King Rat

Solemnly they lined up and Peter Marlowe stirred the brew, which was growing hot now. Mac took the spoon and stirred and bestowed an obscene blessing upon it. Larkin, not to be outdone, began to stir, saying, “Boil, boil, boil and bubble …”

“You out of your mind?” said Brough. “Quoting Macbeth for Chrissake!”

“What’s the matter?”

“It’s unlucky. Quoting Macbeth. Like whistling in a theater dressing room.”

“It is?”

“Any fool knows that!”

“I’ll be damned. Never knew that before.” Larkin frowned.

“Anyway, you quoted it wrong,” said Brough. “It’s ‘Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble’!”

“Oh no it isn’t, Yankee. I know my Shakespeare!”

“Betcha tomorrow’s rice.”

“Watch it, Colonel,” said Mac suspiciously, knowing Larkin’s propensity for gambling. “No man’d bet that lightly.”

“I’m right, Mac,” Larkin said, but he didn’t like the smug expression on the American’s face. “What makes you so sure you’re right?”

“Is it a bet?” asked Brough.

Larkin thought a moment. He liked a gamble—but tomorrow’s rice was too high stakes. “No. I’ll lay my rice ration on the card table, but I’ll be damned if I’ll lay it on Shakespeare.”

“Pity,” Brough said. “I could’ve used an extra ration. It’s Act Four, Scene One, line ten.”

“How the hell can you be that exact?”

“Nothing to it,” Brough said. “I was majoring in the arts at USC, with a big emphasis on journalism and playwriting. I’m going to be a writer when I get out.”

Mac leaned forward and peered into the pot. “I envy you, laddie. Writing can be just about the most important job in the whole world. If it’s any good.”

“That’s a lot of nonsense, Mac,” said Peter Marlowe. “There are a million things more important.”

“That just goes to show how little you know.”

“Business is much more important,” interjected the King. “Without business, the world’d stop—and without money and a stable economy there’d be no one to buy any books.”

“To hell with business and economy,” Brough said. “They’re just material things. It’s just like Mac says.”

“Mac,” said Peter Marlowe. “What makes it so important?”

“Well, laddie, first it’s something I’ve always wanted to do and can’t. I tried many times, but I could never finish anything. That’s the hardest part—to finish. But the most important thing is that writers are the only people who can do something about this planet. A businessman can’t do anything—”

“That’s crap,” said the King. “What about Rockefeller? And Morgan and Ford and Du Pont? And all the others? It’s their philanthropy that finances a helluva lot of research and libraries and hospitals and art. Why, without their dough—”

“But they made their money at someone’s expense,” Brough said crisply. “They could easily plow some of their billions back to the men who made it for them. Those bloodsuckers—”

“I suppose you’re a Democrat?” said the King heatedly.

“You betcha sweet life I am. Look at Roosevelt. Look what he’s doing for the country. He dragged it up by its bootstrings when the goddam Republicans—”

“That’s crap and you know it. Nothing to do with the Republicans. It was an economic cycle—”

“Crapdoodle on economic cycles. The Republicans—”

“Hey, you fellows,” said Larkin mildly. “No politics until after we’ve eaten, what do you say?”

“Well, all right,” Brough said grimly, “but this guy’s from Christmas.”

“Mac, why is it so important? I still don’t see.”

“Well. A writer can put down on a piece of paper an idea—or a point of view. If he’s any good he can sway people, even if it’s written on toilet paper. And he’s the only one in our modern economy who can do it—who can change the world. A businessman can’t—without substantial money. A politician can’t—without substantial position or power. A planter can’t, certainly. An accountant can’t, right, Larkin?”

“Sure.”

“But you’re talking about propaganda,” Brough said. “I don’t want to write propaganda.”

“You ever written for movies, Don?” asked the King.

“I’ve never sold anything to anyone. Guy’s not a writer until he sells something. But movies are goddam important. You know that Lenin said the movies were the most important propaganda medium ever invented?” He saw the King readying an assault. “And I’m not a Commie, you son of a bitch, just because I’m a Democrat.” He turned to Mac. “Jesus, if you read Lenin or Stalin or Trotsky you’re called a Commie.”

“Well, you gotta admit, Don,” said the King, “a lotta Democrats are pinks.”

“Since when has being pro-Russian meant that a guy’s a Communist? They are our allies, you know!”

“I’m sorry about that—in a historical way,” said Mac.

“Why?”

“We’re going to have a lot of trouble afterwards. Particularly in the Orient. Those folk were stirring up a lot of trouble, even before the war.”

“Television’s going to be the coming thing,” said Peter Marlowe, watching a thread of vapor dance the surface of the stew. “You know, I saw a demonstration from Alexandra Palace in London. Baird is sending out a program once a week.”

“I heard about television,” said Brough. “Never seen any.”