by Jack Martin
“We’ve had three Napoleon Bonapartes and five Jesus Christs already this morning,” she said patronizingly. “Which one are you?”
Quite possibly he could have come up with an answer, but she didn’t give him a chance.
He glimpsed the interior of one of the cubicles. In it a sunburnt old wino with matted hair and brown mittens was seated before a table, watching a bolted-down black-and-white television set of indeterminate manufacture. The controls of the set were taped to one position. The wino was watching a game show.
“. . . And I’m sure our sponsors would say, ‘So long for good to our little Japanese friends!’ ” an announcer with freeze-dried hair was saying. “And so now . . .”
The matron installed Max in the next cubicle.
“Sit down, please.”
Max complied for the moment. It was interesting. He gave her his best smile. “Hi.”
“Have you been here before?”
“No, I haven’t. It’s pretty neat.”
The matron consulted a list. “We have two menus—soup and eggs or veg and eggs.”
“I eat in here?”
“Yeah.” She flicked her pencil. “Soup or veg?”
“Uh, soup.”
“Fine.”
Max patted the old plastic wood-grained set. “Can I get to watch Channel 83?”
The matron was mildly surprised. “You care what you watch?”
Max was about to give her his opinion, but she proceeded to the next cubicle.
He waited a decent interval, then ducked out and headed back the way he had come, searching for the tight hair and tortoise-shell glasses of the young woman in charge.
He heard the clicking of heels beyond a fiberboard divider which had been decorated with crosshatch graffiti. HE’S GOT THE WHOLE WORLD IN HIS HANDS, someone had written there. Someone else had crossed that out and lettered, ROSES ARE RED/VIOLETS ARE BLUE/I’M SCHIZOPHRENIC/AND SO AM I. Max peeked around the edge.
There. She was just now making her way to a roped-off stairwell. Max climbed it with his eyes. The second floor consisted of a mezzanine or gallery that ran around the perimeter of the building. That must be where the offices are, he thought. He slicked his hair behind his ears, straightened his sweater and overcoat as best he could and hurried to intercept her.
“Bianca O’Blivion?”
She stopped three steps up the stairs. “Yes?”
“I’m Max Renn. I run Civic TV. I was on a panel show with Professor O’Blivion. The Rena King Show.”
She sized him up over the rims of her glasses.
“Oh, yes. You said some very superficial things. Violence, sex, imagination, catharsis . . .”
“My exact words.”
She was unamused. “What do you want?”
“I want to talk with your father. About a new twist in video that he may not be aware of.”
She allowed him to follow her.
He thought, it looks like I may have to get past his interference runner first. She’s his Bridey.
“But I’m going to miss my soup,” he tried, making friendly conversation.
“It’s navy bean today,” she said without a trace of irony. “I can have some sent up if you like.”
“Maybe next time.”
No, she’s not like Bridey. As far as she’s concerned this is Some Serious Business. Not a good sign. Well, it is that; but lighten up. You need pores if you want to stay human. He remembered the Professor’s dry pontifications. She was her father’s daughter, all right. A chip off the same microcircuitry.
The office was long and broad but remarkably unspacious.
It was too cluttered to invite much in the way of movement. In fact, though it was dense with artifacts—classical statuary, hand-tooled books, Persian rugs and even video equipment—the overall effect was that of a cloistered cell, such as might have been the habitat of some eclectic, time-tripping monk.
The room was dim and muted by heavy drapes, highlighted at one end by candles. As he stood in the middle of it, drinking it all in, he found that his eyes needed more than a few seconds to adapt. He crossed to a window and parted the drapes.
Below the window was a view of the lower level of the mission. From overhead the maze of cubicles on the main floor reminded him of the interior chambers of a honeycomb or anthill, with each division containing a glowing video egg.
“I love the view,” he said.
“You look like them. Like one of Father’s derelicts.”
Like every other remark she made, this one was a coldly literal declarative statement. He turned from the window and let the drapery fall closed.
He said, “I think it’s a style that’s coming back.”
“In their case, Mr. Renn, it’s not a style. It’s a disease forced on them by their lack of access to the cathode ray tube.”
She assumed a commanding position behind the centerpiece of the room, a huge baroque desk decorated with carved serpentine bas-reliefs. In close proximity to the desk was a statue of a cherubic angel blowing a long horn-like affair, a trumpet of sorts. Gabriel, Max guessed.
“You think a few doses of TV are gonna help them?”
She indicated a heavy velvet-upholstered chair for him. “Watching TV will help patch them back into the world’s mixing board.”
“Absolutely,” he said, playing along. He tipped his head toward the video equipment. “And I guess you encourage Father’s derelicts to make home movies. For the world’s mixing board?”
He let his eyes roam past her to a somber stained-glass configuration behind the desk depicting a hand resting on the back of a throne, to a faded tapestry of a virgin and a unicorn, to an aged etching framed to resemble an image on a TV screen. Bianca moved easily among the collection, tending her father’s props with custodial efficiency. She lingered at a bronze bust. Before Max could identify the subject, she raised a swatch of cloth from the pedestal and cowled the sculpted features in shadow.
“Professor O’Blivion sends video letters all over the world. Mr. Renn, your secretary said something about a video club you wanted to join.”
“Is the Professor here?” he said impatiently.
“I am my father’s screen.” She returned to the desk.
Max sat uneasily on the edge of the red velvet chair.
“Once you’ve told me what this little visit is all about,” she continued, “he may choose to send you a cassette. If he does, which format would you like?”
“If he does, it’s going to make conversation a little difficult.”
She sat. She folded her hands and said patiently, “My father has not engaged in conversation for at least twenty years. The monologue is his preferred mode of discourse.” She took up pencil and pad. “Format?”
Max dropped all pretense. He said softly, without expression, “VIDEODROME.”
“Is that a Japanese configuration?”
“You’ve never heard of it?”
“No.”
She’s good, he thought. Too good. It’s going to take more than a password to break her.
It’s possible she doesn’t know. But the old man will. I’m not going to allow her to structure this meeting. She’s used to being the intermediary. But I’m not one of her messenger boys down there, her drones. I’m not going to be that for anyone. I gave that up a long time ago. Her father will want to hear what I have to say. I’ll get my audience. I’m going to deal directly with the source from now on.
He said, “Then there have been serious gaps in your education.” Before she could dismiss him he stood. “VIDEODROME. Mention it to your father. He may want to have a conversation.”
He passed the bronze bust, patted the cowling. He took one last look around the room. The votive candles guttered at his passing.
“I love the view,” he said.
He let himself out.
“Has it started?”
“You’re just in time, patrón.”
As Max watched, Harlan tampered with the receiver f
requency. There was still no visual contact on the monitor, but the oscilloscope was blinking like a radar screen.
“Look at that thing track. It’s really trying to ditch us. Like one missile chasing another.”
Harlan reset his coordinates, one side of his face limned in green by the light from the ’scope. Max squeezed in next to him at the bench.
Two blips were playing a game of tag across the round tube. Harlan tuned to a finer calibration. Now the TV monitor came to life.
A single opening title faded in. It was jammed, shot through with snow and static, but Max could make out a single word: VIDEODROME. It was enough. It was all there ever was.
“Do they know at the other end that they’re being chased?”
Harlan smiled approvingly. “Hey, that’s pretty good. Sure. If they’re monitoring their own track, they’ll know something’s after them. Otherwise the signal wouldn’t have to twist and turn so much.”
Max concentrated on the monitor as Harlan twirled a knob to another band.
“Huh?” said Harlan. “This is new . . .”
Suddenly the second blip vanished from the oscilloscope, and the title on the monitor sharpened to crystal-clarity. The murkiness lifted like a departing fog and the letters beamed in perfectly, as pure as a closed-circuit transmission. Max had never seen it so clear before.
“What? Looks quiet.”
“That’s just it,” said Harlan. “It is quiet. It’s letting us lock on. It’s not taking evasive action.”
On the monitor, the title faded out and the familiar electrified cellar faded in.
A woman. A new one. Of course. But this time something was different.
As she was dragged into camera range, struggling and screaming, every detail of her back and the concrete wall ahead of her registered with fine-grain acuity. Max could see each sweating indentation in the molded wall, the glistening tarnish of the wrist irons, even the individual strands of damp hair on her head. For once the picture was too hard-edged, like a hyperreal nightmare. The newly amplified reception made it seem less like a dream and more like a window on reality, separated from them now only by the invisible protective membrane of the picture tube . . .
Max felt his skin crawl.
But he could not tear his eyes away from the spectacle.
Harlan marveled at the effectiveness of his instruments. “Yeah,” he said, spinning across the frequencies. Nothing could spoil the reception even if he tried to detune it. “Steady as a rock. It’s like they’re beaming it straight into us.”
“Oh, God . . .” Max said.
The latest victim’s head was yanked up by the hair, slapped in close-up, again, again. The head lolled . . .
“What the fuck?” said Harlan. “That’s that lady shrink, isn’t it? Brand? Nicki Brand?”
Max could not move. His scalp shrank and he began to tremble. “Is this still coming from Pittsburgh?” he managed through clenched teeth. He braced himself and fought to retain his balance. “Is it?”
“Yeah. Got to be.”
Nicki’s clothes were ripped from her body. And there. There were the small scars, the burns, the welts, the cuts—the heiroglyphics of her sessions with Max. He knew every mark by heart.
“Get out,” he said, catching his breath. “C’mon. I don’t want you to see this.”
Harlan made a notation in his logbook. “Huh?” he said absently.
Max was shaking. The bench, the monitor, the instruments, the foundations of the entire electrified bunker in which he sat began to rattle as he gripped the slipperiest of edges for support.
“Get the fuck out!” he screamed. “Get out! Now!”
“Okay, Max, okay.”
When Harlan didn’t move fast enough, Max grabbed him by the shirt and dragged him off his stool.
“Shit, man!” Harlan broke violently free, snatched up his backpack and stomped to the door. “I don’t need this. You know what’s wrong with you, Max? You’re too fuckin’ weird!”
Part Three:
The Retina of the
Mind’s Eye
Chapter Seven
Harlan’s voice: “Torture, murder, mutilation.”
“. . . VIDEODROME.” That was Masha. “What you see on that show is for real!”
“I’m gonna audition,” said Nicki. “I was made for that show . . .”
“It has something that you don’t have, Max. It has . . . a philosophy! And that is what makes it dangerous . . .”
Max forced his eyes open.
The faces stopped weaving in and out of the granular darkness in front of him. Their voices, too. All except Nicki’s. The interior of his apartment ceased swimming and found its level. She continued to writhe spastically under the lash which extended from the muscular arm of an unseen assailant. The wall behind her, the TV screen and the room in which he sat flowed with a color that was too deep to bear.
It was ten-thirty p.m.
And still Max could not leave the red room.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and groped with his other hand for the table lamp. He did not open his eyes again until it came on and diluted the intensity of the video image.
He could have shut off the tape. He could have done that hours ago.
But he was not yet finished with it.
Or was it not yet finished with him?
He had been sitting in one position too long. His kidneys ached, as if he had been pummeled into submission while asleep.
Had he been asleep? How could he be sure?
He held his eyes down and labored to regain control over his body, one muscle at a time. His belly itched. He must have been scratching it again. Damned nervous habit. He moved his hand to the collection of VIDEODROME cassettes on the table, tapped them idly. Next to them was the logbook. He opened the steno pad to the page marked “VIDEODROME TRANSMISSION PATTERN.” But Harlan’s scrawl remained impossible to decipher.
The screaming from the television set subsided to a whimper.
He got up abruptly and crossed the living room.
He was dizzy, feverish. He switched off the tape and leaned on the set, sweating.
Something’s wrong with me . . . I’m sick, he thought. Maybe it’s the flu. I hope to God it’s the flu.
What else could it be?
As he stood there supporting himself against the cabinet, the top of the set softened. Without warning it became sticky, gummy. It began to flow like gelatin.
His hand sank in. An inch, two inches—
Shocked, Max arched his body and pulled free.
He raised his shaking hand.
The palm was covered with blood.
No! he thought. This isn’t happening. It can’t be. It didn’t happen. See? It didn’t. No, no, no, no, no . . .
He forced his eyes back to the set.
There did appear to be a depression in the cabinet, between his home video game joysticks. As he watched, the palm-sized indentation in the simulated wood closed over like a wound healing in time-lapse photography, and was gone.
Check.
Compulsively he wiped his hand on his shirt. No trace of blood. Not a drop. Oh, you’re tripping, Max, a flashback, a bad, bad one, that’s all . . .
He reached out blindly and rapped his knuckles on the top of the set.
Hardwood. Well, wood-grained vinyl, at least.
But solid.
Still shaken, he left the living room and went instinctively to the closet, counting his heartbeats.
One, two, three, four, five . . . still holding, sir. Not to worry. One, two, three, four, five . . .
He ploughed through a mass of dusty clothing, stuff he hadn’t worn in years but couldn’t bring himself to throw out. He felt the edge of the shelf. His fingers closed around a soft, triangular case. For some reason the heft of it in his hand was reassuring.
He carried it into the kitchen, holding it tightly against his body, as though afraid that the blank, staring eye of the dead TV screen might see what he was up to
.
He turned on the lights and went to the counter.
He handled the black leather case. In the lower right-hand corner was an inscription in gold lettering: FOR MAX, WHO CAN’T RESIST SHOOTING HIS MOUTH OFF. WITH LOVE FROM DEBORAH.
It was as he remembered it. That in itself was comforting.
He scratched his belly and opened the case.
There, nested in an oily rag, was the gun, an immaculate little Walther PPK automatic. He had never used it, but knowing over the years that it was there had been enough to make him feel more secure in some vague, undefined sense.
He had the feeling now that he might need it for the first time in his life, and soon, though for what purpose he could not say.
For protection, of course.
But against whom?
He examined the elements of the cleaning tools. Then he lifted the automatic from its compartment.
It hugged his hand as if it belonged there, as if it had already grown there, a part of him. Uncertainly at first but with growing confidence he cocked the hammer and checked the breech. The weapon’s weight balanced superbly, pointing itself as effortlessly as a new appendage. He released the hammer gently, ejected the clip with unexpected ease, sorted through the case for oil and cartridges—
There was a knock on the front door.
One, two, three, four, five.
Very loud knocks, magnified in his ears as if by cement walls. But that was crazy. The walls of his apartment were not brick, they were—
Silence.
For a second he couldn’t decide what to do.
Then he replaced the gun, covered the case frantically with a section of old newspaper and tiptoed out of the kitchen, past an astronomical poster of the moon and planets which adorned his refrigerator.
He wiped his hands on his trousers and undid the latch.
Carefully.
“Hi!”
He stepped back.
“This is your cassette, and this is something that came to the office for you from . . .”
He ignored Bridey’s offering and got to the point. “What’d they say at CRAM?”
She swept past him into the living room. “They said that Nicki Brand is definitely not on assignment for them.” Bridey removed the tape from his player and reached into her bag for a new cassette. “She had a month off coming to her and she decided to take it now.”