Fun House (7 page)
Authors: Benjamin Appel
I was too ashamed to report my failure to Commissioner Sonata. I returned to my hotel, where Gladys greeted me excitedly. “Darling, we’ve got our first good news. Barnum Fly’s in town!”
“How do you know?”
“There’s been another murder, the ninth murder, with that cute little slip of his, ‘Everybody Dies on July 4th’. Isn’t that wonderful news?”
I thought of how stupid I had been, and walked to the wall taps.
“Not now, darling!” she cried. “To quote the St. Ewagiow — there’s a time to live and a time to die, a time for opgin and a time for optimism.”
“Gladys, I’ve messed up everything!” I confessed, and told her what a stupid moralistic fool I was.
She listened to me quietly. Then she sighed. “You are a fool but I like you for it. So you couldn’t make love to her?” She patted my hand. “That’s flattering to me, darling. But you better go back to Cleo, darling.”
“Why?” I groaned.
“Historical necessity, my little Eros.”
“Why can’t someone else — ”
She laughed. “I’ve heard you call our men butterflies. And that’s what they are. Butterflies flitting from flower to flower in the hothouse that is the Funhouse.”
I stared at her. “You’re the subversive now!”
“It must be that Bee-Ambo,” she sighed and rubbed at her forehead. “Damn it, I’m thinking too much for my own good. You must go back, darling.”
“No,” I said.
“Barnum Fly’s in town! The A-I-D is here! You must go back. It’s your duty to mankind, that mankind of yours about whom you’re always preaching so tiresomely.” She glanced at me quickly and her blue eyes were so serious they reminded me of my wife’s. “I had some other news from the Commissioner. Cleo is a bonafide member of the St. Ewagiow. That father of her’s did a good job of ruining her life.”
“I have an idea,” I said. “The man to make love to her is Dr. Quipper! He’s the man to make her dream come true. Why, she’d do anything for him.”
“You don’t understand, darling. We all have our assignments and Cleo Fly is your assignment, not Dr. Quipper’s.” She stared at me for a second and then hurried to her closet. Swiftly, she took off her white Formfitte and pulled a black St. Ewagiow dress out of the closet. She put it on, turned towards me and touched the attached silver skull pin. “Death the Glorious!” she said in a low sad voice. “Death, the Victorious!”
“Are you mad?” I exclaimed.
Her blue eyes, the eyes of my wife Ruth, flashed angrily. “Let’s not waste time. I’ll prove you can make love to a skeleton if you have to.”
“Assignments!” I shouted. “Whose assignments? The Board’s! They’re so damned rigid, so damned inflexible — ”
She lifted her head towards the ceiling, and it was amazing how she had managed to transform her round plump face so that it seemed thin and hollow-cheeked, “I have seen the light!” she exclaimed as if talking to that infernal mushroom. “Death, the Glorious, the Victorious! Oh, to die in victorious fusion!”
She carried on in this way for another minute like a genuine St. Ewagiow. It was as if she were inside some sheath, some embalming fluid that sealed her in from anything I could say.
“Gladys!” I begged her. “Let’s see Sonata!”
Suddenly, she became herself again. “You fool, do you want to get us all into trouble? We have our instructions from the Board. Make love to me! Pretend I’m Cleo! See if you can memorize these lines. They’ll impress her.”
“Please, Gladys, darling — ”
“Don’t darling me! Memorize these lines.” And she recited:
“We will soon drink from eternity
Where we will discard all infirmity …”
“Who wrote them?” I muttered.
“R. Night Bauden, the poet laureate of the St. Ewagiow. The British Government put him in prison after the St. Ewagiow bombings in London in 1991.”
I memorized the lines and she recited two more:
“There is no help this side of the grave
Who says otherwise is prophet false and knave …”
“Damn!” I shouted. “Gladys, this is mad, mad, mad!”
She slapped my face. “I’m trying to help you do your duty, you fool.” She put her arms around my waist and in that low sad voice she whispered. “Kiss me, skeleton. For what are we but skeletons temporarily paroled to life?”
I tried to push her away, and she became angry. “How many days do you think there are to the 4th? You simply have to make love to that St. Ewagiow.”
“I guess you’re right,” I said gloomily.
“Let’s have those lines of R. Night Bauden.”
But I had forgotten them, and she looked at me with disgust. “You simply have no head for cultural things!” she said. “You better try a system, some quantitative system. You might try kissing her fifteen times in succession. Can you remember that, my stupid little sparrow?” She seized me and began kissing me and between kisses she said, “I love you!” Fifteen times, she said it, and when she was finished I didn’t want to let go. She laughed and wriggled out of my arms.
“Damn!” I said.
“Compliment her eyes. Maybe you can remember these lines?” And she recited:
“The eyes of a woman are her glorious prize
Until the worms make the final seize …”
I shook my head, and she said. “When you see her take along some of R. Night Bauden’s pamphlets. He’s written one on the subject of Universal Redemption. His argument is that since the earth is doomed eventually to become a frozen planet, time is on the side of the St. Ewagiow. They can fail in their historic mission, but Death, the last kind Mother, will eventually grant mankind Universal Redemption.”
“Gladys, must I?”
“You must, darling,” she sighed. “You better go now, I think you’ll acquit yourself with sextinction.” But despite the inevitable humor her face was unsmiling.
“You don’t want me to go, Gladys.”
“Go, go!” she shouted angrily.
Well, what could I do? (Ruth, forgive me. I did it for you and our children, for everybody’s children.)
I went back to suspect number one and convinced her she hadn’t been dreaming. That evening at the Atomic Amusement Park she filled out the application Dr. Lawrence Quipper had promised. The doctor excused her from her tour of duty, and when we drove back to Greater Miami, I again applied the fifteen-times technique. Later, in her room, as she lay quietly in my arms, I asked her how I could contact her father. She wept. I reminded her of the application and again promised that her father would receive a full Presidential pardon. It was another half hour before she whispered her secret. Whenever she wanted to reach her father she inserted an advertisement in “Magicience-and-You’.
1
Now that she had told me, she wept hysterically. “I’ve betrayed my own father!” she kept on saying. I could only soothe her by reminding her that she would be on the first experimental trip into Urania 235. Gradually, she quieted down and began kissing me. At the sixth or seventh kiss I was suspicious. Maybe imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but there should be some kind of decent interval. I broke away from that feverish addict. My mission was accomplished, and I wanted an advertisement in the very next edition. A special edition, if necessary, could be ordered by the Commissioner.
Downstairs in the lobby, I went into an Airwave
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booth and, when I had the Commissioner, I said in the code we had agreed upon. “Operation love successful. Radiation recommended for protection from Martians now that she has given us Formula Minus X
3
.”
Or, decoded: “Cleo F. is a woman after all. L. and O. protection recommended against St. Ewagiow now that she has given us information we wanted.”
1
Situated in the Paris section of Greater Miami. Greater Miami prided itself on its slogan “Come to Miami and see the world.” Spreading over a 200-mile area, it included the facsimiles of the world’s most interesting cities. Paris-in-Miami, Rome-in-Miami, Tokyo-in-Miami, etc.
1
These brassieres were made of roentgenic fibre that had been
X
-Ray powered. Especially popular at summer hotels, tourist cruises, etc.
2
So-named after the first space satellites launched by the Russians in the year 1957. See Appendix.
1
There were still a few Americans who enjoyed their anti-Semitism.
2
Tourist Liners were equipped with all sorts of gadgets whose sole function was to get a laugh.
1
STABB — Smoother than A Baby’s Bottom. It will be noted that even in their products they were fond of a humorous approach.
2
One of their terms of affection. See Appendix for full list.
1
Paris-in-Miami, that season, was a reproduction of the Paris that had existed prior to the first World War 1914-1918.
2
An imitation of the mushroom clouds that had followed the series of A-Bomb and H-Bomb tests in the period after the second World War of 1941-1945.
1
A fourwheeled conveyance made of rubber that could contract in heavy traffic and expand on the open road to vanity or limousine size.
1
The B.O. Think Machines had wanted to allocate all jobs at the age of one because a child’s reactions then — bedwetting, feeding, crying, etc. — were most significant of his future character development. But the nation’s mothers, unwilling to give up Smile-At-Mother Pills, etc., could not be convinced to cooperate.
2
She was boasting of their planned entertainment. One of their cabinet officials, human, was the Secretary of Fun, Pleasure and Miscellaneous Hobbies.
1
An opium-fortified gin with unpredictable effects.
1
The St. Ewagiow used a wide choice of symbols of which coffins and skulls were most favored. More morbid members went in for replicas of the inner organs; livers, intestines etc. Only hearts because of their sentimental associations with life and love, were forbidden.
2
A powerful soberer known as Sansan from the advertising slogan: SANITY BY SANITARY METHODS.
3
Characteristically, they made a Joke out of this work-serum. Bee-Ambo or Be-Ambitious. Invented in the year 1998 when the Rulers had foreseen that a society dedicated to the Pleasure Principle could easily stagnate. A compulsion to work was necessary in certain situations where human effort was needed.
1
A ton of nuclear fuel did the work of a million tons of coal, the fuel we used. With their biology they controlled the heredity of their animals and plants. They had perfected a pig, for example, that was all bacon — the bacon pig, the pork-chop pig, etc. — and the salada plant with leaves of lettuce and tomato fruit, flavored to taste like French or Russian dressing, etc. But our philosophy more than compensated us for such luxuries.
1
Paris-in-Miami was authentic to the smallest details.
2
Evil is he who evil thinks. Translation.
1
These immense Pleasure Works had succeeded such public works as TVA of a century ago.
2
The Director, Non-Human, of Atomic Amusement Park.
1
The A-in-A or All-in-All Medical equipped to simultaneously diagnose every possible disorder from alimentary tumors to zincoid nephritis.
1
The magicientists of Atomic Amusement Park achieved this effect by manipulating — through the use of light — the cone receptors of the human eye. See Appendix for article ‘Magnetism, Physical and Psychological.’
1
The Management of the Park were not arbitrary in this identification. June at the Park was a proton-male month but July would find the females identified with the electrically charged protons, and the males cast as neutrons.
1
A reproduction of physical phenomena where red light accompanies low energy, blue light high energy.
2
Gamma rays in the nucleus were created when surplus energy was ejected. They accompanied the ‘sex’ swap when protons emitted positrons and neutrons electrons.
1
Magictomatums as they were called at institutions like the Atomic Amusement Park.
2
The Albert Einstein formula for the equality of mass and energy. This famous formula of the great physicist of the twentieth century had led to the invention of the A and H-Bombs. It was reproduced everywhere, on coins stamps, lingerie, etc.
3
Ions or particles of mass.
4
Dee-magnets were used in cyclotrons to accelerate the speed of the whirling ions in atom-smashing.
1
The Rollercoaster was modeled after the cyclotron or electrical sling-shot invented a century earlier. Dee-shaped electrodes, always oppositely charged, caused a stream of particles, the size of atoms, to move around and around, accelerating the particles as they crossed the space between the two Dees.
2
The atoms that made up the spiral paths or tracks of the cyclotron.
3
The energy of bombardment. One million electrical volts, or one mev. Four hundred and eighty-seven mev were needed to smash an iron nucleus, giving rise to the popular expression, ‘I’ll give you a mev on the jaw.’
4
As we crossed the space between the Dees, the Dee-Shaped electrodes charged us to faster speeds exactly as in the cylcotron where the magnetic field charged the stream of whirling particles.
1
He was named after E. O. Lawrence, the Californian physicist who had invented the first cyclotron in 1939, for which he was awarded the Nobel prize.
2
This gadget wasn’t really a cyclotron but was so called by the public. These and similar atomic devices were not for public sale, restricted entirely for the use of the leading magicientists.
1
Ordinary magicientists wore black capes and black hats. Black and purple indicated the highest rank.
2
See Appendix for psychological-sexual excerpts from the dossier of Barnum Fly.
1
One of their leading publications, featuring letters and suggestions sent in by the public, and read by all magicientists.
2
This communicative device operated on the same principles as television of the twentieth century.
3
Their police codes like everything else were humorous.
