Puss in D.C. and Other Stories

by Pamela Sargent

  And then he would lose the women, one by one. First the one big dame he cares about who can take care of herself walks out on him, and that has to be a blow to his ego, and then he can’t even protect the ones who are completely dependent on him. I don’t even want to think of what my analyst might have said about that. And after that, he’s got my husband and the Impresario coming after him, and he gets dragged off to New York, and—well, I don’t have to go into all of that.

  A male archetype, my analyst called him—my analyst was actually more of a Jungian than a Freudian, if you must know. He claimed that’s why there were so many stories about the big ape in the papers and the tale was so compelling and scary and the movie was so popular for so long and the big gorilla became such a famous public figure, even if you’d think having a giant ape running around in New York and then getting shot off the Empire State Building would be enough by itself to get a lot of coverage. But I don’t know about this male archetype stuff, or any of that Freudian or Jungian bushwah or whatever you want to call it.

  I think something else entirely was going on.

  I don’t know when it might have happened—maybe it wasn’t until they caught him and tied him up, maybe it wasn’t until he was getting shot at by all those planes—but I think at some point, the big ape realized that it was men who were responsible for all his troubles. Not his missus, who maybe just needed some time to find herself, or the African babes, or me with my screaming probably giving him a splitting headache, but guys in general. I’ll bet the men in that African village weren’t paying attention to anything the women there said, or they could have saved themselves a whole lot of trouble, I mean you can’t tell me that it was the women who decided to send some poor girl out to a big gorilla. The Impresario sure as hell didn’t listen to me when I told him that maybe it wasn’t such a hot idea to walk out on that stage with my man and stand there in front of the big guy while people shot photos. And I think in the end, when the ape and I were trapped on the Empire State Building, when he decided to put me down instead of hanging on to me, he knew what he was doing.

  He wasn’t thinking about me or my welfare, even if putting me down did save my life. He was thinking of his mate and his son. That’s my guess, anyway. He was thinking that maybe she wouldn’t have left him if he’d treated her differently, if he’d done more of his share around the cave. You probably don’t know this, but by the time we made it up to the top of the Empire State Building, my throat was really sore from all that screaming, and there were tears all over my face, and since I didn’t have a handkerchief or anything, I was snorting like hell just to keep my nose from running. And I remember how he looked at me when I was snorting. He had this strange, sad look in his eyes, as if I reminded him of something, as if he’d heard that sound before and it reminded him of something he’d lost. I think his mate must have snorted like that. I was snorting and I think I might have picked up a few fleas, because I was scratching, too, and my guess is he was remembering how his mate would sit around snorting and scratching in their cave, and he was thinking of her and their son and maybe about all those other women he’d lost after that. Seems to me that would be enough for him to give up on everything then and there. I really doubt it was that beauty-and-savage-beast nonsense the Impresario was so fond of quoting.

  That’s what everybody seems to have missed all these years. The giant ape wasn’t some Freudian symbolism come to life, or an archetype, or the noble savage brought low. He was a fella who lost a dame who was his equal and lost some others who could never be his equals and then realized what it was he really wanted after all and by then it was too late, because a bunch of guys had taken away any chance of him getting it back.

  I’ll admit it. I’ll bet he was wishing he’d done better by Mrs. Big Ape. He was probably thinking that things would have been a lot better for him if the women in the village could have gotten a word in edgewise and the Impresario had listened to me. You may think this is nuts, but in the end, I’m guessing that the big guy had finally become what you could call a kind of feminist.

  Afterword to “After I Stopped Screaming”

  If anyone is wondering why this story, so obviously about King Kong, never mentions the great ape’s name, or that of anyone else, it’s very simple: Peter Jackson had recently released his remake of the classic movie and trademarked not only the title, but also all of the names of the central characters. Sheila Williams at Asimov’s SF Magazine suggested that we avoid any possible legal problems by ditching the names, which is how Carl Denham became the Impresario and Jack Driscoll is cited only as the narrator’s husband. The narrator is of course Ann Darrow, played originally by Fay Wray in 1933, Jessica Lange in the 1976 remake, and Naomi Watts in Peter Jackson’s 2005 version.

  I was terrified of the whole notion of King Kong long before seeing the 1933 movie. A friend of mine in summer camp, a redheaded girl named Cordelia, regaled me and my fellow ten-year-old campers with a vivid blow-by-blow description of the entire picture. Cordelia was not only a good storyteller, she was also somebody who didn’t shy away from the goriest and most disturbing details. I told myself then that this was one movie I was never going to see.

  To date, I’ve seen both of the remakes in theaters and on DVDs, and the original movie a number of times. Turns out that Cordelia also had a gift for exaggeration.

  THE ROTATOR

  “To these I set no bounds in space or time;

  They shall rule forever.”

  —Vergil, The Aeneid

  All of this happened in worlds nearby.

  * * * *

  The tanks rolled down Pennsylvania Avenue and stopped at the edge of Lafayette Park, near the White House. To the east, more tanks were rolling along New York Avenue, while other tanks had also been spotted on 14th and 17th Streets and on Constitution Avenue.

  They were closing the circle, surrounding the White House. No one knew where they had come from, but there they were, a procession of Abrams M1A1 tanks, all with the markings of the United States Army. No one had stopped them, and whatever the tourists and bureaucrats and police standing around in Washington’s streets might think, none of the guards stationed on the White House grounds seemed to be at all concerned when the tanks rolled to a stop and two uniformed men in desert camouflage with stars on their shoulders climbed out, followed by a balding white-haired out-of-shape bespectacled man who looked a lot like the Vice President.

  “What the hell?” somebody milling around in the crowd of sightseers near the Ellipse muttered. “Something’s up,” an old wino said to his homeless companion in Lafayette Park as they shared a bottle of Night Train. Then again, the unusual and even the unthinkable had become so commonplace by now that even the networks didn’t seem to be covering the movement of tanks that had seemed to appear out of nowhere. There was no sign of satellite trucks or of any TV personalities doing stand-ups in front of cameramen.

  “Who are they?” a child asked his mother as the two uniformed men and the heavyset man who looked a whole lot like the Vice President started to walk in the direction of the White House. She had no answer for him, and sometimes, especially these days, it was better just to mind your own business.

  * * * *

  The Vice President said, “No way around it, Mr. President.” Whenever he was alone with the guy, he normally dispensed with the usual courtesies, “Mr. President” and “Sir” and the like, but this particular occasion seemed to require them. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “We do?” the President asked, glancing around the Oval Office. He had his usual blank what-me-worry expression on his face, the one that people who didn’t know him that well could easily mistake for a sign of strength and self-confidence rooted in his religious faith and a deep inner calm.

  “Yes, we do,” the Vice President replied. “We’ve counted the votes seven ways from Sunday, and we’ve lost them, there isn’t a chance now. The
House is going to impeach both of us, and the Senate’s going to convict, thanks to all those turncoat bastards who finally deserted us. It isn’t even going to be close.”

  “Well, fuck them.” The President still wore his look of serenity. “History is what’s with us, and we’ve got the Almighty lookin’ out for us, we sure as shit don’t need the House and the Senate. Someday down the road, people’ll know we were doing the right thing. When the history’s all written, they’ll—”

  “That’s all very well,” the Vice President interrupted, “but in the meantime, we’re dealing with this goddamn impeachment coming up out of nowhere. They’re going to throw both of us out on our asses and put that bitch from San Francisco behind your desk until the next election.” And that wasn’t the worst they might be facing. He’d overheard a few low-level staffers muttering something about the World Court and war crimes tribunals and the Hague the other day when they thought he had left the room. “But I’m not waiting around to witness that travesty. We’re all set, thanks to a secret project I’ve been keeping an eye on and shepherding along, just in case it might turn out to be useful. I’m getting the hell out of here, and you’re coming with me.”

  The President’s eyes became slits; he looked confused. “That’s your idea, cuttin’ and runnin’?” he asked, sounding a bit petulant. “And just where are we gonna go?”

  “Well, in a way, we aren’t going anywhere. In a sense, we’ll be staying right here.” The Vice President would have to explain the complexities of his escape plan very carefully. “Here’s the deal,” he continued in as gentle a tone as he could muster. “What if you could go someplace where everything’s exactly the same as it is here, but where you aren’t going to be impeached, where you’ll still be the President right up until the end of your term?” And maybe even beyond that term, if certain irons the Vice President had in the fire got properly smelted. “I’m talking about a place where we can both avoid impeachment altogether.”

  “Sounds purty good.” The President frowned, making his eyes look even smaller. “But it still smells like cuttin’ and runnin’ to me. Anyway, how the hell do we do all that? Round up the Congress and ship’em out for some enhanced interrogations?”

  “We’ve got an even better way out than that, thanks to the research teams at DARPA.” The Vice President paused. “They got up something for us called the Rotator.”

  “The Rotator?”

  “The Alternative Stochastic Variability Actuator and Rotating Transporter,” the Vice President explained, “but it’s simpler to just call it the Rotator. And that’s basically what it does, rotates you out of one continuum—er, place, and puts you where impeachment isn’t going to happen, executive privilege is upheld, and we can do our goddamn jobs.”

  “You make it sound mighty simple.”

  “It is mighty simple. What happens in the end is mighty simple, anyway.” There was no point in trying to explain the complexities of the technology and the assumptions underlying it to the President, especially since he didn’t really understand them too well himself. “It’s like this. We’ll head out of here for the secure and undisclosed and meet there with everybody who’s coming along with us. Then we get rotated, and before you know it, you’re back in this office going about your business, but without impeachment pending and your poll ratings right back up where they should be. Hell, maybe we can even get them back up in the forties.”

  “So I’ll be back here,” the President said, “but in a way I actually won’t be back right here. I’ll kinda be like somewheres else that’s sorta the same.”

  “That’s it.” Somehow the kid had grasped the big picture.

  “And everything’ll be the same as here?”

  “Everything except the stuff we don’t want to have happen to us.”

  “What about my wife?” the President asked. “I wouldn’t want to get rotated unless she’s gonna get rotated right along with me, and she won’t be back here at the White House until the weekend.”

  The Vice President scowled. His own wife was coming along with him; she had made damned certain of that once he had revealed his plans to her, but he hadn’t counted on bringing the First Lady along on this journey through the variant probabilities. For one thing, he didn’t want anybody coming with them who wasn’t absolutely trustworthy and close-lipped. This had kept the number of people to be rotated at a minimum; there was no point in getting where he wanted to go only to end up with some traitor whistle-blowing before some Congressional committee or other there. For another, he had doubts about the First Lady’s ability to carry out what would need to be done after they were rotated and confronting their variant counterparts. His own wife was coldblooded enough to do what she had to do, but the First Lady probably wouldn’t be up to it even with a triple dose of Xanax.

  “She won’t have to come along with you,” the Vice President said very slowly, “because she’ll already be there, see? I told you, everything’s going to be the same except that everything’ll be going our way and we won’t have to put up with all this oversight and impeachment crap. Believe me, except for that, you won’t notice any difference.” The President probably wouldn’t have noticed any difference anyway, given the useful bubble of obliviousness that usually surrounded him, but he had to know enough to avoid confusion.

  The President’s eyes got really tiny and squinty then, as they always did whenever he was trying to summon up anything resembling a thought. “And my ranch? That’ll still be the same, too?”

  “You’ll have plenty of brush left to clear there, believe me.” The Vice President cleared his throat. “Um, we’d better get going.”

  “Right now?”

  “Yes, now.” Better to get out of here fast, before any of those nerds working on the Alternative Stochastic Variability Actuator and Rotating Transporter got tempted to spill the beans to the media. He had never been able to tell the ethical ones from the opportunists.

  * * * *

  They were all there in the underground chamber of his secure and undisclosed location, his wife, his medical team, and those completely trustworthy souls who were to be rotated along with him and the President. The guys he needed from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency were there, too, along with a couple of officers who understood the research and how to operate the Rotator and other soldiers to man the tanks. He had, however, made sure that the scientists responsible for the actual research and for calculating his course were absent. He wasn’t sure they had wholeheartedly approved of his plans, and they had always seemed somewhat too anxious to outline the possible drawbacks of the Rotator, what with their talk about opening doors and altering events in other continua that might be mirrored throughout a long run of variants and that maybe there were certain doors that should stay closed. All he had needed to know was that he could get to where he wanted to go, and they had assured him of that.

  It was too bad, he thought, that his old buddy, the former Secretary of Defense, couldn’t be here with him to take advantage of DARPA’s Rotator. But there’d be somebody just like him in the next continuum, and maybe, if everything worked out, they’d be able to reappoint him to his old Cabinet position. After all, where they were going, there was even a chance that they were actually winning the war on terror and securing the oilfields, if what the scientists had told him about all the possible variants was correct.

  “All we have to do, Mr. President,” one of the Army officers was saying, “is go outside and get in the tanks, and before you know it, we’ll be on our way to the White House.”

  “Tanks?” the President asked.

  “To protect us while we’re being rotated. You’ll notice what you might call a kind of rippling in the atmosphere, but as long as you’re inside the tank, you’ll be protected from any ill effects when we’re rolling through the gateway.”

  “The get-away?”

  “The gateway.” The
officer had a patient look on his face. “The gateway through to another continuum that the Rotator’s going to open up for us.”

  The President screwed up his eyes. “This isn’t gonna be one of those deals where I have to put on a uniform, is it?” he asked.

  “Not at all,” the officer replied, still wearing his patient look.

  “’Cause prancin’ around in that flight suit on that carrier deck didn’t work out so well in the end.” The President let out one of those laughs of his that sounded like a mixture of a snort and a whinny.

  “You won’t need a uniform for this trip,” the Vice President said, stepping forward, “but you are going to need this.” He handed the President a Glock automatic. “Can’t miss with this baby. Even I won’t be able to miss my target.” He allowed himself an avuncular chuckle.

  The President hefted the automatic in one hand, then slapped it into the other in a way that made the Vice President grateful that the weapon wasn’t yet loaded. “And exactly what am I gonna be aimin’ at?”

  “Well, it’s like this.” The Vice President paused, knowing that he would have to phrase things very carefully. “After we’re rotated, we’re going to run into—well, I guess you could call them our doubles.”

  “Our doubles?”

  “Our twins.” That didn’t seem like the right word, either. “You could even call them our clones.”

  “Clones?” The President grimaced in disapproval. “Can’t say I approve of that. Thought I signed a bill to make that illegal.”

  “I wasn’t talking about that kind of clone,” the Vice President said. “It’s like this. You see, when we get to where we’re going, there’s going to be another President there—that’s you—and another Vice President—that’s me—sitting in the Oval Office. Our Oval Office. I mean, your Oval Office,” he added, correcting himself. “And we have to take their places. I mean we have to take our places in their place.”