“Cozy?”
“Look, opportunities will soon start appearing. Your first response to most of these will probably be distaste. A reluctance to follow through. It’s easier to rehash a routine—to get out of bed at the same hour, eat the same kind of cereal, and totter off to work just like you’ve been doing for the past ten years.”
“I’ve only been working here since Christmas.”
“Coziness sets in—that’s all I’m saying. And it’s the archenemy of evolution, of healthy change. Look for opportunities to defy it. From whatever unlikely quarter they may come.”
“All right. I will.”
“Prove it.”
Cal was startled by the peremptory demand. “How do I do that?”
“By letting me out of this cage.”
Cal hesitated. The snake appeared to be speaking, of course, but the truth—the ostensible truth—was that Philip K. Dick’s disembodied spirit was using the boa as a mouthpiece, to give both a location and an undeniable dramatic burden to his remarks. Why, then, would Dick ask him to let Squeeze out of its cage? It would not be Dick who benefited from the release, and the boa might find its sudden freedom more a trial than a boon.
“Come on, Pickford. Take a risk. Do it.”
So Cal struggled against the cumbersome redness to undo the hasp and lift the cage’s lid. Immediately, all his strength left him. A statue, he stood with one arm supporting the lid as Squeeze flowed up the glass, through the gap, and directly onto Cal’s body; then the boa rippled over his shoulder, around his back, and under his armpit. Cal was aware of the snake’s darting tongue, the ease with which it could have crushed him.
“Flying colors,” the P. K. Dick voice said. “You pass with flying colors.”
Whereupon the boa constrictor unwrapped Cal as effortlessly as it had just wrapped him, coiled back into its glass prison, and slumped neatly to the gravel on its bottom. Cal closed the lid and found that the paralyzing redness had miraculously separated out into nearly all the hues of the visible spectrum.
The Crimson Interlude, as Cal had already begun to think of it, had abruptly concluded.
The people in the mall were moving again, and Mr. K. came back to Cal to tell him to stop worrying about the boa escaping. Squeeze was perfectly content in the cage, and Cal could quit messing with its lock and go back to work.
“Yes, sir,” Cal said bemusedly. “I’ll do that.”
12
“HEY!” Vear shouted, even though the dwarflike figure among the lunar rocks could not possibly hear him. “What the hell are you doing up there?”
He staggered backward, perilously near the edge of his natural ramp, to get a better view of the unsuited person above him. The dwarf—a black man with bandy legs, a barrel chest, and a face that reminded Vear of a Klingon alien’s from Star Trek— leapt dreamily aside, disappearing behind the rocks. By rights, the man should have been dead, a victim of vacuum or blood-boiling heat. Knowing this, Vear had to question what he had just seen. Maybe he hadn’t seen the dwarf at all. Maybe this solo excursion, along with the fatigue that a guy could develop even in lunar gravity, was causing him to hallucinate, to see the thing which is not.
But you asked God for a sign, Vear reminded himself. What if that bowlegged black homunculus was God’s reply? No human being can live out here, of course; and if it’s miracles that demonstrate God’s existence—His readiness to intercede in human affairs—well, you’ve just witnessed one wingding of a miracle.
The major considered walking up the jagged slope to verify what he had seen, but, a hundred feet or more above him, debris clogged his way. Besides, it was much farther to the crater rim—although weirdly slumped or eroded at this point in its arc—than it looked, and Vear had neither the stamina nor the oxygen for a round-trip visit to the high ground from which the dwarf had vanished. And if the dwarf were an illusion, what would he accomplish making such a trip? For that matter, if the dwarf were a sign from God, dangled before him and then teasingly withdrawn, what would he gain? Only, it seemed, his own undoing.
Breathing hard, Vear told himself that he had better sit back down. Rest your weary bones, brother. See if you can’t get your dizziness to depart. Recklessly, he performed a couple of kangaroo hops to the boulder on which he had been perched before the coming of the homunculus. Then, gingerly, he lowered himself to a smooth upper facet of the rock and sat there catching his breath and blankly cogitating. Be careful what you pray for, his daddy had always warned him. You just might get it.
Don’t think, don’t fret, don’t pray, Vear thought. Just rest. Empty your mind and rest. Rest is what you need before you try to go back down to Von Braunville. Rest is what you need before you tackle, again, the tedium and the trials of living in the pockets of fifty people—well, forty-eight—who resent your bad habits and personality tics at least as much as you resent theirs. And so Vear closed his eyes and stopped cogitating. He descended into himself for a spiritual renewal akin to, but different from, praying. He let his mind empty, and he kept on going down.
Back in his own dormitory unit, after shedding his suit in the chamber next to the airlock, Vear hugs the corridor wall, moving along it to the cubicle he shares with Peter Dahlquist, a computer specialist whose primary task is troubleshooting problems at the moonbase. Dahlquist is also one of Vear’s crosses, a tinkerer who has turned their room into a workshop for off-duty projects and a warehouse for all the spare parts, gizmos, and doodads that he has accumulated cadging from any supply officer or ferry-shuttle pilot willing to hear him out.
Indeed, as Vear circles in on their room, he looks up to see a Leonardo da Vinci-esque contraption—a bird of balsa, clear plastic, wire, rubber bands, and, astonishingly, gray and white feathers—flapping dreamily toward him through the narrow corridor. He has to lift his arm to keep the toy bird from striking him in the face, and the bird pirouettes harmlessly to the floor, whispering.
“Sorry,” says Dahlquist, appearing from around the curve of the corridor. “How do you like my mock mockingbird?”
“It’s prettier than your mock turtle, I guess. But the turtle wasn’t a threat to put your eye out.”
“You’ve got a visitor.”
“A visitor?”
“In our room. Make sure your gig-line’s straight and buff up your brass. Figuratively speaking, I mean.”
“Who is it? Logan?”
Dahlquist picks up his toy bird. Older than Vear but blond and boyish-looking, he says, “It wouldn’t be hard to make one of these for everybody at Von Braunville, Gordon. Some of the NASA bigwigs want to send us pets, but these’d do as well, don’t you think?”
“Dolly—”
“Less costly than boosting up a bunch of cocker spaniels from the Cape. No upkeep. No anxiety about keeping them healthy.”
“Who the hell’s here to see me, Dolly?”
Dahlquist strokes one wing of his mock mockingbird and examines its balsa belly to see if the crash snapped a rubber band. “I’m not to tell you. I’d knock before going in, though.” He pats Vear on the shoulder as he ambles on by.
Vear gazes bemusedly after Dahlquist, both wanting and not wanting to tell him about the strange apparition he saw above him on the rim of Censorinus. Don’t, he warns himself. They’ll say you’re insane and ship you home. Great. Going home could be just the ticket. If only it weren’t catch-22 time. You’d be crazy to want to stay on the Moon, they’ll say, so if you don’t, you must be sane, and we can’t send you home unless you’re crazy …
Worriedly, Vear proceeds down the corridor to the room—a room like a triangular pie wedge—that he shares with Dahlquist. Here, hesitantly, he lifts his knuckles and knocks.
“Who is it?”
My Lord, Vear thinks. What a bellow. But he gives his name and rank. “This happens to be my room,” he adds.
“Come in. But hurry up and iris the door behind you.”
Shaken, the major obeys the basso profundo’s command. Inside, Vear finds two m
en in three-piece suits, one of them—the older—seated in a cleared space on the edge of Dahlquist’s messy bunk, and the other—the owner of the sea-deep voice—standing next to his employer with one hand in the pit of his opposite armpit. The major also notices that this gorilla—an exceptionally neat and fragrant-smelling primate—is wearing, with his gray civilian suit, a jaunty green beret. This chapeau paradoxically identifies him as both a veteran of the Vietnam War and a Secret Service man. The personage sitting on the bunk with his legs crossed, after all, is none other than the President of the United States.
“Mr. President,” Vear says, even in his surprise snapping to attention and saluting.
“Okay, okay, Major. It’s good to see spit and polish out here, miles and miles from the world that nourished us all, but it’s only us three fellas now and let’s not stand on ceremony.” He gives Vear a sweet, black Irish grin. “Which is one reason, incidentally in that connection, that I sat down.”
Vear, after dropping his arm, can only gape. What have I done, he wonders, for the President of the United States to come all the way from Washington, DC, to Von Braunville, Censorinus, the Moon, to confront me in my own cramped living quarters? Am I about to be court-martialed? Now the President is waving his hand with spastic authority.
“You can leave us by ourselves, Ingham,” Mr. Nixon tells his beret-wearing bodyguard. “I’m in no danger from this patriotic Air Force officer, and our chat will go better if the major doesn’t feel menaced by someone bigger and stronger than he.”
“Yes, sir,” Ingham agrees, reluctantly exiting.
“A great guy,” the President tells Vear, nodding at the irising door. “A two-time winner of the Medal of Honor, once for heroism at Quang Tri and once, as you must know, for kneecapping that coward Hinckley when the bum tried to bushwhack us in front of the DC Hilton. Ingham could’ve plowed the nut under, but the compassion he learned in Vietnam—the empathy for the suffering of others—well, I for one know that those hard-won virtues stayed his hand even in a moment of crisis.”
“Hinckley went on trial just recently, didn’t he, sir?”
“Between you and me, Major, the bastard’s practically sitting in the chair.”
Vear continues to stand, unsure how to comport himself in this discussion.
Nixon waves him to the chair—ominous word—at Dolly’s desk and workstand: a kipple of duct tape, batteries, potentiometers, even melted Crayolas. “Be at ease, Major. Never mind that a guy as famous and powerful as the fourth-term President of the United States has dropped in on you. Even my office gets messy sometimes, usually before the maids get to it. Every man needs a place he can unwind—San Clemente, Key Biscayne.”
But what are you doing at Von Braunville? Vear thinks, raking a seat for himself at his roommate’s workstand. Why are you here? The major’s every vital sign—breathing, pulse—tells him that he is terrified.
“I’m sure you’ll be as glad as I am to know that the cause of my would-be assassin’s delirium—Flossy Jodelle, that cheeky piece of tail on Right This Way, Mister Dailey— uh, well, our Secretary of Broadcast and Print Media, Mr. Reagan, longtime anchor on the CBS Evening News— Ron has recently assured me that Miss Jodelle’s contract isn’t being renewed next season. This will prevent her from planting evil seeds in the minds of other overweight young men who might one day recover their sense of direction.
“Ron did just what the situation demanded. I’d be a piss-poor American if I didn’t appreciate—which I do—his efforts to keep our young men upright. It’s possible, of course, that this bum was already irredeemable, but we’ve gotta do all we can to save those who still haven’t betrayed both their manhood and their country. Miss Jodelle’s expulsion from an otherwise wholesome TV series is an important step in that direction.”
“Yes, sir,” Vear says, numbed by this flow of information and rhetoric. He almost wishes that Ingham, the agent in the beret, would return to absorb a little of the President’s jibber-jabber.
The two men sit in the pie-shaped room, at the heart of Major Vear’s dormitory cavern. The fact that they have almost nothing in common but their nationality and their language establishes a gulf greater than the six feet actually separating them. We’re maybe 240,000 miles apart, Vear thinks. Metaphorically, I’m sitting on a Moon rock, while you, sir, are sunbathing in Key Biscayne.
“But you’re probably wondering why I’ve come—unannounced, as it were—all these miles to talk to you.”
“I’m wondering when you arrived, Mr. President, and why you’ve singled me out for the honor of this meeting.”
“It’s well you should wonder, Major. I’ve visited every great nation and many of the far less consequential ones on our wonderful planet, but this is my very first trip—indeed, the very first trip of any world leader—to the bleak but profitable surface of the Moon, and I think that this feat—as unsung as I’ve arranged for it to be—must surely rank as the most remarkable, since the dawn of spaceflight, ever achieved by a major world leader.
“My friend Billy Graham, our new Secretary of Nondenominational Godliness, once chided me for going overboard in my description of the triumph of Apollo 11, but even Billy—were he sitting with us now—would surely agree that this lunar visit is “extraordinary”. After all, I was sixty-nine this past January, two years younger than Mr. Reagan, and it takes a lot of courage for a man my age to undertake such a journey. But I’m not going to exploit any of this to puff myself up. For which reason—a very sound reason—we’re going to rap in strictest confidence. And why I want you, Major, to preserve the confidentiality of our meeting.”
“Of course.” Vear looks at his hands, not at the heavy-jowled, familiar face of the President. “Sir, from my knowledge of the launch schedule at Canaveral and of the frequency of t-ship flights from Kennedy Port to Moon orbit, you must’ve come in on the same transfer ship that picked up Nyby’s body. If that’s true, it means you’ve been here several days, undercover or incognito.”
“That’s exactly right. They knew who we were in the t-ship, of course, but before boarding the ferry shuttle, my bodyguard and I disguised ourselves with latex makeup patriotically provided by a cabinet official’s wife. You know her as Grace Rinehart, but make no mistake: She’s a loyal helpmeet to Secretary Berthelot.”
“Have you been with Commander Logan since arriving, then?”
“No. I was sick a couple of days and had to get accustomed—as any semielderly person would—to the goddamn giddiness that even younger lunar travelers may experience. But for everything taken, something’s given, and vice versa—a credo I try to live by. You see, my convalescence gave Ingham time to hang out my pinstripes and to iron this lovely shirt by Gant.”
Otherwise, thinks Vear, you’d be sitting here in your skivvies.
“However, let me make it abundantly clear, Major, that I’m not here simply to chitchat. There’s a method in my madness, just as there was when I told our brave B-52 boys to unload on the dikes in North ‘Nam and flood half that country. Believe me, we wouldn’t be on the Moon today if I hadn’t—in my inspired ‘madness’—ordered those strikes.”
“Mr. President—”
“I stayed out of sight because I was ill, but also because I wasn’t about to let the Russians here at Von Braunville—according to intelligence reports, we’ve got four—deduce the purpose of my visit. Whether ill or not ill, I can ill-afford to play—call it, if you like, Russian roulette—with our national security.”
“Sir, you could go to their dorm and count the Soviets who are here. Their names are Gubarev, Nemov, Shikin, and Romanenko.”
“Of course they are. I didn’t for a moment think their names were Smith, Jones, Davis, and Anderson.”
Make your long story short, Vear silently pleads. Tell me why I’m having to endure this pitiless presidential prating.
“You know, Major Vear, that while more than a hundred and fifty flags fly at the United Nations, the one that flies the highest is the
double standard. We may cooperate with the Soviets in certain areas, but they and their puppets still vote against us in the General Assembly and goad every tinhorn despot who’s ‘unaligned’—and some of our fair-weather allies—to do the same fucking thing, and I’m not going to go down in somebody’s backbiting revisionist history as a jerk who mollycoddled the commies.”
“No, sir. I’m sure you’re not.”
“It’s good to hear you say so. Well, this is what I’ve come to report: NASA is on the brink of outfitting an expedition to Mars, for the purpose of space industrialization, with landings scheduled not on the Red Planet itself but instead on each of its two moons, Demon and Fabian.”
“Deimos and Phobos, sir.” (Quemoy and Matsu—Vear thinks—he might’ve remembered.)
“Whatever. We’re going to crack apart those two little black suckers for their carbon. It’s a long haul, but the tremendous advantage of the trip—make no mistake about my commitment to fuel conservation—is simply that the energy expenditure is less than what we use on our Earth-Moon/Moon-Earth runs! At least, if you don’t count the oxygen taken up for breathing purposes on our ferry shuttles and then pumped into the t-ships for the voyage to Kennedy Port. So I say let’s not count the oxygen.”
“That’s fine with me, Mr. President.”
Nixon, for the first time, stands up. Making a fist, he tells Vear, “Let me say forthrightly that we’re going to cut the fucking Russians out of this one, Major. We have no wish to reprise our Apollo-Soyuz Test Project hanky-panky or our joint Eagle-Bear Heavy Lift Vehicle Launches. So the Rooskies will find—‘feel the heat’, to be hip about it—it’s their bad behavior worldwide that’s put them in hot water with Dick. No carbon from the Martian moons for those guys. And I for one intend to kick Comrades Smith, Jones, Davis, and Anderson clear the hell out of Von Braunville.”
“Sir, they’re scientists—”
“And good ones, too, I don’t doubt. But they’re also commies, who got propaganda before pabulum, and if one bad apple can spoil a whole barrel—which it can (Ezra Taft Benson used to say that all the time back when Ike was in office)—well, those four guys can surely infect the otherwise robust population at this great lunar installation. That’s why I didn’t want them to know I was here—you don’t tell the bugs when you’re calling the exterminator—and that’s why I intend to pack them all off on the next t-ship to, uh, Venalgrad.”
Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas Page 15
