by John Varley
The small boxes held single species. The big ones were jungles, riots of competitors growing alone or parasitically.
The light was very dim, but swelled as he moved along and faded behind him, giving him enough light to see by. He supposed these things grew better in the dark.
It was a living art gallery, but it was also a farm. He came upon a man in a white coat and chef's hat cutting slices from a green-capped giant and putting them into a basket. He was a plump fellow, and smiled and nodded to Sparky as he passed. He popped a piece of bright orange mushroom into his mouth and turned back to his work.
Sparky turned a corner in the semidarkness and entered a brightly lit area that had to be the kitchen, but not one like he'd ever seen. Alcoves opened off each side of another broad corridor, each alcove containing two or three people in chef's whites. There were preparation tables and ovens and all the rest of the equipment of the culinary arts—and art this most definitely was. He saw a whole suckling pig come out of an oven, apple in its mouth, and be removed to a wheeled table for garnishing and decorating. One alcove seemed entirely devoted to cakes. Great, towering, multicolored baroque masterpieces dripping with marzipan, festooned with fanciful figures and flowers. Some were being worked on, others had already been transferred to a wheeled table.
All the alcoves centered around the tables. Sparky realized what it reminded him of. It was like a scene from an old movie set in a big-city hospital emergency room, with gowned doctors and nurses working intently on patients stretched out on... what was the word? Gurneys.
There was another old movie image, too. A big mortuary, cosmeticians carefully preparing their compliant clients. Sparky didn't know why that image sprang to mind, but it did.
The place certainly didn't smell like a hospital or morgue. He passed a saucier, sizzling a brown, thick liquid in a skillet. It was a heavenly smell. He realized he'd had nothing to eat that day. The image of Amish corn muffins came into his mind and he wondered if he would ever have another.
Finished gurneys were being wheeled through an arched doorway and into the banquet room. Three very long tables were covered with white cloth and being set with the culinary creations. Again, something was out of whack. The whole huge room contained not a single chair. Sparky saw plates the size of garbage can lids, but no silver. Instead of glassware there were punch bowls filled with wine and fruit juices, and small robot devices with rotary pumps which dipped plastic tails into the drink and then delivered it by means of prehensile necks to... who? The standing diners? Diners who had no hands? Sparky couldn't picture the patrons of this feast.
Wondering how much farther he had to go, he passed from the banquet room into a dark, dank, sweltering place he at first could not fathom at all.
A ceiling arched high overhead, almost out of sight. Before him was a twenty-foot surface of government-green ceramic tiles, stretching to his right and his left. Beyond that was a placid surface of water, no more than an inch below the ledge he stood on. It was a swimming pool, and quite a large one. He'd never seen one designed quite like this, though.
In a moment he realized it had been converted from an old tank that had probably once been a part of the vast and complex sewage treatment system of King City. It was a big cylinder lying on its side. The water would be as deep as the ceiling was high, and there would be no shallow end. There was no smell beyond a faint whiff of chlorine, and no sound but the intermittent drip of water condensing on the ceiling and falling back into the pool. No diving board, no poolside chairs, no lifeguards, though the place was big enough they'd need motorboats to get to a drowner quickly. No people.
Were they growing something in here? Fish for the banquet tables behind him? Kelp? He went to the edge and leaned over. A faint emerald shimmer from near the bottom revealed nothing at first, then he saw vague shapes undulating slowly between him and the light. It was like looking down into an atomic-reactor core, the surface glass smooth, the depths crystalline. The occasional mutant five-ton sardine swimming by...
Slow, greasy swells distorted the surface and Sparky straightened and squinted into the darkness. A tubular shape was moving slowly toward him, just beneath the surface. Part of its back broke through and rolled slightly. Could it be some sort of whale? Nothing in Luna was more illegal than to produce anything resembling earthly cetaceans. A hippopotamus, more likely.
It was Uncle Ed.
Sparky never understood how he knew this, but he knew. He hadn't seen his uncle in over twenty years, had not known him well then. The thing wallowing in the water below him at first presented nothing resembling a face. But he knew. Then the thing rolled slightly and at one end, on one side, was a clench of flesh that slowly resolved itself into eyes, nose, and a mouth. There was nothing you could really call a head, and certainly nothing resembling a neck. Just endless, tightly packed folds and rolls of flesh that quivered and undulated with the slow rhythms of the water. One single feature was left of the matinee idol that had been Ed Ventura: his nose. It had defined a profile that graced a million movie posters, and there it sat, surrounded, almost overwhelmed. The lips were now fat and sensuous. The chin? Well, Sparky supposed you could call any of several dozen folds below the mouth a chin, if it pleased you. His cheeks were fat. His forehead was fat; if eyebrows remained, they were buried deep. The eyes were at the bottom of puckered pits, but they were alert and alive.
"Hello, Sparky," the thing said. And there was the source of the blubbery sound he had heard over the intercom. Uncle Ed could barely speak without making a raspberry.
"Hi... Uncle Ed?"
"Somewhat changed, but still the same jolly old fellow inside," Ed confirmed. "Wait a moment."
There was a momentary splashing, and Sparky caught a glimpse of what might have been a hand, or a flipper. If it was connected to an arm, Sparky didn't see it. The huge cylinder of pale fat rolled and turned in the water until one end—the end with the face—bobbed partly out of the water. It was like an illustration Sparky recalled from a children's book he used to have. Humpty-Dumpty. An egg with a face painted on it. Only this wasn't painted, it was more like it had been poked into soft bread dough.
The mouth smiled. It was bigger than Sparky had realized. Well, of course it would have to be big to eat enough to... Sparky turned away from that thought. And from the problem of how all that food being prepared in the banquet room was to get from the tables into the maw of this floating creature.
As a matter of fact, Uncle Ed presented several logistical problems to the curious mind, such as breathing, and elimination, and sex... Sparky had never felt less curious in his life.
"Sit down, boy," Ed commanded. "I can't look up at you."
"What's that?"
"No neck, Sparky." His uncle chuckled. "I haven't had much of a neck for ten years now."
Sparky sat, at first crossing his legs beneath him, then deciding he might as well dangle his feet in the water. It was warm and soothing; Sparky had been on the move for almost six hours. He needed a rest.
"Was that a bandage on your leg?"
"Yes."
"And you seem fairly battered in other places."
"I fell down a staircase."
"Of course you did. I must say, you did not show any trace of disgust when first I hove into view."
"I'm an actor."
There was a pause, then Ed laughed.
"And a hell of a good one, nephew! Much better than I ever was. Of course, I never wanted to be an actor, but I had little choice in the matter. Neither did you."
"It's all I ever wanted to be," Sparky said.
"It's all you were ever allowed to want to be, which is a slightly different thing. But you had the talent, and you did well, so no harm done, eh? Except for the occasional near-death experience in the bathtub, I shouldn't wonder."
Sparky was too shocked to reply.
"Well of course I know about that, boy. Not from having witnessed John doing it to you. From having it done to me by my father. Given Jo
hn's personality, and his designs on you, it was a certainty he would use Father's methods in your education."
"Do you have children?" Sparky asked, a little chagrined that he had never thought to find out.
"I did not. I didn't want to find out if I would use Father's methods. They say it runs in families, you know. Child abuse. Something you might wish to consider when the question of child rearing comes up."
Sparky didn't know why he had asked that question. He was feeling lightheaded, not at all well. The smells of cooking from the room behind him were overwhelming, and not as pleasant as they had been.
"You didn't want to be an actor," Sparky said. For some reason, that bit of information had stuck in his head.
"Didn't want to be, and never really became one. I was a star, and I'm sure your father told you the difference. I wanted to be a chef. Our father had other ideas, and one did not cross our father, any more than you cross yours. Though it looks as if you might have done so today."
"Did you see... I mean, has it been on—"
"The news? There is no news in here, Sparky. And before you launch into your story, let me assure you I don't want to hear it. What he did to you, what you did to him, I don't want to know. I can never be called to testify to something I don't know anything about. You fell down a staircase. Right?"
"...right."
"And I'm a ballet dancer. Of course, I'm free to deduce things. You want to get off Luna. You seem unable to simply walk up to the ticket counter and buy passage. Ergo, you are being hunted. You had an argument with this staircase. You seem to have lost."
"You haven't seen the staircase."
"Hah!" Uncle Ed was delighted. "Maybe you gave as good as you got! No, no, don't tell me any details, let me make them up in my own mind. It should provide me with no end of source material for months of quiet contemplation. That's what we mostly do here, if you were curious. Float, and contemplate."
"And eat," Sparky suggested.
Uncle Ed squinted dubiously. With all that fat around his eyes, it was a squint to remember.
"I wasn't—" Sparky began.
"Making fun of me. Of course not. Obviously we eat. I forbade you contempt, disgust. Curiosity I will allow you. Within limits. I'd venture to guess you're wondering how much I weigh."
Like the starlet insulted when asked her measurements, Sparky suspected the lady doth protest too much. Ed wanted to talk, he realized. Within limits. He'd have to be careful not to show too much nor too little interest.
"Three thousand two hundred and seven pounds, at last weighing. Probably a few more by today. A ton and a half of contentment."
Sparky hadn't known humans could get that large. He doubted it was possible without some modifications. Extra hearts, possibly, or mechanical ones. Or elephant hearts. He also suspected that if he asked about that, he could be there for hours.
"I believe I'm the third largest human who has ever lived. Numbers one and two are somewhere in the water below me."
"Are you shooting for first place?"
"Not in any determined way. I wouldn't mind, of course."
"You said 'we.' Who are you? I mean, a cult of some sort?"
"Just retirees who like to eat. People who find the modern world a bit too frantic, who have socialized too much. People on retreat. Who are seeking a lower level of consciousness. Who admire lizards basking on rocks, jellyfish drifting on warm currents. Who are happy to exist, but not eager to struggle, physically or mentally. We have no organization other than regular meals, six times a day, and no name for ourselves. The few outsiders who are aware of us—and that is very few, since we never go out—call us chubbies."
Sparky was reminded of a story of a hermit, isolated and silent for thirty years. Once his silence was broken he couldn't stop talking. Sparky couldn't recall the punch line.
But he could see some sort of forklift trucks congregating down at the far end of the pool. Cargo nets hung from manipulator arms, and there seemed to be a commotion in the water. Good God, it must be feeding time, he realized. He would rather not witness that.
"So can you help me?"
Uncle Ed bobbed in the water like a waterlogged inflatable beach ball, regarding his nephew silently. His expressions were very hard to read.
"I have a private yacht mothballed at a port on the Farside," Uncle Ed said, at length. "Nothing fancy, but it will get you as far as Mars in a reasonable time."
"I'll buy it from you."
"No need." The fat man chuckled. "A stroke of genius, your coming here. It is the absolute last place John would think to look for you. And my yacht is the least likely vehicle for him to watch for. And I suspect you knew I could never resist doing him a bad turn. Isn't that right?"
"You can see right through me," Sparky said. He had never entertained any such idea, had never even remembered he had an uncle until Doc brought it up. But why mention that?
"They tell me it can be made space-ready in two hours. I'll call and authorize it. When you get to Mars, hire someone to bring it back."
"Sure." Sparky had no intention of hiring anyone, or of going to Mars. But why complicate things?
"Good luck," Uncle Ed burbled, his head sinking beneath the water.
* * *
I had needed a little luck, and some thespian and confidence skills to talk my way past busybodies at the spaceport with too much time on their hands, but I had made it. (What had the name of Uncle Ed's yacht been? Eclair? Bonbon?? Something sweet and sticky, I remember that much.) Anyway, with visions of sugarplums—and Uncle Ed's bloated frame—dancing in my head, I had made my escape from Luna, from my father, from Sparky, from everyone who was looking to do me ill or do me good. For almost fifty years I had never shown my real face or revealed my real name. Only recently had I begun to admit once more to being "Sparky," though only in the outer planets, and found to my surprise that I was still remembered.
I had been back to Luna twice since then, when the lure of a role was just too much. I had used ironclad false identification, never the same name. All this had put a severe crimp in my career. No sooner would I start to get good notices, build up a reputation in my current pseudonym, than I'd feel the hot breath of pursuit and take off for a new venue, with a new identity. Practically speaking, no one had been looking for me for thirty or forty years now, I felt reasonably sure. But old habits die hard, and the guilty flee before the bad reviews are out.
And now I was about to return to Luna once more. Luna, the fabled Golden Globe. I could see it out the window of the lifeboat as Poly and I strapped ourselves in for the last leg of the journey. At certain distances it really does look golden, though usually I'd describe it as more of a buttermilk shade. Mount it on a gilt pedestal and you could give it out as an award.
There really had been an award called the Golden Globe once, years before the Invasion. My father had told me about it. It was handed out by a group called the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in honor of the year's best work in motion pictures.
"Not the Foreign Film Critics, you'll notice," he had told me. "Just a bunch of reporters from other countries who used to get together, forty or fifty of them, to have a dinner and hand out awards to any film people desperate enough to show up and get drunk with them. After a while, being reporters, they started giving out press releases about who'd won. On a slow news day, some papers would pick up the story. And then things snowballed. Before long, they had their own television show, full of stars, just as if the award meant something. They managed to upstage the Oscars, and the awards might as well have been given out by the Podunk Rotary Club for all they had to do with film.
"Draw your own moral from this, Sparky. And remember, at the center of the cult of personality called stardom there is just a big empty hole. Awards don't matter. Acclaim doesn't matter. Only your craft matters."
* * *
We were already sore and a bit cranky from a day and a half at one gee. When the lifeboat engine fired it hit hard, and we didn't have
the padding we'd used aboard Hal. But it wasn't a terribly long boost. The first lifeboat fell away—really nothing more than an engine and fuel tank, after Hal modified it in his repair shop. By the time the second one fired Luna was looming much larger in my window. This was a bit gentler, but still rough.
The lifeboat engine coughed out its last while we were still ten meters above the surface. Considering that all the calculations had been done at the orbit of Uranus, I would call this cutting it close. We dropped, and hit with a jar and a crunch of metal. There was a faint hiss audible from the cabin, a sound no Lunarian likes to hear, but we were in our suits, and the boat's tripod landing gear kept us from falling over.
We struggled to our feet, wrestled our luggage into the lock, and stepped out onto the surface. There was no one but Poly to hear my first words, but I set them down here for the sake of history.
"That was one heck of a giant leap for an old actor."
I was home.
* * *
ACT 5
* * *
KING LEAR
ACT I SCENE I
(from The Five-Minit Bard)
* * *
King Lear's Palace
Enter Lear, Goneril, Regan, Cordelia, Gloucester, Kent
LEAR: Hey, you! Go get Burgundy and the Frog! I'm an old fart, and I'm pooped. I'm outta here.
GONERIL: Gimme the kingdom, 'cause I love you and kiss your royal ass.
REGAN: Me, too, Daddy, but twice as much!