The Western Lands Read Free

Ren leafs through scripts. "Yes, I think this one, B.J. Art and box office. The way I see it, it's a classic, see?"
    And Sekem is "permanent party." He knows what buttons to push to get the show moving, soldiers where they are supposed to be, for the most devastating ambush in history. The battle of Dead Souls, fought in the Land of the Dead after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
    "The tide is coming in from Hiroshima you dumb Earth hicks. Sauve qui peut. "
    So when it got too hot for Renny he took off, leaving Joe there. That's one reason Joe hates all Rens. His souls were hideously burned in the blast. His destiny burned off, in terrible pain from the phantom souls seared by the fires of Hell, pulled back to make slingshots and scout knives, to make more guns, to make more noise and Joe is supersensitive to noise, a slammed door keys in the pain almost gone and then Kim's morphine pinned him back to the Cemetery.
    "The best Technician in or out of Hell, and he wants me to make air guns or brass knucks and blackjacks . . . music-box pistols that tinkle out the Danse Macabre . . . maybe we should open a fucking novelty store with itching powder and plaster turds. Is this what I was brought back for?"
    They say passing a kidney stone is the worst pain a man can experience, and they'll let you pass one right in the ER before they'll give you a shot.
    "Might be an addict . . . gotta run an X ray."
    "Machine's broke, doctor."
    "Well then, there's not a thing I can do."
    Having your Ren burned out is worse, much worse. The searing, throbbing pain is always there, with no purpose to take your mind off it.
    Look at a Man of Destiny. Every step, every gesture is handed to him right on cue. All he has to do is ham it up. But when you have to pick up your dead carcass and move it step by bloody step on jagged hunks of white-hot metal and steaming orange juice . . .
    No studio will touch me with a pitchfork. So I threw in with Kim and Hall.
    You reckon ill who leave me out.
    When me you fly I am the wings.

    And who else is going to get this show into space?
    The Tech Sergeants who know how to get a job done. Hart and Bickford, poor players to strut and fret their hour upon the stage. Mike Chase as their Guardian Angel. The Ba, the Heart, made in Hollywood.
    Bristling with idiot suspicions, Hart and Bickford could never trust a Ka. And anybody been to Hell and back knows that the Ka, the Double, is the only one in the whole rotten lot you can trust, because if you don't make it, he don't make it. Hart and Bickford can never admit that they might not make it.
    Knowing you might not make it . . . in that knowledge courage is born. Bickford and Hart can't take that chance, so they will never know courage. And a coward is the worst of all masters.
    A deserted penal colony with dead ghosts . . . pasture land opposite where implausible ponies graze. Does anyone ride them? Do they pull little carts? Do they lay back their ears and bite with their horrid yellow teeth? I doubt it. . . a line of trees, then white grain elevators crash into the sky like a painting in the Whitney Museum.
    Kafka speaks of the point of no return. This is the most difficult of all points to reach. The game is called Find Your Adversary. The Adversary's game plan is to persuade you that he does not exist. "Why all the paranoia?" That is only one of his game plans. You find out he exists, and you are still a long way from a confrontation, a long way. A dreary abrasive dull way, sad voices, dirtier, older.
    Faces of evil hate and despair. He has guns but no one will shoot at him. Easier to wait him out. From the Place of Dead Roads he gambled on a blast-out. Last of the gallant heroes. His gun rusts in his hand. It's no superweapon from outer space, just a Ruger .357 magnum . . . if winter comes . . . (best seller back in the 1920s, never read it but it seems winter is Old Age, the last test and the toughest). Health can be a curse, keeping the body alive when the souls are dead