“Yes, sir. The Corridor has changed in our time.”
“To be sure there must always be change and we must always, as civilizèds, adapt; but adapt to what? This? And the other Lethals of the Hundred-Hander? What is this hundred-handed monster that stinks of madness? Whose Lethals stink of madness? Is it of animal? Yes and no. Is it of vegetable? Yes and no. Is it of mineral? Yes and no. Is it of anything we have ever encountered before?”
“The answer is no, Subadar.”
“To be sure. Is it motivated by any purpose we have ever discovered before?”
“No, Subadar.”
“Is there anything on earth like this thing of hands and stench and madness and cruelty?”
“No, sir.”
“Could it be alien from outer space, as in entertainment drama?”
“No, Subadar. Our communications section knows there’s no life of any sort within light-years of our system.”
“They know, or believe?”
“They know, sir. The five-hundred-meter radio telescope has been beaming out to the entire galaxy for two centuries… a human figure, binary numbers, atomic numbers, DNA structure, a diagram of our solar system… and no response. We’re alone in our segment of the Milky Way galaxy.”
“Most interesting. Then it is not alien from our galaxy, so it is alien of our own solar. It is living and impossible. It is incomprehensible fact. Inconceivable. Unknowable. Inexplicable. Yet it is fact. It is a new Guff madness.”
“Yes, Subadar.”
“Is it then required of us to master this new madness?”
“We must, sir. We’re required by our duty.”
“Ah yes. Our moral and legal obligation, but how to deal with this? Do we respond to each new madness of the Guff by going newly mad ourselves? Must we perform this adaptment to meet our responsibilities, to conform and be thought normally sane in a world that is of a raving madness?”
“We have to conform, Subadar… all of us.”
“Then must we cling to our civilized values in secret and become Closet Sanes? What shall happen to us? What is happening to the Guff and the Corridor? I beg of you, gentlemen, tell me if you can… What is the Northeast Corridor today?”
3
By now, of course, the Northeast Corridor was the Northeast slum, stretching from Canada to the Carolinas and as far west as Pittsburgh. It was a lunacy of violence inhabited by a swarming population with no visible means of support and no fixed residence. It was so vast and chaotic that demographers and the social services had given up all hope. Only the police continued the struggle.
It was a monstrous raree show that everybody denounced and adored. Living in the Corridor, and particularly in the Guff of the Corridor, was like being desperately in lust with a freaked-out Hottentot Venus. You hated it but you couldn’t kick it.
Even the privileged class, like Queen Regina and her seven bee-ladies, who could afford to live protected lives in luxury Oases and, indeed, could escape to anywhere they damn pleased, never dreamed of leaving the Guff. The jungle magicked you. It was alive, by God! Its dementia churned up exciting new vices, sins, crimes, outrages. You never knew when you might be suddenly dead, but you always knew you were superbly alive.
There were hundreds of daily survival crises in the Corridor. Cold was a major discomfort. Everybody was chilled and winter seemed to be stretching out into half the year. A popular revival movement preached that another Glacial Epoch was on the way, announcing the Second Coming. The mystic (?) year 2222 was to be the final freeze when all sinners would be called to judgment. The Scriabin Finkel stable of musicians had composed the Glacial Army’s anthem: “Where You Beez Come God’s Big Freeze?”
Even more exasperating than the lack of heat was the lack of fresh water. Most of the natural potable water had long since been impounded by Ibet (Industry Building a Better Tomorrow) so there was very little left for the suffering consumer of today. Rainwater tanks on roofs, of course, frequently siphoned off by thieving “HOjacks.” Recycling and purifying. A black market. And that was about all, which meant that very few could bathe or launder properly, so the jungle stank. You could smell the Northeast’s bouquet from ten miles out at sea.
Not to believe that everybody minded stinking as they skipped merrily over the rot in the streets, but a lot did, and their only recourse was perfumery. There were a hundred competing companies manufacturing perfume products, but the leader, far and away, was the Corrugated Can Company which had had the good sense to diversify when the great perfume explosion burst.
CCC had the grace to admit, privately, that it had been neck-and-neck with their competition until Blaise Shima joined them. Then it turned into a no-contest. Blaise Shima. Origins: French, Japanese, Irish. Family: None. Education: B.Sc. Princeton, M.Sc. M.I.T., Ph.D. Dhow Chemical. (Dhow had secretly tipped CCC that Shima was a winner, and unfair-practice suits brought by the competition were still pending before the Business Ethics Review Board.) Blaise Shima, thirty-one, unmarried, straight, genius.
His sense of scent was his genius and at CCC he was privately referred to as “The Nose.” He knew everything about perfumery and its chemistry: the animal products—ambergris, castor, civet, musk; the essential oils distilled from plants and flowers; the balsams extruded by wounded trees and shrubs—myrrh, benzoin, storax, Peru, Talu; the synthetics derived from the combination of natural scents with the esters of fatty acids.
Shima had created all of CCC’s premium sellers; “Vulva,” “Assuage,” “OxteF,” (A much more attractive brand name than “Armpitto,” which Kornbluth in Sales had suggested.) “Prep-F,” and “Tongue War.” He was treasured by CCC, paid a salary enormous enough to enable him to live in a super-luxury Oasis that was comfortably warmed. Best of all, CCC had the clout to win him a generous supply of fresh water, h. & c. No girl in the Guff could resist Shima’s invitation to come up and enjoy a hot shower.
But Blaise Shima paid a high price for these comforts. He could never use scented soaps, shave creams, pomades, perfumes, depilatories. He could never eat seasoned foods or drink anything but glass-distilled water. All this, you understand, to keep The Nose undefiled by contamination so that he could smell around in his pure and sterile laboratory and create new masterpieces. He was presently composing a promising new product (working title, “Dil-d’Eau”) but he’d been on it for two months without any firm results and CCC Sales was alarmed by the delay. There was a meeting of the board of directors.
“What the hell’s the matter with him anyway?”
“Has he lost his touch?”
“Not a chance.”
“After all, he has slowed down before. Remember that girl from Ipanema? She wiped him out. What was her name?”
“Ildefonsa Lafferty.”
“She was a killer, from all reports, but Ildefonsa didn’t hold him up this long. Maybe he needs a rest.”
“Why, he had two weeks’ holiday last quarter.”
“What did he do?”
“Spent a week eating and drinking up a storm, he told me. He’s got feisty appetites.”
“Could that be it? Hangover?”
“No. He said he spent the second week purging himself before he came back to work. Sincere.”
The chairman of the board, massive, magisterial, his skin resembling a crocodile’s, broke in. “Is he having trouble here at CCC? Difficulties with middle management, perhaps?”
“Impossible, Mr. Chairman. They wouldn’t dare annoy him.”
“Is he sulking for a raise? Give it to him.”
“He says he can’t spend the money he makes now.”
“Wait. Has our competition got to him?”
“They approach him all the time, sir. He just laughs them off. He’s happy here.”