Robert Wilson - SCHRODINGER'S CAT TRILOGY

"Funny," Mendoza said. "Remind me to laugh on my day off. That attitude is going to get you in a lot of trouble some fine day, my friend."

You must take the bull by the tail and look the facts in the face.

–W. C. fields

The first Furbish Lousewart was a retainer on the Greystoke estate in England in the thirteenth century. He was a foundling, the bastard offspring of the local curate and a nun who, oddly enough, later told Chaucer a story he considered good enough to retell in verse. The nun was also the model for the Prioress in the earliest Tarot deck and her basic features remained even after that card became the Female Pope and, later, the High Priestess.

Lord Greystoke named the infant Furbish Lousewart because he looked so dainty when they found him in the manger. Furbish Lousewart was as dainty a name as you could have in Merrie England in those days, being the vernacular term for herba pedicularis, a most lovely flower of the snapdragon species.

Furbish Lousewart grew to manhood, married, fathered three legitimate children and died in the Third Crusade. One of his illegitimate children, by Lady Greystoke, was the only Greystoke to survive that Crusade and carried on the Greystoke line, unknown to his brothers and sisters, who continued the plebeian line of Lousewarts.

Everyone who is a lawyer must either be mentally defective by nature or be bound to become so in time.

–furbish lousewart v, Unsafe Wherever You Go

And Dr. Glopberger, like Frankenstein, looked on his work and saw that it was very good. So far.

But the nurse, Ms. Ida Pingala, returning along the long white hall permeated with Lysol to the snug white cubicle of the nurses' lounge, seated herself smoothing the starched white hem of her skirt over her pale white knees and punched numbers quick and neat on the phone console, white keys on white plastic the colorless allcolor of antiseptic sterility.

"Ubu, here," came the Voice in her ear.

"Roy. It's Ida." Ms. Pingala was equally crisp.

Sounds of canine panting; Roy was always a cut-up.

Ms. Pingala laughed merrily. "Tonight?" she asked.

Sounds of louder, more passionate panting.

She giggled again. "Your place or mine?"

"Yours. You know how the Bureau is…"

"Eightish?"

"Nineish, to be on the safe side. All hell is breaking loose again."

"Nineish, then. You devil."

More panting.

"Oh you devil you wild man you animal."

"Nineish gotto go now love you bye."

Roy Ubu, in Washington,* hangs up and glances at his wristwatch. Time for the meeting with Babbit.

*Terran Archives 2803: Washington was the capital city of Unistat. It was governed ostensibly by a baseball team called the Senators, but by the time of our story real control had fallen into the hands of the FBI and the Beast.

A listless Santa Claus dingdonging his bell with empty junkie eyes as light snow fell in sparse crystals, not sticking to the sidewalk, but a biting Washington wind stings Ubu's eyes as he leaves the FBI office, turning up his collar to slouch hands deep in pocket to his car. Shifting from first gear into second turning up Pennsylvania Avenue the snowflakes growing thicker and heavier as he drives, snaps on the car radio.

and so the second black uprising in Miami has ended in flame and tragedy. In Washington, President Lousewart is meeting this morning with the Stentorian Ambassador to discuss balance of payments amid a mood of cautious optimism. Parents in Bad Ass, Texas, continue to keep their children out of school in the bitter dispute over biofeedback training. School Superintendent B. S. Curve, still hospitalized from the bomb blast which destroyed

Ubu parks carefully with neat precision flashing his ID at the Secret Service man to be passed quickly into the White House over thick carpets under brilliant chandeliers to the ofFice of Mountbatten Babbit, scientific advisor to the President: a bald and ovoid head with impatiently piercing eyes that scanned for the exact measurement and the precisely calibrated number.

"This ah is a very delicate matter," Babbit began at once. "We give it an Urgent rating but at the same time we do not wish to alarm the public you understand the whole investigation must be carried on with kid gloves as they say The President Himself has instructed me to make it clear to you, to make it absolutely clear, that no leaks will be tolerated no leaks whatsoever or a very big ax will fall on the whole Bureau a very big ax have I made myself clear?"

"Yes sir absolutely sir."

"Good. Now, have you noticed a certain ah a certain decline in American science and technology in recent years a withering away of talent and originality so to speak?"

"Well sir law is my background you know sir I wouldn't know a test tube from a bevatron sir…"

"The decline has been accelerating and is becoming critical in some respects, critical."

"Yes sir but so what sir a lot of science is classified as non-ec and not very popular with the Administration."

Babbit's eyes were scanning Ubu without warmth. "You think it is possible to draw a hard line a sharp boundary between ec science and non-ec science?"

"Well of course sir President Lousewart himself is always saying…"

"I'm not talking about Administration rhetoric Mr. Ubu I am talking about reality. Could you draw such a line and say this is ec research and this is non-ec?"

"Well sir I don't get involved in politics I investigate and find out the facts and that's my job sir administrative decisions are not our business at the Bureau."

"There is no difference between ec and non-ec science," Babbit said with icy deliberation. "I will never say that in public as long as I am part of the Administration you understand the President has a right to expect loyalty from Members of the Team of course but I tell you in private ec and non-ec are terms in theology in metaphysics in value judgment, they have nothing to do with science. It's all as absurd as saying some research is chocolate and some is vanilla and the chocolate is better than the vanilla."

"Yes sir I understand you sir you have my word I'll never repeat any of this sir."

"Good now officially the Administration only wishes to discourage non-ec science but in fact we are suffering a drastic a dangerous possibly a lethal decline in all science right across the board…"

"But sir isn't that what President Lousewart stands for? Tightening our belts, the simple rugged life of our pioneer ancestors, lowered expectations…"

You damned fool we're not talking about political speeches we're talking about the realities of survival." Uh yes sir yes."

"Survival dammit survival."

But quantumly inseparable from Ubu nurse Ida Pingala peeks into the Wildeblood room to see if the patient is sleeping comfortably (always got to be careful with these rich bitches especially the types we get here in Trans-sexuality Surgery rather be back in obs so helpless and adorable they are even if some of the mothers shouldn't be raising kittens much less humans) and leans fixing the hem on her skirt as the figure in the bed gurgles a half-snore mutter "Master… escape…"

Another quantum jump:

"One hundred thirty-two?" Ubu repeated.

"Those are the figures that came out of the Beast," Babbit said evenly. "One hundred thirty-two of the top scientific minds who've left government since the ec programs were implemented are not working for private industry, teaching at universities, or anywhere else to be found."

It may have been coincidence or synchronicity or the quantum inseparability principle (QUIP), but the very same day that Epicene Wildeblood became Mary Margaret Wildeblood in Baltimore and Babbit briefed Roy Ubu on the Brain Drain mystery in Washington, Blake Williams was teaching a class at Columbia and Hugo de Naranja was a student in it. Since Hugo was the first human being who ever saw the Cat, he should have been paying close attention to Williams, but in fact he was a poet and felt it his duty to be bored by all the sciences. Hugo would settle for a gentleman's C in "The Anthropology °f Quantum Physics." Hugo was a Santaria initiate, the third ex-husband of Carol Christmas, and (although he didn't know it) he worked for Hassan i Sabbah X.