T HE ROOM WAS AWASH THE ROOM WAS AWASH with more lasers and open flame than the invasion of Iraq, more smoke and mirrors than the press briefings afterward. The music was so loud, carved figures on the Mayan temples outside were stuffing small lizards in their ears. Tourists lolled in expensively casual versions of local dress — the sort that put real locals into convulsions. Liebnitz wore a puce and magenta striped serape over scarlet trousers, topped by a two metre wide sombrero that had so far knocked over a potted palm, two potted tourists, a head-high stack of guacamole bowls and a passing mariachi band (earning him extended applause). Chief MacBannock wore lime green Bermuda shorts and a chartreuse Hawaiian shirt covered with dodos. Suspiciously, he sipped what he sincerely co see a sell are curlie vill a paper umorella in It. Between them, Bugbyte O’Nanotek looked cool in black shantung and shades. She also looked as if she wanted separate tables. Preferably on separate planets.
The Chief pulled out a cellphone and dialled a complicated sequence. Liebnitz’s hat began to ring, but stopped when he pulled it over his face as if taking a siesta. Bugbyte flipped down a mouthpiece from the temple of her sunglasses. “I called this briefing at the Chicxulub Club,” began MacBannock, “because it is our target zone, because time is short and because no-one here expects us.” “Where’s the Spanish Inquisition when you really need it?” murmured Bugbyte. “Or the Cone of Silence,” agreed Liebnitz.
THE CHIEF went on, “The Club was just built on the spot where an asteroid landed 65 million years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs. That set off our pattern detectors – that and the owner’s name: Möbius Fong, aka Fong the Endlessly Twisted.” Bugbyte nodded. “I saw his band on stage. The Deathbunnies. But why give space to the world’s other loudest heavy metal groups? He hates competition. Both Edible Granite and the Gothic Zydeco Band can deliver. All three bands have played here for weeks.” “It’s cover,” replied Liebnitz. “Fong has been drilling in the basement to get to the core of the asteroid, half a kilometre down. To cover the noise, he had a battle of the bands, then awarded long gigs as prizes. Edible Granite won fair and square as part of their revival tour (“Still Indigestible”) and ex-agent Mabel Stanley — now Rani of SuWaNee — rejoined them and has been digging around for us. She says Fong will reach the core tonight. Gothic Zydeco got in by ensuring that the competition was permanently misplaced. Its leader, Papa Jack Paridy has been snooping too, and there have been sightings of Rialto Sleazewagon.” “Well summarised, Ludwig,” the Chief broke in, “even if you are talking through your hat.”
“But why is everyone so interested in this rock?” asked Bugbyte. “It’s a religious fight,” said the ace logician. “Fong belongs to the Temple of the Vengeful Apostrophe, a devil cult with a cosmological belief in cold dark matter, the missing mass of the universe, a belief that transcends recourse to mere fact.” “Doesn’t all cosmology?” asked Bugbyte. “Yes, of course,” said the Chief, “but the cult believes that the asteroid core is an actual chunk of cold dark matter, one that will put the Higgs boson in its place, win millions of converts and get Fong what he craves most — a spot on reality TV.”
“What about Sleazewagon and Paridy?” Bugbyte continued, “They’re not religious.” “But they are for hire,” said Liebnitz, “In this case, by Don Gordo Beluga, who believes the core is a leftover from the banquet of the gods, a piece of celestial fruitcake.” “Don Gordo would certainly know,” agreed MacBannock, “and not just because he owns the biggest collection of fruitcakes outside the Beltway.” Liebnitz went on: “Our computer ally, GEODE, tells us that the core is probably a chunk of antimatter — suspended in a natural magnetic field. Damn good thing, or the blast when it touched normal matter – the kind of blast that will follow if Fong or Sleazewagon release the core — would make the original impact look like a slap on the butt.”
“WE ALL KNOW that the core can be released by touching it with a magical metal flower, but nobody yet knows which metal or which flower. We’re all waiting for word from our researchers.” MacBannock raised his eyebrows. “A magical metal flower, Ludwig?” Liebnitz coughed and looked embarrassed. “Yeah, well. The idea is irrationally in tune with the superstitious fantasies of the other two teams. For us, it’s simply the scientific consequence of the sub-atomic structure and topological conformation necessary to achieve a safe implosion. I hope.”
Just then, a rotund figure bounced into the hall, dressed as a Spanish courtier in robin’s egg blue and salmon pink. (“My God,” cried MacBannock, “the very colours of the 1938 Ontario licence plate. I didn’t think anyone could wear that combination and live — even Don Gordo.” “Explains why my solar-grays just went opaque, though,” said Bugbyte.) Faking nonchalance badly, the figure minced toward Gothic Zydeco’s bandstand. Mere metres short of it, he tripped over a limbo dancer, staggered off-balance and flattened the mariachi band (which was just tuning up again), skidded on a life-size statue of Carmen Miranda carved from the world’s largest banana and toppled heavily into Papa Jack’s upright Steinway, from which a player piano roll unwound. “At last,” cried the musician, as he tore off the paper and scurried down a nearby flight of stairs, followed by a Klieg light with a pencil-thin moustache, the rest of the band and Don Gordo.
Meanwhile, Möbius Fong was approached by a skinny man riding a bicycle, who handed him two white bags and stood with his hand out. “That’s outrageous!” Fong screamed as he read the bill. “Three hundred pesos for stir-fried iguana and bat with lobster sauce! ! won’t pay!” The Deathbunnies had meanwhile found the fortune cookies and were cracking them open, yanking out the small strips inside and frantically fitting them together like a jigsaw puzzle. Just as they finished and raced after Gothic Zydeco, a giant duck with a wide painted mustache and glasses descended on wires from the ceiling over MacBannock’s table and announced: “Say the secret woid and winna hun’red dallahs.” MacBannock looked startled. “But I didn’t say anything.” “Fine,” sighed the duck, “so the secret woid was ’silence’. Just take the envelope, OK?” Bugbyte did so and soon she and Ludwig were poring over the following puzzle. THE BLANK SQUARES in the chart make up 19 horizontal words, one for each numbered clue. The only vertical words are the two (one after the other) that make up the one blank column reaching from the top to the bottom of the chart. There are no clues for these two words. All 21 of the words in the chart have something in common. Once the words are all filled in, collect together all the letters that have a I in their square, all the letters that have a 2 and all the letters that have a 3. Each of the three sets makes up an anagram; the three anagrams together with the number 1958 form the clue to a two-word phrase with much the same common element as the words in the chart.
1. Parts of ABM
2. Remedy for poison
3. City and see in ancient Syria
4. Disappointing finale
5. 1939 Germany-Japan pact
6. Town and bay in Nova Scotia
7. Town across the bay from Nice
8. Settled aversion
9. Greater or Lesser in the Caribbea
10. Range between Beirut and
Damascus
11. US Civil War site
12. Italian starter
13. The enemy at the end of the
world
14. Alcohol in the radiator
15. Unconventional protagonist
16. Island at the mouth of the
St. Lawrence
17. Oedipus’ daughter
18. Old Philippine province
19. Old-fashioned furniture cover
“Right,” said the ace logician. “The two vertical words define the metal flower we need. Typical of GEODE to use the Latin rather than the common name. Let’s get down to the core before the world goes up.” Mabel rushed over, saying: “There’s only one way to get there in time.” Leading the way backstage, she hauled up a trapdoor labelled Somebody Else’s Problem (“It’s amazing how nobody ever looks there…”) and jumped fearlessly down the steep glassy chute it revealed. Liebnitz and Bugbyte followed and the Chief’s dithering was quickly resolved when he tripped over a lost maraca and went in head first, leaving the trapdoor open behind him. Their descent broken by an immense pile of under-baked tortillas, they entered a vast cave lit by the eerie phosphorescence of hundreds of crystal stalactites. Before them, the other teams stood in silent awe around a wide bowl of darkly gleaming iron. Above its centre whirled a presence at once cold and burning, imprecise of form yet compelling to the eye, redolent of galactic distance and intimate evil, breathing a faint fragrance of dates, rum and candied cherries. “The heart of the demon,” intoned Fong. “The hammer of the world,” said Liebnitz. “The ultimate fruitcake,” moaned Don Gordo.
Jolted aware by the newcomers, Fong lunged for a nearby rack of drawers, opened one to reveal a gleaming object and dashed back holding it up. “A golden peony, ” he said in triumph. “No closer to the core,” warned Don Gordo, as Sleazewagon levelling a flintlock pistol at the club-owner. “For I have the real key.” Flipping open a pomander, he pulled out a lead magnolia, but stopped n his tracks as Fong drew down on him. _iebnitz said: “Not so fast, gentlemen
– I’ve got the genuine article.” He swept off his sombrero, reached inside and sulled out a jaguar’s snarling head, hen hurriedly pushed it back. “Must have the wrong hat.” Bugbyte took the opening to race across the room, scan the labels on Fong’s racks and yank out an innocuous-looking plant — only to he halted in turn by the derringer in Papa Jack’s fist.
MEXICAN STANDOFF. Then the silence was broken by the strident sound of La Cucaracha, as the bruised but still stubbornly strumming mariachi band swept down the glassy chute, overshot the tortillas and mowed down Fong, Don Gordo and MacBannock. Acting fast, Bugbyte tossed her flower to Mabel, who leaned over and touched it to the surface of the dark sphere. With a deep tolling, the core began to pulse, slowly at first and then faster. With each pulse, it got smaller, the sound higher and louder. “It’s forming a black hole,” it will squeeze itself out of existence in shouted Liebnitz, “but it’s antimatter, so minutes. As long as we don’t get any closer, we’ll be fine.”
Wild with frustration, Fong and Don Gordo picked up the mariachi players and began tossing them into core. Still they refused to stop playing, even as they were squeezed smaller and smaller by the intense short-range gravitational field. “That’s awful, Ludwig” said Mabel, “They’ll be crushed.” “Maybe not,” he replied. “The last stage of implosion is a wormhole — they could be cast across space and time and still come out OK — smaller, in a new form, but alive and still as irritating as ever.” As the music vanished with the last wisps of the core, Liebnitz wrestled with the awful suspicion that somewhere, somewhen, a mouse named Topo Gigio was being born.
CAN YOU DUPLICATE Liebnitz’ and Bugbyte’s feat by naming the metal and the flower (Latin and common name) that imploded the core? Not necessary to enter the contest, but can you also provide words to match the 19 clues, and indicate the two-word name indicated by the three-part anagram?
bout de papier will decide the winner by drawing from a box containing all correct entries received by July 15, 2003. The winner will receive a book autographed by A Aalto.
August Mobius was a mathematician best-known for the Mobius strip, a narrow length of paper that is twisted once before the ends are glued together to form a loop with only one side. For memories of 1938, Aalto’s thanks to AB (who notes that his tolerance for mariachi bands ran out less than two weeks after his arrival in Mexico). And as always, his thanks to Mrs Aalto — for “separate planets”, on which he would never hope to be, and for eternal inspiration on so many things.
The solution and winner to last issue’s Who Killed Fats Lebreton will be unveiled in the next issue of bout.
View the original scanned pages →
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 19, No. 4 (2003) — Winter/Spring 2002/2003 // Hiver/Printemps 2002/2003, pp. 41–44. Read the rest of this issue →
