“But I told you I wouldn’t allow that! I can’t afford to be involved in murder. Things are bad enough already.”
“It wasn’t murder. The way I see it, it was self-defense. Anyhow, as it happens, it doesn’t make any difference what you want to call it, because the sentry had bad aim and Worthington was only wounded. He escaped. He told the Inductance Corps, and they’re coming to lay siege to the prison.”
“Then it’s all over! You botched it! We’re through!”
“No—wait till I’ve explained everything. We’re saved, maybe. I’ve been radioing to the Masters, and…”
“Do they still use radios here?” St Bernard asked. “I’ve heard some charming transcriptions of the old radio programs. Do you know The Green Hornet? Thrilling stuff. But I’m surprised to hear that the Masters listen to the Dingoes’ programs.”
“It was more like an SOS than a program that I sent out. I’ve been calling for help ever since Worthington got away. After all, it can’t make much difference if it’s intercepted.”
“Did you contact them? That’s the important thing.”
“I think so. I contacted someone. But how can I tell who it is? It’s all in Morse. Anyhow, I went under the assumption that it was them. We bargained all morning before we reached an agreement. I said I’d help all the pets get out of the prison, and they promised to let me and four friends come along with the pets and live in a kennel. So now it’s only a matter of assembling all the pets around Needlepoint Hill at twelve tonight.”
“Why do we have to take them outside the prison? That sounds like a trick.”
“It has something to do with the field of potential. It’s stronger in places that come to a point. Thirteen thousand pets would weigh a good two thousand tons, and the Masters say they’re still weak from S-Day. Do you think we should trust them?”
“Unless you’re ready to withstand a siege, it looks like we’ll have to. But how are we going to get thirteen thousand pets out the gates by twelve tonight? What explanation could we possibly give Frangle for it? There must be limits to the man’s credulity.”
“I don’t know,” Palmino said, shaking his greasy, black curls in perplexity. “I thought we might send some of the pets out on work details with my guards, and the others could sneak out this window. One at a time. Unobtrusively, sort of.”
“The others? The thirteen thousand others?”
“It’s sticky,” Palmino agreed, digging his fingers into his hair. “It’s really sticky.”
Pluto, who had till this time given no impression of being aware of the matters under discussion, suddenly arose from the corner in which he had been sitting in Gandhi-like self-absorption, and, raising the bolt-bedizened forefinger, announced in magistral tones:
“Now here’s my plan…”
Chapter Nine
In which we may witness Salami, and almost everybody escapes.
The great escape plot almost foundered at its launching, due to Pluto’s artsy-fartsy insistence on arena staging.
“Theatre-in-the-round, my good God!” I exclaimed. “These are Dingoes, not Elizabethans, boy. The groundlings, the Great Unwashed, the stinking rabble that doesn’t know the difference between a Holbein and a hole in the ground. What did Bizet say when he sat down to write the Toreador Song? He said, if they want merde, I’ll give them merde. This is Mass Culture. You’re in Hollywood now. Remember it.”
“But a proscenium arch! It’s… it’s indecent! Hamlet had arena staging. It was good enough for Marlowe; it was good enough for Jonson; it was good enough for Shakespeare; and it’s good enough for me.”
“Amen, brother!” said Clea, clapping her hands.
“They used a proscenium arch at Bayreuth,” St Bernard ventured timidly. Logical discourse was not his element.
“And if it was good enough for Wagner, it should be good enough for us,” I said, grateful for whatever allies. “Illusion—that’s the ticket! People like to be fooled. Besides, if we don’t have a big old painted backdrop, how will we get everyone out the gate? This isn’t art for art’s sake, but for ours.”
“Philistine!” Pluto growled. “Have it your way tonight, but if we ever get this show out of the provinces…”
“Once we’re in Swan Lake, I wash my hands of it. But for tonight, we’d better move. Clea, start the ladies sewing up costumes and rehearsing the production numbers. Remember, sex is everything. And they’ve got to fill up a lot of time, so don’t let them have anything until they’re screaming for it—and then give them half. Palmino, you’ve got an exodus to organize and a set to pound together. Don’t fuss over the style, but make sure the backdrop is opaque. Pluto, you can start helping St Bernard with his lines.”
“But they aren’t written yet.”
“Too late, too late. Give him his lines now and write them when you get to Swan Lake. That was Shakespeare’s way. For my own part, I’ll be the rest of the day at least convincing Frangle that Salami’s going to be the solution to his morale problem.”
“Not salami,” Pluto protested, “—Salome!”
“Salami,” I said sternly. “Remember—you’re in Hollywood now.”
“Salami?” Captain Frangle asked, giving a bewildered twist to his moustaches. “For my part—that is to say, speaking unofficially—I think it could be very, uh, beautiful… is that the word? The Bible and all, yes—but nevertheless.”
“Nevertheless, Captain?”
“Nevertheless, the men, you know. The men are a crude sort, generally speaking. Not that I wouldn’t enjoy a, uh, what is the word… a little culture?… myself, you understand. I’ve always fancied myself an intellectual, you know, but nevertheless.”
“Oh, as for the men, I can assure you there won’t be anything highbrow about this production. You know the story of Salami, of course?”
“Of course. That is to say… if you could refresh my memory…?”
“By all means.” And I told him the story, more or less as it appears in Matthew and Mark and Wilde and Hofmannsthal—and in the Rita Hayworth movie that had given Pluto his inspiration. Thank heaven for the film archives at the Shroeder Kennel! Pluto had altered the traditional story somewhat in the interests of heightened vulgarity.
“And all that is in the Bible?” Frangle asked, at the conclusion of my tale.
“Even as I have said.”
“And they’re going to do that on stage—here?”
“As I’ve been given to understand, five hundred or more of the most beautiful bitches in the penitentiary are rehearsing the roles of the harem slaves. Salami herself is a vision of such chaste purity that words are inadequate.”
“It might be a very rewarding experience at that. Eh, Major? I’ve always held that religious education is essential to the moral well-being of an army. Wasn’t it Napoleon who said an army travels on its soul? Too many commanders these days are willing to let spiritual matters go to hell.”
“I never thought you were one, Captain Frangle.”
Frangle smiled and adjusted one moustache to an expression of modest self-satisfaction and the other to randy anticipation. “When does the fun begin?”
“At nine-thirty, Captain. Promptly at nine-thirty.”
Promptly at nine-forty-five, the curtain rose and one hundred and fourteen guards and three officers of the St Cloud Repatriation Center gasped as one man as they caught their first view of Herod’s Palace in Galilee, brilliantly illuminated by the four searchlights which had been taken down from the prison watchtowers. The backdrop represented an infinite perspective of lotus columns and gothic vaulted roofs, of gilded caryatids and marble pylons, of niches and cornices and ogive windows looking out upon still vaster Babylonian perspectives—a mural that had been the corporate achievement of two hundred and several pets—and looked it. The composition flowed freely from style to style, from Poussin to Chirico and thence to Constable, as naturally as a spring brook babbles over a bed of boulders. Every square inch glowed with a disquietingly gemlike light, since the paint was still fresh and sticky.