Player Piano (44 page)

“But you’ve been talking all along as though it were almost a sure thing,” said Paul.

“Of course, Doctor,” said Lasher patronizingly. “If we
hadn’t all talked that way, we wouldn’t have had that one chance in a thousand. But I didn’t let myself lose touch with reality.”

Lasher, Paul realized, was the only one who hadn’t lost touch with reality. He, alone of the four leaders, seemed unshocked by the course of events, undisturbed by them, even, inexplicably, at peace. Paul, perhaps, had been the one most out of touch, having had little time for reflection, having been so eager to join a large, confident organization with seeming answers to the problems that had made him sorry to be alive.

Finnerty was covering his initial surprise at Lasher’s statement, so perfect an apostle was he. Most of all, apparently, he wanted to remain intellectually as one with the dynamic Lasher, and he, too, now looked at Paul as though surprised to find that Paul wasn’t sure what was going on.

“If we didn’t have a chance, then what on earth was the sense of—?” Paul left the sentence unfinished, and included the ruins of Ilium in a sweep of his hand.

Lasher was fully awake now, and he stood, and paced up and down the room, apparently irritated that he should have to explain something so obvious. “It doesn’t matter if we win or lose, Doctor. The important thing is that we tried. For the record, we tried!” He walked behind Paul’s old desk and faced Paul and Finnerty across it.

“What record?” said Paul.

Suddenly Lasher underwent a transformation. He showed a side of himself he had mentioned, but which Paul had found impossible to imagine.

And, with the transformation, the desk became a pulpit.

“Revolutions aren’t my main line of business,” said Lasher, his voice deep and rolling. “I’m a minister, Doctor, remember? First and last, I’m an enemy of the Devil, a man of God!”

A
S THE SUN
arose over Ilium, and the embers of the town seemed gray in the light of the eternal fire ninety-three million miles away, the State Department limousine, flying a ghost shirt from its radio antenna, crept through the streets.

Bodies lay everywhere, in grotesque attitudes of violent death, but manifesting the miracle of life in a snore, a mutter, the flight of a bubble from the lips.

In the early light, the town seemed an enormous jewel box, lined with the black and gray velvet of fly-ash, and filled with millions of twinkling treasures: bits of air conditioners, amplidynes, analyzers, arc welders, batteries, belts, billers, bookkeeping machines, bottlers, canners, capacitors, circuit-breakers, clocks, coin boxes, calorimeters, colorimeters, computers, condensers, conduits, controls, converters, conveyers, cryostats, counters, cutouts, densitometers, detectors, dust precipitators, dishwashers, dispensers, dynamometers, dynamotors, electrodes, electronic tubes, exciters, fans, filers, filters, frequency changers, furnaces, fuses, gages, garbage disposers, gears, generators, heat exchangers, insulators, lamps, loudspeakers, magnets, mass spectrometers, motor generators, motors, noisemeters, oscillographs, panelboards, personnel machines, photoelectric cells, potentiometers, pushbuttons, radios, radiation detectors, reactors, recorders, rectifiers, reducers, regulators, relays, remote controls, resistors, rheostats, selsyns, servos, solenoids, sorters, spectrophotometers, spectroscopes, springs, starters, straingages, switchboards, switches, tape recorders, tachometers, telemeters, television sets, television cameras, testers, thermocouples, thermostats, timers, toasters, torquemeters, traffic controls, transitors,
transducers, transformers, turbines, vacuum cleaners, vacuum gages, vacuum tubes, venders, vibration meters, viscosimeters, water heaters, wheels, X-ray spectrogoniometers, zymometers …

At the wheel of the limousine was Doctor Edward Francis Finnerty. Beside him was Doctor Paul Proteus. In the back seat were the Reverend James J. Lasher and Professor Ludwig von Neumann, and, asleep on the floor, lay Mr. Ewing J. Halyard of the State Department. In a world of ruins and deep sleep, Halyard’s form on the floor was hardly cause for curiosity, comment, or remedial action.

The brains of the Ghost Shirt Society were touring the strongpoints on the frontiers of their Utopia. And everywhere they found the same things: abandoned weapons, abandoned posts, mounds of expended ammunition, and riddled machinery.

The four had come to an exciting decision: during the six months of blockade threatened by the authorities, they would make the ruins a laboratory, a demonstration of how well and happily men could live with virtually no machines. They saw now the common man’s wisdom in wrecking practically everything. That
was
the way to do it, and the hell with moderation!

“All right, so we’ll heat our water and cook our food and light and warm our homes with wood fires,” said Lasher.

“And walk wherever we’re going,” said Finnerty.

“And read books instead of watching television,” said von Neumann. “The Renaissance comes to upstate New York! We’ll rediscover the two greatest wonders of the world, the human mind and hand.”

“No quarter asked, no quarter given,” said Paul as they contemplated the entire furnishings of an M-11 house, dragged into a vacant lot and hacked to bits.

“This is like the Indians’ massacre of Custer and his men,” said Lasher reflectively. “The Little Bighorn. One isolated victory against an irresistable tide. More and more
whites where Custer came from; more and more machines where these came from. But we may win yet. Well! What is that noise? Somebody awake?”

A faint hubbub came from around a corner, from where the railroad station had been, where it still was after a fashion. Finnerty turned the corner for a better look at the celebrators.

In the station’s waiting room, carnage was everywhere. The terrazzo floor, depicting an earlier slaughter of Iliumites by Oneida Indians, was strewn with the guts and internal secretions of the automatic ticket vendor, the automatic nylon vendor, the automatic coffee vendor, the automatic newspaper vendor, the automatic toothbrush vendor, the automatic shoeshine machine, the automatic photo studio, the automatic baggage checker, the automatic insurance salesman …

But around one machine a group had gathered. The people were crowding one another excitedly, as though a great wonder were in their midst.

Paul and Finnerty left the car to examine the mystery, and saw that the center of attention was an Orange-O machine. Orange-O, Paul recalled, was something of a
cause célèbre
, for no one in the whole country, apparently, could stomach the stuff—no one save Doctor Francis Eldgrin Gelhorne, National Industrial, Commercial, Communications, Foodstuffs, and Resources Director. As a monument to him, Orange-O machines stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the rest, though the coin-box collectors never found anything in the machines but stale Orange-O.

But now the excretor of the blended wood pulp, dye, water, and orange-type flavoring was as popular as a nymphomaniac at an American Legion convention.

“O.K., now let’s try anotha’ nickel in her an’ see how she does,” said a familiar voice from behind the machine—the voice of Bud Calhoun.

“Clunkle”
went the coin, and then a whir, and a gurgle.

The crowd was overjoyed.

“Filled the cup almost to the top that time; and she’s nice and cold now, too,” called the man by the machine’s spout.

“But the light behind the Orange-O sign didn’t light up,” said a woman. “Supposed to.”

“We’ll fix that, won’t we, Bud?” said another voice from behind the machine. “You people get me about three feet of that red wire hanging out of the shoeshine machine, and somebody let me borrow their penknife a second.” The speaker stood up and stretched, and smiled contentedly, and Paul recognized him: the tall, middle-aged, ruddy-faced man who’d fixed Paul’s car with the sweatband of his hat long ago.

The man had been desperately unhappy then. Now he was proud and smiling because his hands were busy doing what they liked to do best, Paul supposed—replacing men like himself with machines. He hooked up the lamp behind the Orange-O sign. “There we are.”

Bud Calhoun bolted on the back. “Now try her.”

The people applauded and lined up, eager for their Orange-O. The first man up emptied his cup, and went immediately to the end of the line for seconds.

“Now, le’s have a look at this li’l ol’ ticket seller,” said Bud. “Oh, oh. Got it right through the microphone.”

“I knew we’d be able to use the telephone out in the street for something,” said the ruddy man. “I’ll go get it.”

The crowd, filled with Orange-O, was drifting over to encourage them in their new enterprise.

When Paul and Finnerty returned to the limousine, they found Lasher and von Neumann looking extremely glum, engaged in conversation with a bright-looking teenager.

“Have you seen an eighth-horsepower electric motor lying around anywhere?” said the youngster. “One that isn’t busted up too bad?”

Lasher shook his head.

“Well, I just have to keep looking, I guess,” said the youngster, picking up a cardboard carton jammed with gears, tubes, switches, and other odd parts. “This place is a gold mine, all right, but it’s tough finding exactly what you need.”

“I imagine,” said Lasher.

“Yep, if I had a decent little motor to go with what I got,” said the youngster excitedly, “I’ll betch anything I could make a gadget that’d play drums like nothing you ever heard before. See, you take a selsyn, and—”

“Proteus! Finnerty!” said Lasher irritably. “What’s been keeping you?”

“Didn’t know you were in a hurry to get anywhere,” said Finnerty.

“Well, I am. Let’s go.”

“Where to?” Finnerty started the car.

“Griffin Boulevard. The roadblock.”

“What’s going on out there?” asked Paul.

“The authorities are waiting for the people of Ilium to turn over their false leaders,” said Lasher. “Anybody want to get out? I’ll drive myself, if you like.”

Finnerty stopped the car.

“Well?” said Lasher.

“I suppose now
is
the time,” said von Neumann matter-of-factly.

Paul said nothing, but made no move to get out.

Finnerty waited a moment longer, then pressed down on the accelerator.

No one spoke until they reached the concertina of barbed wire, the felled telephone poles, and the sandbags of the Griffin Boulevard roadblock. Two brown men, elegantly costumed—Khashdrahr Miasma and the Shah of Bratpuhr—huddled together, asleep in a slit trench to the left of the barricade. Beyond the barbed wire, their wheels toward heaven, were two riddled, abandoned state police cars.

Professor von Neumann looked out over the country-side through his field glasses. “Aha! The authorities.” He handed the glasses to Paul. “There—to the left of that barn. See?”

Paul squinted at the three armored cars by the barn, and the police with their riot guns, lounging, smoking, chatting cheerfully.

Lasher patted Paul on his shoulder as Paul handed the glasses on to him. “Smile, Doctor Proteus—you’re
somebody
now, like your old man was. Who’s got a bottle?”

Finnerty produced one.

Lasher took it, and toasted the others. “To all good Indians,” he said, “past, present, and future. Or, more to the point—to the record.”

The bottle went around the group.

“The record,” said Finnerty, and he seemed satisfied with the toast. He had got what he wanted from the revolution, Paul supposed—a chance to give a savage blow to a close little society that made no comfortable place for him.

“To the record,” said von Neumann. He, too, seemed at peace. To him, the revolution had been a fascinating experiment, Paul realized. He had been less interested in achieving a premeditated end than in seeing what would happen with given beginnings.

Paul took the bottle and studied Lasher for a moment over its fragrant mouth. Lasher, the chief instigator of it all, was contented. A lifelong trafficker in symbols, he had created the revolution as a symbol, and was now welcoming the opportunity to die as one.

And that left Paul. “To a better world,” he started to say, but he cut the toast short, thinking of the people of Ilium, already eager to recreate the same old nightmare. He shrugged. “To the record,” he said, and smashed the empty bottle on a rock.

Von Neumann considered Paul and then the broken
glass. “This isn’t the end, you know,” he said. “Nothing ever is, nothing ever will be—not even Judgment Day.”

“Hands up,” said Lasher almost gaily. “Forward March.”