The Golden Globe

ACT 2

The warm water filled his ears. It made a deep roaring sound. He heard splashes that sounded far away, and he heard his own heartbeat. Air trickled from his lips and nose.

Friends, Romans...

Looking up, he saw the shimmery surface of the water, and beyond that, the dark figure with the ceiling light behind his head, making a halo.

Maybe that's what God looks like, he thought.

Sometimes he could almost see through things. Sometimes things seemed to shimmer, like the water, and he could see beyond them, to some shapeless otherness he could never quite remember. Was he dreaming when he saw these things? Was it remembering?

Remembering...

Friends and Romans and countrymen and ears and... something something something, not to praise him.

Quicksilver bubbles rose toward the looming, dark face. Strong hands on his shoulders. Strong, loving hands, good hands. I only want the best for you, Dodger.

It felt good to lie here. It was warm and it was safe and it was wet, and this is what a baby must feel like in its mommy's tummy.

His heart was pounding louder now. It wasn't fear. He just needed some air, that was all. Babies in their mommies' tummies didn't need air. But once you took that first breath, you sort of got used to it, air got to be something you needed.

Friends Romans lend me your praise him.

A big burst of air broke free and he began to struggle. He didn't want to, he'd been so good, so good so far, but his arms and his legs just wanted to move, and his lungs ached for a sweet breath of air. His small naked shoulders squirmed under the big hands, the good hands. He was so ashamed of himself. Maybe he should just take a big breath of water. Maybe he could learn to breathe water again, since he couldn't seem to learn the important things.

He'd heard it three times now. What was wrong with him, that he couldn't remember after hearing it three times?

It wasn't so bright now. Things were getting dim around the edges. The last of his air leaked from his nose, making hardly any sound at all.

And he had it. He became still as a stone and felt it all burst up from whatever depths it had fallen to when he lost it, and it flowed through his mind and his body, and he was nodding frantically as things got darker and darker.

He was pulled into the air and made a tremendous croaking sound as he filled his lungs and began to spew it out, like vomit.

"Frens romans countrymen lend me yerrears I come to, come to, come to bury Zeezer not t'praze'm," all the air was gone again, so he gasped in another breath, "lives after dem d'good 'soft enter'd with their bones." Pause. Breath. "The noble Brutes has tol' you Zeezer was... was..."

He breathed in and out frantically, staring down at the water, at his legs beneath the water, at his penis.

"Ambitious." The voice came from above. He was flooded with gratitude and love. Everything was going to be all right.

"...was 'bitious if it were so it were a grievious fault and—"

"Grievous."

"Huh?" He looked up into Father's face, searching for signs of anger. "Isn't that what I said?"

"Grie-vous," the man intoned. He had a wonderful voice. It filled the small room. It made the water vibrate. "Grie-vous," he boomed again. Then he wrinkled his nose and upper lip and made his voice nasal, tinny, ridiculous. "You said gree-vee-ous. Where did you learn that?"

"I think Gideon Peppy said it."

"I think so, too. No more television for you, young man, especially the Peppy Show. That man is single-handedly destroying the language."

The man lifted his son from the bathwater and set him on the mat. He wrapped him in a big fluffy white towel that said THARSIS HYATT on it. All their towels had the names of hotels on them.

"Now, take it again, from 'it were a grievous fault, and...' "

"...and grievi—and grievously hath Zeezer answer'd it. The boy continued through Marc Antony's funeral oration, happy as a kitten with a bowl of cream, stumbling only over "Lupercal" and "coffers." As he spoke his father's big hands pummeled him and rubbed him dry through the big towel, powdered him, sprayed him, combed his long yellow hair.

"Very good, Dodger," he said, after the boy had gone through it three times. "But you must never say it that way again."

"All right."

"You must never 'say' it at all. From now on you will hear the words. You will learn what each word means, and what they mean together, and you will make the words live. Memorizing is all very good, but we are not phonographs, are we?"

The boy agreed, having no idea what a phonograph was. Then he was lifted, still wrapped in the towel, and brought to his tiny bedroom, where he stood shivering—the landlord, through some misunderstanding, had stopped providing heat three days before—as his father found a pair of blue flannel pajamas with fluffy tassels on the feet, two sizes too small, and held them while his son stepped in and zipped them up in front.

"We'll get you some new ones next week," his father said. "You're getting to be a big boy." He put his son in bed and tucked the big comforter under his chin.

"Good night, Dodger," he said.

"G'night, Father." The man left the door slightly ajar, as he always did, knowing his son was prone to bad dreams.

Dodger lay there in the dark, looking at the sliver of light on the ceiling that came through the door, and thinking about Junior Zeezer, Octopus Zeezer, Marcus Bootless, Mark Anthony, Cashless, Sinna, Kafka, and the Smoothsayer. He knew those names were wrong but he found it helped him remember them to think of them that way. The real names made no sense at all to him. Neither did the play. That didn't bother him; none of the plays Father read to him made any sense, except Titus Andronicus (Tightest and Raunchiest, in Dodger-speak). Now, there was a story, with guys chopping off hands and pulling out tongues and stabbing each other with swords and stuff. It was almost as good as television.

But not Junior Zeezer. Oh, there was all those guys stabbing Junior in the Senate (also in the heart and the back and the gut, if Dodger understood it right), but most of it was no better than Hambone, which other than a neat ghost and some sword fighting didn't make much sense to Dodger, either.

His trouble was that, though he had a vocabulary ten times larger than most children his age, he didn't know what half the words meant.

Now his father said he was supposed to hear the words. Know what they mean, one at a time and all together. The prospect excited Dodger. All his life he'd been hearing these stories by Shaky-Spear, stories none of his friends knew, stories he couldn't tell his friends because he didn't know what they meant himself.

Now he would know. He suspected that learning what they meant would involve more time underwater.

But maybe that was just for remembering. He was getting so good at remembering now that some bath times went by without getting dunked at all.

The boy shivered, and pulled the covers more tightly around him. Soon he was asleep.

Dodger was four years old.

It's me again. Mister First Person.

And who are you? I might hear you ask. A certain amount of confusion at this point would be only normal.

"Your name is just something to put up on the marquee," my father always said. "It doesn't mean a thing." He proved his point by giving me a handful of them: Kenneth Catherine Duse Faneuil Savoyard Booth Johnson Ivanovich de la Valentine, to mention just a few. Alias K.C., Casey, Ken, Cat, Kendall, Kelly, Kenton and Kelvin. A.K.A. Valencia, Valentine, Van den Troost, and Jones. In various combinations of these and others I may have neglected to mention, I had enough noms de theatre, de plume, and de guerre to make a list longer than the memory of most big-city police computers.

"It gives you options," said my father, a man who was known throughout his life simply as John Valentine. "I have an enormous ego," he would say, with a twinkle in his eye. "I can't stand for the applause to go to anyone but John Valentine. But I am able to do the jail time, when it comes to that."

Well, I can't do the time. I've never stayed in jail longer than it takes to make bail, get new paper, and catch the first available transport to a distant planet. This has prevented me from compiling the sort of credits that might lead to critical adulation, but after all, as my father also used to say, "The performance is the thing."

But as I said earlier, all my friends call me Sparky.

Or, before that, Dodger.

But speaking of the printed page, here's a request to the typesetter:

Could we lose the italics?

Thank you.

I've noticed that, in books, when the point of view is switched, the new part is often set in italics. Well, I don't like italics much, and I'm just going to assume that you, the reader, are smart enough to know when I'm in first person and when I'm using third. Hint: examine the pronouns.

There is this odd thing about me: I usually dream in the third person. Frequently the dreams are in black-and-white, not Technicolor. The dreams are thus a little like out-of-body experiences. I see myself doing things, rather than seeing the things I do. I've spoken with other actors about this, thinking it might be an occupational disorder resulting from spending so much of my time thinking about how a motion or gesture would look, about makeup and staging and presence and all the other aspects of my craft. I found only one other actor who dreamed like I do. Shortly after he told me that he put a bullet through his head, and I stopped asking the question. I didn't like the way people looked at me when I asked, anyway.

That's why I'm putting parts of this in the third person: because I dreamed it. And the reason I'm back in first is, I woke up. Far too soon.

I didn't know it at first. Apart from the grogginess natural to the dosage of "deadballs" I'd taken, there is nothing in space to give one cues as to elapsed time, particularly in the Outer Planets; Pluto would have vanished from sight during the first hours of acceleration. After that, there was nothing visual to show time's passage until arrival at Uranus.

But among the Pantech's equipment is a clock, and I soon became alert enough to fumble open the protective hatch and consult it. I found we'd been gone for only three days.

I was alarmed.

The illegal mixture of drugs sold on the street as deadballs enabled the human body to do something it was never designed to do: sleep for a week, with few deleterious side effects. Hibernate, if you will (or estivate, take your pick, since there were no seasons in space).

Why ban a drug? After all, this isn't the Dark Ages. Getting high isn't illegal on any civilized planet—not that deadballs made you high.

My father's explanation made as much sense as any.

"Profit, Dodger, simple profit," he said. "Ninety percent of interplanet travel is tourism, people running away from their humdrum lives to experience humdrum amusements far from home. And every mile of that travel is the most boring experience imaginable. The owners of the ships that make these useless trips realize this, and devise endless amusements for the passengers—not included in the price of the ticket. A comatose passenger doesn't do any gambling or eating. We can't have that, so deadballs are illegal."

Cynical? Perhaps, but then why are deadballs sold legally to people traveling on errands for the government? Why do the staterooms of high-powered business executives on high-powered fast courier ships remain closed for days at a time? The people who do that other ten percent of space traveling usually do it on hibernation drugs, from the movers and shakers to the immigrants stacked like cordwood in the steerage holds of many a cargo ship.

(Oddly, I never could find a deadball in my hasty flight from Brementon. Judging from the waking state of my fellow passengers, neither could anyone else. In a place where every drug known to man could be had simply by walking up to a guard and paying for it, deadballs were unknown. Apparently the living hell of the trip to and from the prison station was seen as part of the punishment.)

A more legitimate reason for banning them was the informal type of travel I found myself indulging in at that very moment. Without deadballs, only the shortest ride on the rods was survivable.

Now I was beginning to wonder if I would survive this one. Adding it up, it didn't look good.

I had expected to awaken during the course of the voyage; I estimated between ten and a dozen half-day surfacings would be about right. When you wake from a deadball you either need to urinate very badly, or find you have already done so. Though your metabolism has been drastically slowed, you will be very hungry. Usually, a bowel movement will not be necessary. (After the trip you will with great heartbreak deliver yourself of a hard, dried... but let's skip on over that part.)

You can do two weeks of deadballs standing on your head. A month is no real problem. Two months... you would really rather not, for reasons of both comfort and health. Three months, four months... you're pushing it. A few people have survived six months of continuous deadballing, but most would rather not speak of it, like victims of torture.

I had plenty of air, heat, and water. In a cramped environment like the Pantechnicon, or a packing case, food becomes the dearest commodity. Try packing even very light rations for ninety days into a space you can't even stand up in. Just try it. Even if you could, are you able to endure ninety days of solitary confinement? No shuffleboard courts or slot machines. Just you, squatting in the dark, watching your toenails grow.

But if my deadballs had been cut with something, I faced forty or fifty days of that. I would probably not starve. Part of the price of the ticket is the loss of thirty to forty pounds. With bad drugs, I might expect to lose a hundred or more on the Miracle Deadball Diet.

"If you've learned your part cold," my father used to say, "then you've got nothing else worth worrying about. Just take the rest as it comes." Or, don't fret about things you can't do anything about. The future will deliver up its load of misery in due time.

With that semicomforting thought, I began treating this as just a normal, expected comfort stop. I set about tidying my small space and preparing a cold meal of beef jerky and maple syrup. It's better than it sounds, when you haven't eaten anything in three days.

I dialed the shelter to transparency.

The first thing I saw was a thundering herd of horses.

The drugs, right? No, I never even thought of that, though they can cause hallucinations. These horses were frozen in attitudes of great speed, as though they had galloped through a puddle of liquid helium. The freezing was certainly plausible, given the outside temperature. But they were carved from wood. I had been stowed next to a cargo of merry-go-round horses.

They were hanging from racks inside a large packing crate that, for some delightful reason, was transparent. I assumed the case was pressurized and heated. When I played my flashlight over them a thousand jolly colors leaped out at me. I was enchanted.

Where were they going? Who had made them? I never found out.

Like most miscellaneous-cargo vessels, this one consisted of the bare minimum. Basically, it was a central core that contained the drive and the life support systems for cargo and crew—typically, only two or three people. It was over a mile from stem to stern, and along its length it sprouted long composite racks, not much different from a pole you would hang your clothes on. The cargo modules, including the Pantech, had standard couplers that simply and easily snapped over the "horizontal" poles—they were horizontal at launch, anyway—where it was free to swing and sway and orient itself according to the direction of thrust: "riding the rods," just like the Old Earth hoboes. When the ship landed, the rods would be depressed slightly, and the modules would slide off the ends and onto ground carriers. It was a simple system, in use for decades, standard throughout the inhabited planets.

The Pantech was the last module on a rod near the front of the ship. I'd paid a small premium for the outside berth, since I get claustrophobic if I'm stacked in the middle, surrounded by heavy crates that could crush me if they swung in the wrong direction.

I soon saw something odd. It was the crate Lou had abandoned on our way out to the ship. It seemed to have sprung a leak.

I could see it a few rings forward, and one rod over. The corner he had pried up to get in and out now sported a long, white tail. It reminded me of a picture I'd once seen of a tapestry from the Middle Ages. The artist had represented a comet as a many-rayed star with a long tail to one side as it arched across the heavens. This tail was ice of some kind—hard to tell what; hell, everything froze out here. For a while the leak had been in one direction as the ship accelerated. Then, in free fall, the liquid had seeped out in all directions, making a rather pretty Christmas-tree ornament.

I chose to take it as good news. Lou had detected something wrong with his proposed abode before it was even loaded on the ship, like a squirrel finding a leak in his hollow tree just before turning in for his winter's snooze. I hoped his new home proved a little more solid.

Of course, he might be freezing or starving or slowly dying of thirst and there was absolutely nothing I could do to help him.

So I drank a second dose of deadballs, turned the shelter opaque, and curled up in a warm blanket to sleep for a week. I hoped.

"Father, is this the Emerald City?"

John Valentine chuckled and squeezed his son's hand.

"It will do until something better comes along," he said.

They were riding in a half-full tramcar that traced the edge of Hyginus Rima, in the southeast corner of Mare Vaporum, known far and wide as the entertainment capital of the system. Had they taken the tram to the end of the line young Kenneth would actually have seen the Emerald City, pretty much as Dorothy, Toto, and company had approached it in 1939 on a yellow brick road that was partly on a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer soundstage and partly in the box of tricks of a process cinematographer.

There were those who called the Hyginus Line the Yellow Brick Rail.

The official name of the sector they were now entering was the Route of the Stars. The builders had taken their cue from the city fathers of Hollywood, U.S.A., but everything they did had to be a hundred times as large, a thousand times as spectacular—and even less substantial than the original.

Where the stars in the sidewalk on Hollywood Boulevard had been nothing more than small squares of masonry and brass, the ones in Hyginus were holographs the size of billboards, easily seen and read from a speeding tram-car. The giant stars seemed hammered out of pure gold, and in the center of each was a forty-foot fully animated three-dimensional image of the honoree. The stars' names were spelled out in diamonds bigger than watermelons.

"So it's really Hollywood?" the boy asked.

"Son of Hollywood," said his father. "Not much around here that's all that original."

The real name of the area was the King City/Mare Vaporum Artistic and Industrial Park, but no one called it that. The King City part was gerrymandering of the most blatant sort. The actual city was over a hundred miles away, but the city limits ran on each side of the Hyginus rail until it reached Vaporum, where it ballooned to include all the area zoned for industry. The only real benefit reaped by the businesses there was the privilege of paying King City taxes.

As for industry, the only industry in Vaporum was The Movies. Whether anything "artistic" was happening was endlessly debated among the more acerbic critics back in the city.

Those who worked there called it The Park, The Vapors, or Hollywood, the Sequel. They spoke of going out to The Rima, or The Edge, or Yellow Bricktown. Everybody else just called it Hollywood. Since the original Hollywood was a memory, there was seldom any confusion.

"And besides," John Valentine said to his son, "Hollywood was always just a state of mind, anyway."

Young Kenneth pressed his face against the window beside his seat and watched the passing spectacle. The stars were only the beginning.

Behind them were mountainous holograms of the logos of motion-picture studios, past and present, solvent and defunct. Dodger knew they were holograms, but since he had no idea what a hologram was, they were as real to him as the car he was riding in. The apparent heights of these juggernaut illusions could be measured in miles.

There was a tapering iron tower sitting on the north pole of a half Earth globe, spitting stylized sparks and spelling out, letter by letter, A RADIO PICTURE. Next to that was a snow-covered mountain surrounded by drifting clouds and haloed with a starry diadem. A mile-high lion's head roared in the middle of an elaborate scroll of old-fashioned motion picture film, and then yet another globe, hanging suspended and massive above the barren plain, being endlessly circled by a winged machine. "An airplane, Father!"

"That's right. Universal."

"Look! Look!" the boy shouted, pointing to one he was more familiar with. "Sentry! That's where we're going, isn't it, Father?"

"If you don't knock the train off the tracks with all your commotion. Settle down, boy."

Dodger contained his excitement, and watched the armored warrior and bursting firework trademark of Sentry/Sensational Pictures. The gigantic figure went from attention to a position of challenge, his huge weapon held out before him at port arms. But soon he was fading into the distance, replaced by a circle and golden sunburst saying TOHO and a word he couldn't read. A horse with wings charged the tramcar and leaped over it. Dodger looked, but the Pegasus never landed on the other side. A gargantuan rooster flapped its rust-colored wings and ruffled its neck. A dozen multicolored flags snapped in a nonexistent breeze under the towering legend FILMWERKS.

Dodger wished he could fly over this wonderful plain. Recently Father had him memorize the script for Swift!, and he supposed it must look as if a child of Brobdingnag had upended his toy chest and then abandoned his mammoth fripperies out here in the wilderness. Actually, from above he would have seen nothing at all. It cost more to project a holo in all directions, and the designers of the Route of the Stars understood a principle known since the days of D. W. Griffith: make sure your budget gets on the screen. The Hyginus route was the electronic equivalent of dusty old western streets walked by William S. Hart, Tom Mix, and Roy Rogers: false fronts propped up with two-by-fours.

They were just getting into the part of the route devoted to scenes from classic movies when the train pulled into the first Vaporum station. Dodger didn't really want to get off, but when Father took his hand he stood and followed him off the car.

They went down a slideway with a curved, transparent roof, right between the hairy legs of a giant gorilla chained to a big wooden cross. The beast followed them with his eyes, and father and son both looked up as they walked under him.

"Let's hope he doesn't have an upset tummy," John Valentine said, and his son collapsed in helpless giggles.

John Valentine led his son to a wide sofa in a big, nondescript waiting area outside the casting offices of Sentry/Sensational studios. There were many other couches, mostly filled with people. He sat him down, and then squatted in front of him.

"Now, I may be a while, Dodger," he said, straightening the big yellow bow at the boy's neck. Current fashion for young men was a quasi-Victorian look, with knee breeches and frock coats and lace at the cuffs. When Dodger was dressed up like that John called him Buster Brown. Since this was an important audition, father and son were dressed in their best, which if examined closely would have revealed loose threads where the tags reading PROPERTY OF NLF COSTUME DEPARTMENT had been removed. Young Kenneth had golden hair that hung past his shoulders and framed a face with wide-set blue eyes, apple cheeks, and a prominent pair of front teeth with a wide gap between them. He wore a floppy brown velvet beret.

"I want you to wait right here until I get back," Valentine said. "There is a water fountain over there, and the rest room is just around that corner and down the hall. You've got your script"—he took a tattered copy of Cyrano de Bergerac from his briefcase and set it on the sofa—"and I brought a lunch for you." He produced a brown paper bag, opened it, and let Dodger look inside. The boy saw something wrapped in waxed paper, and smelled a banana. "Peanut butter and jelly, your favorite. Now, can I trust you to behave?"

Dodger nodded, and his father pulled the beret down over his eyes, tickled his ribs lightly, and stood. He headed for the door marked CASTING DEPARTMENT.

"Father?" Dodger called out, and John Valentine turned. "Break a leg," the boy said. Valentine gave him a thumbs-up, and went through the door.

Dodger was pretty good at waiting. This wasn't the first time he had gone along for a cattle call, though never before at a motion-picture studio. His father didn't have a very high opinion of the movies, though he worked in them when there was nothing else happening and the rent was overdue.

"Never extra work, though, son," he would say. "If you don't get a line, it's not acting. You might as well hire yourself out as scenery."

Dodger wouldn't have minded being scenery, sometimes. Scenery didn't have to memorize so many plays.

This one was pretty good, though. By the second act he had assigned his own names to all the characters: Cyranose, of course, and Rockshead, who reminded Dodger of a chorus girl they used to know. Pretty, but dumb as a mime. If only she'd been like a mime and stopped talking every once in a while. Then there was Christian the Noodlehead, the Comedy Grease, and Raggynose, the pastry cook.

It was jammed full of sword fighting, which was great, but it also had lots of words he didn't recognize. He dutifully underlined each one, as his father had taught him. He would learn them later. Popinjay. Jobbernowl. Ambuscaded. Mountebanks. Buskin. And what was he to make of Hippocampelephantocamelos?

From time to time an adult would hurry by, usually far too busy to notice the boy sitting in the farthest corner of the lobby. Then someone would pause, look back at him uncertainly. Dodger would give him or her his most winning smile. If that wasn't enough, he would say, "It's all right. My father is meeting with Mr. Sensational." Jack Sensational was the head of the studio. Nobody asked any questions after that.

He ate half his sandwich and all the banana. He visited the facilities his father had pointed out, and decided he was bored to death. What would it hurt, he wondered, if he did a little exploring?

The sign TO SOUNDSTAGES A-B-C-D had lured him farther afield than he intended to go. Now the huge door he was passing read SOUNDSTAGE H-2, and he knew he was lost.

He also knew he was going to be in big trouble. But there is a defense mechanism in dogs and young children that prevents them from worrying too much about future consequences once it is clear that it is too late to avoid them. What the hell? Dodger thought. If I'm going to catch it, I might as well make the crime worthy of the punishment.

So he wandered along the wide corridors, dodging heavy equipment hauling props and scenery, and groups of actors and extras in outlandish costumes chattering among themselves.

He knew just enough to avoid any door with a red light over it, since the light meant actual shooting was going on. But when he opened another door and stuck his head in enough to get a glimpse of a huge ballroom set swarming with carpenters and electricians he was shouted at, and beat a hasty retreat.

But he viewed an open door as an invitation to come in.

The first one he entered was a soundstage populated entirely by six-foot-tall blonde women wearing pink high-heeled shoes and pink ostrich-feather headdresses that towered another four feet over them. There must have been a hundred of them. They were just standing around, doing nothing. Before them were a hundred champagne glasses filled with bubbling liquid, big enough for the women to take a bath in, and behind that was a towering blue backdrop. One of the women glanced at him, then went back to contemplating her long, pink fingernails. For five minutes nothing at all happened. Nobody noticed him and nobody asked him to leave, and it was all incredibly boring.

And that seemed to be what moviemaking was about. He visited three more stages, and in all of them people were standing around doing nothing. Nobody was shooting at anybody, there were no sword fights, no action of any kind. Dodger tentatively decided against a career on the silver screen.

He was getting tired by the time he wandered into Soundstage F-5, and wishing he could find his way back to his half a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. But when he entered F-5 he forgot his hunger.

The other stages had been large, but difficult to see because of false walls standing here and there at random, and lights hanging from the ceilings. This one was empty and the overhead lights were turned off. Dodger didn't need them, because most of the floor of the stage was a vast blue pool of water, lit from below. It was smooth as glass. Tied up not far from him was a full-scale pirate ship, sails furled, whose masts towered a hundred feet high.

This was more like it. Maybe there was magic in the movies after all.

His footsteps echoed in the big barn as he went to the ship. He reached out and touched it, and the ship bobbed slightly, sending out concentric waves that turned the even play of light across the distant ceiling into a magical pattern of diamonds. He pushed harder against the ship, heard an anchor rope creak against a piling, and the pretty pattern of lights was shattered even further. He wondered how he could tell Father about this. There must be words for it. There were so many words.

"Hey, what are you doing?"

He jerked guiltily and looked up. There was another boy standing in the open door of the soundstage, but it was not he who had shouted. An angry-looking woman in the red-and-yellow uniform of Sentry Security was holding the boy by the arm. She was about to pull him out into the corridor when she looked up and saw Dodger.

"You, too," she called out, beckoning. "Get over here. You kids were told not to go wandering. I ought to kick you off the lot."

Dodger thought of running, but didn't immediately see any other exit doors from the place. There was absolutely nothing to hide behind. So he hurried to the guard and she grabbed him, too.

Without another word she hustled them across a busy corridor and through a door marked STUDIO 88. Someone had taped a notice to it: Auditioners and Parents ONLY!

Inside was chaos. It was not an entirely unfamiliar scene to the Dodger. He had witnessed casting calls for the legitimate stage, and knew what happened when you got a hundred precocious youngsters and their indulgent parents together at one time. Some of these kids had yet to hear the word "no" issue from their parents' mouths. They were the ones running in every direction at breakneck speed while Mom and Dad looked on with simpering approval and told everyone in sight that little junior was just so damn talented they didn't have the heart to repress his creative impulses. Sometimes these creative impulses took the form of hitting another talented child with a handy blunt object, and in these cases the police frequently had to be called to prevent murder among the battling parents.

The rest were of another sort entirely. Dodger knew them well. They had spent most of their short lives learning to actually do something—singing, ballet, accordion playing—and had achieved some success at it. They were as spoiled as the first group, but quieter about it. Most of them sat serenely with stage mothers and stage fathers, and the only noise they made was the hideous sounds that issued from their kazoos, harmonicas, and Jew's harps.

"Damn all aspiring Shirley Temples," John Valentine had once said, at just such an audition. "Children on the stage are a necessary evil, I suppose, if you're reviving Annie. God forbid. But they should be locked in a trunk and stored in the wings between shows. Take them out, feed and water them, let them do their turn, and lock them up again."

But he reserved the worst of his scorn for the parents.

"Gypsy Roses, every one of them!" he sneered. "Frustrated, talentless, hams by proxy. They mouth lines along with their brats, and dream of their names on the marquee. They eat their young. If the first one doesn't work out, you'll see the same faces five years later, with a new brat in tow."

Dodger, who had witnessed this routine of his father's several times, would say nothing, remembering the first time he had heard it, when he had innocently asked if he himself wasn't something like that, what with memorizing all the plays by Shakespeare.

And his father would put his hands on Dodger's small shoulders and look intently into his wide blue eyes.

"That's not for you, Dodger. No tap-dancing dog-and-pony shows for my boy. You're learning your craft, and it's the noblest craft of them all. It's the only thing in the world worth doing."

"Where's your release form?"

"Huh?" Dodger looked up into the face of a pretty young woman with a clipboard and a harried expression.

"Here," she said, and thrust a printed form at him. "Have your father or mother fill this out and then wait until your name is called. And please, don't lose this one." She was gone as quickly as she had appeared.

Dodger found his way to a table that was heaped with food. He'd seen nothing like this at theater auditions. Once again his opinion of the movie business moved up a notch.

Much of the food seemed to have been used recently as ammunition in a truly epic food fight, but there was still plenty left in bowls, on platters, and even on big steam tables. He slapped a hot dog into a big bun, squirted mustard, topped it off with three spoonfuls of relish, then grabbed a can of Coke from a barrel of ice and pulled up a chair. He took a big bite, then swept the tablecloth in front of him clear of crushed potato chips and bits of cupcake and part of a melting ice-cream bar. He put the release form on the table and studied it. It seemed simple enough. He glanced around, saw that no one was paying him any attention.

Name? He filled in Kenneth C. Valentine. Stage name (if any): The Artful Dodger. Parent or Guardian: John B. Valentine. Age: 8.

He filled in all the blanks, after first checking the bottom to see if there was any penalty for perjury, a word he had learned a few days ago. His father had cautioned he should always look for it previous to signing anything. And there was a space at the bottom for a signature, but they didn't want his, they wanted his father's. He looked around again, then accurately reproduced the flamboyant loops and incisive angles of his father's autograph: John Barrymore Valentine II.

He finished his hot dog and handed the form to the lady when she came by again. He didn't think anything would come of it, since it would obviously take some time to work through this many children. As he waited he overheard enough to realize this was the first cull from a much larger group. Most of the day's attendees had already been sent home with that ancient kiss-off ringing in their ears: "Thank you for coming don't call us we'll call you."

He looked around at the seventy or eighty remaining. Then he looked at the table where the lady had put the stack of forms.

Hmmm.

A group of kids had been running around the table since he sat down. On their next pass Dodger carelessly stuck his foot out in front of the leader, who went skidding on his face. The others fell down on top of him. The shrieks were deafening, and in no time a frantic gaggle of parents had congealed into an explosive mass, volatile as nitroglycerin. In no more than five seconds the first punch was thrown, and soon after that four fathers were bloodying each other's noses. Dodger strolled toward the casting director's table as everyone else hurried the other way. Glancing around to be sure everyone was either watching the fight or trying to stop it, he lifted the stack of paper. There it was, his application, on the bottom. Hell of a place for it, he decided. He made a small adjustment to the stack and stepped away.

In a moment yet another woman emerged from behind the curtain. She picked up the top form.

"Kenneth Valentine? Kenny, where are you, dear?"

Dodger tugged at her skirt.

"Oh, there you are. Well, you can come with me, and your parents must wait right..." She looked around, puzzled. "Where are your parents, dear?"

"Oh, over there," he said, pointing. Then he smiled and waved.

"Yes, well..." She looked confused for a moment, then brightened. "Well, that is different. Usually I have to bar the door, and then guard the room to keep them from sneaking back in. Very well. Come this way, please."

He followed her through the curtain, then through two doors. The noise didn't completely die away until the second door shut behind him.

"Over here, kid," said a gravelly voice.

It was a large room, almost filled by a long conference table with a dozen chairs on each side and one on each end. On the walls were posters from the Gideon Peppy Show, bright and cheerful and primary-colored, most featuring the maniacally smiling host of the top-rated children's show on three planets, Gideon Peppy. Directly across from Dodger three people sat together near the middle of the table. At one end was an unsmiling woman sitting rigidly upright, hands folded on the table, "a broomstick up her ass," as his father would say. At the other end slouched a man it took Dodger a moment to realize was Gideon Peppy himself.

"Take a seat, little guy," said the man on the left of the triad, a portly fellow with a big shock of blond hair and a plaid shirt. "My name's Lawrence Street, and I'm the casting director. Do you know what that is?"

"Yes, sir." Dodger fought the impulse to hurry over to the table. "Keep your movements slow," his father had told him many times, when he was watching him rehearse. He was about to sit in one of the chairs when the second man, who was bald almost to the top of his head, spoke up.

"Take the next one," he said, with a slight smile. Dodger saw there was some kind of booster seat in it. He climbed aboard with as much dignity as he could muster, but was glad when he was in it, because in the other chair his chin would have been just about level with the table. He folded his hands in front of himself, and waited.

"This is Sam Mohammed," Street said, indicating the swarthy man, "and next to him is Debbie Corlet. They're my assistants." Larry, Moe, and Curly, Dodger thought, getting them fixed in his head. "The lady at the end of the table is from Equity. She's gonna make sure we stick to the child labor laws, but don't worry about that." Auntie Equity, got it. He didn't introduce Peppy, and Dodger wasn't surprised, because he was familiar with the concept of The Man Who Needs No Introduction. It was a measure of importance.

Larry frowned across the table at him.

"I see you didn't bring a copy of your script, so I assume you've memorized it. What we want you—"

"Excuse me, sir," Dodger said, thinking fast, "but I didn't have time to study it. If you could just lend me a copy..."

"They handed them out at the door," Larry said, frowning more deeply.

"They must have missed me," Dodger said. He beamed brightly at Larry. "I'm a very quick study."

The three huddled briefly, and Larry shrugged. "What the hell. Let's see how quick he is. Go over there and read it to him, Debbie."

"That won't be necessary," Dodger said. Curly was already hurrying around the table with the script. She glanced at her boss, who gestured dubiously that she should give him the papers. He smiled up at her and took them.

"So you can read?" Moe said, raising one eyebrow. He made a mark on a form in front of him. "That's good. What is he, the fifth reader today?"

"Fourth," said Gideon Peppy from his end of the table. Dodger looked at the star in time to see him put his trademark lollipop back in his mouth.

"You're right," Larry said. "That first kid was lying, anybody could see that." He looked at Dodger and gestured at the script. "So read it, Kenny. Ya got two minutes."

Dodger looked at the script, which was three short scenes. He assumed they had been written just for this audition. He hoped so. They were terrible.

"Okay," he said. The stooges looked up from a whispered conference they had just begun, and Larry frowned again. He had a talent for frowning.

"Okay, what?"

"I'm ready now."

Larry's frown became a full glower. He pointed a stubby finger at Dodger, and leaned forward.

"I don't much like being lied to, kid. Don't give me this bushwah about not seeing the script, then expect me to believe you've boned it in less than a minute. You memorized it, why don't you just—"

"Let the kid read," Peppy said. Everyone shut up and looked at him quickly. He had his trademark yellow shoes propped up on the table, was leaning back in his chair staring at the ceiling. Larry seemed to taste something bad, but turned to face Dodger again.

"Okay. Debbie's gonna read the part of Sue. You'll be Sparky. Go." He pointed at Dodger, then swiveled in his chair and pointedly turned his back.

" 'Gosh, Sparky,' " Curly chanted, in a dull monotone. " 'I didn't think we'd see you again so soon.' "

" 'They can't get rid me so easily,' " Dodger said. He immediately hated the reading, but didn't know just what to do about it. They went through the scene without a hitch. By the end Curly had relented a little and actually put a little expression into her last two lines, but it was no good, and Dodger knew it. There was absolutely no clue as to the character of Sparky in the scene, there was nothing for him to work with. It was a joking skit lacking a punch line, though the cues for laughter were right there on the page: CUE LAUGH. Dodger knew they kept laughs in cans somewhere in television studios. He thought they'd be opening one heck of a lot of cans to sell this turkey.

But the one thing that did work, oddly enough, was a laugh.

SUE: The boy is so stupid! I can't believe he's your brother.

SPARKY: (laughs) You can pick your friends and you can pick your nose, but you can't wipe your relatives off under the furniture.

Laughing on cue was something little Ken Valentine had learned early in his education, even before the memorization started. He learned it by being tickled until he thought he was going to be sick. ("It's one of the easiest lessons you'll learn, Dodger. Whenever you need to laugh, just think back to this.") It worked almost too well; when he needed to laugh, sometimes, he found himself feeling sick.

So he laughed, and produced a rather odd sound he'd been making since somewhere around his fifth birthday, a sound that caused his father's jaw to drop and led him to say, "Good God. I've raised Woody Woodpecker."

Later, when Dodger heard Woody's laugh, he compared it with his own and thought his father was wrong (though he didn't tell him that). The cartoon laugh was forced and artificial: Hah hah hah HAH hah. His own laugh sounded real enough... but not like anyone else's laugh, he had to admit that.

Out of the corner of his eye, Dodger saw Gideon Peppy look down. Was he smiling? He couldn't tell, and he thought it best not to look over there and find out.

"Okay," said Larry. "Second scene."

This one didn't go any better. Moe read the other part this time, and he was worse than Curly, if anything. The scene lumbered along until nearly the end, when Dodger hesitated.

"What'samatter, kid?" Larry rasped. "Forget your lines?"

"No, sir. It's just that..."

"Spit it out."

"Well, it's a bad line."

The stooges just stared at him. Dodger couldn't help it; he laughed again. This did not go over well with the trio, but what was he supposed to do? He imagined Larry with his hand over his eyes, Moe with his fingers in his ears, and Curly covering her mouth. He saw he had made no friends here.

"I guess this was a bad idea," he said, and started to get up.

"What's the matter with the line, Kenneth?" Gideon Peppy asked.

Dodger turned toward the star.

"Sir, the boy is supposed to be eight years old."

"So?"

"So, an eight-year-old doesn't talk like that."

"So? I can't believe what I'm hearing come out of your mouth."

"I'm not a normal eight-year-old, sir."

"So it would seem."

"I've had theatrical training, Mr. Peppy. Plus, I am eight, and none of my friends would talk like that." He brushed the script on the table with the back of his hand, contemptuously. "Who wrote this crap, anyway?"

"I wrote it.

Instantly, a line from At the Office, a comedy he'd read almost a year ago, sprang into his mind, and he knew it was his only chance.

"Suddenly I like it a lot more," he said.

Peppy was silent for a full ten seconds, while the stooges gaped. Then he took the lollipop from his mouth and pointed it at Dodger.

"This kid I like," he said. "This kid has big brass ones. He reminds me of me when I was his age." He shrugged. "You're right, it's crap. I dashed it off this morning, what the heck, all we gotta do is see can you remember your lines. The rest is personality. Read him the next scene."

" 'Hurry, Sparky. I think I hear the pirates coming.' "

Silence.

" 'Hurry, Sparky,' " Moe started again, but Larry, who didn't seem to like Dodger at all, interrupted.

" 'Samattah, kid? Forgot 'em again?"

"What's my motivation?" Dodger asked.

"Motivation?" Larry wanted to know. He looked baffled.

"Yes, my—"

"Motivation? Motivation?" Peppy asked, around his lollipop. "What's this motivation crap? Suddenly I don't like this kid so much. Your motivation is get loose and kill pirates. Capishe?"

"No, sir," Dodger said. "I mean, who is Sparky? I can't give a good reading unless I know a little about him." There was no response, so he hurried on. "Is he happy? I mean, does he enjoy his life? Or does he worry too much? Is he stupid? I mean, he got captured, didn't he? So... is he worried about the mistake he made? What is his attitude, is the main thing. Should I play him like Errol Flynn, or John Wayne, or the Eliminator?"

Peppy leaned forward and his lollipop stick rattled in his mouth as he talked.

"Sparky is a happy-go-lucky, smart little fuck, but not so smart he don't get outnumbered from time to time, you see what I mean? He is self-confident but not obnoxious about it. His troops like him, and so do the dames, people are alla time buying him drinks. He's a good boy to be with in a tough situation, 'cause nothing bad never happens to him for too damn long. He's the man with the charm but he don't have no big head about it. It ain't he's too stupid to know it, it's he's modest, see? Also trustworthy. Also helpful, brave, clean, and irrelevant. He don't kick his dog, he pulls down about forty-five gees a year, goes to the church of his choice, votes as many times as he can, always for the right people. He's a schlemiel, you hear what I'm saying? Errol Flynn, definitely Errol Flynn." He leaned forward even farther. "With maybe just a touch of Daffy Duck. Now can we read?"

Dodger was not acquainted with Daffy Duck, but stripped of the sarcasm, he thought he might be getting a picture of Sparky.

"There's a big pirate ship, just across the hall," he said.

"You want we should go read in there? Will that help you find your 'motivation'? That's where we'll be shooting this scene."

Oh, yeah? Dodger thought. I thought you dashed it off this morning.

"Could we have just a second?" he asked.

Peppy sat back and looked at the ceiling again.

"Take a second, take a second." He found Dodger again with his eyes. "I'll let you in on a secret. Only reason you're still here is most kids stink at this stuff. We get most of 'em out of here in thirty seconds, am I right? Tell him, Debbie, do I speak the truth here?" Debbie nodded, quickly. "I thought I saw something when you were reading that other crap. Now I'm not so sure. But I'm hardly ever wrong, so you get a second. Hell, two seconds. Find your motivation. Wake me up when you're ready." And he leaned back again.

Dodger closed his eyes and tried to find the key to the scene. "There's always a key," his father had said. "It may be a key to the whole play, or just to a scene. Hitchcock called it a McGuffin."

Well, there was the padlock, wasn't there? Maybe it wasn't a key, but a lock. If Sparky doesn't pick the lock there is no scene, just guys squatting in the dark.

He opened his eyes and looked down. He made his hand hold the lock, shaped his fingers around it, felt the cool metal. How did it look? Well, it was a little rusty. Everything metal on this ship was a little rusty. It was a great big, old-fashioned padlock, round, heavy, with a big keyhole in it. The wards inside would be big clunky things, iron bars meant to be moved by a thick skeleton key, that might be moved by a splinter of wood pried from the deck of a pirate ship.

He saw it in his hand. Felt the weight of it.

Now, how would Sparky pick a lock? He thought of people who squinted at a task like that, who bit down on the tips of their tongues. No way. Not Sparky. He's frowning, but one eyebrow is raised. He knows he can do this. He's confident, it's only going to be a matter of time, and part of his mind is already occupied with what he's going to do when he gets free. Dodger felt his shoulders rising a little, his elbows moving out from his sides. Jimmy Cagney? Just a little bit of that, but without the meanness. One side of his lip curled up. He was going to beat this damn lock, it didn't have a chance.

He started to work.

"Hurry, Sparky! I think I hear the pirates coming!"

That Elwood, Sparky thought. Always jumping at ghosts. Sparky had been listening, and he hadn't heard a thing. He shrugged it away.

"Don't make me nervous." He felt the rusty ward moving, moving just the tiniest bit. But the splinter wasn't very strong, it could break at any moment.

"I think I've..." With a satisfying clink the shackle popped up.

"There! It's open. Come on, guys, pull the chain through the rings. Don't let it rattle! Quietly! Quietly!"

(Dodger stood up in his chair.)

"Now, Basil! Robin! Elwood! You go up through the rear hatch." He gestured to his right. "Elwood, find the powder magazine and try to light a fuse." He watched his men hurry away in the darkness, then turned to the rest of them. "Boots, me and you and the rest will go up front, where the guns are. We're outnumbered, but maybe we can send this old bucket to Davy Jones, even if we have to go down with it!"

(Dodger stepped up onto the conference table and crept away, toward Gideon Peppy.)

Sparky carefully pushed up the hatch cover and looked through the crack. When he saw the sleeping guard he leaped out and popped him one in the jaw, then took his flintlock pistol as he fell. The gang swarmed out behind him.

"Come on, guys, grab a weapon!" said MoeBoots. "Let's go!"

Then the pirates were all over them. Sparky fired his pistol, then threw it in a pirate's face. He grabbed a sword and began slashing right and left, until suddenly there was the evil figure of Bluebeard, his longtime nemesis.

"So, Sparky, you've escaped again! Well, you'll not get away this time." He drew his sword and assumed the en garde position. Sparky stood straight, tossed his head, and saluted the captain with his sword. He laughed, defiantly.

"It's you who'll be walking the plank tonight, me bucko!"

They battled back and forth across the seething deck, slippery with blood. Their steel rang in the night, and flashed in the orange light of the torches. Suddenly there was a cry.

"The fuse is lit! Let's get out of here!"

Sparky, who had been toying with the captain, now lunged forward and thrust his blade through Bluebeard's vile black heart. The pirate fell, mortally wounded. Sparky planted his foot on the beribboned and lacy shirt, pulled his sword free.

"There's an end to your plunder, Captain!" He threw his head back and laughed, triumphantly. "Get the point?" Then he turned to his men, arms held high, and gestured firmly toward the stern.

"Come on, men!" he shouted. "There's no time to waste! Over the side with you, and swim for your lives!"

He pounded down the deck, saw the rail ahead of him, and leaped. He was falling, falling, the black sea below rushing up to meet him, and shit! It was a gray carpet!

Dodger just had time to tuck a little and try to roll, but his head still hit the floor with a loud thump.

He sat up and shook his head. There was a ringing sound in his ears. He visualized a ring of twittering bluebirds circling his head, and wondered if this was the Daffy Duck part. Then he looked up, to see four faces looming over him. Larry spoke first.

"Did you see that? Did you see what he did? Jesus, I thought he was going to run right into you, Mr. Peppy. Did you see that? He just jumped right over him. Right over him! Jesus!"

"The kid's crazy," Curly was saying. "I never saw anything like it."

"Kenneth," Peppy said, an island of calm. "Kid, look at me. Are you okay? Should I get a doctor?"

Dodger shook his head again.

"No, I'm all right."

Peppy took the lollipop out of his mouth and looked at it.

"Damn," he said. "I bit my candy in half."

There didn't seem to be any end to the damn place. After Dodger escaped from the audition, he realized he was still lost. Not only was he lost, but it was getting late. His hopes that his father's audition had gone long were fading rapidly, and every corner he turned seemed to bring him back to a place he'd already seen before. Yet it didn't seem as if he were walking in circles.

When he felt a large hand on his shoulder he almost shouted aloud. He looked up into a narrow, frowning face.

"What's the matter, son?" the man drawled. "You look like you stumbled through a time warp."

You should talk, Dodger thought. They both stopped, and Dodger looked him over. It was a tall man, dressed anachronistically in baggy wool trousers, a gray coat and vest, and a white shirt. The only spot of color about him was a cloth strip knotted around his neck, under his collar. Dodger searched for the word, one he had underlined a few months ago. Necktie. And the shapeless hat perched on his head was a fedora.

He certainly wasn't the only oddly dressed person Dodger had seen in the corridors; this was a motion-picture studio. He'd seen red Indians in buckskins and yellow Chinamen in silk pajamas and black Hottentots in tuxedos. He'd seen green-and-purple extraterrestrials in ancient pressure suits. But they'd all had the look of costumes, somehow. This fellow looked as if he'd just stepped out of a time machine. He looked a little faded, yellowed, like an old photo in an album. He was in color, but it wasn't Technicolor.

"I guess I'm a little lost," he admitted. He was immediately appalled. He was never supposed to admit that. Luna was a strange place, as his father reminded him every time they played there. They had some odd ideas here, ideas that didn't necessarily make single parenting an easy thing. The child-welfare authorities, for instance, would have taken a dim view of Dodger's being left alone all day while his father auditioned. It didn't make much sense to Dodger. What did they expect? His father was a little short of cash right now and couldn't afford to hire a sitter—an idea which offended Dodger anyway. How did they expect a person to get parts, earn a living, put bread on the table if he couldn't look for work?

But if Dodger was picked up, lost, alone, he would surely be taken to the State School. Dodger had never seen this State School, but he had seen Oliver Twist, with Sir Alec Guinness as Fagin, and his father assured him the State School was pretty much like that.

He looked up to gauge the man's reaction. He frowned. Hadn't he seen this guy somewhere before? The man pursed his lips thoughtfully.

"A little lost, is it? Well, I know how that feels. Been a little lost myself here and there. Come to think of it, it was more there than here, or at least that's what it felt like."

"I don't know where here is," Dodger said.

"That's it, exactly!" the man crowed. "What's that in your hand?"

Dodger gave him the paper, and he took something from his pocket and put it on his face, squinting through pieces of glass as he read. Dodger had never seen anyone use spectacles as anything other than a stage prop. The man pointed to the bottom of the page.

"Gideon Peppy? Did you meet Gideon Peppy?"

Dodger nodded.

"Well, I'm impressed, I must say. Mr. Peppy's a mighty big man around here. Yes sir, a mighty big man. Not just everybody gets in to see him."

Dodger didn't care so much about that. All he could think about now was the clock ticking, and his father waiting.

"Do you work here?" he asked.

"Oh, no, it's not that way at all," the man said. "You might say I live around here. But I don't work, not anymore. I did, though. A long time ago, back before it was Sentry/Sensational." He started walking, his hands jammed into the baggy pockets of his pants, and Dodger decided to walk along with him. Where else did he have to go?

"Jack Sensational bought Sentry Studios... oh, it must have been forty, fifty years ago. Only his name wasn't Sensational back then. It was Pudding. Jack Pudding. I guess he figured not many people would come to see a film from Pudding Pictures, so he changed it."

Dodger laughed in spite of himself, then looked up to see if the lanky stringbean was kidding him. He could see no sign of it in the deadpan face. He was more sure than ever he'd seen the man before.

"It's an old Hollywood tradition, you know. I used to know a man by the name of Goldfish. Samuel Goldfish. Jewish fellow, I believe. Well, I don't know what Goldfish means in Hebrew, or maybe Jewish folks just think Goldfish is a mighty fine name—and they'd get no argument from me, you understand—but old Sam realized pretty quick that in America, which is where he lived, Americans thought it was a pretty silly name. So he changed it to Goldwyn, which didn't mean anything at all."

"You mean... the guy from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer?"

"That's him. Only old Sam bailed out of it before Metro really got off the ground. It was old Louis B. that ran the show. Louis B. Mayer. And that's the fellow I worked for. Metro pretty much fell apart a long time ago, and for a while I think it was Sony Pictures, or something like that. But Sony became something else, and that was swallowed by a big corporation, and when all the dust settled, why, there was the Sentry Motion Picture Company." The man stopped, and assumed the well-known position of the giant sentry with his rifle Dodger had seen on the way in, only when he did it, it was comical, his face sort of pop-eyed, his mouth making a little O of surprise. That's when Dodger got it.

"You're Jimmy Stewart," he said.

"Well, no, that's not right," the man said, reaching into his hip pocket and removing a wallet. "The name's Dowd. Elwood P. Here, let me give you one of my cards." Dodger took it, and looked at it. A phone number had been scratched out with a pencil, and a new one written in:

Call (Northside 777)

Pennsylvania 6-5000

"Now, if you want to call me use this number, not that one. That number is the old one."

Dodger was going to say that he'd seen the man just a few weeks ago in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, with John Wayne and Lee Marvin, directed by John Ford, but the talk of telephones brought him back to his problem.

He was supposed to call only in emergencies.

John Valentine was suspicious of most technological advances, regarded even the ones he took advantage of as no better than necessary evils. To him, the telephone was still a newfangled gadget. He refused to have one implanted in his head, like most people. But one could never tell when one's agent might be frantically looking for one, so he carried a pocket portable.

Telephones for children were both improper and an unwarranted expense. Dodger had no instrument at all, internal or otherwise. There were public phones for emergencies.

But telephones also functioned as the omnipresent ears of the government, of law enforcement, and John Valentine had never been on good terms with either. Every conversation was monitored and recorded, he was convinced. So it had damn well better be an emergency.

This was the problem Dodger had been wrestling with, then. He was already beyond hoping he could get out of this without consequences he didn't even like to think about. Father was going to be angry no matter what. Would calling make things worse, or better? And even more important, did he dare make a call when the people from the State School were listening in?

"So what would your name be?"

"Huh?" Dodger had almost forgotten about Mr. Dowd. "Oh, I'm Kenneth. Kenneth Valentine."

"No. You don't say. You wouldn't be Dodger Valentine, John B. Valentine's son, would you?"

Dodger looked up in astonishment, and momentary hope.

"Do you know my father?"

"Why, sure I do. To speak to, anyway, it's not like we're buddies. And I certainly know his work. Anyone who knows theater knows John Valentine's work."

"Mr. Dowd, could you—"

"Call me Elwood. Everybody calls me Elwood."

"Elwood, I've got a—"

"Why, I believe I saw him not thirty minutes ago. Now where was that...?"

Dodger was jumping up and down in his excitement.

"Mist—Elwood, please remember. I've just got to find him."

Elwood squatted down and looked at Dodger, then took a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at the boy's eyes.

"Yes, sir. I believe you do. Well, we'll just have to do something about that, won't we? He stood and took Dodger's hand.

They went around one corner, down a long hallway with doors on each side, then two more corners and there he was, John Valentine, standing tall as he always did, smiling at passersby. Giving no hint of the agitation he was certainly feeling.

Dodger swallowed hard, started forward, then looked around for Elwood.

He was gone.

Then he looked again toward his father, and there was Elwood, standing beside him. The differentness about Elwood was even more pronounced when he saw him standing by his father. Dodger couldn't quite put his finger on it. Elwood's presence was not as solid, somehow. He was not translucent. He cast a shadow. But Dodger knew he wasn't like other people.

He started forward again, and in a moment his father saw him. John Valentine turned toward his son, and something dangerous flashed in his eyes. Dodger kept coming but he reached into his pocket and pulled out the papers he had been given, then held them out before him like a shield.

"What have you done to your hair?" his father asked.

Dodger clapped his hand to his head. He had forgotten!

After everything settled down in the audition room a makeup man had been called. Dodger was swept into a chair and before he quite knew what was happening the man was cutting his hair. This was over the ineffectual protests of Auntie Equity, who kept asking where the boy's parents were. Peppy had turned on his considerable charm, pointing to the signature at the bottom of the release form, and reading a paragraph about agrees to undergo such changes in personal appearance as may be required pursuant to the audition. Dodger thought it best to keep quiet at that point. Maybe signing the paper in his father's name hadn't been such a good idea after all.

Before he knew it, Dodger's long hair had been butchered. It had been blond before; now it was a violent yellow, a yellow never before seen on a human head. On each side it now stuck straight out, like wings. The top of his head was shaved bald, except for a narrow Mohawk strip that was moussed into a topknot four inches high. On each of the strips of bare scalp the hairdresser had tattooed orange lightning bolts. His eyebrows had been shaved and also replaced with lightning bolts.

Dodger looked like a kid who had stuck his finger in an electric outlet.

It was this apparition, not the cherubic child he had left in the waiting room, that now approached John Valentine. That his dismay was not evident on his face—except to Dodger—was tribute to a truly massive acting talent.

But the Dodger could see it in his eyes. He was in big trouble.

There really wasn't anything to say. He held out the paper, and eventually his father took it.

It was crumpled, and there was a big mustard stain right in the middle. But at the bottom was the signature of Gideon Peppy. And at the top were the words Letter of Intent to Tender Offer of Employment.

Stapled to it was a check for twenty thousand dollars.

When I awoke this time I just lay there for a while, remembering that long-ago audition. Ninety-two years ago. Where did the time go?

God, that hair was awful. But I know I liked it at the time.

I shifted and found the clock.

Four days.

Trouble. Big-time trouble.

In the best of circumstances, you can't take your friendly neighborhood drug pusher to the Better Business Bureau to complain about the quality of her wares. You have to handle your complaints yourself, and I would cheerfully have broken her kneecaps and her elbows if I could get my hands on her. But if that had been in the cards she no doubt would never have diluted her product. It was a sweet racket she had going. Anybody she sold deadballs to was on his way off-planet, unlikely to be back in months, or years... or ever, if things worked out right. Right for her, that is. Spectacularly wrong for me. It was outright murder.

Well, what did I expect from a dope pusher?

I chewed slowly on a hard granola bar dipped in honey while I considered my options.

Number one was the most obvious. Simply eat as little as I could during these waking periods, and try to make it through the final forty days on what I had left. Torture, surely... but was it possible? I added it up a dozen different ways and kept reaching the same answer: I don't know. I just didn't have enough data about rates of starvation. I knew people had fasted for very long times, but I didn't have any reliable numbers on it. And hadn't they damaged themselves? I thought I'd heard that. Brain damage can be irreversible.

What I was sure of was that I would be mighty hungry the whole time. And I thought I might go crazy out here with no companion but my appetite.

Option number two involved leaving the Pantech and making my way to the ship's central core. A risky business at best, but I could probably make it. Once I got there, of course, I'd have food. They always carried plenty of good food on these cargo ships, gourmet meals being one of the inducements for taking such a lonely job at all.

Sure, they'd feed me well. And turn me over to the police as soon as they landed. Since I couldn't pay the fare that meant a prison term, and on Oberon that meant the gravity gang. No, thank you.

The third option was a little vague, and was really sort of a suboption to number one. Some of these cargo canisters around me were certain to contain food. If I prowled through them long enough I might find some.

Maybe three hundred tons of onions, or a shipment of parsley, or a tank of diet soda pop that would blow up in my face.

I put those options to one side, and concentrated on number four.

I almost hate to mention option number four, because it was nebulous, at best. I asked myself, is there any way to extend the periods of sleep back to the full week I had been counting on? And the answer to that was... could be. What I had in mind was self-hypnosis.

One of the things I do to tide myself over times of no work is magic. Not just three-card monte and its infinite variations, though I have been known to run a game. And not the manipulation of cards to gain an advantage at the poker table, though I am quite capable of that, too. The same skills useful in running a street con can also be put to use on the semilegitimate stage where no money hinges on the outcome. Prestidigitation. Sleight of hand. Misdirection and showmanship. In my luggage beside the Punch and Judy show are the basic tools of The Amazing Klepto, Mentalist Extraordinary. It consists mainly of a black cape, top hat, and magic wand, and in a pinch I can do without the wand. Most of the tricks I do can be performed with found or hastily manufactured objects. I can work up close in a small room or on the street, on a cabaret or theater stage, and I'm available for birthdays, charivaris, menarches, and bar mitzvahs.

I'm up-front about it. There is no real magic, so far as I know. It's all illusion, and I tell you so before I begin. I'm known as Klepto because a good part of the close-in work involves relieving the audience of jewelry, wallets, and other items worn or carried about the person, then producing them again to amused astonishment all around.

Or not, if I think the item won't be missed.

No real magic, I said, but hypnotism always seems close to it, even to me. I can hypnotize others and have them go through the ancient repertoire of parlor tricks mesmerists have been putting their victims through for centuries: making animal sounds, reverting to childhood, removing their clothing, and generally making damn fools of themselves. Or I can hypnotize myself, and certain parts of the act become much easier for me. Call it yoga if you wish. It is mostly increased control of involuntary body functions, and I learned most of what I know from—who else?—a gypsy woman in a hobo jungle just outside Marsport. Most of the lessons took place in bed.

The trick is to convince yourself you are able to do some unlikely thing. If it is not utterly impossible—I wouldn't recommend trying to fly by flapping your arms—you'd be surprised at the things you can do. Could I convince myself to sleep for a week?

The trick of hypnosis is to fool yourself into believing that something that is possible is in fact true. Sleep was the end result I was seeking, but that was the end. What I proposed was to start at the beginning, with the means of sleep.

So I dissolved two of the white pills in a glass of water, and I held it up before me. I gazed into the milky depths.

You are powerful, I told the potion. You will make me sleep for a week. Yeah. Right.

I made my bubble transparent and assumed the lotus position on my mattress. The cold stars looked down at me, but I ignored them. I looked instead at the gently rocking horses of the future carousel. They were sleeping peacefully. If they could do it, so could I.

"Oh, money pump mayhem. Oh, money pump mayhem." This was my mantra, suitably dodgerized for my delectation. The gypsy woman had her own version, some unpronounceable Romanian or Romany transliteration of the original... Hindi? Urdu? Sanskrit? I didn't know, but most people would recognize the ancient chant of Om mani padme hum. The words don't mean anything, anyway, unless you're a Buddhist, and my version was better than the one an old girlfriend of mine had used: "Oh, Mommy! Pop, me humped!" I never got around to asking her if it was true. "Oh money-pumpmay hem! Oh, money pumpmay hem!" I did that for half an hour. I succeeded in getting myself into a dreamy, receptive state, but not deep enough to believe the deadball was full strength. That was okay. I hadn't expected to.

But didn't I have something in my medicine chest that might help...? I opened it and pawed through the meager contents, and there it was. It was a bottle half-full of white pills. The label said ASPIRIN. Ah, yes, but hadn't I replaced them back on... was it Brementon? Yes, yes, it was. On Brementon I had replaced the innocent white headache pills with innocent white powerful narcotics. Very powerful narcotics. I remember doing so. I could see myself emptying the aspirin. I saw myself dump the aspirin in the trash. I saw myself opening a brown bottle, pouring powerful narcotic pills into my hand, and carefully putting them into the aspirin bottle. I heard them rattling down through the narrow neck.

Great! Now I had a bottle of powerful narcotics. Maybe they would enable me to sleep for a week, along with the deadballs.

I shook two of the pills into my hand. No, better make it four.

On each of them, in tiny red letters, was the word ASPIRIN.

For a moment the whole house of cards wavered, threatened to topple.

Ah, but wait!

I would have laughed, except for the rarefied state of Zen bliss I was in, so I contented myself with a beatific smile. Foolish boy! Don't you recall? Of course you do. The... the... the guy you bought them from told you, he said... he said... he had written ASPIRIN on the powerful narcotics so if anybody looked at them, they would see ASPIRIN, and think they weren't worth stealing. But they were really powerful, powerful narcotics.

In fact, they might be too powerful. Don't take four of them. I put one back into the bottle. Three should be enough.

I popped them into my mouth and washed them down with the chalky deadball solution. Then I set about tidying things up, knowing I'd be asleep soon.

I came across the frog and skull netsuke and I picked it up. I stared at the frog, and it stared back at me.

I liked the way it felt in my hand, so I kept it out. I resumed the lotus position, and stroked the ancient, cool ivory with my thumb. It gradually warmed under my hand. I could feel a pulsing in the frog's throat.

I fell asleep.

Dodger hurried through the busy passenger terminal of the King City Spaceport, clinging to his father's hand, feeling a little like a balloon at the end of a string. It wasn't a bad feeling, but it wasn't a real secure one, either. There was nothing to be done about it. When his father got excited, he moved very fast.

Father and son were dressed in white pants and shoes, long white coats that buttoned all the way down the front and had stiff, upright collars. They wore orange turbans wrapped around their heads. The skin of their hands and faces was now a light brown color, and John Valentine sported a neatly trimmed black beard and mustache. Under the turban Dodger was bald as an egg. The shocking yellow hair was all gone, and so were the lightning-bolt tattoos.

Valentine hurried up to the Inner Planet Budget counter and smiled at the young woman who stood behind it. She smiled down at Dodger, who looked cute as could be, a scale model of his handsome father but without the whiskers.

"Good morning," Valentine said, with a slight accent. "I am seeking a reservation in the person of Rajiv Singh, and his most esteemed son, Rahman. We have been booking two passages of an inside stateroom to Flip City, Mars, with connectings to New Amritsar."

"Yes, Mr. Singh, I have your reservation here." The young woman did something at her ticketing machine and produced a clear plastic rectangle that flashed in rainbow colors when the light hit it. "That will be five hundred and fifty-seven dollars and nineteen cents, including transportation tax, excise tax, amusement tax, transaction tax, value added tax, spaceport usage fees, and the mandated voluntary oxygen-indigent support assessment. May I have your credit number, please?"

"Oh, my goodness, no!" Valentine's smile was still in place, but he was gritting his teeth. "Cash moneys only, if you please! 'Neither a borrower nor a lender be,' as according to poor Richard Almanack. And concerning these other stipends..." He leaned over and studied the lines on her ticketing screen. John Valentine paid few taxes unnecessarily and none willingly. "The harried, hurried traveling public is a market ripe for a swindle, Dodger," he said whenever they went anywhere. "Most of them have no idea that not all those fees apply to them." After five minutes of haggling, he had eliminated six dollars in amusement ("We don't plan to be amused"), transaction ("This is applying to credit dealings only"), and air imposts ("Our temple is contributing most generously each year to the Beggars' Breathing Fund, or as Richard Almanack once said, 'I gave at the office.' ").

Those battles won, Valentine pulled his wad of cash from his coat pocket and paid the fare. The lady validated the ticket and handed it to him.

"Now, may I see your passport, please?"

"Passport? Passport? Surely I am told this is not being necessary, for purposes of tourism or religious pilgrimage not to exceed two weeks of durations. Rahman, my son, are you bringing the passports?" Valentine had been patting himself down, exploring his pockets in distraction. Now he smiled. "We are Sikhs," he said, explaining. "Rahman!"

Dodger had been woolgathering, on the high seas aboard a pirate ship. Now he jerked awake, and patted all his pockets. "No, my father."

"There, you see!" Valentine said.

"You're right, of course," said the lady, "but I do need some identification."

"This should be of no type of problem," Valentine assured her. "Here is an abundance of such items." He fanned several cards out on the counter like a winning poker hand. Dodger felt the pressure on his hand increase. Mr. Rajiv Singh was unlikely to have missed the items, since he was deadballing to Neptune at the moment, only one week into his journey. Valentine had been guaranteed these documents would survive the cursory scrutiny needed to buy tourist passage to Mars. Still, it paid to be cautious, and Dodger was ready, should his hand be squeezed three times, to start complaining loudly about a sudden and violent need to empty his bladder. He was prepared to piss his pants, if it came to that. He really hoped it wouldn't come to that.

He sighed in relief when he saw she was buying it, simply glancing at the stolen identification and making a mark on her screen.

"I can offer you a stateroom upgrade, with a private bath, for a fee increase of only twenty dollars," the lady said.

"Oh, my goodness, yes, of course. Won't that be so jolly, Rahman?"

"Yes, my father."

"And are there any... special dietary needs associated with your faith, Mr. Singh?"

"Oh, my goodness, no. We shall be most pleased to be eating whatsoever the other passengers have been eating. Hamburgers and hot dogs, eh, my son?"

"Oh, my goodness!" Dodger agreed.

"Very well. Your ticket will also function as your meal card, so please don't lose it. Since your departure isn't for another four hours, you may use it to purchase a meal at the spaceport snack bars, in appreciation for your early arrival, courtesy of IPB. Please be at the boarding gate in three hours, with your luggage. Have a pleasant flight, and enjoy your visit to Mars."

"Oh, a most devotional trip, indeed!" Valentine said. "May the sacred monkeys of the New Temple of Amritsar guide you through the day."

The woman's smile became a bit glassy, as though not sure if she wanted to be guided by monkeys, sacred or otherwise, but when Dodger waved to her she waved back. When they were far enough away, Dodger looked up at his father.

"Why don't you buy me some eggs?" he asked. "Since you already—"

"Have provided the ham," Valentine finished, sheepishly. "Damn it, Dodger, why don't you stop me? It's a disease, I tell you, a disease. I can't stop myself."

"I really liked the part about the monkeys."

John Valentine threw his head back and laughed. Dodger loved it when he laughed. He'd been laughing a lot since they got back from Sentry Studios, hardly twenty-four hours ago.

"We've got time to kill, pardner," Valentine said. "What say we take IPB up on their offer to do lunch? Think their budget would stretch to a couple Cokes and Coney Islands?"

John Valentine produced the validated plastic with a flourish, and the clerk ran it through his machine. He and his son carried their trays to a booth overlooking the vast flat plain of the spaceport.

Dodger had contented himself with some mustard and a few spoonfuls of relish on his Coney, but Valentine had buried his, as usual, in chili, diced onions, relish, mustard, cheese, and a barely sublethal dose of the Tabasco sauce he put on almost everything he ate. Valentine's energies were enormous, and so were his appetites.

"You're going to like Mars, Dodge," he said, gingerly lifting the soggy load to his mouth and taking a big bite. "There's more gravity. Get your feet firmly on the ground for a change." He frowned, and chewed. "You remember Mars at all? What were you..."

"Three, you said," Dodger told him. "I don't remember much."

"No, I don't suppose you would. Well, take my word, it's a great place. It's the perfect place for the little theater we've always talked about. Your average Martian has an inferiority complex when it comes to Luna. No real reason they should, it's a much nicer place than here, but they do, that's the point. Luna is the great Golden Globe for most of the system, and the fact that Mars is a perpetual also-ran, Mars is in second place to Luna in just about anything you want to name... well, that just makes it worse. Some little godforsaken asteroid, they don't worry too much about measuring up to Luna. But Mars, Mars is sort of like Chicago, compared to New York. Chicago always had good theaters, good dance troupes. But Chicago never had a Broadway, and they knew they never would. But they always wanted to be New York, you see what I mean? That's where the action was. That's where the best actors, the best dancers, the best directors... if you weren't working in New York, people thought you weren't really doing serious work. "Or like Hollywood in the film business. You could make a perfectly good film in Florida, but Hollywood was the center of the universe. It's where you went to be a star. 'There's no business like show business, there's no business I know!' " He sang, not really at the top of his voice, but John Valentine seldom spoke more quietly than a stage whisper, and several people in the snack bar turned to see the man in the orange turban singing a jaunty showbiz tune. Dodger kicked his father under the table.

Valentine looked around, and laughed. "You're right, Dodge," he said in a lower voice. "Sikhs do work in the industry, you know, but you're right, it looks out of character." Dodger was entitled to kick his father anytime he stepped out of character when they were working in public.

"Anyway," he went on, more confidentially, "what it does to the Martians is, they're much more receptive to culture. You stage Love's Labour's Lost in King City, it's a yawn. Oh, people will come, you might even fill the theater because there's so damn many people here. You do it on Mars, you get a lot more appreciation. The Martians are glad to have you, they cherish you, because by doing Shakespeare or any other of them highfalutin Greeks, you're telling your average Martian rube—and there's nothing rubier than a Martian rube—that he's just as good as a Lunarian. He'll go, even if he doesn't understand every third word, and he'll praise you, and thank you for going to the trouble. And that's good, Dodger, because frankly, other than myself—and you, when you're ready—there's not going to be a Luna-quality cast in the supporting roles. The best of them have already moved to Luna, they're breaking their hearts here. The sort of troupe I'm thinking of, it would get absolutely hammered in the King City reviews. But I guarantee you, on Mars, it will never be noticed."

"Sounds great," Dodger said.

"Better than great." He spread his hands wide, his eyes focused on a giant marquee only he could see. " 'The John Valentine Son Shakespearean Repertory Company.' Just one small pressure dome, out a ways from the city where the rents aren't so high. A hundred fifty, two hundred seats, tops. Why, with twenty thousand dollars we can get it up and running, and even if we lose money every year, I don't see why we can't go six, seven years. And all thanks to Gideon Peppy and his idiotic show."

"Sounds wonderful," said the Dodger.

They ate in silence for a while, each with his own thoughts. Valentine was obviously laying out the floor plans of the repertory theater, drawing up the first season's schedule, deciding who to call in Flip City when it came time to cast the first production.

Dodger simply ate, taking small bites and chewing thoughtfully.

"I'd like to see Mr. Peppy's face tomorrow," Dodger finally ventured, quietly, "when nobody shows up for the contract meeting."

"And he realizes his catch has flown the coop." Valentine cackled. "Yeah, that'd be something to see, all right. We'll send him a postcard from Mars, when we open the first show. Anonymous. Let him wonder what it's all about."

"That should be funny," said Dodger.

They ate in silence for a while, both looking up when the lunchroom was for a moment flooded in light as a ship lifted from the field. Even through the darkened glass, for a moment it outshone the sun. Valentine chuckled.

"I think we could work up a comedy skit about your adventures yesterday. Caught up in the massive gears of the Hollywood machine, eh, Dodger?" He frowned, looking thoughtful. "In fact, I think I've seen something like it before. Very old stuff. Something about soldiers being processed very rapidly into an army, shuffling through physical and mental exams, no one really taking the time to see these chaps as human beings... and before they know it they've inducted a chimpanzee. Now where was that...?"

"Maybe it was one of the sacred monkeys of the New Temple," Dodger suggested.

"That's it! That's it!" Valentine howled. Dodger was eager to get his father's thoughts away from the previous day. While he had not actually lied to his father about the general shape of events—he had in fact been shanghaied into the audition room, for instance—he had tended to exaggerate the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and to downplay his own complicity. He had neglected to mention filling out the form and forging his father's name. He had hurried over the details of his reading, not putting much emphasis on how diligently he had tried to win the part. And come to think of it, when his father assumed Dodger had been kidnapped right out of the waiting room where Valentine had left him, Dodger had not bothered to correct him. Why invite trouble? Dodger had reasoned. It made a much better story the way his father had heard it, and hadn't he always said a good story was frequently superior to the truth?

"I couldn't get over how talented he thought I was," Dodger said, with a chuckle. "Honest, Father. I was hardly even trying."

"Well, I'm tooting my own horn, I suppose," his father said, comfortably, "but I don't think you realize just how much your classical training has set you above other boys your age."

"I guess you're right." Dodger sighed. "Now I guess he'll have to settle for second best."

Valentine reached across the table and chucked his son playfully under the chin.

"After the Valentines," he said, "there is no second place." He finished the last bite of his Coney Island, licked the chili from his fingers, washed it down with a big swig of pop. "I'm still hungry. How about it? You want another?"

"I've still got this one," Dodger said.

"I'm getting another. You want some cookies? A brownie?"

"Cookies would be nice."

Valentine hurried away and Dodger put down the half Coney he had been nibbling. He did nothing at all until his father slid back into the booth across from him, and then he still did nothing. His father looked up from wolfing down his second Coney Island. He frowned at his son.

"What's the matter? Not hungry? There probably won't be any food on the ship for a while, until they get it rotating and unpack the kitchen."

"No, I'm fine," Dodger said. He laced his fingers together and leaned forward slightly, a look of concentration on his face. "Father... you said we could run our theater at a loss for six or seven years on twenty thousand dollars. I was just wondering...."

"Go ahead," Valentine said, when the pause had stretched too long.

"I was wondering, how long could we run it on a hundred thousand dollars?"

Valentine stopped chewing for a moment and his eyes lost their focus. Then he started chewing more slowly.

"You know the answer to that," he said. "But I don't think you meant it as a math problem. Go on, Dodger. What's on your mind?"

"Well, Mr. Peppy said that's what we'd make for an episode. For the pilot, I think he called it."

"Incredible, isn't it?" Valentine said. "I always told you there's lots of money in that business. Lots of money. The only problem is, what you have to do to earn it."

"Right," Dodger agreed. "That's right. Still..."

Valentine put down the Coney and regarded his son.

"Just tell it, Dodger. What do you have in mind?"

"Yes, sir. I was just thinking, since I already have the part... well, we could take them for some real money if I went ahead and made the pilot."

Valentine said nothing.

"Just think how crazy Mr. Peppy would get if we made the pilot, and then took off for Mars."

Valentine howled at that one, then got serious. He reached across the table and took Dodger's hand in his.

"You'd really do that, wouldn't you?" he said, his eyes glistening. "For your old man and his crazy theater, you'd put yourself through that mill, and I'll bet you'd never complain, either." He stood up, almost knocking over the table, leaned across, and kissed his son on the forehead. He sat back down and gazed out over the field for a while, getting his emotions under control. At last he looked back, fondly.

"I can't let you do it, Dodger. I know you think you could handle it, but let me tell you, you have no idea the insanity that would be brought to bear. I brought you up to be an actor, not a mugger in dumb shows. Not a spiffed-up little clown with yellow hair and zigzags on his head and I don't know what all else. You think it's just a pilot, son, but it's really a trap. It's the first dose of an addicting drug. The money is tempting, and if I had any less regard for you I'd snap it up in a King City minute. But it's because I do hold you in such high regard that we're going to take the money and run." He squeezed Dodger's hand again. "But I want you to know, I'll never forget the offer."

Dodger smiled, and shrugged.

"It was just an idea," he said. "Just a way to be sure the John Valentine Repertory Shakespearean Theater gets off to a good start. But you're probably right. They did seem like crazy people."

He looked out the window where a ship, big as a city, was being hauled out to its pad on a creeper the size of a small crater. "Still," he said, wistfully. "All that money."

Three hours later the lady at the IPB ticket counter looked up to see the Sikh father and son hurrying in her direction.

"Sir! Your ship is boarding right now! You'll have to run to—"

"Oh, my goodness, no!" said the man. "Oh, most frightfully no. My most esteemed lady, the sacred monkeys of the New Temple of Amritsar have deemed this a most insuspicious point in time to be traveling. What a surprise this has become to myself and my most excellent son, Rahman, I shall have left to your imaginings. However, the upshooting of the situation is this: that we should now be seeking a refunding of our monies. We shall be guided to the New Temple at a date to be later determined." He paused, and smiled. "Or perhaps I should be saying, 'piloted.' " He slapped the plastic boarding pass on the counter.

The woman knew little of religions other than her own Catholic upbringing, had never really heard of Sikhs. But as she was refunding the money (including, to her later chagrin, amusement tax, transaction tax, and Beggar's Breath), she decided Sikhs must be a sort of Buddhist. She was familiar with the Buddha. She recalled thinking the son looked a lot like his father, but she could see now she had been wrong.

No, the satisfied smile on the small face was the very image of the Enlightened One.

From that moment on, my father was just about the only person that ever called me Dodger anymore. From then on, I was Sparky. I wasn't Kenneth even in the credits, and no one at Sentry ever called me Dodger.

If I had it to do over again, would I choose to go with Father to Mars? To this day I don't know. Being strongly identified with a part can be a blessing, but is usually a curse in my business. Ask Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Boris Karloff. It goes back at least that far. Like a singer asked to endlessly repeat his one monster hit, you get very tired of it. Reviewers will forever after make much of the fact that it was little Sparky who played the part of Willy Loman, will more than likely treat the whole enterprise as a stunt. That's one reason I've used so many pseudonyms in my career.

But being Sparky has been helpful from time to time. It's an image you can trade on, when you're otherwise down-and-out. It will get your foot in the door, get you special attention even if half the time it is only to be told Sorry, I just can't see little Sparky as Stanley Kowalski. It gets you attention as somebody-who-used-to-be-somebody while Wanda B. Somebody, Mita Bean, and Neva Hoydova are cooling their heels at a cattle call. And brother, when you're out there riding on a smile and a shoeshine, it can give you that edge you need.

Hi, it's me again. The artist formerly known as Sparky.

I am waking up for the third time this voyage, being as careful as I can not to tamper with my meditative state, trying not to become fully awake, since you can never tell if you'll convince yourself again of the Big Lie you managed to swallow getting into this state.

I checked my clock and found I'd been asleep for seven days. I took the news calmly—of course it had been seven days; I'd taken powerful narcotics—and I had in fact already suspected it, because I was twice as hungry as I had been each previous time. It looked to be starvation on the installment plan, which was a lot better than a continuous forty days of it.

I ate. You don't want to know what I ate any more than I want to revisit the tastes by telling about it. Just recall the items I bought back on Pluto, imagine them all swirled together in a blender, and I'll leave the rest to your imagination. It was vile stuff, and it killed the hunger pangs, which was all it was supposed to do.

I shook out three pills. They were now plainly labeled POWERFUL NARCOTICS, I noticed. I washed them down with deadball solution that was actually starting to taste pretty good.

I slept.

"Interesting," said John Valentine, when he saw his son. "But what about the pants?"

"Donald Duck never wore pants," said Gideon Peppy, around his lollipop.

Sparky had spent the entire morning with Rose, the nice production-designer lady, and her staff of hair, costume, and makeup people. His hair had been restored in its tripartite pattern, but instead of banana yellow it was now metallic and bronze, spiraled and wiry. The side wings were swept back instead of spread out, and the front part of the Mohawk drooped down over his forehead. The electric zigzags were back, joined now by a pair on his chest. His eyes were mascaraed from eyelash to brow in a deep rose fading to black, then tapering to more zigzags at the corners. He wore black lipstick. He had been prodded and pampered, trimmed, teased, and flattered by the deft boys and girls of the makeup department, and made to feel very important indeed. He had been massaged with warm oils until his skin glistened. If he wanted something to eat or drink he had merely to ask and it appeared. He had received his first manicure and pedicure. Then he had been put into his costume, which was a red jerkin or waistcoat (which his father said was pronounced weskit) with gold embroidery suggestive of a circuit board. It could be fastened with a frog in front, or left open. It had no sleeves or lapels. It reached the middle of his hips. When he had it on Sparky immediately asked the same question his father would ask a few minutes later, and when he was told that was it, the entire costume, he knew there was going to be trouble.

Now he stood silently in front of the huge mirror that backed the conference table on the edge of the bustling pirate-ship tank set. Gideon Peppy liked conference tables, had one brought in anywhere he was going to meet with people, and immediately installed himself in a big chair at one end. His staff clustered at that end, drawn like iron filings to a magnet. He sat there now, feet up on the table as was his custom, and looked at Sparky. Behind him and to his right was the usual pandemonium of a set being constructed, wired, painted, and lit all at once. A wharf had been built and a Caribbean port town was almost complete. Nail guns stuttered and paint sprayers hissed and table saws howled as gangs of grips carried Styrofoam barrels and inflatable bales of cotton to stack on the wharf. A paving machine was moving along like a giant metal termite queen, laying cobbles in irregular rows on the steep main street. Set dressers were strewing straw and garbage and imitation horseshit, daubing weathered-wood walls with ersatz mildew. Somewhere underwater frogmen were positioning battery-powered mini-brutes to shine upward through the turquoise water. And anchored just off the wharf was the pirate ship itself, swarming with gaffers and riggers testing the complex system of ropes, pulleys, and canvas.

Sparky watched it all in the mirror, and remembered Orson Welles's description of a motion picture soundstage: the greatest toy a boy ever had.

"Yes," his father thundered, bringing Sparky back to reality. "And Donald Duck was a cartoon, a water fowl, and imaginary. And, apparently, sexless. You should bear in mind that my son is a real little boy."

Valentine had grasped the dynamic of the conference table instantly, weeks ago when he had his first meeting with Peppy and his staff. He had marched unerringly to the far end of the table and had been camping out there ever since. It meant he had to raise his voice to reach Peppy, especially on a noisy set like this one, but it was no problem for John Valentine, who liked to boast that he had never been miked in his life and always projected to the last row of the balcony.

Peppy and Valentine had loathed each other on sight and each had yet to speak an impolite word to the other. The tension at the table had grown so unbearable that the faint of heart among Peppy's entourage hyperventilated and had to breathe into paper bags when the meetings adjourned.

"I never forget it for a minute, my good friend," Peppy replied. "A wonderful talent, your son. He's going to be a big star, and very soon. Maybe even bigger than me." He chuckled wryly, bemused at such a thought, and a few of his people chuckled with him. He leaned forward. But we're dealing in a fantasy world here, John B. We're making movie magic. We've researched this high and low—haven't we, Rose? Tell him about the research—and what you're seeing in that sweet little boy is the coming thing, John B., the coming thing. We won't be in business very long if we wait around until the coming thing is already here. We've got to be the ones who define what it is. Tell him, Rose."

Valentine, who liked being called John B. about as much as Jack Sensational would have liked being called Puddin' head, folded his hands comfortably and turned to Rose with a sweet smile.

Rose was that rarity, an artist oblivious to power politics within the team. She liked her creation, and she liked Sparky, and had no idea how much Valentine and Peppy detested each other.

"It's true, Mr. Valentine," she enthused, and hurried over to take Sparky by the elbows and boost him onto the table, where he swaggered around in the middle, careful not to get too close to either end, where there were tigers. He struck a few poses, watching himself in the mirror.

"The one-piece look is already the thing in the Mercury Commune, and you know how they've bellwethered all the newest things for the last two years. Simplicity is the statement. One garment, loads of makeup. Both sexes. And not just the tiny tots, either. Just a shirt, or a pair of trousers. Sometimes just one sleeve—just a sleeve, no shirt—or a legging." She illustrated on her own body, with graceful hand gestures, then joined Sparky on the table. She herself wore a garment similar to his, but a little longer. She went down on one knee beside him, pointing out features of her handiwork. "Depilate from the neck down. Oil up. One item of clothing. That's the key to the new look. Lots of skin. Heck, on Mars the upper classes aren't dressing their children at all until they reach puberty, as if we were back in the fifties. I think that's reverse snobbery, and besides, you can't make money selling nudity."

"You can make more money selling more clothes," Valentine pointed out. "That's true," said Peppy. "And we'll sell caps, and T-shirts, and whatever the marketing department dreams up. But that'll be with pictures of Sparky, and with the Sparky artwork and logo and characters. If the kids want to wear the Sparky look, they'll wear the vest dingus. And they'll buy it from us, because we'll be the only ones selling Sparky vests with the official Sparky's Gang seal."

"Only to eight-year-olds," Valentine said.

"So what? We figure three-to-ten, actually, but eight is the target, for now. This thing takes off, takes off big, we'll get up to the teens as the Sparkster gets older. I'm telling you, John B., the Victorian Kid is history. You can pack away all his lacy duds, his velvet shirts and ruffled collars and knee britches. Coupla months, everybody's kid's gonna dress like this."

"If he wears it at all," Valentine said, dangerously. "I don't know, Pepsi. There's something about it that rubs me the wrong way. Call me old-fashioned. Nudity is fine, at home, at the playground, in the swimming pool."

"But this isn't nudity, Mr. V," Rose piped up, honestly trying to be helpful. "Nudity is dreary. This is style."

"Not to put too fine a point to it, Rose, my darling," John said, "I was raised to believe a young gentleman should wear pants in public."

Rose—who, like most third-generation and younger Lunarians, had no more body modesty than a mink—had no idea what he was talking about. She had made costumes faithfully for a hundred Earth-era pictures without ever really grasping the genitalia taboo. People wore lots of clothing on Earth because it had been dangerous down there, to her way of thinking. Blistering sunlight, lethal cold winds. There was nothing like that to protect oneself from on Luna, and people wore clothing almost exclusively for decoration, sometimes a lot of it, sometimes very little, depending on the fashion of the day. If the fashion now was no pants, what's the big deal? She looked to Peppy for help.

Gideon Peppy carefully removed half his lollipop from his mouth, and chewed on the rest. He had never eaten his hard candy treats until he met the Valentines, father and son, but now he found himself frequently biting down hard on them. Pepsi, is it, you prick?

He laughed indulgently, one friend to another, and shook his head.

"Johnny, Johnny, honestly! I don't know where you get these ideas! He's a riot, isn't he, fellas? A riot. Sometimes I think you're just kidding us, and I'm too dumb to get the joke. But I'm here for you, paisan. I care, I really do. If you have concerns I'm always willing to listen. If you're not happy, nobody at this table is happy, so what I want from you is to talk to me, John. Blue-sky it for us. What would you like to see here? We all want your input and my mind is a blank page, costume-wise. So draw on it, John B., draw on it. What kind of pants are we talking here?"

Sparky, who had not been following the exchange at all closely, chose that moment to pipe up.

"I kind of like it, Father," he said.

The silence that followed was mercifully short, as one of Rose's assistants arrived with a girl in tow. Now it was Sparky's turn to frown dubiously.

Peppy stood up to greet the girl. He lifted her up onto the table where she stood confidently, hands on hips, looking a challenge at Sparky.

"Folks, meet Sparky's new sidekick. I'd like you to say hi to Kaspara Polichinelli!"

"Sidekick? Sidekick? I didn't see anything about a sidekick." John Valentine reached for his script.

"All action heroes have sidekicks," Peppy said, smugly. "We figured from the start Sparky'd have one. We wrote her in last week."

Sparky walked slowly toward the young lady. Eight years old, he figured. Dressed exactly as he was, only the waistcoat was blue with silver highlights. Hair trimmed the same, only silver instead of brass. Zigzags, eye shadow, all the same. The black lipstick was a trifle bee-stung, a little Betty Boopish, but other than that, she looked just like him.

He stopped a pace away and looked her up and down. She smiled. Her two front teeth were prominent.

"What kind of name is Kaspara?" he asked. He was aware that an argument was happening down at Peppy's end of the table, but he tried to ignore it. He knew he had made a major mistake in his comment about the costume, but he was hoping this new sensation might make it seem less important in retrospect. Perhaps Kaspara Polichinelli's arrival would distract his father from his son's innocent gaffe. And that was good.

But he was far from sure anything else about her arrival was so great.

"I don't use it," she said.

"What do they call you? Kassie?"

"Everybody calls me Polly."

Sparky had edged a little closer, trying to see if his shoulder was higher than hers. She smiled, and came around him to stand back-to-back. The two of them looked in the mirror. He had an inch on her. Maybe two if he stood up straight. Well, that was okay, then.

She laughed, and bumped him with her hip.

"Come on," she said. "Don't be such a flip. I know how to stand downstage and not get in your shot. They told me the part was a sidekick when I tried out."

"You're going to be my buddy? Is that it?"

"I don't think they planned any sexual involvement until the third season, at least," she said. "Which is fine with me. I'm old-fashioned, like your father. I figured I'd wait till my blood day, just like my mother did."

Sparky was saved from replying to that by the sound of rising voices at the power end of the table. Storm clouds were forming over there, and the outlook was excellent that the long-delayed cataclysmic confrontation between producer and parent was about to break out. Aides were scurrying for cover as John Valentine came around the table, slapping his script into his open palm while Peppy slapped a copy of Sparky's contract into his.

"Come on," Polly said, pulling his hand. "They told me to bring you back. Miss Crow says it's time for classes."

"Miss Crow?" For a moment Sparky forgot who she was. "Oh. Auntie Equity."

"Auntie Equity." She laughed. "I like that. C'mon, let's get out of here. There's a fight about to happen, and I think your dad's going to lose it. I don't think you want to be around when he does."

John Valentine did lose the fight, if the removal of the character of Polly was the criterion for winning. But he saw it coming, and managed to turn the contest in midstream until it was a struggle over artistic control and not over Polly herself—and managed to convince himself that was what he had been upset about in the first place. It might even have been true. He was not mollified by a small victory on the issue of trousers. "Listen to this," Peppy had offered. "We shoot the pilot in the outfits Rose designed. Then there's a coupla markets off-planet... what is it, Vesta, Callisto... Ceres, I think, all fulla Baptists and Mormons and jerks like that. Vesta, now, wha'd' they call it in that skit the other day...?"

He snapped his fingers rapidly and an aide spoke up. "Planet of the Prudes," he said.

"That's it. We always have to tinker with the Peppy Show for export, so what we'll do, we'll morph some britches on 'em, see what it tests like. Now I ask you, John B. Is that fair?"

"Couldn't be fairer, Pepster." Valentine beamed.

Ah, Polly. Those were more innocent days.

Yes, it's me again, awake after another week.

Like most long voyages, at sea or in space, awake or asleep, there is not usually much to report. One day is like another, barring storm or disaster. I will tell you now, no such disaster will befall. The deadballs will continue to work their hypnotism-reinforced magic, I will continue to awake at regular intervals, I will eat, I will fall back into the arms of Morpheus. In time I will arrive at Oberon, where further adventures await. In the meantime I will allow that long-ago Sparky to tell his story, as is his habit, in the third person, suitably edited into high and low points.

I doubt that I will interrupt him again.

But this time I had to. Sometimes something rises from the depths of the sea or sails out of the ocean of night to make the day a special one. Your diary has been an endless series of identical entries: Falling sunward. Shipboard routine uninterrupted. Weather clear. Slept. Then the lost continent of Atlantis appears off the starboard bow. It's worth a postcard.

We ran into a herd of diaphanophores. A flight of diaphanophores? The book where I found that fancy name you've probably never heard of neglected to give a collective noun for them. Herd definitely won't do, though. How about an exaltation of diaphanophores?

They're better known by several more poetic names, including Outer Angels, Angel's Robes, and spinthistles. Or simply angels. On Pluto, they are called BFODs: Big Fucking Orbital Disks. Those rascally Plutonians. Honestly.

Let's settle on angels, shall we?

Their origins are obscure, but it is known they are man-made. The dominant theory is that they are the creation of some demented biohacker with an illegal lab somewhere in the outer planets. When they first showed up there was considerable alarm about them, but so far they have proven harmless. That was about a century ago, maybe a bit longer, so I'd say the case was pretty well closed. Plenty of people would like to know more about them, to be sure they're not up to something, but angels are traditionally hard to study, and these won't sit still any more than the Biblical variety.

Space angels dissolve when you get close to them. Some people think it's a protective reflex, because what's left of them apparently form sporelike structures, trillions of them, of which only a few will survive. Others think it is contact itself that blows them away, like thistledown. Ships can only approach within ten thousand miles or so. A man in a spacesuit can get within maybe a hundred miles. Then they go pop, like soap bubbles. They are made of a mix of animal and vegetable protein. They are transparent, and probably one molecule thick. The little ones are one hundred thousand miles in diameter.

The big ones go up to ten million miles.

That's crazy, of course. There must be angels smaller than one hundred thousand miles across. They can't just spring into being. But even the big ones don't show up on radar, and finding the small ones when we know most of them spend most of their lives above and below the solar plane, where hardly anyone ever goes, is almost impossible. Maybe they breed out there.

If you read up on them, you will find that I've told you just about everything that is known, and you'll notice I've used a lot of maybes.

Two more things. They move about like sailboats, flying before the solar wind and light pressure. And they survive by sweeping up the extremely thin matter between planets. One reason scientists would like to capture one is they suspect angels might be sweeping up magnetic monopoles, whatever those are.

So there is the physical rundown. The reality was more colorful. I saw them when I woke up. I'd say there were fifty or sixty of them, which meant there were probably a lot more since you only see them when they're oriented such that the sun's light is reflected toward you. There is no way to tell how big each one was, or how distant. One moment an angel would seem truly vast and impossibly distant; the next, I'd convinced myself it was the size of a coin, and only inches from my face. There is no sense of scale. But they flashed and fluttered all around me, and I was enchanted by the rainbow of colors. One seemed to fill a quarter of the sky. It was a pale gold, and I could see stars through it.

Then we hit one.

No sound, no impact. No warning at all. One moment I was watching the distant disks, and the next the universe was bisected by an infinite plain of multicolored light.

It was a sight few people have been granted. The only way to touch an angel is to hit it at high speed. If you decelerate, the force of your engines will destroy it long before you get there. But at the speed we were traveling, the ship punched right through its diaphanous body without warning. I don't think the crew had any idea it was in front of them. How would they? It was between us and the sun, and we could only see it after we'd gone through. Not that they could have done anything if they had been aware of it.

At our speed, any object of reasonable size would be there and gone before your eye could register it. Not the angel. There it was, stretching away to infinity, shrinking not at all as I watched.

Its surface was a fractal swirl of every color of the rainbow. It was like a drop of oil on water, or the surface of a soap bubble. Or something like an aurora I once saw on Mars, but frozen.

Except for one spot. That spot was no color at all, and it seemed to be centered in the endless plain. Well, of course it would be. I could never tell if we'd hit the angel dead center or near the edge, but it was so vast that unless we were very near the edge, it just didn't matter. It was endless in all directions.

The spot was like a hole in space, full of blackness, but then I began to see stars at the bottom of it. It seemed to be getting bigger slowly. It finally dawned on me that I was seeing the hole the ship had punched through the surface of the angel, and considering the speed at which we were leaving it behind, the hole was growing at a monstrous rate.

It kept growing for the twenty minutes or so that I watched it, and then, as suddenly as it appeared, the angel was gone. All at once, from edge to edge.

It must have taken a considerable time for the hole to consume the entire angel. What had happened was we had moved far enough that the sun's light no longer reflected from the angel. It was still there, though going away to wherever punctured angels go.

The whole thing made me quite happy for a time. I hardly tasted the awful stuff I was chewing on. But eventually reality intruded again, and I knew it was time to get back to sleep. I really didn't want to, I sort of wanted to skip over what was coming next.

And it was history, after all. Over and done with. In the past.

Oh, poor Sparky.

The Daewoo Caterpillar lurks in cold, airless tunnels far beneath the Lunar surface. Some say the Breathsucker is the worst thing that can happen to you, the worst way you can die. Dodger knew better. Even the Breathsucker was afraid of the Daewoo Caterpillar.

He had encountered the beast twice before. He never got a good look at it, not that he minded. This time he feared he might have to look directly into its dreadful countenance. He was sure it was the last thing his living eyes would see.

Once more Dodger was a toy balloon, hurrying to keep up with his father's headlong progress down the deserted corridor. Deserted? Abandoned, actually. Here and there were piles of steel rods and ceiling panels and other, mysterious building blocks, some under plastic tarps, all of it dusty. It was entirely possible that no one but Dodger and his father had been down this corridor in the last ten years.

Dodger had been down it twice before. He didn't want to get to the end of it again.

His father was holding his hand too tightly. But that was the least of his problems.

He searched for the words that would bring them to a halt.

To be or not to be.

Friends, Romans, countrymen.

Now is the winter of our discontent.

But, soft!

It was useless. He knew all the words, and none would do him any good, because this wasn't about learning, this wasn't the bathtub. This was the Breathsucker, and the Daewoo Caterpillar. This was as bad as it gets.

"Please," he whispered. He tried not to, but the word had just come bubbling from his mouth. He felt a string of spit rolling down his chin, and he wiped at it with his free hand. "Please, what?" his father said. "Please, Father. Please don't."

Those weren't the words; his father kept up his relentless progress toward the end of the corridor. He could see it now, in the widely spaced work lights hanging from strings overhead. The end of the world.

"I'll tell him," he burst out. "I'll tell him how wrong I was. I'll tell Mr. Peppy I'll wear the pants." No reaction. Only a few more yards to go now.

"Let's... let's just go to Mars! Let's forget the whole thing. We have lots of money now. We—"

Suddenly his father's face was before him, filling the whole universe. Those beloved ice-blue eyes. Eyes that flashed now, eyes that glistened with sincerity, eyes that could be bottomless pools of love, eyes you could swim in, warm eyes. But eyes that now betrayed their sadness, that told Dodger he had let his father down. Mad eyes.

John Valentine spoke barely above a whisper.

"This is not about pants, Dodge," he said. "This is not about money. This is about... artistic control."

"Sure," Dodger said, nodding furiously. "I'll tell Mr. Peppy—"

"This is about presenting a united front. This is about you and me, about family. It's us against them, Dodger. Us against them. We're outnumbered, always will be. If I can't count on you, who can I count on?"

"You can count on me, Father, I swear I—"

"I don't want to do this, son. But I'm convinced it's the right thing to do. It's the way I learned my lesson, and I think you'll learn from it, too."

"I've already learned, Father."

"Never." Valentine had barely raised his voice, yet somehow the word rang in the empty corridor. He held up a forefinger, wagged it back and forth in front of Dodger's face.

"Never contradict your father in public."

"I won't. I promise."

"Never disagree with me in front of strangers."

And before Dodger could promise again never to go against the family, his father picked him up and shoved him through the open door of the ancient airlock.

This was no ordinary airlock. Regular airlocks had a dozen safety devices. They were connected to the Central Computer, who would become aware each time the lock was cycled. Officially, this airlock didn't exist. It was a fifty-year-old temporary structure, meant to pass pressure-suited work gangs from the completed part of the tunnel to the construction area beyond. Just a great big cylinder, really, nested inside a slightly larger, stationary cylinder. The inner cylinder had a door-sized opening in it. The outer one had two, 180 degrees apart. When the inner opening lined up with the second door, all the air in the smaller cylinder simply blew into vacuum. Simple, quick, and dirty, not the sort of thing that was supposed to exist in the ultrasafe Lunar environment.

That it did exist was the result of oversight. The construction project had gone bankrupt, and all the plans and permits were long forgotten now, moldering in some disused memory chip, filed away with the dissolution papers of the bank that had funded it and the company that had started building it. Years had passed, a building boom had come and gone, and this tunnel and its terminus were now as remote and mysterious as the Roman catacombs or the sewers of Paris. A handful of hoboes knew of it. A few hoboes, and John Valentine.

Dodger had been there twice before. He knew to an exquisite interval how fast the lock rotated. Thirty-five seconds. Fifteen to align the doorways, and another fifteen to complete the cycle, to bring the inner door back into congruence with the door where his father waited. A five-second pause while some machinery reset itself. For the first fifteen seconds Dodger would have air. For the five-second pause, and the fifteen seconds beyond that, he would have none.

But the last fifteen seconds were not what had Dodger worried. He knew people didn't blow up when exposed to vacuum, in spite of some lurid movies he had seen. He'd been there twice before. He knew the human body could easily survive twenty seconds of airlessness. You might bleed a little, and your ears would sure as hell hurt, but it wouldn't kill you. It would scare the shit out of you, make those sessions in the bathtub seem like a walk in the park, but if it would kill him, his father would never have done it.

No, it was the five seconds that worried him. The five seconds when he would once again confront the Daewoo Caterpillar. When the door would yawn wide and he'd see it again, lurking in the shadows.

His father didn't know about the Daewoo Caterpillar, Dodger was convinced of that. If he'd known, he'd never have put his son into the airlock. Dodger had tried to tell him about it, tried more than once, but his tongue seemed to freeze before he could even pronounce the creature's name.

If he lived this time, he promised himself he'd tell his father.

Meantime, he had to hurry.

He was on his knees, and that was no good. Lining the walls of the lock were handholds, and Dodger scrambled to his feet and grabbed two of them. When the air went, it would go violently. The first time he'd been here, his father had tied him to a handhold, and the outrush of air had lifted him from his feet and tried to carry him out with it, out to the Caterpillar.

Five seconds. That's all he had to endure. Five seconds. Maybe the beast was sleeping. It had to sleep, didn't it? Probably not.

The lock was turning now. He could feel the slight vibration under his feet. He looked over his shoulder and saw his father being eclipsed, vanishing as the lock turned away from him. Standing there sternly, his arms folded, his brow furrowed with concern. He knew his father loved him. He knew he was doing this to his son because it was for the best. He'd been wrong. So wrong, to speak up, to take Peppy's side. What could he have been thinking?

He'd been thinking like a star, that's what the trouble was. His father had warned him about that. How money and fame can go to your head, make you feel you were special, like your shit didn't stink.

"And you are special, Dodger," John Valentine had said. "You're special to me, and you have a special talent. A special art. But it doesn't give you the right to be impolite."

And certainly not the right to contradict his father in public. What could he have been thinking? They were a team, surely, but a team had to have a leader, and John Valentine was older and stronger and wiser. He'd been there. He'd seen it and done it. Dodger was still learning.

"Dirty laundry is only to be aired backstage," John Valentine had told his son many times. "Never before the audience. And never in front of the producer."

What had he been thinking?

Well, they'd work it out. He would survive this, and he and his father would be a team again. They'd talk things over in the dressing room, like they always did. They'd present a united front on everything.

Dodger pressed his face against the wall. He was as far from the door as he could get. Maybe it would be safer not to look. Maybe he could cower here, keep his back to the thing, and it would overlook him.

Fat chance.

Unlikely the monster would miss him, and impossible that he could last five seconds without looking.

He didn't last one second.

It started very loudly, as the air tried to force itself through the tiny crack. A shriek, deafening, reminding Dodger of a film he'd seen where an evil witch was pushed into a deep well, screaming all the way down. Screaming, but getting fainter, more distant. This sound quickly lost all its punch, too. The air around Dodger plucked at his clothes with cold fingers, pulled at him, became an instant gale that puffed out his cheeks and drove ice picks into his ears, and brought up a monstrous belch from deep inside him. Then there was nothing but the ringing silence, a sound he knew was not a sound but his tortured ears crying in agony. He turned around.

His heart turned to stone. The Daewoo Caterpillar was there. And it wasn't just lurking in the shadows this time, it was lurching toward him. It was huge, a thing of metal teeth and flailing arms and a hideous, bright yellow body and six great glassy eyes. It reached out one skeletal hand toward Dodger, and the cylinder began to turn. Dodger was frozen tight to the spot, watching in dreadful fascination. Would the door turn away in time, or would the creature reach inside and begin feasting?

With the silence of death, the hand entered the doorway.

The inner-lock cylinder kept trying to close, but the claw was in the way. The lock stopped moving, retreated a few inches, and again tried to close. And again, and again, shuttling back and forth like the doors of an elevator when you stuck your hand between them. The creature seemed stymied by the door, but it wouldn't really matter much longer, because Dodger would soon be dead from lack of air.

So the Breathsucker would get him. If it's not one thing, it's another.

He started to slide down the side of the cylinder. Things were getting dark, blurry. He wiped at his eyes, and for a moment he thought he saw Elwood shoving the loathsome claw back into the outer darkness, thought he saw the cylinder begin to rotate again. Thought he felt Elwood's arms around him, cradling him, telling him it was going to be all right.

But that couldn't be true. How would Elwood get in here?

It was his last thought for some time.

Dodger woke to the smell of freshly washed sheets and the sound of a mockingbird's song. He didn't open his eyes for a while, fearing it was all too good to be true. That smell was one he associated with good times: high-class hotels he and his father lived in when the money was good. The sound was one he associated with Texas. And that couldn't be.

But it was. He opened his eyes and sat up. He was tucked into a bed in a small room made entirely of wood. Beside the bed was an open window that looked out on an oak tree only a few feet away. The mockingbird was perched on a branch until he saw Dodger. Then he chirped a few more notes and flew away.

Dodger lay back down. He'd been here before, and if he was here then everything must be all right.

He was on the second floor of an authentic wooden building on the dusty main street of New Austin, in the middle of the Texas disneyland. These were the medical offices of Drs. Henry Wauk, M.D., and Heinrich Wohl, D.D.S, "Quick and Relatively Painless Dentistry," according to the shingle hanging outside. He'd never met Dr. Wohl, but he'd seen Henry Wauk several times. His father had brought him in from time to time for what he thought of as "good, old-fashioned doctoring." But even John Valentine, with his ingrained suspicion of all things modern, had not subjected himself or his son to the sort of butchery that had been practiced in places like this in the 1800s. The archaic medical equipment in this room, the colorful jars of powders and elixirs, and the instruments of torture surrounding the dental chair in the other room were merely for show, as was pretty much everything in Texas. Valentine came here for checkups and physical repairs, when needed, because Henry Wauk was an old friend of his, and because Henry would do the work off the books. The Central Computer and its various legal minions held little sway in Texas, a fact that endeared the place and all the other disneylands to John Valentine. They were virtually independent states, immune to many of the intrusive regulations of the larger civilization.

"Social experiments, they call them," Valentine had said to his son, one day while they were out riding horses—real horses! Dodger had been in heaven—in the sagebrush country west of New Austin. "Living museums. They teach school the old-fashioned way in here, son. Back to basics. All the children learn to read, if you can believe that. They grow their own food, right in the dirt. They live in here, hold down jobs in here. Old jobs, like blacksmithing, and cooperage, and... and plenty of other things I don't pretend to know much about. They hold their own elections, and they don't pay taxes to Mama Luna. Misfits in here, most of them. People who weren't happy on the outside."

Dodger had thought it was odd to call the corridors of Luna "the outside," but he knew what his father meant. Here, there was the illusion of endless space, just like out on the surface. And Texas was pretty large: miles and miles, his father said.

"Doctor" Wauk was one of the misfits. His was no general anomie or existential despair, however. Wauk was what would have been called, in early Texas, a dipsomaniac. He had a fondness for the bottle that he was not willing to be cured of. It had made a disaster of his acting career, and he had finally accepted a part that was to be lived, instead of performed: that of the alcoholic sawbones beloved of old black-and-white westerns.

While Wauk did dispense patent remedies and salves and powders for a few ailments, all the real medical care was accomplished by a perfectly ordinary Medico machine concealed in a closet. More complex work was referred to a normal facility outside the disneyland. Wauk had been given the bare minimum of training to operate the Medico. "After all," as he'd told John Valentine, "it ain't like doctorin' is rocket science, or anything."

Dodger thought he could hear voices from the next room. He rolled out of bed and crept carefully to the door, pressed his ear against it. If he held his breath he could hear his father and Dr. Wauk talking, but he could only get every other word. He looked around and found an antique stethoscope in a drawer. He put the rubber tips in his ears and pressed the metal disk on the end to the wooden door, and the sounds became as clear as a telephone.

"Look, Henry," his father said. "We're rolling in cash. I want you to take this. Please. It would make me feel better."

"Just my normal fee will be sufficient, John," said the doctor.

"Come on. As a favor to me."

"Right at this moment, my old friend, I'm not inclined to do any favors for you beyond the one I just done. No, sir, and I don't think I have much interest in makin' you feel any better, either. In fact, I think I just done you the last favor I'm ever goin' to do you."

There was a long silence. Dodger held his breath. He heard the sound of a chair scraping across a wooden floor, then a creaking sound. Someone just sat down in the chair, Dodger guessed.

"What you just done to that boy is a crime, John. You don't need me to tell you that, you know it already. But knowin' how you feel about laws, and the power of the state, and such, I'm going to tell you something else. What you done to that boy is a sin."

There was an even longer pause, then a sound that Dodger at first didn't recognize but which still froze his heart. It came again, and suddenly Dodger knew his father was weeping.

"Ah, shit, John. Let me try to drop the cornpone, here. I've been living here so long now the accent's hardly an act anymore. But you remember me. It's Henry Wauk talking to you, John. The guy who used to understudy you in half the stuff you ever acted in. I'm the fellow who would have given anything to be half as good as you are, and if I couldn't do that, at least I could hang around you and hope some of the brilliance would rub off. It never did. All we really had in common was a propensity for the bottle. I don't know if you ever thought of me as a friend—"

"I did," John Valentine sobbed. "I still do."

"...well, that may be. I don't know if it's really friendship when one admires the other as much as I admired you. I owe you a lot. I still do owe you a lot, but I'm telling you now, I don't owe you this. This is the third time you've brought that little boy in to me so I could fix him up. I didn't really think much about it the first time. Fixed his busted eardrum, dived back into the bottle. But after the second time I couldn't seem to get it out of my mind. Not what you'd done to his body, John, but what you were doing to his... I don't even know what the word is. His soul, maybe. There's a part of him's always going to be frightened. Scared of you, maybe. Scared of everything."

Dodger bit his lip and frowned. What the hell was the damn quack talking about? He wasn't afraid of his father. He loved his father.

"I don't know why I do these things," Valentine said, miserably.

"That's something I don't even want to think about. I don't care why. What I'm telling you now is, it ends here. You bring him back to me all bloody and swollen up like that again, I'm going straight to the cops."

"That's exactly what you should do," Valentine said.

"I ought to call 'em right now," Wauk went on. "Shit, John, that poor kid was... well, you know how he was."

Dodger almost missed his father's next words, which were barely above a whisper.

"It was an accident. Oh, god, don't look at me like that, Henry, I know it's my responsibility. I know if he'd died it would have been exactly like I'd murdered him. Killed by my stupidity. I'm just trying to tell you... it didn't happen like I thought it would."

"I guess not," the doctor snorted.

"I don't know what happened. I guess the blast of air was just enough this time to dislodge that goddamn Caterpillar machine, and it came rolling down those tracks and I saw it coming, watching him, I was watching through the window beside the lock, I saw what was about to happen and I almost died right there, there was no way to make the lock go any faster, and the next lock was half a mile away and I didn't have a suit anyway, and—"

"Really thought it all through, didn't you?"

"Henry, I'm so sorry. I don't know why I do these things."

"That's between you and your therapist, or your God, or whoever it is you listen to, if you listen to anybody."

"I was so stupid."

"The stupid part I can forgive, John. It's the evil part that scares me. It was evil to do what you did." There was another long silence, then the doctor spoke again, with more curiosity than anger in his voice.

"That's what the Dywoo Caterpillar business was? That he was screaming about when you brought him in?"

"Daewoo/Caterpillar," Valentine said. "You know, the heavy equipment company. Earthmovers, tunneling equipment, asteroid relocation. It was written right on the front of that boring machine. One of the grinder arms or something wedged in the door and I thought... I thought it would never move away." He began sobbing again, great racking spasms that hurt Dodger to hear.

But the boy was already consumed by a hot burst of shame. He sat back on his heels and pounded his fist on his thigh.

"Stupid! Stupid!" he whispered. The one thing in the world he'd been the most frightened of, and it turned out to be nothing but... a machine? Stupid! Biting back tears, he put the stethoscope back against the door.

"There must have been a small gradient there," his father was saying. "The thing rocked back just enough on its tracks, enough so the lock could keep turning. Nothing but sheer, dumb luck. More luck than I deserve, certainly. It must be the boy's luck. Somebody's watching over him."

Dodger had long understood that his father couldn't see Elwood. In fact, he was pretty sure no one could see Elwood but himself. In fact, he'd been wondering, not being completely stupid, if Elwood was just a figurehead of his imagination, a hellishination. A bee in his bonnet, a bat in his belfry. If he was, in a word, crazy. Now he didn't think so. Elwood had shoved that Caterpillar back in its tracks. There was no other explanation for it. Which meant that Elwood was a bona fide ghost, like Hamlet's old man. The only thing he wasn't sure of was if he was the ghost of Elwood P. Dowd, a fictional character, or the ghost of Jimmy Stewart, who had just gone crazy and thought he was Elwood P. Dowd. But from that moment on he knew Elwood was his guardian angel.

"Can I go in and see him now?" Dodger was about to leap back into bed, but held out just long enough to hear the doctor's reply.

"Let the lad rest," said Wauk. "He ought to be out another hour or so, with the dose I gave him. Right now, why don't you take me down to the saloon and buy me a drink or three."

Damn drunk, Dodger thought as he heard the outside door open and close, and the sound of footsteps going down the stairs. Can't even dope me up properly. It's a good thing I'm still alive.

That bastard! Make my father cry, will you?

Dodger started poking around in cupboards and cabinets.

He quickly found a gallon stoneware jug labeled CORN LIQUOR. He pulled out the stopper and smelled it. Booze, all right. Okay, what have we got here?

He spent the next hour reading definitions in an old leather-bound book called Saunders's Comprehensive Medical Encyclopedia, publication date 1898, looking up the words he found printed on bottles and jars that lined the shelves and cabinets in the examining room. "Paregoric," he discovered, was camphorated tincture of opium. It smelled nasty, so he dumped some of it in the jug of corn liquor. "Calomel" was mercurous chloride. That sounded nasty; wasn't mercury poisonous? Into the bottle went a teaspoon of calomel. "Aunt Lydia's Pink Tonic" was said, by the label, to possess excellent emetic properties. After looking up "emetic," Dodger poured in a generous dose. "Nicotine" was a poisonous alkaloid, C₁₀H₁₄N₂. In it went. A "sialogogue" was something that increased the flow of saliva. Why not? "Arecane" was a proprietary remedy and efficacious as a purgative. A "parturifacient" was used to speed up childbirth, while an "abortifacient" produced an abortion. Dodger wondered what a mixture of the two would do to a drunken doctor? "Formalin," "cryptomenorrheal," "Salvarsan," "arnicin," "myxorrheal," "leptuntic"...so many new words, so many definitions, so little time.

After a while he grew tired of reading, and felt a little hungry. In the next room, by the dentist chair, he found the remains of a Mexican lunch: chips and salsa and a cold taco. He took a bite of the taco, and in a moment was searching frantically for a drink of water. After he'd put out the fire in his mouth, he examined the bottle of Pancho's Habanero Hell (WARNING: Do not use near open flame!), then took it into the doctor's office and dumped half the bottle into the jug. He smeared a little sauce around the earpieces of the stethoscope.

He jammed in the cork and shook the jug vigorously, then opened it again and sniffed cautiously. It still smelled like booze.

For good measure, he pissed in the jug before going downstairs to join his father.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

From: First Latitudinarian Church of Celebrity Saints

Subject: November Audience Ratings

Category: Children's (age 2 to 12) periodical (weekly/fortnightly/monthly)

December 1 (King City Temple)

The November "Flack" numbers as compiled by the Trends Research Department of the Latitudinarian Church are as follows:

Admiral Platypus seems to have solidified its hold on the number-two slot in the Adjusted Audience Share rating. Barney's Boulevard, benefiting from a new writing staff, has made its way from number fourteen to number four in the past year. The top two stories continue to be the steepening decline of What the Fuck?, the once-dominant Q A offering from NLF-TV3, and the meteoric rise of Skunk Cabbage, the critically panned actioner about a tribe of zombie children. SC seems poised to make a run on those two old reliable warhorses, Peppy and Platy.

Spokespersons for NLF and the Children's Educational Workshop, producers of WTF?, had no comment when asked if the declining numbers of educational programming across the board in the past three years reflected a growing anti-intellectualism or merely a stagnation of fresh new ideas in the presentation of loftier kid-vid. Oskar Bigbird III, chairman of CEW, promised a news conference later in the week, announcing staffing changes on WTF?

It seems nothing the pundits can say will have any effects on the soaring prospects of Skunk Cabbage. Introduced a mere eight months ago, the "Li'l Stinkers" have stormed the imaginations of a huge number of Lunarian children, and are now ready for a system-wide release. Reports from retailers confirm that for the first time in many a year, sales of Gideon Peppy products were eclipsed by the SC Kids during the month of October. Full figures for November are not yet available. But it seems a safe bet that Li'l Stinkers toys, clothing, software, and other tie-ins will be the hot items this Xmas season. Quote from Gideon Peppy (with a chuckle): "It don't have me chewin' on my lollipop." He pointed to growing cries of outrage from Mars to the Cometary Zone from concerned parents' groups worried about the coming onslaught of SC Kids. Peppy refused to comment on rumors that he himself had been behind some of those protests.

More likely to put toothmarks on his Tootsieroll is the continuing failure to soar of his much-touted new series Sparky and His Gang. Ballyhooed on the Peppy Show for three months before its August launch, Sparky remains mired in the mid-forties, with a dismal 12.4 share. With the fifteenth episode currently lensing at Sentry/Sensational, rumors are that the sixteenth stanza is on hold, while (guess what?) staff changes are contemplated. Say, there's a bunch of WTF? scribes soon to be pounding the pavement, G.P. They'll work cheap.

(For daily show and theatrical numbers, key MORE)

from The Straight Shit Starpage:

Year in Review: sub-Kid-vid

"Anybody Wanna Buy a Sparky Action Mug?"

by Bermuda Schwartz

I've been telling you for two hundred years now, so why do I think you'll all of a sudden start to listen? Ever since those old phosphor dots began to chase each other across the magic glass of the kinescope in the dear departed 1940s, two things are the only things that sell on TV: good stuff, and crap. Neither one is a guarantee of success. Plenty of shows have aspired to be good, but were kidding themselves. They've all long since vanished. And some actually were good, and they're gone, too. As for crap... who can fucking tell with crap? Myghty Mytes shambled onto the screen midsummer, stinking of crap, and by the end of the month it was in the crapper. Skunk Cabbage smelled just as rank, and by Yuletide the Komical Korpses had trailed their slime into every third-rate geraldo's studio on the planet. Kids were sleeping in "Li'l Stinker" coffins, at a thousand dollars a pop, gluing trademarked live worms to their cheeks.

Who can figure it? Not me, not the pundits nor the critics nor the reviewers nor the scholars shaking their heads with dismay. Crap is crap. Some will turn out to be popular crap, and if I knew how to tell the difference I wouldn't be here writing about it, I'd be fucking rich.

But oh dear, I hear the pundits say. One of the few quality shows getting regular viewings—and of course I'm referring to CEW's What the Fuck?—is taking a nose-dive in the ratings. Woe is us! Civilization is darn sure to perish any day now.

Crap. WTF? used to be quality, but have any of you over twelve years old actually looked at the thing lately? I'm telling you, this old ragbag is starting to make Zippy the Zombie look animated. Folks, WTF? is over the hill. It is stale. Look for it at your local mortuary. Sure, it used to be good, but there's another cardinal rule in TV-land, and it is that nothing lasts forever. WTF? is pushing thirty years old. Bye-bye. Adios.

Quality? Well, like it or not (and I don't, much) the Peppy Show will do for an example. What Peppy does, he does well. The characters are funny, the writing is sharp. Kids love him. What can you say? English teachers aside, most educators give Peppy good marks—and how long's it been since anybody listened to an English teacher?

What's that? You say Peppy's show is only ten years old? And he's where in the ratings? Gosh, maybe civilization has a few more months to live.

But that brings us to the topic of today's lesson, children, and that is, what happens to shows that can't seem to decide whether they want to be trashy, or terrific? That brings us to a disastrous effort from the Peppy mill called Sparky and His Gang.

What are we to make of a gobbler like S G? To think of it as an actual turkey is an insult to flightless barnyard poultry everywhere. A genuine turkey knows that it is a turkey, and can therefore work at being the best darn turkey in the coop. S G arrives at your television like a gift-wrapped dead mackerel. You try to figure out, is this fish, or fishwrap? All you know at first is that it smells, vaguely, fishy. And at least part of it is garbage.

It would be pointless to devote a lot of time to a feather-by-feather analysis of this albatross around Gideon Peppy's neck, and I won't subject you to one. Just a short comment, then, and a brief explanation.

Comment: PRESS HERE for HyperText SoundByte©

"Whooooooo fuckiiiiiiing caaaaaaares?"

Explanation: the key to caring about what happens in a show, and I'm talking any show here, from Hamlet to Skunk Cabbage, is believable characters. Characters that bear some resemblance to humans we have known, who display some known human traits. (Exception: the birth-to-five audience, who will watch anything brightly colored and moving; viz. Barney's Boulevard.) Of all the brightly colored, loud, frenetically moving clusters of phosphor dots that call themselves Sparky's Gang, only Sparky himself seems to have anybody at home where a heartbeat should be. Sparky is so good, in fact, so appealing and funny and touching, that I went right out and bought myself a Sparky souvenir coffee mug. But by the time the coffee was cold, so was everything else. I don't think the mug is going to be collectible—even though it is almost certain to be rare—because we buy and treasure these nostalgic bits of pop culture to remind us of something. Something that mattered to us. And I must report to you that, five minutes after the show went off the air, I couldn't remember anything about any of the amorphous collection of rug weasels known as Sparky's Gang, not even their names.

And that is really too bad. Because it is obvious that somebody put a lot of thought into the character of Sparky himself. As played by young Ken Valentine, Sparky is at the same time wonderfully carefree and charming, smart and stalwart. He is the sort of child we all would like to have been, or failing that, to have been friends with. He makes us eager to join his gang, which makes it all the more appalling that his actual band is such a bunch of radishes. He should have been the core of a group of similarly smart, resourceful moppets, united by his undeniable charisma.

But even if Gideon Peppy hires some writers who can do character, Sparky would not yet be out of the woods. Or into the woods, for that matter. The fact is, nobody on this show has a fucking clue as to where the woods is, or if in fact there are any fucking woods. By that I mean, characters need a milieu. A story must happen in a time and a place. There must be a background.

I've watched four episodes of Sparky so far. One show per month, like the curse. In the first one the Gang was battling pirates on the open seas, for no reason that I can fathom other than that there was a full-scale pirate ship available on the Sensational back lot. In the next show the gang was in present time, and in the third, in no universe I could identify. Some pitiful gallimaufry was advanced to explain these temporal and spatial dislocations, but by then I'm afraid I was far advanced in a diabetic coma.

See, that sort of crap can work for Skunk Cabbage, because Skunk is a crap show. I know it, you know it. The producers know it. The kids don't give a possum's posterior because it's full of violence and very noisy and it smells offensive, and mostly because Mom and Dad hate the sonuvabitch.

That won't work for Sparky and His Gang because Sparky aspires to be more, and that is why it is worse than a skunk.

Go ahead, ask your kids. Why aren't you watching Sparky, little Ambrose and Abigail?

PRESS HERE for HyperText SoundByte©

"Aw, mom. I dunno. It just suuucks."

Kids won't be fooled. They'll watch quality, or they'll watch crap. But you better be one or the other, and you better know which that is.

from Hebephrenia, "The Youthpad"

column of 4/10/58

"Spark Plug"

by D. Mentua Precox

So I was hanging out over at the Sen/Sen Studios like hoping to get an interview with the Man Himself, G. Peppy, y'know? When who should like come blitzing by but Velveeta Creemcheese in like a true hurry to ease herself from like point A to point B, y'know? Well, comma, Vel and your totally humble narrator go back to like the last ice age, can you load it? So I was like all "Vel! Exclamation Point! Heard you got 87ed from the inner realms of Peppydom," comma, because the skin was she'd like been fired from her completely powerful job as Czarina of Production at Pep-Pep-Pep-piprod, load it? Then she was all "Aw contrary, Manny, comma comma," and the bitch like knows that D. M. Precox your Humble etc. gets the squints when she hears that name so I was all What's this twist in her shorts? but refrained from verbing it into the etheric, comma, discretion being the better part of something or other period! Exclamation point! So then she goes "Mere haberdashery," and I go "Hats? Hats? Question Mark?" and she goes "Change of. The new hat belongs to hyperster-in-chief of 'The New Improved Sparky and His Gang," and I go "Whoozat?" and she goes "It's G.P.'s new kidvid extravaganzoid," comma, and I'm all "?kraM noitseuQ Why wasn't I informed? Question Mark?" and all snitty she's going "Your office was wired all pronto," comma quothation mark parenthesis (but my Faithful Readers will know that their humble narrator is totally up on all comma ALL things worth knowing in the land of hebephilia, comma, and D.M. and H.N. had never heard of it dot. dot. dot. well, okay, I've heard of it okay?, comma QM, but not because it was shaking on any celeb Richter scale, can you load? sisehtneraP) Period! Be that as it were neither here nor there, soon yrs truly was mustered in to the very like innermost cabals of the Great Giddy Pepperoni himself! E!X!C!L!A!M!A!T!I!O!N! P!O!I!N!T! When what to my wondering orbs do I vid but the Pepman curled in a huddle of scriptsters, comma, nine in number or even a dozen at the powerful end of a table of such like enormous proportions that the King of Kong coulda used it for a surfboard. Yea, verily, comma, oh my breathrin and sisterin. Words were like heated and floated and launched and puncturated. Hair was being torn and shorn. Spittle like flew! Peppy goes "Can't anybody in this overpaid gaggle of hacks goose me up an original concept?" The quacksters hawked excitedly and treatments were waved with terrifying gay abandon, heedless! EP! So I viddy no easy access to the Peppy ear—emdash not in the near recent, anyway—dash, and my questing gaze shambled to the other end of the table, where wire-haired moppets presided, two in census. This must be like the Sparks, of whom things were heedlessly spoken in many a flacky promo in the previous months elapsed. And already, is he nothing but all two-weeks-ago? That was the shake I had downloaded, and yrs. t. feels everything that's shakin'. Apostropheperiod. Vel goes "This is Sparky, the star of our show," and I go "Howja Dew?" and Vel goes "And this is little Polly, sidekickstress," and I go, comma, "Watcha doin' apostrophe?" and little Polly goes "Drawing," which Yours can see with her own lamps that a drawing is indeed being committed, only it's much too much like of a quality for such a youthful inkster so I go "Drawing what?" Well faithful reader D. M. Precox has her good days and her days when eaten by weasels and this wasn't my shining moment, because comma my lenses could clearly see she was drawing a... thing dot dot dot period. And who should quickly validate this you know insight but pretty Polly herself by yodelling "A thing," she goes comma, and elaborating "It's a sort of a guy me and Sparky made up," and Sparky goes "I made it up. She drew it." I go does the thing have a name cue you ee ess tee eye oh en mark? and she goes "Inky Tagger." Well much more transpired that day but your short attention span has spun, it's time for DMP to trill a fond aloha with this on her lips colon: "?kraM noitseuQ Who is Inky Tagger Question Mark?" More later. Remember, you heard it here first.

May 1 (King City Temple)

The April "Flack" numbers as compiled by the Trends Research Department of the Latitudinarian Church are as follows:

Skunk Cabbage retains its precarious grip on the number-two slot for the second month, edging the Admiral by only a few hundred thousand viewings. The big story is still the meteoric rise of Poop, CEW's replacement for the unlamented What the Fuck? which early this year fell into the becalmed straits of the likes of Sparky and His Gang, and now survives only on the marginal sales of back numbers. And so what if the carpers claim "Poop" is really nothing but recycled "Fuck?" As Chairman Bigbird pointed out to the critics, "Food is nothing but recycled poop, isn't it? What's the big deal?"

Not so dramatic but still cause for some concern among the mandarins of Sentry/Sensational is the continuing slippage of the Peppy Show, a five-month phenom that's been slow and steady and shows no signs of having reached bottom. Asked if this might harbing an eventual end to the six-year stranglehold TGPS has held on first place, Peppy replied: "We always lose some numbers when we head into summer. It ain't got me crapping in my drawers."

More likely to put skid marks in his skivvies is the dismal rise of Sparky from thirty-five to thirty-one after a full year in production. Staff changes don't seem to have done the trick, though some observers point out that most of the small gain the show has posted came in the last two months, with the introduction of two new and somewhat more interesting regular characters: Inky Tagger and Arson E. Blazeworthy. Press releases trumpet that a series of new faces will soon transform the Gang. The word from here: Don't bet the farm.

from Howdy Doody

The Trade Mag of Kid-vid

6/30/58

"Boogers and Snot"

by Summerfall Winterspring

"This is Crimea River," says Polly, rather diffidently, as she pushes a sheet of drawing paper in my direction. It is a pencil sketch of a girl who has cried so much the tears have carved massive Mississippi deltas into her face. Catfish could feed at the bottoms of these tributaries. Her hair is disheveled and she is wringing a bucketful of water from the handkerchief she twists in her clawlike hands.

"And what does she do?" I ask. Polly turns to Sparky, seated on her left.

"Not much," Sparky says. "She complains a lot."

"She's had a hard life?" I venture.

"Not so bad. She's a whiner. She's like a sponge. If you get around her she'll take up all your time and all your energy. She'll drain you dry, like a vampire, then she'll find somebody else to complain to."

"Tell her about..." Polly pauses, then gestures to Sparky. "You tell it, Spark."

"Well, when she cries, pretty soon you start crying, too. You can't help it, it's like pepper up your nose. Pretty soon you're bawling like a baby."

"It's infectious," I suggest, hoping to help.

"Yeah. That's it."

Something in his voice alerts me and I look up at him in time to see a glimmer in his eye. I am being humored, I realize. He knows precisely what word to use to describe Crimea's tears. But his face gives nothing away. Only the eyes have that glint of mischief. I won't patronize him again.

I have found the secret wellspring behind Sparky and His Gang. Without even knowing I was looking for it, I have stumbled onto the real reason Sparky's Gang has suddenly climbed from the low twenties in AAS to a surprising fifteenth place in the monthly Flack ratings.

I claim no great reportorial skills in this. Sometimes you're just lucky.

It seemed like good luck at the time to be assigned the Sparky beat. Mission: visit the set and the story conferences once or twice a month, produce a diary of the progression of the show. Who wouldn't have thought it a plum? A new series in development from Gideon Peppy, the man who set the current record in first-place finishes, who can apparently do no wrong? Sparky's Gang had monster hit written all over it.

Who knew?

Actually, by the time the show was ready to air, a lot of us in the entertainment press corps had a pretty good idea. There's a stink that attaches itself to a show that's in trouble, and it ain't the sweet smell of success. Sparky and His Gang had that aroma from the first day of shooting, a day I had the dubious good luck to witness. On the surface everything looked fine. It was the normal circus atmosphere of hurry up and wait, the usual snags that came from crews not yet used to working together. One can usually assume that by the third or fourth episode these little misunderstandings, squabbles, and comic traffic jams will have sorted themselves out, and the production staff will be running in as near an approximation of a well-oiled machine as a television series in production ever gets.

But just below the surface serious trouble was brewing. Brewing? More like seething. This ship was rudderless, Captainless, and lacked a compass. Directions would come from somewhere to alter this or that detail of the set. Two hours later it needed to be altered again. Grips started pools to see how long a new production designer would last, and the times were sometimes measured in hours, not days. It was easy enough to discover these things. Everybody on the set was talking about it. But nobody knew what was going on higher up.

A few weeks later I sat in on my first story conference. Sometimes a writer is handed a metaphor on, as it were, a silver platter. That was the case with Gideon Peppy's famous conference table. Perhaps you've heard of long-ago peace conferences where step one was to determine the size and shape of the table where two groups of people who hated each other's guts could sit and rationally discuss their differences. Peppy's table was a perfect barometer of what was going on with Sparky and His Gang. You could have drawn a wide red stripe across the width of the table and called it the Demilitarized Zone. At the south end sat John Valentine, father of little "Sparky" Valentine, and Sparky himself. At the north end sat Gideon Peppy and everybody else.

The dynamic at the south end was obvious: a father and his son. At the north end some barnyard politic was in operation, its causes not evident to the outsider, but its effects painfully obvious. Simply put, those most in favor with Mr. Peppy sat at his elbow, ready to osculate his rectum should he take a notion to bend over. Beside these high Priests of Peppy sat more ordinary acolytes, legs poised to leap at the shout of "Frog!" Then in the hinterlands, sometimes almost on the DMZ itself, were the fuckups, the doghoused gazing hollow-eyed at the feasting to the north, pathetically eager to scramble after any morsel that dropped from the master's table. The temptation was strong to fashion pointy hats for them out of foolscap.

But no matter how far out of favor one fell, one was never seated to the south of the invisible red line. That was clearly enemy territory.

The view from John Valentine's end of the table was a compact version of da Vinci's Last Supper.

John Barrymore Valentine. Sparky Valentine. The fourth and fifth generations of an acting family that can trace its lineage back to Old Earth. John is the eldest of three siblings, and without a doubt the most talented.

You know a lot about his brother, Edwin Booth Valentine. What's that? You say you've never heard of him? Try Ed Ventura. He is the black sheep of the family. The father, Marlon Brando Valentine, was a thespian of the old order—a very old order—in that he felt acting should be done on the stage. Movies, television, were barely arts at all, and their needs could be served entirely by computer-generated imagery. "Movies are a director's medium," he has said. "Actors are for the theater." John followed in his father's footlights, er, footsteps, but Edwin chose to exploit his good looks and screen presence to become a Movie Star, a Matinee Idol, a Celluloid Casanova. Everything his father hated. Old Marlon kicked him out of the family and disowned him—a real laugh, since Marlon passed his days in genteel poverty, and John... well, we'll get to that. The Valentine brothers had a younger sister, Sarah Bernhardt Valentine, but nothing is known about her. My calls seeking to interview Ed Ventura about his family were not returned.

John Valentine is such a charming man, so handsome, articulate, witty, so full of amusing stories, that it takes several meetings before you realize what a monster he is.

Don't get me wrong; Gideon Peppy is a monster, too. But you expect that from a man who has clawed his way to the top in a cutthroat business. He would cheerfully admit it. Peppy doesn't pretend to be a nice guy. It's all right out there in front with Peppy. What you see is what there is.

It would be easy to compare John Valentine with a well-known character from the historical musical stage: Rose Louise Hovick from Gypsy. The analogy fails at several points. Rose was not talented herself; John Valentine without a doubt is a major talent. I saw his Macbeth fifteen years ago, and recalling it can still give me chills. Gypsy Rose Lee's talents were, shall we say, limited. Sparky Valentine at the age of eight shows me more possibilities than any five movie stars I can name. The kid is awesome. But most importantly, compared to John Valentine, Rose Louise Hovick is easygoing. Rose wanted Gypsy to succeed where she herself had failed, or never had a chance. John Valentine is determined to mold his son into his own image. He doesn't so much want Sparky to be his vicarious ego on the stage; he wants Sparky to be him.

This is bound to lead to trouble. It is heartbreaking to watch Sparky on the set. When the cameras are rolling, he is vibrantly alive. He is Sparky, that devil-may-care freebooter with the heart of gold, setting out to right all the wrongs of the world. When the director yells cut! it all goes away. He enfolds it somewhere inside himself and he waits. He waits with seemingly infinite patience as his father and Gideon Peppy go at it hammer and tongs, unfailingly polite to each other, setting up a current in the atmosphere that has made hardened stagehands pale with apprehension. It seems to affect Sparky not at all. He waits. He listens. When the command to roll 'em is given, he acts. Before that, Sparky exists only as a glint in little Ken Valentine's eye. It is probably the only way the boy can keep from getting crushed between the massive egos of Peppy and his father.

So what has happened? The setup was and is a formula for disaster, a prophecy which fulfilled itself for the first year of production. The only reason I can see for Sparky and His Gang's continuance during those lean months was Gideon Peppy's reluctance to admit he'd come a cropper. Yet, in the last months, the show has begun to attract some attention.

Let's return to that conference table, shall we? The time is several months after our first visit. Various of G. Peppy's toads are perched on different toadstools around the table, but these are matters which could only concern the toads. They are unimportant to us. Most interesting is where John Valentine is seated. Instead of his throne of opposition down in the south forty, John is occupying a stool almost in the Demilitarized Zone!

What has happened? I don't think John understands this consciously, but some part of him does, because his air of smug assurance is getting a little thin. He raises his voice, almost shouts. He can't quite bring himself to actually sit with the rest of the creative staff, but it is clear that he would like to. Instead of his endless stream of barbs, his obstructionism—sometimes for no reason other than his loathing of Peppy—has been replaced by suggestions he clearly believes could improve the show. These are, of course, politely ignored ("We'll sure think about that, John, yes sir!"). The last thing a bunch of writers and a producer want in a story conference is some damn actor.

Of course! Sparky is a flop! Before, John didn't give a flying fuck about the project. It was plain to me that the only reason he and his son were there at all was the chance of some easy money. (Or the only reason John was there, at any rate. I think Sparky might have seen it a little differently, but it's hard to tell with Sparky, who plays his cards very close to the vest. God knows how John was convinced to join the enterprise in the first place, given his antipathy to television. It must have taken some really masterful arm twisting.) But Sparky Valentine—and through him, John Valentine—cannot possibly fail in an acting assignment, even one as menial as this. The low ratings are inexplicable. Sparky's doing a bang-up job. Therefore, the material must be improved. John is getting more and more involved in improving it, whether he knows it or not.

Fast-forward another several months. The Valentine end of the table is now being anchored by Sparky alone, unless you count Polly, who should be classed as a noncombatant, possibly a camp follower, given her obvious crush on Sparky, which he may or may not realize. The two sit on booster seats down there in the cold, away from the creative warmth of Peppy's fires. With them, sometimes, is the Equity rep and a tutor, but the children are able to buffalo these innocents with such ease they are gone most of the time, on one errand or another. John Valentine? Well, he camps out miserably in the DMZ, where we saw him last, but instead of his usual pointed barbs his infrequent words are starting to sound sort of... well, grouchy. And is that the smell of alcohol on his breath? A smudge of cocaine around his nose? Some people are ill-equipped to deal with windfalls of money. One never knows who these people are until the bonanza has struck, and up to this point in his life John Valentine has seldom had a pot to piss in nor a window to fling it from. Now, even with a flop show, the money is pouring in. Dangerous, John.

I can't keep skirting this issue forever. The fact is, John has an extensive criminal record. When times were lean he has been willing to lend his acting talents to unscripted roles, to street improvisations—in short, to what the police call the "long con." That's what he did time for, anyway, though I've been told his skills at the Pigeon Drop and the Spanish Lottery are considerable as well. He exhibits no shame about this, doesn't mind discussing it with the press. It's all part of some extremely wonky political worldview I will not bore you with. (That way I don't have to pretend to understand it.)

Even more alarming is his temper. How he has held it in check thus far during the gestation of Sparky is a matter between him and his probation officer. I'll only mention here that he has barely scraped his way out of numerous assault charges, usually against directors and producers, but occasionally with his fellow actors.

It takes no great insight to see what has been hobbling Sparky and His Gang. Part of it is the clash of wills between Gideon and John, a dislike so intense that Peppy has sometimes done things he should have known were stupid, simply to spite Valentine.

But the big thing is John himself. Not many actors are good with scripts. John Valentine is certainly not one of them. Anyone can see after ten minutes in a story conference that Valentine's influence is entirely a negative one. Nothing could be clearer than that Sparky and everyone associated with it would be much better off if John Valentine suddenly left for an extended tour of Neptune.

But wait! Did I say Polly and Sparky are away from the center of creativity? Perhaps I was hasty. Looking more closely, we see the two are whispering and giggling. Polly is drawing in a big notebook. Peering over his shoulder—before she quickly, shyly, snaps the notebook closed—I can see the drawings are very good. Broad, assured strokes of the pencil. Cartoonlike figures. Do they have names? I ask, after spending a little time ingratiating myself with them. Why, of course they have names.

Inky Tagger. Arson E. Blazeworthy. Crimea River. Lionel Alibi. The law firm of White Wong. Identical twins Tess Tosterone and S. Trojan.

Some of these have already debuted on Sparky and His Gang. The rest I was only shown after promising to keep them a secret, except for their names. (See, Sparky? I told you you could trust me.) I'm allowed one example only, a character to be introduced in the next episode. Windy Cheesecutter.

Like most of the new faces at the old Sparkster's clubhouse, Windy has a big problem. A very big, very smelly problem. As drawn by Polly, Windy is a blimp of a boy, cheeks puffed, lips pursed, eyes bulging, huge sausages for arms and legs and fingers. As imagined by Sparky, Windy keeps blimping and swelling and growing alarmingly until he relieves the pressure. Hey, if Chaucer can make jokes about farting, why can't Sparky?

As you might imagine, this socially debilitating condition has made Windy a bit of an outcast, and damn angry about it. He goes around knocking down buildings with his exploding flatulence. He can clear out a church or theater in ten seconds. Not a nice boy at all, hardly the sort you'd expect to be a part of Sparky's rather uninspired, sometimes downright mealy-mouthed gang. So what does Sparky do about him? You'll have to tune in and see.

I'm sitting at the leper's end of the table with Sparky and Polly. John Valentine is nowhere to be seen. Over there in the next area code are Gideon Peppy and his highly paid writing staff, shouting at each other.

Let them shout. Down here is where the show is being created.

"Why don't you ask her?" Polly says.

"What's that?" I ask, looking up from my note taking.

"Go ahead," Polly says.

"Nah," says Sparky. "She wouldn't be interested."

"Of course I'd be interested," I say. "What is it?"

Sparky studies me dubiously for a moment, then shrugs, and looks at me with a perfectly straight face.

"Are boogers and snot the same thing?" he asks.

"Are..." I close my mouth. I am determined not to laugh. But pretty soon Polly starts to howl, and Sparky joins in. So I do, too.

"No, really," Sparky says. "We've made a list of thirty-five things that can come out of the human body. Without, you know, surgery."

"Only it may be thirty-six," Polly says.

"If boogers and snot are different things. See, we decided plaque, tartar, and calculus are different. But toenails and fingernails are the same."

"We're not counting babies," Polly adds. "And eight of the things are different kinds of hair."

"There wasn't a very good definition of snot in the dictionary."

"Or boogers."

So I think it over and I tell them I think they must be different. Polly looks smugly at Sparky, who sticks out his tongue. Polly gets back to her drawing.

"See," Sparky says, "we decided we need a really good bad guy. If you know what I mean."

I certainly did. The Sparky show had been limping along almost a year now, and that was one of many things that hadn't been very well-defined. Each week a new bad guy was trotted out, dealt with, and market research said the kids just weren't interested in him. If you've got a series about a bunch of kids who go around righting wrongs, thwarting evil, you need a good source of evil.

"What I thought was," Sparky goes on, "since Sparky is pretty smart, that maybe I'd make the bad guy. You know, like Frankenstein. One thing Sparky has to watch out for is, he's a little impulsive. Sometimes he goes ahead and does something without thinking about what might happen. So one day in his laboratory he decides to create a new friend. He thinks about... well, I thought about that song about a hank of hair and a piece of bone. So Sparky gathers up all the things that can come off a human body—and Polly helps, too, and they have to find some of it in other places, because only grown-ups can make some of this stuff, and they throw it all together in the laboratory and, poof! Here's this guy. Only—"

"He doesn't have a soul," I say.

Sparky frowns at his hands. "Maybe it's dorky," he says, doubtfully.

"No, I don't think so. It's true, it's an old story, but I don't think anyone's ever approached it from quite the... direction, or with the same kind of ingredients you do. What will you name this villain?"

And the face shuts down. Only the spark in the eyes remains.

"I haven't decided yet," he says. I know he really has, and is just not going to tell me, but that's okay. I've got my story.

After Sparky and Polly have been called away to shoot a scene, I hang around a little longer, try to be inconspicuous. And I see a curious thing. Over the course of the afternoon just about every one of the high-powered writers from the north side of the table finds an excuse to wander down to the other end. Gosh, has anybody seen my hat? Could it be under the table down here? Oops, looks like that drawing tablet is about to slip off the table. Let me just straighten it up here....

Casually, nonchalant, they saunter and stroll and amble and perambulate, holding their pens and notebooks and cups of coffee. What's this? Oh, it's little Polly's drawings. What's she been up to today, I wonder?

And they leaf through the drawings.

Whatever Gideon Peppy is paying these writers, it's not enough. Not nearly enough, to be willing to steal ideas from children, and put their own names on the ideas. No, sir. I'd want a fucking shitload of money to do that.

So there's the secret. While the creative staff bickers and shouts and hurls out one stale, derivative idea after another, the real stories are being made at the other end of the table, out of boogers, spit, snot, and farts.

And who was the last person I saw visit the far end of the table? I'll give you a hint. He wore yellow shoes, and was sucking on a lollipop.

from LUNAVARIETY

"The Entertainment Industry Daily"

VALENTINE TO NEPTUNE; TO HELM OPNT

staff-written

John Barrymore Valentine, King City resident and longtime thespian of the legitimate stage, has been offered the job of artistic director of the Outer Planets National Theater, effective January 1 of next year.

"It was a tough decision for me," Valentine said, at the press conference announcing his intention to accept the bid. "As many of you know, I have been associate producer on my son's weekly video series, Sparky and His Gang, which is currently number nine in the Flacks. My son and I talked it over and we both felt that, much as we hate to be apart, our careers come first at this point in our lives. Sparky will be in good hands here on Luna. I have a two-year contract, with options to renew. It is my hope to bring a classical revival to the outer planets, which have long lagged behind Luna and Mars in putting the plays of Shakespeare, Moliere, Chekhov, Williams, and many others on boards. It is a great privilege to do my part in the preservation of the arts."

Contacted at his headquarters at Sentry/Sensational, Gideon Peppy, producer of Sparky and His Gang, expressed his happiness and his regrets. "It's a good career move for John," Peppy said. "Of course, we'll all miss his input around here, but I suppose we can manage to get along without him."

The Outer Planets Federation had encountered funding problems for its ambitious but unfinished Performing Arts Centre, taking shape near the Government Centre in New Sydney, Triton. Recent donations have the project moving again, however, and the board of directors felt confident enough of a completion date to announce its selection of Valentine, who will be leaving for the OP on the first available transport.

from Triton Tabloid

Arts Page

8/04/58

by Staff

The Triton Council for the Fine Arts announced today receipt of a large cash bequest, funds earmarked for the completion of the trouble-plagued New Sydney Performing Arts Centre.

"With Federation matching grants, this should be enough to get the Centre up and running," said Spero Meliora, Chairman of the Council.

Asked as to the identity of the benefactor, Meliora would only say, "A patron of the Arts, who wishes to remain anonymous." Speculation rages, but as of this writing no one seems to have a solid line on the name of the publicity-shy angel. One usually reliable source claims the donation came in the form of a cheque written on a King City, Luna, bank, but the Tabloid has been unable to confirm or disprove this.

Immediately after the announcement of the unexpected windfall, Meliora launched a system-wide search for an artistic director. Nationalistic preferences run high in this matter, and much support has been expressed among the O.P. arts community for the idea that the director should be a Tritonian, or at least a citizen of the Federation. The Tabloid's sources, however, say to look for the director to arrive from the same direction as the funding.

And quickly, too.

(For related articles, Press MORE)

PETITION FOR GUARDIANSHIP OF A MINOR CHILD

District Court, King City, Case #390-45155 8/11/58

Petitioner: Melina Polichinelli

Parent or Guardian: John Barrymore Valentine

Minor Child: Kenneth Catherine Valentine

STATEMENT OF PARENT: I, John B. Valentine, declare under penalty of perjury the following to be true and correct, to the best of my knowledge. I have been offered a prestigious position on the outer planets, at a substantial increase in salary. My son is currently starring in a video production, Sparky and His Gang, at the Sentry/Sensational Studios. It would be harmful to his present interests and future prospects if he were to accompany me to Triton. After discussing this matter with him and determining that it is his wish to continue, we have decided a temporary transfer of guardianship is the best course for both of us. My longtime friend and colleague, Melina Polichinelli, has agreed to act in loco parentis for a period of two years, after which I will return to Luna and reassess the situation.

STATEMENT OF PROPOSED GUARDIAN: I, Melina Polichinelli, have known Kenneth Valentine since he was a baby. My own daughter, Kaspara, is currently working with Kenneth and they already spend a great deal of time together. It would be no trouble at all to accept Kenneth into my household. I am sure he will be very happy there.

STATEMENT OF MINOR CHILD: I, Sparky Valentine, have discussed this proposal with my father and with my guardian, and feel this course is best for both of us. I intend to follow a career as an actor, and the experience and recognition to be gained in my current situation will be invaluable to me in the future. At the same time I do not wish to undermine my father's prospects in his new job. I feel I will be happy living with Mellie and Polly.

STATEMENT OF SOCIAL WORKER: I have examined Kenneth Valentine and Melina Polichinelli and can find no reason to oppose the guardianship. It is my opinion that taking young Kenneth, who prefers to be known as "Sparky," away from work he loves would be harmful to the youth, and might even drive a wedge of resentment between father and son. I believe both father and son are agonizing about this decision, but concur that the least harmful solution to both is a temporary separation. Arrangements to be reviewed in two years.

Signed:

John B. Valentine

Melina Polichinelli

Sparky Valentine

Ambrose Wolfinger, M.S.W.

Petition approved, 8/12/58

EJ. Smith, Fourth District Court of King City

D.S.S. La Belle Aurore

en route, Triton

via V-mail, 8/15/58

Dear Sparky,

There's not much I can say now that we haven't gone over already. The ship has stopped boosting and we'll coast all the way now. In a few hours I'll go to sleep, and when I wake up, Triton! (Ooops! We're supposed to pretend we're not using deadballs. Don't spread it around, huh? Ha-ha.) Remember Polonius's advice to Laertes. "The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; but do not dull thy palm with entertainment of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. To thine own self be true." You know the words as well as I. Let me add, always cut the cards. The two years will fly by, and when you've milked this Sparky foolishness for everything you can, you'll join me in teaching these Tritonian hicks a thing or two about the stage! Love from your father,

John Valentine

CONTEST!!!! CONTEST!!!! CONTEST!!!! CONTEST!!!! CONTEST!!!!

PRESS HERE FOR MORE

Hey, Gang! Can you think of 36 things that come out of the human body? That's how many things Sparky and Polly used when they created Armageddon Angry®, the newest kid on Sparky and His Gang! Well, if you can, have we got a contest for you! Sparky and Polly want to treat you to a seven-day, all-expenses-paid stay at Dreamland! Your parents, too, and your whole family! While you're at Dreamland you'll have breakfast with Sparky and Polly and some surprise guests! You'll ride all the coolest new rides! To enter, simply write the 36 things on an official entry form. PRESS for entry form: PRINT

We'll even give you two hints!

1. One of the things is EARWAX!

2. Babies are not one of the things!

Send your entry form along with a box top from SUGAR SPARKLERS, "The Cereal Sparky Eats!" to "Sparky, Sentry/Sensational Studios, Mare Vaporum, Luna." Enter as often as you like! And check under the box top of your SUGAR SPARKLERS cereal for valuable clues! (Winner chosen at random from correct entries. Sorry, if your Mom or Dad works for Sentry/Sensational or Peppiprod, Inc., you can't play!)

December 1 (King City Temple)

The December "Flack" numbers as compiled by the Trends Research Department of the Latitudinarian Church are as follows:

We've got some good news and some bad news for you, Mr. Peppy. Which do you want to hear first? That's right, friends, the seemingly endless reign of the Peppy Show in first place has ended. Skunk Cabbage posted a number-one rating this month by a convincing 2.5 point margin. The good news is that the other Peppy Production, Sparky and His Gang, given up for dead at this time last year, has completed its amazing journey from hopelessness to success, arriving on the chart in fifth position by edging out Barney (see attached rankings).

Asked for his reaction to the end of his record-breaking streak in Kidvid ratings, Peppy said, "We'll get 'em coming or going now. As for not being in first place, you know how much that affects my ad revenue? Not one Neptune nickel, that's how much. You know how many kids load the Peppy Show every week, week in and week out? Millions, that's how many. So a couple a thousand more kids are watching Skunk Cabbage. So what? It ain't scrapin' the shine off my shoes."

More likely to fuck up his Florsheims is the result of a tracking study done by the research firm of Thickey Gitte. According to their figures the Peppy Show would have registered in third place but for two guest shots by characters from the Sparky show, Crispin Crunchy and H. Ralston Riddlerah. AAS was up a full ten points for those two episodes. Given the persistent stories about creative tension on the Sparky team, Peppy has to feel at least ambivalent about those numbers. The departure of John Valentine for the Outer Planets, bruited as a palliative measure for the continuing tensions in the boardroom and the story conference, seems to have helped only a little. Rumor has it that Gideon Peppy has lost creative control of his new baby. So who's in charge, Gideon?

from Elementary Educator's Bulletin

issue #390

"Kids at Risk"

by Humphrey Murgatroyd

It is a distinct pleasure to report that, of the three new television series to become hits in the past year, two of them are good to excellent.

Much has already been written in this journal and many others of the deplorable Skunk Cabbage, and I will not further belabor it here.

Scoop the Poop is, as some critics have suggested, simply What the Fuck? in new clothes. One may regret the lack of originality, but considering the great bulk of children's programming, we should count ourselves lucky that an offering from the Children's Educational Workshop is still available, still getting excellent downloadings.

But the real surprise, and the real quality, is Sparky and His Gang.

Sparky began with high hopes, quickly faded into a yawn with both children and educators, then resurrected itself with an astonishing array of new characters. It began so badly, in fact, that this reviewer stopped watching it after the third outing. Then a few weeks ago, alerted by its quick rise and by favorable comments from my students, I loaded every episode and have now watched each one three times.

It is easy to hypnotize children with sound and fury, signifying nothing. If you watch children watching a show like Skunk Cabbage you will notice a certain glassiness of the eyes, a slackness of the jaw. At such times children are no more sentient than a reptile, and no more emotionally swayed. The violence is meaningless. It is animated wallpaper. If it succeeds in moving them to any degree at all, it is to desensitize them to real violence and its tragic effects. Children rise from such a show unable to tell you much about what happened, other than that things exploded, guns went off, swords were wielded, limbs and heads lopped off. Their play after such an experience has no more depth than the show. After watching cardboard heroes chopping up cardboard enemies for no discernible reason, they become more than a little cardboard themselves. They have been viscerally involved, but their emotions have not been touched. Nothing was ever at stake. No lessons were learned.

This is where Sparky and His Gang succeeds, and that it does is little short of a miracle. Load the early episodes, if you dare. You will find Sparky and his friend, Polly, appealing. Everyone else is a reject from a hundred other similar shows. They do uninteresting things for baffling reasons. The show has no center, and no direction.

The changes in the Sparky show can be traced to the debut of the first interesting member of his gang: Inky Tagger. He is a ridiculous character at first glance. His fingers are a spectrum of magic markers. He has a big aerosol valve growing out of the top of his head. And he is completely covered, head to toe, with constantly shifting graffiti.

Inky is a sinner, you see, like all the new Sparky characters. In the course of his debut episode, Inky was pursued as "The Mad Tagger," whose graffiti came to life and menaced people. Sparky cornered him, talked to him, showed him the harm he was doing. Defiant at first, Inky swore he would never stop his defacements, but being admitted to the Gang, a place where he could finally belong, worked wonders. Sparky and the Gang showed him how he could put his artistic powers to good use. End of story, right?

Wrong. Inky has been known to backslide. He is at his best when close to Sparky, enfolded in the love of the Gang. But when alone, his restless urges are apt to overcome him. He feels terrible about it, but is helpless as any alcoholic. Sparky gets exasperated with Inky, but never stops liking him, and Inky is learning to control his urges.

Think about it. How much money has been spent in "Public Service Announcements" telling kids that graffiti is wrong, that taggers are dopes? I hesitate even to guess. It has had no discernible impact on the problem. The reason, I believe, is a simple one: taggers are not dopes. They are lonely, confused, unsure about their place in a world full of anonymity. All graffiti say the same thing, in the end: I am here! I am a person. Sparky tells taggers it's okay. He understands you, he likes you. And you don't have to be a loser. His gang does more than battle rival gangs. Sparky battles evil, both the external sort, and the bad urges that exist in all of us. It has been a long time since a television show has brought us a message like that.

All Sparky's new gang are a little comical, and a little frightening. An excellent example is Arson E. Blazeworthy. The comical side is his appearance, like a mad scientist whose most recent experiment has blown up. His face is blackened. Sometimes the tip of his nose and the tips of his earlobes burst into flame. His eyes are always comically wide. His charred clothes smolder and smoke. Arson is, of course, the pyromaniac, the compulsive fire-setter. The arsonist was a figure of fear even back on Old Earth. Here in the confines of the Lunar warrens he strikes terror into all our hearts. And it is a common enough condition in the young, one not often talked about. Sparky's Gang faces Arson head-on, reforms him, turns his fire-setting powers toward good. Usually. Like Inky, Arson can find the temptation too great. But he is trying.

All of Sparky's motley crew are trying to do better. Sparky does not demand perfection. He knows no heart is totally pure, not even his own. Sparky himself is sometimes prone to overconfidence, and there is a sprightly, practical-joking side to him.

Each of the children in the Gang personifies some failing, fear, obsession, or stumbling block encountered in the process of growing up. In the last few months they've been given a name, these outsiders brought into the bosom of Sparky's Gang: Kids at Risk. Here, meet a few of them:

Lionel Alibi. As usual, the name says it. Whatever happened, Lionel didn't do it. And if he did do it, it wasn't his fault, because somebody made him do it. And it wasn't him, anyway, it was Annie Rexia.

Acne Rose. The disfiguring skin disease known as acne rosacea is, thankfully, merely a memory now. Except for poor Acne Rose. She has an incurable case, her face a mass of eruptions and cankers. Naturally enough, she hates everyone who looks at her. But, this being a television fantasy, she is armed with the Zits of Death. When she pops a pimple it's like a toxic spill.

"Eeeeuuuuw!" That was the reaction of my class at the first sight of Acne, followed by a cruel gale of giggles. But by the end of the episode they were cheering her on as she helped Sparky corral a vicious gang of polluters. Acne is the ugly duckling most of us feel ourselves to be at some point in our childhoods. She personifies the uncertainty we have about our bodies, about how others see us. She is also very gross.

Sparky's writers are not the first to perceive this great truth: that children like the baser bodily processes (see Zippy the Zombie from Skunk Cabbage). Farts and belches make them laugh. They giggle at things adults think are disgusting, or impolite. Sparky is simply the first to put this engine of risibility into the service of a moral lesson, rather than a mere cheap laugh.

You think you've seen gross? I'll give you gross. Take the Terrible Twins, Windy and Wendy Cheesecutter. Virtually identical in appearance, this brother-and-sister team have been taught, by Sparky and the Gang, how to turn their terminal flatulence into an asset. Apply a lit match to their... er, exhaust, and they're jet-propelled! They can grab the wings of a disabled jumper and lower it gently to the ground, put fallen fledglings back into their nests. Leap higher than a skyscraper! Or if you simply must have something blown up, Windy and Wendy are your best bet.

All the Kids at Risk are misfits, all of them afflicted. Sparky's job in life is to show them the power of their abnormality, and that anyone can be accepted, and loved, if they do the right thing.

In opposition to Sparky is the strongest of the Kids at Risk, a really rotten boy by the name of Armageddon Angry. Week after week Sparky and Army do battle for the hearts, minds, and souls of the Kids. Army is very good. Just when you think Sparky has finally reached a really stubborn miscreant, Army will whisper his poisonous insinuations in the child's ear, and fan the fires of resentment. It's easy enough to do; these kids are severely damaged. And who has done the damage? Why, you and me. Society. The ones of us who look at the ugly duckling and jeer, rather than love. Or even worse, those who view them with their hateful pity, those who want to help. These kids want our acceptance, not our help.

But in Sparky's world, not even Armageddon is all bad. He, too, yearns to be accepted, but his defenses are stronger, his hatred all-consuming. And what is the source of this burning rage?

Ah. It is too early to say for sure. But two things are already clear. Master Angry was created by Sparky himself, in a moment of hubris (this is presented as back story; Sparky and the Gang exist in a timeless world that looks like ours but functions like never-neverland). Nothing could be clearer than that Armageddon Angry is Sparky's dark side. In their face-to-face meetings Army has proven himself an accomplished tempter. He has shown Sparky the joys of an amoral freedom; we could see Sparky waver. It is this sort of edgy, nervous awareness of the possibility of Sparky's overthrow that keeps the kids' attention, that engages their hearts and minds. Nothing is assured in Sparky's world, just as in our own. Your friend of today could stab you in the back tomorrow. And the day after that you might embrace an enemy. These are things children have to deal with, things the cheap adventure shows know nothing about.

How does a child deal with these things? According to Sparky, with pluck and grit, and a willingness to get up and try again when you're down. Above all, without bitterness. The universe has been unfair to you? Gee, that's tough, but crying about it solves nothing. Come with me, I'll show you the power you have.

The other obvious thing about Armageddon Angry is that his own pain is beyond description. He has been betrayed on a very deep level. Without a doubt, this is an abused child.

There is something else that is obvious about the show itself. It has been guided by someone who is an authority in these matters. There is no listing in the credits, and no one at Peppiprod would admit to knowing who this guiding eminence is, but I am certain it will turn out to be a child psychologist of some renown. Perhaps an advisory group of them. I understand the reluctance of the producers to own up to this, the stamp of "Certified Good for You" being the kiss of death it so often is in popular culture, but Sparky is now a big enough hit I would hope this professional would be willing to come forth and receive the congratulations that are due.

In the meantime I and my children will be eagerly watching the coming episodes of Sparky and His Gang. I suggest you and yours do likewise.

(attached addendum)

MEMO FROM: Sparky Valentine

TO: Production Department

This guy thinks we have a headshrinker on the staff. I really hate to disillusion somebody who is doing us so much good with the educational crowd. How about a credit line next week: "Psychological Consultant—Rufus T. Firefly"?

CC:

Gideon Peppy

Moe, Larry, Curly

John Valentine (Triton, via LaserNet)

From the Grievance Committee

Writers' Guild of Luna

To: Gideon Peppy, President, Peppiprod, Inc.

Dear Sir:

It has come to the attention of this committee that you may be in violation of the WGL Minimum Basic Agreement. It has been alleged that you have appropriated characters and story lines developed and created by Writers' Guild member, Kenneth C. Valentine. It is further alleged that you did cause to be registered as trademarks these same characters, in violation of several Luna laws and interplanetary conventions. Attached please find a twenty-four-hour Cease and Desist Order. You are ordered to post this order prominently in the offices of Peppiprod, Inc., and upon the doors to any sets currently in use in the production of the television series Sparky and His Gang. This will serve to notify members of all the Crafts Unions that they may not work in your employ until this matter is resolved. A fact-finding hearing will convene at the Writers' Guild headquarters, 2100 The Alameda, King City, at 1000 hours tomorrow. You may feel free to bring legal representation and any documents, witnesses, or recordings that would substantiate your position in re ownership of these disputed characters and plot lines (see attached list). Thank you in advance for your cooperation in this matter.

Trevor Jones

Chairman, Grievance Committee

of the Writers' Guild of Luna

CC:

Kenneth C. Valentine

Kaspara Polichinelli

D. Mentua Precox

Summerfall Winterspring

Melina Polichinelli

Ambrose Wolfinger, M.S.W.

Sam Mohammed

Debbie Corlet

Velma Crow, representing Actors' Equity

John B. Valentine (Triton, via LaserNet)

from TRANSCRIPT, WGL HEARING

Investigation of certain claims involving Gideon Peppy, and Peppiprod, a corporate entity chartered in the Republic of Luna.

Meeting resumes after lunch and deliberations:

CHAIRMAN: Mr. Peppy, it is the unanimous conclusion of this panel that you are in violation of the Minimum Basic Agreement.

PEPPY: Violation, my fucking lollipop. This is a kangaroo court.

CHAIR: When you signed the MBA, you agreed to abide by certain rules and accept the authority of this committee. You have a right to an appeal, of course, and one will be held in one week's time, right here.

PEPPY: And I'll get sandbagged again. Oh, yeah, I know the drill. Sam! Debbie! You're a fucking Judas, Sam! And Debbie, you're a... a Judette! You thought you figured out which way the wind was blowing, you fucking jerks. Well, let me tell you, I ain't down yet. It ain't gonna be this easy to pick my fucking pocket.

CHAIR: Mr. Peppy, these are informal proceedings, but we would appreciate it if you'd control your temper a little better.

PEPPY: And fuck you, too!

CHAIR: Is there something else you have to add?

PEPPY: You fucking right I do. I was blindsided, that's what I was. I didn't even know the little prick was a member of the WGL!

CHAIR: I fail to see how that changes anything. You were using his creative output. It was your responsibility to see that he was a member.

PEPPY: You all think this is just a fucking coincidence. He joined up two days after I hired him! Now, why would he do that, do you think? Sure, I had him join Screen Actors, I was paying the stinkin' little turd to act! It's his goddamn father, that's who's behind this. They planned it! I spent two fucking million dollars to get rid of his sorry ass. Two million dollars just so I wouldn't have to look at his fucking face at the other end of the table, listen to his fucking voice.

VALENTINE: You be careful what you say about my father.

PEPPY: Oh, now we hear from the fucking peanut gallery. Oh, man! Sam, Debbie, you gonna work with this little shit, you watch your fucking back, you hear me? He can reach around you and stab you while he's shaking your fucking hand. Who do you think suggested we send daddy-o to Neptune?

VALENTINE: That was his idea, Your Honor.

PEPPY: Oh, yeah, I thought so, too, at first. He does that, you know. Then you think it over and you realize he's been leading you around the ring like a prize Pomeranian.

CHAIR: You don't have to call me Your Honor, son.

PEPPY: Is anybody listening to me?

VALENTINE: I didn't know.

PEPPY: He didn't know, he didn't know, he didn't fucking know! I think I'm gonna puke if I hear him say that again. C'mon, people, get me out of here before I start slugging him.

VALENTINE: I really didn't know.

CHAIR: That's all right, Sparky. We understand what happened.

VALENTINE: No, this really bothers me. If I understand you right, I should have been reporting my writing work to you. I was just happy to have my characters on the show, I didn't realize I was doing wrong.

PEPPY: Oh, my god, he's gonna cry. I'm gonna pound the shit out of him!

CHAIR: Mr. Peppy! Grab him... don't let him...

PEPPY: You little fuck! I been railroaded! I been screwed! You think it ends here, well, it don't end here, you're gonna see more of me...

CHAIR: That's right, lock that door. I think somebody should call the police, too, in case he's still out there when we leave.

CORLET: I'll handle that.

CHAIR: Thank you. Now, Sparky, we understand it was through ignorance that you didn't report your creative work until you were made aware of it. It is significant that no one else on the production, people who knew the rules, alerted the WGL until we received the anonymous tip that began the investigation. Please don't worry about it. We exist to help writers, not persecute them. There will be a small fine levied, a warning attached to your dossier, and of course you'll have to pay a certain amount into the retirement fund. Other than that, I can't see that you've done anything to be ashamed of.

VALENTINE: Thank you, Your Honor.

CHAIR: I see no reason why any of you need to attend the appeal hearing next week. The evidentiary matters are already on record. If Mr. Peppy presents additional evidence, we will deal with it at the time. Mr. Secretary, I believe the sense of the committee was that this information be turned over to the proper authorities for investigation of copyright and trademark fraud. Please see that is done this afternoon. This committee will stand in recess until ten o'clock next Monday.

Thimble Theater Productions

Suite 100, Sentry/Sensational Studios

INTEROFFICE MEMO

FROM: Curly

TO: Sparky

Here's the newest Flacks, plus editorial comment.

Continuing story is the inexorable slide of formerly invincible Peppy.

Not much reliable has come out of the courtrooms where Peppiprod and Thimble Theater are locked in a corporate struggle over trademarks and copyrights, A usually reliable source has spread the news that Gideon Peppy collapsed in the courtroom last Thursday, and was briefly hospitalized for what sounds like an attack of apoplexy. Meanwhile production has been halted at the Peppy studios, while Thimble Theater has been able to continue producing the Sparky show under the lower court's ruling, pending final appeal. This means that as of now Peppiprod has only two more stanzas to play, and they will be off the schedule. Somewhere, though, a very fat lady is taking a very deep breath, and the entire industry is waiting to hear what song she sings.

Contacted about this abrupt reversal of fortune, Gideon Peppy had this to say: "Get that fuckin' camera out of my fuckin' face before I break your fuckin' neck!" Easy, Giddy-o. Take a stress pill and cool your jets. Remember when there's a shine on your shoes there's a melody in your heart.

from Vapor Trails

"All the Vicious Irresponsible Gossip Rumor and Innuendo Our Lawyers Permit!"

5/23/59

SOLOMON SPEAKS!

Judge Hands Down Decision in Thimble/Peppy Scuffle

Have you heard the old one about King Solomon and the baby? Two women claimed to be the kid's mother, neither could prove it. Old Sol says bring me a sword, proposes chopping the kid in two, make everybody happy, right? You don't believe me, look in the Bible. I'm sure the library has a copy, it means book, after all.

It looks like Sparky and his Thimble Theater Company get to keep all the characters he created for the show, forty-seven and counting so far. All except two of them. Are you ready? Of course, it's the characters of Sparky and Polly. Peppy was able to prove he wrote about them before he even met young Master Valentine. So "Sparky" the character remains the intellectual property of Peppiprod, for all the good it'll do him, and Sparky, the real-life Lunarian boy, gets to keep his gang, for all the good it'll do him. Somewhere the ghost of old King Solomon must be chuckling.

But rumors too speculative for even us to print hint this is not really the last verse of this epic. Let it stand for the moment that neither party is happy, and neither is about ready to give up.

from Clavius Clarion

Shopper's Bargain Supplement

5/25/59

The big news in our little enclave this week was supposed to be the opening of the new domed city park and shopping mall out in the western district. That was before they announced that Sparky and Polly would be the guests of honor for the grand opening. News of the personal appearance brought some youngsters from as far away as King City. Police estimated the crowd at fifteen thousand.

You would have thought it was three times that many if you heard the cheers when Sparky and Polly flashed into view on their red skycycles. They buzzed the crowd half a dozen times, showering candy and trinkets from their saddlebags. It was a little bit Santa Claus, and a little bit Mardi Gras, and the children loved it. It's a good thing promoters provided adequate security, or the stage would have been mobbed when the two finally landed.

Sparky apologized to the kids for not bringing his gang with him, but he promised they'd be back in the old clubhouse in the near future. Then he and Polly sang the "Sparky's Gang Song" and the "Sugar Sparklers Song." All the kids seemed to know all the words.

But the surprise hit of the day was when a big, bumbling clown in yellow shoes, a checked jacket, red pants, and suspenders, bulled his way onstage, sucking on a huge lollipop. He started shouting at Sparky and Polly, jumping up and down, threatening them. The kids loved it. "Peppy" said he had Sparky's Gang and he was going to hold them hostage. Our heroes were not daunted; they strapped "Peppy" to one of their skycycles and sent him spinning into the air as the kids shouted with glee. And who says children don't follow the business and legal news? There seemed no doubt who the viewers favored in the simmering feud between Peppy and Sparky. If I was Gideon Peppy I'd be running for cover.

from Vapor Trails

6/2/59

OTHER SHOE DROPS!

Wisdom of Solomon, Part Two

At last we can tell it. Final figures are in on the settlement between Gideon Peppy and Thimble Theater. What everyone seemed to have forgotten in last week's dustup was that Sparky Valentine, in addition to winning the rights to the characters he created while the Sparky show was being produced at Peppiprod, won the trademarks associated with them, and all the royalties paid since their creation. Anybody want to guess how much that might be? A figure was not publicly released, but to get an idea, find an eight-year-old, go to his room, and count the number of times you see a member of Sparky's Gang. Multiply that by the number of three-to-twelve-year-olds in Luna (we're not even considering Mars, the Belt, and the OP, but the court is, oh, my, yes!). If the manufacturers paid even a penny for the use of the image—and count on it, they paid more than that—it comes to a very tidy sum.

Entirely too tidy for Peppiprod. Like most production companies, PP's liquid assets are not large. Money goes into development, dividends, promotion, and the shine on Gideon Peppy's yellow shoes. Peppy didn't have anything like that kind of money, and considering he's been off the load for two months, is no longer in production, and rated a weak seventeenth in the AAS last time the show was offered, there were no banks or bankrollers willing to take a flyer on his future prospects.

Into this frightening picture steps Thimble Theater, a.k.a. Sparky Valentine, with an offer GP can't refuse. When the dust settles TT owns all rights to the characters of Sparky and Polly, and all back numbers of the Sparky show. GP is still not back in the black, but he's out of the ultraviolet.

August 1 (King City Temple)

The July Flack Numbers as compiled by the Trends Research Department of the Latitudinarian Church are as follows:

At last! After an heroic two-year struggle, Sparky hits number one!

It's a good thing, too, or this column would be dull as dishwater. The only other number worth noting is the steady progress of Weasels, finally reaching the Fab Five. Plenty of educators out there are hoping it will soon reach number three, so maybe the Weasels can eat the Cabbages and die! Rounding out the comfortable middle of the table is the usual gang of suspects.

Former champ, the Gideon Peppy Show, is still out of the running, "on hiatus" is the polite expression. Word is it's a hiatus that may prove terminal. Peppiprod is still sniffing about for some bucks to get back in front of the cameras.

Contacted about the hard times his company has fallen on... well, we know GP would have had something snappy and witty to say, but we didn't ask him, as our reporter is not anxious to have his jaw broken again. We'll let you know how the lawsuit comes out. And frankly, at this point nobody really cares about the shine on his shoes, the lint on his hard candy, or the crap in his trousers.

from Hebephrenia

column of 6/6/59

"At Home with the Like Wireheads! Ex. P!" by D. Mentua Precox

touch doublestrikes for sound

touch Hyperlined words for refs

...and so when they asked me if I'd, you know, like to spend a few hours like with everybody's fayvyiest brillo-domes, I was all like "Get a clue unquote!" Like, the D stands for Dumbbunny, but not Dope, you load? But they were all like serious as green cheese, and stuff, so I packed my extra sox and training bra and pootled down to the backlot where they were making like the very first Sparky and Polly movie with the, like, Gang. Comma comma period. And there was this quote "dressing room" unquote that Sparky and Polly shared? You know? Question mark? Only it was bigger then D. Mentua's entire cubic!! Exc. etc. I mean, the D stands for Dazzled! Also for I Dug it!

So then Polly answers my like toodleoo in her you know Polly outfit and her hair looking like frozen noodles. And she's all like "Dee! How nice to see!" (Polly's voice ©59 Thimble Theater Productions) And I'm all howjadew howjadew and you know what I'm thinking is, how is it that, like yesterday noodleheads looked all haha looserbilly and stuff, and like, today it's all just treacle and buttered toast? Question mark! How like weird! ExMark? The D stands for Dumbfounded, you know? And then before you know it it's all last Tuesday.

Well, if you've had enufquote "deep thought" unquote for the day, I just had to point out to Pretty Pol that I, D. Period Mentua, had scoffed when the trendbillies like put you two out as mere hulahoops ten-day wondering, as it like were, when I was fritzing it about that you were the gen-you Frisbee! Whamm-o ex ex ex!!! and she goes "And we thank you for it." Your humbuggle narrator came over all pink and stuff. Shit!

And so dinner was served (no electric noodles! paren)thesis comma, and who should come flycycling by but the man/boy of the our, as well as hour, Sparky. And he goes "Long time no Dee!" (Sparky's voice ©59 Kenneth Valentine) and I'm howjadew all over the place again. period. And then most of the time yrs t. is sitting churchmouselike in a corner like watching breathlesslike while tag teams of atts-at-law, counselor, are shuttling massives of paper between the Sparkabilly and his like ex loco p., period comma, lady name of Melina I'd-tell-you-her-last but D stands for Dud when speling wurds of more than five slylabbles. Sillybabbles. Slybulls. D stands for Don't call on me, teacher! Syllables! and that's the lesson for today!

And she Melina is going "Sparky, I don't know anything about these legal matters, and Sparky goes "Don't worry, 'Ma,'" comma threes-trophe, and he goes "That's what lawyers are for." And the babble of attorneys keeps bringing on the papers. And I go "What's this all about question mark," and Sparky goes it's something about a makeover for Giddy Pep and I go boy, could he ever use it, did you lamp those yellow shoes, how un-Fahrenheit, with, goggle, gulp, red suspenders, gimmeachance here! Exclam! Then D.M.P. proozled thru a few, papers lying idly about and stuff, but when it comes to contracts D stands for a D in business ad. period and another D in business math. I'm sure there was a story there for some intrepid news-nosey, but not this my'self please!

So anyway where was I oh, yeah the Royal We spent an hour with the P. and S., and I bet you'd love to hear it. Well, pull your diapers back up, gramma, you didn't think it was all, like, freedie time, didja? Just load up $19.95 and get momster or dadster to thumb it to me for the real cheese! In threedee as in Dementia or D. Mentia, living crayolacolor big as a slice of life Phew! I got that all out in one breath! Period!

from News Nipple

Financial Page

11/11/59

Thimble Theater in Peppy Takeover

In a surprise move today, Thimble Theater Productions, whose chief asset is the children's television show Sparky and His Gang, took control of Peppiprod, Inc., formerly Captained by Gideon Peppy, the originator of the series. At first glance, the transaction seems a case of a minnow swallowing a whale. But according to City Exchange analysts, it was a very hungry and aggressive minnow and a very tired, hollow whale. Peppiprod was saddled with a crippling debt load resulting from recent adverse court decisions in favor of Thimble Theater's managing director and chief stockholder, Kenneth Valentine. Efforts to obtain refinancing for such a speculative venture were making little progress until the takeover bid was announced. Hours later a consortium of investors solidified the deal.

(For financial details PRESS HERE)

The move was vigorously opposed by Chairman Peppy, but in the end his position was not strong enough to appeal to stockholders who stood to benefit in the transaction.

It is little wonder Peppy was opposed. In an odd twist, it turns out that all rights to the character "Gideon Peppy" are owned by Peppiprod, a situation brought about by certain tax advantages. It would seem then that Gideon Peppy, the person, no longer owns the rights to his own voice and image. Thimble Theater could, if it chose, enjoin him from wearing the clothing associated with the character he created—and now largely lives—or at least appearing in public as the character. It could even prevent him from using his own voice in commercial situations. Vaporum is now abuzz with lawyers and agents, seeking to rewrite contracts to avoid a similar conundrum for their clients. That won't be necessary for Ken Valentine, who personally owns the rights to his television character "Sparky," leasing it to Thimble Theater in an arrangement sure to be widely copied.

from Flash in the Pan

"The Collector's Guide to PopCult Ephemera"

'59 Price Guide, coffee mugs

354. Skunk Cabbage. Zappy the Zombie $ 0.45

355. Skunk Cabbage. Zippy the Zombie $ 0.45

356. Sparky and His Gang. Ensemble $ 55.00

357. Sparky and His Gang. Sparky Alone $ 190.00

357a. "Decent" Sparky $5,000.00

NOTE: All Sparky tie-ins with the "original" Gang are worth more than contemporaneous series merchandise because most were destroyed after the bad start. The "decent" variants, produced for sale only on Vesta, Callisto, and Ceres, showing Sparky wearing pants, were never shipped, and only one box survived.

358. Sparky and His Gang. Polly $ 100.00

358a. "Decent" Polly $3,500.00

from The Straight Shit Starpage:

"Where Are They Now?"

6/4/60

by Bermuda Schwartz

You'll never guess who I ran into yesterday in a taproom on the upper levels of North King City. I really don't quite know what to call him. I don't believe the name we all knew him by was his real one, and he can't use the one we knew him by. You might call him "the artist formerly known as Gideon Peppy." Or the Man Without a Name. Or you could tie a dead albatross around his neck and call him Ishmael.

And you know? Clothes really do make the man. Or at least they make the clown. If somebody hadn't pointed him out to me, I never would have recognized him. Okay, I'll fess up. I didn't actually run into him. I don't go to upper-level taverns in North King City, as a rule—in fact, I'd never been in one—but it's the sort of place Not-Gideon Peppy inhabits these days. He had sent for me, and for old time's sake I went.

There's no reason Not-Gideon shouldn't be sipping his vodka-and-beer boilermakers in the cozy country clubs down in bedrock. He's still got plenty of money. It was his balls Sparky took from him, not his wallet. He goes to places where the decor mirrors his mood. And, I found out, because it's only in places like that he can find souls destroyed enough to listen to his tale of woe. And now he had me to listen.

Like some maniacs, Ex-Peppy can present a convincing front for a short time. At first I think he had me confused with that awful Precox person. (Later I found out she'd been by the previous day, found out there was no story there for her clientele, and dropped him like a cold potato. I've never seen why one should lower oneself to the intellectual level of a five-year-old just because... but don't let me get started on that. Please! Period.).

When we had my identity straightened out he regaled me for a while on his plans for a comeback. Outlined for me several new series he had "in development." Told me of all the big people who were coming in with him on these projects. I almost bought it. The man was influential, had moved in those circles until recently. But now he looked as if he wouldn't cast a shadow at high noon in Imbrium.

Then it was Sparky, who he began talking about in a surprisingly calm, controlled voice. He spoke of the lawsuits he had filed, was soon to file, or intended to file as soon as his lawyer drew them up. He kept glancing at the clock over the bar, saying his lawyer would be there soon and I could hear the whole story from him. By then I was wishing the ambulance chaser would arrive and give me a way to gracefully leave.

The segue into insanity was so gradual I hardly noticed it at first. Then I realized he was talking about a computer chip Sparky had implanted in his, non-Gideon's, head, that enabled Sparky to control his thoughts. The doctors hadn't been able to find it, oh no, Sparky was too clever for that, but Once-Was-Peppy had had his telephone removed, just in case. He was sleeping under a lead canopy because he was at his most vulnerable when he was dreaming.

"I have sonic and static generators running all the time, too," he said. "I'm considering having my skull replaced with stainless steel, like the commandos use. See that guy over there?"

The only person in that direction was a stubble-faced drunk passed out with his face in a puddle of spit on the filthy bar top.

"One of Sparky's spies," post-Peppy confided. "He's here every day, pretending not to watch me. Pretending to be too drunk to notice anything. But I've seen him muttering. He's wearing a wire, somewhere, I haven't figured out where yet. He tells them when I leave here so they can keep track of me. Did you see them, loitering around out there? There's enough of them that no matter which way I go they can keep tabs on me. I've confronted them, but they all look at me as if I was crazy."

There was much, much more, I'm sorry to say. You try to be gentle, you try to be kind, but most of all you want to be out of there. Leaving becomes a frightening process of detaching his clawlike fingers from your clothing, first one hand, then the other, then the first hand again. I thought I was free, backing away with a big smile on my face, when his arm shot out and grabbed me again.

"I've figured out who he really is," he said, in a loud whisper.

"Sparky?" I said.

"Satan," the man who used to be Gideon Peppy said.

Folks, I don't want to turn this into a diatribe against the abuses of personal rights and freedoms, but this man needs help. Because he's harmed no one and so far hasn't harmed himself, he cannot be committed to a safe place as in the bad old days. But I'm telling you, leash laws are more humane and much more practical than the way we allow the insane the "right" to go off the proverbial deep end, unrestrained, unhelped.

This man should be stopped, before he hurts himself or someone else.

Or both.

The News Nipple

Obituary Page, 6/10/60

MARSH, Julian E. Born 2103. Mr. Marsh, better known to millions of his young fans as "Gideon Peppy," was dead on arrival at the Mare Vaporum Medical Center yesterday afternoon. The cause of death was a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

For 7 related stories, PRESS MORE

TELEVISION CLOWN KILLS SELF, WOUNDS TRANSIENT

(Mare Vaporum) Julian Marsh, until recently known as Gideon Peppy, arrived at his former office in the Sentry/Sensational Studios at 3:00 P.M., covered in blood, brandishing a .55-caliber automatic pistol. He fired a few rounds seemingly at random, harming no one but sending office workers and security guards running for cover.

He went directly to Studio 5, where the current episode of Sparky and His Gang was being filmed. Screaming incoherently, waving the weapon at anyone who approached him, he demanded to see young Sparky Valentine, star of the show. When informed Sparky was not due on the set for another three hours, he threatened a cameraman, telling him to roll tape. Facing the camera, he made a brief statement, the content of which has not yet been released, then put the muzzle of the gun into his mouth and fired. He was killed instantly.

For 6 related stories press MORE

Earlier in the day Marsh had gone berserk in the Twelve-Step Inn, North King City. He attacked Mr. Buford Keeler with a kitchen knife, inflicting serious wounds on the man's abdomen and chest. Patrons said Marsh was shouting something about finding a microphone. When other customers and the bartender pulled Marsh away, he produced a handgun, fired three rounds, and fled. Mr. Keeler was healed and released.

For 5 related stories, press MORE

Gideon Peppy shouted, "Roll 'em, roll 'em, you cocksucker, or I'll blow your fuckin' head off. Is it on now?"

Peppy's hands and the front of his clothes were dark with dried blood. He stared into the camera, and smiled broadly.

"Maybe this'll satisfy the little fuck," he said, then sucked on the barrel of the gun. When he fired his whole face seemed to stretch out like a face painted on a balloon. A red mess of brains, hair, skull, and blood erupted from the crown of his head, and he fell to the floor like a puppet with cut strings. The camera moved in. There were spatters of blood on his yellow shoes.

Sparky ejected the chipcard and tapped one edge of it idly on his desk.

"Maybe that'll teach him to mess with my father," Sparky said.

He pressed the button on his desk that connected to his secretary. "Send this Peppy death tape to Curly," he said. "Tell her we need a thirty-minute documentary, freeze-frame, slow motion, whatever else you can think of. I want it on my desk by this time tomorrow, ready to outload by tomorrow evening. Also, get to work on a promo tying the death tape to the reloads of the Peppy Show, same time frame. We have to move quickly on this, it'll be old news fast. It ought to provide a good publicity lead-in to the New Peppy Show. If you need me, I'll be in the casting session across the hall."

He rose from his desk and walked across the deep carpet of his office. He went through the door and out into the public corridor. The people who passed him all smiled and waved respectfully. He had a smile for each one.

All conversation died as he entered Studio 88, where the casting session was being held. He remembered the first time he'd been there, not even knowing he was trying out for the part of Sparky. Long time ago, he mused.

He stepped up to his big chair at the end of the table. No one was sitting at the far end, where Julian Marsh used to sit, but that was okay. Everyone was clustered down at Sparky's end.

He opened a crystal candy jar and took out one of the lollipops custom-made for him by Dixie Chocolateers of Tharsis, Mars. The gold-leaf-coated paper rustled expensively as he unwrapped the sweet. He popped it into his cheek and looked around the table. He hitched himself a little higher on the padded box that enabled him to rest his elbows at table level.

"All right, ladies and gentlemen. It's magic time. Send in the first of the Peppy prospects."

Sparky was eleven.