Paint It Black, page 12
part #3 of Sonja Blue Series
The floor-walker looked genuinely perplexed. "I don't understand! There hasn't been a woman in such a condition on this floor since noon! I could swear it! I'm sure I would have noticed...."
"So where'd this poor tad come from, eh?" Mavis sighed, running her work-roughened hand against the baby's cheek. "His mum must have been in the store. Surely the fairies didn't leave him. Too bad he can't tell us who he belongs to."
The nameless son of William Palmer yawned, waved his chubby little fists in the air, and smacked his toothless gums, wondering all the while when he was going to be fed.
* * * * *
Heilongjiang Province, The People's Republic of China
The madman's name was Sun Wang Zuocai, and he had spent the last thirty-three of his seventy-seven years locked away in a private sanitarium in the frozen climes of Heilongjiang Province. There are many such sanitariums scattered throughout Communist China where those considered bent on "criminal insanity against the State" and deemed impossible to reeducate have been banished. What made this particular sanitarium different from the others was that Sun Wang Zuocai was its only inmate.
None of the six staff members assigned to watch over the old man could understand what was so important - or dangerous - about him that he had to be kept in isolated confinement and dosed with the most potent of psychoactive drugs.
Thin to the point of emaciation, his arms and legs withered from decades spent strapped into a straitjacket and manacled to his bed, with a long beard and mustaches the color of fresh snow, and a piercing gaze that seemed to look through both time and space, Sun Wang Zuocai appeared more like a crazed wizard from the Beijing opera than a senile mental patient. And that, more or less, was the truth. Although no one except a select handful of Party leaders knew of his existence, at one time Sun Wang Zuocai had served as mystic advisor to Chairman Mao.
Wang Zuocai was born in 1917 in Zhejiang Province, a place renowned for its scenic beauty. His father was a wealthy man, heir to a sizable tea plantation and silkworm concern that stretched back three centuries. His mother, however, was of even nobler stock. Her family was descended from a long line of sorcerers who had advised the emperors since the days of the Ch'in Dynasty. By the time Wang Zuocai was five years old, his talent as an oracle was already making itself known. But then the Japanese came and things became bad for his family. His parents hoped that he would someday become a member of General Chiang Kai-shek's retinue, but Wang Zuocai's second sight told him that the future lay with Mao Zedong. So, at the age of eighteen, he joined the Chinese Communist Party and found himself on the Long March.
During those hard, torturous years - on the run from both the Nationalists and the occupying Japanese - Wang Zuocai became one of Mao's most trusted - and secret - personal advisers. At first his precognitive abilities were limited to a few minutes and those who were physically present, but as time progressed, so did his power to see into the future.
Mao relied on Wang Zuocai's talents a great deal, but he had to be exceptionally careful in concealing the exact nature of his confidant's ability. If his Soviet advisers got wind of Wang Zuocai, they would either dismiss Mao as a fool - or try to steal Wang for their own uses. It would not help matters among Mao's fellow workers if it was discovered he was using the services of an oracle, a habit associated with the Imperial dynasties. Thus, although Sun Wang Zuocai was one of the most powerful and influential members of the CCP, no one knew who he was. And so it went for twenty-two years.
Until 1958.
Before 1958, there had been the First Five-Year Plan, which emphasized rapid industrial development and expansion. Iron and steel, electric power, heavy engineering, and other sophisticated, highly capital-intensive plants were developed at the expense of agriculture, which, up until then, had occupied more that eighty percent of the population.
Now Mao proposed the introduction of the Second Five-Year Plan - which he called the Great Leap Forward. The Great Leap Forward called for the abolition of private plots and the formation of communes, and the increase of agricultural output through greater cooperation and physical effort. The Chairman called his oracle to him, told him of his plans, and asked what great future Wang Zuocai foresaw for China.
What Wang Zuocai saw was crop failure and famine, leading to the starvation of millions and, eventually, to the dissolution of diplomatic ties between China and the Russians and Mao's forced retirement as Chairman of the republic. Mao, already growing accustomed to being worshipped as the wisest of men, took exception with Wang Zuocai's prophecy and denounced him as a reactionary. The very next day, Wang Zuocai was arrested as he left his house and taken to a "reeducation facility" in Jiangxi Province.
He spent most of his time in solitary confinement. Endless tape loops quoting the wisdom of the Chairman harangued him from hidden speakers day and night. The only times he saw other people were when the guards came in to beat him. Malnourished and forced to sleep on lice-ridden straw, denied anything to read except the writings of the Chairman, Wang Zuocai's talent began feeding on itself, growing stronger and wilder. Soon he was able to predict the guards' arrival within the minute of the hour of the day, even though he had no way of keeping time.
One time, as he was being beaten, he looked up into the face of one of his guards and said: "Your wife is being untrue behind your back. She takes the village Party official into her bed the moment you leave the house. He is with her now." The guard called him a liar and struck him with his rifle, breaking Wang's jaw. Two days later, the guard caught his wife in bed with the village Party official and shot them both, then turned the rifle on himself. Wang Zuocai saw that part, too, which is why he'd told the guard in the first place.
By 1961 the Great Leap Forward had proved itself to be a disaster. Uncounted millions had starved to death in the outlying provinces, and the Soviets had left in disgust, taking their blueprints with them. Mao, chastised, retired as Chairman of the republic, if not the party. Not long after his resignation, Mao ordered Wang Zuocai's release from prison and had his old advisor brought back to the Forbidden City. But he quickly discovered that the Sun Wang Zuocai who stood before him was not the man he used to know.
Although Wang Zuocai was only forty-four, his ordeal had turned his hair white and cost him most of his teeth. But what Mao found most discomforting were his eyes - they seemed to see into a disturbing distance. Occasionally Wang Zuocai would grimace or shake his head or smirk at something only he could see. After offering his former confidant some rice wine, Mao asked him what it was he saw. Wang Zuocai said he saw many things, but at that moment he was watching the assassination of the Americans' most recent president.
He then went on to forecast, in no real order, the fall of Saigon, the death of a black musician, and Nixon standing on the Great Walt.
Mao did not know if the oracle was, indeed, seeing the future or if he'd gone mad. When Wang Zuocai veered from forecasting the future and began espousing the existence of nonhuman races dwelling unseen among humanity - even going so far as to accuse Mao's own wife, Jiang Qing, of having the head of a she-fox - Mao decided Wang Zuocai was indeed insane. As much as it saddened him to realize that he had been instrumental in destroying his friend's mind, part of him couldn't help but sigh in relief. That bit about Nixon and the Great Wall really had him worried for a moment....
So Sun Wang Zuocai was bundled off to the frozen frontiers of Heilongjiang Province, to be tended for the rest of his natural life by nurses and doctors better suited to the treating of farm animals. (Though Wang Zuocai's natural life proved considerably longer than Mao's.) In the years since his initial commitment, he'd had only one visitor - Deng Xiaoping. He'd come in and asked Wang Zuocai two questions, then never returned. However, Deng did order that Wang be kept in a straitjacket round the clock from that day forward. Now, after fifteen years, he was to receive his second - and final - visitor.
She poured herself through the reinforced window, her skin glowing like light shining through a glass of plum wine. Wang Zuocai watched silently as she moved toward his bed, her feet skimming the cold tiles. Everything in Heilongjiang was cold. The winters were fierce and harsh, lasting up to eight months. For someone such as Wang Zuocai, born and bred in the warmer southern climes, nothing was ever warm enough. But that was about to change.
The glowing woman smiled down at him, radiating a heat that sank through his wrinkled skin and into his ancient bones. How long had it been since he'd last known a woman? Thirty-six years? It had been the better part of a decade since he'd been able to masturbate.
The woman gestured with her hands, and the canvas straitjacket that had been Wang Zuocai's one article of clothing since 1979 disintegrated as if made from tissue paper. Freed at last, Wang Zuocai's member rose to greet its liberator. Smiling demurely, the woman climbed onto the bed and straddled the old oracle.
Sun Wang Zuocai had foreseen this night's encounter the day he went before Mao and spoke of the American president and of Lady Mao being of the kitsune. He knew that Mao would dismiss him as mad, but that was the only way to ensure that he would survive the coming years of turmoil, with its Cultural Revolution and Gang of Four and Ti'animin Square. It was the only way to make sure that he somehow managed to live to see the arrival of the beautiful glowing woman, who would make him the father of a new and wondrous race.
It didn't take him long. After all the planning, all the waiting, everything was happening so fast. As his celestial lover pulled herself off him, Sun Wang Zuocai felt something in his chest fold in on itself. Fast. Everything was happening so fast - first the mating, now his death. Even as his seed quickened in her womb, Wang Zuocai's life came to its end. Of course, he had already known it was going to happen.
11
WHEN THE DEAD DIE
Death is not the greatest of evils; it is worse to want to die, and not be able to.
- Sophocles, Electra
The fever called ‘Living’ is conquered at last.
-Edgar Allan Poe, "For Annie"
As Sonja stepped out of the limo in front of the Chelsea Hotel, the first thing she saw was a homeless person pissing in a doorway. She smiled and tossed the driver an extra twenty.
Hell, it's New York.
The limo pulled back into traffic and she shouldered her one piece of luggage - a black nylon duffel bag - and strode toward the entrance of the hotel, just in case she was being watched. She did a turn in the revolving door and was back on the streets within seconds, her hair five inches longer and the color of raw honey.
She kept a nest in Tribeca, a stone's throw from City Hall. There were a couple of holding companies and realty agencies involved in collecting rents and maintaining the property, but essentially she owned the building. She'd bought it several years ago with some of the proceeds from Ghilardi's estate. She dodged into the subway entrance on Eighth Avenue, dropping her vision into the Pretender spectrum, scanning for signs of the inhuman among the commuting hordes. In any major city there were numerous shadow races hidden amongst the bread-and-butter featherless bipeds, and New York was certainly no exception.
It was five-thirty - well into rush hour - and the subway platform swarmed with the Pretending Kind of a dozen different cultures, each having followed its traditional prey group to the New World in search of a better life. A naga wearing the skin of an elderly Pakistani gentleman flared his cobra's hood at her in ritual warning, then resumed perusing his newspaper. A garuda, cloaked in the disguise of a lowly busboy, clattered its bill nervously as it fed itself unshelled sunflower seeds. It and the naga kept exchanging glances at one another. Their respective species were ancestral enemies, but having to maintain the illusion of humanity - and catch a train - forced the necessity of coexistence. At least for the moment.
An ogre, its misshapen limbs hidden by homeboy fashion, slouched against one of the support beams. A succubus, dressed in the body of a young woman, smiled seductively at an older man wearing a London Fog raincoat and carrying a briefcase, who was fumbling for a light for her cigarette. Sonja doubted he could see the succubus' cyclopean eye or the mane of living, writhing worms she sported in place of hair.
Suddenly the smells of ozone and filth announced the A Train's arrival. It screeched to a halt and the doors opened. Stepping inside, Sonja found a vargr dressed as an investment banker, and a thick-set, clay-eyed golem serving as an escort for an extremely old Hasidic man who, according to her peripheral mind-scan, was carrying a fortune in diamonds on his person.
She rode the train to the World Trade Center, then made her way to the surface. The first thing she saw as she exited the glass-and-steel megalith was the seventeenth-century churchyard across the street. Twilight had mellowed into dusk while she was underground, and - amazing as it might seem for such an urban landscape - a handful of fireflies danced among the leaning tombstones.
Her nest was located on Chambers Street, off West Broadway. The building was six stories tall, identical to those flanking it. The first three floors housed various businesses - a karate school, a photographer's studio, an accounting firm - while the top two floors stayed vacant.
It was after six o'clock and all of the businesses were closed for the day. The elevator was old, with a collapsible gate and a control switch that looked like something from an old-fashioned ocean liner. Sonja stopped the elevator on the fifth floor and rolled back the protective gate so she could unlock the outer barrier. She made a mental note to be careful not to trigger the boobytraps she'd installed.
The entrance barrier rolled back with a rusty squeal, and she squeezed her eyes shut and grimaced, but nothing happened. She stepped out of the elevator and into the foyer. A double-barreled shotgun and a loaded crossbow, rigged with fishing line and lead counterweights, were pointed at the elevator.
She unlocked the door to the fifth-floor loft and was swallowed by total darkness. Not that it mattered; she could read the New York Times in the deepest pit in Carlsbad Cavern without straining her eyes. The loft had the dusty, close smell that sealed rooms often get. As it was, her nest was actually on the sixth floor. The fifth was empty of anything except booby-traps. She liked keeping as much space as possible between herself and whatever might be looking for her.
One of the first things she'd had the renovators do when she bought the building a decade ago was alter the interior staircases. The original staircases had been sealed and a second staircase had been installed that bypassed the fifth and sixth floors on its may to the roof, thus ensuring her privacy. But this was New York City, after all, so she placed a few booby-traps in her private stairwell just to be on the safe side.
She unlocked the door that led to the roof, after disabling the speargun aimed at gut level. The moment she opened the door, she knew that one of the traps had been sprung.
She found what was left of the would-be burglar on the landing between the roof and the sixth floor. He'd triggered the deadfall, sending a cinderblock into the middle of his face. He had probably been young, although it was hard to tell with most of his features pulped. He'd been lying there at least a month or two, and he'd decayed to the point where she couldn't tell if he was black, white, Latino, or Asian. In any case, he was dead.
Sonja dragged the body down to the sixth floor and unlocked the door to the loft, careful not to trigger the bayonet-studded box-spring mattress hinged to the ceiling just inside the threshold. The sixth floor was sectioned into three large areas centered around a long hallway. The area closest to the entrance was a fully outfitted workroom, containing a carpenter's bench, a huge array of power-tools, and a large, glass-lined metal tub.
With the help of a few well-chosen power tools, it took her less than ten minutes to reduce her unwanted guest into component parts. She tossed the limbs and viscera into the glass-lined tub and opened one of the industrial sized hydrochloric acid bottles she kept in a special cabinet. The solution was meant to process metal, but it was also handy in turning troublesome dead bodies into soup.
Satisfied that her erstwhile intruder was liquefying nicely, Sonja shucked her protective gloves and apron and headed down the hall to the room set aside as living space. At a thousand square feet, it was larger than most New York apartments. A kitchenette, complete with microwave, dishwasher, gas range, refrigerator, and breakfast bar, took up one corner. There was an inch or more of dust on every surface and a shriveled orange the size of a walnut in the fridge. What had once been a walk-in closet was now a bathroom, complete with shower and toilet, and a loft bed occupied the exposed brick wall. Thick Persian carpets covered the floor, and the ceiling was decorated in drooping falls of Mosquito netting, giving the space the feel of a Bedouin's tent. A couple of starkly chic halogen lamps, a free-standing antique wardrobe, and a oversized leather chair set in front of a projection television screen were the only other pieces of furniture.
Sonja opened the wardrobe, and the smell of cedar filled the room. Inside hung several expensive silk suits sealed in protective plastic wrappers, along with a half-dozen matching black silk shirts. Four pairs of Italian shoes littered the floor of the wardrobe. Chaz's stuff. He'd had a taste for the expensive things in life. Not necessarily good, mind you, just expensive. She bundled the suits together and dumped them in the tub with the melting burglar, then went back into the living area and stripped naked.
She didn't realize she was still a blonde until she looked down at her crotch in the shower. She closed her eyes and concentrated. When she reopened them, the last of the yellow was being replaced by black. Her hair was still long, though. Since it was impossible for her to shorten her hair the same way she forced its growth, she elected to jettison it. She ran her fingers through her hair and all twelve inches dropped to the floor of the shower. By the time she stepped out to towel herself dry, her scalp was already bristling with fresh growth.
