Fun House by Benjamin Appel Read Free Book Online Page A

the age of six!”
    “Her job didn’t exist when she was six. Atomic Park is new. Her father had her transferred to it. He had special privileges as a holder of the Supreme Court Medal of Distinguished Pleasure. Don’t forget he created Atomic Park.”
    “He
wanted
her to work in a place like that! Where she wouldn’t want to marry and have children?”
    “You’re so wholesome, darling.”
    Before I could answer there was a terrific explosion. The A-I-D! I thought in panic and ran for shelter. Flinging myself under a sidewalk table I waited for the end. And heard laughter. It got louder, closer. In the blinding white light that had followed the explosion, I looked at the legs of a crowd surrounding my table. Somebody pulled at my ankle. I was coaxed out by an L. and O. officer in the uniform of a French gendarme 1 . He led me away from the crowd and pointed up at the sky, his pointing finger a bright red, for the light had changed. “There will be five fission-fusion blasts tonight, monsieur,” he explained. “It is the convention. Five fission-fusion blasts but harmless as the breath of a mother.
Honi soit qui mal il pense 2
” he said, and in French fashion kissed me on both cheeks before walking off.
    “I see a cab,” Gladys called. “Wait here, darling.”
    I felt like the biggest fool in the world. The street was flickering with red light. I started walking. I passed a little square where I had a clear view of the huge mushroom I had first seen in the morning. It had been lit up for the evening. But lit-up doesn’t describe that hideous balloon. It was cooking with colors, smoking and boiling, and only its white skull-shaped center remained constant.
    I shook my fist at the nightmare in the sky and at all the St. Ewagiows of this world. No, I vowed to myself, they weren’t going to get this country of mine. “Damn you!” I yelled in my emotion.
    Again, the tourists began to flock around me, their faces turning orange and black and red in the changing lights. “What’s the matter with him?” I heard somebody asking. “Too much gay Paree,” somebody else said, and the crowd laughed. Just then Gladys came up in a Shrinkmobile and shouted. “Darling, here I am.”
    I got into the cab and she said. “That was a perfect introduction to Atomic Park! Fission-Fusion or do you just feel confusion?”
    I was still inside the Funhouse, I thought. But I was no longer bitter. I knew that if I was going to save my way of life, I just had to save their way. It was one world.
    Atomic Amusement Park was situated on the western edge of the city, and the first sight of it was depressing. In the middle of a great lawn was a walled city bathed in a strange white light that somehow reminded me of heavy white water. The Shrinkmobiles ahead of it seemed to be traveling along the bottom of a sea. As for Gladys, she had become silent, not a joke in her. “Maybe you won’t pass the test,” she whispered.
    “What test?”
    “The medical. I’m not going in with you, darling, I can’t, I simply can’t! Driver, stop!”
    She kissed me and wished me luck. More depressed than ever I drove in alone through a segment of the wall that seemed to have vanished. Another invention of the magicientist Barnum Fly, I thought. Behind the wall, the procession of Shrinkmobiles pulled up in front of a windowless building that was some fifty feet high and approximately a mile long 1 . Above its roof, the name of the Park flickered like lightning: ATOMIC AMUSEMENT PARK.
    “You ever go?” I asked my driver.
    “When I was younger,” he said. “That Atomic Rollercoaster, there’s a thrill!”
    “What’s it like?”
    “It’s great, great, but I guess I’m too old.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “It was two months before I stopped shaking.”
    “Some fun,” I muttered.
    “It’s great fun. I just can’t take it any more.”
    I got out of the cab and followed the crowd into a big waiting room whose walls and ceiling were