Five Great Novels Part 12

"On Katella!"

"Somewhere on Katella, Mr. Arctor. In Anaheim. No, wait--Carl says it was in Santa Ana, on Main. Does that--"

"Thanks," he said and hung up. Santa Ana. Main. That's where the f.u.c.king dope party was, and I must have turned in thirty names and as many license plates that night; that was not your standard party. A big s.h.i.+pment had arrived from Mexico; the buyers were splitting and, as usual with buyers, sampling as they split. Half of them now probably have been busted by buy agents sent out . . . Wow, he thought: I still remember--or never will correctly remember--that night. But that still doesn't excuse Barris from impersonating Arctor with malice aforethought on that phone call coming in. Except that, by the evidence, Barris had made it up on the spot--improvised. s.h.i.+t, maybe Barris was wired the other night and did what a lot of dudes do when they're wired: just sort of groove with what's happening. Arctor wrote the check for a certainty; Barris just happened to pick up the phone. Thought, in his charred head, that it was a cool gag. Being irresponsible only, nothing more. And, he reflected as he dialed Yellow Cab again, Arctor has not been very responsible in making good on that check over this prolonged period. Whose fault is that? Getting it out once more, he examined the date on the check. A month and a half. Jesus, talk about irresponsibility! Arctor could wind up inside looking out, for that; it's G.o.d's mercy that nutty Carl didn't go to the D.A. already. Probably his sweet old sister restrained him. Arctor, he decided, better get his a.s.s in gear; he's done a few dingey things himself I didn't know about until now. Barris isn't the only one or perhaps even the primary one. For one thing, there is still to be explained the cause of Barris's intense, concerted malice toward Arctor; a man doesn't set out over a long period of time to burn somebody for no reason. And Barris isn't trying to burn anybody else, not, say, Luckman or Charles Freck or Donna Hawthorne; he helped get Jerry Fabin to the federal clinic more than anyone else, and he's kind to all the animals in the house. One time Arctor had been going to send one of the dogs-- what the h.e.l.l was the little black one's name, Popo or something?--to the pound to be destroyed, she couldn't be trained, and Barris had spent hours, in fact days, with Popo, gently training her and talking with her until she calmed down and could be trained and so didn't have to go be snuffed. If Barris had general malice toward all, he wouldn't do numbers, good numbers, like that.

"Yellow Cab," the phone said. He gave the address of the Sh.e.l.l station. And if Carl the locksmith had pegged Arctor as a heavy doper, he pondered as he lounged around moodily waiting for the cab, it isn't Barris's fault; when Carl must've pulled up in his truck at 5 A.M. to make a key for Arctor's Olds, Arctor probably was walking on Jell-O sidewalks and up walls and batting off fisheyes and every other kind of good dope-trip thing. Carl drew his conclusions then. As Carl ground the new key, Arctor probably floated around upside down or bounced about on his head, talking sideways. No wonder Carl had not been amused. In fact, he speculated, maybe Barris is trying to cover up for Arctor's increasing f.u.c.kups. Arctor is no longer keeping his vehicle in safe condition, as he once did, he's been hanging paper, not deliberately but because his G.o.dd.a.m.n brain is slushed from dope. But, if anything, that's worse. Barris is doing what he can; that's a possibility. Only, his brain, too, is slushed. _All_ their brains are . . .

_Dem Wumme gleich' ich, der den Staub durchwuhlt, Den, wie er sich im Staube nahrend lebt, Des Wandrers Tmitt vernichtet and begrabt_.

. . . slushed and mutually interacting in a slushed way. It's the slushed leading the slushed. And right into doom. Maybe, he conjectured, Arctor cut the wires and bent the wires and created all the shorts in his cephscope. In the middle of the night. But for what reason? That would be a difficult one: _why?_ But with slushed brains anything was possible, any variety of twisted--like the wires themselves--motives. He'd seen it, during his undercover law-enforcement work, many, many, times. This tragedy was not new to him; this would be, in their computer files, just one more case. This was the phase ahead of the journey to the federal clinic, as with Jerry Fabin. All these guys walked one game board, stood now in different squares various distances from the goal, and would reach it at several times. But all, eventually, would reach it: the federal clinics. It was inscribed in their neural tissue. Or what remained of it. Nothing could halt it or turn it back now. And, he had begun to believe, for Bob Arctor most of all. It was his intuition, just beginning, not dependent on anything Barris was doing. A new, professional insight. And also, his superiors at the Orange County Sheriff's Office had decided to focus on Bob Arctor; they no doubt had reasons which he knew nothing about. Perhaps these facts confirmed one another: their growing interest in Arctor--after all, it had cost the department a bundle to install the holo-scanners in Arctor's house, and to pay him to a.n.a.lyze the print-outs, as well as others higher up to pa.s.s judgment on what he periodically turned over--this fitted in with Barris's unusual attention toward Arctor, both having selected Arctor as a Primo target. But what had he seen himself in Arctor's conduct that struck him as unusual? Firsthand, not dependent on these two interests? As the taxi drove along, he reflected that he would have to watch awhile to come across anything, more than likely; it would not disclose itself to the monitors in a day. He would have to be patient; he would have to resign himself to a longterm scrutiny and to put himself in a s.p.a.ce where he was willing to wait. Once he saw something on the holo-scanners, however, some enigmatic or suspicious behavior on Arctor's part, then a three-point fix would exist on him, a third verification of the others' interests. Certainly this would be a confirm. It would justify the expense and time of everyone's interest. I wonder what Barris knows that we don't know, he wondered. Maybe we should haul him in and ask him. But-- better to obtain material developed independently from Barris; otherwise it would be a duplication of what Barris, whoever he was or represented, had. And then he thought, What the h.e.l.l am I talking about? I must be nuts. I know Bob Arctor; he's a good person. He's up to nothing. At least nothing unsavory. In fact, he thought, he works for the Orange County Sheriff's Office, covertly. Which is probably . . .

_Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust, Die eine will sich von dem andern trennen: Die eine halt, in dember Liebesl.u.s.t, Sich an die Welt mit klammernden Organen; Die andre hebt gewaltsam sich vom Dust Zu den Gefilden hoher Ahnen_.

. . . why Barris is after him. But, he thought, that wouldn't explain why the Orange County Sheriff's office is after him--especially to the extent of installing all those holos and a.s.signing a full-time agent to watch and report on him. That wouldn't account for that. It does not compute, he thought. More, a lot more, is going down in that house, that run-down rubble-filled house with its weed-patch backyard and catbox that never gets emptied and animals walking on the kitchen table and garbage spilling over that no one ever takes out. What a waste, he thought, of a truly good house. So much could be done with it. A family, children, and a woman, could live there. It was designed for that: three bedrooms. Such a waste; such a f.u.c.king waste! They ought to take it away from him, he thought; enter the situation and foreclose. Maybe they will. And put it to better use; that house yearns for that. That house has seen so much better days, long ago. Those days could return. If another kind of person had it and kept it up. The yard especially, he thought, as the cab pulled into the newspaper-splattered driveway. He paid the driver, got out his door key, and entered the house. Immediately he felt something watching: the holo-scanners on him. As soon as he crossed his own threshold. Alone-- no one but him in the house. Untrue! Him and the scanners, insidious and invisible, that watched him and recorded. Everything he did. Everything he uttered. Like the scrawls on the wall when you're peeing in a public urinal, he thought. SMILE! YOU'RE ON CANDID CAMERA! I am, he thought, as soon as I enter this house. It's eerie. He did not like it. He felt self-conscious; the sensation had grown since the first day, when they'd arrived home--the "dog-s.h.i.+t day," as he thought of it, couldn't keep from thinking of it. Each day the experience of the scanners had grown.

"n.o.body home, I guess," he stated aloud as usual, and was aware that the scanners had picked that up. But he had to take care always: he wasn't supposed to know they were there. Like an actor before a movie camera, he decided, you act like the camera doesn't exist or else you blow it. It's all over. And for this s.h.i.+t there are no take-two's. What you get instead is wipeout. I mean, what I get. Not the people behind the scanners but me. What I ought to do, he thought, to get out of this, is sell the house; it's run down anyway. But . . . I love this house. No way! It's my house. n.o.body can drive me out. For whatever reasons they would or do want to. a.s.suming there's a "they" at all. Which may just be my imagination, the "they" watching me. Paranoia. Or rather the "it." The depersonalized it. Whatever it is that's watching, it is not a human. Not by my standards, anyhow. Not what I'd recognize. As silly as this is, he thought, it's frightening. Something is being done to me and by a mere thing, here in my own house. Before my very eyes. Within _something's_ very eyes; within the sight of some _thing_. Which, unlike little dark-eyed Donna, does not ever blink. What does a scanner see? he asked himself. I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a pa.s.sive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo-scanner like they use these days, the latest thing, see into me--into us--clearly or darkly? I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can't any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside. I hope, for everyone's sake, the scanners do better. Because, he thought, if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed, cursed again and like we have been continually, and we'll wind up dead this way, knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too. From the living-room bookcase he took down a volume at random; it turned out to be, he discovered, _The Picture Book of s.e.xual Love_. Opening at random, he perceived a page-- which showed a man nibbling happily at a chick's right t.i.t, and the chick sighing--and said aloud, as if reading to himself from the book, as if quoting from some famous old-time double-dome philosopher, which he was not: "Any given man sees only a tiny portion of the total truth, and very often, in fact almost . . .

_Weh! steck' ich in dem Kerker noch? Verfluchtes dumpfes Mauerloch, Wo selbst das liebe Himmelslicht Trub durch gemalte Scheiben bricht! Beschrankt mit diesem Bucherhauf, Den Wurme nagen, Staub bedeckt, Den bis ans hohe_.

. . . perpetually, he deliberately deceives himself about that little precious fragment as well. A portion of him turns against him and acts like another person, defeating him from inside. A man inside a man. Which is no man at all."

Nodding, as if moved by the wisdom of the nonexisting written words on that page, he closed the large redbound, gold-stamped _Picture Book of s.e.xual Love_ and restored it to the shelf. I hope the scanners don't zoom in on the cover of this book, he thought, and blow my shuck.

Charles Freck, becoming progressively more and more depressed by what was happening to everybody he knew, decided finally to off himself. There was no problem, in the circles where he hung out, in putting an end to yourself; you just bought into a large quant.i.ty of reds and took them with some cheap wine, late at night, with the phone off the hook so no one would interrupt you. The planning part had to do with the artifacts you wanted found on you by later archeologists. So they'd know from which stratum you came. And also could piece together where your head had been at the time you did it. He spent several days deciding on the artifacts. Much longer than he had spent deciding to kill himself, and approximately the same time required to get that many reds. He would be found lying on his back, on his bed, with a copy of Ayn Rand's _The Fountainhead_ (which would prove he had been a misunderstood superman rejected by the ma.s.ses and so, in a sense, murdered by their scorn) and an unfinished letter to Exxon protesting the cancellation of his gas credit card. That way he would indict the system and achieve something by his death, over and above what the death itself achieved. Actually, he was not as sure in his mind what the death achieved as what the two artifacts achieved; but anyhow it all added up, and he began to make ready, like an animal sensing its time has come and acting out its instinctive programming, laid down by nature, when its inevitable end was near.

At the last moment (as end-time closed in on him) he changed his mind on a decisive issue and decided to drink the reds down with a connoisseur wine instead of Ripple or Thunderbird, so he set off on one last drive, over to Trader Joe's, which specialized in fine wines, and bought a bottle of 1971 Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon, which set him back almost thirty dollars--all he had. Back home again, he uncorked the wine, let it breathe, drank a few gla.s.ses of it, spent a few minutes contemplating his favorite page of _The Ill.u.s.trated Picture Book of s.e.x_, which showed the girl on top, then placed the plastic bag of reds beside his bed, lay down with the Ayn Rand book and unfinished protest letter to Exxon, tried to think of something meaningful but could not, although he kept remembering the girl being on top, and then, with a gla.s.s of the Cabernet Sauvignon, gulped down all the reds at once. After that, the deed being done, he lay back, the Ayn Rand book and letter on his chest, and waited. However, he had been burned. The capsules were not barbiturates, as represented. They were some kind of kinky psychedelics, of a type he had never dropped before, probably a mixture, and new on the market. Instead of quietly suffocating, Charles Freck began to hallucinate. Well, he thought philosophically, this is the story of my life. Always ripped off. He had to face the fact--considering how many of the capsules he had swallowed--that he was in for some trip. The next thing he knew, a creature from between dimensions was standing beside his bed looking down at him disapprovingly. The creature had many eyes, all over it, ultra-modern expensive-looking clothing, and rose up eight feet high. Also, it carried an enormous scroll.

"You're going to read me my sins," Charles Freck said. The creature nodded and unsealed the scroll. Freck said, lying helpless on his bed, "and it's going to take a hundred thousand hours."

Fixing its many compound eyes on him, the creature from between dimensions said, "We are no longer in the mundane universe. Lower-plane categories of material existence such as 's.p.a.ce' and 'time' no longer apply to you. You have been elevated to the transcendent realm. Your sins will be read to you ceaselessly, in s.h.i.+fts, throughout eternity. The list will never end."

Know your dealer, Charles Freck thought, and wished he could take back the last half-hour of his life. A thousand years later he was still lying there on his bed with the Ayn Rand book and the letter to Exxon on his chest, listening to them read his sins to him. They had gotten up to the first grade, when he was six years old. Ten thousand years later they had reached the sixth grade. The year he had discovered masturbation. He shut his eyes, but he could still see the multi-eyed, eight-foot-high being with its endless scroll reading on and on.

"And next--" it was saying. Charles Freck thought, At least I got a good wine.

12.

Two days later Fred, puzzled, watched Holo-Scanner Three as his subject Robert Arctor pulled a book, evidently at random, from his bookshelf in the living room of his house. Dope stashed behind it? Fred wondered, and zoomed the scanner lens in. Or a phone number or address written in it? He could see that Arctor hadn't pulled the book to read; Arctor had just entered the house and still wore his coat. He had a peculiar air about him: tense and b.u.mmed out both at once, a sort of dulled urgency. The zoomar lens of the scanner showed the page had a color photo of a man gnawing on a woman's right nipple, with both individuals nude. The woman was evidently having an o.r.g.a.s.m; her eyes had half shut and her mouth hung open in a soundless moan. Maybe Arctor's using it to get off on, Fred thought as he watched. But Arctor paid no attention to the picture; instead, he creakingly recited something mystifying, partly in German obviously to puzzle anyone overhearing him. Maybe he imagined his roommates were somewhere in the house and wanted to bait them into appearing, Fred speculated. No one appeared. Luckman, Fred knew from having been at the scanners a long while, had dropped a bunch of reds mixed with Substance D and pa.s.sed out fully dressed in his bedroom, a couple of steps short of his bed. Barris had left entirely. What is Arctor doing? Fred wondered, and noted the ident code for these sections. He's becoming more and more strange. I can see now what that informant who phoned in about him meant. Or, he conjectured, those sentences Arctor spoke aloud could be a voice command to some electronic hardware he'd installed in the house. Turn on or turn off. Maybe even create an interference field against scanning . . . such as this. But he doubted it. Doubted if it was in any way rational or purposeful or meaningful, except to Arctor. The guy is nuts, he thought. He really is. From the day he found his cephscope sabotaged--certainly the day he arrived home with his car all f.u.c.ked up, f.u.c.ked up in such a way as to almost kill him--he's been dingey ever since. And to some extent before that, Fred thought. Anyhow, ever since the "dog-s.h.i.+t day," as he knew Arctor called it. Actually, he could not blame him. That, Fred reflected as he watched Arctor peel off his coat wearily, would blow anyone's mind. But most people would phase back in. He hasn't. He's getting worse. Reading aloud to no one messages that don't exist and in foreign tongues. Unless he's shucking me, Fred thought with uneasiness. In some fas.h.i.+on figured out he's being monitored and is . . . covering up what he's actually doing? Or just playing head games with us? Time, he decided, will tell. I say he's shucking us, Fred decided. Some people can tell when they're being watched. A sixth sense. Not paranoia, but a primitive instinct: what a mouse has, any hunted thing. Knows it's being stalked. _Feels_ it. He's doing s.h.i.+t for our benefit, stringing us along. But--you can't be sure. There are shucks on top of shucks. Layers and layers. The sound of Arctor reading obscurely had awakened Luckman according to the scanner covering his bedroom. Luckman sat up groggily and listened. He then heard the noise of Arctor dropping a coat hanger while hanging up his coat. Luckman slid his long muscular legs under him and in one motion picked up a hand ax which he kept on the table by his bed; he stood erect and moved animal-smoothly toward the door of his bedroom. In the living room, Arctor picked up the mail from the coffee table and started through it. He tossed a large junkmail piece toward the wastebasket. It missed. In his bedroom Luckman heard that. He stiffened and raised his head as if to sniff the air. Arctor, reading the mail, suddenly scowled and said, "I'll be dipped."

In his bedroom Luckman relaxed, set the ax down with a clank, smoothed his hair, opened the door, and stepped out. "Hi. What's happening?"

Arctor said, "I drove by the Maylar Microdot Corporation Building."

"You're s.h.i.+tting me."

"And," Arctor said, "they were taking an inventory. But one of the employees evidently had tracked the inventory outdoors on the heel of his shoe. So they were all outside there in the Maylar Microdot Corporation parking lot with a pair of tweezers and lots and lots of little magnifying gla.s.ses. And a little paper bag."

"Any reward?" Luckman said, yawning and beating with his palms on his flat, hard gut.

"They had a reward they were offering," Arctor said. "But they lost that, too. It was a little tiny penny."

Luckman said, "You see very many events of this nature as you're driving along?"

"Only in Orange County," Arctor said.

"How large is the Maylar Microdot Corporation building?"

"About an inch high," Arctor said.

"How much would you estimate it weighs?"

"Including the employees?"

Fred sent the tape spinning ahead at fast wind. When an hour had pa.s.sed, according to the meter, he halted it momentarily.

"--about ten pounds," Arctor was saying.

"Well, how can you tell, then, when you pa.s.s by it, if it's only an inch high and only weighs ten pounds?"

Arctor, now sitting on the couch with his feet up, said, "They have a big sign."

Jesus! Fred thought, and again sent the tape ahead. He halted it at only ten minutes elapsed real time, on a hunch.

"--what's the sign look like?" Luckman was saying. He sat on the floor, cleaning a boxful of gra.s.s. "Neon and like that? Colors? I wonder if I've seen it. Is it conspicuous?"

"Here, I'll show it to you," Arctor said, reaching into his s.h.i.+rt pocket. "I brought it home with me."

Again Fred sent the tape at fast forward.

"--you know how you could smuggle microdots into a country without them knowing?" Luckman was saying.

"Just about any way you wanted," Arctor said, leaning back, smoking a joint. The air was cloudy.

"No, I mean a way they'd never flash on," Luckman said. "It was Barris who suggested this to me one day, confidentially; I wasn't supposed to tell anyone, because he's putting it in his book."

"What book? _Common Household Dope and_--"

"No. _Simple Ways to Smuggle Objects into the U.S. and out, Depending on Which Way You're Going_. You smuggle it in with a s.h.i.+pment of dope. Like with heroin. The microdots are down inside the packets. n.o.body'd notice, they're so small. They won't--"

"But then some junkie'd shoot up a hit of half smack and half microdots."

"Well, then, he'd be the f.u.c.kingest educated junkie you ever did see."

"Depending on what was on the microdots."

"Barris had his other way to smuggle dope across the border. You know how the customs guys, they ask you to declare what you have? And you can't say dope because--"

"Okay, how?"

"Well, see, you take a huge block of hash and carve it in the shape of a man. Then you hollow out a section and put a wind-up motor like a clockworks in it, and a little ca.s.sette tape, and you stand in line with it, and then just before it goes through customs you wind up the key and it walks up to the customs man, who says to it, 'Do you have anything to declare?' and the block of hash says, 'No, I don't,' and keeps on walking. Until it runs down on the other side of the border."

"You could put a solar-type battery in it instead of a spring and it could keep walking for years. Forever."

"What's the use of that? It'd finally reach either the Pacific or the Atlantic. In fact, it'd walk off the edge of the Earth, like--"

"Imagine an Eskimo village, and a six-foot-high block of hash worth about--how much would that be worth?"

"About a billion dollars."

"More. Two billion."

"These Eskimos are chewing hides and carving bone spears, and this block of hash worth two billion dollars comes walking through the snow saying over and over, 'No, I don't.'"

"They'd wonder what it meant by that."

"They'd be puzzled forever. There'd be legends."

"Can you imagine telling your grandkids, 'I saw with my own eyes the six-foot-high block of hash appear out of the blinding fog and walk past, that way, worth two billion do!lars, saying, "No, I don't." 'His grandchildren would have him committed."

"No, see, legends build. After a few centuries they'd be saying, 'In my forefathers' time one day a ninety-foot-high block of extremely good quality Afghanistan hash worth eight trillion dollars came at us dripping fire and screaming, "Die, Eskimo dogs!" and we fought and fought with it, using our spears, and finally killed it.'

"The kids wouldn't believe that either."

"Kids never believe anything any more."

"It's a downer to tell anything to a kid. I once had a kid ask me, 'What was it like to see the first automobile?' s.h.i.+t, man, I was born in 1962."

"Christ," Arctor said, "I once had a guy I knew burned out on acid ask me that. He was twenty-seven years old. I was only three years older than him. He didn't know anything any more. Later on he dropped some more hits of acid--or what he was sold as acid--and after that he peed on the floor and c.r.a.pped on the floor, and when you said something to him, like 'How are you, Don?', he just repeated it after you, like a bird. 'How are you, Don?'"

Silence, then. Between the two joint-smoking men in the cloudy living room. A long, somber silence.

"Bob, you know something. . ." Luckman said at last. "I used to be the same age as everyone else."

"I think so was I," Arctor said.

"I don't know what did it."

"Sure, Luckman," Arctor said, "you know what did it to all of us."

"Well, let's not talk about it." He continued inhaling noisily, his long face sallow in the dim midday light.

One of the phones in the safe apartment rang. A scramble suit answered it, then extended it toward Fred. "Fred."

He shut off the holos and took the phone.

"Remember when you were downtown last week?" a voice said. "Being administered the BG test?"

After an interval of silence Fred said, "Yes."

"You were supposed to come back." A pause at that end, too. "We've processed more recent material on you . . . I have taken it upon myself to schedule you for the full standard battery of percept tests plus other testing. Your time for this is tomorrow, three o'clock in the afternoon, the same room. It will take about four hours in all. Do you remember the room number?"

"No," Fred said.

"How are you feeling?"

"Okay," Fred said stoically.

"Any problems? In your work or outside your work?"

"I had a fight with my girl."

"Any confusion? Are you experiencing any difficulty identifying persons or objects? Does anything you see appear inverted or reversed? And while I'm asking, any s.p.a.ce-time or language disorientation?"

"No," he said glumly. "No to all the above."

"We'll see you tomorrow at Room 203," the psychologist deputy said.

"What material of mine did you find to be--"

"We'll take that up tomorrow. Be there. All right? And, Fred, don't get discouraged." _Click_. Well, click to you too, he thought, and hung up. With irritation, sensing that they were leaning on him, making him do something he resented doing, he snapped the holos into print-out once more; the cubes lit up with color and the three-dimensional scenes within animated. From the aud tap more purposeless, frustrating--to Fred--babble emerged: "This chick," Luckman droned on, "had gotten knocked up, and she applied for an abortion because she'd missed like four periods and she was conspicuously swelling up. She did nothing but gripe about the cost of the abortion; she couldn't get on public a.s.sistance for some reason. One day I was over at her place, and this girl friend of hers was there telling her she only had a hysterical pregnancy. 'You just _want_ to believe you're pregnant,' the chick was flattering at her. 'It's a guilt trip. And the abortion, and the heavy bread it's going to cost you, that's a penance trip.' So the chick-- I really dug her--she looked up calmly and she said, 'Okay, then if it's a hysterical pregnancy I'll get a hysterical abortion and pay for it with hysterical money.' Arctor said, "I wonder whose face is on the hysterical five-dollar bill."

"Well, who was our most hysterical President?"

"Bill Falkes. He only _thought_ he was President."

"When did he think he served?"

"He imagined he served two terms back around 1882. Later on after a lot of therapy he came to imagine he served only one term--"

With great fury Fred slammed the holos ahead two and a half hours. How long does this garbage go on? he asked himself. All day? Forever?

"--so you take your child to the doctor, to the psychologist, and you tell him how your child screams all the time and has tantrums." Luckman had two lids of gra.s.s before him on the coffee table plus a can of beer; he was inspecting the gra.s.s. "And lies; the kid lies. Makes up exaggerated stories. And the psychologist examines the kid and his diagnosis is 'Madam, your child is hysterical. You have a hysterical child. But I don't know why.' And then you, the mother, there's your chance and you lay it on him, 'I know why, doctor. It's because I had a hysterical pregnancy.'" Both Luckman and Arctor laughed, and so did Jim Barris; he had returned sometime during the two hours and was with them, working on his funky hash pipe, winding white string. Again Fred spun the tape forward a full hour.

"--this guy," Luckman was saying, manicuring a box full of gra.s.s, hunched over it as Arctor sat across from him, more or less watching, "appeared on TV claiming to be a world-famous impostor. He had posed at one time or another, he told the interviewer, as a great surgeon at Johns Hopkins Medical College, a theoretical submolecular high-velocity particle-research physicist on a federal grant at Harvard, as a Finnish novelist who'd won the n.o.bel Prize in literature, as a deposed president of Argentina married to--"

"And he got away with all that?" Arctor asked. "He never got caught?"

"The guy never posed as any of those. He never posed as anything but a world-famous impostor. That came out later in the L.A. _Times_--they checked up. The guy pushed a broom at Disneyland, or had until he read this autobiography about this world-famous impostor--there really was one--and he said, 'h.e.l.l, I can pose as all those exotic dudes and get away with it like he did,' and then he decided, 'h.e.l.l, why do that; I'll just pose as another impostor.' He made a lot of bread that way, the _Times_ said. Almost as much as the real world-famous impostor. And he said it was a lot easier."

Barris, off to himself in a corner winding string, said, "We see impostors now and then. In our lives. But not posing as subatomic physicists."

"Narks, you mean," Luckman said. "Yeah, narks. I wonder how many narks we know. What's a nark look like?"