Titans of Chaos

Could be a basketball player, if he wasn't already a linebacker. Heavy black boots, heavy blackdenim pants, heavy black leather jacket. Black on black on black. You get the picture. Every inchof the black leather jacket had a shining metal ring sewn to it, so he rang and glittered as hewalked. Clipped among his rings were Japanese throwing stars, looking like harmless ornaments,lost in the glitter. The handle of a Bowie knife protruded from a sheath in his boot, a second wasat his hip, a third up his sleeve. In his hand he carried not a spear (as I first had thought) but aharpoon with a sharpened steel togglehead and, incredibly, a loop of cable running through it,with the other end of the cord wrapping his spear hand.

He might have been a member of a biker gang. A really, really nasty biker gang. A biker gang ofEskimos, I should say, who harpooned seals between riots.

Oh, and he was handsome, in a rough way. Very rough. His face looked like something carved byrough hatchet blows out of a pine stump. His hair was done up in short gelled spikes, a look thatwent out of fashion in England after the defeat of the Rets. He had wide, high cheeks, blunt jaw,his mouth a single cruel slash beneath a proud nose, eyes like a wolf's eye beneath a wideoverhanging brow, the forehead of a king or a philosopher: a warrior-king, though, or aNietzschean philosopher. A scar ran from the corner of his eye across the muscles of his cheek, towhere the deep lines formed brackets around his stern mouth. It was a big, ugly scar, but,somehow, it made his face look more striking, not less. I was sure he had gotten it at Heidelberg.

The crowd quieted down when he strode up. "May I help you?" he said in a tone that left noquestion that no help could possibly be forthcoming.

I said, "We are here to see Mr. Archer on a matter of very important, um, importance." (Boy, Icould have said that better.)

Colin helped me. Sort of. Not. He chimed in, "Tell your boss that the world could be destroyed ifhe dicks around with us."

Tall, Dark, Scarred, and Handsome gave him a thoughtful look. "So... you can, um, destroy theworld, issat right? Cute trick."

Colin grinned like an idiot. "Yeah, but we can only do it once."

He said, "Listen, kids. You know what my job here is?"

Vanity looked at his huge harpoon. She said gaily, "Let me guess. You seek the White Whale?"