Fun House (10 page)

I lifted my eyes to the white screen in the ceiling, and as I did so I was no longer conscious there was a screen. I was in an abandoned farmhouse, peering through a window. Cavalrymen in Confederate uniforms galloped up across a cornfield. And I was afraid of them. My heart was beating wildly, I was sweating. I raised the pistol in my hand and aimed at their leader, sighting. I lowered my hand and turned from the window. On the floor was a dead soldier in a bloody Union uniform. Tears filled my eyes and again I faced the window, raising the pistol …

The screen suddenly appeared, white and blank. “The Rulers vetoed the Time Stream,” I heard the professor saying. “Too activist. People thought they were really making history. The master adapted the Time Stream principle to the Ciner-amours
¹
, using the time principle in a passive way, which he combined with the spectacle principle of Cecil De Mille
²
.”

I wiped my eyes. They were wet. It was real tears that I had wept in that abandoned farmhouse. I felt inside my pockets for the pistol but there was no pistol, and I thought I would never know who the dead Union soldier was. Never …

Silently, I followed Professor Fleischkopf out of the room. We returned down the corridor to the door where we had paused a few minutes ago. “We are what we think we are,” the professor said softly. “Who are we, where do we come from?”

He opened the door, and we went inside into a big room that was all white walls. In his black and purple cape but wearing Scotch kilts, Dr. Bangani was sitting before some huge machine, studying its gauges, levers, valves, mechanical pituitaries and other apparatus unfamiliar to me. He was so absorbed he didn’t seem to be in charge of the machine so much as in its charge. On the white walls, the warning DANGER was printed in black letters.

The professor coughed, and Dr. Bangani absentmindedly glanced up at us. “Welcome to Bangani Castle, old chap,” he said to me, returning to his problem.

The professor lowered his head and whispered in my ear. “Address him as Lord Alpha, you know the alpha-particle man Lord Rutherford? A great man, Rutherford. His experiments opened up modern exploration of the atom.”

I nodded unhappily. I should have been accustomed to the split personalities so common among them, these people who, becoming bored with themselves, rushed from self to self, as one might say — but I hadn’t expected boredom in a magicientist like Dr. Bangani. I thought of how I had been kidnapped and brought to this place. I thought of the time stream, the real time stream that was rushing towards Doomsday. “Lord Alpha!” I called.

“Welcome, welcome, old chap. Sit down won’t you?” He had even changed his accent — it was an English accent. “Sit down. Don’t stand there like a silly rotter!”

There was only one other chair in the room, a white metal one with tubular jointed legs. As I sat down — how can I describe that sensation of horror? — that chair seemed to be sitting up to me, meeting my lowering body and holding me tight. I tried to escape. I couldn’t. I screamed.

They both stared at me with a cold scientific curiosity.

“Master, I would like to try it out on him,” the professor said to Lord Alpha-B. “NA+NO
₇
=H
₂
SO
₉
R is just the solution.”

“Later perhaps, professor.” He moved one of the machine’s dials, and instantly the wall I was facing sank into the floor. Behind it was a small cell, unfurnished except for a cot on which lay a sleeping man. “I’ll get the bugger up,” Lord Alpha-B. remarked casually and pressed a button.

The sleeping man jumped upright, rubbing the back of his neck where the Shocko
¹
had hit him. There was nothing to keep him from stepping into the room where we were. Nothing except that same Shocko. He cursed as he faced us, and I recognized Barnum Fly. Barnum Fly!

At the Venus wine shop I hadn’t seen his face. It was a thrill to see it now — the face of the man who had become World Enemy Number One. The short broken nose, the grayish eyes, the tousled gray hair sprouting in all directions as if from a patchwork of scalps painfully reassembled on one head — so the Commissioner had humorously but accurately described his hair. The Oedipus Rex
¹
mouth with its full maternal upper lip, and thin calculating lower lip.

“We’ve caught the bugger,” Lord Alpha-B. said to me. “Unfortunately we haven’t got our hands on the A-I-D. I’m going to put you in there with him until you tell us where you and the Commissioner have hidden it.” “Hidden it!” I cried. “For God’s sake — ”

But he had already pulled a switch, and that clutching claw of a chair shot me across the room. There was a blaze of light and the next thing I knew the field of Shocko was neutralized, and I was standing alongside the cot.

“You’ll have to sleep on the floor,” Barnum Fly said with a yawn.

It was typical of the man, I thought numbly. Slowly the wall was sliding into place. I could only see the professor’s head, and then it was gone. I groaned at the windowless and doorless box in which I was a prisoner.

“You’ll get used to it,” Barnum Fly said.

“Oh, God,” I said.

He stared at me. “Are you a member of the brotherhood?”

Only now did I become aware of the fact that I was still wearing my St. Ewagiow suit. I lifted up the end of my white necktie with its black coil of intestines design, and in a rage I pulled it off and threw it on the floor.

“You’re in bad condition, brother,” he said. “Listen, you can sleep on the cot if you want.”

I felt like crying. I felt like butting my head against the wall. Instead I reached into my pocket for my U-Latus. There were none. “Not even one damn pill left,” I sobbed with frustration.

“Will it make so much difference on the Day of Judgment?” he asked and stared up at some point above my head.

I looked at him with horror as he stared at his private radioactive visions. His St. Ewagiow sympathies had evidently affected his once brilliant brain. Then I remembered that all prisons were alike. This greatest of the magicientists, stripped of his honors, kidnapped by his enemy Dr. Bangani, was just another prisoner. A prisoner who had got religion — the religion of a death cult.

“Just one pill,” I muttered. “One little U-Latu.”

He dug his hand into his pocket and tossed me a box. I opened it gratefully but it was empty. “Damn!” I shouted.

“Eat it,” he said. “It’ll help you.”

I gulped down the box
¹
and after a few minutes I felt a wan smile come to my lips. “Thanks,” I said. “I never thought I’d thank you for anything, Barnum.”

“Thank Death the Redeemer,” he replied earnestly.

“I’m not a member of the St. Ewagiow and never want to be,” I said.

“Do you know who rides?” he asked.

I shrugged, and he continued. “The four horsemen. On the first horse is Death. On the second horse is Death. On the third horse — ”

“Is Death,” I said, with what might be called a cheerful horror. Here it was June 28th and where the A-I-D was, God alone knew. If the St. Ewagiow had hold of it, the Day of Judgment would soon dawn — and yet, as I mashed the pulp of that U-Latu box, I felt like smiling. A vision of two perfectly fitting angel wings drifted before me. They were mine, those pearly white wings, and all I had to do was attach them to my collarbones by their loop-over feathers, and when the A-I-D blew up the world’s store of A-Bombs, H-Bombs, C-Bombs, Dirty Bombs and Clean Bombs, ICBM’s, Anti-Missiles and Anti-Anti Missiles I would be off flying to the moon …

“Death has ruled the world since the first platypus crawled in the slime among the dinosaurs,” he exhorted me. “Where is Cheops the Magnificent? Where is Agalamah the Great? Alexander? Napoleon the World Conqueror? Hitler the Invincible?”

He went on for a long time. I remember laughing sleepily as I played with my own fantasties. Then the effects of the U-Latu box wore off, and I began to think he wasn’t so damned funny. It wasn’t long before the first chill of fear stabbed me. “Has Dr. Bangani got the A-I-D?” I asked him.

“Do you believe in Science?”

“I believe in life!” I said frantically. “Barnum, listen to me. You left the Reservation but some of it must remain in your heart. You’ve got children, your daughter Cleo — ”

“Science!” he shouted. “Always trying to prolong life. And the result? Man who used to live thirty-one years and four months now lives to a hundred. Don’t talk to me about Science, for who always wins in the end? Death the Invincible!”

Tears filled my eyes. Then I had an inspiration. “You’ve convinced me, brother. I would like to join the brotherhood.” He kissed me on both cheeks. “Hallelujah, brother.”

“Hallelujah,” I said with only the trace of a sob.

“I’ll initiate you, brother. Assume the sacred position.”

“What’s that, brother?”

“Lie flat on the cot.”

I did as he ordered while he yelped his hallelujahs. “Close your eyes, brother, and try to keep from breathing. That is, keep your breathing to a minimum. Low and quiet. Low and quiet. Don’t carry it to an extreme or you’ll pass out. Ready, brother?”

“Ready,” I said from the cot in the quietest dead-man’s voice I could manage.

“Where is Cheops the Magnificent, Agalamah the Great, Alexander, Napoleon the World Conqueror, Hitler the Invincible? Nowhere and everywhere brother!” he chanted.

The ceremony continued for five minutes and then he pronounced me a full member in good standing of the St. Ewagiow. I waited another few minutes, and then I said, “Brother, now that we’re brothers do you think we should have any secrets between us?”

“With death between us what use are secrets, brother?”

“Speaking of death, will we all die on the 4th?”

“Let’s hope so, brother.”

“Has Dr. Bangani got the A-I-D, brother?”

“No. Only Brother Fly knows where the A-I-D is, brother.”

I stared at him, and he whispered. “I am not Barnum Fly, brother.” He actually smiled at my astonished expression, a ghastly St. Ewagiow type of smile. “My name’s Bowling, brother. Milton Berle
¹
Bowling.”

I examined that face of his — it was Barnum F.’s face — but a light was beginning to dawn. After all this was the land of Garden of Eden salons and hybridized scientists. “You’re a remake, brother?” I said.

He nodded. “That old Bangani is senile, brother. Brother Fly, the instrument of fulfillment is free, brother. Free! The A-I-D is safe, brother to destroy the world!”

“Thank God!” I said.

“Thank Death!” he said.

Hope, wonderful hope brought a smile to my lips — without U-Latus. There was still a chance. There were still six days left. Dr. Bangani had been taken in by a simple trick, outsmarted by his apprentice. I thought of Commissioner Sonata and his organization, and in my joy I grabbed Barnum’s double and began dancing around the cell with him. “Dear Milton — You are Milton, aren’t you? Thank God!”

“Thank Death I am!” he raved. “Brother Fly is free to destroy the world, hallelujah! Hallelujah for the A-I-D. Hallelujah for science the servant of Death!”

“Three hallelujahs for Death!” I yelled happily. “And three more for the dust from which we’ve come and the dust to which we’ll return. Oh, the glorious victorious dust of salvation, decimation and extermination!”

He stopped dancing and said. “R. Night Bauden himself would have been proud of that. Brother, I don’t say this lightly, but although we’ve just met, I would say you have a future ahead of you in the brotherhood.”

That fanatic was poor company. He had only one subject and a dead one at that — to joke grimly. It was a relief when the wall slid into the floor by the now familiar flash. I looked out at the professor and Dr. Bangani or Lord Alpha-B. for he was still wearing those Scotch kilts. I signaled that I wanted to talk. They consulted together, and then I was whirled out of the cell via the by-now-familiar clutching claw of a chair.

“You’ve got the wrong man!” I said excitedly. “He’s not Barnum Fly. You’ve got an imposter — ”

They seemed totally uninterested. The professor put his hand into his coat and pulled out a hypodermic. I tried to escape from that chair but it held me like glue. “Listen to me for God’s sake!” I yelled.

“You killed the last two, Professor Fleischkopf,” Lord Alpha-B. reminded his hybrid.

“I’ve perfected it now, master. NA+NO
₇
=H
₂
SO
₉
R. It can’t go wrong.” He walked to me and I began to scream. “It won’t harm you,” he said gently. “It’s perfect now. All it is, is a little truth serum. Truth is a hobby of mine,” he explained as I cringed from him. “I’ve always believed that truth is an enzyme that can be detected chemically.”

“You madmen!” I screamed. “You’ll end up by killing everybody! There are only six days left, you madmen — ”

“Who is mad, and who is sane?” the professor asked and sighed philosophically. “A problem for the neuro-craniologists. Not my discipline, I confess. I am a bio-physicist, and my research into the nature of truth is somewhat out of my field — ”

“You can’t play games forever!” I shouted. “You haven’t got Barnum Fly!”

“This serum won’t hurt you. If you’re telling the truth, the air you breathe out will be colorless.”

“And if he is lying?” Lord Alpha-B. asked with a cold scientific curiosity.

“If he’s lying he’ll exhale a color somewhere between yellow and saffron depending on his rate of respiration. The SO
₉
you know.”

I was silent. I was trying to think of some argument that might appeal to those cultivated and scientific schizoids. But all I could think of was how much better off I would have been in the hands of genuine madmen. This Professor Fleischkopf of the cauterized conscience who was also Fleischy — and Dr. Bangani who numbered Merlin, Amen-Khat-Re, Einstein and Lord Rutherford among his ancestors! Two split personalities without even a split heart between them. That was the terrible truth.

“It won’t hurt you,” the professor said. I tried to defend myself from his hypodermic but that chair had me trapped. He darted the point into my wrist, stepped back and smiled. “Now we can begin. Who are you?”