Dinner at Deviant's Palace (29 page)

There was a collage of smells—hot metal, mildew, bad teeth—and then the tunnel narrowed to a small ragged opening that he had to scramble up a slope to get to, and then he’d squeezed through it and leaped clear and was rolling on cold, gritty,
normal
pavement.

He scrambled to his feet and for a moment he was tempted to bless himself as his mother had taught him decades ago, for here, separated from him by only one high-arching canal bridge, and beyond that an ascending flight of steps, was Deviant’s Palace itself.

T
ALL RIDES WHIRLED OUT
front, glaringly lit, as was the building itself, by apparently genuine electric lights that cast a multicolored noon radiance over the waterfront. A big incandescent orange sign crawled across the front of the edifice, and even as Rivas read it, dizzy with incredulity, he wondered if it could have been put up solely for his own benefit, for the words were in the complicated old-time spelling:

DEVIANT’S PALACE

Steaks, Unconventional Seafood, Progressive Cocktails

Meditation Chapel! Petting Zoo! Souvenir Shop!

GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS!

Explicit Scenes & Offensive Sounds

A million big flying bugs were battering themselves against the glowing glass tubes.

The stories he’d heard had prepared him for the size of the place—it was huge, stretching away out of sight in either direction, and six or seven stories tall in some places—but had not quite prepared him for the lunacy of the architecture. Everything was rounded or tapering out to spiny points; there were no planes or right angles, and the lavishly applied stucco had the appearance of leathery hide. The many unsymmetrical windows and doors were inset, in arches so ragged and so randomly placed that they seemed to have been made by firing cannons at the walls from within—though each window was covered by an intricately worked grille; a profusion of apparently ornamental arches gave the place a morbidly skeletal appearance, which was not entirely relieved by the hundreds of banners and giant pinwheels and weathervanes. Most of the windows glowed with colored light, and the big front doors were wide open and spilling out a loud two-toned singing, not unlike the Jaybirds’ mind-blurring hum.

Rivas ran trembling fingers through his hair and took the invitation out of his pocket. This must be the place, he thought, and started forward. He walked slowly, for each step required an individual choice between continuing and fleeing.

At the top of the bridge he paused to look around. Deviant’s Palace, he saw, was the hub of a dozen canals, which all disappeared inside the place through high arches. He descended the far side of the bridge and approached the stairs.

A fat, hooded person scrambled out of a manhole in front of him and blocked his way. In glowing letters on the person’s robe front was spelled out: I GOT MY ASHES HAULED AT DEVIANT’S PALACE. “Sorry, sir, invitation only tonight,” piped up a sexless voice.

Rivas held up his invitation.

The hooded figure peered at it in the bright electric light. “Well, excuse me, the guest of honor! Just head right on in—you’re expected.”

The situation had already had a fever-dream unreality to it, but this grotesque courtesy totally disoriented Rivas. “Thank you,” he said, and as he went up the steps he actually caught himself wishing he’d shaved.

From overhead he heard a windy sighing, and looking up he saw the wooden gargoyles he’d once heard described. They were writhing and stretching out splintery arms and rolling their heads. Rivas had been told that when the things cried out it was with human voices, but tonight it was just a whispery roaring that he heard, like the voices of the trash men in Irvine.

Through the open doors he could see a carpeted hallway. He shrugged and stepped inside.

In a loop of a canal a few hundred feet from the structure, ripples spread as a corpse drained of blood floated to the surface.

That’s a little better, thought the thing under the water. I can think a little more clearly now. So he thinks he can lose me by going into that place, does he? Think again, Gregorio.

It swam closer, already faintly uncomfortable with the burning and itching, in spite of the shielding water around it. He
knows
I hate these places, it thought. That’s why he keeps going to them. But once I’ve got him, we’ll go where
I
want to go.

It looked back and up at the floating corpse, wishing the old drunk had had more vitality. That’s what I need, it thought. If I could drain somebody strong, then I could become so strong myself, and solid, that I could simply beat Rivas into submission.

The thing shivered with pleasure at the thought.

Well, it told itself, get moving. You don’t want Rivas to die before you can catch up to him. It kicked its froggy feet and swam toward one of the arches in the wall of Deviant’s Palace.

Another hooded figure approached Rivas as soon as he’d entered the low hall.

“We meet again, Mister Rivas!” came a woman’s voice from inside the cowl. “The Lord will be pleased that you could attend on such short notice.” The hood was flung back and Sister Sue smiled crazily at him. “You should be flattered,” she said. “He nearly never troubles himself to invite anyone. Generally he just lets them
drift
west.”

Rivas had managed to control, and, he hoped, conceal, his instant impulse to run. Right at the moment, he told himself firmly, there are many more dire things to fear than this girl. “Well hello, Sister Sue,” he said, deciding he might as well enter into the spirit of the evening. “Uh… what an unexpected pleasure.”

With a clever but completely unconvincing imitation of vivacity she took his arm and led him up the hall. “During our brief acquaintance,” she said, “I’ve gathered that you’re fond of music and drink.” The former, as you perceive, is provided.” Evidently she meant the two-tone hum. “Might we furnish you with some of the latter?”

All at once the whole awkwardly stilted pretense, from the calligraphic invitation to Sister Sue’s nearly impenetrable imitation of high society speech, made Rivas vaguely sick. “Yes, thanks,” he said tiredly. “Tequila neat, please.” At least the offer of a drink was an indication that they didn’t intend to hit him with the sacrament. The smell of the sea seemed to be even stronger inside the building.

She led him down the hall to a flight of stairs and down these to a beautifully tiled but lopsided arch, and simultaneously a drink was put into his hand and he stepped through the arch.

He nearly dropped the glass. He was standing on a sort of dock at the bottom of a vast cathedral of a chamber, and he almost thought he was outside again because of the damp chill and a faint mist that made the ceiling hard to see. Colored lamps dangling on long chains set the mist aglow and cast highlights on the broad and apparently deep pool that was most of the floor. Wide tiers with tables and chairs on them ringed the ascending walls at uneven intervals, and bridges spanned the gulf in several places. The arch Rivas had walked out through was the smallest of at least a dozen that ringed the chamber, and with a thrill of panic Rivas realized that the whole place looked inadequately supported—the tiers, the bridges, the vast expanses of inward-sloping stone far above his head; the structure, it seemed to Rivas, needed many more pillars.

Big polygonal rafts drifted on the surface of the lagoon like leaves on a pond, and as Rivas’s eyes grew accustomed to the soaring volume of the place and able to focus on smaller things, he saw that there were chairs and a table and candles, and in most cases a party of diners, on each raft. Waiters in little gondolas sculled among them, occasionally raising waves and drawing curses from the diners.

One raft held steady, perhaps anchored, way out in the middle of the lagoon, and instead of a table it had a ring of holes cut in it. All the holes were empty except the bigger central one, in which bobbed something that Rivas thought was a leather beanbag chair. The smell on the chilly air, he noticed, was the same one he’d encountered in Irvine—a mix of fish and garbage.

Sister Sue rang a bell mounted on the arch beside them, and though the silvery note wasn’t loud, conversation stopped at all the tables. The monotonous singing stopped too, and the thing Rivas had thought was a beanbag chair straightened up, revealing itself to be the unsubmerged top half of a man—bald, brown, and fatter than Rivas would have thought a person could get.

“Mister Rivas,” came a glutinous whisper that echoed among the canal arches. “So good of you to come.” And Rivas realized that this must be his host, Norton Jaybush himself, Lord of Irvine and Venice,

Rivas remembered the drink in his hand, and took a sip of it. It was tequila all right, and the peppery bite of it was reassuring, evidence that a sane world did still exist somewhere outside. “Mister Jaybush, I think,” he said loudly; but when his voice echoed back at him he realized that he could speak in a conversational tone and still be heard throughout the enormous chamber—evidently the place had been built with acoustics in mind. “Or should I say Mister Sevatividam? High time we met.” Cool, he thought with some cautious satisfaction. Very cool.

One of the gondolas swept up to the dock, and the boatman’s pole flexed as he brought the boat to a halt. With a smile, Rivas solicitously took Sister Sue’s elbow as if to help her aboard, but she smiled back—with such joyful malice that his smile became a wince—and said, “You first, brother.”

The boatman held the gondola steady while Rivas maneuvered himself and his drink into it, and then Sister Sue swung in behind him. She prodded his back with something hard, and said cheerfully, “The Lord wants you alive, so I won’t shoot to kill—but if you want to mess around, I’ll be happy to ruin your elbow.”

“I’m sure it’d get you all excited,” Rivas agreed.

Again the gondolier flexed the long pole against the pool wall, and the little boat surged smoothly out onto the face of the water. They passed a raft of diners, and Rivas glanced at them curiously. They were an oddly mixed lot—some were just filthy Blood freaks that somebody had dressed up in tinfoil hats and red monkey jackets, but others had the narrow faces and elegant dinner clothes of aristocracy—but for some reason the faces of all the alert ones wore expressions of alarm as they returned Rivas’s stare.

Though he was keeping his face twisted in a smile that he hoped looked more confident than nervous, he was estimating how many ways there might be to get out of here. Somehow the idea of drawing his knife and using Jaybush as a hostage didn’t seem feasible; the man was far too fat to be moved readily, and touching him would probably subject one to an unsought dose of the sacrament. Sue, and no doubt others too, had guns, so swimming back to the dock entrance was out. But these arches obviously connected this lagoon to the canals outside. It might be possible to swim out through one of them.

And in through one of the eastern arches a thing came swimming, several yards under the water’s surface, its big eyes peering at the wobbling patches of light overhead. It paused, its head turning on its stalk neck as it scanned the many rafts up there.

The gondola was nearing Jaybush’s raft, and Rivas reluctantly met the gaze of his host. The man’s eyes were nearly hidden in folds of fat, but Rivas could see mild humor in them, as though Jaybush was finding tonight’s proceedings tolerably amusing. A parent attending a school play, thought Rivas.

“You’ve learned some things, sir,” Jaybush rumbled. “But be careful. Knowledge is a toxin. Why, just the fact of your having spoken my true name means that quite a number of these people must die tonight.” A smile widened the huge pumpkin head as Jaybush looked around at the many rafts. Rivas was a little surprised that none of the diners did anything more than look unhappy at this hews.

The gondola bumped up alongside the raft. “Out you go, brother,” said Sister Sue.

Rivas finished his drink, leaned out and set the glass down on the wooden surface of the raft, and then managed to follow it without falling into the water. He crouched awkwardly on the raft, hoping that everyone couldn’t see how it made him tremble to be this close to the thing called Jaybush.

There was, he could see now, a submerged chair hung below each of the round holes cut in Jaybush’s raft. “Do please be seated,” his host told him.

“Uh… right. Thanks.” Rivas lowered himself into one, now feeling ridiculous as well as scared. The water was cold.

Sister Sue climbed out of the gondola with effortless agility and slithered into another hole across the raft from him. Her smile was as sunny as ever, and she held an automatic pistol with relaxed familiarity.

Jaybush, bobbing in the big central hole like some disagreeable centerpiece, beamed at him. “Well!” said the Messiah. “As you say, it is high time we met. I believe, in fact, sir, that you know me better than anyone else does. A number of people have taken both Blood and the sacrament, but you are the very first, I believe, to have developed procedures to shield yourself from their effects! Even in,” he paused to wink ponderously, “
other places
, no one ever attained the insight into my nature that you have.”

Rivas grinned unhappily, for he’d just recognized an important reason for his having accepted the invitation—to show off. He had wanted to let this interstellar limpet eel know that he had indeed learned its secrets. If he had simply ignored the invitation and gone back to Ellay, not only would Uri be doomed, but Sevatividam would think Rivas hadn’t been bright enough to figure the invitation out.

“Do you see the men with rifles on the small rafts around the pool’s periphery?” Jaybush went on. “They are, like the jaybush you encountered at the Cerritos Stadium, deaf. Not for the same reason, but just so that, in case the very direst sort of secrets are revealed here tonight, requiring the deaths of all hearers except myself and conceivably you, I won’t be left unattended.” He caught Rivas’s glance at Sister Sue. “Yes, my boy,” Jaybush said, “even our dear Sister Sue will have to die if certain things are spoken aloud.”

Sister Sue’s smile didn’t falter.

Rivas discovered that he was not tempted to shout, for example,
He’s a psychic vampire from outer space!
… and he thought he caught a glint of surprise in her eyes.