The Western Lands Read online

  "Stop the boat. Sea scorpions here."

  Delivering this delicacy to rich clients, he was often propositioned. And he had already decided whether the offer was to his advantage. It was not long before he received the proposition he was looking for: to become a Scribe, apprenticed to old Sesos-tris, the pederast.

  Neferti learned the glyphs with breathtaking speed. Sesos-tris had never seen such a student. Neferti knew that it was dangerous to depart from the norm in any direction, and most particularly in the direction of excellence. But he didn't have much time.

  Neferti wrote each day in advance, whom he would encounter and how he would deal with the encounter. He took pains, of course, to conceal these experiments from Sesostris. He can think in glyphs as he walks, writing from the pictures he passes: a horned owl, legs, eyes, a mouth, an empty road waiting. And he writes as he walks: coming forth, his legs and eyes waiting in the road; a sheaf of wheat in a field, his erect phallus under his loincloth. Coming forth waiting for thee from of old: legs, eyes, a mouth, a road, a hand pointing, an erect phallus, a sheaf of wheat.

  Individual glyphs can be delineated in many different ways. They can be incorporated into a picture, and the pictures can move. Panels of glyphs can be shifted into various combinations. Neferti devised glyphs of his own to indicate whole panels and ways in which they can be fitted together. Where the horned owl lights, a connection is made.

  Abata's official position was Assayer of Scribes, and since the number of Scribes was far in excess of the work available, he still exercised considerable influence, his position being more or less similar to that of a modern art critic.

  The Scribes were divided into a number of schools: the Traditional, the Naturalistic, the Functional, the Situational, the Punctual, the Random, the Picture Puzzle. Abata invariably chose the most stilted, conventional and banal scripts, so that schools of this lifeless garbage flooded the art market. But his position was precarious. Brokers were consulting their own as-sayers. Even the most tasteless and vulgar parvenus of the emerging merchant class complained of his boring murals, that always looked the same from any angle or in any light.

  "We want Picture Puzzle scripts."

  In Picture Puzzle scripts, the glyphs are incorporated into the big picture: an eye, a phallus, water, birds, animals spell out the story. At first it is just a picture with a special look, then glyphs swim out of clouds and water, pop out of swift lizards, run with the hare of hours, sit with the toad of a million years, spatter out of excrement thrown by an angry ape, trickle out of streams, a boy masturbates in the shadow of an owl's wing, a weather vane whirls in the wind.

  Abata's power depended on keeping the other assayers in line to support his judgments. This he found increasingly difficult. It was becoming obvious that his poor taste threatened the market. The other assayers began to shun him, catching the contagious reek of failure, and the Old Man had a contract out on him. A knife could streak out of an alley or doorway. He had bodyguards, but any one of his guards could be Alamout's man.

  These were troubled times. There was war in the heavens, as the One God attempted to exterminate or neutralize the Many Gods and establish a seat of absolute power. The priests were aligning themselves on one side or the other. Revolution was spreading up from the South, moving in from the East and from the Western deserts. Not only had the rich monopolized the land and the wealth, they had monopolized the Western Lands. Only the members of certain families were allowed to mummify themselves, and so achieve immortality.

  Neferti aligned himself with the rebels and the followers of Many Gods. There was a new edict against sodomy, issued by the One God priests. The penalty was impalement. His relation with the old pederast scribe Sesostris was now highly dangerous.

  His patron was a kindly, ineffectual man of a vacillating disposition. He could not bring himself to take sides in the fierce controversy raging over the One God concept. Gently Neferti pointed out that a neutral position was untenable, especially in view of the new edict. His enemies had waited for this chance. In Sesostris's attempt to make no enemies, he would succeed only in making no friends he could trust.

  Neferti intended to obtain the secret Western Land papyrus. Scribes at his level were not supposed to know even that such a papyrus existed. He carried at all times an alabaster tube of poison, in case of arrest, and a thin dagger with a grooved tip dipped in cobra venom.

  The apprentice Scribes were housed in dormitories, under strict discipline. Neferti had hitherto bypassed these onerous conditions through his relation with Sesostris. This exemption, together with his brilliance, made him a target for hate and envy, solid as the blow of a fist and sharp as an ax.

  The glyph of the spitting cobra gives protection. He knows just where to spit his poison and what poison to use, and he has allies who think as he does. But now his position was extremely precarious. To continue his relationship with Sesostris, he set up rotating places to meet: a room in the village one day, hidden coves and caves another.

  All Scribes study the Egyptian pantheon: Ra, Bast, Set, Osiris, Amen, Horus, Isis, Nut, Hathor. Many Gods are known only to a few initiates, like the Shrieking Scorpion: half cat and half scorpion, said to have been conceived by a union between Bast and the Scorpion Goddess. With her lashing tail loaded with deadly venom, her rending cat claws and insect mandibles, she is evoked only by the most terrible curses. And the Centipede God, with a centipede's body, the poison fangs sprouting from the glands of his neck, and a man's translucent head in which the brain glows white-hot behind red, faceted eyes. His bite causes death in terrible agony, the victim roasted alive. The Centipede God lives in red sandstone caves in the blistering Hot Lands of the South.

  Neferti fashions little blocks of clay and hardwoods on which glyphs are delineated in raised outline, so that he has only to press the block into ink and then imprint the glyphs on papyrus. Demons and Helpers can be drawn into being and assigned functions and contexts. They have their special abilities, their weapons and means of access, their enemies and friends, their masters and servants.

  One of the Helpers is characterized by an indentation on the upper tip of his member where the Creator left his thumbprint. It was a small thumb, no bigger than a finger but much longer, with three articulations. This Helper leaves behind him a smell of musk and thunder and the blue smell of the sea wind. Giver of Winds is his name. Fleet and light-boned, he can skim over swamps and quicksand, climb a sheer cliff or a palace wall. His long thin fingers can crush a man's neck or tear off an arm. He can parry the quickest sword slash and dodge an arrow. He is the Helper on perilous journeys and impossible escapes. He knows the Bang-utot cord of sperm that strangles a sleeping enemy, the smells of valor and danger, of ferrets and spiced lace stained by radiant journeys.

  His Mayan counterpart is Ah Pook, patron of street boys, wanderers and outcasts: a face of green marble, thick round lips, flaring eyes like jade slits. He knows the slums of Tenochtitlân, the warrens and reeking alleys of the Centipede City. His phallus is a smooth, translucent green, and he gives off a smell of fungus and toadstools, of jungles and untamed wild cats and orchids, of moss and stone.

  Another helper is the adolescent Ka of the god Amsu. Of a shining, dazzling beauty, he knows every nuance of sex and courtship. He is the only defender against the female goddesses of sexual destruction and orgasm death, the vampire Lilith, and Ixtab, the goddess of ropes and snares and sexual hanging. His phallus is a pulsing tube of opalescent pink light. His smell, sweet and heavy, burns through the body with prickles and shivers of delight. His hair is a brilliant blazing red. Even the goddess Bast quails before him, reduced to a lovesick drab.

  The Healing Helper is a calm gray presence with a kind, unhappy face, for he has taken on much pain. But he is deft and quick. Pain dissolves beneath his fingers, and sickness loosens its hold. He brings a smell of clean bandages, dawn wind in fever dreams, sleep after sleepless nights.

  For every Helper, there is a corresponding demon or
adversary. Many play both roles. There are old demons wracked with the pain of toothless, impotent hate, who live only to injure, occupying evil old caretakers and doormen.

  The Pharaoh is a One God believer, but he does not have the support of his Palace staff. Obviously he will be assassinated sooner or later. Neferti does not wish to associate himself with a lost cause which he opposes in any case, but he is still under the Pharaoh and his secret police. They are everywhere, watching and listening. One moves in stylized pantomimes of innocence.

  At any hour of the day or night, the Pharaoh summons everyone in the Palace to an audience.

  "The Pharaoh awaits! Come!"

  No time to get dressed, just a hasty robe and here we go again.

  They form ranks in front of the Pharaoh. His Palace guards, a caste of genetic eunuchs, move up and down the line, carefully searching for weapons. When the word is given, the Palace retinue parades past the throne very slowly.

  "Stop!"

  Each one stops at the Pharaoh's feet for the Examination. The Pharaoh, with his alabaster white face and black snake eyes, looks at you, around you, through you, looking for a dagger in your mind, listening for the whispered furtive words, smelling for the sweat of guilty fear. His guards stand ready, massed on both sides of the throne. Motioned on by a twitch of his staff, you try not to look too relieved. Now he points with the staff, and the guards move forward. Someone is dragged away.

  Neferti knows the arts of telepathic blocking and misdirection. You can't make your mind a blank, for that would be detected at once. You must present a cover mind which the Pharaoh can tune into, and which is completely harmless: "For me the Pharaoh is a God." You can't lay it on too thick.

  Needless to say, one's enemies attempt to take advantage of the occasion. There are telepathic ventriloquists who can throw disloyal thoughts: "How long must we endure this vile pig Pharaoh? Our time will come . . . soon, very soon."

  And there are the Smell Throwers, who can throw smells onto the target in a crowded street. People hiss and start away, leaving him in a circle of eyes burning with hate and loathing. Sometimes a Smell Thrower will take advantage of the Examination to discredit a rival, causing him to appear before the Pharaoh reeking of excrement. It is a dangerous expedient, however, as a skilled practitioner can throw it back with double stink.

  The sin of Secret Painting is rife, though punished by impalement on a white-hot bronze phallus. Secret Painters are divided into tribes. Neferti belongs to the Cobra Tribe. They keep with them at all times the means of suicide, and gather in their secret haunts to compare suicide and murder weapons. They are not averse to taking as many with them as possible.

  Their haunts are not secret in the sense of being hidden. To the outsider they would appear as a perfectly ordinary house or inn. Should an unwanted stranger happen in, he will see nothing noteworthy, but rather an emptiness, a lack of anything that can engage his interest or pleasure. The food isn't exactly bad, but it is exactly the kind of food he doesn't like. If he ventures, on a sexual encounter, it will end in a grating climax, at once painful and disgusting. The sheets are not dirty, but they feel dirty and smell dirty.

  One of the wise palates from the Good Guide Book came in here, and went out with his buds switched over—he moans and rolls his eyes like Crazy Horse impersonated by Jimmy Durante over the most appalling junk food for starters, and sardines eaten from the can with a shoehorn, washed down with Green River. The meat course is second-run rejects from premises closed by the Board of Health, doused in stale ketchup and anchored down with cherry milkshakes laced with gritty undissolved granules of cheaper-by-the-ton synthetic malt, then a canned pineapple and marshmallow salad with Postum.

  They don't come back. And usually they can't get out quick enough.

  A certain species of vampire which can take male or female form sneaks into the rooms of youths. The pleasures they offer are irresistible, and the victim is hopelessly captivated by these nightly visits which no lock or charm can forestall. The victim loses all interest in human contact. He lives only for the visits of the vampire, which leave him always weaker and more wasted. In the end he is little more than a living mummy.

  These visitations have decimated rural areas, and the large estates are deserted. It has long been suspected that these vampires are the ghosts of mummies who immortalize themselves in this way and convert the energy required to maintain the Western Lands.

  Revolution is spreading, and many of the large estates are deserted and have been taken over by partisans.

  The Partisan Leader Mementot has uttered a terrible threat: "I am going to destroy every fucking mummy I get my hands on. The Western Lands of the rich are watered by fellaheen blood, built of fellaheen flesh and bones, lighted by fellaheen spirit."

  Terrorized, the rich have brought in mercenaries from the South, filthy Ethiopians who delight in the torture of prisoners. A common practice is death by fire in muslin. The victim is wrapped in strips of muslin soaked in beeswax, to the semblance of a mummy, then set alight to divert his captors with the Mummy Dance, accompanied by flute music . . . hideous shrill mimicry of burning screams.

  "Go! Go! Go!" they chant, pissing all over themselves with laughter.

  A sibilant quivering hiss, and the partisans attack like silent hungry ghosts. One dispatches the dancing mummy with a sword slice that severs the charred head. Grimacing hideously, it bounces among the mercenaries. Sagging like unstrung puppets, their vile torture lust steamingly exposed to sharp steel, deserted by their employers who have shut themselves into fortified citadels, the mercenaries either join the partisans or retreat and disband to the Hot Lands of the South.

  In the Hot Lands there are seven artesian wells, and the settlements cluster around the precious waters. The houses are completely sealed, except for ventilating screens impregnated with oils that kill insect invaders. The oil must also be worn on all exposed surfaces when venturing into the open, and suits with many layers of silk to cover the body, and boots to the knees. No one goes out except at night, when the temperature plummets to 120 degrees. The houses are cooled by layers of burlap and a constant drip of water, the evaporation giving off more coolness as the outside heat increases.

  The wells are fed by underground rivers which sometimes change course. In Japan they get into baths so hot you have to stay absolutely still until the water cools. One movement and you would scald to death. Here it's the same with the air, and it doesn't cool. One quick movement and you start roasting. Takes an hour to cross a room. Talking will roast your lips and strangle you with your bursting tongue. Three months of that, and then the faint stirring of coolness around the edges, cool blue on your burning flesh, the winds of God bringing rain.

  Certain highly prized minerals are found only in this area: a metal which can be molded like clay but will harden to the consistency of bronze, and the burning metal that glows with a soft cold fire, giving off a steady, silent rain of death. One exposure means death in a few weeks, as flesh and entrails wither and the brittle bones snap like dry reeds. A metal unguent gives protection from the deadly emanations of the Burning Silver.

  Some Secret Painters of the Cobra Tribe have gathered in a squalid inn. They sip excellent wine served in earthen mugs. A "wrong one" would get the wine suitable to the vessel, a sour grit that sticks to his teeth and coats his mouth. They do not regard all strangers as undesirable, to be gotten rid of as soon as possible. But certain categories are definitely bad news they don't want around: informers, Palace spies, purveyors of gossip and rumors, lunatics and religious sons of bitches.

  As usual, they are comparing weapons for suicide and murder, poison pins and rings and clasps and earrings and teeth, poison sewn under the skin, articles of clothing soaked in poison. For suicide, cobra and mamba venoms are quite quick and painless, rather pleasant in fact, and some of them are also cobra venom addicts.

  The venom of the cobra, dried and administered in a carefully adjusted dose by blowing the dissolved
venom into the flesh through a sharpened tube, produces a feeling of serene euphoria which lasts up to three hours. Repeated exposure leads to dependence, which confers upon the addict immunity to the venom. This is advantageous when using cobra as a weapon.

  Cobra venom is now restricted to initiation ceremonies and the use of a few advanced adepts, who converse in sibilant hisses, reptilian purrs and sometimes the icy cold shriek of reptile hysteria. They slowly become cold-blooded, and cease to dream. The withdrawal symptoms are excruciating, the cold blood as low as 75° F heated back to 98.6° in a few hours. Patients must be restrained from suicide by any means at hand. Industrial doses of heroin are the only remedy if no venom is available and, since cobras are not always handy, few choose to contract this perilous addiction. Fortunately, dependence is not quickly established.

  Turning now to some of the more deplorable files: hmm, yes, Reggie Carlton . . . anonymous features that are somehow very displeasing. In fact, one feels definitely queasy . . . a hideous member straining out from just below the navel, wrinkled purple black at the end. The shaft juts up, flat on top, with little nodules of purple-pink flesh around the crown oozing with deadly venom. The dead empty eyes, the hideous cock. Deformed children beg behind him. Every cock is deformed, some swollen and bulbous, some thin as pencils, two-pronged penises with tiny fangs strike at each other spurting venom, a rectum where the penis was, the penis now grows slowly from the navel.

  These demons from Bosch are familiars of the Gaboon Viper, a bloated snake with symmetrical patterns of brown, white and black, thick as an average thigh, tapering to a blunt tail. The head is like a small shovel, translucent gray-pink poison glands on each side and on the snout, two little purple-pink horns that writhe and smell toward the target (replicas of the Gaboon's cock). Instead of wriggling along like a decent snake, your Gaboon Viper crawls along on his ribs, straight ahead, like a purposeful caterpillar.