The Best of Lucius Shepard by Lucius Shepard Read Free Book Online

girlfriend over money and
walked out. He sent her a letter saying he had gone south and would be back in
a few months with more money than she could ever spend. I had no idea what he’d
done. The whole thing about Griaule had just been a bunch of us sitting around
the Red Bear, drinking up my pay - I’d sold an article - and somebody said,
“Wouldn’t it be great if Dardano didn’t have to write articles, if we didn’t
have to paint pictures that colour-co-ordinated with people’s furniture or
slave at getting the gooey smiles of little nieces and nephews just right?” All
sorts of improbable moneymaking schemes were put forward. Robberies,
kidnappings. Then the idea of swindling the city fathers of Teocinte came up,
and the entire plan was fleshed out in minutes. Scribbled on napkins, scrawled
on sketchpads. A group effort. I keep trying to remember if anyone got a glassy
look in their eye, if I felt a cold tendril of Griaule’s thought stirring my
brains. But I can’t. It was a half-hour’s sensation, nothing more. A drunken
whimsy, an art-school metaphor. Shortly thereafter, we ran out of money and
staggered into the streets. It was snowing — big wet flakes that melted down
our collars. God, we were drunk! Laughing, balancing on the icy railing of the
University Bridge. Making faces at the bundled-up burghers and their fat ladies
who huffed and puffed past, spouting steam and never giving us a glance, and
none of us - not even the burghers - knowing that we were living our happy
ending in advance…
     
    - from The
Man Who Painted The Dragon Griaule by Louis Dardano
     
    <>
     
    *
* * *
     
    Salvador
     
     
    Three weeks before they wasted
Tecolutla, Dantzler had his baptism of fire. The platoon was crossing a meadow
at the foot of an emerald-green volcano, and being a dreamy sort, he was idling
along, swatting tall grasses with his rifle barrel and thinking how it might
have been a first-grader with crayons who had devised this elementary landscape
of a perfect cone rising into a cloudless sky, when cap-pistol noises sounded
on the slope. Someone screamed for the medic, and Dantzler dove into the grass,
fumbling for his ampules. He slipped one from the dispenser and popped it under
his nose, inhaling frantically; then, to be on the safe side, he popped
another—”A double helpin’ of martial arts,” as DT would say—and lay with his
head down until the drugs had worked their magic. There was dirt in his mouth,
and he was very afraid.
     
    Gradually
his arms and legs lost their heaviness, and his heart rate slowed. His vision
sharpened to the point that he could see not only the pinpricks of fire
blooming on the slope, but also the figures behind them, half-obscured by
brush. A bubble of grim anger welled up in his brain, hardened to a fierce
resolve, and he started moving toward the volcano. By the time he reached the
base of the cone, he was all rage and reflexes. He spent the next forty minutes
spinning acrobatically through the thickets, spraying shadows with bursts of
his M-18; yet part of his mind remained distant from the action, marveling at
his efficiency, at the comic-strip enthusiasm he felt for the task of killing.
He shouted at the men he shot, and he shot them many more times than was
necessary, like a child playing soldier.
     
    “Playin’
my ass!” DT would say. “You just actin’ natural.”
     
    DT
was a firm believer in the ampules; though the official line was that they
contained tailored RNA compounds and pseudoendorphins modified to an inhalant
form, he held the opinion that they opened a man up to his inner nature. He was
big, black, with heavily muscled arms and crudely stamped features, and he had
come to the Special Forces direct from prison, where he had done a stretch for
attempted murder; the palms of his hands were covered by jail tattoos—a
pentagram and a horned monster. The words DIE HIGH were painted on his helmet.
This was his second tour in Salvador, and