by John Varley
Valentine hurried up to the Inner Planet Budget counter and smiled at the young woman who stood behind it. She smiled down at Dodger, who looked cute as could be, a scale model of his handsome father but without the whiskers.
"Good morning," Valentine said, with a slight accent. "I am seeking a reservation in the person of Rajiv Singh, and his most esteemed son, Rahman. We have been booking two passages of an inside stateroom to Flip City, Mars, with connectings to New Amritsar."
"Yes, Mr. Singh, I have your reservation here." The young woman did something at her ticketing machine and produced a clear plastic rectangle that flashed in rainbow colors when the light hit it. "That will be five hundred and fifty-seven dollars and nineteen cents, including transportation tax, excise tax, amusement tax, transaction tax, value added tax, spaceport usage fees, and the mandated voluntary oxygen-indigent support assessment. May I have your credit number, please?"
"Oh, my goodness, no!" Valentine's smile was still in place, but he was gritting his teeth. "Cash moneys only, if you please! 'Neither a borrower nor a lender be,' as according to poor Richard Almanack. And concerning these other stipends..." He leaned over and studied the lines on her ticketing screen. John Valentine paid few taxes unnecessarily and none willingly. "The harried, hurried traveling public is a market ripe for a swindle, Dodger," he said whenever they went anywhere. "Most of them have no idea that not all those fees apply to them." After five minutes of haggling, he had eliminated six dollars in amusement ("We don't plan to be amused"), transaction ("This is applying to credit dealings only"), and air imposts ("Our temple is contributing most generously each year to the Beggars' Breathing Fund, or as Richard Almanack once said, 'I gave at the office.' ").
Those battles won, Valentine pulled his wad of cash from his coat pocket and paid the fare. The lady validated the ticket and handed it to him.
"Now, may I see your passport, please?"
"Passport? Passport? Surely I am told this is not being necessary, for purposes of tourism or religious pilgrimage not to exceed two weeks of durations. Rahman, my son, are you bringing the passports?" Valentine had been patting himself down, exploring his pockets in distraction. Now he smiled. "We are Sikhs," he said, explaining. "Rahman!"
Dodger had been woolgathering, on the high seas aboard a pirate ship. Now he jerked awake, and patted all his pockets. "No, my father."
"There, you see!" Valentine said.
"You're right, of course," said the lady, "but I do need some identification."
"This should be of no type of problem," Valentine assured her. "Here is an abundance of such items." He fanned several cards out on the counter like a winning poker hand. Dodger felt the pressure on his hand increase. Mr. Rajiv Singh was unlikely to have missed the items, since he was deadballing to Neptune at the moment, only one week into his journey. Valentine had been guaranteed these documents would survive the cursory scrutiny needed to buy tourist passage to Mars. Still, it paid to be cautious, and Dodger was ready, should his hand be squeezed three times, to start complaining loudly about a sudden and violent need to empty his bladder. He was prepared to piss his pants, if it came to that. He really hoped it wouldn't come to that.
He sighed in relief when he saw she was buying it, simply glancing at the stolen identification and making a mark on her screen.
"I can offer you a stateroom upgrade, with a private bath, for a fee increase of only twenty dollars," the lady said.
"Oh, my goodness, yes, of course. Won't that be so jolly, Rahman?"
"Yes, my father."
"And are there any... special dietary needs associated with your faith, Mr. Singh?"
"Oh, my goodness, no. We shall be most pleased to be eating whatsoever the other passengers have been eating. Hamburgers and hot dogs, eh, my son?"
"Oh, my goodness!" Dodger agreed.
"Very well. Your ticket will also function as your meal card, so please don't lose it. Since your departure isn't for another four hours, you may use it to purchase a meal at the spaceport snack bars, in appreciation for your early arrival, courtesy of IPB. Please be at the boarding gate in three hours, with your luggage. Have a pleasant flight, and enjoy your visit to Mars."
"Oh, a most devotional trip, indeed!" Valentine said. "May the sacred monkeys of the New Temple of Amritsar guide you through the day."
The woman's smile became a bit glassy, as though not sure if she wanted to be guided by monkeys, sacred or otherwise, but when Dodger waved to her she waved back. When they were far enough away, Dodger looked up at his father.
"Why don't you buy me some eggs?" he asked. "Since you already—"
"Have provided the ham," Valentine finished, sheepishly. "Damn it, Dodger, why don't you stop me? It's a disease, I tell you, a disease. I can't stop myself."
"I really liked the part about the monkeys."
John Valentine threw his head back and laughed. Dodger loved it when he laughed. He'd been laughing a lot since they got back from Sentry Studios, hardly twenty-four hours ago.
"We've got time to kill, pardner," Valentine said. "What say we take IPB up on their offer to do lunch? Think their budget would stretch to a couple Cokes and Coney Islands?"
* * *
John Valentine produced the validated plastic with a flourish, and the clerk ran it through his machine. He and his son carried their trays to a booth overlooking the vast flat plain of the spaceport.
Dodger had contented himself with some mustard and a few spoonfuls of relish on his Coney, but Valentine had buried his, as usual, in chili, diced onions, relish, mustard, cheese, and a barely sublethal dose of the Tabasco sauce he put on almost everything he ate. Valentine's energies were enormous, and so were his appetites.
"You're going to like Mars, Dodge," he said, gingerly lifting the soggy load to his mouth and taking a big bite. "There's more gravity. Get your feet firmly on the ground for a change." He frowned, and chewed. "You remember Mars at all? What were you..."
"Three, you said," Dodger told him. "I don't remember much."
"No, I don't suppose you would. Well, take my word, it's a great place. It's the perfect place for the little theater we've always talked about. Your average Martian has an inferiority complex when it comes to Luna. No real reason they should, it's a much nicer place than here, but they do, that's the point. Luna is the great Golden Globe for most of the system, and the fact that Mars is a perpetual also-ran, Mars is in second place to Luna in just about anything you want to name... well, that just makes it worse. Some little godforsaken asteroid, they don't worry too much about measuring up to Luna. But Mars, Mars is sort of like Chicago, compared to New York. Chicago always had good theaters, good dance troupes. But Chicago never had a Broadway, and they knew they never would. But they always wanted to be New York, you see what I mean? That's where the action was. That's where the best actors, the best dancers, the best directors... if you weren't working in New York, people thought you weren't really doing serious work. "Or like Hollywood in the film business. You could make a perfectly good film in Florida, but Hollywood was the center of the universe. It's where you went to be a star. 'There's no business like show business, there's no business I know!' " He sang, not really at the top of his voice, but John Valentine seldom spoke more quietly than a stage whisper, and several people in the snack bar turned to see the man in the orange turban singing a jaunty showbiz tune. Dodger kicked his father under the table.
Valentine looked around, and laughed. "You're right, Dodge," he said in a lower voice. "Sikhs do work in the industry, you know, but you're right, it looks out of character." Dodger was entitled to kick his father anytime he stepped out of character when they were working in public.
"Anyway," he went on, more confidentially, "what it does to the Martians is, they're much more receptive to culture. You stage Love's Labour's Lost in King City, it's a yawn. Oh, people will come, you might even fill the theater because there's so damn many people here. You do it on Mars, you get a lot more appreciation. The Martian
s are glad to have you, they cherish you, because by doing Shakespeare or any other of them highfalutin Greeks, you're telling your average Martian rube—and there's nothing rubier than a Martian rube—that he's just as good as a Lunarian. He'll go, even if he doesn't understand every third word, and he'll praise you, and thank you for going to the trouble. And that's good, Dodger, because frankly, other than myself—and you, when you're ready—there's not going to be a Luna-quality cast in the supporting roles. The best of them have already moved to Luna, they're breaking their hearts here. The sort of troupe I'm thinking of, it would get absolutely hammered in the King City reviews. But I guarantee you, on Mars, it will never be noticed."
"Sounds great," Dodger said.
"Better than great." He spread his hands wide, his eyes focused on a giant marquee only he could see. " 'The John Valentine Son Shakespearean Repertory Company.' Just one small pressure dome, out a ways from the city where the rents aren't so high. A hundred fifty, two hundred seats, tops. Why, with twenty thousand dollars we can get it up and running, and even if we lose money every year, I don't see why we can't go six, seven years. And all thanks to Gideon Peppy and his idiotic show."
"Sounds wonderful," said the Dodger.
They ate in silence for a while, each with his own thoughts. Valentine was obviously laying out the floor plans of the repertory theater, drawing up the first season's schedule, deciding who to call in Flip City when it came time to cast the first production.
Dodger simply ate, taking small bites and chewing thoughtfully.
"I'd like to see Mr. Peppy's face tomorrow," Dodger finally ventured, quietly, "when nobody shows up for the contract meeting."
"And he realizes his catch has flown the coop." Valentine cackled. "Yeah, that'd be something to see, all right. We'll send him a postcard from Mars, when we open the first show. Anonymous. Let him wonder what it's all about."
"That should be funny," said Dodger.
They ate in silence for a while, both looking up when the lunchroom was for a moment flooded in light as a ship lifted from the field. Even through the darkened glass, for a moment it outshone the sun. Valentine chuckled.
"I think we could work up a comedy skit about your adventures yesterday. Caught up in the massive gears of the Hollywood machine, eh, Dodger?" He frowned, looking thoughtful. "In fact, I think I've seen something like it before. Very old stuff. Something about soldiers being processed very rapidly into an army, shuffling through physical and mental exams, no one really taking the time to see these chaps as human beings... and before they know it they've inducted a chimpanzee. Now where was that...?"
"Maybe it was one of the sacred monkeys of the New Temple," Dodger suggested.
"That's it! That's it!" Valentine howled. Dodger was eager to get his father's thoughts away from the previous day. While he had not actually lied to his father about the general shape of events—he had in fact been shanghaied into the audition room, for instance—he had tended to exaggerate the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and to downplay his own complicity. He had neglected to mention filling out the form and forging his father's name. He had hurried over the details of his reading, not putting much emphasis on how diligently he had tried to win the part. And come to think of it, when his father assumed Dodger had been kidnapped right out of the waiting room where Valentine had left him, Dodger had not bothered to correct him. Why invite trouble? Dodger had reasoned. It made a much better story the way his father had heard it, and hadn't he always said a good story was frequently superior to the truth?
"I couldn't get over how talented he thought I was," Dodger said, with a chuckle. "Honest, Father. I was hardly even trying."
"Well, I'm tooting my own horn, I suppose," his father said, comfortably, "but I don't think you realize just how much your classical training has set you above other boys your age."
"I guess you're right." Dodger sighed. "Now I guess he'll have to settle for second best."
Valentine reached across the table and chucked his son playfully under the chin.
"After the Valentines," he said, "there is no second place." He finished the last bite of his Coney Island, licked the chili from his fingers, washed it down with a big swig of pop. "I'm still hungry. How about it? You want another?"
"I've still got this one," Dodger said.
"I'm getting another. You want some cookies? A brownie?"
"Cookies would be nice."
Valentine hurried away and Dodger put down the half Coney he had been nibbling. He did nothing at all until his father slid back into the booth across from him, and then he still did nothing. His father looked up from wolfing down his second Coney Island. He frowned at his son.
"What's the matter? Not hungry? There probably won't be any food on the ship for a while, until they get it rotating and unpack the kitchen."
"No, I'm fine," Dodger said. He laced his fingers together and leaned forward slightly, a look of concentration on his face. "Father... you said we could run our theater at a loss for six or seven years on twenty thousand dollars. I was just wondering...."
"Go ahead," Valentine said, when the pause had stretched too long.
"I was wondering, how long could we run it on a hundred thousand dollars?"
Valentine stopped chewing for a moment and his eyes lost their focus. Then he started chewing more slowly.
"You know the answer to that," he said. "But I don't think you meant it as a math problem. Go on, Dodger. What's on your mind?"
"Well, Mr. Peppy said that's what we'd make for an episode. For the pilot, I think he called it."
"Incredible, isn't it?" Valentine said. "I always told you there's lots of money in that business. Lots of money. The only problem is, what you have to do to earn it."
"Right," Dodger agreed. "That's right. Still..."
Valentine put down the Coney and regarded his son.
"Just tell it, Dodger. What do you have in mind?"
"Yes, sir. I was just thinking, since I already have the part... well, we could take them for some real money if I went ahead and made the pilot."
Valentine said nothing.
"Just think how crazy Mr. Peppy would get if we made the pilot, and then took off for Mars."
Valentine howled at that one, then got serious. He reached across the table and took Dodger's hand in his.
"You'd really do that, wouldn't you?" he said, his eyes glistening. "For your old man and his crazy theater, you'd put yourself through that mill, and I'll bet you'd never complain, either." He stood up, almost knocking over the table, leaned across, and kissed his son on the forehead. He sat back down and gazed out over the field for a while, getting his emotions under control. At last he looked back, fondly.
"I can't let you do it, Dodger. I know you think you could handle it, but let me tell you, you have no idea the insanity that would be brought to bear. I brought you up to be an actor, not a mugger in dumb shows. Not a spiffed-up little clown with yellow hair and zigzags on his head and I don't know what all else. You think it's just a pilot, son, but it's really a trap. It's the first dose of an addicting drug. The money is tempting, and if I had any less regard for you I'd snap it up in a King City minute. But it's because I do hold you in such high regard that we're going to take the money and run." He squeezed Dodger's hand again. "But I want you to know, I'll never forget the offer."
Dodger smiled, and shrugged.
"It was just an idea," he said. "Just a way to be sure the John Valentine Repertory Shakespearean Theater gets off to a good start. But you're probably right. They did seem like crazy people."
He looked out the window where a ship, big as a city, was being hauled out to its pad on a creeper the size of a small crater. "Still," he said, wistfully. "All that money."
* * *
Three hours later the lady at the IPB ticket counter looked up to see the Sikh father and son hurrying in her direction.
"Sir! Your ship is boarding right now! You'll have to run to—"
"Oh, my goodness, no!" said the man. "Oh, most frightfully no. My most esteemed lady, the sacred monkeys of the New Temple of Amritsar have deemed this a most insuspicious point in time to be traveling. What a surprise this has become to myself and my most excellent son, Rahman, I shall have left to your imaginings. However, the upshooting of the situation is this: that we should now be seeking a refunding of our monies. We shall be guided to the New Temple at a date to be later determined." He paused, and smiled. "Or perhaps I should be saying, 'piloted.' " He slapped the plastic boarding pass on the counter.
The woman knew little of religions other than her own Catholic upbringing, had never really heard of Sikhs. But as she was refunding the money (including, to her later chagrin, amusement tax, transaction tax, and Beggar's Breath), she decided Sikhs must be a sort of Buddhist. She was familiar with the Buddha. She recalled thinking the son looked a lot like his father, but she could see now she had been wrong.
No, the satisfied smile on the small face was the very image of the Enlightened One.
* * *
From that moment on, my father was just about the only person that ever called me Dodger anymore. From then on, I was Sparky. I wasn't Kenneth even in the credits, and no one at Sentry ever called me Dodger.
If I had it to do over again, would I choose to go with Father to Mars? To this day I don't know. Being strongly identified with a part can be a blessing, but is usually a curse in my business. Ask Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Boris Karloff. It goes back at least that far. Like a singer asked to endlessly repeat his one monster hit, you get very tired of it. Reviewers will forever after make much of the fact that it was little Sparky who played the part of Willy Loman, will more than likely treat the whole enterprise as a stunt. That's one reason I've used so many pseudonyms in my career.
But being Sparky has been helpful from time to time. It's an image you can trade on, when you're otherwise down-and-out. It will get your foot in the door, get you special attention even if half the time it is only to be told Sorry, I just can't see little Sparky as Stanley Kowalski. It gets you attention as somebody-who-used-to-be-somebody while Wanda B. Somebody, Mita Bean, and Neva Hoydova are cooling their heels at a cattle call. And brother, when you're out there riding on a smile and a shoeshine, it can give you that edge you need.
