Our Friends From Frolix 8

  ‘If it’s got to be done,’ Ed Woodman said, ‘couldn’t he do it slowly? So we can arrange care? They may starve to death or walk into passing squibs, they’re like infants.’

  ‘The ultimate vengeance,’ Nick murmured.

  ‘Yes,’ Elka said. ‘But we can’t let them die helpless and’ — she gestured—‘retarded.’

  ‘“Retarded,”’ Nick said. Yes, that’s what they were, not like children but like brain-damaged children. Hence, Marshall’s frustration when they tried to question him.

  And it was brain damage. The cerebellum of their brains had been injured, from within, from the probing thing.

  The TV set, still on, now carried the voice of the regular network newscaster. ‘—was just twelve hours ago that the famous physicist Amos Ild, retained by Council Chairman Willis Gram as his special advisor in the crisis, predicted over all television networks that there was no chance — repeat: no chance — that Thors Provoni had brought back an alien life form with him.’ For the first time, Nick heard authentic anger in the announcer’s voice. ‘It would appear that the Council Chairman has relied on the — what’s the expression? Staff of bending oats or something; I don’t know. God in heaven.’ On the screen the announcer bowed his head. ‘It looked — to us, anyhow — like a good idea, the Baltimore laser system, trained on Dinosaur’s hatch. I guess, looking back now, it was too simple. Provoni wasn’t going to get himself snuffed like that after ten years in space. Morgo Rahn Wilc, we have that down as the name or title of the alien.’ Turning his face away from the microphone, the announcer said to someone invisible, ‘For the first time in my life I’m glad I’m not a New.’ He did not seem to realize that his words were being picked up by the world, nor did he care: he sat rubbing his eyes, shaking his head, saying nothing. Then his image disappeared and another announcer, evidently preempting him, appeared. He looked grave.

  ‘Neurological tissue-damage seems to be deliberately—’ he began, but at that point Charley took hold of Nick’s hand and led him from the set.

  ‘I want to listen,’ he said.

  ‘We’re going to take a drive,’ Charley said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Instead of sitting around here feeling unhooked. We’ll go fast. We’ll go in the Purple Sea Cow.’

  ‘You mean go back to where they killed Denny?’ He stared at her in absolute disbelief. ‘The black pissers probably have a stake-out, an alarm system—’

  ‘They don’t care now,’ Charley said quietly. ‘First of all, they were all called in for crowd control, and secondly, if I can’t go riding in the Cow for a few minutes, up real high and real fast, I’ll probably try to kill myself. I mean that, Nick.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said. In a way she was right: there was no real point in staying here, glued to the TV set. ‘But how’ll we get over there?’

  ‘Ed’s squib,’ Charley said. ‘Ed, can we borrow your squib? For a little drive?’

  ‘Sure.’ Ed handed her the keys. ‘You may need gas, though.’

  Together, Nick and Charley ascended the stairs to the roof: only two floors were involved, so the elevator was not needed. For a time, neither of them spoke; they devoted themselves to locating Ed’s squib.

  Seated inside the squib, behind the tiller, Nick said, ‘You should have told him where we’re going. About the Cow.’

  ‘Why worry him?’ That was her sole, complete answer; she gave no more.

  He sent the squib up into the sky; it was, now, virtually free of traffic. Presently, they hovered about Charley’s former apartment building. There, on the roof field, stood the Purple Sea Cow.

  ‘Shall I go down there?’ Nick asked her.

  ‘Yes.’ She peered. ‘I don’t see anybody around. Really, they don’t care anymore. It’s the end of everything, Nick. The end of the PSS, the end of Gram, or Amos Ild — can you imagine what that thing will do when it gets to him?’

  He shut off the squib’s motor, glided silently down to come to rest beside the Cow. So far so good.

  Charley got swiftly out, key in hand; she strode to the door of the Cow, inserted the key. The door opened; she at once squeezed in behind the tiller, motioned him to open the other door. ‘Hurry,’ she said. ‘I can hear an alarm some-where, probably on the ground floor. But what the hell now?’ She smashed savagely down on the gas pedal, and the Cow raced upward, skimming like a barn swallow, like a flat disc.

  ‘Look back,’ Charley said, ‘and see if anybody’s following us.’

  He did so. ‘Nothing in sight.’

  ‘I’ll take evasive maneuvers,’ she said, ‘as Denny called it. We do a lot of spirals and Immelmanns. It’s really frosty.’ The squib dived, roared up a canyon between high rise buildings. ‘Listen to those pipes,’ Charley said, and pressed down even harder on the gas pedal.

  ‘If you drive like this,’ he said, ‘you will pick up an occifer.’

  She turned her head. ‘Don’t you understand? They don’t care now. The whole establishment, everything they were supposed to protect — it’s all gone. Their superiors are like the man you and Ed found downstairs.’

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘you’ve changed since I met you.’ Since a couple of days, he realized. The bubbling vitality was gone from her; she had become hard in an almost cheap sort of way: she still wore her makeup but it had become a complete mask, now, inanimate. He had noticed it before, but it was coming up from deeper levels now. Everything about her, even when she was talking or moving, seemed inanimate. As if she no longer feels, he thought. But consider what’s happened: first, the attacking of the 16th Avenue printing plant, then her horrible encounter with rutting Willis Gram, then Denny’s death. And now this. She had nothing left by which to feel.

  As if reading his thoughts, Charley said, ‘I can’t drive this thing the way Denny did. He was a master pilot; he could get it up to 120—’

  ‘In town?’ Nick asked. ‘In traffic?’

  ‘On the big freeway tacks,’ Charley said.

  ‘You both would have been killed by now.’ Her driving made him acutely uneasy; she had, by degrees, increased their velocity. The dial read 130. That was fast enough for him.

  ‘You know,’ Charley said, gripping the tiller with both hands, and staring fixedly ahead, ‘Denny was an intellectual, a real one. He read all Cordon’s pamphlets and tracts, all his writing. He was very proud of that; it made him feel superior to everybody else. You know what he used to say? He said he — Denny — could never be wrong, and that once he had a premise he could deduce from it with exact certainty.’

  She slowed down, turned the squib down a side street between smaller buildings. Now she seemed to have a destination in mind — formerly she had driven just for the joy of flight, but now she slowed, lowered the squib… he peered down, saw a square without buildings.

  ‘Central Park,’ she said, glancing at him. ‘You ever been here before?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think it still existed.’

  ‘Most of it doesn’t. It’s been cut down to a single acre. But it’s still grass; it’s still a park.’ Somberly, she said, ‘Denny and I found it one day, cruising around late at night, about 4:00 A.M. It frosted us out of our shoes; it really did. We’ll land there.’ The squib dipped down, slowed until it barely moved forward, and then she let the rubber tires touch the ground. The squib, its wings withdrawn, became, all at once, a surface vehicle.

  Opening the door on her side, Charley got out; he did so, too, and was astounded at the texture of the grass under his feet. He had never walked on grass before in his life.

  ‘How are your tires?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m a regroover, remember? If you’ll give me a flashlight, I’ll look them over and see if any are regrooved. It could cost you your life, you realize. To have a regrooved tire and not know it.’

  Charley lay down, stretched herself out on the grass, arms folded to prop up her head. ‘My tires are okay,’ she said. ‘We only use the Cow at
night, when there’s room to fly. We don’t take it as a surface vehicle during the day except in an emergency. Like the one that killed Denny.’ She was silent, then, for a protracted length of time, simply lying on her back in the damp, cold grass, staring up at the stars.

  ‘Nobody comes here,’ Nick said.

  ‘Never. They’d obliterate it completely, but Gram has a soft spot about it. Seems he played here as a child.’ She raised her head and said wonderingly, ‘Can you imagine Willis Gram as a baby? Or Provoni, for that matter. You know why I brought you here? So we could make love.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said.

  ‘You’re not surprised?’

  ‘It’s been hanging in the back of both our minds since we met,’ he said. Anyhow it was true for him; he suspected it in her, too, but of course she could deny it.

  ‘Can I take your clothes off for you?’ she asked, rummaging in the pockets of his coat to see if he had anything of value which might fall out and get lost in the grass. ‘Car keys?’ she asked. ‘Ident tabs? Oh, what the hell. Sit up.’ He did so, and she removed his coat, which she carefully laid out on the ground near his head. ‘Next your shirt,’ she said, and so it went. Until, at last, she began on her own clothing.

  ‘What small breasts you have,’ he said, perceiving her in the dim starlight.

  ‘Listen,’ she said brusquely, ‘it’s not like it’s costing you anything.’

  That melted his heart. ‘No, of course not,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you to do this—’ He put his hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s just that you did it here, with Denny.’ For you, he thought, it may be like old times, but for me there’s a specter hanging over me: the Dionysian face of the young boy… all that life, and snuffed out just like that. ‘It reminds me of a part of a poem,’ he said, ‘by Yeats.’ He helped her take off her alliforgict sweater: they were easy to get on, hard to get off, once they had molded themselves to the curves of the body.

  ‘I should just spray myself with paint,’ she said, as the sweater came off.

  ‘You don’t get the texture of fabric that way,’ he said. He paused a moment and said, hopefully, ‘Do you like Yeats?’

  ‘Was he before Bob Dylan?’

  ‘Yes.’

  “Then I don’t want to hear about him. As far as I’m concerned, poetry started with Dylan and has declined since.’

  Together, they removed the rest of their clothing; for a time they lay naked in the cold, wet grass, and then, simultaneously, they rolled toward each other; he rolled himself onto her, held her, gazed down at her face.

  ‘I’m ugly,’ she said. ‘Aren’t I?’

  ‘You think that?’ He was appalled. ‘Why, you’re one of the most attractive women I’ve ever met.’

  ‘I’m not a woman,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘I can’t give back. I can only accept, not give. So don’t expect anything of me, just that I’m here now.’

  ‘It’s statutory rape,’ he told her, presently.

  Charley said, ‘Look, the end of the world has come; we’re being taken over and neurologically destroyed by an unkillable thing. So at a time like this, what pisser is going to cite you? Anyway, there’d have to be a complaint made, and who would do it? Who would witness it?’

  ‘“Witness it,”’ he echoed, holding her close to him for a moment. PSS monitoring systems… they probably had one set up on Central Park, forgotten as it was. He withdrew from her, then, leaped to his feet. ‘Get your clothes on fast,’ he said, reaching for his own.

  ‘If you’re thinking of a pisser monitor of this park—’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Believe me, they’re all watching Times Square. Except those who’re New Men, like Director Barnes. They’ll be tending to the damaged ones.’ A thought struck her. ‘That means Willis Gram.’ She sat up, buried her hands in her ruffled, grass-wet hair. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but I sort of liked him.’ She began to get her own clothes, and then she dropped them to the ground and beseechingly said, ‘Look, Nick, the PSS isn’t coming to get us. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, you take me a little longer, maybe just five minutes or so. And you can read that — what is it? — poem to me.’

  ‘I don’t have the book with me and you know it.’

  ‘Do you remember it?’

  ‘I guess so,’ Fear, like a tide rising in his heart, made him tremble as he put his own clothes back down and approached the supine girl. As he put his arms around her he said, ‘It’s a sad poem; I was thinking about Denny and this spot, here, where you used to come in the Cow. It’s as if his spirit’s buried here.’

  ‘You’re hurting me,’ Charley complained. ‘Do it more slowly.’

  Once again he got to his feet. He began methodically to dress. ‘I can’t take the chance of being picked up,’ he said, ‘with those assassins, those black pissers, out for me.’

  She lay unmoving. And then she said, ‘Tell me the poem.’

  ‘Will you get dressed? While I’m saying it?’

  ‘No,’ she said, arms behind her head, staring upward at the stars. ‘Provoni came from up there,’ she said. ‘God, I’m just so goddam glad I’m not a New Man right now—’ She clenched her fists and ground out the words, harshly. ‘He’s doing right, but — you have to feel sorry for them, the New Men. Lobotomized. Their Nodes of Rogers gone and God knows what else. Surgery out of space.’ She laughed. ‘Let’s write it all up and call it THE COSMIC SURGEON FROM A DISTANT STAR. Okay?’

  He crouched down, gathering up her items. Purse, sweater, underwear. ‘I’ll tell you the poem and then you’ll understand why I can’t go with you to places you and Denny went; I can’t replace him, like a new Denny. Next you’ll be giving me his wallet, which is probably ostrich hide, his watch, a Criterion, his agitite cuff links—’ He broke off. ‘“I must be gone: there is a grave where daffodil and lily wave, and—”’ He paused.

  ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘“And I would please the hapless faun, buried under the sleep ground, with mirthful songs before the dawn.’”

  ‘What does “mirthful” mean?’ she asked.

  He ignored her and spoke on. ‘“His shouting days with mirth were crowned; and still I dream he treads the lawn, walking ghostly in the dew.”’ Pierced, he thought, by my glad singing through. But he could not say it aloud; it affected him too much.

  ‘You like that?’ Charley asked. ‘That kind of old stuff?’

  Nick said, ‘It’s my favorite poem.’

  ‘Do you like Dylan?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Tell me another poem.’ Dressed, now, she sat beside him, knees bent, head bowed.

  ‘I don’t know any others from memory. I don’t even remember how the rest of it goes, and I’ve read it a thousand times.’

  ‘Was Beethoven a poet?’ she asked.

  ‘A composer. Of music.’

  ‘So was Bob Dylan.’

  Nick said, ‘The world began before Dylan.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ Charley said. ‘I feel like I’m catching cold. Did you enjoy it?’

  ‘No,’ he said truthfully.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You’re too tense.’

  ‘If you had gone through the things I’ve gone through—’

  ‘Maybe that’s what’s the matter. You know too much. Too much and too soon. But I love you.’ He put his arm around her, hugged her, kissed her on the temple.

  ‘Really?’ Some of her old vitality returned; she leaped up, spread her arms wide, spun in a circle, arms extended.

  A police cruiser, its siren and red light off, came gliding up behind them, silently landing.

  ‘The Cow,’ Charley said; she and he sprinted for the Cow, scrambled in, with Charley behind the tiller. She started it up; the Cow rolled forward as its wings extended themselves.

  The red light of the PSS skunk car came on; so did its siren. And, on a bullhorn, the cruiser blared at them, words they could not decipher; the words echoed and echoed until Charley scree
ched with suffering.

  ‘I’ll lose him,’ she said. ‘Denny did it a thousand times; I learned from him.’ She crushed the gas pedal, flattened it. The roar of full-throated pipes thundered behind Nick, and at the same time his head was snapped back, as the Cow suddenly gained speed. ‘I’ll show you the engine in this sometime,’ she said, her eyes moving back and forth. And the Cow continued to gain speed; he had never been in a squib hopped-up like this, although he had seen many hopped-up ones brought onto the lot for resale. They were not like this, however.

  ‘Denny put every pop of money he owned into the Cow,’ she said. ‘He built it for like this, for getting away from the pissers. Watch.’ She touched a switch, sat back, her hands no longer on the controls. The squib dropped abruptly, almost to the ground; Nick tensed himself — it looked like sure impact — and then, on some sort of automatic pilot system, unfamiliar to him, the ship glided at enormous speed up narrow streets, between old wooden stores — gliding at about three feet from the ground.

  ‘You can’t navigate this low,’ he said to her. ‘We’re lower than if the wheels were down and we were landcrawling.’

  ‘Now watch this.’ She turned her head, studied the PSS cruiser behind her — it had followed, allowed himself to fly at their level — and then she yanked the rise-gear network into the ninety degrees’ position.

  They shot upward, into the darkness, the cruiser right behind them.

  And now, from the south, a second cruiser appeared.

  ‘We ought to give up,’ Nick said, as the two cruisers joined together. ‘They could open fire any time, now, and get us. In another minute, if we don’t comply with that flashing red light, they’ll do so.’

  ‘But if we’re caught, they’ll snuff you,’ Charley said. She increased their flight angle, and still, behind them, the two police cruisers howled their sirens and flashed their lights.

  The Cow dropped once more, deadfall, until the automatic system halted it several feet above the pavement. The police cruisers followed. They dropped, too.

  ‘Oh, God,’ Charley said. ‘They’ve got the Reeves-Fairfax margin control system, too. Let’s see.’ Her face worked frantically. ‘Denny,’ she said. ‘Denny, what’ll I do? What’ll I do now?’ She turned a corner — scraping a street lamp, he noticed. And then a bursting cloud of fire manifested itself directly ahead of them.