Madonna and the Starship (9781616961220) (6 page)

“Walter knows nothing about it. Connie thinks it's a fraternity stunt. No harm in playing along, I figure.”

“Your girlfriend's got a good head on her shoulders,” said Floyd. “Jerry's still sick, so I'm putting her back in the announcer's booth.”

“She's not my girlfriend.”

I spent the afternoon rewriting “The Phantom Asteroid” while trying to think of a viable premise for a Judeo-Christian teleplay. Nothing sprang to mind. Apparently my science-fiction sensibility was inimical to the ethos of religious drama. The immediate future would find me doing my part for the Kellogg's account and the Ovaltine account, but Connie would have to service the God account on her own.

As it happened, my self-diagnosis proved wrong. Riding the F Train toward Delancey Street Station, shielded from November's chill by Uncle Wonder's cardigan, I was visited by an idea for a potentially worthy
Bread Alone
installment, keyed to Jesus's famous observation—Matthew 6:27—that no man had ever lengthened his life by worrying. “Pazuzu Jones, Demon of Regret” would tell of Dr. Felix Olinger, a psychiatrist who makes a diabolical pact. The demon in question agrees to uncouple Felix's psyche from his personal regrets, so that they can no longer cause him mental distress. For his part, Felix must capture each such amputated sorrow, now incarnated as a hideous imp, and cast it down a mine shaft. The bargain soon spins out of control, for our hero keeps encountering missed chances he'd forgotten about. In the end Felix realizes he should have settled for brooding ineffectually on his regrets, just like every other pathetic mortal.

The Saint Francis of Assisi House was an unassuming three-story building near the corner of Broome and Ludlow, the adjacent lot devoted to the stockpiling of wrecked automobiles and the cultivation of giveaway vegetables. Hand-lettered signs indicated zones for CABBAGES, BEANS, TOMATOES, and SQUASH, though the produce had long since been harvested. Strikingly attired in a black beret and white wool scarf, Connie appeared on the sidewalk, then ushered me inside. I followed her across a parquet-floored foyer, through a sparsely furnished meeting room, and into the vicinity of a roaring stove. Hell's Kitchen might lie on the far West Side, but Heaven's Kitchen occupied these very premises. I pulled off my coat and sweater, Connie removed her hat and wrap, and we began taking turns stirring an enormous copper kettle abrim with New England clam chowder.

As a somber line of Bowery bums shuffled past, puffing on cigarettes and pushing empty trays along aluminum rails, Connie and two fellow Assisians provided each tramp (mostly men, though I counted seven women) with a bowl of chowder and a hunk of bread. Some of our clients appeared intoxicated, none looked especially healthy, and all were famished. Although I felt like an extra in some creepy Bing Crosby movie about soup-kitchen saints, I believed I understood why Connie chose to spend her spare time this way. “Pazuzu Jones, Demon of Regret” suddenly seemed an embarrassment to me, as spiritually inert as
Texaco Star Theater
.

“Donna Dain invites us to see Christ in every person,” she said, “even a scabby wretch whose pants are stained with urine. My analyst thinks I have a savior complex. I tell him there are worse role models than Jesus.”

Mirabile dictu
, as in a minor-league reenactment of the miracle of the loaves and fishes, our store of victuals was sufficient to feed everyone who showed up that night. After supplying the last tramp with his chowder and bread, we four missionaries—I now considered myself an honorary Assisian—commandeered the remaining portions and adjourned to the basement, a warm but gloomy grotto suffused with cigarette smoke and crammed with vagrants consuming their dinners at dilapidated picnic tables. Slurping sounds filled the air. The far corner evidently functioned as the editorial offices for the
Catholic Anarchist
—conference table, Silex coffee-maker, bank of typewriters, mimeograph machine, back issues papering the walls—and it was here that Connie and I alighted to eat in privacy.

“So how'd it go at the White Horse?” I asked her.

“Horribly,” she replied, thereby producing a rush of pleasure in my
Schadenfreude
gland.

“Things not working out between you and Sidney?”

“I'm talking about Dylan Thomas. The man is killing himself. After six straight whiskies, he went to his hotel to lie down. He wanted me to go with him.”

“As his nursemaid?”

“His tavern wench.”

“Naturally you refused.”

“Sidney did that for me,” said Connie. “An hour later, Mr. Thomas was back with us. He drank another six, kissed me on the lips, and collapsed. They took him to Saint Vincent's. I expect to read his obituary in tomorrow's
Times
.”

“ ‘Though they go mad, they shall be sane,'” I recited, sipping lukewarm coffee. “‘Though they sink through the sea, they shall rise again. Though lovers be lost, love shall not.'”

“‘And death shall have no dominion.'” Connie smeared butter on her bread. “What shall we discuss first, your Martians or your
Bread Alone
script?”

“I'm afraid I've lost confidence in my script.”

“Maybe you can salvage part of it for a
Brock Barton
episode or an
Andromache
story,” Connie said with an acerbic grin.

“Andromeda.”

“Right.” She took a bite of bread. “Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that these crustaceans are exactly what they say they are. Somewhere beyond our solar system lies a planet of logical positivists.”

“Logical positivists?” I offered Connie a perplexed frown, then swallowed a spoonful of chowder.

“Look it up in your
Britannica
. The Vienna Circle of the nineteen-twenties. Verify, verify. No metaphysics allowed. The concept of God is not so much false as incoherent. Eventually the movement reached Cambridge. I hope your Qualimosans aren't typical of alien races. What could be more boring than a galaxy run by Bertrand Russell?”

“A galaxy run by Bishop Sheen?” I suggested. “I hear you'll be announcing tomorrow's show. How about, after the awards ceremony, you join the lobsters and me for our night on the town? I could use an expert in the care and feeding of logical positivists.”

“Sure, why not?” said Connie. “Relax, Kurt. They're a couple of frat pledges, probably from Columbia.”

“I wonder if Qualimosans die.”

“Huh? Everybody dies, Kurt.”

“But then you Christians are rewarded with eternal life,” I noted.

“I don't know anything about eternal life. Donna says our job is to steal little pieces of Heaven and smuggle them into this mission. As for death, I'll defer to a better writer than myself. ‘Do not go gentle into that good night...'”

“‘Old men should burn and rave at close of day,'” I added. “‘Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.'”

“Amen,” said Connie.

The following afternoon, fearful that the IRT might break down—it was known to happen—I splurged on a cab, unaware that a labyrinth of interconnected traffic jams lay between the Village and Rockefeller Center. I reached NBC a mere forty minutes before the final chapter of “The Cobra King of Ganymede” would hit the airwaves. Presiding over the front desk was Claude Moffet, a washed-up actor who'd once played Diet Smith on the old
Dick Tracy
radio serial. I told him that, come four-fifteen, two actors wearing trench coats and Mardi Gras lobster costumes would arrive for a guest appearance on
Uncle Wonder's Attic
.

My next stop was dressing room B, where a chattering Trixie transformed me into Uncle Wonder. I hurried to Studio One. Stepping onto the attic set, I realized that, in case the Qualimosans failed to show up, I should have a science experiment ready. I rooted around in the steamer trunk, soon finding the stuff I'd once used to build a Galvanic cell on camera: zinc cathode, copper anode, glass salt-bridge, jars of sulfate solution—plus a flashlight bulb to test the battery's efficacy. Yes, the audience had already seen this demonstration, and, yes, it had nothing to do with today's episode, but I could address both anomalies by declaring that a good experiment was always worth repeating.

Stationed in the announcer's booth, Connie turned in another fine performance, deftly delivering the recapitulation of Wednesday's cliffhanger, then preparing the audience for chapter three, “Cataract of Fire.”

Needless to say, the molten lava did not consume Brock, Wendy, and Lance, who escaped its wrath when Cotter Pin cloaked his friends in an antigravity matrix. The
Triton
's crew then surveyed the incinerated fortress, seeking proof that they'd dealt a fatal blow to Argon Drakka's python project. Cut to a commercial: Brock at Galaxy Central eating and endorsing Sugar Corn Pops. Cut back to Ganymede. Suddenly Drakka emerged from the ashes, secure within a spacecraft to which he'd tethered his latest creation, a snake-egg the size of a meteor. The evil madman rocketed away, towing the immense spheroid behind him. The
Triton
gave chase. As Drakka approached Earth, his cargo doubled in mass and volume, then trebled, quadrupled, quintupled. Abruptly he cut the egg loose, and it plunged into the Pacific Ocean, cracking open on impact. From the organic capsule an enormous serpent emerged and immediately encircled the planet. (Somehow Mike Zipser persuaded a live python to wrap itself around a huge Rand McNally globe borrowed from the New York Public Library.) “People of Earth!” cried Drakka, broadcasting his threat via his ship's loudspeakers. “Obey me now, or I shall squash your sphere like a tangerine in a chain-mail fist!” At this unnerving juncture, Cotter Pin enacted a daring scheme. Harnessing all his technical prowess, he reversed the Earth's magnetic poles, thus flinging the serpent into deep space. Fade-out. Cut to Brock doing an Ovaltine commercial. Dissolve to title card,
THE PHANTOM ASTEROID
.

“Join us next week for a brand new adventure, ‘The Phantom Asteroid'!” Connie told the audience. “Until then, remember the code of the Rocket Rangers! ‘Equality and justice for creatures of all races, colors, creeds, tentacle types, and eyeball arrays'!”

Now Floyd brought up camera three: Uncle Wonder and Andy Tuckerman occupying the attic set as the Motorola displayed the title card, THE PHANTOM ASTEROID. I deactivated the tube, cleared my throat, and glanced at my watch. 4:20 P.M. My crustaceans were five minutes late. Damn.

I decided I'd better resurrect the original script, telling Andy, “I thought our planet was gonna be crushed! What an exciting climax!”

“You can say that again!”

“Hey, Andy, ever wondered how a flashlight battery works?”

“Not lately,” said the kid, unhelpfully. “We built one last year, remember?”

“A good experiment is always worth repeating.”

From the darkness beyond the attic set, a voice rang out. “‘Equality and justice for creatures of all races, colors, creeds, tentacle types, and eyeball arrays'! A most peculiar imperative!”

I froze. A beguiling scent reached my nostrils. The aliens might look like lobsters, but they smelled like Hershey bars. Lips twitching, feelers trembling, the skinny one ambled onto the attic set, then shrugged off its trench coat and laid its slouch hat atop the Motorola. Facing me squarely, the creature dipped its triclopean head in a deferential gesture.

“O Uncle Wonder, we apologize for our temporal miscalculation. But as Brock Barton once said, ‘Better late than never.'”

“Holy mazackers!” exclaimed Andy.

The broadcast TV image had provided no clue to my visitor's scale—it was taller than I'd anticipated: an eight-footer at least. A necklace dangled from the seam between its head and thorax, bearing a pendant resembling the golden statue of Prometheus in Rockefeller Center.

“I am Wulawand, of the gender you call female.”

A squeaky-wheeled tea trolley rolled onto the set, pushed by the fat lobster, easily seven feet tall, its slouch hat and trench coat secured in a claw. The conveyance held an object the size of a lampshade, hidden by a gold lamé cloth.

Flinging down its hat and coat, the fat alien bowed before Andy. “Greetings, Master Andrew. How privileged I feel to make your acquaintance. My name is Volavont, of the male gender.”

“Am I on camera two or camera three?” asked Wulawand.

“Three,” I replied. “Note the tally light.”

Wulawand faced the appropriate lens. “Boys and girls of Planet Earth, you cannot imagine how fortunate you are. Back on Qualimosa, a terrible civil war rages between the regiments of reason and the battalions of irrationality.”

Andy tugged on my sleeve and whispered, “What's she talking about?”

“Alas, you cannot argue with a religious revelation, children,” said Volavont, adding his plump face to the camera-three midshot. “A revelation is always true. Otherwise it would be something else.”

“It might be a spittoon, for example,” said Wulawand in a caustic tone, “or a stomach pump, or a venereal disease.” She emitted a
squonk, squonk, squonk
sound that I took to be the Qualimosan equivalent of laughter.