“And so, when the FBI starts closing in, Dillinger gets Jimmy Lawrence, a petty crook whose days are numbered because of his heart trouble, to pose as him. Then Dillinger becomes Ann Sage, a Chicago madam of a Chicago whorehouse, and has the real Ann Sage kidnaped by friends and taken to Canada. Then, if my informant is correct, Dillinger-as-Ann-Sage goes to the Biograph Theater with Lawrence-as-Dillinger after telling the FBI that they’ll be there. The pseudo-Dillinger is shot and killed by the FBI. Dillinger-as-Ann-Sage walks away from the execution.”
Lundquist sneered, and the studio audience laughed loudly.
“In other words, your protagonist takes the identity of a woman, becomes a woman. I understand that you are planning a sequel, Guns and Gonads…”
Lundquist sneered again, and the audience laughed even more loudly.
“…in which Dillinger has great difficulty with the social, economic, and emotional identity of a woman. Eventually, he adapts, and he even comes to like being a woman. He, she, rather, marries, has children, and then goes back to a life of crime as a female whose gang is composed of her sons and their gunmolls. She has quite a colorful, if violent, career under the name of Ma Barker but is finally killed, her guns blazing in a final but futile gesture of defiance, by the organics.
“However, my data banker tells me that Ann Sage lived to a ripe old age and certainly did not suffer a rich sea-change of sex or identity. Ma Barker was born in A.D. 1872, whereas Dillinger was born in A.D. 1903. By no stretch of anyone’s imagination, except yours, could the two be identical. There is such a thing as carrying artistic license too far, Ras Repp. I suggest that you have carried it off into Cloud-Cuckoo-Land, emphasis on the Cuckoo.
“Still, these two lived so long ago that historical anachronism is of little importance. In which case, why didn’t you drag Robin Hood in? Though I suppose that he would have turned out to be Maid Marian!”
The audience hooted and roared.
“Do not all these repetitions of a theme, your inability to use a different idea, your constant hammering at the problem of identity, betray your insecurity and doubts about your own identity? Doesn’t that undoubted mental instability require examination by the government psychicists?”
The audience was in an uproar. Repp was taken aback by this unexpected disclosure about his drama. While he should have been thinking about his reply, he was wondering which of his colleagues had leaked the information about the movie.
As the cries and boos trailed away, he decided that he would have to start his own inquisition next Friday. After work hours, of course. Meanwhile, he had better take care of Lundquist.
He rose from the chair, stuck his thumbs in his big belt, and swaggered across the platform to the “pulpit.” Standing, he was able to stare down at Lundquist despite the host’s elevated chair. Lundquist was still smiling, but he blinked furiously. He did not like having to look up at his guest.
“Pilgrim, those are hard words, and I’m glad you smiled when you said them. Now, if these were the old days, I’d punch you in the nose.”
Lundquist and the audience gasped.
“But these are nonviolent and civilized times. I’ve contracted not to sue you for anything you say about me. And you can’t sue me, either. It’s a no-holds-barred, kick-in-the-nuts-or-what-have-you, gouge-eyes-out, half-alligator, half-bear-wrestling-and-ear-chewing show. Verbally, that is.
“So, I say you’re a liar and a word-twister and a fact-bender. Out of sixty movies I’ve made, only nine have been about shape-changing and role-exchanging. Any fool can see that I’m not hung up or obsessed with the problem of identity. Any fool but you, I reckon. As for your careless and malicious remark about my mental instability, if I did have a screw loose, I would’ve popped you one. See how calm I am? See this hand? Is it shaking? It’s not, but if it did, who’d blame me?
“What I am, Ras Lundquist, is the Bach of the drama. I play infinite variations on a single theme.”
“Bach is turgid,” Lundquist said, sneering.
All in all, it was a good show. The viewers were delighted with the violence of the dialog and enchanted by the threat of physical violence. According to the monitor, exactly 200,300,181 were watching the show. It would be rerun next Friday so that those who were now sleeping could get a chance to view it.
Repp walked out jauntily into the corridor, stopped for a while to say his name into the recorders thrust at him by fans, and then swaggered to the elevator. He taxied to his apartment, drank a bourbon, and went to bed. At 11:02, he was awakened by the alarm strip. After setting up his dummy and changing clothes, he put his bag over his shoulder and went down to the basement to get a bike from the vehicle-pool. The air was warmer than it had been the previous evening; another heat wave was heading toward Manhattan. A few light clouds were moving slowly eastward. The streets were almost empty. Several organic cars passed him. The occupants looked at him but went on. On the sidewalks were stacks of one-foot cubes, the compacted and stoned garbage-trash put out by Friday’s State Cleaning Corps. Saturday’s would pick it up. Aside from infrequent data, the only thing passed on from one day to the next was garbage-trash. The cubes had several uses, one of which was as building blocks. It was said, with only some exaggeration, that half of the housing in Manhattan was garbage. “So, what’s changed?” was the usual retort.
At 11:20 P.M., Repp stopped in front of an apartment building on Shinbone Alley. He looked around the brightly illuminated area before going down the ramp leading to the basement. He did not want to be seen entering the building by organics. They might think that he was just a late-coming tenant, but they also stopped every seventh person they saw out this late for a quick checkup.
No vehicle was in sight, and he could not hear the singing of tires on pavement. He turned and rode down the well-lighted ramp to its end and into the bicycle garage. After putting the bicycle in a rack, he walked toward the elevator door, twice kicking trash on the floor. “Damn weedies!” he muttered. He stopped and took from the bag his Saturday’s star-disc. It was not supposed to open the elevator door until after midnight, but he had made alterations to admit him. Though not a professional electronics technician, he had taken enough courses to be one.
Just as he inserted the tip into the hole, he heard a low voice behind him. He jumped, pulling the tip from the hole, and whirled. “Jesus, you scared me!” he shouted. “Where’d you come from? Why’d you sneak up on me like that?”
The man gestured with a thumb at the four empty emergency cylinders at the far end of the garage. “Sorry,” he said in a low gravelly voice. “I had to get near enough to make sure who you were.”
He wore an orange tricorn hat and light-purple robe decorated with black cloverleaf figures, the uniform of Friday’s organic patrollers. For a second, Repp had thought that he was done for. All was lost unless he could get the gun in his bag out in time to use it. The intruder was too big for Repp to tackle with only his hands. And he would have shot the man. He had not had time to think about the consequences of the act. His desperation would have taken over him as if he were a robot.
What had kept him from going for his weapon was that the man was alone. Organics always traveled by twos. So this one must be an immer.
“As soon as you get your color back, I’ll give you the message,” the man said. “By the way, that was a good show you gave tonight. You really told that snobbish bastard.”
Repp’s heart was slowing down, and he could breathe almost normally. He said, “If you know me, why’d you come up so quietly?”
“I told you I had to make sure. You aren’t in your Western outfit.”
“What’s the message?”
“This evening, at 10:02 P.M., the organics observed and pursued a wanted daybreaker, Morning Rose Doubleday. I was told that you will know of her. Ras Doubleday fled and took refuge in a house that, unfortunately, was next to the house where a woman named Snick, Panthea Snick, had been hidden after she had been stoned.
“
When the woman, Doubleday, was cornered in this house, she refused to surrender. She committed suicide by detonating a minibomb implanted in her body. The resulting explosion not only killed the organics pursuing her and the family then occupying the house, but also destroyed the buildings on both sides.”
“Why didn’t I hear it?” Repp said. “Where did this take place?”
“That’s not relevant,” the man said, “but it was on West Thirty-fifth Street. Message continued.
“During the search of the wrecked buildings, the organics found the stoned body of Snick. They destoned her, and she told her story.”
The man paused and looked at Repp as if he expected him to say something. When Repp shook his head, the man said, “I guess you know what that means. I don’t. Message continued. All immers will be or have been notified that Snick is again a grave danger to us. Her description is being passed on. I was told that I didn’t have to give it to you.
“All immers are to keep a lookout for Panthea Snick. If she can be killed without attracting attention, she is to be killed at once and the body disposed of. The council suggests putting it in a G-T compacter.
“If the situation is such that she can’t be killed on the spot, whoever sees her will notify his contacts, and they will go after her. You will pass on this message to all your contacts, and you will describe her. You will do this every day until you are told to stop.”
The man paused again and said, “It was assumed that her mission was the search for and arrest of Morning Rose Doubleday. But since she is still conducting a search, that assumption may not be correct. It is possible that she had a multipurpose mission and that Doubleday was only one mission. Or it may be that she is looking for other members of Doubleday’s organization, though the organics have received no such report from Snick. That is, the lower echelons of the organics have received no such report or data. She must have transmitted data to today’s higher officials that has resulted in permission to continue her mission, whatever that is. And she will transmit this to tomorrow’s officials.
“If tomorrow’s council hears anything that may immediately affect you re Snick, you will be notified as soon as possible.”
The man spoke as if he were a receiver-transmitter spewing forth organic officialese.
“One more item before message is finished,” the man said. “We do have a highly placed official in Saturday. That official will endeavor to find out exactly what Snick’s mission is. Meanwhile, keep a low profile. Snick will be living in this area. She will move into an apartment in Washington Mews Block Building.”
“Got you,” Repp said. “She’s taken an apartment in this area because whoever she’s looking for is in this area. At least, she thinks so.”
“Good luck,” the man said. He looked around at the trash. “How do you stand this?” He turned and walked toward the ramp before Repp could reply.
“Thanks, I’ll need it,” Repp called softly after him. He turned. The elevator door was still open, waiting for him. He entered the cage and punched the button for his floor. Though he was rising physically, he was sinking emotionally. Wyatt Repp, he was thinking, had ridden high all day. And now, shortly before midnight, he had tumbled hard. Very hard.
As he reached his floor, his spirits surged upward, though briefly. Snick’s face had flashed like a mental meteorite through his dark thoughts. Why should he feel joy? Because she was alive. That was very strange and needed looking into. Especially since he was supposed to kill her if he got the chance.
Saturday-World
VARIETY, Second Month of the Year
D5-W1 (Day-Five, Week-One)
22.
“Ohm-mani-padme-hum!”
The deep male voice droned the chant. Charles Arpad Ohm batted at it as if it were a gnat flying around his ear.
“Ohm-mani-padme-hum!”
“Go away!” Charlie said. “I’ve got a hell of a hangover!”
“Ohm-mani-padme-hum!”
“Shut up!” Charlie said, and he put the pillow over his head. The voice came through the pillow faintly but insistently. It was as if a Tibetan monk was speaking a ritual to awaken the dead, as if he, Charlie Ohm, was buried but not beyond resurrection.
The voice stopped. Charlie, knowing what was coming, cursed. The female voice that succeeded the male was very loud and shrill, the essence of shrew, termagant, and nag. It was his ex-wife’s, programed into the alarm strip by Charlie because it was the only voice that could get him out of bed. It made him angry, raised his blood pressure, and brought him up and out of desirable sloth. Not so desirable if he was to get to work on time.
“You lazy slob! Bum! Drunk! Lech! Sickening weedie! Get your goldbricking ass into gear! Malingering mutt! Pig! Parasite! Dirt balls! There’s only one thing you can get up in the morning, and I want none of that! See if you can’t hoist the rest of you, your alcohol-soaked carcass, the desecrated and ruined temple you call your body, out of your trough-bed! Get up now or I’ll pour cold water on you. God knows you need a bath, crud faucet!”
“That does it!” Charlie cried, and he rolled over, lifted the pillow, and tossed it at the alarm strip. His ex-wife’s snarling face was displayed on it. She yelled, “That’s right! Throw things at me, you unreasonable facsimile of a facsimile! You couldn’t hit an elephant’s rear!”
Charlie had recorded some of his wife’s rantings and had excised various bits and put them together in an unharmonious whole. Some irrational wish to be punished—after all, the divorce had been partly his fault—had made him submit himself in early mornings to her decibelish devilings.
Charlie rolled groaning out of bed, stood up somewhat shakily, and shambled to the bathroom. On the way, he kicked aside a crumpled candy-bar wrapper. He swore at the occupant who had failed to drop it in the disposer. Passing the row of cylinders, he shook his fist at the face in the window of Friday’s stoner.
“Slob!”
At least Friday had changed the bedclothes. This time. More than once, Charlie had fallen into a bed smelling of sweat, and, once, of vomit. Despite this, he had not complained to the authorities. That was against the unwritten code of the weedies. But he would leave a nasty message for Robert Chang Selassie.
When he was finished in the bathroom, he went through the door that led into the living room. Beyond the pool table, standing against the eastern wall, was the row of seven cylinders. The only one who inspired a thought in Charlie was Sunday’s occupant, Tom Zurvan, who stared through the window. His fierce expression, long hair, and long and thick beard made him look like an Old Testament prophet, a Jeremiah of the fourteenth-century New Era. Charlie blessed him ironically, sure that Zurvan never left anything for others to clean up. Charlie also felt sure that Zurvan would not have approved of him.
His ex-wife’s voice had stopped, but it would screech out again if he went back to bed or lay down on the sofa or the floor. It was programed to pounce upon him, if necessary, until he had had his first cup of coffee.
He walked down the hall, passing by strips that had been automatically activated. Their voices were a medley and a babel.
“…learned today that ten thousand more square miles have been reclaimed from the Amazon Basin Desert…”
“…the bad news is that London, despite enormous efforts, is sinking again at the rate of two inches an obyear…”
“…answer the Number Seven question, and you will win forty more credits, fully government-authorized. What year, in both pre-New Era and New Era dates, did the Battle of Dallas take place?”
“…the ancient philosopher, Woody Allen, said that we are all monads without windows. There is some dispute among the historians about the exactness of the reading of the ancient records. Some claim that Allen said nomads, not monads. In which case…”
“…a vote for Nuchal Kelly Wang is a vote against the continued use of contraceptive chemicals in our drinking water. Stop this obsolete and unwarranted method of birth control! We have room on this great planet for
more people! A vote for Wang is a vote for the future! People are crying for children, yet…”
A reminder strip, one of several, displayed that Charlie was scheduled to take a voter-qualification test next Saturday.
STUDY HARD, YOU DUMMY. REMEMBER THAT YOU FAILED THE TEST LAST TIME.
“What’s the difference?” Charlie growled. “Wang is the only one I’d vote for, and he doesn’t have a chance.”
A news strip in the kitchen greeted him with a view of Pope Sixtus the Eleventh on the porch of his bungalow in Rome. This had been recorded last Saturday during the installation of Ivan Phumiphon Yeti as today’s head of the Roman Catholic Church. The camera swept over the fifty or so of the faithful on the small lawn and passed into the house. Ohm paused to watch while getting a stoned four-cup cube of coffee from his PP cabinet. The strip showed the faces of the other six vicars of Christ in their cylinders in a tiny room. They were the faces of old men who looked as if they had suffered much.
“Suffering is good for the character,” Ohm said, and he told the strip to switch to another channel. He was not uncaring; he was stirred by feelings that he could not handle at the moment. But the sight of the Manhattan Manglers being beaten 5-4 by the Rhode Island Roosters did not quiet him. There had been a riot after that soccer match, one that Charlie might have joined if he had been in the stadium. Though the strips had not shown the melee (ten badly injured), Charlie had heard about it via the grapevine.