Keep The Giraffe Burning (6 page)

Everyone took sides but me. I tried hard to stay impartial, to wait for the final blaze of truth. At home I tried not to notice the yellowed clipping on the wall. None of the questions were checked off. We knew nothing.

The last week of October was the worst. Dr Grauber said that the first frost might kill the object, whether or not it was human. Dr Lowell agreed, but argued for moving it to a greenhouse, not a hospital. All over town there were cryptic notices of a massive GM procession, on Halloween, ‘Night of the Mask’. Police leave was cancelled for that night, and still more Marines were brought in. When I arrived for work at dusk, I saw them setting up machine guns on the barricades.
Ring of steel
, I thought.
And for what?

Someone said Dr Grauber wanted to see me. While I waited outside his office I could hear him and Lowell arguing.

‘You admit you know nothing of medicine, Dr Lowell. You’re a biologist. A marine biologist at that. You know about as much about medicine as I know about – pogonophorae.’

‘Certainly. But I don’t see –’

‘Then I’ll spell it out for you. The face is human, or part-human. If he dies, because you’ve disregarded medical advice – good advice – that’s murder.’

‘Oh, come now. You can’t –’

‘I can. I’ll have you arrested, Dr Lowell. And brought to trial.’

‘You’ll never prove it’s human.’

‘No, you’ll probably get off. But think of the headlines. Think of what the publicity will mean to your precious career.’

‘God damn you,’ said Lowell pleasantly. ‘I almost think you would, too. Still, I can always fire you.’

There was a loud click. When Lowell came out, he was putting the broken pieces of his pipe in his pocket. He looked worried, but when he saw me, he smiled.

‘Next patient,’ he said.

Grauber looked sick. He was polishing his pince-nez furiously, perhaps to disguise the trembling of his hands.

‘Ah, Anderson is it?’ He never remembered the names or faces of his staff. ‘Sit down, Anderson. I have some rather bad news for you.’

I sat down. ‘What is it, Doctor?’

‘The FBI came to see me earlier, to tell me you’re a security risk.’

‘What? Me?’

‘They showed me a photograph of you at some rally. One of these odd-ball groups that keeps trying to smash their way into the park. And they searched your room at the barracks and found a certain leaflet.’

‘But I can explain –’

He held up a hand. ‘I’m sure you can. I’m sure you can. But not to me.
I don’t understand these new political things.
They
say you must go, so go you must. I am sorry. Of course we’ll try to keep you on at the hospital, if we can. I’m sure you mean us no harm.’

‘No harm? No
harm
?’ When I got outside, I had to laugh. It’s said Auguste Kekulé laughed when he awoke from his dream to understand the benzene ring. In the words of the song:

Then I awoke

Was this some kind of joke?

It was, and the joke was on me. I had worked four months for the project, washing glassware, reading dials. Keeping an open mind, not taking sides. Waiting for the blaze of truth. And the truth was
I had never laid eyes on the Face itself
.

Well, now was the time. Coming up the hill to the park I could see the great GM procession, thousands on thousands of tiny lights like the glittering scales of one huge snake. Pointing to the truth in the park. Over there, in that little tent. What would they do, if they broke in? Carry it away? Fall down and worship, pressing their hideous masks to the ground? Too many questions (Can it speak? Can it think?), and no answers.

I thought of Kekulé’s dream again. Was there another meaning? The snake devours its tail: All things must turn back to their origins. The circle is zero. Ashes to ashes …

I took a 500 ml bottle of benzene from the lab, where I had used it to clean the glassware. Kekulé’s benzene, the big zero. When I tore open the flaps of the little tent I could hardly make out the Face. Just a lighter oval in the darkness. I poured the bottle of benzene on it and ignited it. They tell me there was an explosion. My face was burned, and I have lost my sight.

But I have seen enough.

Author’s Note.

This story is told in nine parenthetical ‘layers’:

1. The general’s last word.
   

2. A present tense account of the ‘Battle of the Corridor’ as he perceives it.
   

3. A past tense account of the past few days in the hospital.
   

4. A medico-military report on ‘the subject’s’ life, career and emotional state.
   

5. His top-secret monograph on The Master Plan.
   

6. Brief extracts from scenes of his childhood, youth and young manhood.
   

7. An ‘Item Description’ of Woman as he sees her.
   

8. His dreams.
   

9. A sub-dream ‘reality’ which permits him an overview of all of the above.
   

SH
(Yes, that was a kind of command:
QUIET – HOSPITAL ZONE.
The General’s dry eyes flicker, and he lets them close against the fluorescent whiteness.

He stands naked in the corridor, swaying slightly. When he opens his eyes he sees that the light has robbed him of his shadow. A little more gloom, he complains reasonably. And some eerie Muzak, please.
(Miss R. B. Glaski and Miss T. N. Nye were his two-day nurses. The punning part of his backbrain relabelled them Miss Glass and Miss Nylon, and then went on to further barbarisms: Intern Al Hemorrhage, etc. Only the surgeon, Dr Godden, seemed to escape.

One night the General awoke with a high fever
(The subject was born in Avalon, Iowa, in 1925, and there lived with both parents (and an older sister) until 1944, when drafted into the Army Air Force. The subject married Miss Ruth Matthias in 1946. Their only child, a boy, died at birth two years later.

9. Attended the following schools: University of Minnesota (USAFROTC), 1946-50: B.S. (Math.) Fort Buechner Flight School, Amis, Texas, 1951-2. The War College Annexe, Port Smith, Virginia: M.S., Ph.D. The Air Defense Academy, Casper, Wyoming, 1958-9. L’Ecole Supérieure de la Science Militaire, Antwerp, 1966.

The subject is an Associate Fellow of the Potomac Institute for Advanced Studies, Washington, D.C.
(It may seem presumptuous to call the Master Plan both beautifully simple and elegant, but such is done in the certain knowledge that it is the only means of carrying on wars of any kind whatever; that it will supersede everything from the meanest counterinsurgency campaign to the most ambitious and brilliant global showdown. The Plan is a complete, self-contained system of programming which does not admit of lesser plans. Strategy and tactics are drawn into its circle of radiance and there transmuted.
(In his room with the door shut, and The Lone Ranger turned up loud. Even then, he could hear Dad shouting at her. She’d be better off dead than coming to him like this. He’d rather kill any daughter of his who came home in trouble. The razor blade slipped through the sheet of balsa and into his finger and right out again.
(ITEM DESCRIPTION:
(He was late to work at the hybrid seed corn plant, so now he had to drive through the late-maze that must be insoluble. ‘They’re making a movie of my life,’ he explained to the doctor. ‘It must be in the next room, but I think it’s too late to see it.’ ‘On TV,’ the doctor said, motioning him to the second butcher’s block. On the first lay an oddly familiar figure, split open. It lay face down, like someone making love. The cleaver) Blood the colour of dirty brick fell to the razor-nicked edge of the table. ‘Hi-yo, Silver!’)
The subject was a jet ace twice in Korea, and was awarded the DFC in 1953. Later that year, the subject suffered a nervous collapse, and was retired from flight duty.)
conscious of a presence by the bed. Ruth? Out of the question – the night nurse, maybe. He did not roll over to look, but held himself rigid. After a while, he slept again. Dreamlessly.

The next morning Captain Savage made the first of his many little visits. He was not only attached to the General’s staff, he was for the moment the entire staff, his only link with the Pentagon. The two set about preparing the General’s monograph on the Master Plan.

Captain Savage was a fussy, pedantic little clerk, complete to the pair of silver-rimmed glasses gripping his nose like calipers. His sharp face grew animated when he was talking of numbers, and his hands – when they were not making a priestly gesture, fingertips together – were forever busy counting and naming things.

His briefcase contained only a silver writing instrument, a blank note pad, and the scrambler tape recorder.

(In October, 1960, Ruth née Matthias filed for divorce from her husband on the grounds of mental cruelty. A month later, she dropped this suit. In December, 1960, she committed suicide by barbiturates. Her note is reproduced in full:

This is it, big ace. Cram your Air Force. I’ve had it. I know you’ll be happy to be rid of me, so you can marry Helen. At least this is one way I’ll get away from the Air Force. Kiss me goodbye, dear. Be good. You’ve never loved me for a minute, or anything else but your magic squares or whatever they are. I want you to enjoy yourself, your few last years, with Helen. By the way ace, the doctor phoned. He says he thinks you’ve got cancer.

The note was pronounced genuine, after computer analysis by the Schneidman system, having the following characteristics:

• Specific information.
  

• Names of people, places, concrete things.
  ^*
  

• Frequent mention of a man.
  

• Gave instructions to others that were concrete enough to be carried out.
  

• Fewer percentage of THINK words.
  

• Greater percentage of actions by a man upon the writer.
  

• Mention of the word ‘love’.
  

*
Although the name ‘Helen’ does not seem to refer to a real person.

The following year, the subject underwent successful surgery for removal of a benign brain tumor. In 1966, a second tumor was removed from the colon. Within a few months, a malignancy was discovered in the region of the thyroid gland. The presence of a second growth in the brain was suspected, and in 1968 the subject entered Atwater Clinic for observation.

(THE BURAC 8800 SERIES COMPUTERS. This series, having been found useful for previous contingency theory operations, was selected for the Master Plan. Special, more highly flexible programming procedures were devised. To illustrate:

THE CHASE. Define a classic chase or hunt situation in which hunter A moves across the streets of a city in a car. He may make only right-angle turns, only at proper corners, and moves n blocks per second. The hunted, B, may move in any direction, not only keeping to the streets, but at a slower rate n - m blocks per second. At time t = 0, B makes his presence known to A at some point (x
_OB
, y
_OB
), while A is at some other point (x
_OA
, y
_OA
). A is blind to B’s movements, if any, after this time. The classic problem is to catch B in the shortest possible time. Assuming B’s
path to be completely random, this is a simple time series problem, and a solution is possible.

But suppose B is able to transport himself instantaneously from any point to any other. Suppose he is able to disappear entirely for any finite duration. Suppose that he is able to move in three dimensions, or some higher number. Classical analysis is unable to deal with these processes. But the Master Plan may deal with these and many other contingencies, including the unlikely possibility that B becomes A himself (hiding by identity)!

(He kept a diary, marking certain days with asterisks. In the summer he went detasseling, and the slippery sex organs of the male hybrid seed corn cut into his hands. The older boys smoked corn silk rolled up in newspaper. They asked him if he knew what a blanket party without a blanket was called. Peace on earth was the answer, and when he failed to laugh, they turned away, disgusted by his ignorance.

(ITEM DESCRIPTION:

1. WOMAN, Human, self-propelled, four-limbed, objective, interesting, sexually

2. not applicable

3. n/a.

(movie, in some other language, showed the three-year-old General tossing a stick into Fox Lake for Blackie to retrieve. The General wore his striped coveralls with the red rubber buttons he dared not touch. Blackie swam out and never came back.