Twinkle, Twinkle, "Killer" Kane (11 page)

“Hah! Also you’re not an orange. Colonel No-Face, who the hell
are
you? All this suspense is a pain in the ass.”

“I am Colonel Hudson Kane.”

“You are Gregory Peck, you idiot. Don’t let anyone talk you out of it. No one could ever talk
me
out of it. Not on your life. No, sir. I’d be glad to be Adolphe Menjou. Have I told you about my uncle? Played piano on a mountaintop, naked as a jaybird. Did it almost every morning, Hud, usually at sunrise.”

“Yes, go on,” said Kane.

“That’s all.”

“That’s all?”

“About my uncle, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Hell, isn’t that
enough?
What more do you
want?
”

“Nothing at all. I merely wondered why you mentioned it.”

“I mentioned it, you cluck, because Adolphe Menjou wouldn’t
do
that. And neither would Warren Beatty. I would
love
to be Warren Beatty.”

“Well, I really don’t see why,” said Kane.

“Of
course
you don’t see why! You’re Gregory
Peck!
”

“Yes, yes, I see.”

“Don’t go putting me on, you patronizing snot. You’re not Gregory Peck at all. You’re an unfrocked priest. Incidentally, old padre, I’ve got some rather disquieting news for you.”

“What? What news?”

“I can prove there is a Foot. Would you like me to do it now or would you prefer to wire the Pope before I talk to United Press? Once that happens, Hud, I warn you, there won’t be frocks to go around. Better put yours on now so they’ll think you’re sincere.”

“Let’s hear the proof.”

“Put on the frock. I don’t want to see you hurt.”

“I haven’t
got
a frock.”

“Where the hell
is
it?” demanded Cutshaw. “Walking around at some witches’ sabbath?”

“No.”

“Hud—put on the frock.”

“The proof.”

“You crazy, stubborn kid, Hud. Don’t come sniveling to me later when you can’t get a job cleaning altars.” Cutshaw sat up. “Have you ever heard of ‘entropy’?”

“I have.”

“Say it’s a racehorse and I’ll maim you!”

“It is related,” said Kane, “to a law of thermodynamics.”

“Pretty slick there, Hud. Maybe too slick for your own damn good. Now where am I heading?” demanded Cutshaw.

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

“To where the
universe
is heading! To a final, final heat death! Know what that is? Well, I’ll tell you. I am Morris the Explainer. It’s a basic foos of physics, an
irreversible,
basic foos that one of these days, bye and bye, the whole damn party will be over. In about three billion years every particle of matter in the entire bloody universe will be totally disorganized. Random, totally random. And once the universe is random it’ll maintain a certain temperature, a certain
constant
temperature that never, never changes. And because it never changes the particles of matter in the universe can never hope to reorganize. The universe can’t build up again. Random, it’ll always stay random. Forever and ever and ever. Doesn’t that scare the living piss out of you, Hud? Hud, where’s your frock? Got a spare? Let me have it. I shouldn’t talk like this in front of me. I swear, it gives me the willies.”

As Cutshaw spoke, he stared at the ground, like a man who is talking to himself.

“Please continue,” said Colonel Kane.

“Do you accept my foos of physics?”

“Theories keep changing every year,” said Kane. “But this one seems immutable. At least, the physicists seem to think so.”

“Does that mean ‘yes,’ you devious asp?”

“Yes.”

“You accept my basic foos?”

“Yes, I accept it.”

Cutshaw scowled, looking up. “Don’t say ‘it,’ you swine, say ‘
foos.
’ Say, ‘I accept your basic foos.’”

Kane gripped a pencil under the desk and broke it in half. Then looked at his hands. “I accept your basic foos.”

“Marvey keen! Now follow, Youngblood, follow. Follow very, very carefully.” Cutshaw’s speech became slow and measured. “It’s a matter of
time
before it happens, before we reach that final heat death. And when we reach that final heat death, life can never reappear. If that seems clear, Hud, paw the ground twice.”

“Yes, that’s clear.”

“Your lightning insights purely astound me. Now, let’s take a simple disjunction. Either matter—matter or energy—is eternal and always existed, or it
didn’t
always exist and had a definite beginning in time. So let’s eliminate one or the other. Let’s say that matter always existed. And bear in mind that the coming heat death, Hud, is purely a matter of time. Did I say three billion years? Let’s say a
billion
billion years. I don’t care
what
the time required is, Hud. Whatever it is, it’s limited. But if matter always existed, dunce, you and I aren’t here.”

“What?”

“Hud, we don’t
exist!
Heat death has already come and gone!”

“I don’t follow.”

“You’d rather confess. Give me the frock and I’ll let you confess. Let no one write
‘Obdurate’
on my tombstone. Call me flexible, Hud, and confess.”

“Captain—”

“Warren, then. Call me Warren.”

“I’ve missed a connection,” said Kane, “in the argument.”

“You’ve been missing connections the whole of your life! Foot! You are dumber than a prize Dauphin. Look—if matter has always existed and if heat death is a matter of time like, let’s say, a billion billion years, then, Hud, it’s got to have
already happened!
A billion billion years have come and gone a trillion times,
mon cher,
an
infinite
number of times! Ahead of us and behind us, is an infinite number of years in the case of matter always existing! So heat death has come and gone! And once it comes, there can never be life! Never again! Not for eternity! So how come we’re talking, eh, how come? Though notice that
I
am talking
sensibly
while you just sit there
drooling.
Nevertheless, we are here. Why is that?”

Interest quickened in Kane’s eyes. “Either matter is not eternal, I’d say, or the entropy theory is wrong.”

“
What?
You reject my basic foos, Hud? My basic foos of
physics?
”

“No,” said Kane. “No, I do not.”

“Then there can be only one alternative, Greg: matter
hasn’t
always existed. And that means once there was purely
nothing,
Hud, nothing at all in existence. So how come there’s something
now?
The answer is obvious to even the lowliest, the meanest of intelligences, and that, of course, means you. The answer is something
other
than matter had to make matter begin to be. That something other I call Foot. How does that grab you?”

“It’s rather compelling.”

“There’s only one thing wrong,” said Cutshaw.

“What?”

“I don’t believe it for a minute. What do you take me for, a lunatic?” The astronaut sprang from the sofa, charging the desk with head-bent belligerence. “I copied that proof from a privy wall at a Maryknoll Mission in Beverly Hills!”

“It doesn’t convince you?”

“Intellectually, yes. But emotionally,
no!
”

Kane said, “I thought you’d made it up.”

“Hud, I am
sick
of your snotty insults! Sick of your whole performance, in fact! Enough of this shabby charade! Burn your frock! Buy a gown! You are Mary Baker Eddy!”

Kane said, “I thought I was Gregory Peck.”

“Why, you incredible megalomaniac! How come you’re loose while your betters are chained!”

“Please sit down,” motioned Kane.

“No, I won’t.”

“Cutshaw, why not?”

“There is quicksand all around me. Think I’m a child? Think I’m a Kane? Think that I’d fall for
that
dumb trick? Next you’ll say, ‘Look at the submarine!’ and then you’ll squirt me with a water gun!” The astronaut leaped onto the desk, sitting with folded arms and legs, confronting Kane like a Delphic leprechaun. “Lieutenant Zook thinks you’re P. T. Barnum,” he said. “I thought him to be in error at first and declared him excommunicate, but perhaps I overextended. I see on your brow the Mark of the Beast.”

“What?” Kane subtly stiffened.

“Have you ever killed a lamb?”

“No.”

“Barnum slaughtered a thousand. He set up a cage at one of his sideshows, put in a lion and a lamb. Side by side. Lion and lamb. And there was never any trouble. Hud, the public just went lollypops. ‘Look, a lion and a lamb,’ they said, ‘and they never even argue! Hell, they never even
discuss!
’ It was spookier than plastic figs. But what the public didn’t know was that it was never the same lamb. It was always the same lion, though, one with regular eating habits, always at intermission. Ate a lamb every day for almost three hundred days. Then they shot him for asking for mint sauce. As for myself, I would have shot Barnum.”

“I have never killed a lamb,” said Kane, his tongue thick in his mouth.

“Why should
anyone
kill a lamb? It isn’t the killing, it’s the suffering. Why should
any
animal suffer?”

Kane said softly, “Why should
man?
”

“None of that, you frockless seducer. Human suffering admits of answers. ‘Pie in the sky’ and other inanities of the same stupid kidney. But animals
get
no pie in the sky. Let’s talk about
them
and avoid the piosities, Hud. Why should animals suffer?”

Kane said simply, “Man must eat.”

“Let ’em eat
cake!
” roared Cutshaw abruptly. “Anyway, who ever ate a vulture? Why do
vultures
have to suffer!”

“Pain is a necessary evil. Not evil at all, in fact, but a warning device that acts for the good of the body.”

“That is bullcrap, pure and simple. That has nothing to do with vultures. Hell, a man can thrive on mother’s milk, on wheat germ, on
grass!
Why eat meat? Why does he have to? For cholesterol and a heart attack? Why have animals at
all
if they’ve got to gore each others’ stomachs just to
live,
Colonel Fiasco! Is there an afterlife for animals? A balance for the pain? Would you say that pain makes vultures ‘noble’? Gives them ‘character’? Crap like that? If there is a Foot and he made panthers, then he surely must have
bunions!
I can’t
believe
in such a Foot!”

“How do you know,” Kane reasoned quietly, “that an animal’s experience of pain is anything like what it is for man? Isn’t pain more intense with cognition? With memory of what it is like?”

Cutshaw glared for a moment in silence. Then reached out his hand and cuffed Kane’s ear. “After an answer so zestfully fatuous, I feel I must terminate this discussion. You are a donkey without peer and totally useless, to me, useless.”

Cutshaw nimbly leaped from the desk, whipped a document from his pocket and spread it flat in front of Kane. “Kindly sign this confession so we can all get a little peace. Please do not sign it ‘Calvin Coolidge’ or any such subtle attempt at forgery. Fun is fun but we’ve had enough. Do you drink Coke?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Colonel Ryan was a Mormon.
He
drank Coke and thought he sinned heinously.”

“What is the point?” asked Colonel Kane.

“How should
I
know?” yipped the astronaut. “I never pretended that I know
every
thing! Now sign. A simple ‘A’ will do. ‘A’ for Attila the Hun.”

Kane looked at Cutshaw intently. “Why do you call me ‘Attila the Hun’?”

“Why do you call me Manfred Cutshaw? Everyone
knows
I’m Warren Beatty. Come, now, sign, I’m through protecting you.”

“Let’s talk,” said Kane.

“Indeed. I propose that we talk about my uncle. Now he’s a general in the Air Force. Sits twenty-four hours in a Pentagon basement with his fingers twitching near buttons and a bright-red meltproof phone. Still naked as a jaybird, Hud, but hell, he gets no visitors, so I figure, what’s the harm. Sign the confession.”

“Let’s talk about God.”

“Not with you. All your knowledge is pure Quinsana. Now make your ‘A’; I’m getting restless.”

Kane glanced at the paper, then up at Cutshaw. “What do you know?” he asked him cryptically.

“That I can walk like a fly.” Cutshaw abruptly flew at a wall, making several earnest attempts at running straight up the side of it while singing an aria from
Carmen.
After his fifth abortive attempt, he cast an accusing look at Kane. “There’s something wrong with this wall,” he glared, then crouched, like Richard the Third, out of the office with a glide. “We are watching!” he warned from the doorway, and melted away like morning mist.

Kane turned over the blank confession form, stared at a penciled sketch depicting two peering eyes. And felt the first faint pulsations of an imminent migraine headache.

Cutshaw leaned out of a dormitory window, deep in brood. Zook stood beside him, training binoculars on the school next door. Clydene Sloop, he had long since discovered, was a shameless exhibitionist who did most of her studying naked with her window blinds up full. No doubt it improved her concentration, thought Zook, who was rarely inclined to be cynical. He was purely and simply inclined, and accepted whatever heaven sent without question. However, at the moment Clydene was not in, and all he could find was Mary Jo Mawr, pensively brooding out her window like dark-eyed Bess, the innkeeper’s daughter.

“That phone-book trick,” muttered Cutshaw. “Wish I’d seen it for myself.”

“Starting to doubt?”

“Let’s shake him up. Really press him. Maybe—maybe he’ll lose his grip. Suppose one of us grabbed him by surprise when we’ve really got him going?”

“Leave him alone,” said Zook.

The astronaut softly uttered, “I can’t.” Then he turned to Zook with fresh attack. “Come on, you start it. Get on him right now.”