A portentously inconspicuous man, grey beard and grey face and shabby brown jellaba, sings in slight unplaceable accent without opening his lips:
'Oh you dolls, you great big beautiful dolls.'
Squads of police with thin lips, big noses and cold grey eyes move into the Market from every entrance street. They club and kick the rioters with cold, methodical brutality. The rioters have been carted away in trucks. The shutters go up and the citizens of Interzone step out into the square littered with teeth and sandals and slippery with blood. The sea chest of the dead man is in the Embassy, and the vice consul breaks the news to mother.
There is no... Morning... Daybreak...
(Note: Old time, veteran Schmeckers, faces beaten by grey junk weather, will remember.... In 1920s a lot of Chinese pushers around found The West so unreliable, dishonest and wrong, they all packed in, so when an Occidental junky came to score, they say: 'No glot.... C'lom Fliday....') 73
ISLAM INCORPORATED AND THE
PARTIES OF INTERZONE
I was working for an outfit known as Islam Inc., financed by A. J., the notorious Merchant of Sex, who scandalized international society when he appeared at the Duc de Ventre's ball as a walking penis covered by a huge condom emblazoned with the A. J. motto 'They Shall Not Pass.'
'Rather bad taste, old boy,' said the Duke.
To which A. J. replied: 'Up yours with Interzone K.Y.' The reference is to the K.Y. scandal which was still in a larval state at that time. A. J.'s repartee often refers to future events. He is a master of the delayed squelch.
Salvador Hassan O'Leary, the After Birth Tycoon, is also involved. That is, one of his subsidiary companies has made unspecified contributions, and one of his subsidiary personalities is attached to the organization in an advisory capacity without in any way committing himself to, or associating himself with, the policies, actions or objectives of Islam Inc. Mention should also be made of Clem and Jody, the Ergot Brothers, who decimated the Republic of Hassan with poison wheat, Autopsy Ahmed, and Hepatitis Hal, the fruit and vegetable broker.
A rout of Mullahs and Muftis and Husseins and Caids and Glaouis and Sheiks and Sultans and Holy Men and representatives of every conceivable Arab party make up the rank and file and attend the actual meetings from which the higher ups prudently abstain. Though the delegates are carefully searched at the door, these gatherings invariably culminate in riots. Speakers are often doused with gasoline and burned to death, or some uncouth desert Sheik opens up on his opponents with a machine gun he had concealed in the belly of a pet sheep. Nationalist martyrs with grenades up the ass mingle with the assembled conferents and suddenly explode, occasioning heavy casualties.... And there was the occasion when President Ra threw the British Prime Minister to the ground and forcibly sodomized him, the spectacle being televised to the entire Arab World. Wild yipes of joy were heard in Stockholm. Interzone has an ordinance forbidding a meeting of Islam Inc. within five miles of the city limits.
A. J.--he is actually of obscure Near East extraction --had at one time come on like an English gentleman. His English accent waned with the British Empire, and after World War II he became an American by Act of Congress. A. J. is an agent like me, but for whom or for what no one has ever been able to discover. It is rumored that he represents a trust of giant insects from another galaxy.... I believe he is on the Factualist side (which I also represent); of course he could be a Liquefactign Agent (the Liquefaction program involves the eventual merging of everyone into One Man by a process of protoplasmic absorption). You can never be sure of anyone in the industry. A. J.'s cover story? An international playboy and harmless practical joker. It was A. J. who put the piranha fish in Lady Sutton-Smith's swimming pool, and dosed the punch with a mixture of Yage, Hashish and Yohimbine during a Fourth of July reception at the U.S. Embassy, precipitating an orgy. Ten prominent citizens --American, of course -- subsequently died of shame. Dying of shame is an accomplishment peculiar to Kwakiutl Indians and Americans -- others simply say '
'
'And I say unto you, brothers and sisters of the Anti-Fluoride movement, we have this day struck such a blow for purity as will never call a retreat.... Out, I say, with the filthy foreign fluorides!
74
We will sweep this fair land sweet and clean as a young boy's tensed flank. ...I will now lead you in our theme song
A well head is lighted by fluorescent lights that play over it in hideous juke-box colors. The AntiFluorides file past the well singing as each dips up a drink from the oaken bucket....
'The old oaken bucket, the gold oaken bucket
The glublthulunnubbeth...'
A. J. had tampered with the water, inserting a South American vine that turns the gums to mush. (I hear about this vine from an old German prospector who is dying of uremia in Pasto, Columbia. Supposed to grow in the Putumayo
