Passing Through the Flame (42 page)

“Right on!”

Ivan got up, began pacing, turning his blue eyes on the staff of the
Flash
; on Suzanne; on Rod McAllister of the People’s Alliance, Ruby Berger from the Militant Student’s Action Committee, and Ory Battenburg from the Sunshine Conspiracy, three heavies from out of town whom he had been able to materialize in Los Angeles on two days’ notice.

Ivan looked at Stein and sat down beside him, a gesture that Stein understood and appreciated. “Barry and I have been kicking it around, and here’s
our
vision for Sunset City,” he said. “A revolutionary committee seizes control of the stage and the PA equipment, turns the festival over to the people, and reconstitutes it as the Parliament of Woodstock Nation. We go beyond passing resolutions. We go beyond education. When the four days of the festival are over, we leave something permanent and beautiful behind. The facilities that handle a quarter of a million people for four days can be converted into facilities to support a permanent population of ten or twenty thousand indefinitely. A permanent capital, a liberated zone, a parliament of tribes, a new beginning!” Eyes burned, though mouths were creased in skepticism. “That’s a nice little speech, Ivan,” McAllister said. “But what does it mean in concrete terms?”

Ivan Blue shrugged. “I’m a visionary, not an organizer,” he said. “Barry knows how to work out details... tell them how you see it, man.”

Stein felt the power being passed to him like a relay team’s baton. Ivan sucked in his vibes and passed the meeting over to him. This was the key moment; it was up to him to show them the bridge between fantasy and reality.

“Okay, first we seize control of the stage and the PA equipment so we can communicate with the people,” Stein said. “Once this is done, we announce our intentions and ask for the people’s endorsement. Once we have a quarter of a million people with us, Beck and Taub can’t do anything to stop us short of getting troops called in. Then we constitute a Parliament of Woodstock Nation, consisting of representatives of every conceivable political and cultural group in the counterculture, and representatives chosen by the people on the spot. This parliament will be the governing body of Sunset City. It’ll write a constitution and a manifesto and ask for twenty thousand people to stay after the festival is over. Committees on food, sanitation, public order, and so forth will be set up, and for the first time in history, the Movement will be in physical control of a piece of actual territory. After that, it’s up to the people.”

“Yeah, right,” Ivan said. “See, it
can
be done!”

“What about the pigs?” Dick O’Brian said.

“How many rentacops can Beck have?” Stein said. “Not enough to fight a quarter of a million people.”

“I mean the
real
pigs. What happens when everyone goes home? The pigs and the national guard move in on the ten or twenty thousand people who are left.”

“Maybe we keep everyone there while we negotiate with the authorities?”

“How is this city of twenty thousand brothers and sisters supposed to survive?” Ruby Berger asked. “I mean, how are they going to eat?”

“We’ll have to establish an economic base,” Stein said. “Farming. Support from people all over the nation. I hate to say it, but tourism will have to be a major factor initially, and with ten or twenty thousand people living in the world’s only true liberated zone, creating the Aquarian Age instead of dreaming about it, I think we’ll have quite an attraction.”

“We could get a lot of the right kind of people to move their operations into the new capital,” Ory Battenburg said. “Recording artists, headshop supply manufacturing, craftsmen of all kinds.”

“Right on!” O’Brian said. “In fact, there’ll be lots of craft and clothing people exhibiting as part of the People’s World’s Fair that Beck and Taub are setting up. All we have to do is persuade them to stay.”

“And Eden Records is very kindly supplying us with first-rate recording equipment to rip off,” Stein said.

“And what about all the movie equipment that’ll be there? We can produce films.”

“I’d be willing to move the
Flash
to Sunset City,” Stein said impulsively. “If we could raise the bread to set up a printing plant.” My God, why not? I could just let everything here go bankrupt and leave Marvin nothing but the name of the paper and the debts. We could get all the comic publishers and underground papers and maybe even
Rolling Stone
to form a printing cooperative and print
everything
on our own ground.

“What about a free dope zone? We could protect big dealers in return for ten percent of the gross in taxation.”

“We could manufacture acid.”

“Grow pot as a cash crop.”

“Right on!”

Ivan clapped Stein on the shoulder. “Hey, we’ve done it, haven’t we?” he said. “They believe. They
believe.”
His whole body seemed to vibrate. He was drunk on his own charisma.

“—bike shops for the Hell’s Angels—”

“—city of geodesic domes—”

Ideas and energy were humming around the room like a swarm of frantic bees, but it was all becoming unfocused, trailing off into fantasy. Even Ivan doesn’t seem to realize that this has to be kept on a practical plane. You can’t run a revolution on pure belief. This has got to be my scene, Stein realized. Ivan can supply the energy, the charisma, but I’ve got to be the one to keep our feet on the ground, to prevent this from becoming a farce.

“—recognition by Algeria and Cuba—”

“—negotiations for repatriation of all political prisoners—”

“Hold on a second!” Stein shouted over the hubbub. “Let’s get our shit together before we take off for the promised land.”

The cross-conversation guttered and died, and Barry Stein found himself the focal point of a small sea of young faces. I’m the oldest man here, he realized. I’m the heaviest head. I’m the only one who knows how to deal with the operating realities of the society we’re in. Ivan’s got to be the front man, he’s got to be the focus of most of the glory, but the
responsibility
is mine. No one ever called Ivan Blue responsible. I’m the grand old man of this particular revolution.

It was an exhilarating and at the same time rather saddening satori.

“First of all, we’ve got to keep our mouths shut,” Stein said. “None of this must be repeated to anyone prematurely. If Jango Beck were to find out beforehand....” He shuddered, remembering Beck’s outburst in the High Castle, remembering the hard coldness in his voice that said that Jango Beck was capable of just about anything if pushed far enough. Up to and including the snuffing of his enemies.

Stein saw that the mention of Beck had sobered them down somewhat. No one here was unaware of Beck’s reputation. This was not a rip-off of Bill Graham or some fly-by-night promoter. This was a revolutionary act against a real heavyweight. This was going to be the real thing. For keeps.

“Second, before we start thinking of what we’re going to do after we seize Sunset City, we’re going to have to have concrete plans for the take-over. We need a committee to make those plans, and no more people than absolutely necessary should know exactly what they are.”

“I nominate Barry to head the revolutionary committee,” Ivan said, predictably enough.

“Second.”

“Anyone else?” Stein asked, knowing that there was no other logical choice.

“Ivan Blue,” Battenburg said.

“Second.”

Stein took a short breath. The last thing we need now is a factional fight. “Look,” he said, “I don’t want to be the chairman of any committee, and I don’t think Ivan does either. This committee shouldn’t be large enough to
need
a chairman. Ivan and I can work together without either of us running a trip like that. I propose a committee consisting of Ivan, myself, and Ruby Berger. Without a chairman. A committee of equals.”

“Right on!”

“Second the motion.”

The resolution passed by general consent. Ruby Berger was a good choice for the third member because she had organizing experience, because she was a woman, and because she had no ties to either the
Flash
or Ivan Blue. Ivan gave Stein a funny look, but Stein knew that he’d realize that this was for the best once the committee started functioning.

“This committee is not empowered to do anything beyond organizing the seizure,” McAllister said. “I want that understood.”

“Once we’ve taken over the festival, this committee will dissolve itself,” Stein assured him. “The people themselves will choose their own permanent leaders, in proper democratic fashion.”

“Once we have a duly constituted body to turn things over to, that’s what we’ll do,” Ivan said. “We’ll need proposed programs, of course, but any representative of any group or any brother or sister who wants to will have an opportunity to speak. The people will decide everything.”

“Power to the people!”

Ivan raised his fist mechanically into the air, but once more Stein saw that uncharacteristic expression of rage on his face, that personal hatred that he had seen in the High Castle.

“Right on!” Ivan shouted. He pointed his middle finger at the ceiling, and abruptly his expression changed, became the familiar, almost impish Ivan. “And the finger to Jango Beck!”

John Horst slowly chewed a morsel of cheese omelet as he watched Paul Conrad heartily attack his chef’s salad, seemingly unaffected by the honor of dining in the executives’ lounge with the head of the studio. Perversely, he found himself liking the kid for this very indifference to the ceremonial import of the occasion. How many times have I had my stomach turned at lunch by brown-nosing producers and directors? This kid seems utterly blind to the whole traditional complex of studio relations. Either that, or he just doesn’t give a damn.

Being forced to helplessly preside over the slow downward slide of Eden Pictures, a slide produced by forces beyond any one man’s control—the inevitable erosion of feature-film box-office receipts in the face of free television without a corresponding decline in production costs—Horst had lost his reverence for the traditional Hollywood studio system at whose shaky pinnacle he stood. The old-line directors and producers who still thought a million-dollar film could be considered cheap were lead weights tied to the feet of the drowning studios. The only bigger set of cement overshoes were the unions, which were producing their own high unemployment rates by keeping budgets so bloated that Hollywood was being priced out of the world film market.

Kids like Conrad, who had never ridden the old-time gravy train, who were thinking in terms of fifty thousand dollars when they uttered the words “low budget,” were the hope of the Hollywood industry. If that meant that they considered studio heads something less than all-powerful father figures, that was a price Horst was willing to pay. Give a half-million-dollar budget to the kind of ass-kissing loxes I’ve been employing for the past ten years, and they scream cheapskate. Give the same budget to a creative kid like Conrad, and he secretly considers you wastefully extravagant.

“So I thought we should get better acquainted, Paul, seeing you’re going to start shooting in three weeks,” Horst said, sipping at his coffee.

“I appreciate that, Mr. Horst, I really do,” Conrad said, smiling a conspiratorial smile, hardly the usual expression of a young director toward his ultimate boss. “After all, if we’re honest with ourselves about it, you and I are the only people involved in this project who really know anything about movies. Taub knows nothing at all, Jango’s a great promoter, but he has no experience with film.... I’m not exactly a seasoned old pro, but you’re the only person on this whole damn project who even knows as much as I do.”

There was something totally outrageous in Conrad’s sincerity—was this simply a more sophisticated form of brownnosing? “You wouldn’t be shining me on, would you, Paul?”

Conrad’s face became a shade grimmer; he seemed suddenly older, more mature. “Consider the real situation, Mr. Horst, and you can answer the question yourself.”

Horst was warmed by a sudden surge of communal feeling between Conrad and himself, the exact sort of intergenerational communion he longed for, and found so utterly lacking, in his relationship with his two sponging sons. He’s right—we
are
the only two people on this project who can regard each other as competent fellow professionals, even with twenty years of my experience separating us. But how ballsy of him to come out and say it! If only Rich and Tod could be like that, instead of using my name to make starlets and terrorize creative talent, and then sneering at me behind my back. Oh, yes, I like this kid!

“I see what you mean,” Horst said. “I want you to feel that you can talk to me on a working basis, that you can turn to me for advice as one professional to another, without my position as studio head getting in the way.”

Conrad sipped at his coffee, looking at his plate. “I’m really glad you feel that way,” he said. “Because I’d like to talk frankly with you about something....”

“Something you’re nervous about?”

Conrad smiled wryly. “I start shooting in three weeks, I don’t have a leading man, I don’t control casting, the producer who does has never cast a film in his life, and the leading lady he’s already given me is, to be charitable, a lox. Would you say I had any reason to be nervous?”

“Is Jango Beck giving you trouble?”

“Is Jango giving me trouble?” Conrad’s face screwed up into a thoughtful grimace. “I really don’t know,” he said. “In most ways, he’s really great to work with. He’s given me no trouble with the script; in fact, he’s been very helpful at times. He’s not hassling me about budget, and he’s really come through in staging an imaginative festival. I feel like a swine complaining to you at all, because he’s been the ideal producer in every area but one. But....”

“But?”

“But my God, Mr. Horst, how can I begin shooting a film three weeks from now without a leading man?”

“Have you discussed this with Beck?”

“He’s promised me a decision within five days. But....”

“But?”

“But he won’t even tell me who he’s considering. And the leading lady he’s already cast... I worked with her on a smut film, she can’t act at all....”