“Donald! Stop it, Donald—stop it!”
More gas rained down from crunching grenades. He lost the energy needed to drive his fists and a modicum of sanity returned to him before he blacked out. He said, “Norman. Oh my God. Norman. I’m so—”
The apology, the recipient, the speaker, whirled together into nothing.
the happening world (7)
THE STATE OF THE ART
I saw scrawled on the corner of a wall scrawawawled on a wawawall caterwauled cattycorner on the wawall what did I see scrawled on the wawl I forget so it can’t be that important KNOW IN YOUR OWN HANDS WITH A POLY-FORMING KIT THE SENSATIONS OF MICHELANGELO AND MOORE OF RODIN AND ROUAULT let us analyse your metabolism and compound for you a mixture that’s yours and yours alone guaranteed to trip you higher further longer by cross-breeding the kaleidoscope with the computer we created the Colliderscope that turns your drab daily environment into a marvellous mystery HE THAT HATH EARS TO HEAR LET HIM HEAR ALL THERE IS IN THE RANDOM SOUNDS OF A WHYTE NOYSE® GENERATOR tomorrow’s architecture will be a thing of space volume introversion and compaction BEETHOVEN VIOLIN CONCERTO SOLOIST ERICH MUNK-GREEN when you’re redecorating don’t forget to consult us for original computer-created artworks to complement your colour-scheme rare exotic taste sensations from the most ordinary food if you dredge it with a little “Ass-salt” before cooking THE LATEST PLANETARY COLLISION SIZE SMASH OF THE EM THIRTY-ONES IS ON SPOOL EG92745 if you haven’t read it you haven’t celebrated your twenty-first “gives a totally new meaning to the term ‘novel’!” NETSUKE WAS NEVER LIKE THIS BEFORE THE TEXTURES THE FORMS ARE ENDLESSLY ABSORBING THOUGH NOT HABIT-FORMING (G’TEED) one of the great creative artists of our generation is responsible for clothes by “Gondola” MACBETH OF MOONBASE ZERO BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE AND HANK SODLEY freevent tonite pyrotechnics and ample opportunity for self-expression bring your own hatreds you mean you haven’t yet bought one of Ed Ferlingham’s time-boxettes? make your home a frame for your individuality WE THE MARIONETTES A NEW BALLET BY SHAUN the most fascinating pursuit of this century is to study the stochastic potential of English “verbal Karezza because it always seems almost to be there and never makes it” THE GREATEST ART IS THE MOST NEGLECTED WHEN DID YOU LAST EXPERIENCE ECSTASY IN BED? at the 22nd Century Gallery now wear your oldest clothes or buy our unique disposables or come buff to “shit-shower” by Alan Zelgin at last perfume achieves the status of true art in the delicate flagons of Twenty-first Scentury by Arpège TONIGHT ON CHANNEL FIFTY IN THE PERFECTION OF HOLOGRAPHIC SOLIDARITY polychrome enigmata by The Triple at Shoplace Shoplace Shoplace LOVE YOUR DISINTEGRATIVE TENDENCIES AND GET US TO HELP THEM ALONG antiques you’ve never seen before because we invented them and there are lots and lots how about a Balinese hubcap or a non-genuine art nouveau hi-fi set? learn the zock with that true accustomed-to-free-fall touch at our studios THEATRE IN THE HOLE PRESENTS WAGNER’S LOW END GRIN the autoshout for intellectuals fitted free of charge to your set EXPERIENCE “STENCH” BY QUATROMANE FULL DIRECTIONS AVAILABLE never be bored by the popparade Tonvaria makes them over in the style you love from Bach to Beiderbecke to Bronstein to whoever WHEN WE SAY SENSATIONAL WE MEAN IT HEIGHTEN ALL YOUR PERCEPTIONS WITH MILD NON-ADDICTIVE sick and tired of it all send for us example $1000 for invasion of apt by 3 with paint and buckets of dreck $1500 for armed hold-up and theft of all movables with dialogue and max. damage to fixtures special quotations up to $3000 at last gastronomy acquires the status of true art at the hands of Noël Noël OUR CANS ARE INDIVIDUALLY DESIGNED BY SOME OF TODAY’S GREAT CREATIVE ARTISTS you too can exploit your artistic potential with one of our personalised courses BE THE ONLY PERSON ON YOUR BLOCK TO READ THESE STORIES ON HANDTOOLED VELLUM WITH BEAUTIFUL CALLIGRAPHY at last that neglected sense of touch can enjoy the fruits of a great artist’s creativity get “Stingle”® HAVE YOU PAINTED “CHRIST STOPPED AT EMMAUS” YET? throw that old camera on the dreck-pile and get with the holographic trend LIMITED EDITION OF ONE MILLION NUMBERED COPIES we can re-programme your life to make an artistically rounded whole WHEN THEY SAY BOTTICELLI DO YOU THINK IT’S A CHEESE WELL AS OF TODAY IT IS AND GASTRONOMES ACKNOWLEDGE OUR ACHIEVEMENT School of Free Television presents a black blind journey into wherever is theme of freevent tomoro Museum of Last Week exhibition changes daily THE ART OF THE BLUE MOVIE LECTURE WITH REAL FILM NOT TAPED REPRODUCTIONS at last television’s potential is realised in the hands of a great creative artist how have your dreams been lately and it’s not your shrinker asking but the people who’ve taken the sleep-inducer the next logical step at last dress assumes its rightful status among the creative arts at the hands of A TRUE CREATIVE ARTIST IN THE FIELD OF COSMETIC SURGERY IS DR. don’t waste the chance to make your family a work of ART OF SUCCESS CALL AND INQUIRE you’ll appreciate not hate what the world offers when you VOLUNTEER DICTY FOR FREEVENT WITH 24-HOUR SENSORY INTERFERENCE decorative shells rocks relics LIVING NOVEL COME AND INTERACT WITH THE AUTHOR OF breaking apart is another aspect of the whole not art not life but experience match your pets to your personality genotype-moulded animals of all descriptions AT LAST THE STATUS OF TRUE CREATIVE ART IS CONFERRED ON rearrangement of your experience into a symmetrical pattern YOUR END TOO CAN BE A WORK OF ART CONCEIVED BY YOURSELF ALL TRADITIONAL FORMS OF EXECUTION AVAILABLE IN RIGOROUSLY ACCURATE HISTORICAL DETAIL EXPLOSION DROWNING PRECIPITATION FROM HEIGHT ALL WEAPONS SELF- OR OTHER-DIRECTED REASONABLE TERMS FROM TERMINATION INC. THE COMPANY THAT MAKES AN ART OF YOUR END FOR YOU (not legal in following states…)
(ART A Friend of mine in Tulsa, Okla., when I was about eleven years old. I’d be interested to hear from him. There are so many pseudos around taking his name in vain.
—The Hipcrime Vocab by Chad C. Mulligan)
tracking with closeups (10)
SMOTHERLOVE
Stretched out on the couch naked, hair dyed the fashionable bronze shade that everyone said suited her so well, a screen protecting the majority of her body from the scan of the camera on the phone but bathing her in the blue-white of the sunshine lamps, Sasha Peterson did not look her forty-four years. Rounded enough for her skin to be full and firm everywhere, on the shoulders, on the breasts tipped with carnelian nipples, on the belly underlined with hair dyed to match her head (never overlook anything, never give away anything, never never never miss a trick), she weighed a little more than she should have done but not enough to matter.
“Not exactly suitable,” she said. “Of course, Philip was disappointed when I said so, but I don’t believe in secrets between mother and son, which is of course the most intimate of all human relationships, isn’t it? If I feel strongly about something I speak my mind on the subject and of course I expect Philip to do the same. Excuse me just a moment, Alice. Darling!”
Fully dressed in slightly conservative clothing of a cut that had been popular among young men ten years before, Philip looked up from his chair the other side of the room. He was a husky youth of twenty with pimples that even the most modern dermal treatments had not totally conquered.
“Bring me another whistler, will you?”
A hand tipped immaculately with chrome polish held out an empty Jacobean glass whose cut-crystal facets caught and shattered the light of the sunshine lamps into diamond brilliance.
“Do you mind if I fix myself another, too?”
“I think not, darling. You’ve had one already, and you’re not—ah—case-hardened like your old mum, are you?” As he took the glass: “So I don’t expect we’ll be seeing any more of Lucy. It’s a shame because in some ways she’s quite a nice girl, and no one could say she’s not intelligent. But she’s—not to be too mealy-mouthed—a bit common, don’t you think? And she’s almost three years older than Philip, and I feel it makes such a disproportionate amount of difference at that age, don’t you? I mean, considering it percentage-wise, with Philip being only twenty as he is. Ah, thanks a trillion, lovey!” With one hand she reached up and ruffled her son’s hair as he bent over her before accepting the glass and setting it beside her.
“And while you’re up, sugar-loaf, light me another of those Bay Golds, will you? Be sure not to inhale it, though, won’t you?”
Philip crossed the room, opened the reefer-box, applied a flame to the tip and wasted the first eighth of an inch dutifully on the unappreciative air.
“I’m going to be on my own tonight anyway, though—he’s going to see that nice boy Aaron he was in the same class with when he was doing … Goodness, it’s about time you left, isn’t it, plum-pudding?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“No, gracious! Of course I don’t mind! But you’ll be back as soon as you can, won’t you?” She accepted the reefer with those same metal-gleaming claws. “Kiss your old mum goodbye, then, and give Aaron my regards.”
Peck-peck.
“Ah, you’re mother’s boy, aren’t you, Philip? See you later, then. Oh, by the way, Alice, the reason I called: I seem to remember you saying you knew somebody in the department who sorted matters out when a draft notice came in for the Wilkins boy. Well, we’ve had the inevitable trouble at last, and though it’s a lot of nonsense of course I was wondering whether…”
“Yes, Sasha,” Philip said in answer to the question she had long forgotten.
continuity (10)
DUE PROCESS
A vast expanded hollow human void, arms belly legs like tunnels thrumming to the disgusting pulse of nausea. Bit by bit and painfully drawn together by spider’s-web frail links and assembled into …
Person. Vomit-prone, bruised, aching, Donald Hogan. He would rather have stayed in the nowhere of unconsciousness but there was a sharp cut-off with the sleepy-gas the police department used; the side-effects were carefully restricted to nausea and weakness, the most undermining sensations.
He rolled on one side and discovered that support ended. Terror of falling blind jolted his full awareness back. He looked and grabbed simultaneously, hand reaching a metal bar, eyes receiving a crazy insoluble mystery of shapes and lines.
He had almost rolled off something that was more of a shelf than a bunk, but if he had done so he would have fallen mere inches to the floor; he was on the lowest level. He saw through a steel grille a stacked layer of horizontal compartments, each containing a human body, and foggily deduced that on this side of the grille there must be other similar compartments, one holding himself. A man and a woman in police uniform activated the roller to retract a grille separating one bank of prisoners from the next and the metal shrieked as it cleared their way. They walked, holding a recorder for notes that they exchanged according to whether the next subject was male or female, to a point level with his vision and began to search one of the unconscious captives. The one on the corresponding shelf to his own, he saw, was a girl lying in a pool of her own vomit.
“Jet along,” the policewoman said. “Some of this lot only got a whiff and they may be shaking out of it any minute.”
“All right. This one’s ID says he’s—”
Donald tried stupidly to sit up and discovered he had only nine inches clearance, but banging his head on the underside of the next shelf made a noise and attracted their attention.
“See what I mean?” said the woman, and turned with a sigh to speak through the partition of mesh. “Lie down—your turn will come!”
Donald forced his feet and one arm to the floor and then his whole incredible weight into a standing position, his hand clutching the side of the fourth shelf up to steady him. He said, “What’s going on? Where is this place?”
In both directions, as far as he could see by poor shielded lamps, human bodies laid out as if in a mortuary.
“Ah, fasten it,” said the woman, and turned her back.
“Listen! You picked up all these rioters but it was the driver of the pseudo cab—”
“Ah, dreck!” The policeman stamped his foot, an incongruously camp gesture because he was over six feet tall, brawny and broken-nosed, but nowadays … “All right, messy-mouth, what is it?”
“The way the riot got started! Did you find the driver of the cab?”
“What cab?”
“I was trapped in a pseudo cab, and I managed to stop him closing the door because I was wearing a Karatand and jammed it, and—”
“Anything about a cab on this?” the man said to the woman, who shrugged.
“Do I have time to find out why they got brought in?”
“So shut up and wait, messy-mouth,” the man told Donald. “Or I’ll gas you again. Now this one,” he resumed, the woman raising the mike of the recorder to collect his words, “is—”
Donald, astonished, saw and recognised the man whose pockets the policeman was searching.
“A vice-president of General Technics, and you’ll hear a lot more about this!”
“What?”
“That’s Norman House of GT!” Stretched out like a wax dummy, eyes tiredly closed, hands tossed at random on his chest by whoever brought him in.
“Right,” the man said slowly, inspecting the ID he had discovered. “How do you know?”
“He’s my roomie.”
The man and woman exchanged glances. “Prove it,” the man said, holding out his hand.
Donald searched his own pockets, finding that the Karatand and the Jettigun had gone—of course—and ultimately locating his own ID. He thrust it awkwardly through the intervening grille.
“The address checks,” the policeman admitted reluctantly. “Better get them out of here, Syl—can’t afford to buck GT.”
The woman gave Donald a look of pure butch loathing and switched off the recorder. “The drecky bleeder,” she said. “As if we weren’t on a tight enough schedule. But okay.”
“Wait there,” the man said. “We can’t get to you without we go right around the end and come back.”
“What about this one?” asked the woman, pointing to Norman.
“Get a stretcher party. If there’s time before any more of them wake up and start causing trouble.”
Grilles whined and groaned as they retracted and slammed back, making a crazy metallic counterpoint to the footsteps of the pair while they retraced their path to the end of the line of cells. That was what he was in, Donald now realised, though the original layout had been overlaid with several alterations until now at last the limit had been reached and there was no more space unless you simply closed the prisoners into drawers like coffins and extracted them like solving a glass-puzzle.
They reached him eventually and he stumbled out ahead of them towards a tiled corridor where another woman took him in charge and showed him to an office without occupants.
“Wait here,” she said. “Someone will come to see you in a moment.”
The moment stretched. Donald sat on a hard chair and put his head in his hands, wondering if he was now going to throw up.
Behind his closed eyelids he saw a pattern of human bodies laid out under a mesh of wire.
* * *
“Your name Hogan?”
Donald started. A man with captain’s shoulder-badges had entered the room and was going around the corner of the central table to sit at its far side. He held a file of papers.
“Y-yes.”
“Apparently you know something about how the trouble got started tonight.” The captain opened a drawer of the table, pulled out the mike of a recorder and clicked over a switch. “Let’s have it.”
“I got in a psuedo cab and…” Wearily, recital of the details.
The captain nodded. “Yeah. We had a report there was one of those bleeders working the area—Christ knows why, you’d think they’d work an uptown district where people use cabs more, where they carry more cash or credit cards than they do down your manor.”
“It’s not my manor.”
“Then whatinole were you doing there?”
“I—uh—I’d been for a walk.”
“You what?” The captain looked at him unbelievingly. “Do you do this kind of thing often?”
“N-no. I just suddenly realised I’d g
ot out of the habit of going out in the evenings unless I was going somewhere particular, like to call on people. So I—”
“Christ. Don’t make a habit of it, will you? We have enough trouble to handle without you adding to the pile.”
“Now look!” Donald was beginning to recover; indignation made his back straighten. “It’s not my fault if a pseudo—”
“No? Look at yourself, then!”
Confused, Donald glanced down at clothes smeared with the garbage that had been hurled into the street around the prowlie, and the sight made his nausea return in full force. He said weakly, “I’m a mess, but—”
“Mess has nothing to do with it. How many people did you see on that manor who were dressed like you? You were marked as an intruder at once. It didn’t have to be a pseudo cab that made you the spark for an explosion—it could have been an Afram yonderboy and his sparewheels making mock, or a mugger estimating you as prosperous, or anything. You did a damn-fool thing, and as a result my department has better than two hundred extra people in this building, which wasn’t meant to cope with half its present occupants!”
“I don’t see what right you have to talk to me like that!” Donald flared. “Have you caught the driver of the cab along with the couple of hundred innocent people you’ve swept up off the street?”
“You’re free with your figures, aren’t you?” the captain said in a soft voice. “A couple of hundred innocent people? I doubt it. The cabdriver may well be among them if he was slow in running, and that cuts it by one, you must admit that if no more. Also we have, I expect”—and he raised his hand to count finger by finger the groups he was listing—“the vandals and looters who smashed the window of a store and made off with most of its stock of liquor and reefers, plus the people who chopped down a street-light, plus the people who damaged one of my prowl cars, plus any number of people who flooded a street with decaying garbage and created a health hazard, and certainly several dozens who were excessively ready with assorted weapons, like a gun used to bring down one of my patrol copters and—the clubs with which the pilot was beaten to death. You were saying…?”