by John Sladek
Rocky looked closer at the battle of Dresden landscape. ‘Toy sojurs? That’s a big set-up you’ve got there, General.’
‘Indeed, forty acres and still growing. I was lucky enough to get these lead lancers from an old warehouse in Minneapolis—had to make a special trip to make the deal—they cost a fortune, but they’re worth it. Look at that detail!’
‘Nice hobby.’
Weimarauner frowned. ‘It’s far more than that, Rockstone. Do you think I’d waste taxpayers’ money on a hobby?
‘No, you see, my concentration on a single battle seems to stir the deepest reaches of my intellect. While I work out every contingency of the battle of Dresden, on a conscious level, my unconscious is free to experiment with daring new ideas.’ He surveyed the green velvet landscape, the rows of tiny white tents. ‘It was while I was on that trip to Minneapolis that the whole conception of the Pink Barrettes came to me entire. To name but one example. And while I was debating a detail of this battle—supposing Blucher had engaged Napoleon before he got to Dresden—I suddenly came upon this new logistics system, Modulog.’
‘All from a toy! Wow!’
Weimarauner looked at him coldly. ‘Why don’t you toddle off with Captain Blunden here, and let him tell you all about Modulog? He can explain it as well as I.’
This was perfectly true, for Captain Blunden, who now led Rocky inside to the study and poured out two sherries, was the originator of Modulog, just as Hackendorf had originated the Pink Barrettes. Weimarauner’s genius lay in surrounding himself with capable official and semi-official aides. They ghosted his books, drafted his recommendations to the Secretary of Defense, and now and then managed to draw his attention from Dresden long enough to hand him a new idea to ‘come upon’.
Weimarauner meanwhile withdrew further and further from real military activities. He no longer kept an office at the Pentagon, but communicated from his country home by special telephone. He no longer concerned himself with the present war—at times he could not remember the names of the enemy nation—but slipped deeper and deeper into the complexities of Napoleon vs. Blucher. What if Blucher attacked first? What if Napoleon had not left off his attack on Dresden in the middle? How much of the river could he have held, and for how long?
‘Modulog,’ said the captain, ‘is all new. It’s based on three new principles, sir.’
‘Just between you and me, let’s drop the sir, Blunden. I hope we’re all friends here.’ He winked a false eyelash and toasted the captain with his sherry.
‘Yes—General. The principles are: First, that there is no reason to handle and transport troops and materiel in different ways. Second, thanks to container freight systems already in operation, troops may be boxed and shipped in a modular way just as any other materiel. In other words, a box of men is no harder to handle and dispatch than a box of supplies. Containers may be fitted out with life-support facilities, namely airholes, food and chemical toilets,.
‘Third, the fastest way of processing materiel is by using computer routing. The most expedient route can be found by feeding in all the available transport data, all the data on requirements and priorities, and then letting Nature—the computer, rather—take its course.
‘Imagine that we have three cities. City A makes guns, City B is a troop assembly point, City C is a target, or delivery area. C needs a certain number of armed personnel at time t1. At time to we have at A all our weapons and half enough transport to deliver them, and at B all our troops and one-quarter of the necessary transport. The transport at B is twice as fast as that at A, and the relative distances of the three cities are…’
Rocky went into a daydream while the earnest young captain rattled on. How could life be so complicated now? When, only yesterday, life was an island idyll. he thought.
‘The important thing is, all the services will be switched over,’ Blunden was saying. ‘Even where container freight isn’t feasible, orders will be processed by our central computer, using the latest in digital equipment, die Müller-Fokker tapes.’
Rocky struck him lightly on the arm with his wand. ‘Bad words,’ he said. ‘Bad words, you naughty captain.’
At Billy Koch Crusade Headquarters, another mail bag was dumped on the sorting table, and sorters went to work with their thumb knives. Marilyn Temblor picked up her purse and went to the ladies’ restroom. No one saw her take the phial from her purse but God.
‘I don’t care,’ she said defiantly to the roller towel. ‘ I’ll—I’ll quit this job. I’ll become a stewardess!’
She opened the phial and dabbed some on her wrist. Almost at once the overpowering sexy odor filled the room. She panicked, scrubbed furiously until her wrist was almost bleeding—but the odor clung, accusing her.
Back in the mail room she picked up the first letter.
Dear Billy,
My problem is, I’m in love with a man who hardly notices me. I’m his secretary, and I know this sounds like just a girlish infatuation, but I am not a girl at all. I am over eighty years of age and so is he. We have been good friends for many years, and though my affection for him has ripened into love, he still thinks of me as just a loyal companion.
We are both single, and I would like to marry him, but I hate to wait for him to ‘pop’ the question. What can I do to make him notice me as a woman, without seeming to throw myself at him? Should I confess I love him? Ask him to marry me? Or just wait and see?
Please answer, Billy. My time is running out.
Yours in confusion, Amy Q. Birdsall
That would be 674; Marilyn knew without even consulting the chart. 674 was ‘Girl wants to propose to man.’
The next letter was a little tougher. She stopped chewing gum and read the letter three times before she could focus her mind on it.
Dear Billy Koch:
1. Cadet Sturgemoore Shairp wants to kill himself.
2. He is at military school.
3. The bible says it is wrong to take life, but he is being trained to take life.
4. Sometimes it is all right to kill someone.
5. Sometimes it must be all right to kill yourself.
6. Colonel Fouts said that anyone who plays with himself will be expelled.
7. Then Cadet Sturgemoore Shairp played with himself a lot, because he wanted to go home.
8. It didn’t work.
9. Mother does not answer Cadet Sturgemoore Shairp’s letters. She is on television.
10. Father is dead.
11. Mother is just like she was dead.
12. Cadet Sturgemoore Shairp should die, too.
13. Cadet Sturgemoore Shairp went to ask Colonel Fouts if it would be all right to kill himself.
14. Colonel Fouts took a long time answering the door.
15. What do you want, he said.
16. There was chocolate all over his face.
17. Cadet Sturgemoore Shairp did not know what to say, so he looked down.
18. There was a pink strap garter strap thing hanging out of the Colonel’s fly.
19. Cadet Sturgemoore Shairp said did the Colonel believe in God, that God wanted everyone to live.
20. A hundred and twenty punishment tours, the Colonel said, impertinence to an officer.
21. Billy, sir, Cadet Sturgemoore Shairp requests permission to kill himself.
Please advice,
Cadet Sturgemoore Shairp
It must be ‘wants to commit suicide’, number 647. And the other one was 674. Bothered only slightly by that ‘pink strap garter strap thing’, Marilyn rolled a sheet of paper in the first automated typewriter and headed it ‘Dear Miss Birdsall’. Then someone seized her hand and held it to his nose.
Jim, the handsome bible student. ‘My, you smell nice,’ he said. ‘Perfume?’
She nodded and punched the machine with her free hand. 647.
‘What’s it called?’
She freed her hand. Blushing, she set the second machine for 674. ‘I—don’t remember.’
‘Sure y
ou do,’ he said. The typewriters started chattering. She would lose her job. Shut out of the Crusade, Billy’s Crusade, forever. Would it be the same, being a stewardess? An ‘air angel’?
‘Sure you remember,’ he insisted, moving closer. ‘What was that name?’
She could hardly say it.
‘My Sin.’
‘Doctor, do you have to come and see me in that—that drag?’
Glen seized a coke and wrang its neck. Feinwelt tossed a golden sausage curl and settled himself on the couch.
‘Listen, Glen. We’ve been over this a few times, haven’t we? I have other patients, other things to attend to. I know you’d like me to be Big Daddy Doctor for Glensie alone, but let’s try to look at this unselfishly. You know I haven’t time to change clothes six times a day or whatever. If you can’t make the necessary adjustment, well…’
‘But everybody’s going to think I’m—and it isn’t just that. I don’t think you wear that drum majorette outfit just to hold hands with a few sick faggots. Oh no. I’ve been reading a few things in connection with an article I’m doing for Stagman. I’ve learned a few things.’
‘Really?’ The drum majorette lit a fragrant cigarette and leaned back. ‘Like what?’
Glen was silent for a moment, gazing up at Bertha Venus. ‘It’s like…Cybele. The bitch goddess, demanding that her priests castrate themselves and put on women’s clothes.’ He put on a World War Two aviator’s helmet.
‘Not sure I follow you.’
‘And then in the Middle Ages! They thought witches were able to make men impotent. By the same token, they built big phallic cathedrals to the Virgin. The Virgin Mother!’ He tried on a Sioux war bonnet. ‘Yes, and their priests had to wear skirts, too. St Francis tried to go against that tradition…but a hundred years later or so there were the Franciscans putting on skirts.’
‘Don’t you think you’re harping on this unnecessarily?’ Feinwelt’s case-hardened voice had taken an edge. ‘Just what is this “article” about, anyway?’
‘And it all comes down to Bette Cooke. The latest incarnation of the Mighty Bitch Mother Angry Virgin Goddess, see? Her oracles are recipe books. Her priests are advertising men. Her charm is the silverware coupon on the flour bag, and her Mysteries are the secrets of cooking—no, not just cooking, but cooking that will “keep the menfolk coming back for seconds”. Menfolk! Not men. Men reduced, crushed down to sexless elves!’
‘If you really feel that way…’
‘What time is it?’
Feinwelt looked at his watch. ‘Oh now, we have plenty of time left in our session, if that’s what’s worrying you.’
‘She’s on. The commercial’s on!’
Glen rushed to the electronic wall and switched on the glowing features of Bette Cooke. He did not notice when Feinwelt left.
Billikins had finished the wall. He wanted to call Nurse to see it, but she’d only laugh nasty. He had to admire and love it all by himself.
The wall was a crayon and pencil drawing covering one long wall of his room, twelve feet long and eight high. It was a combination (though not to Billikins) of public-toilet art, church-window portraiture, bible map and political cartoon. There were a hundred and forty-four thousand faces in it, each wearing a label on its forehead or hat, each expressing glee or torment.
At the top, a seven-foot phallus aimed to enter a standard men’s-room snatch (or winged buttonhole). The prick had been wrapped end to end in a bandage reading: ‘There shall be a cause of GOD, which is the twelve and the seven, freely. It without is the twelve, and the seven within are five loaves and two fishes, and this East: shall enfold it.’
Below this was a layer of cloud, the ‘Cloud of Could’, studded with hands, feet and eyes. The cloud terminated in two fists, one at each end. The right hand held a burning diploma, the left a sign: ‘The Flying Roll is the last great whirlwind and the great church IN the west! WHO used to send forth all to gather together all manner cloud and fire, loud and ire, peacefully enfolding the First Life. I am accounted for and counted, I am continued and the fire in the DOUBLE lamp enfolds it!!!’
Across the cloud large yellow-rayed letters spelled:
IS GOD TO RAPTURE A POWERLESS CHURCH!
On the land below were the twelve tribes, identified as being divided into six nations, four races, three classes and two sides. On the left were the SLACKERS, LACKERS, LACQUEYS, BACKERS,
WRACKERS and PACKERS; on the right were DIGGERS, WIGGERS CHIGGERS, NIGGERS, TRIGGERS and JURY-RIGGERS. Each tribe of twelve thousand was further subdivided all 48 ways imaginable. The remaining space was filled with flames, banners, signs, swords, sheep, the winding road of Venue leading up to Mount Golden Mystery, clocks and $-bags, eyes baleful and eyes protective, gallows, elks, the Stairs of Relief and the Five Truths in their white robes; whips, a cage of thorns, snakes whose spots were roses, the blazing headlights and grill of a Saette, pennants, the Keys of Penance, special notices too small to read, and scallop shells. The diggers were digging for sparkling letters buried in the earth:
WHOSOEVER SLAYS THE FIRST LIFE SHALL LIVE FOREVER, BUT THE COLOR OF AMBER SLAYS AND IT IS SLAIN. DARKNESS IS THE FREELY PORTION OF HIM WHO FINDS OUT THE ACCOUNT!
He signed it in the corner: ‘Words of Jehovah.’ Then he closed the bedroom door and began nailing it shut. Nurse called out from the kitchen, ordering him to cut out that racket.
Nurse Harriet Saga scootched down in the chair, easing wind and her varicose legs. She was just too pooped to yell at him again. Instead she selected another piece of fudge and turned to the horoscope page:
You will be relieved of a burden which has bothered you for some weeks. Domestic difficulties may come to a head this morning, spoiling your day, unless
The first hammer blow struck her in the neck. The other fifty-eight landed among the tight red curls of her hair, deep at the darker roots.
There was no place to hide, and he was sore afraid: which amongst them might not recognize him? But the POWER came upon him, guiding his eyes to the newspaper on the kitchen table. He moved a tooth-marked piece of fudge, leaving a bloody smear, and read the headline: ‘BIBLELAND TO OPEN TODAY. Bob’s Water, Calif. (UP)…’
He found Nurse’s purse in the foyer. In it there lay a big wad of earthly money and a pair of dark glasses. His eyes caught his eyes in the foyer mirror as he put them on. Those precious stones in the rims of the glasses—none too good for Him who Billikins was about to meet.
He told the cab driver he wanted Bibleland.
‘Is it far?’
‘Furder than I go, buddy. Ya hafta fly. Whatcha want, the airport?’
‘What do I…?’
‘Ya wanta fly or what?’
‘Yes. Yes…I want to fly.’
The cab picked up speed. It passed a giant picture of the Woman in Blue and White, ‘LET ME SHOW YOU,’ she said, ‘HOW TO CATCH YOUR GINGERBREAD BOY.’
Fourteen
Dear Miss Birdsall:
If you knew a man who rented a fine home, fully equipped with air conditioning, wall-to-wall carpets and pastel fixtures, and one day this man just up and BURNED DOWN this lovely home, you’d certainly wonder why! Did he hate the landlord? Did he have some other place to live? If not, why on God’s earth did he do it?
If this man said he was just ‘tired of living here’ you’d call him a fool.
Yet you have been thinking of taking the beautiful home God rents to you FREE OF CHARGE—your body—and WRECKING IT! Isn’t that a thousand times more foolish?
What you’re thinking of doing is a sin. It is wanton, pointless destruction. Not only is it SIN, but it is THE ONE SIN THAT CAN NEVER BE FORGIVEN OR UNDONE! It means the ETERNAL LOSS of your earthly home—the beautiful home God gave you.
You are troubled. The stresses of modern life, the daily ‘rat race’ and perhaps personal sorrows weigh heavily upon you. But it isn’t SIN you want. What you really want is a change. A reason to GO ON LIVING.
WHY NOT COME OVER TO CHRI
ST?
‘I am the Resurrection and the Life.’
‘The wages of sin is death.’
Switch to Jesus Christ and see! Read your Bible. Pray, asking Jesus to forgive you for even thinking of this Sin. He will make your burden lighter, give you new power to zip through the old daily routine without a thought of despair. Millions have testified to this—it is a fact!
So don’t burn the house down—light up your heart and invite Christ in.
God bless you,
Billy Koch
She crumpled the letter, then began ironing it flat again with her ringless left hand. What could Billy mean by that? ‘Sin that can never…’
She read it again. There was no mistake. It wasn’t a form letter, Could there be two Miss Birdsalls? No matter how she looked at it, Billy just wasn’t making sense.
Amy removed her glasses and began polishing them, a nerve-calming ritual of many years’ standing. As she held them up to the light, she noticed the rims. Dark plastic across the top, steel below—they looked so medical Like a face brace. How many times had she meant to change them for something sexier, say rhinestones or glowing plastic? Yet always she wound up with the same old thing: the dull, the cheap, the reasonable.
Weren’t all these years of chastity enough? It didn’t seem fair. What she had preserved so carefully all these years had diminished in value to everyone, even to her, until now it was like a ticket to a dance of long ago…yet Billy now asked her to go on with it, to save that faded ticket.. . Why? Why did he hate her so?
A fragment of memory from the always dim near past attached itself to the question. There was a street corner she’d just come out of. There was a service at the ballpark. The car. She’d come out of the ballpark looking for a taxi, walking, and the car.
