The ultimate power broker and wielder of influence in this sequestered world was Zipporah, the Deneuvian primary concubine, who at this moment was berating Semple for lying too long in the comfort of the seraglio pool. “You have to be there. There’s no discussion about it. Anyone who doesn’t show will need an impossibly good excuse.”
“I have a perfect excuse. The bastard has all but crippled me.”
The expressions of the other women as they overheard this final retort registered not only shock but also the kind of covert satisfaction that came with watching a possible rival drop herself into deep trouble. Every inmate in the harem acted on the principle that each word they uttered would be overheard, recorded, and relayed to Anubis, and Semple could easily be digging her own grave by mouthing off. To call the God-King a bastard was a near certain fast track to the oubliette: the “forgetting place”, a set of tiny cells in a damp subbasement so cramped that it was all but impossible to lie or stand. Concubines and courtiers could be confined without food, water, or even light in the oubliette, in some cases until they went mad, withered, died, or reached some other approximation of the terminal state.
As Anubis’s current favorite, Semple did have a certain leeway regarding her behavior; the flavor of the moment could get away with a lot. But Semple was also coming to understand that Anubis’s relationships with his women were exactly like his tastes in food. The God-King would obsess on a specific delicacy, gorge on it continuously for a period of time, but then abruptly tire of it and either go on to some new innovation or return to the tried and tested. Semple knew that her ability to get away with open blasphemy had a very limited shelf life.
Zipporah didn’t seem as shocked as the other women, but she stared down at Semple from the side of the pool with a knowing and world-weary expression. Without saying a word, she made it abundantly clear that she had seen them come and go, and Semple should take care while she could. “That won’t exactly qualify as a good excuse.”
“And what would?”
Zipporah smiled coldly. “Sudden discorporation might just get you off the hook, my dear. Short of that, I can’t think of very much else. Acting the spoiled brat because you’re the temporary favorite certainly won’t cut it. Remember this is only the master’s second atom bomb, and he’s very anxious about it. The scientists have all been threatened with slow extermination if it doesn’t go off totally according to plan, and I doubt if any of us would fare very much better if we failed to show up for the great event.”
The detonation of the second Necropolis nuclear device was Anubis’s current obsession. Although, as far as Semple could glean from the seraglio scuttlebutt, the thing was little more than a small and very dirty bomb, not even up to Fat Man magnitude, the dog-god was so taken with the idea of letting off his very own man-made sun that he was designing an entire holy event around the explosion: a religious festival of the highest order, a full, dawn-to-dark day dedicated to the glory of his divine cleverness.
“You’re not going to let me slide on this one, are you?”
Zipporah shook her head. “I doubt I’d let you slide even if I could. I want you out of that pool and into the dressing room in the next five minutes.”
“You really don’t like me, do you?”
Zipporah regarded Semple with a look that was, at the same time, both sharp and glassy. “No, I don’t much like you, but that’s hardly relevant. All that concerns me is that you’re difficult, time-consuming, and potentially dangerous. When you finally get yourself into trouble, as you eventually will, you’re quite likely to drop some of us in the excreta right along with you.”
“You seem to have formed a very precise opinion of me in the short time that I’ve been here.”
“You aren’t the first to try to test the limits of her position.”
“Is that what I’m doing?”
“Of course it is. And even though I don’t particularly like you, I will give you one word of cautionary advice. Once the gloss of your novelty has worn off, you’ll need all the friends you can get.”
Semple nodded and reluctantly lowered her feet to find the bottom of the pool. She knew that in her own way Zipporah meant well, but Semple was resolved not to be a part of Anubis’s harem long enough to find out what it was like to fall from favor. She climbed from the pool, waving away the handmaidens who were hastening toward her with a robe and towels. As she passed Zipporah, she communicated what she hoped was a certain measure of respect. “I’ll watch the bomb go off and make nice. I’m not looking to clash with you.”
Zipporah acknowledged this as something akin to an apology. “I appreciate that, if you mean it.”
Semple pushed her wet hair out of her eyes. “Oh, I mean it. There’s more to me than just overbearing self-indulgence.”
With that she padded away to the dressing room, dripping water and trailing handmaidens, wondering all the way what kind of lunatic constructs and detonates atom bombs for his own personal amusement.
***
“So, as you can imagine, I was feeling pretty bad by the time that kid shot me dead back there in that bar in El Paso. I mean, a man’s sunk damned low when he’s riding with a crew of pistoleers who can turn up at a wedding, gun down the groom, the best man, the bride’s father, and the priest, and then go on to rape the bride, the bride’s mother, the matron of honor, the six bridesmaids, and a couple of nuns who just happened to be passing, and then have no remorse or any real excuse ‘cept being in the fifth day of a week-long shitfaced mescal drunk.”
Jim nodded. He was aware that the small Mammal with No Name hadn’t had a chance to talk to anyone or anything but the carnivorous plant in a long time, and it didn’t bother him if he wanted to prattle on. “I kinda know how you feel.”
“Of course, those were hard days. 1869-”
Jim was amazed. “You’ve been in this swamp since 1869?”
“Sure have.”
Jim blinked. “That’s quite a sojourn.”
“I had a lot of guilt.”
“Even so, that means you’ve been here longer than Doc Holliday, and not had half as much fun, from what I can see.”
“There aren’t many who have as much fun as Doc.”
“You know Doc?”
“Sure, I know Doc. We come from the same territory.”
“I thought you got yourself shot in Texas. Doc was more around Arizona and Colorado.”
“When I say territory, I’m talking more about time and ethos than the geography. Me and Doc were both good ol’ boys who headed west after the War Between the States. There were hundreds of us on the move back then. Talk about an evil season. A lot of them who went out West were crazy as a shitbug to start with. Sick and insane with seeing too much death, and knowing fuck-all except kill or be killed. I mean, after Shiloh, Vicksburg, the Wilderness, and Pickett’s bloody Charge, what did anyone expect? No one had ever seen a war like that, my friend. We faced miniballs that could rip off half your arm at close to a mile, canister that could blow away a platoon of men with one shot. The world had never witnessed such a mechanical fucking slaughter. The first fully organized carnage of the Industrial Revolution. They say boys went crazy in Vietnam, but I’m telling you, Vietnam wasn’t dick compared with Chancellorsville. We lost as many in a bad afternoon as they did in all twelve years of Nam. After it was all over, and Bobby Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse, we had homicidals and spooked-out psychotics wandering all over the Frontier for ten years or more. Some went after the Indians, like Custer and Sheridan, thinking a taste of genocide would lay the ghosts. Others, like the James boys and the Youngers, just went right on fighting the war-”