GRAVITY RAINBOW (94 page)

Out of apparently nothing more than the emptiness of "The White Visitation," she finds a projector, threads a reel and focuses the image on a water-stained wall, next to a landscape of some northern coomb, with daft aristocrats larking about. She sees a white-haired girl in Pirate Prentice's Chelsea maisonette, a face so strange that she has recognized the mediaeval rooms before she does herself.

When did they-ah, the day Osbie Feel was processing the Amanita mushrooms… Fascinated, she stares at twenty minutes of herself in pre-Piscean fugue. What on earth did they use it for? The answer to that one's in the can too, and it isn't long before she finds it-Octopus Grigori in his tank, watching the Katje footage. Clip after clip: flickering screen and cutaways to Octopus G., staring-each with its typewritten date, showing the improvement in the creature's conditioned reflex.

Spliced on at the end of all this, inexplicably, is what seems to be a screen test of Osbie Feel, of all people. There is a sound track. Osbie is improvising a scenario for a movie he's written, entitled:

doper's greed "We open with Nelson Eddy in the background, singing:

Doper's greed,

Oh, doper's greed!

It's the most disgustin' thing I ever seed!

When you're out there feelin' fine,

It'll turn you into swine,

If you ever get a taste of DOPER'S GREED!

"Now into town ride two trail-weary cowboys, Basil Rathbone and S. Z. ('Cuddles') Sakall. At the entrance to town, barring their way, stands the Midget who played the lead in
Freaks.
The one with the German accent. He is the town sheriff. He is wearing an enormous gold star that nearly covers his chest. Rathbone and Sakall rein up, with uneasy smiles on their faces.

"RATHBONE: That can't possibly be
real,
can it?

"SAKALL: Hoo, hoo! Of course that's real, you wretched
eddict,
you vent 'n' chewed too much o' that veird
cectus,
beck down the trail. You should hev smucked that nice veed I had, I
tula
you-

"RATHBONE (with his nervous Sickly Smile): Please-I
don't
need a Jewish mother. I know what's real, and what isn't real.

"(The Midget, meanwhile, is posturing in different tough-hombre attitudes, and waving a brace of gigantic Colts about.)

"SAKALL: Vhen you been out on the trail-and
you know vhich
trail too, don't you you sniveling punk-for as long as I have, you know ah real midget sheriff from ah hallucinated vun.

"RATHBONE: I hadn't known either class existed. You must obviously have seen midget sheriffs all over this Territory, else you would hardly have invented the category. O-or would you? You know, you're just dodgy enough to try anything.

"SAKALL: You forgot 'You old rescal.'

"RATHBONE: You old rascal.

"They laugh, draw their guns, and exchange a few playful shots. The Midget is rushing back and forth, furious, emitting high-pitched German-accented Westernisms like 'This town ain't big enough for both of us!'

"SAKALL: Veil, ve're
both seeing
him. That means he's real.

"RATHBONE: Joint hallucination is not unknown in our world, podner.

"SAKALL: Who sez
it's joint
hallucination? Hoo, hoo! If it vas any kind of hallucination-I'm not saying it
is,
now-it vould be peyote. Or jimson veed, mebbe…

"This interesting conversation goes on for an hour and a half. There are no cuts. The Midget is active the whole time, reacting to the many subtle and now and then dazzling points presented. Occasionally the horses will shit in the dust. It is not clear if the Midget knows that his reality is being discussed. Another of this film's artful ambiguities. Finally, Rathbone and Sakall agree that the only way to settle the argument is to kill the Midget, who gathers their intention and runs off screaming down the street. Sakall laughs so hard he falls off his horse into the horse trough, and we get a final closeup of Rath-bone smiling, in his uncertain way. Fade up song:

When you're out there feelin' fine,

It'll turn you into swine,

If you ever get a taste of Doper's Greed!"

There is a brief epilogue to this, with Osbie trying to point out that of course the element of
Greed
must be worked somehow into the plot line, in order to justify the title, but the film runs out in the middle of an "uh…".

Katie by now is in a bewildered state, but she knows a message when she sees it. Someone, a hidden friend at "The White Visitation"-perhaps Silvernail himself, who's been less than fanatically loyal to Pointsman and his lot-has planted Osbie Feel's screen test deliberately here, where they knew she'd find it. She rewinds and runs the film again. Osbie is looking straight into the camera: straight at her, none of your idle doper's foolery here, he's
acting.
There's no mistake. It
is
a message, in code, which after not too long she busts as follows. Say that Basil Rathbone stands for young Osbie himself. S. Z. Sakall may be Mr. Pointsman, and the Midget sheriff the whole dark grandiose Scheme, wrapped in one small package, diminished, a clear target. Pointsman argues that it's real, but Osbie knows better. Pointsman ends up in the stagnant trough, and the plot/Midget vanishes, frightened, into the dust. A prophecy. A kindness. She returns to her open cell, gathers a few belongings in a bag, and walks out of "The White Visitation," past the undipped topiary hedges, growing back into reality, past peacetime's returned madmen sitting gently in the

sun. Once, outside Scheveningen, she walked the dunes, past the waterworks, past the blocks of new flats replacing the torn-down slums, concrete still wet inside its shuttering, with the same hope of escape in her heart-moved, a vulnerable shadow, so long ago, toward her rendezvous with Pirate by the windmill called "The Angel." Where is he now? Is he still living in Chelsea? Is he even alive?

Osbie is at home, anyway, chewing spices, smoking reefers, and shooting cocaine. The last of his wartime stash. One grand eruption. He's been up for three days. He beams at Katje, a sunburst in primary colors spiking out from his head, waves the needle he's just taken out of his vein, clamps between his teeth a pipe as big as a saxophone and puts on a deerstalker cap, which does not affect the sunburst a bit.

"Sherlock Holmes. Basil Rathborne. I was right," out of breath, letting her bag fall with a thump.

The aura pulses, bows modestly. He is also steel, he is rawhide and sweat. "Good, good. There's the son of Frankenstein in it, too. I wish we could have been more direct, but-"

"Where's Prentice?"

"Out scouting up some transportation." He leads her to a back room fitted out with telephones, a cork board with notes pinned all over, desks littered with maps, schedules,
An Introduction to
Modern Herero,
corporate histories, spools of recording wire. "Not very organized around here yet. But it's coming along, love, it's coming."

Is this what she thinks it is? Wakened from how many times and pushed away because it won't do to hope, not this much? Dialectically, sooner or later, some counterforce would have had to arise… she must not have been political enough: never enough to keep faith that it would… even with all the power on the other side, that it really would…

Osbie has pulled up folding chairs: hands her now a mimeographed sheaf, rather fat it is, "One or two things, here, you should know. We hate to rush you. But the horse trough is waiting."

And presently, his modulations having flowed through the rooms in splendid (and for a while distracting) displays of bougainvillea red and peach, it seems he has stabilized for the moment into the not-quite-worldly hero of a lost Victorian children's book, for he answers, after her hundredth version of the same question, "In the Parliament of Life, the time comes, simply, for a division. We are now in the corridors we have chosen, moving toward the Floor…"

Dear Mom, I put a couple of people in Hell today…

– Fragment, thought to be from

the
Gospel of Thomas

(Oxyrhynchus papyrus number classified)

Who would have thought so many would be here? They keep appearing, all through this disquieting structure, gathered in groups, pacing alone in meditation, or studying the paintings, the books, the exhibits. It seems to be some very extensive museum, a place of many levels, and new wings that generate like living tissue-though if it all does grow toward some end shape, those who are here inside can't see it. Some of the halls are to be entered at one's peril, and monitors are standing at all the approaches to make this clear. Movement among these passages is without friction, skimming and rapid, often headlong, as on perfect roller skates. Parts of the long galleries are open to the sea. There are cafes to sit in and watch the sunsets-or sunrises, depending on the hours of shifts and symposia. Fantastic pastry carts come by, big as pantechnicons: one has to
go inside,
search the numberless shelves, each revealing treats gooier and sweeter than the last… chefs stand by with ice-cream scoops at the ready, awaiting only a word from the saccharomaniac client to swiftly mold and rush baked Alaskas of any size and flavor to the ovens… there are boats of baklava stuffed with Bavarian cream, topped with curls of bittersweet chocolate, broken almonds, cherries as big as ping-pong balls, and popcorn in melted marshmallows and butter, and thousands of kinds of fudge, from liquorice to divinity, being slapped out on the flat stone tables, and taffy-pulling, all by hand, that sometimes extends around corners, out windows, back in another corridor-er, excuse me, sir, could you hold this for a moment? thank
you
-the joker is gone, leaving Pirate Prentice here, newly arrived and still a bit puzzled with it all, holding one end of a candy clew whose other end could be anywhere at all… well, he might as well follow it… prowling along looking quite wry, reeling in taffy by the yard, occasionally stuffing a bit in his mouth-mm, peanut butter and molasses-well, its labyrinthine path turns out, like Route One where it passes through the heart of Providence, to've been set up deliberately to give the stranger a tour of the city. This taffy trick is a standard orientation de-

vice here it seems, for Pirate now and then will cross the path of some other novice… often they'll have a time getting their strands of taffy disentangled, which has also been planned as a good, spontaneous way for the newcomers to meet. The tour now takes Pirate out into an open courtyard, where a small crowd has formed around one of the Erdschweinhohle delegates in a rip-roaring argument with some advertising executive over what else but the Heresy Question, already a pebble in the shoe of this Convention, and perhaps to be the rock on which it will founder. Street-entertainers go by: self-taught tumblers doing amazing handsprings on pavement that seems dangerously hard and slippery, choirs of kazoos playing Gilbert Sullivan medleys, a boy and girl who dance not along the level street but up and down, usually at the major flights of steps, whenever there's a queue to be waited through…

Gathering up his ball of taffy, which by now is growing quite cumbersome, Pirate passes Beaverboard Row, as it is known: comprising the offices of all the Committees, with the name of each stenciled above the doorway-A4… IG… OIL FIRMS… LOBOTOMY… SELF-DEFENSE… HERESY…

"Naturally you're seeing this all through a soldier's eyes," she's very young, insouciant, wearing a silly small young-woman's hat of the period, her face clean and steady enough for the broad-shouldered, high-waisted, no-neck profile they're all affecting these days. She moves along beside him taking long and graceful steps, swings her arms, tosses her head-reaches over to grab some of his taffy, and touching his hand as she does so.

"For you it's all a garden," he suggests.

"Yes. Perhaps you're not such a stick after all."

Ah, they do bother him, these free women in their teens, their spirits are so contagious,

[Where did the swing band come from? She's bouncing up and down, she wants to be jitterbugged, he sees she wants
to lose her
gravity
-]

I'll tell you it's just -out, -ray, -juss, Spirit is so -con, -tay, -juss, Nobody knows their a-ges…

Walkin' through bees of hon -ney, Throwin' away -that -mon, -ney, Laughin' at things so -fun -ny, Spirit's comin' through -to, -you!

Nev -ver, -mind, whatcha hear from your car, Take a lookit just -how -keen -they are,

Nev -ver, -mind, -what, your calendar say, Ev'rybody's nine months old today! Hey,

Pages are turnin' pages, Nobody's in -their, – ca, -ges, Spirit's just so – con, -ta, -gious- Just let the Spirit -move, -for, -you!

The only office not physically touching the others on Beaverboard Row, intentionally set apart, is a little corrugated shack, stovepipe coming out the top, pieces of automobile lying around rusted solid in the yard, piles of wood under rain-colored and failing canvas, a house trailer with its tires and one wheel tilted forlorn in the spanging of the cold rain at its weathered outsides… devil's advocate's what the shingle sez, yes inside is a Jesuit here to act in that capacity, here to preach, like his colleague Teilhard de Chardin, against return. Here to say that critical mass cannot be ignored. Once the technical means of control have reached a certain size, a certain degree of
being connected
one to another, the chances for freedom are over for good. The word has ceased to have meaning. It's a potent case Father Rapier makes here, not without great moments of eloquence, moments when he himself is clearly moved… no need even to be there, at the office, for visitors may tune in from anywhere in the Convention to his passionate demonstrations, which often come in the midst of celebrating what hep humorists here are already calling "Critical Mass" (get it? not too many did in 1945, the Cosmic Bomb was still trembling in its earli-ness, not yet revealed to the People, so you heard the term only in the very superhepcat-to-hepcat exchanges). "I think that there is a terrible possibility now, in the World. We may not brush it away, we must look at it. It is possible that They will not die. That it is now within the state of Their art to go on forever-though we, of course, will keep dying as we always have. Death has been the source of Their power. It was easy enough for us to see that. If we are here once, only once, then clearly we are here to take what we can while we may. If They have taken much more, and taken not only from Earth but also from us- well, why begrudge Them, when they're just as doomed to die as we are? All in the same boat, all under the same shadow… yes… yes. But is that really true? Or is it the best, and the most carefully propagated, of all Their lies, known and unknown?