The Nubian must have sensed that she was at the end of her tether, because he quickly returned the spear to it’s upright parade position. “I can only warn you again: you will not be readmitted.”
Semple managed to get her voice under control. “That’s perfectly okay. I’m not coming back.” She glanced a last single time at the royal enclosure. “I think I’d rather have my eyes burned out than come back in here.”
The Nubian’s face stiffened and he stood at rigid attention. Semple guessed he was less than comfortable around what he saw as a harem girl having a neurotic outburst and his only defense was to turn robot. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t.”
She stepped past the Nubian and, as far as she was concerned, detached herself from the court of Anubis. At the same moment, the trumpets blared. “Zero minus twenty minutes and counting.”
***
The mansion was close, and even in the moonlight Jim was able to make out some of its architectural details. Whoever designed the place had gone all the way with the Old South. A tall, porticoed, Gothic Graceland with flying buttresses and narrow conical turrets rose like a warning from its attendant grove of trees. Up close, the place was so threatening that Jim started wondering why he’d allowed himself to be talked into coming there. He was beginning to feel like Jonathan Harker approaching a Dixie Castle Dracula, and he wondered if the mammal was in fact some kind of elaborate serial prankster who, for his own mysterious satisfaction, took total strangers into the worst part of the swamp and then abruptly abandoned them. At first Jim had been saddened by the little creature’s departure, but as he drew nearer to the mansion and saw its forbidding exterior more clearly, his mood rapidly soured and he became sorely pissed off. Even the yellow light spilling from the windows was cold and unwelcoming. Folks who chose to live in the darkest depths of this ancient swamp hardly seemed the kind who would embrace a passing stranger.
Jim caught his foot in a knot of submerged roots and nearly went sprawling again. He was about to start cursing when he heard a rustling in the reeds only a few yards away. Jim looked carefully around, but could see nothing. Then the rustling came again, and at once he knew it was being made by a human or animal uncomfortably close to him. He bent his knees and lowered himself, as silently as he could manage, until just his head remained above the water. The move didn’t come a moment too soon. Almost immediately, dark figures broke through the undergrowth in front of him, wading purposefully through the swamp water, weapons held high, with easy precise movements that only come from absolute knowledge of the terrain. The worst part was, they were coming directly toward him.
***
As soon as Semple was outside the Nubian-guarded entryway to the royal enclosure, she found herself assaulted by the sounds and the smells of the masses. Out there in the poor people’s area of the Divine Atom Bomb Festival-in what might have been called the cheap seats, had there been any seats-the stench was a physical presence. Unwashed bodies, the halitosis of a multitude, the urine-feces-vomit stink that wafted from the improvised latrines, and the sour-grease reek of bad junk food all conspired in olfactory assault. To make matters worse, Semple immediately found herself an instant curiosity about to be elevated to sideshow status. A ragged, swarthy, and very drunk man in a filthy kilt and bolero lurched up to her and attempted to grope her. “Bitch, if you wanna go slumming, you could do a lot fuckin’ worse than go slumming with me.” The man seemed to assume she was some courtier looking for rough-trade thrills out in the country of the proles.
Semple didn’t bother to disabuse him; her intention was to simply sidestep and hurry on. But hurrying on presented something of a problem, since she had no idea where she was going. This made it difficult to carry off her usual air of command. She slipped past the man, who yelled after her, “Stuck-up whore! What’s your fucking problem? Think you’re too good for my kind?”
Semple, who was having enough problems with the human flesh in her digestive tract, tried to keep walking, but the man wasn’t finished. “So what are you doing out here if you think you’re so fucking good?” He started to follow her, yelling at her retreating back. “You get back here and talk to me! You fucks from the palace ain’t no better than the rest of us!”
The man’s tirade had the unfortunate effect of causing everyone within earshot to turn and look at her. At first these gawkers were merely curious. Up to that point, Semple had been too freaked to consider the impact she might cause, but with a hundred or more of the ragged, dull-eyed Necropolis poor staring at her, she suddenly realized just how sorely she stuck out, a painted and perfumed butterfly misplaced in a realm of deprived and disgruntled roaches and scorpions.
It didn’t take long for simple curiosity to transmute into dull, lumpen anger, and the randomly loitering began to gather into a loose knot of resentful faces. Semple could almost hear their thoughts. What could they do with this strange apparition, this gratuitous visitor from a world that they could only imagine with envy? At first the crowd kept its distance, moving with her but staring with growing hostility. The first to break ranks and actually advance toward her was a full-breasted woman in cheap and disheveled holiday finery, who had come from rutting in the desert dirt with two well-developed young men while a third took instant photographs with a cheap plastic camera. The woman halted a couple of paces in front of Semple, barring her way. She dusted off her hands and slowly looked Semple up and down. “So what happened, lovey? The doghead throw you out of paradise?”
Semple was forced to stop, but she didn’t think the woman’s sneering question merited an answer. She looked around for an avenue of dignified retreat, but none presented itself. The ring of poor had closed and she was surrounded. Fear hovered on Semple’s horizon of emotional options, but she knew that any hint and the mob would be on her in an instant. As far as she could assess the situation, the proles had decided she was Marie Antoinette and they wanted their cake. Emboldened, the woman took another step toward her. “What’s your problem, girl? Think you’re too good to talk to the likes of me? You’re on our turf now and you’re going to have to learn a new set of manners.”
Semple treated the woman to a look of what she hoped was sufficiently withering contempt. “Are you suggesting you’re going to teach me?”
The woman laughed and turned to the crowd of spectators. “You hear that? The bitch still thinks she’s safe on the inside.”
The woman was now close enough for Semple to smell the combination of booze, sweat, and the earthy body stink of recent sex. As the woman faced her again, Semple glared warningly into the smeared makeup of the gaudily painted face. “You’d be well advised not to start anything with me.” In fact, she wasn’t as confident as she sounded. This harlot from the slums had a mean scar over her left cheekbone, but Semple refused to be intimidated.
The woman’s eyes glinted dangerously. “Well advised? You’re telling me that I’d be well advised? You think some gang of Nubians is going to come running out and rescue you?”
Two other women had left the circle of watchers and were moving to join the first. Semple knew the situation was already on its way to becoming a class war flashpoint, and she was at a loss as to how to handle it when it turned ugly. To her dismay, the crunch came even sooner than she expected. The woman extended a dirty hand with chipped purple nails, trying to grab the jewel-encrusted gold collar from around Semple’s neck. “So what about this thing? You may have a dozen of them, but, out here, that could keep a family for a year or more.”
Semple jerked the collar out of reach. The piece didn’t even belong to her. It was merely on loan from the seraglio strongroom. As a possession of Anubis, she had no personal property, but she couldn’t expect the crowd to understand this. All she could do was maintain a bold front and hope for the best, and so she quickly snarled at the woman, “Keep your fucking bitch prole hands off me.”