THREE: THE MAGICIENTIST M. E. BANGANI

A PERIOD OF watchful waiting began. In the meanwhile, the St. Ewagiow carnival continued with some not altogether unexpected events. Bonafide members of that death cult, stimulated by the mushroom cloud exploding around the clock, started several bloody riots.

On the evening of June 26th, I was alone in my room. Gladys had just gone — after some offensive jokes about Tunnel of Love soul-mates. I owed my success with Cleo F. to Gladys, but being a woman she had already become indifferent to the long view of history. In a few minutes, I would be leaving to meet Cleo and escort her to Atomic Park. I finished my bourbon, and as I put the glass down, the first of the evening’s imitation fission-fusion blasts lit up the room’s windows. As if timed with it, there was a knock on the door. Before I could open it, the door swung open and a short dark man stepped inside, wearing the black and purple cape, and black hat with purple feather of a magicientist.

He bowed and then facing the door he lifted his hand and the door closed. A typical magicientist trick, I guessed. On that door-closing hand of his, I had noticed a big black metal ring with a purple stone that probably contained a magnet.

“How do you do?” I said.

He looked at me in silence. He had dark brown eyes, and maybe because of his dramatic entrance they struck me as being not only penetrating but very unpleasant. For one thing they seemed too youthful¹ for a man his age. He was in his eighties or nineties, and his face was a web of wrinkles.

“May I ask who you are?” I said politely.

“Think!” he said in a deep voice that was also surprisingly youthful.

It came on me like a flash, I knew him. His name and his face. I had seen them both in the dossier on Barnum Fly. He was none other than Dr. M. E. Bangani, the famous magicientist who had turned Government witness and revealed the facts about the You-Too-Can-Be-A-Think-Machine Conspiracy.

“Dr. Bangani!” I said. “What do you want?”

He pulled off his black hat and swished it mockingly before him. “I want what you want, Crockett Smith, Life!”

Red and green and yellow bursts from the mushroom outside streaked across his old bald skull. “Commissioner Sonata was ill-advised not to consult us,” he said. “Of course we magicientists are suspect. Still the Commissioner was ill-advised. Or should I say our Omnipotent Rulers were ill-advised? But nobody advises Them, do they, Crockett Smith?”

“Who told you about me?”

He chuckled, but without humor, spiteful and malicious. “Our minds are free, my friend. We magicientists and you Reservationists. How would you like to meet my former pupil Barnum Fly?”

“You should go to Commissioner Sonata with your information.”

“And be arrested for illegal associations? No thank you. You hesitate, my friend. Ah, conflicting theories, the main occupational hazard in the life of a police officer. Ah, there is that word Life again. Life, sweet life!”

“You should see the Commissioner!”

“You question my motives? Am I an agent of the Rulers? The answer is no. I am an agent of Life. Old as I am I want to continue living on this earth of ours.” He lifted one old bent finger and his eyes narrowed. “A Presidential pardon would appeal to Barnum. A brilliant mind, too brilliant perhaps; but enough of personalities.”

“You’ve spoken to his daughter Cleo!” I accused him.

“No,” he said and his wrinkled hand vanished into his black cape. He held up a triangular object that seemed to be made of three transparent clock-faces. “I can read your thoughts with this Trans-rec¹ that I had the honor of inventing. Believe me, my friend, I want what you want.” He waved his other hand and a burst of golden sunshine filled the room. “Life, sweet life. I live for my visions, my friend. I live to bridge the gulf between the known and the unknown. Ah, the fearful unknown. It has always fascinated me. That is why I became a magicientist. To escape the humdrum of ordinary life.”

I blinked at the golden sunshine he had created and he chuckled. “A simple polaroid phenomenon. Child’s play, like turning dust into gold, or the flying atomic carpets so popular ten years ago. Child’s play, my friend, but I take pleasure in even the simplest conquests of our magicience.”

The golden sunshine was fading. He lowered his old wrinkled face. “If you agree to a few simple precautions, I am prepared to bring you to Barnum Fly — ”

“You expect me to believe that? You testified against him! He’s your enemy!”

“He was once my friend. The egg is round, the sun is round, life is a circle, and a Presidential pardon will make him my friend again. And you? You would be a hero. You would be able to ask the Rulers for a grant of new territory for the Reservation. With your large families, you must have new territory.”

He had read my thoughts all right, my most secret thoughts and ambitions that I had mentioned to no one on the Outside. New territory! And if I was successful how could the Rulers refuse?

“A few simple precautions. Why do you hesitate? You haven’t heard from Barnum, and it’s June 26th. There are only eight days left to prevent disaster, and you hesitate?”

“What precautions?” I said.

“This hotel is surrounded by the Commissioner’s men. Your police shadows. They will have to be neutralized. You will have to disguise yourself, my friend, and it will be necessary for me to temporarily blank out your consciousness.”

“Not that,” I said.

“Ah, you don’t trust me. Neither do I trust you. I can’t risk your calling on your police shadows as you plan to do.”

With that Trans-rec in his hand, I had no secrets. In that room of changing lights, that old man in his black cape was like a ghost sitting inside my very brain.

“You’re afraid, and you’re tempted,” he said. “The thought of succeeding without the Commissioner’s help is tempting. The lone wolf from the Reservation, that’s who you are! The rugged individualist of the ancient American Dream! Can you trust me? I betrayed Barnum Fly once before to the Rulers? And what if I am still Their agent? No, my friend, I am an agent of Life. Our Rulers are rigid and I am an agent of Life! A few precautions?”

I nodded, and his wrinkled lips smiled. He held up the Trans-rec and the last thing I remembered was that its central clock-face showed a spot of black light or rather blackish purplish light. The spot moved out towards me in a narrow beam and on it I returned, all my senses seeming to flow into that central clock-face, into time without end …

When I opened my eyes I slowly realized that I was in an alley. Dark walls and barred windows stretched before me. I heard voices. Entering the alley was an Oriental in a turban carrying a flaming torch, behind him twenty or thirty people. As they approached closer I saw that they were Americans in white suits and pith helmets. The Oriental paused and lifted his torch over my head. “In all our bazaars you will find these pitiful remittance men.”

“He doesn’t look as if he’s from an aristocratic family,” one of the Americans said while another asked the guide. “Is he a hasheesh eater?”

I lay there stupefied and then watched them go, shaking their heads. Behind them a caravan of camels trooped by, led by Hindus or Moslems. I was certain that I was dreaming when one of the camels urinated. The flying drops, the smell were unmistakably real. Am I going crazy, I wondered. In a frenzy I got to my feet and ran down the alley after the party of American tourists. Wait, I thought to myself, you forgot something.

I went back to where I had been and picked up a sign attached to a stick. Then I again hurried after the tourists. They were in a street that emptied into the alley. Torches burned over rows of street stalls and merchants in fezzes shouted their wares. Mostly rugs and copper pots. I touched the arm of the tourist who had thought I was hasheesh eater, “Where am I?” I asked in a trembling voice.

“In Calcutta, my poor man,” she said. She was a plump lady all in white.

I moaned, and she examined me with pity. I must have been a sight, dirty and smelling from those camels. “Calcutta,” I mumbled, dazed.

The guide walked over and whispered. “Yes, Calcutta-in-Miami. Go back to your hotel and stay away from opgin.”

I gasped with relief. “Where is Paris?”

I followed his directions into a street where toy-sized tigers and elephants¹ were for sale. The elephants snorted, the tigers snarled. Miniature snorts and miniature snarls. Veiled women in sarongs glanced at the sign I was carrying on my shoulder. “Sahib,” one of them murmured and offered me a leaflet with the motto²

Picturesque brown-skinned gamins chased each other, but now I knew who they were. Child actors hired by the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce.

As soon as I entered Paris-in-Miami, my destination flashed into my head. I wanted the Venus on Rue Bouillabaisse. I remember glancing up at the street signs and thinking dreamily, Not the Rue de Quatre. Not the Rue des Chats Morts. I asked directions of a loitering gendarme, and still carrying my sign walked through a maze of dark streets, apparently the Apache section of Paris-in-Miami adjoining the Calcutta slums. At last I was on the Rue Bouillabaisse and in another minute I stopped before a small wine shop whose dirty window was lettered in white; VENUS. A common-enough name here where dozens of cafés were so-called and where many of them also sold the favors of a class of women known as the doves.³

Although there was a sign in the window, AWAY ON VACATION with the symbolic number 28, I went inside. There were no customers, only a man I took for the proprietor who said, “Bon Soir, monsieur.”

“Bon soir,” I said and as I stood there, my reflection in the mirror on the wall instantly restored my reviving memory. There was my face which I recognized despite the beard. It was a real beard for I tugged at it with my fingers. I stared at a bearded man in a black shroud-like St. Ewagiow suit, wearing a white necktie with a black design that might have represented a coil of intestines. This stranger who was myself was carrying a sign which read: HTAED EHT LASREVINU REMEEDER. The words might have been Arabic or Hittite, a deliberate device of the International St. Ewagiow who were always boasting of their world-wide membership. But it was only another St. Ewagiow motto spelled backwards: DEATH THE UNIVERSAL REDEEMER.

That sign, that suit, that necktie, that beard — I owed them all to M. E. Bangani. I had come here to this cheap-looking shop with its white washed walls scrawled with drawings of naked women — complete some of them, others incomplete — because of M. E. Bangani!

Thoughtfully, I scratched at my beard and read a brand-new banner, evidently supplied by the arrangement committee of the St. Ewagiow carnival, that hung over a shelf of dusty wine bottles.

This was another of the endless anti-life slogans of the St. Ewagiow, or rather of one of their splinter anti-Negro groups.¹ Anybody with even a shred of education knew that although Salk was a Negro whose pioneering serum had been very effective against polio in the twentieth century, Pasteur was a white man who had first discovered the existence of bacteria.

“Welcome,” the proprietor said, and poured me a drink.

I took the glass, but remembering the effects of the Trans-rec, I didn’t drink. “Don’t be afraid, monsieur,” the proprietor said. “It’s only burgundy fortified with a little opgin. Defortified opgin,” he added with a smile, proving that he wasn’t immune from the prevailing disease, good humor.

I gulped the drink down in the tradition of the open-range country where I came from. “Where is Dr. Bangani?” I said.

“One minute, monsieur.” He walked to a door in the rear and knocked. It opened, and a giant stepped out. I’m six-foot-one, but he was six or seven inches taller and weighed about three hundred pounds. He wore the black cape of a magicientist and a white suit with odd buttons and a very odd hat. Not a magicientist’s black slouch but a black skullcap equipped with a revolving white circle like a halo.² It was held in place, I guessed, by invisible wires. His face was long and intelligent — that is from the nose up. He had a high forehead and brooding eyes, but below the nose his face was — I can think of no better word than the one we use — the face of a varmint. Thick brutal lips and a heavy chin and jaws.

“The master expects you,” he said in a soft voice that didn’t belong to those lips of his.

“Who are you?” I asked nervously.

“An interesting question. Who are you? Who am I? Are you a member of the St. Ewagiow as you appear? Or Crockett Smith, the L. and O. agent? And does it matter so very much? Who among us is always certain of his identity? Who are we? Where do we come from? What is right, what is wrong? Only when the psyche is attuned to the neurological thought-beat of another personality can we know ourselves as human beings. Love,” he whispered gently. “Love, the only positive element in life. And far more stable than a half dozen atoms I could mention. Without love we all carry a stranger inside our hearts and souls. A perpetual tenant who never pays emotional rent. Without responsibilities. Living on a fee simple. And this stranger is all of us. Only love matters. Not matter, which is made up of molecules, atoms, protons, electrons, neutrinos and all the rest of that mysterious hodge-podge.”

The buttons of his white jacket had begun to gleam and I found myself staring at them. Buttons made of three circles arranged in triangles, the letter H₃ in their centers.¹ The H₃’s were all glowing with a purplish light, reminding me of the purplish mesons I had seen on the Rollercoaster.

“Now, let us see the master,” he said.

I pulled my attention away from his buttons, which were beginning to have a hypnotic effect, and followed him into the rear room. Seated at a table was Dr. Bangani. He was holding a flower in his hand that, biologically, seemed like a cross between a rose and an iris, inhaling its fragrance while he pulled off and ate its leaves. These were shaped like tiny green cucumbers or leafcumbers as they were called. Behind him on a couch was a sleeping man, his face turned to the wall, his hands behind his back. His hands were tied with All-Emergency Thread as were his ankles.

The old magicientist waved the almost-rose at the sleeping man. “There’s Barnum Fly. A brilliant student, too brilliant,” he murmured. “The brain-picker,” he added spitefully.

Our eyes met, and I sensed a fatal web of betrayals in the center of which, like a sinister atomic spider, was the A-I-D. I couldn’t speak, I was stunned. Then I cried out. “The A-I-D!”

“Ah, if only I had the A-I-D, my friend,” he chuckled.

“Where — Where is it?”

“Only Barnum knows that.”

“The Trans-rec!” I gasped with excitement.

“It wouldn’t work on a magicientist, my friend.”

“The Brain-Confessor!”

“Effective with the herd, not with a man like Barnum.” He glanced at the sleeping man. “There is the greatest of our magicientists. Don’t you agree, Professor Fleischkopf?”

The giant in the hydrogen hat shrugged. “Master, I prefer not to answer that question until I can evaluate the x of heredity as against the y of environment. And if the y factor includes you, master, his guide and mentor — ”

“These professors and their everlasting quibbling!” the old magicientist exclaimed impatiently.

“Nevertheless, the y factor — ”

“Fleischy!” the old magicientist called in a sharp tone like a man to a dog. As I wondered why he had abbreviated the professor’s name, something amazing happened. The professor’s high forehead wrinkled like an ape’s and he began to change into a different person. As if the lower part of his face, the brutal below-the-nose part of him, the pithycantelope erectus if I remember my schooling, were dominating his personality. Those intelligent eyes of his were fawning, full of slavish love like a dog’s. He walked over to M. E. Bangani and his nose twitched.

Dr. Bangani plucked a leafcumber and tossed it to the monster who snatched it in mid-air and gulped it down. “An interesting hybrid,” the old magicientist said to me, smiling at the fear he saw in my face. “Far more advanced than the original psycho-muscles¹ that I first perfected years ago.” He nodded at the sleeping man on the couch. “It was Barnum’s idea to apply the psycho-muscle principle to scientists who had become unhappy in the service of the State. “Let’s cauterize their conscience,” he said. “Simple, isn’t it? The simplicity of genius! Professor Fleischkopf was one of our leading biophysicists. You wouldn’t believe it but he was a foot shorter before I pressurized his genes. I like my hybrids strong. There you see him, half scientist and half beast, and no unsettling conscience. But the original idea was Barnum’s. The student surpassed the master, and now in turn I have mastered him.”

I was frightened as never before in my life by this rambling old man, whose every word was dusty with regret and poisoned with envy. “What do you want?” I asked.

“Life!” he answered. “I am not a Barnum aspiring to become supreme dictator. I don’t want to rule the world. All I want is equality for our magicientists with the Rulers. Equality!” he said, his deep voice rising. “A revolutionary I am not! But I have always believed that an elite class like us magicientists are entitled to more recognition than we have received. That is why I need your help. As a Reservation man you must share some of my feelings about the Rulers. I need your help to win over the Commissioner and the L. and O. I talk to you as an equal, Crockett Smith.” He chuckled that mean little chuckle of his. “I could hybridize you, my friend, but I prefer to talk to you as an equal.”

An unreasoning fear overcame me. I bolted for the door, but I never reached it. Something stunned me and a second later I realized I was on the floor. Then M. E. Bangani or rather two M. E. Bangani’s seemed to stand over me. Luckily it was only an optical illusion, for when the two Banganis kicked me — not a hard kick but more of a contemptuous poke — I felt glad that it was only one foot after all. “He’s not unconscious,” I heard him saying. “Professor Fleischkopf please attend to it …” That was the last thing I heard for suddenly I felt the jab of a needle. And my senses began to spin, faster and faster — a spin into darkness.

When I first heard the distant beat of drums I was sure I was dreaming. I had to be dreaming. Not only were there drums, but before me stretched a tremendous moonlit window extending the length of a room that must have been close to sixty feet long. All this in the rear room of the Venus wine shop was unlikely. I noticed now that I seemed to be lying on some sort of long polished platform. I stroked its surface experimentally, but it stayed hard. It didn’t change into a thigh.¹ No dream women materialized, not Cleo F. or Gladys E. or even my dear wife Ruth who although far away was still completely eligible as a siren of my subconscious. Could it be that I wasn’t dreaming? Was I the victim of another magicientifical amnesia?

My eyes had become used to the moonlight. The polished platform, I realized, was really the top of a huge table. It was fantastic. Then I remembered the sting of the needle that Professor Fleischkopf had jabbed into me as I lay on the floor of the Venus. I began to tremble, not because I’d been knocked out by a needle. The career of a law enforcement officer in a territory that has its share of outlaws like the Reservation is full of unconscious moments. But usually when I recovered my senses I’d find myself in the sort of place that goes with the profession, as you might say. Never before had I ended up on a banquet board. It is the unexpected that worries a man. And when I thought of M. E. Bangani and his hybridized scientist Fleischy — Fleischkopf I felt complete defeat.

The drums were still beating. I listened intently and then I heard another sound. Faint, steady, humming. I got off the table and went to the great window. It was semi-transparent, made of one of their plasto-alumino-crystals. I located its operational buttons and pressed the LIFT. The window slid up and out of sight, and the humming became very loud. Before me a swarm of insects fluttered, fluttering and dropping dead, all seemingly in one blow. None were coming into the room although there was no window to keep them out.

Carefully I extended my finger towards the window that wasn’t. As I had anticipated, even without touching it, I felt an unpleasant shock.¹ Thoughtfully I stared at those insect hordes winging out of the night and dying on the wing. Large sized specimens too. They had to be large. Down below were the tops of big trees.

I pulled out my Aag², opened the tiny sighting rod and held the phosphorescent gleaming bead straight before me. I pressed the illuminator and read the measurement — 96.82. I was exactly ninety-six feet and eight inches above ground. My all-Emergency Thread could have gotten me down but I was afraid to try. The Shocko, at its center, might be strong enough to knock me out or even kill me.

I stood there a beaten man, staring at those doomed insects. That Shocko was their A-I-D. I thought of humanity fluttering its wings on July 4th, of swarms of mothers calling to their children “Where are you?” and the children answering with their last radioactive breaths, “I don’t know mother … I don’t know mother …”

How long I stood there brooding, I’ll never know. A new sound, violent and unmistakable made me gasp.

Down below among those trees was an elephant. Greater Miami had everything, I knew. I myself had seen camels and toy-size elephants. But this beast wasn’t toy-sized. Above the beating drums and buzzing insects, it was bellowing wildly. It was either hungry or mating or maybe both. I listened numbly, no longer caring. Then I thought of the words of the man who had been a second father to me, Boone Truckley, my predecessor as Reservation Chief of Police. “When in doubt take inventory, my boy.”

I did so. There was: 1. A banquet hall 96.82 feet above ground. 2. Drums. 3. Window protected by Shocko. 4. An elephant that sounded berserk.

It added up — to madness if I’d been back home. But here on the Outside, who could tell? Grimly I searched through my pockets, and thank God, there was one last U-Latu. I chewed on it and began to cheer up. So much so that I went to the door of the banquet room. It was locked. I kicked and pounded it and I felt a definite pleasure in making as much noise as I could.

There was no response. Only the primeval sound of the drums, the buzzing of the insects, and in the deeper part of the jungle the faint but recognizable answering trumpet of a second elephant. Then I heard footsteps outside the door.

It opened, and the great room was flooded with light. Before me was Fleischkopf. The scientist and not the caveman, for when he spoke it was in his gentle voice. “Would you like to know where you are?” he asked and smiled that gentle academic smile of his.

“Africa-in-Miami.”

“No, we flew here after I applied the M. N.¹ You will forgive us, won’t you? The flight was a short one. We traveled by Atomo-Jette — ”

“Atomo-Jette!” I exclaimed. “This is Africa then, the real Africa!”

“More or less. We haven’t left the country,² really.”

“Where are we? Nevada? New Mexico?” I felt miserable thinking of how close I was to the Reservation and yet so far, separated by a million miles of principle.

“We took good care of you,” he said. “We removed your beard while you slept. You had an unusually bad reaction to the M. N. You’ve been sleeping for two days.”

I felt sick. June 28th — only six days to July 4th! I rubbed at my clean-shaven chin and thought of the beard M. E. Bangani had supplied me with in my hotel room in Paris-in-Miami. A hundred miserable thoughts went through my head, and I cursed myself for listening to M. E. Bangani, and for the temptation to play the hero. At least I could have consulted Gladys …

To keep from thinking, I looked about this banquet hall. It was furnished simply, except for dozens of portraits on the walls. A strange collection, for they were all portraits of very old men with dark intense eyes. They all semed alike, and when I looked closer I realized that they were alike. From all those dozens of portraits, M. E. Bangani was staring at me. “My God!” I cried.

“The master calls this his ancestor room,” the professor explained seriously. “Have you ever considered the significance of ancestors, the factor x of heredity? At his noblest, Man can be defined as the one mammal who has ancestors, and I do not mean his immediate parents and grandparents. I am talking spiritually of the great men of the past, the great scientists, the great astrologers and alchemists.”

He walked to the nearest portrait, and I followed him. I’d last seen that hybrid in a black magicientist cape and hydrogen hat. Now he was wearing African-style tan shorts, sandals, and only his shirt of megaton blue¹ indicated his scientific inclinations. He nodded at the portrait, that of an ancient man with a white pointed beard, wearing a pointed hat out of the middle ages. “A genius!” he lectured me in his heavy professorial manner. “Do you recognize him?”

When I could control my trembling I said, “No.”

“That’s Merlin, the magician of King Arthur’s Court.” He walked to another portrait and said. “And here is Amen-Khat-Re, the Egyptian sorcerer, who taught Moses the technique of dividing a large mass of water. I refer of course to the Red Sea. And here is a man much closer to us in time, the physicist Albert Einstein.”

“The clothes they wear are different,” I couldn’t help saying. “But their faces, their eyes are like those of Dr. Bangani!”

“You Reservation people are stupid, aren’t you? Merlin, Amen-Khat-Re and Einstein? What are they in the last analysis but the spiritual ancestors of the master? The master honors them in his name, M. E. Bangani — Merlin Einstein Bangani. Don’t you think that even our spiritual ancestors ought to have some resemblance to us?

“That’s a very good point,” I said.

“And isn’t it natural to honor the pioneers in any field? I’ll concede that up to the age of Einstein they were all a trifle crude. But where would we be without a beginning? Progress doesn’t come by itself. But what would a Reservation man know about Progress? Come!”

I followed him out of the ancestor room into a corridor whose walls were covered with formulas out of the scientific disciplines: 1550 Angstroms in diameter. Four cats designated as Group A compete for food under controlled conditions until Cat A-1 emerges as dominant. 2HR₂+CO₂ bacte-riochlorophyll/light C (H₂O)₂+2R. The Red Shift in Non-Dopplerian Terms.

At the end of the corridor he stopped in front of a closed door and said confidentially. “We are what we think we are. Remember that when you see the master.”

“Who does Dr. Bangani think he is?” I asked fearfully.

“Remember this is Africa, primitive Africa where an individual need account only to himself. And the master sometimes gets tired of being himself.

“Who does he think he is?”

“The master doesn’t think he is, as you so ineptly phrased it. He is what he thinks.” He stared at me with pity. “You Reservation people! Dull work has deadened your imagination. No, we better not go in to the master just now. Your psyche needs stimulation.”

“Please!” I pleaded. “Please, professor.”

But, gripping me by the arm, he propelled me forward down the corridor to a door that carried a little sign: TIME STREAM. We went into a room that was completely black except for a shining white screen in the ceiling. “Aren’t you curious?” he asked me. “No questions?”

“No,” I muttered.

“The Time Stream,” he lectured me. “Or, Spectacles of the Past! A great man, the master. By re-examining the relativity formulas of Einstein, he has succeeded in reversing time.” From the white screen overhead, a dim light illuminated his hybridized face. His jaws seemed heavier and more brutal. “Now, let’s see. You people on the Reservation prohibit inventions after the year 1879. Perhaps you would like to return to the Civil War?” Before I could reply, he walked to one of the black walls. I heard him pull a panel for there was a metallic sliding sound, and in bright light, rows of instruments appeared, “Watch the screen!” he said.

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-amours¹, using the time principle in a passive way, which he combined with the spectacle principle of Cecil De Mille².”

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+NO₇=H₂SO₉R 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 Shocko¹ 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 Rex¹ 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 box¹ 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 Berle¹ 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+NO₇=H₂ SO₉R. 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 SO₉ 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?”

“You madmen!” I shouted.

Lord Alpha-B. scolded me. “What kind of childish attitude is that? Come, your name.”

“You know who I am. Crockett Smith!” I muttered. “Listen to me.”

How shall I describe my emotions when blowing out of my nostrils I saw a yellowish mist that proved I was lying? “I’m Crockett Smith!” I repeated and the yellow mist thickened. There before my eyes was the circumstantial evidence that even a pair of lungs couldn’t be trusted. My own lungs! I cursed and struggled and in my fury managed to free one hand from the hold of that chair. “I’m Crockett Smith!” I shouted and still that yellow mist persisted. I clapped my hand over my mouth and that treacherous stuff filtered through.

“Isn’t it childish to contradict the logic of Science?” Lord Alpha-B. asked me.

“Damn your science! I’m Crockett Smith and no one else!” And there was that damned yellow gas again. This time I didn’t protest for a new thought had paralyzed me. THE TRUTH SERUM WASN’T LYING. Maybe I’d once been a man named Crockett Smith, but hadn’t I left the Reservation? Hadn’t I eaten U-Latus and drunk opgin and associated with people like Commissioner Sonata? And made love to a two-in-one, police agent-writer who was also the double of my wife? And had an affair with an Atomic Park attendant, the thrill addict silver corder Cleo F.? Who knew? Perhaps the personality I had grown up with and that I’d known as Crockett Smith belonged to the past.

“Damn the Funhouse!” I cursed heartbrokenly. “Damn you all! I’m not myself any more, I’m nobody, another split man!”

And the truth serum let this pass uncensored. “Ah,” Lord Alpha-B. said.

“Very interesting,” the professor said. “And now will you tell us about Barnum Fly?”

“You haven’t got him!” I said and there was no yellow mist. Suddenly my despair was gone. “You’ve been tricked!”

Lord Alpha-B. gnashed his teeth. “That brain thief!” he said. “Always tricking me. I ought to retire! I’m too old!” He paced up and down, his old bald head lowered, swearing he would retire. “That brain thief! It was my theoretical paper on the relativity of pleasure, my concept of the large and the small that he stole to create Atomic Amusement Park!”

He stopped in front of me, his eyes burning. “Release him,” he said to the professor. “I must think, think. But what will I think with? This poor tired cerebrum.” He clapped his hand to his forehead. “This ravelled knot, this weary network of cells?”

They freed me from that chair and walked to the door. I called after them. The professor turned and frowned. “The master wishes to be alone. Make yourself at home, my friend. One word of advice. Keep out of any room marked Experimental. And if you see any automatons, ignore them!”

The door closed. I stared at the machine in the center of the room and at the tubular-jointed chair, and then I rushed out. “Wait!” I shouted at the giant professor and the hunched old magicientist in his cape.

“The master wishes to be alone!” the professor shouted and taking out his hypodermic he squirted some of the truth serum. A yellow cloud filled the corridor and when it cleared they were gone.

I could have used a U-Latu. My head was reeling. You’re a prisoner in this damned castle, I thought.

It was so quiet in that corridor. I glanced at the formulas and equations on the walls and shivered. I wondered if I should return to the ancestor room. Oh, God, I thought and began walking down the corridor. I passed the door of the room where I had been, the TIME STREAM room. Beyond it was a door with the warning EXPERIMENTAL-SPACE TRAVEL, and another door EXPERIMENTAL — LILLIPUTIANS. I hesitated — yes, I admit it honestly — before a door with the legend: CASTLES IN SPAIN.

I simply didn’t want to think about the A-I-D. And when I came to a door whose sign read SEX LABORATORY, on the impulse, a very human impulse, I went inside. There was a large central room, with two doors leading to the labs, both of them carrying EXPERIMENTAL signs. The walls were lined with books, a big desk stood in the middle, and a smaller desk off to the side. As I stood there gaping and hardly breathing, one of the EXPERIMENTAL doors opened and an automaton whirred over to the small desk where it seated itself. The typical headless automaton so common among them — a white cylinder, this one, with a dozen or so protruding white rods that began picking up paper after paper from the desk, registering the information in its interior. For as it examined the papers, tabulating lights gleamed in its white middle.

“Excuse me,” I said.

It paid no attention to me and I sighed with relief. I went over to the books and read some of the titles. THE NORMALCY OF SEXUAL ABERRATIONS; LESBIANISM, A WAY OF LIFE; COPULATION AMONG THE INVERTEBRATES OR A GUIDE TO HUMAN BEHAVIOR. I glanced at the busy automaton and inched over to the big desk, and before I realized what I was doing I picked up a sheet of paper scrawled with notes. The first line I have never forgotten: Why can’t human beings love like animals?

I read through the notes which projected an Amatory Zoo. One part of this zoo would be a two-hundred-foot-in-diameter imitation of the eye of a deer. By utilizing refractions and a hypnotic system described tersely as ‘cortex-hypnotism’, people entering it would imagine themselves to be stags and does. Another part was a salt-water maze to be contained inside the framework of a whale. The theory here was too abstruse for me to understand but it depended upon the recapitualition of the embryo and a return to the ocean-stage of development.

It was fascinating reading. Then I came to a sheet of notes on top of which was scrawled another memorable line: The act of love utilizing one of THE FIVE SENSES. It outlined a house of love divided into five sensory floors. On the first floor, lovers would be reduced to the sense of hearing. And Dr. Bangani — I guessed it was his handwriting — had scribbled: Today at the Aviation Aviary in Greater Los Angeles, people in helicopters are steering like bats solely through their sense of hearing. To make love with only this sense functioning. How charming!

I was reading about the second floor where the lovers would be reduced to the sense of smell when I heard a woman’s voice. At first I thought it was the automaton. But then I realized the voice was coming from behind one of the doors marked EXPERIMENTAL. Again the voice sounded, half groan and half yawn. My heart jumped and I edged over to the door and underneath the warning EXPERIMENTAL, I read two scribbled words in the same handwriting as in the notes: Sleeping Beauties.

The professor had warned me. Yes, he had warned me, but when I thought of my own experiences in this laboratory-castle of Lord Alpha-B. — my two days of unconsciousness in his ancestor room, the truth serum, and that clutching claw of a chair — I just didn’t have the heart, the human heart to resist. Or the human curiosity.

I pushed the door open by the width of a crack, all the time watching the automaton. That inhuman thing was utterly absorbed in its work. The woman in EXPERIMENTAL had become silent. But when I touched the door again she whispered. “Help me!” No longer hesitating, I went inside, shutting the door behind me.

On a huge bed was a huge woman. An Amazon in size, at least seven feet tall, a beautiful Amazon with long black hair that reached to her waist. She was wearing a silky white garment that I had only seen before in my childhood fairy tales. It draped her body like a nightgown but it wasn’t a nightgown, made of some rich heavy cloth, an antique golden belt around her waist. I felt as if I had entered the Time Stream again, as if I had stepped into a far away past. The room was like a stone cell in a dungeon. But the bed with its carved head and footboards, covered with a canopy of gold, was fit for a princess. A princess, I thought my heart beating wildly. A real princess….

She had lifted her head, staring at me with large black wet eyes. I had never seen eyes so tearful and yet so happy. Only her head had moved, and I noticed now how still she lay, her arms rigid at her sides, her legs unmoving. “Help me,” she whispered.

“Can’t you get up from that bed?”

“No. Help me.”

“How can I help you?”

“The master’s spell,” she whispered. “Break the master’s spell.”

“How?”

Her eyelids fluttered and she singsonged:

“I love thee? Is that all?”

She was no longer held down by whatever had bound her¹. She smiled and her bare arms lifted above her head. As if awakening she gulped in a breath of air, her breasts bulging up under her strange white dress. She laughed a deep full laugh and leaped from the bed. “I am free!” she cried. “Free! Free!”

“I don’t know about that,” I said, thinking of Lord Alpha-B. and his professor, automatons and fields of Shocko.

She rushed over to me, her eyes glaring with a light that was fierce and velvety.

“We ought to think of how to escape,” I said hurriedly.

The change in her worried me. Her cheeks that had been as white as that shift of her’s, flushed a deep pink color. And those eyes! “I love thee,” she panted.

She was beautiful, yes, but she towered over me, and I began to feel sorry for having ignored the professor’s warning. Who knew what enzymes had gone into this experiment? “My dear girl,” I said, trying to soothe her. “We’re prisoners here — ”

“I love thee!” she repeated and with a single bound — she was a muscular woman — she charged in on me and caught my wrist, and with a strength that wasn’t what you would think of as being feminine, she pulled me to her, “Come here, my little mouse!” she laughed and her laughter was so loud it bounced off the stone walls.

I couldn’t believe this was happening to me, but those inflamed eyes of her’s, that terrible strength! “My dear girl, we’re in an awful spot,” I said choking down my fear.

She pulled me to her, and I was kissed as never before in my life. She lifted her head and in a triumphant lustful voice shouted. “Mousikins, I love thee!” And like the huge feminine cat she was, she dragged me to that bed of hers …

When she fell asleep, I picked up my scattered clothes and dressed. I tip-toed out of the room, closing the door behind me. The white cylinder was still busily at work. I knew it was indifferent to me but in my confused and uncertain state of mind I said, “Excuse me.”

“A messenger is waiting outside to bring you to the master,” it said in a coy flirtatious voice — the voice inbuilt into its mechanism.

“Thank you,” I muttered.

Outside the SEX LABORATORY, there was a automaton made like a foot, a winged foot. When it saw me or rather sensed me, for it had no eyes, its wing fluttered from side to side, a shining bright wing whose feathers were thin strips of aluminum. It advanced down the corridor. I followed it. My state of mind could be imagined. I was dazed, dizzy and depleted. As if in a dream I stepped into an elevator and felt it zoom down the 96.82 feet that I had measured what seemed a lifetime ago.

The door slid open, and I walked out into a hall whose walls were covered with spears and shields, where suits of armor out of the middle ages stood about like steel ghosts, empty of the pikemen, crossbowmen, falconiers and coxcombs that had worn them once in battle. Waiting for me at a beamed door that was at least twenty feet high were the professor and his master.

“I hope you have learned your lesson,” the professor scolded me, shaking his big head. The old magicientist ignored me. Bald head slumped, he was muttering to himself. The professor put a warning finger across his lips and then he whispered. “He hasn’t relaxed yet but I am certain he will feel better after the hunt. His Lordship always does.”

“Ah, to live in an age of eternal values!” Lord Alpha-B. exclaimed and glancing at me he said. “Welcome to Bangani Castle, old chap. Do you like to hunt?” And without waiting for an answer sighed. “It was a passion of my ancestors.” He waved his wrinkled hand at the suits of steel armor.

The professor whispered in my ear. “The master is a genius but sentimental. He isn’t satisfied with one set of ancesters but must have two.”

“The first Lord Bangani was a great huntsman,” his descendant declared.

The professor prodded me with his elbow and said. “When a man speaks of his ancestors, he expects the courtesy of a reply.”

“Thank God for your ancestors!” I said with a spurt of emotion that was almost anger. “They fought with spears and bows in the great days before the A-I-D.”

“Sussex, Sussex,” his lordship murmured as if to himself. “To the west there is Kenya, to the south Tanganyika, and I a man reared on the gentle downs of Sussex.”

“Dr. Bangani!” I cried. “We’re wasting time!”

“Gentle Sussex,” he said, walking away from me to a suit of armor along side the beamed door.

“For God’s sake!” I said to the professor. “You’re an educated man — ”

“You peasant from the Reservation!” he scolded me gently.

“You haven’t got Barnum Fly! You’ve got an imposter! We must — ”

“We must practice noblesse oblige, peasant!” he said. “The master will make the decision when he is ready.”

It was hopeless appealing to him. Tears of frustration came to my eyes as I stared at that big lump of cauterized conscience.

“Sussex, Sussex,” his master whispered and drew out a sword strapped around the steel waist of the suit of armor. Immediately, the beamed door it controlled¹ swung open.

“Come!” the professor said.

Outside, a golden African-type moon² was floating over the transplanted palms and mahoganies. It was much lower in the sky than the real moon. A beautiful sight, those two moons, but all I could think of was that soon it would be June 29th. June 29th and five days to go …

“Professor Fleischkopf,” Lord Alpha-B. called. The professor walked over to him, and the old man patted his shoulder. “You love to hunt, don’t you, my faithful boy?” And like a man with his dog I heard him utter the one word: “Fleischy!”

“Hunting!” Fleischy drooled. It was Fleischy the caveman, and although I had witnessed this quick-change before, my recent experiences at the Castle had about destroyed my self-control. I jumped back a step at the sight of that bent old magicientist in his black and purple cape, and the huge drooling two-footed dog next to him.

“What’s the trouble, old chap?” Lord Alpha-B. asked me.

“The drums,” I said weakly, evasively. Those mysterious drums that I had heard for the first time in the ancestor room were beating steadily in the jungle, whose tops I could see beyond the high wall that enclosed the estate.

“Drums!” Fleischy roared with laughter. “Got to have drums to keep the animals off-balance. Don’t nobody tell you different. All animals, they’re dummies. The wise elephant, the tricky tiger,” he laughed with contempt. “One minute they’re running, and the next they’re warm meat.” He strode over to me and lowered his grinning, slobbering face to mine. “This is a game preserve, you dummy. The animals can’t get out, see? Always they hear the drums, you dummy. You like to hunt?”

I was afraid to say no. I said nothing, and he pounded me on the shoulders. “We got everything here,” he gloated. “You want lions, we got lions. We got tigers and leopards and flamingoes if you want flamingoes although they’re not much good.”

“But we haven’t got the red fox of Sussex,” Lord Alpha-B. said moodily, “Ah, we might as well make the best of it. We’ll have a real old-fashioned hunt in honor of our guest. We’ll use rifles.”

“Rifles!” Fleischy shouted. “I like Flammos¹ best.”

“You forget about Flammos. I said rifles. We’ll get some beaters and have a little sport.”

“Sport!” I said. I felt as I were struggling to escape a nightmare. “How can you think of sport when we don’t know what tomorrow’ll bring?”

“Spoken like a true unsportsman,” Lord Alpha-B. said, and chuckled an English chuckle at his English humor.

“When I think of the A-I-D!” I pleaded with him. “One man hunting every single human being in the world — ”

“You miserable rotter, will you stop reminding me of my mistake. Keep still, or I swear by all that’s holy, in the name of science itself, that I’ll hybridize you!” He turned his face towards me, and those eyes of his became visible as if I were seeing them in daylight, while the rest of him seemed to blacken out. He seemed disembodied, a pair of terrible eyes¹.

I was petrified, and when he led the way to a low white building I staggered after him. In the light of the two moons, the building looked like a hospital. It was pitch dark inside until the old magicientist lit his eyes up again. In the glare I stared at the beaters lined up against the wall. Metal and plastic automatons, imitations of the Ugandis and Zulus who had once hunted in the jungles, clubs and spears in their hands.

“Come over here!” Lord Alpha-B. called to me. “These are the beaters I prefer. I had them made up to my own order.”

In the light of his eyes I stared at a second row of beaters who dwarfed Fleischy-Fleischkopf in size, nine-footers if an inch. The first one wore the black robes of a judge, in its hand a three-foot object that looked like a document.

“Senator Clark Gable Fresset!” he chuckled. “I had my differences with Barnum, but I share his dislikes.” He tapped the three-foot document. “There he is with the subpoena he served on me. Do you know what Fleischy calls him?”

“Fido! That’s Fido!” Fleischy hollered.

The second giant-size beater turned out to be a very good imitation of Commissioner Sonata. In its outsized hand it was holding a rectangular cloth, a duplicate of a $10,000 bill. “That’s Rover,” Fleischy confided in me. “I had a nice lil dog called Rover once. I used to give him the guts of the things I killed. What a nice lil dog. I don’t know what got into me. Why did I have to eat that nice lil dog?”

The third beater held a five-foot brief case in its hand, a two-foot plastic cigar in its mouth. I stared with horror at its face. The short twisted nose, the hair standing up as if from a patchwork of scalps, the unmistakable psychiatric mouth! “Barnum Fly!” I said. “Why don’t we go after him?” I blurted and fearfully waited for the magicientist’s reaction.

But when he answered me, his voice was quiet. “Ah, the fox hunts of Sussex.”

Tears filled my eyes. After all, how often can a man be frustrated. I felt as if I were going mad, and maybe I was. What saved me was the thought that they wanted me to go mad — that this hunt was a hunt after my mind, another experiment.

Wiping my eyes, I saw Lord Alpha-B. reach up to the nose of the third beater. He slid the nose to one side, exposing a small panel with a switch. He lifted the switch and then slid the nose back into place. Fascinated, despite myself, for I knew that I ought to concentrate on the problem of making some contact with this ancestor worshipper¹, I observed him going through the nose routine with the Commissioner and the Senator.

“They’ll warm up shortly, old chap,” he remarked absentmindedly as if lost in thoughts of his own. Now and then he sighed and whispered something that could have been Sussex but I wasn’t sure.

The three beaters began to vibrate. Their rubbery bodies expanded and deflated, their arms began to swing. The Senator swung his subpoena, the Commissioner his banknote, Barnum F. his brief case. Suddenly, the cold electric glare of the magicientist’s eyes were dimmed by a green blaze bursting out of the eyes of the three beaters. The blaze vanished, appeared again.

“They’re working great!” Fleischy said. “What good boys!”

“Green is an interesting color,” his master remarked to me, “The green of nature, the green of envy.”

I looked at him and wondered if the real Barnum F., like the Senator, had been murdered? Murdered and the A-I-D locked up in one of the rooms in this castle of horrors? That would explain my kidnapping — for I was a menace to his plans. When I thought of his plans, my head began to spin. Plans for power, absolute power! And meanwile he was playing with me like a cat with a mouse — for here on the Outside even a power-crazy magicientist had to have his fun.

The green blaze was steady now, the arms of the three beaters swinging so fast they were blurs; the monsters began to rise up and down on their ball-and-socket toes. Their rubberized necks stretched, their chests blew up and contracted, and with each contraction, the buttons on their coats flicked on and off, green like their eyes, but much dimmer. And dimmest of all, the tip of Barnum F.’s two-foot cigar.

“How about a three hour safari, old chap?”

I answered in that same casual cold-tea voice. “Dr. Bangani, you’ve got the A-I-D and don’t deny it!”

“Two hours, old chap?” he asked with a cheery smile, and in the green light of the beaters’ eyes and buttons, he hurried over to what might have been a bulletin board except for the clock in its center. “A one hour hunt, you crazy rotter?” He adjusted the clock’s hands. “What would you like? Elephant, lion, buffalo?”

“All of them!” Fleischy said excitedly.

I forced myself to speak. “Dr. Bangani, tell me what you want and I’ll help you. Equality with the Rulers as you once said? What do you want?”

“What do you want, old chap? Elephant or lion or perhaps what we call a jungle combination. A couple of carnivores and several of the swifter grass-eaters?”

“Let’s have a lil of each!” Fleischy cried. “Some lions, some buffalo and maybe a zebra.”

“You keep still!” his master said, and at the bulletin board he pushed in three buttons marked: E, L and B. Then he raised two of the board’s three switches. In the green light I could see the letters on each. AMP — (M–N)⁴. The third switch 12z + R/v he let alone.

Watching him I was thinking that in one of his madder scientific moods, he might be setting off the A-I-D. He was an old man with only a few years to live. And if his plans for power weren’t successful….

(Posterity, if there will be a posterity, I can never forget that stooped silhouette at his bulletin board. The green eerie light of the beaters illuminating, not only the symbols noted in the above, mathematical, electronic, catatonic, but the symbol of symbols hanging so fatally over the world on the evening of June 28th.)

“Hey, get out of the way, dummy!” Fleischy bellowed, pushing me hard with both hands. I smashed into the wall, and when I turned I saw the three beaters streaking by like three pieces of lightning mounted on legs. “You dummy, they can do a hundred and fifty miles an hour¹.”

He grabbed my arm and dragged me past the Ugandi and Zulu-type beaters. “Those things ever get out of control?” I couldn’t help asking.

“There isn’t an ounce of Science in the rotter!” Lord Alpha-B. said disgustedly. “The three out there will give us a one hour hunt and when the time is up, they will return to their proper stations, faithful as hounds. There is nothing to worry about so carry on like a white man, you rotter.”

Fleischy pushed a rifle into my hand. “Let’s go, dummy. Get the 235² out of your pants.”

We ran out into the moonlight. The green-eyed beaters were nowhere in sight. We crossed a broad lawn to the wall that enclosed the estate. At its base was a small round transparent structure³. Fleischy dashed inside and turned a square knob. In a few seconds, a section of the wall swung open. By now of course I’d got used to walls lifting, sliding or disappearing, but I couldn’t guess at what had happened to the beaters.

“Where are they?”

“Outside,” Lord Alpha-B. replied laconically.

“Outside what? That wall’s at least thirty feet high!”

“They didn’t leap the wall, you silly rotter.”

“No?”

“No. They passed through the wall.”

I stood there thinking this over and staring at this hunting companion of mine and wishing I was back home where hunting was really a sport. Fleischy joined us, and his master snapped at him. “Professor, will you explain to this silly chap how the beaters passed through the wall?”

“Nothing is solid in this universe,” the professor lectured me. “Matter merely presents a solid appearance.”

Perhaps his master was bored but abruptly he called. “Fleischy!” and his two-legged dog was back with us.

“There’s all kinds of holes in matter, dummy. No matter how solid it seems it ain’t and that’s what’s the matter with matter. Those beaters, dummy? They’re made on the idea nothing’s solid, see. They can pass through any damn thing and the damn company¹ that makes them charges a fortune for them, too. Now let’s not waste any more time, dummy.” Beyond the wall was the jungle. As we plunged into it, I felt like sneaking under some tree and blowing my brains out. For how was I ever going to reason with a split-brain? But something kept me going. Not courage or hope but just plain animal persistence — my two legs. From the branches of the forced-growth trees, creeping vines hung like ropes. And waiting for us in the thick bush were the beaters. I couldn’t make out their shapes, only the green of their glimmering buttons and inhuman eyes.

“Good boys!” Fleischy greeted them. “C’mon now, Fido, Rover, Rex! Sic ‘em!”

Rex, I thought with a shiver, that could only mean Barnum F.

But the green-eyed things didn’t seem to hear him; it was only when the Master of the Hunt called that they seemed to hear and understand. “There you are, you bloody beggars!” Lord Alpha-B. shouted. “Away with you! For King and Sussex!”

One second I saw them and the next they were gone, the three of us in pursuit, following that mechanico-atomo-electronic pack. We came to a path, a narrow path but made of concrete, and climbed up to a steep slope. And suddenly I smelled the breath of wild cruel Africa² — moldy and stinking of dead meat left for the maggots. I breathed in that jungle stench as the drums beat and Fleischy shouted, “Sic ‘em boys!”

Up the path we rushed to the top of the slope where a hunting station had been hacked out of the wilderness. In the moonlight of the African-artificial and the real moon, I could distinctly see a barbecue pit and several concrete benches. Lord Alpha-B. got up on one of the benches and began to halloo, feebly at first, for he was an old man and it took time before he recovered his breath.

Far away in the jungle I could see the green eyes of the beaters. Then we all heard it. An elephant in fear of its life.

“I want the first shot!” Fleischy bellowed.

“You rotter! Our guest has the privilege.”

I didn’t want that poor beast. Its snortings were enough to make a heart of stone bleed. I couldn’t have pitied it more if it had been human. Maybe my nerves were breaking, for as they shouted at me to get ready for the kill, I heard myself saying, “Why don’t you let us alone? All we want are a few simple things, a little security, a little love.”

“Philosophy is stupid at the moment of truth!” Lord Alpha-B. retorted.

I shrieked at what was coming up from the valley below. It was awful enough to see the beaters, their buttons and eyes glowing, but the elephant! It shone green, its huge body outlined in green, its ears green, its wildly undulating and immense nose like a green-tinted phosphorescent boa-constrictor.

I tossed my rifle away and ran. Behind me I heard a shot. Then silence except for the bom-bom-bom of the drums.

“Come out of that bloody funk, you bloody coward!” I heard a familiar voice, I lifted my head out of the shrub where I was hiding. Silhouetted against the velvet African-type night were two outlines, a short one and the gigantic one of the hybrid.

I stood up and approached them nervously. Below on the valley slope, the dead elephant lay in a pool of greenish light — its own. Further down the slope, the three green-eyed beaters stood as if waiting. “This you call sport,” I said heavily.

I refused to continue hunting with them. So while they got their mixed bag, I sat shivering on one of the benches. Once when Fleischy was the gun, his master tried to rally me. “Those beaters are harmless, old chap. They operate on a closed circuit. They beat up the game, drive it, and when the gun goes off, the circuit is broken. What’s there to worry about? The lighting effects? How else could we see the beasts at night? Nothing mysterious about it. Every drinking spring on this preserve is loaded with isotopes, the X-Ray type, and every beast to a greater or lesser degree is illuminated.”

But I wouldn’t budge. After the hunt, we returned to the Castle, to his lordship’s hunting den which like all other such dens was a skin-and-head shop. (My dislike for hunting started at Bangani Castle.) On the walls were the stuffed heads of tiger and wildebeest, all shining green from the isotopes they had once absorbed in the stomachs they no longer had. Over the fireplace was an elephant head with pale green tusks. “A wild rogue, that one,” Lord Alpha-B. boasted as he poured the scotch into our glasses.

Fleischy sniffed and frowned, walking over to the liquor cabinet where, true to his worst self, he picked up a bottle of gin.

“Professor!” his master called.

Before us, staring disgustedly at the gin in his hand, was the academician. “Will human genius ever solve the mysteries of human nature?” he asked as he put down the gin and accepted a glass of scotch.

“Now that wild rogue,” Lord Alpha-B. resumed. “I killed him many years ago. That is why the isotopes are fading. Ah, the hunts of yesteryear,” he sighed and settled down in a leather chair. He yawned, rubbed the top of his bald head which reflected the mounted trophies, shining a delicate pale green.

I finished my scotch, refilled, drank again, and with whiskey courage said, “Here we sit as if everything’s all right with the world.”

“There goes that crashing bore again,” Lord Alpha-B. yawned, “You might at least have the courtesy to wait until after dinner. Professor, the menu.”

The menu carried his crest. A Think Machine in gold, and in its center, the head of a magicientist in a black and purple hat, the motto also in black and purple: EQUALITY UNDER LAW.

I was hungry. Outside of the U-Latu box given to me by Barnum F.’s double, I’d forgotten when I’d eaten my last meal. I ordered steak and roast Sussex duck for my main courses. The professor walked to a panel underneath a lion head and pressed a series of buttons. “I agree with our guest,” he said. “Everything is not right with the world. We are living in a state of permanent crisis, and humanity — I pronounce the word with contempt — has still to learn the profound lessons of the lower kingdoms. The admirable society of the ant, for example, where every Tom, Dick and Harry metaphorically speaking knows his job. What superb concentration on the task in hand. Consider the mantis who will seize an ant in the process of enjoying its well-earned dinner and begin to eat away at its stomach. And the ant, that superb creature, continues dining on its own dinner. There’s concentration, there’s a philosophy for you to meet the vicissitudes of existence. How backward man is in comparison. If I had the rule of the world I would turn men into ants.”

“How would you begin?” Lord Alpha-B. said.

“First, I would remove the faculty of thought and memory, the entire human complex of ambitions, inhibitions and exhibitions.” He smiled at his phrase and then solemn again said, “The trouble with man, sir, is man.”

“I agree with that,” I said. “Man is his own deadliest enemy and the proof of that is the A-I-D!”

“Stop!” Lord Alpha-B. shouted. “I warn you!”

“For God’s sake, Dr. Bangani — ”

“Your constant invocations to the Supreme Dictator are as monotonous as your screams. Do you think I am happy under the Rulers?” He turned to the professor. “Continue.”

“The trouble with man is man,” the professor repeated. “No human society today is without serious flaws. In the words of the Swedish sociologist, Snorkelmut, ‘The United States is pleasure-mad and gadget-glad.’ And the Reservation? What is it but a retreat into the dark womb of the past, a womb pillared with the umbilical cords of work and sweat? As for India and the Congo and all the former colonies of a hundred years ago, with their cult of democracy — what is that but a cultural lag? Neither do I approve of the Communist nations with their cult of multi-radicalism. I find such a social order a multi-plication of the zero of boredom. In the words of Snorkelmut: ‘A utopia is only possible when the you of individualism is changed into the u of unionism. A u that soon becomes the c of collectivism and finally the d of despotism.’ ”

“Go ahead!” I cried with despair. “You and your professors! Blow up the world! You killed Barnum Fly. You killed him and you’ve got hold of the A-I-D!”

“Fleischy!” his master said and instantly the professor changed into a cave-man. The old magicientist glowered at me and then waved his hand at his human dog. “That’s what I could do to you, my friend. Remove that conscience of yours once and for all. This man you see here was once a famous scientist, a biophysicist, a specialist in enzyme chemistry. Do you want to hear him sing the silly song I’ve taught him? A silly song that amuses me. Fleischy, sing ‘The Biology of Life.’ ”

The hybrid grinned and lifting his huge head he sang:

“Very good, Fleischy,” his master said, and his eyes fixed on me. “I told you how I made him grow a foot by pressuring his genes, my friend. I warn you for the last time. I’ll hybridize you! I’ll unconscience you!”

“You threaten me with removing my conscience,” I said. “But I still have it and speak up I will. I don’t know what you want. All I know is that the A-I-D is threatening all of us. All of us!” I cried. “And that’s wrong, Dr. Bangani. That’s wrong!”

“You’ve got courage,” he said. “And that’s what I had to know, my friend. I need a man with courage. Come!”

I was stunned but I followed him. He led me out of the den and five minutes later we were on the upper floor of the Castle, walking down the corridor with its equations on the walls. We passed the Sex Laboratory, the Time Stream Room, and finally he paused in front of a door with no sign. Inside was a complicated machine with hundreds and hundreds of electric tubes. Attached to its top was a yellow and red hobby horse. “This is a Think Machine,” he explained swiftly. “It can work a million times faster than the human eye, the human hand or human mind. The human eye has been duplicated and surpassed in those rows of tubes. The human hand with its five digits have been multiplied into a series of holes on a strip of tape, into current in an electromagnet. The human mind has been copied in the memory device and calculator.”

I stared at him, not knowing what to think. He pointed up at the yellow and red hobby horse. “Get up on it. There’s a ladder behind the machine.”

He chuckled when I hesitated. “Ah, you are afraid I’m going to operate on that conscience of yours?” He shook his fingers at me. “Wanted in this hour of crisis,” he said mockingly. “A man of courage!”

Without a word I walked to the rear of the machine and climbed the ladder. I seated myself on the hobby horse, and he stared up at me, grinning. “You have courage,” he said and rubbed his hands together. Then he advanced on the machine and pressed a button. The hobby horse began to rock up and down and to speak:

“An electric signal has caused the quartz crystal inside my bowels to expand and press against my mercury. It ripples, it ripples, and in 1/3000 of a second it presses against another crystal, generating a new electric impulse. Hey, hey, and a hi nonny-nonny. You-Too-Can-Be-A-Think-Machine! Rider, do you feel the electric impulses?”

I did feel them. They came in waves …

“Hey, hey, and a hi nonny-nonny. Electric impulses to amplifier, and a hi-nonny-nonny. Feedback to computing circuits, and a hi-nonny-nonny. Magnetic tape for intermediate, erasable memory, and ask my rider any question, ask my rider any question and a hi nonny-nonny. You-Too-Can-Be-A-Think-Machine!”

As those electric impulses flowed into me, as I rocked up and down on the talking horse, I saw the old magicientist hold up a card with a series of punched holes on them. Then he stepped close to the machine and I could no longer see him. The electric impulses doubled, and the hobby horse as it rocked spoke:

“Quartz crystal, oh my liver, oh my mercury. Hey, ho, and a hi nonny-nonny. You-Too-Can-Be-A-Think-Machine. Oh, my amplifier, my feedback, I shouldn’t have eaten that, and a hi nonny-nonny. To answer the question: Am I Dr. M. E. Bangani? The answer is: No, you are Magicientist Barnum Fly.”