James Axler - Dark Goddess

Diplomacy, turning potential enemies into allies against the spreading reign of the overlords, had become the paramount tactic of Cerberus over the past two years. Lessons in how to deal with foreign cultures and religions took the place of weapons instruction and other training.

Over the past five years, Brigid Baptiste and former Cobaltville Magistrates Kane and Grant had tramped through jungles, ruined cities, over mountains, across deserts and they had found strange cultures everywhere, often bizarre re-creations of societies that had vanished long before the nukecaust.

Due in part to her eidetic memory, Brigid spoke a dozen languages and could get along in a score of dialects, but knowing the native tongues of many different cultures and lands was only a small part of her work. Aside from her command of languages, Brigid had made history and geopolitics abiding interests in a world that was changing rapidly.

She and all the personnel of Cerberus, over half a world away atop a mountain peak in Montana, had devoted themselves to changing the nuke-scarred planet into something better. At least that was her earnest hope. To turn hope into reality meant respecting the often alien behavior patterns of a vast number of ancient religions, legends, myths and taboos.

However, Billy-boy Porpoise had exhibited behavior patterns that were all too familiar to Kane. After inviting the two emissaries from Cerberus to a council with the promise of giving their proposal serious consideration, he had chosen treachery over diplomacy. Although not particularly surprised by Billy-boy’s choice, Kane had been enraged when Brigid was held hostage so as to force a new session of talks.

Shaster wheeled the Jeep down a crushed-shell driveway and braked to a stop at the foot of a flight of stone steps. Orchid stepped behind Kane and pressed the bore of the revolver against his back. “Let’s move it on up, sec man.”

Kane climbed the steps with the girl and Shaster walking behind him. At the top of the steps a gently sloping path curved through an area lush with shrubs and tropical plants—huge ferns, enormous, glossy elephant ears, green philodendrons and orange birds-of-paradise.

Kane heard the murmur of voices and the clanging rhythm of steel drums, as well as the bleat of trumpets and the wail of an electric slide guitar. He sidled between two date palm trees and came to a halt, looking down into a slightly sunken area dominated by a huge, blue-tiled in-ground swimming pool.

A score of people, most of them nearly naked and some of them completely so, milled around on the concrete deck of the pool. A four-piece reggae band played a vigorous piece that sounded like a tuneless racket to Kane’s ears.

He saw only two people in the pool. One was an enormously fat man sitting in an inflatable purple rubber chair, floating motionless in the deep end. A pink foam dolphin bobbed in the water beside his right hand. It was almost the same color as Billy-boy Porpoise’s bare skin.

On Porpoise’s left hand, reclining in an identical chair, was a tall woman of five-nine or so with flowing curves, long, lovely and unbruised legs—and an abundant bosom almost completely exposed by the two narrow triangles of yellow cloth that were scarcely more than token acknowledgments of clothing.

The woman’s thick hair shone with the fiery hue of molten lava, and although Kane couldn’t see her eyes behind the lenses of the sunglasses she wore, he received the distinct impression Brigid Baptiste was completely at ease as she lounged beside Billy-boy Porpoise.

Kane strode down to the poolside, very conscious of how he was being ignored by the revelers. He wasted no time looking for hidden guns—it was enough to know they were around.

He saw a big moon-faced man, tall and wedge shaped, with a thick chest and wide shoulders that led to a size-eighteen neck. He had a flat face, with a bulging forehead and about two pounds too much jawbone. His hair looked like the sprout of black hog bristles. His skin was unhealthy, blotched, mottled by the scars of old radiation burns that came of digging around hellzones. The garish colors of the tropical-print shirt complemented his complexion.

The man’s gristle-buried eyes followed Kane’s every step, and the expression on his face was one of concentrated hatred. It took him a few seconds to put a name to the ugly face—Blister McQuade, the former pit boss of Mandeville who bore no one from Cerberus a feeling that even approximated goodwill.

A small girl, stark naked except for fluorescent pink body paint laid on in loops and a fall of blond, silken hair that covered her upper body like a cloak, glided up to him. Silently she handed him a fluted glass filled with a bright orange fluid.

Kane waved her off. “Too early for me, sweetheart.”

He spoke loudly in order to be heard over the band. Billy-boy Porpoise’s eyelids fluttered. His sagging pectorals with shocking pink nipples rose and fell. He inhaled, and then exhaled a deep breath, causing small wavelets to break at the pool’s edge.

He peered up at Kane with dark eyes surrounded by pouches of fat. They were round eyes with no discernible lashes and bore no resemblance to those found on a dolphin. Kane figured they had originally been intended for a barracuda but due to a production error, ended up in Billy-boy’s hairless head.

“Kane,” he said in a soft voice.

“Billy-boy,” Kane replied. “Sorry to wake you.”

“Nonsense. We were just conserving our strength.” He glanced toward Brigid Baptiste. “Weren’t we, doll-baby?”

Brigid did not reply, her face expressionless. With the sunglasses concealing her eyes, she might as well have been wearing a mask.

Kane nodded toward her. “Good morning, doll-baby. You’re looking rested.”

Slowly, she lifted the sunglasses and regarded him with dispassionate, emerald-green, jade-hard eyes. “I don’t know what would give you that idea.”

A slender woman with a fair complexion, Brigid Baptiste’s high forehead gave the impression of a probing intellect, whereas her full underlip hinted at an appreciation of the sensual. Her mane of thick hair hung in a long sunset-colored braid, tossed over her left shoulder.

As he sat up straighter in his floating chair, Billy-boy Porpoise’s pudgy fingers pulled a lever that activated a small prop positioned at the rear of the seat. With a faint whir, the chair moved toward the concrete steps at the shallow end of the pool.

Grasping the handrail, Porpoise heaved himself out of the pool, rolls of fat jiggling as he mounted the steps in a slow, careful motion. Water streamed from his balloonlike belly, dripping down his tree-trunk-thick thighs. Although at first glance he appeared naked, he wore tiny Speedo briefs, almost absorbed by the multiple bulges of flabby, wet flesh. His dripping body was totally hairless, heavy pendants of fat creasing his torso and limbs. Barely visible within the folds of the man’s triple chins wealed the trace of an old scar, the memento of a long-ago throat cutting. Sunlight glinted from the multitude of rings on his pudgy fingers.

Brigid rolled out of her chair and swam with languorous strokes to the edge of the pool, effortlessly heaving herself out of the water. She casually padded barefoot toward a buffet table. It required a great deal of effort on Kane’s part to fix his attention elsewhere.

The girl who had offered Kane the drink picked up a multicolored beach towel only slightly smaller than a sail and carefully began patting every part of Porpoise’s skin dry. He smiled at her fondly. “Thank you, Dixie.”

He lifted his arms so Dixie could wipe down the undersides. Each touch of the towel sent little ripples jiggling over the expanse of pink flesh. Trying not to allow his revulsion show on his face, Kane guessed the man stood a little less than six feet tall, but probably tipped the scales at four-hundred-plus pounds.