Madonna and the Starship (9781616961220) (4 page)

“Then I've got precisely the audience I want,” said Connie, whereupon we Underwood Milkers split the tab and went our separate ways.

LOGICAL POSITIVISTS

FROM OUTER SPACE

n Wednesday morning I awoke in thrall to an unfamiliar emotion, which I soon interpreted as the dark side of Uncle Wyatt's cosmic astonishment—a case of cosmic perplexity. Were the Qualimosans truly of extraterrestrial origin? If so, then it behooved me, in the name of interplanetary diplomacy, to use today's installment of
Uncle Wonder's Attic
to herald the forthcoming awards ceremony. But if the whole thing was a hoax, I'd be setting myself up for a mortifying moment, even worse than the time when, unaware that Floyd Cox had neglected to dissolve from the Uncle Wonder attic set to the end title, I began smoking a Chesterfield before three million school children and an apoplectic floor manager.

I needed some advice, and I knew where to get it: 59 West 82nd Street, apartment 3C, where Saul Silver slept, ate, watched TV, brushed his teeth, and edited
Andromeda
. Saul would tell me whether or not to take the Qualimosans seriously. Besides, I wanted to pitch him my new idea for a novelette, tentatively titled “Voyage to the Edge of the Universe.” I telephoned the great man, woke him up—he kept an erratic schedule—and told him I was anxious to discuss both an embryonic story premise and an odd experience I'd had after yesterday's broadcast. He agreed to meet me at noon.

In those days the adjective “crazy” frequently emerged in conversations concerning Saul Silver, especially when the participants were writers to whom he owed money, but no one could actually defend that diagnosis. Saul was not crazy. He was, rather, agoraphobic—fearful of open spaces—the result of a war trauma he was loath to discuss. By all accounts he hadn't left his apartment in five years, relying on the local bodega to send over his groceries and the U.S. Postal Service to deliver edited manuscripts to the midtown offices of Alpha Enterprises, where publisher Nathan Berkowitz's drones assembled each month's issue of
Andromeda
.

Entering the foyer of Saul's building, I pressed the buzzer for the basement apartment—the electronic connection between 3C and the outside world no longer functioned—thereby summoning his occasional housekeeper, Gladys Everhart, a retired stenographer who supplemented her Social Security income with the monthly $100 stipend Saul paid her for putting up with him. As Gladys and I mounted the stairs, she explained that Mr. Silver was “about to have one of his spells,” so she'd soon be leaving on one pretext or another, “since he never likes for me to see him in that state.”

The third-floor landing now functioned as an extension of Saul's office, wobbly stacks of
Amazing Stories
,
Astounding
,
Fantastic
, and other
Andromeda
competitors rising from the threadbare Oriental rug. Gladys unlocked the door to 3C—evidently her duties included those of a porter, so that Saul needn't aggravate his agoraphobia by rising to greet visitors—and guided me inside. My heart sank. Illness ascendant, Saul lay sprawled across the sofa, perspiring, rubbing his temples as if to assuage a headache. His fox terrier, Ira, rested on his paunch.

“Morning, Kurt,” he said. Despite his condition, or perhaps because of it, the great man always dressed elegantly in a tweed jacket and brown wool tie. “At the moment I'm indisposed, but I'll bounce back.”

“You always do,” I said, surveying the room. Saul's desk held a Royal typewriter and a swarming mass of manuscripts. The flocked wallpaper displayed a gallery of late twenty-second-century art—rocketships, robots, marching mutants, domed cities—that had once served as
Andromeda
covers. In the far corner two young actors, male and female, filled an Admiral TV set with their anguished conversation: a scene from
Search for Tomorrow
, I figured, or maybe
The Guiding Light
or
As the World Turns
. Why did the names of so many soap operas sound like the titles of science-fiction stories?

Taking a gimp leash in hand, Gladys announced that “somebody needs a walk,” a proposition with which the fox terrier obviously agreed. An instant later the housekeeper and Ira sashayed out of the room, the dog's tail wagging like a demented metronome. I elected to get the more difficult task out of the way, saving my edge-of-the-universe novelette for later, so I told Saul all about the Qualimosans' broadcast, their intention to give me the Zorningorg Prize, and the perambulating dressmaker's dummy.

“What the hell kind of a word is ‘Zorningorg'?” said Saul. “Sounds like a space monster from some piece of
Amazing Stories
crap. Are these aliens
real
, Kurt?”

“I was hoping you could tell me that.”

“What do they look like? Little green men?”

“Large blue lobsters. The dummy trick was pretty convincing.”

“Smart money says they're a couple of
schnorrers
in suits, and the dummy was mechanized behind your back. Ah, but smart money isn't always so bright.” Saul pulled a handkerchief from his jacket and wiped the sweat from his brow. “Christ on a raft, Kurt, we're in the goddamn
science fiction
business! We're supposed to believe in extraterrestrials, metaterrestrials, überterrestrials, and all such
meshugaas
!”

“So you think I should advertise their appearance?”

“The universe is a far stranger place than we imagine. Yes, Kurt, announce your Qualimosans. If it's all a gag, and they never show up, you'll survive the embarrassment.”

The great man's words soothed me. “Thanks, Saul. I'm feeling better.” Indeed, part of me would be disappointed if I didn't receive a Zorningorg Prize. Every year the goddamn Ecumenical Outreach Award for Quality Children's Television went to
Planet Patrol
.

“Tell me about this new short story of yours.”

“A novelette actually. I call it—”

Saul cut me off with a sudden howl. He spilled off the sofa, dropped to his knees, and crawled across the room. This was not the first time I'd seen him in the throes of an attack, but my pulse still quickened, and my stomach roiled. Reaching the desk, he seized the swivel chair by the seat and sent it scurrying away on its casters. He crept into the empty cavity and curled up like a hibernating bear.

“Anything I can do?” I gasped.

Even as his tissues contracted into a cowering mass of dread, Saul struggled to maintain a professional demeanor. “Guess what? Yesterday's mail brought two fan letters praising your ‘Dreams of Chronos.'”

“You seen a doctor yet? He give you a prescription? Should I look in the medicine cabinet?”

“Tell me about your novelette. I don't think there's a pill for this.”

“There's always a pill.”

“You've got a title, right?”

“‘Voyage to the Edge of the Universe.'”

“There's too much
space
in this city!” Saul ground his teeth, a noise suggesting a chef pulverizing a walnut with mortar and pestle. “At least I don't live on a god-damn prairie. Your novelette, it has a plot?”

“An American astronaut named Adam—”

“Anything but Adam.”

“A Russian astronaut, Sergei, sole inhabitant of a manned FTL probe, resolves to venture beyond all imaginable boundaries. Against explicit orders from Washington—I mean Moscow—he guides his probe along our spiral arm of the galaxy—”

“This room is too
big !

“And vaults himself into the void. How about we go to the emergency room, Saul? You need a Miltown.”

“This will pass! Tell me more!”

“You sure?”

“More!”

“Having exited the Milky Way, Sergei next leaves the galactic cluster behind and eventually reaches the edge of the universe.”

“Cushions! On the double!”

“What?

“Cushions! Cushions!”

“Roger! Wilco!”

Frantically I stripped the sofa of its three fat cushions and jammed them into Saul's cubicle. He embraced the therapeutic pillows as a shipwreck victim might clutch a floating spar.

“You're a prince, Kurt. What happens to Sergei?”

“I'm calling an ambulance.”

“What happens to Sergei?!”

“He has entered a zone that defies his powers of rational analysis. The familiar laws of physics no longer apply. He feels like Alice down the rabbit hole.”

“Zelda and Zoey!”

“Who?”

“In there!” cried Saul, gesturing toward the coat closet. “Zelda and Zoey!”

I dashed to the closet and pulled back the door, whereupon a pair of rubber love dolls—fully inflated, life-size, all pink flesh and voluptuous parabolas—fell into my arms.

“It's not what you think!” wailed Saul. “I used to have a girlfriend! I intend to get another! I don't use Zelda and Zoey for
that !

“Of course not.”

As I pressed the pneumatic mannequins into Saul's grasp, tranquility wafted through him, like a cool breeze healing a torrid night. The color returned to his cheeks, and he stopped sweating. He heaved a sigh, hugged his dolls, and asked, “Does Sergei go mad?”

“Not quite, but he now lives in despair—how else would a sane man react to discovering that the triumphant progress of human knowledge has been an illusion? You're looking better.”

“The girls have never failed me.”

“But then Sergei experiences a revelation. Just as that exquisite system called Newtonian physics operates within a relativistic universe, so does that grand enterprise called experimental science offer intimations of something more glorious still.”

“Good twist,” said Saul. “Beyond reality. I like it.”

“Our hero has broached that blessed state Socrates sought millennia ago. Sergei understands himself to be an ignorant man—and this realization has made him wise.”

“Ah, yes, Socrates.” Saul relaxed his grip on the love dolls. “What would Kurt Jastrow do without his
Encyclopaedia Britannica
?”

“In the final paragraph Sergei's probe zooms into
terra incognita
, and he is privileged to behold space and time being born before his eyes.”

“Can you finish it in two weeks?” said Saul, lurching out of his hidey-hole. Gradually he gained his feet. “I'd like it for the February issue.”

“I'll do my best.”

“By the way, Sergei can't be Russian. There's a Cold War on. Maybe you hadn't heard? You want Joe McCarthy to come after us? Make him British, and call him Neville.”

“Sure thing.”

“You will excuse me now,” said Saul, staggering across the room. “I've got a ton of slush to read, but you can be sure I'll catch your big announcement.”

“Wait till four-twenty before tuning in NBC, and you won't have to sit through a
Brock Barton
chapter called ‘Fangs of Death.'”

“Get thee to a typewriter, Kurt Jastrow,” said Saul, wheeling his chair back into place. “Meet the deadline, and I'll up your salary to four cents a word.”

At three o'clock I arrived at Studio One, only to discover that our golden-tonsiled host, Jerry Korngold, had just phoned in sick, a bad case of bronchitis—not a surprise, actually: this was the smoggiest New York November on record. Much to Floyd Cox's distress, nobody in the regular cast was willing to plug the gap. Apparently AFTRA, which I'd never gotten around to joining, forbid its members to sign contracts on the spur of the moment. My initial impulse was to volunteer my own thespian talents—the Writers Guild didn't particularly care if its constituents did impromptu moonlighting on the actors' side of the camera—but then I realized that, at the climax of the episode, I'd have to be in two places at once: the announcer's booth and the attic set.