The Simulacra

9

The Theodoras Nitz commercial squeaked, ‘In the presence of strangers do you feel you don't quite exist? Do they seem not to notice you, as if you were invisible? On a bus or spaceship do you sometimes look around you and discover that no one, absolutely no one, recognizes you or cares about you and quite possibly may even -- ‘

With his carbon dioxide-powered pellet rifle, Maury Frauenzimmer carefully shot the Nitz commercial as it hung pressed against the far wall of his cluttered office. It had squeezed in during the night, had greeted him in the morning with its tinny harangue.

Broken, the commercial dropped to the floor. Maury crushed it with his solid, compacted weight and then returned the pellet rifle to its rack.

‘The mail,' Chic Strikerock said. ‘Where's today's mail?'

He had been searching everywhere in the office since his arrival.

Maury noisily sipped coffee from his cup and said, ‘Look on top of the files. Under that rag we use to clean the keys of the typewriter.' He bit into a breakfast doughnut, the sugarcovered type. He could see that Chic was behaving oddly and he wondered what it signified.

All at once Chic said, ‘Maury, I've got something I wrote out for you.' He tossed a folded piece of paper on to the desk.

Without examining it Maury knew what it was.

‘I'm resigning,' Chic said. He was pale.

‘Please don't,' Maury said. ‘Something will come along. I can keep the firm functioning.' He did not open the letter; he left it where Chic had tossed it. ‘What would you do if you left here?' Maury asked.

‘Emigrate to Mars.'

The intercom on the desk buzzed, and their secretary, Greta Trupe, said, ‘Mr Frauenzimmer, a Mr Garth McRae to see you with several other gentlemen, in a group.'

I wonder who they are, Maury wondered. ‘Don't send them in yet,' he said to Greta. ‘I'm in conference with Mr Strikerock.'

‘Go ahead and conduct your business,' Chic said. ‘I'm going. I'll leave my resignation letter there on your desk. Wish me luck.'

‘I wish you luck.' Maury felt depressed and ill. He stared down at the desk until the door opened and closed and Chic had gone. What a hell of a way to begin the day, Maury thought. Picking up the letter he opened it, glanced at it, folded it once more. He pressed a button on the desk intercom and said, ‘Miss Trupe, send in -- the name you said, McRae or whatever it was. And his party.'

‘Yes, Mr Frauenzimmer.'

The door from the outer office opened and Maury drew himself up to face what he recognized at once to be government officials; two of them wore the grey of the National Police, and the leader of the group, evidently McRae, had the bearing of a major official of the executive branch; in other words a highly-placed Ge.

Rising clumsily to his feet, Maury extended his hand and said, ‘Gentlemen, what can I do for you?'

Shaking hands with him, McRae said, ‘You're Frauenzimmer?'

‘Correct,' Maury answered. His heart laboured and he had difficulty breathing. Were they going to close him down? As they had moved in on the Vienna School of psychiatrists? ‘What have I done?' he asked, and heard his voice waver with apprehension. It was one trouble after another.

McRae smiled. ‘Nothing, so far. We're here to initiate discussion of the placing of an order with your firm. However, this involves knowledge of a Ge level. May I rip out your intercom?'

‘P-pardon?' Maury said, taken aback.

Nodding to the NP men, McRae stepped aside; the police moved in and swiftly made the intercom inoperative. They then inspected the walls, the furniture; they examined scrupulously every inch of the room and its equipment and then they nodded to McRae to continue.

McRae said, ‘All right. Frauenzimmer, we have specs with us for a sim we'd like constructed. Here.' He held out a sealed envelope. ‘Go over this. We'll wait.'

Opening the envelope, Maury studied its contents.

‘Can you do it?' McRae asked, presently.

Raising his head, Maury said, ‘These specifications are for a der Alte.'

‘Correct.' McRae nodded.

Then that's it, Maury realized. That's the piece of Ge knowledge; I'm now a Ge.

It's happened in an instant. I'm on the inside. Too bad Chic left; poor goddam Chic, what bad timing, bad luck, on his part. If he had stayed five minutes longer ...

‘It's been true for fifty years,' McRae said.

They were drawing him in. Making him as much a part of this as possible now.

‘Good grief,' Maury said. ‘I never guessed, watching it perform on TV, making its speeches. And here I build the damn things myself.' He was staggered.

‘Karp did a good job,' McRae said. ‘Especially on the current one, Rudi Kalbfleisch. We wondered if you'd guessed.'

‘Never,' Maury said. ‘Not one time.' Not in a million years.

‘Can you do it? Build it?'

‘Sure.' Maury nodded.

‘When will you start?'

‘Right away.'

‘Good. You realize, naturally, that initially NP men will have to be kept here, to ensure security maintenance.'

‘Okay,' Maury murmured. ‘If you have to, you have to. Listen, excuse me a moment.' He edged past them, to the door and through, to the outer office; taken by surprise they permitted him to go. ‘Miss Trupe, did you see what way Mr Strikerock went?' he asked.

‘He just drove off, Mr Frauenzimmer. Towards the autobahn I guess he went back home to The Abraham Lincoln where he lives.'

You poor guy, Maury thought. He shook his head.

The Chic Strikerock luck; still functioning. Now he began to feel elated.

This changes everything, he realized. I'm back in business; I'm caterer to the king -- or rather, I supply the White House. Same thing. Yes, it's the same thing!

He returned to his office, where McRae and the others waited; they eyed him rather darkly. ‘Sorry,' he said. ‘I was looking for my sales chief. I wanted to pull him back due to this. We won't want to take any new orders for a while, so we can be free to concentrate on this.' He hesitated. ‘As to the cost.'

‘We'll sign a contract,' Garth McRae said. ‘You'll be guaranteed your costs plus forty per cent. The Rudi Kalbfleisch we acquired for a total net sum of one billion USEA dollars, plus of course the cost of perpetual maintenance and repair since the acquisition.'

‘Oh yeah,' Maury agreed. ‘You wouldn't want it to stop working in the middle of a speech.' He tried to chuckle but found he could not.

‘How does that sound, roughly? Say between one bill and one-five.'

Maury said thickly, ‘Um, fine.' His head felt as if it were about to roll off his shoulders and plunge to the floor.

Studying him, McRae said, ‘You're a small firm, Frauenzimmer. You and I are both aware of that. Don't get your hopes up. This will not make you a big firm, such as Karp und Sohnen Werke. However, it will guarantee your continued existence; obviously we're prepared to underwrite you economically speaking for as long as is necessary.

We've gone exhaustively into your books -- does that petrify you? -- and we know that you've been operating in the red for months now.'

‘True,' Maury said.

‘But your work is good,' Garth McRae continued. ‘We've minutely inspected examples of it, both here and where it actually functions on Luna and Mars. You display authentic craftsmanship, more so, I feel, than the Karp Werke. That of course is why we're here today instead of there with Anton and old Felix.'

‘I wondered,' Maury said. So that was why the government had decided this time to let the contract to him, not Karp. He thought, did Karp build all the der Alte simulacra up to now? Good question. If this were so -- what a radical departure in government procurement policy this was! But better not to ask.

‘Have a cigar,' Garth McRae said, holding an Optimo admiral out to him. ‘Extra mild. Pure Florida leaf.'

‘Thank you.' Maury gratefully -- and fumblingly -- accepted the big greenish cigar. Both he and Garth McRae lit up, gazing at one another in what all at once had become calm, assured silence.

The news posted on The Abraham Lincoln's communal bulletin board that Duncan & Millar had been chosen by the talent scout to perform at the White House astounded Edgar Stone; he read the announcement again and again, searching for the joker in it and wondering how the little nervous, cringing man had managed to do it.

There's been cheating, Stone said to himself. Just as I passed him on his relpol tests ... he's got somebody else to falsify a few results for him along the talent line. He himself had heard the jugs; he had been present at that programme, and Duncan & Miller, Classical Jugs, simply were not that good. They were good, admittedly ... but intuitively he knew that more was involved.

Deep inside him he experienced anger, a resentment that he had ever falsified Duncan's test-score. I put him on the road to success, Stone realized; I saved him. And now he's on his way to the White House, out of here entirely.

No wonder Ian Duncan had done so poorly on his relpol test. He had been busy practising on his jug, obviously; Duncan had no time for the commonplace realities which the rest of humanity had to cope with. It must be terrific to be an artist, Stone thought with bitterness. You're exempt from all the rules and responsibilities; you can do just as you like.

He sure made a fool out of me, Stone said to himself.

Striding rapidly down the second-floor hall, Stone arrived at the office of the building skypilot; he rang the bell and the door opened, showing him the sight of the skypilot deep in work at his desk, his face wrinkled with fatigue. ‘Uh, father,' Stone said, ‘I'd like to confess. Can you spare a few minutes? It's very urgently on my mind, my sins I mean.'

Rubbing his forehead, Patrick Doyle nodded. ‘Jeez,' he murmured. ‘It either rains or it pours; I've had ten presidents in today so far, using the confessionator. Go ahead.'

He pointed wearily to the alcove which opened on to his office. ‘Sit down and plug yourself in. I'll be listening while I fill out these 4-10 forms from Berlin.'

Filled with righteous indignation, his hands trembling, Edgar Stone attached the electrodes of the confessionator to the correct spots of his scalp, and then, picking up the microphone, began to confess. The tapedrums of the machine turned slowly as he spoke. ‘Moved by a false type pity,' he said, ‘I infracted a rule of this building. But mainly I am concerned not with the act itself but with the motives behind it; the act is merely the outgrowth of a false attitude towards my fellow residents. This individual, my neighbour Mr Ian Duncan, did poorly on his recent relpol test and I foresaw him being evicted from The Abraham Lincoln. I identified with him because subconsciously I regard myself as a failure, both as a resident of this building and as a man, so I falsified his score to indicate that he had passed. Obviously a new relpol test will have to be given to Mr Ian Duncan and the one which I scored will have to be marked void.' He eyed the skypilot, but there was no evident reaction.

That will take care of Duncan and his Classic Jug, Stone said to himself.

By now the confessionator had analysed his confession; it popped a card out, and Doyle rose to his feet to receive it.

After a long, careful scrutiny he glanced keenly up. ‘Mr Stone,' he said, ‘the view expressed here is that your confession is no confession. What do you really have on your mind? Go back and begin all over; you haven't probed down deeply enough and brought up the genuine material And I suggest you start out by confessing that you misconfessed consciously and deliberately.'

‘No such thing,' Stone said, or rather tried to say; his voice had gone out on him, numbed by dismay. ‘P-perhaps I could discuss this with you informally, sir. I did falsify Ian Duncan's test score; that's a fact. Now, perhaps my motives for doing it -- ‘

Doyle interrupted. ‘Aren't you jealous of Duncan now? What with his success with the jug, White House-wards?'

There was silence.

‘This -- could be,' Stone rasped in admission at last. ‘But it doesn't change the fact that by all rights Ian Duncan shouldn't be living here; he should be evicted, my motives notwithstanding. Look it up in the Communal Apartment building Code. I know there's a section covering a situation such as this.'

‘But you can't get out of here,' the skypilot persisted, ‘without confessing; you must satisfy the machine. You're attempting to force eviction of a neighbour to satisfy your own emotional, psychological needs. Confess that, and then perhaps we can discuss the Code ruling as it pertains to Duncan.'

Stone groaned and once more attached the intricate system of electrodes to his scalp. ‘All right,' he grated. ‘I hate Ian Duncan because he's artistically gifted and I'm not. I'm willing to be examined by a twelve-resident jury of my neighbours to see what the penalty for my sin is; but I insist that Duncan be given another relpol test! I won't give up on this -- he has no right to be dwelling here amongst us. It's morally and legally wrong.'

‘At least you're being honest, now,' Doyle said.

‘Actually,' Stone said, ‘I enjoy jug band playing; I liked their little act, the other night. But I have to behave in a manner which I believe to be in the public interest.'

The confessionator, it seemed to him, snorted in derision as it popped a second card. But perhaps it was only his imagination.

‘You're just getting yourself deeper and deeper,' Doyle said, reading the card. ‘Look at this.' He grimly passed the card to Stone. ‘Your mind is a riot of confused, ambivalent motives. When was the last time you confessed?'

Flushing, Stone mumbled, ‘I think -- last August. Pape Jones was the skypilot then. Yes, it must have been August.'

Actually, it had been early July.

‘A lot of work will have to be done with you,' Doyle said, lighting a cigarillo and leaning back in his chair.

The opening number on their White House programme they had decided after much discussion and hot argument, would be the Bach ‘Chaconne in D.' Al had always liked it, despite the difficulties involved, the double-stopping and all. Even thinking about the Chaconne made Ian Duncan nervous.

He wished, now that it had at last been decided, that he had held out for the much simpler ‘Fifty Unaccompanied Cello Suite.' But too late now. Al had sent the information to the White House A & R secretary, Mr Harold Slezak.

Al said, ‘Don't for heaven's sake worry; you've got the number two jug in this. Do you mind being second jug to me?'

‘No,' Ian said. It was a relief, actually; Al had the far more difficult part.

Outside the perimeter of Jalopy Jungle Number three the papoola moved, crisscrossing the sidewalk in its gliding, quiet pursuit of a sales prospect. It was only ten in the morning, and no one worth collaring had come along, as yet.

Today the lot had been set up in the hilly section of Oakland, California, among the winding, tree-shrouded streets of the better residential section. Across from the lot, Ian could see The Joe Louis, a peculiarly-shaped but striking apartment building of a thousand units, mostly occupied by very well-to-do Negroes. The building, in the morning sun, appeared especially neat and cared for. A guard, with badge and gun, patrolled the entrance, stopping anyone who did not live there from entering.

‘Slezak has to okay the programme,' Al reminded him.

‘Maybe Nicole won't want to hear the Chaconne; she's got very specialized tastes and they're changing all the time.'

In his mind Ian saw Nicole propped up in her enormous bed, in her pink, frilly robe, her breakfast on a tray beside her as she scanned the programme schedules presented to her for her approval. Already she's heard about us, he thought.

She knows of our existence.

In that case, we really do exist. Like a child that has to have its mother watching what it does, we're brought into being, validated consensually, by Nicole's gaze.

And when she takes her eye off us, he thought, then what? What happens to us afterwards? Do we disintegrate, sink back into oblivion? Back, he thought, into random, unformed atoms. Where we came from, the world of nonbeing, The world we've been in all our lives, up until now.

‘And,' Al said, ‘she may ask us for an encore. She may even request a particular favourite. I've researched it, and it seems she sometimes asks to hear Schumann's "The Happy Farmer." Got that in mind? We'd better work "The Happy Farmer" up, just in case.' He blew a few toots on his jug, thoughtfully.

‘I can't do it,' Ian said abruptly. ‘I can't go on. It means too much to me. Something will go wrong; we won't please her and they'll boot us out. And we'll never be able to forget.'

‘Look,' Al began. ‘We have the papoola. And that gives us -- ‘ He broke off. A tall, stoop-shouldered, elderly man in an expensive natural fibre-grey suit was coming up the sidewalk. ‘My god, it's Luke himself,' Al said. He looked frightened. ‘I've only seen him twice before in my life. Something must be wrong.'

‘Better reel in the papoola,' Ian said. The papoola had begun to move towards Loony Luke.

With a bewildered expression on his face Al said, ‘I can't.'

He fiddled desperately with the controls at his waist. ‘It won't respond.'

The papoola reached Luke, and Luke bent down, picked it up and continued on towards the lot, the papoola under his arm.

‘He's taken precedence over me,' Al said. He looked at Ian numbly.

The door of the office opened and Loony Luke entered.

‘We got a report that you've been using this in your own time, for purposes of your own,' he said to Al, his voice low and gravelly. ‘You were told not to do that; the papoola belongs to the lot, not to the operator.'

Al said, ‘Aw, come on, Luke -- ‘

‘You ought to be fired,' Luke said, ‘but you're a good salesman so I'll keep you on. Meanwhile, you'll have to make your quota without help.' Tightening his grip on the papoola, he started out. ‘My time is valuable; I have to go.'

He saw Al's jug. ‘That's not a musical instrument; it's a thing to put whisky in.'

Al said, ‘Listen, Luke, this is publicity. Performing for Nicole means that the network of jalopy jungles will gain prestige. Got it?'

‘I don't want prestige,' Luke said, pausing at the door. ‘There's no catering to Nicole Thibodeaux by me; let her run her society the way she wants and I'll run the jungles the way I want. She leaves me alone and I'll leave her alone and that's fine with me. Don't mess it up. Tell Slezak you can't appear and forget about it; no grown man in his right senses would be hooting into an empty bottle anyhow.'

‘That's where you're wrong,' Al said. ‘Art can be found in the most mundane daily walks of life, like in these jugs for instance.'

Luke, picking his teeth with a silver toothpick, said, ‘Now you don't have a papoola to soften the First Family up for you. Better think about that. Do you really expect to make it without the papoola?' He grinned.

After a pause Al said to Ian, ‘He's right. The papoola did it for us. But -- hell, let's go on anyhow.'

‘You've got guts,' Luke said. ‘But no sense. Still, I have to admire you. I can see why you've been a top-notch salesman for the organization; you don't give up. Take the papoola the night you perform at the White House and then return it to me the next morning.' He tossed the round, buglike creature to Al; grabbing it, Al hugged it against his chest like a big pillow. ‘Maybe it would be good publicity for the jungles,' Luke said meditatively. ‘But I know this. Nicole doesn't like us. Too many people have slipped out of her hands by means of us; we're a leak in mama's structure and mama knows it.' Again he grinned, showing gold teeth.

Al said, ‘Thanks, Luke.'

‘But I'll operate the papoola,' Luke said. ‘By remote. I'm a little more skilled than you; after all, I built them.'

‘Sure,' Al said. ‘I'll have my hands full playing anyhow.'

‘Yes,' Luke said, ‘you'll need both hands for that bottle.'

Something in Luke's tone made Ian Duncan uneasy.

What's he up to? he wondered. But in any case he and his buddy Al Miller had no choice; they had to have the papoola working for them. And no doubt Luke could do a good job operating it; he had already proved his superiority over Al, just now, and as Luke said, Al would be busy blowing away on his jug. But still ...

‘Loony Luke,' Ian said, ‘have you ever met Nicole?' It was a sudden thought on his part, an intuition.

‘Sure,' Luke said steadily. ‘Years ago. I had some hand puppets; my dad and I travelled around putting on puppet shows. We finally played the White House.'

‘What happened there?' Ian asked.

Luke, after a pause, said, ‘She -- didn't care for us. Said something about our puppets being indecent.'

And you hate her, Ian realized. You never forgave her.

‘Were they?' he asked Luke.

‘No,' Luke answered. ‘True, one act was a strip show; we had follies girl puppets. But nobody ever objected before. My dad took it hard but it didn't bother me.' His face was impassive.

Al said, ‘Was Nicole the First Lady that far back?'

‘Oh yes,' Luke said. ‘She's been in office for seventy-three years; didn't you know that?'

‘It isn't possible,' both Al and Ian said, almost together.

‘Sure it is,' Luke said. ‘She's a really old woman, now. Must be. A grandmother. But she still looks good, I guess. You'll know when you see her.'

Stunned, Ian said, ‘On TV -- ‘

‘Oh yeah,' Luke agreed. ‘On TV she looks around twenty. But go to the history books ... except of course they're banned to everyone except Ges. I mean the real history texts; not the ones they give you for studying for those relpol tests. Once you look it up you can figure it out for yourself. The facts are all there. Buried down somewhere.'

The facts, Ian realized, mean nothing when you can see with your own eyes she's as young-looking as ever. And we see that every day.

Luke you're lying, he thought. We know it; we all know it.

My buddy Al saw her; Al would have said, if she was really like that. You hate her; that's your motive. Shaken, he turned his back to Luke; not wanting to have anything more to do with the man now. Seventy-three years in office -- that would make Nicole almost ninety, now. He shuddered at the idea; he blocked it out of his thoughts. Or at least he tried to.

‘Good luck, boys,' Luke said, chewing on his toothpick.

It's too bad, Al Miller thought, that the government cracked down on those psychoanalysts. He glanced across his office at his buddy Ian Duncan. Because you're in a bad way, Al realized. But actually there was one of them left; he had heard about it over TV. Dr Superb or something like that.

‘Ian,' he said. ‘You need help. You're not going to be able to blow that jug for Nicole, not the way you're feeling.'

‘I'll be okay,' Ian said shortly.

Al said, ‘Ever been to a psychiatrist?'

‘Couple times. Long ago.'

‘You think they're better than chemical therapy?'

‘Anything's better than chemical therapy.'

If he's the only psychoanalyst still practising in the entire USEA, Al thought, he's no doubt swamped. Couldn't possibly take on any new patients.

However, for the heck of it, he looked up the number, picked up his phone and dialled.

‘Who're you calling?' Ian asked suspiciously.

‘Dr Superb. The last of the -- ‘

‘I know. Who's it for? You? Me?'

‘Both of us maybe,' Al said.

‘But primarily for me.'

Al did not answer. A girl's image -- she had lovely, enlarged, high-rise breasts -- had formed on the screen and in his ear her voice said, ‘Dr Superb's office.'

‘Is the doctor accepting any new patients at this time?' Al asked, scrutinizing her image fixedly.

‘Yes he is,' the girl said in a vigorous, firm tone of voice.

‘Terrific!' Al said, pleased and surprised. ‘I and my partner would like to come in, whenever it's possible; the sooner the better.' He gave her his name and Ian's.

‘What about Friday at nine-thirty in the morning?' the girl asked.

‘It's a deal,' Al said. ‘Thanks a lot, miss. Ma'am.' He hung up violently. ‘We got it!" he said to Ian. ‘Now we can thrash our worries out with someone qualified to render a professional assist. You know, talk about mother image -- did you see that girl? Because -- ‘

‘You can go,' Ian said. ‘I'm not.'

Al said quietly, ‘If you don't go, I'm not playing my jug at the White House. So you better go.'

Ian stared at him.

‘I mean it,' Al said.

There was a long, awkward silence.

‘I'll go,' Ian said, at last. ‘But once only. No more after this Friday.'

‘That's up to the doctor.'

‘Listen,' Ian said. ‘If Nicole Thibodeaux is ninety years old no psychotherapy is going to help me.'

‘You're that much involved emotionally with her? A woman you've never seen? That's schizophrenic. Because the fact is you're involved with -- ‘ Al gestured. ‘An illusion. Something synthetic, unreal.'

‘What's unreal and what's real? To me she's more real than anything else; than you, even. Even than myself, my own life.'

‘Holy smoke,' Al said. He was impressed. ‘Well, at least you have something to live for.'

‘Right,' Ian said, and nodded.

‘We'll see what Superb says on Friday,' Al said. ‘We'll ask him just how schizophrenic -- if at all -- it is.' He shrugged.

‘Maybe I'm wrong; maybe it isn't.' Maybe it's Luke and I who are the insane ones, he thought. To him, Luke for example, was much more real, much more an influencing factor, than Nicole Thibodeaux. But then, he had seen Nicole in the flesh, and Ian had not. That made all the difference, although he was not sure quite why.

He picked up his jug and began practising once more.

And, after a pause, Ian Duncan did the same, joining in.

Together, they puffed away.