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Фантастика. Фэнтези
   Зарубежная фантастика
      Вильям Берроуз. Голый завтрак (engl) -
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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 ъiker'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 ъussian 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 ъed 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. ъeplicas 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 ъeplicas, 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.ъ.s -- Identical ъeplicas. 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.ъ.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 opp

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