The Simulacra (9 page)

“The image,” Superb said, “of the Bad Mother. Overpowering and cosmic.”

“It’s because of weak-fibered men like me that Nicole can rule,” Chic said. “I’m the reason why we’ve got a matriarchal society—I’m like a six-year-old kid.”

“You’re not unique. You realize that. In fact, it’s the national neurosis. The psychological fault of our times.”

Chic Strikerock said slowly, deliberately, “If I joined Bertold Goltz and the Sons of Job I could be a real man.”

“There’s something else you could do, if you want to break free of the mother, of Nicole. Emigrate. To Mars. Buy one of those flivvers, those Loony Luke jalopies, the next time one of his peripatetic jalopy jungles lands close enough for you to go aboard.”

Haltingly, with a strange expression, Chic Strikerock said, “My god. I never really seriously thought of that. It always seemed just—frantic. Unreasonable. Done neurotically, in desperation.”

“It would be better than joining Goltz, anyhow.”

“What about Julie?”

Superb shrugged. “Take her along; why not? Is she good in bed?”

“Please.”

“Sorry.”

Chic Strikerock said, “I wonder what Loony Luke himself is like.”

“A real bastard, I hear.”

“Maybe that’s good; maybe that’s what I want. Need.”

Dr. Superb said, “Time’s up for today. I hope I helped you, at least a little. Next time—”

“You helped; you gave me a very good idea. Or rather, you ratified a very good idea inside me. Maybe I will emigrate to Mars; hell, why should I wait until Maury Frauenzimmer fires me? I’ll quit right away and go locate a Loony Luke jalopy jungle. And if Julie wants to come, fine; and if not, also fine. She is good in bed, doctor, but not uniquely so. Not so good she can’t be replaced. So—” Chic Strikerock rose from his chair. “I may not be seeing you again, doctor.” He held out his hand and they shook hands.

“Drop me a postcard when you get to Mars,” Dr. Superb said.

Nodding, Strikerock said, “I’ll do that. Do you think you’ll still be doing business here at this address?”

“I don’t know,” Dr. Superb said. Perhaps, he thought, you are my last patient. The more I think about it the more I’m sure you’re the one for whom I’ve been waiting. But only time would tell.

They walked together to the door of the office.

“Anyhow,” Chic Strikerock said, “I’m not as bad off as that guy you talked to on the phone. Who was that? I think I’ve seen him somewhere before, or a picture of him. Maybe on TV; yes, that was it. He’s some sort of a performer. You know, when you were talking to him I felt a sort of affinity toward him. As if we were both struggling together, both of us in deep, serious trouble and trying to get out some way, any way.”

“Ummm.” Dr. Superb said as he opened the door.

“You’re not going to tell me who he is; you’re not allowed to. I understand. Well, I wish him luck, whoever he is.”

“He needs it,” Superb said. “Whoever he is. At this point.”

Caustically, Molly Dondoldo said, “How’d it feel, Nat, to be communicating with the great man himself? Because, of course, we all do agree; Bertold Goltz is
the
great man of our times.”

Nat Flieger shrugged. The auto-cab had now left the town of Jenner and was climbing a long grade, slower and slower, moving inland toward what appeared to be the rain forest proper, a huge damp mesa which seemed almost like something remaining from the Jurassic Period. A swamp of dinosaurs, Nat thought to himself. Not for humans.

“I think Goltz made a convert,” Jim Planck said, with a wink at Molly. He grinned at Nat.

Rain, fine and light, had begun to descend silently; the windshield wipers of the auto-cab came on, throbbing in a loud rhythm that was both irregular and annoying. The auto-cab now turned from the main road—which was at least paved—onto a side road of red rock; the cab bumped along, pitching and wallowing; inside its mechanism gears changed as the cab creakily adjusted to the new conditions. It did not sound to Nat as if the auto-cab was doing a very satisfactory job of things. He had the feeling that it was going to stop any moment now, would give up the job and quit.

“You know what I expect to see along here?” Molly said, gazing up at the dense foliage on both sides of the narrow, ascending road. “I expect to see around the next bend a Loony Luke jalopy jungle, sitting there, parked, waiting for us.”

“Just for us?” Jim Planck asked. “Why just for us?”

“Because,” Molly said, “we’re about washed up.”

Around the next bend of the road there was a structure; Nat peered at it, wondering what it was. Old, shabby, abandoned-looking . . . he realized all at once that he was seeing a
gas station.
Left over from the days of internal combustion engine autos. He was thunderstruck.

“An antique,” Molly said. “A relic! How bizarre. Maybe we ought to stop and look at it. It’s historical, like an old fort or an old adobe mill; please, Nat, stop the damn cab.”

Nat punched buttons on the dashboard and the auto-cab, groaning in an anguish of friction and malconceived self-cues, came to a stop before the gasoline station.

Warily, Jim Planck opened the door and stepped out. He had his Japanese-made camera with him and now he snapped it open, squinting in the dull, fog-shrouded light. The mild rain made his face shiny; water dripped down the lenses of his glasses and he removed them, stuffing them into his coat pocket. “I’ll take a couple of shots of it,” he said to Nat and Molly.

In a soft voice Molly said to Nat, “There’s someone in there. Don’t move or say anything. He’s watching us.”

Getting out of the cab Nat crossed the red rock to the gasoline station. He saw the man inside rise and come to meet him; the door of the building swung open. A hunched man with a huge deformed jaw and teeth faced him; the man gestured and began to talk.

“What’s he saying?” Jim said to Nat, looking frightened.

The man, elderly, mumbled, “Hig, hig, hig.” Or so it sounded to Nat. The man was trying to tell them something and yet he could not. He continued to try. And Nat, at last, thought he made out real words; he strained to understand, cupping his ear and waiting while the great-jawed old man mumbled on, anxiously, still gesturing.

“He’s asking,” Molly said to Nat, “if we brought his mail.” Jim said, “It must be a custom around here, for cars coming up this road to bring the mail from town.” To the elderly man with the massive jaw Jim said, “Sorry, we didn’t know. We don’t have your mail.”

Nodding, the man ceased his noises; he seemed resigned. He clearly understood.

“We’re looking for Richard Kongrosian,” Nat said to the elderly man. “Are we on the right road?”

The man peered at him sideways, slyly. “Got any vegetables?”

“Vegetables!” Nat said.

“I can eat vegetables pretty good.” The elderly man winked at him and held out his hand, waiting, hoping.

“Sorry,” Nat said, disconcerted. He turned to Jim and Molly. “Vegetables,” he said. “Could you understand him? That’s what he said, isn’t it?”

The elderly man mumbled. “I can’t eat meat. Wait.” He fumbled in his coat pocket and brought out a printed card which he passed to Nat. The card, dirty and shabby, could barely be read; Nat held it up to the light, squinting as he sought to make out the printed lettering.

FEED ME AND I WILL TELL YOU
ANYTHING YOU WANT TO HEAR.
COURTESY OF THE CHUPPERS ASSN.

“I am a chupper,” the elderly man said, and took the card suddenly back, returning it to his coat pocket.

“Let’s get out of here,” Molly said to Nat, quietly.

A radiation-spawned race, Nat thought. The chuppers of Northern California. Their enclave lay here. He wondered how many of them there were. Ten? A thousand? And this was where Richard Kongrosian had chosen to live.

But perhaps Kongrosian was right. These were people, despite their malformity. They received mail, probably had little jobs or tasks, perhaps lived on county relief if they couldn’t work. They were bothering no one and certainly they were harmless. He felt discouraged at his own reaction—his initial, instinctive aversion.

To the elderly chupper Nat said, “Would you like a coin?” He held out a platinum five-dollar piece.

Nodding, the chupper accepted the coin. “Thankya.”

“Does Kongrosian live along this road?” Nat asked once again.

The chupper pointed.

“Okay,” Jim Planck said. “Let’s go. We’re heading the right way.” He glanced urgently at Nat and Molly. “Come on.”

The three of them re-entered the auto-cab; Nat started it up and they drove on past the gasoline station and the old chupper, who stood expressionlessly, watching them go as if he had once more become inert, turned off like a simulacrum, a mere machine.

“Wow,” Molly said, and let out her breath raggedly. “What the hell was
that?
”

“Expect more,” Nat said briefly.

“Goodness god in heaven,” Molly said. “Kongrosian must be as nutty as they say, living here. I wouldn’t live up here in this swamp for anything. I wish I hadn’t come. Let’s record him at the studio, okay? I feel like turning back.”

The auto-cab crawled along, passed under trailing vines, and then all at once they were facing the remains of a town.

A rotting sequence of wooden buildings with faded lettering and broken windows, and yet not abandoned. Here and there, along the weed-split sidewalks, Nat saw people; or rather, he thought, chuppers. Five or six of them making their way haltingly along, on their errands, whatever they might be; god knew what one did here. No phones, no mail—

Maybe, he thought, Kongrosian finds it peaceful here. There was no sound, except that of the mist-like rain falling. Maybe once you get used to it—but he did not think he could damn well ever get used to it. The factor of decay was too much at work, here. The absence of anything new, of any blossoming or growing. They can be chuppers if they want or if they have to be, he thought, but they ought to try harder, try to keep their settlement in repair. This is awful.

Like Molly he wished, now, that he hadn’t come.

“I would think a long time,” he said aloud, “before I’d plunk my life down in this area. But if you could do it—you’d have accepted one of the most difficult aspects of life.”

“And what’s that?” Jim asked.

“The supremacy of the past,” Nat said. In this region the past ruled thoroughly, entire. Their collective past: the war which had preceded their immediate era, its consequences. The ecological changes in everyone’s life. This was a museum, but alive. Movement, of a circular sort . . . he shut his eyes. I wonder, he thought, if new chuppers are born. It must be genetically carried; I know it is. Or rather, he thought, I’m afraid it is. This is a waning sporting, and yet—it continues on.

They have survived. And that’s good enough for the real environment, for the evolutionary process. That’s what does it, from the trilobite on. He felt sick.

And then he thought,
I’ve seen this malformity before.
In pictures. In reconstructions. The reconstructions, the guesses, were quite good, evidently. Perhaps they had been corrected through von Lessinger’s equipment. Stooped bodies, massive jaw, inability to eat meat because of a lack of incisor teeth, great difficulty speaking. “Molly,” he said aloud, “you know what these are, these chuppers?”

She nodded.

Jim Planck said, “Neanderthal. They’re not radiation freaks; they’re throwbacks.”

The auto-cab crept on, through the chuppers’ town. Searching in its blind, mechanical way for the nearby home of the world-famous concert pianist Richard Kongrosian.

NINE

The Theodorus Nitz commercial squeaked, “In the presence of strangers do you feel you
don’t quite exist?
Do they seem not to notice you, as if you were invisible? On a bus or spaceship do you sometimes look around you and discover that no one,
absolutely no one,
recognizes you or cares about you and quite possibly may even—”

With his carbon dioxide–powered pellet rifle, Maury Frauenzimmer carefully shot the Nitz commercial as it hung pressed against the far wall of his cluttered office. It had squeezed in during the night, had greeted him in the morning with its tinny harangue.

Broken, the commercial dropped to the floor. Maury crushed it with his solid, compacted weight and then returned the pellet rifle to its rack.

“The mail,” Chic Strikerock said. “Where’s today’s mail?” He had been searching everywhere in the office since his arrival.

Maury noisily sipped coffee from his cup and said, “Look on top of the files. Under that rag we use to clean the keys of the typewriter.” He bit into a breakfast doughnut, the sugar-covered type. He could see that Chic was behaving oddly and he wondered what it signified.

All at once Chic said, “Maury, I’ve got something I wrote out for you.” He tossed a folded piece of paper onto the desk.

Without examining it Maury knew what it was.

“I’m resigning,” Chic said. He was pale.

“Please don’t.” Maury said. “Something will come along. I can keep the firm functioning.” He did not open the letter; he left it where Chic had tossed it. “What would you do if you left here?” Maury asked.

“Emigrate to Mars.”

The intercom on the desk buzzed, and their secretary, Greta Trupe, said, “Mr. Frauenzimmer, a Mr. Garth McRae to see you with several other gentlemen, in a group.”

I wonder who they are, Maury wondered. “Don’t send them in yet,” he said to Greta. “I’m in conference with Mr. Strikerock.”

“Go ahead and conduct your business,” Chic said. “I’m going. I’ll leave my resignation letter there on your desk. Wish me luck.”

“I wish you luck.” Maury felt depressed and ill. He stared down at the desk until the door opened and closed and Chic had gone. What a hell of a way to begin the day, Maury thought. Picking up the letter he opened it, glanced at it, folded it up once more. He pressed a button on the desk intercom and said, “Miss Trupe, send in—the name you said, McRae or whatever it was. And his party.”

“Yes, Mr. Frauenzimmer.”

The door from the outer office opened and Maury drew himself up to face what he recognized at once to be government officials; two of them wore the gray of the National Police, and the leader of the group, evidently McRae, had the bearing of a major official of the executive branch; in other words, a highly-placed
Ge.
Rising clumsily to his feet, Maury extended his hand and said, “Gentlemen, what can I do for you?”

Shaking hands with him, McRae said, “You’re Frauenzimmer?”

“Correct,” Maury answered. His heart labored and he had difficulty breathing. Were they going to close him down? As they had moved in on the Vienna School of psychiatrists? “What have I done?” he asked, and heard his voice waver with apprehension. It was one trouble after another.

McRae smiled. “Nothing, so far. We’re here to initiate discussion of the placing of an order with your firm. However, this involves knowledge of a
Ge
level. May I rip out your intercom?”

“P-pardon?” Maury said, taken aback.

Nodding to the NP men, McRae stepped aside; the police moved in and swiftly made the intercom inoperative. They then inspected the walls, the furniture; they examined scrupulously every inch of the room and its equipment and then they nodded to McRae to continue.

McRae said, “All right. Frauenzimmer, we have specs with us for a sim we’d like constructed. Here.” He held out a sealed envelope. “Go over this. We’ll wait.”

Opening the envelope, Maury studied its contents.

“Can you do it?” McRae asked, presently.

Raising his head, Maury said, “These specifications are for a der Alte.”

“Correct.” McRae nodded.

Then that’s it, Maury realized. That’s the piece of
Ge
knowledge; I’m now a
Ge.
It’s happened in an instant. I’m on the inside. Too bad Chic left; poor goddam Chic, what bad timing, bad luck, on his part. If he had stayed five minutes longer . . .

“It’s been true for fifty years,” McRae said.

They were drawing him in. Making him as much a part of this as possible now.

“Good grief,” Maury said. “I never guessed, watching it perform on TV, making its speeches. And here I build the damn things myself.” He was staggered.

“Karp did a good job,” McRae said. “Especially on the current one, Rudi Kalbfleisch. We wondered if you’d guessed.”

“Never,” Maury said. “Not one time.” Not in a million years.

“Can you do it? Build it?”

“Sure.” Maury nodded.

“When will you start?”

“Right away.”

“Good. You realize, naturally, that initially NP men will have to be kept here, to insure security maintenance.”

“Okay,” Maury murmured. “If you have to, you have to. Listen, excuse me a moment.” He edged past them, to the door and through, to the outer office; taken by surprise they permitted him to go. “Miss Trupe, did you see what way Mr. Strikerock went?” he asked.

“He just drove off, Mr. Frauenzimmer. Toward the autobahn. I guess he went back home to The Abraham Lincoln where he lives.”

You poor guy, Maury thought. He shook his head. The Chic Strikerock luck; still functioning. Now he began to feel elated.
This changes everything,
he realized. I’m back in business; I’m caterer to the king—or rather, I supply the White House. Same thing. Yes, it’s the same thing!

He returned to his office, where McRae and the others waited; they eyed him rather darkly. “Sorry,” he said, “I was looking for my sales chief. I wanted to pull him back due to this. We won’t want to take any new orders for a while, so we can be free to concentrate on this.” He hesitated. “As to the cost—”

“We’ll sign a contract,” Garth McRae said. “You’ll be guaranteed your costs plus forty percent. The Rudi Kalbfleisch we acquired for a total net sum of one billion USEA dollars, plus of course the cost of perpetual maintenance and repair since the acquisition.”

“Oh yeah,” Maury agreed. “You wouldn’t want it to stop working in the middle of a speech.” He tried to chuckle but found he could not.

“How does that sound, roughly? Say between one bil and one-five.”

Maury said thickly, “Um, fine.” His head felt as if it were about to roll off his shoulders and plunge to the floor.

Studying him, McRae said, “You’re a small firm, Frauenzimmer. You and I are both aware of that. Don’t get your hopes up. This will not make you a big firm, such as Karp und Sohnen Werke. However, it will guarantee you continued existence; obviously we’re prepared to underwrite you economically speaking for as long as is necessary. We’ve gone exhaustively into your books—does that petrify you? —and we know that you’ve been operating in the red for months now.”

“True,” Maury said.

“But your work is good,” Garth McRae continued. “We’ve minutely inspected examples of it, both here and where it actually functions on Luna and Mars. You display authentic craftsmanship, more so, I feel, then the Karp Werke. That of course is why we’re here today instead of there with Anton and old Felix.”

“I wondered.” Maury said. So that was why the government had decided this time to let the contract to him, not Karp. He thought, Did Karp build
all
the der Alte simulacra up to now? Good question. If this were so—what a radical departure in government procurement policy this was! But better not to ask.

“Have a cigar,” Garth McRae said, holding an Optimo
admiral
out to him. “Extra mild. Pure Florida leaf.”

“Thank you.” Maury gratefully—and fumblingly—accepted the big greenish cigar. Both he and Garth McRae lit up, gazing at one another in what all at once had become calm, assured silence.

The news posted on The Abraham Lincoln’s communal bulletin board that Duncan & Miller had been chosen by the talent scout to perform at the White House astounded Edgar Stone; he read the announcement again and again, searching for the joker in it and wondering how the little nervous, cringing man had managed to do it.

There’s been cheating,
Stone said to himself. Just as I passed him on his relpol tests . . . he’s got somebody else to falsify a few results for him along the talent line. He himself had heard the jugs; he had been present at that program, and Duncan & Miller, Classical Jugs, simply were not that good. They were
good,
admittedly . . . but intuitively he knew that more was involved.

Deep inside him he experienced anger, a resentment that he had ever falsified Duncan’s test-score. I put him on the road to success, Stone realized; I saved him. And now he’s on his way to the White House, out of here entirely.

No wonder Ian Duncan had done so poorly on his relpol test. He had been busy practicing on his jug, obviously; Duncan had no time for the commonplace realities which the rest of humanity had to cope with. It must be terrific to be an artist, Stone thought with bitterness. You’re exempt from all the rules and responsibilities; you can do just as you like.

He sure made a fool out of me, Stone said to himself.

Striding rapidly down the second floor hall, Stone arrived at the office of the building skypilot; he rang the bell and the door opened, showing him the sight of the skypilot deep in work at his desk, his face wrinkled with fatigue. “Uh, father,” Stone said, “I’d like to confess. Can you spare a few minutes? It’s very urgently on my mind, my sins I mean.”

Rubbing his forehead, Patrick Doyle nodded. “Jeez,” he murmured. “It either rains or it pours; I’ve had ten residents in today so far, using the confessionator. Go ahead.” He pointed wearily to the alcove which opened onto his office. “Sit down and plug yourself in. I’ll be listening while I fill out these 4-10 forms from Berlin.”

Filled with righteous indignation, his hands trembling, Edgar Stone attached the electrodes of the confessionator to the correct spots of his scalp, and then, picking up the microphone, began to confess. The tapedrums of the machine turned slowly as he spoke. “Moved by a false type pity,” he said, “I infracted a rule of the building. But mainly I am concerned not with the act itself but the motives behind it; the act is merely the outgrowth of a false attitude toward my fellow residents. This individual, my neighbor Mr. Ian Duncan, did poorly on his recent relpol test and I foresaw him being evicted from The Abraham Lincoln. I identified with him because subconsciously I regard myself as a failure, both as a resident of this building and as a man, so I falsified his score to indicate that he had passed. Obviously, a new relpol test will have to be given to Mr. Ian Duncan and the one which I scored will have to be marked void.” He eyed the skypilot, but there was no evident reaction.

That will take care of Duncan and his Classic Jug, Stone said to himself.

By now the confessionator had analyzed his confession; it popped a card out, and Doyle rose to his feet to receive it. After a long, careful scrutiny he glanced keenly up. “Mr. Stone,” he said, “the view expressed here is that your confession is no confession. What do you
really
have on your mind? Go back and begin all over; you haven’t probed down deeply enough and brought up the genuine material. And I suggest you start out by confessing that you misconfessed consciously and deliberately.”

“No such thing,” Stone said, or rather tried to say; his voice had gone out on him, numbed by dismay. “P-perhaps I could discuss this with you informally, sir. I did falsify Ian Duncan’s test score; that’s a fact. Now, perhaps my motives for doing it—”

Doyle interrupted. “Aren’t you jealous of Duncan now? What with his success with the jug, White House-wards?”

There was silence.

“This—could be,” Stone rasped in admission at last. “But it doesn’t change the fact that by all rights Ian Duncan shouldn’t be living here; he should be evicted, my motives notwithstanding. Look it up in the Communal Apartment-building Code. I know there’s a section covering a situation such as this.”

“But you can’t get out of here,” the skypilot persisted, “without confessing; you must satisfy the machine. You’re attempting to force eviction of a neighbor to satisfy your own emotional, psychological needs. Confess that, and
then
perhaps we can discuss the Code ruling as it pertains to Duncan.”

Stone groaned and once more attached the intricate system of electrodes to his scalp. “All right,” he grated. “I hate Ian Duncan because he’s artistically gifted and I’m not. I’m willing to be examined by a twelve-resident jury of my neighbors to see what the penalty for my sin is; but I insist that Duncan be given another relpol test! I won’t give up on this—he has no right to be dwelling here amongst us. It’s morally and legally
wrong.
”

“At least you’re being honest, now,” Doyle said.

“Actually,” Stone said, “I enjoy jug band playing; I liked their little act, the other night. But I have to behave in a manner which I believe to be in the public interest.”

The confessionator, it seemed to him, snorted in derision as it popped a second card. But perhaps it was only his imagination.

“You’re just getting yourself deeper and deeper,” Doyle said, reading the card. “Look at this.” He grimly passed the card to Stone. “Your mind is a riot of confused, ambivalent motives.
When was the last time you confessed?
”

Flushing, Stone mumbled, “I think—last August. Pepé Jones was the skypilot, then. Yes, it must have been August.” Actually, it had been early July.

“A lot of work will have to be done with you,” Doyle said, lighting a cigarillo and leaning back in his chair.

The opening number on their White House program, they had decided after much discussion and hot argument, would be the Bach “Chaconne in D.” Al had always liked it, despite the difficulties involved, the double-stopping and all. Even thinking about the Chaconne made Ian Duncan nervous. He wished, now that it had at last been decided, that he had held out for the much simpler “Fifth Unaccompanied Cello Suite.” But too late now. Al had sent the information on to the White House A & R secretary, Mr. Harold Slezak.