by John Kessel
Corrupting Dr. Nice
John Kessel
CORRUPTING DR. NICE
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 1997 by John Kessel.
Introduction © 2011 by John Kessel.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
Original Cover illustration by Max Schindler. Used by Permission.
I Don’t Know What Kind of Blues I’ve Got, by Duke Ellington © 1942 (Renewed) EMI Robbins Catalog Inc. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc., Miami, FL 33014
eISBN: 978-1-61824-984-5
Ebook Cover Image by John Kessel.
Electronic Version by Baen Books
http://www.baen.com
Dedicated, with affection and gratitude, to
Frank Capra
George Cukor
Howard Hawks
Gregory La Cava
Ernst Lubitsch
Leo McCarey
George Stevens
Billy Wilder
and most especially, in admiration of his genius, to
Preston Sturges
INTRODUCTION: REMEMBERING DR. NICE
I have a little saying that I made up some years ago that repeats in my mind when I am trying to figure out, working my way through a new story, how I should treat my characters. “No one deserves anything; everyone deserves everything.”
Corrupting Dr. Nice first appeared in 1997. For this e-book edition I thought I might revisit the writing of the book and say a few words. I have been a fan of classic screwball and romantic comedy of the 1930s and 40s since I was a teenager; some of the best moments of my life have been spent in dark theaters watching Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn in Howard Hawks’ Bringing Up Baby, or Grant and Irene Dunn in Leo McCarey’s The Awful Truth, or Herbert Marshall, Kay Francis, and Miriam Hopkins in Ernst Lubitsch’s Trouble in Paradise, or Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in Capra’s It Happened One Night.
Following the 1989 publication of my novel Good News From Outer Space, I cast about trying to figure out if I had another novel in me. Good News was an apocalyptic millennial thriller—though it had comic overtones, the comedy was very dark. In writing it I felt as if I had found a voice that worked for me. Being the kind of writer I am, I immediately rejected the idea of writing another book like that one. Since I loved these old comedies, I wondered if I might crash together classic screwball and science fiction. Aside from some of the work of Connie Willis, I had not seen much attempt to try that in our genre.
Strangely, though I had seen dozens of such films, good and bad, until the 1980s I had never encountered the films of Preston Sturges. Sturges’s star had fallen so rapidly and drastically by 1950, and he had managed to accomplish so little in the decade before his death at sixty in 1959, that it took a long time for anyone to think of recovering him. While Capra and Hawks and Lubitsch and even McCarey were spoken of with reverence, and their films shown repeatedly in the 1970s in university film series and revival theatres, aside from references to the script he wrote for the early film The Power and the Glory, which many cited as an influence on Citizen Kane, and occasional mention of Sullivan’s Travels, Sturges remained essentially invisible. So it was that when I first saw his films—notably Sullivan’s Travels, The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, and The Lady Eve—it was a revelation to me. In some ways Sturges spoke to me more strongly than these other filmmakers I loved. He offered romance and humor, but it was the satirical edge of his movies that seemed most in tune with my own personality. Here, I thought, is the way to merge screwball with the cynical vision of the world that was second nature to me.
I went off on a huge Sturges bender, seeing as many of the films as I could. Some were hard to see—Easy Living and Remember the Night, which he scripted but did not direct, were for years unavailable, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock was snarled up in the mess Howard Hughes had made of it when he took it from Sturges and recut it, and the eight amazing films he wrote and directed in four years at Paramount were only spottily available. The death of the revival theaters in the 1980s made it hard to see these films in their proper circumstances. But the home video revolution helped.
Anyone who reads Corrupting Dr. Nice will see that though I honored many other of my favorites in the course of the novel—in particular, scenes with Wilma the dinosaur will be familiar to fans of Bringing up Baby—I most owe this novel to The Lady Eve. But there was no point in simply retelling that story—we have The Lady Eve already. What could I bring to it?
I pondered this issue for a long time, and for a while it seemed I would not write this book. It was when I saw the story as a vehicle for social comment, and time travel as a means of exploitation of the past, and embodied my social comment in the differences that push Genevieve and Owen apart, that the story took off for me. What this meant practically was the introduction of the story of Simon the Zealot. This subplot owes nothing as far as I can tell to screwball, and in its grimmer expression may perhaps be seen to be at war with the comedy, but I am of the opinion that the very best comedy—and most definitely Sturges’ best work—is just another way to talk about serious things.
The critic James Harvey has pointed out the startling similarities of screwball comedy and film noir. I see two elements that are essential to both.
First, both classic screwball and noir films are centered on an alluring woman with whom the hero gets ensnared. Her motives are ambiguous, yet she is the motivator of the action. The man, no matter how much he may think he knows of the world (and he is usually deluded into thinking he is much more competent than he is) struggles to keep up with her. The plot leads him through a series of twists and turns. There is a conflict between attraction and distrust, and in this dance the woman is in no way subordinate to the man. Sex is very much the air.
Second, the world of both screwball and noir is a chaotic one, subject to surprising turns that are the result of either fate or accident. The universe is either benign (screwball) or malign (noir) and the characters cannot control it no matter how hard they try. They may, for a time, think they have it licked, but in the end they are knocked about like pinballs in a complex machine, trying to end up in the right slot.
Throw in a cast of oddball, eccentric, or socially representative secondary characters and you have the classic screwball or noir, Ball of Fire, starring Barbara Stanwyck, or Double Indemnity, starring . . . Barbara Stanwyck.
I more or less consciously tried to honor all of these things in Corrupting Dr. Nice. I leave it to you to decide whether the enterprise was worth the investment.
For those of you who may be interested, I have written three other time travel stories, set in the same universe as Corrupting Dr. Nice, that are decidedly not comedies. They explore the noir side of the equation I’ve set forth here. All three star my amoral “fixer” character Detlev Gruber, who appears in a small role in Dr. Nice as an employee of Rosethrush’s media conglomerate. These stories are “Some Like It Cold,” “The Miracle of Ivar Avenue,” and “It’s All True,” which I hope to present as an e-book in the near future.
One final thing: it has always seemed to me that the very end of The Lady Eve is a bit rushed. The hero Charles Pike is ushered into his happy ending without really earning it. So I give my hero Owen something to do, unselfishly, at some risk to himself, so that he might in the end deserve his undeserved good fortune. But no one deserves anything, and everyone deserves everything.
John Kessel
20 December 2011
PART I
Jerusalem, 40 C.E.
> ONE: PARIS HOLIDAY
As Sloane unlaced the bodice of Genevieve's peasant's dress all she could hear was his breathing, fast and light. It showed how thinly his gentleness lay over his lust, and it was all she could do to keep from running from the room.
"You'll have to excuse me," Sloane said. "I'm not used to these antiquated fastenings."
The secret to this business was giving the mark what he thought he wanted. Genevieve pushed his hands aside and unlaced herself, slowly, turning it into a performance. Sloane tore at his own clothing, hopping up and down on one foot as he tugged at his breeches. Through the tiny latticed window to the courtyard came the smell of rotting vegetables and the voices of the concierge and his wife arguing in eighteenth-century French. Before Genevieve could shrug out of the sleeves of her dress Sloane had launched himself at her and they fell together onto the bed. He reeked of cologne and antibacterial soap. Gen forced a giggle and began to wonder how long she was going to have to keep this up.
At last the door burst open and in rushed August, wearing a dark blue frock coat over knee breeches, black buckled shoes, and a cocked hat with tricolor cockade. He flashed the sigil of Saltimbanque Corporation Security. "Sloane," he said. "You're under arrest."
Sloane jerked back. Gen stifled her relief and acted as if she had never seen such an apparition in all her life. "Who are you, sir?" she asked August. She let a quaver come to her voice.
"Never you mind, Madame," said August. He approached the bed as if to soothe her, and she clutched her disarrayed clothes to her breast. Sloane cowered beneath the counterpane.
When August reached the bedside, in a single swift motion he pulled a stunner from his pocket, held it to Genevieve's head and discharged it. The stunner was powerless, but Genevieve collapsed among the bedclothes as if she'd been knocked out. She listened. "Okay, Sloane. Time to go."
Genevieve felt Sloane stir beside her. "Is she dead?" He sounded terrified.
"Unconscious. She'll be out for a half hour or so. Time enough for me to book you."
"I didn't plan this. It just happened. She came on to me in the restaurant..."
"I don't care if she tackled you around the ankles. This isn't an unburned universe. We plan to be here awhile."
"What difference does it make?"
"We have to deal with these people. The Committee of Public Safety's idea of freedom wasn't to have us come in and sleep with their women. You know the rules."
An edge of calculation crept into Sloane's voice. "Give me a break. They've seen plenty of changes. One more will hardly be noticed. What would it cost to make this right?"
August made him wait. Genevieve wished she could open her eyes. Her father was good. "Can't do it, friend. My movements are logged more tightly than yours, even. If I'm here preventing interference my bosses are going to want to know what happened to the interferer. To say nothing of keeping this girl quiet."
"This tramp? She's nobody. If she disappeared today it wouldn't make a bit of difference."
The bastard. Gen hoped August would make him pay extra for that. Forget the money--she hoped he'd rip Sloane's lungs out and leave him for dead. Instead he said, "How much cash do you have on you?"
"About 700 francs--"
"Not currency, idiot. Eurodollars." Genevieve had reported to August that Sloane typically carried access to more than a hundred thousand in electronic cash on him at all times. He'd sashayed into the 1790s Hyatt like he was going to buy the place, sporting the fashionable rotund physique of 2060s wealth, dropping thousand dollar tips and expecting to find the Eiffel Tower.
"I can slip you fifty thousand right here," Sloane said.
August snorted. "Pull your pants up and let's get you booked."
"Eighty."
"When is your wife expecting you back at the hotel? Did you tell her you were running down to Notre Dame for a quart of milk?"
"A hundred. A hundred ten!"
Another silence. At last August said, "Let's have it, then."
A rustle of clothes, the tap of code on a wallet keypad.
"All right. You do three things, Sloane. One, you wait here in this room while I dispose of the girl. You don't make a move until I come back. Two, when you get back to the hotel you go to your room and check out immediately, then head back uptime. Three, you keep your mouth shut, and you never try anything like this again."
August was so good when he was playing a cop. Just the right mix of arrogance and corruption.
"Believe me, I will," said Sloane. "You won't regret giving me a break."
"I won't regret it because I'm never going to see you again. Right?"
"Right, right."
Genevieve felt August lean over the bed and pick her up. He grunted. He was getting a little old to lug her around. He carried her out the door, kicked it closed. She opened her eyes and mimed a kiss at him. He scowled. At the head of the stairs he gave up and set her down, winded. "You're no slip of a girl anymore," he said.
They snuck down the back stairs, avoiding the concierge, and out of the Hotel des Balcons. The 1793 Paris lane reeked of piss, horse manure and fresh-baked bread from the pâtisserie on the corner. Outside the shop a couple of Swiss hussars in brilliant blue dress uniforms loitered talking to a girl in a mob-cap. A beggar wearing a tricolor on his filthy hat and a silkscreened T-shirt of Humphrey Bogart clutched after Genevieve's skirts as they passed. "Alms, citizens?"
To the beggar's astonishment, August gave him his frock coat and hat. "Liberté, égalité, fraternité!" August said. Gen pulled him away down the street.
She was still upset. "What kept you so long!"
"Nothing kept me. You know as well as I the game works better when the mark's nervous. I don't want him clearheaded. I want him too surprised to see straight."
"And how long did you expect me to keep him off me?"
He patted her arm. "Don't pretend you can't take care of yourself."
She supposed it was the truth, but it was not what she wanted to hear. "I'm tired of being the badger," she told him. "Next time you do it."
"You find me the mark, my dear, and I'll badger her to death."
"We need to get out of this stinking century. Let's do ancient Rome again. We'll sell pieces of the true cross. We'll offer army blankets as the Robe."
"Anything you like," he replied. He stopped, looked directly at her. He had let himself age in recent years; his hair was gray and his brow lined. "You know I wouldn't let anyone hurt you, Genevieve. The man who tries it is history."
Genevieve leaned on his arm, overwhelmed with sudden sadness. It was her day for being emotional, she guessed. "History," she said. History was their business.
A portable plastic sign on solid rubber tires in front of the Odeon Theater proclaimed, "Ce Soir, en Direct--Edith Piaf!" The historicals were all in a rage for the twentieth century chanteuse, and for her part, she seemed to like the past better than the future. She was carrying on a famous affair with Danton, who thanks to Saltimbanque had managed not to get himself executed this time, negotiating himself into a position of de facto rule over the city, though conspirators in coffee shops swore he was in the pocket of the multinationals.
August and Gen ducked down a blind alley across from the theater. A cat, crouching over a mangled rat, watched them warily. At the back of the alley August retrieved his 21st century dress coat. Gen discarded the peasant's dress and threw on her yellow frock and her wristward. They hurried past the Luxembourg Gardens to Montparnasse. As they approached the wall surrounding the time traveler's quarter, historicals in the streets crowded around. "Have pity on my poverty!" a young woman holding a baby to her breast cried. "Chocolate bars, bacteriophage, TV!" a boy shouted. This time August tossed them a handful of coins and they pressed on through the crowd of hangers on around the Notre Dame des Champs security gate. Saltimbanque security in blue, carrying rifles, manned the checkpoint.
"ID, s'il vous plaît," the guard said.
August and Gen ran their wristw
ards over the reader, which identified them as Mr. and Mrs. Knox Cramer of Hong Kong. The guard passed them through and they headed down the boulevard to the Hyatt Regency, towering over the 18th century French buildings like some glittering glass tumor.
No one in the lobby paid them any attention; for all they knew August and Gen were just some tourists back from the catacombs. They stopped in their room only long enough to pick up their bags, already packed.
"Did you have a pleasant stay?" the desk clerk asked August.
"Most profitable," August replied, paying with Sloane's cash. "There are things to do here we could never find back home."
"Well, you must try one of our other temporal resorts. We've just settled a new universe at twelfth century Angkor Wat. You should check it out."
"I'm certain we will."
After checking out they headed for time stage in the hotel's basement, where they purchased tickets, in three jumps, for ancient Athens. The steward took their bags and directed them to the departure lounge, where they sat and watched through the window to the chamber. The hotel's Gödel stage was of moderate size, five meters in diameter, surrounded by a field delimiter of stainless steel that looked like a guard rail. In the dim air above the stage hung the subtly warped geometries of the singularity emulator, and off to the side, behind their controls, were the technicians. The lights in the chamber were kept low, though the moments of shot and arrival were accompanied by flares of radiation that their window compensated for. A dark couple with their child--Amerinds, perhaps?--were being helped onto the stage. The woman looked nervous, but the kid was babbling excitedly.