GRAVITY RAINBOW (112 page)

the elevator by now running down a back corridor to a central-heating complex
zoom!
over the heads of a couple of black custodians who are passing back and forth a cigarette rolled from some West African narcotic herb, stuffs his hostage into a gigantic furnace which is banked for the spring (too bad), and flees out the back way down an aisle of plane trees into a small park, over a fence, zippety zop, fastfoot Roger and the London cops.

There's nothing back at "The White Visitation" he really needs. Nothing he can't let go. Clothes on his back and the pool motorcycle, a pocket full of spare change and anger unlimited, what more does a 30-year-old innocent need to make his way in the city? "I'm fucking
Dick Whittington!"
it occurs to him zooming down Kings Road, "I've come to London! I'm your Lord Mayor…"

Pirate is at home, and apparently expecting Roger. Pieces of his faithful Mendoza lie about the refectory table, shining with oil or bluing, wads, patches, rods, bottles occupy his hands, but his eyes are on Roger.

"No," cutting into a denunciation of Pointsman when Milton Gloaming's name comes up, "it's a minor item, but stop right there. Pointsman didn't send him.
We
sent him."

"We."

"You're a novice paranoid, Roger," first time Prentice has ever used his Christian name and it touches Roger enough to check his tirade. "Of course a well-developed They-system is necessary-but it's only half the story. For every They there ought to be a We. In our case there is. Creative paranoia means developing at least as thorough a We-system as a They-system-"

"Wait, wait, first where's the Haig and Haig, be a gracious host, second what is a 'They-system,' I don't pull Chebychev's Theorem on you, do I?"

"I mean what They and Their hired psychiatrists call 'delusional

systems.' Needless to say, 'delusions' are always officially defined. We don't have to worry about questions of real or unreal. They only talk out of expediency. It's the
system
that matters. How the data arrange themselves inside it. Some are consistent, others fall apart. Your idea that Pointsman sent Gloaming takes a wrong fork. Without any contrary set of delusions-delusions about ourselves, which I'm calling a We-system-the Gloaming idea might have been all right-"

"Delusions about ourselves?"

"Not real ones."

"But officially defined."

"Out of expediency, yes."

"Well, you're playing Their game, then."

"Don't let it bother you. You'll find you can operate quite well. Seeing as we haven't won yet, it isn't really much of a problem."

Roger is totally confused. At this point, in wanders who but Milton Gloaming with a black man Roger recognizes now as one of the two herb-smokers in the furnace room under Clive Mossmoon's office. His name is Jan Otyiyumbu, and he's a Schwarzkommando liaison man. One of Blodgett Waxwing's apache lieutenants shows up with his girl, who's not walking so much as dancing, very fluid and slow, a dance in which Osbie Feel, popping out of the kitchen now with his shirt off (and a Porky Pig tattoo on his stomach? How long has Feel had
that?)
correctly identifies the influence of heroin.

It's a little bewildering-if this is a "We-system," why isn't it at least thoughtful enough to interlock in a reasonable way, like They-systems do?

"That's exactly it," Osbie screams, belly-dancing Porky into a wide, alarming grin,
"They're
the rational ones. We piss on Their rational arrangements. Don't we… Mexico?"

"Hoorah!" cry the others. Well taken, Osbie.

Sir Stephen Dodson-Truck sits by the window, cleaning a Sten. Outside, blowing over its dorsal and summer stillness, London today can feel advance chills of Austerity. There isn't a word in Sir Stephen's head right now. He is completely involved with the weapon. He no longer thinks about his wife, Nora, although she's out there, in some room, still surrounded by her planetary psychics, and aimed herself now toward a peculiar fate. In recent weeks, in true messianic style, it has come clear to her that her real identity is, literally, the Force of Gravity.
I
am Gravity, I am That against which the Rocket must struggle, to which the prehistoric wastes submit and are transmuted to the very sub-

stance of History…
Her wheeling freaks, her seers, teleporters, astral travelers and tragic human interfaces all know of her visitation, but none see any way for her to turn. She must prove herself now-find deeper forms of renunciation, deeper than Sabbatai Zvi's apostasy before the Sublime Porte. It is a situation not without its chances for a good practical joke now and then-poor Nora will be suckered into seances that wouldn't fool your great-aunt, visits from the likes of Ronald Cherrycoke in a Jesus Christ getup, whistling down the wires into a hidden ultraviolet baby spot where he will start fluorescing in most questionable taste, blithering odd bits of Gospel together, reaching down from his crucified altitudes to actually cop feels of Nora's girdled behind… highly offended, she will flee into hallways full of clammy invisible hands-poltergeists will back toilets up on her, ladylike turds will bob at her virgin vertex, and screaming
ugh,
ass dripping, girdle around her knees, she will go staggering into her own drawing-room to find no refuge even there, no, someone will have caused to materialize for her a lesbian elephant soixante-neuf, slimy trunks pistoning symmetrically in and out of juicy elephant vulvas, and when she turns to escape this horrid exhibition she'll find some playful ghost has latched the door behind her, and another's just about to sock her in the face with a cold Yorkshire pudding…

In Pirate's maisonette, everyone is singing now a counterforce traveling song, with Thomas Gwenhidwy, who has not fallen to the dialectic curse of Pointsman's Book after all, accompanying on what seems to be a rosewood crwth:

They've been sleeping on your shoulder,

They've been crying in your beer,

And They've sung you all Their sad lullabies,

And you thought They wanted sympathy and didn't care

for souls,

And They never were about to put you wise. But I'm telling you today, That it ain't the only way,

And there's shit you won't be eating any more- They've been paying you to love it, But the time has come to shove it, And it isn't a resistance, it's a war.

"It's a war," Roger sings, driving into Cuxhaven, wondering offhand how Jessica has cut her hair for Jeremy, and how that insufferable

prig would look with a thrust chamber wrapped around his head, "it's a war…"

Light one up before you mosey out that door, Once you cuddled 'em and kissed 'em, But we're bringin' down Their system, And it isn't a resistance, it's a war…

These pine limbs, crackling so blue and watery, don't seem to put out any heat at all. Confiscated weapons and ammo lie around half-crated or piled loose inside the C-Company perimeter. For days the U.S. Army has been out sweeping Thuringia, busting into houses in the middle of the night. A certain lycanthropophobia or fear of Werewolves occupies minds at higher levels. Winter is coming. Soon there won't be enough food or coal in Germany. Potato crops toward the end of the War, for example, all went to make alcohol for the rockets. But there are still small-arms aplenty, and ammunition to fit them. Where you cannot feed, you take away weapons. Weapons and food have been firmly linked in the governmental mind for as long as either has been around.

On the mountainsides, patches will flash up now and then, bright as dittany in July at the Zippo's ceremonial touch. Pfc. Eddie Pensiero, a replacement here in the 89th Division, also an amphetamine enthusiast, sits huddling nearly on top of the fire, shivering and watching the divisional patch on his arm, which ordinarily resembles a cluster of rocket-noses seen out of a dilating asshole, all in black and olive-drab, but which now looks like something even stranger than
that,
which Eddie will think of in a minute.

Shivering is one of Eddie Pensiero's favorite pastimes. Not the kind of shiver
normal
people get, the goose-on-the-grave passover and gone, but shivering that
doesn't stop.
Very hard to get used to at first. Eddie is a connoisseur of shivers. He is even able, in some strange way, to
read
them, like Saure Bummer reads reefers, like Miklos Thanatz reads whipscars. But the gift isn't limited just to Eddie's
own
shivers, oh no, they're
other
peoples' shivers, too! Yeah they come in one by one, they come in all together in groups (lately he's been growing in his brain a kind of discriminator circuit, learning how to separate them

out). Least interesting of these shivers are the ones with a perfectly steady frequency, no variation to them at all. The next-to-least interesting are the frequency-modulated kind, now faster now slower depending on information put in at the other end, wherever that might be. Then you have the irregular waveforms that change both in frequency and in amplitude. They have to be Fourier-analyzed into their harmonics, which is a little tougher. There is often coding involved, certain subfrequencies, certain power-levels-you have to be pretty good to get the hang of these.

"Hey Pensiero." It is Eddie's Sergeant, Howard ("Slow") Lerner. "Getcher ass offa dat fire."

"Aww, Sarge," chatters Eddie, "c'mon. I wuz just tryin' ta get wawm."

"No ick-skew-siz, Pensiero! One o' th' koinels wants his hair cut,
right now,
an' yer
it!"

"Ahh, youse guys," mutters Pensiero, crawling over to his sleeping bag and looking through his pack for comb and scissors. He is the company barber. His haircuts, which take hours and often days, are immediately recognizable throughout the Zone, revealing as they do the hair-by-hair singlemindedness of the "benny" habitue.

The colonel is sitting, waiting, under an electric bulb. The bulb is receiving its power from another enlisted man, who sits back in the shadows hand-pedaling the twin generator cranks. It is Eddie's friend Private Paddy ("Electro") McGonigle, an Irish lad from New Jersey, one of those million virtuous and adjusted city poor you know from the movies-you've seen them dancing, singing, hanging out the washing on the lines, getting drunk at wakes, worrying about their children going bad, I just don't know any more Faather, he's a good b'y but he's runnin' with a crool crowd, on through every wretched Hollywood lie down to and including this year's big hit,
A Tree Grows
in Brooklyn.
With his crank here young Paddy is practicing another form of Eddie's gift, though he's transmitting not receiving. The bulb appears to burn steadily, but this is really a succession of electric peaks and valleys, passing by at a speed that depends on how fast Paddy is cranking. It's only that the wire inside the bulb unbrightens slow enough before the next peak shows up that fools us into seeing a steady light. It's really a train of imperceptible light and dark.
Usually
imperceptible. The message is never conscious on Paddy's part. It is sent by muscles and skeleton, by that circuit of his body which has learned to work as a source of electrical power.

Right now Eddie Pensiero is shivering and not paying much atten-

tion to that light bulb. His own message is interesting enough. Somebody close by, out in the night, is playing a blues on a mouth harp. "Whut's
dat?"
Eddie wants to know, standing under the white light behind the silent colonel in his dress uniform, "hey, McGonigle-you hear sunip'n?"

"Yeah," jeers Paddy from behind the generator, "I hear yer dischodge, flyin' away, wit' big
wings
comin' outa th' ass end. Dat's whut
I
hear! Yuk, yuk!"

"Aw, it's th'
bunk!"
replies Eddie Pensiero. "Y-you don't hear no dischodge, ya big dumbheaded Mick."

"Hey, Pensiero, ya know whut a Eye-talian
submarine
sounds like, on dat new sonar? Huh?"

"Uh… whut?"

"Pinnnggguinea-guinea-guinea wopwopwop!
Dat's
whut! Yuk, yuk, yuk!"

"Fuck youse," sez Eddie, and commences combing the colonel's silver-black hair.

The moment the comb contacts his head, the colonel begins to speak. "Ordinarily, we'd spend no more than 24 hours on a house-to-house sweep. Sundown to sundown, house to house. There's a quality of black and gold to either end of it, that way, silhouettes, shaken skies pure as a cyclorama. But these sunsets, out here, I don't know. Do you suppose something has exploded somewhere? Really-somewhere in the East? Another Krakatoa? Another name at least that exotic… the colors are so different now. Volcanic ash, or any finely-divided substance, suspended in the atmosphere, can diffract the colors strangely. Did you know that, son? Hard to believe, isn't it? Rather a long taper if you don't mind, and just short of combable on top. Yes, Private, the colors change, and how! The question is, are they changing
according
to something?
Is the sun's everyday spectrum being modulated? Not at random, but systematically, by this unknown debris in the prevailing winds? Is there information for us? Deep questions, and disturbing ones.

"Where are you from, son? I'm from Kenosha, Wisconsin. My folks have a little farm back there. Snowfields and fenceposts all the way to Chicago. The snow covers the old cars up on blocks in the yards… big white bundles… it looks like Graves Registration back there in Wisconsin.

"Heh, heh…"

"Hey Pensiero," calls Paddy McGonigle, "ya still hearin' dat sound?"

"Yeah uh I t'ink it's a mouth-organ," Pensiero busily combing up single hairs, cutting each one a slightly different length, going back again and again to touch up here and there… God is who knows their number. Atropos is who severs them to different lengths. So, God under the aspect of Atropos, she who cannot be turned, is in possession of Eddie Pensiero tonight.

"I got
your
mouth organ," jeers Paddy, "right here! Look! A wop clarinet!"