Balefires Read online

  You poor little guy! Howard thought. Aloud he said, "Ah, Wally? I'll do what I can-"

  Which might not be a heck of a lot. If Howard arrived, he'd be bare-assed naked and in the middle of a bunch of guys with swords they knew how to use. Not to mention the occasional dragon.

  "-but you know, it isn't that hard to, ah, meet girls."He paused to choose the next words carefully."Lots of times just being around one for a while is enough to, you know, bring the two of you together. If you play your cards right."

  The truck drove off with a snort of diesel exhaust as the garage door began to rumble down. The corpses of the sheep and transformer lay together in the bed of the vehicle.

  "I've never played cards at all, Howard," the little man said with a sad smile."I guess this is hard for a handsome young man like you to understand, but…"

  He turned his head away and wiped his eyes fiercely.

  "Hey, that's all right, Wally," Howard said, patting him on the back."Sure, I'll take care of that if there's, you know, any way to do it. No problem."

  Compared to the rest of the assignment, that was the gospel truth.

  "Thank you, Howard," Wally said through a racking snuffle. "I'm, well, I'm lucky to have met a real hero like you in my time of need."

  Only faintly audible through the heavy doors, another big truck was pulling up outside. A relay clicked and the machinery began to rumble again.

  "I feel sure we're going to succeed," Wally added. "If we have to double the field strength, well, that's just what we're going to do. No matter what!"

  Wally sounded a lot more cheerful when he made that promise than Howard was to hear it.

  ***

  With the six new transformers in place, the line almost filled the outside wall. On that side only the curtained-off corner-they were already drawn-didn't have machinery squatting on it. Howard could still smell burned insulation. He'd never thought he'd be thankful for a stink like that, but it covered other possible reminders of the afternoon's experiment.

  Wally looked at Howard and tried to force a grin. His expression would've been more appropriate for somebody being raped by a Christmas tree.

  "Hey, buck up, buddy," Howard said. "We're going to be fine!"

  Funny, but telling the lie made Howard feel that the words might possibly be true. Logically he knew a lot better.

  The door hidden behind the curtain opened. Howard heard aclink over the hum of machinery as something hard brushed against the raised lintel. He wondered what animal Strange was bringing in to sacrifice this time. Howard had expected a heifer or maybe an elephant, but Strange would've had to raise the vehicular door to bring in animals that big.

  Strange stuck his head out between two curtain panels. "Are you ready to proceed, Master Popple?" he asked. He held the curtains together so that all Howard could see was the throat of his garments. He seemed to be wearing the same silver-marked black satin as in the afternoon.

  "I believe-"Wally said. He caught Howard's terse nod and continued, "Yes, we're ready, Mr. Strange. It'll take ninety seconds from whenever we start to build the field."

  "Start now, then," Strange said curtly. He drew the curtains tight behind him and began to chant. His words had considerable musical power despite being complete gibberish. That was also true of opera, of course, so far as Howard was concerned.

  Wally tried to smile again, then busied himself with his keyboard. The mica window looked onto the glade, empty save for trees and the flitting passage of a bird whose plumage was as purely blue as the summer sky. Howard watched the scientist, and he watched images on the mica; but more compelling than those, he listened through the curtains at his back to the sound of Robert Strange's voice chanting.

  Howard felt the hairs lift from his body. Where those of his chest touched the loose caftan they tickled like the feeling at the back of a dry throat that you can't seem to swallow away. Violet haze blurred the air beyond the mica.

  Genie Strange screamed.

  Howard turned. The door to Genie's room was closed-closed and latched. The drapes around Strange and his activities bulged outward.

  Genie hopped through and fell, dragging a section of the velvet down. The scarf used to gag her had slipped out of her mouth; it was the only garment she was wearing. Her wrists and ankles were tied together behind her back, but she'd managed to undo the cord that'd bound her to the drain.

  Robert Strange, his face as hard and contorted as that of a marble demon, stepped out behind her. He grabbed a handful of Genie's black hair with his free hand.

  "Hey!" Howard said. There was a bank of equipment between him and the Stranges. As gracefully as if he'd been practicing all his life, Howard took two running steps, planted his right palm on the rack, and leaped over with his legs swung off to his left side. Even the Thief of Baghdad would be impressed Until the caftan's billowing hem caught the chassis full of plug-in circuits on top of the rack. As Howard's legs straightened, the tightening cloth spilled him like a lassoed steer. Strange looked at him without expression.

  Howard sprang up. The torn caftan, bunched now around his ankles, tripped him again.

  Strange lifted Genie's head, avoiding her attempts to bite him. He poised the curved dagger in his right hand over her throat. Howard grabbed the sides of the rug on which he'd fallen and jerked with all his strength, snatching Strange's feet out from under him.

  "You…!" shouted Strange as he toppled backward. Genie'd tossed her short hair free of his grip, but he didn't lose the dagger in his other hand. It was underneath when the Wizard of Fast Food hit the concrete.

  The chassis that Howard'd dragged to the floor with him was popping and spluttering, but he wasn't prepared for the flash of violet light that filled the interior of the lab. It was so intense that Howard only vaguely noticed the accompanying thunderclap. He heard Wally cry out and turned.

  Wally wasn't there. His clothing, from brown shoes to the pair of reading glasses he wore tilted up on his forehead, lay in the middle of the hexagram. The hundred and twenty-three pounds of Wally Popple had vanished.

  Except for an image in the mica window.

  Howard lifted Genie before he remembered that her stepfather and the dagger might be of more immediate concern. He looked back.

  He'd been right the first time. Strange's face was turned toward Howard. He looked absolutely furious. He'd managed to thrash into a prone position while dying, but the silver hilt projecting from the middle of his back showed that dying was certainly what he'd done.

  The transformer on the far left of the line shorted out. The one next to it went a heartbeat later, and when the third failed it showered the room with blobs of flaming tar. One of them slapped the mica window, and shattered it like a bomb.

  "Can you please untie me, Howard?" asked the girl in his arms. "Though the way things are starting to happen in here, maybe that could wait till we're outside."

  "Right!" said Howard. "Right!"

  He paused to shrug off what was left of the caftan; it had started to burn as well. Somehow he couldn't get concerned about what the guards thought of him now.

  ***

  Because he and Genie were going to be gone for at least three weeks and a fourth besides if the Chinese authorities agreed to open Tibet to Strangeco- which they would; Howard Jones wasn't called the Swashbuckler of Fast Food for nothing-Howard stopped by the mansion's former garage for a moment. He liked to, well, keep an eye on how things were going.

  He'd had the big room cleaned and nearly Emptied immediately after the wedding, but he still smelled the bitterness of burned insulation. He supposed it was mostly in his mind by now.

  Genie'd wanted to tear the garage down completely since it held nothing but bad memories for her, but she'd agreed to let Howard keep the room so long as he'd had the door into her old suite welded shut. She wasn't the sort of girl to object to the whim of the man who'd saved her life; besides, she loved her husband.

  Howard went to the skeletal apparatus on the one ra
ck remaining in the room. Three hair-fine filaments were still attached to the top edge of a piece of mica no bigger than a quarter.

  Howard bent to peer into it. If you looked carefully at the right times, you could see images in the mica.

  The focus wandered. Howard hadn't tried to adjust the apparatus himself or let anybody else take a look at it. Mostly all there was to see was snow, but this time he was in luck.

  The peephole looked out at the spring where couples used to cavort. Wally was there with his entourage, checking the generating turbine he'd built to power the first electric lights in his new home. If Howard understood the preparations he'd seen going on in the royal palace last week, telephones were about to follow.

  When Wally turned with a satisfied expression, Howard waved. He knew the little fellow couldn't see him, but it made Howard feel he was sort of keeping in touch. Wally walked out of the image area surrounded by courtiers.

  Howard checked his watch and sighed; he needed to get moving. He'd promised the company fencing team that he and Genie would at least drop in on their match with Princeton. After Howard instituted morning unity-building fencing exercises throughout Strangeco, a number of the employees had become fencing enthusiasts.

  Howard took a last look at the pool in the other world. He'd never seen Wally take a sip of the water, and it didn't seem likely that he ever would.

  After all, a powerful wizard like Master Popple had to beat off beautiful women with a stick.

  Smokie Joe

  I've recently begun writing big-budget fantasy novels. The first question interviewers ask me is almost invariably, "Why did you switch from military SF to fantasy?"

  The truth-as this volume proves-is that I started out writing fantasy. After I got back from Southeast Asia in 1971 I had first-hand knowledge of war and the military. I used that background in science fiction stories which eventually (and I mean eventually) got me a name for writing military SF; but I love fantasy, and I've never stopped writing it.

  A British writer and editor, Michel Parry, edited a number of interesting original (or partly original) horror and fantasy anthologies in the 1970s. These didn't pay a lot-I believe everything I sold Michel was at a penny a word-but they were sales (and to real publishers like Mayflower and Star) at a time when there were very few outlets in the US for fantasy. (More places in the US would buy SF. For the most part I got rejections from them, but there were at least magazines to which I could send my stories.)

  One of Michel's odder endeavors was to edit Devil's Kisses and More Devil's Kisses, anthologies of erotic horror stories, under the name Linda Lovecraft-the trademark of a chain of British sex shops. My understanding is that Linda Lovecraft, like Juan Valdez, was the figment of a marketing weasel's imagination; I recall Michel saying that he'd wondered if he was going to have to appear in court in drag and a blond wig after the raid.

  We'll get to the raid later.

  Michel asked me to submit to the second volume; I wrote "Smokie Joe." (The idiosyncratic spelling "smokie" seemed right for the character. I don't know why.) There's sex in it, but I don't want to meet the person who gets an erotic thrill from this one.

  "Smokie Joe" is a deal-with-the-Devil story (set in Joliet, Illinois, though the setting isn't crucial to the plot). My problem with most of the genre is that the Devil doesn't come through as really evil. My Devil is evil; and I don't trivialize evil, especially since I came back from Viet Nam.

  Michel sent me a copy of More Devil's Kisses hot off the presses. That was a good thing, because no sooner had the book hit the newsstands than the police impounded all copies on an obscenity complaint and briefly locked up the in-house editor. The charges were dropped when the publisher (Corgi) pulped the whole edition.

  Because the matter didn't go to trial, there's no certainty as to which precise matters were the subject of the complaint. The best bet is that the Chris Miller piece had caused the problem, but that was a reprint from a magazine which had been sold in Britain without objection. The only other evidence is that when the book was brought out in Germany, two stories were dropped; Miller's and "Smokie Joe."

  I've not only been banned in Britain, I've been banned in Germany too.

  It was Saturday night but Tom Mullens' numbers parlor was as still as the morgue Big Tom expected to grace the next day. He was sweating. He pretended not to, thinking that it would be read as fear by the three sets of eyes trained on him across the counting table; but the drops runneled out of his still-dark curls and down his beefy face. He had always bragged that his two knobbly fists made him a match for any cheap gunman. Tullio's boys didn't work cheap, and Big Tom's throat had clogged with the old boast when he saw the cratered offal their Uzis had left of seven of his runners.

  Lod Mahoney couldn't have cared less about Mullens' sweat: his eyes were blind and staring with his own fear. Lod was a paunchy, balding fifty-five, the armpits and long sleeves of his white shirt moist but his bow tie still a neat dark band of respectability. He had stayed this final, terrible week with Big Tom not out of loyalty but because he was only the bookkeeper he appeared to be. Criminal in his associations, not his instincts, Lod did not know how to run.

  If Big Tom looked a boar at bay, his son Danny had the sulky nervousness of a well-whipped dog. His eyes darted back and forth among the others in the room, excited to be where he had never before been allowed, but pettish to know that it was only because his father did not trust him loose. Danny's adolescent face was an armature for the conflicting emotions his mind threw on it. On Monday gunshots had called him to a window. Memory of what he had seen in the street now dolloped occasional terror onto his expression.

  Across from Big Tom, his hands delicate but almost as dark as the scarred maple on which they lay, smiled Smokie Joe. His goatee bobbled in a humor that no one with him in the room could see. "I can find a couple hard boys," he said in a honey-golden voice, "who can get you out of this yet, Big Tom."

  "What?" Mullens snarled, clenching a fist to wipe away the smirk he was sure underlay the words. But Smokie Joe's calm belied a joke. The black eyes were placid, the perfect features composed beneath the slick black hair."Iceman," Big Tom muttered, but aloud he demanded, "All right, what's the hitch? What does anybody out of a funny farm want to get mixed up with me now?"

  "Oh, well," his slim lieutenant said with the same suave ease that had taken him to the top of Mullens' organization in the brief months since he had appeared. He spread his palms upward. "They'll want a piece of the action, sure. Half of anything they generate after things get straightened around."

  "That's nothing!" Big Tom said, astounded.

  "Tom, they'll be Syndicate-" blurted Mahoney, a new fear stamping itself across his face.

  "Do you think I care?" Mullens shouted. He stood, his eyes flicking to the blinds drawn across windows in which bullet-proof Lexan had replaced the glass. He rolled his arms as if lifting a huge weight to his chest. "I won't look at where help comes from now if it'll take out Tullio," he said. "My grandmother always said she was a witch, you know? When I saw this coming six months ago I opened her spell-book and prayed to the Devil he should help me. And I meant it, by God."

  "Thought it was that simple?" smiled Smokie Joe as he, too, rose to his feet. "One thing, though," he added, leaning forward a little so that his knuckles rested on the table."You've got a choice, Big Tom. But after you choose, there's no going back… Do you understand?"

  "I won't go back on my word," Mullens said. He took a deep breath because Smokie Joe seemed to have grown, to bulk huge in the artificial light. "I swear on my mother's grave."

  "On your soul, Tom Mullens," demanded the honeyed voice.

  "I swear on my soul."

  "What the Hell do you think-" Danny Mullens began, but Smokie Joe's contempt froze him at his father's side.

  "Hold your tongue when men talk, boy," Joe sneered. Then, to the entrance-way door that should have been guarded by slack-faced Rudy Luscher, he called, "Come on in, boys."r />
  The door opened. Both the figures standing there were tall and dressed with the greasy casualness of back-yard mechanics. One was thin and pale, the other a squat giant whose stumpy legs gave him the build of a dwarf twice magnified. "Nick, Angelo; meet Big Tom Mullens, your new employer," said Joe, his hand indicating the newcomers with the grace of an emcee bringing on the star turn.

  "Where the fuck is Rudy?" Big Tom asked. "Drunk, asleep…" the giant shrugged.

  "If yourpeoplewereanygood, youwouldn'tneedus."Hisvoicewasincongruously as sweet as a chapel bell. "You want us to take out Tullio, Mr. Mullens?"

  "Goddamned right," Mullens agreed with an angry nod. "Any way you can."

  "And we're part of your organization afterwards," the corpse-pale newcomer added. Neither of them had any expression in their eyes."We get half of anything we bring in, and you give us a free hand."

  "I already said so!"Big Tom blazed."Now, do you stand here all night waiting for Tullio to set up one last hit?"

  Smokie Joe broke in with a laugh that chilled the room."Oh, don't worry about Tullio. Not after tomorrow morning."He was still laughing when Nick and Angelo turned and left the room. They closed the door very gently behind them.

  ***

  The black Cadillac got a final dab before Tullio's chauffeur folded the chamois and stepped back. Every Sunday morning he parked squarely in front of St Irenaeus to let out two bodyguards and his employer: Tullio had not missed mass or made confession in thirty-seven years. By now people knew not to take Tullio's place at the curb. People knew-or they learned, like the owner of the red VW was going to learn. The chauffeur spat a gobbet that dribbled down the suitcase lashed like a dorsal fin to the Volkswagen's roof.

  The small bomb behind the altar of St Irenaeus rattled the Sunday quiet and shivered the rose window on the street side. The chauffeur's jaw trembled. He dropped the cloth and jumped in to crank the big, silent engine of the Cadillac. The church doors slammed back, the bodyguards fanning to right and left with pistols in their hands. Tullio stumbled out behind them, his thin face yellow except where spatters of the priest's blood had marked it. The trio scuttled down the steps, their eyes darting about the street like lizards' tongues. Ruthless elbows and gun butts had ripped the gangsters through shocked churchgoers, but now the doors spilled out net-veiled women and men in dark suits.