All those ruined worlds out there, all the people crying for emancipation from slavery, death—can you help them?
So the devil sat on my shoulder, whispered in my ear. You have to take a stand. So drenched in cynicism I’d been for so many years, shooting my mouth off and myself in the foot with all my breezy sarcasm and my clowning around, I hadn’t seen it. I thought being a rocket engineer was my role of roles. A hustler not long after? Scammer? Gangster? Big man with the big ship?
Your purpose lies before you, Jet Rusco.
Even if it kills me?
You’re already dead. Twice remember?
But I’m in a tank.
So, get out of a tank.
And there was a flash, a glimpse, of some reckoning between me and Mong, a final showdown, just me and him on a distant planet. The details were crystal clear. My mind, lucid as a ten megawatt bulb saw the rocks, boulders, the fields and the peasants hoeing their onions and yams in the fields, eking out a meager existence off the impossibly arid land. These past lives, these future lives, whatever they were, they were a hell of a trip. I’d stick to Myscol if I could.
So, floated to the surface, one of those crazy visions and conversations one has with his alter self, which make a lot of sense in a storybook fantasy but not in real life.
The tanks, the failures, the fuckups, the slits in my back—all these were the universe’s way of forcing me to see reason, to do my duty, and fulfill my life’s purpose. The voice spoke again. What are you, a crazy bastard? Yes. But the path burned clear as a lighthouse’s beacon before me.
I’d have to bring down Mong if it was the last thing I did.
Chapter 24
I must have floated there a lab rat for hours, days. Who knew in this artificial, freaked-out world?
When Balt next removed me from my tank, Blest was out of his watery prison. He sat trussed like a wet hog, his back tied to a square wooden post. Zan twirled in my place hung from the beams, his shaved head lolling on his chest.
“Time to dry for a bit,” Mong remarked, rubbing his chin in earnest thought. He motioned to Balt. “See that they’re taken care of. I have tasks that require attention offworld. Blest’s punishment will be less severe than Rusco’s, so he’ll need time to dry out some more.”
Blest’s leg had turned a deep green from shin down, a source of amusement for Mong. He studied the strange creature, the flap of leaf wrapped around Blest’s shin and tsked his tongue. “Old Greenie seems to be still latched on for good, Blest. Aren’t you a lucky one? He’s taken a liking to you. Pretty soon we’ll have to start calling you Mr. Greenfoot, or ‘Jolly Green Giant’. Or how about Plant Toe?”
Blest moaned.
Balt gave a chortling laugh.
“Let’s leave our sleeping beauties for the time being, Balt. They need to catch up on some well-needed rest.”
Before Mong left, he turned and raised his hand. As I blinked, thinking to hear a sound behind me, he whacked me in the solar plexus again, hard with the flat of his palm, that magical palm that sent me spinning into a world of oblivion. Some new universe, some new dimension of pain, horror, and illumination.
Maybe it was angels I saw, or consummate devils. Winged beings, half anthropoid, half alien, with voices croaking like frogs, breathing sighs of wind, whispering horror in my ears. They hissed macabre tales of the universes we know not of, both unseen and the seen. I protested in a voiceless murmur, wishing their voices would leave my mind, but they did not. Only laughed and carried me far away to realms unheard of, places beyond the sphere of time and space that defined the witchery of the amalgo. Call me a liar, Jet Rusco, but this was real! Perhaps it was the same place where the filthy locusts built their diseased technology. I wished for no reminder of that terrifying world, that other world that Mong brought me to again and again.
I died another time, and I knew the power of Mong’s devils. His depraved gods. And I wished to hell I hadn’t.
* * *
My waterlogged brain woke again, struggling to drive sense back into the flaccid cells. Mong and his minion were gone. Only Blest and Zan remained where I’d last seen them. I guessed this would be one of the last times we would all be together in any conversable ring, so we’d have to take full advantage of the situation.
I hissed at Blest who lolled about eight feet away. “Pst…can you hear me, Blest? Are you still conscious?”
He moaned. “Go away whoever you are…”
“Blest, dammit!” I cried. “Look at me.”
He stirred. His eyes blinked and gained focus. “Oh, Rusco. I must have died and gone to heaven. It’s you. Are we back in Bantam yet?”
“Bantam?—you idiot. The ship’s dead. Remember?”
“Oh, right. Where are we then? Oh, I’d better not ask. Why are you tied up like that? Wait, I’m tied up too.” He shook his head, struggling to make sense of the physical evidence, as if he were an amnesiac, his eyes goggling every which way.
I gave a wretched sigh.
“Rusco, you wouldn’t believe it,” Blest said in an excited cackle. “The funniest, damnedest memory. Me and my buddy Rog were out cruising at Pegri’s tavern. We’d just come off training shift, wanted to let loose, hit the pubs, and we had this bet, see who could get laid first…old Rog, braggartly bastard sicced himself on this quiet, solemn-type sitting in the dimness o’er by the window. Real killer broad. Turns out she was a robot, can you believe it—”
“Shut the
