Star-out purple, gold, orange
Bring in at 4-beat intervals
MLS full group with spots
tympani, Lasry-Bachet organ,
blue shading yellow then pink
pre-cut speech tape
MANCH / total recall /
XLBCU leader’s uvula,
SHIFT / man that’s really
negged
someth / WHIP / ah whoinole
cares anyway / GARKER /
Super sitar on Las-Bach
garker / GARKER / garker
organ
(ad lib)
Snatch of Hallelujah chorus
BCU pigeon’s wing, white
Leader talks over gp:
feathers
YOU GOT THE OFFYOUR-
ASS FOR BOTH OF US MY
Shiggy fondles own breasts,
SPAREWHEEL AND ME
green over shading blue
AND SHIGGY MAKES
THREE
Las-Bach FFF waltz-time
BCU shiggy’s hands as each
taken by male right hand and
Acceleratube passes by
pulled apart
Resume speech tape
Interior tunnel
I GOING BUST MY
Hold
SKULL
Green bars shift on black
Kiss loudens synch with
VLS zooms in to BCU kiss
Resume bass, sitar
Track thru head of shiggy to
face of gp leader XLBCU
Rpt with leader over:
LEAVE this WORLD to
Shiggy walks along front of
ROT
Las-Bach org watching player
GONE to BUST my SKULL
stroke glass columns and
SHIFT this SCENE on POT
produce sound, then bends
TRIP on TINE and PULL
over and begins to suck long-
HEAVen ON my HEAD
est (bass) column
MIGHT as WELL be DEAD
MAGine ALL we COULD
DO if WE was FREE
BCU tympani beater
SHEETing HOLE we’re
Street scene negged w shiggy
NOT
arm-in-arm w leader and
YAGinOL is GOOD
sparewheel
ALL i CAN is BE!
White-out
(etc.)
(etc.)
$ *
$ *
* Total in both columns: another planetary-collision-size smash hit for the Em Thirty-Ones, not permitted to be broadcast over any channel serving the Pacific Conflict Zone.
continuity (22)
THE PRICE OF ADMISSION
It occurred to the seething Donald after a while that he had foreseen the indignity due to be inflicted on him. The idea was irrational, but that didn’t concern him; he was content to feel that his curious state of mind on the express, when he had thought those wild thoughts about Odinzeus, stemmed from a prevision of this gesture to deprive him of manhood.
Phrasing it that way was absolutely stupid, of course. He had not infrequently considered a reversible sterilisation operation, but the need had never arisen; all the shiggies he had to do with were fitted with their tiny subcutaneous progestin capsules, secreting a year’s supply without risk of pregnancy. But he was away from home and familiar things, and what he had deemed familiar had turned and rent him, and in any case his subconscious was not amenable to persuasion. It clung with animal obstinacy to the reassurance that in the ultimate resort a man could make a man.
He was, however, in Yatakang. He had passed through the expressport building, crouched low under its protective roof of concrete capped with thick earth and trees, and here he was outside and being assailed by scores, hundreds, of Yatakangis, some of them addressing him in pidgin that included Dutch and English words. A porter with a wheeled electric barrow had brought his belongings out, too, and was standing by awaiting payment for the service.
I forgot to change some money. Did they give me any along with my papers?
There had been an envelope with credit-cards in, he remembered that, but was there any cash? Looking, he discovered half a dozen crisp ten-tala bills, worth about—hmmm—sixty cents each. He gave them to the porter and stood by his bags for a while, occasionally scowling at the youths and girls who clustered around offering to find him a cab, tote the bags, sell him souvenirs and sticky-sickly sweetmeats, or merely staring because he was a round-eye. All the youths were in off-white—sometimes dirty—jackets and breeches, mostly barefoot, and the girls in sharengs of twenty different colours from black to gold.
Across the parking lot paralleling the expressport building, where stood a number of electric and many more human-powered cabs—rixas—along with two or three modern Chinese-built buses, there was a whole rank of gaudily-decked booths made of light waterproof fabric on frames that were either natural bamboo or plastic imitations. A policeman was marching up and down in front of them, frowning at their keepers and receiving bland smiles in response. Donald struggled to put them in perspective. The Solukarta régime discouraged superstition, he knew that, but according to the signs over these little booths they were places where one might make a propitiatory sacrifice to whatever god one favoured before leaving on a journey, or to acknowledge a safe return home from abroad. They were doing good business, too—he saw five or six people approach them in the short time he stood watching. Each took a cone-shaped lump of incense and set it burning with much touching of hands to forehead and heart, or lit a streamer of paper printed with a prayer and watched until it had fizzled smokily into nothing.
Glancing sidelong at Grandfather Loa’s looming bulk, more clearly visible because the rain was lightening, he found he could hardly blame the Yatakangis for keeping up their old customs.
“Ah, my American friend,” a soft voice said alongside him. “Thank you again, Mr.—?”
He turned, speaking his name mechanically, to greet the Indian girl. In her flowing full-length sari she looked even more graceful and delicate than before, though it was clear from the way she kept adjusting its hang she was unused to anything that so encumbered her legs.
“You’re waiting for a cab—? No, I see there are plenty. What, then?”
“Taking stock. I’ve never been here before.” He uttered the words with mere forced politeness, though he was intellectually aware she was both pretty and emancipated; the impact of what the Yatakangi doctor had just done to him seemed to have numbed his male reactions for the moment.
“Yet you speak Yatakangi, and apparently very well,” the girl said.
“I wanted to learn a non-Indo-European language, and it came handy because not many people were studying it … Are you going into Gongilung?”
“Yes, I have rooms booked at a hotel. I think it’s called the Dedication Hotel.”
“So have I.”
“Will you share a cab with me, then?”
No surprise at the coincidence. Why should there be? The Dedication Hotel was the only hotel in Gongilung catering for a Westernised clientele, an automatic choice if rooms were available.
“Or would you rather ride in a rickshaw? I don’t believe you have them in America, do you?”
Rickshaw—of course: the root from which the modern Yatakangi word “rixa” must derive. Donald said, “Have we not too much baggage?”
“Of course not. These drivers look just as strong as the ones we have at home. Yes? Hey, you there!”
She waved energetically at the first rixa-man on the line, and he pedalled his curious five-wheeled conveyance over to them. He made no objection about the amount of baggage, as she had promised, but loaded it up on the rear platform until the springs sagged, then held the low doors for them to get in.