Ambient 06 - Going, Going, Gone

gorillas. Then foreign tourists – the ones that mattered, Canadians and Argentinians and Australians – raised enough of a ruckus that they moved him here, where at least he nominally fit in within an anthropological framework.
    »Sambo?« Eulie said, giving me bugeyes.
    »Nickname,« I said, reading the label on the mahogany part of the case. »First one of his kind ever brought over.« I reconsidered. »Of his tribe.«
    »Masai,« she said. I couldn’t remember what his real name had been; remembered it sounded just as made up. He was as tall as Chlojo, but only half as wide – all muscle, posed on one foot, a long spear cradled in one arm. His skin was as dark as an oxblood loafer, I suspected they waxed him periodically, to keep him fresh. »He’s Masai.«
    »May as well be Cherokee.«
    »Brought here in 1917?«
    »And sent to the Bronx Zoo,« I said. »Didn’t stay too long, though. Died in the pandemic.« I tried to remember the name of the disease no one caught anymore, the one that took all four of my grandparents. »Brainbuster.« Eulie and Chlo looked at one another and nodded, and kept staring in the case, at the man who wasn’t man, not officially, not here. You’d have thought their moms would have warned them about things like this, but maybe they never had the chance. Or maybe they were Canadians after all, and sheltered from the more mindboggling acts of their neighbours to the South.
    »Zoo?« Chlo asked.
    »Genetic upkeepery,« said Eulie. »None protested?«
    »Only ones’d protest would have too much reason to complain,« I said. »Maybe it’s not that bad a thing. Long time from now, I don’t know where I’ll be, but chances are good he’ll still be around.«
    I turned down the volume; we seemed to be alone in the room, but you can never be too careful when it comes to acoustic tricks in these old Victorian barns. »Even so, speaking personally, I can’t hang out in this joint without thinking I might wind up in one of these boxes myself.« I started to think that if I stuck around much longer, I’d start making with the boohoos myself. »Come on, ladies. I need to pick up something at my place before we make the scene tonight.«
     

SEVEN
    The something that needed picking up before we hit the Astor was a standard-issue test tube containing 30 parts distilled water to one part phenylethylamine isoergine-144, an especially delirious new compound tagged by the Interior Department’s pocket protectors as Pi-R2. Now it strikes me as probable that some of you have passed what idle newspapermen call the acid test. Six months earlier, while the finishing touches were still being put on, I gave Pi a try. Let me tell you, my brothers, the difference between the trip LSD-25 gives you and the one you get from Pi is like the difference between your old granny pinching your cheek and the Homicide boys hauling you into the back room and making you believe you took a razor to Shirley Temple. And like that perm-a-muggles Chlojo gave me, you only had to let your finger do the walking through the stuff to get the right size hit, that is, one which dropkicked you right there into a twenty-eight-hour ride on the Cyclone, nineteen hours of which consisted of the old peakeroo.
    The wise man knows that that way lies dementia praecox. Once I splashed down, and spent a week recovering, I presented my report, suggesting that it might not be a bad idea if they just stuck Pi in the storage room, back there with the smallpox and anthrax, but I don’t have to tell you that in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is ignored.
    Considering that to the best of my knowledge the Personality Dynamos weren’t familiar with anything stronger than strawberry mesc, dosing the punchbowl with Pi would make sure that if the hapless Dynos had personalities of even an animal sort prior to sipping, they would be tabula rasae afterward. But a further mixing would bring the trip down to a bearable state; I simply wasn’t sure how much mixing would be necessary.
     
    We made the Astor at six forty-five. I’d changed into my dullest suit, a slate-blue single-b model that made me look like an accountant who could be persuaded to forget how to add. In her little black mini Eulie blended in beautifully. Chlojo, however, still presented problems no matter how good the camouflage. Her muumuu was colourful enough as street wear, but in close quarters it made her look like a one-woman parade float. Every time she took a step