Madonna and the Starship (9781616961220)

by Morrow, James

  “Who are Zelda and Zoey?” Connie asked me as Gladys guided us up the stairs.

  “Sexy ladies from the Eighties,” I said.

  Arriving at the threshold of apartment 3C, the adjacent landing still crowded with back issues of Amazing, Astounding, and Fantastic, Gladys disengaged the lock and ushered us into the living room. Saul’s fox terrier leaped off the couch and began barking at the lobsters, calming down the instant Gladys said, “Now, Ira, that’s no way to greet folks who’ve come all the way from Neptune to see us.”

  Saul was seated behind his desk, scribbling furiously in the margins of a manuscript, his face obscured by three precarious piles of unsolicited fiction, most of it residing in sealed Manila envelopes. The Admiral TV was tuned to a Dodgers game—which made no sense, the season having ended two months earlier.

  “Forgive me for not rising,” said Saul to the lobsters. “I have a condition.”

  “You need never ask our forgiveness, O Saul Silver, whose magazine made Kurt Jastrow the atheist rationalist logical positivist he is today,” said the female crustacean, removing her sandwich board. “Call me Wulawand.”

  “I am Volavont.” The male crustacean likewise shed his disguise, then employed his triadic orbs to scan the exhibit of Andromeda cover paintings.

  “Ebbets Field?” I said, pointing to the TV. “What the hell are the Dodgers doing playing in November?”

  “That’s a documentary movie about Jackie Robinson,” Saul explained. “A real mensch. When he gets too old to play the game, I hope they retire his number.” He scrutinized the lobsters. “I saw you on my cathode-ray tube yesterday, giving Kurt his award. For three years now, Uncle Wonder has been saving the galaxy from God, and it was high time the galaxy stopped taking him for granted. Uncle Wonder, I mean, not God.”

  “Maybe your magazine will receive a Zorningorg Prize some day,” said Wulawand.

  “That would certainly ramp up the circulation.” Saul pitched me a grin. “Is that your trophy in the bag, Kurt? Bring it here.”

  I set my valise on Saul’s desk and removed the cloaked prism. “It’s like Medusa,” I said, retrieving the trinocular goggles. “Perseus had his shield, and you’ll need this visor.”

  Instead of donning the goggles and contemplating the kaleidoscopic triangles, Saul pointed to my colleague and said, “And this darling creature must be Connie Osborne. Enchanté.”

  “Moi aussi,” said Connie.

  With all the nonchalance I could muster, I slipped a copy of “The Madonna and the Starship” from my valise and surreptitiously inserted it in a slush pile. “Connie equates Andromeda with something she calls ‘that Buck Rogers stuff,’ but we’re friends anyway.”

  “Permit me to suggest that even Buck Rogers stuff is not Buck Rogers stuff,” said Saul to Connie.

  “I intend to look into your famous publication,” she said. “Where should I start? I’ve heard almost anything by Kurt Jastrow is worth reading.”

  “A gift for Miss Osborne,” said Saul, lifting an Andromeda from his desk and passing it to me. I delivered the issue to Connie. “Our latest number, hot off the presses,” the great man continued. “Are you favorably disposed toward satire, my dear? Then I recommend ‘A Child of the Millennium’ by Manfred Glass. If you’re a ban-the-bomb sort of gal, try ‘The Last Countdown’ by Terrence Murgeon. As it happens, they’re both coming over later for our Saturday night poker game. Their insomnia’s even worse than mine.”

  I’d participated in a West 82nd Street seven-card stud tournament only once in my life, and that was quite enough. The pulp-meisters of Prospect Park—Manny Glass and Terry Murgeon—had emptied my pockets to the last speck of lint.

  “I love poker,” said Connie. “Alas, Kurt and I’ll be working at the studio during your bluffing marathon.”

  “I love it, too,” said Wulawand.

  “You have poker on Qualimosa?” asked Saul.

  “The rules are so logical and self-evident that the game has evolved independently on many worlds, as did chess and mahjong,” said Volavont. “Seven-card stud, I daresay, is a universal constant, rather like electron mass and the speed of light.”

  “Then we’ll have to deal you both in tonight,” said Saul. “We’ll play till mid-morning, then flip on the TV and look at that amusing religious satire—what’s it called?—Not By Bread Alone.”

  “As Mr. Jastrow and Miss Osborne will tell you, we have taken a profound interest in tomorrow’s installment,” said Wulawand, retrieving both the ocarina-shaped transceiver and the gold lamé cloth from beneath her carapace. “Shortly after the program begins, we may have to suspend this impervious veil in front of the picture tube, contact the navigator of our orbiting spaceship”—she stroked the sinister sweet potato—“and speak with him concerning an X-13 death-ray.”

  “Our goal being to exterminate a hive of irrationalist vermin thriving on your planet,” said Volavont.

  “Irrationalist vermin deserve nothing better,” said Saul, assuming an impeccable poker face.

  “Perhaps you can settle a controversy for us,” said Volavont. “In a high-low game, the best possible low hand is ace-two-three-four-five, correct?”

  “Uh-huh,” said Saul.

  “But would that sequence not constitute a straight?” asked Wulawand.

  “Not according to the standard rules.”

  “I told you so,” said Volavont, squonk-squonk-squonking in Wulawand’s face.

  “I’m hoping that, before Manny and Terry get here, you marvelous invertebrates might help me catch up on my work.” Saul rested his hand on the tallest tower of submissions. “You’ll be able to tell within a page or two whether a manuscript’s worth reading.”

  “On Qualimosa the science-fiction authors are stuck in a rut,” said Wulawand. “Last month Rocket Sagas and Comet Angst both published stories that end, ‘And her name was Eve.’”

  “You have an Adam and Eve legend on your planet?” asked Saul.

  “You would be surprised how many Milky Way bards sing of a primordial sexually-reproducing couple,” said Volavont. “On Qualimosa we call them Filbone and Fonia. The irrationalist faction in our civil war regards them as historical figures.”

  “Another breakthrough for Alpha Enterprises!” I declared. “‘Subscribe to Andromeda, the only science-fiction magazine whose slush pile is read by actual aliens!’”

  “I wonder, would the average SF writer rather have his story accepted by me or a couple of guest editors from Procyon?” Saul slipped on the goggles, pulled away the cardigan, and leaned toward the prism. “Good heavens!”

  “Your question is not difficult,” said Wulawand. “He would rather his story were blessed by you, O Saul Silver.”

  “If I believed in a Supreme Being, I would swear I’m staring into his brain!” Saul declared. “A billion divine neurons, flashing on and off! Apocalyptic glowworms! The electric eels of Ein Sof !” Panting and gulping, he removed the goggles and set them on his desk. “There is no God, and he lives in this prism.”

  “Are you all right, Mr. Silver?” Gladys inquired.

  “Perseus was lucky he didn’t have agoraphobia,” said Saul, nodding. “Even a diluted Medusa is too much for me.”

  Returning to the great man’s desk, I cloaked the trophy with the cardigan. “There’s a teleplay of interest in this pile,” I whispered, setting my palm on the relevant stack of manuscripts. “Read it if you get a chance. Don’t pass it to the lobsters by mistake.”

  I packed away the Zorningorg Prize and ferried the valise across the room. Cupping my free hand beneath Connie’s arm, I guided her toward the door.

  “We’ll try to return in time for the broadcast,” I told Saul and his guests as I escorted my colleague out of the apartment. “Otherwise, enjoy the show!”

  “Praised be the gods of logic!” exclaimed Wulawand.

  “All hail the avatars of doubt!” declared Volavont.

  “Vita brevis, ars longa!” shouted Saul.

 
As dusk seeped into the pocks and pores of Greenwich Village, Connie and I trudged down Hudson Street, morosely preparing one another for the worst. Three of the five remaining actors we hoped to recruit were Not By Bread Alone regulars, and while Connie didn’t know them well, she suspected that our presumed apostle Peter, our intended leper, and our hypothetical Demivirgin Mary felt rather more protective toward Western civilization’s favorite religion than did our secular Jewish Jesus. Once they learned just how far “The Madonna and the Starship” went in sneering at the sacred, they might change their minds and bow out.

  Transfixed by foreboding, we entered the White Horse Tavern and strode past the crowded bar to a cramped dining space featuring dark oak walls, Dashiell Hammett shadows, and a pale plaster horse the size of a lamb. We proceeded to the back room. Two Rocket Rangers and a disciple of Jesus awaited us, seated in an alcove beneath a frieze of pseudo-Tiffany stained glass, both Brock Barton actors nursing golden beers.

  Approaching the gloomy niche, Connie suddenly groaned. She slouched against the wall and sucked in a deep breath.

  “On Wednesday night,” she explained to the troupe, “in this very alcove, I saw Dylan Thomas consume what would prove to be his last shot of alcohol.”

  “Shall we move to another table?” asked Hollis Wright, the reasonably handsome and adequately talented actor who portrayed Brock Barton.

  “No, but we should down a round of whiskies tonight in Mr. Thomas’s honor,” said Connie, installing herself at the head of the table.

  “I don’t drink,” said Clement Sayles, our presumed Peter, a tall ectomorph with a diffident beard he’d probably grown for his Bread Alone appearance.

  “I’ll be your proxy,” said the stumpy and hyperkinetic Jimmy Breeze, better known as Ducky Malloy. “I confess to a fondness for whiskey.”

  “‘And death shall have no dominion,’” said Wilma Lamont, gliding toward the alcove. The actress we’d marked for Mary was an earthy woman whose wry eyes and mischievous lips betrayed a certain lewdness of temperament—not anyone’s default image of the Blessed Virgin, but Ogden Lynx was famous for casting against type. “He was a great writer. Evidently I’ve got a crack at playing Rosie Probert when the Poetry Center revives Under Milk Wood next year. They just signed Hugh Griffith for Captain Cat.”

  Now our intended leper, the wan and cadaverous Gully Lomax, joined the gathering. “Is Ogden coming?” he asked.

  “This isn’t an Ogden sort of project,” said Connie, distributing the scripts. “Last night Kurt gave you a rough idea why we can’t broadcast my original teleplay, and now he’ll fill in the details.”

  “First let’s get some food on the table,” I said.

  We placed our orders, including the local liquid delicacy, a mixture of porter and ale, then indulged in autobiographical revelations, a conversation keyed to Gully’s fear that, owing to a dalliance with the Young Communist League, “Joe McCarthy’s bloodhounds have caught my scent.”

  Within fifteen minutes the various cheeseburgers, Reuben sandwiches, soft drinks, and beers arrived. As the meal progressed, I told the actors everything I knew about the Qualimosan crisis. Anticipating their objections to our baroque solution, I explained that waylaying the lobsters was not a possibility, since the X-13 death-ray would strike automatically at 10:20 A.M. I concluded by remarking that “an orbiting Sword of Damocles” hung over the heads of two million innocent TV viewers, “but I feel confident we can sheath the blade.”

  I set the Zorningorg Prize on the table, then removed the cardigan and delivered the trinocular goggles to Clement, who promptly descended to the prism’s hallucinatory core. Emerging, he passed the trophy to Wilma—and so it went, actor after actor, until the entire troupe had entered into a condition of primordial wonderment.

  “We’ve got to work this pyramid thing into a Brock Barton episode,” said Hollis, stroking the prize.

  “Another day’s discussion.” I cloaked the artifact and returned it to my valise.

  Taking up their scripts, our cast read “The Madonna and the Starship” with more sympathy than any pointedly satiric if occasionally sophomoric teleplay had ever received in human history.

  “Given the time crunch, I can’t offer you much directorial guidance,” said Connie after everyone had scanned the final page. “Each of you must plumb his soul for plausible motivations. May I assume you’re all willing to play the game?”

  “You can count on Brock Barton,” said Hollis.

  “And the apostle Peter,” said Clement, lighting a Pall Mall.

  “Maybe this whole thing will turn out to be a hoax,” said Wilma, “like what Orson Welles did on the radio with those Martians, but we still gotta see it through.”

  “This is a great opportunity for me,” said Gully evenly. “I’m always looking to fatten my McCarthy dossier.”

  “It’s just crazy enough to work,” declared Jimmy, another line I’d promised myself I would never use in a Brock Barton episode. “That said, I’m telling my sister and her husband to watch Lamp Unto My Feet instead.”

  Connie issued the essential imperatives—conference room C, 8:00 A.M., lines down pat—then added, “God willing, we’ll send these dreadful aliens home before they can hurt anybody.”

  “Great, but there’s just one problem,” said Hollis, flicking a bit of corned beef off his script. “Three years ago I was about to autograph my Brock Barton contract when Mr. Spalding pointed out a clause that Kellogg’s had inserted at the last minute. The whole matter seemed trivial at the time, so I went ahead and signed.”

  Jimmy took a large swallow of black and tan. “And the clause said—?”

  “That I can’t portray Brock Barton under any circumstances—including guest stints on other shows and live appearances at supermarket openings and such—without making a pitch for Sugar Corn Pops twice each hour.”

  “We don’t need this, Hollis,” I said. “We really don’t.”

  “Turns out that Ovaltine added the same sort of clause,” he elaborated.

  “You’re spoiling my appetite,” I muttered.

  “Here’s an idea,” said Connie. “Ten minutes into the new script, Jesus has everybody sit down to a Eucharist meal, right?”

  “Shazam!” cried an excited Wilma. “‘Eat these measures of Sugar Corn Pops, for they are my body. Drink this Ovaltine, for it is my blood.’”

  “At which juncture Brock steps in and pitches both products, like he’s done a thousand times before!” exclaimed Hollis.

  “Okay, that should work,” I said, scanning our troupe. “I assume the rest of you have no such catches in your contracts.”

  “No catches, but I think we could do a lot more with my blind and crippled leper,” said Gully. “He’s our Job figure—right?—the blameless victim who’s not afraid to put God in the dock. So how about giving me a knockout dungheap filibuster? Jehovah is a monster, a sadist, a cosmic vivisectionist who takes pleasure in his creatures’ suffering.”

  “I see your point, but we’ve got to keep the show down to twenty-five minutes,” said Connie. “If we encroach on Corporal Rex, Wonder Dog of the NYPD, there’ll be hell to pay. But assuming things go at a fast enough clip, I’ll have the floor manager give you the high sign, and you can deliver a succinct Jobian rant.”

  “Too bad you had to drop Mary’s other sons,” said Wilma. “Your aliens would love to see my virginity take it on the chin. Maybe I could tell Jesus, ‘As a little boy, you were quite a handful, especially compared to your brothers.’”

  “I like that,” said Connie. “Scratch your speech about the preschool Jesus kicking the puppy and add what you just said.”

  I took a final swallow of black and tan. “And then Ezra replies, ‘Well, naturally I was a handful. I’m God, you know.’”

  “Great!” exclaimed Connie.

  “As long as we’re writing our own material,” said Clement, puffing on his Pall Mall, “let’s have Peter make an Oscar Wilde sort of overture to Jesus, who hugs h
is disciple passionately and says, ‘On this church I will get my rocks off.’”

  “No!” cried Gully, slamming his palm on the table.

  “Are you insane?” Wilma asked Clement.

  “Just a suggestion.”

  “It’s time we ordered the final round,” said Connie, gesturing the waitress into our vicinity. “Please bring us seven watered-down whiskies,” she told the bored young woman, “two bowls of pretzels, and a maudlin anecdote about the late Dylan Thomas.”

  Eager to learn their lines and disappear into their revised personae, the five players exited the White Horse Tavern at seven o’clock. Connie and I lingered, drinking coffee and convincing each other that the changes we’d just endorsed were for the better. Shortly after seven-thirty I called Ezra on the tavern’s payphone, explained the Kellogg’s contract crisis, and gave him his new lines for the Eucharist scene plus his riposte to Mary’s declaration that he’d been a difficult child.

  “This is juicy stuff, full of subtext,” he enthused. “Bread Alone will go out with a bang, won’t it?”

  “The biggest,” I said. “Bring all the necessary breakfast cereal props, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “Ovaltine, too.”

  “You got it.”

  Next I rang up Saul, who told me Manny and Terry had arrived at 59 West 82nd Street a half-hour ago. Everybody was getting along like gangbusters. Already Saul, the Andromeda writers, and the lobsters had played two hands of seven-card stud, Manny taking the first pot with a flush, Volavont winning the second with three jacks.

  “Before the game, Wulawand found an extraordinary first-contact story in the pile,” said Saul. Lowering his voice, he added, “I like the script, Kurt. Mazel tov.”

  “It keeps getting better.”

  “Too bad it leaves the aliens’ Weltanschauung intact.”

  “We mustn’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good.”

  “True enough, but I’m going to have Manny and Terry read it on the sly. If we get any bright ideas, I’ll call you first thing in the morning.”

  As the watered-down whiskies evaporated from our brains, Connie and I left the White Horse and ambled toward Father Demo Square, looking for a taxi.