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Chapter 20
The
mescaline had furiously begun to affect him; the room grew lit up with
colors, and the perspective factor altered so that the ceiling seemed a
million miles high. And, gazing at Alys, he saw her hair come alive ...
like Medusa's, he thought, and felt fear.
Ignoring
him, Alys continued, "Felix especially likes Basque cuisine, but they cook
with so much butter that it gives him pyloric spasms. He also has a good
collection of Weird Tales, and he loves baseball. And - let's see."
She wandered off, a finger tapping against her lips as she reflected.
"He's interested in the occult. Do you -"
"I feel
something," Jason said.
"What do you
feel?"
Jason said,
"I can't get away."
"It's the
mes. Take it easy."
"I -" He
pondered; a giant weight lay on his brain, but all throughout the weight
streaks of light, of satori-like insight, shot here and there.
"What I
collect," Alys said, "is in the next room, what we call the library. This
is the study. In the library Felix has all his law books ... did you know
he's a lawyer, as well as a police general? And he has done some good
things; I have to admit it. Do you now what he did once?"
He could not answer; he could only stand. Inert, hearing the sounds but
not the meaning. Of it.
"For a year
Felix was legally in charge of one-fourth of Terra's forced-labor camps.
He discovered that by virtue of an obscure law passed years ago when the
forced-labor camps were more like death camp s- with a lot of blacks in
them - anyhow, he discovered that this statute permitted the camps to
operate only during the Second Civil War. And he had the power to close
any and all camps at any time he felt it to be in the public interest. And
those blacks and the students who'd been working in the camps are damn
tough and strong, from years of heavy manual labor. They're not like the
effete, pale, clammy students living beneath the campus areas. And then he
researched and discovered another obscure statute. Any camp that isn't
operating at a profit has to be - or rather had to be - closed. So Felix
changed the amount of money - very little, of course - paid to the
detainees. So all he had to do was jack up their pay, show red ink in the
books, and bam; he could shut down the camps." She laughed.
He tried to
speak but couldn't. Inside him his mind churned like a tattered rubber
ball, sinking and rising, slowing down, speeding up, fading and then
flaring brilliantly; the shafts of light scampered all through him,
piercing every part of his body.
"But the big
thing Felix did," Alys said, "had to do with the student kibbutzim under
the burned-out campuses. A lot of them are desperate for food and water;
you know how it is: the students try to make it into town, foraging for
supplies, ripping off and looting. Well, the police maintain a lot of
agents among the students agitating for a final shootout with the police
... which the police and nats are hopefully waiting for. Do you see?"
"I see," he
said, "a hat."
"But Felix
tried to keep off any sort of shootout. But to do it he had to get
supplies to the students; do you see?"
"The hat is
red," Jason said. "Like your ears."
"Because of
his position as marshal in the pol hierarchy, Felix had access to
informant reports as to the condition of each student kibbutz. He knew
which ones were failing and which were making it. It was his job to boil
out of the horde of abstracts the ultimately important facts: which
kibbutzim were going under and which were not. Once he had listed those in
trouble, other high police officers met with him to decide how to apply
pressure which would hasten the end. Defeatist agitation by police finks,
sabotage of food and water supplies. Desperate - actually hopeless -
forays out of the campus area in search of help - for instance, at
Columbia one time they had a plan of getting to the Harry S Truman Labor
Camp and liberating the detainees and arming them, but at that even Felix
had to say 'Intervene!' But anyhow it was Felix's job to determine the
tactic for each kibbutz under scrutiny. Many, many times he advised no
action at all. For this, of course, the hardhats criticized him, demanded
his removal from his position." Alys paused. "He was a full police
marshal, then, you have to realize."
"Your red,"
Jason said, "is fantidulous."
"I know."
Alys's lips turned down. "Can't you hold your hit, man? I'm trying to tell
you something. Felix got demoted, from police marshal to police general,
because he saw to it, when he could, that in the kibbutzim the students
were bathed, fed, their medical supplies looked after, cots provided. Like
he did for the forced-labor camps under his jurisdiction. So now he's just
a general. But they leave him alone. They've done all they can to him for
now and he still holds a high office."
"But your
incest," Jason said. "What if?" He paused; he could not remember the rest
of his sentence. "If," he said, and that seemed to be it; he felt a
furious glow, arising from the fact that he had managed to convey his
message to her. "If," he said again, and the inner glow became wild with
happy fury. He exclaimed aloud.
"You mean
what if the marshals knew that Felix and I have a son? What would they
do?"
"They would
do," Jason said. "Can we hear some music? Or give me -" His words
ceased; none more entered his brain. "Gee," he said. "My mother wouldn't
be here. Death."
Alys inhaled
deeply, sighed. "Okay, Jason," she said. "I'll give up trying to rap with
you. Until your head is back."
"Talk," he
said.
"Would you
like to see my bondage cartoons?"
"What," he
said, "that's?"
"Drawings,
very stylized, of chicks tied up, and men -"
"Can I lie
down?" he said. "My legs won't work. I think my right leg extends to the
moon. In other words" - he considered - "I broke it standing up."
"Come here."
She led him, step by step, from the study and back into the living room.
"Lie down on the couch," she told him. With agonizing difficulty he did
so. "I'll go get you some Thorazine; it'll counteract the mes."
"This is a
mess," he said.
"Let's see
... where the hell did I put that? I rarely if ever have to use it, but I
keep it in case something like this ... God damn it, can't you drop a
single cap of mes and be something? I take five at once."
"But you're
vast," Jason said.
"I'll be
back; I'm going upstairs." Alys strode off, toward a door located several
distances away; for a long, long time he watched her dwindle - how did she
accomplish it? It seemed incredible that she could shrink down to almost
nothing - and then she vanished. He felt, at that, terrible fear. He knew
that he had become alone, without help. Who will help me? he asked
himself. I have to get away from these stamps and cups and snuffboxes and
bondage cartoons and phone grids and frog's legs I've got to get to that
quibble I've got to flyaway and back to where I know back in town maybe
with Ruth Rae if they've let her go or even back to Kathy Nelson this
woman is too much for me so is her brother them and their incest child in
Florida named what?
He rose
unsteadily, groped his way across a rug that sprang a million leaks of
pure pigment as he trod on it, crushing it with his ponderous shoes, and
then, at last, he stumbled against the front door of the unsteady room.
Sunlight. He
had gotten outside.
The quibble.
He hobbled
to it.
Inside he
sat at the controls, bewildered by legions of knobs, levers, wheels,
pedals, dials. "Why doesn't it go?" he said aloud. "Get going!" he told
it, rocking back and forth in the driver's seat. "Won't she let me go?" he
asked the quibble.
The keys. Of
course he couldn't fly it no keys.
Her coat in
the back seat; he had witnessed it. And also her large mailpouch purse.
There, the keys in her purse. There.
The two
record albums. Taverner and the Blue, Blue Blues. And the best of
them all: There'll be a Good Time. He groped, managed somehow to
lift both record albums up, conveyed them to the empty seat beside him. I
have the proof here, he realized. It's here in these records and it's here
in the house. With her. I've got to find it here if I'm going to. Find it.
Nowhere else. Even General Mr. Felix What-Is-He-Named? he won't find it.
He doesn't know. As much as me.
Carrying the
enormous record albums he ran back to the house - around him the landscape
flowed, with whip, tall, tree-like organisms gulping in air out of the
sweet blue sky, organisms which absorbed water and light, ate the hue into
the sky ... he reached the gate, pushed against it. The gate did not
budge. Button.
He found no.
Step by
step. Feel each inch with fingers. Like in the dark. Yes, he thought. I'm
in darkness. He set down the much- too-big record albums, stood against
the wall beside the gate, slowly massaged the rubberlike surface of the
wall. Nothing. Nothing.
The button.
He pressed
it, grabbed up the record albums, stood in front of the gate as it
incredibly slowly creaked its noisy protesting way open.
A
brown-uniformed man carrying a gun appeared. Jason said, "I had to go back
to the quibble for something."
"Perfectly
all right, sir," the man in the brown uniform said. "I saw you leave and I
knew you'd be back."
"Is she
insane?" Jason asked him.
"I'm not in
a position to know, sir," the man in the brown uniform said, and he backed
away, touching his visored cap.
The front
door of the house hung open as he had left it. He scrambled through,
descended brick steps, found himself once more in the radically irregular
living room with its million-mile-high ceiling. "Alys!" he said. Was she
in the room? He carefully looked in all directions; as he had done when
searching for the button he phased his way through every visible inch of
the room. The bar at the far end with the handsome walnut drug cabinet ...
couch, chairs. Pictures on the walls. A face in one of the pictures jeered
at him but he did not care; it could not leave the wall. The quad
phonograph ...
His records.
Play them.
He lifted at
the lid of the phonograph but it wouldn't open. Why? he asked. Locked? No,
it slid out. He slid it out, with a terrible noise, as if he had destroyed
it. Tone arm. Spindle. He got one of his records out of its sleeve and
placed in on the spindle. I can work these things, he said, and turned on
the amplifiers, setting the mode to phono. Switch that activated the
changer. He twisted it. The tone arm lifted; the turntable began to spin,
agonizingly slowly. What was the matter with it? Wrong speed? No; he
checked. Thirty-three and a third. The mechanism of the spindle heaved and
the record dropped.
Loud noise
of the needle hitting the lead-in groove. Crackles of dust, clicks.
Typical of old quad records. Easily misused and damaged; all you had to do
was breathe on them.
Background
hiss. More crackles.
No music.
Lifting the
tone arm, he set it farther in. Great roaring crash as the stylus struck
the surface; he winced, sought the volume control to turn it down. Still
no music. No sound of himself singing.
The strength
the mescaline had over him began now to waver; he felt coldly, keenly
sober. The other record. Swiftly he got it from its jacket and sleeve,
placed it on the spindle, rejected the first record.
Sound of the
needle touching plastic surface. Background hiss and the inevitable
crackles and clicks. Still no music.
The records
were blank.
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