Dayworld (21 page)

The artists, however, could put in as many hours as they wished to make sure that the project was done in time or to raise the quality.

The arrangement was not one that most artists liked. In fact, most of them, including Repp, detested it. They could do nothing about it except to make a formal organized protest. This they had done several times. So far, without success.

Nevertheless, although the schedule was the only really important item for the government, aside from the budget, of course, the monitors kept a close watch on the time put in by the artists.

Some things had not changed since the ancient days of Hollywood. Repp, for instance, was getting triple credits because he was the chief scriptwriter, the chief director, and a lead actor. He had used his own influence and that of an immer on the visual arts committee to secure three simultaneous positions. The political jockeying and jousting had cost Repp many evenings, not to mention many credits for giving parties, but the effort had been worth it. If he could keep the triple positions for his next show, he could get a bigger apartment. If one was available.

Work moved along smoothly if the squabbles and arguments and subtle insults were not considered. These, however, were a part of TV and empathorium-making and to be taken in stride. The first two scenes scheduled for the morning were graphed and regraphed until perfect. Repp had a short but hot dispute with Bakaffa, the government censor, over the use of holographed subtitles. Repp claimed that they distracted the viewer and were not necessary because they had been in so many shows that the audience knew what the archaic words were. Bakaffa insisted that “nigger” and “wop” and “saw-bones” and “accumulation of interest” and “gat” and “rod” and “pansy” and “morphadite” would not be understood by at least half the audience. Whether they did or did not understand these ancient words made no difference. The government required that all such be explained in subtitles.

Repp lost, but he had the satisfaction of driving Bakaffa close to tears. He was not sadistic. He just wanted to make Bakaffa earn his extra pay as a government informer.

At ten minutes after one, during the third scene, the main character’s left leg suddenly shrank to half its length. The technicians tried to locate the malfunction in the holograph-projector, but they failed because the trouble-shooting equipment had also malfunctioned.

“OK,” Repp said. “It’s twenty minutes to lunchtime, anyway. We’ll eat now. Maybe the trouble’ll be fixed by the time we get back.”

After he had eaten, he strode down the wide corridor of the first floor from the sandwich shop. The sun coming through the story-high windows shone whitely on his Western outfit, and his high heels clickety-clicked loudly. Many recognized him, and some stopped him to get his autograph. He spoke his name and ID number into their recorders, said he was sure glad to meet them, and strode on. There was one embarrassing though not entirely unpleasing incident. A beautiful young woman begged him to take her to his or her apartment and do what he would. He turned her down graciously, but when she got on her knees and put both arms around his legs, he had to call to two organics to pry her loose.

“No charges,” he told them. “Just see that she doesn’t impede this pilgrim’s progress.”

“I love you, Wyatt!” the woman cried out after him. “Ride me like a pony! Fire me like a six-shooter!”

Red-faced but grinning as he got on the elevator, Repp muttered, “Jesus Christ!”

Since he and his wife had agreed to be chaste while they were separated by her Chilean expedition, he had not bedded a woman. He was honest enough to admit to himself that his celibacy had not been based solidly on morality or lack of desire for any but his wife. He needed a rest from sex; he had to recharge his battery, as it were. Though he had a wife on every day but Sunday, more than one on Thursday, and thus each day should have been stimulated afresh, much like a rooster in a barnyard, he was sometimes not up to the freshness and the challenge. His gonads did not use the same system or arithmetic as his mind.

Feeling good because he was wanted but did not want, he walked into his office and sat down at his desk. Strips displayed messages for him, number-one priority being from his wife, Jane-John. She looked happy because she was coming home next Friday. Stoned, she would be loaded into a plane on Saturday, tomorrow, and delivered to the airport the same day. From there, she would be cargoed via dirigible to the Thirteen-Principles Towers. He was to pick her up next Friday at one in the morning. Or, if he could not make it, she would take a taxi.

Jane-John Wilford Denpasat was a beautiful dark-skinned woman with depigged blonde hair and depigged blue eyes.

“I love my work, Wyatt, but it’s getting to be a drag because we have to be transported two hundred miles every day from the digs to the nearest stoning station. And I miss you terribly. See you soon, bucko. I can hardly wait.”

Waiting was easy for her despite what she had said. Unconscious people did not fret and fume or get nervous. And, though he would not be stoned every day until next Friday, he would be someone else and so not thinking about her. New Era society did have its disadvantages, but it also had many benefits. Check and balance; tit for tat; give and take; loss and profit.

Though the strips had not shown a chess move since Tuesday, Repp still felt disappointed that there was none today. He thought of Yankev Gril—Jimmy Cricket—and felt keen regret that their game had had to be dropped. Where was Gril now? Still playing in Washington Square Park? In jail? Stoned and awaiting trial? Or convicted and permanently stoned?

His other messages concerned business. The most important was a reminder that he was a guest on the
ILL Show.
He should be in the studio at 7:30, and he would be on at 8:00 sharp.

No immer had tried to get into contact with him via strip or in person. That omission was, he supposed, good news.

21.

At the end of the workday, Repp taxied home. After working out on a gym set, he showered and then ate a light supper. He arrived at the Thirteen-Principles Towers Building at exactly 7:25 P.M. and was in the studio at 7:30. Here he was made comfortable by the secretary of the host of the
ILL Show,
Ras Irving Lenin Lundquist. During coffee, he read the strip display that described the guest list and the topics and suggested a few witty remarks he might like to make.

At 8:40, Repp left the studio. He was satisfied with his performance, though several of Lundquist’s remarks had stung him. It was good publicity to be seen on the
ILL Show,
hosted by the self-styled Gray Monk of the Mind. Lundquist avoided the showy and flamboyant and went for the serious and the intellectual. Instead of dazzling stage scenes and a startling and flashy costume, the studio room was modeled like the host’s idea of a medieval monk’s cell. Clad in a gray robe, he sat on a chair behind a desk on a platform that was a foot higher than the guests’ chairs. Lundquist was thus able to give the impression that he was the inquisitor-general of Spain and that his guests were on trial. During the nasty questions and comments he hurled at Repp, Repp made the studio audience laugh. He asked Lundquist when he was bringing in the rack and the iron maiden. Because the
ILL Show
audience was composed mostly of the better-educated or those who thought they were, Repp could be assured that it understood the references. That was one of the reasons Repp had exposed himself to the barbs and insults. Another was that he hoped to give as good as or better than he got. Also, it was well known that Lundquist, no matter how he seemed to despise his guests, invited only those he thought had somehow managed to get at least in the neighborhood of his intellectual eminence.

Lundquist attacked Repp on the premise that his character was insecure and shaky.

“You seem to be hung up on role-changing and shapeshifting, Ras Repp. I need enumerate only a few of your movies, which reflect this obsession, this compulsion, which, in turn, reflects the basic core of your being. Or perhaps I should say, reflects the
lack
of stable identity. There are, for instance,
The Count of Monte Cristo, The Odyssey, Proteus at Miami, Helen of Troy,
and
Custer and Crazy Horse: Two Parallels That Met.

“All these have to do with disguises, hallucinations, or illusions about identity, or changing of shapes and, hence, change of identity or a seeming change. Curiously enough, you are best known as the man who writes the best Westerns. In fact, as the man who resurrected the Western drama, which had been dead for a thousand years. Some say, better dead.

“Yet those works which have attracted the attention and even the blessing of
some
art critics have not been Westerns. Except, of course, for your
Custer and Crazy Horse.
And that is a most curious Western. Custer and Crazy Horse both get the idea that they’ll go to a medicine man, get shape-changing powers from the medicine man, adopt each other’s shapes, and lead their enemies to their deaths. Of course, neither knows that the other is doing this. Thus, Custer-as-Crazy Horse kills Crazy Horse-as-Custer, and then, unable to change his shape, is killed by whites.”

Lundquist smiled his infamous smile, which had been likened to, among other things, a vagina with teeth.

“I have it from a reliable source that your current work-in-progress,
Dillinger Didn’t Die,
is based on a remarkably similar idea. In fact, your protagonist, the ancient bank robber, escapes from the FBI, the organics of the twentieth century, by magically turning into a woman. He does this by getting his moll, I mean, his woman lover, Billie Frechette, an Indian of the Wisconsin Menominee tribe, to take him to the tabu abode of Wabosso, the Great White Hare, the Menominee Trickster. This creature of ancient Indian legend and folk tale gives Dillinger the power to turn into a woman at an appropriate time.

“And so, when the FBI starts closing in, Dillinger gets Jimmy Lawrence, a petty crook whose days are numbered because of his heart trouble, to pose as him. Then Dillinger becomes Ann Sage, a Chicago madam of a Chicago whorehouse, and has the real Ann Sage kidnaped by friends and taken to Canada. Then, if my informant is correct, Dillinger-as-Ann-Sage goes to the Biograph Theater with Lawrence-as-Dillinger after telling the FBI that they’ll be there. The pseudo-Dillinger is shot and killed by the FBI. Dillinger-as-Ann-Sage walks away from the execution.”

Lundquist sneered, and the studio audience laughed loudly.

“In other words, your protagonist takes the identity of a woman,
becomes
a woman. I understand that you are planning a sequel,
Guns and Gonads
...”

Lundquist sneered again, and the audience laughed even more loudly.

“ ... in which Dillinger has great difficulty with the social, economic, and emotional identity of a woman. Eventually, he adapts, and he even comes to like being a woman. He, she, rather, marries, has children, and then goes back to a life of crime as a female whose gang is composed of her sons and their gunmolls. She has quite a colorful, if violent, career under the name of Ma Barker but is finally killed, her guns blazing in a final but futile gesture of defiance, by the organics.

“However, my data banker tells me that Ann Sage lived to a ripe old age and certainly did not suffer a rich sea-change of sex or identity. Ma Barker was born in A.D. 1872, whereas Dillinger was born in A.D. 1903. By no stretch of anyone’s imagination, except yours, could the two be identical. There is such a thing as carrying artistic license too far, Ras Repp. I suggest that you have carried it off into Cloud-Cuckoo-Land, emphasis on the Cuckoo.

“Still, these two lived so long ago that historical anachronism is of little importance. In which case, why didn’t you drag Robin Hood in? Though I suppose that he would have turned out to be Maid Marian!”

The audience hooted and roared.

“Do not all these repetitions of a theme, your inability to use a different idea, your constant hammering at the problem of identity, betray your insecurity and doubts about your own identity? Doesn’t that undoubted mental instability require examination by the government psychicists?”

The audience was in an uproar. Repp was taken aback by this unexpected disclosure about his drama. While he should have been thinking about his reply, he was wondering which of his colleagues had leaked the information about the movie.

As the cries and boos trailed away, he decided that he would have to start his own inquisition next Friday. After work hours, of course. Meanwhile, he had better take care of Lundquist.

He rose from the chair, stuck his thumbs in his big belt, and swaggered across the platform to the “pulpit.” Standing, he was able to stare down at Lundquist despite the host’s elevated chair. Lundquist was still smiling, but he blinked furiously. He did not like having to look up at his guest.

“Pilgrim, those are hard words, and I’m glad you smiled when you said them. Now, if these were the old days, I’d punch you in the nose.”

Lundquist and the audience gasped.

“But these are nonviolent and civilized times. I’ve contracted not to sue you for anything you say about me. And you can’t sue me, either. It’s a no-holds-barred, kick-in-the-nuts-or-what-have-you, gouge-eyes-out, half-alligator, half-bear-wrestling-and-ear-chewing show. Verbally, that is.

“So, I say you’re a liar and a word-twister and a fact-bender. Out of sixty movies I’ve made, only nine have been about shape-changing and role-exchanging. Any fool can see that I’m not hung up or obsessed with the problem of identity. Any fool but you, I reckon. As for your careless and malicious remark about my mental instability, if I did have a screw loose, I would’ve popped you one. See how calm I am? See this hand? Is it shaking? It’s not, but if it did, who’d blame me?

“What I am, Ras Lundquist, is the Bach of the drama. I play infinite variations on a single theme.”

“Bach is turgid,” Lundquist said, sneering.