Classic PJ Farmer

by Philip José Farmer

  At last, I got out of him that he wasn’t so much afraid Mahrud would fail as he was that he might succeed.

  “If Mahrud does clothe the old bones with new flesh, me ever-loving wife will be out looking for me, and me life won’t be worth a pre-Brew nickel. She’ll never forget nor forgive that ‘twas me who pushed her down those steps ten years ago and broke her stringy neck. Twill make no difference to her that she’ll come back better than ever, with a lovely new figure and a pretty face instead o’ that hatchet. Not her, the black-hearted, stone-livered wrath o’ God!

  “Sure, and I’ve had an unhappy life ever since the day I opened me innocent blue eyes—untainted except for the old original sin, but Mahrud says that’s no dogma o’ his—and first saw the light o’ day. Unhappy I’ve been, and unhappy I’ll live. I can’t even taste the sweet sting o’ death—because, as sure as the sun rises in the east, as sure as Durham became a bull and swam the Illinois with the lovely Peggy on his back and made her his bride upon the high bluffs—I can’t even die because me everloving wife would search out me bones and ship them to Mahrud and be standing there facing me when I arose.”

  I was getting weary of listening to this flow of hyperbole, interminable as the Illinois itself. I said, “Thank you, Mr. Weepen-willy, and good night. We’ve got a long trip ahead of us.”

  “Sure, me bhoy, and that’s not me given name. Tis a nickname given me by the bhoys down at the town hall because…”

  I heard no more. I went back to my mother’s grave and lay down by it. I couldn’t get to sleep, because Alice and Weepenwilly were talking. Then, just as I’d managed almost to drop off, Alice sat down by me. She insisted on retelling me the story Weepenwilly had just told her.

  I’d seen his white loincloth, hadn’t I? Well, if Weepenwilly had stood up, I’d have perceived the three-cornered fold of it. And I’d have seen its remarkable resemblance to early infant apparel. That resemblance was not coincidental, for Weepenwilly was one of the Dozen Diapered Darlings.

  Moreover, if he had stood up, I’d have noticed the yellow glow that emanated from his posterior, the nimbus so much like a firefly’s in color and position.

  It seemed that, shortly after the Brew began taking full effect, when the people of Onaback had turned their backs to the outside world, numerous self-styled prophets had tried to take advantage of the new religion. Each had presented his own variation of an as-yet-misunderstood creed. Among them had been twelve politicians who had long been bleeding the city’s treasury dry. Because it was some time before the Bottle’s contents began affecting the nature of things noticeably, they had not been aware at first of what was happening.

  The wheels of industry slowed by degrees. Grass and trees subtly encroached upon pavement. People gradually lost interest in the cares of life. Inhibitions were imperceptibly dissolved. Enmities and bitternesses and diseases faded. The terrors, burdens, and boredoms of life burned away as magically as the morning mist under the rising sun.

  A time came when people quit flying to Chicago for business or pleasure. When nobody went to the library to take out books. When the typographers and reporters of the daily newspapers failed to show up for work. When the Earthgripper Diesel Company and Myron Malkers Distillery—biggest on earth of their kind, both of them—blew the final whistle. When people everywhere seemed to realize that all had been wrong with the world, but that it was going to be fine and dandy in the future.

  About then, the mail-carriers quit. Frantic telegrams and letters were sent to Washington and the state capital—though from other towns, because the local operators had quit. This was when the Food and Drug Administration, and the Internal Revenue Bureau, and the F.B.I. sent agents into Onaback to investigate. These agents did not come back and others were sent in, only to succumb to the Brew.

  The Brew had not yet reached its full potency, when Durham had just revealed himself, through the prophet Sheed, as Mahrud. There was still some opposition, and the most vigorous came from the twelve politicians. They organized a meeting in the courthouse square and urged the people to follow them in an attack on Mahrud. First they would march on Traybell University, where Sheed lived in the Meteorological Building.

  “Then,” said one of the twelve, shaking his fist at the long thin line of Brew geysering from the Bottle up on the hills, “we’ll lynch this mad scientist who calls himself Mahrud, this lunatic we know is a crazy university professor and a reader of poetry and philosophy. Friends, citizens, Americans, if this Mahrud is indeed a god, as Sheed, another mad scientist claims, let him strike me with lightning! My friends and I dare him to!”

  The dozen were standing on a platform in the courthouse yard. They could look down Main Street and across the river to the hills. They faced the east defiantly. No bellowings came, no lightnings. But in the next instant, the dozen were forced to flee ignominiously, never again to defy the All-Bull.

  Alice giggled. “They were struck by an affliction which was not as devastating as lightning nor as spectacular. But it was far more demoralizing. Mahrud wished on them a disability which required them to wear diapers for much the same reason babies have to. Of course, this convinced the Dozen Diapered Darlings. But that brassy-nerved bunch of ex-ward-heelers switched right around and said they’d known all along that Mahrud was the Real Bull. They’d called the meeting so they could make a dramatic announcement of their change of heart. Now he’d given them a monopoly on divine relevation. If anybody wanted to get in touch with him, let them step up and pay on the line. They still hadn’t realized that money was no good anymore.

  “They even had the shortsightedness and the crust to pray to Mahrud for a special sign to prove their prophethood. And the All-Bull did send them signs of their sanctity. He gave them permanent halos, blazing yellow lights.”

  Sitting up and hugging her knees, Alice rocked back and forth with laughter. “Of course, the Dozen should have been ecstatically happy. But they weren’t. For Mahrud had slyly misplaced their halos, locating them in a place where, if the Darlings wished to demonstrate their marks of sainthood, they would be forced to stand up.

  “And, would you believe it, this thick-headed Dozen refuses to admit that Mahrud has afflicted them. Instead, they brag continually about their halos’ location, and they attempt to get everybody else to wear diapers. They say a towel around the middle is as much a sign of a true believer in Mahrud as a turban or fez is that of a believer in Allah.

  “Naturally, their real reason is that they don’t want to be conspicuous. Not that they mind being outstanding. It’s just that they don’t want people to be reminded of their disability or their original sin.”

  Tears ran from her eyes. She choked with laughter.

  I failed to see anything funny about it, and I told her so.

  “You don’t get it, Temper,” she said. “This condition is curable. All the Darlings have to do is pray to Mahrud to be relieved of it, and they will be. But their pride won’t let them. They insist it’s a benefit and a sign of the Bull’s favor. They suffer, yes, but they like to suffer. Just as Weepenwilly likes to sit on his wife’s tombstone— as if that’d keep her under the ground—and wail about his misfortune. He and his kind wouldn’t give up their punishment for the world—literally!”

  She began laughing loudly again. I sat up and grabbed her shoulders and pulled her close to smell her breath. There was no hint of the Brew, so she hadn’t been drinking from Weepenwilly’s bottle. She was suffering from hysteria, plain and simple.

  The normal procedure for bringing a woman back to normality is to slap her resoundingly upon the cheek. But in this case Alice turned the tables by slapping me first—resoundingly. The effect was the same. She quit laughing and glared at me.

  I held my stinging cheek. “What was that for?”

  “For trying to take advantage of me,” she said.

  I was so angry and taken aback that I could only stutter, “Why, I—why, I—”

  “Just keep your hands to yourself,” s
he snapped. “Don’t mistake my sympathy for love. Or think, because these Brew-bums have no inhibitions or discrimination, that I’ve also succumbed.”

  I turned my back on her and closed my eyes. But the longer I lay there, and the more I thought of her misinterpretation, the madder I became. Finally, boiling within, I sat up and said tightly, “Alice!”

  She must not have been sleeping either. She raised up at once and stared at me, her eyes big. “What—what is it?”

  “I forgot to give you this.” I let her have it across the side of her face. Then, without waiting to see the effect of my blow, I lay down and turned my back again. For a minute, I’ll admit, my spine was cold and tense, waiting for the nails to rake down my naked skin.

  But nothing like that happened. First, there was the sort of silence that breathes. Then, instead of the attack, came a racking breath, followed by sobs, which sloped off into snifflings and the wiping of tears.

  I stood it as long as I could. Then I sat up again and said, “All right, so maybe I shouldn’t have hit you. But you had no business taking it for granted that I was trying to make love to you. Look, I know I’m repulsive to you, but that’s all the more reason why I wouldn’t be making a pass at you. I have some pride. And you don’t exactly drive me out of my mind with passion, you know. What makes you think you’re any Helen of Troy or Cleopatra?”

  There I went. I was always trying to smooth things over, and every time I ended by roughing them up. Now she was mad and she showed it by getting up and walking off. I caught her as she reached the cemetery gate.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” I asked.

  “Down to the foot of Main Street, Onaback, Illinois, and I’m bottling a sample of the Brew there. Then I’m reporting to my father as soon as possible.”

  “You little fool, you can’t do that. You’re supposed to stick with me.”

  She tossed her long black hair. “My orders don’t say I have to. If, in my opinion, your presence becomes a danger to my mission, I may leave you. And I think you’re a definite danger—if not to my mission, at least to me!”

  I grabbed her wrist and whirled her around. “You’re acting like a little girl, not like a major in the U.S. Marines. What’s the matter with you?”

  She tried to jerk her wrist loose. That made me madder, but when her fist struck me, I saw red. I wasn’t so blinded that I couldn’t find her cheek again with the flat of my hand. Then she was on me with a hold that would have broken my arm if I hadn’t applied the counterhold. Then I had her down on her side with both her arms caught behind her back. This was where a good little man was better than a good big girl.

  “All right,” I gritted, “what is it?”

  She wouldn’t reply. She twisted frantically, though she knew she couldn’t get loose and groaned with frustration.

  “Is it the same thing that’s wrong with rne?”

  She quit struggling and said, very softly. “Yes, that’s it.”

  I released her arms. She rolled over on her back, but she didn’t try to get up. “You mean,” I said, still not able to believe it, “that you’re in love with me, just as I am with you?”

  She nodded again. I kissed her with all the pent-up desire that I’d been taking out on her in physical combat a moment ago.

  I said, “I still can’t believe it. It was only natural for me to fall in love with you, even if you did act as if you hated my guts. But why did you fall in love with me? Or, if you can’t answer that, why did you ride me?”

  “You won’t like this,” she said. “I could tell you what a psychologist would say. We’re both college graduates, professional people, interested in the arts and so on. That wouldn’t take in the differences, or course. But what does that matter? It happened.

  “I didn’t want it to. I fought against it. And I used the reverse of the old Jamesian principle that, if you pretend to be something or to like something, you will be that something. I tried to act as if I loathed you.”

  “Why?” I demanded. She turned her head away, but I took her chin and forced her face to me. “Let’s have it.”

  “You know I was nasty about your being bald. Well, I didn’t really dislike that. Just the opposite—I loved it. And that was the whole trouble. I analyzed my own case and decided I loved you because I had an Electra complex. I—”

  “You mean,” I said, my voice rising, “that because I was bald like your father and somewhat older than you, you fell for me?”

  “Well, no, not really. I mean that’s what I told myself so I’d get over it. That helped me to pretend to hate you so that I might end up doing so.”

  Flabbergasted was no word for the way I felt. If I hadn’t been lying on the ground, I’d have been floored. Alice Lewis was one of those products of modern times, so psychology-conscious that she tended to regard an uninhibited affection of parent and child as a sign that both ought to rush to the nearest psychoanalyst.

  “I’m in a terrible fix,” said Alice. “I don’t know if you fulfill my father-image or if I’m genuinely in love with you. I think I am, yet…”

  She put her hand up to stroke my naked scalp. Knowing what I did, I resented the caress. I started to jerk my head away, but she clamped her hand on it and exclaimed, “Dan, your scalp’s fuzzy!”

  I said, “Huh?” and ran my own palm over my head. She was right. A very light down covered my baldness.

  “So,” I said, delighted and shocked at the same time, “that’s what the nymph meant when she pointed at my head and said that if it weren’t for that, she’d think I hadn’t tasted the Brew yet! The Brew that fellow poured on my head—that’s what did it!”

  I jumped up and shouted, “Hooray!”

  And scarcely had the echoes died down than there was an answering call, one that made my blood chill. This was a loud braying laugh from far off, a bellowing hee-haw!

  “Polivinosel!” I said. I grabbed Alices hand, and we fled down the road. Nor did we stop until we had descended the hill that runs down into U.S. Route 24. There, puffing and panting from the half-mile run and thirstier than ever, we walked toward the city of Onaback, another half-mile away.

  I looked back from time to time, but I saw no sign of the Ass. There was no guarantee he wasn’t on our trail, however. He could have been lost in the great mass of people we’d encountered. These carried baskets and bottles and torches and were, as I found out from conversation with a man, latecomers going to view the departure of the bone-boat from the foot of Main Street.

  “Rumor says that Mahrud—may his name be bull—will raise the dead at the foot of the hill the Fountain of the Bottle spurts from. Whether that’s so or not, we’ll all have fun. Barbecue, Brew, and bundling make the world go round.”

  I couldn’t argue with that statement. They certainly were the principal amusements of the natives.

  During our progress down Adams Street, I learned much about the valley’s setup. My informant was very talkative, as were all his fellow Brew-drinkers. He told me that the theocracy began on the lowest plane with his kind, Joe Doe. Then there were the prayer-men. These received the petitions of the populace, sorted them out, and passed on those that needed attention to prophets like the Forecaster Sheed, who screened them. Then these in turn were relayed to demigods like Polivinosel, Albert Allegory, and a dozen others I had not heard of before then. They reported directly to Mahrud or Peggy.

  Mahrud handled godhood like big business. He had delegated various departments to his vice-presidents such as the Ass, who handled fertility, and Sheed, who was probably the happiest forecaster who’d ever lived. Once a professor of physics at Traybell and the city’s meteorologist, Sheed was now the only weatherman whose prophecies were one hundred percent correct. There was a good reason for that. He made the weather.

  All this was very interesting, but my mind wasn’t as intent on the information as it should have been. For one thing, I kept looking back to see if Polivinosel was following us. For another, I worried about Alice’s a
ttitude toward me. Now that I had hair, would she stop loving me? Was it a—now I was doing it—fixation that attracted her to me, or was it a genuine affection?

  If my situation hadn’t been so tense, I’d have laughed at myself. Who would have thought that some day I might not leap with joy at the possibility of once again having a full head of hair and a beautiful girl in love with me?

  The next moment, I did leap. It was not from joy, however. Somebody behind me had given a loud braying laugh. There was no mistaking the Ass’s hee-haw. I whirled and saw, blazing golden in both the light of the moon and the torches, the figure of Polivinosel galloping toward us. There were people in the way, but they ran to get out of his path, yelling as they did so. His hoofs rang on the pavement even above their cries. Then he was on us and bellowing, “What now, little man? What now?”

  Just as he reached us, I fell flat on my face. He was going so fast, he couldn’t stop. His hoofs didn’t help him keep his balance either, nor did Alice when she shoved him. Over he went, carrying with him bottles and baskets of fruit and corn and little cages of chickens. Women shrieked, baskets flew, glass broke, chickens squawked and shot out of sprung doors—Polivinosel was buried in the whole mess.

  Alice and I burst through the crowd, turned a corner and raced down to Washington Street, which ran parallel to Adams. There was a much smaller parade of pilgrims here, but it was better than nothing. We ducked among these while, a block away, the giant throat of the Ass called again and again, “Little man, what now? What now, little man?”

  I could have sworn he was galloping toward us. Then his voice, mighty as it was, became smaller, and the fast cloppety-clop died away.