"Team captains, team captains - will you please report to your tents."
Without much hope, Paul rattled the saloon doors, thinking he might be able to talk a floor sweeper inside into getting him a little something.
"I've just been informed," said the loudspeaker, "I've just been informed that the captain of the Blue Team is not in his tent. Doctor Paul Proteus; Doctor Paul . . ."
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Shah of Bratpuhr's golden turban hung unfurled like a roller towel in heaven from the hat rack in Miami Beach.
"Puka pala koko, puku ebo koko, nibo aki koko," said the Shah.
"What's the foreign gentleman after?" asked Homer Bigley, proprietor of the barber shop.
"He wants a little off the sides, a little off the back, and leave the top alone," mumbled Khashdrahr Miasma, under a steaming towel in the barber chair next to the Shah's.
Doctor Ewing J. Halyard was giving himself a ragged manicure with his teeth in one of the waiting chairs, while his charges received their first American haircuts. He smiled and nodded at whatever was being said, but heard nothing save the soft crackle of the letter in his breast pocket as he shifted nervously in a search for comfort no chair could give him. The letter, from the personnel officer of the State Department, had pursued him from New York to Utica to Niagara Falls to Camp Drum to Indianapolis to St. Louis to Fort Riley to Houston to Hollywood to the Grand Canyon to Carlsbad Caverns to Hanford to Chicago to Miami Beach, where he roosted long enough for the letter to catch him - catch him like a javelin, quivering squarely between the shoulder-blades of his spirit. He was lobster-red from a day on the sand, but beneath this stinging veneer of fine health and spirits he was cold and dead-white with fear. "My dear Mr. Halyard," it had begun. "My dear Mr. . . ."
While Halyard brooded, Homer Bigley, with the reflexes born of a life of barbering, selected his scissors, clicked them in air about the sacred head, and, as though his right hand were serviced by the same nerve as his diaphragm and voicebox, he began to cut hair and talk - talked to the uncomprehending Shah after the fashion of an extroverted embalmer chatting with a corpse.
"Yessir, picked a nice time to come. They call this the off-season, but I say it's the nicest time of year. Cheapest time, too. But that isn't what I meant. It's fifteen degrees cooler right here and now than it is in New York City, and I'll bet not one person in fifty up north knows that. Just because the fact hasn't been promoted. Everything's promotion. Ever stop to think about that? Everything you think you think because somebody promoted the ideas. Education - nothing but promotion.
"Good promotion and bad promotion. Barbers, now, they get a lot of bad promotion on account of cartoons and television comedians, you know? Can't pick up a magazine or turn on the television without you see a joke about a barber cutting somebody. And sure, maybe that's good for a little snicker, maybe, and God knows the world can use a few snickers, but I don't think it's right to hurt somebody to give somebody else a snicker. I mean that it all kind of cancels out, and nobody's ahead. And I just wonder if any of those comedians or cartoon people ever stop to think about the thousands of barbers who go from one year to the next without they ever cut a customer, and still these people go around telling everybody that barbers are slashing so many arteries and veins you wonder how the sewers can handle it all. But seems like nobody ever thinks about what's maybe sacred to somebody, any more.
"Matter of fact, of course, used to be barbers did bleed people, of course, and got paid for it, too. One of the oldest professions on earth, if you stop to think about it, but nobody does. Used to be sort of doctors, bleeding people and setting their bones and all, and then the doctors got sore and took over all that stuff and left the barbers haircutting and shaving. Very interesting history. But my father used to say, before he died, of course, that the barbers would be here long after the last doctor's laid away, and there was a lot in what he said. He was worth listening to.
"Nowadays, by golly, it takes more time and skill to cut hair'n to do what the doctors do. If you had syphilis or the clap or scarlet fever or yellow fever or pneumonia or cancer or something, why, hell, I could cure you while I was drawing the water for a shampoo. Take a little old needle, puncho! squirto! miracle! and give you a clean bill of health along with your change. Any barber could do what a doctor does nowadays. But I'll give you fifty dollars if you can show me a doctor who can cut hair.
"Now, they say barbering isn't a profession, but you take the other professions that got so big for their breeches since the Middle Ages and look down on barbering. You take medicine, you take the law. Machinery!
"Doctor doesn't use his head and education to figure out what's the matter with you. Machines go over you - measure this, measure that. Then he picks out the right miracle stuff, and the only reason he does is on account of the machines tell him that's what to do. And the lawyers! Of course, I say it's a pretty good thing what happened to them, because it was a bad thing for them, which couldn't help to be a good thing for everybody else. I didn't say that. My father said it. Those are his words. But the law's the law now, and not a contest between a lot of men paid to grin and lie and yell and finagle for whatever somebody wanted them to grin and lie and yell and finagle about. By golly, the lie detectors know who's lying and who's telling the truth, and those old card machines know how the law runs on whatever the case is about, and they can find out a helluva sight quicker'n you can say habeas corpus what judges did about cases like that before. And that settles it. No more of this fast footwork. Hell, if I had a lie detector and card machines and all, I could run a law business here and fix you up with a divorce or a million dollar damage suit or whatever you needed whatsoever while you were sticking your feet and a dime into that shoeshine machine.
"Used to be sort of high and mighty, sort of priests, those doctors and lawyers and all, but they're beginning to look more and more like mechanics. Dentists are holding up pretty good, though. They're the exception that proves the rule, I say. And barbering - one of the oldest professions on earth, incidentally - has held up better than all the rest. Machines separated the men from the boys, you might say.
"The men from the boys - that's what they used to say in the Army, Sergeant Elm Wheeler would. Memphis boy. 'Here we go, boys,' he'd say. 'Here's where we separate the men from the boys.' And off we'd go for the next hill, and the medics'd follow and separate the dead from the wounded. And then Wheeler'd say, 'Here we go, here's where we separate the men from the boys.' And that went on till we got separated from our battalion and Wheeler got his head separated from his shoulders.
"But you know, terrible as that mess was - not just Wheeler, but the whole war - it brought out the greatness in the American people. There's something about war that brings out greatness. I hate to say that, but it's true. Of course, maybe that's because you can get great so quick in a war. Just one damn fool thing for a couple of seconds, and you're great. I could be the greatest barber in the world, and maybe I am, but I'd have to prove it with a lifetime of great haircutting, and then nobody'd notice. That's just the way peacetime things are, you know?
"But Elm Wheeler, you couldn't help but notice him when he went hog-wild after he got a letter from his wife saying she'd had a baby, and he hadn't seen her for two years. Why, he read that and ran up to a machine-gun nest and shot and hand-grenaded everybody in it something awful, then he ran up to another one and mashed up all the people there with his rifle butt, and then, after he'd busted that, he started after a mortar emplacement with a rock in each hand, and they got him with a shell fragment. You could of paid a surgeon a thousand dollars, and he couldn't of done a nicer job. Well, Elm Wheeler got the Congressional Medal for that, and they laid it in his coffin with him. Just laid it there. Couldn't hang it around his neck, and if they'd put it on his chest, I expect they'd of had to use solder, he was so full of lead and scrap iron.
"But he was great, and nobody'd argue about that, but do you think he could of been great today, in this moder
n day and age? Wheeler? Elm Wheeler? You know what he would be today? A Reek and Wreck, that's all. The war made him, and this life would of killed him.
"And another nice thing about war - not that anything about war is nice, I guess - is that while it's going on and you're in it, you never worry about doing the right thing. See? Up there, fighting and all, you couldn't be righter. You could of been a heller at home and made a lot of people unhappy and all, and been a dumb, mean bastard, but you're king over there - king to everybody, and especially to yourself. This above all, be true to yourself, and you can't be false to anybody else, and that's it - in a hole, being shot at and shooting back.
"These kids in the Army now, that's just a place to keep 'em off the streets and out of trouble, because there isn't anything else to do with them. And the only chance they'll ever get to be anybody is if there's a war. That's the only chance in the world they got of showing anybody they lived and died, and for something, by God.
"Used to be there was a lot of damn fool things a dumb bastard could do to be great, but the machines fixed that. You know, used to be you could go to sea on a big clipper ship or a fishing ship and be a big hero in a storm. Or maybe you could be a pioneer and go out west and lead the people and make trails and chase away Indians and all that. Or you could be a cowboy, or all kinds of dangerous things, and still be a dumb bastard.
"Now the machines take all the dangerous jobs, and the dumb bastards just get tucked away in big bunches of prefabs that look like the end of a game of Monopoly, or in barracks, and there's nothing for them to do but set there and kind of hope for a big fire where maybe they can run into a burning building in front of everybody and run out with a baby in their arms. Or maybe hope - though they don't say so out loud because the last one was so terrible - for another war. Course, there isn't going to be another one.
"And, oh, I guess machines have made things a lot better. I'd be a fool to say they haven't, though there's plenty who say they haven't, and I can see what they mean, all right. It does seem like the machines took all the good jobs, where a man could be true to hisself and false to nobody else, and left all the silly ones. And I guess I'm just about the end of a race, standing here on my own two feet.
"And I'm lucky barbering held out as long as it did - long enough to take care of me. And I'm glad I don't have any kids. That way it comes out even, and I don't have to think about this shop not being here for them, about nothing being for them but the Army or the Reeks and Wrecks, probably - unless an engineer or manager or research man or bureaucrat got at my wife, and the kids had their brains instead of mine. But Clara'd let one of those jerks at her just about as quick as you could stuff a pound of oleomargarine up a cat's ass with a hot awl.
"Anyway, I hope they keep those barber machines out of Miami Beach for another two years, and then I'll be ready to retire and the hell with them. They had the man who invented the damn things on television the other night, and turns out he's a barber hisself. Said he kept worrying and worrying about somebody was going to invent a haircutting machine that'd put him out of business. And he'd have nightmares about it, and when he'd wake up from them, he'd tell hisself all the reasons why they couldn't ever make a machine that'd do the job - you know, all the complicated motions a barber goes through. And then, in his next nightmare, he'd dream of a machine that did one of the jobs, like combing, and he'd see how it worked clear as a bell. And it was just a vicious circle. He'd dream. Then he'd tell hisself something the machine couldn't do. Then he'd dream of a machine, and he'd see just how a machine could do what he'd said it couldn't do. And on and on, until he'd dreamed up a whole machine that cut hair like nobody's business. And he sold his plans for a hundred thousand bucks and royalties, and I don't guess he has to worry about anything any more.
"Ever stop to think what a funny thing the human mind is? And there you are, sir, how's that look to you?"
"Sumklish," said the Shah, and he took a long drink from the flask Khashdrahr handed him. He studied himself soberly in the mirror Bigley held up for him. "Nibo bakula ni provo," he said at last.
"He likes it?" asked Bigley.
"He says it's nothing a turban won't cover," said Khashdrahr, whose haircut was also over. He called to Halyard. "Your turn, Doctor."
"Hmmm?" said Halyard absently, looking up from the letter. "Oh - no haircut for me. Think we ought to go back to the hotel for a rest, eh?" He glanced at the letter once more:
My dear Mr. Halyard:
We have just completed an audit of the personnel cards for our Department, checking the information coded on them against the facts.
During this audit, it was discovered that you failed to meet the physical-education requirements for a bachelor's degree from Cornell University, and that the degree was awarded you through a clerical oversight of this deficiency. I regret to inform you that you are, therefore, technically without a bachelor's degree, and, hence, technically ineligible for the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees which also appear on your record.
Since there are, as you know, severe penalties for willfully coding false information on personnel cards, we are obliged to advise you that you are officially without a college degree of any sort, and that you are transferred from staff to probationary status for a period of eight weeks, in which time you will return to Cornell and make up this deficiency.
Perhaps you can work this small chore into your itinerary, and give the Shah an opportunity to see a representative American institution of higher learning.
I have been in touch with Cornell about this mix-up, and they assure me that they will arrange for you to take the physical-education tests whenever you like. You will not have to take the course, but only the final examinations. These tests, I understand, are quite simple: swim six lengths of the swimming pool, do twenty pushups, fifteen chinnings, climb a rope, stand on your . . .
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
The moon was full over the Thousand Islands, and, on one of them at least, there were a thousand eyes to see it. The cream of the East and Middle West, engineeringwise and managerwise, was met in the amphitheater of the Meadows. It was the second night, the night of the keynote play and the bonfire. The stage in the center of the circling stone seats was hidden beneath a pair of steel quarter-spheres, which would presently open like the shells of a steamed quahog.
Kroner sat down next to Paul and laid his hand on Paul's knee. "Nice night, boy."
"Yessir."
"Think we've got a good team this year, Paul."
"Yessir. They look good." After one day of competition, the Blue Team did look good, good despite the large proportion of top - hence tired and old - executives in its ranks. That afternoon the Blues had knocked the captain of the Greens, Shepherd, out of the box after three innings. Shepherd, in his determination to win and his horror of losing, had blown up completely.
Paul, by contrast, had played heads-up ball all the way, effortlessly, laughingly, wholly out of character. In analyzing the magical quality of the afternoon during the cocktail hour, Paul realized what had happened: for the first time since he'd made up his mind to quit, he really hadn't given a damn about the system, about the Meadows, about intramural politics. He'd tried not to give a damn before, but he hadn't had much luck. Now, suddenly, as of the afternoon, he was his own man.
Paul was half tight, and pleased with himself. Everything was going to be just fine.
"The Old Man wants to start the meeting shortly after his plane lands," said Kroner, "so we'll have to leave whatever's going on."
"O.K.," said Paul. "Swell." Swell night, tangy air, and a drowsy sort of harmlessness over everything. Maybe he'd give notice tonight, if he felt like it. No hurry. "Fine."
"Everybody in their seats, please," said the loudspeaker. "Will everybody take their seats. The Program Committee has just informed me that we are eight minutes behind time, so will everybody take their seats."
Everybody did. The band, wearing summer tuxedos, struck up a medley of Meadows favorites. The music
faded. The quarter-spheres opened a trifle at the top, freeing a beam of light that shot through cigarette smoke to the deep-blue heavens. The music stopped, machinery underground grumbled, and the quarter-spheres sank into the earth, revealing:
An old man, with a white beard reaching to his waist, wearing a long white robe and golden sandals and a blue conical hat speckled with golden stars, sits atop an extraordinarily tall stepladder. He looks wise, just, and tired by responsibility. In one hand he holds a large dust cloth. Beside the ladder, and of the same height, is a slender pole. Another just like it stands across the stage. Between the two poles is a loop of wire, passing, like a clothesline, over pulleys fixed to the poles. Hanging from the wire are a series of metallic stars about two feet across. They are coated with fluorescent paint, so that a beam of invisible infrared light, playing on one star, then another, makes them come alive with dazzling color.
The old man, oblivious to the audience, contemplates the stars strung out before him, unhooks the star nearest to him, studies its surface, polishes a tarnished spot on it, shakes his head sadly, and lets the star fall. He looks down at the fallen star with regret, then at those still on the wire, then at the audience. He speaks.
OLD MAN. I am the Sky Manager. It is I who keep night skies shining brightly; I who, when a star's glory is tarnished beyond restoration, must take it from the firmament. Every hundred years I climb my ladder to keep the heavens bright. And now my time has come again.
(He pulls on the wire, bringing another star within reach. He removes the star and examines it.)
And this is a strange star to be shining in the modern heavens. And yet, a hundred years ago, when I last kept my vigil, it was proud and new, and only a few meteors, destroying themselves in a brilliant instant, shone more brightly than this. (He holds up the star, and the infrared light makes it glow brightly, bringing out the lettering which says, "Labor Unionism." He dusts it desultorily, shrugs, and lets it drop.) In brave company. (Looks down at scrap heap.) With stars named Rugged Individualism, Socialism, Free Enterprise, Communism, Fascism, and - (Leaves sentence unfinished, and sighs.)
Vonnegut, Kurt - Player Piano (v5.0) Page 20