Pandemonium

It was the same thing the Piper had shouted back in 2002. A Finnish speed skater, Arttu Heikkinen, was on the last thousand meters of the 5000-meter race, half a lap ahead of the nearest competitor, on pace to break the world record. Suddenly Heikkinen slowed, looked around until he spotted the TV cameras, and beamed. The second-place skater started to pass on the outside. Heikkinen tripped him, sending him sliding into the padded walls, and burst out laughing. He ripped his Lycra suit down the middle and let it hang like a half-shed skin. And then he turned in a circle, and commanded the spectators in the arena to dance. Heikkinen never recovered from the shame and never appeared in another race.

Most of the people in the bar were trying to get away now, but others were frozen in their seats. I pushed through the outrushing crowd, bouncing off bodies, trying to get closer. The Piper hopped onto the bar’s yellow chair, and then leaped over the back of a couch, landing next to a red-haired woman. She screamed.

“I . . . said . . . dance!” the Piper exclaimed. He yanked her to her feet, laughing maniacally. The woman, thin and perhaps forty years old, shook her head frantically, tears already running down her cheeks.

“Hey mister,” I said.

The Piper turned and leered down at me. “Ye-es?”

I didn’t know what was in the glass—water, 7Up, vodka—something clear. I shoved it at him, splashing his face. He sputtered, blinked. The woman yanked her arm free.

“Get the hell out of here,” I said. “You’re not fooling anyone.”

He stared at me. Whatever he’d used to paint his face was running onto his chest in scarlet streaks.

“I said, get out.”

He stepped down off the couch. “Jeez, take it easy. Take a fucking joke.” He slumped toward the open end of the room that connected to the hotel proper. A long moment, and one of the male bartenders ran past me, trying to catch him.

Someone slapped me on the back. Someone else pushed a shot glass into my hand. Tom, laughing. “How’d you know, man? How’d you fucking know?”

. . .

“—wouldn’t even listen to me. He just walked away. All I’m talking about is taking down the antenna. There’s some hardware in our heads that’s picking up broadcasts from the All Demon Network, and we just have to figure out a way to pull the plug, or at least change the fucking channel. I’m not even talking about real surgery. We wouldn’t have to even drill into the lobe, you could do it with microwaves, the way they can kill off tumors with these intersecting microwaves, all of

’em too low powered to hurt you except at the exact point where they overlap. Is that so much to ask, to just consider it?”

Selena nodded sympathetically. Or maybe she was just humoring me. I chose to take the sympathy.

“You can’t do that,” the Hispanic kid said, interrupting. Who wasn’t Hispanic, it had turned out, but Armenian. “I’ve read about this Dr. Ram guy, and what he’s talking about is cutting out the Eye of Shiva.”

“The whatsis?” I dimly remembered somebody mentioning that earlier.

“The hidden eye that the ancients believed opened them up to God,” Tom said. “In Phil’s terms, it was the thing that allowed him to receive the information that Valis was firing at him. If you look back at—”

Tom suddenly lurched forward, his drink sloshing onto the carpet. A huge man in a T-shirt and cargo shorts had backed into him. “Someone stole my costume! It was right here! Who stole my costume?” He turned, and I recognized the fat man from in front of the Hyatt this morning, the one dressed as the Truth.

“Nobody here, man,” Tom said.

The fat man scowled, then shoved off in a new direction. “Where’s my fucking fedora!”

The Hispa—Armenian kid gripped me by the arm. “Del, look at me. Do you really want some quack to cut out your connection to God?”

“God? You think this—you think these things are God? Smoke-