No answer to questions such. No, none indeed.
And yet, as he looked, a message came twisting and turning down from the grey morning sky.
It was dreamily slow. He had time for speculation, time in the heightened seconds before impact to determine the sex of the falling body. It was a dom—smooth and graceful as a seal in the standard black one-piece of the jet flipper.
He looked for the jet pack on her back. It wasn’t there. He looked for the chute that should have saved her if the jets died. That, too, wasn’t there.
So she must have jetted up over London and deliberately stepped out of the harness to enjoy her last long dance down the sky.
He had time enough to see that she was indeed dancing.
The dance of death.
Her body hit silently, close by the fountain, scattering a thousand pigeons.
Nobody noticed. Except Dion Quern.
Nobody noticed the dying fall, the cloudy ovation of the birds, the pulped protoplasm on a bed of stone. It was too early to notice such things.
A muted bell tinkled somewhere in the upholstery of Dion’s contour chair, and the voice of the Indian dom said quietly: “DQM, I7L, 85B. Please attend room nine, corridor A. Your formula is ready to shoot… Happy landing, squire.”
Dion stood up, still gazing through the window. No doubt a Peace Officer or a passer-by would shortly spot the debris and arrange for its removal.
“Send not to know for whom the bell tinkles,” he murmured. “It tinkles incessantly, dear love, for thee and me.”
He turned towards corridor A, unaware that his face was wet with tears.
Ten
THE time bombs were set out in neat little rows on a trolley. They were plastic and colour-coded. They looked like surrealist sea-shells.
The nurse was a male, possibly around Dion’s own age, give or take a decade. One never knew, with time shots.
“Dion Quern?”
“Himself.”
“Drape your dear body, friend.” The nurse indicated a wall bunk. “Strip and drape. Pushing back the clock is a wearisome business.”
Dion stepped out of his tunic and lay down.
The nurse yawned. “Ho hum. Where is your data plate?”
Dion indicated the trolley on which he had placed the thin piece of plastic given him by the Indian receptionist. “I dropped it by the sea-shells… So men are still allowed to work here, then?”
The nurse gave him a thin smile. “I squire the club’s top domdoc, Diogenes. For which, as a special treat, I am allowed to extend the purgatory of others.” He picked up the data plate, dropped it into the slot of a small decoder built into the wall, and examined the information. He made a disapproving noise with his tongue. “Three threes. You have been a naughty boy. Next time it will be a two.”
“If there’s a next time,” said Dion.
“There’s always a next time. Finagle’s Second Canon…Now let’s start you off with the base shots and dispose of the shakes.”
“I’m not shaking,” said Dion.
“You have been. You will be. Also Finagle’s Second Canon.”
The nurse selected five green time bombs, deftly taped one to each of Dion’s legs, one to each of his arms, and the remaining one on his chest above the heart. “My name is Smith, a fact which so far may fail to interest you. I am Leander of that fraternity… You ought to know who to curse when you collect your grade one.”
“This is one hell of a non sequitur,” complained Dion irritably. “I’ve just seen a dom fall out of the sky, and I am in no mood for quippery. So programme the needles and plug the hole in your head.”
Leander Smith smiled. “Rest tranquil, Dion, man ami. You may wish to volunteer your sanity away-in which case you will doubtless require to glance at the scoreboard… Do you enjoy living in this great domdoctored world?”
“Not wildly.”
“Do you ever feel that you, too, could make some mild contribution to human regress-providing your life wasn’t being sucked out of you by big-breasted bitches with high I.Q.’s, wide appetites, low morals and a monopoly of lions?”
“Shove it and start the time shots.” Dion was feeling oddly tired.
“I stand reproved.” Leander Smith pressed a stud, and a control console shot out of the wall behind Dion’s head. He heard the sound of switches being thrown, then almost immediately became aware of a brief stinging sensation in his left leg. It was followed by a similar feeling in his right leg, both arms and finally the chest.
Meanwhile, Leander Smith was taping a series of yellow capsules to various parts of his body. As he worked, he talked.
“I’m Mephistopheles, Dion. Some bastard sport up there sent me to tempt you. Don’t think of funny ploys, for Stopes sake. The room is not wired for playback; and if it were, I’d have more to lose than you.”
The euphoria-always attendant on the first shots-was beginning to take effect.
“What coprolitic bifurcation are you expounding?” he demanded drunkenly.
“Rebellion,” said Leander. “Disruption of the status quo. Sexual anarchy. Universal suffrage for men. Motherhood for doms, and all manner of obscenities. You name it, I’m for it-along with a few other maladjusted psychos. Live now, take your grade one later. Want to join? It’s a real fun thing.”
Dion lay on the wall bunk, naked, with green and yellow time bombs taped all over him and watched Leander reset the radio trigger on the control console. Once again the pricking and tingling sensations started. He felt decidedly drunk.
“Are you-hie-pumping me full of Happyland?” he asked suspiciously.
“I cannot tell a lie. Yes, dear friend of my youth, along with the time shots I am pumping you full of Happyland. It’s easier that way.”
“Cowsy lunt,” mumbled Dion. “I’ll smash your cant-cant-cantaloupe faecal face.”
“Try it,” advised Leander. “All things are possible in this best of all possible nightmares.”
Dion tried to stand up. The room began to spin and he fell back. “Buffoon,” he murmured weakly, “bastard, bungling buffoon. Baffling bustard bassoon… Wait till I—wait—wait…” He began to giggle.
Unperturbed, Leander continued to strap the blue sequence of time bombs to his body.
“Listen, hop-head. I’ll straighten you out when I’ve had my speak. Meanwhile let the words filter through the sewage between your ears. You’ve already had three grade threes, so you are clearly not the goodest of good fairies. You pine a little, you live longer and you die a lot. Put the dying to some use, friend. Join the Lost Legion. We guarantee to fix it so you can transport a few doms with you.”
Dion hiccupped. “Lost Legion. Last lusty Lost Legion… What lachrymose lampoonery is this, dear Judas? Stand still while I kick your artful artefact up your alley.”
Leander was amused. “This alliterative syndrome is a nice new quirk, laddie. But don’t let it fuzz your thinking. The Lost Legion I will paraphrase. Call it the Tong of Frustrated Sub-Men. Call it Male Minorities Anonymous. It’s a rose by any other nom de guerre. Just a bunch of bright lads who are out to bust the big busts or bust themselves busting. Do I make myself lambent?”
“Pel-pellucid… Down with the doms and up yours.”
“That’s it-in a nutshell. Want to play?”
“Where do I sign?”
“You don’t-and we’ll call you. Some time… This is one Stopes of a way of recruiting…” He went to the control and triggered the blue bombs. Dion felt as if his limbs, independent of his trunk, were dancing a variety of out of phase fandangos. The trunk was merely oscillating-like a snake with cramp.
“The thing is,” went on Leander, “we’re guerillas. We have to be. Not enough of us for a real stand up and spit party.”
“Baboons,” corrected Dion blearily.
“No, just anthropoid guerillas with delusions of manhood… Where do you live, guerilla?”
“In a cage called London Seven.”
“Who do you squire
?”
“Juno Locke, the female lemur with the female femur.”
“What is she?”
“Peace Officer to big-busted bandicoots and frightened flunkeys with flawed flutes.”
“What an acquisition! And for Stopes’ sake stop alliterating. It’s not the Happyland. There is no Happyland. It’s the cockeyed euphoria.”
“Euphoria Quern, spinster of this parish,” agreed Dion solemnly.
“Zip it, blabbertrap,” said Leander, taping on the red bombs, the last sequence of the time shots. “This final salvo is going to sober you somewhat. And God bless all the rejuvenated mini-bugs in your overloaded tissue.” He went to the console and triggered all the red bombs simultaneously.
Dion moaned, shuddered and fainted.
By the time he came round, all the gaily coloured shells had been removed and Leander was rubbing him down with some colourless fluid that burned, cooled, soothed and invigorated all at the same time.
“So I lived through it,” said Dion unsteadily.
“Maybe. Do you remember it?”
They looked at each other. With a shout of rage, Dion leaped off the wall bunk, his arm raised, his fist feeling like the hammer of Thor. And fell flat on his face.
Leander turned him over gently with his foot. “I forgot to tell you. Don’t make any sudden movements for a while… Do you remember it?”
“Yes, bastard.”
“Don’t forget it, then. You are hereby elected to the suicide squadron. One of these dark nights you’ll get a call. Take a short sharp shot and do what the voice says.”
“I could denounce you to the doms.”
“Joke. You’ve got three threes. I’ve got nothing. My story is the same as yours—except that my first person doesn’t have a psychorecord. Who wins?”
“Bastard.”
“You said that before. Now let us decently cover the flesh that drives all doms to sexstasy.” He helped Dion up. “I think you’re steady enough to walk, laddie. So push back to your dom and give her the customary ration of spelaeology. But remember—you’re now a latent guerilla. You may not get a call till next week. You may not get one—if you’re lucky—till next year. But when you get one, you operate at Mach five. And remember also—guerillas sometimes bleed.”
“Cut the drama. I’m trying very hard to believe you believe it yourself.”
“Try harder, Dion. Otherwise you could die laughing—hysterically.”
Dion fingered the credit key in his reticule. Thirty-five thousand, less seven see fifty. It gave him a great sense of well being. And security.
He could hop to Bogota or Samarkand and sit tight till all the Leanders in London collected their grade ones and the moon jumped over all the cows who ran this great big cud-chewing world.
Then he thought of Juno with sudden senseless affection. She trusted him with the trove. Stupid bitch.
“One question.”
“Well, Master Dion?”
“You squire a domdoc. How do you feel about her?”
Leander laughed. “You squire a Peace Officer. How do you feel about her?”
“That’s no answer.”
“It wasn’t much of a question. Listen, Dion, a dom is just a face in the crowd. And the crowd is too damn loud and crowded… Weaken for one and you weaken for all.”
Dion smiled. “Now that we’re down to slogans I’ll bid you a very good morning. For ever.”
Leander opened the door. “Don’t be afraid you’ll miss the second part of the show. For ever is shorter than you think.”
Eleven
AFTER a night of mild lesbian frolics and occasional heterosexual interludes, the ambassadors of the United States of North and South America, the Neo-Soviet Union and the Sino-Indian Empire, together with the Proconsul of the Grand Federation of Europe and Queen Victoria the Second, sat soberly in the private suite at New Buck House taking their morning coffee and energy rolls.
Victoria, still a fine-looking dom in her late eighties, was bored. She was bored with the routines of monarchy, the routines of state, the sports and infras of the bed-chamber, the prospect of another sixty glorious years and especially with the fragments of protocol that still clung tenaciously to her existence like cobwebs from the Dark Ages.
“Darlings,” she said, quaintly affecting the novelese of the late twentieth century, now once again coming into fashion, “what the hell?”
“Sweet, is that a statement or a question?” asked the Neo-Soviet ambassador. Anastasia was a wide-eyed, black-haired, breathtakingly bouncy thing on the juvenile side of fifty. She subscribed to the quite disarming and simple philosophy that politics are love—and consequently devoted all of her extra-sexual energies arranging treaties with everybody.
“Both,” said Victoria. “I’m bored. In the doldrums. Life is a Möbius strip.”
“Your Majesty,” said Eleanor, “how about dinner at the White House? You haven’t been to Brasilia since the President’s coronation. Besides,” she added significantly, “they serve the most excellent caramel dessert.”
Victoria shook her head. “We are not amused.” Then, recalling that the American ambassador was a very sensitive dom, she added placatingly: “Sorry, love. I know it’s the greatest show on earth, but I’m just not in the phase for big hellos. Also I don’t go a megaton on having my arm shaken off and my hand kissed to the bone before the booze-up starts. I hope Sammy wasn’t expecting me?”
“No, Your Majesty. But the Queen’s suite is permanently ready, and the President has asked me to renew her standing invitation… You could always make it an incognito.”
Victoria laughed grimly. “I had an American incognito about fifteen years ago. It rained Daughters of the Restoration, Maidens of the Plains and the Hollywood State Choir… Don’t think I don’t like that sort of thing, Eleanor. It’s all a question of phase.”
Josephine, Proconsul of the Grand Federation, scratched her legs (thus calling attention to what a scribbling sport had once defined as France’s greatest assets), poured some more coffee and yawned. “You are righter than right, chérie. It is all a question of mood. And on this last day of October I am in the mood for a new mood. Something different is required… Quaint, perhaps, but different.”
The ambassador of the Sino-Indian Empire suddenly had an idea. “I have it, Vicky,” she said. “Let me call home and get them to freeze the waters below the Taj Mahal. Then we can jet over late this afternoon, electro-roast an ox and have an olde English skating party complete with paper lanterns, Johann Strauss and half a regiment of big virile Pathans.”
“Darling Indira,” said the Queen gently, “you read too much. Also we had an Indian evening-or was it an Indonesian evening?—about ten days ago… But somewhere… somewhere there is the virus of an idea.” She turned once more to the Federation Proconsul. “What day did you say it was, love?”
“The last day of October.”
“Ahah,” exclaimed Victoria triumphantly. “Ace, king, queen, jack. Hallowe’en! I knew there was something at the back of my libido. Olde Anglican custom. We’ll have a witches’ sabbath.”
“Joy—squared and cubed,” said Eleanor.
“Hallowe’en?” enquired Anastasia dubiously.
“Hallowe’en,” confirmed the Queen emphatically. “The Eve of All Hallows, when sports go bump in the night. We’ll have witches and warlocks and demons and devils, We’ll have skeletons and virgins and fireworks and black magic.” Then, as an afterthought, she added: “We will also have the Commons, the Diplomatic Corps, the Peace Corps and senior civil servants… The A list, I think. The B’s are too bloody stodgy for words… And everyone is commanded to arrive by jet pack and broomstick… Ha, that should be a bright little kick—particularly if we lace the booze.” She patted Anastasia on the arm. “Be a dearie, and hit the go button. You’re nearest. We’d better programme the serfs to lay on something special.”
Anastasia rang for the private secretary.
Indira, still saddened a l
ittle by the royal rejection of the Taj Mahal, said somewhat petulantly: “But where can one hold this—this witches’ sabbath?”
Victoria grinned. “Where else but Stonehenge, you beautiful brown beast?”
Twelve
At the end of the world
wrote Dion,
the sky stole blood from a rose.
He gazed hypnotically at the ancient writing pad, chewed the end of his century-old pencil for a moment or two, then reached absently for the bottle of vodka. He didn’t bother to pour any. He just raised the neck of the bottle to his lips and drank.
Presently, he hiccupped. Then he began to write once more:
And where darkness grows
in the hollow light of twilight,
a white island lay,
sear-like in darkness.
There was left no sensation,
only the heaving stillness
of night’s last sickness.
Continents flickered;
silent sea-beds spoke
in forked-flame play
and a mime of forgotten birds.
There was another long pause, and further consultation with the vodka. At last he received enlightenment and the pencil whispered quickly across the page.
Wind, the smothered wind heard
too much of a tale for the keeping;
wept and swept from the planet,
as only the dying hurry
to canyon or cave or valley
where no light grows.
Finally, as an afterthought, he added: Dion Quern, October 31, 2071. Then he threw the pencil down and reached for the vodka.
Juno was sitting at the chess board, plugged in to a game with the domestic computer of London Seven. It lived two hundred and fourteen floors below in the basement of the tower and was simultaneously playing two hundred and forty-seven games of plane chess, five games of tri-di chess, eighteen games of Go and nine games of Hokusan. It was also programming the air-conditioning, the high speed lifts, the restaurant service and room service and delivering its daily report to the Greater London Computer on water and power intake.
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