The Great Pursuit

'Oh no he's not,' she shrieked, 'he's mine!' and dewigged another. Then flailing about her she drove the Gay Liberationists out of the lobby. Behind her Piper and the cops cowered while MacMordie shouted encouragement. In the medley outside Arabs For Palestine and Zionists For Israel momentarily united and completed the demolition of Gay Liberation before joining battle again. By that time Sonia had dragged Piper into the elevator. MacMordie joined them and pressed the button. For the next twenty minutes they went up and down while the struggle for Piparfat, O'Piper and Peipmann raged on outside.

'You've really screwed things up now,' Sonia told MacMordie. 'It takes me all my time to get the poor guy over here and you have to arrange Custer's Last Stand for a welcome.'

In the corner the poor guy was sitting on the floor. MacMordie ignored him. 'The product needed exposure and it's sure getting it. This will hit prime time TV. I wouldn't wonder there aren't news flashes going out now.'

'Great,' said Sonia, 'and what have you got laid on for us next? The Hindenburg disaster?'

'So this is going to hit the headlines...' MacMordie began but there was a low moan from the corner. Something had already hit Piper. His hand was bleeding. Sonia knelt beside him.

'What happened, honey?' she asked. Piper pointed wanly at a frisbee on which were painted the words Gulag Go. The frisbee was edged with razor blades. Sonia turned on MacMordie.

'I suppose that was your idea too,' she yelled. 'Frisbees with razor blades. You could guillotine someone with a thing like that.'

'Me? I didn't have a thing ' MacMordie began but Sonia had stopped the elevator.

'Ambulance! Ambulance,' she shouted, but it was an hour before the police managed to get Piper out of the building. By that time Hutchmeyer's instructions had been carried out. So had a large number of protesters who had been rushed to hospital. The streets were littered with broken glass, smashed banners and tear-gas canisters. As Piper was helped into the ambulance his eyes were streaming tears. He sat nursing his injured hand and the conviction that he had come to a madhouse.

'What did I do wrong?' he asked Sonia pathetically.

'Nothing. Nothing at all.'

'You were great, just great,' said MacMordie appreciatively and studied Piper's wound. 'Pity there's not more blood.'

'What more do you want?' snarled Sonia. 'Two pounds of flesh? Haven't you got enough already?'

'Blood,' said MacMordie. 'Colour TV you can tell the difference from ketchup. This has got to be authentic' He turned to the nurse. 'You got any whole blood?'

'Whole blood? For a scratch like that you want whole blood?' she said.

'Listen,' said MacMordie, 'this guy's a haemophiliac. You going to let him bleed to death?'

'I am not a haemophiliac,' protested Piper but the siren drowned his voice.

'He needs a transfusion,' shouted MacMordie. 'Give me that blood.'

'Are you out of your fucking mind?' screamed Sonia as MacMordie grappled with the nurse. 'Hasn't he been through enough without you wanting to give him a blood transfusion?'

'I don't want a transfusion,' squeaked Piper frantically. 'I don't need one.'

'Yea but the TV cameras do,' said MacMordie. 'In Technicolor.'

'I will not give the patient...' said the nurse but MacMordie had grabbed the bottle and was wrestling with the cap.

'You don't even know his blood group,' the nurse yelled as the cap came off.

'No need to,' said MacMordie and emptied most of the bottle over Piper's head.

'Now look what you've done,' bawled Sonia. Piper had passed out.

'Okay so we resuscitate him,' said MacMordie. 'This is going to make Kildare look like nothing,' and he clamped the oxygen mask over Piper's face. By the time Piper was lifted out of the ambulance on a stretcher he looked like death itself. Under the mask and the blood his face had turned purple. In the excitement nobody had thought to turn the oxygen on.

'Is he still alive?' asked a reporter who had followed the ambulance.

'Who knows?' said MacMordie enthusiastically. Piper was carried into Casualty while a bloodstained Sonia tried to calm the nurse who was having hysterics.

'It was too terrible. Never in my whole life have I known such a thing and in my ambulance too,' she screamed at the TV cameras and reporters before being led away after her patient. As the crimson stretcher with Piper's body was lifted on to a trolley and wheeled away, MacMordie wiped his hands with satisfaction. Around him the TV cameras buzzed. The product had got exposure. Mr Hutchmeyer would be pleased.

Mr Hutchmeyer was. He watched the riot on TV with evident satisfaction and all the fervour of a fight enthusiast.

'That's my boy,' he yelled as a young Zionist flattened an innocent Japanese passenger off the ship with a placard saying 'Remember Lod'. A cop tried to intervene and was promptly felled by something in drag. The picture joggled violently as the cameraman was hit from behind. When it finally steadied it was focused on an elderly woman lying bleeding on the ground.

'Great,' said Hutchmeyer, 'MacMordie's done a great job. That boy's got a real talent for action.'

'That's what you think,' said Baby, who knew better.

'What the hell do you mean by that?' said Hutchmeyer, momentarily diverted. Baby shrugged.

'I just don't like violence is all.'

'Violence? So life is violent. Competitive. That's the way the cookie crumbles.'

Baby studied the screen. 'There's two more cookies just crumbled now,' she said.

'Human nature,' said Hutchmeyer, 'I didn't invent human nature.'

'Just exploit it.'

'Make a living.'

'Make a killing if you ask me,' said Baby. 'That woman's not going to make it.'

'Shit,' said Hutchmeyer.

'Took the word out of my mouth,' said Baby. Hutchmeyer concentrated on the screen and tried to ignore Baby. A police posse with Piper came out of Customs.

'That's him,' said Hutchmeyer. 'The motherfucker looks like he's pissing himself.'

Baby looked and sighed. The haunted Piper was just as she had hoped, young, pale, sensitive and intensely vulnerable. Like Keats at Waterloo she thought.

'Who's the fatso with MacMordie?' she asked as Sonia kneed a Ukrainian who had just spat on her dress.

'That's my girl,' shouted Hutchmeyer enthusiastically. Baby looked at him incredulously.

'You've got to be joking. One bounce with that female Russian shotput and you'd bust your truss.'

'Never mind my goddam truss,' said Hutchmeyer, 'I'm just telling you that that baby there is the greatest little saleswoman in the world.'

'Great she may be,' said Baby, 'little she ain't. That Muscovite doubled up with lover's balls knows that. What's her name?'

'Sonia Futtle,' said Hutchmeyer dreamily.

'I could have guessed,' said Baby, 'she's just futtled an Irishman now. He'll never ride again.'

'Jesus,' said Hutchmeyer and retreated to his study to avoid the disillusionment of Baby's commentary. He put a call through to the New York office for a computer forecast on predicted sales of Pause O Men for the Virgin in the light of this great new publicity. Then he got through to Production and ordered another half million copies. Finally a call to Hollywood and a demand for another five per cent in TV serial takings. And all the time his mind was busy with wanton thoughts of Sonia Futtle and same natural way of killing what remained of Miss Penobscot 1935 so that he wouldn't have to part with twenty million dollars to get a divorce. Maybe MacMordie could come up with something. Like fucking her to death. That would be natural. And this Piper guy had a hard-on for old women. Could be there was something there.

In the emergency theatre at the Roosevelt Hospital doctors and surgeons struggled to save Piper's life. The fact that appearances led them to suppose he had bled to death from a head wound while his symptoms were those of suffocation made their task more complicated than it might otherwise have been. The hysterical nurse was no help at all.