“Then French-type love is too pebbly. You might at least have sifted it through a screen or something.”
“But I did, through a passoire, French for a colander. Our loving made it lumpy again.”
“And I thank you for that. Opbless. Make me a mattress, please.”
“Climb on top.”
“Ah! That’s better. Thank you again, sir.”
Two minutes, or perhaps twenty, slid by while they drifted and murmured on the terrace.
“You have the nicest bumps, love…”
“Yours is the greatest…”
“Not no more.”
“He’ll be back… That boy’s got strent.”
“The only thing about me that has…”
“Don’t put yourself down.”
“Just facing up to le pauvre petit. I wish I had your strength, Gretchen.”
“I’m no stronger than you.”
“Ten times as.”
“Never.”
“Five times as?”
“No.”
“Two and a half?”
“You’ve got your own kind of power, Blaise.”
“Not me. I feel as soft as Ind’dni.”
“Don’t underestimate him. There’s iron in that man. I can feel it.”
“So long as you don’t feel him…”
“Blaise! You can’t possibly be jealous?”
“Well… Sometimes I catch you looking at him kind of funny-like.”
“Just sizing him up… Feeling for his design. He’s got controlled violence in him, Blaise. If he ever loses control— Look out!”
“That bearded Hindu skog? Never!”
“Funny you should say that, because you’re like Ind’dni.”
“Me!”
“Oh yes. There’s violence in you… Only yours is attack-escape.”
“You’re putting me on.”
“No way. Either you’re le pauvre petit, hiding from tough situations in your lab, or you attempt to escape from a crise by attacking it. And when you do— Look out for Mr. Wish!”
“I couldn’t agree less. I’ve never wanted to hurt anybody or anything. There must be another explanation for the Wish lunacy.”
“Maybe you’re right. I’m too happy to argue. Let’s just go on drifting…”
“Too comfy, you mean.”
“And sleepy. Do we have to do anything today except enjoy Ops?”
“Pay off for our pranks. The Subadar gave me a list of legit claims.”
“Oh… Yes… We’ll split it up.” Gretchen’s yawn tickled his ear. “That shouldn’t take long. My place afterward?”
“Not long for you, maybe. Me, I’ve got another something else to do.”
“My! Aren’t we busy, busy, busy…”
“I’ve got to find a location where I can check out your senses.”
“Oh that. Can’t you do it in a lab?”
“No. It’s got to be a locale completely insulated from all externals.”
“Like empty outer space?”
“Space is far from empty, but that’s the idea. Some place deep and isolated with a power source… It won’t be easy to find…”
“For a genius-type like you? Go on!”
“Opthanks, lady. Would you mind getting off’n me?”
“But I’m so comfy…”
“Off… Off… Off…”
Gretchen got to her feet, grudgingly, and looked around through Shima’s eyes. “I’ll sweep the terrace.”
“Leave it for the end of Ops Week. We’ve too much to do today. What are you going to wear?”
“Plain white coveralls. Nothing fancy. You?”
“Coveralls, too, only blue work-denim.”
“So… Luck, man, and Opbless.”
“Luck, lady, and Opbless.”
The giant boardroom of CCC was jam-packed with freeloaders in tattered clothes, all shouting, singing, drinking, guzzling. A long trestle stretched the fifty-foot length of one wall. It was heaped with food, drink, and squeams, and behind it stood the eleven distinguished directors of CCC, wearing stained chefs’ costumes, and cheerfully serving all comers. Opsday.
Shima squirmed through the mob and reached the trestle at last. “Opbless, senator, I—”
“It’s Jimmy J. today, Blaise. Opbless. What can I serve you?”
“I’m looking for the chairman, Jimmy J.”
“You mean Mills? I think he’s handling the Squeamwich department. Down the road apiece.”
Shima fought down the trestle. “Opbless, general.”
“It’s Georgie, Blaise baby. Opbless. Say, I’ve got some ninety-caliber squeams and morwiches. What’ll it be? White? Rye? Fiber? Glass? Poly?”
“I thought the chairman was handling this concession.”
“Millsie? Not now, baby. He’s shifted over to the rotgut counter.”
Shima struggled again. “Opbless, governor.”
“It’s Nelly today, Blaise. Good old reliable Nelly. Say, I got something for you, son. Just what the doctor ordered. That’s a joke, son. It’s my own invention, The Earache. It sends, fella, it sends.”
“How, govern— Nelly?”
The governor pointed to half a dozen grinning supines jumbled in a corner. “All sent by Nelly’s elixir, The Earache.”
“What’s so special about it?”
“You don’t drink it, son. You drop it. In your ear and you have ignition. Now here’s a dropperful and—”
“Not just now, sir—I mean Nelly. I’m really looking for the chairman. I was told he was here.”
“Mills? Oh. No, Millypooh’s taken over soup.”
In his bedraggled chef’s costume the chairman was ranting like a sideshow pitchman, “HURRY! HURRY! HURRY” In one hand he held a soup tureen, in the other an enema bag. “HURRY! HURRY! HURRY! COME ONE! COME ALL! MEET THE BELLYWHOPPER! IT MEETS IN THE MIDDLE! THE ONLY SOUP THAT TASTES FROM THE INSIDE OUT! Hi, Blaise. Opbless.”
“Opbless, Mr. Chairm— Mills: Sir, I— Excuse me. Millie, I came to square the account for my ruined lab.”
“Forget it, Blaise. THE BELLYWHOPPER! THE BELLYWHOPPER! This is the first of Ops Week. All forgiven, and we’ll set your lab up for you again. MEET THE BELLYWHOPPER! BOTH ENDS AGAINST THE MIDDLE! We can afford it. God knows, CCC’s made enough money out of you.”
“Thank you, Mills.”
“Opbless, Blaise.”
“Sir— Millie, something else. I need a very special environment for a very special test I’ve got to run as soon as possible. Does CCC own a deep mine with a power source I could use? I need a place where the subject can be completely isolated.”
“Mine? Mine? My God, we’ve got a dozen exhausted mines all over the world, but not one you could use in a hurrry, Blaise.”
“Why not, Mills?”
“In the first place, all wiring and utilities were ripped out for scrap ages ago. In the second place, they’ve been taken over by squatters. Thousands of them. Would take at least a year to evict them, kicking and screaming. HURRY! HURRY! HURRY! THE BELLYWHOPPER!”
Gretchen couldn’t assay the mob surrounding the art museum because lifestyle was abandoned by the entire Corridor during Ops Week. Those who didn’t dress badly, faked it. Those who didn’t speak or behave without style, faked it. But she was sure of one thing: most of them had to be art lovers.
Because the museum followed a hallowed Neapolitan New Year’s custom. The Neapolitans save up all their unwanted household furnishings and decorations and on New Year’s Day they throw them out of their windows with hilarious celebrations, and if you’re walking the street, you’d better be on the alert for falling furniture.
The museum, always plagued by storage problems, followed this custom on the first Opsday. Whatever clutter they had occupying precious space, judged unworthy and proven unsalable (for a decent price) was tossed out the top-floor windows.
So down came paintings, prints, etchings, posters, statues, objets d’art and vertu, empty frames, pieces of armor, peri
od costumes, papyrus, Baroque instruments, mummified cats, battered pistols, crumbling pewter.
There were shrieks of laughter from the windows as the mob fought hysterically to catch and possess in fee simple absolute each falling object, and Gretchen knew that getting rid of the museum’s worthless clutter was only half its enjoyment. Although she was out on the fringe of the mob, she found herself surprisingly and massively jostled by a large human object.
“Sorry. Opbless,” she muttered, shifting aside.
“Opbless,” said a clear, cultivated voice with no attempt at faking Ops Week commonality.
Gretchen turned curiously. It was the Queen Bee, Winifred Ashley.
“Regina!”
“What? BB? Is it really you, my dear? How unexpected and how very nice. What are you doing here? Touching earth for something?”
“Not really, Regina. I was hoping to apologize and make up for a disturbance I created the other day, but I see it’s quite impossible. And you?”
“Ah! I’m hoping for a secret treasure.”
“Can you tell me?”
“But of course, dear. After all, you are one of us.” Regina lowered her voice. “They have a player-piano gathering dust in a corner. Every year I hope they’ll tire of it and throw it out.”
“But you already have a player-piano in your beautiful Communist apartment, Regina.”
“Yes, BB, but I don’t want the museum’s old pianola. I want what’s in it. I’m the only one who knows. The first pianola roll of the ‘Internationale’ by Pottier and Degeyter, 1871. It will make the focal point of my decor. Can’t you hear it?” Regina sang as mellifluously as she spoke, “Arise, ye prisoners of starvation…” She laughed. “Perhaps only a dream, but still I touch earth. We’ll see you at my place this evening, of course, dear BB? A lahvely Opsparty to entertain our men. Opbless.”
It was free baths for all in the spillway of the Hudson Hell Gate dam. Fresh water, hot from the breeder cooling system. Slightly radioactive, to be sure, but what the hell, Opsday. Live a little, touch earth, and to hell with the rest. The four-acre spillway was seething with naked bodies, glowing from the heat, foaming with soap, submerging, surging up like porpoises, laughing, shouting, choking, coughing rhapsodically.
“Sooner or later one of them has to drown,” the man alongside Shima murmured. “Maybe on her own or maybe with a little help. I keep hoping. Opbless.”
“Opbless,” Shima answered and inspected the stranger. He was startling; tall, Lincolnesque in face and figure, and markedly piebald. The hair was albino, the beard black, the eyes red, the skin blotched with random black-and-white patches.
“I’m a haploid,” the stranger said casually, almost mechanically, as though he had responded to Shima’s suprised take a thousand times before. “Chromosomes from one parent only.”
“But you are a kind of albino, aren’t you?” Shima asked, much interested.
“Haploid albino,” the stranger said wearily. “Let it go at that, doctor. Don’t try any dissection on me.”
“What! What? You call me ‘doctor’? Are you the—?”
“Yes. Yes indeed. And apparently you have no memory. May I ask what squeam you were shooting?”
“Promethium. The hydride. PmH2.”
“Never heard of it. I must remember to try it. Now this time, doctor, if one of them drowns, with or without help from me, kindly do not interfere. No rescue. No resuscitation. If there’s any mouth-to-mouth, I will apply it in my own fashion.”
“My God! You’re sick!”
“Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it.”
“Christ! I’d rather die first.”
“Sorry. I don’t dig boys.”
Shima took a deep breath. “No. I’m sorry. Really sorry. I apologize for losing my head. I’m not here to argue or hassle with anybody, and certainly I’m in no position to pass moral judgments. I beg you to forgive me.”
“Nicely put.”
“So if you’ll excuse me…”
“Where are you off to?”
“I’m trying to get an interview with the dam director.”
“Oh, are you really, now?”
“Yes. Would you know where I might locate him or her, please?”
“Do I owe you favors?”
“No. I owe you.”
“Nicely put. The dam director is a Mr. Lafferty.”
“Thank you. And where might I find him?”
“Here. I’m Lafferty.”
Again Shima lost his poise. He gawked and stammered, “But— But— But—”
“But how?” Lafferty smiled. “Simple. Brilliance. Hard work. And the fact that I inherited fifty-one percent of the Hudson Hell Gate stock.”
“Ildefonsa would,” Shima said under his breath.
“Must you bring her up at the beginning of the fête, doctor?”
“Sorry again. Apologies again. I’m an ass today.”
“Accepted without reserve.”
“Mr. Lafferty, I—”
“Opsday. Droney.”
“Droney. Thank you. Opbless. I… I came to ask a favor of the HHG director…”
“Ask it.”
“I need a very special environment for a very special sensory test. It must be completely isolated from all sight and sound. I was hoping that the dam depths might—”
“No way,” Lafferty interupted. “If you hadn’t been so busy with your silly firecrackers down there, you’d have noticed that the depths are filled with rumblings and water-wooshings. Speaking of which, there goes a charming young girl under for the third time. She needs tender care. Excuse me.”
Shima could not reply.
The celebrated necrophiliac gave him a benign smile. “We will discuss your landing Subadar Ind’dni on my back another time.” As he plunged into the spillway, Lafferty declaimed, “Strong as an eagle! Swift as a vulture! Go! Go! Go! Go! Necro culture!”
Gianni Jiki’s tattoo parlor was by no means a hole in the wall. It was virtually a hospital with a central reception hall hung with display charts and a dozen side clinics with a dozen assistants working on the assembly-line principle. If, say, a Guff buck desired the prized (and rather expensive) cobra tattoo, the snake was first outlined around his waist in one surgery, detailed in the next, colored in a third, and the fanged head finalized in a fourth after a most respectful and tactfully induced erection. The lady who desired her labia majora converted into the lids of a roguish eye received the same respectful and tactful assembly line attention.
But on this first Opsday it was not business as usual, it was the mendicants’ carnival. In addition to decorative and erotic tattooing, Gianni Jiki also contrived magnificent injuries; bruises, contusions, livid scars, fresh wounds, and malignant skin eruptions for the larcenous accident “victims,” the blackmailing beggars, the deadbeats of the Guff. Consequently, his hospital was the informal clubhouse of the Guff’s professional panhandlers.
A joyous prosthetic dance was in progress in the main hall when Gretchen Nunn arrived. Synthesizers screamed. The professional cripples had removed their prosthetic arms, legs, hands, feet, and even half a neck and a shoulder. They were sitting in a circle, laughing and keying their tiny hand controls, while their detached prosthetic parts danced and cavorted in response to the radio commands. Lone legs kicked or tapped or soft-shoed. Single arms entwined with others in a prosthetic square dance. And some manipulators were clever enough to turn the fingers of their detached hands into chorus lines.
A jolly man, four-by-four-fat, stark naked, tattooed from head to toe, came up to Gretchen, beamed and greeted her. “Buon giorno. Opbless. Never, I thought, mai, never would you return.”
“Opbless,” Gretchen answered. “You— You’re Mr. Jiki, of course?”
“Si. Gianni. You were pazza the other night, eh? Too much wine?”
“I’ve come to apologize and make it up to you, Gianni.”
“To apology? Grazie. Most gentile. Grazie. But to make up? What? A joke only, eh? Mol
to cattiva, but yet only the joke. You have come, and my Opsday is made. That is enough.”
“But I must do something for you.”
“You must, eh? So.” Gianni considered, then beamed even broader. “Bene! You will dance with us.”
Gretchen stared at him. He met her look and nodded toward the floor. “Pick your partner, gentile signora.”
She was not the one to cavil or hesitate. Gretchen stepped onto the main floor, cased the cavorting prosthetics, and at last tapped the shoulder of a shoulder-and-arm.
“Sigfried,” Gianni called to three-quarters of a beggar. “La signora will waltz with you.”
Gretchen danced. Gianni Jiki sang, “Gualtiero! Gualtiero! Condurre mi per altare…”
They had this wretched hull of a Mississippi paddle wheeler for a barge and were holding their KKK Bar-B-Q on it. Shima found the celebration impossible to believe. There was a bed of glowing coals. There was a gigantic rotisserie revolving over it. And on the massive steel spit roasted a trussed form that was unmistakably humanoid.
“Dear God!” Shima whispered. “A cannibal barbecue.”
A seven-foot Watusi king, carrying all the accouterments of African royalty, greeted Shima. “Opbless, Dr. Shima, and welcome to our Honkfeast.”
“Opbless,” Shima replied faintly. “So you remember me?”
“Who could forget your rendition of that quaint Porgy and Bess with Miz Nunn? It is to be treasured.”
“I’m here to make amends for that. I’d like very much to square it with you; courtesywise, moneywise, anywise. You name it.”
“On Opsday? Impossible. Forget it, doctor. We have. Now come and join the feast. Dinner is about to be served.”
“I’d really like to do something for you,” Shima persisted, “because I want something from you.”
“Oh? What?”
“An estimate.”
“Yes? Of what?”
“I must conduct a sensory test which requires absolute isolation of the subject. I was considering some sort of small, thick concrete bunker.”
“Yes. And?”
“You people have a lock on the construction industry. How quickly could you put a bunker together and for how much? Can you give me a time and cost estimate?”
GOLEM 100 Page 16
