Short of having a tribe to get the job done, he could do it in the lab with Bose stereo amplifiers and crystals, copper wire and water, sea salt for more kick, under the light of a full moon . . .

All he had to do was follow the breakthrough equation he'd just discovered.

To night, he was bringing Kali stateside.

To night, he was gonna get laid.

Then tomorrow, together they would kick some corporate a.s.s and rule the world.

It took Ernest all day to bring in the right a.s.sortment of crystals and to research their proper alignment. He had to make sure he was in alignment with the galactic center, and had to break out his telescope and compa.s.s for that. Then there was the ritual part; Ernest didn't think it was necessary but he relented, and prepared fruit and drink offerings for the ent.i.ty. It made some sense, he supposed, since she was coming into a physical body, she would need nourishment.

Then there was getting all the sounds right; downloading the right African drumbeats and Native-American flutes, and mixing them with Indian sitars took a bit of blending and then he found and added in some powerful Ohm chants.

By midnight, everything was ready. He'd even taken a bath and had gotten naked to stand under the copper wire pyramid mounted on the ceiling, hoping his body would be used as the battery to go along with everything else that was rigged; the human body was 80-percent water and was the perfect saline ph, so it was no wonder that the ancients used human sacrifices as human generators. Only, he wasn't gonna die. That was unnecessary and wasteful, especially when he had a generator the ent.i.ty could tap to help bring itself through the vortex.

Human ignorance and a lack of enlightened vocabulary had been responsible for so much waste and way too many barbaric deaths. Ernest sighed.

But it was time.

He lit the end of the thick joint he'd rolled, brought it to his lips, and inhaled deeply, allowing his nostrils to flare. He watched the end of the huge blunt glow red, and then proceeded to light the incense pots and white candles around the room. He then stood inside a circle of sea salt and flipped on the stereo, then activated the device that he'd created.

Heavy percussion thrummed through his body. The joint and incense was making him heady. The music caused him to close his eyes and sway as he lent his voice to it between deep puffs of reefer. Soon he felt light and as though electric current was running over the surface of his skin- just like it had been described in the spell books. The antic.i.p.ation gave him an unbearable erection, but if his efforts succeeded, Kali would be here soon. Now it was time to call her by name, he thought, with every fiber of his being believing she could come through, believing that she existed, suspending disbelief.

He spoke aloud the words of the ancient equation in a loud and clear voice, speaking with conviction . . . invoking Kali until the veins rose in his temples and throat. Then he said it again, this time raising his arms and shouting it, giving in to the madness of the theater, wanting it so badly that he didn't care whether it was shamanic drama or not, so long as it worked. She had to come!

Despite all his work and research, he was still unprepared when the candles blew out and the bowls of water suddenly flipped against the wall. Nor was he prepared for the cutting chill that swept into the room, or the sudden, intense heat that followed, causing the air to become so hot it verged on painful.

"Who calls me?" an angry female voice demanded.

Ernest stood there for a moment; joint in hand, mouth agape, staring.

A naked woman had appeared in the room, with four arms and a serious att.i.tude.

"I do," he whispered, as awed as the scientist who'd first seen an atom must have been.

"And your request?"

He bowed. "Kali . . . be my mate and let us destroy the evil-doers of the world together."

She folded one set of her arms over her naked b.r.e.a.s.t.s, while her other pair of hands went to her hips, and she shook her head. "You motherf.u.c.kers are all the same. You want some a.s.s and then you wanna go take out the guys who used to get all the babes."

Ernest stared at her, blinking. She sounded like a ghetto princess, hardly the lofty G.o.ddess he'd expected.

"Look, when we come into this dimension, we come with all the baggage you've got in your subconscious, okaaay. This is why, if you read the religious texts, only holy men or women with a clue are supposed to call us up."

"I . . . I . . .".

"Yeah, heard it before, baby. You didn't know. Whateva." She sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes at him, and then took the thick joint from his fingers and drew on it hard. "Okay, so I'm here, and yeah, we can get busy, and yeah, I can roll some heads- but you know I'm Shiva's woman, right? You do know that when he finds out that your punk a.s.s called me up, he's gonna go straight gansta on you, right? Just saying." She handed him back the joint and let the smoke filter out of her lovely nose. "You prepared for all of that?"

Ernest drew a slow drag on the joint, inhaling her fragrance as he looked over her body, and then nodded.

She smiled. "Okay. I'ma go easy on you, baby. I'll tell Shiva to be cool. You ain't had none in a really long time, I can tell. So, I guess that would make you lose your mind and wanna destroy the world. I'm cool wit that."

"I just want to carve out the bad and leave the good," Ernest said carefully, still awed as his mouth went dry.

Kali c.o.c.ked her head to the side and studied his now wilted erection. "You do have potent seed, right?"

Ernest quickly nodded. "The best."

Kali smiled as the long gold fingernail on one of her right forefingers began to extend and widen into a menacing blade. "Good . . . because I'm definitely going to need a sacrifice in order to work with you, baby. Goes with the territory. No pain, no gain."

L. A. Banks was the best-selling author of the Vampire Huntress Legend series, which consists of twelve volumes. She was also the author of the Crimson Moon werewolf series, which includes Bad Blood, Bite the Bullet, Undead on Arrival, Cursed to Death, Never Cry Werewolf, and Left for Undead. Writing under the bylines Leslie Esdaile and Leslie Esdaile Banks, she has also published fiction in the romance and crime/ suspense genres. In 2008, Banks was named the Essence Magazine Storyteller of the Year. She died at the age of fifty-one in August 2011.

Our next story takes us into the blazing heat of New Mexico. New Mexico is a unique state. It's given us the first chimpanzee astronaut, the first nuclear weapons test, and the alleged cover-up of an extraterrestrial s.p.a.ce craft recovery. From that fertile ground, you can expect a lot of wild UFO stories and tall tales of atomic-fueled mutations.

With that kind of background, Albuquerque reporter, Pat Gilcrease, isn't expecting much when he gets a report of a two-headed chicken living on a remote country ranch. Maybe a hand-st.i.tched fake. A genetic freak if he's lucky. He's certainly not prepared for what he finds.

As Gilcrease learns more, he discovers he is onto the story of his life. It's a story that proves not all brilliant scientists are created equal, and not every farmer's daughter is a brainless hick.

Brainless, no. But mad, on the other hand . . .

RURAL SINGULARITY.

ALAN DEAN FOSTER.

Gilcrease mopped his brow with the halfway clean rag he had scrounged from the trunk of the car. The only extant war between New Mexico and Texas was between ranchers and oilmen who each claimed that their side of the border was the one that was hottest in mid-August. Having driven all the way from Albuquerque, Gilcrease was happy to call it a tie and a plague on both their hot houses.

Not that it wasn't warm in Albuquerque this time of year, too. It was just that everything seemed hotter in the greater desolation that lay to the east of the Sacramento foothills. This was country that made the high desert terrain around Albuquerque seem positively tropic. With every pa.s.sing moment he looked forward to the return drive and his nice, cool cubby in the newspaper office.

This was fool's errand for a slow day, he knew. "Human interest," these occasional excursions into the creases of an anomalous humanity were called. Just his luck to be nominated to do the follow-up on this one.

His first glimpse of the Parkers' "ranch" did not inspire confidence. Furnished in half twenty-first-, half nineteenth-century fashion, the single-story rock and wood structure scrunched back against a succession of rising rounded hillocks like a bear scratching his a.s.s. There was a windmill that on a good day supplied water to the dwelling. Behind and off to the left side of the house was a traditional barn belted by wooden timbers intended to restrain more cattle than ever roamed this particular homestead.

When Gilcrease drove up in a cloud of dust and muttered adjectives, Walt Parker was working under the hood of that undying icon of mobile American steel known as a full-size pickup truck. With the heavy hood raised it looked as if the truck was saying "ahh." Parking nearby, the reporter took one last optimistic rag-swipe at his forehead and climbed out. The KEEP OFF THE GRa.s.s sign posted in the dirt driveway made him smile. The only gra.s.s for many miles around was to be found high up in the mountains behind the house.

"Walter Parker? I'm Pat Gilcrease, from the Albuquerque Journal."

Weather-beaten and bank-battered, Parker looked ten years older than the fifty-one to which he would admit. There was more oil in the old towel he was using to clean his hands than in the dusty ground beneath his feet. Gilcrease winced slightly when the man extended a welcoming hand, but having no choice he took the greasy fingers firmly. Parker squinted up at the taller, younger man.

"You're here about the two-headed chickens, I expect."

Gilcrease nodded, then found himself frowning. "You have more than one?"

"Whole flock." The rancher shook his head. "People. You show them something you're proud of, tell them to keep it to themselves, and they promptly go and call a newspaper." He shook his head regretfully. "Well, you're here, and you've come all the way from the city, so I expect it would be impolite not to show you."

Gilcrease didn't even take out his camera as the rancher guided his visitor around the house and toward the barn. Between the two stood an enclosure fashioned from wood posts and chicken-wire fencing. Parker prepared himself for the worst. More than likely he would be shown a badly st.i.tched and sewn fake. If he was lucky, one of the rancher's birds might have hatched an honest mutation. Enough to justify a quick snapshot or two and a short article for the People section of the paper. It really had been a slow news week.

"Here 'tis." Parker unlatched the door to the coop. As he did so, twenty or more clucking chickens came running. They were accompanied by a snowstorm of at least twice as many chicks. Gilcrease eyed them, and his jaw promptly dropped.

Every one of them had two heads. Every one. And they looked as healthy as any comparable flock of normal chickens.

Having antic.i.p.ated his guest's reaction, Parker was grinning. "Didn't believe, did you, Mr. Gilcrease?"

Having finally succeeded in fumbling his camera out of his shirt pocket, the flabbergasted reporter was snapping pictures like mad. "How- I've seen pictures of two-headed animals before. But it's always only one or two individuals at a time. A two-headed snake, or a two-headed turtle. Even a two-headed sheep. But this . . ." Holding the camera in one hand he gestured with the other. "How did this happen?"

"Want to see something else interesting?" Parker raised a hand. "Wait here."

Gilcrease continued to fire off shots while his host disappeared into the long, low hen house. When the rancher returned he was holding several eggs. Double-sh.e.l.led eggs, like perfect little white dumbbells. He handed one to the dumbfounded reporter.

"That's how you get two-headed chickens. You get them to lay double eggs." Like light behind a T-shirt, pride began to show through his initial reticence. "My daughter Suzie bred them."

"Your daughter?"

Parker nodded. "She's one clever little girl. Special." His expression faded somewhat. "You know: special. Home-schooled. Has to be."

Staring at the back of his camera, Gilcrease was reviewing the pictures he had just taken. They were as real as the two-headed chicks presently peep-peeping around his ankles.

"Why is that?" he asked absently, his present attention more focused on the pictures.

"She's addled. Clever, but addled. When she was a lot younger- eleven, I think she was- we took her to see a doctor in El Paso. Specialist. He examined her, did some tests. Said she was what you call an idiot savant. I was gonna punch the guy out until my wife told me what that meant. She's the smart one in the family, Mary is. Visiting her mother in Amarillo this week. She wouldn't like it if she knew there was a reporter out here asking about Suzie. But after the neighbors called your paper . . ." He shrugged. "I thought it better to come clean about the chickens to a real paper than wait for some tabloid freelancer to come snooping around."

"I'm flattered. My paper is flattered, I mean." Gilcrease pocketed his camera. He had his pictures and his article, but still . . . "Could I meet your daughter? I promise I won't take any photos without your permission and a signed release. Anything else would be an invasion of privacy."

Parker scrutinized his visitor closely. "You seem like a pretty straight guy, Pat. All right, you can say hi. But be careful what you say and how you say it. Keep things . . . you know. Simple. And don't touch anything. Especially her toys." Gilcrease nodded.

Parker led him out of the coop and into the barn. It was a s.p.a.cious construction. Ranch equipment was scattered everywhere. Two of the horse stalls were occupied and one of the occupants neighed inquisitively at their approach. Seeing that both animals had only one head apiece, Gilcrease was mildly disappointed. Searching his surroundings he saw nothing out of the ordinary around.

"Suzie's in back," Parker explained. "We fixed up a little playroom and workshop for her. It's where she spends most of her time, puttering around." Near the rear of the barn they halted outside a closed door and his tone darkened. "Promise now: no pictures." Gilcrease reaffirmed his earlier commitment whereupon his host opened the door.

The interior of the corner room was flooded with light from multiple double-pane windows. Surprisingly, there was also a skylight. More surprisingly, the light from both sources fell upon what looked like several folds of dark purple, foot-wide wrapping ribbon suspended in midair. At the center of the winding ribbons several yard-long coils of copper wire protruded from the top of a metal ovoid. Cables from the ovoid led to a bank of deep-cycle marine batteries. The entire setup emitted a very faint hum.

"Amplified solar generator." Parker spoke as though it was the most natural thing in the world. "Another of Suzie's putterings." He jerked a thumb toward the front of the property. "We got another one powers the whole house."

Gilcrease swallowed. His camera was burning a hole in his pocket, but he had promised. "Another one? The same size?" His host nodded. "That's a lot of wattage to come out of such a small solar array. I'd think you'd have to cover the whole building with panels to get enough juice to run a house."

"That's what I'd think, Mr. Gilcrease. But Suzie says these are 120 percent efficient."

Gilcrease frowned. "That doesn't make any sense."

His host grinned. "Neither does Suzie." He raised his voice. "Suzie! We got company! Where are you, girl?"

A figure rose from behind a heavy wooden workbench piled to overflowing with devices, instruments, bottles, beakers, and what to Gilcrease's eyes appeared to be just plain sc.r.a.p. She was pudgy, overweight but not obese, with pale blue eyes and blond hair cut in a crude pageboy that suggested her mother did all the girl's styling and tr.i.m.m.i.n.g. She looked at her father, then turned a shy stare on their visitor.

"Say h.e.l.lo, Suzie. This is Mr. Gilcrease. He's come from Albuquerque just to see your chickens." Parker gestured. "Come on, girl. He won't hurt you."

Slowly, reluctantly, the adolescent edged around from behind the workbench. Her downcast eyes only occasionally rose to glance fitfully at the two men. Her hands remained behind her back. She wore scruffy jeans, a lightweight flannel shirt, and- unusual for a girl of her apparent age- no makeup or jewelry. Keeping her eyes on the ground, she halted in front of her father.

"Say h.e.l.lo, Suzie," he prompted her gently.

An awkward silence ensued. Finally the girl stuck out one hand, keeping the other behind her and her eyes aimed downward. "Hullo," she mumbled. "I'm Suzie."

Gilcrease took the proffered fingers and squeezed gently. As soon as he let go, her hand vanished behind her back to rejoin its companion. The reporter was at once uncomfortable and fascinated.

"Hi, Suzie. If you don't mind my asking, how old are you?"

"Seventeen," she whispered. Gilcrease had to strain to hear. Looking and listening, he immediately understood and sympathized with the rancher's family circ.u.mstances. This girl might be seventeen chronologically, but socially and probably emotionally she was maybe nine. And might forever remain nine. He tailored his tone and words accordingly.

"I liked your chickens, Suzie.

A hint of a shy, withdrawn smile. "Thank you."

"Your dad said that you bred them?"

She nodded, showing a little more interest.

"Can you tell me how you did that?" Gilcrease asked softly.

For the first time, she looked up to meet his gaze. "It wasn't hard. I just had to induce the appropriate mutation and then crossbreed the relevant haploids until the desired dominant characteristic replaced the recessive. Mendel coulda done it but he didn't have the right tools for microscopic genetic manipulation." Her eyes dropped again, along with her voice. "Mom and Dad like the eggs, so I kept breeding them."

Gilcrease felt as if he had been hit with a hammer. Not knowing what else to say, he turned to indicate the apparent solar generator. "And- you made that, too?"

She nodded and her head came up again. "Had to. The power goes out a lot here and there are unpredictable surges that are bad for my computers. I hacked the inputs and the relevant software from the power company but this is better. It's cleaner power, too. Dad asked me to make him one for the house, so I did."

Gilcrease forced a smile as he struggled to stay on top of what was becoming an increasingly absurdist conversation. "Your dad says your generator's panels- I'm guessing they're those windy purple things- are 120 percent efficient." He leaned toward her and put his hands on his knees. "Now, Suzie, how can that be? How can you get more energy out of something than goes into it from the sun?"

Putting a finger in her mouth, she began chewing on the nail. "I made a photon multiplier. It works real good."

By now Gilcrease desperately wanted to take out his camera, but he held off. Promise or no promise, he was going to get some pictures here before he left. And some video. No matter how crazy this adolescent girl was, the story would play wonderfully in the paper's People section. Perhaps not flatteringly, but it would sell ads and maybe even drive a small if temporary uptick in circulation.

"Now, Suzie, I'm no scientist, but even I know you can't get more energy out of something than what goes into it."

Her voice rose in protest, almost irritably. "You can if you access the photonic flow from a second dimension."

It was at this point that Gilcrease knew he was being had. It wouldn't be the first time. Living in New Mexico, there was at least one good Roswell story to be exploited every year. Not to mention the inevitable wild tales of mutants born of the early atomic bomb tests running amok in the state forests. But this one, featuring a simple-minded teenage girl as its protagonist, was smarter by half than most. Whether she was faking her illness or not he didn't know. If not, then extra points to her clever father for figuring out how to program her pseudo-scientific responses. It was all based on getting someone to report on the two-headed chickens, of course. They were real enough. But the rest of this was an obvious con in the making. Pulling out a pad and pen, he eyed the father. If this was a scam, the old man should be ready to fill in the details about now. And ask for money, of course.

"I'm just going to make some notes, Mr. Parker. No photos. Maybe some quick sketches. Would that be okay?"