Soma Blues

by Robert Sheckley

  O.A. was skeptical until Peter mentioned what he could pay: Seventy thousand a year for openers, all expenses, and a share in the profits of the new/old drug if and when it was developed.

  “Sounds great,” Peter said. “How many years can you guarantee at that price?”

  “One,” Peter said. “You get one year to come up with something. If it’s anything me and my partners can use, we double your salary and the gravy train begins. If there’s nothing in it—and you ought to know in a year—then you go your way and we go ours and no hard feelings.”

  “A year isn’t much time,” O.A. said. “I’d need at least six months just to set up a lab, research the literature, begin.”

  “Make it a year and a half,” Peter suggested.

  “Make it two years.”

  “Done,” Peter said, feeling generous with Selim’s money.

  Next they came to the matter of setting up the lab. O.A. wanted something with a cover that would deceive or at least satisfy anyone looking into it. The best was to buy a small existing business, one that had recently gone belly-up and could be purchased for a song. Marilyn had to be consulted. The story they told her was that O.A. was going to look into the duplication of an existing process, a food additive unprotected by patent. If he could successfully duplicate the process, it could be sold to a Swiss firm that was paying through the nose for the original product. Marilyn thought it all sounded a little bogus but didn’t seem to be dangerous in a legal sense. And the money sounded good. That much income would let her quit her teaching job and devote full time to completing her long-delayed novel about growing up the only Jewish girl of Chinese parentage in a small South Carolina town.

  “So how’s it going?” Peter Two asked five months later. He had returned from Ibiza to see how O.A. was getting on. O.A. had a harried look. His eyes were red-rimmed. He exhibited various signs of nervousness, including rubbing one finger against another.

  “I think I’m onto something,” O.A. said. “The most recent batch is quite promising.”

  “You don’t look so good,” Peter said. “Are you also on something?”

  O.A. gave a ragged laugh. “On something? What do you think? Somebody has to test this stuff to see where we’re getting. I can’t ask Marilyn to do it. I can’t try it out on the kids. I can’t put an ad in the paper asking for volunteers for a groovy new drug in the developmental stage. I have to try the stuff out on myself.”

  “You’re sounding a little strange,” Peter observed.

  “Of course I am,” O.A. said. “What do you expect? I won’t have soma until I have it, will I? And meantime I have to test all the stuff that doesn’t work, or that works but has drawbacks—like giving blinding headaches or setting the pulse up to dancing rhythm, or turning the extermities to ice, or any of the other thousands of things I’ve found.”

  “This is not a good situation,” Peter said, observing that O.A. seemed to be ranging up toward hysteria when he was not drifting down toward stupor. “This is going to play hell with your concentration.”

  “You’re telling me?” O.A. said, his voice rising above the loud hum of conversation in the coffee shop.

  “Tell you what,” Peter said. “Cool out for a while. I’m going to find you someone to guinea pig for you.”

  “Is that safe?”

  “A lot safer than what you’re doing now.”

  Peter was as good as his word. Later that day he returned to O.A.’s apartment. With him he brought a young, short, stocky man, Japanese by the look of him, with bristly close-cropped black hair and an open and frank expression.

  “This is Irito Mutinami. Irito’s an old friend from Ibiza.”

  The two men shook hands. Irito said, “I was there in ’60 and ’61. Greatest place on earth. The babes. And the drugs. Man, it was too much. When were you there?”

  “Just one summer in ’74,” O.A. said.

  One summer wasn’t much, but it was enough for membership in the club of Ibizaphiles. The two men exchanged the names of people they both knew. They reminisced about beaches they had lain on, restaurants they had eaten in, girls they had known in common, and other details of the bonding code of exiles. Soon they were perfectly satisfied with each other.

  “I laid out the position for Irito,” Peter said. “He’ll be happy to test your drugs for you. He lives in Chinatown, so he’ll be handy to come over and ingest whatever your latest concoction is. I’m taking care of his pay.”

  “Fine, fine.” O.A. felt he had to add, “I hope you know what you’re getting into, Irito.”

  “Call me Tom. That’s what they call me at home. Hey, guys, this is great. I mean, imagine being paid to test groovy drugs! I mean, it’s the sort of thing I’d pay you for if I was heeled. It’s like a dream. What did Khayyam say? ‘I often wonder what the vintners buy one half so precious as the goods they sell.’ I mean, it’s that kind of a situation.”

  “You’re Japanese?” O.A. asked.

  “Third generation.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, what are you doing living in Chinatown?”

  “I lucked into a one-room place on Catherine Street. Man, I got the greatest food on all sides of me. It’s like a dream.”

  “You don’t get any trouble?”

  Irito, or Tom, shrugged. “Why should I get any trouble? I’m just another foreigner to them.”

  “Can you start this afternoon?” O.A. asked.

  “Hey, man, I can start right now.”

  “This may not be quite as groovy as you expect, Tom.”

  “No problem. I can handle bummers.”

  “I’ll be on my way,” Peter said, rising. “I think we’ve solved a problem here, O.A. I’ll be in touch.”

  Peter left. O.A. went to the lab’s inner room and came back with a test tube half full of a viscous blue substance.

  “What do you call this?” Irito asked, lifting the tube.

  “No name yet. This is just Run Three forty-two A.”

  “Nice name,” Irito said. “I like it already.”

  And so it went. Life went better for O.A. now that he had Irito as a tester. Irito was what they used to call a dead-game dopehead. When he got high, he liked it. When he was brought down, it amused him. The only stipulation that O.A. made was that Irito not take any other narcotic or alcoholic substance during the period of testing. It would only confuse the results of the soma program. Irito was a little reluctant to give up his marijuana. It was helping him get through his accountancy course at NYU. But he promised, and he was a boy-man of his word. As it turned out, he didn’t miss marijuana at all. O.A.’s continuing work gave him many different head trips to contemplate, some of them pleasant, all of them interesting.

  10

  Hob loved his sacrifice outfit. They gave it to him soon after Peter left swearing he’d do what he could, but he didn’t see what he could do. Hob’s followers brought him clean trousers, a shirt, and a three-quarter-length jacket, all of finest Japanese crepe. After he was dressed, they splattered him with red sandalwood and vermillion, and then they put marigold garlands around his neck.

  So interested had Hob been in Peter’s story that he had quite forgotten that he had a task to perform. But even a god can be absentminded. In fact, who had a better right? But he remembered when Selim returned.

  The small, dapper Indian had changed into long robes and a turban. He had brought two turbaned followers with him. They led Hob to a little anteroom, told him they’d be back for him soon, bowed deeply, and left him alone, closing the door softly behind them.

  Hob saw there was an open window. He went to it and took a deep breath. Below was a gently sloping roof. It would be so easy to go out across the roof, down the drainpipe, out to the green wooded land below. They had been so attentive to everything else, but they had overlooked this. So it went in the affairs of men. Humans tried to take care of every possibility but always left something undone. He looked out the window, then closed and locked it. He, the god, escape? He
wouldn’t miss what was coming next for anything in the world.

  He sat for a while in perfect one-pointed meditation. He was ready when they came for him.

  Hob knew it was time for the ceremony, and he was eager for it to begin. He had that old-time religious feeling. You don’t see a lot of that anymore: the willing sacrifice.

  Taking care to keep his feet on the ground and not float above their heads as he could so easily have done, Hob walked with Selim and the several others out of the anteroom, down a corridor, through a doorway, down another corridor, and so on, until he came to a big room, an auditorium sort of room. It was filled with worshipers, all of them men. On one side, about half of them were Indian, wearing white robes and white turbans. Across the aisle, the others were in business dress. The two groups sat in rows of folding chairs on different sides of the room, like friends of the bride and friends of the groom.

  There was a scattering of applause as Hob walked down the aisle. Hob nodded to them as he walked out onto the little stage in the front of the room. He nodded in a most friendly, if condescending, manner—for he had already determined he would not be an austere, standoffish god, but rather a familiar, friendly one, a god anyone could talk to, one willing to do anything for his people. Selim was just behind him, at his right elbow, as was proper for the leader of his cult.

  Selim began intoning a chant, and the other turbaned people took it up, a deep-voiced chant, antiphonal, with breaks in the recital in which Hob himself spoke forth, his voice brazen and splendid, saying the unknown words of a new language that he would teach them later, when he had been reborn.

  To one side of the stage was a long, low, marble altar with a pure-white fleece thrown over it and lying on that, the long black-bladed knife with which the ceremony would be performed. An overhead spotlight bathed it in white radiance. Hob knew that the altar was where he was supposed to be. He walked up to it and a hush came over the worshipers. Examining it, he saw that the marble was carved deeply and looked very old. The carving showed two figures on either side of what looked like a tree of life. The figures were raised from the stone, standing out in high relief, whereas the tree was incised deep into the rock. It took Hob a moment to figure out why this was so. Then he realized that the deeply chiseled tree would carry away his blood when he was sacrificed. He was pleased to see a suitable receptacle of onyx situated beneath the blood channel. Not a drop of his blood would be lost.

  He was joined now by young acolytes wearing smart-looking crimson cloaks with hoods, swinging censers in which incense was burning. Frankincense and myrrh—how appropriate. It had never been like this back when Hob had attended synagogue. Perfumed smoke twisted its way toward the ceiling.

  The place was dark; no, not exactly dark but dim. As Hob’s eyes grow accustomed to the gloom he saw, standing behind the chanting acolytes, a whole bunch of hybrid animals: lions combined with zebras, rhinoceroses whose lower parts were snakes. What did they call them? Chimeras! The chimeras were symbolic beasts, and modern rationalism said they never existed. How wrong they were! He was looking at them now!

  His all-knowledge informed him that for many centuries, several orders of creation had interacted on the earth, not just men and animals, but chimeras also and, of course, spirits and gods. It made Hob feel good to realize that his own willing compliance in this ceremony of death was playing its part in calling forth the ancient gods to live again.

  And the scene kept on changing, which was charming but a little bewildering. Now it was like a landscape by Dalí, now a landscape filled with architecture by Gaudí. To one side Hob saw an open coffin. It was empty. He was puzzled by it for a moment, then realized it was meant for him. It was where they would put his body after they sacrificed him. His body, but not him, for he, of course, could not die; he would simply create a new body as soon as he’d discarded the old one.

  Looking around the room again, he saw other things that perplexed him for a moment and would have made him think he was hallucinating if he hadn’t known better. Something floppy was making its way across the room. A walking catfish! And there was a two-headed calf, one head bawling for its mother, the other head blinking incuriously at the plump hermaphrodite leading it.

  All in all, it was just the sort of thing that could have been staged on the shores of the Ganges. And that was deeply satisfying.

  There was someone coming toward him wearing an elaborate gold headgear.

  “Are you ready?” he asked Hob. It was Selim.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” Hob said lightly. He knew he ought to be taking this more seriously, but it was difficult, he was just feeling too good, everything was too funny. He only hoped he didn’t ruin their ceremony with his Zarathustrian levity.

  Then people were urging him gently toward the altar. At last, it was time! When he was standing in front of it, they pressed their hands on his shoulders. Silly of them. All they had to do was tell him to kneel. He did so, and put his head where they indicated. Now all was in readiness. He could see how they had it planned out. Hob merely had to tilt back his head and someone would cut his throat with that long, sharp, wavy knife. Like slicing a pot roast, Hob thought, and had to suppress his laughter.

  Now the music was coming up. Funny, he hadn’t seen any orchestra. Perhaps they were concealed behind the walls. They were tootling and banging away now, an oriental clangor. Or maybe it was a recording. The chanting went on over the orchestra and quickly mounted in intensity. Hob couldn’t make out the tune.

  Then a priestess came forward and picked up the black-bladed knife. She was masked as a bird, some kind of hawk. She was wearing a jeweled halter and gauze pants gathered at the ankles. Quite an attractive body, very white under the overhead lights, vaguely familiar. When Hob reached up and gently removed her mask, he was not too surprised to find Annabelle under it.

  11

  “I told you I had something really big going for me,” Annabelle said. The mask had smeared her makeup, but she still looked fine.

  “I had no idea you meant this,” Hob replied. He was still smiling, but not feeling quite as good as he had before. In fact, he was starting to feel a little weird.

  “I’m sorry it has to be you,” Annabelle said. “But objectively, as a friend, maybe you can feel good for me. Being high priestess of the newest cult in the world is something, isn’t it?”

  “Your parents would be proud of you,” Hob said. And then he heard someone’s voice from the audience, saying, loud and clear, “This isn’t fair! I won’t stand for it!”

  And then a woman came marching out of the audience and up to the stage beside Hob and Annabelle. She looked familiar, too.

  It was Devi, wearing a long white robe, her face set and furious. Peter, looking unhappy and embarrassed, was just getting to the stage beside her.

  “Devi, please,” Peter said.

  “You son of a bitch,” Devi said to him. “You promised me I could be the high priestess. What’s this English bitch doing here?”

  “Now, wait a minute, sister,” Annabelle said. “I was promised this by the top man, Señor Arranque. I made all this possible.”

  “You didn’t do diddly squat,” Devi said, revealing a grasp of English made complete through Stephen King novels. “And who is this Arranque? Just a common criminal! I am the daughter of Selim, the head of the cult, and I am married to the creator of soma!”

  “Now just everybody hold on just a moment!” Hob said in his best Jimmy Stewart imitation. “I think I’ve got something to say about this!”

  There were cries from the audience: “Let the sacrifice speak!

  “Let’s hear what the Pharmakos has to say!”

  And just a moment after that, all hell broke loose as a door in the back opened, and in walked a tall Englishman and a taller black man.

  12

  A murmur of discontent and disapprobation passed through the ranks of the attendees. Those on the left side of the auditorium were representatives of the original Kali Cul
t. There were about seventy of them, and they all came from the Indian subcontinent. For many of them, it was their first time away from Mother India. Europe seemed to them a strange and godless place, and Ibiza, heart of the sybaritic Mediterranean culture, was most godless of all. They were serious men, for the most part ultrareligious Brahmins, Hindustan patriots unsatisfied with India’s relatively insignifant showing on the international scene and particularly disturbed by the domination of Indian crime by powerful groups from other countries. They had let Selim lead them into this new enterprise, one that would be Indian dominated, the first Hindustan mafia since the beginning of the world.

  Selim had made this possible by producing, through Peter, a singular product: Soma, the epitome of drugs. But he had also had to compromise. To get soma onto the international scene and not leave it a merely local product—as qat was in Yemen or unprocessed coca leaves in Peru and Bolivia—he had had to form a partnership with foreign criminal elements.

  It was members of this other criminal element, sitting on the right side of the auditorium, who were in equal attendance here at the rites of Kali.

  There were some fifty-seven of them, criminals from all over Europe, the Americas, and Asia, sick of their subordination to the established drug cartels of their own countries, ready to form an alliance with the Indians, with their new product, ready to supply and sell the new drug wherever it might be wanted.

  There was no love lost between these two groups.

  The Indians considered the Europeans scum of the earth, riffraff who hadn’t succeeded in their native lands.

  The Europeans considered the Indians tradition-bound fuddy-duddies who had lucked onto a product and expected to use the enterprise and expertise of others to bring them wealth.

  The animosity between the two groups was already high. It was brought to the point of explosion by the sight of two women—one European, one Asiatic—struggling on a stage for a black-handled knife.