Jim glanced up as another triangular formation of UFOs crossed the sky. “I know as well as you do that there’s nothing I can do about it.” He looked back, directly into Hypodermic’s red glowing eyes. “But that’s what I’m asking you, isn’t it? Why the fuck should you want to make me go further? What percentage is there in it for either of us? The only thing you prove is that you can make a drunk and an ex-junkie do what you want. There’s no big trick in that.”
“Did anyone ever tell you you had a destiny?”
Jim’s expression became wary and suspicious. “No, not recently.”
“Maybe that’s something you should ponder on.”
“What are you trying to tell me? That you’re preparing me for some kind of destiny?”
“You wouldn’t believe that?”
“It’d be hard.”
“Some things we keep secret even from ourselves.”
Jim wasn’t letting Hypodermic get away with that piece of obliqueness. “Wait one minute . . . ” But then he was distracted by a sudden shimmer of light some fifty yards down the road. “Now what the hell is that?”
Hypodermic lazily looked around. “Probably one more fool wanting to sell his soul so he can play the damned guitar like Keith Richards. He’s hoping to find Legba, le Maitre Ka-Fu, the Master of the Crossroads, but tonight he’s only going to find disappointment.”
But the figure appearing out of the spinning shimmer was not carrying a guitar. Nothing so mundane. She was nine feet tall, not including her massive headdress of spun gold and ostrich plumes, and she wore a floor-length robe tailored from sheets of frozen flame. Danbhala La Flambeau had arrived at the Crossroads, and now Jim had two Mysteres to contend with instead of just one.
“Ca va, le bon Docteur Piqures?”
Dr. Hypodermic didn’t exactly seem pleased to see his statuesque female counterpart. “We’re talking English here.”
La Flambeau drifted toward them. Her feet didn’t touch the surface of the road. “Are you still torturing that poor boy, Hypodermic?”
“The more I try to reason with him, the more recalcitrant he does become.”
Jim glared at the Doctor. “When did you try reasoning with me, you son of a bitch?”
Hypodermic appealed to La Flambeau. “You see what I mean? Now he calls me a son of a bitch.”
“And what did you expect? The boy had to develop a backbone sooner or later.”
If Jim had been angry before, now he was furious. “Are you telling me this has been no more than some kind of bullshit boot-camp character-building exercise?”
La Flambeau smiled knowingly. “You didn’t really expect to drift through the entire Afterlife getting worthless drunk and telling everyone how you lost your memory and didn’t know which side was up, did you?”
Jim, having already faced Hypodermic, saw no reason to back down to La Flambeau, even though she did seem as formidable and direct as the Doctor was sinister and devious. “But I did lose my memory. There’s still a fuck of a lot of it missing.”
“But you didn’t lose your anger and your passion, did you?”
“I assumed a lot of that stuff was left behind on Earth.”
Now Hypodermic started in on him again. Two against one at the Crossroads. “That’s mainly because you died like a wretched defeated hophead.”
Jim didn’t like the odds at all and he reacted without thinking. “And whose fault was that?”
Both La Flambeau and Hypodermic looked at him sharply. “Yes, whose fault was that?”
Jim realized what he’d said, and all he could do was shrug. “Yeah, I guess I’m the only one who can take the bottom-line rap for that.”
La Flambeau nodded. “That, at least, is progress.”
“Progress toward what?”
“Progress to the kind of attitude you are going to need when you get where you’re going.”
“Where I’m going? There’s some kind of destination to all this?”
“Oh, indeed there is, Jim Morrison.”
Jim had fallen into these kinds of traps before. This new line of the Mysteres ’ was starting to sound like a close neighbor of Doc Holliday’s doctrine of wait and see. “And is anyone going to tell me what it might be? Or do I have to go on twisting in the wind?”
La Flambeau looked at Hypodermic. “Shall I tell him or will you?”
Hypodermic’s jaw clicked. “You tell him. I’ve spent enough time with him not to want to give him the satisfaction.”
La Flambeau smiled at Jim. “The Doctor is famous for his charm both in this world and the last.”
Jim nodded. “I’ve already observed.”
“It’s time for you to move on, Jim Morrison, and learn some new lessons. It’s time for you to visit the Island of the Gods.”
Jim took a step back. “Wait a minute-”
“There’s no time left to wait.”
“I thought time was strictly relative.”
“That doesn’t mean we have it to waste.”
“I’ve always tried to steer clear of the gods.”
“We do tend to limit the choices of humans.”
“I’ve heard things can happen to men who get too close to gods.”
“Things worse even than death?”
“That’s what I heard.”
“So you admit there may be worse things than death?”
“Is this all a subtle way of telling me that I’m going to go whether I like it or not?”
Hypodermic’s eyes glowed like heated coals. “It’s also a subtle way of telling you to be careful. On the Island of the Gods, some are not as patient and tolerant as we are.”
***
The sky of Heaven had turned a chill, early morning bleak, and the nuns wading in the water were shivering despite their green rubber thigh boots as they floated the blue-white, wet body toward the others who were waiting on the lakeshore. As they reached the shallows, more nuns got down into the water, soaking the long hems and flowing sleeves of their black habits. Very gently they lifted the corpse that had once been a woman from the water, over the lily pads, and laid it on the grass at the margin the lake. A cartoon deer came into sight from out of a grove of pines, saw what was happening, and turned tail and fled. It was plainly no place for Bambis or bluebirds. The nun Bernadette, who had been leading the search party, detached herself from the shocked group around the body, stripped off her rubber waders, and walked to where Aimee, Semple, and Mr. Thomas were waiting, flanked by a half dozen of Semple’s rubber guards. “It’s her. It’s Mary-Theresa. She’s been strangled and mutilated.”
Bernadette didn’t have to say anything else. Her expression told it all. The slaying was without question the handiwork of the nowvanished Jesus, and she, and presumably at least a majority of the other nuns, held both Aimee and Semple, who had brought him there, directly responsible. The nuns weren’t going to accept the excuse that Mary-Theresa hadn’t really died but only temporarily returned to the Great Double Helix. The suffering that had been inflicted on her before she’d discorporated was more than enough to leave her scarred for her next three or four incarnations, and the nuns wanted payback. If they couldn’t get Jesus himself, the two sisters would be the next best thing.
“He has to be found.”
“I’ve got nuns looking for him all over, but there’s a distinct chance that he’s already out of here.”
Semple and Aimee exchanged glances. The situation appeared increasingly sticky. Semple knew that all Aimee wanted to do was cut loose and rage all over her, but she wasn’t about to do it while the nuns were watching. Under the constant scrutiny, they had to maintain a united front and pray that Jesus was still around and would be caught. Semple walked past Bernadette to where the body was lying on the grass. The nuns around it glared at her with open hostility, but so far they didn’t seem to feel ready to make any kind of overt move, although one of them did snarl out of the corner of her mouth, “Why don’t you get away from her? You’re not wanted here.”
Semple glanced down at the corpse and then fixed the nun with a glacial glare. “Believe me, I don’t want to be here, either.”