Warren Murphy: Acid Rock

They should be as one hand and one back and one body. The trunks should rise like swans on gilded lakes. The green one first.

And thus it came to pass that morning that the trunks, one by one, went into the room of the Master of Sinanju. The green one first.

And when all the trunks were in the room, piled one on another, the green one separate by the window, the Master of Sinanju bade them all farewell. And when they did not wish to leave such an illustrious one, insisting he tell them the somebody he was, he no longer spoke. But a strange thing began to happen. The golden swirls of the kimono rustled, and one and another and another of these followers found themselves hurled out, until the last one, he too, was outside the door. With an ugly welt on his cheek.

"He is somebody," shrieked a girl. "Only somebody would act that way. I've got to have him. I've got to have him. I want him."

Chiun opened the green trunk. In it, Remo knew, was the special television set that not only showed one channel, but taped two other networks simultaneously, because as Chiun had often said, all the good shows were on at once, the good shows being the soap operas.

Another special feature of the set was that all the Sony marks had been ground, pried, or painted off, and replaced with Made in Korea. Chiun refused to use Japanese because of what he described as a recent treacherous incident committed by the Japanese against the House of Sinanju. By going through a chart of Japanese emperors Remo had deduced that the recent incident had occurred in 1282 A.D.

According to Chiun, the Japanese emperor, hearing of the wisdom and wonder of Sinanju, had sent an emissary to the then Master of Sinanju, requesting guidance in a difficult matter. Little did the Master realize what treachery, what perfidy he was dealing with, for after giving his assistance, he realized something had been stolen. Agents of the emperor had been watching him in his tasks and they had copied his methods, thus stealing the art of Ninji, or silent night attack, from Sinanju.

"So they paid for a hit and copied some techniques," Remo had said.

"They stole that which lasts longer than rubies," said Chiun. "They stole wisdom, which I attempt to give to you and which you treat as nothing."

"How do you figure that, Little Father?"

"You do not appreciate the perfidy of the Japanese. It is good that they do not get their hands on this television set, lest they would copy that too. You cannot trust the Japanese."

"Yeah, they could rip off the whole great Korean electronics industry if the Koreans aren't careful."

When As the Planet Revolves came on, Remo went outside to see if he could find a red-headed girl of nineteen who might or might not be alive.

As Remo moved through the crowd outside the door, he heard comments of "That's nobody, he works for somebody . . . hey, stop pushing . . . hey, watch your hands ... that's nobody .., he's nobody... somebody's still inside."

He roamed the field of Farmer Tyrus amid the wafting odor of marijuana and hashish. He stepped over couples and knapsacks. At the edge of the field he avoided the tangle of cables pushing toward a raised stage where summer squash once grew. Two tall metal towers flanked the stage. An army of electricians moved with disciplined energy, checking and installing equipment. Only their beards and clothes seemed casual.

Near the stage, Remo spotted violently-red hair flowing over a knapsack. A brown-haired head was pressed to it. Both bodies were under a blanket and moving.

He bypassed two girls, helping a third who was coming out of a bad LSD trip. He went to the moving blanket and waited. And waited. He could not see the face under the red hair, so he waited some more. When he was tired of waiting, he bent down quickly and sent his two forefingers vibrating down the base of the spine of the uppermost body. He did it so quickly it looked as if he were picking a leaf off the blanket.

"Oooooh," groaned the top body in ecstasy, as Remo had expected, but the movement under the blanket did not cease.

Enough was enough. He pushed aside the short brown hair to see the face that belonged to the long red hair. It was not Vickie Stoner. It was not Vickie anyone. The her was a him and the real her was on top with the short brown hair.

"Do it again like you did before," she said. Remo went off to look for Vickie Stoner, if she were still alive. He checked the field and he checked the painted buses along the road. Every so often, he asked the question:

"I'm looking for my woman. Nineteen. Red hair. Freckles. Name's Vickie."

But there was no response. Then a gray Lincoln Continental passed him. A scarfaced man was at the wheel. Sleeping in the back was a red-haired girl with a glory of freckles. It could be. Remo saw the Continental find a parking spot a half mile down the road. Four young people and the man with the scar emerged and walked the rest of the way to the North Adams Experience. The heavyset man with the scar seemed very friendly, gesturing to the tower on the left of the bandstand. He even cleared a place for the group, roughly pushing other young people out of the way. Remo followed.

"I heard somebody is in the motel," said the redhead excitedly. It was Vickie Stoner.

Now, how could word reach so quickly, Remo wondered. He had heard that in the acid culture rumors traveled faster than light, and with surprising accuracy.

"He's somebody but we don't know who," said a young blond man with an Indian headband. Remo noticed by the way he stood what no one else had noticed, because they could only recognize a weapon from its outlines, not from the way a body reacted to carrying it. Remo knew the young blond man with the headband was armed and he was watching Vickie Stoner.

The heavyset man with the gray fedora was eyeing the left tower. He did not stand armed. But Remo could feel something strange about the way the man looked at that tower, as if he were examining it for some destructive use.

Remo sat down by Vickie Stoner, not even speaking to her. He just waited. Tyrus's field filled. There were echoes to greetings and calls, the twang of an occasional guitar.

One loud amateur voice wafted over the field, and as Remo watched Vickie Stoner fall asleep, he tried to discern the lyrics the voice was singing.

"Pie wide, sucking on a cloudstick,

Whirl the long road,

Happy tears and good-bye beers.

Drop tomorrow like yesterday's trip tick,

Pie wide, sucking on a cloudstick.

Rip your belly with chemical love.

They're driving you downward,

With Christ's rummage sale.

Pie wide. She does it like she loves it.

Pie wide, sucking on a cloudstick."

Remo asked the blond boy with the headband the meaning of the lyrics.

"It is, man. What it is, it is. You don't define it, dig?"

"Certainly," Remo said.

"It's protest."

"Against what?"

"Everything, man, dig? This fucked-up environment. The hypocrisy. The oppression."

"You like electric guitars?" Remo asked.

"The baddest."

"Do you know where electricity comes from?"

"Good karma, man."

"Generators," Remo said. "Generators. Air polluting, high faluting, generators."

"I never heard that one, man."

"Which one?"

"The lyric. That's a freak, man. Bitchen. Generators, air polluting, high faluting, generators. Baddest."

So Remo, unable to discourse in this language, shut up. He watched the man with the scar fiddle around one tower support and then another, but in such a casual way it looked as if he were just lounging around.

The Dead Meat Lice were to start at seven P.M. At six-thirty, it was announced over the loudspeakers, which could have cut through a swamp, that there would be a forty-five minute delay. At seven p.m., there was an announcement of an hour's delay. At eight-thirty, it was announced any minute now. At nine p.m., as a few harsh floodlights lit the periphery of the area, separating it from the darkness beyond, it was announced: "Here they come."