Fun House (3 page)
Authors: Benjamin Appel
She was smiling at me, the easy smile they all had, amused perhaps, flattered perhaps, willing to make love perhaps, in the easy way they all had in this land of the 28th Amendment. And I? (Ruth, I won’t conceal anything. This eyewitness report is the straight unvarnished truth.) I was tempted. I had just come from the fourth floor of this hotel with its eighth victim and eighth message announcing the end of the world on July 4th.
“I seem to know you,” she said.
“Who are you?” I asked her.
“A writer. I do autobiogs of famous people, the really great entertainers.”
I must have looked blank for she said eagerly, “Maybe you read my last one about B. S. Wong-Nottingshire? Imagine climbing four of the biggest Himalayas, including Mount Everest in two weeks! Only an Englishman of Tibetan ancestry could have done it!” She got out of bed, her eyes narrowing. “I know who you are! You’re Crockett Smith! I’ve seen a dozen photos of you in the papers, all mysterious, too! Why are you here?”
I said nothing.
“Have you thought of someone doing your autobiog?”
“I’m not an entertainer,” I said. “And you’re not the writer you pretend to be.”
She smiled, but that smile of hers no longer tempted me. I was afraid of this woman who could have been my wife, a decoy playing on my emotions, but who for all I knew was a member of the St. Ewagiow. Then, I recalled that it was the Commissioner himself who had urged me to come to this room and it was all clear.
They
had assigned one of Their policewomen to spy on me and ordered a Garden of Eden treatment to produce this double of my dear wife Ruth. It was unfair. It was like hitting a man below the belt. And the Commissioner who pretended to be my friend had gone along with Their dirty Scheme.
Without a word I headed for the door. She barred my way. “Why go?” she asked.
“Why?” I said with contempt. “You’re nothing but a cheap police spy.”
“Every writer is a spy,” she said calmly. “We snoop into the lives of our characters, real or imaginary. Have a drink, or is that forbidden on the Reservation?”
I hesitated, wondering if I shouldn’t try to find out more about her. Wasn’t that my duty?
“So you think I’m a spy? What difference does it make for whom we work as long as our personal lives are our own? Or don’t you people believe in a personal life?”
As she stood there in that flaming nightgown, she reminded me more than ever of my wife. I felt myself succumbing to her charm, the old familiar charms that had been reproduced so accurately in this strange woman. True, my conscience was still bothering me, but against this still small voice I silently invoked the 28th. After all any police officer will respect the laws of the country whose guest he is.
I picked up the bottle of whiskey and drank. It wasn’t as good as our corn whiskey but it would do. When I put the bottle down she smiled and floated towards me. I stepped back, and she said, “Darling, don’t be so moral.” She laughed and pointed at the white stitched words on her nightgown, just above her navel. “Read this, darling.”
I read:
‘Among the natural rights of every nation is the flight of fornication.’
She laughed and said. “Perhaps you don’t care for puns? There’s a perfectly wonderful story, the best traveling-salesman story you ever heard, over my left hip.”
Again, she floated towards me, I stood there while she snuggled close, her blue eyes so like my wife’s looking up into mine, asking, demanding. I kissed her, and when I lifted my lips she stroked my cheek and whispered. “I wouldn’t let Them redo my hands, not my hands, darling.”
This bold confession was too much for me. I pushed her away. She laughed as if I were a child and without a word began pulling her nightgown off.
“Who the hell do you think I am?” I shouted. “One of your kind?”
Laughing she tossed the nightgown at me. “Read the story about the honeymooners. It’s below my right breast Oh, how can you find it now?” Laughing and giggling she came over to me. I waited until she was close, then I slapped her face.
“Report that to
Them
!” I yelled and rushed out of the room.
That evening when I saw Commissioner Sonata, he admitted he was responsible for Gladys Ellsberg. He said that when he had decided to bring me in from the Reservation, the Board had advised him of the importance of activating the life-wish in any man.
Delays at the Garden of Eden Salons had prevented earlier delivery of Gladys Ellsberg.
1
One of the many racetracks where humans performed. A development of the Do-It-Yourself fad of the 1950’s. Hundreds of thousands of people used the free facilities provided by the Government. Races were from 20 yards to 220 yards. There were no races of longer distances. Too much like work.
2
As was their custom, the Commissioner was named after a famous entertainer of the previous century Just as our custom was to take our names from early American history.
1
The illegal St. Ewagiow had been founded in 1987 when the invention of the A-I-D had stunned mankind. It will be recalled that when the danger was publicized, the United Nations acted instantly to meet the crisis. In an extraordinary session, Carlos Guerra of Spain had made himself world famous by calling the inventor, Prof. Abel Kane, “The Universal Subversive.” By unanimous vote, Kane was interned in India, and A-I-D placed under Indian custody. This prompt action calmed world anxiety. But the knowledge that such a threat existed encouraged a rash of fanatic movements and death cults. The St. Ewagiow expounded the belief that Kane was the Universal Redeemer. Their program was to get hold of the A-I-D and redeem the world by blowing it up. They called themselves the Redeemers, but when a Milwaukee journalist had humorously described them as the St. Ewagiow — from their official name, Society to Redeem The World And Get It Over With — the nickname had struck the popular fancy. It will be noted that for obvious reasons, the Milwaukee journalist substituted the word
end
for the word
redeem
.
1
They worshipped Science. Their Pleasure State was only possible because of their advanced scientific organization. And tears, of course, were suspect in a society dedicated to pleasure.
1
Cityurbs, combinations of cities and their outlying suburbs. Some of them were over a hundred miles in area. Between the cityurbs, great deserted areas had been converted into hunting and fishing paradises. The Reservation, therefore, owed its establishment to the geo-eco-psycho trends that had transformed the nation.
2
It had a breaking point of 500 lbs. Very useful police equipment, but nothing I would recommend for the Reservation where our law barring all inventions prior to 1879 is not only a law but a way of life.
1
Popularly known as Peeping Toms. The Brain-Confessor itself was called a Peeping Tom, a slang expression derived from a game very fashionable in the 2020’s. The players, men and women, would scatter at midnight and meet again in two hours. The one with the highest anatomical score, proved by photos, would be declared the winner.
1
These pictures were known as One-Shot Animateds. They were powered for movement and sound by transistors so small they could not be seen, inserted into the molecular structure of the paper. The power of a human glance was sufficient to animate them.
They were a development of the earlier pornographic French postal cards, and featured a class of women whom we on the Reservation called by their ancient name but who in the Funhouse operated organizationally as Geisha Incorporated, Helen of Troy Sisterhood, etc.
1
The nineteenth century inventor of the circus, a popular entertainment of that period, featuring dancing elephants, fat ladies and tattooed men.
2
There were Think Machines in every Government Bureau, while across the Potomac River in the section known as New City, the highest non-human echelons of Government were housed in tremendous windowless marble buildings. To us, it is almost impossible to imagine their slave-like devotion to these Think Machines, which had relieved them of the necessity of solving their own problems. Originally, the Think Machines were affectionately called the Bosses, but this phrase was resented by Them as being too human, and the more mathematical name, The Rulers, came into usage.
The two political parties (human) that had taken the place of the Democrats and Republicans, had divided on the issue. The Stars and Stripers, to which Commissioner Sonata belonged, had favored the continued use of the Bosses as being more in the Democratic tradition. But the Red-White-and-Blues, 100% machine men, had won in a national referendum.
1
The Supreme Court of Supreme Thought or S.C.O.S.T. was the top circle of Government Think Machines. Resident on the American enclave on the moon.
2
One of the many sedatives used by people to avoid unpleasant moments. U-Latu — You Laugh at the Universe — had first come into general use after its initial pilot distribution to mourners at funerals.
1
More later on this Park that I visited in line of duty. When I think of it — my God!
2
Named after the movie star of a hundred years ago.
1
This hotel featured royal suites where newlyweds could play at being kings and queens.
2
In the last ten years, what with Smile-At-Mother pills, a crybaby was about as rare as a soiled diaper. There was a pill for that condition, too. Babies emitted stainless gasses and had in general become very little of an inconvenience.
1
Habit Rehabilitation Leads To Happiness. These farms were operated on franchise by various of the hotel syndicates.
1
DO NOT DISTURB signs were rarely used in their hotels. They had been superceded by the symbolic 28 which stood for the 28th Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing an individual the right to happiness.
1
Until 1975, the beauty business had been controlled by some twenty corporations charging expensive fees. Faces, noses, bowlegs, flat chests, etc., could, in the advertising lingo, BE-RECTIFIED BE-UTIFUL. Then the Garden of Eden Salons were founded and subsidized by the Government. Its services were limited by law to the female sex and male homosexuals. The nominal fee it charged brought Beauty into every American kitchen. In fact, the kitchen-appliance manufacturers with their constant campaigns against Kitchen Hands and the Kitchen Look had financed the Garden of Edens law suit.
2
The Catalogue began on page 1 with the Aphrodite Model (four color-choices.)
3
No matter what type, whether the Swan Feather, Dew Drop, Little Cloud or the voluptuous Taj Mahal, breasts were all streamlined.
A
LL
in all, June 23rd was a full day. The Commissioner had seen the Board and They had evaluated the data concerning Barnum Fly’s colleagues, relatives, wives, children, enemies, grading them as suspects. Top of the list was Cleo Fly, a daughter by his third wife. “He was closest to this girl,” the Commissioner said and picking up a report from his desk he read: “ ‘The probabilities of B.F. being in touch with C.F. are in the ratio of 9.74 x: y.’ ”
“What’s
y
stand for?” I asked impatiently.
“Filial affection.”
Cleo F. was living in Greater Miami, the old-time playland that had become one of the larger cityurbs in the Pleasure State. It was decided that I go there immediately. The Commissioner accompanied me to the airport. “I have another conference with the Board,” he said. “I promise to meet you as soon as I can. Report to L. and O. Headquarters on the Rue de la Paix
1
.”
The next plane out was a huge Tourist Liner whose attraction was low speed, no greater than that of airplanes of a century ago. The slow flight gave the passengers a chance to use the medical facilities on these planes, and thus renew their energies before burning them up in Greater Miami. I had five or six nightcaps in the lounge where forty of fifty couples were sitting about, chattering and joking, while they chewed on various types of pills brought to them by the nurse-hostesses. The women were all illustrations out of the Garden of Eden catalogue. Their escorts had more variety, ranging from tall, skinny men to fat barrel types with noses and ears that were just noses and ears.
As I say, I had a row of nightcaps but they didn’t help much. I still felt suspicious about the Commissioner and his exact relations to the Board. At last I retired to my cabin, and in the dark I saw a shape, faceless but not breastless. The woman on my bed — it could only be a woman — was wearing one of the fashionable Roenfoam
1
brassieres popular that season.
I switched on the light and looked at the sleeping figure of my wife’s double, Gladys Ellsberg. In the light her breasts were no longer visible. They seemed to have vanished behind the black evening dress she was wearing. I stared at her and silently cursed the Commissioner for the cynical and sneaking bureaucrat he was. Disturbed, I took a cigar from my pocket, and when I’d puffed a few times I was amazed at how good I felt. The cigar was one of a handful given to me by Sonata at parting. I examined it suspiciously. On the cigar band, in purple letters, was the name of the make: U-Latus. Damn, I thought, and walking over to Gladys I blew a thick cloud of smoke in her face.
The smoke may have been relaxing when inhaled properly but in a burst it awoke her and threw her into a coughing fit. “Do you know any more childish tricks?” she said, after she’d caught her breath.
“Damn you all!” I said and walked over to the porthole. High in the starry sky the artificial lakes on the moon were silver streaks, the towers of the domed cities shining with a thousand reflections. Moodily, I remembered that in one of those towers in the American enclave, the Supreme Court or S.C.O.S.T. were sitting, if one could think of Machines sitting. The new gods, the Rulers of America.
At a lower altitude there wasn’t much to see, besides an occasional space satellite or sputnik
2
. One in the shape of a giant bottle, familiar, anciently American, floated by. Against the immense starry night two bright words shone, although a little crookedly — evidently the atomic electricity had shorted for the first letters of the two bright words were missing.
O
C
A
O
L
A
‘We’ll soon be in Paris,” I heard Gladys whispering behind me, and a second later I felt her arms creep around my waist. “I don’t blame you for being angry, darling. But can’t we hiss and make up.” She giggled loudly at her miserable pun. I pushed her away. Smiling, she hurried to the light control and switched it off. In the dark cabin, the roentgenic fibres in her bra came into their own. Guided by her illuminated breasts, so full and voluptuous, the breasts of a woman no longer budding but ripe, the breasts of my own wife, I went over to the control and turned the light on again.
She laughed, and I heard a rustling where she was and guessed she was removing her evening dress. As for the bra, she must have tossed it on a chair for I could distinctly see the molecular structure of the wood.
“I hate police spies,” I said.
“Do I ask you for character references, darling? Suppose I do work for Commissioner Sonata? Aren’t you working for him, too? Don’t you know how to live?”
“The hell with all of you!”
That irritated her. “Why don’t you go back where you come from?” she snapped, and began taunting me with all the anti-Reservation insults she could think of, calling me a New Redskin and a New Zionist
1
.
I turned on the light, and a third voice, a comic voice
2
said: “Make up your mind, lover, do you want me on or off?”
Before me on the bed was an angry and practically naked woman. “You hate police spies, do you, but what are you? Why are we going to Miami?”
“You have an argument there,” I had to admit.
Right away she was all smiles. She held out her arms. (Ruth, forgive me. She looked so much like you.)
The last thing I heard was her yawning voice. “Sleep should be prohibited. A waste of time. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness …”
She woke me when we were approaching Greater Miami. I almost didn’t recognize her, she was so completely dressed, wearing a dark green suit with no stylish roenfoam or other tricky accessories, except for her hat, a small green hat with a gold watch fastened to it, and attached to the watch a long feather, shaped like a writer’s quill, a bright yellow in color, decorated with little dollar signs in green.
I showered and shaved, which among them was a simple matter of applying a fragrant pink whisker-remover called STABB.
1
Then I put on a sky blue Wearitwunce suit. I had left my Reservation homespuns in Washington. The perpetual 70-degree climate was too warm for homespun, and besides, as the Commissioner had argued, it made me too conspicuous.
When I stepped out into the cabin she grinned. “How’s my little Eros
2
?”
For a second I considered telling her that I could love only one woman, and that in fact, as I saw it, I had made love to my wife even if in absentia. But I kept still. I knew that her reaction would be some cheap off-color remark.
“Isn’t my little sparrow going to kiss me?” she said. I winced, and she laughed. “You’re so moral, darling. Love, love, the basic shove!”
To change the subject I said, “Were you serious about my autobiography?”
“Of course, cock robin.”
It was sickening. “Gladys, please do me a favor,” I said, “and call me by my proper name. This autobiography idea — ”
“How do you like this for an opening, darling?” She half closed her eyes and recited: “ I’d always thought of myself as a down-to-earth type until the day when the Maharajah of Baho called me to his estate and informed me that the great ruby of Phir-Phul given to him by the League of Asiatic Nations for his services in suppressing the St. Ewagiow in Java — ’ ”
“Gladys!” I almost shouted at her.
“Don’t you like it?”
“I’ve never met this Maharajah, I’ve never been to Java — ”
“Am I writing this autobiog or are you?” she retorted. “You’re the writer, the creative person,” I tried to appease her. “But it’s a fact that I’ve never met this Maharajah — ”
“You’ve never met me either!”
“Come, Gladys.” I had to smile.
She smiled also and held up her hands, her white, soft hands. “You’ve only met my hands, darling.” And she burst into laughter that I can only describe as ghastly.
There was nothing to do but light up one of the U-Latu cigars.
It was almost dawn when we reached the airport on the outskirts of Greater Miami. Without landing we transferred to one of the many cabcopters that had flown up to meet us like a swarm of flies. “June 24th,” I said sadly as we left the Tourist Liner.
“We write books and hunt criminals,” she sighed. “Let’s forget it, darling. It’s Paris in June.”
We both looked down at Paris-in-Miami
1
with its gabled rooftops and artistic garrets, its sailboats on the Seine, its Eiffel Tower. The sky had been cloudless, but suddenly there was a flare of blinding light, and before us an immense mushroom-shaped balloon
2
rose up from what I learned later was the Place de l’Opera. As we watched, it swelled and expanded, and in huge letters the words W
ELCOME
S
T
. E
WAGIOW
appeared on its sides.
“Gladys!” I said, when I could speak.
“The St. Ewagiow haven’t taken over the city,” she laughed. “It’s only the Board, darling.”
Even today I marvel at the cunning of those Mechanical Brains. They had reasoned that since Greater Miami was a famous convention city, a makebelieve St. Ewagiow carnival featuring that death cult’s philosophy would be a popular novelty certain to attract a horde of visitors. And among these visitors, there would be genuine St. Ewagiows who would welcome the opportunity of playing at legality. Everything on the outside revolved around that corrupt word PLAY.
“You’re kept informed; I’m kept in the dark,” I said bitterly when she was finished with her explanations.
Her eyes were fixed on that hideous mushroom shape. “What a wonderful bit of luck for the Miami Chamber of Commerce. I’d hate to be the Mayor of Greater Reno or Greater Los Angeles! They’ll all be wanting a St. Ewagiow convention now.”
My U-Latu cigar had gone out but I didn’t relight it. I wanted no artificial stimulants to make me forget the ugly truth. I was of no importance. The Commissioner, for all his stories of how he had fought for me, was going along with Them.
When we landed it was plain that the St. Ewagiow, or rather the crowds of extras and would-be-actors and actresses who infested the country, were having a field day. Driving to our hotel, a parade stopped our Shrinkmobile
1
. Before us marched hundreds of beautiful woman in black swimming suits, their hair tinted the same shade of gray. A tombstone gray, I suppose, for they were each carrying a miniature skeleton with a sign attached. The skeletons were two-foot affairs about the size of small infants, painted in colors representing human skin, from Swedish blonde to Congo black. Their heads were grotesque chalky white skulls that swayed and bounced with each step of the marching gray-haired woman. The signs carried the following slogan in different languages:
THIS IS ME, THIS IS YOU.
And so forth: in French (
C’EST MOI, C’EST TOI
), in Greek, Russian, German, Japanese, Tagalog, Punjabi, and God only knew what else.
Next was a float with a dozen men holding scythes while above their heads a red banner lettered in many languages flew in the breeze:
THE ONE TRUE REVOLUTION IS THE REVOLUTION OF DEATH.
The next float seemed as if it had come straight out of an embalmer’s parlor. It held three glass coffins inside of which lay, respectively, a little girl of six, a young man in his twenties, and an elderly woman. The signs for this one were out of the Bible:
THERE IS A TIME TO LIVE AND A TIME TO DIE. ECCLESIASTES.
It all made me shudder. Where I haled from we joked about death, but within decent limits. This parade was horrible, as if the stink of real corpses were rising from it. I was thinking I couldn’t fail! The A-I-D had to be found and hidden away for all time, never again to menace the people of the world.
“Isn’t it clever?” Gladys laughed. “C’est moi, C’est toi.”
“Clever!” I muttered. “The cleverness of self-destruction.”
The driver turned around and smiled. “We have everything in Miami! Last week we had two conventions. Real ones, not like this show. The Descendants of the Good Samaritans — ”
“And on July 4th you’ll have the Society of Unknown Dead!” I said. “And you’ll be through driving a Shrinkmobile!”
“No, sir,” he said. “I like my job. I’ll never forget the day I received my certificate from the B.O.”
“He means the Board of Occupations,” Gladys explained to me.
“Did They pick your job, too?” I asked.
“Who else is better qualified, darling? I’d been playing in the yard when my father called me into the house and said, ‘Gladys, you’re going to be a writer!’ I was so happy, I was only six — ”
“Six?” I said.
“That’s when we’re tested, and it’s just the right age. When you’re six you want to be so many things. What a relief it was not to worry about the future. It makes adolescence so nice.”
“A perpetual adolescence if you ask me.”
She nudged me playfully with her elbow. “What’s so wrong with that? But I forget. Work is sacred on the Reservation.”
“Individualism is sacred. We pick our own jobs. Why, I was a rancher and a storekeeper before I went into police work.”
“What a wasteful method. Here at the age of six
1
you would have entered an L. and O. elementary school.”
The street was now clear. We passed a shopping center where thousands of people in easy chairs sat around a circular rotating window full of goods and gadgets. Now and then they jotted down an order on the pads in their hands. “Perpetual adolescence!” I said. “Two hours’ work, two hours’ window-shopping, and the rest of the day for pleasure.”
“And what have you got, my darling ploughboy? Twelve hours work, no windowshopping, and a frantic grab in bed before you collapse from sheer exhaustion.” She patted my hand. “What you people need is a five-year plan
2
.”
When we checked into our hotel — The Hotel Pompadour on the left bank of the Seine — she danced across the living room and sang. “Paris, Paris, the city of Love.”
“I guess I’ll never understand you people,” I said quietly. “Here it is June 24th and exactly ten days left before the 4th — ”