Kill The Monster, Chapter 21

XIX. A FAMILY OCCASION

The air was cold, biting on his skin as he strode across the graves. There was an old Eastern European tradition, he remembered, that anyone who walked across another man's grave made that man a vampire. If so, I'm making platoons of the garlic-fearing fuckers.

The service was the only spot of living humanity on the landscape. The churchyard was bleak, the trees leafless, the autumn leaves left in heaps to moulder against the gravestones. An elderly lady yew towered overhead, tempting small children with bright red fruit. Huge Victorian sarcophagi, adorned with headless marble angels and overgrown with ivy, flanked the gravel paths, but the burial was taking place at the more fashionable, happening end of the churchyard where gravestones were commissioned in durable Norwegian granite rather than the less durable old red sandstone that stood rotting round the church.

He was unamazed to see how few of his relations had actually turned up. In the years since he'd achieved power, they had assured him in droves that they'd been present at their Pastor's mother's burial, but now he was actually here, he could pick out only two or three. Aleister Stanley from GKN, not a blood relative, staring sorrowfully into the grave mouth. Aunties Valerie and Irene, blubbering mournfully. Half the congregation were wearing government-issue paper masks, the ones that had been handed out for free after the dirty bomb detonation in central London and had made their wearers' faces itch intolerably.

And there were dozens upon dozens of Churchpeople. Hands and heads downcast, genuinely united in grief. He saw Stephanie, Giustiniano, George Jakes, the CEO of Hirondelle Canada, Mohammed Speight, Hirondelle's European Sales Director, Naveh Chaney, Hirondelle's Chief Designer. He saw the Dean of the College of Cardinals, the President of the United Republic of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Vice-President of the United States of America. He saw Adam Hamed's widow. He saw Abel Hamed's son, a dark-haired boy very much like his father apart from a birthmark on one cheek, who looked up at the Pastor as he approached over the graves with alarm.

He had, of course, been expected; the crowd around the grave parted, and he was given a Church army greatcoat to wear, as he was of course still naked. Besides the greatcoat, there were trousers, boots and a sweater, which he carefully put on without question. No-one around the graves batted an eyelid at his stitchlessness, not even the children.

He was not the only Pastor round the grave; also present were a Third World Generalissimo Pastor in enough gold braid to rig a very expensive sailing vessel, a chubby Pastor in what looked like an Armani dressing gown who smiled and waved amiably, and one final, thinner, more sallow figure flanked by a middle-aged mongoloid and a dark-haired man with a birthmark on one cheek. The sallow figure wore the same Church robes Sean had been avoiding for two decades. The robes were understated, stylish, well-designed, and had undoubtedly cost an inca's ransom.

The coffin was over ten feet long, made of beaten gold, and adorned with stars, crosses, crescents and parallel texts in Latin, Hebrew and Arabic.

"It has an emergency radio transmitter", said the dressing gown Pastor, turning to Sean in excitement. "So she can signal even after burial. And oh, so many traps to catch grave robbers unawares!" He took a sip from a G and T he was holding. "It will electrify them, gas them, and in extremis, raise itself on legs and rebury itself in a safer location. It is impervious to gunfire, explosives, and chemical and mechanical cutting gear. It contains its own micro-nuclear power plant, oxygen and water recycling, and plays piped angelic choral music at a flick of the interee's finger..."

"It's what she would have wanted", said Sean solemnly. "Didn't I meet you in Venice?"

"Don't think so, don't think so", said the dressing gown Pastor. "Not yet, at any rate. I'm planning for us to meet up on the Fifteenth, though, on schedule."

The presiding vicar, an apparently genuine C of E incumbent looking quite bemused at the number of heavy military vehicles pulled up around his graveyard, cleared his throat.

"Sorry", whispered Venetian Sean. "Time to stick her in the dirt."

Sean counted at least ten Hirondelles parked at the lich gate, crowded down the narrow lane, each on its own the length of a bus. One was brilliant silver - not a manufacturer's misnomer, but a sheen bright enough to have hallmarks - with running boards large enough to waltz on. Two were identical, the same metallic shade of aubergine, upholstered in what looked remarkably like purple calfskin. The third, meanwhile, was shining white, so bright it hurt to look at it.

The third, meanwhile, was shining white, so bright it hurt to look at it.

"It's not actually paint", whispered Venetian Sean in his ear. "Those are millions of nano-fibre optics embedded in the bodywork, thousands even to the square centimetre. What you think is just a very bright reflection is actually squillions of tiny, white-light lasers squirting coherent light into the back of your eye. Quite ingenious. I was standing next to His chief engineer five minutes back, and he explained it all to me." He squinted at the car. "Apparently if you look too long you can actually get blinded."

Sean heard the capitalization at the beginning of 'His'. "Who's 'He'?" he said.

"Him." Venetian Sean nudged Sean's attention across the grave uncomfortably. "Him."

He knew he was being talked about, smiled as thinly as Spring ice, and bowed curtly from inside His ecclesiastical robes.

"Now look here", muttered Sean, "you can't possibly be scared of him. He's you."

Venetian Sean chuckled. "Oh, yes I can. Since He started consolidating His position from 2032 onwards, He's been extending His influence backwards through time. Military Me over there acts as His aide-de-camp." He lowered his voice to a whisper loud enough to be heard in Surbiton. "He had Mickey executed."

Sean stiffened and held his eyes straight ahead.

"He knows we don't kill Him", said Venetian Sean, "so He does what He likes. He's officially God incarnate from 2034 onwards, though He could have declared that well before then, to be quite honest. Your coming back from the dead in 2023 really consolidated His case for self-deification."

"EARTH TO EARTH - ASHES TO ASHES - DUST TO DUST."

A gold-robed minion stepped forward and tipped an urn into the grave. Three colours of powder crumbled out of it.

"The earth is from Adam's grave", whispered Venetian Sean reverently. "He tracked him down, you see. Adam was an exile from a tribe in Africa in 83,000 BC, exiled for being born racially inferior, a genetic freak - thin-nosed, thin-lipped, pale-skinned, blue-eyed. He walked across the Sinai into a land of monsters. Neanderthals. Gigantopithecus Blacki. This is where all the apocryphal gospel stuff about the sons of Cain comes from. Hardly the first man - the first men on Earth were negros - but a useful symbol. The ashes are from Joan of Arc's martyrdom. The dust is from Hiroshima."

The sarcophagus began to lower into the grave on a chain drive that appeared to be powered from the inside of the casket itself. All about the grave, dignitaries and luminaries crossed themselves.

"LILY WAS BELOVEDBY HER FAMILY", said the C of E rent-a-priest. "IN PARTICULAR, BY HER HUSBAND ALWYN AND HER SON, UH, SONS, SEAN, SEAN, SEAN AND SEAN, WHO ARE ALL WITH US TODAY." To do him credit, the holy man didn't falter in his delivery. "SHE WAS A DUTIFUL WIFE, KEPT A GOOD HOME, AND IF SHE DID ATTEMPT TO KILL HER OWN SON ON NUMEROUS OCCASIONS, IT WAS ALWAYS IN THE KNOWLEDGE THAT GOD WOULD PROTECT SEAN, JUST AS ABRAHAM'S HAND WAS STAYED AGAINST ISAAC." As the vicar recited his sermon, Sean became aware of the two small children and the terrified-looking woman standing on the other side of the grave, flanked by smiling Churchmen in Committee robes. Those, of course, would be parson's family.

As the earth began to fall onto the coffin, being shovelled in by taciturn men in sextons' robes using jewel-bright shovels, Venetian Sean collapsed into tears.

"Hey", said Sean. "She's where she can't be hurt any longer."

The older version of himself looked up with gritted teeth. "Look at the casket. She's not dead."

He looked again and, in the front of the sarcophagus where the face of a Pharaoh would have been, saw a slab of plexiglass with a pale, aged face looking out of it. Its eyes linked with Sean's. Were they pleading, were they wistful, were they angry?

"They buried her before she died", said Venetian Sean bitterly. "She lasted in the earth for over a hundred days. Then they brought the body to High Acres and left it on the porch for you to find." He looked up at the thin Sean in the Patriarch's robes. "His little joke."

Sean started forward to leap into the grave. Hands seized him from behind. He was wrestled away from the grave by men larger than any man had a right to be, wearing robes covered in ecclesiastical symbols. The C of E priest looked up at him sorrowfully. Across the grave, the patriarch teased a polymer tube from his robe and took a hit of a clear amber fluid.

"Hormones", hissed Venetian Sean. "He's gone so many levels up the turannone scale, He's hardly human any longer."

"He would say", interrupted Generalissmo Sean, lifting a magnificent feathered hat onto his head, "that He is more than human." The feathers of the hat were brilliant green.

"Quetzal?" said Sean. The General nodded to Sean's captors, and they dragged him backwards, his heels making furrows in the dirt, towards a translation gate that had just opened beneath the yew.

"Archaeopteryx", said the General. "Go with Him, not against Him. He has more power than you or I. And the beauty of it is that we will be Him one day."

"And know that I killed my own mother." Sean stared at the future Pastor bitterly.

"Yet He seems to have come to terms with this", said the General, "even if you and I haven't. Who's going to punish Him for anything He or we do in any case? We both know there is no god. I mean, the Pope ought to know, right? Though He seems to have come to the conclusion that there is a god, and that it's Him."

The Gate glowed like a snowglobe, all refracted light. The daylight coming through it was brighter than today's.

Other churchmen were also holding struggling figures fast among the tombstones - men and women squirming like eels on a hotplate, contrasting with the iron immovability of the men who held them.

"Those two", said the General in distaste, "we took from Mickey's car in twenty-twenty. Cheap hookers from Vegas. Not quite the sort you expected, though, I imagine."

One of the cheap hookers called out to Sean desperately. "Look, I don't know what it is you think we've done wrong, but whatever it is, we're sorry."

Sean shook his head sadly. "You've done nothing wrong."

The hooker's outlandish blond wig fell away, revealing a hairnetted scalp. He struggled with his captor with quite respectable muscles, and unusually large hands.

"But he's going to kill you anyway", said Sean sadly.

Both hookers - Sean had ordered Mickey to bring a black and a white - struggled like wildcats as the General nodded to a Church technician standing holding a communicator. One of the men even screamed like a wildcat.

A communicator that can talk to other times? Gate technology has improved in the next fifteen years.

"Switch the Gate to 40.49 North, 14.26 East", said the technician into his communicator. "CE nineteen forty-four."

The Gate blob shrank into nothing like a lava lump fragment, then grew outwards again, cherry-red, hotter than Sean could bear even at this distance. He had to put his hand over his eyes. Around the Gate, onthe grass, dew steamed.

"What's that?" said one of the hookers in fear.

"Vesuvius", said the General with some satisfaction. "In its last major eruption. One metre above lava level. The mountain of fire. The only place I feel I can safely dispose of your One Ring."

One hooker screamed like a little girl, one like a man, as they were hurled through the ruby divide.

"Snap shut", said the technician quickly.

The Gate shrank like a burst balloon. The screams were suddenly stifled. A cool breeze blew across the graves as the pressure equalized. A single yell of rage, rather than fear, remained. Sean turned to see Mickey - the older, paunchier Mickey he had last seen only one subjective hour ago - being held by two of the faithful. Mickey appeared to have been dressed in some of Sean's old clothes - a Gore-Tex anorak, a fleece, walking boots -

Oh my god.

"It was Michael who betrayed his grandmother", said the General with an expression devoid of pity, "and betrayed us. He snuck off secretly through time to inform the Committee's department of temporal security that the Resistance were using randomization utilities built into the very earliest navigation OS's to cover their tracks in time. The Committee then rewrote the utilities, causing them so append to audit files in secret backing storage volumes every time they were used. This allowed our glorious Committee to track the Resistance at every point in its history, monitor it, use it as an excuse for committing the Committee's own necessary atrocities. Michael further informed the Committee that the Resistance had a plan to use both the randomization utilities and an overload of a Model Three power circuit to send cobalt bombs back in time to the Precambrian, wiping out all early life on Earth, and colonize the Cryptozoic, starting all over again. If the Committee had believed him, you'd have been retranslated into the heart of a sun as a precautionary measure as soon as you stepped into the translator at Krakatoa. For this reason, we thought", said the General, "seeing that you don't yet have the stones for such things, that we'd let Michael deliver your first address to yourself in St. Ives."

Sean stared at his son - not quite like looking in the mirror, but how am I going to know what I'll look like thirteen years in the future?

"That", he said finally, "explains a great deal."

"We've also sourced a couple of really quite beautiful female escorts for him", said the General, indicating a pair of women, clad in barely sufficient quantities of lime green and fluorescent pink, who Sean recognized with a jolt. "He should be grateful, but is he? We get nothing but scowls and frowning." He waved his fingers theatrically close to Mickey's teeth; the other man snapped at them.

"Escorts from Vegas", said Sean. He felt cold. The world felt as if it had broadened into a grave-lined pit with him in it. People at his elbow were a thousand miles away.

"He will, however, do his appointed duty", said the General, "or for every word he says out of script, we will execute one of his Resistance friends via a variety of slow and quite conceptually beautiful methods, after explaining to them exactly who is responsible for putting them in their predicament. And he will be forced to watch the process, if we have to tape his eyelids open -"

"You do know", said Sean, staring directly at Mickey, "that they'll kill them and torture them anyway as part of standard Committee counter-heresy procedures."

Mickey looked away.

"Ah, but it's the identification of betrayal that's important to him", said the General. "He prefers to stab his friends in the back, because at least then he doesn't have to look them in the eye. That's the crux of it, eh, son?"

"Iam two years older than he is by my reckoning", said Mickey with surprising dignity, "and I resent being called 'son'."

"You'll resent a lot more by the time I'm done with you", hissed the General. "You ever hear of King Edward the Second of England?"

"He was defeated by the Scots at Bannockburn", said Mickey, then pantomimed a moment of deep thought. "And hey - wasn't he gay? Maybe that was directly linked to his incapability as a General. That makes sense."

"Ah, but Edward did far more than simply run from the Scots like a little girl!" said the General, his eyes alight. "Edward, you see, pursued bestial and perverse relationships. He even had a little man friend called Gaveston, whom his father banished from England in a fit of rage. Edward's tastes, however, did not return to God's ordained orifice, and after the death of his father, his courtiers eventually decided it was time to end his reign of buttock-stoking terror. They interned him in Berkeley Castle, where he was killed in a way calculated to deter even the most enthusiastic sodomite. His death involved a wooden table and a red hot poker, and his screams were heard loud enough to keep the local peasantry awake throughout the night even through walls three feet thick -"

"You forgot to add", added Mickey bitterly, "that Edward was not the equal of his famous father."

"You betrayed my side and yours", said the General. "Don't try to argue your way out of it."

The Gate had expanded again to become a drab patch of greyness.

"I recognize that year", said Sean.

"Only a few days away", said the General. "We could make you wait for it, but instead, we're taking you straight there by the magic of atoms. Step up, lucky contestant number one."

Mickey was hustled towards the Gate and unceremoniously ejected from the present.

"- and numbers two and three!" The Vegas hookers were invited to waddled through the Gate in their enormous heels; blissfully unaware of the fact that the field interface would cut them in half if they slipped, they minced into the future.

Do they think it's all a special effect?

"I'm afraid", said the General, turning to Sean, "you're staying here. You have to return triumphantly from the dead." He turned to the technician. "Do you have the coordinates for the outside of the Pastoral tomb in 2023?"

The technician nodded as Sean's captors released him. Sean stared down the General.

"I", he said, "will kill you for this."

"I'm sure", grinned the General, "I would have remembered if you had. By the way, the Great She-Satan died this week, in confinement. Quite a distressing illness, possibly gastroenteritis, possibly stomach cancer, we're not quite sure. Hard to tell when you can only observe via CCTV. We were unable to supply sufficiently Advanced medical staff, or even sanitary attendants, to meet her needs. The final stages were quite mortifying to watch." He nodded to his technician. "Close down this Gate and open the '23 one." Then, he smiled sadly at Sean. "I know you're going to do it, and I can't stop you, as it's already happened. So go ahead."

Sean's hand snapped down around the wrist of one of its captors and jerked it up directly into the Gate interface. The man roared in agony as his wrist neatly parted company with his hand, which Sean still held as he ducked backward into the future. He felt wet sand beneath his feet. English beach sand, full of oil tanker detritus, fag ends and dogshit.

He turned to the General, throwing him the morsel of bleeding meat.

"Be seeing you."

The future shrank down to nothing, leaving him standing on a cold seashore, his waterproof flapping in the wind. The two Vegas girls had fallen over instantly as their high heels sank into the sand; they were cursing, spitting silica, using language no gentleman would automatically assume they favoured.

Mickey looked up in puzzlement at Sean, holding a Metalstorm Glock small calibre rail pistol in his hands, squinting dangerously down the barrel.

"What did he send you after us for?"

"He didn't." He watched Mickey try to work the grip safety on the Glock. "I know what you're thinking of doing. It won't work. You still have stuff to do."

"What the FUCK you MOTHERS trying to PULL on us?" said one of the Vegas girls, hoisting herself unsteadily to her feet and collapsing sideways into the sand again.

Mickey flipped the boot switch on the pistol, drew up a laserpointer on his own face, jerked his thumb down on the trigger. Nothing happened. He sighed.

"It'll work one day", consoled Sean. "You have to pretend to be me, I believe", he added, "for the next half hour."

"I know", nodded Mickey. "El Generalissimo took me through it. He said you didn't have the balls to take responsibility for your own life right now." He looked up at Sean. "You didn't use to be like that. What happened?"

"Same thing as you, I expect", said Mickey. "Power, and the prospect of power."

"You try to point that thing at me", said the Vegas girl unfeasibly, "and I'll kick your ass."

"I wanted to be Pastor to make things right", said Mickey. "Put them back the way they were, make the world good again. Give it icecaps and coral reefs and self respect. I just didn't think democracy would make things any better. I mean, democracy was what melted the icecaps in the first place. Democracy elected you."

Mickey leaned against the heavy rocks of the sea wall, making a face at a lone surfer who had just walked out of the sea with a face of stark amazement at the bubble of othertime that had just shrunk to nothing on the beach. He won't last long. Committee cleaners'll take him down before he goes a hundred yards.

"First of all", he said, "you are assuming the world was ever good to begin with. The world has done its best to kill us all - you and me, humanity, the class mammalia, living creatures as a whole - over time. Ice ages, cometary impacts, vulcanism - you name it, Mother Earth's chucked it at us. And many of the fluffy creatures that your mother fought to save would have ripped her limb from limb as soon as look at her."

"Ah, sir?" said the other Vegas girl. "Please don't hurt us, sir. We'll do anything you want."

"But that's the point", said Mickey. "We have to prove we're better than the world. That we won't sink to its level."

"And secondly", said Sean, gazing out at a mile of rolling green Atlantic, "I didn't think democracy would do any good either. But the world's never really had democracy. That's the problem. Democracy has always involved presidential campaigns funds and political parties and primaries and first-past-the-post and all of the legislative sleight-of-hand that ensures the very rich stay in charge. No, we've never really had democracy."

"Maybe", said Mickey, "we ought to make some."

"I fear", said Sean, "that it may be too late now." He spotted a small black something being nudged inland by the surf. "Hey, will you look at that." He got to his feet and padded down the sand with difficulty, stitches pulling in his side. He had to use a hand to steady himself to bend down to the waterline.

He returned back to Mickey and the girls, holding the small black bakelite-shiny thing between thumb and forefinger.

"A mermaid's purse", he said. "Know what it is? The egg case of a skate or ray. This one's broken, baby ray made it out into the big blue." He bowed to one of the Vegas girls. "With my compliments. A mermaid's purse for a siren."

The hooker, who Sean was almost certain was currently wondering why he was comparing her to the blue flashing lights on the tops of police cars, took the mermaid's purse as if it were some alien organism.

"Got the helotonovirus sample?" said Sean. "And the gun, we're sure the gun is loaded, yes?"

Mickey nodded.

"Then hand over both of them, it's time for us to change clothes. There'll be a couple of Gates opening soon, after our little drama plays out in the Tate. One of those Gates will be our friend the General come to find the US president and take him away to fame and fortune in the year 2023. One of them will take a condemned criminal away to death-or-worse. Which one do you want to walk through?"

Mickey's eyes searched Sean for falsehood, like a wild animal trying to decide whether to bite a hand or feed from it. "You'd change clothes with me? Why? I betrayed you!"

"Mickey, you're my son. I sang you to sleep when you were a little boy. I taught you to fight. I taught you to swim. I even occasionally used to come home and spend quality time with you. And that bastard", he said, jerking a thumb in the metaphorical direction of four days ago, "is not coming anywhere near you."

"That bastard", said Mickey, "is you."

"Not yet." Sean began struggling out of his jersey, greatly confusing the Vegas girls. "Not yet. Hurry up, for fuck's sake!"

The exchange of clothes took under a minute. Death was a great encourager. Finally, when he stood in his clothes of thirteen years before and Mickey in a Church combat uniform, Sean felt in his pocket experimentally.

"I knew I left this here. And all these years, I'd thought some Church goon had stolen it, when I'd done it myself." He began levering the correct blade out of the Victorinox knife frantically. "Hold out your hand."

Mutely, Mickey held out an upturned palm the exact size and shape of Sean's own. Sean took hold of the wrist, drew the knife across the palm, made sure the incision hurt. Mickey's arm stiffened as the blade bit in, but he did not cry out.

Then, Sean returned the blade to his own arm, rolling up his sleeve and making a cut at the crook of his elbow. "I didn't have a cut in my hand when I met me", he explained, pressing Mickey's hand over the wound. "Blood-to-blood contact. You should shortly be a Level Thirty-Three. That means I'm going to have to up my own level again. The only potential flaw in the plan is that I know I've already done all this, which could mean one of two things - either I already know it'll work, in which case I won't even try to stop myself, or I already know it'll fail, in which case the confusion will last long enough for you to get away."

Mickey's hands were shaking. Sean grabbed hold of them by the thumbs.

"Easy. The Monarch of the World does not shake in fear."

"I never thought I was good enough to be you, dad -"

"Jesus Christ, enough with the waterworks already, now of all times -"

"I never thought I could possibly be like you. The President. The Pope. The Pastor. The big brave soldier. I worshipped you, dad. So I, I chose something different. A whole different gender, in fact. I chickened out."

Sean squeezed the thumbs so hard that he was certain he was causing actual physical pain. "Mickey Mickey Mickey. Don't rationalize after the fact. You were born gay. I know, I had your genome checked, there is a group of genes that code for it and you had a full set. Everyone knew about it, everyone has always known. And I", he said wearily, "have always been the Pastor, and I have always wished I wasn't. But there are two things inmy life that I've found worthwhile, and those are my wife and my son." He smaned. "Remember when we ran through Toys R Us and turned on all the SQUEEZE MY TUMMY toys? One hundred plush Eeyores saying Thanks Fer Noticin Me in concert? How old were you then?"

Mickey grinned. "Nineteen."

"And do you remember when we hid that dead mouse under the perfume counter in Safeway?"

"Yeah!" Mickey guffawed. "It had all maggots crawling in it. It was fantastic."

A head leaned over the top of the sea wall. It looked from Sean to Mickey.

"It's, uh, time for you to be leaving, Pastor."

Sean nodded at Mickey.

"Right you are", said Mickey. He extended a hand.

"Be seeing you", said Mickey.

"Probably not", said Sean. "What with my imminent execution and all."

Mickey nodded, turned, and trudged away down the sand towards the Digey, the narrow street that ran between Porthmeor and the harbour. Sean reflected that, after decades of living in Cornwall, he still had no idea what a Digey was.

He exhaled. The wound in his side hurt, and he had to pretend it wasn't there. He looked up at the face at the top of the sea wall.

"FOR MY NEXT TRICK", he called out, "I WILL REQUIRE HALF A BOTTLE OF VODKA AND ABSOLUTE UNQUESTIONING OBEDIENCE."

The face at the top of the wall withdrew. A half bottle of Pomos Belvédère sailed down from above, making a small crater in the sand. He could see his own car travelling down Porthmeor Hill in the direction of the Island car park. Why did I come that way? Barrelling down narrow country lanes, probably. A penis thing. Cars don't affect me in quite the same way nowadays.

But I've got my role to play.

He slid the gun into an inside pocket, not bothering to make it safe, bent to pick up the vodka bottle, and offered his arm to the Vegas girls.

"Come, ladies", he said. "The hour of your performance is nigh. You will be Shanice, I believe, and you Kryst-L with a K, no a, a hyphen and a capital L, am I right? Believe me, ladies, when I say that this ordeal will soon be over, and that no-one will be sorrier to see the back of you than I."

They took his arms. On the way up the beach onto Porthmeor Road, he stepped across the body of the surfer who'd caught sight of the Gate interface opening. There was no perceptible sign of any injury, though he was plainly dead, sprawled by his board in the street, still wearing his wetsuit, gawping up at the white sky. Sean stepped over the body and began to whistle Sally Can't Dance tunelessly and happily as he and the Vegas ladies pressed on towards the Tate.