PRESIDENT: We are not doomed, sir.
SECRETARY MCKAIN: Doomed. Another year like this and our economy and military forces will be a complete shambles, rather than the mostly shambles they are now.
PRESIDENT: And what are you proposing that we do now that we’re not already doing?
(Sounds of whispering among some of the participants.)
HILLIE KLINGTON: Mr. President, we have reason to believe that the Protean terrorists are planning to xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. We feel that this event will give us a unique once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take down their leadership. What we propose is that we xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx and thus eliminate much of the danger facing us.
(A long silence.)
PRESIDENT: That’s outrageous.
SECRETARY MCKAIN: But absolutely necessary.
(Long silence.)
PRESIDENT: I’ll take it under consideration.
FIFTY-SEVEN
(From Billy Morton’s MY FRIEND LOUIE, pp. 390–393)
“We’ve decided to organize the biggest Fun-In in human history,” says Molière from the top of a file cabinet.
We were all in Lita’s office at the Protean Defense League: Molière, Louie, LT, Baloney, and Gibberish, who had apparently rejoined the good guys for reasons no one would explain to me. Karen was at the meeting too, along with six other human friends of the FFs, including Harry Barnes.
“The Forthehelluvit event to end all Forthehelluvit events,” adds Gibberish.
“Baloney,” says Baloney.
“And present our plan to the big FF convention coming up in two days out in the Atlantic,” says Louie. “We hope to get many FFs from around the world to join us.”
“Exactly what do you have in mind?” asks Lita. She’s at her desk, I’m in the only comfortable chair in the room, and Jimmy and Lucas are sitting on two extremely hard chairs normally intended for visiting lawyers or Feds. Four of the other humans, including Karen, are crowded onto a settee. Harry Barnes is standing in the middle of the room looking like he’s ready to take over the meeting.
LT has assumed the shape of an owl, with two beautiful walnut eyes, painted white and brown. Can’t fly though, so he just sits on a windowsill looking wise. Never seen him so inactive.
“This Labor Day,” says Molière, “we plan to get every group we can find and seduce them to march—for the hell of it.”
“We think we can get more than a hundred different groups, unions, churches, leagues, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, leftist and rightest organizations, governmental agencies, brokerage house employees, high school bands, office workers—you name it—we’re trying to get them to join us on the first Saturday in September.”
“The NYPD know about this?” says I.
“We’ve invited the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association of New York, but so far they’ve given us no firm commitment other than that they’ll hassle us to the best of their ability.”
“You trying to get them to join the march?” I ask.
“We’re also trying to get government workers from six different agencies, including the Department of Defense and the CIA.”
“Jesus.”
“We’re arguing that they can monitor what’s happening better if they’re marching with us than any other way,” says Molière.
“Baloney,” says Baloney.
“The plan is to have groups start out from all five boroughs of New York and march until they all converge on Central Park.”
“And then what?” asks Lita.
“Then we all settle into the park and have fun.”
“And what’s it all supposed to prove?” she asks.
“Absolutely nothing,” says Gibberish. “No creature in its right mind ever tries to prove anything.”
“Baloney.”
“And how long will people stay in Central Park?” I ask.
“Ahh, interesting question,” says Louie.
“Until we all march out of the park and take over Manhattan,” says Gibberish.
“And what’s taking over Manhattan involve?” asks Lita.
“Ahh, interesting question,” says Molière.
“We shall see what we shall see,” says Gibberish.
“Profound,” says Baloney.
“What did you say?” says Gibbs, startled.
“Baloney.”
“To accommodate the half million or so you hope to have march into the park,” Harry says from the middle of the room, “we’re going to have to do a lot of advanced planning—food, shelter, porta-potties, blankets, tarps. Have you done any planning yet for contingencies?”
“A lot of planning,” says Molière. “And we’ll need a lot of help from every human in this room, you especially, Harry. And the dozens of other humans we’re working with on this.”
“You can’t pull off a big event like this,” says Harry, “without a lot of planning.”
“And a lot of money,” says Karen.
“Exactly,” says Harry.
“We’ve begun to run short on our stolen loot,” says Louie, “so we may have to tap you, HB, for a few million. That work for you?”
“Mi moola es su moola,” says Harry.
“But whatever we do, we’ve got to keep it light,” says Gibberish. “We’re not trying to overthrow Western civilization, only have fun and let a few humans have fun too.”
“Can’t we do both?” I ask.
“Ah, Billy,” says Louie, “you still haven’t got it.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means that the answer is no.” Louie says. “You won’t get far if you pursue with seriousness the overthrow of the system. Only when you learn to play will your civilization change. If you fight it, the forces of the system will absorb every blow and leave you feeling you’re fighting a war buried in molasses. Change the way you live. Learn to play. Make fun of the dictators, don’t fight them. Only then will the system slowly change.”
“All of life is a great mystery,” suddenly comes from the owl on the windowsill. “Only fools try to figure it out.”
We all stared at LT, whose walnut eyes were slowly revolving as if he were drunk.
“Baloney,” says Baloney.
FIFTY-EIGHT
(From Billy Morton’s MY FRIEND LOUIE, pp. 398–403)
When Louie invited me and Lita to go out onto the Atlantic on Harry Barnes’ big yacht and see the earth’s first great gathering of the FFs I was naturally gung-ho to do it. I loved being with FFs and I loved being out on the ocean.
Naturally Lita vetoed it. Even Louie admitted that they’d learned that the government had asked some sort of special operations unit to look into ways they could kill as many FFs as possible on this wonderful occasion. Louie tried to assure her that their computer hacking was keeping them pretty much up to date on the government’s plans, but Lita said that “pretty much” was not the same as second-by-second knowledge of what the military was up to. Lita assured me that it wasn’t that she minded my getting killed so much as that the kids might get upset. That gave us a laugh, but it still left me feeling frustrated: I really wanted to go.
But as you know, arguing with Lita is like arguing with a blizzard—no matter what I say, I get snowed under.
So I did what every red-blooded man has to do every now and then—I decided to ignore her and sneak out to sea without her permission. And with any luck I’d get blown up or drowned and not have to face the consequences with Lita.
I wanted to take the boys too, but there are limits to my stupidity.
Out on the Atlantic on Harry’s yacht Big Bucks I had just as great a time as I thought I would. We were surging along at forty knots, heading to a rendezvous point about half
way between New York Harbor—from where we left—and Bermuda.
At first there were a dozen FFs, half that I already knew, and two dozen human beings, most that I didn’t know—Harry, Karen, and my secretary, Althea, being the ones that I did. The humans were drinking a lot of Harry’s high-priced booze, and the FFs were bouncing around the boat and diving into the ocean or surging up out of the ocean shaped like long fish and then landing on deck as spheres. Although I wasn’t sure, it seemed as though the whole first day and night dozens of new FFs were popping up onto the boat, spending ten or fifteen minutes with us, and then diving back into the ocean. LT told us that they could swim as fast or faster than our yacht was going so didn’t really need a ride.
Meeting new humans who had made friends with the FFs was fun. We traded our tall tales about how we’d met our FF or FFs and what we were doing with them—or rather what they were doing with us.
One gal told me that she met her FF when she and her boyfriend were making love at a campsite in the woods. She suddenly noticed past her guy’s shoulder a round beach ball rolling slowly around them. She knew what an alien terrorist looked like, so she screamed, figuring she was about to be murdered or raped. But the beach ball began talking to her and her guy, and told them he was just passing by and enjoyed seeing human beings enjoying life. It took about three hours but this FF—she named him “Peeping Tom”—managed to convince her that FFs were not terrorists. He wanted her help in getting her Christian sect to assist the FFs in getting money and food to some pretty hard up people in her town of Newburgh. Which she and her guy ended up doing.
When I figured we must be getting close to the meeting site, about four P.M. on the second afternoon, we began to see a lot of porpoises swimming along in our direction, and a few FFs among them bursting out of the water in all variety of fish shapes. At first there were only fifty or sixty, but as we continued to move east the fleet grew. Soon there were hundreds on each side of our boat doing leaps and somersaults that made Marine World look like a kid’s fishbowl with a few goldfish.
Our ship began to slow, dropping to fifteen knots, so soon the FFs and the porpoises, and now at least two dozen orcas were swimming in circles around us, and around two other large boats that were now within a quarter mile of us. FFs were again surging up onto the boat and then seconds or minutes later diving back into the ocean.
Normally I like being out on the sea because there’s no one else around, but this day I stood stupidly smiling for half an hour at this incredible jubilee of play: thousands of FFs and sea creatures swimming and diving and dancing among a fleet of about ten ships. This planet had never seen before and probably never will again such a gathering.
The Big Bucks and most of the other boats stopped moving and we all wallowed in the gentle swell. Gibberish, Louie, and LT had plopped up onto our deck and soon they and five or six of us humans got into a pretty interesting chat. It began when Althea asked if FFs had personalities or characters.
“We have acts,” says Gibberish. “Many acts. You people might call them personalities, but we call them ‘acts’ or, more accurately, ‘adoptive temporary lunacy.’”
Karen and I and a couple of others laughed.
“What’s that mean?” Althea asks.
“It means,” says Gibbs, “that everything we do is an act, is pretending, is play, and because our actions are never necessarily related to reason, we think of it as temporary lunacies.”
“Great,” says I. “Makes me feel real important.”
“You know that feeling important is at the heart of the human sickness,” says Louie. “If humans could just let go of the feeling that you as an individual and humans as a species are important, you’d be cured. You’d begin to live at one with each other and with all the life around you, as the creatures we’re watching are doing. Instead, somehow over the last three or four thousand years you’ve come to feel you’re God’s chosen people, the only beings who count.”
“And what a disaster that’s making of things on Earth,” says Gibbs.
“Don’t all creatures naturally feel they’re the center of the universe?” says Karen. “Isn’t that what each life form needs for its survival.”
“Other forms of life have no sense of importance at all,” says Gibbs.
“We know,” says LT. “We’ve talked to hundreds of thousands of them.”
’Course, none of us humans had lately had a good chat with a tulip, bumblebee or amoeba, and that pretty much undercut any rebuttal one of us might want to make.
Nevertheless, I was about to say something witty or clever, when Louie and Gibberish suddenly leapt over the ship’s railing and into the sea. LT bounced toward the rail and then back again.
“They’re going to drop a nuclear bomb on us, and we don’t think we can stop them,” he says.
* * *
All but one or two of the FFs leapt into the sea. I turned and headed up to the bridge. LT came with me and so did Karen. Even as I climbed the stairs I could feel our yacht accelerating and turning.
Harry Barnes was on the bridge with the captain, and Harry looked more worried than I’d ever seen him. The captain stood next to the crewman who was at the helm and had turned us back west at full throttle.
In the sea around us I could no longer see a single creature, not even a seagull.
“Anyone know when the big bang is coming?” I ask, more to break the silence than because I wanted an answer.
Harry Barnes shook his head and the others were silent.
We all waited. It wasn’t good for my digestion to be creeping along at forty knots expecting to be blown up any second, so I swallowed a shot of Harry’s expensive bourbon. Didn’t help.
I was about to try a second drink when Baloney appeared and told us that Louie, Molière, and an FF named Brain were back on our boat trying to defuse the bomb or mess with the evil bomber’s computer system to prevent it from reaching the right location. I went down to the master cabin where they were working.
The three FFs and two crewmen were working from two computers. One could never tell from its bearing whether an FF was happy or scared or gloomy, but the fact that all three of them were totally motionless except for their numerous digits was not a good sign. I can only relax when I see FFs bouncing.
“Five more minutes,” says Louie.
“Five more minutes for what?” I ask.
“Until the plane is over its intended target.”
“Aren’t all the FFs like us scooting away at full speed?”
“Yes. But they were only warned twelve minutes ago. Even at a mile a minute a lot of them are still going to be within range of any blast.”
“Can’t you guys just dive down half a mile and escape damage that way?”
“We’re like porpoises: we can’t go deeper than five or six hundred feet.”
After a bit, “Four minutes,” says Molière.
A lot of unintelligible stuff was happening on both computers, and I knew both Louie and Molière were focused on trying to save everyone. Talking to us took only a millionth of their attention so I didn’t feel guilty nagging them with questions.
“Are we going to die?” I ask.
“Yes,” says Molière. “You’re going to die.”
“In that case anyone got any candy or bourbon?”
“You’ll die,” says Louie, “although perhaps not today.”
Perhaps: not exactly the most reassuring word in the history of the world.
I didn’t want to die inside—even with some friends in a fancy master stateroom—so I left and went back up on deck. The sun was shining, the sea had a nice gentle swell and a few pretty white caps, and everything was hunky-dory. Nothing to fear but fear itself. And a nuclear explosion.
I saw the crew had gotten the ship’s two lifeboats loose from their davits and sitting on deck. And a big rubber dinghy too. The ship’s first mate was ordering a crewman aboard each.
The two crewmen who’d been with the FFs at the co
mputers suddenly came hurrying out onto the deck. I didn’t have to ask them if the FFs had succeeded or failed: their frightened faces said it all.
So I rushed back up to the bridge. I wanted to have the best view possible if I was to get converted into smithereens.
When I arrived, only the man at the wheel was staring forward—LT, the captain, Harry, Karen, and two new crewmen were all staring aft. I joined them. I was just about to ask where the bourbon bottle had gone when the beautiful blue noonday sky behind us to the east exploded. The brilliant flash blinded me. As I waited with my eyes not seeing much and braced myself against the aft wall, I was suddenly slammed hard and flat against the aft part of the bridge, and then, as I struggled to clear my woozy head, thrown sideways to the floor. Someone tumbled on top of me and rolled away.
As I lay there stunned, I found myself sliding sideways up against and then onto the port side of the bridge cabin. Half-blind and still woozy from slamming my head, I wasn’t thinking with my usual brilliant clarity and vaguely wondered why I seemed to be lying on the side wall of the bridge instead of the floor. And then I wondered why the water that was beginning to fill the bridge cabin was rising around me and not on the floor where it belonged.
My vision was still blurred, but I struggled to sit up to keep my head above the rising water, vaguely thinking how clever I was to sit up and thus not drown.
Then someone grabbed my arm. The water was at my chest.