Wake Up and Dream (22 page)

Borne in on a wave of new east coast money, new studios like Senserama had muscled in, and the old, mainly Jewish-run businesses had faded. So, apparently, as increasingly weird stories started to circulate, had Howard Hughes’ sanity. Stories of walk-outs and arguments. Stories of ridiculously under-funded and over-budget projects which never made the screen. Stories of him refusing to eat anything other than one precise batch of one exact kind of food. Stories of him locking himself up for weeks inside packing cases. Stories of him keeping endless bottles of his own urine. All good reasons, Clark supposed, why a guy might end up here in the Met. But if Howard Hughes was a madman, he certainly wasn’t looking or acting that way.

“Can I help you?” he was asking as he wiped his hands on an oil-stained rag.

“My name’s Daniel Lamotte. I’m a screenwriter.”

Hughes leaned forward and squinted as if peering through a gauze. “Sounds a bit familiar. Written anything I might have seen?”

“Maybe a feelie called
The Virgin Queen
.”

“Of course!” Hughes’ still easy-on-the eye face split into a smile. “Great feelie. Wish I’d made it myself, and can’t say better that that.” Then he looked puzzled. “But what are you doing
here
?”

“I’m working on another feelie project, and I’m looking for the kind of information I thought you might be able to help me out with.”

“You got a contract?”

“With Senserama. Signed it only a couple of days back.”

Hughes whistled. “That’s a big name. Been a while since I’ve met any folks actually working in your profession. Though I do believe we’ve got one or two who are kinda between projects here at the Met…” He chuckled. He still had that easy swagger. And he was still wiping his hands with that rag. “So—what’s it about? What’s the main deal?”

“A biopic of Lars Bechmeir.”

“I see.” Hughes thought about putting down the rag, but then started wiping again. “Which is why you decided to try to talk to me?”

“Basically yes.”

“Not sure that I can help you much. Have you spoken to Bechmeir himself?”

“Not yet, no.”

Hughes nodded. “I guess not.” He was still grinning, but it was getting harder to make sense of the smile. “Always was a real difficult guy to get a proper hold of once you got past the publicity. Even before he lost his wife.”

“Still, you worked very closely with him early on. I mean, one of the key scenes—not just in my film, but in the whole history of the feelie industry—is that day when you let him come to your office in the Taft Building to demonstrate his prototype device.”

“Sure. Came right in and sat down in front of me with that famous carpetbag with that weird gizmo in it. Well, it
seemed
weird at the time..”

“What was that like? Why
did
you agree to see him?”

Hughes gave an odd gesture. It was part shudder, part shrug. “Just thought, why the hell not, I guess. Look, Mister, ah, Dan, isn’t it?
Dan
—I’ve given lots of interviews about this. It was all recorded in the press and the newsreels at the time. I appreciate you taking the trouble of coming here to see me an’ all, but that part of my life is past, and most of the time I just think good riddance.” Again, that odd movement. “I really ain’t sure there’s much I can add.”

“I guess I was hoping for some kind of greater insight. I mean—what’s Lars Bechmeir actually like?”

“Pretty regular sort of guy. Cares about the way things work, just like myself. You know—the German accent, the glasses, the beard, those double-button down suits. Not sure what else you want me to say. If I were you, I’d just keep it simple and write the story everyone knows and not start messing around with it. Sure sounds like an interesting project, though. Should have been done years ago, I guess, and I’d have liked to have had a piece of it, once upon a time…” Things slid and whirred and strained all around in a sourceless gleam as Hughes wiped his hands and maintained that fixed smile. “As you can see, I’m busy in other ways now. All of this…” He gestured with his rag. “… is what keeps the Met going. The heat, the water, the power. We got five big turbines.”

“That’s great, Howie. But, like I was saying, surely there’s got to be somethi—”

“Two backups as well. Two hundred kilowatts. Plus we got all the steam and heat to drive the laundry house up top. Sweet set-up, don’t you think?”

Clark nodded. He could appreciate a fine enginehouse as well as the next man. But where was this getting him? He decided to try a different tack.

“But I guess they were good times. You know, producing that very first feelie. The way everyone thought that it would all be some cockamamie freakshow. And then—”

“’Course, there’s no field generators down here.” Hughes’ manner as he interrupted this time was more forceful, although he was still grinning like the regular, good-looking guy he seemed. “All you get here is the pure clean surge of power.” He looked around his machine temple, a gleam lighting his eyes. “Couldn’t get anything more clean and apple pie.”

“I guess not.”

“Reason I like it down here so much. No
interference
, you know? Nothing getting in your mind that shouldn’t be there.”

“Sure.”

“You know how it works—I mean, those waves Lars Bechmeir discovered? They’re processed the limbic node, then transmitted or received as low-wave electromagnetics by the lymphatic system, which is why you can sometimes get to see an aura with a roughly human shape when you run it out through a grid, or back along a cathode ray. Of course, there are blackouts, hotspots—all kinds of juju and interference. Sometimes it’s just a kind of daze. Whole area’s fascinating. Absolutely—the way thoughts and ideas, whole
concepts
, can be absorbed and given out again by the human brain.

“Take an example, you just wouldn’t believe how many communists we get coming in the Met these days. Course, their disease is easily sorted. The surgeons can take the whole socialistic mess clean out of your head.” He touched the side of his oddly flat cap. “Had it done myself. Piece of brain not much larger than an acorn. Not that I’m going communist, of course, but the thing can grow like a tumor, and you don’t want to run the risk, right? I’ve seen some of them big as your fist lying all bloody right there on a silver dish.”

Hughes was still talking in the same easy way, although his hands had got so busy with wiping and re-wiping that the rag had dissolved into threads. He tossed what was left into a nearby bucket, then took a clean rag out from his back pocket and began again. Clark realized that the brownish marks weren’t machine oil, but blood.

“Brain’s just like any other mechanism. Work out what the problem is, and there’s nothing that can’t be fixed. Pinkos, faggots, murderers—it’s all down to some or other part not working the way it should. Same with hygiene, dirty thoughts or bits of grime. Get a piece of grit in a piston, stands to reason you have to ease it out. Exact same thing goes with the brain. It’s like tweaking the best out of an engine by removing anything that’s in the way of the power train. I mean, look at me, the stuff I’ve had done, and every single bit of it has been a step up in horsepower, a definite gain. You see… ?”

Hughes paused in wiping his stripped and bloodied palms to lift off his cap. The easy grin was still there in his mouth and eyes, but he was no longer the same man. Amid suppurating patches of stitching and scar, the top and sides of his head sprouted irregular bits of hair. But it wasn’t so much the seared and clumped look of the skin that was bothering as the actual
shape
of his skull. Like a pie which hasn’t risen properly in the oven, there were falls and indentations where the bone seemed to have given in.

He was still prodding this and that area of his ruined scalp with his long-nailed fingers, talking about craniotomies and lobotomies and psychographs—about how the skin needed to be peeled back and the bone cut right through and other bits pushed aside or taken out to get to the offending part—but Clark was horrified and lost.

“Yeah,” Hughes muttered now, smiling once more and deftly replacing his cap, “best thing I ever did was get my brain properly sorted. Not that it’s ever finished with, of course. It’s like this here enginehouse. Soon as you turn your back for more than a moment, something is sure to start spinning loose or grinding too tight.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But the most important thing with any kind of machine is to keep it
clean
, right? Goes with a generator or pump, just the same way it does with the human mind. Any kind of grit of dirt, you got to root it out. Sand’s the worst. Your oil’s plain ruined no matter how much you filter it. Have to strip the whole machine down, wash it out—Yeah!” Hughes was grinning, nodding. His flat cap had slipped to the side of his head. “Bastard stuff bungs everything up. You can feel it grinding, hissing. Wish you could knock it out of your mind, but it gets everywhere. In your ears. Behind your eyes. Sand’s the worst for sure. Matter of fact…” His hands moved over his face, leaving red streaks. “…I can feel it now.” Sand…? Clark felt an odd drift to his own thoughts, like something outside of him was taking hold. It was as if he was watching some feelie from a seat too close to the screen, or was trapped upstairs again in one of those rooms in the Met. “But what does it feel like to you right now,

Howie?” he asked. “What
is
going on?”

“It feels like—” Hughes hunched over the gantry rail, jaw spread wide as if he was trying to cough something out. “Feels like… Feels like…”

“Feels like what, Howie? What is it you want to say?”

Drool strung from Howard Hughes’ mouth as the muscles of his face knotted and unknotted. Then his cap slipped from his head and floated in arcs though the churning machinery below.

“What is it, Howie?”

His whole body arched and convulsed. He was retching now like a cat with a hairball, or as if possessed by some kind of fit. He certainly looked to be beyond speech. Then he did manage to make a sound. It was a small harsh reflux, but nevertheless, as his tongue spasmed and his whole body jerked, it sounded remarkably like a T.

It came again. There was no mistaking it.

“T—”

“Can you spell it out, Howie? Can you say it?”

“Thr—”

It was like some ghastly process of birth. Then it all came at once, splitting his jaw so wide and pushing his tongue so far out that Clark feared that the guy’s throat and guts would come out with it in slippery loops.

“Thrasis.”

Howard Hughes subsided.

Howard Hughes slumped back from the gantry rail and crouched into a small, whimpering ball.

“H
OWIE’S LIKE MOST OF US HERE,”
Little Joe muttered as he pushed his trolley back toward the elevator. “Has his bad moments, but he’ll get over it. Just needs a touch of the moodies, that’s all…”

Clark’s own thoughts were churning. He could still see that hunched and ruined figure at the far end of the gantry. It had seemed for a moment to be not one Howard Hughes but many, a thin blur of tremulous, agonized voices and scrabbling hands.

“How long have you been here, Joe?”

“Oh, I’m a newbie. Just the last five or six years is all. Only got to be a trustie these last couple.”

“This may sound like an odd question, but does my name ring any kind of bell? I mean my last name, Lamotte? Or else a guy called Hogg?”

Little Joe thought for a moment, then pressed the elevator button with an oddly stubby finger before shaking his head. “Can’t say it does.”

“How about something called Thrasis?”

“Say what?”

“Thrasis.”

Little Joe shook his head.

They ended up back in the Met’s main entrance hall, with Little Joe parking his mop trolley in the same spot beneath the same severe portrait of one of the city fathers from which Clark had taken it.

“Come back any time you like,” he said. “That is, if you fancy some more research. Now that you got the uniform an’ all.”

“Thanks. I’d be happy to see you again, Little Joe, but I’m not so sure about the rest. You shouldn’t be in here either. Should ask to get yourself re-assessed…”

Little Joe’s askew eyebrows rearranged themselves into something resembling a frown.

“Needn’t worry about missing the moodies,” Clark added. “You can spend all day and all night tucked up in the feelie houses in the city for all anyone’ll care. And there’s always plenty of work for a guy who can handle a mop.”

“Wish it were that simple, Mr Lamotte.” His gaze was sad and soft. “Truth is, the city air don’t agree with me. I got this skin condition, see. Gets me all antsy so I can’t move for scratching and a’nibbling. That’s why I bit my nails so bad.” He held out his big hands. All that was left of his nails were nubs of shiny scar tissue.

“That’s why I had to pull out my teeth, an’ all. My kids and my wife, they got the same problem. So I did them too.” Little Joe balled up his hands and pulled his arms close around himself. “So I reckon I’m probably better in here ’til I stop getting the itches an’ they get that city sorted.”

L
IGHTS GLOWED OUT FROM POOLHALLS
and poker parlors in the early gloom. The lowering sun across the intersections was angry and red. Roger and his pals cast lengthening shadows down Blixden Avenue as they chased their tin can. Clark got out of the Delahaye and squinted up at the sky. It was banking up with cloud. There was a smell of change in the air.

“That was
some
phone call.” Roger ran over to him, ragged clothes flapping in the wind. “Mysterious geeks in uniform—and now you’re wearing one yourself! Are you for
real
, Mr Lamotte, or is this all some feelie you think you’re in?”

“Sometimes wonder. But you
did
tell Barbara Eshel?”

“I obey ze orders.“ The kid saluted, European style.

“And everything’s okay? Nothing’s happened?”

“Not much.” The kid looked disappointed. Then his eyes traveled up the street toward the mailbox about halfway up. Clark followed his gaze. A thought came into his head.

“Why did you say the postie was mad, Roger?”