Fun House

by Appel, Benjamin

  I can still hear my trembling voice. I can still see the professor and Gladys in the private compartment of the Double-Jette flying us back to Washington, D.C. He was wearing the khaki clothes of a hunter, on his head the hydrogen hat I remembered — the black skull cap representing the hydrogen nucleus, the white revolving ring the orbit of its single electron. His face was attentive and intelligent — that is, the part above the nose.

  “Is it set to go off?” he repeated. “And is it so important?”

  “Even you don’t want to die, professor!” Gladys said.

  “The statement Life or Death is a misleading one, my dear young woman. The true statement is Life or Death but always Power.”

  “Power to destroy the world!” she cried passionately. “The world is holy.”

  The professor smiled. “You remind me of my youth, or rather of a book I read when I was young. It was an old book published more than a hundred years ago in 1910 or 1911. The cover and title page were missing, and with it the writer’s name. He was a scientist, and he too preached of a holy world. Let us search for order and beauty in the universe, he wrote. That was his definition of science, by the way. A search for order and beauty. He wrote that our minds are a part of our bodies, a part of the living breathing world, and the world was holy.” Mockingly, the professor folded his huge hands together. “Let us revere all that is alive and serve no masters who would destroy the goodness and beauty and mercy that exists in man except when he is occupied with war and death! In 1914, holy man fought his first unholy world war, and in 1939 his second. And the searchers for order and beauty searched for death! The chemists searched for chemical death, the bacteriologists for plague, the physicists for their poisoned mushrooms, the thinkers and philosophers for the cold death of words. And holy man marched in blood behind the waving triumphant banner of Science.”

  I stared at him, at the white spinning of his hydrogen hat. “Have you set it?” I gasped.

  “Only power is holy,” he answered. “I follow the instructions of my master!” His eyes had become fanatic. Those intelligent eyes of his were like a mad dog’s.

  “For God’s sake!” I cried. “You’ve set it!”

  “What is set, what is unset? Settled, unsettled, life, death?” the professor philosophized. “At the stroke of midnight it will be the 4th of July.”

  “Will it be Zero Hour?”

  ‘What is Zero Hour but the beginning of infinity in one view, and in another, the beginning of a finite circle?”

  It was twilight when we landed. The Commissioner was waiting for us at the airport and instantly we went to L. and O. Headquarters. There, the professor repeated his story, and the Commissioner said. “I don’t blame you for not trusting us, professor. We are grateful that you saw fit to accompany Crockett.”

  “We are old hunting friends and a friendship sealed in the woods is lasting.”

  From his face it was impossible to guess whether he was joking or serious. “We will go see the President right now, professor. Will you accept his assurances?”

  The professor nodded. “I voted for him,” he said simply.

  “Crockett,” the Commissioner said to me. “There isn’t time to explain why you can’t come along. Briefly, the Minister of Police X-Y has circulated all sorts of slanders about you and your abilities.” He glanced at his watch. “My God, time’s going! Crockett, you’ve done a great job. You deserve the Medal of Honor — ” He broke off and said to Gladys E. “Come along. I may need you.”

  Before we parted he arranged for me to meet him at nine o’clock at the downstairs library of the New Senate Office Building. When I entered it was almost empty. Three or four men were reading newspapers or talking quietly with their One-Shot Animateds. On the walls there were murals showing the great inventions of the past — the electric bulb, the automobile, the cyclotron, the rocket. Other murals showed the great inventions of more recent times — the Space Bubble, the U-Latu pill etc.

  Because the closets of an older America had a certain historical and symobolical significance, they had been preserved. The downstairs Library, as I should have mentioned, had once been the Men’s Room. (At the far end of the library was the simple biochemical product that had superceded the older habits — a glass container holding several hundred of what seemed to be candy balls, the manufacturer’s name No-Canno1 printed above the well-known cherub trademark.)

  I sat down and waited. I tried to read but it was nine o’clock, nine o’clock of July 3rd. I thought of how wonderful it would be to go home to my wife and family. These eleven days on the Outside were like eleven years, but I couldn’t relax. It was past nine o’clock and getting later with each breath I took. Later and later and later. God alone knew whether the Commissioner would succeed. The A-I-D was still missing and for all we knew set to detonate every A and H-Bomb in the world on the stroke of midnight.

  I had to rush to the glass container. I pulled the lever. One of the No-Cannos rolled down the little chute, and I popped it into my mouth.

  At that instant, I felt somebody’s hand on my shoulder. It was, a young man with a dapper little mustache. “Let’s sit down, Crockett,” he whispered in a deep gruff voice.

  I’d never seen this particular L. and O., but without a word I followed him to a leather couch against the white wall (also preserved) opposite the antique closets.

  “It looks good,” he whispered. “Badge didn’t have to convince Number One how serious the situation is.” He was, of course, speaking in code. Badge stood for the Commissioner. Number One was the President.

  “Number One’s in favor of giving Broken Glass what he wants,” the operative continued, and taking a pad from his pocket he scribbled a few lines. I almost shouted with joy when I read them.

  “Barnum’ll get all he was promised. Opposition from Court of Problems weakening. President firm. S.C.O.S.T. in emergency session.

  “Nothing is definite yet,” the L. and O. warned me. “Badge is meeting now with a committee of Sub-Ones.” This, I guessed meant either Cabinet members or Senators or a mixture of both. “Badge couldn’t meet you, Crockett. You’re to come with me.”

  “Where?”

  “Badge wants you to relax. We’ll go to the Cineramour1 on Pennsylvania Avenue.”

  We walked uptown on the broad avenue with its alternately light and dark blocks.2 Everywhere carefree people, tourists visiting the Capital, Government employees, young couples and entire families were strolling, whistling and singing and laughing. Many of them were also bound for the Cineramour where they would spend an hour or a couple days or even a week, if they were on vacation.3

  Up ahead we could see the Cineramour, a great, square, windowless white building some hundred stories high. It shone like a huge lump of sugar, striped with fluctuating bands of rainbow color like a peppermint stick. Across Pennsylvania Avenue was the White House and the towering Little White House.1

  I walked in a daze, not daring to glance at my watch. As we entered another dark stretch I felt my hand seized by warm soft fingers. “Darling, don’t you know me?” The voice I heard was no longer gruff and masculine but light and soft. I pulled my hand free, and when we stepped into a street bright as daylight, I saw that she had managed to get rid of her mustache and suit. It was Gladys in a black evening gown. She held up a little curved metal plate, the Voicechanger that had been in her mouth. It had fitted over her upper teeth and was capable of being adjusted to control both volume and tone.

  “Everything will be all right,” she said, throwing the gadget away.

  “Are you sure?”

  “As sure as I am of life.”

  “I don’t trust the professor,” I muttered. “I don’t trust all these bureaucrats, these machine heads. Gladys, are you sure?”

  “Yes, darling. I’m sure because there are more people who want to live than those who want to die, because life is stronger than death.”

  I looked at her. It was the new Gladys who had first revealed herself in
the linen room of the Double-Jette to Russoplayo. It was the explorer of the planet Utopia … Still, her shining eyes heartened me. I also began to feel that life would go on, life must go on. On the Outside, back home on the Reservation everywhere in the world, up to and including the moon.

  In front of the Cineramour’s three entrances,2 a dozen or so men and women paraded up and down carrying enlarged photos of dogs and cats. There was a photo of a Newfoundland guarding a small child, a kitten playing with a string. “We want dogs and cats in Washington D.C!” they shouted.

  “Bring back our pets.3”

  “Look at them,” I said. “If they only knew — ”

  “Darling, you worry too much! Even the Rulers on the moon won’t be safe without the earth as an anchor.” She smiled. “Let’s declare a holiday, darling.”

  She led me over towards the entrance to the Present Show. We passed a display, a late-model Space-Bubble that could be driven on land, through the air and under water. Behind its transparent walls, seated at the controls were two beautiful automatons — perfect imitations of the flesh and blood stars Theda Bara Rumppe and ?anymore1 Jeffers. They were naked. The stars themselves couldn’t be according to law — only nudity in art was permissible on the Outside. No sound came through the transparent walls, but it was obvious that the two smiling and ogling automatons or sexomatums (as they were called in the entertainment industry) were having a romantic conversation. Curious people were listening in, holding audiophones attached to the Space Bubble, to their ears.

  Gladys put one of the audiophones against her ear. Then she held out her hand to me. As soon as I took it I could also hear2 what the sexomatums were saying:

  “Theda, darling, I know a perfectly lovely place where we can be alone.”

  “But we’ve been there Barry. I won’t go to that Sargasso Sea again.”

  “Theda, you forget it’s July, and you can’t see lamprey eels every day of the week, only once in seven years when they migrate to the Sargasso, and besides the lampreys there are the octopus, darling, dripping simply dripping in their own ink. Theda, I haven’t ever used the Nature Control on this panel, and I think it would be so much fun to vibrate their rather meaningless scrawlings to read ‘Barry loves Theda.’”

  I should have been used to life in the Funhouse but I’d heard enough. I pulled Gladys away and the connecting wire of her audiophone broke.

  “Darling,” she said reproachfully, “suppose it is silly, but can’t we be silly now and then?”

  No one paid any attention to us.3 Those with audiophones kept right on eavesdropping. But from the entrance to the Present Show, a Cineramour automaton dressed in a white suit spiraled with red and blue, a repair kit hanging from its shoulder, slithered up. It took the audiophone from Gladys, dropped it into its repair kit. “Thank you,” the thing said in a metallic voice. “These accidents do happen but your Management has provided for every contingency and every comfort. Your entertainment is our sole obligation.”

  Opening the repair kit, it took out a little spray gun and squirted it on the end of the broken wire. “Ladies and gentlemen,” it spieled. “By utilizing a process of growth similar to that of the chrysalis and pupa — ”

  I was listening with a growing fear to that spieling automaton. It reminded me of the Voice at Atomic Amusement Park. That Inhuman Voice … I was thinking htat the Time Stream of Dr. Bangani had led to the invention of these Cineramours. I was afraid of all these magicientists and their corrupted professors, of death and the A-I-D …

  “By utilizing a process of growth observed in the world of insects, modern miracles can be performed for your entertainment!” the voice of the automaton was spieling.

  The broken wire-end had begun to enlarge. It grew and grew, a smudgy foggy-white in color like an insect cocoon. Suddenly it hardened and condensed to become an audiophone. There were only a few scattered laughs. Nearly everybody had seen this fix-it operation before. Only a little boy asked loudly. “Mama, mama, where did the big doll hide it?”

  From somewhere another metallic voice boomed; “Present, Past, Future! It is all yours, folks. Take your pick, folks. Do you want to go from the Present into the Future? Tonight, the Future offers love in a century still unborn where man the conqueror of the universe gaily explores the galaxies of space with his loved one. Starring the ever-popular Theda Rumppe as Phosphere Geiger and Barrymore Jeffers as Professor Halio-Minus. A shocking, outspoken story of two intrepid settlers from earth among the starry clusters of the Milky Way. With Barry Jeffers, you will meet with unearthly temptation — the strange sexy ovoid sixth-dimensional being who is however passionately feminine as no woman on earth dares to be. Be tempted with Barry Jeffers by the French actress Denise Havre-Brest as Logarithm M — E.”

  Half of that fickle crowd were already hurrying over to the entrance to the Future. Again, I glanced at my watch. It was almost ten o’clock. “The time!” I muttered heartbrokenly. “Time, time. What have we done with our time?” I stared across Pennsylvania Avenue at the White House and Little White House. They were meeting there right now and I had made it possible for them (and Them) to meet. I had saved the country, saved humanity, but for what, I asked myself. Maybe I was just worn out from that final dash to Russoplayo, but I felt empty and bitter and mean enough to be a St. Ewagiow myself. I wondered if the human race was worth saving. That second I knew how the prophets had felt down the ages, writing their warnings on the walls; Mene Mene Tekel1 while the people laughed and knocked each other down as they rushed to the circus or bullfight or ball game or crucifixion.2

  “Don’t you want to see the Future?” Gladys asked me.

  I shook my head. “I haven’t got the nerve.”

  “Let’s take in the Past then, darling. And stop looking so gloomy.” She sighed. “You make me feel like taking a U-Latu, and I’ve sworn off.”

  The display before the entrance to the Past was a horse, or rather, a horse automaton twenty feet high. I looked at this animal, familiar to me as a Reservation man if not to them. It was completely black except for a white blaze like the letter L in the middle of its forehead. With its muzzle, the horse nudged at the shoulder of Barrymore Jeffers, pushing him towards Theda Rumppe. That night, it seemed they were the main attraction in Past, Present, and Future.

  Gladys pointed at the L on the horse’s forehead. “Love,” she smiled.

  “The world can go smash!” I grumbled in a fury. “But who cares when we’re all having a good time?”

  Again a Cineramour automaton slithered out to us. “Sir,” it said to me, “Would you prefer some other initial? The initial of your lady companion perhaps?” Without waiting for an answer, it slithered over to the horse and touched what must have been a control on its right front leg.

  The L in the middle of the horse’s forehead vanished and an M appeared. “Have we a Mary in the house?” the automaton asked and M appeared. “Have we a Natchez Nelly?” It asked. “Initials of love constant through the ages.” An N had taken the place of the M on the horse’s forehead. “Tonight, the Past offers love in a bygone century, starring the ever-popular Barrymore Jeffers as Rob Vigilante, a cowboy on the vast western plain crisscrossed only by the double-crossing sheep herders. Have we an Osa in the house … A land lonely under the Big Dipper, torn by posses of sheriffs in pursuit of the ever-popular Theda Rumppe, starring in the role of Miss Evangeline Hereford, a prim schoolteacher from a little town in Massachusetts come to the virgin West, without a friend, and virginal herself until a humble black horse, a mere beast perhaps, but not a beast at heart, the horse with a heart, Digitalis, brings Evangeline to Rob. A truly great story, starring Digitalis in the role of Rin-Tin-Tin.1”

  “Let’s go in,” Gladys urged me with a smile. “You should like this, darling. Anyway, it might be amusing and I don’t want you to keep on looking like a storm.”

  We entered a dim lobby and a nurse in a purowhite2 uniform with the number 73 pinned on it, led us through the crowd of newcomers to
the doctors’ offices. Under the vaulted ceiling, the offices looked like rows of tiny boxes. Nurse 73 opened a door numbered 73. The doctor inside raised his head from a picture book. Its title was ‘The Loves of Theda Rumppe,’ and from its pages a soft voice was murmuring; “Oh, doctor, only you can make me happy …”

  He turned the book upside down and the voice stopped. He was also in purowhite, a 73 pinned to his jacket. “Please be seated, guests of Cineramour3.”

  “No,” I muttered. “I don’t want any of it.”

  “It only takes a few minutes,” Gladys whispered. “It’s a formality. Everybody should go to church once in awhile.”

  “Church!”

  The doctor had heard me. He smiled. “Your mental health is our pleasure,” he said and his voice was like the automoton’s outside. He gestured at two dark brown chairs that I noticed, now, were carved with all sorts of religious symbols, crosses and stars and crescent moons.

  Gladys seated herself, and unwillingly I, too, sat down. The doctor returned to his picture book as if he were alone.

  “Are you happy?” a Voice asked. At first I thought it was the doctor, then I realized it was coming out of the back of my chair. “Happiness is a state of mind.”

  “Let me out of here!” I said. “I’ve had enough!”

  But when I tried to rise, it was too late. Before I knew what had happened, I felt metal clamps gripping me at the temples, come up out of the back of that chair. A four-sided, framelike box, with no top or bottom, dropped down over my head, and on its miniature screen, conditioning shots out of the Past, Present and Future, unreeled before my captured eyes with a dizzying speed.

  … Barry Jeffers as Rob Vigilante, seated on Digitalis and galloping across the plains … Theda Rumppe as Evangeline Hereford fighting off a dozen sex-maddened outlaws while a horde of Indians tried to stop Rob …

  Faster and faster … Barry had Theda up on Digitalis and was keeping off the Indians as lamprey eels swam around their Space Bubble on the bottom of the Sargasso Sea … kissing and parting as Barry now become Dr. Halio-Minus, succumbed to the other-worldly charms of the galactic space siren Logarithm M-E …