“You won’t get the full measure of Guinevere’s ingenuity just standing by and watching, sir. You need to be someone like Norman, who’s about on her own level, not someone with cachet like yours.”
“Why?”
“If you’d turned up wearing your ordinary street-clothes she’d only have made you pay some kind of nominal forfeit—standing on your head for ten seconds, or singing a song, or taking off your shoes. Something that wouldn’t have interfered with your enjoyment of the rest of the party, I mean.”
“That’s what one generally expects at a forfeits party, isn’t it?”
“There’s been a change since you went abroad, sir.” Why all this “sirring”? Must be a subconscious response to the fact that as of this morning I’m officially Lieutenant Hogan! “A few years ago that was true. Not any more.”
“I see. I think. Give me examples.”
“Oh … Well, I’ve seen her compel guests to daub themselves all over with ketchup—and shave their heads bald—and crawl around the floor on hands and knees for an hour, until she got tired of enforcing that—and, if you’ll forgive me going into such details, to piss themselves. That comes later and is used to get rid of people she doesn’t want to stay around when the orgy starts.”
“That goes without saying, does it?”
“Oh yes.”
“Is that why people stand for such treatment?”
Chad Mulligan broke in; for the past few moments, unnoticed, he had abandoned the conversation he was having with Norman and had been listening to Donald and Elihu.”
“Sheeting hole, no! At least I’ll wager it’s not why Norman keeps coming, unless you’ve got a well-concealed masochistic streak—hey, Norman?”
“Some people come out of masochism, definitely,” Norman shrugged. “They like to be publicly humiliated. You can generally spot them; they’re blatantly infringing whatever the rule of the evening is, but steering clear of Guinevere’s direct attention until fairly late when they’ve drunk enough or smoked or ingested whatever they need to give them sufficient offyourass for the show-down. Then they go in for cringing and begging to be let off and being jeered at for spoilsports—the whole shtick—and generally they come while they’re getting the treatment. Which of course makes everything free-falling for them and that’s why they accepted the invitation anyway. Harmless, mostly.”
“I was asking about you, not them,” Chad said impatiently.
“Me? I keep coming here because—okay, I’ll open up wide. It’s a constant challenge. She’s a mean bitch, but she’s never yet caved me in on one single forfeit, and there have been times when there were thirty or forty of her pet sparewheels yelling for me to pay one. That’s why I keep on accepting. And frankly it seems to me like a damned stupid reason. This one is going to be my last, and if you weren’t here, Chad, and if I hadn’t conned Elihu into coming, I’d have left already.”
Donald looked at Chad Mulligan. He still only half-believed that this was the genuine article, but the resemblance to the pictures on the jackets of Mulligan’s books was unmistakable—the keen eyes peering out from under heavy brows, the hair combed diagonally back, the neatly trimmed moustache and beard setting off the cynical line of the mouth. There was a more dissipated look to the face in reality than there had been in the publicity shots, but maybe that was due to age rather than actual surrender.
He hoped so.
* * *
“Darling, you do the zock marvellously! You have the genuine free-fall touch!”
“Why, Gwinnie, that’s sweet of you.”
“There’s just one trouble, darling. The zock is strictly a this-minute dance, isn’t it?”
“Forfeit! Forfeit!”
“I’m afraid they’re right, darling, much as it pains me to insist. Don’t you know any of the old dances? How about the shaitan? That goes to this kind of rhythm, I think.”
“Of course it does, Gwinnie. I’m terribly sorry, I should have thought. You want me to do the shaitan for my forfeit?”
“That’s right. But—somebody hand me that dish of honey from the table there? Thank you, lover-girl. Hold this in between your elbows while you’re demonstrating it.”
“But—Gwinnie! It’ll get all over everything!”
“That’s the idea, darling. Come on now, and make with the whole bit. I want to see you touch the floor with the back of your head.”
* * *
“Well, yes, I am a bit out of sorts, I guess. You see, I’m taking this metabolic-rebalancing course that the Orbital Clinic provides for people who don’t respond to Triptine—you’ve heard about that? Uh-huh. And there’s one drecky drawback, which is it makes you much more susceptible to colds, so I’m full to here with counteragents and what with one thing and another my hormones and enzymes are going over Niagara in a barrel. I say, is that twentieth-century or nineteenth?”
“Of course, it’s public knowledge that if the Nark Force was given the funds and support it needs to enforce the legislation it’s supposed to the government would be out on its ear tomorrow. But the discontent needed for a genuine revolution is being drained off into orbit somewhere and that suits Washington fine.”
“So they got these two volunteers, you see, this codder and this shiggy who didn’t give a pint of dreck about doing it in public, and they laid on this exhibition of human reproductive processes for Shalmaneser.”
“No matter what they say I can’t tolerate adherents to a cult which doesn’t respect the human rights of non-members. That’s bigotry irrespective of what verbal haze you generate around it. And these Right Catholics with their insistence on unrestricted breeding are trespassing on the human rights of everyone else’s children. They sheeting well ought to be banned.”
“Right across the block from where my brother-in-law lives. And such a mild-mannered old codder too, he said. Just picked up this butcher’s cleaver and chopped the heads off the kids he was looking after, then went up on the roof with this crate of empty bottles, and started hurling them down on the people below. Killed one, blinded another, had to be fused by a police copter. Could be anybody, you see—and without universal personality-profiling how can one be sure who’s going to turn mucker?”
“Well, we’re pretty lucky, you see. We managed to get into a club—about fifteen couples, all celebrated their twenty-first, very nice people—and there’s a sitting rota so we get to look after the prodgies of members who have clean genotypes. There are nearly a dozen altogether and one of the shiggies is supposed to be preg with twins. Marvellous. We can reckon on having prodgies around the place at least one night a week. It’s not like having one’s own, but—well, there’s no help for it. We have schizophrenia on both sides of the marriage and the risk is far too great.”
“Oh no. Philip is much too young to come along to a party like this. Time enough later on to become sophisticated and cynical and debauched like us oldsters, that’s what I keep telling him. Of course he doesn’t like it—goes on all the time about what other parents allow their prodgies to do at his age—but one doesn’t want to see the bloom of innocence rubbed off too soon, does one? You’re only young once, after all.”
“Frank and Sheena? Oh, they went to Puerto Rico. Didn’t have any choice—they’d sold the apt, bought the tickets, got jobs out there … But they were furious! Said they were going to get out of the States altogether as soon as possible so they could after all have their own prodgies. But lord knows where they can go. Can’t see them roughing it in some benighted backwater country for long, myself, and of course they’d never be allowed back if they did start a family after being forbidden to do so here.”