Turing & Burroughs: A Beatnik SF Novel (33 page)

After a few minutes Ulam set down his hush-phone. “The security chief is flipping his wig. He was very eager to offer this woman to the Grand Inquisitor.”

“Dick Hosty!” exclaimed Alan, his stomach tight. “Please tell me Polly’s safe!”

“She’s on her way here. Frog-marched by two agents who’ll stand guard outside my office. Just in case you two are going bananas.” Ulam pulled a lever on his H-bomb model and the piston snapped up. “
Boom!
”

Ulam took a liking to Susan, and the three of them had a wonderful afternoon together. For today, Ulam didn’t seem interested in working on whatever it was he was supposed to be doing for Project Utopia. Alan knew the feeling. Sometimes it was best to let subterranean rivers do the preliminary excavation.

Ulam’s cathode ray display was directly wired to the MANIAC, and he was able to route programs to the big machine from the controls on his console, displaying the outputs as slowly moving dots and lines on his screen.

At first the patterns reminded Alan of oil slicks or—come to think of it—the patterns he’d seen in those Christmas-tree lights during his tube tech test in the auditorium. But soon they switched to something else. Orderly-looking waves that unexpectedly pushed up their peaks, took on lumpy, unnatural shapes, and occasionally exploded into chaotic fuzz.

“Nonlinear feedback,” explained Ulam. “Normally a spring is pulling back in proportion to how far you’ve pulled it. It’s linear. But what if it is pulling back in proportion to the third power of its displacement? It’s cubic then, nonlinear. It’s not well known that I was using nonlinear wave equations to design the hydrogen bomb. And now, for Project Utopia, I take a step beyond. Instead of reasonable exponents like three, I am looking at crazy exponents. Like negative seven, or pi, or the square root of minus one.”

“And these exotic nonlinear waves have to do with V-bomb?” said Alan.

“I call these waves
V-rays
,” said Ulam. “Return tomorrow for our exciting conclusion. But for today, our Mata Hari here has been asking me for—how did put it, my dear?”

“Vile vibrations,” said Susan.

“Yes,” said Ulam. “In the key of V.” He rooted through a cabinet of equipment and managed to wire a speaker to the back of his cathode ray display. Immediately the room was filled with radically ugly sounds. “Vile,” said Ulam, nodding his head to the irregular rhythms. “And I think
voluptuous
in some way.”

“Can we tape-record this?” Susan asked.

“Why not?” said Ulam. “We are all going bananas. Perhaps in two days the world ends.” He used his hush-phone to call for a reel to reel tape recorder. The security men may have thought it was for documenting confessions from the two questionable employees. In any case, the machine appeared at Ulam’s office door within minutes. Laughing and joking as if they didn’t have a care in the world, Susan and Ulam taped a half-hour’s worth of increasingly gnarly material.

Near the end, Ulam ran a wire from the speaker inputs back into the inputs that led to MANIAC. The sounds grew wondrously dire. And then—like some eldritch jack-in-the-box—Vassar’s glowing manta ray peeped out at Alan and Susan from the back of the cathode ray cabinet.

“Nonlinear feedback,” said Ulam, oblivious of the watchful ghost. He glanced at his watch, weary from the long day’s diversions. “It’s seven in the evening. You two can go.”

“Can I take the reel to reel recorder?” asked Susan boldly. “I have a lot of acousmatic tapes that I want to play.”

“An enterprising woman,” said Ulam. He thought for a moment. “I don’t see that security will object. Although they may want to be sure there’s nothing hidden inside the machine.”

“Can I take this new tape too?” said Susan. “The one we just made? I’m imagining a piece called
The Dance Of Two To The Pi
.”

“You say
dance
?” said Ulam. “Not death? I’m hoping you’re right. You can try to take the tape. But good luck getting it past security.” Ulam clicked his heels and offered a mock salute, pretending to be an agent.

“Oh, smuggling something small is easy for a skugger,” said Susan. She pulled up her sweater and pressed the reel against her bare belly. The reel sank in like a coin into dough. “This is how I saved my old tapes at the Gormly ambush,” she remarked, her voice tightening. “But let’s not get into that. We’d better go.”

“I thought you’d have some scientific questions for me,” Alan plaintively reminded Ulam on his way out. “I
did
offer to help you.”

“Come alone tomorrow,” said Ulam. “Tomorrow is the work day. The big showdown.”

Alan and Susan pumped up their Peter and Polly personalities, and walked down the hall, Susan carrying the tape machine. The security office carefully vetted the machine. And the two guards stuck close to them until they’d reached the front entrance. It was snowing again. A white ambulance was waiting there in the dark with—Dick Hosty at the wheel, wearing a pistol in a shoulder holster

“Ya’ll need a ride into town?” he called. “Dick Hosty’s the name. You’re Peter and Polly Pfaff, lest I’m mistaken. Heard you just lost your job, Polly. Rough deal. Hop on in. It’s started to snow again.”

A low chatter of police talk emanated from a squawk-box on the dash, and a microphone hung near Hosty. The back of the ambulance was filled by a great dark cylinder. Alan didn’t dare let himself think about that. He only hoped that Susan was keeping her guard up as well.

“Thanks, Dick,” said Alan, squeezing into the middle of the bench-style front seat, his voice folksy. “Come on, Polly. He can drop us at the Big Bow Wow.” Alan looked around the ambulance as if in awe. “You get many emergencies out here, Dick?”

“Aw, I don’t use this ambulance for no life-saving, Pete. I got a sick friend in back I like to haul around.”

“Real sorry to hear that,” said Susan, her voice wavering. Alan could feel the tension in her frame. “Your friend’s in an iron lung?”

“Sump’n like that,” said Hosty, pulling onto the road. The headlights carved snow-speckled cones in the night. “Makes some people feel funny when my friend’s around. Right, Roland?”

An extra speaker in the dash crackled. A voice from the cylinder in back. “Right, Dick. I find traitors for you.”

“But Peter and Polly Pfaff here are okay?” asked Hosty, glancing over at them, his face hard and mean.

“AOK, Dick,” said the speaker. “I don’t teep a thing.”

“You
sure
?” said Hosty, jabbing a jerry-rigged red button on the dash. Alan heard a slight crackling sound behind him, and the speaker emitted a yelp. Hosty had sent an electric shock into the captive skugger.

“Don’t
do
that, Dick,” begged the skugsniffer. “It hurts more than you know. I promise I’d never hold out on you. If I sniff any skuggers, you’re going to hear about it.”

“Alright then,” said Hosty. “Just makin’ sure.” The ambulance fish-tailed a little as Hosty accelerated towards town. The cop chatter on the squawk-box continued.

“I’m very, very upset that LANL fired me,” said Susan, having a little trouble with her voice. “Peter and I are practically broke. All I did was goof up on one tape-punch, and
bam
! That Dora’s a bitch. At least my Peter’s still working.”

“Kicked him upstairs, what I heard,” said Hosty in a cozening tone. “Working as a special assistant to Dr. Ulam.”

“Lord knows why,” said Alan, playing the bedazzled rube. “He’s an odd duck, that Dr. Ulam. All I did was mention that math’s a hobby of mine, and he was all over me like a cheap suit. I guess he’s lonely and needs somebody to listen to him. I’m glad to help. Seems like it’s a mighty important project he’s on.”

They reached the sparsely lit center of Los Alamos, little more than a wide place in the road. “You can drop us off by the Bow Wow, Mr. Hosty,” said Susan. “Right here. Now.”

Frozen-faced, the two of them went into the diner, got some take-out food and walked a half-mile further down the highway to Sue Stook’s granny cottage, Alan carrying the reel-to-reel machine, Susan carrying the food, both of them watching their footing in the accumulating snow. They played Peter and Polly Pfaff all the way, talking about Nordic skis. Alan was afraid to say how glad they he was that Hosty and his skugsniffer had headed straight back to LANL from the Big Bow Wow. And Susan didn’t dare vent her hatred of Hosty.

They snapped out of their Pfaff routine when a huge Cadillac pulled up behind them in the cottage’s driveway. Two-tone of course—turquoise on the bottom, cream on top—and with a front grill like a hall of mirrors. The horn was stutter-beeping hello.

“Oh my god,” said Susan, glad for the distraction. “They actually came. Things are going to change.”

“Looks like a couple of
natives
here with old Bill Burroughs,” whooped the driver, hopping out. “Nine hours door to door, Ginzy. Thanks to the aeroplane.”

“Feeling a little woozy,” said the passenger, levering himself out of the humpbacked whale. “But otherwise a delightful drive from Albuquerque, Neal. Hello all. I’m Allen Ginsberg.” The steady snow crowned his long hair with a halo. “The chains were beating on our fenders, Neal. The owner warned you about that. I hope we don’t get billed.”

“Bill Burroughs is paying!” said the driver, staring at the cottage. “He’s rich, even if he won’t admit it.” No lights shone within. “Where’s the buffet with the roast turkey? Is our boy on the nod?” Dressed only in jeans and a T-shirt, the handsome man sprang over to Susan, grinning and holding out his hand like a salesman. “Neal Cassady, and pleased to unseat you.”

“Susan Green. And this is Alan Turing. We’re undercover spies.” She held up the Big Bow Wow bags. “You can share our food.”

“Mormons?” said Neal.

“How so?” said Turing.

“Bill said he was imprisoned by religious fanatics,” said Ginsberg. “Not that I always believe what Bill says when the flat horrible reality of morn closes in after a night of spectacles.” He smiled. He had a warm aura.

“We were debating on the plane whether Bill’s captors were from the Apocryphal Satanists, the Voodoo Vindaloo, or the Shekinah Glory Uncircumcised,” said Neal.

“It’s something else entirely,” said Turing. “Maybe I’ll try and recruit you when we’re inside. But no worries, we’re not raving maniacs, and membership is, where possible, voluntary. Do let’s get in out of the snow. It’s shaping up for a storm.”

“We had a blizzard in Colorado one year it got so deep the horses on my girlfriend’s uncle’s sister-in-law’s farm could barely stick their snoots above the powder,” said Neal. “The frosty snoot-bumps looked like puffball mushrooms.”

“Wonderful image,” said Ginsberg, gazing lovingly at Cassady. Now he turned his attention to the granny cottage. “These houses seem so primitive, with their poor television antennae tacked on to the patched up chimneys. Is Bill really here?”

“He’s probably asleep,” said Alan. “He was typing all last night. A memoir about our trip to Mexico this week. We saw Joan’s ghost down there.”

Seemingly unimpressed, Ginsberg leaned back his head to stare up into the sky. “Spirits as multifarious as snowflakes. Ubiquitous. Every two the same. Eddies in the aether without end.”

“This Joan ghost wasn’t aethereal at all,” said Susan. “You’re missing the point. We reconstituted her from a bone and a skug, and then she shot Bill in the side of his head with a pistol.” Cheerfully jingling her keys, Susan unlocked the cottage door.

“And Bill survived because he’s a skugger,” added Turing, stamping his feet and snapping on the kitchen light. He studied Ginsberg and Cassady. “I assume that Californians know about skugs and skuggers?”

“On radio/TV/newspaper around the clock,” said Ginsberg. “Hot flash for the nation who eats her own vomit. New pariahs! The queers, the commies, the Blacks, the dope fiends, the jazz musicians, the mad, the abstract painters, the unions, the Beat poets...and now the skuggers.”

“Go, Ginzy!” exclaimed Neal. “Unzip the zap. So Bill’s a telepathic, shapeshifting semi-human slug? Bad-ass old bookworm that he is.” He thumped the kitchen table and raised his voice. “We’re here to rescue you, Burroughs! Extrude those slimy stalk eyes, my man! And hand me your works and your wallet. This is for your own good.”

Bill appeared in his bedroom doorway, squinting against the light and coughing. “Like I’m running a halfway house for recidivist criminals.” He peered at the dark windows. “Slept away the day. I like being out of synch with the clone world.”

“It’s an objective correlative for your unparalleled alienation,” said Ginsberg, embracing his friend. “Dear Bill. Back from Tangier and his oriental fountain of youth, twenty years younger. A fairy tale. What mad narratives unspool amid you skuggers? Whence, whither and yon?”

Pleased with the attention, Burroughs kissed Ginsberg on the mouth for so long a time that Turing grew uncomfortable and then jealous. Cassady looked over at Turing and waggled his eyebrows.

“Disencumber yourself of those Bow Wow vittles, Susan,” Neal told Susan, and took a seat at the kitchen table. “We’ll gobble and snarf. Later I’ll run out for more, skidding my monster Caddy down the street. You can come along if you like. I’m legendary for taking young ladies for rides, you understand. This turquoise DeVille is ordinarily rented only for weddings.” Neal mimed a leer. “A mobile bower. There’s a four hundred BTU heater to drive off the morbid chills from the pinched-ass Great Plains.”