“I modeled her after Cleo,” he said at coffee.
“Modeled?” I said.
He chuckled that mean malicious chuckle of his and said, “Yes. She’s a robot. A robot with a limited vocabulary as you discovered, my friend. ‘Help me … I love thee …’ A few appealing phrases like that and an unlimited capacity for love.”
I was horrified as I digested the meaning of this revelation. I will be horrified as long as I live — to have made love — love? — I was raped by a robot!
But I shouldn’t have been surprised. Wasn’t he the creator of Atomic Amusement Park?
He sat there in the hunting den that had once belonged to Dr. Bangani, in the Castle of Dr. Bangani, with Dr. Bangani’s hybrid at his feet as one might say — the conscienceless dog of a professor who was faithful to any master — he sat there wearing the very face and body of Dr. Bangani and bitterly attacked his victim.
“How tired I am of pretending to be that old timid fool. An old fool who never had the courage to rebel against the Rulers he detested as much as I. Full equality of magicientists with the Rulers — that was his senile philosophy! I remember when he was perfecting his Time Stream. I suggested that we really could use it for subversion. ‘Let’s remake the past,’ I urged him. You saw a bit of the Civil War? I suggested a Civil War where the Confederates won the final victory. Or a Civil War where the slaves gained control of the Union Army and elected a Negro president who decreed slavery for all whites, Unionists and Confederates. Brilliant, if I say so myself. It would have planted the seed of revolt in the brains of the people. But the old fool insisted on being faithful to history, and when the Rulers vetoed the Time Stream as being too activist, he agreed immediately. The Cineramours — that sums up the old fool. Cineramours and Drink-Towns1.”
“But Dr. Bangani did support you?” I said.
“Only to betray me,” he answered. “He opposed all my ideas to undermine the Rulers. When I proposed a revival of religion to counteract the almost superstitious awe the people felt for the Rulers, he became frightened. I thought that if we could publicize Christ as a Magicientist — after all He walked on the water and raised the dead — we would in a subtle way infiltrate the people with the concept of revolt. But that old fool again led the opposition to me. True, he supported my plan of subverting the smaller countries of the world by exporting the Pleasure Principle, but he was already plotting to betray me. He was the one who volunteered information about my invention You-Too-Can-Be-A-Think-Machine! Pure envy! I should have guessed it. From the day I received the R-Treatment2 as a reward for my Atomic Amusement Park, the first magicientist ever to receive this high honor, the old man could never forgive me.”
Before that historic dinner was over, he was asking me to call him Nathaniel — his name on the Reservation — but those burning eyes of his discouraged any feelings of friendship. And when I thought of the conditions he had laid down before returning the A-I-D to the authorities, I felt like chewing a U-Latu. I had promised him a full Presidential pardon, the return of his confiscated wealth, and the position of Assistant to the Secretary of Pleasure, Fun and Miscellaneous Hobbies. It was a tall order but the alternative to what he called ‘Vindication’ was too frightful to think about.
We had agreed that he would return with me to Washington D.C. But without the A-I-D. The A-I-D would be entrusted to the professor who would depart for parts unknown. If there was any trickery, the professor would detonate the A-I-D on July 4th. “I can rely on him to do so,” Bangani (Barnum F.) declared. “Remember, my friend, he has no conscience and his biggest pleasure is hunting.”
I tried to argue that a man who loved to reduce living animals to warm meat might be tempted by the prospect of several billion human beings. “It’s the hunt of hunts!” I said. “The hunt to end all hunts.” But all my arguments were useless. Bangani (Barnum F.) insisted that his kept professor could be trusted if we kept our word.
“I want to be vindicated,” he said over and over again. “If I’m not vindicated let the whole world go hang!”
“You will be vindicated,” I promised as the chills ran up and down my spine.
I should add here that no one, including Bangani (Barnum F.) would know where the professor was hiding. His master had deliberately decided to exclude that bit of information from his brain. Not that he was worried about Brain-Confessors or other such similar apparatus which in his case would be useless. “I am putting myself in your power, my friend, and it may be that Commissioner Sonata has a mind-reading device of a really superior sort.”
Late that evening we climbed into Bangani (Barnum F.)’s private Spacecapsul1 and flew back towards Washington D.C. There were three of us, Bangani (Barnum F.), myself and a woman whom I’d never seen until the moment of departure. She was a St. Ewagiow from Italy, a blonde beauty with dark eyes who had originally been his liaison to the brotherhood. But after his metamorphosis, he had put her into a state of P.A. or permanent amnesia. “I don’t trust women, old chap,” he confided in me. He still used the speech and expressions characteristic of the deceased Dr. Bangani or Lord Alpha-B. which wasn’t surprising. The metamorphosis had been so successful that in many ways he had become his own victim. The obsession with ancestors — the ancestors of Dr. Bangani — the dislike he had shown for the nine-foot beater who resembled Barnum F. — all indicated than even psychologically he had been partially reconditioned into the traumatic image of his former teacher. When I hinted of this he said, “The first thing I’ll do after my pardon is enter a Garden of Eden Salon and have myself restored. I’m bloody well tired of looking like a man of eighty.”
Bloody — there it was again, a favorite word in the vocabulary of Lord Alpha-B.
He was silent for most of the flight. It was only when we flew over the six hundred mile constellation of lights that was Greater Chicago-Detroit1 that he really became talkative. “That’s where I first worked when I left the Reservation, my friend. I was nobody then, a bottler in the Pinkelphin2 Distillery. I worked my two hour day and went home to my family. I had married again, a girl who worked in the next department, Juliet Lacrosse by name. I was nobody. Then one day I dropped a suggestion in the Suggestion Box and my whole life changed.”
“What was the suggestion?”
“One of the effects of Pinkelphin is a vision of graceful dancing animals. I suggested that there was no reason why animals couldn’t be trained to dance as well as humans. I was transferred to one of the labs. There I worked with animal psychologists, chemists and reflexionists. In a year we had trained thirty monkeys to perform a Swan Lake with human grace.” He sighed, “That’s all life is, my friend. A Human Ballet in which the brains of the dancers have been, to coin a phrase, monkeyfied.”
“I don’t know that I agree,” I said.
He chuckled. “You hate to call me Nathaniel, don’t you?” He got up from his seat and nodded at the blonde P.A. “Excuse us, my friend. The jungle calls.”
They retired to the Spacecapsul’s private compartment. As the craft steered itself, I sat there thinking of this renegade’s ambitions and of the professor who had gone off somewhere with the A-I-D. God, I prayed, let it work out for the best.
A few minutes later, the Capitol appeared below, or, rather, the two Capitols. Old Washington was a mass of lights, but across the Potomac River in New Washington, the lights were few and scattered. There, in windowless skyscrapers, the highest Government officials — the Think Machines — were housed with Their non-human cerebral staffs, Their secretarial calculators and lesser computors, as well as the vast bureaucracy of human technicians and engineers who serviced Them.
I glanced up at the moon where the Supreme Rulers whose life blood was atomic current, looked down upon the earth and upon the nation that proudly called itself the Pleasure Republic. I thought of Bangani (Barnum F.) and the vindication he wanted and tried to tell myself that after all, the Rulers, even if not human, desired their Own Continuance. Yes, They would agree to Bangani (Bar
num F.)’s conditions. Yes, why not? I began to feel hopeful. The A-I-D would be returned to international custody in India. The St. Ewagiows and other death-cultists of this world would be immobilized. Yes, why not?
We landed in Old Washington. I parted from my fellow passengers and within ten minutes I was at L. and O. Headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue. “I’d given you up for dead!” Commissioner Sonata said happily. “It’s good to see you, Crockett!” And when I reported my great news, he smiled with speechless joy. Then his blond face twisted and he wept. Sobbing he asked me to repeat my news and when I did, he hugged me. “We’ll see the President in the morning. I always knew I hadn’t made a mistake in you. You’re a genius!”
He was overwhelmed with emotion. He wanted to entertain me, babbling incoherently about One-Shot Animateds and opgin parties. He suggested a ski party in Antartica-in-Miami and even a trip to the moon, “I can get the authorization!”
“No thanks, Elvis,” I said quietly. “All I want is some old-fashioned sleep.”
“Shall I airwave Gladys?”
“No, Elvis,” I said, thinking of that sleeping beauty in the Sex Lab.
(It was the hardest no I had ever said. Ruth, forgive me, but after my recent experiences, Gladys E., to me, was like a wife. I wanted to go to her as I would to you, Ruth, and perhaps I would have if not for Bangani (Barnum F.). When I thought of that renegade who had once lived among us, I found the resolution to say no.)
The Commissioner studied me curiously. “Crockett, I guess you are a hero. An absolutely genuine hero. But no sleep for me tonight. I’m celebrating. Everything is bound to work out for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Barnum Fly’ll get his pardon and life will go on as before.”
“Do you think They will raise any objections?”
“No. It’ll go through channels of course, and it may even go as far as the moon. Stop worrying, Crockett! You can go to sleep with — what’s that quaint expression you have on the Reservation? Oh, yes, you can go to sleep with a clear conscience. I propose to sleep without it.”
When I went to see the Commissioner in the morning I found the city crowded with delegations from all over the country. It was June 30th or National Lobby Day. Before the final vote on the Budget, Congress was commanded by law to receive and listen to its citizens. I had almost forgotten.
Tears of homesickness filled my eyes when I saw a delegation from the Reservation, the men in homespun, the women in gingham dresses. During the last ten years we had always sent a delegation to Washington on June 30th. Territory was what we wanted. With a rapidly expanding population we had for years been petitioning Congress for the remainder of Montana. Montana, I thought with a surge of pride. I would get it for them, I thought.
I was happy to see my own people, but since I had left the Reservation in secrecy, I didn’t want to be recognized. Still, I was so homesick I paused on the edge of the crowd that had surrounded the Reservation delegation. It was a typically noisy and joking crowd.
“Do you cowboys still want Montana?” some fool shouted.
“Montana for the cowboys and their cowbabies!” another fool declaimed, and pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. “Resolution Number 1,457,457,” he read. “Whereas the United States of America, a land founded by pioneers and inspired by the old-fashioned pioneer spirit, and spirits, hereby awards, donates, gives, grants and aggrandizes the remainder of the State of Montana to the Reservationists so that they and their descendants, herein to be described as settlers, cowboys, and Indians, can weave wool and spin sheep …”
The crowd roared at this silly concoction published, no doubt, by the National Dictionary of Pocket Humor. I rushed over to the clown, snatched the scrap of paper out of his hand and tore it into bits. There might have been a riot, but just then a Reservation woman whom I knew — Esther Silo — recognized me and called, “There’s Crockett Smith, the dirty renegade, the wife-deserter!”
I regretted my impulsive action, but it was too late. The crowd of Outsiders was grinning, waiting to hear more. “Esther,” I said. “I’m here on official business.”
“Since when is deserting your poor wife and children official business?”
“You’ll be sorry you said that, Esther!”
“Look at him in his fancy dude clothes,” she sneered, pointing at my leaf-green Wearitwunce suit. “Fancy clothes, fancy women — we know his kind.”
There was nothing to do but skulk off. I only calmed down when I was with the Commissioner and had lit up one of his U-Latu cigars. “My own people,” I concluded my bitter story with a smile.
“They’ll welcome you back as a hero when they know all the facts, Crockett.”
The news he had was all I could have hoped for. He had seen the president, who approved of everything I had done. An emergency meeting of the Cabinet had been scheduled for eleven o’clock. Also at eleven, to expedite matters, the Commissioner and I would present the case of Bangani (Barnum F.) to the lower Supreme (human) Court in New Washington. “If They approve, the Supreme Court will go along, Crockett!”
New Washington when we got there was swarming with tourists. Not only was it Lobby Day, but June and July had always been big tourist months in the Capital. Tourists stared at the huge windowless skyscrapers and crowded about the outdoor QanA’s or Question-and-Answer Think Machines, asking all sorts of questions. Simple questions of how much was in their wallets, and more difficult ones such as predictions of the future. They were enjoying the answers too. These QanA’s were fun machines more than anything else, the most recent novelty. In fact, they were a harmless adaptation of the subversive You-Too-Can-Be-A-Think-Machine project that had led to the conviction of Barnum Fly.
We walked through a park, bright with exotic flowers, the flaming red muscamortis1, the black and purple magicientist, whose petals changed to pink and blue when they dropped to the ground, and the national flower, the three leaved red, white and blue clover. The park attendants, I noticed, were wearing Japanese kimonos. “A new summer style?” I asked the Commissioner.
“No. Japan happens to be Nation of the Month. It’s a diplomatic courtesy of the Rulers. They honor the nations of the world on an alphabetical basis.”
On the other side of the park, there was a second row of windowless skyscrapers. Guards paraded in front of their entrances — automatons with arms and legs, and numbers for heads, mostly 2’s but with an occasional 4 or 7. In honor of Nation of the Month, they wore Japanese uniforms.
The Commissioner approached a Number 4 and said in code, “M (9X-N2).”
It conducted us to an inner court wheer the windowless walls rose on three sides. Here there was no one, human or antihuman. Then, from one of buildings came a man who was either Japanese or had been made up to resemble a Japanese. He bowed and said, “I am to conduct the honorable gentlemen to the Court of Problems.” We followed him to where a brass ring was set in the stone. He bowed again with the proverbial courtesy of the Orient and pulled on the ring. I heard a hum, a strong sustained hum. The stone before us, a section of about ten feet by ten, began to sink. When the hum stopped, an escalator like some living thing emerged out of the space. It grew and grew until it reached the wall of what must have been the Court of Problems.
We stepped on the escalator, the guide behind us. He smiled at the surprise and excitement he must have observed in my face. “Problems,” he singsonged. “Problems, problems. Gentlemen, are you aware that the people of Japan whom we honor this month have no problems? Their Rulers have eliminated all problems. Twelve hours of dreamless sleep. Four hours work, four hours pleasure, and four hours of prayer to their Supreme Ruler-Mikados.”
I listened to this good-will propaganda that evidently he had been spieling from June 1st to June 30th. “Tomorrow’s another month,” I said. “And you’ll be giving another speech on the glories of life in another country.”
“Yes, on Kanada1,” he smiled.
He was just another bureaucrat with a bureaucrat’s lac
k of imagination. What he needed was an injection of Gladys’ Bee-Ambo, I thought. I had been thinking about her all morning, if the truth must be told.
We had been carried by the escalator to an elevated street, sixty or seventy feet above the stone court below; not a street so much as a ledge or shelf attached to the doorless and windowless wall of the skyscraper.
The guide bowed and without another word descended.
“Look!” the Commissioner said, pointing. I turned around. Even in the sun, the tiny yellow tail light, fixed to what in a human would have been the end of the spine, gleamed brightly.
“He seemed so real!” I said.
“You never can tell any more to whom you’re talking.”
“Elvis, I’m worried. No use concealing it. All this red tape — ”
“I won’t move a step until you calm down,” he said, taking out a box of U-Latus. We each ate two of the happiness pills and then walked over to the entrance or what should have been an entrance. Twenty feet above our heads there was a carved legend in the white marble; E=MC21.
“I suppose there’ll be a door somewhere, a seeing eye,” I said cheerfully.
There was. As our shadows fell2 on the blank wall, it slid open. We entered a big reception room which had also been decorated in honor of the Nation of the Month. There were screens with conventional Japanese designs — storks, cherry trees, geishas. At the desks, the receptionists were wearing silk kimonos. To me, they looked real enough, even though they were remarkably alike, with black hair and slanted eyes. “The Garden of Eden Salons are certainly kept busy, Elvis,” I said.
They looked real, but as we approached, they simultaneously lifted their heads and smiled. Maybe it was the U-Latus but somehow it struck me as the funniest thing I had ever seen. And when the wall behind us slid back into place, I laughed. A solemn-faced official hurried over to us. This one, I was positive, was human. First of all there was nothing Japanese about him, but more importantly he had a wart on his chin and a crooked mouth. There was absolutely nothing machine-made about him. He was, if I may use the phrase, divinely human.
Fun House Page 12
