The Golden Globe

by John Varley

  Hi, it's me again. The artist formerly known as Sparky.

  I am waking up for the third time this voyage, being as careful as I can not to tamper with my meditative state, trying not to become fully awake, since you can never tell if you'll convince yourself again of the Big Lie you managed to swallow getting into this state.

  I checked my clock and found I'd been asleep for seven days. I took the news calmly—of course it had been seven days; I'd taken powerful narcotics—and I had in fact already suspected it, because I was twice as hungry as I had been each previous time. It looked to be starvation on the installment plan, which was a lot better than a continuous forty days of it.

  I ate. You don't want to know what I ate any more than I want to revisit the tastes by telling about it. Just recall the items I bought back on Pluto, imagine them all swirled together in a blender, and I'll leave the rest to your imagination. It was vile stuff, and it killed the hunger pangs, which was all it was supposed to do.

  I shook out three pills. They were now plainly labeled POWERFUL NARCOTICS, I noticed. I washed them down with deadball solution that was actually starting to taste pretty good.

  I slept.

  * * *

  "Interesting," said John Valentine, when he saw his son. "But what about the pants?"

  "Donald Duck never wore pants," said Gideon Peppy, around his lollipop.

  Sparky had spent the entire morning with Rose, the nice production-designer lady, and her staff of hair, costume, and makeup people. His hair had been restored in its tripartite pattern, but instead of banana yellow it was now metallic and bronze, spiraled and wiry. The side wings were swept back instead of spread out, and the front part of the Mohawk drooped down over his forehead. The electric zigzags were back, joined now by a pair on his chest. His eyes were mascaraed from eyelash to brow in a deep rose fading to black, then tapering to more zigzags at the corners. He wore black lipstick. He had been prodded and pampered, trimmed, teased, and flattered by the deft boys and girls of the makeup department, and made to feel very important indeed. He had been massaged with warm oils until his skin glistened. If he wanted something to eat or drink he had merely to ask and it appeared. He had received his first manicure and pedicure. Then he had been put into his costume, which was a red jerkin or waistcoat (which his father said was pronounced weskit) with gold embroidery suggestive of a circuit board. It could be fastened with a frog in front, or left open. It had no sleeves or lapels. It reached the middle of his hips. When he had it on Sparky immediately asked the same question his father would ask a few minutes later, and when he was told that was it, the entire costume, he knew there was going to be trouble.

  Now he stood silently in front of the huge mirror that backed the conference table on the edge of the bustling pirate-ship tank set. Gideon Peppy liked conference tables, had one brought in anywhere he was going to meet with people, and immediately installed himself in a big chair at one end. His staff clustered at that end, drawn like iron filings to a magnet. He sat there now, feet up on the table as was his custom, and looked at Sparky. Behind him and to his right was the usual pandemonium of a set being constructed, wired, painted, and lit all at once. A wharf had been built and a Caribbean port town was almost complete. Nail guns stuttered and paint sprayers hissed and table saws howled as gangs of grips carried Styrofoam barrels and inflatable bales of cotton to stack on the wharf. A paving machine was moving along like a giant metal termite queen, laying cobbles in irregular rows on the steep main street. Set dressers were strewing straw and garbage and imitation horseshit, daubing weathered-wood walls with ersatz mildew. Somewhere underwater frogmen were positioning battery-powered mini-brutes to shine upward through the turquoise water. And anchored just off the wharf was the pirate ship itself, swarming with gaffers and riggers testing the complex system of ropes, pulleys, and canvas.

  Sparky watched it all in the mirror, and remembered Orson Welles's description of a motion picture soundstage: the greatest toy a boy ever had.

  "Yes," his father thundered, bringing Sparky back to reality. "And Donald Duck was a cartoon, a water fowl, and imaginary. And, apparently, sexless. You should bear in mind that my son is a real little boy."

  Valentine had grasped the dynamic of the conference table instantly, weeks ago when he had his first meeting with Peppy and his staff. He had marched unerringly to the far end of the table and had been camping out there ever since. It meant he had to raise his voice to reach Peppy, especially on a noisy set like this one, but it was no problem for John Valentine, who liked to boast that he had never been miked in his life and always projected to the last row of the balcony.

  Peppy and Valentine had loathed each other on sight and each had yet to speak an impolite word to the other. The tension at the table had grown so unbearable that the faint of heart among Peppy's entourage hyperventilated and had to breathe into paper bags when the meetings adjourned.

  "I never forget it for a minute, my good friend," Peppy replied. "A wonderful talent, your son. He's going to be a big star, and very soon. Maybe even bigger than me." He chuckled wryly, bemused at such a thought, and a few of his people chuckled with him. He leaned forward. But we're dealing in a fantasy world here, John B. We're making movie magic. We've researched this high and low—haven't we, Rose? Tell him about the research—and what you're seeing in that sweet little boy is the coming thing, John B., the coming thing. We won't be in business very long if we wait around until the coming thing is already here. We've got to be the ones who define what it is. Tell him, Rose."

  Valentine, who liked being called John B. about as much as Jack Sensational would have liked being called Puddin' head, folded his hands comfortably and turned to Rose with a sweet smile.

  Rose was that rarity, an artist oblivious to power politics within the team. She liked her creation, and she liked Sparky, and had no idea how much Valentine and Peppy detested each other.

  "It's true, Mr. Valentine," she enthused, and hurried over to take Sparky by the elbows and boost him onto the table, where he swaggered around in the middle, careful not to get too close to either end, where there were tigers. He struck a few poses, watching himself in the mirror.

  "The one-piece look is already the thing in the Mercury Commune, and you know how they've bellwethered all the newest things for the last two years. Simplicity is the statement. One garment, loads of makeup. Both sexes. And not just the tiny tots, either. Just a shirt, or a pair of trousers. Sometimes just one sleeve—just a sleeve, no shirt—or a legging." She illustrated on her own body, with graceful hand gestures, then joined Sparky on the table. She herself wore a garment similar to his, but a little longer. She went down on one knee beside him, pointing out features of her handiwork. "Depilate from the neck down. Oil up. One item of clothing. That's the key to the new look. Lots of skin. Heck, on Mars the upper classes aren't dressing their children at all until they reach puberty, as if we were back in the fifties. I think that's reverse snobbery, and besides, you can't make money selling nudity."

  "You can make more money selling more clothes," Valentine pointed out. "That's true," said Peppy. "And we'll sell caps, and T-shirts, and whatever the marketing department dreams up. But that'll be with pictures of Sparky, and with the Sparky artwork and logo and characters. If the kids want to wear the Sparky look, they'll wear the vest dingus. And they'll buy it from us, because we'll be the only ones selling Sparky vests with the official Sparky's Gang seal."

  "Only to eight-year-olds," Valentine said.

  "So what? We figure three-to-ten, actually, but eight is the target, for now. This thing takes off, takes off big, we'll get up to the teens as the Sparkster gets older. I'm telling you, John B., the Victorian Kid is history. You can pack away all his lacy duds, his velvet shirts and ruffled collars and knee britches. Coupla months, everybody's kid's gonna dress like this."

  "If he wears it at all," Valentine said, dangerously. "I don't know, Pepsi. There's something about it that rubs me the wrong way. Call me old-f
ashioned. Nudity is fine, at home, at the playground, in the swimming pool."

  "But this isn't nudity, Mr. V," Rose piped up, honestly trying to be helpful. "Nudity is dreary. This is style."

  "Not to put too fine a point to it, Rose, my darling," John said, "I was raised to believe a young gentleman should wear pants in public."

  Rose—who, like most third-generation and younger Lunarians, had no more body modesty than a mink—had no idea what he was talking about. She had made costumes faithfully for a hundred Earth-era pictures without ever really grasping the genitalia taboo. People wore lots of clothing on Earth because it had been dangerous down there, to her way of thinking. Blistering sunlight, lethal cold winds. There was nothing like that to protect oneself from on Luna, and people wore clothing almost exclusively for decoration, sometimes a lot of it, sometimes very little, depending on the fashion of the day. If the fashion now was no pants, what's the big deal? She looked to Peppy for help.

  Gideon Peppy carefully removed half his lollipop from his mouth, and chewed on the rest. He had never eaten his hard candy treats until he met the Valentines, father and son, but now he found himself frequently biting down hard on them. Pepsi, is it, you prick?

  He laughed indulgently, one friend to another, and shook his head.

  "Johnny, Johnny, honestly! I don't know where you get these ideas! He's a riot, isn't he, fellas? A riot. Sometimes I think you're just kidding us, and I'm too dumb to get the joke. But I'm here for you, paisan. I care, I really do. If you have concerns I'm always willing to listen. If you're not happy, nobody at this table is happy, so what I want from you is to talk to me, John. Blue-sky it for us. What would you like to see here? We all want your input and my mind is a blank page, costume-wise. So draw on it, John B., draw on it. What kind of pants are we talking here?"

  Sparky, who had not been following the exchange at all closely, chose that moment to pipe up.

  "I kind of like it, Father," he said.

  The silence that followed was mercifully short, as one of Rose's assistants arrived with a girl in tow. Now it was Sparky's turn to frown dubiously.

  Peppy stood up to greet the girl. He lifted her up onto the table where she stood confidently, hands on hips, looking a challenge at Sparky.

  "Folks, meet Sparky's new sidekick. I'd like you to say hi to Kaspara Polichinelli!"

  "Sidekick? Sidekick? I didn't see anything about a sidekick." John Valentine reached for his script.

  "All action heroes have sidekicks," Peppy said, smugly. "We figured from the start Sparky'd have one. We wrote her in last week."

  Sparky walked slowly toward the young lady. Eight years old, he figured. Dressed exactly as he was, only the waistcoat was blue with silver highlights. Hair trimmed the same, only silver instead of brass. Zigzags, eye shadow, all the same. The black lipstick was a trifle bee-stung, a little Betty Boopish, but other than that, she looked just like him.

  He stopped a pace away and looked her up and down. She smiled. Her two front teeth were prominent.

  "What kind of name is Kaspara?" he asked. He was aware that an argument was happening down at Peppy's end of the table, but he tried to ignore it. He knew he had made a major mistake in his comment about the costume, but he was hoping this new sensation might make it seem less important in retrospect. Perhaps Kaspara Polichinelli's arrival would distract his father from his son's innocent gaffe. And that was good.

  But he was far from sure anything else about her arrival was so great.

  "I don't use it," she said.

  "What do they call you? Kassie?"

  "Everybody calls me Polly."

  Sparky had edged a little closer, trying to see if his shoulder was higher than hers. She smiled, and came around him to stand back-to-back. The two of them looked in the mirror. He had an inch on her. Maybe two if he stood up straight. Well, that was okay, then.

  She laughed, and bumped him with her hip.

  "Come on," she said. "Don't be such a flip. I know how to stand downstage and not get in your shot. They told me the part was a sidekick when I tried out."

  "You're going to be my buddy? Is that it?"

  "I don't think they planned any sexual involvement until the third season, at least," she said. "Which is fine with me. I'm old-fashioned, like your father. I figured I'd wait till my blood day, just like my mother did."

  Sparky was saved from replying to that by the sound of rising voices at the power end of the table. Storm clouds were forming over there, and the outlook was excellent that the long-delayed cataclysmic confrontation between producer and parent was about to break out. Aides were scurrying for cover as John Valentine came around the table, slapping his script into his open palm while Peppy slapped a copy of Sparky's contract into his.

  "Come on," Polly said, pulling his hand. "They told me to bring you back. Miss Crow says it's time for classes."

  "Miss Crow?" For a moment Sparky forgot who she was. "Oh. Auntie Equity."

  "Auntie Equity." She laughed. "I like that. C'mon, let's get out of here. There's a fight about to happen, and I think your dad's going to lose it. I don't think you want to be around when he does."

  John Valentine did lose the fight, if the removal of the character of Polly was the criterion for winning. But he saw it coming, and managed to turn the contest in midstream until it was a struggle over artistic control and not over Polly herself—and managed to convince himself that was what he had been upset about in the first place. It might even have been true. He was not mollified by a small victory on the issue of trousers. "Listen to this," Peppy had offered. "We shoot the pilot in the outfits Rose designed. Then there's a coupla markets off-planet... what is it, Vesta, Callisto... Ceres, I think, all fulla Baptists and Mormons and jerks like that. Vesta, now, wha'd' they call it in that skit the other day...?"

  He snapped his fingers rapidly and an aide spoke up. "Planet of the Prudes," he said.

  "That's it. We always have to tinker with the Peppy Show for export, so what we'll do, we'll morph some britches on 'em, see what it tests like. Now I ask you, John B. Is that fair?"

  "Couldn't be fairer, Pepster." Valentine beamed.

  * * *

  Ah, Polly. Those were more innocent days.

  Yes, it's me again, awake after another week.

  Like most long voyages, at sea or in space, awake or asleep, there is not usually much to report. One day is like another, barring storm or disaster. I will tell you now, no such disaster will befall. The deadballs will continue to work their hypnotism-reinforced magic, I will continue to awake at regular intervals, I will eat, I will fall back into the arms of Morpheus. In time I will arrive at Oberon, where further adventures await. In the meantime I will allow that long-ago Sparky to tell his story, as is his habit, in the third person, suitably edited into high and low points.

  I doubt that I will interrupt him again.

  But this time I had to. Sometimes something rises from the depths of the sea or sails out of the ocean of night to make the day a special one. Your diary has been an endless series of identical entries: Falling sunward. Shipboard routine uninterrupted. Weather clear. Slept. Then the lost continent of Atlantis appears off the starboard bow. It's worth a postcard.

  We ran into a herd of diaphanophores. A flight of diaphanophores? The book where I found that fancy name you've probably never heard of neglected to give a collective noun for them. Herd definitely won't do, though. How about an exaltation of diaphanophores?

  They're better known by several more poetic names, including Outer Angels, Angel's Robes, and spinthistles. Or simply angels. On Pluto, they are called BFODs: Big Fucking Orbital Disks. Those rascally Plutonians. Honestly.

  Let's settle on angels, shall we?

  Their origins are obscure, but it is known they are man-made. The dominant theory is that they are the creation of some demented biohacker with an illegal lab somewhere in the outer planets. When they first showed up there was considerable alarm about them, but so far they have proven ha
rmless. That was about a century ago, maybe a bit longer, so I'd say the case was pretty well closed. Plenty of people would like to know more about them, to be sure they're not up to something, but angels are traditionally hard to study, and these won't sit still any more than the Biblical variety.

  Space angels dissolve when you get close to them. Some people think it's a protective reflex, because what's left of them apparently form sporelike structures, trillions of them, of which only a few will survive. Others think it is contact itself that blows them away, like thistledown. Ships can only approach within ten thousand miles or so. A man in a spacesuit can get within maybe a hundred miles. Then they go pop, like soap bubbles. They are made of a mix of animal and vegetable protein. They are transparent, and probably one molecule thick. The little ones are one hundred thousand miles in diameter.

  The big ones go up to ten million miles.

  That's crazy, of course. There must be angels smaller than one hundred thousand miles across. They can't just spring into being. But even the big ones don't show up on radar, and finding the small ones when we know most of them spend most of their lives above and below the solar plane, where hardly anyone ever goes, is almost impossible. Maybe they breed out there.

  If you read up on them, you will find that I've told you just about everything that is known, and you'll notice I've used a lot of maybes.

  Two more things. They move about like sailboats, flying before the solar wind and light pressure. And they survive by sweeping up the extremely thin matter between planets. One reason scientists would like to capture one is they suspect angels might be sweeping up magnetic monopoles, whatever those are.

  So there is the physical rundown. The reality was more colorful. I saw them when I woke up. I'd say there were fifty or sixty of them, which meant there were probably a lot more since you only see them when they're oriented such that the sun's light is reflected toward you. There is no way to tell how big each one was, or how distant. One moment an angel would seem truly vast and impossibly distant; the next, I'd convinced myself it was the size of a coin, and only inches from my face. There is no sense of scale. But they flashed and fluttered all around me, and I was enchanted by the rainbow of colors. One seemed to fill a quarter of the sky. It was a pale gold, and I could see stars through it.