Sex and the High Command (6 page)

“Excellent. Now, gentlemen, both of you must be prepared to accept the incredible. But you’re both Navy. Remember, brave hand in the foray, cool council in cumber.”

Even though Captain Hansen was braced against improbabilities, Amos Culpepper almost delivered the
coup de grâce
. Behind a huge and completely bare desk, Culpepper’s pink face formed a perfect circle, and his black hair was brushed straight back without a part. Any man concerned with his appearance would have broken the circle by fluffing the hair, but Culpepper had added a pair of pince-nez spectacles as thick as the bottoms of beer bottles and of such magnifying power that they turned his eyes into two pale-blue circles floating out from the center of the larger circle.

“Gentlemen, you wish to know why you are here. First, I would like to ask a question: Are you Christians?”

“Yes, sir,” the chief answered.

“Good. It isn’t so hard for Christians to accept what is happening because we have accepted the Virgin Birth of Our Blessed Savior. Technically, this miracle is called parthenogenesis. Artificial parthenogenesis has long been practiced in biology labs on tadpoles. Natural parthenogenesis in human beings is not unknown. In 1924, in Lincolnshire, England, Mary X, a virgin with a nun’s cap 1.8 millimeters thick, was delivered of a fully formed girl child, stillborn but completely developed.”

Annoyed by Culpepper’s pedantry and the pacing of his words, Hansen interrupted. “Tm under the impression that we’re here to stop a feminine peace movement,” he said.

“Under that guise it is practiced,” Culpepper said slowly, “but females must always give themselves an excuse for their lewdness and sensuality, be that excuse sentiment, duty, or drunkenness. As a man, I can speak bluntly. The subject for this cabinet meeting is self-induced childbirth arising from autoeroticism in the female.”

“You mean they’re playing pocket pool?” the chief gasped.

“There’s been no information of this nature published in Navy bulletins,” the captain said testily.

“You can readily understand, gentlemen,” Culpepper said, “that these incidents occur in a very sensitive area. Women are not willing to advertise their practice, and men are reluctant to publicize the fact that they have been rejected for a vaginal douche. As for your question. Captain,” he turned to McCormick, “carnal release is not achieved through self-manipulation. Rather it arises through a chemical agency known by the trade name of Vita-Lerp but popularly referred to as jazz pills, vaginal bombs, or California jumping beans.”

“Well, I’ll be a bald-headed woodpecker,” the chief ejaculated. “When that little doozy was telling me I was better than a V-bomb, she was comparing me to a douche!”

“Why, Captain, this amazes me.” Culpepper was equally surprised. “You’ve had relations with a woman after she’s been bombed?”

“I’m the chief, but I did.”

“Tell me, how did you manage it?”

“Mr. Culpepper,” the captain intervened, “the chief’s lecture takes over an hour. You tell us. How did this thing get started?”

“Two years ago,” Culpepper began, “a cell biologist named Martin, in Van Nuys, California, discovered the product and marketed it as a rejuvenating facial creme called Vita-Lerp because the chief ingredient was oil of eucalyptus plus alkaloids. It actually has a rejuvenating effect, though temporary.” Here, the pace of Culpepper’s words faltered. “My wife used it on her face, first… Dr. Henrietta Carey, a gynecologist then working at UCLA, met Martin at a cocktail party. He explained the action of Vita-Lerp to her in technical terms, and she recognized it as a possible breakthrough in DNA chemistry. Not even she suspected to what extent, until she used it to give tone and resiliency to the tissues of a female patient who was barren because flaccid vaginal tissues blocked her Fallopian tubes. Dr. Carey inserted a capsule into her patient while her patient’s husband waited in an anteroom to be called. When the capsule melted, it became obvious that the patient would have found her mate highly superfluous in respect to carnal stimuli. In fact, he was dismissed without a trial and later divorced by the woman even though she was pregnant when she instituted proceedings. Meanwhile, Dr. Carey lent her name to endorse the product, for fifty-one percent of the company, and Vita-Lerp was marketed as an aid to feminine hygiene. In six months Martin was dead of a heart attack, and the product was sweeping the country.”

“He died rather conveniently,” Hansen remarked.

“So we thought, but Dr. Carey, as attending physician and the executor of his estate, signed his death warrant and cremated his remains.”

“Why don’t you stop the sale of the product?”

“Such an act would be unconstitutional,” Culpepper explained. “It’s FDA-approved, nontoxic, and not a drug. Since it triggers the DNA in ova without the male chromosome, it’s been a boon to chicken farmers and dairymen. Roosters and bulls are neither produced nor needed.”

“Well,” Hansen said slowly, “I’m sure that I mean more to my wife than a fertilizing agent.”

“Service wives are its most avid supporters, sir, since they’re alone a lot. Once a female has tried Vita-Lerp, any male, for her, becomes a biological relic. I know! I’m a Southern Baptist, and no one appreciates parthenogenesis more than Amos Culpepper, but, during my legally authorized visits when I’m permitted to take my darling daughter in my arms and gaze down on her little face and I realize that I am not my daughter’s father, well, gentlemen, I, I, I…”

His voice broke, and Hansen felt compassion for this little man whose round eyes stared from his round face, for under the magnification of his eyeglasses two enormous round teardrops were swelling.

“It’s time, gentlemen,” a kindly angel in the blue serge of the Secret Service announced from the doorway.

Admiral Primrose met them in the conference room to take over the introductions. For Hansen, there was a feeling of unreality in meeting so suddenly so many faces he recognized from the pages of Time magazine. Most of the men were standing around a long table, covered with green felt, ashtrays, and note pads, but one sat alone near the head of the table, his fingers fluting over the felt and his blue eyes focused afar. “A gentleman I’d especially like for you to meet is our Senator from Louisiana, Senator Dubois,” the admiral said, steering them toward the figure.

Primrose said “de bwye” in the French manner rather than “dewboys” in the Southern manner.

Under his thatch of Mark Twain hair, the man’s face held the sensitivity and strength of a Southern aristocrat, and there was respect in the admiral’s voice as he bent low and murmured, “May I disturb you. Senator?”

Arousing himself, the senator looked up, smiled, and said, “Why, sutnly, Adm’l. I wasn’t pondering affairs of state. I’s just dreamin’ ’bout catfishing down on the bayous when I was a little barefooted pickaninny.”

Primrose waited for the nostalgia to clear from the old man’s recollections before he said, “Senator Dubois, this is Captain Hansen who commanded our Antarctic expedition.”

Slowly the senator rose to his full height, every inch of it regal, and said, “Captain, I’d sure like to shake yo’ hand, but I hear tell you’re a Virginia gentleman, and I know some of you gentlemen still have reservations about shaking the hand of a colored man.”

“Not at all. Senator,” the captain assured him. “In the Navy, we judge each man on his own merits, even a colored man.”

As he shook the senator’s hand, the admiral waved McCormick forward. “And there’s our ace in the hole, Senator, Chief McCormick, from Tennessee.”

“I sho heard about you,” the senator said, “and if it’s not against your convictions, I’d like to extend to you, also, the hand of greeting.”

Strangely, McCormick seemed reluctant. “You’re not one of them Cajun Catholics, are you, boy?”

“No, sir, Cap’n. I’m a Methodist.”

“Then, put her there, boy. I don’t mind a good Southern darky much as I mind some of these Yankees.”

Hansen was aghast at the familiarity in the chief’s greeting, but the senator seemed to do a half shuffle, tilted his head slightly downward, and flashed McCormick a broad grin. “Boss, I’m mighty proud to hear that. I always said the Southern white man and colored man got a lot in common, sometimes even the same mammy.”

“I always wanted me a black mammy. Senator, but black mammies came high in my neighborhood… Say, how’d a good old colored boy like you ever get to be senator?”

Drawing the captain aside. Admiral Primrose introduced Hansen to the Secretary of Defense, Pickens, a tall, slender man with an Alabama drawl. They were exchanging pleasantries when Culpepper entered the room and stood by the door, saying, “Gentlemen, the President.” Hansen snapped to attention, but the civilians merely straightened up slightly and moved to stand behind their chairs.

President Demorest Habersham entered.

In contrast to his portrait in the wardroom of the
Chattahoochee
, the President’s hair was thinner, there were pouches under his eyes, and his lower lip protruded much farther than the lip in the painting. He looked down the table and said, “Gentlemen, be seated.”

All sat but the President.

“Today, we’re honored by a visit from Senator Dubois, distinguished leader of the opposition, who has put the interests of his country above partisan politics to join us. From the Navy Department, we have Captain Benjamin Franklin Hansen, who has just returned from the Ross Ice Shelf, and Chief Water Tender Angus McCormick, of Captain Hansen’s command. Both have been recommended for the Distinguished Service Medal.”

A dazed captain and chief stood briefly for applause as Primrose’s face grew overly stoical.

“Now, gentlemen,” the President continued, “if you must smoke in defiance of Health, Education, and Welfare, please confine your ashes to the trays, you in particular. Health, Education, and Welfare.” He nodded toward Dr. Houston Drexel. “The hired hands have been giving me the dickens over the mess we leave. Also, I ask you to refrain from emotional displays during this meeting. It is not for us to weep tears; rather, it is for us to seek solutions… Mr. Cobb, you may commence the status reports.”

As the President sat down, the Secretary of State stood. Acworth Cobb’s University of Georgia gullah quivered with discords accompanied by a tic in Cobb’s right eye.

“Mr. President, gentlemen, Italy seems to be the developing hot spot. Last night a group broke into the Pitti Palace and emasculated the statue of David. Bloodshed continues in Africa, particularly in Tanzania where Kenyatta’s evacuation to Madagascar continues. Mexico has gone under, definitely. Canada seems to be holding steady in the Great Plains, but Montreal and Quebec are long gone. No news from China, but our man in the Vale of Shalimar reports that Tibet is not yet contaminated.”

“Request permission, Mr. President, to go hunt yeti,” Dalton Lamar, Secretary of the Interior, leaned over and called down, and the Secretary of State grinned. “That’s my report, sir.” He sat down.

“The Secretary of Defense?” Habersham ignored Lamar.

Oglethorpe Pickens rose to the slender six and one-half feet which had helped make him an ail-American basketballer at the University of Alabama. “In the past month, enlistments have tripled from a rumor that volunteers are sent overseas. Troop defections to East Germany, however, are holding steady, and defections to the West have dwindled to a trickle, all of which bodes well for Operation Queen Swap…”

“What’s Operation Queen Swap?” Powers barked the question from across the table.

“A military operation not open for discussion,” the Defense Secretary said. “And, of course, we in Defense are standing by for the trade mission from Moscow.”

Oglethorpe Pickens sat down.

“HEW?”

“Mr. President, gentlemen.” The medical doctor stood up. “Ratio of girl births to boy births now stands at seventeen to one in urban areas, ten to one in rural areas. At the present rate of decline, there’ll only be trace amounts of boy babies born by March of next year.” Dr. Drexel sat down.

Hansen was saved from horror by the casual manner in which the reports were delivered to the President and by his inner glow from the DSM. If a man truly believed such a juggernaut was rolling toward him, he might go mad, Hansen admitted. These men were hardly perturbed, so the reports must be exaggerated. But where were the hawks and doves?

His balance was slightly tilted after the President called, “Labor?”

Hansen remembered that the admiral had said that Frumenti was a peregrine falcon, and he could see the Californian struggle for self-control as he opened his notebook before him, without standing. “Our cost of living dropped another two points last week, but I don’t think the drop represents a normal fluctuation. I think the housewives are pulling it down. They’re not buying fancy cuts of meat, anymore. They’re feeding their husbands swill! Anyway, I don’t think the cost of living represents the true cost of living, not the way we’ve got it set up. Take me, I’m a bachelor. My wife won’t leave San Francisco to come to Washington. But I’m a man. Hell, I’ve got feelings. So I do a little playing around. I’m honest about it. I lay it right on the line with the girls, tell ’em I’m married—no romantic hanky-panky. Two years ago I take a woman out and buy her a meal. Third time around, I score. Cost per score? Around twelve dollars, averaging out the initial investment. Then the system starts breaking down. Here and there, I miss a score. About six months ago I noticed the average start edging up. Here, I’ve got the figures.”

He began thumbing, convulsively, through his notebook. Hansen saw his hands tremble. Beads of sweat were forming on his forehead. “I started keeping tab, six months ago, in increments of two months. First increment, cost per score, 22.50. Second increment, 102.80, over three hundred percent increase. Now, third increment, and gentlemen this fiscal period isn’t over, so far, 386.48! Over a thousand percent increase from the first increment. Now, gentlemen, I’m Secretary of Labor. This is a strain on my budget. Now, I’m asking you, if it’s getting out of reach of my budget, what’s happening to the working stiff… begging your pardon, sirs, the poor laboring man?”