And as Paul said these things to himself, a wave of sadness washed over them as though they'd been written in sand. He was understanding now that no man could live without roots--roots in a patch of desert, a red clay field, a mountain slope, a rocky coast, a city street. In black loam, in mud or sand or rock or asphalt or carpet, every man had his roots down deep--in home. A lump grew in his throat, and he couldn't do anything about it. Doctor Paul Proteus was saying goodbye forever to home.
"So long," he said. And then, in spite of himself, "So long, gang."
A laggard group, genuinely inebriated, was being coaxed out of the saloon. They were singing an effusively sentimental rendition of "Toast the Oak." They draped their arms over each other's shoulders; and made clumsily for the great tree. Their voices came clearly to Paul over the flat, green lawns:
"Grown from but an acorn,
Giant now you are;
May you ne'er stop growing;
Rise to the stars!
Proud sy-him-bol a-hov
Ourrrrrrrrs."
There was a reverent pause, broken by an exclamation. "Jesus!" It was Berringer's voice, Berringer's word.
" 'Smatter?"
"Look at the tree--around the bottom!"
"Holy smokes!"
"Somebody's stripped the bark off clear around," said Berringer hollowly.
"Who?"
"Who do you think?" said Berringer. "That stinking saboteur. Where is he?"
The Spirit of the Meadows gunned her engines and backed into open water.
"Hey," cried a lonely, frightened voice in the night. "Hey--somebody's killed the Oak."
"Killed the Oak," echoed the shore.
The loudspeakers clattered on again, and a chilling war whoop filled the air. "Beware the Ghost Shirt!" shrieked a terrible voice.
"Ghost Shirt," said the shore, and all was deathly still.
24
EN ROUTE BY air from Miami Beach to Ithaca, New York, home of Cornell University, the Shah of Bratpuhr caught a nasty cold. When seven prakhouls (that quantity of fluid that can be contained in the skin of an adult male Bratpuhrian marmot) of Sumklish improved the Shah's spirits but did nothing for his respiratory system, it was decided that the plane should land in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in order that the Shah might rest and try the magic of American medicine.
With seven prakhouls of Sumklish under his belt, the Shah called cheery messages to pretty female Takarus on his way to the doctor's office.
"Pitty fit-fit, sibi Takaru? Niki fit-fit. Akka sahn nibo fit-fit, simi Takaru?"
Khashdrahr, who was without the benefit of Sumklish, was livid with embarrassment. "Shah says it is a nice day," he explained unhappily.
"Fit-fit, pu sibi bonanza?" called the Shah to a small blonde who had her hands in a streetcorner manicure machine.
She blushed, and jerked her hands from the machine and stalked away, leaving the machine to buff away at nothingness. A street urchin stuck his grubby hands in for the remainder of the operation, and drew them out with gleaming, red-enameled nails.
"I'm glad he likes the weather," said Halyard glumly. For many weeks now, they'd traveled without the subject's coming up once, and Halyard had hopefully told himself that the Shah really was different from his other guests in this respect, different from the French and Bolivians and Czechs and Japanese and Panamanians and Yaps and.... But, no. The Shah, too, was now getting curious about American-type women. Halyard, at a frightful price in dignity, was once more going to have to perform the role of utterly perfect host--or pimp.
"Fit-fit?" called the Shah, as they pulled up to a stoplight.
"Look," said Halyard reproachfully to Khashdrahr, "tell him he just can't walk up to any American girl at all and ask her to sleep with him. I'll see what I can do, but it won't be easy."
Khashdrahr told the Shah, who waved him away. Before anyone could stop him, the Shah was out on the sidewalk, confidently confronting a startlingly beautiful, dark-skinned brunette. "Fit-fit, sibi Takaru?"
"Please," said Halyard to her, "please excuse my friend. He's a bit under the weather."
She took the Shah's arm, and together they climbed back into the limousine.
"I'm afraid there's been a terrible misunderstanding, young lady," said Halyard. "I hardly know how to put it. I, ah, he, that is--What I mean to say, rather, is he wasn't offering you a ride."
"He was asking for something, wasn't he?"
"Yes."
"There's been no misunderstanding."
"Fit-fit," said the Shah.
"Quite so," said Halyard.
Khashdrahr began looking out of the window with fresh interest, wildness, in fact, and Halyard had difficulty holding himself in check.
"Here we are," said the driver. "Here's Doctor Pepkowitz's office."
"Yes, well, you wait in the car, young lady," said Halyard, "while the Shah goes in here for a cold treatment."
The Shah was grinning, and inhaling and exhaling rapidly.
"His sniffles are gone," said Khashdrahr wonderingly.
"Drive on," said Halyard. He had seen a similar miracle cure of an Ecuadorian brigadier's hives.
The girl seemed restless and unhappy, and utterly out of character, Halyard thought. She smiled constantly, unconvincingly, and was apparently anxious to get the whole thing over with. Halyard still couldn't believe that she knew what the whole thing was.
"Where are we going now?" she said, grimly cheerful. "A hotel, I suppose."
"Yes," said Halyard unevenly.
"Good." She patted the Shah on his shoulder, and burst into tears.
The Shah was distressed and tried clumsily to comfort her. "Oh, nibo souri, sibi Takaru. Akka sahn souri? Ohhh. Tipi Takaru. Ahhhh."
"There, now," said Halyard. "See here."
"I don't do this every day," she said, blowing her nose. "Please excuse me. I'll try to be better."
"Certainly. We understand," said Halyard. "The whole thing has been a terrible mistake. Where would you like us to leave you off?"
"Oh, no--I'm going through with it," she said gloomily.
"Please--" said Halyard. "Perhaps it would be better for all concerned if--"
"If I lost my husband? Better if he shot himself or starved?"
"Certainly not! But why would those terrible things happen if you refused to--That is--"
"It's a long story." She dried her eyes. "My husband, Ed, is a writer."
"What's his classification number?" said Halyard.
"That's just it. He hasn't one."
"Then how can you call him a writer?" said Halyard.
"Because he writes," she said.
"My dear girl," said Halyard paternally, "on that basis, we're all writers."
"Two days ago he had a number--W-441."
"Fiction novice," Halyard explained to Khashdrahr.
"Yes," she said, "and he was to have it until he'd completed his novel. After that, he was supposed to get either a W-440--"
"Fiction journeyman," said Halyard.
"Or a W-255."
"Public relations," said Halyard.
"Please, what are public relations?" said Khashdrahr.
"That profession," said Halyard, quoting by memory from the Manual, "that profession specializing in the cultivation, by applied psychology in mass communication media, of favorable public opinion with regard to controversial issues and institutions, without being offensive to anyone of importance, and with the continued stability of the economy and society its primary goal."
"Oh well, never mind," said Khashdrahr. "Please go on with your story, sibi Takaru"
"Two months ago he submitted his finished manuscript to the National Council of Arts and Letters for criticism and assignment to one of the book clubs."
"There are twelve of them," Halyard interrupted. "Each one selects books for a specific type of reader."
"There are twelve types of readers?" said Khashdrahr.
"There is now talk of a thirteenth and fourteenth," said
Halyard. "The line has to be drawn somewhere, of course, because of the economics of the thing. In order to be self-supporting, a book club has to have at least a half-million members, or it isn't worth setting up the machinery--the electronic billers, the electronic addressers, the electronic wrappers, the electronic presses, and the electronic dividend computers."
"And the electronic writers," said the girl bitterly.
"That'll come, that'll come," said Halyard. "But Lord knows getting manuscripts isn't any trick. That's hardly the problem. Machinery's the thing. One of the smaller clubs, for instance, covers four city blocks. DSM."
"DSM?" said Khashdrahr.
"Excuse me. Dog Story of the Month."
Khashdrahr and the Shah shook their heads slowly and made clucking sounds. "Four city blocks," echoed Khashdrahr hollowly.
"Well, a fully automatic setup like that makes culture very cheap. Book costs less than seven packs of chewing gum. And there are picture clubs, too--pictures for your walls at amazingly cheap prices. Matter of fact, culture's so cheap, a man figured he could insulate his house cheaper with books and prints than he could with rockwool. Don't think it's true, but it's a cute story with a good point."
"And painters are well supported under this club system?" asked Khashdrahr.
"Supported--I guess!" said Halyard. "It's the Golden Age of Art, with millions of dollars a year poured into reproductions of Rembrandts, Whistlers, Goyas, Renoirs, El Grecos, Degas, da Vincis, Michelangelos ..."
"These club members, they get just any book, any picture?" asked Khashdrahr.
"I should say not! A lot of research goes into what's run off, believe me. Surveys of public reading tastes, readability and appeal tests on books being considered. Heavens, running off an unpopular book would put a club out of business like that!" He snapped his fingers ominously. "The way they keep culture so cheap is by knowing in advance what and how much of it people want. They get it right, right down to the color of the jacket. Gutenberg would be amazed."
"Gutenberg?" said Khashdrahr.
"Sure--the man who invented movable type. First man to mass-produce Bibles."
"Alla sutta takki?" said the Shah.
"Eh?" said Halyard.
"Shah wants to know if he made a survey first."
"Anyway," said the girl, "my husband's book was rejected by the Council."
"Badly written," said Halyard primly. "The standards are high."
"Beautifully written," she said patiently. "But it was twenty-seven pages longer than the maximum length; its readability quotient was 26.3, and--"
"No club will touch anything with an R.Q. above 17," explained Halyard.
"And," the girl continued, "it had an antimachine theme."
Halyard's eyebrows arched high. "Well! I should hope they wouldn't print it! What on earth does he think he's doing? Good lord, you're lucky if he isn't behind bars, inciting to advocate the commission of sabotage like that. He didn't really think somebody'd print it, did he?"
"He didn't care. He had to write it, so he wrote it."
"Why doesn't he write about clipper ships, or something like that? This book about the old days on the Erie Canal--the man who wrote that is cleaning up. Big demand for that bare-chested stuff."
She shrugged helplessly. "Because he never got mad at clipper ships or the Erie Canal, I guess."
"He sounds very maladjusted," said Halyard distastefully. "If you ask me, my dear, he needs the help of a competent psychiatrist. They do wonderful things in psychiatry these days. Take perfectly hopeless cases, and turn them into grade A citizens. Doesn't he believe in psychiatry?"
"Yes, indeed. He watched his brother find peace of mind through psychiatry. That's why he won't have anything to do with it."
"I don't follow. Isn't his brother happy?"
"Utterly and always happy. And my husband says somebody's just got to be maladjusted; that somebody's got to be uncomfortable enough to wonder where people are, where they're going, and why they're going there. That was the trouble with his book. It raised those questions, and was rejected. So he was ordered into public-relations duty."
"So the story has a happy ending after all," said Halyard.
"Hardly. He refused."
"Lordy!"
"Yes. He was notified that, unless he reported for public-relations duty by yesterday, his subsistence, his housing permit, his health and security package, everything, would be revoked. So today, when you came along, I was wandering around town, wondering what on earth a girl could do these days to make a few dollars. There aren't many things."
"This husband of yours, he'd rather have his wife a--Rather, have her--" Halyard cleared his throat "--than go into public relations?"
"I'm proud to say," said the girl, "that he's one of the few men on earth with a little self-respect left."
Khashdrahr translated this last bit, and the Shah shook his head sadly. The Shah removed a ruby ring and pressed it into her hand. "Ti, sibi Takaru. Dibo. Brahous brahouna, houna saki. Ippi goura Brahouna ta tippo a mismit." He opened the limousine door for her.
"What did the gentleman say?" she asked.
"He said to take the ring, pretty little citizen," said Khashdrahr tenderly. "He said goodbye and good luck, and that some of the greatest prophets were crazy as bedbugs."
"Thank you, sir," she said, climbing out and starting to cry again. "God bless you."
The limousine pulled away from her. The Shah waved wistfully. "Dibo, sibi Takaru," he said, and was seized by a violent sneezing fit. He blew his nose. "Sumklish!"
Khashdrahr handed him the sacred flask.
25
WHEN THE SPIRIT OF THE MEADOWS churned up to the dock at the Mainland, the public address system, turned low, was murmuring "Good Night, Sweetheart," a sweet wraith of music a whisper above the voice in the pines, the lapping of the great blue water, the whir of the eagle wing.
No lights shone from the women's and children's lodges. In the Central Administration Building was a single square of light, silhouetting a sleeping clerk.
As Paul made for it, to ask the clerk where he might find Anita, lights flashed in his night-accustomed eyes. When his pupils had adjusted themselves to the glare, he found himself staring at his reflection in a mirror again, under the legend, THE BEST WIFE FOR THE BEST MAN FOR THE BEST JOB IN THE WORLD.
He hurried past the mirror, wondering how many times Anita had contemplated her reflection and the legend here, wondering how she would take the news that her Best Man had become merely a man, with no job at all.
He woke up the clerk, who called the matron in charge of the lodge where Anita slept.
"What's matter with the party over there?" said the clerk sleepily, waiting for the matron to answer. "You're about the tenth guy to come over here tonight. Usually they don't start coming until about the fourth day. Now, what's the matter with the matron, anyway? The phone's right by her bunk." He glanced at the clock. "You know what time it is? You haven't got time to make a nickel. The last boat back for the island leaves in three minutes."
"Keep ringing. I'm not going back."
"If you're going to spend the night, don't tell me about it. There're about twenty-seven rules against it."
Paul handed him a ten-dollar bill. "Keep ringing."
"For that, you can be invisible for a week. Whaddya like? Blondes, brunettes, redheads? Aha! She answered. Where the hell you been?" he asked the matron. "You got a Mrs. Paul Proteus there?" He nodded. "Uh-huh, uh-huh. O.K. Leave a note on her bunk, will you." He turned to Paul. "She's out, Doctor."
"Out?"
"Walking in the moonlight, probably. Matron says she's a great walker."
If Anita was a great walker, it was news to Paul. He'd seen her drive a car to the house across the street from theirs, and she denied all the tenets of physical culture by remaining young and graceful while eating like a farmhand and conserving her strength like a princess. Bound feet and six-inch fingernails wouldn't have restricted her activities in the
least.
Paul sat down on a wicker chair in the cool blue shadows of the Administration Building's porch and rested his feet on the peeling bark of the log railing to wait.
Now the lights along the walks blinked on and off, a silent signal, warning that the last boat was about to leave for the island.
There was laughing, and quick crunching in the gravel, and a couple ran from the woods toward the dock. Their insistence on keeping their arms about each other's waists made their progress as graceless as a sack race. This annoyed Paul as a critic. It was painful to watch a clumsily conducted mating rite, knowing, from long experience with the skilled Anita, how much like a dance it could be when done properly.
There--she was making him slow down now, and their gait through the trees, against the moon, was more orderly. Paul had been sure that the farewell kiss would be an ungainly business, but, all credit to her, they stopped, and took the time and stances to do it right. Good.
Paul watched them with increasing identification with the man. Paul had always been a petty thief of others' high moments, and his hunger for this particular sort of moment was acute. With his old life gone, and his new one, whatever it was to be, not yet begun, he was voracious for love--Anita's love, vividly imagined love, vicarious love--any love, whatever was immediately available.
Now she was coming back, slowly, thoughtfully, content. Wonderful.
The lights on the booby-trap mirror flashed on. The woman smoothed her slacks over her hips and tucked in a wisp of hair. She lingered before her image a long time, turning this way and that, seemingly pleased, as well she might be, by the shape of her breasts ingenuously hidden under tight green cotton, with the word "Captain" undulating uphill, downdale.
"Anita!"
She jumped, and quickly folded her arms across her bosom in a protective gesture. Slowly her arms went to her sides again, and she stood erect, a woman with nothing to hide, least of all Shepherd's shirt. "Hello, Paul." She walked over to the porch where he sat, stately, cold, and sat down beside him. "Well?"
When he said nothing, her poise began to fail and she plucked nervously at the bark on the log railing, pulling off little strips and throwing them out into the summer night. "Go ahead," she said at last.
"Me go ahead?" said Paul.
"Don't you think an explanation is in order?"
"Decidedly."
Player Piano Page 23