by John Sladek
The car turned the corner. She’d jumped back to avoid being killed. It was…Billy’s car? Yes, she could see him at the wheel, those cold blue eyes…and he cursed her, his curse mingling with the blare of that musical horn:
That satanic hate. Why?
Grover came out of the inner office and found Amy moving her nose down a column of names in the telephone book.
‘Here it is,’ she said. ‘Here it is: 46 Phenolphthalein Drive.’
‘Where are your glasses, Amy?’
Her naked face blushed. ‘I—broke them.’
‘Golly, you’d better get some new ones. Your eyes look terrible. All red and…’
‘I have that address you wanted/ She waved the phone book. ‘The Societé Anonyme des Transtévérins’.
‘Uh huh. Good. I’m perty sure that outfit is the key to all the others. It may be a chance to use our heads and really stamp out Cumminism all over the country! Tell you what. We’ll drive up there and keep an eye on them for awhile.’
It was a short way to Phenolphthalein Drive. As they drove, Grover explained their objective.
‘I probably shouldn’t bring you along on this dangerous a mission, Amy. These are the Big Boys, and they play rough. By the way, in case anything should happen to me, I’ll give you the commonation to the safe. You know What We Have in the Safe.’
‘You mean the b…’
‘Right. You set it just like an alarm clock, and put it on all our records. It wouldn’t be much use my dying, if it meant they learned all about us.’
The Societé Anonyme des Transtévérins was, in fact, a Communist front organization masquerading as a Franco-Italian banking firm. But its operations were in another part of town. It had no connection whatever with the quiet brick building Amy and Grover now parked across from and began observing through binoculars (from under the shade of a willow): the headquarters of Transvestites Anonymous.
‘I can’t see anything,’ said Amy, ‘through my half the binoculars. Are they adjusted?’
‘Yes, they’re fine. It’s you and no glasses, Amy. You oughta get them fixed. How’d they come to get broke, anyways?’
I’m cold. Can’t we move the car into the sun?’
‘And have them spot us? Amy, this is a dangerous outfit! Their last name, “Transtėvėrins”, is an anagram of “invents arrest”! And that isn’t all!’
He explained that the director’s name was Julien Pė, whose last name, as Grover understood, meant pi, the probable secret symbol for the group. ‘pi,’ he said, ‘is a circular relation, see? Wheels within wheels.’
Amy was about to congratulate him on his discovery when Grover gasped. A vehicle was entering the deserted road.
‘Police car,’ he said. ‘Or their “police”. We’d better try and look natural.’
He took off his glasses. The myopia of their eye-beams blended. Then, for the first time in their many years of friendship, Grover drew her over and kissed her.
Dear Cadet Sturgemoore Shairp:
Many a young person has had the same feelings you have now, and there is nothing sinful about them. If they are used and directed in the ways of the Lord, such feelings lead to the continuation of the human race and the multiplication of God’s flock on earth.
The step you are about to take is a grave one, and you must make sure you are right. I cannot advise you on this, but God can and will. Pray. Read your Bible. Let the Lord guide you.
‘It is good for man to be alone,’ the Bible says. And in the words of the English poet John Donne, a preacher like me, ‘No man is an island’. If you decide yourself to be NO LONGER ALONE, be resolute. Stick by your decision, No Matter What.As Davy Crockett put it, ‘Be sure you’re right, then go ahead.’
God bless you,
Billy Koch
Spot read the first paragraph three times. ‘The continuation of the human race’? He guessed that might mean killing yourself to make room for more—lightening the airplane of humanity by baling out.
The idea of suicide came often to him now, in the St Praetexta school library, under the great picture of Galahad. In the evening. ‘My strength is as the strength of ten…’ It scared him, what Billy said in the last part: Stick by it, no matter what. That meant not making his decision final until he was sure…
If only there were someone to talk him out of it. ‘A preacher like me…’
Spot made his way to the front of the room and asked the librarian for anything by John Donny.
‘Who?’ The old ex-marine looked suspicious.
‘John Donny, the English poet…’
‘Don Juan, you mean. Oh no you don’t. Heard about that one, did ya? Dirty sex pome by “Lord” Byron. I guess you figured I wouldn’t know the difference, eh? You won’t get any meat-beating poetry past me, by Heaven I’
Spot showed him the letter and the name in it.
‘Donne? Preacher? No, I don’t think we have any—wait, I’ll have a look.’
While Spot waited, a classmate came out of the reserve room. ‘Man, have I been reading the real shit!’ he said. ‘They got it on reserve here, this book all about the nigger conspiracy. One Marts Fight. The guy that wrote it is in prison, but my military political science prof says not for long.’
‘Verne, do you…’
‘Do I what?’
‘Do you think suicide is wrong?’
‘Wes Davis says—he wrote this book—he says it all depends. For the inferior races, he says it’s the only honorable solution. Or for any weak person. But we’re strong !’
‘Yeah, I…thanks.’
The librarian came from the stacks with a thin volume.
‘I guess this is all right,’ he said, slapping it on the counter. ‘Looks to be about God and Samson and them. Take keer of it now—I don’t want to see any pecker tracks when you bring it back.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ Spot took the book to his room. It was Biathanatos, John Donne’s long justification for suicide.
The Billy android stood tall, even with his head bowed, a captain, at least, in the army of the Lord. The hymn finished and he raised his hands to heaven, or towards the roof of the auditorium.
‘Lord, I’m asking you to do something for some of our sick brethren. I’m asking you to heal them in mind and body and spirit, like you healed the sick in Jerusalem.’
The blind and halt had paid their fees and shuffled into line. Now the line moved forward under the direction of Crusade cops, as Billy spoke in soothing cadences, repeating again and again his instructions to the evidently slow-witted Deity:
‘Let the pahwr flow down, O Lord! Jesus, let the pahwr flow down! Through my right hand, Lord! Lord Jesus, let the pahwr down through my right…’
When he’d worked on the right hand enough he got the left going. The first candidates stumbled up the steps and stood blinking uncertainly in the glaring light.
Jerry sat with his real foot up on the console. He peeled a peanut, tossed it in the air and snapped it up. He put the shell back in the bag, then rummaged under shells for a whole one.
The door opened and a Crusade cop named Morgan put his head in. ‘Jerry, I got a guy out here says he wants to talk to somebody.’
‘What about?’
‘He says he’s pretty rich, and he looks like it. An old guy.’
‘Special contributions upstairs.’
‘No, he says he wants to buy something. Some kind of tape, he says.’
Jerry missed a peanut. ‘What did he say, exactly?’
‘He said—you ain’t religious, are ya?’
Jerry grinned. The cop leaned closer and whispered what he thought the name of the tape was.
‘Morgan, we’ve got a problem. A real problem. This guy seems to know a little too much about our operation here.’
The cop, who himself knew nothing of the operation, scratched his head. ‘That’s bad. You think a tax boy, maybe?’
‘Blackmailer is my guess. Oh, of course we’re not doing anything illegal here, b
ut a clever blackmailer could make it look bad for us. Where is he now?’
‘I left him down by gate five, right by the passage. He’s a little old man with a gold-top cane. You want me to take over for you a few minutes?’
‘Yeah, okay. Now here’s what you do…’ He pointed out the monitors to the cop and told him to watch carefully. If anything went wrong, if Billy started speaking oddly or fell down or anything, he was to push a certain button. It would either light a green panel light or a red warning. The red blinking light was mounted inside a large button marked SCRUB. When it was alight, pushing it brought the whole show to a close. He did not explain the meaning of any of this, or how a program could be ‘scrubbed’: Direct connections to the android would make it clutch its chest and crumple, whereupon a ‘doctor’ would rush to ‘Billy’s* aid and the spotlight be taken away from him.
‘You mean all this stuff is just in case Billy falls down or gets laryngitis?’
‘Something like that. This is a million-dollar operation, Morgie—we don’t take chances. Speaking of which, how about loaning me your gun? I don’t want any trouble with this guy, but…’
‘Aw, Christ, Jerry, he’s an old man!’
‘But maybe he’s not alone. Anyway, just in case.’
It was sundown in Las Vegas. The biggest fairy Officer Kulak had ever seen stood in front of a television store, pretending to look at the Billy Koch service. He was more or less respectably dressed, but Kulak knew what he was by the rhinestone-rimmed sunglasses. The trouble was, he wasn’t doing anything. The laws being what they were, Kulak could do no more than kick him a few times and make him move along.
A party of interested tourists stopped to watch. ‘Las Vegas ain’t what it used to be,’ said one. ‘In the old days, they’d haul in a fruit like that, get him to blow everybody in the station, and then pound the piss out of him.’
‘That’s what they oughta do,’ said another. ‘But I guess the criminal element is just taking over.’
The big man in the odd glasses moved off towards the bus station.
‘O God! O God! I’m—well!’
‘Take off that brace, brother. Show the people the pahwr of the Lord Jesus!’
The man fumbled off his heavy appliance, a neck brace, and threw it to the back of the stage, where a stagehand could retrieve it and return it to the prop room. ‘My God! I’m ALL RIGHT!’
The next unfortunate was real, an asthmatic child. Billy’s hands gripped her head. ‘LordOLordhealthischildthispoor-afflictedchildletthepahwrcomedownrightdownherethroughmy-hands RIGHT DOWN THROUGH MY HANDS AND—HEAL this child!’
The girl gave a little scream and ran to her mother, a woman in a dress of National Arsenamid feed sacking. ‘Mommy, Mommy, my chest don’t hurt no more!’
Billy, smiling and sweating, swung the child up and stood her on a chair. ‘Let everyone see you, honey! Let EVERYONE see the PAHWR of the LORD!’
More people joined the end of the line as Billy next healed a man with a paralysed hand and a girl with a blemish (the blemish didn’t actually go away, but it ‘felt funny’). Next came a teenager on crutches, dragging both legs.
The door opened. It wasn’t Jerry, it was the old man.
‘Hi again! Thought you’d forgotten about me, so I came around to have a look at the tape for myself.’
‘OUT!’ The cop slapped his empty holster. ‘This is a restricted area! Didn’t you see the sign?’ (On one of the monitors, Billy seemed to shudder slightly. The SCRUB button light pulsated like a painful tooth.)
‘I just wanted to speak to the engineer in charge here…’
‘He went to gate five, to see you!’ The Crusade cop began gently shoving the old man toward the door.
‘Ah well, I must have missed him. Perhaps our paths crossed.’ MacCormick Hines smiled, thinking of the three shots the engineer had wasted. They were certainly out to protect their investment here, no two ways about it. Or the secret of Billy’s success.
‘Wait outside, you! When Jerry gets back, you can…’
‘Yes, perhaps you’re right.’ Except that Jerry wouldn’t be coming back for awhile. Two bright young men had seen to that. ‘Yes, I’ll just—Good God! Look!’ He pointed his cane at one of the monitors.
The cop stopped shoving. ‘Jesus! What the hell is going on?’ He stabbed every button on the console, but nothing happened. ‘O Jesus, I’d better go find Jerry!’
Billy went into his usual auction chant that rose and fell and ended in a scream of ‘HEAL!’ At the climax his steel fingers closed tightly about the boy’s skull. The kid screamed and dropped his crutches. Nobody seemed to notice that he wasn’t standing alone; he was suspended by those crushing hands.
Billy dropped him and advanced on a woman with a cleft palate, so hypnotized that she was already trying to say she was cured. Back of him, the Crusade cops were crowding on the stage, valiantly trying to screen the boy’s corpse from the audience.
Mumble, mumble, pahwr of the Lord and…
‘HEAL!’
The palsied old woman who was next in line tried to back away, but those behind her were stubbornly shoving forward, and Billy stalked her, opening and closing hands that were covered with stickiness.…
‘HEAL!’
In quick succession he HEALEDa mongoloid child, a wheelchair paralytic, a laborer with a slipped disc and a mother with a migraine. Some of the others managed to throw themselves out of reach, fall, scramble or jump off the stage.
Not everyone in the hall panicked at once. While the people in front were screaming and trying to rush the exits, those in back were still climbing up on seats to see the miracles. Even when everyone did get turned around and headed outward, they found the exits barred and guarded by Crusade cops. If, in the tumult, anyone could have heard them, they would have explained: the collection hadn’t been taken up yet.
Trailing a coaxial cable that unreeled from under the stage, Billy descended to the audience. Some of the screams now became coherent.
‘The guy’s nuts! He’s nuts!’
‘Stop him!’
‘Somebody stop him!’
Several men seized an usher and started kicking him. People piled up against the exits were beginning to suffocate.
‘Stop him!’
Someone threw a punch that hit him solidly; it only turned Billy in a new direction.
‘HEAL!’
A doctor rushed Billy and broke a hypodermic on his arm. The android plowed on, HEALing. His smile was ecstatic.
‘O Christ, somebody…’
‘HEAL! HEAL!’
A thread of oil smoke rose from the back of Billy’s collar. It thickened to a fluttering ribbon. As Billy reached to HEAL another victim, his collar blossomed into greenish flames.
‘Satan has come among us!’
Billy slowed, faltered, stopped. Flames licked up his cheeks as he raised both arms in benediction and began:
Nearer my God to Thee
Nearer my God to Thee
His thermostatically-controlled-fire-emergency-panic-prevention-system was working perfectly.
The organist took her bitten fingers from her mouth and began a tentative accompaniment. A quavering voice in the balcony took up the refrain, and then the entire audience found itself forcing out the reassuring melody. A few at a time, they fell to their knees.
Billy’s torso was shirted in flames of many colors. Lumps of plastic flesh rolled down to his ankles. Miraculously his strong, manly baritone came loud as ever from the midst of the bonfire.
It did not cease until the song was finished, and the final circuit switched off by fire. There remained then the steel skeleton, blackened machinery and tangles of wire, all fused to a pedestal puddle of pink plastic and smoldering tan oxfords. And in their sockets the pale blue eyes still looked toward heaven.
Bibleland neared the end of its third day of business. There were rumors of trouble in Minneapolis, and a garbled TV newscast about a fire which had ‘possibly injured’
the great healing evangelist. (The service itself had been cut off in the middle, due to ‘network transmission difficulties’). Attendance here did not, in any case, slacken.
The ten-acre park was divided into four ‘lands’: Old Testament Land, New Testament Land, Heaven Land and Hades Land. Among the crowd of child pilgrims and pilgrim families, a lone man attracted the attention of Crusade cops.
They were on the alert for pickpockets and perverts, and this man was especially perverted-looking, in his wrinkled gray business suit, tennis shoes and ladies’ rhinestone-rimmed sunglasses. Two plainclothesmen were detailed to keep an eye on him.
He began with the Garden of Eden boat ride. Here a train of boats moved through the still waters of a winding lagoon, passing in sequence all of the mechanical tableaux of the bible story. Adam was shown alone, then shaking hands with his new partner and bride, then the two shared a meal of grapes. Adam and Eve inevitably fell, but their discovery of nakedness was omitted, for our original parents wore modest fig-leaf bikinis from the start.
The stranger seemed oddly unmoved by it all. He did not look up even when an angel drove them from the Garden with a neon sword, or when Adam fought a Tyrannosaur with his stone ax. Instead, he gazed steadily at the waters of the artificial lagoon, and at the innumerable floating islands of ice-cream wrappers, ice-cream sticks, pop bottles and souvenir programs.
The suspect rode the Promised Land roller coaster, catching, from one of its summits, a Pisgah view of Heaven Land. He visited the small zoo called Noah’s Ark on time to see the lions get their dinner. It looked suspiciously like lamb. He took a trip on that children’s favorite, the Fiery Chariot (transfigured by flashing lights and fluorescent paint from an old Octopus), and tried his luck at knocking Goliath into a bucket of water with a basketball. He won a prize here and elsewhere: for knocking down pyramids of Philistines with a ‘jawbone’ boomerang, a plaster ten commandments bookend; for setting fire to Sodom and Gomorrah with an electric-eye rifle, a winged kewpie; for pounding a weight to the top of Jacob’s Ladder, a plastic telescope showing a view of Solomon’s temple.
