There is a reason for bars being dark.

This was the first vague thought that came to the Grand Conduit Dwayne as he awoke. The younger half of the Grand Conduits was lying on warm sand, face up. A small but hellishly bright sun was rising over him. Each ray stuck in his eyes like a needle. In a few minutes, a second sun appeared on the horizon, a larger one. And it joined the first in tormenting Dwayne.

There is a reason for bars being dark, Dwayne philosophized in a mumble, trying to roll over and burrow his face into the sand. Sunlight and liquor just do not mix.

“What’s happening to me?” Dwayne mumbled then, his thoughts becoming less abstract and more personal as he regained consciousness.
A striking, brightly colored image of his brother’s face appeared above him, momentarily obscuring the faces of the two suns — the hot white balls of the suns became the cool-blue eyes of the Grand Conduit Brad.

“Sorry, kid,” Brad said. “But you’ve been … removed … from our enterprise. I’ve told you, time and again, that your drinking was bad for the business. But you can’t stop, can you? And now, I’ve had to do something about it. You’re disenfranchised, brother. I’ve dealt you out. But — on the up side — you can drink all you want now. And to show that there’s no hard feelings, that this is all just good business, I’ve left you a bon voyage present in the sand.”

“Brad … What? But you can’t …” Dwayne protested groggily.

“Sorry, but I can, and I did. Have to go now kid. Busy man. And Dwayne — There can be no more contact between us.”
“Brad, come on …! What are you doing?”

But now, all Dwayne could see were the two hot suns.

“This is really unbelievable,” Dwayne asserted, wondering where he was. The problem was, it really wasn’t unbelievable. A dirty maneuver like this was just like Brad. And he wouldn’t feel the slightest guilt over it either, Dwayne knew. Nor was it likely that he would reconsider.
Dwayne stood up, swaying, a big, muscular man in a white undershirt and shorts. He looked around with squinting eyes. Nothing but pinkish dunes in all directions.

His head was pounding.

He found Brad’s gift — a case of liquor was lying unopened in the sand. The lettering on the sides of the case proclaimed its identity: LITTLE BROTHER VODKA. There were several layers of irony to the gift. One of them was that the ‘Little Brother’ referred to was in fact Dwayne himself. Before going into religion — what was it, two, three, centuries ago? — the brothers had run a successful liquor business. This vodka, one of their most popular products, had been named in honor of Dwayne.

Cruel irony or not, Dwayne was in the habit of starting his mornings with a quick drink. He knelt down on the hot sand and opened the case of Little Brother. He took a swig and fought to keep it down; the first swig of the morning was always a bit rough. “Hair of the dog,” he breathed, and the next swig was not so troublesome. Then Dwayne stood and picked up the case, tucking it under a big arm. He started off in one direction or another over the dunes.

Two suns, desert atmosphere, no visible life forms … he could be just about anywhere. But wherever this was, it had to be the worst smelling planet Dwayne had ever set foot on. God, what an odor. Maybe something had died on the dunes, something big, and he was downwind of it. But no, there was no wind, and the stink had a constancy to it that did not suggest a distant source. Was it the air itself? Poison atmosphere? Dwayne rubbed perspiration off his forehead with the side of his arm. Then he frowned, sniffing the arm. Then he sniffed the other arm.

The horrible stink was him. It was not the dunes, not the atmosphere, not a dead desert animal. It was him that was reeking.


Dwayne thought immediately of a time when Brad had Church operatives derail the career of a politician that stood in the way of the Church. The operatives had sprayed the man (running at the time for an easy reelection) with a chemical compound that, once applied to skin, could not be removed. And this compound had the smell of a skunk army, it was lethal, room-clearing stuff. And the politician had sunk into a bad smelling obscurity after that.

Brad had given Dwayne with the same treatment. It made sense … He figured Dwayne could retaliate, try to rally some support after this treachery, since the public loved Dwayne as much as they loved Brad. But who would even believe he was Dwayne, if he stank so bad no one could get near him? Brad had never romanticized the love of the Galaxies for the two Grand Conduits. “Kid, if we weren’t so pretty and if we didn’t smell so good, they’d be on to the next circus.”

Dwayne wasn’t smelling so good.