Turpin lifted his palms.
“How do I do that?”
“There must be ways. The Computer …”
“I ain’t no mass murderer. I been pretty rough in my time, but I ain’t going to slaughter people just to get some peace and quiet. Besides, keeping them in line gives me something to do.”
He grinned and said, “Time to get them out of the streets and into the Rosebud. We going to have a party here, and it ain’t easy to herd them in.”
He went to the wall behind the desk, said a few words, and a glowing round spot appeared. Then he uttered some codewords.
He turned, grinning even more broadly. “Man, I got the power! I’m Merlin the Magician and the Wizard of Oz rolled up in one and smoking like a ten-dollar Havana. I’m the Great God Turpinus, the black Zeus, mighty Thor the Thunderer, the Old Rainmaker, the Chief Snake Oil Seller, Mr. Bones the Puppeteer.”
Within three minutes clouds had cut off the sun, clouds that thickened and blackened. A wind whistled through the bars in the open windows and lifted the togas, kilts and skirts.
“They’ll all be inside quicker’n you can say scat to a cat,” he said. “They be bitching about getting wet, but that don’t matter.”
“There are unconscious people out there,” Alice said. “What about them?”
“They got to take their chances. Besides, it’ll do them good. Some of them need a bath. Nobody gets pneumonia, anyway.”
He gave them some instructions about keeping out of trouble if the drunks gave them a hard time. “They shouldn’t. I gave them orders they was to treat you nice even if you is white.”
“What about us?” Li Po said. “We aren’t white.”
“You are to them. Anybody who ain’t black is white. It’s a matter of fine but not subtle semantic distinction.”
Burton was partly amused by the latter statement and partly irritated. The man deliberately shifted back and forth from the English of the “well-educated to ghetto lingo as if he wanted to anger his listeners. Or perhaps to play the clown. Or both. Somewhere in him was a self-contempt engendered by the white-ruled system of his time. He might not be conscious of it, but it was there. According to Frigate, the American Negroes of the later twentieth century had overcome this, or tried to, and claimed to be proud to be black. But Turpin was still playing a game for which there was no need.
But, as Nur had said, one should not be proud to be black or white. One should only be proud to be a good human being, and that pride should watch out for stumbles.
Turpin had replied, “Yeah, but you have to go through certain stages to get there, and being proud you’re black is one of them.”
“A very good point,” Nur had said. “However, one shouldn’t get stuck in a stage. Climb on to the next one.”
They went down to the vestibule, as Turpin called it. Long before they reached it, the loud music and chatter and shrill laughter and the tsunami of alcohol, burning drugs and tobacco smote them. Everybody was inside, including those who’d passed out. These had been carried in by the androids and were lined along a wall.
“Mingle, folks!” Turpin shouted, and he waved his hand at the crowd. He did not feel he had to introduce his guests; he had shown their faces and names on the computer screens. However, his guests hesitated. It was not easy to just walk up to a group and start talking. The Dowists were repelled and scandalized and obviously were regretting having come here. Turpin, seeing this, gestured at a small group that had been standing at the far end of the bar. This made its way through the throng to the guests and began conversation. Their host had picked them out to break the ice, and he had done well. Or so it seemed at the beginning. Some of them were Second Chancers or New Christians; these went to the Dowists. Though they differed in some fundamental principles, all three religions were pacifist and theoretically tolerant. They also had a common bond in that they abhorred excessive use of alcohol and any use of tobacco or other drugs.