[813] in Central_America
New quotes for Sun Jun 26
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Sun Jun 26 01:22:10 1988
From: Don't reply to root! <root@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
Date: Sun, 26 Jun 88 01:21:38 EDT
To: ca-mtg@bloom-beacon.mit.edu
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dachurch (Douglas A. Church):
"We forgive as we forget
As the water flows over the bridge
As we walk on the floodland
As we walk on the water
We forget" - "Rain From Heaven", The Sisterhood, _Gift_
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dschmidt (Dan Schmidt):
Well, hrrump, heh, heh, here comes Pirate's Condition creeping over
him again, when he's least expecting it as usual -- might as well mention
here that much of what the dossiers call Pirate Prentice is a strange
talent for -- well, for getting inside the fantasies of others: being able,
actually, to take over the burden of _managing_ them ...
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The first few times nothing clicked. The fantasies were O.K. but
belonged to nobody important. But the Firm is patient, committed to
the Long Run as They are. At last, one proper Sherlock Holmes London
evening, the unmistakable smell of gas came to Pirate from a dark
street lamp, and out of the fog ahead materialized a giant, organ-like
form. Carefully, black-shod step by step, Pirate approached the
thing. It began to slide forward to meet him, over the cobblestones
slow as a snail, leaving behind some slime brightness of street-wake
that could not have been from fog. In the space between them was a
crossover point, which Pirate, being a bit faster, reached first. He
reeled back, in horror, back past the point -- but such recognitions
are not reversible. _It was a giant Adenoid_. At least as big as St.
Paul's, and growing hour by hour. London, perhaps all England, was in
mortal peril!
This lymphatic monster had once blocked the distinguished pharynx
of Lord Blatherard Osmo, who at the time occupied the Novi Pazar desk
at the Foreign Office, an obscure penance for the previous century of
British policy on the Eastern Question, for on this obscure sanjak
had once hinged the entire fate of Europe:
Nobody knows-where, it is-on-the-map,
Who'd ever think-it, could start-such-a-flap?
Each Montenegran, and Serbian too,
Waitin' for some-thing, right outa the blue -- oh honey
Pack up my Glad-stone, 'n' brush off my suit,
And then light me up my bigfat, cigar --
If ya want my address, it's
That O-ri-ent Express,
To the san-jak of No-vi Pa-zar!
Chorus of quite nubile young women naughtily attired in Busbies and
jackboots dance around for a bit here while in another quarter Lord
Blatherard Osmo proceeds to get _assimilated_ by his own growing
Adenoid, some horrible transformation of cell plasma it is quite
beyond Edwardian medicine to explain... before long, tophats are
littering the squares of Mayfair, cheap perfume hanging ownerless in
the pub lights of the East End as the Adenoid continues on its
rampage, not swallowing up its victims at random, no, the fiendish
Adenoid has a _master plan_, it's choosing only certain personalities
useful to it -- there is a new election, a new preterition abroad in
England here that throws the Home Office into hysterical and painful
epsodes of indecision... no one knows _what_ to do... a halfhearted
attempt is made to evacuate London, black phaetons clatter in massive
ant-cortege over the trusswork bridges, observer balloons are
stationed in the sky, "Got it in Hampstead Heath, just sitting
_breathing_, like... going in and out..." "Any sort of _sound_ down
there?" "Yes, it's horrible... like a stupendous _nose_ sucking in
snot... wait, now it's... beginning to... oh, _no_... oh, God I can't
describe it, it's so beast--" the wire is snapped, the transmission
ends, the balloon rises into the teal-blue daybreak. Teams come down
from the Cavendish Laboratory, to string the Heath with huge magnets,
electric-arc terminals, black iron control panels full of guages and
cranks, the Army shows up in full battle gear with bombs full of the
latest deadly gas -- the Adenoid is blasted, electric-shocked,
poisoned, changes color and shape here and there, yellow fat-nodes
appear high over the trees... before the flash-powder cameras of the
Press, a hideous green pseudopod crawls toward the cordon of troops
and suddenly _sshhlop!_ wipes out an entire observation post with a
deluge of some disgusting orange mucus in which the unfortunate men
are _digested_ -- not screaming but actually laughing, _enjoying_
themselves...
Pirate/Osmo's mission is to establish liaison with the Adenoid.
The situation is now stable, the Adenoid occupies all of St. James's,
the historic buildings are no more, Government offices have been
relocated, but so dispersed that communication among them is highly
uncertain -- postmen are being snatched off of their rounds by
stiff-pimpled Adenoid tentacles of fluorescent beige, telegraph wires
are apt to go down at any whim of the Adenoid. Each morning Lord
Blatherard Osmo must put on his bowler, and take his briefcase out to
the Adenoid to make his daily demarche. It is taking up so much of
his time he's begun to neglect Novi Pazar, and F.O. is worried. In
the thirties balance-of-power thinking was still quite strong, the
diplomats were all down with Balkanosis, spies with foreign hybrid
names lurked in all the stations of the Ottoman rump, code messages in
a dozen Slavic tongues were being tattooed on bare upper lips over
which the operatives then grew mustaches, to be shaved off only by
authorized crypto officers and skin then grafted over the messages by
the Firms' plastic surgeons... their lips were palimpsests of secret
flesh, scarred and unnaturally white, by which they all knew each
other.
Novi Pazar, anyhow, was still a croix mystique on the palm of
Europe, and F.O. finally decided to go to the Firm for help. The Firm
knew just the man.
Every day for 2 1/2 years, Pirate went out to visit the St. James
Adenoid. It nearly drove him crazy. Though he was able to develop a
pidgin by which he and the Adenoid could communicate, unfortunately he
wasn't nasally equipped to make the sounds too well, and it got to be
an awful chore. As the two of them snuffled back and forth, alienists
in black seven-button suits, admirers of Dr. Freud the Adenoid clearly
had no use for, stood on stepladders up against its loathsome grayish
flank shoveling the new wonderdrug cocaine -- bringing _hods_ full of
the white substance, in relays, up the ladders to smear on the
throbbing glandcreature, and into the germ toxins bubbling nastily
inside its crypts, with no visible effects at all (though who knows
how that _Adenoid_ felt, eh?).
But Lord Blatherard Osmo was able at last to devote all of his time
to Novi Pazar. Early in 1939, he was discovered mysteriously
suffocated in a bathtub full of tapioca pudding, at the home of a
Certain Viscountess. Some have seen in this the hand of the Firm.
Months passed, World War II started, years passed, nothing was heard
from Novi Pazar. Pirate Prentice had saved Europe from the Balkan
Armageddon the old men dreamed of, giddy in their beds with its
grandeur -- though not from World War II, of course. But by then,
the Firm was allowing Pirate only tiny little homeopathic doses of
peace, just enough to keep his defenses up, but not enough for it to
poison him.
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Reprinted without permission from _Gravity's Rainbow_ by Thomas
Pynchon (the best book _ever_)
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nlgilman (Nancy L Gilman):
Hi there folks!!!! I'm home and I am finally logging in. I even
remember some of the commands. If you missed me, (I am leaving
tomorrow morning) I may be back up before rush but I doubt it at this
point. I can be reached by mail or by phone at my mother's house:
(301) 229-5891
6709 Brigadoon Drive, Bethesda MD 20817
I will be having my own phone installed soon.
Mark will have the new number.
I will occasionally be stopping by my Dad's place on weekends. The
number there is:
(703) 684-7990
--- End of Central America ---
