The Purple Book Read online

  Everything is purple but the prose

  RIDERS OF THE PURPLE WAGE

  (The Hugo-winning short novel)

  SPIDERS OF THE PURPLE MAGE

  THE LONG WET PURPLE DREAM OF RIP VAN WINKLE

  (X-rated as well as purple)

  in

  The Purple Book

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1962 by Philip José Farmer

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof in any form.

  A TOR Book

  First TOR printing, August 1982

  ISBN: 48-529-8

  Cover art by: Howard Chaykín

  Acknowledgements:

  The parts of this book which were first published are copyright as follows: “The Oogenesis of Bird City,” in Amazing Stories, © 1970 by Ziff-Davis by Harlan Ellison; “Spiders of the Purple Mage,” in Tales From the Vulgar Unicorn, © 1980 by Philip Jose Farmer; “The Making of Revelation, Part I,” in After the Fall, © 1980 by Robert Sheckley; “The Long Wet Purple Dream of Rip van Winkle.” in Puritan, © 1981 by Puritan Publishing, Inc., as “The Long Wet Dream of Rip van Winkle.”

  Printed in the United States of America

  Distributed by

  Pinnacle Books, Inc.

  1430 Broadway

  New York, New York 10018

  CONTENTS

  Prologue to Riders of the Purple Wage

  The Oögenesis of Bird City

  RIDERS OF THE PURPLE WAGE

  or The Great Gavage

  SPIDERS OF THE PURPLE MAGE

  THE MAKING OF REVELATION, PART I

  THE LONG WET PURPLE DREAM OF RIP VAN WINKLE

  Prologue to Riders of the Purple Wage

  The

  Oögenesis

  of

  Bird City

  The President of the U.S.A. sat at the desk of the mayor of Upper Metropolitan Los Angeles, Level 1. There was no question of where the mayor was to sit. Before the office of mayor could be filled, the electorate had to move into the city.

  The huge room was filled with U.S. cabinet heads and bureau chiefs, senators, state governors, industrial and educational magnates, union presidents, and several state GIP presidents. Most of them were watching the TV screens covering one part of the curving wall.

  Nobody looked through the big window behind the President, even though this gave a view of half of the city. Outside the municipal building, the sky was blue with a few fleecy clouds. The midsummer sun was just past the zenith, yet the breeze was cool; it was 73°F everywhere in the city. Of the 200,000 visitors, at least one-third were collected around tour-guides. Most of the hand-carried football-sized TV cameras of the reporters were focused at that moment on one man.

  Government spieler: “Ladies ’n gentlemen, you’ve been personally conducted through most of this city and you now know almost as much as if you’d stayed home and watched it on TV. You’ve seen everything but the interior of the houses, the inside of your future homes. You’ve been amazed at what Uncle Sam, and the state of California, built here, a Utopia, an Emerald City of Oz, with you as the Wizard…”

  Heckler (a large black woman with an M.A. in Elementary School Electronic Transference): “The houses look more like the eggs that Dorothy used to frighten the Nome King with!”

  Spieler (managing to glare and smile at the same time); “Lady, you’ve been shooting your mouth off so much, you must be an agent for the Anti-Bodies! You didn’t take the pauper’s oath; you took the peeper’s oath!”

  Heckler (bridling): “I’ll sue you for defamation of character and public ridicule!”

  Spieler (running his gaze up and down her whale-like figure): “Sue, sue, sooie! No wonder you’re so sensitive about eggs, lady.

  There’s something ovoid about you!”

  The crowd laughed. The President snorted disgustedly and spoke into a disc strapped to his wrist. A man in the crowd, the message relayed through his ear plug, spoke into his wrist transmitter, but the spieler gestured as if to say, “This is my show! Jump in the lake if you don’t like it!”

  Spieler: “You’ve seen the artificial lake in the center of the city with the municipal and other buildings around it. The Folk Art Center, the Folk Recreation Center, the hospital, university, research center, and the PANDORA, the people’s all-necessities depot of regulated abundance. You’ve been delighted and amazed with the fairyland of goodies that Uncle Sam, and the State of California, offers you free. Necessities and luxuries, too, since Luxury Is A Necessity, to quote the FBC. You want anything—anything!—you go to the PANDORA, press some buttons, and presto! you’re rich beyond your dreams!”

  Heckler: “When the lid to Pandora’s box was opened, all the evils in the world flew out, and…”

  Spieler: “No interruptions, lady! We’re on a strict time schedule…”

  Heckler: “Why? We’re not going anyplace!”

  Spieler: “I’ll tell you where you can go, lady.”

  Heckler: “But…”

  Spieler: “But me no buts, lady! You know, you ought to go on a diet!”

  Heckler: (struggling to control her temper): “Don’t get personal, big mouth! I’m big, all right, and I got a wallop, too, remember that. Now, Pandora’s box…”

  The spieler made a vulgar remark, at which the crowd laughed. The heckler shouted but could not be heard above the noise.

  The President shifted uneasily. Kingbrook, the 82-year-old senator from New York, harumphed and said. “The things they permit nowadays in public media. Really, it’s disgusting…”

  Some of the screens on the wall of the mayor’s office showed various parts of the interior of the city. One screen displayed a view from a helicopter flying on the oceanside exterior of Upper Metropolitan LA. It was far enough away to get the entire structure in its camera, including the hundred self-adjusting cylinders that supported the Brobdingnagian plastic cube and the telescoping elevator shafts dangling from the central underbase. Beneath the shadow of box and legs was the central section of the old city and the jagged sprawl of the rest of Los Angeles and surrounding cities.

  The President stabbed towards the screen with a cigarette and said. “Screen 24, gentlemen. The dark past below. The misery of a disrupted ant colony. Above it, the bright complex of the future. The chance for everyone to realize the full potentiality as a human being.”

  Spieler: “Before I conduct you into this house, which is internally just like every other private residence…”

  Heckler: “Infernally, you mean. They all look just alike on the outside, too.”

  Spieler: “Lady, you’re arousing my righteous wrath. Now, folks, you noticed that all the buildings, municipal and private, are constructed like eggs. This futuristic design was adopted because the egg shape, according to the latest theory, is that of the universe. No corners, all curving, infinity within a confined space, if you follow me.”

  Heckler: “I don’t!”

  Spieler: “Take off a little weight, lady, and you’ll be in shape to keep up with the rest of us. The ovoid form gives you a feeling of unbounded space yet of security-closeness. When you get inside…”

  Every house was a great smooth white plastic egg lifted 18.28 meters above the floor of the city by a thick truncated-cone support. (Offscreen commentators explained that 18.18 meters was 20 feet, for the benefit of older viewers who could not adjust to the new system of measurement.) On two sides of the cone were stairs ending at a horizontal door on the lower side of the ovoid. These opened automatically to permit entrance. Also, a door opened in the cone base, and an elevator inside lifted the sick or cr
ippled or, as the spieler put it, “the just plain lazy, everybody’s got a guaranteed right to be lazy.” The hollow base also housed several electrical carts for transportation around the city.

  The President saw Kierson, the Detroit automobile magnate, frown at the carts. The auto industry had shifted entirely from internal combustion motors to electrical and nuclear power ten years ago, and now Kierson saw the doom of these. The President made a mental note to pacify and reassure him on this point later.

  Spieler: “…Variety Within Unity, folks. You’ve heard a lot about that on FBC, and these houses are an example. In reply to the lady’s anxiety about the houses all looking alike, every home owner can paint the outside of his house to express his individuality. Anything goes. From reproductions of Rembrandt to psychedelic dreams to dirty words, if you got the guts. Everything’s free, including speech…”

  Heckler: “They’ll look like a bunch of Easter eggs!”

  Spieler: “Lady, Uncle Sam is The Big Easter Bunny!”

  The spieler took the group into the house, and the cameramen went into the atrium, kitchen, and the ten rooms to show the viewers just what the citizens-to-be were getting for nothing.

  “For nothing!” Senator Kingbrook growled. “The taxpayers are paying through the nose, through every orifice, with their sweat and blood for this!”

  The President said, mildly, “They won’t have to in the future, as I’ll explain.”

  “You don’t have to explain anything to any of us,” Kingbrook said. “We all know all about the economy of abundance versus the economy of scarcity. And about your plans for the transitional stage, which you call ORE, obverse-reverse economy, but which I call schizophrenic horrors in tremens!”

  The President smiled and said, “You’ll have your say, Senator.”

  The men and women in the room were silent for a while as they watched the spieler extol the splendors and virtues of the house with its soundproof walls, the atrium with its pool, the workshop with machinery for crafts, the storeroom, the bedroom-studios, TV in every room, retractable and inflatable furniture, air-conditioning, microfilm library, and so on.

  Government shill: “This is fabulous! A hell of a lot better than any noisy rat-ridden dump on the ground!”

  Spieler (quoting an FBC slogan): “Happy and free as the birds in the air! That’s why everybody calls this Bird City and why the citizens are known as freebirds! Everything first class! Everything free!”

  Heckler: “Except freedom to live where you want to in the type of house you want!”

  Spieler: “Lady, unless you’re a millionaire, you won’t be able to get a house on the ground that isn’t just like every other house. And then you’d have to worry about it being burned down. Lady, you’d gripe if you was hung with a new rope!”

  The group went outside where the spieler pointed out that, though they were three hectometers above ground, they had trees and grass in small parks. If they wanted to fish or boat, they could use the lake in the municipal-building area.

  Shill: “Man, this is living!”

  Spieler: “The dome above the city looks just like the sky outside. The sun is an electronic reproduction; its progress exactly coincides with that of the real sun. Only, you don’t have to worry about it getting too cold or too hot in here or about it raining. We even got birds in here.”

  Heckler; “What about the robins? Come springtime, how’re they going to get inside without a pass?”

  Spieler. “Lady, you got a big mouth! Whyn’t you…”

  The President rose from his chair. Kingbrook’s face was wrinkled, fissured, and folded with old age. The red of his anger made his features look like hot lava on a volcano slope just after an eruption. His rich rumble pushed against the eardrums of those in the room as if they were in a pressure chamber.

  “A brave new concentration camp, gentlemen! Fifty billion dollars worth to house 50,000 people! The great bankruptopolis of the future! I estimate it’ll cost one trillion dollars just to enclose this state’s population in these glorified chicken runs!”

  “Not if ORE is put into effect,” the President said. He held up his hand to indicate silence and said, “I’d like to hear Guildman, gentlemen. Then we can have our conferences.”

  Senator Beaucamp of Mississippi muttered, “One trillion dollars! That would house, feed, and educate the entire population of my state for twenty years!”

  The President signalled to cut off all screens except the FBC channel. The private network commentators were also speaking, but the federal commentator was the important one. His pitch was being imitated—if reluctantly—by the private networks. Enough pressure and threats had been applied to make them wary of going all-out against the President. Although the mass media had been restrained, the speech of private persons had not been repressed. For one thing, the public needed a safety valve. Occasionally, a private speaker was given a chance to express himself on TV and radio. And so, a cavalry charge of invectives had been and was being hurled at the President. He had been denounced as an ultra-reactionary, a degenerate liberal, a Communist, a Fascist, a vulture, a pig, a Puritan, a pervert, a Hitler, etc., and had been hung in absentia so many times that an enterprising manufacturer of effigies had made a small fortune—though taxes made it even smaller.

  From cavalry to Calvary, he thought. All charges admitted. All charges dented. I am human, and that takes in everything. Even the accusation of fanaticism. I know that what I’m doing is right, or, at least, the only known way. When the Four Horsemen ride, the countercharge cannot be led by a self-doubter.

  The voice of the Great Guildman, as he was pleased to be called, throbbed through the room. Chief FBC commentator, bureau executive, Ph.D. in Mass Communications, G-90 rating, one who spoke with authority, whose personal voltage was turned full-on, who could, some said, have talked God into keeping Adam and Eve in the garden.

  “…cries out! The people, the suffering earth itself, cry out! The air is poisoned! The water is poisoned! The soil is poisoned! Mankind is poisoned with the excess of his genius for survival! The wide walls of the Earth have become narrowed! Man, swelling like a tumor with uncontrolled growth, kills the body that gave him birth! He is squeezing himself into an insane mold which crushes his life out, crushes all hope for an abundant life, security, peace, quiet, fulfillment, dignity…”

  The audience, tuning in on forty channels, was well aware of this; he was painting a picture the oils of which had been squeezed from their own pain. And so Guildman did not tarry overlong at these points. He spoke briefly of the dying economy of scarcity, obsolete in the middle 1900’s but seeming vigorous, like a sick man with a fatal disease who keeps going on larger and larger shots of drugs and on placebos. Then he splashed bright colors over the canvas of the future.

  Guildman went on about the population expansion, automation, the ever-growing permanently depressed class and its riots and insurrections, the ever-decreasing and ever-overburdened taxpayers with their strikes and riots, the Beverly Hills Massacre, the misery, crime, anger, etc.

  The President repressed an impulse to squirm. There would be plenty of blacks and grays in The Golden World (the President’s own catch-phrase). Utopia could never exist. The structure of human society, in every respect, had a built-in instability, which meant that there would always be a certain amount of suffering and maladjustment. There were always victims of change.

  But that could not be helped. And it was a good thing that change was the unchanging characteristic of society. Otherwise, stagnation, rigidity, and loss of hope for improvement would result.

  Beaucamp leaned close to the President and said softly, “Plenty of people have pointed out that the economy of abundance eventually means the death of capitalism. You’ve never commented on this, but you can’t keep silent much longer.”

  “When I do speak,” the President said, “I’ll point out that EOA also means the death of socialism and communism. Besides, there’s nothing sacred in an economic system, exc
ept to those who confuse money with religion. Systems are made for man, not vice versa.”

  Kingbrook rose from his sofa, his bones cracking, and walked stiffly towards the President.

  “You’ve rammed through this project despite the opposition of the majority of taxpayers! You used methods that were not only unconstitutional, sir! I know for a fact that criminal tactics were used, blackmail and intimidation, sir! But you will go no more on your Caesar’s road! This project has beggared our once wealthy nation, and we are not going to build any more of your follies! Your grandiose—and wicked—Golden World will be as tarnished as brass, as green as fool’s gold, by the time that I am through with you! Don’t underestimate me and my colleagues, sir!”

  “I know of your plans to impeach me,” the President said with a slight smile. “Now, Senators Beaucamp and Kingbrook, and you, Governor Corrigan, would you step into the mayor’s apartment? I’d like to have a few words—I hope they’re few—with you.”

  Kingbrook. breathing heavily, said, “My mind is made up, Mr. President. I know what’s wrong and what’s right for our country. If you have any veiled threats or insidious proposals, make them in public, sir! In this room, before these gentlemen!”

  The President looked at the embarrassed faces, the stony, the hostile, the gleeful, and then glanced at his wristwatch. He said, “I only ask five minutes.”

  He continued, “I’m not slighting any of you. I intend to talk to all of you in groups selected because of relevant subjects. Three to five minutes apiece will let us complete our business before the post-dedication speeches. Gentlemen!” And he turned and strode through the door.

  A few seconds passed, and then the three, stiff-faced, stiff-backed, walked in.

  “Sit down or stand as you please,” the President said.

  There was a silence Kingbrook lit a cigar and took a chair. Corrigan hesitated and then sat near Kingbrook. Beaucamp remained standing. The President stood before them.

  He said, “You’ve seen the people who toured this city. They’re the prospective citizens. What is their outstanding common characteristic?”