The battle of Dresden was going badly. Blücher had hoped to regroup his forces while Napoleon was otherwise occupied, but the wily Frenchman had turned twice from Dresden to engage him. He did this without little hope of victory, however, and its effect was nil. Napoleon had fought two indecisive battles and was weakened, while Blücher was as strong as ever.
‘Grid-phone call, sir. Pentagon. Will you take it in the summer-house?’
‘Unh?’ With effort, Weimarauner wrenched himself out of the character of Napoleon (a lead figure, two inches high, leaning over a postage-stamp map inside a tent the size of a toy drum) and into the character of Chief of Staff. ‘Oh, fine.’
As he strode across the artificial landscape, stepping here and there to avoid an army, the wind snapped his robe and silk pajamas. The summerhouse was fragrant with climbing flowers, and translucent brown bees nudged among them. It was the general’s favorite spot. He sat down and pushed the scrambler button on his grid-phone. A weak, blocky line drawing of Brigadier General Garner appeared on the screen.
‘Sir, what the hell is going on? How come you shoved this pansy outfit in here on us? Them Pink Brassieres are only making things worse around here.’
‘What seems to be the trouble?’
‘Sir, they make me
sick
, that’s what’s the trouble! They make
everybody
sick!’
Weimarauner opened an icebox under the table and probed it. He removed a mango yoghurt and made a leisurely breakfast. When he had finished, he fitted a cigarette to his holder, lit it, and leaned back to contemplate once more the grid-screen. ‘General Garner, you know that that is the idea. They do indeed make everybody sick. Like a gas.’
‘Yeah? Well everybody is tearing the shit out of them.’ The features of the line drawing tried a placating smile. ‘Sir, I’m not complaining. I know these—boys—are supposed to be good psychological warfare. Only they’re getting massacred, and my men are bitching about having to help them out.’
Weimarauner waved, dismissing both Garner and a bee that was investigating the yoghurt dish. ‘All right, all right. Get some of the boys to draft some orders. We’ll send them out to Southeast Asia—to whatever Enemy we’re fighting out there right now. By Container freight of course.’
‘Of course, sir. By the way, Jarmoss of the computer department wants a word with you urgently.’
‘Switch me over to him, will you?’
In a moment the screen drew an approximate sketch of worried Col Jarmoss. The sine waves in his forehead and the parentheses around his tight mouth were a trifle blocky—the grid screen worked only in verticals and horizontals—but nevertheless stood very well for Jarmoss’s typical distressed expression.
There was no particular reason to communicate by grid-phone with his subordinates, but Weimarauner liked it that way. It was nice not to have to deal with them as humans. No matter how personable they tried to be—and none tried harder than Jarmoss—they remained so many little crude drawings, little animated cartoons.
‘How’s the battle of Dresden going sir?’
‘Fine, Colonel, fine.’ Weimarauner looked out the vine-bordered doorway, across the landscape lawn. Every detail of the landscape around Dresden had been faithfully copied at a scale of 1:36. The earth had been replaced with plastic, the grass was nylon plush. Japanese dwarf trees stood at proportional heights, in their proper positions. The model Germans were defending their town with cannon the size of cigars.
‘I got that piece of land I needed for the river area,’ he said in no hurry to hear the colonel’s complaint. ‘You’ll be happy to know.’
The drawing tried to smile. ‘That’s lucky, General.’
‘Yes, luck and aggressive thinking, the marks of a good military man. The farmer didn’t want to sell. I finally requisitioned his farm in the interests of National Security. It is, too. My work here may not seem it, but it
is
in the interests of National Security, all of it.’
‘Yes sir. Now about…’
‘You believe that, don’t you, Colonel?’
‘Oh, yessir. Sir, we’ve got a few problems here…by the way, we’ve ordered the Pink Barrettes to Southeast Asia, as you requested.’
‘Fine, fine. What’s the problem?’
‘Our computer has been fouling up something awful. Operation Modulog is in one hell of a mess. The trouble seems to be in the tape unit…’
‘Spare me the technical details, Jarmoss. I’m an eighteenth-century man. Do whatever needs to be done. Get a new tape unit or whatever.’
‘Yes sir. Another thing: a couple dozen civilians came around earlier, asking about the tape. Some kind of legal thing. I told them to come out and see you about it, sir, since we’re not authorized to talk about the Müller-Fokker tape. I hope you’ll let them have it, sir. We’re sick of it.’
‘Very unwise, Colonel. I hate hacking about with legal nonsense.’ He broke the connection and went back to Dresden.
Later the platoon of lawyers showed up. Most of them represented MacCormick Hines, president and owner of the National Arsenamid Corporation. One of them represented a Mr Robert Etwall Shairp.
‘I’m serving you with this writ of
habeas corpus
. General, and demanding that my client be released.’
‘Gladly, gladly. But I’ve never heard of your client. Robert Etwall Shairp? Is he a prisoner taken in the Washington conflict? A soldier?’
‘No, General. The pink tape you are using in one of your Pentagon computers,’ said the lawyer. ‘That is my client.’
Spot seated himself in that portion of the Capitol lawn that was shaped like a keystone. After making sure he was unobserved, he unscrewed the lid of a can of gas and poured it over himself.
The riot was about over; the cops were getting back into their bus. Spot struck a match, but the drops of gasoline running down his hand put it out.
A tall man in Indian beads stepped from behind a tree. His face, a palimpsest of scars, showed no surprise at seeing a gasoline-soaked boy lighting a match.
‘We know few quail before lunch,’ he said.
‘I’m killing myself.’ Spot tore out another match. ‘In protest against Mom and Dad.’ He struck it.
Wise Bream acted instinctively at the sight of the flame. Hauling out Baal, he quenched it with an enormous stream.
The cop who spotted the pair screamed ‘Get ’em! Get those goddamned protesters!’
The first of the five cops grabbed Spot and dragged him away. ‘Impersonating an officer, eh, kid? You oughta get life for this.’
The other four closed in on Wise Bream.
‘I’m gonna kill this bastard pervert, Charlie! Did you
see
him? Pissing on a kid!’
‘Pissing nothing, he was tryna get the kid to suck him off.’
They sprayed Mace in his eyes and then took turns kicking at the offending organ.
‘I’m too pooped to keep this up, Sarge, whadya say we just shoot him?’
‘Oh no. I wanna see this fucker get the chair. Pissing on the uniform!’
They handcuffed him. Two of them stuck a nightstick between his wrists and holding opposite ends of it dragged him away.
‘Hold it.’ The cop called Charlie leaned over the unconscious prisoner, nose to nose with him. ‘You’re under arrest,’ he said. ‘I have to warn you that anything you say can be used against you, that you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to, that you’re entitled to counsel, and that if you can’t afford a lawyer, the District of Columbia will pay for one.’
Laughing and nudging each other, they dragged him on toward the detention camp.
Bert the copilot had timed in on local newscasts. He was no longer interested at all in Marilyn Temblor, not after seeing the way she
gave herself to
that Commie spy. Disgusting! Worst of all, it hadn’t worked. The bastard kept them all covered all during it, and afterward he just zipped up his pants, adjusted his cummerbund, and said, ‘On to Cuba, gentlemen.’
‘We’re not going anywhere,’ said Hal. ‘We’ve got about ten minutes’ fuel. It’s too late to even try for an airport now. I’m taking her down.
‘I’ll be damned!’ Bert adjusted the earphones. ‘The President’s missing!’
‘….
was to have taken off by helicopter from the roof of Blair House and proceeded directly to the submarine
Scampi.
But the
Scampi
reports they have not yet arrived. “We did see one helicopter pass by us about two miles north and head on out to sea,” says the skipper, “but I can’t see why they didn’t signal us on the radio, if it was them” ’
‘Forget about that crap!’ Hal shoved his copilot. ‘We’ve got to crash-land this mother, and
now’
Sister Maria said the words; while Sister Mary Jane shoved the syringe, full of water, up the pregnant woman’s dress. The rest of the passengers crowded around offering advice.
‘Not that way, sister, you’ll give her an enema.’
‘I thought a baptism had to have the same one saying the words…’
‘She’s just squirting it up the front of her dress…’
‘What’s that coming out—
mud?’
The hump of ‘pregnancy’ shifted slightly. Ash and water poured out over the floor, and, a moment later, a silver urn, stamped with the
Stagman
symbol, slipped down out of the front of her dress and rolled away.
A stewardess, naked but for her uniform cap, ran through, announcing an emergency landing. ‘Will everyone please fasten their seatbelts?’
‘I’m dreaming,’ said someone. ‘This probably has something to say to me, some personal symbolism. Wait’ll I tell Feinwelt!’
Ignoring him, Feinwelt led the group in singing to keep up their spirits. Christmas carols—the only songs he knew—worked their magic as the plane went into a dive and the silver urn clattered on forward.
‘Oh what fun it is to ride…’
‘Use the goddamned radar, Bert! I can’t see how the hell high up we are.’
‘Screw you. Everybody gives me orders around here. If you’re such a hotshot pilot,
you
land the plane.’
The figures ahead cast long morning shadows: trees, tents, motionless men…from the passengers he heard
Don we now our gay apparel…
as the men and trees fled past at incredible speed, too fast for a landing, too fast…
Among the motionless, listening figures of quaint soldiers stood a giant bedroom slipper. Above it, the giant face of Weimarauner arranged itself in the appropriate expression, ironic surprise.
The detention center on the Mall was a rectangle of snarled barb-wire. It was said the guards would let you talk to the prisoners across this barrier, for a price.
‘Affirmative,’ said a guard whom Mac Hines approached. ‘The price is a grand a minute.’
‘A thousand dollars a minute? Isn’t that a little steep?’
‘You look like you wouldn’t: miss it too bad. Besides, it isn’t for me. It all goes to my favorite charity. Make out your check to the Red Cross.’
‘All right. Good way to run a charity drive, at that. But why the Red Cross?’
‘I don’t know…they’ve been pretty darn nice to us guys here in no-man’s land. I mean, they kept the coffee and donuts coming right on through the thick of the fighting…and at rock-bottom prices, too!’
In the end, Mac managed to ransom Spot altogether out of the place, though he had to take Spot’s friend, too. The friend was a great hulking moron who alternately mumbled incomprehensible statements and wet his pants. From a return ticket in his pocket they identified him as ‘W. Bream’, so it was only natural to call him Willy.
‘I’ll tell you a secret, Spot,’ said Mac as they climbed into the limousine. ‘That big bundle in the corner there is your Mom. She’s frozen now, but when she thaws out, I’m going to marry her! Won’t that be splendid?’
Spot concentrated on a blister on his thumb and said nothing.
Fouts awoke to a noisy kiddie show and realized it was Saturday morning. He started on the candy bars, a bite of this, a bite of that, mixing and melting peppermint cream, smooth fudge and crunchy peanuts, bittersweet and milk chocolate, slick marshmallow, toasted almonds, crisp coconut, honeyed toffee and dark caramel so sweet it hurt going down. ‘I’m unhappy,’ he thought, ‘and alone.’ But it was an abstract idea, unrelated to the pure sugar joy of living. A bite of this, a bite of that…and after awhile he began to laugh along with Bill the Cat and Mary the Canary.
‘If we’re gonna do it, Amy, we better do it quick,’ Grover whispered. They sat in the basement of the building, huddled together on an old mattress where, for an hour, they had been discussing the pros and cons of assassination. Obviously the man deserved it—but was it
wrong?
‘All we gotta do is set the fuse—takes half an hour—and scram out of here. I don’t see what the problem is!’
‘Maybe if we…went with him…’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh Grover, I’m
old
. I’ve had my life, such as it was. And maybe it wouldn’t be
murder
so much if we…didn’t scram out of here.’
Grover thought it over. ‘Okey-dokey, Amy. We’ll do it your way. Who wants to live in a Red Chinese America anyhow?’
He set the fuse and they sat back in the darkness, leaning together without deliberately touching.