Vineland by Thomas Pynchon

clash of jet-speed geometries.
    When the hatch at last sighed open, the intruders entered the flying nightclub with elite-unit grace, automatics ready, faces dim behind high-impact shields, all business. Everyone was ordered to a seat. The captain came on the PA. “This is for our own good. They don’t want all of us, just a few. When they get to your seat number, please cooperate, and try not to believe any rumors you hear. And till we get the rest of you where your tickets say you’re going, all drinks are on the Kahuna Airlines Contingency Fund!” which brought loud applause but would prove, in the drawn-out litigation attending this incident, to have been an appeal to a fictional entity.
    Gretchen dropped by the synthesizer just to take a breather. “This is fun,” Zoyd said. “First time I ever heard the cap’n’s voice. If he can sing ‘Tiny Bubbles,’ I’m out of a job.”
    â€œEverybody’s nervous and drinking. What a bummer. Kahuna Airlines done it again.”
    â€œThis doesn’t happen on the majors?”
    â€œThere was some kind of a industry-wide agreement? It would have cost more than Kahuna wanted to spend. The word they all use is ‘insurance.’ “
    Night fell like the end of a movie. The alcohol flowed torrentially, and soon it was necessary to switch over to a reserve tank of inexpensive vodka, located in the wing. Some passengers fell unconscious, some glazed out, others kicked off their shoes and partied, notwithstanding the grim shielded troopers working slowly, methodically among them. As Zoyd was segueing into the main title theme from
Godzilla, King of the Monsters
(1956), he was distracted by a voice somewhere behind and slightly below him. “What it is, bro! OK if I—sit in?” He saw somebody in a blond hippie haircut, floral bell-bottoms, and tropical shirt, with a dozen or so plastic leis piled up around his face and shoulders, plus some pitch-black goggle-style shades and a straw hat, holding a banjo-ukulele of between-the-wars vintage. The hair turned out to be a wig, borrowed from Gretchen, who had also suggested Zoyd for sanctuary.
    â€œMan’s after you, eh,” smoothly, finding a lead sheet with, inevitably, uke diagrams on it. “How about this?”
    â€œUh-huh!” the strange ukulelist replied. “But it’d be easier—in the key of G!” Ukulele talk, all right, the new sideman proceeding to turn in a respectable rhythm job on the old Hawaiian favorite “Wacky Coconuts,” though when Zoyd took the vocal he got confused enough to have to go back to the tonic and wait.
    Â 
    Can’t ya hear . . . them . . .
    (vumm) Uh Wack-ky Coconuts,
    (hm) Uh Wack-ky Coconuts,
    Thumpin’ in a syn-copated island,
    Melodee . . .
    Con
-tinuouslee. . . .
    Â 
    Yes one by one those
    (vum) Wack-ky Coconuts,
    (vum) Wack-ky Coconuts,
    Fallin’ on m’ roof like th’ beat of some
    Jungle drum . . . (mm!)
    Vum-vum vum!
    Â 
    Why won’t those
    Ol’ Wack-ky Coconuts, find some other place?
    Why should I remain in Wack-
    Ky Coconuts’ embrace? Must be wacky ’bout
    Â 
    (vum!) Wack-ky Coconuts,
    (vum!) Oh, those loco nuts,
    They’re the coconuts
    For me!
    Â 
    The pursuers moved along among the boogeying and the cataplectic, none of them giving the strumming fugitive much of a look, in search, it seemed, of some different profile. Further, Zoyd noticed that every time he hit his highest B flat, the invaders would grab for their radio headsets, as if unable to hear or understand the signal, so he tried to play the note whenever he could, and soon was watching them withdraw in a blank perplexity.
    Zoyd’s odd visitor, with ritual economy, held out a business card, iridescent plastic, colors shifting around according to cues that couldn’t always be sensed.
    â€œMy life—looks like you saved