Terra Incognita

by Connie Willis

  “They’re all pimping jobs.” I started through the crush toward Mayer.

  Heada squeezed through after me. “If it is an official project,” she said, “tell him you want a credit.”

  Mayer had moved to the other side of the freescreen, probably trying to get away from Vincent, who was right behind him, still talking. Above them, the crowd on the screen was still revolving, but slower and slower, and the edges of the room were starting to soft-focus. Mayer turned and saw me, and waved, all in slow motion.

  I stopped, and Heada crashed into me. “Do you have any slalom?” I said, and she started fumbling in her hand again. “Or ice? Anything to hold off a klieg flash?”

  She held out the same assortment of capsules and cubes as before, only not as many. “I don’t think so,” she said, peering at them.

  “Find me something, okay?” I said, and squeezed my eyes shut, hard, and then opened them again. The soft-focus receded.

  “I’ll see if I can find you some lude,” she said. “Remember, if it’s the real thing, you want a credit.” She slipped off toward a pair of James Deans, and I went up to Mayer.

  “Here you go,” I said to Mayer, and tried to hand him the disk. I wasn’t going to get paid, but it was at least worth a try.

  “Tom!” Mayer said. He didn’t take the disk.

  Heada was right. His boss was out.

  “Just the guy I’ve been looking for,” he said. “What have you been up to?”

  “Working for you,” I said, and tried again to hand him the disk. “It’s all done. Just what you ordered. River Phoenix, close-up, kiss. She’s even got four lines.”

  “Great,” he said, and pocketed the disk. He pulled out a palmtop and punched in numbers. “You want this in your online account, right?”

  “Right,” I said, wondering if this was some kind of bizarre pre-flashing symptom: actually getting what you wanted. I looked around for Heada. She wasn’t talking to the James Deans anymore.

  “I can always count on you for the tough jobs,” Mayer said. “I’ve got a new project you might be interested in.” He put a friendly arm around my shoulder and led me away from Vincent. “Nobody knows this,” he said, “but there’s a possibility of a merger between ILMGM and Viamount, and if it goes through, my boss and his girlfriends’ll be a dead issue.”

  How does Heada do it? I thought wonderingly.

  “It’s still just in the talking stages, of course, but we’re all very excited about the prospect of working with a great company like Viamount.”

  Translation: It’s a done deal, and “scrambling” isn’t even the word. I looked down at Mayer’s hands, half expecting to see blood under his fingernails.

  “Viamount’s as committed as ILMGM is to the making of quality movies, but you know how the American public is about mergers. So our first job, if this thing goes through, is to send them the message: ‘We care.’ Do you know Austin Arthurton?”

  Sorry, Heada, I thought, it’s another pimping job.

  “What’s the job?” I said. “Didging in Arthurton’s girlfriend? Boyfriend? German shepherd?”

  “Jesus, no!” he said, and looked around to make sure nobody’d heard that. “Arthurton’s totally straight, vegetarian, clean, a real Gary Cooper type. He’s completely committed to convincing the public the studio’s in responsible hands. Which is where you come in. We’ll supply you with a memory upgrade and automatic print-and-send, and I’ll have you paid on receipt through the feed.” He waved the disk of his old boss’s girlfriend at me. “No more having to track me down at parties.” He smiled.

  “What’s the job?”

  He didn’t answer. He looked around the room, twitching. “I see a lot of new faces,” he said, smiling at a Marilyn in yellow feathers. There’s No Business Like Show Business. “Anything interesting?”

  Yes, up in my room, and I want to flash on her, not you, Mayer, so get to the point.

  “ILMGM’s taken some flak lately. You know the rap: violence, AS’s, negative influence. Nothing serious, but Arthurton wants to project a positive image—”

  And he’s a real Gary Cooper type. I was wrong about its being a pimping job, Heada. It’s a slash-and-burn.

  “What does he want out?” I said.

  He started to twitch again. “It’s not a censorship job, just a few adjustments here and there. The average revision won’t be more than ten frames. Each one’ll take you maybe fifteen minutes, and most of them are simple deletes. The comp can do those automatically.”

  “And I take out what? Sex? Chooch?”

  “AS’s. Twenty-five a movie, and you get paid whether you have to change anything or not. It’ll keep you in chooch for a year.”

  “How many movies?”

  “Not that many. I don’t know exactly.”

  He reached in his suit pocket and handed me an opdisk like the one I’d given him. “The menu’s on here.”

  “Everything? Cigarettes? Alcohol?”

  “All addictive substances,” he said, “visuals, audios, and references. But the Anti-Smoking League’s already taken the nicotine out, and most of the movies on the list have only got a couple of scenes that need to be reworked. A lot of them are already clean. All you’ll have to do is watch them, do a print-and-send, and collect your money.”

  Right. And then feed in access codes for two hours. A wipe was easy, five minutes tops, and a superimpose ten, even working from a vid. It was the accesses that were murder. Even my River Phoenix–watching marathon was nothing compared to the hours I’d spend reading in accesses, working my way past authorization guards and ID-locks so the fibe-op source wouldn’t automatically spit out the changes I’d made.

  “No, thanks,” I said, and tried to hand him back the disk. “Not without full access.”

  Mayer looked patient. “You know why the authorization codes are necessary.”

  Sure. So nobody can change a pixel of all those copyrighted movies, or harm a hair on the head of all those bought-and-paid-for stars. Except the studios.

  “Sorry, Mayer. Not interested,” I said, and started to walk away.

  “Okay, okay,” he said, twitching. “Fifty per and full exec access. I can’t do anything about the fibe-op-feed ID-locks and the Film Preservation Society registration. But you can have complete freedom on the changes. No preapproval. You can be creative.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Creative.”

  “Is it a deal?” he said.

  Heada was sidling past the screen, looking up at Fred and Ginger. They were in close-up, gazing into each other’s eyes.

  At least the job would pay enough for my tuition and my own AS’s, instead of having to have Heada mooch for me, instead of taking klieg by mistake and having to worry about flashing on Mayer and carrying an indelible image of him around in my head forever. And they’re all pimping jobs, in or out. Or official.

  “Why not?” I said, and Heada came up. She took my hand and slipped a lude into it.

  “Great,” Mayer said. “I’ll give you a list. You can do them in any order. A minimum of twelve a week.”

  I nodded. “I’ll get right on it,” I said, and started for the stairs, popping the lude as I went.

  Heada pursued me to the foot of the stairs. “Did you get the job?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was it a remake?”

  I didn’t have time to listen to what she’d say when she found out it was a slash-and-burn. “Yeah,” I said, and sprinted back up the stairs.

  There really wasn’t any hurry. The lude would give me half an hour at least and Alis was already on the bed. If she was still there. If she hadn’t gotten her fill of Fred and Ginge and left.

  The door was half open the way I’d left it, which was either a good or a bad sign. I looked in. I could see the near bank. The array was blank. Thanks, Mayer.
She’s gone, and all I’ve got to show for it is a Hays Office list. If I’m lucky, I’ll get to flash on Walter Brennan taking a swig of rotgut whiskey.

  I started to push the door open, and stopped. She was there after all. I could see her reflection in the silvered screens. She was sitting on the bed, leaning forward, watching something. I pushed the door farther open so I could see what. The door scraped a little against the carpet, but she didn’t move. She was watching the center screen. It was the only one on. She must not have been able to figure out the other screens from my hurried instructions, or maybe one screen was all she was used to back in Bedford Falls.

  She was watching with that focused look she had had downstairs, but it wasn’t the Continental. It wasn’t even Ginger dancing side by side with Fred. It was Eleanor Powell. She and Fred were tap-dancing on a dark polished floor. There were lights in the background, meant to look like stars, and the floor reflected them in long, shimmering trails of light.

  Fred and Eleanor were in white—him in a suit, no tails, no top hat this time, her in a white dress with a knee-length skirt that swirled out when she swung into the turns. Her light brown hair was the same length as Alis’s and was pulled back with a white headband that glittered, catching the light from the reflections.

  Fred and Eleanor were dancing side by side, casually, their arms only a little out to the sides for balance, their hands not even close to touching, matching each other step for step.

  Alis had the sound off, but I didn’t need to hear the taps, or the music, to know what this was. Broadway Melody of 1940, the second half of the “Begin the Beguine” number. The first half was a tango, formal jacket and long white dress, the kind of stuff Fred did with all his partners, except that he didn’t have to cover for Eleanor Powell or maneuver fancy steps around her. She could dance as well as he did.

  And the second half was this—no fancy dress, no fuss, the two of them dancing side by side, full-length shot and one long, unbroken take. He tapped a combination, she echoed it, snapping the steps out in precision time, he did another, she answered, neither of them looking at the other, each of them intent on the music.

  Not “intent.” Wrong word. There was no concentration in them at all, no effort; they might have made up the whole routine just now as they stepped onto the polished floor, improvising as they went.

  I stood there in the door, watching Alis watch them as she sat there on the edge of the bed, looking like sex was the furthest thing from her mind. Heada was right—this had been a bad idea. I should go back down to the party and find some face who wasn’t locked at the knees, whose big ambition was to work as a warmbody for Columbia Tri-Star. The lude I’d just taken would hold off any flash long enough for me to talk one of the Marilyns into coming on cue.

  And Ruby Keeler’d never miss me—she was oblivious to everything but Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell doing a series of rapid-fire tap breaks. She probably wouldn’t even notice if I brought the Marilyn back up to the bed to pop. Which is what I should do, while I still had time.

  But I didn’t. I leaned against the door, watching Fred and Eleanor and Alis, watching Alis’s reflection in the blank screens of the right-hand array. Fred and Eleanor were reflected in the screens, too, their images superimposed on Alis’s intent face on the silver screens.

  And “intent” wasn’t the right word for her either. She had lost that alert, focused look she’d had watching the Continental, counting the steps, trying to memorize the combinations. She had gone beyond that, watching Fred and Eleanor dance side by side, their hands not touching, and they weren’t counting either, they were lost in the effortless steps, in the easy turns, lost in the dancing, and so was Alis. Her face was absolutely still watching them, like a freeze frame, and Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell were somehow still, too, even as they danced.

  They tapped, turning, and Eleanor danced Fred back across the floor, facing him now but still not looking at him, her steps reflections of his, and then they were side by side again, swinging into a tap cadenza, their feet and the swirling skirt and the fake stars reflected in the polished floor, in the screens, in Alis’s still face.

  Eleanor swung into a turn, not looking at Fred, not having to, the turn perfectly matched to his, and they were side by side again, tapping in counterpoint, their hands almost touching, Eleanor’s face as still as Alis’s, intent, oblivious. Fred tapped out a ripple, and Eleanor repeated it, and glanced sideways over her shoulder and smiled at him, a smile of awareness and complicity and utter joy.

  I flashed.

  The klieg usually gives you at least a few seconds warning, enough time to do something to hold it off or at least close your eyes, but not this time. No warning, no telltale soft-focus, nothing.

  One minute I was leaning against the door, watching Alis watch Fred and Eleanor tippity-tapping away, and the next: freeze frame, cut! print, and send, like a flashbulb going off in your face, only the afterimage is as clear as the picture, and it doesn’t fade, it doesn’t go away.

  I put my hand up in front of my eyes, like somebody trying to shield themselves from a nuclear blast, but it was too late. The image was already burned into my neocortex.

  I must’ve staggered back against the door, too, and maybe even cried out, because when I opened my eyes, she was looking at me, alarmed, concerned.

  “Is something wrong?” she said, scrambling off the bed and taking my arm. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. Fine. She was holding the remote. I took it away from her and clicked the comp off. The screen went silver, blank except for the reflection of the two of us standing there in the door. And superimposed on the reflection another reflection—Alis’s face, rapt, absorbed, watching Fred and Eleanor in white, dancing on the starry floor.

  “Come on,” I said, and grabbed Alis’s hand.

  “Where are we going?”

  Someplace. Anyplace. A theater where some other movie is showing. “Hollywood,” I said, pulling her out into the hall. “To dance in the movies.”

  Camera whip-pans to medium shot: LAIT station sign. Diamond screen, “Los Angeles Instransit” in hot pink caps, “Westwood Station” in bright green.

  We took the skids. Mistake. The back section was closed off, but they were still practically empty—a few knots of tourates on their way home from Universal Studios clumped together in the middle of the room, a couple of druggates asleep against the back wall, three others over by the far side wall, laying out three-card monte hands on the yellow warning strip, one lone Marilyn.

  The tourates were watching the station sign anxiously, like they were afraid they’d miss their stop. Fat chance. The time between Instransit stations may be inst, but it takes the skids a good ten minutes to generate the negative-matter region that produces the transit, and another five afterward before they turn on the exit arrows, during which time nobody was going anywhere.

  The tourates might as well relax and enjoy the show. What there was of it. Only one of the side walls was working, and half of it was running a continuous loop of ads for ILMGM, which apparently didn’t know it’d been taken over yet. In the center of the wall, a digitized lion roared under the studio trademark in glowing gold: “Anything’s Possible!” The screen blurred and went to swirling mist while a voiceover said, “ILMGM! More Stars Than There Are in Heaven,” and then announced names while said stars appeared out of the fog. Vivien Leigh tripping toward us in a huge hoop skirt; Arnold Schwarzenegger roaring in on a motorcycle; Charlie Chaplin twirling his cane.

  “Constantly working to bring you the brightest stars in the firmament,” the voiceover said, which meant the stars currently in copyright litigation. Marlene Dietrich, Macaulay Culkin at age ten, Fred Astaire in top hat and tails, strolling effortlessly, casually toward us.

  I’d dragged Alis out of the dorm to get away from mirrors and the Beguine and Fred, tippity-tapping away on my f
rontal lobe, to find something different to look at if I flashed again, but all I’d done was exchange my screen for a bigger one.

  The other wall was even worse. It was apparently later than I’d thought. They’d shut the ads off for the night, and it was nothing but a long expanse of mirror. Like the polished floor Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell had danced on, side by side, their hands nearly—

  I focused on the reflections. The druggates looked dead. They’d probably taken capsules Heada told them were chooch. The Marilyn was practicing her pout in the mirror, flinching forward with a look of openmouthed surprise, and splaying her hand against her white pleated skirt to keep it from billowing up. The steam grating scene from The Seven Year Itch.

  The tourates were still watching the station sign, which read La Brea Tar Pits. Alis was watching it, too, her face intent, and even in the fluorescents and the flickering light of ILMGM upcoming remakes, her hair had that curious backlit look. Her feet were apart, and she held her hands out, braced for sudden movement.

  “No skids in Riverwood, huh?” I said.

  She grinned. “Riverwood. That’s Mickey Rooney’s hometown in Strike Up the Band,” she said. “We only had a little one in Galesburg. And it had seats.”

  “You can squeeze more people in during rush hour without seats. You don’t have to stand like that, you know.”

  “I know,” she said, moving her feet together. “I just keep expecting us to move.”

  “We already did,” I said, glancing at the station sign. It had changed to Pasadena. “For about a nanosecond. Station to station and no in-between. It’s all done with mirrors.”

  I stood on the yellow warning strip and put my hand out toward the side wall. “Only they’re not mirrors. They’re a curtain of negative matter you could put your hand right through. You need to get a studio exec on the make to explain it to you.”

  “Isn’t it dangerous?” she said, looking down at the yellow warning strip.