"Janice will show you," Casparza said. "The power of spirit."

Hull grit his teeth. Janice very deftly slit open the cadaver's belly with heavy-gauge autopsy scalpel. She plunged her hands into the rive and began to pull things out. First came glistening pink rolls of intestines, then the kidneys, the liver, stomach, spleen. She tossed each wet ma.s.s of organs into a big plastic garbage can. Then she reached up further for the higher stuff-the heart, the lungs. It all went into the can. By the time she was done, she was slick to the elbows with dark, oxygen-starved blood.

"We can fit six or eight keys into the average corpse," Casparza informed.

Hull frowned in spite of his dilemma. "You're out of your mind. That's the oldest trick in the book. Customs has been wise to it for years."

Casparza smiled. Now Janice was packing sealed keys into the corpse's evacuated body cavity, then stuffed in wads of foam rubber to fill in the gaps and smooth things out. She worked with calm efficiency. Finished, she began to sew up the gaping seam with black autopsy suture.

"You can't smuggle c.o.ke into the states in cadavers," Hull objected. "Customs inspects all air freight, including coffins, including bodies tagged for transport. Any idiot knows that.

The girl said you were muling the stuff."

"That's correct, Mr. Hull. My mules walk right past your customs agents."

Wha-. , Hull thought Walk?

Janice raised her nightgown. Hull's eyes, in dreadful a.s.sessment roved up her legs, over the patch of pubic hair, and stopped. Across her belly was a long black-st.i.tched seam.

"Janice has been muling for me for quite some time."

My G.o.d was about all Hull could think.

Raka began muttering something, heavy incomprehensible words like a chant The words seemed palpable, they seemed to thicken amid the air as fog. They seemed alive. Then he placed one of the makak about the corpse's neck.

And the corpse sat up and climbed off the gurney.

My G.o.d, my G.o.d mya".

Raka led the corpse out.

Casparza held out his fat hands, his face, for the first time, placid in some solemn knowledge. "So you see, amigo, we still have a deal. And you'll get to be your own mule."

Aw, Jesus, Jesusa".

The scalpel flashed splotchily in Janice's hand. Hull began to scream as she began to cut.

The Mother.

My G.o.d, Smith thought. This is my wife.

He'd lain her out naked across the bed. Her nipples looked like bruises now, and her skina"every inch of which he'd once caressed in lovea"glittered pastily beneath the gelid sweat of death.

My... wife...

The bivalving scalpel flashed in his hand.

I'm autopsying my wife.

Smith took a heavy breath. Then he began to cut.

"Jeannie! Don't go near that!" Smith shouted. He clambered clumsily after her down the wooded hill, careful of stumps and roots hidden under leaves. Whatever that thing was in the ravine--A keg? he wondered. A drum? a"it just looked... nasty. It wasn't supposed to be there, and he didn't want his daughter touching it "Jeannie!" he shouted once more.

Jeannie gladly pretended not to hear these heated commands of her father, as would most 7-year-olds. Instead she nimbly wended through branches and brush, and descended into the ravine.

The thicket crunched beneath Smith's plodding feet. Two decades of a pack of Parliments a day reminded him how out of shape he was. Some doctor, but at least his patients couldn't accuse him of hypocrisies. He loped ahead, gasping, and raised his arms to s.h.i.+eld himself from the spiny branches that seemed determined to thwart his progress. Smith was a liberal; he was also an over-reactor. He remembered any number of headlines detailing his worst ecological fears. WAYNESVILLE CANCER RATES FOUND TO BE THREE TIMES HIGHER THAN NATIONAL AVERAGE. AA COUNTY FINED.

MILLIONS FOR SECRETLY PUMPING UNTREATED SEWAGE INTO BAY.

BROCK CLIFFS NUCLEAR WASTE WATER SEEPS INTO RESERVOIR. And so on. Smith, as a father, felt legitimately paranoid of the faux pas of this new age of progress. Just nights ago he'd read in the Post about containers of toxic waste that had fallen off a truck near an Edgewood elementary school. Some teenagers had opened one of the containers, and had died in hours. Then there was that town up north, an entire community evacuated when cable tv diggers had uncovered a secretly buried consignment of binary waste products, compliments of the U.S. Army Chemical Corps. The stuff had been there twenty years. No wonder the town's miscarriage and birth defect rates had been so high...

What a world, Smith considered.

And this thing in the ravine, it looked like a chemical drum of some sort, with bright red stripes like a warning. Smith had spotted it from the back porch with his binoculars. Bird watching, he always told Marie. Oh, that's nice, dear, she'd said once. It's wonderful that you haven't lost interest in your childhood hobbies. This was partly true at any rate; Smith had indeed been an avid bird-watcher as a child. The only thing he watched now, however, was that Donna Whatshername next door, the neighbor's kid. On days she didn't have cla.s.ses at the community college, she'd lie out in her backyard, to work on her tan.

What she also worked on was Smith's libido. Jeeeeeeesus Christ! he must've thought a million times, focusing the Bushnell 7x12s. It astounded him, the level to which modern swimwear had reverted. Bikinis these days made the ones Marie had worn years ago look like winter parkas. Smith had a funny feeling that Donna Whatshername knew he was watching her. The poses seemed staged, lewd, nearly masturbatory. Too often the girl would untie her top and idly roll toward Smith's gaze, her eyes closed as if sleepy. Donna was, to put it eloquently, well-possessed of an ample mammarian carriage, or, in Smith's less eloquent consensus: Good Christ and Lord Almighty, that is one humdinger of a rack of milk wagons!

All of which had fairly little to do with the bizarre white drum that sat not 100 hundred yards beyond his property line. He'd been focusing up. the usual ritual upon coming home from work, while Marie prepared dinner. Donna sauntered across her own yard as if on cue, all long tan legs, curvy contours, and... mammarian carriage.

"Jeeeeeeesus Christ!" Smith muttered, the binoculars close to welded to his eyes. "She ain't wearing a bikini, she's wearing dental floss."

"What's that dear?'

Smith jerked the Bushnells quickly toward the woods. Marie had come out onto the patio, looking domestic as ever in her ruzzy slippers, lilac sundress, and calico ap.r.o.n.

"A black-throated blue warbler," Smith feigned enthusiasm. "A female too. You can tell by the pink spot on each wing. They're rare for this area"

"Oh, that's nice, dear." Her broad, pretty face s.h.i.+fted in a blink of fuddlement. "I could have sworn you said something about dental floss ... Anyway, dinner'll be ready in ten minutes. Have you seen Jeannie?"

"Naw," Smith replied, never veering his gaze from the scape of the woods. "She's probably watching those Star Trek reruns, as usual. Either that or she's in her room playing with her Kirk and Spock dolls."

Marie disappeared back to the kitchen, leaving Smith slightly asweat. Be careful, you idiot. Yes, he'd have to be more careful than this. He felt no shame in his frequent voyeurismsa"Looting's not cheating, he rationalized. It wasn't like he was having s.e.x with Donna, was it? He was merely reveling in the visual appreciation of her womanhood.

What was wrong with that? This was no different than bird watching, espying pretty things in nature, celebrating them. Donna Dental Floss was a rare black-throated blue warbler and nothing more.

But, boy, oh boy, a thought seeped. What I wouldn't give toa"

The most adulterous images betrayed him. Smith humping the foxy coed h.e.l.l for leather right there in the gra.s.s, his eyes crossed. Dog-style, missionary, her feet pinned back behind her earsa"it didn't mattera"redepositing one allotment of his s.e.m.e.n after the nexta"

Stop it! he commanded himself Don't be a cad!

But cad or not, just as Smith would turn the binoculars back to the bikini-clad human masterpiece in the next yard, he caught one last glimpse of the wood's descent, and he noticed thea"

"What the h.e.l.la""

a"white, red-striped drum.

"a"is that?"

The drum sat half-buried in the ravine, and that's when Smith dropped the Bushnells and bolted, for it wasn't only the white drum that he'd seen, but also his 7-year-old silken haired daughter eagerly ambling toward it.

"Stay AWAY from that! Smith's voice cracked through the dense green woods. Jeannie glanced up, and froze. Terror bloomed in the big, bright-blue eyes. Curiosity incarnate had been caught; Daddy the Destroyer was here.

"One more step, young lady, and you lose your dolls for a week," Smith threatened from the edge of the dried ravine. "But, Daddya""

"For a month? he embellished. "Now step away from that thing. It's dangerous. It's dirty."

"No it's not Daddy," the little girl replied. "It's- "If you don't do as you're told, missy, it's no more Star Trek Forever."

This horrifying consequence reflected an even deeper terror in Jeannie's s.h.i.+ning child-eyes. She paused, peering at the white drum, then backed off She ascended the ravine's thatchy slope while Smith himself went down. "Stay there," he said, pointing a stem finger.

"But why is it dirty, Daddy?"

"It just is," came his articulate response. He plodded toward the cryptic keg. How can you explain something like this to a 7-year-old? Well you see, honey, some really bad man decided to dump this drum of tumor-accelerating, carcinogenic, ganglionic-response-inhibiting and probably irradiated toxic effluvium in our backyard because he was too lazy to dispose of it properly. And its dirty, dirty stuff, and that means if you get near it your orbital lobes will turn into giant coaxial metastatic ma.s.ses by the time you 're out of college, and your ovaries 'II be glowing like a pair of f.u.c.king Christmas tree lights. "It's dirty, honey," he replied instead. "It's like dog poo. You don't want to get near it."

Her little face looked cruxed. "But you're getting near it."

Smith frowned, choosing a long fallen limb. "That's because I'm a grownup, and grownups are allowed. But little girls aren't"

"That's dumb, Daddy," came Jeannie's haughty response.

Precocious, Smith thought. The drum, he saw now, had no writing on it just the bright-scarlet stripes, which made sense. If you 're going to dump hazardous waste illegally, you don ? leave your name and address. And he was sure now that's what it was. The drum sat on its side as if dropped. At once Smith noticed a meaty scent...

Like rotten pork he thought. His nostrils cringed. Or like that cadaver the county cops brought in last summer. It had ripened in the heat for days, hidden beneath humid hay bales. Cooking.

The drum's rim appeared crimped, offering a small egress. Smith poked the branch into it and pushed. "Aw, s.h.i.+t!" he exclaimed and leapt back. The lid popped off, emptying a gush of black, lumpy sludge into the ravine's craw. Smith could've vomited. The stuff stank worse than a fish market dumpster in high summer.

He gaped at it a moment, his handkerchief to his face. The sludge looked coagulated like gravy that hadn't evened. Large bubbles rose from the surface of the spill, percolating, and the stench thickened. Thank G.o.d the creek had long-since dried up, otherwise the stream would be hauling this gunk away right now. Smith felt momentarily weird staring at the crisp, popping bubbles. His sweat rusheda"the ma.s.s of ichor seemed to waft s.h.i.+fts of heat.

"Come on." Smith huffed back up the hillock and led Jeannie away from the ravine. He took long strides, yanking her by the hand. Boy, this p.i.s.ses me off, he fumed. I've got a kid for G.o.ds sake. Some chemical company a.s.shole dumps this c.r.a.p near kids? Yeah, what a world.

"I saw a falling star, Daddy," Jeannie remarked as they headed back to Smith's cedar-s.h.i.+ngled Colonial, It cost 150k, in a nice culdesac. Smith worked hard for it, and for everything to keep his family comfortable, and then some thoughtless creep pulls a stunt like this. Word gets around and the whole community could go lo h.e.l.l. Smith envisioned the headlines. TOXIC WASTE DUMPED IN STORYBOOK TOWN. PROPERTY VALUES PLUMMET. a.s.sholes, he thought "What did you say, honey?"

"But it wasn't really a star," she enlivened on. "It was that drum. I saw it last night."

"You saw Star Trek last night is what you saw, miss." Kids, Smith thought. Then they were back at the house, back to normality. "Dinner's ready," he said. "Don't forget to wash your hands."

He'd reported the incident to the police anonymously; he didn't need a slew of questions.

With my luck they 'll think I had something to do with it. Smith reasoned that whoever had dumped the sludge had brought it down the old logging road on the other side of the treebelt and that's what the authorities would conclude.

That night he slept fitfully, dragged in and out of chasms of dreams. He never had bad dreams; his job had cauterized him since med school. Smith was the county coroner, and after so many years of autopsying human grotesqueries atop his Aimsworth pitch-tilt powerdrain morgue table, he could eat a tuna on rye with one hand and fish through gunshot intestinal vaults with the other. No big deal. Tonight, however, towlines of nightmares hauled him through rank mind-muck visions the likes of which his slumber had never before offered up. "She's eating. Daddy, she's eating! Isn't Mommy pretty when she eats?" Jeannie smiled in her Care Bear pajamas, gazing down into the nighted ravine.

Meanwhile, Smith's wife knelt naked at the opened drum. With enthusiasm, she plucked lumps out of the stinking black spillage and sucked them off her fingers. Moonlight s.h.i.+mmered through the trees, a tinseled vertigo. Jeannie's eyes s.h.i.+ned wide as brand-new silver dollars. "Eat, Mommy, eat. I'd eat too but I'm too little." Smith wanted to puke in the dream. Yeah, bend over and let 'er rip. It was not an easy thing to watch your extremely inhibited wife eat lumps of chemical s.h.i.+t out of a bubbling, odorous ma.s.s of toxic waste. No, this was not an easy thing to watch at all. "Oh, it tastes simply scrumptious, dear," Marie remarked. "You really should try some." No thanks, hon. That stuff s probably not on the Atkins 'Diet. "Daddy can't eat that," Jeannie was quick to relate, which relieved Smith in his dream-paresis. He seemed to be lashed to a tree, forced to watch this disgusting play of nightmare in his boxer shorts. "The Mother," Jeannie kept chanting from the hillock's edge. "The Mother, the Mother." Freud would s.h.i.+t in his pants if he could see this dream, Smith managed to muse. He fairly understood the psychology of dreams: eroto-societal symbolism, s.e.x-death links, and all that. Buta" s.e.x-sludge links?

he wondered. What did this scenario say about himself? It came as no surprise when, next. Donna, the lissome neighbor of the dental floss bikinis, traipsed down into the hot ravine. She too was buck naked and she wasted no time in joining Marie's putrid smorgasbord. "Donna can eat too." Jeannie rejoiced. "It's only Daddy who can't eat, not here." The dream seemed to peel Smith's eyelids off; Freud's manifestos forced him to watch. Good G.o.d, he thought aghast. Donna and Marie openly caressed themselves in the lump-laden bilge. They were kissing! "Here," Marie invited. She pa.s.sed a lump, about the size of a walnut, from her own mouth into Donna's. "More," Donna panted. Good G.o.d Smith thought again. Would somebody PLEASE wake me up! Marie, lying back in the black sc.u.m, had placed more of the lopsided lumps up and down her belly and betwixt her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, for Donna to eat off. "Your husband's got a hard one for me," Donna commented between morsels, "Don't get your hopes up," Marie laughed back, caressing herself in the slime. "He comes way too fast, and he's not very big. Sort of like one of those little breakfast links." They cackled at this remark, like witches breathing helium.

Smith fumed in spite of his revulsion. Breakfast link, huh? "G.o.d, this stuff is really boss,"

Donna delighted. Soon, when she and Smith's wife had sufficiently filled their bellies, they focused their appet.i.tes on each other. Smith was sweating. This was like the lesbian p.o.r.no flicks they'd shown at his bachelor party, only they hadn't included curdled toxic sludge in the production. Donna and Marie slithered over one another in the muck, beslicking their bodies. They s.h.i.+ned like black human lacquer. "Isn't this great, Daddy?'

Jeannie inquired, clapping with glee in the moonlight. No, Smith thought. This is not great. "Oooo," Marie cooed. "You do it so much better than my husband." Smith frowned. Donna's face, amid a sound quite similar to that of a big, hungry dog tearing into a pile of Alpo, busied itself between Marie's spread legs...

Smith didn't know how much more of this he could take. Aw, it's only a dream, he dismissed. "You'll have to eat too. Daddy," his daughter informed him again. "But not here, not at the Mother's." What the h.e.l.l are you talking about, you little imp! Smith thought in a burst of frustration. But then Marie and Donna were drifting up the ravine's slope. Giggling, they took Smith away from the tree and lay him down paralyzed into the sludge. "Not too much." Marie warned as her hands roved her husband's rather flabby chest. "I told you, he comes real fast." Smith frowned again. When he glanced past his burgeoning belly, he noted that Donna was fellating him, and via a considerable level of proficiency. The coed stopped a moment disengaging her mouth long enough to chuckle and remark, "You're right Marie, it is like a breakfast link!" This infuriated Smith further.

What, a guy's gotta have a leg of lamb between his legs to keep a woman happy? Christ.

"He's close, you better get on him now," Donna suggested. The sludge crackled as Marie prepared to mount him. But then it was Smith's daughter's face that bulged forward, warped in cherubic youth like a fisheye lens. "No!" the demanding little voice echoed.

"Daddy's not ready yet! Daddy has to visit the Father!"

Smith spent the next day at work hungover. At least that's what it felt like, a bezeled drill bit spinning through the pulp of his brain. He'd stopped drinking years ago; he'd opened too many Parke-Davis cadaver bags lull of too many mangled drunk drivers, and he'd histologized too many swollen, sclerotic livers too many times. Yet his head pounded all day. Splinters raged behind his eyes.

The dream, he kept thinking. The nightmare.

He saw the heinous black wads everywhere: in the autoclave, in the chromatograph receptacle, on the flat top of the Vision Series blood a.n.a.lyzer and in the morgue table's stainless steel runoff gutters. He even saw them in the Polar Water bottle, and in his lunch...

But only for an instant When he blinked, they were gone.

Backwash, that was all. The nightmare had wrung him out. Get your act together, Smith.

He'd bungled two y-sections already today, and had to jink the autopsy reports. Thank G.o.d Smith's clients could tell no tales. He hadn't been so off the mark in years.

Eventually he dismissed the dream as frivolity, just a lewd mindstage of fear and guilt Fear that a drum of chemical waste had been dumped behind his house, and guilt from his voyeurism. He felt much better about the whole thing when he called home that afternoon. "The police were out back earlier," Marie related, "and then some cars with EPA seals came. They took the drum away in a big truck. It was like a movie, men in gas masks and white rubber suits were poking around. They sprayed some kind of foam all around the ravine and left notices in everybody's mailbox saying that the area is safe and there's nothing to worry about." This news relieved Smith fully. The white drum was gone now, and its black spillage decontaminated. End of story.

But not end of headache.

When Smith drove home, he spotted Donna walking away from the bus stop. "Need a lift?' he offered.

"Sure, thanks," she replied and slid into Smith's big Buick. Her blond head c.o.c.ked, though, and she peered at him. "Are you all right, Mr. Smith? You look, like, oh, I don't know, like you're all tensed up or something."

Mr. Smith. Christ, she makes me feel like a dinosaur. "I've had a rip-roaring headache all day, that's all."

"Well, wait, put the car in park," she oddly suggested.

"Why?"

She slid right next to him, smiling. "I'll rub your temples."

Smith blushed. "Uh, well, uh. you knowa"I'm kind of like, you know... Married."

Donna laughed lackadaisically. "Mr. Smith, letting a girl rub your temples isn't exactly what I'd call being unfaithful."