Ron Goulart writes science fiction with such a ready and easy wit that some people forget that he is a Very Serious Artist, that his stories are rife with symbolism and significance and above all relevance. Of The Romance of Dr. Tanner he says, “This one is about writing a soap opera for lizards and about suburban and domestic problems, United States foreign policy, social ills, the quest for identity and the place of mass media in our society.” His story is about all that and much more—large shaggy apelike nergs, for instance, that carry landcars off into the woods for religious purposes, and migratory animals that thrive on synthetic fabrics, and sujo birds, which like to eat windows. “This planet is very strange,” says his hero. Yes indeed.
Ron Goulart
“Just like I figured,” said the lizard man in the white coat. He puffed on his pipe and added, “Now, here’s my advice to you . . .”
“What will Dr. Tanner tell Jenny? And how will it affect his own tangled love for Nana? You won’t want to miss tomorrow’s dramatic episode of The Romance of Dr. Tanner, brought to you by the government of Fenomeno Territory. Good afternoon.” The human announcer smiled and pointed toward the territorial flag on the wall behind him.
Ted Gonzalves, a thin dark man of thirty-one, looked from the second television screen above his tweed-covered desk to the third screen. His willowy blonde wife was there. Ted punched the show sound off and turned up to his wife. “Hi, Nancy,” he said. “Did you watch it today?”
Nancy shook her head. “I had problems of my own today, Ted.” She shifted in the wool living room chair. “First promise you won’t yell or lose your temper.”
His number one television screen flashed on and a nervous, grinning lizard man in a polyester golf suit appeared. Ted said to his wife, “Lazlo Woolson is on the other pixphone, Nan. Hold on.” He punched off her sound and brought in the voice of his immediate boss.
“I thought I told you to scrap the organ transplant stuff,” said the territorial network executive.
“It’s over as of today,” said Ted. “We left Dr. Tanner with one hand in the guy’s stomach at the end of yesterday’s episode. Takes a little time to write him out of some situations, Lazlo.”
“I’ve been golfing with Vice President McKinney and he’s quite.. .”
“Who’s Vice President McKinney?”
“The vice president of the Fenomeno Territorial Network,” replied the lizard executive. “Our boss.”
“What happened to Vice President Reisberson?”
“He left nearly two weeks ago, Ted,” said Woolson. “You writers. None of you keep up. I was attempting to explain that to Baixo only last evening.”
“Him I know. Baixo is the president of Fenomeno Territory.”
“Prime minister,” corrected the lizard man. “He was reshuffled last week, Ted. Don’t you read any of my memos?”
“Look, Lazlo, we’ve been revising Dr. Tanner so much lately I may have fallen behind on memos somewhat.”
“Baixo wants more anti-welfare stuff in our soap opera,” said the network executive. “McKinney wants to see more sex.”
“From who? The lizard actors or the humans?”
“Both,” said Woolson. “McKinney feels, and I had to agree, you missed a good sexy scene when Dr. Tanner had Rosemarie on the couch.”
“That was where Baixo wanted the plug for the new surtax.”
“Dr. Tanner could have fondled her knee while he was outlining the government’s new tax plans.”
“What, and drop the graphs?”
Woolson said, “I have to get over to the clubhouse now, Ted. Think about what I’ve said. I’ll send you a memo.”
Ted looked again at his wife. She had her long slim hands in her lap, fingers entangling. “Promise?” she said as the sound returned.
Ted nodded. “I’m too tired to yell. What is it?”
“The car.”
“Which car?”
“The landcar. The one I use for shopping and errands.”
“What happened, an accident?”
“It was carried off by nergs.”
“Carried off by nergs?”
“If you’re not yelling now, what is that?”
“I was screaming,” replied Ted. “Nergs? Those big shaggy apelike creatures who inhabit the wilds at the edge of the territory. Those nergs?”
“There’s some other kind?” said his pretty pale wife. “Yes, a half dozen of them swooped down on the embassy parking lot and carried our landcar off into the wilderness.”
“What were you doing at the Barnum Embassy, Nancy?”
His wife glanced down at her knees. “I like to look at the photomurals of Barnum. It’s our home planet, after all.”
“You’re not seeing somebody there?”
Nancy began quietly crying. “I don’t mind if you scream and yell over what I do do, but don’t accuse me of what I don’t.”
Ted took a deep breath, frowning briefly at the next soap opera unfolding on his station monitor screen.
“Six nergs?”
“According to eye witnesses,” said his pretty wife. “Nergs don’t drive, you know.”
“Yes, I know that much about this planet. We’ve been here nearly a year.”
Nancy continued, “As I understand it the nergs like to use landcars to build nests in and sometimes for their simple and rather primitive religious rituals. Bryson explained some of their customs.”
“Bryson Jiggs? The associate Barnum ambassador to Murdstone just happened to be wandering around the embassy parking lot and lecturing on the mores and folkways of nergs?”
“No, he came out when he heard the sirens.”
“What sirens?”
“When I heard about the car I fainted and a very pleasant lizard lady accompanied by six very cute little grandchildren she was showing the sights called an ambulance.”
“You’re sure you didn’t go there to meet Bryson Jiggs?”
“Yes, I am,” answered his blonde wife. “Our insurance company says they don’t cover nergs. Because of the religious overtones. So we either have to hire a retrieval service to go into the wilds and bring back our landcar or we have to forget about it.”
“Forget about a $2500 car?” Ted hit his desk top hard enough to make tweed patterns on the side of his fist.
“Or pay a retrieval service $400. I checked. That’s the cheapest anybody will do it for and doesn’t include decontamination, washing or polishing.”
“I’ll think about it,” said Ted, “and we’ll discuss it tonight.”
“Are you going to have to work late?”
“Not beyond eight probably,” Ted told his wife. “I have to write the new government stand on the bombing of Tumulo Territory into the next three scripts, which means either cutting out or revising all the hayloft scenes. I’ll see you after eight. Don’t go hanging around the embassy anymore.”
“How can I? The nergs have my chief means of transportation.” She blacked the pixphone from her side.
Ted got up to go and talk to Dr. Tanner.
* * * *
Andy Bock, the round-shouldered green lizard man who played the title role in the soap opera Ted wrote, had a small dressing room in the basement level of the station. Ted found him there in his plaid rocking chair, eating Earth pickles.
“You played the scene in Neva’s apartment exactly right today, Bock,” said Ted as he walked in through the open doorway.
“I spilled a little of the champagne,” said the lizard actor.
“That’s to be expected, since you had to carry those scale models of the new government missile sites under one arm.”
“Just like I figured,” replied Bock.
Ted sat in a herringbone wing chair. “This is the first propaganda soap opera I’ve ever done,” he said. “Sometimes it’s hard to get all the elements to fuse.”
“Yep,” agreed Bock, sucking a pickle.
Ted cleared his throat and felt the pattern of his chair for a moment. “Look, Bock. You’ve been helpful in the months I’ve worked here, one of the few people I can really talk to. I’ve got another small problem.”
The big rounded lizard man placed his pickle on a tweed coffee table and said, “Always glad to listen, Ted, and help if I can. Some folks tell me there’s not much difference between me and Dr. Tanner. Gosh knows we both give out more than our share of free advice. Only difference is, I guess, I don’t smoke a pipe in real life or go in much for propaganda.”
“Murdstone is a pretty wild and untamed planet,” began Ted. “Compared with Barnum.”
“Frontier planet,” agreed Bock. “One reason why our government is a bit tougher than some.”
“At times I have the feeling I’m never going to get used to it.”
“That your problem for today?”
“No,” said Ted. “Nergs have carried off our landcar.”
Bock nodded. “Yep, they do plenty of that.”
“The thing is, we don’t quite have $2500 to buy a new car,” said Ted. “Even though writing The Romance of Dr. Tanner pays more than Hotspur Corners, we still haven’t been able to save too much.”
“Hotspur Corners was the soap opera you wrote back home on Barnum, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, for three and a half years. So, look. Nancy says they’ll charge at least $400 to try and retrieve the damn car. A retrieval service and you never know how long they’ll take. I don’t want to pay the $400 and still I have to lose the car. Nancy says, well, then forget it. I hate to do that.”
“Course you do,” said Bock, nodding. He picked up the pickle and rubbed it along his scaly snout. “Here’s what I figure. No use listening to what your wife says. Women don’t understand gadgets, let alone cars. They just ain’t mechanical minded, are they? Besides, your wife don’t seem like she understands how downright mad incidents like this make you. You got to blow off steam. Wellsir, my advice to you is go into the wilds yourself, take a stungun along. One of them big hunting stunguns. Track them nergs down and bring back your car yourself. That’s my advice.”
Ted thought, his mouth puckered slightly. “You’re right, Bock. There’s no reason to sit still and take every single damn thing. I may have to do what I’m told around here, but there’s no reason to let a bunch of nergs get away with anything.”
“That’s how I figure,” said Bock, swallowing the pickle.
* * * *
Ted’s mother flashed onto the third screen over his desk a moment after he sat down in his felt chair the next morning. “You look all bruised and battered,” she observed.
Ted gave a careful nod of agreement at his squat, wide-shouldered mother. “Some nergs roughed me up, mom.”
Mrs. Gonzalves was in her office at the territory’s other television station. Replicas of all the planets in the Barnum System dangled from thin copper wires over her chintz desk. “I rang up your house last night after my eleven o’clock newscast and Nancy told me you weren’t home yet. This unsettled me. I had just ended my broadcast with my well-known closing tag, That’s the news for tonight, dear friends. Good night to you all and god bless the late Mr. Gonzalves and here’s a kiss for Teddy.’ Little did I realize you weren’t on the receiving end.”
“It’s the first eleven o’clock kiss I missed this month, mom.”
“You miss all the six o’clock news kisses.”
“Look, mom, you helped me get this writing job out here on this wild and untamed planet. So you ought to know writing a propaganda soap opera requires a lot of work.”
“Don’t I have to slant my news scripts every night? That takes hard work, too, but I always have time to send a kiss your way,” said his wide mother. “Why did the nergs do this to you?”
Ted frowned. “Oh, it’s my fault, mom. I was out in the wilderness.”
“Doing what?”
“Looking around.”
“For what, looking?”
“Our landcar. The nergs like to carry landcars off into the woods.”
“I did a documentary on nergs, remember? It won two harlans and a hobie.” She gestured at something off screen. “On my shelf over there. What, did your wife let them walk off with the car?”
“More or less, mom,” said Ted. “I’m late for work today and I should really get going now.”
“Did you get your car back, Teddy?”
“Not exactly.”
“What did you get?”
“I got jumped by seven large shaggy apelike nergs, pummeled and punched and thwacked with hard sticks. Then I got all my clothes ripped off and I got tied up with jungly vines and carried to my home suburb and dropped on my front lawn at ten minutes past midnight.”
“No wonder you didn’t answer my call.”
“Goodbye, mom.”
“Watch at eleven tonight, Teddy.” His mother threw him a kiss and faded from the pixphone screen.
* * * *
Two weeks later on a Tuesday afternoon Ted went to Andy Bock with another problem.
Bock was resting in a rayon hammock and licking a carrot stick with his long thin tongue. “Howdy, Ted. I think we worked the cut in welfare payments business in pretty good today. Mighty nice visual, the real pie representing government expenditures.”
“Seemed to play well,” said Ted, sitting on a silk ottoman.
“Course, I didn’t intend for that piece of pie representing the still quite large share of government funds going to people on relief to fall in my pajama pocket like it did,” said the lizard actor. “Still, if I do say so, I saved the scene pretty good. Long as I been doing The Romance of Dr. Tanner, I still get a mite nervous when I have some current government policy to explain during a seduction scene.”
“You did fine, Bock. I got a call from Lazlo Woolson and he told me this is exactly the kind of polite sexiness President McKinney likes.”
“Is he network president again?”
“Was he before?”
“Might be a different McKinney,” said the lizard man. “But, shucks, Ted, you look as how you got a problem and are maybe in need of some advice.”
“Well, sort of,” admitted Ted. “Actually, I was getting ready to quit the soap opera profession when my contract on Hotspur Corners ran out, back on Barnum. I was thinking about going back into elementary school teaching. I have a degree in Current Events, with a minor in Show & Tell. Bock, this planet is very strange.”
“Takes some getting used to,” agreed Bock.
“Living in the suburbs of Fenomeno Territory is even odder than living in the suburbs on Barnum,” said Ted. “Little invisible animals ate all Nancy’s clothes.”
“Off her body?”
“No, out of the closets. Some sort of migratory animals who thrive on synthetic fabrics. I’ve been wearing naturals since we got here, so they left my wardrobe alone.”
Bock said, “Yep, I heard of them fellers. Folks hereabouts call them zibelinas. As I recollect, however, them zibelinas won’t attack a house as has folks in it. They prefer places where there ain’t nobody to home.”
“Nancy was off looking at the photomurals at the Barnum Embassy again yesterday when they struck,” explained Ted. “The real problem here is our house insurance company says this kind of damage isn’t covered in our policy. See, I never thought to ask for a clause covering little invisible animals who eat synthetic fabrics. Premiums are high enough as it is.”
“You’re trying to figure how to get some new clothes for the wife?”
“Yes. I need at least $1500. We don’t quite have that much. The retrieval service charged $500 for getting our landcar back.”
“You finally decided to let them fetch it back, eh?” Bock shrugged. “Wellsir, you take this present situation. You could maybe take your time and buy Nancy a new wardrobe a little at a time.”
Ted shook his head, saying, “No, that way’ll take too long. I don’t care what she’s up to, I feel I owe her this. She’s not exactly happy on Murdstone. She expected we’d be living in some quiet rural part of Barnum by now, with me teaching. Fenomeno Territory is not what she anticipated at all and it’s taking her quite a long time to get oriented. What with nergs and zibelinas and the like. I have to get her an entire new run of clothes right now.”
“Bout the way I see it,” said the lizard man. “I tell you what. Borrow the whole $1500 from somebody you know who has lots of money. Who’d that be? I got it. Your newscasting mother. Sure enough, there’s the thing to do for certain. Go right smack over to her station and catch her between newscasts.”
“You think so?”
“Wasn’t she instrumental in persuading you to come take this here job?”
“Well, in a way. Though I was a little uncertain about the teaching myself.”
“She throws you a kiss two or three times a night. I seen that myself ever and again. She pulls down a mighty nice salary from the territorial government, I hear. Ask her for a loan.”
“I guess you’re right,” said Ted.
* * * *
When Lazlo Woolson looked into his office Ted gave a start. “Still twitchy from the accident?” the scaly executive asked.
Ted swung around in his new gabardine desk chair, favoring his broken leg. “No, it’s just I’m used to seeing you on the phone screen. You look enormous in person.”
“I probably am a touch overweight,” admitted the lizard man. “Too many state dinners.” He rubbed scaly fingers together, rattling the fax memos in his hand. “President Hummerford has some ideas about livening up our soap opera, Ted.”
“What is he president of, the territory or the network?”
“The territory,” replied the lizard executive. “I saw you on your mother’s news show the other night and I jumped to the conclusion you were keeping up with events.”
“I was part of events.”
“How’s the leg? Would you like some of the station celebrities to sign your cast?”
“No.”
“You were courageous in accompanying your mother to the food riot,” said Woolson as he eased across the sharkskin rug and let the memos flutter down toward the desk top. “You planning to help her regularly? Not that we object. With governmental control of communications we don’t have the kind of station rivalries you’re accustomed to back on Barnum.”
“I had to talk to my mother on a personal matter,” said Ted. “She doesn’t have much free time and unless I drove her out to the riot I couldn’t have talked to her at all.”
“Fortunate for you they shot out the tires first and then turned the flame guns on you,” said the lizard man. “Gave you time to leap free and then tug your mother from the landcar. What was that I saw you rescue before you helped the dear lady get clear?”
“Her purse.” Ted picked up the top memo from the new pile. “What’s this one mean? ‘Migrant workers attack and ravage Alice in the tomato patch.’ “
“President Hummerford thinks the migrant workers in our territory don’t need a pay raise right now, nor indoor plumbing in their huts.”
“I figured that part,” said Ted. “But Alice died two weeks ago while Dr. Tanner was operating on her after she was ravaged by the monorail porters.”
“President Hummerford must have missed a few episodes while he was preoccupied with his coup,” said the lizard executive. “Okay, the migrants will have to ravage someone else in the tomato patch. How about Nurse Jane?”
Ted frowned. “I don’t know, Lazlo. Nurse Jane is still blind as a result of the student demonstration at the medical school.”
“Perfect. We get sex, a lot of nice anti-migrant feeling and a warm wave of sympathy for the handicapped.”
Folding the memo in half, Ted asked, “Are tomatoes still in season?”
“I’ll have to check. Lettuce will do as well.”
Ted’s third screen flashed on, showing a friend of his from his neighborhood. “I have a call, Lazlo. Let me ponder this and get back to you.”
“Sure, Ted. The migrant problem is the most important one.” The lizard executive moved for the door. “The rest of those memos aren’t as urgent. As far as having Dr. Tanner seduce Nurse Jane in the stock room above the besieged welfare store . . . maybe you’d better postpone, since the migrants are going to take a crack at her.”
Woolson left and Ted turned to the pixphone screen.
* * * *
Ted declined Bock’s offer of a celery stalk. “Something else has come up,” he said.
The lizard man actor began shrugging out of his doctor’s smock. “Wellsir now, Ted, I got the feeling my last couple pieces of advice didn’t work out letter perfect for you.”
Ted hesitated, then dropped slowly into a velvet chair. “Nobody can bat a thousand.”
“Eh?”
“A baseball idiom. Baseball is a game they play back on Barnum, with a bat.”
“A thousand would be perfect?” Bock put his big green hands behind him and began a slow semi-circular pacing of his dressing room. “What’s the latest thing bothering at you?”
“Ever heard of some migratory fowl called sujo birds?”
“Yep, large green-feathered critters.”
“Green? My neighbor thought they were sea blue,” said Ted. “Though he only saw them for a few minutes while they were eating the windows out of our house.”
“They’re eccentric rascals sure enough, those sujo birds. They have a real craving, specially during migratory dashes, for glass and nearglass. When they’re really famished they’ll stop long enough to gobble up blinds, shades, curtains and drapes or even a lamp shade sitting too close to a window.”
“They did that this morning. Ate all our windows and drapes on the sunny side of the house.”
“Your insurance probably don’t cover that either. And I reckon as how, what with having to replace your exploded car and paying your doctor bills and buying them clothes for Nancy, you ain’t got much left out of the $1500 you borrowed from your mother. A darn shame.”
Ted said, “The sujo birds ate the windows and drapes off the master bedroom.”
“No reason they’d spare the master bedroom.”
“Which is how my neighbor noticed Nancy in bed with a diplomat named Bryson Jiggs.”
Bock inflated his green scaly cheeks and then made a wooshing exhalation. “Little dark bandy-legged feller, ain’t he? Keeps showing up at our station cocktail parties.”
“You met him at one. I met him at one. Nancy met him at one.”
“Wellsir, little bandy-legged Bryson Jiggs,” said the lizard. “Right neighborly of your neighbor to give you the lowdown.”
“The sujo birds even ate Bryson Jiggs’ striped pants,” said Ted. “He apparently had them hanging over a chair next to the window.
“Your neighbor’s got himself a nice eye for detail.”
“He’s a freelance muralist.”
Bock tapped one small yellow eye. “Yep, artists always see more than plain everyday folks. Now, I tell you what you ought to do about this bandy-legged feller.”
“I think I’ll simply tell Nancy I know,” said Ted. “She’s bound to call in and tell me about the birds any time now.”
Bock shook one big green hand negatively. “Nope, nope, Ted. Leave her out of the deal. No use trying to be reasonable with a woman. Nossir. Thing for you to do, as I see it, is go right straight over to this Bryson Jiggs at his embassy. Walk smackdab up and give him a good punch in the snoot or a swift kick in the fanny, depending on which way he’s facing. After that tell him, real angry-like, ‘Don’t come fooling around my wife no more, you little bandy-legged runt!’ That’s my advice.”
“I’m not as convinced of the effectiveness of the action approach as I used to be,” said Ted.
“Is that so?” Bock picked up a celery stalk and tapped his chin with it.
* * * *
The day before he left the planet Ted went down to say goodbye to Bock. “I haven’t been taking your advice lately,” he told the lizard man.
Rocking gently in his plaid rocker, Bock replied, “Noticed as much.”
“Been very interesting,” said Ted. “Instead of rushing off last month and punching Bryson Jiggs as you suggested, I took the day off and went home to talk to Nancy. She finally admitted she didn’t like Murdstone any better than I do and didn’t like what I’ve been doing to earn a living. She didn’t like my continually letting my mother and Lazlo and you tell me what to do. She didn’t want to sound like any of you so she kept quiet about everything and got upset and finally looked up Jiggs. I don’t know if this makes any sense to you.”
“Yep, women are like that.”
“Now we’re talking, things over more,” said Ted. “I’m breaking the habit of listening to everybody but myself.”
“Wellsir, you’ll most likely do well teaching back on Barnum now.”
“I expect so, yes.” He stood watching the lizard man. “I’ve been thinking about all the advice you’ve given me over the past year. Most of it was completely opposite to what I should really have done. It took me a while to see that, but I finally did.”
The lizard man waited a long second and then said, “Just like I figured.”