The professor said dubiously at last: 'I suppose one must call her a sort of Cultural Diffusionist….' He was happier when he had her classified.
He went on: 'I think you know Miss Phoebe Bancroft. We wish you to present us to her as soon as possible.'
'Professor,' I complained, 'we have a roadmap and we can find La Plume. And once we've found La Plume I don't think it'll be very hard to find Miss Phoebe.'
'I will be pleased to accompany you,' said the Duchess. 'Though normally I frown on mechanical devices, I keep an automobile nearby in case of—in case of—well! Of all the rude—!'
Believe it or not, she was speechless. Nothing in her rich store of gibberish and hate seemed to fit the situation. Anti-fluoridation, organic farming, even Khalil Gilbran were irrelevant in the face of us two each standing on one leg, thumbing our noses and sticking out our tongues.
Undeniably the posture of defense was losing efficiency. It took longer to burn away the foolish glow….
'Professor,' I asked after we warily relaxed, 'how many more of those can we take?'
He shrugged. 'That is why a guide will be useful,' he said. 'Madame, I believe you mentioned an automobile.'
'I know!' she said brightly. 'It was asana yoga, wasn't it? Postures, I mean?'
The professor sucked an invisible lemon. 'No, madame,' he said cadaverously, 'It was neither siddhasana nor padmasana. Yoga has been subsumed under Functional Epistemology, as has every other working philosophical system, Eastern and Western—but we waste time. The automobile?'
'You have to do that every so often, is that it?'
'We will leave it at that, madame. The automobile, please.'
'Come right along,' she said gaily. I didn't like the look on her face.
Madam Chairlady was about to spring a parliamentary coup. But I got my briefcase and followed.
The car was in a nearby barn. It was a handsome new Lincoln, and I was reasonably certain that our fair cicerone had stolen it. But then, we had stolen the Ford.
I loaded the briefcase in and took the wheel over her objections and we headed for La Plume, a dozen miles away. On the road she yelped: 'Oh, Functional Epistemology—and you're Professor Leuten!'
'Yes, madame,' he wearily agreed.
'I've read your book, of course. So has Miss Bancroft; she'll be so pleased to see you.'
'Then why, madame, did you order your subjects to murder us?'
'Well, professor, of course I didn't know who you were then, and it was rather shocking, seeing somebody in a car. I, ah, had the feeling that you were up to no, good, especially when you mentioned dear Miss Bancroft. She, you know, is really responsible for the re-emergence of the New Lemuria.'
'Indeed?' said the professor. 'You understand, then, about Leveled Personality Interflow?' He was beaming.
'I beg your pardon?'
'Leveled Personality Interflow!' he barked. 'Chapter Nine!'
'Oh. In your book, of course. Well, as a matter of fact I skipped—'
'Another one,' muttered the professor, leaning back.
The Duchess chattered on: 'Dear Miss Bancroft, of course, swears by your book. But you were asking— no, it wasn't what you said. I cast her horoscope and it turned out that she is the Twenty-Seventh Pendragon!'
'Scheissdreck,' the professor mumbled, too discouraged to translate.
'So naturally, professor, she incarnates Taliesin spiritually and'—a modest giggle—'you know who incarnates it materially. Which is only sensible, since I'm descended from the high priestesses of Mu. Little did I think when I was running the Wee Occult Book Shoppe in Carbondale!'
'Ha,' said the professor. He made an effort. 'Madame, tell me something. Do you never feel a certain thing, a sense of friendliness and intoxication and goodwill enveloping you quite suddenly?'
'Oh, that,' she said scornfully. 'Yes; every now and then. It doesn't bother me. I just think of all the work I have to do. How I must stamp out the dreadful, soul-destroying advocates of meat-eating, and chemical fertilizer, and fluoridation. How I must wage the good fight for occult science and crush the materialistic philosophers. How I must tear down our corrupt and self-seeking ministers and priests, our rotten laws and customs—'
'Lieber Gott,' the professor marveled as she went on. 'With Norris it is spiders. With me it is rats and asphyxiation. But with this woman it is apparently everything in the Kosmos except her own revolting self!'
She didn't hear him; she was demanding that the voting age for women be lowered to sixteen and for men raised to thirty-five.
We plowed through flies and mosquitoes like smoke. The flies bred happily on dead cows and in sheep which unfortunately were still alive.
There wasn't oil cake for the cows in the New Lemuria. There wasn't sheep-dip for the sheep. There weren't state and county and township and village road crews constantly patrolling, unplugging sluices, clearing gutters, replacing rusted culverts, and so quite naturally the countryside was reverting to swampland. The mosquitoes loved it.
'La Plume,' the Duchess announced gaily. 'And that's Miss Phoebe Bancroft's little house right there. Just why did you wish to see her, professor, by the way?'
'To complete her re-education …' the professor said in a tired voice.
Miss Phoebe's house, and the few near it, were the only places we had seen in the Area which weren't blighted by neglect. Miss Phoebe, of course, was able to tell the shambling zombies what to do in the way of truck- gardening, lawn-mowing and maintenance. The bugs weren't too bad there.
'She's probably resting, poor dear,' said the Duchess. I stopped the car and we got out. The Duchess said something about Kleenex and got in again and rummaged through the glove compartment.
'Please, professor,' I said, clutching my briefcase. 'Play it the smart way. The way I told you.'
'Norris,' he said, 'I realize that you have my best interests at heart.
You're a good boy, Norris and I like you—'
'Watch it!' I yelled, and swung into the posture of defense. So did he.
Spiders. It wasn't a good old world, not while there were loathsome spiders in it. Spiders—
And a pistol shot past my ear. The professor fell. I turned and saw the Duchess looking smug, about to shoot me too. I sidestepped and she missed; as I slapped the automatic out of her hand I thought confusedly that it was a near-miracle, her hitting the professor at five paces even if he was a standing target. People don't realize how hard it is to hit anything with a handgun.
I suppose I was going to kill her or at least damage her badly when a new element intruded. A little old white- haired lady tottering down the neat gravel path from the house. She wore a nice pastel dress which surprised me; somehow I had always thought of her in black.
'Bertha!' Miss Phoebe rapped out. 'What have you done?'
The Duchess simpered. 'That man there was going to harm you, Phoebe, dear. And this fellow is just as bad—'
Miss Phoebe said: 'Nonsense. Nobody can harm me. Chapter Nine, Rule Seven. Bertha, I saw you shoot that gentleman. I'm very angry with you, Bertha. Very angry.'
The Duchess turned up her eyes and crumpled. I didn't have to check; I was sure she was dead. Miss Phoebe was once again In Utter Harmony With Her Environment.
I went over and knelt beside the professor. He had a hole in his stomach and was still breathing. There wasn't much blood. I sat down and cried. For the professor. For the poor damned human race which at a mile per day would be gobbled up into apathy and idiocy. Goodby, Newton and Einstein, goodby steak dinners and Michelangelo and Tenzing Norkay; goodby Moses, Rodin, Kwan Yin, transistors, Boole and Steichen….
A redheaded man with an adam's apple was saying gently to Miss Phoebe: 'It's this rabbit, ma'am.' And indeed an enormous rabbit was loping up to him. 'Every time I find a turnip or something he takes it away from me and he kicks and bites when I try to reason with him—'
And indeed he took a piece of turnip from his pocket and the rabbit insolently pawed it from his hand and nibbled it triumphantly with one wise-guy eye cocked up at his victim. 'He does that every time, Miss Phoebe,' the man said unhappily.
The little old lady said: 'I'll think of something, Henry. But let me take care of these people first.'
