Mad Boys (25 page)

“You’re looking at Hydrohead Hill,” Siena said. “At night when demands on the national power grid are reduced and the price of electricity is down, water is pumped to the top of the hill to a pond. In the daytime, when the price of electricity is high, the water is dropped through turbines and the electricity is sold. With the price difference in the cost of electricity, Xi not only produces its own power but also makes a profit.”

The moving sidewalk passed from Spree to Luck, the Indian-run gambling casino. Lights flashed from floor to ceiling; sounds of slot machines filled my ears; a vague, metallic burnt smell tickled my nostrils. Up, down, time, and sense were irrelevant here. The patrons neither smiled nor frowned, but looked as if they’d been hit between the eyes with baseball bats. I recognized the look from when Father had a few drinks or a hit of his drug.

An Indian man, woman, twin boys about ten, and a dog walked by. The Indians, dressed in raccoon-graybrown tuxedos, were handsome and very dark. The dog was small, built like a coyote, but marked like a Dalmatian. All of them, including the dog, had dark, greasy circles painted around their eyes. I stared at them.

“They’re the managers of the casino, the ones we’re supposed to see,” Siena said.

She showed the family her credentials.

“Phi’s not open yet, and the Exposition of the Uncanny is top secret,” the Indian man said.

“Read my orders. Signed by the Director,” Siena said.

While the man read the orders, I said to the Indian woman, “Excuse me, but I think I remember you from a different dimension. You were raccoons under a bridge, and you snubbed me.”

“Could be,” said the woman.

The Indians boys said something in their language that I did not understand.

“We are descendants of the lost $$$ Indian tribe, formerly the ? ? ? Indian tribe,” the Indian woman said. She went on to explain that the $$$ Indians had leased their lands to VRN for ninety-nine years. With the profits, the Indians had opened the gambling casino.

“You sold your heritage,” Siena said.

“Three centuries ago, our people were converted to the white man’s religion by a Spanish nun known as the Lady in Blue. Meanwhile, our Indian enemies stole the white man’s horses and guns and grew strong. They almost annihilated us, took our lands and prospered. But in turn they were wiped out by the whites. Today after much study we have determined that the way to survival is to take from the white man his most valuable asset, more valuable even than his religion or his technology.”

I looked at Siena, and she looked at me. We did not understand.

“My wife is trying to tell you,” the Indian man said, “that we sold our homeland and built a casino to get money. Your papers are in order. Come with me, please.”

We started to follow the Indian man, but the Indian woman stepped between us. “Not you,” she said to me, “just her. You wait here.”

The Indian man took Siena away, and the other Indians and the coyote/Dalmatian followed. They disappeared into some brightly colored lights, and I found myself alone. For the next ten minutes, I stood around and watched the gamblers. They were a preoccupied bunch. I could have stripped naked and done somersaults, and they wouldn’t have noticed. When Siena came back, she was alone, and she was no longer wearing her Langdon suit. She was in a loose-fitting fatigue uniform, spotted in a tan and light green, camouflage for desert fighting. She looked like a soldier. I felt as if I’d lost her for good. Or maybe lost Langdon for good. If that was the case, Xiphi would be back worse than ever.

“I’ve got some things to tell you, Web,” she said, a real serious look on her face. “I have to return to Third World Theater now. But there’s something else. About your mother . . .”

“Listen,” I interrupted, “I’ve been thinking. Forget that stupid war. Come and live with my mom and me. I want to be with you.”

“We can never be together, Web. The cause is too important. I have to go to war. Web, do you have the faintest idea how to live?”

Her question threw me. I didn’t have a clue. “Maybe we could camp in the van, travel around. You could drive. And anyway my mom will know.”

“Web, your mother. . . .”

“You promised you’d take me to her.”

“Web, she’s dead. She’s been dead for years.”

“Dead! You lied to me! You betrayed me! I’ll kill you.” I screamed at her, but it didn’t make any difference to the gamblers. The tinkling sounds of the machines rode over my tirade, and my frantic gesturing attracted no attention.

“I didn’t lie to you. I only found out a minute ago that she was dead. And you
will
be taken to her. I was assured of that.”

“You sure?”

“This has all been arranged. We’re part of a plan. It’s going to work out, Web. I have to go, I have to return to my unit. To my cause. Please understand.”

I was too mad to cry, and too sad to start swinging. She took a step toward me as if she was going to touch me, maybe kiss me. Or maybe it was just wishful thinking on Xiphi’s part. Anyway, she hesitated, reached into her shirt pocket, and gave me a cigarette. I put it behind my ear. The soldier in Siena took over control, and she did an about-face and walked away.

PHI

American writers of French-Canadian descent often produce drifting odysseys sounding themes of love and home. This is the “Evangeline” effect, and examples include
On the Road by
Jack Kerouac,
The Mosquito Coast
and other works by Paul Theroux,
Postcards by
E. Annie Proulx, and
Virtual Reality: The Adventures of Lotus Magellan
by . . . by . . . the name escapes me at the moment.

—From the Journal of Henri Scratch.

A few minutes later the $$$ Indians reappeared, walking toward me in procession. “Come with us, young man,” said the man. The boys giggled, the coyote/dalmatian barked, and the woman led the way. I followed. We walked to an elevator. The door opened and I stepped in alone.

The woman patted the coyote/dalmatian, and he got into the elevator with me. “This is $#$@!,” the Indian woman said with a click. “He will be your guide.”

“Is he a coyote or a Dalmatian, or what?” I asked, as the elevator door began to slide shut.

“He is what he is,” said the Indian man.

The door slid closed. A soft hum and a gentle shove against the soles of my feet told me we were going up. I didn’t know where. There were no numbers on the control panel. In fact, no controls on the control panel. $#$@! wagged his tail, so I relaxed some.

We stepped off the elevator into what appeared to be the outdoors. $#$@! barked, as if to say “Follow me” and then walked right through a prickly pear cactus. I bent to touch the leaves of the cactus. Nothing there but light. The entire desert vista was an elaborate holographic display. We were still inside.

The path was narrow, winding upward through rocks and thorny cacti. There was more vegetation the higher up we walked. I saw stunted cedars, pines, oaks, grasses with tufted tops, a few wild flowers, the gray cadavers of downed trees. I kept trying and failing to touch things.

We came to what appeared to be a dead end at the faces of boulders big as houses. $#$@! pressed his nose against the rocks. Some of them, I could just discern, were actual objects, even if they weren’t actual rocks. Finally, $#$@!’s nose touched a pivot point, and the rock moved aside just like in a PG-rated adventure movie. We slipped through the opening, and a mazelike path wound upward through boulders to a ridge. From here I could see a hidden plateau surrounded on all sides by a steep incline. It was obvious we were in the crater of an ancient volcano.

In the distance was a tremendous pueblo built under a cliff overhang, the holograph of the precasino home of the Indians. Close to us, water poured from a rock. Not a trickle but a river, cascading down a waterfall, irrigating the two miles or so between us and the pueblo. I could hear the rushing sound. I walked right through the cataract of light. Beyond were orchards and fields of corn, beans, tomatoes, vegetables, and flower gardens. I could smell roses.

We walked to the pueblo. Everything looked as it must have when the pueblo was built nearly a thousand years ago; reddish adobe apartments were connected by patios and wooden ladders. $#$@! knew exactly where he was going. He brought me to an adobe-designed telephone booth. I punched up 911. The operator said, “For a guided tour, press one; to return to the real world, press two.” I pressed two. The operator said, “Thank you for pressing two. Press one, please.” I pressed one. “One moment and you will be connected to your tour guide.” A couple minutes went by. I wanted to leave, but $#$@! barked for me to stay still.

“Welcome to Phi.” The voice came not only out of the telephone receiver, but seemingly from everywhere, and in the deep gargle of my demon, the Director.

“My mother. . . .” I would have said more, but I didn’t know myself what the question was.

“In due time,” said the Director.

“You lied to me.”

“You haven’t been lied to. You’ve been deceived. Think of this distinction as the main element of human relationships. Meanwhile, enjoy the tour. Phi is not complete yet. At the moment, its holographic illusions are set only for the tastes of the Children of the Cacti. When Phi is ready for the public, hundreds of virtual worlds will be available to suit other tastes. Now hang up the phone and follow $#$@!”

I did as ordered. $#$@! brought me to a big window. Behind the glass fifty or sixty middle-aged people ate at stone picnic tables.

“Can they see me?” I asked.

“They know you’re here, but they don’t choose to view you,” the Director said. “The Children of the Cacti exist entirely in a virtual world of their own creation. In this world there are no biting bugs, and the temperature is balmy all year-round. There is no strife.”

“The strife is in Xi,” I said.

“Strife
is
Xi,” said the Director. “You’re beginning to catch on. The trick is to transform strife into strive, Xi into Phi.”

I stared hard through the window. It was the lunch hour. The Children of the Cacti seemed to be having a grand time as they ate. Dinner was strictly vegetarian, but it looked good and real—tortillas, a spicy vegetable chili, salad, all of it washed down with homemade wine served in red ceramic mugs. From their raccoon eyes, I recognized the waiters as member of the $$$ tribe. And then something struck me as odd.

“These people are all parent age, but I don’t see any children. Where are the kids?”

“Think about it,” said the Director. “If you were creating a world without strife, would you want any children around? There are no children of the Children of the Cacti. They finessed the kids out of their lives.”

The Director droned on, telling me all about the Children of the Cacti. They lived like the Pueblo peoples you see in
National Geographic
with a few notable exceptions. Social, spiritual, recreational, even political life revolved around TV-watching in six connecting rooms. Each of the TV viewing rooms was dedicated to a certain show category—men’s shows (such as sporting events), women’s shows (such as soap operas), dramas, sex shows, potluck, and first-run movies. Viewers floated among the TV sets, voting every half hour by secret ballot which show or movie within the category should be selected. During off-peak hours, participants were allowed to make speeches on behalf of unpopular programs. Those shows were taped and played between 2 and 6
A.M
. This was known as Minority Television.

In this society, there was no haranguing political process. Here the polls and ratings
were
the elections and the legislation. There was no competition in Phi. No goals, no sense of time but what television programming brought.

After the Director’s talk about the Children of the Cacti, he told me to prepare myself for my first full-blown virtual reality experience.

$#$@! started down a ramp, and soon we were outside the pueblo and on the desert floor. Up ahead was a cliff, sixty or seventy feet up. Before my eyes, this lonely place of just rocks and tan earth began to fill with people and music, rock ’n’ roll. The people were shoulder to shoulder. They danced and wiggled and sang out. A handful of people had made their way up the cliff, and one of them, a pretty woman in a flower-print dress, broke away from the group and ran to the edge. I couldn’t see her face very clearly because she was far away, but I recognized her by the way she moved, dancing and lighthearted: my mother.

“Careful, Flower—the rocks are loose!” I recognized the warn ing voice. It was Marla, the woman who had hypnotized me in the Catacombs.

Mother laughed and started to wiggle to the beat of the music. Two seconds later, she slipped and fell. She didn’t scream, just made a wheee! sound. She fell right down at me. I made as if to catch her, but she went through me. After a thump at my feet, the illusion vanished.

“That was how your mother died, in a silly accident,” said the Director in a voice full of scorn and sadness. “Thereafter the Children of the Cacti called this place Sorrows.”

I prayed that Xiphi or Langdon, even the Alien, would rescue me from this . . . this feeling of emptiness inside of me.

“Take me away! Please take me away,” I cried out. Seconds later I was following $#$@! down a plain hallway that you might find in any office building, but I could still hear the voice of the Director.

“Most of Children of the Cacti are middle-aged, but when they first started they were rebellious youths. They found their insights through drugs. Graduated to ideas—peace and love. Flirted with Eastern religions. Tried group living—commune-ism. When their numbers declined, they sought refuge in Christianity and conventional life-styles. Invented New Age. None of if worked. The Children of the Cacti left Jesus, political ideology, and drugs. The turning point was your mother’s death. Led by an excommunicated priest, they found the keys to the perfect society: trust funds, entertainment, no kids. Persons without a steady source of income, such as Dirty Joe, were banished. New people of means were recruited. Today the Children of the Cacti are learning to govern their lives and loves with entertainment as the medium and money as the method.”