Fun House (22 page)

“It looks good,” he whispered. “Badge didn’t have to convince Number One how serious the situation is.” He was, of course, speaking in code.
Badge
stood for the Commissioner.
Number One
was the President.

“Number One’s in favor of giving Broken Glass what he wants,” the operative continued, and taking a pad from his pocket he scribbled a few lines. I almost shouted with joy when I read them.

“Barnum’ll get all he was promised. Opposition from Court of Problems weakening. President firm. S.C.O.S.T. in emergency session
.

“Nothing is definite yet,” the L. and O. warned me. “Badge is meeting now with a committee of Sub-Ones.” This, I guessed meant either Cabinet members or Senators or a mixture of both. “Badge couldn’t meet you, Crockett. You’re to come with me.”

“Where?”

“Badge wants you to relax. We’ll go to the Cineramour
¹
on Pennsylvania Avenue.”

We walked uptown on the broad avenue with its alternately light and dark blocks.
²
Everywhere carefree people, tourists visiting the Capital, Government employees, young couples and entire families were strolling, whistling and singing and laughing. Many of them were also bound for the Cineramour where they would spend an hour or a couple days or even a week, if they were on vacation.
³

Up ahead we could see the Cineramour, a great, square, windowless white building some hundred stories high. It shone like a huge lump of sugar, striped with fluctuating bands of rainbow color like a peppermint stick. Across Pennsylvania Avenue was the White House and the towering Little White House.
¹

I walked in a daze, not daring to glance at my watch. As we entered another dark stretch I felt my hand seized by warm soft fingers. “Darling, don’t you know me?” The voice I heard was no longer gruff and masculine but light and soft. I pulled my hand free, and when we stepped into a street bright as daylight, I saw that she had managed to get rid of her mustache and suit. It was Gladys in a black evening gown. She held up a little curved metal plate, the Voicechanger that had been in her mouth. It had fitted over her upper teeth and was capable of being adjusted to control both volume and tone.

“Everything will be all right,” she said, throwing the gadget away.

“Are you sure?”

“As sure as I am of life.”

“I don’t trust the professor,” I muttered. “I don’t trust all these bureaucrats, these machine heads. Gladys, are you sure?”

“Yes, darling. I’m sure because there are more people who want to live than those who want to die, because life is stronger than death.”

I looked at her. It was the new Gladys who had first revealed herself in the linen room of the Double-Jette to Russoplayo. It was the explorer of the planet Utopia … Still, her shining eyes heartened me. I also began to feel that life would go on, life must go on. On the Outside, back home on the Reservation everywhere in the world, up to and including the moon.

In front of the Cineramour’s three entrances,
²
a dozen or so men and women paraded up and down carrying enlarged photos of dogs and cats. There was a photo of a Newfoundland guarding a small child, a kitten playing with a string. “We want dogs and cats in Washington D.C!” they shouted.

“Bring back our pets.
³
”

“Look at them,” I said. “If they only knew — ”

“Darling, you worry too much! Even the Rulers on the moon won’t be safe without the earth as an anchor.” She smiled. “Let’s declare a holiday, darling.”

She led me over towards the entrance to the Present Show. We passed a display, a late-model Space-Bubble that could be driven on land, through the air and under water. Behind its transparent walls, seated at the controls were two beautiful automatons — perfect imitations of the flesh and blood stars Theda Bara Rumppe and ?anymore
¹
Jeffers. They were naked. The stars themselves couldn’t be according to law — only nudity in art was permissible on the Outside. No sound came through the transparent walls, but it was obvious that the two smiling and ogling automatons or sexomatums (as they were called in the entertainment industry) were having a romantic conversation. Curious people were listening in, holding audiophones attached to the Space Bubble, to their ears.

Gladys put one of the audiophones against her ear. Then she held out her hand to me. As soon as I took it I could also hear
²
what the sexomatums were saying:

“Theda, darling, I know a perfectly lovely place where we can be alone.”

“But we’ve been there Barry. I won’t go to that Sargasso Sea again.”

“Theda, you forget it’s July, and you can’t see lamprey eels every day of the week, only once in seven years when they migrate to the Sargasso, and besides the lampreys there are the octopus, darling, dripping simply dripping in their own ink. Theda, I haven’t ever used the Nature Control on this panel, and I think it would be so much fun to vibrate their rather meaningless scrawlings to read ‘Barry loves Theda.’”

I should have been used to life in the Funhouse but I’d heard enough. I pulled Gladys away and the connecting wire of her audiophone broke.

“Darling,” she said reproachfully, “suppose it is silly, but can’t we be silly now and then?”

No one paid any attention to us.
³
Those with audiophones kept right on eavesdropping. But from the entrance to the Present Show, a Cineramour automaton dressed in a white suit spiraled with red and blue, a repair kit hanging from its shoulder, slithered up. It took the audiophone from Gladys, dropped it into its repair kit. “Thank you,” the thing said in a metallic voice. “These accidents do happen but your Management has provided for every contingency and every comfort. Your entertainment is our sole obligation.”

Opening the repair kit, it took out a little spray gun and squirted it on the end of the broken wire. “Ladies and gentlemen,” it spieled. “By utilizing a process of growth similar to that of the chrysalis and pupa — ”

I was listening with a growing fear to that spieling automaton. It reminded me of the Voice at Atomic Amusement Park. That Inhuman Voice … I was thinking htat the Time Stream of Dr. Bangani had led to the invention of these Cineramours. I was afraid of all these magicientists and their corrupted professors, of death and the A-I-D …

“By utilizing a process of growth observed in the world of insects, modern miracles can be performed for your entertainment!” the voice of the automaton was spieling.

The broken wire-end had begun to enlarge. It grew and grew, a smudgy foggy-white in color like an insect cocoon. Suddenly it hardened and condensed to become an audiophone. There were only a few scattered laughs. Nearly everybody had seen this fix-it operation before. Only a little boy asked loudly. “Mama, mama, where did the big doll hide it?”

From somewhere another metallic voice boomed; “Present, Past, Future! It is all yours, folks. Take your pick, folks. Do you want to go from the Present into the Future? Tonight, the Future offers love in a century still unborn where man the conqueror of the universe gaily explores the galaxies of space with his loved one. Starring the ever-popular Theda Rumppe as Phosphere Geiger and Barrymore Jeffers as Professor Halio-Minus. A shocking, outspoken story of two intrepid settlers from earth among the starry clusters of the Milky Way. With Barry Jeffers, you will meet with unearthly temptation — the strange sexy ovoid sixth-dimensional being who is however passionately feminine as no woman on earth dares to be. Be tempted with Barry Jeffers by the French actress Denise Havre-Brest as Logarithm M — E.”

Half of that fickle crowd were already hurrying over to the entrance to the Future. Again, I glanced at my watch. It was almost ten o’clock. “The time!” I muttered heartbrokenly. “Time, time. What have we done with our time?” I stared across Pennsylvania Avenue at the White House and Little White House. They were meeting there right now and I had made it possible for them (and Them) to meet. I had saved the country, saved humanity, but for what, I asked myself. Maybe I was just worn out from that final dash to Russoplayo, but I felt empty and bitter and mean enough to be a St. Ewagiow myself. I wondered if the human race was worth saving. That second I knew how the prophets had felt down the ages, writing their warnings on the walls; Mene Mene Tekel
¹
while the people laughed and knocked each other down as they rushed to the circus or bullfight or ball game or crucifixion.
²

“Don’t you want to see the Future?” Gladys asked me.

I shook my head. “I haven’t got the nerve.”

“Let’s take in the Past then, darling. And stop looking so gloomy.” She sighed. “You make me feel like taking a U-Latu, and I’ve sworn off.”

The display before the entrance to the Past was a horse, or rather, a horse automaton twenty feet high. I looked at this animal, familiar to me as a Reservation man if not to them. It was completely black except for a white blaze like the letter L in the middle of its forehead. With its muzzle, the horse nudged at the shoulder of Barrymore Jeffers, pushing him towards Theda Rumppe. That night, it seemed they were the main attraction in Past, Present, and Future.

Gladys pointed at the L on the horse’s forehead. “Love,” she smiled.

“The world can go smash!” I grumbled in a fury. “But who cares when we’re all having a good time?”

Again a Cineramour automaton slithered out to us. “Sir,” it said to me, “Would you prefer some other initial? The initial of your lady companion perhaps?” Without waiting for an answer, it slithered over to the horse and touched what must have been a control on its right front leg.

The L in the middle of the horse’s forehead vanished and an M appeared. “Have we a Mary in the house?” the automaton asked and M appeared. “Have we a Natchez Nelly?” It asked. “Initials of love constant through the ages.” An N had taken the place of the M on the horse’s forehead. “Tonight, the Past offers love in a bygone century, starring the ever-popular Barrymore Jeffers as Rob Vigilante, a cowboy on the vast western plain crisscrossed only by the double-crossing sheep herders. Have we an Osa in the house … A land lonely under the Big Dipper, torn by posses of sheriffs in pursuit of the ever-popular Theda Rumppe, starring in the role of Miss Evangeline Hereford, a prim schoolteacher from a little town in Massachusetts come to the virgin West, without a friend, and virginal herself until a humble black horse, a mere beast perhaps, but not a beast at heart, the horse with a heart, Digitalis, brings Evangeline to Rob. A truly great story, starring Digitalis in the role of Rin-Tin-Tin.
¹
”

“Let’s go in,” Gladys urged me with a smile. “You should like this, darling. Anyway, it might be amusing and I don’t want you to keep on looking like a storm.”

We entered a dim lobby and a nurse in a purowhite
²
uniform with the number 73 pinned on it, led us through the crowd of newcomers to the doctors’ offices. Under the vaulted ceiling, the offices looked like rows of tiny boxes. Nurse 73 opened a door numbered 73. The doctor inside raised his head from a picture book. Its title was ‘The Loves of Theda Rumppe,’ and from its pages a soft voice was murmuring; “Oh, doctor, only you can make me happy …”

He turned the book upside down and the voice stopped. He was also in purowhite, a 73 pinned to his jacket. “Please be seated, guests of Cineramour
³
.”

“No,” I muttered. “I don’t want any of it.”

“It only takes a few minutes,” Gladys whispered. “It’s a formality. Everybody should go to church once in awhile.”

“Church!”

The doctor had heard me. He smiled. “Your mental health is our pleasure,” he said and his voice was like the automoton’s outside. He gestured at two dark brown chairs that I noticed, now, were carved with all sorts of religious symbols, crosses and stars and crescent moons.

Gladys seated herself, and unwillingly I, too, sat down. The doctor returned to his picture book as if he were alone.

“Are you happy?” a Voice asked. At first I thought it was the doctor, then I realized it was coming out of the back of my chair. “Happiness is a state of mind.”

“Let me out of here!” I said. “I’ve had enough!”

But when I tried to rise, it was too late. Before I knew what had happened, I felt metal clamps gripping me at the temples, come up out of the back of that chair. A four-sided, framelike box, with no top or bottom, dropped down over my head, and on its miniature screen, conditioning shots out of the Past, Present and Future, unreeled before my captured eyes with a dizzying speed.

… Barry Jeffers as Rob Vigilante, seated on Digitalis and galloping across the plains … Theda Rumppe as Evangeline Hereford fighting off a dozen sex-maddened outlaws while a horde of Indians tried to stop Rob …

Faster and faster … Barry had Theda up on Digitalis and was keeping off the Indians as lamprey eels swam around their Space Bubble on the bottom of the Sargasso Sea … kissing and parting as Barry now become Dr. Halio-Minus, succumbed to the other-worldly charms of the galactic space siren Logarithm M-E …

Suddenly the conditioning shots ended. The miniature TV-movie house was lifted from my head, the metal clamps that had gripped me at the temples, numbing thought itself, sliding back into the carven chair. Dizzy, half-maddened, half-hypnotized, I blinked at the real faces of real people in an unreal world.

There before me was Doctor 73, Gladys, and Commissioner Sonata. “Men,” the Commissioner called and two L. and O. operatives entered. “Take him outside.”

They escorted the doctor out of the office. The Commissioner glanced at me, and shrugging hopelessly, he wandered over to the doctor’s desk. He stared down at the picture book and slowly began turning its pages. The soft voice of Theda Rumppe sounded. “Oh, Commissioner, only you can make me happy …”

Gently, Gladys took the book from him. “They’ve won,” he said. “They’ve put the professor in an H.R.L.H.
¹
”

Only now could I get the words off my tongue. “The A-I-D?”