NECROM

Gibson drank one of the Scotches and half of the first beer, and then he picked up the phone again and dialed Desiree's number. Desiree was now living with an entertainment lawyer whom Gibson considered to be one of the worst examples of primordial slime that ever walked on legs. She answered on the second ring. "Hello."

At least she hadn't vanished into limbo.

"Desiree?"

She sounded puzzled. "Who is this?"

"It's me, Joe."

"I'm sorry, Joe who?"

Gibson didn't like this at all. "How quickly they forget. "

Puzzled changed to nervous. "Who is this?"

"We only lived together for two and a half years."

"I think you have the wrong number."

"For Christ's sake, Desiree. It's me, Joe-Joe Gibson."

"I think you have the wrong Desiree."

Gibson felt himself losing his temper. "What the fuck do I have to do, repeat intimate details of our sex life?"

Nervous was replaced by angry. "Listen, you sicko creep, I don't need this shit. I'm hanging up right now."

New York women knew how to hang up a phone. Gibson sat holding the thing until it made the reproachful beeping of a receiver off the hook. It was only then that he hung it up and reached for the second Scotch. What the hell had gone down? It was as though he'd become some Orwellian nonperson, expunged from record and even memory. His mind started searching through some of the available options. The first to present itself was that he had really died when Nephredana had shot him with the streamheat return-gun, and now he was in some custom-tailored hell. He put that to one side as too absolute and went on to the next. The idea that he was still in the region of Necrom, and all this was just one more illusion, maybe some grandiose, rat-maze psychology test, just didn't hold water. When he'd been in the primal world with Necrom's messenger, a certain disco

After a lot of thought, he narrowed the field down to a pair of theories in which he couldn't find any truly gaping holes. The first was that there had been some glitch in the transition and he wasn't in his own dimension at all. Instead, he'd landed in one that was incredibly close to his own, separated by only the smallest of details, like the one-way streets of New York going in the wrong direction and the fact that he'd never been born. The second theory was a little more complicated. He was actually back in his own dimension, but, since he had been gone, some subtle but deeply weird change had taken place, maybe because of a print-through from the nuking of Luxor. His only problem was that he hadn't been here to go through the change along with everyone and everything else. He was less successful at thinking up ways to confirm or refute these theories, and inspiration was a long time coming.

"In times of crisis, turn on the TV."

He turned on the TV and flipped round the dial. It looked like perfectly normal afternoon programming: the regular soaps, Donahue doing a piece on women who married Satanists, Oprah sobbing along with the mothers of child prostitutes. There were kids' cartoons on cha

Since the TV was of no help, he returned to the phone. There was one very obvious call that he could make. He dialed the desk to get the correct time. It was 3:45, and that meant that it was just before midnight in London,. He was back on the phone again getting UK information.

"I'm sorry, sir. There is no listing in the Greater London area under that name."

Damn it to hell.

"Are you sure about that? It's not just an unlisted number?"

"I'm quite sure, sir. I have no listing under the name Gideon Windemere."

The booze seemed to be loosening up his brain, because a new idea immediately presented itself. Maybe he should have another shot at trying to find Tony Ramos. Even if his memory had somehow been expunged from Tony's brain, Ramos was quite crazy enough to at least listen to his story. Ramos had a longtime, on-again and off-again girlfriend, Cupcake DiMaggio, a short, feisty, and very unpredictable little spitfire of a woman with a beehive hairdo straight out of the Shangri-Las and a tattoo of a black panther licking its paws on her left shoulder. If anyone knew what had become of Tony Ramos, it would be Cupcake.

Back to 411. "Do you have a listing for a Lois DiMaggio?"

The computer came on the line. "The number is 718-555-5678. The number is 718-555-5678."

Gibson dialed the number.

"Yeah?" It was Cupcake.

"I don't know if you remember me, my name is Joe Gibson."

Cupcake was suspicious and hostile, her regular demeanor with strangers, except Gibson had known her as long as he had known Tony. "I don't remember you. Should I?"

"I was a friend of Tony Ramos."

"Is this some kind of fucking joke?"

"I'm just trying to get ahold of him."

Now Cupcake was angry. "What are you, pal? Some kinda ghoul? All of Tony's friends know that Tony died eight months ago. So unless you've been out of town or something…"

Gibson felt ill. "Yes, yes, I've been away. What the hell happened?"

"The asshole OD'd on dope."

Gibson could see why her voice was so full of anger and bitterness. Cupcake had never made any secret of how much she loved Tony Ramos. It was one of those Sid-and-Nancy things. "I'm sorry."

"So am I, pal."

Gibson called for another Scotch. He needed it. Tony had always gone in for bouts of dopefiending, and, eight months ago, Tony Ramos had indeed OD'd, except that he had OD'd at Gibson's apartment, and Gibson had called the paramedics and Tony had pulled through. In this new world, where Gibson didn't seem to exist, he hadn't been there when Tony had scored the ultra-pure, miraculously uncut China White that had fucked him up, and Tony Ramos had died. Gibson couldn't shake the sick feeling that somehow he was responsible.

The porter came by with more booze. "You're drinking heavy."

Gibson nodded. "Yeah, I got problems."

"Take it easy, okay?"

Gibson nodded again and tipped the man. "I'll do my best."

He had to get out of there. The hotel room was getting claustrophobic, and he knew he wasn't going to learn anything more or come up with any solution by just sitting on the bed, drinking, watching TV, and making phone calls to people who couldn't remember him.

Out on the street, he took it into his head to walk down to Tower Records. The record store should show if any trace of his music remained. He started down Twenty-Third Street until he reached the Flatiron Building; then he turned south, heading downtown. He also stopped at a couple of taverns on the way. He realized that he was building to a full-scale drunk and that might not be such a smart idea, but a certain recklessness had come into the picture. What did he expect from himself? He'd lost his past, his history, his home, and he had found out that one of his best friends was dead, and he certainly had reason enough to get as disgustingly drunk as his mood indicated and damn the torpedoes.

It was with much the same attitude that he entered Tower Records. The uniformed security guard just inside the front door gave him a hard look, but Gibson walked the walk with such stu