Paint It Black (23 page)

The Great Victoria Desert, Australia:

It was a toss-up as to which was hotter, the sun under which he walked or the ground on which he walked. His skin hung in peeling tatters from his bare shoulders, pinker than boiled shrimp. His back felt as if he'd lain down on a white-hot barby grill, producing blisters the size of walnuts. How long had he been on walkabout? Three days? Four? How long could a man walk naked in the Northern Territory of Australia before dying of exposure and thirst? Two days? Three?

A month ago his name ,was Charlie Gower. He worked as a commercial artist in Canberra, designing logos for tinned meat and flavored chips. Then the advertising firm he worked for landed a state-sponsored job. Charlie wasn't too sure what the campaign was about - some kind of anniversary of something

- but he was supposed to draw on ancient aboriginal designs for the campaign. So he found himself checking out books on tjurunga, the sacred object art of the aborigines. Charlie had

never paid too much attention to native art before - being Australian, he spent most of his time in art school studying the Old Masters of Europe and the painters of English landscapes out of national insecurity. But the minute he laid eyes on the sinuous primitivism of the ancient Koori, as the aborigines called themselves before there were Australians to tell them otherwise, something changed inside Charlie Gower.

Fascinated by the artwork of these primitive nomadic tribes, Charlie began to look into the history of the peoples themselves

- something rarely, if ever, mentioned in his schooling. And, to his surprise, he discovered he had aborigine blood in him.

His great-great-grandfather, Jebediah Gower of London, had been arrested for stealing a coat and sent to Australia to serve his queen and country as convict labor. He'd been fifteen years old at the time of his arrest. He worked his way to freedom by the age of twenty-one and took an aborigine girl to wife. All Charlie could find out about her was that she had been of the Wurunjerri and Jebediah had renamed her Hannah. When he asked Grandfather Gower about Jebediah and Hannah, the old man had been scandalized by the suggestion that his ancestors had been anything but good, upstanding white folk.

'Where'd you get this rubbish about your great-great being'

a convict and that he married an abo?' Grandfather Gower demanded, all but spitting his false teeth out in disgust.

'Jebediah Gower came over as a guard! And Hannah was white as you an' me!'

'I found it in the public record, Grandfather. They've got it all on microfiche now.'

Create PDF
files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (
http://www.novapdf.com
)

'Rubbish! Absolute rubbish!'

Charlie really didn't know what he expected to hear from his grandpa. Grandfather Gower's generation had been raised to be ashamed of its convict and aborigine heritage, and his parents' generation wasn't much better. His mother, a devout Christian, was exceptionally concerned over his interest in pagan art, fearing for his immortal soul. As far as Charlie was concerned, they were all overreacting. He had simply discovered a new hobby, one that allowed him a freedom of expression denied him by the commercial strictures of his job.

Charlie read of how the Koori called the time before the birth of man the Dreamtime. At the dawn of time, beings of great power shaped the land and filled it with all the plants and animals that would ever be. After the beings of power died, they transformed their physical bodies into the stars and the rainbows and the mountains and their spirits withdrew from the earth into the spiritual realm, where they dreamed the world. However, the Dreaming things retained their power over the physical realm, which they would continue to release as long as humans followed the Great and Secret Plan. But it was only through dreams that the living could commune with the spiritual realm of the making gods and gain strength from them. All of this was well and good, if you were an anthropology major, but Charlie didn't really think that much about it. Until that night, when he found himself in the Dreaming.

In his dream he was walking naked through a strange and hostile land, both beautiful and frightening in its inhospitality to man. As he walked under the beating sun he saw the Great Snakes Ungunel, Wanambi, and Aranda rise from their watery hiding places and stretch themselves until they filled the sky with their writhing, endless bodies. Mudungkala, the old blind woman who was mother to all mankind, crawled from the middle of the earth, clutching the three babies that were the first human beings to her withered breasts, and scolded him for being so slow.

'You best hurry up, Djabo, if you would be father to the new race.'

'My name isn't Djabo, it's Charlie. Charlie Gower.'

'Maybe that is the name you wear in the land of the white men,' Mudungkala told him. 'But in the Dreaming you are Djabo. And it's best not to keep your bride waiting, no matter what your name.' The old woman pointed in the direction of the horizon. Charlie saw a beautiful woman in place of the sun, shining like she held a thousand stars in her belly. The Dream Woman opened her eyes and pinned Charlie with their golden stare. Then she spoke his name:

Create PDF
files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (
http://www.novapdf.com
) Djabo.

Her voice echoed in his head for several days as he tried to focus his attention on an advert for a beer company.

He was supposed to be drawing a kangaroo with a six pack of beer in its pouch in place of a joey. After he'd finished drawing the kangaroo, the clients told him they wanted the kangaroo to be wearing a bush hat because that would somehow 'masculinize' the kangaroo and then no one could accuse them of encouraging pregnant mothers to drink beer. As the client's PR representative droned on about kangaroos with hats being more masculine than kangaroos without hats, Charlie Gower heard somebody call his name. Not his white name. His Dreaming name.

Djabo.

Charlie's eyes widened as they darted around the conference room, but he couldn't see anyone.

Djabo. It's time to go walkabout, the Dreamtime voice said.

And the voice was right. It was time to go walkabout Without saying a word, Charlie stood up from his chair and began taking off his tie. Everyone in the room fell silent and stared at him as if he'd just sawed off his right leg.

'Gower! What's the meaning of this?' his boss blustered.

Charlie did not respond, instead he marched out of the conference room and headed for the elevator. He left his jacket lying on the street outside the office building he had worked in since graduating from university.

That was what? Three? Four days ago?

He'd walked along the highways until they turned into roads. Then he walked along the roads until they became trails. Then he walked along the trails until they became paths. And now he was climbing Ayers Rock, one of the biggest bloody rocks on the face of the earth.

Not that he'd done it all on his own. He'd had some help along the way, such as the elderly full-blooded Bindubi who had let him ride in the back of his beat-up old Land Rover for a hundred miles, and the shape-shifting mura-mura who, upon seeing how close to starvation and death from dehydration he was, came dancing out of the shimmering heat with a length of cooked 'roo tail and an emu egg full of water. Sometimes the mura-mura looked like aborigines, sometimes they looked like

kangaroo-headed humans, other times they looked like they had dingo heads. In any case, they'd proven fairly friendly.

He clawed his way up Ayers Rock like an insect, scraping

Create PDF
files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (
http://www.novapdf.com
) the tips of his fingers away on its rough, red surface. All conscious thought, all identity besides that of Djabo, continued to flake away with his burnt and peeling hide. And finally, after struggling for the better part of a day and a night, he finally made the summit and lay on his back, his face turned toward the sun, his arms and legs splayed to embrace the universe.

As he stared up at the punishing sky with the last of his scorched vision, he saw a piece of the sun break off and fall from the heavens. As the piece of sun got closer, he could make out arms and legs and a head. He smiled then, for he recognized the Dream Woman and knew he was not dreaming.

The Dream Woman scooped him up in her golden arms and bore him into the sky, where she wrapped his scorched flesh in soft clouds and coaxed the honey of life from his loins with only the slightest movement of her own.

When Charlie Gower woke up, he found himself being tended to by a tribe of Ngaanatjara, several hundred miles south of Ayers Rock. His skin was darker than a beetlenut, and there was what looked like tribal scarring on his face and belly. He wasn't sure if he'd done that to himself or if the Dream Woman was responsible. The first day he was in the Ngaanatjara camp he wondered how he was going to get back home to Canberra. On the second day he wondered if he still had a job, or if someone else was drawing hats on beer-packing kangaroos. On the third day he said to hell with it and declared Charlie Gower dead. From now on there was only Djabo, picture-maker and sorcerer to the Ngaanatjara. And that's who he remained for the rest of his life.

15.

She's here.

Lords of the Outer Dark preserve me, she's here.

One of my operatives saw her the other day,

prowling the streets of Chinatown, asking questions about Wretched Fly. Clever girl. Very clever. Seek out the master by tracing his servant. It will only be a matter of a day or two -- if not hours -- before she connects Wretched Fly with Kepa Hudie. Then my years of rehearsal will be behind me, and I will find myself faced with the real thing.

The question is: am I ready? Am I ready to cast aside my proxies and step inside the tiger's cage? Why do I even ask myself such a question? Am I not Morgan, Lord of the Morning Star? In the past I would no more ponder such things than I would walk unprotected in daylight. But that was before our last meeting. She did more than permanently mark me

Create PDF
files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (
http://www.novapdf.com
)

- that alone was insult enough - she took something from me as well. As we battled on the psychic combat field, in the Place Between Places, she absorbed a part of me shaped in the form of a chimera. By doing that, she gained a certain control over me. She made me love her.

It is not fair that I should find love now. I have prided myself on loving no one and nothing in seven hundred and fifty-three years. Love makes fools even of the shrewdest player -- witness how it led Pangloss to the tragic mistake of making me his equal. I certainly never loved the loathsome old pervert, either as a human or as a vampire. Either I tolerated his attentions or else I would undergo the gelder's knife and sing as one of the castrati in Celestine IV's papal choir.

I have heard from reliable sources that Pangloss is dead, or close enough to it. The old fool finally succumbed to the Ennui. Good for him.

I have walked throughout my existence without fear of wounds, or capture, or slavery, for I have worn death as my armor. Nothing living could move my heart or stir me to more than the basest appetite.

But now I find myself gazing into the eyes of Medusa, reflected back at me by my own shield, and I find myself smitten. It is not fair that I have found love, for I do not want it and it will destroy me if I give it half a chance.

She's here. She's finally, really here.

I can hardly wait.

From the journals of Sir Morgan,

Lord of the Morning Star.

Chinatown had proven a hard nut to crack, even for one such as herself. All Asian communities are fiercely cliquish, but none more so than New York's. Low faan, be they Anglo, black, or Hispanic, stick out like sore thumbs in its overcrowded streets.

She could use her telepathic abilities only so far - most human minds were not designed to withstand intrusive scans. If she wasn't careful, their consciousness could very well crumble like an elaborate sugar confection, rendering them useless, both to her and themselves. Still, there were those who would always provide information - for a price.

There was nothing to distinguish the front of the Yankee China Drugstore from any of the others on the block. The windows of the old herb pharmacy were so dusty most passersby

Create PDF
files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (
http://www.novapdf.com
) would automatically assume it was no longer in business.

They would be wrong.

A little bell over the threshold rang as she entered the shop.

The inside was dark and dusty, although she could make out the original fixtures dating from the middle of the last century. A twenty-foot-long gilded screen of chrysanthemums and grinning lions blocked the view into the back of the store.

A couple of faded paper lanterns hung from the pressed-tin ceiling. A long wooden counter with glass windows displayed mass-produced ceramic Buddhas and Mah-Jongg sets and even cheaper tea sets with poorly woven wicker handles. Everything was coated by a fine patina of dust.

A young Chinese man dressed in gray sweats stepped out from behind the screen that blocked access to the rest of the store. He looked hesitant, obviously unprepared for a low faan entering the establishment.

'I'm looking for Hu Tong of the Junren Mao.'

The young man shook 'his head vigorously. 'No here. No one that name here. You got wrong place maybe yes.'

'Don't hand me that crap,' Sonja snapped back in Cantonese.

'Hu Tong has been operating out of this store for one hundred and thirty-six years, give or take a year. Now go tell him he's got a customer!'

'Go back to work, Pei Lu,' purred a deep masculine voice from behind the screen. 'I shall see to our customer myself.'

Hu Tong, chieftain of the Junren Mao, stepped out from behind the gilded screen and fixed Sonja with his eyes of lambent green. It was hard to decide which was more impressive, his formal mandarin dress, complete with elaborately embroidered dragon robe and peacock-feather tassel, or the fact that he had the head of a tiger.