Fun House

An eyewitness report of the historic search for the world’s most dangerous weapon, the A-I-D …

by
BENJAMIN APPEL

a division of F+W Media, Inc.

Cover

Title Page

A Warning

One: The Search Begins

Two: Suspect Number One

Three: The Magicientist M. E. Bangani

Four: The World Is Saved — Almost

Five: Last Chance

Also Available

Copyright

I
SHOULD
state immediately that, in writing this historic eyewitness report, I am prejudiced with all the prejudices of a Reservation American.

The facts about our way of life are generally known. Still, there are many who forget that the Reservation was established only in 1979, after the two-hour work-day had been made law in the United States. It was in 1979, a grand and glorious year, when our forefathers, who believed in the old pioneer virtues, petitioned Congress for a tract of land where we could live and work — fourteen or sixteen hours a day if we wished — as had the first settlers in this country.

To its credit, Congress granted this petition, and the Reservation was created. It would prove to be a continuous source of vulgar amusement for Americans on the Outside.
¹
Yet, if they laughed at us for being hopelessly old-fashioned, we, in turn, had a righteous scorn for a people who only lived for idle amusement in the Pleasure State that had succeeded the Welfare State of the twentieth century. I, as a Reservation American, born and bred, was no exception. I had never been outside the Reservation until June 23, 2039, when as Reservation Chief of Police I was drafted in the service of my country.

Service, faith and hope — that is why I am writing this eyewitness report about the search for the stolen A-I-D, the most terrible invention mankind has ever known. Not for fame or glory, but as an example of what one determined hard-working man was able to do.

The stolen A-I-D will be recovered! I refuse to think that total destruction is still a possibility.

In this year 2039, the facts about the A-I-D are known to every child, but they can bear repetition.

The A-I-D weighs exactly twenty-four pounds, corresponding to the twenty-four hours in the day — a gruesome touch of the inventor’s imagination.

The A-I-D is a detonator.

It is NOT the super-bomb as many think. If the timing device has not been set, it is harmless. The A-I-D is a detonator, but whether the released radioactive gamma rays or the mesons in its thermoid atomic coil constitute the force will always remain in doubt. What is certain is that it can go off and destroy the world’s stockpile of fission and fusion bombs, our unhappy inheritance from the past.

People of the earth, a warning!

1. Report any odd or mysterious parcel of medium weight to the proper officials!

2. Give at least two hours of your day to the official search parties organized by your Government!

3. Mankind has one last chance to save itself!

And mankind will be saved for I, one humble individual, almost did the job myself.
¹

J
UNE
23, 2039 will be a historic date if this earth continues to have a history. On that day I discovered what was really at the bottom of the case that until then had been known to me only as the July 4th Murders.

My connection with the case had begun with the fifth murder, that of the Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, who had been found dead on June 20th in a speciality ballroom of that city devoted to the study and performance of the primitive African dance. The next day, June 21st, the sixth corpse turned up, in a storeroom of the state-supported Sunday Artists Museum in San Francisco, California. On June 22nd, the seventh corpse was found behind the paddock of the Ucanrun Racetrack
¹
in Baltimore, Maryland.

These three murders, like the four preceding them, had apparently been committed by the same person or persons. The murderer’s trademark, so to speak, accompanied all of them — a slip of paper bearing the following message.

The victims, except for the first victim, a United States Senator, were all important city officials.

On June 23rd, with Commissioner Elvis Sonata,
²
I returned to Washington, and at Law and Order Headquarters, we discussed the seventh, or Baltimore corpse. “Exactly like all the others,” the Commissioner said with a smile. They were always smiling. Since the day I had left the Reservation I hadn’t seen more than a dozen sad or unhappy or even just plain thoughtful faces.

He gave me the murder slip. Its duplicate had been found pinned to the hair or attached to the fingers of the previous six victims. “Elvis,” I said seriously. “You’ve been withholding important information from me. Is it because we disagree in our private beliefs? If so, I’ll be damned if I know why you drafted me!”

“You’re Reservation Chief of Police, Crockett,” he said.

“Am I? This is the first time in sixty years Washington has called on any of us!”

“Better late than never, as the lifelong spinster said on her wedding night.” He made his pitiful joke like a bird sings, without thinking. They were always joking, always looking at what they called “the brighter side of life.” As a result, they all had what I would describe as laughy faces, faces without character. They didn’t need character. They were a nation on a perpetual weekend. Although most of them held jobs, it was only as a means to an end, a technique for heightening their fun. Even the two-hour day of 1979 was entirely voluntary in 2039!

How different they were from us! We worked hard as in the great days of the country when the West was the West. We had to work hard because all machinery invented after 1879, a century before 1979, the year of the Great Return as we called it, was prohibited. Ours was the ideal society. Work, Courage and Large Families. True, we had criminals, but thank God, crime with us was honest crime because we still had honest temptation. Among us, temptation hadn’t been reduced to gratification, as on the Outside.

I stared angrily at his blond handsome face, so insipid, so self-indulgent. “Answer this one question, Elvis. Are these murders the work of the St. Ewagiow
¹
?”

He was silent, and I said, “It is that death cult, isn’t it?”

He reached into his pocket and took out a small red, white and blue bound book — the National Dictionary of Pocket Humor — consulted it and then read aloud: “ ‘Death Cult … Death Dulls …’ ” and began laughing to himself as he glanced through the suggested puns and other humorous connotations. But before he could (as they were constantly saying) “Wowsle me,” I grabbed him by his coat lapels and shook him. Believe me, as a Reservation police officer who had followed horse thieves on mountainous trails for a week at a stretch, I had muscles in my shoulders.

His coat lapels ripped, leaving a piece of cloth in my hands. (He was wearing one of those lightweight Wearitwunce suits whose price was two for a dollar. It was made of wafton, nikrilon and daffin. The controlled climate on the Outside had eliminated the need for heavier clothing. Temperature year-round was 70 degrees, a perpetual spring, unlike us, thank God, who still lived under the old-fashioned four seasons.) The commissoner stared at the cloth in my hands and roared at this joke on himself while I controlled the impulse to throw the rag into his face. That’s what they called cloth! And suddenly I became aware of my own sturdy gray homespun. I felt homesick. I thought of the long winter evenings in which my wife Ruth had sat weaving at her loom, with the older children busy at soap-making.

“Fun, fun,” I said bitterly.

The Commissioner wiped his eyes. “This much I can tell you, Crockett. There is a national emergency.” He said that in what was for him a solemn tone. “The threat ‘Everybody Dies On July 4th’ is no idle threat. We have exactly eleven days to prevent disaster.”

He looked at me for a long time, and maybe I was imagining things but for a second I thought his eyes had got wet. Not really wet or even good and damp, but as if a single tear, one to the eye, had unwillingly leaked its way. The Commissioner’s crying, even in this limited way, was more than I could stand. They had no use for tears. Hadn’t he said during the investigation of the Atlanta corpse that tears were a saline solution that not only blurred the accurate observation of scientific facts
¹
but were also a criticism of the Government?

“Elvis,” I said, greatly moved. “Eleven days!”

But as I spoke, he again began flipping through the pages of his little red, white and blue handbook. Probably for a witticism based on the number eleven. This typical reaction infuriated me. I thought it was my duty to get the information he was suppressing, a duty above all to the people back home. My people, the real Americans.

I thought of how our forefathers had come to the Reservation in the year 1979 to escape the then-new, soul-destroying, two-hour work-day. Leaving a nation already debauched with leisure and sunken in a stew of hobbies, where countless men in the prime of life were retiring at the age of thirty. The New Redskins, they had called us, predicting that we wouldn’t stay for more than a few years, and that we ourselves would tear down the great atomic-powered fence our forefathers had asked for to protect themselves from sightseeing parties from the Outside. I thought of this precious territory of ours, ploughed with our own sweat, in the heart of the continent — its eastern border running through Valley City, North Dakota, Yankton, South Dakota, and North Plate, Nebraska; its western border cutting through the middle of Montana and Wyoming; southwards to within fifty miles of the cityurb
¹
that had boomed around Denver, Colorado; and northward by treaty agreement with Canada to Moosejaw, Saskatchewan, and Portage La Prairie, Manitoba.

Yes, a hundred and one thoughts of the founding days of the Reservation streamed through my heart, and I came to a lightning decision — the kind of decision typical of men brought up in the big spaces.

I jumped to my feet and hit the Commissioner on the jaw. He fell to the floor, and as I stuffed the torn piece of his coat lapel into his mouth, I began to whistle, for there is no satisfaction like going about a job properly. I knew exactly what I wanted. The contents of the Commissioner’s brain.

I hauled him back into his chair and tied him securely with the All-Emergency Thread
²
carried by their Law and Order officers. A spool of it had been given to me on my arrival. Then I studied the Com-Tel or Communications-Telephone on his desk and pushed in the SCI Button. A few seconds later an electronic voice was talking to me from somewhere in the building.

“Science,” it said pleasantly. “Science, Science … Are you ready, Commissioner? Ready? Ready? Authors. Ballistics. Controls …”

At Controls I lifted my hand from the button. There was a moment of silence and then a second electronic voice began to talk.

“Controls, Controls … Are you ready. Commissioner? Ready? Ready?” This voice began to call off a long list of controls, all beginning with the letter A. What I wanted was in the B’s. I pressed the proper button on the Com-Tel. The voice paused as if to catch its electronic breath and then began.

“Brain-Effectors, Brain-Effectors … Are you ready, Commissioner? Ready? Ready? Amnesia Pills. Antibiotic Neurodromes. Brain-Confessors …”

Brain-Confessors! That was what I wanted. Within a few minutes there was a knock on the door. I walked over and opened it cautiously. Before me stood a four-foot automaton typical of the automatons and robots that performed their duller jobs. Headless, with a piston moving up and down where its neck should have been and, mounted on the piston, one green eye and one red eye.

“I’ll take it, officer,” I said, “Thanks.”

“Thank you, Commissioner,” it replied in a throaty voice — a female, this one. The red eye flicked off, the green eye flicked on and it swiftly moved down the corridor.

I carried the Brain-Confessor over to the desk. It seemed like a simple affair to operate. (I should mention that on my arrival from the Reservation I had been given a basic course in police techniques at L. and O. Headquarters.) I clamped the grooved cranial band across the Commissioner’s forehead, released the two occipital recorders
¹
and slid them across the band until they were directly over both of his temples, where I fastened them. A single wire connected the occipital recorders to the control box. I turned the main dial until the arrow pointed at the legend: WILLED ACTIONS. These were now neutralized. I picked up the earphones attached to the control box, reached for the mouthpiece and asked my first question.

“Commissioner, I understand that there is a national emergency?”

A tiny voice, the voice of the unconscious man, not his voice really, not his ordinary voice — but his B-Voice or Brain-Voice — sounded in the earphones, “Yes,” it said.

“What’s this national emergency all about?”

The B-Voice replied. “The A-I-D has been stolen.”

“Stolen!” I exclaimed.

As if in response to the horror in my voice, the B-Voice, like a sad echo repeated. “Stolen. Stolen from India and brought to the United States.”

“Who stole it?” To this day I can hear my trembling question.

“The St. Ewagiow.”

I groaned at the thought of the A-I-D in the hands of the death cult. And in the United States! Wiping the sweat from my face I said. “The A-I-D here?”

“Yes, hidden somewhere in the country. Barnum Fly, Barnum Fly, Barnum Fly.” The B-Voice repeated this name a dozen times.

“Who is Barnum Fly?”

“Public enemy number one. See the dossier in my desk.”

“Where in your desk?”

“The third drawer on the right. Under the pictures.”

And so concluded that memorable conversation of June 23rd.

I pulled open the third drawer and was startled when the top picture,
¹
that of a naked blonde, smiled and waved her hand and in a lecherous voice whispered. “Darling, watch me do some bumplettes …” Quickly, I turned it face downward on the desk, cutting off the blonde’s voice. But a second voice, the voice of a naked brunette on the picture underneath whispered. “Darling, I live at 2340 Connecticut Avenue …” I grabbed the entire stack, turning them bottoms up and faces down to the technological devil who was their master.

The name Fly had seemed vaguely familiar to me, and as I glanced through the thick dossier I placed it. I must have fainted from the shock. How long I was unconscious I don’t know, but the low murnur of a woman’s voice aroused me. From the floor where I had dropped I saw the Commissioner at his desk, the Brain-Confessor removed from his head and watching something in his hands. One of the Animateds.

“Elvis,” I called.

He shrugged and reluctantly ended his interview with the murmuring woman. “I should be angry with you,” he said with a smile. Nothing is more irritating than the forgiving smile of a man who by rights should be in a fury. Besides, my professional pride was hurt, for somehow he had escaped from the All-Emergency Thread.

“I should be angry,” he repeated. “But I feel too good about sharing that damned secret. Crockett, I can’t tell you the strain it’s been!”

“Barnum Fly, I muttered. All I could think of was that according to the dossier, Barnum Fly was one of ours, although on the Reservation his first name had been Nathaniel. He had changed it to Barnum
¹
when he had been granted permission to leave for the Outside. That was our custom. Once a year, after the harvest, all dissatisfied Reservationists had the right to leave. As Nathaniel Fly had, when his wheat crop was devoured by locusts, and his wife and children died of typhoid.

“I understand now why I’m needed,” I said with bitter shame. “A Reservation man to catch a Reservation man. What I can’t understand is, why the secrecy?”

“Can’t you guess?” he asked softly.

I shook my head and he said, “They made it hard for me to bring you in.”

“They?”

He pointed up at the ceiling. “The Board.”

I understood him now. The
Board
, The
They
, he was referring to were the Think Machines
²
on the upper floors.

“The trouble I’ve had with Them!” he said. (I follow Outside usage in capitalizing when referring to the Think Machines.) “I was forced to appeal to the Supreme Court
¹
and if I hadn’t won the President’s support you wouldn’t be here, Crockett.”

Never in all my life had I received such a testimonial to my reputation as a police officer. Deeply touched, I thanked him, and then my suspicions got the best of me. “You sent for me,” I said bluntly, “because your job as Commissioner is shaky. You haven’t stopped these murders. The A-I-D is still missing.”

“I’m worried about my job,” he conceded. “But believe me I’m more worried about what will happen if we don’t recover the A-I-D. We’ll all be finished if we don’t catch up with Barnum Fly. You and I and the Supreme Court Itself. It’s on the moon, but if the earth is turned into dust what will the moon revolve about? It’s too frightful to think about! That’s why I fought for you, Crockett. I’ll accept any help I can get. It’s that simple! I don’t want to die on July 4th!”