Player Piano (Utopia 14)

Chapter Twenty One

THE moon was full over the Thousand Islands, and, on one of them at least, there were a thousand eyes to see it. The cream of the East and Middle West, engineeringwise and managerwise, was met in the amphitheater of the Meadows. It was the second night, the night of the keynote play and the bonfire. The stage in the center of the circling stone seats was hidden beneath a pair of steel quarter-spheres, which would presently open like the shells of a steamed quahog.

Kroner sat down next to Paul and laid his hand on Paul's knee. "Nice night, boy."

"Yessir."

"Think we've got a good team this year, Paul."

"Yessir. They look good." After one day of competition, the Blue Team did look good, good despite the large proportion of top - hence tired and old - executives in its ranks. That afternoon the Blues had knocked the captain of the Greens, Shepherd, out of the box after three innings. Shepherd, in his determination to win and his horror of losing, had blown up completely.

Paul, by contrast, had played heads-up ball all the way, effortlessly, laughingly, wholly out of character. In analyzing the magical quality of the afternoon during the cocktail hour, Paul realized what had happened: for the first time since he'd made up his mind to quit, he really hadn't given a damn about the system, about the Meadows, about intramural politics. He'd tried not to give a damn before, but he hadn't had much luck. Now, suddenly, as of the afternoon, he was his own man.

Paul was half tight, and pleased with himself. Everything was going to be just fine.

"The Old Man wants to start the meeting shortly after his plane lands," said Kroner, "so we'll have to leave whatever's going on."

"O.K.," said Paul. "Swell." Swell night, tangy air, and a drowsy sort of harmlessness over everything. Maybe he'd give notice tonight, if he felt like it. No hurry. "Fine."

"Everybody in their seats, please," said the loudspeaker. "Will everybody take their seats. The Program Committee has just informed me that we are eight minutes behind time, so will everybody take their seats."

Everybody did. The band, wearing summer tuxedos, struck up a medley of Meadows favorites. The music faded. The quarter-spheres opened a trifle at the top, freeing a beam of light that shot through cigarette smoke to the deep-blue heavens. The music stopped, machinery underground grumbled, and the quarter-spheres sank into the earth, revealing:

An old man, with a white beard reaching to his waist, wearing a long white robe and golden sandals and a blue conical hat speckled with golden stars, sits atop an extraordinarily tall stepladder. He looks wise, just, and tired by responsibility. In one hand he holds a large dust cloth. Beside the ladder, and of the same height, is a slender pole. Another just like it stands across the stage. Between the two poles is a loop of wire, passing, like a clothesline, over pulleys fixed to the poles. Hanging from the wire are a series of metallic stars about two feet across. They are coated with fluorescent paint, so that a beam of invisible infrared light, playing on one star, then another, makes them come alive with dazzling color.

The old man, oblivious to the audience, contemplates the stars strung out before him, unhooks the star nearest to him, studies its surface, polishes a tarnished spot on it, shakes his head sadly, and lets the star fall. He looks down at the fallen star with regret, then at those still on the wire, then at the audience. He speaks.

OLD MAN. I am the Sky Manager. It is I who keep night skies shining brightly; I who, when a star's glory is tarnished beyond restoration, must take it from the firmament. Every hundred years I climb my ladder to keep the heavens bright. And now my time has come again.

(He pulls on the wire, bringing another star within reach. He removes the star and examines it.)

And this is a strange star to be shining in the modern heavens. And yet, a hundred years ago, when I last kept my vigil, it was proud and new, and only a few meteors, destroying themselves in a brilliant instant, shone more brightly than this. (He holds up the star, and the infrared light makes it glow brightly, bringing out the lettering which says, "Labor Unionism." He dusts it desultorily, shrugs, and lets it drop.) In brave company. (Looks down at scrap heap.) With stars named Rugged Individualism, Socialism, Free Enterprise, Communism, Fascism, and - (Leaves sentence unfinished, and sighs.)

It is not an easy job, not always a pleasant one. But One far wiser than I, infinitely good, has decreed that it must be done (sighs), and be done dispassionately.

(He pulls on wire, and brings in another star, the biggest of all. The infrared light hits it, and it lights up brilliantly, and on it is the image of the Oak, the symbol of the organization.)

Alas, a young beauty. But already there are those who hate the sight of it, who clamor for it to be torn from the heavens. (He dabs at it with his dust cloth, shrugs, and holds the star at arm's length, preparatory to dropping it.)

Enter a clean-cut, handsome young engineer from audience.

YOUNG ENG. (Shakes foot of ladder.) No! No, Sky Manager, no!

OLD MAN. (Looks down curiously.) What is this? A mere stripling challenges the caretaker of the heavens? Enter unkempt young radical through trap door in stage.

RADICAL. (Sneeringly) Take it down.

YOUNG ENG. There's never been a more brilliant, beautiful star!

RADICAL. There's never been a bloodier, blacker one!

OLD MAN. (Looks perplexedly from the two men to the star and back.) Hmmmm. Are you prepared to appeal the fate of this star with reason rather than emotion? My duties require that I be the sworn enemy of emotion.

YOUNG ENG. I am!

RADICAL. I, too. (Smiles.) And I promise to take very little of your time.

A tall judge's rostrum now surrounds the old man's ladder. The old man wears a judge's wig and robes. The radical and the young engineer are similarly robed and wigged after the fashion of English barristers.

OFFSTAGE

VOICE. Oyez, oyez, oyez! The Court of Celestial Relations is now in session!

OLD MAN. (Bangs with gavel.) Order in the court. The prosecution will proceed.

RADICAL. (Offensively ingratiating.) Your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the prosecution will show that the star in question is as tarnished - nay, black! - as any ever hung in the heavens. I will call but one witness, but that witness in effect is a million witnesses, each of whom could tell the same sordid tale, tell the unvarnished truth in the same simple words from the heart. I'd like to call John Averageman to the stand.

OFFSTAGE

VOICE. John Averageman, John Averageman. Take the stand, please. Enter John Averageman through trap door in stage floor.

(He is slightly pudgy, shy, middle-aged, endearing. His clothes are cheap, verging on being comical. He is in awe of the court, and has perhaps had a couple of drinks to bolster his nerve.)

RADICAL. (Touches John's arm.) I'm looking out for you, John. Take your time about answering. Don't let them rattle you. Let me do the thinking, and you'll be all right.

OFFSTAGE

VOICE. Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

JOHN. (Looks questioningly at radical.) Do I?

RADICAL. You do.

RADICAL. John, suppose you tell the court what you did before the war, before this new star arose to spoil, to besmirch the heavens.

JOHN. I was a machinist in the Averagetown Works of the Averagetown Manufacturing Company.

RADICAL. And now?

JOHN. I'm in the Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps, sir. Shovelman First Class.

RADICAL. Suppose, for the edification of the court, you tell us what you made before the star arose, and what you make now.

JOHN. (Stares upward, remembering and computing with difficulty.) Well, sir, when the defense work and all got going before the war, seems to me I could make better'n a hundred a week with overtime. Best week I ever had, I guess, was about a hundred and forty five dollars. Now I get thirty a week.

RADICAL. Uh-huh. In other words, as that star went up, your income dropped. To be exact, John, your income dropped about eighty per cent.

YOUNG ENG. (Jumps to feet impulsively, likably.) Your honor, I -

OLD MAN. Wait until the cross-examination.

YOUNG ENG. Yessir. Sorry, sir.

RADICAL. I think we've made it amply clear that the American standard of living has tumbled eighty per cent. (His features assume an annoyingly pious expression.) But enough of merely materialistic considerations. What has the ascent of this star meant to John Averageman in terms of his spirit? John, tell the court what you told me. Remember? About the engineers and managers -

JOHN. Yessir. (Looks hesitantly at young engineer.) No offense, sir -

RADICAL. (Prodding.) The truth can never be spoken without someone getting hurt, John. Go right ahead.

JOHN. Well, sir, it hurts a man a lot to be forgotten. You know - to have the fellers in charge, the engineers and managers, just sort of look right through him like they don't see him. A guy likes to know somebody thinks enough of him to look out for him.

YOUNG ENG. (Urgently) Your honor!

OLD MAN. (Severely) I will not tolerate any further interruptions from you. The issues are far graver than I thought. (To radical) Please proceed.

RADICAL. Go ahead, John.

JOHN. Well, sir, that's just about it. Kind of summing up, seems like these days the engineers and managers and the like are everything, and the average man is just nothing any more.

RADICAL. (Pretends to be overcome by the tragedy of John's testimony. After seemingly searching for words and struggling with emotion for thirty seconds, he at last speaks, choked up and angry.) Star of wonder, star of might; star of wondrous beauty bright.

Take it down. (Shakes fist.) Take it down! (Gestures at John.) We've heard the voice of the people - the people, yes. "Take it down!" they say.

Who is it that says, "Leave it up?" Who? Not John, not the people. Who? (Dramatically, he produces a pamphlet from his breast pocket.) Your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury (reads from pamphlet), at the start of the war, the average income for engineers and managers in this great land of ours was $8,449.27. Now, on this poisoned night, as the black star reaches its zenith, eighty per cent of John Averageman's pay check has been wrenched from him. And what is the average pay check for engineers and managers, you ask?

(Reads from the pamphlet again, with bitter emphasis on every syllable.) Fifty-seven thousand eight hundred and ninety-six dollars and forty-one cents!

(Explosively.) Your witness!

(Radical slinks over to the far post and leans against it to watch contemptuously.)

YOUNG ENG. (Softly, kindly) John.

JOHN. (Suspiciously, hostilely) Yessir?

YOUNG ENG. John, tell me - when you had this large income, before the star arose, did you by any chance have a twenty-eight-inch television set.

JOHN. (Puzzled) No, sir.

YOUNG ENG. Or a laundry console or a radar stove or an electronic dust precipitator?

JOHN. No, sir, I didn't. Them things were for the rich folks.

YOUNG ENG. And tell me, John, when you had all that money, did you have a social insurance package that paid all of your medical bills, all of your dentist bills, and provided for food, housing, clothes, and pocket money in your old age?

JOHN. No, sir. There wasn't no such thing then, in those days.

YOUNG ENG. But you have them now, now that the (sarcastically) black star has risen, haven't you?

JOHN. Yessir, that's right, I do. But -

YOUNG ENG. John, you've heard of Julius Caesar? Good, you have. John, do you suppose that Caesar, with all his power and wealth, with the world at his feet, do you suppose he had what you, Mr. Averageman, have today?

JOHN. (Surprised) Come to think of it, he didn't. Huh! What do you know?

RADICAL. (Furiously) I object! What has Caesar got to do with it?

YOUNG ENG. Your honor, the point I was trying to make was that John, here, since the star in question has risen, has become far richer than the wildest dreams of Caesar or Napoleon or Henry VIII! Or any emperor in history! Thirty dollars, John - yes, that is how much money you make. But, not with all his gold and armies could Charlemagne have gotten one single electric lamp or vacuum tube! He would have given anything to get the security and health package you have, John. But could he get it? No!

JOHN. Well, for heaven's sakes! But -

YOUNG ENG. (Anticipates John's objection.) But the engineers and managers have forgotten Mr. Averageman?

JOHN. Yessir, that's what I was going to say.

YOUNG ENG. John, do you know that no manager or engineer would have a job if it weren't for you? How could we forget you for even a minute, when every minute of our lives is spent trying to give you what you want! Do you know who my boss is, John?

JOHN. Don't believe I ever met the gentleman.

YOUNG ENG. (Smiling) Oh, I think maybe you have. He's you, John! If I can't give you what you want, I'm through. We're all through, and down comes the star.

JOHN. (Blushing) Gosh, I never looked at it quite that way before, sir. (Laughs modestly.) But I guess that's right, isn't it? What do you know about that? But -

YOUNG ENG. But I make too much money? Fifty-seven thousand dollars? Is that what worries you?

JOHN. Yessir, that's a lot of money.

YOUNG ENG. John, before the star arose, the payroll for producing what I produce for you, for my boss, Mr. Averageman, ran to more than fifty-seven thousand dollars a week. Not a year, mind you, but a week! It looks to me, John, like you, the consumer, are the big winner, not me.

JOHN. (Whistles low, under his breath.) Is that a fact! (Points suddenly at radical, who is very restive.) But, he said -

YOUNG ENG. We've answered everything he's said, John. And I'd like to add one little thought. He'd like to take advantage of your good nature. He wants power, and he doesn't care about anything else. He'd like to make you swallow his half-truths, John, and get you to help him pull down the star, and put himself in power, and the whole world back in the Dark Ages!

JOHN. (Glowering.) Oh, he would, would he?

(Radical looks worried, then frightened and chagrined, and suddenly makes dash for trap door in stage. John is right after him, and trap door closes. Stage lights fade, and blue feature spot comes up on young engineer, who moves directly to center of stage. Band starts "Battle Hymn of the Republic" softly, almost imperceptibly.)

YOUNG ENG. (Reflectively, soberly, conversationally) Yes, there are those who've clamored so loudly against our star that some have been convinced it is tarnished. And if that star were to come down, it would be partly our fault. Yes, ours! Every minute of the day we should be pointing out how beautiful it is, and why it is beautiful. We hold our peace too much.

(Points at star. Infrared beam hits it, making it glow beautifully.) Under it, we've become rich beyond the wildest dreams of the past!Civilization has reached the dizziest heights of all time!

(Music swells a little in volume.) Thirty-one point seven times as many television sets as all the rest of the world put together!

(Music gets louder still.) Ninety-three per cent of all the world's electrostatic dust precipitators! Seventy-seven per cent of all the world's automobiles! Ninety-eight per cent of its helicopters! Eighty-one point nine per cent of its refrigerators!

(Music gets louder still.) Seventy-one point three per cent of the world's generating capacity! Eighty-five per cent of its industrial control vacuum tubes! Sixty-nine per cent of its fractional horsepower motors! Ninety-eight point three per cent of . . .

(Music crescendos, drowning him out.)

Fade feature spot. Launch rockets from shore.)

The young engineer is gone, and so are the trappings of the court. The old man is at the top of his ladder, alone with his stars, as he was at the beginning.

He holds out the star bearing the image of the Oak, smiles, hooks it onto the wire, and sends it out, where it glows in infrared.

OLD MAN. Yes, out it goes again, brighter than all the rest. (He reaches under his robe, and comes out with a powerful flashlight, whose beam he aims directly upward.) And when I come back to examine the stars for stains in another century, will it gleam as it does now? Or? (Looks meaningfully at the foot of the ladder.) Well, what determines whether it will be tarnished or not? (Looks at the audience.) It depends on - (Suddenly brings down the flashlight, so its beam strikes face after face after face in the audience.) You! And You! And You! etc.

(Fire rockets. Hit "Stars and Stripes Forever" hard.)

Kroner's hand crashed down on Paul's knee. "Phwew! The best keynoter yet! Paul - the story, the whole story in a nutshell!"

"You'll be interested in knowing - " said the loudspeaker over the applause. "Here's an announcement of interest: In the past, the keynote plays have been written by professional writers under our supervision. This play you've just seen was written, believe it or not, by an engineer and manager within the organization! Bill Holdermann, stand up! Stand up! Stand up, Bill!"

The audience went wild.

"I knew it!" shouted Kroner. "It was real! It went right to the heart. It had to be somebody inside!"

Holdermann, a shaggy, worn-out nobody from the Indianapolis Works, stood a few rows ahead of Paul, red, smiling, and with tears in his eyes. At the sunset of life, he had arrived. Perhaps a muffled wisp of the applause reached the ears of his wife, the woman who had had faith in him when no one else had, across the water, on the Mainland.

"Bonfire in five minutes," said the loudspeaker. "Five minutes to make new contacts, then the bonfire."

Shepherd struggled through the crowd and took Kroner's attention away from Paul. " 'Not with all his gold and armies,' " Shepherd quoted from the play. " 'Not with all his gold and armies could Charlemagne have gotten one single electric lamp or vacuum tube!' " He shook his head wonderingly, admiringly. "Don't tell me art is dying."

"Art who?" said Paul under his breath, and he walked away from them, into the twilight at the fringe of the ring of floodlights. The rest of the crowd drifted, tightly packed, toward the shore, where Luke Lubbock, Alfy, and others of the service staff were pouring kerosene on a hillock of pine fagots.

The play was virtually the same play that had begun every Meadows session, even before the war, when the island had belonged to a steel company. Twenty years ago, Paul's father had brought him up here, and the play's message had been the same: that the common man wasn't nearly as grateful as he should be for what the engineers and managers had given him, and that the radicals were the cause of the ingratitude.

When Paul had first seen the allegory, as a teen-ager, he'd been moved deeply. He had been struck full force by its sublime clarity and simplicity. It was a story in a nutshell, and the heroic struggle against ingratitude was made so vivid for his young mind that he'd worshipped his father for a little while as a fighter, a latter-day Richard the Lionhearted.

"Well," his father had said after that first play, years ago, "what are you thinking, Paul?"

"I had no idea - no idea that's what was going on."

"That's the story," his father had said sadly. "The whole story. That's the way it is."

"Yessir." Their eyes had met, and an inexpressibly sweet sense of eternal tragedy had passed between them, between their generations - a legacy of Weltschmerz as old as humanity.

Now, Paul stood by himself on a dark walk, bewildered by the picture of, as Kroner put it, the men at the head of the procession of civilization, the openers of doors to undreamed-of new worlds. This silly playlet seemed to satisfy them completely as a picture of what they were doing, why they were doing it, and who was against them, and why some people were against them. It was a beautifully simple picture these procession leaders had. It was as though a navigator, in order to free his mind of worries, had erased all the reefs from his maps.

Suddenly, light flashed in Paul's eyes, but less dazzling light than the Sky Manager's. He faced his own image in a mirror framed by fluorescent lamps. Over the mirror was the legend, THE BEST MAN IN THE WORLD FOR THE BEST JOB IN THE WORLD. The island was covered with such booby traps. The lamps about this mirror were old ones, and they gave off a wavering light tinged with greens and purples. They gave his skin the quality of corroded copper, and his lips and eye rims were lavender. He discovered that there was nothing disquieting about seeing himself dead. An awakening conscience, unaccompanied by new wisdom, made his life so damned lonely, he decided he wouldn't much mind being dead. And the good offices of the cocktail hour were wearing away.

A drone in the sky to the east distracted him - probably the amphibian bearing the priceless two hundred and fifty pounds of Doctor Francis Eldgrin Gelhorne, and his know-how.

Paul took a step down the path, which turned off the lights, and headed back toward the bonfire, which was sending sparks and flames up hundreds of feet and turning the faces about it to a sweaty pink.

A professional actor, painted bronze, wearing an eagle-feather war bonnet and a beaded G-string, held up his hand and tilted his head back proudly. The crowd fell silent. "How!" He looked earnestly from face to face. "How! Many moons ago, my people made their home on this island."

The amphibian was circling the island now, coming lower.

"It's the Old Man all right," whispered Kroner to Paul. "Wouldn't look good to walk out on the ceremony, though. We'll have to stick it out."

"My people were brave people," said the Indian. "My people were proud and honest people. My people worked hard, played hard, fought hard, until it was time to go to the Happy Hunting Ground."

The same actor had been hired to play the Indian for years, ever since Paul had been coming to the Meadows. He'd been hired originally for his deep voice and beautiful muscles. Now, Paul noticed, his belly cast a shadow over his G-string, his left calf had developed a varicose vein, and war paint failed to hide the gray bags under his eyes. He had become such a regular at the Meadows, such a vital symbol - surpassed in that function only by Doctor Gelhorne and the Oak -that he was a man apart from the other hired help, on a first-name footing with the brass, and with the drinking privileges of a regular guest.

"Now our braves are gone, our strong young men - gone from this island, which belonged to my people, lo, these many moons ago," said the Indian. "Now other young men come. But the spirit of my people lives on, the Spirit of the Meadows. It is everywhere: in the wind through the pines, in the lapping of the great blue water, in the whir of an eagle wing, in the growl of summer thunder. No man can call this island his, no man can be happy here, who does not harken to the Spirit, who does not take the Oath of the Spirit."

There was the clattering of the switch in the loudspeaker again. "Young braves at the Meadows for the first step forward," said a pontifical voice, not that of the usual drover.

"Raise your right hands," said the Indian. "Repeat after me the Oath of the Spirit of the Meadows. I solemnly swear by the voice in the pines -"

"By the voice in the pines," said the neophytes.

"By the lapping of the great blue water, by the whir of the eagle wing -"

The Old Man's plane had skated across the water to the shore on the other side of the island and was roaring its engines as it inched up a ramp onto land.

"By the growl of the summer thunder," said the Indian.

"By the growl of the summer thunder."

"I will uphold the Spirit of the Meadows," said the Indian. "I will obey the wise commands of my chiefs, for the good of the people. I will work and fight fearlessly, tirelessly for a better world. I will never say the job is done. I will uphold the honor of my profession and what I represent at all times. I will seek out enemies of the people, enemies of a better world for all children, relentlessly."

"Relentlessly!" said someone in the crowd near Paul, passionately. He turned to see that Luke Lubbock, again swept into the mainstream of pomp and circumstance, held his hand high and swore to everything that came along. In Luke's left hand was a fire extinguisher, apparently for use in case the blaze spread.

When the oath was done, the Indian looked and saw it was good. "The Spirit of the Meadows is pleased," he said. "The Meadows belong to these stout-hearted braves, and it shall be a proud, happy place as it was, lo, these many moons ago."

A smoke bomb concealed before him screened him for a startling instant, and he was gone.

"The saloon is open," said the loudspeaker. "The saloon is open, and will be open until midnight."

Paul found himself walking beside the pleasant youngster he'd met at lunch, Doctor Edmund Harrison of the Ithaca Works. Shepherd and Berringer were right behind, flattering the life out of Kroner.

"Well, how'd you like it, Ed?" said Paul.

Harrison looked at him searchingly, started to smile, and seemed to think it inadvisable. "Very well done," he said carefully. "Very professional."

"Jesus Christ," Berringer was saying, "I mean, Christ, boy, that was a show. You know, it's entertainment, and still you learn something, too. Christ! When you do both, that's art, boy. Christ, and that wasn't cheap to put on, either, I'll bet."

Ed Harrison of Ithaca stopped and picked up a bit of stone from the side of the path. "I'll be damned," he said. "An arrowhead!"

"A nice one, too," said Paul, admiring the relic.

"So there really were Indians on this island," said Harrison.

"For chrissakes, you crazy bastard," said Berringer. "You deaf, dumb, and blind? Whaddya think they been trying to tell you for the past half-hour?"