The Western Lands Read Online Free PDF Page B

gone wrong and started looking for the unknown player. Bickford knew about Joe's past, of course, but would have considered him unimportant. A gunsmith, a checker player—not even chess.
    Over the centuries and tens of centuries, Joe had served many men—and many Gods, for men are but the representatives of Gods. He had served many, and respected none. "They don't even know what buttons to push or what happens when you push them. Push themselves out of a job every fucking time."
    Joe is the Tinkerer, the Smith, the Master of Keys and Locks, of Time and Fire, the Master of Light and Sound, the Technician. He knows the how and the when. The why does not concern him. He has left many sinking ships. "So I am to take orders from a birdbrained posturing faggot? Just leave the details to Joe.  . . . Well, he left one too many. They all do."
    He would have to move quickly before Bickford & Co. could recover and close the leak. He knew there was only one man who could effect the basic changes dictated by the human impasse: Hassan i Sabbah: HIS. The Old Man of the Mountain. And HIS was cut off by a blockade that made the Gates of Anubis look like a dimestore lock.
    Joe understood Kim so well that he could afford to dispense with him as a part of himself not useful or relevant at the present time. He understood Kim's attempt to transcend his physical structure, to which he could never become reconciled, by an icy, inhuman perfection of attitude, painfully maintained and refined to an unbearable pitch. Joe turned to a negation of attitude, a purity of function that could be maintained only by the pressure of deadly purpose.
    The simplest task caused him almost unbearable pain, like looking about his workspace and putting every object in its ordained place, each object to be either assigned a place or moved to another room, which resulted in moving one clutter to another place where he would, in time, extend his tidying process until each object had felt the touch of his hand, and those objects that finally belonged nowhere would be arranged into what he called a Muriel, a final expression of random disorder.
    This continual pain is a sanction imposed by Nature, whose laws he flouts by remaining alive. Joe's only lifeline is the love of certain animals. Dogs immediately see him with deep hatred as the Stranger, but he can make himself invisible to dogs, incapable of being seen because the dog's eyes would hurt, so that the dog skirts the perimeters of his cover.
    Cats see him as a friend. They rub against him purring, and he can tame weasels, skunks and racoons. He knows the lost art of turning an animal into a familiar. The touch must be very brave and very gentle. He can feel his ki fill the lost hand and the animal turns, its back arched under the phantom touch. If the touch fails, the animal may attack like a demon from Hell. Several people have been killed trying to tame the Tiger Cat, a twenty-pound wildcat found in Central America. Only those who can be without fear can make a familiar. And Joe has nothing left to fear.

    Faint blush transfigured his years and implemented a flash of youth. He unscrewed capitalism, snake shedding its skin. Change terminal. Bought a ticket to offer a chance of outhouse. Hour souls . . . for Mike Chase Joe knows in his arm socket become President, a faint blush flashed some disastrous legislation features a disastrous presidency leaving for Bickford another sink out in nitrous film smoke quick precise Joe detached another dead end. Only a tool box. The board and checkers coo a little tune like survival. Consider the seven ways to the stage melted into one. There is only one man in the Cemetery—HIS. How can the blockade be broken and the day's cul de sac?

    Joe the Dead belongs to a select breed of outlaws known as the NOs, natural outlaws dedicated to breaking the so-called natural laws of the universe foisted upon us by physicists, chemists, mathematicians, biologists and, above all, the