Madonna and the Starship (9781616961220) (11 page)

The A train whooshed out of the tunnel and screeched to a halt. Connie and I bid the three IRT tourists farewell, then climbed back to daylight, walked to Prince Street Station, and took the N train to Herald Square.

Our Galilean rabbi, Ezra Heifetz, a swarthy man who uncannily resembled Warner Sallman's iconic Jesus painting, had already secured a booth at Chock Full O' Nuts. Shortly after sidling into the compartment, Connie and I were joined by the muscular Calder Bolling and the massive Joel Seddok, of Cotter Pin and Sylvester Simian fame respectively. A Negro employee appeared—racial pluralism had been a Chock Full O' Nuts hiring norm even before Jackie Robinson became the company's vice president—and took our orders. We all selected the house specialties: coffee, egg sandwiches, a plateful of brownies. I glanced at my watch. Noon on the dot. Twenty-two hours till show time.

Waiting for our lunch to arrive, the five of us traded autobiographical anecdotes. Until this moment I hadn't realized that Calder had gotten his start as a Venusian gangster in a Republic serial called
Ghouls of the Stratosphere
, nor had I known that, after a knee injury terminated his wrestling career (and exempted him from the Army), Joel had reinvented himself portraying gorillas in horror comedies of the Bowery-Boys-East-Side-Kids-Three-Stooges variety, a résumé that put him in the running for the semicoveted role of Sylvester. As for Ezra, it turned out that incarnating Jesus was something of a family tradition, his grandfather having played the part in D. W. Griffith's
Intolerance
, his great uncle in
Ben-Hur
, and he himself in the recent MGM remake of
Quo Vadis
.

“Here's the funny thing,” said Ezra. “We're Jews.”

“So was Jesus,” noted Connie, distributing three scripts from the stack.

“I can compound the irony,” said Ezra. “We're
secular
Jews.”

“Jesus was, too, according to Donna Dain,” said Connie. “She believes his intention was to end religion and replace it with morality.”

The waiter reappeared, orders in hand. As we savored our meals, I offered a full account of the awards ceremony, the crustaceans' scandalized reaction to the “Sitting Shivah” rehearsal, the incinerated dressmaker's dummy, and our efforts to convince Wulawand and Volavont that
Not By Bread Alone
was sacrilegious. By way of countering our three actors' evident skepticism, I removed the Zorningorg Prize from my valise, set the trophy on the table, pulled away the cardigan, and, passing the goggles to Ezra, invited him to peer into the incandescent heart of Qualimosan culture.

The artifact proved persuasive, not only for Ezra but also for Calder and Joel. Something uncanny had fallen into my hands, a hallucination-machine whose provenance was either extraterrestrial or something equally fantastic. The instant I cloaked the prize once again our actors entered into a state of suspended disbelief and set about perusing “The Madonna and the Starship.”

“I have trouble believing Ogden's on board with this,” said Ezra upon turning the last page. “He's more reverent than God.”

“Ogden's taking a vacation,” said Connie. “I'll be in the control room on Sunday, calling the shots. I'm counting on you all to show up in character and off the book. Come to conference room C at eight o'clock sharp.”

“In other words, we're directing ourselves,” said Calder, frowning.

“What other choice is there?” Connie replied.

“We could assassinate the Qualimosans,” Calder suggested.

“The X-13 has already been placed on standby alert,” I explained. “If the navigator of the aliens' spaceship, a creature called Yaxquid, doesn't hear from Wulawand by twenty minutes after ten tomorrow, the death-ray will fire automatically.”

“What if we just lock 'em up somewhere?” asked Joel. “The price of their freedom will be deactivating the X-13.”

“Assault Wulawand and Volavont?” said Connie. “They probably have sidearm blasters. Don't you ever watch
Brock Barton and His Rocket Rangers
?”

“Believe me, our best hope is this script,” I said, “not some reckless Errol Flynn derring-do.”

“Since the death-ray will be riding the NBC carrier wave, maybe we could simply disconnect the transmitter before the broadcast,” Joel persisted. “Okay, sure, hundreds of thousands of
Bread Alone
viewers would probably change channels to some
other
religious program, for which the network will never forgive us, but that's better than letting everybody die.”

“I don't mind boosting the ratings for
Lamp Unto My Feet
,” said Connie, “but the Qualimosans
themselves
might switch to that show, and then the jig would
really
be up.”

Calder tapped his script with a silver-plated cigarette lighter. “You know what's going to happen, don't you? After this thing hits the airwaves, we'll all be out of work.”

“Worse than that,” said Joel. “Everybody connected with
Bread Alone
and
Brock Barton
will be out of work.”

“Speaking for myself, I'm looking on the bright side.” Ezra dunked a brownie in his coffee. He bit off a soggy morsel, chewed pensively, and laid a palm on his script. “A Messiah driven mad by his premature burial,” he said in measured tones. “Hey, Connie, hey, Kurt—this is meaty stuff. Jesus as Quixote, as Lear, Ahab, Raskolnikov. I'm salivating like Pavlov's dog. Sure, I'll probably get some bad press in
Daily Variety
, ‘Yid Thespian Ridicules Redeemer in Blasphemous Broadcast,' but, hey, I can live with it.”

“Actually, I'm pretty darned excited, too,” said Joel. “How often does an actor get to play a gorilla who introduces Jesus Christ to Charles Darwin?”

“Thanks for the line, ‘Miracles are like the gods—capricious, cruel, and wholly unreliable,'” said Calder. “Delicious.”

“I see just one hitch,” said Ezra. “So the Qualimosans go home without committing mass murder—great—but how do we know they won't monitor a regular
Bread Alone
broadcast next month and realize they've been hornswoggled?”

“Kurt worries about that, too,” said Connie. “In theory we could write and produce a very different script, calculated to make the crustaceans see the limitations of their
Weltanschauung
, but the clock is against us.”

“Let's not allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good,” Calder told the group.

“Saving two million lives sounds like a fine morning's work to me,” added Joel. “I think we should settle for that.”

Ezra snorted and said nothing.

I unveiled my trophy, slipped on the visor, and surveyed the nearest facet. No doubt my sleep-deprived brain was playing tricks on me, but I thought I saw an impish creature cavorting across a meadow strewn with glittering diamonds.
Calder is right,
the Demon of Regret told me,
you must not let the perfect become the enemy of the good—but neither should you let the good become the friend of the atrocious.

“By the way, this lunch is on NBC,” said Connie, signaling our waiter. “I have a subsistence expense account.”

“Then let's have another cup of coffee,” said Joel.

“More brownies,” said Calder.

“The best bottle of champagne in the Chock Full O' Nuts cellar,” said Ezra.

I continued to contemplate the iridescent triangle. The Demon of Regret vanished. Like an immense colony of fireflies, the diamonds rose from the meadow to ornament a seamless black sky, forming constellations that presumably illustrated some Qualimosan equivalent of pagan mythology. But the substance of these stories was opaque to me, narratives from another world, so I closed my eyes, removed the goggles, and, like a magician covering a bird cage prior to making a canary disappear, dropped the cardigan back over my prize.

ANYTHING FOR OVALTINE

he instant I beheld Eliot and the Qualimosans milling around on the steps of the American Museum of Natural History, the aliens still bedecked in their sandwich boards, I concluded that my roommate's scheme had succeeded. Waving their subway maps around like pennants, the lobsters comported themselves with the glee of children who'd just seen an especially splendid performance by the Rockettes. Of course, it would be foolish to take Wulawand and Volavont themselves to see the famous Radio City Music Hall show—they were certain to become bored and flee into the metropolis at large, soon spotting evidence that Earthlings were more enamored of the metaphysical than they'd assumed—but luckily I had an ace named Saul Silver up my sleeve.

“Nowhere on Qualimosa can an aficionado of the arts visit anything as magnificent as your Interborough Rapid Transit,” Wulawand declared.

“Sorry we couldn't join you,” I said, setting down my valise, its interior crammed with my award and the nine remaining teleplays. “At least Miss Osborne and I finished our script about Norwegian fisheries.”

“O Eliot Thornhill, you are a virtuoso tour guide,” said Volavont to my roommate.

“Not the first time an unemployed actor has worked as a docent,” said Eliot.

“We especially enjoyed the subterranean gallery called Times Square,” said Volavont.

“‘Come and meet those dancing feet,'” sang Connie, “‘on the avenue I'm takin' you to, Forty-Second Street.'”

“Mr. Thornhill performed that same song for us,” said Volavont. “‘Little nifties from the Fifties, innocent and sweet,'” he sang. “‘Sexy ladies from the Eighties, who are indiscreet.'” A carillon of
squonk, squonk, squonk
laughter pealed from his throat. “‘They're side by side, they're glorified, where the underworld can meet the elite, naughty, bawdy, gaudy, sporty Forty-Second Street'!”

“Speaking of the Eighties, our next destination is just around the corner,” I said. “Saul Silver, editor of America's premier science-fiction magazine, has invited you to dine with him on macaroni and cheese. Reading
Andromeda
as a teenager made me the atheist rationalist logical positivist I am today.”

“We shall happily accede to Mr. Silver's request,” said Wulawand. “On Qualimosa we, too, have science-fiction periodicals, although
Rocket Sagas
and
Comet Angst
are surely inferior to your
Andromeda
.”

“Will you and Miss Osborne be joining the party?” asked Volavont.

“I'm afraid we've got an emergency conference at the studio,” I replied, shaking my head. “You'll find Mr. Silver a little peculiar—he suffers from agoraphobia—but he's got the finest mind in the business.”

Eliot announced that he must now “revisit the aesthetic pleasures of the IRT,” as he had a ticket to see Arthur Kennedy and E. G. Marshall in
The Crucible
that night at the Martin Beck and wanted “to grab some dinner first at a midtown automat.” Before Eliot strode away, the lobsters offered him their gratitude for “a visually munificent and acoustically nutritive afternoon.”

I decided to accompany my roommate on his one-block walk to the 81st Street Station, taking the opportunity to thank him for confining Wulawand and Volavont to a secular zone during the Chock Full O' Nuts meeting.

“So how's the big broadcast shaping up?” he asked.

“I'm guardedly optimistic. That said, if you know anybody who watches
Not By Bread Alone
, tell him to skip tomorrow's installment.”

Ten minutes later, Connie, the crustaceans, and I stood shoulder-to-carapace in the atrium of Saul Silver's building. I pressed the buzzer. Gladys trundled up from the basement, admitted us to the foyer, and promptly lost her composure, chortling like a schoolgirl being mischievous in church.

“You Flash Gordon guys will do
anything
to get into Mr. Silver's magazine, won't you?” she said, looking Wulawand in her compound eye. “He'll love your getups, but if you
really
want to impress him, bring him a blow-up floozy next time.” She offered me a conspiratorial wink. “He thinks I don't know about Zelda and Zoey.”

“We are not Flash Gordon guys,” Wulawand insisted, “and we have no desire to write for
Andromeda
.”

“Mr. Silver is expecting us,” added Volavont. “We are here to eat macaroni and talk about the cosmos.”

“Who are Zelda and Zoey?” Connie asked me as Gladys guided us up the stairs.

“Sexy ladies from the Eighties,” I said.

Arriving at the threshold of apartment 3C, the adjacent landing still crowded with back issues of
Amazing
,
Astounding
, and
Fantastic
, Gladys disengaged the lock and ushered us into the living room. Saul's fox terrier leaped off the couch and began barking at the lobsters, calming down the instant Gladys said, “Now, Ira, that's no way to greet folks who've come all the way from Neptune to see us.”

Saul was seated behind his desk, scribbling furiously in the margins of a manuscript, his face obscured by three precarious piles of unsolicited fiction, most of it residing in sealed Manila envelopes. The Admiral TV was tuned to a Dodgers game—which made no sense, the season having ended two months earlier.

“Forgive me for not rising,” said Saul to the lobsters. “I have a condition.”

“You need never ask our forgiveness, O Saul Silver, whose magazine made Kurt Jastrow the atheist rationalist logical positivist he is today,” said the female crustacean, removing her sandwich board. “Call me Wulawand.”

“I am Volavont.” The male crustacean likewise shed his disguise, then employed his triadic orbs to scan the exhibit of
Andromeda
cover paintings.

“Ebbets Field?” I said, pointing to the TV. “What the hell are the Dodgers doing playing in November?”

“That's a documentary movie about Jackie Robinson,” Saul explained. “A real
mensch
. When he gets too old to play the game, I hope they retire his number.” He scrutinized the lobsters. “I saw you on my cathode-ray tube yesterday, giving Kurt his award. For three years now, Uncle Wonder has been saving the galaxy from God, and it was high time the galaxy stopped taking him for granted. Uncle Wonder, I mean, not God.”

“Maybe your magazine will receive a Zorningorg Prize some day,” said Wulawand.

“That would certainly ramp up the circulation.” Saul pitched me a grin. “Is that your trophy in the bag, Kurt? Bring it here.”

I set my valise on Saul's desk and removed the cloaked prism. “It's like Medusa,” I said, retrieving the trinocular goggles. “Perseus had his shield, and you'll need this visor.”

Instead of donning the goggles and contemplating the kaleidoscopic triangles, Saul pointed to my colleague and said, “And this darling creature must be Connie Osborne.
Enchanté
.”

“
Moi aussi
,” said Connie.

With all the nonchalance I could muster, I slipped a copy of “The Madonna and the Starship” from my valise and surreptitiously inserted it in a slush pile. “Connie equates
Andromeda
with something she calls ‘that Buck Rogers stuff,' but we're friends anyway.”

“Permit me to suggest that even Buck Rogers stuff is not Buck Rogers stuff,” said Saul to Connie.

“I intend to look into your famous publication,” she said. “Where should I start? I've heard almost anything by Kurt Jastrow is worth reading.”

“A gift for Miss Osborne,” said Saul, lifting an
Andromeda
from his desk and passing it to me. I delivered the issue to Connie. “Our latest number, hot off the presses,” the great man continued. “Are you favorably disposed toward satire, my dear? Then I recommend ‘A Child of the Millennium' by Manfred Glass. If you're a ban-the-bomb sort of gal, try ‘The Last Countdown' by Terrence Murgeon. As it happens, they're both coming over later for our Saturday night poker game. Their insomnia's even worse than mine.”

I'd participated in a West 82nd Street seven-card stud
tournament only once in my life, and that was quite enough. The pulp-meisters of Prospect Park—Manny Glass and Terry Murgeon—had emptied my pockets to the last speck of lint.

“I love poker,” said Connie. “Alas, Kurt and I'll be working at the studio during your bluffing marathon.”

“I love it, too,” said Wulawand.

“You have poker on Qualimosa?” asked Saul.

“The rules are so logical and self-evident that the game has evolved independently on many worlds, as did chess and mahjong,” said Volavont. “Seven-card stud, I daresay, is a universal constant, rather like electron mass and the speed of light.”

“Then we'll have to deal you both in tonight,” said Saul. “We'll play till mid-morning, then flip on the TV and look at that amusing religious satire—what's it called?—
Not By Bread Alone
.”

“As Mr. Jastrow and Miss Osborne will tell you, we have taken a profound interest in tomorrow's installment,” said Wulawand, retrieving both the ocarina-shaped transceiver and the gold lamé cloth from beneath her carapace. “Shortly after the program begins, we may have to suspend this impervious veil in front of the picture tube, contact the navigator of our orbiting spaceship”—she stroked the sinister sweet potato—“and speak with him concerning an X-13 death-ray.”

“Our goal being to exterminate a hive of irrationalist vermin thriving on your planet,” said Volavont.

“Irrationalist vermin deserve nothing better,” said Saul, assuming an impeccable poker face.

“Perhaps you can settle a controversy for us,” said Volavont. “In a high-low game, the best possible low hand is ace-two-three-four-five, correct?”

“Uh-huh,” said Saul.

“But would that sequence not constitute a straight?” asked Wulawand.

“Not according to the standard rules.”

“I told you so,” said Volavont,
squonk-squonk-squonking
in Wulawand's face.

“I'm hoping that, before Manny and Terry get here, you marvelous invertebrates might help me catch up on my work.” Saul rested his hand on the tallest tower of submissions. “You'll be able to tell within a page or two whether a manuscript's worth reading.”

“On Qualimosa the science-fiction authors are stuck in a rut,” said Wulawand. “Last month
Rocket Sagas
and
Comet Angst
both published stories that end, ‘And her name was Eve.'”

“You have an Adam and Eve legend on your planet?” asked Saul.

“You would be surprised how many Milky Way bards sing of a primordial sexually-reproducing couple,” said Volavont. “On Qualimosa we call them Filbone and Fonia. The irrationalist faction in our civil war regards them as historical figures.”

“Another breakthrough for Alpha Enterprises!” I declared. “‘Subscribe to
Andromeda
, the only science-fiction magazine whose slush pile is read by actual aliens!'”

“I wonder, would the average SF writer rather have his story accepted by me or a couple of guest editors from Procyon?” Saul slipped on the goggles, pulled away the cardigan, and leaned toward the prism. “Good heavens!”

“Your question is not difficult,” said Wulawand. “He would rather his story were blessed by
you
, O Saul Silver.”

“If I believed in a Supreme Being, I would swear I'm staring into his brain!” Saul declared. “A billion divine neurons, flashing on and off! Apocalyptic glowworms! The electric eels of
Ein Sof
!” Panting and gulping, he removed the goggles and set them on his desk. “There is no God, and he lives in this prism.”