The man from charisma

HE BLOWS EVERY MIND!

Every man sees him as his hero. Every woman sees him as her lusttul dream. Every race and nation claims him enthusiastically as its own. But Jonathan Relevant, the Man from Charisma, is strictly on his own, doing his own thing, freaking out both foe and friend as he swings into far-out sexational action and adventure.

THE MAN FROM CHARISMA

The newest, greatest creation of the one and only

TED MARK

Ted Mark

THE MAN FROM

CHARISMA

1970

CHAPTER ONE

The world is round. It rotates on its axis. Fact!

So, at various times, various people are standing upside down on the bottom of the globe. Logic!

The question is, how come they don’t fall off? The answer is simple:

People are falling off all the time!

Perspective!

With the proper perspective, it’s easily understood that there are indeed global dropouts. Also global drop-ins. Which brings us to Jonathan Relevant. . . . Maybe . . .

Naked, he dropped into the world with no indication that he had exactly been born into it. Still, he may have been an infant . . . And he may have been a full-grown man . . . or an adolescent . . . or an octogenarian. . . .

As to the manner of Jonathan Relevant’s appearing, it was cataclysmic. But like many cataclysms in this post-Hiroshima world, it had to be carefully planned. The other element for creating cataclysms was also present: a teeny-weeny mistake. Hell, that’s why they put erasers on H-bombs. . . . Perspective . . .

“Hell, that’s why they put erasers on H-bombs.” That’s what Professor Klauss Von Schweindrek said when it happened. Professor Von Schweindrek, de-Nazified and made a U.S. citizen by special act of Congress, was the scientist in charge of the United States’ Project Blowjob.

“Back to the old drawing board.” So remarked Admiral Vladimir Churkov when it occurred. Admiral Churkov, much admired as a phrasemaker in the higher echelons of communist society, was in charge of the U.S.S.R. Operation Fartnik.

All of which is relevant to Jonathan Relevant as one and one is to two. —Two H-bombs, that is. Or, to be more precise, underwater nuclear-test devices.

One of these devices, a short time before the manifestation of Jonathan Relevant, snuggled in a wooden crate under maximum security guard at the home base and computer processing center of Project Blowjob at Point Barrow, Alaska. It was kept cozy and warm by an excessive padding of excelsior—doubtless meant to inspire it onward and oopsward. Only a simple nuclear nose-job was needed to ready it for launching.

At the same time, the second missile rested in a lead box under maximum security guard at the home base and data processing center of Operation Fartnik at Ambarchik on the Siberian seacoast. Its schnozzola had already been nuclearized. It awaited transportation via Soviet atomic U-boat.

When the Russian submarine Glubtub arrived at Ambarchik, there was a short delay while scientists rechecked some of the more sensitive recording instruments. Meanwhile, at Point Barrow, the nuclear warhead was screwed into position and the missile loaded onto the U.S. submarine Wartoy. Professor Von Schweindrek boarded the Wartoy, all hatches were secured, and the craft submerged. Concurrently, in the Waters off Ambarchik, the U.S.S.R. Glubtub was leveling off at seventy fathoms and setting its course due north. The Wartoy also headed due north at a depth of seventy fathoms. The cruising speed of both ships was a fast twenty knots. This speed was maintained until both vessels arrived at their destinations simultaneously, and engine performances were cut to the minimums required to hold relatively stationary positions.

For the Wartoy, the position was eighty miles due north of the Mendeleyev Ridge in the Arctic Ocean. The Glubtub held at a spot 120 miles south of the Harris or Lomonsov Ridge. The U-boats lay parallel along a northern latitude of eighty-six degrees, each about 240 miles from the North Pole, and roughly 160 miles from each other. Both maintained a depth of seventy fathoms.

Aboard the Wartoy, Professor Von Schweindrek stood over a control panel with three buttons. The first, blood red, would launch the underwater nuclear-test device when it was pushed. The second, dead white, would detonate the missile’s warhead when it was pressed. The third button, a melancholy blue, would raise to the surface a complex of periscopes and cameras by which the result might be observed and recorded.

Admiral Churkov, on the Glubtub, sat in front of a similar control panel. Only this one had a troika of switches instead of buttons. One was shaped like a hammer, one like a sickle, and one like a globe of the world. Tripping the hammer would fire the Russian underwater missile. Triggering the sickle would detonate it. The globular switch, when rotated, would elevate the Glubtub’s cameras and periscopes.

Professor Von Schweindrek pushed the red button. The American test bomb zipped away on a level course at seventy fathoms along a 270-degree azimuth. Its course had been carefully planned in advance. In case anything went wrong, the nuclear warhead would be pointed toward Siberia. Aiming it the other way might have put an undue strain on relations between the United States and Canada — if anything Went wrong, that is.

At that precise moment, Admiral Churkov tripped the hammer. The Russian undersea missile took off on a level course at seventy fathoms, along a ninety-degree azimuth. The direction had been precisely determined beforehand so that if there was a slipup the hydrogen warhead would be traveling toward Canada. The Russians didn’t want to be accused of violating the human rights of political prisoners in Siberia by aiming it in the other direction—if anything went wrong, that is.

As the two nuclear devices travel on their appointed courses, inexorably converging on the manifestation of Jonathan Relevant, pause to consider the concept of coincidence. In fiction, the long arm of coincidence is a brittle twig. Stretch it too far, it snaps and credibility breaks with it. But reality knows no such rules.

Reality always seats your wife’s best friend at the next table in the intime little bistro where you’re fondling your mistress. In life, you take a laxative, board an elevator en route to the lavatory, and are trapped there through a trembling colon of eternity by a one-in-a-billion power failure short-circuiting the entire Eastern seaboard. Circumstance dictates that if you tie one on, the first person you’ll stagger into will be your mother-in-law, or the minister’s wife, or that teetotaling client who’s just on the verge of signing the contract you’ve been slaving over for three months.

That’s life!

Coincidence . . .

If two marbles are traveling on the same straight line, one along a 270-degree azimuth, the other along a ninety-degree azimuth, they are moving toward each other. If they continue on their respective courses, they will inevitably collide. If their momentum is great, both marbles will shatter upon impact. If the impact is great enough, there will be atomic displacement.

Science derives from this verification of the formula E=MC². Observation tells the layman that this is how men lose their marbles.

As the Russian test device approached the halfway mark in its carefully calculated journey, aboard the U.S.S.R. Glubtub Admiral Churkov conducted a 121-piece symphony orchestra playing a Katchaturian overture in his head. As the brass section built to the crescendo, the middle finger of his right hand, which was his baton, stabbed rhythmically toward the sickle-shaped lever on the control panel in front of him. Of course, Admiral Churkov never actually touched the sickle switch. But Katchaturian would never be the same for him again.

Aboard the U.S. Wartoy, as the American missile neared the midway point of its electronically computed trip, Professor Von Schweindrek recited Nietzche to himself. A clenched fist drumming on the control panel provided punctuation. Of course, Professor Von Schweindrek’s fist never really made contact with the White button. Nevertheless, to him, in future Zarathustra spake with forked tongue.

The cymbals resounded, Superman cracked his whip, and both subs were sent into a spin by an unexpected nuclear explosion half as far away and twice as powerful as the ones anticipated. Equipment and men bounced off the walls of both undersea vessels. Halfway around the world, off the coast of Japan, a fisherman picked himself up off the deck of his ship and sat down to write a letter of protest to the UN.

“Oops!” Professor Von Schweindrek said.

“Oops!” Admiral Churkov unknowingly echoed.

Both men assumed that their respective hands must have slipped. But each soon saw that this was not the case. The white button had not been depressed. The sickle-shaped lever had not been tripped.

Concurrent with these realizations of innocence came two sputtering voices. One, heard aboard the Wartoy, originated at the home base of Project Blowjob at Point Barrow, Alaska. The other, communicating to the Glubtub, was transmitted from the Operation Fartnik computer center at Ambarchik, Siberia. Both, in essence, conveyed the same message:

“Klutz! Too soon! You weren’t supposed to detonate until—”

Both men protested their innocence with outsized vehemence. Von Schweindrek justified himself all the way back to the days of the first putsch. Admiral Churkov reminded Control of his fidelity to the party, tracing it back to the day in 1937 when he’d reported his own sister to the authorities for listening to a smuggled recording of Guy Lombardo.

By the time they’d finished, the situation aboard both submarines was stable enough to raise the observation and recording equipment. Professor Von Schweindrek pressed the blue button. Admiral Churkov rotated the globular switch. Both men crunched their monocles in their eagerness to peer through the telescopic periscopes.

Neither saw very much. Both subs were still too far away. And it would be a while before the point of nuclear explosion could be approached with any degree of safety. In the interim, both Point Barrow and Ambarchik raised the same nagging questions:

“Wha’ hoppen? If you didn’t detonate the missile, why did it go off?”

To which Professor Von Schweindrek could only reply: “Eine grosse ober-goof! Hell, that’s why they put erasers . . .”

And Admiral Churkov could only answer: “Nyet guilty! But there was a phumph somewhere along the line, so— Back to the old . . .”

Finally, both submarines, following the course of their respective missiles, were able to get close enough to the point of impact to observe the results. In some respects these early observations all agree. Cameras and eyes confirmed the presence of the largest mushroom cloud recorded to date. Russians and Americans agreed that it was twice as large as the one anticipated. Piercing the vapor, both parties detected a small iceberg at about the center of the stem of the mushroom where it sprouted from the Arctic waters. Both simultaneously noted the blip of what later turned out to be an enemy submarine on their radarscopes. Up to that point there was general agreement among all the observers, mechanical and human.

Then Jonathan Relevant appeared and each eye blazed its own optic trail!

In the forward section of the U.S. Wartoy, Lieutenant j.g. Crispus was peering through the telescope when Jonathan Relevant manifested himself. Lieutenant Crispus, who had been the only black man in his graduating class at Annapolis, was a naval intelligence officer assigned to the Wartoy as an observer. He’d been well-trained for the job, and he prided himself on doing it well. Now he relayed his observations to the captain over the intercom:

“Reporting appearance of man at distance of approximately six hundred yards atop iceberg, sir.”

“Observation acknowledged. Provide more detailed description.”

“Details as follows: Male. Negro. Nude. About six feet tall, one-hundred-eighty pounds. Twenty-five to thirty-five years of age. Military bearing . . .”

“Mister Crispus!” the captain bellowed. “Do you have that periscope reversed so you’re looking in the mirror?”

“Negative. And might I be permitted to remind the captain that subject is naked, while I am wearing regulation uniform.”

“Mister Crispus! What would a naked black man be doing standing on an iceberg in the middle of the Arctic Ocean?”

“What would a naked white man be doing standing on an iceberg in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, sir?”

While the captain pondered that question, in the compartment below him, amidships on the Wartoy, Professor Von Schweindrek was tape-recording his first impression of Jonathan Relevant: “Blonde, blue-eyed, Aryan, un-circumcised. Dueling scar on right cheek. Prussian demeanor . . .”

On the other side of the iceberg, in the rear section of the U.S.S.R Glublub, was the only female aboard either vessel, Dr. Ludmilla Skivar. The young Soviet biologist was renowned for her scientifically revolutionary treatise entitled A Pavlovian Interpretation of the Salivary Glands as Reactive Sensory Mechanisms in the Pre-Coital Stages of Human Reproduction and the Subsequent Effects Related to the Malthusian Theory of Progressively Increasing World Population—-familiarly referred to in scientific circles as The Skivar Spit, Sex and Rabbit Theory.

Even in her shapeless coveralls, Ludmilla Skivar didn’t fit the image of the Nobel Prize contender she was. The thrust of her mammaries was too impudent for them to be dismissed as mere encasements for lungs. Her pelvic structure, enticingly prominent at the juncture of her pants legs, was of more than clinically osteopathic interest. Indeed, her skeletal structure as a whole was fleshed in such a way as to turn the most dedicated of her anatomy students from textbook nomenclature to more idiomatic exclamations of appreciation.

But it was her face, with its osculatable O of a mouth, high cheekbones, round, dimpled chin, and hoydenish topping of tousled, curly black hair, which really made Dr. Skivar appear more frivolous than was becoming to a dedicated Soviet scientist. Only the deep green eyes asked biological questions. And perhaps they asked them a bit too directly to uphold scientific detachment.

Now one of those eyes peered through the periscope at Jonathan Relevant. “Tall,” Dr. Skivar noted. (She was a tall girl herself, but he had at least four inches on her; even if she wore heels, he’d be tall enough.) “Dark.” (His tightly curled black hair and rugged swarthiness was reminiscent of Yuri Gagarin.) “Handsome.” (The strong build of a Russian peasant, but with the intensity and intelligence in his face of the poet Yevtushenko; Dr. Skivar sighed.)

“Male. Naked. Male!” (The genital development was truly remarkable, truly remarkable! Nor was it merely due to the tumescent state—doubtless an automatic reflex to the sub-freezing temperature—of his primary reproductive organ.)

“Male. Naked. Masculine. Nude. Tumescent . . .” Dr. Ludmilla Skivar blinked one green eye and then peered into the eyepiece of the periscope again to confirm her observation.

Meanwhile, in the control room of the Glubtub, Admiral Churkov was also observing Jonathan Relevant through a periscope. A smile of nostalgia crossed the admiral’s lips. The naked man on the iceberg looked amazingly like the admiral’s dead father. Admiral Churkov had loved and admired his father more than any other man he had ever known. Self-educated, first a downtrodden streetcleaner in the service of the czar, and then a fiery revolutionary waving the banner of Lenin, the admiral’s father had spent his last days as a functionary in the Moscow Sanitation Department, a man grown a little too soft and fat perhaps, but a man filled with stirring tales of past glories never to be duplicated by his adoring son because the People’s government was now a fait accompli and it was a time for building and consolidating, not for battling cossack dragons, nor tipping over czarist windmills. But now the stories echoed once again in the admiral’s mind as he looked upon the balding little man with the scraggly beard and pendulous belly standing naked on the iceberg, the half-ridiculous, half-heroic little man who was just past the prime of his middle years and who so resembled the admiral’s memory of his father, but who somehow seemed to excel even that fondly elaborated memory. And as Admiral Churkov gazed into the periscope, the smile on his lips broadened and his eyes clouded slightly with sentimental Slavic mist. . . .

So much for first impressions. But what about the cameras? What of those precision instruments so infinitely more reliable than the human eye? Did not the high-speed, sensitized film reveal the truth about Jonathan Relevant?

After all, the American submarine was equipped with the most advanced photographic equipment developed by the Japanese. And the Russian vessel was outfitted with the most precise cameras yet invented by the Germans. So what did these films show?

Nothing!

Absolutely nothing!

Both sets of film revealed the drift of fallout, the movements of water and ice, even the tiny details of the periscopes of the opposing subs on the horizon. But of Jonathan Relevant there was not a trace! Neither then nor later was a camera ever developed which was capable of recording his image!

“What do you mean he doesn’t register on film, Ginzburg?” the Wartoy captain demanded of the photographer’s mate. “What the hell is he? A vampire or something?”

“I don’t know, sir.” Secretly, Ginzburg hoped Jonathan Relevant did turn out to be a vampire. It would serve that lousy anti-Semite of a captain right!

Ginzburg dwelled on the idea. He could just see the captain on the iceberg trying to shove a crucifix of hammered silver in the face of Jonathan Relevant. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. . . .” Ginzburg imagined the captain chanting the words.

And then, Ginzburg envisioned Jonathan Relevant drawing himself up to his full Semitic height, looking down his long, proud, hooked nose at the captain, and speaking in the sonorous voice of the rabbi who had bar-mitzvahed Ginzburg: “Oy! Hev you ever got the wrong vampire, schmuck!”

And then Jonathan Relevant would pounce on the captain and eat him all up, right down to his bigoted Navy WASP toenails!

“Ginzburg!” The captain’s voice banished the daydream. “Snap out of it. Get your cameras ready. We’re going up!”

When Admiral Churkov saw the Wartoy starting to surface, he gave the order for the Glubtub to do likewise. Landing parties on both vessels scrambled into lead suits. These would protect them against the radioactivity when they emerged on deck and proceeded to the iceberg for the initial confrontation with Jonathan Relevant.

Both parties accomplished this simultaneously. The Wartoy captain headed the American landing party himself. Admiral Churkov led the Russian group. They faced each other with hostility over the head of the naked Jonathan Relevant, who was now seated on the iceberg.

“We’ve rescued you.” The American captain took hold of one naked shoulder. “You’ll be safe aboard our ship.”

“Nyet.” The Russian admiral grasped the other shoulder and spoke in Russian. “In the name of the Supreme Soviet, I offer you the hospitality of our vessel.”

“How do you feel?” Dr. Ludmilla Skivar, her trained eye paying homage to Jonathan Relevant’s genital reaction at close quarters, posed the question in Russian.

“How do you feel?” Lieutenant Crispus asked in English.

“How do you feel?” Professor Von Schweindrek inquired in German.

“How do you feel?” Ginzburg spoke to Jonathan Relevant in Yiddish.

“My tookus is cold,” Jonathan Relevant replied.

Dr. Skivar heard the answer in flawless Russian. Lieutenant Crispus heard it in English. Professor Von Schweindrek heard it in German. And Ginzburg heard it in Yiddish.

“Let go of his shoulder!” the Wartoy captain insisted. “This man is obviously an American!”

“Since when do Americans speak perfect Russian with a Moscow inflection?” The Russian admiral took a firmer grip.

“I’m really quite chilly,” Jonathan Relevant said.

“Of course.” Admiral Churkov snapped his fingers and a Glubtub seaman threw a blanket over the shivering figure. The letters “U.S.S.R.” stood out in black against the olive-green wool.

Immediately the Wartoy captain signaled a sailor to cover the offensive lettering with an American blanket which had “U.S. Navy” embossed on it. The Russians topped this with a third blanket, and the Americans added a fourth.

This went on until someone once again inquired as to how Jonathan Relevant was feeling.

“Uncomfortably warm,” he replied in all languages at once.

The process was reversed as each side removed the other’s blankets with their offensive lettering. Finally Jonathan Relevant was naked once again. Ginzburg followed Dr. Skivar’s gaze to where Jonathan Relevant’s genitals rested on the iceberg. “Definitely Jewish!” he confirmed to himself.

“Are you an American?” the Wartoy captain asked.

“Are you a Russian?” Admiral Churkov sought confirma- tion.

“Deutsche?" Professor Von Schweindrek inquired.

“Yes! Da! Ja!” was the one-word reply.

“What’s your name?” they asked him in their various languages.

“Jonathan. Ivan. Johann. Jakob” was the one-word answer.

“And your last name?”

No answer.

“He’s been through a lot,” a pharmacist’s mate off the Wartoy remarked to a buddy. “He’s confused. Could be he’s even got amnesia.”

“Anyways,” the other sailor answered. “With the guy sitting there freezing to death, the question ain’t exactly relevant.”

“How else they gonna find out what nationality he is?” the pharmacist's mate argued. “It is so relevant.”

“It ain’t!”

“It is!”

“It ain’t!”

“I’ll prove it is. I’ll ask him.” The pharmacist’s mate addressed the shivering figure directly. “Is it relevant?” he asked softly.

“Tell us your last name!” all the brass were demanding at the same time.

“Relevant?” The naked man repeated the word back to the pharmacist’s mate.

“Jonathan Relevant! Must come from good Yankee stock,” the Wartoy captain decided.

“Ivan Relevant.” The Russian admiral nodded. “It has the ring of the Urals.”

“Jakob ben Relevant.” Ginzburg smiled. “A proud Jewish name.”

“Johann Relevant. Prussian.” Professor Von Schweindrek was positive.

“He’s an American and he’s coming aboard our ship!” The Wartoy captain tugged at Jonathan Relevant’s shoulder.

“Our ship!” Admiral Churkov pulled at Ivan Relevant’s other shoulder.

Why is the black man always being torn apart by whites trying to help him? Lieutenant Crispus wondered silently.

How come the Jew’s always trapped in the middle? Ginzburg reflected to himself.

“American!”

“Russian!”

The two ranking officers were still pulling the naked man in opposite directions.

“Why don’t you flip a coin?” Professor Von Schweindrek suggested.

Both oflicers agreed. The captain produced a quarter. The admiral fished out a kopeck. They stared at each other stubbornly, each refusing to accept the other’s coin for flipping. Finally Von Schweindrek settled it by producing a German mark.

The captain, remembering that he was an officer and a gentleman, magnanimously allowed Admiral Churkov to flip the mark. “Heads!” he called as it soared upward. But the coin landed in a crack in the iceberg and fell through.

“Klutz!” The captain forgot that he was an officer and a gentleman. “Let me do it.” He accepted a second coin from Von Schweindrek and flipped it.

“Tails!” The Soviet admiral chose. But a gust of wind took the coin and it missed the iceberg entirely, fell into the water, and sank from sight.

“This is getting expensive,” Professor Von Schweindrek grumbled as he fished a third coin from his pocket. “Let him do it.” He handed the mark to Johann Relevant. Jonathan Relevant flipped the coin.

“Tails!” the Wartoy captain called.

“Heads!” the Glubtub admiral snapped.

All eyes followed the coin as it rose end over end in the air. All eyes followed it as it started its downward journey. Americans and Russians fell to their knees, the better to see it, as it landed. And then a sigh of disbelief and frustration rose from both sides.

The coin was standing on end!

CHAPTER TWO

The President’s hemorrhoids were the most carefully guarded secret in Washington. Only the most trusted members of his official family knew of the affliction. And, of necessity, his personal physician, the noted anal-ist Dr. Rex Talley, was privy to the discomforts of the President’s privy.

Only once had there been a near leak. It came at the end of one of the first press conferences held by the President after assuming office. A sudden spasm had left the Chief Executive standing on one foot and deaf to the last question asked of him. “The need for a B.M. is drastic!” the President blurted out as he bolted the assemblage and raced for the nearest White House john.

“PREZ SQUEEZES FOR ABM” was typical of the headlines which followed. Immediately a horde of government, military, and scientific “experts” chose up sides and started compiling data on the need for an anti-ballistic missile system. So much for the decision-making process at the highest level of the administration!

The decision-making process ran into another rectal difficulty in the case of Jonathan Relevant. When news of the iceberg impasse was relayed from the Wartoy to Point Barrow to the Pentagon to the White House, it caught the administration with its pants down. Literally. The situation had to be explained to Dr. Rex Talley, who then passed on the information to the President through the closed door of his personal water closet.

“Dynamite!” the Commander-in-Chief grunted.

“You want them to blow up the Russian sub?” Dr. Talley tried to interpret.

“No! No!” World War III was averted. “I mean these damn piles! If you were any kind of a doctor —”

“Now, now, Mr. President,” Dr. Talley soothed him. “You know how sensitive the AMA is. You wouldn’t want word of your antimedical attitude—”

“Sorry . . . confidential . . . not for release. . . .” the President strained. “No such thing as privacy around here!” The words came out in a gush. “Ahh! . . . A man can’t even”—choked off-—“without being interrupted!”

“I’m sorry, Mr. President. But the Joint Chiefs insisted. They’re meeting with the Cabinet and waiting for your answer.”

“We can’t afford an incident now. Confidentially, we’re planning one for later in the year. A confrontation must be avoided at all costs. . . . Ooh! That hurt!”

“A confrontation must be avoided at all costs.”

The message was relayed from Washington to Point Barrow to the U.S. Wartoy. Meanwhile, aboard the U.S.S.R. Glubtub, similar instructions were being received from Moscow via Ambarchik. Like the White House, the Kremlin didn’t want a premature incident which might abort the surprise confrontation they were planning for later in the year.

The impasse remained an impasse. Neither side would relinquish its claim to Jonathan Relevant. Neither side would push so hard as to force the other to react strongly.

The Russians gave in to the extent of allowing the Americans to erect a pre-fab hut on the iceberg so that Jonathan Relevant might be shielded from the Arctic elements. The Americans in turn let the Russians furnish the hut and supply clothing. A schedule was worked out by which they took turns feeding and interviewing him.

The interviews were spaced out so that Jonathan Relevant had some time to himself. He needed it. He had to be alone to work things out. Jonathan Relevant had this identity crisis.

“Who are you?” Jonathan Relevant asked Jonathan Relevant.

“Jonathan Relevant,” Jonathan Relevant replied.

Why not? It was as good a name as any. “What are you?” was a much harder question. And “Why are you?” was the most difficult of all.

Amnesia? No. Jonathan Relevant wasn’t sure how he knew he didn’t have amnesia. He just knew it.

It seemed as if he just knew a lot of things. “But do I remember them?” he asked himself. Did he remember the discovery of fire? The Punic Wars? The development of Euclidian geometry? The journey with Columbus? Madame Pompadour? Hiroshima? “Or do I just remember reading about them?"

“Neither,” he decided. He just knew! . . . Everything . . . perhaps . . .

Except about himself. He didn’t know about himself. Only that he was a man.

“But am I a thin man, or a fat man?” he wondered. “Am I black, or white? Russian, or American? T all, or short?”

He’d been provided with a full-length mirror, and now he_ posed in front of it. Nothing! No image! “That’s going to make it pretty damn hard to shave!” Jonathan Relevant grumbled to himself.

He tried looking at his body directly. But his eyes wouldn’t cooperate. They seemed to fog over. It was as if he was peering through a constantly changing series of prisms, each distortion blending into the next. His skin was white and black and brown and red and yellow. His body was long and squat and skinny and pudgy and muscular and flabby. Even his big toe evaded description. This little piggy went the route from baby soft to aged gnarl.

“All I know about my body for sure is that my ass is cold!” concluded Jonathan Relevant.

Maybe that was a clue. If his eyes wouldn’t define him, then perhaps his sense of touch would. He pinched himself.

“Ouch!” '

So he could feel pain. And cold. And probably other sensations as well. He poked himself in the stomach. It felt hard. He did it again. It felt soft. He touched his chest. It was hairy. Again. His chest was hairless. He grasped his upper arm. It was muscular. His fingers circled it again. It was pitifully bony.

“Among other things,” Jonathan Relevant summed up ruefully, “I’m a very fat and powerful ninety-pound weakling.

"I wonder how I smell.”

He sniffed. Odorless. “Maybe I caught a cold on that iceberg.”

“How do I sound? What language do I speak?" Jonathan Relevant spoke the questions aloud. He had no difficulty understanding himself. But that didn’t answer the questions. His language was Relevant; it communicated—inwardly and outwardly—but it defied categorizing.

Yet Jonathan Relevant already knew that when he was with someone else there was an inner sense of how he looked and sounded, of who and what he was. It was as if the other person brought him into focus with himself. And if there was more than one other person, the focus changed quickly, snapped from one identity to the other, and yet the sharpness didn’t blur. Only when he was alone, he couldn’t define himself.

And there was more to it. He felt an instant rapport with whomever he came in contact. He knew that this was mutual. Still more. He became an idealization of what the other person wanted to see, the personification of that ideal to which the other person could most comfortably relate. Yet, even as he melted into such identities, he remained Jonathan Relevant. He knew that too!

He remained Jonathan Relevant. —“whatever the hell that is!” he sighed.

There was only one place to look for the answer. “Know thyself!” Jonathan Relevant advised Jonathan Relevant.

“Up yours!” Jonathan Relevant replied wearily.

“Now don’t get nasty,” he told himself. “You’re all you’ve got!”

“Narcissist!”

“You have to identify with something. Figure out what it is and go on from there.”

Finally he thought of something. It was an Abner Dean cartoon portraying a wild party. Right in the middle of the wingding, in the center of the living-room floor, was an igloo. A naked man was peering out of the entrance to the igloo. Jonathan Relevant could identify with that naked man.

The caption of the cartoon was “What am I doing here?”

“Why was I born? Why am I living? . . .” Jonathan Relevant hurnmed what he knew was his favorite song.

“Don’t be maudlin.” He stopped singing. “You can't talk yourself into feeling alienated. The way you relate to people, you’re probably the least alienated person in the whole world!”

“Sure. I relate great to everybody except me!”

“You’re not alone in that.”

“Ohmigod! I hope I don't turn out to be a shrink!”

“Don’t always be thinking of yourself.”

“You just told me to ‘know thyself.’ How can I know myself if I don't think about myself?"

“Don’t be rigid. Be flexible. Look at the larger picture. A naked man who defies description and categorization pops up on an Arctic iceberg following a nuclear explosion. What’s the significance? What does it mean to the world?”

“You’re asking me? Jesus Christ!”

“Doubtful! Very doubtful! Still, there must be a reason why you’re here. A mission of some sort? Find out what it is, and maybe you’ll find yourself in the process.”

“A mission? Like a quest? That’s a pretty moralistic idea. But what kind of morals do I have?"

“Sexually elastic.”

“And my ethics?”

“Situational.”

“Do I believe in anything?”

“In doing right.”

“What's right?”

“That depends.”

I believe in doing right. . . . “Well, at least I’m not a vegetable,” Jonathan Relevant decided. “Even if I am defined by others, I’m not just a reactive mechanism.”

“So now I know what I’m not. But what am I?"

“Well, I sure hope you like solving puzzles,” Jonathan Relevant told Jonathan Relevant. “Because you’ve got a doozy to work on: yourself!”

Who is Jonathan Relevant? What is Jonathan Relevant? Why is Jonathan Relevant?

These questions also concerned the Americans and Russians who interviewed Jonathan Relevant. The first of these interviews was conducted by Lieutenant j.g. Crispus in his role as naval intelligence officer of the Wartoy. The recommended procedure was to gain the subject’s confidence. The black interrogator felt such immediate and strong rapport with the black man being interviewed that this was achieved effortlessly.

“Man, I dig your cool!” Lieutenant Crispus was frankly admiring.

“Baby, you park your ass on an iceberg, you gonna be cool too!” Jonathan Relevant replied.

“That’s for sure.” Lieutenant Crispus chuckled. Then he got down to business. “The way my official report reads,” he told Jonathan Relevant, “I saw you slide down a sunbeam and land on this iceberg. Is that right?”

“Shoot, you a trained military observer, ain’t you? So you seen what you seen.” Thus Jonathan Relevant confirmed that the lieutenant had seen him slide down a sunbeam without acknowledging that he’d actually done so.

Lieutenant Crispus didn’t notice the evasion. Subsequently his perception was accepted by certain members of the scientific-military community. From it they evolved the “Sunbeam Hypothesis.”

The “Sunbeam Hypothesis” was based on Einsteinian measurements of the speed of light and the molecular changes which take place in a body traveling at such a speed. It was postulated that Jonathan Relevant had invented a method of teletransportation, that molecular rearrangement accounted for his sudden appearance, and that the process had scrambled his brain cells, which would explain his seeming amnesia. Photosynthesis was probably involved, which would explain the role of the sunbeam in the reassemblance.

“Photosynthesis . . .” Jonathan Relevant mulled over the implications of the “Sunbeam Hypothesis.” “I’m always chasing rainbows . . .” he sang to himself.

“Photosynthesis . . . are you animal, vegetable, or mineral?” he asked himself. “Are you bigger than a breadbox?” he added.

“God, you’re an introspective bastard!” he answered himself.

“Photosynthesis . . . good thing it wasn’t a rainy day! I might have missed the whole planet altogether!”

The “Sunbeam Hypothesis” was never accepted as widely among scientists as the “Messiah Theorem” proposed by the world-renowned Professor Klauss Von Schweindrek. The “Messiah Theorem” (alternately known as the “Genesis Postulate”) stemmed from Von Schweindrek’s first view of Johann Relevant through the Wartoy periscope. The professor-—who, incidentally, had been reared very religiously in his pre-Nazi childhood-—saw the naked figure walk on the water and then step up on the iceberg.

“Johann Relevant is an instant mutation formed on the spot by unplanned bionuclear interaction.” This was one part of Von Schweindrek’s logic. He expressed it to the intellectual-looking young German during their first interview.

“It wouldn’t be the first time that scientists researching in one direction came up with an oppositional result.” Johann Relevant thoughtfully traced the outline of the dueling scar on his cheek.

The comment puzzled Von Schweindrek. “We were testing a nuclear missile. . . .”

“You were testing an ultimate weapon designed to wipe out whole populations. And that’s called—”

“Genocide!”

That’s a No-No! Johann Relevant thought of the Nuremberg trials. I believe in doing right. And that’s definitely a No-No. It felt good to realize that he only conformed so far.

“I see.” Professor Von Schweindrek continued, “We were researching an economical means of genocide, and instead we came up with-—”

“Genesis.” Johann Relevant clicked his heels. “Genesis.”

Von Schweindrek went on to explain the second part of his theory. “Atomic rearrangement in previous nuclear tests has suggested the possibility of gravitational displacement. This would have been particularly extreme following the double nuclear explosion. The rearrangement of energy patterns could have created a buoyancy which made it possible for you to walk on the water. Or, the reshuffling of your own molecules might have resulted in a weightlessness enabling you to accomplish the feat.”

“Fermi himself postulated the question of the inter-relationship of nuclear alteration and gravity” was the Relevant response.

“Ja! Ja!” Professor Von Schweindrek’s eyes widened with admiration at Johann Relevant’s grasp of the complex subject. “So you see, it is imperative that the theory be tested. . . .”

A few moments later, Johann Relevant, naked, marched from the safety of the hut into the sub-zero, still radioactive atmosphere. Professor Von Schweindrek squelched an impulse to salute the Wagnerian figure as it goose-stepped to the edge of the iceberg.

Chin high, shoulders back, blue eyes fixed on the horizon, Johann Relevant stepped onto the Arctic Ocean.

Chin high, shoulders back, blue eyes fixed on the horizon, Johann Relevant sank from sight.

“Add ‘Codicil One’ to the ‘Messiah Theorem,’ ” Professor Von Schweindrek wrote after Johann Relevant had been fished out. “Whether molecular rearrangement of the sea, or weightlessness explains the ability to walk on the water, the effect is short-term.”

Shivering, alone in his hut, Johann Relevant also reached a conclusion. “Whoever I am,” he decided, “I’m definitely not Jesus Christ!”

That was a load off his mind. Somehow Jonathan Relevant knew he couldn’t sustain the self-denial of a messiah. This knowledge was not unrelated to the conception of the “Merman Thesis.”

Indeed, the “Merman Thesis” stemmed in part from the first known sex act of Jonathan Relevant. Of course, it was known by only two people: Jonathan Relevant himself and his partner in the act, Dr. Ludmilla Skivar.

It was night when the Russian girl entered the hut. The interior was dark. “Comrade Relevant?” she whispered.

“Da?”

“Comrade Ludmilla Skivar here.”

“Nice of you to visit me, Comrade.” He knew that the Russians weren’t all bad.

His Russian is as faultless as my own, Ludmilla thought to herself. “There are some scientific points I would like your help in investigating,” she said aloud.

“Not really.” Ivan Relevant corrected her firmly. “What you would really like is for me to make love to you, Comrade.”

Male . . . naked . . . tumescent. . . . The memory filled Ludmilla’s mind. “Da!” she heard herself agreeing. “Da!”

“Then take off your clothes and come here!” I wonder if I’ll know what to do when she gets here, he worried. After all, just how experienced am I?

He needn’t have worried.

Ludmilla stripped and slipped under the covers. She felt the naked male body hot and ready and muscular against her own. “Oh, Comrade Relevant!” Her nails dug into the flexed tendons of his shoulders; her tousled black hair grazed his cheek; their lips met and clung together.

Remember your first taste of honey‘? Your first car? The first home run you ever hit? Well, that’s what it was like for Ivan Relevant.

His hands were everywhere. Each touch was a step higher in a mounting pattern of arousal. Her neck arched under his fingertips. Her flat belly rippled to his caress. Her nipples hardened in the palms of his sensitive hands, and her breasts fluttered like plump white doves as he gently squeezed them into panting fullness. Exquisite sensations swept up her body from her quivering thighs when he stroked them. Her nether lips palpitated and then clutched greedily at the knuckles seeking admission.

If this is what I’ve been missing up to now—the thought flashed through Ivan Relevant’s mind—-then it’s a damned shame!

Ludmilla grabbed for the Relevant member with both hands. It was ready beyond a readiness most men are able to offer, and when his body locked with hers, it was as if an abyss had been filled by some ideally fitted flesh sculpture. As in all else, Relevant proved truly relevant.

Nor was he precipitate. His passion surely equalled hers, yet he refrained—effortlessly-—from releasing it. Ludmilla reached the heights-—once, twice, three times—and then she lost count. The thrills of fulfillment came so quickly, one on top of the other, that it seemed as if each release, of itself, contained the seeds of arousal for the one following it.

Ludmilla’s brain couldn’t cope with the dizzying sensations. Awhirl, it conjured up the tritest of sexual similes. She rode the erotic crest of waves in a pounding ocean. Higher and higher they spun her until, finally, the churning waters parted with Ivan Relevant’s release and she was plunged into a spiraling vortex of ecstasy which carried her to the sea bottom itself—-and beyond. Her body drew into itself the oceanic quake; her brain translated the experience into the “Merman Thesis.”

According to the “Merman Thesis,” the double nuclear explosion caused penetration of the ocean floor. Dr. Skivar postulated that Ivan Relevant was a member of an undersea race of humanoids existing beneath the crust of the sea bottom. Her theory was that he’d been propelled to the surface by the force of the blast. From his physical characteristics, she thought that his race and the Slavic peoples of Russia might have a common ancestry.

Its proponents, naturally, remained ignorant of the correlation between the Relevant-Skivar copulation and the “Merman Thesis.” This loss to Freudian psychology went unnoted as evidence was compiled to support the theory. The legends of Atlantis were cited as germane, and Relevant was viewed as sort of a living Dead Sea scroll. It was hoped that studying him would ultimately prove leg- end to be history, just as the Dead Sea scrolls had done for certain parts of the Old Testament.

“There’s no soul in the role of a scroll.” That’s what Ivan Relevant thought of the “Merman Thesis.” Still, he cooperated with Dr. Skivar’s researches at every opportunity. “Raise your hips up just a little higher,” he suggested to her in the interests of science. Yes, he cooperated fully!

There was, however, no cooperation forthcoming from Admiral Churkov in promoting the theory proposed by his eminent countrywoman. The admiral had his own ideas, which would come to be known as the “Galactic View.” It hypothesized that Ivan Relevant was a Russian astronaut whose space ship had developed some in-flight defect during the reentry phase, causing it to crash. Admiral Churkov claimed he, himself, had seen the rocketship plummet into the water just before Ivan Relevant appeared.

When it was suggested to the admiral that what he had really seen was a steel container of garbage being jettisoned from the Wartoy on the other side of the iceberg, he pooh-poohed the notion. He insisted he had clearly distinguished the markings of hammer and sickle on the craft before it submerged. Nor would he believe that the markings were really a piece of stray celery and a slice of onion which had adhered to the garbage container. He was encouraged in his stubbornness when the Supreme Soviet -- in order to get a political foothold on Ivan Relevant—officially supported the “Galactic View.”

The admiral visited Ivan Relevant and informed him that he had now been officially identified as a Russian astronaut. But as Admiral Churkov warmly talked with the undersized, balding little man with the nattily trimmed beard and too-round stomach, he had to admit that he didn’t look much like an astronaut. Instead, Ivan Relevant managed to resemble both Lenin and the admiral’s father at the same time.

“Do you know about the proud role of the Moscow Sanitation Department in the Revolution?” The Admiral was surprised to hear himself blurting out the question.

“They cleaned the streets?” Ivan Relevant guessed.

“Da! Da! Of all the czarist trash!” Admiral Churkov’s eyes were moist. “My father was a leader in the struggle!”

“He must have been quite a man.”

“He was! He was! You resemble him. . . . There is an aura about you . . . you are a Russian!” The admiral’s voice rang with conviction. “You are a communist! I know it!”

“Am I?” Ivan Relevant patted his small, round Russian tummy. “Am I?”

And so the “Galactic View” was left unconfirmed like all the other theories. All had logical weaknesses. All were attacked for these weaknesses.

The scientific community polarized itself and sniped away. The nit-picking was complex and the general public soon became skeptical of all the learned hypotheses. Most people sought a simpler explanation of Jonathan Relevant.

“Most people are a helluva lot smarter than most people think most people are.” Jonathan Relevant was learning. Jonathan Relevant also sought a simpler explanation of Jonathan Relevant.

One was supplied by a syndicated columnist who’d never been any closer to the polar regions than a vanilla Eskimo pie. But Percy Pander had other qualifications. He had a creative imagination, a memory like an IBM elephant bank, a top-notch research staff, and a flair for the dramatic that held the interest of eight-point-six million newspaper readers five days a week. All of which added up to the following column under the Pander by-line:

Who is Johnny Relevant? The whole world is asking. The eggheads’ answer is gobbledygook. The true story is even stranger.

It begins about 25 years ago with a man and a woman. The man was Christopher Benson Relevant, inventor of the SEVEN-OH-SIX Computer, the most highly developed mechanical brain of that era. The woman was Elizabeth Huntley Relevant, his wife, Professor of Humanities at a famous University. They had an infant son.

They had love. They had success and fame and fortune. But there was a snake in their Eden. The Mushroom Cloud! It threatened their son.

And so the Relevants opted for out.

They were wealthy, which helped. They outfitted a small yacht, stocked it with provisions, and loaded a SEVEN-OH-SIX Computer aboard. This was a teaching machine for their son. Into its memory banks had been crammed all of the knowledge of man.

One tiny ferrite core bank contained the entire linguistic curriculum of Berlitz. Another held every philosophy ever conceived. A third covered mathematics from Euclid to Einstein. And so on.

The Relevants set sail, heading north. They thought the polar regions would be least likely to be affected by the nuclear madness of mankind. It was a logical mistake.

Their next-to-last radio transmission reported the sighting of a small land mass in the Arctic Ocean. Not an iceberg, but an island of land. There was vegetation, and the Relevants were so impressed by its beauty that they gave it a very special name. They called it “Charisma.”

The next day they radioed that they had run into a severe storm. Their small ship was buffeted by gale winds and in danger of being pulled apart. Their only hope was to make it to the Island of Charisma.

That was the last message. The Relevants were never heard from again. It was presumed that all three were dead.

But did all three perish? Might not the Relevants have managed to save their infant son? Isn’t it possible that he landed on Charisma with that master computer and survived?

We say it is possible! We say that infant lived and grew to be a man! A very special man raised by a machine! Perhaps the best-educated man in the world! A man trained above all for survival! And we say that the proof of this is Johnny Relevant himself! Who is Johnny Relevant? He’s the Man from Charisma! We challenge the eggheads to prove otherwise!

Science and Reason both balked at the Percy Pander column. Nevertheless, acceptance spread out from his eight-point-six million readership to include rank-and-file yahoos around the world.

Why did they buy it?

"At the gut level”—Jonathan Relevant had a revelation — “fairy tales make more sense than Science and Reason."

It was at the gut level— or below—that the President of the United States reacted to the “Man from Charisma” piece. The emotional impact went straight to the seat of power. Thus the President was gingerly perched on his private White House toilet when the hot-line call from the Russian premier was put through.

“Good day, Mr. President,” the premier greeted him. “Your hemorrhoids are better, I trust?”

Security was going to hear about this! “A baseless rumor, Mr. Premier.” A sudden twinge brought tears to the President’s eyes, but he managed not to wince aloud. “Not worthy of discussion.”

“And the matter of Ivan Relevant? Is that worthy of discussion?”

“Ah. Then you are prepared to negotiate?” The President shifted his weight and breathed a momentary sigh of relief.

“I am prepared to offer you full custody of Ivan Relevant if all United States troops leave West Germany immediately.”

“Ridiculous! Our commitments to our allies—”

“Commitments? Allies? Vietnam?”

The President checked for bleeding. “I’ll make you a counterproposition,” he offered. “Get out of the Middle East and stay out, and you can have Jonathan Relevant.”

“I’ll give you the same deal, Mr. President.”

“Stalemate. All right. What about Vietnam then?”

“Withdraw unilaterally and Ivan Relevant is yours.”

“If it were that simple, I might not have these damn hem-— No, Mr. Premier. The Saigon involvement is too complex.” The President bit his lip against a particularly painful spasm. “However, if you can get the North Vietnamese to formally recognize Saigon in the negotiations, you can have Jonathan Relevant.”

The Soviet premier’s mind raced. There were advantages to such a proposal. It would enrage China and further alienate her from North Vietnam. It would have propaganda value. North Vietnam might not like it, but with Russia supplying the hardware and picking up the major portion of the tab, it shouldn’t be too hard to twist their arm.

“Agreed!” The premier accepted the President’s offer. They worked out the details, and then hung up. The President felt a lot better. The President reached for the toilet paper. . . .

Within twenty-four hours, the Relevant transfer was made. The crews of both ships stood by as he crossed the iceberg and boarded the U.S.S.R. Glubtub. To the men of the Wartoy, Jonathan Relevant seemed to go most unwillingly, a martyr. To the Russians, Ivan Relevant strode on deck with the jubilation of a just liberated man.

The Glubtub proceeded to Ambarchik. A Russian transport plane was warmed up and waiting to take Ivan Relevant to Moscow. Dr. Ludmilla Skivar was to make the journey with him. Admiral Churkov walked out to the plane with Ivan Relevant to bid him farewell.

“If you have a chance, look in on the Sanitation Department while you’re in Moscow,” the admiral suggested in a choked voice.

“I will.”

“The men of the Sanitation Department - such men are the backbone of Russia!”

“And men like you.” Ivan Relevant patted his shoulder.

“That is the highest compliment I have ever received.” The admiral couldn’t stop the tear trickling down his cheek. “And coming from you! . . . This is a moment I shall never forget!”

“Good-bye, son.” Ivan Relevant boarded the plane.

“Son!” The Admiral sat down in the middle of the runway and bawled.

The plane taxied down the strip and lifted into the air. A few moments later, when it had gained altitude and leveled off, the door leading from the pilots’ compartment to the passenger cabin was kicked open. Three men in Russian air-force uniforms emerged, their hands held high in the air. Behind them was a fourth man in civilian clothes. He held a large pistol.

“We have been hijacked!” one of the Russian airmen announced. ,“Three men. The other two are flying the plane.”

“Y’all!” The man in civvies flourished his gun at Ludmilla Skivar. “Into the aisle!” He herded her along with the airmen toward the rear of the plane. He locked the four of them in a compartment of the tail section and returned to Jonathan Relevant. “Leander Pigbaigh, Cee Ah Aih.” He identified himself. “An’ yew must be the gentleman Ah’m heah to fetch.” Deference spread over Leander Pigbaigh’s florid face. “Colonel Relevant, suh?”

“Yoah servant, suh,” Jonathan Relevant replied.

“Mah compliments.” Pigbaigh’s musclebound torso actually managed a bow. “Yoah safe from them commies now, suh. An’,” he added, “Ah’d say that calls foah a snifter.” He produced a pint bottle of bourbon.

“Ah‘ll drink to that.” Jonathan Relevant hoisted the bottle.

It passed back and forth between them until it was empty. Then Leander Pigbaigh fell into a deep sleep. Jonathan Relevant pondered a new discovery about himself : liquor didn’t affect him. He stared out the window. It was some time later that he spotted the formation of six Russian fighter planes, their motors straining, climbing toward the sky above the transport. A moment later the lead plane plunged straight toward the airliner. The other fighters followed close behind.

What was that about “a man trained above all for survival?” The Man from Charisma asked himself.

In a screaming dive, the lead plane came so close that eye contact was established between the Soviet pilot and Jonathan Relevant. The pilot’s thumb flexed to press the button that would activate the murderous bank of machine guns inset into each wing of his plane.

I really am too young to die! Jonathan Relevant i formed Jonathan Relevant. But the protest was purely academic, because-—

Death stared into the face of Jonathan Relevant!

CHAPTER THREE

Afro-American penes, generally speaking, dangle between castration and over-evaluation. From the Rinso’d-race point of view, that is. For most of its 112 years of hallowed existence, Harnell University had -unofficially, of course— leaned to the former attitude. But the times, they are a-changing. Sho’ ’nuf!

The pendulous pendulum was swinging back. Manhood, after all, is in the eyes of the bee-holder. Across the nation, in one way or another, Whitey was coughing up reparations for guilt. And the guilty gray-skins of Harnell U. were paying the piper with a vision altered to perceive a stiffened ebony pecker where once they had focused comfortably on Eunuch Tom, the spunkless Unc, ball-less and shucksy friendly. Yep, black tumescence was slashing through the ivy at Harnell.

With all deliberate speed. Which, naturally, was perceived as jet-pace dangerous by the university trustees, and molasses-smeared turtlefoot by the handful of bright black-ghetto groovies who’d slipped into the student body through the cracks in the crumbling walls of Harnell tradition. Being young, this later group was out of pocket, patience-wise; being black, they had the unscratchable itch.

Time was Redneck Rudyard kippled his pale kopf re the inscrutable—but too screwable — Oriental. But today ’tis the itch of the unscratchable blackable that furrows the paleskin forehead from East to West Coast. Hollywood having finished the Noble Redman right down to the stereophonic Cinerama rainbow of spit on his grave, only the pesky darkies-—X, Double X, Triple X, et al.—remain to thumbscrew the Caucasian conscience-—spell that b-u-s-i-n-e-s-s.

Yeah—b-u-s-i-n-e-s-s-—ain’t that what college is all about?

The unscratchable itch interfered with business. So Whitey tried to scratch it. He tried to scratch it all across the length and breadth of this-1and-is-your-land-from-California-to-the-New-York-Island. But Br’er Ofay couldn’t quite reach it, that itch. And those milkish fingers weren’t reaching it at Harnell University. Also, they weren’t moving fast enough. Those ivory knuckles weren’t even shifting into second. Blackface-wise, Harnell University was more token-y than the IRT.

Such was the considered opinion of twenty-year-old Harnell sophomore G-for-George Pullman Porter, a six-foot chunk of Negritude co-opted by the System for the purposes of integrating the Institution. There were other Afro skins color-coordinating the student body, but G-for-George Pullman Porter stood out among them. He was the founder and president of the recently formed (and decidedly unofficial) Harnell University Society of Afro-American Students. He had qualities of leadership; they were his endowment from the white world.

Sort of, even his name was part of that endowment. Way back when, just after the ex-Confederate Kernel withdrew the corncob halfway, a turned-loose field hand known as Rufe hauled black ass northward and went to work for the railroad as a redcap. Since the plantation had never provided him with a last name, it was only natural that the conductor on the train should give him one.

“Porter!” he called, and Rufe “Porter” was christened. He ate the missionary Wafer, which was pure crow—Jim Crow.

Rufe passed the name “Porter” on to his son, who passed it on to his son, who happened to be the father of G-for-George Pullman Porter. Papa Porter wasn’t as philosophical about it as Ole Rufe had been. Third-generation crow— Jim Crow—leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. Papa Porter had been washing it out with whiskey the night his son was born.

“What are you naming the baby?” the nurse at the hospital had asked him as she filled out the birth certificate. The question chased a few pertinent thoughts through Papa Porter’s mind. One: a boy child’s no boon to a black family; more bacon’s apt to come home via the “girl” (womb-to-tomb status of the domestic) yas-ma’aming it through Mrs. Snow White’s kitchen. Two: even if the kid was Carver-smart, there’d be nothing but a GW future for him—he could rise as high as the elevator he operated, push his way to the top of the hand-truck wheelers on Seventh Avenue, shine a shoe or two— or two million. Three: so might as well call a spade a spade from spadebirth; nobody’d know his name anyway (the jig was up, but never high); yeah, so spell out the score right from the start.

“G-for-George Pullman Porter,” Papa Porter told the nurse. Maybe she was bored, or maybe just literal minded, but that’s how she wrote it down on the birth certificate: “G-for-George Pullman Porter.”

Papa Porter didn’t know the times would be a-changing. He didn’t recognize the built-in black lash of the appellation. He didn’t understand that “G-for-George Pullman Porter” was just the straw needed to break the black camelback patience of his son in this new generation of young bucks.

By the time he reached adolescence, G-for-George Pullman Porter had whipped himself with that name long enough to know that he wasn’t ever—not never—going to pilot the white man’s upsy-downsy cage, nor wheel the white dealer’s dress-cart up the avenue, nor spit-polish leather over ingrown white toenails on white cement pavements. G-for-George Pullman Porter was going to die maybe, but he wasn’t going to ever take step one toward living up to his name. G-for-George Pullman Porter was a new breed of cat—and his nails were sharp.

Whitey recognized this even before Papa Porter did. So Whitey flipped a coin—heads: give him a gun, take it away, send him to jail, throw away the key; tails: educate him, send him to college, keep a sharp eye on him, if he gets that gun elsewhere, send him to jail and throw away the key. It came up tails. G-for-George Pullman Porter integrated—or maybe infiltrated—-Harnell University.

By his second year there, sophomore G. P. Porter had assimilated just enough to know two facts of Ivy life. One, assimilation wasn’t possible. Two, even if it had been possible, he didn’t want to assimilate. It was harder being black, and the way this man-child saw it, the harder the better. The white boys—Greeks and grinds, jocks and rebels—all seemed to have this identity crisis centered around the groin. Black was harder; black was better; black was rooty-full!

And black was in demand with Betty Boop Co-ed, she of the Harnell bleached skin. Black fit into her color scheme. If she was red (or even pinko) and she was white, then she was usually blue about the problem—and black and blue go so well together! So G. P. Porter — feeling guilty sometimes, feeling like he was maybe somehow selling out—obliged.

It was while he was obliging one night that he happend to glance out the window of Minerva Kaufman’s room and saw the Angel Gabriel. Like there he was, one and a half times as large as life, shining black in the moonlight. Yes, man, there he was, big and black and naked, with his wide iron nostrils sniffing at the stars, and his metal-kinky hair lending darkness to the night. Oh yes, he was there, the Angel Gabriel, nude sinews rippling like polished ebony, tree-trunk legs spread wide and inky against a background of white stucco provided by the Administration Building a little ways off in the distance. Unh-hunh, there stood the Angel Gabriel—with nothing at all but neutral white stucco between those massive thighs. There he stood—sans manhood!

“What’s the matter?” Minerva Kaufman’s white skin wriggled impatiently over Minerva Kaufman’s white sheets. “Why did you stop?”

“Hell! They castrated him!” G. P. was sitting up on the edge of the bed now, peering out the window.

“Who castrated who?” Minerva sat up. Pert red nipples nuzzled the muscles of G. P.’s arm. She pressed closer and firm young breast flesh flattened against him. Her delicate white hand floated down his naked belly and twined around the strong, sure threat of his Negritude. It was never quite as big as she expected it to be. But then she’d cut her teeth on Portnoy’s folklore, the side issue of his complaint, which spelled out the following rule: expectations vis-a-vis the black male organ are in inverse proportion to Jewish-mother-sponsored lack of faith in Hebrew he-ness; the Jewish son often reacts negatively to this hard-won black upmanship, but the Jewish daughter may consider it positively.

Now Minerva considered it positively. Way down deep, at some unspecified Freudian level, there was the perception of an escape hatch from the Jewish bag which allowed her to hold on to the advantages of being persecuted while shucking some psychological Semitic excess baggage. The black lever to that escape hatch was in the delicate grasp of her white fist.

“For a minute there, you had me worried,” she told G. P.

“The mother!” G. P. was still looking out the window, still brooding.

“Hey? Remember me?” Minerva’s long blond hair swept ticklingly over his thighs as her mouth descended to prod his memory.

The maneuver blocked G. P.’s view of the Angel Gabriel. The Way Minerva was kneeling, her haunches were raised and they filled his eyes, plump ivory globes quivering in the moonlight. Absentmindedly, he reached out to stroke them. Then, gently, he shifted her to one side so he could view the Angel Gabriel again.

“Hey! Pay attention!” Minerva raised her head momentarily and looked at him with mischievous green eyes. When he continued to stare, she lowered it again and gently used her small, sharp teeth.

“Ouch!” G. P. was successfully distracted. One of his hands closed firmly over a creamy breast and he rolled Minerva over on her back. Her slender thighs parted to accommodate him as he sprawled over her.

“Oh! Yes-yes-yes! All the way! All of it!” Her long legs straightened and the ankles locked around his neck.

“Now . . . now . . . now!”

“Yeah! Now!” G. P. lunged mightily. “NOW-OW- OW! . . .”

The naked Angel Gabriel, organless, continued to stare uncaringly at the night sky.

When it was over, G. P. got out of bed to fish a cigarette out of his pants pocket. On his feet, he looked down at Minerva admiringly. She was all female lying there, sated and a little weary now, content for the time being, the nipples of her breasts no longer quite so hard, but rather spreading pinkly like just opening rosebuds, one hip curving as she rested her weight on the other, long legs demurely crossed, but the mound of her womanhood still pulsating slightly, impudently. Her green eyes returned his gaze lazily and her pink tongue peeped out from between her lips as if it was about to lick his body. But she sighed and her mouth relaxed.

Returning with the lit cigarette, G. P. glanced out the window again. The naked Angel Gabriel still stood in sexless concentration. “That is one helluva thing—with no thing!” G. P. said aloud.

“Hmmm?” Minerva lackadaisically pulled herself up on the pillows and followed his gaze. “What’s the matter?”

“What’s the matter? Just look! He’s naked and he’s castrated. That’s What!”

“He’s not castrated. He’s an angel. Angels are asexual. They don’t have any you-know-what.”

“Minerva, sometimes you’re so damn white you’re hopeless! He’s a black angel! Dig? If he was a white angel, you het your flesh-colored Band-Aid he wouldn’t be asexual. lt‘s bad enough they do it to the black man. But this is just plain bragging about it, advertising it. It’s an insult to every black student on this buttermilk campus!”

“Oh, come on now, G. P. That statue’s been standing there for over a hundred years. Nobody ever took offense at it before.”

“Maybe that’s because for ninety-five of those hundred years this joint was so lily-white they wouldn’t let in an ofay with a sunburn!”

“Ancient history. Just like the statue. That’s probably why he hasn’t got any whatsis.” Minerva giggled. “He’s so old it probably fell off; he’s so old if he did have one it would be useless.”

“You know what?” G. P. stared down at her coldly. When he spoke, it was not as her lover, but as the head of the Harnell Afro-American Student Society. “You are the whitest, most insensitive bitch I ever was stupid enough to let use me.” G. P. reached for his pants and started to pull them over his legs. “That’s what you are, Minerva!”

Her eyes filled with tears. “G. P., please. I didn’t mean—- Oh, you’re right. I am insensitive! I’m sorry! Really I am. I should have realized— Please, don’t go like this. Not afer—”

“All right. Cool it.” G. P. sat down on the edge of the bed. “You’re going to make me feel all guilty about enjoying watching a white girl cry,” he teased her.

“Then I’d have to feel guilty about making you feel guilty.” Minerva smiled through her tears. “Kiss me.” She flung her arms around his neck.

G. P. kissed her. It was a long kiss of probing tongues and clinging lips. Their bodies took up where the kiss left off. It was a lazy, slow-building rewooing.

“How long did you say that statue’s been up?” G. P. asked as his fingers dipped into the valley between her breasts.

“Over a hundred years. I don’t know exactly.” Minerva nibbled his earlobe. “It was a gift from the founder. Old Rutherford Wallace Harnell himself.”

“It figures.” G. P. strummed one of her nipples.

“Why?” She dug her nails into the muscles of his shoulder.

“Because he was a slave-running bastard. That’s why!” He kissed her soft underbelly.

“Ahh.” She purred, tensed, relaxed.

“And that damn statue’s a symbol of him and his kind and the fact that it still stands proves things haven’t really changed much around here.” G. P.’s lips moved lower.

“We could get a few people some dark night and tear it down . . . down . . . down. . . .”

Minerva thrilled.

“Nope.” G. P.’s voice was muffled. He raised his head slightly. “That would be admitting defeat. What we’ve got to do is give that black angel back his manhood.” He dipped, tongue first.

“Okay. But later . . . later. . . .” Minerva’s hands tangled in his hair.

“All right.” G. P. rose up and impaled her on his lap. “Later. . . .”

“Later!” The rubber-covered finger of Dr. Rex Talley rose up and impaled the President of the United States. “It would be better if you took the call later, Mr. President. To ensure regularity, we must keep to the suppository schedule, and that means that now would be the best time to—”

“I can’t take the call 1ater!” The President cut him off and wriggled free. “This is a hot-line call to the Kremlin.” The President pulled up his pants and sat down on the edge of the massage table. “And I put it through myself,” he told Dr. Talley. “It’s crucial, so you just stand by and wait until I’m through.” He picked up the telephone and put it on his lap. A moment later it buzzed, signifying that the call had been put through.

“Mr. Premier!” the President said, without preamble. “Why did you double-cross me in Paris?”

“You know the answer to that, Mr. President.”

“All I know is that in secret talks yesterday afternoon the North Vietnam delegation agreed to recognize Saigon publicly. An announcement was to be made at the start of the talks today. Instead of which our chief negotiator in Paris has informed me that the North Vietnam delegation just walked out on the talks and charged the United States with bad faith. I demand an explanation, Mr. Premier!”

“Oh? Do you? Well, then, you shall have one, Mr. President. My government prevailed upon the North Vietnamese to take the action of which you speak. That is your explanation!” The premier’s voice was icy with anger.

“But why?”

“You dare to ask me that, Mr. President? After your betrayal in the matter of Ivan Relevant!”

“Betrayal?” The President was genuinely puzzled. “But Relevant’s on his way to Moscow. That’s what we agreed.”

“The plane has been hijacked!”

“Hijacked? But who—”

“Who? The Duchy of Luxembourg, perhaps? Come now, Mr. President! Do not take me for a fool!”

There was a long pause. Then—- “I’ll get back to you, Mr. Premier.”

“Be quick, Mr. President.”

There was no mistaking the threat in the Russian premier’s voice. The President swallowed hard as he hung up the phone.

Dr. Rex Talley took the telephone from the President’s hands and set it down on a side table. “Brace yourself, Mr. President,” he instructed.

Lying facedown on the massage table, the President braced himself. Delicately, Dr. Talley opened the flap of the old-fashioned presidential underwear and inserted a suppository. The President winced. “Talley,” he grunted, “you have cold hands!”

“I’m sorry, Mr. President.”

“Sorry! Sorry! What good is sorry! Do something about it! Hold your hands over a Bunsen burner or something, for Christ’s sake! Things are bad enough without having my hemorrhoids iced!”

“All done, Mr. President.” Dr. Talley buttoned the flap and patted the presidential rump soothingly.

The President got to his feet and pulled up his trousers again as Dr. Talley exited. When he was gone, the President dialed the phone quickly. “Aaron,” he said, when the buzzing was answered, “what the hell is going on?”

“I beg your pardon, Mr. President?”

“Fm talking about this Russian plane we hijacked.”

“I don’t know anything about it, Mr. President.”

“You’re the Secretary of State, aren’t you? If you don’t know, who does?”

“Might I suggest you try the Secretary of Defense, Mr. President?”

“Damn!” The President slammed down the phone and dialed again. “Benedict!” he shouted into the mouthpiece. “Did you authorize the hijacking of a plane from Ambarchik?”

“Ambar—-what, Mr. President?” the Secretary of Defense replied.

“Siberia, you ninny! We’ve hijacked a plane from there, and I bloody well want to know who issued the order!”

“It wasn’t me, Mr. President. I’ve been home playing Monopoly all afternoon with Alger of U.S. Steel and Swift of Alloys Unlimited and the Merriwell brothers of—”

“Monopoly!” The President broke off the call with a savage karate chop to the telephone. “Goddam military-industrial complex!” He dialed a third time. “Oswald,” he said through clenched teeth when the call was answered, “did you authorize the hijacking of a Russian transport plane?”

“I don’t believe so, Mr. President.”

“You don’t believe so! What the hell do you mean? Either you did, or you didn’t! Christ, Oswald! You’re the head of the CIA! You ought to know whether you issued the order or not!”

“Offhand, I don’t know anything about it, Mr. President.”

“ ‘I don’t know anything about it, Mr. President.’ ” The President mimicked him. “You too!” he fumed.

“I thought we’d agreed never to mention that again, Mr. President.”

“What? Mention What? What are you babbling about, Oswald?”

“The U-2, Mr. President. You said--” “The U-2? The U-2? Dammit, Oswald, I told you I never wanted to hear about that again. Why do you pick now of all times to bring it up?”

“I didn’t bring it up, Mr. President. You did.” Oswald’s voice sounded sulky.

“If you don’t stop with these irrelevancies, Oswald, I’m going to fire you. So help me I will!”

“Fire me, Mr. President? You’re just upset, Mr. President. After all, Strom--” Oswald deliberately left it hanging there.

“I didn’t mean it, Oswald.” The President backtracked hastily. “I was just trying to drive home to you how urgent this situation is.” The President’s tone was placating. “Please. Just check out this hijacking business and get back to me quickly.”

“Of course, Mr. President. May I ask what the urgency is?”

“It’s personal, dammit!” The President fought a sudden spasm as the suppository took effect.

“I understand, Mr. President. You know, I was discussing your problem with my brother-in-law Hubert, the druggist, and he suggested —”

“Not now, Oswald!” the President interrupted. “Just check out the hijacking and get back to me. Quickly!” The President hung up and raced for the privy.

He was still there when Oswald called back. “What have you found out?” the President asked.

“Hubert says a solution of royal jelly and —”

“Oswald! I’m grateful. Really I am. But right now would you just tell me what’s happening with that Russian transport.”

“Of course, Mr. President. Nothing to worry about. That situation is under control.”

“What does that mean, Oswald? ‘Under control?’ ”

“Well, Mr. President, a squadron of Russian aircraft is pursuing the plane. We don’t know whether they’ll attack or not. But if they do, the Joint Chiefs will be ready.”

“ ‘Ready?’ ” The President turned pale on the potty. “Just what do you mean ‘ready,’ Oswald?”

“Strategic Air Command has three bomber squadrons on full alert,” Oswald announced proudly. “Their nuclear bombs will be unloaded within three minutes, seven-point-two seconds of any Russian attack.”

“Oswald! What the hell are you trying to do? Start a war with the Russians?”

“I didn’t start it, Mr. President. They started it,” Oswald whined.

“And do you think the Russians are going to take this lying down, Oswald?”

“I raised that very point with Curtiss, Mr. President. He assured me that our first-strike capacity, as compared to the Russian air force’s first-strike capacity--”

“Just a minute,” the President interrupted. “What about the missiles their subs are carrying? What did Curtiss say about that?”

“Well, he didn’t want to step on the Navy’s toes. You know how it is, Mr. President. But he promised to bring the matter up tactfully with the admiral at this dinner party they’re both going to tonight.”

“ ‘Dinner party’ ” the President repeated dully.

“There’s really no cause for worry, Mr. President. With our antimissile defense system, the Russky hardware can only be seventy percent effective. And our underground launchers give us a second-strike capacity of —”

“Oswald!”

“Yes, Mr. President?”

“Shut up. Just shut up!”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

There was a long silence, broken only by the trickle of the plumbing, While the President’s mind strained to evaluate the situation. The Russians had as much reason to want Jonathan Relevant alive as the United States did, he decided. Therefore the fighter planes were just a show of muscle. Aware of the consequences, the Russian premier was much too sensible to order them to attack. It was a bluff. The Russian fighters wouldn’t attack, and therefore neither would the American bombers.

The President finally broke the silence. “It’s all right, Oswald,” he said aloud. “The Russians won’t attack. Our planes won’t have to drop their H-bombs.”

“Too bad, Mr. President.” Oswald sighed. “That will disappoint Strom.”

The President’s sphincter muscle contracted painfully at mention of the name. He changed the subject quickly. “All right now, Oswald. Tell me who authorized the hijacking of that transport.”

“Actually, no one did, Mr. President. One of our men simply used his own initiative.”

“You mean some CIA agent just decided to grab this plane all on his own? Without authorization?”

“Yes sir, Mr. President.”

“What’s the man’s name?”

“Leander Pigbaigh, Mr. President.”

“Pigbaigh . . . it figures! Oswald, I want his scalp!”

“Aren’t you being a little hard on him, Mr. President? After all, the CIA prides itself on inculcating initiative in its men.”

“Dammit, Oswald, who’s deciding this country’s foreign policy anyway? The President? Or the CIA?”

There was a long, noncommittal silence.

“Oswald? Answer me! I am the elected head of this government, am I not?”

“Yes, Mr. President. But--”

“But what?”

“If you’ll pardon me, Mr. President, that’s just it. Your office is political. The CIA is above politics. When it comes to the security of the nation, ours is an ongoing concern. After all, Presidents come and go, but the CIA continues to guard the nation against its enemies, foreign and domestic, regardless of changes in the administration.”

“I thought that was the FBI,” the President muttered.

“Can you really trust them, Mr. President?”

“Be careful, Oswald! This wire might be tapped!”

“No, it’s not, Mr. President,” Oswald assured him.

“How can you be sure of that?”

“Because we tap the phone of Jay Edgar Nightlight himself and we have a tape of him making the decision not to tap the White House phone. He doesn’t question your loyalty, Mr. President.”

“I guess I should be grateful,” the President grunted. “But what about you, Oswald? What about the CIA? Do you tap my phone?”

“What a question, Mr. President.” Oswald laughed.

“Yes. Isn’t it? But what’s the answer?”

“The answer is that the CIA is much more thorough than the FBI, Mr. President.”

“I see. Well, good-bye, Oswald. Say hello to Strom for me.”

“Will do, Mr. President. Good-bye.”

The President hung up. He reached for the toilet paper. Just as he tore off a few sheets, the hot-line telephone rang.

“Mr. President?” The Russian premier’s tone was strangely conciliatory. “There’s been this little boo-boo on my end that I think we should discuss.”

“A little boo-boo on your end? You should see my—”

“I mean a slipup, Mr. President. Only a small oversight, really, but—”

“Would it have anything to do with those Russian fighter planes, Mr. Premier?”

“Well, yes, Mr. President. As you know, our pursuit jets are designed for short-range combat. Therefore they have a limited amount of fuel. Now, on this particular flight, due to the suddenness with which they were put into the air, the squadron was operating under standard instructions.” The premier paused.

“And what are ‘standard instructions,’ Mr. Premier?” the President prodded him.

“One half hour before the point of no return, the planes attack unless they have received orders to turn back to their base.”

“But of course they were given such orders, Mr. Premier.”

“Well, you see, Mr. President, the base commander was waiting to hear from his superior officer in Moscow. And his superior officer was waiting to hear from me. Which brings me to that little boo-boo I was talking about. . . .”

“Mr. Premier! Do you mean you didn’t issue the order?”

“Uh—well, actually, no. I didn’t.”

“But why not?”

“I had to go to the bathroom,” the premier admitted in a very small voice. “And I forgot.”

“I understand.”

“You do?”

“If anybody does, Mr. Premier, I do.” The President’s empathy was genuine. “But about the boo-boo you mentioned—- Do you mean that your fighter planes—”

“Are attacking now,” the premier confessed. “It’s too late to stop them, Mr. President. They’ve probably already shot down the transport carrying Ivan Relevant. That’s why I’m calling, Mr. President. I wanted you to hear about it from me before the situation became exaggerated.”

“Exaggerated? Do you realize, Mr. Premier that three squadrons of American planes will be dropping H-bombs on your country by the time we hang up?”

“You’ll have to stop them, Mr. President!”

"I_can’t stop them! As soon as they learn that transport is beihg attacked, our bombers will establish radio silence. They'll fly above your radar. They could be dropping their bombs any minute now!”

If they do, Mr. President, reciprocation will be automatic and instantaneous. If you attack our cities, we shall have to attack yours.”

“But you started it!”

“I already apologized for that, Mr. President. I told you it was a boo-boo. I had to go to the bathroom! What do you want me to do? It won’t do any good for me to go on feeling guilty for the rest of my life.”

“But you are guilty!”

“Some times, Mr. President, you remind me of my mother. The premier spoke strongly now. “If you bomb us, we'll hit you!” he reiterated.

“Mr. Premier, this means war!” The President stood up. Nuclear War, do you understand?” The President flushed the toilet, which played a march by Sousa. “War!” he repeated.

“Be kind to your web-footed friends. . . .”

WAR!

CHAPTER FOUR

The lead jet of the Russian squadron plunged sharply to- ward the fat center section of the transport plane. The pilot’s thumb flexed to push the button that would spray death from the machine guns in the winds of the jet. He squinted through the crosswire of the aiming mechanism, waiting for the last split second to fire in order to get the maximum effect of devastation. Then the eye pressed to the sights blinked . . . unbelievingly . . . and blinked again . . . and the instant for firing had passed!

Why didn’t the pilot shoot? For the same reason that Pavlov’s dog starts to drool. A bell had gone off somewhere in the recesses of his brain. The Russian psycho-biological scientists call it “conditioned reflex”; the political brain-scrubbers of the Soviet call it “Socialist loyalty.”

Magnified in his sights, as they focused clearly on the window out of which Jonathan Relevant was peering, was the visage of the Premier of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics!

The lead pilot’s thumb moved away from the firing mechanism. Pavlov’s dog, caught between two bells, didn’t know which way to go. He was immobilized. The fighter plane passed under the transport and continued its screaming dive.

“Do not fire!” The squadron leader screamed the order to the other pilots following in his wake. It was his last command. His aircraft plunged into the waters of the Gulf of Alaska and vanished from sight. Like so many lemmings, the other pilots of the well-disciplined squadron held formation and followed their leader to his watery rave.

“Wa’al, Ah’ll be damned!” CIA agent Leander Pigbaigh had awakened just in time to observe the maneuver. “Sho’ gotta hand it to them Russkies. That’s jes’ ’bout the purtiest piece o’ flyin’ Ah ever did see.”

“But them six men is daid!” Jonathan Relevant said softly, sadly.

“The on’y good Russky’s a daid Russky!”

“Ah doan’ b’lieve that!” Jonathan Relevant’s voice was firm. He knew he didn’t like death. Not senseless death.

“Colonel, yoah all heart,” Pigbaigh told him admiringly. “Yew got true Southern compassion is what yew got.”

“Y’all stop an’ thank on it a mite,” Jonathan Relevant suggested to Pigbaigh. “Yew doan’ really like to see brave men takin’ to theah graves, now do yew?”

“Yew so right, Colonel!” A genuine tear trickled down Pigbaigh’s cheek. “An’ them boys sho’ was brave, Russkies or no. Ah reackon they must o’ come from the south o’ Russia.” He put his hand over his heart and bowed his head in silent tribute. . . .

A few moments later the President of the United States was bowing his head in silent thanks. He’d just received word that the American bombers had learned of the fate of the Russian squadron before severing radio contact to embark on their nuclear raid. Now he could cancel the orders he’d given when the Russian premier had hung up on him earlier. It would no longer be necessary to counter-attack. The noses of the MIRV missiles could once again be turned away from Moscow and Leningrad in the nick of time. The Moscow-Washington first-strike-second-strike Ping-Pong ball could be balanced on the net awhile longer.

The hot-line telephone rang. The Russian premier rattled off a long statement which boiled down to two words: “Concession” and “Reciprocity.” The Russians claimed to have made the first and demanded the second.

The President knew it was a bluff, but he played the game. “What do you mean by ‘Reciprocity,’ Mr. Premier?” he asked.

“Ivan Relevant is to be returned to us immediately!”

“You can have the plane and crew back,” the President conceded.

“And Relevant?”

“Is granted sanctuary. The United States stands for the right of the individual to make his own decisions in the privacy of his own mind. . . .”

“Ain’t it a mite crowded in heah?" Jonathon Relevant asked as Pigbaigh squeezed into the plane’s small lavatory with him.

“Ah’m responsible foah yew, Colonel,” Pigbaigh told him. Yoah in mah pertective custody. . . .”

“Privacy and the rights of the individual are sacrosanct,” the President summed up.

“Bah!” The Russian premier slammed down the telephone. He punched the intercom. “Get me our United Nations ambassador immediately!” he ordered.

The Soviet ambassador to the UN listened carefully to the instructions of his premier. Then he made the calls necessary to put in motion the machinery which would summon the UN members to an emergency session. It was some hours later when he rose to address that special meeting.

“The government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics wishes to lodge the strongest possible protest regarding hostile and aggressive action taken by the capitalist imperialist dictatorship rulers of the United States of America in the matter of one Ivan Relevant, Soviet citizen,” he began. “The most stringent measures against the government of the United States are requested of this august body by the government of the Union of . . .”

While the Soviet UN ambassador proceeded with his ho-hum diatribe, the hijacked Russian aircraft was setting down on American soil. It landed at a secret CIA base on the California coast, about halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. As he disembarked, Leander Pigbaigh was informed that a direct telephone line was being held open for him to speak to Washington.

“Pigbaigh? Oswald here,” the voice on the other end announced tersely. “Just why the hell did you grab that plane without authorization, Pigbaigh?”

“ ’Cause it was theah!” Pigbaigh stuck out his jaw and planted his flag on top of the lunar mountain.

“The President’s damn mad, Pigbaigh. He wants your scalp!”

“Mah scalp?” Pigbaigh chuckled. “Naow, ’foah he acts prematuahly, might be y’all an’ the President both ought to have a chat with Uncle Strom.”

“Now, Pigbaigh, there’s no need for that. I’ll smooth the whole thing over. Why bother your uncle with a minor matter like this? . . . Now, getting back to Jonathan Relevant . . .”

“Yes, suh?”

“He should be kept under wraps for a while.”

"Yes, suh."

“Someplace where our scientists can examine him properly, Pigbaigh.”

“That’s all arranged, suh.”

“Good. Good. Keep in touch, Pigbaigh.” Oswald ended the conversation.

An hour later Pigbaigh escorted Jonathan Relevant aboard a CIA plane. Overhead the Russian transport was starting back toward Siberia with its original crew. A squadron of U.S. jet fighters was speeding it on its way. But Dr. Ludmilla Skivar was not on board the Soviet aircraft.

“I don’t want to return to Russia!” she’d announced to Pigbaigh through a CIA interpreter.

“Y’all mean yew wants to defect?”

“That is correct. Providing I can take part in the examination of Relevant.”

Pigbaigh called Washington and cleared it. If so renowned a figure as Dr. Ludmilla Skivar was indeed defecting to the United States, it would have great propaganda value. And there was also the scientific expertise she would bring with her. “But keep tabs on her,” Pigbaigh was told. “Until we can be sure of her loyalty.”

Her “loyalty” was made clear to Ivan Relevant when she sat down next to him in the plane. “Don’t worry, Comrade,” she whispered, enveloping him with her love-cow eyes. “I’m going to stay with you until a way is found for both of us to return to Mother Russia. Our love will find a way to circumvent these arrogant Americans. After all,” she added proudly, “we are both Russians, both communists.”

“I’m apolitical,” Ivan Relevant told her truthfully.

“But you do love me. Don’t you?”

“Yes.” And that was also the truth.

The conversation was interrupted by Pigbaigh. “Yew done the right thang, ma’am,” he told Ludmilla as he came up the aisle. “Gawd is on ouah side, the side 0’ dee-moc-racy.”

“God is on our side!” The United States ambassador to the UN was replying to the Russian charges. “He is on the side of democracy. He is on the side of freedom. In America Jonathan Relevant will have the freedom to choose. He will be free to go where he wishes, to associate with whom he wants to associate . . ."

“Ah’ll have to ask yew to move,” Pigbaigh told Ludmilla. “Ah’m ’sponsible foah the colonel heah, an’ Ah can’t have him consortin’ with yew till we get yoah final see-curity clearance.”

“But Ah’m enjoyin’ this heah lady’s company,” Jonathan Relevant protested.

“Now, Colonel, it’s foah yoah own pertection.” Pigbaigh pulled Ludmilla from the seat and sat down in it.

The plane winged inland. Ludmilla sulked. Pigbaigh dozed and snored. Jonathan Relevant sat quietly and thought about Jonathan Relevant.

He had a few more pieces to add to the puzzle which was himself. Not enough to see the picture. Not enough to answer the questions of who and what he was, or why he was here. Just enough to fit together a few more insights into himself.

He’d learned that he could feel emotion as well as tactile sensation. For instance, fear. He’d felt that when facing the diving Russian plane.

And relief. When his eyes met those of the lead pilot, Jonathan Relevant experienced that automatic rapport which was a part of him and knew that the Soviet pilot also experienced it. In that instant he knew that the Russian wouldn’t fire and he felt relief.

And guilt. “It was them or me," he alibied when the six men died. But he knew that didn’t matter; the choice was wrong. “Be glad you’re alive,” he told himself.

“I am."

“Then why be a bleeding heart?”

“Because I am that too.”

And he accepted that piece of the puzzle, anticipating that it would eventually fit into place.

“I’m apolitical.” He thought about what he’d told Ludmilla. It was so. But it didn’t mean he was uninvolved. Just that he wasn’t partisan. People, not creeds, were the important thing.

“I suppose you think that’s pretty damn profound?”

“The greatest profundities, the real truths, always turn out to be simple and trite,” he told himself smugly.

“Hoo-hah! Look who thinks he’s Herman Hesse!”

“I could be worse things.”

“I can see you’re going to be pretty hard to live with. You could get to be a real drag!”

“What’s wrong with pinning down the verities?”

“It makes you self-righteous. One thing the world doesn’t need is any more righteousness. You could fill an ocean with the blood spilled in the name of Right.”

“Yes. But I can’! be for Wrong. It’s against my nature."

Another piece for the puzzle.

“Right? Wrong? Semantics! Like love! You told Ludmilla you loved her.”

“It's true!”

“Maybe. But is it right? You know damn well that ‘love’ to you means something very different than it does to her. After all, you love Pigbaigh too.”

“But I don't like him.”

“You love him. You love everybody. Maybe you’re really a cocker spaniel.”

“I can't help it. It's how I feel. I do love everybody."

“Shove it up your heart!”

But it was another piece of the puzzle, and Jonathan Relevant accepted it.

He was still debating the meaning of the pieces with himself when the CIA plane landed at a small, private airport in the mid-Eastern section of the country. Here the passengers transferred to a limousine for the last lap of their journey. About twenty minutes later the car passed through the gates of Harnell University and braked to a halt in front of the imposing facade of the main building of the newly erected Graduate Study Science Research Institute. Pigbaigh led the way inside.

“Welcome to the research institute on behalf of Condom-Inium, Inc.” A very tall, thin, fortyish man with close-cropped gray hair greeted them. “I’m Peter Glover, head troubleshooter for Condom at the institute. And this is Harnell Chancellor Hardlign.”

“Harnell University is honored to make the resources of its research institute available to you gentlemen.” Chancellor Hardlign was around the same age as Glover, a foot shorter, stockily built, slightly balding, distinguished-looking .

Mutt and Jeff. That's how they looked in tandem. And they cordially hated each other for it.

“Naow, tellers, it’s right nice o’ yew to be on han’ to greet us,” Pigbaigh said. “But we mought’s well put one thang straight from the start. This heah’s a gov’ment operation. Cee Ah Aih’ll be in charge.”

“B~b-but this is a p-private institution!” Chancellor Hardlign sputtered.

“Shoot! Where’d y’al1 be ’thout Cee Ah Aih fundin’?” Pig- baigh reminded him. “Harnell’d be jes’ one moah jerkwater college on the skids ’thout we underwrote yoah research program.”

“You forget that Condom-Inium participated in the financing dollar for dollar,” Glover remarked icily. “Naturally we are entitled to participate in any of the benefits accruing from the research done here. And that includes any involving Jonathan Relevant.”

“Condom-whatchamacallit ain’t but a subsidiary o’ Viet Rubber.” Pigbaigh put him straight. “Case yew don’t know it, Viet Rubber op’rates on gov’ment subsidies what have to be cleared with Cee Ah Aih. So ain’t gonna be no trouble ’bout ouah usin’ the Thank Tank heah at Harnell. An’ naow”—syrup trickled back into his tone—“Ah s’pec yew’d like to meet Colonel Jonathan Relevant. This heah’s Mr. Peter Glover o’ Condom.” He introduced them.

“Mr. Relevant.” Peter Glover grasped Jonathan Relevant’s hand firmly and pumped it. “You know, sir, you bear a striking resemblance to the head of the National Association of Manufacturers.”

“Thank you.”

“No need to thank me. I don’t pay compliments lightly. I can tell that you’re a hard-headed, no-nonsense businessman, just as I am myself. It’s going to be a pleasure working with you, sir.”

“I’m sure we’ll get along.” I wouldn't be Jonathan Relevant if I wasn’t sure.

“You can bet your blue chips on that!”

“ ‘The business of America is business,’ ” Jonathan Relevant heard himself quoting.

“Where are you, Cal Coolidge, now that we need you?" Peter Glover sighed.

“An’ this heah’s Chancellor Hardlign o’ Harrell.” Pigbaigh continued the introductions.

“I’m very interested in education,” Jonathan Relevant told the chancellor as they shook hands.

“It’s the country’s investment in its future.” The chancellor responded warmly. “It’s an honor to meet someone who recognizes its importance.”

“There is no higher calling than that of a dedicated educator,” Jonathan Relevant said sincerely. “Only such men can hope to raise the level of mankind as a whole.”

“How true! How true!” Chancellor Hardlign beamed.

“Of course, the dedicated educator must always be careful not to compromise away his standards in the effort.”

“Uh . . . yes. . . .” The chancellor drifted away, looking pensive. He’d just remembered a bit of fund-raising business which would have to be attended to tomorrow. The chancellor was renowned for his fund-raising ability.

Jonathan Relevant was shown to a room in the living quarters of the research institute. When he was alone, he undressed and lay down on the bed. He gazed out the one window at the statue of the black Angel Gabriel on the mall. He noticed immediately that Gabriel was lacking a penis.

“And you think you’ve got troubles!” Jonathan Relevant snorted to Jonathan Relevant.

After a while he saw a small group of young men approach the statue. Their faces shone brown and black in the moonlight. There was the hissing sound of a soldering iron, followed by the flare of a welder’s torch. A half hour passed and the group departed.

He continued to look at the statue. The Angel Gabriel was no longer exactly angelic. “That's better." A small smile crossed the lips of Jonathan Relevant.

A larger smile wreathed the face of Minerva Kaufman when she looked out the window of her room the next morning. She was the only white on campus with advance knowledge of the blacks’ plans regarding the Angel Gabriel. Her lover, G-for-George Pullman Porter, the head of the Harnell Society of Afro-American Students, had confided in her the previous afternoon that he had located a black metallurgy major willing to perform the delicate operation. Now, looking at the result, Minerva judged the operation to be a success.

A large, black penis had been welded on between the legs of the Angel Gabriel! Minerva wondered if the black lads hadn’t perhaps overcompensated. It wasn’t just the size of the appendage; it was the blatant, perpendicular erectness of it.

As the campus came to life, reactions were immediate. The Afro-American Student Society was prepared. Under the signature of its president, G. P. Porter, the society issued a manifesto affirming its commitment to black manhood and approving the addition to the Angel Gabriel as a symbol of black manhood at Harnell. The manifesto spelled out the Afro-American Society’s position that “under no circumstances” would they allow the Angel Gabriel to be “recastrated.”

While the Black Manifesto was being circulated among the student body, the largest and most influential of Harnell’s sororities held a meeting. By unanimous vote they condemned the angel’s new organ as “disgusting” and “an affront to womanhood.” Several BMOC rallied to support their position. The football team captain was the natural leader of this group, which was composed mainly of athletes and athletic supporters. The jocks started making plans to re-emasculate the Angel Gabriel so that “decent girls” might walk the campus unoffended.

On the other side, Minerva Kaufman, who was a wheel in the larger of the two warring factions of SDS on campus, gathered together a group of radical white students pledged to back up the principles of Afro-American culture involved. Meanwhile, off campus, in the nearby black ghetto, a militant in Afro garb stood on a street corner and urged his followers to arm themselves and march on the college so that this symbol of black manhood might be “liberated.” A few blocks away, the white head of the local Urban League office, who hadn’t been asked to comment, issued a statement which added up to “No comment.” Further up town, a black psychologist was accusing the “white power structure” of having itself engineered the penal reform as a means of perpetuating the “sex-fear myth” which was “the basis of all white prejudice.”

Meanwhile, besieged by reporters, Harnell Chancellor Hardlign told them it was just “a typical college prank-—-albeit in particularly questionable taste—-with absolutely no racial overtones.” He added that “of course it will be removed at the earliest opportunity.”

The faculty quaked at the statement. A committee was quickly formed to consider the situation. After a lengthy debate, it was decided to call the ad hoc faculty committee “The Ad Hoc Faculty Committee.”

Directly following this decision, word was received that the Harnell University Alumni Commission-—HUAC for short — was demanding the immediate expulsion of those students responsible for “the desecration of this hallowed work of art which epitomizes the spirit and tradition of our proud Alma Mater.” The Ad Hoc Faculty Committee was immobilized. Teachers, instructors, and professors polarized themselves according to tenure.

The campus air was electric with anticipation. Students thronged to the mall to look at the Angel Gabriel. The first action came shortly after noontime. It was precipitated by an innocent bystander. In the crowd, gazing at the statue, an apolitical home-ec major nudged her boyfriend and observed, “Now that’s the way a man should be built!”

“Nobody’s built that way.” The boyfriend responded defensively.

“That’s what you think!” A black girl standing in front of them had overheard and couldn’t resist the remark.

The white girl was curious. “Are they really like that?” She pointed at the statue with unerring aim.

“Unh-hunh!” The black girl giggled.

“It’s a put-on!” The boyfriend was getting hot under the button-down, white-on-white collar. “It’s all part of that divide-and-conquer black-power strategy,” he told the white girl. “Don’t fall for it! Don’t be a goon!” he added through tight lips.

“Who you calling ‘coon?’ ” A black boy a few feet away misheard and jumped to the conclusion that the black girl was being insulted. “Picking on a girl! You’re pretty damn cocky!”

“Anti-Semite!” A Jewish jock came up, flexing his muscles under his Star of David frat shirt. “Maybe you’d like to try calling me mockey,” he suggested menacingly. “How about it? Think you can make it stick?”

“I’ll show you who’s a spic!” A Puerto Rican student elbowed his way up to the group.

“Nobody but another Irishman can call an Irishman a mick!” A tall boy with the map of the Emerald Isle freckling his angry face confronted the Puerto Rican. “I wouldn’t even take that from my pop.”

“Wop?” An Italian student threw the first punch.

“Prick!”

“Spic!”

“Mick!”

“Kike!”

“Dyke!”

"Wop!"

“Cop!”

“Spade!”

“Raid!”

Fists flew and the fracas spread toward the statue of the Angel Gabriel. A group of Afro-American students clustered there, led by G. P. Porter. When the words “cop” and “raid” reached their ears, they circled the statue and linked arms to protect it. Nearby, Minerva Kaufman was making a speech to her SDS faction on the duty of concerned white radicals to help their “black brothers” against “honky violence.” It was hard to hear her in the confusion, but nevertheless the speech had its effect. The SDS-ers dispersed to form a human barricade around the Afro-Americans.

Marching toward the melee, a large group of Greeks and jocks reacted to the maneuver at the base of the statue. “Come on, fellows!” the captain of the Harnell eleven whooped. “Let’s show ’em they can’t take over our school!” With six husky linemen in the van, he led a flying wedge through the crowd toward the statue. The other athletes and frat men followed at a trot.

From a window in the Administration Building, Chancellor Hardlign had been watching. Now he moved to act. He called the chief of the Campus Security Police and instructed that the entire force of twenty-four men proceed to the scene to break up what was fast becoming a riot.

“How about the locals?” the chief asked. “We might need help.”

“There isn’t time,” the chancellor told him. “We’ve got to break this up before it has a chance to spread. Disperse the crowd and get that statue inside this building. I want it out of sight. That way we can take care of the obscenity without all this nonsense from the students.”

' “Yes sir!” The chief hung up and summoned his men.

“Fuzz!” The cry went up at the first sight of the billy-wielding cops. About half the crowd scattered immediately.

From the window of his room, Jonathan Relevant observed this latest development as he had been observing the mounting situation since early morning. “A detached observer. Maybe that’s my role,” he told himself. “Sort of a cosmic anthropologist compiling information on the ritualistic power struggles of the tribe.”

The Campus Security Police Chief fired several shots over the heads of the milling students to hurry them along.

“An onlooker gathering data on the tribal traditions by which the youth of the tribe challenge their elders, and on the age-old defensive responses of the elders. Just an impartial observer.” A bullet passed over the heads of the students, broke the window of his room, and whizzed past the ear of Jonathan Relevant. “Hey! What’s the big idea? I’m an innocent bystander!"

“Nobody’s an innocent bystander! The noncombatant is always the first victim! In the end, the uninvolved always become the most involved of all! So face it. You're Relevant. You’re involved!”

It was another piece for the puzzle.

The SDS-ers, already slugging it out with the jocks, broke ranks and fled as the campus bluecoats charged. Arms still locked, the Afro-Americans went limp as the cops moved in on them. A few black heads were busted to break their chain. A few more were busted gratuitously. Finally the blacks broke and ran, confirmed in their blackness by the cops’ zeal.

They regrouped across the campus and watched as the bluecoats picked up the statue and carried it into the Administration Building. “Where are we going to do?” One of the blacks asked the question that was on all their minds.

“You really want to know, baby?” G. P. Porter was boiling. “Okay! Right on! I’ll tell you! . . .”

G. P.’s plan was put into action shortly after the police left the Administration Building. The only cop left was the one usually on guard in the center hall. Behind him, against the wall, and circumspectly facing it, was the Angel Gabriel. The cop took a firm grip on his billy when the black students came through the door.

“We’d like to see the chancellor,” G. P. told him.

“You got an appointment, boy?”

“No. But we’re a delegation to-—”

“Can’t see the chancellor without you got an appointment, boy.”

“Unh-hunh!" G. P.’s eyes narrowed. “So be it!” Motioning to the others to follow, he headed for the stairs leading to the offices on the second floor.

“Now you hold it right there, boy!” The cop blocked the staircase. He raised his club threateningly.

Less than a minute later he was flat on his back with three blacks sitting on top of him while a fourth twirled his billy. They stripped him and tossed him out the front door, completely nude. Jonathan Relevant watched as the naked figure scooted across the campus. He was the only witness when the nude cop ran smack into Miss Judith Uptyte, the college librarian, a virgin lady in her sixties.

By then G. P. and the others had stormed into the chancel1or’s office. “What’s the meaning of this?” Chancellor Hardlign demanded.

“We’re here to discuss black manhood!”

“I’ll be glad to discuss it.” The chancellor maintained his calm. “But not under coercive circumstances. I’m always available to my students. Just make an appointment.”

“And meanwhile Gabriel will be melted down for shrapnel! No thanks!” G. P. was firm. “You’ll talk to us right now!”

The chancellor sucked in angry air. “Now look here-—” The telephone rang. “Excuse me.” He answered it. “Hello. . . . As a matter of fact, I am rather busy at the moment, Miss Uptyte. . . . What’s that? . . . Naked, did you say? . . . One of our campus officers . . . leaped out of the shrubbery at you. . . . Sexual assault. Well, I agree, but . . . no, Miss Uptyte, please don’t do that. . . . Well, of course I’m concerned about your reputation, but there’s the reputation of the university to be considered as well. . . . But if you file a formal complaint the publicity will . . . I promise you that immediate action will be taken. . . . Yes. . . . Good-bye.” Chancellor Hardlign hung up the telephone and turned back to confront G. P. “A rather serious matter has come up,” he said. “Evidently one of our policemen has turned into some sort of sex maniac and is running amok. I have to take measures. So if you’ll all be good enough to leave now-—”

“No!” G. P. sat down on the floor and some of the other blacks followed suit. “The Afro-American Society has been trying to go through channels for over a year to get this joint to enlarge its quota of admissions for blacks, and we know where that’s at!” he told the chancellor.

“There are no quotas at Harnell!”

“And there are no blacks to speak of either!”

“If you won’t get out of my office, then you leave me no alternative!” Chancellor Hardlign reached for the phone.

G. P. yanked the phone wires out of the wall.

“Vandalism!” The chancellor stormed out from behind his desk. Before he could reach the door, it was closed and two blacks stood blocking it. “Am I to understand that you’re going to keep me here against my will?” Chancellor Hardlign was livid.

“Harnell’s being liberated,” G. P. told him. “And you’re a hostage to see that it stays liberated.” G. P. got to his feet. “You stay and guard him,” he instructed four of the blacks. “The rest of you come with me. We’ve got to secure the building.”

The blacks used desks, filing cabinets, all sorts of ofiice furniture to barricade the Administration Building. Only one window was left unblocked to serve as entrance and exit. Two of the larger boys were stationed there to guard it by G. P.

G. P. left via that window and headed for the chemistry lab of the Science Research Institute. He intended to load up on explosives. A little TNT might go a long way in discouraging any attempt to retake the Administration Building. From his window, Jonathan Relevant watched the young black race across the quad until he vanished behind the building next door.

G. P. used a crowbar to get into the basement storeroom of the chem lab. Choosing carefully, he loaded up a large sack. Just as he started back for the window, he spotted a campus cop bending over to examine the jimmied lock. G. P. went out the storeroom door and headed down a long corridor. The door at the other end admitted him to the basement of the building next door. He came to a staircase, went up one flight, and emerged to find himself in a corridor of the main building of the research institute proper.

G. P. wandered down the hallway. Hearing footsteps, he stopped short. There was a door opposite him. He had little choice. He turned the doorknob. The door swung open. G. P. stepped into the room and found himself nose to nose with —

“Eldridge Cleaver!”

“Glad to know you.” Jonathan Relevant knew the young man wasn’t Eldridge Cleaver. But if he wanted to pass himself off as the Black Panther spokesman, Jonathan saw no reason to puncture the illusion. It seemed a harmless enough impersonation.

“Eldridge Cleaver!” G. P. set the sack of explosives down on the floor and grinned ecstatically at Jonathan Relevant. “I’d know you anywhere from your pictures!”

“Right on!” Jonathan Relevant realized that he, himself, was Eldridge Cleaver. You’re a little slow, Jonathan Relevant told the Jonathan Relevant who was Eldridge Cleaver. I hesitated, the Jonathan Relevant was was Eldridge Cleaver silently replied, ’cause I was wondering whether to take the Fifth. It’s the California syndrome. You know, he added with a credit line to Ogden Nash, if you're a Panther, don't anther.

“I’ve read everything you ever wrote.” G. P. was babbling worshipfully. “Eldridge Cleaver! Talk about the right guy at the right time! I figured you were probably in Cuba, or China, or Algeria, some place like that, hiding out, you know? Man, am I ever glad to see you!” G. P. hefted the sack of explosives.

Suddenly Leander Pigbaigh filled the doorway to the room. “What yew doin’ heah, boy?” he demanded. “No students ’lowed heah, nigra nor otherwise. This place is under gov’ment see-curity an’—”

“Run for it!” G. P. pulled Jonathan Relevant toward the window, then stopped short as he noticed the bars on it.

“Hol’ it right theah!” Pigbaigh’s gun was out. “Ah mean it, boy. Ah’ll shoot. So yew jes’ freeze!” Pigbaigh motioned to Jonathan Relevant. “Colonel Relevant, suh, yew come over heah by me wheah yew’ll be safe.”

Obligingly, Jonathan Relevant started toward the CIA man. Inadvertently, he blocked Pigbaigh’s gun. In that instant, G. P. reached into the sack and came up with a small vial of clear liquid.

“What yew got theah, boy?” Pigbaigh inquired.

“Nitroglycerin, baby! Enough to blow this place clear to the moon! Now drop that gun!”

“Put it down!”

“Drop your gun!”

Jonathan Relevant, halfway between them, looked from one to the other. Pigbaigh was nervous; his hand was shaking; the gun was wavering toward Jonathan Relevant. G. P. was also jittery; his palm was sweating; the explosive vial was slipping through his fingers.

“. . . and if the two most powerful nations in the world cannot agree in the matter of Jonathan Relevant,” the Danish envoy asked the UN, “then what hope is there for agreement in such vital areas as disarmament? If reason will not prevail, then what hope is there for humanity? Trapped between the nuclear missiles of the Americans and the hydrogen warheads of the Russians, what hope . . ."

Jonathan Relevant looked at the muzzle of the gun. Jonathan Relevant looked at the quivering vial of nitroglycerin. Jonathan Relevant sighed and asked himself the following question:

Is it possible to be Relevant—and survive?

CHAPTER FIVE

Some guys simply can’t wear Bermuda shorts. Modesty forbids. Big Dick Eberhard was in this category. And his outsize genitalia indirectly served as the deus ex machina which rescued Jonathan Relevant from his predicament.

A 250-pound lineman, Big Dick was the workhorse of the finest varsity eleven Harnell U had put together in many a year. He was a superjock among superjocks. But he had this little problem—only it wasn’t little. '

There was nothing soft about Big Dick Eberhard—including his problem. The reason for this was that Big Dick steadfastly denied himself the fulfillment of his post-puberty appetites. It was part of what the Harnell coach called “keeping in training,” Palm warts weaken the straight arm. Chastity was the price of making All-American. Besides, the team came first with Big Dick.

Yet, before the season started, his purity sabotaged team morale. The locker room was being undermined by the shower room. When Eberhard unveiled his ever-tumescent and absurdly large joint under the community spray, his teammates couldn’t help feeling inadequate. This collective feeling was carried over to the gridiron. The team was suffering from penis envy, one and all.

The coach spotted the problem in time. He solved it by having Eberhard shower in solitude. Then he went on to capitalize on it by devising the sensational “Statue of Libertine” play.

The play called for Eberhard to assume the most prominent position in the Harnell offensive lineup. His teammates gave him lots of room and were carefully drilled never to look at him. A maximum amount of time was allowed in formation, not long enough to bring down a penalty for delaying the game, but ample for the opposing team to observe Eberhard’s opened fly and fully exposed Goliath gonads.

Thus Big Dick Eberhard became the most offensive offensive lineman Harnell—or any other team-—had ever had. His titanic tumescence carried Harnell through an undefeated season. And when the season was over, he continued to resist temptation. Keeping his upper lip as stiff as his aforementioned fixtures, he remained staunch in his purity. He never broke training. Until —

The day of the first fracas over the Angel Gabriel, Big Dick Eberhard was in the van of the jocks that charged the statue. When he inadvertently straight-armed a bosomy blond SDS-er, the hand on the end of that straight arm automatically closed around one of her large, butter-soft, bra-less, sweatered breasts——and didn’t unclasp.

“Let go!” Feet off the ground, dangling from one breast, the co-ed squirmed.

But Big Dick Eberhard couldn’t let go. He was transfixed, beyond the mores of mice and men. He simply stared.

“George!” The blonde recognized a fullback she’d once dated and called him to come to her aid. “Help!”

“Now let go, fella.” With the melee swirling around them, George tried to gentle down his teammate. “You’re bruising her, buddy. See, it’s soft and it crumples easy 1ike.”

“It’s soft, Ghaw-urge,” the big fellow echoed.

“That’s right. Now let it go, old pal.”

“It feels nice, Ghaw-urge.”

“Sure it does, buddy. Now just open your fist.”

“I don’t mean any harm, Ghaw-urge.”

“I know, pal. Now open your hand. That’s it, one finger at a time.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt her, Ghaw-urge. Honest I didn’t.”

The blonde fell to the ground as the hamlike hand unclenched. “It’s all out of shape!” she moaned. “A girl could get breast cancer from a thing like that!”

“I didn’t mean no harm, Ghaw-urge,” Big Dick Eberhard kept repeating as his teammate escorted him from the scene.

Later, alone in his room, Big Dick couldn’t exorcise the feeling of that warm, panting breast in his hand. It was his first erotic contact and the lust it aroused wouldn’t dissipate. Over and over again he had to catch himself as his hands wandered groinward with the memory of that mangled mammary. Still, Big Dick restrained himself; still he kept from breaking training.

He fought off temptation all day. Toward dusk he decided that exercise might help. He put on his gym suit and jogged across the campus.

Approaching the rear of the main building of the Science Research Institute, his eye was caught by a light in one of the ground-floor rooms. Jogging in place, he observed the bars on the window and dimly remembered some sort of pinko protest when they’d been installed. He stopped jogging and froze when a female figure in bra and panties appeared behind the bars.

The girl stretched luxuriously. Then she reached behind her to fumble with the clasp of the brassiere. A moment later the bra fell away from her magnificent breasts.

Big Dick Eberhard started jogging again. He jogged straight up to the window. His eyes just cleared the sill. His jaw dropped as he got a close-up look at Dr. Ludmilla Skivar, bare bosom swaying, in the act of wriggling free of her panties.

Stepping out of them and picking them up daintily, the ravishing Russian stretched again. Her thighs rippled enticingly; the soft, ebony triangle where they met thrust forward to reveal ruby nether lips; large, nose-cone breasts strained upward, long nipples quivering. Long black hair framing her face sensually, a yawn sculpted her lips into an inviting moue.

Big Dick Eberhard moaned low in his throat. Fortunately, the gym suit he was wearing featured stretch pants. Ludmilla stretched out naked on the bed across the room from the window. Big Dick had a clear view from head to toe. The utilitarianism of his stretch pants was proven beyond the manufacturer’s wildest claims as Big Dick observed what followed.

Ludmilla was daydreaming of Ivan Relevant in the room across the hall, so near and yet so far, separated from her by the CIA lock on the outside of her door. She relived the experience of their lovemaking and phantasized what it would be like when Ivan Relevant made love to her again. Her fingertips caressed her breasts, circling the nipples to hardness, tantalizing the wide, pink aureoles, flicking the darkening tips with the edges of her nails.

Her hands drifted down to her hips; her tongue licked her lips; her thighs parted. She turned over. Her hands reach back to caress her flushed and glowing buttocks as she rose up and down on the bed.

She turned on her back. Cupping one breast, she bent to catch the nipple gently between her teeth. Her lips fastened on it momentarily, then released it to her darting tongue. Her hands rested on her thighs now, rising and falling with them rhythmically.

Ludmilla’s fingers separated the thigh flesh and tangled in the ebony triangle. Tremblingly, she revealed the quivering core of her womanhood. The lips opened and closed pulsatingly as one fingertip dueled with the aroused clitoris. Then her hand vanished from sight and her body thrashed violently about on the bed. A scream of wordless exultation reached Big Dick’s ears as Ludmilla erupted.

Although he hadn’t broken training—yet—Big Dick couldn’t stop the answering cry that escaped his lips. “Touchdown!” he yelled. “Touchdown!”

Ludmilla sprang to her feet and dashed to the window. Big Dick was frozen to the spot. “What are you doing there?” she demanded in Russian.

Even if he had understood, Big Dick would have been incapable of answering her.

“You Americans! You’re all voyeurs!”

Still no verbal response.

“Say something!” Ludmilla leaned over the windowsill, wedging her head between the bars. “What’s that?” She thrust her hand through the bars and pointed at the stretch pants. “What are you carrying there?”

Despite the language barrier and his mesmerized condition, Big Dick dimly perceived her meaning. He shook his head “no” to indicate the absence of any foreign object.

Disbelieving, Ludmilla moved her head down to peer more closely at the stretch pants. The maneuver accidentally thrust a breast tip into Big Dick’s mouth, which had remained open throughout. Now it closed.

“Let go of me!” Ludmilla tried to pull away. The movement caused her other breast to rub against Big Dick’s hand where it rested on the windowsill beside his chin. His fingers closed around it. “Ouch!” Ludmilla said in flawless Russian. “Ouch!”

Because her assailant was below her, Ludmilla’s creamy breasts were being pulled cruelly downward. Although he was beyond thought processes, Big Dick nevertheless acted to relieve the situation. Grasping the bars of the window with his free hand, he braced his feet against the wall. The strain was too much. The elastic waistband of his stretch pants snapped. They fell around his ankles and he kicked them off. Then, still bracing himself, he walked his feet upward until they rested on the sill. In this way he eased the pressure on Ludmilla without releasing the treasures in his grasp.

The maneuver placed his mammoth manhood directly under the Russian scientist’s nose. She gasped, which inflated her breasts, which inspired Eberhard to inhale deeply, which made her gasp again. To maintain his balance, Big Dick reached around her with his free hand and got a grip on a cold steam pipe inside the room. Ludmilla’s glorious bare bottom now rested in the crook of his arm.

She tried to move away from the intimate contact. This upset the delicate balance. Big Dick’s feet, propped against the windowsill, slid up through the bars and lodged in Ludmilla’s armpits; his bare, musclebound rump hung out over the sill. In order to hold his position, he flexed the muscles of his powerful forearm. This raised Ludmilla’s bottom so that her feet dangled off the floor. When she tried to brace them against the inside wall for support, the counterforces involved propelled them up through the bars of the window. The backs of her thighs came to rest on Eberhard’s shoulders.

The resulting position brought the fulcrums of their bodies into contact. “Rape!” Ludmilla screamed in scientifically precise Russian. “Rape!” she reiterated as Big Dick Eberhard lunged forward for the first time and—-alas!-—- broke training. “Rape!”

Eberhard pivoted back and down a bit.

“OO-ooh!” Ludmilla exclaimed in culturally enriched Russian.

Eberhard moved forward.

“Ah-ahh!” Dr. Skivar moaned with a Moscow inflection.

Eberhard moved back and forth again.

“OO-ooh! . . . Ah-ahh!”

And again.

“OO-ooh! . . . Ah-ahh! . . . Ooh-Ahh! . . . Ooh-Ahh! . . . Ooh-Ahh-Ooh-Ahh-Ooh-Ahh! . . .”

Nearly ten years of accumulated postpuberty frustration built the pressure toward release for Big Dick Eberhard. His muscles tensed; his toenails dug into Ludmilla’s armpits; their organs clashed mightily between the bars. “Ooh-Ahh-Ooh-Ahh-Ooh-Ahh. . . .”

“TOUCHDOWN!” Eberhard lunged and exploded. “AHH!” Ludmilla sprang to receive him.

It was a mistake. She should have “OOH-ed.” The sudden muscle tension was too much even for the mighty line-man. His forearm succumbed to the sudden pressure; his hand let go the steam pipe. His legs snapped straight against her armpits and Ludmilla was propelled from his grasp like a rocket.

Her naked body shot across the room. The locked door buckled at the impact and she kept going. Her body whizzed across the hallway and through the open doorway of the room opposite. Here this nude female missile served to unfreeze the three-man tableau which included Jonathan Relevant.

On the wing, Ludmilla’s feet knocked the vial of nitro from the grasp of G. P. Porter and sent it spiraling toward the ceiling. Her head rocketed into the midsection of Leander Pigbaigh, who reacted by flinging his gun skyward and doubling over to clutch at his suddenly airless solar plexus. Ludmilla finally came to rest in a heap against the far wall.

“I’ve been raped!” she informed them in uncomplaining Russian as Jonathan Relevant reached over his shoulder for a one-handed catch of the nitro while intercepting the flying CIA pistol with his other hand. “You've got good reflexes.” Jonathan Relevant silently complimented Jonathan Relevant.

Leander Pigbaigh was still double over. G. P. took advantage of the situation to move fast. “Come on, Eldridge!” He picked up his sack of explosives and tugged at Jonathan Relevant’s arm. “Let’s hightail it back to the brothers!” G. P. hurriedly ushered Jonathan Relevant from the room.

They exited the building and, with G. P. setting the pace, rounded the corner to the rear of the Science Research Institute at a trot. As they passed under the window of Ludmilla’s room, Big Dick Eberhard’s naked, over-muscled derriere mooned at them plaintively. “I didn’t mean no harm, Ghaw-urge,” he kept whining to himself.

“Hey, man, what you doin’ there?” G. P. called on the run.

“Nothing. I’m not doing nothing. Honest!” Big Dick replied. “I’m stuck. My legs are jammed between the bars. But I don’t mean no harm. Help me.”

Jonathan Relevant moved to help Big Dick, but G. P. stopped him. “Sorry, Whitey. We’re in a kind of a hurry.” G. P. pulled Jonathan Relevant along.

“I didn’t mean to hurt her, Ghaw-urge.” The voice grew faint behind them as they reached the Administration Building.

Once inside, G. P. was surrounded by his fellow black students. They all talked at once, reporting on the situation, offering tactical advice, raising questions. What about food during the occupation? Suppose the cops were brought in? Or the National Guard? Shouldn’t they make preparations for tear gas? If they continued holding the chancellor prisoner, wasn’t that kidnapping? And mightn’t that bring the feds into it? What about a coalition with the white radical students? If ghetto blacks were admitted, might they not present a disciplinary problem? What about the chain of command? Who was to give orders, and who to take them? How about issuing a statement to the press? Who was going to draw up a list of demands? Should a committee be formed? What were the priorities?

G. P. took the last questions first. “We’re going to get up the demands,” he told them, indicating himself and Jonathan Relevant. “And We’re going to do it right now because that comes first. That’s why we’re here. So hold off on the other problems till we’re through.” He led Jonathan Relevant to a small room off the center hall and closed the door against the noise behind them. “Phew!” He grinned at Jonathan Relevant. “Welcome to the revolution, Brother Cleaver.” He held out his hand, palm up, fingers spread.

Jonathan Relevant spread his fingers and slapped G. P.’s hand firmly. “Take five.” He acknowledged the welcome.

“Coffee?” A hot plate had been set up on a bridge table and water bubbled in a Silex. “It’s instant, but what the hey,” G. P. added. “How do you take it?”

“Black is best.”

“B1ack is strong!” G. P. shook his first. “Well, let’s get at it.” He pulled over a typewriter table and sat down across from Jonathan Relevant. “First demand, the Angel Gabriel.” He inserted paper and carbons and touch-typed the heading. “Now let’s see.” He took his fingers off the keyboard. “They got to put it back on its pedestal and promise to keep it there. And with all its equipment intact. We want a guarantee there’ll be no peckin’ away at the pecker. O1’ Gabe goes back and stays with his black manhood where it belongs!” G. P. looked at Eldridge Cleaver for confirmation.

Jonathan Relevant returned his gaze. “This dingus is important ’cause it’s symbolic. That so?”

“Right on. Gonads for Gabriel represent manhood for all black men.”

“But ain’t that symbol pretty much an exaggeration of reality?” Jonathan Relevant inquired.

“Either that, or I have been deprived in more ways than culturally, man.” G. P. grinned.

“Right on. You dig what I’m getting at?” Jonathan Relevant grinned back at him. “Like maybe you’re gonna end up defeating your purpose. You set up Gabe as a symbol, but could be that symbol makes impressionable young bucks like feel inferior. ‘Cause they can’t measure up noways. You read me?”

“Yeah.” G. P. nodded. “But isn’t that a chance we got to take? We’re committed now.”

“Then make the demand. But be primed to negotiate with the mothahs on it,” Jonathan Relevant advised.

“How’s that, Eldridge? These demands gotta be non-negotiable. You know that.”

“Sure. You gotta say that.” Jonathan Relevant nodded. “But you also gotta leave the administration a way to save a little face.”

“Man, how you gonna compromise on Gabe’s joint? Cut half of it off, or what?” G. P. was puzzled.

“No, baby. Leave every mothah’s inch of it right there. But when Whitey looks ready to give in on your other points, you throw him a soup bone. You agree to cover Angel’s cannon—but only if it’s covered with a genuine Swahili loincloth. Like that way you keep your manhood cake ’thout normal-built black men eatin’ their livers for soul food.”

“Man, that is really cool.” G. P. chuckled and started typing. “I won’t put it down here, but I’ll save it for when the right time comes. Now, point number two. . . .”

The following few points were disposed of without much discussion between them. Then G. P. brought up the demand for the establishment of a Department of Afro-American Studies at Harnell. “I want to push for as many genuine African cats to teach these courses as possible,” G. P. explained. “Soul, man! Real Afro soul! That’s what it takes to give black kids the pride of race!”

“Like they should identify with Africans an’ that way they know who they is?” Jonathan Relevant inquired.

“You got it, Brother Cleaver.”

“But they ain’t,” Jonathan Relevant said softly.

“Ain’t what?”

“Ain’t Africans. They’s black Americans—-which maybe ain’t the same as white Americans, but also ain’t like growin’ up in black Africa.”

“Yeah? So?”

“They’s no natural culture bond ’tween American black kids an’ Africa. Too many years an’ too many miles ’tween ’em. You can’t force it. They never gonna fit into that mold. The American black, he’s an American cat. Maybe he gotta tear the country up to get justice, but in his gut he knows he’s a black American, not an African.”

“You saying we should scrap the demand for an Afro study program?”

“Nope. Just that the focus should be on black America, not just black Africa.”

“Like no Swahili? That what you getting at?”

“Nope.” Jonathan Relevant shook’ Eldridge Cleaver’s head. “They’s just as much reason to learn Swahili as there is French or Italian. An’ Swahili makes a lot more sense than Latin or Greek. Shee-it! This world’s two-thirds nonwhite. Time’s come for Americans—black an’ white—- to learn to communicate with these folks.”

“Seems like these courses should be aimed at white students,” G. P. mused. “They need ’em more than we do.”

“Let white kids take Afro courses. But black kids should get preference in enrolling ’cause that’s where it’s at today. Black cats need it more than whites ’cause it’ll give ’em a realistic pride, ’stead of wallowing in the resentment of being the underdog. I mean a pride rooted in who and what they are, what they’ve accomplished, and what their goals are. As American blacks! True pride ain’t arrogant, nor exclusive. Dig?”

G. P. nodded and began typing again. When he stopped, they want on to the next point. And then the next. About an hour later they came to the final demand: amnesty.

“Complete amnesty for all blacks, whether they’re students or not,” G. P. suggested. “No action to be taken against them by the university administration, or the civil authorities.”

“How ’bout the whites who back you?”

“They’ll just be using us for their own thing. SDS or whatever, it’ll be a white fight they’re waging. We’re just giving them the excuse.” G. P. was cynical.

“You can’t sell ’em down the river,” Jonathan Relevant told him. “You gotta groove practical politics. Face up to it, baby. Ain’t enough blacks on this campus to change nothin’ ’thout white support. You need ’em, man. Amnesty’s gonna end up bein’ the big issue. An’ you better believe it. You leave out the whites an’ they just liable to cop out altogether. An’ ’thout ’em you just plain too weak!”

“Okay. Amnesty for all blacks and sympathetic whites.”

“All whites.” Jonathan Relevant corrected him.

“Huh? What about the ones that oppose us? If there’s any rough stuff, you can bet it’ll come from those right-wing Greeks and jocks first. You saying we should ask amnesty for them too?”

“Yep. If you do, you pull the rug right out from under their prejudice from the start. You come on fightin’ for their rights, that makes it damn hard for them to justify fightin’ you to themselves. Shee-it! You just might neutralize some of ’em.”

G. P. might have been listening to Eldridge Cleaver but it was Jonathan Relevant talking.

“Total amnesty.” G. P. X’d out what he’d typed before and reworded the demand. “That does it.” He pulled the last sheet from the typewriter and clipped it to the others. “Would you take these ten demands upstairs to the chancellor and lay them on him, Brother Cleaver?” he asked Jonathan Relevant. “If there’s one man Old Hardlign won’t be able to intimidate, you’re him. What do you say?”

“Right on.” Jonathan Relevant consented.

A short while later, the door to Chancellor Hardlign’s office was opened and G. P. instructed the guards he’d left there to post themselves in the hallway outside. The chancellor looked up from his desk, where he'd been dozing. He blinked the sleep from his eyes and opened them wide as Jonathan Relevant entered alone, closing the door be- hind him.

The chancellor’s eyes conveyed his impression of Jonathan Relevant to Jonathan Relevant. Caucasian, efficient-looking, about ten years the chancellor’s senior, well-mannered, intelligent, and reasonable—that was the man Jonathan Relevant knew he now was. And there was wisdom in the deep lines of his craggy face.

It was a change from having been Eldridge Cleaver.

“Being Eldridge Cleaver isn’t easy,” Jonathan Relevant reflected.

“It probably isn’t easy for Eldridge Cleaver to be Eldridge Cleaver either!” the Relevant alter ego reminded him.

“I don’t know how you managed it, sir, but I am ex- tremely glad to see you.” Chancellor Hardlign greeted him.

“I trust you weren’t put through too great an ordeal by the black students.”

“Not at all,” Jonathan Relevant assured him. “As a matter of fact, they’ve asked me to discuss these demands with you.” He handed the chancellor the stapled type- sheets.

“If you’ll excuse me-—” Chancellor Hardlign waved Jonathan Relevant to a chair, and then sat back down at his desk to read the demands. He muttered comments as he went down the list.

“Can’t put the statue back like that; it’s obscene!”

“I believe a satisfactory compromise might be worked out on that particular point,” Jonathan Relevant told him carefully.

“Umm . . . ‘Lowering of Admission Standards to Increase Enrollment of Educationally Deprived Minorities.’ No! Can’t do that without lowering curriculum requirements, and then our diplomas would be worthless! . . . Ha! If they only knew how I’ve been going with my hat in my hand to various foundations and alumni to get money for a Negro scholarship fund! . . . More black teachers? Where do we find them? . . . Oh, no! Living quarters restricted to blacks is reverse discrimination! Harnell can’t be associated with such a policy!”

“How many all-white fraternities do you have?” Jonathan Relevant asked in a reasonable voice. “How many houses restricted to white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants?”

“But the Jewish students have a fraternity and sorority of their own. And the Catholics—”

“Exactly. Why not the blacks?”

“Well, we’re trying to do away with that sort of thing,” Hardlign replied weakly. Quickly, he went on to the next point. “Afro-American Study Department. That’s been in the works for three years.” His eyes met those of Jonathan Relevant and he looked down again quickly. “ ‘Replacement of Textbooks having References Derogatory to Minority Groups.’ Umm. Well . . . oh, now, this one is ridiculous! I have no control over university expansion into the ghettto. It’s a matter of Harnell’s real-estate investments. And the trustees aren’t going to brook interference from students in that area. . . . I suppose we can recognize the Afro-American Society’s right to represent black students if enough black students want them to. . . . Total amnesty. Out of the question! That would be accepting anarchy! They can’t expect to hold me prisoner like this and—”

“They’re firm on that point,” Jonathan Relevant told him. “Look at it their way. It’s self-preservation. If you grant it before outside authorities are drawn into the situation, then it’s strictly a matter of university discipline. Be forgiving and you may be able to end this protest. Otherwise, amnesty will become the issue and you’ll have half the student body clamoring for it. The main objective is to stop it before it escalates. Isn’t that right?”

Chancellor Hardlign’s answer was drowned out by a sudden roar from outside the building. “FREE THE CHANCELLOR! WE WANT HARDLIGN! FREE THE CHANCELLOR! WE WANT HARDLIGN!” The shouting maintained volume and settled into a steady chant.

Chancellor Hardlign crossed to the window and Jonathan Relevant followed behind him. Below them, on the quad outside the building, there was a group of about thirty athletes and perhaps twenty boys in fraternity jackets. The Harnell coach and the captain of the football team were leading the chanting. A dozen of the athletes had carried a trampoline from the gymnasium to the Administration Building, and now they were setting it up under the chancellor’s office windows. A cheer went up from the crowd when Chancellor Hardlign appeared.

The coach signal the crowd to be quiet. Then he spoke through a megaphone. “Chancellor Hardlign, we’re here because we believe in Harnell! We believe in you! And we believe in the democratic process! We want you to know we’re with you a hundred percent in keeping obscenity from the Harnell campus!”

Another cheer went up. When it subsided, the coach continued, “And we’re not going to let those commie jigs hold you prisoner!”

Jonathan Relevant’s groan of dismay was lost in the roar of approval from the crowd.

“My boys are going to hold this trampoline so you and your friend can leap to safety,” the coach blithely in- formed the chancellor. “Now there’s nothing to worry about. You two gents just lock arms and jump. Once you’re out of there, Chancellor, we’re going to liberate this building and bring those anarchists to justice!”

“I don’t think—” The chancellor looked down at the trampoline and stiffened with apprehension.

“Beware forced savings!” More Relevant lore.

“Excuse me, sir.” The coach spoke with urgency. “I’d advise you not to think about it. The more you think, the harder it is to jump. Don’t look down. We’ll catch you. Trust us.”

“Beware manufacturing trust!”

“Now,” the coach instructed them briskly. “Just lock arms. That’s it. Now the two of you step up on the sill. Good. Good. Now remember to keep your bodies loose. The looser you are, the less you’ll bounce. Just remember to check your fall and keep your balance.”

“Beware checks and balances!“

“Now just close your eyes and jump!”

Arm in arm, Chancellor Hardlign and Jonathan Relevant stepped off the windowsill. It was at that instant that a second crowd appeared at the nearby gates to the univer-sity grounds and charged the rescuers. This second throng consisted of about forty very tough-looking ghetto blacks. Jonathan Relevant went limp just before they hit the trampoline. But his terror of the leap made Chancellor Hardlign stiffen like a steel rod. Because of this, when they hit, the two of them were propelled back upward with great force. Instead of checking their fall, they bounced higher.

“Beware the check that bounces!”

They passed the chancellor’s office window and rose above the roof of the building before they started to descend again. At the peak of the ascent, Jonathan Relevant opened his eyes. He looked down at the free-for-all developing on the ground far below.

The whites were getting the worst of it. The black-ghetto fighters launched groin kicks with the precision of a troupe of ballet dancers. Their teeth dug into white ears and held on with bulldog tenacity. Clubs drummed on crew-cut skulls and the whites fell away before an onslaught of rocks and broken bottles. None of the college boys had ever been in this kind of fight before.

From high up, the Relevant perspective took on an odd focus. It was as if he was viewing the scene through a microscope. The grassy quad was a smear on the slide, a microcosm of the living organism which was the Earth, the world. And the battlers were virulent germs swarming over it and destroying the grass, its life-force.

“That’s what mankind is!” Jonathan Relevant nodded to himself as he and Chancellor Hardlign hurtled downward toward the trampoline once again. “Mankind is a disease! The population explosion is measle germs propagating! War is chicken pox, foreign bacteria attacking healthy cells! Big business is the common-cold baccillus polluting the organism’s environment—air, sea, vegetation -—and you have to feed a cold, which leads to conspicuous consumption! Yep! Man is a virus on the face of the earth, a parasite who leaves boils and pimples and scabs behind to attest his symbiotic nature! Yep! Man is a virus!"

“Not really. It’s just that fear engenders cynicism.” Jonathan Relevant provided Jonathan Relevant with another piece of the puzzle which was Jonathan Relevant.

As the ground rushed up to meet them, he observed a few of the tougher athletes trying to form a bulwark against the blacks assaulting the trampoline-holders. For a long moment, this aspect of the battle remained at an impasse. But when Chancellor Hardlign looked down and saw the danger, his body became even stiffer than it had the first time. Having picked up velocity, he and Jonathan Relevant, arms still locked, struck the trampoline with tremendous impact. Immediately, they rocketed skyward again like an activated Siamese-twin jet.

A split second later Jonathan Relevant looked down to see the impasse broken as the whites gave way before the blacks’ assault. The trampoline fell to the ground and those who had been holding it retreated. There was nothing to break the eventual fall of the two hurtling bodies now.

Jonathan Relevant perceived the blur of the chancellor’s office window passing at top speed as they rose. He saw the roof go past. He watched the stars coming closer with still no sign that the ascent was approaching its apex. And he looked down to note again that the trampoline was no longer being held to catch them.

It was a long way down, and they were still rising. They were zooming up . . . up . . . up. . . .

Jonathan Relevant recalled his first instant of awareness on the iceberg, his first feeling—-that it was good to be alive! It had certainly been a short life, but a merry enough one, he supposed. After all—-

“Easy come, easy go-o-o-o-o-o-o-. . . .”

CHAPTER SIX

It had been a very disturbing day for Miss Judith Uptyte, the college librarian. First the depraved desecration of the Angel Gabriel, then the violence between the students and the campus security police, and finally the outrage of that naked officer leaping out at her from the shrubbery. To be subjected to such events!—it was really too much for a delicately reared maiden lady in her sixties!

Some time after her unsatisfactory telephone conversation with Chancellor Hardlign, still overwrought, Miss Uptyte walked to the drugstore to renew her tranquilizer prescription. Returning, she passed directly behind the main building of the Science Research Institute. It proved an unfortunate route.

Rounding the corner of the building, Miss Uptyte stopped in her tracks and froze. Her eyes popped and she was forced to squint as her breath flogged her pince-nez. There, hanging out of the window, spotlighted by the rays from the overhead bulb within the room, hung the all-too-naked backside of Big Dick Eberhard.

Miss Uptyte bolted. It was only when she was safe in her fourth-floor walkup, with the door double-locked behind her, that the initial shock subsided into outrage. She picked up the telephone and dialed the number of Chancellor Hardlign with shaking fingers.

“Chancellor! . . . The Science Research Institute! . . . There was someone deliberately mooning at me when I . . .”

“I yam sor-ree. The number you have caw-uld is not a wor-king num-ber. The li-yun has been dis-con-nec-ted.”

“You don’t understand! I’ve been assaulted by a naked fundament! And this is the second—”

“Thi-yus is a re-cor-ded an-nounce-ment. I yam sor—ree. The num-ber you have caw-uld . . .”

“What is happening to this university?” Miss Uptyte hung up the phone and collapsed in tears. In her forty years at Harnell, her virtue had never suffered such a visual assault! And twice in one day! With an effort, she banished the vision of that bare male bottom from her mind only to have it instantly replaced by the earlier memory of the outrageous organ so nakedly flaunted by that unclothed campus police officer. Miss Uptyte tried, but she couldn’t dispel the picture of all that naked fuzz flesh bounding across the campus in broad daylight.

She took a cold shower. She took a milk bath. She took a hot shower. She took a sitz bath. Nothing helped. Miss Uptyte had a bad case of Menopause Revisited. Hot flushes, cold fiushes—and blushes, blotches, and blisters to boot!

Finally the distraught librarian swallowed a tranquilizer and two aspirins, donned her sensible flannel nighty, and slipped into bed with her hot water bottle. She closed her eyes and steadfastly kept reminding herself that the hot water bottle was just that—a hot water bottle. Each time it crawled up her varicose thighs, she determinedly pushed it back down to her feet again. But sleep eluded her. Her tormented brain was too well lit by the moon of Big Dick Eberhard’s trapped tookus. . . .

That moon was still shining when the jocks marched to the rescue of Chancellor Hardlign. The coach was in the lead as they approached the rear of the Science Research Institute on their way to the Administration Building. The athletes carrying the trampoline were brought up short when the coach espied the Eberhard bare bottom and braked to a shocked halt.

He stared for a long moment, and then his voice exploded out of him with a mighty bellow. “Eberhard!” he screamed. “Mooning!”

“I didn’t mean no harm,” Big Dick Eberhard pleaded.

“Get down from there!”

“I can’t. My legs are stuck between the bars. Honest.” Big Dick whimpered. “Help me.”

“You broke training, Eberhard!”

“I know.” Big Dick hung his head contritely.

“You’re a disgrace to the Harnell team uniform!”

“I didn’t mean no harm. Honest I didn’t.”

“You’re through, Eberhard!” The coach lowered his head in disdain and motioned to the others to resume the march to the Administration Building. “Turn in your key to the shower room,” he called back to Eberhard.

_“I didn’t mean no harm, Ghaw-urge.” Big Dick spotted his teammate in the rear ranks of the jocks. “Help me, Ghaw-urge. My legs are stuck in the bars. Please, Ghaw- urge. I'll never do it again.”

But George ignored him. With the other jocks, he vanished from Big Dick’s sight. “He’s not my friend,” Big Dick muttered to himself. “None of them fellers are my friend!”

He was still mumbling to himself a while later when the sound of chanting reached his ears: “WE WANT HARDLIGN! FREE THE CHANCELLOR! . . .” More time passed and the chant died away. It was quite still, and then the silence suddenly erupted into the sounds of a pitched battle. Automatically, Big Dick craned his head toward the noise. He saw two figures, arms locked, zooming toward the heavens, then plummeting downward. They shot skyward a second time, faster, rising higher than before, twin rockets in human form, hands outstretched and reaching for the stars. . . .

As Jonathan Relevant and Chancellor Hardlign approached the zenith of their upward flight, Jonathan’s realization that the trampoline was gone finally spurred him to action. He flexed the muscle of the arm locked with the chancellor’s arm, forcing both their upper torsos to arch forward. Their bodies no longer rose straight up, but rather described an ascending curve. As this arc approached its apex, from which point they must descend, Jonathan computed the downward course most likely to end in a landing place where they might not break their necks. . . .

Miss Judith Uptyte’s eyes snapped open when the four feet struck the window of her fourth-floor bedroom and shattered it. An instant later the bodies of the two men hit the bed. The slats gave way and the spring and mattress crashed to the floor. The three of them formed a tangle of arms and legs with the hot water bottle sticking straight up out of the center like the whirling spout of a tornado.

Miss Uptyte took a deep breath, intending to loose a scream designed to give a banshee an inferiority complex. But before she could release it, her eyes met those of Jonathan Relevant. The megadecibel holler froze in her throat.

Cary Grant? In her bed! Miss Uptyte blinked. Forty-odd years of dreaming and— She must still be dreaming! Very well then! It was her dream! There were refinements to consider—-a decision to be made. Which cinematic co-star did she prefer being? It would determine her character and the nature of the relationship.

Cary Grant and Irene Dunne? Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman? Cary Grant and Doris Day? Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn? That was it! Katy Hepburn! What better role for a dream in which a reluctant virgin of sixty-plus years might tarry with Cary?

“Hello there.” She batted her baggy eyes flirtily. “I’m Judith Uptyte.”

“Juw-dy! Juw-dy! Juw-dy!” Jonathan Relevant acknowledged the introduction.

“I think I’ve twisted my ankle,” the chancellor spoke.

“Chancellor Hardlign!” Miss Uptyte Wrenched her gaze away from Jonathan Relevant. “This is an outrage! What are you doing in my dream? What are you doing in my bed?”

“Please, Miss Uptyte! I can explain! You see, there was this trampoline, and we were jumping, and —”

“A trampoline? Jumping? At your age? Really, Chancellor Hardlignl”

“I know it must seem peculiar, Miss Uptyte. But—”

“Peculiar? You have a gift for underestimatement, Chancellor. Now if you’ll be good enough to leave”——Miss Uptyte pointed imperiously toward the door—“this instant!”

“Of course.” Chancellor Hardlign’s arm was still locked with Jonathan Relevant’s. Now he pulled him along toward the edge of the bed as he tried to disentangle the sheets with his free hand. “We’re going,” he assured Miss Uptyte.

“You are? Both of you?” The pluralism gave Miss Uptyte second thoughts. “Well, you certainly should, Chancellor Hardlign! A man in your position! The head of a renowned university in the bed of an unmarried lady! Even if it is only a dream. Think how it would look! Yes, Chancellor, you certainly must leave immediately.” Miss Uptyte’s tone softened abruptly. “But this gentleman-—” She fluttered her grant-filled eyes at Jonathan Relevant.

“He leaves when I leave.” The chancellor held up their entwined arms. “Our arms are locked. See?”

“Then unlock them!” Miss Uptyte blurted out.

“Miss Uptyte!” The chancellor was shocked at the implication. “He can’t stay here with you alone under these circumstances!”

“Why not?” Miss Judith Uptyte whined. “It’s my dream!”

“Juw-dy, Juw-dy, Juw-dy,” Jonathan Relevant interjected. “Under that sophisticated exterior, yuw are such a little girl. Have faith, Juw-dy. We’ll meet again in yuwer dreams.” Exiting with Chancellor Hardlign, Jonathan Relevant blew a cavalier kiss from the doorway.

Outside, they found themselves trapped in a burlesque skit. Jonathan Relevant started back for the Science Research Institute. The chancellor was heading home, which happened to be in the opposite direction. The problem was that their arms were still locked.

“If you’ll be good enough to release me, sir—” Jonathan Relevant requested respectfully. He relaxed his grip and tried to pull free, but his arm was still pinned between the chancellor’s arm and upper ribcage.

“Bursitis.” The chancellor explained his Napoleonic pose.

“When the muscle locks this way, I can’t move it,” he added apologetically. “I’m afraid we’re stuck together.”

“What happens when one of us has to go to the bathroom?” Jonathan Relevant wondered aloud.

“That’s out of the question!”

“In that case, we had better figure a way to disentangle ourselves.” Jonathan Relevant stood sideways to the chancellor, straightened his arm, and pulled.

“It’s no use. You’re not getting enough leverage.”

“HO-HO-HO CHI MINH!” The chant was faint at first, and then grew louder as a small group of marching students approached the interlocked pair.

“Perhaps if you’d try bending over a bit, sir.”

The chancellor bent over. Jonathan Relevant put his free hand on his back and tried to use it for leverage.

“HO-HO-HO CHI MINH!” The chanters marched into view.

“It’s no use.” The chancellor straightened up.

Jonathan Relevant got around behind him. He planted his foot squarely in the seat of the chancellor’s pants. “Brace yourself,” he instructed.

“HO-HO-HO CHI MINH!” The chanters were only a few feet away from them now.

Jonathan Relevant took a deep breath and shoved his foot against the chancellor’s rump as hard as he was able. It worked. Jonathan was able to pull his arm loose as the kick propelled the chancellor into the midst of the “HO-HO” hollerers.

“Groovy!” One of the students congratulated Jonathan. “Kickin’ the crap out of Old Hardlign himself! Man, you’re my kind of militant!”

Chancellor Hardlign picked himself up and scooted into the night. He was followed by assorted jeers, boos, and catcalls.

“Like you belong with us,” the student told Jonathan Relevant.

“What’s the action?” Jonathan Relevant ran his fingers through his long hair, and then squeezed an adolescent pimple under his beard.

“Minerva Kaufman’s called this SDS emergency meeting and we’re going to march into it.”

“Why are you going to march into it?” Jonathan Relevant inquired.

“So we can march out again. Come on, man.”

Jonathan Relevant was carried along as the small group proceeded to the SDS! meeting and entered the hall where it was being held. Minerva Kaufman was on the podium, chairing the meeting. She eyed the new arrivals apprehensively.

“We want our revolution, and we don’t care how!” they caroled. “We want our revolution—now!”

Minerva pounded her gavel. “I see the PLP has deigned to honor us with their presence,” she observed sarcastically.

“We’re members of SDS!” the student alongside Jonathan retorted hotly.

“Then go along with SDS procedure and shut up! You’re disrupting this meeting. And it isn’t the first time. This is typical Progressive Labor Party tactics!”

“Bourgeois! Liberal! Sellout!” The PLP leader shook his fist. “Up the revolution!”

“HO-HO-HO CHI MINH!” The PLP faction snake-danced around the hall, shouting their contempt for the moderates, and finally marched out.

Jonathan Relevant remained behind. “If enough of the Left keeps splintering off from the Left,” he wondered to himself, “then does that make those left on the Left the Right?"

“Wrong. Those left would rather not be Right because Right is wrong to them.”

“Then is Right right to those left on the Right?”

“If they're really Right, that's right. But not if they're Right just because they've been left by the Left."

“Who's on F irst?"

So much for the politics of the New Left. . . .

After the dissidents had departed, the atmosphere of the meeting changed. Minerva was able to take charge briskly, to spell out her plan and set about implementing it. It was simple. The Harnell SDS was going to support the Afro students by “liberating” a second building. In order to demonstrate their opposition to certain war-oriented university research programs at the same time, it was decided that the most logical structure to occupy was the main building of the Science Research Institute.

A short while later, with Jonathan Relevant trailing along, the SDS-ers approached the institute from the rear. “But, soft!” An English lit. major in the forefront with Minerva stopped and pointed. “What moon through younder window breaks?”

Minerva followed his finger and saw the bare, round rump of Big Dick Eberhard glowing from the sill of the barred window. “Looks like someone had the same idea we had,” she guessed. “That’s not the way, friend,” she called, approaching the mooning Eberhard. “You'll never break those bars.”

“I didn’t mean no harm, Ghaw-urge.”

“I’ll be damned!” Minerva stopped short. “It’s Eberhard! Superjock himself! How come you’re not out busting black skulls with the rest of the team?”

“The coach, he threw me off the team for breaking training. I told him I didn’t mean to hurt nobody. Honest! But the coach, he wouldn’t listen, and he says I can't play with the fellers no more.”

“Without Eberhard they’re sunk,” one of the SDS-ers remarked. “The team is dead!”

“Drummed out of the corpse.” Jonathan Relevant summed up silently.

“It don’t make no never-mind to me,” Big Dick sulked. “I thought them fellers on the team, I thought they was my friends. But-they ain’t. Here I am stuck, and not a one of them would help me. Not even Ghaw-urge. They ain’t my friends no more!”

“Let’s get the poor slob loose.” Minerva beckoned to two of the huskier boys.

They grabbed Big Dick around the waist, braced themselves, and tugged. A moment later he jerked free. He tumbled to the ground, his naked rear landing on the face of one of his rescuers and all but suffocating him.

Minerva handed him his tattered stretch pants. Big Dick pulled them on and verbalized his gratitude. “Them fellers on the team ain’t my friends no more,” he said. “You helped me, and now you’re my friends. I’m gonna stay with you ’cause you’re my friends.”

Big Dick Eberhard, All-American, had been radicalized.

He fell in beside Minerva as the group marched around to the front of the Science Research Institute. Jonathan Relevant went with them. He wanted to wash up, and that’s where his room was. But before he could enter the building, he was detoured.

“Psst!” A medium-sized man with a shock of unruly white hair emerged from the shrubbery and accosted Jonathan Relevant. “I’m Dr. Umpmeyer,” he informed him. He wore a shapeless tweed jacket with leather patches at the elbows. “Philosophy department,” he added, fiddling with a hearing aid dangling from one ear. “I’d appreciate it if you’d come along with me, young fellow.” There was a slight New England twang to his speech.

“Come along where?”

“To a special Ad Hoc Faculty Committee meeting.”

“Why me?” Jonathan Relevant inquired.

“Because I want them to hear the radical student point of view.”

“I don’t think I’m qualified to give it,” Jonathan Relevant told him honestly.

“You look a dang sight more qualified than the rest of that scruffy lot!” Dr. Umpmeyer gestured toward the backs of the SDS-ers. “At least you’re clean-shaven and you’ve got a haircut. If I brought one of those unwashed longhairs, half the faculty would tune out before he opened his mouth. But you look respectable enough. You’re older than the others. You don’t look like you’ll go off half- cocked. Matter of fact, you remind me of myself when I was a graduate student.”

“But I’m not a graduate student.”

“Doesn’t matter. Will you come along?”

“Why not?” It was all part of the educational process. And Jonathan Relevant was trying to educate himself regarding Jonathan Relevant.

The faculty meeting was already in progress when they entered. A bald man with a sallow complexion and the look of a cadaver on an ulcer diet was speaking. “The responsibility of the faculty is to the university.” He belched loudly. “Our obligation as teachers is to remain loyal to the Harnell administration.” He burped a second time. “These students are behaving like anarchists and we cannot condone anarchy!” He broke wind loudly, emphasizing his point. “We cannot afford to further indulge the spoiled children of overpermissive parents in tantrums which disrupt the—-”

“Professor Rumpkis.” Dr. Umpmeyer identified the speaker for Jonathan Relevant. “Physics.”

“He ought to try a different brand.”

“Hmm?” Dr. Umpmeyer removed his hearing aid and shook it vigorously. “Goldang it! Every time that Rumpkis talks he makes this thing go out of whack. It’s very sensitive to tone, you know, and he’s so blasted flatulent!”

“. . . and so I say we should issue a statement supporting Chancellor Hardlign and the Harnell trustees in whatever steps they take to suppress this unruly rabble!” Professor Rumpkis concluded with a final, simultaneous, and most impressive oral and anal backfire. He sat down amid light and unenthusiastic applause, covered his mouth with both hands, and burped disconsolately behind them.

“What was that?” Dr. Umpmeyer was banging the hearing-aid receiver on his knee.

“HE SAID THE FACULTY SHOULD SUPPORT THE ADMINISTRATION IN QUELLING THE DISSIDENTS,” Jonathan Relevant shouted.

“Dissonance is the problem, alrighty!” Dr. Umpmeyer removed the batteries from the hearing aid and checked the terminal points. “Blast that gaseous old gasbag!” he muttered. “He does it every time!”

A rolly-polly, middle-aged woman had the floor now. “Mercy Altebopper. Psychology department,” she introduced herself. “I have the greatest respect for Professor Rumpkis.” A tic seized the right side of her face and her eye blinked violently. “But I am in complete disagreement with him.” Her cheek twitched and she winked again.

“What’s she saying?” Dr. Umpmeyer was tracing his wiring.

“SHE DOESN’T AGREE WITH THE LAST SPEAKER’S VIEWS,” Jonathan Relevant yelled.

“The speaker screws are all right. I checked them. That’s not where the trouble is.”

“The administration is insensitive to the opinions of students.” The tic abruptly switched to the left side of Mercy Altebopper’s face. “And the students know this because they are constantly ignored when they protest that which is most appalling in their classes.”

“THE KIDS ARE IGNORED WHEN THEY POINT OUT WHAT’S APPALLING IN THEIR CLASSES.”

“ ‘Falling on their asses?’ I don’t like to hear ladies use language like that,” Dr. Umpmeyer grumbled. “I know I’m old-fashioned, but it offends my sense of dignity.”

“It’s time that students and faculty both had a voice in the running of this institution. We must back the dissidents all the way. Their battle is our battle. If we turn our backs on them-— Well, think of their frustration. And such frustration breeds inhumanity!” Both sides of Mercy A1tebopper’s face were ticking frantically now. Her whole visage shook, and then her eyes crossed. She sat down and covered her crossed eyes with her hands.

“. . . FRUSTRATION BREEDS INHUMANITY," Jonathan Relevant finished yelling into the hearing aid.

“That’s true. ‘Frustration leads to insanity.’ But I don’t think Miss Altebopper’s that far gone yet. No indeed. That tic is a rather severe symptom, but I wouldn’t presume to say she’s over the line.”

“What we have here,” Jonathan Relevant thought to himself, “is a problem of communication."

“What we have here is a problem of communication.” Dr. Umpmeyer claimed the floor. “The administration is deaf to the students and the students are beyond listening to the administration. Most of the trouble in the world comes from folks not hearing what the other fellow is saying.”

Professor Rumpkis removed his hands from his mouth and got to his feet. Dr. Umpmeyer, annoyed, looked at him and pointedly removed his hearing aid. Professor Rumpkis sat down and covered his mouth with both hands again.

“Dang it! I lost my point.” Dr. Umpmeyer turned to Jonathan Relevant for help. “What was I saying?”

“ABOUT PEOPLE HEARING OTHER PEOPLE. . . .”

“Oh, yes. And there’s no reason for people fearing each other. Take this situation. The men who run this college aren’t monsters engaged in some kind of insidious establishment plot. And the students enrolled here aren’t blind nihilists out for blood. But the two sides don’t really listen to each other. That’s the trouble. So it’s up to the faculty. Our role must be as mediators. It’s up to us to establish ourselves as the line of communication between the administration and the students. Above all, we should avoid taking sides.” Dr. Umpmeyer sat down and turned to Jonathan Relevant. “Maybe it’s fence-straddling, but you agree with that, don’t you, young fellow?” he asked.

“THE TROUBLE WITH STRADDLING FENCES IS THAT SOMETIMES YOU GET SLIVERS IN YOUR CROTCH,” Jonathan Relevant boomed by way of reply.

“ ‘Swivel it a notch?’ No. That won’t do any good. The dang thing’s really busted.”

Professor Rumpkis was on his feet again, his hands no longer blocking his mouth. He looked at Dr. Umpmeyer and started to answer him. Dr. Umpmeyer ostentatiously placed both his hands over both his ears. Professor Rumpkis belched belligerently and spoke anyway. When he’d finished, he broke wind loudly, sneered ghoulishly at Dr. Umpmeyer, sat down, and covered his mouth with his hands again.

New voices carried on the discussion. Most of the faculty leaned toward the middle course suggested by Dr. Umpmeyer. A resolution calling for the Ad Hoc Faculty Committee to moderate the dispute was proposed. While it was being voted on, Jonathan Relevant looked at the three main protagonists.

Mercy Altebopper still sat with her hands over her eyes. Dr. Umpmeyer still covered his ears with his hands. And Professor Rumpkis was still concealing his belches behind the hands clasped in front of his mouth.

See no evil! Hear no evil! Speak no evil! Jonathan Relevant smiled to himself. Number One Monkey saw only that the kids were right and remained blind to the possibility of the baby going down the drain with the bath water. Number Two Monkey was all for communication—and deaf to what anybody else was saying. And Number Three Monkey believed in the rule book and wasn’t about to talk to anybody who questioned it.

The Three Wise Men? Jonathan Relevant wondered. Why not? Wisdom is always relative. Or is it just that all men are monkeys?

The vote taken and the resolution approved, a logic instructor spoke up. “If we’re going to moderate, we have to know precisely what the position of each of the factions actually is. I move that we appoint a representative to confer with each of them and report back to us.”

The motion was seconded and carried by a hand vote. A Jenssen-ite biology professor was chosen to talk to the black students. And orderly law professor was pick to establish communication with the SDS students. That left open the selection of someone to confer with the administration.

What teacher, instructor, or professor has a viable relationship with Chancellor Hardlign, or the trustees? That was the question before the meeting. There was no answer; there were no takers.

“And that’s precisely why we should be backing the students instead of trying to referee!” Mercy Altebopper peeped out from behind her hands. Her tic died hard.

“You, sir-—” A phys.-ed. instructor was on his feet and pointing at Jonathan Relevant. “Didn’t I see you with Chancellor Hardlign before? When we were rescuing him from his office?”

“I was with him,” Jonathan Relevant admitted.

“That’s our man,” the instructor told the other faculty members. “He’s been through a traumatic experience with the chancellor. If anybody can talk to him, he can.”

“But—” Jonathan Relevant tried to say.

“All in favor say ‘Aye.’ ”

“AYE!” It was unanimous.

“That’s democracy.” Jonathan Relevant sighed to himself.

“What’s that they’re saying?” Professor Umpmeyer want-ed to know.

“I’M TO TALK TO THE CHANCELLOR ABOUT THE STUDENTS.” Jonathan Relevant filled him in.

“Good idea. One of their own should talk to the students. Let them know the faculty can’t condone violence.”

“IT’S THE CHANCELLOR I’M TALKING TO!”

“It might be a balky screw. You could be right." Professor Umpmeyer took out his hearing aid and started fiddling with it again.

“And that’s one of the problems of democracy,” Jonathan Relevant decided. “Nobody really listens. And even when they're talking about the problem of nobody listening, nobody’s listening." Jonathan Relevant cracked his knuckles thoughtfully. . . . '

The knuckles of the President of the United States were also being cracked—but not in thought. His digital joints were being snapped in smoldering anger as he surveyed the dinner plate which had just been place under his nose. “Grits!” he hissed menacingly. “The roughest roughage around! With my hemorrhoids! That cook must be trying to kill me! Get him out here!”

A moment later the White House cook stood quivering before him. “You wanted to see me, Mr. President?”

“Look at this!” The President raised the plate. “Grits!” He picked it up higher. “Who put you up to this? The Kremlin?”

“Please, Mr. President. I just cooked them."

“Who ordered them?” the President demanded.

“I don’t know, Mr. President. The order came from on high. It was just passed down to me.”

“Excuse me, Mr. President,” the White House butler interrupted. “The grits were a very special gift.”

“From who?” the President demanded. “Chou En-lai? I demand to know who sent them!”

The butler told him.

“Strom?” The President picked up his fork. “Strom . . . well, then . . .” He shoveled a forkful of grits into his mouth.

“Excuse me, Mr. President.” The butler was at his elbow again, holding a telephone. “It’s the ambassador calling from the UN.”

“Yes?” The President took the phone. “They passed a resolution to what? . . . I see. . . . But isn’t there some— Just a minute. Hold the phone.” The President laid the receiver down on the table and turned to confront the butler, who was standing behind him with a pencil and a small pad. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?” the President inquired.

“My memoirs, Mr. President.”

“Your what?”

“My memoirs. I’m taking notes for them. You know, for when I write my book: My Four Years as a White House Butler. I’ve already got the contract for it.”

“That’s pretty damn opportunistic,” the President fumed. “You could be fired, you know.”

“With the domestic-help situation the way it is today? I’ll pretend you didn’t say that, Mr. President. Please don’t upset yourself, sir. I’ll be very quiet. I’ll just stand back here and take my notes.”

“The least you could do is make it eight years,” the President grumbled, picking up the phone again. “All right. Go on with what you were telling me,” he said into the mouthpiece.

The President listened. Finally he hung up. “I’m going into the study,” he told the butler. “I have to make some important calls. Private calls,” he added pointedly.

“But you haven’t finished your grits yet, Mr. President,” the butler reminded him. .

The President stood, opened the flap of his jacket, and with a swift motion of his hand brushed the grits from the plate into his pocket. “Don’t tell Strom!” he cautioned the butler.

Alone in his study, the President dialed the private number of the head of the CIA. “Oswald,” he said when the buzzing was answered, “the General Assembly just passed a resolution demanding that Jonathan Relevant be turned over to the UN. Our ambassador’s feeling is that if we don’t comply, they may go so far as to apply sanctions. So I think you’d better get Relevant On a plane to New York as soon as possible.”

There was a long silence on the other end.

“Oswald? Did you hear me?”

“I heard you, Mr. President. It’s just that there have been certain developments of which you may not be aware. You see, sir, we don’t exactly have Jonathan Relevant at this time.”

“What the hell do you mean? Isn't he at Harnell?”

“As far as I know he’s there, sir. But Harnell's going up. SDS has taken over the Science Research Institute and our man Pigbaigh’s trapped there. Black students have seized the Administration Building and at one point they were holding the chancellor hostage. As to Jonathan Relevant, there are conflicting reports. We don’t know whether he’s in the hands of the blacks, or the SDS, or neither. One of our agents has infiltrated the SDS group, but communications with him are impossible at this time.”

“Oswald! Do you mean that a bunch of college students have taken Jonathan Relevant away from the CIA?”

“We’re not sure, Mr. President, but it seems likely.”

“Now they’ve gone too far! Under no circumstances will I be affected by demonstrations of this sort!”

“Careful, Mr. President. That’s an unfortunate choice of words. Remember Trikkidikki.”

“If they buck me, I’ll get Hershey back! That’ll show those snot-nosed punks.”

“Please, Mr. President! If the papers ever got hold of that —”

“Oswald, if we can’t produce Relevant, we’ll have more international egg on our face than Nasser eating an Israeli omelet!”

“That’s no yolk, Mr. President. Heh-heh!”

“Oh, my God!” The President slammed down the phone. He thought a moment and then dialed again. “Hello, General. Now hear this! I want ten thousand paratroopers with complete battle gear to proceed to Harnell University immediately. The SDS has taken over the Science Research Institute. I want it liberated—-and fast! . . . Sure, use tear gas if you have to! Use cannons if you have to! . . . That’s right, I said cannons!” The President hung up the phone. “I’ll teach those kids the meaning of Democracy!” he muttered to himself.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Did you ever have doubts about your manhood? Not you, lady! That’s another problem altogether——although not completely irrelevant to Jonathan Relevant. His manhood doubts, you see, did result from a not dissimilar confusion in the mind of a certain lady.

The lady was Nancy Hardlign, young wife of the chancellor of Harnell University. Nancy was not a happy lady. The reason for her unhappiness was that All-American neurotic syndrome: sex.

Her husband, the chancellor, was not the world’s greatest lover. Nor was he the world’s second greatest lover. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t even in the first division. Or the second. The very bottom third of the bottom third -— that’s where the chancellor stood, just barely nosing out a few terminal prostate cases.

Now Nancy was easily attractive enough to have found a substitute. And she was definitely frustrated enough to justify the taking of a lover to herself. Yet, strangely, she didn’t really feel tempted by other men.

Other women? . . . Well, yes, Nancy had on occasion felt a groin-tensing thrill of arousal provoked by some particularly attractive member of her own sex. But she’d never done anything about it. (Except for that one experience before she was married, and she thought she’d banished that from her mind.) After all, there was her status as the wife of the chancellor to be maintained.

Earlier that eventful evening, Nancy had been down in the cellar trampling grapes when her husband came home. Twenty minutes later he’d called down the staircase that he was leaving again for a meeting with the Board of Trustees and certain key members of the Alumni Association, and that he’d probably be back late. Some time passed, and then the doorbell rang. Nancy went up to answer it.

It was quite late for a caller, and she assumed that her husband must have forgotten his key. But it wasn’t the chancellor. It was a quite beautiful blond girl she’d never met before.

Odd, there was something familiar about the girl. It took Nancy a moment to realize what it was. When she did, she blushed at the memory.

It had been a long time ago, before she met the chancellor and married him, her one premarital affair with another female — if a long weekend with a girl she was never to see again could be called an “affair.” Nancy had instigated it, really taken advantage of the other girl, who was both younger and more naive than she was, reveled in it, and then moved on, retaining only a memory of ecstasy that faded until it seemed no more to Nancy than an exaggerated fantasy. But here was this curvaceous young blonde, and her presence in Nancy’s doorway somehow brought it all back.

Jonathan Relevant wasn’t aware of the lengthy silence which followed the opening of the Hardlign’s front door. He wasn’t aware of it because his mind was too busy being appalled at what had happened to his body. The news was brought home to him in a quick series of perceptions.

First there was a strange heaviness in Jonathan Relevant’s chest. A quick look downward brought the cause into focus. Jonathan Relevant had sprouted breasts!

He felt the tickle of blond hair grazing his shoulders. He put his hand in his pocket and his hip felt strangely round. He had to tighten his belt over a waist grown strangely narrow. He reached deeper into his pocket and —

It was gone!

There was a vacuum where his penis should have been.

Baby, face it! Have you ever got a manhood problem! Jonathan Relevant told Jonathan Relevant. The thought seemed to echo effeminately through his mind.

“Yes?” Nancy Hardlign found her tongue first. “Are you looking for someone?”

“Something!” Jonathan Relevant blurted out.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’d like to see Chancellor Hardlign.” Jonathan Relevant recovered.

“He isn’t here. Would you like to come in and wait, miss?”

‘Miss’! “Yes, thanks.” Jonathan Relevant followed Nancy inside, feeling his hips sway and his high, plump derriere bounce as he walked. Myra Breckenridge is alive and well and Relevant! With an effort, Jonathan Relevant (or is it Joanna now? he wondered) stopped being introspective and directed his attention outward. “Your nose is purple,” he-she told Nancy Hardlign.

“Oh, dear!” Nancy scrubbed vigorously, but ineffectively, with a wisp of handkerchief. “Is that better?”

“No, but why bother? It’s really a very attractive contrast to your red hair.” In some confusion, Jonathan Relevant took a good look at Nancy Hardlign. The confusion stemmed from the fact that Nancy’s trim body, with its small, high, pointy breasts and long shapely legs, aroused strong erotic feelings in Jonathan Relevant. And that missing appendage raised the question of just what possibly could be done about those feelings.

“Thank you. It’s been a long time since anybody, man or woman, paid me a compliment like— You see, the chancellor is a very busy man, and he—” Why was she saying such things to a total stranger? It wasn’t like Nancy to air her secret frustrations. And yet —

“I understand,” Jonathan Relevant told her.

Nancy believed the blonde did understand. Suddenly she felt more relaxed than she had in years. She found herself revealing things that she’d barely admitted to herself before. And it seemed perfectly natural to be confiding them to this girl.

“He’s really a very good husband, you see. I mean, he’s kindly, and considerate, and generous. He never complains about my spending money, or anything like that. But the physical side of our marriage—- Well, I really have no right to complain. I should have anticipated that when I married a man twenty years older than myself. Somehow that didn’t seem so important at the time. I mean, he was the first man I’d met who wasn’t just interested in my body.”

“A natural enough focus of interest,” Jonathan Relevant interjected. “It’s a superb body.”

“Yes. I know. But when I was younger it used to disgust me that men treated me as just a body with no identity except my sex appeal. Then I met the chancellor. He was truly interested in my mind, in me for myself, not just in my breasts and legs and all that. So when he proposed, I accepted—-despite the difference in our ages. Only now I find that I miss—Well, you know.”

“Yes, I know.” And somehow Jonathan Relevant did know.

“So I sublimate.” Nancy sighed. “And that’s why my nose is purple.”

“Is that why your feet are purple too?” Jonathan Relevant inquired.

“Oh, dear. I should have put my shoes on. I hope I haven’t tracked up the rug. It might not come out.”

“Also, your dress is stained.”

“That doesn’t matter. It’s not really a dress. Just a sort of smock I wear around the house when I’m doing messy jobs. I put it on because it’s loose enough so I don’t have to wear anything underneath it. A bra, even the elastic on panties. I can’t stand the way they interfere with my freedom of movement. You know how it is,” Nancy added, woman to woman.

“Whether it’s a dress, or a smock, it’s very becoming. The purple spots really set off your figure.”

“Thanks. It’s nice to know that something good comes out of wallowing in those damn grapes.”

“Grapes?”

“Grapes. That’s what the purple is from,” Nancy explained. “I’ve got ten crates of the damn things down the basement.”

“You mean you bought ten crates of grapes?”

“No. I don’t buy grapes. Because of the way they treat the migrant workers and won’t let them form a union so they can get a living wage, you know. The ten crates were a gift. From the Governor of California. He probably got them as a payoff for pushing subsidies for the growers. Anyway, he sent them after my husband made this speech about cracking down on campus dissidents. You know, how their scholarships should be canceled and they should be drafted and put in the front lines in Vietnam as an object lesson so maybe they’d appreciate the democratic ideal more. So the governor sent him a telegram saying how he agreed and admired the chancellor’s toughness, and along with the telegram came these ten crates of California grapes.”