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"Pedro," quoth the piper.
"Cristo!" cried Big Brother.
"Cristo!" quoth the piper.
Jesus Christ! thought Mosca, intimidated by the crumbling six-foot sides of hir grave. How the fuck am I going to get out of here? The Brothers of Light fell to their knees and keened awe and terror.
Emerging from this grave requires a miracle.
"Hermano Major," said Mosca, "give Me your hand that I may bless you and assure you there's nothing to fear."
Big Brother reached into the pit.
Mosca grasped his hand and pulled hirself out.
"There is nothing to fear as long as you are perfectly obedient." The piper fainted.
Crow, that absurd bird, fluttered down to perch on Mosca's shoulder.
Mosca stood there, deep inside of this most unfamiliar vehicle, embodied in the form of the enemy of life, unsure as to the pulses to send through the control circuits, luckily locked into the body's senses, utterly perplexed. On the shiny side is now we can abandon---- at least for a while---- the ugly pronoun hir and, by the grace of his new body, refer to Mosca as he. But now s/he must learn how to be he, and beyond that, more than a child, a boy: no, a man, a hu-man. "Do something," said Crow. Mosca remained motionless, loincloth streaked with rusty dry blood, body soiled, shedding dirt, confronting an absolutely astounded Big Brother, sensing an alien presence, that of the Cristo reviving within. I may have become what I hate most, but on the other hand at last I'm the same size as them. I'm a man-sized mole; they accept me. I can pass as human easier than I could as fly, although I don't know how to be either one. Crow squawked in Big Brother's face. In his new vehicle Mosca felt much as an airplane passenger would if he were suddenly plucked from his seat and thrust behind the controls.
From profound depths an awareness spread through Mosca. "Henceforth, Crow, you can call me Pedro Felice Gonzales." "In that case, from now on you call me Corvus Brachyrhyncos Hesperes."
Big Brother dropped to his knees, as previously had all the other Hermanos de Luz, save for the piper, who was now sitting, giddy, shaking his head back into consciousness.
"Mosca, my man," said Crow. "Do something."
Abruptly, Mosca became aware of his stinging lacerations.
"Move!"
Awkwardly stumbling, Mosca lurched toward the trucks.
Fly legs surely are more practical.
Side by side in the New Mexico firmament three summits of evolution loomed: crow of birds, fly of insects, man of mammals.
"Now what?"
"Back to town you cretin!"
"Back-to-town," Mosca commanded in antique rustic Spanish. Big Brother heard him not.
Pedro Felice Gonzales seemed more of a zombie than a Cristo, a resurrected Christ. Would he try to take power?
"Get into the big truck."
"Where should I sit?"
"The status seat, you moron."
Mosca sat up front, next to the driver's seat, presently bereft of a driver. The Brothers, keening hymns, crawled toward the truck on their knees.
With a sudden shock Mosca realized henceforth he could no longer fly, but would be forever earthbound.
Relishing this, Crow flapped aloft and circled the truck. Me attormenta noche y dia
Un cuidado sin cesar;
!Ay! Jesus del alma mia
Sí me tengo de salvar.
Over and over they chanted this solemn, melancholy hymn. Despues de esta fragil vida,
?Donde me voy a parar?
Ah, Jesus del alma mia
Sí, me tango de salvar.
"Back to town!" Mosca shouted out his window.
It torments me night and day
A care without cease;
!Aye! Jesus of my soul
Yes I try to save myself.
Mosca cried out again, but Big Brother could not hear him through the din.
After this fragile life,
Where will I end up?
Ah, Jesus of my soul,
Yes, I try to save myself.
Mosca raked his hand through his hair and saw dandruff floating down through a sunbeam. "What now, Crow?"
"We've got to get out of here."
"How? "
"Drive."
"Who, me?"
"You."
"I don't know how."
"Look here, young---- ugh . . . man, if you don't, who will?"
"I can't."
"You think I can?"
The chanting grew more intense.
I wish I were back at the vet's.
I wish my Flymaster were here.
"Drive!" Crow gave him the driving code. "Be careful! We don't want to activate any more of Pedro Felice Gonzales than we have to. We want to leave his systems dormant."
"Chickenshit! Activate them all, just for the fun of it."
"Brother Pedro is an imbecile."
"Aren't all humans?"
"In a way. But watch out. Activate this man's systems and you'll be in a civil war for control of his odiferous stringy body." Crow settled on the windowsill and peered. "He sure is ugly. But then, aren't they all?"
Mosca started the truck and, still in first gear, guided it slowly away from the secret cemetery along the rutted dirt road, through a second-growth coniferous wood, toward the intersection with the Trail of Blood. Crow frolicked in the air before the truck, teasing, rubbing it in, that Mosca had come on the wing, and was returning, à la Santa Sebastiana, on wheels, albeit wheels with softer rims. Crow cawed and
flapped and hovered and dived and looped-the-loop. Irked, grinding his teeth, Mosca kept glancing at him. Will I ever feel at home in this crude endoskeletal earthbound flesh-and-blood machine? Crow soared upward, and Mosca looked away from the road---- something, imbecile or no, Pedro Felice Gonzales would never have done were he still in command of his body---- and watched Crow's taunting flight.
With a sudden jolt and shock the truck stopped.
His knee slammed into the dash and he felt pain.
He'd hit a tree and crushed the radiator.
"I'll bet you wish you could fly."
"Fuck you! I may be clumsy, but now I'm too big for you to eat, and plenty big enough to stomp you flat."
"You'll have to catch me first."
Crow swooped away and vanished among the trees.
Mosca's knee throbbed, and it hurt.
He slid to the ground and proceeded on foot.
The resurrected Cristo had supplemented his lurch with a limp. Plodding along, stumbling in ruts, envying the buzzards wheeling overhead, he came to a stagnant, green pond dished among the trees. It spoke with the voices of frogs. Turtles showed their heads. The woods sang and chirped. He skipped a stone across the pond, slap slap slap, something no fly could do. Maybe there are more possibilities than I thought! A pressure swelled inside, telling him he had to plan. And, henceforth---- O! abomination---- I'll have to eat. He tugged down his breechclout and drew out the rubbery hose he found inside. What idiotic engineering! Genetic control guided by science will surely produce a better vehicle for life than this. A stream of piss burst forth and fell bubbling into the pond. A calm came over him. He shook that ridiculous rubbery hose, and, while pulling up his garment, tucked it back inside. Another spasm twinged and formed a wet stain on the clout, but, what the hell, the air is hot and dry, and I can regard pissing myself as a further penance. Slowly, warmly, standing there, reposed, he forgot his own existence and felt a mellow union with it all. A new sensation! Flies are too fussy to feel it. But what do I know about how flies feel? A snapping sound intruded into the voice of the forest and a sparrow fell dead into the pond, and lay there half hidden by the green scum. Out of the foliage stepped a nine-year-old boy, carrying a small rifle.
"Got that son-of-a-bitch, didn't I?"
"Bitch? You're old enough to tell a bird from a dog."
"Fuck you, mister."
"My name is Pedro Felice Gonzales, not mister."
"My name's Adolf Hitler, Mr Gonzales, and I still say fuck you." Sensing futility in this conversation, Mosca resumed his walk. The road led from shady woods to sunny wheat fields and M0sca began to sweat like a galloping horse. Another imperfection in this foolish endoskeletal design. Flies don't sweat, and they get along all right. They can stay airborne for hours and survive at thirty-thousand feet. Honorary flies like Monarchs travel thousands of miles. Flies began settling on him and sucking sweat. By automatic reflex he smacked one on his arm. He looked at the crushed form of his victim. A little drink cost this guy his life. He smacked another. When human, do as humans do. Sure. Eat. Shit. Kill. And, through ignorance and greed, poison the land, the sea, the air, so thoroughly that soon nothing can live. Surely, Santa Sebastiana will free me from this body and restore me to the clean and ethical life of the fly. Here's the Trail of Blood! Mosca turned uphill, toward the village. Ahead, at the crest, the huge wooden cross stood silhouetted against blue sky and, seemingly, it drew him toward it as he trudged. Now, he stood at its foot.
Uproot it.
Drag it back to town!
He left it behind and let his feet carry him downward along the bloodstained trail. Wheat rippled on both sides. A mouse darted across his path. Yellow butterflies and gnats flew everywhere. Birds
chirped and soared. He felt himself part of solid life. Where does me stop and it begin? How would Pedro Felice Gonzales answer that? Ask him? No. Cut off my arms and legs. Okay. They are part of the it. Cut off this silly hose and its slack sack of nuts. More it gone. Pull the teeth; pare off the ears. Still it. Cut off the torso and attach the head to a blood machine. More it. Is the whole thing environment? Put the brain in a bell jar. Slice off superfluous parts. Where does it stop and me begin?
A subtle itching aching swelled in his ear. He dug in a finger and drew out some wax. Where does that come from? Why? We ought to engineer this vehicle over again, starting with a precise definition of what we expect it to do. Yes!
The Morada at the end of the trail grew larger and larger as he approached the village. How would Christ feel if He really came back? What do I do when they see me? He passed the first house, an adobe, where children were running in and out of spray rising from a lawn sprinkler. No one was on the streets. The sun baked the Sunday paralysis into a pie. TV's evil eye glowed in most of the houses and the fragrance of Easter cooking pervaded. Crow came swooping down from the sky and flapped alongside.
"I see you escaped the rectangle."
"What rectangle?"
"The rectangle. Get it? The wreck-tangle."
"The tangle, pal, has scarcely begun."
He paused to peer over a fence at a lovely sun-bathing brunette.
"Cristo mio," said Crow. "The daily Greyhound stops at the store next to the Morada in, well, about an hour, around noon. The procession to Christ's tomb is supposed to start at about two."
A tingling excitement began to pervade Mosca's new body. Were more of Pedro's systems turning on? He stared at the sunbather, hypnotized by her nut brown softness, by black hairs curling up from her bikini, a shameless lavender in color, and by the twin mounds of her breasts, and it all engulfed him in a tremendous thrill, and that preposterous worm began acting up again, growing, tumescing, raising its ugly purple head above the loincloth as if to see for itself, aching, urging him toward an endoskeletal adventure of which no fly had ever dreamed. What's fly lust like? asked the voice of the observer within as he struggled against the demands of that wretched worm, now swollen to a solid seven inches.
The sunbather, stretching, moved sensuously against her blanket, and, blinking, sat up.
She saw the resurrected Cristo.
Sounding a hideous screaming shriek, she dashed into her house. He ran toward the Morada.
Crow cawed merrily overhead.
People came running from their houses.
Most of the men had been nursing their wounds and watching a big league double-header.
"Cristo! Cristo!"
Howling wailing chanting and crossing their hearts, the people fell to their knees, and he charged through them, up the steps of the Morada, and across the chapel to the storeroom door.
Locked!
He turned, and by his awesome presence drove out those few brave souls who'd followed him in.
With a steel slat he barred the front door.
He kicked the storeroom door open.
No fly could do that.
There stood Santa Sebastiana radiating soft light. "My little Moshka!" She exploded into wild mirthful laughter. "Look at you! You are what you hate."
"I'm still me."
"Oh, yes. In the form of those who shit all over the house of life."
"Change me back."
"Not until I feel like it."
That idiotic worm rose to the beauty of this lovely wraith. She reached out and snapped it and dissolved once more into hoots of mirth. So what do you do with beauty? Admire it? Stroke it? Eat it? Become it? "Evolution's first blunder was making males," she said. "We don't need them.'
"I'm an androgyne."
"Not any more. You must kill a monster to be saved."
"I'm the monster."
"For a fly, you catch on fast."
The worm subsided and he recovered his natural perspective, his fly's-eye view of things. Pseudo fly's, that is. Those two bags gracing her chest were as preposterous as the worm and its bag of nuts. Back to the drawing board! Design a new model! Santa Sebastiana smiled at him and said, "No one will ever know me. No one will ever see me."
An alarm clock ticking on a shelf caught his eye.
"Around noon," said he, "we're leaving town on the bus."
"How are you going to pay the fare?"
Christ! Another complication!
"Can you get on dressed like that?"
Still yet more dilemma.
"I'm the patron of archers and soldiers and bus drivers," she said.
"Do they know it?"
"Electricians, too." She gestured at a wooden chest. "And thieves. Look in there." He opened the chest. It was full of money. "We'll let the Morada pay our way." The worm rose once more and showed its head. "Take off that dirty rag."
He stripped off his clout.
The arrow still protruded from the idol's eye, and the idol still sat in the cart.
He wrapped the breechclout around a skull, Apache style.
Magna Mater gestured toward a rack of clothing. "You can choose from among the dresses of the Marys, or wear the toga of Pontius Pilate."
As long as I'm a male, I might as well try to act like one. Whatever that means.
She helped him adjust his Roman dress.
He stuffed Pilate's purse with money.
It resembled a woman's handbag.
Santa Sebastiana vanished back into her wooden image.
"Get me off this cart; the arrow: Pull it out."
He jerked it free and lifted her off, disengaging the wooden gears, one of which protruded from her rump. That was even funnier than tits and he burst into laughter. "Get my bow and arrows." He lifted her crude, wooden form up in his arms, laid the bow and arrows over her breast, and walked to the front door. "My dear little Moshka, when I sense the presence of the bus, go!"
She soon signaled the time had come. He kicked the slat out of its slots, swung the door open, and, carrying her, walked out into a huge crowd of flagelantes and their families, and he pushed past them and through the drizzle of blood flinging off their whips and boarded the bus.
"Where you going?" asked the driver in an Alabama accent.
Sebastiana's thought found voice in his throat.
"The train station in Lamy-Santa Fe." .
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