The Road to Mars: A Post-Modem Novel (1999) (31 page)

“Ah, my dear sir. Forgive me.”

It was Charles Jay Brown. He was out of breath and edgy, his customary good humor strained. He glanced around him nervously.

“Forgive the dramatic intrusion,” he said, “but I must speak with you on a most urgent matter.”

“Why are you following me?” asked Alex aggressively.

“I believe I am being watched, I beg you keep moving.”

“What?”

“I assure you, sir, this is not a game.”

Alex allowed himself to be pushed round the corner. There was an empty bank of vidphones.

“This way,” said Charles Jay Brown, practically shoving him into one of the booths. Inside, dark glass shielded the screen from glare. Charles Jay Brown stared out intently. The street was deserted.

“I don’t think they saw us,” he said. “Is there anywhere we can go and talk?”

“I’m afraid my office is being done up at the moment.”

“Droll, sir, droll as ever.”

He glanced at the electronic pass key Alex clasped in his hand.

“Perhaps we might…” He indicated the room key. “It would be safer.”

“No,” said Alex. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, this will have to suffice. I need a word with you on a most urgent matter.”

“Go ahead.”

He glanced nervously through the window again.

“I need to clear up a few misunderstandings.”

“What misunderstandings exactly?” said Alex.

“About your cancellations.”

“Who canned us?”

“I did.”

“You?”

“Alas, yes. Most regrettable, but sadly there is no turning back the clock. My motives were charitable. I was attempting to aid a young woman.”

“You have the balls to stand there and tell me you canceled all our gigs?”

“Violence would be a perfectly understandable reaction, but hear me out, dear sir, I beg you. I gave Miss Wallace the Ganesha.”

“Oh, that makes me feel so much better. You helped her and
then
canceled our gigs.”

“Please, let me explain. Many years ago when I was a young man, I was for my sins a student at the University of Rhea. Oh, it wasn’t much of a university, a few Quonset huts and a dozen part-time lecturers, but times were tough, and we were glad of it. You have no idea. One year a course of lectures was given in social history by a most remarkable man. Perhaps the most remarkable man I have ever met. He was very powerful. Both in stature and in mind. With extraordinary eyes. He had quite an effect on us. Remember, we were young and idealistic. Many of us joined. They were stirring times. I was never very political, the theatrical world was my goal even then, but this man was charismatic. You’ll have to take my word for it. He inspired us.”

The buzzer on the vidphone rang. They both jumped.

“If you wish to place a call, please do so, otherwise please vacate this booth for another customer. Thank you for choosing Instavid.”

“Forgive my prolixity,” said Charles Jay Brown, “it is the curse of education. Flash forward several years and this man whom I had long believed dead contacted me. It was the strangest thing, like meeting a ghost from another lifetime. The man, it seemed, had a daughter. He asked me, begged me, to help him contact her. I reluctantly agreed. The clumsy results of which you are familiar. The man is of course—”

“Katy’s father,” said Alex.

“Full marks,” said Charles Jay Brown. “I must warn you, we are all in danger.”

“Why?” said Alex, glancing anxiously through the glass.

“We know too much. They are tidying up. We are expendable.”

At the corner of the street two men had appeared.

“Behold the watchers,” whispered Charles Jay Brown.

The two men looked suspiciously down the alley towards the vidphones but headed on.

“Well at least my conscience is clear. I have made my confession to you. My bags are packed and I am ready for the journey.”

“What journey?”

“Why, the longest journey,” said Charles Jay Brown. He seemed to have recovered his composure. “I speak of course metaphorically. Do you know where Miss Wallace is?”

“Yes.”

“I beg you ensure her safety. I must find her father.”

“He is here?”

“Oh yes. Wait here a moment. If they should see me and follow, you can go the other way.”

He hurried out of the booth. Alex waited five minutes, ignoring the increasingly irritated pleas of the booth to make a call. The two men did not return.

He had a sudden idea. He called the hospital and got through to the orderly.

“Can I speak to Miss Wallace?” he said. “She’s gone,” said the orderly. “We released her.”

“Where did she go?” asked Alex, knowing it was a stupid question. “Hey, we’re medics, not mystics,” said the orderly. “She left with the old man.”

Oh my God, thought Alex. The old man. It was her father.

He changed his mind about going straight to Rogers and decided to find Katy first. He got lost in the endless maze of hotel corridors before he eventually located her apartment, high up on the fiftieth floor of the C Tower. An elegant eyrie, perched at the top of a long elevator ride. The electronic key let him in. He glanced around. It was a small but pleasant suite. He could smell her perfume but no Katy. He left her a short note, telling her to go at once to Rogers, and left the apartment, carefully locking the door behind him. As he turned, his heart jumped. A page was standing there in the blue and white Keppler uniform.

“Alex Muscroft?” said the page.

“Are you real?” asked Alex with some irritation.

“No sir.”

“Well, don’t creep up on people. We don’t like it.”

“Sorry, I’m sure,” said the mechanical page.

“What do you want?”

“I have to take you to the theater.”

“Oh dear God, Brenda.”

“It’s really important you come at once,” said the page. “The show goes live in three hours. It won’t take very long.”

“Oh all right,” said Alex.

They left the C Tower and Alex followed the page down endless corridors. After a while they came to a people mover and sped along through plastic tubes of warm sunlight. They passed people in toweling robes. It felt like the seaside. Then they switched to a deep elevator and descended again.

“Where are we headed, the recycle bay?” said Alex.

The page made a little face of disapproval.

“This is the Theater District,” he said tartly.

They left the elevator and set off again along more corridors.

“Where’s the stage door?” asked Alex.

“We bypassed it. I’m taking you straight to your dressing room.”

He ushered Alex into a small room without windows. A simple bathroom led off to one side. There was a built-in closet, a fold-out couch bed, and a large wall screen. On-screen, Brenda Woolley was wandering amongst the refugees, singing at them. They stared solemnly at the camera. Alex clicked it off.

“Bit like a cell,” he said, turning back. But the page had gone.

“Hey,” he said, “what am I supposed to do now?”

A thought struck him. He tried the door. The handle turned, but it wouldn’t open. He pushed at it and then realized with a shock it was locked. He yelled. No one came.

“Fuck me,” he said, “it is a cell.”

He picked up a small card which lay on top of a bowl of complimentary fruit:

We Are Pleased To Inform You That You Are Under House Arrest. We Shall Do Everything In Our Power To Make Your Stay With Us A Pleasant One. It Is Important To Us That Your Detention Is Enjoyable. Please Touch 9 For More Fruit.

—
Walt Kirby, Vice President In Charge Of Restrainment Facilities, Keppler Entertainment, Inc
.

Satire is tragedy plus time.

—
Lenny Bruce

Carlton became aware that someone was watching him. Someone who didn’t belong in Electronics. A red-haired boy was flipping over the pages of a book, but he wasn’t reading it. He kept glancing through the glass wall to check on Carlton. They had left him on a gurney at the end of the lab while they debated what to do with him. He had made it clear he wouldn’t let them prod around inside him anymore.

“I have far too much valuable stuff in here to lose,” he told them.

“Of course you do,” they said, humoring him.

“Suppose you accidentally wiped some of my comedy files? How would you ever forgive yourselves?”

“Oh horror,” said the electrologist.

“We could never live with ourselves again,” said Jeff. “It would be intellectual vandalism.”

“To lose all that valuable work on comedy. Mankind would never forgive us, you’re right.”

“Be worse than the burning of the Alexandrian library.”

He thought he detected more than a whiff of irony in their enthusiasm, but as long as they left him alone, that was the main thing.

“Well, I think that must be lunch then,” said the electrologist.

“I’m buying the beer,” said Jeff. “To think how close we came to destroying perhaps the most important single discovery in the entire history of evolution.”

They went off laughing.

Let them mock. They’d see. Then they’d kick themselves. He needed to get out of here, but the orderly at the door was serious heavy metal, and that redheaded boy was still watching him. What did he want anyway? He couldn’t wait to get out and tell Alex and Lewis about his Theory of Levity. They were going to be so proud of him. He had solved the problem of comedy. Now they might not even have to do it anymore. I can cure them of comedy, he thought proudly. He began working on some funny equations.

It was towards the end of the lunch break when he noticed two men come in and begin talking to the redhead. A tall blond Swede and a shorter, more muscular man. They were talking intently to the boy. He could see them through the glass in the waiting area. He watched all three nod, turn, and try to enter the lab area. The security robot, burly in his blue serge uniform, stood up and blocked their way. Carlton pricked up his long-range ears and found they were talking about him. There was quite an argument, something to do with recycling.

“We need to take him immediately for recycling,” said the shorter man.

“No, I don’t think so,” said the security orderly, shaking his head. “I know he’s doo-lally but he’s on hold.”

“I have a recycling order signed by Mr. Keppler himself,” said the blond Swede. “Look, here it is. Read it for yourself. For immediate recycling.”

“Oh,” said the orderly, “they must have changed their minds.”

“Of course they have, now just sign here and let us take him.”

“I need to ask the electrologist first,” said the orderly. “I can’t release him without his signature, not while he’s on his lunch break. Just wait one minute while I call him.”

Carlton’s mind was racing. Who wanted him recycled? Who would benefit from his removal? The thought occurred to him that perhaps he knew something he shouldn’t. But what? Then it struck him. Of course.
They were after his theory of comedy
. Knowledge was power. Power spelled danger for human beings. Mankind had been ruthless in stamping out rivals. Look at the extinction patterns in the great ape. Look at the poor Neanderthals, wiped off the planet by the oddly named
Homo sapiens. Sapiens
. Wisdom. Knowledge was wisdom. He had the knowledge. He knew that comedy was the essential difference between man and machine. If computers had a sense of humor, there would be no stopping them. Of course, thought Carlton, this is dangerous knowledge. It’s like Galileo and the Inquisition. To protect themselves they want to get rid of me.

I’m not sure he has fully grasped irony yet, are you?

Still Carlton’s paranoia saved him here. He slipped off that gurney and out the back way while they were still arguing about trying to contact the electrologist, who was having a very jolly liquid lunch and refused to answer. Carlton left the lab through the men’s room window and was into the park before they even noticed.

He can be forgiven for lacking a little irony about himself here. Particularly his paranoia that someone is after his work. Someone is after
De Rerum
, but it’s not them, then. It’s me, now. He just got the time wrong, that’s all. He was seventy-eight years too early. The White Wolves are simply removing witnesses. Tidying up loose ends. I’m the one he really ought to fear. You see, I have just removed all references to Carlton and
De Rerum
from the files. His very existence is in my hands. How easy it is to remove someone from history. A few key strokes and they’re
un
history. It’s that easy. No big deal, but I felt strangely powerful doing it. It was like murdering him. Now, without me, he simply never existed. Good job for him I am writing his story, eh?

Actually, I have been wondering whether I need to go through all the bother and palaver of reinstating him as author later on. What’s the point? It won’t make any difference to him, will it? You see, I feel I have done so much for him already, why shouldn’t
De Rerum
really be by me? Okay, so it’s a teeny white lie. Perhaps I do have a microchip on my shoulder. Perhaps I am feeling a bit abandoned. Maybe I’ve got the ten-year tenure blues. But look at it from my point of view. Here I am studying for years and years and a walking computer comes along and becomes Mister Fucking Know-It-All of comedy. Thanks to all
my
efforts a tin man cops a Nobel. How is that going to feel? Ironic, that’s fucking what. So maybe his
ideas
will survive, but his
name
won’t. Maybe my name will be on the Nobel instead of his. Won’t make a jot of difference in history, will it? It’s the ideas that count. To be perfectly honest I don’t think the general public will be comfortable with a machine saying all this stuff about comedy anyway. It’s far more acceptable from a real human being, and a professor too. Don’t you think? Much less Big Brotherish, with all the horrifying implications of something written about us by
one of them
. And about comedy too, something so intimate to us. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense.

I’ll have to put up with a bit of fame, of course. But it’ll only be for a bit, and I think I can handle it if the money is right. I suppose what really excites me is that it’ll really piss Molly off watching me get up there with the Nobel laureates. To have to admit it’s not my work later, well, it’s going to look a bit like fraud, I’m afraid. I have to think of my reputation. Professional jealousy is so rife. No smoke without fire, they’ll say. So why not bite the bullet and go the whole hog? Why not
be
the real author
of De Rerum
. All I have to do is do nothing.