Summer 2007 (8 page)

SM:
Sadly we also don’t have time to
discuss the rumors of a toe fetish.

JS:
: Yeah, well…

NS:
It was all breasts and feet with him.

JS:
: One thing we can
say about Ten Toes and Others is that apparently the Post Office has filed a
suit to stop its publication on the grounds that it’s just too damn heavy to
deliver. But again, we’re out of time.

NS:
Do have time enough
just for a quick toast?

JS:
: A toast! Yes!

NS:
To my
Uncle Godfrey.

JS:
: To Uncle Godfrey: May his lap be forever free
for small children.

NS
&
SM:
Hear, hear.

JS:
:
Thank you everyone, thank you for coming.

– END TRANSCRIPT
—

Fiction:
Carnival Knowledge: a Lucifer Jones Story by Mike
Resnick

I wandered north and east until I finally came to Los
Blancos, which had two hotels, three restaurants, a whorehouse, and five bars,
none of which felt inclined to extend credit to a man of the cloth. I finally
got a grubstake together when I taught some of the locals a little game what
had to do with statistical probabilities and the number 21. It was when they
became more interested in the number 54, which was how many cards there were in
the deck once you counted the two aces that slipped out of my shirtsleeve at a
most inopportune time that I felt a need to take my leave of that fair
metropolis, and the sooner the better.

I’d won just enough money to buy passage with an
itinerant bush pilot, whose profession was sadly misnamed as there wasn’t a
single bush aboard his little three-seater. I figgered I might as well go to
Buenos Aires, since I was in Argentina anyway, but he explained that this was
carnival week in Rio, and that’s where people from all over South America was
headed, and I figured if
they
were going to Rio probably their money was
going along with them, and I just might get my hands on enough contributions,
freely given and otherwise, to finally get around to building the Tabernacle of
Saint Luke–and even if not, there had to be a passel of fallen women in
serious need of salvation, and taking the sins of fallen women unto myself was
one of the things I did best, me being one of God’s personal representatives.

“Tell me about this here carnival,” I said after I
agreed to let him take me there. “Got a lot of sideshow games of chance in it?”

“No, Senor,” he replied.

“Elephants and lions and other trained critters like
that?”

“Certainly not, Senor.”

“Well,” I said, “we can play guessing games all the way
to Rio, or you can tell me what makes carnival week different from any other
time of year.”

“Everyone dresses up in costumes, and they march through
the streets, and everywhere there are bands and dancing. The whole city is
filled with revelers.”

It sounded a lot more like a costume party than a
carnival, but I didn’t want to disagree with him, especially not at 7,000 feet
of altitude and no parachute, so I just sat back and started making plans. I
figured I’d go dressed as a preacher what had been stuck in the South American
outback for a couple of months, which would at least save me the cost of a
costume, and with people coming from all over the continent, there figured to
be enough sinners for me to get right down to the business of saving souls,
since if you’re going to save sinners you just naturally got to go to where
they all congregate, and when the pilot started describing some of the ladies’
costumes, which sure as shooting sounded a lot more like the ladies’ lack of
costumes, I knew that I’d somehow lucked out and was going to the very best
place to find a bunch of blackened souls what was in serious need of some spiritual
soap and water.

“Not only is it Carnival,” he continued as this great
big city came into view, “but if you are lucky you will have the opportunity to
see the Pebbles of God.”

“I speak to God every day,” I said, “and He ain’t never
mentioned no pebbles to me. You make ‘em sound like they’re mighty special, at
least as pebbles go.”

“That is merely the name for them, Senor,” said the
pilot. “They are actually a matched set of perfect blue-white diamonds.”

“You don’t say? Worth a lot, are they?”

“A king’s ransom,” he answered. “Maybe an emperor’s.”

“And they’re going to be on display during this here
costume party?” I asked.

“They won’t be out on the street with the revelers, of
course,” he explained. “But they have been moved to the Presidential Palace
under heavy guard where certain select dignitaries will be allowed to view
them.”

“How do these here dignitaries get themselves selected?”
I said.

He shrugged, which damned near sent the plane into a
tailspin. “Who knows, Senor?” And then he added, kind of suspiciously, “Why do
you ask?”

“Well, Brother,” I said, “as a man of the cloth, I
figger I might be offended by all the drinking and scanty costumes and the
like. I kind of yearn for something more sedate, like admiring works of art.”

“There is an excellent art museum on San Paulo Street,”
he offered.

I shook my head. “Probably filled to overflowing with
paintings of shameless naked women,” I said. “No, I think I’d better stick to
admiring God’s marbles.”

“The Pebbles of God,” he corrected me.

“Whatever,” I said with a shrug.

Then he got busy landing the plane, and the conversation
kind of lay there like a dead groundhog, and finally we bumped down–I was
going to say that we touched down, but I wouldn’t want my Silent Partner to strike
me dead for lying to you–and I got out of the plane and wandered over to
the Customs and Immigration shed, which was composed of rotting wood and a
leaky roof, and lit by a gas lantern.

“Welcome to Rio,” said a uniformed man with a bushy
mustache and a toothy smile.

“Glad to be here, Brother,” I said. “Which way to the
diamonds?”

“It is the wrong time of year,” he said apologetically.
“We do not play baseball during Carnival.”

“Okay, then,” I said. “Just point out the Presidential
Palace and I’ll be on my way.”

“I am afraid no one is allowed in or out of the palace
since the robbery, Senor,” he told me.

“What robbery are you referring to?” I asked, hoping
that it was something trivial, like maybe someone stealing Mrs. President.

“The Pebbles of God, Senor,” he said. “You have heard of
them?”

“Once or twice,” I said. “What happened?”

“I do not know, Senor,” he replied. “I have been at my
station all day. But we received word about an hour ago that an incredibly
brazen thief somehow got past all our security and stole the Pebbles. They are
searching the city for him even as we speak, but with Carnival going on…” He
shrugged. “Ah, well. We have the finest police force in the world. I’m sure
that eventually they will apprehend the thief and recover the diamonds. Now
then, Senor, have you anything to declare?”

“Just that I’m as outraged as you are, and that Satan’s
probably warming up a seat in hell for him even as you and I shoot the breeze,”
I said.

“I mean, have you anything to declare for Customs?”

“No,” I answered. “Us men of the cloth travel light.” I
showed him my wallet, which was empty, since I’d put what little money I had
left inside my shoe.

“Thank you, Senor,” he said, looking at it and handing
it back to me. “By the way, your driver’s license expired nineteen years ago.”

“Yeah?” I said, taking a look. “You know, I could have
sworn it was only seventeen years out of date. Thanks for pointing it out to
me.”

Before he could answer I was heading through the airport
and out into the street, where I caught a double-decker bus and headed off
toward the center of town. I figured since the Pebbles of God were no longer
available, the least I could do was join the party that seemed to be going on
all around me, and maybe share a little carnival knowledge with an obliging
lady of quality.

Everywhere I looked people were wearing costumes (or in
the case of some of the young ladies, not quite wearing them), and they all were
smiling and laughing and dancing the samba, which for them of you what ain’t
never seen it is a kind of rhythmic form of palsy where you take a ton of steps
but don’t get nowhere.

The bus was slowing down for a corner when my eyes fell
on the prettiest morsel of femininity I ever did see. She had long black hair
flowing down to her waist, and the kind of figure that made you think she had
room for an extra set of lungs, and her hips were vibrating like unto a
rattlesnake about to strike. I couldn’t quite figure out her costume, but
mostly it looked like a naked lady covered with gold and silver glitter and
maybe a set of false eyelashes and not a hell of a lot more.

I hopped off the bus and made my way through the dancers
right up to her side.

“Howdy, ma’am,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind this
intrusion, but I got to tell you that your beauty done dazzled me from afar, so
I thunk I’d come on over and let it dazzle me from close up.”

She flashed me a smile that would have made me bay at
the moon if I could have spotted it amidst all the balloons and confetti.

“You are rich Americano, no?” she said in the most
beautiful feminine voice.

“Yeah, that’s me,” I said, because I figured hitting
.500 already put me ahead of Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb.

“I am Conchita,” she said. “You put me in movies,
maybe?”

“Sure, I’ll be happy to,” I said, making a mental note
to buy a little eight-millimeter camera the next morning, and maybe purchase
some film in a month or two, after all the tourists went back home and the
prices began dropping.

Well, we got to talking, and one thing led to another,
and before long Conchita had samba’d her way to a little hotel on a side
street, and then she samba’d up the stairs, and then she samba’d into the big
double bed, and sometime during the night while I was snoring peacefully she
samba’d back out and about an hour before sunrise she samba’d in back and brung
her six brothers with her. One of ‘em looked like Primo Carnera, only meaner,
and he was the runt of the litter. She introduced us and asked me to name the
date, and I told her I couldn’t rightly remember but I thunk we were in June,
or maybe April, or possibly October, and she laughed musically and said that
she didn’t mean today’s date, she meant the date for our nuptials.

The whole family seemed mildly upset when I explained
that offering to buy a cheap camera didn’t constitute a bonafide proposal of
marriage back where I came from. Then she started crying, and her brothers
began ripping the room apart and looking like they was about to leave the room
alone and start in on me, so I kind of rushed out the doorway and down the
stairs. By the time I hit the main floor I realized I didn’t know how to get in
touch with Conchita in case she wanted to go out on another date at some point
in the future when everyone had calmed down, but them brothers were thundering
down the stairs so fast that I figured that it was better to have loved and
lost than to have loved and been dismembered, so I took off down the street and
tried to lose myself in the crowd, which was still there and still dancing,
even though the sun was thinking of coming up.

“There he is!” yelled a voice, and I saw that one of
Conchita’s brothers–the one with steel teeth and hobnailed
boots–had spotted me. I raced down an alley, turned onto the next street,
damned near bumped into the brother who carried a hand axe for comfort, spun
around, and headed off in a new direction. Before long all six of ‘em was hot
on my tail, and the only thing that saved me was that the crowd was getting
thicker and thicker, and none of us could make much headway.

Finally I spotted a big building where a bunch of gents
in sparkling white suits and ladies in sparkling pink skins were gathering, and
I made a bee-line for the door. I don’t think Conchita’s brothers saw me,
because they were no more than fifteen seconds behind me, and no one entered
the place for the next half minute. I looked around, and saw that I was in a
warehouse, and that this was where a bunch of men were getting into their
costumes and a bunch of ladies were getting out of them, so to speak. I
figgered the best way to become incognizant was to put on some of the duds the
men were wearing, but they seem to have brung their own, because big as the
place was I couldn’t find no spare costumes hanging on the walls.

Finally I walked up to one of the men and offered him
five dollars for his sequined tuxedo.

“Ten,” he said.

“Okay, ten.”

“And a date with Jean Harlow,” he added.

“I don’t know Jean Harlow,” I admitted.

“Then the deal’s off,” he said.

“Hang on a minute,” I said. “I know a right friendly
local girl named Conchita.”

“Conchita with all the brothers?” he said. “You and 500
others.” He crossed himself. “Those brothers made short work of at least 490 of
them.”

“That’s why I need a disguise.”