Martian Rainbow

by Robert L. Forward

  At the top he was met by the butler, who took his hat, medals, and jacket—while looking disapprovingly at the epaulets with their ragged holes.

  "There is a gentleman to see you in the View Room, sir," he said.

  "Who is it?"

  "He said to say, 'An admirer of yours'," the butler answered. "Hotel security assures me that he has a legitimate reason for seeing you. I can also vouch for him, sir."

  Alexander went up the winding steps to the View Room. The room was the apex to the central building of the Crystal City Pyramids and had an unobstructed view in all directions. Standing there looking out one of the triangular floor-to-apex windows was a large man in a white silk suit and white suede shoes. They went well with the thick mane of white hair on his head. He was over six feet tall and looked like he weighed 250 pounds or more. He was holding a glass in a huge paw of a hand whose fingers seemed to be cluttered with masses of gold rings sparkling with huge diamonds. The glass was full nearly to the brim with brown liquid. There were no ice cubes.

  "Straight malt scotch," Alexander muttered to himself, noticing the bottle of Old Pulteney sitting on top of the liquor cabinet. The hand raised, there was a long pause, and the hand came down. The tumbler was one-third empty.

  "Enjoying the view?" Alexander asked.

  "Ha-hah!" the man replied in a loud voice that echoed strangely in the pyramid-shaped room. "The conquering hero returns!" He slowly turned around and Alexander could now see that in addition to his white silk suit and gold rings, the man was wearing a gold-thread brocade vest that stretched across his ample chest and belly. Under his ruddy, cherubic, smiling face was a white silk tie in a Windsor knot with a gigantic gold and diamond stickpin. As he stretched out his other gold-ringed paw to shake hands, Alexander noticed that he didn't try to come in close in order to overawe him with his height, as so many large people did.

  "I know you. You are the great General Alexander Armstrong, conqueror of Mars," the man said heartily. "Excuse me ... ex-General Alexander Armstrong—for I have just finished watching your recent performance on television." He paused, took a sip of scotch, then continued.

  "I am a great admirer of yours. In the past I have admired you from afar, since you were doing very well on your own. But now I have brought my admiration closer, for I believe that I can be of some benefit to you in your present situation. And perhaps ... you can be of some benefit to me." He took another long, slow drink of scotch, swishing it around in his mouth as he did so, obviously enjoying the taste as well as the alcohol.

  "Enjoying the scotch?" Alexander asked, one eyebrow raised.

  "Should," the man said, filling his tumbler again from the bottle of Old Pulteney. "I had my butler order this case after sampling it during my last golfing trip to the Sandside Dome Golf and Beach Resort on the north coast of Scodand."

  "Your butler?" Alexander said, finally beginning to understand.

  "Yes. I own this place. In fact I own the whole damn Pyramids Hotel. When I heard you were coming to town and wanted the top floor, I just hopped over to one of my guest suites on top of one of the other pyramids and let you have it. Use it as long as you like—the maid, too; she's not there just for dusting ..." He paused for another sip of scotch. "Like the place?"

  "Yes, it's very nice. Thank you, Mister ..."

  "You don't know me," the man said. "I am burdened with the terrible moniker of ... Robert L. Krapp. Why my father never changed his last name, I'll never know—although I never did, either. Once you have fought for your name all through grade school, keeping it is a badge of courage. Just call me Rob."

  "But if you are rich enough to own the Pyramids Hotel, why haven't I heard of you?"

  "When you have a name like mine," Rob said, "you use someone else's. For the expenditure side of the ledger I use Pyramid Trust. For the income side of the ledger I use the Prophet Muhammad Sheik and the Church of the Unifier."

  "The religious nut who has half the population of California and the East Coast believing he is the pipeline to God?"

  "That's my boy," Rob said proudly, taking another gulp of scotch. "But it isn't half the population, we only get tithes from twenty-eight percent of the East Coast and thirty-five percent of California—as of last week's figures."

  Rob suddenly got serious. "But the real problem from a market-growth point of view is that Muhammad doesn't seem to be transportable. He does real well on the coasts, where people have more cosmopolitan tastes and are willing to listen to a foreigner, but when I try to market him in the central states, or across the border, the customers stay away in droves.

  "What I need is someone with a broader appeal, someone who is known around the world, someone with strong and proven leadership qualities, someone who shows up well on video—although I can make anyone look good on video—someone who has an important mission to carry out ... like a mission to save the world from evil ..."

  "Like the evil tyranny of atheistic neocommunism that threatens us now!" Alexander said, phrases from his recent speech still echoing in his brain.

  "Exactly. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could use modern mass-media technology to aid you in ridding the world of the atheistic rulers of Neocommunist Russia, their socialist sympathizers, and their cowardly Neocommunist propaganda dupes?"

  Rob put down his tumbler and started to pace around the room, his voice rising and falling in a hypnotic pattern. He pounded one huge fist into another. "You must strike. You must strike now! You must strike during your upcoming tour, while the world hangs upon your every word." He stopped pacing and, stooping slightly, put both hands on Alexander's shoulders to stare straight into his eyes.

  "Together," he said, "we must drive away the evil forces of neocommunism that threaten us and bring everlasting freedom to the United States and to the world!"

  "Yes," Alexander agreed, under his spell. "We must! But how?"

  "Come!" Rob said. "I will show you."

  He led the way down the winding stairs from the View Room to the built-in office of the central pyramid suite.

  "Alert Eric and the media magicians, Jane," Rob said as he led Alex past the secretary. Rob moved knowingly across the room, touched some hidden controls, and soon a triple-video-screen console rolled into view out of an inner wall. Rob sat down before the central screen.

  "Let's have a 'naked' of Muddy, Eric," Rob said to the console.

  "Are you sure you can stand it?" a voice said from a speaker.

  "Warts and all," Rob assured him. On the central screen appeared a picture of a skinny, rheumy-eyed, muddy-skinned Arab with a poorly wrapped turban, a ragged wispy beard, and a strongly hooked nose with a horrendous hairy wart on it. He was giving a speech. The voice was reedy, monotonous, and heavily accented.

  "Is that the real Muhammad Sheik?" Alexander asked in amazement. "I've seen him on video occasionally while scanning across the channels, and he doesn't look like that!"

  "Cut the fooling around," Rob said to the console. "This is serious business. I have Alexander Armstrong with me." The hairy wart vanished from the nose of Muhammad Sheik. "Sorry, Rob—just kidding."

  "That is the way he really looks," Rob said, pointing to the reedy Arab guru. "Before Eric and his media-magicians 'smooth' up his image a little.

  "Now give me the Southern California standard on the left screen, Eric," Rob said. Almost instantly the same view of Muhammad Sheik appeared on the left-hand screen, but now the turban was spiraled perfectly, clear eyes sparkled intensely from a lean, aesthetic face with a flowing beard. The color of his face was a clear light brown, while the hook in his nose had been softened considerably. The voice was strong, clear, and hypnotic.

  "That's the Muhammad Sheik I remember," Alex said.

  "The New England version on the right," Rob said, and a third image appeared on the right screen. The color of the skin of the image was whiter in tone and the nose straighter. The voice was broadening its a's and swallowing its r's.

  "Our across-the-border attempt n
ow." The New England image was replaced with another version of Muhammad Sheik.

  This one had a skin tone that was close to the original, but the beard had completely disappeared. The voice now spoke in fluent Spanish.

  "I don't know Mexican, but it looks like even his lip motions are correctly synchronized!" Alex said in amazement.

  "Nothing to it, once you have built up a library," Eric's voice answered from the speaker.

  "With these software tools," Rob bragged, turning around to look at Alexander, "I can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. But in your case, I don't have to. It does really help to use Eric's program, however, when you want to switch languages." He returned to face the console.

  "Dump Muddy, Eric," Rob said. "And let me have some of that demo tape of General Armstrong you've been working on for the past half-hour."

  "It's still a little rough in spots," Eric warned.

  The three screens blanked, then the central screen lit up with a picture of Alexander at a podium. The podium and microphone height, the background, and the camera angle had all been adjusted to make Alexander look over six feet tall. Instead of a military crew cut, he had a wavy hair style that even Alexander had to admit made him look handsomer than ever. His face smiled, and the famous crow's-feet wrinkles appeared, but now they didn't add to his age, just his character. His eyes seemed to burn and sparkle with inner fire.

  His uniform had been replaced with a golden buttonless tunic, with a cadet collar and padded shoulders. His voice had not been changed much, although it was somehow richer, more articulate, more fascinating, and more hypnotic in its ability to hold the attention of the listener.

  "My people," his image said. "My people! Come to me. Come to me and listen. I call on you, my people! Come and drive away the evil forces that threaten the peace. The peace of the United States. The peace of the world!

  "They now threaten to grab all the planet. You know them ... the atheistic rulers of Neocommunist Russia, their socialist sympathizers, and their cowardly Neocommunist propaganda dupes! But they are not invincible. I can drive them away. But I need your help!"

  The image pointed its finger down over the podium and the camera point of view switched to one that looked up from below at a towering, awe-inspiring image of a golden-tuniced Alexander, his finger pointing straight down at the camera.

  "You can help! Get your checkbook ... and send a check ... right now! To the Church of the Unifier, Washington, D.C."

  The motion of the image stopped. "The only words I had to piece together were church and unifier," Eric's voice bragged from the console.

  Alexander stood in amazement.

  "That was me?"

  "That was only a first approximation of what could be you," Eric replied.

  "Now that you no longer have the staff and resources of the Space Command to draw on, perhaps you could use a little assistance in managing your media appearances in the U.S. and around the world in the next few months? Pyramid Trust would be glad to take on the responsibilities, in return for a small commission."

  "How much?" Alexander demanded, suddenly suspicious.

  "Muhammad Sheik retains eighty-five percent," Rob said. "But since you are so much easier to market, Pyramid Trust would be more than willing to only charge a ten percent fee."

  "Fine," Alexander said, having recently negotiated a ten percent fee plus expenses contract with Scott Meredith Literary Agency for his book.

  "Plus expenses," Rob added, almost as an afterthought.

  "Okay," Alexander replied, unconcerned about details.

  "Excellent," Rob said, pulling out a small piece of paper. "Sign here."

  Alexander signed with a flourish—two ornate capital A's, each followed by a squiggle. He then went back and carefully stroked in the single straight back cross through the invisible X in the first squiggle that distinguished his signature from that of his brother Augustus.

  THE NEXT day Rob took Alexander off to Eric Oldenburg's studio, which was full of high-tech cameras and image processing computers. Physically, Eric was almost the exact opposite of the other computer wizards that Alexander knew.

  Eric was compact, well-built, and handsome, like Alexander, but with nowhere near the shoulders or biceps. Although buried alone in a complex console room, surrounded only by computers, and communicating with the outside world only through computer links, he wore an expensive, impeccably tailored business suit, a fashionably thin narrow-striped tie, and a carefully color coordinated two-tone tailored shirt with ruby cuff links that occasionally clattered on the keyboard when he reached to touch a screen icon. Eric was obviously doing well working for Rob.

  A cross between a rich movie star and an IBM salesman, was Alexander's final analysis.

  They had Alexander give a speech. There were a lot of strange-sounding phrases, many from the Bible, and some from other books. Eric then had him repeat the alphabet and read a list of words and phonemes. It was late that night, in the Pyramid penthouse, before the tailor finally finished his last measurements and Rob left for the guest penthouse. Then the maid started to make a pest of herself.

  THE FOLLOWING afternoon, Alexander, Rob, and Eric met in the penthouse. The tailor had delivered Alexander's suit that noon. It consisted of a modernistic tunic and tights made of scintillating gold cloth, with high, raised golden boots that made him look taller. The buttonless tunic had a high cadet collar that lengthened Alexander's neckline, and space-age winged shoulder pads that made him look like a hero from the future.

  Alexander looked himself over in the three-sided mirror in the cavernous clothes closet. "Looks nice!"

  "Yes, it does," Rob and Eric agreed.

  Rob came over and adjusted a shoulder. Eric activated the video cameras behind the mirrors to get sample images of Alexander from all sides.

  "I canceled your tour of Philadelphia tomorrow, Alex," Rob said.

  "Why?" Alexander demanded. "That's the home of liberty! Surely we will need Philadelphia to fight neocommunism."

  "Because the organizers couldn't get a hall big enough, and I didn't want to start off your tour with a riot," Rob said. "Besides, tonight is your debut as the new leader of the Church of the Unifier."

  "But isn't that Muhammad Sheik's church?"

  "Not anymore," Rob said. "Muhammad has decided to take his millions and return to Lebanon."

  "Not to mention the fact that someone reported to the Immigration Service that his visa had expired," Eric said under lis breath. "Twenty seconds to nine," he called to Rob.

  "I m sure there will be a request for press interviews after the broadcast," Rob said. "I assume you will be up to it?"

  "Of course," Alexander said. "I've handled hundreds of press conferences before. What room will we be using for the reporters?"

  "We don't do face-to-face interviews anymore," Rob replied. "All interviews are now done by remote, with everything passing through Eric's computers before it goes out to the public."

  "But the public will certainly see the real me when I give my speeches during the tours," Alexander objected, slightly bewil-ered.

  "Not the way I have your tour rearranged," Rob said. "I only booked you into large domes and football stadiums, and then insisted on a fifty-meter clear space between the podium and the first seats—for security reasons, of course."

  "Nobody can see any sort of detail in a face at fifty meters or more," Eric said. "So then I come in by supplying a large-screen video replay of the speaker to the stadium audience. Suitably massaged—of course."

  "The main reason I'm doing this," Rob said, "is that after a few weeks, you won't even have to bother going to the stadium to give speeches. I have a search out for some six-foot look-alikes. As soon as we get them signed up and trained, they can take care of that minor detail for you."

  "Not very minor sometimes ..." Eric said under his breath.

  "Later, Eric," Rob hushed, but Eric wasn't in the mood that day to hush.

  "We lost a Muddy look-alike last year,
" he said. "Being a profit-making prophet is not the safest job in the world. That's why Rob takes refuge behind his name and lets other people front for him."

  THE SUNDAY evening broadcast of the Church of the Unifier came on at nine p.m. Eastern Standard Time—Six, Pacific Standard Time. Prophet Muhammad Sheik started with his usual introductory message and the call for pledges and tithes. Then he startled the audience by saying that he had a revolutionary message for them. They were to call their friends and make sure they were listening.

  Then came the break for the demonstrations of the Muhammad Sheik 'Healing Chair', the advertisements for the potions to stop drug addiction, alcohol hangovers, cigarette cough, overeating, poor circulation, herpes, AIDS, backache, and the common cold. After long minutes, the prophet returned to the screen, looking as good as he had ever looked, his face radiant with joy.

  "For long I have been a prophet telling you of the future coming of God the Infinite Lord! God the Unifier of all," he said. "I am now a prophet that has great joy!" His face lit up even more. "Because today I am the prophet that will introduce God himself to you, the living Unifier, the Infinite Lord incarnate!"

  The camera drew back, making Muhammad Sheik a small figure in the left foreground. In the distance there shone a golden light, a golden light that grew larger and brighter, until it almost filled the camera lens. An angel chorus raised a trillion hosannas in the background and a thousand organs seemed to expand the very space-time with their sound.

  Muhammad's voice came in over the music. "I am privileged to present to you today, the Infinite Lord, your God. God the Unifier. The Unifier of your life. The Unifier of your country. The Unifier of your world. The Unifier of the solar system. The Unifier of the universe!" He paused.

  "This is Alexander. The Infinite Lord—and this is his sign." Muhammad Sheik made the sign of the infinity symbol, but vertically, like a propeller. The animation artists behind the television camera captured the symbol as he drew it and raised it high overhead. "Heed his sign," Muhammad Sheik said, fading. "Heed the Infinite Lord ... and obey him."