The Strongest Thing There Is 66

He wasn’t dead.

But he certainly looked dead; except that now and then, in the midst of all that seeming death, he would give a shivering twitch.

Frank protested loudly that “Papa” wasn’t dead, that he couldn’t be dead. He was frantic. “ ‘Papa’! You can’t die! You can’t!”

Frank loosened “Papa’s” collar and blouse, rubbed his wrists. “Give him air! Give ‘Papa’ air!”

The fighter-plane pilots came running over to help us. One had sense enough to go for the airport ambulance.

The band and the color guard, which had received no orders, remained at quivering attention.

I looked for Mona, found that she was still serene and had withdrawn to the rail of the reviewing stand. Death, if there was going to be death, did not alarm her.

Standing next to her was a pilot. He was not looking at her, but he had a perspiring radiance that I attributed to his being so near to her.

“Papa” now regained something like consciousness. With a hand that flapped like a captured bird, he pointed at Frank. “You…” he said.

We all fell silent, in order to hear his words.

His lips moved, but we could hear nothing but bubbling sounds.

Somebody had what looked like a wonderful idea then — what looks like a hideous idea in retrospect. Someone — a pilot, I think — took the microphone from its mount and held it by “Papa’s” bubbling lips in order to amplify his words.

So death rattles and all sorts of spastic yodels bounced off the new buildings.

And then came words.

“You,” he said to Frank hoarsely, “you — Franklin Hoenikker — you will be the next President of San Lorenzo. Science — you have science. Science is the strongest thing there is.

“Science,” said “Papa.” “Ice.” He rolled his yellow eyes, and he passed out again.

I looked at Mona.

Her expression was unchanged.

The pilot next to her, however, had his features composed in the catatonic, orgiastic rigidity of one receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor.

I looked down and I saw what I was not meant to see.

Mona had slipped off her sandal. Her small brown foot was bare.

And with that foot, she was kneading and kneading and kneading — obscenely kneading — the instep of the flyer’s boot.

Hy-u-o-ook-kuh! 67

“Papa” didn’t die — not then.

He was rolled away in the airport’s big red meat wagon. The Mintons were taken to their embassy by an American limousine.

Newt and Angela were taken to Frank’s house in a San Lorenzan limousine.

The Crosbys and I were taken to the Casa Mona hotel in San Lorenzo’s one taxi, a hearselike 1939 Chrysler limousine with jump seats. The name on the side of the cab was Castle Transportation Inc. The cab was owned by Philip Castle, the owner of the Casa Mona, the son of the completely unselfish man I had come to interview.

The Crosbys and I were both upset. Our consternation was expressed in questions we had to have answered at once. The Crosbys wanted to know who Bokonon was. They were scandalized by the idea that anyone should be opposed to “Papa” Monzano.

Irrelevantly, I found that I had to know at once who the Hundred Martyrs to Democracy had been.

The Crosbys got their answer first. They could not understand the San Lorenzan dialect, so I had to translate for them. Crosby’s basic question to our driver was: “Who the hell is this pissant Bokonon, anyway?”

“Very bad man,” said the driver. What he actually said was, “Vorry ball moan .”

“A Communist?” asked Crosby, when he heard my translation.

“Oh, sure.”

“Has he got any following?”

“Sir?”

“Does anybody think he’s any good?”

“Oh, no, sir,” said the driver piously. “Nobody that crazy.”

“Why hasn’t he been caught?” demanded Crosby.

“Hard man to find,” said the driver. “Very smart.”

“Well, people must be hiding him and giving him food or he’d be caught by now.”

“Nobody hide him; nobody feed him. Everybody too smart to do that.”

“You sure?”

“Oh, sure,” said the driver. “Anybody feed that crazy old man, anybody give him place to sleep, they get the hook. Nobody want the hook.”

He pronounced that last word: “hy-u-o- ook-kuh .”

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 440