Ohara suggested, 'You try make funny, fo'get monotony. Fo' exampurr spend coupre mimon dorras make big reso't town, cawr same Schmir-ton, Ohio. Think how mad Missah Nickey be, he put up hoterr, have to cawr same Hoterr Hir-ton Schmir-ton! Oh, raffs!'
It would not do.
'Ohara,' Bunny said tragically, 'I would give—' he shrugged whimsically—'what little I have not to be bored with, ah, life.'
The impassive Oriental countenance of his manservant flickered briefly in a grimace. His orders were clear, and he knew how terrible would be the consequences of disobedience.
Bunny tossed fitfully alone in his bed an hour later, and Ohara was on the phone to an unlisted New York number. 'This Ohara,' he whispered. 'Missah Bunny talk about giving away money. Awr his money.'
The responding voice was that of an Englishman. It said: 'Thank you, Ohara. One hopes, of course, for your sake, that the information has arrived in time. One hopes devoutly that it will not be necessary to inflict the Death of a Thousand Cuts on you. A book could be written about Number Three Hundred and Twenty-Eight alone, and as for Number Four Hundred and One—Well, I won't keep you with my chattering.' He hung up.
Within minutes the lonely house in a canyon was surrounded; the Fourth Plutocratic Airborne and Amphibious Assault Force was the ultimate in efficient mercenary troops. By dawn they had Bunny on his way to Barsax' Carolina estate under heavy sedation.
He woke in the guest room he knew, just off the corridor which contained the Museum of Suppressed Inventions. Little Mr. Witz and quiet Mr. Briggs were there. With granite faces they told him: 'You have broken the Code, young Coogler. You said there was something you valued above money. You have got to go.'
'Please,' Bunny blubbered. 'I didn't mean it. I’ll marry your daughter.
I’ll marry both your daughters! Just don't kill me.'
Mr. Witz said implacably, 'Our decent, money-fearing girls wouldn't have anything to do with a dirty plutophobe like you, young Coogler. If only your poor father had put through the trust fund in time—well, thank Heaven he's not alive to see this day. But we won't kill you, young Coogler. It is not within our power to cause the death of a billionaire as if he were an animal or mere human being. What we can and will do is quarantine you. In Virginia.'
This sounded like a rank non sequitur to Bunny until they look him to the Museum and trundled out a one-man space ship invented early in 1923 by a Herr Rudolf Grenzbach of Czernovitz, Upper Silesia, whose body had been found in Lower Silesia later that year.
Officers of the Fourth PA.A.A.F. loaded him into the bomblike contrivance over his spirited protest and pre-set the course. Virginia, it seemed, was an asteroid rather than die neighboring state. They fired the rockets- and Bunny was on his way.
Four years later Mr. Witz and Mr. Briggs conferred again. Terhaps,'
said Mr. Witz, <swe've put enough of a scare into ban. Let's radio the lad and find out whether he's given up Mi wfld seditious notions and is ready to be rescued.'
They tuned in the asteroid Virginia on another suppressed invention.
'Young Coogler,' Briggs said into the microphone. This is Briggs. We wish to know whether you've come to your senses and are ready to take your place in society—ours, of course.'
There squawked over the loud-speaker the voice of Bunny. 'I say, what was that. No, not now, not for a second please. Where did that voice come from? Can you hear me, Mr. Briggs?'
'I hear you,' said Mr. Briggs.
'Extraordinary! Another invention, eh?'
'Yes,' said Briggs. 'I am calling, young Coogler, to learn whether you are properly contrite and if so to arrange for your rescue.'
'Rescue?' said the voice of Bunny. 'Why, no thanks. That wont be necessary. Having a fine time here. They need me, you know. They love me for, ah, myself alone. Not the dashed money. Double-dash the money, I say!'
Mr. Briggs, white to the lips, broke the connection.
'He meant you to do that,' Mr. Witz remarked.
'I know. Let him rot there.'
The quavery old curator had been listening, 'On Virginia?' he asked tremulously. 'You don't rot on Virginia, Don't you gentlemen know how it got its name?'
'Never bothered to find out,' Mr. Briggs snapped. 'Since you're bursting to tell us, you might as well.'
The curator beamed. 'They call it Virginia because it's the planetoid of virgins. The dangdest thing. Perpetual virgins. The Plutocratic Space Force says they've never seen anything like it, not on Mars, not on Callisto. Self- renewing—the dangdest thing!'
Mr. Briggs and Mr. Witz looked at each other. After a while Mr. Witz spoke.
'Bunny,' he said reflectively. 'Bunny. He was well named.'
The Advent on Channel Twelve
It came to pass in the third quarter of the fiscal year that the Federal Reserve Board did raise the rediscount rate and money was tight in the land. And certain bankers which sate hi New York sent to Ben Graffis in Hollywood a writing which said, Money is tight in the land so let Poopy Panda up periscope and fire all bow tubes.
Whereupon Ben Graffis made to them this moan:
O ye bankers, Poopy Panda is like unto the child of my flesh and you have made of him a devouring dragon. Once was I content with my studio and my animators when we did make twelve Poopy Pandas a year; cursed be the day when I floated a New York loan. You have commanded me to make feature-length cartoon epics and I did obey, and they do open at the Paramount to sensational grosses, and we do re-release them to the nabes year on year, without end. You have commanded me to film live adventure shorts and I did obey, and in the cutting room we do devilishly splice and pull frames and flop neg-atives so that I and my cameras are become bearers of false witness and men look upon my live adventure shorts and say lo! these beasts and birds are like unto us in their laughter, wooing, pranks, and con-tention. You have commanded that I become a mountebank for that I did build Poopy Pandaland, whereinto men enter with their children, their silver, and their wits, and wherefrom they go out with their children only, sandbagged by a thousand catch-penny engines; even this did I obey.
You have commanded that Poopy Panda shill every weekday night on television between five and six for the Poopy Panda Pals, and even this did I obey, though Poopy Panda is like unto the child of my flesh.
But O ye bankers, this last command will I never obey.
Whereupon the bankers which sate in New York sent to him an-other writing that said, Even so, let Poopy Panda up periscope and fire all bow tubes, and they said, Remember, boy, we hold thy paper.
And Ben Graffis did obey.
He called unto him his animators and directors and cameramen and writers, and his heart was sore but he dissembled and said: In jest you call one another brainwashers, forasmuch as you addle the heads of children five hours a week that they shall buy our spon-sors'
wares. You have fulfilled the prophecies, for is it not written in the Book of the Space Merchants that there shall be spherical trusts? And the Poopy Panda Pals plug the Poopy Panda Magazine, and the Poopy Panda Magazine plugs Poopy Pandaland, and Poopy Pandaland plugs the Poopy Panda Pals. You have asked of the Motiva-tional Research boys how we shall hook the little bastards and they have told ye, and ye have done it. You identify the untalented kid viewers with the talented kid performers, you provide in Otto Clodd a bumbling father image to be derided, you furnish in Jackie Whipple an idealized big brother for the boys and a sex-fantasy for the more precocious girls. You flatter the cans off the viewers by ever saying to them that they shall rule the twenty-first century, nor mind that those who shall in good sooth come to power are doing their homework and not watching television programs. You have created a liturgy of opening hymn and closing benediction, and over all hovers the spirit of Poopy Panda urging and coaxing the viewers to buy our sponsors' wares.
