“Did you see him, Chief?”
“It did look like him.”
“And he had your invention.”
“It did appear so.”
Moira comes out of the bathroom, face scrubbed.
“I’m leaving,” she announces and strides for the door.
“Wait!” I jump against the door, blocking her. “You can’t go out there!”
“I’m going to get my Cupid’s Quiver and my own clothes. That is, if I come back.”
“Get her what?” asks Lola.
“You can’t leave just now. It’s too dangerous.”
“I must get my own clothes.”
“What does she mean, her own clothes?” asks Lola, frowning.
“We may be here quite a while, Lola,” I explain earnestly.
“Yes,” says Moira. “Chico and I had plans to stay only for the weekend.”
“Weekend? Chico?” Lola has risen slowly and stands, one fist on her hip, pelvis tilted menacingly. “Who is this Chico?”
“Ha ha,” I laugh nervously. “I’m sure everybody’s plans for the Fourth were spoiled. I’ll tell you what,” I say quickly to Moira. “Give me your key and I’ll go for you.”
Now it’s Lola who heads for the door. “Out of my way, Chico. I’m going too. I have to get my cello and look after my horses. A horse you can trust.”
“I’ll get your cello too, Lola. It’s in Love, didn’t you tell me?”
Both girls confront me.
“Well? Are you moving out of the way, Tom?” Lola asks.
I shrug and step aside.
Out they go—“I may not be back,” says Moira over her shoulder — and back they come, reeling back as if blown in by a gale. They slam the door and stand, palms against the wood, eyes rolling up. Two girls they truly seem and very young.
Lola swallows. “He’s there.”
“Who?”
“A Bantu.”
I peep through the curtains. It is Ely in his kwunghali standing with his Sten gun in the shadow of the opposite balcony. I recognize the classy Duke Ellington forehead. He is looking right and left but not up.
“I’ll go, O.K.?” I say wearily, holding out a hand for Moira’s key. “Lola, take out your automatic and sit here. Ellen, take my revolver and sit there.”
Moira has collapsed on the bed, where she lies opening and closing her knees.
“Why don’t you go to the bathroom, dear,” says Ellen.
Moira obeys. She gives me her key without a word.
When she comes out, I open the bathroom window. Lola follows me.
“How are you going to get my cello through that window?”
“I’ll put it in a safe place downstairs.”
“What about the Bantu?”
“If he comes up on the balcony, shoot him.”
“Very well, Chico,” says Lola sarcastically. “You just be careful with my cello — Chico.”
I switch off the air-conditioner. “Sorry, girls.”
“Be careful, Chief,” whispers Ellen, helping me through the window. Absently wetting her fingertips with her tongue, she smooths out my eyebrows with strong mother-smoothings.
Before leaving, I give each girl a light Chloride massage over Brodmann 32 and pineal Layer I — to inoculate them against a Heavy Sodium fallout, an unlikely event in the next few hours, but who knows? After treatment, each girl looks so serene, both alert and dreamy-eyed, as sleepy and watchful as a waking child, that I do the same for myself.
A gaggle of unruly Left students mill about the main gate of the Behavioral Institute. Some drive nails into golf balls. Others fill Coke bottles with gasoline. They frown when they see me. I recognize several members of Buddy Brown’s faction.
Professor Coffin Cabot, a famous scholar on loan from Harvard, is in their midst, a pair of wire-cutters in one hand and the flag of North Ecuador in the other, counseling, exhorting, and showing students how to clip the heads off nails after they are driven into a golf ball.
“What are you doing here, More?” he asks, his face darkening.
“What’s wrong with my being here?”
“Haven’t you done enough dirty work for the military-industrial-academic complex?”
“What do you mean?’
“You know very well what I mean, I suppose you don’t know that your cute little toy has been added to the Maryland arsenal along with its cache of plague bacilli and lethal gases.”
“No, I didn’t. By whom?”
“By your fascist friend, Immelmann.”
“He’s not a friend. But may I ask what you are doing?”
“We are organizing a nonviolent demonstration for peace and freedom in Ecuador.”
“Nonviolent?” I ask, looking at the pile of spiked golf balls.
“We practice creative nonviolent violence, that is, violence in the service of nonviolence. It is a matter of intention.”
Professor Cabot is a semanticist.
“When is this coming off?”
“This afternoon. We’re marching against the so-called Fourth of July movement in town.”
“So-called?”
“Yes. We recognize only the Fifth of July movement named in honor of the day Jorge Rojas parachuted into the mountains of South Ecuador.”
“Jorge Rojas?”
“Of course. He’s the George Washington of Ecuador, the only man beloved north and south and the only man capable of uniting the country.”
“But didn’t he kill several hundred thousand Ecuadorians who didn’t love him?”
“Yes, but they were either fascists or running dogs or lackeys of the American imperialists. Anyhow, the question has become academic.”
“How is that?”
“Because those who are left do love him.”
I scratch my head. “Why are you carrying that flag?”
“Because North Ecuador stands for peace and freedom.”
“But aren’t you an American?”
“Yes, but America is a cancer in the community of democratic nations. Incidentally, More, my lecture on this subject last month in Stockholm received an even greater ovation than it got at Harvard.”
“If that is the case, why don’t you live in Sweden or North Ecuador?”
Professor Cabot looks at me incredulously as he adjusts a wick in a Coke bottle.
“You’ve got to be kidding, More.”
“No.”
He stands up, looks right and left, and says in a low voice, “Do you know what I’m pulling at Cambridge?”
“No.”
“A hundred thousand a year plus two hundred thousand for my own institute. And Berkeley offered me more. What do you think of that?”
“Very good,” I reply sympathetically, setting as I do as high a value on money as the next man.
“Say, why don’t you join us, More?” asks Coffin Cabot impulsively.
“No thanks. I’ve got to pick up a ah cello.” For some reason I blush.
Cabot grins. “That figures. Fiddling while Rome burns, eh?”
“No. The fact is there are three girls over there in the motel—”
“What?”
“Never mind.” I was on the point of telling him about the dangers of the misuse of my invention when I catch sight of — I It can’t be but it is. There over Coffin Cabot’s shoulder, moving about among the students with my lapsometer, is Art Immelmann!
“Excuse me,” I murmur, but Cabot is already preoccupied with the next batch of golf balls and does not notice Art.
I watch him.
Art Immelmann, it soon becomes clear, is demonstrating my device to the students as the famous fake prop of The Pit, laughing and shaking his head at the preposterousness of it, like a doctor unmasking the latest quackery. The students laugh. Yet, as he does so, he makes passes over the students’ heads.