“Opbless, Mr. Chairm—Mills: Sir, I—Excuse me. Millie, I came to square the account for my ruined lab.”
“Forget it, Blaise. THE BELLYWHOPPER! THE BELLYWHOPPER! This is the first of Ops Week. All forgiven, and we’ll set your lab up for you again. MEET THE BELLYWHOPPER! BOTH ENDS AGAINST THE MIDDLE! We can afford it. God knows, CCC’s made enough money out of you.”
“Thank you, Mills.”
“Opbless, Blaise.”
“Sir—Millie, something else. I need a very special environment for a very special test I’ve got to run as soon as possible. Does CCC own a deep mine with a power source I could use? I need a place where the subject can be completely isolated.”
“Mine? Mine? My God, we’ve got a dozen exhausted mines all over the world, but not one you could use in a hurrry, Blaise.”
“Why not, Mills?”
“In the first place, all wiring and utilities were ripped out for scrap ages ago. In the second place, they’ve been taken over by squatters. Thousands of them. Would take at least a year to evict them, kicking and screaming. HURRY! HURRY! HURRY! THE BELLYWHOPPER!”
* * *
Gretchen couldn’t assay the mob surrounding the art museum because lifestyle was abandoned by the entire Corridor during Ops Week. Those who didn’t dress badly, faked it. Those who didn’t speak or behave without style, faked it. But she was sure of one thing: most of them had to be art lovers.
Because the museum followed a hallowed Neapolitan New Year’s custom. The Neapolitans save up all their unwanted household furnishings and decorations and on New Year’s Day they throw them out of their windows with hilarious celebrations, and if you’re walking the street, you’d better be on the alert for falling furniture.
The museum, always plagued by storage problems, followed this custom on the first Opsday. Whatever clutter they had occupying precious space, judged unworthy and proven unsalable (for a decent price) was tossed out the top-floor windows.
So down came paintings, prints, etchings, posters, statues, objets d’art and vertu, empty frames, pieces of armor, period costumes, papyrus, Baroque instruments, mummified cats, battered pistols, crumbling pewter.
There were shrieks of laughter from the windows as the mob fought hysterically to catch and possess in fee simple absolute each falling object, and Gretchen knew that getting rid of the museum’s worthless clutter was only half its enjoyment. Although she was out on the fringe of the mob, she found herself surprisingly and massively jostled by a large human object.
“Sorry. Opbless,” she muttered, shifting aside.
“Opbless,” said a clear, cultivated voice with no attempt at faking Ops Week commonality.
Gretchen turned curiously. It was the Queen Bee, Winifred Ashley.
“Regina!”
“What? BB? Is it really you, my dear? How unexpected and how very nice. What are you doing here? Touching earth for something?”
“Not really, Regina. I was hoping to apologize and make up for a disturbance I created the other day, but I see it’s quite impossible. And you?”
“Ah! I’m hoping for a secret treasure.”
“Can you tell me?”
“But of course, dear. After all, you are one of us.” Regina lowered her voice. “They have a player-piano gathering dust in a corner. Every year I hope they’ll tire of it and throw it out.”
“But you already have a player-piano in your beautiful Communist apartment, Regina.”
“Yes, BB, but I don’t want the museum’s old pianola. I want what’s in it. I’m the only one who knows. The first pianola roll of the ‘Internationale’ by Pottier and Degeyter, 1871. It will make the focal point of my decor. Can’t you hear it?” Regina sang as mellifluously as she spoke, “Arise, ye prisoners of starvation…” She laughed. “Perhaps only a dream, but still I touch earth. We’ll see you at my place this evening, of course, dear BB? A lahvely Opsparty to entertain our men. Opbless.”
* * *
It was free baths for all in the spillway of the Hudson Hell Gate dam. Fresh water, hot from the breeder cooling system. Slightly radioactive, to be sure, but what the hell, Opsday. Live a little, touch earth, and to hell with the rest. The four-acre spillway was seething with naked bodies, glowing from the heat, foaming with soap, submerging, surging up like porpoises, laughing, shouting, choking, coughing rhapsodically.
“Sooner or later one of them has to drown,” the man alongside Shima murmured. “Maybe on her own or maybe with a little help. I keep hoping. Opbless.”
“Opbless,” Shima answered and inspected the stranger. He was startling; tall, Lincolnesque in face and figure, and markedly piebald. The hair was albino, the beard black, the eyes red, the skin blotched with random black-and-white patches.
“I’m a haploid,” the stranger said casually, almost mechanically, as though he had responded to Shima’s suprised take a thousand times before. “Chromosomes from one parent only.”
“But you are a kind of albino, aren’t you?” Shima asked, much interested.
“Haploid albino,” the stranger said wearily. “Let it go at that, doctor. Don’t try any dissection on me.”
“What! What? You call me ‘doctor’? Are you the—?”
“Yes. Yes indeed. And apparently you have no memory. May I ask what squeam you were shooting?”
“Promethium. The hydride. PmH2.”
“Never heard of it. I must remember to try it. Now this time, doctor, if one of them drowns, with or without help from me, kindly do not interfere. No rescue. No resuscitation. If there’s any mouth-to-mouth, I will apply it in my own fashion.”
“My God! You’re sick!”
“Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it.”
“Christ! I’d rather die first.”
“Sorry. I don’t dig boys.”
Shima took a deep breath. “No. I’m sorry. Really sorry. I apologize for losing my head. I’m not here to argue or hassle with anybody, and certainly I’m in no position to pass moral judgments. I beg you to forgive me.”
“Nicely put.”
“So if you’ll excuse me…”
“Where are you off to?”
“I’m trying to get an interview with the dam director.”
“Oh, are you really, now?”
“Yes. Would you know where I might locate him or her, please?”
“Do I owe you favors?”
“No. I owe you.”
“Nicely put. The dam director is a Mr. Lafferty.”
“Thank you. And where might I find him?”
“Here. I’m Lafferty.”
Again Shima lost his poise. He gawked and stammered, “But—But—But—”
“But how?” Lafferty smiled. “Simple. Brilliance. Hard work. And the fact that I inherited fifty-one percent of the Hudson Hell Gate stock.”
“Ildefonsa would,” Shima said under his breath.
“Must you bring her up at the beginning of the fête, doctor?”
“Sorry again. Apologies again. I’m an ass today.”
“Accepted without reserve.”
“Mr. Lafferty, I—”
“Opsday. Droney.”
“Droney. Thank you. Opbless. I… I came to ask a favor of the HHG director…”
“Ask it.”
“I need a very special environment for a very special sensory test. It must be completely isolated from all sight and sound. I was hoping that the dam depths might—”
“No way,” Lafferty interupted. “If you hadn’t been so busy with your silly firecrackers down there, you’d have noticed that the depths are filled with rumblings and water-wooshings. Speaking of which, there goes a charming young girl under for the third time. She needs tender care. Excuse me.”
Shima could not reply.
The celebrated necrophiliac gave him a benign smile. “We will discuss your landing Subadar Ind’dni on my back another time.” As he plunged into the spillway, Lafferty declaimed, “Strong as an eagle! Swift as a vulture! Go! Go! Go! Go! Necro culture!”