Читать книгу The Second Science Fiction MEGAPACK® - Robert Silverberg - Страница 5

GHOST, by Darrell Schweitzer

“You can never get used to this town, Henry,” I said. “Even after five years, the weirdness is still in my face, daily.”

“So nu? It’s Tinseltown, Hollywood U.S.A., kiddo. You were expecting maybe Little Rock, Arkansas?”

“I don’t know what I was expecting—”

“You’re the one who lives here. I’m from New York, remember?”

That was only one of the infinite number of things which, subtly, didn’t make any sense at all. Henry Jessel was from the one city in the country where most people don’t have cars, even feel the need for them, and he was driving the rented car he’d insisting on getting at the airport to pick me up at my place. Here we were on the Harbor Freeway, amid some of the worst driving conditions in the world, where you can theoretically get from anywhere to anywhere in forty-five minutes but in practice sometime between half an hour and next week. He was the one who wanted to be independent, or absorb the L.A. experience or something. He was driving. I think he did it to impress upon me that he was in control.

“Yo! Look out!”

He swerved. The lunatic who had never heard of turn signals and probably thought solid matter could pass through solid matter if you only wish upon a star cleared our fender by inches.

“Tinseltown, kiddo,” Henry said again, remembering to breathe.

Henry Jessel was nine years my junior, but he’d always somehow been the leader in our friendship or partnership or whatever it was. He had all but seized control of my life, which entitled him to take fifteen percent of my income and call me “kiddo.” Henry Jessel was my literary agent. He got me my first novelization job, Captain Cut-Throat, the book version of a pirate movie which had lasted in the theaters almost a whole day; a book which sold dozens of copies. Then he loaded me on a plane for the Coast, where I, Jerry Jack Miller, became one of the least-known, best-paid writers in Hollywood, or anywhere else for that matter.

And I didn’t even work in movies. Not exactly. Which was the problem. I was a ghost. My specialty was writing novels for TV stars who pretended to be novelists, which paid extraordinarily well, but my name seldom made it even into the dedication. I felt like I was pouring my talents down a black hole.

“I just can’t do it anymore,” I said. “I stare at the blank screen and I can’t.”

“You are behind on your next book,” Henry said, gravely.

As we absorbed the quintessential Los Angeles experience, sitting grid locked in traffic in the dry-roasting August heat while the car’s air-conditioner strained desperately to cope, it all came out, how I’d loved it all at first, and done all the touristy things in the first few weeks out here: Disneyland, Universal, Hollywood Boulevard and the Walk of Fame—and that was where the disillusion began to set in, because Hollywood Boulevard is a wreck, with many of the great Deco theaters just burned-out shells between blocks of shabby storefronts and outlets for we-want-your-bucks religious cults; and there’s even a crack in Elvis’s star, right there in the sidewalk and nobody really cares except maybe the enormous dinosaur looking down over the rooftops; but for a while still I found the smaller weird things, the fun things, which kept me going for a while, like the Ackermansion and the Museum of Jurassic Technology and Frankenstein’s Restaurant (where the tables are haunted); and Venice Beach is really very nice, and I even made the pilgrimage to Bronson Canyon where they filmed any number of matinee westerns, not to mention Robot Monster; but I suppose it was when I saw Donald Fucking Duck’s footprints in the cement in front of Grauman’s Chinese, right next to Shirley Temple’s and Humphrey Bogart’s that it came to me, Hey, this whole goddamn town is a lie, which makes me the lie behind the lie—and—and—

Henry reached over and put his hand on my shoulder in a fatherly way and said, “You don’t have to live in Hollywood, not at this stage of your career. Later, yes, but for now you could write your books just as well from a trailer park in Nebraska, and if you’d like me to arrange it—”

“That’s not the point, Henry.”

“No it isn’t. You aren’t getting to the point. Jerry, when you talk to me, I will listen. But when you just kvetch, I will let it wash over me like water over a stone until you get to the point. And, incidentally, Donald Duck doesn’t have a middle name, so watch it.”

Traffic started moving again. In time we squeezed by the scene of a multiple-car accident, where it didn’t look like anyone was hurt but there were cops everywhere and people waving their arms and shouting; only we couldn’t hear what they were saying because the windows were up the and the air conditioning was on (which made it all unreal, like a movie with the soundtrack turned off), and that was when I got to the point we’d both been waiting for.

“I’m nothing, Henry, nobody. I’m not an writer. I’m the guy who does space-operas for Carl Sanderson to put his name on. The man is an absolute fake. He’s a Schwarzenegger rip-off and even his muscles are fake. He’s supposed to be this square-jawed hero, but I happen to know that his jaw’s a fake too. It’s prosthetic. He got it from the same company that does Jack Palance’s cheekbones and Kirk Douglas’s chin. Christ, the way that moron gets on the talk shows you’d think he actually thinks he wrote those books, or can even read them.”

“The man is an actor, Jerry. That’s his job. He’s been a cowboy, a gladiator, the robot on Cybercops, and now he’s the mercenary captain on Galactic Avengers. He’s fully capable of playing the role of a writer if the powers that be back in New York want to shell out hundreds of thousands of bucks for books with his name on them, and if he doesn’t actually know how to spell ‘the’ the same way twice in a row, that is a small and incidental detail which you and I are paid very well to take care of.”

“I’m just a hack, Henry. I want to be something more, something real.”

Since we were caught motionless in traffic again, Henry was able to turn to me with a look of genuine alarm on his face and say, “Jerry, you’re not having an attack of artistic integrity, are you?”

“Well I—”

“Jerry, remember what you were before I made you what you are. You’d published a few pretty sonnets in quarterlies which paid you in copies, and then there were your short stories for which the publishers sometimes threw in a packet of bird-seed; and then I said to you, ‘Put yourself in my hands,’ and you put yourself there, and now you live in a gorgeous house in Palos Verdes and you got a gorgeous wife and gorgeous kids, and your bank account is not at all below six figures. I’d say you’re doing pretty well, Jerry, but remember, it’s part of a bargain you and I made five years ago, and I get plans for you in the future too, but for it all to work, you’ve got to do your part while I do my part. I am sure you understand that, Jerry. I do not phrase that as a question. I made you an offer and you accepted, of your own free will, knowing what it would entail.”

“Ah, Mephistopheles—”

Once more he touched me on the shoulder in that father-knows-best sort of way and said, “I will take care of everything, Jerry. I’m your agent. Trust me.”

And again the traffic started moving, pretty briskly this time, and all I said now was, “Where are we going anyway?”

“You haven’t figured out?”

“Henry, this is Los Angeles, which is like Manhattan only horizontal. It’s so big you can see the curvature of the Earth in some of the parking lots. No, I don’t know where we’re going or what it is exactly we’re trying to accomplish.”

“Think of it as emergency therapy, Jerry. Something to get the creative juices flowing.”

“A sanatorium then, for shock treatment?”

“More of a secret, something which, as they’d say in the military, is available on a need-to-know basis. Now you need to know, so that’s where we’re going.”

“Ah, I see.”

“No you don’t.”

“So you’re psychic now, too?”

“No need, Jerry. But as your literary agent, I do have certain talents.”

“You and Carl Sanderson both.”

“Exactly.”

There was an ominous resonance to that last line, but I didn’t say anything more and just stared out the window as we got off the Freeway a little past Burbank and turned and turned again and again; and if Henry knew where he was going then maybe he really did have special powers. Maybe I even dozed off for a while because as the sun went down I start I looked at my reflection in the windshield and for a long moment of helpless, utter horror, I saw not my own face, but that of Carl Sanderson, heroic space mercenary of large screen and small; then I was clawing away at my face and it came off and underneath was a robot and cowboy and a gladiator and Kermit the Frog and a bug-eyed, drooling Smile Face and then just a skull, which cracked into dust and bits, and there I was sitting in the car next to Henry with no head at all, and he reached over and screwed a giant light bulb into my neck; which he switched on somehow, and put a paper mask on top of it, which started to burn through from the heat of the bulb—

And then the car came gently to a stop and Henry nudged me.

“Hey, kiddo.”

I put my hands to my face to make sure I was really me.

“We’re here,” he said.

Here was somewhere north of the Hollywood Hills, where the desert almost starts, in a non-committal way. We walked across a parking lot just a little bit too small to have its own moon to a completely nondescript bungalow which had a little brass sign by the door that read SIMULACRUM STUDIOS INC., which told me nothing at all, but told Henry enough that he got out an I.D. card of some sort, slid it into a lock, and the door buzzed open.

“I hope we’re not late,” I said. “The traffic.”

“They know about that.”

After a minute or two, I didn’t doubt that “they” knew about everything, because we’d just walked into what could have been the set for a spy movie. Henry used the I.D. card again, and again. Doors buzzed open. Panels slid back. Guys in uniforms made phone calls in hushed tones. We had to place our hands on scanners. The next thing, I was sure, was that we’d be crowded into a phone booth and there’d be no question that Henry knew what the secret number was, and then the floor would drop out…but no, it was just endless escalators, like the ones at Universal Studios where by the time you’re halfway down you realize you’ve left your stomach behind in the stratosphere and there’s a dinosaur waiting to eat you up at the bottom in the Jurassic Park ride…but I digress, and down we went, and down, and down, until we came to yet another series of vast, sealed off, secret rooms where scientists in lab coats passed silently this way and that and there wasn’t a crackling Jacob’s Ladder or cackling hunchbacked assistant in sight.

At last a very polite lady who could well have been the Chief Assistant Sub-Deputy Aide at the C.I.A. ushered us into a little circular theater of some kind and closed the door behind us.

I thought I heard air hiss, as if we’d been sealed into a space capsule.

The lights dimmed.

“Henry, what is this?”

“Be quiet. It’s what you’ve got to see.”

A panel slid back in the ceiling. Apparatus lowered.

And for a moment after that I thought we were going to die, or at least be blinded by the searing flash, because the thing coming out of the ceiling looked was a dead ringer for the gigantic laser that almost took Sean Connery’s balls off in Goldfinger—but the beam was gentle. It just touched the floor in front of us and then other beams shot out from the walls on either side, and in front of us, and right over our heads, and all these beams of light mixed and whirled somehow, like paint you drop onto one of those little gizmos that spins the paper; only the result wasn’t just sunburst splotches and streaks. Not after a second or two anyway. A shape began to form in the middle of the air. It spread out, and split, until it had what we distinctly two legs, which lowered themselves down to the floor. The lights changed color now, and texture, if light can be said to have texture. From the apparatus came a high-pitched whining and the smell of ozone. The light rippled, like a reflection on a pool in sunlight, and the thing before us was definitely human-shaped now, a man, yes; I could make out the face, a little, a bit more.

Then the machinery stopped, the lights came back up, and there he was, standing in front of us, as real as could be, if such words have any meaning anymore.

My agent got up and went over to the man in the Galactic Avengers uniform who stood in the middle of the circular floor. Then he turned back to me.

“Jerry Jack Miller, I’d like you to meet Carl Sanderson.”

I didn’t know what to say or do. I just gaped.

He, it, Sanderson or the thing which looked like Sanderson, square jaw and all, flashed me his famous smile, twinkled his blue eyes, and said, “Don’t bother to get up.”

He held out his hand, and I reached for it, but he missed and his hand passed right through my forearm. Sparks flew. I felt a shock and gave out a yell and drew back.

Sanderson rippled, his whole body shifting side to side real fast, and his head seemed to jerk in a way no living human being’s head could ever move, and he said, “Pl—please—pleased to—”

“Sometimes it takes them a moment to get the calibrations exactly right,” Henry whispered. “Don’t worry. Everything’s fine.”

Henry flashed me his famous smile, which is closer to what a rat sees when confronted by a hungry cobra who says to him, Let’s make a deal; but he was my agent and I remembered that he was on my side.

Then Sanderson shook my hand, and his touch was warm and firm, and he said, “Always pleased to meet one of my fans.”

The C.I.A. lady came in and said, “Would you excuse us? Mister Sanderson has to meet the press before tonight’s appearance.”

The two of them went out and it was Sanderson who very solidly opened and closed the door for the lady, being a far more impeccable gentleman in “life” than he was on TV.

I stared at Henry.

“So, what was that? Is this the big secret, that Sanderson’s even more of a fake, that they’ve got holograms to take his place for his public appearances—?”

“It’s not a hologram, exactly. It’s a multiple-task, self-programming, holographic AI.”

“AI?”

“Artificial Intelligence. It’s generated as you have seen. If they put enough power into it, it can retain its integrity for weeks at a time. A single zap and a Virtual Cast Member can last through an entire film shoot.”

“But this is ridiculous. No, it’s obscene. What does the real Carl Sanderson do, just hang around in his palace, get laid, and collect his checks?”

“That was the real Carl Sanderson, Jerry. He does everything an actor is expected to do, only better. He never forgets his lines.”

“I’ll bet.”

“That would be a very safe bet, Jerry. He is totally reliable.”

“But the original, human, flesh-and-blood Sanderson—?”

“You don’t get it, Jerry, do you, unless I have to spell it out. There is no such person as Carl Sanderson, not anymore. There is only the simulacrum. The guy who started out as a TV cowboy in the ’60s, well, his career didn’t go forward. Only a few of his, you might say, talents, have continued—”

“But that’s awful—”

“So as you see, his famous square jaw is not a prosthetic. He is a prosthetic.”

“Oh, shit.… What does it mean?”

“What it means, Jerry, is that you are the author of all those books you write. You and nobody else? Even AI programs aren’t smart enough to write novels yet. So doesn’t that cheer you up? Isn’t everything all right now, kiddo?”

I was almost in tears then.

“No,” I said. “No, it isn’t.”

“Jerry,” he said sternly. “You knew what you were getting into when you became my client. Grow up, kiddo. If you can’t take the heat, get out of the damn swimming pool.”

“Metaphors were never your strong point, were they Henry?”

“I got plenty of strong points. But you, kiddo, need a good talking to.”

#

So I got a good talking to, later, at Frankenstein’s Haunted Restaurant (now a chain, under new management) where one of the trick tables nearby tipped over suddenly while the waiter was taking an order, and everybody tittered nervously. I looked up. When I looked down again a hand rose up out of our table top and put an eyeball in my drink, which lit up like a Christmas ornament and winked.

When I looked up from that, Boris Karloff as the The Bodysnatcher was sitting across from me, and explaining in that sinister, lisping voice of his, “We’re all dust in the end, Jerry, or random electrons. What does it matter? It’s what you do in the meantime that counts.”

Then something crashed somewhere and when I looked again, it was a completely wasted F. Scott Fitzgerald, with dark bags under his eyes, saying, “They ruined me, but they don’t have to ruin you, if only you’ll just play the game—”

Then it was Orson Welles leaning over, whispering into my face, telling me what it was all about.

I also had a talk with Hemingway who said, “When they made For Whom the Cash Register Tolls, I thought it was crap, but the cash register kept on tolling no matter what.”

Humphrey Bogart and Fred Astaire both explained that the TV commercials they’re doing these days are just warm-up exercises, and both planned full comebacks.

“I might want to write a book with you one day, kid,” Bogart said.

Every time the cast changed, the eyeball blinked. It was a projector of some kind.

I even met Donald Duck, whose flippers still had cement on them. He assured me he had no middle name. He was looking for somebody to collaborate with him on his autobiography. The money involved would have been enough to jumpstart the economy of a Third World nation.

“I couldn’t do it without you,” said the duck.

Henry leaned over the table, into the light of the glowing eyeball in my drink.

“That’s the beauty of it, Jerry. Maybe some actors have something to worry about these days, but you’re sitting pretty.”

I faked a smile. “Because there are no holo-whosit-AI writers, is that it?”

“Yes. Precisely. That’s it. Actors, directors, producers, yes, but you’re better off than all them. So start counting your blessings, kiddo.”

“I feel like slitting my throat. Do you think there’s be any virtual blood?”

That was when he hauled me out of there by the collar and threw me back into the car.

“Not on my fifteen percent, you don’t!”

* * * *

So we drove back to Hollywood Boulevard, and on the way it was Henry Jessel who worked his magic on me, not any AI of William Shakespeare or Edward D. Wood or whoever, just my old pal, whom I’d known since he was still in high school and we were both trying to break into paperback science fiction, as if that were the way to make oneself part of the stellar firmament. Just Henry, who did what he does best, and so the ending of my story is a trifle mysterious, a trifle vague, because even I don’t know precisely how he did it, but he is my agent, and agents have mysterious powers, and I guess he just put the whammy on me.

What he did was come up with a really good metaphor for once. It could have been a Zen riddle.

He said, “If everyone is wearing masks all the time, how do you know it’s really them?”

Precisely. There might even be Virtual Publishers in New York, but they weren’t on the same wavelength as the folks in Hollywood, and in fact only agents like Henry could connect the two. Only he knew the secrets of both. Only he could have shown me what he had shown me.

“Your editor is a big Carl Sanderson fan,” he said. “She’s dying to meet him. Maybe someday soon we can all get together.”

That is, if my editor thinks that Carl Sanderson is a 1960s cowboy star made good, for whom books are being ghosted, and Carl Sanderson is a guy with clout, who can call up the aforesaid editor and demand that the whole direction of a storyline be scrapped because he has a better idea, and all the editor can do is meekly pass the instructions on to me—well, then, who precisely is in charge here?

“All you have to do,” Henry explained, “is put on the mask and your editor will never know the difference. Nor will the reading public. What Carl Sanderson wants, Carl Sanderson gets. If you are Carl Sanderson, aren’t you on top of the world?”

Ah Mephistopheles, indeed. He took me to the mountaintop. He showed me all the kingdoms of the world, which he would give me, if only I played along.

“Trust me, I’m your agent,” he said.

I think I sold my soul all over again that night. If Carl Sanderson wanted to be James Joyce, he could be James Joyce, Henry told me. If he wanted to be Edgar Rice Burroughs, he could be Edgar Rice Burroughs. Or anything in between. Just use the magic name. It has that much clout.

“I won’t let the publishers interfere, kiddo. I got connections, remember?”

“Yes, I remember.”

And for just one horrifying second he seemed to flicker and jerk from side to side impossibly, but I convinced myself that was just a trick of the light.

We parked a couple blocks away from the Boulevard, and hoofed it along the Walk of Fame, counting the stars (You’ll be glad to know they’ve repaired the crack in Elvis’s), and we got to Grauman’s Chinese Theater (which may be under new management but is still Grauman’s Chinese in the hearts of millions) in time for the midnight ceremony in which Carl Sanderson’s footprints and hand prints and the impression of his graviton-blaster were recorded in cement, right next to those of Shatner and Nimoy and all the crowd—and, for that matter, Donald Duck—and afterward I asked him to autograph a copy of Galactic Avengers in the Nebula of Death for me; and he shook my hand firmly and said, “I’m always pleased to meet one of my fans.”

And after that Carl Sanderson entered a whole new, entirely remarkable phase of literary creativity.