“Safe and sound. Yes.”
“But you did not report discovery to me despite your prior agitation. Why, madame?”
“Because I—Because we had something far more urgent to do.”
“Precise nature of same?”
“A Promethium trip.”
“Ah yes. Hoping to visit the Infraworld of your fanciful imagination.”
“I didn’t believe her either,” Shima broke in. “I was just being polite. But it’s not imaginary, Ind’dni, it’s fact, goddam cold fact. Maybe I should call it hot news because it was out of sight! Wild!”
“And all this when?”
“Not more than an hour ago.” Shima was feverish in his excitement. “It’s a discovery that’ll make history when I can get it documented and publish. They’ll call it the Shima Syndrome or maybe the Nunn Effect. We mainlined a milligram of Pm each in my lab. We shot ourselves in matching veins to make sure the effect would hit us at approximately the same time, and the Pm must have taken over within minutes. The effect was fantastic, Subadar. Unbelievable! There is a goddam Phasmaworld. There might even be an entire goddam Phasmaculture buried deep under externals, for all I know. We weren’t wherever we were long enough to do much exploring.”
“You really believe this, Dr. Shima?”
“Believe? Damn it, Ind’dni, I know.”
“You were in madame’s Subworld together?”
“Together, yes; but not in the Ourworld sense.”
“And how long did the visit last?”
“That’s hard to say. Our space-time orientation was wiped out. All our normal everyday senses were wiped. But a milly of Pm couldn’t have lasted very long. I’d say twenty minutes. You, Gretchen?”
“Closer to a half hour.”
“And during all this, where were you in… what did you call it, doctor… in the Ourworld?”
“In my lab at CCC.”
“That is, our bods were,” Gretchen explained. “I told you that we’d leave the Guff without leaving, Subadar, and so we did.”
“You did not,” Ind’dni said quite distinctly.
Gretchen took a breath. Then, “You think we’re lying?”
“No.” Ind’dni was quietly emphatic. “No. I think you’re mad, both of you… Promethium mad. Evidently the chemical is extremely dangerous.”
“What? Why? How do you—”
“Please to listen. Five o’clock in the afternoon was yesterday. It is past six o’clock in the morning of today. Your half hour lasted twelve hours.”
“But—That’s impossible!”
“And I can account for some of them. There was that A.P.B. and an alert on Code Nemo. There was a watch and the reports came in from all points on your insane careering through the Guff.”
“But we weren’t out in the Guff,” Gretchen protested. “We never left Blaise’s lab, physically.”
“But you did, both of you.”
“This is a damned ploy, Ind’dni.”
“On my honor I assure you not, doctor.”
They both knew he was a man of honor and were flabbergasted. They could only stare silent questions.
“Shall I tell you the story of your missing twelve hours?”
Neither could answer.
The story (Ind’dni continued) cannot give accurate times and sequences. It is probable that events have been omitted because staff had great difficulty tracking your madly unpredictable adventures. One, who is precinct chess champion, reported that you both leaped about like the knight’s move in torus chess.
We start at five o’clock yesterday afternoon. Following took place: Madame invaded premises of F.A.O. Noir toy emporium and tried to incite toys to riot against children. She was heard exhorting a stuffed ostrich: “Kill, baby, kill! Kill the kids.”
Meanwhile, the doctor was in the complex of Intra National Cartel Association searching for a virgin. After much perplexity, I realized that the initials of the company form noun, INCA. Apparently Dr. Shima wished to sacrifice to Aztec gods by cutting out the heart of a virgin. His sacrificial knife was a ruler. Metric.
Item: Dr. Shima was discovered in bowels of the Hudson Hell Gate dam with avowed intent of blowing up entire structure which—his quoted words—was a rapacious rape of coastal ecology. His explosive was a ten-foot string of Chinese firecrackers which he ignited and escaped in consequent confusion.
Miz Nunn next manifested in the Guff Art Museum, where she astonished many serious students and scholars by running from statue to statue, grasping the male genitals, and complaining that they were cold. She escaped apprehension by flinging a fig leaf in a guard’s face.
In Central Park Dr. Shima tried to destroy the kites of children and adults by flying a killer kite. Fortunately its tail was not armed with cutting blades, as is the custom, but merely a cordless shaver. He next appeared on Bedloe’s Island resolved to climb to the top of nonexistent Statue of Liberty and relight the lady’s torch. The island, you know, was sold to the Anti-Vivisection League and is maintained as an animal refuge. The league did not take kindly to the flaming combustibles that Dr. Shima was carrying. Neither did the animals.
Together you invaded premises of a respectable tattoo practitioner and demanded that he marry you by tattooing you two into one. When he tried to explain that he was not licensed to marry anyone by any means whatever, you threw him down and tried to tattoo the letters F.I.N.K. on his already completely ornamented body, meanwhile singing, “Walter, Walter, lead me to the altar, and I’ll show you where I’m tattooed.”
Dr. Shima then appeared in the Guff morgue where he engaged in a bitter altercation with a celebrated necrophiliac over the body of a dead girl. It seems that Dr. Shima wished to inspect her internal organs by means of dissection, a discipline which he regretted never having studied at Princeton, M.I.T., or Dhow Chemical. The gentleman had other designs on the body, for which he had already paid. A most unfortunate confrontation.
Staff next reported you, madame, pressing your pelvis in most lascivious manner against a three-sheet 3-D poster. It was an advertisement for “UpMan,” a cantharis, featuring “before” and “after” depictions of a nude man. Your attentions were devoted to the “after” gentleman, who was highly colored and considerably larger-than-lifesize.
Dr. Shima was also rather erotic at this time. He was dashing about, ripping garments off passing ladies and spraying them black, chanting the words, “Black is bangable! Bang is black-able!” Most odd because the ladies were already naturally black.
It has not been reported where you obtained cosmetics, Miz Nunn, but you appeared in studios of Glacial Army’s Station WGA in full clown makeup and attempted to brazen your way into their broadcast of Pagliacci as revised by Scriabin Finkel to demonstrate that jealousy is contrary to God’s will. You kept sounding your high C as proof of your artistry, which same inspired many stray dogs to howling.
Staff located you both together, after another knight’s leap, at CCC complex. You had wrecked Dr. Shima’s laboratory in process of mixing all chemicals and reagents in a gigantic top hat stolen from a peanut advertisement. Resultant odor was most unpleasant. On one wall you had finger-painted in potassium permanganate (KMnO4) the slogan: KILSTENCH—THE STINKING MAN’S SCENTARETTE!
At Staten Island Dr. Shima tied himself to the nose of a Saturn launch vehicle and urged Miz Nunn to light a match, fire the rocket and launch him into outer space, but she was too busy spraying the concrete pad with Christmas red and green decorations, affirming that the alien inhabitants of distant stars would comprehend Luke, ii, 14 far more readily than E = Mc2 or even 1 + 1 = 2.
Our A.P.B. watch next sighted the co-conspirators—staff’s words—intruding on a fully authorized gathering of the Black Ku Klux Klan, where you extinguished their sacred flaming mandala in a most scatological manner and improvised a performance of the classic Porgy and Bess opera which unbiased witnesses describe as merely pathetic.