Fun House

by Appel, Benjamin

  I must have become pale, for he pulled out a rectangular box from his pocket. Inside it were a row of small white pills lettered in bright purple: U-LATU.2 I took one and ate it. Within seconds I became calm and even cheerful.

  “Elvis, I have some questions. One, how did this Fly manage to steal the A-I-D? What were his motives? Why did he tie up with the St. Ewagiow?”

  “It’s all in his dossier, but I’ll give you a capsule summary. When he came to us from the Reservation about twenty-five years ago, Barnum Fly was ambitious, a hard worker, understandably so when you consider his immigrant background.” The Commissioner smiled at his little joke but instantly, to his credit, wiped the smile from his lips. “Within a few years, he had become a successful theatrical agent. His speciality was animal performers. In cooperation with our animal psychologists, the Barnum Fly Monkey Ballet was trained to perform the first creditable — by human standards — Swan Lake. It made him famous. He was admitted to the Institute — ”

  “What Institute?”

  “I keep forgetting you’re a stranger. The Institute of Applied Science. All our great showmen are Institute graduates. Let me explain a bit. At the Institute, they concentrate on the basic problem of adapting science to entertainment. Magicientists as the public calls them. Barnum Fly’s record was brilliant, and even more brilliant after his graduation. The Atomic Amusement Park1 is a product of his genius, and for it the Rulers awarded him our highest honor, the S.C.O.S.T. Medal of Distinguished Pleasure. Yet the man was dissatisfied, as we discovered. On January 10th of this year, the investigations of Senator Clark Gable Fresset2 proved that he was the secret head of a small group of Institute graduates who had succeeded in gaining control over a number of smaller nations, Costa Rica, Yemen, and Ghana among them.”

  “How did he do that?”

  “By exporting our way of life. Forgive me, Crockett, but only a Reservation man could have been so ambitious. Our national motto of Each Man To His Pleasure also includes the concept of each nation to its own brand of nationalism. Forgive me for being so self-righteous, Crockett.”

  “Why libel a whole people because of one renegade, Elvis?”

  “Let’s get back to Barnum Fly,” he said. “Together with his associates he was tried in secret session and proven guilty. Sentence, however, was suspended because of his great services to his country. It was at this point that his closest associate, the magicientist M.E. Bangani, who had been his teacher at the Institute, turned Government witness and testified that Fly was perfecting a subversive game with which he hoped to take over power in the United States itself.”

  “A game you said?”

  “Yes. Tentatively called You-Too-Can-Be-A-Think-Machine. This treason of course was utterly unforgivable. He was sentenced to two years in prison, our maximum sentence. Two years of deprivation from pleasure! Even the brilliant mind of Fly couldn’t take the shock. He shouted that he would support the outlawed St. Ewagiow. For this he was given an additional two months to be served concurrently for illegal verbal associations. Subsequent investigation disclosed that he had actually established an alliance with the St. Ewagiow. They engineered his escape from prison, and as you know Senator Fresset was found murdered on May 28th.”

  “And now there have been seven of these July 4th murders,” I said thoughtfully.

  “We’re after the most dangerous man in the world, Crockett. An egomaniac prepared to destroy civilization if he can’t dominate it. I use the word maniac literally. Imagine yourself in his place. As a magicientist, what trick can surpass the A-I-D? The curtain rises on July 4th and, with a wave of your hand, this globe of ours with all its continents and oceans vanishes in a cloud of smoke. Oh, God!” he groaned, and, grabbing at the box of U-Latus, he popped two into his mouth, “Take another, Crockett, you’ll need it.”

  I swallowed one of the purple-lettered pills and felt a sick smile come to my clenched lips.

  “There isn’t much more to add. During Barnum Fly’s second trial, our agents in the St. Ewagiow reported that the A-I-D had been stolen and brought to the United States.”

  “Why didn’t they detonate the A-I-D in India?”

  “We can only guess. Remember, the inventor is an American, the Universal Redeemer as they call him. Perhaps the St. Ewagiow felt the redemption ought to begin here in honor of Professor Kane? Perhaps some of Fly’s associates among the magicientists managed to get their hands on it, leaving the St. Ewagiow with no choice but to go along with that egomaniac’s time table? Eleven days! That’s all we have left.”

  I swallowed another U-Latu, but behind the cheerful relaxed smile on my lips I felt myself gasping. The Commissioner seized the box and gulped down a pill. “That professor fellow invented the joke to end all jokes,” he said. “The A-I-D, or twenty-four pounds of pure unalloyed humor. Do you know what he said when he was put into custody? ‘My detonator has an affinity with infinity!’ That’s why he called it the A-I-D. Infinity!” the Commissioner laughed hysterically. “Infinity and redemption …”

  I helped myself to a couple more U-Latus and now I was able to laugh with him. I wiped the tears of joy from my eyes as I thought of the United States, his United States and my United States, turned into dust and scattering into space.

  “Redemption!” he howled. “Redeem the world by blowing it up. Isn’t that a funny game when you think of it? The game of death, the last game where there no winners and no losers …”

  Oh, I tell you, we were both howling.

  Then, the Com-Tel buzzed, and some clerk of an automaton informed us that the eighth corpse had been found in the Royal Bridal Suite Number 171 at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City. It looked as if Barnum F., formerly Nathaniel F. had been, to use an old-fashioned expression — ”working overtime.”

  When we arrived at the Waldorf-Astoria, we were directed to the fourth, or Marilyn Monroe floor, so-named after another great entertainer of the twentieth century. Royal Bridal Suite No. 17 with its red plush and lighting fixtures in the shape of gold crowns, was crowded with L. and O. operatives and lab technicians. The body was in the bedroom under a gaudy sheet whose design consisted of two crowns, a male and a female, locked together in an unholy alliance. Under ordinary circumstances I would have blushed.

  I reached for the sheet. My hand was trembling, my face felt hot and feverish. I could see that they were all surprised at my emotion. To them, I was a police officer from a backward territory, a primitive. Perhaps. But knowing what I knew now about the July 4th Murders, I was, to put it plainly, bigger than myself. I was a representative of mankind. Not that I underestimated the Commissioner and his men, but I think it is fair to say that no man on the Outside was capable of sustained work. The voluntary two-hour day defined both their ambitions and their limitations.

  One of the lab technicians misunderstood my emotions, He smirked at the others and whispered some comment. I looked at him with contempt and, embarrassed, he said in a professional tone, “A very bloody murder, Chief. I estimate that 1.75 pints of blood were lost by the victim — ”

  “Damn your estimates!” I shouted and suddenly my nerves snapped and I began to cry like a baby. That is, like a Reservation baby, for their babies no longer cried.2

  They all stared at me with disapproval, even the Commissioner. I knew what they thought, these Think-Machine accessories. I was too non-scientific for their tastes, a throwback to an earlier America where detection still depended on the individual hunch and flash of intuition. Left to themselves they would follow the taped instructions of their electronic L. and O. Board, and if they caught the killer would bring him to trial, and the judge after studying a digest of similar cases prepared by still another Board would deliver judgment. If the psychiatric defense was good, the killer would be committed to one of the country’s H.R.L.H. Farms1 where they would cut up paper dolls, as once on the Outside they had cut up flesh-and-blood ones. On the Reservation we had one treatment for killers. We strung them up.

  I wiped m
y tears. I’m not ashamed to admit that I wept. Then, I lifted the sheet and examined the corpse. It was a woman. Tied to the toes of her right foot was a slip with the now-familiar words:

  TO THE AUTHORITIES

  EVERYBODY DIES ON JULY 4th

  I studied the slip and thought of how, one by one, that miserable renegade Barnum F. was throwing these pitiful corpses at the authorities. As if playing some kind of insane teasing joke.

  The lab technicians got busy with their instruments, analyzing the breath-marks and radar traces. I had seen them before at their plodding fact-finding. They consulted with the Commissioner, who came over to me and said, “That accounts for it, Crockett.”

  “Accounts for what?”

  “Why she was alone in the bridal suite. The man with her was the Fire Chief and intended victim, but unfortunately for her there was a fire at the Small Boat Builders Dock. It’s the same pattern we’ve had right along. Prominent city officials marked for murder.”

  “Elvis, has it occurred to you that we have data by the yard, and that what we need are suspects?”

  He took me aside and whispered. “What are you talking about? You and I know the identity of the murderer.”

  The others paid no attention to us. They weren’t curious.

  “Elvis, who would our man be seeing?”

  “According to our master plan — ”

  “What master plan?”

  “The Board’s master plan. Don’t look so hurt, Crockett. I haven’t had a chance to tell you everything. Anyway, the Board has analyzed the problem of suspects from the mathematical and quantitative viewpoints, correlating the incidence of chance with all available statistics — ”

  “For God’s sake, will you talk plain American!”

  “This very minute our operatives are keeping an eye on all suspects. Barnum Fly’s former friends, his associates. Magicientists like himself. His wives. He was married eight times with nine children — ”

  “Have you narrowed it down?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean leading targets.”

  “We’re proceeding on the basis that every suspect is a leading target.”

  “There’s no time for that, Elvis. I want you to ask the Board to go over Their facts and come up with somebody They can definitely label Number One Suspect, Number Two Suspect. And so on. I’ll go to the Board myself!”

  “That wouldn’t be advisable, feeling the way They do about you, Crockett. No, I’ll talk to the Board myself. Why don’t you get some sleep? We have a room in this hotel.”

  It seemed like a good idea, but when I stood outside the room — Room 889 on the eighth, or Pagliacci floor, so named after the great clown of the eighteenth century immortalized by the Italian songwriter, Verdi — it was apparently occupied. A 281 gleamed in the center of the door. I called to the clerk at the end of the corridor, showed him my L. and O. badge, and he unlocked the door.

  It was occupied. Sleeping on the bed was a woman in a red nightgown stitched with off-color jokes in white. I stared at her, and for a second I thought I was going to faint a second time. For this woman was my wife Ruth, whom I’d left behind on the Reservation.

  I fought for self-control. Shutting my eyes I recalled the words of my predecessor as Reservation Chief of Police, Boone Truckley: “Jump for your gun but not to conclusions!” Only then did I open my eyes and approach the bed. Would my modest wife wear such a nightgown? I wondered. Never! It was a flaming red and even with a quick glance I could see that the jokes and stories were of the sort that even our boldest women would have been ashamed of. Suddenly I felt a sensation of relief. My wife’s hands were hard and calloused from spinning and carding and washing and a hundred other chores. This woman’s hands were white and delicate, the hands of a butterfly, the typical hands of a woman of the Outside.

  Still, with the exception of the hands, she was a dead ringer for my wife Ruth. A good looking blonde of about thirty, becoming a little heavy, what we called a buxom blonde.

  Immediately I began searching the room for clues. There was an empty quart on the floor. A second quart, two-thirds gone, stood on a desk next to a combination Talko-Typo, one of their voice-operated machines containing an inbuilt grammarian that corrected all mistakes of punctuation and spelling. In the machine there was a sheet of paper with the following lines which I reproduce, for they were to prove of some significance in the historic events of the eleven days remaining before July 4th.

  Gladys Ellsberg, autobiogs are my specialty, Gladys Ellsberg, corrupt, pure-hearted, corrupt.

  “Who are you?” I heard her calling from the bed.

  “You didn’t hear me come in but you hear me now,” I said. “What kind of sleep is that?”

  “My own kind of sleep, darling,” she said. “Haven’t you heard of the 28th?”

  She was staring at me with two eyes that were exactly like my wife’s. Big blue eyes that were slightly protuberant, the left one with a slight squint. It was unnerving. Only her hands proved she was an imposter. This woman was one of their women, and yet she wasn’t beautiful as all women were beautiful on the Outside ever since the Garden of Eden Salons1 had won their case in S.C.O.S.T. This Gladys Ellsberg seemed like the real thing, a natural article who hadn’t picked her face and body out of the latest Garden of Eden Catalogue2. Her eyelashes, although long, were not the size so popular that season — three-quarter to full-inch lashes on the lower eyelids that covered up both eye shadow and eyewrinkle. Her dark yellow hair seemed genuine, as were her breasts3 which were a little too full, sagging a little with the beginning of middle age.

  She was the very image of my wife Ruth! The blood rushed to my head as I stared at this ripe double. I felt guilty and confused. I won’t cover up my emotions. On the Reservation we call a spade a spade, and I’d missed my wife as a man has a right to miss his wife, and here she was, except for those give-away hands.

  She was smiling at me, the easy smile they all had, amused perhaps, flattered perhaps, willing to make love perhaps, in the easy way they all had in this land of the 28th Amendment. And I? (Ruth, I won’t conceal anything. This eyewitness report is the straight unvarnished truth.) I was tempted. I had just come from the fourth floor of this hotel with its eighth victim and eighth message announcing the end of the world on July 4th.

  “I seem to know you,” she said.

  “Who are you?” I asked her.

  “A writer. I do autobiogs of famous people, the really great entertainers.”

  I must have looked blank for she said eagerly, “Maybe you read my last one about B. S. Wong-Nottingshire? Imagine climbing four of the biggest Himalayas, including Mount Everest in two weeks! Only an Englishman of Tibetan ancestry could have done it!” She got out of bed, her eyes narrowing. “I know who you are! You’re Crockett Smith! I’ve seen a dozen photos of you in the papers, all mysterious, too! Why are you here?”

  I said nothing.

  “Have you thought of someone doing your autobiog?”

  “I’m not an entertainer,” I said. “And you’re not the writer you pretend to be.”

  She smiled, but that smile of hers no longer tempted me. I was afraid of this woman who could have been my wife, a decoy playing on my emotions, but who for all I knew was a member of the St. Ewagiow. Then, I recalled that it was the Commissioner himself who had urged me to come to this room and it was all clear. They had assigned one of Their policewomen to spy on me and ordered a Garden of Eden treatment to produce this double of my dear wife Ruth. It was unfair. It was like hitting a man below the belt. And the Commissioner who pretended to be my friend had gone along with Their dirty Scheme.

  Without a word I headed for the door. She barred my way. “Why go?” she asked.

  “Why?” I said with contempt. “You’re nothing but a cheap police spy.”

  “Every writer is a spy,” she said calmly. “We snoop into the lives of our characters, real or imaginary. Have a drink, or is that forbidden on the Reservation?�
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  I hesitated, wondering if I shouldn’t try to find out more about her. Wasn’t that my duty?

  “So you think I’m a spy? What difference does it make for whom we work as long as our personal lives are our own? Or don’t you people believe in a personal life?”

  As she stood there in that flaming nightgown, she reminded me more than ever of my wife. I felt myself succumbing to her charm, the old familiar charms that had been reproduced so accurately in this strange woman. True, my conscience was still bothering me, but against this still small voice I silently invoked the 28th. After all any police officer will respect the laws of the country whose guest he is.

  I picked up the bottle of whiskey and drank. It wasn’t as good as our corn whiskey but it would do. When I put the bottle down she smiled and floated towards me. I stepped back, and she said, “Darling, don’t be so moral.” She laughed and pointed at the white stitched words on her nightgown, just above her navel. “Read this, darling.”

  I read: ‘Among the natural rights of every nation is the flight of fornication.’

  She laughed and said. “Perhaps you don’t care for puns? There’s a perfectly wonderful story, the best traveling-salesman story you ever heard, over my left hip.”

  Again, she floated towards me, I stood there while she snuggled close, her blue eyes so like my wife’s looking up into mine, asking, demanding. I kissed her, and when I lifted my lips she stroked my cheek and whispered. “I wouldn’t let Them redo my hands, not my hands, darling.”

  This bold confession was too much for me. I pushed her away. She laughed as if I were a child and without a word began pulling her nightgown off.

  “Who the hell do you think I am?” I shouted. “One of your kind?”

  Laughing she tossed the nightgown at me. “Read the story about the honeymooners. It’s below my right breast Oh, how can you find it now?” Laughing and giggling she came over to me. I waited until she was close, then I slapped her face.