It was only natural that he edged away from me, I suppose. I was grimy from working under the gas tank. This plus the discreditable ability I had shown in starting the stalled car reminded him that he was, after all, a Herr Doktor from a red university while I was, after all, a publisher’s employee with nebulous qualifications from some place called Cornell. The atmosphere was wrong for it, but sooner or later he had to be told.
“Professor, we’ve got to have a talk and get something straight before we find Miss Phoebe.”
He looked at the huge striped sign the city fathers of Scranton wisely erected to mark that awful downgrade into the city. WARNING! SEVEN-MILE DEATH TRAP AHEAD SHIFT INTO OWER GEAR. $50 FINE. OBEY OR PAY!
“What is there to get straight?” he demanded. “She has partially mastered Functional Epistemology—even though Hopedale Press prefers to call it ‘Living on the Cosmic Expense Account.’ This has unleashed certain latent powers of hers. It is simply our task to complete her mastery of the ethical aspect of F.E. She will cease to dominate other minds as soon as she comprehends that her behavior is dys-functional and in contravention of the Principle of Permissive Evolution.” To him the matter was settled. He mused: “Really I should not have let you cut so drastically my exposition of Dyadic Imbalance; that must be the root of her difficulty. A brief inductive explanation—”
“Professor,” I said. “I thought I told you in the train that you’re a fake.”
He corrected me loftily. “You told me that you think I’m a fake, Mr. Morris. Naturally I was angered by your duplicity, but your opinion of me proves nothing. I ask you to look around you. Is this fakery?”
We were well into the city. Bewildered dogs yelped at our car. Windows were broken and goods were scattered on the sidewalks; here and there a house was burning brightly. Smashed and overturned cars dotted the streets, and zombies walked slowly around them. When Miss Phoebe hit a city the effects were something like a thousand-bomber raid.
“It’s not fakery,” I said, steeririg around a smiling man in a straw hat and overalls. “It isn’t Functional Epistemology either. It’s faith in Functional Epistemology. It could have been faith in anything, but your book just happened to be what she settled on.”
“Are you daring,” he demanded, white to the lips, “to compare me with the faith healers?”
“Yes,” I said wearily. “They get their cures. So do lots of people. Let’s roll it up in a ball, professor. I think the best thing to do when we meet Miss Phoebe is for you to tell her you’re a fake. Destroy her faith in you and your system and I think she’ll turn back into a normal old lady again. Wait a minute! Don’t tell me you’re not a fake. I can prove you are. You say she’s partly mastered F.E. and gets her powers from that partial mastery. Well, presumably you’ve completely mastered F.E., since you invented it. So why can’t you do everything she’s done, and lots more? Why can’t you end this mess by levitating to La Plume, instead of taking the Lackawanna and a 1941 Ford? And, by God, why couldn’t you fix the Ford with a pass of the hands and F.E. instead of standing by while I worked?”
His voice was genuinely puzzled. “I thought I just explained, Norris. Though it never occurred to me before, I suppose I could do what you say, but I wouldn’t dream of it. As I said, it would be dys-functional and in complete contravention of The Principle or Permissive—”
I said something very rude and added: “In short, you can but you won’t.”
“Naturally not! The Principle of Permissive—” He looked at me with slow awareness dawning in his eyes. “Morris! My editor. My proofreader. My by-the-pub-lisher-officially-assigned fidus Achates. Norris, haven’t you read my book?”
“No,” I said shortly. “I’ve been much too busy. You didn’t get on the cover of Time magazine by blind chance, you know.”
He was laughing helplessly. “How goes that song,” he finally asked me, his eyes damp, “ ‘God Bless America’ ?”
I stopped the car abruptly. “I think I feel something,” I said. “Professor, I like you.”
“I like you too, Norris,” he told me. “Norris, my boy, what do you think of ladies?”
“Delicate creatures. Custodians of culture. Professor, what about meat-eating?”
“Shocking barbarous survival. This is it, Norris!”
We yanked open the doors and leaped out. We stood on one foot each, thumbed our noses and stuck out our tongues.
Allowing for the time on the tram, this was the l,962d time I had done it in the past two months. One thousand, nine hundred and sixty-one times the professor had arranged for spiders to pop out at me from books, from the television screen, from under steaks, from desk drawers, from my pockets, from his. Black widows, tarantulas, harmless (hah!) big house spiders, real and imitation. One thousand, nine hundred and sixty-one times I had felt the arachnophobe’s horrified revulsion; Each time I felt I had thrown major voluntary muscular systems into play by drawing up one leg violently, violently swinging my hand to my nose, violently grimacing to stick out my tongue.
My body had learned at last. There was no spider this time; there was only Miss Phoebe: a vague, pleasant feeling something like the first martini. But my posture of defense this l,962d time was accompanied by the old rejection and horror. It had no spider, so it turned on Miss Phoebe. The vague first-martini feeling vanished like morning mist burned away by the sun.
I relaxed cautiously. On the other side of the car so did Professor Leuten. “Professor,” I said, “I don’t like you any more.”
“Thank you,” he said coldly. “Nor do I like you.”
“I guess we’re back to normal,” I said. “Climb in.” He climbed in and we started off. I grudgingly said: “Congratulations.”
“Because it worked? Don’t be ridiculous. It was to be expected that a plan of campaign derived from the principles of Functional Epistemology would be successful. All that was required was that you be at least as smart as one of Professor Pavlov’s dogs, and I admit I considered that hypothesis the weak link in my chain of reasoning . . .”
We stopped for a meal from the canned stuff in the back of the car about one o’clock and then chugged steadily north through the ruined countryside. The little towns were wrecked and abandoned. Presumably refugees from the expanding Plague Area did the first damage by looting; the subsequent destruction just—happened. It showed you what would just happen to any twentieth-century town or city in the course of a few weeks if the people who wage endless war against breakdown and dilapidation put aside their arms. It was anybody’s guess whether fire or water had done more damage.
Between the towns the animals were incredibly bold. There was a veritable army of rabbits eating their way across a field of clover. A farmer-zombie flapped a patchwork quilt at them, saying affectionately: “Shoo, little bunnies! Go away, now! I mean it!”
But they knew he didn’t, and continued to chew their way across his field.
I stopped the car and called to the farmer. He came right away, smiling. “The little dickenses!” he said, waving at the rabbits. “But I haven’t the heart to really scare them.”
“Are you happy?” I asked him.
“Oh, yes!” His eyes were sunken and bright; his cheekbones showed on his starved face. “People should be considerate,” he said. “I always say that being considerate is what matters most.”
“Don’t you miss electricity and cars and tractors?”
“Goodness, no. I always say that things were better in the old days. Life was more gracious, I always say. Why, I don’t miss gasoline or electricity one little bit. Everybody’s so considerate and gracious that it makes up for everything.”
“I wonder if you’d be so considerate and gracious as to lie down in the road so we can drive over you?”
He looked mildly surprised and started to get down, saying: “Well, if it would afford you gentlemen any pleasure—”
“No; don’t bother after all. You can get back to your rabbits.”
He touched h
is straw hat and went away, beaming. We drove on. I said to the professor: “Chapter Nine: ‘How to be in Utter Harmony With Your Environment.’ Only she didn’t change herself, Professor Leuten; she changed the environment. Every man and woman hi the Area is what Miss Phoebe thinks they ought to be: silly, sentimental, obliging and gracious to the point of idiocy. Nostalgic and all thumbs when it comes to this dreadful machinery.”
“Norris,” the professor said thoughtfully, “we’ve been associated for some tune. I think you might drop the ‘professor’ and call me ‘Leuten.’ In a way we’re friends—”
I jammed on the worn, mushy brakes. “Out!” I yelled, and we piled out. The silly glow was enveloping me fast. Again, thumb to nose and tongue out, I burned it away. When I looked at the professor and was quite sure he was a stubborn old fossil I knew I was all right again. When he glared at me and snapped: “Naturally I withdraw my last remark, Norris, and no chentleman would hold me to it,” I knew he was normal. We got in and kept going north.
The devastation became noticeably worse after we passed a gutted, stinking shambles that had once been the town of Meshoppen, Pa. After Meshoppen there were more bodies on the road and the flies became a horror. No pyrethrum from Kenya. No DDT from Wilmington. We drove in the afternoon heat with the windows cranked up and the hood ventilator closed. It was at about Meshoppen’s radius from La Plume that things had stabilized for a while and the Army Engineers actually began to throw up barbed wire. Who knew what happened then? Perhaps Miss Phoebe recovered from a slight cold, or perhaps she told herself firmly that her faith in Professor Leuten’s wonderful book was weakening; that she must take hold of herself and really work hard at being in utter harmony with her environment. The next morning—no Army Engineers. Zombies in uniform were glimpsed wandering about and smiling. The next morning the radius of the Plague Aea was growing at the old mile a day.
I wanted distraction from the sweat that streamed down my face. “Professor,” I said, “do you remember the last word in Miss Phoebe’s letter? It was ‘forever.’ Do you suppose . . .?”
“Immortality? Yes; I think that is well within the range of misapplied F.E. Of course complete mastery of F.E. ensures that no such selfish power would be invoked. The beauty of F.E. is its conservatism, in the kinetic sense. It is self-regulating. A world in which universal mastery of F.E. has been achieved—and I now perceive that the publication of my views by the Hopedale Press was if anything a step away from that ideal—would be in no outward wise different from the present world.”
“Built-in escape clause,” I snapped. “Like yoga. You ask ’em to prove they’ve achieved self-mastery, just a little demonstration like levitating or turning transparent but they’re all ready for you. They tell you they’ve achieved so much self-mastery they’ve mastered the desire to levitate or turn transparent. I almost wish I’d read your book, professor, instead of just editing it. Maybe you’re smarter than I thought.”
He turned brick-red and gritted out: “Your insults merely bore me, Norris.”
The highway took a turn and we turned with it. I braked again and rubbed my eyes. “Do you see them?” I asked the professor.
“Yes,” he said matter-of-factly. “This must be the retinue of the Duchess of Carbondale.”
They were a dozen men shoulder to shoulder barricading the road. They were armed with miscellaneous sporting rifles and one bazooka. They wore kilt-like garments and what seemed to be bracelets from a five-and-ten. When we stopped they opened up the center of the line and the Duchess of Carbondale drove through in her chariot—only the chariot was a harness-racing sulky and she didn’t drive it; the horse was led by a skinny teen-age girl got up as Charmian for a high-school production of Antony and Cleopatra. The Duchess herself wore ample white robes, a tiara and junk jewelry. She looked like your unfavorite aunt, the fat one, or a grade-school teacher you remember with loathing when you’re forty, or one of those women who ring your doorbell and try to bully you into signing petitions against fluoridation or atheism in the public schools.
The bazooka man had his stovepipe trained on our hood. His finger was on the button and he was waiting for the Duchess to nod. “Get out,” I told the professor, grabbing my briefcase. He looked at the bazooka and we got out.
“Hail, O mortals,” said the Duchess.
I looked helplessly at the professor. Not even my extensive experience with lady novelists had equipped me to deal with the situation. He, however, was able to take the ball. He was a European and he had status and that’s the starting point for them: establish status and then conduct yourself accordingly. He said: “Madame, my name is Konrad Leuten. I am a doctor of philosophy of the University of Gottingen and a member of the faculty of the University of Basle. Whom have I the honor to address?”
Her eyes narrowed appraisingly. “O mortal,” she said, and her voice was less windily dramatic, “know ye that here in the New Lemuria worldly titles are as naught. And know ye not that the pure hearts of my subjects may not be sullied by base machinery?”
“I didn’t know, madame,” Leuten said politely. “I apologize. We intended, however, to go only as far as La Plume. May we have your permission to do so?”
At the mention of La Plume she went poker-faced. After a moment she waved at the bazooka man. “Destroy, O Phraxanartes, the base machine of the strangers,” she said. Phraxanartes touched the button of his stovepipe. Leuten and I jumped for the ditch, my hand welded to the briefcase-handle, when the rocket whooshed into the poor old Ford’s motor. We huddled there while the gas tank boomed and cans and bottles exploded. The noise subsided to a crackling roar and the whizzing fragments stopped coming our way after maybe a minute. I put my head up first. The Duchess and her retinue were gone, presumably melted into the roadside stand of trees.
Her windy contralto blasted out: “Arise, O strangers, and join us.”
Leuten said from the ditch: “A perfectly reasonable request, Norris. Let us do so. After all, one must be obliging.”
“And gracious,” I added.
Good old Duchess! I thought. Good old Leuten! Wonderful old world, with hills and trees and bunnies and kitties and considerate people . . .
Leuten was standing on one foot, thumbing his nose, sticking out his tongue, screaming: “Norris! Norris! Defend yourself!” He was slapping my face with his free hand. Sluggishly I went into the posture of defense, thinking: Such nonsense. Defense against what? But I wouldn’t hurt old Leuten’s feelings for the world—
Adrenalin boiled through my veins, triggered by the posture. Spiders. Crawling hairy, horrid spiders with purple, venom-dripping fangs. They hid in your shoes and bit you and your feet swelled with the poison. Their sticky, loathsome webs brushed across your face when you walked in the dark and they came scuttling silently, champing their jaws, winking their evil gem-like eyes. Spiders!
The voice of the duchess blared impatiently: “I said, join us, O strangers. Well, what are you waiting for?”
The professor and I relaxed and looked at each other. “She’s mad,” the professor said softly. “From an asylum.”
“I doubt it. You don’t know America very well. Maybe you lock them up when they get like that in Europe; over here we elect them chairlady of the Library Fund Drive. If we don’t, we never hear the end of it.”
The costumed girl was leading the Duchess’s sulky onto the road again. Some of her retinue were beginning to follow; she waved them back and dismissed the girl curtly. We skirted the heat of the burning car and approached her. It was that or try to outrun a volley from the miscellaneous sporting rifles.
“O strangers,” she said, “you mentioned La Plume. Do you happen to be acquainted with my dear friend Phoebe Bancroft?”
The professor nodded before I could stop him. But almost simultaneously with his nod I was dragging the Duchess from her improvised chariot. It was very unpleasant, but I put my hands around her throat and knelt on her. It meant letting go of the briefcase but it was worth it.
She guggled and floundered and managed to whoop: “Don’t shoot! I take it back, don’t shoot them. Pamphilius, don’t shoot, you might hit me!”
“Send ’em away,” I told her.
“Never!” she blared. “They are my loyal retainers.”
“You try, professor,” I said.
I believe what he put on then was his classroom manner. He stiffened and swelled and rasped towards the shrubbery: “Come out at once. All of you.”
They came out, shambling and puzzled. They realized that something was very wrong. There was the Duchess on the ground and she wasn’t telling them what to do the way she’d been telling them for weeks now. They wanted to oblige her in any little way they could, like shooting strangers, or scrounging canned food for her, but how could they oblige her while she lay there slowly turning purple? It was very confusing. Luckily there was somebody else to oblige, the professor.
“Go away,” he barked at them. “Go far away. We do not need you any more. And throw away your guns.”
Well, that was something a body could understand. They smiled and threw away their guns and went away in their obliging and considerate fashion.
I eased up on the Duchess’s throat. “What was that guff about the New Lemuria?” I asked her.
“You’re a rude and ignorant young man,” she snapped. From the corner of my eye I could see the professor involuntarily nodding agreement. “Every educated person knows that the lost wisdom of Lemuria was to be revived in the person of a beautiful priestess this year. According to the science of pyramidology—”
Beautiful priestess? Oh.
The professor and I stood by while she spouted an amazing compost of lost-continentism, the Ten Tribes, anti-fluoridation, vegetarianism, homeopathic medicine, organic farming, astrology, flying saucers, and the prose-poems of Khalil Gibran.
The professor said dubiously at last: “I suppose one must call her a sort of Cultural Diffusionist . . .” He was happier when he had her classified. He went on: “I think you know Miss Phoebe Bancroft. We wish you to present us to her as soon as possible.”
Collected Short Fiction Page 232