Madonna and the Starship (9781616961220) (14 page)

“Good God, you're right,” said Connie. “They're nihilists.”

“It's all clear to me now!” I babbled, strapping on my wristwatch. 2:00 A.M. “Our script is missing two crucial characters. When Saul and his guests tune in ‘The Madonna and the Starship' today, Wulawand and Volavont must see
themselves
on the screen. That is, they must see, er, let me think—”

“They must see Zontac and Korkhan, the rayguntoting nihilists from Planet Voidovia!” exclaimed Connie. “The invertebrates who've replaced God with their own megalomania!”

“Perfect!”

“The present draft pits metaphysics against materialism.” Connie slid off the fourposter and started getting dressed. “But unless you're an ancient Greek, dialectic is not enough. The rewrite must turn on—”

“Trialectic?”

“Good!” She raised her hand, made a fist, extended the index finger. “Worldview number one: the Judeans—Mary, Jesus, Peter, and the leper, connoisseurs of the supernatural.” Her middle finger emerged. “Worldview number two: our Voidovians—Zontac and Korkhan, acolytes of the abyss.” Her ring finger appeared. “And hovering above these incompatible persuasions, worldview number three: the scientific humanists of the space schooner
Triton
—Brock, Ducky, Cotter Pin, and Sylvester, at odds with both the numinous and the nihilistic.”

“I knew that Buck Rogers stuff would come in handy one day.”

“Shut up,” said Connie affectionately, tucking her maroon blouse into her pleated skirt. “So where the hell do we get actors to play Zontac and Korkhan at the eleventh hour?”

“Search me. What a minute. Saul's poker table. Manny used to do stand-up comedy. Terry once appeared off-Broadway in
R.U.R.
”

“What about their dialogue? Improvisation?”

“Cue cards. Like we do with those uppity radio actors who refuse to learn their lines.”

“We'll need costumes.”

“I'm thinking of an early
Tell Me a Ghost Story
,” I said. “‘Revenge of the Gargoyles,' ‘Curse of the Gargoyles,' ‘Gargoyles of Sunnybrook Farm,' something like that.”

“‘Night of the Gargoyles,'” said Connie. “Script by brother Howard. He hated how Sonny Glover directed it.”

“But the masks were terrific. As for Ralston Purina, the
Corporal Rex
commercial is always done live. We'll simply drop it into our show at ten forty-five.”

“Brilliant!”

An instant later I deactivated the alarm clock and tossed it into my valise. Fully clothed now, Connie and I slipped out of Studio Three and dashed to the miniscule office she commanded as
Bread Alone
's producer. I placed a call to 59 West 82nd Street. Saul answered with a chipper, “Bathsheba's Cathouse, King David speaking.”

“Hi, Saul. It's me. How's it going?”

“That Volavont is one stud-poker-playing sonofabitch.”

“Question. Did Manny and Terry look at the teleplay?”

“Furtively, like foxes,” said Saul. “They like the idea of saving two million Christians, but they noticed the
Weltanschauung
problem.”

“I think we've solved it, a matter of getting the lobsters to realize they're trafficking in nihilism. We're adding a whole half-hour, including
roman-à-clef
characters based on Wulawand and Volavont. Listen, Saul, you gotta convince Manny and Terry to show up here in a few hours. They were born to play Zontac and Korkhan.”

“I don't understand—will they be ad-libbing? Isn't that risky?”

“Cue cards. Tell 'em that, if they come through for Connie and me, you'll publish their next stories sight unseen.”

“Bribery is against my principles.”

“Hey, Saul, we've got a chance to stop nihilism from infecting the whole goddamn Milky Way! Tell 'em you'll publish their next goddamn stories!”

“If I know Manny and Terry, they'll join your troupe for the fun of it.”

“I want you to equip 'em with a couple of toy rayguns from your collection. Conference room C. Eight o'clock. They should use the employees' entrance. Can you remember all that?”

“You can trust me, Kurt. Bye, now. I'm sitting on a full house.”

As I cradled the handset, Connie opened her desk drawer and grabbed a metal ring from which a dozen keys dangled like jellyfish tentacles. I followed her down the stairs to the basement wardrobe department. The door yielded to a brass key. A nude male mannequin, gelded like a choirboy, mutely greeted us. For the next half-hour we alternately scoured the shelves (which held scads of masks, wigs, hats, helmets, and crowns fitted over disembodied faceless heads) and pawed through the racks (where scores of coats, capes, gowns, suits, and zippered costumes hung like gibbeted prisoners). Our efforts were rewarded with a pair of latex gargoyle masks—bulging eyes, flared nostrils, pointed ears, bulbous tongues—and matching slate-gray jumpsuits.

Costumes in hand, we scurried down the corridor to the employees' subterranean entrance. As it happened, the guard on duty was Claude Moffet, erstwhile performer on the defunct
Dick Tracy
radio serial. I told him that around 8:00 A.M. two eminent American writers bearing toy rayguns would appear, and he should admit them posthaste.

Returning to street level, Connie and I deposited the gargoyle outfits in dressing room A, along with a note to the
Bread Alone
wardrobe mistress explaining that she should suit up Mr. Glass and Mr. Murgeon the instant they arrived. We sprinted to the storage closets, where we procured a hundred blank cue cards, plus a box of grease pencils. As we staggered away, hugging bundles of pasteboard, Connie and I agreed that we needn't write any new lines for the minor characters of Peter and the leper. As for Cotter Pin and Sylvester Simian, we should keep their brawny human
alter egos
in reserve, for they might prove vital in deterring unwanted visitors during the broadcast.

Arriving in conference room C, Connie and I got to work. For ninety minutes, we batted potential speeches and possible stage directions back and forth like shuttlecocks. (Per Hollis's contract, we remembered to include additional Sugar Corn Pops and Ovaltine commercials.) Taking turns in the role of stenographer, fighting sleep with every clause and comma, we methodically transcribed our best ideas, so that each cue card became a piece in a jigsaw puzzle that, assembled, might conceivably influence the course of galactic history.

The plot was simple. After the Demivirgin Mary delivers the final line of act one—“If forced to choose between a planet I know to be real and a paradise I must take on faith, I would surely cry, ‘Give me the Earth!'”—two malign creatures rocket in from Voidovia. Zontac and Korkhan explain that they've embarked on a grand tour of the Milky Way, following an itinerary that includes vaporizing everyone who doesn't share their one hundred percent deity-free worldview. Drawing forth their rayguns, they threaten Jesus, his mother, his apostle, and the leper. But then Brock Barton comes to the Judeans' rescue, arguing that the Voidovians' professed atheism is nothing of the kind.

“You've not rejected God at all,” says the captain of the
Triton
. “You've turned him into
yourselves
. How theistic of you.”

“You've not dismantled the Almighty's throne,” adds Ducky Malloy. “You've made it your favorite easy chair. How pious of you.”

“If God is a bad idea, then
playing
God is an even worse idea,” says Brock. “You invertebrates have embraced the very mythology you claim to despise.”

“God is
not
a bad idea,” Mary insists.

“It's a very
good
idea,” Jesus avers.

“I think not,” says Brock, having the last word.

Fade-out. Cut to title card, WHO CREATED GOD? Dissolve to NBC logo.

Under normal circumstances, Connie and I would now have borne the ninety-three new speeches to Studio Two and distributed them around the
Bread Alone
set. But our muscles and ligaments would hear none of it. Since Friday afternoon we'd been burning our candles at both ends; nothing remained of us but nubs of wax and smidgeons of wick. And so, after numbering the cue cards, we leaned them against the walls in a half-dozen upright stacks, crawled under the circular table, stretched out on the carpet, and promptly fell asleep, knowing that, sooner rather than later, a Judean theist, a
Triton
humanist, or a nihilistic gargoyle would rouse us from our slumbers.

THAT BUCK ROGERS STUFF

epressed by their poker losses, and to invertebrates no less, Manny Glass and Terry Murgeon had little desire to hang around Saul's apartment, and so they arrived in conference room C, rayguns at the ready, a half-hour ahead of schedule. As Connie and I crawled out from under the table, the two insomniac
Andromeda
writers presented us with catastrophic news. The picture tube of Saul's television set had burned out. Kaput. Defunct. Irredeemably on the fritz.

I grabbed the wall phone and, after quickly introducing Connie to “the pulp-meisters of Prospect Park,” placed a frantic call to 59 West 82nd Street.

“You gotta borrow Gladys Everhart's TV!” I told Saul.

“She's at her sister's place in Yonkers, and I don't have a key to her apartment.” 

“Then go buy a new TV!” 

“Agoraphobics don't go out and buy new TV's, Kurt, especially on Sunday morning. The stores aren't open.”

“Call a repairman!”

“It's Sunday, Kurt! It's the
fershlugginer
Christian Sabbath!”

“Get the lobsters to steal one!”

“That would be a recipe for disaster,” said Saul.

“Doing nothing about the Qualimosan death-ray is a recipe for disaster!”

“I'm on the case, Kurt,” said Saul. “
Shalom
.”

“So which is the better part?” asked Manny, rifling through a stack of cue cards. With his rapid-fire speech cadences and fondness for wisecracks, he was generally regarded as the Groucho Marx of pulp science fiction. “Zontac or Korkhan?”

“It depends on how you feel about facing two million
Bread Alone
viewers and declaring, ‘Logical positivism today, logical positivism tomorrow, logical positivism forever!'” said Connie. “That's Zontac's best line.”

“I think I'll play Korkhan,” said Manny.

“Which gives you the speech that begins, ‘Die, Judean scum!'” said Connie. “‘Go to your illusory maker, you deluded fools!'”

“Actually, I'm leaning toward Zontac,” said Manny.

“Let's flip a coin.” Terry pulled a nickel from his pocket and passed it to me. A pale man with a mellifluous voice, he was as suave and ethereal as Manny was ribald and earthy. “Heads, I'm stuck with Zontac. Tails, I'm forced to play Korkhan.”

I flipped the coin. Terry would play Zontac.

“Listen, fellas,” said Connie, “Kurt and I really appreciate how you stepped up to the plate at the last minute.”

“I ask myself, if Kurt Jastrow and Connie Osborne ever got the opportunity to save a couple million Jews,” said Manny, “like maybe the audience for
The Goldbergs
, would they rise to the occasion? I'm sure they would.”

“Take the cue cards to Studio Two and distribute them around the set in chronological order,” said Connie, gesturing toward the stacks of grease-pencil speeches. “Then find the switchboard cubby and tell Lulu she'll be receiving some irate calls this morning. In every case, she should say, ‘Didn't you know? This is our once-a-year Saturnalia hoax.'”

“No, she should say, ‘It's an April Fool's Day gag,'” Manny insisted. “When the caller says, ‘But it's not April Fool's Day,' Lulu answers, ‘That's part of the gag.'”

“I like that,” said Terry.

Connie glowered and said, “Finally, go to dressing room A, where Hannah will zip you into your Voidovian suits. They're actually gargoyle costumes left over from an old
Tell Me a Ghost Story
.”

“I saw that one,” said Manny, opening the door for Terry. “‘Gargoyle Bar Mitzvah.' Very avant-garde.”

No sooner did the
Andromeda 
writers leave on their errands than conference room C began filling up with actors. True to his word, Ezra had brought along an ice chest jammed with a box of Sugar Corn Pops, a jar of Ovaltine, and a bottle of milk. Assuming a persona of authority, somewhere between a crossing guard and a softball coach, Connie removed her loafers and climbed atop the table.

“God willing, we are about to write a glorious chapter in the annals of anonymous benevolence,” she told the assembled company.

“Last night I read the Book of Job and cobbled together a nifty little rant,” said Gully.

“I'll try to shoehorn it in,” Connie assured him.

“I'm all set to endorse Jesus's preferred Eucharist substances,” said Hollis.

“You're also our announcer,” said Connie. “The final image is a midshot of two chastened aliens, so you'll have no problem getting to the booth in time for the closing signature.”

“Chastened aliens?” said Clement. “That isn't in my script.”

“Mine neither,” said Wilma.

“Same here,” said Jimmy.

Connie proceeded to explain that, during the night, “The Madonna and the Starship” had transmuted into a fifty-five minute epic. The pivot from act one to act two would occur on Mary's line about preferring a real planet to a hypothetical paradise. When writing the second half of the show, Connie continued, she and Mr. Jastrow had focused on convincing the Qualimosans that their worldview was unworthy of the term “logical positivism,” for it was as barbaric in its attack on conventional wisdom as Friedrich Nietzsche's had been erudite. The troupe would find the additional material—including speeches by invading aliens Zontac and Korkhan, plus new dialogue for Brock, Ducky, Jesus, and Mary—displayed on a convenient panorama of cue cards. Peter and the leper could, if they wished, contribute an occasional extemporaneous line. As for Cotter Pin and Sylvester, it would be best if the corresponding actors slipped away shortly after ten-thirty and started guarding the periphery of the set, for by then the broadcast would have surely drawn a mob of protestors.

“So we're gunning for their
Weltanschauung
after all!” exclaimed Ezra. “Marvelous!”

“And how are the producers of
Corporal Rex
taking all this?” asked Calder.

“Except for the commercial, the whole show's on 35mm celluloid,” said Connie. “Film chains break down at the worst times—don't they, Joel?”

“I'm on the job,” said the gorilla.

“And now, troupers, it's up and at 'em!” cried Connie. “Off with your clothes and into your costumes! I want to see everyone in Studio Two by nine-thirty on the dot!”

While our players transformed themselves into Judeans and Rocket Rangers, Connie and I hied ourselves to the NBC commissary, where we consumed a couple of jelly doughnuts washed down with black coffee.

“About last night,” she said, a line I'd vowed never to write if I ever became a real dramatist. “We both went a little crazy, huh? The tech rehearsal, the exhaustion, the kaleidoscopes. What I'm trying to say is that I'm not in the market for a steady boyfriend.”

“I understand,” I muttered, attempting to project simple disappointment but probably sounding despondent. “That prism takes a person to the strangest places.”

“My analyst says that now's the time for me to concentrate on my career. Believe me, Kurt, if I
wanted
a relationship, you'd be at the top of the list—”

“Ahead of Sidney Blanchard?”

“Way ahead of Sidney, but for the next several years I want to throw myself into scriptwriting. Okay, sure,
Bread Alone
is doomed. Religious broadcasting? It's here to stay, and I want to help it grow. Thanks to ‘The Madonna and the Starship,' I've started seeing unexpected possibilities in the form.”

“Unexpected,” I said, finishing my coffee. “Makes sense. Now let's go run those pesky Martians out of town.”

“Will Mr. Silver figure out how to get them in front of a functional TV?” asked Connie.

“He's pulled bigger rabbits out of smaller hats.”

Resuscitated, though hardly revitalized, I followed Connie as she dashed to the kinescope booth, the facility through which NBC preserved its most important broadcasts for posterity. The television monitor and the loaded 35mm camera faced each other like gunfighters in Dodge City, while the auxiliary shutter stood ready to resolve the disparity—thirty frames per second versus twenty-four—between the respective optical illusions on which television and motion pictures depended. The technician hadn't arrived yet, so Connie left him a note saying that this morning's
Bread Alone
must not be committed to celluloid.
It's certain to be our worst show ever
, she wrote,
and I want it to leave no trace
.

We exited the kinescope booth, sprinted to Studio Two, and waded into the hubbub: the lighting director fiddling with his kliegs and fresnels, the boom operator adjusting his omnidirectional mike, the cameramen rehearsing their dolly moves, the floor manager pacing nervously around, the assistant director pursuing an equally anxious path—and everyone casting puzzled glances at the costumed gargoyles, wondering why Ogden Lynx had imported two medieval statues into a drama set in ancient Palestine. All ninety-three cue cards fringed the dining-room set. The on-air floor monitor displayed the current NBC offering: a live puppet show out of Studio Three called
Locky the Loch Ness Monster
. Although the image was almost certainly a closed-circuit feed, uncoupled from the carrier wave, I resolved to kill this particular cathode-ray tube when “The Madonna and the Starship” began, just to make sure we eluded the death-ray.

Connie whistled sharply, commanding the crew's attention, then revealed that this morning's broadcast would be “a trifle unorthodox.” No matter what the actors said—no matter what they did or what costumes they wore—“each of you professionals must stay at his post.” Sooner rather than later, she insisted, the program's ostensible irreverence would be “explained to everyone's satisfaction.”

The instant Connie finished her speech, an unwelcome visitor appeared, the eternally crusty Ogden, dressed in his usual loud checked jacket and polka-dot bowtie, cricketing his way across the studio floor like some immense insect out of a
Brock Barton
episode.

“Morning, Connie,” he said. “I decided to drop by and help out.”

“Know how you can help?” said Connie. “Go home.”

“I promise not to kibitz unless you ask.”

“What I'm asking is for you to leave.”

“See here, Connie Osborne!” shouted Ogden. “I've directed forty-one consecutive
Bread Alone
installments! This is
my
show, too!”

Now the program's regular announcer, the lumpish and genial Fred Thigpen, ambled into view.

“Hi, Mr. Lynx, morning, Miss Osborne—sorry I'm late. Where's the script?”

“Guess what, Mr. Thigpen?” said Connie. “We won't be employing your services today. It's our once-a-year Saturnalia celebration.”

“Saturnalia?” said Ogden.

“But this is Sunday,” said Fred.

“Bingo,” said Connie. “Go to church, Mr. Thigpen. Read the funnies. Mow your lawn. Report for work this time next week.”

The bewildered announcer shrugged and sauntered away.

While Connie and Ogden resumed their argument, I climbed the stairs to the control room, where Leo the technical director and Harold the audio engineer practiced their cross-fades and twiddled their potentiometers. I grabbed the telephone and called Saul.

“Okay, problem solved,” he said: a felicitous message—so why did he sound distressed? “I just finished escorting the lobsters—”

“Escorting them? You mean you left your apartment?”

“I took 'em all the way to Marty's Electronics Shop on Eighty-Fourth. We broke in, found a working Zenith, turned the dial to channel two, tuned in a puppet show called—”

“
Locky the Loch Ness Monster
!” I cried. “Brilliant, Saul! I'm damned impressed! You triumphed over your condition!”