Helene Conapt and Ty Dance, H-wood’s current rising couple, turned in tandem. Punched from the same cookie cut of Aryan friskiness, the sexy pair, hits as homicidal fraternal twins in National Pictures’ recent series of eroto-slasher films, had been lost in each other’s next-to-identical blue eyes. “We just got married,” Helene Conapt said with an unexpected screech, displaying a gold band wider than anything Johnson and Johnson ever put out.
“They’ve just returned from their honeymoon,” Stiller said with a grandfatherly glow.
“We went to Two Bunch for cosmo rehab.”
Komodo thought this quite marvelous. “Such a wonderful idea to renew your philosophical beliefs on the occasion of your marriage. Congratulations.”
Ty Dance looked at Komodo with wary confusion. “We just got our earlobes redone, that’s all.”
It was then Komodo noticed that Victor Stiller was staring at him.
“Mr. Komodo, have we met before?”
Komodo felt his heart seize up. “I don’t think so. I’m a stranger in this country.”
Stiller squinted behind his gold-rimmed glasses. “You’re certain? You have the most familiar face. Didn’t we meet many years ago? Have you ever been in Budapest? Or perhaps Vienna?”
Komodo shook his head nervously.
“Not even as a child? Somehow I remember you as a boy. A boy from long ago.”
It was Bobby Zeber who came to Komodo’s rescue. “Mr. Komodo is a film director. You ever hear of Gojiro, Victor?”
Stiller raised his thick eyebrows, shook his head.
“Never heard of Gojiro?” Helene Conapt grated. Then, to Komodo, “Wow. You’re the one who makes those Gojiro movies? They’re great. My little brother, he really thinks the monster’s real. You can’t talk him out of it for nothing.”
“You make children’s films?” Stiller said. “An important task. A noble and daunting responsibility.”
Komodo smiled uneasily. “Yes. Well, actually, many children see them, but much of the audience is quite a bit older.”
“They’re monster movies,” Helene Conapt explained eagerly. “Everyone likes monster movies.”
“A monster?” The concept seemed to amuse Victor Stiller.
“Big green ugly thing, but fun.” Ty Dance tossed in.
Stiller smiled amiably, taking in the byplay, then turned to Komodo. “Tell me one thing, sir. Do your films have happy endings? To me, that is essential. I can’t abide doom and gloom, worlds in disarray. It makes me uncomfortable, as if some insufficiently disguised transgression is about to leap upon me. To deny the viewer a sense of comfortable completion connotes an unforgiving attitude on the part of the filmmaker, I feel.”
Bobby Zeber put down the glass of club soda he’d been drinking. “Maybe it’s a good thing to make some people uncomfortable, don’t you think, Victor?”
“Oh Bobby, don’t start in.”
Zeber turned to Komodo. “Victor doesn’t care for the films Sheila and I make. He only profits from them.”
Stiller did not answer, addressing Komodo instead. “What are your views on this? Do you feel, as Bobby seems to, that in this day and age an unhappy ending is somehow intrinsically more honest than a happy one?”
The flare of tension between Victor Stiller and Bobby Zeber made Komodo want to disappear. Yet this was
Victor Stiller
asking
him
a question, an intriguing one at that. Instantly converting to an ever-eager schoolboy, he sought to construct a closely reasoned exegesis that would both stun and delight his master. “Why, I believe in the earned arf,” is what Komodo said.
The earned arf.
It was Gojiro’s term, invented back in the days when he and Komodo first considered the narrative structure of those scenarios that Shig eventually turned into the King of Monsters series. At the time it was Komodo’s idea to have the movies end happily, since the more reality-tenuous Atoms might not be able to stand the strain of a downful denouement.
Gojiro was against it. “Enough with this obligatory final-frame iconography. I ain’t taking no arfs that ain’t earned,” he declared, in reference to what he deemed the repulsive practice of certain Dishscreen wallahs who truncated their shoddy sagas with the family dog barking at a particularly stupid joke made by one of the numbnuts characters, thereby triggering a spasm of laughtrack hilarity that fabricated a totally unearned sense of well-being. This didn’t mean the monster was against the happy ending—quite the contrary. He felt that any story that didn’t end happily,
truly
happily, was no story at all.
“We must speak of the nature of the storyteller in today’s changing world,” Komodo said as he stood under Albert Bullins’s tent, hoping to do justice to Gojiro’s argument. “Perhaps at the outset of the Modern Age it was enough to hold a mirror before the face of the world, to document the predicament into which we were heading. Now, however, it’s too late for that. The situation is there for all to see. It is the job of the storyteller to seek the Way Out. He must keep on talking, inventing incident after incident, stalling for time if need be, until an ending that is both happy and True springs to sight. That does not mean that I despise endings that appear to be sad. To me, no ending is truly sad unless it produces a false closure to the story. Then it is a bad ending, and, by necessity, sad. No matter what the circumstances of the tale when the storyteller stops, the story remains valid as long as there is a promise of a next episode, a maintenance of at least the
potentiality
of a happy ending. This is the
earned arf
, the goal of Art in our times, I believe.”
When Komodo looked up, he saw that Victor Stiller, whom he was desperately trying to impress, did not appear to be listening at all. The old man’s attention was affixed to the perfect sweep of Helene Conapt’s breasts. It was Bobby Zeber who seemed immersed in Komodo’s words.
“The earned arf . . .” Zeber half laughed, a strange disassociation passing over him. “So you’re an optimist, Mr. Komodo?”
“I prefer to call myself a pragmatist,” Komodo answered, his gaze meeting Zeber’s in a form of uncomprehending concordance.
Zeber shook his head once more and turned to Stiller. “Mr. Komodo is very interested in Sheila’s father.”
The faintest tremor seemed to shoot through the old scientist’s previously impeccable bonhomie. “Oh?”
Zeber cocked his head, as if exploiting an unseen advantage. “It is Mr. Brooks, really, that you wish to speak to, isn’t it, Mr. Komodo? That’s what you told Sheila, right?”
The sheltered moment he thought he shared with Bobby Zeber shattered, Komodo fumbled about. “Well, yes . . .”
Stiller glowered at Zeber, then smiled in Komodo’s direction. “But Mr. Brooks is . . . dead.”
“Yes. I know that,” Komodo sputtered. “I think what Mr. Zeber means is that if Mr. Brooks
were
alive, there would be many pressing matters that I would hope to take up with him, matters of extreme importance.”
“But he’s dead.”
“Yes, alas.” Suddenly, Komodo began to choke up. “It was a terrible loss. Of course, no one can be certain of these things, but I would say that Mr. Brooks was the most brilliant of all men.”
“That is true. He was, as you say, the most brilliant of men. The most brilliant mind civilization has yet produced. We were boys together, you know—”
“At Göttingen!”
“Yes, Mr. Komodo. That’s right.”
“When he arrived you were his protector, his only friend!”
Stiller smiled benevolently. “How do you know that?”
“I have made a special study concerning the lives of the great twentieth-century scientists and how they contributed to the first Atomic test.” This was true enough. Komodo didn’t miss a word of the Bomb books that happened to float in as part of Radioactive Island’s circulating library. He was familiar with the unique working relationship that existed between Victor Stiller and Joseph Prometheus Brooks, the way Stiller served as the so-called interface between the spectral Joseph Brooks and the world at large. “Brooks created the Beast, but Stiller sold it” was the famously cynical comment concerning their partnership.
Komodo’s interest melted Stiller. “It’s true, I took charge of him. When he arrived at the school he seemed so lost. He was only thirteen years old. I was only seventeen, but already it was clear to me that he was the most capable mind in the school. I couldn’t allow the autocrats to squeeze the life from him. We became friends, yes. I believe I was the only real friend he ever had.”
Stiller took off his glasses, rubbed them with a monogrammed handkerchief. “I’m sorry. I’ve become very nostalgic. Mr. Komodo, you take me back to days I haven’t thought about in years.”
Komodo smiled ear to ear. “Could you just speak, talk about this great genius? Any information at all would be invaluable to me.”
Stiller looked at Komodo quizzically. “But there is so much . . . Did you know that he once was determined to quit physics and become a musician instead?”
Komodo nodded politely. This was not a new story.
“He was quite a clarinet player, or so I’m told. He left the school, went off to Paris. I remember going to that Hot Club, where he played in a band with some black men.”
“Sidney Bechet.”
Stiller looked up. “What’s that?”
“He played with Sidney Bechet.”
“Was that the man’s name? It’s so long ago now. Anyway, I went to this place and tried to talk some sense into him. I demanded he return to his work. He wouldn’t listen. He said he was looking for something he couldn’t find in science. Something more. It was quite irrational. There was nothing I could do, nothing any of us could do. It seemed such a waste.”
“It was only his wife, Leona, who could make him return to science.”
Again Stiller stopped, frowning this time. “That’s correct, Mr. Komodo.” The scientist’s tone turned deliberate, remote. “She was an American girl in Paris, an art student. She was very beautiful, flamboyant, in her way. So different from Joseph. Yet from the very first time she saw him, she wanted him. It was an obsession. We were so worried. She seemed so odd, always making strange comments, spiritualist nonsense. We thought, if he goes with her, we’ll never get him back. Science will suffer. But it was her; she did it. She was the one who convinced him where his destiny lay.”
Komodo swallowed hard. Stiller’s sudden coldness told him not to ask any more questions. How he hated himself then. Why hadn’t he kept his mouth shut, allowed Stiller to speak at his own pace?
A strained moment passed before Bobby Zeber said, matter-of-factly, “Did you know, Mr. Komodo, that it was Leona who chose the Encrucijada Valley as the Bomb site?”
Komodo turned. “No. I didn’t know that.”
“It’s true. She’d been out there before, years earlier. She was going out west with her family and the train broke down. Maybe she was fifteen, sixteen . . . anyway, she wandered away from the train, went over a ridge and into the valley. She convinced Brooks that the test had to be made there and nowhere else—”
Stiller coughed. “Mr. Komodo isn’t interested in these old wives’ tales, Bobby. The Valley was chosen for the test because it met every specification. It was unknown and self-contained—”
Zeber kept talking to Komodo. “That’s where they were married, Joseph and Leona. Victor knows that, he was their best man—”
“Bobby—”
“That’s where Sheila was born, in that valley.”
“On July 16, 1945 . . .” Komodo said softly.
Then Komodo felt Stiller’s eyes on him, as if the old scientist’s stare was trying to bore into his head. “Mr. Komodo, are you absolutely certain we’ve never met?” The way Stiller looked at him was frightening—that scientist’s brain, which once contemplated the power of the Universe, was beginning to kick in. Komodo could feel its heat. “We have met. I’m certain of it. It’s coming to me, just give me a moment.”
It was as he sat girding himself for Stiller’s next word that Komodo felt the first low frequency, the initial trembler. Automatically his eyes went to the source. Albert Bullins’s 1936 Bearcat! It was exploding! A fireball shot forth, dense smoke filled the tent.
Komodo rose to tell the others to take cover. But when he opened his mouth, no sound came out. It was madness! Across the table, Victor Stiller was still trying to decide where he knew Komodo from. Bobby Zeber shook an ice cube from a tall frosted glass into his mouth and out again. Komodo watched the ice descend; it took a while. Everything was happening in slow motion . . . slow motion and no sound. Helene Conapt moved her hand over her siren’s hair. Ty Dance flicked a crumb from the collar of his white sailor shirt.
Then Komodo felt his head turning, as if some unseen force was pulling him, drawing his attention. There was no choice in it at all! He looked across Albert Bullins’s tent, through the idle talkers and hard smilers to the other side, where he saw her.
If anything, she looked more harrowed than she had at the Turret House. The fact that she’d apparently made an effort to dress, prepare herself for this public appearance only made it worse. Makeup bleared across her pallid countenance as if applied by a spin-art operator, white hair staticked from her skull like it was trying to escape. Her unwieldy body was draped with a satin outfit reminiscent of the film
Forbidden Planet
, her long, parched legs shooting like stilts beyond the hem of her red skirt. Put together with those gummed black glasses, it was an arresting sight.
“Ms. Brooks!” His shout came out distorted, like the electronically disguised voice of a government witness. She saw him now, moved ahead.
They could have been anywhere. Amongst the teeming masses of a Calcutta railway station, deep in a great rain forest, on the far side of the moon. It didn’t matter; nothing did except that they be together. Faster and faster they went, flung forward like paper ghosts strung up on wires in a children’s show. Faster and faster, until all they saw was each other’s face.
But then it was over. That strangest crease had opened—it was now shut tight. Clocks began to tick once more. Wham! The roof blew off Albert Bullins’s car. Made a major boom, too: They heard it all through Bel Air, the papers said the next day. It seems that the Gojiro doll Shig gave Bullins—the one the mogul casually tossed into the Bearcat’s back seat—was equipped with one of those Chinese New Year miniblasters Komodo once worked up to satisfy the pyrolusts of certain boy Atoms. Remote-controlled, detonatable from a hundred yards, those bombs could stop your heart, as Gojiro found out that night when some brat Atoms imbedded one inside his ear as he slept. The payload on this particular doll had obviously been anted up. It not only shot through the roof of Bullins’s car but ripped a hole in that big top as well, kept going, returning to earth several miles away, smack between two ready-to-rumble sets of Bloods and Crips.