Devil-May-Care
PART I
THE DEATH OF VIRGINIA WOOLF
CHAPTER 1
Whack.
General MacArthur got hit in his sleep by what they called a Nightmare. And it was a corker.
Whack! A Mafia word meaning to shoot, stab, strangle, hang on a meathook, or otherwise molest until dead, the squirming bod of your enemy. The victim is required to: (a) Squeal loud apologies. (b) Cry, wriggle, and implore. (c) Volunteer his or her immortal soul in exchange for freedom. (e) Writhe and yell unabashedly, while soiling Jockey Shorts if wearing them. (f) Whimper softly. (g) Die.
WHACK! Doug thought it was Scaulzo, which meant... worse torture was on the way! Because now... he was engulfed in a warm, sensuous dream... and that could only mean... the Big S. was... toying with him...
The General was on vacation in Heaven. Or maybe it was just the Capital of Peace and Understanding. He, Douglas MacArthur, walked down a fabulous street, gaping at marvels on all sides.
There was a FOR RENT sign on a building. Doug grabbed the sign and began climbing a flight of stairs. The place stank like urine trickling down a tombstone but he wanted to live here more than he'd ever wanted anything in his life. He rapped on the Manager's door. No answer. He gave another loud rap. The door opened... just a crack.
Doug saw something moving in there. Something that smelled like an open grave. His heart just about stopped. The hinges began creaking. A hideous, drawn-out sound. He knew that behind the door lurked a THING so awful that to see it would drive him mad!
There was a hand. Part of one. Ugh! Clutching the door. The hand was rotten. Decayed flesh fell off ivory bones. Doug didn't want to see the body it was attached.to. He would scream! He'd turn into a gibbering madman— he'd foam at the mouth, wet his nicely pressed uniform pants and look ridiculous. The men would laugh! It would be a thousand times better to die— except he couldn't die! He was Supreme Command with a whole Galaxy riding on his shoulders. He'd just have to confront the HIDEOUS CORPSE lurking behind this door... and WHACK the sucker.
A terrible, ringing noise sliced the air. Doug turned to run but his feet were rooted! The door opened wider— bits of rotten flesh peeled off the fingertips. His heart was banging in his chest. In another second it would reach out for him— a ZOMBIE returned from limbo.
"Don't open that door!" he tried to yell but his lips wouldn't move.
The door fell open-
Doug woke with a scream clenched in his throat. He grabbed the phone with a hand so wet, the stupid instrument fell (sweat was running off him in rivers) and he had to lean down and scoop it off the carpet with a half-sobbed:
"Yo."
"I have correct core Virginia Woorf," said Tokyo switchboard with grim self-satisfaction.
"Patch her through to Lincoln," barked the General.
"Rady say love you all to pieces."
"Tell her to get stuffed."
"She cry and cry—"
"Tell her, we haddum locked in a cage! And this is just the beginning."
"Warns that General in serious danger."
"Tell her: 'If only you had examined the long-term consequences of your actions, you two-timing twat.'"
MacArthur hung up with a bang. Virginia Woolf, ohhh, yeah. When last they'd kissed goodbye she had simpered
"Ooh, lover... I have SUCH A CRUSH on her," referring to that honey-haired blood-lapper Sterling O'Blivion. It was a sabotage thing. Practicing being human (as every anthropologist had to do down here examining the pathology of Earth social customs) the bitch only wanted to humiliate Doug in front of his men as women always did; but she'd be punished for it! The whore would wish she had never been born!
The General had signed into this hotel after an exhausting journey, rushed upstairs, collapsed on the bed and fell asleep only to have that (could it have been prophetic?) terrible dream. Now he was wide awake gnawing the handsomely-buffed nails of his long, sinewy fingers and wondering how in fuckinghell the trouble-shooter Virginia Woolf had verified his location in Tokyo (a city seething with happy Japanese who worshipped MacArthur, their newly crowned Emperor— go check your history book if you wanna dig how nuts humans are as Patton would say)— him seeking a place to crawl away from the world and think a mind-wrenchingly complex situation through...
Virginia Woolf. Who'd have guessed what a slut she'd turn out to be— like all Earth babes? Supposed to be down here cracking the puzzle "Why do humans generate a chronic state of war and hysteria?" and what does she do but go play hide-the-salami (oh no no no! Christ. The very thought made his head throb) with Scaulzo himself; the demon incarnate... devil in the flesh... the Big S.! who had terrorized this primitive species since pre-cave days, forcing them to love it. And now the whole incredible, hypocritical mess was gonna blow sky-high if he couldn't—couldn't-
Doug chewed his nails.
A merciless psychopath, Scaulzo destroyed his victims after "having his way with them" as the saying went; and as luck had it— four billion citizens were hot to dance the boogaloo with him, while swearing on a stack of bibles that they weren't! Which meant: Omark was now an army commander. Nothing easy— oh no! He hadda be the dude licensed to WHACK until the folks would kiss his feet— for being a weird combination of gushy Hallmark card and serial killer; a guy able to decimate an entire population and then appear on TV with tears in his eyes giving toys and Granola to a bunch of raped, starved orphans— oh yes. Mr. Macho needed gallons of self-pity, mixed with that beefwitted lack of understanding of how every single act of every man's, affects everything in the universe like a stone tossed into a pond— for then and only then could the salient points of a sour culture where there was no relief from crimes of violence and ripoffs of the environment under the holy name "Defending Our God-Given PROPERTY (including animals and women)" be grasped by a scholarly, alien whale like Omark in a dude suit. Wearing a sidearm. Ouch.
Yep: saving humanity was a matter of infinite hope. And this ol' teacher found out real quick that if you were your natural, loving self... they'd WHACK you.
He could see it coming. Folks' morbid fascination with horror and paranoia could only mean that— Christ! Omark'd wanted a shot like this for years; and now that he had it...
But field reconnaissance aside, on top of learning paranoia (a skill so complicated it was driving him absolutely nuts) he had to work full-steam on his thesis. Back home on Rysemus the theory had seemed fundamental. A clean, flawless leap into the Unknown. He had pared it until it could be expressed as a simple question in basic English. This was that question. Should human leaders be allowed out without their mothers?
Then suddenly the ax fell. Yesterday, in one of those compulsively dreadful moments that were happening all too often all of a sudden, "something" made him open his big fat mouth and tell the men the true story of how MacArthur had lived with his Mom while attending the U.S. Military Academy. The very memory of it made Doug's face twitch, it was so humiliating...
It happened at a briefing in the War Room of the Pentagon. He'd been slashing at a map with a rubber-tipped pointer (one of his better skills) and whacking toy tanks off a layout, pointer in fist and sidearm on one hip (a sidearm, Omark had gathered, was symbolic of the fact that you possessed a dick almost embarrassingly big. Your hand was supposed to pat your sidearm lovingly— also symbolic. Most of what humans did was symbolic but you couldn't take a chance on wringing any of their necks because you could never be certain what the savages were up to, even if you were the senior Squad Officer down here, right?) Anyway he was giving it his all, slapping toys off a board as he boomed in that deep-throated, masculine voice of authority that made men hang on his every word; when suddenly— everything he had built up so carefully came crashing down around his ears.
He thought they'd be mildly surprised but appreciative of his homely honesty. Hah! First: that mortifying ripple of laughter. Apparently the men were laughing at their General, not with him! Soon they were guffawing like rubes at a sideshow— who'd have dreamed that Moms were not valued here as bunkies, messmates, negotiating partners, offensive strategy consultants— when females were obviously the sex with the brains? If any human could be said to have any brains. Why, there wasn't another tenth-rate pesthole in the Galaxy with a policy so suicidal.
And Doug hadn't known how to fix it. He tried the old reliable butch swagger, picking his teeth with his knife and scowling like an Easter Island idol but no soap. Then fumblingly he tried explaining that the Orca whale lived with its mother all its life and was the most successful big animal since the dinosaur (or would have been if you erased humans from the picture which might not be too bad an idea— Doug had twice voted to have them put out of their misery but Virginia Woolf, Harry and H.G. outvoted him and Patton)— anyway, the men just about split their guts laughing and it was a demoralizing blow to Omark. He'd been helpless to keep from blurting that stuff out. Was he going nuts? Or could it be... something had hold of him? Something from the vast, dim halls of Eternal Evil— the Agony Organ in other words?
The tough part was sorting out the ordinary craziness people considered "normal" from attacks of the A-0 or demon possession sent by Satan as these rubes called Scaulzo. That bastard... he could WHACK an agent... that nozzle! He'd soak you with "subconscious" crap: distinct memories of things that never happened or he'd make you say things that needed to be said but you could get your wally blown off for saying them— and if the General was under attack whose fault was it but that literary slut, Virginia Woolf? Doug feared there'd be plenty more nasty surprises waiting for him. Already his penis wouldn't behave. It got erect at the slightest provocation like a junior high school kid's, always at the wrong time... which boded no good.
Scaulzo. A hideous, dark, unclean thing (the worst of it being--they had the bastard in a cage until the crazy floozie turned him loose!) driving a man right over the edge; nor was this the first time for Doug. Once, he'd been able to resist any A-0 attack but now? Too much TV and sleazy horror literature maybe. And when you immersed yourself deeply into a savage culture like this one, it could be fatal. You were always walking a fine line; but that was the challenge. That was the fun of it. If you could survive.
The big S. always looked so great when he wore a human bod dressed in a thousand-dollar suit. Clean-cut, with a fine and appealing voice, hair neatly combed, he had beautiful manners— everything Kosher. The idol of every generation, the bad dude never said "Mofo" or any of those words that upset Earthies so bad they couldn't think rationally (butter wouldn't melt in the archfiend's mouth; yet in his native body he was a basilisk so hideous they'd scream and turn to stone at the sight of him) and yet: being superstitious savages, unable to take control of their own lives, they went on their knees to him. Billions applauded the idea that the Boogieman was Lord and they were only helpless pawns; and now Doug would be required to immerse himself in that mind-set while not letting it destroy him if possible— or be discredited, sent back to the minors. And it could happen. Even to one with Omark's spectacular academic standing. Ouch.
The old hotel creaked. Otherwise all was quiet except for overhead fans clacking. Now a radio down the hall played a boohoo song about tears on a guy's pilla each morning— "I cry when I dream about you," quavered the voice. It was sad, very sad and Doug tried to get into it. He got sad too. There was no rock and roll way back here in the fifties, there was drugs and sex but no rock and roll... so he got sad.
He really loved Virginia Woolf. And the dumb cunt was probably suffering horribly, trapped in some snafu of her own making (flake that she was)— and yet Doug had a hunch she was mixed up in this more than he knew. "It is time for me to deal with you," he'd say in passionate tones and smash her across the chops. For Woolf had made her choice. "So that's where she belongs—with him, not with me."
Woolf was her own worst enemy. She flirted with that sadistic hypnotist. She lured him! "I love you so much but goodbye," he'd tell her. For she had done the unpardonable— driven by what she called her "Inner Spiritual Light." Yeah, right! "The courage to face evil, the faith to subdue it"-- give me a fucking break. Doug knew she was really drawn by that unruly lock of black hair that fell so sweetly across his rival's brow. Yeah— the devil was smart enough to show up with lots of hair. Humans loved hair, as long as it was attached to the appearance of wealth and a smooth line; which explained why they voted for the Big S. every time. The Rysemians were always unpopular compared to Scaulzo. Doug didn't quite know why except they were the real thing and not just a well-advertised tub of expensively coutured lawyer pudding with Mafia funding, and yet... the reactions of his staff pained him terribly; but no matter how bad it got, or how much they taunted him, the General loved those cathartic memory trips to the good old days at West Point with his Mom— the best of Doug's life.
She used to say, "Doug darling, the secret of success is having a dream and having the courage to run after it. Reach for the stars!" and bring him chicken soup. And the day he took the Point's tough entrance exam she said, "Heroism is an equal opportunity employer, my child. Put honor first and you'll be President one day." Was that a coach or what? Omark felt that every General should stick with her Mom from cradle to grave like the Orca whale, and why? Because a mother knows. A mother can tell. A mother is unbeatable at helping a fellow face the storms of life. Hadn't it been proven that with a trainer like Mrs. MacArthur in his corner, this General not only graduated first in his class, but almost got himself elected President? Not bad for a rich white kid from Arkansas.
"Virginia's trigger-happy, boyfriend" (as that hoarse-voiced, big-screen pussy, Sterling O'Blivion— who would as soon drain a decent man's blood as look at him; yet considered herself a "hermetic scholar" in love with her own glitzy past but was only a dotty old broad who should be booted off the Squad— but of course wouldn't be as long as Woolf protected her and the Chief backed it up— always called Omark) thumped his pillow but sleep would not return. He was the one in grave trouble here, not Virginia Woolf! He had put in to be MacArthur because the assignment looked like a plum. Frimble put in for Doug as well (Frimble was the engineer who devised the "Mousehole" system linking galactic poles that brought the Rysemians to this dustmote in the first place. They were never attracted to the dump; it just happened to be near Grid 8 which might cause a problem) and they tossed for it, Omark "won" and now Frimble rode the cat seat. All he hadda do was grunt "Bombs Away" and blow the balls off two cities while Omark sweated blood here in Tokyo because Harry Truman was out to get him. It was unfair!
The phone rang steadily. Doug figured it was Virginia Woolf the woman he had loved and lost "to another woman," how humiliating! but screw her. Or again: it might be Commander in-Chief Abe Lincoln and that was equally distasteful.
Rysemians had no use for "authority"— a barbaric device leading to dysfunction and early extinction. What was needed was either a thoroughgoing use of the N-bomb by his people (Patton wanted that— not that it'd make a hell of a lot of difference in light of the total oxygen rip-off that was coming in 2123 A.D.) or: a draining of old poisons from each and every human individual (Heidi's Grandfather, the head of the Mission, wanted that, with all his sweet little ole goat herder heart) followed by your basic training in Ethics. If a species had Ethics they didn't need authority. If they didn't, authority didn't work.
But Ethics was a bad word around here because psycho bigwigs could make "serious money" off of mass confusion— unaware that they already had all the "serious money" there was to be had.
Punishment? A joke. How could you punish beings who were acting terrible because they'd already been punished too terribly? Oh, it was a paradox for sure. Nothing could solve the mess. Still, they were giving it a try. The phone rang steadily...
He'd be walking into a coffin if he answered.
THE DEATH OF VIRGINIA WOOLF
CHAPTER 1
Whack.
General MacArthur got hit in his sleep by what they called a Nightmare. And it was a corker.
Whack! A Mafia word meaning to shoot, stab, strangle, hang on a meathook, or otherwise molest until dead, the squirming bod of your enemy. The victim is required to: (a) Squeal loud apologies. (b) Cry, wriggle, and implore. (c) Volunteer his or her immortal soul in exchange for freedom. (e) Writhe and yell unabashedly, while soiling Jockey Shorts if wearing them. (f) Whimper softly. (g) Die.
WHACK! Doug thought it was Scaulzo, which meant... worse torture was on the way! Because now... he was engulfed in a warm, sensuous dream... and that could only mean... the Big S. was... toying with him...
The General was on vacation in Heaven. Or maybe it was just the Capital of Peace and Understanding. He, Douglas MacArthur, walked down a fabulous street, gaping at marvels on all sides.
There was a FOR RENT sign on a building. Doug grabbed the sign and began climbing a flight of stairs. The place stank like urine trickling down a tombstone but he wanted to live here more than he'd ever wanted anything in his life. He rapped on the Manager's door. No answer. He gave another loud rap. The door opened... just a crack.
Doug saw something moving in there. Something that smelled like an open grave. His heart just about stopped. The hinges began creaking. A hideous, drawn-out sound. He knew that behind the door lurked a THING so awful that to see it would drive him mad!
There was a hand. Part of one. Ugh! Clutching the door. The hand was rotten. Decayed flesh fell off ivory bones. Doug didn't want to see the body it was attached.to. He would scream! He'd turn into a gibbering madman— he'd foam at the mouth, wet his nicely pressed uniform pants and look ridiculous. The men would laugh! It would be a thousand times better to die— except he couldn't die! He was Supreme Command with a whole Galaxy riding on his shoulders. He'd just have to confront the HIDEOUS CORPSE lurking behind this door... and WHACK the sucker.
A terrible, ringing noise sliced the air. Doug turned to run but his feet were rooted! The door opened wider— bits of rotten flesh peeled off the fingertips. His heart was banging in his chest. In another second it would reach out for him— a ZOMBIE returned from limbo.
"Don't open that door!" he tried to yell but his lips wouldn't move.
The door fell open-
Doug woke with a scream clenched in his throat. He grabbed the phone with a hand so wet, the stupid instrument fell (sweat was running off him in rivers) and he had to lean down and scoop it off the carpet with a half-sobbed:
"Yo."
"I have correct core Virginia Woorf," said Tokyo switchboard with grim self-satisfaction.
"Patch her through to Lincoln," barked the General.
"Rady say love you all to pieces."
"Tell her to get stuffed."
"She cry and cry—"
"Tell her, we haddum locked in a cage! And this is just the beginning."
"Warns that General in serious danger."
"Tell her: 'If only you had examined the long-term consequences of your actions, you two-timing twat.'"
MacArthur hung up with a bang. Virginia Woolf, ohhh, yeah. When last they'd kissed goodbye she had simpered
"Ooh, lover... I have SUCH A CRUSH on her," referring to that honey-haired blood-lapper Sterling O'Blivion. It was a sabotage thing. Practicing being human (as every anthropologist had to do down here examining the pathology of Earth social customs) the bitch only wanted to humiliate Doug in front of his men as women always did; but she'd be punished for it! The whore would wish she had never been born!
The General had signed into this hotel after an exhausting journey, rushed upstairs, collapsed on the bed and fell asleep only to have that (could it have been prophetic?) terrible dream. Now he was wide awake gnawing the handsomely-buffed nails of his long, sinewy fingers and wondering how in fuckinghell the trouble-shooter Virginia Woolf had verified his location in Tokyo (a city seething with happy Japanese who worshipped MacArthur, their newly crowned Emperor— go check your history book if you wanna dig how nuts humans are as Patton would say)— him seeking a place to crawl away from the world and think a mind-wrenchingly complex situation through...
Virginia Woolf. Who'd have guessed what a slut she'd turn out to be— like all Earth babes? Supposed to be down here cracking the puzzle "Why do humans generate a chronic state of war and hysteria?" and what does she do but go play hide-the-salami (oh no no no! Christ. The very thought made his head throb) with Scaulzo himself; the demon incarnate... devil in the flesh... the Big S.! who had terrorized this primitive species since pre-cave days, forcing them to love it. And now the whole incredible, hypocritical mess was gonna blow sky-high if he couldn't—couldn't-
Doug chewed his nails.
A merciless psychopath, Scaulzo destroyed his victims after "having his way with them" as the saying went; and as luck had it— four billion citizens were hot to dance the boogaloo with him, while swearing on a stack of bibles that they weren't! Which meant: Omark was now an army commander. Nothing easy— oh no! He hadda be the dude licensed to WHACK until the folks would kiss his feet— for being a weird combination of gushy Hallmark card and serial killer; a guy able to decimate an entire population and then appear on TV with tears in his eyes giving toys and Granola to a bunch of raped, starved orphans— oh yes. Mr. Macho needed gallons of self-pity, mixed with that beefwitted lack of understanding of how every single act of every man's, affects everything in the universe like a stone tossed into a pond— for then and only then could the salient points of a sour culture where there was no relief from crimes of violence and ripoffs of the environment under the holy name "Defending Our God-Given PROPERTY (including animals and women)" be grasped by a scholarly, alien whale like Omark in a dude suit. Wearing a sidearm. Ouch.
Yep: saving humanity was a matter of infinite hope. And this ol' teacher found out real quick that if you were your natural, loving self... they'd WHACK you.
He could see it coming. Folks' morbid fascination with horror and paranoia could only mean that— Christ! Omark'd wanted a shot like this for years; and now that he had it...
But field reconnaissance aside, on top of learning paranoia (a skill so complicated it was driving him absolutely nuts) he had to work full-steam on his thesis. Back home on Rysemus the theory had seemed fundamental. A clean, flawless leap into the Unknown. He had pared it until it could be expressed as a simple question in basic English. This was that question. Should human leaders be allowed out without their mothers?
Then suddenly the ax fell. Yesterday, in one of those compulsively dreadful moments that were happening all too often all of a sudden, "something" made him open his big fat mouth and tell the men the true story of how MacArthur had lived with his Mom while attending the U.S. Military Academy. The very memory of it made Doug's face twitch, it was so humiliating...
It happened at a briefing in the War Room of the Pentagon. He'd been slashing at a map with a rubber-tipped pointer (one of his better skills) and whacking toy tanks off a layout, pointer in fist and sidearm on one hip (a sidearm, Omark had gathered, was symbolic of the fact that you possessed a dick almost embarrassingly big. Your hand was supposed to pat your sidearm lovingly— also symbolic. Most of what humans did was symbolic but you couldn't take a chance on wringing any of their necks because you could never be certain what the savages were up to, even if you were the senior Squad Officer down here, right?) Anyway he was giving it his all, slapping toys off a board as he boomed in that deep-throated, masculine voice of authority that made men hang on his every word; when suddenly— everything he had built up so carefully came crashing down around his ears.
He thought they'd be mildly surprised but appreciative of his homely honesty. Hah! First: that mortifying ripple of laughter. Apparently the men were laughing at their General, not with him! Soon they were guffawing like rubes at a sideshow— who'd have dreamed that Moms were not valued here as bunkies, messmates, negotiating partners, offensive strategy consultants— when females were obviously the sex with the brains? If any human could be said to have any brains. Why, there wasn't another tenth-rate pesthole in the Galaxy with a policy so suicidal.
And Doug hadn't known how to fix it. He tried the old reliable butch swagger, picking his teeth with his knife and scowling like an Easter Island idol but no soap. Then fumblingly he tried explaining that the Orca whale lived with its mother all its life and was the most successful big animal since the dinosaur (or would have been if you erased humans from the picture which might not be too bad an idea— Doug had twice voted to have them put out of their misery but Virginia Woolf, Harry and H.G. outvoted him and Patton)— anyway, the men just about split their guts laughing and it was a demoralizing blow to Omark. He'd been helpless to keep from blurting that stuff out. Was he going nuts? Or could it be... something had hold of him? Something from the vast, dim halls of Eternal Evil— the Agony Organ in other words?
The tough part was sorting out the ordinary craziness people considered "normal" from attacks of the A-0 or demon possession sent by Satan as these rubes called Scaulzo. That bastard... he could WHACK an agent... that nozzle! He'd soak you with "subconscious" crap: distinct memories of things that never happened or he'd make you say things that needed to be said but you could get your wally blown off for saying them— and if the General was under attack whose fault was it but that literary slut, Virginia Woolf? Doug feared there'd be plenty more nasty surprises waiting for him. Already his penis wouldn't behave. It got erect at the slightest provocation like a junior high school kid's, always at the wrong time... which boded no good.
Scaulzo. A hideous, dark, unclean thing (the worst of it being--they had the bastard in a cage until the crazy floozie turned him loose!) driving a man right over the edge; nor was this the first time for Doug. Once, he'd been able to resist any A-0 attack but now? Too much TV and sleazy horror literature maybe. And when you immersed yourself deeply into a savage culture like this one, it could be fatal. You were always walking a fine line; but that was the challenge. That was the fun of it. If you could survive.
The big S. always looked so great when he wore a human bod dressed in a thousand-dollar suit. Clean-cut, with a fine and appealing voice, hair neatly combed, he had beautiful manners— everything Kosher. The idol of every generation, the bad dude never said "Mofo" or any of those words that upset Earthies so bad they couldn't think rationally (butter wouldn't melt in the archfiend's mouth; yet in his native body he was a basilisk so hideous they'd scream and turn to stone at the sight of him) and yet: being superstitious savages, unable to take control of their own lives, they went on their knees to him. Billions applauded the idea that the Boogieman was Lord and they were only helpless pawns; and now Doug would be required to immerse himself in that mind-set while not letting it destroy him if possible— or be discredited, sent back to the minors. And it could happen. Even to one with Omark's spectacular academic standing. Ouch.
The old hotel creaked. Otherwise all was quiet except for overhead fans clacking. Now a radio down the hall played a boohoo song about tears on a guy's pilla each morning— "I cry when I dream about you," quavered the voice. It was sad, very sad and Doug tried to get into it. He got sad too. There was no rock and roll way back here in the fifties, there was drugs and sex but no rock and roll... so he got sad.
He really loved Virginia Woolf. And the dumb cunt was probably suffering horribly, trapped in some snafu of her own making (flake that she was)— and yet Doug had a hunch she was mixed up in this more than he knew. "It is time for me to deal with you," he'd say in passionate tones and smash her across the chops. For Woolf had made her choice. "So that's where she belongs—with him, not with me."
Woolf was her own worst enemy. She flirted with that sadistic hypnotist. She lured him! "I love you so much but goodbye," he'd tell her. For she had done the unpardonable— driven by what she called her "Inner Spiritual Light." Yeah, right! "The courage to face evil, the faith to subdue it"-- give me a fucking break. Doug knew she was really drawn by that unruly lock of black hair that fell so sweetly across his rival's brow. Yeah— the devil was smart enough to show up with lots of hair. Humans loved hair, as long as it was attached to the appearance of wealth and a smooth line; which explained why they voted for the Big S. every time. The Rysemians were always unpopular compared to Scaulzo. Doug didn't quite know why except they were the real thing and not just a well-advertised tub of expensively coutured lawyer pudding with Mafia funding, and yet... the reactions of his staff pained him terribly; but no matter how bad it got, or how much they taunted him, the General loved those cathartic memory trips to the good old days at West Point with his Mom— the best of Doug's life.
She used to say, "Doug darling, the secret of success is having a dream and having the courage to run after it. Reach for the stars!" and bring him chicken soup. And the day he took the Point's tough entrance exam she said, "Heroism is an equal opportunity employer, my child. Put honor first and you'll be President one day." Was that a coach or what? Omark felt that every General should stick with her Mom from cradle to grave like the Orca whale, and why? Because a mother knows. A mother can tell. A mother is unbeatable at helping a fellow face the storms of life. Hadn't it been proven that with a trainer like Mrs. MacArthur in his corner, this General not only graduated first in his class, but almost got himself elected President? Not bad for a rich white kid from Arkansas.
"Virginia's trigger-happy, boyfriend" (as that hoarse-voiced, big-screen pussy, Sterling O'Blivion— who would as soon drain a decent man's blood as look at him; yet considered herself a "hermetic scholar" in love with her own glitzy past but was only a dotty old broad who should be booted off the Squad— but of course wouldn't be as long as Woolf protected her and the Chief backed it up— always called Omark) thumped his pillow but sleep would not return. He was the one in grave trouble here, not Virginia Woolf! He had put in to be MacArthur because the assignment looked like a plum. Frimble put in for Doug as well (Frimble was the engineer who devised the "Mousehole" system linking galactic poles that brought the Rysemians to this dustmote in the first place. They were never attracted to the dump; it just happened to be near Grid 8 which might cause a problem) and they tossed for it, Omark "won" and now Frimble rode the cat seat. All he hadda do was grunt "Bombs Away" and blow the balls off two cities while Omark sweated blood here in Tokyo because Harry Truman was out to get him. It was unfair!
The phone rang steadily. Doug figured it was Virginia Woolf the woman he had loved and lost "to another woman," how humiliating! but screw her. Or again: it might be Commander in-Chief Abe Lincoln and that was equally distasteful.
Rysemians had no use for "authority"— a barbaric device leading to dysfunction and early extinction. What was needed was either a thoroughgoing use of the N-bomb by his people (Patton wanted that— not that it'd make a hell of a lot of difference in light of the total oxygen rip-off that was coming in 2123 A.D.) or: a draining of old poisons from each and every human individual (Heidi's Grandfather, the head of the Mission, wanted that, with all his sweet little ole goat herder heart) followed by your basic training in Ethics. If a species had Ethics they didn't need authority. If they didn't, authority didn't work.
But Ethics was a bad word around here because psycho bigwigs could make "serious money" off of mass confusion— unaware that they already had all the "serious money" there was to be had.
Punishment? A joke. How could you punish beings who were acting terrible because they'd already been punished too terribly? Oh, it was a paradox for sure. Nothing could solve the mess. Still, they were giving it a try. The phone rang steadily...
He'd be walking into a coffin if he answered.