by John Sladek
HE RUNS, A TOPSY OF FIRE, BESTRIDE REAL LIVES, TOO. WHAT RUNE OF ‘F’, OR ITS LESSER GOODNESS? HE RUNS, A TOPSY OF FIRE, BESTRIDE REAL LIVES, TOO, FOR HE HAS FUND IT’S MORE THATCHED, MAKING IT WHIST-DEALER’S BRAWNY MOTHER’S EVIL. ENDS. REQUEST EDITOR’S RE ADVICE.
(THE MIND REELS)
and alone on the island. My only companion is a stuffed parrot. Breaking teeth off my comb to keep track of the days. Today a plane went over. It didn’t respond to my signal fire, unless you can call skywriting a response:
HE RUNS TOPS OF FIR, BEST IDEAL LIVES, TOO. TUNE OF FORTLESSNESS? HE RUNS TOPS OF FIR, BEST IDEAL LIVES, TOO, FOR FUN I’M RE-THATCHED, MAKING IT WHISTLER’S BRAW MOTHER’S EVIL. ENDS. REQUESTED TO READ VICE.
These mystery letters began blowing away at once, leaving:
HE RUNS TOPS OF F BEST I AL LI ES, TOO.
E FORTLESSNESS? HE RUNS TOPS OF F BEST I AL LI ES, TOO,UN RETHATCHED, MAKING IT WHISTLE BR OTHER’S EVIL. ENDS. REQUESTED RE D ICE.
This isn’t working out at all. I’d hoped to tell the story but the pen has to trace its own shadow…the story includes the world around the story and the story in it’…say A writes a story about an imaginary land, and A’ writes about some wholly fictitious ‘historical’ event, and A” writes about or hints at, some fabulous country with all its rulers, rules, ruled…then B many centuries later finds the old manuscripts of these works, misses their metaphors and sets the event in the country, which is in the land.
‘The Iructu’, he writes seriously, ‘have no word for death.
They refer to it indirectly as “potatoes”. Death is “eating your potatoes”, burial is “planting the potatoes”, a stillborn child is “new potatoes”, etc. The potato, they explain, like death, has many eyes…’
Critic B' believes the story and adds embellishments of his own. So do other scholars, until by the time of B''''' men are actually planning to set out on a great sea voyage to visit the fabled land.
We set sail in the year of our Lord——. Each new problem encloses but does not answer the last. ‘Let’s sail till we come to the edge’* indeed, but over the edge is just another face of the old world-cube. I don’t even know what the problem is any more, but I go on calculating, reasoning, drifting off course…
And in the water around the ship the plankton have lofty thoughts as they top each wave, and see the nest wave on…
Part 2: Noun’Man’
Four
Feinwelt rode up in the elevator, thinking psychiatrist thoughts and shareholder thoughts. The split is there, all right, Feinwelt, you crazy shrink. It isn’t enough to be den mother to a bunch of ex-transvestites. It isn’t enough to be the biggest shareholder in Stagman Enterprises next to Glen Dale himself. No, you’ve got to wangle—watch that!—your way in to become Glen’s personal Big Shrink. What are you doing here, in this, this mind of a building? In this accidental empire?
Glen Dale’s empire was accidental, like a famous pearl. It had begun with a small, quite ordinary grain of irritation—when, in youth, Glen had discovered that he could not, no matter what, get laid.
It was improved and rounded by a few coats of what Glen called ‘sophisticated seduction techniques’. A better bottle of wine, a few more jazz tapes, four-star brandy, tickets to shows, dinner for two, oh yes, and smoking jackets, cocktail shakers…layer upon layer did this poor oyster of a man apply to his misery. Cars, a yacht, the magazine, money, clothes, more of everything, better of each, a glossier magazine, the Stagman Club…until the accident seemed deliberate and fine. I wonder whether the pearl ever chokes the oyster to death?
Eleven million Stagman readers opened their center folds each month to enjoy the twenty-two million well-photographed nipples of Miss Monthly. Then there were the dozens of Stagman Clubs, the thousands of bare-chested girls in buckskin (‘Does’), the hundreds of thousands of moist men who, being strictly forbidden to touch the Does, except in the palm with crisp money, came to play. The grandest club of all was here in the Stagman Tower, in the scrotal end. The shank was devoted to magazine offices; the tip, a penthouse for the chief.
The elevator bore psychiatrist Feinwelt up the tube, chief-ward, as he worried that Glen might be a difficult case. Nearly forty, after all, and apparently a virgin.
Shareholder Feinwelt worried on the other side. What if Glen did get cured? And what if that meant the collapse of the driving force behind Stagman? It was sublimation, no doubt of it. And who, confronted with a pearl of this quality, could want to open it to get the grain of sand? Who but a head doctor? But drop it, think of something else, think of how many spermatazoa are jerked off over Miss Monthly, let’s see…
And spermatazoan Feinwelt, homunculus Feinwelt, crawled upward (eleven million times two million, but not all do it, say six million, that makes, urn…)
Twelve trillion. Twelve trillion unfulfilled humans, condemned to death over the tits of one stenographer.
Glen sucked a coke and reread proofs of a picture feature for Stagman on the Good Life (as lived by Glen Dale).
Above, the urbane editor-publisher of Stagman at work in his luxurious penthouse pad atop Stagman Tower. In Minneapolis did Glen Dale a stately pleasuredom decree, and a posh and private playground. This lordly manor, replete with a brace of handsome amenities, is fully equipped for funful frolic. Sartorial sophisticate Glen wears Aztec feather crown, whose pinions, handcrafted, spell out Interplanetary Drinking Team.
He took off his Prussian spike helmet and put it in the hat closet. The Phrygian cap was better.
‘Is that so?’ The way Feinwelt said it made Glen feel this was all a mistake. Did he really need a psychiatrist? Especially one he knew already.
‘Why don’t you go into the den and make yourself at home, Doctor?’ Maybe he just needed an understanding woman. As in the story in last month’s issue.
Feinwelt picked up an object from the coffee table (DUROTREND CLOCK TABLE LIGHTER CONTAINS RADIO, FLASHLIGHT, TACH, DRINK HYGROMETER AND TAPE RECORDER WITH RECHARGEABLE POWER PACK) and plucked at its chrome attachments for a moment.
‘Well then. Shall we get to work?’
‘Her name was Meri. M-E-R-I. A model. I thought I had it made: a fire in the fireplace, Billie Holliday on tape, schnapps on the bearskin rug. I had every step planned.’
‘And?’
‘And nothing!’
There was silence.
‘Why do you think that was, Glen?’
‘How do I know? What’s wrong with me?
‘I mean I’m forty (not quite), single, not bad-looking, rich, famous, hard-working, successful…And no Babbitt, either. Who owns every side Julian Huxley’s Ants ever cut? Who bought the first holograph Bergen made? Who paid to have Deef John Holler tapes smuggled out of the Library of Congress and re-recorded? I’m hip and I’ve got taste. I blow pretty good piano. I have the best in the city. I’m oenologically wise. My sartorial selection is peerless.
‘But I don’t get anything.’
In the privacy of the penthouse elevator, Feinwelt let out whoops of laughter.
He was more serious when he conferred downstairs with the managing editor.
‘Hank, the way I see it, there’s one frustrated son of a bitch up there. As his doctor, I can’t ethically slow down his therapy or anything, you know, but I’ll tell you how we can keep him producing. Fix him up. Line him up with about a hundred or two fine-looking, frigid girls. You know the kind, this place must be crawling with them. “Look but don’t touch” ladies. If necessary, bribe ‘em. Half on non-delivery. You might stick on a monitor camera on that bedroom, to make sure. Then, if things look like they’re getting out of hand, create a diversion.’
‘You mean, call him up?’
‘Call him up, smash in the door, start a fire, send in the cops, tell him he’s lost a page proof—anything.’ He leaned forward, overpowering Hank with the scent of Chanel No. 5. ‘I hope I don’t have to tell you what happens if we fail. If that guy up there gets his rocks off once, it could mean
the end! Stagman will lose him—and about ten millions readers. The leading men’s magazine today, and tomorrow it could be just one more creep sheet on the boots-and-garter belt counter.’
The sermon at Vandal Ballpark was considered an unqualified success by everyone—except the preacher, Billy Koch.
‘My voice went all cruddy mere at the end, Jerry. You notice that?’ Billy and his computer expert harnessed themselves into the Saette and waited for the guards to open the gates.
‘I thought you were fine, Billy. Really.’
‘Just the same, I’ll be glad when you get that robot contraption finished. My voice is getting blown out. And that damned thing better work, too, for the money I’m paying.’
‘Oh, it’ll work, don’t you worry, sir. Then you can take it easy now and then. You’ve been flying too much, that affects the throat.’
Billy wheeled the special car into traffic and floored it. The other vehicles around them slowed, stopped, then slipped past in reverse, gaining speed. Billy grunted happily, leaned over and switched on the videotape replay of his sermon.
‘The Devil can be a lion in the streets, seeking whom he may devour!’
‘Well, what I’m worried about is the healing ceremony. Them people get damned close, you know. Closer than that truck I’m tailgating. They can count the drops of sweat on my brow. How will it look if…’
‘Don’t worry about a thing, Billy. We’ve thought of every possibility. Our audioanimatron is exactly like you, and we’re programming in tapes of all your old sermons. Gestures, speech—LOOK OUT!—speech, why you won’t know it isn’t you. All we need now are these special tapes…’
‘Get over, you bastard! OVER!’ Billy leaned far out the window to scream at a taxi, then sawed the ruby steering wheel to change lanes twice, fast.
‘He can be a quiet cancer, burning in the brainy,’ continued the figure on the tiny screen. Billy turned it off.
‘Christ, they let anybody drive a cab.’
‘It’s left at die next light,’ said Jerry. His face was drawn with fear, and the odor of overheated deodorant escaped from his crease-resistant suit. Nevertheless he crossed one artificial leather shoe over the other, in a sketch of relaxation. ‘Better watch out for the old woman crossing.’
‘I do the driving, damn you!’
The old woman was caught by the yellow light. She turned, hesitated, then started back into the path of the car. Billy accelerated, cramped the wheel for the turn, and gave her a blast on his musical horn. ‘Rock of Ages’, it sang hastily, ‘cleft for me.’
‘Up yours, y’old bag!’ he called cheerfully.
She looked up, startled, raised one hand as if to ward off the car, then leaped back nimbly as it slid past.
‘Hahaha, I knew it! I knew she could move fast enough if she had to. Christ, I’d like to see all pedestrians fry in Hell!’
He drew up before the US Government Surplus store and double-parked. ‘Don’t take too long, I got to get back to Crusade HQ.’
The computer man carried his attaché case and natural shoulders inside the store.
‘I could only save you two,’ said the clerk, holding up a reel of tape. ‘I just hadda let the others go. The govermint bought one—at least he said he was govermint. That’s something—buying back their own surplus!’
‘Well, two’ll be enough, anyway.’ As Jerry made out the check, the clerk went on. ‘About a million guys called up asking about urn. Wish I had more, but I guess there ain’t no more. Hadda kid in here five minits ago asking for one, but he couldn’t afford it anyway.’
Ank sat in the pickup, calming his hysterical breathing. He watched a bronze Saette cut the corner badly (nearly hitting an old lady) and pull up across the street. Then his eyes misted over, and for a few seconds he lost interest in looking at anything.
Anybody who owned a car like that could easily afford a Muller-Fokker tape. While Ank, in his fifty-dollar pickup truck with a wired-on exhaust…
The beauty of M-F tape was that it was really randomized, the clerk had said. While an ordinary computer could generate ‘random’ numbers, they weren’t really random at all. Just fitted to a very complicated equation. Any mechanism was finally predictable.
But the Muller-Fokker tape went beyond mechanism. It was philosophically different. There was room enough in it for (according to the clerk) a human mind!
Sales talk, maybe. And at two thousand dollars a reel, you’d expect a good pitch. Ank wanted it, all the same, more than he’d ever wanted anything—as much as he wanted to be a known painter.
Well, nothing to be done. He would just have to go on saving his pennies from reviewing other people’s work, get some time on a small, cheap computer.…
Purring smoke, the old pickup truck pulled away from the curb and moved off. A moment later, Jerry came out of the store, tossed two odd-looking reels or computer tape—pink, it was, flesh pink—into the back seat and climbed in.
‘Better fasten your harness, boy. I drive this baby.’
The Saette screamed out, jerking them back in their seats. With every gear change they snapped forward and back, like two mechanical clowns rocking with canned mirth.
‘How much was that?’
‘Four thousand, Billy. But it was worth it, you’ll see. That tape will run the whole thing for us. We’ll sort out fragments of your sermons and let that tape re-sort them into new ones.’
Billy drove down back streets to avoid traffic.
‘Hold on now. LOOK OUT, YOU SON OF SATAN! Jesus, a man can’t even drive across the city with all these—what were you saying, Jer?’
‘I said we’ve almost worked out the scheme for Bibleland. Of course it’s a lot easier, because the audioanimatrons there will just be mechanical gadgets, while this one will practically be a man. I’m…’
Billy raced for the yellow light as Ank, coming from the right, tried to coast through on the red. They met.
‘Jeez, look at all the blood!’
‘Look at the funny foreign job. They must be dead in there.’
‘Yeah, nobody could live through that.’
The witnesses who swore this, could, a moment later, attest to a miracle, for the battered door of the Saette wiggled, groaned and gave up a whole, smiling man. But for a cut on his forehead, he seemed unhurt.
‘You all right, buddy? Hey, aren’t you Billy Koch?’
‘The Lord,’ said Billy gravely, ‘has preserved me for His work. Get an ambulance, somebody. My partner’s bleeding like a stuck pig in there.’ Somebody leapt to obey.
The ambulance men got to the computer expert first, loading him and the reel of tape he clutched on a stretcher, applying a compress to his knee. The fire department had to cut away part of the truck to get Ank out. He was bruised and delirious. As they lifted him clear, two objects fell out of his lap: a reel of tape and Jerry’s foot (still shod in gleaming unscuffed plastic). A fireman picked them up and tossed them on the stretcher.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to come along for a check-up?’ an intern asked Billy, who was helping clear the crowd.
‘No thanks, Doctor. A Greater Physician has already checked me out and found me fit.’
He hailed a cab and returned to Crusade Headquarters. An hour later, while he was going over the plans for Bibleland with his architect, Bill began scratching the bandage on his forehead.
‘I think,’ he said in sonorous, crowd-thrilling tones, ‘I think the doggie want a dink a gaga.’
Five
‘Dr Fellstus! I am here to answer the phone and take care of your appointments. And that’s all!’
‘Gee whiz, Marge.’ The vet’s forehead twitched, snapping his dark elastic brows. It was one of Fellstus’s chief ways of showing emotion. ‘You’re a damned attractive woman. And you’re single now…so am I. To me, you’re…’
‘A receptionist,’ she said. ‘By the way, it’s almost time for Mr Hines and Toto.’ She batted away his hand with a fistful of patients’ files. ‘I�
�m a receptionist, you are a veterinarian, remember?’
‘In your mouth, it sounds—dishonest.’
‘Just you forget about my mouth, and all the rest. Or I’ll quit. So help me.’
Fellstus tried a smile, but the brows went on jerking. ‘If you quit, how will you keep that boy of yours at that expensive military school? Be reasonable, kid. It’s a good job.
‘And if could be even better. You could have anything you wanted. I’d set you up with a nice little place…’
The door opened and Mr MacCormick Hines led in a gloomy collie. Fellstus improvised a professional face.
‘Mr Hines! And Toto! Let’s go right into my office, shall we?’
Hines beamed recognition on Marge. ‘My dear, you’re looking radiant. Radiant. Dr Fellstus, you’re a lucky vet.’ He nudged Fellstus in the stomach with his gold-headed cane.
‘Oh, don’t I know it, sir.’ His huge flat fingers closed over the old man’s shoulder and he propelled him into the inner office.
When their session was finished, Mr Hines stopped by Marge’s desk. ‘I—ah—meant to ask you something, my dear. Have I seen—I know this sounds awkward, but have I seen your face before? On television, perhaps?’
‘No, I’m afraid not.’ Seeing that he made no move to leave, she changed the subject. ‘How’s Toto getting along?’
‘Depressed, Mrs Shairp. Depressed.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Really, you ought to think of trying TV work. If you don’t mind my saying so, yours is a unique face: Young, yet old, pure, yet motherly, a face touched by suffering, yet—I see I’m embarrassing you, so let me come to the point.
‘A certain food company I know of is looking for a woman to do television commercials. I have an idea you’d be perfect for the the part. Why not give them a try?’
She half-smiled. ‘No, really, I don’t think…’
‘I have their card here.’ He extracted a card and laid it before her. ‘That’s the man to see—Mr Bradd. The director of the Marketing Division.’