"Thought about it," said Audrey.
"In an abstract sort of way ..." said Jerry.
"Like death and old age ..." said John.
"Doesn't happen to people one knows..." said Audrey feeling like a Fitzgerald character. The sun came out from behind a cloud and filled the room with light.
The Consul leaned forward and spoke in confidential tones. "For example ... for example ... you could work your way home. There's a ship in Piraeus now that can use three deckhands. Any sailing experience?"
"Reef the mizzenmast!" said Audrey.
"Scuttle the bilge!" said John.
"And pour hot tar on the companionway!" said Jerry.
"Good." The Consul wrote something down on a slip of paper and passed it to Audrey. "When you get to The Billy Celeste, ask for Captain Nordenholz."
The boys stood up and said in chorus: "Thank you, Mr. Pierson." They flashed toothpaste smiles.
Mr. Pierson looked down at his desk and said nothing. The boys walked out.
As he stepped out of the office, Audrey got a whiff of that unmistakable hospital smell. A young man in a white coat was chatting with a nurse at the reception desk. A taxi pulled up for them at the door.
In the office, Doctor Pierson picked up the phone: "Doctor Pierson here.... Yes, no question about it." He picked up the slides and studied them. "B-23 all right.... The boy Jerry is obviously the original carrier.... Active? Like a plutonium pile....There is, of course, the uh delicate and sensitive question of differential racial or ethnic susceptibility ... with further research, perhaps ... Could not commit myself on the basis of present findings ... theoretically possible, of course. On the other hand, uncontrolled mutation cannot be ruled out ... sure? How can I be sure? After all it's not in my district."
Late afternoon in the cabin of The Billy Celeste. Audrey and the boys have just signed on.
Skipper Nordenholz glanced down at the names. "Well uh Jerry, Audrey, and John ... you have made a wise choice. I hope you are quite fit?"
"Oh yes, Captain."
"Aye, aye, sir."
"The doctor said we made a remarkable recovery."
"Good. We will be sailing within the hour.... Tunis, Gibraltar ... Lisbon for Halifax. Incidentally, we will be passing the exact spot off the Azores where The Mary Celeste was found in 1872—all sails set, completely undamaged, nobody on board." His green eyes glinted with irony and he smiled slightly and added, "The mystery was never solved."
"Perhaps it was just the basic mystery of life, Skipper," Audrey added cheekily. "Now you see it—now you don't."
Minutes to go
We call ourselves the Destroying Angels. Our target is the rear-end of Yass-Waddah, if it could be said to have one. We feel rather like the Light Brigade. All the bad characters of history are gathered in Yass-Waddah for a last-ditch stand: the Countess de Gulpa, heavy and cold as a fish under tons of gray shale; the Countess de Vile, eyes glowing, face flushed from the ecstasy of torture; the Ugly Spirit; the Black Abbot; and the Council of the Selected—all with their guards and minions and torture chambers. How can we prevail against this wall of icy purpose?
We got the message on the teleflash from Ba'dan. Yass-Waddah has completed nuclear device ahead of schedule. All-out aid requested.
We are still 150 miles from Yass-Waddah. Four days hard marching. We don't have that much time.
We are here because
of you
Woke up in the silent wolf lope. There is the river. No sign of Yass-Waddah. I must be above or below it.
I reach the bank. Across the river I can see the rotting piers and sheds of East Ba'dan. To my right is what remains of a bridge, the upper structure rotted away, leaving only the piles protruding from green water.
I am standing where Yass-Waddah used to be. The water looks green and cold and dirty and curiously artificial, like a diorama in the Museum of Natural History.
A blond boy enters from my right where the bridge used to be, walking on the green-brown water. He moves with a stalking gait as if he were playing some part in a play, mimicking some actor with a touch of parody.
The boy is wearing a white T-shirt with a yellow calligram on the chest surrounded by a circle of yellow light, rainbow-colored at the edges. He is weaing white gym shorts and white tennis shoes.
A dark boy in identical white gym clothes is standing to my left on the bank at the top of a grassy hillock. He has planted a banner in the ground beside him and holds the shaft with one hand. The banner is the calligram in the rainbow circle stirring gently in a wind that ruffles his shorts around smooth white thighs.
The blond boy walks up from the water and stands in front of his dark twin. The dark boys begins to talk in soft flute calls, clean and sweet and joyful with a sound like laughter, wind in the trees, birds at dawn, trickling streams. The blond boy answers in the same language, sweetly inhuman voices from a distant star.
Now I recognize the dark boy as Dink Rivers, the boy from Middletown, and the other as myself. This is a high school play. We have just taken the west side of the river. This is the conquest of Yass-Waddah.
Good evening, our chap. A good crossing. Yass-Waddah disintegrated.
A slow insouciant shrug of rocks and stones and trees spreads a golf course along the river now several hundred yards away. Two caddies stand in a sand trap. One rubs his crotch and the other makes a jack-off gesture. Music from the country club on a gust of wind. Red brick buildings, cobblestone streets. It is getting darker. Dusty ticket booth.
A sign:
The Billy Celeste High School presents:
CITIES OF THE RED NIGHT
I lead the way through rooms stacked with furniture and paintings, passageways, partitions, stairways, booths, cubicles, elevators, ramps and ladders, trunks full of costumes and old weapons, bathtubs, toilets, steam rooms, and rooms open in front....
A boy jacks off on a yellow toilet seat...catcalls and scattered applause.
We are in a cobblestone alley. I look at my companion. He is about eighteen. He has large brown eyes with amber pupils, set to the side of his face, and a long straight Mayan nose. He is dressed in blue-and-brown-striped pants and shirt.
I open a rusty padlock into my father's workshop. We strip and straddle a pirate chest, facing each other. His skin is a deep brownish-purple gray underneath. A sharp musty smell pulses from his erect phallus with its smooth purple head. His eyes converge on me like a lizard's.
"What scene do you want me to act in?"
"Death Baby fucks the Corn God."
We open the chest. He takes out a necklace of crystal skulls and puts it on. There is a reek of decay as he drapes me in the golden flesh of the young Corn God.
We are in a vast loft-attic-gymnasium-warehouse. There are chests and trunks, costumes, mirrors, and makeup. Boys are taking out costumes, trying them on, posing and giggling in front of mirror, moving props and backdrops.
The warehouse seems endless. A maze of rooms and streets, cafés, courtyards and gardens. Farm rooms, with walnut bedsteads and hooked rugs, open onto a pond where boys fish naked on an improvised raft. A Moroccan patio is animated with sand foxes and a boy playing a flute ... stars like wilted gardenias across the blue night sky.
A number of performances are going on at the same time, in many rooms, on many levels. The spectators circulate from one stage to another, putting on costumes and makeup to join a performance and the performers all move from one stage to another. There are moving stages and floats, platforms that descend from the ceiling on pulleys, doors that pop open, and partitions that slide back.
Audrey, naked except for a sailor hat, is tipped back balancing in a chair while he reads a comic book entitled: "Audrey and the Pirates."