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I cleared my throat. What kind of guide had Harry dreamed up for us? "I'm Joe Fletcher. And that's Sondra and Harry."
"Joe." He touched my face with his cool fingers. "It's a rare pleasure to meet an intelligent man. I'm Tad Beat."
"How about a drink?" asked Harry. "Do you have any whiskey?"
"I have enough to get you boys country drunk. Let's make my pad."
We followed Tad downstairs. His apartment took up one very large room on the building's top floor. His floor and walls were covered with Oriental carpets. A narrow bed, some boxes of food, and a desk with papers and a typewriter completed the furnishings.
"Stap my vitals," muttered Tad, rummaging under his bed. "Just what the old doctor ordered. Keeps the slugs off, too." He took out a clear glass bottle of oily liquid.
Harry drank from it, wiped his mouth, then passed the bottle to Sondra. She shook her head and gave the bottle to me. It was moonshine, sharp and with a bitter undertaste. I spit out half the mouthful I'd taken and gave the bottle back to Tad. I didn't trust wireheads.
"Tell us more about Herber," I requested. "Did he start a religion, or what? You say they electrocuted him?"
"You're really elsewhere," said Tad. "Mr. Nobody from Nowhere. Scope this, age levels five through thirteen."
He handed me a color comic book, the kind of thing that a child might bring home from Bible school. On the cover was a soft giant brain with a halo. That was Gary? Crowded all around the brain were laughing children with humps on their backs. It occurred to me that I'd seen a lot of round-shouldered people on the streets here. Why would being saved make you into a hunchback? Begi
1. Gary's parents were scientists. Two clean-cut people in white smocks. She holds a test tube, he holds a Geiger counter.
2. Their world was full of trouble. Weapons, broken liquor bottles, bloody faces, a background of psychedelic music symbols.
3. And God had been forgotten. A drunk sleeping on the steps of a looted temple.
4. God spoke to Gary's parents. They stand in a roomful of machines, staring up into streaming light.
5. And told them what to do. She leans over a microscope, while he handles some radioactive material with tongs. Her belly is swollen.
6. Gary Herber was born on June 25. The parents lean over a radiant cradle. The cradle contains a naked brain with a spinal cord.
7. Gary's brother, Seth, was scared. The brain floats in a tank of nutrient. A dirty, unattractive boy peers at it from around a doorjamb.
8. God told Seth to share. Seth kneeling next to the brain's tank, his face blank with religious ecstasy.
9. Seth and Gary grew together. Gary is riding the nape of Seth's neck. Seth is clean and happylooking, writing answers on a blackboard.
10. They began to teach God's Laws. Lean and charismatic, Seth is standing on a soapbox preaching to a crowd. The naked brain is hidden beneath Seth's coat.
11. These are God's Laws. A stone tablet with three laws chiseled in:
God's Laws
I. Follow Gary
II. Be Clean
III. Teach God's Laws
Tad thrust the bottle at me again. Reluctantly I looked up from the comic. The bottle was almost empty and Harry was drunk. He was sitting on Tad's bed with his arm around Sondra. They were kissing.
"No thanks, Tad." I turned my attention back to the comic. "Is this all true?"
"They omit to mention where Gary wig and drink all a woman's spinal fluid. She croaked and the Herbers got the chair."
I read on.
12. Gary's disciples shared him. Smiling Seth is setting Gary down on an attractive woman's naked back. Many cheering faces in the background.
13. But there were enemies. Three swarthy, low-browed men sitting at a table with money and whiskey. One shows a legal document to his gloating comrades.
14. Seth and Gary were arrested. Faceless police officers in riot helmets drag humpbacked Seth away from weeping women and children.
15. The public electrocution. Seth is strapped into an electric chair. A special wire leads to Gary, naked on Seth's back. A crowd is watching.
16. The Blessed Scionization. Seth is dead and smoking. But Gary is much bigger than before. He bulges out like a cauliflower, and pieces of him are splitting off.
17. Soon Gary was everywhere. An army of men, women, and children, each with a naked brain riding on his or her back. They are constructing a palace.
18. Don't you want to share? The tablet of God's Laws, the electric chair, and a cheerful brain float together in a space of light.
19. Come to the Palace this Thursday! Two happy children, a boy and a girl, walk up the marble steps of a splendid white building.
I closed the comic and looked up. Tad and Sondra were arguing. Harry was really out of it, and Tad had just given him another bottle.
"Why do you give him so much to drink?" Sondra demanded.
"It's like the sight of someone about to flip excites me," Tad said, reaching up to fondle his hat-band. "I like to crack them open and feed on the wonderful soft stuff that ooze out."
Sondra looked at Tad with real dislike. "You're awful! A wirehead, a drunk, a gay —"
Tad leered at her, forming his face into a caricature of heterosexual lust. "What are these strange feelings that come over me when I look at those tits sticking out so cute? No, no!" He held his hand as if to shield his face, then sidled over to drape his arms across my shoulders. "You and me could really exist, Joe."
Harry was taking this all in with drunken relish.
"We don't have very much time," I said, fending off Tad's advances. He was a real old-time degenerate.
Harry chugged from the new bottle and tossed it back to Tad. I didn't see how they could stomach the stuff. I felt sick from the one taste of it I'd had.
"Just tell us where to find Gary Herber," said Sondra. "And we'll be on our way."
"It's not going to be as easy as we thought," I told her. "Herber is all over the place. He's a sort of parasite that grows on people's backs. But what was that about a palace, Tad?"
"Gary's palace," said Tad, smiling loosely. "Ten blocks east of here. The palace is for the boss slug. The king-size Herber that grows the buds. Granpaw brain. We'll hold him still with that pink gun and work out. Do it hard TV so's the citizens down home can share the harvest plenty." Tad seemed almost as drunk as Harry.
Sondra and I exchanged looks of concern. It was well past eleven.
"We really have to get moving," I repeated.
"Don't you want to try on my hat, Joe? It has a left-brain/right-brain feedback loop. Feel real wiggy."
"No!" cried Sondra. "Let's go before it's too late!"
We clattered down the stone stairs to the street, Harry leaning heavily on Tad and me. Sondra flew down ahead of us.
"Do you want me to drive, Harry?"
"Naw, naw, I'm shuperman. I'll shober up when I hafta. You wa
Tad found himself a heavy .45 automatic. We all got in the Cad. Both of the windshields were broken — the police laser had broken the back, and Tad's rock had broken the front. Harry gu