Still together in unholy alliance—my words—you were observed in a markethon where Dr. Shima pursued the screaming and laughing Miz Nunn with patently carnal intent. You pelted the lady with phallic objects, doctor; asparagus, celery, bananas, mushrooms, and sausages. To make certain that your intent would be understood by all, you had embellished the objects with crude but specific details.
There was some sort of gap here in your knight’s moves, but apparently you split up again. Madame was pursued in the Strøget where she was smashing star-sapphire displays and denouncing conspicuous consumption, proclaiming, “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” Dr. Shima invaded the Equal Rights maternity hospital and disrupted and endangered several crucial deliveries shouting that he had been impregnated by an elephant and needed an emergency abortion.
You took refuge in the Church of All Atheists, Miz Nunn, where you shocked those few unbelievers who understood Latin by chanting in a loud voice as follows: “O tua lingula, usque perniciter vibrans et vipera. O tuae mammulae, mammae molliculae, dulciter turgidae, gemina poma.” For shame, madame.
And you, Dr. Shima, mounted to the roof of an oasis adjoining the P.L.O. headquarters and tried to topple their two-ton rain tank onto the pinnacle of the P.L.O. pyramid with your bare hands. You were heard howling, “She may enter you but never vice versa.” Really, doctor!
Final act of madness: The two of you burst into this H.Q., sought me out, and tried to stone me to death for being—your words—the wicked sorcerer who had conjured up the Golem100. Fortunately, you were armed only with magical toadstones, which ancient sorcerers believed resided in the heads of toads and could destroy all evil. They are not lethal. But most unfortunately you had neglected to remove the stones from the toads.
Subadar Ind’dni stopped, smiled, drew a deep breath, and crossed to the tree trunk, which he stroked absently. There was silence.
Then Shima croaked, “We did those insane things?”
“And perhaps more,” Ind’dni murmured.
“For twelve hours?”
“A most provocative drug, your Promethium, doctor. Incidentally, may I suggest that you and Miz Nunn submit to a physical examination in near future. Promethium is radioactive, although no reports were received of your glowing in the dark.”
“I know,” Shima muttered. “It was a calculated risk.”
Gretchen said, “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”
“Neither will help, madame. More important is to learn how and why you did what you did.”
“Then you believe we have no knowledge or recollection, Mr. Ind’dni?”
“I watched your facial expressions whilst recounting. Yes, I do. Now, are you willing to discuss an impasse with me?” Ind’dni returned to the charcoal pit and seated himself on the rim. “Before you answer, permit me to assure you that I make no official threats. Your absurd acts were mischief, merely, which may easily be healed by fair payments to victims which I know you will do. The precinct will not advise Legal to prosecute. In any event you could not be immediately punished because tomorrow is the first Opsday of Ops Week. No, my entire concern is the Hundred-Hander beast and I am convinced that you are deeply and secretly involved with that obscene creature. Do you insist on keeping your secret? It is your privilege, and that is the impasse.”
At length Gretchen said, “I think we’ll have to open up, Blaise.”
“I wanted to before but you stopped me.”
“The timing was wrong then. Now is the moment of trust.”
“Reserving what?”
“Nothing.”
“Your phony weapon? My Mr. Wish?”
“Both.”
“There go our careers.”
“Not if the Subadar can be trusted.”
Ind’dni called quietly, “You are taping?”
The disembodied voice answered, “Yes, sir.”
“No longer, please. This consultation is now for my ears only, on my sole responsiblity. You will end record on these words.”
“Yes, sir. Ten-four.”
Gretchen gave Ind’dni a grateful look. “Yours the grace, Subadar.”
“Mine the honor, madame. Now then…?”
And they told him everything. Ind’dni gave them the courtesy of unmasking his face as he listened; he registered suprise, exasperation, anger, incredulity, and even occasional amusement, but not once did he express sympathy. In fact, when they had finished the long recital, he spoke with the severity of a father. “For two distinguished persons, educated and expert, among the elite of the Guff, you have behaved like silly children playing—what was that antique game?—playing Cops and Robbers.”
“We were only trying to meet a strange problem with a strange solution,” Shima muttered.
“No.” Ind’dni was emphatic. “You were trying to answer strength from weakness. If I am to believe your analysis, madame, I—”
“Do you?” Gretchen cut in.
“I am strongly tempted for a reason you have given me quite unaware. Perhaps I will manifest it later. According to your analysis, this Golem monstrosity knows none of the logic of human behavior. It is undiluted passion. It is savagery. Then how meet it with rational reasoning? Can we anthropomorphize a cyclone? And this maleficent is a cyclone tearing apart the Guff. You say you saw it in your Subworld?”
“We think so.”
“Describe same. No, not yet. First describe the subterranean continent as you saw it.”
“We didn’t see it at first,” Shima said. “Our senses were merely echoing.”
“Then describe echoes.”
“But it was just silly nonsense, not worth repeating.”
“You think so? But I have reason to ask. Do not underestimate my cerebral intelligence, I beg. Please to answer.”
Ind’dni listened intently to the description of their fantastic sensory flashes during the Promethium trip. When they were finished he nodded with satisfaction.
“And now the lunacy of your twelve-hour peregrinations is explained,” he said. “Can you not link up parallels between the real world—the Ourworld, Dr. Shima calls it—and your Phasma adventure?”
Shima seemed angered by the Subadar’s grasping something he had missed. “You tell us,” he growled.
Ind’dni’s face flickered; he had noted Shima’s annoyance. “No need for exhaustive detail,” he said smoothly. “I am sure you will construct all for yourselves after I have given a few clues… signposts to guide you. Did you not, doctor, appear to Miz Nunn as an Aztec god? And your search for a virgin at Intra National Cartel Association?
“At another point, attempting to perceive Miz Nunn, you saw figure of a nude woman with internal organs displayed. Does this not tie in with your event at the Guff morgue? Madame, attempting to see you, saw a tattooed Japanese samurai. And what of the happening in the real tattoo parlor?
“You saw yourself, doctor, as a grotesque man with an elephant head. No connection with your invasion of E.R. maternity hospital claiming to have been impregnated by an elephant?
“You saw yourself as a Christmas ornament, madame, and meanwhile in physical life you were covering Staten Island launch pad with Christmas red and green, insisting that aliens on distant stars would understand Luke ii, ‘On earth peace, good will toward men.’ Enough signposts? Need I continue?”
Shima whistled. “By God, he’s right! Everything ties in. When I saw you as a beautiful black nude… that must have been when I was spraying women black.”
“Yes. And when I saw myself dancing with you, that’s when I was seducing the poster.”
“But why didn’t we realize it?”
“You had not time for reflection,” Ind’dni interposed. “Do not feel chagrin. From your last lunacy here in the Center, you went directly into narcotic examination.”
“And we told you what?”
“Nothing, doctor. You have no memory of those twelve hours. You were completely spaced out and timed out because apparently you were functioning entirely a
s somatic entities… naughty animals, prankish but not— Yes, madame?”
“I want to apologize, Subadar. I did underestimate you; not your intelligence, your instincts. I felt contemptuous because you seemed to brush off my analysis of the Golem100 too lightly. Now I know why you did. I’d ignored the soma factor, and your instinct told you that. Mine did not. I’m sorry. I do apologize.”
“Most courteous and generous, Miz Nunn, although I confess I do not yet understand.”
“Me neither,” Shima grunted.
“My gut understands. The trouble is, our bods are on speaking terms with our minds, but not the other way around. It’s a one-way street.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Gretch?”
“About my mistake, which the Subadar sensed. I was so obsessed with exploring the Phasmaworld concept that I ignored the reality of the human physical world. I’m a traitor to psychodynamics. But let’s drop the psytech jive and talk plain housekeeping, shall we?”
“A pleasure, lady.”
“We’ve got a mind and body. Are they separate?”
“No, they’re one.”
“Who’s in charge?”
“Both.”
“Can you have a living bod without a mind?”
“Yes, a vegetable.”
“Can you have a living mind without a bod?”
“No, unless you believe in ghosts.”
“So the mind, the psyche, has got to have a home, and the soma is the house for the psyche. The bod’s the lodging house; the pysche’s the tenant. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“And whatever the psyche produces—art, music, science, logic, ideas, love, hatred—is really a product of the whole house.”
“I’ll concede that.”
“You better concede it. The Golem is a quasi-living entity. It must be the product of a house.”
“You said it’s the product of the bee-ladies.”
“And their hive is its house. That’s my point. The hive is the hearth and home of the Golem.” Gretchen turned to Ind’dni. “Am I making sense, Subadar?”
Ind’dni smiled. “You omit the soul, madame.”
“No, I merely omit mention. The soul is the tonus of the soma. It’s metabolic music.”
“The hell it is,” Shima broke in. “Not that I buy the concept of a soul. But if there is one, it belongs to the mind… to the psyche. It’s the thinking part of us.”
“Not to me, Blaise. I believe it’s a resonance of the soma, the flowering of a million years of evolution, the cultural unconscious in all animals.”
“Animals! All animals?”
“All,” Gretchen said firmly. “Do you think a tiger has a soul?”
“A lot of religions say no.”
“Saint Francis of Assisi didn’t. The tiger has a soul. It can’t compute. It doesn’t pray. You never hear a tiger say, ‘What did the Polack do when he got lost in the jungle?’ His soma and psyche are purely reflexive, dedicated to survival and satisfaction, but I say the tiger has a soul, all the same, and I rest my case.”
“Yes, but what is your case, counselor?” Shima was in deadly earnest.
“That the ladies’ hive is the body and soul of the Golem, its house. Do you agree, Subadar?”
“Most unusual construct, as is your wont, Miz Nunn. But does not the Golem have a body of its own… a hundred bodies? Most unhappily I do not know whereabouts of its soul, if any. Shall I issue an A.P.B.?”
Gretchen laughed. “Using Code Nemo?”
“Perhaps a Code Credo would be more à propos.”
“Damn it! If you two are going to start clowning—!” Shima burst out.
“Cool it, baby. Just relieving the tension, is all,” Gretchen soothed. To Ind’dni, “It’s a quasi-body, Subadar; a projection, along with its primal drives, of the hive. That’s why it’s polymorphic. Think of water in free fall. Without gravity the water can be shaped into anything. The Golem has no real form of its own. The hive is its generator and shapes it ad lib.”
Shima demanded, “Then you mean destroy all the bee-ladies to zap the Golem? I can just see our good friend here standing by and permitting that.”
“Hardly likely,” Ind’dni murmured. “I permit no destruction whatever.”
“I don’t mean destroy the women,” Gretchen explained. “It’s a collective act, remember? Break up the colony and you destroy the Golem’s home.”
“Scatter them?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not sure whether the beehive parallel goes that far.”
“Let’s suppose it does.”
“Then it’s still iffy. The life of an insect colony can go on whether there’s a queen or not. Only the beehive must have a queen.”
“You mean what’s-her-name… Winifred Ashley?”
“And that’s the big ‘if.’ Is she really a queen in the bee sense, holding the colony together? Is she the prime factor in the generation of the Golem? Damn it, I don’t know, and I don’t know how to find out.”
“There’s an obvious solution, another Pm trip.”
“But I’m afraid of that, Blaise. We can’t trust our senses because they panic and short-circuit. And certainly we can’t trust our somas when the rest of us vacate.”
“If I may make a suggestion?” Ind’dni spoke from the cedar trunk.
“Please.”
“The next Promethium trip may be made under controlled environment. The bodies can be restrained.”
“That’s true, Subadar, but it doesn’t solve the problem of our unreliable senses.”
“Not Dr. Shima’s, perhaps, but yours alone, madame?”
“Mine? Alone?”
“I have begged not to be underestimated. Yes, I knew all about your seeing at second hand before your confession. You are a lusus naturae. You did sense this Hundred-Hander?”
“I think I did.”
“Appearance, please.”
“An unformed, man.”
“Actions?”
“None.”
“You perceived the beast with your own senses or through Dr. Shima’s?”
Gretchen was thunderstruck. “My God! I never thought—I honestly don’t know.”
“Do you know whether its behavior in your Phasmaworld might reveal its prime source?”
“It might. Maybe. Does this mean you believe me now?”
“Maybe. Your word. But does it not occur to you that your second-handery will enable you to visit the Phasmaworld with virgin senses and perceive what truly transpires?”
“By God!” Shima exclaimed.
“The expedition can come only after planning and careful preparation. Now you must go and rest. You both need it.” Ind’dni was firmly in control. “Next, doctor, you will test madame’s senses. We know about her sight, but sound must also be examined. That, too, may be crucial.”
“What about the other three; smell, taste, and touch?”
“But I already know from confession of true events. That was your unaware reason for my belief, madame, which I told you I would manifest later.”
“What did she confess that tells you so much?”
“Touch, doctor? Did she not feel sensation of cold when the creature invaded?”
“She did, by God!”
“Wait,” Gretchen said. “I might have gotten that secondhand from the Golem itself.”
“How, madame? Does the creature have senses in human terms? And would it be aware of the cold it exuded? No. That sense was your very own.”
“He’s right, Gretch. But smell and taste, Ind’dni? They’re linked, of course.”
“Ah! That was clincher, as Legal would say. Miz Nunn, of herself, with her own senses, smelled the typical odor the Hundred-Hander emits, the bouquet de malades, the aroma of the mad. I have smelled it myself and that was what convinced my belief. The Bombazine mind is most often enforced by subtleties.”
“This smartass skog really is something, Gretchen,” Shima growled, again angered.
Ind’dni’s face flickered in response to the pejorative. “Please not to delay testing, doctor. There is time urgency. ‘The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold.’ For ‘Assyrian’ read the Hundred-Hander Golem. Of course you will make redress to victims of your escapades. My staff will assist.”
“How?” Shima demanded. “With money?”
“With knowledge.” Ind’dni arose to escort them out. “What then, doctor? You are unacquainted with scandal of Mount Everest ski lift?”
“Certainly I’m acquainted. It collapsed.”
“Plunging fifty misfortunates to injury and death. That was not the scandal I refer to. When rescuers arrived at scene of disaster there were not fifty, there were one hundred and five victims, in quotes, writhing in the snow crying for medical and legal. That was the scandal and it must not happen to you.”
Ind’dni opened the door, smiled them out with a soft, “Opbless,” and closed the door. He pressed a button and called to no one, “Please to resume recording and send in Mr. Droney Lafferty.”
15
Ah yes, the first wild Opsday of Ops Week, traditional Opalia (the Women’s Movement counter to Saturnalia) dedicated to reckless entertainment… as if the Guff needed any additional excuse for madness. Ops, wife of Saturn, Earth Goddess of Plenty, (she gave her name to “opulent”) in whose honor one touched earth instead of wood for luck, gave earthenware gifts, and fraternized regardless of rank or clout.
No schools, no disciplines, no punishments, no status dress or speech or courtesies; just free-for-all fun, and the best way to begin the carnival was to entertain a woman with her butt firmly pressed against earth, as Blaise Shima had just done.
“Opbless,” Gretchen gasped.
“Opbless, love.”
“But this gravel is killing my back.”
“Gravel? For shame, Gretchen. It’s earth, imported all the way from la belle France. We grudge no expense.”
GOLEM 100 Page 15
