To Sail Beyond The Sunset: The Life and Loves of Maureen Johnson

Chapter 26 - Pixel to the Rescue

After that Mad Tea Party in which I woke up in bed with a cat and a corpse in Grand Hotel Augustus, Pixel and I wound up in the office of Dr Eric Ridpath, house physician, where we met his office nurse, Dagmar Dobbs - a gal who was at once awarded Pixel's stamp of approval. Dagmar was giving me a GYN examination, when she told me that tonight was La Fiesta de Santa Carolita.

It is a good thing that just before she put me on the table she had required me to pee in a cup, or I might have peed in her face.

As I have explained in excessive detail, ‘Santa Carolita' is my daughter Carol, born in Gregorian 1902 at Kansas City on Tellus Prime, time line two, code Leslie LeCroix.

Lazarus Long had initiated ‘Carol's Day' on 26 June 1918 Gregorian, as a rite of passage for Carol, marking her transition from childhood to womanhood. Lazarus toasted Carol in champagne, telling her what a wonderful thing it was to be a woman, naming for her both the privileges and the responsibilities of her new and exalted status, and declaring that 26 June shall now and forever be known as ‘Carol's Day'.

the notion of calling it ‘Carol's Day' had suggested itself to Lazarus from something he remembered from a thousand years in the future - or in the past, depending on your time frame. On the frontier planet New Beginnings he and his wife Dora had declared ‘Helen's Day' to celebrate puberty in their oldest child, Helen. That was their stated purpose. Their unstated purpose was to attempt to place some control over the sexual behaviour of their growing sons and daughters, in order to head off the sort of tragedy I ran into with Priscilla and Donald.

Neither Lazarus nor I (nor Dora) had moralistic notions about incest, but all of us had feared the damage incest can do, both genetically and socially. ‘Helen's Day' and ‘Carol's Day' gave each set of parents some leverage in handling the touchy problems of sex in young people, problems that can so easily end in tragedy... but need not.

(I most despise in Marian her self-indulgent failure to carry out the parental duty of maintaining discipline. ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child' is not sadistic; it is hard common sense. You fail your children worst if you do not punish them when they need it. The lessons you fail to teach them will be taught later and much more harshly by a cruel world, the real world where no excuses are accepted, the world of TANSTAAFL and of Mrs Be-Done-By-As-You-Did.)

Lazarus told me (centuries later or years later - a matter of viewpoint) that he was half-way through his toast to Carol when he suddenly realised that he was inaugurating the most widespread holiday of the human race: Carolita's Day - and that he has been trying ever since to decide which came first: the chicken or the egg.

Chicken or egg, Carol's Day did develop over the centuries and on many planets into a public holiday - this I learned when I was taken to Tertius. Usually it was celebrated just for the fun of it, the way the Japanese celebrate Christmas, as a secular holiday having nothing to do with religion.

But in some cultures it developed as a religious holiday peculiar to theocracies: the safety-valve holiday, the day of excesses, of sin without punishment, the saturnalia.

While I got out of those silly stirrups and down off that cold table and put on my ‘clothes' (a caftan rigged. from a beach towel), Dr Ridpath and Dagmar looked over my test results. They pronounced me healthy-merely out of my skull, which neither of them seemed to regard as important.

Dr Ridpath said, ‘Explain things to her, Dag. I'm going to take a shower and get ready.'

‘What do you want to do, Maureen?' Dagmar asked me. ‘Doc tens me that your total assets are that terry-cloth tent you're wearing and this orange cat. Pixel! Stop that! This is not a night you can go to a police station and ask your way to the county poor farm; tonight the cops skin down and join in the riot.' She looked me up and down. ‘If you go out on the streets tonight - well, you'd have a quieter time in a lions' den. Maybe you like such things - many do. Me, f'rinstance. But tonight a gal is either locked up or knocked up. You can stay here, sleep on the couch. I can find you a blanket. Pixel! Get down from there!'

‘Come here, Pixel: I held out both hands; he jumped into my arms. ‘How about the Salvation Army?'

‘The what?'

I tried to explain. She shook her head. ‘Never heard of it. Sounds like another of your daydreams, dear; nothing of that sort is ever authorised by the Church of Your Choice.'

‘What church is your choice?'

"Huh? Your choice, my choice, everybody's choice - the Church of the Great Inseminator, of course - what other church be there? If it's not your choice, a ride on a rail might clarify your thinking. It would mine.'

I shook my head. ‘Dagmar, I'm more and more confused. Back where I come from there is total religious freedom.'

‘That's what we have here, ducks - and don't let a proctor hear you say anything else.' She suddenly smiled like the Wicked Witch of the West. ‘Although there are always some proctors and some priests found stone-cold dead in the dawn's early light, grinning in risus sardonicus, the morning after Saint Carol's feast; I am not the only widow with a long memory.'

I must have looked stupid. ‘You're a widow? I'm sorry.'

‘I talk too much. Not all that tragic, luv. Marriages are made in Heaven, as everybody knows, and my patron priest picked just the man Heaven had in mind for me, no possible doubt and you'll never hear me say otherwise. But when Delmer - my appointed soul mate - fell out of favour at the throne and was trimmed, well, I cried but not too long. Delmer is an altar boy now and quite a favourite among the male sopranos, so I understand. The awkward part is that since he isn't actually dead, just trimmed, I can't marry again.' She looked bleak.

Then she shrugged and smiled. ‘So Santa Carolita's nigh his a big night for me, seeing how closely we are watched all the rest of the year.'

I said, I'm confused again. Are you saying that things are puritanical here - except this one night?'

‘I'm not sure I know what you mean by "puritanical", Maureen. And I have trouble staying with your "Man from Mars" pose - if it is a pose -‘

‘It's not a pose! Dagmar, I truly am lost. I'm not on my own planet; I don't know anything at all about this place.'

‘Ali right, I'll throw in with you, I said I would. But it is hard to keep it in mind. Okay, the way things work here - Three hundred and sixty-four days of the year - sixty-five on leap years - everything is either required or forbidden. The Golden Rule, the Supreme Bishop calls it - God's Plan. But on Carolita's feast day, from sundown to sunrise, anything goes. Carolita is the patron saint of street singers, whores, gypsies, vagabonds, actors, of all whom must live outside the city walls. So on her day - Boss! You're not going outdoors in that outfit!'

‘And why not?'

Dagmar made retching noises; I turned to see what the fuss was about. The doctor had gone to shower, had returned still stripped down and sporting the most amazing phallus I have ever seen. It was standing straight up, rising out of a wide, dense briar patch of dark brown curls. It thrust up at least twelve inches from that curly base. Just back of the mitre it was as thick as my wrist. It curved back slightly toward his hairy belly.

It ‘breathed' when he did, bowing an inch at each breath. I looked at it in horrified fascination the way a bird looks at a snake, and felt my nipples grow crisp. Take it away! Get a stick and kill it!

‘Boss, take that silly toy right back to Sears Roebuck and demand your money back! Or I'll, I'll - I'll flush it down the pot, that's what I'll do!'

‘You do and you'll pay the plumber's bill. Look, Dagmar, I'm ing to wear it home and I want you to snap a pic of Zenobia's face when she sees it. Then I'll take it off... unless Zenobia decides she wants me to wear it to the Mayor's orgy. Now get into your costume; we still have to pick up Daffy and his assistant. His goose, although he claims otherwise. Move. Shake your tail, frail.'

‘Pee on you, Boss.'

‘Has the sun gone down so soon? Maureen, if I understood you earlier, you have not eaten today. Come have dinner with us and we can discuss what to do with you later; my wife is the best cook in town. Right, Dagmar?'

‘Correct, Boss. That makes twice this week you've been right.'

‘When was the other time? Did you find something for Cinderella to wear?'

‘It's a problem, Boss. Ali I have here are jumpsuit uniforms, cut for me. On Maureen they would fit too soon in one direction, too late in the other.' (She meant that I'm shaped like a pear while she is shaped more like a celery.)

Dr Ridpath looked at me, then at her, decided that Dagmar was right. ‘Maureen, we'll see what my wife has that you can wear. It won't matter between here and there; you'll be in a robocab. Pixel! Dinner time, boy!'

‘Now? Wow!'

So we had dinner at the home of the Ridpaths. Zenobia Ridpath is indeed a good cook. Pixel and I appreciated her, and she appreciated Pixel and was warmly hospitable to me. Zenobia is a dignified matron, beautiful, about forty-five, with premature white hair tinted with a blue rinse. Her face did not change when she saw the mechanical monstrosity her husband was sporting.

He said, ‘What do you think this is, Zen?'

She answered, ‘Oh, at last! You promised it to me as a wedding present all these many years ago! Well, better late than never - I think.' She stooped and looked at it. ‘Why does it have "Made in Japan" printed on it?' She straightened up and smiled at us. ‘Hello, Dagmar, good to see you. Happy festival!'

‘Bumper crops!'

‘Big babies! Mrs Johnson, it was sweet of you to come. May I call you Maureen? And may I offer you some crab legs? Flown in from Japan, like my husband's new peepee.

And what would yon like to drink?' A polite little machine rolled up with crab legs and other tasty titbits, and took my drink order - Cuba Libre but omit the rum.

Mrs Ridpath congratulated Dagmar on her costume: a black, sheer body-stocking covering even her head - but missing wherever presence of garment would get in the way at a saturnalia: cutaway crotch, breasts bare, mouth bare. The result was glaringly obscene.

Zenobia's costume was provocative but pretty - a blue fog that matched her eyes and did not hide much. Daffy Weisskopf climbed right up her front, making jungle noises. She just smiled at him. ‘Have something to eat first, Doctor. And save some of your strength for after midnight.'

I think Dr Eric's suspicions about Dr Daffy's assistant, Freddie, were justified; he did not smell right to me and I apparently did not smell right to him - and I was beginning to be whiff, as I was starting to get into a party mood. As I had requested, that Cuba Libre had no rum in it, but I had half of it inside me before I realised that it was loaded with vodka - one hundred proof, I feel certain. Vodka is tricky; it has no odour and no taste... and now I lay me down to sleep -

I think some of those appetisers had aphrodisiacs concealed in them... and Maureen does not need aphrodisiacs. Has never needed them.

There were three sorts of wine at dinner and endless toasts that rapidly progressed from suggestive to outrageous. The little robot that waited on my sector of the table kept the wine glasses filled but was not programmed to understand ‘water' - and Mama Maureen got potted.

No use pretending anything else. I had too little to eat and too much to drink and too little sleep and I never have learned to drink like a lady. I had simply learned how to pretend to drink while avoiding alcohol. But on Carolita's night I let my guard down.

I had planned to ask Zenobia to permit me to stay overnight in her house... then on the morrow, festival over, I could tackle a city restored to its senses. First I needed a minimum of money and clothes... and there are ways to get both without actually stealing. A female can often wangle an unsecured loan if she hits a mate for it who shows a tendency to pat her in a friendly fashion. She can hint pretty strongly as to the interest she is willing to pay... and every female Time Corps field agent has done something like that on occasion. We aren't nervous virgins; we don't leave Boondock without being vaccinated against pregnancy and nineteen other things you might catch if a trouser worm bit you. If you are too tender-minded for such emergency measures, you do belong in the profession. Females are better than males as Time Corps scouts because they can get away with such things. My co-wife Gwen/Hazel could steal the spots off a leopard and never disturb his sleep. If she were sent after the Rheingold, Fafnir and his flaming halitosis would not stand a chance.

Having acquired that minimum of local money and local clothing, my next move would be a preliminary study to determine: 1)how to get more money in this culture without going to jail; 2)where, if anywhere, is the Time Corps message drop; 3)if the second point is null, where is the dummy front for Hilda's crosstime black-marketers? Most of this can be researched unobtrusively either at a public library or in a telephone directory.

All very professional - Instead I got snagged by the proctors and did not do any of it.

Zenobia insisted that I go with them to the Mayor's orgy, and by then I lacked the judgement to refuse. She selected a costume for me, too, from her clothes: long sheer hose, green round garters, high heels, and a cape... and somehow it seemed to me the perfect costume, just right, although I could not remember why I thought so.

I recall only vignettes of the Mayor's party. Perhaps it will help to think of a party given jointly by Caligula and Nero, as directed by Cecil B. de Mille in gorgeous Technicolor. I remember telling some oaf (I can't remember his face; I'm not sure he had a face) that it was not impossible to lay me - many have tried and most succeeded - but it had to be approached romantic like, not like a man grabbing a bite standing up at a fast-food joint.

That party and the rest of that night was rape, rape, rape, all around me... I do not care for rape; one does not meet a better class of people that way.

I escaped from that party and found myself out in the park. My leaving had to do with a pompous ass dressed in a long robe (a cope?) of white silk heavily embroidered in cardinal and gold. It was open down the front with his Flaggenstange sticking out. He was so self-important that he had four acolytes to help him with the chore.

He grabbed me as I was trying to slide past - stuck his tongue in my mouth. I kneed him and ran, and jumped out an open window. Ground floor, yes-but I did not stop to find out.

Pixel caught up with me in about fifty yards, then slowed me somewhat as he criss-crossed ahead of me. He went into that big park and I slowed down to a walk. I was still wearing the cape but I had lost one slipper going out the window, then had kicked the other off at once, being unable to run one shoe off, one shoe on. It did not matter as I had gone barefooted so habitually in Boondock that my feet were as tough as shoe leather.

I wandered around the park for a while, watching the action (amazing!) and wondering where I could go. I did not want to risk the Mayor's palace again; my pompous boyfriend with the fancy vestment might still be there. I did not know where the Ridpaths lived even though I had been there. It seemed to me that I must wait for dawn, then locate Grand Hotel Augustas (should be easy), go to Dr Eric's office on the mezzanine, and hit him for a small loan. Hobson's choice, no other option - but not too unlikely as he had brailled me quite thoroughly during dinner. He wasn't being rude; similar things or more so were going on all around the table. And I had been warned.

I joined in briefly at the esbat - midnight, full moon overhead, and ritual prayers being said in Latin, Greek, Old Norse (I think), and three other languages. One woman was a snake goddess from ancient Crete. Authentic? I don't know. Pixel rode my shoulder at the service as if he were used to the role of witch's familiar.

As I left the altar, he jumped down and ran ahead of me as usual.

I heard a shout. ‘There's her cat! And there she is! Grab her'

And they did.

As I've said, I don't like rape. I especially dislike it when four men hold me while a fat slob in an embroidered cope does things to my body. So I bit him. And discussed his ancestry and personal habits.

So I wound up in the hoosegow and stayed there until the crazies from the Committee for Aesthetic Deletions pulled a jail-break and got me loose.

This is called ‘Out of the frying-pan and into the fire.'

Last night the Committee was presided over by Count Dracula, the only case of type-casting that I saw - this repulsively handsome creature not only wore the opera cloak associated with video vampires, he had also taken the trouble to have a mouthpiece fashioned for him by a prosthodontist; he had dog teeth that came down over his lower lip. At least I assume that they were artificial; I don't really believe that any humans or quasi-human have teeth like that.

I joined the circle and took the one remaining chair. ‘Good evening, cousins. And good evening to you, Count. Where is the Old Man of the Mountain tonight?'

‘That is not a question one asks.'

‘Well, excuse me, please! And pray, why not?'

‘We will leave that to you as an exercise in deduction. But don't ask such a question again. And do not be late again. You are the subject of our discussion tonight, Lady Macbeth -‘

‘Maureen Johnson, if you please.'

‘It does not please me. It is one more instance of your unwillingness to observe the rules necessary to the safety of the Dead Men. Yesterday you were observed exchanging words with one of the hotel staff, a chambermaid. What were you talking about?'

I stood up. ‘Count Dracula.'

‘Yes, Lady Macbeth?'

‘You can go to hell. And I'm going to bed.'

‘Sit down!'

I did not. But all those near me grabbed at me, and sat me down. I don't think any three could have managed it; they all were ill, deathly ill. But seven were too much for me - and I was reluctant to be rough in resisting them.

The chairman went on, ‘Milady Macbeth, you have been with us over two weeks now. During that time you have refused every mission offered you. You owe us for your rescue -

‘Nonsense! The Committee owes me! I would never have been in a position to need rescue had you not kidnapped me and shoved me into bed with a corpse, one of your killings, Judge Hardacres. Don't talk to me about what I owe the Committee! You returned some of my clothes - but where's my purse? Why did you drug me? How dare you kidnap an innocent visitor to dress up one of your assassinations? Who planned that job? I want to talk to him.'

‘Lady Macbeth.'

‘Yes?'

‘Hold your tongue. You will now have a mission assigned to you. It has been planned and you will carry it out tonight. The client is Major General Lew Rawson, retired. He was in charge of the recent provocation incident in -‘

‘Count Dracula!'

‘Yes?'

‘Go hang by your heels!'

‘Don't interrupt again. The operation has been fully planned. Jack the Ripper and Lucrezia Borgia will go with you, and coach you. You can kill him in his bed, or, if you balk, you will be killed as he is killed and the two of you arranged in a tableau that will give substance to the rumours about him.'

The attention of everyone was on the row between the new chairman and me; proctors poured in off the balcony before they were seen. But a voice I recognised called out, ‘Watch it, Maureen!' and I dived for the deck.

The robes and hoods were the Ku-Klux-Klan ersatz of the proctors, but the voice was that of Dagmar. When I turned my head at her voice, I spotted Pixel with .her.

Time Corps military units have stun guns they use when killing must be selective. They fanned the room with them. I got the edge of one charge, did not quite pass out but did not object when a big, husky proctor (one of my husbands!) scooped me up. Then we were all out on the balcony and into a small troop carrier hovering at the rail.

I heard the door dose, felt it in my ears. ‘Ready?'

‘Ready!'

‘Has somebody got Pixel?'

‘I've got him! Let's go!' (Hilda's voice)

And then we were home in Boondock, on the parking lawn at the Long residence.

A voice I know well said, ‘Secure all systems,' and the pilot turned in his seat and looked at me. ‘Mama,' he said mournfully, ‘you sure give me a lot of grief.'

Tm sorry, Woodrow.'

‘Why didn't you tell me? I would have helped.'

‘I'm sure you would, dear. But I was merely scouting.'

‘But you should have -‘

Hilda interrupted. ‘Stop it, Lazarus. Mama Maureen is tired and probably hungry. Mama, Tamara has lunch ready. Two hours from now - local time fourteen hundred - is an operation briefing, all hands. Jubal is in charge of the briefing and -‘

‘Operation briefing? What operation?'

‘Your operation, Mama,' Woodrow answered. ‘We're going to go find Gramp. Either rescue him, or slip him into a body-bag. But we're doing it right, this time. It's a Time Corps major operation, resources as needed; the Circle of Ouroboros is unanimous. Mama, why didn't you tell me?'

Hilda said, ‘Shut up, Woodie. And stay shut. We've got Mama Maureen back and that's all that counts. Right, Pixel?'

‘Rrrrite!'

‘So let's go to lunch.'