Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy

by Robert A. Wilson

  “Son of a bitch,” Mendoza said suddenly, sitting up.

  Starhawk was almost startled. “Huh?”

  “That dog,” Mendoza said. “You see that son of a bitch shit right on the sidewalk? They do that all over the city, the ordinance doesn’t mean a fucking thing. Dirty, filthy animals, I’d ban them from the fucking city entirely, I was mayor.”

  “Yeah,” Starhawk said. “That’s our chief problem here, dogs shitting on the street.”

  “It ain’t funny,” Mendoza said. “Filthy bastards spread all kinds of diseases. And you take your kid out for a walk and there’s two of them humping and the kid says, ‘Daddy, what are the doggies doing?’ What are you gonna tell her, is what I wanna know. Dirty, filthy animals.”

  “Yeah, but about Murphy and this job.”

  “Okay, okay,” Mendoza said. “I’m just telling you dirty filthy animals should be banned. With Murph you got to be in and out as slick and sneaky as a preacher’s prick in a cow’s ass. I mean, he likes guns, more than most cops. And he’d love an excuse to shoot you.”

  “Murphy?” Starhawk turned in his seat. “Murph and I, we never had any bad feelings.”

  “Well, okay, he loves the ground you walk on. Like all the hookers on Powell Street, and the housewives up in Marin, and the college girls now too. But he hates what you are. He hates all minorities—Indians, niggers, it don’t matter to him, he’s democratic about it. The fuck, he doesn’t like me much, and we been partners going on ten years this May. And he hates burglars especially. An Indian burglar, that’s almost as good to him as a nigger burglar. You got to realize that when you go in there.”

  “That’s a hot one,” Starhawk said, not laughing. “That really is a hot one. All the stuff he’s fenced for me, and he hates burglars. That really is good. Next thing you’ll tell me is the Vice Squad hates hookers.”

  “Murphy’s religious,” Mendoza said. “He’d love to make holes in you. That’s what you got to understand.”

  “Support your local police,” Starhawk said, “for a more efficient police state.”

  “Look, you on this caper or you just going to sit here and crack wise? I can get Marty Malloy, you know.”

  “You’re religious too,” Starhawk said. “I went and made fun of the department and now you’re going to get Malloy. Who’ll fuck up the whole job and you’ll both be up in Q for the next twenty years. But at least he won’t crack wise about the department. He’ll leave fingerprints all over the joint, and drop the snow in the bushes on his way out, and crash into an Oakland P.D. car going home, and then lead them right to your front door, but he’s got proper respect for the police, Malloy. Yeah, you get Malloy.”

  “Look, no need to be touchy.” Mendoza was ingratiating. “I want you, I don’t want Malloy. Just lay off the department, is all.”

  “Okay, okay. No need for either of us to get antsy.” Starhawk smiled like an actor. “How much coke you think?”

  “Like I say, who knows? But it’s got to be around 500 Gs. That’s what Amato says and he’s good at making estimates like that. Say Amato is wrong for once in his life, say it’s only 300 Gs, still you don’t get half of 300 Gs every night you go out and knock over a house.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Starhawk said. “It’s so beautiful it stinks. A cop with a couple hundred thou in hot cocaine, all I got to do is walk in and walk out, he’ll never report it to anyone. That’s just what bothers me. Murphy comes home and finds it gone, he’s going to do something. Okay, he can’t call the captain and say, ‘Some thief just stole the cocaine I took from Freddy Fuckerfaster when I busted him, before I could sell it to Maldonado. Send over a squad car real quick.’ That’s what he don’t do. So, okay, what does he do? You know him better than I do.”

  “He gets mad for a week, and anybody we bust better watch his ass or Murph will turn him over to wrecking crew. That’s all. What the fuck can he do, you see? There’s just nothing you can do when somebody snatches something you shouldn’t have in the first place. Especially when you’re a cop.”

  “There’s me and Malloy,” Starhawk said. “And five others Murph knows as well as me. And two I can think of that Murph doesn’t know about yet. And maybe two that I don’t even know, let’s say. That’s let’s see, about ten or eleven guys who might have done it, afterwards. Ten or eleven really good cat burglars in the Bay Area that Murphy will come looking for, one way or another.”

  “So? You had a day in the last five years somebody on the force wasn’t trying to put you away?” Mendoza grinned. “Or you worried that Maldonado will think the coke’s already his and put the whole Cosa Nostra onto getting it back? Balls. There’s ten guys around here could do it, like you say. And ten more might have come up from L.A. and another ten from Vegas or Chicago or Christ knows where. You go in as slick as you usually do, nobody’ll ever have a lead. Murphy’ll have a purple hard-on for a week or so, and I wouldn’t want to be anybody he busts then, but that’s all that’ll happen, all. You in or you out?”

  “Wait. When’s Murph’s next day off?”

  “Tomorrow. Why?”

  “Some people,” Starhawk said, “they had this kind of merchandise, they’d hide it so you practically got to take the walls down one by one before you find it. You know? Case like that, you want to save yourself some time, you watch until they show you where it is.”

  “Hey, Murph’s no dumbbell. You think you’re the Invisible Man or something?”

  “It’s got to be tomorrow. Believe me, he’ll never see me, but I’ll see him. You was to ask me, going in today bare-ass, before I can case the house, would be the best way to get my balls in a sling. For all I know, he’s got a friend staked out there for when he’s at work. And I wait till the day after tomorrow, when he’s at work again, he may have already sold it to Maldonado. Am I right or am I right?”

  “Jeez.” Mendoza turned to look straight at Starhawk. “You going in there, with Murph at home, I don’t like that at all. What I don’t want is somebody gets dead, him or you. That happens, my ass is grass and the whole department is the lawn mower.”

  “Anybody in the department ever link me to a killing? Even suspect me? You know better than that, Mendy. I don’t go in bare-ass, you know. Already, I got three plans.”

  “Then you’re really in.”

  “Oh, I’m in.” Starhawk stopped cleaning his nails and returned the key to the ignition. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. The only thing I like better than stealing from a cop is fucking a cop.”

  “Funny,” Mendoza said. “Remind me to laugh on my day off. That attitude is going to get you in a lot of trouble some fine day, my friend.”

  THE FIRST FURBISH LOUSEWART

  You must take the bull by the tail and look the facts in the face.

  —W. C. FIELDS

  The first Furbish Lousewart was a retainer on the Greystoke estate in England in the thirteenth century. He was a foundling, the bastard offspring of the local curate and a nun who, oddly enough, later told Chaucer a story he considered good enough to retell in verse. The nun was also the model for the Prioress in the earliest Tarot deck and her basic features remained even after that card became the Female Pope and, later, the High Priestess.

  Lord Greystoke named the infant Furbish Lousewart because he looked so dainty when they found him in the manger. Furbish Lousewart was as dainty a name as you could have in Merrie England in those days, being the vernacular term for herba pedicularis, a most lovely flower of the snapdragon species.

  Furbish Lousewart grew to manhood, married, fathered three legitimate children and died in the Third Crusade. One of his illegitimate children, by Lady Greystoke, was the only Greystoke to survive that Crusade and carried on the Greystoke line, unknown to his brothers and sisters, who continued the plebeian line of Lousewarts.

  NOTHING

  Everyone who is a lawyer must either be mentally defective by nature or be bound to become so in time.

  —FURBISH LOUSEWART V, Unsafe Where
ver You Go

  And Dr. Glopberger, like Frankenstein, looked on his work and saw that it was very good. So far.

  But the nurse, Ms. Ida Pingala, returning along the long white hall permeated with Lysol to the snug white cubicle of the nurses’ lounge, seated herself smoothing the starched white hem of her skirt over her pale white knees and punched numbers quick and neat on the phone console, white keys on white plastic the colorless allcolor of antiseptic sterility.

  “Ubu, here,” came the Voice in her ear.

  “Roy. It’s Ida.” Ms. Pingala was equally crisp.

  Sounds of canine panting; Roy was always a cut-up.

  Ms. Pingala laughed merrily. “Tonight?” she asked.

  Sounds of louder, more passionate panting.

  She giggled again. “Your place or mine?”

  “Yours. You know how the Bureau is….”

  “Eightish?”

  “Nineish, to be on the safe side. All hell is breaking loose again.”

  “Nineish, then. You devil.” More panting.

  “Oh you devil you wild man you animal.”

  “Nineish gotto go now love you bye.”

  Roy Ubu, in Washington,*hangs up and glances at his wristwatch. Time for the meeting with Babbit.

  A listless Santa Claus dingdonging his bell with empty junkie eyes as light snow fell in sparse crystals, not sticking to the sidewalk, but a biting Washington wind stings Ubu’s eyes as he leaves the FBI office, turning up his collar to slouch hands deep in pocket to his car. Shifting from first gear into second turning up Pennsylvania Avenue the snowflakes growing thicker and heavier as he drives, snaps on the car radio.

  and so the second black uprising in Miami has ended in flame and tragedy. In Washington, President Lousewart is meeting this morning with the Stentorian Ambassador to discuss balance of payments amid a mood of cautious optimism. Parents in Bad Ass, Texas, continue to keep their children out of school in the bitter dispute over biofeedback training. School Superintendent B. S. Curve, still hospitalized from the bomb blast which destroyed

  Ubu parks carefully with neat precision flashing his ID at the Secret Service man to be passed quickly into the White House over thick carpets under brilliant chandeliers to the office of Mountbatten Babbit, scientific advisor to the President: a bald and ovoid head with impatiently piercing eyes that scanned for the exact measurement and the precisely calibrated number.

  “This ah is a very delicate matter,” Babbit began at once. “We give it an Urgent rating but at the same time we do not wish to alarm the public you understand the whole investigation must be carried on with kid gloves as they say The President Himself has instructed me to make it clear to you, to make it absolutely clear, that no leaks will be tolerated no leaks whatsoever or a very big ax will fall on the whole Bureau a very big ax have I made myself clear?”

  “Yes sir absolutely sir.”

  “Good. Now, have you noticed a certain ah a certain decline in American science and technology in recent years a withering away of talent and originality so to speak?”

  “Well sir law is my background you know sir I wouldn’t know a test tube from a bevatron sir….”

  “The decline has been accelerating and is becoming critical in some respects, critical.”

  “Yes sir but so what sir a lot of science is classified as non-ec and not very popular with the Administration.”

  Babbit’s eyes were scanning Ubu without warmth. “You think it is possible to draw a hard line a sharp boundary between ec science and non-ec science?”

  “Well of course sir President Lousewart himself is always saying …”

  “I’m not talking about Administration rhetoric Mr. Ubu I am talking about reality. Could you draw such a line and say this is ec research and this is non-ec?”

  “Well sir I don’t get involved in politics I investigate and find out the facts and that’s my job sir administrative decisions are not our business at the Bureau.”

  “There is no difference between ec and non-ec science,” Babbit said with icy deliberation. “I will never say that in public as long as I am part of the Administration you understand the President has a right to expect loyalty from Members of the Team of course but I tell you in private ec and non-ec are terms in theology in metaphysics in value judgment, they have nothing to do with science. It’s all as absurd as saying some research is chocolate and some is vanilla and the chocolate is better than the vanilla.”

  “Yes sir I understand you sir you have my word I’ll never repeat any of this sir.”

  “Good now officially the Administration only wishes to discourage non-ec science but in fact we are suffering a drastic a dangerous possibly a lethal decline in all science right across the board …”

  “But sir isn’t that what President Lousewart stands for? Tightening our belts, the simple rugged life of our pioneer ancestors, lowered expectations …”

  “You damned fool we’re not talking about political speeches we’re talking about the realities of survival.”

  “Uh yes sir yes.”

  “Survival dammit survival.”

  But quantumly inseparable from Ubu nurse Ida Pingala peeks into the Wildeblood room to see if the patient is sleeping comfortably (always got to be careful with these rich bitches especially the types we get here in Trans-sexuality Surgery rather be back in obs so helpless and adorable they are even if some of the mothers shouldn’t be raising kittens much less humans) and leans fixing the hem on her skirt as the figure in the bed gurgles a half-snore mutter “Master … escape …”

  Another quantum jump:

  “One hundred thirty-two?” Ubu repeated.

  “Those are the figures that came out of the Beast,” Babbit said evenly. “One hundred thirty-two of the top scientific minds who’ve left government since the ec programs were implemented are not working for private industry, teaching at universities, or anywhere else to be found.”

  *Terran Archives 2803: Washington was the capital city of Unistat. It was governed ostensibly by a baseball team called the Senators, but by the time of our story real control had fallen into the hands of the FBI and the Beast.

  SEX, STATUS, SUCCESS

  It may have been coincidence or synchronicity or the quantum inseparability principle (QUIP), but the very same day that Epicene Wildeblood became Mary Margaret Wildeblood in Baltimore and Babbit briefed Roy Ubu on the Brain Drain mystery in Washington, Blake Williams was teaching a class at Columbia and Hugo de Naranja was a student in it. Since Hugo was the first human being who ever saw the Cat, he should have been paying close attention to Williams, but in fact he was a poet and felt it his duty to be bored by all the sciences. Hugo would settle for a gentleman’s C in “The Anthropology of Quantum Physics.” Hugo was a Santaria initiate, the third ex-husband of Carol Christmas, and (although he didn’t know it) he worked for Hassan i Sabbah X.

  “It wasn’t Einstein,” Williams was droning along, “and it wasn’t even Heisenberg or dear old Schrödinger who drove the last nail in the coffin of common sense. It was John S. Bell, who published his memorable Theorem in 1964, nearly twenty years ago,” and blah blah blah. Hugo was more interested in the ass of the girl in the row ahead of him. He wanted both his hands on that ass. He wanted her thighs around his waist. He wanted his cock way up inside her hot White Protestant pussy. Screwing Latino girls rated 0 in his book (that was only sex), screwing Jewish girls was 5 (that was Status), but screwing a White Protestant girl was 10 points and a gold star (that was SUCCESS).

  Williams continues to transmit to blank bored faces: “Bell’s Theorem basically deals with nonlocality. That is, it shows that no local explanation can account for the known facts of quantum mechanics. Um perhaps I should clarify that. A local explanation is one that assumes that things seemingly separate in space and time are really separate. Um? Yes. It assumes, that is to say, that space and time are independent of our primate nervous systems. Do I have your attention, class?

  “But Bell is even more rev
olutionary. He offers us two choices if we try to keep locality, and if there are any students in this class who are seriously interested in the subject this would be a good time to take a few notes. Um. First choice: we can abandon quantum mechanics itself. That of course means inescapably that we abandon atomic physics and about three-quarters of everything we call science. Um. Now we really don’t want to give up quantum mechanics so let’s look at choice two. We give up objectivity. Well, that’s not too great a sacrifice for those of us who have already given up sweets and male superiority and ha ha faith in the integrity of government or even cigarettes. We can give up objectivity. Ahhh yes but the trouble is … Yes Mr. Naranja?”

  “Ees this goan be on the examination sir?”

  “No you needn’t worry about that Mr. Naranja we wouldn’t dream of asking anything hard on the examination I believe the last examination with a hard question given at this university was in a survey of mathematics course in 1953 yes Mr. Lee?”

  “Is possibre that quantum connection is not immediate and unmitigated? Then perhaps we take choice one and give up not quantum mechanics itself but merely modify the quantum connection in a sense that it is some way sir mediate or mitigated, does that seem possibre sir?”

  “Ah Mr. Lee how did you ever land at this university there are times I suspect you of actually seeking an education but I’m afraid in this case your canny intellect has run aground. Recent experiments by Clauser and Aspect shut that door forever. The quantum connection is immediate, unmitigated, and I might say omnipresent as the Thomist God.”

  “So. You tell us, Professor Williams, how many times Crauser’s experiment has been verified?”

  Jingle bells, jingle bells,

  Jingle all the way

  Rebirth, Wildeblood was deciding, is messier than first birth, despite old Augustine and his media feces et urine trip … how much he had wanted to be Annette Haven in the clusterfuck scene in China Girl: one cock in Her mouth, one in Her snatch, one in each hand: ah, Wildeblood, ‘twere paradise enow. But the reality of it, the adjustments to be made: