“Good, very good,” the priest commended.
Bob took another drink from the bucket he still held in his hands.
The priest stood over Bob. “We can rest until nightfall, but you must eat. We need you stronger.”
Closing his eyes, Bob scanned the area. Date palms, but these had been scavenged by insects. Perhaps he could eat palm shoots? He took another sip from the bucket. Opening his eyes, he watched a scarab beetle scurry under a pile of palm leaves.
“Yes,” said the priest, “you must eat.”
The beetle emerged from under the palm leaves and stopped, and another joined it. Slowly they began moving toward Bob and the priest. More joined them, a procession that crawled up to and onto Bob. Lying inert, he looked at them, and then picked one up, held it near his mouth, and licked it. Then he popped it into his mouth and bit down, tasting the bitter flesh squirt between his teeth.
Bob opened his mouth and the beetles began crawling in.
He feasted.
16
The space around Vince buzzed with insects, both natural and artificial. Quick, syncopated beats of metal drums filled the air, rising and falling in rhythm with a mass of dancers. The houngans—male voodoo priests—dressed in garish costumes of red and green, sang above the drums, leading prayers. In the center, a massive bonfire. An effigy of Saint John was burning, his flames leaping into the sky.
A patch of soggy ground rose up out of the waters and the airboat, its engine cut, slid silently aground. Lake Pontchartrain didn’t really exist anymore, it was just another part of the Mississippi delta, but the past drew people to this patch of swamp, St. John’s Bayou, that was once a part of Pontchartrain’s shoreline.
Drones circled in the darkness, and pontoon boats filled with revelers dotted the waters between floating fires. From the jumble of music and hoots of laughter echoing, not everyone was here to get religion. This was a big party for all comers. Or perhaps the party was the religion.
“Mr. Indigo, this way.” An old woman was waiting for them, standing at the edge of the water with a Grilla hunched ominously behind her. She beckoned to Vince.
A mambo, a voodoo priestess, thought Vince, looking at her flowing white robe. She seemed genuine in her enthusiasm. Vince took another pull from the a trompe bottle, feeling its fire in his throat. He walked to the front of the boat and took her offered hand.
“Why am I here?” asked Vince as he jumped down, landing ankle-deep in mud. In the background, Hotstuff was keeping their guard up, searching for threats.
“It is the night of kanzo, Mr. Indigo.” The mambo’s eyes sparkled in the firelight. “When the loa pick the tribe.”
Vince stepped forward out of the muck onto slightly more solid ground. He knew what the loa were—voodoo spirits, but not deities, more like intermediaries to God.
“This is your journey,” she added, leading him into dancers that swayed back and forth with the drum beat.
The crowd parted, revealing a knot of young men, their eyes seeing but not seeing, faces painted white, deep in a trance-like state. The priestesses, their white robes flowing, circled the men, chanting. In augmented space, the reality skins of the assembled fused into a phantasmagoria of monsters and demons that swayed above the dancers. Vince’s vision blurred. He thought he saw a lougaroo, the crocodile werewolf of Louisiana-swamp legend, appear and then disappear though the crowd.
Vince looked into the fire that towered before him. The flames of Saint John. It was John who was supposed to have spoken to God in a cave on Patmos—one of the Greek islands—where he’d written down Revelations and the Apocalypse was described.
“We need to get out of here,” hissed Hotstuff in Vince’s head. He turned an eye inward. “I think she wants you to go through the houngan ceremony…”
One of the boys near Vince convulsed, then stood up straight. The mambos near him shrieked and parted to create an opening. Through the opening Vince saw a bed of red-hot coals spread from the base of the fire along a line that led to a fiery portal. A black cauldron sat at the end closest to him, filled with a bubbling liquid.
The rhythm of the drums gained in urgency. The boy staggered toward the cauldron.
“You see,” said the old priestess, again by his side. “The loa taking possession, the spirit will protect him.”
Did they want him to witness their rituals? The Ascetics here were intimately tied into the local religion. He had no choice, nowhere to run, his fear matched by his fascination. Vince watched a pattern of stars emerge from the fire.
The boy stood at the rim of the cauldron. The drums built their way into a crescendo. Without warning, the boy leaned over and plunged both arms into the boiling oil.
Hotstuff cringed. “That oil is nearly six hundred degrees, there’s no way his biological systems could—”
But Vince wasn’t listening anymore. The collage of stars from the fire took shape, arranging itself into a diamond-weave of gold. The lougaroo appeared in the crowd again, its crocodile face leered at him, but then fear flashed in its eyes as a hulking figure divided the crowd in front of Vince.
Pulling his arms from the boiling oil, the boy held them aloft, undamaged, and the crowd erupted in cheers. The drums were furious, their beat disappearing into a cacophony of noise. Behind the fire, its image undulating in waves of heat, Vince saw a bull being led by its nose ring, standing knee deep in water.
The boy took a tentative step forward onto the red hot coals, and then stood on them, leaning forward and walking toward the fiery portal. On the other side of the fire, a spider-legged Ascetic mounted the bull, a blade flashing in its robotic limb. It reached down and ripped the blade across the bull’s neck. Blood poured out and the bull dropped to its knees.
Vince looked back from the fire. The hulking figure loomed over him, the star pattern burning in its forehead, a flaming sword in one of its hands.
“Don’t resist,” whispered the priestess in his ear.
“Vince!” Hotstuff yelled. She tried to take control of his body, to move him away to safety, or to override his sensory systems, but it was no use.
The dark figure reached and grabbed Vince. He didn’t flinch. Down, down, the figure reached, blackness enveloping Vince, and then the figure went inside, disappearing into Vince’s body.
The priestess’s eyes grew wide. “Papa Ogoun!” she hissed, staring at Vince, backing away from him.
Vince felt a presence inhabiting his body. His mind flashed forward in time, and he watched himself walking across the coals, his body traversing through the fiery portal in the fire and emerging unscathed on the other side. Then his mind flashed backward, into a jungle where great green beasts stood between towering ferns.
“Vince!” screamed Hotstuff. “I don’t know what—”
He plunged his arms into the boiling oil. He didn’t remember walking to the cauldron, but he felt no fear. The boiling oil felt as cool as a mountain stream, and the fires of Saint John beckoned him, the carpet of hot coals an oasis of tranquility he wanted to swim in.
And then the screaming began.
Bright flashes and orange fireballs erupted in Vince’s peripheral vision. The spirit in him retreated. Looking down, he was standing barefoot in the coals. He looked up. The rising heat distorted the image of a military mechanoid that stalked toward the gathering from the darkness. Overhead, bursts of fire as aerial drones exploded.
Vince’s defensive networks came back online, and in augmented space a three-dimensional situational report blossomed into his awareness.