“We’ve caught the bugger,” Lord Alpha-B. said to me. “Unfortunately we haven’t got our hands on the A-I-D. I’m going to put you in there with him until you tell us where you and the Commissioner have hidden it.” “Hidden it!” I cried. “For God’s sake — ”
But he had already pulled a switch, and that clutching claw of a chair shot me across the room. There was a blaze of light and the next thing I knew the field of Shocko was neutralized, and I was standing alongside the cot.
“You’ll have to sleep on the floor,” Barnum Fly said with a yawn.
It was typical of the man, I thought numbly. Slowly the wall was sliding into place. I could only see the professor’s head, and then it was gone. I groaned at the windowless and doorless box in which I was a prisoner.
“You’ll get used to it,” Barnum Fly said.
“Oh, God,” I said.
He stared at me. “Are you a member of the brotherhood?”
Only now did I become aware of the fact that I was still wearing my St. Ewagiow suit. I lifted up the end of my white necktie with its black coil of intestines design, and in a rage I pulled it off and threw it on the floor.
“You’re in bad condition, brother,” he said. “Listen, you can sleep on the cot if you want.”
I felt like crying. I felt like butting my head against the wall. Instead I reached into my pocket for my U-Latus. There were none. “Not even one damn pill left,” I sobbed with frustration.
“Will it make so much difference on the Day of Judgment?” he asked and stared up at some point above my head.
I looked at him with horror as he stared at his private radioactive visions. His St. Ewagiow sympathies had evidently affected his once brilliant brain. Then I remembered that all prisons were alike. This greatest of the magicientists, stripped of his honors, kidnapped by his enemy Dr. Bangani, was just another prisoner. A prisoner who had got religion — the religion of a death cult.
“Just one pill,” I muttered. “One little U-Latu.”
He dug his hand into his pocket and tossed me a box. I opened it gratefully but it was empty. “Damn!” I shouted.
“Eat it,” he said. “It’ll help you.”
I gulped down the box1 and after a few minutes I felt a wan smile come to my lips. “Thanks,” I said. “I never thought I’d thank you for anything, Barnum.”
“Thank Death the Redeemer,” he replied earnestly.
“I’m not a member of the St. Ewagiow and never want to be,” I said.
“Do you know who rides?” he asked.
I shrugged, and he continued. “The four horsemen. On the first horse is Death. On the second horse is Death. On the third horse — ”
“Is Death,” I said, with what might be called a cheerful horror. Here it was June 28th and where the A-I-D was, God alone knew. If the St. Ewagiow had hold of it, the Day of Judgment would soon dawn — and yet, as I mashed the pulp of that U-Latu box, I felt like smiling. A vision of two perfectly fitting angel wings drifted before me. They were mine, those pearly white wings, and all I had to do was attach them to my collarbones by their loop-over feathers, and when the A-I-D blew up the world’s store of A-Bombs, H-Bombs, C-Bombs, Dirty Bombs and Clean Bombs, ICBM’s, Anti-Missiles and Anti-Anti Missiles I would be off flying to the moon …
“Death has ruled the world since the first platypus crawled in the slime among the dinosaurs,” he exhorted me. “Where is Cheops the Magnificent? Where is Agalamah the Great? Alexander? Napoleon the World Conqueror? Hitler the Invincible?”
He went on for a long time. I remember laughing sleepily as I played with my own fantasties. Then the effects of the U-Latu box wore off, and I began to think he wasn’t so damned funny. It wasn’t long before the first chill of fear stabbed me. “Has Dr. Bangani got the A-I-D?” I asked him.
“Do you believe in Science?”
“I believe in life!” I said frantically. “Barnum, listen to me. You left the Reservation but some of it must remain in your heart. You’ve got children, your daughter Cleo — ”
“Science!” he shouted. “Always trying to prolong life. And the result? Man who used to live thirty-one years and four months now lives to a hundred. Don’t talk to me about Science, for who always wins in the end? Death the Invincible!”
Tears filled my eyes. Then I had an inspiration. “You’ve convinced me, brother. I would like to join the brotherhood.” He kissed me on both cheeks. “Hallelujah, brother.”
“Hallelujah,” I said with only the trace of a sob.
“I’ll initiate you, brother. Assume the sacred position.”
“What’s that, brother?”
“Lie flat on the cot.”
I did as he ordered while he yelped his hallelujahs. “Close your eyes, brother, and try to keep from breathing. That is, keep your breathing to a minimum. Low and quiet. Low and quiet. Don’t carry it to an extreme or you’ll pass out. Ready, brother?”
“Ready,” I said from the cot in the quietest dead-man’s voice I could manage.
“Where is Cheops the Magnificent, Agalamah the Great, Alexander, Napoleon the World Conqueror, Hitler the Invincible? Nowhere and everywhere brother!” he chanted.
The ceremony continued for five minutes and then he pronounced me a full member in good standing of the St. Ewagiow. I waited another few minutes, and then I said, “Brother, now that we’re brothers do you think we should have any secrets between us?”
“With death between us what use are secrets, brother?”
“Speaking of death, will we all die on the 4th?”
“Let’s hope so, brother.”
“Has Dr. Bangani got the A-I-D, brother?”
“No. Only Brother Fly knows where the A-I-D is, brother.”
I stared at him, and he whispered. “I am not Barnum Fly, brother.” He actually smiled at my astonished expression, a ghastly St. Ewagiow type of smile. “My name’s Bowling, brother. Milton Berle1 Bowling.”
I examined that face of his — it was Barnum F.’s face — but a light was beginning to dawn. After all this was the land of Garden of Eden salons and hybridized scientists. “You’re a remake, brother?” I said.
He nodded. “That old Bangani is senile, brother. Brother Fly, the instrument of fulfillment is free, brother. Free! The A-I-D is safe, brother to destroy the world!”
“Thank God!” I said.
“Thank Death!” he said.
Hope, wonderful hope brought a smile to my lips — without U-Latus. There was still a chance. There were still six days left. Dr. Bangani had been taken in by a simple trick, outsmarted by his apprentice. I thought of Commissioner Sonata and his organization, and in my joy I grabbed Barnum’s double and began dancing around the cell with him. “Dear Milton — You are Milton, aren’t you? Thank God!”
“Thank Death I am!” he raved. “Brother Fly is free to destroy the world, hallelujah! Hallelujah for the A-I-D. Hallelujah for science the servant of Death!”
“Three hallelujahs for Death!” I yelled happily. “And three more for the dust from which we’ve come and the dust to which we’ll return. Oh, the glorious victorious dust of salvation, decimation and extermination!”
He stopped dancing and said. “R. Night Bauden himself would have been proud of that. Brother, I don’t say this lightly, but although we’ve just met, I would say you have a future ahead of you in the brotherhood.”
That fanatic was poor company. He had only one subject and a dead one at that — to joke grimly. It was a relief when the wall slid into the floor by the now familiar flash. I looked out at the professor and Dr. Bangani or Lord Alpha-B. for he was still wearing those Scotch kilts. I signaled that I wanted to talk. They consulted together, and then I was whirled out of the cell via the by-now-familiar clutching claw of a chair.
“You’ve got the wrong man!” I said excitedly. “He’s not Barnum Fly. You’ve got an imposter — ”
They seemed totally uninterested. The professor put his hand into his coat and pulled out a hypoder
mic. I tried to escape from that chair but it held me like glue. “Listen to me for God’s sake!” I yelled.
“You killed the last two, Professor Fleischkopf,” Lord Alpha-B. reminded his hybrid.
“I’ve perfected it now, master. NA+NO7=H2 SO9R. It can’t go wrong.” He walked to me and I began to scream. “It won’t harm you,” he said gently. “It’s perfect now. All it is, is a little truth serum. Truth is a hobby of mine,” he explained as I cringed from him. “I’ve always believed that truth is an enzyme that can be detected chemically.”
“You madmen!” I screamed. “You’ll end up by killing everybody! There are only six days left, you madmen — ”
“Who is mad, and who is sane?” the professor asked and sighed philosophically. “A problem for the neuro-craniologists. Not my discipline, I confess. I am a bio-physicist, and my research into the nature of truth is somewhat out of my field — ”
“You can’t play games forever!” I shouted. “You haven’t got Barnum Fly!”
“This serum won’t hurt you. If you’re telling the truth, the air you breathe out will be colorless.”
“And if he is lying?” Lord Alpha-B. asked with a cold scientific curiosity.
“If he’s lying he’ll exhale a color somewhere between yellow and saffron depending on his rate of respiration. The SO9 you know.”
I was silent. I was trying to think of some argument that might appeal to those cultivated and scientific schizoids. But all I could think of was how much better off I would have been in the hands of genuine madmen. This Professor Fleischkopf of the cauterized conscience who was also Fleischy — and Dr. Bangani who numbered Merlin, Amen-Khat-Re, Einstein and Lord Rutherford among his ancestors! Two split personalities without even a split heart between them. That was the terrible truth.
“It won’t hurt you,” the professor said. I tried to defend myself from his hypodermic but that chair had me trapped. He darted the point into my wrist, stepped back and smiled. “Now we can begin. Who are you?”
“You madmen!” I shouted.
Lord Alpha-B. scolded me. “What kind of childish attitude is that? Come, your name.”
“You know who I am. Crockett Smith!” I muttered. “Listen to me.”
How shall I describe my emotions when blowing out of my nostrils I saw a yellowish mist that proved I was lying? “I’m Crockett Smith!” I repeated and the yellow mist thickened. There before my eyes was the circumstantial evidence that even a pair of lungs couldn’t be trusted. My own lungs! I cursed and struggled and in my fury managed to free one hand from the hold of that chair. “I’m Crockett Smith!” I shouted and still that yellow mist persisted. I clapped my hand over my mouth and that treacherous stuff filtered through.
“Isn’t it childish to contradict the logic of Science?” Lord Alpha-B. asked me.
“Damn your science! I’m Crockett Smith and no one else!” And there was that damned yellow gas again. This time I didn’t protest for a new thought had paralyzed me. THE TRUTH SERUM WASN’T LYING. Maybe I’d once been a man named Crockett Smith, but hadn’t I left the Reservation? Hadn’t I eaten U-Latus and drunk opgin and associated with people like Commissioner Sonata? And made love to a two-in-one, police agent-writer who was also the double of my wife? And had an affair with an Atomic Park attendant, the thrill addict silver corder Cleo F.? Who knew? Perhaps the personality I had grown up with and that I’d known as Crockett Smith belonged to the past.
“Damn the Funhouse!” I cursed heartbrokenly. “Damn you all! I’m not myself any more, I’m nobody, another split man!”
And the truth serum let this pass uncensored. “Ah,” Lord Alpha-B. said.
“Very interesting,” the professor said. “And now will you tell us about Barnum Fly?”
“You haven’t got him!” I said and there was no yellow mist. Suddenly my despair was gone. “You’ve been tricked!”
Lord Alpha-B. gnashed his teeth. “That brain thief!” he said. “Always tricking me. I ought to retire! I’m too old!” He paced up and down, his old bald head lowered, swearing he would retire. “That brain thief! It was my theoretical paper on the relativity of pleasure, my concept of the large and the small that he stole to create Atomic Amusement Park!”
He stopped in front of me, his eyes burning. “Release him,” he said to the professor. “I must think, think. But what will I think with? This poor tired cerebrum.” He clapped his hand to his forehead. “This ravelled knot, this weary network of cells?”
They freed me from that chair and walked to the door. I called after them. The professor turned and frowned. “The master wishes to be alone. Make yourself at home, my friend. One word of advice. Keep out of any room marked Experimental. And if you see any automatons, ignore them!”
The door closed. I stared at the machine in the center of the room and at the tubular-jointed chair, and then I rushed out. “Wait!” I shouted at the giant professor and the hunched old magicientist in his cape.
“The master wishes to be alone!” the professor shouted and taking out his hypodermic he squirted some of the truth serum. A yellow cloud filled the corridor and when it cleared they were gone.
I could have used a U-Latu. My head was reeling. You’re a prisoner in this damned castle, I thought.
It was so quiet in that corridor. I glanced at the formulas and equations on the walls and shivered. I wondered if I should return to the ancestor room. Oh, God, I thought and began walking down the corridor. I passed the door of the room where I had been, the TIME STREAM room. Beyond it was a door with the warning EXPERIMENTAL-SPACE TRAVEL, and another door EXPERIMENTAL — LILLIPUTIANS. I hesitated — yes, I admit it honestly — before a door with the legend: CASTLES IN SPAIN.
I simply didn’t want to think about the A-I-D. And when I came to a door whose sign read SEX LABORATORY, on the impulse, a very human impulse, I went inside. There was a large central room, with two doors leading to the labs, both of them carrying EXPERIMENTAL signs. The walls were lined with books, a big desk stood in the middle, and a smaller desk off to the side. As I stood there gaping and hardly breathing, one of the EXPERIMENTAL doors opened and an automaton whirred over to the small desk where it seated itself. The typical headless automaton so common among them — a white cylinder, this one, with a dozen or so protruding white rods that began picking up paper after paper from the desk, registering the information in its interior. For as it examined the papers, tabulating lights gleamed in its white middle.
“Excuse me,” I said.
It paid no attention to me and I sighed with relief. I went over to the books and read some of the titles. THE NORMALCY OF SEXUAL ABERRATIONS; LESBIANISM, A WAY OF LIFE; COPULATION AMONG THE INVERTEBRATES OR A GUIDE TO HUMAN BEHAVIOR. I glanced at the busy automaton and inched over to the big desk, and before I realized what I was doing I picked up a sheet of paper scrawled with notes. The first line I have never forgotten: Why can’t human beings love like animals?
I read through the notes which projected an Amatory Zoo. One part of this zoo would be a two-hundred-foot-in-diameter imitation of the eye of a deer. By utilizing refractions and a hypnotic system described tersely as ‘cortex-hypnotism’, people entering it would imagine themselves to be stags and does. Another part was a salt-water maze to be contained inside the framework of a whale. The theory here was too abstruse for me to understand but it depended upon the recapitualition of the embryo and a return to the ocean-stage of development.
It was fascinating reading. Then I came to a sheet of notes on top of which was scrawled another memorable line: The act of love utilizing one of THE FIVE SENSES. It outlined a house of love divided into five sensory floors. On the first floor, lovers would be reduced to the sense of hearing. And Dr. Bangani — I guessed it was his handwriting — had scribbled: Today at the Aviation Aviary in Greater Los Angeles, people in helicopters are steering like bats solely through their sense of hearing. To make love with only this sense functioning. How charming!
I was reading about the se
cond floor where the lovers would be reduced to the sense of smell when I heard a woman’s voice. At first I thought it was the automaton. But then I realized the voice was coming from behind one of the doors marked EXPERIMENTAL. Again the voice sounded, half groan and half yawn. My heart jumped and I edged over to the door and underneath the warning EXPERIMENTAL, I read two scribbled words in the same handwriting as in the notes: Sleeping Beauties.
The professor had warned me. Yes, he had warned me, but when I thought of my own experiences in this laboratory-castle of Lord Alpha-B. — my two days of unconsciousness in his ancestor room, the truth serum, and that clutching claw of a chair — I just didn’t have the heart, the human heart to resist. Or the human curiosity.
I pushed the door open by the width of a crack, all the time watching the automaton. That inhuman thing was utterly absorbed in its work. The woman in EXPERIMENTAL had become silent. But when I touched the door again she whispered. “Help me!” No longer hesitating, I went inside, shutting the door behind me.
On a huge bed was a huge woman. An Amazon in size, at least seven feet tall, a beautiful Amazon with long black hair that reached to her waist. She was wearing a silky white garment that I had only seen before in my childhood fairy tales. It draped her body like a nightgown but it wasn’t a nightgown, made of some rich heavy cloth, an antique golden belt around her waist. I felt as if I had entered the Time Stream again, as if I had stepped into a far away past. The room was like a stone cell in a dungeon. But the bed with its carved head and footboards, covered with a canopy of gold, was fit for a princess. A princess, I thought my heart beating wildly. A real princess….
She had lifted her head, staring at me with large black wet eyes. I had never seen eyes so tearful and yet so happy. Only her head had moved, and I noticed now how still she lay, her arms rigid at her sides, her legs unmoving. “Help me,” she whispered.
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