And don’t call me sir. You’re not our butler anymore, remember?
You’re a self-employed man—or seal, or whatever. You’re my friend.”

“Your friend? Do you really mean that?”

“Why would I say it if I didn’t?”

Cornelius looked puzzled for a moment, then shrugged. “I’m sorry,
it’s the tropes again. I forget that you’re not acting.”

“No way, dude, this is real. More or less.”

S01E03.
 
A
 
Hag-Ridden
 
Coach
 
with
 
No
 
Wood
 
on
 
the
 
Sides

A black sawed-off station wagon rattled through thinning crowds
and progressively emptier streets. It was not that dawn grew near and the
revelers sought their beds, nor had the celebrants wearied of their activities,
for this was an occasion that came but once and most Californians were anxious
to prolong the novelty of the bicentennial while it felt like something more
than another reason for sales spectaculars. No, there were better reasons for
the growing silence and the infrequency of humans where the wagon went.

The streets grew steadily fouler; damper and darker the decay on
all sides. Buildings had fallen here, but souls had lofted high.

The driver of the wagon was a thin old woman, so frail and
bird-boned that she would have banged against the dashboard every second if
she hadn’t been strapped to her seat. Her ancient fingers, thin and tenacious
as ivy creepers, clutched the steering wheel with desperate vigor; her arms,
protruding from the depths of a billowing black robe, were scarcely thicker.
She drove at full speed, although it seemed impossible in the cluttered
streets. Sometimes she swerved to avoid black patches, unsure if they were
puddles or bottomless tarns; more often she relied on ferocious speed to plow
her over or through a variety of obstacles. Pieces of barbed wire, rusty
rubble, broken tubes of phosphor-powdered glass, the occasional sluggard rat,
such tokens could always be found in the wagon’s radiator grill at the end of
her wild midnight rides. Once a sister mechanic had found a human foot in the
spoked hubcaps, severed just beneath the ankle. Its advanced putrefaction had been
a relief to all, offering assurance that the Official Crone had not yet struck
down an innocent being. Her license was in perpetual danger of being revoked.
Yet, for all her frenzied speed and demonic, gutter-spanning leaps, she was at
heart a gentle soul who always wept at the sight of a rat tail in the wiper
blades. Nothing, however, certainly no tender sentiment, could slow her down.

Which was why she of all the Daughters had been chosen for this
errand.

Over the unmufflered din of the old gas engine and through the
perpetual ringing in her ears, she heard the infant wailing among the sacks of
grain and kibble in the wagon’s bed. It sounded like a siren, a noise foreign
to these sacred precincts, since police never enforced profane laws within the
boundaries of the Holy City.

She glanced over her shoulder to make sure the jolting ride hadn’t
thrown the child from its nest. The babe appeared safe, but it made her
uncomfortable to leave such things to fate, especially after the trouble she’d
endured to catch the little dear.

Before long, she was forced to slow the wagon. The street had
narrowed until it was no better than a track for feral dogs. It was wide enough
for the wagon in most places, but there had been some slippage during the day
(or perhaps the Valis sect had slyly rearranged it), and rubble thicker than
usual posed a hazard. She shut off the motor, dismounted, and peered into the
back of the wagon, after first checking to make sure that no one was lurking
about, waiting to fire pink light beams in her direction.

Ah, the healthy wailing of a baby girl. The Official Crone’s old
nipples ached and itched a little. Dry memories. She hadn’t heard the sound in
many years. The Daughters bore no children, having no contact with men—Goddess
forbid!

The baby had worked her way down among the sacks, but after some
exertion the crone retrieved her. She screamed vigorously, waving her tiny
fists more fiercely than any tot in the old woman’s memory. Cooing, she pressed
the child to her breast, wishing her eyes were better, wishing (for once) that
the night were not so dark. The buildings were so tall and congested that light
rarely carried from brighter parts of the Frange. She couldn’t make out more
than the plainest fact of eyes, nose, and mouth. The High Priestess had
promised that the girl would have orange eyes, but there was no evidence of
that in this darkness. Still, this had to be the babe they sought.

The swaddling was loose; the child now kicked free of it. The
crone set her down on a sack of cereal, bent painfully to retrieve the cloth,
and, when she stood up, screamed.

Somewhere nearby, fireworks had exploded. Their light danced over
the ruined towers, bits of it bouncing down to these drear depths. In the
fitful flashes, unmistakably, the Official Crone beheld a child’s dangling pee . . . pee . . . penis?

Penis?

It was a male. . . .

Her heart nearly stopped beating, but her thoughts moved so
quickly that they tugged her blood along out of necessity.

The child’s masculinity was a disaster. It meant she had somehow
stolen the wrong child. A changeling. She would suffer the cosmic wrath of
Mother Kali, not to mention the more painful and immediate anger of Kali’s High
Priestess.

But worse than this to the Official Crone was the knowledge that
she had touched the . . . the male. Her fingers had very
nearly brushed that, that, that, that
thing,
that
terrible item of sickening masculine flesh! All this was forbidden. More than
forbidden, it was disgusting, it revolted her. She had lain with men once, long
before Kali called her. She’d had a husband and even male children, but that
was long ages behind her now. To think that somehow a male member had risen out
of nowhere and practically fallen into her lap—it filled her with horror. The
Official Crone didn’t know where to turn.

First, half out of her senses, she threw the soiled swaddlings
over the child to spare herself the sight of his tiny pizzle in case of another
fireworks flare. She didn’t know whether to scrape the boy into the street and
leave him there, or simply shove him back deeper into the wagon and pretend she’d
never looked, leaving all hard decisions to the High Priestess. True, that
would mean desecrating the temple, but at least she could hold to her story.
She had fulfilled her mission to the best of her ability. How was she supposed
to know that the wrong child would fall from the fire escape?

But if she ditched the child and came back empty-handed, she would
have no excuse. The High Priestess would think her a doddering, blind old fool,
and say her infirmity made her imagine a penis in place of the pristine apricot
folds of the female gender. The Official Crone knew a penis when she saw one,
but what if the High Priestess didn’t believe her? It just wouldn’t do to
insist on detailed knowledge of such a blasphemous object!

That decided her. She would do no more and no less than the High
Priestess had directed. If she ended up with the wrong child, so be it.

It wasn’t her fault. None of it. It was an honest accident. How
many infants were tossed from fire escapes at midnight on the state
bicentennial?

She clambered back into the seat, trying to keep her mind off the
thing that squalled behind her. Once the station wagon started moving again,
the baby would slip down among the sacks; that would explain why its swaddling
had come undone.

She wasn’t going to risk impurity by touching it again.

With a fresh, impatient eye, she examined the pile of loose rocks
and cement that blocked her way. She decided that ultimately nothing would
carry her through better than a burst of honest speed. And if the child tumbled
overboard, well . . .

Accidents will happen.

***

While the bicentennial was of great concern to many Californians
(particularly those on the payroll), such temporal matters fell far below the
notice of the Holy City’s sacred squatters. Festivities couldn’t offer the
escape from care they sought. Governors had come and gone with hardly an impact
on the precinct, except when their policies had plunged it even farther into
poverty. A President of the United States had inspected the region more than
forty years ago and declared it a disaster area, uninhabitable, worthy of
federal assistance—had there been any spare change in the Union coffers. But
money there was none, and the aid never came, and eventually even the toughest
of the poor found good reason to leave. Life was hard enough elsewhere. Why
suffer unnecessarily?

A few, however, ventured into the urban no-man’s-land and found it
to their liking—spiritual cousins of the hermits who wandered into deserts to
live on locusts, into arctic wastes to subsist on lichen and flavored ice, or
off to the weightless asteroid colonies, where a dedicated man could simper and
suffer self-righteously while his bones slowly softened and imploded for want
of gravity.

The forgotten city’s new inhabitants were pioneers of decay who
found in the tangled ruins of once-modern cities enough meaningful symbols to
propel their souls beyond the reach of gravity. Atop slumps of slag from which
no vacancy
signs
protruded, fire-eyed, speed-eating monks divined Zen prophecies whose
meaningless runes they scribbled in spray-can poetry on gray, smog-eaten walls.
These were the first temples and the first rites of the new visionaries.

Next, of course, came followers. Some were orthodox ruin-skulkers,
professional jackals who prowled the shadows in search of the occasional senile
citizen or mendicant monk so deep in satori that he couldn’t be bothered to
protect himself. Prides and packs of juveniles, beasts warring for territory,
tore up streets that the priests had hoped to make their own. In such an
atmosphere, religion could not help but flourish.

Eventually the gangs themselves were initiated into the mysteries
of this new Eleusis, brought in as guardians of the fallen temples. Outside
officers of the law found ever fewer reasons to enter the inner city. The
defending angels kept the avenues dark and ruinous, inculcating the mood most
helpful for a zealous pursuit of salvation. One could not tread these streets
without acknowledging the flesh’s vulnerability, the meager meaning of mere
existence. Savage spiritual predators contributed to such insights. The gangs
defended those who sat on girders high in broken buildings, staring at sun and
moon till blindness stunned them and they fell. On occasion, the gangs were
even said to roam beyond the sacred city’s bounds searching for acolytes,
offering a bloody baptism to those whom fate tossed into their filthy-pure
hands.

None of these defenders disturbed the Official Crone’s wagon,
having watched it come and go night after night. She in turn accepted them, and
tried not to dwell on the fact that some were men. Men did have their uses, she
supposed. Life was all balance, all compromise. Only death, black mercy, was
totality, a perfect bargain sealed.

At last, just ahead, she saw the black temple of her sect. Some Holy City residents made their homes in ancient condominiums, blasted supermarkets,
laundromats, car parks, banks, and bowling alleys. But the Daughters of Kali
had found themselves an actual church, of uncertain denomination but clearly
intended for worship. Above the entrance was a wide marquee on which the
Daughters had arranged the name of their goddess in black plastic letters,
coming soon: kali!
A small
booth stood below the great sign, from which the priests of old had declaimed
to passersby and plucked acolytes from among the unwary. The doors were mere
metal frames, empty when the Daughters inherited the temple, although they had
since filled the frames with dark, translucent scenes in stained plastic. The
crone had joined the temple several years before, when the High Priestess first
opened its doors. Before that, she had served Kali in other ways, less
knowingly.

She drew up in an alley alongside the church and rapped the secret
code on the dark rear door. It opened creakingly, pulled back by a black-cowled
Daughter who greeted the elder with a respectful curtsy.

“Get the High Priestess,” the Official Crone said. “The errand is
done.”

“But it’s nearly time for mass,” the younger protested.

“Tell her now, before it starts. She needs to know.”

The young Daughter scurried away, leaving the Official Crone to
take her post. It was closer to dawn than she had thought. Inside the temple,
Daughters scurried to finish their tasks before sunrise and the night’s last
ceremonies.

The tattered rows of temple seats were full of worshipers. Their
shadows leaped on the painted walls where bits of dirty gilt glimmered, caught
in the light of a hundred votive candles that burned in alcoves around the room
as well as on the wide stage at the low end of the slanting floor. High in the
wall opposite the stage was a tiny, square window, the fane of the inmost
mysteries, where burned the most sacred flame of all.