The Napoleon looked up fiercely and reprimanded, “Fornicoot the onus squeered.”
Immediately, the ground rumbled, the earth shook, the crust quivered. Something was about to pop, and it was going to pop loud!
“Run for the hills! This time he’s really done it!”
I didn’t know what he’d done, but it didn’t seem a time to be standing around asking questions.
We ran up the slope and out onto the meadow and across it. When we were halfway to the road, I overcame the contagious panic long enough to risk a glance over my shoulder. And I saw it.
You’ve heard of explosions flowering? Well, this was the first time I had ever seen the reverse—a colossal sunflower exploding, energized and accelerated fantastically in its growth by an overdose of that incredible stimulant, the Brew. It attained the size of a Sequoia within a split-second, its stalk and head blasting the earth in a hurry to get out. It was reaching high into the sky and burning, because of the tremendous energy poured out in its growth.
And then, its lower parts having been denied a grip because its foundations had been thrust aside, it was toppling, toppling, a flaming tower of destruction.
Alice and I got out of the way. But we barely made it and, for a second, I was sure that that titanic blazing hulk would smash us like beetles beneath a hard leather heel.
It went whoosh! And then karoomp! And we fell forward, stunned, unable to move. Or so we thought. The next instant we both leaped from our paralysis, bare rumps blistered.
Alice screamed. “Oh, God, Dan! It hurts!”
I knew that, for I had been burned too in that region. I think our expedition would have come to a bad end right then and there, for we needed immediate medical attention and would have had to go back to HQ to get it. These primitives had evidently forgotten all knowledge of up-to-date healing.
True enough—but they had forgotten because they no longer needed the knowledge. Attracted by our pitiful plight, two men, before I could object, had thrown the contents of two buckets over our backs.
I yelped with terror, but I had no place to run except back into the fire. Even the Brew was better than that. And I didn’t get any in or even near my mouth.
Nevertheless, I was going to protest angrily at this horse-play while we were in such agony. But before I could say anything, I no longer felt pain.
I couldn’t see what was happening to me, but I could see Alices reaction. Her back was toward me, and she had quit whimpering.
Beneath the moist film of Brew, the blisters had fallen off, and a new healthy pink shone through.
Alice was so overcome, she even forgot her feud with me long enough to put her head on my chest and weep, “Oh, Dan, Dan, isn’t it wonderful?”
I didn’t want to give this evil drug too much credit. After all, like any narcotic, it had its beneficial effects if used correctly, but it could be horribly vicious if mishandled.
I said, “Come on, we have to go back,” and I took her hand and led her to the new crater. I felt I must solve the puzzle of the Scrambled Men. And I thought of the credit I’d get for suggesting a new method of warfare—dropping bombcases filled with Brew and seeds from balloons. And what about cannon shooting shells whose propulsive power would also be seed and Brew? Only—how would you clean the cannon out afterward? You’d have to have a tree surgeon attached to every artillery team. Of course, you could use the rocket principle for your missiles. Only—wouldn’t a Brobdingnagian pansy or cornstalk trailing out behind create an awful drag and a suddenly added weight? Wouldn’t you have to train botanists to be aerodynamicists, or vice versa, and… ?
I rejected the whole idea. The brass at HQ would never believe me.
The Scrambled Men worked quickly and efficiently and with all the added vigor Brew-drinking gave. Inside of fifteen minutes, they had put out the fire and had then pulled the smoldering trunk out of the way. They at once began digging into the slopes and bottom of the excavation.
I watched them. They seemed to be obeying the orders of the man in the admiral’s hat, and were continually conferring with him and their fellow workers. But not a single one could understand what the other was saying. All effective communication was done by facial expressions and gestures. Yet none would admit that to any of the others.
Well, I thought, this was scarcely a novelty, though I had never seen it carried out on such a thorough scale. And what—or who— was responsible?
Again, wearily this time, I asked a spectator what was going on. These people seemed to be incapable of making a serious statement, but there was always the chance that I’d find somebody who was an exception.
“I’ll tell you, stranger. These men are living evidences of the fact that it doesn’t pay to corrupt religion for your own purposes.”
He drank from a flask he carried on a chain around his neck and then offered me a slug. He looked surprised at my refusal but took no offense.
“These were the leaders of the community just before Mahrud manifested himself as the Real Bull. You know—preachers, big and little businessmen, newspaper editors, gamblers, lawyers, bankers, union business agents, doctors, book reviewers, college professors. The men who are supposed to know how to cure your diseases social, economic, financial, administrative, psychological, spiritual, and so on, into the deep dark night. They knew the Right Word, comprehend? The Word that’d set Things straight, understand?
“The only trouble was that after the Brew began to flow freely, nobody who’d drunk from the Holy Bottle would pay any attention to these pillars of the community. They tried hard for a long time. Then, seeing which way the tide was inevitably foaming, they decided that maybe they’d better get in on a good thing. After all, if everybody was doing it, it must be the correct thing to do.
“So, after drinking enough Brew to give them courage, but not enough to change them into ordinary fun-loving but Mahrud-fearing citizens, they announced they were the prophets of a new religion. And from then on, according to their advertisements, none but them was fit to run the worship of the Big Bull. Of course, Sheed the Weather Prophet and Polivinosel and the Allegory ignored them, and so were denounced as false gods.
“Makes you laugh, doesn’t it? But that’s the way it goes. And that’s the way it went until Mahrud—bibulous be his people forever—got mad. He announced, through Sheed, that these pillars of the community were just dummy-prophets, fakes. As punishment, he was going to give them a gift, as he had earlier done to the Dozen Diapered Darlings.
“So he said, in effect, ‘You’ve been telling the people that you, and only you, have possession of the Real Bull, the Right Word. Well, you’ll have it. Only it’ll be the Word that nobody but you can understand, and to every other man it’ll be a strange tongue. Now—scram!’ ”
“But after he’d watched these poor characters stumbling around trying to talk to each other and the people and getting madder than the hops in the Brew or else sadder than the morning-after, Mahrud felt sorry. So he said, ‘Look, I’ll give you a chance. I’ve hidden the key to your troubles somewhere in this valley.
Search for it. If you find it, you’ll be cured. And everybody will understand you, understand?’ ”
“So he gave them a map—all of them, mind you—but this half-dressed Napoleon here grabbed the map, and he kept it by virtue of being the most un-understandable of the bunch. And, ever since, he’s been directing the search for the key that’ll unscramble them.”
“That’s why they’re doing all this blasting and digging?” I asked, dazed.
“Yes, they’re following the map,” he said, laughing.
I thanked him and walked up behind the man with the admiral’s hat and sword. I looked over his shoulder. The map was covered with long squiggly lines and many shorter branches. These, I supposed, were the lines he was following in his creekbed-making.
He looked around at me. “Symfrantic gangleboys?”
“You said it,” I choked, and then I had to turn and walk away. “That m
ap is a chart of the human nervous system,” I gasped to Alice. “And he’s following one of the branches of the vagus nerve.”
“The wandering nerve,” murmured Alice. “Or is it the wondering nerve? But what could all this mean?”
As we began our climb from the pit, I said, “I think we’re seeing the birth-pangs of a new mythology. One of the demigods is based upon a famous comic strip character. Another is formed in the image of a pun on the translation of his name—though his new form does correspond to his lustful, asinine character. And we see that the chief deity bases his worship—and at least one of his epiphanies—on his mortal nickname. All this makes me wonder upon what foundations the old-time pantheons and myths were built. Were they also orginally based on such incongruous and unlikely features?”
“Daniel Temper!” Alice snapped. “You talk as if you believed the old pagan gods once existed and as if this Mahrud actually is a god!”
“Before I came here, I’d have laughed at any such theory,” I said. “How do you explain what you’ve seen?”
We climbed up in silence. At the edge, I turned for one more glimpse of the Scrambled Men, the object lesson designed by Mahrud. They were digging just as busily as ever paying no attention to the ribald comments of the spectators. The funny thing about this, I thought, was that these unscrambled men had not yet caught on to the fact that the Scrambled Men were more than a wacky sect, that they were symbols of what the spectators must themselves do if they wished to travel beyond their own present carefree and happy but unprogressive state.
As plainly as the ears on the head of the Ass-God, the plight of these frantically digging sons of Babel said to everybody, “Look within yourselves to find the key.”
That advice was probably uttered by the first philosopher among the cavemen.
I caught the glint of something metallic almost buried in the dirt of the slope. I went back and picked it up. It was a long-handled silver screwdriver.
If I hadn’t known my old teacher so well, I don’t think I ever would have understood its presence. But I’d been bombarded in his classes with his bizarre methods of putting things over. So I knew that I held in my hand another of his serious jokes—a utensil designed to take its place in the roster of myths springing up within this Valley Olympus.
You had the legend of Pandoras Box, of Philemon and Baucis’ Pitcher, Medusa’s Face, Odin’s Pledged Eye. Why not the Silver Screwdriver?
I explained to Alice. “Remember the gag about the boy who was born with a golden screw in his navel? How all his life he wondered what it was for? How ashamed he was because he was different from anybody else and had to keep it hidden? Remember how he finally found a psychiatrist who told him to go home and dream of the fairy queen? And how Queen Titania slid down on a moonbeam and gave him a silver screwdriver? And how, when he’d unscrewed the golden screw from his navel, he felt so happy about being normal and being able to marry without making his bride laugh at him? Remember, he then forgot all his vain speculations upon the purpose of that golden screw? And how, very happy, he got up from his chair to reach for a cigarette? And his derriere, deprived of its former fastening, dropped off?”
“You don’t mean it?” she breathed.
“But I do! How do we know the tale of the Golden Apples or the Golden Fleece didn’t have their origin in jokes and that they later acquired a symbolic significance?”
She had no answer to that, any more than anybody did.
“Aren’t you going to give it to the Scrambled Men?” she asked. “It’d save them all this blasting and digging. And they could settle down and quit talking gibberish.”
“I imagine they’ve stumbled over it a hundred times before and kicked it to one side, refusing to recognize its meaning.”
“Yes, but what does it mean?”
Exasperatedly, I said, “It’s another clue to the fact that they ought to look within themselves, that they ought to consider the nature of their punishment and the lesson to be derived from it.”
We walked away. The whole incident had left me plunged in gloom. I seemed to be getting deeper and deeper into a murk furnished by a being who, in the far dim background, mocked me. Was it mere coincidence that we’d been met by the Allegory, that he’d given us his vaguely ominous advice?
I didn’t have much time to think, for we came to the side road which led to the State Hospital. I could look down it and see the white stones of the cemetery outside the high wire fence. I must have stood there longer than I thought, because Alice said, “What’s the matter?”
“The State Hospital cemetery is just inside the fence. The Meltonville cemetery is on the other side. My father is buried in the state grounds; my mother lies in the villages cemetery. They are separated in death, as they were in life.”
“Dan,” she said softly, “we ought to get a few hours’ sleep before we go on. We’ve walked a long way. Why don’t we visit your parents’ graves and then sleep there? Would you like that?”
“Very much. Thank you for the thought, Alice.” The words came hard. “You’re a pretty wonderful person.”
“Not so much. It’s merely the decent thing to do.”
She would have to say that just when I was beginning to feel a little warmer toward her.
We went down the road. A big red-haired man walked toward us. He was all eyes for Alice, so much so that I expected the same sort of trouble we’d had with Polivinosel. But when he looked at me, he stopped, grinned, and burst into loud howls of laughter. As he passed me, I smelled his breath. It was loaded with the Brew.
“What’s the matter with him?”
“I don’t know,” said Alice, looking at me. “Wait a minute! Of course! Polivinosel and the others must have known all the time that you were an Outsider!”
“Why?”
“Because you’re bald! Have we seen any bald men? No! That’s why this fellow laughed!”
“If that’s so, I’m marked! All Polivinosel has to do is have his worshipers look for a skinhead.”
“Oh, it’s not that bad,” she said. “You have to remember that Outsiders are constantly coming in, and that any number of ex-soldiers are in the process of changing. You could pass for one of those.” She grabbed my hand. “Oh well, come along, let’s get some sleep. Then we can think about it.”
We came to the cemetery entrance. The shrubbery on either side of the stone arch had grown higher than rny head. The iron gate in the arch was wide open and covered with rust. Inside, however, I did not see the expected desolate and wild expanse of tall weeds. They were kept trimmed by the goats and sheep that stood around like silvery statues in the moonlight.
I gave a cry and ran forward.
My mother’s grave gaped like a big brown mouth. There was black water at the bottom, and her coffin was tilted on end. Evidently, it had been taken out and then slid carelessly back in. Its lid was open. It was empty.
Behind me, Alice said, “Easy, Dan. There’s no cause for looking so alarmed.”
“So this is your splendid people, Alice, the gods and nymphs of the New Golden Age. Grave-robbers! Ghouls!”
“I don’t think so. They’d have no need or desire for money and jewels. Let’s look around. There must be some other explanation.”
We looked. We found Weepenwilly.
He was sitting with his back against a tombstone. He was so large and dark and quiet that he seemed to be cast out of bronze, a part of the monument itself. He looked like Rodin’s Thinker—a Thinker wearing a derby hat and white loincloth. But there was something alive about him and, when he raised his head, we saw tears glistening in the moonlight.
“Could you tell me,” I asked excitedly, “why all these graves are dug up?”
“Bless you, my bhoy,” he said in a slight brogue. “Sure, now, and have you a loved one buried here?”
“My mother,” I said.
His tears flowed faster. “Faith, bhoy, and is it so? Then you’ll be happy when I tell you the glorious news. Me own dea
r wife was buried here, you know.”
I didn’t see anything about that to make me happy, but I kept quiet and waited.
“Yes, me bhoy—you’ll pardon my calling you that, won’t you? After all, I was a veteran o‘ the Spanish-American War, and I outrank you by quite a few years. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the blessed ascent o’ Mahrud—may he stub his divine toe and fall on his glorious face, bless him—I would now be dead of old age and me bones resting in the boat along with me wife’s, and so—”
“What boat?” I interrupted.
“What boat? Where have you been? Ah, yes, you’re new.” He pointed his finger at his head, to indicate my baldness, I suppose.
“Faith, bhoy, you must hurry to Onaback in the morning and see the boatload o’ bones leave. Twill be big doings then, you can count on that, with lots o’ Brew and barbecued beef and pork and enough love-making to last you for a week.”
After repeated questioning, I learned that Mahrud had had the remains of the dead in all the graveyards of the Area dug up and transported to Onaback. The next day, a boat carrying the bones would cross the Illinois and deposit the load upon the eastern shore. What would happen after that, not even the minor gods knew—or else would not tell—but everybody was sure that Mahrud intended to bring the dead back to life. And everybody was thronging into the city to witness such an event.
That news made me feel better. If there were to be many people on the roads and in the city itself, then it would be easy to stay lost in the crowds.
The man with the derby said, “As sure as they call me Weepenwilly, children, the All-Bull is going too far. He’ll try to raise the dead, and he won’t be able to do it. And then where will the peoples faith in him be? Where will I be?”
He sobbed, “I’ll be out o’ work again, me position lost—me that served the Old God faithfully until I saw He was losing ground and that Mahrud was the up-and-coming deity nowadays. A God such as they had in the ancient days in Erin when gods was gods and men was giants. But now Mahrud—bull be his name, curse him— will lose face, and he’ll never get it back. Then I’ll be that most miserable o‘ all things, a prophet without honor. What’s worse, I was just about to be promoted to a hemi-semi-demigod—I’ve been coming up fast all on account o’ me faithful and hard work and keeping me mouth shut—when this big promotional stunt has to enter the All-Bull’s head. Why can’t he leave well enough alone?”
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