Tim Powers - Dinner At Deviant's Palace

Slam. Only five more, Greg—hang on! Slam. All but five done now. You can take five more. Slam. Okay, count 'em down, that was six, here comes five . . .

Over the Holy City the clouds were disrupted by frequent violent updrafts, and the flying man banked north off them so as to skim the Santa Ana River and the barren beaches south of Hunningten Town rather than actually fly over the glass plain of Irvine, even though most of himself was down there. He didn't know that it was free neutrons that made his soap bubble skin itch, but he knew that flying near the place made him feel bad. He hoped the bulk of himself wouldn't come to harm in there.

Though only five days old, he was getting better at handling his ever-heavier body. Now he skimmed in low over a hill and down the far side, twitching fluff from the bobbing heads of dandelions and startling bees and enjoying being

in the shade of the hill. . . . He was still in direct sunlight,

but he was momentarily cut off from the hard, itchy heat radiating from the Holy City.

The hill descended quite a distance, and he was able to surge up fast, lose speed and stall, without rising above its crest. And as he gently drifted down, he wondered why Rivas had to keep pretending he still wanted this Uri creature. The sinking man, his balloon-fingered hands spread to slow his drifting descent, reviewed the scanty memories Rivas had of the woman. Why, he thought as he tap-dancingly touched down—he still didn't have enough weight to bend stiff weeds—why, he hardly remembers her at all. She's important to him only as an excuse for . . . for . . .

Well, the drifting man didn't quite know. Something like an alcoholic's attitude toward liquor. Rivas had somehow got into the position of needing something he didn't like . . . no . . . more precisely, he'd got into the position of not liking something he needed. Why?

The featherweight man dancing over the tops of the flowers didn't really care why, he simply didn't want Rivas to learn why . . . because if Rivas knew, it might clear up his confusions and interfere with the dancing man's seduction of him. And the thistledown man wanted—so very badly!– to merge with Gregorio Rivas. How else was either of them to become whole?

All night the rainy wind had been from the north, but the sun had begun silently to shatter the clouds, and fitful breezes were occasionally blowing in from the sea. When the next gust bent the grass and made the balloon man grab a weed stalk to keep from being tumbled inland, he lifted his plastic-bag head and snuffed the sea air.

He'd caught a scent of Rivas, but distantly, and in a strange, bloody-smelling mix. The featherweight man kicked and rose like a kite launched in a strong wind, and he didn't mind getting above the hill into the hot region, for he could see better from up here.

When he was at the top of his jump he spread his arms and legs to catch the breeze and stay up there, and as he stared out at the shadow-mottled blue face of the sea he warped his still ectoplasmic eyes through a dozen round and oval shapes, trying to focus on what he needed to see.

Then he had it in sight, and his fingers and long toes lashed madly in the air to keep him steady.

It was a big wide barge with odd projecting cowls and wings and fins, like an exploded beetle, surging along so strongly, and leaving such a white wake, that the flying man knew it was powered by some species of engine. And it was, his fine-tuned senses told him, crowded inside with women. The twiddle-fingered airborne man frowned primly.

Well, he thought, I daresay Rivas is enjoying this cruise.

There were bales under dark cloths dragging in the water alongside the boat, and the kite man finally caught on that Rivas was in one of the bales. He couldn't have explained how he knew it, only that when he looked at the boat and thought of Rivas he got an impression of cold rushing water and darkness and stale air.

Boy, boy, the flying man thought, clicking his tongue and shaking his translucent head pityingly. You do so poorly on your own. It's time you and I had another chat.

The hemogoblin spread flattened arms and, at home on the wind, swooped away toward the sea, leaving the land behind.

At first Rivas tried to resist the warm euphoric drowsiness that was stealing over him; he reminded himself of the danger he was in, and the much greater danger Uri was in, and he tried to feel tension and anxiety.

Somehow, though, it all seemed postponeable. After all, what could he do to help or hinder things from inside this ridiculous cage? Perhaps the wisest thing to do would be to go to sleep, in this actually quite comfortable bed of rushing water. The shaking wasn't nearly so bad now that they'd apparently got out past the breakers. It occurred to him that he'd heard of waterbeds, but this was the first riverbed he knew of.

He laughed heartily, and for quite a while, at the notion.

Singing a song seemed like a good idea for a few moments, but sleep proved more imperative. He snuggled up against the steel bars on the hull side, not forgetting to say good night to all the girls on the other side of the wood– what were they in, anyway, a big barrel? A keg of leg, ho ho, a butt of butts; he was whooping with laughter now– then he subsided and arranged himself for sleep, wondering, with the last spark of awareness, why the sea water tasted so . . . what, not salty . . . rusty, that was it. Like blood.

To his own intense annoyance he let himself sink no further toward sleep. Let me sleep, he begged himself; of course sea water tastes like blood. It used to be blood. No, the other way around, evolutionarily blood was once just a quantity of sea water contained in the hollow body of some early form of life . . . sponges or jellyfish or something. Right. Now that that's settled, he thought, let's go to bed.

But again one part of his mind—a part that was becoming seriously alarmed—resisted sleep. Why, he thought muz-zily, should the sea water have the rusty iron taste of blood? And why is my thumb . . . and the bullet lash down my back too . . . going numb? And what is it that this . . . thought-dissolving blurriness reminds me of?

The answers arrived almost simultaneously. Shifting to a more comfortable position in the hope of tricking himself into sleep, he became aware of two objects in his hip pocket, a big hard lump and a flat hard disk. Irritably he reached down under the turbulent water and dug them out.

By touch he could tell what they were.They were the jar of Blood, evidently empty, that he'd pocketed after giving the dying boy a whiff, and the lid that had once been screwed onto it. Evidently he was sitting right now in a vigorously stirred soup of Blood. And the oblivion that was eroding the awareness out from under him had the same feeling of being monitored that his very first long ago receiving of the Jaybird communion had had.

Taking Blood felt like receiving the sacrament.

He knew this was important . . . in a way. Actually, wasn't it something he'd already guessed? Or would have, soon? Of course it was.

No, insisted the unhappy, struggling part of his mind, it's important.

Right, right. Much too important to consider before taking a little nap.

The salty, rusty fluid crashing around him in the darkness was hot, or so it seemed to him now, and he tried to remember where he was but couldn't. Evidently he'd got inside the heart of some huge being.

He wasn't sure who he was himself. The very idea of self seemed odd. He reached up to touch his face and it took all his strength to do it; he fumbled at his own face, feeling the toothless gums, the sunken cheeks, the hairless skull. There was another person too inside the spasming chamber of muscle, a bigger person, one who still had hair, and it warmed him to realize that that was him, too—or he and that person were both equally members of someone higher, the someone whose blood crashed powerfully, sus-