"Oh, my goodness!" Dodger agreed.
"Very well. Your ticket will also function as your meal card, so please don't lose it. Since your departure isn't for another four hours, you may use it to purchase a meal at the spaceport snack bars, in appreciation for your early arrival, courtesy of IPB. Please be at the boarding gate in three hours, with your luggage. Have a pleasant flight, and enjoy your visit to Mars."
"Oh, a most devotional trip, indeed!" Valentine said. "May the sacred monkeys of the New Temple of Amritsar guide you through the day."
The woman's smile became a bit glassy, as though not sure if she wanted to be guided by monkeys, sacred or otherwise, but when Dodger waved to her she waved back. When they were far enough away, Dodger looked up at his father.
"Why don't you buy me some eggs?" he asked. "Since you already—"
"Have provided the ham," Valentine finished, sheepishly. "Damn it, Dodger, why don't you stop me? It's a disease, I tell you, a disease. I can't stop myself."
"I really liked the part about the monkeys."
John Valentine threw his head back and laughed. Dodger loved it when he laughed. He'd been laughing a lot since they got back from Sentry Studios, hardly twenty-four hours ago.
"We've got time to kill, pardner," Valentine said. "What say we take IPB up on their offer to do lunch? Think their budget would stretch to a couple Cokes and Coney Islands?"
John Valentine produced the validated plastic with a flourish, and the clerk ran it through his machine. He and his son carried their trays to a booth overlooking the vast flat plain of the spaceport.
Dodger had contented himself with some mustard and a few spoonfuls of relish on his Coney, but Valentine had buried his, as usual, in chili, diced onions, relish, mustard, cheese, and a barely sublethal dose of the Tabasco sauce he put on almost everything he ate. Valentine's energies were enormous, and so were his appetites.
"You're going to like Mars, Dodge," he said, gingerly lifting the soggy load to his mouth and taking a big bite. "There's more gravity. Get your feet firmly on the ground for a change." He frowned, and chewed. "You remember Mars at all? What were you..."
"Three, you said," Dodger told him. "I don't remember much."
"No, I don't suppose you would. Well, take my word, it's a great place. It's the perfect place for the little theater we've always talked about. Your average Martian has an inferiority complex when it comes to Luna. No real reason they should, it's a much nicer place than here, but they do, that's the point. Luna is the great Golden Globe for most of the system, and the fact that Mars is a perpetual also-ran, Mars is in second place to Luna in just about anything you want to name... well, that just makes it worse. Some little godforsaken asteroid, they don't worry too much about measuring up to Luna. But Mars, Mars is sort of like Chicago, compared to New York. Chicago always had good theaters, good dance troupes. But Chicago never had a Broadway, and they knew they never would. But they always wanted to be New York, you see what I mean? That's where the action was. That's where the best actors, the best dancers, the best directors... if you weren't working in New York, people thought you weren't really doing serious work. "Or like Hollywood in the film business. You could make a perfectly good film in Florida, but Hollywood was the center of the universe. It's where you went to be a star. 'There's no business like show business, there's no business I know!' " He sang, not really at the top of his voice, but John Valentine seldom spoke more quietly than a stage whisper, and several people in the snack bar turned to see the man in the orange turban singing a jaunty showbiz tune. Dodger kicked his father under the table.
Valentine looked around, and laughed. "You're right, Dodge," he said in a lower voice. "Sikhs do work in the industry, you know, but you're right, it looks out of character." Dodger was entitled to kick his father anytime he stepped out of character when they were working in public.
"Anyway," he went on, more confidentially, "what it does to the Martians is, they're much more receptive to culture. You stage Love's Labour's Lost in King City, it's a yawn. Oh, people will come, you might even fill the theater because there's so damn many people here. You do it on Mars, you get a lot more appreciation. The Martians are glad to have you, they cherish you, because by doing Shakespeare or any other of them highfalutin Greeks, you're telling your average Martian rube—and there's nothing rubier than a Martian rube—that he's just as good as a Lunarian. He'll go, even if he doesn't understand every third word, and he'll praise you, and thank you for going to the trouble. And that's good, Dodger, because frankly, other than myself—and you, when you're ready—there's not going to be a Luna-quality cast in the supporting roles. The best of them have already moved to Luna, they're breaking their hearts here. The sort of troupe I'm thinking of, it would get absolutely hammered in the King City reviews. But I guarantee you, on Mars, it will never be noticed."
"Sounds great," Dodger said.
"Better than great." He spread his hands wide, his eyes focused on a giant marquee only he could see. " 'The John Valentine Son Shakespearean Repertory Company.' Just one small pressure dome, out a ways from the city where the rents aren't so high. A hundred fifty, two hundred seats, tops. Why, with twenty thousand dollars we can get it up and running, and even if we lose money every year, I don't see why we can't go six, seven years. And all thanks to Gideon Peppy and his idiotic show."
"Sounds wonderful," said the Dodger.
They ate in silence for a while, each with his own thoughts. Valentine was obviously laying out the floor plans of the repertory theater, drawing up the first season's schedule, deciding who to call in Flip City when it came time to cast the first production.
Dodger simply ate, taking small bites and chewing thoughtfully.
"I'd like to see Mr. Peppy's face tomorrow," Dodger finally ventured, quietly, "when nobody shows up for the contract meeting."
"And he realizes his catch has flown the coop." Valentine cackled. "Yeah, that'd be something to see, all right. We'll send him a postcard from Mars, when we open the first show. Anonymous. Let him wonder what it's all about."
"That should be funny," said Dodger.
They ate in silence for a while, both looking up when the lunchroom was for a moment flooded in light as a ship lifted from the field. Even through the darkened glass, for a moment it outshone the sun. Valentine chuckled.
"I think we could work up a comedy skit about your adventures yesterday. Caught up in the massive gears of the Hollywood machine, eh, Dodger?" He frowned, looking thoughtful. "In fact, I think I've seen something like it before. Very old stuff. Something about soldiers being processed very rapidly into an army, shuffling through physical and mental exams, no one really taking the time to see these chaps as human beings... and before they know it they've inducted a chimpanzee. Now where was that...?"
"Maybe it was one of the sacred monkeys of the New Temple," Dodger suggested.
"That's it! That's it!" Valentine howled. Dodger was eager to get his father's thoughts away from the previous day. While he had not actually lied to his father about the general shape of events—he had in fact been shanghaied into the audition room, for instance—he had tended to exaggerate the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and to downplay his own complicity. He had neglected to mention filling out the form and forging his father's name. He had hurried over the details of his reading, not putting much emphasis on how diligently he had tried to win the part. And come to think of it, when his father assumed Dodger had been kidnapped right out of the waiting room where Valentine had left him, Dodger had not bothered to correct him. Why invite trouble? Dodger had reasoned. It made a much better story the way his father had heard it, and hadn't he always said a good story was frequently superior to the truth?