The World of Tiers, Volume 2

by Philip José Farmer

  “… sent to Iron Pants’s office again. But he wasn’t there. Probably balling his secretary in the xerox room.”

  “… so he says, ‘I knew you was long, and I knew you was black, but where did you get them googly eyes?’”

  “Man, I swear you wasn’t my asshole buddy, I don’t take those racist jokes. Lemme tell you about the white woman—a mouse ran up her snatch so she go see this black doctor. And he say …”

  Chattering fast, seeming to talk out of both sides of their mouths at the same time, giggling, butt-slapping, shadow-boxing, the group danced into the front hall. Jim was silent, his only responses a grunt or a forced grin. The black beauty wasn’t working the way it was supposed to. The guy who’d sold it to Sam must’ve cheated him. Probably had just a little Biphetamine in it. The rest of it was ground-up aspirin or something.

  While on his way to his locker, he saw Sheila Helsgets leaning against the wall. She was talking to and smiling at Robert “Ram-’Em” Basing, a very big and very good-looking blond who was Central’s foremost tackle and captain of the football and the rhetoric teams. A six-letter man. Lots of money, drove a Mercedes-Benz, and lived on Gold Hill. An A-minus average. A clear and tanned complexion. Naturally, he was pinned to Sheila, probably in more ways than one, Jim thought. But reliable reports said he was cheating on her. He’d even been seen in a nightclub in the nearby city of Warren with Angie “Blow-Job” Calorick.

  Seeing him pat the egg-shaped cheek of Sheila’s ass made Jim want to puke.

  He slammed his locker door shut with a big bang. Sheila looked away from Basing and at him. She quit smiling. Then she turned her head back to The Winner. She smiled again.

  Sheila baby, you think he’s Jesus H. Christ Himself! I’d like to crucify him, preferably with rusty nails that wouldn’t be hammered through only his hands and feet. Wouldn’t make any difference, though. She’d still look at me like I was a leper. “Unclean! Unclean!”

  Jim sang softly to himself as he trudged down the hall toward Biology 201. It was his own creation, titled “Here’s Looking Up at You.”

  Scruff me, scurve me,

  Deck me out with pimples and fleas.

  Feed me beans, then bitch about

  Gas a-boiling in your face.

  Step on me, and call me flat.

  Squeeze me dry, and call me husk.

  Say I got no class at all!

  Trip-hammer sky’s ramming me down,

  Knocking the dandruff off my head,

  Thumpa-thumpa-thumping me,

  Drilling rock and liquid iron.

  Earthworms, moles, and buried bones,

  God, the Devil, Mrs. Grundy,

  Who’s not looking down at me

  Spinning in the core of Earth?

  Any way from here is up.

  Can’t believe that’s not a lie.

  Every way looks down to me.

  Raunch me, sleaze me,

  Rip my soul with taloned scorn.

  Call me ragged, light a candle.

  Say for me a ragged mass.

  Scruff me, scurve me,

  Deck me out with pimples and fleas.

  He followed Bob and Sam into the big classroom and took a chair in the rear row corner with the other losers. There was the usual loud talk, poking fun at each other, sailing paper airplanes, and throwing spitballs. Then silence and rigidity came down like a guillotine blade as the aged but not venerable Mister Lewis “Holy Roller” Hunks walked in. Grim and crusty and obnoxiously religious described Mister Hunks. Add to that that he was a creationist who was forced by law to teach evolution, though it was called “development,” and you had one frustrated and miserable white-haired old man.

  Hunks checked off the students present and absent as if he were taking the roll call on the Day of Judgment. After pronouncing each name, he looked up from behind very thick glasses. He grimaced when he spoke the name of a student he did not like, and he smiled thinly when he uttered the name of a student who was not going to Flunkers’ Hell. He smiled three times.

  Having designated a favorite student to carry a list of the absent to the principal’s office, Hunks launched into today’s lecture. It continued the previous lecture, which was on the reproductive system of the frog. Jim tried to listen intently and to take notes because the subject was interesting. But his stomach hurt, and he had a headache. To make conditions worse, Hunks managed to combine droning with a squeaky voice. Jim felt like he was on an oxcart with an unlubricated wheel going across a flat and treeless plain. The view was putting him to sleep, but the wheel was keeping him awake.

  Sam Wyzak, who was sitting by Jim, leaned over and whispered, “I’m going to fall asleep. Whyn’t you tell him he’s full of shit? At least we won’t be bored to death.”

  “Why don’t you tell him?” Jim whispered back.

  “Hell, I don’t know nothing about this and couldn’t care less. You’re the expert. You start the fireworks. Old Sam just wanta make things jump. Geeve eet to heem!”

  A silence in the room alerted Jim. He straightened up and looked at Mister Hunks. The old guy was glaring at him, and the students had turned their heads to look at him and Sam. Jim’s heart felt like a squirrel thrown into a wheel-cage. It began running just to stay in one place. The thuds of its feet against metal were also drum signals. “Man, you done it now!”

  “Well, Mister Grimson, Mister Wyzak,” Hunks squeaked. “Would you mind sharing with us your private thoughts about the subject at hand?”

  Jim said, “It was nothing.”

  His own voice was squeaky. He was angry because he had been caught, and he was angry with himself because he was afraid to speak out against Hunks. The old man would make a fool of him for sure.

  “Nothing, Mister Grimson? Nothing? You two were disturbing me and the class because you were just making nonsensical noises? Or perhaps you were imitating the apes you claim you’re descended from? Were you imitating ape calls, you two?”

  Jim’s heart beat even harder, and his stomach swung back and forth, sloshing acid from one end to the other. But, trying to look cool, he stood up. He also was trying to keep his voice steady.

  “Well,” he said. He paused to clear his suddenly phlegmed throat. “No, we weren’t imitating ape language. We …”

  “Ape language?” Hunks said. “Apes don’t have a language!”

  “Well, I mean … ape signals, whatever.”

  Sam whispered, “Umgawa!” He writhed with silent laughter.

  “When your fellow simian recovers from his fit, you may continue,” Hunks said. He squinted through his thick glasses as if they were a telescope and he, the astronomer, had just discovered some worthless asteroid that had no business being where it was.

  Sam quit moving, but he was biting his lips to keep from exploding with laughter.

  “Uh,” Jim said, and he cleared his throat again. “Uh, I had some thoughts on what you just said, uh, that about life developing, no, I mean originating, in the primal soup, and its, uh, statical, I mean, statistical improbability. But I got to think more about that before I say anything.

  “What I was thinking was about something you said last week. Remember? You, we, talked about why, for example, uh, dog embryos and human embryos were so similar. In the early stages of their development, anyway. You explained why human embryos have tails, that is, according to the theory of development. You evidently didn’t believe that theory. Then you tried to explain why, uh, if the Creator made all creatures in just a couple of days … you said, you tried to explain why all male mammals have nipples even though they don’t need them, why, uh, flightless insects have wings.”

  His throat felt dry. Hunks’s grin was mean, mean, mean. The students were watching him. Some had tittered when he mentioned nipples.

  “Also, why do snakes have rudimental … rudimentary … limbs when they never need them any more than males need nipples and insects that can’t fly need wings? They wouldn’t have nipples, limbs, and wings if they were cre
ated in a single day. You said that the wings, nipples, and limbs were created for the sake of symmetry. The Creator was an artist, and It had to make Its creatures symmetrical.”

  Jim referred to the Creator as It because it bugged Hunks. Now his voice was stronger and deeper, and he was speaking without the awkward hesitations. He was on a roll. Devil take the consequences.

  “That ‘symmetry’ explanation, if you’ll pardon me, Mister Hunks, doesn’t ring true. It doesn’t seem to be logical. Anyway, I was thinking about it. Here’s what I’d like you to explain to me, sir. If the Creator was so keen on ‘symmetry,’ why, on the day of Creation, didn’t It make males who also had female genitals and vice versa? Why don’t us men have vaginas, too, and why don’t women have penises?”

  Laughter from the students. Explosion from Mister Hunks.

  “Shut up and sit down!”

  “But, sir!”

  “I said shut up and sit down!”

  Jim should have been happy because he had triumphed. But he was shaking with rage. Hunks was just like his father. When he had lost in a battle of words, he refused to listen any more, and he evoked the gag law that adults used against children. It was unappealable to a higher court because Hunks was also that court.

  Fortunately, the end-of-the-class bell rang just then. Hunks looked as if he was going to have a stroke, but he did not tell Jim to see him in his office that afternoon. Jim felt as if his own blood vessels were going to erupt. However, a few seconds later, as he walked down the hall, he began to feel exultance mixing with the rage. He had really given it to the old fart, the living fossil, the Ku Klux Klanner of Kristians.

  Bob Pellegrino and Sam Wyzak were walking with him through the crowd of students. Bob said, “It don’t matter if you win every argument with that dirty old man. He’s gonna flunk your ass.”

  Jim understood the description of Hunks. To the young, anybody over sixty was dirty. No matter how physically clean the old were in actuality, they were dirty because they were close to death. Old Man Death was the ultimate in filthiness, and anybody in his neighborhood was deeply soiled.

  There was also something that Jim could not know then and would not know until much later. That was that Hunks was much closer to the truth than the evolutionists.

  CHAPTER 8

  Lunch hour came. Jim had no money to buy food, and his anger had subsided enough for him to feel very hungry. Sam Wyzak split his lunch with him, and Bob Pellegrino gave him half a tuna fish sandwich and half a pickle. Jim cooled off even more during Mister Lum’s course in Advanced English and Composition. This was the only subject in which he had a B average. Well, pretty close to a B. A few A’s on the compositions he was going to write, and he would get a B average. But if Jim didn’t ever master the difference between a dangling participle and a dangling particle, he wouldn’t pass the course.

  “Knowing that won’t help you become a better writer, and you’ll never use that item of academic knowledge,” he had said. “However, it’s not so hard to understand, and you’re not a moron, no matter what your other teachers say. I’m not going to pass you until knowledge of the difference is embedded in your bones. Now, I’m not current with the latest discoveries in physics. What the hell is a dangling particle?”

  After biology class, Jim and Sam headed for the rest room. They went past the elderly guard outside the room and entered. The place was busy, noisy, and stinking. There, leaning against the wall by the washbowls were Freehoffer, “The Blob,” and his buddies, Dolkin and Skarga. They were passing around a roach as if they didn’t give a damn if the guard caught them, and they didn’t. Freehoffer was huge, six feet four, close to three hundred pounds, double-chinned, balloon-bellied, pig-nosed, and weasel-eyed. His blue-black facial hair should have been shaved three days ago. A ponytail bound his black greasy hair. Egg yolk stained his red-and-black striped shirt.

  Dolkin and Skarga were both short but very wide, and their yellow-brown hair looked like viper nests.

  Freehoffer and his buddies would have been shaking down his victims, mostly scared freshmen or nerds, if the room hadn’t been so crowded. Jim had been forced to give them money at least a dozen times during his four years at Central. But this year he had never been caught alone in the rest room by them, and the last time he had coughed up his change for them, he had told Freehoffer, “Never again!”

  Having eased themselves at the urinals, Jim and Sam started to leave the room. Freehoffer stuck a foot out and tripped Jim, who fell forward and banged his head against the exit door. The pain was a hammer blow on a detonator. Jim yelped and, cursing, straightened up, turned around, and swung with his right fist. He did not think about what he was doing; he was scarcely aware that he was doing it. His fist sank into the big belly. Freehoffer’s laughter became a deep grunt, and he doubled over.

  A surfer of rage carried on by a red wave, Jim brought his knee up against The Blob’s chin. The Blob fell on the tiled floor, but he got up on all fours. Jim snarled, “Don’t ever touch me again, Pus-Face!”

  Sam said, “Let’s get going, Jim!”

  Freehoffer got to his feet. “You won’t get away with this, shithead!”

  Dolkin and Skarga started to move in. Sam tugged on Jim’s arm. “For Christ’s sake, let’s get outa here!”

  “This ain’t the place!” Freehoffer bellowed. “But if you’re a real man, Grimson, you’ll meet me back of Pravit’s after school’s over! You won’t get no chance to hit me when I ain’t looking! I’ll beat you to a bloody pulp if you got the guts to stand up to me, and I don’t think you got ’em!”

  Jim started to shake, but he said, “Fair fight? Man to man? Fists only?”

  “Yeah! Fair fight! Fists only! I don’t need nothing except my fists to stretch you out, you spindly little fruitcake!”

  “I don’t like to dirty my hands on you, but I’ll do it, you heap of shit,” Jim said. With Sam behind him, he swaggered out of the rest room.

  “Jesus Christ, man!” Sam said. “What got into you?”

  “I just won’t take any more of his shit!”

  “You must be mad at everybody and everything,” Sam said. “You ain’t thinking straight. You know he ain’t going to fight fair, and Dolkin and Skarga’ll be there to jump on you, too.”

  “What’d you do if you were in my place?” Jim snarled.

  “Me? I wouldn’t show, no way. I’m not crazy!”

  “You gonna be there, or you gonna let me take them on by myself?”

  “Oh, I’ll be there,” Sam said. “I won’t let you down, old buddy. But I better tell Bob and the others about this. The more the better. You’ll need backup. I’ll bring a brick, too. But this is crazy!”

  By the time that school was out, the entire student body seemed to know about the scheduled fight. Jim was still mad but not so much that he was not also scared. Sam’s advice to stand The Blob up instead of standing up to him was making more sense. But he was not going to back out now. Everybody would think he had a yellow streak down his back.

  Pravit’s Confectionery and Drugstore was a block away from the high school. Trailed and preceded by students, Jim went down the alley along the side of the store and then went a few paces along the alley behind the old redbrick building. With him were Wyzak, Pellegrino, and Larsen. Jim had hoped that Freehoffer would be a no-show. No. There was The Blob, leaning against the wall near the back door, a toothpick in his blubber lips, seeming most nonchalant. By his side stood Dolkin and Skarga.

  “There’s the rest-room mugger, the bully of the crapper!” Jim called out. His voice started out loud and firm enough, but it cracked near the end of his sentence. He stopped a dozen feet from Freehoffer while the crowd shifted around to form a semicircle. Jim’s three cronies stood just behind him.

  The Blob sneered. He said, “Sticks and stones, big mouth.” He continued to lean against the wall.

  Jim dropped his book bag, screamed, and ran forward. Freehoffer straightened up, his eyes wide. Jim ran and then laun
ched himself. He had seen karate fighting in many movies but had never practiced any. This was a first-time, all-or-nothing effort, do or die. His body came close to leveling out as he slammed the bottom of his shoe into Freehoffer’s nose. He had tried for the chin, but his aim was off. Not so bad, though. The Blob’s head snapped back, and he staggered against the wall. Blood gushed from his nostrils.

  Then Jim fell straight backward, tried to twist, but fell heavily on his side. Pain shot through his shoulder. The wind was knocked out of him. Despite this, he was up on his feet and charged Freehoffer with his head down. He drove it into the big belly. More pain lanced through him, but down his neck this time.

  Freehoffer gasped. Blood ran down his face, and he bent over, clutching his belly. The attack had caught both him and his buddies by surprise. Dolkin and Skarga, however, unfroze and jumped on Jim, who still had not gotten his wind back. Sam Wyzak, though fight-shy, did not hold back once he got into a battle. He brought out from under his jacket a brick. He slammed it against the side of Dolkin’s head. Dolkin went down onto his knees, a hand clamped to the injured part. Skarga brought his fist out of the pocket of his jacket. Brass knuckles gleamed as he pulled his arm back to drive them into Jim’s ribs. Bob Pellegrino stepped in and slammed a fist against the side of Skarga’s jaw. Sam hit Skarga on his shoulder with the brick. Skarga went down, yelling with pain, then tried to crawl away into the crowd. Pellegrino kicked him hard in the butt. Steve Larsen jumped on Skarga and bore him all the way to the ground.

  The Blob had a lot of flesh to absorb the damage done to him. He was far from being out of the fight. Bellowing, he lunged forward, drove into Jim, locked his arms around him, and carried him down to the hard black pavement. Since Jim had his arms free, he was able to strike Freehoffer as they rolled around, though not effectively. When The Blob bit him in his stomach, Jim cried out, but the pain gave him strength to tear himself loose. He was still on his back when Freehoffer rose to his feet and drew a foot back to kick Jim.