MEMP’IS
BOOK
FIVE – “YOGA IS, as YOGA DOES”
(Saturday,
January 6, 2035)
Henry
Hat is savouring a late breakfast when Norlin enters the Catholic Restaurant on Southwest Sixth, a
brisk ten minute walk from the Trouble Factory, almost to the West Arrow
Highway. The sky remains ominous, but
rain has ceased - for the moment - the diner is clean, sterile... sparsely
populated at this quiet hour between breakfast and lunch. A strolling violinist circles the room, his
instrument a recording-box containing full background orchestration for
instrumental versions of the King's devotional songs... portraits of the King
and Pope Jerzy gaze down from the walls - between,
and beneath, them a placard: "We
have found the truth... and the truth makes no sense."
There's
also a print of Mondrian's “Chrysanthemums”, which ghastly riddle causes the
policeman to shiver...
"Later and later, Norlin,"
the man in yellow says, pushing around the debris of a meal in his bowl,
"the contemplative life appears to harmonize with you..."
"I was held up by Germany Smith. Says he spoke with you..."
"Entertaining fellow. Rather like conversing with a shrub..."
the suncop opines, "a well-trimmed holly, or
poinsettia. Seasonal creature..."
Henry Hat pushes a few strands of shredded wheat...
without, even, skimsmilk... around in their bowl with
a thick, glastic spoon. A plump-cheeked, cassocked waiter approaches
their table.
"Just decaffa
and a whole timberwheat muffin."
"Are you... Norton?" the waiter asks.
"Norlin. Close enough?"
The
man removes a pale yellow envelope from his back pocket.
"I
think this is for you." Norlin looks up, with a questioning expression, and the
waiter clears his throat. "Guy came round to the back door a few
minutes ago, laid a Jean on me and said you'd be
coming by..."
Norlin takes the envelope
gingerly, holds it up and shakes it as if it might contain a letter bomb. When it doesn't explode, he nods and holds up
another Baratarian fiver."
"Any
chance a guy could get some real butter and jam... strawberry, grape, doesn't
matter as long as real cream, real fruit and sugar's involved..."
"Now
you know that's illegal, sir," the waiter clucks, but remains at attention
by their table when Norlin pulls out another
Lafitte. "Well, you money ain't covered wit' slime, like that other guy's... I think
we can accommodate you."
When the waiter has gone, after glancing round to one of
the portraits which, probably, conceals a MAU-surveillance camera, Norlin lays the yellow envelope down, picks up one of the
restaurant's knives, and opens it carefully.
"All
these other problems round, last thing I need's a healthy, Jatesian
breakfast," he says in a challenging way.
"Now... what is this?"
Within
the envelope is a placard similar to that posted in the Jates
Hall #216, but yellow, on the flip side are the words: "ADMIT ONE".
"Flyer
for one of those Bardo Parties," Norlin deduces.
"Illegal as hell... way up in Mormentz,
so it won't be no shoddy operation. Probably have liquor, drugs... Jates knows what else!
Dogs..."
He
crumples the envelope and invitation and draws his hand back to throw both
across the top of their booth, but Henry Hat drums his knuckles on the
table.
"Somebody
went to considerable expense and trouble to locate you and get that invitation
into your possession..."
"Yeah,
probably some cat lover," Norlin scowls. "All kinds of freaks up in Mormentz... way my luck is going, probably there's someone
waiting behind one of those purple bushes to take a shot at me, soon as I show
my face..."
"Perhaps. Then again, you don't really have that much
face left to lose, do you..."
"Since you put it that way..."
Norlin draws his hand down and
stuffs the crumpled invitation in his pocket as the waiter returns with decaffa and a perfectly rectangular biscuit glistening,
ever so slightly, with a clear phlegm of lipids and fructose that the LCs
moving smuggled delicacies through the Chinese Market have perfected as almost
invisible to long-distance infrared surveillance.
"Fella that left that
envelope... what did he look like?" Norlin
inquires.
"Freak.
Long, black overcoat, hat pulled down over his face. Smelled funny, like
seaweed. Somethin' wrong about him. Just as soon he didn't come back, you
either..." says the Catholic waiter, looking over his shoulder again. Idiot! Norlin
thinks. If one of the hundreds of ladies
in Government Center observation posts isn't doing her nails or dreaming about
her yearly week's vacation in MexAmerica, a report's
probably being transmitted... at this very moment... to the Trouble Factory.
When
their clerical waitcaptain has backed away like some
extinct crustacean, Henry Hat points to Norlin's
breakfast...
"Want a taste?"
"Just pick that up."
When
he has done so, taking a careful bite of his criminal muffin, Henry Hat picks
up the plate and locates a small, white pill... no larger than a grain of
rice... on the underside, which he holds up, screening it with the cuff of his
yellow coat from the prying eyes of Elvis, and pinches.
"Amateurs! Don't even know what they're listening for...
any old dero will do.
I think we can talk now... anything normally picked up probably travels
to Rome and back before the bad guys can do anything about it. Events move rapidly, accelerating. Traditional policing methods will not bring
us nearer a solution in time..."
"Thus...
Stimwood
Academy!"
"Correct. I have a friend inside, one of the doctors...
he has arranged, for us, a conference room and will be bringing twelve of his
best to the table..."
"Twelve
nuts!" the Corporal shakes his
head, taking another bite of the illicit morsel.
"Norlin... Norlin... I should have
hoped that, by this time, you'd have thrown off such outdated conventions as
health and sanity... these are things relative to the dominant culture and
extremely malleable during epochs of cultural upheaval, like that which we are
quickly approaching. Upheaval
no less traumatic... in its own way... than the Cannonball."
"What
am I going to say?" Norlin pouts. "Monday morning I go into work... same keb as every day for a year and six kebbin'
months since, well you probably read my file, or Germany Smith told you. Still, I had a job, a place to live... see my
boy every other weekend, maybe work my way back... could be worse. Like kebbin' up
three cases, including my first command since... well... whole kebbin' Department blames me for losing their Jatesday bonuses and I'm even all over the PV. Even Paul Parchette's
kebbin' monologues... that kebbin'
monkey! Strangers calling me at home with threats and
Compliance will probably pull my badge soon as they pull themselves out of the
hole they say I dug for 'em..."
"You
are one unhappy fellow,
Corporal. Well, were you at least able
to find four volunteers to fill out our hand of sixteen? Sixteen, Norlin, is
a very prestigious number..."
"Yeah,
yeah... I got a crowd your man will
really like. They'll hold their own
against any dozen of his denizens of the academic deep..."
If
Norlin expects some objection from the man in yellow,
he's doomed to disappointment.
"That's good. Good,"
Henry Hat repeats, rubbing his thin hands together. "You've done a good job... you ought to
go easier upon yourself. You have
unresolved issues... I know... and we have time. So I'd like to tell you a little story,"
he said. "I wasn't always with the
Solar Commission, you know... there was, even, a time
I fancied myself rather like our Mondretto, an
artist."
"That so?" Norlin
probes, suspicious...
"It
was. I struggled in a web of delusion,
finally confronting that spider before whom no gentleman may admit defeat...
irrational expectation. Of course I
never sold anything, but I did read books and attend classes, so the mere
status of being an artist sufficed to
prevent me from being taken in as a social parasite - well, at least until the
City Councils up north tightened up their standards. So, I sought appointment to the Solar
Commission and, in the most elementary peering into furnaces and taking
measurements of the integrity of congealed sunlight, I sought and, at last,
found a sort of absolution... rebirth, let us speak frankly... in those
fires. I saw the ephemeralities
of Style burned clean, and the multifold states of Substance made
one-pointed..."
"Are
you a Jatesist, then?
But it's not possible to be a Jatesist and an artist..." Norlin
warned the man in yellow, thinking that this might well be
an explanation for Henry Hat's familiarity with Stimwood. "Even though the Master is gone, there
may exist no other artists save those who simply and
humbly walk in footsteps that Triple-J has already prepared. Or quicksketch
outlaws, working the Chinese Market.
Well, there was Elvis... but, of course, I am speaking of living artists. All else that has happened since his
ascension is not art, only artifice and, probably, crime. So... you abandoned this delusion..."
the Corporal prodded.
"Until the other night. He may not be the equal of Triple-J... or,
even, that plastic master of linear disaster from whom he borrows a name and
angular sentiments, but Mondretto is a subtle
enemy," said Henry Hat. "Think!... Norlin... what dangerous
criminals those Old Masters would've made!
Is it mere coincidence that their effigies have been preserved upon... cigar boxes?" The Corporal recoiled. "Where I might better have employed my
time preparing for the afternoon's conclave at Stimwood,
Norlin, I found myself caught up in the challenge...
fascinated, you might say, like an insect in a spiderweb,
filling in Mondretto's dots and shading
rectangles."
Henry
Hat has brought the Prancing Pony canvas along with him in an opaque, glassine
covering... he slides it out, now, showing off his labours
to the Corporal. Norlin
dutifully ponders this partially completed enigma in shades of yellow... dark
and pale... with grayish streakings at the margins,
thinks to respond, then thinks the better of it... mouth hanging open in a
flattened "O", face the likeness of a rotting Halloween pumpkin in
his indecision.
"Was there something you wanted to tell me?"
The
false violinist swoops by, pretending to play an impossibly saccharine
"Jailhouse Rock", and Norlin
gestures to the Catholic waiter for a refill.
"As long as we are telling tales and sharing
stories," begins the Corporal. "I think it only fair that I reciprocate
by giving you a version... my version... of the incident with Max Bend which,
no doubt, you have heard told through a dozen facets,
and by a dozen interested parties..."
But the Solar Policeman refuses to rise to Norlin's provocation... folding both hands in his lap and
saying, only: "Behind any legend, there is likely to be a coyote. A fat coyote.
Proceed."