Speeches from the plays - 5. From The Emerald Oil Company [The action takes place in the mind of a Seer, & we discover How It All Really Works. But first, James Power O’Toole, least successful of CIA agents, takes a part in a rehearsal; & suffers a mishap.] Old Retainer It depends how you play the game. You have to keep him happy. I did. I survived, didn't I? Got caught in the toes a few times. That's what has me all gnarled and knotted. Dangerous business. He likes to play strangers. They usually try to win. He en- courages them in that for a while. Like a bit of competition, he says. I mean it is a free world. But if they look like winning, he changes the rules; and if they still look like winning, he eats them! Power O I'll play him. He won't mind me. I'm on his side. I believe in competition and free ennerprise. Old Retainer Well that's all right then if you do. Have a game. Ingratiate yourself. Play his rules though. Nothing to it. Just pretend to compete. Know how it goes? He owns nine-tenths of the property, you own one-tenth. You throw dice. You move around the board. If you land on his property, you pay him. If he lands on yours, you invite him to set up an industry, producing beans. Power So I go broke pretty quick? Old Retainer O no you don't. You mortgage. Then you re- nogotiate your loan. Then you renogotiate your renogotiation. Don't give up whatever you do. Go on try it. He's waking up now. Up on the chair, now hop up onto the table. Introduce yourself. Giant Haaa. Haaaagh! HAAAAAAKKHHH!! Power Hi. Giant Fee! Power I came to ask... Giant Fie! Power ...about a game... Giant Foe! Power ...of monopoly. Giant Mo- nopoly? Did you say monopoly? Why of course little fellow. First we will distribute the beans, the assets. Now let me see. One for you, four for me, five for me; one for you... Stage Manager ...all right people hold it. I just want to skip a bit. That's looking pretty good to me. What do you think yourself, E.M. sir? Sure you'll tell us later. Let's just move on to the bottom of the next page, the game has been in progress some time, "So you want..." Right Giant, your line. Giant So you want to mortgage Peru? Not enough! You'll have to mortgage Thailand too! AAAOO but I hate doing this to people! My turn to throw the dice... One, two... FEE! Power I'm afraid I just can't pay. Giant FIE! Power I've mortgaged everything I can. I'm broke. Giant FOE!... I do everything I can for you. I lend you money, I set you up in business. I only ask you to pay me back, a little at a time, as the rules of the game demand. And what do I find? You've spent all the new money I lent you paying me back for old money I lent you earlier! Ungrateful wretch! Is that any way to manage your finances? Answer me! Power Well I guess the game's over now. Giant You think it's a game? FEE! FIE! FOE!!! And - get a load of this!!! - Power Well it is a game, isn't it? Giant FUMMMMNNYUMMMMNYAMMMmmmm!! MWAAMMMMmmm Mwamm mmmwwpppf! (guzzling - then on the intake) Sssslllltthhwwpplllthllssllp'p! (Pause.) Stage Manager E.M. sir. I think we've got a problem. He ate him. The Giant ate your man. E.M. Yes I saw that. Don't you feel that's carrying the rehearsal process a tad too far? Who wrote this garbage anyway, where is he? Stage Manager You'll very likely find him in the bar below. He won't attend rehearsals - actors messing up his nice clean script. All right everyone take five see if we can dig the CIA out of its latest tight corner...! E.M. You can tell your author I don't think he has a lot of tact… Ladies and gentlemen, let us return to the 7th floor. You know as a public relations exercise, that was a washout. Wouldn't do at all. And it's nowhere near the truth. Not that that matters. And indeed our primary concern is that it should be nowhere near the truth. Here we are. Excuse me one moment. The shrine. The card I left. Prayer offering really. This little piece of card represents investment plans proposed for a Third World country of little or no consequence. Profitability, although a major consideration, is not our sole concern. No. Cosmic Harmony is. Most vital. At a price. Like anything else. And that price is an element that figures in all our plans - it shows up sometimes as a percentage, function, factor, integral, exponent - but it's always there. This is the element that must be submitted to the challenging scrutiny of the personage in our shrine... (Tabernacle curtains draw aside, an illumined image intones in a lurid brass voice:) Giant-as-Moloch I am Moloch! I am your Death Wish! Where are my children?! E.M. (closing the curtains) Moloch, erstwhile god of death and destruction, currently patron of economic development. We have a procedure. I throw dice. Even, Moloch says no, odd he says yes. Double sixes, wait. Right, here we go. Even. MSN, Moloch Says No. And back into the works. Sorry babies... of Africa? All Africa? O well. Not my choice. How it has to be. Thus the almighty economic forces determine whether millions live or die, and are accounted for. Infallible? The concept of mistake does not apply. And the key component that must be pleasing to Moloch? Child sacrifice. O yes. That's his requirement. Whether it's powdered milk, a little war, disaster engineered, disaster courted, whether it means depressing an economy down to famine level by cutting the price of its major product, coffee, seisal, zinc... Everything can be managed. And must be. Child sacrifice. It's he who says it. Not me. Simply must be faced up to. We live in a world of hard economic realities, at least I do. I live with it. Anyway, it's nothing new. Already it's implicit in newspaper catchphrases of the contented who may be children of yesterday's famine refugees. I think we should be above all that self-reproach business. It hurts us only if we think about it. Soldier on. Duty. Maybe repugnant, ultimately noble. It's up to us to make it work, all this... Phil (the visionary) Wouldn't it make you sick? This hurts me more than it hurts you. The martyred executioner. I can't see any more. Too horrible for words. I never thought I could have dreamt up anything so sordid. But that's science. Step one - review the baffling facts, in our case criminal misuse of the world's resources; step two - construct a hypothesis, the only one cogent and gruesome enough to fit those facts. I mean we have control. Somebody's doing it…. |
