Another peculiar consideration was that the majority of those who underwent crucifixion were genuine entities and not Aimee’s tame creations. The unfortunates were drawn from the numbers of odd spirits who had trouble assuming an identity and personality of their own in the Afterlife and gravitated to the constructs of others, in this case Aimee’s personal Heaven. By far the greater percentage of these sad arrivals caused no problems in Heaven, blending easily with the manufactured angels and cherubs. The victims on the crosses-all but a couple of exceptions of the male gender-must have transgressed in some way and were paying the price. Semple understood that the malefactors and heretics were usually fingered by one or another of the ex-prostitute nuns, who had the dual function of acting as Aimee’s spy net and ideological secret police. As the saying went, there was nothing more righteously vindictive than a reformed whore. The only thing that remained a total mystery to Semple was where the constantly increasing numbers of bones were coming from.
Aimee, having arranged to be slightly farther up the sere, central hill of Golgotha, was able to talk down to her sister with a far-fromwarranted superiority. “So when do you intend starting out on your quest?”
“I thought I’d go right now.”
Aimee looked surprised. “Right now?”
Semple nodded. “That’s right. Unless you can think of any reason to delay.”
“I can think of none. Where are you intending to commence your search?”
“I was going to travel directly to Necropolis.”
Aimee frowned. “Necropolis? Is that wise?”
“It’s the closest confluence.”
“Necropolis is an evil place. Old and evil and made worse by the passage of time. I heard there were over a million souls there, all subject to the will of one being who claims to be the god Anubis and is reputed to be the personification of iniquity.”
Semple smiled annoyingly. “I thought it would be my kind of place.”
“You could encounter many strange things in Necropolis.”
A troop of small black monkeys with bald white faces like little old men was rooting through the litter of bones and tossing them around as though attempting a miniature re-creation of the prologue of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001. At the mention of the word “Necropolis,” however, they stopped what they were doing and appeared to settle down to listen to the conversation. Semple noted that animals and birds were a new addition, and wondered what fresh weirdness might be eating at the underside of her sister’s mind. Along with the monkeys, a flock of vultures flapped and squabbled between the crosses, rats scurried through the lower levels of the bone piles, and skinny yellow dogs snarled and scavenged. “Like it’s so totally normal around here?”
“Don’t take Anubis too lightly. I understand he runs a brutally sophisticated police state.”
Semple glanced at Aimee’s gang of nuns but didn’t comment on their homegrown secret-police tactics. “I have quite a rep as a funster myself. I don’t see why I should be afraid of any jackal-headed Egyptian death god. Besides, he’s almost certain to be a phony.”
“Phony or not, I’ve also heard he encourages cannibalism.”
Semple looked hard at her sister. The monkeys continued to watch intently. “Does something about my leaving worry you? Are you trying to put me off?”
“Of course not. Why should it?” Once again Aimee’s answer wasn’t ringing true. “Are you concerned that putting distance between us will create some kind of problem?”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?”
“I hadn’t even considered it.”
“You hadn’t?”
“No, I hadn’t.”
Semple shrugged. “It did occur to me that a separation might have an effect on us.”
“What kind of effect?”
Semple suddenly realized that her observation had been more accurate than she had imagined. “I don’t know. A stretching of the bonds and connections between us might in some way weaken or diminish us.”
Aimee was starting to look a little frightened. “Do you think it will?”
“I don’t know. It might.”
“But you’ll take that chance?”
“You want your poet, don’t you?”
“Yes, but . . . ”
“Then I have to leave. It had to happen sooner or later. We can’t remain joined by an invisible umbilical for all eternity.”
“I know that.”
“Particularly if you have plans to replace God.”
Aimee took a step back and looked around quickly at her entourage of nuns. “I don’t have plans to replace God. That’s a terrible thing to say.”
“It’s true, though.”
“It’s blasphemous.”
“That doesn’t mean that it’s not true.”
“But it’s not true.”
Semple gestured to the nuns surrounding her sister. “You want to watch out for those bitches, Aimee. Like Winston Churchill used to say about the Germans, they’re either at your feet or at your throat.” She glanced up at the nearest cross in clear warning. “Don’t make any wrong moves, sister, or they’ll have you nailed to the wood.”
Semple gave Aimee points for speed of recovery. She gathered her attitude, and was once again sweet and superior. “Is that your parting thought?”
“I suppose so.”
“And you intend to leave from here?”
Semple forced a grin. She was a little scared, too, but the nonchalant swashbuckler in her would never allow her to admit it. “Here’s as good a place as any to vibe away. No point in waiting around.”
“You’ll wind-walk directly to Necropolis?”
“It’s big enough. I doubt I can miss it. Will you and your crew of nuns help energize me?”
Aimee nodded. “Of course.”
Semple indicated that Aimee and her nuns should form a circle around her, with Aimee directly facing her. As the nuns started to comply, the victim on one of the nearby crosses suddenly spoke. He was a swarthy man, only recently nailed in place, with fresh blood still running from his feet and palms. He addressed himself to Semple. “She’s right, you know. There are cannibals in Necropolis. I should know. I was one. That’s why I came here. To find salvation. It was-”
“You will remain silent!” He was cut off by one of the nuns breaking from the forming circle and rushing, screaming, at the unfortunate man. “No one asked you to speak! How dare you speak?” She reached the foot of the cross and flailed unmercifully at him with a heavy wooden rosary. Fortunately for him, the nun was comparatively short and even with the rosary she was able to land blows only on his legs and feet. Aimee quickly beckoned her back to the circle, and then glanced at Semple. “Are you ready?”
“I suppose so.” The truth was she was having a little difficulty maintaining appearances. The crucified man’s testimony had unnerved her more than she cared to admit. She might have had a renegade imagination and been fascinated by advanced vice, but Semple was well aware that eating people was fundamentally wrong.
The nuns raised their arms and pointed at Semple. Energy flowed from their fingertips directly to her, increasing in strength as Aimee and the nuns locked and focused their concentration. Semple’s exterior began to vibrate. The landscape started to waver. She took a final look at Aimee. “I shall return with your poet.”
Semple McPherson filled her mind with an image of Necropolis and vanished from her sister’s Heaven.
***
The light was so intense that Jim felt as though hard radiation were coursing through his very being. The crisp air crackled and hummed and Jim could smell sudden whiffs of highly charged ozone. The walls of the incomplete buildings in Doc Holliday’s tiny township vibrated with eerie, sympathetic resonances, and tremors shook the ground under his feet. Jim all but staggered under the assault on his senses. Even his taste buds were registering something bizarre and metallic. The roughly spherical maelstrom of light had made three fast passes, about four feet off the ground, up and down the street, from the desert approaches all the way to Sun Yat’s opium den and back again. Then it had come to an abrupt stop right by the cantina, and right by where Jim and Saladeen, now on their feet and, in Jim’s case, suddenly sober, were wondering what the hell was going to happen next. When the light halted, Long Time Robert Moore also stopped playing, and to Jim that was nothing but an ill omen.