Alien Accounts (26 page)

‘Get set, armor-maker from Armorica,’ he mumbled, working his big toe inside the trigger guard. ‘I’m gonna make a hole in your cap.’ But who was the guy? He wanted to think of a good translation of the name first.

A Guardsman spoke to him through a faulty loudhailer: ‘You need helpEEEEEEE. Throw down your WHEEEE and we will help you. We’veEEEEAWWWrounded. Do you understand? WHOOOP!’

As he pulled the trigger, he came up with a good enough translation of the name in the cap: From Armorica = From Normandy =
Norman
Armor-maker =
Mailer

The thought, along with the old cap, flew up to the topmost leaves of the elm.

MEMORANDUM

From the desk of Gen. Max Heiliger (Ret.)

To: H. H. Murd

There have been rumors circulating about the nationality hence loyalty of Phil Wang, so I may as well clear them up now:

He is a loyal American citizen of Chinese extraction, born and brought up in the Midwest. He is also a former comic book illustrator, and indeed
won a Croix des Filles de Revolution d’Amerique for his war comic, ‘Guts of Glory’. That should straighten out any misunderstanding.

This memo cancels and supersedes all other memos on the subject.

Regards,

Max

A MENTAL NOTE

This is a rash and ill-considered business. Do we
know
Mrs Rockefeller smoked Camels in her monoplane (
New Yorker
, April 17, 1937)? Over which state? Whence coming, whither bound? Let X define that term the
goal of A
. Then let Y be a terrible crime against all peace-loving people of the world. A is the state of A (plus its environment), being the foliage nearby a nearby tree, when two keen eyes watch the withering away of this state. Y is the Corinthian Room of any Hotel Pierre (its environment). Now X is representable by co-ordinates X and Y in an abstract state. Now Y is a parameter representing all peace-loving people of the state. The word
paowa
means literally some constant X representing the forgiveness of all innocent people who love peace. That rash and ill-considered young man has the Volkbein arms, but I hope that all
paowa
people will smoke Camels.

This fine-looking young instrument implies a world error of prediction and its environment, yet this is a strange and terrible business at the Y. I know personally the average of A, or change in this inhuman thing.

I hope all business people will see it in their hearts to forgive me for this crime, which I see in my heart was a crime against all people of the Hotel Pierre. The fine-looking young man of the Camel arms – gave birth!

They are of Y, the people of great length and military beauty. That belongs to the co-ordinates of soul and office, Miss Bunne, yours of the history,

H.H. Murd

‘So it was
you
who called me all those times!’ Marilyn said with a laugh. ‘I wondered who it was.’

‘I thought you knew my voice,’ said the other woman. ‘But now that you know who it was, you know who loves you, too.’

‘Of course! Oh, this calls for a drink! Joe, would you bring us two invoices, plenty of ice?’

Stoat got them all together in the drawing room for a showdown. There were maps all over his face and clothes, and he did not in general look well.

‘Averaging all the worth-situations as main-part factors,’ he said, ‘the arrival at an approximation of the practical value (or value-set) for any projected application can be implemented in such cases where extrinsic worth-situations are assumed intrinsic. Otherwise, Heiliger’s Law applies.

‘Eric could not have arrived at the scene of the real crime until
at least
nine-thirty
, by the clock in the hall. Since Murd had set this clock forward ten minutes at ten minutes before the other butler lit the fire, the body (which was cold) would have had to be lying before the fire
before
Marilyn phoned David. In other words,
whoever
came from the library into here, out through the dining room and up the back stairs to change and come down the front way again, looking as if they had just got up to see if that was a gunshot, that person would have thought the real time was
nine twenty
. But at nine twenty, Max here was out front, shovelling snow and unwittingly clearing away the
first
set of footprints, the footprints of …’

‘
Oh God, I can’t stand it!
’ Marilyn cried, and ran to bury her mutilated face in the comforting padded shoulder of Mr Murd. Stoat, smiling dangerously, ground on towards the inevitable Conclusion.

‘The clock was fast; the hands pointed to nine. The dog pointed to something frozen fast in the snow – a hand. As Phil pointed out, he was fast asleep. On the other hand, Murd moved fast. The hour was at hand. At this point, Eric gave Max a hand with his fast car, which needed a new set of points. David showed his hand a little too soon, and Anne, we know, was in fast company. Kravon pointed to a portrait by a false hand, a second-hand copy that still had its points. The point is …’

‘I confess,’ said the bandaged man, taking out a peculiar little gun.

‘Too late,’ Stoat reproached him. ‘I resume: Leprosy struck. The hour struck. The workers at the plant struck. A match was struck. I struck up a new acquaintance. Lightning struck the lightning rod. And so on.’

‘You have nothing on me,’ Freag sneered.

‘Max discovered he was white, an ex-Nazi from Argentina, with amnesia – and he knew Marilyn, despite her sympathetic birthmark, was an Israeli spy!

‘Murd, seeing the game was up, took the deathkit from his hollow heel and used it – but was it on himself? Kravon, posing as the other butler, came in to light the fire – really to get close enough to Anne to do what he had to do, what he had been plotting all those years in stir!

‘Phil, having thought for years he was of the royal house of Thailand, discovered that he had been changed in the cradle for Eric! Almost too late, Phil learned that Marilyn was his cousin!

‘At this point, the lights went out. David found himself not down in the lab at all, but somewhere in the mob on Breughel Street. Eric, thinking he was in the library, took down a book – it was a brick from the lab wall! He felt a stealthy step behind him, turned and struck out! Is it really necessary to describe the president, Hernando Horario Murd? Expiring in the flamethrower’s flames, David steadfastly refused to name the noble-woman who had betrayed him to the National Guard. Travers promised himself – one more interview, and he would have enough to retire – just one more big one. “Good God!” Eric realised what Freag and Logan had been creating all those months, down in that infernal laboratory. David, expiring, offered a prayer for the transmission of sins. Marilyn, locked in a creaking tower of the old self, suddenly turned and ran for her life! The
lights went out again.’

The lights went out again, and when they came on, Stoat lay in a pool of ink. Eric had vanished. Marilyn, without her birthmark, was nowhere to be seen.

‘This is just the way poor Marty got it,’ Max said, sipping the tea that contained he knew not what. The figure of Connecticut on the floor groaned and moved. Everyone filed out.

The figure on the floor raised itself on one peninsula and spoke: ‘It’s what I’ve been trying and trying to get through to all of you; the murderer is …’

And making a vague gesture that took in everything, it fell back.

MARILYN MEETS MYSTERIOUS CALLER – SELF!

Girl with miraculous vanishing birthmark does it again

KRAVON TO DRIVE ‘BAD-LUCK’ LOTUS IN INDY 500

‘I’ve found new heart,’ he quips

EX-NAZI NAMED HEAD OF SOUTH AFRICAN MILITARY

Peculiar pigmentation causes scowls in Johannesburg

Eric, who called himself ‘David’ these days, sat in the Automat over a cup of black coffee, wondering if that girl over there with the thirty-one perfect freckles would like a date with him. He didn’t suppose so, but you never knew …

Marilyn sat in the Automat eating pale jello, wondering if Eric was ever going to get up and come over and speak to her, or what. Why didn’t he screw up his courage? The way he had screwed up their lives?

She could hardly keep this up. Seven dishes of jello so far, and no action. Was this the Eric of seaside newspaper days? Maybe he didn’t recognise her since ‘Mother-Scrubber’, with its deep-down cleansing action, had removed the hidden dirt and the clearly exposed dirt from her face. Well, here goes jello number eight.

She sure liked jello, Eric noted admiringly. Reminded him of a girl he once knew. That was a good opening line:

‘Excuse me, miss, but you sure seem to like jello. Reminds me …’

Something else drew his attention. A peculiar man was standing in the line at the cashier’s window. He was tall, rather stiff, and amazingly symmetrical, and he seemed to be wearing a toupee.

‘Ten dollars?’ the cashier said. ‘
All
change?’

‘… yes … please …’ The man spoke faintly in a tinny voice. When the change was finally before him, he removed his hat, bent from the hips, and scooped in all the coins in one movement.

As the man turned from the window, Eric noticed again how symmetrical his features were: two perfect halves, with a thin scar or
seam running down the middle. He glided without hesitation to the section marked PIES. Eric, along with a few others, craned his neck to watch.

Inserting a coin next to ‘lemon meringue’, the man twisted the knob. The window popped open. Instead of removing the pie, he reached in a fist and smashed it, smearing it well around in its stainless steel box. Then he repeated this performance at the next window down, and the next.

After finishing the ‘lemon meringue’ column, he moved one step to the left and began on ‘apple’. Other customers froze, looking from the columns of windows smeared with broken pastry to the man’s constantly-moving left hand, which became in turn covered with apple, peach, cherry and berry syrup, custard, whipped cream, and gouts of pumpkin.

‘Hey!’

‘Hey, what the hell here! Dis pie’s all crumbled up!’

‘Him, he’s the guy. Hey, Mr Rich Man! You don’t care if anybody else wants ta eat?’

A manager bustled over. ‘What’s going on here? You can’t do
that
!’

The stranger said nothing, and the manager too was frozen, hypnotised by the combination of violent action and serene, even indifferent expression.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked again, baffled and afraid. ‘You don’t like pie or something?’

Having finished the PIES section, the odd man seized a handful of paper napkins and began wiping off his fingers, one by one. ‘… yes …’ he said, ‘… like … pies … very … much …’ Then he headed for the section marked BEVERAGES. Soon the spouts of ‘Coffee’, ‘Coffee with Cream’, ‘Coffee with Extra Cream’, ‘Tea’ and ‘Hot Chocolate’ were gushing beverages enough to overflow their respective drains, cover the counter top, and drizzle from the edge. The stranger continued to plug in nickles and pull cranks, standing in a puddle of mixed beverages.

Eric looked around to see if the freckled girl were sharing this experience with him. She was gone, and a busboy in white was hurrying to remove all trace of her existence.

Well, to sum up: I opened my eyes, etc., etc., and then the last doctor wanted to leave the room. In pity, I created an ‘outside’, reducing the thickness of the walls from infinity to just ‘thick’, and making part of one wall moveable. I made a kind of ‘hole’ that could be opened or closed. On the ‘other’ side of it, I lettered:

DRUM INC.

RESTRICTED AREA

NO VISITORS

Then he ‘opened’ it and went ‘out’.

A cop in crash helmet and other cop togs came into the Automat.
Someone pointed out the peculiar man, and the cop went over to teach him a lesson. People speculated about it over the clatter of dishes and the metronomic beat of the billy.

‘Too much book if you ask me. Too much book.’

The cop sat down afterwards for a coffee and donut. When he had finished, someone pointed out Eric. So the cop came over and taught Eric a lesson, too.

Marilyn noticed she was headed for the river. People, scraps of newspaper flew by her:

GOD TAKES BRIBE

‘… suit becomes him …’

‘He sat up on the …’

U.S. TO TEST ‘SUN BOMB’

She had known her boyfriend since they were both eighteen. They were now twenty. They had always had a stormy relationship – one minute very happy together, the next arguing and miserable. Sometimes he’d say they would get married soon, and then he’d say he was ambitious, and marriage was impossible for at least five years. She’d suggested they part, but he didn’t want that. Now her belly was heavy, painfully swollen with jello, and she felt so unhappy and discontented. What do you advise?

‘198-, A Tale of “Tomorrow”’ –
New Worlds
#197, © 1970