The Müller-Fokker Effect (17 page)
‘
Modulog
,’ said the captain, ‘is all new. It’s based on three new principles, sir.’
‘Just between you and me, let’s drop the
sir
, Blunden. I hope we’re all friends here.’ He winked a false eyelash and toasted the captain with his sherry.
‘Yes—General. The principles are: First, that there is no reason to handle and transport troops and materiel in different ways. Second, thanks to container freight systems already in operation, troops may be boxed and shipped in a modular way just as any other materiel. In other words, a box of men is no harder to handle and dispatch than a box of supplies. Containers may be fitted out with life-support facilities, namely airholes, food and chemical toilets,.
‘Third, the fastest way of processing materiel is by using computer routing. The most expedient route can be found by feeding in all the available transport data, all the data on requirements and priorities, and then letting Nature—the computer, rather—take its course.
‘Imagine that we have three cities. City A makes guns, City B is a troop assembly point, City C is a target, or delivery area. C needs a certain number of armed personnel at time t
1
. At time to we have at A all our weapons and half enough transport to deliver them, and at B all our troops and one-quarter of the necessary transport. The transport at B is twice as fast as that at A, and the relative distances of the three cities are…’
Rocky went into a daydream while the earnest young captain rattled on. How could life be so complicated now? When, only yesterday, life was an island idyll.
he thought.
‘The important thing is, all the services will be switched over,’ Blunden was saying. ‘Even where container freight isn’t feasible, orders will be processed by our central computer, using the latest in digital equipment, die Müller-Fokker tapes.’
Rocky struck him lightly on the arm with his wand. ‘Bad words,’ he said. ‘Bad words, you naughty captain.’
At Billy Koch Crusade Headquarters, another mail bag was dumped on the sorting table, and sorters went to work with their thumb knives. Marilyn Temblor picked up her purse and went to the ladies’ restroom. No one saw her take the phial from her purse but God.
‘I don’t care,’ she said defiantly to the roller towel. ‘ I’ll—I’ll quit this job. I’ll become a
stewardess!’
She opened the phial and dabbed some on her wrist. Almost at once the overpowering sexy odor filled the room. She panicked, scrubbed furiously until her wrist was almost bleeding—but the odor clung, accusing her.
Back in the mail room she picked up the first letter.
Dear Billy,
My problem is, I’m in love with a man who hardly notices me. I’m his secretary, and I know this sounds like just a girlish infatuation, but I am not a girl at all. I am over eighty years of age and so is he. We have been good friends for many years, and though my affection for him has ripened into love, he still thinks of me as just a loyal companion.
We are both single, and I would like to marry him, but I hate to wait for him to ‘pop’ the question. What can I do to make him notice me as a woman, without seeming to throw myself at him? Should I confess I love him? Ask him to marry me? Or just wait and see?
Please answer, Billy. My time is running out.
Yours in confusion, Amy Q. Birdsall
That would be 674; Marilyn knew without even consulting the chart. 674 was ‘Girl wants to propose to man.’
The next letter was a little tougher. She stopped chewing gum and read the letter three times before she could focus her mind on it.
Dear Billy Koch:
1. Cadet Sturgemoore Shairp wants to kill himself.
2. He is at military school.
3. The bible says it is wrong to take life, but he is being trained to take life.
4. Sometimes it is all right to kill someone.
5. Sometimes it must be all right to kill yourself.
6. Colonel Fouts said that anyone who plays with himself will be expelled.
7. Then Cadet Sturgemoore Shairp played with himself a lot, because he wanted to go home.
8. It didn’t work.
9. Mother does not answer Cadet Sturgemoore Shairp’s letters. She is on television.
10. Father is dead.
11. Mother is just like she was dead.
12. Cadet Sturgemoore Shairp should die, too.
13. Cadet Sturgemoore Shairp went to ask Colonel Fouts if it would be all right to kill himself.
14. Colonel Fouts took a long time answering the door.
15. What do you want, he said.
16. There was chocolate all over his face.
17. Cadet Sturgemoore Shairp did not know what to say, so he looked down.
18. There was a pink strap garter strap thing hanging out of the Colonel’s fly.
19. Cadet Sturgemoore Shairp said did the Colonel believe in God, that God wanted everyone to live.
20. A hundred and twenty punishment tours, the Colonel said, impertinence to an officer.
21. Billy, sir, Cadet Sturgemoore Shairp requests permission to kill himself.
Please advice,
Cadet Sturgemoore Shairp
It must be ‘wants to commit suicide’, number 647. And the other one was 674. Bothered only slightly by that ‘pink strap garter strap thing’, Marilyn rolled a sheet of paper in the first automated typewriter and headed it ‘Dear Miss Birdsall’. Then someone seized her hand and held it to his nose.
Jim, the handsome bible student. ‘My, you smell nice,’ he said. ‘Perfume?’
She nodded and punched the machine with her free hand. 647.
‘What’s it called?’
She freed her hand. Blushing, she set the second machine for 674. ‘I—don’t remember.’
‘Sure you do,’ he said. The typewriters started chattering. She would lose her job. Shut out of the Crusade, Billy’s Crusade, forever. Would it be the same, being a stewardess? An ‘air angel’?
‘Sure you remember,’ he insisted, moving closer. ‘What was that name?’
She could hardly say it.
‘My Sin.’
‘Doctor, do you have to come and see me in that—that drag?’
Glen seized a coke and wrang its neck. Feinwelt tossed a golden sausage curl and settled himself on the couch.
‘Listen, Glen. We’ve been over this a few times, haven’t we? I have other patients, other things to attend to. I know you’d like me to be Big Daddy Doctor for Glensie alone, but let’s try to look at this unselfishly. You know I haven’t time to change clothes six times a day or whatever. If
you
can’t make the necessary adjustment, well…’
‘But everybody’s going to think I’m—and it isn’t just that. I don’t think you wear that drum majorette outfit just to hold hands with a few sick faggots. Oh no. I’ve been reading a few things in connection with an article I’m doing for
Stagman
. I’ve learned a few things.’
‘Really?’ The drum majorette lit a fragrant cigarette and leaned back. ‘Like what?’
Glen was silent for a moment, gazing up at
Bertha Venus
. ‘It’s like…Cybele. The bitch goddess, demanding that her priests castrate themselves and put on women’s clothes.’ He put on a World War Two aviator’s helmet.
‘Not sure I follow you.’
‘And then in the Middle Ages! They thought witches were able to make men impotent. By the same token, they built big phallic cathedrals to the Virgin. The Virgin Mother!’ He tried on a Sioux war bonnet. ‘Yes, and
their
priests had to wear skirts, too. St Francis tried to go against that tradition…but a hundred years later or so there were the Franciscans putting on skirts.’
‘Don’t you think you’re harping on this unnecessarily?’ Feinwelt’s case-hardened voice had taken an edge. ‘Just what is this “article” about, anyway?’
‘And it all comes down to Bette Cooke. The latest incarnation of the Mighty Bitch Mother Angry Virgin Goddess, see? Her oracles are recipe books. Her priests are advertising men. Her charm is the silverware coupon on the flour bag, and her Mysteries are the secrets of cooking—no, not just cooking, but cooking that will “keep the menfolk coming back for seconds”.
Menfolk!
Not men. Men reduced, crushed down to sexless
elves!’
‘If you really feel that way…’
‘What time is it?’
Feinwelt looked at his watch. ‘Oh now, we have plenty of time left in our session, if that’s what’s worrying you.’
‘She’s on. The commercial’s on!’
Glen rushed to the electronic wall and switched on the glowing features of Bette Cooke. He did not notice when Feinwelt left.
Billikins had finished the wall. He wanted to call Nurse to see it, but she’d only laugh nasty. He had to admire and love it all by himself.
The wall
was a crayon and pencil drawing covering one long wall of his room, twelve feet long and eight high. It was a combination (though not to Billikins) of public-toilet art, church-window portraiture, bible map and political cartoon. There were a hundred and forty-four thousand faces in it, each wearing a label on its forehead or hat, each expressing glee or torment.
At the top, a seven-foot phallus aimed to enter a standard men’s-room snatch (or winged buttonhole). The prick had been wrapped end to end in a bandage reading: ‘There shall be a cause of
GOD
, which is the twelve and the seven, freely. It without is the twelve, and the seven within are five loaves and two fishes, and this East: shall enfold it.’
Below this was a layer of cloud, the ‘Cloud of Could’, studded with hands, feet and eyes. The cloud terminated in two fists, one at each end. The right hand held a burning diploma, the left a sign: ‘The Flying Roll is the last great whirlwind and the great church
IN
the west!
WHO
used to send forth all to gather together all manner cloud and fire, loud and ire, peacefully enfolding the First Life. I am accounted for and counted, I am continued and the fire in the
DOUBLE
lamp enfolds it!!!’
Across the cloud large yellow-rayed letters spelled:
IS GOD TO RAPTURE A POWERLESS CHURCH!
On the land below were the twelve tribes, identified as being divided into six nations, four races, three classes and two sides. On the left were the
SLACKERS, LACKERS, LACQUEYS, BACKERS,
WRACKERS
and
PACKERS
; on the right were
DIGGERS, WIGGERS CHIGGERS, NIGGERS, TRIGGERS
and
JURY-RIGGERS
. Each tribe of twelve thousand was further subdivided all 48 ways imaginable. The remaining space was filled with flames, banners, signs, swords, sheep, the winding road of Venue leading up to Mount Golden Mystery, clocks and $-bags, eyes baleful and eyes protective, gallows, elks, the Stairs of Relief and the Five Truths in their white robes; whips, a cage of thorns, snakes whose spots were roses, the blazing headlights and grill of a Saette, pennants, the Keys of Penance, special notices too small to read, and scallop shells. The diggers were digging for sparkling letters buried in the earth:
WHOSOEVER SLAYS THE FIRST LIFE SHALL LIVE FOREVER, BUT THE COLOR OF AMBER SLAYS AND IT IS SLAIN. DARKNESS IS THE FREELY PORTION OF HIM WHO FINDS OUT THE ACCOUNT!
He signed it in the corner: ‘Words of Jehovah.’ Then he closed the bedroom door and began nailing it shut. Nurse called out from the kitchen, ordering him to cut out that racket.