Another contingent of guests has arrived among whom I recognize American narcotics agens. One of them is talking with a Mexican lawyer. "I feel so sorry for these American boys in jail here for the cocaina," the lawyer says. "And for the girls, even sorrier. I do what I can to get them out but it is most difficult. Our laws are very strict. Much stricter than yours."
In a search booth, which is also one of the booths at Lupita's party, a naked American girl with two uniformed police. The General and the lawyer enter from a door at the rear of the booth. One of the cops points to a packet of cocaine on a shelf. "She have it in her pussee, señores." Ata gesture from the General the cops exit, grinning like monkeys.
"We feel so sorry for your pussee—frozen in the snow," says the General taking off his pants. "I am the beeg thaw."
A giggling macho pulls aside a curtain in front of the booth. "Good pussee, cabrones?"
Two Chapultepec blondes nudge each other and chant in unison: "Isn't he marvelous? Never repeats himself."
The macho pulls aside the curtain of the next booth. "He fuck her in the dry hole."
"Never repeats himself."
In the end booth Ah Pook, the Mayan God of Death, is fucking the young Corn God. As the curtains are jerked aside they reach orgasm and the young Corn God is spattered with black spots of decay. A nitrous haze like vaporized fish steams off their bodies. The macho gasps, coughs, and drops dead of a heart attack.
"Never repeats himself."
Lupita gestures. Indian servants load the body onto a stretcher and carry it out. The party resumes at an even more hectic pace. The gas released by the copulations of life and death acts on the younger guests like catnip. They strip off their clothes, rolling around on mattresses which are spread out on the floor by wooden-faced servants. They exchange masks and do stripteases with scarves while others roll on their backs, legs in the air, applauding with their feet.
The Iguana touched my arm. "Will you and your two helpers please come with me? We have matters to discuss in private."
She led us through a side door and down a long corridor to an elevator. The elevator opened onto a short hall at the end of which was another door. She motioned us into a large loft apartment furnished in Moroccan and Mexican style with rugs, low table, a few chairs, and couches. I declined a drink but accepted a joint.
"The postcard vendor tells me you can help us locate John Everson," I began
She nodded. I remembered that I had not heard her brother say anything. He had nodded and smiled when we were introduced. He sat beside her now on a low couch looking serene rather than bored. Jim, Kiki, and I sat opposite in three cedar chairs from Santa Fe.
"We have many places here...." A wave of her hand brought the benzoin smell of New Mexico into the room. "It was a lovely place but they had to spoil it with their idiotic bombs. Oh yes, John Everson ... such a nice boy, modern and convenient. You found him so, of course?" She turned to her brother, who smiled and licked his lips. "Well, he is in Durango with relatives ... in excellent condition, considering the transfer of identities. Such operations may leave the patient a hospital case for months. This generally means that the operations has not been skillfully performed, or that discordant entities have been lodged in the same body....
"In Everson's case, there have been no complications. We had to give the Mexican identity sufficient time for a transfer to take place. Now it only remains to blend the two and he will recover his own identity, with fluent Spanish and a knowledge of rural Mexico which will be useful in his profession.
"In this case, the two identities are so similar that there will be no disharmony. And the spirit of El Gringo now has a home. He could not enter the cycle of rebirth because his karma required a duplicate death. This was done by electric brain stimulation which seems completely real to the patient. As you know, a difficulty in organ transplants is that they are rejected as a foreign body. Drugs must be administered to suspend the rejection. In this case, the shared experience of being hanged will dissolve the rejection that would otherwise occur, giving rise to the phenomenon of multiple personalities, where only one personality can occupy the body at one time. The hanging experience acts as a solvent. The two personalities will blend into one. John Everson will contact his parents, and tell them that he suffered a lapse of memory owing to a light concussion but is now completely recovered."
I leaned back. "Well, that wraps that case up."
"You have been retained to act against the Countess...thirty thousand dollars. Does that seem enough to you?"
"Well, considering what we are expected to do—no."
"And considering that you are all inexperienced and susceptible, this is virtually a suicide mission. I am prepared to retain you at a fair price and provide contacts which will give you at least some chance of success."
She led the way into a bare room with chairs, a long table, and filing cabinets along one wall. I recognized the room as a replica of the room in back of the postcard vendor's shop. She went to the filing cabinet and handed me a short pamphlet bound in heavy parchment. On the cover in red letters:
CITIES OF THE RED NIGHT
Book Two
Cities of the Red Night
The Cities of the Red Night were six in number: Tamaghis, Ba'dan, Yass-Waddah, Waghdas, Naufana, and Ghadis. These cities were located in an area roughly corresponding to the Gobi Desert, a hundred thousand years ago. At that thime the desert was dotted with large oases and traversed by a river which emptied into the Caspian Sea.
The largest of these oases contained a lake ten miles long and five miles across, on the shores of which the university town of Waghdas was founded. Pilgrims came from all over the inhabited world to study in the academies of Waghdas, where the arts and sciences reached peaks of attainment that have never been equaled. Much of this ancient knowledge is now lost.
The towns of Ba'dan and Yass-Waddah were opposite each other on the river. Tamaghis, located in a desolate area to the north on a small oasis, could properly be called a desert town. Naufana and Ghadis were situated in mountainous areas to the west and south beyond the perimeter of usual trade routes between the other cities.
In addition to the six cities, there were a number of villages and nomadic tribes. Food was plentiful and for a time the population was completely stable: no one was born unless someone died.
The inhabitants were divided into an elite minority known as the Transmigrants and a majority known as the Receptacles. Within these categories were a number of occupational and specialized strata and the two classes were not in practice separate. Transmigrants acted as Receptacles and Receptacles became Transmigrants.
To show the system in operation: Here is an old Transmigrant on his deathbed. He has selected his future Receptacle parents, who are summoned to the death chamber. The parents then copulate, achieving orgasm just as the old Transmigrant dies so that his spirit enters the womb to be reborn. Every Transmigrant carries with him at all times a list of alternative parents, and in case of accident, violence, or sudden illness, the nearest parents are rushed to the scene. However, there was at first little chance of random or unexpected deaths since the Council of Transmigrants in Waghdas had attained such skill in the art of prophecy that they were able to chart a life from birth to death and determine in most cases the exact time and manner of death.
Many Transmigrants preferred not to wait for the infirmities of age and the ravages of illness, lest their spirit be so weakened as to be overwhelmed and absorbed by the Receptacle child. These hardy Transmigrants, in the full vigor of maturity, after rigorous training in concentration and astral projection, would select two death guides to kill them in front of the copulating parents. The methods of death most commonly employed were hanging and strangulation, the Transmigrant dying in orgasm, which was considered the most reliable method of ensuring a successful transfer. Drugs were also developed, large doses of which occasioned death in erotic convulsions, smaller doses being used to enhance sexual pleasure. And these drugs were often used in conjunction with other forms of death.