R.W. VI - Riverworld and Other Stories

  Quivering, his stomach twisting like a snake trying to bite its own tail, he shot out of bed and into the shower. Ten minutes later, physically clean but mentally still filthed, he went into the front room. It was a shambles, dirty glasses, an empty fifth, a forest-fire aftermath of butts and ashes. He'd have to clean up before the cleaning woman got here. After turning off the stereo, he ran back to the back bedroom. Horrified, he gazed at the rumpled sheets, spotted with what looked like poltergeist crap but wasn't.

  The kitchen table held her typewriter and carbons from a manuscript. At least she'd done some writing before the orgy. When it came to work, all Healeys were conscientious. Though in her case, the world'd be better off if she neglected it.

  Unable to eat breakfast, he read part of her new novel. Prude and Prejudice by Jane Austen-Healey. It was her usual filth, its only redeeming quality being, not social significance, but its potentiality for making money. Whatever her vices, a disdain for money was not among them. Thank God, at least she wasn't a Communist.

  The novel took place in the near-future, which made it science-fiction, another black mark against it. The women's-lib movement had resulted in an accelerating number of young impotents. One of these, a shamus named John – the bitch named all her protagonists John – had gone to a penitorium. This was run by a mad scientist, Herr Doktor Sigmund Arschtoll, who'd invented a quick method of transplanting male genitals. John Jemencule had been given a penis guaranteed to rise, but he'd found that occurred only when he was in church and singing hymns.

  The scientist had offered a refund or a new cock. John had taken the latter, only to discover that it only inflated during the singing of the national anthem. Arschtoll couldn't understand what had gone wrong. So he offered John, who was a detective – all Jane's heroes were dicks, the bitch – the job of tracking down the culprit. John had accepted, though not before getting another organ.

  The moment he stepped into the men's room across the hall, he discovered that it was of the gay persuasion.

  'Zee vhat I mean?' Arschtoll said. 'De manufacturer'ss schlipped in a bad bunch on me. Prooff it, andt I'll giff you four grandt and trow in an Iron Cross.'

  'First, give me another pri – pri – pri –, uh, male member,' John Jemencule said. 'They can't all be bad, can they?'

  'De only way to findt out iss to be scientific. Dat is ekshperiment. Here. Try dis vone.'

  It was too late to start the new case that day. Jemencule went home to watch the Erotic Box Office channel on TV. By the time he'd seen three shows, he was wondering what was wrong with his fourth organ. He found out when he switched to a straight channel, which was showing a musical version of The Sheep-man.

  John Healey threw the carbons on the floor. No use destroying them; Jane hid the top copy. This couldn't go on. Like it or not, he must see a psychiatrist. He wasn't mentally ill, but he'd do anything to get rid of Jane, anything that was moral, that is. Doctor Irving Mundwoetig, Cut-Rates for Oral and Anal Fixations, Multiple Personalities a Specialty, looked across his mahogany banana-shaped desk at Healey.

  'It's no disgrace. You'd be surprised how many policemen have sneaked in. Take off that ridiculous fake moustache and those dark glasses and tell me what troubles you.'

  Healey gulped and then blurted, 'I'm a schizo!'

  'Aren't we all? Well, begin at the beginning. You don't mind if I drink and smoke? It makes me more relaxed.'

  John reared up from his chair. 'I hate those filthy habits! All filthy habits!'

  'You don't shit?'

  'I'm leaving. I have to put up with dirty talk from my fellow officers, but I don't have to from you.'

  'Most rigid,' the doctor murmured. 'Very well. No you-know-what from now on. So, sit down.'

  Haltingly, blushing, squirming, Healey told him of the terrible events of the past four years.

  'This case could make me famous, a best-seller author,' the doctor murmured.

  'What?'

  'Nothing. Did anything traumatic occur just before the emergence of your sister?'

  'I woke up one morning and found the spare bedroom closet full of women's clothes. And a douche bag in the extra bathroom, for pity's sake!'

  'At least she's clean. What I meant was, did anything traumatic happen before then?'

  'Nothing.'

  'You've repressed the incident, since you yourself purchased the feminine articles.'

  'Not me!' Healey shouted. 'She did it! Don't you dare say I'm the same person as that cu – cu–... uh... woman!'

  Sighing, Mundwoetig poured out a triple bourbon.

  'Okay. When you were twelve, you went for a hike in the woods near your home. You took your female German shepherd along. A police dog, note. Your twin sister, Jane, insisted on following you. You forced her to leave, but she refused to go without Princess. Neither was ever seen again. You think some sick man killed the dog, raped your sister, murdered her, then buried both someplace.'

  'I think he raped Princess, too.'

  The doctor's eyebrows rose. 'Oh? Why?'

  'You know how those perverts are.'

  'Anyway, you felt great guilt. Your child's mind determined then that you'd be a cop, avenge your sister by ridding the world of perversion. Since then you've led a very puritanical life. You've never even had intercourse with a woman.'

  'With anyone.'

  'Curious you should say that. However, you have been having intercourse in your persona as Jane Austen-Healey, porno writer and, to use your own phrase, general all-around slut.'

  'I can't take it anymore! I've thought of committing suicide, that'd show the bitch, but it wouldn't look good on my record. On the other hand, maybe I'd be doing her a service. Like putting a sick cur out of its misery.'

  'How do you know she's not having fun fu–... uh, isn't well-adjusted?'

  'Would you call a woman well adjusted who maliciously and vindictively forces her own brother to get bug – bug – bug – sod – sod – sod–... degrades him?'

  'You say she usually takes over when you're asleep? But lately you've been blanking out in the evening, always at home? Are you aware that sometimes the new persona absorbs the old...? Do you feel faint, Mr Healey?'

  'It must be the smoke.'

  'If you can't stand the smoke of speculation, you'll never be able to endure the heat of the fire of fact. Hmm! Not a bad phrase. I'll put it in my... never mind. But it does need polishing. Anyway, I'll just drink if the smoke really gets you down. Now, what we have to do is find out why Jane has appeared. We might get a clue to that by observing how she behaves. This is a mystery, and you're a detective. If you applied the same type of reasoning in this case as you do in your police work, then..."

  'You want me to arrest myself and then read my rights to myself?'

  'That would be a bizarre turn! The readers... uh, I meant to say we've done all we can this session. Besides, the bottle is empty. I'll see you tomorrow.' Swaying, the doctor rose.

  Healey groaned and said, 'Oh, God, Doc, what if she took over while I was on duty? I'd be disgraced. The department would drum me out if I was caught arresting a public comfort-station queen while I was in drag.' 'It could be worse. If you were caught going...' 'Don't you dare say it! Doc, you think we got enough time?' 'I certainly hope so. There's not enough material yet. I mean... Hey! I just thought of something! It's a wonder you didn't long before now. Why don't you correspond with her? You might establish a beautiful relationship. You must admit there's a wide communication gap between you two.'

  Dear Jane:

  He erased the words. He wasn't a hypocrite. He wouldn't address as Dear anyone he hated, unless that person owed him money.

  But the omission might make her furious.

  Dearest Jane,

  Please. Could we correspond? Maybe we could work something out, get to like each other. Then I'd give you more of my prime time if you'd quit boozing and whoring around and would write respectable novels. You could take over right after my supper and maybe then you could get
to bed early and without sinning and I could get some rest. And I wouldn't wake up feeling like I'd been raped all night. Though God knows, with you it's not rape.

  He tore the sheet up. No use pi – pi – angering her.

  But the longer he sat up trying to mentally compose a friendly letter, the angrier he got. Why should he demean himself? Besides, he couldn't trust her to limit herself to the agreed-upon timesharing. Let a bitch get her nose in, and she'd take over the whole kennel.

  Jane:

  I give up. You got me by the balls short hairs neck. But I just can't take it any more. There's only one way out for me. And for you. Unless you agree to reform 100 percent. Believe me, if you don't, I'm going to shoot myself in the head. It'll be a suicide-homicide case, though the police won't know it. But, though I'm desperate, I am open to reason. If you can tell me how we can work this out, and it's moral, I'll do it.

  Brother!

  You think I like it any better than you do? You don't know how disgusted I am to be incarcerated in the body of such a repulsive uptight bluenose. Or the nausea I have to overcome each night when I find myself in your clumsy hairy ugly body. I should have boobs and a cunt and be properly fucked. And I yearn to have a baby. It's your goddamn fault I can't.

  I wish I could peel you like I do my panties and drop you in the garbage. But I can't. So, remember that two can play at this game. If you don't quit bugging me, I'll take poison. I've written a letter by you in which you confess to being a closet alcoholic, smoker, drug addict, porno writer, and queen. Don't think about killing yourself before I can put it on the table for the police to read. A dear friend will mail his copy to the D.A. if the police don't get the first one. Your fingerprints will be, all over the sheets, and it's no trouble for me to forge your signature.

  Your fuzz brothers and the decency league will piss on your grave. Have a good day.

  John groaned. The bitch wasn't easily scared. She had his great courage.

  Jane had completed her latest offering of dirt. John read the carbons from the point at which he'd left off.

  •••

  Jemencule, Arschtoll's undercover agent, had gone to work for the maker of artificial penises. (Burning with indignation, Healey skimmed through the many pages of sexual scenes obligatory in hardcore porno. But he read carefully the descriptions of how the organs were made.)

  The owner, Professor Castor Fouteur, another mad scientist, used a fairly simple recipe to prepare his wonder pricks. He dumped tons of bull pizzles into a vat, added some chemicals, turned on a low heat, and thus made a vast pot of liquid protein. Add a dash of Spanish fly, stir well, and run off into moulds, where the cooling stuff formed huge phalli lacking only the nerves. These were handstitched in separate rooms.

  The rooms were air-conditioned; music of the workers' choice was piped in; there were four ten-minute sex breaks. Morale, though not morals, was high.

  After a hundred pages, during which Jemencule's sleuthing was often interrupted by sexbook boilerplate orgies in which he unfortunately couldn't participate, he figured out what was wrong with the product. The chemicals in the vat had accidentally sensitised the protein to certain types of sound. When the phalli were subjected to the genre of music played in each room, conditioned reflexes, a kind of imprinting, were installed in them. This explained why the penises only became erect under certain circumstances.

  It wasn't the gays or the sheep that had made Jemencule's organs stand at attention. It was the Muzak in the men's room and the film score.

  But, unscrupulous bastard that he was, he decided to keep the secret to himself until he could sell it for a huge sum to a syndicate. Before leaving the factory, he concealed six organs in his clothing. Not only would he need them as samples for analysis, he could use them himself. All he had to do to ensure potency was to affix one suited to the type of his date, musically speaking. If she loved rock, he'd play that in his pad. If she was a classical buff, Beethoven's Fifth would guarantee a tremendous fu – fu –... uh... coitus. And what a climax!

  But a surprise doorcheck exposed him manifold. Fouteur tortured him – all Jane's Johns were tortured, the vindictive so-and-so – until he confessed. The professor couldn't permit the spy to go free, and he was temporarily short of protein supply anyway. Screaming, Jemencule was added to the basic recipe of bull's pizzles.

  •••

  'What your sister symbolises there,' Mundwoetig said, 'is that you're a big prick. But she, in a literary sense, turns you into a bunch of little pricks. Hence, you become harmless and, in fact, comic. Not to be taken seriously.'

  'Horse poppies!'

  'What's meat to the unconscious is poison to the conscious. Hmm. Like that phrase. This is going to be a cornerstone classic.'

  The doctor poured out a large glass from a gallon-sized decanter.

  'My analyst and I really got someplace last session. I'm off the hard stuff now, a giant step forward in my therapy. However, back to work. We're at the stage where I can give you some clues, but you'll have to work out their significance yourself. Otherwise, you'll refuse to believe it.

  'Jemencule becomes soup before being made into many practically independent phalli. That is, they're more organisms than organs.

  'Neverhard, in Sensuality and Sensibility, is pressed flat as a shadow by a triphammer and then buried in a bed of pansies.

  'Heisslippen, the time traveller in Man's Fouled Park, accidentally becomes part of a dinosaur egg.

  'Petard, in Enema, is eaten by a giant Venus flytrap.

  'Does all this suggest anything to you? No? All right. Is Jane unconsciously encoding messages to you? And to herself of course? You don't think so. Well, try this one on for size. Fizzle, in Prude and Prejudice, equates with puzzle. Solve the puzzle, and you've got a pizzle. Does that grab you?'

  'You're nuts.'

  'Would I spend all my time talking to funny-farm candidates if I wasn't? Just joking. But sit down! It's time for a long hard penetration of your defence mechanisms. You act as if your sister is an entirely separate entity from you. Originally, she was. But now she's not a person who was born by your mother. Like Athena sprung full-grown from Zeus' head, Jane was conceived full-blown – maybe I should retract that phrase and say completely adult – in your own mind.

  'She's an artificial personality you've made. Thus, she can behave as you unconsciously wish you could. Yet you need not be guilty about her mode of life because she's an independent person.

  'On the other hand, you do feel guilt because of what happened to her. Which was really what? Here's something you've been dodging whenever I bring it up. You say Jane took Princess back with her so Jane'd have both a companion and a guardian in the woods. But...'

  'You're even more perverted than my sister is! I don't have to let you bury me in your filth! I won't listen to it!'

  Mundwoetig, shouting, staggered after Healey as he ran down the hall. But the detective couldn't understand the words because of the finger jammed into each ear. Which made Mundwoetig wonder, fleetingly, if he'd overlooked an aural fixation in his patient.

  Healey, plunging into the crowd in the lobby, could hear well enough to know that the doctor had quit shouting. And he could hear him suddenly stop yelling and start whistling at him. Fighting the urge to turn back, he kept running.

  •••

  So many suicides took place in bedrooms because they were where the fu – fu – fu – conceptions occurred. A bedroom was the beginning, the alpha, and so should be the end, the omega. And since he was born naked, he'd go out naked. Almost, anyway. He just hadn't been able to take off his shorts. A man had to preserve at least a minimum decency.

  His finger curled around the trigger of the .38, the muzzle of which was close to his temple.

  'Good-bye, Jane. I'm really sorry about the whole thing, though God knows I didn't do anything to start it. I just can't stand this any more. I've spread newspapers around so the blood won't mess up the carpet. Here goes!'

  A loud
voice, a woman's but recognisable as that of the child he'd known so well but so briefly, spoke.

  'Oh no, you don't! You're not going to kill me twice. I managed to eavesdrop today, for the first time ever. I understood what your analyst was saying, even if you didn't, you dumbhead. So I've been bulldozing my way through the barriers because I knew that if I didn't we'd die.

  'I don't particularly care for the way I'm going to use to save us. But it's the lesser of two evils.

  'So... I'm pulling the switch, you dogfucker!'

  •••

  The doctor, approaching the front porch of Healey's house, could hear the barking.

  'Too late, too late,' he muttered as he swung open the unlocked front door. 'Oh, well. Win a few, lose a lot. Maybe it's for the best. Or am I rationalising?'

  Healey bounded awkwardly toward him, his tongue hanging out. Mundwoetig patted him on the head, which encouraged him to rear up and lick the doctor's face.

  'Sit, Princess!'

  THE PHANTOM

  OF THE SEWERS

  Foreword

  * * *

  Now and then, here and there, I write a 'fictional-author story.' This is a tale supposedly written by an author who is a character in fiction. An example would be David Copperfield or Anna Karenina. No stories by them have as yet appeared in print, but I wouldn't be surprised if they don't show up someday in a magazine or a book.

  The first that I wrote under a fictional-author byline was the novel Venus on the Half-Shell by 'Kilgore Trout. 'Breathes there a person who doesn't know of Kilgore Trout? Plenty, I've found out. But millions are well acquainted with this sadsack science-fiction author who appears in Kurt Vonnegut's God Bless You, Mr Rosewater, Slaughterhouse-Five, and Breakfast of Champions. And many, a few years ago, were astonished to see this novel appear on the bookstands. Here they had thought all along that Trout was only a fictional character, yet here was a novel by Trout with a bibliography of Trout's works, a short biography, and a photograph on the back cover of a scroungy-looking long-bearded much-shafted science-fiction author.