The man from charisma

“I see.” Jonathan Relevant plucked at an eyebrow.

“So I’m making grape jelly down the basement. I trample the grapes in a vat down there. It’s a lot more strenuous than I thought it would be.”

“Sublimation,” Jonathan reminded her, patting a stray blond curl into place.

“That’s what I thought. But now I’m not so sure. I mean, that’s a pretty basic thing to be doing-—bouncing up and down on grapes barefoot. A certain——umm—-rhythm is established. Do you see what I mean?”

“No, but I’d like to.” Jonathan Relevant plumped up his breasts speculatively.

“Why don’t you come downstairs and watch for a while?”

“All right.”

Nancy led the way down the cellar steps. Getting used to the undulating motion of walking, Jonathan Relevant followed. Crates of grapes, their tops pried off, stood around a large, waist-high vat. Inside, the vat was filled about a third of the way up with grapes, grape pulp, and grape juice. Nancy motioned to the blond girl to sit on the cellar steps while she climbed into the vat.

“You just have to keep jumping up and down.” Nancy suited the action to the words.

Jonathan Relevant watched, long eyelashes fluttering, as she jumped. The grapes beneath her bare feet seemed to provide a certain resiliency. Nancy did indeed fall into a definite and mounting rhythm very quickly.

Her longish red hair flamed out behind her as she leaped. Her bra-less breasts rose and fell noticeably against the loose material of her smock. Juice from the grapes pasted the material over one of them, and the outline of the sharp, pointy nipple was clearly revealed behind the purple-soaked spot.

The loose garment billowed up over Nancy‘s thighs as she bounced. Their creamy white surfaces became slippery with the juice of the grapes. She revolved slowly with each successive jump. A particularly energetic leap revealed her high, exquisitely molded derriere, pink-flushed, purple-spattered, rippling in motion. As Nancy completed the pirouette, the roundness of her belly was revealed in a flash that also bared the soft red-bronze triangle of her womanhood.

“Oh!” She stopped for a moment and leaned over the side of the vat. “It sure takes a lot of energy.” Her breasts were still straining with the effort to suck air into her lungs.

“It looks like fun.”

“It is. Would you like to try it?”

“All right.”

“You’d better take off your clothes,” Nancy advised the shapely blond girl in a voice that was consciously without inflection. “That juice really splatters and the stains don’t come out.”

“All right.” Jonathan Relevant stripped and climbed into the vat with Nancy.

“Start out slowly,” Nancy advised. “That’s it. Up . . . and down . . . up . . . and down . . .” They both moved in time to the words. “Up . . . and down . . . whoops!”

The vat was small and they collided. Nancy grabbed onto the blonde for support. Her arms locked around Jonathan Relevant’s neck, and the length of their soft bodies pressed together. Their breasts and thighs burned hotly at the contact. “Perhaps we’d better hold on to each other and jump together,” Nancy murmured.

“All right.”

“Up...and down...up...and down...”

Aha! What is Jonathan Relevant? The answer at last! “. . . up . . . and down . . .” Jonathan Relevant is a yo-yo! In more ways than one! But it wasn’t self-knowledge, only a slight touch of vertigo.

“Up...and down...up...and down...”

Clinging together, they rose and fell together with the rhythm. Nancy’s dress slid up to her waist, but she didn’t notice. Her eyes were closed. Her juice-slicked thighs moved like well-oiled pistons against the soft, female thighs of Jonathan Relevant. The nipples of her breasts hardened against the new-grown breasts of Jonathan Relevant.

And Jonathan Relevant wasn’t doubting or questioning now. The new role had taken over completely. Thought had given way to sensation-—to the feeling of Nancy’s hands on the plump female bottom, Nancy’s fingers digging into the quivering pink flesh, Nancy’s purple-soaked nipple finding its way to the girl-lips of Jonathan Relevant, Nancy’s moan as she clutched at the back of the girl-neck and strained to feel the laving of the girl-tongue through the material of the smock. “Up . . . and down . . .” Nancy grasped the girl-hips with her knees so that the two burning, quivering female cores made tantalizing contact.

Up . . . and up . . . and up again . . . and—finally-- down!

They fell together to the mattress of grapes and remained there. A few seconds later the juice-spattered smock Nancy had been wearing was tossed over the side. Their bodies locked, purple with juice, slippery with pulp, abandoned in lust. They thrashed about ecstatically, crushing the grapes, white limbs blurred in the purple steam rising over their frenetic movements. . . .

“Now this way!” Nancy panted.

Jonathan Relevant’s girl-body rippled spasmodically as Nancy’s mouth found its nether lips. The favor returned, they both sucked the juice of the grapes, each from the other. The girl-nipples of Jonathan Relevant, almost as deeply colored in their tautness as the grapes themselves, tingled with this new and mounting thrill. Full hips, succulently plump, writhed, flaring out from the narrow waist, and strained against the weight of the redhead pinning them down. Long legs, slippery and splotched with grape juice, formed a V, stretching straight up in the air now, angles wide apart, creamy thighs rippling, oscillating, clutching. Nancy’s tongue tickling the aroused clitoris was driving Jonathan Relevant wild, and at the same time there was the urge to devour the pulsating maw of Nancy’s femininity. The girls erupted a second time, so violently that their bodies turned, locked scissor-fashion, and ground against each other. Then Nancy moved over Jonathan Relevant, her small, glistening breasts hanging over the blond girl’s face as she moved up and down and mindlessly repeated the word. “Again! . . . Again! . . . Again!”

A series of mounting explosions shook both girls as one climax followed another in rapid succession. As they sustained the final tremor, the scene swam before Jonathan Relevant’s eyes like a violet phantasmagoria. It was so overpowering for Nancy that she lost consciousness for an instant.

Regaining her senses, the redhead automatically repeated her demand. “Again!” Their bodies moved in unison to comply. But—-

“Nancy!” Chancellor Hardlign stood at the head of the cellar stairs, quivering with indignation as he stared at the scene in the vat below him. His wife! Stark naked! And with Jonathan Relevant, a man the chancellor identified with and liked and respected! But a man older than himself, and making love to his wife! How could such a thing happen? The question found its way to his lips. “How could this happen?” the chancellor asked aloud.

“I was graped!” Nancy told him, dripping purple juice. She picked a bit of fruit pulp from between her small, upright breasts and repeated the accusation: “I’ve been graped!”

“Is that true, sir?” Despite his anger, there was deference in Chancellor Hardlign’s voice as he put the question to the older man.

“It’s accurate,” Jonathan Relevant granted, aware of sudden breastlessness, aware of having taken on both manhood and age under the chancellor’s gaze.

“I can’t believe that a man of your caliber would use force on my wife!” Chancellor Hardlign blurted out.

“It is hard to believe,” Jonathan Relevant agreed.

Nancy Hardlign blushed.

“Not that I haven’t wanted to use force on her sometimes myself, you understand,” the chancellor added.

“I understand.” Jonathan Relevant understood.

“I never knew that, dear.” Nancy Hardlign looked at her husband with surprise.

“There are lots of things you don’t know about me. You think I’m just a fusty old pedant. Well, many’s the night I’ve lain away phantasizing what it would be like to beat you black and blue. And tonight I just might do it!”

“Really?” Nancy climbed out of the vat and retrieved her purple-stained smock.

“Bursitis permitting.” The chancellor manipulated his stiff right arm with his left hand.

“A little exercise might be just the thing for that,” Nancy murmured. She pulled on the smock and went up the cellar stairs. “I’ll be waiting, dear,” she told her husband, patting his cheek as she passed him. “Don’t be too long.”

She wriggled provocatively and exited.

The chancellor stared after her, lost in speculation. Meanwhile, Jonathan Relevant climbed out of the vat, wiped the grape juice from his body, and dressed. He started up the stairs. The chancellor snapped out of his reverie.

‘Tm not a drinking man, but I do believe I need a Scotch and soda,” the chancellor said. He led the way to his study, motioned Jonathan Relevant to be seated, and proceeded to the liquor cabinet. “I suppose I should be violently angry with you,” he said as he mixed the drinks. “But somehow I don’t feel that way. Curious.” He handed Jonathan Relevant a drink.

“Thank you.”

“You know,” the chancellor continued, “when you’re married to a woman so much younger than yourself, you wonder about the possibility of her being unfaithful to you. Only somehow I was always sure it would be a much younger man.”

“At least a man,” Jonathan Relevant muttered to himself. He was still shook up by the trauma of his last manifestation.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh. Anyway, the fact that it’s not some young stallion, the fact that it’s you—well, I don’t want to be Noel Coward-ly about it, but in a strange way that‘s almost flattering. You see, I do admire you, sir. And to have my wife confirm my judgment so emphatically—- No doubt it’s horrendous, but I feel more pleased than outraged.”

“It’s not horrendous. It’s the way you feel,” Jonathan Relevant told him sincerely. “Why try to force a reaction that you don’t feel?”

“Because it’s expected, I suppose.”

“I don’t expect it. I don’t think your wife expects it. The question is, why should you expect it of yourself when it’s not the way you feel?”

“Precisely.” The chancellor tossed off his drink. “You know, my bursitis seems to be much better.” He laughed, a little embarrassed, and mixed two more Scotch and sodas. “Have you and my wife known each other long?” he asked conversationally.

“No. We just met tonight. Actually, I came here to see you.”

“Oh? What about?”

“The situation here at Harnell. The Ad Hoc Faculty Committee would like to arbitrate between the administration and the dissident students.”

“Arbitrate!” The chancellor’s voice was stern. “The faculty should be backing the administration all the way. That’s the only responsible position they can have!” A sudden twinge of bursitis stiffened his arm across his chest again.

“Someone will have to arbitrate. Why not the faculty?”

“Because their first responsibility is to the university!” The chancellor stuck his jaw out.

“Don’t they have a responsibility to the students too?” Jonathan Relevant asked.

“Of course. And it’s in the best interests of the students that a firm stand be taken. They have to learn that the rules of this university cannot be flaunted. Discipline must prevail!” Jaw jutting out, arm across his chest, hand inside his jacket, the chancellor came across to Jonathan Relevant as truly Napoleonic. “When will they realize that?” he added.

“Not tonight, Josephine,” Jonathan Relevant murmured.

“I’ve just come from a meeting with the Board of Trustees and representatives of HUAC—the Harnell University Alumni Commission,” the chancellor continued. “At my suggestion, an ultimatum has been issued to both groups of dissident students. They have until nine o’clock tomorrow morning to vacate both buildings. If they don’t comply, they will be forcibly removed!”

“That's just the sort of confrontation the faculty would like to see avoided.”

“Then let the faculty persuade the students to desist. If not, force will be met with force and in the end we will smash them!”

Listening to the Hardlign hard line, Jonathan Relevant heard the opening bars of the 1812 Overture. Onward to Moscow! A little snow never hurt anybody! So why worry?

“I’ve been in communication with both the mayor and the governor,” the chancellor told him. “If the students won’t leave voluntarily, then the police will remove them. And if the police can’t handle the situation, two units of the state‘s National Guard have been placed on standby at strategic positions.”

The chancellor was astride his white horse. Jonathan Relevant saw that clearly. And there seemed little chance of dislodging him before the battle was joined. “Isn’t all that force an overreaction?” Jonathan Relevant asked aloud.

“Perhaps. But once it was decided to take action, of necessity I had to delegate some of my authority to government officials. It’s unfortunate, but unavoidable that the situation here happens to fit into the local political picture. The mayor’s got his eye on the Statehouse and he’s determined to crack down hard on college rebellions. And the governor won’t be outdone when it comes to who can yell for law and order louder. Each of them is out to prove he’s tougher than the other.”

It takes more than one man to lead the way to Waterloo! Jonathan Relevant decided. And you spell that V-I-E-T-N-A-M! he added to himself. He decided to voice the thought aloud. “This sort of escalation is what got America so deeply involved in Vietnam,” he told the chancellor.

“You’re speaking figuratively, of course.”

“No.”

“But the situations aren’t analogous. What we have here is just a bunch of spoiled kids throwing a temper tantrum.”

“Even if that were true, you wouldn’t cure a child’s tantrums by cracking his skull open.”

“You’re exaggerating. It won’t come to that.”

“Won’t it?”

“Well, if it does, the dissidents will have no one but themselves to blame.”

“Tell yourself that when you’re sitting all alone on St. Helena.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing.” There's no point in picking an old bone apart. Jonathan Relevant finished his drink and stood up to leave.

The chancellor saw him to the door. “Do you like grape jelly?” he asked Jonathan Relevant as they shook hands in parting.

“Yes, I do.”

“I’ll have my wife send you a jar,” the chancellor promised.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Jonathan Relevant walked up the front steps of the main building of the Science Research Institute. At the front door he was stopped by a young man with scraggly long hair and a patchy beard which tried hard to be full but didn’t quite succeed. The young man looked at Jonathan Relevant and saw a young man with scraggly long hair and a classically full beard right off a Smith Brothers Cough Drop box. “This is where it’s at.” He grinned at Jonathan Relevant. “Welcome to the barricades.”

“Up the revolution!” Jonathan Relevant returned the grin and walked inside to the center hall.

“Peace.” A co-ed in a see-through blouse and blue jeans held up by a length of clothesline greeted Jonathan Relevant.

“Peace and love everywhere.” He extended his fingers in the V symbol and headed for the entrance to the hall leading to the room he’d occupied earlier.

“Hey, buddy!” Passing one of the doorways, Jonathan Relevant was hailed sotto voce by another young man. This one’s face was smeared with war paint and he was wearing the buckskins and feathered headdress of a Sioux Indian. “In here!” Tugging his Buffalo Bill moustache, he jerked his head to indicate that Jonathan Relevant should enter the room behind him. When Jonathan complied, he closed the door behind them. “Just a second and I’ll get us a light.” In the dark he rubbed two sticks together.

“Will this help?” Jonathan Relevant struck a match.

“Oh. Yeah. Thanks.” The Indian lit an oil lantern and turned the Wick down very low. “I sure am glad to see you,” he said, his war paint gleaming phosphorescently in the flickering light. “I thought I was the only one.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah. But I spotted you right off.”

“How?”—as the Indian said to the Mermaid, Jonathan Relevant quipped to himself.

“How.” The Indian held up his hand and returned the greeting. “Sixth sense.” He answered Jonathan Relevant’s question. “You know how it is. When you’ve been in awhile you get so you can spot your own. I mean, you could tell about me, couldn’t you?”

“No.”

“On the level? Hey, that’s good. Real good. I’ve been afraid the kids would peg me. But if you didn’t spot me, they won’t.” The Indian blew his nose and sniffed. “I think I’m allergic to this damn war paint,” he confided. “Let’s get down to cases.” He sneezed. “I’ve already set myself up as the provocateur. So the thing for you to do is to play it cool. Try to get in with the leadership. What do you think?”

“It sounds logical.”

“Good. Then we understand each other.”

“We do?”

“And I’ll get word to Pigbaigh that there’s two of us and the CIA’s on the job.” The Indian sneezed again.

“Where is Pigbaigh?”

“The kids are holding him hostage. Some of the other personnel here too. He’s really fuming.” .

“I’ll bet he is.”

“Yeah. Listen, the kids are having a strategy meeting and we’d better get to it so we know what’s happening. But we’d better separate. It isn’t smart for us to be seen together.”

“All right.”

The Indian blew his nose. He put his finger to his lips to signal Jonathan Relevant to be quiet, snuffed out the oil lamp, opened the door, and looked both ways down the hall. “All clear.” He motioned to Jonathan to leave.

Jonathan went back to his room, took a quick shower, and changed his clothes. Then he proceeded to the meeting of the student dissidents. A little while after he’d sat down, the Indian entered and carefully seated himself on the other side of the room from Jonathan.

“The trouble is the establishment’s got all this modern technology going for them,” one of the SDS-ers was saying. “Just look at one small aspect of it. Communications. They’ve got all kinds of transistor gadgets. . . .”

The Indian lit a pipe, covered it with his palm, then quickly raised and lowered his hand so that a series of smoke signals wafted toward the ceiling over Jonathan Relevant’s head.

“Wrist radios and electronic cigarette packs and all that jazz so that they’re always in contact. . . .”

Jonathan Relevant pulled out a handkerchief and semaphored a noncommittal reply to the CIA Indian.

“We’re getting off the track.” Minerva Kaufman took charge of the meeting. “What we’ve got to decide is what we’re going to do tomorrow morning when push comes to shove.”

“What can we do?” another girl asked. “We can’t fight barehanded against armed police and National Guard. It would be futile. We’ll have to get out.”

“We could resist nonviolently. Lock arms and go limp. Force the pigs to carry us out,” a boy with long, blond hair suggested.

“And passively get our nonviolent heads busted,” a second boy sneered. “I want to see you stay limp when the tear gas hits.”

“What this college needs is a compulsory course in non-violent resistance,” someone suggested. “It’d come in a damn sight handier than Am. Lit. One.”

“My folks sent me to college

“To gain a lot of knowledge

“That I'll probably never never ever use . . .”

So sang a cynical frosh.

“AIYEE!” The CIA Indian was on his feet. His sudden whoop captured the attention of the others. “It’s a sellout!” He shook his fist. “Leave peacefully . . . nonviolence . . . is that why we liberated this building? No! We did it to shake up the establishment, to demand a voice in the running of this place. And now you want to chicken out! To give up and leave with your tail between your legs! Where are your guts? This is revolution! Bring on the pigs! Bring on the clubs and the Mace and the tear gas! We’ll stand up to them with our bare bodies! That’s what commitment means!”

There was a smattering of applause. The Indian sat down and winked at Jonathan Relevant. Gravely, he returned the wink.

“R.O.T.C. must go!” a boy shouted.

“Rotsy must go!” Others picked up the chant.

“If we’re going to resist, then we need a battle plan,” Minerva pointed out practically. “We need to set up a chain of command. And we’ll have to have discipline.”

“Rotsy must go!”

“Rotsy is where you find it,” Jonathan Relevant decided.

“Power to the people!” the students shouted.

“This operation has to be strictly programmed,” Minerva added.

“Power to the people!”

“The programmed people?”

“Everybody will have an assignment and we’ll all have to perform on a rigid schedule,” said Minerva Kaufman.

“Thou shalt not fold, spindle, or mutilate thy fellow human being—unless the circumstances force thy hand.”

“I’m for Minerva staying in charge.” The boy with the long blond hair made the motion. “All in favor?”

There was an overwhelming show of hands.

“Okay.” Minerva accepted. “Now one of the first things we’ve got to decide is what to do with the hostages.”

“Spread-eagle ’em across the doorways and windows!” The CIA Indian was on his feet again, pounding his bare chest. “Threaten to run ’em through if we’re attacked!” His chest was a fiery red. “Burn one of ’em at the stake! Just to show we mean business!” Up close it could be seen that the redness was the result of a nasty rash—probably caused by his allergy to the war paint streaking his upper torso. “Burn, Kemosabe, burn!”

“That’s pretty extreme,” Minerva remonstrated.

“Extremism in the defense of extremism is no crime!” Scratching fiercely, the CIA Indian sat down and folded his arms.

“He’s right!” A few others picked up on the sentiment. “If they want violence, we’ll give ’em violence!”

“Peace and love everywhere!”

“Hold on a minute!” Minerva reestablished her grip on the group. “We can’t afford to blow our cool. If we harm any of those hostages, we’ll turn off any support we might get from outside, and probably most of the large group of uncommitted students here at Harnell as well. If the other side acts violently first, then the sympathy will be with us. Going by the patterns at other schools, we could be the rallying point for a general student protest strike here at Harnell. But only if we’re the victims. Now you put me in charge, and this is one decision I’m going to make. Nobody lays a hand on the hostages!”

“Then what do we do with them?” a law student spoke up. “If we continue to hold them prisoner, then technically we face a federal kidnapping charge. And for what? What’s the point if we’re not prepared to use them to buttress our position?”

“All right. Then we’ll let them go,” Minerva decided. “When the ultimatum falls due, just before the bust, at nine in the morning, we’ll give the hostages safe-conduct out of here. If we time it right, the media will cover it. That way we’ll stress our own lack of violence and when the action starts we’ll come off as being reasonable in contrast to the administration’s heavy hand.” She looked at the faces of the students and finally pointed at Jonathan Relevant. “You take charge of that,” she instructed him. “Get the prisoners all together in one place so they’ll be ready to leave when the time comes.”

The CIA Indian puffed his pipe approvingly. “Congratulations,” the smoke signal said. “That’s what I call really infiltrating.”

Jonathan Relevant nodded noncommittally at the Indian and started out of the room to comply with Minerva’s instructions.

A cloud of smoke signal advice followed him: “Rough them up! Leave marks! Blood . . .”

Jonathan Relevant’s first stop in collecting the prisoners was the room of Dr. Ludmilla Skivar. When he opened the door, he was greeted by the sight of what was fast becoming the best-known rear end on the Harnell campus. It Was - as usual—mooning nakedly.

Big Dick Eberhard rolled over and Dr. Ludmilla Skivar came into view. “I didn’t hurt her. Honest, Ghaw-urge!”

“I know you didn’t. It’s all right,” Jonathan Relevant reassured him.

“Darling! I am so glad to see you again!” Ludmilla chattered in rapid and embarrassed Russian. “I hope you don’t think I was being unfaithful to you. This fellow is my guard and he is big and strong and --”

“I understand. No need for explanations.” Jonathan Relevant escorted her to the room where the prisoners were to be gathered and then continued on down the corridor to fetch the next hostage.

“Colonel Relevant, suh!” Leander Pigbaigh greeted him. “So they got yew tew! Ah’m mighty sorry ’bout all this, suh.”

“Tha’s the way the cawn-pone crumbles,” Jonathan Relevant replied.

“Listen, Colonel,” Pigbaigh whispered in his ear. “Doan’ dee-spair. Cee Ah Aih is on the job. We got a man in theah with them commie kids. They thank he’s a hippie.” Pigbaigh chuckled. “He’ll get us out of heah some ways.”

“Ain’t no sweat,” Jonathan Relevant agreed. “Ah’m in contac’ with him. Now y’all jes’ wait heah.” He left Pigbaigh in the room with Ludmilla.

Peter Glover was next. His Chamber of Commerce face lit up like John Wayne hearing the nick-o’-time bugle call of approaching cavalry when Jonathan Relevant appeared. “American ingenuity always finds a way,” he enthused. “That’s what made the country great. I knew from the first that you were the kind of hardheaded businessman Condom-Inium could depend on, Mr. Relevant. Now, sir, What’s your plan for getting us out of here?”

“The first thing is to get everybody together, Mr. Glover. I understand there are some research personnel still locked in their laboratories.”

“That’s right. They locked themselves in when those damn kids took over the place. They won’t let the SDS into the labs, and the kids won’t let them out.”

“Well, I can guarantee them safe-conduct out if we can get to them,” Jonathan Relevant told Glover.

“They’ll open up for me.” Glover was positive.

“Good.”

Jonathan Relevant and Glover went to the section of the institute where the laboratories were located. The SDS guards were dismissed. A few words from Glover, and the two of them were admitted to the labs. An antiseptic-looking little man in a white coat closed the door and turned to face them.

“This is Dr. Handelquim, Chief Research Gynecologist for Condom-Inium.” Peter Glover introduced the little man to Jonathan Relevant.

“A most interesting field.” Jonathan Relevant shook hands with him.

“Thank you.” The gynecologist inserted the index fingers of each hand at the corners of his mouth and widened his lips into a smile. “I can see, sir, that you are the sort of man who appreciates the importance of my work. Not too many men do. Women, on the other hand—”

“Dr. Handelquim is ambidextrous,” Peter Glover interjected. “He’s one of our most dependable scientists— a gynecologist who keeps his nose to the groinstone.”

Dr. Handelquim beamed at the compliment as Peter Glover led Jonathan Relevant through a door at the back of the laboratory. They emerged in a room of whirring computers and blinking lights. A tall, muscular Japanese of about thirty-five years looked up as they entered.

“This is Professor Tektodi in charge of our Data Processing Center,” Peter Glover identified the Japanese. “And this is Jonathan Relevant,” he told Professor Tektodi.

“A privilege.” Professor Tektodi smiled into the intellectual visage of the Oriental with Glover and bowed low.

“The privilege is mine.” Jonathan Relevant returned the bow.

“It is indeed an honor to meet you, Jan-San Relevant.”

“I am the one who is honored to meet the renowned Professor Tektodi.”

“The honorable Jan-San Relevant knows of me? I am truly flattered.”

“Who does not know of your work on computers?”

“You are interested in computers, Jan-San Relevant?”

“Indeed.”

“Then I shall myself be honored to show to you the latest circuitry which has resulted in a mechanism so superior to the human brain as to render any further thought processes of man unnecessary.” Professor Tektodi’s eyes glowed. “What do you think of that, Jan-San Relevant?”

“It won’t be necessary for me to think of it.” Jan-San Relevant spread his hands Wide. “It will do the thinking for me.”

“Exactly!” Professor Tektodi nodded firmly. “This computer has made human thought obsolete.”

“And human beings?” Jan-San Relevant asked gently. “Has it made them obsolete too?”

“Has it made human beings obsolete?” Professor Tektodi pondered the question. “I don’t really know,” he admitted. “I shall have to ask the computer.” He turned away and began punching a keyboard feeder mechanism as Glover and Jonathan Relevant continued on into the next laboratory.

“Dr. Shpritzsvet?” Glover called out the name as they entered.

From somewhere in the center of the horror-movie collection of bubbling test tubes and hissing electrodes popped up the head of a man with ears pointed like bat wings and jet-black eyebrows that formed a V over glowing coals. Dragging one leg, he approached Peter Glover and Jonathan Relevant. He seemed oblivious to the occasional crackle of electricity bouncing off him as he passed through the assembled paraphernalia.

“Dr. Shpritzsvet heads up our chemical research project,” Peter Glover informed Jonathan Relevant.

Red eyes glowing with fanatic zeal, the doctor approached them, spraying the air before him with the con- tents of a large aerosol can as he came.

“Dr. Shpritzsvet is working on perfecting a universal deodorant,” Glover added.

“Amazing!” Dr. Shpritzsvet circled Jonathan Relevant sniffing. “No body odor whatsoever!” He stared at Jonathan with unqualified admiration.

“Dr. Shpritzsvet is of the opinion that all the problems of the world will be solved when people no longer have to smell each other,” Glover explained.

“Smells are the cause of all aggressions!” Dr. Shpritzsvet elaborated to Jonathan Relevant. “I must compliment you, sir, on your complete lack of hostile odors.”

“Are you sure you don’t have a cold?” Jonathan Relevant inquired.

“Condom-Inium, Inc., will market Dr. Shpritzsvet’s deodorant as soon as he gets the bugs out,” Peter Glover confided. “And the government’s interested too. If the formula really overcomes hostility, it might be the answer to the Vietcong. Provided it can be controlled so it doesn’t foul up our side’s aggressiveness. We’ll have to cut the university in on the earnings, of course, but there should be plenty to go around. Just thought I’d tell you so you can get in on the ground floor.”

“Thanks.”

“Think nothing of it. After all, it’s—-”

“The American way.” Jonathan Relevant smiled humorlessly and finished the sentence.

“I detect the odor of avarice,” Dr. Shpritzsvet said disapprovingly.

“Don’t be so sensitive,” Peter Glover told him.

“. . . Don’t be so sensitive!” Chancellor Hardlign remonstrated with his wife, Nancy.

“But your elbows are digging into my ribs!” Her purple-splotched body tried to shift under the weight pinning it to their marriage bed.

“I’m hurting you, am I? Well, good!”

“A gentleman always leans on his elbows. And I always thought you were a gentleman.”

“Not tonight I’m not! Tonight I’m a primeval beast filled with lust and sadism!”

“Of course you are, dear.” Nancy sighed. “Which reminds me, I thought you were going to beat me.”

“I did beat you! And just as hard as I was able! My arm is sore from beating you!”

“You call that beating me? With an ostrich feather?”

“Was it very frustrating?”

“Yes!”

“Good!”

“I thought you were really going to flagellate me.” Nancy wriggled masochistically. “Do it, darling! Beat me with your belt!”

“No!” the chancellor refused sadistically.

“Then will you please move.” Nancy scowled. “My back is killing me.”

“From being beaten with an ostrich feather?”

“No. From trampling grapes. Do you think it’s easy to—” Nancy was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone. She stretched out to the night table, picked it up, and held it to her ear. “Hello.” She listened a moment. “It’s for you, De Sade,” she told the chancellor sarcastically.

“Who is it?”

“They said it was the President.”

“What does he want? I just saw him at that Board of Trustees meeting.”

“Not the president of Harnell.” Nancy handed him the phone. “The President of the United States.”

The chancellor took it from her and shouted into the mouthpiece angrily. “You kids may think it’s funny to call my home at this time of night, but when I find out who’s responsible—-” The chancellor’s jaw dropped open. He was silent for a long moment. “It really is the President!” he gulped finally.

“Don’t forget to ask him how his hemorrhoids are” was Nancy’s wifely advice.

“Yes, Mr. President. . . . I see, Mr. President. . . . Of course, Mr. President. . . . Paratroopers? But, Mr. President! . . . No, I didn’t mean. . . . I agree, Mr. President. You can’t swat an elephant with an ostrich feather. . . .”

Nancy giggled.

“. . . but we already have the local police and the National Guard. . . . The hostages? Well, no, I don’t really know what the students are planning to do with them. . . . All right, Mr. President. I’ll do my best.”

“Regards to Strom,” Nancy hissed. But it was too late.

The chancellor had hung up.

“I have to contact those kids at the Science Research Institute,” Chancellor Hardlign said. “If they don’t release those hostages, the U.S. Army is going to fall in on us.” He dialed quickly.

“Hello. Effete Intellectual Snobs, Harnell Division. To which anarchist did you wish to speak?” A pretty little girl whose father was rumored to be fairly high up in the national government answered the phone. She listened a moment and then summoned Minerva Kaufman. “It’s the chancellor,” she told Minerva. “I guess you’d better talk to him.”

Minerva took the phone. Her conversation with the chancellor was short. But when she hung up, she was obviously shaken. “That settles it! We have to get those hostages out of here!” she said to no one in particular. She headed down the hall toward the room in which the hostages had been assembled.

Inside the room, Jonathan Relevant had been cornered by Leander Pigbaigh. The CIA man was whispering into his ear with great urgency. “Little gook runs the thank-tank—-” Pigbaigh pointed surreptitiously at Professor Tektodi. “Watch him. He’s been cleared bah See-curity, but yew nevah know. ’Member the Yeller Peril!”

Before Jonathan could reply, the door opened to admit Minerva Kaufman. The CIA Indian followed her into the room. He took one look at Leander Pigbaigh and seemed to go berserk.

“Do away with the CIA!” he screamed, jumping up and down and scratching himself. “Kill the Gestapo!” He punctuated the demand with a hearty sneeze. “Kill! Kill! Kill!”

Pigbaigh turned pale and wriggled his ears at the Indian in Morse code. “Don’t overact!” he cautioned. “You’re going too far! Be careful you don’t convince them!”

The Indian subsided. Minerva ignored his outburst and spoke to the hostages in a calm voice. “In the morning we’re going to let you all leave under a flag of truce,” she told them.

The hostages huddled among themselves for a moment. Then Leander Pigbaigh turned and faced Minerva. There was no doubt that he spoke for all the prisoners.

“We won’t go!” Pigbaigh announced.

“We’re staying!” Peter Glover backed him up. “We have every right to be on these premises and you have none!”

“My computer predicted you’d try to ameliorate your circumstances by releasing us,” Professor Tektodi said.

“But it won’t work!” Dr. Handelquim’s head poked out from under Dr. Ludmilla Skivar’s dress to utter the statement and then immediately vanished again.

“And I smell something rotten in your eagerness to free us,” Dr. Shpritzsvet sniffed.

“I’ll never leave you, darling,” Ludmilla informed Jonathan Relevant in Russian, her hands stroking the back of Dr. Handelquim’s neck, her eyes straying toward Big Dick Eberhard.

“We won’t go!” Pigbaigh repeated the decision and sat down firmly on the floor. “You can’t make us leave!” The other hostages followed his example. We’re staying!”

“You won’t go?” Minerva Kaufman looked at them helplessly. “But if we don’t release you they’ll send in paratroopers!”

“Good!” Pigbaigh folded his arms firmly.

“What do you think?” Minerva turned to Jonathan Relevant beside her and spread her hands. “Do you see any way to avoid this confrontation?”

“Every confrontation is an opportunity for communication and understanding.” Jonathan Relevant soothed her. Or for noncommunication, nonunderstanding, and violence, he added to himself.

“Where will it all end?” Minerva wondered aloud.

Up against the wall, Mother—-

CHAPTER NINE

Dawn broke on the eggs rolling into position to be cracked for the Harnell omelet. There were white eggs and brown eggs of various shades, gun-powdered army eggs and simmering cop eggs, mildle-class coddled eggs and hard-boiled ghetto eggs, too-fresh SDS eggs and CIA rotten eggs, War- painted deviled eggs and sit-in poaching eggs, brain-scrambled eggs and eggheads galore. Also there were lots of chicks, committed and un, and at least one old hen (Miss Uptyte) with ruffled feathers. And all because of the cock which didn’t crow with the sunrise, but merely gleamed metallically, silent, waiting for the events of the day to decide Whether or not its connection with the Angel Gabriel would be served.

The statue had been moved to the center of the main hall of the Administration Building, where G. P. hoped it would serve as an inspiration to the brothers when the action started. The ranks of the black students had been bolstered by the street fighters from the ghetto who had joined them inside the building after routing the jocks the previous night. G. P. assigned students and ghetto youths to their various posts. Everybody was on edge, waiting for the action to begin. G. P. carried his sack of explosives with him as he moved around the center hall.

“Man, we gonna blow this place sky-high!” The speaker was the leader of the street gang. He was known as “Hardcore,” a nickname derived from soapbox speeches in which he repeatedly told his ghetto followers that if “Whitey ain’t gonna give me no job, I’m gonna be the hardest-core unemployed black man in this whole town!”

Now G. P. tried to explain to Hardcore that the explosives were only a last resort, and even then meant only to be used for a threat, rather than actually detonated.

But Hardcore wasn’t hearing G. P. “Baby, you point out this here chancellor to me an’ ZAP!—got you a red-spoutin’ lawn sprinkle!” Hardcore jabbed the air graphically with a switchblade knife. “Then we make us some Molotovs an’ mop up on the rest of the ofays!”

G. P. wished he’d never thought of taking the explosives. . . .

The sun rose higher, spreading its rays over the areas adjacent to the campus. Here, the city police were assembling. A few of the more eager cops were already sneaking off behind the bushes to remove their nameplates and badges in a modest desire for anonymity during the up-coming action.

Farther back from the campus, the state’s National Guardsmen were assembling. They looked very young and very nervous as they inserted their bayonets in their rifles. Some boys leave the country to avoid the draft, some boys go to college, and some boys join the National Guard. Now many of the Guardsmen looked like they wished they’d made a different choice.

Behind the Guard the paratroopers were assembled. They seemed crisp and efficient by comparison, gung-ho and deadly. Like the cops, they had an ingrained recognition of who the real enemy was: smart-ass college kids who looked down on GIs, loudmouth softies whose Daddy-money had bought their way out of serving their country. The paratroopers—most of them—were as itchy as the bluecoats to crack open a few eggheads.

In a rear-echelon tent, the leaders of the three forces of “law and order” were meeting. The chief of police, the colonel in charge of the paratroops, and the general leading the National Guard discussed their tactics. They spoke calmly, as befits men holding the responsibility of command.

“My boys’ll club the longhaired little bastards into the ground,” the chief of police promised. “Then we’ll mop ’em up with Mace!”

“The men under my command have been trained to break up demonstrations with bayonets and tear gas,” the Guard general told them. “They’re itching for action!”

“Then what are they doing in the Guard?” the paratrooper colonel wanted to know. “Now, I don’t care what the police or the Guard do,” he continued. “My orders come directly from the President. I’m to get those hostages and it doesn’t matter who gets clobbered in the process. And I’ve got tanks, weapons carriers, cannon, and an elite fighting force— all the muscle I need to achieve the objective.”

“Shouldn’t we coordinate our activities?” the chief of police asked.

“Why? More fun for everybody if we don’t.” The Guard general winked.

“I’ll buy that.” The paratrooper colonel agreed. “Hell, that’s what I call real academic freedom! . . .”

“Academic freedom isn’t license!” the captain of the football team was telling the assembled meeting of concerned Greeks and jocks.

“Isn’t he wonderful? Such a phrasemaker!” a dewy-eyed cheerleader whispered to her sorority sister.

“This is our school and we’re not going to let a bunch of black savages and pinkos take it away from us,” the captain continued. “We’re going to go in there and throw them out ourselves! . . .”

“It’s our job to throw the bums out,” the campus police chief informed his twenty-eight-man force. “Let’s prove we can do it without any outside help. Why should outsiders get the credit? Are you with me, men?”

“Oink! Oink!”

They were with him. . . .

“We’re with you, Chancellor!” There was a murmur of agreement from the Harnell Board of Trustees as the speaker sat back down in his wheelchair and rested his gouty foot.

“Thank you, gentlemen.” Chancellor Hardlign acknowledged their faith in him.

“Speaking for the Harnell University Alumni Committee”-—another man tottered to his feet——“I want you to know, Chancellor, that we admire your toughness in this situation.”

“My thanks to HUAC.” The chancellor bowed his head.

“Damn the torpedoes!” the HUAC speaker rambled. “Give ’em liberty! The British are coming! Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes!”

“Watch your blood pressure!” A fellow alumnus pulled the speaker back into his chair.

“It won’t be long now, gentlemen,” the chancellor informed them, “before I deliver the final ultimatum. And then I shan’t hesitate to see that these dissidents are removed by whatever means necessary, including physical force! . . .”

“Force is the only answer!” The Weathermen faction of SDS was making its kamikaze plans. “It’s the only way to radicalize the student body! So we bide our time until just the right moment, and then we dive in and bleed just as hard as we can. Remember, blood is the only irrigation for revolution!”

“Everybody into the irrigation ditch! . . .”

“Our last-ditch attempts to mediate this situation have failed,” Mercy Altebopper told the Ad Hoc Faculty Committee in an “I-told-you-so” tone of voice. “Now is the time to show the students that they have our support, that we’re with them all the way!” Her face twitched violently; her eyes crossed; she sat down and put her hands over them.

“Cooperation, blah-blah-blah . . .” Dr. Umpmeyer told them. “Conciliation, blah-blah-blah. . . . Communication, blah-blah-blah. . . ." Nobody listened. Dr. Umpmeyer sat down and covered his ears with his hands as Professor Rumpkis started to talk.

“. . . obligation to support the administration one hundred percent. The faculty must set an example to the students if discipline is to be upheld, if anarchy and chaos are not to . . .” Professor Rumpkis turned the air blue with the dual release of his flatulence. But his gaseous advice went unheeded and finally he too sat back down, squelching a belch behind hands which remained clasped in front of his mouth.

See no evil! Hear no evil! Speak no evil! The faculty was as ready for confrontation as it was ever going to be. . . .

Confrontation was also uppermost in the minds of the SDS students sitting-in at the main building of the Science Research Institute. The sun was well up in the sky now, and time was growing short. The hostages were still stubbornly refusing to allow themselves to be removed from the premises. In a quiet comer, Ivan Relevant was listening to Ludmilla Skivar’s reactions to the situation.

“Americans are too soft!” the voluptuous Russian snorted. “In Russia we would use the strongest measures to put down those who dare to question authority as these students are doing. It must be because Americans have so little respect for their institutions that they are afraid to use force to protect them.”

“That’s the difference between America and Russia,” Ivan Relevant granted.

“We can only hope that the difference is narrowing.”

‘Tm very much afraid that it is.”

“When the people of America become the government of America, as in Russia -”

“—then the people will no longer dissent, as in Russia,” Ivan Relevant reasoned.

“Where the proletariat rule, there is no need for dissent!”

“And no room for it!”

“Exactly!” Ludmilla’s eyes shone with zeal. “That’s as it should be! Isn’t it?”

“Don’t ask me,” Ivan Relevant sighed. “Ask Josef Stalin . . . or Spyro Agnew.”

“Stalin is dead.”

“And Agnew was born dead. Never mind. Forget it,” Ivan Relevant told her.

“I don’t understand. Don’t you believe in Marxism?” Ludmilla asked him.

“Marxism is a gas. . . . But Russia is a drag.”

“Can I see you a minute?” Minerva Kaufman interrupted their tête-à-tête. Jonathan Relevant joined her in the hall. “It’s about the hostages,” Minerva explained. “Glover and Pigbaigh are adamant. They won’t leave. But I was wondering about the scientists. They seem to dig you. Maybe you could talk to them.”

“All right. Where are they?”

“Back in their labs. I thought it might soften them up if we didn’t restrict their activities.”

“I’ll go see them.” Jonathan Relevant left Minerva and went to the laboratories.

A young SDS student was on guard at the door. “What do you do for your acne?” he asked Jonathan Relevant as he admitted him.

“I pretend it isn’t there.”

“You’d think those savants in there would come up with a cure for it instead of spending their time figuring out new ways to kill people.”

“That’s how it is when you get older,” Jonathan Relevant told him. “You forget how it is to have skin trouble.”

“Never trust anybody over thirty,” the student said it as if he’d just that moment come up with a profound new truth.

“Unless he’s got lots of pimples.” Jonathan passed inside.

“Gynecocracy!” Dr. Handelquim greeted him.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Gynecocracy. Government by Women. In the land of gynecocrats, the gynecologist is king.”

“I see.” Jonathan Relevant wasn’t sure that he saw at all.

“I could be the power behind the throne.”

“Which, I suppose, would have stirrups on either side of it?”

“Of course, my friend. You see, it’s the only viable program. Only women can deescalate the current world situation. The only hope is for the ladies to take over-with the help of those few men who understand them — like myself. Their day is coming!”

“The day of the Gold Star Mother,” Jonathan Relevant mused.

“Don’t be cynical, my friend.”

“I’m sorry.” Jonathan Relevant got down to brass tacks. “I’ve come to see if I can prevail upon you to leave,” he told Professor Handelquim.

“Absolutely not.”

“But why not?”

“Gynecocracy.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Haven’t you noticed that it is a female who has taken charge of things here? That is very significant! This Minerva Kaufman! She‘s the wave of the future. I want to be around to ride the crest of that wave!”

Dr. Handelquim is the sort of man, Jonathan Relevant decided, whose life won't be fulfilled until he can perforn a hysterectomy on the Pacific Ocean! He continued on into the computer room, where Professor Tektodi was studying a long tape which the main computer had just disgorged.

“Ah, Jan-San Relevant. You are just in time.” Professor Tektodi bowed to him.

“In time for what?”

“The computer has calculated the results of the upcoming confrontation. I have fed all significant data into it, and here are its predictions.”

“What does the computer predict?”

“Disaster. Much blood. Many people hurt. Much destruction of property.” Professor Tektodi didn’t seem too unhappy about the prospects.

“But can’t something be done to avert all that?”

“No. It is inevitable.” Professor Tektodi smiled with Oriental fatalism.

The trouble with Oriental fatalism, and the trouble with modern computer technology are the same, Jan-San Relevant reflected. People accept the inevitable and just stop trying—-even when trying might mean survival.

Who is Jonathan Relevant?

He’s a man who believes in trying!

One more piece of the puzzle . . .

“If it’s going to be that bad,” Jan-San Relevant said aloud, “then why do you want to stay here? Why not get out before things get rough?”

“I have to stay with my computer so that I can feed more data into it as events occur.”

Disaster can be a way of life. Some men are never so happy as when they can stand by and measure the flow of lava while the volcano swallows its victims. Is that what Man calls History?

“That’s what we call scientific detachment,” Professor Tektodi added by way of explaining his position.

“Scientific detachment? Is that another name for Hiroshima?” Jan-San Relevant left Professor Tektodi with the thought and continued on into the laboratory of Dr. Shpritzsvet.

Bubbling caldrons, crackling electricity, steaming beakers, whirring machinery—-the scene was Lugosi camp with decor by Dali, Transylvanian clutter with sound effects by a Warhol werewolf, a setting with the feeling of a busy graveyard at midnight when the vampires disengage the stakes from their heartless hearts. In the center of this grade-C Hollywood phantasmagoria, Dr. Shpritzsvet hunched over his calculations and muttered to himself like a frustrated lycanthrope on the verge of an orgasm he can’t quite attain. He scribbled notes, checked calculations, and spewed wordless, Frankensteinian grunts. It was a moment before he looked up blankly and then focused on Jonathan Relevant.

Steinmetz!

That was who popped into the crippled scientist’s mind as he looked upon Jonathan Relevant. It wasn’t so much that Jonathan Relevant looked like the famous hunch-backed genius as that he appeared to be an exaggerated version—-a sympathetic caricature perhaps—of Steinmetz. It was as if both the massive intellect and the physical torture which had defined Steinmetz were magnified in Jonathan Relevant. Unanticipated and strong feelings of warmth and admiration swept over Dr. Shpritzsvet.

“I’m on the brink!” he greeted Jonathan Relevant.

Of what? Jonathan Relevant wondered. Madness? “Of what?” Jonathan Relevant asked.

“Of perfecting my universal deodorant. One additional element . . . one small alteration in my calculations . . . one variation in the process of electrolysis, perhaps . . .”

“Great discoveries always hinge on the most minute factors,” Jonathan Relevant sympathized.

“That’s very true.” Dr. Shpritzsvet launched into a long, detailed, complicated explanation of his experiments. He could see that Jonathan Relevant followed the most difficult points with ease. It wasn’t too often that Dr. Shpritzsvet had a chance to explain his work to a scientific equal and now the opportunity made him verbose. It was quite a while before he ran down.

“I see what you mean,” Jonathan Relevant said. “It really will be some very simple thing that will snap into place and your problem will be solved. But perhaps the trouble is that you’re overtired. Why don’t you go home and get some sleep and then come back and tackle this with a clear head?”

“No! I can’t stop now! Not when I’m right on the verge! I have to keep going until—”

So Dr. Shpritzsvet, like his two colleagues, stubbornly refused to leave the Science Research Institute. Jonathan Relevant left him and reported back to Minerva Kaufman. Glumly, she accepted the fact that none of the hostages would cooperate by letting the dissidents set them free.

That was the position as nine o’clock drew closer. It was still a few moments short of the hour when a sound truck appeared on the quad in front of the Science Research Institute. Several alumni rode the truck. As it braked to a halt, Chancellor Hardlign addressed the dissidents through a loudspeaker:

“THIS IS A FINAL WARNING. IF YOU DO NOT VACATE THE PREMISES IMMEDIATELY YOU WILL BE FORCIBLY REMOVED. IF, PRIOR TO THIS ACTION, YOU HAVE NOT RELEASED THOSE YOU ARE HOLDING HOSTAGE, I HAVE BEEN INFORMED THAT THE FEDERAL AUTHORITIES WILL PRESS KIDNAPPING CHARGES AGAINST ALL THOSE INVOLVED, LEADERS AND FOLLOWERS AS WELL. I REPEAT: THIS IS A FINAL WARNING.”

A wave of frightened murmurs swept over the SDS students at the chancellor’s words. “Damn it! We’re not holding any hostages,” Minerva remarked to Jonathan Relevant. “They’re only here because they refuse to leave!”

“Then the chancellor should know that before they start busting heads.”

“Do you think he’d believe it?”

“There’s only one way to find out.” Jonathan Relevant took out a white handkerchief, attached it to the end of a classroom pointer, and stuck it out the window.

“IF THE DISSIDENT STUDENTS WISH TO TALK, WE WILL LISTEN,” the chancellor announced, ever the public-relations man conscious of the news media setting up its equipment nearby.

Jonathan Relevant emerged from the building carrying the white flag. Minerva followed behind him. They walked up to the sound truck and the chancellor climbed down to talk to them. Among the alumni on the truck there were murmurs of disapproval and recommendations that the pair should be seized. But the chancellor was much too aware of image to betray the flag of truce.

“Mr. Relevant!” the chancellor was surprised to see him with the SDS leader. The alumni on the truck looked at the distinguished man with the young girl student with puzzlement. Then Minerva claimed their attention.

“We came to discuss the matter of the hostages,” she told the chancellor.

“Then you’re prepared to give them up and vacate the premises peacefully?”

“We won’t vacate the premises until our demands are met. But we are perfectly willing to let the hostages leave. You see, they’re not hostages at all, really. We’ve offered them their freedom and they refuse to go. We’re not holding them against their will. We thought that fact should be known.” Minerva raised her voice as a few newsmen came into earshot.

“Surely you don’t expect me to believe that,” the chancellor demurred.

“It’s true,” Jonathan Relevant told him.

“It is?” The chancellor’s disbelief was shaken.

“Yes.”

“I believe you,” the chancellor heard himself saying—- and meaning it. “But you unruly children will still have to leave the institute,” he added to Minerva.

“Unruly children!” she snarled. “You don’t mind killing us off in your goddam war, and you have the gall to—-”

“Hey, baby!” Jonathan Relevant took her arm. “Cool it. ‘Children’ isn’t a curse word. It’s just a category usually determined by the age of the cat doing the generalizing.”

“I meant no offense,” the chancellor told Minerva. “But you are unruly. You are breaking the rules. And it is my responsibility to see that the rules are upheld.”

“No matter how many skulls are cracked,” Minerva muttered. “You won’t even consider our demands, no matter how just some of them may be. All you’re interested in is discipline.”

“I will not consider your demands under protest. Bring them to my attention through the proper channels and-—”

“Chancellor,” Jonathan Relevant interrupted him, “do you know what the greatest escalating factor in the whole world is?”

“No. What?”

“Formality. That’s right. Formality. Don’t be formal, Chancellor. Not now, when time is so short. Unbend. Forget about the shape of the table, if you see what I mean. Forget about the ‘proper channels.’ Come and talk to these students human to human, and violence may yet be averted.” The eyes of Jonathan Relevant looked deep into the eyes of the chancellor.

The chancellor looked up at the alumni on the truck. They were staring at Jonathan Relevant as if mesmerized. The very fact that they weren’t screaming objections was enough to convince the chancellor. “All right. I’ll go back with you and talk to them,” he told Jonathan Relevant and Minerva. Flanked by them, he started back toward the institute.

As the three of them started up the steps of the building, the CIA Indian pushed his way past the student guards and emerged to meet them. “Nice going!” the Indian performed a little war dance. “I didn’t think he’d be stupid enough to go for it. Now we’ve really got us a hostage!”

“What does he—” the chancellor sputter.

“The chancellor is here under a flag of-—” Minerva started to explain.

But before either could finish the sentences they had started, several things happened simultaneously. The Indian produced an egg and mashed it into the chancellor’s face. The shrubbery on one side of the entrance came alive with campus security police, who charged up the stairs toward the four figures at the top. The shrubbery on the other side of the entrance spewed forth Weathermen dissidents who climbed over the side of the broad staircase to intercept the campus cops.

“Bleed, baby, bleed!” the Weathermen leader shouted to one of his followers as he deliberately stuck his head under an all-too-willing cop’s club.

“Shouldn’t we wait until the TV people get their cameras into position?” another Weathermen martyr asked.

“Kill the chancellor!” the CIA Indian screamed. But when Jonathan Relevant interposed himself between Hardlign and the Indian, the latter retreated in confusion.

“Come on.” Jonathan Relevant pulled the chancellor over the side of the stairs. They landed in the shrubbery. The sound truck, heading toward the scene at top speed, veered to pick up the chancellor. The alumni were frothing at the mouth and demanding vengeance for the “double-cross.”

Jonathan leaped back up to the staircase, reached Minerva, and drew her inside. Before the student guards could close the door on the battle, the Indian also entered. Looking behind him at the cops splattering Weathermen pulp all over the marble steps, the Indian’s face was smugly satisfied.

Jonathan Relevant and Minerva ran to a window. They could see the sound truck speeding toward the spot where the city police were massed and waiting. The chancellor stood atop the truck with his arm outstretched like Napoleon on the verge of ordering Marshall Ney to launch a cavalry charge.

Then the city police started moving toward the building held by SDS. Clubs held high, Mace spray-guns at the ready, for the most part badge-less, the cops moved in squads, quickly, but without running. The platoon bringing up the rear included some fifty savage-looking Doberman pinschers straining at their short leashes.

On the steps the campus security police were mopping up the last of the Weathermen. Then, from around the corner of the institute, a new group made their appearance. It was the Greeks and jocks, led by the captain of the football team, determined to help stop the assault on the billys of the campus police by the skulls of the Weathermen.

“SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL POLICE!” they chanted as they headed for the fray.

The sentiment didn’t help them. It fell on deaf ears. Before the crew cuts could reach the steps, the city fuzz intercepted them with a cloud of Mace. “You’re making a mistake. We’re on your side,” the football captain tried to explain just before a billy was shoved into his groin.

“You kids gotta learn respect for authority!” the chief of police announced as the jocks and Greeks ran from the snarling dogs.

“We’re learning!” an Alpha Mu sobbed as he ran.

“Which side are you on, boy?

“Which side are you on? . . .”

The singing of the blacks reached the ears of the law and order Whiteys as they fled past the Administration Building. The Dobermans howled an answer, snapping at college-shop slacks all the way back to the gymnasium. Here, what was left of the crusading jocks and Greeks gathered lo try to figure out what had happened to them.

Meanwhile, the state Guardsmen were preparing to go into action. One young Guardsman, scared, a staunch catholic, murmured a novena before inserting his bayonet. “And God bless Mommy and Daddy and Mayor Daley and—oh! yes!—Mario Procaccino—-Whatever that is,” he added.

The Guard marched toward the Administration Building as the city police joined the campus cops on the steps of the institute. The Weathermen were doing their thing. “Bleed, baby, bleed!” They were bleeding. Some of the SDS-ers came out of the institute and pulled a few of the more badly wounded Weathermen inside the institute. Then they barred the doors against the police. Outside, on the steps, an elite group of Weathermen hemophiliacs proved it was possible to cooperate with the most sadistic cops by laying their masochism on the line.

The Guard formed ranks in front of the Administration Building and put on their tear-gas masks. On command, several canisters were thrown through the windows of the building. Inside, the black students and their ghetto allies covered their faces with wet handkerchiefs and lobbed the canisters back out as fast they were able. The wind carried the tear gas toward the institute and a few moments later the unprepared campus flics and city blue-coats and Weathermen bleeders dispersed into a choking mob bent only on fleeing the cloud of gas.

The Guardsmen marched toward the entrance to the Administration Building, their commander bent on their breaking down the door with their rifle butts. The blacks prepared to meet the assault by shoving every available piece of furniture in front of the door. G. P. decided that if the Guardsmen broke through the best thing to do would be to retreat to the second floor, where the one staircase might prove a strategically defensible position. He ordered the statue of the Angel Gabriel carried up there.

Before the Guardsmen could launch their assault, however, a new element confused the situation even more. The Ad Hoc Faculty Committee, led by Mercy Altebopper and Dr. Umpmeyer, mounted the steps of the Administration Building to offer “a compromise solution” to the blacks inside. If the blacks accepted, the Ad Hoc Faculty Committee intended to try to influence the administration to likewise go along with it.

But the faculty members never got to talk to either group. Before they realized what was happening, the National Guardsmen were surrounding them on the steps and prodding at them with their bayonets. “Umpgrghhimmllfarschtuk!” a young Guardsman commanded Dr. Umpmeyer through his tear-gas mask.

“Could you speak more clearly, young man? I have this hearing difficulty and——”

“Ngralkpmphbginahrybvznew!” The Guardsman prodded Dr. Umpmeyer’s chest with his bayonet.

“Oh, dear! Now you’ve done it! You cut the wire! What is it that you want? If you’ll take off that mask, maybe I can read your lips!”

“Jgfumplladquigyoldbstrdsvbtchcmmnst!”

Jonathan Relevant observed the scene from a distance. But even from his position at the window of the institute, he could tell what the major difficulty was. Communication is never easy! Jonathan Relevant decided. Never!

“Wouldn’t it be great if a teacher was killed and a student got the blame?” the CIA Indian puffed to Jonathan Relevant on his pipe.

“If the Administration Building falls, we’ll be next,” Minerva said anxiously.

“We may be first,” Jonathan Relevant pointed out the Window. “Look.”

The paratroopers had fallen in and were marking time smartly, waiting for the order to charge the Science Research Institute. Behind them other paratroopers were being held in reserve. And behind them waited jeeps with barbed wire, weapons carriers, a few small tanks, and some light artillery.

As they prepared to charge, the Guardsmen were clearing the last of the Ad Hoc Faculty Committee from the steps of the Administration Building. Inside the building, G. P. had just become aware of a second problem. “Where’s my nitro?” he demanded. “Who took my sack of explosives?”

Everybody looked blank. Hardcore looked blankest of all. G. P. confronted him. “You took it!” he said accusingly.

“Shoot, man, would I do that?”

“You would! And I’m betting you did! Now give it back!” G. P. demanded.

“Wha’ for? You ain’t gonna use it.”

“That’s right. And neither are you. No matter what, nobody’s going to get killed if I can help it.”

“Then what you want with them ’splosives anyway?”

“Give them to me and I’ll show you!”

Hardcore reached behind the statue of the Angel Gabriel and produced the sack. G. P. took the sack, went over to a window, and flung it into the shrubbery. Hardcore shook his head in disdain.

A moment later a state Guardsman found the sack in the bushes. He opened it, looked at the contents, and scratched his head, unsure what they were. He decided he’d better bring it to the CO.

En route, the Guardsman collided with a Weathermen student fleeing the police. The sack went flying from his grasp and the contents were strewn over the ground. Miraculously, none of the explosives were activated-— then.

“Go ahead and stab me with your bayonet!” the radical believer demanded bravely.

“Nahh. I don’t swing that way,” the Guardsman replied.

The Weatherman shrugged philosophically. “Got a cigarette?” he asked.

“Yeah.” The Guardsman gave him a cigarette.

“Got a match?”

“You want me to smoke it for you too?” The Guardsman gave him a match.

“You think it’s easy for me to come to the establishment and beg like this? Sure you do!” The Weatherman answered his own question. “That’s how much you apes know about human dignity!” He lit the cigarette and flung the match on the ground.

BAROOM? . . . Nope. There was no one mammoth, overwhelming explosion. What did happen was a chain reaction of small blasts which mounted in intensity as one explosive set off another. The student and the Guardsman both dropped to the ground and tried to burrow for safety.

Farther away the reaction was even more shocked. To the Guardsmen, on the verge of battering down the door to the Administration Building, it seemed as if they were being fired upon. They scattered for cover and returned the fire.

It was this return fire which dispersed the paratroopers as they charged the institute. Combat veterans, they sought cover behind trees and bushes and the corners of buildings and fired back at anything that moved.

One of the things that moved was the police, since much of the crossfire was directed at the institute and they were on the front steps. The campus security cops dropped back into the shrubbery on one side of the entrance and the city police sought cover in the shrubberg on the other side. Both groups sent bullets flying back in the direction from which the bullets seemed to be coming.

One last Weathermen fanatic stood on the steps and bared his chest to the hail of lead. “Up the revolution!” he shouted. “Yay Ché! I hate my father!” Thanks to an invisible shield of lousy marksmanship, nothing hit him.

Jonathan Relevant observed the scene. Paratroopers and Guardsmen were blasting away at each other, at the cops, at the remnants of the Ad Hoc Faculty Committee, at the alumni sound truck which had been trapped in the crossfire, at the black students in the Administration Building and the SDS students in the institute, at the Greeks and jocks in the gymnasium building, at anything that moved and anything suspicious that didn’t move. Now the cops added to the barrage. Gunsmoke spread over the scene and almost hid the tanks and artillery as they started to move into action. A stray bullet whizzed past Jonathan Relevant’s ear.

This is ridiculous! he decided. Somebody’s going to get hurt!

“Where are you going?” Minerva Kaufman asked him from where she was lying on the floor as he stepped over her.

“I’ll be right back.”

“You’ll miss all the fun!” the CIA Indian semaphored.

Some fun! Jonathan Relevant ran down the corridor until he came to the entrance to the laboratories.

“Gynecocracy!” Dr. Handelquim greeted him.

“Woman’s place is in the home!” Jonathan Relevant kept going.

“Bloodshed!” Professor Tektodi bowed low. “The computer is always right. Is it not so?”

“Right! It is not so!” Jonathan Relevant continued on his path.

“One small factor . . .” Dr. Shpritzsvet was still bent over his calculations when Jonathan Relevant entered.

“Let me see your figures.” Jonathan Relevant elbowed him aside. “Here,” he said after a moment. “This is your error. You reversed these two elements.”

“Good God! You’re right!” Dr. Shpritzsvet eurekaed. “Wait! Wait! Let me make the substitutions and we’ll see—”

Jonathan Relevant stood by patiently while the scientist remixed his formula.

“Ready!” Dr. Shpritzsvet announced at last. “Now we shall see if we have the universal deodorant.” He reached into a drawer and came up with a stale, moldy, unappetizing chunk of Limburger cheese. “Smell this!” He shoved it under Jonathan Relevant’s nose.

“Ugh!” Jonathan Relevant gagged.

Dr. Shpritzsvet sprayed it with the new formula. “Now smell it.” Again he held the cheese under Jonathan Relevant’s nose.

“Nothing! No odor whatsoever!” Jonathan Relevant sniffed.

“It works! It works! It works!” Dr. Shpritzsvet danced a macabre jig.

“Does it?” Jonathan Relevant brought him back down to earth. “What about your other theory? That odors are the cause of all hostility and that this universal deodorant could stop all aggressiveness?”

“What about it?”

“Don’t you want to test that too?”

"How?"

“With that!” Jonathan Relevant pointed to a wind machine in the corner of the laboratory. “You mix up a batch and I’ll set up the machine and we’ll spray it over the campus. The college, in case you don’t know it, is seething with aggression at this very moment. It’s a perfect opportunity to try it out. . . .”

A little while later one of the paratroopers paused to reload. He took a deep breath, careful not to raise his head too high with all that live ammo flying around. Then he put down his gun, got to his feet, bent over, picked a daisy, and waved it at the Guardsmen who were shooting at him.

Three of the Guardsmen waved back and then started playing leapfrog. A moment later the chief of the campus security police joined them. The game took them up the steps of the Administration Building, where Hardcore opened the door to admit them and graciously handed each of them a stick of grass.

At the institute, the CIA Indian was earnestly confessing his real identity to Minerva Kaufman, who kept telling him it wasn’t important. The chancellor strolled into the institute with some of the alumni and they beamed at the students and said they hoped everybody was having fun. A few moments later the chancellor was having a discussion about baseball with the leader of the Weathermen.

“Peace and love everywhere!” Dr. Shpritzsvet beamed as he and Jonathan Relevant toured the campus and surveyed the results of the experiment. “Peace and love everywhere!”

“Perhaps,” Jonathan Relevant replied. “But—”

“But what, my friend?”

“There’s something not quite right about all this euphoria. I can’t put my finger on it, but—”

Peace and love everywhere . . .

But there was something wrong! And then Jonathan Relevant realized what it was!

CHAPTER TEN

The President of the United States sat irnpatiently—and gingerly, as his condition required-—by the telephone and waited for news of the situation at Harnell. Things were becoming sticky at the UN. Pressure was mounting for the administration to produce Jonathan Relevant. The building of suspense is not a healthy psychological climate for hemorrhoids. But the President had no choice. He fidgeted and waited for the phone to ring.

It rang.

“Hello!” The President answered on the first ding-a-ling.

“Hello, Mr. President.” It was the number-two ding-a-ling.

“Oh. Hello, Mr. Vice President.” The President sighed with disappointment.. “Congratulations on that speech last night. I understand the silent majority really liked it.”

“Thank you, Mr. President. . . . Uh, but how could you tell?”

“By their silence, Mr. Vice President. How else?”

“Of course.”

“The way you tied up all those loose ends-—connecting the Quakers and the peaceniks and the commies in one great big anti-American conspiracy. It shows that patriotism isn’t extinct in this country. It was really quite ca feat.”

“Thank you, Mr. President.” The Veep’s voice snuggled cozily into the telephone. “Better a feat than a gnu, I always say.”

“Whatever that means.”

“Well, Mr. President, it means-—”

“Don’t explain it! I’m proud to have you for vice-president, Mr. Vice President. But when you start explaining things somehow it comes out sounding like Greek to me.”

“I’m proud of my heritage, Mr. President,” the Veep said stiffly.

“Aren’t we all.” The President’s tone was soothing. “Umm, listen, Mr. Vice President, I’m expecting a rather important call. Was there something particular you wanted?

“I was just wondering if you heard about the fire in my home last night, Mr. President.”

“No. I hadn’t. How did it start?”

“We’re not sure, but I’m very much afraid one of my children might have dropped an inflammatory remark.”

“Was there much damage?”

“My library was completely destroyed,” the Vice President told him.

“That’s a shame.” ’

“Yes. I lost both books.”

“That is a shame,” the President repeated.

“One of them I hadn’t even finished coloring yet."

“Well, don’t feel too badly, Mr. Vice President. Perhaps they can be replaced.”

“Why bother?” The Vice President showed he was taking it like a man. “After all, if you’ve seen one book. . . .”

“I like that, Mr. Vice President. It shows the right spirit. You’ve reaffirmed my faith in you. . . . Well, keep in touch.”

“Good-bye, Mr. President.”

“Good-bye.” The President hung up the phone.

Almost immediately, it rang again.

“Hello.”

“Oswald here, Mr. President.”

“Yes? Yes?”

“I’m afraid there’s nothing concrete to report, Mr. President. The situation at Harnell is very confused.”

“Christ, Oswald! What do you mean ‘nothing concrete?’ Don’t you realize I’m sitting on a powder keg with a short fuse?”

“I understand the discomfort of your ailment, Mr. President, but don’t you think you may be giving in to the psychosomatic aspect of-—”

“Damn it, Oswald! I don’t mean…”

“My brother-in-law Hubert, the druggist, was telling me about this new suppository that's supposed to work wonders—”

“Shove it! Tell your brother-in-law Hubert to shove it too! I’m not talking about that! I’m talking about the political situation!”

“Mr. President, I’m well aware that the UN is-—”

“Not the UN! It’s much more serious than that, Oswald.” The President’s voice dropped to a confidential whisper. “I have it on the best authority that Strom has given the word to the special Senate Sub-Committee on Un-American Indian Affairs to investigate the Harnell situation!”

“The Alcatraz Committee, Mr. President?” Oswald sounded both surprised and puzzled. “I don’t understand. How do they figure in this? I thought they were holding hearings on the possibility of Russian missile bases being supplied to the Indians who seized Alcatraz? I thought their bag was the tie-in between the Red menace and the menace of the Redman. What’s all that got to do with Harnell?”

“I don’t know, Oswald. I really don’t know. But I do know that it’s a part of the whole flank attack on the power of the executive by the legislative branch of the government. Wouldn’t surprise me if the Alcatraz Committee itself has been infiltrated by liberals sneaking up on the Tonkin Bay Resolution. You know what that means, Oswald! That means a grab to get back some of my presidential power! That is why I have to know what the picture is at Harnell. And I have to know fast.”

“I wish there was something I could tell you, Mr. President.”

“What about Pigbaigh? What about that other agent you planted? Have you contacted them?”

“I’ve been in communication with both of them, Mr. President, but-—-”

“But what, Oswald? What did Pigbaigh say?”

“He didn’t say anything, Mr. President. He-—umm--—he sang to me.”

“He what?”

“He sang to me, Mr. President.”

“What did he sing?”

“ ‘Down by the Riverside,’ Mr. President. You know—- Gonna lay down my sword and shield . . ." Oswald sang. “. . . Ain’t gonna study war no more!” he concluded.

“Catchy tune. . . . Is that some kind of code, Oswald?"

“If it is, the opposition has broken it, Mr. President.”

“What about the other agent, the infiltrator?

“All he said was ‘Peace and love, everywhere.’ He just kept repeating it, Mr. President.”

“I don’t get it. Has he defected or something?”

“I really don’t know, Mr. President.”

“Well what about the commander of the paratroopers? Couldn’t he give you a picture of the situation?”

“I haven’t been able to reach him, Mr. President. He left orders that he wasn’t to be disturbed.”

“Why the hell not? What the hell is he so busy doing?”

“I raised that question, Mr. President. He—uhh—he’s stringing love beads.”

There was a long silence while the President absorbed this information. “Oswald,” he concluded finally, there is something peculiar going on at Harnell.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“There should be confrontation and violence. Where is the confrontation and violence, Oswald?”

“There doesn’t seem to be any, Mr. President. The reports I get point to everything being pretty peaceful.”

“Peaceful? Where are the police, Oswald? What about all this ‘police brutality’ I keep hearing about?”

“The police are gathering flowers, Mr. President.”

“And the National Guard?”

“They’re involved on a pop-art project to make a giant mobile out of their gas masks.”

“Well, what about the paratroops? Wait! Don’t tell me! They’re having a love-in with the SDS! Right?”

“Only some of them, Mr. President. The rest are at a faculty tea.”

“Drinking or smoking, Oswald?”

“I don’t know. Shall I try to find out, Mr. President?”

“Never mind. The important thing is, where is Jonathan Relevant? We have to produce him, Oswald! Have you gotten any leads?”

“I’m working on it, Mr. President.”

“Forgive me, Oswald, but that doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence. You find him, Oswald! You hear me! You find Jonathan Relevant before the Alcatraz Committee grabs him and deliver him to me! Get me Jonathan Relevant! . . .”

What gets me, Jonathan Relevant reflected to himself as he surveyed the embracing paratroopers and co-eds strewn over Harnell Mall, is that this is supposed to be a love-in and nobody’s making love. It was true. There was lots of physical contact, but no evidence of passion anywhere to be seen. Jonathan Relevant called it to the attention of Dr. Shpritzsvet.

“So?” Dr. Shpritzsvet shrugged it off. “They all seem happy -”

“Yes. But they don’t seem loving. Neither physically nor emotionally.”

“At least they’re not aggressive. My universal deodorant has schneidered all their hostility.”

“But what else has it affected?” Jonathan Relevant wondered. “What has it done to their other emotions?”

“You are suggesting side effects?”

“I’d say it was a decided possibility. Wouldn’t you?”

“Perhaps. But surely the good, the removal of aggressions, surely that outweighs any side effects.”

“I’m not so sure.” Jonathan Relevant thought a moment. “Not if it’s erased sexual aggression along with other forms of hostility,” he decided at last.

“What are you driving at?”

“Aggression is an integral part of the sex drive. If you take it away, you could be destroying the sex urge altogether. And no sex could mean no human reproduction.”

“But that’s wonderful! I’ve discovered a way to reverse the population explosion!” Dr. Shpritzsvet clapped his hands.

“You may have discovered the road to human extinction!” Jonathan Relevant corrected him. “lf no odors equal no sex urge and that means no reproduction, then instead of people killing each other off, they’ll just die out.”

“But you’re just hypothesizing. You don’t know. that my universal deodorant has that effect.”

“True. But I suspect that it kills off all emotions, not just aggressions.”

“Interesting. But how can it be put to the test?” Dr. Shpritzsvet wondered.

“There’s a way.” Jonathan Relevant left it cryptic. But what he was thinking was that when it came to emotional response-—or lack of same—there was one infallible litmus paper: himself.

Who is Jonathan Relevant?

The answer, so far, seemed always to be found in the eye of the beholder. In part, Jonathan Relevant was what they wanted to see. And that part was internalized so that his perceptions of himself altered according to the emotional needs of the other persons. Therefore it was he, himself, Jonathan Relevant, who was the most accurate yardstick for the feeling quotient of others.

Now, put to the test, the yardstick recorded peculiarly non-Relevant measurements. When G-for-George Pullman Porter came face to face with Jonathan Relevant, for instance, there was a notable lack of that rapport which had formerly existed between them. There was friendliness, and lack of aggression, but—

“Black and white together,” G. P. greeted Jonathan Relevant with the words.

“Right on, baby!” Jonathan Relevant replied with a clenched fist and a voice filled with Cleaver righteousness.

“Sure. Sure.” G. P. yawned.

“Up the Panthers!”

“Uh-huh.” G. P. agreed without conviction.

“Manhood for Gabriel!” Jonathan Relevant shouted. “Manhood for black men!”

“Oh, absolutely, man.” G. P. nodded. “But do you have to go screaming it out like that? You’re jarring my tranquillity.”

Jonathan Relevant stared at him, frustrated. There was nothing coming back. He didn’t feel black; he didn’t feel like Eldridge Cleaver; he just felt like basic Relevant-— and that left him feeling incomplete. The other person had to supply the missing components to the Relevant identity at any given moment, and G. P. Wasn’t helping.

Like G. P., Leander Pigbaigh lacked the emotion to round out the Jonathan Relevant picture of Jonathan Relevant. “Flowahs foah peace, Colonel.” He placed a garland around Jonathan Relevant’s neck.

“We mus’ be vig’lant!” Jonathan Relevant said tentatively.

“Flowah powah, Colonel. Flowah powah.”

“How ’bout the Red menace?” Jonathan Relevant tried desperately to make contact.

“Y’all too up-tight, Colonel. Relax an’ enjoy life.”

“But the Cee Ah Aih—”

“See what Ah mean, Colonel? Naow what yew wanna go talkin’ shop foah?” Leander Pigbaigh shook his head sadly and moved away from Jonathan Relevant.

Making contact with Ludmilla Skivar proved equally difficult. The hot-eyed Russian beauty simply clutched at Big Dick Eberhard and looked at Ivan Relevant blankly. "He is teaching me the American custom of bundling,” she informed Ivan Relevant, “and you are interrupting.”

“Comrade. Wouldn’t you like to make love?”

“Not particularly.”

"What about our plans. for returning to Mother Russia?" Ivan Relevant whispered to her.

“One place is as good as another.”

“Would you rather be with him than me?” Ivan Relevant tried jealousy.

“One man is the same as another. His body is warm. That is all that I require.” She turned her back on Ivan Relevant and snuggled up to Big Dick Eberhard.

A few moments later Jonathan Relevant was crossing the campus when a wire-service newsman stopped him.

“Say, Mac,” the reporter said, “there’s a rumor this Jonathan Relevant’s here someplace. You got any idea where I might find him?”

Jonathan Relevant felt no click of identity. The newsman wanted Jonathan Relevant, but he evidently didn’t want him enough to put him into focus. “No, I don’t,” Jonathan Relevant replied.

“Oh, well. I guess it doesn’t really matter.” The reporter looked through Jonathan Relevant without seeing him and wandered away.

This must be what ifs like not to be Jonathan Relevant!

Jonathan Relevant had a sudden flash of insight. This must be what it's like for most people, most of the time. No touching. Hazy identity. Not really being seen, or felt; not really seeing, or feeling. That’s what they mean by “alienation.” Everybody inside himself. And only half alive there without the part that has to come from outside himself. Awful! Just awful!

His thoughts were interrupted by a chance meeting with Chancellor Hardlign. “Good day, Mr. Relevant.” The chancellor nodded to Jonathan Relevant as if he was just an acquaintance, one of many students, or faculty, not important enough to slow his pace to greet.

“How do you do, Chancellor? I trust your responsibilities are not weighing too heavily upon you at this time. Jonathan Relevant blocked his way.

“Not at all. Not at all. Everything is running very smoothly.”

“But the student disruption-—”

“Well, boys and girls will be boys and girls. Calm and tranquility will prevail.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of!” Jonathan Relevant tried another tack. “How is your charming wife?” he asked.

“My wife?” The chancellor was vague. “Oh, yes. Fine. She’s fine . . . I presume.”

Jonathan Relevant left the chancellor and sought out Dr. Shpritzsvet once again. “Your universal deodorant definitely negates all emotions, not just those of hostility,” he told the scientist.

“Perhaps. In any case, it doesn’t matter. I have just run some tests with guinea pigs and the indications are that the effects are only temporary. They’ll wear off.”

“How soon?”

“I can’t say exactly. But probably it will be a matter of hours. Certainly no more than a day.”

“In that case,” Jonathan Relevant decided, “something had better be done to resolve this collegiate brouhaha before everybody regains their aggressions.” With this objective in mind, he left Dr. Shpritzsvet and set about arranging a gathering of the most pertinent people.

The meeting took place about an hour later in a conference room at the Administration Building. G. P. was present, representing the Afro-American Student Society. Minerva Kaufman was there for SDS. The chancellor, flanked by two aging alumni, represented the Harnell administration. Peter Glover came as an observer for the outside interests involved in the Science Research Institute. And Dr. Umpmeyer, Professor Rumpkis, and Mercy Altebopper were there for the faculty.

At the start of the session, they all had two things in common: lack of bodily odors and passivity. For a group with so many implicit differences between them, they were strangely friendly. Yet there was no relating, no touching of person to person. Hate was lacking, and so was love. And something else, Jonathan Relevant thought. Something . . . humanity! he decided. If there is no hate and there is no love, there can be no humanity.

Turn that around, and it might mean that you’re not human, boyo!

What is Jonathan Relevant?

Human, nevertheless!

Contradiction! Paradox!

Well, what's more human than that?

Another very small piece for the puzzle . . . and a hint that there might be other dimensions to it.

“Our demands are nonnegotiable.” G. P. was the first to speak. But his words lacked force. They seemed mouthed by rote, rather than delivered out of conviction.

“But we came here to negotiate,” the chancellor said reasonably. “The administration is prepared to work out a settlement as long as it’s not done under duress."

“Are you prepared to sever all government research contracts immediately?" Minerva Kaufman asked, resting her head on the chancellor’s shoulder. “The SDS wants that, abolition of R.O.T.C., plus the granting of all the black students’ demands.”

“My dear,” one of the alumni interjected, “you don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Yes,” the second alumni chimed in, his attitude both fatherly and detached, “if we cut off our research contracts we couldn’t afford to keep Harnell open.”

“Perhaps a compromise could be worked out whereby Condom-Inium removes only those projects which disturb you,” Peter Glover suggested.

They all looked surprised at his words. Peter Glover looked surprised himself. Mercy Altebopper blinked. Dr. Umpmeyer cupped his ear. Professor Rumpkis belched.

All three gestures signified approval of Glover’s words.

“We can’t abolish R.O.T.C., though,” the chancellor said. “There are some students who want it.”

“How about putting it up to a student referendum,” Jonathan Relevant suggested, “and abiding by a majority vote?”

“That’s a good idea.” The chancellor looked at Jonathan Relevant. “Say, who are you, anyway?” he inquired. “ I mean, what are you doing here? Do you represent the students, or the faculty, or what?”

“I was wondering the same thing,” Minerva said.

“Well, neither actually,” Jonathan Relevant told them.

“Then you really have no business being here,” the chancellor said mildly.

“I was just going to say that,” Minerva agreed.

The others all nodded and looked at Jonathan Relevant.

“If my presence bothers you, I’ll leave,” he said.

They looked at each other and shrugged. Nobody really cared. Jonathan Relevant stayed.

Most of the demands of the Afro-American students seem reasonable enough,” the chancellor granted. “But two of them present difficulties. I refer to the statue and to the demand for total amnesty.”

_ SDS has the same demands,” Minerva Kaufman interjected softly.

“The statue has to stay intact.” G. P. yawned. “It’s a matter of black manhood.”

“I think a compromise might be worked out here too,” Jonathan Relevant suggested. “That is, if the administration will go along with total amnesty.”

“But the statue is obscene!” one of the alumni said.

“Is it?” Jonathan Relevant asked. “Is it really?”

“Well, any case it’s a distortion of reality,” the other alumnus said. “At least I think it is. Isn’t it?” he asked G. P. directly.

“At your age do you really care?” the chancellor wondered.

“Some men never stop competing,” Peter Glover murmured. “It’s—-”

“—-the American way.” They all chimed in to finish the sentence for him. And then they all smiled at each other without rancor.

“Sure it’s an exaggeration,” G. P. admitted. “But so what? Lots of art is an exaggeration.”

“Somebody mentioned a compromise,” Professor Rumpkis remembered.

“Could be.” G. P. smiled sweetly. “But first what about amnesty?”

“I just don’t think the trustees would stand for it,” Chancellor Hardlign said sorrowfully. '

“Oh, I don’t know,” one of the alumni said. “Why be vengeful?”

Chancellor Hard1ign’s jaw dropped open and he stared at him in astonishment. “But before you said they should all be expelled and jailed,” he reminded the alumnus.

"Well, perhaps I was hasty,” the alumnus answered.

“Yes. These children seem reasonable enough.” The second alumnus beamed at G. P. and Minerva. “If we can settle things, I don’t see why we should be punitive.”

“What is the compromise on the statue?” Chancellor Hardlign asked.

Jonathan Relevant explained about covering the Angel Gabriel’s offending member with a Swahili loincloth. Broad smiles broke out as the group grasped the compromise. An ideal solution, they all agreed.

It was also agreed that they should disband for an hour while the agreement was drawn up by the chancellor’s secretary, and then return to sign it. They parted amicably, the chancellor and the alumni proudly sporting new love beads, G. P. and Minerva waving Harnell U pennants. Peace and tranquility marked all of their attitudes, each toward the others.

But when they reassembled, peace and tranquility were noticeably absent. Hostility had replaced them. Jonathan Relevant caught the first hint of the change when he bumped into G. P. on his way back to the Administration Building.

“Right on, Brother Cleaver!” G. P. greeted him with a clenched fist.

A moment later Jonathan Relevant met the chancellor. “The first thing we have to do is reestablish discipline,” he told Jonathan Relevant.

Jonathan Relevant sniffed as he reentered the meeting room. The effects of the universal deodorant had worn off. The odor of adrenal glands pumping up aggressions was marked. And if Jonathan Relevant had had any lingering doubts about it, they were dispelled by the opening words of one of the alumni.

“I’m not even going to sit down at the same table with her!” he snarled, pointing at Minerva Kaufman. “I know a wise-ass New York Jew commie when I see one!” The alumnus hated New York because the one and only time he’d been there a peace demonstrator had insulted him, a cabdriver had overcharged him, and a call girl had laughed in his face when he’d been unable to perform. He hated Jews because seventeen years ago he’d; bought a secondhand car from a Jewish salesman and the transmission had dropped out of it before he’d gone ten miles. He defined communists as anybody to the left of Lester Maddox and hated them because he was convinced they were responsible for the graduated income tax.

Minerva Kaufman flushed, started to answer, and then stopped herself. Deliberately, vehemently, she wrapped her arms around G. P. and kissed him. “B1ack and white together, we shall overcome!” she proclaimed in a voice shaking with anger.

“I heard that before, baby, and I don’t buy it!” G. P; disengaged himself. “I don’t want to be together with white folks. I just want them off my back.”

“That’s an extremely impertinent attitude, young man!” the chancellor remonstrated.

“Now how are we supposed to absorb these people into industry when that’s their attitude?” Peter Glover added.

“The hell with them!” the second alumnus said succinctly.

“History shows that if you give these radicals an inch--” Professor Rumpkis burped.

“The faculty has to side with the students against the fascistic old fogeys running this university!” Mercy Altebopper cried.

“Can’t any of you people speak up so a man can hear?” Dr. Umpmeyer bared his teeth.

“Excuse me,” Jonathan Relevant interrupted, “but I’d just like to remind you that the reason we all came back here was to sign the terms upon which we’ve all agreed.”

“I’m not going to sign anything committing Condom-Inium to limiting its researches at Harnell” Peter Glover declared.

“Listen,” Jonathan Relevant whispered in his ear urgently, “I have it on reliable authority that they’re prepared to give you a free hand at M.I.T.”

“Really? But what about the students protesting there?”

“The M.I.T. administration is going to take a firm stand. It will be a much more stable situation than here at Harnell.”

“Is that so?” Peter Glover searched the Melvin Laird-ish face of Jonathan Relevant. What he saw there convinced him. “Very well then.” He signed.

Jonathan Relevant put his arms around the shoulders of the two alumni and they huddled off to one side. “Listen,” he said to them, “we’re in a position to get in on the bottom of a very good thing. Condom-Inium holds the rights to that universal deodorant. You saw what happened here. The Pentagon will have to be impressed. That means government contracts. And we’re lucky. The move to M.I.T. is just the delay we need to get our brokers to start picking up Condom-Inium stock slowly without shooting the price up. What you’ve got here at Harnell is peanuts by comparison. So let’s sign this silly agreement and get back to business.”

“He’s right. We’d better get cracking before those goddam Wall Street Jews get wind of it.” The first alumnus signed.

“It’s Harnell’s loss, but what the hell! A man’s got to look out for himself.” The second alumnus signed.

The two alumni left with Peter Glover.

“Why is the administration trying to railroad this agreement though?” Mercy Altebopper’s eyes crossed with suspicion.

“I know that your doubts spring from the most idealistic motives,” Jonathan Relevant murmured to her, “but you also have to think of yourself. And there’s one thing you should remember.”

“What?”

“Tenure!”

Mercy Altebopper looked into the kindly face of Robert Donat playing kindly Mr. Chips. “Good-bye,” she said to kindly Jonathan Relevant as she signed and departed. Tenure.

Jonathan Relevant sidled up to Professor Rumpkis.

“Two very influential alumni have already approved this agreement,” he told the professor. “Are you going to stand opposed to them?”

“I hadn’t looked at it that way.” Professor Rumpkis broke wind. “What do you think?” he asked Jonathan Relevant deferentially.

“I think you should sign.” Jonathan Relevant belched.

The belch did it. Professor Rumpkis signed, burped his admiration and gratitute to Jonathan Relevant, and left.

“I don’t mind granting amnesty to most of the students involved,” the chancellor muttered. “They’re just dupes. But the leaders should be punished.”

“You must be kidding!” Minerva Kaufman was livid. “You don’t seriously expect us to agree to sell ourselves down the river!”

“Perhaps a compromise . . .” Dr. Umpmeyer suggested.

“Like maybe just shaft the black leaders?” G. P. sneered sarcastically.

“Chancellor.” Jonathan Relevant took him aside. “Do you know how leaders are made?”

“I don’t think I follow you, sir.”

“Leaders are made by the people who oppose them,” Jonathan Relevant said earnestly. “The more important the man in opposition, the more important he makes the person heading up the other side. And you are a very important man, Chancellor.” ‘

“Thank you, sir.”

“Right now those two” — Jonathan Relevant indicated G. P. and Minerva—“lead two small groups. If you punish them, then what you’re doing is broadening their base of power. Many students will follow them out of sympathy.”

“Are you saying that I’ll make them martyrs?”

“Not quite that. But you will increase their importance and their power as leaders. Whereas if you grant them amnesty, along with everybody else, to some extent they’ll merge back into the crowd.”

“I don’t know. . . .” The chancellor drummed his fingers on the table.

“And there’s one other thing,” Jonathan Relevant pointed out. “You’ve already agreed. In a sense, if you don’t sign, you’ll be going back on your word.”

“You’d put it that strongly?”

“I’d be disappointed in you.” Jonathan Relevant looked deep into the chancellor’s eyes. '

“Oh! Well, in that case . . .” The Chancellor signed.

Jonathan Relevant moved to G.P. and Minerva. “Look, you two,” he said, “you’ve gotten all of your demands. You’d be crazy not to sign.”

“I don’t know.” G. P. scratched his head. “I was thinking we should have included something in there about freeing Bobby Seale.”

“Save it for next time!” Jonathan Relevant told him.

“Right on, Eldridge.” G. P. signed.

“Suppose the Rotsy referendum doesn’t come out our way?” Minerva wondered.

“You don’t have much faith, do you?” Jonathan Relevant shook his head sadly.

“I suppose if we conduct an educational campaign it’ll be all right.” Minerva signed.

Jonathan Relevant turned toward Dr. Umpmeyer, but before he could speak the door to the room burst open and Hardcore entered, breathing hard. “Man!” He leveled an accusing finger at G. P. “I hear you sellin’ out!”

“What do you mean?” G. P. was taken aback.

“I hear you ’ greed to cover up Gabe’s dingus!”

“Well, yes, but —”

“Uncle Tom!”

“Now wait a minute—”

“I ain’t waitin’ no minute, boy! You college cats think you so smart you almos’ White! Well, we a lot tougher ’n that, an’ we ain’t buyin’ no tokenism!”

“But it’s a Swahili loincloth!” G. P. tried to explain.

“That manhood belong to us, baby! That’s my pecker hangin’ off Ol’ Gabe much as yours. An’ I wants it out there where Whitey can see what black manhood is.”

“He’s right.” G. P. sighed and reached for the paper.

“What are you doing?” Jonathan Relevant asked.

“Hell, Eldridge, the ghetto’s where it’s at. Not here at the white man’s college. I’m going to scratch my name off that agreement. We’re just going to have to go on fighting for Angel Gabriel’s black manhood.”

“Nonsense!” Dr. Umpmeyer took everybody by surprise. “The statue is not of the Angel Gabriel,” he explained, “and if it was, the Angel Gabriel wouldn’t be a black.”

“More ofay doubletalk!” Hardcore folded his arms.

“I don’t understand.” Even the chancellor was puzzled.

“I’ve done a little research,” Dr. Umpmeyer said calmly, smiling at the reassuring hum of his new hearing aid. “And I’ve found out that the statue we’re talking about was never intended to represent a black man—or a black angel for that matter.”

“Man, you blind? That statue black!” Hardcore snarled.

“It looks black. But it’s not. Take a knife and scratch at the surface and you’ll see what I mean.”

“You don’t mean it’s white?” G. P.’s brain was whirling.

“No. It’s red.”

“Huh?” Couched in different ways, that was the reaction of all of them.

“The statue was intended to be a representation of Chief White Flag, the leader of the tribe which once inhabited the land on which Harnell was built. The tribe was wiped out to the last man during an interracial peace parley.”

“So much for the first Brotherhood Week,” Jonathan Relevant murmured.

“It seems one of the white settlers present at the parley choked to death on the peace pipe and the other Whites assumed the Indians had deliberately poisoned him and went berserk. It was a massacre, and it culminated in the death of Chief White Flag. Just before he died, realizing that the Whites would take over the tribe’s land, he put a very strange curse on it. According to the legend, he suggested that the land be used to educate white men and prophesied that as the white man got smarter his education would destroy him.”

Of them all, only Jonathan Relevant fully comprehended that.

“Wait a minute!” G. P. interrupted. “If it’s a statue of an Indian, how come it’s been accepted as a statue of the black Angel Gabriel all these years.

“During the Civil War Union troops marched through this area and they pillaged and burned. But Old Man Harnell met them with open arms, claiming to be a Union sympathizer. He did a lot of things to make it seem credible. One of the things he did was paint the statue black and tell Northern officers he’d been educating Negroes on the sly. He made them believe it was a symbol-—the Angel Gabriel opening the gates to freedom.”

“Hey, man! If it’s a Indian, then how come ain’t got no dingus?” Hardcore wanted to know.

“That’s how they killed Chief White Flag,” Dr. Umpmeyer explained. “They castrated him—s1owly.”

“Art imitates life,” Jonathan Relevant observed.

“What do you think?” G. P. put the question directly to Hardcore.

“Makes no never-mind! Ain’t gonna sell our red brothers down Whitey’s river neither!” Hardcore grabbed the agreement, tore it into little pieces, and scattered it like confetti over the room. “An’ that’s where it’s at!” he announced. “Just where it was at before!”

Before the others could react, the door to the room was flung open and Leander Pigbaigh came hurtling through it with two beefy men right behind him. His abrupt entrance had caught him in midsentence: “——an’ since the Cee Ah Aih’s ’sponsible foah see-curity, that takes pree-cee-dence ovah youah jurisdiction an’ y’all got no right tew—”

“Jonathan Relevant!” Cutting Pigbaigh off, one of the men boomed out the name in a voice as beefy as he was himself. “Yes?” Jonathan Relevant acknowledged his identity.

“I hereby serve you with this subpoena ordering your appearance before the Senate Sub-Committee on Un-American Indian Affairs at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.” He handed Jonathan Relevant an official-looking document. “I further inform you that we are empowered to escort you to Washington immediately.”

“But who are you?” Jonathan Relevant asked mildly.

“Here are my credentials, sir.” He whipped out his wallet and shoved a card under Jonathan Relevant’s nose.

“Official Special Investigator for the Sub-Committee.”

“But this is an A & S credit card,” Jonathan Relevant observed.

“Are you questioning our authority, sir?” Despite the automatic deference Jonathan Relevant evoked from him, there was an ominous note in his voice.

“It’s ’ficial awl right, Colonel,” Pigbaigh told Jonathan Relevant in a resigned tone of voice.

“But an A & S credit card?”

“See-curity reasons. They got theah methods same’s we got ouahs. The thang is, they’s yew-surpin’ Cee Ah Aih ’thority. Strom’s gonna heah ’bout this!” Pigbaigh told the special agents.

“He already knows.” The special investigator pulled the rug out from under Pigbaigh.

“Alla same, Ah’m ’sponsible foah the Colonel heah, an’ Ah’m goin’ ’long with him to protec’ Cee Ah Aih int’rests.”

“All right. There’s a car waiting outside.”

“Just a minute,” Jonathan Relevant said. “Nothing’s been settled here. If we leave now, what’s going to happen at Harnell?”

“That’s not our concern. Let’s go.” The first investigator led the way outside. The second one brought up the rear, gently prodding Jonathan Relevant.

A moment later, he was seated in the back of a limousine, between Leander Pigbaigh and one of the investigators, on the way to catch the special plane waiting to take them to Washington. As the car pulled away, Jonathan Relevant noticed a group of students assembling outside the Administration Building. He remembered that the statue was still inside. The students were all dressed in Indian costumes and carrying protest signs. “GIVE THE INDIAN BACK HIS MANHOOD!” summed them up. They were chanting loudly and forming into a circle for a war dance. Jonathan Relevant did a double-take when he recognized the leader of the group. It was the CIA agent.

“Ouah boys are always on the job!” Leander Pigbaigh had spotted him too. “Ah find that reassurin’. America nevah sleeps!”

Insomnia! Jonathan Relevant sighed. That’s some domestic policy!

CHAPTER ELEVEN

At nine o’clock the next morning, an hour before the proceedings were due to start, Jonathan Relevant was escorted to an anteroom outside the Senate chamber where the sub-committee’s hearings were being held. He was left alone there. The two special investigators stationed themselves outside each of the doors leading to the anteroom. That they were functioning as guards was obvious.

It was about a quarter past nine when one of the doors opened and the civvy sentry admitted a man in his late fifties with a mane of flowing, rather long gray hair. The newcomer’s demeanor was dignified; he was simply dressed. He wore a breechcloth and a headband with one feather sticking up from it. He carried an attaché case. His build was muscular, the features of his face right off a one-cent piece, circa 1900.

“How do you do?” He greeted Jonathan Relevant in a voice that was both warm and cultured, a voice that lent each syllable its full, clear weight. “I am Judge Tutored Foot. I am to act as your counsel before the sub-committee -—with your permission, of course.” His blue eyes studied Jonathan Relevant. “Yes,” he said after a moment, “I see that you are.”

“Are what?”

“An Indian. We weren’t really sure, you know.”

“We?”

“The Board of Chiefs elected to govern Alcatraz. I’m one of them.”

“I’m a little confused,” Jonathan Relevant confessed.

“Perfectly understandable. Things have happened so fast that I’m a little confused myself. Let me tell you what I know—-which isn’t much—and then you can fill me in on your involvement.”

“All right,” Jonathan Relevant agreed.

“Some time last night a message reached Alcatraz,” Judge Tutored Foot began.

“A message?”

“Yes. It had been relayed by drum from San Francisco—”

“By drum--”

“-—and passed on by smoke signal to Alcatraz.”

“By smoke signal-—-”

“Yes. . . . Anyway, according to the message, there was a confrontation between the Indians at Harnell and the white power structure shaping up. It also mentioned that you had been spirited away by US. government agents. It was unclear as to whether or not you were an Indian. Well, you can see the position that put us in!”

“I’m afraid I don’t—”

“Well, you know that Alcatraz is an independent country?”

“Oh . . . yes.” Jonathan Relevant was noncommittal. “Yes. It’s been some time now since the Indians reclaimed Alcatraz and subsequently issued our Declaration of Independence from the white colonial rule of the United States government. However, our position is ticklish, and this has a bearing on your case. You see, there is still no official recognition of our sovereign status by the United States government.”

“I see.”

“Yes. We recognize them, but they don’t recognize us. Therefore, there has been no exchange of ambassadors. There are no official channels of communication between us. Unofficially, our envoys in Luxembourg hold talks. But officially, the United States won’t even admit that the talks take place. To do so would be to grant the Alcatraz diplomats a status which by inference would acknowledge the legitimacy of our government. Do you understand?”

“No.”

“Neither do we. Presumably the U.S. State Department which sets the policy understands—-but I have my doubts. Anyway, since the United States doesn’t grant the fact of our independence, it is forced into the position of not granting the fact that American Indians on Alcatraz have voluntarily given up their citizenship in the United States. Officially, then, we are still U.S. citizens and free to move about the country. In a way, this works to our advantage. You see, it’s a one-way street. We have very strict immigration laws on Alcatraz. Under no circumstances do we grant citizenship to white aliens. Even the rules allowing white aliens to visit are very strict. This may seem harsh, but history has shown us the unwiseness of permitting the white race free access to our territory. An old Cherokee proverb sums it up: ‘Hospitality to the white man is like setting out food to feed the cockroaches. They quickly return with all their friends and relatives and eat all of your food as well as the food you have set out for them.’ And then, I might add, they level the growing place of the food, suck the oil from the ground, and make a motion picture to show how brave they are in the face of the atrocities committed by the savage, heathen redman. . . . So our immigration quota for whites is zero.”

“That sounds sensible,” Jonathan Relevant granted.

“However, to get back to your case, when the Board of Chiefs heard that an unliberated Indian had been seized by the U.S. government under circumstances that are still confused in my mind, it was decided that I be sent here to offer help and advice.”

“Why you? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“Prior to becoming a citizen of Alcatraz, I sat on a high bench of the federal court system—just below the Supreme Court, as a matter of fact,” Judge Tutored Foot told him. “It was felt that my reputation might be an asset in any proceedings you face.”

“Am I facing some sort of charges?”

“As I understand it, not at the moment. You’ve merely been summoned to appear as a witness in connection with the Harnell disturbances. Still, there are things about your position which I confess frankly I don’t understand myself.”

“Such as?”

“You seem to be very important to a great many people -—people who are themselves very important-—-for reasons which aren’t clear to me.”

“What people?”

“This sub-committee, for one. And the Russians . . ."

“The Russians?”

“Yes. They’ve sent us word through our ambassador in Moscow that they will support Alcatraz to the fullest in any action Alcatraz takes in your behalf. On the other hand, the President of the United States is interested.”

“For or against?”

“I’m not sure. All I can tell you is that he’s expedited my presence here and has let it be known to me that he Would not look unkindly on anything I do which keeps the power of the committee in check.”

One of the doors opened and one of the guards gestured to Judge Tutored Foot. The judge went over to him, spoke a moment, and then returned to Jonathan Relevant. “The sub-committee is about to convene,” he told him. “You’re the only witness scheduled today. So they’ll be calling us soon. If you have any other questions, now is the time to ask them.”

“I have one question,” Jonathan Relevant told him.

“Yes?”

“Don’t you find it drafty in that breechcloth?”

“It’s not just drafty. It’s damned uncomfortable. Outside of ready access for purposes of scratching, it’s a completely impractical garment for the world today. Either I find my bare behind sticking to leatherette, or else I’m the victim of self-imposed strangulated hernia when the damn thing rides up on me!”

“Then why do you wear it?”

“Ordinarily I don’t. On Alcatraz I Wear an ordinary blue-serge suit. But off the ‘Rock,’ it becomes a matter of image—sort of a reminder to Whitey that the genocide of the redman isn’t quite complete yet, a reminder that he shouldn’t sleep too soundly nights, a reminder—hopefully—to make his guilty scalp itch.”

The door to the hearing chamber opened again. The guard stood aside, indicating that they should enter. Jonathan Relevant followed Judge Tutored Foot into the other room. “It’s a closed hearing,” the judge whispered to Jonathan Relevant as they walked down the aisle. “The press and the public are excluded.”

“Why are their backs to us?” Jonathan indicated the long table at which the Senators were sitting. “And why is there that glass wall between their table and ours?”

“The wall is bulletproof. Some of the witnesses at these hearings have been known to become violent. It’s there to protect the Senators. It’s called a ‘Van Gogh.’ ”

“Why is it called that?”

“It was put up after an incident involving Senator Van Gogh, head of the special Senate sub-committee to investigate Communist infiltration into the field of modern painting. Senator Van Gogh told an artist who was a witness before the committee that his work struck him as obscure. The artist responded by hurling a palette knife which sliced off the Senator’s left ear.”

“Well, I suppose art demands some sacrifices,” Jonathan Relevant observed. “But I still don’t understand Why they’re sitting with their backs to us.”

“To keep from being harassed.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You see this microphone here? Well, you speak to the sub-committee through it. In the past, when witnesses became disruptive, the mike would be shut off. Then, during the investigation into the Yippies, some of the disruptive witnesses resorted to visual abuse. A few of them lowered their pants and ‘mooned’ at the Senators. Some disrobed completely. Some had various obscene words tattooed on various parts of their anatomies. Anyway, since those hearings, the Senators don’t face the witnesses.”

“It doesn’t sound like a very communicative atmosphere. Why don’t they just interrogate the witnesses over the telephone?”

“They probably would if they weren’t afraid that the wires were tapped.”

“You mean by some other government agency?”

“Yes. And by each other. . . . Ahh, the chairman has arrived.”

“Which one is he?”

“The one in the center with the completely bald dome with the corrugations. Senator Schizoid from South Carolina.”

“Who are the others?”

“From left to right, the gray head parted in the center is Senator Compromise from Connecticut, the crew-cut no-neck is Senator Minstrel from California, then Senator Schizoid, the black neck-nape is the Negro Senator Carver from Massachusetts, and the redheaded fringe shaped like a target is Senator Wingright from Arizona. Compromise and Carver are the two moderates on the sub-committee. The others are pretty conservative. . . . Here we go. They’re going to swear you in.”

A clerk with his back to Jonathan Relevant administered the oath. Then the corrugated bald dome bobbed and Senator Schizoid kicked off the questioning. “Your name is Jonathan Relevant and counsel representing you is Judge Tutored Foot.”

“Yes, sir.” Jonathan Relevant felt no click of identity.

“Now that’s downright interesting. Now, Mr. Relevant, just exactly what is your connection with the communist-inspired insurrection of savages on Alcatraz Island?”

“There is none.” With their backs to him, that automatic rapport didn’t work.

“Then how do you explain your selection of counsel.”

“I object.” Judge Tutored Foot was on his feet. “I’m going to instruct my client not to answer that question on the grounds that it’s not germane to the reason he was called to give testimony before this sub-committee.”

“All right, Judge Foot.” The wrinkled dome nodded good-humoredly. “I’ll withdraw the question. You people are right quick on the uptake. Tricky too. I’m always telling my friends at the Defense Department we could learn a thing or two from those savages.”

“Thank you, Senator. We’ll do our best to teach you a thing or two.” Judge Foot sat back down.

“All right, Mr. Relevant,” Senator Schizoid continued. “Are you a communist?”

“No.”

“Are you acquainted with one Abby Hoffman?”

“N0."

“Dave Dellinger?"

“N0.”

“Jerry Rubin?”

“No.”

“Aaron Burr?”

“No.”

“Benedict Arnold?”

“No.”

“Tom Hayden?”

“No.”

“Rennie Davis?”

“No.”

“But you do know who these people are?”

“Yes?”

“Well, we make progress. Now, in August of 1968 did you cross the Illinois state line as part of a conspiracy to —"

“Objection.” Judge Tutored Foot interrupted. “Harnell University is not in the State of Illinois. I move that all of these questions and answers be stricken from the record as not pertinent to these proceedings.”

“What’s he doing off the reservation anyway?” The red-fringed head of Senator Wingright wagged back and forth angrily.

“Mr. Chairman, couldn’t we get right down to the meat of the matter?” Senator Compromise suggested.

“I defer to the judgment of the senior Senator from Connecticut.” The corrugated bald dome bowed mockingly.

“All right, Mr. Relevant, let’s get to Harnell. Now we know that one of the things that always triggers these college disturbances is the arrival of an outside agitator. You do admit that the trouble there started right after your arrival on the campus?”

“Yes, sir. But I had nothing to do with it.”

“But you had direct contact with the Russians just prior to your arrival at Harnell. Is that correct?”

“Well, yes. But-—”

“And then there were disturbances, violence involving young commies and nig—Nee-groes.”

“That’s true. But—”

“And now you show up here with a heathen Indian lawyer involved in yet another insurrection by a godless group of savages who we have good reason to think are being manipulated by Moscow or Peking or Havana, or all three. Wouldn’t you say that was an interesting coincidence, Mr. Relevant?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re beating around the bush, Orville,” Senator Wingright interrupted. “Let me have a crack at him. Now then, Mr. Witness, are you trying to tell us that the trouble at Harnell wasn’t part of the overall communist conspiracy to wreck the educational structure of this country?”

“I don’t believe so. I think it was just a reaction on the part of black students to a symbol that—”

“You mean the statue?” Senator Carver interrupted.

“Yes, sir.”

“But we have it on good authority that the statue is of an Indian. Why should that arouse the black students?” Senator Carver wanted to know.

“Senator Wingright was talking,” Senator Schizoid pointed out to Senator Carver. “And you interrupted him.”

“I beg the Senator’s pardon.”

“Don’t you go getting uppity now,” Senator Schizoid cautioned. “Remember your place. As for you,” he told Jonathan Relevant, “answer the question.”

“The black students didn’t know it was a statue of an Indian. They thought it was a statue of a black man.”

“You reckon they’re not too bright?” Senator Schizoid wondered.

Before Jonathan Relevant could respond, Senator Minstrel got into the act. “Let’s assume the black boys were dupes,” he said. “But what about those middle-class white radical kids? Who told them what to do?”

“Nobody.”

“Are you trying to say those kids just started wrecking the college on their own initiative?”

“Yes.”

“Well, let me tell you that in California, we know better. We know those kids are propagandized and trained by the commies. And we handle them accordingly. They’re subversives and we shoot them!”

“That should bring them to their senses,” Jonathan Relevant murmured.

“Love America, or leave it!” Senator Minstrel shouted.

“Keep calm, George.” Senator Wingright tried to soothe him.

“I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy . . .” Senator Minstrel broke into song and performed a little two-step.

“Very nice, George.” Senator Schizoid applauded politely. “But would you sit down now so we can get on with this hearing? Thanks. Now, Mr. Relevant, we’re specifically concerned with who instigated the involvement of Indian students in the riots at Harnell.”

“A CIA agent. If anybody instigated them, he did.”

“The Witness is not being responsive to the question!” Senator Wingright was indignant.

“Now just hold on a minute,” Senator Compromise spoke up. “Don’t harass the witness. What he’s saying interests me very much. The CIA! Hmm. Am I to understand that there was a CIA provocateur among the students?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And he was instrumental in provoking the trouble at Harnell?”

“Some of it. Yes, sir.”

“I see.” Senator Compromise jotted down some notes.

“Now, come on, Irving.” Senator Schizoid spoke to Senator Compromise in a wheedling tone. “You don’t want to open that can of worms.”

“Why not?” Senator Compromise asked.

“Because,” Senator Schizoid whispered, “Strom wouldn't like it.”

Senator Comprornise’s neck turned pale and he tore up the slip of paper.

Senator Wingright took over the questioning. “Mr. Witness, it has been suggested that a certain notorious pediatrician has through his nefarious theories of permissiveness undermined the discipline which is the very basis of our American system. It has been further suggested that this doctor has done this because he is working for the communists. This man has not only undermined the authority of parents and the respect of youth for them, he has also set about undermining the American military system, which is the foundation of the security of the United States. Are you familiar with the man of whom I am speaking?”

“I know of him. Yes, sir.”

“How would you characterize his role in the trouble at Harnell.”

“As far as I know, he isn’t involved.”

“How can you say that, Mr. Witness?” Senator Schizoid’s corrugated skull turned livid. “Have you any idea what percentage of the student body at Harnell were raised by the insidious theories of perrnissiveness promulgated by this man?”

“No, sir.”

“Over ninety percent! Over ninety percent, Mr. Witness! What do you have to say to that?”

“I’m afraid I don’t see—”

“You don’t see!” The corrugations rippled ominously. “Do you realize that this doctrine is opposed to toilet training? Do you know what that means?”

“A lot of dirty diapers,” Jonathan Relevant guessed.

“Don’t be flippant, Mr. Witness! It means lack of discipline! It means that we have raised a generation of savages! It means that all of the students at Harnell are Indians!”

“My God, if he’s right,” Judge Tutored Foot Whispered, “we may yet get the country back.”

“Why would you want it?” Jonathan Relevant wondered.

“The witness has not responded to the question,” Senator Wingright pointed out.

“I’ll rephrase the question,” Senator Schizoid decided. “Now then, Mr. Relevant, do you believe that American children should be denied the discipline of toilet training?"

“Yes.”

“I see.” The corrugations compressed disapprovingly. “And do you believe that children should be allowed to challenge the wisdom of their elders?”

“I do.”

“Then I assume that you believe that high-school-age children should be able to tell their teachers what to teach?”

“Well, they should certainly be able to tell their teachers what they want to learn. If they’re being taught physics and chemistry and their observation of the world around them shows that these sciences are polluting the atmosphere and the oceans, then they should be able to point out to their teachers that the need is not to educate another generation of technicians, but rather to train large numbers of conservationists. If the counselors in their schools, as the evidence indicates, are perpetuating economic racism by guiding minority-group members into dead-end occupations while middle-class white kids are being pointed toward the more lucrative professions, then I think the kids have the right to insist on a say in the selection of these advisers, a voice that will result in the appointment of counselors more sensitive to their needs. There are other examples. . . .”

“In other words”-—-Senator Schizoid’s voice was heavy with sarcasm—“the young should instruct the old; the students should teach the teachers. The younger you are, the smarter you are; the older you are, the dumber you are.”

“I didn’t say that,” Jonathan Relevant protested mildly. “But I would say that the younger you are, the less corrupted you’ve had a chance to become. The older you are, the more you’ve been inculcated with the values of a society that has become lemminglike.”

“Values!” Senator Wingright’s red fringe danced on his neck. “That’s just what we’re talking about! These kids today, those kids at Harnell, are running amok, destroying all the values of the society!”

“I don’t think so.” Jonathan Relevant was thoughtful. “I think they’re conscious—many of them, anyway—of the values, but feel that their elders are the ones who have betrayed those values. Harnell is a good example. They hear about democracy-—the students, I mean—-and their lives are regulated by an administrative autocracy. They are taught the idealism of the American Revolution and find their school cooperating in the research and development of new weapons to be used in the squelching of agrarian revolutions in other countries. They believe in equality and each day in dozens of ways, minority-group students at Harnell are denied equality. It’s not the values the students are attacking—not the majority of them, anyway. It’s the dichotomy between the ideals and the performance. The older generation accepts that dichotomy. The rebellious students want to destroy it. The real target is hypocrisy.”

“But,” Senator Compromise interjected, “if the young-— as epitomized by the campus rebels at Harnell-—-are allowed to proceed unchecked, they will destroy the fabric of society and the ideals they profess to believe in along with it. They make no distinction between the baby and the bath water. Both will go down the drain!”

“Some make no distinction,” Jonathan Relevant admitted. “But others do. You have to have faith that the more balanced view will prevail. The future generation will have to fight that out with one another. But right now, they can’t do that because their elders won’t let them. So the first order of business for them is confrontation with the mess their elders have bequeathed them.”

“And what about their violence?” Senator Carver’s black head bowed as if under a heavy weight. “Do you condone that?”

“No. But I understand it. Violence is relative. You get very upset over the property damage resulting from student disturbances. Yet over a thousand lives a week are being lost in a war which you gentlemen have it within your power to stop and while some of you oppose it none of vou have instituted the kind of legislative action which could bring it to a halt. This is the very sort of thing the students are talking about. How can you deplore their violence and let this much greater violence continue? How can you compare the harassment of a General Electric recruiter with the bombing and the slaughter that goes on every day? This is what they’re saying.”

“But aren’t they being untrue to their own principles?” Senator Carver wondered. “If they deplore violence and then act violently, aren’t they falling into the same trap of hypocrisy they accuse us of perpetuating?”

“Yes.” Jonathan Relevant sighed. “The Weathermen may well be the Chicago police force of tomorrow. But if it works out that way, you gentlemen will bear a large share of the responsibility. You’re the government. By your insensitivity to the reasonable demands of the moderates in the student movements and the black movements and the other movements for social reforms, you’re saying no to peaceful change and giving weight to those who claim violent revolution is the only answer. But there still may be time. . . .”

“Now it’s out there!” Senator Minstrel’s crew cut bristled. “Revolution! That’s what we’re really talking about! I’ve been sitting here listening for the past twenty minutes, and I haven’t understood one word of this gibberish. But revolution! That I understand! Now let’s stop all this effete hogwash and talk about what’s really happening at Harnell. Mr. Witness, who’s behind it? That’s what we want to know! The Black Panthers?”

“They’re not involved.”

“The communists?”

“No, sir.”

“Who then?”

“The students. First the Afro-American-”

“Aha!” Senator Schizoid thumped the table. “Then you admit that the nig-—-Nee-groes started the trouble?”

“Well, yes.”

“But who provoked them, Mr. Witness. That’s the question! Who provoked them?”

“You did.” Jonathan Relevant told him calmly.

“Me?” Senator Schizoid’s voice shot up the scale.

“Not you specifically. You generally. The whites in America who hold power. The white administration at Harnell which gave them a runaround of the sort that’s become standard procedure at most American colleges. Frustration was what lay behind the explosion at Harnell. Black frustration at the stalling. White frustration at red tape designed to maintain the status quo. When the young people— black and white— are constantly frustrated by the immovability of the power structure, they are driven to the streets.”

“But change can’t come about overnight,” Senator Carver pointed out.

“That‘s right,” Senator Compromise agreed. “It takes time.”

“There is no time!” Jonathan Relevant told them earnestly. “That’s what the kids see and you don’t. You think they’re just after instant gratification—that’s what you meant before when you talked about their permissive upbringing. But it isn’t that. It’s that there literally isn’t time. The paranoia of the military is demonstrable. We’re moments away from pushing the button, firing the missiles, setting off the holocaust. Pollution has passed the point of mere threat. It’s here. It’s killing people daily. Our air is very close to being unbreathable NOW! Our water is almost undrinkable NOW! Our soil is almost non-arable NOW! Our cities are uninhabitable and the residents of the ghettos are dying NOW! You simply don’t have the luxury of time. This is the point the young people grasp, the point you miss.”

“This man is a communist!” Senator Schizoid decided. “And I recommend to this sub-committee that we recommend to the Justice Department that he be prosecuted as such. It’s quite obvious to me that he crossed the state line to spread his poisonous doctrines and to foment riot at Harnell University.”

“The sub-committee is exceeding its authority!” Judge Tutored Foot was on his feet. “Your function is to investigate with the purpose of recommending legislation. Not to instigate prosecutions!”

“I recommend we have that savage arrested along with him,” Senator Wingright suggested.

“But I didn’t foment the riot!” Jonathan Relevant pro- tested.

The sub-committee ignored him and went into a huddle.

If I could only get them to look at me, Jonathan Relevant was thinking. All along he’d felt the frustration of not having established that automatic rapport which was such an integral function of his being. Without eye contact it eluded him and left him incomplete. It’s just what they do to the blacks and the students, he reflected. Dehumanization! That's what it’s called. Dehumanization!

The sub-committee had arrived at a decision. There were three votes to hold Jonathan Relevant and Judge Tutored Foot for federal prosecution. Senators Compromise and Carver abstained. Marshals were summoned to take them into custody.

“Won’t you look at me?” Jonathan Relevant tried one more time as the marshals were leading them away.

The backs of the sub-committee stared silently back at him. That was their answer. They weren’t about to look at him. They weren’t about to look at anything that threatened them.

Dehumanization!

CHAPTER TWELVE

Follow the bouncing ball, and sing along . . .

As Jonathan Relevant and Judge Tutored Foot were on their way to jail, word of the sub-committee action reached the President. While they were being fingerprinted, the President was dialing a certain confidential number. “Strom . . .” he said with deference in his voice when the call was answered. About the time the iron door of the detention cell clanged shut behind them, Senator Schizoid was answering his telephone. “Strom . . .” he said with even more deference than the President as he recognized the voice on the other end. Twenty minutes after they’d been jailed, Jonathan Relevant and Judge Tutored Foot were released.

Sing along with Strom . . .

More federal marshals greeted them as they emerged into the fresh air of Washington. Judge Foot was to be escorted to a plane waiting to take him back to Alcatraz. Jonathan Relevant was to be escorted to the White House.

“When you see the President,” Judge Foot told Jonathan Relevant as they parted, “you might pass the word that certain militant black leaders have been consulting with us about the effects of ‘benign neglect’ on American Indians. I know it’s an abstract point, but you might mention that I was wondering if he—the President—- sees any reactive connection between the slaughtering of the buffalo herds and the breakfast programs of groups like the Black Panthers and the Young Lords.”

“I doubt it.” Jonathan Relevant bid the Judge good-bye as he was escorted past the sentry at the gate to the White House grounds.

Inside the White House he was conducted to the office of the President’s male secretary. The marshals faded away. The secretary checked the President’s availability with a fast phone call and then motioned to Jonathan Relevant to follow him. A moment later Jonathan Relevant was face to face with the President of the United States.

“Mr. President, may I present Jonathan Relevant?” The President’s male secretary stayed just long enough to watch them shake hands, and then faded unobtrusively from the room.

The President waved Jonathan Relevant to a chair and sat down himself. “So you’re Jonathan Relevant.” The President studied him a moment. He approved of what he saw.

Jonathan Relevant had a ski-slope nose, slightly kinky hair, a corrugated forehead, a prominent Adam's apple, somewhat beady eyes set close together, and pronounced five-o’clock shadow. The lines of middle age furrowing his face seemed to speak of battles lost and persecution complex. The lantern jaw stuck out like a mountain west of the Rockies and bespoke the sort of stubbornness that just might be insensitive to the opinions of others, no matter how great their numbers. There was a furtive quality about him that is usually found only in used-car salesmen, professional poker players, and experienced politicians.

The President decided that whatever else Jonathan Relevant might be, he most certainly was a politician. He reminded the President of someone, but he couldn’t think who. Still, the President sensed immediately that they spoke the same language, the language of smoke-filled rooms, oil depletion allowances, law and order, status quo logrolling, God, country, and motherhood.

“We have things to talk about,” the President told Jonathan Relevant, “but first I’d like to catch the six-o’clock news. Would you mind watching it with me?”

“Of course not, Mr. President.”

“Good.” The President turned on the TV set and settled back to watch.

“The Six-O’Clock News is brought to you by the Nuclear Defense Corporation,” an announcer in the uniform of a four-star general proclaimed in clipped tones. “Remember, ‘One Man, One Bomb’ is our motto. And our motto is your security, Mr. and Mrs. America. . . . Now here’s the Vice President of the United States with the News of the Day.”

“Good evening, loyal Americans everywhere.” The plastic visage of the Veep replaced the announcer on the screen. “The administration is proud to bring you a completely unbiased wrap-up of news around the world. First, Vietnam . . . The administration has decided not to take action on the Thieu-Ky black-market operation for two reasons. First, according to a spokesman for the President, it would not be in the democratic tradition for us to interfere in the internal affairs of another country. And second, according to the Economic Advisory Council, any alteration in the business practices of the South Vietnam government would have a far more deleterious effect on the American business community and perhaps on the economy as a whole than it would have on the Saigon officials involved—since their money is in Swiss banks. Thus the administration has wisely decided to continue our aid program at its present level on the theory that maintaining the status-quo economy in South Vietnam is in our national interest and in the hope that some of the benefits will trickle back to the United States via those American officers cooperating with Premier Thieu’s business operations. . . . In the democratic tradition, a small group of ten million antiwar commie dupes were allowed to demonstrate within a reasonable distance of the White House today. The effeminate dissidents gathered in Philadelphia and marched as far as Baltimore before government forces regretfully had to turn them back because they had become violent. Leaders of the march encouraged the demonstrators to pelt the police with flowers, and so government forces were forced to nip the potential riot in the bud by dropping napalm on a ten-square-block area, illegally occupied by the fleeing demonstrators. The Mayor of Baltimore issued a statement in favor of the federal action and pointed out that the razed area was mainly in the ghetto and had been due for urban renewal in any case. This way, the mayor added, the city wouldn’t be faced with the problem of relocation. . . . The President issued a statement reassuring loyal Americans that he would not be swayed from his Vietnam policy by this small, vocal minority, most of whom, in any case, had been wiped out. . . . The Justice Department announced that they were issuing a warrant for any rioters who had escaped the napalm and planned to press riot conspiracy charges against them. . . . In Chicago, the Justice Department is already involved in the latest of a series of trials growing out of conspiracy charges. The defendants are the American Bar Association, an organization only recently placed on the Attorney General’s subversive list. The charges against the association stem from their defense of the lawyers who were jailed for defending the lawyers who were jailed for defending the lawyers who were jailed for defending the eight commies involved in demonstrations at the Democratic Convention in Chicago some years back. The presiding judge is Julius Hoffman, who, in this humble commentator’s opinion, is living proof that in America senility is no bar to performing one’s patriotic duty. With the approval of Chicago’s Mayor Daley, Judge Hoffman has arranged for the defendants to watch the trial on television in the dungeons recently constructed under the Cook County Jail. Thus American jurisprudence safeguards the rights of the accused no matter how heinous their behavior. The gags and chains, however, have regretfully remained because the disruptive tactics of the prisoners’ screaming “Right on, Bobby!” may instigate the other prisoners to violence. Such precautions seem only right when one remembers how Bobby Seale himself tore at the fabric of our legal structure by his outrageous and disruptive demands for legal representation. Remembering this, I’d like to say a word to those bleeding hearts who keep whining about the genocide practiced on the Black Panthers. It’s just this: Genocide in the name of internal security is no crime! . . .

“Here in Washington, the Senate approved the Administration Draft Reform Bill this afternoon. The bill has been sent to the President for his signature. Under its provisions, the draft age has been dropped to twelve years and the voting age has been raised to thirty-five. Thus the President is fulfilling his promise to bring the country together and to stem the rising tide of anti-Americanism among the younger generation. I’d like to assure listeners that I am expressing no bias whatsoever, but only common sense, when I say that the military experience will teach our young people the meaning and responsibilities of patriotism so that if they reach voting age they’ll be able to cast their ballots with full appreciation of the American ideal. . . .

“The American ideal received a typically distorted challenge today from the Soviet Russian Space Program. According to Pravda, the Russian astronaut currently on the moon is the first man to urinate there. This is a bald-face lie. As American TV viewers well know, the leader of the crew of Apollo Thirty-three not only urinated on the lunar surface, but defecated there! What’s more, the lunar atmosphere has preserved the proof! American taxpayers who willingly paid out thirty-seven billion dollars for this accomplishment may well be indignant over the Russian attempt to ignore it and claim the glory of being the first to deposit human excrement on the lunar surface. Next they’ll be claiming to have been the first to masturbate on Mars! . . .

“Now for a wrap-up of some smaller news items. . . . The South’s inimitable Strom suggested today that Senators who are blocking the latest presidential appointment to the Supreme Court should be deported to Africa, since that’s obviously where their sympathies lie. And the prospective appointee himself issued a statement saying he was proud of his role in the attempted assassination plot against Dick Gregory since it was obviously in the national interest. As to charges that he embezzled funds from the local Red Cross chapter while serving as chairman, the nominee insisted that the thirteen thousand dollars involved was legitimate payment for donating blood. Having known this man for twenty years, I can tell you that it’s good red American blood and our President couldn’t have chosen a finer candidate to offset the Court’s obviously pinko philosophy! . . . The Post Office Department today impounded some eight million copies of two underground newspapers, The Washington Post and The New York Times. In keeping with the administration crackdown on obscene, slanted, and commie-inspired material which may fall into the hands of children and warp young minds, the publishers and editors of the two illegal publications have been taken into custody under the Agnew Act. As an example of the sort of propaganda these filthy sheets are printing, the administration cited a recent Times editorial which stated that it was difficult to evaluate the President’s latest Vietnam proclamation unless one could read it in the original German. Such gobbledegook may pass for humor among the limp-wristed commie intelligentsia, but just plain folks like you and me ain’t a-gonna put up with it any longer. So three cheers for the Post Office Department. And it’s reassuring to know that when and if those publishers get out of jail, the vigilantes of the loyal, silent majority will be waiting for them! . . . The Governor of California, following through on the President’s request, today announced the results of the inquiry into the UCLA-Whittier football game. You may remember that Whittier lost by twenty points. The Whittier coach claimed that the referee was biased, and today’s decision bears out that claim. Whittier is now the official winner of the game. The President has announced that the fifty dollars he won on the game will be donated to the Whittier Grape Growers’ Association for the Preservation of Right to Work Laws. . . .

“And now, for my closing editorial, I would like to address myself to the parents of this great nation of ours. Although the infamous baby-doctor has long since received his just desserts as a traitor to his country, his insidious philosophy continues to permeate our society. Permissiveness, in all its treacherous, pinko-inspired forms continues to undermine our institutions. In this context I would like to cite the shameful incident in which a company of American soldiers recently refused to expose themselves to enemy fire. Quite simply, these boys refused to obey orders. They were disobedient! I ask you, from whence springs such lack of respect for authority, such contempt for the most basic military discipline? The answer is that there are no undisciplined children without the permissiveness of parents who refuse to face up to their responsibility to discipline their offspring. Instant gratification—in this case, the willful resistance to the sacrifice of one’s life in the cause of freedom—is what the young people are demanding. It is the obligation of their parents, of older citizens who recognize their responsibility to this country, to frustrate this demand for instant gratification. Give in once, as in the example I cited, and the result will be chaos. How then will we be able to fight for the preservation of democratic ideals? But resistance to the demands of the young must start in the home; it must start early; it must be firm and unyielding. I tell you, my fellow citizens, that the undermining of our country began when the first parent shucked his obligation to toilet train his child. I tell you that freedom of the potty is license to rebel! Our young people flaunt morality, and do you know why? Because the very first time an infant reaches for those sacred and unmentionable areas of his body, the parent ignores his responsibility to punish that infant, to slap the offending hand, to tie it if necessary so that it cannot reach the filthy organs and supply instant gratification. We are all frustrated! What right has this younger generation to demand that it should not be frustrated? The first time you turn your back on a masturbating child, you are raising a child who will grow up to turn his back on everything this country holds dear. Where would this country be if the American Revolution had been left in the hands of bed-wetters and onanists? We’d all be talking with limey accents-—heh-heh—that’s where! Discipline! It must be reestablished in the home! In line with this necessity, I am asking the administration to introduce a bill making it a federal crime for a parent to refuse to toilet train his child, for a parent to allow filthy self-fondling in the years between infancy and adolescence, for a parent to refuse to spank a naughty child when prevailing community standards indicate such action! In my house, human organs are untouched by human hands! So must it be in the nation! Let our motto be one of awareness! Let our motto be: Spare the rod and spoil the country! . . . Thank you for listening, and good night.”

The Veep was replaced by the announcer on the screen. “This program has been cosponsored by the Pentagon and the Defense Department with—”

The President turned off the TV set and turned to Jonathan Relevant. “What I like about the Veep is his impartiality,” he said. “How did you like it?”

“Whatever happened to Huntley and Brinkley?” Jonathan Relevant inquired.

“I’m not sure, but I think they come up for parole soon. Of course,” the President added matter-of-factly, “it will be denied.”

“Of course.”

“What did you think of the Vice President’s editorial?”

“I thought it was a lot of crap, Mr. President.”

“Wasn’t it, though? You know, that’s one thing I really envy about the Vice President—his ability to spew crap. Not all of us are so fortunate.” The President sighed. “Well, Mr. Relevant, let’s get back to you. I suppose you know that you’re to be turned over to the UN?”

“Leander Pigbaigh told me.”

“Yes. But I wanted to talk to you personally first. You see, the Russians claim that you should be returned to them. We claim that you asked for sanctuary in the United States.”

“But that’s not true, Mr. President.”

“Yes, well— The point is that the Security Council will probably leave the choice up to you. I’m concerned that you choose wisely.”

“You mean choose the United States, Mr. President?”

“Yes.”

“Why should I?”

“Why shouldn’t you?”

“Songymy!”

“Surely you wouldn’t prefer Russia?” The President quickly tried another approach.

“There are other alternatives. There are other countries.”

“Perhaps. But I’d like you to choose the United States.”

“I’ll consider it, Mr. President,” Jonathan Relevant promised.

“But you won’t commit yourself?” The President looked at him shrewdly.

“No, sir.”

The President had prepared many arguments meant to determine Jonathan Relevant’s decision. He had planned alternatives intended to influence, to coerce, to force if necessary. He had the ammunition to reason, to cajole, to intimidate. But now, as he sat face to face with Jonathan Relevant, the President was suddenly without the will to fire.

Nor was he sure of the reason why he held back. It might have been because the strong rapport he felt for Jonathan Relevant was assurance enough that he would choose the United States over other countries—just as the President himself would have chosen if their situations had been reversed. Or it might have been that the President recognized his inability to influence Jonathan Relevant’s decision no matter what pressures he brought to bear.

In either case, the President didn’t press the point. It was still up in the air when Jonathan Relevant departed the White House. Yet the President felt strangely calm as he watched him depart.

Leander Pigbaigh was waiting in a downstairs reception room. Just before they left the CIA man was called aside by an aide of the President’s. As they settled into a waiting limousine, Pigbaigh filled in Jonathan Relevant on what the aide had said.

“They done smoked the peace pipe at Harnell. The trouble’s ovah theah.”

“Oh? What’d they dew? Call in the Cav’lry?” Jonathan Relevant asked. “Pull awl the trustees’ Cadillacs intew a circle?”

“Naw. They jes’ run out o’ Injuns. Seems ouah boy got busted by the locals an’ it turns out they ain’t no more redskins on the campus. That Alcatraz bunch sent ’em a message sayin’ they should butt out an’ let the Injuns handle they own troubles ’thout manufacturin’ ’em. So they awl got togethah an’ ’greed to them terms yew got ’em tew ’gree tew afore.”

“What happens now?” Jonathan Relevant wondered.

“Seems weah loosenin’ up on see-curity precautions with yew, Colonel. The President’s eagah yew shouldn’t feel no ways like a prisoner. So, ’tween naow and tomorrow when we go to New Yawk an’ turn yew ovah to the Yew Enn, yew jes’ feel free to do anythin’ yew feel like.”

What do I feel like doing? Jonathan Relevant wondered. At the moment he didn’t know. Later, after Pigbaigh had left him in his hotel room, circumstances provided an answer in the form of a knock on his door.

“Hello, Ludmilla.” Ivan Relevant greeted his visitor in Russian.

Ludmilla held up a bottle of vodka and entered. “I thought we might have a drink together for old times’ sake,” she told him. “Or for new times’ sake,” she added.

“That’s a very nice idea.” Ivan Relevant closed the door behind her and followed her into the room. A heady perfume assailed his senses as he came close to her.

Nor was it just the perfume that belied the casual nature of Dr. Ludmilla Skivar’s presence. Her appearance was also highly sensual. She had Americanized her manner of dress and sexualized it in the process.

Ludmilla wore the skimpiest of mini-skirts and it revealed her long legs in net stockings which accentuated their slender, yet fleshy shapeliness. The white-silk blouse she wore featured a deep V which clearly showed the pronounced cleft between her breasts and the inverted parenthesis of flesh on either side of the cleavage. And the material lost the battle to long, sharp nipples visibly straining without the hindrance of a brassiere. Her long, ebony hair tumbled down over her shoulders and curled to nestle just above the impressive swell of her large breasts. Her dark eyes smoldered as she looked at Ivan Relevant and her tongue peeped out between moist, red lips as if shyly posing a silent question.

She handed Ivan Relevant a glass half filled with vodka. Picking up her own glass, she brushed against him and he felt the heat and firmness of her breast through the silk as it pressed against his arm. She looked at him knowingly, sat down on the edge of the bed, and patted the sheet beside her, indicating that he should sit there.

He did. They sipped their vodka. With her free hand she reached out and took his hand. She held it in her lap. Her net-covered thigh burned against it and then started to move very slightly, back and forth. His knuckles caught in the webbing and she increased the pressure on his hand so that he could feel the quivering flesh of her leg.

Ivan Relevant drained his drink, put the glass down, and put his free arm around her shoulder. His fingertips barely grazed the silken swell of the top of her breast. Ludmilla caught her breath and inhaled sharply. Both nipples moved as if in added protest against the flimsy material covering them.

She turned her head. Her lips were only a few inches away from those of Ivan Relevant. He closed the distance. Their mouths locked hotly, moistly, ardently, lips moving, tongues exploring. Ivan Relevant’s fingers trailed up from her thigh, along the side of her body, tracing the firm thrust of her hip, the narrowness of her waist, the firm flesh of the side of her now panting breast.

“I must make a confession to you,” she murmured in Russian when the kiss was over. “Nothing excites me so much as being touched with my clothes on, through the material, I mean. Is that terribly depraved?”

“Nyet! It’s not depraved at all.” Ivan Relevant cupped her breasts over the silk and squeezed them gently.

Ludmilla closed her eyes and gasped. All her senses were concentrated on the contact and the feelings it aroused. The whole of her breasts swelling in his hands, the nipples growing even longer and firmer and harder as he manipulated them between his fingers, the aureoles seeming to widen as he drew little circles to trace their outlines, the fire sweeping over her bosom until it seemed that the silk between his hands and her flesh must melt away-all of her felt as if it had been compressed into the area of her bosom and the deep cleft between the round mounds of female flesh opened and closed with her excited breathing as if it, itself, was the aching female void palpitating to be filled.

Greedily, Ludmilla reached down and unzipped his pants. She grabbed for the Relevant member with both hands. She found it firm as Russian steel, hot as boiled borscht, heavy with sour cream, intoxicating as vodka. After a moment she removed one hand and clawed at the silk blouse until her breasts swung free. Then she sprawled over his lap, writhing until she’d managed to catch his manhood between her breasts. Her flesh closed around it and she held him tightly as a glove.

Writhing, her breast tips grazed his thighs and then, as she wriggled into a different position, his belly. She paused for a moment to push his pants down so the hot hardness of her nipples might be felt directly against the muscles of his thighs and belly. And all the time her breast flesh pulsated tightly around the hardness of his lust.

Crouching the way she was, Ludmilla’s derriere protruded upward in front of Ivan Relevant’s eyes. The mini-skirt had ridden up over the well-rounded flare of her hips to reveal the garter belt holding up the net stockings. She wore no panties. The pink-flushed globes quivered with her passion and Ivan Relevant couldn’t resist reaching out with both hands to caress them. She moaned audibly and her whole body trembled as he kneaded the plump flesh.

When he moved his hand to trace the separation between her buttocks to the core of her womanhood, her head jerked spasmodically, her breasts released him to be replaced by her greedy mouth stretching widely to encompass his outsize organ. One hand cupped his genitals, tickling, manipulating, tugging gently. Mindlessly, her lower body rose higher into the air until its nether mouth found his lips. His hands squeezed the globes of her buttocks and he sipped gently from the tight red lips of her femaleness. Then, as she ground against him, not so gently . . .

Ludmilla’s thigh muscles tensed and for a long moment it was as if she was trying to devour him with the maw of her sex. Then a series of explosions shook her body, one after another and she pressed so greedily that momentary contact was made with the back of her throat. Ivan Relevant’s release coincided with the peak of her ecstasy and it was sustained for a long time during which her throat contracted rapidly to absorb it.

Even after it was over, Ludmilla didn’t release him. She continued to use her tongue greedily and to gulp. The result was a speedy renewal of his passion.

Then she leaped to her feet. There was a full-length mirror across from them and she placed a straight-backed chair in front of it. She grasped the back of the chair with both her hands and bent over so that her large breasts swayed over the back of it. The way she was bending, her flushed derriere stuck out invitingly. She wriggled it insinuatingly and looked at Ivan Relevant in the mirror.

He responded immediately. Kicking his pants aside, he came up behind her, grasped her hips, and stabbed straight to the target. She squealed and her knuckles were white on the chair back. Looking in the mirror seemed to make her even wilder. Her breasts swung to and fro so vigorously that their mirror image was a blur. Her hips rotated frantically and the globes of her bottom bounced more and more demandingly against his lower stomach. Each time she caught a glimpse of the length of the Relevant member entering, or half withdrawing, she squealed aloud and pushed backward to recapture it.

Once Ivan Relevant switched targets and she cried aloud. Yet she responded to this new experience as she continued to respond when he switched back again. It was a little while later that she became so excited that her feet cleared the floor and Ivan Relevant supported her by her hips as her derriere circled grindingly in the throes of a second series of mounting orgasms. He thrust mightily and rode the crest of one of them through the peaks of two more, his release of passion continuing even after she subsided. The “Merman Thesis” was reconfirmed.

Then they fell to the floor together, exhausted. Who is Jonathan Relevant? Whatever else he may be, he’s a man who enjoys sex, Ivan Relevant decided. He closed his eyes and buried his face contentedly between Ludmilla’s breasts.

When he raised his head again and opened his eyes, the overhead light was blocked. It took him a moment to focus and realize that the blur was a figure of a man standing over the two of them. It was another moment before he appreciated that the man was holding a gun and pointing it at him.

“Well done, Comrade,” the man said to Ludmilla in Russian. There was a decidedly unhealthy smirk on his face.

“What are you doing here?” She scrambled to her feet, tugged down her mini-skirt, and pulled the silk blouse over her naked breasts.

“Moscow has decided not to take any chances. There is a plane waiting at a secret airfield. By the time the United States discovers it can’t deliver Ivan Relevant to the UN, he will be safely in Russia where he belongs. Comrade Relevant!” He waved the gun respectfully. “Will you please put your clothes on and come along with us.”

Ivan Relevant complied. “Is that gun really necessary?” he asked as they left the room.

“Your pardon. I feel insecure without it. Believe me, I look on it as nothing but a bond of friendship between us, Comrade Relevant.”

“Aren’t you afraid that this action could result in serious trouble between the United States and Russia?” Ivan Relevant asked.

“It is not my place to worry. Our leaders know what they’re doing.”

“Our leaders know what they're doing.” Such is the faith that makes government possible. Without it the rulers -— Russian, American, Chinese, whatever — presidents, premiers, dictators, et al.-—would be unable to govern. “Our leaders know what they’re doing.” Such is the tenuous clutch of mankind on civilization, Jonathan-Ivan Relevant reflected. Only sometimes, sometimes, leaders don’t know what they’re doing.

And what then? What then, Adolf-Benito-Nikita-Lyndon- Dickie-Spyro-Chou-Alexander? What then?

What then?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“I don’t know what to do!” the President of the United States admitted.

“If you don’t, Mr. President,” Oswald wondered, “then who does?”

“How could you have let him slip through your fingers like that?!” the President demanded.

“You said you didn’t want him guarded, or his movements hampered in any way, Mr. President. We just followed your instructions.”

“I didn’t say you shouldn’t observe normal security precautions. I didn’t say the CIA should stop keeping him under protective surveillance!”

“We did that, Mr. President. There was a man observing his every movement. That’s how we know the Russkies have him.”

“What you’re saying is that the CIA just stood by calmly and watched while the Russians made off with Jonathan Relevant! Oswald, how the hell can you justify that?”

“Strom.”

“Strom?” The President was brought up short. “What do you mean? What has Strom got to do with it?”

“Have you discussed this with Strom, Mr. President?”

“Well, no— You know how busy Strom is. I don’t like to bother him with—”

“Then I must tell you, Mr. President, that Strom saw certain advantages to allowing the Russians to kidnap Jonathan Relevant. At the last minute it was his decision that the CIA not interfere.”

“His decision? But shouldn’t you have consulted me?”

The President grimaced at the pain of a sudden hemorrhoid spasm and made the conscious effort necessary to control his sphincter muscles.

“There wasn’t time to go through channels, Mr. President.”

“Well, at least you could have kept me informed,” the President grumbled.

“That’s why I’m here, Mr. President.”

“All right then.” The President shifted his weight on the rubber tire on which he was sitting. “Why does Strom think we should let the Russians have Relevant?”

“Because of his evaluation of reports received which detail the effect of Jonathan Relevant on both the people and institutions with which he has come in contact. What it adds up to, Mr. President, is that Jonathan Relevant disturbs the status quo. Strom had the Condom-Inium Think Tank do a rush projection on the future effect of Jonathan Relevant on this country and the extrapolation indicated he would be a decidedly disruptive force. It also implied that he would be equally disruptive in terms of other societies, specifically communist societies. So, when the Russkies grabbed him, Strom decided we should let them have him. In short, Jonathan Relevant may be a most valuable weapon for Americanism in Russia, while in the United States the likelihood is that he’d cause problems.”

“Well, if Strom thinks that’s the right course . . . But,” the President remembered with a hemorrhoidal spasm that brought beads of sweat to his forehead, “how do we explain our inability to produce Jonathan Relevant to the UN?”

“That’s easy, Mr. President.” Oswald was smug. “We simply prove to them that the Russians kidnapped him.”

“But suppose the Russians deny it? How can we prove it?”

“We show them the pictures the CIA took of the Russians forcing Jonathan Relevant aboard a Soviet plane.”

“Do you have these pictures?”

Oswald glanced at his watch. “They were being developed when I left headquarters to come over here. I left instructions for a courier to bring them as soon as they were ready. He should be here now. If you’ll give me just a moment, Mr. President, I’ll step outside and see if he’s arrived.”

“All right, Oswald.”

Oswald left the room and returned almost immediately with a brown manila envelope. “Here they are, Mr. President.” He handed the Chief Executive the envelope.

The President opened it and took out several eight-by-ten glossies. He studied the first a moment, then looked at the second. More quickly now, he flipped through the rest of them. “Oh, no!” He slammed the pictures down on his desk.

“What is it, Mr. President?”

“I-——I—” The President bolted for the bathroom. “I can’t talk now!” The door slammed behind him.

Oswald picked up the photos and looked at them. Like the President, he studied the first one and then went on to the others more quickly. “Oh, no!” he echoed. There was no trace of Jonathan Relevant on any of the photographs. His presence simply had not registered on the film. “Jonathan Relevant,” Oswald muttered to himself, “is a Polaroid party poop!”

“Oswald!” The croak of the President's voice sounded from the other side of the door to the privy. “Those pictures—Oswald! Where is Jonathan Relevant? . . .”

Ivan Relevant, at that moment, was in an unmarked Russian aircraft somewhere over Alaska and approaching the Bering Strait. Dr. Ludmilla Skivar was seated beside him. A small package rested in his lap. Absentmindedly, he picked it up and juggled it with one hand.

“What’s that?” Ludmilla asked in Russian.

“Oh?” Ivan Relevant looked at the package. “I’m not sure,” he replied. “A messenger handed it to me when we were leaving the hotel. I’d forgotten about it.”

“Why don’t you open it?”

“All right.” Ivan Relevant unwrapped the package. A card fell out and he picked it up.

“What does it say?” Ludmilla inquired.

“ ‘You see we didn’t welch on grape jelly,’ ” Ivan Relevant read aloud. “ ‘Fondest regards, Chancellor and Mrs. Hardlign.’ ” He looked at the jar of paraffin-sealed jelly and smile to himself.

“I don’t understand what it means. But then who can understand Americans?” Ludmilla shrugged off the question and changed the subject. “We will be together in Moscow a lot,” she told him, her eyes smoldering with erotic promises. “The Supreme Soviet has granted permission for me to work with you on developing the ‘Merman Thesis.’ It is because I am a Nobel candidate,” she added proudly.

“Nobel oblige,” Ivan Relevant observed.

“You don’t sound very enthusiastic. Why can’t you have faith in my ‘Merman Thesis.’ The philosophic, scientific basis—”

“Sometimes—” Ivan Relevant interrupted. “Sometimes—- not always, but sometimes — theories of science and philosophy merely stem from the talent for making something out of nothing.”

“Order out of chaos!” Ludmilla rebutted stiflly.

“That can be the same thing. Not always. But sometimes upon analysis -”

“Perhaps. But if you’re so wise, then you tell me the answer. How do you think you came into being?” Ludmilla demanded.

“How do you think you came into being?” he replied.

“I was born!”

“Which explains nothing.”

“Scientifically—”

“-—-it explains nothing. Science labels everything, categorizes the acts, the organisms, and the processes of birth, but Science explains nothing.”

“Then how do you explain your being here?”

“I’m here.” Ivan Relevant smiled. “That’s all.”

“A miracle?” Ludmilla sneered.

“Everything that breathes is a miracle of sorts. The hummingbird and the Gila monster.”

“Theology!” Ludmilla snorted her contempt.

“Perhaps. Or perhaps metaphysics. What difference does the label make? No matter what you call it, there are only two ways of looking at it: prolife and antilife. That’s the most important thing I’ve been able to determine about myself: I’m prolife.”

“Well so am I,” Ludmilla said quickly and defensively. Then she repeated it as if she too had just made a discovery about herself. “I’m prolife.”

“No hummingbird I,” he added reflectively. “But my eyes see no monsters, Gila or otherwise.”

“Except perhaps when they turn inward.” Ludmilla was speaking to herself.

“Not even then,” Ivan Relevant said positively. “Not if one’s vision is deep enough and clear enough.”

They fell silent. The plane winged closer to the Alaskan coastline, to the Bering Strait. Ivan Relevant looked out the window. A moment later he noticed that one of the jet engines had stopped firing. He called it to Ludmi1la’s attention.

“There are three others,” she reassured him. “Plenty of power to get us to Siberia.”

Ivan Relevant looked out the opposite window just as a second engine ceased functioning. I remember this movie, he thought to himself. Now the third engine goes. He looked out the first window again. There was no jet stream coming from either engine. And then the pilot’s voice over the intercom says—

“We’re having a little operational difficulty.” The pilot spoke in Russian. “But there’s no cause for alarm. As a precautionary measure, passengers are asked to put on their parachutes and life jackets. I repeat, there is no cause for alarm.”

And then the copilot, a reassuring smile pasted on a face taut with underlying grimness, walks with measured step down the passenger cabin aisle to the tail of the plane. A moment later Ivan Relevant watched the copilot vanish to the rear. But why the tail? The difficulty seems to be up front, the engines, the wings. Why the tail?

“What’s back there?” he asked Ludmilla.

“The lavatory.”

“What else?”

“I don’t know.”

The copilot reappeared, his smile broader, his underlying taut grimness tauter and grimmer. He went back into the pilots’ compartment and the door closed behind him. Silence, and then the pilot’s voice sounded over the intercom again.

“We regret to inform you that due to operational ditficulties the lavatory is temporarily out of order. Passengers are requested not to attempt to use it. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

Now, according to the script, just about now the navigator is informing the pilot that we've passed the point of no return. The pilot concludes that the plane can't make it on one engine and that the situation is hopeless. Eyes staring, voice strained, he tells the crew to prepare the passengers, that he’s going to ditch the plane in the drink. The copilot disagrees. “We can make it," he tells the pilot, “if we just lighten the load."

But the dazed pilot is beyond hearing him.

“You’ve pushed the panic button!” the copilot tells him.

The pilot ignores him and starts to guide the plane downward. As the aircraft loses altitude, the copilot springs into action. He slaps the pilot’s face hard. “Get hold of yourself, man!” he tells him sternly.

And the pilot snaps out of it. He shakes his head hard and the cobwebs of panic visibly dissolve from his eyes. He’s alert and crisp once again. “Thanks,” he tells the copilot. “I needed that slap. I'm okay now. We’re going for broke. I'm going to fly this baby home by the seat of my pants.” (In Russian, with subtitles no less.)

“You can do it." The copilot claps him on the shoulder and leaves. Then, in the next scene, the copilot reenters the passenger cabin and announces—

“The situation is serious, but not critical,” the copilot informed them from the doorway. “We have to lighten the load of the plane. I’ll need help.”

And one of the passengers leaps to his feet and says—-

“Just tell me what to do,” Ivan Relevant volunteered.

“First thing is to get rid of the luggage. Just knock out that emergency-exit door and I’ll pass stuff to you to jettison. While we’re doing that, Ludmilla can take this screwdriver and detach the seats from their moorings. We’ll get rid of them next.”

Pan shot of luggage being passed down aisle, brave passenger braced in emergency-exit doorway, wind whipping the scuttled articles from his grasp. Dissolve to exterior shot of plane with baggage, chairs, etc., hurtling off into space. Held long enough to show slight gain in altitude.

“What now?” Ivan Relevant stood panting in the door- way.

“Just a minute.” The copilot exited to the front compartment. When he returned his arms were filled with clothing.

“What’s that?”

“The pilot and navigator’s uniforms.” He handed them to Ivan Relevant and indicated that he should throw them over the side. “Every ounce counts,” he said—and he started to strip.

Whoa! I don’t remember this in the movie!

“You too, comrades.” The copilot indicated that Ludmilla, Ivan Relevant, and the strong-arm man who had kidnapped him should all remove their clothes.

“Every ounce?” Ludmilla, down to bra and panties, hesitated.

“Every ounce!”

Ludmilla removed her undergarments and passed them to Ivan Relevant to throw out. She stood nude except for her life jacket and parachute.

Movies are better than ever!

The others, save for the emergency items, were also nude. The copilot went up front, consulted with the pilot, and returned. “It’s touch and go, but I think we’re going to make it,” he informed them. “We’re over the Bering Sea right now.” He strode over to Ivan Relevant, who was still braced in front of the open hatchway. “Well done, comrade.” The copilot slapped him heartily on the shoulder.

“Thank—” Ivan Relevant started to stay. But the slap caught him off balance. He tottered for an instant, then fell backward and vanished from sight. “—you-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oooooo. . . .”

“Mr. President! Mr. President!” Oswald pounded on the door of the White House privy.

“What is it, Oswald?” the President groaned. He was feeling just awful. His hemorrhoids had never been worse.

“Jonathan Relevant has been lost at sea!” Oswald informed him through the door.

“Jonathan who?” The President was having difficulty concentrating.

“Jonathan Relevant! We’ve been monitoring that Russian plane he was on and they just notified Moscow that he fell out of the plane somewhere over the Bering Sea. At least we think that’s what they said.”

“What do you mean you ‘think,’ Oswald?” The President knew his discomfort was muddying up his own mind, but even so it seemed to him that Oswald was coming over fuzzy.

“Well, the Russian transmission was in code, Mr. President. We’ve broken the code, but the trouble is we’ve come up with two decoding possibilities. One unscrambles as Jonathan Relevant falling out of the plane over the Bering Sea.”

“And the other?”

“Literally, Mr. President?”

“Oswald, please! I'm not feeling well. Just tell me what the other translation is.”

“Literally—‘God must have loved the common roach; He made so many of them.’ That’s it, Mr. President.”

“But which is the right one, Oswald?”

“You pays your money and you takes your choice, Mr. President.”

“The hell with it!” The President dismissed Jonathan Relevant from his mind and concentrated on the matter at hand. “My aching ass!” he moaned. . . .

“My aching ass!” Jonathan Relevant moaned. The harness of the parchute had cut into his fundament badly when the ’chute had opened. Also the strap had scraped off some skin when he’d splashed down in the Bering Strait. Wriggling out of the harness, he’d irritated the inflamed flesh.

The icy waters first cooled and then numbed the pain. Feeling the numbness starting to spread, Jonathan Relevant—naked except for his inflated life jacket—started swimming to keep his circulation going. After a while he spotted an iceberg and headed for it. When he reached the iceberg he had to struggle to pull himself up on it. The life jacket was ripped during his exertions. As he finally scrambled to the surface of the berg, the life jacket fell away from him and floated away.

Jonathan Relevant huddled naked on the iceberg and hugged himself against the cold. The numbness went out of his bottom and the cold of the ice on which it was resting penetrated. “My tookus is cold,” Jonathan Relevant said to himself. Somehow the words had a familiar ring. “I’m right back where I started from,” he decided.

And what have you learned?

When one sits on an iceberg, one’s tookus becomes cold.

Very funny. But what else? What have you learned about the world? The Universe?

Natural law.

Huh?

Natural law. An iceberg applied to the human fundament chills same. That’s natural law: Relevant’s First Principle.

Aha! Then you see order in the Universe!

Compared to what?

Well then, do you see chaos in the Universe?

Compared to what?

Don’t be evasive! Just how do you conceive of the Universe?

I don’t!

Why not?

There’s no basis of comparison. There’s no yardstick. So how can there be conceptualization?

But some men have come up with concepts. How do you explain that?

Guesswork. . . . There’s only one question about the Universe that has validity.

What question is that?

Is it bigger than a breadbox?

Whose breadbox?

Oh, no! I’m not going to get into that bag!

Why not? God. Nature. Life-force. Those are only the tags for what’s constant in the Universe.

What’s constant?

Two plus two equals four.

Does it?

A trillon-trillon times out of a trillion-trillion times it does.

And the trillion-trillion-and-first time? Maybe the trillion-trillion-and-first time two plus two equals five.

What does that mean?

It means that’s where it’s at, baby. Right now. That’s the great big universal truth. Two plus two equals five!

And all the patterns are man-made? Is that it? Hoo-hah! So much for metaphysics! Because it doesn’t matter if they are man-made! It only raises another question.

Which is?

What have you learned about mankind during your brief sojourn in the “civilized” world?

Mankind is a paradox.

Cop-out!

Maybe. But what can I say about Man except that the opposite is always true?

My ass!

-—is cold. I know. But there’s no escaping it. At the core of Man is life. And the end of life is death. He lives until he dies. But he starts to die from the moment he’s born. All of Man’s other problems stem from that basic dilemma. And it’s an unsolvable dilemma.

Isn’t that a truth of sorts?

It’s a condition. Where Man is concerned, nothing is really true.

And - if - that - statement’s – true – then – that -statement’s – false - and – where – Man – is – concerned – everything – is – really - true.

Touché! . . . And more paradox. Man is a cosmic joke, a Camus absurdity caught between the Gautama Buddha and Adolf Hitler. Right is always perverted; it’s the human condition.

But there’s another side.

Sure. Evil is always thwarted too. Mostly because it’s bungled.

Still, on balance—-

Not knowable. The final score isn’t in yet—although it may be closer than Man thinks. A cancer cure, or germ warfare? Birth control and abortion reform, or overpopulation? Farm subsidies, or starvation? Communication, or Alienation? Peace and Love, or Violence and War? Sweet Reason, or The Bomb? These are the choices and the time is now.

Compromise solutions—-

-—are no longer possible. Time has run out. Choices, not compromises. Decisions, not accommodations—and soon! The alternatives are all laid out for Man to see. He can weigh them maybe a little while longer, but then he has to decide. Life or death. It’s that simple.

Uh-huh. And would you care to venture a guess as to which he’ll choose?

Nope! But I’1l give you a clue. Mankind is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And where does that leave you?

Floating bare-ass on an iceberg and asking myself: Who is Jonathan Relevant?

And the answer?

A naked guy with a frostbitten ass floating on an iceberg.

Also maybe a mirror held up to humanity. What do you think?

Pompous! Pompous as hell! But if similes turn you on, then add this: I just noticed that this iceberg is starting to break up!

Mirror, mirror on the ice,

It’s too late to load the dice!

The hell it is! Look-y theah!

And over there too!

Jonathan Relevant’s head swiveled from one sight to the other. Beneath his freezing butt the ice was cracking. The berg was breaking up. But he paid it no mind. He was too busy squinting, his eyes moving back and forth, trying to pierce the fog of the Bering Strait.

Now, in the distance, he could make out perhaps half a dozen kayaks proceeding toward him. They were manned by fur-buncled Amerinds, some of who were waving harpoons. They were coming from the direction of the Alaskan coast.

From the other direction, Siberia, a large primitive fishing boat hove hazily into view. The crew was made up of Koryaks, native Siberians. Spying the figure on the iceberg, one of them fired a rifle.

“Koryaks!” One of the Amerinds identified the Siberian craft. “And they’re shooting at us! They mean to drive us away so that they can capture our brother stranded on the iceberg! Prepare to defend yourselves!” Spears bristled from the fleet of kayaks.

“Get ready!” The Koryak captain assured himself that his crew was armed and alerted. “That’s one of us on the iceberg and those Amerinds are trying to take him prisoner! They mean to make a fight of it!”

The Koryak boat came within hailing distance of the iceberg. “Who are you?” the captain shouted.

“Who are you?” the Amerind chief yelled simultaneously.

“Joktka Relevant” was the answer the Koryaks heard.

“Nanook Relevant.” The reply reached the Amerinds loud and clear.

“Get away! He’s a Koryak!” the Siberian captain shouted to the Amerinds.

“He’s an Amerind!” The kayaks kept coming.

“Fire over their heads to warn them off,” the Koryak captain ordered.

A volley sounded out. It was followed by a flight of spears from the Amerinds. More shots. More spears . . .

The naked man on the iceberg crouched low and watched the spears flying over his head and listened to the bullets whistling past. They're trying to rescue me, he reminded himself. They just want to help me.

Out of the frying pan . . .

What about yourself? What about that puzzle of yourself and the pieces you collected? Doesn't it begin to make any sense at all?

Sense, hell! Survival comes first!

You knew that back on the first iceberg. But what’s the answer?

What’s the question?

Who is Jonathan Relevant?