Accipiter, flashing several crystals of emotion: “It’s no wonder we law enforcers have such a hard time operating effectively! Sometimes, not only the majority of citizens seem to be on the law-breaker’s side but my own employers…”
Interviewer: “Would you care to complete that statement? I’m sure your employers are watching this channel. No? I understand that Winnegan’s trial and yours are, for some reason, scheduled to take place at the same time. How do you plan to be present at both trials? Heh, heh! Some fido-casters are calling you The Simultaneous Man!”
Accipter, face darkening: “Some idiot clerk did that! He incorrectly fed the data into the legal computer. And he, or somebody, turned off the error-override circuit, and the computer burned up. The clerk is suspected of deliberately making the error—by me anyway, and let the idiot sue me if he wishes—anyway, there have been too many cases like this, and…”
Interviewer: “Would you mind summing up the course of this case for our viewers’ benefit? Just the highlights, please.”
Accipiter: “Well, ah, as you know, fifty years ago all large private-enterprise businesses had become government bureaus. All except the building construction firm, the Finnegan Fifty-three States Company, of which the president was Finn Finnegan. He was the father of the man who is to be buried—somewhere—today.
“Also, all unions except the largest, the construction union, were dissolved or were government unions. Actually, the company and its union were one, because all employees got ninety-five per cent of the money, distributed more or less equally among them. Old Finnegan was both the company president and union business agent-secretary.
“By hook or crook, mainly by crook, I believe, the firm-union had resisted the inevitable absorption. There were investigations into Finnegan’s methods: coercion and blackmail of U.S. Senators and even U.S. Supreme Court Justices. Nothing was, however, proved.”
Interviewer: “For the benefit of our viewers who may be a little hazy on their history, even fifty years ago money was used only for the purchase of nonguaranteed items. Its other use, as today, was as an index of prestige and social esteem. At one time, the government was thinking of getting rid of currency entirely, but a study revealed that it had great psychological value. The income tax was also kept, although the government had no use for money, because the size of a man’s tax determined prestige and also because it enabled the government to remove a large amount of currency from circulation.”
Accipiter: “Anyway, when old Finnegan died, the federal government renewed its pressure to incorporate the construction workers and the company officials as civil servants. But young Finnegan proved to be as foxy and vicious as his old man. I don’t suggest, of course, that the fact that his uncle was President of the U.S. at that time had anything to do with young Finnegan’s success.”
Interviewer: “Young Finnegan was seventy years old when his father died.”
Accipiter: “During this struggle, which went on for many years, Finnegan decided to rename himself Winnegan. It’s a pun on Win Again. He seems to have had a childish, even imbecilic, delight in puns, which, frankly, I don’t understand. Puns, I mean.”
Interviewer: “For the benefit of our non-American viewers, who may not know of our national custom of Naming Day… this was originated by the Panamorites. When a citizen comes of age, he may at any time thereafter take a new name, one which he believes to be appropriate to his temperament or goal in life. I might point out that Uncle Sam, who’s been unfairly accused of trying to impose conformity upon his citizens, encourages this individualistic approach to life. This despite the increased record-keeping required on the government’s part.
“I might also point out something else of interest. The government claimed that Grandpa Winnegan was mentally incompetent. My listeners will pardon me, I hope, if I take up a moment of your time to explain the basis of Uncle Sam’s assertion. Now, for the benefit of those among you who are unacquainted with an early 20th-century classic, Finnegan’s Wake, despite your government’s wish for you to have a free lifelong education, the author, James Joyce, derived the title from an old vaudeville song.”
(Half-fadeout while a monitor briefly explains “vaudeville.”)
“The song was about Tim Finnegan, an Irish hod carrier who fell off a ladder while drunk and was supposedly killed. During the Irish wake held for Finnegan, the corpse is accidentally splashed with whiskey. Finnegan, feeling the touch of the whiskey, the ‘water of life,’ sits up in his coffin and then climbs out to drink and dance with the mourners.
“Grandpa Winnegan always claimed that the vaudeville song was based on reality, you can’t keep a good man down, and that the original Tim Finnegan was his ancestor. This preposterous statement was used by the government in its suit against Winnegan.
“However, Winnegan produced documents to substantiate his assertion. Later—too late—the documents were proved to be forgeries.”
Accipiter: “The government’s case against Winnegan was strengthened by the rank and file’s sympathy with the government. Citizens were complaining that the business-union was undemocratic and discriminatory. The officials and workers were getting relatively high wages, but many citizens had to be contented with their guaranteed income. So, Winnegan was brought to trial and accused, justly, of course, of various crimes, among which were subversion of democracy.
“Seeing the inevitable, Winnegan capped his criminal career. He somehow managed to steal 20 billion dollars from the federal deposit vault. This sum, by the way, was equal to half the currency then existing in Greater LA. Winnegan disappeared with the money, which he had not only stolen but had not paid income tax on. Unforgivable. I don’t know why so many people have glamorized this villain’s feat. Why, I’ve seen fido shows with him as the hero, thinly disguised under another name, of course.”
Interviewer: “Yes, folks, Winnegan committed the Crime Of The Age. And, although he has finally been located, and is to be buried today—somewhere—the case is not completely closed. The federal government says it is. But where is the money, the 20 billion dollars?”
Accipiter: “Actually, the money has no value now except as collectors’ items. Shortly after the theft, the government called in all currency and then issued new bills that could not be mistaken for the old. The government had been wanting to do something like this for a long time, anyway, because it believed that there was too much currency, and it only reissued half the amount taken in.
“I’d like very much to know where the money is. I won’t rest until I do. I’ll hunt it down if I have to do it on my own time.”
Interviewer: “You may have plenty of time to do that if young Winnegan wins his case. Well, folks, as most of you may know, Winnegan was found dead in a lower level of San Francisco about a year after he disappeared. His grand-daughter identified the body, and the fingerprints, earprints, retinaprints, teethprints, blood-type, hair-type, and a dozen other identity prints matched out.”
Chib, who has been listening, thinks that Grandpa must have spent several millions of the stolen money arranging this. He does not know, but he suspects that a research lab somewhere in the world grew the duplicate in a biotank.
This happened two years after Chib was born. When Chib was five, his grandpa showed up. Without letting Mama know he was back, he moved in. Only Chib was his confidant. It was, of course, impossible for Grandpa to go completely unnoticed by Mama, yet she now insisted that she had never seen him. Chib thought that this was to avoid prosecution for being an accessory after the crime. He was not sure. Perhaps she had blocked off his “visitations” from the rest of her mind. For her it would be easy, since she never knew whether today was Tuesday or Thursday and could not tell you what year it was.
Chib ignores the mortuarians, who want to know what to do with the body. He walks over to the grave. The top of the ovoid coffin is visible now, with the long elephantlike snout of the digging machine sonically crumbling the dirt and then sucking it up. Accipite
r, breaking through his lifelong control, is smiling at the fidomen and rubbing his hands.
“Dance a little, you son of a bitch,” Chib says, his anger the only block to the tears and the wail building up in him.
The area around the coffin is cleared to make room for the grappling arms of the machine. These descend, hook under, and lift the black, irradiated-plastic, mocksilver-arabesqued coffin up and out and onto the grass. Chib, seeing the IRB men begin to open the coffin, starts to say something but closes his mouth. He watches intently, his knees bent as if getting ready to jump. The fidomen close in, their eyeball-shaped cameras pointing at the group around the coffin.
Groaning, the lid rises. There is a big bang. Dense dark smoke billows. Accipiter and his men, blackened, eyes wide and white, coughing, stagger out of the cloud. The fidomen are running every which way or stooping to pick up their cameras. Those who were standing far enough back can see that the explosion took place at the bottom of the grave. Only Chib knows that the raising of the coffin lid has activated the detonating device in the grave.
He is also the first to look up into the sky at the projectile soaring from the grave because only he expected it. The rocket climbs up to five hundred feet while the fidomen train their cameras on it. It bursts apart and from it a ribbon unfolds between two round objects. The objects expand to become balloons while the ribbon becomes a huge banner.
On it, in big black letters, are the words
WINNEGAN’S FAKE!
Twenty billions of dollars buried beneath the supposed bottom of the grave burn furiously. Some bills, blown up in the geyser of fireworks, are carried by the wind while IRB men, fidomen, mortuary officials, and municipality officials chase them.
Mama is stunned.
Accipiter looks as if he is having a stroke.
Chib cries and then laughs and rolls on the ground.
Grandpa has again screwed Uncle Sam and has also pulled his greatest pun where all the world can see it.
“Oh, you old man!” Chib sobs between laughing fits. “Oh, you old man! How I love you!”
While he is rolling on the ground again, roaring so hard his ribs hurt, he feels a paper in his hand. He stops laughing and gets on his knees and calls after the man who gave it to him. The man says, “I was paid by your grandfather to hand it to you when he was buried.”
Chib reads.
I hope nobody was hurt, not even the IRB men.
Final advice from the Wise Old Man In The Cave. Tear loose. Leave LA. Leave the country. Go to Egypt. Let your mother ride the purple wage on her own. She can do it if she practices thrift and self-denial. If she can’t, that’s not your fault.
You are fortunate indeed to have been born with talent, if not genius, and to be strong enough to want to rip out the umbilical cord. So do it. Go to Egypt. Steep yourself in the ancient culture. Stand before the Sphinx. Ask her (actually, it’s a he) the Question.
Then visit one of the zoological preserves south of the Nile. Live for a while in a reasonable facsimile of Nature as she was before mankind dishonored and disfigured her. There, where Homo Sapiens (?) evolved from the killer ape, absorb the spirit of that ancient place and time.
You’ve been painting with your penis, which I’m afraid was more stiffened with bile than with passion for life. Learn to paint with your heart. Only thus will you become great and true.
Paint.
Then, go wherever you want to go. I’ll be with you as long as you’re alive to remember me. To quote Runic, “I’ll be the Northern Lights of your soul.”
Hold fast to the belief that there will be others to love you just as much as I did or even more. What is more important, you must love them as much as they love you.
Can you do this?
SPIDERS OF THE
PURPLE MAGE
This was the week of the great rat hunt in Sanctuary.
The next week, all the cats that could be caught were killed and degutted.
The third week, all dogs were run down and disemboweled.
Masha zil-Ineel was one of the very few people in the city who didn’t take part in the rat hunt. She just couldn’t believe that any rat, no matter how big, and there were some huge ones in Sanctuary, could swallow a jewel so large.
But when a rumor spread that someone had seen a cat eat a dead rat and that the cat had acted strangely afterward, she thought it wise to pretend to chase cats. If she hadn’t, people might wonder why not. They might think that she knew something they didn’t. And then she might be the one run down.
Unlike the animals, however, she’d be tortured until she told where the jewel was.
She didn’t know where it was. She wasn’t even sure that there was an emerald.
But everybody knew that she’d been told about the jewel by Benna nus-Katarz. Thanks to Masha’s blabbermouth drunken husband, Eevroen.
Three weeks ago, on a dark night, Masha had returned late from midwifing in the rich merchant’s eastern quarter. It was well past midnight, but she wasn’t sure of the hour because of the cloud-covered sky. The second wife of Shoozh the spice-importer had borne her fourth infant. Masha had attended to the delivery personally while Doctor Nadeesh had sat in the next room, the door only half-closed, and listened to her reports. Nadeesh was forbidden to see any part of a female client except for those normally exposed and especially forbidden to see the breasts and genitals. If there was any trouble with the birthing, Masha would inform him, and he would give her instructions.
This angered Masha, since the doctors collected half of the fee, yet were seldom of any use. In fact, they were usually a hindrance.
Still, half a fee was better than none. What if the wives and concubines of the wealthy were as nonchalant and hardy as the poor women, who just squatted down wherever they happened to be when the pangs started and gave birth unassisted? Masha could not have supported herself, her two daughters, her invalid mother, or her lazy alcoholic husband. The money she made from doing the more affluent women’s hair and from her tooth-pulling and manufacture of false teeth in the marketplace wasn’t enough. But midwifery added the income that kept her and her family just outside hunger’s door.
She would have liked to pick up more money by cutting men’s hair in the marketplace, but both law and ancient custom forbade that.
Shortly after she had burned the umbilical cord of the newborn to ensure that demons didn’t steal it and had ritualistically washed her hands, she left Shoozh’s house. His guards, knowing her, let her through the gate without challenge, and the guards of the gate to the eastern quarters also allowed her to pass. Not however without offers from a few to share their beds with her that night.
“I can do much better than that sot of a husband of yours!” one said.
Masha was glad that her hood and the darkness prevented the guards from seeing her burning face by the torchlight. However, if they could have seen that she was blushing with shame, they might have been embarrassed. They would know then that they weren’t dealing with a brazen slut of the Maze but with a woman who had known better days and a higher position in society than she now held. The blush alone would have told them that.
What they didn’t know and what she couldn’t forget was that she had once lived in this walled area and her father had been an affluent, if not wealthy, merchant.
She passed on silently. It would have made her feel good to have told them her past and then ripped them with the invective she’d learned in the Maze. But to do that would lower her estimate of herself.
Though she had her own torch and the means for lighting it in the cylindrical leather case on her back, she did not use them. It was better to walk unlit and hence unseen into the streets. Though many of the lurkers in the shadows would let her pass unmolested, since they had known her when she was a child, others would not be so kind. They would rob her for the tools of her trade and the clothes she wore and some would rape her. Or try to.
Through the darkness she went swiftly, her steps sure becaus
e of long experience. The adobe buildings of the city were a dim whitish bulk ahead. Then the path took a turn, and she saw some small flickers of light here and there. Torches. A little further, and a light became a square. The window of a tavern.
She entered a narrow winding street and strode down its center. Turning a corner, she saw a torch in a bracket on the wall of a house and two men standing near it. Immediately she crossed to the far side and, hugging the walls, passed the two. Their pipes glowed redly; she caught a whiff of the pungent and sickly smoke of kleetel, the drug used by the poor when they didn’t have money for the more expensive krrf. Which was most of the time.
After two or three pipefuls, the smokers would be vomiting. But they would claim that the euphoria would make the upchucking worth it.
There were other odors: garbage piled by the walls, slop-jars of excrement, and puke from kleetel smokers and drunks. The garbage would be shoveled into goat-drawn carts by Downwinders whose families had long held this right. The slop-jars would be emptied by a Downwinder family that had delivered the contents to farmers for a century and would and had fought fiercely to keep this right. The farmers would use the excrement to feed their soil; the urine would be emptied into the mouth of the White Foal River and carried out to sea.
She also heard the rustling and squealing of rats as they searched for edible portions and dogs growling or snarling as they chased the rats or fought each other. And she glimpsed the swift shadows of running cats.
Like a cat, she sped down the street in a half-run, stopping at corners to look around them before venturing farther. When she was about a half-mile from her place, she heard the pounding of feet ahead. She froze and tried to make herself look like part of the wall.
At that moment the moon broke through the clouds.
It was almost a full moon. The light revealed her to any but a blind person. She darted across the street to the dark side and played wall again.
The slap of feet on the hard-packed dirt of the street came closer. Somewhere above her, a baby began crying.