Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy Part 10

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 a.s.sume 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 s.p.a.ce-time-matter continuum, but we're more ignorant than Asia or Africa about s.p.a.ce-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 c.o.o.ns earn the right to live in Evanston, I say."

"Well, this theory could 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...." 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 Calley 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, Ped Xing's world. He sat in the lotus, his shakti shakti mounted on his p.e.n.i.s, their eyes locked, until the neurological synergy occurred: They were One. And then the Others were there, too, all the minds of s.p.a.ce-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. mounted on his p.e.n.i.s, their eyes locked, until the neurological synergy occurred: They were One. And then the Others were there, too, all the minds of s.p.a.ce-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- Mountbatten Babbit, Ph.D., became aware that every body at the table was staring at him. Then he realized that he was sobbing. "Oh, G.o.d," he said, a mind at the end of its tether. "Oh, G.o.d, G.o.d, G.o.d ..."

It was explained as a breakdown due to overwork. There was no psychiatrist; ambition forbade the risk, so a clinical psychologist of Behaviorist orientation was found, on the faculty of Northwestern University, and the visits were listed as consultation in social psychology for business management.

Mounty and the psychologist defined Ped Xing as a hallucination caused by the negative conditioning of the pacifist pickets surrounding Weishaupt Chemicals. A method of deconditioning was worked out, using hypnosis and aversion therapy against all manifestations of the Ped Xing persona. The aversive stimulus was apomorphine, a non-addicting morphine derivative that provokes vomiting and sensations of death. At first Ped Xing would speak directly at these moments, begging and pleading, "Don't send me back to the flames...." Later he became defiant. "We'll be back, millions of us, from all over the Third World. Living in your fat white bodies. Running your corporations and bureaucracies. All through the seventies and eighties. We'll be back." As the theory of aversion therapy predicts, Ped Xing was finally extinguished.

Safely established beyond freedom and dignity, Mounty Babbit became the ideal conditioned subject. In 1982 he resigned his position as President of Weishaupt Chemicals to become Special Scientific Advisor to the White House.

ANOTHER EIGENSTATE EIGENSTATE.

That which is forbidden is not allowed.-JOHN LILLY, The Center of the Cyclone The Center of the Cyclone O how money makes me hum O how money makes me hum O how money makes me hum Benny Benedict was working on his mantra, and didn't realize that he had wandered quite a bit from the Sanskrit original.

O how money makes me hum O how money makes me hum O how money makes me hum the purpose of suffering is to make us ask the important questions what a guy a stage magician he said O how money makes me hum O how money makes me hum He had reached the corner of Lexington and Twenty-third Street.

Pablo Gomez stepped out of a doorway and hit Benny from behind, hard, with a lead pipe.

Oh mommie take me home Oh mommie take me home ... Benny exploded into the white light.

Fortunately the last remaining citizen of Manhattan with a sense of civic duty, one James Mortimer, came around the corner at just that moment. James Mortimer carried a police whistle at all times, since he knew he was living in a still-violent society. He blew several blasts, loud and shrill. Pablo Gomez fled without getting any money, and an ambulance arrived in time to rush Benny to the hospital and save his life.

THE ROOMS WERE TURNED INSIDE OUT.

The "nervous breakdown" (as it was called) of Ha.s.san i Sabbah X did not attract much attention; the Cult of the Black Mother had never been as well publicized as the Nation of Islam or the Black Panthers. The New York News-Times-Post News-Times-Post actually referred to Ha.s.san as a "well-known nightclub owner in Harlem," in their very brief story, and their reporter hadn't even investigated far enough to learn that Ha.s.san was also the head of a cult with more members than the Missouri Synod Lutherans. But, then, the Cult of the Black Mother had never been publicity-minded; even actually referred to Ha.s.san as a "well-known nightclub owner in Harlem," in their very brief story, and their reporter hadn't even investigated far enough to learn that Ha.s.san was also the head of a cult with more members than the Missouri Synod Lutherans. But, then, the Cult of the Black Mother had never been publicity-minded; even The Amsterdam News The Amsterdam News, unaware of its members.h.i.+p, described it as "a small church."

Ha.s.san had been delivered to Bellevue in a state of raving mania, under physical restraint by two of his former aides. The psychiatrists quickly p.r.o.nounced him "paranoid schizophrenic" and prescribed the heaviest tranquilizer then available, which in fact kept him fairly drowsy even when he wasn't comatose. Nonetheless, when able to summon the energy to rise out of his lethargy and talk again, he would monotonously repeat to any other inmate or orderly who came near, "Look, I don't belong here. Something terrible has happened. I'm really the President of this f.u.c.king country ..." and so on, with endless elaborations and details.

"A deeply defended psychosis," the psychiatrists decided, and began a course of electroshock treatments.

Whenever the flipped-out black came out of his daze, however, he would begin the same schizzy ranting all over: "Hey, listen, I'm the President of this f.u.c.king country...."

The electroshock was stepped up. Ha.s.san retreated into a permanent daze and ceased to annoy anybody. By this time his brain had been fried to the consistency of a White Tower scrambled egg and his impressions of the external world were mostly olfactory and aural, like those of a subnormal toy poodle; he no longer argued about anything, since he no longer understood such abstract concepts as ego persistence or ident.i.ty. The psychiatrists were satisfied: "If you can't cure a nut," their tacit motto was, "at least you can keep him from running around the ward annoying people."

Two FBI agents later discussed the matter privately.

"You think CIA did it?" asked the first, Tobias Knight.

"You figure he'd been working for them?" the other, Roy Ubu, asked in return. "I always had that notion myself. But why would they f.u.c.k his head like that, when G.o.d only knows what he might spill to somebody who'd get released from the nuthouse and repeat it to a reporter? Nah, CIA doesn't work that way. They'd just-" He drew a finger across his throat.

"I don't believe in coincidences," Knight said stubbornly. "Somebody got to him."

"Something," Ubu corrected with a sinister intonation. "You know as well as I do what he was. A witch." Ubu corrected with a sinister intonation. "You know as well as I do what he was. A witch."

"Voodooist," Knight corrected.

"Whatever. Everybody we ever sent in died of a heart attack, right?" Ubu looked over his shoulder. "Officially, the Bureau doesn't believe in witches. But I'll tell you what happened to Mr. Ha.s.san i Sabbah X in my my opinion. He called up something that he couldn't put down." opinion. He called up something that he couldn't put down."

THE LOCK IS A HOLE.

Dr. Francis Dashwood-neat, clean, rich, and not yet forty-drove into the grounds of the o.r.g.a.s.m Research Foundation on Van Ness in San Francisco at precisely 8:57 in the morning. He checked his wrist.w.a.tch again after he parked his sleek M.G. in the executive parking lot. It was 8:58. Excellent. A quick trot and he was at his desk before the office clock reached nine. Once again he had demonstrated the punctuality (a.n.a.l-retentive personality, silly prescientific Freudians called it) which had contributed so much to raising him to his present high position in the medical research bureaucracy of the United States.

Frank Dashwood, M.D., L.L.D., Ph.D., at the age of only thirty-eight, headed the most heavily funded and hotly debated inst.i.tution in the world: o.r.g.a.s.m Research, a multimillion-dollar project dedicated to filling in the psychological intangibles left out of the pioneering research of Masters and Johnson two decades earlier. Since these psychological intangibles were-as Dr. Dashwood sometimes wittily remarked-"both psychological and intangible," there was no end to the research. Meanwhile, the funding money came rolling in.

Frank was, according to a survey by a management a.n.a.lyst, one of the seventeen men in the United States who was totally happy with his job.

Other researchers sometimes expressed envy of this fact. "What red-blooded man," one of them had once asked with some warmth, "wouldn't be happy supervising other people's o.r.g.a.s.ms and pulling down a swift sixty grand swift sixty grand a year for it?" a year for it?"

This was somewhat unfair to a dedicated scientist. Dr. Dashwood was truly fascinated by o.r.g.a.s.ms-as Edison was by electricity-and had an inexhaustible curiosity about every possible factor involved in every possible twitch, itch, moan, gibber, gasp, sob, shudder, or howl connected with that dramatic biological tremor. Even more, however, he was mesmerized by lines, curves, averages, graphs, and every aspect of mathematics that could be clearly visualized. The world, for him, was not made up of "things," crude Disneyland animations projected by our lower nervous circuits, but of energy meshes. With no knowledge of Zen Buddhism, he intuitively shared Sixth Patriarch Hui Neng's vision that "from the beginning there has never been a thing." thing." Dr. Dashwood lived in a universe of transactions that could be written as equations and traced on graph paper. Dr. Dashwood lived in a universe of transactions that could be written as equations and traced on graph paper.

Above his desk was a motto suggested ironically by a skeptical friend. Dr. Dashwood saw nothing funny about it and adopted it as his own banner: SCIENCE, PURE SCIENCE, AND d.a.m.nED BE HE.

WHO FIRST CRIES "HOLD, TOO MUCH!"

As he settled himself at his desk he observed that Ms. Karrige, his secretary, had already poured his coffee for him. Fine: The girl (femperson, he corrected) was really getting broken to the harness. He whipped out his thermometer and measured the black liquid in the cup: 98.4 degrees. Excellent: She was learning to meet his exacting demands.

Dr. Dashwood could not abide inexact.i.tude or slovenliness in any human activity. "A thing worth doing," he would explain to his subordinates, "is worth doing right." right." He said this often, and malicious members of the staff said it even more often, when he was out of earshot, with a tone and a facial expression that were caricatures of his own. He said this often, and malicious members of the staff said it even more often, when he was out of earshot, with a tone and a facial expression that were caricatures of his own.

With a smile on his lips and a glint in his eye, Frank Dashwood buzzed Ms. Karrige. "What's first for today?" he asked cheerfully.

The Jabberwock was growing: The key was no key....

FUNNY VALENTINE.

Megalithic monuments were certainly not places of wors.h.i.+p but places of refuge for people fleeing the advance of mud.-FURBISH LOUSEWART V, Unsafe Wherever You Go Unsafe Wherever You Go While Dr. Dashwood was pressing his buzzer in San Francisco, Starhawk was carefully s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g two mountain climber's hooks into a hill across the bay in Oakland. The first rope was wrapped around his waist outside the trousers, ran through a pulley, and came back to his hand. The second rope circled his chest, ran through the second pulley, and was secured to a tree. He began lowering himself down through the redwoods.

At first there was no visibility at ground level, but as he descended the roof of Murphy's house a bit of yard came into view. None of the neighboring houses was visible at all.

Approaching Murphy's roof, Starhawk slowed and then stopped his descent. In midair he turned, every muscle straining, and continued his descent headfirst, legs tightly together, the style of a professional highdiver. A small film of perspiration formed around his lips. He was totally silent.

Twice, redwood branches almost tangled his ropes. He remained totally silent while disengaging.

Finally, he gripped the roof edge with his left hand, let out more slack with his right, and lowered himself until he was looking in the corner of a window upside down. It was the bedroom. Murphy wasn't there. The bed was unmade.

Starhawk raised himself, swung, and descended again to inspect another window. The living room. Murphy was sitting in a red plush chair, his face expressionless. He was listening to music on the stereo. A shotgun leaned against the wall behind him.

Very slowly, Starhawk raised himself again and swung to the next window. In five minutes, totally silent, he was sure that there was n.o.body in any of the other rooms.

He slowly raised himself again and found a perch in a redwood that commanded a view of the front yard and doorway. He waited.

The music from the stereo drifted up to him. Peggy Lee was singing "My Funny Valentine."

After waiting forty-five minutes, Starhawk descended again. Murphy was no longer in the living room. The shotgun was missing also.

"The f.u.c.k?" Starhawk muttered.

He swung carefully over to the bedroom window. The shotgun rested against the wall beside the closet.

Murphy came out of the closet and picked up the shotgun again. Careful man, that Murphy; never go anywhere without your shotgun when you're holding maybe half a million in hot snow.

Murphy looked quite happy now. He looked like the happiest man Starhawk had ever seen.

Starhawk returned to his perch in the redwood tree. Murphy had obviously taken a snort of the c.o.ke and was probably feeling like Luke Skywalker heading for the Death Star. Starhawk waited silently. It was good to know where the cocaine was.

A few minutes later a squirrel came along an overhead branch and almost walked over Starhawk's rope. He stopped, frozen: unable to believe that a human being was way up here in the tree.

Starhawk and the squirrel stared at each other, both immobile. Then the squirrel ran.

Starhawk smiled. He went on waiting, quietly.

FIRST MAMMAL-ROBOT DYAD.

Dr. Dashwood buzzed Ms. Karrige. "What's first for today?" he asked cheerfully, eager to plunge directly back into the thick of things, as was typical of him on Monday mornings.

"The uh colored gentleman from New York," came the tinny voice on the intercom.

"Send him right in!" Frank said eagerly.

Robert Pearson was dressed in his "dealing with the straight establishment" clothes, which meant that he looked like the black equivalent of a Mafia don moving in on a legit corporation. You had to look twice to realize that he was too resplendent to appear really conservative.

"You really have the um merchandise?" Dr. Dashwood asked.

"I wouldn't waste your time otherwise," Pearson said carefully.

"And it's not flaccid? I can get them in flaccid state from Johns Hopkins's s.e.x-change department, by the gross. This must be totally erect, and I can't imagine how you managed that...."

Pearson removed a package from his briefcase. "See for yourself," he said.

Dr. Dashwood spent several minutes examining the ghoulish trophy. Pearson sat back and lit up a black Sherman cigarette. He was wondering just how surprised Dashwood would be if he mentioned his own long-ago Ph.D. or his career as lead guitarist with Clark Kent and his Supermen. He was just another black gangster as far as Dashwood knew or cared.

"It's real," Dr. Dashwood said finally. "A beautiful specimen," he added with total scientific detachment. Then he looked directly at Pearson with unblinking curiosity. "You either have a friend with a truly desperate need for money or an enemy who now knows what it means to rouse your anger," he commented mildly.

The haggling over money began at that point. Pearson left on the noon flight to New York, bearing $10,000, which later found its way to Afghanistan and came back in the form of bricks of pure has.h.i.+sh.

Dr. Dashwood, meanwhile, was in m.o.q.-the multiple-o.r.g.a.s.m-quotient laboratory-making certain technical adjustments on the ACE equipment. ACE-for artificial coital equipment-had been devised by the Masters-Johnson team and allowed a plastic imitation p.e.n.i.s, containing microphotographic devices, to stimulate the inside of a v.a.g.i.n.a while obtaining clear photographic evidence of the actual physiological changes occurring therein. o.r.g.a.s.m Research had used the same model in their investigation of m.o.q.-the endeavor to find out precisely how many o.r.g.a.s.ms a multiply o.r.g.a.s.mic woman could actually have without untoward side effects. It was Dashwood's conviction that, the physiological data being already determined, a real p.e.n.i.s was more practical now; but a year-long search for the once-famous Cuban Superman had failed to locate the stalwart stud. ("Those b.l.o.o.d.y puritanical Commies have probably rehabilitated rehabilitated him into him into more socially useful work," more socially useful work," Dashwood concluded mournfully.) Dashwood concluded mournfully.) Now at last with the relic of Wildeblood's quantum jump across the gender gap attached to ACE, Dashwood had the ideal scientific instrument to measure m.o.q.

A subject had been obtained via ads placed in underground newspapers throughout the state of California. ("What do Easterners know about fancy f.u.c.king?" Dashwood asked, ruling out everybody on the other side of the Rockies. All that part of the country, he firmly believed, was a puritan's heaven and a hedonist's h.e.l.l.) The ad said bluntly: s.e.xPOT WANTEDWe are not making p.o.r.ny movies. We are not kinks or creeps. This is a serious scientific project. If you think you qualify, and would like to earn $1,000, write Box 56, San Francisco, in strict confidence.

Weeding out unlikely prospects had been time-consuming and somewhat wearying, although a few had set some interesting records with the old plastic ACE apparatus. The subject selected to have the trial run on the new reincarnated ACE was a Ms. Rhoda Chief, vocalist with a rock group called the Civic Monster. Known to critics as the best heavy rock singer since Janis Joplin, Rhoda was originally renowned back in the sixties for her own curious mutation of old-fas.h.i.+oned Dixieland "scat singing"; what few realized was that her riffs were not mere Jabberwocky but actually fragments of the Enochian Keys used by Dr. John Dee, Mr. Aleister Crowley, and other magicians. People who came out of Civic Monster concerts seeing auras, hearing strange voices, catching odd fugitive glimpses into fairyland and Oz, or seeing the djinns gathered about the throne of Allah, attributed this to the heavy marijuana fumes always circulating in the air at rock concerts. What Rhoda herself saw during those moments was a secret between herself and her occasional lover in that decade, the controversial stage magician Cagliostro the Great.

Rhoda had gained another reputation in the 1970s: "That chick gives head better than anybody in show biz," it was often said in High Society. But this rumor had not reached the aseptic scientific world in which Dr. Dashwood moved.

Twirling his dapper bow tie debonairly, Francis Dashwood, physician and scientist, strode down the hall to Laboratory Three.

Rhoda Chief, already nude but with a single sheet demurely spread over her full and obviously still-glorious body, smiled brightly as she saw the doctor.

"Where's ACE?" she asked cheerfully.

"We've been making some improvements," Dashwood said with professional unction. "You might find today's research a distinct improvement over the test runs last week."

The sheet slipped a bit, revealing several inches of round, tense breast. "You mean a bigger-size gizmo on it? I already been through the Errol Flynn, the Primo Carnera, and the King Kong." These were technical slang for various models of robot d.i.l.d.o.

What a fantastic piece of hot l.u.s.tful woman she was, Frank thought irrelevantly. Despite his scientific att.i.tude, he felt himself secretly longing for the moments ahead when the sheet would finally be swept aside to reveal that incredible body, which had appeared in his dreams twice over the weekend. With an effort, he resumed his professional manner.

"No," he said quietly. "No larger sizes. The King Kong is the biggest we have in stock. Today is something entirely new. We are using the real thing-but still attached to the ACE machine, so you can control it as always, calibrating speed and depth of thrust and so forth to your own special requirements. Ah, here it comes now."