Nova Express (13 page)

Bureaucracy tuned in on all—Incredibly devious conditions hatch cosmologies of telepathic misdirection—Mind screen movies overlapping make recordings ahead and leave before thinking was recorded—Our most precise data came from U.N. (United Narcotics)—His plan was drug addicts of America slip through the cordon—Pain of heroin failure often the cause of windows to pursue ends not compatible cell-blanketing agent—Our most precise data with The Silent People—Plan was almost superhuman drug burned through his juxtapositions—He was naked now to Nagasaki defining the limits against him—The projector can shift its succinct army before flesh dissolving—

Integrity and bravery are difficulties in the laboratory—­Experiments to evolve ill took control this planet—Through the streets Nagasaki defining the limits of bravery—We find nationalisms and clashings to degree of addiction—It is fairly easy to predict inter police taking arms to protect their own forgeries from the taken over—Might reach 500 Ideology Headquarters armed with Board Officers produced synthetically—The hallucinogen drugs bottle three-dimensional coordinate points—New hallucinogens directed against affective animal life—Slight overdose of ugliness fear and hate—The ovens were image dust swirling round you total disposal—Some ugly noxious disgusting act sharply recorded becomes now part of “Photo ­falling—Word Falling”—Presented and represented before towers open fire—Alien virus can dissolve millions—It starts ­eating—Screamed back white hot copies of ­itself—So the Fear Species can replace the host armed now with tapeworm of bring down word and image plus ­Nagasaki—Injury Headquarters—Dual mammalian structure—Hiroshima People—Or some disgusting officers produced the rest of it—

Attorney General For Fear announced yesterday the discovery that cries of nepotism might “form a new mineral damaging to the President”—­Insidious form of high density silica as extremely small particles got into politics with Lyndon B. Johnson, wife of two Negro secret service men—Another Mineral American formed by meteorite impact—“And it would make a splendid good talker,” he said—

At these tables there is virtually jostling ­diplomats—Some displacements of a sedate and celebrated rose garden but ideal for the processes of a quiet river view restaurant—Police juice and the law are no cure for widespread public petting in chow lines the Soviet Union said yesterday—Anti-American promptly denounced Kennedy's moribund position of insistence:

“Washington know-how to deal with this sort demonstration in Venezuela of irresponsible propaganda—Outside Caracas I am deeply distressed at the Soviet Union's attempt to drag us back just when we was stoned in violation of the administration's twenty billion dollar solemn word—”

He begged as a personal thing scattered uprisings—

Error in enemy strategy is switchboard redirected—Word is TWO that is the noxious human inter language recorded—And where you have TWO you have odor's and nationalism's word—They started tampering with net—Injury Headquarters blockade was broken—“Calling partisans of all nation—Crab word falling—Virus photo falling—Break through in Grey Room—”

From a Land of Grass
Without Mirrors

FROM A LAND OF GRASS WITHOUT ­MIRRORS

The cadet stepped out of a jungle of rancid swamp pools covered with spider webs through a slat fence in a place of wooden runways and barriers—walked through a forbidden door and someone said:

“What do you want?”

The cadet looked at the ground and said: “I didn't mean anything.”

He walked down a wooden ramp to a school desk of shellacked brown maple where a woman sat.

“Where have you been?”

“I have been to The Far Assembly Meeting—I am on my way back to school—”

“What Assembly Meeting? Where?”

“The Far Assembly Meeting—Over there—”

“That's a lie. The Far Assembly Meeting is in
that
direction.”

He composed his face for Basic Pain as he had been taught to compose his face to show nothing.

“I have been to a meeting,” he said.

“You have six hours forced work—Guard—”

And the club crushed into his ribs and kidneys and the sides of his neck jabbed his testicles and stomach no matter how he did or did not do the work assigned and loss of composure was punishable by death. Then taken back to World Trade School K9 and whether he walked fast or slow or between slow and fast more bone-crushing shocks fell through him—So the cadets learn The Basic Formulae of Pain and Fear—Rules and staff change at arbitrary intervals—Cadets encouraged or forced into behavior subject to heaviest sanctions of deprivation, prolonged discomfort, noise, boredom all compensation removed from the offending cadets who were always being shifted from one school to another and never knew if they were succeeding brilliantly or washed out report to disposal—

Lee woke with his spine vibrating and the smell of other cigarette smoke in his room—He walked streets swept by color storms slow motion in spinal fluid came to the fish city of marble streets and copper domes—Along canals of terminal sewage—the green boy-girls tend gardens of pink flesh—Amphibious vampire creatures who breathe in other flesh—double sex sad as the drenched lands of swamp delta to a sky that does not change—Where flesh circulates stale and rotten as the green water—by purple fungoid gills—They breathe in flesh—settling slow in caustic green enzymes dissolving body—eating gills adjusted to the host's breathing rhythm—eat and excrete through purple gills and move in a slow settling cloud of sewage—They are in pairs known as The Other Half—the invisible Siamese twin moving in and out of one body—talk in slow flesh grafts and virus patterns exchanging genital sewage breathe in and out of each other on slow purple gills of half sleep with cruel idiot smiles eating Terminal Addicts of The Orgasm Drug under a sign cut in black stone:

The Nature of Begging

Need?—Lack.

Want?—Need.

Life?—Death.

“It is a warning,” said The Prince with a slow bronze smile—“We can do no more—Here where flesh circulates like clothes on stale trade flesh of Spain and Forty-Second Street—scanning pattern of legs—pant smell of The Vagrant Ball Players—”

Lee woke with the green breathing rhythm—Gills slow stirring other cigarette smoke in other gills adjusted to the host by color storms—It is in pairs known as The Other Half sweet and rotten they move in and out and talk in spinal fluid exchanging genital sewage on slow purple gills of half sleep—Addicts of The Orgasm Drug—Flesh juice in festering spines of terminal ­sewage—Run down of Spain and 42nd St. to the fish city of marble flesh grafts—­Diseased beggars with cruel idiot smiles eating erogenous holes inject The Green Drug—Sting insect spasms—It is a warning—We can do not—Doesn't change—Even the sky stale and rotten dissolving—

Lee woke in other flesh the lookout different—His body was covered by transparent sheets dissolving in a green mist—

“Lie still—Wait—Flesh frozen still—Deep freeze—Don't move until you can feel arms and legs—­Remember in that hospital after spinal anesthesia and tried to get out of bed to my heroin stash and fell-slid all over the floor with legs like blocks of wood.”

He moved his head slightly to one side—Rows and tiers of bunks—A dank packing-house smell—Stinging sex nettles lashed his crotch and hot shit exploded down his thigh to the knee—

“Lie still—Wait—”

The sweet rotten smell of diarrhea swept through the air in waves—The Others were moving now—Larval flesh hanging in rags—Faces purple tumescent bursting insect lust rolled in shit and piss and sperm—

“Watch what everyone else is doing and don't do it (—General Orders for Emergency Conditions—)”

He could move his arm now—He reached for his stash of apomorphine and slipped a handful of tablets under his tongue—His body twisted forward and emptied and he jetted free and drifted to the ­ceiling—Looked down on quivering bodies—crab and centipede forms flashed here and there—Then red swirls of violence—The caustic green mist settled—In a few minutes there was no movement—

Lee was not surprised to see other people he knew—“I brought them with me”—He decided—“We will send out patrols—There must be other survivors”—

He moved cautiously forward the others fanned out on both sides—He found that he could move on his projected image from point to point—He was already accustomed to life without a body—

“Not much different—We are still quite definite and vulnerable ­organisms”—Certainly being without a body conveyed no release from fear—He looked down—The green mist had formed a carpet of lichen over the bunks and floor of what looked like a vast ­warehouse—He could see surviving life forms with body—Green creatures with purple fungoid gills—“The atmosphere must be largely carbon dioxide,” he decided—He passed a screen through and wiped out all thought and word from the past—He was conversing with his survivors in color flashes and projected concepts—He could feel danger—All around him the familiar fear urgent and quivering—

The two agents sat in basement room 1920 Spanish villa—Rotten spermy insect smell of The Green People swirling in bare corners quivering through boneless substance in color blats—He felt out through the open door on thin music down dark streets swept by enemy patrols and the paralyzing white flak—He moved like an electric dog sniffing pointing enemy personnel and installations through bodies and mind screens of the silent fish city his burning metal eyes Uranian born in the face of Nova Conditions—his brain seared by flash blasts of image war—

In this area of Total Conditions on The Nova Express the agents of shadow empires move on hideous electric needs—Faces of scarred metal back from The Ovens of Minraud—Orgasm Drug addicts back from The Venusian Front—And the cool blue heavy metal addicts of Uranus—

In this area the only reason any agent contacts any other agent is for purpose of assassination—So one assumes that any one close to him or her is there precisely to kill—What else? We never knew anything else here—None the less we are reasonably gregarious since nothing is more dangerous than withdrawing from contact into a dead whistle stop—So every encounter quivers with electric suspicion—ozone smell of invisible flash bulbs—

Agents are always exchanging identities as articles of clothing circulate in strata of hustlers—These exchanges marked by last-minute attempts to switch the package and leave you standing with some old goofball bum in 1910 Panama—Lee had such a deal on with the other agent and of course both were falsifying and concealing defects in the merchandise—Of course no agent will allow a trial run since the borrower would be subject to take off with the package and fuck every­body they'll do it every time—So all the deals are sight unseen both parties gathering what information he can delving into the other identity for hidden miles and engineering flaws that could leave him with faulty equipment in a desperate position—His patrols were checking the other agent—Sending in reports—Conveying ­instructions—intercepting messages—

“Present Controller is The American Woman—Tracer on all connections—Taping all lines in and out—Santa Monica California—She is coming in loud and clear now—”

The young man dropped Time on the bed—His face was forming a smooth brown substance like the side of an electric eel—His left hand dissolved in a crystal bulb where a stinger of yellow light quivered sharp as a hypo needle—Orgasm Sting Ray—Venusian weapon—A full dose can tear the body to insect pieces in electric orgasms—Smaller doses bring paralysis and withered limbs of blighted fiber flesh—Lee hummed a little tune and cut the image lines with his grey screen—The Orgasm Sting dissolved in smoke—Lee picked the boy up by one elbow rigid as a clothing dummy and weightless now Lee guided him down the street steering the body with slight movements of the arm—The screen was empty—The boy sat on Lee's bed his face blank as a plate—The Nova Police moved in calm and grey with inflexible authority—

“
‘Paddy The Sting' arrested—Host empty—Heavy scar tissue—Surgery indicated—Transfer impractical—”

TOO FAR DOWN THE ROAD

—The Boy, driven too far down the road by some hideous electric hand—I don't know—Perhaps the boy never existed—All thought and word from the past—It was in the war—I am not sure—You can not know the appalling Venusian Front—Obscure hand taping all messages in and out—Last human contacts—suddenly ­withdrawn—The Boy had never existed at all—A mouth against the pane—­muttering—Dim jerky far away voice: “Know who I am? You come to ‘indicated accident' long ago . . . old junky selling Christmas seals on North Clark St. . . . ‘The Priest' they called him . . . used to be me, Mister” shabby quarters of a forgotten city . . . tin can flash flare . . . smell of ashes . . . wind stirs a lock of hair . . . “Know who I am? hock shop kid like mother used to make . . . Wind and Dust is my name . . . Never Happened is my name . . . Good Bye Mister is my name . . . quiet now . . . I go . . .” (flickering silver smile).

NO GOOD AT THIS RATE

Smell of other cigarette smoke on child track—­Proceed to the outer—All marble streets and copper domes inside air—Signature in scar tissue stale and rotten as the green water—Moldy pawn ticket by purple fungoid gills—The invisible Siamese twin moving in through flesh grafts and virus patterns—Exchanging weight on slow purple gills—Addicts of the purpose—Flesh juice vampires is no good—All sewage—Idiot smiles eating erogenous deal—Sweet rotten smell of ice—Insect smell of the green car wreck—The young agent to borrow your body for a special half made no face to conceal the ice—He dies many years ago—He said: “Yes you want to—Right back to a size like that—Said on child track—Screaming on the deal?”

She didn't get it—All possessed by overwhelming inside air—Shoeshine boy, collapse it—Could make or break any place by his male image back in—The shoeshine boy didn't get jump—Wait till the signs are right—And shit sure know to very—Wait a bit—No good—Fast their mind waves and long counts—No use—Don't know the answer—Arsenic two years—Go on treating it—In the blood arsenic and bleeding gums—Now I had my light weight .38 like for protection—

He dies many years ago—“Sunshine of your smile,” he said and stomped your ambassador to the mud flats where all died addicted in convulsions of insect—They were addicted to this round of whatever visits of a special kind—

“Grow to a size like that,” said Nimum—“So where is my ten percent on the deal?”

The shoeshine boy collapsed and they revived him with secret techniques—The money pinned to an old man's underwear is like that is the best—

So I said: “We can do it here—They won't see us—When I walk with the Dib they can't see me—”

Careful—Watch the exits—Don't go to Paris—Wait till the signs are right—Write to everyone—Wait a bit—No good at this rate—Watch the waves and long counts—No use moving out—Try one if you want to—Right back to the track, Jack—Vampires is no good all possessed by overwhelming Minraud girl—All dies in ­convulsions—Don't go to Paris—Venusian front—On child track screaming without a body—Still quite definite and vulnerable organisms—Nova signature in scar tissue—Purpose of “assassination” back to a size like that—Her is there precisely to kill—Fast their mind waves and attempts to switch the ­package—Know the answer?: Arsenic two years: Goofball bum in 1910 ­Panama—They'll do it every time—The young man dropped Time on us with all the Gods of Life—Giggles canal talk from the sewage drifting round the gallows turning ­cartwheels—Groveled in visits of a special kind—Know the answer?: Arsenic two years:: Operation completed—WE are blood arsenic and bleeding gums—

“Are you sure they are not for protection or perhaps too quick?”

“Quite sure—Nothing here but to borrow your body for a special purpose”:: (“Excellent—Proceed to the ice”)

He dies many years ago—Screen went dead—The smell of gasoline filled straw hat and silk scarf—Won't be much left—Have to move fast—Wouldn't know his name—No use of them better than they are—You want to?—Right back to the track, Jack—The Controller at the exits—

WIND HAND TO THE HILT

White sat quietly beaming “humanity's condition”—Wise Radio Doctor started putting welfare officers in his portable—The Effects Boys to see if they can do any locks over the Chinese—Told me to sit down—Gave me Panorama Comfortable and then said:

“Well? Anything to go by? What are we going to do?”

What weighted the program down was refusal to leave—

“Well what are you going to do? Perhaps alone?”

“You'd like to do half of it for me would you?”

He slung me out and Worth and Vicky talked usefully about that was that—Maybe I've met Two Of A Kind—They both started share of these people—Vicky especially sounded him—It wasn't what he had—You know is why?—What they are meant to do is all?—Going to get out of it?—An interview with Modigliani obvious usually sooner than later—I've seen a lot of these old men you visit on a P&O—You know sixty seventy years east voyage—Do you see yourself ending up in Cathay?—Trying to pinch suitcase like that you'll end up buying the deluxe straight—The job will be there—No cleaner—