by Sladek, John
rodeo: suspect roundup and intensive reconciliation
social therapist: interrogator
technicality: prisoner.
Souplines
The President has a rich dream life. It soaks through his skin like a rich soup and arranges the wrinkles in his ‘sober’ business suit. Examination of the seat of the President’s business pants reveals inmost desires, claims psychologist. A relief map of Indochina, perhaps.
His dreams boil up in projects, plans, operations, advisory committee schemes. His dreaming eye is on the donut, says aide. Operation Big Sandy, for instance. It may seem crazy to wall off Mexico (phase one), but there you are. ‘It’s so crazy,’ says General Hare, ‘it just might work. Or not.’
The lunch with leading blacks goes even worse than he’d feared. The press conference is cancelled and he disappears for half an hour into the Reagan Room. Later, before he goes to meet concerned psychologists and policemen, he checks his chin for lines of sin.
Major Operation
Operation Big Sandy was born on the littered conference table of the Great Seal’s team of ‘creative’ advisers. Karl and Dan were cuffing and folding maps to rearrange the world. Filcup sought truth in the depths of black coffee.
‘A door-to-door instant welfare program? Let me call it Streetheart.’
‘A national idea bank –’
‘Yes, but unemployment.’
‘Unemployment, sure, but social security deficits.’
Filcup held up an atlas. ‘Think of the United States as a sheep or cow, marked into cuts of meat.’
‘The United Steaks?’
‘Don’t laugh, it’s the body politic. About to be invaded by hostile germs, coming up the anus from Mexico –’
‘Now just hold on a minute!’ Texas Dan Foyle demanded that Filcup apologize.
‘What we need is antiseptic. Make the Rio Grande radioactive. Build a wall,’ he continued.
‘A wall to write on!’ Karl said. ‘A challenge for our painters.’
‘Sell off advertising space.’
Dan cracked his knuckles wit unrestrained excitement. ‘This could be great for the old folks. Give them something to look at, a new interest in life. You realize that there are over a hundred retirement ranches in that area, and that more than half our retired folks live within a hundred miles of Mexico.’
Filcup seemed convulsed by a private joke. ‘Wait till I tell you the rest, Dan. There’s something in this for the old folks, all right, in phase two. But for now, we’ll not only sell space to advertisers, we’ll build gas stations, highways, concessions. A view of the wall. A view over it. Visit the gun emplacements. Amazing plastic replicas of the Grand Canyon, the Great Wall of China, the Wailing Wall of Jerusalem! It’ll take up the slack in Mexican tourism, giving our vacationers a new place to go. And of course it’ll be a sop for unemployment.’
‘The Great Wall!’ They toasted it in cold coffee.
2. Technicalities
At Fort Nixon Retraining Center
Dr Veck was explaining the routine to the new man, Lane. ‘I know youngsters like you are chock-full of theory, itching to try everything out,’ he said, clapping him on the shoulder. ‘Fort Nixon is just the place for it. The normal routine isn’t too irksome because most of ours are politicals, as you know. Not much trouble except security – they will try to escape – but I’m afraid they make dull cases.’
He slid open a panel depicting the death of Actaeon (or some other deer) to show, through the back of a one-way glass, a dozen retrainees at work on handicrafts. ‘As you see, dull.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Who’s the old-timer over in the corner? The one doing leather work.’
‘Old Hank? He’s pretty well beyond treatment. I’ll show you his record sometime. Looks as if he’s making another bridle. He’s made three already, one white, one red and one black. This one seems to be beige. Of course he has no idea what he’ll do with them. In fact, he told me he knows nothing at all about horses. Poor old Hank!’
Oblivious to their concern, Hank was kicking a water pipe under his bench, tapping out a message to his one friend.
‘The government apparently has contingency plans to use some of our people for a work camp. Some construction project. I’d guess it’s either another retirement ranch or else a dam on the Rio Grande. But of course they never tell us anything, We only have to deal with the extra security that will mean.’
‘Do you have many escapes?’ asked Dr Lane.
‘We always catch them. And then we give them a taste of the random room. Little invention of my own. The occupant doesn’t know what will happen to him, or when – all he knows is that it will be unpleasant. At perfectly random intervals he gets cold water, hot water, shock, strobe lights, whistles, drones, a shower of shit, whispers, heat, cold and so on. Life in the ordinary ward seems pretty good to them after that. They’re grateful for a secure, comfortable routine, and escape is – well – remote.’
‘Ah, yes, I noticed your paper on it in Political Psychopath, though I didn’t have a chance to read it yet. Sounds interesting.’
Dr Veck acknowledged this half compliment with half a smile. ‘Your praxis was at Mount Burris, was it not?’ He found his hair hurt, and his breath had to be forced.
‘Yes, but not with politicals. I worked mainly with the children of malcontents. Primary adjustments, corporation workshop. Tame stuff compared to political deviation, which has always been my first love. Are you all right, doctor?’
‘Ah, it’s nothing. I experience these symptoms, shortness of breath and so on, whenever I leave my office for any length of time. What say we go up to my office now, and I’ll show you some typical case histories.’
Entering Veck’s office, the two men were arrested by a throbbing desert sunset. Dr Lane sighed. Breaking off in the middle of a discussion of pattern attrition, he murmured:
‘Who captains haughty Nature in her flaming hair
Can ne’er rest slothy whilst some lesser groom –’
‘What was that?’ Veck snapped the blinds shut and turned up the decent office light.
‘Nothing, really. I wrote it for a class in Environmental Humanities.’
‘Good for you! We social engineers can use a smattering of culture around the place. Gives us new perspective on our problems. Like this one, for instance.’ He threw a dusty folder on the desk. ‘Mr C. was a Communist, and he liked being a Communist. We tried damned near everything. Finally we learned that a fellow party member had seduced C.’s wife. We simply told him about this, allowed him to escape, and bingo!’
‘Bingo?’
‘By killing the seducer, C. proved that he thought of his wife as a piece of property. It was the first beachhead of capitalism in his commie brain. With our help he became vitally interested in other possessions, in getting and spending. His socialism fell away like an old scab. Today C. is a Baptist minister and a Rotarian.’
‘Amazing!’
‘Or take this case, Mr von J. Von J. was a malcontent, a hater of authority. Arrested for vandalism, jaywalking, nonpayment of taxes, contempt of court. Here we used aversive methods to great effect. The first step was to teach him self-discipline. We made him hold his urine twenty hours at a time, memorize chapters of Norman Vincent Peale, and so on. Now, I am given to understand, von J. is more than a model citizen; he does some work for the FBI.
‘Mr B. was an anarchist. We placed him in a controlled work situation. Among those who worked around him we removed everyone of competence and replaced them with indecisive idiots. They looked to B. for guidance; he became a straw boss, then a real boss. We rewarded his responsibility with more pay and privileges. He became a trusty.
‘Naturally he escaped. On his return, B. learned that R., one of the idiot workers who had worshipped him, had, left on his own, committed suicide.
‘In this way B. was brought to see that running away doesn’t bring liberty, but slavery. He now realized that the truly free aren’t rebels
and anarchists, but those who have submitted their will to a Higher Authority. The way I put it to him in a little talk was: “Democracy is like a spaceship. It may seem stuffy inside, but you can’t just step out for a breath of outer space!”’
Dr Lane saw his cue, and chuckled. ‘But how did you really arrange it? What actually happened to R.? A transfer?’
‘Oh, dear me, no.’ Veck laughed. ‘We had to string him up in his room, for real. To make it look good. B. was nothing if not skeptical.’
Remorse Code Message
O Hank! You have turnt your face to the wall again. Or anyway you’ve stopped acknowledging my messages. And you won’t talk to the other retrainees. Sit there then in the common room, silent and obscure as Gun.* Trying perhaps to etch out a certain territory in the room by exposing it to the acid of your silence. One by one the others move away to far parts of the room where they can kibbitz at Ping-Pong or pretend to study the paper autumn leaves pinned to the bulletin board, wishing all a HAPPY COLUMBUS DAY. Perhaps you can empty the room itself, even the wing, or the whole of Fort Nixon, driving away all life and plastering over the crevices with thick hostile silence.
But you just couldn’t have such an unconstructive notion. Not to say such an asocial, dangerous notion. Because whatever they say about there being no punishments here, extremely uncomfortable things can happen to the asocial. And your silence can hardly be construed as ‘making an honest effort’ at retraining, can it?
Your obstinate silence. Suppose they feel it necessary to counter it? To bring in the Fort Nixon Silver Band to fill the void? And then certain select retrainees (the ‘doctors’ staying out of it) might hold you to a chair while the Silver Band marches past, playing ‘Under the Double Eagle’ and ‘Them Basses’. Certain select retrainees, known somehow to one another, might hold you to a chair while the Silver Band sharpens up. They sharpen the edges of the bells of their trumpets and sousaphones. Then they extend your tongue and hold it while they saw it off with their shining instruments. Then they pin it to the bulletin board, among the autumn leaves.
Listen, Hank, you have friends in high places. One phone call and you can be out of here, long gone before they put you to work on the Great Project. Just admit that God is pretty first-rate and God’s Own Country is, gosh, not so bad either, when you get right down under it. Or say anything, say howdy to your friends and neighbours, the other inmates. Otherwise I hear the Silver Band massing in the anteroom; I see a wet pink leaf upon the bulletin board, HAPPY COLUMBUTH DAY, end of Message.
Dr Lane’s Secret Journal (1)
… the question of who he thinks he is trying to contact. Veck claims he was in prison before, tapped out morse code on the water pipes with other prisoners and just couldn’t break the habit. Though no one here seems to listen to his tapping.
Yesterday, I tried immobilizing Hank with s.p. and restraints. As I predicted, he keeps messages going even then, by nearly inaudible tongue clicks.
A challenging case. Hank evidently was some kind of painter and sculptor at one time. Later he made a series of animated cartoons of which I saw only one example. It seemed particularly sadistic to me. The main story seemed to be a quarrel between dogs, cats and mice. This version differed from others mainly in that it strove for realistic violence. Thus when an animal was struck by an enormous wooden mallet, he did not go dizzy with X X eyes and tweeting birds and a pulsating red lump. Instead he screamed, staggered, fell, gushed blood, vomited, lay quivering and died, defecating. I believe the cartoon was called ‘Suffering Cats’. It was seditious.
A challenging case. Today we talked.
LANE: Good morning, Hank. Feeling OK today?
HANK: Try a synthesis of that.
LANE: I’d like to try –
HANK: They’re out of it. No good. (Indistinct murmur) Pricks! (Or ‘bricks’)
LANE: I’d like you to look at these cards and tell me what the story is on each. What they remind you of.
HANK:: Listen, I’m the pope around here. I’m the mural man and I’m the muracle man …
LANE: What does this remind you of, Hank? (Overturned car)
HANK: It’s a picture that’s supposed to remind me of the next picture. It reminds me a little of a car accident. And a mural I once did, about fifteen hundred miles long. Incorporated a white line, nothing nicer.
LANE: Do you think doing murals is nice, Hank? Isn’t it more fun building things up, painting, than tearing them down?
HANK: Why choose? They don’t. It’s all part of the same thing, the seduction of the construction. If you’re looking for anarchist bombers, arrest God, eh? There’s the destruction of the destruction for you!
Anyway, it’s too late. You can’t exactly make an omelette, can you? One of these days, ‘Up against the wall, robot!’ and it’s good-bye Mexico. Their symbol the cockroach, the meek little bastard that inherits the earth.
I gather he’s talking about building walls, painting murals on them and then tearing them down. This doubtless symbolizes his whole life, a tension between creation (art) and destruction (anarchy). A long and wasted life! It’s hard to believe, but Hank was born before the great Chesterton died.
A Harsh Physic (1)
The roomful of psychologists and police officials paid little attention when the President entered. Some were gossiping, and those who noticed his scurrying figure turned away with disgusted expressions: ‘That slick bastard … Let’s talk about something else …’
It was different when they saw Bissell of the FBI coming straight from the door to the lectern. The admiration, envy and affection they felt for the little guy could not be expressed in ordinary terms – though perhaps Freemasons had a word for the stirring beneath the apron.
Bissell gave his report on surveillance. On the whole, random search and arrest techniques had not proved productive of info on subverts. Intensive infiltration was being tried with more success, but it took time, men and money.
We managed to infiltrate one group of anarchist bombers in the Southwest, for example, only by an indirect method. Our man on the inside is not actually known to us – we couldn’t risk direct contact. Instead he passes information to the Bureau and receives orders from it through a neutral man. We call him a “circuit-breaker”, because he can break contact in case of trouble.
‘Our “Listening Post” program has been very successful,’ he continued. ‘This means bugging public and private places where we hope dangerous subverts might meet. Originally we had planned to use computers to sort through the vast amount of tape we collected this way. The computers would search for key words like black, power, liberation, revolution and government, and select these portions for further study.
‘But we have recruited instead a large number of personnel to do this sorting job for us. These recruits are trustworthy, keen listeners, naturally suspicious and absolutely loyal. Best of all, they work for free.’
The President raised his hand. ‘Just who are these dedicated personnel?’
‘I was about to explain, sir, that they are elderly people living in retirement homes. As they have little to do, listening gives them pleasure. Many are retired military men, only too glad to still be of service to their country.’
That concluded Bissell’s report. Flanked by two of his enormous agents, the little man marched out of the room. The rest realized they had been holding their breaths. Now the place seemed empty, as though it had lost some great dynamic presence – some modern Wilhelm Reich.
At the Rocking R
Brad Dexter peered out of his water-cooled window at America Deserta. As always, hot and quiet. Fifty degrees out there, or so the ranch authorities said, and a laborious calculation told him that this was ‘a hundred and twenty-two real degrees, Irma! Think of that!’
He propped her up so she could see the shimmering desert. ‘You know, in the old days, they used to fry an egg on the sidewalk on a day like this. No, I guess they only pretended to fry it. I found out later it was a fake, in
Unvarnished Truth magazine. I got the issue here someplace.’
Much of the small room was taken up with towering stacks of magazines. The ranch authorities hadn’t liked it, but Brad had insisted on not parting with a single issue of Unvarnished Truth. If a man couldn’t live in comfort at a retirement ranch, just where in hell could he relax? Just tell Brad that, and he would ask no more.
It wasn’t much of a ranch. No horses, cattle, barns, corrals or pastures. In fact, it wasn’t a ranch at all, except for being stuck out here in the blazing desert. The Rocking R Retirement Ranch consisted of thirteen great hexagonal towers called ‘bunkhouses’, each named after some forgotten child star. Brad and Irma resided on the twentieth story of Donald O’Connor.*
‘Now where is that article?’ Brad leafed through tattered, yellowed issues containing the latest on the Kennedy assassinations, ‘I Killed Martin Bormann’, ‘Her Hubby Was a Woman’, ‘Eyeless Sight’, ‘Birth Pills Can Kill!’ and ‘How Oil Companies Murdered the Car That Runs on Water’. ‘I know I had that danged thing someplace – What are you looking at, honey?’
There wasn’t much to see outside. Everything was so still it could have been a hologram. The electric fence that marked the future location of the Wall made a diagonal across this picture, starting in the lower right corner and disappearing over a dune at the upper left. Next to it an endless sausage curl of barbed wire followed the same contour. Somewhere beyond the dune lay the work camp where they were building the Wall. Once a week, Brad had been lucky enough to see a great silver airship carrying equipment and supplies to the camp, and now he hoped Irma had spotted another. It was funny about Irma. Even though her eyes never moved, Brad could always tell when she was intent on something.
Now he saw it, a tiny figure trudging along next to the barbed wire coil, coming this way. From here, Brad couldn’t make out much except the gray uniform.
‘Escapee from the work camp, Irma. And there goes the danged lunch bell. Well, to heck with that – this is worth missing lunch for!’ He took out his teeth for comfort.
