Bashafen wet der arbetsman!
“Freiheit! Freiheit!” Gretchen whispered. “Sheit oif! Sheit oif with your rabbi!”
“Next, our ‘Rebel Girl, a Precious Pearl’ will favor us with the ‘Internationale,’ as sung for the finale of the play of the same name.”
“But not, I say, NOT in drab English. In the only VERO language of BELLEZZA ARTI!” ¶¶¶¶
●●●●
“What does Regina know about beautiful art? She’s just a rich reactionary. What do any of them know? Yenta is commercial. Mary’s too dumb. Nell’s insincere.”
Compagni avanti! Il gran partito
Noi siam dei lavoratore.
Rosso un fior c’è in petto fiorito;
Una fede c’è nata in cor!
Noi non siamo piu nell’officina,
Entro terra, nei campi, in mar,
La plebe sempre all’opera china
Senza Ideal in cui sperar.
“Avanti, Sarah! Avanti! Leave these superficial UNCREATIVE women. They’re beneath you.”
“Miss Priss has chosen the precise tongue of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,” Regina said. “They are the godfathers of our glorious Bolshevik Epiphany, and she perhaps may become the godmother.”
“Regina’s always putting you down,” Gretchen hissed. “She’s rich and vulgar. They’re all vulgar and common. The twins are marital perverts. Nell Gwyn is worse than a whore.”
Wacht auf, Verdammte dieser Erde,
Die stets man noch zum Hungern zwingt!
Das Recht, wie Glut im Kraterherde,
Nun mit Macht zum Durchbruch dringt.
Reinen Tisch macht mit den Bedrängern:
Heer der Sklaven, wache auf!
Ein Nichts zu sein, tragt es nicht länger—
Alles zu werden strömt zuhauf!
“Wacht auf, Priss! Wacht auf! Wake up. Get out of here. You’re too nice and decent for these rotten women who’re completely without cultivated manners.”
“It’s no secret that our beloved Nell Gwyn is the color of our beloved Revolutionary Red Flag,” Regina smiled, “but I do have a secret to reveal. She is of Spanish descent, and that rara avis, a titian Castilian.”
“And she’s a bile-green turkey, Nell. Green with envy. She knows you ought to be holding the meetings in your beautiful apartment and running them in your high style. She’s jealous of you. They all are.”
Arriba los pobres del mundo
En pié los esclavos sin pan
Y alcémon todos al grito de
Viva la Internacionál!
Rompamos al punto las trabas
Que impiden el triunfo del bien
Cambiemos el mundo de fase,
Hundiendo el imperio burgués!
“Triunfo, Nell! Triunfo! Viva la Internacionál! Believe what you sing. You know damned well that you should be the queen.”
* * *
As the depressed Gretchen strolled the Strøget, chewing over her failure to arouse the bee-ladies to a hive revolution against Queen Regina, she was astonished and delighted to see Blaise Shima bearing down on her like the Flying Dutchman, full-sail and silent. She ran to meet him, seized his arm, and before they could exchange greetings was pouring out an account of the psalm-singing for the coming of the glorious Bolshevik epiphany.
“… And then the twins, Oodgedye and Udgedye, sang it in Russian and I handed them the same number—You two are the only really liberated women here, and all the rest hate you for it; Regina, Priss, Sarah, Yenta… Why don’t you get lost from this dull scene? Why don’t you take the song to heart? Same result. Nothing…
“My God, I’m glad we ran into each other, Blaise. I’m heartsick. I couldn’t start a palace revolution in the colony, even with malice, jealousies, rivalries, anything. Regina binds them together, and she’s too strong. The Queen Bee has got to be removed if we hope to scatter the hive and wipe the Golem. But how?
“Don’t bother to answer, Blaise. It was a rhetorical question. I know the answer and it sickens me, but it’s the only way out for us and the rest of the Guff. I’m going to the P.L.O. and buy a contract on Winifred Ashley with the PloFather. She can and will wipe her. It’s horrible—neither of us is a deliberate destroyer—but there’s no other way. What do you think, Blaise? Will you go along with it? God knows what Ind’dni will do when he finds out—that cat finds out everything—but are you with me? What do you think?”
“uoy kcuf lliw I kniht I”
“What?”
“uoy kcuf lliw I kniht I”
“Blaise!”
“uoy kcuf lliw I kniht I”
“For God’s sake! What’s this gibberish?”
“uoy kcuf lliw I kniht I”
“You’ve gone out of your mind!”
Gretchen tore herself away from Shima’s clutch, gave him one stupefied look, then dashed out of the Strøget. She careered around a corner, another, and came face to face with Salem Burne, smooth, slender, polished. The psychomancer smiled and held out his arms, grasping and clawing.
“uoy kcuf won llahs I”
“What!”
“uoy kcuf won llahs I”
“Are you insane?”
“uoy kcuf won llahs I”
“You’re mad, Burne. The whole Guff’s gone mad and gibbering!”
“uoy kcuf won llahs I”
She ran again, panting, trembling, and rammed into Dr. F.H. Leuz. The Drogh Director caught and enveloped her massively as she staggered.
“kcuf lamirP”
“For God’s sake, Leuz! Not you!”
“kcuf lamirP”
“First Blaise? Then Burne? Now you? No! No!”
“kcuf lamirP”
“This is a nightmare. It has to be. This garble! I’m asleep somewhere. Why can’t I wake up?”
She fought free of Leuz and reeled back into a doorway. She hid in the darkness in a panic. She was suddenly swept into the arms of the “UpMan” poster’s Mr. “After” who spun her around, beamed, and bruised her crotch with battering ram blows of his larger-than-lifesize.
“kcuF kcuF kcuF kcuF kcuF kcuF”
“Christ almighty! Dear God almighty!”
She stumbled out of the doorway, ran blind, ran hot, ran broken, sobbing, flinching and flailing, and
there was
the
Statue
of
Liberty
holding out
her
arms
and
flaming torch.
And as the ponderous metal arms crushed around her, Gretchen fainted.
* * *
“No, you have not gone mad, Miz Nunn,” Ind’dni assured her. “What you have experienced was not hallucination. It was a nightmare of quasi-reality; the reality of the polymorphic Golem beast in many guises: Dr. Shima; Salem Burne, the psychomancer; Dr. Leuz, the much-respected Director of Drogh Operations; the ‘UpMan’ poster come to life; the long-ago-scrapped Statue of Liberty.”
“And the gibberish it spoke?”
“Feeble attempts at spoken communication, which it got backwards. The creature is not of intelligence and has no grasp of our reality. It is merely brute passion using what it dredges up from your memory as decoys. I’m surprised that the Hundred-Handed animal did not appear as a computer or transport or anything else in your experience. I have no doubt that it is too primitive to understand that machines cannot speak.”
“And you rescued me, Subadar?”
“Staff was only too happy to oblige.”
“Your staff just happened to be passing by?”
“Not quite, Miz Nunn. After the ominous revelation of last night, I had you followed.”
“What ominous revelation?”
“You and Dr. Shima have private and intimate nicknames for each other, yes? Archaic pejoratives?”