Perhaps they did. When he got to the bureau, he saw that no one was working and that the supervisors did not seem to care. In fact, these were just as manic as their underlings. They stood around outside their offices talking, though with other supervisors, not the workers, and they drank coffee and laughed and joked. Shaking his head, Duncan went into his enclosure and sat down. Though no one else had even turned on the power to the computers, he activated his equipment. Now, what was he supposed to do?
That made him frown. His duties were hazy, somewhere in his mind but apparently skipping about, not ready to settle down and put their shoulders, as it were, to the wheel. He swore. Somehow, he had become infected with the over-buoyancy and giddiness of the others. He decided that he would ignore it. But, though he stared at the screens, he could not summon any concentration. And, when several colleagues suggested that they go out and have a drink, he said, “Sure! Sounds like a great idea!”
What the hell am I doing? he thought as he walked with the group past a gaggle of supervisors. These did not even seem to notice that the data bankers had deserted their posts and that many were leaving the office. Duncan, like his cronies, walked past the machine in which he was supposed to insert his ID card when he left the premises during working hours.
Outside, the group stood for a moment talking about where the best place to celebrate would be. They had trouble making themselves heard above the cries and laughs of the pedestrians and the passengers on the buses and the cyclists in the courseway. By the time that his colleagues had agreed that the Snorter was the nearest tavern and therefore the best, Duncan knew why the courseway was so jammed. The stores were empty; the clerks and customers who should have filled them were all outside. At the moment, that did not seem strange to him. Of course, these people did not want to work any more than he did. And, since the overseers were out in the crowd, why shouldn’t they be?
Getting to the Snorter was not easy. They had to push through the jam. Taking a bus would not help them. These were by now halted in the press. Even if the vehicles could have moved, the drivers had also left their posts.
“What’s going on?” Duncan shouted to Wark Zoong Cobledence, a woman who worked at the enclosure next to his.
“What do you mean?” she yelled.
“Ah, forget it!” he screamed. Which he did at once.
By the time that the group had reached the Snorter, it had only five left out of the original ten. They dived into the tavern, giggling and chortling, then lost some of their zest. The place was jammed with customers, but the waiters had not shown up or had left shortly after doing so. For the moment, the crowd was stymied. They milled around chattering or shouting as if their voices would summon the waiters. Then a woman walked behind the nearest bar, grabbed a glass from under the bar, and filled it with whiskey from a wall spigot. She downed the three-ounce drink, choked, and, eyes tearing, said loudly, “Drinks are on me!”
Others joined her to act as bartenders who were also their own best customers. Some people made an effort to pay for the drinks by inserting their cards into the proper slots, but they were pushed away and jeered at.
“Today’s Freedom Day!” Padre Cabtab bellowed. “Let everything be free! Or, if you insist, on me! But don’t ask me my name!”
The crowd in the room thinned somewhat as others went to the remaining rooms, where the same thing happened. Presently, everybody was more or less drunk, mostly more, and having a very good time. Duncan and Cabtab, huge brandy goblets sloshing over the brims with World Joy bourbon, the second-best in the world, found a booth. Two more patrons, uninvited, sat down by them. One was a very dark and good-looking woman wearing only a purple-and-rose dressing gown. She said that she lived down the street, had not eaten breakfast, and had stuck her head out of the door to see what was going on. On impulse, she had decided to go into the street and get in on the merrymaking.
“So, here I am, ready for everything and anything!”
Her fingers tightened gently on Duncan’s crotch.
This, for some reason, neither surprised nor disturbed him.
However, the man who had sat down with her did surprise Duncan. He was the thin man with the big eyes and the green hat with antennae whom Duncan had met on the train from New Jersey. Professor Carebara. Who, Duncan remembered with a jolt, he had seen briefly on TV after the big brawl at the Snorter. Carebara’s face seemed even longer and narrower and his huge eyes almost insectine. He wore yellow calf-high boots, red kneebreeches, a blue swallowtail coat, a ruffled white shirt with a cataract of light-green lace at the ends of the sleeves, and a green hat shaped like an ancient Puritan’s. It sported two foot-long purple antennae.
Padre Cabtab said, loudly, “What are you doing here, Professor? Slumming?”
Carebara sipped his wine, then said, “Of course not. I come here sometimes to check on the ant population.”
“Ants?” Cabtab said. “What ants?”
“You haven’t seen any? I’m surprised. The bureau’s had a lot of complaints. They’re everywhere, they live in the spaces between the walls, in warehouses, any place where they are not likely to be disturbed. They’re a recent mutation of a species the scientific name of which would mean nothing to you. Suffice it that they’re what laypersons call garden ants. They seem to have adapted wonderfully to what should be a hostile environment. They eat anything that can sustain human life, and they also eat other insects, including cockroaches. They—”
“Cockroaches?” the padre said. “What cockroaches?”
“There are plenty in L.A., though they tend to thrive in the residences of the minimum-credit blocks. The dropouts are very careless about cleaning up, despite all the government has done to educate them in the extreme need and urgency of sanitary living. In fact, I suspect the minims deliberately act like slobs just to defy the government. Anyway and however, I am not interested so much in the ants themselves, though they do present certain bizarre and fascinating features, as I am in the mimetic parasites that have moved in with them. These, too, are recent mutations, and they…”
Duncan quit listening. The woman who had sat down with Carebara had slid under the table and was now doing something that erected the professor’s ants far above Duncan’s mental view. Cabtab leaned over the table, ignoring Carebara’s lecture, and said, “What’s she doing down there?”
“I don’t want to talk,” Duncan said. His face twisted; he gasped; it was over. Then it was the padre’s turn to grab the edge of the table, roll his eyes, groan, and gasp. A few seconds later, the professor stopped talking, and his face, usually deadpan, bent like a bow, twitched like the skin of an animal dislodging flies, and he uttered a long aah! After which his eyes became less huge, and he resumed his lecture, though not from where he had left off.
“Who is she?” Duncan said.
Carebara did not reply. Duncan squeezed the professor’s thin shoulder. “Who is she?”
“I don’t know,” Carebara said, looking angry. “Why don’t you ask her?”
The woman crawled out from under the table, reached up, took the padre’s goblet, drank, and went on all fours to the next booth. Duncan half-rose and watched the expressions on the face of the woman seated on the outer edge. Her companions, a woman and two men, seemed to be aware of what was going on. They laughed shrilly and made remarks that the woman paid no attention to. Presently, hands clenching the table edge, her head thrown back, eyes closed, she moaned. Duncan sat down and turned his head away.
“No one objects,” he said.
“Why should they?” Cabtab said.
Duncan had no answer to that.
“A very generous and democratic woman,” the padre said. “I toast her.” He lifted his goblet, saw it was empty, and banged it down. “Waiter! Waiter!”
“You forget there aren’t any,” Duncan said. “I’ll get the drinks.”
He got up from the booth but could not resist looking under the booth next to his. The nameless woman was now occupied with
the man next to the woman she had first attended. Duncan shook his head, whether in admiration or disgust he did not himself know, and pushed through the crowd around the bar. They gave way without protest until he tried to squeeze between a man and a woman.
“Who do you think you’re shoving?” the man said. He wore a dark orange hat shaped like a castle and had a long beard separated into many strands tied by buttercup-yellow ribbons.
“Just trying to get a drink,” Duncan said mildly. Much of the tension, irritation, and uneasiness that had been swelling up these last three days had left him. And the whiskey also helped make him feel mellow.
“Don’t take any crap from him, Milo!” the woman shrilled. She lifted her arm above the mob and poured her vodka over Duncan’s head.
“That’s a waste of good booze!” the man growled, and he hit, not Duncan, who had thought he was going to get the fist, but the woman.
Duncan brought his fist up close to his chest—he had no room to straighten the arm out—and caught the man under the chin with it. Then he half-turned and jerked the back of his elbow into the woman’s solar plexus. She quit laughing, doubled up, then fell to the floor. The man Duncan had hit staggered back but not far because of the press of bodies. Bellowing, he lurched toward Duncan, who ducked. The man fell over the woman, who was just trying to get back up, and Duncan slammed his knuckles against the man’s cheekbone. All his mellowness was gone.
The room exploded. The fighting did not spread out from where Duncan, the woman, and the man were. It seemed as if it was not the contact of fists that started the brawl but the idea of a brawl. That flashed through the big rooms with the speed of thought, and the philosophical concept became realization. Inside a second, all the patrons were either trying to strike, scratch, or kick someone or else attempting to fight their way out of a fight. Duncan did not have long to contemplate the speed with which the tavern became a gladiator’s delight. Something very hard, probably the bottom of a thick mug, slammed into the back of his head. Half-senseless, he fell to his knees. Descent seemed like a good idea then. It was certainly an irresistible one. He went down on his face, groaning, the impact softened by a woman’s leg. A man fell heavily on Duncan’s back, rolled off, but did not get up. Duncan stared at the bloodied face near his and decided that it made sense to stay on the floor. His vision began to clear, but the pain in the back of his head got worse. Meanwhile, feet banged into him, though not very hard. No one was trying to hurt him; the blows were accidental. Nevertheless, unintentional kicks can cause pain.
He made another decision. He would get out of the place and to home, where he could treat his injuries. That would not be done without more bruises and bloodshed. But if he stayed, he was going to get hurt more, anyway.
And where were the organics? Why hadn’t they come charging into the place, spraying everybody with unconscious-making aerosol, quieting the hullabaloo to a whisper? The age-old complaint that the ganks were never there when you needed them was certainly true just now.
No sooner had he gotten on hands and knees than a woman fell backward over him on his right and a man fell onto the back of his legs. These, however, did not stay on top of him. Cursing, screaming, and hitting—including two blows on Duncan’s back—and all in all having a very good time, the two left. Only to return and to fall on him again. He struggled up. A knee banged his nose. Blood gushed out onto the hardwood floor below him. He got back down, rolled over, pulled out a piece of tissue paper, and held it to his nose.
“To hell with it! I’ll just stay here until this blows over!”
He could not resist kicking a man who was struggling with another just in front of him. His heel drove into the man’s crotch. Screaming, bent over, holding his testicles, the man was hit on top of his head with his antagonist’s interlocked hands. Then the antagonist stumbled over Duncan and shot into the small and ever-changing space between the legs of two grappling men. The knees of both rammed him in the ears and rendered him momentarily unaware of the fickleness of geometry or his pain. Duncan, despite what he had decided a few seconds before, got on all fours again. By then the space above six inches from the floor had increased somewhat. A lot of people were lying down, by choice or not. Even the noise level had lowered, though someone entering the Snorter just then would have thought that the place sounded like the halls of hell.
High above the rest rose the bellow of Padre Cabtab. Duncan glimpsed him lifting a kicking woman high above his head. The arms bent and the woman shot forward and felled three men with her body. Duncan rose again, plowed through the crowd toward the priest, had to defend himself against a man and then a woman, got by them with some bruises and scratches, and suddenly was in a comparatively open area near Cabtab. The padre had just made some more space by hurling a man against two others and flooring all three.
“Glory to the gods of battles, Jahweh and Woden!” the padre yelled. His face was a blaze of joy smeared with blood. “This is wonderful spiritual and physical therapy!”
“Let’s get out of here, let them be happy,” Duncan said.
Then he saw Panthea Snick, whom he had not known was still in the Snorter. Her robe had been torn off, leaving her wearing panties and high-heeled shoes. One shoe, anyway. She was beating a woman over the head with the heel of the left shoe. Both were bleeding here and there, and she had a big blue mark over one eye.
“Follow me!” Duncan shouted hoarsely. He staggered up to the two females and pulled Snick away. The other woman fled, holding her head with both hands.
“It’s me, Dunc,” he said while Snick writhed in his two arms. His nose was buried in the back of her hair, which smelled of perfume, whiskey, and blood. “Let’s go!”
The woman who had run off came back with two men. They advanced, spreading out to take Duncan and Snick from three sides. But Cabtab barreled across the floor, leaping over bodies, and slammed into one man, who was bowled over against the next. All three went down. Only Cabtab got up. The woman, shrieking, fled again.
“Out we go,” Duncan said. He turned and bore Snick, screaming, her arms and legs waving, through the door. Cabtab followed him.
Outside was even worse, and Duncan wondered briefly if he should go back into the tavern. There were dozens of battlers slugging it out in the courseway and scores of bodies, some moving, some not, on the spongy black-and-scarlet-striped floor of the way. The noncombatants were either making love in various ways or feverishly betting on the battlers.
Snick suddenly went limp. She said, “Put me down. I’ll be all right when I get some clothes on.”
He released her.
“I think we should get out of the ways,” he said. “My apartment is the closest place.”
He looked around. Where were the ganks? Where were the ambulances and the doctors? Probably busy elsewhere. They just did not have the numbers needed to handle what must be a citywide riot. Plus brawl. Plus orgy.
He motioned to the padre, who was standing near the door to the Snorter. Cabtab did not seem to notice the gesture; he was looking upward at the ceiling courseway, which was a display of a deep blue sky and some wispy wind-driven clouds. Duncan called the padre’s name, but Cabtab did not acknowledge it. His eyes were wide, and his face had the most joyous expression Duncan had ever seen. It made Duncan uneasy. No. Scared.
Cabtab suddenly lowered his gaze, his mouth working angrily but his face keeping the same “caught” expression. He lifted his hands and tore off the neckchains holding the dozen or so religious symbols. The crucifix, star of David, crescent, Thor’s hammer, voodoo idol, and other figures flew up and out, falling into and on the crowd. Next to fall was the padre himself. He toppled stiff and straight as a tree sawed through at the base of the trunk and hit the slightly yielding sidewalk hard. Duncan ran toward him, pushing some spectators out of the way and jumping over bodies. By the time he reached Cabtab, the man had lost his rigidity and was vibrating every which way. He was not having an epileptic seizure; his eyes were wide open and
bright, and he was talking rapidly. However, the language was one Duncan had never heard, and he was familiar with the sounds of the twenty still spoken on Earth.
A moment later, Snick, sealing up a robe she must have taken from one of the unconscious women, was by his side. “What’s the matter with him?” she said, breathing hard. “He looks like he’s had a vision.”
“I think you’re not far off the track.”
Duncan jumped to avoid being knocked over by Cabtab’s explosive rising from the sidewalk. The padre had lost much of the rapt look, but enough remained to shine forth. The molecules of his face seemed to have rearranged themselves into new features. If Duncan had not known that the man had to be the padre, he might not have recognized him.
“No more the ancient gods!” Cabtab howled. “They have gone and will not return! If indeed they were ever here! No! Yes! People, gather around me! I bring good news, perhaps the first you’ve ever heard! Honey for the ears! Meat for the soul! Gather around, and listen to me! I speak to you not as Padre Cabtab but as the loudspeaker of the Just-Born God! I am the display screen of the Divine!”
“Padre! Padre!” Duncan said. “Don’t you know me?”
He pulled on the man’s robe, but the giant pushed Duncan’s hand away as if it were an irritating fly.
“I know all men and women and children!” he bellowed. “Listen to me, you whom I know and whom the Just-Born God knows beyond knowing! Listen to me! Hear! Drink in the truth! Then act! Do what the Just-Born bids you do through me!”