Waiting for the Galactic Bus (21 page)

Trouble is, you don’t know who your enemies are. You gotta watch everyone.

But while they screamed for him, Roy knew what to do. What he’d dreamed of.

Going to show you people the truth of the world. What you always want. Like the raids which they did exactly what you didn’t have the balls for, and you are going to love me for it, because I am the goddamned people. Love me!

“Get the guards back in here,” he ordered, not taking his eyes from the milling thousands beyond the window. “Time to let them see me.”

    22   

The rewards of faith and
their avoidance

Streaking through limbo with Milt Kahane, Woody Barnes marveled at the black, bright, star-winking universe around him. “Man, you really get a different picture from up here.”

“Very impressive,” Milt agreed. “No view like it, although the Hudson Valley comes close. The whole thing is a helluva show, Barnes. Being alive, being at all. That’s what this gig is all about. Remember your trumpet voluntaries from practice?”

They shot through gaseous clouds, played tag with asteroid belts, hitched a short ride on
Voyager 1
snail-pacing past the orbit of Pluto. The frail little contraption looked lonely but familiar to Woody. Milt hurried him on.

“It’ll get shmutz all over the costume. Come on, we’re late.” With the whoop of a raucous diver, Milt kicked off from
Voyager
and whizzed on, Woody close behind. “Everyone wants a reward, especially shmucks like Roy. What do you want?”

“Never thought much about it,” Woody reflected. “At least, not until they zapped Charity. Enough gigs to pay the rent, I guess. Chance to play with some good sidemen. Get married.”

“Like Charity?”

“No, she’s all hung up on Roy. I never said anything to her anyway.”

“Wouldn’t’ve done any good,” Milt was sure. “Love is a matter of when.”

A sudden, nearby nova turned the universe blinding white.

“Wheeee! Feel the breeze! You know the worst thing in the world, Woody? Getting what you thought you wanted. Never looks as good on you as in the store. Take that mother who fragged us in Beirut. He got zapped the same day and came Topside looking for Mohammed and Allah, the whole shmeer. The Boss really has trouble with Moslems, and this dipstick was a Shiite, sort of an Islamic Fundamentalist. They don’t even like other Moslems.”

But there were great fringe benefits. As Milt explained it, radical Moslems had an ancient but precise idea of heavenly reward for defenders of the faith.

“Houris: sort of super Arab hookers. These guys believe they get an eternal shtup with orgasms that last a thousand years. Sexual Valhalla.”

Woody considered the prospect. “Not only couldn’t I stand it — hell, I’d get bored.”

“That’s the point, but (a) you’re not dumb and (b) you’re not a fanatic. If these clowns had any smarts, they’d be raising poppies or selling rugs.”

Milt did a graceful loop and figure eight, waving his trumpet at eternity. “The Boss gives Dipstick his houri just to get rid of him. Not a real houri: actually she’d been a waitress in Newark who belly-danced on weekends. But sexy? You could get seasick watching her navel. So she goes in, she told me, and this turkey gets it on after a lot of bullshit about the infidels he scored, meaning you and me, and he cranks up on paradise.”

As Milt had it from the part-time houri, when paradise arrived as advertised, with no sign of cessation, the Shiite felt it was really worth dying for. Gibbering with faith and gratitude, he labored to redeem his spiritual green stamps. Ten minutes into his thousand years, he wondered if the Koran mentioned anything about a break now and then. After twenty minutes he was ready for Sundays off.

“What the hell, the Thousand-Year Reich only made the first twelve,” Milt observed. “So — half an hour and he throws in the towel. Totaled, sick at heart. In tears, yet. The dangers of literal belief: what’s eternal reward when there’s nothing left to want, right? So the Boss sits him down — believe me, he had to sit down — to find out what he really wanted to do. Which was all uphill, because I met this clown and he had the IQ of a Venetian blind; even Arabs had trouble getting through to him. That’s why they put him in that window alone and told him carefully who to waste and who not, hoping Dipstick would remember some of it.

“Anyway, the Boss finally gets out of him that he was a baker, a whiz on baklava. He gives him the last known address on Mohammed, and off goes the Lion of Islam to find the place — which turns out to be in Greenwich Village. So now he’s the patron spirit of a falafel hut on Macdougal Street, inspiring the best Middle Eastern desserts in town, happy as a clam. There we go! Hang a right, Barnes.”

Woody dove after Milt toward a tiny point of light from whence came a growing roar of human frenzy. “Must be Roy’s crowd whooping it up.”

Milt listened as they drew closer. “That’s them. Can’t use your mute this gig. Subtle is not in. These turkeys are all Venetian blinds.”

“Roy wasn’t too dumb, I guess. He was always reading.”

“Yeah?” When Milt turned to glance at Woody, he looked rather like Jake. “Who do you think I’ve been talking about? Arabs?”

They swooped toward the distant point of light that became a city, a street, a screaming crowd. A high balcony...

    23   

The clear vistas of paranoia

Drumm at his shoulder, Roy ogled the crowd below like an orphan given a birthday party.

“Microphones ready, sir.”

“Listen, what about Topside?” The memory was all too recent for Roy. “I seen God close up and He ain’t no wimp. He could really fuck us up.”

“Hardly.” Drumm seemed unconcerned. “Topside is not all God, just as Britain was not all Churchill. Topside has always observed strict neutrality where Below Stairs is concerned; not to mention the vast numbers of them in open or secret sympathy with the Cause. The rest don’t want trouble, which is fine until we’re ready to enlarge our ambitions. Their emissaries will put in an appearance today as promised. Listen to your people, Leader:
there
is reality. You are eternal. Be Brutus. Seize the time. Below Stairs is ours today.” Drumm let the seductive implication hover at Roy’s ear. “Tomorrow...?”

Tomorrow Topside. Roy thrilled to the first frisson of invincibility. Heaven and hell all his for all time, bought and paid for with a heart attack.
Jesus, too fuckin much. Like he says, seize the time.
“Okay. Guards out first. Let’s go.”

At Drumm’s order, the guards, vigilant mastiffs, filed in and through the balcony doors. As Roy Stride stepped onto the balcony, the roar burst from the crowd like a single crazed animal. He raised his arms, asking for silence but content to let the storm of frenzied triumph roll over him forever. Drumm waited at the other microphone until he could be heard.

“The Wembley government has stepped down.” Another wave of delirium, which Drumm stayed with an upraised hand. “A worn-out garment discarded by a healthy body.”

Pandemonium. Roy felt close to tears.

“A new day! Topside itself has agreed to a non-aggression pact following the Leader’s assurance that, with this assumption of power, he has no larger political demands. We ARE the future!”

Again the energy exploded from thousands of upturned throats. ROY! STRIDE! ROY! STRIDE! ROY! STRIDE!

“We expect momentarily the emissaries of Topside to ratify our assumption of rule,” Drumm told them. “Of our destiny!”

STRIDE! STRIDE! STRIDE!

Arms lifted, Roy beamed down upon his destiny.
You motherfuckers are gonna kiss my ass and love me for it
.

“Liberated Aryans of Below Stairs” — Drumm drew out the vowels in a stentorian voice — “greet the morning of your own new day!”

Hysteria again as Drumm stepped away from his microphone and saluted Roy Stride. Roy waited full minutes until the screaming went ragged from collective exhaustion and subsided to the tense, murmurous anticipation of a single beast straining to be unleashed.

“WE BEEN DOWN!” Roy boomed over the expectant acres of them. “GOING UP!”

The roar from them was music to his ear as he raised his fist in what was to be a new salute — knuckles not forward as with the radicals of the’60s and’70s, but turned in naturally, fist ready to fall like an avenging hammer. He found he didn’t have to think of the words, they simply came to him. “They always laughed at us, right? We were the trash, the rednecks, the clowns at the back door of their yuppie paradise. And every four years they promised us whatever we wanted just so’s we’d vote. Sure they did — while the farms got sold and the factories closed down. They did everything but listen, right? Well, they’ll listen
now.”

STRIDE! STRIDE! STRIDE!

He found his rhythm, learned from Purdy Simco. “Hallelujah, a new day come! They don’t write the word of truth, we do. From now on, they don’t speak for the White Christian American Way,
we
do. That’s for us. By God and all that’s holy —”

In nearby limbo, Milt Kahane nudged Woody. “That’s our cue. Let’s give him the shtick.”

Trumpet ready, wig straight and lines learned, Woody Barnes still marveled at the monumental travesty of what he saw. “If this was on TV, I’d turn it off.”

“You might.” Milt worked the spit valve on his polished instrument. “They won’t. Look at those clowns: are they laughing? Myth is in, kid. And... go!”

Strauss or Berlioz would have wept for sheer musical ecstasy. The effect was staggering. Over pedal tones deep as from the organ at the heart of the world, a great celestial chord of massed brass blared in a symphonic hosanna as two columns of dazzling light appeared above the balcony and resolved to white-gowned, Aryan-blond angels who lifted their trumpets in an electrifying fiat to the stunned crowd.

“Topside and the ranks of heaven, the halls of ultimate truth and justice, proclaim and ratify the sovereignty of Roy Stride Below Stairs.”

“Second in sway only to the Prince himself,” the second angel declared in a marked New York accent.

Another riff from the first angel, curled about the edges by a subtle drawling style. The trumpet came down smoothly to rest on his hip. “For unto the chosen people is come a chosen Leader. All hail to the people of Below Stairs and the Leader they have so long deserved.” He nodded to his gossamer-robed companion, sotto voce: “Hit it, Milt.”