Golem 100

22

When Gretchen staggered into her Oasis, she was instantly surrounded by excited women who passed her from embrace to embrace, stroking, petting, kissing her. Up in her shambled apartment they produced a divan, liberated from somewhere else, and coaxed her to recline on it. She was a naked odalisque, streaming with sweat, saliva, and semen, primal and pungent. They clustered around her nude body, gently stroking her Venus-mount until the contraction cramp relaxed. Then they withdrew Shima’s bloody penis, the mating sign that their queen was no longer a virgin, and waited, rustling and whispering in a humming buzz.

At last Gretchen opened her eyes and looked around. They fell silent and watched her expectantly.

“It’s all got to be restored,” she said in a faint voice.

“Yes, BB.”

“Everything back to the future.”

“Yes, BB.” They didn’t understand but laughed submissively.

Gretchen’s control began to return. “Priss, you must know cleaning companies.”

“Yes, BB.”

“Hire one.”

“They’re expensive, BB.”

“I can afford it.”

“All of us can do it together, BB,” the two-headed monster with four arms offered. “You don’t have to pay.”

“No. I have another assignment for you two. Which of us did I kill?”

“You don’t remember?” Mary Mixup was astonished.

“No.”

“Y-You killed three,” Priss stammered. “N-Nell. Sarah. Y-Yenta. You almost k-killed her rabbi, too.”

“Yes. The prime contenders. Let’s get that settled. Oodgedye, Udgedye, I want their bods taken to the Guff precinct. You will tell Subadar Ind’dni exactly what happened. Can do?”

“Will do, BB.” The twins didn’t dream of dissenting, objecting or recusing.

“He’ll probably issue an A.P.B. for me, but I’ll handle that. You guards, help the twins and go back to Security duty. No more invasions.”

“Yes, BB.”

“Where’s the Raxon woman?”

“Here, BB.”

“I’m having your apartment cleaned and restored too, but your ceiling and my floor must be repaired. Do you know construction people?”

“Yes, BB.”

“Hire a contractor. I’ll pay.”

“Not all, BB. My girls did as much damage as yours.”

“My girls? Yes. My girls. But I’m running my girls and I’m picking up the tab for everything. Get a contractor.”

“Yes, BB.”

“Where’s the Pi-girl?”

“Here, BB.”

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen, ma’am person.”

“Old enough to work for me. You’ll join my staff and attend to me.”

“Thank you, BB ma’am person.”

“You’ll also go to school nights. I’ll make the arrangement. I won’t have illiterates around me.”

“No, BB ma’am. Yes, BB person.”

“If any of you girls want anything from Regina’s place, you have my permission. Take it, but no quarreling.”

“Yes, BB.”

“And Nellie’s.”

“Burned out, BB.”

“Yenta’s?”

“Her rabbi has it.”

“Sarah’s?”

“I’ll be taking it over, BB.”

“You’re Norah, her dresser?”

“I am that, BB.”

“Good and welcome, Norah. Can you afford Sarah’s place?”

“Thank you, BB. I don’t surely know yet.”

“If you can’t, come to me.” Gretchen looked around at the hive. “All of you come to me for everything. Is that understood?”

They rustled happily.

“Only to me. Is that understood?”

Some of them rustled unhappily.

“Relax, all of you. I’ll explain it at our first Twenty tonight.”

“Twenty?” Mary Mixup was bewildered. “Are there twenty of us?”

Oodgedye stopped her head count. “Sharpen a wit, dummy. BB must mean twenty hours.”

“That’s eight pip emma,” Udgedye explained.

“Oh? We’re meeting at eight? Where? Here?”

“No,” Gretchen said. “We’re all filthy. We’ve got to clean and refresh and change. The Zauna.”

* * *

One is subjected to the frigid, temperate and torrid terrestrial zones in the Zauna Baths; also the environments of Luna, Mars and Venus, with authentic sound-effects; winds, snow, hail, rain, thunderstorms, bird calls, insect stridulations, and animal cries. Also the alien language of extraterrestrial plant forms which murmur or moan and chatter or clatter incomprehensibly as they germinate, grow, replicate, and die.

The waters, of course, are fantastically expensive even though they’re recycled constantly. The scents, soaps, and essential oils are much cheaper but really useless without water. For a monumental fee one may have exclusive use of the Zauna for oneself and guests, which fee Gretchen paid.

As the colony progressed through hot, warm, cold; baths, showers, soaps, oils, and massages; warming, relaxing, gleaming, Gretchen cosseted her subjects. “I’m going to tell you a true story,” she began. “Some of you will recognize yourselves in it. The rest will be able to guess. No, Lydia dear, no trombone fanfare now. Please not to interrupt. No interruptions from anyone.

“There was a group of ladies who met once a week to socialize and comfort themselves with food and friendship and fun and games. They were all very dear, sweet, and delightful ladies who meant no harm to anyone. But they did do great harm because they forgot that they were women, and there’s a vast difference between a lady and a woman.

“One of the fun games they played was a witchcraft ritual to raise the Devil. None of them believed in Satan and hell any more than they believed in God and heaven. After all, this is the twenty-second century, and these were modern, sophisticated ladies; but they were also women.

“The difference between a lady and a woman is the difference between carved ivory and an elephant’s tusk. No, don’t laugh. I’m not comparing us to elephants. We’re the carved ivory; exquisite, beautiful, the result of centuries of the craft—keep that word in mind—the craft of designing, shaping and carving the natural tusk into a work of art that will please men. We are carved by man’s craft into ladies to please men. And we have forgotten the original tusk, the fighting, foraging, dangerous weapon that is a woman. They say that inside every joke there is a truth. Inside every carved ivory piece there is a deadly weapon.

“Why have women always permitted men to exploit and carve them into ladies? We’ve done it because we need men as much as they need us. But while we have been forced to accept men as they are, they’re afraid of us as we really are, and so our need traps us into the safe carved ivory role—safe for men, that is. But the menace is still inside us.

“And a strange thing happened with this group of lovely ladies. The primal dangers buried and forgotten inside each of them combined to give birth to a single, whole danger, a quasi-real creature, a protean primal lust, a male brute multiplied by ten times ten, the Golem¹⁰⁰. I won’t describe the horrors that the Golem¹⁰⁰ brought with it into the Guff. All that’s over now. The brute’s disappeared into another universe.

“This must never happen again. It will not happen again with me or my girls. Desire men, yes. Accept men, yes. Use men, yes. But never let a man use you. Let them want women, good, but never be corrupted by their craft of shaping the tusk into safe carved ivory. That’s why I said: Like men, yes, but no more than that.

“Like them, enjoy them, use them for what they’re fit, but never need them. Why should you? We have ourselves. No more ladies; we’re women. We’re the house; they’re only the tenants. They can come and go; we’re forever. The next Twenty will be held in this Zauna again, same day next week. I’ll arrange it. Meanwhile, stay and enjoy your freedom. Pi-girl, you come with me. I have to split for a showdown with a chauvinist chemist who’s used my ‘lady hangup’ just once too often.”

* * *

(The Soho exit from the Baths. Gretchen and Pi emerge into the Guff. They are clean steamed, massaged and bathed. They wear fresh jump suits. Neither has applied maquillage, but Gretchen has frittered her Afro with rainbow sequins. Pi has braided her pale hair into pigtails tied with white silk bows. They stop for a moment while the street and sidewalk signs glow and speak and urge the public.)

THE SIGNS

LIVE! LIVE!LIVE!LIVE!LIVE!LIVE!

LOVE! LOVE! LOVE! LOVE! LOVE! LOVE!

EAT! EAT! EAT! EAT! EAT! EAT!

SIDEWALKS

Won’t you adore having your ass banged off, baby? Follow me! Follow me! Follow me to the scene of the scrime!

(Two drunks giggle and totter the length of an endless glowing sidewalk penis which leads them around a corner.)

1ST DRUNK

(In slurred Guff Blurt) Hey man grab man blast man scrime man ‘round the world man in all directions huh huh huh?

2ND DRUNK

(Simulating aristocratic elegance) Aye dew nott föllöw yew m’freund.

THE SIGNS

MANBALONEY… 100

MUDBALONEY… 150

GIRLBALONEY… 175

GUTBALONEY… 160

PISSBALONEY… 75

GRETCHEN

(Pointing) We head this way, Pi-girl.

PI

Where to, Miz Person?

GRETCHEN

Uptown west. To Blaise Shima’s penthouse. We’ll have to walk it. Come on, girl.

(The two women thread their way through the Guff streets. As they skirt the banks of the Hudson River, the mud monsters, generated by the radioactive pollution in the New York harbor ooze up onto the broken pavements; ambulatory slime molds in search of foul foods.)

THE MONSTERS

Ssss! Pfff! Srrr! Zzzz!

(In the Scrime House of Mother Merkin, three whores stand at an upstairs window, burning phallic candles in left hands, right hands preparing their allure for the night. They are dressed and coiffured in replication of current entertainment celebrities.)

PI

Ooo look, Miz Nunn person. Isn’t that Greta Grabya?

GRETCHEN

No.

PI

And Fonda del Solitary?

GRETCHEN

No.

PI

And Rh Factor?

GRETCHEN

No. They’re just fifty-class funks.

(The bawds throw open the window and begin their singing commercial to the Guff public.)

THE WHORES

My mother said I always should

Prance with a yanceman in the wood.

If I did, she would say,

You lucky girl to use your ass.

Use your ass.

Use your ass.

And make the lucky fucker pay.

(A corner Pukebox blazes lurid lights.)

PI

Oh please, Miz Person. I just love Phlegmy’s latest. Please, Miz? Please?

(Gretchen grudgingly halts and inserts slug in Pukebox. Pi presses button No. 1101. A sound-bug flips out, is drawn to the print of Pi’s index finger, and follows her finger, sounding softly.)

PHLEGMY

(With clinical realism)

Vomitation. Vomitation.

Retchitation. Retchitation.

Spew. Spew.

Upchuck, daddy,

With a solid pour.

(The sound-bug finishes its number and flies back to the Pukebox. Near Person Lane, formerly Maiden Lane, twenty-two porters, bearing huge delivery loads of Condensed & Evaporated Plastequila, are in hot argument with a squad of P.L.O. soldiers and their lieutenant.)

A PORTER

Hey man gotta makeadeliver. Since when gotta customs boundairy line here is all?

LIEUTENANT

Hey man set up yesdy. Wanna deliver gotta pay twemmy is all.

(To Gretchen)

Hi hey. Remember youse. Bije babe Falasha Jew doll come to our pyramid. Hihey pretty Jew jill.

GRETCHEN

Hi handsome. I see our PloFather got new illegal neighborhood boundry. Great. We got to pay?

LIEUTENANT

No money fm’you, pretty bije babe. Maybe something else, later?

GRETCHEN

Sure. See you underneath.

(Explosion! Concussion! The Krypton Ketchup factory bursts open as a bomb explodes and the Organic Terrorist Movement makes a statement over the public broadcast system.)

BROADCAST

We done it! We done it! But be assured, poisoned public, that the ingredients of our bomb were pure-ly and safe-ly organic. The Movement NEVER rots.

(A thousand and twenty-seven Guff ghouls are crimsoned as they lick up the ketchup.)

THE GHOULS

Lap-Lap-Lap-Lap-Lap-Lap-Lickety-Lap.

(In Captain Shaft’s Dart Range the naked female targets scream challenges at the Sado-Mach dart-shooters.)

TARGETS

Shoot, man, shoot! Hate me and shoot! Shoot for a triple! Tit, tit, and cooz!

CAPTAIN SHAFT

Try your luck, babes? Got some juicy big-prick targets…

GRETCHEN

She’s too young and I’m too old.

(A Hang-Glider sails low overhead, slowly descending. A man hangs by the neck from the glider, the strangling noose knotted into the traditional thirteen turns of the rope.)

PI

Ooo look, Miz Gretch person. I seen a lot of suicides but never like this one before.

(A gaggle of crones follows the falling glider avidly absorbing the emissions from the spasming penis of the suicide.)

GRETCHEN

Saw, Pi. Saw. It’s obvious I must put you through a good school.

(A night class in the Educational Television Elementary School earnestly studies a projection screen.)

THE SCREEN

PABLUM/GOOD OLD-TIME FLAVOR

Define “Good”

Define “Old”

Define “Time”

Define “Flavor”

Write five hundred (500) word essay on use of the hyphen.

Define “Hyphen”

Define “500”

PI

(Sadly) I couldn’t pass that test, Miz Gretch. Person.

GRETCHEN

(Cheerfully) Not to worry, dear. That was an advanced class for high-I.Q. types.

(In Nixon, formerly Lincoln, Center, Ms. Liz Cuiz blushingly receives First Prize for her display of wax flowers in the Seventy-fifth Annual Imitation Horticultural show.)

MS. CUIZ

Gotta admission, wax beat plastic anytime, exspecial fr’eatin’.

(Hastily)

Doan beez mad on me, youse beautiful Photo-Plastic Ink. guys… I dig plastic too.

(The Eskimo Exterminator Company cleans out an IRS warehouse to save tons of accusatory and incriminating documents from the ravages of insects and rodents. Two Eskimos debate over the merits of ants and roaches as they devour them.)

1ST ESKIMO

Halstu di oyg’n tsu der erd, vestu mer vi verem nisht zen.

2ND ESKIMO

Der vus hot alemen lib, iz gelibt fun keynem.

PI

Them Eskimos get in everywhere.

GRETCHEN

Esquimaux, Pi. Esquimaux.

(In Slammer Sodom’s Rodeo a Chimpanzee rider complains bitterly to the handlers readying the human bronco he is to mount for the competition.)

CHIMPANZEE

Tk-nk-fk-wk-tk-lk-mk-bk-zk!

1ST HANDLER

What’s he beefin’ about now?

2ND HANDLER

Aw, these rodeo stars is always complainin’. He says we tie the barbed wire too tight around the bronc’s balls to make’m buck. Says it takes alla juice outa the stud.

(In the Cryogenic Ice Palace two cannibals are discussing cryo-cuisine.)

1ST CANNIBAL

Gotta like thaw ‘em out, man, before you roast ‘em.

2ND CANNIBAL

Not if’n they beez friz like over hundrid year, man. Get kinda stinksville. Gotta roast ‘em friz.

1ST CANNIBAL

Wha’part you dig most?

2ND CANNIBAL

Guts.

1ST CANNIBAL

Oh man, das d’answer. Guts is delly.

(Night and the Guff. Murk light. Gnome-goons. The frozen corpse of Mr. Rubor-Tumor is being roasted. Salem Burne’s dancers warm themselves around the fire. The PloFather’s spidery hands play on the buttocks of Sheikh Omar ben Omar as he mounts an Unbeliever. In the morgue Gianni Jiki buys the corpse of Droney Lafferty for its piebald skin which will be turned into a wall-hanging. The black eyes of Yenta Calienta have been traded for a hand-powered Mixmaster. The Therpool has discovered that its freak water is also hallucinogenic. Three Hudson Hell Gate Dam engineers have mathematically proved to a Science Convention that bees can fly. Miss Priss is ravished by a robot and takes it to a therapist. The original Scriabin Finkel, aged 97, dies and his stable composes a Scriabin sendoff entitled: SAFE-HIT ME, FINKEL, THROUGH THE OUTFIELD OF DEATH.)

Shima’s Oasis had once been the Spanish Museum. His penthouse was a peak in the sawtooth skyline looming over the fuming Hudson River where flickering will-o’-the-wisps burned and danced above the whorls and eddies.

Gretchen opened the penthouse door and called in a tone of command, “Blaise!”

No answer.

She entered, attended by Pi-girl. They explored lounge, bedroom, bath, kitchen and terrace, still carpeted with Opsday earth. “Blaise!”

“No one here, Miz BB ma’am person.”

“After all I’ve been through, has that son-of-a-bitch gone back to work without even calling me? Withdrawing? Le pauvre petit. Typical!”

She called CCC. No Shima.

“If he’s lost control and gone into fugue again, this is the last time I bail him out. Pi-girl, call the Guff precinct for me. I don’t want them to hear my voice and trace me. I’ll tell you what to say.”

Pi called the Guff precinct, prompted by Gretchen. No. Shima. No A.P.B. on Shima. No Ind’dni. The Subadar had gone home.

“What the hell! I’ve got to quash the coming A.P.B. on myself anyway. Pi-girl, you go back to my place and supervise the restoration. You’re responsible, girl. I’m growing you up. I won’t have children around me. I’m going to Ind’dni’s place. He may know where Shima is. I’ll do a number on both men and get it over with. I am a new breed, by God! Free! Free! It’s a mechia!”

The Pi-girl attended Gretchen to Ind’dni’s residence in what had once been Gramercy Park, and then continued on to the Oasis in “Old Town.” Gretchen mounted to Ind’dni’s apartment and rang.

The door was opened for her by the Subadar, beautifully robed in white. “Ah!” he smiled. “I have been expecting you. Come. Come in. Come in peace and hope. We too have found the way to the primal pinnacle. We have found the ishta devata, the true worship. It is the Lord Siva in His first glorious manifestation as Sveta, the White.”

Gretchen gasped, then managed, “Ind’dni?”

“Once,” Ind’dni smiled. “Come. Come in. You are my beloved friend, Gretchen Nunn.”

“Once also,” Gretchen answered as she entered. “I’ve found the way too, Subadar.”

“Yes,” Ind’dni said quietly as he safed the door. “Yes, I’m fully aware of all that has transpired. I did tell you that I was not without resources. You have reached a new peak, an exalted peak, perhaps even the primal pinnacle which, alas, Dr. Shima could not before he died. Despite all his brilliant assets, he could not cope with the challenge he dreamed of meeting.”

“What? Blaise dead?” Gretchen was shocked.

Ind’dni nodded.

“But how?”

“Ah, you do not remember. You have left your old life behind, as I have mine. He was torn apart by you in your new role of queen.”

“I killed him?”

“Tore him apart.”

Gretchen was speechless.

“What? Guilt? Grief? Come, love, we are both of us beyond that, so let us speak frankly as equals, and we are equals, you know. I too have reached a pinnacle and am, perhaps, the only primal equal you can have. So let us befriend and support each other.”

“Y-You—You’re only trying to comfort me.” She was shaken. “I tore Blaise… tore him apart?”

“We must comfort each other. We’re alone on the heights and have only each other.”

“B-But you all said I was born to it… The New Primal Man… Not you, Subadar. How have you reached your pinnacle?”

“I was reborn through the Black Hole.”

“In the contra-universe? It had that effect?”

“Or perhaps the new colony, your new hive, has raised me to the heights?”

“My God! My God! My God!”

“Rather call Him by His true name, Siva, the Divine Generator of Life. We shall enter the universe of Siva together. You have much to teach me and I shall teach you to procreate the all-embracing spirit of the Soma. We shall worship the twelve sacred Lingas together.”

“Ind’dni, this can’t be you. You sound insane, and I think I’m mad, too. What’s happened to us?”

And he taught her to worship the twelve sacred Lingas for three mad erotic hours that left her gasping and incredulous and melting into the universal Soma.

“Oh my God…” she whispered. “Oh my God… My God! My God! My God! I’ve never been loved like this before. Never! No woman ever was. I’ve never loved love like this before. Never! Is this the pinnacle?”

He nodded.

“I knew you weren’t the fag you pretended to be to Shima. You’re a man. You’re more than a man; you’re ten times ten any man I ever knew. My God! Dear God! I love you. I love you. I love you. And you? Me? Is it the same with you?”

Ind’dni smiled to her, then arose, went to a mirror and on it printed with a crimsoned forefinger:

I LOVE YOU

It took a long moment for Gretchen to understand what she’d just seen.

“But—B-but that was your left hand,” she whispered. “You’re writing with your left hand, and that’s backward mirror-writing. I—You—He never came back from the contraworld. Oh Jesus! Dear Jesus God…” Her voice broke. “He… He was left behind. He’s trapped in that contrabedlam forever. You came back in his place. Didn’t you? Didn’t you?” Her voice rose hysterically. “And you’ve been masquerading as the real Ind’dni… My dear, sweet, wonderful Ind’dni. That explains why you did and said everything backwards after the return. You’re his contraself, the reversed Ind’dni, remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless… the negative Ind’dni that my real Ind’dni saw.”

He smiled. “I’m Golem¹⁰¹.”