Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said Part 17

20

The mescaline had furiously begun to affect him; the room grew lit up with colors, and the perspective factor altered so that the ceiling seemed a million miles high. And, gazing at Alys, he saw her hair come alive . . . like Medusa's, he thought, and felt fear.

Ignoring him, Alys continued, "Felix especially likes Basque cuisine, but they cook with so much b.u.t.ter that it gives him pyloric spasms. He also has a good collection of _Weird Tales_, and he loves baseball. And--let's see." She wandered off, a finger tapping against her lips as she reflected. "He's interested in the occult. Do you--"

"I feel something," Jason said.

"What do you feel?"

Jason said, "I can't get away."

"It's the mes. Take it easy."

"I--" He pondered; a giant weight lay on his brain, but all throughout the weight streaks of light, of satori-like insight, shot here and there.

"What I collect," Alys said, "is in the next room, what we call the library. This is the study. In the library Felix has all his law books . . . did you know he's a lawyer, as well as a police general? And he has done some good things; I have to admit it. Do you now what he did once?"

He could not answer; he could only stand. Inert, hearing the sounds but not the meaning. Of it.

"For a year Felix was legally in charge of one-fourth of Terra's forced-labor camps. He discovered that by virtue of an obscure law pa.s.sed years ago when the forced-labor camps were more like death camps--with a lot of blacks in them-- anyhow, he discovered that this statute permitted the camps to operate only during the Second Civil War. And he had the power to close any and all camps at any time he felt it to be in the public interest. And those blacks and the students who'd been working in the camps are d.a.m.n tough and strong, from years of heavy manual labor. They're not like the effete, pale, clammy students living beneath the campus areas. And then he researched and discovered another obscure statute. Any camp that isn't operating at a profit has to be--or rather had to be--closed. So Felix changed the amount of money-- very little, of course--paid to the detainees. So all he had to do was jack up their pay, show red ink in the books, and barn; he could shut down the camps." She laughed.

He tried to speak but couldn't. Inside him his mind churned like a tattered rubber ball, sinking and rising, slowing down, speeding up, fading and then flaring brilliantly; the shafts of light scampered all through him, piercing every part of his body.

"But the big thing Felix did," Alys said, "had to do with the student kibbutzim under the burned-out campuses. A lot of them are desperate for food and water; you know how it is: the students try to make it into town, foraging for supplies, ripping off and looting. Well, the police maintain a lot of agents among the students agitating for a final shootout with the police . . . which the police and nats are hopefully waiting for. Do you see?"

"I see," he said, "a hat."

"But Felix tried to keep off any sort of shootout. But to do it he had to get supplies to the students; do you see?"

"The hat is red," Jason said. "Like your ears."

"Because of his position as marshal in the pol hierarchy, Felix had access to informant reports as to the condition of each student kibbutz. He knew which ones were failing and which were making it. It was his job to boil out of the horde of abstracts the ultimately important facts: which kibbutzim were going under and which were not. Once he had listed those in trouble, other high police officers met with him to decide how to apply pressure which would hasten the end. Defeatist agitation by police finks, sabotage of food and water supplies. Desperate--actually hopeless--forays out of the campus area in search of help--for instance, at Columbia one time they had a plan of getting to the Harry S Truman Labor Camp and liberating the detainees and arming them, but at that even Felix had to say 'Intervene!' But anyhow it was Felix's job to determine the tactic for each kibbutz under scrutiny. Many, many times he advised no action at all. For this, of course, the hardhats criticized him, demanded his removal from his position." Alys paused. "He was a full police marshal, then, you have to realize."

"Your red," Jason said, "is fantidulous."

"I know." Alys's lips turned down. "Can't you hold your hit, man? I'm trying to tell you something. Felix got _demoted_, from police marshal to police general, because he saw to it, when he could, that in the kibbutzim the students were bathed, fed, their medical supplies looked after, cots provided. Like he did for the forced-labor camps under his jurisdiction. So now he's just a general. But they leave him alone. They've done all they can to him for now and he still holds a high office."

"But your incest," Jason said. "What if?" He paused; he could not remember the rest of his sentence. "If," he said, and that seemed to be it; he felt a furious glow, arising from the fact that he had managed to convey his message to her. "If," he said again, and the inner glow became wild with happy fury. He exclaimed aloud.

"You mean what if the marshals knew that Felix and I have a son? What would they do?"

"They would do," Jason said. "Can we hear some music? Or give me--" His words ceased; none more entered his brain. "Gee," he said. "My mother wouldn't be here. Death."

Alys inhaled deeply, sighed. "Okay, Jason," she said. "I'll give up trying to rap with you. Until your head is back."

"Talk," he said.

"Would you like to see my bondage cartoons?"

"What," he said, "that's?"

"Drawings, very stylized, of chicks tied up, and men--"

"Can I lie down?" he said. "My legs won't work. I think my right leg extends to the moon. In other words"--he considered--"I broke it standing up."

"Come here." She led him, step by step, from the study and back into the living room. "Lie down on the couch," she told him. With agonizing difficulty he did so. "I'll go get you some Thorazine; it'll counteract the mes."

"This is a mess," he said.

"Let's see . . . where the h.e.l.l did I put that? I rarely if ever have to use it, but I keep it in case something like this . . . G.o.d d.a.m.n it, can't you drop a single cap of mes and be something? I take five at once."

"But you're vast," Jason said.

"I'll be back; I'm going upstairs." Alys strode off, toward a door located several distances away; for a long, long time he watched her dwindle--how did she accomplish it? It seemed incredible that she could shrink down to almost nothing--and then she vanished. He felt, at that, terrible fear. He knew that he had become alone, without help. Who will help me? he asked himself. I have to get away from these stamps and cups and snuffboxes and bondage cartoons and phone grids and frog's legs I've got to get to that quibble I've got to fly away and back to where I know back in town maybe with Ruth Rae if they've let her go or even back to Kathy Nelson this woman is too much for me so is her brother them and their incest child in Florida named what?

He rose unsteadily, groped his way across a rug that sprang a million leaks of pure pigment as he trod on it, crushing it with his ponderous shoes, and then, at last, he stumbled against the front door of the unsteady room.

Sunlight. He had gotten outside.

The quibble.

He hobbled to it.

Inside he sat at the controls, bewildered by legions of k.n.o.bs, levers, wheels, pedals, dials. "Why doesn't it go?" he said aloud. "Get going!" he told it, rocking back and forth in the driver's seat. "Won't she let me go?" he asked the quibble.

The keys. Of course he couldn't fly it no keys.

Her coat in the back seat; he had witnessed it. And also her large mailpouch purse. There, the keys in her purse. There.

The two record alb.u.ms. _Taverner and the Blue, Blue Blues_. And the best of them all: _There'll be a Good Time_. He groped, managed somehow to lift both record alb.u.ms up, conveyed them to the empty seat beside him. I have the proof here, he realized. It's here in these records and it's here in the house. With her. I've got to find it here if I'm going to. Find it. Nowhere else. Even General Mr. Felix What-Is-HeNamed? he won't find it. He doesn't know. As much as me.

Carrying the enormous record alb.u.ms he ran back to the house--around him the landscape flowed, with whip, tall, tree-like organisms gulping in air out of the sweet blue sky, organisms which absorbed water and light, ate the hue into the sky. . . he reached the gate, pushed against it. The gate did not budge. b.u.t.ton.

He found no.

Step by step. Feel each inch with fingers. Like in the dark. Yes, he thought. I'm in darkness. He set down the muchtoo-big record alb.u.ms, stood against the wall beside the gate, slowly ma.s.saged the rubberlike surface of the wall. Nothing. Nothing.

The b.u.t.ton.

He pressed it, grabbed up the record alb.u.ms, stood in front of the gate as it incredibly slowly creaked its noisy protesting way open.

A brown-uniformed man carrying a gun appeared. Jason said, "I had to go back to the quibble for something."

"Perfectly all right, sir," the man in the brown uniform said. "I saw you leave and I knew you'd be back."

"Is she insane?" Jason asked him.

"I'm not in a position to know, sir," the man in the brown uniform said, and he backed away, touching his visored cap.

The front door of the house hung open as he had left it. He scrambled through, descended brick steps, found himself once more in the radically irregular living room with its million-mile-high ceiling. "Alys!" he said. Was she in the room? He carefully looked in all directions; as he had done when searching for the b.u.t.ton he phased his way through every visible inch of the room. The bar at the far end with the handsome walnut drug cabinet . . . couch, chairs. Pictures on the walls. A face in one of the pictures jeered at him but he did not care; it could not leave the wall. The quad phonograph.

His records. Play them.

He lifted at the lid of the phonograph but it wouldn't open. Why? he asked. Locked? No, it slid out. He slid it out, with a terrible noise, as if he had destroyed it. Tone arm. Spindle. He got one of his records out of its sleeve and placed in on the spindle. I can work these things, he said, and turned on the amplifiers, setting the mode to phono. Switch that activated the changer. He twisted it. The tone arm lifted; the turntable began to spin, agonizingly slowly. What was the matter with it? Wrong speed? No; he checked. Thirty-three and a third. The mechanism of the spindle heaved and the record dropped.

Loud noise of the needle hitting the lead-in groove. Crackles of dust, clicks. Typical of old quad records. Easily misused and damaged; all you had to do was breathe on them.

Background hiss. More crackles.

No music.

Lifting the tone arm, he set it farther in. Great roaring crash as the stylus struck the surface; he winced, sought the volume control to turn it down. Still no music. No sound of himself singing.

The strength the mescaline had over him began now to waver; he felt coldly, keenly sober. The other record. Swiftly he got it from its jacket and sleeve, placed it on the spindle, rejected the first record.

Sound of the needle touching plastic surface. Background hiss and the inevitable crackles and clicks. Still no music.

The records were blank.

PART THREE

Never may my woes be relieved, Since pity is fled; And tears and sighs and groans my weary days Of all joys have deprived.

21

"Alys!" Jason Taverner called loudly. No answer. Is it the mescaline? he asked himself. He made his way clumsily from the phonograph toward the door through which Alys had gone. A long hallway, deep-pile wool carpet. At the far end stairs with a black iron railing, leading up to the second floor.

He strode as quickly as possible up the hall, to the stairs, and then, step by step, up the stairs.

The second floor. A foyer, with an antique Hepplewhite table off to one side, piled high with _Box_ magazines. That, weirdly, caught his attention; who, Felix or Alys, or both, read a low-cla.s.s ma.s.s-circulation p.o.r.nographic magazine like _Box?_ He pa.s.sed on then, still--because of the mescaline, certainly--seeing small details. The bathroom; that was where he would find her.

"Alys," he said grimly; perspiration trickled from his forehead down his nose and cheeks; his armpits had become steamy and damp with the emotions cascading through his body. "G.o.d d.a.m.n it," he said, speaking to her although he could not see her. "There's no music on those records, no me. They're fakes. Aren't they?" Or is it the mescaline? he asked himself. "I've got to know!" he said. "Make them play if they're okay. Is the phonograph broken, is that it? Needle point or stylus or whatever you call them broken off?" It happens, he thought. Maybe it's riding on the tops of the grooves.

A half-open door; he pushed it wide. A bedroom, with the bed unmade. And on the floor a mattress with a sleeping bag thrown onto it. A little pile of men's supplies: shaving cream, deodorant, razor, aftershave, comb. . . a guest, he thought, here before but now gone.

"Is anybody here?" he yelled.

Silence.

Ahead he saw the bathroom; past the partially opened door he caught sight of an amazingly old tub on painted lion's legs. An antique, he thought, even down to their bathtub. He loped haltingly down the hail, past other doors, to the bathroom; reaching it, he pushed the door aside.

And saw, on the floor, a skeleton.

It wore black shiny pants, leather shirt, chain belt with wrought-iron buckle. The foot bones had cast aside the highheeled shoes. A few tufts of hair clung to the skull, but outside of that, there remained nothing: the eyes had gone, all the flesh had gone. And the skeleton itself had become yellow.

"G.o.d," Jason said, swaying; he felt his vision fail and his sense of gravity shift: his middle ear fluctuated in its pressures so that the room caromed around him, silently in perpetual ball motion. Like a pourout of Ferris wheel at a child's circus.

He shut his eyes, hung on to the wall, then, finally, looked again.

She has died, he thought. But when? A hundred thousand years ago? A few minutes ago?

Why has she died? he asked himself.

Is it the mescaline? That I took? _Is this real?_ It's real.

Bending, he touched the leather fringed shirt. The leather felt soft and smooth; it hadn't decayed. Time hadn't touched her clothing; that meant something but he did not comprehend what. Just her, he thought. Everything else in this house is the same as it was. So it can't be the mescaline affecting me. But I can't be sure, he thought.

Downstairs. Get out of here.

He loped erratically back down the hail, still in the process of scrambling to his feet, so that he ran bent over like an ape of some unusual kind. He seized the black iron railing, descended two, three steps at once, stumbled and fell, caught himself and hauled himself back up to a standing position. In his chest his heart labored, and his lungs, overtaxed, inflated and emptied like a bellows.

In an instant he had sped across the living room to the front door--then, for reasons obscure to him but somehow important, he s.n.a.t.c.hed up the two records from the phonograph, stuffed them into their jackets, carried them with him through the front door of the house, out into the bright warm sun of midday.

"Leaving, sir?" the brown-uniformed private cop asked, noticing him standing there, his chest heaving.

"I'm sick," Jason said.

"Sorry to hear that, sir. Can I get you anything?"

"The keys to the quibble."

"Miss Buckman usually leaves the keys in the ignition," the cop said.

"I looked," Jason said, panting.

The cop said, "I'll go ask Miss Buckman for you."