by John Barnes
It was about ten days after we’d met at the W Café, and though I hadn’t heard from Travis, I’d talked to a couple of cops who were former students, and/or friends, and asked for the behind-the-scenes story; the whole thing had been weird enough that practically every city and county cop in Gunnison County, and all the other counties that adjoined Saguache, had called some cop or other over in Saguache to get the straight poop.
It had started with an anonymous phone tip to the Saguache County sheriff’s office that a large white pickup with a distinctive camper back contained several crates of experimental pills, possibly stolen but certainly misappropriated, which were only supposed to be in the first stages of human testing, and said pills were supposedly being sold for more than a hundred dollars each.
Common sense should have told them that no one would be bringing a load like that to a place like that to sell it. If you looked over the crowd in the Mutilated Cow, perhaps a few of them were trustifarians who might have afforded a drug that expensive. But the great majority were classic wandered-in-and-stuck types who you find in every small town in the Rockies; people who’d found a niche and never had one before, and therefore didn’t want to live anywhere else. Brown Pierre was almost typical.
Most of the hit-and-stick residents scrape by on odd jobs, part-time employment, and a little help from their friends, and probably half the crowd had had a little trouble coming up with a three-dollar cover. But major drug busts don’t fall into the laps of small county departments very often, so Saguache County’s Finest came in like they were busting Jack the Ripper, Al Capone, and Hitler, all at once, blocked all the exits, and hauled everyone down to the jail, all about twenty minutes after Melody left.
“I’m not sure how I got home,” she told me and Kara. “It’s a good thing driving while crying isn’t a crime.” Later Kara turned that phrase into a song, and still later she got so many requests (it was a pretty good song, I’d have to say) that she got sick of it. Now she won’t sing “Driving While Crying” no matter how much you ask her. She’ll even try to convince you there was never any such song. Melody does it well, though, so if you’re ever passing near Gunnison and you catch her act at a roadhouse, you can hear it then.
After they had all been shuffled around from room to room in the Saguache County Jail, while everyone figured out what to do with them, the whole crowd from the Mutilated Cow was suddenly released. A mysterious Mr. Hale, with all kinds of federal authority and “confirmation out the wazoo from FBI and BATF and CIA and I swear to god even Fish and Game,” as one Gunnison cop had quoted the Saguache County dispatcher to me, had shown up at the jail, everything had been declared one big mistake, and they’d all been let go, with no one even questioned. And there the matter rested, everything undone, as vanished as the one million cubic meters of sand from Great Sand Dunes.
I had told Melody Travis’s story, omitting the whole way-too-bizarre business about Earth being sold multiple times to aliens and all of us being pawns in a chess game between Susan Glasgow and Lena Logan. Melody had been delighted to find an enormous number of mythic motifs and shared elements with urban legends and paranoid structures in all of it. “What you’d expect from a real good liar,” she said. “Your friend is a remarkable creative artist who prefers audiences of just a few. There are lots of such people in the world—every little town has a Medal of Honor winner who in fact was never in any uniform after leaving the safety patrol, and a guy whose great-grandfather was the real inventor of television, and a couple of cannibals and one or two hidden European royalty in its past.”
“Gunnison’s cannibal was real,” I pointed out.
“Gunnison’s cannibal was documented.” She leaned back and played with her long hair; I thought again that Travis was a real idiot, but then I’d been thinking that for decades, and it had never done either me or Travis one bit of good. “You’ll probably enjoy getting away from the weirdness for a while,” she said.
“At ACTF Regionals? Oh, there will still be plenty of weirdness. It just won’t be weird weirdness.”
The sun crawled down the sky behind us, and our shadow ran out in front across the stone cold road, and the tires ground away, pushing more of Kansas back behind us. Hours clicked by as we drove and stopped, drove and stopped, pausing only now and then to take on gas and Whoppers. I realized Melody was right; this conference would help get my head back into its normal shape, and I was looking forward to the chance for that.
One problem with ACTF, for which there is really no solution, is that schools vary enormously in size and budget and extent of drama programs. There are universities that spend, on a show, as much as some others spend on a season, and though talent and training can compensate, and a hundred-dollar set can look like ten thousand, when it’s sitting next to a ten-thousand-dollar set that was designed by someone just as talented and better trained, and built by a professional shop staff, that hundred-dollar set is still not going to look like much. And when one school offers two acting classes—a non-majors class and a beginner class, and that’s it—in the English department, and another offers two different acting classes plus voice and movement every term, in a conservatory, well, sometimes it’s the equivalent of your high school football team playing in the NFL; the most important thing is that everyone be kind, refined, and totally blind.
As a tiny school with only three faculty who did theatre at all, Western was painfully aware of this, but, for us, we were having a great year. Not only did our lighting people do well—that was usually our strength—but one of our costume designs had gotten a rave critique, and one of our guys made it all the way to semifinals in the Irene Ryan Acting Competition, so all the kids were tense about that. Then he didn’t make finals, so after semis everyone went out to get drunk, and I got back to my room late.
There was a flashing light on the phone. I picked it up, followed directions and punched buttons until it played my voice mail, and nearly dropped the stupid thing when I heard Travis’s voice say, “So, you got any time to talk to an old friend, in between putting the wood to all these little coeds?”
Other friends might have said, for example, “Hi.” Or “John, this is Travis,” if that was who they were.
He said he had a room in the hotel, and to call no matter how late it was. I looked at the clock and my schedule and realized I didn’t have to meet anyone, or be anywhere, till one the next afternoon. I thought for maybe a minute. I considered calling Kara, who was usually awake late, to have her talk me out of this.
Then I called Travis. He was still awake and dressed, and only two floors away.
Two minutes later, I opened my door, and there he was. “I suppose you’re wondering why—”
“I’m trying to give up wondering why for the New Year, Trav, it’s a resolution. Come on in.”
He set a sixpack of Fat Tire into my room fridge, pulling one for himself. “Want one?”
“Better not.”
“Well, then.” He opened his. “John, I have to say, bud, you’ve got a knack for not being there. It took me a while to get over being pissed about that, because if you’d stuck around just a little more, instead of going home to sit in a basement and type your damn book, you could’ve seen stuff that would’ve kept you in book material for the rest of your life. So let me start off just saying that I was mad, but I made myself think it all through from your viewpoint, and by the time I got done with that, I wasn’t mad anymore, okay?”
“I’m glad you’re not mad at me for having not cooperated in having my life disrupted.”
“I’m sure there’s meaning in that sentence somewhere.”
“I have a life, Travis, one I like. You used to be entertaining. The uproars are getting kind of frequent and really tiresome. And, like I said, I have a life.”
“You have a dull life, John, and if you like it, how come you’re blowing up like a balloon and turning a funny shade of gray and look halfway to the grave? But suit yourself. Like it or not, life or not, you�
�re the guy I’m going to tell all this to.” He took another pull at his beer, and began.
It seemed as if the universe blinked once, and there I was, stretched out on my bed, listening, while Travis sat in the armchair facing me, and told me another preposterous story. I used to think that Travis’s visits indicated something good I’d done in a previous life; then for a while I thought they indicated something bad. Upon reflection, if there is actually any connection between Travis Bismarck’s visits and my actions in a past life, I think it must be that I was some kind of horrible practical joker, or maybe an experimental psychologist or a professional saboteur.
I settled back deeper into the bed, thinking that perhaps if I fell asleep while he talked, he’d just leave. To my dismay, his story became interesting.
“Okay. So, you left the Mutilated Cow to go home and write and sulk, and you left my pack with Melody, and if you’d talked to me for half a second you’d’ve found out that Hale called and we had a meeting with him in Albuquerque the next day, he was coming that night to pick us up in an SR-8—yes, Mr. Sci Fi Guy, you missed seeing a flying saucer—so there was no way I was going back to sleep on your couch, or going back to bounce on Melody, or any such, I had work to do, and so did the Irwins and Jenapha. Of course, because we both got bombed and then you got sulky and didn’t want to talk, I never did finish filling you in about what all was going on.”
“Well, I got the part that it’s all an epic struggle with one side being Lena Logan, Call Girl for Truth Justice and the American Way, working for All Thumbs, who is sort of a cross between the Lone Ranger and E.T. And the other side being Susan Glasgow, Evil Capitalist Scientist, backed by the—let me try to pronounce this now that I’m sober—the pTh’tong n’Wi, who are sort of like insane gardeners and con men, with a property-rights fixation …”
“Hey, not bad, you remember. Did I tell you about the Third Force?”
“Uh, no,” I said, being in no shape to lie well.
“Oh, man. And that’s where the Hardware Store Killer gets into it, don’t you see?”
“Um. I’m sure I’ll see if you tell me.” It is seldom a good sign when I’m starting a lot of sentences with “um.”
“See, the problem is, when you’re working with the good guys, you gotta be noble. At least I think that’s the problem. And besides, Lena Logan is sentimental and a nice person, whatever she may like to do when she’s loaded up on Gaudeamus pills. That’s where it all starts, is that problem that Lena Logan is a nice person.”
You remember that poster you used to have on your wall in the frat house, John, the one with the picture of the gorilla holding a ball bat, and the caption “Physical brutality is the sincerest form of criticism?” Well, that seems to be a guiding principle in Galactic law. If somebody sells their planet, and their own people then kill them, that’s taken to be convincing evidence that it was disapproved of, and that therefore the deal might not have been valid. So when the court is looking at the behavior of individuals within an individualist species, trying to figure out which individuals actually had the power to make contracts that could bind the species as a whole, they often look at whether the natives were killed or punished by their own people. Just the way it is.
Instigating the killing of the people who sell the planet, however, is not something All Thumbs, or any other marshal, is allowed to do; they can mention that it strengthens your case, but you’re highly subject to challenge if your species doesn’t usually settle matters by killing each other. Now, of course, when I heard about that, I said right away that I think we could win that challenge, if our history was admissible in that court. But Lena felt strongly that she didn’t want to kill her old friends, and for a long time she was the senior native leader of our little organization, and All Thumbs thought her feelings should be respected. I guess I agree with Lena that the good guys ought to win with their hands as clean as can be managed, at least as long as they win. But that might just be that what-would-roy-rogers-do side of my nature.
And that’s how we know there’s a Third Force in the game, besides Susan Glasgow and Lena Logan. We just don’t know quite who. But clearly they know the rules too, because when the Hardware Store Killer murdered those five women from Moloch College, it strongly reinforced the case that we, the people of Earth, did not agree to sell our planet so that those seven women could be rich. So the way to put it, John, is that the unknown Third Force is basically bad guys on the side of the good guys.
Best guess I can make is that they don’t want the feds or any cops figuring out anything about why the murders are happening, so they try to make it look like a serial killer did it. And it kind of worked—it wasn’t till the third one, Heart Reno, that the papers even noticed the Moloch College connection.
As a matter of fact, we’re the only side that doesn’t do much killing, though obviously, if you think about that poor pizza girl, our hands aren’t spotless either. But the real heavy-duty killers are Susan Glasgow’s outfit. Because the problem gets worse every month that more and more people keep inventing Gaudeamus, on their own. Everything is fine with Susan’s group if the pTh’tong n’Wi or any of a dozen other species gets to the inventor to offer platinum and diamonds, or all the knowledge in the world, or whatever they want, for the same deal—sell the Earth. And most of the inventors do get all clever-stupid and crafty-dumb and realize that they had someone begging to buy the Brooklyn Bridge and offering the Hope Diamond to do it, and cut the deal. See, every time the Earth is sold again, it reinforces the record that that’s something we would do and that you can buy the Earth from any old individual human.
But now and then, someone tries to go to the government about it. When they try, Susan’s little group just gaudeamuses an air bubble into their brains, then gaudeamuses it back out after it has destroyed enough tissue, so it just looks like a freak stroke.
Now, they don’t fuck with me ’cause somebody real good’s got my back. I’m hooked in with All Thumbs, like Hale and all of Xegon and the Irwins, and if they mess with me, just on the general principle that they never let anybody fuck with their native help, All Thumbs and the marshals will be all over them. It’s like being Tonto, you know, old Kemo Sabe might treat you like a servant but when the bad guys whomp your ass, he’s all over them. And All Thumbs himself is even more secure, being what he is. Apparently hurting or threatening a Galactic Marshal is, cubed and squared, like shooting a Texas Ranger.
I really had meant to fall asleep, but I had to ask. “Do you like him?”
“All Thumbs? Interesting question. You like your cat, right? And maybe the neighbor’s dog? But you probably don’t like some random shark in the Atlantic and you could give a shit about the bacteria in your yogurt, right? And yet all of those are less alien than All Thumbs; in some ways you’ve got more in common with that old coleus plant on your windowsill than I do with him. He explained something, once, as Lena was trying to learn to communicate with him, and she passed it on to us. Vertebrates have two basic axes, pleasure-pain and distress-eustress, so you like something in the pleasure and eustress quadrant, you’re brave about something in the pain-eustress quadrant, you feel guilt or shame about things in the pleasure-distress quadrant, and you hate and fear things in the pain-distress quadrant. With all kinds of twinks and mods on that, of course. Well, All Thumbs doesn’t have axes, he has hexagons, and four, not two. So our like, don’t like, can live with, all that stuff, is like the gray scale in a dog’s vision; what he has emotionally is like full-color vision plus UV and X-ray. One of us can have friendship with him about as easily as Corner the cat can play Scrabble with you.” He tilted his chair back and stretched. “Eventually this story is also going to explain why I’m here, bud. I mean in your hotel room, not about Dad being too lazy to get to the drugstore.”
“That joke’s still old.”
“We’re all getting old, compadre.” He took another sip. “So the case went on getting more complicated, but at least All Thumbs was now a step
closer, via Xegon, to getting respectable contact with a genuine government, and since he couldn’t officially teach us anything about Gaudeamus, it also meant we had some research that might give us that technology in time for us to pay off a lot of the contracts, maybe all of them. Lena and the Irwins and Jenapha worked pretty long and hard to make that happen; it had been the focus of most of their activity for about a year and a half, just steering and borrowing Xegon’s research, and importing whatever other companies’ research would help Xegon, and back-door distributing all the ideas that lead to better and more Gaudeamus. Because we need to really understand it and have it working by February 4, 2011, and that old clock keeps ticking. And meanwhile Susan Glasgow was buying out or killing most of the good talent. And the unknown Third Force was killing the Moloch women, which was good news as far as our case went, and frankly I had to admit I thought it would be great if they bagged Susan, but we also had to worry about whether they might go after Lena, since killing Lena would make the case just as thoroughly. So we had a lot of players on the field, and no exact count of teams, and that’s when the whole works got kicked over, and it all went into the soup.”
“You mean it gets more complicated?”
“Getting there, getting there. Good stories have some twists and turns, and the best stories are all twists and turns.”
“Bullshit.”
“You’d be the authority on that,” he said. He threw his empty bottle, straight and hard, into the wastebasket across the room, knocking it over. “On bullshit, I mean. Make your living making it up. Me, I got to live it.”
