The House of Rumour A Novel

17

the star





Danny Osiris was finding it hard to sleep. It was the Adderall, of course. He had upped the dose just when he was supposed to be cutting down. He went up on the terrace and watched the dawn break over the valley. Venus burnt low in the sky to the east. Danny’s mind buzzed with flashes of pure knowledge, epiphanies. He was thinking so clearly now but in ways that he could scarcely articulate or express to others. His speech slurred in demented aphasia. Even the voice in his head seemed disconnected, sampled song lyrics re-edited in his mind. There’s a starman, over the rainbow. The sun just below the horizon, tinting the edge of the sky. Red diffused into turquoise like blood in a swimming pool. The bright planet began to fade. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer son of the morning.

He shook out a couple of blue and white capsules into his palm, with ADDERALL XR 15mg engraved on each. Thirty milligrams in an extended-release delivery system. He swallowed them. Chased them with the bottle of Evian he had brought out with him. Somewhere, waiting in the sky. He lit a Marlboro Light and looked across the canyons at the city beneath him. The reward system in his brain was firing up, a dopamine release in his mesolimbic pathway. As above, so below. Something hovered over Westwood, a red light pulsing. A helicopter, probably. There’s a starman. Somewhere.

Danny was scared. He was convinced that the Church was out to get him. They didn’t like it when somebody tried to leave. And an old friend had warned him that there was a journalist out there snooping around the Vita Lampada case. Johnny had phoned him. Johnny who used to be Jenny. Lucky creature, thought Danny, to be able to escape the self like that. Danny felt trapped. A man trapped in a man’s body.

He still had the manuscript Vita had given Jenny just before she was found dead in her flat. Danny didn’t understand all of it but he knew it contained official secrets about Rudolf Hess. He had known Vita from the New Romantic scene; she was a hustler and something of a con artist but very entertaining. It was Vita who had turned Danny on to science fiction. He remembered her talking about alien abduction, saying: ‘Doesn’t everybody just want to be taken away to another planet?’ Danny had agreed. We all want to escape. Maybe Vita was a little crazy. She had been seeing a shrink as part of her gender-reassignment process and said the psychiatrist’s definition of transsexuality was ‘gender dysphoria’. Funny word, dysphoria, thought Danny: the opposite of euphoria, he supposed. Just like dystopia is the opposite of utopia.

Well, Vita had finally escaped the self all right. Most people now thought that it was suicide, that she just made her death look mysterious. The last great trick she played on everyone. But Danny couldn’t be sure. He had to hide the manuscript properly this time, without it being traced to him. He would find a place for it so that even Johnny wouldn’t know where it was.

Arthur arrived at eight. He wore a Blonde Ambition black satin tour jacket, white T-shirt, black 501s, black Nike Air trainers. Stocky build, jet-black hair close cropped, Navajo features. Arthur was his bodyguard, his chauffeur, his personal trainer.

‘Morning, boss,’ he greeted Danny. ‘You wanna work out?’

‘Uhn . . . hi . . . is, er, Lorry? Is Lorry with you?’

‘Lorraine’s coming at nine, boss. So we’ve got time. What do you say?’

‘What?’

‘A quick workout. We could do the White Crane Chi Gong. Get you centred.’

‘Uhn . . . no. I . . .’

Danny shrugged. He saw the concern on Arthur’s face and he wanted to explain that everything was all right but he could not form any kind of coherent sentence. He tried a smile but suspected that just made him look more wasted.

‘At least have some breakfast, boss.’

‘Uhn . . . sure.’

In the kitchen Juanita had laid out an array of fresh fruit. Danny picked out a mango, two bananas, a pear and three oranges. He gestured to Juanita.

‘En la licuadora . . . por . . .’

Juanita smiled and nodded. She peeled the bananas and put them in the liquidiser.

He took the glass of juice and wandered out into the front garden. He looked up and saw a figure standing in his driveway. A man in a grey suit. He turned back to the house.

‘Arthur,’ he tried to shout but his voice was a feeble croak.

He looked back at the driveway. The man in the grey suit had disappeared.

Lorraine arrived at nine. His manager wore a Helmut Lang suit in light gunmetal, a Bikini Kill T-shirt, black slip-on loafers. Her hair teased out in a shock, her face more made-up than usual. Danny noticed dark rings under her eyes.

‘Uhn . . . are you . . . okay?’

‘I’m fine, Danny. Just, you know—’

‘Working too hard?’

‘No, no, I’m loving the job, I really am. Playtime’s been a little crazy, that’s all. But good news. I think I’ve found the lawyer that can get you out of your recording deal. Name’s Paul Moss. He’s going to argue that you didn’t have full and proper legal advice when you renegotiated back in ’ninety-one, that you didn’t enter into the contract knowingly.’

‘That’s . . . good.’

‘And that they were negligent in promoting your last album. They just don’t understand the new direction.’

‘Uhn . . .’

‘So, shall I set up a meeting?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Right. Item two: the film project. Are you sure this is the right part for you?’

‘Uhn . . . yeah.’

‘But you’d be playing a f*cking alien, for Christ’s sake. Won’t that mean make-up and latex shit all over your face?’

‘Uhn . . . no . . . it’s not going to be like that.’

‘Okay. I’ll have another look at the script. You’ve got that writer coming over at four, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Now, Danny, I don’t understand. I checked with the production company and this guy isn’t even attached to the project.’

‘He wrote the . . . uhn . . .’

‘He wrote the screenplay for the original. That was back in the 1950s. He’s not doing the remake.’

‘I like his work.’

‘Okay. But, look, Danny, if they do offer you the part, the insurers will want you to have a medical.’

‘Uhn . . .’

‘You sure you’re up to that right now? I mean, you’re coming through a difficult period, making a break with the past. Maybe now’s not the time to have too much stress in your life.’

‘I’m okay.’

‘Sure. But, you know, you’re worried about old friends giving you a hard time about moving on.’

‘Uhn . . .’

‘Arthur can look after you, you know. And we can always get more security if you want it.’

‘Thanks.’

‘And I’m always just down the road. Don’t let those freaks get to you. We’ll get through this. Then you can get back in the studio and do what you do best. Anything else?’

‘No, no, I don’t think so.’

‘Well, if there is I’m in the office all day.’

As Lorraine got up to leave Danny stood also. He reached out his arms clumsily to touch her, as if he was still learning how to make some gesture of friendship. Something between a hug and a handshake. Lorraine smiled.

‘It’s going to be fine. It really is. Just try to relax. We can take our time over all of this.’

‘Uhn . . . thanks, Lorry.’

She ruffled his hair then turned and left the room. Danny collapsed back onto the couch. He fished the pill bottle out of his pocket, clicked off the lid and carefully poured out the capsules onto the glass surface of the coffee table. He counted them out. He had twelve left. He looked at the label on the bottle.



06/27/97

OSIRIS, D.

TAKE 1 CAPSULE 3 TIMES A DAY

NO REFILLS.



He was nearly through this month’s prescription. Dr Nielson had told him that he wasn’t going to write him another before the due date. They were for his anxiety and his attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, he had said, and it was important that he stick to the recommended dosage. He would have to find another doctor. He picked out two capsules and then put all the other drugs back into the bottle. He went to the kitchen and got a Diet Dr Pepper from the fridge.

Arthur was practising a series of Muay Thai boxing moves on the kickbag when Danny went down to the gym.

‘Hey, boss!’ Arthur called out when he saw him, and gave the bag one last kick.

He was wearing shorts and a singlet, his loosely muscled body slick with sweat. He moved across the floor towards Danny with a little disco hustle punctuated by Sui Nim Tao postures as he launched into the second verse of ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ by Carl Douglas.

Danny broke into a nervous spasm of laughter as Arthur reached for a towel.

‘Whaddaya say?’ he panted, rubbing the back of his neck. ‘Wanna boogie?’

Danny shook his head.

‘Come on. Just a little exercise, boss.’

‘Yeah. I want to . . . uhn . . . go out.’

Arthur wiped his face.

‘Where d’you wanna go?’

‘Walk.’

‘Right. So, Griffith Park?’

‘Uhn . . . no.’

‘Elysian Park? Sycamore Grove?’

Danny shook his head, dismayed that after less than one month in his employment Arthur already knew all his favourite cruising haunts. But there was another place he thought of. A tranquil little Garden of Earthly Delights.

‘Cowboy Park.’

Arthur smiled.

‘Cowboy Park?’

‘Uhn . . .’

‘You mean that little place by the Beverly Hills Hotel?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Kippy yi yay, boss. I’ll get changed and have a car out front in ten minutes. Which one do you want?’

‘Uhn?’

‘Which car, boss?’

Danny thought about it. He had a 1950s electric-blue Cadillac convertible, a 1974 bright-red Pontiac GTO, a silver Mercedes E-Class, a black BMW Z3 and a tan Jeep Cherokee. He could drive none of these vehicles.

‘The Merc.’

They wound down through Laurel Canyon Boulevard onto Sunset with the radio on. As they drove through the Strip, ‘Set Adrift on Memory Bliss’ by P.M. Dawn was playing. Danny felt his heart flutter. He wondered if it was a side-effect of the Adderall or just a scattering of the emotions. He had a fleeting vision of another version of himself, in another universe, crying uncontrollably. He nodded his head gently to the break-beat, sighing to the sighs of the Spandau sample. Reality used to be a friend of mine . . .

They passed through West Hollywood.

‘Nearly there, boss.’

‘Uhn . . . tell me about . . .’

‘What?’

‘The cowboy.’

‘Will Rogers? He was a cowboy actor. Did a vaudeville rope act.’

‘Uhn . . .’

‘Kind of philosopher too. Homespun stuff, but kinda funny.’

Arthur pulled up at the Will Rogers Memorial Park.

‘Affable.’

‘Affable?’

‘Yeah, affable. He had lots of sayings: if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging, things like that. But you know his most famous saying?’

‘Uhn?’

Arthur gave a deep laugh and put on an Okie drawl.

‘I never met a man I didn’t like.’

The park was a tree-lined enclosure, gently landscaped with manicured lawns and planted borders. Shallow steps led up to a central promenade with raised beds along its centre. Danny walked down to the fountain. He was wearing purple Versace jeans, a Ramones T-shirt, wraparound Ray-Bans, black suede New Balance trainers. When he got to the fishpond he crouched down and looked into the murky water. Koi carp swam in aimless circles. A fat goldfish looked up at him, mouthing mournfully. The creature looked trapped in its dismal element, staring out from another dimension.

Danny put his hand in his pocket. Last time he was here he had thought of bringing breadcrumbs or something, but he hadn’t remembered. All he had was the pill bottle. He took out one of the Adderall capsules and carefully took it apart. It was full of tiny extended-release beads, which he spilt out on to the palm of his hand. As he sprinkled some on the surface of the water the fish came up and swallowed one. Other koi were alerted and joined in the feed, thrashing about, struggling with each other to take some of the bait. Danny wondered what visions the fish might have. Perhaps they would see him as an alien god, feeding them gnosis. He watched until every fragment of the drug was gone then stood up and continued past the fountain.

The restroom was a vine-covered building in a secluded corner of the park. Another man in a hooded top was slowly approaching it from the perimeter path. Danny checked the man was looking his way, as he adjusted the crotch of his jeans, feeling the hardness of hopeful anticipation. The man glanced back at him then entered the restroom. As Danny made to follow him he felt a rush of energy course through his body. But as he reached the doorway he stopped. All at once excitement turned to fear. Panic.

He turned and strode back to the promenade. He felt his heart shudder again and he was sure that he was about to have a heart attack. He would die here, in this little park. He was hyperventilating. He had to calm down. He found a bench and sat down. He tried to exhale slowly, remembering the breathing exercises he had learnt. Out breath, count one, in then and out breath, count two and so on up to ten. It was all right, he told himself. It was going to be all right.

‘Danny?’

He looked up and saw a man with grey hair in a lightweight grey suit looking down at him. It was the man he had seen on his driveway that morning, he was sure of it.

‘Here.’ He offered Danny a small bottle of Evian.

Danny took a sip, wiped his mouth and handed it back.

‘Thanks.’

The man sat down next to him. He let out a sigh.

‘Danny, Danny, Danny,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘You really are a lost soul, aren’t you?’

‘Uhn . . .’

‘Just be glad it’s us watching and not the press. Or the Beverly Hills Police Department.’

‘Uhn . . . I . . .’

‘Come back. We can protect you. No one else can.’

Danny shook his head. He must be from the Church, he thought.

‘Those pills, they’re killing you, you know? What you need is niacin, vitamin B3, purification therapy. We can get you clean again.’

The man in the grey suit made a vague sweeping gesture with his left hand.

‘And all this. Danny, I mean, really. These rumours we’ve been hearing. But we understand, we really do. I’ve been looking through your audit records. It’s all there. We know all about you. And you were making such good progress. You were operating level. Now you want to blow that? Disconnect yourself? Become a suppressive person again?’

‘Uhn . . .’

‘You’ve not been sleeping, have you? I think I know what’s really keeping you awake. It’s not just the drugs. You came on too quickly, you weren’t ready. You can’t deal with the secret knowledge of the Church. You’ve been trying to work things out on your own. Wanting to find out all about UFOs and extraterrestrials, hiring that investigator.’

‘Uhn?’

‘Oh, we know all about that, Danny. You paid that guy twenty thousand dollars to gather information on UFO sightings and government cover-ups about contact with aliens. What did you get for that? We’ve got what you need. You need to let us take care of you.’

‘Uhn.’

‘You need to rid your body of those space-alien parasites.’

‘I don’t want . . .’

‘You’ll go insane unless you let us help you. I can clear you, Danny. I can clear you today. Come to the Celebrity Center, we can book a VIP room.’

‘No . . .’

‘Remember, Danny, it isn’t just this life you’re messing up. You’re risking all your future lives! Your spiritual immortality is at stake.’

Danny looked up at the blue sky and thought of the fish thrashing about in the fishpond. His eyes began to water. He turned to look at the man sitting next to him but he had vanished. He looked around the park but the man in the grey suit was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he had imagined him. Maybe he wasn’t from the Church at all. Maybe he was one of them.

Danny stood up and started to walk. Grey suit, grey alien, he thought. It could have been them all along. But what could it mean? Perhaps they were after the manuscript that Jenny had given him. He let out a sob. He was tired of all his secret knowledge. And frightened. When he got into the car Arthur noticed that he was shaking.

‘Are you all right, boss?’

‘Uhn . . . yeah. Home.’

Back at his house in Laurel Canyon, Danny Osiris went to his bedroom and collapsed onto his bed. He tried to sleep but when he shut his eyes his visual cortex was flooded with vivid Technicolor images. It seemed less bright when he opened his eyes. He got up and watched his favourite porn video. It was a man f*cking another man who was wearing a black rubber hood with a gag in it. He imagined himself as the man doing the f*cking, then as the one being f*cked, yin-yang, yang-yin, an alternating current in his consciousness as he masturbated. He got hard but he couldn’t come.

He went downstairs and got Juanita to make him an egg-white omelette. He ate it on wholemeal toast with a glass of orange juice. He went to see Lorraine in the office.

‘When uhn . . . Mr Zagorski . . .’

‘The writer guy?’

‘Yeah . . . show him . . .’

Danny pointed at the vast open space of his house.

‘Where do you want me to show him?’

‘Library . . . uhn . . . I’ll be there.’

Danny’s bookshelves were filled with books about the occult, the paranormal and UFOs. He had a considerable selection of counter-factual and alternate histories, and a whole section devoted to works that speculated on the nature of ancient civilisations. He found the box file that contained most of the papers he had acquired from the professional investigator the grey-suited man had mentioned. He removed a dossier and put it on the table in the middle of the room next to a pile of notes.

Larry Zagorski arrived just before four. He wore an aloha shirt, cargo pants, black Birkenstocks. Cropped grey hair. Lorraine introduced them. As they shook hands Danny felt a surge of power pulse into his limp palm.

‘Wow, this is quite some library,’ Larry said, looking around at the shelves.

Danny gestured at his science fiction section.

‘Do you want me in this meeting?’ Lorraine asked.

‘Uhn . . . no.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘It’s fine.’

Lorraine shrugged and walked away. Danny saw that Larry was stooping over a bookshelf.

‘Can I . . . uhn . . . help?’

‘You’ll have to forgive me. I always start at Z. Writers, you know, can’t help checking if we’re on the shelf. Good God. They’re all here!’

‘I’m a fan.’

‘I’ll say. Even I haven’t got some of these. You want me to sign them?’

‘Please.’

Larry stood up holding a battered paperback of Lords of the Black Sun, a garish illustration of a spaceship with swastika markings on its cover. He opened it.

‘This one already has a dedication. “To the gorgeous Danny, my favourite space cadet, love, Vita.” A girlfriend?’

‘Uhn . . . no.’

Danny made a sign for them to sit down at the table.

‘You know,’ Larry said, ‘all the big West Coast SF writers used to meet up around here. At Heinlein’s house. Just up the road, Lookout Mountain Avenue.’

‘Heinlein? Robert Heinlein?’

‘Yeah. He had this salon. The Mañana Literary Society, he called it. I met them all there. Jack Williamson, Leigh Brackett, L. Ron Hubbard . . .’

‘Uhn . . . Hubbard?’

‘Yeah. Jack Parsons, too. You know, the rocket scientist.’

‘Uhn . . .’

‘So, Lorraine tells me that you’re up for a part in this remake of Fugitive Alien.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, you know, I’m not involved in it. They’ve offered me this one-off payment, but I don’t think I even own any residual rights. I should really ask Mary-Lou about it.’

‘Uhn?’

‘She was the director and, well, we were friends.’ Larry sighed. ‘You know, the older I get the more I think of her. Back then. Sorry, what were we saying?’

‘I . . . uhn . . . just want to . . .’

Larry looked at Danny with sudden concern in his face. For a moment he seemed about to have a seizure or something.

‘Uhn . . . talk.’

Larry smiled, relieved.

‘Yeah, sure.’

‘Uhn . . . I find it hard to talk . . . but . . .’

‘It’s okay. Take your time.’

‘Thanks.’

‘So, you want to talk about the film?’

‘Yeah, and . . . uhn, ideas . . . you see things . . .’

‘See things?’

‘Visions . . . imagination . . .’

‘Well.’ Larry shrugged. ‘Not so much any more.’

‘Uhn . . . here . . .’

Danny picked up the dossier on the table and handed it to Larry who opened the folder and looked at the first page.

‘Read . . . uhn . . . please.’

‘ “Dated 19 September 1947. Memorandum for the military assessment of the Joint Intelligence Committee. Subject: examination of unidentified disc-like aircraft near military installations in the state of New Mexico: a preliminary report. 1. Pursuant to the recent world events and domestic problems within the Atomic Energy Commission, the intelligence reports of so-called flying saucers and the intrusion of unidentified aircraft over the most secret defence installations, a classified intelligence project is warranted . . .” Wow, is this supposed to be the Magenta Memorandum?’

‘Uhn . . . yeah.’

‘Well, I’ve heard all the rumours about it, of course.’

‘In the film . . .’

‘In the film it’s just a bit of dialogue. I don’t think it was even in the original script. Just something Dexter added.’

Danny jabbed a finger at the dossier.

‘What do you . . . uhn . . . think?’

Larry shuffled through the file.

‘About this? Well, it’s a great plot idea.’

‘It’s an . . . uhn . . . fake?’

‘Who knows any more? Look, you know there’s all this stuff about the government covering up UFOs and things like that? The TV’s full of it at the moment.’

Danny nodded.

‘But what if there was some other kind of cover-up going on? Take Roswell. No one made much fuss about it at the time. Back then there were flying saucer stories in the papers every week. Believe me, it was a craze. No, Roswell became big only when a book was written about it in 1980. Close Encounters of the Third Kind had just made UFOs big again. And at a second glance, the Roswell incident did look a little strange. The air force issued a statement that a flying disc had been recovered and then later denied it. Then they say it’s a weather balloon.’

‘Uhn . . . yeah.’

‘It’s all a bit suspicious and confusing. Because maybe there was a cover-up at Roswell.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. But not in the way all these conspiracy theories play it. Okay, it’s 1947. The Soviets have just started running atomic bomb tests, ballistic missile launches. Everybody’s paranoid as hell. We’re sending up radar-tracking balloons over enemy airspace. If the Russians find out, there could be an international incident. Flying saucers, they’re perfect disinformation. You can use them to confuse a situation, then you can deny them. You can blame it all on the aliens. They become a convenient myth for all kinds of security issues. Maybe the Magenta Memorandum is just part of that.’

‘But, I see . . . uhn . . . things.’

‘Sure. We all see things. We wouldn’t have much of an imagination if we didn’t.’

‘There might be . . . uhn . . . something.’

‘Yeah, maybe. Maybe we see some things that we don’t understand. That’s why they are called unidentified flying objects. Because we just don’t know. Sometimes we don’t know what we see.’

‘Uhn . . . yes . . . I always . . . uhn . . . the stars.’

Danny gestured at the space above his head. He wished that he could explain to Larry Zagorski all the thoughts that he had been having. He grabbed at the pile of notes on the table and sorted through them. He found a page and put it in front of them. Larry looked down at the sheet of foolscap.



John Six explained the secret of the universe to Bella Berkeley telepathically, using an analogy that he knew she would understand. It came to her like a memory. She had grown up watching holovision, the three-dimensional images that were beamed into every household by the Corporation. As a child Bella had thought of this seemingly solid phantasmagoria as an independent entity, but now she knew them to be projected from another source. John’s wisdom came into her mind as a simple revelation: that the whole of the cosmos was one vast projection, a vision expanding from a surface of pure information.

Larry Zagorski, American Gnostic (1958)



Appollonius of Tyana, writing as Hermes Trismegistos, said, ‘That which is above is that which is below.’ By this he meant to tell us that our universe is a hologram, but he lacked the term.

Philip K. Dick, Valis (1981)



According to t’Hooft the combination of quantum mechanics and gravity require the three-dimensional world to be an image of data that can be stored on a two-dimensional projection much like a holographic image. The two-dimensional description requires only one discrete degree of freedom per Plank area and yet it is rich enough to describe all three-dimensional phenomena.

Professor Leonard Susskind, The World as a Hologram (1994)



‘Wow,’ Larry murmured. ‘Yeah, I saw something about this hologram theory. I thought it was some kind of gimmick.’

‘Uhn . . . volume of space encoded on its boundary . . . on an event horizon . . .’

‘Complex stuff. But, you know, a physicist once told me that you can’t really use these theories as a description of the world we live in.’

‘Uhn . . . or appear to . . .’

‘Sure, but—’

‘The entire universe . . . uhn . . . an information structure.’

‘Well, I never had enough of the maths to get to grips with this. I once tried to explain quantum theory on a date. I really blew it there.’

‘But you saw . . .’

Danny pointed at Larry’s quote on the page.

‘I was mostly stoned when I wrote that book. And I can’t remember coming up with that bit. Sometimes you get lucky with ideas. Phil Dick certainly did. He had a thing about precognition, of course.’

‘And . . . uhn . . . you?’

Larry sighed.

‘When you get to my age precognition isn’t so much of an issue.’

‘Uhn.’ Danny smiled and suddenly had a thought.

He went over to one of the bookshelves and crouched down in front of it. One section was a false front that clicked open as he pushed at it to reveal a small wall safe concealed behind it. He dialled the combination lock, opened the door and took out a padded envelope. He stood up and shook its contents out onto the table. There was a sheaf of yellowing sheets of A4 paper. A manuscript with a heading on the first page: The Hanged Man. With it were newspaper clippings, articles about Vita Lampada and Marius Trevelyan.

‘What’s all this?’ asked Larry.

‘I want you to have . . .’

‘Is this a story you’ve written?’

‘Uhn, no . . . Secrets, official secrets.’

‘Listen, I’m really not looking for material, you know.’

‘Please.’

Danny knew now that he had found a safe place. Where better to hide a pebble than on a beach? Larry would have stacks of papers and manuscripts. And he was a writer, so he might be able to do something with the story.

‘You, uhn.’ He looked imploringly at Larry. ‘You understand.’

‘Well, you know how to flatter a guy.’

‘Take it . . . uhn . . . please.’

Larry looked at Danny and then down at what was scattered across the table. Words, words, words, he thought. As if I need any more of them. Then he shrugged and scooped them all up. Danny smiled.

‘Uhn . . . thanks.’

Larry left at six. Danny then went to see Lorraine. He asked her to find him a new doctor and to order him some sushi, four types of nigiri and miso soup. At eight he watched an episode of The X-Files. In the show the FBI agents Mulder and Scully investigated a series of assaults in a community of carnival sideshow performers. The attacker turned out to be one of a pair of co-joined twins who had found a way of detaching himself from his brother but was then compelled to find another body to connect with.

After sundown Danny went up onto the terrace. He lit a Marlboro Light and looked out over the constellation of lights in the valley. A matrix: each bright dot a soul. An airliner crept across the horizon, a signal pulsing against the night. Somewhere, waiting in the sky. Danny felt that he had let go of some of the dangerous knowledge of the world. Maybe now he would get his voice back and he could take some studio time, sing again. Part of him wished that he could go to the Celebrity Center and get clear. If only he could really be brainwashed, his mind wiped clean of it all. But it hadn’t worked. He was still lost in space, in the free-fall of a slow decaying orbit. There’s a starman, over the rainbow. But he had never landed. Danny had watched the skies for years but they had never come. Alone. Set adrift on memory bliss. Sampled sighs and feedback distortion, his mind a tape-loop. He felt a great weariness, all his experience repeats and reruns. Perhaps this whole universe was just a remake, a cover version.