Rushdie, Salmon - Th.. - hudson's home on the web

Lucifer, the morning's star.
His breath, it should be mentioned, had somehow or other wholly ceased to smell . . .
"Come on, baby," cried invincible Gibreel, in whose behaviour the reader may, not unreasonably,
perceive the delirious, dislocating effects of his recent fall. "Rise "n" shine! Let's take this place by storm."
Turning his back on the sea, blotting out the bad memory in order to make room for the next things,
passionate as always for newness, he would have planted (had he owned one) a flag, to claim in the name
of whoknowswho this white country, his new-found land. "Spoono," he pleaded, "shift, baba, or are you
bloody dead?" Which being uttered brought the speaker to (or at least towards) his senses. He bent over
the other's prostrate form, did not dare to touch. "Not now, old Chumch," he urged. "Not when we came so
far."
Saladin: was not dead, but weeping. <strong>Th</strong>e tears of shock freezing on his face. And all his body cased in a
fine skin of ice, smooth as glass, like a bad dream come true. In the miasmic semi--consciousness induced
by his low body temperature he was possessed by the nightmare-fear of cracking, of seeing his blood
bubbling up from the ice-breaks, of his flesh coming away with the shards. He was full of questions, did we
truly, I mean, with your hands flapping, and then the waters, you don't mean to tell me they _actually_,
like in the movies, when Charlton Heston stretched out his staff, so that we could, across the ocean--floor,
it never happened, couldn't have, but if not then how, or did we in some way underwater, escorted by the
mermaids, the sea passing through us as if we were fish or ghosts, was that the truth, yes or no, I need to
have to.. . but when his eyes opened the questions acquired the indistinctness of dreams, so that he could
no longer grasp them, their tails flicked before him and vanished like submarine fins. He was looking up at
the sky, and noticed that it was the wrong colour entirely, blood-orange flecked with green, and the snow
was blue as ink. He blinked hard but the colours refused to change, giving rise to the notion that he had
fallen out of the sky into some wrongness, some other place, not England or perhaps not-England, some
counterfeit zone, rotten borough, altered state. Maybe, he considered briefly: Hell? No, no, he reassured
himself as unconsciousness threatened, that can't be it, not yet, you aren't dead yet; but dying.
Well then: a transit lounge.
He began to shiver; the vibration grew so intense that it occurred to him that he might break up under
the stress, like a, like a, plane.
<strong>Th</strong>en nothing existed. He was in a void, and if he were to survive he would have to construct everything
from scratch, would have to invent the ground beneath his feet before he could take a step, only there was
no need now to worry about such matters, because here in front of him was the inevitable: the tall, bony
figure of Death, in a wide-brimmed straw hat, with a dark cloak flapping in the breeze. Death, leaning on a
silverheaded cane, wearing olive-green Wellington boots.
"What do you imagine yourselves to be doing here?" Death wanted to know. "<strong>Th</strong>is is private property.
<strong>Th</strong>ere's a sign." Said in a woman's voice that was somewhat tremulous and more than somewhat thrilled.
A few moments later, Death bent over him -- _to kiss me_, he panicked silently. _To suck the breath
from my body_. He made small, futile movements of protest.
"He's alive all right," Death remarked to, who was it, Gibreel. "But, my dear. His breath: what a pong.
When did he last clean his teeth?"
o o o
One man's breath was sweetened, while another's, by an equal and opposite mystery, was soured.
What did they expect? Falling like that out of the sky: did they imagine there would be no sideeffects?
Higher Powers had taken an interest, it should have been obvious to them both, and such Powers (I am, of
course, speaking of myself) have a mischievous, almost a wanton attitude to tumbling flies. And another
thing, let's be clear: great falls change people. You think _they_ fell a long way? In the matter of tumbles, I
yield pride of place to no personage, whether mortal or im--. From clouds to ashes, down the chimney you
might say, from heavenlight to hellfire. . . under the stress of a long plunge, I was saying, mutations are to
be expected, not all of them random. Unnatural selections. Not much of a price to pay for survival, for
being reborn, for becoming new, and at their age at that.
What? I should enumerate the changes?
Good breath/bad breath.
And around the edges of Gibreel Farishta's head, as he stood with his back to the dawn, it seemed to
Rosa Diamond that she discerned a faint, but distinctly golden, _glow_.
And were those bumps, at Chamcha's temples, under his sodden and still-in-place bowler hat?