Again Jesus shook his head. “Nothing so he’d notice.”
“But look at the screen!” Semple pointed at two large passenger-carrying autogiros that were running low and fast straight for where Anubis and his entourage were waiting. The large, bulbous planes, with their big, forward-mounted radial engines, huge rotors, short stubby wings, red and silver livery, and art deco fuselage styling, had to be Anubis’s ace in the hole-his ticket to ride. Semple’s voice modulated toward the high C of an anguished wail. “That dog-headed fuck is going to get away! After everything, the bastard is going to escape!”
***
Jim’s breath steamed with each exhalation as he looked around at the ice cavern. The opium spell was irrevocably broken and he was cold to the point of shivering. All around, twisted glacial shapes loomed over him, as though some great cascade had been instantly frozen, only to crack under its own internal stresses and then refreeze again, leaving gaping crevasses and bottomless fissures, straining without motion against the forces of some great internalized kinetic agony. Wasn’t one of the moons of Neptune like that? So unstable that it constantly blew itself apart, but so cold that it was immediately returned to a sphere of sunless ice? Dr. Hypodermic sat some twelve or fourteen feet above where Jim was standing, angular arachnid legs formally crossed and smoking a long thin cheroot, the smoke from which drifted on an almost horizontal plane in the sub-zero air. While he sat and smoked, frost formed white on his shoulders and the crown of his stovepipe hat. “This is what used to be the very core of hell. Where Lucifer sat entombed in ice after his great bust-up with God.”
Jim turned. “I don’t see him.”
“I’m telling you how it was then, man. Not how it is now.”
“So where’s Lucifer now?”
“Quite likely playing cards in the casino with Doc Holliday.”
“Doc play cards with the devil?”
“Doc has always been a student of challenging all possible limitations.”
“But gambling with Satan?”
“Something of a tradition, n’ est-ce pas?”
Jim nodded. “I guess so. Except that I thought I saw Doc in the opium den.”
“How many places can Doc be at once? Let me count the ways.” Hypodermic produced a leather cigar case with silver fittings. “You want one of these?”
Jim nodded. “Why not?”
The Doctor tossed Jim a cheroot. He caught it deftly and with equal dexterity conjured a flame at the tip of his thumb and lit it. The smoke tasted good and he was pleased that he had accomplished everything so neatly in front of the Mystere. The Mystere, meanwhile, gestured around the ice cavern like a real estate broker hustling a client. “This place could be your fortress of solitude.”
Jim looked up quizzically. “Are you suggesting that I sign on as Superman?”
“It’s one way to go.”
“What is this? Some kind of sequence of temptations?”
“Not exactly.”
“So what is this all about?”
“It’s simple. You were a star, then you were a drunk, then you were a junkie, and that made you mine. Now I have to figure out what to do with you.”
“And you’re trying different contexts on for size?”
“You got it, mon ami.”
***
Gojiro’s eyes slowly closed and the forward screen blacked out. The second-unit images showed that the two autogiros were taking a circular course, giving the monster the widest possible berth before making the final approach to pick up Anubis and his people. Semple was bedside herself. She stood with Mr. Thomas, in her ludicrous superheroine outfit, all but beating her gloved fists on the screens in angry frustration as the autogiros slowly made their turn. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
Mr. Thomas’s eyes were large and phlegmatic. “It’s the luck of the draw, girl.”
“I don’t need fucking platitudes.”
“You can’t win them all.”
“I can’t win any of them.”
Jesus put the useless remote aside and leaned back in the couch. He, too, seemed to accept the escape of Anubis as inevitable. “Self-pity is very unbecoming.”
“Fuck unbecoming. You two didn’t have to sleep with the dog-headed psychopath.”
Mr. Thomas waggled his horns. “And for that we are profoundly grateful.”
“You also didn’t nearly get blown apart by his bloody atom bomb.”
Jesus looked offended. “It brought you to us, didn’t it?”
“You said that before.”
“But it’s still true, isn’t it?”
“And, like I asked you before, what good has that done me? I’m decked out in this absurd fucking outfit, and-”
Mr. Thomas looked up at her. “I rather like the costume.”
“Then you fucking wear it. It looks dumb. It leaves me half naked. It’s uncomfortable. It constricts and cuts in all the wrong places and these boots were certainly not made for walking.”
As Semple railed against fate, Jesus, and Mr. Thomas, a mighty snore echoed through the dome. For Semple, this was the last straw. “The damned thing’s gone to sleep.”
Jesus yawned in sympathy. “I’m afraid so.”
“If you were any kind of real messiah, you’d do something. You wouldn’t just sit here in a tumor with a goat and cross-shaped pool. Jesus Christ? If you saw a real fucking cross, you’d run a mile. Three Romans with nails and no one would see you for dust.”
“Rudeness and insults are even more unattractive than self-pity.”
Semple swung around, fists clenched. This time, she was more than ready to punch out the phony Christ. Maybe a black eye and a bloody nose would do something for his calm self-satisfaction. As she turned, however, the forward screen suddenly came to life again. “What’s happening?”
“He seems to have woken up.”
The autogiros were now just a hundred yards from the roof where Anubis and the courtiers and concubines were waiting, moving slowly in for the pick-up.
Mr. Thomas was the first to grasp what was going on. “It’s the autogiros. The Big Green hates aircraft.”
The dome trembled and Jesus grabbed for the remote, at the same time looking reproachfully at Semple. “I’ll do what I can, but you really don’t deserve this after what you said to me.”
Gojiro stumbled ponderously to his feet and lurched toward the two aircraft. The autogiros immediately took evasive action, swinging away from Anubis’s rooftop refuge, but in two mighty strides the irritated monster had them within his grasp. He grabbed the nearest of the pair just behind the cockpit, literally ripping the plane out of the air and crushing it between his three-fingered hands. The pilot of the second aircraft, seeing what had happened to his partner’s machine, immediately threw his into a climbing turn, desperately trying to make both height and distance and get himself out of reach of the reptile’s clutches. Unfortunately, the Necropolis version of the autogiro was neither fast enough nor maneuverable enough to do what was required of it. A green hand flashed up and seized it firmly by the tapering tail. The pilot’s last forlorn option was simply to open the throttle as wide as he could and hope he could tear himself free by sheer raw horsepower. This theory actually worked, up to a point. The engine screamed as it revved beyond all safety limits, but instead of pulling free from the monster’s grip, it simply tore itself loose, destroying the autogiro in the process. The detached engine’s momentum carried it on and up for an instant, but then it flipped over and began to spiral crazily to the rubble below. The body of the plane remained firmly in Gojiro’s left hand. A crewman plunged through the gaping hole in the fuselage, and Gojiro glanced down as the body fluttered to earth like a twisting leaf. A mere falling human could hardly hold his attention for very long, though, and with a terminal gesture of finality he mashed the second autogiro with a thunderous clap of his hands.