The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy Page 3

  We had settled back in our comfortable armchairs, and Professor Dringenbaum of Switzerland was just delivering the first numeral of his report, when all at once the hollow rumble of an explosion shook the building and made the windows rattle. The optimists among us passed this off as a simple earthquake, but I was inclined to think that the group of demonstrators outside that had been picketing the hotel since morning was now resorting to incendiary tactics. Though the following blast and concussion, much more powerful, changed my mind; now I could hear the familiar staccato of machine-gun fire in the streets. No, there was no longer any doubt: Costa Rica had entered into the stage of open hostilities. Our reporters were the first to disappear; at the sound of shooting they jumped to their feet and rushed out the door, eager to cover this new assignment. But Professor Dringenbaum went on with his lecture, which was fairly pessimistic in tone, for it maintained that the next phase of our civilization would be cannibalism. He cited several well-known American theoreticians, who had calculated that, if things on Earth continued at their present rate, in four hundred years humanity would represent a living sphere of bodies with a radius expanding at approximately the speed of light. But new explosions interrupted the report. The futurologists, confused, began to leave the hall and mingle in the lobby with people from the Liberated Literature convention. Judging by the appearance of these latter, the outbreak of the fighting had caught them in the middle of activity which suggested complete indifference to the threat of overpopulation. Behind some editors from the publishing house of Knopf stood naked secretaries—though not entirely naked, for their limbs were painted with various op designs. They carried portable water pipes and hookahs filled with a popular mixture of LSD, marijuana, yohimbine and opium. The liberationists, someone told me, had just burned the United States Postmaster General in effigy (it seems he had ordered the destruction of a pamphlet calling for the initiation of mass incest) and now, gathered in the lobby, they were behaving most inappropriately—particularly given the seriousness of the situation. With the exception of a few who were exhausted or remained in a narcotic stupor, they all carried on in a positively scandalous fashion. I heard screams from the reception desk, where switchboard operators were being raped, and one potbellied gentleman in a leopardskin tore through the hotel cloakroom, waving a hashish torch as he chased the attendants. It took several porters to restrain him. Then someone from the mezzanine threw armfuls of photographs down on our heads, photographs depicting in vivid color exactly how one man could satisfy his lust with another, and a great deal more besides. When the first tanks appeared in the streets—clearly visible from our windows—panic-stricken phillumenists and student protesters came pouring from the elevators; trampling underfoot the abovementioned pâté mounds and salad molds (which the publishers had brought out with them), these newcomers scattered in all directions. And there was the bearded anti-papist bellowing like a bull and wildly swinging his papalshooter, knocking down anyone who stood in the way. He pushed through the crowd and ran out in front of the hotel, where he hid behind a corner of the building and—I saw this with my own eyes—opened fire on the figures running past. Obviously this dedicated, ideologically motivated fanatic really didn't care, when it came down to it, whom he shot at. The lobby, filled with cries of terror and revelry, became a scene of utter pandemonium when the huge picture windows began to shatter. I tried to locate my reporter friends and, seeing them dash up the street, followed after; the atmosphere in the Hilton had really become too oppressive. Behind a low concrete wall along the hotel driveway crouched two cameramen, frantically filming everything, which made little sense, since everyone knows that the first thing that happens on such occasions is the burning of a car with foreign license plates. Flames and smoke were already rising from the hotel parking lot. Mauvin, standing beside me, rubbed his hands and chuckled at the sight of his Dodge crackling in the blaze—he had rented it from Hertz. The majority of the American reporters, however, did not find this amusing. I noticed some people struggling to put out the fire: these were mainly old men, poorly dressed, and they were hauling water in buckets from a nearby fountain. That struck me as odd. In the distance, at the far end of the Avenida del Salvación and the Avenida del Resurrección, police helmets glimmered; yet the square in front of the hotel, with its surrounding lawns and luxuriant palms, was still empty. Those doddering old men, hoarsely calling to one another, quickly formed a fire brigade, in spite of their canes and crutches; such gallantry was astounding, but then I remembered what had happened earlier that day and immediately shared my suspicions with Mauvin. The rattle of machine guns and the thunder of bursting shells made it difficult to talk; for a while the Frenchman's keen face showed a total lack of comprehension, but suddenly his eyes lit up. "Aha!" he roared above the din. "The water! The drinking water! Great God, for the first time in history … cryptochemocracy!" And with these words he ran back to the hotel like one possessed. To get to a telephone, apparently. Strange though, that the lines should still be open.

  I was standing there in the driveway when Professor Trottelreiner, one of the Swiss futurologists, joined me. By then the police were doing what they should have done hours ago: wearing black helmets, shields and gas masks, armed with guns and clubs, they formed a cordon around the whole Hilton complex to keep back the mob, which was just beginning to pour from the park that separated us from the city's theater district. With great skill special police units set up grenade launchers and fired these into the crowd; the explosions were remarkably weak, though they raised thick clouds of whitish smoke. At first I thought that this was tear gas, but the people, instead of fleeing and choking in fury, clearly began to huddle around the pale vapors; their shouts quickly died away, and soon I could hear them singing—they were singing hymns. The reporters, rushing back and forth between the cordon and the hotel entrance with their cameras and tape recorders, were completely mystified by this, though it was obvious to me that the police were employing some new pacification chemical, in aerosol form. But then, from the Avenida del… I can't recall which … another group of people appeared, and these were somehow unaffected by the grenades, or so it seemed. Later I was told that this group had continued advancing in order to help the police, not to attack them. Yet who could draw such subtle distinctions in that general chaos? There were several more salvos of grenades, and that was followed by the characteristic roar and hiss of a water cannon, then finally the machine guns opened up and the air was filled with the whine of bullets. They were playing for keeps now, so I ducked behind the low driveway wall, using it like the breastwork of a trench, and found myself between Stantor and Haynes of the Washington Post. In a few words I filled them in; they were furious that I had betrayed such a banner-headline secret first to an AFP man, and crawled full speed back to the hotel, only to return shortly, scowling—the lines were no longer open. But Stantor had managed to buttonhole the officer in charge of hotel defenses and learned from him that planes carrying LTN bombs (LTN: Love Thy Neighbor) were now on their way. Then we were ordered to clear the area, and all the policemen put on gas masks with special filters. We received masks too.

  Professor Trottelreiner was, as luck would have it, a specialist in the field of psychotropic pharmacology, and he cautioned me not to use the gas mask under any circumstance, as it would cease to operate at sufficiently high concentrations of aerosol; this would then give rise to the so-called phenomenon of filter overload, and in an instant one could inhale a much heavier dose than if one breathed the air without the benefit of a mask. The only sure protection, he said, anticipating my question, would be a separate oxygen supply; so we went to the hotel desk, managed to catch one receptionist still on duty and found, with his assistance, a storeroom full of fire-fighting equipment, including plenty of oxygen masks: Draeger make, with closed circulation. Thus accoutered, the Professor and I returned to the street, just in time to hear the dreadful, ear-splitting whistle that announced the arrival of the first planes. As everyone knows,
the Hilton was accidentally bombed with LTN minutes after the air raid commenced; the consequences of that error were disastrous. True, the LTN hit only the far wing of the building's lower structure, where display booths had been set up by the Association of Publishers of Liberated Literature, and therefore none of the hotel guests suffered immediate injury. On the other hand, the police guarding us took the full brunt of it. Paroxysms of love soon swept their ranks, assuming mass proportions. Before my eyes policemen tore the masks from their faces and, shedding copious tears of remorse, fell to their knees and begged the demonstrators for forgiveness, pushing the billy clubs into their hands with fervent pleas to be severely beaten. Following another LTN bombardment, which raised the drug's concentration even more, these minions of the law stumbled over themselves in the mad rush to kiss and hug everyone within reach. It was only several weeks after the whole tragedy that we were able, more or less, to piece together what had happened. The government had decided that morning to nip the developing revolution in the bud, so it put into the municipal water tower about 700 kilograms of bromo-benignimizer, mixing equal parts of Felicitine, Placidol and Superjubilan. The water to the police and military barracks had been shut off first, of course. Except that without the proper experts this plan was doomed to failure—the phenomenon of filter overload in the masks was not taken into account, for example, nor the fact that different social groups would consume the drinking water in radically different amounts.

  The conversion of the police took place with particular violence because, as Trottelreiner explained to me, the less an individual was accustomed to following his own natural good impulses, the greater the effect of such drugs upon him. That explained why, when two planes in the next wave accidentally LTN'd the city hall, so many of the highest ranking police and military officials committed suicide, unable to endure the terrible pangs of conscience over policies they had implemented in the past. And if you add to this the fact that General Diaz himself had—before putting a bullet through his head—ordered the immediate release of all political prisoners, it is easier to understand the extraordinary ferocity of the fighting that developed in the course of the night. The airstrips, being far from the city, remained untouched, and the pilots had their orders, and followed them to the letter. Police and military observers in their hermetic bunkers, seeing what was going on, finally resorted to the extreme measures that plunged all Nounas into the chaos of total emotional derangement. Of course we had no inkling of any of this at the Hilton. It was eleven o'clock at night when the first armored divisions of the army appeared on the scene, rolling into the square surrounded by parks and palms; they had come to stifle the brotherly love rampant among the police. This they did, with considerable bloodshed. Poor Mauvin was standing a foot away from the place where a pacification grenade exploded; the force of the blast tore the fingers off his left hand as well as his left ear, but he assured me that he had never really cared for that hand in the first place and the ear wasn't worth mentioning, in fact if I liked I could have the other, and he pulled a penknife from his pocket to make good the offer; but I took the penknife gently from his hand and led him to an improvised first-aid station. There he was tended by the secretaries of the liberated publishers; now chemically converted, they were all bawling like babies. They had put on modest clothing and even wore veils, so as not to tempt anyone to sin; a few of these pitiful creatures, more strongly affected, had actually shaven their heads. On the way back from the first-aid area I had the miserable luck to run into a group of publishers. Though I didn't recognize them at first: they were dressed in old burlap bags tied around with rope (which they also used to flog themselves); crying for mercy, clamoring, they threw themselves at my feet and beseeched me to whip them properly, for they had depraved society. Imagine my surprise when, looking at these flagellants more closely, I saw that they were all from the staff of Playboy, including the editor in chief! That gentleman wouldn't let me go, so bitterly did his conscience torment him. They pulled at my sleeves, realizing that thanks to the oxygen mask I was the only one able to harm a hair on their head. I could take no more of this and gave in to their demands at last, much against my will. Soon my arms were aching, and it grew difficult to breathe—I was afraid I might not find another tank of oxygen when this one ran out—meanwhile the publishers had formed a long line, trembling with impatience for their turn. Finally, to get rid of them, I told them to pick up all those enormous color posters that had been thrown into the lobby by the LTN explosions in the wing of the Hilton, that made the place look like Sodom and Gomorrah twice over; following my instructions, they put the posters in a huge pile out in front of the hotel and burned them. Unfortunately an artillery unit stationed in the park took the bonfire for some kind of signal and opened up on us. I left as quickly as I could, only to bump into one Harvey Simsworth in the basement. This was a writer who had hit upon the lucrative idea of turning fairy tales into hardcore pornography (he: was the author of Ali Baba and the Forty Perverts), then made another fortune by rewriting the classics of world literature (works like King Leer); he employed the simple device: of revealing the "secret sex life" of all the traditional tales—for example, what Snow White really did with the seven dwarfs, what Jack did with Jill, what Aladdin did with his lamp, etc., etc. I tried to beg off, explaining that my arm was tired. In that case—he shouted, sobbing—I could at least kick him. What could I do? It was heartless to refuse. Later, (completely worn out by these exertions, I dragged myself back to the room with the fire extinguishers, where luckily I found a couple more unused cylinders of oxygen. Professor Trottelreiner was there, seated on a coil of fire hose; he was reading the futurological articles, glad to have found a little free time in the professional hustle and bustle of attending conferences. Meanwhile the LTN bombs continued to fall thick and fast. The Professor advised that in severe cases of lovestroke—and especially serious was an attack of universal good will, accompanied by petting convulsions—poultices should be applied, as well as heavy doses of castor oil in alternation with the pumping of the stomach.

  In the newsroom Stantor Wooley (from the Herald), Sharkey and Kuntze (a photographer working temporarily for Paris-Match) were playing cards with masks on their faces. Since the lines were out, they had nothing better to do. I began to watch, but Joe Missinger, an important American journalist, burst in yelling that the police had been given tablets of Furiol to counteract the benignimizers. We understood at once what that meant and ran for the basement, but it turned out to be another false rumor. So we went outside to look around; I made the dismal discovery that our hotel was missing its top twenty or thirty floors; my room, along with everything in it, was lost in a mountain of rubble. Flames filled three quarters of the sky. A burly policeman in a helmet was chasing some youth, roaring: "Stop, stop for God's sake, I love you!"—but the youth ignored these exhortations. Things had quieted down somewhat, and the reporters, driven by their professional urge to investigate, cautiously headed for the park. I went along. There were a variety of religious services in progress, black masses and white, with the secret police participating conspicuously. Nearby stood a large crowd of people weeping and tearing their hair; they were holding over their heads an enormous sign which read, SPIT ON US, WE ARE INFORMERS! Judging by the number of these penitent Judases, it must have cost the government plenty to maintain them—funds which might have been better spent improving the economic situation in Costa Rica. Back at the Hilton we saw another crowd. Police dogs, behaving more like friendly Saint Bernards, were trotting out bottles of the most expensive liquor from the hotel bar and distributing them indiscriminately. In the bar itself policemen and protesters, arms around one another, took turns singing patriotic and revolutionary songs. I tried the basement, but couldn't endure all the converting and cavorting going on in there, so I went to the room with the fire extinguishers to talk to Professor Trottelreiner. To my surprise, he had found three partners and was playing bridge. Quetzalcoatl, a graduate student, trump
ed his ace; this so angered the Professor that he left the table in a huff. Just then Sharkey stuck his head in the door and announced that he had caught General Aquillo's speech on the radio: they were going to crush the rebellion by dropping conventional bombs on the city. After a brief council of war we decided to retreat to the lowest level of the Hilton, which was an underground sewer system. The hotel kitchen having been totally demolished, there was nothing to eat; hungry demonstrators, phillumenists and publishers stuffed themselves with the chocolate lozenges, aspics and other morsels they had discovered in the abandoned centro erotico at the corner of the hotel wing. I saw how their faces changed when the sexual stimulants contained in those comestibles began to mix in their veins with the benignimizers. One shuddered to think where this chemical escalation might lead. I saw the pairing off of futurologists with Indian bootblacks, I saw secret agents in the arms of hotel janitors, and enormous sleek rats fraternizing with cats—while the police dogs licked everyone and everything in sight. Our progress was slow and difficult, for we had to push our way through a heavy crowd, and I was bringing up the rear, struggling with half the oxygen tanks on my back. Patted, kissed on the arms and legs, fondled and adored, smothered by hugs and squeezes, I stubbornly plowed ahead, until I heard Stantor shout in triumph: he'd found the entrance to the sewers! Exerting the last of our strength, we moved aside the heavy manhole cover and lowered ourselves one by one into the concrete well. I held Professor Trottelreiner, whose foot had slipped on a rung of the iron ladder, and asked him if he'd ever imagined the convention turning out like this. Instead of answering, he tried to kiss my hand, which immediately aroused my suspicions; his mask had been knocked loose, as it turned out, causing him to swallow some of the drug-contaminated air. Without delay we applied physical torture, forced him to breathe pure oxygen, and read Hayakawa's report aloud—that was Howler's idea. The Professor finally came to his senses, of which he gave ample evidence by a series of pungent oaths, and we were able to continue on our way. Suddenly in the dim beam of our flashlight we saw the dark wall of the sewer covered with patches of oil; this was a most welcome sight, for now thirty feet of earth separated us from the surface of the LTN'd city. Imagine our surprise when we discovered that we had not been the first to think of this haven. There on the concrete platform sat, in full assembly, the management of the Hilton; these prudent officials had provided themselves with inflatable reclining chairs from the hotel pool, transistor radios, plenty of scotch and bourbon, and an ample picnic lunch. Since they too were wearing oxygen masks, there was little chance, if any, that they would willingly share their provisions with us. But we assumed a threatening attitude and managed to convince them (they were outnumbered anyway). And so with a little arm-twisting full agreement was reached, and we all sat down to dine on cold lobster. This meal, unscheduled and unforeseen in the program, concluded the first day of the futurological congress.