He crossed quickly to the window, looked out into the back garden. Two figures, one with blond hair in a pony-tail, one with an elephant's head, were riding a rising pillar of dirt to the top of the rear garden wall.
"Shit," Belew said, and ran.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
"Where are we, Unca Neesha?" Sprout asked, hanging slightly back.
It was another villa a few blocks away, less grand than the one the President and Chancellor occupied, and dark. The grounds were overgrown, the shrubberies looming black ominous shapes.
"I don't like it here," the girl protested. "I'm afraid."
"There is nothing to fear," the guru said. "Not with your Uncle Ganesha here. Have I not the power of maya? Have I not magic?"
She bit her lip, but nodded. She was going to be brave. She had learned how a long time ago, when the bad people took her from her daddy.
He pushed the door. It opened. Inside, the house echoed to their steps, and smelled of mildew and the dust that swirled up to greet them as they entered.
The place had belonged to a ranking member of one of the former Socialist Republic's many and varied secret police organizations. Showing that wisdom Marcos owned, but Ceaucescu and Honecker sadly lacked, he had blown town before People Power came and nailed his ass to a light standard. The villa had suffered a little token vandalism and looting in the immediate aftermath of Liberation, but Madam President had made it known she Strongly Disapproved of that sort of thing, and it had ceased. The house had been closed up, and remained fairly undisturbed until the guru's sannyasi cased it.
They walked through the foyer and parlor to the great room. Ganesha gestured, and it became paradise. In this case paradise was dominated by a bed, canopied in fine silk and cloth of gold, lit by myriad candles and golden oil lamps, swaying from carved-ivory chains.
"We're going to go to bed?" Sprout asked, trying to hide her disappointment. She wasn't tired yet, and anyway the excitement of escaping the Palace had got her all awake.
"Here, my child, kneel upon the bed." the guru said, urging her onto it.
"I never sleep without my pink bear," she said, and then remembered to add politely, "and Mr. Fish."
"Sleep, my child?" Ganesha tittered. "Sleeping is the furthest thing from my mind. Soon, you shall truly know paradise. I can make you feel things your young body never knew it could experience - "
As he spoke, the tip of his trunk slid softly down her cheek. She smiled. It felt good.
His hands were on her, caressing. She tried to pull away. There was something wrong here, something her daddy had warned her about....
The T-shirt vanished. Chimes began to play.
She gasped and hugged her arms over her white bra. "Stop it!" she wailed.
"Do not be afraid, my princess," Ganesha said. "I shall not hurt you, no. First I shall prepare you - "
He dropped a hand to her hip. The cut-off jeans vanished.
"And then will come the pleasure. Come now, my sweet, do not cringe away. Let me help you off with that."
He tried to reach her bra. She clasped her forearms in a tight inverted V before her and turned away. He tittered.
"No matter. That which I can touch, I can bring to nonbeing. As I can create, so can I destroy, though at not so long a range."
As he spoke, he got two plump fingers under the strap of Sprout's bra, pulled it away from her skin. She whimpered.
The bra disappeared.
"See? It is all so simple. Nothing to fear, nothing to worry about. I am your father's guru, but I would be more to you, precious child. Oh, so very much more."
"Please," she said, unable to hold in the tears. "Leave me alone."
"You will not wish that when you learn what I can offer." He ran his hand down her ribs. Her satiny skin was drawn up in goosebumps. He reached for the waistband of her panties.
A click from behind him, metallic and multiplex.
Deliberately Ganesha turned. J. Robert Belew stood in the door to the parlor, aiming his Para-Ordnance at the guru's broad stomach.
"Back off, Hosenose. Or I'll commence to let your atman leak out through your belly-button."
Ganesha sighed. "Truly, you are without wisdom."
His giant white rat materialized at Belew's right hand. Before he could pull the trigger it bit off his gun hand with a flash of orange incisors.
Belew gasped and fell to his knees as blood jetted across the room, spraying the magnificent canopy, Ganesha, and Sprout. Sprout crouched on the bed, looking wildly from Belew to Ganesha to the giant rat, which sat on its great haunches, demurely cleaning blood from its whiskers.
"Sprout, run!" Belew screamed. "Back to your father!"
The half-naked girl tried to obey. She started to jump off the bed, but the sheet rose up around her legs, tangling her and pulling her down.
The rat gave off cleaning its face to lunge again at Belew. Desperately he rolled aside, just avoiding its strike. The maneuver brought him into the corner, almost against the base of an old-fashioned floor lamp with a flexible neck. He pressed his spurting stump against its base.
The rat jumped for him. The top of the lamp slammed down right between its eyes, which showed maroon highlights in the candlelight.
The rat sat down on its haunches. The lamp struck like a cobra, cracking it on its snout. The rat chittered outrage and grabbed the lamp in its teeth. It bit down hard.
There was a blue flash, and a pop!, and a brief loud buzzing, accompanied by a stink of burning meat. The rat flopped over on its back, the broken lamp hanging from its convulsively working jaws, blue sparks flying like spittle from its mouth. It kicked around the room, tore the hangings from the bed and expired.
"My rat," Ganesha said in tones of desolation. He had trouble making himself heard over Sprout's screams. The sheet had completely entwined her long legs, turned her to a mummy lamia with an angel's face. "You have slain my sacred rat."
"You can build yourself another," J. Bob said, between pants, as he rolled to his knees and cast about for his sidearm. "Unless I miss my guess. What do you do, call virtual particles into being in the desired form? And if you need something really substantial, like a riding rat, it uses up a lot of your capacity, doesn't it? Thought I saw this LSD playboy pad of yours waver a few times there.
"And your little disintegration trick - you can suppress virtual particles, too, as well as call them into being, you rascal, you. Like the pions that carry the strong force - "
Ganesha shook his magnificent head. "You are lost in the maya of your machines - "
"Actually, I think it's the blood I've lost that makes me talk like this."
"- to concern yourself with how I do what I do, when all that matters is what I do."
And his mind caught the flames of the lamps and the candles, and drew them forth in bright strands into a roiling, roaring mass, and set them upon Belew. He fought, rolling on the floor to douse the flames, roaring as much in fury as in pain. But in the end, the flames had their way.
At last it was done, and he lay still.
For a moment Ganesha stood over his vanquished foe. The corpse was covered with a hard black charcoal crust, from which stinking smoke rose. The guru nodded and turned away.
"And now, my child," he said, going to the bed. The smell of incense filled the room, to banish less pleasant odors. "Let us continue where we left off."
Sprout stared at him with wide blue eyes. When he reached his trunk for her she struck at it with her fists.
"You hurt Unca Bob. I hate you!"
He reared, blinking back sudden tears of pain. He seized her wrists.
"I will not be denied any longer," he cried. Golden vines twined around Sprout's arms from the posts of the bed. They drew her down onto her back.
Behind Ganesha the smoking mummy stirred. Slowly, agonizingly, it stretched a foot toward the handgun lying near it on the floor. Handspan patches of blackened meat fell away like cheap plaster.