🚀 go-pugleaf

(continued from part one...)

                                      ***

     A greenish mass filled the television.  Ominous music played.  A
crisp, masculine voice spoke.  "You want change.  The politicians are
offering you more of the same."  Images of Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, Ross
Perot floated over the greenish mass.  In each picture, the candidates were
glowering, pointing their fingers, contorting their faces in expressions of
disgust.
     "You can't afford more of the same.  You can't afford to elect a
politician this year."  The greenish mass suddenly came into focus, a wall
of coarse scales.  "There is one candidate you can vote for.  There's one
candidate who stands above the rest."  The camera suddenly pans upwards.  A
gigantic lizard head appeared in the distance.  "Godzilla.  Let's put a
real reptile in office."

                                      ***

     Agent Gulf R. Tonkin carefully set the phone back in its cradle.  He
rolled out of bed, flicked the light on.  He blinked at the clock on the
dresser.  10:54 PM.  That would make it almost 3 AM in France.  Damn, he
thought.  Need to be asleep now.  He glared steadily at the phone.  Damn
emergencies.  They'd call him tonight, alright, but he'd still be on a
plane to France day after tomorrow.
     With a swift kick, he sent the phone skidding under the bed.  The dial
tone droned faintly.  He turned to the closet, opened it.  A row of dark
suits hung in the closet.  He counted out the fifth suit from the right,
lifted the hanger out of the closet, laid the suit on the bed.  White
shirts on dark plastic hangers hung from a second dowel behind and beneath
the first one.  Tonkin chose a shirt, laid it over the suit.  He slammed
the closet shut.
     From beneath the bed, a nasal female voice chimed, "If you would like
to make a call, please hang up and try again.  If you need help, please
dial zero for the operator.  Three-seven-six."
     Tonkin's lips twitched as he dressed.  Sure, he could use help.  Not
that he would get any.  He imagined dialing the operator, explaining that a
man who had been dead for almost three hundred years was going to blow up
the electoral college, which actually consisted of the two hundred and
fifty year old founding fathers meeting tonight in a secret room beneath
the basement of Independence Hall.  His smile faded.  He wondered how
difficult it would be to find and kill an operator.  He'd never thought
about it before.  Irritated, he pulled the suit coat on.  He'd have to look
into it, in case the situation ever arose.
     The .38 under his pillow fit neatly into the holster sewn into the
coat.  The MIB sure knows its stuff, he thought.  It was good to be back on
the payroll.

                                      ***

     A hunched figure holding a candelabra in its right hand shuffled down
the sidewalk in front of the Capitol building.  A Capitol Cab pulled up
near the figure.  The window on the passenger side squeaked down, a
grizzled beard wearing a baseball cap stuck out.  "Jefferson?"  asked the
cabbie.
     Jefferson nodded.  "On time," he said.  "It's good to see you again."
He blew out the candles on his candelabra, opened the rear door, slid in
behind the cabbie.
     The cabbie shrugged.  "Almost missed it, you know.  They put in this
computer a couple of years ago.  Keeps track of all the fares.  Supposed to
make us more efficient, or something.  Damn thing's been down all week,
though."  The cabbie adjusted the rearview mirror.  "Philadelphia, no
stops, fast as I can make it, same as last time."  It was half a question.
     "Same as last time," said Jefferson.   Jefferson rubbed his palms
together.  "Next time I suggest you rely on your own natural abilities
rather than a machine, though."
     The cab pulled away from the curb, sped off into the night.  Jefferson
leaned back in the seat, shut his eyes.  It was an effort to talk, he
thought.  It would come back to him.  He opened his eyes, leaned forward.
"You should be getting near retirement age, shouldn't you?  You should buy
a farm.  Nothing like working the land."
     "Got a brown thumb," growled the cabbie.  "The wife bought me a cactus
last year for Valentine's.  Lasted two weeks."  He grunted.  "Couldn't even
farm weeds."
     Jefferson settled back into his seat.  "Come now, there's nothing an
honest man can't make good on if he puts his back into it.  Let me give you
some horticultural advice."
     The cabbie grunted, pulled onto the turnpike.

                                      ***

     "Hi there, this is Unorthodox Lass here at Ralph Nader headquarters.
We're coming to you live from the floor, where excitement is hot.  Despite
an almost complete lack of name recognition for the Green Party of America,
the persistent feeling that the Green are a bunch of environmental
radicals, the lack of any Vice Presidential candidate and a persistent
misidentification of Ralph Nader with another, similarly named celebrity,
this crowd is expecting an upset victory here tonight.  Let's get some
comments.  Hi!"
     "Oh -- hey there.  Nice flannel."
     "Thanks.  I got it at L.L. Beans.  Tell me, what do you think of the
Green Party's chances here tonight?"
     "Are you kidding?  We can't *lose!*  We're running Darth Vader!  Are
*you* going to vote against him?"
     "Actually, I wouldn't -- but you're running Ralph Nader.  Not Darth
Vader."
     "Heh.  Right.  Keep telling yourself that when the Star Destroyers
obliterate your village from the Sky."
     "Whatever.  So, you're thinking--"
     "Landslide!  Go Vader in '96!  You do not understand the *power* of
the Dark Side of the Force!"
     "Ah... hah.  Right.  I'm heading for the punch.  Back to you in the
studio."

                                      ***

     Dreams came, fluctuating with the rocking of the bus.  They smelled
like vinyl, tasted like foam rubber, melted away like mist in the sun.  The
dreams held scraps of memory.  He dreamed of himself, crouching in Sunday
school, Sister Mary Ellen coaching him to recite a poem she had taught him.
He dreamed of her stories, evil Protestants snatching away good children
and baking them in ovens, frying children with onions and dandelion greens,
slicing children into thin strips to dry in the sun.  Protestants filled
his nightmares, misshapen creatures who reached out for him with bloody,
skeletal fingers, whispering unpronounceable words in their strange,
heathen languages.  Once he asked Sister Mary Ellen if Protestants were
like trolls.  She had smacked the back of his hand for believing in fairy
tales.
     "There are no trolls, Guy," Sister Mary Ellen told him.  Her eyes were
deep in the wrinkled skin.  The lines seemed to move across her face.  "If
there were, though, Protestants would still be worse."
     The bus jolted to a stop.  Guy Fawkes opened his eyes.  He was still
drowsy, the memory of Sister Mary Ellen's voice rang in his head.
     "Hey, buddy," the bus driver called.  "You have to get off.  Last
stop."
     Fawkes blinked.  The sound of the nun's voice faded into the depths of
the past.  "Thanks,"  he said.  He stood, limped to the front of the bus.
He looked into the driver's eyes.  "Are you Catholic?"
     "What?"  The bus driver blinked.  "Well, no.  I'm more of a techno-
pagan animist, actually."  The bus driver rummaged in a backpack next to
his seat.  "Matter of fact, I've got a book here if you'd like to borrow
it."  The bus driver set a sandwich wrapped in wax paper next to the seat.
"It's gotta be here somewhere.  You'll really like it."
     Guy Fawkes limped away from the bus.  Stranger every year, he thought.
But not a Protestant.  He felt that he should have stayed, convinced the
man to go to Mass.  At the same time, he felt the darkness deepening, knew
that it was near midnight.  There was no time to sow.

                                      ***

     Thomas arranged the nametags in two neat rows.  He laid a placecard
beside each tag, put a stubby yellow pencil on each placecard.  He walked
to the back of the room, began filling a large punchbowl with apple cider.

                                      ***

     "Thank you, Unorthodox Lass," Nouveaux Skunk said.  "We now turn to
our roving reporter in the field.  Kent Clark, on loan from the Daily
Planted of Megapolis.  Kent, are you there?"
     "Yes, indeed I am!" Kent's reply came, as his face appeared on the
screen, in a tight closeup.  Too close, it seemed, as one of Kent's nose
hairs hit and cracked the camera lens.  "I'm here in sunny New Mexico,
covering the state senate race!  And boy, what a tight race it is!"
     "Could you back the camera up a bit?" Nouveaux asked.
     "What?  Oh, sure!"  The picture abruptly backed up to show the
entirety of Kent Clark's face.  Behind him was a glaringly bright backdrop.
"As you can see, New Mexico is experiencing somewhat unusual weather
lately, and my keen reporter's sense tells me that's bound to affect voting
patterns!"
     "Could you pan the camera around?"
     "Sure!"
     The picture swung around, showing frozen tundra all over the place.
Several penguins were standing near Kent, squawking furiously.
     "Okay, you can stop panning--"
     "What?"
     Suddenly, Kent let go of the camera.  Immediately thereafter, it shot
over miles of glacial ice, and seemed like it would head into orbit.
Which, likely, it would have, if Kent hadn't taken the opportunity to
change into his Mighty Guy outfit and flown up to retrieve it.  Amazingly,
he managed to do so with only slight damage to the ozone layer.  He set
down again and looked at the camera.
     "Good thing I, Mighty Guy, was here, else this brave reporter would
have lost his live broadcasting camera!" he exclaimed.  "I wonder where...
wait!  There he is now!"  Clumsily, Mighty Guy covered the lens with his
hand and shuffled the camera around in his arms.  When he removed his hand
again, it was to show his face, only now with his 'civilian' glasses.  "Ah,
thank you, Mighty Guy!" he exclaimed.  "Good thing you were here to help
out!"  Again, a clumsy cover while Kent removed his glasses.  "Not a
problem!"  Again a cover....
     "Er, not to interrupt or anything," Nouveaux Skunk interrupted, "but
do you realize you're in Antarctica, and not New Mexico?"
     "By Pa Clark's whiskers!" Kent exclaimed.  "You're right!  I must have
boarded the wrong plane!"
     Nouveaux Skunk glanced at Ignorantman, saw he was about to ask
something, and promptly shoved a sandwich into his mouth.
     "Mmmph!"
     "Kent, I assume this means you'll be stranded there until after this
Special is done...." Nouveaux said, barely daring to hope.
     "Not at all!" Kent replied.  "After all, Mighty Guy is still here, and
surely he can carry me to New Mexico...."
     "I don't think that'll be necessary."
     "Oh, okay!  I'll just return to the studio, then."
     "Wait!" the Skunk exclaimed.  "On second thought, keep going!  Head
for New Mexico!  The public is depending on you to not return here until
well after the Special is over and I'm out of the building, out of the
city, and possibly on another continent!"
     "Indeed!" Kent agreed.  "Well, Mighty Guy, are you ready?"  More
clumsy fumbling.  Kent appeared, sans glasses.  "Ready!"  More fumbling.
"Then let's go!"  Nouveaux Skunk signaled the engineer, and the picture
was immediately replaced by a graphic.
     "Why did you force this sandwich into my mouth?" Ignorantman asked,
after finishing the last of it.  "Is this your way of telling me I should
eat better?  What exactly does eating better entail?  Is it like eating
batter, or butter, or drinking bitter?  Does the bologna have political
significance?  Would that make the mayonnaise a tax cut or a foreign
policy?  What if I don't want a tomato?  Do you want the other half of the
sandwich?"
     "Moving right along," Nouveaux said, without missing a beat, "we've
got another report on the elections in the Ottsamaddawidu Confederation.
Lets turn via transwave link to either our reporter in the field or Rad."

                                      ***

     George Washington admired himself in the bathroom mirror.  He wore a
jacket with red plaid arms.  The rest of the jacket was blue.  A frilly
beige shirt poked out at the neck of the jacket.  He wore multicolored
Hawaiian shorts, tall striped socks, leather sandals with thin soles.  He
set a black baseball cap embroidered with a sliver X on his head.
Washington turned, admired himself in profile.  "Perfect," said George.
"Refined, but youthful-looking.  Can't wait to see the look on Franklin's
face."  He half-lowered his eyelids in a look of stylish sophistication.
"Quite good," he said to himself.  "Indeed, quite good."

                                      ***

     Tonkin clutched at the steering wheel, swore quietly to himself.  Two
cars in front of him, at the toll booth, a short man began emptying his
pockets onto the hood of his car.  Tonkin flicked the radio on.  Quiet jazz
spilled from the speakers, dark saxophones, arid snare patterns, sparse
trumpet notes wove through the interior of the car.  A piano tinkled
quietly from behind a glass wall.  Rain spattered against the windshield.
The short man shrugged to the toll booth attendant, smacked himself in the
forehead, began to cram the contents of his pockets into a McDonald's bag.
     Tonkin leaned on the horn.  It sounded faint, harsh.  The pitch
swooped to a low buzz as he held the horn.  The short man threw the
McDonald's bag into the passenger seat.  Tonkin released the horn, slid the
car into neutral, revved the engine impatiently.  The car in front of him
crept forward a few feet.
     He flicked the gearshift into first, let up on the clutch.  The car
crept forward.  He brought the car to a halt, shook the gearshift to
neutral.  In the mirror, he watched a red Vespa scooter drift up to his
rear bumper.  The rider wore wraparound sunglasses, a red-white and blue
helmet.  There seemed to be a passenger on the back of the scooter; white
knuckled hands clasped at the man's midsection.
     Tonkin considered slipping the car into reverse.  An accident, he
thought.  Could happen to anyone.  He tightened his arm against his side,
felt the .38.  Not tonight, he thought.  Work to do.  He read the scooter's
plate in the mirror.  "E-U-R-E-K-A.  Eureka," he said to himself.  He shook
his head.  All those scooterists were nuts.  Someday, he thought.  He
pulled the gearshift back towards reverse, then caught himself and pushed
it into first.  The car slid forward.  He handed a bill to the toll booth
attendant.

                                      ***

     The lights came on, indicating the camera was now on and broadcasting.
Rad and the few hundred or so almost-as-well-tanned-as-Rad Californians
hanging about did not immediately notice, however, as they were busy eating
meat-filled sandwiches.
     "Rad..." Nouveaux Skunk's voice came from the speaker.
     "Like, mmmph?" Rad asked through a mouthful.  His eyes grew wider, he
finished his bite and quickly hid the rest of his sandwich.  "Like, oh,
hi!"
     "Rad, have you found our missing reporter?"
     "Like, um... sort of."
     There was a long pause.
     "Rad... you didn't...."
     "Like, what?" Rad asked.  He looked at the sandwiches the others were
chowing down on.  "Oh, like, no, dude.  After we found, like, the reporter
dude, like, we decided to stop and, like, enjoy some, like, most totally
excellent sandwiches, y'know?"
     "I see.  Where is he now?"
     "Mind you, like, the meat is, like, a bit green...."
     "Where is... what?"
     "And there's, like, vegetation growing out of it, but, like...."
     "What... IS... that?"
     "It's, like, Chia Pet, dude... the other green meat."
     There came a silence from the speaker, followed by the sound of a
popular antacid being dropped into a glass of water.  After some quick
chugging sounds, Nouveaux Skunk's voice returned.
     "Back to the original subject," he said, a bit haggardly.  "Where is
our reporter?"
     "I, like, said, dude."
     "I know you found him.  Where is he *now?*"
     Rad looked around.
     "Like, um...."
     "You lost him, didn't you."
     "Um... yah."
     "I see."
     "You, like, do?"
     "Yes."
     "Cool, dude!"
     Nouveaux Skunk's reply fairly seethed from the camera.  "No, it is
*not* cool.  I want to see him on camera before the night is out!"
     Rad stared at the camera a bit.  After a minute, he blinked.  "Like,
okay, dude.  I mean, like, don't be, like, such a maynard about it, like,
y'know?"
     "Rrrrrgh...."

                                      ***

     Alexander Hamilton strode the aisle of United 1074.  Fat businessmen
in striped shirts glared at him as he paced.  He ignored them, for the most
part.  From time to time one would catch his eye and when that happened,
Hamilton would snort.  It was a snort which he had learned from his
grandfather, a snort which began at the tips of his toes, built up steam as
it traveled through his lanky legs, swelled to a deep rush of air in his
chest, and finally exploded through his nostrils in a sudden burst of
concentrated scorn few men, living or dead, could withstand.   The
businessmen withered at his snort, their faces dropping towards their laps
as though they were made of wax and Hamilton's snort was a tongue of fire.
     Alexander Hamilton was proud of his snort.  He had practiced it for
centuries, it was now as effortless to him as blinking.  Hamilton had used
the snort to escape the Tsar's soldiers in Russia during (insert name of
that rebellion that's on the tip of your tongue but you cant remember it.)
He'd snorted his way into Al Capone's speakeasies in 192?.  He'd snorted
himself out of a dozen marriages, into three sentences for contempt of
court, into a well-paying job as a movie critic in the Hollywood of 195?.
His snort encapsulated his life.  He often told himself that if Samuel
Johnson had had a snort like this, the Doctor would never have set pen to
paper.
     A stewardess laid her hand on his arm.  "Excuse me, sir," she said.
"We'll be landing in a minute.  You have to sit down."  She was small, long
dark hair.  Her eyes seemed very large in her face.
     He stifled the reflexive snort, turned it into a chuckle as it roared
through his windpipe.  "Of course."  He winked at the stewardess.  "Always
do what a lady asks, that's my motto."  He extended his arm towards her.
"Lead the way, my dear."

                                      ***

     Professor Harlan Atropine closed the book he was reading, set it on
his desk.  He brushed the cover with his fingers.  The book was bound in
dark brown leather, waterstained near the bottom of the spine.  Flecks of
gold leaf clung to thick, raised symbols on the spine.  The professor
puffed his cheeks, made a plosive sound with his lips.
     The room was small, crammed with stacks of multicolored books, sheets
of yellow legal paper cluttered with notes in a dense script that seemed to
ignore the lines and wander in spirals around the paper.  Empty pizza boxes
littered the floor, Drink(tm) cans formed irregular pyramids on the
bookcases.  Atop a filing cabinet, a small color television set, its sound
muted, was showing a picture of an exceptionally well-tanned man eating a
greenish, meaty sandwich.  Behind the Professor's desk, multicolored pins
festooned a large map of the world.  The Professor swiveled his chair to
look at it.  His eyes blinked rapidly behind the thick glasses.
     "Philadelphia," muttered the Professor to himself.  "Tonight,
Philadelphia."
     He shrugged.  He took a can of Drink(tm) from a box under his desk,
cracked it open, drank it warm.Article Unavailable