The Age of Sinatra, page 12
part #2 of Motorman Series
“Funny,” Moldenke said. “My sacrum discharges every time I walk by this place.”
“It’s an energy sink,” Ophelia said. “I feel it, too. Like walking in mud. I’m light-headed.”
Climbing over the Grassy Knoll, they headed for the Old Ruby Trail. From this vantage, they could see Parkla’s upper floors jutting above a thicket of camphor trees and sucker weed. A few minutes’ walk along the trail brought them to an encampment of homeless neuts, all males, who were roasting green glands over a smoldering pile of poudrette.
“Hello, strangers,” one of them said. “They call me Spanish Johnny. Have some pickled plesio and some roasted glands with us.”
“No time,” Moldenke said. “Bad flocculus. Going to Ferry to have it removed.”
“And I’m getting mulcing dugs,” Ophelia said.
Spanish Johnny spit into the dirt. “Nothing is more vulgar than haste. Those blessed growths might look bad to you, Americans, but believe me, you’re going to sorely miss them when they’re gone.” He threw a stone at a Stinker sitting around the fire. “Nephrastus, come on over and pleasure these settlers with a good story.”
The Stinker stood unsteadily, coated with dust and dry leaves. A cluster of hard, black fecal pellets rolled out of his trouser leg. “OK, boss. Here’s the story. I smoked sawdust behind Zeus Bologna and performed onanism in an apple for want of a natural opening. I fell asleep, dreaming I was at the head of a band of devils storming Indiana. I flung a burning Manifesto at a man’s head, emptied a chamber pot onto a bed. That’s when the drumming began: A rat. A tat. A ratta tat tat. There was a terrible fire at the Squat ’n’ Gobble. Seven burned. Another crushed by falling timbers. And I’m on the scene, drumming for the dead. Rat a tat. Rat a tat. Rat tat tat a rat a tat, a rat tat tat, a rat tat tat. Going up and down the country after that. Rat tat tat. Rat tat tat. From eight till four in the morning, with a rattling, thundering noise. A rat. A rat. A rat tat tat. A rat. A tat. A ratta tat tat. People inquired, ‘What is it about you, that you want to go all over the place going rat, a tat, a rat tat tat? Are you a witch? You’re actually shaped like a drum.’
‘I do have unlucky days,’ I said in reply. ‘My name is Nephrastus. My beat is the fastest.’
‘No more drumming, you hear?’ they said. Then Ratt came to town. An honor guard of plume-hatted Arvians drew up to see him lay the cornerstone of their new temple, watched him smooth the first applications of mortar with a silver trowel, watched him rise when he heard the sound. Ooom pa pa. Oom pa pa. Oompa oompa Oompapa. And he wondered what it was, going, Oompapa Oompapa. Was it a tuba or a man? Going Oompa Oompa Oompapa… .”
“Please,” Moldenke said. “I’m begging you. No more. We have to get to Parkla.”
“Be on your way. We have no use or liking for your kind,” said Spanish Johnny. “Your mind will change when the Forgetting comes.”
Nephrastus said, “Look! Ratt’s balloon.”
The great balloon, as big as a building and full of gas, floated just above Dilly Plaza, rotating slowly in a lazy breeze from the Firecracker Sea. It bore a passing resemblance to Ratt’s head and shoulders, though the facial features had been brushed on in soluble black paint and were dissolving in the humid night air.
Radio Ratt:
A ghostly ship has been sighted by head-diggers off Diego Point, in blowing weather only. The stronger the wind, it seems, the more often the ship appears. Though the mist-enshrouded vessel is seen sailing at an immense rate before the wind, under full press of canvas, even in the most violent gales, she is never known to go into port. Among head-diggers, the story goes that the captain of the ship and all its passengers have been condemned to beat about the sea since the last Great Forgetting. Ghost ship or not, head-digging continues on Holly Island at a feverish pitch. A rich mine of them has been found there, some still frozen, and diggers are pouring into the area in hopes of growing wealthy. In addition to the heads, many tons of healing unguent cream, valued at more than eight-zil guida, have been unearthed thus far.
ARRIVING AT PARKLA, Moldenke and Ophelia were greeted by a weatherbeaten sign above the entrance that read Virtue Never Dwelt Long with Filth.
They rested on an old wooden bench in the foyer. For the better part of an hour, Moldenke dozed. In a dream he saw Arvey posing for an old-fashioned photograph near a wooden picket fence. He held a magazine in one hand and a rifle in the other. The woman behind the Kodak was an attractive young Russian. Moldenke sensed that she was Arvey’s wife.
Ophelia prodded him awake. “Get up, Moldenke. Let’s go. The Arvians have set up a gauntlet for us.”
“You first,” one of them said to Moldenke, pointing a rifle at him. “Go through it or I’ll blow your head off. They don’t call this weapon a ‘man licker’ for nothing.”
Moldenke crawled through the gauntlet, poked in the ribs with rifle butts, spat on, taunted with shouts of “Long live Fidel! Revenge the Bay of Pigs!” When he came to the end, a wiry young Arvian with a serious nature and a tensely set jaw held out a straw basket. “Please, help bring Arvey back. Where is he when we need him? Give us all the guida you’ve got.”
Moldenke took out Piombo’s wad and rolled it into the basket.
“Dunka, dunka, whatta hunka. You’re an honorary Arvian now, buster.”
A small choir of Arvians then chanted a short recitation of their Credo, the Last List: “Typing—already he was at work on his memoirs… . Crystal for watch—-time is of the essence… . Job—to get money to send to Marina and the kids… . Bank account—to put what was left in… . Mail— a postal box was always handy… . Job—it was a very big thing… . Haircut—-it helped get a job …. Library—one of his favorite pre-edible books was Kenny’s Profiles in Courage… . Plug for radio—his ear on the world, it had to be working… . Haircut—this, too, is mentioned twice… . In the name of Arvey… . We know the hour, we know not the day. We watch and we wait. Our lamps trimmed and burning. We know not the hour, we know not the day. Oh, Arvey. Oh, Arvey. Be with us now.”
Ophelia passed through the gauntlet unassailed. All Arvians averted their heads and eyes. They were following Ratt’s latest ordinance, applying to Arvians only—never look directly at a female settler.
“Can you tell us how to find Dr. Ferry’s clinic?” she asked one of the Arvians.
Averting his eyes and lowering his rifle, he said, “I’ve never been there, but I think I know. See that archway? That sign that says No Necronauts Beyond This Point. Go in there, up a flight to the mezzanine, turn north into the south wing, then head east until you pass the custodian’s closet. From there you’ll see stairs leading to a sunken arboretum. Careful … they’re riddled with rust and very unstable. Once down, follow the path marked D45-K. It snakes through a stand of camphor, then a plot of greasewood, and there you are. Ferry’s clinic. Stay alert in the greasewood. They tell me there’s a rabid gibnut in there, lost its fur, acting oddly, going in circles and foaming at the snout… . Now, please move on along. Others are trying to get through the gauntlet.”
Following the complex directions, with a few wrong turns and time spent finding their way out of no-outlet corridors, they came upon the shirtless custodian sitting on a nail keg outside the closet, his neck shortened by deformist surgery, the thick, brutish head lying flush with the shoulders, fixed in position, facing backward. He held a mop standing on end like a spear and stared dreamily at a tray of cleaning agents, saying their names again and again, attempting to commit them to memory. “There’s lye, there’s muriatic acid, ammonia, oil of citronella. Lye, muriatic, ammonia, citronella.” The litany of cleaning agents continued until he reached a natural stopping point.
“Excuse me,” Moldenke said.
Ophelia said, “That’s a really fine head job. It has the stamp of Ferry’s work.”
“Thanks. It is. An original Ferry. I thought it best, finally, to start seeing where I’ve been rather than where I’m going.”
“Excuse me,” Moldenke repeated. “We need to find Ferry’s clinic.”
“Holy bitchment. I can see why. That flocculus is a nightmare. Go right down the hall to the stairs, down the stairs, and across the arboretum. Watch out for that gibnut. It has the blind staggers. Don’t let it bite you. It always goes for that handy little tendon behind your ankle. And watch you don’t slip on the way to the stairs. I’ve just bent over backward to wax that corridor with pure carnauba and buff it till I was dizzy. It’s like walking on mirrors in felt slippers.”
“It’s nice to see someone taking pride in their work, however menial,” Ophelia said.
She and Moldenke carried their clogs and walked barefoot on the highly polished floor to the arboretum stairs, whose metal understructure was a true example of neglect—unpainted support braces dangling loose, some steps missing altogether. The climb down was perilous, and, once off the stairs, they saw a muddy bog standing between them and the clean, dry stones of the path. The light, filtered through a dome of yellow pre-Forgetting glass and a crust of gull droppings, gave the arboretum an eerie glow and the feeling of stillness before a storm.
“That’s a gibnut wallow,” Moldenke said. “Keep your eyes open.”
Ophelia’s nostrils flared. “What’s that I smell?”
“Musk,” Moldenke said. “The gibnut’s close.”
The path across the arboretum was far from straight, curving around gibnut wallows, winding back on itself to avoid patches of sucker weed, sometimes taking abrupt right or left turns for no discernible reason.
“It’s taking forever,” Moldenke complained, just as a sudden tug at one of the legs of his jumpsuit threw him off balance. “It’s the gibnut!”
Losing all feeling in his feet, he toppled into a thorny greasewood patch and pricked himself mercilessly. Then, rolling out of that hazard, he only entangled himself in sucker weed, whose florets clung to his throat and forehead. One by one, like nuts from a tree, he plucked them loose, leaving rosy welts at the points of attachment. Amid these struggles, the gibnut made its escape and Ophelia was not to be seen. Moldenke called her name a few times and got no response. He continued along the path, which curved less and less, and the thicket thinned.
When he reached the terrazzo gallery at the other side of the arboretum, a little troupe of Stinkers was putting on a dumb show. Another sold green glands, and a particularly scurvy one stood beside a cobbled-together casket. “You wanna fuck a Stinker?” he said, pinching Moldenke’s collar. “She don’t smell a bit. Fresh as a daisy. Just died this morning. The worms got her.”
“Not interested,” Moldenke said.
“Its legal, you know. Starting today at noon. It was on the radio.”
“Get out of my way, please.”
The Stinker backed away, the hem of his long gray overcoat dragging on the ground.
At last, the door to Ferry’s clinic could be seen at the very end of the gallery. In a small rotunda otherwise empty of furnishings stood a wooden pedestal with a copper bowl containing two plasticine tokens bearing the numbers three and eight. Moldenke picked up the three, then put it back and took the eight.
Green arrows painted on the floor led him into a waiting room, where a nurse sat at a small metal desk. She was on the frail and pasty side, unblemished except for a few blisters on her cheek and a ripe pustule on her chin. Ten or onety-one patients sat motionless, listening to the nurse’s radio.
“Give me your token,” the nurse said. She put it into a hopper with the rest, mixing them in with a wooden spoon, stirring them like a soup. “I’ll buzz your number when it comes up. Don’t forget it. Sit down. It’s time for the news.” Moldenke found an empty chair and dutifully listened: “Candidate Montfaucon was locked up in the American jail yesterday afternoon for treating the inhabitants of the mulcing cage to a lighted cigar. Montfaucon threw the cigar into a mound of straw, thereby terrifying the gals and starting a fire in the cage… . And over Indiana way, Lars Renfro, an explorer whose career was greatly accelerated when he discovered the east pole in Indiana’s fertile crescent, was drained until dead today by Bloodgood Cutter, a bloodletter, hired by Montfaucon’s goons, a maid and a cabby, who are to stand trial and be executed… . Finally, the Sinatra-Age pleasure ship Titanic sank today off Permanganate Island, taking crew and all but two passengers to their watery graves. The two survivors were the French showman Topinard and one of his prodigies, the neutrodyne giant Indole, whose natural buoyancy saved both himself and his master. ‘I’m saddened by the loss of Skatole, ’ Topinard told Radio Ratt. Despite his able coaching, he said, Skatole never learned to swim, or even float.”
Poor Udo, Moldenke thought.
When the nurse turned off the radio, ceiling fans came to life, revolving by virtue of a complex network of leather belts going from one fan to another and then through a slot high in the wall to whatever source of power was turning them.
A buzzer sounded three times. After a pause, it sounded again, three times. The nurse looked around. “Number eight?”
“I just came in,” Moldenke said. “All these people were ahead of me.”
“Damn you, if you’re number eight, come here.”
He stood at the nurse’s desk, leaning on its edge for support.
“What are you seeking here? Deformation?”
“Bad flocculus. Maybe worms.” He pointed to his chest. “And my boosters are getting old.”
“Sheep or pig?”
“Sheep.”
“Very old, then. Pre-Forgetting?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Ferry’s not a sheep man, you know. You’ll get pig this time. The French have developed an exceptionally stout-hearted strain. The heart goes forever. Dr. Ferry uses nothing else.”
On entering Ferry’s examining room with the nurse, Moldenke was dwarfed by a life-size blowup of Arvey that covered an entire wall. Opposite, Ferry sat at a card table eating hot fungu. “It’s all I can keep down any more,” he said. His head and face were pale and hairless. Above his eyes were pasted two snippets of wooly carpet, a poor mimic of eyebrows.
“He wants you to take off the flocculus, Doctor Ferry. And a few other things.”
“Worms and a bum implant.”
Ferry was feverish, tongue swollen, yellow and protruding. His voice was a shallow, throaty croak. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”
“Eat the rest of that fungu, Doctor.” The nurse stirred it for him. “You know what happens when you don’t. Look, it’s getting cold on you.”
Dr. Ferry took up the spoon and ate. The swollen tongue and loose dentures made the process haphazard and messy, the fungu spilling down his chin and onto his smock.
The nurse led Moldenke to the examining table. “Lie here and relax. I’ll be getting back to the other patients. You be a good boy, now. It won’t hurt a bit.”
Ferry finished his fungu, then turned his attention to Moldenke. “Feeling listless … anemic? Lapses of memory?”
“All that.”
“Impairment of the power to use words?”
“Often.”
“The lapses of memory. How long have you had them?”
“I don’t recall.”
“Seeing any worms in the stool?”
“If I look.”
“Stand up. Show me the implant.”
Moldenke struggled with a rusty zipper until it ripped free of the cloth and his jumpsuit fell open.
“Who did this work?”
“Burnheart.”
“When?”
“Just before the last Forgetting. A lung had to go to make room.”
“We’re much better at these things these days. We use pig now. French pig. It only takes one. Not so invasive. We can leave the lungs in place. A few days rest, an infusion of nuxated iron, and presto, there you are, ready to walk a new body around. Would you like me to pencil you in for tomorrow?”
“The cost?”
“Very, very modest. Three zil guida. We’re Arvian run and well endowed.”
“And my worms?”
Ferry slipped a finger into Moldenke’s sparse beard and parted it. “Look at those encystings. We’re going to have to go after your condition aggressively. We have healing strategies to attempt, but no guarantees. Let me have a look at your testicles. Ah, see there. The worms are beginning to migrate down into your sack. I tell you what, we’re running a special on pig sacks. I could sew you on a pair in no time. Completely worm resistant. Very high sperm production. You could be knee-deep in offspring, provided you sex with neut gals only. That’s the caveat on these pig nuts. No sexing with settler women.”
“No problem for me,” Moldenke said.
“We’ll do it. I don’t like the looks of that sack of yours. We can kill the worms, but the damage is done. I’ll tell my Stinkers to cut a pig with your name on it.”
“And the flocculus?”
“It’s well rooted. Those kind have a habit of coming back with multiplied ferocity. Why don’t we strike a balance here? I’ll just give it a good trim and shape it up some. Maybe lighten that deep blue color and leave it at that.”
“If you say so, Dr. Ferry.”
“I say so.” He pounded the top of his desk and called to the nurse.
“Yes, doctor?”
“Take him to the depilatorium, and when he’s through there, get him settled in his room and put him to sleep. Tell the Stinks to ice down a fresh sack tonight.”
“Yes, doctor.”
“And on the way, be sure he sees what I’ve been doing with Arvey.” He coughed up a little kernel of hard fungu.
“Is Arvey here?” Moldenke asked.
“Right down the hall,” the nurse said cheerily. “It’s something everyone should see.”
Arvey was displayed behind the glass of the old nursery, angled slightly toward the viewer, his restored head in such lifelike condition that there were bubbles of saliva clustering around his mouth. The rest of the body lay separate from the head, covered with a black cloth.
“Behold,” the nurse said. She knelt and bowed. “We know not the hour, we know not the day. The head is alive. Ask it anything. It will respond.”
