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On the way back to Fort Meade, our favorite borl considered the awesome difficulties presented by the accomplishment of hir sworn mission: Liquidate mankind so life can live. How can one little pseudo fly achieve such vast results? Despite his parking tickets, Thomas is waxing downright exuberant. I can't possibly kill them all without help. Control the mind of CIA. Why not? Master the master. The Flymaster. Work through Bruhn. Santa Sebastiana? Find her. Could be help there. Use the Christians? Let Mankind give his life s0 life may live. A noble Christlike sacrifice. As penance to absolve its sins, the human species could . . . bloody well should---- suicide. The rest of life. Help from there? The flies, the insects, it's their turn to rule. Go to the aristocrats. The crows, the best of the birds. Find Crow. And rodents? Aristo-rats. They're the lords. And let the reptiles help us kill the king. In Newt Wars, a fiction alas, the newts really did it. Rats. Tried and true. They have experience, and motive. Look at their success with the bubonic plague! Rats, bats, crows, newts, mosquitoes, and of course flies, all working together, spreading the
government's poisons and pandemics. Why not? And fish? Which kind is most advanced? Of the best design? Insects, all of them, buzzing in unison. We'll modulate our wing-beat rate until it pulses at Tesla's earth-smashing resonance. Yes! With an alarm-clock sized oscillator he once started an earthquake in New York City. Earth resonates at eight, fourteen, and twenty Hertz; earth's vibrational periodicy is one hour and forty-nine minutes. Get that throbbing. That should do the job! But, no. It would produce overkill. And there sits Tom, quite oblivious of his future, rejoicing in Edwin dead, Thomas DDS&T, exhilarated, happily babbling, gushing twaddle. "Yes, Mosca, I've wondered about that, my name, I mean. I'll find out and tell the twins. In the Middle Ages, Oxford was Oxen Ford. So Spofford must be Spoff Ford, as in where you can cross the Spoff, or where spoffs-whatever they might be---- crossed something else. But is spoff pure or corrupt? I'll have to put our computers to work on it. There's a town called Spofford on Elm Creek in south Texas, but none, insofar as I know, in the UK." And now it's blather about the Hudson River Dutchmen, and Courtlandt, probably a place lorded over by patroons. And that leads to chatter about his twins, how he named William for Donovan and Clinton, and Clint for Clinton, and Clint Eastwood. "Well, actually, my wife did it. Took the names off a list I made for her. I gave them one eagle feather each, and . . . ."
When once again Mosca became aware of Thomas' rambling voice he was saying ". . . yes, it's true, I often daydream about the perfect crime. It has to be a felony, one which doesn't hurt anybody, or from which anyone profits, or benefits. It has to be outrageous, but cannot destroy property, and, yes, the authorites have to be notified in advance. Within those parameters, I try to design an unsolvable crime. That's one hell of a challenge, one I have yet to meet, but for sure, believe it, I will invent it and do it some fine day . . . " He interrupted himself. "Yale. I guess I can tell you. Yale is number two. Serious people go to Harvard. Much like they go to Cam-bridge, not Oxford."
Thomas began to sing Ivan Skivinsky Skivar, verse after verse, until arriving at the turnoff to Fort Meade, crooning "Take your last look, at sunshine and brook," he slowed, hushed, and told Mosca to fly home. Bruhn had made hir a door, a small pipe traversing the frame of a lab window. She flew directly home and buzzed around inside, but no Bruhn. The dipterary stood open and Mosca flew to a sunny area, alit and fell asleep---- no, it was more like she fell into a trance, or even a coma, and she lay there still, absorbing nourishment.
All day she steeped in sunlight.
At dusk she stirred, and tuned her mind to the National Public Radio network to be soothed by classical music.
When the next day dawned, she basked in sunshine, and after the meridian had passed, rose into the air, recharged, rejuvenated---- re-younged, that is, precisely what Lysle had craved when he'd complained his Mapighian tubules were shot, his eyes dimming, his spiracles clogging, and his exoskeleton developing fissures. And he'd begged Dr Bruhn to do something, but no. Bruhn could have given him a shot of insect juvenile hormone----ecdysin, but did he? No. What had he done instead? The good doctor had crushed dear old Lysle to death.
CIA had used Lysle up, then, when worn out and useless, CIA had killed him.
As Bruhn had put it: "When elephants fight, it's the grass that gets trampled."
He'd said the same about testing diseases on Africans, thus sounding a familiar chord composed of higher purpose, public service, progressive science, and the wisdom of his mentor, Dr Harkinson.
And Mosca swoops around vainly searching for Dr Bruhn and feeling terribly depressed. There's so much to talk with him about! Tears abruptly well into all hir eyes as with sudden shock revelation comes: I was and am in love with Lysle and I'll ache for him forever.
And throughout hir whole body grief throbbed and pulsed.
She writhed in the penultimate of sadness.
And that even though Sebastiana assured me, I, Mosca, more than a hermaphrodite with tits and jock, I, with neither, am a flawless androgyne. I embody the perfect marriage of male and female and, consequently, I'm self-contained and free of need for mate or comrade.
Mosca darts about, infuriated.
They killed Lysle.
Lysle must be avenged.
Where is Lysle's spirit?
He was so kind, s0 masculine, so gifted!
Utter dissolution's unthinkable.
Lysle's in Heaven.
He can't be.
He was never baptized.
Nor has he a soul.
So what.
He's in Heaven anyhow!
Fly Heaven?
Heaven.
Lysle, there.
Revenge, here.
As Dr Bruhn so often says: "Of all life, Virus is King."
I'll use you, Dr Donovan Tesla Bruhn, and when I no longer need you, King Virus will strike you dead.
Quing Virus!
And, Bruhn, you'll help me kill all the other humans s0 you can replace them with a superior model.
Oh, yes, built around its mission, survival, it swims and fucks and excretes and eats, and as its embryos grow within mother they devour each other leaving only the fittest to be born, and it's s0 well designed it lives in all waters and although a very early model, it has no need to evolve because it's already perfect.
And it never thinks. Why bother? Truly, a no-brainer.
Of fish, shark is best.
But me, like most life, I'm just a prototype.
To compensate for defects in design we develop intelligence. Only sharks and roaches embody the ideal.
As Bruhn puts it: Homosap's defective and ugly body design issues from fortuitous misfortune, from flawless bad luck, perfect and pure, as in being killed by mines left over from some forgotten war.
In an emotional frenzy, Mosca flew until exhausted, and then opened hir conscience to radio.
"This is CRN---- Christian Radio Network---- morning news. The intelligence community was stunned today by the sudden deaths of the Director of Central Intelligence and two of his senior aides. The three men had lunched together yesterday in Langley, Virginia. No more information has been released. Stay tuned for updates."
CIA! Your King is dead!
Long live Quing Virus!
Revenge! O! sweet revenge!
Dead Dead Dead, all three!
My first kills!
They are now what undertakers call their clients: Flybait.
Next comes mass production of flybait.
Dead dead dead.
In twelve hours, not ten days.
Too . . . fast . . . !
What's my next move?
Consult Bruhn.
Impatiently she darted around the laboratory, transmitting signals on changing frequencies, hoping to find Bruhn's wavelength.
Abruptly, at a nearby window, a frantic clicking sound.
Outside fiercely pecking, a crow.
Crow.
Crow!
What would bird-loving Bruhn think of this fowl?
And on Christian radio, Gospel Pam was warning of the opening of man's last epoch, the age of Six-Six-Six, already begun in 1981 with the inauguration of Ronald (six letters) Wilson (six letters) Reagan (six letters), our first and only six-six-six president. "And, so, now, dear brothers and sisters, as in eating an artichoke, we'll peel off the few years left to us one by one, and relish the meat of each, then devour the heart and rapture up to Judgment by Lord God Almighty."
The plastic window shook and rattled under Crow's assault. Mosca slipped outside.
"Crow!"
"You've been summoned."
"Where to?"
"To Dr Bruhn's. Crawl inside me and I'll take you there."
Mosca flew to Crow's tongue, slid down a slippery slope, and then muscled along through the familiar slimy blackness to the meat-walled passenger chamber.
"Once again," came Crow's voice, "it is my honor and privilege to associate with a fellow homo-hater."
"What's new at the Morada?"
"They're still awed by Mary Magdalene's visitation and Pedro Gonzales' resurrection and await their return."
"That'll be the day!"
"And, because someone stole most of their money, the Brothers of Light are calling each other thieves, and gathering supporters to the end of punishing all rivals. O! what a lovely divisive and destructive mess!"
Exalted and anxious, our favorite borl told his corvine pal about the lunch at Langley, and the too-too-sudden deaths, and, after s0 much dawdling and so many postponements, the joy of having embarked at last on hir fateful mission. Crow enthused at this welcome news and they talked over various ways to achieve the total and utter extirpation of Homosaps and all his works.
With a great flapping of wings, Crow declared: "In the name of the Cosmic Egg, I say that without further delay we must confront the dragon, terminate the monster."
"The Cosmic Egg---- let me guess---- is bluish green with irregular brown markings."
"I praise your perspicacity."
"It's cosmic, it's corvine, it replenishes the rookery."
"Oh, indeed it does, and we must release our full puissance against the most savage of the beasts. And, caught as we are in a moment of supreme crisis, do so with the utmost dispatch. For example, as a spur to our sense of urgency it is interesting to note that pesticides have killed all the birds in the Sacramento Valley." As Crow flapped and glided along, Mosca urged the necessity of combining the birds and animals and fish and insects into a joint effort to destroy mankind. "Solidarity will do it!" Crow swore to help, then said symbolic of it all to him is that once near Rockford, Illinois, farmers, by exploding a huge pile of dynamite beneath the trees of a roost, killed 328,731 crows. In the spirit of true show-biz sport, done not for fun but for score, they counted them all. "It is my considered opinion in the final analysis the general synthesis will prove to demonstrate we must all rally to the war against humanity under no lesser banner than that of animal rights."
"To do so, we'll have to declare a moratorium on eating, decree a universal fast."
"Why, may I ask. Why?"
"Why, you prolix old toad-eater. Why? Life begins with the molecule. Right?"
"True enough."
"So how far down the food chain do animal rights go?" Whilst they wrestled with that question and Mosca's proposed solution of using only the aristocrats of the several genres of life---- save for fish where reliance would have to stand on the brainless shark,
Crow swooped and soared due north to avoid the airports then winged eastward above US 40 into central Baltimore where he flew over the Mencken House and downward across more row houses and settled on the marble step of one built in the 1820's.
He preened and pecked at Dr Bruhn's door until someone opened it and he flew in. "It's a Pheromone Party," said Crow, as pulsing with loud music he oozed Mosca out into the light. "Doesn't that just turn your stomach?"
Mosca buzzed up and eyed an extraordinary scene.
Swirling among free-flying freshly cloned passenger pigeons, buoyed by the loud music, Santa Sebastiana, in a loose dark yellow dress, quivering a Japanese fan, was dancing the Moska with a man clad à la J. Edgar Hoover in lace stockings, panties, and stuffed brassiere---- Dr Bruhn!
"Disgusting," cawed Crow.
Seated at a small bar, tended by that holy, scarfaced sheepfucker, Pedro Felice Gonzales, were old Richard in a dandruff-flaked navy shirt and white cap, and ancient one-armed Blaise Cendrars, a dead Gauloise drooping from his lips. With a loud rasping sound, one of those odious, cloying, misting, wet whale farts issued from Pedro and clung to everything. Cendrars tugged at his beret as he listened to the band and watched the dance. "She'll surely make that pharaoh moan," he said to no one in particular. Leaning against the wall, looking on, squirting retzina from a wineskin into each other's mouths, were two people Mosca remembered from Big Sur: the Cum Vampire---- the Cumpire, and Billy Burke, the young poet. George, clad in the exoskeletal battle dress of Legio Dix Fretensis, danced clanking with a woman wearing traditional black mourning for her hated husband, and the nine-year-old boy, whom Mosca remembered shooting birds in New Mexico, was now wandering around the room begging guests to shit in his face. And there were others Mosca had yet to meet, mainly ladies ranging from elegant to elephant.
As Mosca hovered over this bacchanal, the music intensified into a flitting pattern and she soon found hirself air dancing with all the other insects in the room.
Santa Sebastiana led Dr Bruhn out and away to his bedroom there to engage in lewd and lascivious acts.
"Dada ist für Ruhe und Orden;
"Die Frau in Gelb ist Gegangen!"
said Blaise to the air. "Dada is for tranquillity and medals; the woman in yellow is gone." He turned to Richard. "Die Frau in Gelb ist gegangen, and truth no longer adjoins reality."
Abruptly, as if to confirm this, George, the Roman soldier, began doing a sl0w strip tease, shedding a bit or armor here, a helmet there, a sandal somewhere else, until, naked, he stood undulating, rosy and hairy, sucking from a bottle of gin. He began reciting: "A bunch of the flies/ Was whooping it up/ In one of them Yu-kon halls/ And the muscid mooning the crows in the skies/ Was slowly . . . ." Sebastiana came back, leading Bruhn by the hand, and, on seeing George, whooped with mirthful joy. George fell to the floor and lay there inert in a slowly spreading puddle of piss. The music transformed to a flowing mode and Sebastiana abandoned Bruhn and seized Billy as her partner in the AC/DC dance, which she called the Tesla/Edison. And then the music stopped, and she motioned Mosca down to visit with her. "Welcome to my pheromone party, my daymare."
"That yellow dress! If only they could see you back home at the Morada, riding your cart in their Easter Parade!"
"If only they could have seen me and Dr Bruhn at a staff meeting at Fort Meade! I pumped him and that Roman soldier and that little kid, Adolf, so full of pheromones they'll . . . . And, don't I love it!---- it's a new aphrodisiac Dr Bruhn developed himself! He thinks if distributed in water supplies millions would fuck themselves to death. Dionysus will rule, and women will become Maenads all, and kill off the men, and mankind will blow out not in a big atomic flash,
but in one grand glorious blast of smut." She let hir perch on the back of her hand. "My dear little Moshka, I've been keeping my eye on you. I decided it's time to assemble all your friends and have a party."
"Here in your dada Morada."
"Yes. And in your honor we dance the Moska, a legacy of Aubrey Beardsley. Why not the Mosca? Because Mosca is a billion-starred galaxy. For that dance the band would have to play the music of the spheres, or at the very least, something based on the Lost Chord, and that might prove to be Tesla's earth smasher."
"Snow falls in my room,
"Constellations intrude."
"Aren't you the sweet little poet, Moska mia." She tapped her fan against her wrist. "I think I'll challenge Cupid to an archery duel." She shook the fan open. "Killing that fat little dogfucker will show who's boss."
"You sure you'd win?"
"I always win. The penitentes understand that, which is more than I can say for these guests, mortal or immortal as the case may be. The Brothers of Light and of Darkness both see me as Death's deputy, and in me they sense His majesty." Her eyes were in rapid motion as she watched hir dart and flit. "They all believe each prayer to me prolongs their lives." The music became pounding rock, and everyone danced, except for Dr Bruhn, who sprawled asleep in a chair, and Dr Bruhn's pigeons who were flapping around and gorging on party food. "I know you wonder why I arranged all this for you, my dear baby bug."
"It had crossed my mind."
"You're a fuck-up. You need practice. You've only killed three, and you have more than five billion to go."
That fresh young homosap, Billy, represents hope. I'll have to kill him next.
"Well, how you going to do it?"
"Do what?" asked Blaise in his slightly Germanic accent.
She'd not noticed the two old men approaching.
She extended her fan toward the dancers.
"Explain to me why the human race is and always has been yearning for salvation from outer space?"
Blaise spat on the floor.
"Look at it this way," quoth he.
"Bla bla bla,
Ne mange pas,
Regarde ça!
Sur ton plat!
Le violà!
Des morceaux
Des animaux!
Non non non!
Ne mange pas,
On y va,
Bla bla bla.
"A man without a faith is like a fish without a saddle."
.
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