GOLEM 100

by Alfred Bester

  “Radio-wave propagation of all sorts, anywhere from shortwave down to ten kilocycles. How does the Golem sense them, Ind’dni?”

  “Merely as geometric designs. What an opportunity for a critic of entertainment, eh?”

  “Great Deva in Devachan! It is frantic now, and has transposed to sound.”

  Gretchen seized the microphone. “But when the Golem tried to attack me and spoke that backwards gibberish, you said the creature was ‘not of intelligence.’ Your words, Subadar.”

  “True, madame, and the gibberish continues. It is perceiving word images and fragments alone.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I will try to illuminate Golem’s extraordinary perceptions which I am sensing, Miz Nunn. Do you read music?”

  “Through other eyes, yes.”

  “And as you read it, does your inner ear hear it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Conceive, please, of someone who cannot read musical notation in act of looking at a score. Would such person hear anything?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “And what would they see?”

  “Just lines and dots and circles and strange signs and symbols.”

  “Thank you. And that is how Golem100 is presently perceiving the sounds that we use for communication.”

  “It cannot find a host, a home, a father, a mother, any refuge…

  “It has lost it’s fight for survival. We are going…”

  “Nothing remains.”

  21

  Ind’dni sprawled exhausted in the deep chair specially engineered for the DODO’s bulk. They were in the office of F.H. Leuz and surrounded by a kaleidoscope of fish. The walls were lined with scores of tanks that emitted a bubbling and hissing. While Gretchen and Shima watched the Subadar, Leuz crossed to a clear tank with nothing in it but crystal water and a single lobe of bleached brain coral. He drew a glass from a spigot at the base of the tank and brought it to Ind’dni. As he passed a tank containing a conger eel, he gave it a friendly tap and the eel snapped its frightening jaws at his fingers.

  “Got him trained,” Leuz said. He put the glass into the Subadar’s hand. “Drink careful-like,” he said. “It’s vodka. Hundred proof.”

  Ind’dni was not only shattered but completely disoriented. The first sip he attempted was from the far side of the glass. He succeeded only in dribbling on his chest. He turned the glass ninety degrees in his hand to reverse it, but again tried to drink from the opposite rim. At last his bewildered mind understood and he managed a sip from the near lip, then another, and finally the entire glassful. He took a breath.

  “Thanks zaban, Leuz-doctor. Was most full. Of need. Needful, yes?” He smiled at Gretchen and Shima. “So. Not quite so impervious, Alkhand-sarangdharind’dni, as Burne-Salem estimated, eh? Alien must admit name complete when entering country.” He handed the glass back to Leuz. “Mujh thank beloved Lord Siva all over at last.”

  Gretchen clasped her hands. “Then the Golem’s gone, Subadar?”

  Ind’dni made an effort to master coherent speech. “Rather… Rather to say, extinguished.”

  “But dirty, rotten dead?”

  “Difficult to state. That extraordinary creature left no corpus vile.”

  Shima was dissatisfied. “Why can’t you say for sure, Ind’dni?”

  “Alkhand-sarangdharind’dni full name most of reluctance to discuss scientific science with experts, Shima-doctor, but…”

  “Yes? But? Go on, man!”

  “Seemed to me that it… Withdrew? Disappeared? Dissolved through a Black Hole.”

  “The hell you say!” Shima exclaimed. “A Black Hole? Into a contra-universe?”

  “Excuse me.” Leuz was leaning back against a tank, seemingly enhaloed by a hundred neon fish. “The Black Hole passageway into a contra-universe is still only a theoretical concept. There’s no hard evidence, outside of assumptions about stellar collapse.” The huge man looked up at the ceiling where a stuffed devilfish hung, flapping its wings to nowhere. “Some claim that the tremendous Siberian blast of nineteen-ought-eight wasn’t caused by a meteorite but by a wandering Black Hole.”

  “But was what I seemed to perceive from our senses, Leuz-doctor.”

  Gretchen knifed in. “Our senses, Subadar? And when you were reporting from the bathysphere you said, ‘We are going.’”

  “Bikhe, Miz Nunn. ‘We.’ ‘Our.’ Self senses very nearly transported all way through with the Golem.”

  “But they didn’t?”

  “Partim only. Then I withdrew.”

  Shima whistled. “Describe it, Ind’dni. What was it like?”

  Ind’dni closed his eyes, but before he could answer, Leuz began drawling suggestions. “Chaos? Disorientation? That’s obvious from the way you’re behaving now, Subadar. Time running backward? Space inside-out? Total inversion? Heart and respiration reversed? Body transposed, right for left and left for right? Everything contra?”

  Ind’dni could only reply with a nod to each. Then he whispered, “And I saw the goks.”

  “You saw the what?”

  “I saw what Shima-doctor calls skog; my contraself.”

  All three were incredulous. Shima burst out, “Christ on the Mount! A mirror image?”

  “Worse. A negative of self. Dismaying reversal.” Ind’dni made another effort to reorganize himself. “Black for white, white for black, as Leuz-doctor suggests. I am bred and cultured by Hindostani tradition. Trained by security discipline for conduct of self-civilized control. Contra of self was refutation, negation of my accustomary lifestyle. It was— How to say? Was— I can only use Miz Nunn’s descriptive of deep-buried id…”

  “Remorseless,” Gretchen murmured. “Treacherous, lecherous, kindless.”

  Ind’dni gave her a backward wave of thanks. “So, in admissioned panic, the positive Ind’dni got… to use one of your favorite locutions, Shima-doctor… got out the hell of there.”

  “Jesu!” Shima breathed. “To lose such an opportunity. I would have been forced to follow that challenge until I caught up with it and made it talk.”

  “In reverse gibberish, no doubt,” and Gretchen suddenly burst out laughing and went on laughing in hysterical relief.

  “Opportunity was cheerfully and blessedly lost, Shima-doctor, for me,” Ind’dni said, ignoring Gretchen’s cackle which was rising to a crescendo. “For me, reversed contraworld made our mad Guff seem rational by contrast.”

  “Not rational; cheerful!” Gretchen bubbled. “Cheerful’s the word. Cheerful! Cheerful!” She smacked the conger eel tank with her lips. “Giz a kiss, bigmouth. The Golem’s dead, departed, gone to its contrareward…” She skipped from tank to tank, laughing and smacking them with her mouth. “We’ve got to celebrate. No more Golem. No more horrors. I’m out of the cell, hear, all you fisheses? No more Guff-arrest-cell. No more padded cell. Hear ye! Hear ye! Salmons and soles! Shadses and sturgeonses! Cods and crabs!”

  “Hey Gretch!” Shima protested. “Easy, girl!”

  “Whatsa matter you?” Gretchen demanded. “Not happy? I am. It’s all over. Snagu! Situation normal; all guffed up. I’m out of the cell. Come on a my place, all of you. We’ll join the crazy ladies if they’re still there. We’ll celebrate. We’ll eat and drink up a storm and sing crazy songs to celebrate. Come on a my place. Snagu! Snagu!”

  She tore out of the office and the three men followed. There was something about Gretchen that had to be followed.

  The masonry which had once been a bridge pier and was now an Oasis fortress was a shambles. It was wide open, without security, and it was impossible to tell the rips from the bees. The crazy ladies (Snagu!) were still there. They had by now taken over the entire Oasis (with every woman in it) to transform it into a buzzing swarm, and the food and drink were still there, even more than ever. When Gretchen, followed by the three men, entered, she was confronted in the Oasis lobby by:

  A

  silver-sequined

  S*T*A*R

  A
belly-dancer

  with tureen of

  Bee’s Wing Broth

  balanced

  on her head

  Clown________Boadicea_______Clown

  playing_________with_________playing

  clarinet__Honey-baked Ham__trombone

  ROYAL JELLIED EELS

  borne by

  The two-headed Beast

  That Ate Nizhni Novgorod

  Clown

  playing

  French horn

  Followed

  by

  a train of

  laughing shouting

  women

  offering no assistance whatever

  And on the trek up the winding stone stairs to Gretchen’s apartment (all Oasis services had come to a dead stop), they were forced to squirm past clusters of Moses, Goldilocks, a lady’s maid, a carpenter, Security guards, a Hobo, wood and water sprites, groupies, kackies, yancy-boppers, giggers, squeam-souls, and assorted geek-girls who had come to rip and stayed to enjoy the fun. Gretchen was pelted, crammed, choked, gagged with sweets forced into her mouth by insistent hands.

  Although the swarms respectfully made way for Gretchen, the men were treated with rude contempt. Leuz had to use his massive bulk to force a path for the others. Even the most violent women bounced off him like confetti.

  Shima called, “Can you believe this Walpurgisnacht, Lucy?”

  “Don’t you remember Vrok?” Leuz threw back over his shoulder. “Excuse me, ma’am.”

  “Vrok? Who Vrok? What Vrok?”

  “Vrok, the crock. Sorry, lady. Taught astrophys at— Oops! Sorry, girl—tech. Used to say— No, no, ma’am, your fault— Vrok always said, ‘Nature is more audacious in her realities than man in his most fantastic imaginings.’— Unhand my crotch, lady…”

  “What the hell’s natural about this?”

  “You’ve never been asshole buddies with bees?”

  In what had once been Gretchen’s tailored lounge was a wreckage of debris honeycombing a vast wooden cask on which some drunken hand had printed with crimson cherry brandy: HONEY OXO MEAD. Gretchen, even more possessed by the uproar, was impelled to plunge head foremost into the cask.

  She emerged, gulping and gasping. “DEE-licious!” she shouted. “DEE-voon! Everybody celebrate! Snagu! Snagu!” and submerged again. Up. “The Golem’s dead! Quahk! Quahk! Quahk!” Under again.

  “So’s the queen!” Gafoozalum screamed. “The old queen’s dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Regina’s guffy dead!”

  “This may lead to something fantastic, Subadar,” Leuz said. There was no answer and he looked around. “Where’s Ind’dni, Shim?”

  “Don’t know. Either he got lost in the mob or took off. How can it get any more fantastic than this, Lucy?”

  “I used to keep bees when I was a kid, Shim, and I know ‘em. First thing a hive does when it loses its old queen is build queen cells and start a batch of candidates for the job.”

  “How?”

  “They fill the cells with royal jelly. Take a look around. Isn’t all this royal jelly?”

  “By God, I think you’re right.”

  “First candidate out of her cell becomes the new queen. Remember what your girl’s been saying? ‘I’m out of the cell.’”

  “But she means the Golem and Guff-arrest.”

  “Sure. First thing she does is go from cell to cell and kill her rivals before they hatch.”

  “D’you mean Gretchen’s been crowned queen by this mob?”

  “Then she takes off from the hive to get herself banged by the no-good drones hanging around outside. She emits an Oxo Acid come-on that no male can resist. What’s printed on that cask where she’s taking a bath? Honey Oxo Mead.”

  “Jesus! You’ve almost got me convinced.”

  “You better be.”

  “But do they know what they’re doing… Gretchen and all the rest?”

  “No. They’re just following an instinctive pattern Nature formed ages ago.”

  “For bees,” Shima objected. “Not people.”

  “Uh-uh. Can’t you get it through your head that your Gretchen isn’t people; she’s the New Primal Man. She’s getting back to Nature’s basics on her way to the pinnacle, and there’s going to be hell to pay.”

  Gretchen came out of the honey mead shrilling and piping. She was shaking and trembling, and clung to the side of the cask while the mob rocked around her. They embraced her, stroked her, kissed her, butted her lovingly. They rolled her off the cask.

  “Uh-huh,” Leuz said. “It’s the new queen pattern all right, Shim. Now the fireworks start. Shim? Shim?” Leuz looked around in surprise. Shima was gone. Like Ind’dni, he had taken off.

  Gretchen scrambled to her feet and began short, darting dashes at no one and nothing, still shrilling. She was unaware. She was frenzied. She was primal. In that vast labyrinth with its tortuous passages and corridors and apartments, hacked out of the bridge pier masonry to form the Oasis, she was the new queen and blind-driven to extinguish all rivals.

  She went down the ladder to the Raxon apartment below, thrusting through swarm clusters, searching, searching for what she didn’t know, but the primal instinct would tell her when she found it. She clawed her way up to her own apartment again, still searching, seeking, shrilling. Then she came face to face with Nellie Gwyn, unrecognizable in belly-dancer costume, singing in a scream, but Gretchen recognized her. She went for her throat while the mob cheered.

  When Nell was dead, Gretchen again began her darting dashes at no one and nothing, and then again began searching, seeking, out into the corridor, shoving through the excited swarms until she came upon Yenta Calienta, majestic in Delilah robes and the beard of Moses. The death-struggle carried them the length of the corridor.

  When Yenta was dead and Bimmy beaten off, Gretchen went down the Oasis stairs, searching, seeking, shrilling, hunting. She found her prey in the lobby and left Sarah stiffening in a snowdrift of silver sequins. The kill had stripped off the last fragments of Gretchen’s clothes. Then she took flight out into the Guff.

  She ran; her African breasts heaving, her buttocks quivering, her vulva openly inviting and compressing spasmodically with every stride. She ran blindly through the Guff. And she was madly pursued by the burning, aching, wish-dreaming drones of the Guff.

  The drone is Nature’s necessary trash; merely an apparat for the manufacture of semen, all the way from the lion to the bee. The male lion is a drone, lazy, unproductive, useless outside of his one function; fed and cared for by his mate who makes the kills, produces his litters and raises the cubs. But after he has dined on the prey she had provided and lies drowsing in the sun, what does he dream he is? The King of Beasts? And what does the human drone dream he is?

  “Look up in the sky!”

  “It’s a bird!”

  “It’s a plane!”

  “It’s EAGLEMAN!”

  Mysteriously hatched in an aerie by superscientists from outer space and flown to the Guff, EAGLEMAN uses his mysterious aerial powers to fight the forces of evil and injustice, meanwhile posing as Tiny Gimp, a timid, harmless cripple.

  And the cripple banged Gretchen’s ass off.

  “What’s riding that horse?”

  “It’s a boiler!”

  “It’s an ashcan!”

  “It’s KNIGHTMAN!”

  Welded into human form from invincible space-steel by a mysterious star blacksmith, and given the wisdom of Vulcan, KNIGHTMAN uses his mysterious powers of chivalry to fight the forces of evil and injustice, meanwhile posing as Skip Sands, a timid, harmless horse trainer.

  And the trainer galloped Gretchen sidesaddle.

  “Look in that bathroom!”

  “It’s a sink!”

  “It’s a tub!”

  “It’s HONKMAN!”

  Boiled up from the atomic waters of a Swedish mineral spring and mysteriously transported to the Guff by Space Guardians, HONKMAN uses his mysterious muscular superpowers to fight the forces of evil an
d injustice, meanwhile posing as Sven Svenson, a timid, harmless garbage collector.

  And the garbage collector gave Gretchen a Swedish massage.

  “Look behind that tree!”

  “It’s a branch!”

  “It’s a bush!”

  “It’s REDMAN!”

  Deposited in the last wigwam of the western plains by ecologists from outer space and heir to all the mysterious lore of the Indians, REDMAN used his mysterious tracking powers to fight the forces of evil and injustice in the Guff, meanwhile posing as Moisha Katz, a timid, harmless accountant.

  And Moisha bellywhopped Gretchen.

  “Look down in that cellar!”

  “It’s a tank!”

  “It’s a furnace!”

  “It’s GORILLAMAN!”

  Born in the torrid jungle of Africa and educated in the Guff by an animal trainer from outer space, GORILLAMAN uses his mysterious junglecraft to fight the forces of evil and injustice, meanwhile posing as Fido, a timid, harmless performing dog.

  And Fido banged Gretchen spatchcock.

  “Look in the precinct!”

  “It’s the fuzz!”

  “It’s the law!”

  “It’s JURYMAN!”

  Dictated in the law courts of outer space and heir to all super-stellar legal lore, JURYMAN was mysteriously brought to the Guff to prosecute the forces of evil and injustice with his mysterious legal powers, meanwhile posing as Ronald Pica, a timid, harmless court stenographer.

  And the stenographer prosecuted Gretchen, vi et armis.

  “Look up in the sky!”

  “It’s a comet!”

  “It’s a nova!”

  “It’s NEUTRONMAN!”

  Born on a collapsing star and mysteriously transported to the Guff by the supermavins of space, NEUTRONMAN secretly uses his mysterious astral powers to fight the forces of evil and injustice, meanwhile posing as Lance Languid, a timid, harmless dilettante.