A Cure for Cancer

I America takes 'No Nonsense' line

Curled in deep leather armchairs beside a comfortable fire in the sitting-room of Jerry's Ladbroke Grove H. Q. Jerry and Karen von Krupp listened to Groucho Marx singing Father's Day while they caught up with the newspapers.

It seemed that Israel, having annexed Turkey, Greece and Bulgaria, was putting it about that Rumania and Albania were threatening her security. U. S. President Teddy 'Angel Face' Paolozzi had increased the number of military advisors sent to Europe to three million. They were under the command of General Ulysses Washington Cumberland whose mission was to keep order in Europe and seek out 'certain fifth column elements'. The British parliament, both government and opposition, had been arrested as their jumbo Trident was about to take off for Gibraltar. President Paolozzi had sent a diplomatic note to Israel that read Stay off our turf, Israel, or else. A riot in Prague had received universal censure from the European press. 'Uncool' was the Daily Mirror verdict. Bubonic plague remained unchecked in Berlin and Lübeck.

Jerry stopped reading. Evidently, there was little news of any relevance.

'What now?' said Karen von Krupp as Jerry took her hand and pulled her down to the rug. He tore off her clothes, tore off his own knickers and made fierce love to her. Again and again she came and when he fell back, high wig askew, his skirt torn and his stockings laddered, she sighed. 'Ach! At last — a man who is a man!'

2 His choice: Die now or rot tomorrow!

Jerry looked past the bars and glass of the window at the houses in the street beyond the wall. Grey rain fell. Through the rain ran a pack of girls, few over five feet, with narrow, stooped shoulders and cheap see-through blouses and tight little skirts stretched over mean thighs. He sighed.

The Animals, The Who, Zoot Money's Big Roll Band, The Spencer Davis Group, The Moody Blues, Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, Geno Washington and the Ram Jam Band, Chris Farlowe and the Thunderbirds, The Steam Packet, Manfred Mann, Jesus Christ and the Apostles. Where were the groups of yesterday?

Behind him, Karen von Krupp listened moodily to Ives's Symphony No. I in D Minor. He wondered if that wasn't the key to the whole thing.

'Still here,' he said.

She nodded.

'And getting more so.'

There's something on your mind,' she murmured.

'Something indigestible. I've been too long in the wilderness, honey.'

'Don't say that, Jerry.'

'I've got to face it.'

'You can make it.'

'Sure. I can make it.'

'Are all your relatives dead now?'

'I sometimes think they must be.'

'What are you going to do?'

'I'l decide soon. The world is ruled by bad poets. I must do something about it.' That's your mission?'

'More or less, honey. More or less.'

'Are you asking or telling?'

3 My deadly mission

'It's a question of polarities,' he told her as they slid about in the bed. 'A problem of equilibrium.'

'I told you. I don't understand philosophy.'

'I told you. This is physics.'

'What will become of you?'

'I'll probably die. I almost always do.'

'Don't die on me, liebchen.'

'A lot depends on the next movement.'

'Denn wovon lebt der Mensch?'

'Maybe. It's all a dreckhaufen really.'

'Isn't that the way you like it?'

'Sure.'

'You'll never die.'

'Not in that sense, of course. Still, it gets boring.'

Then why don't you stop?'

'Ich mochte auch mal was Schones sehen...'

4 Sing high, sweetie—for tonight you fry!

His brain cleared. The process took a few minutes.

From somewhere there came a faint hissing sound. 'My programme,' he murmured, smiling back in the darkness.

5 Amnesia: Why you get it

An early postcard showing Loch Promenade, Douglas, Isle of Man, with a single-deck open-sided omnibus drawn by a horse. The people wear Edwardian clothes. The tower-clock in the foreground says 11.22. The card is post-marked Liverpool, 31 May 1968. The message and address are partially obscured -'We may arrive Sunday anyway see you soon! Julia pp. JRC.' 79 Tavistock Road, London, W.11.

6 What was secret of 'thing in the cellar'?

It was a machine of intense beauty consisting of delicate red, gold and silver webs, strands of which brushed his face and had the vital warmth of human skin.

The webs rustled as he entered them, and they began to sing. He relaxed. Beesley's plan had almost worked and the Shift, in this instance, hadn't really helped, either. Still, the machine would set all that right. They certainly needed each other.

Refreshed, sobered, he contemplated the possibilities.