Elvis Invictus

Judith Tarr

A more than slightly off-the-wall sequel to “Them Old Hyannis Blues”

I. Pater Patriae

Elvis Presley, The First Four Years: A Presidential Album

1. From a Jack to a King: After the Inaugural. There they are, posed on the steps of the Ritchie Valens Center for the Performing Arts, the President magisterial in white tie and tails, the First Lady floating in a sea of white tulle. No hint in this official portrait of the tragedy that struck the Inaugural Ball: Secretary of State Lennon gunned down by terrorists; Vice President King narrowly escaped from a similar fate, the President’s life saved by the lead singer of the Kennedy Brothers musical combo. The show must go on, the President’s expression declares. All’s quiet on the Potomac front. No bad omens for the new, young, radical Administration.
2. Kissin’ Cousins: Swearing In the New Secretary of State. The freshly minted Secretary has a new set of hornrims for the occasion. Grave responsibilities await him in the international arena—and like rot, as the late, lamented Mr. Lennon would have said. Secretary Holly keeps a diplomatic distance from President Presley, but their wives, arm in arm, proclaim the close relations between the two families.
3. For the Good Times: At Home in the White House. A rare opportunity for the public eye to examine the private life of the First Family. Matriarch Dolly oversees a Rose Garden outing. Elvis, Jr. gives little Mary Lee a riding lesson on the Presidential pony, Heartbreak. Verne and Jeff David romp with two of the family’s black-and-tan hounds. The bitch, Nancy, will drop her litter two days after the photograph is taken: ten prime puppies. Sale of the litter will benefit Dolly’s favored cause, the Butterflies-Aren’t-Free Foundation.
4. Treat Me Nice: With King Vladimir III of Russia. The major diplomatic triumph of the President’s first Administration: the Congress of Vienna (that’s the Opera House behind the dignitaries). King Vladimir, having agreed to open diplomatic relations with the Cossack Republics and the Grand Khanate of Tartary, appears rarely pleased to be in the President’s company. Secretary of State Holly tries to efface himself in the background. Note Elvis, Jr.—he has his father’s looks—with the lovely young lady in red. A celebrated romance is about to begin between the First Son of the Grand Republic and the Tsaritsa of All the Russias.
5. Trouble: The Banana Boat Crisis. Next to the greatest triumph, the greatest frustration. The President, in fatigues, views the wreckage of the American embassy in Costa Chiquita. The first all-female unit in Marine history stands guard. Two Medals of Honor and many Purple Hearts later, the Fighting Amazons will be forced to withdraw to Grenada, leaving the field—or rather the banana plantation—to the People’s Army. President Presley vows, “I shall return.”
6. The Wonder of You: Gala in Graceland. Home at last for a splendid occasion: the reception in honor of the year’s American Nobel Prize winners. The President and the First Lady stand proudly with the three laureates: Asimov—onetime chemist, world-renowned roboticist, cited for his work in artificial intelligence and the Laws of Robotics. Clarke—astronomer, cosmologist, explorer of the bizarre magnetic anomaly on the Moon. And Heinlein, author and admiral, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. The gala is an unqualified success. When it winds down, the laureates and the President will decamp to the Ritz Graceland and celebrate till dawn in a mob of well-wishers, fellow dignitaries, and science-fiction fans. The Secret Service will cope.
7. Good Rockin’ Tonight: Jamming in the White House Studio. The President unbuttons for an old-time hoedown. Mad Jack Kennedy shares the mike in a rendition of “Graceland on My Mind.” Dolly adds her voice to the chorus. The backup band is a stellar gathering: Secretary of State Holly, Attorney General Ellington, Vice President King, and Prime Minister Starr of United Britain at the drums. Kennedy will refuse appointment to the Cabinet as Secretary of Defense. His brother, Teddy, will take his place, signaling the entry into politics of a famous musical family.
8. It’s Now or Never: At the Mars Shot. A dream fulfilled: the first expedition to Mars blasts off from Cape Lennon. Inset shows the President with the crew. The President seems as elated as the astronauts—but is that a suggestion of sadness? Envy, maybe? “If I have to be remembered for only one thing,” the President says, “I want to be remembered for this.” Protesters pack the gates, demanding the lifting of the banana embargo.
9. Suspicious Minds: Running for Reelection. Debating the Hollywood Faction. President Presley faces off against candidates Ronald Reagan (Democrat) and Woodrow “Woody” Allen (Independent). Reagan’s Let-It-All-Hang-Out Economics vies with Allen’s Government-as-Yenta. Sharp attacks on the President’s Banana Republic policy, his handling of the People’s War in Berkeley, and his rockabilly adaptation of “Rock of Ages.” He counters with copious examples of his policies of moderation, modernization, and world unity. The conclusion is foregone. Even in this blurred newspaper shot, we see the President looking ahead to his second term, with its new triumphs, its new defeats, and its ever-new promise of photo opportunities.

II. Rex Gloriosus

“What I did on My Summer Vacation”

What I did on my summer vacation was, I went to see the King.

Momma collects kings. We saw King Ronnie in California del Sud last year, and the year before that we went all the way to All the Russias (actually, there’s just one, but they like to make it look like a lot) and saw Tsarina Tatiana and her husband, Prince Elvis. Momma said Prince Elvis looks just like his daddy did when he was his age, so I sort of knew what to expect when we went to see the King—the real King—in Graceland.

He used to be President. We studied that in Social Studies last year, and I got an A on the test. I wrote an essay about how Presidents got worn out and President Danforth’s government went to pieces and we ended up with kings and dictators and anarchs and presidents-for-life and queens-for-a-day. It’s hard to collect queens-for-a-day, they really add up and you have to get there before the midnight execution, which is tough if you just found out this morning and all the flights are booked, but kings stay around for a while.

So we went to see the King. Momma saw him a long time ago, when he first got elected King, after he stopped being President and Junior married the Princess of All the Russias and little Mary Lee went to be Dictator-for-the-Revolution of Mars Colony. He was the first King in her collection. Now she’s got six dozen, less one, and she decided she’d collect him again. Besides, Aunt Hattie’s something important in Graceland Palace, and she said she could get us in and actually meet him.

We never met a king momma’s collected before. We met Prince Charles in London, but he doesn’t really count, and King Billy in Plains wasn’t really a king, he just said he was. Momma actually thought about leaving me at home with Daddy and Grandma and Graciebot and the babies, but I said she’d been collecting kings with me since I was a fetus, it wasn’t fair if she stopped just when it was starting to get good.

Momma cares about fair, but she doesn’t sell it cheap. I had to wear a dress—a real dress, no cheating with wide-bottom pants—and I had to promise not to speak unless spoken to. That almost decided me into staying home, but I’m as stubborn as momma is. I put on the dress and buttoned my lip, and off we went to Graceland.

Graceland’s kind of like Buckingham Palace, and kind of like Versailles (we collected King Louis XXVII there), but not as tacky. The Royal Guard wears white sequins and long sideburns and carries pearl-handled pistols. One of them met us when we drove up in the taxi. He checked momma’s papers and acted like we were some kind of royalty, bowing and ma’aming and calling me Miz Rollins.

“Actually,” I was all set to say, “Billie Sue Rollins is just my nom de plum. I’m really Lady Gloriana Alexandra von Roehling. You can call me Your Ladyship.” But momma gave me a Look and I didn’t say it.

When I’m eighteen, you bet I get my name changed.

Meanwhile I’m just twelve—well, eleven and a half—and momma wasn’t having any of what she called nonsense. So I kept quiet and followed along after the guard in the sequins, and kept half an eye on momma. Momma was looking like she got escorted into Graceland Palace every day, nice and calm, with her best dress on, the one with the blue suede skirt and shoes to match, and her jacket with the sequins and the fringe, and her hair in a Dolly do, platinum curls all over and puffs out to here. I wanted one, too, but momma said no. So I was stuck with my boring old red curly top.

We must have walked forever. We kept getting passed on to different people. Each one was fancier than the last one, but they all called momma ma’am.

I know we’re supposed to do a lot of description, and I should write all about the mirrors and glass and fancy tassels and pretty-colored carpets, but I was too busy looking around to really see much of anything, and it’s a lie to make it up, isn’t it? Even if I do get points off my grade. Anyway, it was mostly just lots of things. Lots of doors. Lots of stairs. Lots of shiny floors. They were all so slippery I had to creep along on my slick new shoe-soles. I wondered how the people who lived there did it. Maybe they skated when people weren’t looking.

“Sticky tape,” momma whispered when I asked. She wasn’t missing a step in her high, high heels. Just after she said that, the guard opened a door, and there we were.

I was kind of disappointed. You know all the pictures, how they show the King on his throne that they made out of a white Cadillac, in white fur and blue suede and of course sequins, with his crown on his head dazzling fit to make you blind. I’d brought my sunglasses just in case, had them right in my little bag, and I was all set for the long, long hall with the white carpet, and all the bows you had to make in the movies, and lords and ladies bowing back, and trumpets, and everybody’s name called out when they came in.

What we got was a room. It was ordinary, kind of. I mean it was big and everything, and it had a white carpet, but it wasn’t the throne room. The furniture in it was just furniture, chairs and things, and people were standing around, like when daddy does his real-estate cocktail parties at the Dewdrop Inn.

I got my name called out, sure enough. “Billie Sue!” in a honk like a foghorn, and there was Aunt Hattie bearing down on us, all set to hug me to death. I could lip-synch the script, she’s been on it since momma was a baby, practically. “Billie Sue! Oh, you’ve grown! Hasn’t she grown, Linda Mae? Why, she’s almost as big as you are!”

I wanted to crawl right down between the floorboards, if there’d been any, which there weren’t, this being Graceland. It was marble clear down to China.

Momma looked kind of put out herself. She wore her company smile, the one she puts on when daddy’s had too many extra cocktails and it’s time to get home. “Harriet. How wonderful to see you. Thank you so much for inviting us.”

“Oh, don’t thank me,” said Aunt Hattie. “Thank his majesty here.”

And there he was. I looked right past him the first time, looking for somebody who looked like Prince Elvis. Prince Elvis is old—he must be almost thirty—but he’s got these swoony eyes and all that black hair, and he looks at you just right, and—

Well, anyway. We’re all sorry Prince Elvis is married. So I was looking for him, you know, but older.

Good thing momma made me button my lip. The King didn’t look anything like his pictures. He was fat, for one thing. He had a suit like daddy’s friend Joe Bob wears, it tried to make him look thin, but it didn’t work. There weren’t any sequins on the suit. At all. And he wasn’t wearing his crown.

You collect kings as long as momma and I have, you get so you know kings are people, too. But if you’re going to meet them in person, right there to talk to, you’d think they’d dress up a little, put a crown on, play it up.

He did have a nice voice. He said hello to momma and hello to me. He said momma was looking right pretty, and he said he was sorry Dolly couldn’t be there but she was out saving the butterflies or something. Momma said thank you and that’s too bad and yes isn’t it a nice day.

I didn’t say anything. I guess I mumbled something when he said hello, but that was it. Everybody says I should have asked him things, like had Nancy the Tenth had her puppies yet and was he going to visit Mary Lee on Mars and did he really write the words to the Banana Boat Song. But come right down to it, I was tongue-tied. He looked at me, see. He gave me that little smile he has, that all the boys try to do but they only look stupid.

And I couldn’t say a word. Boring old suit and no throne and big gut and all, he was the King. Even if he didn’t wear his blue suede shoes.

He had to go away and do something important, but before he did, he told Aunt Hattie to take us around. So we saw the throne, and I even sat in the back seat for a minute. It felt weird, sitting up there in a car that runs and everything, with a gold key in the ignition all ready to turn and the gas tank reading Full in diamond letters. So people would know the state was running smooth, Aunt Hattie said. So he could make a fast getaway if a terrorist came along, I thought.

We saw the throne, like I said, and we saw where the lords and ladies all meet and have dances and jam sessions and parliaments, and we got to see a bit of the place where the royal family lives, just the living room and a little bedroom that wasn’t much bigger than mine at home. We got to see the kennels, too, but not Nancy the Tenth, who was still waiting to have her puppies. I asked momma if we could get a puppy when we got home. Momma gave me a Look.

Then Aunt Hattie took us out to the Heartbreak Hotel for dinner, and momma had lobster but I had steak, I didn’t like the way the lobster was looking at me. We were ma’amed there, too, and they gave us champagne on the house. Momma looked real happy at that. I thought it was icky, so they gave me ginger ale instead.

Then we stayed the night in Graceland, right there in the palace, and in the morning we went home. Momma and I decided that she had prettier kings in her collection, and younger ones, and even a few who were kingier, if you know hat I mean. But when we came right down to it, for a real, solid, all-around King, there isn’t anybody to beat Elvis.

III. Divus Elvis

Rex quondam, rexque futurus

The pope was dying in Memphis. The cardinals stood in attendance, a circle of blue and glistening white, intoning the prayers for the all-but-departed. The Sisters of Saint Marilyn knelt in their red habits; the Brothers of Saint John Lennon bent their heads, obscuring the gleam of their wire-rimmed spectacles. Acolytes stood waiting with censers and lumelights. One proud, trembling child held the Keys to the Cadillac, which she must pass to the pope’s successor in the moment of the pope’s death. .

Her holiness lay deep in a coma. She wore the full regalia of her office, the white sequined jumpsuit hanging slack on her wasted bones, the wig with its pompadour fallen askew on her shaven skull, her hands folded over the platinum-plated mike with its crusting of sequins and sacred symbols. Before she lost consciousness she had refused the ritual drug overdose. She would die under her own power, she had said. Those were her last words.

Her successor should have been seated by the bed, watching the rising and falling of the sunken breast, waiting for it to stop. But he had excused himself. Fled, one might have said, from the light and the music and the faint, advancing reek of death.

The election was past, her holiness’ will affirmed. He would inherit the Mike and the Wig and the Keys. He would serve the Servants of God in Song, prince of the Church of Elvis Transcendent. There was no appeal of that judgment, and no escape from it but the one his predecessor was taking.

He walked softly into the cathedral. The Cadillac, once mere earthly throne, now seat of the Divine King, shone blinding under the spotlights. There was the usual mob around the Tomb, streaming past it on the rolling runway, with guards to keep them from stopping or backpedaling. They were silent except for the shuffle of feet, the catch of a sob.

Beyond the altar and the Tomb, the cathedral was nearly dark. Lumelights and the occasional lava lamp dispelled the shadows in side chapels. He made his way with sure steps, evading pews and praying devotees, walking patrol as he liked to think of it.

His destination was near the farthest corner, a chapel to which few people went. Its lumelight was almost dead. He plugged in the lava lamp, reverently, and knelt in its glow. The altar here was plain, a chrome table spread with a white cloth, no image on it, no vessels, only the table, the quiet, the emptiness.

But here more than anywhere, he felt the presence of the King. In this plain place, this silence without disruption, he heard best the Voice above all voices.

“Lord,” he whispered, “I am not worthy.”

He received no answer, unless silence itself was a response.

“I was a simple man,” he said, “a keeper of hounds in your kennel. What have I done to deserve your favor?”

Silence. Outside the chapel, a figure passed. Sister of the Sacred Spouse—his eye caught the gleam of silver fringes, the sheen of lava-light on the platinum wig.

“Your yoke is heavy, your burden too great. How am I to speak for you in these worlds? Mars Ultima has seceded from Mars Proxima. Titan Station has turned apostate and embraced the Unfaith of Unholy Marx. Earth wages its wars as it has since time began. Who will listen to my poor voice?”

“Who else among the cardinals can carry a tune?”

He did not start or turn. Cardinal Archbishop Rollins sat beside him in a whisper of blue suede. She was the oldest of the College, but she had a bent for the unusual; she had tried one of the new rejuvenation treatments. It had been, as far as he could see, a remarkable success. He doubted that she had been so Dollyesque in contour even as a young woman.

“So you need me to sing the masses,” he said. “Wouldn’t any backstage crooner have done as well?”

“Any backstage crooner isn’t Cardinal Bishop John Elvis Lennon.”

“So,” he said with bitterness that he did not need to feign. “It’s nepotism, no more.”

She shrugged. “Why not? We need a solid figurehead. Martha was good, mind you, but she wasn’t holy family. She had to work that much harder to make her authority stick. You’ve got it from the start. It’s bred in.”

He tapped his forehead. “Not up here.”

“Who cares what’s up there? You’ll think for yourself, or we’ll do your thinking for you. We’ve got to get Titan back, and Disunited Europe is getting worse by the day, and Venus Dome is trying to renege on its contract. You’re young, you’re holy family, you look vigorous enough to last. Even Titan might be willing to pay attention when you put them under anathema.”

“Anathema won’t mean a thing to the Unfaithful,” he said.

“It will if you put the fear of the King in them.”

He sat on his heels and fixed his eyes on the empty altar. It wavered and blurred. “I don’t want to be pope. I didn’t even want to be a cardinal. I’m not worthy!”

“Bullpuckey,” said the Cardinal Archbishop. “Pull up your socks and stop sniffling. You’ll be pope and that’s that.”

His fists hurt with clenching. “Why don’t you do it?”

“Because I can serve the Church better where I am,” she said. “Now get up. Martha’s hanging on by a thread, and you’re going to be there when she takes that last breath.”

“No,” he said.

For too brief a moment he thought he had won. Cardinal Archbishop Rollins was a little thing, no higher than his shoulder; he could dig in his heels, and she could never move him.

Then she got a grip on his ear. “Are you walking or am I dragging you?”

“I’ll cry murder,” he said.

“Go right ahead,” she said. “I’ll yell louder. Off key.”

He flinched.

She did not let go his ear, but neither did she twist it. “Look here,” she said more softly. “We really do need you. You, not somebody else. Because of who you are, yes. Because you can sing—which, really, was more than the King could do. He always sang flat.”

He sucked in his breath, horrified; but a small, vile part of him whispered that she was right.

She went on as if she had not uttered heresy. “And, my dear, because you honestly do believe the cant you sing. Martha was too dry a wit. She lost converts because she challenged their brand-new faith. She asked them to think about what they believed in. Which you don’t do if you’re building a church.”

He clapped his hand over the ear that was still free of her death grip. Her voice came unimpeded through the other. “You’re going to be our evangelical pope, young John. You’ll rock and sing your way across the worlds, and you’ll make us triumphant.”

“I will not!”

She let him go. His ear ached and burned. But he did not move to comfort it. She smiled a she-devil’s smile. “You won’t advance the faith? You won’t help the church to prosper? You’ll let it fall because you don’t want to get involved?”

Cardinal sins, all of those. And yet what she asked of him, vile, venal, cynical—

She shook her head. “You’ve been a cardinal this long, and you never caught on? Maybe you are as brainless as you think.”

“I close my eyes to foulness, my ears to temptation.” As he spoke, he did both. The dark was blessed, the quiet less than absolute.

“They’ll love you in Titan City,” she said, sharp and clear. “Sulk for a while, then. But not too long. When they blow the horn, it’s going to be you behind the wheel, and your Key in the ignition. Like it or not.”

Alive, he wondered, or dead?

That was despair. Despair was a sin. “Is there no escape?”

“Not a one,” she said.

He huddled on the cold hard floor. “You are all devils. “

“We serve the King,” she said.

His head came up. Even as far down as he was in desperation, her tone astonished him. “You do believe that.”

She did not answer. She had the face of the rejuvenated, smooth but not young; ageless. Like a dark angel’s.

Temptation, he thought. Corruption.

And yet . . .

“If I take what you force on me,” he said, “and I cry anathema on you all, what will you do?”

“Accept,” she said, “and pray that you find good guidance. “

“Guidance controlled by you?”

“You could kill us,” she pointed out.

He shuddered. But he said, “I might.”

She neither flinched nor laughed. She waited. For what, he could well guess.

He did not give her what she wanted: either threats or pleading. He folded his hands, bowed his head.

There was no Voice in this place, with her presence throbbing in it. He had no guidance but his heart, and that thudded and stuttered. He had never had a choice. This cup was his, no matter where he turned.

But what he did with it—there was all the power he had.

She thought she knew what he would do. So did they all. And maybe they were right. Maybe, Elvis willing, they were not.

He felt the brush of wings as soft as sleep, but stronger than sleep could ever be. Death had come for the pope. And yet, maybe, it waited; it watched him, not to claim him, nor to compel him, but simply to see how he would move.

Still he remained on his knees. The cold weight of the Keys seemed already to fill his hands. In his strong sweet voice he began to pray. He prayed long, and he prayed hard, and he prayed alone.

Until he had come almost to the end. Then at last her voice wound in with his; and the horn sounded beneath it, the clarion call of the Cadillac, marking the passing of the Keeper of the Keys.

Holy Elvis, father of songs, pray for us singers,

now and to the end of our dance. Amen.

The End

Copyright © 1994 by Judith Tarr

First published in By Any Other Fame, ed. Mike Resnick and Martin H. Greenberg, DAW, 1994