obert to protest. Sample Menu: The Clear Camel Piss Soup with boiled Earth Worms The Filet of Sun-Ripened Sting Ray basted with Eau de Cologne and garnished with nettles The After-Birth Supreme de Boeuf, cooked in drained crank case oil, served with a piquant sauce of rotten egg yolks and crushed bed bugs The Limburger Cheese sugar cured in diabetic orine doused in Canned Heat Flamboyant.... So the clients are quietly dying of botulism.... Then A. J. returns with an entourage of Arab refugees from the Middle East. He takes one mouthful and screams: "Garbage God damn it. Cook this wise citizen in his own swill!" And so the legend of A. J. the laughable, lovable ec- centric grew and grew.... Fadeout to Venice.... Gondoliers singing and pathic cries swell up from San Marco and Harry's. Charming old Venetian anecdote about this bridge, it seems some Venetian sailors take a trip around the world and all turn into fruits they fuck the cabin boy already, so when they get back to Venice it is necessary women walk over this bridge with their lungs hanging out to arouse the desires of these dubious citizens. So get a battalion of shock troops up to San Marco on the double. "Girls, this is O.A.O., Operation All Out. If your tits won't stop them bring up your cunts and confound these faggots." "Oh Gertie it's true. It's all true. They've got a horrid gash instead of a thrilling thing." "I can't face it." "Enough to turn a body to stone." Paul spoke wiser than he know being a really evil old shit when he talk about men lying with men doing that which is inconvenient. Inconvenient is the word. So who want to trip over a cock on the way to a cunt, and when a citizen get the yen to hump a gash, some evil stranger rush in and do that which is inconvenient to his ass. A. J. rush across San Marco slashing at pigeons with a cutlass: "Bastards! Sons of bitches!" he screams.... He staggers aboard his barge, a monstrous construction in gilt and pink and blue with sails of purple velvet. He is dressed in a preposterous naval uniform covered with braid and ribbons and medals, dirty and torn, the coat buttoned in the wrong holes.... A. J. walks to a huge reproduction of a Greek urn topped by a gold statue of a boy with an erection. He twists the boy's balls and a jet of champagne spurts into his mouth. He wipes his mouth and looks around. "Where are my Nubians, God damn it?" he yells. His secretary looks up from a comic book: "Juicing. ...Chasing cunt." "Goldbricking cocksuckers. Where's a man without his Nubians?" "Take a gondola whyncha?' "A gondola?" A. J. screams. "I put out for this cock- sucker I should ride in a gondola already? Reef the mainsail and ship the oars, Mr. Hyslop.... I'm gonna make with the auxiliary." Mr. Hyslop shrugs resignedly. With one finger he begins punching a switchboard.... The sails drop, the oars draw into the hull. "And turn on the perfume whyncha? The canal stinks up a breeze." "Gardenia? Sandlewood?' "Naw. Ambrosia." Mr. Hyslop presses another button and a thick cloud of perfume settles over the barge. A. J. is seized with a fit of coughing.... "Make with the fans" he yells. "I'm suffocatin'!" Mr. Hyslop is coughing into a handkerchief. He presses a button. Fans whir and thin out the ambrosia. A. J. in- stalls himself at the rudder on a raised dais. "Contact!" The barge begins to vibrate. "Avanti, God damn it!" A. J. yells and the barge takes off across the canal at a tremendous speed overturning gondolas full of tourists, missing the motoscafi by inches, veering from one side of the canal to the other (the wake washes over the sidewalks drenching passersby) shattering a fleet of moored gondolas, and finally piles up against a pier, spins out into the middle of the canal.... A column of water spurts six feet in the air from a hole in the hull. "Man the pumps, Mr. Hyslop. She's shipping water." The barge gives a sudden lurch throwing A. J. into the canal. "Abandon ship, God damn it! Every man for him- self!" Fadeout to Mambo music. The inauguration of Escuela Amigo, a school for de- linquent boys of Latin American origin, endowed by A. J., Faculty Boys and press attending. A. J. staggers out onto a platform draped with American flags. "In the immortal words of Father Flanagan there is no such thing as a bad boy.... Where's the statuary, God damn it?" TECHNICIAN: "You want it now?" A. J.: "What you think I'm doing here Furthucrisakes? I should unveil the son of a bitch in abstentia?" TECHNICIAN: "All right... All right. Coming right up." The statue is towed out by a Graham Hymie trac- tor and placed in front of the platform. A. J. presses a button. Turbines start under the platform, rising to a deafening whine. Wind blows the red velvet drapes off the statue. They tangle around the Faculty members in the front row.... Clouds of dust and debris whip through the spectators. The sirens slowly subside. The Faculty disengages itself from the drapes.... Every- one is looking at the statue in breathless silence. FATHER GONZALEZ: "Mother of God!" THE MAN From Time: "I don't believe it." Daily News: "It's nothing but fruity." Chorus of whistles from the boys. A monumental creation in shiny pink stone stands re- vealed as the dust settles. A naked boy is bending over a sleeping comrade with evident intention to waken him with a flute. One hand is holding the flute, the other reaching for a piece of cloth draped over the sleeper's middle. The cloth bulges suggestively. Both boys wear a flower behind the ear, identical expressions, dreamy and brutal, depraved and innocent. This crea- tions tops a limestone pyramid on which is inscribed in letters of porcelain mosaic -- pink and blue and gold -- the school motto: "With it and for it." A. J. lurches forward and breaks a champagne bottle across the boy's taut buttocks. "And remember, boys, that's where champagne comes from." Manhattan Serenade. A. J. and entourage start into New York night club. A. J. is leading a purple-assed baboon on a gold chain. A. J. is dressed in checked linen plus fours with a cashmere jacket. MANAGER: "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. What's that?' A. J.: "It's an Illyrian poodle. Choicest beast a man can latch onto. It'll raise the tone of your trap." MANAGER: "I suspect it to be a purple-assed baboon and it stands outside." STOOGE: "Don't you know who this is? It's A. J., last of the big time spenders." MANAGER: "Leave him take his purple-assed bastard and big time spend some place else." A. J. stops in front of another club and looks in. "Ele- gant fags and old cunts, God damn it! We come to the right place. Avanti, ragazzit" He drives a gold stake into the floor and pickets the baboon. He begins talking in elegant tones, his stooges filling in. "Fantastic!" "Monstrous!" "Utter heaven1" A. J. puts a long cigarette holder in his mouth. The holder is made of some obscenely flexible material. It swings and undulates as if endowed with loathsome reptilian life. A. J.: "So there I was Hat on my stomach at thirty thousand feet." Several nearby fags raise their heads like animals scenting danger. A. J. leaps to his feet with an inarticu- late snarl. "You purple-assed cocksucker!" he screams. "I'll teach you to shit on the floor!" He pulls a whip from his um- brella and cuts the baboon across the ass. The baboon screams and tears loose the stake. He leaps on the next table and climbs up an old woman who dies of heart failure on the spot. A. J.: "Sorry, lady. Discipline you know." In a frenzy he whips the baboon from one end of the bar to the other. The baboon, screaming and snarl- ing and shitting with terror, climbs over the clients, runs up and down on top of the bar, swings from drapes and chandeliers.... A. J.: "You'll straighten up and shit right or you won't be inna condition to shit one way or the other." STOOGE: "You ought to be ashamed of yourself up- settin' A. J. after all he's done for you." A. J.: "Ingrates! Every one of them ingrates! Take it from an old queen." Of course no one believes this cover story. A. J. claims to be an "independent," which is to say: "Mind your own business." There are no independents any more. ... The Zone swarms with every variety of dupe but there are no neutrals there. A neutral at A. J.'s level is of course unthinkable.... Hassan is a notorious Liquefactionist and suspect to be a secret Sender -- "Shucks, boys," he says with a dis- arming pin, "I'm just a blooming old cancer and I gotta proliferate." He picks up a Texas accent associating with Dry Hole Dutton, the Dallas wildcatter, and he wears cowboy boots and ten-gallon hat at all times in- doors and out.... His eyes are invisible behind black glasses, his face smooth and blank as wax above a well- cut suit made entirely from immature high denomina- tion bank notes. (Bank notes are in fact currency, but they must mature before they can be negotiated.... Bank notes run as high as one million clams a note. ) "They keep hatching out all over me," he says shyly. ..."It's like, gee, I don't know how to say it. It's like I was a Mummy scorpion carrying those little baby notes around on my warm body and feeling them grow.... Gosh I hope I don't bore you with all this." Salvador, known as Sally to his friends -- he always keeps a few "friends" around and pays them by the hour -- got cured in the slunk business in World War II. (To get cured means to get rich. Expression used by Texas oil men.) The Pure Food and Drug Department have his picture in their files, a heavy faced man with an embalmed look as if paraffin had been injected under the skin which is smooth, shiny and poreless. One eye is dead grey color, round as a marble, with flaws and opaque spots. The other is black and shiny, an old un- dreaming insect eye. His eyes are normally invisible behind black glasses. He looks sinister and enigmatic -- his gestures and man- nerisms are not yet comprehensible -- like the secret police of a larval state. In moments of excitement Salvador is apt to lapse into broken English. His accent at such moments sug- gests an Italian origin. He reads and speaks Etruscan, A squad of accountant investigators have made a life work of Sal's international dossier.... His operations extend through the world in an inextricable, shifting web of subsidiaries, front companies, and aliases. He has held 23 passports and been deported 49 times -- deportation proceedings pending in Cuba, Pakistan, Hongkong and Yokohama. Salvador Hassan O'Leary, alias The Shoe Store Kid, alias Wrong Way Marv, alias After Birth Leary, alias Slunky Pete, alias Placenta Juan, alias K. Y. Ahmed, alias El Chinche, alias El Culito, etc., etc. for fifteen solid pages of dossier, first tangled with the law in NYC where he was traveling with a character known to the Brooklyn police as Blubber Wilson, who hustled his goof ball money shaking down fetishists in shoe stores. Has- san was charged some third degree extortion and con- spiracy to impersonate a police officer. He had learnt the shakeman's Number One rule: D.T.-- Ditch Tin -- which corresponds to the pilot's KFS -- Keep Flying Speed.... As The Vigilante puts it: "If you get a rumble, kid, ditch your piece of tin if you have to swal- low it." So they didn't bust him with a queer badge. Hassan testified against Wilson, who drew Pen Indef. (longest term possible under New York law for a mis- demeanor conviction. Nominally an indefinite sentence, it means three years in Riker's Island). Hassan's case was nolle prossed. "I'd have drawn a nickel," Hassan said, "if I hadn't met a decent cop." Hassan met a de- cent cop every time he took a fall. His dossier contains three pages of monikers indicating his proclivity for cooperating with the law, "playing ball" the cops call it. Others call it something else: Ab the Fuzz Lover, Finky Marv, The Crooning Hebe, Ali the Stool, Wrongo Sal, The Wailing Spic, The Sheeny Soprano, The Bronx Opera House, The Copper's Djinn, The Answering Serv- ice, The Squeaking Syrian, The Cooing Cocksucker, The Musical Fruit, The Wrong Ass Hole, The Fairy Fink, Leary the Nark, The Lilting Leprechaun... Grassy Gert. He opened a sex shop in Yokohama, pushed junk in Beirut, pimped in Panama. During World War II he shifted into high, took over a dairy in Holland and cut the butter with used axle grease, cornered the K.Y. market in North Africa, and finally hit the jackpot with slunks. He prospered and proliferated, Hooding the world with cut medicines and cheap counterfeit goods of every variety. Adulterated shark repellent, cut anti- biotics, condemned parachutes, stale anti-venom, in- active serums and vaccines, leaking lifeboats. Clem and Jody, two oldtime vaudeville hoofers, cope out as Russian agents whose sole function is to repre- sent the U.S. in an unpopular light. When arrested for sodomy in Indonesia, Clem said to the examining magistrate: "'Tain't as if it was being queer. After all they's only Gooks." They appeared in Liberia dressed in black Stetsons and red galluses: "So I shoot that old nigger and he flop on his side one leg up in the air just akicking." "Yeah, but you ever burn a nigger?" They are always pacing round Bidonvilles smoking huge cigars: "Haveta get some bulldozers in here Jody. Clean out all this crap." Morbid crowds follow them about hoping to witness some superlative American outrage. "Thirty years in show business and I never handle such a routine like this. I gotta dispossess a Bidonville, give myself a bang of H, piss on the Black Stone, make with the Prayer Call whilst dressed in my hog suit, cancel Lend Lease and get fucked up the ass simul- taneous.... What, am I an octopus already?" Clem complains. They are conspiring to kidnap the Black Stone with a helicopter and substitute a hog pen, the hogs trained to give the Bronx cheer when the pilgrims show. "We try to train them squealing bastards to sing: 'Three cheers for the Red White and Blue,' but it can't be done...." "We connect for that wheat with Ali Wong Chapul- tepec in Panama. He tells us it is a high grade of shit this Finnish skipper die inna local jump joint and leave this cargo to the madame.... 'She was like a mother to me,' he says and those were his last words.... So we buy it in good faith off the old gash. Laid ten pieces of H on her." "Good H too. Good Aleppo H." "Just enough milk sugar to keep her strength up." "We should look a gift horse in the ass already?" "Isn't it true than when you got to Hassan you gave a banquet for the Caid and served couscous made from the wheat?" "We sure did. And you know those citizens were so loaded on that marijuana they all wig inna middle of the banquet.... Me, I just had bread and milk... ulcers you know." "Likewise." "So they all run around screaming they is on fire and the bulk of them die the following morning." "And the rest the morning after that." "What they expect already when they rot theirselves with Eastern vices?" "Funny thing those citizens turn all black and their legs drop off." "Horrible result of marijuana addiction." "The very same thing occurred to me." "So we deal directly with the old Sultan who is being a well-known Latah. After that everything is plain sailing you might say." "But you wouldn't believe it, certain disgruntled ele- ments chased us right down to our launch." "Handicapped somewhat by lack of legs." "And a condition in the head." (Ergot is a fungus disease grows on bad wheat. Dur- ing the Middle Ages Europe was periodically deci- mated by outbreaks of Ergotism, which was called St. Anthony's fire. Gangrene frequently supervenes, the legs turn black and drop off. ) They unload a shipment of condemned parachutes on the Ecuadorian Air Force. Manoeuvres: Boys plummet streaming 'chutes like broken condoms splash young blood over pot-bellied generals... shattering wake of sound as Clem and Jody disappear over the Andes in jet getaway.... The exact objectives of Islam Inc. are obscure. Need- less to say everyone involved has a different angle, and they all intend to cross each other up somewhere along the line. A. J. is agitating for the destruction of Israel: "With all this feeling against the West a chap has a spot of bother scoring for the young Arab amenities.... The situation is little short of intolerable.... Israel consti- tutes a downright inconvenience." Typical A. J. cover story. Clem and Jody give out they are interested in the de- struction of Near East oil Belds to boost the value of their Venezuelan holdings. Clem writes a number to the tune of "Crawdad" (Big Bill Broonzy). What you gonna do when the oil goes dry? Gonna sit right there and watch those Arabs die. Salvador emits a thick screen of international finance to cloak, at least from the rank and file, his Liquefac- tionist activities.... But over a few stiff yages he lets his hair down among friends. "Islam is jellied consomme already," he says, dancing the Liquefactionist Jig.... And then, unable to contain himself, he bursts into a hideous falsetto: It's trembling on the brink One push and down it sink Hey, Maw, get ready my veil. "Well, these citizens have engaged the services of a Brooklyn Jew who passes himself off as the second coming of Mohammed.... In fact Doctor Benway delivered him by Caesarian section from a Holy Man in Mecca.... "If Ahmed won't come out... We'll go in and get him." This shameless plant is accepted without question by the gullible Arabs. "Nice folk, these Arabs... Nice ignorant folk," Clem says. So this phony gives out with daily Surahs on the radio: "Now friends of the radio audience, this is Ah- med your friendly prophet.... Today I'd like to talk about the importance of being dainty and kissin' fresh at all times.... Friends, use Jody's chlorophyll tablets and be sure." Now a word about the parties of Interzone.... It will be immediately clear that the Liquefaction Party is, except for one man, entirely composed of dupes, it not being clear until the final absorption who is whose dupe.... The Liquefactionists are much given to every form of perversion, especially sado-masochistic practices.... Liquefactionists in general know what the score is. The Senders, on the other hand, are notorious for their ignorance of the nature and terminal state of sending, for barbarous and self-righteous manners, and for rabid fear of any fact --. It was only the intervention of the Factualists that prevented the Senders from putting Einstein in an institution and destroying his theory. It may be said that only a very few Senders know what they are doing and these top Senders are the most dan- gerous and evil men in the world.... Techniques of Sending were crude at first. Fadeout to the National Electronic Conference in Chicago. The Conferents are putting on their overcoats.... The speaker talks in a fiat shopgirl voice: "In closing I want to sound a word of warning.... The logical extension of encephalographic research is bicontrol; that is control of physical movement, mental processes, emotional reactions and apparent sensory im- pressions by means of bioelectric signals injected into the nervous system of the subject." "Louder and funnier!" The Conferents are trouping out in clouds of dust. "Shortly after birth a surgeon could install connec- tions in the brain. A miniature radio receiver could be plugged in and the subject controlled from State- controlled transmitters." Dust settles through the windless air of a vast empty hall -- smell of hot iron and steam; a radiator sings in the distance.... The Speaker shuffles his notes and blows dust off them.... "The biocontrol apparatus is prototype of one-way telepathic control. The subject could be rendered sus- ceptible to the transmitter by drugs or other processing without installing any apparatus. Ultimately the Senders will use telepathic transmitting exclusively.... Ever dig the Mayan codices? I figure it like this: the priests -- about one per cent of population -- made with one-way telepathic broadcasts instructing the workers what to feel and when.... A telepathic sender has to send all the time. He can never receive, because if he receives that means someone else has feelings of his own could louse up his continuity. The sender has to send all the time, but he can't ever recharge himself by contact. Sooner or later he's got no feelings to send. You can't have feelings alone. Not alone like the Sender is alone -- and you dig there can only be one Sender at one place-time.... Finally the screen goes dead.... The Sender has turned into a huge centipede.... So the workers come in on the beam and burn the centipede and elect a new Sender by consensus of the general will.... The Mayans were limited by isolation.... Now one Sender could control the planet.... You see control can never be a means to any practical end.... It can never be a means to anything but more control.... Like junk..." The Divisionists occupy a mid-way position, could in fact be termed moderates.... They are called Divi- sionists because they literally divide. They cut off tiny bits of their flesh and grow exact replicas of themselves in embryo jelly. It seems probable, unless the process of division is halted, that eventually there will be only one replica of one sex on the planet: that is one person in the world with millions of separate bodies.... Are these bodies actually independent, and could they in time develop varied characteristics? I doubt it. Replicas must periodically recharge with the Mother Cell. This is an article of faith with the Divisionists, who live in fear of a replica revolution.... Some Divisionists think that the process can be halted short of the eventual monop- oly of one replica. They say: "Just let me plant a few more replicas all over so I won't be lonely when I travel.... And we must strictly control the division of Undesirables...." Every replica but your own is even- tually an "Undesirable." Of course if someone starts inundating an area with Identical Replicas, everyone knows what is going on. The other citizens are subject to declare a "Schluppit" (wholesale massacre of all identifiable replicas). To avoid extermination of their replicas, citizens dye, distort, and alter them with face and body molds. Only the most abandoned and shame- less characters venture to manufacture I.R.s -- Identical Replicas. A cretinous albino Caid, product of a long line of re- cessive genes (tiny toothless mouth lined with black hairs, body of a huge crab, claws instead of arms, eyes projected on stalks) accumulated 20,000 I.R.s. "As far as the eye can see, nothing but replicas," he says, crawling around on his terrace and speaking in strange insect chirps. "I don't have to skulk around like a nameless asshole growing replicas in my cesspool and sneaking them out disguised as plumbers and delivery men.... My replicas don't have their dazzling beauty marred by plastic surgery and barbarous dye and bleach processes. They stand forth naked in the sun for all to see, in their incandescent loveliness of body, face and soul. I have made them in my image and enjoined them to increase and multiply geometric for they shall inherit the earth." A professional witch was called in to make Sheik Aracknid's replica cultures forever sterile.... As the witch was preparing to loose a blast of anti-orgones, Benway told him: "Don't knock yourself out. Frederick's ataxia will clean out that replica nest. I studied neurol- ogy under Professor Fingerbottom in Vienna... and he knew every nerve in your body. Magnificent old thing... Came to a sticky end.... His falling piles blew out the Duc de Ventre's Hispano Suiza and wrapped around the rear wheel. He was completely gutted, leav- ing an empty shell sitting there on the giraffe skin up- holstery.... Even the eyes and brain went with a horrible schlupping sound. The Duc de Ventre says he will carry that ghastly schlup to his mausoleum." Since there is no sure way to detect a disguised re- plica (though every Divisionist has some method he considers infallible) the Divisionists are hysterically paranoid. If some citizen ventures to express a liberal opinion, another citizen invariably snarls: "What are you? Some stinking Nigger's bleached-out replica?" The casualties in barroom fights are staggering. In fact the fear of Negro replicas -- which may be blond and blue-eyed -- has depopulated whole regions. The Divisionists are all latent or overt homosexuals. Evil old queens tell the young boys: "If you go with a woman your replicas won't grow." And citizens are forever putting the hex on someone else's replica cultures. Cries of: "Hex my culture will you, Biddy Blair1" followed by sound effects of mayhem, continually ring through the quarter.... The Divisionists are much given to the practice of black magic in general, and they have in- numerable formulas of varying efficacy for destroying the Mother Cell, also known as the Protoplasm Daddy, by torturing or killing a captured replica.... The au- thorities have finally given up the attempt to control, among the Divisionists, the crimes of murder and un- licensed production of replicas. But they do stage pre- election raids and destroy vast replica cultures in the mountainous regions of the Zone where replica moon- shiners hole up. Sex with a replica is strictly forbidden and almost universally practiced. There are queer bars where shameless citizens openly consort with their replicas. House detectives stick their heads into hotel rooms say- ing: "Have you got a replica in here?" Bars subject to be inundated by low class replica lovers put up signs in ditto marks: " " " "s Will Not Be Served Here.... It may be said that the average Divi- sionist lives in a continual crisis of fear and rage, un- able to achieve either the self-righteous complacency of the Senders or the relaxed depravity of the Lique- factionists.... However the parties are not in practice separate but blend in all combinations. The Factualists are Anti-Liquefactionist, Anti-Divi- sionist, and above all Anti-Sender. Bulletin of the Coordinate Factualist on the subject of replicas: "We must reject the facile solution of fiood- ing the planet with 'desirable replicas.' It is highly doubtful if there are any desirable replicas, such crea- tures constituting an attempt to circumvent process and change. Even the most intelligent and genetically per- fect replicas would in all probability constitute an un- speakable menace to life on this planet...." T.B.-- Tentative Bulletin-Liquefaction: "We must not reject or deny our protoplasmic core, striving at all time to maintain a maximum of flexibility without falling into the morass of liquefaction...." Tentative and Incom- plete Bulletin: "Emphatically we do not oppose tele- pathic research. In fact, telepathy properly used and understood could be the ultimate defense against any form of organized coercion or tyranny on the part of of pressure groups or individual control addicts. We op- pose, as we oppose atomic war, the use of such knowl- edge to control, coerce, debase, exploit or annihilate the individuality of another living creature. Telepathy is not, by its nature, a one-way process. To attempt to set up a one-way telepathic broadcast must be regarded as an unqualified evil...." D.B.-- Definitive Bulletin: "The Sender will be de- fined by negatives. A low pressure area, a sucking emptiness. He will be portentously anonymous, face- less, colorless. He will -- probably -- be born with smooth disks of skin instead of eyes. He always knows where he is going like a virus knows. He doesn't need eyes." "Couldn't there be more than one Sender?" "Oh yes, many of them at first. But not for long. Some maudlin citizens will think they can send something edifying, not realizing that sending is evil. Scientists will say: 'Sending is like atomic power.... If properly harnessed.' At this point an anal technician mixes a bi- carbonate of soda and pulls the switch that reduces the earth to cosmic dust. ('Belch... They'll hear this fart on Jupiter.')... Artists will confuse sending with crea- tion. They will camp around screeching 'A new medium' until their rating drops off.... Philosophers will bat around the ends and means hassle not knowing that sending can never be a means to anything but more sending, Like Junk. Try using junk as a means to some- thing else.... Some citizens with 'Coca Cola and aspirin' control habits will be talking about the evil glamor of sending. But no one will talk about anything very long. The Sender, he don't like talking." The Sender is not a human individual.... It is The Human Virus. (All virus are deteriorated cells leading a parasitic existence.... They have specific affinity for the Mother Cell; thus deteriorated liver cells seek the home place of hepatitis, etc. So every species has a Master Virus: Deteriorated Image of that species. ) The broken image of Man moves in minute by minute and cell by cell.... Poverty, hatred, war, police-crimi- nals, bureaucracy, insanity, all symptoms of The Human Virus. The Human Virus can now be isolated and treated. THE COUNTY CLERK The County Clerk has his office in a huge red brick building known as the Old Court House. Civil cases are, in fact, tried there, the proceeding inexorably dragging out until the contestants die or abandon litigation. This is due to the vast number of records pertaining to abso- lutely everything, all filed in the wrong place so that no one but the County Clerk and his staff of assistants can find them, and he often spends years in the search. In fact, he is still looking for material relative to a dam- age suit that was settled out of court in 1910. Large sections of the Old Court House have fallen in ruins, and others are highly dangerous owing to frequent cave-ins. The County Clerk assigns the more dangerous missions to his assistants, many of whom have lost their lives in the service. In 1912 two hundred and seven assistants were trapped in a collapse of the North-by- North-East wing. When suit is brought against anyone in the Zone, his lawyers connive to have the case transferred to the Old Court House. Once this is done, the plaintiff has lost the case, so the only cases that actually go to trial in the Old Court House are those instigated by eccentrics and paranoids who want "a public hearing," which they rarely get since only the most desperate famine of news will bring a reporter to the Old Court House. The Old Court House is located in the town of Pigeon Hole outside the urban zone. The inhabitants of this town and the surrounding area of swamps and heavy timber are people of such great stupidity and such bar- barous practices that the Administration has seen Bt to quarantine them in a reservation surrounded by a radio- active wall of iron bricks. In retaliation the citizens of Pigeon Hole plaster their town with signs: "Urbanite Don't Let The Sun Set On You Here," an unnecessary injunction, since nothing but urgent business would take any urbanite to Pigeon Hole. Lee's case is urgent. He has to file an immediate affi- davit that he is suffering from bubonic plague to avoid eviction from the house he has occupied ten years with- out paying the rent. He exists in perpetual quarantine. So he packs his suitcase of affidavits and petitions and injunctions and certificates and takes a bus to the Frontier. The Urbanite customs inspector waves him through: "I hope you've got an atom bomb in that suit- case." Lee swallows a handful of tranquilizing pills and steps into the Pigeon Hole customs shed. The inspectors spend three hours pawing through his papers, consult- ing dusty books of regulations and duties from which they read incomprehensible and ominous excerpts end- ing with: "And as such is subject to fine and penalty under act 666." They look at him significantly. They go through his papers with a magnifying glass. "Sometimes they slip dirty limericks between the lines." "Maybe he figures to sell them for toilet paper. Is this crap for your own personal use?" "Yes." "He says yes." "And how do we know that?" "I gotta affidavit." "Wise guy. Take off your clothes." "Yeah. Maybe he got dirty tattoos." They paw over his body probing his ass for contra- band and examine it for evidence of sodomy. They dunk his hair and send the water out to be analyzed. "Maybe he's got dope in his hair." Finally, they impound his suitcase; and he staggers out of the shed with a fifty pound bale of documents. A dozen or so Recordites sit on the Old Court House steps of rotten wood. They watch his approach with pale blue eyes, turning their heads slow on wrinkled necks (the wrinkles full of dust) to follow his body up the steps and through the door. Inside, dust hangs in the air like fog, sifting down from the ceiling, rising in clouds from the floor as he walks. He mounts a perilous staircase -- condemned in 1929. Once his foot goes through, and the dry splinters tear into the flesh of his leg. The stairscase ends in a painter's scaffold, attached with frayed rope and pullies to a beam almost invisible in dusty distance. He pulls himself up cautiously to a ferris wheel cabin. His weight sets in motion hydraulic machinery (sound of running water). The wheel moves smooth and silent to stop by a rusty iron balcony, worn through here and there like an old shoe sole. He walks down a long corridor lined with doors, most of them nailed or boarded shut. In one office, Near East Exqui- sitries on a green brass plaque, the Mugwump is catch- ing termites with his long black tongue. The door of the County Clerk's office is open. The County Clerk sits in- side gumming snuff, surrounded by six assistants. Lee stands in the doorway. The County Clerk goes on talk- ing without looking up. "I run into Ted Spigot the other day... a good old boy, too. Not a finer man in the Zone than Ted Spigot. ...Now it was a Friday I happen to remember because the Old Lady was down with the menstrual cramps and I went to Doc Parker's drugstore on Dalton Street, just opposite Ma Green's Ethical Massage Parlor, where Jed's old livery stable used to be.... Now, Jed, I'll remember his second name directly, had a cast in the left eye and his wife came from some place out East, Algiers I believe it was, and after Jed died she married up again, and she married one of the Hoot boys, Clem Hoot if my memory serves, a good old boy too, now Hoot was around fifty-four fifty-five year old at the time.... So I says to Doc Parker: 'My old lady is down bad with the menstrual cramps. Sell me two ounces of paregoric.' "So Doc says, 'Well, Arch, you gotta sign the book. Name, address and date of purchase. It's the law.' "So I asked Doc what the day was, and he said, 'Fri- day the 13th.' "So I said, ' I guess I already had mine.' "'Well,' Doc says, 'there was a feller in here this morning. City feller. Dressed kinda flashy. So he's got him a RX for a mason jar of morphine.... Kinda funny looking prescription writ out on toilet paper.... And I told him straight out: "Mister, I suspect you to be a dope Bend." ' "'"I got the ingrowing toe nails, Pop. I'm in agony."' he says. "'"Well," I says, "I gotta be careful. But so long as you got a legitimate condition and an RX from a certi- Bed bona feedy M.D., I'm honored to serve you." ' "'"That croaker's really certified," he say.... Well, I guess one hand didn't know what the other was doing when I give him a jar of Saniflush by error.... So I reckon he's had his too.' "'Just the thing to clean a man's blood.' "'You know, that very thing occurred to me. Should be a sight better than sulphur and molasses.... Now, Arch, don't think I'm nosey; but a man don't have no secrets from God and his druggist I always say.... Is you still humping the Old Gray Mare?' " 'Why, Doc Parker... I'll have you know I'm a family man and an Elder in the First Denominational Non-sextarian Church and I ain't had a piecea hoss ass since we was kids together.' "'Them was the days, Arch. Remember the time I got the goose grease mixed up with the mustard? Al- ways was a one to grab the wrong jar, feller say. They could have heard you squealing over in Cunt Lick County, just a squealing like a stoat with his stones cut off.' "'You're in the wrong hole, Doc. It was you took the mustard and me as had to wait till you cooled off.' "'Wistful thinking, Arch. I read about it one time inna magazine settin' in that green outhouse behind the station.... Now what I meant awhile back, Arch, you didn't rightly understand me.... I was referring to your wife as the Old Cray Mare.... I mean she ain't what she used to be what with all them carbuncles and cata- racts and chilblains and hemorrhoids and aftosa.' "'Yas, Doc, Liz is right sickly. Never was the same after her eleventh miscarriaging.... There was some- thing right strange about that. Doc Ferris he told me straight, he said: "Arch, 'tain't fitting you should see that critter." And he gives me a long look made my flesh crawl.... Well, you sure said it right, Doc. She ain't what she used to be. And your medicines don't seem to ease her none. In fact, she ain't been able to tell night from day since using them eye drops you sold her last month.... But, Doc, you oughtta know I wouldn't be humping Liz, the old cow, meaning no disrespect to the mother of my dead monsters. Not when I got that sweet little ol' fifteen year old thing.... You know that yaller girl used to work in Marylou's Hair Straightening and Skin Bleach Parlor over in Nigga town.' "'Getting that dark chicken meat, Arch? Gettin' that coon pone?' "'Gettin' it steady, Doc. Gettin' it steady. Well, feller say duty is goosing me. Gotta get back to the old crank case.' "'I'll bet she needs a grease job worst way.' "'Doc, she sure is a dry hole.... Well, thanks for the paregoric. " 'And thanks for the trade, Arch