The Snake Oil Wars Read online

  “Gonna make all the difference. Get this, Coyul.”

  “Get this, Devil!”

  Coyul had only a split second to see Lance Candor poised in the doorway, the hissing satchel charge in his hand. “You’re dealing with Americans, Satan!” Lance hurled the bomb. “Take that!”

  Startled, Coyul could only view the trajectory of the missile – up, over, down between smoked salmon and caviar – and hear Lance’s yell of triumph as he darted away. The explosion was spectacular. Coyul, Kaufman, Gershwin, the piano and hors d’oeuvres whirled together in a Cuisinart effect, blossomed outward in a spray and splattered against the broken walls. Heavier objects did not travel so far. Gershwin’s head found itself nose down among the shards of a Waterford bowl. Nearby, Kaufman’s equally dissociated head fixed him with a dyspeptic scowl.

  “What did I tell you? That song is a bomb.”

  One of the benefits of post life was the convenience of ordering your own scenery according to mood. Richard Wagner, composer of Das Ring, paced through a breathtaking landscape of Bavarian mountains and primeval forest. Part of his mind sketched at the newly conceived musical dramas. The rest occupied itself with loathing Coyul. Herr Wagner was an accomplished loather, but fair about it. He’d always given equal time to Barion.

  The trouble began long ago when Verdi praised Wagner to Coyul, saying, “His genius is infinite.”

  “His vulgarity perhaps,” Coyul differed. “His genius is wholly confined to music.”

  The remark got back to Wagner, and Coyul was thereafter an object of Wagnerian detestation. However, some permission would be required for the new opera cycle since casting would involve thousands. Wagner was grateful to have missed Coyul when he called. Another time perhaps. He might even petition by mail.

  The new work would be a series of opera about the Aryan invasion of India. Hitler loved the concept, and his taste was impeccable. Wagner envisioned the penultimate scene of the first opera: thousands of tall blond warriors descending through the clouds upon a stunned and churlishly ungrateful rabble of dwarfish lumpen, The heroic vanguard would include his heroine who would enter lost, pursued by a horde of stunted, slavering villains. There would be a nimbus of light about her golden head, a beacon to the Aryan hero who rescued and joined her in a twenty-minute duet. She must have a name whose sound was beauty itself Statuesque as her conquering kind, his heroine would be —

  Would be...

  Richard Wagner halted and stared.

  Not would be, Was. There. Redundant as breathing might be, Wagner gasped aloud.

  Directly in his path, lounging against a centuried oak, was his creation incarnate. Cascades of hair He molten gold fell over creamy shoulders so white there seemed a bluish undertint, A truly legendary figure was barely covered by a brief, diaphanous costume that would have caused riots at Bayreuth, She was at least eight feet tall, ninety-six utterly flawless inches. Not Germanic, more striking than Amazon. For her height, not an inch or an ounce was too little, too much or misplaced. Wagner Bushed with ardor. Flagstad and Nilsson were forgotten, Never until this moment had his artistic intent been so perfectly realized in Resh, Her leitmotif, fresh as the first dawn in Valhalla, Flooded through his soul in a spontaneous burst of creation. He could hear it, see it finished in score for two hundred instruments —

  Her Viking-blue eyes wide with curiosity, the dazzling behemoth bent to examine a fallen leaf The flow of her body through the simple movement was sensuality itself She caught sight of Wagner — “Oh!” — and focused on him with the fascination of novelty and a smile that put all his remembered hormones on red alert.

  You are Brunhilde, he adored.

  “No, my name is Purji, I’ve only just arrived,” She appeared to understand him telepathically; Wagner heard her in German. “What an athletic tongue you think in. Here, sit down and help me get my bearings.”

  She took his hand. Wagner was wafted swiftly upward to a thick limb of the oak. Next to the leviathan Purji he felt like a ventriloquist’s dummy. “There now.” She gazed around in surmise. “From the fascinating but unstable nature of my surroundings, I’ve landed in a post-life energy pool,” She stroked Wagner like a lapdog. “You are a dear little thing.”

  “And you... are a goddess?”

  She nodded. “Used to be. Among the Keljians, Pardon me, I’m so used to their proportions.” Her fabulous image dissolved, shrank and recombined to the same perfection on a smaller scale. “I’m looking for a dear friend who must be somewhere hereabouts. Coyul, a lovely male like yourself”

  “Coyul?” Wagner’s ego bristled. No more was she perfection’s glass, She even spoke with Coyul’s clipped auslander accent. “You are a friend of that spiritual gargoyle?”

  “I am in the right place,” Purji bubbled. “More than friends, I’ve been in love with him since school. Eons in your time.”

  “There is no accounting for passion.”

  “Well, consistency at least. Passion is only a moment, but —” The rest of Purji’s sentiment was lost in a yelp of surprise as a tremendous detonation rocked their tree and tumbled them from the limb to the ground. From somewhere beyond Wagner’s schwarzwald, brownish smoke rose in an ominous plume from unseen destruction. The retired goddess appeared more vindicated than alarmed.

  “I see you have an advanced concept of politics. Would you be a kind gentleman and direct me to Coyly?”

  Shaken, Wagner did not attempt to get up, merely waved Purji toward the rising mushroom of smoke. “That way, fräulein Just follow the debris.”

  3

  Downturns in the deity line

  Purji read Coyul’s unmistakable energy very near but weak, Finding him would be a problem, The remnants of the salon were unpleasantly Ruid, vacillating queasily between matter and energy, The destruction reminded Purji of holy wars on Keljia, Walls, furniture and smaller objects were rubbled together in an architectural salad dressed with a blackish-pink substance she would rather not dwell on.

  “My poor Coyul,”

  From somewhere nearby, a woozy voice responded, “Uh... yes?”

  “Coyul?” Purji cast about anxiously, “Where are you?”

  “Sort of all over. Could you sift around a bit?”

  Purji found him in installments, this bit pureed over a section of wall, that scattered on the floor, torso neatly processed through up ended piano strings in the egalitarian manner of an egg dicer. Under a light fall of first edition pages from a splintered bookcase, Purji discovered Coyul’s head. “Darling!”

  “Purji” The mild blue eyes peered at her foggily, trying to focus. “I felt you near, couldn’t think how, George? Hello?’

  “Who, dear?”

  “Innocent bystanders. Hello, Georges plural, G and K? Are you there? Purji, do you see anything that might belong to two tall men?”

  “No, Everything I’ve found so far seems to go with you,” Tenderly she wiped the Camembert from his bruised brow – difficult, as his head kept melting to soft, grayish Jell-O. “What an awful – have I come at a bad time?”

  “You? Never,” the head assured her, “but you’re not catching me at my best.”

  “I thought for a moment that ghastly mess on the walls —”

  “Farewell the salmon and caviar.” Coyul gathered himself for the effort. “This will be difficult.” His mind, stunned and reeling inside a human cranium, couldn’t do anything right at first. He managed a form that might have been rendered by a child with a blunt crayon, but the results kept melting to a mish-mash of flickering light and gelatinous matter, For a moment he realized an eerie resemblance to John Kennedy but couldn’t hold it.

  “Closer,” Purji encouraged, “Keep going.”

  “Keep talking,” he moaned, “All I hear is a dull bong.”

  With a clearing mind, Coyul gradually reconstituted himself. A golden blob resolved to his favorite lama; dressing gown and filled out with familiar proportions. Amorphous features resolved to character and expression, Pallid, shake
n, but restored – something like Dylan Thomas in his later years – Coyul sat up and smiled at Purji

  “There’s my darling,”

  “Purji! It’s been eons, Where’s your ship?”

  “Out there in matter phase.” She gestured blithely between kisses.

  “Let me look at you,” Definitely worth the effort, still bleary as his sight was. Beside Purji’s idealized Keljian form, the best Miss Universe was a victim of birth defect. One might imagine the sensuality of a Joan Collins superimposed on Mariel Hemingway and the result raised to the tenth power of femininity. In a swaddling choir robe and with a Bible in her hand, Purji would still be outlawed in most American states.

  “Dazzling as ever, you erotic triumph,” Coyul vowed. “I last saw you – when?”

  The memory was dear to Purji, undimmed by eons. “At home, the radical students’ demonstration, remember? All of us showing off, making love in human form, and so bad at it.”

  “Like polar bears in a Charleston contest;” Coyul recalled, “But what fun it was.”

  “Darling.” Purji kissed him again with sharpening intent and therapeutic effect. “It still is.”

  After impromptu love amid the ruins, Coyul felt more like his old self, restoring the salon to former glory and setting out caviar and smoked salmon for Purji. “A delicious human innovation, one of their better efforts. Try some.”

  She nibbled tentatively. “Looked so visceral on the walls.”

  After a quick search, Coyul had decided not to worry about Gershwin or Kaufman. They’d probably recombined on their own and gone home. Gershwin would take it in stride, but the hypochondriac Kaufman might let it ruin his week.

  “Now. Purji, where in the universe have you been?”

  “Oh, simply everywhere.” Draped over the lounge, Purji was delightfully discovering scotch. “Chasing the stars in their courses”

  “You just vanished.”

  “So did you. Of course there is a vast difference between being marooned with monkeys” — she punctuated her thought with a wave of her glass and a small hiccup “and being taken up socially by Keljian humans.”

  Though larger than Earthers and utterly beautiful, Keljians were still meandering through a Bronze Age state of development, but for Purji the interlude had been glorious. “You are in the presence of the most popular fertility goddess Keljia ever knew.”

  “No! You theological brigand.”

  Purji searched Coyul’s mind like a memory bank for a comparable image, “I was a star, an unqualified hit. They were sacrificing to me day and night.”

  “Ye gods. not people?”

  “Anyone they could throw and tie. You know humans when they get carried away. I discouraged the practice immediately, willed the fires to go out. Instead of combusting to my glory, the sacrifice lay there complaining until they finally got the point and just sent dowers. Oh, but it was lovely when they chose my annual consort.” Purji lay back with a blissful sigh. “Keljian males are admirable. Picture it, dear; thousands of years of celebrity, festivals, done by the best sculptors, invoked in love songs. But then... oh, then.”

  “What happened? Wait, let me guess. Monotheism.”

  Purji dissolved from the lounge to reappear in somber gray near a window, a tragic figure. “My beloved Keljians. No plumbing but painfully religious, Monotheism it was. In came the patriarchs and virtually invented guilt. They created a male deity grim as death, somewhere between an articulate volcano and a psychotic child, I should have seen it coming.”

  “Indeed you should have, at your age.”

  She frowned at him. “That is a boorish remark. I am younger than you.”

  “I do have a little job experience.” Coyul easily pictured her decline. In time her worship became unpopular, then persecuted. Political power identified with the male godhead and found it pious as well as profitable to day the old order with a vengeance.

  “Life became grotesque,” Purji lamented. “There I was, demoted to a sleazy demon with the nastiest motives and character ascribed to me, exorcised every other week, I was exhausted. Finally I threw fame to the winds and caught the next survey ship home. Now it’s happening to you. Coyul” — she brimmed suddenly with mischievous inspiration —” why don’t we just take my ship and find some ordinary little world, nothing elaborate, and be gods together?”

  The notion of a cozy little mom-and-pop religion was briefly tempting. “No, I can’t Barion’s on the Rock and it’s my fault as much as his these high-tech Comanches have become what they arc. I’ve got to help them grow up, All suggestions gratefully accepted,”

  Someone coughed politely in the entrance, Three distinguished older men waited discreetly to be noticed: an archbishop in full canonicals, a tall man in Victorian garb and a smaller man who would have stood out as an American anywhere. Coyul bounced up to greet them.

  “Gentlemen, please come in. This is Purji, a lady of my own race. Purji, let me present —”

  “Considering our mission, we would prefer to remain anonymous for the time’” the bearded Victorian gentleman interjected with a bow to Purji, “Madam,”

  “It’s about Candor,” the American said.

  “I see. Then, Purji, let me present three gentlemen from” — Coyul ticked them off — “Westminster, Canterbury and Washington”

  “Delighted” The archbishop inclined his mitered head to Purji “Candor indeed is our argument. My king would have had his head at Tyburn by sundown.”

  “Young Mr. Candor, dashing as a trenchcoat and nearly as bright, I really haven’t decided what action to take,” Coyul told them, “Perhaps you can advise me.”

  The delegation exchanged glances, electing the Prime Minister to speak first. “The press is already taking sides, making an issue. Your inaugural appearance did not find a receptive audience.”

  “To put it mildly.”

  “Shall I address you as Prince?”

  “If you will, or simply Coyul. Barion never stood on ceremony, neither will I.”

  “Prince,” The P.M. had a long habit of deference to royalty under a single minded queen who demanded it, “Every responsible citizen Topside is shocked and revolted by Candor’s action”

  “And the rest are cheering him,” the American rasped in his gravelly voice. “Son, you’ve got a bad situation here. I never saw anything firm up so fast,”

  “Fanaticism is not too strong a term,” said the grave P.M. The American’s input was far pithier. “Arrest Candor. Make an example. The Fundys and fringe lunatics will be all over television with their side, making that little cockroach into Christ. There’s got to be a strong commonsense position to fight them.”

  “Frankly, gentlemen, I’ve never arrested anyone before,” Coyul considered. “What crime and what charge? This is post life, not Earth. Mayhem dwindles to an emotional snit”

  “Not to them. Look, Coyul,” The American made his points as he had in life, forcefully, both hands up, edges forward, cutting decisively through problems. “You know I’ve faced my share of bullies and bullshit, from Klansmen to generals with a goddamned Caesar complex. Candor’s not important, but he’s sure as hell dangerous. That dim-bulb S. O. B. loves being a hero. Did y’see him on TV the day he was shot? He did everything but lick the camera when he went down And his trial is going to be standing room only with hardshells who define freedom as their right to tell you how to think. Indict his grandstanding ass, pardon my French, convict him and ship him Below Stairs. The little bastard will love suffering long’s someone takes pictures,”

  The P, M, cleared his throat, “If I may? Her Majesty and Prince Albert agree that a strong and immediate showing must be made for the conservative cause.”

  “Thank you,” Coyul acknowledged, “They would not receive me when I called”

  “Her Majesty conveyed no disapproval,” the archbishop hastened to clarify, “neither did any former English ruler. Merely that until your position is more clearly defined, reception might be misconstrued.�
�

  “I quite understand.”

  “On your authority, Prince,” the P.M. pressed, “my provosts are ready to arrest Lance Candor.”

  Coyul picked out random notes on the piano in time with his thoughts, “I don’t know what to tell you. The only assassin I ever liked was Wilksey Booth, but still...”

  Purji’s suggestion was wifely and sensible. “You’ve had a grisly morning, dear. Why not sleep on the question? A nap would he just the thing.”

  “Thank you, Purji. True, gentlemen, I’m not as young as I used to be, I’ve seen all this before and will again before your kind grows up or blows up. Purji and I are of an ancient race, one of the earliest. We found ourselves virtually alone in the young universe. Perhaps it was loneliness that sent us out looking for someone to think back at us. Not always rewarding where humans are concerned. Except for the blood and misery, your history is bad Gilbert and Sullivan, and democracy, I’m afraid, a lovely illusion.”

  “So is Father Christmas,” the P.M. observed with warm wisdom. “For all of that, I shall still read my Dickens each Christmas Eve and hang my stocking on the mantel. December would be barren without it.”

  “Unpopular decisions are always rough,” the American reminded Coyul from direct experience. “Hard to make, hard to live with.”

  “Yes,” Coyul read too many remembered nightmares in the man from Missouri. “Yours were more difficult. For the thousands dead, remember the million saved.”

  “I try, Coyul. Every day.”

  “I guess that’s what it amounts to. Thank you, Harry. And you, P.M. I’ll still hang up my stocking.” Coyul closed the piano, “Arrest the swashbuckling Candor.”

  The PM. bowed formally and turned to the entrance. “Sarmajor!”

  Into Coyul’s salon marched two impressively muscular British sergeants, vintage 1870, stamping to rigid attention before the Prime Minister. “SAH!”

  “Carry out your instructions.”

  “SAH!” A whip-crack salute, “Left turn! Quick-HAHH! One-two-one-two —”

  The posse and all to follow were now in motion. The delegation withdrew. Coyul sat down. For a moment his face was shadowed by all of his long ages, “Five million years, Purji. See how it goes?”