Alternate Gerrolds by David Gerrold Read Free Book Online Page B

answered questions, and the excitement just grew and grew and grew.
    Of course, when Jack came out, the place went wild. It was like election night. There were people there wearing KENNEDY FOR PRESIDENT buttons. Like he was really the character he played. They loved him. And he loved being loved. Whatever else you might say about Jack Kennedy, he knew how to make love to an audience. Style and grace. That was Jack all over.
    Y’know, I saw the Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl. All three concerts. And I never saw that kind of hysteria, not even when Ringo threw jellybeans at the audience. But the Trackers—I thought they were going to scream the walls down.
    Jack was glowing. His wife had just turned to him and whispered, “Well, you can’t say they don’t love you now—” when it happened.
    At first, I thought it was a car backfiring. It didn’t sound like a gunshot at all. In fact, most people were puzzled at the sound. It all happened so fast. Then Jack grabbed his throat, and I guess for a second, we all thought he was joking. Y’know how you do: “Augh, they got me—” But he had this real stupid look on his face—confused, like. Then the second and third shots went off—and it was the third shot that killed him. And that’s when the screaming started. And the panic. All those people injured and killed, suffocated in the
crush. It was terrible. Everybody running. I can still see it. I still get nightmares.
    I’ve always been amazed they caught the little bastard who did it. Sirhan Sirhan. I’ll never forget his name. Another one of those nerdy little geeks who never had a life of his own. He lived inside the TV. He thought it was real. Half a dozen of those really big women we see at all the conventions just jumped the poor son of a bitch and flattened him. They were outraged that someone would dare to attack their captain. Sirhan was lucky to escape with his balls still attached.
    Y’know, later some of the witnesses said that Sirhan kept yelling, “Wait, wait—I can explain!” Like you can explain a thing like that? It didn’t make any sense then. It doesn’t make any sense now, no matter how many articles William F. Buckley and Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe write about it.
    You know what it was? Sirhan never forgave us for replacing Kirk and Spock with Logan and REM. He said we’d ruined the whole show.
    But that’s not even the half of it. You want to know the rest of the cosmic joke? Bugliosi, the district attorney, told me later on. Sirhan was aiming at Bobby and missed. Three times! Bobby was standing just behind Jack, but that kid couldn’t shoot worth shit. I think if he’d have hit Bobby, the industry would have given him a medal. Instead, he got the gas chamber and a movie of the week.
    But now—y’know, I think back on it, and I see how stupid we all were. We didn’t know the power of television. None of us did. We didn’t even suspect.
    Jack knew, I think. Bobby knew for sure. He knew that you could change the way people think and feel and vote just by what you put on the screen. Bobby knew that. He had the vision. But he was never the same after that. How could you be? The whole thing scared the hell out of all of us—the whole industry. NBC cancelled the show, but they couldn’t cancel the nightmares.
    Y’ask me, I think that was the turning point in the sixties—the killing of Kennedy. That’s when it all started going bad. That’s when we all went crazy and started tearing things down. But, oh, hell—that’s old news. Everybody knows it.
    Now, we’ve got the Kennedy mystique and Star Track: The New Voyages. And ... it’s all shit. It’s just ... so much merchandise. Whatever might have been true or meaningful or wonderful about Star Track is
gone. It’s all been eaten up by the lawyers and the fans and the publicity department.
    Don’t take this personally, but I don’t trust anybody under thirty. I don’t think any of you understand what happened then. It was