“Are there events in the world?” he was lecturing into the dictaphone. “Are there events in the world at the present time? We hear rumor, we see signs; surely there is some shadow play going on which one might call ‘Events in the World.’ We of the elite, however, do not need to be overly concerned with these. What we do desire is a refinement still more refined, a nobility still more noble, an elite still more elect. We draw in on ourselves. There is a vulgarity of numbers. We reduce the vulgarity and the thing. A thousand gross units goes into one essence. And then we refine the essence again and again.”
(“This man is wrong,” said Loras who was alien. “It's been tried in other places; it doesn't work. You reduce it and it dies, it dies every time. You narrow the grove too much and even the noble trees die.” Loras the alien had sought for his Earth visit a place like the Bug, knowing that his sanity was not the sanity of this strange world. He had had no real trouble gaining admittance. He had simply gone to the attendance official, declared that he was a visitor from the stars, and after less than half an hour of lively discussion he had been accepted as a member of the Bug. He wasn't a handsome creature, but he had a pleasant and outgoing personality. And such little physical peculiarities as he possessed — a slight caudal appendage, a triple Adam's apple, opposable great toes — were not held against him. He was intelligent and he adjusted well. Only once had he eaten his plate after eating his food. Only once had he given the astral caress on being introduced to another. Only once — )
And Michael Fountain lectured on. “We will, of course, abandon large sections of the world as soon as we can phase them out. The entire old world, I believe, can well be abandoned in the present century. There is no need of it, really. The new world is ample for the people. ‘Is it not well that all the members of one family should dwell in one house?’ And many attitudes and mythologies of the old world will likewise be allowed to die. In a way, the old world has already become something like the disordered unconscious of the new. Discard it, I say! And then the southern continent of the new world may well be abandoned in a further generation. One continent is enough for mankind. For a refined and elect mankind it is more than ample.”
(The sherbet had melted and dried in Freddy's pocket now, leaving only a stain, a slight stickiness, and a tightly rolled piece of paper. Freddy took it out and read it as he listened with exterior ears to the distant voice of Michael Fountain. You aren't a whole lot of good in there, it said. Don't you know that things have already begun? The day before yesterday there were twenty deaths of the new diseases. Yesterday there were fifty. Today there will be two hundred when the count is in. And tomorrow three still newer diseases will appear, one of them being the old disease named panic. I know that you haven't any plan, and I haven't much of one. I have a few men. I need a few more. At sundown you will take three good men and go over the fence. That was the sticky scribbling of Leo Joe Larker on the lavender-stained paper.)
“Ultimately, all mankind will be lodged in a single town,” Michael Fountain lectured on. “The dross will have disappeared. Only the many-times refined gold will remain. And more finally still, all of mankind will be lodged in a single house. This is most important to the closing and diminishing of the circle. We support, as expedient, all cyclic Orphism; and so we must support the effort of the returnees. But they were only shadows of ourselves. Their concern that the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth be repeated has been a good one up to this time. The returnees must at all cost keep the world in this cycle. They cannot permit the world to ascend. They cannot even permit the cycle to become a helix, a spiral. We support them in the one direction, but we do not support them in another. The cycle, of course, cannot be permitted to become an ascending or outgrowing spiral. Neither can it be permitted to remain a simple cycle forever. It must become a diminished concentric with each turn of it smaller and more refined than the last. We will diminish to a point. We will concentrate in one point.”
(“The patricks and their castles will stand against him in that,” said Croll who was a patrick. “We've stood for the open way even when it was stagnant; we won't accept the closed way even when it's in movement. Theirs isn't the eternal symbol of the snake with his tail in his mouth, forever repeating. That snake eats a little of his own tail every time he goes around, and he becomes a much smaller snake. We'll stand against them and their diminishment!”)
“The final human race, at its finest hour (and I see it as an hour not more than ten seconds long) will surely have diminished to no more than three or four exceptional men,” Michael Fountain lectured on. “And then is the synthesis, the diminished finale: the world will one day dissolve into the original Great Man. Is it not a most quieting and peaceful concept? But what is that silence? The roaring had gone down to a gurgling in the last few years. The gurgling had softened to a mere dripping in these later days. Now it no longer drips. How has it become so shallow and dry?”
(“Ha! The old man's fountain ran dry,” said Boneface. “I knew it would.” This boney-faced man was a madman. He was intensely mad, a killer. If he ever said something that seemed to make sense — and often he did — it was a slip. He was mad. He always insisted on that point.)
(But will you be ready for it? asked the note from Leo Joe Larker that Freddy had taken from his sticky pocket. Ready or not, you will have to come. I am prepared to visit some plagues of my own; but only on the returnees, not on the world. You may already have guessed that I once joined their company. But I was a very recent recruit of theirs and I have broken away. To make up for the part I have had in it I will try to stop the thing. Now, here is what you will do — )
(“Let's look at the other two, Foley-Smith,” said the patrick Croll. “There's a lot better stuff in them than in this dried-up old man. Sure, he knew where the fountain itself was once. He went to it with his pitcher. But that's all gone with him now. Let's get the other bunch. Those two have a real fight going on, and some of the sideplay from the others in the show is so strong that it takes you right up into it.”)
James Bauer and Arouet Manion still continued their teetering on the edge of the world battle. They fought through arena after arena. Bauer still sat, ponderous and purple-swollen and glassy-eyed, breathing like thunder. Arouet still stretched dragonlike on the stone floor, shuddering with final sickness, poisonous to the last. They were two arms of the deadly hydra, tearing and killing each other. It is only for this reason that the abominable creature, recreated so many times, has never demolished the world: it mistakes its own tentacles for other things and battles them to the death.
Hondo Silverio had come in. He was breaking the brain-weave, tearing it loose, slicing it up. His green mottled humor had become death gray with the new concern, but he moved easily, helped himself to a drink from the sideboard and flung himself onto one of the scatter-couches.
Wing Manion came in, wrinkled her fish-nose in many-layered disgust, and stood over her sick-dragon husband Arouet. She also had sworn to break the weave. The Harvester mark was still livid on her forehead but she would no longer be a Harvester. She picked Arouet up in her arms (“This fish gets pretty strong, after a couple of days out of the old pond,” she had once said of herself), carried the awkward length and lug of him over to the most distant chair, and deposited him there with worried concern. But Arouet, still showing no more life than a dank quivering, poured himself like quicksilver out of the chair and slithered the width of the patio to lie again before Bauer in his attitude of mocking adoration. They still had several arenas to battle through. Letitia Bauer (the dead one) came and stood wraithlike and worried. Bedelia Bencher also came and watched a moment in her wraith-extension. And Salzy was there. Ah, she was revolted and fascinated at the same time by the struggle. It was as passionate as she could have wished it, but it was not at all the right shape. She had so hoped that it would be helical!
Meanwhile, back in our main context, Foley-Smith had finished reading the note from Leo Joe Larker.
There were some straight specifics in it. That Larker was a real strategist, a poor man's general. He knew how to go about a street fight, a town fight. And the last words of the note: Now eat it. Chew it up and eat it. It should have a pleasant sherbet flavor. A determined man can swallow paper. It does not really bulk larger for the chewing. It only seems to. Now swallow it.
And Fred Foley swallowed it.
Foley was to take three of the inmates over the fence with him. Larker had written that more would be useless. Foley thought that the three would be useless. They were Loras who was alien, Croll who was patrick, and O'mara who was Irish. But the boney-faced man insisted that he would go also. He knew every word that was in the note, though he had not read it with his eyes. Boneface had spooky powers. It was better to have him on your side than against you.
In town people had begun to die like flies. They became drowsy and died, without really being sick. Actually most of them weren't sick, but the suggestion to die was implanted in them.
Overhead the clouds were gathering and tumbling. They were touched with sudden silver and (now that it came near sunset) they were also touched with that color that is called morada which is a mulberry or violet or purple. Foley gathered his four men. There was no leaving Boneface behind. That man had sensed and entered his element.
“I used to be a pathological killer,” Boneface said. “They say they've cured me of that and I'm no longer dangerous. They think they've cured me! Men, just give me a target and I'm a butcher all over again. Oh, you can't shake me. You have to take me along. And for one of your squeamish jobs I'm just the man.”
There were events in the world and the city that afternoon and evening. The plague itself appeared. There was a clear case of it truly verified. But a curious aspect of the appearance was that it was widely reported on the air and on paper several hours before it came. Manipulated panic was all the thing.
And at almost the identical time two men were murdered. One of them was a Great Liberal Statesman who was actually a shoddy phony, and one was a Well-Beloved Conservative Leader whose own family couldn't stand him. There was a further distortion. The reports of both murders were out slightly before they happened, and partisans of both men had begun to gather.
And just previous to the riots, an army detachment had crossed over from Virginia to put down the riots. The military could not find the reported corpses strewing the sidewalks. Wisely they waited. They were only a little bit early.
In other sections, students attacked soldiers. The students always averaged about ten years older than the soldiers. Embassies were burned. Small private armies moved through the streets. They were distinguished only by armbands or not distinguished at all. The transit workers announced a one hour strike for the following morning as evidence of their solidarity.
Fred Foley heard a chuckle in his mind. It was the brittle chuckle of Carmody Overlark. Carmody and his would cause the disturbances to succeed (while seeming to fail) or to fail (while seeming to succeed); anyhow they would have their sort of value out of them, and the world would be further shackled.
“It's time to get moving,” Fred Foley told his four men. “Only one target inside the Bug, according to Larker. I'd have thought there'd be more.”
Foley sent Croll to kill Doctor Millhouse. Croll the patrick seemed a little timid about going and killing a man, and Boneface wanted to do it, but Foley repeated the command, and Croll went.
Meanwhile, Foley briefed them again rapidly, armed them from the cache that Leo Joe Larker had hidden and told of in the note, waited. Croll came back twitching; he said that he couldn't kill Doctor Millhouse, that Doctor Millhouse had already been dead when he got to him. Foley looked around for Boneface, then saw him deep in the shadows. “Who, me?” was the look that Boneface gave him. Well, it was done, and Boneface had done it; but Foley had rather wanted to test the patrick Croll on an easy one first. They went over the fence to begin what Larker had called the Night of the Long Knives in his notes. Like all unstarred generals, Larker was something of a ham.
XIII: AND ALL TALL MONSTERS STAND
The psychological rule says that when the inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner contradictions, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposite halves.
Aion: C. G. Jung
TARGETS! Larker had tagged many of the prominent returnees for Foley and his group to get. But another unstarred general was mocking in Foley's mind.
“It doesn't make any difference, Frederick,” Miguel Fuentes was saying from his distant underground. “It is just a little diversion, a little fun. Do it if you want to do it. But the first phase has already happened, and the next will not begin till I and others (and especially you) come out tomorrow. This doesn't matter.”
“This does matter!” Foley swore. “You battle your monsters and I'll battle mine! There will be dimensions — in me, or in the world.”
Some very prominent people were on the list, but who would have suspected that they were returned people? Lee, Twitchell, Cramms, Rowell, Goodfoot, Munsey, Napier, Nash, Cabot, Bottoms, Miss Cora Addamson. Well, how does one go about killing leading people, those of a station above one? The etiquette of murder is incomplete. It may be that the intent and the act itself carry the basis of an introduction. There should be a certain fluidity of the rules, murder being partly a social and partly a business thing. There is need of a small rule book on the manners of it.
Lee was the first on the list and the first ticked off. Foley knew him on sight, knew where he lived, knew his shuffling figure now going back and forth in front of his own luxury apartment building. In fact, Lee seemed to be waiting for Foley or for the event. Foley killed him quickly, the first man he ever slew.
He shot him suddenly. A lady gasped nearby, and there were other sounds of shock in the street. But many things as rude were going on. Foley quickly rejoined his group.
On Constitution Avenue, one group of soldiers had scattered a gaggle of “students” and there was a little clatter of quick death on each side. Some very respectable fighting was going on around the circles and up and down Massachusetts and New York Avenues. “It is all for nothing, Freddy,” Miguel Fuentes was mocking. “This isn't the real thing. It is only little theatricals.”
“They want to turn the world into little theatricals,” Freddy said. “I want to make it real again.” Freddy went after Twitchell.
Twitchell had a permanent hotel suite right in the way and Fred Foley went boldly in. It was a red-eyed woman who answered and came to the door.
“I must see Mr. Twitchell at once,” Freddy said and began to push in.
“That will be quite impossible,” said the red-eyed lady. “Please go. I haven't time to explain.”
“Neither have I — I'll just come in. What I have to do will only take an instant.”
“No, no, God no! Not at a time like this.” The lady was suddenly strong, and Foley had pushed his way in only with great difficulty.
“Be quiet, lady,” he said. “My business will be brief and to the point, if my hand is steady.”
“My husband has no more business at all to transact. He is dead.”
“But can we be sure? I'll make sure, lady.”
“You monster! He has just died. How is it possible for one to be so heartless?” But Foley had forced his way into the inner room.
“He does look pretty dead. What was it?”
“One of the new diseases of today. He was tired and he lay down for a little. When I went to wake him just now he was dead.”
“There's no harm at all in making sure.”
“The doctor will make sure. He's on his way here now.”
“The doctors are going to be very overworked tonight. I'll make it easier for them. I'll leave no doubt that this man is dead.”
Mrs. Twitchell uttered a series of short little screams or yelps,
and Foley made sure that Twitchell was dead. “I bet I'm as good with the short knife as Boneface says that he is,” Freddy growled in a sort of sordid trance as he did it. The man bled hardly at all when Foley gave him the blade. It was as if the blood had been frozen. From this, and from other signs, Foley knew that the man had been suspended, not dead. But now he was dead.
Mrs. Twitchell was making such a fuss about it that Foley was glad to get out of there, back to his group and to the peace and quiet of the riotous streets.
Loras was explaining that he had not been able to kill Cramms, that Cramms was already dead when he got there. “Well, all right, so long as you made sure,” said Foley.
“Of course I made sure,” Loras stated. “It was a little embarrassing for me to do it, me a stranger with no proper explanation of myself, and his family all around him, but I made sure.”
“How?” asked Boneface.
“Why, I held a small mirror to his mouth. It wasn't clouded as it would be if he had the slightest breath. And he had no pulse or body warmth. He was dead.”
“No, let me,” said Boneface. “I'll make sure.” Boneface went up to kill Cramms, and Loras was puzzled. “But what other test will he use?” this peculiar Loras asked. It wasn't just that Loras was an alien. Beyond that, he seemed uncomprehending at times.
“Oh, he'll have a sure test,” Foley said. “I thought you understood the nature of the men we're combatting.”
“I begin to see,” Loras mused. “It's possible that he was not dead at all. That would fool anybody not in the secret, wouldn't it? But I haven't a lot of enthusiasm for this killing. I am terminating my relationship with this group.”
Loras didn't fully understand people. Or else he was faking; possibly he was no alien, but something else.
“You'll either kill or be killed,” Foley told him. “I'll leave no loose ends.”
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