The Golden Globe

by John Varley

  "If you don't knock the train off the tracks with all your commotion. Settle down, boy."

  Dodger contained his excitement, and watched the armored warrior and bursting firework trademark of Sentry/Sensational Pictures. The gigantic figure went from attention to a position of challenge, his huge weapon held out before him at port arms. But soon he was fading into the distance, replaced by a circle and golden sunburst saying TOHO and a word he couldn't read. A horse with wings charged the tramcar and leaped over it. Dodger looked, but the Pegasus never landed on the other side. A gargantuan rooster flapped its rust-colored wings and ruffled its neck. A dozen multicolored flags snapped in a nonexistent breeze under the towering legend FILMWERKS.

  Dodger wished he could fly over this wonderful plain. Recently Father had him memorize the script for Swift!, and he supposed it must look as if a child of Brobdingnag had upended his toy chest and then abandoned his mammoth fripperies out here in the wilderness. Actually, from above he would have seen nothing at all. It cost more to project a holo in all directions, and the designers of the Route of the Stars understood a principle known since the days of D. W. Griffith: make sure your budget gets on the screen. The Hyginus route was the electronic equivalent of dusty old western streets walked by William S. Hart, Tom Mix, and Roy Rogers: false fronts propped up with two-by-fours.

  They were just getting into the part of the route devoted to scenes from classic movies when the train pulled into the first Vaporum station. Dodger didn't really want to get off, but when Father took his hand he stood and followed him off the car.

  They went down a slideway with a curved, transparent roof, right between the hairy legs of a giant gorilla chained to a big wooden cross. The beast followed them with his eyes, and father and son both looked up as they walked under him.

  "Let's hope he doesn't have an upset tummy," John Valentine said, and his son collapsed in helpless giggles.

  * * *

  John Valentine led his son to a wide sofa in a big, nondescript waiting area outside the casting offices of Sentry/Sensational studios. There were many other couches, mostly filled with people. He sat him down, and then squatted in front of him.

  "Now, I may be a while, Dodger," he said, straightening the big yellow bow at the boy's neck. Current fashion for young men was a quasi-Victorian look, with knee breeches and frock coats and lace at the cuffs. When Dodger was dressed up like that John called him Buster Brown. Since this was an important audition, father and son were dressed in their best, which if examined closely would have revealed loose threads where the tags reading PROPERTY OF NLF COSTUME DEPARTMENT had been removed. Young Kenneth had golden hair that hung past his shoulders and framed a face with wide-set blue eyes, apple cheeks, and a prominent pair of front teeth with a wide gap between them. He wore a floppy brown velvet beret.

  "I want you to wait right here until I get back," Valentine said. "There is a water fountain over there, and the rest room is just around that corner and down the hall. You've got your script"—he took a tattered copy of Cyrano de Bergerac from his briefcase and set it on the sofa—"and I brought a lunch for you." He produced a brown paper bag, opened it, and let Dodger look inside. The boy saw something wrapped in waxed paper, and smelled a banana. "Peanut butter and jelly, your favorite. Now, can I trust you to behave?"

  Dodger nodded, and his father pulled the beret down over his eyes, tickled his ribs lightly, and stood. He headed for the door marked CASTING DEPARTMENT.

  "Father?" Dodger called out, and John Valentine turned. "Break a leg," the boy said. Valentine gave him a thumbs-up, and went through the door.

  * * *

  Dodger was pretty good at waiting. This wasn't the first time he had gone along for a cattle call, though never before at a motion-picture studio. His father didn't have a very high opinion of the movies, though he worked in them when there was nothing else happening and the rent was overdue.

  "Never extra work, though, son," he would say. "If you don't get a line, it's not acting. You might as well hire yourself out as scenery."

  Dodger wouldn't have minded being scenery, sometimes. Scenery didn't have to memorize so many plays.

  This one was pretty good, though. By the second act he had assigned his own names to all the characters: Cyranose, of course, and Rockshead, who reminded Dodger of a chorus girl they used to know. Pretty, but dumb as a mime. If only she'd been like a mime and stopped talking every once in a while. Then there was Christian the Noodlehead, the Comedy Grease, and Raggynose, the pastry cook.

  It was jammed full of sword fighting, which was great, but it also had lots of words he didn't recognize. He dutifully underlined each one, as his father had taught him. He would learn them later. Popinjay. Jobbernowl. Ambuscaded. Mountebanks. Buskin. And what was he to make of Hippocampelephantocamelos?

  From time to time an adult would hurry by, usually far too busy to notice the boy sitting in the farthest corner of the lobby. Then someone would pause, look back at him uncertainly. Dodger would give him or her his most winning smile. If that wasn't enough, he would say, "It's all right. My father is meeting with Mr. Sensational." Jack Sensational was the head of the studio. Nobody asked any questions after that.

  He ate half his sandwich and all the banana. He visited the facilities his father had pointed out, and decided he was bored to death. What would it hurt, he wondered, if he did a little exploring?

  * * *

  The sign TO SOUNDSTAGES A-B-C-D had lured him farther afield than he intended to go. Now the huge door he was passing read SOUNDSTAGE H-2, and he knew he was lost.

  He also knew he was going to be in big trouble. But there is a defense mechanism in dogs and young children that prevents them from worrying too much about future consequences once it is clear that it is too late to avoid them. What the hell? Dodger thought. If I'm going to catch it, I might as well make the crime worthy of the punishment.

  So he wandered along the wide corridors, dodging heavy equipment hauling props and scenery, and groups of actors and extras in outlandish costumes chattering among themselves.

  He knew just enough to avoid any door with a red light over it, since the light meant actual shooting was going on. But when he opened another door and stuck his head in enough to get a glimpse of a huge ballroom set swarming with carpenters and electricians he was shouted at, and beat a hasty retreat.

  But he viewed an open door as an invitation to come in.

  The first one he entered was a soundstage populated entirely by six-foot-tall blonde women wearing pink high-heeled shoes and pink ostrich-feather headdresses that towered another four feet over them. There must have been a hundred of them. They were just standing around, doing nothing. Before them were a hundred champagne glasses filled with bubbling liquid, big enough for the women to take a bath in, and behind that was a towering blue backdrop. One of the women glanced at him, then went back to contemplating her long, pink fingernails. For five minutes nothing at all happened. Nobody noticed him and nobody asked him to leave, and it was all incredibly boring.

  And that seemed to be what moviemaking was about. He visited three more stages, and in all of them people were standing around doing nothing. Nobody was shooting at anybody, there were no sword fights, no action of any kind. Dodger tentatively decided against a career on the silver screen.

  * * *

  He was getting tired by the time he wandered into Soundstage F-5, and wishing he could find his way back to his half a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. But when he entered F-5 he forgot his hunger.

  The other stages had been large, but difficult to see because of false walls standing here and there at random, and lights hanging from the ceilings. This one was empty and the overhead lights were turned off. Dodger didn't need them, because most of the floor of the stage was a vast blue pool of water, lit from below. It was smooth as glass. Tied up not far from him was a full-scale pirate ship, sails furled, whose masts towered a hundred feet high.

  This was more like it. Maybe there was
magic in the movies after all.

  His footsteps echoed in the big barn as he went to the ship. He reached out and touched it, and the ship bobbed slightly, sending out concentric waves that turned the even play of light across the distant ceiling into a magical pattern of diamonds. He pushed harder against the ship, heard an anchor rope creak against a piling, and the pretty pattern of lights was shattered even further. He wondered how he could tell Father about this. There must be words for it. There were so many words.

  "Hey, what are you doing?"

  He jerked guiltily and looked up. There was another boy standing in the open door of the soundstage, but it was not he who had shouted. An angry-looking woman in the red-and-yellow uniform of Sentry Security was holding the boy by the arm. She was about to pull him out into the corridor when she looked up and saw Dodger.

  "You, too," she called out, beckoning. "Get over here. You kids were told not to go wandering. I ought to kick you off the lot."

  Dodger thought of running, but didn't immediately see any other exit doors from the place. There was absolutely nothing to hide behind. So he hurried to the guard and she grabbed him, too.

  Without another word she hustled them across a busy corridor and through a door marked STUDIO 88. Someone had taped a notice to it: Auditioners and Parents ONLY!

  Inside was chaos. It was not an entirely unfamiliar scene to the Dodger. He had witnessed casting calls for the legitimate stage, and knew what happened when you got a hundred precocious youngsters and their indulgent parents together at one time. Some of these kids had yet to hear the word "no" issue from their parents' mouths. They were the ones running in every direction at breakneck speed while Mom and Dad looked on with simpering approval and told everyone in sight that little junior was just so damn talented they didn't have the heart to repress his creative impulses. Sometimes these creative impulses took the form of hitting another talented child with a handy blunt object, and in these cases the police frequently had to be called to prevent murder among the battling parents.

  The rest were of another sort entirely. Dodger knew them well. They had spent most of their short lives learning to actually do something—singing, ballet, accordion playing—and had achieved some success at it. They were as spoiled as the first group, but quieter about it. Most of them sat serenely with stage mothers and stage fathers, and the only noise they made was the hideous sounds that issued from their kazoos, harmonicas, and Jew's harps.

  "Damn all aspiring Shirley Temples," John Valentine had once said, at just such an audition. "Children on the stage are a necessary evil, I suppose, if you're reviving Annie. God forbid. But they should be locked in a trunk and stored in the wings between shows. Take them out, feed and water them, let them do their turn, and lock them up again."

  But he reserved the worst of his scorn for the parents.

  "Gypsy Roses, every one of them!" he sneered. "Frustrated, talentless, hams by proxy. They mouth lines along with their brats, and dream of their names on the marquee. They eat their young. If the first one doesn't work out, you'll see the same faces five years later, with a new brat in tow."

  Dodger, who had witnessed this routine of his father's several times, would say nothing, remembering the first time he had heard it, when he had innocently asked if he himself wasn't something like that, what with memorizing all the plays by Shakespeare.

  And his father would put his hands on Dodger's small shoulders and look intently into his wide blue eyes.

  "That's not for you, Dodger. No tap-dancing dog-and-pony shows for my boy. You're learning your craft, and it's the noblest craft of them all. It's the only thing in the world worth doing."

  "Where's your release form?"

  "Huh?" Dodger looked up into the face of a pretty young woman with a clipboard and a harried expression.

  "Here," she said, and thrust a printed form at him. "Have your father or mother fill this out and then wait until your name is called. And please, don't lose this one." She was gone as quickly as she had appeared.

  Dodger found his way to a table that was heaped with food. He'd seen nothing like this at theater auditions. Once again his opinion of the movie business moved up a notch.

  Much of the food seemed to have been used recently as ammunition in a truly epic food fight, but there was still plenty left in bowls, on platters, and even on big steam tables. He slapped a hot dog into a big bun, squirted mustard, topped it off with three spoonfuls of relish, then grabbed a can of Coke from a barrel of ice and pulled up a chair. He took a big bite, then swept the tablecloth in front of him clear of crushed potato chips and bits of cupcake and part of a melting ice-cream bar. He put the release form on the table and studied it. It seemed simple enough. He glanced around, saw that no one was paying him any attention.

  Name? He filled in Kenneth C. Valentine. Stage name (if any): The Artful Dodger. Parent or Guardian: John B. Valentine. Age: 8.

  He filled in all the blanks, after first checking the bottom to see if there was any penalty for perjury, a word he had learned a few days ago. His father had cautioned he should always look for it previous to signing anything. And there was a space at the bottom for a signature, but they didn't want his, they wanted his father's. He looked around again, then accurately reproduced the flamboyant loops and incisive angles of his father's autograph: John Barrymore Valentine II.

  He finished his hot dog and handed the form to the lady when she came by again. He didn't think anything would come of it, since it would obviously take some time to work through this many children. As he waited he overheard enough to realize this was the first cull from a much larger group. Most of the day's attendees had already been sent home with that ancient kiss-off ringing in their ears: "Thank you for coming don't call us we'll call you."

  He looked around at the seventy or eighty remaining. Then he looked at the table where the lady had put the stack of forms.

  Hmmm.

  A group of kids had been running around the table since he sat down. On their next pass Dodger carelessly stuck his foot out in front of the leader, who went skidding on his face. The others fell down on top of him. The shrieks were deafening, and in no time a frantic gaggle of parents had congealed into an explosive mass, volatile as nitroglycerin. In no more than five seconds the first punch was thrown, and soon after that four fathers were bloodying each other's noses. Dodger strolled toward the casting director's table as everyone else hurried the other way. Glancing around to be sure everyone was either watching the fight or trying to stop it, he lifted the stack of paper. There it was, his application, on the bottom. Hell of a place for it, he decided. He made a small adjustment to the stack and stepped away.

  In a moment yet another woman emerged from behind the curtain. She picked up the top form.

  "Kenneth Valentine? Kenny, where are you, dear?"

  Dodger tugged at her skirt.

  "Oh, there you are. Well, you can come with me, and your parents must wait right..." She looked around, puzzled. "Where are your parents, dear?"

  "Oh, over there," he said, pointing. Then he smiled and waved.

  "Yes, well..." She looked confused for a moment, then brightened. "Well, that is different. Usually I have to bar the door, and then guard the room to keep them from sneaking back in. Very well. Come this way, please."

  He followed her through the curtain, then through two doors. The noise didn't completely die away until the second door shut behind him.

  "Over here, kid," said a gravelly voice.

  It was a large room, almost filled by a long conference table with a dozen chairs on each side and one on each end. On the walls were posters from the Gideon Peppy Show, bright and cheerful and primary-colored, most featuring the maniacally smiling host of the top-rated children's show on three planets, Gideon Peppy. Directly across from Dodger three people sat together near the middle of the table. At one end was an unsmiling woman sitting rigidly upright, hands folded on the table, "a broomstick up her ass," as his father would say. At the oth
er end slouched a man it took Dodger a moment to realize was Gideon Peppy himself.

  "Take a seat, little guy," said the man on the left of the triad, a portly fellow with a big shock of blond hair and a plaid shirt. "My name's Lawrence Street, and I'm the casting director. Do you know what that is?"

  "Yes, sir." Dodger fought the impulse to hurry over to the table. "Keep your movements slow," his father had told him many times, when he was watching him rehearse. He was about to sit in one of the chairs when the second man, who was bald almost to the top of his head, spoke up.

  "Take the next one," he said, with a slight smile. Dodger saw there was some kind of booster seat in it. He climbed aboard with as much dignity as he could muster, but was glad when he was in it, because in the other chair his chin would have been just about level with the table. He folded his hands in front of himself, and waited.

  "This is Sam Mohammed," Street said, indicating the swarthy man, "and next to him is Debbie Corlet. They're my assistants." Larry, Moe, and Curly, Dodger thought, getting them fixed in his head. "The lady at the end of the table is from Equity. She's gonna make sure we stick to the child labor laws, but don't worry about that." Auntie Equity, got it. He didn't introduce Peppy, and Dodger wasn't surprised, because he was familiar with the concept of The Man Who Needs No Introduction. It was a measure of importance.

  Larry frowned across the table at him.

  "I see you didn't bring a copy of your script, so I assume you've memorized it. What we want you—"

  "Excuse me, sir," Dodger said, thinking fast, "but I didn't have time to study it. If you could just lend me a copy..."

  "They handed them out at the door," Larry said, frowning more deeply.

  "They must have missed me," Dodger said. He beamed brightly at Larry. "I'm a very quick study."

  The three huddled briefly, and Larry shrugged. "What the hell. Let's see how quick he is. Go over there and read it to him, Debbie."

  "That won't be necessary," Dodger said. Curly was already hurrying around the table with the script. She glanced at her boss, who gestured dubiously that she should give him the papers. He smiled up at her and took them.