GOLEM 100
Alfred Bester
1
There were eight of them who met in the hive every week to warm themselves and each other. They were charming bee-ladies, attractive and sweet-tempered despite—or perhaps because of—the fact that they were all secure and assured. (The less-privileged classes called them “high mucky-fucks.”)
They were not all cut from the identical pattern like insect-type bees. They were intensely individual, human-type ladies even though they were living far in our future. After all, our heirs won’t change all that much. Each of them had her own kinky eccentricity which is the true source of charm.
Each had a secret name, as indeed we all do, and that was their real reality. Perhaps I’m committing a heinous crime in revealing them—T.S. Eliot insisted that the secret name of a creature, “the deep and inscrutable singular Name,” could and should be known to no one—but the bee-ladies knew them and used them, so here they are:
Regina, the Queen Bee. It has the old English law pronunciation, Re-JYN-a.
Little Mary Mixup, who can never get anything straight, including her hair.
Nellie Gwyn, who would have given the raunchy King Charles the Second an even harder time than her namesake.
Miss Priss, who still has a girlie-girlie lisp, and as a child was heard to say in praise of her schoolboy beau, “He’s a perfect gentleman. When we cross the street he takes my arm and walks me so I shouldn’t step in the shit.”
Sarah Heartburn, flinging the back of her hand against her brow and declaiming in thrilling tones, “Go! GO! I must be a-LONE! I wish to—com-MUTE with myself!”
Yenta Calienta, who knows everything you have in your purse, your tote, your closets, your freeze. Yenta is always trying to make preposterous trades, like her broken hourglass for your antique mah-jongg set with one piece missing.
And the twins, Oodgedye and Udgedye, which mean “Guess who” and “Guess which” in Russian. Anton Chekhov used those words for dog names in one of his farces.
That adds up to eight. There was a sort of ninth, Regina’s slavey called Pi, not because she had anything to do with the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter (3.1416) but simply because she’s a pie-faced girl.
You may want to know whether the bee-ladies were married or single or living in sin or frigid or having dyke affairs or swinging from the chandelier or whatever. The answer is a blanket yes because they lived in the famous or infamous Guff precinct. Much more about the Guff later. But keep in mind that they were all secure and assured in background—they’d all been through the posh colleges called “The Seven Sisters”—and in status and income. So when you meet them alone together with their hair down, so to speak, remember that you’re seeing their Closet-Selves.
The rest of the world only met poised, attractive women who were insulated from the fears that beset the submerged majority who lived in the Guff; murder, mayhem, rape, robbery, and all other assorted violences too numerous to list. The dignity and charm of the eight ladies was preserved by living in strongly protected homes, using guaranteed, bonded transport, with iron-safe escort service at their call. The only real crise in their lives was the chronic boredom that insulation brings.
So they entertained themselves (with their hair down) by meeting as often as they could in Regina’s big avant-garde apartment, which could hardly be called a hive, and yet they did behave like bee-ladies. They buzzed with gossip and jokes and chitchat. They played nonsense games. They did bee-dances now and then. They gorged on sweets when they were restless or tired or angry. And there were occasional sad moments when they butted heads to establish an informal dominance-order. Human-types do that along with many other creatures. We’ve been doing it ever since the first primordial DNA molecule told the rest of the DNAs who was boss and proved it.
Their latest amusement was diabolism. None of them took it seriously. None of them really believed in commerce with the Devil; riding broomsticks and pulling off their stockings to raise a storm and all that sort of nonsense. As a matter of fact, Regina had become interested in the game only because she was a direct descendant of Sir John Holt (1642-1710), the Lord Chief Justice of England.
Holt was a swinger when he was an undergraduate at Oxford and he ran out of money, as usual. He managed to swindle a week’s free lodging by pretending to cure his landlady’s daughter of an ague. The goniff scribbled a few words of Greek on a scrap of parchment and told his landlady to tie it to the girl’s waist and leave it there until she was well.
Years later, when Holt was L.C.J., an old woman was brought before him charged with sorcery. She professed to cure fevers with the application of a piece of parchment. Holt looked at the parchment, and you guessed it; the identical phony charm he’d faked years before. Holt burst out laughing and confessed, and the old doll was acquitted. She was one of the last to be tried for witchcraft in England.
So you can see why Regina was interested but never serious. It was more or less amateur theatricals, playacting with overtones of a parlor concert, fun and games in a deliciously dark key. But the hell of this game was that without their knowledge or intent—repeat: without their knowledge or intent—these darling, good-humored ladies were actually generating a most damnable demon.
It was a polymorphous quasi-entity never before dreamed of in the entire history of witchcraft and devil lore, a monstrous Golem. No, not the well-known synthetic slave of Jewish legend, but a unique multiplication of the brutal cruelty that lies buried deep within all of us, even the best of us. Freud called it the “Id,” the unconscious source of instinctive energy which demands savage animal satisfaction. Alone and separate, the Id in each of the bee-ladies was under control; but together, consolidated by the fun-diabolism, they all merged.
8 × Id = Golem100
Watch their first ritual.
* * *
“Now then, ladies, final rehearsal for raising the Devil. Got your scripts? Everybody ready?”
“Yes, but is this the realsie, Regina?”
“No, not yet. For real it has to be all of us together with stage effects. This is just the final tryout, one by one. Invocation, dear, you go first.”
“Well, all right, but if ANYONE l!a!u!g!h!s—”
“No, no, Sarah. All Sincere City. Go.”
Sarah Heartburn declaimed the Invocation.
Sarah
– 7
0
“Wonderful! Wasn’t she dramatic, ladies?”
“All heart. All heart.”
“Sarah could invoke anything out of the woodwork.”
“Aye, you mock me, but I felt a C*H*I*L*L when I was chaunting it!”
“The devil playing footsie with you?”
“ ‘Twas NOT my foot, Nellie.”
“Oops! Naughty, naughty.”
“Now ladies, please! We must be serious.”
“Doesn’t Satan have a sense of humor, Regina?”
“Try a clean joke on him, Priss. Now let’s get on with it. Oodgedye, you’re next. Prayer.”
Oodgedye read the Latin Prayer.
Sarah
+ Oodgedye
– 6
0
“Lovely. I never thought Latin could sound so beautiful. Congratulations, dear.”
“Thanks, Regina. I only wish it made sense, too.”
“I’m sure it will to the Devil. Now who’s next? Mary Mixup with Pact?”
“No, me, Regina. Conjuration.”
“Oh, of course, Udgedye. It’s back to English before we get to the French. Ready?”
“Willing and able. Stand back, everybody. When I conjure I’m practically a fiend in human shape.”
“Splendid, Ud, but don’t get too intimate with Satan. He’s not exactly reliable.”