I said, “Mike, for Bog’s sake! Blown all circuits? Or planning to give us away?”
Before he could sulk Prof said, “Hold on, Manuel; I see possibilities. Mike, would it suit you to take a pen name?”
That’s how “Simon Jester” was born. Mike picked it apparently by tossing random numbers. But he used another name for serious verse, his Party name, Adam Selene.
“Simon’s” verse was doggerel, bawdy, subversive, ranging from poking fun at vips to savage attacks on Warden, system, Peace Dragoons, finks. You found it on walls of public W.C.s, or on scraps of paper left in tube capsules: Or in taprooms. Wherever they were they were signed “Simon Jester” and with a matchstick drawing of a little horned devil with big grin and forked tail. Sometimes he was stabbing a fat man with a pitchfork. Sometimes just his face would appear, big grin and horns, until shortly even horns and grin meant “Simon was here.”
Simon appeared all over Luna same day and from then on never let up. Shortly he started receiving volunteer help; his verses and little pictures, so simple anybody could draw them, began appearing more places than we had planned. This wider coverage had to be from fellow travelers. Verses and cartoons started appearing inside Complex–which could not have been our work; we never recruited civil servants. Also, three days after initial appearance of a very rough limerick, one that implied that Warden’s fatness derived from unsavory habits, this limerick popped up on pressure-sticky labels with cartoon improved so that fat victim flinching from Simon’s pitchfork was recognizably Mort the Wart. We didn’t buy them, we didn’t print them. But they appeared in L-City and Novylen and Hong Kong, stuck almost everywhere–public phones, stanchions in corridors, pressure locks, ramp railings, other. I had a sample count made, fed it to Mike; he reported that over seventy thousand labels had been used in L-City alone.
I did not know of a printing plant in L-City willing to risk such a job and equipped for it. Began to wonder if might be another revolutionary cabal?
Simon’s verses were such a success that he branched out as a poltergeist and neither Warden nor security chief was allowed to miss it. “Dear Mort the Wart,” ran one letter. “Do please be careful from midnight to four hundred tomorrow. Love & Kisses, Simon”–with horns and grin. In same mail Alvarez received one reading: “Dear Pimplehead, If the Warden breaks his leg tomorrow night it will be your fault. Faithfully your conscience, Simon”–again with horns and smile.
We didn’t have anything planned; we just wanted Mort and Alvarez to lose sleep–which they did, plus bodyguard. All Mike did was to call Warden’s private phone at intervals from midnight to four hundred–an unlisted number supposedly known only to his personal staff. By calling members of his personal staff simultaneously and connecting them to Mort Mike not only created confusion but got Warden angry at his assistants–he flatly refused to believe their denials.
But was luck that Warden, goaded too far, ran down a ramp. Even a new chum does that only once. So he walked on air and sprained an ankle–close enough to a broken leg and Alvarez was there when it happened.
Those sleep-losers were mostly just that. Like rumor that Authority catapult had been mined and would be blown up, another night. Ninety plus eighteen men can’t search a hundred kilometers of catapult in hours, especially when ninety are Peace Dragoons not used to p-suit work and hating it–this midnight came at new earth with Sun high; they were outside far longer than is healthy, managed to cook up their own accidents while almost cooking themselves, and showed nearest thing to mutiny in regiment’s history. One accident was fatal. Did he fall or was he pushed? A sergeant.
Midnight alarums made Peace Dragoons on passport watch much taken by yawning and more bad-tempered, which produced more clashes with Loonies and still greater resentment both ways–so Simon increased pressure.
Adam Selene’s verse was on a higher plane. Mike submitted it to Prof and accepted his literary judgment (good, I think) without resentment. Mike’s scansion and rhyming were perfect, Mike being a computer with whole English language in his memory and able to search for a fitting word in microseconds. What was weak was self-criticism. That improved rapidly under Prof’s stern editorship.