“Christ damn you!”
“I see it does. Fascinating, isn’t it? Now that we can connect with our quasi-human computers—I swear my workshop tank is more alive than I am—we can have love affairs with them. We can even have togetherness by radio, telephone and telegraph. Does your trick go down on you by shortwave when you’re on Triton?”
“I swear you’ll be forever dying.”
“Will I aunty? Thank you for cluing me in to your torture.” Abruptly, Winter turned into cold iron. “Last time around the track, Manchu. Is it a Meta deal?”
“Never.”
“Do I get my girl’s location?”
“Never.”
“How long did the Zulus roast you?”
“A week.”
“And you didn’t break?”
“Never.”
“I’ll break you in a week, Manchu, and I’ll do it no-hands.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ballade de Pendu
In which the humiliation of a formidable adversary leads to a search of two lovers for each other through the grapevine of the secret gossip and tittle-tattle of the Worshipful Company of Computers.
—The author
This dirty, rotten ringmaster (HISS!) armed with a red-hot whip (BOO!) was torturing the sweet, harmless animals (OOP! AH!) into leaping through flaming hoops, juggling burning bricks, and riding electrical velocipedes which shocked them with lightning bolts. (BOO! HISS! GRRR!) Then a determined ape rebelled. (CHEERS!) The other animals joined him. (“Creatures of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!”) (HOORAY!) The vicious ringmaster was overpowered, (LAUGHTER! JEERS!) and forced to perform the same humiliating antics with his own whip. (APPLAUSE! ECSTASIES!)
After the curtain fell, the stagehands rearranged the sets, props, and life-size animal marionettes for the next performance. Only the ringmaster puppet was walked off the stage on its wires into a dressing room in the wings where Nigelle Englund, the albino vet. and zoo director, and Rogue Winter were waiting.
While Nigelle detached the wires and removed the acupuncture needles from hypnogenic control spots in the puppet’s body, Winter said, “Nice show this morning, Tom. Better than last night. Much better. You’re really getting into the part. I clocked forty laughs and ten boffs.”
Ta-mo Yung-kung, Number-One Jink Mandarin and Manchu Duke of Life and Death, snarled helplessly.
“You’re great in the role, Tom. The kids love to hate you. Nig says you’re the best attraction the zoo’s had in years.”
“If… I… Could… Only…”
“Now, now! No actor’s temperament, Tom. No fooling around with your part. You’re acupunctured for a taped performance and you’ll have to stick with the script. The show’s the boss.”
“We can’t keep this up forever, Rogue,” Nigelle said. “Even with rest periods between shows, he’s bound to run out of vital juices and turn into a vegetable.”
“All I need is a week to smash his amour propre, Nig. No faggot’s vanity can hold out longer than that.”
and
starring
RINGMASTER, THE FIEND IN SNARLING SHAPE
“Tom, you were really brilliant tonight. When Gorilla, the Good shoved that hot brick up your ass, your pain-take brought the house down.”
Ta-mo Yung-kung, Number-One Jink Mandarin and Manchu Duke of Life and Death, glared helplessly.
“Yeah, I know, they’re rewriting the script. But you have to understand, Tom. Great scripts aren’t written, they’re rewritten. That’s show business.”
and
starring
RINGMASTER, THE FIEND IN GNASHING SHAPE
“I don’t know whether that sight-bit of Seal, the Sport flipping sardines into your mouth after you jump through the hoops really works, Tom. And I’m definitely against the Ecdysiast dumping excrement on you like that. Bad taste. Very bad. It should go, even if the kids love it.
“But not to worry, baby. Nig Englund’s scheduled a script conference for tomorrow and we’ll work something out. May even call in a couple of gag writers from the Coast. Got any suggestions? People you’d like to work with?”
Ta-mo Yung-kung, Mandarin and Manchu Duke, groaned helplessly.
and
starring
RINGMASTER, THE FIEND IN WHINING SHAPE
“Hot news, Tom! Headlines! You’ve become a cult figure. The kids are starting Ringy-Ding clubs all over the Solar. They wear your photo—the great shot of Gorilla, the Good shoving the brick up your ass—and they carry red whips. They call their bluejeans ‘bluefiends.’ Best of all, a lot of grown-ups are recognizing your picture and are coming here to find out why the famous exobiologist is making a clown of himself. Your Jink chums are coming, too. Triton can’t believe that their Celestial mandarin is playing the meshugena zhlob in a zoo show, and they’ve got to see for themselves. You’re a star, baby. We’ll have to program you for signing autographs.”
Ta-mo Yung-kung, Mandarin and Duke, sobbed helplessly.
and
starring
RINGMASTER, THE FIEND IN SHOWBIZ SHAPE
“And now, ladies and gentlemen, persons, people and hybrids HA-HA everywhere, alive and kicking HA-HA from the New York zoo to every nook and granny GET IT? of the Solar, SBC-TV brings you the latest, the greatest, the cutest, the brutest clown in variety history in the preem of his brand-new, grand new, vulgar, venomous, vengeful hate-filled variety miniseries, starring the man you love to hate—THE RINGMASTER in—THE RINGY-DING DUNG SHOW!”
“Five minutes, Mr. Young. Onstage, please.”
“Gig, Tom baby. We’ve got you wired and programmed to wow them. You’re going to make yourself and Triton so famous you’ll become catchwords. And I can say I knew you when you were nothing but a Duke of Death. So… Let’s go. Good luck. Merde. Break a leg…”
“Com… Pute… Err…” the Manchu croaked.
“What, baby?”
“Com… Pute… Err… Know…”
“A computer knows?”
“Y…”
“A computer knows what? Hurry up, Tom. You’re on in three minutes.”
“Wheh… Yuh… Girl…”
“Where my girl? Where my girl is? A computer knows where my Titanian is holed up? Where your soldiers can’t get at her?”
“Y…”
“What computer? Where?”
“…”
“Come on, Tom. Don’t play games with me. There are millions of tanks in the Solar. What particular computer knows where my Demi is?”
“…”
“Come on, damn you! You’re broke. Don’t try to weasel. Deliver. What computer and where?”
“…”
“It’s no use, Rogue,” Nigelle said. “He can’t. He’s completely drained… pure puppet now. God knows how long it’ll take him to recover his conscious self.”
“Yeh. Might as well wire him up for his show. I’ve got to compliment the sonofabitch; he held out for six days. I also have to compliment myself; I broke him no-hands… but I’m left nowhere, owing to a surfeit of hay.”
“What?”
“Needle in the haystack, Nig. First find that goddam computer, which could be any tank anywhere, and if it’ll tell me the truth.”
“Computers can’t lie.”
“They’re half-alive, aren’t they? Name any living thing that doesn’t lie, one way or another.”
“If so programmed.”
“And who’s to say this Manchu turkey hasn’t so programmed the tank that knows where Demi’s stashed herself? You know, tell the truth only and if the password code is keyed in to you.”
“It is tricky.”
“And so is finding her even if a tank can tell me where to look.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Common sense, Nig. If our Duke of Death could tell his soldiers where to find her, and they still couldn’t grab her, she must be absolutely inaccessible. Oi veh, meyd’l! Tsibeles is growing in my estomac!”
But in this silly drama of mine they happen to approach the same corner from opposite sides of a crossroad and are, against all odds, bound to meet. Only at that moment a giant theater billboard is lowered to the sidewalk at the corner so that the electric bulbs can be changed. Rogue passes around the outside of the sign and Demi slips past on the inside, and they never meet. The billboard is advertising, FATE—NOW PLAYING AT THE BIJOU.
And yet this little farce is inspired by the reality which both later confided in me; they were searching for each other through the grapevine of the Honorable Company of Computers which is far more labyrinthine than the streets of a city.
In a most unexpected way computer technology has reversed prosthesis, which is the addition of an artificial part to replace a defect in the body. The engineers discovered that the addition of organic parts to a computer enlarged it from a mere lightning adding machine into a quasi-living entity. But a side effect no one could have anticipated was the transformation of the tanks into a grapevine of crosstalk.
Demi Jeroux was working inside the grapevine in her search for Winter. See how their semilife peeps through the computer gibberish:
900
REM***SEARCH GENERATOR***
1000
CLS
1010
INPUT “COMPUTERS (C)”; A$
1020
INPUT “ANALOG & DIGITAL (A,D)”; #
1030
CLS: IF A$ = “A” OR A$ = “D” THEN # = INFORM
1040
IF # = “A” INFORM
1050
IF # = “D” INFORM
1060
PRINT APB LOCATION ROG
NO SIGNIFIES ‘NUMBER’
0 SIGNIFIES ZERO’
0 IS A NUMBER
NO = R-OG UINTA
NO = ROGUE WINTER
O = NO R-OG UINTA
O = NO ROGUE WINTER
1070
THANKS LOADS A HEAP & YOU ARE N = NERD
!!
REM***MAIN PROGRAM—ROG CAPTURE***
10
GOSUB 1000 ROGUE WINTER
20
GOSUB 2000 R-OG UINTA
30
ROG = “RANDOM = R”
40
ROG “APB = R”
50
GOSUB TERRA “T”; GOSUB GANYMEDE “G”
60
IF ROG = “T” THEN APB “T”
70
GOSUB APB ROG TGTT JUST IN CASE
80
IF NO = 0 & 0 = NO ROGUE WINTER THEN WHERE?
LOOKING FOR YOU STUPID
AND YOU CAN STICK 1070
On the other hand, Winter was working outside the party line, trying to tap it for clues to Demi’s hideout, and not at all aware that it was a grapevine which kept its own secrets. He cross-examined scores of computer tanks, speaking compiler, assembly, and machine languages, and here are examples of some of the answers he received:
0010110111000101100101011000111
and
‘__‘‘__‘____‘‘__‘‘‘_‘____‘‘‘__’
and
:.:::.:.:.:..:::..:…::.:..:::.:
That last reply translates as, “A random variable on a sample space with its admissible system of events and probabilities measure is a function with the property that for every real number there is an event in the admissible system of events.”
“Thanks loads a heap,” he growled.
“A field is a commutative division ring,” the tank added helpfully.
Perhaps most exasperating was the fact that he, a professional mavin of languages, had been forced to go through a primer to accustom him to the niggling linguistics which all tanks demand. It was a sort of White Knight’s dialogue with Alice in “Through the Looking-Glass.”
The name of your search is called “Needle in the Haystack.”
Right. That’s my search.
Wrong. That’s what the name is called. The name really is “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
Right. That’s what my search is called.
Wrong. Your search is called “Quiz the Computers,” but that’s only what it’s called.
Then what the hell is my search for my girl?
Ah, now we’re getting there. Your search really is “APB Demi Jeroux.” Now pay attention. Computers demand four linguistic identities; the call-name of the name of the search, the name of the search, the call-name of the search, and the search. Got that?
C’est la mer à boire.
What?
It’s going to be impossible. Like swallowing an ocean.
Now that you know all about my inaccessible hideout, Odessa, you can understand how I knew everything Rogue said and did when he returned to his Beaux Arts apartment, angry and exhausted.
I was eavesdropping, true, but a girl in love has got her rights. Who said, “All’s fair in love and war”? Some poet named Francis, I think. Not Francis Scott Key, Francis Smedley who ran the “Stars and Bars Soda Solarium (No Singles)” just outside the Marymount dormitories.
Rogue’d repossessed my psycat (whose name was “Coco”) from Nig Englund and was pouring out his frustrations to her. Coco, of course, was clinging to his neck, making churrs of contentment. I admit that I was a bit envious because I wanted to do the same thing myself, but Rogue had to be carefully prepared for the surprise; the Maori macho pride, especially that of a double-kill king, can quick-fire.
Anyway, he was complaining, “Damn it, madame, I tried the Triton tank in their embassy. Now that I’ve got their prize mandarin, they couldn’t have been more cooperative. Then the Solar Media number. Missing persons. Her apartment house. Anywhere she had a charge account. Then Alitalia, United, TransSolar, Jet France, PanSol. Long distance to Virginia. Odessa Partridge and her Intelligence apparat. Tom Young’s exobiology trick. I tried Elektronenrechners, Ordinateurs, Calcolatores, Comhairims, and even the old, original Golem-One computer in Jerusalem. Nothing nowhere. Null. Nada. Nulla. I’m licked!”
He loosened the collar of his jumpsuit and opened it to give my psycat access to his throat. Then he toured the apartment fretfully, inspecting every piece of furniture I’d used, every picture and book I’d examined, the knickknacks and souvenirs which I’d touched; the six-foot tub which we’d never had the chance to use together; the Japanesey bed which we had. Then he went into his workshop to switch on the computer to which he was neurally synapsed. It was already on.
“Crazy,” he muttered. “I must have been walking in my sleep… unless you did it, kitkat?”
“Spqrrr,” and that was no answer.
He did activate the tank’s auxiliary video screens located around the apartment so that he could wander while debating with his second self and see what answers it displayed. He was flabbergasted to see the screens displaying both of us seated on the living-room couch, talking to each other that first night.
“But the computer wasn’t switched on that first night. I could swear to that.”
ROGUE
What did you like about me?
DEMI
When?
ROGUE
When you first came to work for Solar Media.
DEMI
What makes you think I liked you?
ROGUE
You were willing to have lunch with me.
DEMI
It was your mad passion.
ROGUE
For what, in particular?
DEMI
The sophisticated beauty in the ski lodge, Mystique d’Charisma.
ROGUE
There isn’t any Mystique d’Charisma.
DEMI
That’s what I liked about you.
“But the talk wasn’t like that at all, our first night together. This is all ass-backwards!”<
br />
DEMI
Would you like an autographed skin shot of Mystique? I can get the Media art department to fake it for you.
ROGUE
No thanks. I want more than faked nudes from you.
DEMI
He’s turning macho. Now that he’s made the girl, he’s showing his true colors.
“What the hell is going on with this damned demented tank? The voices and figures are perfect, but the dialogue is a distortion.”
DEMI
And what did you like about me when you first met me at Solar?
ROGUE
Who says I liked you?
DEMI
You moved in on me like a bandit and asked me out to lunch… and maybe worse.
ROGUE
It was your gaydom.
DEMI
You thought I was a fag in drag?
ROGUE
No, no, your gayety. You do everything like it’s fun and games, and you’re completely unexpectable. You— You’re a gay deceiver.
THE DECEIVERS Page 17