THE SOUL STEALERS
Annie came into the living room, ashen, shaken. “They’ve issued a life directive, Jack.”
“Life directive? What the hell are you talking about?”
“If you don’t begin processing and I continue living with you, they’ll cut me off from Transformationalism. Totally.”
Weller’s composure shattered utterly. “That does it!” he shouted. “I absolutely, categorically, totally forbid you to see any of these maniacs again!”
“Jack! Stop it!” Annie screamed. “Don’t you see that you’re confirming everything they said?” Tears began to form in her eyes. “If you won’t come for processing, I’m getting out of here this very minute!”
Then she slammed the door behind her, leaving Weller transfixed in the center of the living room, his body frozen in rage, his mind roaring with emotional white noise.
He stood there for long moments trying to force rationality back into his screaming brain, trying to break the shocked, stunned, raging stasis that held him in emotional and physical paralysis.
But before he could move, before he could get himself to the door, he heard the engine of her car start in the driveway. Then, with a roar, the metallic scream of a missed shift, and the howl of an engine revving toward redline, she was gone… .
Other books by Norman Spinrad
Novels
THE SOLARIANS
THE MEN IN THE JUNGLE
AGENT OF CHAOS
BUG JACK BARRON
THE IRON DREAM
RIDING THE TORCH
PASSING THROUGH THE FLAME
THE MIND GAME
A WORLD BETWEEN
SONGS FROM THE STARS
THE VOID CAPTAIN’S TALE
CHILD OF FORTUNE
Short Story Collections
THE LAST HURRAH OF THE GOLDEN HORDE
NO DIRECTION HOME
THE STAR SPANGLED FUTURE
Non-fiction
FRAGMENTS OF AMERICA STAYING ALIVE: A WRITERS’ GUIDE
Anthologies (editor)
THE NEW TOMORROWS MODERN SCIENCE FICTION
THE MIND GAME
A Bantam Book / published by arrangement with the Author
Bantam edition / August 1985
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1980 by Norman Spinrad.
Cover artwork copyright © 1985 by Catherine Huerta.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by
mimeograph or any other means, without permission.
For information address: Bantam Books, Inc.
ISBN 0-553-25061-2
Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada
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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
H 0987654321
Order is the enemy of Chaos. But the enemy of Order is also the enemy of Chaos.
—Gregor Markowitz
One
Sweat plastering the back of his shirt to the seat of his Triumph, eyes burning from San Fernando Valley smog, brain throbbing with dulled exhaustion, Jack Weller turned off the Ventura Freeway onto Moorpark. Another day, another ten minutes of Monkey Business in the can, another piece of my lifeline sold for a hundred dollars and my name flashed across the boob tube as the director of a peculiarly mindless kiddie show, he thought. But don’t get me wrong, I love Hollywood.
Down Moorpark—gas stations, Burger Palaces, supermarkets, giant drugstores—left, right, left, and onto the street where he lived. Endless anonymous ticky-tacky ranch houses inadequately veiled by trees and thick shrubbery. Oh, the towering feeling? He turned up the driveway and parked behind Annie’s ancient red Porsche sitting in the open garage. Image, image, the price we pay for image! If a would-be up-and-coming young director or an aspiring actress wanted the comfort of a closed, air-conditioned car, it had to be a late-model Cadillac or at the very least a fancy Buick—anything less said “poor,” and that was the kiss of death. So two sports cars it was, acceptable image on the cheap.
Inside, Annie was waiting for him in the living room, lithe, blond and lovely in a flowering caftan but tired and empty around the eyes, poor baby. “Hi, babes,” she said. A brief pro forma kiss with no juice in it.
“How did it go?” Weller asked, going to the bar and getting out the Martini fixings.
Annie sighed. “The usual,” she said. “Next week Harry’s lined up an audition for a part in a perfume commercial. And some writer client of his is working on an original screenplay which might have something for me in it if it ever gets sold. How’s the monkey business?”
Weller poured two Martinis, handed her one, sat down on the couch beside her, and took a long cold swallow. “More fun than a barrel of producers,” he said. “Our warm, wonderful father figure came in with a hangover, the kids were into playing practical jokes on each other today, and the damned chimp crapped on the set twice.”
“But don’t get me wrong, I love Hollywood,” Annie chorused along with him. They laughed and relaxed closer to each other.
The air-conditioner was beginning to cool him off, and the Martini was beginning to loosen a few of the knots in his gut. There are those who would say I’ve got it made, Weller reflected. A more or less steady five-hundred dollars a week directing a network show, even if it is kiddie stuff. Twenty grand of equity in a house, even if it is in the Valley. A beautiful wife who loves me, even if we do have our problems. One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor.
“What’s for dinner?” Weller asked, feeling like any nine-to-fiver coming home to the little woman, and hating it.
“Chinese spareribs and corn on the cob,” Annie said. “Pour me another and I’ll go take a look.”
Weller’s stomach sent pleasure messages to his grumbling brain. It was one of his favorites, and Annie’s fixing it was always a little flash of the love between them that still seemed to survive despite her frustration with an acting career that was going nowhere and his frustration at clinging to the bottom rung of a long, long ladder, no closer to directing feature films or even prime-time segments than he had been two years ago. At least we haven’t gotten to the point of taking it out on each other, he thought, pouring two more drinks. Not yet.
Annie went into the kitchen, and Weller sat back down on the couch, sipping his drink and contemplating the furniture. How he hated the wall-to-wall carpeting, the Danish-modern junk, the big color TV console, the Middle American-ness of it all! Five years, and he still couldn’t think of this house as home, as something permanent. Home was a big, lavish place in the Hollywood Hills, with a swimming pool, a huge garden, and a sauna; home was where they were going to live when Annie was a star and he was a big-time feature-film director. The only thing that could be worse than the transient feeling of this house would be accepting this place, this life, as something they had arrived at, rather than a place along the road to the top. I’m only thirty-one, he thought, and Annie’s only twenty-nine. We’re not old enough to be stuck where we are.
“Come and git it!” Annie called from the kitchen. Weller tossed down the rest of his drink, his attention drawn from these heavy musings to the dinner-sized hole in his stomach, and he went into the dining room happy to be thinking of little else but ribs and com.
By the time he had put away two butter-drenched cobs of com and a plate of crackling sweet-and-sour spareribs, Weller was feeling more mellow, and he and Annie leaned toward each other across the table over coffee, looking into each other’s eyes and beginning to fe
el cozy. They would probably make love before settling down in front of the tube tonight.
Despite everything—a couple of brief bouts of experimental swinging, three desultory orgies, and a few sneaky side affairs along the way—they could still please each other in bed. In fact, after the transitory thrill of unwrapping a fresh new body, Weller had found the other women he had had during their six-year marriage ultimately and rapidly boring compared to Annie. Annie had always told him that other men left her with the same feeling, and nothing in their life together had signaled to him that this was a kind lie. They had been totally faithful to each other for over two years now, having learned, if nothing else, that their sex lives together were not the source of their mutual nagging frustration, that bedtime adventures were no cure for lack of career satisfaction.
“Love you, lady,” Weller said, reaching across the table and touching his palm to her cheek.
“We’re lovely people,” she said. They touched, and they eyed, and they kissed, and then they went into the living room, shucking clothes as they walked, and made love on the green velvet couch, dissolving away the tedium and frustration of the day, at least temporarily, into the mindless melding of bodies.
But inevitably after a time it had to be over, and they found themselves once more lying naked against each other on the couch, dully watching television.
For the Wellers, as for two hundred million others, the tube was an artificial release from boredom, from the need to chew over things that had been said to each other a thousand times before just to fill dead air. But for them it was also an instrument of self-flagellation. Weller watched the prime-time dramatic shows knowing that they were formula garbage, contemptuous of the directors who had made their secure careers in big-time TV and who no longer burned to do features. And yet each time a director’s credit line appeared on the screen, it was a little knife in his gut. For the nobodies who directed these turkeys were still a long step up the ladder from Jack Weller and his Saturday-morning monkey show, and he never saw a prime-time segment that he could admire, that he didn’t know he could do better. And Annie compared the face and figure of every featured actress to herself, unable to understand why they were getting the work while she had to scramble and scheme just to get an occasional commercial or walk-on.
“Full shot, close-up, full shot, close-up,” Weller muttered, seeing whatever it was only in terms of the formula blocking.
Weller wondered why he watched so much of the damned stuff—there was certainly nothing to learn from it. But what had they done during those intermittent periods when they righteously swore off watching TV? Lots of movies, which made the envy even worse. Middling Hollywood hangouts which led to swinging which led back to middling Hollywood hangouts. Rounds of parties with people who were mostly worse off than they were, where they were objects of envy. Earnest heart-to-heart talks which petered out into dull staring contests which left them hating each other and blaming each other for the deadly boredom. What was missing from their life? It didn’t take a shrink or a marriage counselor to figure it out for them. Success, that was what was missing, and there was no substitute for it.
“Look at her,” Annie said. “She’s walking through it like a zombie. Maybe I should shop around for a new agent—”
The ringing of the phone cut through the television trance. Annie got up and answered it.
“Hello, Bob—”
“The what—”
“It is?”
“I’ll ask him. Hold on.”
Standing by the phone table, Annie said: “It’s Bob and Susan Shumway. They’re going to the Transformationalist Celebrity Center tonight. Bob wants to know if we’d like to meet them there.”
Bob Shumway was a fairly successful television writer. Bob and Susan and Jack and Annie had had a brief swinging number three years ago which had quickly faded out into a kind of distant friendship. Bob was something of a Hollywood trendie, always trying to be “where it was at,” a great believer in going to the right parties and meeting the right people. Weller admired his style, though only in small doses.
“What’s the Transformationalist Celebrity Center?” Weller asked. He had heard of Transformationalism, dimly. It was one of those consciousness-raising cults, like Arica, EST, or Scientology, of which he had a low and jaundiced opinion. Somehow it didn’t seem like much of a Bob Shumway number.
“Bob says it’s a kind of private club run by the Transformationalists. Free drinks. Very Beverly Hills.”
“You want to go, Annie?”
She shrugged. “We don’t have anything better to do.”
“Let me talk to him,” Weller said. He went to the phone. “Hi, Bob. What’s happening?”
“Thought you might like to meet us at the Celebrity Center, babe. It’s only been open a couple of months, but it’s an interesting scene. ”
“Didn’t know you were into guru games, Bob.”
“Hey, you can just tune out the Transformationalist scam. Point is, Transformationalism has mucho bread, and this center is designed to attract the Hollywood heavies. ”
“So?”
“So? So they’ve set up a groovy place, and they ply you with unlimited free booze. And such being the case, a lot of people are starting to hang out there. Contacts, boy! The movers and shapers. Beautiful people. Take a look. Might be the place to make the Big Connection. What do you say?”
“Just a minute, Bob.” Weller looked at Annie. “Want to see if we can meet someone who can make us stars at this guru den?” he asked sardonically. “At least we can lap up the free booze,” he added in a W. C. Fields voice.
“Sure,” Annie said, much more earnestly. By the look in her eyes Weller could tell that she was already fantasizing a chance meeting with Joe Levine. Hope springs eternal, he thought, feeling just a little sad, a shade protective.
“Okay, Bob, we’ll meet you at about eight thirty.”
“Make it eight thirty sharp, and we’ll meet you in the parking lot.”
“Roger.”
“Ten-four, babe. See you there.”
The Santa Monica Mountains march east-west to the sea, a natural barrier between the suburbia of the San Fernando Valley to the north and the glitter and flash of Hollywood and Beverly Hills at their southern feet. From Mulholland Drive, running along the crest line, Weller could see the vast nightscape of Los Angeles spread below them, a brilliant carpet of light. Driving up over the ridgeline and down the defile of Beverly Glen Boulevard toward Beverly Hills, whipping around the curves in the open sports car with Annie’s golden hair streaming in the fragrant night air, he lived for the moment in the Hollywood persona he longed to capture and hold. Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Malibu Canyon, Topanga, Laurel Canyon—these hills were the habitat of those who had made it; this was where they belonged.
Out of the hills and onto the fiat streets of downtown Beverly Hills, the streets largely empty of pedestrians even at this hour, the action taking place very privately, behind closed doors. Weller pulled into the parking lot of the Transformationalist Celebrity Center. There were about two dozen cars in the lot—Jags, some older Porshes, a couple of Cadillacs, but also some or the cheaper sports cars, and even one VW van. Weller parked alongside Bob Shumway’s vintage Aston-Martin. Bob and Susan were leaning against the car, Bob slightly paunchy in a cream-colored leisure suit, Susan dark and fullbodied in midnight-blue capris and a bare midriff red blouse.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” Kiss, kiss.
“Been here often?” Annie asked as they walked out of the parking lot.
“A few times,” Susan answered.
“It’s only been open awhile,” Bob said. “Just starting to catch on. The real heavies should just be starting to appear. The only free saloon in town.”
By this time they had reached the entrance: a brown door in an otherwise featureless building front. A small bronze plaque identified it as “The Transformationalist Celebrity Center.”
Immediately inside was a smal
l blue-walled reception area. Facing them was another closed door with another bronze plaque. This one said:
Transform the transformers and transform the world.
Transform the world and transform your own lives.
—John B. Steinhardt
Beside the door was a small desk, and behind the desk was an intense-looking young man with a clipboard of papers and a ball-point pen.
“Good evening and welcome to the Transformationalist Celebrity Center,” he said earnestly. “Please sign in.” He handed Weller the clipboard and pen. The form on the clipboard had places for name, address, phone number, and whether or not he had visited the Celebrity Center before. Weller shot Bob Shumway a narrow look, thinking, here I go onto one more mailing list, filled out the form, and handed it to Annie.
After they had all filled out the form, the attendant held the door open for them, and they walked into a large room with a cream-colored ceiling, red flocked wallpaper, and a dark hardwood floor. A bar with a mirror behind it ran the length of one wall, and there was a small, low stage in the middle of the opposite wall. The rest of the room was filled with small cafe tables. On the far wall was a huge black and white photograph of a heavyset man in his fifties with long, thinning gray hair and a bushy gray moustache. There were thirty or forty people scattered about the place, a few of them sitting at the bar. Anonymous soft music played, far in the background.
They took a table near the bar. Bob Shumway ran his eyes around the room. “Couple of TV producers, few actors, there’s Eddie Berger from GAC, what’s-his-name who writes half the cop shows in town, film critic from Los Angeles, nothing much. Looks like a slow night so far. ”
A waitress appeared, wearing a white blouse and black slacks, again with that intense look about the eyes. “What’s your pleasure, folks? All refreshments are courtesy of Transformationalism. May you enjoy your evening and leave transformed.” The little spiel reminded Weller of a living television commercial. The waitress took their orders and departed toward the bar.
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