Get your own Free Homepage
Dr Bruhn cradled the phone, and smiled at Lysle. "I only told him what he needs to know."
"Will you really do it, Doc? You sure it'll work?"
Dr Bruhn had promised Lysle to extend his life far beyond the housefly norm of one-score and eighteen days.
"No. But the procedure is promising. It's based on the premise that flies, like people and all the other forms assumed by life, are not solid substance, but energy organized around a complex attractant."
"And you trust me not to tell the rest of the flies?"
"It doesn't worry me."
"Why not?" buzzed Lysle.
"You're a misfit among diptera just as I am among homosapiens." Lysle lit on his hand. "What does worry me, little fella, is they'll torture you to make you tell them everything you know about Mosca. They feel no restraint. In MKULTRA, while seeking the secrets of mind control, they tortured war prisoners, experimented on them, then shot them." Far off in Frisco, Thomas drank his water, his mind a circus of thought, its ringmaster, his resolution to capture Pedro and the mystery woman. A sudden tumult at a lower level drew the spotlight. He waddled to the toilet just in time to squat and blast. What a pleasant surprise! A real joy! The first shit in three days! If middle age draws attention increasingly to the digestive system and its product, old age must be Hindu-like in its obsession with bowels. Every senior ticket to this circus confers the right to a free enema. The fan rattled and a faucet dripped. He called NAO and told them to dispatch a pager tuned to Pedro surveillance and report Pedro's location. They quickly called back to say Pedro and his woman were sitting on a bench in Washington Square near a bronze statue. They'd left the wooden sculpture in an art store. What an extraordinary couple! A grimy Christian fanatic and a sophisticated sex queen. The technicians brought his clothes, and, as he was dressing, the pager arrived in a cab. "I'm on my way over," he said to his stakeout man. "I'm dressed like a Hell's Angel." Soon he was being taxied along Broadway through the tunnel to Columbus where he alighted and walked a few blocks to Washington Square. A gaunt Latino and a radiant woman sat together on a bench near the statue of Benjamin Franklin; the stakeout stood across the street before the Italianesque facade of a Catholic church. Thomas stretched out on the lawn and watched his prey. Part of it. Where the hell have they hidden Mosca? A Roman soldier in full armor, the sky-blue plume of the first cohort bristling his helmet, the arms of legio dix fretensis adorning his shield, ambled across the square. Everybody's in disguise today. Every day! Especially in this goofy city that knows how. But unlike most, especially CIA, people here admit it. SKINHEAD BIKER CONFRONTS ROMAN SOLDIER. What news does that present? Biker-mio. Me-O. See-Aye-A-Oh. CIA. A secret society like the Masons, like the Knights of Malta, one partially privatised by Casey. We're superannuated pranksters, consecrated to keeping the world's oligarchy in power, and, as the years pass, becoming more and
more preoccupied with our bowels. The Merry Bowelsters. That's us. Hardly an exclusive society, not at all like Skull & Bones or the Lower Garrison Seamen's, Fishermen's, Boozehounds', and Scatologists' Association. Pedro rises and begins to pace. In winter, at the old ferry house, during a plus tide impeded by floes, ice would on occasion form on the floor. The mind is a prism borne by emotion, breaking truth into thoughts and facts. Pedro is a polliwog among frogs. No. A weasel cast to snapping turtles. Turtles snap flies. Flies are hard to catch. Of all airborne insects, they're built on the most advanced design, one MKMOSCA now controls and has almost perfected. Where the hell is Mosca? Can I detect his presence from here? Each of the forty thousand varieties of fly has but one pair of wings, with vibrating stalks---- stabilizers---- behind, where other bugs have a second set of wings. A crow lands on a pine branch and Pedro watches it inching toward the end, trying to see how far it can go. Crow sport. Good clean crow fun. And me? CIA's not as much fun as of old. I have license to do anything with scant regard to cost, or consequence, anything I can keep hidden and justify by the requirements of National Security. As we define it. These days, instead of sitting on the back porch of the ferry house drinking wine with the railroad worker and the ancient truant officer while shooting Civil War muskets at West Point, I could shoot a cannon. The crow drops off and glides to the turf and struts. It halts before Pedro. What's it telling him? "The slowly changing order of the stars is the utmost poetic pattern . . . ."
How about political pattern?
There they go!
Pedro and the woman make a sudden dash into Vallejo Street, and run toward Grant.
Where the hell is Mosca?
At this point we can think of Mosca as an animated, truncated, intelligent isosceles triangle, an ur-ultimate surveillance-and-germ-transfer system, moist for the moment, no---- wet---- embodied in quintessential darkness at the nerve nexus of a truly penitential sheep-fucking Christian devotee bent on sin, seeking the Gate of Horn and passage through to and into the reptilian muck of utter depravity to thrash and wallow until sated. But not for sensual pleasure, mind you. No. Not for the fun of it, but so that upon emerging his vile Stains of Sin may be scourged away in a shower of blood as he ascends the Mount of Grace from whose blessed summit peaceful fields of billowing grain, trim courses of golf, verdant pastures close-cropped by golden sheep, and the alabaster mass of the City of Raptured Saints may be seen, or, glory of glories, this year or next, should he be lucky enough, pure enough, absolutely without sin, enjoyed. And Thomas Cortlandt Spofford? Professional. An embodiment of sophisticated training. Of loyalty. Of devotion to National Security. Tom. Our Tom. For the moment a creature of momentum, an impetus free of thought, guided by the sense of Duty, urged onward by the force of Mission and its injunction: Terminate with extreme prejudice the career of this presumptuous fly. But does that noun fit? Where, I ask, is Mosca to be placed within even the most recent and refined of Biology's taxonomical systems? Within its patterns of morphology?
Indeed, in all truth, we must ask: Does the mission and its momentum find direction in psychosoma Tom? Or in our Santa Sebastiana-favored pseudo fly? No! The impulse emanates from Pedro, a sinbound body rushing through clouds of golden fleece toward beautiful girls and pretty boys who manifest in the streets and on the sidewalks of North Beach, San Francisco, and scatter in dismay before his malodorous onslaught. And Mosca? Mosca struggles to control a rogue biovehicle, now affecting its course somewhat, now helplessly captive and profoundly immersed in the reptilian chaos of an ongoing sin-led Saint Vitus' Dance shuddering downward toward the sordid privities of the unknown as colors flare across a spectrum swiftly ranging back and forth from infantile red to urgent violet.
Shall that eternal blazon be for folk of flesh and blood?
Yes, let us think of him that way as we watch Thomas track his quarry on its erratic course through the throngs of North Beach, San Francisco, and, eventually, into one of its oldest and funkiest bars, The Saloon, founded in October of 1861 by Ferdinand Wagner (1814-1882), quondam resident of New Orleans and native of Studweiller, Bas Rhin, France.
The bar came around the Horn in a Boston sailing ship and has been in place since 1861.
"We're being followed," said Sebastiana, as she stepped up to it.
She slid onto a stool.
She ordered red wine for them both.
She drew some Morada money from her purse and placed it on the bar.
"Behold the sacred blood of Christ," said the Pedro voice.
"That biker, Mosca, by the entrance."
"What about him?"
"That's our cross-dressed mannequin from room 102."
"We better run for it."
"I don't see a back door."
Pedro slid a hand up her thigh and pressed a braid of fingers into her.
She whacked him away.
"Sorry, pal. Pedro got away from me."
"Penance, sinner, penance. Hark my words, O! shameless devotee of evil. Mend thy ways, or the Lord's wrath will smite thee, cunt and tit."
"That biker's watching us, and I'll bet he's got friends outside."
"Sister! Hark the trump! Judgment Day is nigh!"
"He's using my English to torment you."
"Will power, Mosca. Control!"
The skinhead biker was smiling at himself in the mirror.
Pedro laid a hand on her thigh.
"Get Pedro's hand off of me."
Instead of resisting Pedro, Mosca lets the hand slide crotchward again and bury fingers in her.
She smites him away.
The jukebox blares Blues over Bodega.
Mosca warms.
Likes it.
The worm rises.
Pedro Erectus!
"You're being corrupted by that holy sheep fucker."
Mosca likes the wine too.
"You're being possessed by lizard mind."
"He wants to fuck you, ewe."
She scowls, showing teeth.
"So let's fuck."
"Let's go..
For the harp he has no heart,
Nor for the having of the ring,
Nor in woman is his weal,
Nor in any thing so'ever
Save tossing o'er the wave."
Why did that come to mind?
"Out!"
She stood and strode toward the door, Pedrosca/Moscedro following. Thomas, fully immersed in his biker role, a romantic cover, one much to be preferred to office worker or even military officer, blocked the way. Tough Tom braced and confronted. Yes, oh yes, he did. Suddenly he blanched, and ran to the toilet, and they walked fast out of there into open spaces where stakeout people became their shadow.
"Repent!" cried Pedro.
"Shut up!" snarled Sebastiana.
Now what? thought Thomas.
Seated on his throne, growing impatient with this sudden bondage to bursts of liquid defecation, Thomas paged his stakeout, told him to keep following, then, convinced at last that even though Mosca was near and flying, he was quite undetectable, it became obvious interrogation time had come. He called the police, and the FBI. Arrest them. Both of them. Hold them incommunicado until I arrive.
Riding along in this loathsome Christian sheep-fucker, letting Sebastiana pull the l.C.s-f. ahead by the hand, Mosca, resolve thinning, struggling for control, said, "Get me out in the sun!"
"Be patient. In good time."
"But I'll lose my energy"
"While in there, unknown to you, you're metabolizing Pedro's energy, which comes from the sun through food and blood. Moshka mio, you're learning a bit more about what it's like to be human."
And that will make it easier to kill them all, life's enemies, homosaps, all six billion.
"I'm going to leave you in there until you become human. I mean become Pedro, who on second thought may not be altogether human." She was tugging him along by the hand, and he moved docily, will-less, all resolve having fled into that erect and trembling worm. "Maybe you can civilize Pedro. Find a psychiatrist to help, help harmonize your two schizoid parts, make them into, well . . . one." Spying a neon dog neon-leashed to neon letters, the sign for a pet store, Pedro reared and pulled them along to Grant Avenue and ran over car hoods to the other side and loped uphill and went in. Joyfully, Pedro stopped at a display rack, and picked off a chromed steel chain, and wrapped it around his waist. He selected a thick steel-studded black collar off the rack and buckled it around his neck, and secured it with a padlock. Sebastiana whooped with mirth when he swallowed the keys and the fleshface owner chomped his cigar, lips revolving it, and without words Mosca pled for release.
"O! ye foul and accursed spawn of devils from Hell, renounce thy sins and prepare for the Last Judgment."
"Mister, the present judgment, including tax, is sixty-eight dollars and twelve cents."
Pedro selected a snakeskin leash. He clipped it to his collar and passed the lead end to Sebastiana. "I am thine." He cringed. "Thine. Thy slave. Punish me!"
"Hey, babe, let me do it." Yes! I'll make him kill himself. My first hit! She won't let me rot inside the corpse. Six billion. Minus one. One pungent stinker, gone. And me, set free.
Without replying to this murderous request Sebastiana paid, and drew her slave out onto the sidewalk. "Dear little Moshka, I hope you're enjoying your new home." She led him to Columbus Avenue, then, sensing the hunters closing in, crossed over at the light, hoping for a taxi. By Jack London Alley at the bus stop in front of Vesuvio she paused to look around.
Pedro, never!
Mosca forever!
Destabilize, which is happening to all life, means let the horses out, free the animals in the zoo.
Expansion, which is happening to all, means at its center the universe is creating something from nothing.
I sing of drifting G's,
And killer bees,
Allies from Africa.
Henceforth, my motto is conformity, discipline, and unity against the enemy.
Engage and destroy!
And now these repugnant homosap flesh/bone blobs press onto the 15 Kearney bus and squeeze in among other ambulatory pusbags. Whilst in memory Oscar the castrati-cat looks down.
"It would seem our laxative is active, Moshka mio. But not active enough."
Thomas had appeared on the other bank of the Columbus Avenue river-rush of traffic.
Standing room only.
Aboard the bus.
Sebastiana cascaded Morada coins into the farebox.
Pedro reached for the crotch of a Chinese school girl.
A shriek, and a general shove, and Pedro was out the door, back at the stop, Sebastiana beside him.
Thomas approached on the crosswalk.
Sebastiana pulled Pedro across the alley and into City Lights Bookstore.
Pedro collided with Lawrence Ferlinghetti who was getting his mail from the clerk, and, pursued by scornful contempt, they ran downstairs into the basement store to the far end and hid behind a bookshelf.
No one else moved among the shelves and tables, which was just as well, for, abruptly, Pedro steeped his surroundings in one of his horrible, wet, cloying, misting farts, clinging to everything.
"I promised to set you free, little Moshka. Are you ready?"
Mosca buzzed yes.
"But before I do it---- and I'm doing it only because I promised I would if you'd set me free---- you will swear to carry out your commitment to utterly destroy humanity s0 the rest of life can live."
Despite the gross experience of riding about in his primitive Pedromobile, and its meaning, both metabolistic and metaphorical, Mosca had for some time been aware of weakening in his will to destroy manwomankind. Thrust onward by a sudden surge of resolve, he made Sebastiana an absolute eternal pledge to bring homosap's career to a screaming halt. Alerted by the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs and into the basement, they pressed up against the case and its books. Sebastiana ran her fingers across the backs of novels named Snail, and Sowboy and Squed, Canam, Coyote, and Romance Run, all by the same author, a man Mosca was predestined to meet somewhat later in the course of hir adventures. "Read those books, Moshka. Make a cerebellum note of it. They're among my favorites."
"Just because you tell me to?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"You'll get some laughs."
"Flies don't laugh,"
"People do."
"So what?"
"Maybe you'll learn something."
"I hate learning."
"Do it."
Pedro plunged a rough sheep-herding hand into her decolletage and bruised her tit. She snatched the pastoral hand away. Purposeful footsteps sounding in the room seemed to be coming closer and closer. Pedro pawed her butt. She twisted his arm away, and decided curbing his lust in the interests of civil society would be about as easy as keeping streets free of feculence by diapering dogs and horses or as purifying the cultural stream by filtering out revealed religion and emotional advertising. She ran her hands over Pedro's scalp and suddenly Mosca felt hirself being drawn forth along damp passages and then, abruptly, she found hirself standing perched on Pedro's outer ear, dazzled by light, buoyed by swelling energy. Thomas paused on the other side of their bookcase. Why did they cross-dress me? "Come out!" he said. "I know you're there!" No response. How to force them out? He wrapped his belt around his fist, the heavy brass buckle on top. That would handle the Latino. "He's CIA," said Mosca. "He can't arrest us." She shared with Sebastiana what Dr Bruhn had once explained. Talking to Thomas over Sowboy and Squed and through the
back of the case across some philos0phy books on the other side, she announced: "In establishing CIA the National Security Act of 1947 specified that the Agency---- now I quote, 'shall have no police, subpoena, law enforcement powers, or internal-security functions.' Meaning you have no authority to arrest us."
"But, lady, I have the power." He paged for backup. "Come out quietly."
"Now," she whispered to Mosca, "I'll play our best card. I'll turn Pedro loose, and let him rampage, and maybe he'll start World War III, and we won't have to."
She shoved Pedro out into the room.
Police came down the stairs.
Pedro ran at them.
Mosca leapt off hir ear-balcony to buzz, and flit.
Lysle had shown hir how.
Airborne at last!
"Not s0 fast," said Thomas.
Our Thomas.
He trapped Mosca in cupped hands.
"You just won the free trip to Maryland."
Get your own Free Homepage