Shaman wasn’t ruffled a bit. He sounded like someone trying to talk a suicide down from the ledge: deliberate, calm. I heard him with my skin, between pulses of blood, between breaths, between thrusts and red thoughts as I mortar-and-pestled Nora: “Now, Gypsy, now, Nora, you must stop. You know this. The Earther’s one of my Space People now. He’s a part of me. Don’t fuck with me, Sanduleans, or there’ll be hell to pay.”
Nora was fondling something besides my buttocks. She was stroking something inside my mind, a part of my mind invisible to me, as the nose is to the eyes. She stroked as you might stroke a dog to make it let go a ball. Of what ball did she want me to lose hold?
Shaman said, “Does the Earther know what you are to him, Nora? This isn’t Sanduleak, you know. Some things are frowned upon in this galaxy.”
Gypsy emitted a blast of red vapor. His skin ballooned outward like a swollen calf’s belly, and exploded. The wet shards settled. Some stuck to the ceiling and walls, where they slid and dripped. He was the snake, or a gigantic yellow neuron, more like, bulbous at the bottom, grey dendrites like Medusa’s hair tangling on top.
“Run!” Gone Joe rasped. He was out.
And I was out. I couldn’t stay inside Nora any more. Soul and body were shriveling to a bead. I couldn’t act. Nora groaned disappointment and withdrew from my mind, leaving the ball in whatever jaws held it there. Gone Joe took one look at Gypsy and beat it into the kitchen.
“Did you get it?” Gypsy asked Nora. He used his whole reptilian body for a tongue.
“No,” she said.
“You see,” Shaman gloated, “the boy’s not like you Sanduleans, Gypsy. You’ll come in anyone, won’t you, even your mother? In fact, especially your mother, ey, Gypsy?”
“Damn! How did you get here, Shaman?” Gypsy yelled. “I know you can’t epochй worth spit.”
“Didn’t have to,” he cooed?from the kitchen, sounded like. And there, at the swinging door, where Gone Joe had been a moment before, stood Shaman, his features melting from Gone Joe’s into the ones I had seen in the New Mexico tent, by candle light, like a dry, crushed sponge duck springing out in water. “I came along in him, Gyp. A little reconnaissance. I figured someone like you would try to spoil my party. You’re trumped, Sandulean. Thanks for the ride, Mel.”
“Are you my father?” I said.
“I’m you.” Incomprehensible.
18. You Are My Sweet Burrito (Please Be True)
Many years later, on Sanduleak, collapsed by then to a neutron star, a pulsar, in the Large Magellanic Cloud, I happened to hear the following song by Johnny Abilene and the Haymakers. Folks live on bebop there, always have, always will, but on the station I was tuned to they liked to interrupt the Top Million every now and then for a little down home Country Western, especially tunes that have to do with me, since I am a sort of galactic hero there, or mascot, more like.
The Sanduleans are funny that way, like Bible thumpers on Earth who like to pepper every exchange, however secular or banal, with references to the Gospel:
“Can you believe it, Ethel? They charged me three-fifty for one pair of athletic socks at the Spend-and-Save. I felt like turning over their table.”
“Render unto Caesar, Georgette.”
“Praise the Lord!”
On Sanduleak they say things like this: “as tight as Gone Joe in Izzy’s bung.” Or when they just almost get something they want, but fail at the very last moment, they often say, “It was like Mel and Nora in Texas.”
The number was announced as “You Are My Sweet Burrito (Please Be True),” I think. Things go by very fast on a neutron star, and the news came on right after:
I won’t call you “honey,” ’cause you know you’re not that sweet,
Or “knockwurst,” though you knock me offa my feet.
You’re a sight too lumpy to be my “cream of wheat.”
Yes, you’re just my salsa verde sweet burrit-
O! Please be true.
Don’t leak on my place mat.