“We just escaped death,” said Chuck. “Champagne might be the order of the day.”
“I got good cold champán,” said the barman.
Compared with the likely effects of champagne, beer seemed safer if Chuck and Jim insisted, so I pointed at the beer tap. “Two of those. Coke for me.”
“Yeah,” said Juno.
“Me too,” from Barbara.
“Hey mister, hey mister,” clamoured one of the kids, unmistakably American, “are you actors in a space movie?”
“No, we are not actors,” Barbara said.
“You look actors,” piped up a cancan girl.
At that point up bustled a plump, tanned, beaming middle-aged woman in jeans and a billowy yellow blouse.
“Boys, go and play in the street,” she instructed. “Chicas,” to the cancan dancers, “help with the drinks, las bebidas okay? Pablo ¿qué pasa?”
Pablo spoke rather quickly in Spanish, the woman nodding and saying Si from time to time.
“I have to sit down.” Juno headed for a big round empty table, us four others following gladly.
Joining us at the table, the woman told us in a British accent, “I’m the wardrobe mistress of Texas Hollywood. My name’s Rachel. Where did you get those spacesuits? They’re so authentic looking. Is there a commercial I don’t know about?”
“It’s pretty hot in these,” complained Juno.
“They from planet Mars,” Pablo told her. “Hace muy frio… makes very cold on Mars.”
A couple of the cancan girls brought our drinks, then Rachel shooed them away.
“Look now,” Rachel said in a motherly way, “if you’ll just step over the street I can fit you all out in something much more comfortable. Your spacesuits will be perfectly safe over there. May as well take your helmets with you too.”
Chuck drained his chilled beer in one go. “I guess we oughta borrow someone’s mobile… You know, phone the US embassy. That’ll be in Lisbon, I guess. No, Madrid.”
“Why would you want to do that?” asked Rachel. “Phone your director, your producer.”
“We don’t have those,” said Chuck. Was his voice slurring already? “We have Mission Control.”
“They say they brought back from Mars, not say how.”
“Oh God, it’s so awful,” said Rachel quickly. “I watched on TV. I’m so sorry for your countrymen, those brave astronauts.”
“We are those astronauts,” said Chuck. “This is real. A flying saucer – ”
“No,” I hissed.
“– a flying saucer brought us back in – three hours, can you believe it?”
“I think he has heatstroke,” I said. “In these suits. Or maybe it’s the beer.”
Rachel rose. “Come on, all of you. Over the street.” She herded us.
Within twenty minutes we were arrayed for the Wild West, the gals in ankle-length sleeveless striped dresses, me as a corporal in the US Cavalry in blue uniform, yellow neckerchief and chevrons. Chuck was a Marshall with pointy silver badge, Jim an ordinary cowpoke. Necessarily we’d abandoned our thermal long-johns cum long-sleeved vest combos, so we lacked underwear, which the wardrobe room didn’t stock. On impulse I transferred the clingfilm with its bit of evidence to my new uniform.
Back to the table we went with Rachel, Chuck taking his Mars camera along as though he too had become a tourist. More beers and Cokes appeared.
Juno aired herself, and smiled at Rachel. “Sure feels a lot better.”
“So, hombre,” our cowboy said to Chuck, “not spaceman now, feel different?”
Chuck drank then yawned. “We still gotta phone.”
“Phone American embassy, they believe you? Send black helicopters?”
I shook my head. “They’ll be unlikely to believe us at first.”
“So we phone Houston,” said Chuck. “They know our voices.”
“You have the number on you?”
Chuck looked frustrated. “Look, we don’t have money, passports, anything of the sort. Just our suits. And cameras, datapads. I can show you us on Mars,” he said to Rachel. So that was why he’d brought the camera. “Look, look,” presenting images on the camera’s screen, of us in a stony reddish desert, the big landing module standing there, a metal cabin on legs that looked like a model.
Without our noticing, more tourists had arrived in the saloon, mostly distinguishable from authentic pretend cowboys by cameras and pallid or lobster-red faces. One silvery-bearded crewcut fellow, who’d been here already, was shifting his chair ever closer to our table.
“Excuse me for butting in,” he said. “You seen that conspiracy movie about how the Apollo 11 Moon landing was simulated? The White House was worried there mightn’t be live TV from Apollo 11 on account of technical problems, so to be on the safe side they got Stanley Kubrick to simulate the video secretly on the set of 2001. Flew over to England with moon suits and a spare lunar exploration module that Armstrong and Aldrin had practised with. Allegedly.
“There’s footage of Kissinger and other White House big-wigs authorising the plan – except if you pay close attention they’re merely talking about a plan, unspecified. It’s the voiceover that says this is about Apollo 11. And there’s an interview with Kubrick’s widow Christiane, and her brother, what’s his name, Harlan, Jan Harlan, that’s it, talking about how impressed Kissinger was – Christiane mentions Kissinger by name, but again it’s the voiceover that says this is about Kubrick shooting a simulated Apollo-on-the Moon in England. England, of course, because Kubrick lived near London and wouldn’t fly. Clever bit of editing, that film! I’m a connoisseur of conspiracy theories. And do I seem to be in on the ground floor here and now!”
“But look.” Chuck displayed more images for him. “These are real photos.”
“They’re real electronic photos, there’s no denying. Kubrick’s genius was in making 2001 look real with the technology of the late Sixties. Boy, have we moved on from there!”
Chuck put the camera on the table and slumped.
Our busybody went on: “I couldn’t help overhearing you saying about having no documents or money, only those spacesuits and, before you went off to get changed, I’m sure I heard flying saucer. That’s a beautiful touch, if I’m reading this correctly. So who’s your director?”
“There ain’t no director,” I told him.
“You mean it’s an amateur production, like Indiana Jones reshot in a garage? Just you five guys on your own?”
“Mister, it’s real. What kind of movie has no cameraman?”
The bearded fellow winked. “Who needs a cameraman? Soon as you came into town, folks would be uploading vids of those spacesuits to YouTube. Those vids will go viral, so you don’t even need to make a movie yourselves – very astute. Tell you what – I’m Mike Appleton, by the way – those suits looked worth three grand apiece.”
“More like a hundred K each,” Juno said hotly. NASA hadn’t stinted on our Mars environment gear.
Appleton stroked his chin. “That sounds a bit greedy, but I’d go to twenty-five K for the complete set. Me being, as I say, keen on conspiracy theory movies and associated paraphernalia, and you do keep insisting you need money. Unless,” and he darted a wary glance at Rachel, “there’s a higher offer on the table.”
Rachel was indignant. “Five supposed astronauts walk into a bar and tell a tall tale to a naïve wardrobe mistress. Then a total stranger, who happens to be conveniently present, pipes up, ‘Wow, what great Sci-fi Costumes! I’ll pay you tens of thousands of Euros.’ I wasn’t born yesterday!”
“That was dollars,” corrected Mike Appleton.
“So the silly wardrobe mistress promptly says, ‘I’ll raise you five thousand,’ and she empties her bank account. Away walk five happy actors with their accomplice.”
“Rachel,” I said gently, “we are not acquaintances of this gentleman. Mister Appleton, you are spoiling our hitherto cordial relationship with this good lady who has been kind enough to help us out.”
“And isn’t it a bit of a coincidence,” persisted Rachel, “your Mr Appleton being so knowledgeable about that hoax film by Kubrick?”
“Alleged hoax,” said Appleton. “That’s the beauty of it. My offer stands.”
Chuck seemed to have gone to sleep, and Jim was looking half-canned. The beer, and the fact that about five hours ago we’d been destined to die on Mars.
“Mister,” said Barbara, “if we sell you our suits, at a ridiculous garage sale price, what do we do next? Use our five thousand dollars each – that would have to be cash, by the way, in the circumstances – to fund a new life in Spain with no ID? Fuck!” she cried. “I’m forgetting all about our families, who must be going through hell at this moment believing that we’re gonna die!”
“That,” I pointed out, “is because our spouses aren’t exactly in the forefront of our minds.”
Appleton seemed like an accomplice of whatever had returned us to Earth so near to this film-set theme-park where he happened to be staying, his intervention pushing us towards a route and a way of thinking that not long before I’d have regarded as absurd. Appleton was the mechanism by which a major part of our physical proof might be removed from us while we were in a disoriented state of mind!
“Five K each could get us back to America,” went on Barbara, “but we can’t board any plane without ID. We’d have to smuggle ourselves by boat to Mexico, sneak over the border like illegals, catch a Greyhound and turn up on our own doorsteps at midnight…”
Appleton clapped his hands. “I assume you watched Capricorn One a lot.”
I could have groaned. Ten years on, if the Chinese land on Mars, since the USA mightn’t risk another failure, it would become clear that our bodies had vanished. But meanwhile…
“We have a clear and urgent duty,” announced Jim of a sudden, reviving, “not just to our grief-stricken spouses but to NASA and to our government and to the people. Yet here we are, cooling our heels in a bar.”
“Hey, did you forget about you and Becky separating?” asked Barbara.
A commotion and gunfire somewhere in the street drew most of the tourists outside. A buckboard clattered by, bearing a coffin, and the bartender called to the few remaining tourists, “Gentlemen and ladies, outlaw will hang soon for murder!”
Chuck was snoring noticeably. Astronaut selection procedures had eliminated noisy snorers, although purring was acceptable, as NASA used to joke. Juno had been quite a purrer. Spanish air and the beer had started Chuck rumbling.
“A duty,” said Appleton, “to alert everyone about UFOs? After all the previous official denials? Is that what this is all about, then – UFO revelations? That could be seen as bad taste, capitalising upon the deaths on Mars, even if you do resemble those brave guys quite closely. In fact, it can’t be coincidence that you’re spitting images of the Marsonauts. So this must have been cooked up months ago – as if knowing in advance that the lander wouldn’t be able to take off. That’s as good as saying that NASA is a party to this, and – yes! – they set this up ahead of time in case of any tragedy in order to minimise that. Maybe NASA never completely trusted the lander’s engines. I guess your spouses will be able to tell the difference, so they need to be sworn to secrecy. Hey, but you guys need to be available for a media tour around the world! So you need to know astronaut talk and be wise about Mars, same as the real crew. Unless the UFO revelation distracts everybody…”
Appleton’s brain was working overtime. Me, I was starting to feel unreal, as if I’d merely been hypnotised to imagine I’d been on Mars.
“So they’d set all this up in case of a national tragedy,” Appleton continued, “at the cost of endorsing flying saucers and aliens! Wow, that’s one giant step for the space agency, you might say. If you must tell a lie, tell it big.”
“We never saw any aliens. We only heard a voice.”
“In your heads?”
“On our radio.”
“We oughta phone,” repeated Jim.
“I’m serious about buying the suits. I’ll go to thirty-five K – K for Kubrick, hey? – for the set including your cameras. That’s cash. Euros’ll be more use to you, so let’s say forty K Euros. You come along to Almería with me so I can visit a bank. I’ll throw in overnight at a decent hotel. My hire car’ll hold three of you. Ma’am,” he addressed Rachel, “may I hire one of your vehicles and someone to drive it? For the other two guys and the suits.”
“I drive,” said Pablo, doubtless in expectation of money.
“I really don’t know,” said Rachel.
“Two hundred Euros for vehicle and driver, how’s that? Better than a taxi fare.”
“We don’t have authority to sell our suits,” Juno said, as though selling them was even a plausible proposition. The trouble was, we weren’t highly assertive, any of us. That’s how we got to Mars in harmony.
“Supposing,” said Appleton, “you’d come down in Amazonia or the Gobi Desert, you’d need to improvise to survive. Might have meant bartering your suits to Jivaros or Mongolians… Hey, see how I’m talking as if you really are astronauts! For this prank to work properly, those suits ought to disappear, leaving only the photos and video clips taken here uploaded and viral. The suits will vanish into a private collection.”
“You’re planning to sell them on!” Rachel accused Appleton. “You could easily ask a million each from rich obsessives. Or Russian billionaires.”
“Ma’am, you have the option any time soon to make a bid of your own. Except that you think this is a hustle and that I’m in cahoots with these good gentlemen and ladies.”
“You did choose a convenient time to visit Texas Hollywood.”
“Look, lady, the supposed flying saucer dumps them here because movies made here pretend to be made in America. Part of Spain pretending to be the Wild West. Me, I’m fascinated by movies about pretences, or which are pretences themselves. 9/11 conspiracy stuff, or those allegedly faked Moon landings. So of course this is a place I always wanted to visit – but I might just as easily have come here last week or last month and missed all this. My presence is pure luck! What’s going on here with these actor-astronauts is what you might call a meta-pretence because the genius is that no movie even needs to be made. The internet will make the movie spontaneously.”
Hadn’t it occurred to Appleton that Rachel and Pablo might be in cahoots with the five of us? That Rachel the wardrobe mistress might have kitted us out in our Kubrick suits, knowing that Mike Appleton was booked for a couple of days, and having cleverly hacked into his finances beforehand? Which would mean that they routinely did likewise with other tourists too, awaiting their chance… and now Rachel had upped the ante considerably with her accusation about Russian billionaire collectors…
“I’ve been trying,” said Juno, “to remember my home phone number. It’s in my mobile’s memory. But not in my brain.”
Nor could I remember mine clearly! Digits danced in my mind’s eye like on some slot machine in Vegas, with a very wide window, but no jackpot lined up. This wasn’t too amazing. Since when had I needed to recite my own phone number?
“So what’s it to be?” said Appleton. “Sell the suits, or is there a Plan B?” He chuckled. “You must have a Plan B from outer space. B for back-up. I mean, some colleague’s vehicle had to bring you here all suited up.” He still wasn’t suspecting Rachel!
“It was a space vehicle of unknown design,” I insisted.
“Sure, sure, piloted by aliens fond of movie sets. How would they know where this place is?”
“By Googling?” I suggested. “Obviously they’re familiar with Earth. They laid on German-style deli sandwiches for us.”
“Aha!” exclaimed Appleton. “Here’s the Nazi version! Hitler’s scientists go to Antarctica by submarine and build a base underground, or under the ice, to make flying saucers designed in the Reich. Decades later the base is still operating, the source of every UFO sighting since 1947. Plus there’s a big Aryan breeding programm
e. By now the Swastika flies inside the caverns of Phoebus, which explains how rescue was close at hand for you. Maybe the Nazi ufonauts are in cahoots with rightwing billionaires allied to the Illuminati or whoever, since why should NASA build big chemical rockets if antigravity is available to the US government? Look, you can’t have both versions at the same time – aliens and Nazis.”
“I never said anything about Nazis!” I protested.
“You mentioned sandwiches made in Deutschland.”
“I’m just telling you what happened.”
“Hmm, a Nazi sandwich… Symbolic none the less. Did your aliens buy sandwiches in Germany as disinformation? To throw people off the scent of aliens? This is more devious than I thought. Are there any other surprise details you’d like to add?”
“Yes! Why aren’t you wondering if Rachel and the management of Texas Hollywood set this up, in league with us supposing we’re actors, in order to con you out of forty K Euros? And whether that’s why Rachel accused you of setting this up to con her, so as to inoculate you against suspicion of a money sting!”
How could I have been drawn into such a weird way of thinking?
Appleton shrugged. “I know illegal things happen here all the time. Gypsies, drugs, property swindles. And this country’s awash with illegal immigrants. But that’s a bit imaginative.”
Rachel burst out laughing. “I ought to resent what you just said, Jack,” she told me. “But I can see where you’re coming from. I still think Mr Appleton plans to sell your suits on at a huge profit.”
Appleton looked momentarily disconcerted, but he rallied with the vigour of someone whose favourite ice cream might suddenly be snatched away.
“Great dialogue,” he told me. “You really are covering all the bases. So should I say your suits look worth a lot more, and then the price goes up; or that most likely they were ordered on the net from a fancy-dress factory in China? By the way, before I finally commit myself I need a closer look at those suits. How’s their air-conditioning?”
“We were heating up horribly in them!” insisted Juno. “Those were made for sub-zero Mars, not Spain.”
Solaris Rising: The New Solaris Book of Science Fiction Page 23