“Bullshit,” Heather said. “I didn’t ‘run into her’ because you made damn sure you saw to that.”
“Anyhow,” he said, as he made a right turn for the skyfly, “I got her not one but two auditions, and she snurfled them both. And to keep her self-respect she’s got to blame it on me. I somehow herded her into failing. You see the picture.”
“Does she have nice boobs?” Heather said.
“Actually, yes.” He grinned and Heather laughed. “You know my weakness. But I did my part of the bargain; I got her an audition—two auditions. The last one was six months ago and I know goddamn well she’s still smoldering and brooding over it. I wonder what she wants to tell me.”
He punched the control module to set up an automatic course for Marilyn’s apartment building with its small but adequate roof field.
“She’s probably in love with you,” Heather said, as he parked the skyfly on its tail, releasing then the descent stairs.
“Like forty million others,” Jason said genially.
Heather, making herself comfortable in the bucket seat of the skyfly said, “Don’t be gone very long or so help me I’m taking off without you.”
“Leaving me stuck with Marilyn?” he said. They both laughed. “I’ll be right back.” He crossed the field to the elevator, pressed the button.
When he entered Marilyn’s apartment he saw, at once, that she was out of her mind. Her entire face had pinched and constricted; her body so retracted that it looked as if she were trying to ingest herself. And her eyes. Very few things around or about women made him uneasy, but this did. Her eyes, completely round, with huge pupils, bored at him as she stood silently facing him, her arms folded, everything about her unyielding and iron rigid.
“Start talking,” Jason said, feeling around for the handle of the advantage. Usually—in fact virtually always—he could control a situation that involved a woman; it was, in point of fact, his specialty. But this…he felt uncomfortable. And still she said nothing. Her face, under layers of makeup, had become completely bloodless, as if she were an animated corpse. “You want another audition?” Jason asked. “Is that it?”
Marilyn shook her head no.
“Okay; tell me what it is,” he said wearily but uneasily. He kept the unease out of his voice, however; he was far too shrewd, far too experienced, to let her hear his uncertainty. In a confrontation with a woman it ran nearly ninety per cent bluff, on both sides. It all lay in how you did it, not what you did.
“I have something for you,” Marilyn turned, walked off out of sight into the kitchen. He strolled after her.
“You still blame me for the lack of success of both—” he began.
“Here you are,” Marilyn said. She lifted up a plastic bag from the drainboard, stood holding it a moment, her face still bloodless and stark, her eyes jutting and unblinking, and then she yanked the bag open, swung it, moved swiftly up to him.
It happened too fast. He backed away out of instinct, but too slowly and too late. The gelatinlike Callisto cuddle sponge with its fifty feeding tubes clung to him, anchored itself to his chest. Already he felt the feeding tubes dig into him, into his chest.
He leaped to the overhead kitchen cabinets, grabbed out a half-filled bottle of scotch, unscrewed the lid with flying fingers, and poured the scotch onto the gelatinlike creature. His thoughts had become lucid, even brilliant; he did not panic, but stood there pouring the scotch onto the thing.
For a moment nothing happened. He still managed to hold himself together and not flee into panic. And then the thing bubbled, shriveled, fell from his chest onto the floor. It had died.
Feeling weak, he seated himself at the kitchen table. Now he found himself fighting off unconsciousness; some of the feeding tubes remained inside him, and they were still alive. “Not bad,” he managed to say. “You almost got me, you fucking little tramp.”
“Not almost,” Marilyn Mason said flatly, emotionlessly. “Some of the feeding tubes are still in you and you know it; I can see it on your face. And a bottle of scotch isn’t going to get them out. Nothing is going to get them out.”
At that point he fainted. Dimly, he saw the green-and-gray floor rise to take him and then there was emptiness. A void without even himself in it.
Pain. He opened his eyes, reflexively touched his chest. His hand-tailored silk suit had vanished; he wore a cotton hospital robe and he was lying flat on a gurney. “God,” he said thickly as the two staff men wheeled the gurney rapidly up the hospital corridor.
Heather Hart hovered over him, anxious and in shock, but, like him, she retained full possession of her senses. “I knew something was wrong,” she said rapidly as the staff men wheeled him into a room. “I didn’t wait for you in the skyfly; I came down after you.”
“You probably thought we were in bed together,” he said weakly.
“The doctor said,” Heather said, “that in another fifteen seconds you would have succumbed to the somatic violation, as he calls it. The entrance of that thing into you.”
“I got the thing,” he said. “But I didn’t get all the feeding tubes. It was too late.”
“I know,” Heather said. “The doctor told me. They’re planning surgery for as soon as possible; they may be able to do something if the tubes haven’t penetrated too far.”
“I was good in the crisis,” Jason grated; he shut his eyes and endured the pain. “But not quite good enough. Just not quite.” Opening his eyes, he saw that Heather was crying. “Is it that bad?” he asked her; reaching up he took hold of her hand. He felt the pressure of her love as she squeezed his fingers, and then there was nothing. Except the pain. But nothing else, no Heather, no hospital, no staff men, no light. And no sound. It was an eternal moment and it absorbed him completely.
2
Light filtered back, filling his closed eyes with a membrane of illuminated redness. He opened his eyes, lifted his head to look around him. To search out Heather or the doctor.
He lay alone in the room. No one else. A bureau with a cracked vanity mirror, ugly old light fixtures jutting from the grease-saturated walls. And from somewhere nearby the blare of a TV set.
He was not in a hospital.
And Heather was not with him; he experienced her absence, the total emptiness of everything, because of her.
God, he thought. What’s happened?
The pain in his chest had vanished, along with so much else. Shakily, he pushed back the soiled wool blanket, sat up, rubbed his forehead reflexively, gathered together his vitality.
This is a hotel room, he realized. A lousy, bug-infested cheap wino hotel. No curtains, no bathroom. Like he had lived in years ago, at the start of his career. Back when he had been unknown and had no money. The dark days he always shut out of his memory as best he could.
Money. He groped at his clothes, discovered that he no longer wore the hospital gown but had back, in wrinkled condition, his hand-tailored silk suit. And, in the inner coat pocket, the wad of high-denomination bills, the money he had intended to take to Vegas.
At least he had that.
Swiftly, he looked around for a phone. No, of course not. But there’d be one in the lobby. But whom to call? Heather? Al Bliss, his agent? Mory Mann, the producer of his TV show? His attorney, Bill Wolfer? Or all of them, as soon as possible, perhaps.
Unsteadily, he managed to get to his feet; he stood swaying, cursing for reasons he did not understand. An animal instinct held him; he readied himself, his strong six body, to fight. But he could not discern the antagonist, and that frightened him. For the first time in as long as he could remember he felt panic.
Has a lot of time passed? he asked himself. He could not tell; he had no sense of it either way. Daytime. Quibbles zooming and bleating in the skies outside the dirty glass of his window. He looked at his watch; it read ten-thirty. So what? It could be a thousand years off, for all he knew. His watch couldn’t help him.
But the phone would. He made his way out into the dust-saturated
corridor, found the stairs, descended step by step, holding on to the rail until at last he stood in the depressing, empty lobby with its ratty old overstuffed chairs.
Fortunately he had change. He dropped a one-dollar gold piece into the slot, dialed Al Bliss’s number.
“Bliss Talent Agency,” Al’s voice came presently.
“Listen,” Jason said. “I don’t know where I am. In the name of Christ come and get me; get me out of here; get me someplace else. You understand, Al? Do you?”
Silence from the phone. And then in a distant, detached voice Al Bliss said, “Who am I talking to?”
He snarled his answer.
“I don’t know you, Mr. Jason Taverner,” Al Bliss said, again in his most neutral, uninvolved voice. “Are you sure you have the right number? Who did you want to talk to?”
“To you, Al. Al Bliss, my agent. What happened in the hospital? How’d I get out of there into here? Don’t you know?” His panic ebbed as he forced control on himself; he made his words come out reasonably. “Can you get hold of Heather for me?”
“Miss Hart?” Al said, and chuckled. And did not answer.
“You,” Jason said savagely, “are through as my agent. Period. No matter what the situation is. You are out.”
In his ear Al Bliss chuckled again and then, with a click, the line became dead. Al Bliss had hung up.
I’ll kill the son of a bitch, Jason said to himself. I’ll tear that fat balding little bastard into inch-square pieces.
What was he trying to do to me? I don’t understand. What all of a sudden does he have against me? What the hell did I do to him, for chrissakes? He’s been my friend and agent nineteen years. And nothing like this has ever happened before.
I’ll try Bill Wolfer, he decided. He’s always in his office or on call; I’ll be able to get hold of him and find out what this is all about. He dropped a second gold dollar into the phone’s slot and, from memory, once more dialed.
“Wolfer and Blaine, Attorneys-at-law,” a female receptionist’s voice sounded in his ear.
“Let me talk to Bill,” Jason said. “This is Jason Taverner. You know who I am.”
The receptionist said, “Mr. Wolfer is in court today. Would you care to speak to Mr. Blaine instead, or shall I have Mr. Wolfer call you back when he returns to the office later on this afternoon?”
“Do you know who I am?” Jason said. “Do you know who Jason Taverner is? Do you watch TV?” His voice almost got away from him at that point; he heard it break and rise. With great effort he regained control over it, but he could not stop his hands from shaking; his whole body, in fact, shook.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Taverner,” the receptionist said. “I really can’t talk for Mr. Wolfer or—”
“Do you watch TV?” he said.
“Yes.”
“And you haven’t heard of me? The Jason Taverner Show, at nine on Tuesday nights?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Taverner. You really must talk directly to Mr. Wolfer. Give me the number of the phone you’re calling from and I’ll see to it that he calls you back sometime today.”
He hung up.
I’m insane, he thought. Or she’s insane. She and Al Bliss, that son of a bitch. God. He moved shakily away from the phone, seated himself in one of the faded overstuffed chairs. It felt good to sit; he shut his eyes and breathed slowly and deeply. And pondered.
I have five thousand dollars in government high-denomination bills, he told himself. So I’m not completely helpless. And that thing is gone from my chest, including its feeding tubes. They must have been able to get at them surgically in the hospital. So at least I’m alive; I can rejoice over that. Has there been a time lapse? he asked himself. Where’s a newspaper?
He found an L.A. Times on a nearby couch, read the date. October 12, 1988. No time lapse. This was the day after his show and the day Marilyn had sent him, dying, to the hospital.
An idea came to him. He searched through the sections of newspaper until he found the entertainment column. Currently he was appearing nightly at the Persian Room of the Hollywood Hilton—had been in fact for three weeks, but of course less Tuesdays because of his show.
The ad for him which the hotel people had been running during the past three weeks did not seem to be on the page anywhere. He thought groggily, maybe it’s been moved to another page. He thereupon combed that section of the paper thoroughly. Ad after ad for entertainers but no mention of him. And his face had been on the entertainment page of some newspaper or another for ten years. Without an ellipsis.
I’ll make one more try, he decided. I’ll try Mory Mann.
Fishing out his wallet, he searched for the slip on which he had written Mory’s number.
His wallet was very thin.
All his identification cards were gone. Cards that made it possible for him to stay alive. Cards that got him through pol and nat barricades without being shot or thrown into a forced-labor camp.
I can’t live two hours without my ID, he said to himself. I don’t even dare walk out of the lobby of this rundown hotel and onto the public sidewalk. They’ll assume I’m a student or teacher escaped from one of the campuses. I’ll spend the rest of my life as a slave doing heavy manual labor. I am what they call an unperson.
So my first job, he thought, is to stay alive. The hell with Jason Taverner as a public entertainer; I can worry about that later.
He could feel within his brain the powerful six-determined constituents moving already into focus. I am not like other men, he told himself. I will get out of this, whatever it is. Somehow.
For example, he realized, with all this money I have on me I can get myself down to Watts and buy phony ID cards. A whole walletful of them. There must be a hundred little operators scratching away at that, from what I’ve heard. But I never thought I’d be using one of them. Not Jason Taverner. Not a public entertainer with an audience of thirty million.
Among all those thirty million people, he asked himself, isn’t there one who remembers me? If “remember” is the right word. I’m talking as if a lot of time has passed, that I’m an old man now, a has-been, feeding off former glories. And that’s not what’s going on.
Returning to the phone, he looked up the number of the birth-registration control center in Iowa; with several gold coins he managed to reach them at last, after much delay.
“My name is Jason Taverner,” he told the clerk. “I was born in Chicago at Memorial Hospital on December 16, 1946. Would you please confirm and release a copy of my certificate of birth? I need it for a job I’m applying for.”
“Yes, sir.” The clerk put the line on hold; Jason waited.
The clerk clicked back on. “Mr. Jason Taverner, born in Cook County on December 16, 1946.”
“Yes,” Jason said.
“We have no birth registration form for such a person at that time and place. Are you absolutely sure of the facts, sir?”
“You mean do I know my name and when and where I was born?” His voice again managed to escape his control, but this time he let it; panic flooded him. “Thanks,” he said and hung up, shaking violently, now. Shaking in his body and in his mind.
I don’t exist, he said to himself. There is no Jason Taverner. There never was and there never will be. The hell with my career; I just want to live. If someone or something wants to eradicate my career, okay; do it. But aren’t I going to be allowed to exist at all? Wasn’t I even born?
Something stirred in his chest. With terror he thought, They didn’t get the feed tubes out entirely; some of them are still growing and feeding inside of me. That goddamn tramp of a no-talent girl. I hope she winds up walking the streets for two bits a try.
After what I did for her: getting her those two auditions for A and R people. But hell—I did get to lay her a lot. I suppose it comes out even.
Returning to his hotel room, he took a good long look at himself in the flyspecked vanity mirror. His appearance hadn’t changed, except that he needed a shave. No older. No more
lines, no gray hair visible. The good shoulders and biceps. The fat-free waist that let him wear the current formfitting men’s clothing.
And that’s important to your image, he said to himself. What kind of suits you can wear, especially those tucked-in-waist numbers. I must have fifty of them, he thought. Or did have. Where are they now? he asked himself. The bird is gone, and in what meadow does it now sing? Or however that goes. Something from the past, out of his days at school. Forgotten until this moment. Strange, he thought, what drifts up into your mind when you’re in an unfamiliar and ominous situation. Sometimes the most trivial stuff imaginable.
If wishes were horses then beggars might fly. Stuff like that. It’s enough to drive you crazy.
He wondered how many pol and nat check stations there were between this miserable hotel and the closest ID forger in Watts? Ten? Thirteen? Two? For me, he thought, all it takes is one. One random check by a mobile vehicle and crew of three. With their damn radio gear connecting them to pol-nat data central in Kansas City. Where they keep the dossiers.
He rolled back his sleeve and examined his forearm. Yes, there it was: his tattooed ident number. His somatic license plate, to be carried by him throughout his life, buried at last with him in his longed-for grave.
Well, the pols and nats at the mobile check station would read off the ident number to Kansas City and then—what then? Was his dossier still there or was it gone, too, like his birth certificate? And if it wasn’t there, what would the polnat bureaucrats think it meant?
A clerical error. Somebody misfiled the microfilm packet that made up the dossier. It’ll turn up. Someday, when it doesn’t matter, when I’ve spent ten years of my life in a quarry on Luna using a manual pickax. If the dossier isn’t there, he mused, they’ll assume I’m an escaped student, because it’s only students who don’t have pol-nat dossiers, and even some of them, the important ones, the leaders—they’re in there, too.
I am at the bottom of life, he realized. And I can’t even climb my way up to mere physical existence. Me, a man who yesterday had an audience of thirty million. Someday, somehow, I will grope my way back to them. But not now. There are other things that come first. The bare bones of existence that every man is born with: I don’t even have that. But I will get it; a six is not an ordinary. No ordinary could have physically or psychologically survived what’s happened to me—especially the uncertainty—as I have.