'My career? My career as a circus freak?'
'You're not a circus freak. You're a sensitive and valuable person in a predacious market culture.'
I threw up my hands. 'Oh, I give up. I'm going home. I wish there were dragons. I wish there were castles. I wish I could get on a spaceship. This world is just a big letdown.'
I didn't even care if I sounded childish. I stomped away, snorting to get the smell of charcoal smoke out of my nose. I wanted a bucket of Haagen-Dazs so bad – not that it would do any good. I went to my car and found I'd locked the keys inside.
Some guy in a white T-shirt and cutoffs came up to me. I tried to ignore him but he kept staring at me until I had to look at him.
'Hi,’ said the guy. 'You must be Cookie. I'm Jake Davies, but everybody calls me Montana. You know, the sandworm archeo-biologist? I study extraplanetary artifacts and interpret the messages in the tracks of the Arrakis sandworm, but I also dabble in other areas. You may have read my monograph on replicating the tensile strength of sandworm skin in biodomes.'
I looked at him blankly for a minute. Then my mom-trained make-nice reflexes kicked in and I said, 'Oh, yeah. Dune was a great book, but I never could get into the sequels.'
He made a lemon face and added, 'I find there's a distinct lack of administrative support for my post. I keep asking for a language interpreter but I never get one. I put in a request for a planetary field expedition three years ago. I don't have to tell you that never happened.'
What a kook. I looked around for an escape.
'I'm gonna . . . get some water,’ I said, edging towards the cooler where some guys from Accounting were standing. I was tempted to bolt, but thought I should at least try and brush him off onto somebody else.
His eyebrows came down like two caterpillars kissing. 'Are you mocking me?' he snarled. 'Water is the lifeblood. Water is the sacred text. Water—'
I ran for it. I dodged around Gloria's kids and almost collided with Gunther carrying a big platter of ribs smothered in Heinz 57 sauce.
'Cookie, there you are – no hard feelings, right? Can I tempt you with a—'
I swerved to avoid Gunther and instead crashed into Miles. He had a beach towel draped around his neck and was still holding his car keys. Thank heavens.
'Can we leave?' I said.
'I just got here. Are those ribs?'
I grabbed his arm. 'Seriously. I need to go. Now.'
'Unhand me, wench. Into the chariot with you, then, and surcease your scowling.'
He opened the door and I sat down heavily in his front seat. He started the engine and pulled out.
'I was really looking forward to going swimming,' he said. Then he glanced across at me. 'What's going on with you? You look like you're going to cry.'
I was crying. I blotted my face on my forearm and took a couple of shuddery breaths to control myself.
'Never mind.'
'I found out about Leroy Jones,' he said. 'He does exist. The social security number matches his name. Now are you going to tell me why you wanted to know?'
I leaned my head against the window. The air-conditioning came up and ruffled the hairs on my forearms.
I said, 'Let me guess. He's a psycho killer. He tried to assassinate Walt Disney.'
'Walt Disney is already dead. No, Leroy Jones is a respected artist and illustrator. He's one of the creators of some new cartoon that has all the kids excited. I never heard of it – I'm a Rocky & Bullwinkle guy myself.'
He did a right onto Black Oak Ridge Road and took the opportunity to take a long look at me. I gave him my profile.
'What cartoon?' I said dully.
'Huh. Well, this is the funny part, but I'm not sure I should tell you because you're touchy about these things . . .'
'I already know. It's Cookie Starfishes, isn't it?'
Miles seemed disappointed. 'Then I guess you already have one,' he said.
'Have one what?'
'Look in the glove compartment.'
I opened the glove compartment and next to a map of Passaic County and a roll of Lifesavers was a stuffed purple starfish. When you squeezed it, it played the line 'I am the eye/In the sky/I can fly' from that song 'Planetary Express' by Rocket Squad. The song I supposedly 'picked' somehow. So it was the theme song for Cookie Starfishes.
'Cute, huh? Come on, Cookie, cheer up. You've got a mascot.'
I leaned back in the seat and laid my forearm over my eyes.
'I'm losing all perspective,' I said. 'What's happening to me?'
'Did you know,' said Miles, 'that Genesis once wrote a song from the perspective of a lawnmower?'
the dead lamb's Mother
Klaski fishes the logic bullets out of the well, using the netting on Lewis's equipment pack. The task takes a while, but she goes at it with total focus. When they are out, she picks them up and lets them spill through her fingers. They look like jewels and smell like fertilizer. They seem to resonate slightly in her hands, like bells.
'This is what everyone wants so badly,' she says. Her voice is shaking. 'The mathematics of the Grid. The master key of creation. The code to an alien mind.'
Klaski sits back on her heels.
'So Arla had a secret. She took the logic bullets out of the mines and hid them in the well. I wonder if it's done anything to them . . .'
She smooths them in her hands, looking for signs of cracks or flaws. Not that she would know. She's never seen logic bullets before.
'I thought it was suicidal behavior but she was just checking on her treasure trove. What was she going to do with them? Keep them from MF?'
You can almost hear Arla now. 'The machines will use this. They'll build better weapons. They'll get control. They'll find the Grid's weaknesses, understand its thought.'
Klaski laughs.
'Yes, it's true, folks - Joanne Klaski walks off with the door prize.'
She freezes. She has realized that someone is watching her. She focuses her eyes on the spaces within the Grid. There are several someones, actually, and they all look the same.
Klaski drops the logic bullets in a cascade of melodic tones and brandishes her ray gun.
'You keep away from me!' she yells.
Serge's little girls – they're like wrapping a live lamb in the skin of a dead one so the dead lamb's mother will accept it – is that what the Grid is doing? Just getting under our skin, again and again.
Because Klaski can't seem to bring herself to shoot them. Not unless they move first. They don't. They are scarcely more than eyes in a dark forest.
She flips open her Swatch.
'Major Galante? Machine Front? It's. . .it's Lieutenant Klaski, you don't know me, I'm under Captain Serge . . . you know, she had Dante but I don't know how. . .? Hello? Machine Front? Mayday?'
She waits a while. Her Swatch plays Madonna's 'Borderline' and the cursor flashes. Then a mechanical voice says, 'Attempting connection to Major Galante. Please wait.'
'Galante.'
'Oh! Major Galante, this is Lieutenant Klaski - can you hear me?'
'Yeah, I got you, Klaski, where you guys been? I keep calling and getting no response.'
'Major, it's bad, I lost the others. I think they're all. . .they're not coming back. Uh, can you tell me how to get to your position?'
'My advice is to get your flier up again. We need Gossamer.'
'I can't. It's damaged. Shot down.'
'Gossamer's damaged? No wonder I can't get through. I've tried to call Sergeant Lewis about fifty times. What's going on over there? Let me speak to Dr. Gonzalez.'
'She's dead, ma'am. I'm the only one left and I—'
Her face is rubberizing and her voice bubbles with tears.
Galante is cursing freely.
'How close are you to the mines? You should be nearly at the perimeter. Get a grip. Lieutenant, and get yourself to safety. I can't come looking for you now, I got problems of my own.'
'I really need to talk to you in person, Major Galante. There's some th
ings I just can't explain over a Swatch. Can't you send me your position and I can come to you instead?'
'Sure, if you think you can walk through about ten thousand golems and survive. We're under ambush. You don't want to be here. Get up to the mines. If you can make it that far, my guys will take care of you. Copy?'
'Yeah,' croaks Klaski tearfully. 'l copy.'
The link cuts. Klaski takes a shuddery breath. 'How am I going to get there from here?'
And you remember the dead Grid, cutting a road in the direction of the mines. Its edge is near here. You send files to her Swatch, hoping she'll take the hint.
The Swatch chirps a few bars of 'Red Skies at Night' and Klaski answers easily. She looks deflated when she realizes it's only a data transmission from Gossamer. Then she fishes around in the Swatch for a long time before she finds the visual of your flyover showing the dead Grid and how it leads to the mines.
'I hope this works,' she moans.
Klaski counts the logic bullets. There are forty-seven. She packs them in Hendricks's knapsack, dumping out various clothes, cassette tapes and toiletries in the process. After she's taken Thriller she incinerates these. She picks up Gossamer and drapes you across her own backpack much as Arla did. Then Klaski picks up Hendricks's pack with the logic bullets and hangs them around her front, like a kangaroo pouch, and sets off.
planetary journey
In the end I told Miles enough to get him excited about Dataplex. Culminating in the fact that I'd been watching Cookie Starfishes all this time when I was at work. But he didn't look especially shocked. I prompted:
'Don't you remember? Don't you remember the night we got drunk and I told you I felt like a starfish? Remember? Ringworld Engineers in the bathtub, you said.'
It came out all jumbled, and Miles rubbed his eyebrows as he tried to follow my meaning. 'Oh . . . maybe . . . sort of . . . did you actually say 'Cookie Starfishes' at the time?'
'Yeah, I did. And then I saw the darn cereal in Shop Rite.'
He wagged his head from side to side, considering. I couldn't understand why he wasn't more shocked and horrified by the sinister implications of what Dataplex were doing. OK, maybe making these connections is the province of the paranoid schizophrenic – maybe I'm extra good at it. But to me there was a big unknown in terms of whether Dataplex was making me think and feel things, or whether my visions were truly there to be felt whether or not Dataplex existed. Whether the world on a TV screen was more real than me and Miles sitting in this car yakking about it.
But in that case, how could the Grid in some sense be inseparable from a cartoon about intelligent spacefaring snacks?
'Golems . . .' Miles murmured doubtfully.
I said: 'Come on. Do you really think I could make all this stuff up if I tried?'
'Well. Something's going on. Hard to say what it is.'
He didn't believe me. He didn't think I was lying; he just thought I was deluded.
But he hacked into Dataplex's personnel records and found that Leroy Jones had been paid as an outside contractor – just like I was – not long before I joined Dataplex. Miles also found his current address: a very swanky neighborhood in Alpine where people like Brooke Shields were rumored to live.
'Let's go out there tomorrow,' he said. 'What can it hurt?'
A confrontation? No, thanks.
'I don't know. I have to be at the dojo later, and . . . I don't know, Miles. What's the point?'
But here I was, Saturday morning after a weird bout of Friday-night TV with Klaski and the logic, sitting on Leroy Jones's couch in his Alpine mini-mansion, sipping iced tea and listening to Miles do a Barbara Walters on the great man.
'You know, I can't say where the ideas come from,' Leroy mused. 'Usually I'll be out running and an idea will just like float into my head. I'll get home, do a little sketch – like with the starfishes idea, the first thing I saw was Malkor, the wizard. At first he was a comical character. He had a magic cookie jar, and he used the cookies to cast spells.'
Miles glanced at me, but I didn't meet his eye.
'But then it kind of started to morph in my head, and the cookies became real characters, and they had their own stories.'
'Were you working for Dataplex then?' I said.
'If you could call it working! I went in and took a test. They play you some music and ask you to draw what you hear. At least, that's what I had to do, anyway – maybe the drawing part was because I'm an artist by profession. Then they gave me a whole stack of tapes, asked me to listen to them and bring in my sketches. So I did. I played them on my Walkman when I was out jogging. And then, one day, I got the starfishes idea. I worked on it for a while before I got up the nerve to show it to anybody. I took it to a friend of mine at Rodeo Comics, and he gave it to some TV chick he knew, and the next thing I know I get a TV contract. I quit the Dataplex project as soon as the real money started coming. I got too busy with the show.'
I wonder if that was when you died, I thought, looking for Grid parallels. And became a golem.
'What was on the tapes?' I tried to sound casually curious.
'Oh, music. Rock, pop, R&B, world music. A whole mix. Some stuff I've heard, but most of it was new to me. Some of it has come on the radio since then. One of the songs was actually 'Planetary Journey', believe it or not. You know, the Cookie Starfishes theme song. It hadn't even been released yet, but the producers picked it for the show and as soon as I heard it I recognized it from the Dataplex tapes. Neat coincidence. Good tune, too.'
'Did you know that Dataplex are still involved in the show?' Miles said.
Leroy waved his hand. 'Yeah, I hear they consult on the advertising or something. Everybody seems to think they know the secret of a show's success and they can tell advertisers which space to buy to get the best results. That's about the extent of it.'
'So you don't think your idea had anything to do with Dataplex?'
Leroy frowned. He was a light-skinned black man, with a sprinkling of freckles and a mustache, and until Miles said that his expression had been sunny and open.
'No. No, I don't. Not unless you want to give them credit for letting me take time off from my other jobs, giving me some headspace, which I badly needed at the time.'
'Of course, of course,' Miles said hastily 'Well, thanks a lot for your time. Sorry to drop in like this. Come on, Karen.'
I didn't move.
'Mr. Jones. How did you hear about the Dataplex gig?' I asked.
Leroy chuckled. 'You're probably not going to believe this, but it was one of those ads – you know: Earn up to $500 a week in your spare time, no selling, type of thing. At the time I was pretty hard up. Keisha's mom left her with me, I had to put her in day care and work two jobs just to keep food on the table and pay the car loan. Actually, if I remember correctly, somebody put a flier on my windshield. I came out of my counselor's office and there it was. See, it was tough times. I was on antidepressants and all that crap, I had to see a shrink but I couldn't afford him. I saw the ad and I thought, 'What the hell?"
I looked around the villa. It had been tastefully decorated. Everything was in the kind of understatement that you can only buy in SoHo, except for a giant framed poster advertising Cookie Starfishes.
Leroy sure wasn't depressed now.
Then something flashed in my head.
'Do you remember your counselor's name?'
He cocked his head. 'Yeah. Dr. Stengel. Good guy. Very sympathetic'
Keisha's Shetland pony could be seen grazing outside. How many Dr. Stengels could there be in northern New Jersey?
'Gunther Stengel?' I asked.
'I think so . . . yeah. Some kind of German name, or Swedish or something. You know him?'
Everything was clicking now. I could just see Gunther sending his secretary out to put fliers on people's cars while he had them on his couch talking about their childhoods. It was one way to recruit nutcases.
Leroy Jones was watching me curiously. Shaken, I babbled a breathle
ss response. 'No . . . not exactly. . . well, it all turned out OK for you. That's quite a story'
'Yeah.' Leroy Jones grinned and sat back, relaxing. 'It turned out great. We're going into syndication and I'm looking at cable deals, maybe a movie. Who says art doesn't pay?'
'Too bad they had to kill you first,' I murmured without thinking. When I saw his face, I leaped to my feet, horrified. 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean that.'
Miles grabbed my arm. 'Cookie doesn't know what she's saying sometimes,' he said. 'Please excuse us.'
Now Leroy was seriously annoyed. He followed us to the door.
'What's all this about?' he shouted after us as we ran down the front lawn. 'Do you guys really work for Rolling Stone? Hey! I thought you said your name was Karen!'
'It's a conspiracy!' cried Miles, hitting the steering wheel. 'An attempt to dominate the commercial market. Mind control. Shit.'
'Mind control?' I said. 'Where do you get that?'
'Dataplex planted the idea for Cookie Starfishes in Leroy Jones, using music. I wonder where those original tapes are now?'
'Don't be ridiculous, Miles.'
He took his gaze off the road and stared at me. Usually he's the one saying that to me.
'Well, how do you explain the connection?'
'I don't know,' I said. 'But I refuse to believe that Gunther is capable of performing mind control. He can't even get his dogs to listen to him. He's a good salesman but he's no Franz Mesmer.'
'Who?'
'The first hypnotist. The word 'mesmerize' comes from his name, didn't you know that? My mother, she was into all that stuff.'
'I should have known.'
'See, why would Dataplex plant an idea for a hit TV show in the mind of an unknown cartoonist? If they knew they had a hit show, they would have run with it themselves. And besides, if they already had the idea, it had to come from somewhere. The original creator would be bound to object and probably try to sue them. It's not plausible. It's not even plausible to imagine that, with a plot like you've described to me, Cookie Starfishes could be a hit show. I mean, who would predict that? It sounds totally stupid in theory.'
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