Free Keep The Giraffe Burning by John Sladek Page A

day, on the waiting room of the patent office. A dozen men sat waiting, each holding a package of unusual shape on his lap. To Barbara, it was much the same as the other waiting room, in which Dave had waited until the nurse told him it was triplets. It was in that very hospital that Al lay recovering from his twenty-storey fall: a mass of bandages, with all four limbs held up in traction splint, to an elaborate arrangement of wires, pulleys and weights. Thus gravity would cure, he reflected, what it had caused. Walter had a table alone, in a corner of the hotel restaurant near a placard: WATCH YOUR HAT AND COAT . There was an unusual object in his soup, and Walter called the waiter’s attention to it.
    The stag dinner for N. Decting was being held in another room at the hotel. Out of an immense cake leapt Trixi, who often danced on the tables until dawn. Bill was embarrassed. Any nakedness reminded him of the human condition, of answering the telephone wrapped in a bath towel.
    On the beach, Bill sneaked a look at a pair of bikini blondes named Doreen and Darlene, while Mary sneaked a look at him. Finally he dozed, dreaming of dramatic news headlines like:
    WORLD DECLARED A MARXIST PARADISE
    themselves being expanded into great boxwood word blocks that were being shoved forward to chock up the sagging floor of sand.
    Meanwhile the kids buried Bill in sand.
    On the drive borne, Bill and Mary sat in front, while the kids slept dreamlessly in the back seat. Bill pointed out to Mary that a flying saucer had landed in the desert, and that a short green man could be seen making his way from it towards a telephone booth.
    Mr Gordon found he couldn’t sleep, partly because he’d taken a nap in the afternoon, producing Zs. Now he tried counting sheep, visualizing them leaping one by one over a rail fence … into what?
    A strange noise. Mr Gordon crept downstairs and looked into the dining room. The man who was putting silver into a satchel wore a flat cap, a black eyemask, and a jacket over a striped sweater. He worked byflashlight.
    ‘Asia,’ said the burglar, turning his beam upon Mr Gordon, ‘is the key. As Japan begins to play an increasing role in shaping the economic future of the world, China may shake off her mantle of mystery and challenge the island giant to open industrial warfare. In any case, we must watch Asia, the world’s weathercock.’
    The Dectings’ honeymoon took them to Asia, to a place not far from where Major X had hunted the tiger from a howdah. In the marketplace, the Dectings saw snake charmers, fakirs, reclining on beds of nails, and the famous Indian Rope Trick.
    Major X and Trixi were sitting in water up to their necks in a large cast-iron pot. This had been set to boil on an open fire, while black men danced around them, brandishing spears. The black men all wore grass skirts and bones through their noses.
    ‘I wish I knew the reason,’ said the Major earnestly. ‘I really wish I’d studied a bit of anthropology, instead of all that blasted art history.’ Then, there being some time to kill before they boiled, he explained to Trixi the cloud-formulae which Constable seemed to have learned from Alexander Cozens.
    George was at last a prisoner again. This time he was manacled to the wall, hanging by his wrists. Nearby hung a stranger in the same plight.
    ‘There is a game called Prisoner’s Dilemma,’ George said. ‘We assume that two men have been caught by the police and are questioned separately. Each can either talk or keep quiet. If one confesses, he’ll get ten years, and his companion will be executed. But if both confess, they’ll both get life imprisonment. Finally, if neither confesses, they’ll both be freed.
    ‘According to the rule of game theory, each man should confess. But common sense tells us they can do better by both keeping quiet. It’s quite a puzzle.’
    The other did not reply. At dawn, George was taken outside, stood against a wall and shot. As he died, the