Riders of the Purple Wage

by Philip José Farmer

  “Three bombs!” Chib says loudly so that Legrand’s fido will pick up the words. “One for the control console of the desalinization plant, a second for the backup console, the third for the nexus of the big pipe that carries the water to the reservoir on the 20th level.”

  Pinkerton Legrand turns pale. He downs all the whiskey in his glass and orders another, although he has already had too many. He presses the plate on his fido to transmit a triple top-priority. Lights blink redly in HQ; a gong clangs repeatedly; the chief wakes up so suddenly he falls off his chair.

  Accipiter also hears, but he sits stiff, dark, and brooding as the diorite image of a Pharaoh’s falcon. Monomaniac, he is not to be diverted by talk of inundating all LA, even if it will lead to action. On Grandpa’s trail, he is now here because he hopes to use Chib as the key to the house. One “mouse”—as he thinks of his criminals—one “mouse” will run to the hole of another.

  “When do you think we can go into action?” Huga Wells-Erb Heinsturbury, the science-fiction authoress, says.

  “In about three weeks,” Chib says.

  At HQ, the chief curses Legrand for disturbing him. There are thousands of young men and women blowing off steam with these plots of destruction, assassination, and revolt. He does not understand why the young punks talk like this, since they have everything handed them free. If he had his way, he’d throw them into jail and kick them around a little or more than.

  “After we do it, we’ll have to take off for the big outdoors,” Red Hawk says. His eyes glisten. “I’m telling you, boys, being a free man in the forest is the greatest. You’re a genuine individual, not just one of the faceless breed.”

  Red Hawk believes in this plot to destroy LA. He is happy because, though he hasn’t said so, he has grieved while in Mother Nature’s lap for intellectual companionship. The other savages can hear a deer at a hundred yards, detect a rattlesnake in the bushes, but they’re deaf to the footfalls of philosophy, the neigh of Nietzsche, the rattle of Russell, the honkings of Hegel.

  “The illiterate swine!” he says aloud. The others say, “What?”

  “Nothing. Listen, you guys must know how wonderful it is. You were in the WNRCC.”

  “I was 4-F,” Omar Runic says. “I got hay fever.”

  “I was working on my second M.A.,” Gibbon Tacitus says.

  “I was in the WNRCC band,” Sibelius Amadeus Yehudi says. “We only got outside when we played the camps, and that wasn’t often.”

  “Chib, you were in the Corps. You loved it, didn’t you?”

  Chib nods but says, “Being a neo-Amerind takes all your time just to survive. When could I paint? And who would see the paintings if I did get time? Anyway, that’s no life for a woman or a baby.”

  Red Hawk looks hurt and orders a whiskey mixed with P.

  Pinkerton Legrand doesn’t want to interrupt his monitoring, yet he can’t stand the pressure in his bladder. He walks towards the room used as the customers’ catch-all. Red Hawk, in a nasty mood caused by rejection, sticks his leg out. Legrand trips, catches himself, and stumbles forward. Benedictine puts out her leg. Legrand falls on his face. He no longer has any reason to go to the urinal except to wash himself off.

  Everybody except Legrand and Accipiter laugh. Legrand jumps up, his fists doubled. Benedictine ignores him and walks over to Chib, her friends following. Chib stiffens. She says, “You perverted bastard! You told me you were just going to use your finger!”

  “You’re repeating yourself,” Chib says. “The important thing is, what’s going to happen to the baby?”

  “What do you care?” Benedictine says. “For all you know, it might not even be yours!”

  “That’d be a relief,” Chib says, “if it weren’t. Even so, the baby should have a say in this. He might want to live—even with you as his mother.”

  “In this miserable life!” she cries. “I’m going to do it a favor. I’m going to the hospital and get rid of it. Because of you, I have to miss out on my big chance at the Folk Festival! There’ll be agents from all over there, and I won’t get a chance to sing for them!”

  “You’re a liar,” Chib says. “You’re all dressed up to sing.”

  Benedictine’s face is red; her eyes, wide; her nostrils, flaring.

  “You spoiled my fun!”

  She shouts, “Hey, everybody, want to hear a howler! This great artist, this big hunk of manhood, Chib the divine, he can’t get a hard-on unless he’s gone down on!”

  Chib’s friends look at each other. What’s the bitch screaming about? So what’s new?

  From Grandpa’s Private Ejaculations:

  Some of the features of the Panamorite religion, so reviled and loathed in the 21st century, have hecome everyday facts in modern times. Love, love, love, physical and spkitual! It’s not enough to just kiss your children and hug them. But oral stimulation of the genitals of infants by the parents and relatives has resulted in some curious conditioned reflexes. I could write a book about this aspect of mid-22nd century life and probably will.

  Legrand comes out of the washroom. Benedictine slaps Chib’s face. Chib slaps her back. Gobrinus lifts up a section of the bar and hurtles through the opening, crying, “Poisson! Poisson!”

  He collides with Legrand, who lurches into Bela, who screams, whirls, and slaps Legrand, who slaps back. Benedictine empties a glass of P in Chib’s face. Howling, he jumps up and swings his fist. Benedictine ducks, and the fist goes over her shoulder into a girlfriend’s chest.

  Red Hawk leaps up on the table and shouts, “I’m a regular bearcat, half-alligator, half…”

  The table, held up in a graviton field, can’t bear much weight. It tilts and catapults him into the girls, and all go down. They bite and scratch Red Hawk, and Benedictine squeezes his testicles. He screams, writhes, and hurls Benedictine with his feet onto the top of the table. It has regained its normal height and altitude, but now it flips over again, tossing her to the other side. Legrand, tippytoeing through the crowd on his way to the exit, is knocked down. He loses some front teeth against somebody’s knee cap. Spitting blood and teeth, he jumps up and slugs a bystander.

  Gobrinus fires off a gun that shoots a tiny Very light. It’s supposed to blind the brawlers and so bring them to their senses while they’re regaining their sight. It hangs in the air and shines like

  A STAR OVER BEDLAM

  The Police Chief is talking via fido to a man in a public booth. The man has turned off the video and is disguising his voice.

  “They’re beating the shit out of each other in The Private Universe.”

  The Chief groans. The Festival has just begun, and They are at it already.

  “Thanks. The boys’ll be on the way. What’s your name? I’d like to recommend you for a Citizen’s Medal.”

  “What! And get the shit knocked out of me, too! I ain’t no stoolie; just doing my duty. Besides, I don’t like Gobrinus or his customers. They’re a bunch of snobs.”

  The Chief issues orders to the riot squad, leans back, and drinks a beer while he watches the operation on fido. What’s the matter with these people, anyway? They’re always mad about something.

  The sirens scream. Although the bolgani ride electrically driven noiseless tricycles, they’re still clinging to the centuries-old tradition of warning the criminals that they’re coming. Five trikes pull up before the open door of The Private Universe. The police dismount and confer. Their two-storied cylindrical helmets are black and have scarlet roaches. They wear goggles for some reason although their vehicles can’t go over 15 m.p.h. Their jackets are black and fuzzy, like a teddy bear’s fur, and huge golden epaulets decorate their shoulders. The shorts are electric-blue and fuzzy; the jackboots, glossy black. They carry electric shock sticks and guns that fire chokegas pellets.

  Gobrinus blocks the entrance. Sergeant O’Hara says, “Come on, let us in. No, I don’t have a warrant of entry. But I’ll get one.”

  “If you do, I’ll sue,” Gobrinus says. He smiles. While
it is true that government red tape was so tangled he quit trying to acquire a tavern legally, it is also true that the government will protect him in this issue. Invasion of privacy is a tough rap for the police to break.

  O’Hara looks inside the doorway at the two bodies on the floor, at those holding their heads and sides and wiping off blood, and at Accipiter, sitting like a vulture dreaming of carrion. One of the bodies gets up on all fours and crawls through between Gobrinus’ legs out into the street.

  “Sergeant, arrest that man!” Gobrinus says. “He’s wearing an illegal fido. I accuse him of invasion of privacy.”

  O’Hara’s face lights up. At least he’ll get one arrest to his credit. Legrand is placed in the paddywagon, which arrives just after the ambulance. Red Hawk is carried out as far as the doorway by his friends. He opens his eyes just as he’s being carried on a stretcher to the ambulance and he mutters.

  O’Hara leans over him. “What?”

  “I fought a bear once with only my knife, and I came out better than with those cunts. I charge them with assault and battery, murder and mayhem.”

  O’Hara’s attempt to get Red Hawk to sign a warrant fails because Red Hawk is now unconscious. He curses. By the time Red Hawk begins feeling better, he’ll refuse to sign the warrant. He won’t want the girls and their boy-friends laying for him, not if he has any sense at all.

  Through the barred window of the paddywagon, Legrand screams, “I’m a gummint agent! You can’t arrest me!”

  The police get a hurry-up call to go to the front of the Folk Center, where a fight between local youths and Westwood invaders is threatening to become a riot. Benedictine leaves the tavern. Despite several blows in the shoulders and stomach, a kick in the buttocks, and a bang on the head, she shows no signs of losing the fetus.

  Chib, half-sad, half-glad, watches her go. He feels a dull grief that the baby is to be denied life. By now he realizes that part of his objection to the abortion is identification with the fetus; he knows what Grandpa thinks he does not know. He realizes that his birth was an accident—lucky or unlucky. If things had gone otherwise, he would not have been born. The thought of his nonexistence—no painting, no friends, no laughter, no hope, no love—horrifies him. His mother, drunkenly negligent about contraception, has had any number of abortions, and he could have been one of them.

  Watching Benedictine swagger away (despite her torn clothes), he wonders what he could ever have seen in her. Life with her, even with a child, would have been gritty.

  In the hope-lined nest of the mouth

  Love flies once more, nestles down,

  Coos, flashes feathered glory, dazzles,

  And then flies away, crapping,

  As is the wont of hirds,

  To jet-assist the take off.

  —Omar Runic

  Chib returns to his home, but he still can’t get back into his room. He goes to the storeroom. The painting is seven-eighths finished but was not completed because he was dissatisfied with it. Now he takes it from the house and carries it to Runic’s house, which is in the same clutch as his. Runic is at the Center, but he always leaves his doors open when he’s gone. He has equipment which Chib uses to finish the painting, working with a sureness and intensity he lacked the first time he was creating it. He then leaves Runic’s house with the huge oval canvas held above his head.

  He strides past the pedestals and under their curving branches with the ovoids at their ends. He skirts several small grassy parks with trees, walks beneath more houses, and in ten minutes is nearing the heart of Beverly Hills. Here mercurial Chib sees

  ALL IN THE GOLDEN AFTERNOON, THREE LEADEN LADIES

  drifting in a canoe on Lake Issus. Maryam bint Yusuf, her mother, and aunt listlessly hold fishing poles and look towards the gay colors, music, and the chattering crowd before the Folk Center. By now the police have broken up the juvenile fight and are standing around to make sure nobody else makes trouble.

  The three women are dressed in the somber clothes, completely body-concealing, of the Mohammedan Wahhabi fundamentalist sect. They do not wear veils; not even the Wahhabi now insist on this. Their Egyptian brethren ashore are clad in modern garments, shameful and sinful. Despite which, the ladies stare at them.

  Their menfolk are at the edge of the crowd. Bearded and costumed like sheiks in a Foreign Legion fido show, they mutter gargling oaths and hiss at the iniquitous display of female flesh. But they stare.

  This small group has come from the zoological preserves of Abyssinia, where they were caught poaching. Their gummint gave them three choices. Imprisonment in a rehabilitation center, where they would be treated until they became good citizens if it took the rest of their lives. Emigration to the megalopolis of Haifa, Israel. Or emigration to Beverly Hills, LA.

  What, dwell among the accursed Jews of Israel? They spat and chose Beverly Hills. Alas, Allah had mocked them! They were now surrounded by Finkelsteins, Applebaums, Siegels, Weintraubs, and others of the infidel tribes of Isaac. Even worse, Beverly Hills had no mosque. They either traveled forty kilometers every day to the 16th level, where a mosque was available, or used a private home.

  Chib hastens to the edge of the plastic-edged lake and puts down his painting and bows low, whipping off his somewhat battered hat. Maryam smiles at him but loses the smile when the two chaperones reprimand her.

  “Ya kelb! Ya ibn kelb!” the two shout at him.

  Chib grins at them, waves his hat, and says, “Charmed, I’m sure, mesdames! Oh, you lovely ladies remind me of the Three Graces.”

  He then cries out, “I love you, Maryam! I love you! Thou art like the Rose of Sharon to me! Beautiful, doe-eyed, virginal! A fortress of innocence and strength, filled with a fierce motherhood and utter faithfulness to thy one true love! I love thee, thou art the only light in a black sky of dead stars! I cry to you across the void!”

  Maryam understands World English, but the wind carries his words away from her. She simpers, and Chib cannot help feeling a momentary repulsion, a flash of anger as if she has somehow betrayed him. Nevertheless, he rallies and shouts, “I invite you to come with me to the showing! You and your mother and aunt will be my guests. You can see my paintings, my soul, and know what kind of man is going to carry you off on his Pegasus, my dove!”

  There is nothing as ridiculous as the verbal outpourings of a young poet in love. Outrageously exaggerated. I laugh. But I am also touched. Old as I am, I remember my first loves, the fire, the torrents of words, lightning-sheathed, ache-winged. Dear lasses, most of you are dead; the rest, withered. I blow you a kiss.

  —Grandpa

  Maryam’s mother stands up in the canoe. For a second, her profile is to Chib, and he sees intimations of the hawk that Maryam will be when she is her mother’s age. Maryam now has a gently aquiline face—“the sweep of the sword of love”—Chib has called that nose. Bold but beautiful. However, her mother does look like a dirty old eagle. And her aunt—uneaglish but something of the camel in those features.

  Chib suppresses these unfavorable, even treacherous, comparisons. But he cannot suppress the three bearded, robed, and unwashed men who gather around him.

  Chib smiles but says, “I don’t remember inviting you.”

  They look blank since rapidly spoken LA English is a huftymagufty to them. Abu—generic name for any Egyptian in Beverly Hills—rasps an oath so ancient even the pre-Mohammed Meccans knew it. He forms a fist. Another Arab steps towards the painting and draws back a foot as if to kick it.

  At this moment, Maryam’s mother discovers that it is as dangerous to stand in a canoe as on a camel. It is worse, because the three women cannot swim.

  Neither can the middle-aged Arab who attacks Chib, only to find his victim sidestepping and then urging him on into the lake with a foot in the rear. One of the young men rushes Chib; the other starts to kick at the painting. Both halt on hearing the three women scream and on seeing them go over into the water.

  Then the two run to the edge of the la
ke, where they also go into the water, propelled by one of Chib’s hands in each of their backs. A bolgan hears the six of them screaming and thrashing around and runs over to Chib. Chib is becoming concerned because Maryam is having trouble staying above the water. Her terror is not faked.

  What Chib does not understand is why they are all carrying on so. Their feet must be on the bottom; the surface is below their chins. Despite which, Maryam looks as if she is going to drown. So do the others, but he is not interested in them. He should go in after Maryam. However, if he does, he will have to get a change of clothes before going to the showing.

  At this thought, he laughs loudly and then even more loudly as the bolgan goes in after the women. He picks up the painting and walks off laughing. Before he reaches the Center, he sobers.

  “Now, how come Grandpa was so right? How does he read me so well? Am I fickle, too shallow? No, I have been too deeply in love too many times. Can I help it if I love Beauty, and the beauties I love do not have enough Beauty? My eye is too demanding; it cancels the urgings of my heart.”

  THE MASSACRE OF THE INNER SENSE

  The entrance hall (one of twelve) which Chib enters was designed by Grandpa Winnegan. The visitor comes into a long curving tube lined with mirrors at various angles. He sees a triangular door at the end of the corridor. The door seems to be too tiny for anybody over nine years old to enter. The illusion makes the visitor feel as if he’s walking up the wall as he progresses towards the door. At the end of the tube, the visitor is convinced he’s standing on the ceiling.

  But the door gets larger as he approaches until it becomes huge. Commentators have guessed that this entrance is the architect’s symbolic representation of the gateway to the world of art. One should stand on his head before entering the wonderland of aesthetics.

  On going in, the visitor thinks at first that the tremendous room is inside out or reversed. He gets even dizzier. The far wall actually seems the near wall until the visitor gets reorientated. Some people can’t adjust and have to get out before they faint or vomit.