The Amino Acid tossed his cigarette toward an ashtray and started forward.
Leon's already purpled face went darker, and he stared hard into Crane's eyes—lifted one hand—and then closed his eyes and inhaled.
And Crane was falling away into the darkness of his own mind, aware of the ancient, shifting gods so far below.
His last articulated thought was: It didn't work. He won.
Like galaxies, the things turned beneath him, and though there was no light, he could see them by the images they rang into vibrant compulsion in his mind.
There was the Fool, dancing on the precipice, and the sphinxes that pulled the splendid Chariot, and Judgment calling human forms out of opening graves, and the Moon, with luminous rain falling into a pool, and, somehow closer, the hermaphroditic figure that was the World; and then he was able to look at himself.
His own form was the robed and powerful body of the Emperor, and he held in his right hand the looped Egyptian cross, the ankh.
He rose, and the other entities seemed to bow in repectful greeting, and he heard a chorus of singing and weeping and shouting that evoked, for all the bass roars of horror and rage that abraded the pure high voices, triumph and hope.
He continued to rise, up through the ringing, glittering blackness.
And vision came back to his eyes, and he was standing on the red carpet in the lounge of his father's houseboat.
The Amino Acid's cigarette hit the ashtray, and he took another step forward.
The Hanari body, suddenly expressionless, took a step backward to catch its balance.
"No!" screamed Doctor Leaky in sudden panic, "not this, I love life, my love life? Love wife? Burned up my Chevrolet, took my boy away from me, my wife did." He was breathing deeply, with his eyes closed, and Crane could see that the old man had wet his pants again. "I won't sink in this," shouted the Doctor Leaky body, "I can gather my thoughts." Again he was silent, and Crane was afraid Leon might actually be able to exert the broken, senile brain and jump back into the now blank-eyed Hanari. "I will gather the—the—I know what—the cards, I spilled them. Well, really I threw them."
The Amino Acid was gaping around, his hand on the butt of his holstered revolver.
"Go sit down," Crane told him. The young man nodded and went back to the bar and sat on one of the stools.
"You—I've got it, I've got it," shouted Doctor Leaky, his eyes still screwed shut. "I can … push—" He grinned suddenly and blinked around, until he saw the Hanari body still standing across the room from him. "No, goddamn son of a bitch charged me, what was it? Two hundred dollars! For a used engine, in '45, or wait, no, that's right, '45. I—I made my—my displeasure clear, I assure you. Of that."
Crane stared at the frantic wheelchair-bound body, and he realized that this was the first time in more than twenty years that his father's mind had been in his father's body. This thrashing old man was his complete father, whole again.
Crane clenched his fists and forced himself not to run over to the wheelchair and hug the man. Remember Ozzie, he told himself. Ozzie was your true father. This man you still love so much killed Ozzie.
Doctor Leaky was subsiding into giggles again. "Do you think that boy cried?" He frowned suddenly and looked around, as if at a crowd of debaters. "Never! I cut the hook out of his finger and he never cried …"
Crane pushed past the blinking, mindless Art Hanari and crossed to the big round card table. Bending down, he reached out with both hands and swept the Tarot cards into one stack and turned the stack face down on the green felt.
"You're not to touch those cards!" shouted the Amino Acid.
Crane looked over his shoulder. The young man had drawn his revolver and was pointing it at him. "Why not?" He smiled and jerked a thumb at the Hanari. "He doesn't have any objections. Ask him."
"I'm going to have to ask you to step away from the table," he told Crane. "Mr. Hanari has told us to kill anyone who tries to take the cards."
Crane hadn't anticipated this problem. He thought of the chilly gun in his belt, under the untucked shirt, and knew he wouldn't be able to drag it free before the Amino Acid had time for at least two shots. And the young man was already aiming at him.
Crane sighed. "Why Amino Acids?" he asked lightly.
"How do you know that name?" The young man seemed grudgingly pleased that Crane did know of it, like a writer meeting a stranger who has read one of his stories.
"Bitin Dog told me."
"Hah." The young man waved the gun barrel. "Step away from the table." Crane walked over and stood beside the Hanari.
"Our leader came up with the name," the young man said. "We're—we were a—a men's club, all pretty hip to the New Age wisdom … though our leader got killed last week, and now most of the guys have split. Amino comes from the Greek Ammon, the name of the Egyptian sun-god, for your information—and there are twenty amino acids that are the basis of all proteins, such as DNA, which is the currency of sexual reproduction, which we were against." He shrugged. "There were twenty of us. There are twenty cards in the Major Arcana if you throw away the Moon and the Lovers. We figured to be the psychic pool's DNA and immaculately conceive ourselves a real Fisher King, no woman needed, in the person of our leader. And after our leader was murdered, Stevie and I found Mr. Hanari, who's already that kind of King."
He blinked and frowned. "And would you step away from Mr. Hanari, too, please. Further than that. Sit down in the far chair. I'm perfectly willing to kill you, sir. Mr. Hanari has given us specific instructions." As Crane sat down in one of the farther chairs, the Amino Acid glanced at the slack-jawed, dully staring Hanari body. "I'm sure he'll have instructions for me in just a moment, when he's done … thinking."
He's empty, boy, thought Crane. He won't be speaking ever again—unless my father can throw his mind clear of his old body with his broken old brain, which he hasn't managed to do yet.
Crane glanced at Doctor Leaky, who was alternately frowning and chortling. But he might, Crane thought nervously, if we let him have enough time to try.
He remembered having once, while drunk, sunk in a vision down to the Archetype level below his mind and then come up through the wrong personality well and found himself in a woman's body. Maybe he could do that intentionally now, and come up in the Hanari body, and order this young man to throw his gun into the lake and leave. Crane closed his eyes and let his mind descend deeply, beginning to lose the mental outriggers and nets and emblems of his own individuality as he sank toward the level everyone shared.
But he found himself instead in a vivid hypnagogic dream, in which he was sunk in the darkness of the lake's deep water. He knew he was still sitting at the card table aboard his father's houseboat, he could see the paneled walls and the glowing lamps and the Hanari body standing and rocking on the carpet, but he could also see now, dimly, the walls of Siegel's Flamingo penthouse, and dark lake water beyond the aquarium-like windows, and the cupboard behind which had been concealed the shaft that led down to the basement tunnel.
Now, in the dream, the shaft led away upward instead. And a voice in his head, so faint that he couldn't be sure he wasn't imagining it, said, You're too big now to fit. There's only a little bit of me left. I'll go.
Thank you for helping me, Crane thought, and a moment later he was afraid the deteriorated personality out there might have caught the feelings behind the consciously projected thought: doubt, and embarrassment, and repugnance.