Free Exceptions to Reality by Alan Dean Foster Page B

curious fellow dealers away from the
Mary Anne
. And if it was not, Larson mused, why, his son could always put in a call for help to an escort service the likes of which was not to be found in the Providence Yellow Pages.
    High overhead, the aurora borealis suddenly flashed to life, filling the night sky above the steadily chugging fishing boat with shimmering luminescence.
    “You know what they say causes the light of the aurora, David?” Larson had an arm around his son’s tired shoulders. “It’s the flickering of light off the shields of the Valkyries.”
    The younger Larson nodded. “From designer-branded armor I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

The Killing of Bad Bull
    I have been fortunate enough to have journeyed far and wide over this isolated little ball of dirt and water we call home. My travels have provided me with inspirations for entire books. East Africa for
Into the Out Of;
Peru, Papua New Guinea, and Australia for
Interlopers;
the South Pacific islands for
The Howling Stones;
and most recently India for
Sagramanda.
    I’ve also used memories of people I have met as the basis for characters. I have transposed and transmogrified places I’ve visited into alien worlds. Mamirauá in Brazil for
Drowning World,
Namibia for
Carnivores of Light and Darkness,
Peru again for
Catalyst.
    But sometimes—sometimes you don’t have to travel very far in search of inspiration. There are days when you find it waiting for you right around the corner. That’s the case with Bucky’s Casino on the Yavapai-Apache Indian reservation, which is engulfed by the city limits of my hometown of Prescott, Arizona. It’s much like the Nevada gambling meccas of Laughlin and Las Vegas, towns that are close enough to be neighbors. Loud and flashy neighbors, ever calling, ever enticing.
    These modern-day temples of temptation are powerful enough to lure visitors from all over the globe. Are they strong enough to attract mutant powers? In such places would strange abilities be used for good or for evil? Or would they just be—used?

    The saddest thing about it was that it was his own people who were trying to kill him. The rest of humanity didn’t give a damn. Of course, the rest of humanity did not know about him. Which was the reason his own people were trying to kill him.
    A quick stroll around the casino revealed nothing out of the ordinary. Here in the great tropical metropolis of Salvador, on the north coast of Brazil, the men and women sitting like sphinxes in front of the slot machines and laughing as dice ricocheted around the craps table were nearly all locals, with only a smattering of foreigners. Being Pima-Cheyenne made it easier for him to pick out strangers, since the local Indians were considerably smaller of stature than their more robust North American cousins. This was important, since strangers might be looking for more than just entertainment or the chance to make a quick dollar.
    They might be looking for him.
    They had chased him clear across the United States, from Vegas, to the riverboat casinos of the Mississippi, to the enclosed gambling palaces that ringed the Great Lakes, and finally to Atlantic City. Then through Europe, where he had barely managed to give them the proverbial slip. Upon reaching South America, he had begun his run in Rio before moving on to São Paulo, and now found himself here. For the well-traveled Bull Threerivers, Salvador was a comparative backwater, big city or no.
    He took only one carry-on bag with him. It contained a few items of personal interest, one change of plain clothing, one of exceedingly expensive custom-tailored attire, and little else besides his passport and a dozen bankbooks held together with rubber bands. The bankbooks tallied accounts listed under half a dozen aliases in Switzerland, the Caymans, and the Cook Islands. Cumulative numbers in those books reached seven figures. When they reached eight, Threerivers would stop. That was the goal he had set for