Chapter 12

 

A Tale of Two Wizards

 

Old Tom Finney manoeuvred his battered pram through the front doors of the George Street mission. He was dripping wet, reeking of cheap alcohol and unwashed flesh, and rambling incoherently. A female volunteer worker named Judy managed to catch him before he collapsed on the lino. A cursory examination revealed him to be thoroughly intoxicated and slightly undernourished, but otherwise remarkably healthy for a homeless man.

“I need ta see the priest, I need ta see the priest,” Tom cried, trying to fight the girl off.

“Relax - you’re not going to die!’ Judy assured him.

“I know that, yer silly girl!” Tom cried, attempting to struggle to his feet. “But I still need ta see the priest! I have somethin’ very important t’ discuss with him!”

“What you need is a wash, some dry clothes, a good square meal and time to sober up!” Judy told him as she helped him up and over to a chair.

“I like the idea of food, but washin’ and soberin’ up’s a mug’s game.” Tom pulled a face. “Ye wash once, an’ the next day yer all dirty again! An’ as for soberin’ up - Jaysus, me pore head hurts just thinkin’ about it!”

“If you want to see Father Peterson, you’ll have to be clean and coherent!” Judy retorted. “Now, Adam and Chris’ll take you to the showers.” She gestured towards two burly youths who had just appeared to see what all the fuss was about.

Tom glanced over one shoulder at his pram, still parked near the doors. “What about me things?”

“They’ll be perfectly safe right here,” Judy assured him. “Now go with the boys - they’ll take good care of you.”

With much trepidation, Tom allowed himself to be escorted off. The importance of his information overrode his dislike of showering and sobering up. Besides, he could use some new clothes. The elbows had finally worn out of his old corduroy coat, his trousers were thin and ragged with no knees left, and as for his shoes - garbage-bags were more waterproof. For a few hours he could handle being sober, seeing the world for the cruel, twisted place it really was. But only for a few hours, mind you.

Clean and clad in mismatched second-hand clothes, Tom Finney resembled an out of work actor, with his straggly grey hair and beard. He allowed Judy to comb his hair and tie it back with an elastic band, but refused to let her cut his beard. “Clear off! It keeps me chest warm!”

After he’d eaten, and pestered all the mission staff to the point of distraction, Judy took him upstairs to see Father Peterson, who was busy sorting through the books and lamenting the sorry state of the mission’s finances.

“What can I do for you, my son?” the young priest asked kindly. He had not long been a cleric, and was still full of youthful ideas and plans. He found addressing a man old enough to be his grandfather as “my son” a little disconcerting. “Take a seat and we’ll talk.”

Awkwardly Tom perched himself in a chair opposite. Already he could feel a headache approaching, and hoped this wouldn’t take long. Some cheap plonk would go down really well right now. “Well Father, I know you priests talk to God all the time, but I was wonderin’ - what has He told ye about th’ New God?”

Father Peterson looked blank. “‘New God’?”

Tom gulped. “Ya mean ya don’t know about the New God?”

Smiling sadly, Father Peterson shook his head. You poor old fellow, he thought. Give up the alcohol - it’s completely fuddled your brain!

“Nothin’ at all?” Tom asked, his old heart pounding with worry.

“No. There is only one God, Tom - the one who watches over us and protects us from evil.”

Tom started to shiver. “Well, this throws a right royal spanner in the works,” he muttered. How on Earth could a man of God not know about the scourge known as the New God? Unless he wasn’t a true man of God! But when he looked at Father Peterson, he saw his faith, blazing around him like a fiery white halo. He believed in the Lord all right, but his rigid upbringing and time in the clergy had stolen his imagination and open-mindedness away. No way would he accept the idea of another god.

“What’s wrong, Tom?” the Father asked gently.

“Unless ya’ve heard about the New God, it’ll be too hard to explain,” Tom answered. “I’d better go - I need to find a priest who’s heard of him before it’s too late.” He pushed his chair back from the desk and shambled out.

Father Peterson fingered his chin. Poor old fellow, he thought again.

“Finished already?” Judy inquired as Tom hurried out.

“Yeh. Be seein’ ya. Thanks for the food an’ strides.” He departed the mission as quickly as he had arrived. Where on Earth could he turn now? The only cleric he knew was a lost cause who hadn’t even heard of the New God! Perhaps he should start haunting the local churches. He wished he didn’t have to find a cleric, but he couldn’t face up to his responsibility on his own. Since fleeing from the New God at Town Hall Station, the Lord had been berating him for his cowardice and filling his head with stories of the New God’s evil.

“Every day He gains in power in his search for followers! All he has to do is use his Voice and my people will prostrate themselves before him in their hundreds! You must find him again, and pray to me!

But poor Tom couldn’t manage on his own - he needed a priest by his side, someone with transport and connections. How could he hope to track down the New God in a city of millions, with only a battered pram and his hopeful heart? Sometimes he wondered why the heck God hadn’t chosen someone else to do his bloody bidding.

Ten years earlier Tom Finney had been happily married with a roof - albeit a rented one - over his head. Then the voices came, whispering to him in the dark like demons. In an attempt to banish them he took up drinking, and in the space of only a few months, he lost his job, his wife and his house. On the street with nothing, Tom took solace in the Bible’s pages, hoping to find a reason for his madness.

Then the voices revealed themselves their holy, rather than unholy origin. God spoke directly to Tom, warning him of the New God’s imminent arrival and the distressing fact that so far, the old derelict was the only one with a mind open enough to accept the truth of a divine rival.

 

After spending a night recovering from their painful Dreaming ordeal, Klaus Streicher and Wooreema stepped from the little house into warm morning sunshine. Klaus dispelled the dwelling with a twitch of his fingers, and no-one would ever have guessed that a little house had occupied the clearing for twelve hours.

Wooreema muttered something under his breath.

“What’s wrong?” Klaus asked. “It’s a beautiful morning. The sun’s shining, the birds are singing-”

“It’s these robes! They’re starting to irritate my skin!” the shaman exploded, pulling angrily at his new coverings.

“I told you before, you can’t parade around White man territory wearing nought but a smelly hide cloak and a smile! You’ll be locked up!” Klaus shouldered his backpack. “We must remain inconspicuous at all times.”

“I suppose you’re right. But they itch like lice!” Wooreema started scratching vigorously.

“You’ll get used to them.” Klaus started through the trees, hoping to find a better vantage point. As Wooreema followed, he remembered with a shiver just where Klaus had found the robes he now wore.

Back in the enchanted hut, the wizard dumped his battered old leather backpack on the floor and pulled its drawstrings apart. “So - what colour robes do you want?” he asked cheerfully.

“You have more than one set in there?”

Gripping the edges of the rucksack, Klaus inserted one leg into it, then the other. “Yes. Now what colour do you want?”

Wooreema gaped, wondering what on Earth his companion was doing. He answered with the first colour to pop into his numb brain. “Er - green, I suppose.”

“I’ll be back in a minute.” To the shaman’s utter horror, Klaus descended into the pack and disappeared from sight. Wooreema darted forward, and peered into the sack’s open mouth. He saw Klaus climbing down a ladder into an enormous storeroom crammed with shelves.

Wooreema mouthed silently. Finally a strangled “how?” managed to escape his lips.

Klaus looked up with a cheeky grin. “This pack’s actually a very powerful Magick item. Its interior exists on a whole other plane, created especially for it. Clever, isn’t it? I can keep an entire life’s worth of possessions in here, and no-one would ever know.” He started rummaging through the heavily laden shelves. “Ah! Here we are.” He pulled out a set of leaf-green robes and a matching cloak. “These should fit you.” He tossed them up to Wooreema, who caught them with limp fingers, almost dropping them. Klaus then collected some dried provisions and a bottle of whiskey before starting back up the ladder. “I thought about retrieving this food while we were in the Dreaming, but I didn’t know how the pack’s Magick would work there. Sometimes opening an extra-dimensional portal on another plane of existence can have disastrous results.”

Klaus emerged from the pack, deposited the food on a table, and picked up his staff, looking sadly down at it. “Dead as a doornail. It’ll take me days to recharge it. Into the pack.” He tossed the stick into the rucksack’s maw, and it disappeared from sight. To Wooreema’s horror, he heard a clatter as it fell onto the extra-dimensional storeroom’s floor.

Then Klaus took a swig from the bottle he’d picked up. “Care for a drink?”

After what he’d seen, Wooreema decided a small drink of White man alcohol was just what he needed! He spent the rest of the evening examining Klaus’ backpack, and eventually summoned up the courage to climb down into it.

He supposed the reason why his people had never developed such items was because they didn’t have much need for possessions. But by the Creator! With such an item he could store all of his talismans, and enough food to see the tribe through entire winter!

Now, as he watched the pack bounce on Klaus’ back, he had trouble believing that such a grubby, dilapidated leather bag was really an awesomely powerful Magick item! It even bulged like a full pack, and when he touched it he felt only the lumps created by everyday items.

They reached a narrow dirt path, winding its way along the mountainside, and decided to follow it for a few minutes. “If we don’t get our bearings soon, I’ll conjure us up another platform,” Klaus declared.

Suddenly Wooreema tugged on his sleeve. Klaus spun. “What is it?”

“Voices - coming this way!”

The two men stepped to one side of the narrow path, and sure enough the owners of the voices appeared; four Caucasian hikers in loose-fitting tunics, trousers and boots. On seeing Klaus and Wooreema they gaped, and a prepubescent boy with a shaved head actually stopped to stare in wonder.

“Man - that’s what I call a beard!” he gasped, eyeing Klaus’s amazing abundance of facial hair. A teenage girl grabbed him by an arm and pulled him after her.

“They could be part of a weird new cult,” someone else declared as they continued along the path.

“So much for being inconspicuous!” Wooreema declared icily once the hikers had disappeared. “Do you have any other clothes in your pack?”

“Nothing like those!” The wizards ducked into the bushes at the side of the path, and Klaus tugged angrily at his beard. “Did you see the look that impudent little brat gave me? I might as well have had a hairy snake growing out of my chin! Jesus, your beard’s like a bramble-thicket, and did they stare at you like you were a freak? No!”

“Perhaps you should cut it off,” Wooreema suggested.

“My beard?! Are you crazy? It took me twenty years to grow!”

“And you’ll be alive long enough to grow another - long enough to grow twenty more such beards.”

“That’s a good point.” Klaus took a deep breath. “Very well - for the sake of anonymity, I’ll cut off my beard.” He drew a knife from his belt and threw a simple spell of sharpness over it. He braided his beard into a single plait and sawed it off. Then he used the knife to shave himself smooth. “Feels strange to be clean shaven after so many years.” He patted his cheek. “My face is cold!”

“You look a lot younger,” Wooreema told him.

Klaus stared at him, surprised by the compliment. “I do?”

Wooreema smiled. “At least ten years younger. Tie your hair back - it will also help.”

“You’re not just saying that, are you?”

“Of course not! It is not in my nature to lie.”

Pleased by Wooreema’s observation, Klaus pulled his hair back and secured it with a black ribbon. “Now how do I look?”

“Much more ... Science Earth White man-ish!”

Klaus looked down at his beloved blue robes. “Now, I suppose we ought to do something about our clothes.” He lifted his bony hands. “I hope my memory serves me correctly, otherwise this will earn us more laughs!” He intoned a simple spell of alteration, designed to permanently change the cut and colour of an individual’s clothing. He copied the clothes the leader of the hiking group had worn; tight black trousers, leather boots, and jacket over a weirdly coloured woollen jumper. He knew a lot of his details would be wrong, but hoped they wouldn’t matter. He finished the incantation with a flourish, and the wild mana rushed to do his bidding with a swift, deadly efficiency which left him breathless.

“Amazing,” Wooreema gasped.

“Well - I guess it’s your turn. You’ll ... have to wear the boy’s clothes!” Klaus lifted his hands for a second spell. The power of this Earth’s mana still awed him. He had no wish to miscast a spell on this planet - the intense backlash would turn him from a wizard into a wazard. He finished his second spell, and the swirling forces of mana engulfed the shaman, altering his flowing robes into baggy cloth trousers, brightly coloured shoes with thick rubber soles, and a long navy blue tunic that fell to the tops of his thighs and had a hood at the back.

“What does ‘Sydney Kinks’ mean?” Wooreema asked, examining his tunic.

Klaus shrugged his shoulders. “I have no idea.”

“Could it have been ‘Sydney Kings’?”

“Possibly, but it’s too late now.” Still rubbing his face, Klaus looked around. “What d’you reckon? I cast ‘Platform’, render us invisible, and we fly into the city?”

With a shiver Wooreema remembered the city as seen from the Dreaming. “I ... I suppose so. We haven’t really made much progress, have me?”

Klaus summoned up a platform and encased it within a bubble of invisibility. It vanished. “The platform lasts for as long as I concentrate, but the bubble will disappear in about two hours.”

“We’ll have to be quick then.” Carefully Wooreema stepped up onto the platform, and Klaus followed. Despite the invisibility, they could still see each other, as transparent ghostlike figures.

“Going up.”

Slowly, they rose into the air, leaving the muddy track behind. Treetops dropped beneath them, becoming a lush green carpet coating the mountain-sides. Strong winds buffeted them, and Wooreema had to crouch down, gripping the platform’s edges. Because he was in control of the platform, Klaus could attach his feet to its smooth surface. As the mountainous landscape unfolded beneath them, he developed an idea of their location from memories of the previous evening, when they had occupied this exact same point in the Dreaming. He turned, focussed his will, and with a warning to Wooreema to hang on tight, sent the platform streaking off towards the city.

The shaman screamed in terror as gale-force winds flattened him against the enchanted plane, threatening to tear his fingers from the edge. “Slow down!”

“I only gave it a little nudge!” Klaus cried. “I didn’t expect it to go off like a runaway elephant!” He managed to slow down to a more respectable speed.

“By the Sky-Father! I don’t want to lose any more years off my life!” Wooreema croaked. “I should try to cast a spell of flying.”

“If it’ll make things easier for you.”

Wooreema narrowed his eyes, drawing in his will. Because a lot of his spells were all nature-based, he could only acquire abilities from specific animals. He focussed on an eagle, and sought out its spiritual counterpart to tell him he wanted wings. But although he found its entity on the Dreaming, he couldn’t communicate his desires to it, and it shied from his mind in terror. He remembered the spirits they had encountered on this side of the Dreaming, and realised he couldn’t cast any of his Nature spells. Only an old tree had comprehended his language.

“No good?” Klaus asked.

“I ... I can’t cast any spell that directly involve Nature!” he cried. “My powers are next to useless!”

“Jesus - I’m so sorry!” Klaus cried. “But you can still do elemental spells, can’t you?”

“Yes - even though the Elemental Schools are closely linked to Nature, all Elements understand the Tongue of Magick. But so many of my spells rely on Nature ... I can’t use the schools of Alteration, Beast Mastery, Divination, Nature...”

“I knew there was a reason why I came along.” Klaus patted Wooreema on a shoulder. “Don’t let it worry you - so long as you can still rip out a fireball in an emergency or heal me when I take an arrow, you’re doing a damn sight better than most mages!” Suddenly he looked down. “Dear God - we’re arrived!”

Wooreema followed Klaus’s gaze to see a neat network of houses with carefully pruned yards and tarred streets separating them. Strange metal things travelled along the roads, people seated inside their bellies.

“What are those?” He pointed to the moving objects.

Klaus looked down, following Wooreema’s gaze. “Horseless carriages of some sort. There are an awful lot of them, aren’t there?” He gestured towards a wide street where hundreds of the contraptions flowed along, their movements regulated by an intricate pattern of coloured lights.

Wooreema nodded. He couldn’t see any sign of the Earth’s putrefaction, but a faint smell of decay still managed to reach his nostrils. He supposed it was more a memory than actual reality.

Klaus slowed the platform to a stop and reached into his pack for his crystal ball, which Wooreema supposed was on a top shelf of the enchanted storeroom. He held it out in front of him and looked through. “Aw shit.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Can’t use this while we’re invisible. In order to recall the map I made, we’ll have to become visible.”

“We’ll have to find somewhere to hide. How about in a tree?”

“Mayhaps. But between some buildings is a better idea.” He pointed ahead, where in the distance a forest of towers rose into the blue sky. A hazy layer blanketed the entire area.

“That is where the corruption is the highest - do you think it will be safe?”

“If we were on the Dreaming, no - but here? Nothing can hurt us. Like you said, these people know nothing about Magick. There aren’t even any enchanted animals.” Shoving the ball back into his back, he sent the platform flying towards the strange constructions.

Below, the population grew denser, and the trees and gardens disappeared, becoming almost non-existent in areas. The air developed a foul smell that made both wizards cough. Wooreema began to feel nauseous as he contemplated the dead earth rotting far below all those worked stone constructions. Strange spider-webs of wires passed below, reminding him of the glowing webs they had seen in the Dreaming, which had sizzled with strange snakes of light. He could sense an alien power humming through those cables, and warned Klaus to stay away from them. A similar power helped to propel the vehicles.

“It seems to be electricity of some sort,” Klaus answered. “But how it travels through those wires is beyond me!”

Wooreema’s belly contracted, and leaned over the edge of the platform. A thin stream of vomit appeared at the edge of the invisibility bubble, and rained to the ground.

Klaus could sense Wooreema’s pain, but was unable to keep from smiling at the thought of some unsuspecting fool, caught in a rain of spew from Heaven. “Not much further,” he assured the shaman.

Wooreema straightened. “I’ll be alright.” He dragged an arm across his lips. He had tried to control himself, not come across as weak after revealing he had lost most of his spell-casting ability. But all the alien construction below had been too much.

Klaus manoeuvred the platform between the windowless walls of two stone buildings and dispelled their concealment. The air was filled with the stink that made their throats hurt, and other alien compounds. Wooreema sat with his legs crossed, resting his head in his hands. He could feel the dark walls closing in, threatening to steal the last of his strength. He felt his new age, and very, very tired despite the long sleep he’d had the previous night.

Klaus rubbed his crystal ball and peered into its pristine depths. He focussed on the map and it appeared inside, as perfect as it had been the previous day. “Now, where are we?” he whispered, narrowing his eyes. The map unrolled, passing swiftly through the ball until their location appeared as seen from above. “Ah. Now where did we first see the Storm?”

This time the ball wasn’t as specific since the Storm had appeared over a large area. Klaus realised with a sinking feeling that they would have to search several square miles of area - at the very least. “We’ll need more help than this.” He slipped the ball back into his pack.

“What is that?” Wooreema gasped, climbing laboriously to his feet.

Klaus spun around. “What?”

Suddenly, a vibrating noise filled the air, and a long, sleek machine flew past, held aloft by a set of spinning blades on top. It had a symbol painted on its underbelly, depicting a “7” in a circle. Klaus dropped to his knees, releasing a string of shocked expletives.

“What was that about ‘nothing can hurt us’?” Wooreema demanded.

“That ... that thing didn’t attack us, did it?” Klaus gasped, trying to make light of the situation.

“But it certainly frightened us!” Wooreema exploded.

“You’re right. I’m taking us down!” Too quickly for Wooreema’s comfort, Klaus dropped the platform into a narrow alley between the buildings. He hoped no-one was watching as they landed, and jumped off onto solid ground. Wooreema shivered, actually glad of the shoes on his feet, preventing him from feeling the Earth’s pain through his soles. At first they had been painfully constrictive.

“This place is certainly very strange,” Wooreema observed, looking slowly around at the buildings, now towering high above him, higher than any tree - almost as high as a mountain.

“Aye,” Klaus agreed. “So this is what my kind is aspiring to? Can’t say I like it any more than you. Should we take a look around? Mayhap we’ll find some clues as to the New God’s exact whereabouts.” He led Wooreema from the alley and out onto a busy street. The metal machines had appeared like toys from the air, but on the ground they were monstrous and frightening, noisy metal beasts with garishly coloured bodies and clouds of foul stench emerging from their rears - like farts from Hell.

Fortunately, following groups of other people, it didn’t take the wizards long to work out how to operate the magic lights that made the machines stop and go. They walked slowly, taking in the sheer weirdness of this world; the monstrously tall buildings, the strangely- dressed people and the weird smells bombarding their nostrils at every opportunity.

“My God!” Wooreema heard someone cry from not far away. “It’s him! The cult leader! Nick Stryker!”

Klaus looked around, searching for the source of the voice, and saw a young woman with long pale hair, wearing a jacket made from something black and very shiny. She stood with a male friend, pointing at the mage by Wooreema’s side. The shaman glanced at his companion, but Klaus appeared to be engrossed in a colourful display behind a sheet of crystal. Mannequins, clad in colourful woollen dresses, had been arranged in enticing poses. He hadn’t heard the cry, but Wooreema had always had acute hearing.

“Fair enough, but who’s the wizened old aborigine with him?” Wooreema heard the girl’s friend ask. “Doesn’t he hang around with a little pommy guy and a really big South American bodyguard?”

The shaman took Klaus’s arm. “Something very strange is happening,” he whispered in the mage’s ear.

Klaus turned, jerked from his contemplation of the impossibly attractive dummies. “What’s that?”

“Someone over there appears to recognise you.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. But when they both turned around, the woman and her mate were hurrying off. “That girl in black, and the man with her,” he explained.

Klaus scratched his newly shaven chin. “Recognised me? In what way?”

“She called you ‘Nick Stryker’ - the Cult Leader!”

“Very close to Niklaus Streicher!” Klaus gasped. “But that’s impossible! I haven’t been here before! Neither of us has! And as for ‘Cult Leader’ - I’ve never led a religious cult in my life - never even wanted to! I hate religion! Do you know what’s going on?”

“I am afraid I do not,” Wooreema answered sadly. “Let’s continue and hope that some of our questions will soon be answered.”

After that incident, both wizards were on the lookout for more signs of recognition. In reward for their alertness, they noticed strange stares, and amazed whispers to companions. The man they knew as Nick Stryker was obviously a very high profile individual. Instead of receiving the answers they wanted, more questions piled up, rapidly becoming a teetering tower of mystery. The wizards continued on along the busy streets, without any real idea of where they were heading. Too much information was bombarding their senses.

Then Klaus noticed the posters, glued to one wall of what appeared to be an ale-house. He grabbed for the hem of Wooreema’s blue tunic and pulled him to a stop. “L-look!”

One poster depicted a man in a long black coat, standing with his arms upraised in front of an ominous sky. An unfelt breeze whipped his long grey pony tail over his shoulders. The words above him read;

“Nick Stryker welcomes you to join him at God’s Right Hand.”

The other picture described a strange symbol, of a four pointed star floating above a stylised hand. The print beneath read simply “The Right Hand of God”. An address was supplied in small print.

Klaus rubbed his chin. “I really should not have shaved off my beard.”

“He could be your twin brother,” Wooreema agreed.

“This is unbelievable! On this world I have an exact lookalike, with a name too close to mine to be mere coincidence! How can this be?”

“Two Earths, ours of Magick and this one of Science. Perhaps everyone on our world exists on this one as well.”

“Jesus.” Klaus stared at the posters again. “That raises some very scary thoughts! Mayhaps we should find this Nick Stryker and have a word with him. Look at the stormy sky in this picture - his cult probably follows the New God!” An icy shiver raced down his spine at the thought of a twin, who followed the very being they were endeavouring to seek and help destroy.

Wooreema hurriedly shook his head. “As yet, the New God has no followers. This Nick Stryker probably serves the White man God Jehovah.”

Klaus relaxed. Of course - the star above the hand was actually a Christian cross. “So ... he probably won’t be able to help us.”

“I would not be so sure. Take the posters - they might still come in handy.”

Klaus peeled them from the wall, folded them into a small square and shoved them into one pocket of his leather jacket. “Now what? We aren’t exactly making much progress, wandering around aimlessly.”

Wooreema looked around, a gentle breeze ruffling his thick, curly beard. “A good question! All we can do is conjure up another platform and comb the area in which we think the New God is hiding.”

“Or wait for another storm.” Klaus sank down on a doorstep. “I need a rest - I feel like I’ve been walking for hours!”

Wooreema joined him. “Me too.”

“We are a pair, aren’t we?” Klaus asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Two geriatrics who can’t even manage a few kilometres, drafted to save the world!” Klaus laughed humourlessly. “Aren’t adventurers supposed to be muscular young warriors with broadswords hanging from their hips?”

“Most heroes are old. Certainly youngsters have a powerful fire in their bellies, which keeps them going long after most would have turned back, but they lack wisdom.”

“At least they don’t feel like going back to bed right now.” Klaus massaged his brow.

“False prophet!” Both wizards looked up at the sound of the querulous voice. A hairy old man in dirty clothes was trundling a pram towards them, and indignantly waving one bony fist. “You blind people with yer empty promises, leavin’ them susceptible to evil!”

“‘False prophet’?” Klaus pushed himself to his feet. “Wait - you think I’m that cult leader Stryker, don’t you?”

The homeless man stopped, confusion entering his drunken gaze. “What ye tryin’ to pull, Stryker?” he demanded in an accent nothing like his righteous rambling of earlier. “I might be a piss-artist, but I know your sermons are swayin’ people from the True Faith - and when the New God comes-”

Klaus grabbed the little man by his shoulders and shook him. A sour stench of unwashed flesh and alcohol galloped up his nostrils. “Did you say ‘New God’?” he hissed.

Wooreema leapt to his feet. Could it be true? Could this dirty old White man really know the True God’s location?

Fear leapt into the bum’s eyes. “Er - yeah, I did,” he answered uncertainly.

“You ... you know of him?” Klaus cried.

The old man’s eyes widened. “You know of him?” he countered.

“Of course I do! I wouldn’t be asking about Him if I didn’t know anything about Him!” Klaus shouted. “We’re looking for Him!”

The hobo started mouthing incoherently, trying to spit his words out in his excitement. “I-I-I don’t believe it!” he finally managed to splutter. Klaus released him and stepped back to stand beside Wooreema. “Almost a week I’ve spent lookin’ for a priest who knows of the New God! I’ve been shown out o’ more churches than I care to count! I ... I never thought that you would know about the New God! You - the False Prophet!”

Klaus took a deep breath. “I’m not Nick Stryker. I might look like him, but I’m not him. Wooreema and I have ... come from a long way away in search of the New God.”

The old man dragged a hand through his tangled beard. “You’re tellin’ the truth, ain’t ya?”

Both Klaus and Wooreema nodded.

“Blimey.” The old man turned away to absorb this baffling new titbit. “So that’s why God told me to head down this way!”

“Sir,” Klaus began.

“‘Sir’?” The old man spun back around. “Cripes, no-one’s ever called me ‘sir’ before! I’m Tom Finney, or I’m ‘you drunken bum’, but I’m certainly not ‘sir’!”

“In that case, I’m Nicklaus Streicher, and this is my friend Wooreema,” Klaus explained with a gesture towards the shaman. “I know my name sounds like Nick Stryker, but I assure you I’m a completely different person.”

Tom nodded vigorously. “I said before, I believe you! I ... I well, I guess I can see the truth in your aura. Nick’s aura’s really dark and murky - sort of filthy shit-brown. Even though yours is still grubby, it’s much lighter, more green than brown.”

“You ... ‘see’ auras?” Klaus gasped.

“Only when I drink.” Tom lifted a paper-wrapped bottle. “Otherwise everything’s drab an’ dead. I saw the New God’s aura once.” He shivered. “It was the vilest green I ever saw - an’ at the same time it was a confused purple. It was shot through with lightning-bolts.”

“You saw the New God?” Wooreema stepped forward in excitement.

Tom nodded and took a swig from his bottle. “Piss-bolted in terror before I could tell God, and He wasn’t at all pleased with me. I figger the only reason I could see the New God’s aura was ‘cause He was still corporeal an’ didn’t have any followers to give Him power.”

“Do you know where he is now?” the shaman demanded. It was his turn to grab the old drunk by his narrow shoulders.

Tom seemed to sag in Wooreema’s excited grip. “I’m sorry, but I’ve no idea where He is right now. Do you?”

Wooreema released the old man and stepped back. “No.”

“Then I guess we all have to look for him together! You fellas got a car?”

“A car?” Klaus and Wooreema exchanged glances, realising that Tom was probably talking about one of those horseless carriages. “No - we don’t have a car, but we do have transport,” Wooreema explained.

“And we have a rough idea where the New God lives.”

Klaus massaged the bridge of his nose. “This is just great. Now we’re three geriatrics out to save the world!”

 

* * * *