by R. M. Koster
The US government’s best guess had him still holed up in the wilds of Nezona, but that theory was about to crumble. His lawyers were waging a rear guard against the prosecutors. Barrage of quibbles, smoke screen of specious motions, Clung to each technicality till they were pried off, then withdrew to new positions in higher courts. But few courts were left. Soon a marshal would set out, would board a plane for Draco, the state capital. Soon he’d guide his rented car into the hills, arrive at Dred’s redoubt armed with court orders. To open the steel gates and leash the Dobermans, deactivate the laser beams and minefields, but he’d serve his papers on a cleverly wrought dummy, a dead ringer for Dred as last seen in public back in the Fifties. And the robot would accept them gracefully, would smile and say, “No one’s above the law. Above the law, above the law, above the law,” then thumb its nose and wrench its plastic head off, exposing a tangle of multicolored wires.
The former security officer of Mandeville Pathogenics himself the quarry of an alphabet of government agencies, prowled the network airways with the tale that Dred was a captive at his hotel in Zeno, Arizada. Ol’ Dred, the story went, had been gobbling pills so long his brain was like cornmeal mush. A bunch of young aides had taken over and were manipulating the senile freak on orders from the A-rabs and the Chinks. The ex-executive may even have believed his own twaddle—there was a dummy Dred in Zeno too—but he was no closer to Dred’s whereabouts than the government. Guesses sped after Mandeville but never reached him. He was cruising two hundred fathoms down, beneath the long swells of the South Atlantic.
Mandragon knew. I saw it. USS Scorpion, lost with all hands, supposedly, off the Azores in 1968. Slid bulletsmooth through the deep-ocean gloom. Pale whisps of phosphorescence trailed her diving plane. Clung to her dorsal sail and whirled in vortex haloes round her screw. Inside no engine racket, no vibration. Hiss-hum-whirr of fans blowing scrubbed air through the compartments. Pop of circuit breakers, peptic gurgle of hydraulic lines, slow creak of hull. In the companionways the veinous twilight of red bulbs. In the control room the green glimmer of dials, the blush of a lone lamp at the chart table. Behind it, on a high stool, a man in pale-blue coveralls, the top of his rump against the lowered periscope, his head and shoulders bent over calipers, No way to tell he was a man and not a robot. Simply knew it, though more like a robot from his slack features and the socket implanted back of his left car.
Another like him sat facing the portside panel, fingered the levers without moving them, studied the green dials. Two more reclined farther forward in bucket seats, behind airplane-style control columns. Hands in their laps, faces empty of expression. Stared up at a panel of sweep indicators: speed in knots and speed in engine capacity; stern plane and bow plane, rise and dive, gyro and rudder. The sweeps nudged right and left, down and up, as the control wheels inched clockwise and counterclockwise, forward and back, on autopilot. And opposite these two, on the starboard side of the boat, another robot-man sat peering into the sonar scope.
Forward of the control center was the radio room. Aft of the periscope was the guidance system, three gyrocompasses suspended from the ceiling in ash-can-like grey plastic cylinders, each independent yet interconnected, each checking itself constantly against the others, and all three linked to a computer that printed out continuous report of the boat’s position. The gyros were oriented to the center of the earth. Earth’s core, not anything in heaven, was the boat’s lodestar.
One deck down a compartment stretched from the bulkhead forward of the radio room to the bulkhead aft of the guidance system. Forty form-fitting couches, twenty on each side, set perpendicular to the boat’s keel. On each a supine man in pale-blue coveralls, at each man’s head a cord running out from the wall and plugged into the socket back of his ear. Those on the starboard side lay with their eyes closed and their bodies motionless, breathing in the slow rhythm of deep slumber. Those on the portside couches stared blindly up at the red-tinged ceiling, their faces twisted in moronic grins, their bodies writhing slowly, their throats emitting low moans of delight. Hidden fans whirred sibilantly, pushing scrubbed air forward through the compartment.
The men on the portside couches grow suddenly calm. Grins lade, moans cease, limbs droop. Eyes close, they plummet to slumber. Those on the starboard couches wake. Unplug and let the cords wind to the wall. Rise and file forward through the oval door in the bulkhead,
They descend a ladder one deck and go aft to a communal lavatory. They strip their coveralls and drop them in a hamper. In groups of five they use the showers, the toilets and washbasins, the bank of electric razors. They take towels from a stock and dry themselves. They take clean coveralls from a stock and dress. They neither speak nor look at one another. They neither smile nor frown. They file aft along a short companionway into the galley. They eat in silence, their hands and jaws working deliberately.
The fresh watch leave the galley and go off about the boat. To the control room, to the reactor and engine rooms. To the filtration plant, where the boat’s air is scrubbed of impurities and enriched with oxygen extracted from sea water. To other stations, relieving the men on duty. And these scuttle, quickly and silently as rats, to the compartment on B Deck, and throw themselves down on the empty couches, and snatch the cords from the wall and plug them in. Fall back grinning moronically, writhing slowly, moaning in joy.
Forward, at the round prow, Dred Mandeville was working. Gaunt frame draped in a contoured couch-chair, which he could turn by a button on the armrest, Crimson eyes staring up at a bank of TV screens, which he could program from a calculator keyboard. Screens spangled with data on his holdings, on the world’s economy, and by a touch he could summon any information he required. From time to time he raised a microphone to his lips and dictated a memo, then swung the, couch toward another bank of screens.
Soon night would cloak the surface far above him. The boat would swim up to a depth of a few fathoms. To gather in coded bursts of signal, bounced off the sky from transmitters on Mount Vervex, and freshen the data in the computer that fed the screens. In the darkest hour an antenna mast would rise. Dred’s memos would flash out to his empire. But neither periscope nor sail ever broke, the waves.
No agency or court could touch Dred there. No light but the pallor of his screens could reach him. Yet his power, all he cared for, was undiminished. The long midsection of the boat was packed with stores. Spare cores for the reactor were aboard. The crew would go surely and silently about their tasks till death claimed them. Twice a day, as soon as he came off watch, each man got his pay: four hours of electronic tickling in the pleasure center of his brain. Nothing could match it, no joy on earth or in any prophet’s heaven. No man who’d tasted it would give it up. Theirs for as long as they served loyally. Long ago they’d forgotten their homes and loved ones, the tepid rewards of human life. Slept without dreaming, worked the boat like robots. Dwelt in paradise four hours in every twelve, with bliss and glory plugged into their mortal brains, Dred might cruise on for years, invisible, invulnerable, potent.
Expected to be down only five months. Sent Angela to Alejo in November, and in January went on board his kidnapped sub. Dropped beneath the surface of the sea, and by then Alejo had returned to Tinieblas and was running for president. Elected by landslide. Took office on June 1, and in a week or so he’d be ready to receive Dred Mandeville, and give him an extradition-proof refuge.
So on June 8, when Amichevole’s Universal Circus arrived in Ciudad Tinieblas, Dred Mandeville was headed this way too. In the Brazil Basin off Recife. Two hundred fathoms down. Sharking north-northwest toward the equator.
19
The circus wasn’t much different from seven years before, when the power living in me made itself manifest. Gili-Gili was gone, of course. And so, in a sense, was Aristo the wire-walker. Never got over his terrifying “fall” to the tent roof, his upside-down roach-scramble across the ceiling. Took to the bottle, and in six months could scarcely walk solid ground, much less a swaying ha
lf-inch cable. Don Lorenzo let him stay on, gave him a paper-work job and overlooked the way he botched it, indulged his drinking. Not from any sudden attack of human decency or Christian love. Aristo was primed to slither into the geek cage when Chancaca died.
Which happened one pleasant evening in La Guira, about three years after I stopped freaking. Chancaca had just drained his after-show pint, was sprawled in Imelda’s horse van. Bare, rachitic chest smeared with damp feathers, shoulders cushioned on a manure mound. When he felt death seize his lower body, knew the bottle he’d just emptied was his last. Tranced his epiphany myself, broke in on me while I was getting out of costume-deathtug, and he began gibbering in his Andean language. Too weak to pry the crabclaws from his loins, but then it seemed to him the muddy lot beyond the tailgate was a pool of shimmering celestial booze, limpid lagoon of solace glimmered in starlight. His heart, swollen with so much grief and joy, burst smilingly.
The whole circus was touched by his passing. Even Don Lorenzo, when he found out that despite all the priming, Aristo wasn’t half the geek Chancaca had been.
On the other hand, Rebozo was twice the clown. Bebe was still alive, at the great age of sixteen, but had entered an honorable semi-retirement. The ducks, trained patiently for years, could sing “The Beautiful Blue Danube.”
(Rebozo—bedraggled frock coat, winged collar, gigantic wig—leads his artists gravely into the ring. Rolling breakers of applause and cheers. Turns, sweeping his arm, as they waddle past him and flutter up onto a round dais. Bows deeply—once, twice, thrice—to the audience: more applause, then faces the ducks and draws a baton from the breast of his coat. Flourishes it in air, right hand six inches northeast of his temple, left hand clasping his paunch; now sweeps it slowly in a reclining figure 8: left and over, right and over, left):
1st DUCK Quaaaaaah; quaaaaaah; quaaaaaah; quaaa.
2nd DUCK (at Rebozo’s cue, poked with a slightly bent left forefinger) Qua qua, qua qua.
1st DUCK (as Rebozo’s bacon sways up-down-left, up-downright) Qua-quaaa quaaa quaaa quaaa.
2nd DUCK (cued by Rebozo’s forefinger) Qua qua, qua qua.
1st DUCK Qua-quaaa quaaa quaaa quaaa.
2nd DUCK Qua qua, qua qua.
1st DUCK (swaying its head, following the raised pinky on Rebozo’s bacon hand) Qua-quaaa quaaa quaaa quaaa.
2nd DUCK (its bill nodding in recoil from the poked finger) Qua qua, qua qua.
1st DUCK (as Rebozo’s baton circles twice, then stabs roofward) Qua-quaaa quaaa quaaa QUAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!
2nd DUCK (with 1st duck holding its quack, bacon aloft and vibrating, forefinger poking in cue) Qua qua, qua qua.
1st DUCK (as baton plunges, circles, stabs straight up and vibrates) Qua-quaaa quaaa quaaa QUAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!
2nd DUCK (while 1st duck holds) Qua qua, qua qua.
1st & 2nd DUCKS (while Rebozo sweeps baton and empty hand in concert, first slowly, then accelerating into frenzy; while his head and shoulders sway with the ducks’ singing, and with the lilting strains of an invisible hundred-and-twenty-piece symphony orchestra ranged on invisible platforms behind them; while he lifts his paste-caked face toward the tent roof, closed eyelids fluttering in esthetic bliss) Quaaa, quaaa, quaaa, quaaa,
QUAAA!
Qua-qua-QUAAAAAI
Qua-qua-QUA, qua-QUA,
qua-QUAAAAAAAAAAACK!
(Reboscanini brings both hands crashing down, snuffing the final note. Instant of silence, then stands motionless as applause cascades onto his shoulders and cheers foam up about his head. Straightens and slowly crosses his wrists over his breast so that the tip of his baton is six inches northwest of his left temple. Lifts his face and turns, spreads his arms slowly to embrace the shouts of “Bravo!” Finally he bows, so deeply that the mop-strands of his wig brush on the sawdust. Then he comes erect, half-turns, steps backward. Holds palms toward his artists and bows to them. They flap their wings in modest acknowledgment, briefly bob their bills. And ancient Bebe plods into the ring, bearing in her jaws a bouquet of gardenias, which she lays respectfully on the dais.)
The ducks quack-quacked to the delight of crowds throughout Central America and the Caribbean, brought so much joy into the world even Rebozo was tainted with it. The integrity of his despair was blemished. Suffered intermittent mild attacks of happiness, was liable to break out in smiles from time to time. And his dreams, which I continued to visit, were often blotched and mottled with good cheer.
With love even. Sometimes his dreams replayed the days when Angela pretended to love him, and then they were stained through with love. I first came to know love in Rebozo’s dreams.
As for me, I wasn’t happy, but I too surpassed myself entertaining people. My trances came with fearful frequency, so that I’d scarcely recovered from one when the next hit. Slept poorly, couldn’t digest my food, was prey again to the strange sense of foreboding that possessed me before my initiation. But onstage the power in me poured out wonders. Shows so consistently spectacular that my partitioned area in the Rotunda couldn’t hold my audiences. And Don Lorenzo resolved to put me in the main tent, make me a headliner.
Here in Ciudad Tinieblas. This was the spot for me to make my starring debut. Had never forgotten the miracles of ’63. Most receptive stop on our whole tour, so Don Lorenzo expected to make a killing.
It began well enough. Alejo Sancudo had taken office one week before we opened here. Mood of hope and optimism in the city, sense of good times ahead that makes folks freer with their cash, eager to spend it on amusements. Capacity crowd, even at boosted prices. Delirious with glee at Rebozo and ducks. Gave them five minutes of applause and cheers, demanded encores, and laughter still rippling through the stands when Don Lorenzo announced El Mago Mandragon.
Who hadn’t an inkling what my power would pull. Jittery, bubbles in my gut and my right check twitching, but had the God-will-provide spirit of religious beggars. Knew power lived in me and trusted it. Hard to believe now, but impossible to deny. And as I hesitated, there in the passageway between two sets of stands, it repaid my faith. Explosion without concussion, like a rifle crack: Don Lorenzo vanished, and I, Mandragon, was where he’d been standing, at center ring.
Spectate it now in my imagination. Replay it, witness it like one of the crowd. A lot healthier for my mind to chew on than my show in the morning. The whole audience breathed in, an audible wheeze. Don Lorenzo, translated to the top of the stands beside the bandmaster, maybe had time to wonder if there’d be talking animals or reversed gravity or what. But even before Mandragon the Mage could acknowledge the applause that rolled down in welcome, I reeled as though punched, then stood with head to one side and arms flung outward, eyeballs swung up in their sockets so only the whites showed. There was silence in the tent about the space of half a minute. Then Mandragon began to speak.
In a high monotone, empty of expression, full of authority. That reached clearly to the farthest spectator. And with the first words, a pale-blue aura began to bloom from Mandragon’s forehead, swelled steadily in size and brilliance till it filled the whole tent, elliptical globe of frigid flickering light. So unsettling, along with what the voice said, that people wept in anguish, yet no one could rise or close his eyes or look away, or lift his hands to press them to his cars. The voice spoke, the aura glowed, for about half an hour.
Began by prophesying the fall of Alejo. In itself not surprising: he’d been flushed from office three times before. But it went on to say the coup was set for that night, would take place within minutes, had already begun. It named the conspirators, a gang of obscure officers, whom many in the tent had never heard of, and as it named them, their images flickered in the aura that swelled from my forehead. It told how troops would seize the palace and other buildings, the assembly and the ministries, the TV and radio stations, the newspapers and the phone exchange. As it spoke, pictures of the event played in the globe. Soldiers hammering doors in with their rifle butts, herding people out into the street at bayonet point. The voic
e said who’d be arrested, and the aura showed them being taken. Some were in the tent, and would have liked to save themselves, or at least not to have to watch and listen, but none of them could move a muscle.
Terrifying in its strangeness. The trancing seer, the expressionless authoritative voice, the pale-blue globe with visions dancing in it. But these first prophecies didn’t in themselves disturb many spectators. Tinieblans were used to abrupt shifts of government. Found them diverting, since they rarely brought much trouble, except to those tossed out of jobs. Alejo had never lasted a full term. Many who’d rejoiced the week before at his inauguration were, no doubt, glad at his being deposed. For the variety of it, though the conspirators might have waited a decent interval. But then the voice began to foretell what would come after. Things would be different this time; this time Tinieblas would be twisted inside cut. Dictatorship. Calamity and upheaval. Cruelty and want, a binding ring of pain drawn round the country. The voice droned on, detailing horrors. And fearful scenes were imaged in the aura, flashed and dissolved into mete fearful scenes, till the whole crowd wept in despair and terror. But before it could tell the end, the voice ceased. Broke off as if unplugged, and the aura faded. Mandragon collapsed onto the sawdust of the ring.
With that, the crowd was released. Burst from the tent and found everything as described in the first part of Mandragon’s prophecy. Soldiers posted round El Opulento. Soldiers in the cable office opposite. Soldiers dragging citizens into patrol trucks. Alejo had been deposed while I was in trance. Civil Guard officers had taken power. Tinieblas was under martial law.