Thoroughly agitated, Babbit wandered into the primate house, not noticing the sign which said "CLOSED TODAY." There he saw two grim-faced men, in green uniforms, and a gorilla, in a blue uniform, going through a most remarkable pantomime. One of the men would raise a sign saying "WE DEMAND JUSTICE" and the gorilla would then spray him with a can of shaving cream; the other man would then feed the gorilla.
Operant conditioning. But what the hell…
Even Fed Xing was confused by that one.
WHERE THE FUCK?
The night watchman at Bhavani Imports, a Puerto Rican poet and Santaria initiate named Hugo de Naranja, was reading a novel called Illuminatus! when the mysterious incident occurred. Hugo was so absorbed in the book, which he considered the greatest novel since Don Quixote, that he didn't notice the strange sound at first. Gradually the sound s persistence invaded his consciousness, dragged him out of the most aesthetically exquisite blow job in all modern fiction, jerked him into an alert awareness that out there in the darkness there was something odd going on.
Rats, he thought.
No, the quick trot of rat paws was different.
A thief with soft slippers, or in his stockings…
Not that, either.
Hugo put down his book and picked up flashlight in left hand groping right-handedly and then finding pistol in holster. Something was going on in the vast darkness of the warehouse and he had to go and look for it and do something about it. He wished he hadn't read so many Women's Lib diatribes against machismo and Papa Hemingway. He wished he could still believe in the macho values. He wished he had more cojones or another job.
Then he walked out of his cubbyhole office, flashing the light ahead of him, and quoted to himself from his favorite philosopher. "The ordinary man has problems. The warrior only has challenges." Then he saw the intruder.
A cat. It was only a cat, held for one moment in his lightbeam, then skittering away into deeper darkness as the light raced after it. Then it was caught again, higher up, standing for Christ's sake on the ghastly amputated penis plaque, its golden eyes glittering half-whitely in the flashed lightray. A cat standing on a penis, something right out of Surrealism or Dada.
"Scat!" Hugo shouted, really amused now. "Rrrow! Scat! Beat it!"
Then the cat leapt and Hugo's flash leapt after it jumping to the floor, where it would, should, must, didn't land. The light moved back quickly, swept several arcs, while Hugo was beginning to think: Christ, it didn't make any sound when it landed, not even a muffled cat thud. And his beam swept back and forth again in searching arcs, as the words formed "it disappeared in midair," were rejected (it couldn't) and the beam rested for a minute on the challengingly erect Penis Without a Man (what hijo de puta would do a thing like that?) and the question burst from his lips, aloud, the nightwatchman's vice of talking to himself, which he had always resisted before:
"Where did it the fuck jump to? Where the fuck?"
THE DISPOSSESSED
Mounty Babbit never did learn to live with Fed Xing. In fact, he eventually had a full-scale psychotic breakdown. Of course, because of his wealth, the doctors always referred to it as a catathymic crisis.
The breakdown occurred at a dinner party, worse luck.
The Moons were guests again, and this time they had their nephew, Simon-a bearded young mathematician whose father had been the black sheep of the Moon family, a Wobbly agitator. Simon himself had been arrested during the Democratic Convention riots the previous year but got off on probation.
Everything went pleasantly enough until Molly Moon got on her obsession about Oriental Masters invading Western bodies to pass on their transcendental mysticism.
Joe Moon must have noticed the look on Mounty's face because he said, "Molly, remember our host is a scientist."
"And a Taurus," Molly said quickly. "I know how hard it is for him to accept spiritual truths."
"He doesn't bore you with the latest chemical shop-talk," Joe said gently. "I'm sure you don't have to bore him with all this astrology or whatever it is."
"It's not astrology. It's astral projection."
"It sounds half-astral to me," Joe said, laughing as loud as he could, trying to get them all laughing and turn the topic into a joke.
Young Simon, however, had ideas of his own. "Aunt Molly might be right," he said thoughtfully. "The Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky paradox does lead to some freaky possibilities. But why assume only the high adepts are coming? Every primitive group in the world has some kind of magical tradition. And they've tried everything else to get out from under white domination."
"Now don't start with your radicalism…" Joe warned.
"I'm not talking politics," Simon said innocently. "Everywhere in the world there are people who'd like to change places with us. Live in our rich homes. Eat our extravagant diet. Drive our cars. We know a lot about the space-time-matter continuum, but we're more ignorant than Asia or Africa about space-time-mind continuum. How about the Native Americans, for that matter? Wouldn't their magicians love to take over some white bodies for a while? Is that why so many young people are wearing Indian headbands, taking Indian drugs like peyote, moving out of the cities into the woods…? Ever have your car stolen by a black kid from Chicago's ghetto? Wouldn't they like to steal your body too?"
"That's nonsense," Molly Moon said angrily. "All those backward people you're talking about couldn't learn the higher spiritual arts…"
"Mounty, you're a scientist," Joe Moon said imploringly. "Tell Simon what's wrong with his theory."
"Anybody can spin theories," Babbit said carefully. "Science is a matter of proof. You can make up a million and one theories, Simon, but if you go to work for a corporation you'll have to produce theories that engineers can use. The one theory' out of a million that can be proven. Everything else is just idle speculation."
"Exactly." Joe Moon beamed, delighted. "Let the coons earn the right to live in Evanston, I say."
"Well, this theory could be checked out," Simon went on guilelessly; but Babbit knew he was baiting everybody. "If such an uh invasion were occurring, it would be aimed at people with important positions. Business executives. Government officials. The people who control the media. Check them out and see if they're all growing a little bit weird lately…"
The helicopter descended and the earth turned to flame. My daughter ran toward me, burning, screaming. Why was it an American flag on the helicopter instead of a swastika? Was it Galley or Eichmann who was looking at me with imploring eyes begging my understanding and forgiveness?
Day after day the napalm fell from the skies. Day after day children died screaming at 1,000° Centigrade. Month after month, year after year, the fire continued to consume the world, Fed King's world. He sat in the lotus, his shakti mounted on his penis, their eyes locked, until the neurological synergy occurred: They were One. And then the Others were there, too, all the minds of space-time who turned on the neuroatomic circuit, the beetle intellects of Betelgeuse, Nicholas and Perenella Flamel, Bruno and Elizabeth, Cagliostro, and, as the time warp opened, galaxy after galaxy joined in, the Starmaker appeared dimly, and the first jump was possible.
He was a flower on a rose bush in England and a poet was staring at him as he stared back at the poet: "The roses have the look of flowers that are looked at" emerged from that moment.
SHe was a microbe flailing tentatively in a soupy ocean.
He was a Terran archivist looking back at the decline and fall of the American Empire.
SHe was Mountbatten Babbit in Evanston, Illinois-a good one, grab quick, this was one of the murderers, hold on-