Stranger Than You Think Page 9

  ‘The young man deserves his commission,” I said.

  “And a lifetime indulgence,” my mad friend added.

  We were served, one recalcitrant wife with cahuama, the rest of us with beef just emerging from its banana leaf shroud after forty-eight hours underground.

  “Real barbacoa,” my friend exulted.

  I wrapped beef in a hot tortilla, pausing only to slosh it with red-green sauce made of tiny magma-flavored chiles serranos macerated with onion, jitomate, oregano, and fresh coriander leaves.

  “True barbacoa,” I agreed, “Not that fraudulent pap from the backyard brazier which ulcerates our vincible homeland.”

  The bulletheads performed heroic sleight of mouth. The ubiquitous small boys trotted beer and iced glasses of instant insanity from across the street. “After the Great Ones pull the astronaut through the hole,” the Byzantine continued, “They indoctrinate him into the nature of the universe.”

  A wife stared morosely at turtle stew. “This tastes like fish,” she complained. While my mad friend and I laughed a boy removed her plate and brought barbacoa.

  “You will like this story,” the Byzantine told us.

  “Like a strawberry pizza,” I said, but he was continuing.

  “In this story we prove that space travel is impossible. After all, space is solid!”

  My mad friend grinned. “Now I know why the Index bans Galileo.”

  “But what, then, is Earth?”

  “A bubble in the gently flowing solid of space.”

  “And the Great Ones?” I asked, “Where do they live?”

  “On other spheres.”

  “Don’t you mean in?”

  “On,” he insisted, “Earth is a sphere inside a sphere. We live on outer surface of inner sphere. How else could we see stars?”

  “How indeed?” my mad friend wondered.

  The mortal gorge was ending. The old woman brought a fleeting memory of Act I, Scene 1, MacBeth as she ladled up coffee and the inevitable final course of beans from her cauldrons.

  The palomino rummaged in her purse and discovered the green wrapped package. Que sera? she wondered.

  It looked like sheets of unseparated banknotes. Then I realized they were lottery tickets, perforated to tear each into its hundred separately saleable cachos.

  “What date?” I asked. She handed me a sheet. “Last week. Winners ought to be posted by now.”

  The progenitor was recalling stories of 8 million peso winners. “How do you cash them?” he sputtered. “Help me and you’ll get a split. Everybody gets a split!” Across the patio the ancient man and woman regarded us.

  The palomino progenitor made a magnificent gesture and said “This is on me.” He handed the old woman a note whose denomination precluded any hope of change and grandiloquently told her to keep it. I wondered how much would revert to the turtle butcher.

  That young man reappeared with more calandrias. It was ten PM. Offices and stores had just closed and the local people were hurrying home to supper. I wondered how much of a dent we had made in what the inhabitants of this pension were going to get.

  Momma sat beside the palomino. Her husband shouted back to us regarding the division of spoils. “Why not wait and see if the tickets won?” my mad friend shouted back.

  “If space is solid why don’t we fall up?” I asked.

  The Byzantine leaned forward with sudden intensity and I saw he was not as drunk as I’d thought. “A planet is a one way screen. Gravity is the relentless seep of space pushing in.”

  The calandria lurched over a missing cobble. My friend cast a jaundiced eye at the moon’s direction and said, “We progress from Penn Station to the Battery via Brooklyn.”

  “Oh, give the poor boy a chance,” a wife said.

  In the lead carriage the turtle butcher s dyspeptic grimaces were soulful.

  “If gravity seeps in,” I said, “The bubble will get full.”

  “It’s been happening since the Ur-bubble burst to create an expanding universe. Have you noted the circular bubble sign in primitive religions, erroneously called the sun disc?”

  “A yam like that would sure as Kennedy put me on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. What times your boat leaving?” my friend asked with his usual mercurial change of subject.

  “8 AM.”

  He glanced at his watch. “How much farther to that miserable hotel?”

  The turtle butchers soulful looks made me wonder if he was passing a stone. “We expect to hit the Discontinuity any minute,” I said. “Maybe I can get away from this Turkish bath soon.” I slashed at the gnats which descended each time we passed a street light.

  “Mira alli!” a wife exclaimed. Walls were draped with numbers printed on muslin. “Alto!” I yelled. We scrambled into the lottery office. The Byzantine made explosive noises and his bulletheads stood quiet. “How long are you stuck with them?” I asked.

  “Thirteen more days but our plans may change. Would you care to join the tour?”

  “Afraid not. I’ve got work to do.”

  “Where’re you going?” my friend asked.

  The Byzantine got that glassy look again and I suddenly noticed a hearing aid. He had once told me he expected to die at 40. He must be around 42 now. His eyes focussed and he put his hand on my arm. “En serio, I have a fondness for you. I will happily bear the expense for you and wives.”

  Bulletheads crowded around, arguing like poorly carburated Vespas. “Right proud t’have y all come along,” said one. The one a wife had insisted was female edged closer. “Danger if you not,” she added. “We needing badly women.”

  My mad friend had been watching the gambling crazed palominos. “Those tickets are complete?” he asked, “Nothing torn off?” They nodded. “If the stubs weren’t handed in for the drawing your discarded, unsold tickets are about as valuable as a Nixon button,” my friend said.

  Seeing his bubble burst, the progenitor tried to laugh but looked more as if his ulcer had just gone septic. He was remembering his ‘this is all on me.’ As horses clopped toward our hotel even the turtle butcher sensed that the evening’s magic had departed.

  “These Great Ones,” I asked, “Why such a hurry to pull the astronaut through the hole? Do they have to close it quick to keep from leaking gravity?”

  The Byzantine had lost interest in his own story. “How do they get from one planet to another if it can’t be done with spaceships?” I insisted. He came to with a jerk and I wondered if he were drunk or tired. “Time machine,” he said, “That’s how I met the Great Ones.”

  Back in first person, I noted. “In an expanding universe,” the little man continued, “The only way to travel is to go back to that instant when the Ur-bubble has just burst and step to one’s chosen destination. It’s easy to move forward again in time.”

  “A good idea for a story,” my mad friend said thoughtfully. “Too bad I can’t use it.”

  “Too late,” the Byzantine said, and went to sleep. Moments later we arrived and as the turtle butcher watched his palomino depart I knew somebody else’s bubble had burst. The floor was crowded now and an orchestra industriously ground out a mambo while the locals, a tourist or two, and the wild cattle twisted. As we crossed the floor someone released a mass of balloons. Dancing turned to bedlam as hairpins and cigarettes popped them. The Byzantine caught my arm. “You will come?” he pleaded.

  “Sorry.” I felt sudden shame when the little man I had always regarded as a figure of fun shook my hand and spun so abruptly that I could see tears fly. A balloon rocketed across the floor and slapped me wetly in the face.

  The wives had put up their hair and gone to bed. I sat on the balcony watching the moon sink into the sea just about where Blaspheme II was tethered to its column of drill steel. My mad friend silently passed a rosary through his fingers. “Too bad about the lottery tickets,” he finally said.

  “Did you notice how the Byzantine lost interest right in the middle of his story?”

  My fr
iend nodded. “Wasn’t drinking much either. I wonder if he’s on the needle. Notice that glassy stare and the way he was Hearing Voices?”

  “Be funny if that hearing aid was a radio. I wonder what instructions the Great Ones would give him.”

  Beneath our balcony the bulletheads erupted with packed bags. They trotted toward the ocean for a farewell swim. “Two out of three will step on stingrays,” my mad friend guaranteed. But there was only laughter as they splashed into the quietly lapping ocean.

  I had a sudden thought. “Could we find that paper that was on the table this afternoon?” My friend made an interrogatory grunt. “The pictures,” I said, “They look like that mixed bag of astronauts.”

  My mad friend snorted and began thumbing his rosary.

  “This’d sure be the place to hole up if somebody wanted to pretend he was in orbit.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” my friend snapped, “Give up sf for a while. Try knitting, or smoking pot. Besides, the Great Ones pull them up through the hole.”

  “Right,” I grunted.

  “I’m bushed,” my mad friend said. “In case you sail before I get up, I’ll be here another week. Think you’ll break through by then?”

  “Could be,” I said.

  “Well, good night. Don’t forget the article.” He disappeared and I sat watching the bulletheads come out of the sea. Still in bathing gear, they set off with their bags. Why had that female thought it dangerous if we didn’t go?

  And why didn’t the Byzantine want to peddle his crazy theory any more? The palomino progenitor had lost something he never really had. So had the turtle butcher. But what bubble had burst for the Byzantine? I yawned and gazed at the gibbous moon through half closed eyes. What were they celebrating downstairs popping all those balloons?

  To hell with it,” I decided. The night was half gone and tomorrow I’d be out on that barge again.

  Drilling the Mohole.

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