+J.M.J.+
Through the Door in the Sky
By "Matrix Refugee"
Author's Note:
Remember this one??? I've neglected this one for far too long, but it has not
been an easy write. I have an idea how it ends, but getting to that ending has
been hard to figure out, plus I've had a few problems with some of my original
characters taking over the story, or at least trying to (Not Dietrich
Hohenzoller, he's too humble yet noble to do that, but Jerry Peik and Azor
Montressor are both another story). "fom4life" has been getting all over my rear
to finish this one, so here's the fourth part. Keep an eye out for a mild
discrepancy: there is more going on than meets the eye. Also, I added a few
details from the "History of 'The Truman Show'" which forms the forward of the
shooting script, which I have been using as a reference as I write this (when
I've been writing this. If only I could stop coming up with ideas for weird "Road
to Perdition" fics!)
Disclaimer:
See chapter I. WARNING: Mild slash (Montressor/Sweyk). Don't think that I regard
homosexuals as evil. Montressor doesn't count as such really because he's more
of a sexual omnivore than anything else…to put it mildly.
But first, the simulated movie credits; Hey, it's my fic…
Paramount Pictures presents
A Scott Rudin Production
A Peter Weir Film
The Truman Show II
Featuring
Ed Harris Otto Stuckmeyer Jude Law Joe Pantoliano
With Jake Jacobi as Montressor
And Themselves
Sylvia Thomas & Truman Burbank
Written by Andrew Niccol and R.C.H. Mulhare
Directed by Peter Weir
* * * * * *
Chapter IV: The Angry Confrontation
Mose, the executive producer of "the show" stood up behind his desk as the door of his office opened. Two huge men in long black leather jackets strode into the room, forcing back the secretary who opened the door.
As the big men came up to the desk, someone behind them reached up and pushed them aside, a smaller man in a gray shantung suit fitted to his lean frame under a black cloak lined with purple satin. A wide-brimmed black fedora with along peacock feather in the band sat tilted over his face, shading the whole left side of his visage. He paused, posed flamboyantly with his wrists resting on his lackeys' shoulders, then he took off his hat.
"Are all the papers in order?" Montressor asked.
"Yes, I just finished speaking with the legal department: We've released Truman's papers and turned them over to you, Azor," Mose said, pushing a contract across the desktop.
Montressor perched himself on the edge of the desk and picked up the contract. He scanned it over, his albinist eye blinking slightly.
"Yes…yes…everything is everything," Montressor purred. He laid the contract on the desktop, reached inside his jacket and drew out a fountain pen, uncapped it and, with a flourish, signed the document in what Mose hoped was only red ink.
He looked up at Mose. "So, you promise to let me bring Truman to his new residence cum place of employ in my own manner, without the intervention of any local, state, or Federal authorities?"
"He's out of our hands and into yours," Mose said, spreading his hands, hoping they didn't look helpless.
Montressor reached out with his piebald hand and patted Mose's cheek. That gesture alone made his skin start to crawl. "That's what I like to hear. Now, you won't have to look at my gorgeous face again, since I'll be out looking for my boy. You're a dear, anyone told you that? You find a good use for that cash: find yourself another child star."
Montressor stood up, putting his hat on his head. He grinned at Mose crookedly and strode for the door, his henchmen closing in behind him.
Mose breathed a sigh of relief, his sweat cold on his brow and the back of his neck. Now he just had to break the news to Cristoff…
* * * * *
Over breakfast on the back porch, Jerry and Sylvia shared crazy behind the scenes stories with Truman.
"Remember the college rowing club?" Sylvia asked.
"Ugh, not one of my favorite memories," Truman groaned.
"It was really funny behind the scenes," Sylvia said.
"Yeah, Cristoff wanted this one guy to half-drown, Harry le Drip we'll call him," Jerry continued. "But Harry le Drip didn't want to half-drown because he was afraid of completely drowning. So I offered to half-drown instead. I mean, it would look funnier: I was playing this stiff comic character; it would look funnier if the prissy rich guy almost drowns, then comes to and complains that he'd rather that he'd almost drowned in whatever-brand-bottled-water had made product placement that season.
"So we were rehearsing in the far side of the tank that surrounded the island. Everything was going normally, until the boat capsized and I go overboard. Then my rowing shorts caught on something and tore off completely. I mean, there I am in the altogether except for my tank top."
"Unfortunately, I happened to be looking in just the right place," Sylvia said, blushing.
"Uh oh!" Truman cried. "How dare you expose yourself in front of my future intended!
"She was a lady about it: she lobbed her sweater toward me and I covered myself up," Jerry concluded.
"Well, here's how I remember that incident: Marlon—or should I call him Lou Whatsizface?—he was trying to get me to join the rowing club and cure my water phobia that way. So he and Meryl dragged me to a rowing meet one day. And that very day, one of the star rowers almost drowns before my very eyes. So I bugged outta there. Never went back."
"You know why you were like that, don't you?" asked a deep voice.
The three of them looked up. Dietrich stood framed in the open door.
"I bet it had to do with that Cristoff dude you told me about," Truman said.
"It did: he bred this fear into you, cultivated it like a plant so you would stay put upon his island."
"So my father being lost at sea, Jerry almost drowning, that was part of the plan?" Truman asked.
"Yes."
Truman shook his head. "I guess it's something of a miracle that I got up the courage to escape across the water."
"You may want to gather your courage again for the news I have to break," Dietrich said. He drew in a long breath. "Montressor just signed an agreement with the executives of OmniCam: he owns you now."
Truman leaned forward in his chair, gripping the edge of the table, his mouth went slack. Sylvia put her hands on his shoulders.
"I guess I'd better start packing my bags," he said. "We can forget about the wedding plans."
"No, there's ways we can bypass Montressor's jackals. If we stay in one place as much as possible, that will help. But those of us who must go in and out will have to be on our guard more than ever," Dietrich said.
"Well, you and I will really have to keep our eyes peeled," Jerry said, getting up from the table and going in, letting Dietrich take over the watch.
Sylvia kneaded Truman's shoulders. "Hey, we can get through this if we stay together. It won't be long before all this is behind us and we can live in peace."
He clasped one of her hands in his. "But we gotta get married some time."
"We can secret a justice of the peace up here. Tenniel can pull it off."
* * * * *
Cristoff ran the cold-water faucet in his bathroom over his throbbing head.
The intercom buzzed. "Cris, are you alive in there? It's Mose."
"I'm in the bathroom!" Cristoff yelled, making his headache worse.
He lifted his dripping head from the basin as Mose walked in.
"Did they find him? Did they find Truman?" Cristoff asked.
Mose put his hand on Cristoff's shoulder. "This isn't easy news for me to break to you. But…we sealed the deal with Montressor."
Cristoff stared at Mose. He lifted his hand and pushed Mose's hand from his shoulder.
"You didn't."
"We had no choice. We just lost our best program, reruns or no reruns. Montressor's idea could work. They gave our show a chance, now it's time for Azor to take a turn."
"Azor's turn. You're calling him Azor now. Are you on that close terms with him already?"
"He has an interesting concept. There's only one way to find out how the audiences are going to accept it."
Cristoff pointed an accusing finger at Mose. "You know they won't take too well to it."
"The critics said that about our show."
"Montressor's show was nothing like mine. My work was meant to bring hope into the world, to the viewers. Montressor…I don't know what Montressor hopes to do except blacken their minds and hearts."
"You sound like a Republican."
"Don't care if I do!" Cristoff snapped back.
"Cris, my hands were tied. The network needs new blood."
"Azor Montressor will only drain your network. He's a vampire."
"My network? Cris, you built it up. If you want, you can stay on and help Azor get his feet on the ground."
"There is one person I am NOT going to help and that person is Azor Montressor, so you can take that thought and cram it up your nose!"
"Cris, please, be reasonable."
"There is nothing reasonable about your proposition. Now get out!"
Mose gave him an odd look. "All right, Cris, if that's what you want. But I'm afraid you won't be able to stay here in the apartment for much longer. You might want to start packing."
"OUT!!!"
Mose went out slowly.
Cristoff sat down on the edge of the bathtub. His head sank into his hands between his knees. He wept the tears he had been holding back.
* * * * *
Dietrich was on high alert that day. He had some of the grounds men start checking cars for stowaways as people came and went. Bettina told him it wasn't necessary with every vehicle, since she only had a hatch back Ford Probe, little chance for one of Montressor's spies to sneak in hidden in the back of that thing, which Jerry not too affectionately called a "roller-skate".
"Oh, you're calling it that because you drive a great big Land Rover," Bettina retorted, as they unloaded boxes of groceries from the back of the "Ford Probe Roller-Skate".
"Well, y' know, y' could stow the Probe in the back of the Land Rover and use that as an emergency car in case the Land Rover died," Truman suggested.
After lunch, Tenniel did something he considered vital to Truman's adjustment to the real world.
Sylvia knocked on the door of Truman's room. "Who goes there: friend or foe?" he demanded in a deep voice.
"A very good friend," she said. He threw the door open.
"Oh, THAT kind of friend!" he cried, grabbing her and kissing her a little too hard.
She pushed him off gently. "Tenniel wants to show you something downstairs. It's very important."
"Okay," Truman said, a little uncertain, but following her downstairs.
They went into the living room, where Tenniel was inserting a DVD into a player built into a TV with no receptor. The menu screen came up.
THE TRUMAN SHOW: EPISODE 9,855
Truman stood slightly aghast, staring at the screen blankly.
"You don't have to watch it if you don't want to," Tenniel said, his finger hovering over the "stop" button on the remote.
"I don't think I should…I mean, it might make me want to go back," Truman hesitated.
"I think when you see the show for yourself, it will give you some perspective on the whole phenomena," Tenniel said.
"Look at it as a very strange kind of out-of-body experience," Jerry said, from his seat by the window.
"Well…okay," Truman said, sitting down on the couch. "I'll watch it for all its worth."
"I'll be right here in case you have trouble," Sylvia promised, sitting down next to him.
Tenniel hit the "play" button.
The episode showed the day Truman and "Meryl"—Hannah Gill, or whatever her name was—bought their house: waking up in the room they had shared in his "mother's" house after they got back from their wedding/camping trip; breakfast; going to the realtor's office; looking at the fact sheets on several houses. They found a bungalow marketed as the perfect starter house. Truman noticed something a bit too chatty about the real estate agent, just a bit too salesman-like. But he probably hadn't noticed it then: he'd been too close to that world, and he'd still been in the honeymoon afterglow.
He'd haggled with the real estate woman: that sounded convincing, because he knew it wasn't acting. She'd given him a song and a dance, but he was as much a salesman as she was. They settled on a lower price of $50,000.
Tenniel fast-forwarded a few scenes just because it was connecting material: driving home, grocery shopping for Truman's "mother". He returned it to normal speed during the dinner scene so they could hear the conversation.
"God, what a bad actor," Jerry commented on Truman's "mother" otherwise known as Alanis Montclair. "Now just why did that woman win five Emmy awards in the last seven years?"
"She really wasn't a great actor, even if she was good at faking illnesses," Sylvia said.
"Faking in more ways than one," Truman commented ruefully.
"Now what makes you say that?" Tenniel asked, clearly knowing the answer yet clearly wanting to hear Truman elaborate on it himself.
"Well, she was faking it as an actress and as a hypochondriac," Truman said. "I always wondered if she was faking it, and I was gonna send her to a shrink. Imagine if I had tried."
"Yeah, they'd have had you go to a shrink," Jerry said.
They watched in silence for a while. Tenniel fast-forwarded it again through a scene with Truman (onscreen) and "Meryl" washing dishes, playing a board game with "mother"—it didn't surprise Truman that it was "Life"—then getting ready for the night. When "Meryl" and Truman (onscreen) started getting cozy, Truman himself had to look away.
"It's not so bad," Sylvia said. "But you don't have to watch."
He peeked out of the corner of his eye. The camera had cut to the curtains blowing in the wind, the moon shining through the window.
"Had enough?" Tenniel asked.
"That's enough for me," Jerry said.
"Yes, thanks," Sylvia said.
Tenniel hit the stop button on the remote, got up and ejected the disk.
Truman sat with his hands gripping his knees. He shook his head, trying to clear it, breathing hard. "It was all so real," he said. "But it wasn't."
"Do you wish you could go back?" Sylvia asked.
"I want to keep going forward, but part of me just wishes it could all be like it was before," he said, turning his hands over, empty.
"You know you can't go back," Jerry said, dead sober. "There's probably nothing left to go back to. There's no other choice left."
Truman breathed freely again. "Okay, okay…I'm okay…just got cold feet for a second there."
* * * * *
That evening, the company was a little subdued at supper. Even Jerry's usual chatter seemed dampened.
Sylvia offered to help Bettina and Marcus with the dishes. Dietrich went out to collect the mail and check on how matters stood at the offices of the TLF during Jerry's watch.
"Permission to go out for a breath of fresh air?" Truman asked Tenniel, as the chief collected the dishes and brought them to the kitchen.
"Of course," Tenniel said, mock severe. "But don't be out more than a half an hour or else you next turn will be docketed."
"I'll make sure he doesn't," Jerry said, dead pan, but with a gleam in his eye.
"You getting stir-crazy?" Jerry asked when they were outside.
"A little," Truman admitted. "But I should be used to it after being cooped up in that fortress for twenty-nine years."
"You mean the EcoSphere," Jerry said. "Yeah, but you had no clue that there was much else beyond that. Imagine being part of the supporting cast, being cooped up in that place for weeks at a time, not much contact with the outside world, and pretending to be a different person for most of the day. That happened to me when I worked there. Very schizophrenic way to live: I used to almost forget I was Jerry Peik sometimes when I finally got out."
"Gee, and I thought I had it bad."
"Mm, and neither of us had it as bad as Dietrich had it working for Montressor."
"He told you any particulars?"
"Not by word of mouth. I found it out the hard way. When I lost my apartment, I stayed with him for a while. Third night I stayed there, he woke me up, screaming. He'd had a nightmare about Montressor. That's the only time I've ever seen him that scared. His back is all scarred up from floggings Montressor had his goons give him when he—Dietrich that is—tried to back out."
"That's horrible," Truman said.
"Yeah, I actually watched an old episode of a series Montressor did years ago," Jerry screwed up his face and shook his head. "Bad stuff. I mean, adult content is one thing, but this was horrible. This stuff would make David Cronenberg movies look like Frank Capra's stuff." He looked at Truman, realizing his misstep. "Oops, sorry, I forgot you've never seen anything higher than PG-13."
"Well, Marlon or whatzisface smuggled a copy of Playboy into the house once, and I really caught it from my mother."
"Even THAT is very mild compared to Montressor's work."
"Speaking of adult stuff, not to sound prying but, uh, did Dietrich ever like y' know, try the moves on you?"
"Nah, that's just the way he is. In all the years I've known him, I've never seen him even have a crush on anyone," Jerry said.
"I'd think he'd be tempted."
"He knows I'm not that type, not to say he hasn't had his share of curiosity about me and some sublimated interest."
"That doesn't bother you?"
"He wasn't the first and he probably won't be the last. Besides, as long as no one is stalking me or trying to kill me, I've nothing to worry about."
Truman changed the subject. "So, as far as getting me out is concerned, where do we go from here?"
"We're proceeding with caution now. But according to Dietrich, the Montressor expert, the little rat is likely to celebrate his victory with a two-day orgy, which buys us a little time but not much."
"Guess we better budget that time. Sylvia and I had better get hitched soon, otherwise we might not live long enough to share the same last name," Truman said.
"Okay, my turn to ask a personal question: did you and that other woman wait for the ring?"
Truman wagged his head. "Not all the way; that woman who was my mother would have taken a fit if she'd found out, and even if she didn't ask me outright, she'd have weaseled it out of me somehow. She was the kind of person you couldn't keep stuff from." He paused. "I suppose that Cristoff dude who ran the zoo ordered her to do that to me." In a gravelly, gangsterish voice, he said, "Aw right, yer not gonna let that kid do nothin' behind yah back, right? And if he tries to hide somethin' from yah, whaddya do? Yah gonna get on his case till he sings, right? Riiiiggghht." In a swoony falsetto, he added, "Oh yes, boss Cristoff, anything you say!"
Jerry laughed. "God, you should have been an actor."
Truman shoved him playfully as he said, "Peik, I WAS an actor for the past twenty-nine years."
"I suppose it wouldn't be too fahr-fetched for yew to resohrt to that other grayt Amerric'n spohrt: litigaysh'n," Jerry said. He suddenly shook his head and cleared his throat noisily. Truman eyed him, wondering if this might be some kind of odd Canadian joke.
"Yeah, I thought about that. Not a bad idea: sue the OmniCam Corporation for twenty-nine years back wages. It was white slavery, right?"
"That's how we described it. The TLF always said that Lincoln abolished slavery in the States, but OmniCam brought it back, in a far more insidious incarnation."
"You're darn right there," Truman said.
They both were thoughtfully quiet for a long while. Jerry fell back a little ways, giving Truman some space. Truman looked up at the darkening sky above. A white light showed over the treetops. He paused to watch it.
A yellow-white orb lifted over the trees.
Truman looked at Jerry. "So that's the moon."
"Is it real?" Jerry asked in a tremulous squeak, like a child's voice. In his normal voice, he added, "Yeah, that used to bug me something awful. The moon in the EcoSphere never moved. Know why?"
"Of course not."
"It was a screen for the window of Cristoff's apartment on the roof of the EcoSphere. Oh, that drove me nuts: look up at the sky in the middle of the day. Oh, there's the moon, there for all to see, never moves. I was glad to get out of that madhouse when Cristoff fired me." He looked at Truman. "But not so glad as you must have been."
"I don't know…with this Montressor goon buying me, it might have been better if I'd stayed put," Truman said, shaking his head and turning away.
Jerry grabbed him from behind and spun him around to face him. His green eyes smoldered with irritation.
"Listen, fella, there's no going back there. Dietrich could tell you better and maybe he should," he said, dead serious.
"Isn't there some way we could turn this all around, put things back the way they were?" Truman asked.
Jerry's fingers on his shoulders twitched ever so slightly, but a paroxysm of pain shot through Truman's nerves so that he almost fell to his knees. Jerry let him go. Truman staggered back.
"I didn't want to have to do it that way, but I thought it best to give you a small taste of what Montressor might have in store for you," Jerry said, apologetic.
"Maybe I better go in," Truman said, rubbing his aching shoulders.
"Yeah, Dietrich won't want to find you out here when he gets back."
"Wouldn't want to have someone that big mad at me. Especially if guys my size can almost floor me."
"Nah, Dietrich's a big fuzzball: you have to do something really nasty before he'll do some major damage to you, unless you've done something to warrant a counter assault."
"Montressor couldn't get past him, eh?"
"They'd have to get past me first," Jerry said.
"Oh, send in the skinny kid first."
"Yup, nothing beats David against Goliath before you bring out the heavy artillery."
"And Dietrich is some really heavy artillery."
"You ain't kiddin'."
"I bet Dietrich could make mincemeat outta Montressor."
"Might take some doing getting at him."
"Oh, yeah, those big goons he sends around."
"You seen 'em?"
"I spotted 'em the first day I escaped," he shivered.
"I second the motion," Jerry said, fitting the action to the words.
* * * * *
Dietrich carefully avoided the main roads as he came back from checking the main office of the TLF, collecting the mail, making sure nothing had happened. No more arson… By now Montressor would be too drugged or drunk or screwed or gorged to send his henchmen out.
But he realized such generalizations could land him in trouble. Montressor was as violent and unpredictable as the wind.
He headed back to the cottage by yet another indirect route. He came within sight of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel; he glanced up at it, wondering if Montressor had encamped there as he always did when he was in L.A.
* * * * *
At that moment, Sweyk was coming up the stairs to the penthouse. Gregor the front guard let him in, looking disappointed that the man at the door wasn't an intruder he could rough up.
"How's the old man?" Sweyk asked.
"As wound tight as the bark on a tree and ready to pass out, whichever he does first," Gregor said.
"The usual post-celebration stuff, I hear yah," Sweyk said, heading on into the front room.
He found Montressor sitting sprawled out in his armchair, his head slung back, mouth slack, eyes a little glassy. The collar of his shirt and his vest hung open. He cradled the swollen left side of his belly on the inside of one forearm.
Montressor lifted his head, his eyes slightly unfocussed. "Holla, Sweyk!" he said a little thickly. "Anything to report?"
"Not much action down to TLF HQ," Sweyk said.
A grin crossed Montressor's face. "Not watching their back door, eh? Perhaps then we should make things a little hot for them."
"Want us to teach 'em a little thing or two? Is the timing right?"
"You've learned well," Montressor said. "But first…help me to rise. I sat down and got stuck."
"Want me to pull yah out?"
Montressor snorted. "Don't be ridiculous; I'm not that bloated."
Sweyk took Montressor's hand and helped him to rise. He supported the smaller man along the hallway to the bedroom. Montressor stumbled once, veering to the left, pulling Sweyk that way.
"Whadja do? Consume all 2,000 calories at one sitting?" Sweyk grunted.
Righting himself, Montressor shoved Sweyk against the wall. "One more crack out of you and I just might have you for dessert—you're lucky I'm too logy to do much to you." He bit Sweyk on the ear so hard the larger man yelped.
"Not yet, not yet," Montressor purred, letting go of Sweyk's ear. They continued down the hallway.
"So you want us to put the burn on the TLF?" Sweyk asked at the door to Montressor's chamber.
"By all means: Hohenzoller will be expecting me to be out of commission. He's forgotten a lot of things about me," Montressor said, leaning against the doorpost. "Go to it, Sweyk."
"Y' don't have to tell me twice."
* * * * *
On the route back to the cottage, Dietrich took the same road from which branched the access road to the EcoSphere. He passed by the forest that half-concealed most of the bulk of the structure. The dome hulked above the treetops, gleaming in the moonlight, the exposed support armatures on the outside like silvered cobwebs.
He drove past the access road, but after a few hundred yards, he pulled the car over and U-turned, heading back.
He drove up the access road. The gates stood open. A shake down crew was going in and out of the building, removing loads of set pieces. They took no notice of him as he pulled the car behind the parked trucks. He got out and crossed the yard purposefully. In his black leather windbreaker, military fatigue pants and combat shoes, he looked like a security guard, so he blended in.
He tested several doors as if he were a guard. Finding one open, he let himself in.
* * * * *
Cristoff sat in his front room, near the glass table on which lay the handgun. His hands hung clasped between his knees. Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" played on the stereo. He breathed deeply, evenly, trying to clear his head and get his resolve to kick in.
They say mortal wounds give no pain.
His life's work cut short, his star player vanished and now sold to the likes of Azor Montressor. He had lived too long. He was only sixty and robust for his age, but he felt older than that.
He drew in a long breath. He made his hand reach for the gun, his eyes staring straight ahead, not tracking with his head, not panning toward the table. His hand closed on the gunstock, feeling without feeling the rubberized metal grip.
He held the gun in both hands, weighing it in his palms. The lamplight shone dully on the barrel.
Something rattled at the door, probably just the night watchman testing the lock. Cristoff waited for him to pass on.
He ejected the clip and checked it. One bullet left. That was all it would take, but that was all he had.
The door creaked open.
He pressed the muzzle under his jaw, pointing up. He started to thumb off the safety.
A shadow fell over him.
"Mr. Cristoff?" asked a deep voice behind him.
Cristoff whirled round in his chair. A tall, bulky man in a black leather jacket stood behind him. Cristoff rose, stepping back. Who was Montressor sending now?
"How did you get in here?" he demanded.
"Your door was unlocked. It is not fit for a man like you to seal himself up in a room."
"Who are you and what do you propose to do?"
"My name is Dietrich Hohenzoller. I'm a private detective, but now I work for the TLF…I also urge you to put down the gun, you don't want to do that," the tall man said.
"What in hell makes you say that? My life is of no use to anyone now, least of all myself," Cristoff rasped.
"Yes, it is of use to someone. Truman needs to hear your side of the story. You brought him to this place, but I think you can help him cut the last ties to it."
"Truman is…alive?"
"Yes. He's in a safe place, but he can't stay there much longer before Montressor gets wise to us."
"He doesn't want to hear it," Cristoff said, shaking his head. "He won't want to see me."
"That may be so, but it will do the both of you much good," Hohenzoller held out his hand, open, palm up. "Give me the gun."
Cristoff held out the gun, his hands opening over it, nerveless. Hohenzoller took it and removed the clip, putting the gun in one pocket, the clip in another.
"How?"
"You alone know what you must tell him. Come with me."
"I can't. He won't want to hear a word I have to say."
"That may be so, but you both need to face one another so that you may go on."
Cristoff drew in a long breath. "All right. I'm coming with you."
* * * * *
Sylvia sat in the living room with Truman, telling him more about what her life had been like before and since "the show", when Jerry and Tenniel suddenly came into the room.
"Truman, Hohenzoller has brought in a visitor for you," Tenniel said.
"Okay, but, uh, can you tell me who it is?" Truman asked, uncertain.
"'Fraid not, it would spoil the effect," Jerry said. He stepped aside from the doorway.
A tall man clad in a black jersey over black slacks entered, a gray beret covering his bald head and he squinted at the world through metal-rimmed glasses.
"Who are you?" Truman asked.
"I'm Cristoff," the stranger said.
"Oh, it's you," Truman snarled, doubling his fists. "You're the one who got me into this mess, the one who cooped me up in that mock-up small town. How do I know if you're really Cristoff and you're not that Montressor creep that's on my tail."
"I knew Montressor very well: this is not he," Dietrich said.
"I don't know if I trust that: I'm beginning to wonder what's real and what isn't," Truman said.
"You're real, Truman," the stranger said.
Truman looked at him.
The voice…that was the same voice that had spoken to him out of the sky when he had stood before the open door in the painted backdrop.
"If you're Cristoff, why did you do that to me? Can't you see how it fouled up my life?"
"I never intended to mess up your life. I only wanted to protect you from the horrors of the real world."
"But why protect me? You only made it worse for me!"
"If we're going to get anywhere, perhaps I should explain myself.
"I came from a very broken home. My father was a drug addict. My mother had to work as a call girl. Granted, she worked for a high class escort service, but she basically was supporting my father's habit—the man was a genius of a photographer when he wasn't stoned; he could have supported my sisters and I very handsomely if he ever put his talent to good use.
"When I was eleven, Social Services finally stepped in and took us away from my parents, put us in the care of my uncle, my father's brother, who was in advertising, doing commercials. He recognized my talent and encouraged it, disciplined my gifts. He never told us outright that he loved us, but he had his own way of showing, by taking reels and reels of 8mm film of us, not just at big things like birthdays and Christmas, but ordinary stuff: washing dishes, cleaning our rooms, feeding the dog, doing yard work, waiting for the school bus.
"I got an idea when I was sixteen to do a movie that would follow someone for a whole day, tastefully showing their every move. I quit high school and enrolled in a film school. My first effort was a twelve-hour long version of my adoptive father's home movies of my sisters and I, which I called "A Life in a Day". It won a few modest awards at a few independent film festivals. One of my classmates, Mose Meyers, suggested we shoot a reality film about homeless people in an empty building his father owned. Mose even dressed like a homeless man and moved around among them. We got in touch with a small cable channel owned by a company that made spy cameras for the CIA. They broadcasted a somewhat censored version of it, uninterrupted. Most people jumped on it for its somewhat sensational appeal, but some people called it far too realistic."
"I imagine it was," Truman said.
"I wasn't for everyone, I won't deny, but we had to start somewhere," Cristoff admitted. "I've always been an admirer of the classic films of the 19 30s and '40s, particularly the films of Frank Capra."
"Oh, so that's why the TV channels in Sea Haven ran a lot of that stuff," Truman cut in.
"I only wanted the best for your world," Cristoff admitted.
"Let him finish his story," Sylvia pleaded.
"Go on," Truman mumbled.
"I wanted to do something along the lines of the first half of It's a Wonderful Life, where you see the hero's life from his childhood up to the present day of the story, only I wanted to expand on it: I wanted to show one man's life from his birth onwards. Mose found five different unwed mothers whose due dates were before the estimated air date of the show, which went by the working title of 'Bringing up Baby', but which we later changed to The Truman Show, when we decided on a name for the future star.
"We started out very small, with just the interior set of Truman's—I mean, your house, first your nursery, then expanding as you got bigger. At the same time, several corporations had joined forces to construct what would eventually become the world's largest soundstage."
"The fortress," Truman said. "That's what I call it."
"It's actually called the EcoSphere, but you can call it what you like now."
"So that's all I am to you? An actor in a crap TV show? I'm a living, breath human being, goddammit!"
"I know you are," Cristoff said, calmly. "I wanted you to have the kind of life I wanted to have. I wanted you to know safety, and shelter, and security. I wanted you to have the kind of childhood I wished I could have had. All parents do."
"If I am your son, you've done one lousy job of being a father," Truman rasped, just above a whisper.
Cristoff drew in a long breath. "I don't deny that. But you have to realize what kind of a situation I was in."
"Why didn't you think about the situation you put me in?!" Truman screamed. "What's real? Huh? Tell me! What is real? How do you define real in that screwed up head of yours, huh? Don't give me any quick answers, 'cause I don't have time for 'em."
Cristoff looked at him. His lips parted slightly as if he were about to say something. But he pressed his mouth shut.
Silence filled the room. Peik's eyes roved from one face to another; Sylvia put her hand on Truman's shoulder, but he took no notice. Tenniel's jaw clenched and relaxed, almost nervously. Dietrich maintained his usual calm stoicism.
Cristoff's gaze had dropped to the floor. His hands hung slack on his thighs.
He looked up. "I'm sorry, Truman, but I don't have an easy answer for you, except that I'm sorry for what I've put you through."
"ENNNHH!" Truman said, making a noise like a gameshow buzzer. "That's not a good enough answer to fix the last twenty-nine years of my life. Ex-cuse me."
With that he strode out of the room. They heard his feet clatter on the stairs. Then a door slammed overhead.
"I was afraid something like this would happen," Cristoff said, to no one in particular. "That's why when Mose kept dunning me to do the 'M. Night Shyamalan thing', I never dared to do it."
"Let me go talk to him," Sylvia said, heading for the stairs.
Peik moved to catch her arm, but Dietrich was a second quicker. He touched the outside of her elbow. "Perhaps you should wait a moment, give his temper some time to cool," he suggested.
"Maybe I can help cool it," she insisted. She mounted the stairs. Peik's eyes followed her up. Cristoff looked up after her.
"Truman's damn right," he admitted. "I screwed up his life.
"Not completely," Dietrich said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "He found Sylvia."
* * * * *
Sylvia tapped on Truman's door. No reply. She rapped louder. She heard a rustle behind the door, but nothing else.
"Truman?" she asked.
"Go away," his voice replied, muffled.
"Truman, it's me: it's Sylvia." She tried the door. It wasn't locked, but she didn't want to intrude.
After a moment, the door opened. Truman looked out at her, then stepped aside and let her in.
"All right, I'm sorry I acted like a spoiled kid, but if you've gone through the kind of stuff I've gone through these past few days, you'd forget your manners too," he said. "I wasn't thinking."
"I know you weren't, but just remember: Cristoff meant well," she said.
"Well, what do they say about the road to hell being paved with good intentions?" he asked, closing the door behind him.
"He made a terrible mistake, but some good came out of it," she said.
"Oh really?" he sneered, pacing around her. "Do you really mean that, or are you just an actress mouthing lines?"
She reached out to him. She took his face in her hands, covering his cheeks, turning his face to hers.
"No. I'm real. And my love for you is real."
He covered her hands with his. He drew her close and held her. He tried to hold it back, but he felt the tears come anyway. He leaned his face into her neck. She stroked him, consoling, almost motherly, but with a lover's passionate linger.
* * * * *
Downstairs, Cristoff turned to walk out. "I've burned out my welcome," he said. "I've injured him just by being here."
"No, Cristoff," Tenniel said. "He's just a scared young man who's had a long, confusing week. He'll calm down again, once he gets his shirt out of a knot, and if there's anyone who can do that, it's Sylvia."
"Even still, I should go," Cristoff said.
Dietrich put his hand on Cristoff's shoulder, gripping it firmly. "No, Cristoff: you can't go."
"I'd only be a burden to you," Cristoff said.
"You aren't a burden. I think the two of you need to ride this out together," Tenniel said.
"Besides, if you went now, who knows what Montressor has in store for you if your paths should cross," Jerry said, rolling his eyes.
"Peik's right: we've admitted you to our circle of confidence," Tenniel said. "You're with us. You can't go back any more than he can. We have to protect you too."
"You began this," Dietrich said, firmly, looking Cristoff in the eye. "You must help him complete this." He held out his hand, palm up.
Cristoff looked up at Dietrich. The man could probably twist both his arms off easily. He thought of rushing Peik, but the smaller man was probably just as hard to get past in a different way. And even if he got past them, he would have to deal with Montressor out there.
He had nothing left to lose.
He put his hand in Dietrich's. Peik covered it with his. Tenniel put his hand under Dietrich's and put his free hand on top.
"For Truman's sake," Cristoff said.
"You're in," Tenniel said. "But just remember what being in entails.
Cristoff nodded as they released his hand. "I know."
To be continued…
Through the Door in the Sky
By "Matrix Refugee"
Author's Note:
Remember this one??? I've neglected this one for far too long, but it has not
been an easy write. I have an idea how it ends, but getting to that ending has
been hard to figure out, plus I've had a few problems with some of my original
characters taking over the story, or at least trying to (Not Dietrich
Hohenzoller, he's too humble yet noble to do that, but Jerry Peik and Azor
Montressor are both another story). "fom4life" has been getting all over my rear
to finish this one, so here's the fourth part. Keep an eye out for a mild
discrepancy: there is more going on than meets the eye. Also, I added a few
details from the "History of 'The Truman Show'" which forms the forward of the
shooting script, which I have been using as a reference as I write this (when
I've been writing this. If only I could stop coming up with ideas for weird "Road
to Perdition" fics!)
Disclaimer:
See chapter I. WARNING: Mild slash (Montressor/Sweyk). Don't think that I regard
homosexuals as evil. Montressor doesn't count as such really because he's more
of a sexual omnivore than anything else…to put it mildly.
But first, the simulated movie credits; Hey, it's my fic…
Paramount Pictures presents
A Scott Rudin Production
A Peter Weir Film
The Truman Show II
Featuring
Ed Harris Otto Stuckmeyer Jude Law Joe Pantoliano
With Jake Jacobi as Montressor
And Themselves
Sylvia Thomas & Truman Burbank
Written by Andrew Niccol and R.C.H. Mulhare
Directed by Peter Weir
* * * * * *
Chapter IV: The Angry Confrontation
Mose, the executive producer of "the show" stood up behind his desk as the door of his office opened. Two huge men in long black leather jackets strode into the room, forcing back the secretary who opened the door.
As the big men came up to the desk, someone behind them reached up and pushed them aside, a smaller man in a gray shantung suit fitted to his lean frame under a black cloak lined with purple satin. A wide-brimmed black fedora with along peacock feather in the band sat tilted over his face, shading the whole left side of his visage. He paused, posed flamboyantly with his wrists resting on his lackeys' shoulders, then he took off his hat.
"Are all the papers in order?" Montressor asked.
"Yes, I just finished speaking with the legal department: We've released Truman's papers and turned them over to you, Azor," Mose said, pushing a contract across the desktop.
Montressor perched himself on the edge of the desk and picked up the contract. He scanned it over, his albinist eye blinking slightly.
"Yes…yes…everything is everything," Montressor purred. He laid the contract on the desktop, reached inside his jacket and drew out a fountain pen, uncapped it and, with a flourish, signed the document in what Mose hoped was only red ink.
He looked up at Mose. "So, you promise to let me bring Truman to his new residence cum place of employ in my own manner, without the intervention of any local, state, or Federal authorities?"
"He's out of our hands and into yours," Mose said, spreading his hands, hoping they didn't look helpless.
Montressor reached out with his piebald hand and patted Mose's cheek. That gesture alone made his skin start to crawl. "That's what I like to hear. Now, you won't have to look at my gorgeous face again, since I'll be out looking for my boy. You're a dear, anyone told you that? You find a good use for that cash: find yourself another child star."
Montressor stood up, putting his hat on his head. He grinned at Mose crookedly and strode for the door, his henchmen closing in behind him.
Mose breathed a sigh of relief, his sweat cold on his brow and the back of his neck. Now he just had to break the news to Cristoff…
* * * * *
Over breakfast on the back porch, Jerry and Sylvia shared crazy behind the scenes stories with Truman.
"Remember the college rowing club?" Sylvia asked.
"Ugh, not one of my favorite memories," Truman groaned.
"It was really funny behind the scenes," Sylvia said.
"Yeah, Cristoff wanted this one guy to half-drown, Harry le Drip we'll call him," Jerry continued. "But Harry le Drip didn't want to half-drown because he was afraid of completely drowning. So I offered to half-drown instead. I mean, it would look funnier: I was playing this stiff comic character; it would look funnier if the prissy rich guy almost drowns, then comes to and complains that he'd rather that he'd almost drowned in whatever-brand-bottled-water had made product placement that season.
"So we were rehearsing in the far side of the tank that surrounded the island. Everything was going normally, until the boat capsized and I go overboard. Then my rowing shorts caught on something and tore off completely. I mean, there I am in the altogether except for my tank top."
"Unfortunately, I happened to be looking in just the right place," Sylvia said, blushing.
"Uh oh!" Truman cried. "How dare you expose yourself in front of my future intended!
"She was a lady about it: she lobbed her sweater toward me and I covered myself up," Jerry concluded.
"Well, here's how I remember that incident: Marlon—or should I call him Lou Whatsizface?—he was trying to get me to join the rowing club and cure my water phobia that way. So he and Meryl dragged me to a rowing meet one day. And that very day, one of the star rowers almost drowns before my very eyes. So I bugged outta there. Never went back."
"You know why you were like that, don't you?" asked a deep voice.
The three of them looked up. Dietrich stood framed in the open door.
"I bet it had to do with that Cristoff dude you told me about," Truman said.
"It did: he bred this fear into you, cultivated it like a plant so you would stay put upon his island."
"So my father being lost at sea, Jerry almost drowning, that was part of the plan?" Truman asked.
"Yes."
Truman shook his head. "I guess it's something of a miracle that I got up the courage to escape across the water."
"You may want to gather your courage again for the news I have to break," Dietrich said. He drew in a long breath. "Montressor just signed an agreement with the executives of OmniCam: he owns you now."
Truman leaned forward in his chair, gripping the edge of the table, his mouth went slack. Sylvia put her hands on his shoulders.
"I guess I'd better start packing my bags," he said. "We can forget about the wedding plans."
"No, there's ways we can bypass Montressor's jackals. If we stay in one place as much as possible, that will help. But those of us who must go in and out will have to be on our guard more than ever," Dietrich said.
"Well, you and I will really have to keep our eyes peeled," Jerry said, getting up from the table and going in, letting Dietrich take over the watch.
Sylvia kneaded Truman's shoulders. "Hey, we can get through this if we stay together. It won't be long before all this is behind us and we can live in peace."
He clasped one of her hands in his. "But we gotta get married some time."
"We can secret a justice of the peace up here. Tenniel can pull it off."
* * * * *
Cristoff ran the cold-water faucet in his bathroom over his throbbing head.
The intercom buzzed. "Cris, are you alive in there? It's Mose."
"I'm in the bathroom!" Cristoff yelled, making his headache worse.
He lifted his dripping head from the basin as Mose walked in.
"Did they find him? Did they find Truman?" Cristoff asked.
Mose put his hand on Cristoff's shoulder. "This isn't easy news for me to break to you. But…we sealed the deal with Montressor."
Cristoff stared at Mose. He lifted his hand and pushed Mose's hand from his shoulder.
"You didn't."
"We had no choice. We just lost our best program, reruns or no reruns. Montressor's idea could work. They gave our show a chance, now it's time for Azor to take a turn."
"Azor's turn. You're calling him Azor now. Are you on that close terms with him already?"
"He has an interesting concept. There's only one way to find out how the audiences are going to accept it."
Cristoff pointed an accusing finger at Mose. "You know they won't take too well to it."
"The critics said that about our show."
"Montressor's show was nothing like mine. My work was meant to bring hope into the world, to the viewers. Montressor…I don't know what Montressor hopes to do except blacken their minds and hearts."
"You sound like a Republican."
"Don't care if I do!" Cristoff snapped back.
"Cris, my hands were tied. The network needs new blood."
"Azor Montressor will only drain your network. He's a vampire."
"My network? Cris, you built it up. If you want, you can stay on and help Azor get his feet on the ground."
"There is one person I am NOT going to help and that person is Azor Montressor, so you can take that thought and cram it up your nose!"
"Cris, please, be reasonable."
"There is nothing reasonable about your proposition. Now get out!"
Mose gave him an odd look. "All right, Cris, if that's what you want. But I'm afraid you won't be able to stay here in the apartment for much longer. You might want to start packing."
"OUT!!!"
Mose went out slowly.
Cristoff sat down on the edge of the bathtub. His head sank into his hands between his knees. He wept the tears he had been holding back.
* * * * *
Dietrich was on high alert that day. He had some of the grounds men start checking cars for stowaways as people came and went. Bettina told him it wasn't necessary with every vehicle, since she only had a hatch back Ford Probe, little chance for one of Montressor's spies to sneak in hidden in the back of that thing, which Jerry not too affectionately called a "roller-skate".
"Oh, you're calling it that because you drive a great big Land Rover," Bettina retorted, as they unloaded boxes of groceries from the back of the "Ford Probe Roller-Skate".
"Well, y' know, y' could stow the Probe in the back of the Land Rover and use that as an emergency car in case the Land Rover died," Truman suggested.
After lunch, Tenniel did something he considered vital to Truman's adjustment to the real world.
Sylvia knocked on the door of Truman's room. "Who goes there: friend or foe?" he demanded in a deep voice.
"A very good friend," she said. He threw the door open.
"Oh, THAT kind of friend!" he cried, grabbing her and kissing her a little too hard.
She pushed him off gently. "Tenniel wants to show you something downstairs. It's very important."
"Okay," Truman said, a little uncertain, but following her downstairs.
They went into the living room, where Tenniel was inserting a DVD into a player built into a TV with no receptor. The menu screen came up.
THE TRUMAN SHOW: EPISODE 9,855
Truman stood slightly aghast, staring at the screen blankly.
"You don't have to watch it if you don't want to," Tenniel said, his finger hovering over the "stop" button on the remote.
"I don't think I should…I mean, it might make me want to go back," Truman hesitated.
"I think when you see the show for yourself, it will give you some perspective on the whole phenomena," Tenniel said.
"Look at it as a very strange kind of out-of-body experience," Jerry said, from his seat by the window.
"Well…okay," Truman said, sitting down on the couch. "I'll watch it for all its worth."
"I'll be right here in case you have trouble," Sylvia promised, sitting down next to him.
Tenniel hit the "play" button.
The episode showed the day Truman and "Meryl"—Hannah Gill, or whatever her name was—bought their house: waking up in the room they had shared in his "mother's" house after they got back from their wedding/camping trip; breakfast; going to the realtor's office; looking at the fact sheets on several houses. They found a bungalow marketed as the perfect starter house. Truman noticed something a bit too chatty about the real estate agent, just a bit too salesman-like. But he probably hadn't noticed it then: he'd been too close to that world, and he'd still been in the honeymoon afterglow.
He'd haggled with the real estate woman: that sounded convincing, because he knew it wasn't acting. She'd given him a song and a dance, but he was as much a salesman as she was. They settled on a lower price of $50,000.
Tenniel fast-forwarded a few scenes just because it was connecting material: driving home, grocery shopping for Truman's "mother". He returned it to normal speed during the dinner scene so they could hear the conversation.
"God, what a bad actor," Jerry commented on Truman's "mother" otherwise known as Alanis Montclair. "Now just why did that woman win five Emmy awards in the last seven years?"
"She really wasn't a great actor, even if she was good at faking illnesses," Sylvia said.
"Faking in more ways than one," Truman commented ruefully.
"Now what makes you say that?" Tenniel asked, clearly knowing the answer yet clearly wanting to hear Truman elaborate on it himself.
"Well, she was faking it as an actress and as a hypochondriac," Truman said. "I always wondered if she was faking it, and I was gonna send her to a shrink. Imagine if I had tried."
"Yeah, they'd have had you go to a shrink," Jerry said.
They watched in silence for a while. Tenniel fast-forwarded it again through a scene with Truman (onscreen) and "Meryl" washing dishes, playing a board game with "mother"—it didn't surprise Truman that it was "Life"—then getting ready for the night. When "Meryl" and Truman (onscreen) started getting cozy, Truman himself had to look away.
"It's not so bad," Sylvia said. "But you don't have to watch."
He peeked out of the corner of his eye. The camera had cut to the curtains blowing in the wind, the moon shining through the window.
"Had enough?" Tenniel asked.
"That's enough for me," Jerry said.
"Yes, thanks," Sylvia said.
Tenniel hit the stop button on the remote, got up and ejected the disk.
Truman sat with his hands gripping his knees. He shook his head, trying to clear it, breathing hard. "It was all so real," he said. "But it wasn't."
"Do you wish you could go back?" Sylvia asked.
"I want to keep going forward, but part of me just wishes it could all be like it was before," he said, turning his hands over, empty.
"You know you can't go back," Jerry said, dead sober. "There's probably nothing left to go back to. There's no other choice left."
Truman breathed freely again. "Okay, okay…I'm okay…just got cold feet for a second there."
* * * * *
That evening, the company was a little subdued at supper. Even Jerry's usual chatter seemed dampened.
Sylvia offered to help Bettina and Marcus with the dishes. Dietrich went out to collect the mail and check on how matters stood at the offices of the TLF during Jerry's watch.
"Permission to go out for a breath of fresh air?" Truman asked Tenniel, as the chief collected the dishes and brought them to the kitchen.
"Of course," Tenniel said, mock severe. "But don't be out more than a half an hour or else you next turn will be docketed."
"I'll make sure he doesn't," Jerry said, dead pan, but with a gleam in his eye.
"You getting stir-crazy?" Jerry asked when they were outside.
"A little," Truman admitted. "But I should be used to it after being cooped up in that fortress for twenty-nine years."
"You mean the EcoSphere," Jerry said. "Yeah, but you had no clue that there was much else beyond that. Imagine being part of the supporting cast, being cooped up in that place for weeks at a time, not much contact with the outside world, and pretending to be a different person for most of the day. That happened to me when I worked there. Very schizophrenic way to live: I used to almost forget I was Jerry Peik sometimes when I finally got out."
"Gee, and I thought I had it bad."
"Mm, and neither of us had it as bad as Dietrich had it working for Montressor."
"He told you any particulars?"
"Not by word of mouth. I found it out the hard way. When I lost my apartment, I stayed with him for a while. Third night I stayed there, he woke me up, screaming. He'd had a nightmare about Montressor. That's the only time I've ever seen him that scared. His back is all scarred up from floggings Montressor had his goons give him when he—Dietrich that is—tried to back out."
"That's horrible," Truman said.
"Yeah, I actually watched an old episode of a series Montressor did years ago," Jerry screwed up his face and shook his head. "Bad stuff. I mean, adult content is one thing, but this was horrible. This stuff would make David Cronenberg movies look like Frank Capra's stuff." He looked at Truman, realizing his misstep. "Oops, sorry, I forgot you've never seen anything higher than PG-13."
"Well, Marlon or whatzisface smuggled a copy of Playboy into the house once, and I really caught it from my mother."
"Even THAT is very mild compared to Montressor's work."
"Speaking of adult stuff, not to sound prying but, uh, did Dietrich ever like y' know, try the moves on you?"
"Nah, that's just the way he is. In all the years I've known him, I've never seen him even have a crush on anyone," Jerry said.
"I'd think he'd be tempted."
"He knows I'm not that type, not to say he hasn't had his share of curiosity about me and some sublimated interest."
"That doesn't bother you?"
"He wasn't the first and he probably won't be the last. Besides, as long as no one is stalking me or trying to kill me, I've nothing to worry about."
Truman changed the subject. "So, as far as getting me out is concerned, where do we go from here?"
"We're proceeding with caution now. But according to Dietrich, the Montressor expert, the little rat is likely to celebrate his victory with a two-day orgy, which buys us a little time but not much."
"Guess we better budget that time. Sylvia and I had better get hitched soon, otherwise we might not live long enough to share the same last name," Truman said.
"Okay, my turn to ask a personal question: did you and that other woman wait for the ring?"
Truman wagged his head. "Not all the way; that woman who was my mother would have taken a fit if she'd found out, and even if she didn't ask me outright, she'd have weaseled it out of me somehow. She was the kind of person you couldn't keep stuff from." He paused. "I suppose that Cristoff dude who ran the zoo ordered her to do that to me." In a gravelly, gangsterish voice, he said, "Aw right, yer not gonna let that kid do nothin' behind yah back, right? And if he tries to hide somethin' from yah, whaddya do? Yah gonna get on his case till he sings, right? Riiiiggghht." In a swoony falsetto, he added, "Oh yes, boss Cristoff, anything you say!"
Jerry laughed. "God, you should have been an actor."
Truman shoved him playfully as he said, "Peik, I WAS an actor for the past twenty-nine years."
"I suppose it wouldn't be too fahr-fetched for yew to resohrt to that other grayt Amerric'n spohrt: litigaysh'n," Jerry said. He suddenly shook his head and cleared his throat noisily. Truman eyed him, wondering if this might be some kind of odd Canadian joke.
"Yeah, I thought about that. Not a bad idea: sue the OmniCam Corporation for twenty-nine years back wages. It was white slavery, right?"
"That's how we described it. The TLF always said that Lincoln abolished slavery in the States, but OmniCam brought it back, in a far more insidious incarnation."
"You're darn right there," Truman said.
They both were thoughtfully quiet for a long while. Jerry fell back a little ways, giving Truman some space. Truman looked up at the darkening sky above. A white light showed over the treetops. He paused to watch it.
A yellow-white orb lifted over the trees.
Truman looked at Jerry. "So that's the moon."
"Is it real?" Jerry asked in a tremulous squeak, like a child's voice. In his normal voice, he added, "Yeah, that used to bug me something awful. The moon in the EcoSphere never moved. Know why?"
"Of course not."
"It was a screen for the window of Cristoff's apartment on the roof of the EcoSphere. Oh, that drove me nuts: look up at the sky in the middle of the day. Oh, there's the moon, there for all to see, never moves. I was glad to get out of that madhouse when Cristoff fired me." He looked at Truman. "But not so glad as you must have been."
"I don't know…with this Montressor goon buying me, it might have been better if I'd stayed put," Truman said, shaking his head and turning away.
Jerry grabbed him from behind and spun him around to face him. His green eyes smoldered with irritation.
"Listen, fella, there's no going back there. Dietrich could tell you better and maybe he should," he said, dead serious.
"Isn't there some way we could turn this all around, put things back the way they were?" Truman asked.
Jerry's fingers on his shoulders twitched ever so slightly, but a paroxysm of pain shot through Truman's nerves so that he almost fell to his knees. Jerry let him go. Truman staggered back.
"I didn't want to have to do it that way, but I thought it best to give you a small taste of what Montressor might have in store for you," Jerry said, apologetic.
"Maybe I better go in," Truman said, rubbing his aching shoulders.
"Yeah, Dietrich won't want to find you out here when he gets back."
"Wouldn't want to have someone that big mad at me. Especially if guys my size can almost floor me."
"Nah, Dietrich's a big fuzzball: you have to do something really nasty before he'll do some major damage to you, unless you've done something to warrant a counter assault."
"Montressor couldn't get past him, eh?"
"They'd have to get past me first," Jerry said.
"Oh, send in the skinny kid first."
"Yup, nothing beats David against Goliath before you bring out the heavy artillery."
"And Dietrich is some really heavy artillery."
"You ain't kiddin'."
"I bet Dietrich could make mincemeat outta Montressor."
"Might take some doing getting at him."
"Oh, yeah, those big goons he sends around."
"You seen 'em?"
"I spotted 'em the first day I escaped," he shivered.
"I second the motion," Jerry said, fitting the action to the words.
* * * * *
Dietrich carefully avoided the main roads as he came back from checking the main office of the TLF, collecting the mail, making sure nothing had happened. No more arson… By now Montressor would be too drugged or drunk or screwed or gorged to send his henchmen out.
But he realized such generalizations could land him in trouble. Montressor was as violent and unpredictable as the wind.
He headed back to the cottage by yet another indirect route. He came within sight of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel; he glanced up at it, wondering if Montressor had encamped there as he always did when he was in L.A.
* * * * *
At that moment, Sweyk was coming up the stairs to the penthouse. Gregor the front guard let him in, looking disappointed that the man at the door wasn't an intruder he could rough up.
"How's the old man?" Sweyk asked.
"As wound tight as the bark on a tree and ready to pass out, whichever he does first," Gregor said.
"The usual post-celebration stuff, I hear yah," Sweyk said, heading on into the front room.
He found Montressor sitting sprawled out in his armchair, his head slung back, mouth slack, eyes a little glassy. The collar of his shirt and his vest hung open. He cradled the swollen left side of his belly on the inside of one forearm.
Montressor lifted his head, his eyes slightly unfocussed. "Holla, Sweyk!" he said a little thickly. "Anything to report?"
"Not much action down to TLF HQ," Sweyk said.
A grin crossed Montressor's face. "Not watching their back door, eh? Perhaps then we should make things a little hot for them."
"Want us to teach 'em a little thing or two? Is the timing right?"
"You've learned well," Montressor said. "But first…help me to rise. I sat down and got stuck."
"Want me to pull yah out?"
Montressor snorted. "Don't be ridiculous; I'm not that bloated."
Sweyk took Montressor's hand and helped him to rise. He supported the smaller man along the hallway to the bedroom. Montressor stumbled once, veering to the left, pulling Sweyk that way.
"Whadja do? Consume all 2,000 calories at one sitting?" Sweyk grunted.
Righting himself, Montressor shoved Sweyk against the wall. "One more crack out of you and I just might have you for dessert—you're lucky I'm too logy to do much to you." He bit Sweyk on the ear so hard the larger man yelped.
"Not yet, not yet," Montressor purred, letting go of Sweyk's ear. They continued down the hallway.
"So you want us to put the burn on the TLF?" Sweyk asked at the door to Montressor's chamber.
"By all means: Hohenzoller will be expecting me to be out of commission. He's forgotten a lot of things about me," Montressor said, leaning against the doorpost. "Go to it, Sweyk."
"Y' don't have to tell me twice."
* * * * *
On the route back to the cottage, Dietrich took the same road from which branched the access road to the EcoSphere. He passed by the forest that half-concealed most of the bulk of the structure. The dome hulked above the treetops, gleaming in the moonlight, the exposed support armatures on the outside like silvered cobwebs.
He drove past the access road, but after a few hundred yards, he pulled the car over and U-turned, heading back.
He drove up the access road. The gates stood open. A shake down crew was going in and out of the building, removing loads of set pieces. They took no notice of him as he pulled the car behind the parked trucks. He got out and crossed the yard purposefully. In his black leather windbreaker, military fatigue pants and combat shoes, he looked like a security guard, so he blended in.
He tested several doors as if he were a guard. Finding one open, he let himself in.
* * * * *
Cristoff sat in his front room, near the glass table on which lay the handgun. His hands hung clasped between his knees. Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" played on the stereo. He breathed deeply, evenly, trying to clear his head and get his resolve to kick in.
They say mortal wounds give no pain.
His life's work cut short, his star player vanished and now sold to the likes of Azor Montressor. He had lived too long. He was only sixty and robust for his age, but he felt older than that.
He drew in a long breath. He made his hand reach for the gun, his eyes staring straight ahead, not tracking with his head, not panning toward the table. His hand closed on the gunstock, feeling without feeling the rubberized metal grip.
He held the gun in both hands, weighing it in his palms. The lamplight shone dully on the barrel.
Something rattled at the door, probably just the night watchman testing the lock. Cristoff waited for him to pass on.
He ejected the clip and checked it. One bullet left. That was all it would take, but that was all he had.
The door creaked open.
He pressed the muzzle under his jaw, pointing up. He started to thumb off the safety.
A shadow fell over him.
"Mr. Cristoff?" asked a deep voice behind him.
Cristoff whirled round in his chair. A tall, bulky man in a black leather jacket stood behind him. Cristoff rose, stepping back. Who was Montressor sending now?
"How did you get in here?" he demanded.
"Your door was unlocked. It is not fit for a man like you to seal himself up in a room."
"Who are you and what do you propose to do?"
"My name is Dietrich Hohenzoller. I'm a private detective, but now I work for the TLF…I also urge you to put down the gun, you don't want to do that," the tall man said.
"What in hell makes you say that? My life is of no use to anyone now, least of all myself," Cristoff rasped.
"Yes, it is of use to someone. Truman needs to hear your side of the story. You brought him to this place, but I think you can help him cut the last ties to it."
"Truman is…alive?"
"Yes. He's in a safe place, but he can't stay there much longer before Montressor gets wise to us."
"He doesn't want to hear it," Cristoff said, shaking his head. "He won't want to see me."
"That may be so, but it will do the both of you much good," Hohenzoller held out his hand, open, palm up. "Give me the gun."
Cristoff held out the gun, his hands opening over it, nerveless. Hohenzoller took it and removed the clip, putting the gun in one pocket, the clip in another.
"How?"
"You alone know what you must tell him. Come with me."
"I can't. He won't want to hear a word I have to say."
"That may be so, but you both need to face one another so that you may go on."
Cristoff drew in a long breath. "All right. I'm coming with you."
* * * * *
Sylvia sat in the living room with Truman, telling him more about what her life had been like before and since "the show", when Jerry and Tenniel suddenly came into the room.
"Truman, Hohenzoller has brought in a visitor for you," Tenniel said.
"Okay, but, uh, can you tell me who it is?" Truman asked, uncertain.
"'Fraid not, it would spoil the effect," Jerry said. He stepped aside from the doorway.
A tall man clad in a black jersey over black slacks entered, a gray beret covering his bald head and he squinted at the world through metal-rimmed glasses.
"Who are you?" Truman asked.
"I'm Cristoff," the stranger said.
"Oh, it's you," Truman snarled, doubling his fists. "You're the one who got me into this mess, the one who cooped me up in that mock-up small town. How do I know if you're really Cristoff and you're not that Montressor creep that's on my tail."
"I knew Montressor very well: this is not he," Dietrich said.
"I don't know if I trust that: I'm beginning to wonder what's real and what isn't," Truman said.
"You're real, Truman," the stranger said.
Truman looked at him.
The voice…that was the same voice that had spoken to him out of the sky when he had stood before the open door in the painted backdrop.
"If you're Cristoff, why did you do that to me? Can't you see how it fouled up my life?"
"I never intended to mess up your life. I only wanted to protect you from the horrors of the real world."
"But why protect me? You only made it worse for me!"
"If we're going to get anywhere, perhaps I should explain myself.
"I came from a very broken home. My father was a drug addict. My mother had to work as a call girl. Granted, she worked for a high class escort service, but she basically was supporting my father's habit—the man was a genius of a photographer when he wasn't stoned; he could have supported my sisters and I very handsomely if he ever put his talent to good use.
"When I was eleven, Social Services finally stepped in and took us away from my parents, put us in the care of my uncle, my father's brother, who was in advertising, doing commercials. He recognized my talent and encouraged it, disciplined my gifts. He never told us outright that he loved us, but he had his own way of showing, by taking reels and reels of 8mm film of us, not just at big things like birthdays and Christmas, but ordinary stuff: washing dishes, cleaning our rooms, feeding the dog, doing yard work, waiting for the school bus.
"I got an idea when I was sixteen to do a movie that would follow someone for a whole day, tastefully showing their every move. I quit high school and enrolled in a film school. My first effort was a twelve-hour long version of my adoptive father's home movies of my sisters and I, which I called "A Life in a Day". It won a few modest awards at a few independent film festivals. One of my classmates, Mose Meyers, suggested we shoot a reality film about homeless people in an empty building his father owned. Mose even dressed like a homeless man and moved around among them. We got in touch with a small cable channel owned by a company that made spy cameras for the CIA. They broadcasted a somewhat censored version of it, uninterrupted. Most people jumped on it for its somewhat sensational appeal, but some people called it far too realistic."
"I imagine it was," Truman said.
"I wasn't for everyone, I won't deny, but we had to start somewhere," Cristoff admitted. "I've always been an admirer of the classic films of the 19 30s and '40s, particularly the films of Frank Capra."
"Oh, so that's why the TV channels in Sea Haven ran a lot of that stuff," Truman cut in.
"I only wanted the best for your world," Cristoff admitted.
"Let him finish his story," Sylvia pleaded.
"Go on," Truman mumbled.
"I wanted to do something along the lines of the first half of It's a Wonderful Life, where you see the hero's life from his childhood up to the present day of the story, only I wanted to expand on it: I wanted to show one man's life from his birth onwards. Mose found five different unwed mothers whose due dates were before the estimated air date of the show, which went by the working title of 'Bringing up Baby', but which we later changed to The Truman Show, when we decided on a name for the future star.
"We started out very small, with just the interior set of Truman's—I mean, your house, first your nursery, then expanding as you got bigger. At the same time, several corporations had joined forces to construct what would eventually become the world's largest soundstage."
"The fortress," Truman said. "That's what I call it."
"It's actually called the EcoSphere, but you can call it what you like now."
"So that's all I am to you? An actor in a crap TV show? I'm a living, breath human being, goddammit!"
"I know you are," Cristoff said, calmly. "I wanted you to have the kind of life I wanted to have. I wanted you to know safety, and shelter, and security. I wanted you to have the kind of childhood I wished I could have had. All parents do."
"If I am your son, you've done one lousy job of being a father," Truman rasped, just above a whisper.
Cristoff drew in a long breath. "I don't deny that. But you have to realize what kind of a situation I was in."
"Why didn't you think about the situation you put me in?!" Truman screamed. "What's real? Huh? Tell me! What is real? How do you define real in that screwed up head of yours, huh? Don't give me any quick answers, 'cause I don't have time for 'em."
Cristoff looked at him. His lips parted slightly as if he were about to say something. But he pressed his mouth shut.
Silence filled the room. Peik's eyes roved from one face to another; Sylvia put her hand on Truman's shoulder, but he took no notice. Tenniel's jaw clenched and relaxed, almost nervously. Dietrich maintained his usual calm stoicism.
Cristoff's gaze had dropped to the floor. His hands hung slack on his thighs.
He looked up. "I'm sorry, Truman, but I don't have an easy answer for you, except that I'm sorry for what I've put you through."
"ENNNHH!" Truman said, making a noise like a gameshow buzzer. "That's not a good enough answer to fix the last twenty-nine years of my life. Ex-cuse me."
With that he strode out of the room. They heard his feet clatter on the stairs. Then a door slammed overhead.
"I was afraid something like this would happen," Cristoff said, to no one in particular. "That's why when Mose kept dunning me to do the 'M. Night Shyamalan thing', I never dared to do it."
"Let me go talk to him," Sylvia said, heading for the stairs.
Peik moved to catch her arm, but Dietrich was a second quicker. He touched the outside of her elbow. "Perhaps you should wait a moment, give his temper some time to cool," he suggested.
"Maybe I can help cool it," she insisted. She mounted the stairs. Peik's eyes followed her up. Cristoff looked up after her.
"Truman's damn right," he admitted. "I screwed up his life.
"Not completely," Dietrich said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "He found Sylvia."
* * * * *
Sylvia tapped on Truman's door. No reply. She rapped louder. She heard a rustle behind the door, but nothing else.
"Truman?" she asked.
"Go away," his voice replied, muffled.
"Truman, it's me: it's Sylvia." She tried the door. It wasn't locked, but she didn't want to intrude.
After a moment, the door opened. Truman looked out at her, then stepped aside and let her in.
"All right, I'm sorry I acted like a spoiled kid, but if you've gone through the kind of stuff I've gone through these past few days, you'd forget your manners too," he said. "I wasn't thinking."
"I know you weren't, but just remember: Cristoff meant well," she said.
"Well, what do they say about the road to hell being paved with good intentions?" he asked, closing the door behind him.
"He made a terrible mistake, but some good came out of it," she said.
"Oh really?" he sneered, pacing around her. "Do you really mean that, or are you just an actress mouthing lines?"
She reached out to him. She took his face in her hands, covering his cheeks, turning his face to hers.
"No. I'm real. And my love for you is real."
He covered her hands with his. He drew her close and held her. He tried to hold it back, but he felt the tears come anyway. He leaned his face into her neck. She stroked him, consoling, almost motherly, but with a lover's passionate linger.
* * * * *
Downstairs, Cristoff turned to walk out. "I've burned out my welcome," he said. "I've injured him just by being here."
"No, Cristoff," Tenniel said. "He's just a scared young man who's had a long, confusing week. He'll calm down again, once he gets his shirt out of a knot, and if there's anyone who can do that, it's Sylvia."
"Even still, I should go," Cristoff said.
Dietrich put his hand on Cristoff's shoulder, gripping it firmly. "No, Cristoff: you can't go."
"I'd only be a burden to you," Cristoff said.
"You aren't a burden. I think the two of you need to ride this out together," Tenniel said.
"Besides, if you went now, who knows what Montressor has in store for you if your paths should cross," Jerry said, rolling his eyes.
"Peik's right: we've admitted you to our circle of confidence," Tenniel said. "You're with us. You can't go back any more than he can. We have to protect you too."
"You began this," Dietrich said, firmly, looking Cristoff in the eye. "You must help him complete this." He held out his hand, palm up.
Cristoff looked up at Dietrich. The man could probably twist both his arms off easily. He thought of rushing Peik, but the smaller man was probably just as hard to get past in a different way. And even if he got past them, he would have to deal with Montressor out there.
He had nothing left to lose.
He put his hand in Dietrich's. Peik covered it with his. Tenniel put his hand under Dietrich's and put his free hand on top.
"For Truman's sake," Cristoff said.
"You're in," Tenniel said. "But just remember what being in entails.
Cristoff nodded as they released his hand. "I know."
To be continued…