The Classic Philip Jose Farmer. 1952 - 1964 Part 5

"Whatever he used, he covered his own house and some of his neighbors' houses from roof to base.

When the police appeared, he plastered their car with the paint and blinded them. While they were trying to clear their eyes, he walked off. A half-hour later, he streaked the girls' dorrn with red paint and scared a number of the occupants into hysteria. He entered the building, pushed past the scandalized housemother, raced up and down the halls, threw paint over anybody who showed his head, seemingly from a bottomless can, and then, failing to find Peggy Rourke, disappeared.

"I might add that all this time he was laughing like a madman and announcing loudly to all and sundry that tonight he was painting the town red.

"Miss Rourke had gone with Polivinosel and some of his fraternity brothers and dates to a restaurant.

Later, the couple dropped the others off at their homes and then proceeded, theoretically, to the girls'

dormitory. Neither got there. Nor were they or the professor seen again during the two years that elapsed between that incident and the time the Onaback papers quit publishing. The popular theory was that the love-crazed professor had killed and buried them and then fled to parts unknown. But I choose, on good evidence, to believe otherwise."

Hurriedly, for I could see they were getting restless, I told them of the bull that had appeared from nowhere at the foot of Main Street. The stockyards later reported that none of their bulls was missing.

Nevertheless, too many people saw the bull for the account to be denied. Not only that, they all testified that the last they saw of it, it was swimming across the Illinois River with a naked woman on its back. She was waving a bottle in her hand. It, and the woman, then plunged into the forest on the bluffs and disappeared.

At this there was an uproar. A Coast Guard Commander said "Are you trying to tell me that Zeus and Europa have come to life, Mr. Temper?"

There was no use in continuing. These men didn't believe unless they saw with their own eyes. I decidedit was time to let them see.

I waved my hand. My a.s.sistants pushed in a large cage on wheels. Within it crouched a very large ape, wearing a little straw hat, a sour expression, and a pair of pink nylon panties. A hole cut in the bottom of the latter allowed her long tail to stick through. Strictly speaking, I suppose, she couldn't be cla.s.sified as an ape. Apes have no tails.

An anthropologist would have seen at once that this wasn't a monkey, either. It was true that she did have a prognathous muzzle, long hair that covered her whole body, long arms, and a tail. But no monkey ever had such a smooth, high brow, or such a big hooked nose, or legs so long in proportion to her trunk.

When the cage had come to rest beside the platform, I said, "Gentlemen, if everything I've said seemed irrevelant, I'm sure that the next few minutes will convince you I have not been barking up the wrong tree."

I turned to the cage, caught myself almost making a bow, and said, "Mrs. Durham, will you please tell these gentlemen what happened to you?"

Then I waited, in full expectation of the talk, torrential and disconnected but illuminating, that had overwhelmed me the previous evening after my buddies had captured her on the edge of the area. I was very proud, because I'd made a discovery that would shock and rock these gentlemen from their heads of bone to their heels of leather and show them that one little agent from the F.D.A. had done what the whole armed forces had not. Then they wouldn't snicker and refer to me as Out-of-Temper by Frothing-at-the-Mouth.

I waited...

And I waited...

And Mrs. Durham refused to say a word. Not one, though I all but got down on my knees and pleaded with her. I tried to explain to her what giant forces were in balance and that she held the fate of the world in the hollow of her pink hairless palm. She would not open her mouth. Somebody had injured her dignity, and she would do nothing but sulk and turn her back on all of us and wave her tail above her pink panties.

She was the most exasperating female I'd ever known. No wonder that her husband made a monkey of her.

Triumph had become fiasco. Nor did it convince the big shots when I played the recording of my last night's conversation with her. They still thought I had less brains than hair, and they showed it when they replied to my request for questions with silence. Major Alice Lewis smiled scornfully.

Well, it made no difference in my mission. I was under orders they hadn't power to countermand.

At 7:30 that evening, I was outside the area with a group of officers and my boss. Though the moon was just coming up, its light was bright enough to read by. About ten yards from us, the whiteness of snow and cold ended, and the green and warmth began.

General Lewis, Major Lewis' father, said, "We'll give you two days to contact Durham, Mr. Temper.

Wednesday, 1400, we attack. Marines, equipped with bows and arrows and airguns, and wearing oxygen masks, will be loaded into gliders with pressurized cabins. These will be released from their tow-planes at high alt.i.tude. They will land upon U. S. Route 24 just south of the city limits, where thereare now two large meadows. They will march up South Adams Street until they come to the downtown district. By then, I hope, you will have located and eliminated the source of this trouble."

For "eliminated," read "a.s.sa.s.sinated." By his expression, he thought I couldn't do it. General Lewis disliked me, not only because I was a civilian with authority, backed by the President himself, but because the conditions of my a.s.signment with his daughter were unorthodox, to say the least. Alice Lewis was not only a major and a woman-she was a mightily attractive one and young for her rank.

She stood there, shivering, in her bra and panties, while I was stripped down to my own shorts. Once we were safely in the woods, we would take off the rest of our clothes. When in Rome...

Marines with bows and arrows and BB guns-no wonder the military was miserable. But, once inside the Area controlled by my former professor and his Brew, firearms simply refused to work. And the Brew did work, making addicts of all who tasted it.

All but me.

I was the only one who had thought to have myself conditioned against it.

Dr. Duerf asked me a few questions while someone strapped a three-gallon tank of distilled water to my back. The doctor was the Columbia psychiatrist who had conditioned me against the Brew.

Suddenly, in the midst of a casual remark, he grabbed the back of my head. A gla.s.s seemed to appear from nowhere in his fist. He tried to force its contents past my lips. I took just one sniff and knocked the gla.s.s from his grip and struck him with the other fist.

He danced back, holding the side of his face. "How do you feel now?" he asked.

"I'm all right," I said, "but I thought for a moment I'd choke. I wanted to kill you for trying to do that to me."

"I had to give you a final test. You pa.s.sed it with a big A. You're thoroughly conditioned against the Brew."

The two Lewises said nothing. They were irked because I, a civilian, had thought of this method of combating the allure of the Brew. The thousand Marines, scheduled to follow me in two days, would have to wear oxygen masks to save them from temptation. As for my companion, she had been hastily put under hypnosis by Duerf, but he didn't know how successfully. Fortunately, her mission would not take as long as mine. She was supposed to go to the source of the Brew and bring back a sample. If, however, I needed help, I was to call on her. Also, though it was unstated, I was to keep her from succ.u.mbing to the Brew.

We shook hands all around, and we walked away. Warm air fell over us like a curtain. One moment, we were shivering; the next, sweating. That was bad. It meant we'd be drinking more water than we had provided ourselves with.

I looked around in the bright moonlight. Two years had changed the Illinois-scape. There were many more trees than there had been, trees of a type you didn't expect to see this far north. Whoever was responsible for the change had had many seeds and sprouts shipped in, in preparation for the warmer climate. I knew, for I had checked in Chicago on various shipments and had found that a man by the name of Smith-Smith!-had, two weeks after Durham's disappearance, begun ordering from tropical countries. The packages had gone to an Onaback house and had ended up in the soil hereabouts.

Durham must have realized that this river-valley area couldn't support its customary 300,000 people,once the railroads and trucks quit shipping in cans of food and fresh milk and provisions. The countryside would have been stripped by the hungry hordes.

But when you looked around at the fruit trees, bananas, cherries, apples, pears, oranges, and others, most of them out of season and flourishing in soils thought unfavorable for their growth-when you noted the blackberry, blueberry, gooseberry, and raspberry bushes, the melons and potatoes and tomatoes on the ground-all large enough to have won county-fair first prizes in any pre-Brew age-then you realized there was no lack of food. All you had to do was pick it and eat.

"It looks to me," whispered Alice Lewis, "like the Garden of Eden."

"Stop talking treason, Alice!" I snapped.

She iced me with a look. "Don't be silly. And don't call me Alice. I'm a major in the Marines."

"Pardon," I said. "But we'd better drop the rank. The natives might wonder. What's more, we'd better shed these clothes before we run into somebody."

She wanted to object, but she had her orders. Even though we were to be together at least thirty-six hours, and would be mother-naked all that time, she insisted we go into the bushes to peel. I didn't argue.

I stepped behind a tree and took off my shorts. At the same time, I smelled cigar smoke. I slipped off the webbing holding the tank to my back and walked out onto the narrow trail. I got a h.e.l.l of a shock.

A monster leaned against a tree, his short legs crossed, a big Havana sticking from the side of his carnivorous mouth, his thumbs tucked in an imaginary vest.

I shouldn't have been frightened. I should have been amused. This creature had stepped right out of a very famous comic strip. He stood seven feet high, had a bright green hide and yellow-brown plates running down his chest and belly. His legs were very short; his trunk, long. His face was half-man, half alligator. He had two enormous b.u.mps on top of his head and big dish-sized eyes. The same half-kindly, half-stupid, and arrogant look was upon his face. He was complete, even to having four fingers instead of five.

My shock came not only from the unexpectedness of his appearance. There is a big difference between something seen on paper and that seen in the flesh. This thing was cute and humorous and lovable in the strip. Transformed into living color and substance, it was monstrous.

"Don't get scared," said the apparition. "I grow on you after a while."

"Who are you?" I asked.

At that moment, Alice stepped out from behind a tree. She gasped, and she grabbed my arm.

He waved his cigar. "I'm the Allegory on the Banks of the Illinois. Welcome, strangers, to the domain of the Great Mahrud."

I didn't know what he meant by those last few words. And it took a minute to figure out that his t.i.tle was a pun derived from the aforesaid cartoonist and from Sheridan's Mrs. Malaprop.

"Albert Allegory is the full name," he said. "That is, in this metamorph. Other forms, other names, you know. And you two, I suppose, are outsiders who wish to live along the Illinois, drink from the Brew, and worship the Bull."He held out his hand with the two inside fingers clenched and the thumb and outside finger extended.

"This is the sign that every true believer makes when he meets another," he said. "Remember it, and you'll be saved much trouble."

"How do you know I'm from the outside?" I asked. I didn't try to lie. He didn't seem to be bent on hurting us.

He laughed, and his vast mouth megaphoned the sound. Alice, no longer the c.o.c.ky WHAM officer, gripped my hand hard.

He said, "I'm sort of a demiG.o.d, you might say. When Mahrud, bull be his name, became a G.o.d, he wrote a letter to me- using the U. S. mails of course-and invited me to come here and demiG.o.d for him. I'd never cared too much for the world as it was so I slipped in past the Army cordon and took over the duties that Mahrud, bull be his name, gave me."

I, too, had received a letter from my former professor. It had arrived before the trouble developed, and I had not understood his invitation to come live with him and be his demiG.o.d. I'd thought he'd slipped a gear or two.

For lack of anything pertinent to say, I asked, "What are your duties?"

He waved his cigar again. "My job, which is anything but onerous, is to meet outsiders and caution them to keep their eyes open. They are to remember that not everything is what it seems, and they are to look beyond the surface of the deed for the symbol."

He puffed on his cigar and then said, "I have a question for you. I don't want you to answer it now, but I want you to think about it and give me an answer later." He blew smoke again. "My question is this-where do you want to go now?"

He didn't offer to expand his question. He said, "So long," and strolled off down a side-path, his short legs seeming to move almost independently of his elongated saurian torso. I stared for a moment, still shaking from the encounter. Then I returned to the tree behind which I'd left my water-tank and strapped it back on.

We walked away fast. Alice was so subdued that she did not seem conscious of our nudity. After a while, she said, "Something like that frightens me. How could a man a.s.sume a form like that?"

"We'll find out," I said with more optimism than I felt. "I think we'd better be prepared for just about anything."

"Perhaps the story Mrs. Durham told you back at Base was true."

I nodded. The Professor's wife had said that, shortly before the Area was sealed off, she had gone to the bluffs across the river, where she knew her husband was. Even though he had announced himself a G.o.d by then, she was not afraid of him.

Mrs. Durham had taken two lawyers along, just in case. She was highly incoherent about what happened across the river. But some strange force, apparently operated by Dr. Durham, had turned her into a large tailed ape, causing her to flee. The two lawyers, metamorphosed into skunks, had also beaten a retreat.

Considering these strange events, Alice said, "What I can't understand is how Durham could do these things. Where's his power? What sort of gadget does he have?"Hot as it was, my skin developed gooseflesh. I could scarcely tell her that I was almost certainly responsible for this entire situation. I felt guilty enough without actually telling the truth. Moreover, if I had told her what I believed to be the truth, she'd have known I was crazy. Nevertheless, that was the way it was, and that was why I had volunteered for this a.s.signment. I'd started it; I had to finish it.

"I'm thirsty," she said. "What about a drink, Pops? We may not get a chance at another for a long time."

"d.a.m.n it," I said as I slipped off the tank, "don't call me Pops! My name is Daniel Temper, and I'm not so old that I could be..."

I stopped. I was old enough to be her father. In the Kentucky mountains, at any rate.

Knowing what I was thinking, she smiled and held out the little cup she had taken from the clip on the tank's side. I growled, "A man's only as old as he feels, and I don't feel over thirty."

At that moment I caught the flicker of moonlight on a form coming down the path. "Duck!" I said to Alice.

She just had time to dive into the gra.s.s. As for me, the tank got in my way, so I decided to stay there and brazen things out.

When I saw what was coming down the path, I wished I had taken off the tank. Weren't there any human beings in this G.o.dforsaken land? First it was the Allegory. Now it was the a.s.s.

He said, "h.e.l.lo, brother," and before I could think of a good comeback, he threw his strange head back and loosed tremendous laughter that was half ha-ha! and half hee-haw!

I didn't think it was funny. I was far too tense to pretend amus.e.m.e.nt. Moreover, his breath stank of Brew. I was half-sick before I could back up to escape it.

He was tall and covered with short blond hair, unlike most a.s.ses, and he stood upon two manlike legs that ended in broad hoofs. He had two long hairy ears, but, otherwise, he was as human as anybody else you might meet in the woods-or on the street. And his name, as he wasn't backward in telling me, was Polivinosel.

He said, "Why are you carrying that tank?"

"I've been smuggling the Brew to the outside."

His grin revealed long yellow horselike teeth. "Bootlegging, eh? But what do they pay you with? Moneys no good to a worshiper of the All-Bull."

He held up his right hand. The thumb and two middle fingers were bent. The index finger and little finger were held straight out. I didn't respond immediately, and he looked hard. I imitated his gesture, and he relaxed a little.

"I'm bootlegging for the love of it," I said. "And also to spread the gospel."

Where that last phrase came from, I had no notion. Perhaps from the reference to "worshiper" and the vaguely religious-looking sign that Polivinosel had made.

He reached out a big hairy hand and turned the spigot on my tank. Before I could move, he had poured out enough to fill his cupped palm. He raised his hand to his lips and slurped loudly. He blew the liquid out so it sprayed all over me. "Whee-oo! That's water!""()f course," I said. "After I get rid of my load of Brew, I fill the tank with ordinary water. If I'm caught by the border patrol, I tell them I'm smuggling pure water into our area."

Polivinosel went hoo-hah-hah and slapped his thigh so hard, it sounded like an axe biting into a tree.

"That's not all," I said. "I even have an agreement with some of the higher officers. They allow me to slip through if I bring them back some Brew."

He winked and brayed and slapped his thigh again. "Corruption, eh, brother? Even bra.s.s will rust. I tell you, it won't be long until the Brew of the Bull spreads everywhere."

Again he made that sign, and I did so almost at the same time.

He said, "I'll walk with you a mile or so. My worshipers-the local Cult of the a.s.s-are holding a fertility ceremony down the path a way. Care to join us?"

I shuddered. "No, thank you," I said fervently.

I had witnessed one of those orgies through a pair of fieldgla.s.ses one night. The huge bonfire had been about two hundred yards inside the forbidden boundary. Against its h.e.l.lish flame, I could see the white and capering bodies of absolutely uninhibited men and women. It was a long time before I could get that scene out of my mind. I used to dream about it.

When I declined the invitation, Polivinosel brayed again and slapped me on the back, or where my back would have been if my tank hadn't been in the way. As it was, I fell on my hands and knees in a patch of tall gra.s.s. I was furious. I not only resented his too-high spirits, I was afraid he had bent the thin-walled tank and sprung a leak in its seams.

But that wasn't the main reason I didn't get up at once. I couldn't move because I was staring into Alice's big blue eyes.

Polivinosel gave a loud whoop and leaped through the air and landed beside me. He got down on his hands and knees and stuck his big ugly mule-eared face into Alice's and bellowed, "How now, white cow! How high browse thou?"

He grabbed Alice by the waist and lifted her up high, getting up himself at the same time. There he held her in the moonlight and turned her around and over and over, as if she were a strange-looking bug he had caught crawling in the weeds.

She squealed and gasped, "d.a.m.n you, you big jacka.s.s, take your filthy paws off me!"

"I'm Polivinosel, the local G.o.d of fertility!" he brayed. "It's my duty-and privilege-to inspect your qualifications. Tell me, daughter, have you prayed recently for a son or daughter? Are your crops coming along? How are your cabbages growing? What about your onions and your parsnips? Are your hens laying enough eggs?"

Instead of being frightened, Alice got angry. "All right, Your Asininity, would you please let me down?