Bobby Zeber was seated at a white wrought-iron table wearing a washed-out burgundy sweatsuit and dirty running shoes. “Something to eat, Mr. Komodo?” Zeber offered, gloomily indicating several large wooden bowls on the glass tabletop. “Designer lettuce, all organic. Grown from custom seeds by formerly codependent dirt hippies up in Mendocino, flown in daily.”
“No, thank you, Mr. Zeber,” Komodo said, patting the pocket of his black pajamas. “I have packed a sandwich.”
“Good idea. It’s smart to bring your own. It establishes control. Isn’t that what everyone wants, control? I shouldn’t be eating this stuff either.” He chomped on a radicchio leaf. “No one should. It’s like what you said at the party.”
“Pardon?”
“About Gojiro—‘The green that men have created.’ I’ve been thinking about that.”
“You have?”
“It makes a lot of sense. You know that expression ‘You are what you eat’? Really, it should be the other way around: ‘Eat what you are.’ And what’s that? Snails and puppy-dog tails?” Zeber laughed mordantly. “Nah, I think we’re lower, much lower. If there was real justice, we wouldn’t be allowed to eat anything except totally chemical foods—not one natural thing, only stuff squeezed from tubes, ejected by fluorocarbon aerosols. That’s the proper diet, all we deserve. Men’s food.”
Zeber stopped, put down his fork with a sigh. “Then maybe you’re wondering why I’m eating this, if that’s how I feel. Because it costs, Mr. Komodo, that’s why. You see, I’m a prisoner of my class.” Zeber laughed again, took a drink of his mineral water. “You read over the contract?”
Komodo felt dizzy. “Well, just briefly.”
“Funny thing. You know, we—Sheila and me—we’ve never done business with outsiders. But still, I had that contract made up—just in case. It’s a ball-breaker, too. Half of it is just in there for spite. That’s the game here: Speak glibly, carry a bigger dick. Maybe that’s why it was so liberating to cross all those clauses out.”
“But, Mr. Zeber, didn’t you tell me that such a project was not possible before—”
“Before I said a lot of things. Let’s just say, when the right deal comes along, the exact right deal, you’ve got to go for it. Your arrival here has put a whole new outlook on things.”
Across the vast lawn Albert Bullins raised his rifle. “Pull,” he shouted, blasting several clay pigeons from the sky.
The gunfire only served to underscore Komodo’s discomfort. “My arrival? I’m not quite sure what you mean, Mr. Zeber.”
Zeber watched Bullins shoot a few targets, then turned to Komodo. “Have you ever felt trapped, Mr. Komodo? Like somehow you’re all knotted up and there’s no way to get out? It’s an awful feeling—you’re just there, suffocating, and you don’t know how it happened. Or maybe you do. Maybe you even saw it coming. Maybe you walked right into it with your eyes open, maybe you even liked it for a while. Except one day it dawns on you that the lies you thought were necessary weren’t necessary at all. That this thing you’ve built, it isn’t good and it isn’t safe, that everything you thought you were protecting . . .
“You don’t have a clue about what I’m talking about, do you, Mr. Komodo?”
“I regret to say that I do not.”
“But you care about Sheila, don’t you?”
Komodo’s throat cramped. “Yes.”
“You’d like to help her? That’s why you answered her letter.”
“Yes. I want to help. I must see her, tell her that—”
“Tell her what?”
Komodo never got to answer. Right then, Zeber’s head spun around. “Oh, shit.”
Victor Stiller, spiffed out in a natty seersucker suit, his gold-rimmed glasses and Rolex glittering in the sunlight, was coming across the rose-bedecked garden. With him was a large man with a blond crew cut wearing a silk suit tailored to stretch across his wide shoulders. Komodo started to get up, to go into his bowing routine, but Stiller cut him off with a curt show of palm. “So happy to see you again, Mr. Komodo. A beautiful day, isn’t it?”
Komodo nodded vigorously. “Yes. Not a bit hot.”
“Usually I retreat to the mountains at this time of year, but this is quite wonderful.” Stiller leaned over, sampled one of the exotic fruits piled in one of the wood bowls. He made a small appreciative sound. “These papayas are perfect.”
Bobby Zeber looked at the large blond man standing impassively on the grass, his bulky arms folded in front of him, then turned to Stiller. “They keep issuing you bigger and bigger models, huh, Victor. I should have known you’d turn up here.”
Stiller smiled. “I like to keep abreast of my major holdings.” He indicated the copy of the contract lying on the table. “Bobby, you can’t be serious about this.”
“Never more,” Zeber said tartly. “As I was telling Mr. Komodo here, I’m a go-for-it kind of guy. Hermit Pandora’s a go-for-it kind of company. When you see daylight, you run to it. And this particular project, Victor . . . it’s talking to me.”
“Bobby, I think you’ve—”
“No, it’s hot . . . in this business, you’ve got to go by feel. And I can feel this—like, for instance, you walking in right now. Could anything be more perfectly timed? Your input could be invaluable. After all, you knew him, you were his only friend. The only one he ever trusted.”
Stiller reached for a rambutan, dropped the hairy fruit into a bowl in front of him. “What do you think this is going to prove?”
“Prove? I’m not trying to prove anything. We’re in business to make movies, create product. And this is the product. Sheila’s masterpiece. Her life’s work. Decades in the making.”
Stiller frowned. “Let me see the script.”
“Not written yet.”
“If you were thinking of her, you wouldn’t be playing out this impotent charade.”
“You’re one to say that.”
“Someone has to look out for her interests.”
“I suppose that’s you?”
“Don’t you care about her at all?”
“You’re really a sick bastard, Victor.”
“Please stop!” Komodo didn’t realize the words were out of his mouth until he saw both Stiller and Zeber staring at him. He hadn’t meant to say anything. Back in the White Light Chamber, Gojiro had told him to forget trying to make sense of why Joe Pro Brooks was alive when he was supposed to be dead. The apparent subterfuge was no doubt the product of “some Tri-Lateralistic trickeration,” the monster maintained. There was no percentage in trying to sort out the cross-purposes. Even the shortest walk in that thickest forest was bound to lose an unsuspecting zard or boy in that house of mirrors that is the naturally selected habitat of spooks. No doubt Stiller was in on it, the reptile remarked. But why? To what end? “Who knows, the old fuck’s got more twists than a barrel of psychotronic pretzels.” Did Zeber know too? Komodo couldn’t bear to consider the possibility. Zeber was the keeper of the safe place; how could he withhold such information from someone he loved? But then again, Komodo thought, who was he to make judgments on the responsibilities of love?
No, he hadn’t planned to speak. But he couldn’t stand to hear Stiller and Zeber argue about Sheila Brooks, bandy her name about in some clandestine tug-of-war.
Stiller looked up, regarded Komodo. Suddenly, he was the genial grandfather again. “Mr. Komodo, I must tell you how much I enjoyed our conversation the other day. If you only knew how invigorating it is for an old man to hear such impassioned talk. I sense you are a man who seeks to temper the metaphysical with the rational and vice versa. Therefore, I am certain that you are well aware of the dialectic between magic and science.”
Immediately, Komodo returned to the role of the eager student. “Why, yes, I find it a fascinating topic.”
“Of course you do! Then I’m certain you’ll understand what I’m trying to say. You see, for me, enlightenment stretches out as a great grid, an endless chessboard, each square a Chinese box
, the contents of which are unknown and unexplored. There are two separate entryways to these boxes: one belongs to the magician, the other to the scientist. Most often the magician will arrive first. He is the psychic adventurer, the sorcerer touched by otherworldly insight. He uses his special capacities to shed a private, incorporeal light. This affords him Power—for what he knows can be known only by him. However, for progress to take hold, the magician must be followed by the scientist. It is the scientist who seeks knowledge on behalf of the society at large. He is a social man, a democrat. He makes accessible the magician’s gift, creates from it a public boon. It is from his work that civilization is established.
“To me, Joseph Brooks was both a magician and a scientist. He stood alone, astride a specific juncture of history, possessed by the supernatural, yet determined to exercise the democracy of science for the good of all mankind. That is the image I prefer to keep in mind of my great, dead friend.”
Zeber hooted, banged the table. “What a performance, Victor! You’ll say anything!”
Stiller shot Zeber a hard look, turned back to Komodo. “It is for this reason, Mr. Komodo, that I will do everything in my power to keep Joseph Brooks’s name from the soil of exploitation.”
“But—but—I would never do anything like that.” Komodo felt sick.
“Of course you wouldn’t,” Stiller said reassuringly. He reached over, grabbed the sleeve of Komodo’s black pajamas. “You have such a willing, open face, Mr. Komodo. I feel you may be one of the few people who really knows how to listen. It is an indispensable trait, Mr. Komodo. I don’t know how you came upon it, but you should treasure it. Listen now, Mr. Komodo. It may be said that technology purchased in a dimestore or received in a movie house also serves to merge the forces of magic and science. But that is faulty thinking. There’s nothing there except the mediocre fantasy of the mob, a carnival for the rabble. Mr. Komodo, I appeal to you, do not reduce that moment when Joseph Brooks stood alone, pushing together the twin hemispheres of knowledge, into what Bobby refers to as product.”
Zeber drummed his forefinger into the contract for Gojiro vs. Joseph Prometheus Brooks in the Valley of Decision. “Signed, sealed, delivered! Komodo, don’t let him hustle you.”
Stiller’s gleaming eyes never left Komodo. “We are kindred spirits, Mr. Komodo, hungry souls, men of science. We revere Mr. Brooks’s contributions in life. We must be respectful of his death. Let the man rest in peace.”
Komodo thought he was about to hyperventilate. “Mr. Stiller, your argument is quite moving and no doubt bears the ring of Truth. However, there is a problem—”
“Problem? In the pursuit of the sublime there are many problems.”
Zeber pounded the table again. “Come on, Victor, it’s only a movie. Let the American public see the Great Man in action. Let’s bring him back. Let’s resurrect him!”
“Resurrect . . .” The word stopped Stiller. “Resurrect . . .” Suddenly the debonair former neutron basher seemed to come unstrung. He cocked his head, stared at Komodo.
“I do know you . . . I’m remembering now.”
Komodo braced himself. From across the lawn came the sound of Albert Bullins’s pump gun as he blasted clay targets. Blam, blam, blam. “Nineteen of twenty, Duke. Beat that, beachboy! Your brown ass is grass.” It was Shig’s turn now. He stepped to the line and drew out a small plastic pistol. “What’s that, Duke?” Bullins bellowed. “You can’t shoot skeet with a goddamned watergun, Duke!”
Stiller narrowed his eyes, bored deeper into Komodo’s skull. “Yes, it was long ago. After the blast in Japan . . . my God . . .”
Shig fired. It seemed that he’d instructed Bullins’s gun bearer to send up twenty-five pigeons at once. When they were all in the air, a noiseless yellow streak sprang from the short plastic barrel. The ray pierced the uppermost target, chain-reacting with the rest, igniting a dazzling rainbow of light above the lush lawn.
“My God,” Victor Stiller said again.
* * *
It was a good thing Shig had that laser pistol turned up past “ultra intense.” Anything less wouldn’t have induced the blinding flash that allowed Komodo to slip from the patio and out to the limo where the odd boy was waiting to drive him back to the Traj Taj.
What an upsetting afternoon! Still rattled after returning to the melancholy mansion, Komodo sought to collect his thoughts with a brisk stroll through the Insta-Envir. Besides, he wanted to see Ebi. He’d been worried about her all day.
Ebi would be inside her thinker. She was always in that cellulose sanctum around twilight time, codifying her taxons. Thinker time was an essential part of Ebi’s day, ever since the colossal tulips first appeared in the Insta-Envir. First, it appeared that the twenty-foot-tall flowers might be useful as birdbaths for the Flying Dutchman-following albatrosses that sometimes swarmed out by Past Due Point. But the plants wouldn’t stay upright. The narrow stems bent under the weight of the bulby tops. The flowering cups then attached themselves to the semifirma with an epoxylike seal, thereby creating six-foot round domes that could be entered by peeling back several pseudovinyl petals. Most of the Atoms used the tulip heads for forts—clubhouse kind of stuff. However, they soon grew tired of the photosynthetic cells, trashed them, and went back to hanging out in the rusting Chevy hulks that ringed the shoreline like yesterday’s asteroids. It was only Ebi who possessed the calmness of spirit to take advantage of the plant’s real utility. She withdrew into the flower’s isolation and thought. It pleased Komodo and Gojiro, knowing Ebi was in her sanctuary, apart from the upheaval and pain of Radioactive Island, the pollen gently falling from the inverted stamens, dusting her beautiful black hair like fine gold.
It hadn’t been Komodo’s intention to eavesdrop. He’d never do that. He just meant to pass by the pink flower (it had to be pink if it was Ebi’s). However, the variety of thinker produced by the Traj Taj soil was cramped and thin-petaled; Komodo could hear Ebi’s lissome voice through the anemic flower. Ebi often entertained herself with a singsong recitation of her findings, an endearing habit, both Komodo and Gojiro agreed.
This time, though, Komodo detected an unusual tension in the little girl’s tone, an impatience he’d never heard before. “Please,” Ebi was saying, “you must try again. Concentrate. This is very important. One more time now.” Through the translucent thinker sides, Komodo could see her standing up, holding a long vinelike object in her hand.
Then he felt heat. A match was igniting. “I gotta smoke, okay?” said a whiny voice. “I can’t think right now, I told you that.” Someone else was inside Ebi’s thinker!
“Please.” Ebi seemed anxious, pleading.
“I don’t know. Chicken-wire ivy?”
“Taxonomic title?”
“Cluckbuckus perdueus number two?”
“Right! Oh, Ms. Brooks! I knew you would be a fast learner. I knew from the moment we met that you had a feeling for the earth.”
Sheila Brooks in Ebi’s thinker! Komodo could not believe his ears.
“Now we must move on to fungi.”
“Fungi?”
“Yes. Please identify and distinguish between the types I’ve placed on this table.”
“Hey, I don’t know, this is like school—you stick wires to the dead frog legs and watch them jump.”
“Please.”
“Okay. This is the metallic-spore group here. That’s the Mylarius. This one makes the lightning in the microwave, the Tinfoilus reynoldus.” Sheila Brooks went on like that, making every single identification.
“Wonderful! You have an affinity, I knew you would!” Ebi sounded so pleased.
“Just lucky. Lucky guesses.”
“No. You have an excellent memory.”
“You think so? I think I always had a good memory. Like there was this time, with my dad. We were driving along, the way we did, and we must have stopped at a truck stop or something, because usually it was only us. Anyhow, this man asked me what I did all day. I said I kinda watched the
road, counted the telephone poles. The guy must have been a real jerk because he said it was dumb for a little girl to spend all day counting telephone poles. My dad got mad. I remember how his face twisted up. He said, ‘How many telephone poles between here and Tulsa, Sheila?’ I knew. I just had it in my head. ‘Three thousand five hundred and sixty-two, buster,’ I said. Could be they changed it now, but then it was three thousand five hundred and sixty-two. It shut that guy up, anyhow. And my dad, I think he was a little proud of me, especially the ‘buster’ part. I guess I always did have a good memory.”
“Memory is important. Really important! But you’ll need more than that to become a good taxonomist. You have to use the past as a step to the future. That’s what taxonomy is all about, establishing foundations, building on them. On Radioactive Island, the tide is plentiful, the recombinate possibilities infinite. A taxonomist can never rest. Ms. Brooks—should a creeper-vine plasticineus merge with a strand of razorcoilus, what might be the result?”
Sheila thought for a moment. “Let’s see . . . you have to consider the antecedents. Snapping plasticineus are amalgams of Bullwhipus gatlinburgus and California lawn mulcheratorus first sighted on Cathode Cay . . . so you could call it Razorcoilus plasticineus, gatlinburgus mulcherator type, but that’s too long. Consequently, I would say the best designatory tactic would be specify the locality. I’d go with Razormulchus vineus, Cathode Cay variety.”
“Oh, Ms. Brooks! You have a gift! It is as if you have been taking samples your entire life.”
“Wow . . . thinking this way—it’s like A’s not for apple anymore, B’s not for boat. Like a whole new world I’ve never seen is inside my head . . . and I like it.”
Ebi shut her notebook gleefully. “I feel so much better now! I was worried about the work—that it would not be carried on in the proper way.”
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