Part 17 (1/2)
”What's the use of that? It'd finally reach either the Pacific or the Atlantic. In fact, it'd walk off the edge of the Earth, like-”
”Imagine an Eskimo village, and a six-foot-high block of hash worth about-how much would that be worth?”
”About a billion dollars.”
”More. Two billion.”
”These Eskimos are chewing hides and carving bone spears, and this block of hash worth two billion dollars comes walking through the snow saying over and over, 'No, I don't.' ”
”They'd wonder what it meant by that.”
”They'd be puzzled forever. There'd be legends.”
”Can you imagine telling your grandkids, 'I saw with my own eyes the six-foot-high block of hash appear out of the blinding fog and walk past, that way, worth two billion dollars, saying, ”No, I don't.” ' His grandchildren would have him committed.”
”No, see, legends build. After a few centuries they'd be saying, 'In my forefathers' time one day a ninety-foot-high block of extremely good quality Afghanistan hash worth eight trillion dollars came at us dripping fire and screaming, ”Die, Eskimo dogs!” and we fought and fought with it, using our spears, and finally killed it.' ”
”The kids wouldn't believe that either.”
”Kids never believe anything any more.”
”It's a downer to tell anything to a kid. I once had a kid ask me, 'What was it like to see the first automobile?' s.h.i.+t, man, I was born in 1962.”
”Christ,” Arctor said, ”I once had a guy I knew burned out on acid ask me that. He was twenty-seven years old. I was only three years older than him. He didn't know anything any more. Later on he dropped some more hits of acid-or what he was sold as acid-and after that he peed on the floor and c.r.a.pped on the floor, and when you said something to him, like 'How are you, Don?', he just repeated it after you, like a bird. 'How are you, Don?' ”
Silence, then. Between the two joint-smoking men in the cloudy living room. A long, somber silence.
”Bob, you know something ...” Luckman said at last. ”I used to be the same age as everyone else.”
”I think so was I,” Arctor said.
”I don't know what did it.”
”Sure, Luckman,” Arctor said, ”you know what did it to all of us.”
”Well, let's not talk about it.” He continued inhaling noisily, his long face sallow in the dim midday light.
One of the phones in the safe apartment rang. A scramble suit answered it, then extended it toward Fred. ”Fred.”
He shut off the holos and took the phone.
”Remember when you were downtown last week?” a voice said. ”Being administered the BG test?”
After an interval of silence Fred said, ”Yes.”
”You were supposed to come back.” A pause at that end, too. ”We've processed more recent material on you ... I have taken it upon myself to schedule you for the full standard battery of percept tests plus other testing. Your time for this is tomorrow, three o'clock in the afternoon, the same room. It will take about four hours in all. Do you remember the room number?”
”No,” Fred said.
”How are you feeling?”
”Okay,” Fred said stoically.
”Any problems? In your work or outside your work?”
”I had a fight with my girl.”
”Any confusion? Are you experiencing any difficulty identifying persons or objects? Does anything you see appear inverted or reversed? And while I'm asking, any s.p.a.ce-time or language disorientation?”
”No,” he said glumly. ”No to all the above.”
”We'll see you tomorrow at Room 203,” the psychologist deputy said.
”What material of mine did you find to be-”
”We'll take that up tomorrow. Be there. All right? And, Fred, don't get discouraged.” Click. Click.
Well, click to you too, he thought, and hung up.
With irritation, sensing that they were leaning on him, making him do something he resented doing, he snapped the holos into print-out once more; the cubes lit up with color and the three-dimensional scenes within animated. From the aud tap more purposeless, frustrating-to Fred-babble emerged: ”This chick,” Luckman droned on, ”had gotten knocked up, and she applied for an abortion because she'd missed like four periods and she was conspicuously swelling up. She did nothing but gripe about the cost of the abortion; she couldn't get on public a.s.sistance for some reason. One day I was over at her place, and this girl friend of hers was there telling her she only had a hysterical pregnancy. 'You just want want to believe you're pregnant,' the chick was nattering at her. 'It's a guilt trip. And the abortion, and the heavy bread it's going to cost you, that's a penance trip.' So the chick- I really dug her-she looked up calmly and she said, 'Okay, then if it's a hysterical pregnancy I'll get a hysterical abortion and pay for it with hysterical money.' ” to believe you're pregnant,' the chick was nattering at her. 'It's a guilt trip. And the abortion, and the heavy bread it's going to cost you, that's a penance trip.' So the chick- I really dug her-she looked up calmly and she said, 'Okay, then if it's a hysterical pregnancy I'll get a hysterical abortion and pay for it with hysterical money.' ”
Arctor said, ”I wonder whose face is on the hysterical five-dollar bill.”
”Well, who was our most hysterical President?”
”Bill Falkes. He only thought thought he was President.” he was President.”
”When did he think he served?”
”He imagined he served two terms back around 1882. Later on after a lot of therapy he came to imagine he served only one term-”
With great fury Fred slammed the holos ahead two and a half hours. How long does this garbage go on? he asked himself. All day? Forever?
”-so you take your child to the doctor, to the psychologist, and you tell him how your child screams all the time and has tantrums.” Luckman had two lids of gra.s.s before him on the coffee table plus a can of beer; he was inspecting the gra.s.s. ”And lies; the kid lies. Makes up exaggerated stories. And the psychologist examines the kid and his diagnosis is 'Madam, your child is hysterical. You have a hysterical child. But I don't know why.' And then you, the mother, there's your chance and you lay it on him, 'I know why, doctor. It's because I had a hysterical pregnancy.' ” Both Luckman and Arctor laughed, and so did Jim Barris; he had returned sometime during the two hours and was with them, working on his funky hash pipe, winding white string.
Again Fred spun the tape forward a full hour.
”-this guy,” Luckman was saying, manicuring a box full of gra.s.s, hunched over it as Arctor sat across from him, more or less watching, ”appeared on TV claiming to be a world-famous impostor. He had posed at one time or another, he told the interviewer, as a great surgeon at Johns Hopkins Medical College, a theoretical submolecular high-velocity particle-research physicist on a federal grant at Harvard, as a Finnish novelist who'd won the n.o.bel Prize in literature, as a deposed president of Argentina married to-”
”And he got away with all that?” Arctor asked. ”He never got caught?”
”The guy never posed as any of those. He never posed as anything but a world-famous impostor. That came out later in the L.A. Times- Times-they checked up. The guy pushed a broom at Disneyland, or had until he read this autobiography about this world-famous impostor-there really was one-and he said, 'h.e.l.l, I can pose as all those exotic dudes and get away with it like he did,' and then he decided, 'h.e.l.l, why do that; I'll just pose as another impostor.' He made a lot of bread that way, the Times Times said. Almost as much as the real world-famous impostor. And he said it was a lot easier.” said. Almost as much as the real world-famous impostor. And he said it was a lot easier.”
Barris, off to himself in a corner winding string, said, ”We see impostors now and then. In our lives. But not posing as subatomic physicists.”
”Narks, you mean,” Luckman said. ”Yeah, narks. I wonder how many narks we know. What's a nark look like?”
”It's like asking, What's an impostor look like?” Arctor said. ”I talked one time to a big hash dealer who'd been busted with ten pounds of hash in his possession. I asked him what the nark who busted him looked like. You know, the-what do they call them?-buying agent that came out and posed as a friend of a friend and got him to sell him some hash.”