Three-quarters of the other material in Case's file was also fictitious. One-third of this disinformation had been generated by Intelligence Agencies-domestic, foreign, and extraterrestrial-as covers or screens for their own activities in and around Dallas in 1963. Another third had been produced by sincere, dedicated, sometimes avid conspiracy buffs, weaving their own webs of confusion as they searched for the elusive truth. The last third had been created, like the Bonny Benedict item, by journalists following Hearst's advice about what to do when there was no news.
Anybody trying to find out "what really happened" from this collection of mythology would be so confused that the significant fact of the extraterrestrial intervention would never be apparent.
Case did not suspect any of this. He loved his J.F.K. file. He was convinced that someday the crucial piece would come to him, he would insert it into the file, and the whole jigsaw would make sense.
He never realized that the one detail which gave everything away was that while Oswald was firing from the sixth-floor window he was also having a Coke on the second floor and mingling with the crowd in the street.
Like most liberals, Justin Case lacked imagination and never took seriously all the evidence of extraterrestrial activity on earth during the past forty years.
Case was currently having an affair with the Hollywood actress Carol Christmas.
Carol was renowned among the heterosexual male population for having the biggest Brownmillers since Jayne Mansfield; so far only women and a few Gay men had noticed that she could also act.
Carol had been married four times. She had had three abortions. Like other famous Beauties, she was always dieting, and hence, a little bit high-strung. She was also a disciple of General E. A. Crowley, the eccentric English explorer who had discovered the North Pole and claimed there was a hole there leading down to the center of the Earth. Carol devoutly believed Crowley's yarn that there was a whole civilization down there, inside the Earth, run by green-skinned women.
Carol believed this because she had a great artistic faith in the principle of balance. In her probability continuum-in the series of quantum eigenstates that had crystalized into her universe-the whole outside of the planet seemed to be run by white-skinned males. It was only fair that the inside should be run by green-skinned females.
Carol was having three other affairs at the same time as her amour with Justin Case. There was a hairdresser in Hollywood (bi, not Gay) who was very talented at Bryanting and Briggsing-two arts at which totally straight men, in Carol's opinion, were usually a bit clumsy. There was also Fran9ois Loup-Garou, the painter, in Paris, who adored her madly, as only a painter can adore a woman. And there was a bitter but brilliant Black novelist in Chicago named Franklin Stuart.
Justin Case knew all about these other amours; after all, he read Bonny Benedict's column every day. Bonny kept the world informed about which celebrities were Potter Stewarting each other. She did this in a way that was perfectly clear to every reader but totally without any clear meaning in a court of law, in case somebody got irritated and tried to sue her. What she did was to write something like "Hollywood sexpot Carol Christmas and Black novelist Frank Stuart are an item these days."
Everybody knew what "an item" meant.
When Bonny wrote that a couple were "a hot item" many of her readers were mildly puzzled, but assumed she was insinuating some fantastic sexual acrobatics. Actually, it only meant that Bonny was trying to avoid stylistic monotony; occasionally, she even switched it to "a torrid item," which led to even more lascivious fantasies for some of her readers.
Justin Case didn't object to Carol Christmas's other affairs because he accepted it as a fact of life that actors are hypersexed, just as coal miners are prone to black lung disease and novelists to booze and weird drugs. Besides, jealousy was a sign of possessiveness, and possessiveness was illiberal. And, anyway-as he usually concluded his ruminations on this subject, during the infrequent moments when he thought of it at all-Carol's career kept them apart most of the time, and he was not so naive as to expect somebody of her youth and beauty to resist all temptations.
And it was the 1980s, wasn't it?
Actually, Case was a bit of an unconscious psychic-that is, he was aware of quantum probability waves, although not consciously. He sensed that there were approximately 1050 universes in which he had lusted after Carol and never got into her Frankel even once. That unconscious psychic knowledge kept him content with this universe, where he was her part-time lover.
Carol Christmas had starred in the first hard-core porn movie to win the Academy Award, Deep Mongolian Steinem Job. The film had been directed by Stanley Kubrick, after he read a satirical novel in which the author had imagined what would happen if Kubrick set out to make a serious and even artistic porn film.
Despite the success of Deep Mongolian Steinem Job, most humans still did not realize that all fantasies tend to become realities, in one universe or another.
Carol did realize it, however. She was currently involved in approximately 250,000,000 sex acts every hour.
REAL HOUSES, REAL OFFICES
The sensuous California sun hung low and sultry over San Francisco, turning everybody's mood in a low and sultry direction. It was a day when anything could happen. Cops helped old ladies across the street. Bankers gave loans to people who really needed them. A high school girl was heard to speak a sentence in English, without "ya know" before the predicate object.
And a mysterious hand scrawled "The enormous tragedy of the dream nor dashed a thousand kim" on the wall of the Van Ness Street entrance of Orgasm Research.
Dr. Frank Dashwood (dum dum de! Who's Zelenka?) arrived from another novel.
He turned into the Van Ness parking lot of ORGRE, executed a smart translation of his sleek MG into the RESERVED area, and saw the incomprehensible scrawl.
That damned Ezra Pound again. Why do I have to be haunted by a schizo with an obsession about Fernando Poo?
At nine-oh-one Dr. Dashwood passed through the solid oak door saying in gold letters:
FRANCIS DASHWOOD, M.D.
PRESIDENT
There was nothing urgent on the memo pad, so Dashwood began opening the incoming mail leisurely.
Dear Dr. Dashwood,
I am writing to you as a Sex Expert because I don't know where else to turn. I already wrote to Ann Lan-ders, but she just told me to take cold showers. My problem is that I am madly, hopelessly, passionately in love with Linda Lovelace. I've actually seen Deep Throat ninety-three times now and nothing can get her out of my mind. Other women leave me cold; I only want Linda, Linda, Linda. She has so much beauty and charm and sweetness and, my God, can she eat Rehnquist! I know this is hopeless because even though I've written a novel about Vlad the Impaler and made lots of money, I'm still very shy with women. (Some of them are extraterrestrials, I have discovered.) Why did God make such an unjust universe? Can you help me?
Dr. Dashwood frowned thoughtfully, then scrawled, 'Send this nut the see-a-psychiatrist letter." Dum de dum de dum de. Next!
Dr. Orgasm R. Institute
Frank Dashwood 666 Malaclypse San Francisco, Calif.
Dear Dr. Institute:
We are sending you this personalized letter because we know that a man like you, Dr. Institute, cares about his investments and wants to know the facts about Inflation.
Next! (And remember: look up that Zelenka.)
Dear Dr Dashwood,
I am a paraplegic and therefore I am incapable of normal coitus. My sweetheart and I, fortunately, have found that oral sex satisfies us fully-I Marshall her Frankel and then she gives me a Steinem Job. But this creates a terrible legal conundrum, since she lives across the Mississippi River in Iowa and I am a citizen of Illinois. Iowa has a very strict law against oral sex, which they classify as sodomy (due to a mistranslation of the Old Testament, I believe). Thus, we can't have sex in Iowa. Now, Illinois has had no anti-sodomy statutes since the 1960s, so you might think our problem can
be solved by having sex in Illinois. Unfortunately, she can't afford to quit her job in Iowa, and thus every time she travels across the river to have sex with me, she is crossing a state line, which makes me vulnerable under the Mann Act. Is there any possible solution to this legal double-bind?
Dr. Dashwood was intrigued. He began thinking of topological transformations, non-Euclidean geometries, Wheeler's wormholes in superspace… But then he realized he was Romanticizing, just because the puzzle had sparked his imagination. In ordinary four-dimensional Heisenberg space-time, there was no way out of the paradox: If the writer crossed the river, he and his lady were committing sodomy in Iowa, and if the lady crossed the river, they were violating the Mann Act in Illinois.
Logicians dream up such Strange Loops, Dashwood reflected, just to make games for other logicians; but lawyers create them to make more jobs for lawyers.
Dashwood scrawled, "Tell him his lady better damned well find a job in Illinois."
Next.
Dear Dr. Dashwood,
Once there was a man who was condemned to live on the moon. He knew the punishment was just, because he hated his father and such a sin deserves an extreme penalty. Nonetheless, his isolation was terrible and there were times when he thought his heart would break, just because he could never hear a human voice again.
Well, he made the best of his cruel situation. He began sending messages from the moon, telling everything he knew about life on earth-all the joys and agonies and struggles, "the horror and the boredom and the glory" of the long climb upward from the slime to higher and higher consciousness. The people back on earth loved these signals, which contained so much of life's drama, and they praised him extravagantly, and that gave him some comfort through the long years of his exile.
Once, however, he sat down and made a message about his own loneliness, telling how it feels to be separated from humanity by 250,000 miles of Dead Silence.
He called it the Hammerklavier Sonata.
Try to plot that on one of your graphs, you sizeist son-of-a-bitch.
Ezra Pound
Fair Play for Fernando Poo
Committee
The intercom buzzed.
"A man is here from the FBI," Miss Karrig said nervously.
Dr. Dashwood began doing pranayama immediately. "Send… him… in… right… away…"he said between deep breaths.
The agent, whose name was Tobias Knight, had a walrus mustache and a cheery eye; nobody ever looked less threatening. Dr. Dashwood still regarded him with a wary respect, as a large and dangerous mammal. This was the normal attitude since the 1983 Anti-Crime, Anti-Subversion Omnibus bill had entitled the Bureau to conduct random wiretapping on all citizens rather than just on known criminals and known subversives. ("If we only watch the already recognized enemies of society," the author of this bill-Senator Uriah Snoop-had argued, "who knows what hidden monkey business might be festering in dark places to rise up and stab us in the back like a snake in the grass?")
Knight was brisk and (seemingly) honest. A prominent scientist-Dr. G. W. C. Bridge-had disappeared and, since no kidnappers had demanded ransom and no evidence indicated that he had defected to Russia or China, the Bureau was investigating even the most tenuous leads. "Since you attended Miskatonic University in Massachusetts at the same time as Dr. Bridge, we're curious about anything even that far back which might shed light on why he'd want to vanish… if he did vanish voluntarily…"
Dr. Dashwood created an expression of puzzlement. "I hardly knew George," he said slowly. "He was just about the only Black student at Miskatonic, of course, and that made him um highly visible, but we never became friends…"
They beat around the bush for about ten minutes; then Dashwood shot abruptly from the hip. "I know who really was close to Washy," he said, looking inspired! "Pete Simon, the geologist. Why don't you get in touch with him? I think the last I heard he was with the government…"
Knight looked perfectly innocent. "Peter Simon," he said slowly, making a note. "Geologist."
But Dashwood knew: the agent was a shade too bland, too innocent. The Bureau was aware that Dr. Simon had vanished also. Maybe they were on the track of the whole Miskatonic Group.
Dr. Dashwood experienced a thrill of pure adrenaline. Ever since he had started Project Pan he had known this moment would come, and now that it was here he was handling himself impeccably.
Dum de dum de dum de dum dum.
Who's Zelenka?
THE CONTINENTAL OP
That which is forbidden is not allowed.
–john lilly, The Center of the Cyclone
Tobias Knight drove to an old Victorian frame house on Turk Street, where he and Special Agent Roy Ubu had set up temporary headquarters while working on the Dashwood side of the Brain Drain mystery.
Ubu, a smallish, heavily tanned man, was in the living room listening to wiretapped recordings of Dashwood's recent conversations.
"There's another bird mixed up in this," Ubu said. "Guy named Ezra Pound. Every time he calls Dashwood, they talk in some kind of code-'The temple is holy in boxcars boxcars boxcars' and gibberish like that."
But Knight became aware that there was another man in the room, slouched in an overstuffed chair in the corner. He was short, fat, and mean-looking; he had at least as much muscle as fat and was probably even tougher than he looked. Knight, who had been a professional investigator for thirty years, knew at once this man was a cop.
This is an art among professional detectives, and is known as "making" a subject. Knight would walk into a room and "make" everybody at once-as cop, crook, or Straight Citizen.
"This is Hrumph Rumph of the Continental Detective Agency," Ubu said. "It turns out he has an interest in this investigation too."
Knight was suddenly ill at ease; it was the first time in years he had failed to catch a subject's name first time around.
"Hi, Hrumph Rumph," he said, pretending to cough.
"A lot of strange things have gone on in this old house," said the Continental Op casually. Suddenly his voice turned cold: "But you're the strangest, Knight. You're the Illumi-nati's man in the FBI!"
The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees Celsius.
Knight laughed easily. "Now I know you," he said. "You're the most famous PI at Continental. You always throw people off guard with wild remarks like that."
Ubu was confused. "I thought Philip Marlowe invented the technique of starting a conversation with an insult or an accusation," he gasped, eyes aghast.
"Don't be a sap, Ubu," the Continental Op sneered. (He sneered very well, Knight noticed; he must have had a lot of practice.) "This guy is a wrong gee. He's not only spying on the FBI for the CIA but from what I hear he's also spying on both of you for the Bavarian Illuminati."
"All I'm hearing is a lot of wind," Knight said airily. "If you have something to say, say it."
"Don't try to snow me," the Continental Op said frostily. "I know all about you and the Illuminati, so don't think you can pull a fast one."
The Homing Pigeons 379
Ubu was stunned. "Why are we all talking like characters in a 1920s detective novel?" he injected pointedly.
"It's him," Knight grated metallically. "He brings that atmosphere with him."
"Go ahead and be a smart-ass," the Continental Op said mulishly. "But I've got my eye on you, Knight."
Tobias turned and addressed Ubu. "How did this galoot get mixed up in a government probe?" he asked saturninely.
"Professional courtesy," Ubu said graciously. "Continental is looking for one of the missing scientists, a jasper named Peter Simon. Mrs. Simon says she'd like to have him back, if anybody can find him."
"Peter Simon," Knight repeated stonily. "That's a funny coincidence-Dashwood mentioned his name not a half hour ago."
"That's more than a coincidence-it's a propinquity," Ubu said conspiratorially.
"Or a synchronicity," Knight added occultly.
"I don't give a flying Philadelphia Pott
er Stewart what you call it," the Continental Op said cockily. "It means something."
"Let's put a tail on Dr. Dashwood," Ubu growled, barking up the wrong tree.
"I'll get on that myself," Knight said chivalrously.
He rose to leave.
"Just a bloody minute," the Continental Op said sanguinely.
"Yes?" Knight paused.
"I'm coming too," the fat sleuth ejaculated.
Actually, Hrumph Rumph (or whatever the Continental Op's name was) was quite right about Tobias Knight.
Knight was the first pentuple agent in the history of espionage. He was simultaneously employed by the FBI, the CIA, the KGB, the Bavarian Illuminati, and a mysterious person who claimed to represent the Earth Monitoring section of Galactic H.Q.
He was not in this five-dimensional matrix of intrigue for the money, however. Tobias Knight was actually a frustrated sociologist and a would-be historian. He had the Scientific Spirit, or, as he might have stated in the vernacular, he wanted to know "what the hell was really going on." In an age of secret police machinations and conspiracies of all sorts, the only way he could hope to find out what was "really going on" was to be involved in as many clandestine operations as possible.
Knight knew what most people only vaguely suspected- that Intelligence Agencies engage in both the collection of valid signals (information) and the promiscuous dissemination of fake signals (disinformation). They collected the information so that they could form a fairly accurate picture of what was really going on; they spread the disinformation so that all their competitors would form grossly inaccurate pictures. They did this because they knew that whoever could find out what the hell was really going on possessed an advantage over those who were misinformed, confused, and disoriented.
This game had been invented by Joseph Fouche, who was the chief of the secret police under Napoleon. British Intelligence very quickly copied all of Fouche's tactics, and surpassed them, because an intelligent Englishman is always ten times as mad, in a methodical way, than any Frenchman. By the time of the First World War, Intelligence Agencies everywhere had created so much disinformation and confusion that no two historians ever were able to agree about why the war happened, and who double-crossed whom. They couldn't discover whether the war had been plotted or had just resulted from a series of blunders. They couldn't even decide whether the two conspiracies to assassinate Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary (which triggered the war) had been aware of each other.
SCHRODINGER'S CAT TRILOGY Page 30