The Road to Mars: A Post-Modem Novel (1999) (32 page)

It is plagiarism—yes, I admit it—but all knowledge is theft, isn’t it? And theft is the art form of the modem age. Sampling, deconstructing, reconstructing, remaking. Why don’t we just call it
recycling?
I mean without me Carlton’s thesis would be just a dusty memory file in the Ancient Doctoral Thesis Depository at the University of Southern Saturn anyway. Or rather it would have been if I hadn’t just wiped it. But having done that I might as well go through with it. Suitably retitled—
Comedy, Gift of the Gods
, I think—I like that, don’t you? It has a nice commercial ring. And with my name emblazoned on the cover, this could be a best-seller. Don’t be shocked. It happens all the time. Especially in research. Opportunism is the name of the game. Richard M. Nixon’s name is on the moon, not John F. Kennedy’s. Opportunists live.

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.

—
Charlie Chaplin

Rogers was scrolling through the Weiss file. He was a good-looking man in a black leather jacket. Beside him the African, Kyle, built like an athlete.

“What the hell is all this shit?” asked Kyle.

They had read about Katerina Walenska, and now they had come across the Gunpowder Plot.

“What is this, a history lesson?”

“That’s an idea,” said Rogers. “C’mon.”

“Where we going?”

“To a bar.”

“Now you’re talking. Titty bar?”

“History Bar. We need to find out a little about this Gunpowder shit.”

History, once a neglected and spurned subject, full of unsettlingly incorrect attitudes and behaviors, was undergoing a revival. History bars were becoming quite popular. You could call up any period and watch interesting documentaries. When Rogers and Kyle walked in, there was a piece on the last of the Yetis. These furry hominid ancestors had for so long successfully avoided mankind, until they were finally tracked down by a Chinese expeditionary force. Of course they were extinct within twenty-five years of being discovered. A few had survived in society. One went to Yale on a rowing scholarship. Three lived together in New York for a while, where they were popular at parties. One became a drummer in a rock band before the drugs got him. Another even had his own TV talk show for a while, but it was rather slow-going, and the guests soon dried up. The last few had finally been removed from zoos and shipped to the Himalayas by the UN to see if they could adapt again to the wild. Sadly, hunters got most of them. They watched the last of the Yetis, white-haired, unsmiling as he sat in his cell at the Chicago Zoo, slowly fall asleep. Those infinitely melancholy eyes closed. As dead as a Yeti, people said.

“The Yeti,” said Kyle. “That damn thing was harder to find than the clitoris.”

A perky Scottish waitress in a short-skirted tartan outfit bounced over.

“Welcome to the History Bar,” she said. “Our specials today are the Yeti, and Lucrezia Borgia.”

“I see the Yeti is fried,” said Kyle.

“Can I get you a drink or anything?” she said, smiling.

Rogers looked wistfully at the malt whiskey list and then ordered a couple of sodas. She took the order and left. Rogers glanced at some notes in his palm file, then pressed a button. REQUEST PROGRAM NOW came up on the screen in their booth.

“Gunpowder Plot,” he said.

Seventeenth-century London appeared and a plummy British voice began narrating.

“The year 1605, Earth, England, a small island off the coast of Europe riven by religious conflict. Fifty years earlier King Henry VIII had broken with the Catholic Church to form his own Protestant Church so he could get a divorce and marry Anne Boleyn. When he died, his older daughter, ‘Bloody Mary,’ married to the King of Spain, burned Protestants in an attempt to return England to Catholicism. On her death Henry’s younger daughter, Elizabeth, succeeded to the throne and commenced burning Catholics. The Virgin Queen lived an unexpectedly long time, but never married, and after her death in 1602, the Scottish King James VI was invited to become King of a United Kingdom, for the first time uniting the English and the Scottish thrones. But plots were rife. Foremost amongst these was the Gunpowder Plot, which was a large-scale conspiracy by several prominent Catholic families to blow up King James and his Parliament. The plot was foiled when a letter turned up warning relatives not to attend. The cellars were searched, revealing 200 barrels of gunpowder and a man called Guy Fawkes, who under torture revealed the name of his coconspirators.”

“What is this shit?” said Kyle.

“Patience,” said Rogers. “Listen and learn.”

He hit ENTER on the choice FURTHER DETAILS.

Lewis escorted Tay to Bethany’s room. It was high up on the two hundredth floor of the Northwest Wing.

“Should be a great view of the galaxy,” said Lewis for something to say. Tay was unusually quiet, just held onto his hand tightly.

“Daddy, you going to stay with us here?”

“There’s not enough room,” said her mother, unlocking the door.

Inside was tiny. Three small rooms, bedroom, bathroom, and a lounge which doubled as a kitchen. He glanced around at the impersonal hotel decor.

“Well, I guess I’d better run along.”

“Don’t leave, Daddy.”

He hesitated, glancing at the single bedroom.

“You can’t stay here,” said his ex-wife.

“No.” Evidently not.

“Can’t he stay for a bit, Mommy?” pleaded Tay.

“Perhaps another time. I need to get you cleaned up and into bed, young lady.”

“
Oh please
.”

“I tell you what,” said Lewis, “why don’t I go see the policeman, and then come back and visit. Okay?”

She hesitated.

“Okay, Daddy.”

As he knelt down to kiss her, she whispered in his ear.

“Promise me you’ll come back.”

“Oh yes, sweetie, I promise.”

“Tonight?”

“Soon as I’m done.”

She reluctantly let him go. He turned to wave good-bye. Her mother was already running the bath.

“Bye now,” he said.

“Don’t forget, Daddy.”

He smiled and closed the door behind him. To his surprise a uniformed page was waiting outside.

“What is it?” he said.

“You’re needed in the Theater District,” said the page.

“When?”

“Immediately, if you please. You have a rehearsal for the Brenda Woolley Refugee Experience.”

“But I have to see Rogers.”

“I’ll let him know where you are,” said the page.

“Oh, okay. Thanks.”

“FOB,” said the page into his hand.

There was a crackle of acknowledgment.

“This way, sir,” said the page, and led Lewis belowdecks.

Celebrity distorts democracy by giving the rich, beautiful and famous more authority than they deserve.

—
Maureen Dowd

Chaos Theory predicts the unpredictable behavior of large bodies. But no mere scientific theory could accurately predict the behavior of Brenda. She was everywhere, like a large storm system, her course entirely unpredictable. The chaos inside her created chaos around her. She went everywhere in a maelstrom of people, whirling them about like colliding elements in a thunderstorm. Her frenetic activity increased as the show approached, so that the ship seemed filled with many Brendas: Brenda the bold striding through the camps; Brenda the coy silently listening to flattery on the promos; Brenda the magnificent demanding the show be carried live throughout the solar system, even on distant Earth, with its murky reception through its rusty rings (composed of a mixture of space debris and old advertising modules); and Brenda the frail and patient woman with the heart and stomach of a king, who wouldn’t be denied any resource to make the Experience, her Experience,
the
charity Experience of all time. Then there was Brenda the tireless professional, who sat for hours with her creator of special material, sifting through things she might say on the show. This extremely large, heavyset, bearded man, given to eccentric shirts and solid-gold knick-knacks, was at the moment adapting her great hit “I’d Cross the Universe for You, My Darling,” a haunting song of personal love and sacrifice, into something more appropriate for refugees.

“I’d Cross the Universe for You, My Dearies?” he suggested. “Or how about ‘My Angels’? No, I’ve got it. ‘I’d Cross the Universe for You, My Little Chickadees.’”

“That’s not funny,” said Brenda. He was allowed to be amusing but not at her expense, thank you very much. Her beady, close-set eyes went distinctly piggy at moments like these. God was not mocked. And talking of God, she had taken to wandering into the park more and more, wearing a kind of Madonna blue and heavily backlit. Almost a halo effect. “Our Lady of the Camps” was the image she was after, and she had casually suggested that caption to her publicist. She had been slightly disappointed when they had used “First Lady of the Camps” instead. Where was the Vatican when you needed it?

She wandered tirelessly amongst
her people
, as she called them, accompanied only by eight or nine assistants, handing out tickets to lucky refugees. These moments of delightful generosity were captured, edited, and flashed around the solar system. Sometimes, excited by the presence of the cameras, the crowds got out of control, and on at least one occasion several people were hurt. She would always have her bodyguards push
her people
away if they got too close, but there is only so much eight or nine security guards can do when Brenda is so coyly inciting the crowds towards her, and one day they surged forward out of control and a little child was crushed. The minute she heard about it, she rushed home, changed into a different costume, and after dinner, raced over to the hospital. She seemed surprised to see live TV news cameras covering her impromptu visit, which was surprising since she had spent most of the intervening time on the phone to them. In the ward she sang bravely to some other children who were less sick and more telegenic. She left amidst masses of smiles and flowers and hugs from the adoring nurses.

“Sometimes,” she confided to the camera, “a little heartwarming visit can do more than mere medicine.”

Sadly the child died. Brenda thought attending the funeral would be too downbeat. “It conveys the wrong sort of message,” she said. She did, however, send the family free passes for the show.

In the days immediately before the concert her visits to the camps increased. Boo had the temerity to ask her directly one afternoon, “Have you ever thought of coming down here without a camera?”

“Boo dear,” she said patiently, as if to an idiot, “you cannot ask a reporter not to bring a camera.”

“So try not asking a reporter.”

She looked at him. “Boo, they are the story. We need to get the story out.”

“So who’s in every picture?”

“Them and me.”

“Precisely.”

“Precisely what? What is your point?”

She couldn’t see it. To her the oxygen of publicity was as vital as breathing. Publicity is the precious fuel of fame. It is gossip at the speed of light and it’s a poison, of course. Pollutes the soul, destroys the self, flatters the ego, but oh how good it tastes. And it certainly helps to sell books. So while fame is useful for getting tables in crowded restaurants and casual sex from strangers, admiration from strangers is desperately bad for the soul. The constant attention, the fuss, the adulation of the crowd, the seductive delight of never hearing the word “no,” the ability to bend people to your will, to seduce them, to have them do things for you. And to you. On your knees, baby. Worship me. Flatter me. Please me. All very bad for you.

I can hardly wait.

Of course I shan’t want all the entourage bullshit that goes with fame. Groupies are one thing, but I won’t need hairdressers, publicists, astrologers, chauffeurs, makeup, hairdressers, wardrobe, and endless assistants. The victims of fame are sad. Some are almost incapable of boiling an egg. They are terrified to be alone. For to be alone is to face what everyone else has to face: That we are all ultimately alone. That the camera is just a trick with light, and that your image too will fade. That there will come a time, horror of horrors, when even your name will no longer be spoken. That there will be no more glossy pictures, no heart warming story. In short, no you.

Fame, as I have said, is terminal. But then, sadly, so is life.

“Death is so tacky,” said Brenda. “Even writers become famous.”

“Bless you,” said her creator of special material.

“That’s an idea,” said Brenda. “Do you think the Church would be prepared to bless me on TV?”

“Hello, I’m Brenda Woolley and this is
my
Experience.”

Gigantic images of Brenda flashed on the screens in and around the park. She appeared over the trees, on the sides of buildings, looming off huge moving billboards. There was really no escape from her. The park was packed with refugees, which was good for Carlton. He had chosen to take this route rather than the more direct people mover. He figured he would be less easy to spot if the three from the lab came after him. He could hear the chatter of children as he crossed the grass, keeping well away from all blue uniforms. He spotted a line of vidphones with their dark-glass windows and ducked into one.

“Services,” said a facebot.

“Locate a person.”

“Name of person?”

“Alex Muscroft.”

There was just the slightest hesitation.

“One moment, please, while we locate that party for you.”

He had an uncomfortable feeling.

“That party is unavailable at the moment.”

Unavailable?

“Can I leave a message?” asked Carlton.

“One moment while we connect you to the message system.”

Inevitably the hold music was Brenda.

I’d cross the Universe for you,

my darling I’d sail across the galaxy.

There was a sudden interruption on the screen and he was looking at himself. For a moment he thought he was looking into a mirror. Then he realized he was on TV.

“This is Carlton,” said a voice. “Have you seen him? We are looking for him.”