Turing & Burroughs: A Beatnik SF Novel (34 page)

“You sound exactly like my husband used to,” said Susan, strangely giddy. She was setting out the Big Bow Wow food, also some cold-cuts and beer from the fridge. Careless about revealing herself to be a skugger, she made her arms long and snaky to quickly move things around. “My husband’s name was Vassar Lafia. Sorry, Neal, but I’ll be in the market for a different style of man this time around.” She bent her arm into corkscrew curve and chucked Neal under the chin. “Not that I utterly rule you out. I like the raw confidence and the wavy hair. And I’m known for breaking my resolutions.”

“Is being a skugger a good high?” asked Neal as he began devouring a hamburger.

“Kind of,” said Susan, inflating the size of her left hand and studying it. “I’ve been thinking about this particular question. Being a skugger speeds up your vibration rate. The world is One and Many, I’m sure you’ll agree. Normally I would vibrate at about thirty pulses per second, oscillating between the One and and the Many, that is, oscillating between viewing myself as merged into the cosmic reality, and viewing myself as a little ant who fights her way alone. My informed estimate is that being a skugger has kicked my natural vibe rate from thirty up to fifty cycles per second. I know about vibrations because I’m a musician.” As punctuation, Susan snatched Neal’s hamburger from his hand and set it on his plate before he could even see it happen.

“Gawrsh,” said Neal, pretending to be a hick chewing the air. “Sign me up for your cult and I’ll be your pageboy, Lady Green.”

“Fascinating physical arcana,” said Ginsberg, who’d been pondering Susan’s words. “This notion of a personal vibration level—it’s runs through all the secret mystery teachings. The minstrel is the god, the god is the minstrel, the song is the song.”

“Feller says de Broglie’s matter waves explain the duality,” put in Burroughs, clearing his throat. He fixed himself a bourbon and joined them at the table. “Our essence lies in certain giant hereditary molecules. The gene codes. If you regard these molecules as matter waves, you have a precise meaning for your personal vibration. Your insect buzz is the quantum-mechanical frequency of your genome.”

“Flabbergasting erudition,” said Ginsberg, enjoying Bill’s words. “The wise man with his myrrh. Alert the tedious dullards at the Guggenheim Foundation. A new star gleams! Were you hitting musty, foxed stacks of science journals in a bookish Tangier detox, Bill?”

“I teeped all this from my new lover,” said Bill, looking directly at Alan for the first time since their quarrel this morning. “It’s as if Turing has built an extra room onto my head. I’m afraid I’ve been rather ungracious to him today. I was wrung out from my long night of writing.”

“If you love me, why did you kiss Ginsberg in front of me?” demanded Alan.

“I saw the opportunity,” said Bill with a shrug. “I’m taking advantage of looking young. I’ve always been greedy for sensation. You know this, Alan. And please don’t sulk. Sit next to me, dear. Have I told you that you look lovely today? Youthful and world-weary at the same time. Your Christopher Morcom look.”

“Meanwhile,” interrupted Susan, drawing out the word for jokey emphasis. “Was Bill saying that a normal person’s actual genetic molecule actually vibrates at something like thirty cycles per second?”

“I can’t be bothered to calculate that for you,” said Burroughs, insouciantly swirling his drink. “Ask Turing.”

“No need to get into the niggling minutiae, Susan,” said Alan, loath to spoil the fun. “But thirty and fifty
trillion
might be closer to the quantum-mechanical molecular vibration rates. Let’s suppose that one’s psychic perceptions chunk the oscillations by the trillion. So we’re both right.”

“I relish the literal specificity of thirty,” said Ginsberg. “What does thirty cycles per second sound like, Susan?”

“Well, fifty is basically speaker hum,” said Susan. “An annoying buzz. Thirty is deeper, almost granular.” She opened her mouth with her chin drawn back and let out a deep
awww
sound. “Thirty is mellow.” Susan took another deep breath and continued the
awww
.

Ginsberg chanted along like a monk, his voice smooth and deep. “One Many One Many One Many One Many One…”

Turing was distracted from all this by the clamor of his inner skug. It wanted him to make some new recruits. Now! The skug was like a vampire hungry for blood.

So Alan focused on Cassady. “Are you serious about wanting to be a skugger, Neal? I can set you up immediately.” Without Alan even willing it, his finger grew out like a vine to twirl in the air before Neal’s chest. “Do it now?” importuned Alan.

“Bring on the rush,” said Neal, leaning back his head with a reckless air. “Dial my vibrations to fifty, Doctor T.”

“Don’t do it, Neal,” rasped Bill, interposing his hand. “It’s slavery. The skugs are parasites. Like tapeworms. Imagine a ruthless street preacher who lives in your spine and uses you for kicks. Although there is the one big up side that you can change your shape.”

“Maybe worth trying,” said Ginsberg, thoughtfully combing out his full beard with his fingers. “And the skug kicks become your kicks. A karma yoga. Anyway, Bill, you’re a skugger, for good or ill—and you managed to write a substantial memoir fragment, was it last night? Would you say that it’s crafted at the same egregiously apostolic level as your Tangier routines?”

“
The Apocalypse According To Willy Lee
,” said Bill. “I hardly remember what I wrote.”

“Auspicious sign,” said Ginsberg. “Read it to the group after dinner?” He tugged one of the Big Bow Wow bags towards himself. “This food
is
communal, I trust?”

“Skug or no skug?” Alan asked Neal, still wanting to make his new convert.

“Go,” answered the handsomely profiled Neal, and Alan sent his finger forward.

Things calmed down a bit after that. Neal liked being a skugger. Appetite redoubled, he raced out to the Big Bow Wow, bringing back great staggering armfuls of food.

“Hup, hoop!” said Neal, eating his final Bow Wow Burger. “The mighty loaves and the wee fishes. “You should turn skugger too, Ginzy. Don’t falter on the shoreline. The ark of the new goof is come.”

“I find it more interesting to continue as before,” said Ginsberg equably. “I’m an ongoing thought experiment in the history of poesy.” He yawned. “Where do we sleep? There’s only the two bedrooms?”

“I suppose I could fit Neal in,” said Susan demurely. It was like she’d decided to take a break from her grief.

“Far be it from me to disturb you two or, for that matter, Turing and Burroughs, the young mutant lovers,” said Ginsberg, making himself pitiful. “I suppose it’s the sofa for old Allen. The cheese ripens alone. Slumped on a mound of rags. The match girl in the driving snow.”

“Oh come in with us,” said Bill.

“We’ll find a way,” agreed Alan. “We’re highly flexible.”

“I have some new acousmatics to play for you guys,” said Susan, yawning as well. “Nonlinear feedback. I smuggled out a tape from the lab. But I’m beat.”

“Me too,” said Burroughs. He gave Alan a smile. “Even though I’ve only been up for two hours. I might tinker on the memoir later in the night. And present it tomorrow.”

Susan stole a shy look at Neal. “Will all of you still be here tomorrow?”

“Do stay on, Bill,” put in Turing.

“I’m in no rush to split,” said Ginsberg. “It would be worthwhile to see a nuclear blast, the better to stand as witness to history. When’s the next pop coming up?”

“I think day after tomorrow,” said Turing. “They’re calling it the V-bomb. I’ll know more tomorrow.”

“They plan to set it off in a canyon near here,” added Susan. “Where the cliff dwellers lived.”

“
Maaaa
,” said Neal in his best Okie voice. “
I wanna to see them Wild West fahrworks.
”

Chapter 16: Wave Mechanics

Alan awoke to the jabber of Neal, Susan, Ginsberg and Burroughs in the kitchen, gay and lively. Neal was cooking a huge breakfast and Bill was drinking whiskey. The kitchen air was a haze of cigarette smoke. Outside the snow had let up again.

Last night Ginsberg had dropped off to sleep right away, leaving Bill and Alan to have a proper make-up session on the floor beside the mattress. Being skuggers, any surface felt relatively comfortable to them—particularly while making love. For her part, Susan showed every sign of having been intimate with Neal.

“Dig,” said Neal, turning towards Alan. He shrugged his left shoulder and popped up an extra head that wore a copy of Ginsberg’s face.

“This is in poor taste, Neal,” said the Ginsberg head.

“Teach you a lesson!” said Neal. He formed his right hand into a fat mallet and
bonk
struck the fake head. It squealed and sank back into his flesh.

Sitting at the kitchen table, eating oatmeal, the real Ginsberg smiled and shook his head. Evidently he’d already seen this routine several times.

As if competing to be the more bizarre, Bill Burroughs stretched out his arms at the sides of his head, and flowed into
ugh
the form of a ten-foot long centipede, glossy dark maroon on its back, pink underneath, and with scores of wildly twitching ochre legs. Bill’s long body bent forward and he snapped his dripping mandibles in Turing’s face. The fluid gave off a pungent smell of musk and bourbon.

“Feeling chipper, eh Bill,” said Turing, half-amused. “Let me get a spot of tea, and I’m off to save the world.”

“Can I help?” asked Susan.

“Not yet. Ulam wanted me to come alone today. Have you seen Vassar?”

“I’m hoping he’s behind the scenes,” said Susan. “Or it could be he’s jealous now, and in a sulk.”

“The Cassady curse,” said Neal, preening a bit.

“I’m using you as much as you’re using me,” said Susan sharply. “This girl is wise—my little
pageboy
.”

Neal actually looked abashed.

“I’ll be on my way now,” said Turing, shrugging on his coat. This was all too intense. He could get breakfast at the Bow Wow. “Bye, Bill.” The centipede waggled his head, Ginsberg bowed, and Neal winked.

Susan followed Alan to the door. “What about Hosty?” she asked, all merriness leaving her face. “When are you going to kill him?” She seemed almost like a nagging wife.

“The moment will come,” said Alan, expressing more confidence than he really felt. “Vassar will help me. We’ll have to disable Hosty’s radio.”

“Do it today,” urged Susan, going back inside.

Alan paused for a moment, gathering himself for the big day. For now, the sky was clear and sunny.

The two-tone Cadillac was a smooth hump beneath a drift of snow. There was an empty barn behind the cottage where one might in principal garage a car, but that wasn’t the kind of precaution that a Neal Cassady would take. No matter. The drifts were sculpted into lovely higher-degree surfaces—quartics or quintics at the very least.

Tina was on duty at the Big Bow Wow. She brought Alan tea in a pot—a rarity in the States—and a nice breakfast of coddled eggs with muffins.

“Some creep was asking about you this morning,” Tina confided to Alan when she brought the check.

“Asking about the extra guests in the Cadillac?” he said.

“Hadn’t noticed those yet,” said Tina.

“You will,” said Alan. “A poet and a rowdy.”

“I think the guy asking about you was from the LANL security staff,” resumed Tina. “He said he’d seen you eating here and he wanted to know where you live. I didn’t tell him, but be careful.”

“I appreciate this,” said Alan.

He put on his Peter Pfaff personality and hitched a ride to LANL. A security guard walked him to Ulam’s office. Ulam was at work looking very disheveled. He’d pushed aside the gadgets on his table and was standing over a trove of diagrams and calculations. Yesterday’s orderly blackboard had become a palimpsest of erasures, drawings and wiggly symbols.

“Tomorrow is the big blast,” said Ulam. “I suppose you know. Our security stinks.”

“What will the V-bomb do?” asked Alan.

“Oh, you’ve guessed by now,” said Ulam, beginning to pace around his office like a prisoner. “It kills the skugs. How? The V-bomb creates rays that attack some large proteins that are particular to skugs. These V-rays are pushing the molecules into unstable high-energy states, and the molecules collapse into junk.
Pffft
.”

“How strange,” said Alan, feeling a dizzy sense of unreality. “You’re talking about boosting the personal vibrations of the skugs and, I presume, their skugger hosts. My friend Susan and I were discussing something very similar last night. A convergence of thought.”

“It’s a strange time,” said Ulam, still pacing. “I myself have been glimpsing a ghost the last few days—a thing like a manta ray. We approach the world’s edge. It was like this before Hiroshima. Sit down if you like, Alan.” With that, Ulam returned to his document-laden table. “Tell more more about what this Susan says. She has the artist’s intuition. And a beautiful face.”