CHAPTER SEVEN
The sun sizzles into the sea, a giant flaming seltzer tablet. Off the coast, a brooding wave carries a belch.
"Excuse me."
The uniform before me was like Mao's ater the long march, John Paul's after he began to fight, or the Good Humor Man's after a day in the park, its history slogged across the shirt pockets and dripped from the trouser legs. There's nothing like a man in uniform, the slightly tilted helmet, the smiling tie pin, the phone still ringing. I knew this was a man to whom attention must be paid . . . or at least a dime.
"Excuse me, can you direct me to the convention center. I'm late for the shooting."
Questions mounted in my mind breeding more. Did I look like Pocahontus? Could I recognize a character assasin?
"The T.V. lady will be upset if I don't get there P.D.Q."
"YOu'll have to look close for a character, if they turn sideways you'll lose them altogether," I mumbled and unwound the yo-yo down the walk in the general direction.
"Alright men, forward double time."
"Forward!" Chamelion tucked his ears in as the echo discharged like the recoil of a human cannonball cannon laying down an artery barrage.
"Salamander, see that bus door closing? Stick your head in it and be prepared to move your feet at a brisk 35 M.P.H. clip"
The Army Corp. of Electronic Engineers followed General Chamelion towards the convention center like goose steppers in tap shoes, the front row lifting their hats and swinging their briefcases. They looked like any industrial force marching to glory climbing the tax bracket ladder.
As the unit ascended into history, Fannie Fatslaff descended into the kingdom of stoplights and throned herself in the center, protecting the troops from the deadly onslaught of a rush hour. She commandeered the intersection and set it down at a stop.
I wallowed on the walk outside a steeple that tolled and a minister whose hell-fire voice confirmed, "Save yourself." But the words plunged into holy water and stayed down for the count because cooking hotter than the fire, tastier than the brimstone, the sheer exhuberance in his tone raising the curtain before a standing room only crowd. My heart beat its way to the dance floor and raced with all those within the reach of his playground of sound. The waves continued to pump from Jest while the preacher tried to crash the gates with hell as a battering ram. But the hitchhiking tale Jest gave a ride to, the Sinbad treasure he had gleaned, that there is abloom upon us, could not be throttled by the man with the collared neck and he was forced to call in reinforcements.
The big freeze came down the street to suppress Jest's blasephiming. The bible beater's words again. And my own. But he was noseriding his raga downtown.
They searched, seized and long arme his identification (out of the plastic please) as Jest shucked and jived and asked for requests. They like his material and humaned up some but his delivery never begged for applause. I backed up my lungs as they nightsticked him with the curfew laws and more than offered to take him to the edge of town as it wasn't big enough for both of them.
Events to the north, however, were piling up like clouds over a landing strip for floods. There was a thunderous demand from auto horns and a thumbwrestle of metal. Hurricane Fannie had touched down and pulled the plug on the intersection and the cars spun in her wake.
The cops got the call, answered it and left Jest off the hook. He slunk from the scene like the winner in a stealth contest.
I saved my critique for later and looked towards the convention center where the large rectangular hotel stood behind the arena like a box of april rain pushing a bowl of winter waste back into the ground. Up ahead, the corner was plugged in and throwing sparks. I heard a chorus, "Just generally speaking, I'm in love with youooo . . . "
"Hold it!" she advanced on the army, they forgot military tactics and dropped their rear guard. "General, this wasn't the vision I had in mind when we set up this interview. I don't believe the American public will be moved by you and your troops singing your stars off. Where's your arms? And their uniforms?"
She had touched a weak point. The General was proud of his uniform and believed a man out of uniform was like Alexander without the Great. "I couldn't afford to let the men wear them. City Hall unreasonably demanded a parade permit and a security deposit. So I dressed the boys in suits and ties, packed their guns in cases and stuck to the sidewalk."
"I told the boss it'd be and army of pillageing marauders. Instead, I have a convention of hit men looking to lay low after pulling a big job."
"Sixty seconds."
"General, we don't really need all of this assemblage."
"I can't just send them home, some have worked very hard . . . "
"For the interview your presence alone should inspire our viewers. When the red light goes on we'll be broadcasting."
"On the air." The voice haunted from the shadows in the room and the words hovered and then were struck still by the four walls sweltering in the oppressive heat. The walls moaned low and deathly as the electronics implanted in their skin went to work. They twitched against the dark cast of the shadows as the T.V. screens fired and stilled. There was an aura in the room quite apart from the men who sat clinging to each other in the center of the warm pulsing control knowbs of the studio. They sat slumped forward holding their heads in their hands, their looks pained, their faces slowly disintegrating into the dark corners. And on the screen, due to the technical proficiency of the vertical hold controllers, Harless |Hotspum came in bright and clear, no contrast problems, no interference.
"I believe in his programs but more importantly, I believe in the man. He is the man for the office, the man whose solutions are needed to regain the strength that is the cornerstone of this country. He is the only man I can conscietiously support . . . "
The interviewere dug in solidly, "Should his bid for the Presidency fail, you will not support another candidate?"
"Throughout the campaign, he has had the courage to ask the tough questions. It is up to us, each of us, to maintain the courage of our original convictions. For that reason, I am announcing that my support begins and ends with my candidate."
"Tape mounted," the report slipped through the silence towards Phillips and Allen.
Phillips commanded, his voice a controlled calm, "Ready to mix. Prepare the voice-over. Now, cut to tape." The mechanical qualities resonating within the sounds belied the anxiety that shrouded it. "Done. And on the air again." Relief feared the bare walls, frightened away by the pale glow of the dials that charged the room's atmosphere.
The interview continued, the voice slightly different, though no less earnest, the picture slightly different, though no less convincing. "These are the gravest of times. The next four years will determine the course our contry will take for many generations ahead. I pray that it is not a choice made from moral cowardice . . . "
A voice struck out from the pale glow, "That's as close as I can match the backgrounds."
"That's good. Great shot of the convention hall as a whole. That was a fine transition. Keep us on the tape of the previous convention until the interview runs its course and break to local."
"They may shut us down," Phillip's voice quaked. "We were strictly prohibited from viewing the events inside the convention."
"We aren't prevented from screening last election's coverage."
Phillips nodded and lowered his eyes to his hands.
The room remainded dark, sullen, sulking in the corners. Only the psychotic eye of the control panel trapped attention as it displayed its twisted images. the three men were buried in the gaze of the monitoring device, a grey sheet drqwn over their faces, their natural senses barricaded from the environment by their transfixed stare.
The broadcast was just beginning to elucidate the most important events of the day. "This is the way it is on this day of the convention. Perhaps the most revealing statements to date. Certainly, the most revealing statements I've heard. Exacting in their toll, telling you like we see it. Our strategically located staff will bring you up to the minute reports as we get them. Remember, you heard it first, you heard it accurately, and you heard it here."
The vert strung his words out into the sickly green light, "Back to our local stations."
"Are you sure, Bugabooboo? Could you have been on the wrong channel?"
"Sure, sir."
"You tried all the channels."
"All the channels, sir."
"And I wasn't on any of them?"
"Any of them."
"Excuse me General, Sir."
"Yeh, Salamander."
"I think they preempted you." Salamander was like the point end of an officer's sabre set to the rear of a reluctant recruit who wouldn't write home and the General was pushed over the top.
"Sound assembly."
They gathered like a battalion of army ants attacking a layered cake but bogging down in the icing drifts. Some displayed full uniform, others managed a shirt or hat, still others drew their limbs in around them in an effort to conceal their naked civies. The effect was not lost on Chamelion. "This is not a come-as-you-are invasion. Unpack those rifles! You don't look like soldiers so you'd better act like soldiers."
"Salamander, the officers will muster for a briefing at 05 past the hour. We'll liberate that coffee shop for our command post."
But as the occupying forces learned in the German breweries, the objective can be taken but not always held.
"I'm sorry but its management's policy, not mine, and I have to insist on a minimum cover at all my tables."
"This is now my headquarters."
The waitress was on the seventh of an eight hour shift, her feet hurt, her nerves battle-scarred, the cook nasty, but she tried again, "I don't care what you do, say, or eat. I just have to have a minimum order from every person at your table, or you'll have to go somewhere else."
The General came out of the diner and crossed the street like Caesar crossing the Rubicon bent on getting his money out of a five day European package tour. I stampeded out of his path and ducktailed into the arena entrance frightened by the sure knowledge that carnage would follow his footsteps. . . (what with him crossing against the light and all).
Harless was in the foyer primed to eject infringers on his rights of exclusion. His cadillac grace proved an efficient tool in securing the public. "The picture doesn't do you justice," he processed, "And speaking of justice, how is my little fugitive?"
"My name's not on the ballot."
"But you'd get all my votes."
The messenger dropped off the stairs leaving his lungs one flight up, "We're being challenged in the Rules Committee."
Harless patted him on the back and winked at me, "Are you ready for a fight?"
He was still being briefed as he MacArthured the hall. Miss roberts was on three legs fending off the blows, she propped against Harless and exhaled. "H-came-to-play" Harless hooked an ear and the chair recognized the inflating arm.
"I move . . . "
"Second."
"The motion is now open for debate," the chair authorized.
"I amend the motion to . . . "
The opposition grabbed the floor.
The chair counseled, "Out of order."
"All those who favor the said amendment . . . "
"The 'ayes' have it."
"I move we postpone indefinitely the main motion."
"The 'nays' have it."
"Those in favor of the main motion signify by . . ."
"In the opinion of the chair, the 'ayes' have it, and the motion is carried."
Harless cavaliered his head to his opponent, looked at his wrist and swallowed the time, clasped my arm and revved up his voice, "We're wanted in the senator's suite." As we proceeded to the suite, Harless moved the conversation, "What about that job? Have you considered it? I propose we tell the Senator to put you on the payroll."
We opened the door into a buffet catered by the three stooges. Stretched across the collapsed table was the main course, Senator 'Fast Jack' Laton. I knew because I heard Harless, "That's Senator Jack Laton" as he raced to pick him up and dust the dip from his crotch and celery tips from his armpits.
"That's a foul place for a plate of food," righting himself, then taking two steps cartwheeling into the lap of a slinksilk cocktail dress. As she caught him, I caught his cane.
"Where does he want this?"
"Inner ear."
"What?"
"Inner ear infection. That's why he loses his balance." The Senator continued by tripping over the bundled power cables and splashing into the occupants of the room.
"But why do they lose theirs?" I pointed to the people who hung on the walls and chairs like electrical fixtures.
"He's the Party Chairman, head of the election committee and in the Senate he chairs the Fair Campaign Practice Committee. And theses people will elect the next President of the United States."
The Senator was wind-bagging to all within mouthshot, " . . . And it was the color of puke. Nothing could dissuade them from continuing the ruinfication of my office," his voice nosed up, 'I'm sorry Senator but all the offices on the hill are to be painted,' they told me. And let me tell you, it was something to see. Paint splashing, painters everywhere, paint ladders. They had to crawl into my office and did. I'll bet every congressman in the party crawled through at least once. They wanted thier due. If this convention is anything like the last one, when I get back to the hill I'm going to have some kind of fun."
He bounced our way, "Harless, my boy, how are you? I command you on your bang-up campaign. Your advance work took those precincts by storm. You know, with the right people I can't foresee anything standing in the way of a landslide party victory. Take a good look around you, maybe you know or recognize these faces," he smothered in onions close, "I want you to get acquainted because these are the people that are going to make that landslide possible."
Harless's eyes never bumped across the white line, "We will need their help in the long fight ahead."
"Whatever the outcome of this little skirmish, I want you to command these people in the days ahead."
Harless cast out the thought on a line, "I was planning on following my candidate to Washington, on implementing the programs we have developed in Washington from a position where I could be most effective."
"Surely each candidate offers programs you could support?"
"I want to be an effective voice for the party and see that the platform positions these delegates have adopted are carried out."
Fast Jack's eyebrows nittied and grittied, "I will personally assure you that your work will continue in Washington. A President can't do the job alone and I know you'll be a valuable part of any team we send onto the field."
"I don't expect to be a cry in the wilderness. If I help to build the platform, I'd like at least a seat on it."
"When it is the good counsel of those around him that gets a man elected, he relies on their judgements to keep him in office and it follows that those advisors must be in close proximity to that office."
Harless stiffened for an instant, then reeled his thoughts back together again. "I recognize the importance of our mission, the importance to the party, and the importance of the campaign to all of us. I want to be counted on to do my part."
The Senator sucked me into his eyes for the first time, "Harless, how does it happen that you are keeping such enviable company."
"I have proposed that Lahal come to work for me."
The Senator extended his socially disease ridden hand, "I wholeheartedly endorse that proposition."
"Well, it's still and open question but it is an attractive offer," I was uneasy on the stump.
"Perhaps it isn't attractive enough. I believe your qualifications allow me to promise that you will significantly increase your salary when you join us," Harless counseled me.
"I have unfinished responsibilities that I should return to . . . "
"Yes, a conscientious employee must, but that's not pertinent to our offer. More deserving of your considerations is the room for personal fulfillment with your new responsibilities. Is it that our salary offer is still not enticing enough?"
"No, it is certainly generous. Perhaps I just need some time to consider the proposal."
"An opportunity like this can't wait. We need to fill the position immediately. so for your own best interest, Harless and I are submitting your name to the payroll department so you can draw salary immediately."
My reply was left pending as a commotion moved through the door and the Senator addressed it, "What's going on? There's to be no camera crews in here."
"I need a power outlet."
"Hey, I said pack it up. . . " the Senator rolled up his sleeve, spilled half his drink down his shirt, and in the best tradition of American politics, prepared to throw the bums out.
Harless refereed the clinch, "It's O.K. They're the security crew putting in an additional camera system."
"I need electrical power, please."
I Mata Haried the Senator tell Harless, "I don't want anybody able to review what takes place in this room."
Harless turned on his director's voice, "Let me show you to the socket. Um. It looks as though it's already filled. I tell you what, I'll put you in charge of distributing the outlet. Now this cord goes to the microphone in the front of the lecturn, it's not being used now."
The man armed to unplug.
"But if you disconnect it, you guarantee that it won't be used and without those speeches this room may lose its significance as a security risk, and we won't need the protection of your cameras. If there's no need for any more cameras there may not be any need for camera installers."
"O.K. We leave the microphone." He began to trace the cord below the mike.
"Now, this other is plugged into the coffeee pot, but don't unplug it or the room will quickly empty. The coffee is holding together most of the frazzled personalities in the room. Some of these people have been working without sleep for days now. If they go off somewhere else, there will be no one to address in the room and therefore no need for a security outlet."
"So where do I plug my cameras in? You know we've been asked not to overload these outlets. All this power, and no way to tap into it. I had to lobby for these damn cameras. I wanted an unobtrusive system and I got one."
Harless let his words seem as though they wore the cameraman's clothes, "It would be a shame to jeopradize the entire system on one room."
"But what am I going to do about the security?"
"That's up to you. I leave you in charge of this outlet. I'll respect your wishes, just don't take your position lightly."
"I won't and thank you, sir."
One of his men reached up to the neon ceiling lights to check for a hidden place to make an electrical connection and the light began to sway. I watched the light swing across to the man standing next to the outlet, the plug in his hand and the power cords running beneath his feet, turning away the members of his crew trying to disconnect the microphone or coffeepot, explaining how he was bypassing this room in the interest of total security.
The light ran to the Senator's face, his eyes glowing, accounting and casting the room. And it crept across to Harless, his eyes colorless, unfocusing, riveting those in the room still. He climbed over them to look at me, "Where are you leaving to, Lahal? We haven't discussed your first assignment yet."
"No, we haven't."
"Are you walking out on me, we looked so good together."
I was.
"Don't ruin your life by throwing away this opportunity I'm handing you."
"I'm sorry Harless, but if you don't need the juice, there's no need to be plugged in." I saw my form bouncing off the camera's blind lens like hot sunlight bright cool off a glass pane. I jiggled but the eye didn't flinch, I did a double take and a slow roll with my eyes but my comic gestrues couldn't match its deadpan. My shape overlapped the perimeiters of its vision as I strolled out the rrom.
Inside the aperture, the gears and levers clicked and stuttered, the light invaded and the General followed.
"Get a closeup of that guy in front with the medals and weird tie pin. Too good to miss. Pan slowly the rest of those Bozos in uniform nearing the convention entrance."
Chamelion eyud the entrance like a sailor in port after months at sea and he heard the convention say, "Hi there big boy," but looked into his pockets and his cash came up short. Because betwwen the General and the convention center was an ugly demonstration. It appeared as though the first amendment was taken out for a walk but not properly curbed.
The General read the signs from where he halted. "'WE'VE BEEN FOULED - NOW WHERE'S OUR FREE SHOTS.' Free shots? What is this?" He read on as another sign came around into his focus, "'DUNK THE SOB'S, GIVE US FOUR QUARTERS OF GOOD BASKETBALL NOT FOUR MORE YEARS OF GARBAGE TIME.' Who are these morons? Freee shots, Ill give them free shots." His voice fired up into a roar, "Get me a line of sharpshooters!"
"General, please!" She short-stepped towards him on her high heels. He paused with his arm raised and pointed towards his foe like General Lee at Gettysburg, General Marshal at the Argonne, or General Eisenhower at a Cubs game ordering three beers and a bag of peanuts.
In the enemy encampment, speecheds and slogans were whipping the forces into a cannon fodder frenzy. The image was not lost on the cameramen lurking outside the ddors to the hall. They threw their lenses into focus and swooped in catching the summation of a moving and cathartic diatribe, ". . . See thses tickets - worthless. I stood in line twelve hours for these seats. Tell me I'll be reimbursed, but how can my time and heartache be compensated. I've been following this team since I was nine years old. I've lived and died withe 'em. They'replaying the best ball they've ever played. They've got the highest shooting average in the league. Some are calling this the best basketball team ever assembled. And for the first time in the history of the franchise, they make it to the finals. I get tickets in preparation for what will likely be one of the biggest thrills of my life and now I'm told that the series will be played in Boston. Boston! Thousands of miles away. Some home court advantage. Did you know that the home court advantage is worth a good six points to a team. It's true. And six points will in all likelihood be the point spread in every game. And the crowd here, we've been called the sixth man on the court, that's how supportive we are. But now we've been replaced by an . . . an election. I don't believe it. Jeez, more people wathced the N C double A finale this year than voted in the last two elections. . . "
"Please General! she had her hand on his forearm, "What do you intend to do?"
"I'm going to blow they're damned heads off. I've been insulted by the city officials. ignored by its citizens, thrown out of that diner, and now I'm being blockaded by an unsurgent force of rebels."
"Yey're civilians, you're not going to fire on civilians."
"They're local opposition. We're on a mission to capture that assembly hall. We have encountered a force that is bent on keeping us from obtaining our objective. That makes them our enemy. I'm going to blow their damned heads off."
"Chamelion," she cooed, "I don't think you fully comprehend the significance of your actions."
The General raised his stars and bars.
"You see television is a cool medium. A composed image must be maintained at all costs. A sanguine hot-blooded response will appear to be rash, overly forceful, and hot-headed. If your seen on T.V. with the veins popping out of your neck and ordering the massacre of these strikers, your public relations will be irreparably harmed. I repeat, irreparably harmed."
"Just this once. I need the morale booster."
"It won't be just once, every time your name is mentioned the videotape will picture a flesh eating, child beating, General Chamelion. History is always repeated."
"And screwed up a little more each time. What do you propose I do?"
"It's already being done," she gestured towards one of the General's men surrounded by a group of picketeers.
"That's one of my men! If being a P.O.W. is a cool response, then I'm gonna bring in the flame throwers and incinerate every last one of them!"
"No, no, General, that man is how your going to avoid an armed conflict." She breathed into his ear her public relations in a very private manner.
The General approached the group like it was booby trapped. He listened for the trip wire . . . "Just sign it to a loyal supporter from the M.V.P. . . . I lost five bucks off your last game. I should have known not to bet against you . . . Could you make one out to my kid, he thinks you're the greatest . . . I thought you turned pro? Why didn't you play last year, man?"
He looked between the pencils and pads, "I tried out with L.A. but me and the coache saw my role differently, you know."
"The Corporal has an announcement," the General drew to attention, "He wants to tell you that your city has a chance to be the number one sports city in America. That's right. Your city has an opportunity to have not only the best basketball team in the country, but also the best football and if that's not enough, also the best baseball team in America. If you can let me and my men pass, the Corporal will guarantee that your city will take the NBA title, the Super Bowl and the World Series."
The crowd hummed its excietement. This was a historic proposition not to be taken lightly, nor to be accepted without some armchair strategy. "You gonna pick up all the free agents? . . . Where you gonna get the money? . . . Did you by out the franchises, I heard the baseball team was up for sale, bu nothng about the others. . . Look, the onliest way you gonna get a winning boo'ball team is to fire that somabitch coach . . . And his staff and the general manager . . . And how you gonna do that, he's got controlling interest?"
The Corporal stepped forward like a recruit volunteering for K.P. because he knew the latrine was full. "General, I can't promise that. I mean there's too many intangibles. You know, you can asseble the best players money can buy and still not win a championship. We're talking team sports. It has to jell . . . "
"Shut up, swish brain," the vein in the General's neck was popping. The sports fans were tanked up. They sensed the home team was behind, the game lost, and they were turning with a vengeance on their team.
The General took command, though he was not at St. Petersburg, he knew the order, "Fix Bayonets! Alright, you've got two minutes to disperse and then I'm coming through." The General drew his line as if he was General Mills in charge of cookie cutters.
Across from his troops, the picketeers bunched waiting for what the General though was the two minute warning. But long before the bell, long before a whistle blew, the strikers stirred.
"Shot on goal."
The basketballs hailed like pregame warm-ups shot by Goliath when he's gunning. Some hit their mark and the mark fell on its seat but many hit their target and stuck on the fixed bayonets, leaving the General in command of a force armed with giant Tootsie-roll Pops.
Chamelion began to asssess his position, calculate his responses, and build battlefield scenarios, but his field strategy failed to take into account the resourcefulness of his commanders.
"General, sir. I don't want you to worry I've made moves to control the disturbance."
"You gave them the spray, Salamander?"
"No, I called the cops."
"I don't see what the M.P.'s are going to do that we can't?
"Not ours, theirs."
Chamelion began to formulate the curse in his throat which is where it stuck as a scream of silence overwhelmed his thoughts and senses.
"Geez, I'm sorry. I wasn't even aiming or anything. I just bounced, heard the crack and there he was. Damn, I didn't want anything like this to happen. Damn."
"I've had him ever since he was a little thing. I wanted him to stay home but he seemed so well adapted to an amphibian assault."
"I saw him crawl across, I mean at first I thought it was someone's helmet but then I saw his neck and little legs."
It was Chamelion who scooped up the pieces, "He was awfullly little but he sure had courage. I'm going to cite him for bravery above and beyond his shell." He cradled the pieces and the strikers parted for him and then dispersed. His men followed him up to the convention hall doors.
And the cameras stunned, but maintaining their watch, followed his men until they became nothing more than dots on the screen.
"Focus that background," Phillips wiped away the beads of perspiration trickling down his cheek, the tones in his voice reverberated his discomfort, "Look at the other networks." His finger circled in the direction of the monitoring sets
Allen slowly elevated his head from his work over the tape machine.
"Every channel's the sme story, the Generalisimo's move towards the convention hall."
The somber grey machine again drew Allen back to it.
Desperation whined in Phillips's voice, "We must come up with domething."
Only the incipient hum of the tape machine replied. It was a sound of anquish retarded in the throat, until it was released by the depression of a button.
"There," Allen reached to focus the color commentator's suit, "Was, or rather is, our response to the General."
"One of the more important, but seldom commented upon, aspects of thisyear's convention has been the almost total lack of pressure on the delegates generated from outside the convention," his tone was scholarly, his smile that of a friend, his face fatherly. "We have seen none of the developments that have characterized years past . . . "
"I don't see how this is a report on the Generalisimo. He's not even mentioned."
Allen let the remark strangle in the room's thick atmosphere.
"This is just going to point out the discrepencies in our coverage. The other networks must be wondering how we got footage from inside the hall."
"We'll know in a short time," was Allen's slow and deliberate voalization of his racing pulse.
The commentator had faded into an interview with one of the more prominent delegates:
"He's a tottering old fool. Jesus, I don't know how the blithering idiot finds his way to the bathroom let alone his fly. Maybe he doesn't, that's why his ideas are so full of . . . "
"We understand that you didn't take a plane like the other delegates. You took a bus. Is this a special economic protest?"
". . . And he'd sell his own . . . What?"
"I said you took the bus."
"Yeh, that's right. It's a twenty minute ride. No thanks to that same swine who we're suppose to support. When he was governor, he got the bright idea . . ."
"And your wife? Did she come too?"
" . . . Yeh, she'll make a session or two."
"Well, thank you, sir. And back to you, Election Control."
The Vertical Hold Controller monotoned in neither allen's nor Phillips's particular direction, "Another up-to-the-minute report."
"That was a good cut-in," Phillips praised his man with one hand consecrating his jacket shoulder.
"Did you ever dream you'd be doing anything like this?"
"No, this is a project with an extreme technical challenge. I'm very lucky to be working on it. There's hundreds of guys who'd giver their eye teeth to be in my position."
Allen let go his words prophetically, "Here it comes."
The lights paled, the room stopped its pulse as Allen moved to increase the volume on the T.V. screen monitoring the other channels.
"I think to this commentator, this convention is marked by the absence of events that occur off the floor but nevertheless influence the main body of delegates, influences that often originate outside the convention. This is a group that does not seem to be effected by anything other than their own immediate tasks."
The tubes continued to drone out their message as the cameras stayed fixed on their subject.
"Who's that on the rail? On the camera at station five." The guard huffed closing in on the security screen.
I let my eyes wander back along the corridor following the rail up to the upper tiers where the rod iron was inlaid, pretty to look at, freshly painted and still wet. I held for a timelessness, examining fineness but touching the warm scarred wooden hand rail I leaned my body against. I traced with my fingers the whittled outlines of past names and scriptures and slowly descended, reading the imprints for my own clues.
"You need direction?"
Like a rabbit in a rattled cage I jumped around towards the words. "Does this lead to an exit?"
His rented uniform was too big and sagged over his shoes. He shook his head, "Most want to know the way up. You can't just walk out. We'll need to check you out at the front gate, but you'll have to wait, Al's on his dinner hour."
Static burst from his hip, "You are to pursue, apprehend, and escort to the nearest exit a woman identified as Fannie fatslaff. Described as . . . "
My eyes plunged off the balcony, she was coming through the floor goosing the seated crowd like a cat under a rug. Behind her came more baggy uniforms. I was watching Buster Keaton chased by the Keystone Cops for stealing the show.
I followed the widening hall down and met her poiunding up the steps, "Fannie, the screws are onto you. Here, give me your badge. Take mine. Swap coats. And you'll never look so good."
"I know we`re buddies and all but what's in this for you? I mean the worlds filled with people who will turn you in for your own good."
My face pushed out its twinklies. "You're the fastest escape from this asylum. I'm weary of being committed. Just in case I'm asked, what did you, or rather I, do to warrant such preferential treatment?"
"You tried to carry out the will of the people."
"No wonder."
"A classic case of premature morality. Let me explain. The amendment vote is about to be taken, right, and I'm given a placard and told to demonstrate. Everybody begins to chant, "Open the convention! Open the convention! The bands playing 'Put on a Happy Face,' I'm singing, my feet feeling the spirit, I'm moving by the big glass doors at the entrance, I look out and here's this happy face. I hear the pom-poms clapping, 'Open the convention', so I open it up. I open one of the doors, this happy face comes in followed by his army of delegates. whistles blowing, sirens wailing. People I don't even know trying to put their hands on me. You know they may string you up . . . Fannie."
Squashing bugs their boots came down the stairs. The voice tore a hole in the air like a demolator's crane. "I've got her."
"I got her you mean," Fannie was like a mongoose getting a called third strike past a cobra. "Caught her sneaking up the stairs, lucky for you I was here." She handed me over.
The security cameras trailed me out the exit. I winked at the lense and hoped it was appreciated on the receiving end.
The pictures on the screen futilely reached into the room. In the corners, the light's decay coupled with the rotting traces of past campaigns and bred a shadow whose edges pulsed with foreboding. The sliding moisture from the sweating walls hit the floor unnoticed, drowned out by the electronic howl of the equipment. A stench terrorized the room, called from the components by their own intense heat and mingling with the odors already hanging in the thick atmosphere. Across every dimension the room cast its deadly green tone. Engulfed by the glow and dwarfed by the brewing darkness, sat three particles of mankink.
"God, this is a mess."
Phillips and the technician lifted their eyes.
"I can't believe in this short of time my picture has deteriorated." Allen peeled another patch of color from the window that overlooked the convention floor and carried the image of the last Democratic convention gathering in its stained elements.
Phillips abashedly wished the whole damn scene would flake away and release the events on the floor below to his eyes. Only those looked away for the protection of others were refused access to the light of men's activities. His musings were cut short. In an instant, Phillips felt as though his heart and mind had betrayed him and ceased to start. Just as quickly, he let go that thought and embraced another, perhaps his eyelids had become momentarily short-circuited from his mind. Certainly they missed the orderliness of the last transition on the screen. The picture lagged an almost imperceptible, but very real, burst of time behind the sound track. Phillips never doubted the integrity of the electronics system but he did call into question his own stability. His eyes burned, his ears rang, but his voice was mute. And as the sound track continued, the distortion became greater. Phillips felt his nerves stretch, his senses begin to slip from his grasp.
"Have you lost all control?"
Although he desperately wanted to blurt an affirmative, Phillips could not pry his lips apart or unclench his teeth. The technician answered for him.
"Something's wrong."
The words carried their own terrible burden into the air. And they hung there screaming an alarm.
"Adjust it!"
A picture dipping below the horizon line brought a reaction in the technician conditioned since the beginning of his working days, but nothing in his training prepared him for the hideous results of his responses. The image met the level line but then inexplicably pushed past it and tilted at a demonically abhorrent angle. The deviation could not go unchallenged. But the mad torquing knobs only accentuated the growing disparity between the clear cool picture of a functioning system and the wild convoluted images now being displayed on the screen. Phillips could tolerate the insanity no longer. In reaching for the controls, he brushed one of his tortured hands across the contrast dial, a movement in itself of little significance, but one that carried repercussions to a ghoulish extreme. As the picture began to lose its contrasting dark textures, Phillips struck the dial again fading the picture into a counter motion of deep blackness.
"What in hell is happening," Allen was on his feet, his words exploding out of his mouth. The answer to his query drummed its own forceful response raising the volume on the sets to a fiery ball of sound.
The screen now contained on its silver surface all the turbulent furies let loose by mankind.
The Vert's voice was frantic, "I'm cranking this as hard as I can." In each frail pained look was etched what it held in the depths of its soul. It was clear that collectively and individually their tenuous foothold had given way. Their human potential was tragically no match for the power before them and that power possessed in its grip the hearts and minds of the viewing public.
"God in your mercy, deliver us from this wrath," the voice clawed with anguish.
"It is lost."
They had plummeted to the dark hell of despair.
The door shot open. A cold chill pierced through the room. The air clenched tight and anxious reeking a musty, sickly sweet animal fear. A man was silhouetted in the arch of the door, his long gown not quite skirting the floor. The shape floated into the room, its arms folded in front, its face solemn, and belonging to Dr. Driver.
Phillips, Allen, and the technician moved back, leaving Dr. Driver alone to face the equipment. The Doctor lowered his hands to his sides and then, palms up, raised them towards the dials. No breath stirred in their lungs, nor could the three tear their eyes from Driver as the picture cleared and stopped its rolling. Phillips's knees buckled sending him against the other men who caught him and propped him between them. Dr. Driver clapped three times and the volume returned to a level tolerable to the human ear.
"I'll be damned."
"What are we a witness to?"
Driver spoke for the first time since entering the room. "You have seen the finest in technological development. The cataclsmic sensing dials."
"Sensing dials?"
"But you cleared the picture without adjusting any of the controls."
"That is what you induce, but your eyes and mine deceive you. In the event of a catastrophe of major proportions, it is conceivable the operator may be incapacitated and these controls are designed to function with aminimum of operator intervention. These are heat sensing dials triggered now by the rise in temperature in the room. One need only pass his hand over the dial for fine tuning and if he actually does touche the knob, the control will continue to tune until he removes it."
"But what about the sound, was that not a mystical experience?"
"My dear boy, there is nothing magical or mystical in a fine tuner actuated by sound, as I can demonstrate." The Doctor directed his voice towards the screen, "Louder!" he barked. His command was immediately followed by a rise in volume from the signal.
"You've brought our salvation."
Driver stepped out from under the weight of those words, his face hard, his eyes challenging, his voice grave, "Gentlemen, it is time." Each man felt the spine wrenching effects of Driver's bearing. "Our ratings are up above the other networks. The convention is at a close."
They braced themselves for the order.
"Set in motion the Goosebraining."
The electronic howling ceased, the images across the room froze, the heat hung suspended, the room waited sensing its role in the momentous events agead and anticipating the awful task Dr. Driver was about to initiate. And the men too held in their hearts and minds the importance of the events they were caught in. They sensed that the effects of the Goosebrain syndromw would extend well past their own lives. Goosebraining might forcibly reach into every American cranium, screwing knowledge into even the dullest skull plate.
I narrowly missed a terminal sensing as I was dropkicked out the door and aimed at the police siege line. I was intercepted off my feet.
"Jest 's got her on the five. Dances downfield and out of bounds into the half-time festivities."
We landed amongst the rooting section cheering against the plays, our feet picking up the rampaging boogie, tapping into the groove that was going, our bodies pulsating like migrations upstream spawning other enharmonics as below the wild weeds drove through teh buckling cement.
Above us like lawn furniture in a Gauguin, the delegates shouted from their balconies to put faith in the process. Tom Paine wrote their speeches and in the interest of equality they seldom got closer than they needed to spread the word. The cop barricade was strengthened, an effect not lost on the doorway dwellers who rode the city out by day and by night. Though the gladiators were hyped to take the field, the marching band was not about to yield, not during the spell-out.
"We'll take the last letter, O.K., you little alphabet soupie?"
"I'm finally able to achieve my high school dream, I'm a cheerleader." I pom-pommed out my 'k' as the other three letters went by.
"That did it. The gamesover. Here comes the two minute warning."
"This has been declared an unlawful assembly," the voice fragged out into the crowd like a car thief complaining about the choice of upholstery, "You have two minutes to disperse."
My feet fled the dance, my clothes felt empty on a line, and I was whiplashed from the fall when the ride stopped.
The balcony applauded, "You can dance for joy after the election," and the cops cordoned off the exits as if to preserve the festivities for reissue.
Were these followers of Mahatma Ghandi? Nooo. This was generation reared on Soupy Sales.
The linemen took the brunt of the attack and the rest of the team jumped offside before time was up, obviously disappointed at the choice of creme fillings.
Jest grabbed my hand like a two note tie but not before I saw a club go red. A megavoice trailed after us. "We know most of you are decent law-abiding citizens. Do not resist and we will take it into consideration." I heard a nightstick crack beneath my feet.
My hand slipped his grasp, I felt nuzzled underwater. I carromed into a warm shadowed space between two buildings and floated there bieng pulsed down the refuge as the assembly line violece pendulumed. I pressed deeper down the alley and flung head first through the torn-boarded wooden fence.
An expanse of clear sea blew from behind my eyes. In the serenity of the soft painted scape I began to lose my breath.
"Catch your breath Salamander. Here, take my car."
"But sir, we're being recognized."
"Our men are being thrown out faster than a piano carrying basestealer and you tell me we're being observed. I gotta think."
It was not the thinking that produced a ringing in Chamelion's ears, "Hello. Hello. You keep trying, I've got to get to the convention and give my statement of non-acceptance speech." The President handed the phone to his secretary. "I told them I wouldn't run by they wouldn't listen. Well, I'm declining the nomination."
"Hello? Hello? Are you there?"
Chamelion immediately identified the voice as one he was unfamiliar with. "My voice has changed. That's it. Disguise."
"New uniforms, new looks."
Chamelion turned and started like someone stuck by his own purple heart. "Mr. President."
"Mr. President?" Bugabooboo peeked from around the mask, a shadow of his former self.
"That's great, get a mask for all the troops remaining. Chamelion donned his like a Zulu borrowing his father's headpiece to raid a neighboring village for a date. "Let it be said, they did not come to conquer, but to marry."
"The hair doesn't look right."
"Get the bazookas and fire a volley over each man's head so they can get the concussion look. I'm going into the thick of it."
And it was thicker than the seventh Calvary's stable floor after a hay gorging.
"Salamander, I want the reconnaisance patrol to report directly to me."
"An eyewitness report." A microphone was being forec-fed down the throat of a man gasping outside the convention center's doors. "Were you in the center of it?"
"It was horrible, I never want to experience anything like it again."
"Can you describe what you saw?"
"Napoleon hats, men pretending to be Christ, women like Jackie Onassis. Faces wild and distorted, moving fiercely around the room or nodding solemnly in agreement. Faces reeking of stale odors. Odors heavy in their clothes, weighing them down."
"But it was the noise. The rattling. Each delegate committed to his chair, the chairs chained to the floor. The music coming in and out opening and shutting the door to my wits."
"That was one of the accounts from an eyewitness. All day the rumors and reports have been circulating. It has been unsubstantiated but the President has been seen exiting the convention on several occasions. These reports have been conflicting, calling into question their valididty. And it must be added no one has seen the President enter the building, though we know he's in there from some of the pirate films we have been able to air. The activities of the convention have apparently been the subject of considerable controversy. It seems the nominating addresses have been given and the vote is in, but far from being a repeat of the landslide victory four years ago for President Marfar as the rumors and films indicate, the vote has come under investigation. Reports have it that the number of delegates has not stayed consistent and that the vote has been tampered with. It is further stated that a newcomer, his identity a mystery, though sources say he is a popular military hero, has arrived on the scene and is stealing votes. It must be emphasized that these are all unsupported accounts. Word just in: President Marfar was again seen leaving the floor, odd, because he is scheduled to give his acceptance speech shortly."
"I am the President, damn it! You can't throw me out of here."
"Listen, bub, we've thrown more Presidents out than a South American junta. You're just one more. It's nothing personal. If you want to dress up like the President that's O.K. with me, but I've got my orders so out you go."
"General, they've just overthrown Marfar before you could get to him."
Chamelion ripped off his Presidential face, "You mean the guy's already been deposed." The General looked like Sherman finally getting to the sea only to find that water didn't burn.
"I said I'd get to the bottom of this and this is surely as low as it could get," it was the All-American Harless. "I want to know who you are and what you think you're trying to pull off?"
"I'm your President," Chamelion put his mask back on and made ready to attack backwards.
"You're not my President, but you're going to be theirs, at least for tonight."
"I'm General Chamelion, nobodies President."
""You're about to be nobodies nobody. Your men have been decreed honorary delegates of United States Overseas Personnel. They've bound themselves to voting as I direct them. All you have to do is read this speech."
"Then I'm a P.O.W., a Politically Owned Weinie. What if I'm discovered out while in front of the hall?"
"They've already put their faith in the mask. Just read the speech. It's a unanimous opinion that you should refuse the nomination and we turned off the floor mikes. You'll get no resistance."
Chamelion had already read more than he needed, "What d'ya man an end to the F-One-O'sham, reduce military spending, work towards peace. This isn't a speech, its taps over my grave. Salamander!"
"Yes Sir."
"Fight to the death," the General flew but he never made Valhalla.
"Mr. President," the voice charged down the hall button-holing Chamelion. "I'm here to vote for the opposition and since the mikes are off and no one's bothering to keep score I'll tell you in person. I wouldn't vote for you and yours even if you exempted me from all your cocksure schemes."
The General was pushed backwards and brushed against the door like Admiral Dolittle flying by the seat of his pants and backing into history, the door gave way and Chamelion sprawled into the barely lit room.
Harless followed, his eyes tuning to the dull light. "Now who in hell are you?" He scanned the electronic devices, "And what do you think your doing here?"
Fannie strolled on in, in case her expertise was needed. "That's quite far enough," Driver's voice was distinct with a perceptible throaty modulation. "It's too late to terminate the Goosebraining."
The Doctor was confirming Harless's suspicions. He began to realize the man before him was surely mad and obviously carrying out a diabolical scheme, he was now considering the degree to which the involvement had proceeded. "What?"
"Goosebraining." Driver's doomed voice made it clear that whatever it was it was meant to be business.
The General slithered on the floor eyeing Driver's hand cocked over a red flashing button. He quickly surmised that the key to Driver's weapon centered on that pulsating knob. His own Operation slime a failure, he desperately shotgunned his mind for a last minute military alternative.
Harless too noticed the button at Driver's disposal and his fingers began to hinge open and snap shut as in his mind his hand replaced Driver's small skeletal appendages.
"I just dropped in to see if you boys might be a little hungry, we've ordered 3000 pizzas to go and I want to make sure cheese and pepperoni is alright, but I see your busy," Fannie inched her way towards the door. However, there were other orders in the room she did not have time to take down.
"I'm wasting my time. I'm going to disconnect. Nobodies going to ever answer this lousy phone. I'm pulling the plug." But the voice was mistaken beauase like the troops at the battle of Let the Bull Run the sounds were heard and intercepted.
Chamelion's eyes began to glaze, "Yes, pull the plug. Push the button! Throw the switch!" He had found the final military solution. His stare became one hundred yards long and a mile wide and saw only throbbing red button as his objective. As he lunged towards the lever, his lips let go his cry, "Better dead than in the red."
The button was pushed, the lever pulled, there was no denying or turning away. After an instant of startled response the room began again to take a new shape. Chamelion and Harless expected a finality of action but they reacted from a lifetime of playing all angles and they threw their arms across their heads to try and save their necks. Fannie kept her head high, not wanting to miss what was about to tumble in on her and kept moving for the exit. Driver, flanked by the wild-eyed Phillips and Allen, whose face was a picture of quiet resignation, took on the aura of a terrible calm. They waited.
Fannie made it to the door and did not look back. Harless and Chamelion made it through a reliving of their lives and lookedup. It was left to Driver who made it through the culmination of a life's work to pronounce. "It is upon us."
The General and Harless, despite Driver's declarations, perceived no substantial change in the room. The ceiling was still above them, they had both let at least one of their eyes roll upward, the fllor was still below them, they had curled their toes and dug into their shoes. Their breathing shortened and their pulse quickened but this they attributed to the trauma of events. It was difficult then, for these men not to be somewhat skepticle of Driver's achievement.
The best laid plans usually get screwed," Harless's mind felt the button press against his palm as he began to consider the possibility that Driver had somehow experienced a misfire.
"Your incorrect, my friend. Goosebraining has already succeeded. Millions of television viewers are now watching our President gloriously accept his parties nomination after a landslide victory. And the people below us on the convention floor will soon witness a replay of the President's victory and will likewise believe in the events as we have transpired them."
"I believe . . . " Phillips and Allen's chant came out of the corners of the room.
"Well I'm not buying . . ."
"And you too will understand the new properties of electronics," Driver cranked the picture up but it was he who was to take the lesson in the basic laws of physics and chemistry.
Traces of blue sulfurous smoke began to sizzle from an overworked circuit and sure as the fire that followed the smoke, ingeniousness pursued the natural elements. The automatic sprinkler system began to seek out and destroy the flame, first, in a mist that swarmed into the room policing the air, then, in a maneuver that shot down through the air erdefining the room's atmosphere, and finally, in a bombarding rain that captured every spec of dry space. Someone noticed that water was lapping over their shoes. somewhat more alarm however, was registered by the filling of pockets. How high the water may have climbed in the small room was not determined because before any upper limit was reached, the sheer weight displaced by the water buckled the hinges off the door. The sudden vent for the release of pressure sent the water, and every thing not tightly secured, torrenting through the opening. The room's former occupants looked very much like a white water expedition shooting a mad torrid river, a river with a very sudden drop. Over the rail they shot submerged in what was by now an eighth wonder of the world waterfall. They dropped into a monstrous oversized cauldron brewing with humanity neck deep in a rising tide. And still the fire fighting system hurled its monsoon down on the convention hall.
The flood waters surged above the closed metal doors leading in and out of the arena sealing its occupants vault-tight. The festive colored baloons bobbed on the surface next to the terror lit heads, some covered with party hats, giving the arena the look of a fruit salad someone had dumped in the punch bowl to get the party rolling, And moving it was as soon as Allen, Phillips, and Driver found the switch that dropped the bottom out of the floor and sent the convention diving below the surface of the arena to join the Olympic sized swimming pool. Driver's plan was based on his knowledge of the construction of the building. The architect, he knew, had made provisions for the overfilling of the swimming pool. when the volume of water became too great a drain flicked on to bring the pool back into balance. What Driver did not know, and what the architect had never envisioned, was that such an enormous body of water would trigger the drain to kick in with an industrial strength pumping rate sending the whole seaful of arena in a mad, whirling frenzy washing down the sewer.
Though the water stormed and fell, it was panic that reigned on the faces of the delegates, all of whom had journeyed to become special democratic representatives but none of whom wished to experience the equality of being out of the same boat together. As each tread water in his or her own vicious manner, they desperately looked for someone or something to become their life saver. Like many great leaders, Harless found events beckoned and conspired to thrust greatness on him. He found that in this time of threatening crisis, he was head and shoulders above the other delegates and dignitaries, mainly because a giant air bubble had been caught in the seat of his pants and back of his coat. The bubble sent him corking around the giant tub far above the water's surface. As a result, he was hightly visible to the drowning crowd and he became their focal point as they clamored for direction. Even sopping wet, Harless never shrank from his duty but provided visionary leadership by being the first to be caught in the giant whirlpool and be sucked down the drain.
The remainder of the conventioneers followed Harless, their faces dripping with terror. One notable exception was Fannie Fatslaff who shrieked with delight at every twist and rush of the current. She paddled on her side, on her stomach, and on her back, increasing her speed and careening off the waves. A rebel yell whooped from her lungs as she tumulted in the churning water hanging on to the world's number one bath tub ride. And all around her, the voices choked for air.
The slap on my back force air into my lungs and I coughed up a cry as Jest reached out his greeting, "You got out alive through all that crap and jive."
"And you're here to adopt me."
~I don't need a dependent. I happen to fall through periodically."
"Is this habit forming or is your head scrambled?"
"When one is raised on oatmeal, it's small wonder he has mush for brains."
We followed the empty starved streets past a greeding mall.
"The poetry of a generation is enamored with neon."
"It's a sad message that pales before its medium."
'Jest's Pickin' was burned in across the wooden front and it dug in where the plastic ended. a small body was propped outside as one of the pillors of the business.
Jest did the smell sensation and let his nose lift him off the ground. "What is it here that makes my nose leap for joy. could this be din-din? Compliments to your mom. While we divy, let's let go with a chorus from last week's practice session."
When the lesson had subsided, Jest's pupil leashed his fingers, cased his guitar, and bussed a tune back home.
"Doc, some fo these patients look awfully ill." I picked over the pieces of an ailing fretboard.
"Just a little love and attention and they'll be as good as new."
"Then these are broken heart strings?"
Through the door came the voice of the heat, "I'm surprised your open. I expected you to be down getting your head busted."
I was silent, thinking they'll never take me alive.
"An old cheater like me risk outgrowing his had wardrobe? I'm surprised you dropped in. I thought you'd be down busting heads."
"I'd like to be but it's my shoulder, I can't seem to get a good stroke anymore. I guess I'm getting old."
"If not older, at least craftier. Lahal, meet the horsetrader who practically stole the finest quitar in the shop."
"Stole? I was lucky I didn't have to pawn the squad car." The car squawked up demanding attention. He returned after defining the universe in terms of mathematical equations into the radio. "I dropped by to tell you how great the sound is from the instrument."
"Yeh, that soundbox amplifies right into the cheap seats."
"I've got ot respond to a call. Bad happenings down at the convention. The call is out for all available units to join in a rescue operation but we'll be short-handed since most of the patrols are on crowd control."
The tire-black painted the curb and the car galloped towards its job. The radio waves stayed on the air growing a tragedy. I took my cue from the hands calling from the rubble to the wings and I was stepping out without the script or direction to play my part.
Jest brought me back to the room, "The evening looks lonely watching the sun go. How about keeping it company?"
I stood amidst the guitars arranged on the walls, their mouths bowed. I stayed for a measure rejoincing in their silent singing and regretting that I would have to put it down. "It's a night that drives a chill before it and I've got Fannie's coat to return."
"What a coincidence, that's the direction I had in mind. I've got to protect my investments. I don't want to have to buy back any guitar because somebody strained his fingers or ears."
We headed into the light evening air, the night was on the edge waiting to single our vision and cold our steps. We hurried against it.
A trickle, a rush, then a gateflow of people poured against us. I was upstreamed, loosed from Jest, and buoyed against a bank. I compressed myself against a storefront already prepared for Christmas. The winter time is coming, the windows were soaped with frost. I called out, but I could not get across to Jest against the other shore.
His voice headed out singing above the falling rumble:
"I'd be moving on or I'd be going back
If I hadn't found we were already there.
So juice it through the brain files,
Dispatch it across the air,
Uphold convictions,
But has any print wandered so far?
Let the crops be plowed and paved
If it's a good price for the farm,
What's one more piece of land
In a world unreconciled?"
He held the undertowed crowd in abeyance, they did not still, but they slowed, reassured by what remained and what it held. I caught his clasp when the panic had subsided and only he and I twisted down the pavement, skipping two, then dodging in and out of the oncoming broken white lines that tried to divide the singular path before us.
As the ruins of the convention became clearer, I heard the low frightened moan of a train lost somewhere within the small expanse of its rails.
END - 1981