The Golden Globe

"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 Ke

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.

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.