“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Connie, pushing her “Phantom Asteroid” carbon toward me as if it emitted a disagreeable odor. Among her virtues was an uncanny resemblance, in both voice and appearance, to my favorite Hollywood actress, Jean Arthur. “‘Tangible nothingness’? Really, Kurt, that’s a contradiction in terms.”
“No, it’s science fiction,” countered Howard, munching a strip of bacon. “It doesn’t have to make sense.” Of my three fellow Underwood Milkers, only Howard was unstintingly sympathetic to Brock Barton, though he seemed incapable of exhibiting this loyalty without making condescending remarks about science fiction per se. “If I were a kid encountering Kurt’s spectral sphere, I’d think it was swell.”
“And if I were a kid encountering Kurt’s spectral sphere, I’d switch channels to Crusader Rabbit,” said Connie, pouring syrup on her French toast.
“Actually, science fiction has to make a lot of sense, or else it’s just fantasy,” I said, passing Connie the July 1953 issue of Andromeda. The cover displayed a gleaming disc-shaped spaceship engulfed in a maelstrom of light. This was the third time I’d tried to coax her into reading one of my efforts. “I’ve got a story in here that extrapolates from Einstein’s special theory of relativity.”
“The designer made an error,” said Connie, pointing to the cover typography, DREAMS OF CHRONOS: A MIND-BENDING NOVELETTE BY KURT JASTROW. “He’s implying that this lurid spaceship illustrates your story.”
“That lurid spaceship does illustrate my story,” I said, trying not to sound miffed.
“I wish I could fathom why a man of your intelligence likes that Buck Rogers stuff,” said Connie. “I can’t begrudge a writer making a living from children’s television, but why does he squander the rest of his workday trying to please the editor of Andromeda? No thinking person reads it.”
“Cousin Greg reads it,” Howard informed his sister.
“Case in point,” said Connie.
“In pre-Socratic philosophy, Chronos was the personification of time,” I noted.
“I know,” said Connie, eating her French toast.
Of course she knew. Before going to work for NBC, Connie had majored in philosophy at Barnard. I suspected she was some sort of believing Christian—otherwise why was she writing Not By Bread Alone?—though she’d once remarked that “in lieu of attending church” she volunteered each week at the Saint Francis of Assisi House in the Bowery, “ladling out soup for hungry bums,” even though she was “raised Presbyterian and used to think Catholics were scary.” Connie idolized the mission’s founder and chief administrator, Donna Dain, and she often found herself helping to get out the next issue of Miss Dain’s nickel newspaper, the Catholic Anarchist.
This is as good a time as any to report that I was madly in love with Connie, although I’d never made any such protestation in her vicinity. As long as she regarded Andromeda as a kind of correspondence course for graduates of Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang, I would garner neither her affection nor her respect.
“Does Cotter Pin always have to talk in mechanical-man imagery?” Sidney ate a forkful of eggs benedict, then pressed his “Phantom Asteroid” carbon into my grasp. “I struck out ‘Well, I’ll be an oscilloscope’s uncle’ and every other ‘Leapin’ lug nuts!’ I also dumped ‘palpable’ on the cutting-room floor, likewise ‘ethereal.’ This is a children’s show, for heaven’s sake.”
We devoted the rest of the meeting to Connie’s Bread Alone script, “Sitting Shivah for Jesus.” First came the usual passage from Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” played under the off-screen host’s standard introduction. NBC proudly presents stories that dramatize how people of faith, whether residing in ancient Judea or modern America, variously confronting timeless trials and today’s tribulations, meet the challenges of daily existence, for men and women live NOT BY BREAD ALONE. There followed an ingenious and unorthodox drama. Time: the Sunday morning after the crucifixion. Place: the Jerusalem abode of Jesus’s best friend, Lazarus. Fade-in on the master of the house and his guests—Joseph, Mary, and their two surviving sons—arrayed around the dining table. They are sitting shivah, meaning “seven,” the number of days their formal grieving will last. Through the rear window we glimpse Joseph of Arimathea’s sealed crypt, resting place of the Galilean rabbi. Before long the mourners receive a cleansed leper, a cured blind man, and a rehabilitated cripple, who bless the despondent family in the name of the Jesus who healed them. Next, two apostles show up, offering accounts of the Last Supper, and the conversation turns to the dawning doctrine of transubstantiation. In the climax, the stone rolls away from the tomb. Jesus exits, glides toward the house, and appears before his family and beneficiaries, much to their collective and tearful delight. Although the apostles were already committed to spreading the Savior’s message of hope and love, this final miracle reinforces their resolve.
“Are you saying Christianity might have flourished even without the resurrection?” Howard asked his sister.
“I’m saying that charity is its own reward,” said Connie. “It’s not a down payment on eternal life.”
“A subversive thesis,” said Sidney, delivering his carbon copy to the play’s author. “I mean that as a compliment, my dear. Kindly omit ‘My son, my son, are you truly back from the dead?’ It’s sappy.”
“Indeed,” said Connie with a merry laugh. Were she and Sidney cultivating a mutual crush? The thought sent my stomach into free fall.
“The whole shivah premise seems self-defeating to me,” said Howard. “Jews will think you’re appropriating one of their most sacred rituals, and Christians will think you’re celebrating Jews.”
“That’s why God invented television,” Connie replied cryptically.
“That’s why God invented unsponsored television,” said Howard. “I can’t put anything in Tell Me a Ghost Story that violates Procter and Gamble’s notions of propriety.”
“Can you really get away with Joseph and Mary having their own biological children?” I asked Connie. “The Antidicomarianites will love it, but Cardinal Spellman will throw up.”
Once again the Britannica had come through for me. Antidicomarianites, literally “opponents of Mary,” was a term the Church applied disparagingly to Christians who believed that the siblings of Jesus mentioned in the Gospels were the younger children of Joseph and Mary—an interpretation that made hash of Our Lady’s perpetual virginity—as opposed to Joseph’s children by a previous marriage, the orthodox view.
Alas, my use of “Antidicomarianites” failed to beguile Connie. She merely told me, testily, “I don’t give a fig what Cardinal Spellman thinks. At last report he was in Korea, sprinkling holy water on the U.N. guns.”
It occurred to me that neither my Andromeda fiction nor my TV efforts would ever afford me an entrée into Connie Osborne’s complicated heart—but there might be a third way. What if I wrote a speculative Bread Alone script? What if Connie read the first draft and decided we should develop it together? What if we kicked off our new professional relationship with a dinner date in the Village?
“Connie, there’s something I must ask you,” I said. “Not By Bread Alone is broadcast Sunday mornings at ten o’clock, but isn’t your East Coast audience supposed to be in church then?”
“True enough,” said Connie, taking a final sip of coffee. “Kind of a paradox, I guess.”
“Have you considered that most of your viewers might not be very religious?” I said. “Maybe you’re preaching to a bunch of doubters.”
“Then I’ve got precisely the audience I want,” said Connie, whereupon we Underwood Milkers split the tab and went our separate ways.
2.
LOGICAL POSITIVISTS
FROM OUTER SPACE
n Wednesday morning I awoke in thrall to an unfamiliar emotion, which I soon interpreted as the dark side of Uncle Wyatt’s cosmic astonishment—a case of cosmic perplexity. Were the Qualimosans truly of extraterrestrial origin? If so, then it behooved me, in the name of in
terplanetary diplomacy, to use today’s installment of Uncle Wonder’s Attic to herald the forthcoming awards ceremony. But if the whole thing was a hoax, I’d be setting myself up for a mortifying moment, even worse than the time when, unaware that Floyd Cox had neglected to dissolve from the Uncle Wonder attic set to the end title, I began smoking a Chesterfield before three million school children and an apoplectic floor manager.
I needed some advice, and I knew where to get it: 59 West 82nd Street, apartment 3C, where Saul Silver slept, ate, watched TV, brushed his teeth, and edited Andromeda. Saul would tell me whether or not to take the Qualimosans seriously. Besides, I wanted to pitch him my new idea for a novelette, tentatively titled “Voyage to the Edge of the Universe.” I telephoned the great man, woke him up—he kept an erratic schedule—and told him I was anxious to discuss both an embryonic story premise and an odd experience I’d had after yesterday’s broadcast. He agreed to meet me at noon.
In those days the adjective “crazy” frequently emerged in conversations concerning Saul Silver, especially when the participants were writers to whom he owed money, but no one could actually defend that diagnosis. Saul was not crazy. He was, rather, agoraphobic—fearful of open spaces—the result of a war trauma he was loath to discuss. By all accounts he hadn’t left his apartment in five years, relying on the local bodega to send over his groceries and the U.S. Postal Service to deliver edited manuscripts to the midtown offices of Alpha Enterprises, where publisher Nathan Berkowitz’s drones assembled each month’s issue of Andromeda.
Entering the foyer of Saul’s building, I pressed the buzzer for the basement apartment—the electronic connection between 3C and the outside world no longer functioned—thereby summoning his occasional housekeeper, Gladys Everhart, a retired stenographer who supplemented her Social Security income with the monthly $100 stipend Saul paid her for putting up with him. As Gladys and I mounted the stairs, she explained that Mr. Silver was “about to have one of his spells,” so she’d soon be leaving on one pretext or another, “since he never likes for me to see him in that state.”
The third-floor landing now functioned as an extension of Saul’s office, wobbly stacks of Amazing Stories, Astounding, Fantastic, and other Andromeda competitors rising from the threadbare Oriental rug. Gladys unlocked the door to 3C—evidently her duties included those of a porter, so that Saul needn’t aggravate his agoraphobia by rising to greet visitors—and guided me inside. My heart sank. Illness ascendant, Saul lay sprawled across the sofa, perspiring, rubbing his temples as if to assuage a headache. His fox terrier, Ira, rested on his paunch.
“Morning, Kurt,” he said. Despite his condition, or perhaps because of it, the great man always dressed elegantly in a tweed jacket and brown wool tie. “At the moment I’m indisposed, but I’ll bounce back.”
“You always do,” I said, surveying the room. Saul’s desk held a Royal typewriter and a swarming mass of manuscripts. The flocked wallpaper displayed a gallery of late twenty-second-century art—rocketships, robots, marching mutants, domed cities—that had once served as Andromeda covers. In the far corner two young actors, male and female, filled an Admiral TV set with their anguished conversation: a scene from Search for Tomorrow, I figured, or maybe The Guiding Light or As the World Turns. Why did the names of so many soap operas sound like the titles of science-fiction stories?
Taking a gimp leash in hand, Gladys announced that “somebody needs a walk,” a proposition with which the fox terrier obviously agreed. An instant later the housekeeper and Ira sashayed out of the room, the dog’s tail wagging like a demented metronome. I elected to get the more difficult task out of the way, saving my edge-of-the-universe novelette for later, so I told Saul all about the Qualimosans’ broadcast, their intention to give me the Zorningorg Prize, and the perambulating dressmaker’s dummy.
“What the hell kind of a word is ‘Zorningorg’?” said Saul. “Sounds like a space monster from some piece of Amazing Stories crap. Are these aliens real, Kurt?”
“I was hoping you could tell me that.”
“What do they look like? Little green men?”
“Large blue lobsters. The dummy trick was pretty convincing.”
“Smart money says they’re a couple of schnorrers in suits, and the dummy was mechanized behind your back. Ah, but smart money isn’t always so bright.” Saul pulled a handkerchief from his jacket and wiped the sweat from his brow. “Christ on a raft, Kurt, we’re in the goddamn science fiction business! We’re supposed to believe in extraterrestrials, metaterrestrials, überterrestrials, and all such meshugaas!”
“So you think I should advertise their appearance?”
“The universe is a far stranger place than we imagine. Yes, Kurt, announce your Qualimosans. If it’s all a gag, and they never show up, you’ll survive the embarrassment.”
The great man’s words soothed me. “Thanks, Saul. I’m feeling better.” Indeed, part of me would be disappointed if I didn’t receive a Zorningorg Prize. Every year the goddamn Ecumenical Outreach Award for Quality Children’s Television went to Planet Patrol.
“Tell me about this new short story of yours.”
“A novelette actually. I call it—”
Saul cut me off with a sudden howl. He spilled off the sofa, dropped to his knees, and crawled across the room. This was not the first time I’d seen him in the throes of an attack, but my pulse still quickened, and my stomach roiled. Reaching the desk, he seized the swivel chair by the seat and sent it scurrying away on its casters. He crept into the empty cavity and curled up like a hibernating bear.
“Anything I can do?” I gasped.
Even as his tissues contracted into a cowering mass of dread, Saul struggled to maintain a professional demeanor. “Guess what? Yesterday’s mail brought two fan letters praising your ‘Dreams of Chronos.’”
“You seen a doctor yet? He give you a prescription? Should I look in the medicine cabinet?”
“Tell me about your novelette. I don’t think there’s a pill for this.”
“There’s always a pill.”
“You’ve got a title, right?”
“‘Voyage to the Edge of the Universe.’”
“There’s too much space in this city!” Saul ground his teeth, a noise suggesting a chef pulverizing a walnut with mortar and pestle. “At least I don’t live on a god-damn prairie. Your novelette, it has a plot?”
“An American astronaut named Adam—”
“Anything but Adam.”
“A Russian astronaut, Sergei, sole inhabitant of a manned FTL probe, resolves to venture beyond all imaginable boundaries. Against explicit orders from Washington—I mean Moscow—he guides his probe along our spiral arm of the galaxy—”
“This room is too big !
“And vaults himself into the void. How about we go to the emergency room, Saul? You need a Miltown.”
“This will pass! Tell me more!”
“You sure?”
“More!”
“Having exited the Milky Way, Sergei next leaves the galactic cluster behind and eventually reaches the edge of the universe.”
“Cushions! On the double!”
“What?
“Cushions! Cushions!”
“Roger! Wilco!”
Frantically I stripped the sofa of its three fat cushions and jammed them into Saul’s cubicle. He embraced the therapeutic pillows as a shipwreck victim might clutch a floating spar.
“You’re a prince, Kurt. What happens to Sergei?”
“I’m calling an ambulance.”
“What happens to Sergei?!”
“He has entered a zone that defies his powers of rational analysis. The familiar laws of physics no longer apply. He feels like Alice down the rabbit hole.”
“Zelda and Zoey!”
“Who?”
“In there!” cried Saul, gesturing toward the coat closet. “Zelda and Zoey!”
I dashed to the closet and pulled back the door, whereupon a pair of rubber love dolls—f
ully inflated, life-size, all pink flesh and voluptuous parabolas—fell into my arms.
“It’s not what you think!” wailed Saul. “I used to have a girlfriend! I intend to get another! I don’t use Zelda and Zoey for that !
“Of course not.”
As I pressed the pneumatic mannequins into Saul’s grasp, tranquility wafted through him, like a cool breeze healing a torrid night. The color returned to his cheeks, and he stopped sweating. He heaved a sigh, hugged his dolls, and asked, “Does Sergei go mad?”
“Not quite, but he now lives in despair—how else would a sane man react to discovering that the triumphant progress of human knowledge has been an illusion? You’re looking better.”
“The girls have never failed me.”
“But then Sergei experiences a revelation. Just as that exquisite system called Newtonian physics operates within a relativistic universe, so does that grand enterprise called experimental science offer intimations of something more glorious still.”
“Good twist,” said Saul. “Beyond reality. I like it.”
“Our hero has broached that blessed state Socrates sought millennia ago. Sergei understands himself to be an ignorant man—and this realization has made him wise.”
“Ah, yes, Socrates.” Saul relaxed his grip on the love dolls. “What would Kurt Jastrow do without his Encyclopaedia Britannica?”
“In the final paragraph Sergei’s probe zooms into terra incognita, and he is privileged to behold space and time being born before his eyes.”
“Can you finish it in two weeks?” said Saul, lurching out of his hidey-hole. Gradually he gained his feet. “I’d like it for the February issue.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“By the way, Sergei can’t be Russian. There’s a Cold War on. Maybe you hadn’t heard? You want Joe McCarthy to come after us? Make him British, and call him Neville.”
“Sure thing.”
“You will excuse me now,” said Saul, staggering across the room. “I’ve got a ton of slush to read, but you can be sure I’ll catch your big announcement.”
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