GRAVITY RAINBOW (43 page)

"Something wrong?" Hilary Bounce again, with his nose in the doorway.

"It's about this liquid oxygen, need some more of that specific impulse data, there."

"Specific… do you mean specific thrust?"

"Oops, thrust, thrust," English English to the rescue, Bounce diverted:

"For LOX and alcohol it's about 200. What more do you need to know?"

"But didn't you chaps use petrol at Langhurst?"

"Among other things, yes."

"Well it's about those other things. Don't you know there's a war on? You can't be proprietary about stuff like that."

"But all our company reports are back in London. Perhaps my next time out-"

"Shit, this red tape. I need it
now,
Cap'n!" He goes around assuming they've assigned him a limitless Need To Know, and Bounce confirms it:

"I could send back by teletype, I suppose…"

"Now
yer talkin'!" Teletype? Yes, Hilary Bounce has his own, private, Shell International Network Teletype Rig or Terminal, just what Slothrop was hoping for, right in his hotel room, back in the closet behind a rack of Alkit uniforms and stiff shirts. Slothrop finesses his way in with the help of his friend Michele, whom he's noticed Bounce has an eye on. "Howdy babe," up in a brown stocking-hung garret where the dancing girls sleep, "how'd you like to get fixed up with a big oilman tonight?" Some language problem here, she's thinking of getting connected through metal fittings to a gross man dripping somehow with crude oil, a sex angle she's not sure she'd enjoy, but they get that one straightened out, and presently Michele is raring to go sweet-talk the man away from his teletype long enough for Slothrop to get on to London and ask about Imipolex G. Indeed, she has noted Captain Bounce now and then among her nightly admirers, noted in particular an item of belly-brass that Slothrop's seen too: a gold benzene ring with a formee cross in the center-the IG Farben Award for Meritorious Contributions to Synthetics Research. Bounce got that one back in '32. The industrial liaison it suggests was indeed dozing at the bottom of Slothrop's mind when the Rocket Guidance Transmitter Question arose. It has even, in a way, inspired the present teletype plot. Who'd know better than an outfit like Shell, with no real country, no side in any war, no specific face or heritage: tapping instead out of that global Stratum, most deeply laid, from which all the appearances of corporate ownership really spring?

Okay. Now there is a party tonight over on the
Cap,
chez Raoul de la Perlimpinpin, young madcap heir of the Limoges fireworks magnate Georges ("Poudre") de la Perlimpinpin-if "party" is the word for something that's been going on nonstop ever since this piece of France was liberated. Slothrop is allowed-under the usual surveillance-to drop in to RaouPs whenever the mood strikes him. It's a giddy, shiftless crowd out there-they drift in from all corners of Allied Europe, linked by some network of family, venery and a history of other such parties whose complexity his head's never quite been able to fit around. Here and there faces will go by, old American faces from Harvard or from SHAEF, names he's lost-they are revenants, maybe accidental, maybe…

It is to this party that Michele has seduced Hilary Bounce, and for which Slothrop, soon as his reply from London has come nattering through, in clear, on Bounce's machine, now proceeds to dude himself up for. He'll read the information through later. Singing,

With my face shined up-like a microphone And uh Sta-Comb on my hair, I'm just as suave-as, an ice-cream cone, say, I'm Mis-ter Debo-nair…

and turned out in a green French suit of wicked cut with a subtle pur

ple check in it, broad flowered tie won at the trente-et-quarante table,

brown and white wingtip shoes with golf cleats, and white socks,

Slothrop tops off now with a midnight-blue snap-brim fedora and is

away, clickety clack out the foyer of the Casino Hermann Goering,

looking sharp. As he exits, a wiry civilian, disguised as the Secret Ser

vice's notion of an Apache, eases away from a niche in the porte-

cochere, and follows Slothrop's cab out the winding dark road to

Raoul's party. -

Turns out that some merrymaker has earlier put a hundred grams of hashish in the Hollandaise. Word of this has got around. There has been a big run on broccoli. Roasts lie growing cold on the room-long buffet tables. A third of the company are already asleep, mostly on the floor. It is necessary to thread one's way among bodies to get to where anything's happening.

What's happening is not clear. There are the usual tight little

groups out in the gardens, dealing. Not much spectacle tonight. A homosexual triangle has fizzed over into pinches and recriminations, so as to block the door to the bathroom. Young officers are outside vomiting among the zinnias. Couples are wandering. Girls abound, velvet-bowed, voile-sleeved, underfed, broad-shouldered and permed, talking in half a dozen languages, sometimes brown from the sun here, others pale as Death's Vicar from more eastern parts of the War. Eager young chaps with patent-leather hair rush about trying to vamp the ladies, while older heads with no hair at all prefer to wait, putting out only minimal effort, eyes and mouths across the rooms, talking business in the meantime. One end of the salon is occupied by a dance band and an emaciated crooner with wavy hair and very red eyes, who is singing:

julia (fox-trot)

Ju-lia,

Would you think me pe-cul-iar,

If I should fool ya,

In-to givin' me-just-a-little-kiss?

Jool-yaaahh,

No one else could love you tru-lier,

How I'd worship and bejewel ya,

If you'd on-ly give-me just-a-little-kiss!

Ahh J?o/-yaaahhhh-

My poor heart grows un-ru-lier,

No one oolier or droolier,

Could I be longing for-

What's more-

Ju-lia,

I would shout hallelujah,

To have my Jool-yaaahh, In-my-arms forevermore.

Saxophony and Park Lane kind of tune, perfect for certain states of mind. Slothrop sees Hilary Bounce, clearly a victim of the hallucinogenic Hollandaise, nodded out on a great pouf with Michele, who's been fondling his IG Farben trinket for the past two or three hours. Slothrop waves, but neither one notices him.

Dopers and drinkers struggle together without shame at the buffet and in the kitchens, ransacking the closets, licking out the bottoms of casseroles. A nude bathing party passes through on the way down the

sea-steps to the beach. Our host, that Raoul, is roaming around in a ten-gallon hat, Tom Mix shirt and brace of sixguns with a Percheron horse by the bridle. The horse is leaving turds on the Bokhara rug, also on the odd supine guest. It is all out of shape, no focus to it until a sarcastic flourish from the band, and here comes the meanest customer Slothrop has seen outside of a Frankenstein movie-wearing a white zoot suit with reet pleats and a long gold keychain that swings in flashing loops as he crosses the room with a scowl for everybody, in something of a hurry but taking the time to scan faces and bodies, head going side to side, methodical, a little ominous. He stops at last in front of Slothrop, who's putting together a Shirley Temple for himself.

"You." A finger the size of a corncob, an inch from Slothrop's nose.

"You bet," Slothrop dropping a maraschino cherry on the rug then squashing it as he takes a step backward, "I'm the man all right. Sure. What is it? Anything."

"Come on." They proceed outside to a eucalyptus grove, where Jean-Claude Gongue, notorious white slaver of Marseilles, is busy white-slaving. "Hey you," hollering into the trees, "you wanna be a white slave, huh?" "Shit no," answers some invisible girl, "I wanna be a
green
slave!" "Magenta!" yells somebody from up in an olive tree. "Vermilion!" "Think I'll take up dealing dope," sez Jean-Claude.

"Look," Slothrop's friend producing a kraft-paper envelope that even in the gloom Slothrop can tell is fat with American Army yellow-seal scrip, "I want you to hold this for me, till I ask for it back. It looks like Italo is going to get here before Tamara, and I'm not sure which one-"

"At this rate, Tamara's gonna get here before tonight," Slothrop interjects in a Groucho Marx voice.

"Don't try to undermine my confidence in you," advises the Large One. "You're the man."

"Right," Slothrop tucking envelope inside pocket. "Say, where'd you get that zoot you're wearing, there?"

"What's your size?"

"42, medium."

"You shall have one," and so saying he rumbles off back inside.

"A-and a
sharp keychain!"
Slothrop calls after. What th' heck's going on? He wanders around asking a question or two. The fella turns out to be Blodgett Waxwing, well-known escapee from the Caserne Martier in Paris, the worst stockade in the ETO. Waxwing's specialty is phonying documents of various sorts-PX ration cards, passports,

Soldbucher-whilst dealing in Army hardware also as a sideline. He has been AWOL off and on since the Battle of the Bulge, and with a death rap for that over his head he still goes into U.S. Army bases at night to the canteens to watch the movies-provided they're westerns, he loves those shit-kickers, the sound of hoofbeats through a metal speaker across a hundred yards of oildrums and deuce 'n' a half ruts in the foreign earth makes his heart stir as if a breeze blew there, he's got some of his many contacts to run him off a master schedule of every movie playing in every occupation town in the Theatre, and he's been known to hot-wire a general's jeep just to travel up to that Poitiers for the evening to see a good old Bob Steele or Johnny Mack Brown. His picture may hang prominently in all the guardrooms and be engraved in thousands of snowdrops' brains, but he has seen
The Return of Jack
Slade
twenty-seven times.

The story here tonight is a typical WWII romantic intrigue, just another evening at Raoul's place, involving a future opium shipment's being used by Tamara as security against a loan from Italo, who in turn owes Waxwing for a Sherman tank his friend Theophile is trying to smuggle into Palestine but must raise a few thousand pounds for purposes of bribing across the border, and so has put the tank up as collateral to borrow from Tamara, who is using part of her loan from Italo to pay him. But meantime the opium deal doesn't look like it's going to come through, because the middleman hasn't been heard from in several weeks, along with the money Tamara fronted him, which she got from Raoul de la Perlimpinpin through Waxwing, who is now being pressured by Raoul for the money because Italo, deciding the tank belongs to Tamara now, showed up last night and took it away to an Undisclosed Location as payment on his loan, thus causing Raoul to panic. Something like that.

Slothrop's tail is being made indecent propositions by two of the homosexuals who've been fighting in the bathroom. Bounce and Michele are nowhere in sight, and neither's that Waxwing. Raoul is talking earnestly to his horse. Slothrop is just settling down next to a girl in a prewar Worth frock and with a face like Tenniel's Alice, same forehead, nose, hair, when from outside comes this most godawful clanking, snarling, crunching of wood, girls come running terrified out of the eucalyptus trees and into the house and right behind them what comes crashing now into the pallid lights of the garden but- why the Sherman Tank itself! headlights burning like the eyes of King Kong, treads spewing grass and pieces of flagstone as it manoeuvres around and comes to a halt. Its 75 mm cannon swivels until it's pointing through the French windows right down into the room. "An-toine!" a young lady focusing in on the gigantic muzzle, "for heaven's sake, not now…" A hatch flies open and Tamara-Slothrop guesses: wasn't Italo supposed to have the tank?-uh-emerges shrieking to denounce Raoul, Waxwing, Italo, Theophile, and the middleman on the opium deal. "But now," she screams, "I have you all! One coup de foudre!" The hatch drops-oh, Jesus-there's the sound of a 3-inch shell being loaded into its breech. Girls start to scream and make for the exits. Dopers are looking around, blinking, smiling, saying yes in a number of ways. Raoul tries to mount his horse and make his escape, but misses the saddle and slides all the way over, falling into a tub of black-market Jell-o, raspberry flavor, with whipped cream on top. "Aw, no…" Slothrop having about decided to make a flanking run for the tank when YYYBLAAANNNGGG! the cannon lets loose an enormous roar, flame shooting three feet into the room, shock wave driving eardrums in to middle of brain, blowing everybody against the far walls.

A drape has caught fire. Slothrop, tripping over partygoers, can't hear anything, knows his head hurts, keeps running through the smoke at the tank-leaps on, goes to undog the hatch and is nearly knocked off by Tamara popping up to holler at everybody again. After a struggle which shouldn't be without its erotic moments, for Tamara is a swell enough looking twist with some fine moves, Slothrop manages to get her in a come-along and drag her down off of the tank. But loud noise and all, look-he doesn't seem to have an erection. Hmm. This is a datum London never got, because nobody was looking.

Turns out the projectile, a dud, has only torn holes in several walls, and demolished a large allegorical painting of Virtue and Vice in an unnatural act. Virtue had one of those dim faraway smiles. Vice was scratching his shaggy head, a little bewildered. The burning drape's been put out with champagne. Raoul is in tears, thankful for his life, wringing Slothrop's hands and kissing his cheeks, leaving trails of Jell-o wherever he touches. Tamara is escorted away by Raoul's bodyguards. Slothrop has just disengaged himself and is wiping the Jell-o off of his suit when there is a heavy touch on his shoulder.

"You were right. You are the man."

"That's nothing." Errol Flynn frisks his mustache. "I saved a dame from an octopus not so long ago, how about that?"