Harley pulled up to the exit gate of Menlo VA and there was Father Truth. Father Truth belonged in Iraq but that was OK. Harley had things to settle with the boy. Waving him over he dug out his old iPod and handed it out the window.
"That's pussy," said Father Truth. "What, 40 gigs?"
"Hey, dude, that's a lotta gigs for nothing."
"Yeh, so thanks for nothing."
He took it, though, and ran on to the car behind.
* * *
"Are you still hearing things? Seeing things?" Nemo asked. Harley called him Nemo even though that wasn't his name, nobody's name, it means Nobody, dig? Or No Man. Real handle was "Doctor" something but Harley just didn't bother with it. He didn't bother with much. Him the doctor, Jack. Doctor. So why not call him Doctor Jack? CORRECTION: JACK-EL, get it? Good enough for guvmint work we say in Real War Which.
"Yeah, I guess I am," Harley told him.
"And that's OK with you, huh?" Jack-el smirked.
"Pretty much. It hasn't caused any accidents. Doesn't get in the way of my life."
"You got a life now?"
"Well …"
He wrote stuff down. He always wrote stuff down. What for? Maybe it was doodling. He was an accomplished doodler. Pretty good at graffiti, too . He runs along vast walls at night with a compressor and spraygun scrolling out vast and elegant arabesques of the SHIT-PISS-CLIT-TITSandASS variety, quaint now, famous fifteen minutes ago, yet hugely successful among the Art Death heads over to Menlo/Atherton trying for the nigguh F/X with they dead white daddy's plastic in designer hiphop.
"All white guys have a life," he said. "Even when they don't have a life."
"Fuck you, Doctor. With extreme prejudice. No offence, of course."
"None taken, asshole. OK. See you in six. Go on. Fade."
He thought that was cool. Fade. Thought it was just so awesomely Neegro. Yet Doctor Jack-el was the color of bubble gum, and he had little swollen zits all over him face from the Twinky jones. Valley Guy from Microchip One Point O, perforce him no look so good; him no Big Health billboard along the side of the road sez BE ALL YOU CAN BE. But his head was QA stamped, and he was a head doctor, so blow me you don't like that shit.
Father Truth (the boy, the apparition; RULE NUMBER ONE: FATHER TRUTH IS ONLY AN APPARITION; REMEMBER THIS AS YOU GO FURTHER ALONG UPON LIFE'S JOURNEY HERE, KILLER), well, he just flipped old Jack-el off and let it go at that, then blazed around a corner wants to mug a guy for his oxygen tank, necessary to sustain the life support but who needs this old snoid? Harley wondered how the kid would get the thing out of here; what he'd do with it when he did. What you get for a oxygen tank, who smoke oxygen anymore, I ask you? Could be he's collecting equipment for his dead sister still smeared all over the front of a Hum-V Crusader Cab? What else he needs? Well, suturing staples, antiseptic, MS, High Five ‘vivifiers, and Oh yeah doctors, mucho doctors, only none of this slag from outa the GI Joke Farm here, with your permission, Effendi. Hahvudd/Stanfudd, yeh-yeh, that's the which of what's required for the revivification. Always get a rush from the ‘viv. Fifteen minutes ago it was stems and nanos but now even Father Truth waste not his time on this issue, which from the Planet Retro is where.
* * *
The whole lot is thronging with people, some of them patients I recognize, but also an unusual number of Iraqis, particularly the women in black, the Mourners. They seem to swirl and converge upon a tiny opening in the crowd. This is where the dead girl lies, I suppose … Soon enough I am out of there, whizzing down the street to my crib in the last of the white neighborhoods, it's this little cottage behind the house used to be a garage or something. They don't know what to make of me there, the family in front, which is just Blake and his wife now. But I'm quiet, that's what matters, and I leave no messes around the place. Do they hear me screaming in the night ? They don't mention it. Just a polite Hello when they are sitting out on the front porch with yesterday's newspapers. What further news could there be now? What could be of importance any more? An Iraqi Holy Man is holding the girl up and shouting, pleading for justice. Who will bring justice? Who will make restitution? Can there be such a thing now? Father Truth just stands there. He has dropped the expensive cell phone he carries, yet no one goes for it. They seem to know, and respect his grief. I am moving out of the parking lot at this point. Must say my goodbyes. In the rearview mirror the crowd has grown so large that it has spilled out into the street alongside the VA, stopping traffic. Just missed it, Allah be praised. Sirens seem to roar up out of the ground, and I imagine some huge, vengeful worm that must go about cleaning up all this running muck of human loss. As I walk past the house Blake's wife offers me some lemonade. I wave my hand No and go on. Once inside my crib I lie down in the dark and see Father Truth looking at me through the window across from my bed. He is holding his phone out to me, indicating that I have a call. It's an old joke between us. Goes like this. The President is calling me. He needs me to make an announcement to my unit. "It is the Rupture," says Father Truth. "You must warn them to hide under their vehicles. But first they must empty their wallets and turn over all cash and credit cards to the boy, Father Truth. That's what your President says." Which is always when I toss him the iPod. Funny how it circles. It keeps coming back like a guy driving round and round the block, looking for a lost address, his old house, maybe, where he grew up believing all that shit.
Some journalist chick was asking me about him. I said, "He hangs out at an intersection where our convoys make a sharp turn and have to slow down, or except for the testosterone set fresh outa whitebread hiphop burbs of subwoofin' Hum-Vs, the which fuck, way they take that corner. He is very friendly with US Troops and has learned to speak English pretty well, especially up on the ‘awesome' argot and of course the fuck-shit-piss-tits-and-ass variety … actually used him as an interpreter in the past, trying to get our brilliant Crusader Rabbit newspeak bullshit across. See, in other words, hon, the Army has a perpetual problem of psychological logistics, you might say; problem of the supply of motives and emotions, of aptitudes and abilities, of habits and wisdom, of trained eyes and educated ears. And how does it get this matériel to the right places at the right time? Why, Father Truth, of course … Now, we know he steals stuff but we don't care. He packs a fancy cell phone he uses to alert his little gang of highjackers when our patrol elements aren't in the vicinity so that they can go to work. Most kids beg for water, Bic lighters, pens, shiny things, but this kid asks me for a Playstation every time he sees me and all I can offer is a 4G iPod. He has also nicknamed me Abu Saheeh, which means Father Truth. I'm not sure whether to be flattered or not, I mean being Father Truth also."
"So you identify with the boy," Nemo suggests.
I just laugh at the fool but Father Truth says, "Hey doctor? Blow me," and he runs around the corner again, he's no doubt tracking some more equipment he thinks he can sell.
TEST QUESTION: WHO IS FATHER TRUTH?
I am Father Truth. The boy, Abu Saheeh, is also Father Truth. Abu, the thief. Son of Abu, the thief. Grandson of Abu, the thief. All interchangeable, ya diggin me now, killer?
I am lying in the dark, sweating. They are playing some gray music up front, diluted jazz with an organ. I think they've got family in for dinner. This is the Body of Christ. This is the Blood of Christ. Hundreds of years ago, Allah nibbled at the feet of Persia, and soon enough stood before the gates of Constantinople. His Children swarmed into Spain.
Today I got another letter from Cremer, my old CO, sent as Islam approached the shores of the Uxine, or so he beheld these events in a glass darkened by madness:
"My castle is surrounded by tanks. Every morning, looking down from the high battlements, I find them parked there in disarray. Sometimes they vanish. The land will be free of them for a while, but not long. They have no purpose that I can see. Going down there and examining them closely one day, I found the barrels to be sealed with lead so as to insure their complete inoperability, at least as weapons. Even so, men and women dressed in the uniform of our race can be seen to rush into the tanks and drive away with great haste, as if on some pressing errand of belligerence, only to return later, at any time of the day or night, and park in the usual haphazard fashion, then drag themselves out and stagger into one of the buildings which provide shelter for many of our race, little pastel buildings with terraces and shrubs and slave music issuing from loudspeakers they have installed in the useless chimneys. I resent the tanks. I resent the people who use them to no purpose. I am, however, afraid to ask them to move the tanks elsewhere so that I don't have to look at them. Because I don't like these vehicles. I don't like seeing them on the grounds. I don't want to be reminded of a world where such things could be necessary. Yet I am the king of this land and the Supreme Pontiff of our race. My people simply do as they like, and I let them. I abide the insult of their noise and their meaningless activities. I could order them all destroyed. I could issue them real weapons and simply demand that they turn these upon each other for the purpose of mutual destruction. I have in fact often entertained such a notion. But it goes no further. I put up with the torment my people cause me. I say nothing. I sign no papers, give no orders, make no demands. They do what they want. I don't know what they think of me. We never speak. I don't think they know how much I hate them. How could they? We never speak. I can find no reason for this. Neither can I find a reason to do otherwise. Except perhaps to tell them to move their pointless tanks, to stop the slaves from singing as they do. The singing is so ugly, like the tanks, like the people of my race, whom I rule over with firm compassion. They should die. We all should die. There is no reason for any of us to go on living."
The letter carried a Menlo postmark. Harley never bothered to visit, but he saw him on the grounds from time to time.
