Rumpa-pum-pum …
Lola is sitting on the end of the other bed, cleaning her automatic. Moira lies behind her, flat, knees propped up, gazing at the ceiling.
“I’ll fix you a drink, Tom. Where’s the fixings?” says Lola.
“In there.” I nod toward the dressing room.
“I’m afraid I’ve got bad news too, Chief.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s the last message I got from Dr. Immelmann. Just before you came. On the Anser-Phone. Chief, how could he use the Anser-Phone? He didn’t have a transmitter and he had no way of knowing our frequency.”
“Never mind,” I say hurriedly. “What did he want?”
“He said to tell you — now let me get this straight.” Ellen consults her notebook. “To tell you that the program was third-generational and functional on both fronts; that he’s already gotten gratifying overt interactions between the two extremes of the political spectrum, and that you would soon have sufficient data for a convincing pilot. Does that make sense?”
“I’m afraid so,” I say gloomily. “Is that all?”
“I saved the good news, Chief,” says Ellen, frowning at Lola, who is at the bar fixing drinks. “He also said to tell you — and this I wrote down word for word — that he’s been in touch with the Nobel Prize committee in Stockholm, each member of which he knows personally, apprising them of the nature of your work, and that they’re extremely excited about it. Chief, isn’t the Peace Prize the big one? Anyhow, he’s cabling them a summary of the present pilot and he closed with the cryptic remark that you should prepare yourself for some interesting news when the prize is announced in October. Does any of this make sense, Chief?”
“Yes,” I say, frowning. “But October! What makes him think there’ll be anything left in October? The damn fool is going to destroy everything.” Then why is it I wonder, that a pleasant tingling sensation spreads down the backs of my thighs?
“Here’s your favorite, Tom Tom.” Lola hands me a drink.
“Did she say ‘Tom Tom’?” Moira asks Ellen.
I’ve tossed off the whole drink somewhat nervously before it comes over me that it is a gin fizz. Oh well, I’ve got anti-allergy pills with me. The drink is deliciously cool and silky with albumen.
“What are we going to do?” wails Moira, opening and closing her thighs on her hands, like a little girl holding wee-wee.
“Why don’t you go to the bathroom?” suggests Ellen.
“I will,” says Moira, jumping up. “No, I’ve just been. I have to go to the Center to get my things.”
“Right,” Lola agrees instantly. “And I have to get my cello.”
“No no,” I say hastily. “You can’t, Moira, you have everything here you need. I mean everyone has. I’ll get your cello for you, Lola.”
“But my Cupid’s Qui—” says Moira, coming close.
“Yes!” I exclaim, laughing, talking, hawking phlegm all at once.
“Her Cupid’s what?” asks Lola.
“Moira, like the rest of us,” I tell Lola, “didn’t know we’d be stuck here.”
“And besides, I can’t wear the things you brought!” Moira is in tears and is apt to say anything.
“What things?” asks Lola.
“I, ah, laid in some supplies as soon as I had reason to suspect the worst.”
“In a motel?” Lola’s fist disappears into her flank.
“It’s a logical shelter for an emergency,” says Ellen, “because it’s convenient to town, Center, and Paradise.” Ellen is defending me!
“Right,” I say, hawking and, for some reason, dancing like Ken Stryker. I hand my empty glass to Lola.
“If I may make a suggestion, Chief,” says Ellen briskly, “I think we ought to find out exactly what is going on before we do anything.”
“Absolutely right!” Ellen is a jewel.
Ellen turns on the old Philco. “It’s a bad color and 2-D but it gets the local channel — the one over your house, Chief. In a minute they’ll have the news.”
Lola takes my glass to the bar.
No one ever had a better nurse than Ellen.
On comes the picture, flickering and herringboned, of green people in a green field under a green sky. There is a platform and bunting and a speaker. The speaker has a ghost. The crowd mills about restlessly. “Hm, a Fourth of July celebration,” I tell the girls — until all at once I recognize the place. It is the high school football field on the outskirts of town, not three miles from here!
The camera pans among the crowd. I recognize faces here and there: a conservative proctologist, a chiropractor, a retired Air Force colonel, a disgruntled Boeing executive, a Texaco dealer, a knot of PTA mothers from the private school, an occasional Knothead Catholic, and a Baptist preacher sitting on the platform. The speaker is the governor, a well-known Knothead.
Nearly everyone waves a little flag. The crowd is restive.
A reporter is interviewing a deputy sheriff, a good old boy named Junior Trosclair.
“We cain’t hold these folks much longer,” Junior is telling the reporter.
“Hold them from doing what?”
“They talking about marching on the federal complex.”
“Why are they doing that, Deputy?” asks the reporter, already thinking of his next question.
“I don’t know,” says Junior, shaking his head dolefully. “All I know is we cain’t hold them much longer.”
“Sir,” says the reporter, stopping a passerby, a pleasant-looking green-faced man who is wearing two hats and carrying an old M-1 rifle. “Sir, can you tell me what the plans are here?”
“What’s that?” calls out the man, cupping an ear to hear over the uproar. His face has the amiable but bemused expression of a convention delegate.
The reporter repeats the question.
“Oh yes. Well, we’re going to take a stand is the thing,” says the man somewhat absently and, catching sight of a friend, waves at him.
“How is that, sir?” asks the reporter, holding microphone over and grimacing at the engineer.
“What? Oh, we’re going over there and clean them out.”
“Over where?”
“Over to Fedville.” The man gesticulates to the unseen friend and drifts off, nodding and smiling.
The reporter grabs his arm.
“Clean out who, sir? Sir!”
“What? Yes. Well, all of them.”
“All of who?”
“You know, commonists, atheistic scientists, Jews, perverts, dope fiends, coonasses—”
The reporter drops the man’s arm as if it had turned into a snake. “Thank you for your comment,” he says, coming toward the camera. “Now I’ll return you to—”
“And I’ll tell you something else,” says the man, who has warmed to the subject for the first time. He catches up with the fast-stepping reporter. “The niggers may be holed up over yonder in Paradise but you know where they’re getting their orders from?”
“No sir. Now we’ll have a message from—”
“From the White House, otherwise known as the Tel-a-Viv Hilton on Pennsylvania Avenue.”
“Yes sir! Take it, David!”
During the exchange I’ve been watching another reporter with transmitter and backpack passing with his ghost among the crowd. But no. It is — Art Immelmann, a green Art plus a green ghost of Art. No doubt about it. There’s the old-fashioned crewcut and widow’s peak. And he’s carrying not a microphone but my lapsometer. And he’s only pretending to do interviews: holding the device to people’s mouths only when they are looking at him, otherwise passing it over their heads or pressing it into the nape of their necks. “That’s Dr. Immelmann!” cries Ellen, jumping up and pointing to the flickering screen, but at that moment the newscast ends and the afternoon movie resumes, a rerun of a very clean film, which I recognize as The Ice Capades of 1981.