As Semple and a dark-complected concubine called Parsis looked down at a lizard fight just below the passing carriage, a question occurred to her. “If the barcode is the only means of exchange here, how do these people make their bets?”
Parsis looked at her as though she were the epitomic idiot outlander. “They swap markers, don’t they?”
In another part of the well deck of the royal carriage, some of the handmaidens had spotted a threesome-two men and one woman, all having sex together. The sight had inspired an outbreak of smothered girlish giggles and whispered lewdnesses. Semple looked briefly in the direction of the mini-orgy and turned back to Parsis with a frown.
“What do you mean, markers?”
“Slips of papyrus with the bets scrawled on them. When the fight’s over, they’ll all troop off to one of the pushcart vendors and he’ll settle up for them on his computer for a percentage of the action.” Parsis pointed. “Look, there go some of them now.”
A fight had just finished. One green lizard lay bloodily dead in a small temporary arena of banked dirt, and the owners of the badly mauled victor were placing it carefully in a wicker basket. A small crowd, moments earlier baying and catcalling at the combatants, were now marching as one to the nearest pushcart. The vendor was already waving away the people standing in line to buy soda and candy, anticipating his more lucrative wager settlement commission.
Semple shook her head. “I guess folks will always find a way to get a bet down.”
Parsis half smiled. “You want to see them when our lord and master falls into Caligula mode and decides to stage the Games. That’s when the plebs start getting their bets down in the worst possible way. At the end of a good long all-day session at the Games, you get nearly as many killings among the spectators as there are in the stadium.”
Something in Parsis’s tone made Semple look at her thoughtfully. Semple had already noticed that Parsis was something of a kindred spirit; she didn’t quite go with the flow inside the seraglio, tending instead to stand aloof from it, not making waves, doing what was expected of her but otherwise keeping to herself. “You don’t exactly fall down and worship our lord and master, do you?”
Parsis eyed Semple warily. “Maybe I do and maybe I don’t, but I sure as shit ain’t going to court disaster by admitting anything out loud and in public.”
Even this reply set her apart from the mainstream of the dog-god’s women. Precious few of them, even versed as they were in advanced debauchery, would casually employ a phrase like “sure as shit.” “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”
Parsis shrugged. “I don’t know. It’d depend on the question.”
“You weren’t custom-created for this place, were you?”
Parsis stared at Semple as though she were about to take offense. “Hell, no, girl. Do I look like one of those?”
Semple quickly tried to reassure her. “Not in the least. That’s why I was asking. I was wondering, if you’re your own person and not one of the dog-god’s fabrications, why do you continue to stay in this place?”
Parsis was still suspicious. “I could ask the same of you.”
Semple glanced around to see that none of the others, particularly Zipporah, was paying any attention to their conversation. No one was. In fact, most of the rest were hanging over the rail looking for rutting couples among the masses of the poor. “I blundered in here by mistake and only just avoided getting branded and sold on the Fat Ari show. Believe me, the moment I see an opening, I’m out of here.”
Parsis slowly nodded; for one moment, Semple wondered if she had made a terrible mistake by confiding her intentions to this woman. Parsis must have sensed this because she suddenly smiled. “Don’t worry, honey. I ain’t going to repeat what you just told me.”
“I’m grateful for that.”
“On the other hand, you’ll have to be content if I tell you that I ain’t looking for no way out just now.”
“You like it here?”
Parsis gestured around at the opulence of the carriage. “It’s easy enough.” She stared significantly at Semple. “And I ain’t his favorite, so I really don’t have to have that much to do with the dogheaded son of a bitch. Besides, you should have seen what I was lifeside.”
“What was that?”
Parsis grinned. “Baby, you really wouldn’t want to know.”
Before Semple could say anything, the carriage came to a stop with a slight lurch. Zipporah was suddenly bustling around, directing the women of the harem in the direction of the steps that were being moved alongside. “Everyone off as quickly as you can. Hurry it up. We don’t want to keep our lord waiting to make his grand entrance.”
The golden carriage had come to rest beside the royal pavilion and viewing box. In an area totally covered in lavish and exotic creations of canvas, brocade, and silk, the royal pavilion outdid all rivals by a power of ten. It consisted of a tall pyramidal structure of huge tapestry panels showing scenes from the supposed life of the god Anubis. In front of the pyramid itself was an elaborate construction of risers and platforms, made from gold-tinted Lucite and polished steel, at the apex of which stood the divine throne from which Anubis himself would watch the detonation. Its backdrop was a giant sun symbol with a mushroom cloud superimposed over it. Surrounding the dog-god’s perch were smaller thrones and couches, arranged for the accommodation of the court and Anubis’s favored guests. When they arrived, the intention was for the women to hurry off first, preceded only by the soldiers from the prow, and fan out at the base of the steps to form a human background for the ceremonial arrival of the God-King at his nuclear celebration. Things didn’t quite go according to plan, however. As the women attempted to arrange themselves decoratively, they found they were immediately brushed to one side by sweating, unshaven men in rumpled clothes, booze on their breath, laden down with multimedia equipment and aiming bulky, shoulder-mounted TV cameras or big Speedgraphics at the top of the steps where Anubis would first appear. Apparently Necropolis was possessed of its own press corps and paparazzi. Who knew?
As Anubis stepped into sight, Semple realized that, until this moment, she had never seen the dog-god in public before. While the flashbulbs popped, TV cameras zoomed in, and his image was relayed to the half dozen triangular, billboard-sized screens dotted around the festival site, Anubis posed like the god he’d made himself. He squared his perfect shoulders, turned his head, regal from snout to ear, first to the left and then to the right, offering every lens all the conceivable variations of his divine profile. He concluded the display by flexing biceps, triceps, pectorals, and deltoids like a contestant in the Mr. Universe contest. For Semple, widely recognized as his current favorite, the display was embarrassing in the extreme.
When Anubis finally decided that his subjects had been allowed their fill of his static perfection, he started down the steps in studiedly unhurried majesty. This was the cue for the cameras to pull back and the wives, concubines, and handmaidens to move into shot, to bow low in supplication and gaze adoringly on the wondrousness of his being. Anubis even paused for a calculated moment, as though weighing whether the very ground was worthy to bear his amazing grace. Having taken this one short step of faith, Anubis halted for a reprise of the Charles Atlas routine, this time with the leading lights of his harem draped about him in hypnotized devotion. Semple, as the choreography dictated, hung on an upper arm with an exaggerated expression of swooning ecstasy, all the while wondering just how long dogboy could spin out this orgy of narcissism.
Fortunately, another of Anubis’s driving passions distracted him relatively quickly. Whether it was the smell of exotic cooking coming from the elaborate field kitchens or merely the demands of his holy metabolism, his attention suddenly shifted from self-aggrandizement to food. He shook himself loose from his women and strode purposefully into the main area of the royal pavilion, directly behind the viewing boxes, where a buffet had been laid out of an extent, a sumptuousness, and a variety that verged on the insane. While chefs and courtiers alike watched anxiously, Anubis advanced along the heaped-up yardage of groaning board, sampling morsels at random, judging every bite against the high gourmet requirements of a god.