The Sodom and Gomorrah Business

by Barry N. Malzberg

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Alien Contact

Synopsis

Death and Disorder 104. Institute courses told a grim story about the Network - that savage world beyond the closely guarded Institute gates. But they wanted to see for themselves. They had to know. Were they really females there? Would their training as mercenaries prepare them for the wild bands of grisly subhumans? They set out on a journey of discovery only to become the unwitting agents of forces that threatened to destroy the only world they'd ever known.

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 122

Sample

Wham! Sitting in the great auditorium of the Institute Death and Disorder One-Oh-Four. Watching the films of those great events of the past, now temporarily stopped, held in perfect crystalline focus. Held, Like artifacts.

The ancient projector whirs into action again, film 16 millimeters in width, 24 frames per second, colors bright, vivid, technochromic. There is old Kennedy again, living for an instant only to the once more.

Junkies on death, all these fucking Kennedys.

The brains are blown clear through the old bugger’s skull. A slender rosy halo crowns the crimson explosion. He falls into his wife’s arms.

Then the long shapely legs of his. wife as she scrambles for the door.

The action stops. The whir and clatter of the second reel begins. Here is Kennedy II, spilling his brains in a filthy, garbage-strewn kitchen (Couldn’t they have cleaned it for the event?), the eyes calm, almost serene, curiously untouched by the violence, as though pain of death has absolved him of everything, falling, focused, watching the angles of the camera.

He has great theatrical presence, that Kennedy.

And Watts. Blacks race out of stores, clutching TVs, stereos, radios. Militants with bushy afros, long dashikis, black berets, all clenching fists and shouting slogans.

L.A. erupts into earthquakes, fissures, flames, a fiendish tribute to an age of hell.

Then Chicago in the eighties when the Twin Towers toppled, and the Prudential Building went.

Lawson’s knee prods mine. I prod his in return, daydreaming vaguely of train wrecks, auto collisions, plane crashes—of sexual connection. I ponder taking him down the hall to one of the study cubicles, where we would divest ourselves of our martial uniforms—our epaulets, chevrons, ribbons, medals—to grasp and gasp again, as the film rolls, the fires roar, the guns crash, the dance goes on.

Now Wallace has seized his stomach in the shopping center and the violence rolls on, on, on—King, Evers, Chappaquiddick, Malcolm X—till the reel spins to a stop, the tag end flapping against the machine, flickering its flopping, ticking shadow on the screen.

The lights go on.

Lawson and I, we blink, our eyes blinded by the little stabs of light that come from the ceiling like candles. Through the loudspeakers the lecture begins. Every time you see something interesting in the films they hammer you with lectures. This is the price we pay for knowledge. It is a price we pay, knowing that the duller the lectures the more interesting have been the clips.

“The common denominator,” the lecturer says, “we must seek the common denominator in all of the events we have just seen recalled. So consider, ponder some of this if you will. What have you seen here? What is the underlay? Where the link?”

Lawson and I wink at one another. We touch hands in the pause; moderate excitation, slow tumescence. “All pf this,” the lecturer says, “occurred in the cities.

“Occurred in the cities,” the voice continues. “Urbanopolis, agglomeration, cultural flux and flow. Lag, crime, disease, tension, murder, incursion against the extant systems. Consider!” he adds ecstatically, “all of this known again in the great population centers which in the middle part of the century became the primary life situation for eighty percent of the culture. Do you follow all of this so far?”

The lecturer died many years ago. What we are seeing is a plasticized, life-size reproduction of the lecturer programmed with speech. It is an old process, originated in the 1960’s I do believe, but only reconstituted within the past five years at the Institute to save expenses, and a most remarkable process it is. Although the mannequin is waxen, the devices are extremely realistic, and it is hard to realize that he would topple if the podium was suddenly rushed and pressure exerted against the form. Some errant students are rumored to have done this a year or years ago; they were instantly expelled. So desire will rumble along at the mere level of expectation.

“Think of the solution,” the speaker is saying, “the solution! It was staring authorities in their collective faces. The problems were obvious: rising alienation, violence, other factors cited all happening in direct correlation to the incidence of urban centers. The compression of population, too many thrust into little space, congestion, breakdown, failure of the geometries of space.” The mechanized lecturer is babbling incoherently but the machinery often breaks down. “Check all of your references on this tomorrow. Research! Government seeking and finding the solution at last was initially hesitant to seize procedures as bureaucratic processes force delimitation of reality for accommodation. Then throughout the period of burning hastened themselves along that course so briefly ordained, now accelerating, always accelerating.”

Film again. Now the Network is seen from a great height: a mile or more straight up, mingling in the clouds, the outlines of our buildings and roads and people vaguely perceived. Jagged those outlines; they stick out like sickly chancres through the overcast. Network is a piss-poor place; we do not have to be shown that.

Oh, richly, richly does Death and Disorder deserve its wretched reputation. Not thirty minutes into this first class of the initial session the plastic lecturer stumbles in reverse, arms flailing, legs running amuck, gears grinding. He says: “Orientation is now concluded. Reading lists distributed in the corridors.” And the lights go on full, revealing students and the hall.

From the abandoned armory, one bored part-time guard there, I find a wonderful old 1964 Cadillac in running condition. Power windows, power seats, climate control, none of them working. Four hundred and twenty-eight cubic inches in the overhead valve V-8, a wonderful, brown stain spreading from rear-quarter panels through to the fender skirts, both of which, interestingly, are intact. The engine produces flame only with the slightest urging; I manage to set timing from ancient manuals. The attendant looks at me with interest; he is not exactly sure of the limits of his duties. Does he stop me or not? He does not; he is an underclassman and the intensity of my purpose discourages him. We talk a little about the old internal-combustion machine, a device which I regard with as much reverence as my ancestors. Nothing will truly replace it in my desires; the device works. Cadillacs were among the most expensive of domestic automobiles and even with this diseased artifact there is a feeling of pervasive quality, although again it may only be my own sense of excitement. The radio in the car still works and I listen to status reports to cheer me on my work.

Lawson meanwhile is working himself. He, in fact, produces one antique pistol, five beautiful hand grenades, two handfuls of poison capsules, in addition to the usual elevators. The poison is in case of capture, of course.

“We will protect the integrity of the Institute,” he says. His influence appears to be ancient films, whereas mine is founded upon texts. Each to his own, of course, although I find him irritating.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say with a little tickle of fear. “We’re perfectly safe, armed as we are.”

“Maybe not so. You never know. They are malevolent and dangerous.”

“We’ll be safe,” I insist, “perfectly safe. Also, they’re wary of outsiders, let alone two outsiders from the Institute. We’ll be identifiable through our military insignias.”

“Not necessarily”

“They only kill one another.”

“So we have been told.”

“It’s true!” I say, “it’s true!” thinking of the pistons and levers in the Cadillac, pure machinery, the glint of that recollected steel comforting me, although I find myself shouting with a sudden burst of fear, “There’s nothing hazardous to it at all!”

“Don’t be sure,” Lawson says, looking grim, flipping me two of the poison capsules They bounce off my chest like little balls, and I must scramble to retrieve them, one by one, from the floor. Awful consequences if they are discovered on room check; surprise checks are frequent in military school. “I know only,” he adds, “that they want us to believe certain things. But there is a great difference between that which they would have us accept and the objective truth of the matter.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Otherwise,” he says, “why go at all? If it is just as they tell us then there is no need to do field research, is there? Perhaps,” he says cunningly, “you’ve changed your mind on this expedition then.”

“No. Never.”

“Are you quite sure?”

“I want to go. It was my idea,” I say. “You have to remember that.”

“They may seize your brain, destroy your mind, change your impulses.”

“I’m not a child.”

“They are cunning and vicious,” he points out. “They often attack from the rear. They are very hostile toward the Institute.”

“Ridiculous,” I say. I should point out our position in more detail at this time, objectify as it were the rigid parameters of this discussion, fill in physical detail, background, interweave expository sections with the intensity of dialogue, but I will not. There is no quality of background to my life; all is foreground: intensity, clutching, Originally I had hoped not to go to the Institute, to seek something more artistic for . . .