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Chapter 13
In the
living room of Ruth Rae's lavish, lovely, newly built apartment in the
Fireflash District of Las Vegas, Jason Taverner said, "I'm reasonably sure
I can count on forty-eight hours on the outside and twenty-four on the
inside. So I feel fairly certain that I don't have to get out of here
immediately." And if our revolutionary new principle is correct, he
thought, then this assumption will modify the situation to my advantage. I
will be safe.
THE THEORY
CHANGES--
"I'm glad,"
Ruth said wanly, "that you're able to remain here with me in a civilized
way so we can rap a little longer. You want anything more to drink? Scotch
and Coke, maybe?"
THE THEORY
CHANGES THE REALITY IT DESCRIBES. "No," he said, and prowled about the
living room, listening ... to what he did not know. Perhaps the absence of
sounds. No TV sets muttering, no thump of feet against the floor above
their heads. Not even a pornochord somewhere, blasting out from a quad.
"Are the walls fairly thick in these apartments?" he asked Ruth sharply.
"I never
hear anything."
"Does
anything seem strange to you? Out of the ordinary?"
"No." Ruth
shook her head.
"You damn
dumb floogle," he said savagely. She gaped at him in injured
perplexity. "i know," he grated, "that they have me. Now. Here. In this
room."
The doorbell
bonged.
"Let's
ignore it," Ruth said rapidly, stammering and afraid. "I just want to sit
and rap with you, about the mellow things in life you've seen and what you
want to achieve that you haven't achieved already ..." Her voice died into
silence as he went to the door. "It's probably the man from upstairs. He
borrows things. Weird things. Like two fifths of an onion."
Jason opened
the door. Three pols in gray uniforms filled the doorway, with weapon
tubes and nightsticks aimed at him. "Mr. Taverner?" the pol with the
stripes said.
"Yes."
"You are
being taken into protective custody for your own protection and welfare,
effective immediately, so please come with us and do not turn back or in
any way remove yourself physically from contact with us. Your possessions
if any will be picked up for you later and transferred to wherever you
will be at the time."
"Okay," he
said, and felt very little.
Behind him,
Ruth Rae emitted a muffled shriek.
"You also,
miss," the pol with the stripes said, motioning toward her with his
nightstick.
"Can I get
my coat?" she asked timidly.
"Come on."
The pol stepped briskly past Jason, grabbed Ruth Rae by the arm, and
dragged her out the apartment door onto the walkway.
"Do what he
says," Jason said harshly to her.
Ruth Rae
sniveled, "They're going to put me in a forced labor camp."
"No," Jason
said. "They'll probably kill you."
"You're
really a nice guy," one of the pols - without stripes - commented as he
and his companions herded Jason and Ruth Rae down the wrought-iron
staircase to the ground floor. Parked in one of the slots was a police
van, with several pols standing idly around it, weapons held loosely. They
looked inert and bored.
"Show me
your ID," the pol with stripes said to Jason; he extended his hand,
waiting.
"I've got a
seven-day police pass," Jason said. His hands shaking, he fished it out,
gave it to the pol officer.
Scrutinizing
the pass the officer said, "You admit freely of your own volition that you
are Jason Taverner?"
"Yes," he
said.
Two of the
pols expertly searched him for arms. He complied silently, still feeling
very little. Only a half-assed hopeless wish that he had done what he knew
he should have done: moved on. Left Vegas. Headed anywhere.
"Mr.
Taverner," the pol officer said, "the Los Angeles Police Bureau has asked
us to take you into protective custody for your own protection and welfare
and to transport you safely and with due care to the Police Academy in
downtown L.A. , which we will now do. Do you have any complaints as to the
manner in which you have been treated?"
"No," he
said. "Not yet."
"Enter the
rear section of the quibble van," the officer said, pointing at the open
doors.
Jason did
so.
Ruth Rae,
stuffed in beside him, whimpered to herself in the darkness as the doors
slammed shut and locked. He put his arm around her, kissed her on the
forehead. "What did you do?" she whimpered raspingly in her bourbon voice,
"that they're going to kill us for?"
A pol,
getting into the rear of the van with them from the front cab, said, "We
aren't going to snuff you, miss. We're transporting you both back to L.A.
That's all. Calm down."
"I don't
like Los Angeles," Ruth Rae whimpered, "I haven't been there in years, I
hate L. A." She peered wildly around.
"So do I,"
the pol said as he locked the rear compartment off from the cab and
dropped the key through a slot to the pols outside. "But we must learn to
live with it: it's there."
"They're
probably going all through my apartment," Ruth Rae whimpered. "Picking
through everything, breaking everything."
"Absolutely," Jason said tonelessly. His head ached, now, and he felt
nauseated. And tired. "Who are we going to be taken to?" he asked the pol.
"To Inspector McNulty?"
"Most likely
no," the pol said conversationally as the quibble van rose noisily into
the sky. "The drinkers of intoxicating liquor have made you the subject of
their songs and those sitting in the gate are concerning themselves about
you, and according to them Police General Felix Buckman wants to
interrogate you." He explained, "That was from Psalm Sixty-nine. I sit
here by you as a Witness to Jehovah Reborn, who is in this very hour
creating new heavens and a new earth, and the former things will not be
called to mind, neither will they come up into the heart. Isaiah 65:13,
17."
"A police
general?" Jason said, numbed.
"So they
say," the obliging young Jesus-freak pol answered. "I don't know what you
folks did, but you sure did it right."
Ruth Rae
sobbed to herself in the darkness.
"All flesh
is like grass," the Jesus-freak pol intoned, "Like low-grade roachweed
most likely. Unto us a child is born, unto us a hit is given. The crooked
shall be made straight and the straight loaded."
"Do you have
a joint?" Jason asked him.
"No, I've
run out." The Jesus-freak pol rapped on the forward metal wall. "Hey,
Ralf, can you lay a joint on this brother?"
"Here." A
crushed pack of Goldies appeared by way of a gray-sleeved hand and arm.
"Thanks,"
Jason said as he lit up. "You want one?" he asked Ruth Rae.
"I want
Bob," she whimpered. "I want my husband."
Silently,
Jason sat hunched over, smoking and meditating.
"Don't give
up," the Jesus-freak pol crammed in beside him said, in the darkness.
"Why not?"
Jason said.
"The
forced-labor camps aren't that bad. In Basic Orientation they took us
through one; there're showers, and beds with mattresses, and recreation
such as volleyball, and arts and hobbies; you know - crafts, like making
candles. By hand. And your family can send you packages and once a month
they or your friends can visit you." He added, " And you get to worship at
the church of your choice."
Jason said
sardonically, "The church of my choice is the free, open world."
After that
there was silence, except for the noisy clatter of the quibble's engine,
and Ruth Rae's whimpering.
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