After considerable snuffling and lip smacking, the God-King finally rendered his verdict. He nodded curtly to his Lord Victualer, his High Butler, and Head Chef, and a whisper of relief spread through the pavilion. All was well, at least with the food; the culinary staff would live to slice, dice, and fricassee another day. Immediately a circulating army of waiters moved out en masse, bringing drinks and finger foods to the multitude. Anubis remained, content to feed himself directly from the buffet, beckoning to selected courtiers to join him. He started with the hooded Dream Warden and a procession of his techno-priests, subjecting each new arrival to what, from a distance, looked to be an intense and urgent interrogation.
Semple could only conclude that he was checking that the countdown to the atomic blast was proceeding without a hitch. The situation suited Semple perfectly. As long as Anubis was fully occupied with his scientists and atomic advisors, he wouldn’t be bothering his women. Semple imagined he would certainly demand sex once the bomb had been exploded, however it turned out. If the blast was a success, he would undoubtedly feel the need for carnal confirmation of his genius, and if it failed, he would require a violent venting of his rage. Semple didn’t want to think that far ahead. In Necropolis life could only be lived moment by moment, and at that moment she was happy to be left alone.
She accepted a glass of a pale gold sparkling wine that tasted like overvoluptuous champagne: even though she normally had only the most meager interest in recreational eating, she couldn’t resist sampling some of the hors d’oeuvres. She surprised herself by taking an immediate and almost gluttonous liking to some tiny, wood-skewered cubes of marinated and stir-fried meat in a peanut butter sauce. At first Semple had assumed it was pork, but even through the heavy flavor of the marinade, it somehow tasted sweeter and had a somewhat different texture. Almost without thinking, she ate a full six servings and then felt a little guilty at her self-indulgence. She wondered, slightly horrified, if the ways of Anubis were starting to rub off on her.
In addition to the food and drink, waiters were also making the rounds with baskets of dark-tinted visors and handing them out to the guests. Some, like Semple, simply held their visors, not wanting to wear them until they were needed to protect optic nerves from the first nuclear flash. Others, on the other hand, put theirs on, lending the gathering the air of an impromptu masked ball. One of the first to don a mask was Dr. Mengele, whom Semple had spotted across on the other side of the royal pavilion, and avoided to the extent of moving if he showed the slightest sign of coming in her direction. As a further reminder that the moment of detonation was coming, a fanfare of discordant trumpets, like those in the parade’s marching bands, seemed to come out of nowhere, followed by a booming voice that brought all conversation to a stop. “Zero minus sixty minutes and counting.”
***
Hiking through the swamp in darkness was far harder than it had been in daylight. The Mammal with No Name seemed to have good night vision, but Jim found himself constantly stepping onto what he thought was dry ground, but turned out to be viscous sucking mud from which he had to carefully extract himself without losing his boots; every so often a reed bed would part under his weight, plunging him hip-deep into rank, brackish water. Fortunately, after about an hour of this stop, slop, and go progress, a full bulbous moon had risen from behind the broken teeth of the volcanic mountain range and given him a visual fighting chance. With the rising of the moon came the dinosaur chorus, a keening, booming, atonal calland-response that rang from one end of the swamp to the other as long necks, silhouetted against the skyshine and starfields, rose to their fullest stretch.
Jim scrabbled, gasping and winded, up a fairly dry slope, and sat gratefully down on a fallen trunk. The mammal stopped in front of him and looked him up and down. “What’s the matter with you?”
“I’m not only dead, but I’m starting to realize that I’m seriously out of shape.”
“It’s not much farther to the house.”
“Thank God for that.”
The mammal was staring off into the distance, and Jim turned, following his gaze. The dry area, elevated well above water level, afforded a good nighttime view of the house and its surroundings. As far as Jim could tell, the structure stood on a similar raised area, surrounded by a grove of primal oak and plants that resembled giant celery, a half mile away across an expanse of iris, swamp grass, and black water. For the first time, Jim realized that the light he and the mammal were following was, in fact, a combination of five lighted windows, three down and two up, spilling their yellow radiance into the night and illuminating parts of the surrounding land and trees. There were figures moving around the outside of the place, and although Jim had no idea what kind of reception he might receive when he reached the place, he was at least reassured that someone was home.
***
Anubis had finished, for the moment, with the Dream Warden, and now the hooded figure was engaged in a conspiratorial head-to-head conversation with Mengele on the opposite side of the royal pavilion from Semple. That her two archenemies were consulting wouldn’t have bothered her if they hadn’t repeatedly glanced in her direction. Their covert glares were more than enough to make Semple uncomfortable. The tied-back tent flaps of an exit conveniently presented themselves to her right, and she turned and walked toward them. She didn’t look back to see if Mengele and the Dream Warden were watching, but deliberately swayed her hips as she walked, in an obvious display of physical insolence. Let the bastards plot all they wanted. She was the dog-god’s favorite for the time being, and she would do her level damnedest to see the pair of them brought down before she was through.
The exit she’d chosen led out into the open air, to a part of the exclusive royal enclosure right by the al fresco meat kitchens. She found herself amid the overpowering smell of roasting oxen, pigs, sheep, cattle, and other creatures that Semple didn’t recognize, plus entire racks of ducks and chickens, slowly turned on automatic chain-driven spits above glowing beds of coals. More buffet tables had been set up beside the field kitchens and one of the first people that Semple saw there was Fat Ari, awesome in one of his tentlike costumes, helping himself to a whole leg of roast pork.
Semple’s first reaction was to avoid the slave dealer just as she had avoided Mengele and the Dream Warden. She was about to reverse course and move off in the opposite direction when she thought, what the hell? She had nothing to fear from Fat Ari. Why not sashay past him, demonstrating what she’d become since she’d been removed from his clutches? Too few chances for fun presented themselves in this benighted city; why not grab a few rosebuds of payback while she might? She drew herself up to her full height and assumed the carriage of the acknowledged favorite of the God-King. She sauntered toward Fat Ari.
He recognized her right away. To Semple’s mild surprise, Fat Ari showed absolutely no sign of resentment. He looked up from his pig-leg meat, nodded, and smiled with only a hint of regret. “Guess you lucked out, huh?”
Semple treated Fat Ari to a bright but slight favorite-concubine smile. “I guess I did.”