A Creed for the Third Millennium (31 page)

The speedy little mosquito of a thing
made one step en route, in Washington, to pick up Dr Judith Carriol.

He was desperately glad to see her. Mama
had wanted to come, of course, and James had valiantly volunteered, but with him
away on what he was staggered to learn would be a ten-week publicity tour,
neither of them could be spared. Mary also offered her services, dour and
darkling; she was refused on the same grounds. So he had hoped that maybe Lucy
Greco would go with him to Atlanta, or failing her, Elliott MacKenzie, or the publicity
director. To board the helicopter alone was a little daunting.

He had never flown. By the time he was
old enough to wish to fly, planes were virtually grounded save for a very few
flights classified as imperative and always booked out by those whose jobs or
needs gave them priority. The people travelled by jam-packed train or bus, town
to town, state to state, border to border.

'Oh, Judith, a miracle!' he said,
squeezing the hand she held out to him as she settled into the other half of the
back seat.

'Well, I thought you might be grateful
for a friendly face, I had some leave coming, and Elliott very kindly said I
could serve as your official escort and unofficial friend. I hope you don't mind
that it's me.'

'I'm delighted!'

'Bob Smith tonight, huh?'

'Yes.'

'Have you watched his show at
all?'

'No, never. I thought it might be a good
idea to watch it last night, but Andrew advised me not to. He's been tuning in
to all the shows on the list Atticus sent me, or the ones we receive, anyway.
And he said it would be better for me if I just went on and did everything
cold.'

'Do you always take his
advice?'

'When Drew advises, which isn't often,
it's smart to take heed.'

'Nervous?'

'No. Should I be?'

'No. It's a piece of cake,
Joshua.'

'All I care about is the opportunity to
reach people. I hope Bob Smith has read the book.'

'I hope he hasn't,' she said, knowing
full well he hadn't.
'You
tell Bob Smith about millennial neurosis!
There's nothing more boring than having to listen to two people in the know
trade questions and answers. They assume too much, and they take too
many short cuts.'

'You're right. I never thought of
that.'

'Okay!' She wove her fingers through his,
pressed their palms together, turned to smile at him. 'Oh, Joshua, it is good to
see you!'

He didn't answer, just leaned his head
back against the seat squabs behind him, closed his eyes and permitted himself
to enjoy the extraordinary sensation of being shot through the air like a
projectile.

Serious talk shows were a thing of the
past. So for that matter was any kind of serious dramatized television unless it
was musical, classical or at least safely historic. Shakespeare and Moliere were
very much in vogue. Even the much praised shows hosted by Benjamin Steinfeld and
Dominic d'Este were only serious in that they purported to discuss the issues of
the times; in reality they did so in ways that could cause their viewers neither
grief nor rage. Everything media was geared to minimizing trauma and stifling a
genuine spirit of inquiry. Television especially glittered and scintillated,
fell over itself wisecracking and dancing, laughing and singing.

'Tonight with Bob Smith' came on air at
nine and lasted for two hours, and after fifteen years it still held the vast
majority of the country in thrall. The moment that fresh, happy, freckledy face
came on camera grinning almost from one jug ear to the other below its wild
thatch of bright red hair, 'Tonight' was a headlong frolic of gags, sketches,
zippy guests, song-and-dance acts, and more zippy guests.

The format of the show dated back to long
before Bob Smith had been born; spontaneously witty and attractive host with
indefatigable slightly long-suffering sidekick, opening monologue, number-one
guest spot, song or song-and-dance, number-two guest spot, comedy sketch,
number-three guest spot, song or song-and-dance, number-four guest spot, and so
on and so on.

Usually there were between four and eight
guests, this number depending solely upon how Bob Smith felt any one guest was
faring with himself and the studio audience. He was a past master at the art of
cutting a guest short, and right royal in a decision to can the last few of the
hopefuls still waiting back in the green room because a guest was doing better
than anticipated when the show was put together.

His real name was not Bob Smith, it was
Guy Pisano, and he owed his fair urchin face to some nineteenth-century Visigoth
who marched over the Brenner Pass and kept on going south to Calabria. The
network think tank chose his name because Bob was the most popular male first
name and Smith the most common last name; it had no race or creed connotations,
and it conjured up an irresistible image of Everyman. His sidekick, Manning
Croft (real name Otis Green), was cute, black, hip and sassy, an exquisitely
dressed and thoroughly up-to-the-minute version of Rochester or Benson. He knew
his place on Bob Smith's 'Tonight' and he never never exceeded it, though inside
himself he dreamed of one day hosting his own show.

Andrew had advised Dr Christian wisely
not to watch; had he seen the show, he might well have decided to cancel his
entire publicity tour and gone on quietly practising in Holloman, trusting to
his and Lucy Greco's written words to reach the masses he so longed to help. Or
then again, depending upon who looked at the vexed question, perhaps in the
light of what followed, Andrew's advice was not wise at all. As it was, he drove
in a large black car in blissful ignorance of what was in store for him, Dr
Judith Carriol sitting beside him, from the Atlanta helipad all the way down
Peachtree Street to the NBC studios, multi-storeyed and made of pink mirrored
glass in a grandiose plaza that also housed the
buildings of CBS, ABC, Metromedia and PBS.

'Tonight with Bob Smith' occupied two
whole floors, its studio rising through both of them on the north side of the
NBC building. Dr Christian was greeted most respectfully in the ground floor
lobby by a casually dressed young lady who explained that she was one of the
show's fifteen junior or assistant producers. As she conducted the Doctors
Carriol and Christian up thirteen floors in an elevator and then through a
warren of subfusc passages, she chattered away to the clipboard she carried,
some of her words occasionally reaching the ears of her charges, dutifully
following.

Finally, a little over an hour before the
show was scheduled to begin taping, Dr Christian was settled with Dr Carriol in
the green room. Later on he would become a green room expert, and would in
retrospect deem the 'Tonight' green room far and away the most commodious and
tasteful specimen of the genus anywhere. The chairs were roomy and comfortable
and came from Widdicomb, there were coffee tables littered around it carrying
vases of freshly cut flowers, it had no less than six gigantic video monitors
placed so that every chair had an unobscured view, and a mirrored mini-cafeteria
with a uniformed nubile maiden in attendance graced one wall. Declining all but
coffee, Dr Christian subsided into the first chair he came to and gazed around
with the appreciation of one who took an interest in decor and interior
design.

'Why do I feel like whispering?' he asked
Dr Carriol, smiling with a bubbling amusement he couldn't suppress.

'It's an inner sanctum,' she said with an
answering smile.

'Yes, of course.' He looked around again,
but differently. 'There's no one here but us.'

'You're the first guest. They always ask
that guests be here at least one hour before their
time slots. So just wait, the others will come.'

They did. To Dr Christian it was an
education he really enjoyed acquiring, watching his fellow guests. No one
arrived alone, some had quite an entourage, and he could tell the very famous
ones because of a sudden electrical curiosity that galvanized those already
present. They were essentially connoisseurs of themselves, more star-struck than
any mere mortal watching at home. There was no interparty chatting; each
designated guest kept his or her distance from all save his or her companions.
But the eyes slid round assessing, the ears flapped to eavesdrop, the hands
lifted and fluttered and drummed and scratched as if yearning for something
valid to do with themselves. A kind of guilty privilege oozed out of everyone,
mixed with the subtlest drop of twitching twisting fear. This venue, Dr
Christian concluded at the end of his observations, was colossally important to
all these people.

Half an hour before the show began,
another young female assistant producer came to take Dr Christian 'down to
Makeup', as she phrased it; he followed her docilely, leaving Dr Carriol behind
looking superbly at ease and making everyone else in the green room feel
slightly wrong somehow.

In Makeup he felt like a wart or a wen,
sitting in a dentist's chair while a taciturn elderly man muttered about dark
bases and big pores and proceeded to gild this most unpromising lily.

'Gingerbread!' said Dr Christian
suddenly.

The hands stopped; the makeup man looked
at him in the mirror as if he suddenly saw his subject as a human being for the
first time.

'Gingerbread?' echoed the makeup
man.

'I was thinking of myself as a lily, but
that's patently ridiculous,' explained Dr Christian. 'A lily I shall
never be, I toil too hard. But I might just
qualify as gingerbread.'

The makeup man shrugged, lost interest in
the mind under the face, and finished deftly with this inappropriate
guest.

'There you go, Doc!' he announced,
whipping his drape off with the flair of a magician.

Dr Christian eyed himself ironically in
the mirror, ten years younger, skin a lot smoother, eyes debagged and quite
mysteriously larger. 'Thirty instead of forty! Thank you, sir,' he said, then
ambled back along endless corridors with his third different assistant producer
guide.

'I
haven't enjoyed myself so much
in years,' he said to Dr Carriol, sinking back into his chair. 'You know, this
is a revelation.'

She studied him with approval. 'They've
certainly made you look more your age! Very spiffy!'

That was the end of any conversation. On
the monitors the empty studio had acquired an audience in his absence, and since
it was being warmed up by Manning Croft, it laughed with increasing frequency
and ease.

He didn't see Bob Smith, because just as
the opening chords of fanfare announced that the tape was rolling and the show
beginning, a different young female assistant producer came and collected him
from the green room.

Amid urgent whisperings they positioned
him at the edge of a praline-coloured curtain so heavy with silk that it hung
straight and somnolent and graceful.

'Wait here until we cue you, then take a
step out onto the stage, stop, turn and smile at the audience — a
big
smile, please! — then walk on over to the podium. Bob will rise to shake
your hand and you will sit down in the chair on his right. The minute another
guest is announced, you move out of the chair and sit on the nearest end of the
long sofa, and every time a new guest comes on, you move down one more
space on the sofa. Got it?'

'Got it!' he said gaily, too
loudly.

'Sssssh!'

'Sorry.'

The preliminary repartee between Bob
Smith and Manning Croft was over amid giggles from the audience, and Bob Smith
stepped alone into the middle of the huge polished space between where Dr
Christian stood behind the edge of the silk curtain and where the vacant podium
waited with its stunning backdrop of a sunset Atlanta shimmering in the
brilliant studio light.

Dr Christian didn't hear the monologue,
for a man edged up next to him, grasped him urgently by the arm and introduced
himself as the producer of the show.

'It's a pleasure and a privilege to have
this exclusive, Dr Christian,' he murmured. 'Uh — have you ever been on
television before?'

Dr Christian said no, and was subjected
to a soothing sotto voce rundown on how easy it was as long as you just
remembered to concentrate on Bob and ignore the cameras.

The monologue was winding up, the
audience was ecstatic. The producer, still clutching Dr Christian's arm,
tensed.

'Be bright, be cute, be witty — and make
Bob
look good,' said the producer, changing his grip and thrusting Dr
Christian out into the glare of the stage.

He remembered to pause and smile at the
audience after his initial step forward, then he walked across the long empty
space between the edge of the curtain and the podium. Now ensconced behind his
desk, Bob Smith rose to his feet, leaned over to shake Dr Christian's hand, and
with a broad smile welcomed him to the show. Dr Christian sat down and twisted
to gaze at the eager chirpy face to his left, wondering why they couldn't be permitted to face each other
properly. It was damned awkward having to sit twisted into an artificial
pose.