Article: 235473 of rec.arts.books.tolkien Path: uchinews!logbridge.uoregon.edu!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!user-hml3-54.dial.inet.FI!not-for-mail From: "Morgil Blackhope" <<>> Newsgroups: alt.fan.tolkien,rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Repost: Etext, Chapter 5 Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 20:03:42 +0300 Lines: 437 Message-ID: <9drn3p$iid9i$1@ID-81911.news.dfncis.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: user-hml3-54.dial.inet.fi (194.197.66.54) X-Trace: fu-berlin.de 989945790 19477810 194.197.66.54 (16 [81911]) X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3110.5 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3110.3 Xref: uchinews alt.fan.tolkien:64700 rec.arts.books.tolkien:235473 Hi, all! Now that Morambar Udunvagor has been banished from this plane of excistance, and hopefully for good, I thought I could repost the latest Etext chapter in case anyone missed it last time. This is an updated version, which has some minor corrections from the previous one, and the one which is supposed to go on the official Etext continuum... I´m also reposting this cause I´m not 100% sure Steuard and O.Sharp have recieved my e-mail with this corrected version... Morgil Blackhope (with co-author and the birthday-boy Menelvagor. (Yep, you´re a co-author nowadays... :) )) Chapter 5: Of Herbs and Stoned Hobbits. In the delightful new country in which they found themselves, the hobbits thanked Eru, the Valar, and the renowned Elven-singer Daeron (of Daeron and Glorfinkel fame) that they had escaped the wrath of Maglor the Possessive. They used the few moments before the break of dawn to get away as far as possible from the evil place. When daylight became too revealing, they found a hole in which to hide themselves. As their breathing became less uneasy, Frodo turned to Sam and asked: "Well, Sam. What do you think of the Elves *now*?", in a sarcastic manner which forced Sam once again to control his Fist of Death. "I recall you were already sick of them when we were in Lorien." "Aye, that I was," said Sam. "But now I´d gae further an´ say they´re a bunch o´ greedy, selfish, grasping feudal anachronisms." "Bolsheviks, I call them," said Frodo disgustedly. Sam just smiled enigmatically. Suddenly Frodo remembered the Stone of Galadriel, and the strange effect it had had on Maglor. He took the stone out of his pocket and looked at it as it shined on the morning sun, as if a living flame dwelled within it. "Could it be that this is indeed one of the Slipcasts, which were thought to be lost Ages ago?", he said wondering. "No, no! That is not what the grazy music-teacher said to us," argued Spiegel. "He only spoke of the Light inside it, that the light belonged to his father, or something. Besides he´s soo graazy! No. Give it to us! Give it to Spiegel. Come on! You still owe me for that dress!" "Hey now! I got that dress fair and square," answered Frodo angrily. "Besides it wouldn´t fit you anyway, you fat slob!" Spiegel flinched as if she had been hit in the face, and turned away with tears in her eyes. Frodo stood above her breathing heavily. Suddenly he felt as if a cloud had passed away from his eyes. "What did I say? Oh Spiegel, I´m sorry. I didn´t mean to say that. It was the Ring, I tell you. The Ring!" Sam looked at him and the stone he was holding. Suddenly he remembered Frodo, as he had been in the Barrows, a small and insecure, confused little Hobbit. Borish-bourgeois yes, but that was understandable considering his background. But not this monster he had become. "Maybe not," he said. "Maybe it has not been the Ring, but that accursed stone all along, that has been twisting your mind. You saw what it did to Maglor. Think about it! All the evil things - the Boromir incident, all that changing of sexual preferences - have happened *after* Galadriel gave you that stone." "But why would the benevolent Galadriel have done such a thing?" Frodo asked. "Or are you suggesting that Galadriel has some kind of evil twin sister, and *she* gave me that stone while the real Gladdy was hidden is some dark dungeon?" "I don´t know," said Sam. "But I do know that we need somebody learned to help us with this mystery. Somebody who has knowledge and wisdom. Somebody with good heart and sharp brains. Somebody noble, yet friendly, somebody with special - something..." "All right, all right. Just don´t start singing no matter what you do," said Spiegel nervously. Deciding to set their jewellery problems aside for a while, Frodo gazed at the lovely countryside, and Sam listened in delight as the birds warbled the sweet notes of the Pastoral Symphony. "This is the land of the Enemy?" he muttered. "And by the way, who the blazes is leading us these days? Between Spiegel and Gulible, I'm sair flummoxed, I are." "We can both lead, my Precious," wheezed Gulible to Spiegel in a grotesque attempt at seductive charm. "We goes together like a fissh and fisshbone, we doess." "Um, you can lead," replied Spiegel. "I´ll take up the rear." Having said this she promptly moved as far away from Gulible as possible. They walked by a babbling brook, where the frogs sang the Moonlight Sonata. Presently Frodo turned to Spiegel and remarked, "I´ve noticed something odd about you, Spiegel. From one cha... moment to the next you seem to adopt a different style of speech. Sometimes you talk like Gulible, sometimes you talk like Yoda, sometimes you talk like the wife of a famous shire-author, whose name escapes me... Why is this?" "In my youth, I used to channel," replied Spiegel. "In those days, I could control my gift, because of the dress /Baggins stole/." Her eyes glowed with a reddish-purple glow of resentment, before she went on. "When he -- it -- you took the dress, I lost the ability to distinguish ourselves from others, and our identity became confuzzled, my Precious. The only thing that can save me is pure love, but that I will not find until I meet a handsome racially stigmatized stranger. If you would know more, cross my palm with silver." "No, thank you, that´s enough," said Frodo, scratching his head. (He thought he heard the strains of "The Blue Anduin Waltz" or something similar.) "And as for you, Sam," he went on. "Why have you suddenly started speaking in the Northfarthing dialect again?" "I nae longer feel I hae tae deny my heritage. In solidarity with me oppressed fellow-Northfarthingers, I defy your Hobbitonish linguistic hegemony," said Sam. Frodo shrugged. Suddenly they came across a large sign, bewritten with a mysterious script called teuncwar. Fortunately there was a Westron translation, which read: "Lugburz van Beethoven Memorial Concert Hall and Opera House -- Under Construction" and in smaller letters, "Morgai Construction Company." This reminded them again of their peril, which they had nearly forgotten in their relief at escaping Maglor (or Muhammad Ali, as he was called in the Common Speech). They might have left the University of Northern Mordor behind, but they were nonetheless in an ominously cultured land. Once, while scouting ahead, Sam came upon a baritone Orc and a mezzo practising that duet from Act I of /The Balrog of Sevîl/. "I´m nae gaein´ doon there," he said to the others. "Higher up for me." Presently, they came to an end of the classical music stuff, and found themselves in a new, fragrant country -- almost too fragrant. They had left behind the creepily harmonious lands of Dor Remi, and had entered Ethelien, formerly the garden of Gondor(tm) in the days when the White Weed was in flower. (Mayami it had been called in the Westron tongue, a name meaning "Land of the Art Deco".) Or at any rate, it had been the garden of Minas Tirith University, centre of a counterculture opposed to the anti-Sauron wars. The /hippîs/, as the counterculture types had called themselves, had wanted for the people of Gondor to gather herbs and narcotics while Sauron was gathering armies; and face his emissaries with flowers and peace signs, and offer them hashish. Or so the Gondor historians always said; what the counterculture types would have said for themselves, no tale tells, for the Stewards ruthlessly stamped them out, while taking the drug profits unto themselves. Sauron and his servants had little truck with drugs, and had crushed the trade. But in this region but shortly come under the rule of the Dark Lord, the scent of a myriad intoxicants still filled the air: opium poppies, coca plants, various breeds of cannabis, peyote cactuses, qat, heavenly blue, black lotus, several kinds of mushrooms, and other mind-altering plants. Suddenly Sam laughed, from intoxicant-induced euphoria not for jest. Then he frowned, for narcotics were at best a product of bourgeois decadence, and at worst an evil capitalist corruption that destroyed the communities of the poor, and with whose ravages he was only too familiar, from the drug-addled inanities of the Gaffer. From Spiegel´s gasping and choking, he guessed that she too smelled the vapours, and did not relish them. "Drugses," she hissed. "Nasty, uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner." "Morrie would love this," muttered Frodo, who unlike the others, rather enjoyed the temporary relief from his burden - two burdens actually, which the mind-numbing narcotics provided. He was walking in front with Gulible now, stopping every now and then to enjoy a specially alluring scent, or to snack an occasional mushroom. They had travelled halfway through Ethelien when the drugs really began to take hold of them. The day was bright and warm and they had decided to rest and wait for the dusk, for Gulible would not travel under the Yellow Face, since it showed up his ugliness and jeeringly rubbed in the fact that he didn't have a chance in Angband of winning over the lovely Spiegel. So they had found a deep brown bed of last years poppies and settled there. Frodo passed out almost immediately. The fumes helped him to forget for a time a certain self-doubt that had been growing on him since the Spiegel incident. He had had relatively few misgivings about his way of life up to now. It had seemed right to him that, as a wealthier member of society, he should do what he liked and let the less fortunate go hang themselves. Poverty was probably good for them, anyway. Builds character, and all that. Besides, Cassiopeia Took looked really good in that dress (though she looked better with no dress at all ... wogah ... wogah ...) But his treatment of Spiegel had awakened him to the true turpitude of his nature, and he was filled with shame and self-loathing. It was true, the Phial might had been responsible for the worst outrages -- but had it not, in truth, brought out and exaggerated an evil which had long lay just beneath the surface? Oh, to forget, to sleep a profound, dreamless sleep without pain or regret! Frodo inhaled deeply. Ever since their departure from Lorien, he had secretly longed to rediscover the Nirvana he had experienced there, and now that he had found it, it was gonna take something remarkable to get him out of there! Gulible was lying cowered away from the others, but the strange and insidious fumes that surrounded their resting-place were having an effect on him too; the fragrance of the poppies was confounding his brain, so that he could see nought but the image of Spiegel in various provocative postures. How could he win over - if not her heart, at least her body? Suddenly he had an epiphany; so crystal clear that it almost blinded him. Dames didn´t care about a guy´s looks, as long as he was polite and considerate towards them! With this drug-addled insane idea in his head, he sprang up and ran away, returning soon with arms full of flowers. "I picked you some bosies, Ms Spiegel," he explained handing the flowers towards the surprised hobbit-lass. "Why, thank you Gulible," said Spiegel, obviously pleased. She wasn´t feeling quite herself either, and the kind gesture of the old philanderer almost brought tears to her eyes. It seemed to Gulible that his plan was working perfectly. "Well, aren´t you gonna eat them?" he asked. "Look! They´re full of fresh, juicy maggotses..." /Ok, that didn´t work/, thought Gulible, running to woods again. /Maybe if I could find some frogses, eels, crickets or - Wait! Now we know what she would like, yesss.../ Sometimes later Sam woke up from an intoxicated sleep, in which he had dreamed of his beloved Rose. Red Rosie, Revolutionary Rosie, the Rose of the People, Rose of Solidarity. /La Rosa Internationale/ was her name in Rohan, /Róza Luxemburg/ in the East; to the West she went not. But oh, how they had marched together in the Mayday parade, and how hot she had been later, while attacking the revisionist wing in the party central-committee meeting... But what was this? There was his beloved Rose lying right next to him! How did she get here all of a sudden? Sam was trying to work out this problem, when another thought popped into his delusional brains. "How thin and drawn she looks," he muttered. His Rosie had always been a sturdy lass, with broad shoulders and strong hips, a model of a working-class heroine if anyone. "The journey has taken a lot oot o´ her it seems, and that´s a fact." Spiegel didn´t wake up when Sam touched gently her cheek. "Sleep, my dear. Sleep," he muttered. "I will get ye something to eat, if its the last thing I ever do." Then he noticed something lying in the ground, next to the sleeping hobbit. Something that looked exactly like two skinned rabbits. /What a stroke of luck!/ thought Sam. /A gift from Gulible, no doubt. Well, I shall put it in good use.../ He discovered an abandoned Isildur-helmet lying nearby, and using that as a pot, Sam begun to cook one of his specialities; stewed rabbit with herbs and mushrooms. The Shire was not exactly known for its haute cuisine; for the hobbit’s idea of the gastronomic /beau idéal/ emphasised quantity (mostly of meat and potatoes, cooked to be as mushy as possible) over quality. But Sam was accounted a relatively good cook, for a hobbit; although cooking a meal in the absence of his beloved pots -- which he had dumped in the Dead Marshes, where the alligators had seized them for their orchestra -- was clearly going to be a tall order. Soon however, the rabbits cut up lay simmering in the helmet-pot. Still, something was missing though. Conveniently Gulible was wandering about aimlessly, muttering something about being abducted by space aliens. "Hi, there, old snuffler!" said Sam. “Your new motto’s /Always ready to help/..." "First we’ve heard of it, /saddam/," muttered Gulible. "Shut yer mouth and bring me some herbs and mushrooms, or shall I present the Fist of Death on thee! And onyway, dinnae ye want to help me get food for the lady?" "Have mercy!” shrieked Gulible. "We’ll do anything! Get yummy food for Spiegel. Don Giovanni swears it on the Precious!" /Spiegel?/ puzzled Sam momentarily, before figuring that it was probably just another of Revolutionary Rosie’s names, and returned to his pot/helmet. Soon Gulible came back with ingredients. Only now did he get close enough to see what Sam was up to. With a thin hissing shriek he dropped his burden and gripped Sam by the sleeve. "Ach! Nein - halt - raus!" he cried. "No! Evil hobbit! Steals the yummies Gulible brought for Spiegel. /Saddam/! Don Giovanni captured two lab-rats for Spiegel - one was a genius the other insane. Spiegel likes rats so much she faints, and now hobbit tries to take the credit. Don Giovanni won’t let treacherous hobbit steal our wogah! We´ll get even, precious. We have new friends now, good friends and very strong." With these enigmatic words he sauntered off. Suddenly Sam felt like the world was rolling around in his eyes as he returned to his senses. Rosie was gone and so were the rabbits, and he realised that he was boiling two rodents on a hat which had funny round ears. His head was humming and suddenly he collapsed to the ground and lay like a dead thing. The narcotic fumes of Ethelien had defeated him. Through the mists of his drugged sleep, Sam could see the figures of four tall men surrounding them. He could hear their voices, but he was unable to move or speak, or wipe the grin off his face, for that matter. "We have found what we have found," said one men. "But what have we found?" "Not Orcs," said another one. "Unless UNM has lowered their standards remarkably." "Elves perhaps?" said the third man, dumbfully. "Nay! Not Elves," said the fourth, tallest and also the one with thickest hair - thereby probably the chief among them. "Elves have their own dope and need no mannish stuff to get high, or so it is said. No, these three are Hobbits or Pediannath from the north, also known as halflings, halfwits, potheads, that in Rohirric are called /les Américains/, and in Dwarvish /damâb/ (singular /dumb/), or to those who speak High Language: /Ylen Sankia Priha/. They are the result of a fascinating genetic experiment undertaken by Miniwethil the mouse-eared, which explains their rodent-like features and intellect. I wonder whether they have retained any traditions concerning the Flying Mûmaks of Dumbar, which I am trying to collect for my annotated version of the ´Dumbarcalevala´ or /The Adventures of Väinö - the Baad Mother.../" ("Shut your mouth!" muttered one of the men.) "They say Mini mated with one of the Corsairs of Dumbar, so some of their traditions could easily have passed into hobbit-lore. Fascinating, absolutely fascinating. The text, of course, inheres within the diegetico-enacting praxis ...But further discussion of this problem will have to wait. In the meantime, let us carry these three dopeheads away from here to sober up!" At the tall man´s command, the three others picked the hobbits up and carried them away from the opiatic fumes, to the banks of a small stream, and poured cold water on their heads. As Sam returned to his senses, he could see that their captors were indeed Men, even though they were wearing green tights. They had masks on their faces to protect them from the dangerous fumes. All were armed, except the leader, who had instead a large magnifying glass, with which he was examining Frodo´s fingers, mumbling something like: "Mmmm, interesting..." "Hey! Who are you and what are you doing with that?" cried Frodo suddenly alarmed. The tall fluffy-haired man laughed grimly. "I am Dr. Faramir, the Scientist of Gondor(tm)," he said. "And what I do, I do to preserve the might and majesty of Ye ole Gondor, and to promote the development of science and arts of Humanism. /Gaudeamus Igitur/, and all that stuff. Or as the Philosopher-King Earwag said: /With each thing, ask what is its nature, its being/... Although, of course, there have been many philosophical debates about what ´being´ is. /Dasein/ and /Vorhandenheit/, /ens/ and /esse/, but if I go on much longer, a lot of me will have to go in the appendices. Personally, I find Sauron’s theory of the erotics of being fascinating, but fundamentally unsound. What do you think?" Frodo muttered something barely audible, but Dr. Faramir blithely continued his disquisition. "/Quid-pro-quo/. I don´t have to ask your name, Mr. Frodo Baggins of the Bilbohîni, since I already know about you and the... *thing* you are burdened with, but I have many other questions." "You know about his foot-fungus!?" cried Spiegel. "You know about the One Ring of Power, which the Council of Rivendell entrusted to me, and which Boromir(tm) tried to steal so that I had to sta... escape from him and the Fellowship, which included Aragorn the Heir of Isildur, the wannabe-King of both Gondor(tm) and Arnor(r) and the wielder of the Broken Sword, which is now reforged and coming to Minas(r) Tirith(tm) as we speak!?" cried Frodo. "Yes," replied Faramir. "I know about the foot-fungus, since it was a cover-story of last september´s Shire Medical Journal, with some very elaborating pictures, provided by S. Gamgee." Dr. Faramir said nothing about Frodo’s reference to Boromir(tm), although his face had taken on a strange expression when Frodo had uttered that name, and instead continued: "But I must admit that I had forgotten all about the Ring of Rings, after I had my last article concerning it published. I never thought I would get to examine it any closer. A pretty stroke of fortune! A chance for Faramir to win this year´s Morbel Prize for Science. Ha!" He stood up and seemed to grow larger above them as usual in these cases, and the magnifying glass in his hand trembled with excitement. He began to sing: /Some day my grant will come.../ Hobbits looked at him with astonishment. "You and your big mouth, Sam!" cried Frodo. "/Stupid is as stupid does/, Mom used to say and she was right. Another fine mess you have gotten us into!" "/What/?" cried Sam in outrage. "It was you who blabbered the whole thing up, not me! Oh, old Gaffer used to say to me /Whatever goes wrong, the Rich will always try to pin it on the proletarians/, and right enough too!" "Now look here, Doctor-sir!" he said, turning to Faramir. "Dinnae you go punishing servants because their master is but a fool. Slice him up if you have to, but let us go, u-heer!" Suddenly Dr. Faramir seemed to regain control of himself and began to laugh quietly. "Don´t worry Sam. None of you has anything to fear from me. Science may be my passion, but I still have my ethics - although I do experiments with lab-rats, and to pay for my studies I sell drugs in co-operation with a vile gangster known as the ´Voice´, but that´s another thing entirely." "You sell drugs!" cried both Sam and Spiegel in unison. "Only to Orcs and other such worthless creatures, I assure you," answered Dr. Faramir. "Demoralisation of the Enemy has always been a part of the Gondorian Defence Strategy(tm)." "But this is all wrong!" cried Spiegel, horrified. "We can’t try to demoralize the Orcs. Shouldn’t we get to know them and try to be friends with them instead? There is still good in them, I have felt it! Besides, they´re sooo sexy! One as learned as you should know better. How can you justify this?" Dr. Faramir gave them a somewhat pained look, before answering: "There are other reasons too. As I said, the funding of all science has faced some serious budget-cuts, and when the ´Voice´ came to me with a plan which would also provide quite remarkable profits to my university, I really had no choice but to accept. It’s a bad business, and one unworthy of my rank, but as Aruman pointed out in /The Ethics of Necessity/: ´When faced with an absence of choice, choice becomes non-choice.´" "Who is this ´Voice´ that you speak of?" asked Frodo, who thought his servants were getting a bit too impudent, while criticising the doings of the upper classes. "He will not tell us his name, nor permit it to be spelt or spoken," said Dr. Faramir. "But his singing fills us all with dread. At first I thought he was another friend of sciences, but lately I´ve begun to have doubts about his motives and purposes..." Dr. Faramir looked thoughtfully into the distance. "You have given me a lot to think of, you strange wanderers from a distant country," he continued. "This encounter may yet be proven useful for both of us, for I know much about the Rings effects on psyche, and may be able to help you, Frodo. But not now. We have business in hand. For your own safety and mine, I will leave two guards to guard you. You also need these face-masks if you want to avoid another hallucinatory episode. We will talk more when I return. *If* I return, that is - but I feel that I know now what I must do." "Break a leg!" wished Sam and waved his hand. The Hobbits sat down again, and watched the two men on guard settling close by. Speaking in pig-latin they discussed briefly about what had become of Gulible, but found no answer to that. After a while Sam spoke to the guards, wanting to find out if they could be recruited to the cause of Revolution; but they were slow and intellectually beyond such great visions. They named themselves Blacklung and Ramrod, members of Gondor(tm)´s National Guard, and this crud was *not* what they had enlisted for. "We don’t usually come this far on the East-side," said Blacklung. "Business has been slow ever since the Enemy took control of the bridgehead in Disgiliath, and brought his accursed customs officials there. Today´s transaction is the biggest one the ´Voice´ has managed to set up since then, but to make that happen we had to let some Southrons from South Central to get in on the deal. Curse them!" "Yeah, curse the Southrons!" said Ramrod. "’Tis said that in days of yore there we’re dealings with Harad, who provided labor for our sweatshops; but there was never friendship. And now the drug-lords of South Central are trying to get a piece of the action from /our/ dealings to Mordor and eat away our profits. Alas! Such are these days that a white man can´t even sell his own dope from his own backyard, without the help of some racially inferior people. If only the King would return..." "Aye!" said Blacklung. "But I wonder what the Doc is planning to do. He looked like he had something in mind, I think. It sometimes seems he doesn’t have the /kohones/ for this business, it sure does. But if he tries to double-cross the ´Voice´, there will be Udun to pay for us all." After this there silence for a while, apart from the Ramrod’s boombox; and the hobbits, finding the men’s company incredibly boring, dozed off a bit, before they were suddenly awakened by a sound like one of Gandalf’s fireworks gone wrong. They heard yells of "Duck!" and "Run for cover!" and "I ain´t going back to jail!" A long, cinematic fight scene took place. The air was full of bullets and loud coprologies. Suddenly a man fell face down right over the edge of the coca plants that served as their hiding-place. He wore cut-off jeans and a T-shirt, the back of which was bewritten /Sauron Roolz/, and he looked swarthy and racially stigmatized. His brown hand still held a rusty water-pistol. It was Sam’s first sight of war between Men and Men, and he found it a nasty consequence of the deep structures of inequality. He was glad he could not see the man’s face. He wondered if he was really evil at heart, or just a victim of societal exploitation or the product of a broken home, whether the presence of a positive male role-model would have enabled him to avoid this fate -- all in a flash of thought that was suddenly driven from his mind, when a loud noise broke out almost next to him. "Drive-by! Drive-by!" cried Ramrod. "May the Force or Valar or whatever turn him aside! Khaddy! Khaddy!" To his amazement and dread, and everlasting joy, Sam saw an enormous shape come charging through the hashish groves. As big as a house, much bigger than a house he seemed to Sam’s astonished eyes, and noxious fumes gushed forth from the hind portions of his anatomy. Fear and amazement, perhaps, made him appear larger to Sam than he really was; but the Khadillak of South Central was indeed a car of great bulk, and such of his descendants as live on in these latter days are but a shadow of his girth and majesty. It is possible that the effects of the dope had not yet worn off, or perhaps bedazzlement had confounded Sam’s vision; but he could have sworn that the monster’s feet looked a lot like wheels. But he had little time to get a closer look, for in the driver’s seat a man, who looked strangely familiar, was bombarding the countryside with an AK-47. Sam hit the dirt as the bullets ricocheted all around him; and within a moment the great beast was lost to view, still trumpeting his horns far away. Sam gave a deep breath. "It was an Oliphaunt," he said. "So Oliphaunts exist, and I have seen one. What a life! But no one at home will believe me, until the Revolution raises their consciousness. Well, now I’m going to try to sleep off the effect of those cursed poppies. Don’t wake me up!" Blacklung laughed sarcastically. "Don’t you halfwits ever do anything but sleep?" "Not really," muttered Frodo, waking up for a split-second before collapsing.