The Mammoth Book of Golden Age SF

E FOR EFFORT T. L. Sherred

The captain was met at the airport by a staff car. Long and fast it sped. In narrow, silent room the general sat, ramrod-backed, tense. The major waited at the foot of the gleaming steps shining frostily in the night air. Tires screamed to a stop and together the captain and the major raced up the steps. No words of greeting were spoken. The general stood quickly, hand outstretched. The captain ripped open a dispatch case and handed over a thick bundle of papers. The general flipped them over eagerly and spat a sentence at the major. The major disappeared and his harsh voice rang curtly down the outside hall. The man with glasses came in and the general handed him the papers. With jerky fingers the man with glasses sorted them out. With a wave from the general the captain left, a proud smile on his weary young face. The general tapped his fingertips on the black glossy surface of the table. The man with glasses pushed aside crinkled maps, and began to read aloud.

It all started because I’m lazy. By the time I’d shaken off the sandman and checked out of the hotel, every seat in the bus was full. I stuck my bag in a dime locker and went out to kill the hour I had until the bus left. You know the bus terminal — right across from the Book-Cadillac and the Statler, on Washington Boulevard near Michigan Avenue. Like Main in Los Angeles, or maybe Sixty-third in its present state of decay in Chicago, where I was going. Cheap movies, pawnshops, and bars by the dozens, a penny arcade or two, restaurants that feature hamburg steak, bread and butter and coffee for forty cents. Before the War, a quarter.

I like pawnshops. I like cameras, I like tools, I like to look in windows crammed with everything from electric razors to sets of socket wrenches to upper plates. So, with an hour to spare, I walked out Michigan to Sixth and back on the other side of the street. There are a lot of Chinese and Mexicans around that part of town, the Chinese running the restaurants and the Mexicans eating Southern Home Cooking. Between Fourth and Fifth, I stopped to stare at what passed for a movie. Store windows painted black, amateurish signs extolling in Spanish “Detroit premier… cast of thousands… this week only… ten cents—” The few eight-by-ten glossy stills pasted on the windows were poor blowups, spotty and wrinkled; pictures of mailed cavalry and what looked like a good-sized battle. All for ten cents. Right down my alley.

Maybe it’s lucky that history was my major in school. Luck it must have been, certainly not cleverness, that made me pay a dime for a seat in an undertaker’s rickety folding chair imbedded solidly — although the only other customers were a half-dozen Sons of the Order of Tortilla — in a cast of secondhand garlic. I sat near the door. A couple of hundred-watt bulbs dangling naked from the ceiling gave enough light for me to look around. In front of me, in the rear of the store, was the screen, what looked like a white-painted sheet of beaverboard, and when over my shoulder I saw the battered sixteen millimeter projector I began to think that even at a dime it was no bargain. Still, I had forty minutes to wait.

Everyone was smoking. I lit a cigarette and the discouraged Mexican who had taken my dime locked the door and turned off the lights, after giving me a long, questioning look. I’d paid my dime, so I looked right back. In a minute the old projector started clattering. No film credits, no producer’s name, no director, just a tentative flicker before a closeup of a bewhiskered mug labeled Cortez. Then a painted and feathered Indian with the title of Guatemotzin, successor to Moctezuma; an aerial shot of a beautiful job of model-building tagged Ciudad Méjico, 1521. Shots of old muzzle-loaded artillery banging away, great walls spurting stone splinters under direct fire, skinny Indians dying violently with the customary gyrations, smoke and haze and blood. The photography sat me right up straight. It had none of the scratches and erratic cuts that characterized an old print, none of the fuzziness, none of the usual mugging at the camera by the handsome hero. There wasn’t any handsome hero. Did you ever see one of those French pictures, or a Russian, and comment on the reality and depth brought out by working on a small budget that can’t afford famed actors? This, what there was of it, was as good, or better.

It wasn’t until the picture ended with a pan shot of a dreary desolation that I began to add two and two. You can’t, for pennies, really have a cast of thousands, or sets big enough to fill Central Park. A mock-up, even, of a thirty-foot wall costs enough to irritate the auditors, and there had been a lot of wall. That didn’t fit with the bad editing and lack of sound track, not unless the picture had been made in the old silent days. And I knew it hadn’t by the color tones you get with pan film. It looked like a well-rehearsed and badly planned newsreel.

The Mexicans were easing out and I followed them to where the discouraged one was rewinding the reel. I asked him where he got the print.

“I haven’t heard of any epics from the press agents lately, and it looks like a fairly recent print.”

He agreed that it was recent, and added that he’d made it himself. I was polite to that, but he saw that I didn’t believe him and straightened up from the projector.

“You don’t believe that, do you?”

I said that I certainly did, and I had to catch a bus.

“Would you mind telling me why, exactly why?”

I said that the bus—

“I mean it. I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me just what’s wrong with it.”

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” I told him. He waited for me to go on. “Well, for one thing, pictures like that aren’t made for the sixteen-millimeter trade. You’ve got a reduction from a thirty-five-millimeter master,” and I gave him a few of the other reasons that separate home movies from Hollywood. When I finished he smoked quietly for a minute.

“I see.” He took the reel off the projector spindle and closed the case. “I have beer in the back.” I agreed beer sounded good, but the bus — well, just one. From in back of the beaverboard screen he brought paper cups and a Jumbo bottle. With a whimsical “Business suspended” he closed the open door and opened the bottle with an opener screwed on the wall. The store had likely been a grocery or restaurant. There were plenty of chairs. Two we shoved around and relaxed companionably. The beer was warm.

“You know something about this line,” tentatively.

I took it as a question and laughed. “Not too much. Here’s mud,” and we drank. “Used to drive a truck for the Film Exchange.” He was amused at that.

“Stranger in town?”

“Yes and no. Mostly yes. Sinus trouble chased me out and relatives bring me back. Not any more, though; my father’s funeral was last week.” He said that was too bad, and I said it wasn’t. “He had sinus, too.” That was a joke, and he refilled the cups. We talked awhile about the Detroit climate.

Finally he said, rather speculatively, “Didn’t I see you around here last night? Just about eight.” He got up and went after more beer.

I called after him. “No more beer for me.” He brought a bottle anyway, and I looked at my watch. “Well, just one.”

“Was it you?”

“Was it me what?” I held out my paper cup.

“Weren’t you around here—”

I wiped foam off my mustache. “Last night? No, but I wish I had. I’d have caught my bus. No, I was in the Motor Bar last night at eight. And I was still there at midnight.”

He chewed his lip thoughtfully. “The Motor Bar. Just down the street?” And I nodded. “The Motor Bar. Hm-m-m.” I looked at him. “Would you like… sure, you would.” Before I could figure out what he was talking about he went to the back and from behind the beaverboard screen rolled out a big radio-phonograph and another Jumbo bottle. I held the bottle against the light. Still half full. I looked at my watch. He rolled the radio against the wall and lifted the lid to get at the dials.

“Reach behind you, will you? The switch on the wall.” I could reach the switch without getting up, and I did. The lights went out. I hadn’t expected that, and I groped at arm’s length. Then the lights came on again, and I turned back, relieved. But the lights weren’t on; I was looking at the street!

Now, all this happened while I was dripping beer and trying to keep my balance on a tottering chair — the street moved, I didn’t, and it was day and it was night and I was in front of the Book-Cadillac and I was going into the Motor Bar and I was watching myself order a beer and I knew I was wide awake and not dreaming. In a panic I scrabbled off the floor, shedding chairs and beer like an umbrella while I ripped my nails feeling frantically for that light switch. By the time I found it — and all the while I was watching myself pound the bar for the barkeep — I was really in a fine fettle, just about ready to collapse. Out of thin air right into a nightmare. At last I found the switch.

The Mexican was looking at me with the queerest expression I’ve ever seen, like he’d baited a mousetrap and caught a frog. Me? I suppose I looked like I’d seen the devil himself. Maybe I had. The beer was all over the floor and I barely made it to the nearest chair.

“What,” I managed to get out, “what was that?”

The lid of the radio went down. “I felt like that too, the first time. I’d forgotten.”

My fingers were too shaky to get out a cigarette, and I ripped off the top of the package. “I said, what was that?”

He sat down. “That was you, in the Motor Bar, at eight last night.” I must have looked blank as he handed me another paper cup. Automatically I held it out to be refilled.

“Look here—” I started.

“I suppose it is a shock. I’d forgotten what I felt like the first time I… I don’t care much any more. Tomorrow I’m going out to Phillips Radio.” That made no sense to me, and I said so. He went on.

“I’m licked. I’m flat broke. I don’t give a care any more. I’ll settle for cash and live off the royalties.” The story came out, slowly at first, then faster until he was pacing the floor. I guess he was tired of having no one to talk to.

His name was Miguel Jose Zapata Laviada. I told him mine: Lefko. Ed Lefko. He was the son of sugar beet workers who had emigrated from Mexico somewhere in the Twenties. They were sensible enough not to quibble when their oldest son left the back-breaking Michigan fields to seize the chance provided by an NYA scholarship. When the scholarship ran out, he’d worked in garages, driven trucks, clerked in stores, and sold brushes door-to-door to exist and to learn. The Army cut short his education with the First Draft to make him a radar technician; the Army had given him an honorable discharge and an idea so nebulous as to be almost merely a hunch. Jobs were plentiful then, and it wasn’t too hard to end up with enough money to rent a trailer and fill it with Army surplus radio and radar equipment. One year ago he’d finished what he’d started; finished underfed, underweight, and overexcited. But successful, because he had it.

“It” he installed in a radio cabinet, both for ease in handling and for camouflage. For reasons that will become apparent, he didn’t dare apply for a patent. I looked “it” over pretty carefully. Where the phonograph turntable and radio controls had been were vernier dials galore. One big dial was numbered 1 to 24, a couple were numbered 1 to 60, and there were a dozen or so numbered I to 25, plus two or three with no numbers at all. Closest of all, it resembled one of these fancy radio or motor testers found in a super super-service station. That was all, except that there was a sheet of heavy plywood hiding whatever was installed in place of the radio chassis and speaker. A perfectly innocent cache for…

Daydreams are swell. I suppose we’ve all had our share of mental wealth or fame or travel or fantasy. But to sit in a chair and drink warm beer and realize that the dream of ages isn’t a dream anymore, to feel like a god, to know that just by turning a few dials you can see and watch anything, anybody, anywhere, that has ever happened — it still bothers me once in a while.

I know this much, that it’s high frequency stuff. And there’s a lot of mercury and copper and wiring of metals cheap and easy to find, but what goes where, or how — least of all, why — is out of my line. Light has mass and energy, and that mass always loses part of itself and can be translated back to electricity, or something. Mike Laviada himself says that what he stumbled on and developed was nothing new, that long before the war it had been observed many times by men like Compton and Michelson and Pfeiffer, who discarded it as a useless laboratory effect. And, of course, that was before atomic research took precedence over everything.

When the first shock wore off — and Mike had to give me another demonstration — I must have made quite a sight. Mike tells me I couldn’t sit down. I’d pop up and gallop up and down the floor of that ancient store kicking chairs out of my way or stumbling over them, all the time gabbling out words and disconnected sentences faster than my tongue could trip. Finally it filtered through that he was laughing at me. I didn’t see where it was any laughing matter, and I prodded him. He began to get angry.

“I know what I have,” he snapped. “I’m not the biggest fool in the world, as you seem to think. Here, watch this,” and he went back to the radio. “Turn out the light.” I did, and there I was watching myself at the Motor Bar again, a lot happier this time. “Watch this.”

The bar backed away. Out in the street, two blocks down to City Hall. Up the steps to the Council Room. No one there. The Council was in session, then they were gone again. Not a picture, not a projection of a lantern slide, but a slice of life about twelve feet sqaure. If we were close, the field of view was narrow. If we were farther away, the background was just as much in focus as the foreground. The images, if you want to call them images, were just as real, just as lifelike as looking in the doorway of a room. Real they were, three-dimensional, stopped only by the back wall or the distance in the background. Mike was talking as he spun the dials, but I was too engrossed to pay much attention.

I yelped and grabbed and closed my eyes as you would if you were looking straight down with nothing between you and the ground except a lot of smoke and a few clouds. I winked my eyes open almost at the end of what must have been a long racing vertical dive, and there I was, looking at the street again.

“Go any place up the Heavyside Layer, go down as deep as any hole, anywhere, any time.” A blur, and the street changed into a glade of sparse pines. “Buried treasure. Sure. Find it, with what?” The trees disappeared and I reached back for the light switch as he dropped the lid of the radio and sat down.

“How are you going to make any money when you haven’t got it to start with?” No answer to that from me. “I ran an ad in the paper offering to recover lost articles; my first customer was the Law wanting to see my private detective’s license. I’ve seen every big speculator in the country sit in his office buying and selling and making plans; what do you think would happen if I tried to peddle advance market information? I’ve watched the stock market get shoved up and down while I had barely the money to buy the paper that told me about it. I watched a bunch of Peruvian Indians bury the second ransom of Atuahalpa; I haven’t the fare to get to Peru, or the money to buy the tools to dig.” He got up and brought two more bottles. He went on. By that time I was getting a few ideas.

“I’ve watched scribes indite the books that burnt at Alexandria; who would buy, or who would believe me, if I copied one? What would happen if I went over to the Library and told them to rewrite their histories? How many would fight to tie a rope around my neck if they knew I’d watched them steal and murder and take a bath? What sort of padded cell would I get if I showed up with a photograph of Washington, or Caesar? Or Christ?”

I agreed that it was all probably true, but—

“Why do you think I’m here now? You saw the picture I showed for a dime. A dime’s worth, and that’s all, because I didn’t have the money to buy film or to make the picture as I knew I should.” His tongue began to get tangled. He was excited. “I’m doing this because I haven’t the money to get the things I need to get the money I’ll need—” He was so disgusted he booted a chair halfway across the room. It was easy to see that if I had been around a little later, Phillips Radio would have profited. Maybe I’d have been better off, too.

Now, although I’ve always been told that I’d never be worth a hoot, no one has ever accused me of being slow for a dollar. Especially an easy one. I saw money in front of me — easy money, the easiest and the quickest in the world. I saw, for a minute, so far in the future with me on top of the heap, that my head reeled and it was hard to breathe.

“Mike,” I said, “let’s finish that beer and go where we can get some more and maybe something to eat. We’ve got a lot of talking to do.” So we did.

Beer is a mighty fine lubricant; I have always been a pretty smooth talker, and by the time we left the Gin Mill I had a pretty good idea of just what Mike had on his mind. By the time we’d shacked up for the night behind that beaverboard screen in the store, we were full-fledged partners. I don’t recall our even shaking hands on the deal, but that partnership still holds good. Mike is ace high with me, and I guess it’s the other way around, too. That was six years ago; it took me only a year or so to discard some of the corners I used to cut.

Seven days after that, on a Tuesday, I was riding a bus to Grosse Pointe with a full briefcase. Two days after that I was riding back from Grosse Pointe in a shiny taxi, with an empty briefcase and a pocketful of folding money. It was easy.

“Mr. Jones — or Smith — or Brown — I’m with Aristocrat Studios, Personal and Candid Portraits. We thought you might like this picture of you and… no, this is just a test proof. The negative is in our files…. Now, if you’re really interested, I’ll be back the day after tomorrow with our files… I’m sure you will, Mr. Jones. Thank you, Mr. Jones…. ”

Dirty? Sure. Blackmail is always dirty. But if I had a wife and family and a good reputation, I’d stick to the roast beef and forget the Roquefort. Very smelly Roquefort, at that. Mike liked it less than I did. It took some talking, and I had to drag out the old one about the ends justifying the means, and they could well afford it, anyway. Besides, if there was a squawk, they’d get the negatives free. Some of them were pretty bad.

So we had the cash; not too much, but enough to start. Before we took the next step there was plenty to decide. There are a lot who earn a living by convincing millions that Sticko soap is better. We had a harder problem than that: we had, first, to make a saleable and profitable product, and second, we had to convince many, many millions that our “product” was absolutely honest and absolutely accurate. We all know that if you repeat something long enough and loud enough many — or most — will accept it as gospel truth. That called for publicity on an international scale. For the skeptics who know better than to accept advertising, no matter how blatant, we had to use another technique. And since we would certainly get only one chance, we had to be right the first time. Without Mike’s machine the job would have been impossible; without it the job would have been unnecessary.

A lot of sweat ran under the bridge before we found what we thought — and we still do! — the only workable scheme. We picked the only possible way to enter every mind in the world without a fight: the field of entertainment. Absolute secrecy was imperative, and it was only when we reached the last decimal point that we made a move. We started like this:

First we looked for a suitable building — or rather, Mike did. I flew east, to Rochester, for a month. The building he rented was an old bank. We had the windows sealed, a flossy office installed in the front — the bulletproof glass was my idea — air conditioning, a portable bar, electrical wiring of whatever type Mike’s little heart desired, and a blond secretary who thought she was working for M-E Experimental Laboratories. When I got back from Rochester I took over the job of keeping happy the stonemasons and electricians, while Mike fooled around in our suite in the Book where he could look out the window at his old store. The last I heard, they were selling snake oil there. When the Studio, as we came to call it was finished, Mike moved in and the blond settled down to a routine of reading love stories and saying No to all the salesmen who wandered by. I left for Hollywood.

I spent a week digging through the files of Central Casting before I was satisfied, but it took a month of snooping and some under-the-table cash to lease a camera that would handle Tru-color film. That took the biggest load off my mind. When I got back to Detroit the big view camera had arrived from Rochester, with a truckload of glass color plates. Ready to go.

We made quite a ceremony of it. We closed the venetian blinds and I popped the cork on one of the bottles of champagne I’d bought. The blond secretary was impressed; all she’d been doing for her salary was accept delivery of packages and crates and boxes. We had no wine glasses, but we made no fuss about it. Too nervous and excited to drink any more than one bottle, we gave the rest to the blond and told her to take the rest of the afternoon off. After she left — and I think she was disappointed at breaking up what could have been a good party — we locked up after her, went into the studio itself, locked up again, and went to work.

I’ve mentioned that the windows were sealed. All the inside wall had been painted dull black, and with the high ceiling that went with that old bank lobby, it was impressive. But not gloomy. Midway in the studio was planted the big Trucolor camera, loaded and ready. Not much could we see of Mike’s machine, but I knew it was off to the side, set to throw on the back wall. Not on the wall, understand, because the images produced are projected in midair like the meeting of the rays of two searchlights. Mike lifted the lid and I could see him silhouetted against the tiny lights that lit the dials.

“Well?” he said expectantly.

I felt pretty good just then, right down to my billfold.

“It’s all yours, Mike,” and a switch ticked over.

There he was. There was a youngster, dead twenty-five hundred years, real enough, almost, to touch. Alexander. Alexander of Macedon.

Let’s take the first picture in detail. I don’t think I can ever forget what happened in the next year or so. First we followed Alexander through his life, from beginning to end. We skipped, of course the little things he did, jumping ahead days and weeks and years at a time. Then we’d miss him, or find that he’d moved in space. That would mean we’d have to jump back and forth, like the artillery firing bracket or ranging shots, until we found him again. Helped only occasionally by his published lives, we were astounded to realize how much distortion has crept into his life. I often wonder why legends arise about the famous. Certainly their lives are as startling, or appalling, as fiction. And unfortunately we had to hold closely to the accepted histories. If we hadn’t, every professor would have gone into his corner for a hearty sneer. We couldn’t take that chance. Not at first.

After we knew approximately what had happened and where, we used our notes to go back to what had seemed a particular photogenic section and work on that awhile. Eventually we had a fair idea of what we were actually going to film. Then we sat down and wrote an actual script to follow, making allowance for whatever shots we’d have to double in later. Mike used his machine as the projector, and I operated the Trucolor camera at a fixed focus, like taking moving pictures of a movie. As fast as we finished a reel it would go to Rochester for processing, instead of one of the Hollywood outfits that might have done it cheaper. Rochester is so used to horrible amateur stuff that I doubt if anyone ever looks at anything. When the reel was returned we’d run it ourselves to check our choice of scenes and color sense and so on.

For example, we had to show the traditional quarrels with his father, Philip. Most of that we figured on doing with doubles, later. Olympias, his mother, and the fangless snakes she affected, didn’t need any doubling, as we used an angle and amount of distance that didn’t call for actual conversation. The scene where Alexander rode the bucking horse no one else could ride came out of some biographer’s head, but we thought it was so famous we couldn’t leave it out. We dubbed the closeups later, and the actual horseman was a young Scythian who hung around the royal stables for his keep. Roxanne was real enough, like the rest of the Persians’ wives Alexander took over. Luckily, most of them had enough poundage to look luscious. Philip and Parmenio and the rest of the characters were heavily bearded, which made easy the necessary doubling and dubbing-in the necessary speech. (If you ever saw them shave in those days, you’d know why whiskers were popular.)

The most trouble we had was with interior shots. Smoky wicks in a bowl of lard, no matter how plentiful, are too dim even for fast film. Mike got around that by running the Trucolor camera at a single frame a second, with his machine paced accordingly. That accounts for the startling clarity and depth of focus we got from a lens stopped well down. We had all the time in the world to choose the best possible scenes and camera angles; the best actors in the world, expensive camera booms, or repeated retakes under the most exacting director can’t compete with us. We had a lifetime from which to choose.

Eventually we had on film about eighty percent of what you saw in the finished picture. Roughly, we spliced the reels together and sat there entranced at what we had actually done. Even more exciting, even more spectacular than we’d dared hope, was the realization that we’d done a beautiful job, despite the lack of continuity and sound. We’d done all we could, and the worst was yet to come. So we sent for more champagne and told the blond we had cause for celebration. She giggled.

“What are you doing in there, anyway?” she asked. “Every salesman who comes to the door wants to know what you’re making.”

I opened the first bottle. “Just tell them you don’t know.”

“That’s just what I’ve been telling them. They think I’m awfully dumb.” We all laughed at the salesmen.

Mike was thoughtful. “If we’re going to do this sort of thing very often, we ought to have some of these fancy hollow-stemmed glasses.”

The blond was pleased with that. “And we could keep them in my bottom drawer.” Her nose wrinkled prettily. “The bubbles—You know, this is the only time I’ve ever had champagne, except at a wedding, and then it was only one glass.”

“Pour her another,” Mike suggested. “Mine’s empty too.” I did. “What did you do with those bottles you took home last time?”

A blush and a giggle. “My father wanted to open them, but I told him you said to save it for a special occasion.”

By that time I had my feet on her desk. “This is the special occasion, then,” I invited. “Have another, Miss… what’s your first name, anyway? I hate being formal after working hours.”

She was shocked. “And you and Mr. Laviada sign my checks every week! It’s Ruth.”

“Ruth. Ruth.” I rolled it around the piercing bubbles, and it sounded all right.

She nodded. “And your name is Edward, and Mr. Laviada’s is Migwell. Isn’t it?” And she smiled at him.

“MiGELL,” he smiled back. “An old Spanish custom. Usually shortened to Mike.”

“If you’ll hand me another bottle,” I offered, “shorten Edward to Ed.” She handed it over.

By the time we got to the fourth bottle we were as thick as bugs in a rug. It seems that she was twenty-four, free, and single, and loved champagne.

“But,” she burbled fretfully, “I wish I knew what you were doing in there all hours of the day and night. I know you’re here at night sometimes because I’ve seen your car out in front.”

Mike thought that over. “Well,” he said a little unsteadily, “we take pictures.” He blinked one eye. “Might even take pictures of you if we were approached properly.”

I took over. “We take pictures of models.”

“Oh, no.”

“Yes. Models of things and people and whatnot. Little ones. We make it look like it’s real.” I think she was a trifle disappointed.

“Well, now I know, and that makes me feel better. I sign all those bills from Rochester and I don’t know what I’m signing for. Except that they must be film or something.”

“That’s just what it is; film and things like that.”

“Well, it bothered me— No, there’s two more behind the fan.”

Only two more. She had a capacity. I asked her how she would like a vacation. She hadn’t thought about a vacation just yet.

I told her she’d better start thinking about it. “We’re leaving day after tomorrow for Los Angeles, Hollywood.”

“The day after tomorrow? Why—”

I reassured her. “You’ll get paid just the same. But there’s no telling how long we’ll be gone, and there doesn’t seem to be much use in your sitting around here with nothing to do.”

From Mike: “Let’s have that bottle”; and I handed it to him. I went on.

“You’ll get your checks just the same. If you want, we’ll pay you in advance so—”

I was getting full of champagne, and so were we all. Mike was humming softly to himself, happy as a taco. Ruth was having a little trouble with her left eye. I knew just how she felt, because I was having a little trouble watching where she overlapped the swivel chair. Blue eyes, sooo tall, fuzzy hair. Hm-m-m. All work and no play— She handed me the last bottle.

Demurely she hid a tiny hiccup. “I’m going to save all the corks— No, I won’t, either. My father would want to know what I’m thinking of, drinking with my bosses.”

I said it wasn’t a good idea to annoy your father. Mike said why fool with bad ideas, when he had a good one. We were interested. Nothing like a good idea to liven things up.

Mike was expansive as the very devil. “Going to Los Angeles.”

We nodded solemnly.

“Going to Los Angeles to work.”

Another nod.

“Going to work in Los Angeles. What will we do for pretty blond girl to write letters?”

Awful. No pretty blond to write letters and drink champagne. Sad case.

“Gotta hire somebody to write letters anyway. Might not be blond. No blonds in Hollywood. No good ones, anyway. So—”

I saw the wonderful idea, and finished for him. “So we take pretty blond to Los Angeles to write letters!”

What an idea that was! One bottle sooner and its brilliancy would have been dimmed. Ruth bubbled like a fresh bottle, and Mike and I sat there, smirking like mad.

“But I can’t! I couldn’t leave day after tomorrow just like that—!”

Mike was magnificent. “Who said day after tomorrow? Changed our minds. Leave right now.”

She was appalled. “Right now! Just like that?”

“Right now. Just like that.” I was firm.

“But—”

“No buts. Right now. Just like that.”

“Nothing to wear—”

“Buy clothes any place. Best ones in Los Angeles.”

“But my hair—”

Mike suggested a haircut in Hollywood.

I pounded the table. It felt solid. “Call the airport. Three tickets.”

She called the airport. She intimidated easy.

The airport said we could leave for Chicago any time on the hour, and change there for Los Angeles. Mike wanted to know why she was wasting time on the telephone when we could be on our way. Holding up the wheels of progress, emery dust in the gears. One minute to get her hat.

“Call Pappy from the airport.”

Her objections were easily brushed away with a few word-pictures of how much fun there was to be had in Hollywood. We left a sign on the door, Gone to Lunch — Back in December, and made the airport in time for the four o’clock plane, with no time left to call Pappy. I told the parking attendant to hold the car until he heard from me and we made it up the steps and into the plane just in time. The steps were taken away, the motors snorted, and we were off, with Ruth holding fast her hat in an imaginary breeze.

There was a two-hour lay over in Chicago. They don’t serve liquor at the airport, but an obliging cab driver found us a convenient bar down the road, where Ruth made a call to her father. Cautiously we stayed away from the telephone booth, but from what Ruth told us, he must have read her the riot act. The bartender didn’t have champagne, but gave us the special treatment reserved for those that order it. The cab driver saw that we made the liner two hours later.

In Los Angeles we registered at the Commodore, cold sober and ashamed of ourselves. The next day Ruth went shopping for clothes, for herself and for us. We gave her the sizes and enough money to soothe her hangover. Mike and I did some telephoning. After breakfast we sat around until the desk clerk announced a Mr. Lee Johnson to see us.

Lee Johnson was the brisk professional type, the high-bracket salesman. Tall, rather homely, a clipped way of talking. We introduced ourselves as embryo producers. His eyes brightened when we said that. His meat.

“Not exactly the way you think,” I told him. “We already have eighty percent or better of the final print.”

He wanted to know where he came in.

“We have several thousand feet of Trucolor film. Don’t bother asking where or when we got it. This footage is silent. We’ll need sound and, in places, speech dubbed in.”

He nodded. “Easy enough. What condition is the master?”

“Perfect condition. It’s in the hotel vault right now. There are gaps in the story to fill. We’ll need quite a few male and female characters. And all of these will have to do their doubling for cash, and not for screen credit.”

Johnson raised his eyebrows. “Why? Out here, screen credit is bread and butter.”

“Several reasons. This footage was made — never mind where — with the understanding that film credit would favor no one.”

“If you’re lucky enough to catch your talent between pictures, you might get away with it. But if your footage is worth working with, my boys will want screen credit. And I think they’re entitled to it.”

I said that was reasonable enough. The technical crews were essential, and I was prepared to pay well. Particularly to keep their mouths closed until the print was ready for final release. Maybe even after that.

“Before we go any further,” Johnson rose and reached for his hat, “let’s take a look at that print. I don’t know if we can—”

I knew what he was thinking. Amateurs. Home movies. Feelthy peekchures mebbe?

We got the reels out of the hotel safe and drove to his laboratory, out Sunset. The top was down on his convertible and Mike hoped audibly that Ruth would have sense enough to get sport shirts that didn’t scratch.

“Wife?” Johnson asked carelessly.

“Secretary,” Mike answered just as casually. “We flew in last night and she’s out getting us some light clothes.” Johnson’s estimation of us rose visibly.

A porter came out of the laboratory to carry the suitcase containing the film reels. It was a long, low building, with the offices at the front and the actual laboratories tapering off at the rear. Johnson took us in the side door and called for someone whose name we didn’t catch. The anonymous one was a projectionist who took the reels and disappeared into the back of the projection room. We sat for a minute in the soft easy chairs until the projectionist buzzed ready. Johnson glanced at us, and we nodded. He clicked a switch on the arm of his chair and the overhead lights went out. The picture started.

It ran a hundred and ten minutes as it stood. We both watched Johnson like a cat at a rathole. When the tag end showed white on the screen, he signaled with the chair-side buzzer for lights. They came on. He faced us.

“Where did you get that print?”

Mike grinned at him. “Can we do business?”

“Do business!” He was vehement. “You bet your life we can do business! We’ll do the greatest business you ever saw!”

The projection man came down. “Hey, that’s all right. Where’d you get it?”

Mike looked at me. I said, “This isn’t to go any further.”

Johnson looked at his man, who shrugged. “None of my business.”

I dangled the hook. “That wasn’t made here. Never mind where.”

Johnson rose and struck, hook, line and sinker. “Europe! Hm-m-m. Germany. No, France, Russia, maybe, Einstein, or Eisenstein, or whatever his name is?”

I shook my head. “That doesn’t matter. The leads are all dead, or out of commission, but their heirs… well, you get what I mean.”

Johnson saw what I meant. “Absolutely right. No point taking any chances. Where’s the rest–?”

“Who knows? We were lucky to salvage that much. Can do?”

“Can do.” He thought for a minute. “Get Bernstein in here. Better get Kessler and Marrs, too.” The projectionist left. In a few minutes Kessler, a heavyset man, and Marrs, a young, nervous chain-smoker, came in with Bernstein, the sound man. We were introduced all around, and Johnson asked if we minded sitting through another showing.

“Nope. We like it better than you do.”

Not quite. The minute the film was over, Kessler, Marrs, and Bernstein bombarded us with startled questions. We gave them the same answers we’d given Johnson. But we were pleased with the reception, and said so.

Kessler grunted. “I’d like to know who was behind that camera. Best I’ve seen, by Cripes, since Ben Hur. Better than Ben Hur. The boy’s good.”

I grunted right back at him. “That’s the only thing I can tell you. The photography was done by the boys you’re talking to right now. Thanks for the kind word.”

All four of them stared.

Mike said, “That’s right.”

“Hey, hey!” from Marrs. They all looked at us with new respect. It felt good.

Johnson broke into the silence when it became awkward. “What’s next on the score card?”

We got down to cases. Mike, as usual, was content to sit there with his eyes half closed, taking it all in, letting me do all the talking.

“We want sound dubbed in all the way through.”

“Pleasure,” said Bernstein.

“At least a dozen, maybe more, speaking actors with a close resemblance to the leads you’ve seen.”

Johnson was confident. “Easy. Central Casting has everybody’s picture since the Year One.”

“I know. We’ve already checked that. No trouble there. They’ll have to take the cash and let the credit go, for reasons I’ve already explained to Mr. Johnson.”

A moan from Marrs. “I bet I get that job.”

Johnson was snappish. “You do. What else?” to me.

I didn’t know. “Except that we have no plans for distribution as yet. That will have to be worked out.”

“Like falling off a log.” Johnson was happy about that. “One look at the rushes and United Artists would spit in Shakespeare’s eye.”

Marrs came in. “What about the other shots? Got a writer lined up?”

“We’ve got what will pass for the shooting script, or will have in a week or so. Want to go over it with us?”

Marrs said he’d like that.

“How much time have we got?” interposed Kessler. “This is going to be a job. When do we want it?” Already it was “we.”

“Yesterday is when we want it,” snapped Johnson, and he rose. “Any ideas about music? No? We’ll try for Werner Janssen and his boys. Bernstein, you’re responsible for that print from now on. Kessler, get your crew in and have a look at it. Marrs, at their convenience, you’ll go with Mr. Lefko and Mr. Laviada through the files at Central Casting. Keep in touch with them at the Commodore. Now, if you’ll step into my office, we’ll discuss the financial arrangements—”

It was as easy as that.

Oh, I don’t say it was easy work, or anything. Because in the next few months we were playing Busy Bee. What with running down the only one registered at Central Casting who looked like Alexander himself (turned out to be a young Armenian who had given up hope of ever being called from the extras lists and had gone home to Santee), casting, rehearsing the rest of the actors, and swearing at the customers and the boys who built the sets, we were kept hopping. Even Ruth, who had reconciled her father with sorting letters, for once earned her salary. We took turns shooting dictation at her until we had a script that satisfied Mike, myself, and young Marrs, who turned out to be clever as a fox with dialogue.

What I really mean to say is that it was easy, and immensely gratifying, to crack the shell of the tough boys who had seen epics and turkeys come and go. They were really impressed by what we had done. Kessler was disappointed when we refused to be bothered with photographing the rest of the film. We just batted our eyes and said that we were too busy, that we were perfectly confident that he would do as well as we could. He outdid himself, and us. I don’t know what we would have done if he had asked us for any concrete advice. I suppose, when I think it all over, that the boys we met and worked with were so tired of working with the usual mine-run Grade B’s that they were glad to meet someone who knew the difference between glycerin tears and reality and didn’t care if it cost two dollars extra. They had us pegged as a couple of city slickers with plenty on the ball. I hope.

Finally it was over with. We all sat in the projection room and watched the finished product. Mike and I, Marrs and Johnson, Kessler and Bernstein, and all the lesser technicians who split up the really enormous amount of work that had been done. It was terrific. Everyone had done his work well. When Alexander came on the screen, he was Alexander the Great. (The Armenian kid got a good bonus for that.) All that blazing color, all that wealth and magnificence and glamour seemed to flare out of the screen and sear the mind. Even Mike and I, who had seen the original, were on the edge of our seats.

The sheer realism and magnitude of the battle scenes, I think, made the picture. Gore, of course, is glorious when it’s all make-believe and the dead get up to go to lunch. But when Bill Mauldin sees a picture and sells a breathless article on the similarity of infantrymen of all ages — well, Mauldin knows what war is like. So did the infantrymen throughout the world, who wrote letters comparing Alexander’s Arbela to Anzio and the Argonne. The weary peasant, not stolid at all, trudging and trudging into mile after mile of those dust-laden plains and ending as a stinking, naked, ripped corpse peeping from under a mound of flies, isn’t much different whether he carries a sarissa or a rifle. That we’d tried to make obvious, and we succeeded.

When the lights came up in the projection room, we knew we had a winner. Individually we shook hands all around, proud as a bunch of penguins, and with chests out as far. The rest of the men filed out and we retired to Johnson’s office. He poured a drink all around and got down to business.

“How about releases?”

I asked him what he thought.

“Write your own ticket,” he shrugged. “I don’t know whether or not you know it, but the word has already gone around that you’ve got something.”

I told him we’d had calls at the hotel from various sources, and named them.

“See what I mean? I know those babies. Kiss them off if you want to keep your shirt. And while I’m at it, you owe us quite a bit. I suppose you’ve got it.”

“We’ve got it.”

“I was afraid you would. If you didn’t, I’d be the one that would have your shirt.” He grinned, but we all knew he meant it. “All right, that’s settled. Let’s talk about release.

“There are two or three outfits in town that will want a crack at it. My boys will have the word spread around in no time; there’s no point in trying to keep them quiet any longer. I know — they’ll have sense enough not to talk about the things you want off the record. I’ll see to that. But you’re top dog right now. You got loose cash, you’ve got the biggest potential gross I’ve ever seen, and you don’t have to take the first offer. That’s important in this game.”

“How would you like to handle it yourself?”

“I’d like to try. The outfit I’m thinking of needs a feature right now, and they don’t know I know it. They’ll pay and pay. What’s in it for me?”

“That,” I said, “we can talk about later. I think I know just what you’re thinking. We’ll take the usual terms, and we don’t care if you hold up whoever you deal with. What we don’t know won’t hurt us.” That’s what he was thinking, all right. That’s a cutthroat game out there.

“Good. Kessler, get your setup ready for duplication.”

“Always ready.”

“Marrs, start the ball rolling on publicity… what do you want to do about that?” to us.

Mike and I had already talked about that. “As far as we’re concerned,” I said slowly, “do as you think best. Personal publicity, O.K. We won’t look at it, but we won’t dodge it. As far as that goes, we’re the local yokels making good. Soft-pedal any questions about where the picture was made, without being too obvious. You’re going to have trouble when you talk about the non-existent actors, but you ought to be able to figure out something.”

Marrs groaned and Johnson grinned. “He’ll figure out something.”

“As far as technical credit goes, we’ll be glad to see you get all you can, because you’ve done a swell job.” Kessler took that as a personal compliment, and it was. “You might as well know now, before we go any further, that some of the work came right from Detroit.” They all sat up at that.

“Mike and I have a new process of model and trick work.” Kessler opened his mouth to say something but thought better of it. “We’re not going to say what was done, or how much was done in the laboratory, but you’ll admit that it defies detection.”

About that they were fervent. “I’ll say it defies detection. In the game this long, any process work gets by me… where—”

“I’m not going to tell you that. What we’ve got isn’t patented and won’t be, as long as we can hold it up.” There wasn’t any gripping there. These men knew process work when they saw it. If they didn’t see it, it was good. They could understand why we’d want to keep a process that good a secret.

“We can practically guarantee there’ll be more work for you to do later on.” Their interest was plain. “We’re not going to predict when, or make any definite arrangement, but we still have a trick or two in the deck. We like the way we’ve been getting along, and we want to stay that way. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have a date with a blond.”

Johnson was right about the bidding for the release. We — or rather, Johnson — made a very profitable deal with United Amusement and its affiliated theaters. Johnson, the bandit, got his percentage from us and likely did better with United. Kessler and Johnson’s boys took huge ads in the trade journals to boast about their connections with the Academy Award winner. Not only the Academy, but every award that ever went to any picture. Even the Europeans went overboard. They’re the ones that make a fetish of realism. They knew the real thing when they saw it, and so did everyone else.

Our success went to Ruth’s head. In no time she wanted a secretary. At that, she needed one to fend off the screwballs that popped out of the woodwork. So we let her hire a girl to help out. She picked a good typist, about fifty. Ruth is a smart girl, in a lot of ways. Her father showed signs of wanting to see the Pacific, so we raised her salary on condition he’d stay away. The three of us were having too much fun.

The picture opened at the same time in New York and Hollywood. We went to the premiere in great style, with Ruth between us, swollen like a trio of bullfrogs. It’s a great feeling to sit on the floor early in the morning and read reviews that make you feel like floating. It’s a better feeling to have a mintful of money. Johnson and his men were right along with us. I don’t think he could have been too flush in the beginning, and we all got a kick out of riding the crest.

It was a good-sized wave, too. We had all the personal publicity we wanted, and more. Somehow the word was out that we had a new gadget for process photography, and every big studio in town was after what they thought would be a mighty economical thing to have around. The studios that didn’t have a spectacle scheduled looked at the receipts for Alexander and promptly scheduled a spectacle. We drew some very good offers, Johnson said, but we made a series of long faces and broke the news that we were leaving for Detroit the next day, and asked him to hold the fort awhile. I don’t think he thought we actually meant it, but we did. We left the next day.

Back in Detroit we went right to work, helped by the knowledge that we were on the right track. Ruth was kept busy turning away the countless would-be visitors. We admitted no reporters, no salesmen, no one. We had no time. We were using the view camera. Plate after plate were sent to Rochester for developing. A print of each was returned to us, and the plate was held in Rochester for our disposal. We sent to New York for a representative of one of the biggest publishers in the country. We made a deal.

Your main library has a set of the books we published, if you’re interested. Huge, heavy volumes, hundreds of them, each page a razor-sharp blowup from an eight-by-ten negative. A set of those books went to every major library and university in the world. Mike and I got a real kick out of solving some of the problems that have had savants guessing for years. In the Roman volume, for example, we solved the trireme problem with a series of pictures, not only of the interior of a trireme, but a line-of-battle quin-quereme. (Naturally, the professors and amateur yachtsmen weren’t convinced at all.) We had a series of aerial shots of the city of Rome taken a hundred years apart, over a millennium. Aerial views of Ravenna and Londinium, Palmyra and Pompeii, of Eboracum and Byzantium. Oh, we had the time of our lives! We had a volume for Greece and for Rome, for Persia and for Crete, for Egypt and for the Eastern Empire. We had pictures of the Parthenon and the Pharos, pictures of Hannibal and Car-actacus and Vercingetorix, pictures of the Walls of Babylon and the building of the pyramids and the palace of Sargon, pages from the Lost Books of Livy and the plays of Euripides.

Terrifically expensive, a second printing sold at cost to a surprising number of private individuals. If the cost had been less, historical interest would have become even more the fad of the moment.

When the flurry had almost died down, some Italian digging in the hitherto-unexcavated section of ash-buried Pompeii dug into a tiny, buried temple right where our aerial shot had showed it to be. His budget was expanded and he found more ash-covered ruins that agreed with our aerial layout, ruins that hadn’t seen the light of day for almost two thousand years. Everyone promptly wailed that we were the luckiest guessers in captivity; the head of some California cult suspected aloud that we were the reincarnations of two gladiators named Joe.

To get some peace and quiet, Mike and I moved into our studio, lock, stock, and underwear. At our request, the old bank vault had never been removed, and it served well to store our equipment in when we weren’t around. All the mail Ruth couldn’t handle, we disposed of, unread; the old bank building began to look like a well-patronized soup kitchen. We hired burly private detectives to handle the more obnoxious visitors and subscribed to a telegraphic protective service. We had another job to do, another full-length feature.

We stuck to the old historical theme. This time we tried to do what Gibbon did in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. And, I think, we were rather successful, at that. In four hours you can’t completely cover two thousand years, but you can, as we did, show the cracking up of a great civilization, and how painful the process can be. The criticism we drew for virtually ignoring Christ and Christianity was unjust, we think, and unfair. Very few knew then, or know now, that we had included, as a kind of trial balloon, some footage of Christ Himself, and of His times. This footage we had to cut. The Board of Review, as you know, contains both Catholics and Protestants. They — the Board — were up in arms. We didn’t protest very hard when they claimed our “treatment” was irreverent, indecent, and biased and inaccurate “by any Christian standard.” “Why,” they wailed, “it doesn’t even look like Him,” and they were right; it didn’t. Not any picture they ever saw. Then and there we decided that it didn’t pay to tamper with anyone’s religious beliefs. That’s why you’ve never seen anything emanating from us that conflicted even remotely with the accepted historical, sociological, or religious features of Someone Who Knew Better. That Roman picture, by the way — but not accidentally — deviated so little from the textbooks you conned in school that only a few enthusiastic specialists called our attention to what they insisted were errors. We were still in no position to do any mass rewriting of history, because we were unable to reveal just where we got our information.

Johnson, when he saw the Roman epic, mentally kicked high his heels. His men went right to work, and we handled the job as we had the first. One day Kessler, dead earnest, got me in a corner.

“Ed,” he said, “I’m going to find out where you got that footage if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

I told him that some day he would.

“And I don’t mean some day, either; I mean right now. That bushwa about Europe might go once, but not twice. I know better, and so does everyone else. Now, what about it?”

I told him I’d have to consult Mike, and I did. We were up against it. We called a conference.

“Kessler tells me he has troubles. I guess you all know what they are.” They all knew.

Johnson spoke up. “He’s right, too. We know better. Where did you get it?”

I turned to Mike. “Want to do the talking?”

A shake of his head. “You’re doing all right.”

“All right.” Kessler hunched forward a little and Marrs lit another cigarette. “We weren’t lying and we weren’t exaggerating when we said the actual photography was ours. Every frame of film was taken right here in this country, within the past few months. Just how — I won’t mention why or where — we can’t tell you just now.” Kessler snorted in disgust. “Let me finish.”

“We all know that we’re cashing in hand over fist. And we’re going to cash in some more. We have, on our personal schedule, five more pictures. Three of that five we want you to handle as you did the others. The last two of the five will show you both the reason for all the childish secrecy, as Kessler calls it, and another motive that we have so far kept hidden. The last two pictures will show you both our motives and our methods; one is as important as the other. Now — is that enough? Can we go ahead on that basis?”

It wasn’t enough for Kessler. “That doesn’t mean a thing to me. What are we, a bunch of hacks?”

Johnson was thinking about his bank balance. “Five more. Two years, maybe four.”

Marrs was skeptical. “Who do you think you’re going to kid that long? Where’s your studio? Where’s your talent? Where do you shoot your exteriors? Where do you get costumes, and your extras? In one single shot you’ve got forty thousand extras, if you’ve got one! Maybe you can shut me up, but who’s going to answer the questions that Metro and Fox and Paramount and RKO have been asking? Those boys aren’t fools; they know their business. How do you expect me to handle any publicity when I don’t know what the score is myself?”

Johnson told him to pipe down awhile and let him think. Mike and I didn’t like this one bit. But what could we do — tell the truth and end up in a straitjacket?

“Can we do it this way?” he finally asked. “Marrs: these boys have an in with the Soviet Government. They work in some place in Siberia, maybe. Nobody gets within miles of there. No one ever knows what the Russians are doing—”

“Nope!” Marrs was definite. “Any hint that these came from Russia and we’d all be labeled a bunch of Reds. Cut the gross in half.”

Johnson began to pick up speed. “All right, not from Russia. From one of those little republics on the fringe of Siberia or Armenia or some such place. They’re not Russian-made films at all. In fact, they’ve been made by some of the Germans and Austrians the Russians captured and moved after the war. The war fever has died down enough for people to realize that the Germans knew their stuff occasionally. The old sympathy racket for these refugees struggling with faulty equipment, lousy climate, making super-spectacles and smuggling them out under the nose of the Gestapo or whatever they call it— That’s it!”

Doubtfully, Marrs said: “And the Russians tell the world we’re nuts, that they haven’t got any loose Germans?”

That, Johnson overrode. “Who reads the back pages? Who pays any attention to what the Russians say? Who cares? They might even think we’re telling the truth and start looking around their own backyard for something that isn’t there! All right with you?” he said to Mike and me.

“O.K. with us.”

“O.K. with the rest of you? Kessler? Bernstein?”

They weren’t too agreeable, and certainly not happy; but they agreed to play along until we gave the word.

We were warm in our thanks. “You won’t regret it.”

Kessler doubted that very much, but Johnson eased them all out, back to work. Another hurdle leaped — or sidestepped.

Rome was released on schedule and drew the same friendly reviews. “Friendly” is the wrong word for reviews that stretched ticket lines that were blocks long. Marrs did a good job on the publicity. Even that chain of newspapers that afterward turned on us so viciously fell for Marrs’ word wizardly and ran full-page editorials urging the reader to see Rome.

With our third picture, Flame Over France, we corrected a few misconceptions about the French Revolution and began stepping on a few tender toes. Luckily, however, and not altogether by design, there happened to be a liberal government in power in France. They backed us to the hilt with the confirmation we needed. At our request they released a lot of documents that had hitherto conveniently been lost in the cavernous recesses of the Bibliothèque nationale. I’ve forgotten the name of whoever was the perennial pretender to the French throne. At, I’m sure, the subtle probbing of one of Marrs’ ubiquitous publicity men, the pretender sued us for our net worth, alleging defamation of the good name of the Bourbons. A lawyer Johnson dug up for us sucked the poor chump into a courtroom and cut him to bits. Not six cents damages did he get. Samuels, the lawyer and Marrs received a good-sized bonus, and the pretender moved to Honduras.

It was sometime about then, I believe, that the tone of the press began to change. Up until then we’d been regarded as a cross between Shakespeare and Barnum. Because long-obscure facts had been dredged into the light, a few well-known pessimists began to wonder sotto voce if we weren’t just a pair of blasted pests. “Should leave well enough alone.” Only our huge advertising budget kept them from saying more.

I’m going to stop right here and say something about our personal life while all this was going on. Mike I’ve kept in the background pretty well, mostly because he wants it that way. He lets me do all the talking and stick my neck out while he sits in the most comfortable chair in sight. I yell and I argue, and he just sits there; hardly ever a word coming out of that dark-brown pan, certainly never an indication that behind those polite eyebrows there’s a brain — and a sense of humor and wit — faster than and as deadly as a bear trap. Oh, I know we’ve played around, sometimes with a loud bang, but we’ve been, ordinarily, too busy and too preoccupied with what we were doing to waste any time. Ruth, while she was with us, was a good dancing and drinking partner. She was young, she was almost what you’d call beautiful, and she seemed to like being with us. For awhile I had a few ideas about her that might have developed into something serious. We both — I should say, all three of us — found out in time that we looked at a lot of things too differently. So we weren’t too disappointed when she signed with Metro. Her contract meant what she thought was all the fame and money and happiness in the world, plus the personal attention she was doubtless entitled to have. They put her in Class B’s and serials and she, financially, is better off than she ever expected to be. Emotionally, I don’t know. We heard from her some time ago, and I think she’s about due for another divorce. Maybe it’s just as well.

But let’s get away from Ruth. I’m ahead of myself. All this time Mike and I had been working together, our approaches to the final payoff had been divergent. Mike was hopped on the idea of making a better world, and doing that by making war impossible. “War,” he’s often said, “war of any kind is what has made man spend most of his history in merely staying alive. Now, with the atom to use, he has within himself the seed of self-extermination. So help me, Ed, I’m going to do my share of stopping that, or I don’t see any point in living. I mean it!”

He did mean it. He told me that in practically those words the day we met. At the time, I tagged that idea as a pipe dream picked up on an empty stomach. I saw his machine only as a path to luxurious and personal Nirvana, and I thought he’d soon he going my way. I was wrong.

You can’t live, or work, with a likable person without admiring some of the qualities that make that person likable. Another thing: it’s a lot easier to worry about the woes of the world when you haven’t any yourself. It’s a lot easier to have a conscience when you can afford it. When I donned the rose-colored glasses half my battle was won; when I realized how grand a world this could be, the battle was over. That was about the time of Flame Over France, I think. The actual time isn’t important. What is important is that, from that time on, we became the tightest team possible. Since then the only thing we’ve differed on was the time to knock off for a sandwich. Most of our leisure time, what we had of it, has been spent in locking up for the night, rolling out the portable bar, opening just enough beer to feel good, and relaxing. Maybe, after one or two, we might diddle with the dials of the machine and go rambling.

Together we’ve been everywhere and seen anything. It might be a good night to check up on François Villon, that faker, or maybe we would chase around with Haroun-el-Rashid. (If there was ever a man born a few hundred years too soon, it was that careless caliph.) Or if we were in a bad or discouraged mood we might follow the Thirty Years’ War awhile, or if we were real raffish we might inspect the dressing rooms at Radio City. For Mike the crackup of Atlantis has always held an odd fascination, probably because he’s afraid that man will do it again, now that he’s rediscovered nuclear energy. And if I doze off he’s quite apt to go back to the very Beginning, back to the start of the world as we know it now. (It wouldn’t do any good to tell you what went before that.)

When I stop to think, it’s probably just as well that neither of us married. We, of course, have hopes for the future, but at present we’re both tired of the whole human race; tired of greedy faces and hands. With a world that puts a premium on wealth and power and strength, it’s no wonder what decency there is stems from fear of what’s here now, or fear of what’s hereafter. We’ve seen so much of the hidden actions of the world — call it snooping, if you like — that we’ve learned to disregard the surface indications of kindness and good. Only once did Mike and I ever look into the private life of someone we knew and liked and respected. Once was enough. From that day on we made it a point to take people as they seem. Let’s get away from that.

The next two pictures we released in rapid succession: Freedom for Americans, on the American Revolution, and The Brothers and the Guns, about the American Civil War. Bang! Every third politician, a lot of “educators,” and all the professional patriots went after our scalps. Every single chapter of the DAR, the Sons of Union Veterans, and the Daughters of the Confederacy pounded their collective heads against the wall. The South went frantic; every state in the Deep South and one state on the border flatly banned both pictures, the second because it was truthful, and the first because censorship is a contagious disease. They stayed banned until the professional politicians got wise. The bans were revoked, and the choke-collar and string-tie brigade pointed to both pictures as horrible examples of what some people actually believed and thought, and felt pleased that someone had given them an opportunity to roll out the barrel and beat the drums that sound the call for sectional and racial hatred.

New England was tempted to stand on its dignity, but couldn’t stand the strain. North of New York, both pictures were banned. In New York State, the rural representatives voted en bloc, and the ban was clamped on statewide. Special trains ran to Delaware, where the corporations were too busy to pass another law. Libel suits flew like spaghetti, and although the extras headlined the filing of each new suit, very few knew that we lost not one. Although we had to appeal almost every suit to higher courts and in some cases request a change of venue, which was seldom granted, the documentary proof furnished by the record cleared us once we got to a judge, or a series of judges, with no fences to mend.

It was a mighty rasp we drew over wounded ancestral pride. We had shown that not all the mighty have halos of purest gold, that not all the Redcoats were strutting bullies — or angels, and the British Empire, except South Africa, refused entry to both pictures and made violent passes at the State Department. The spectacle of Southern and New England congressmen approving the efforts of a foreign ambassador to suppress free speech drew hilarious hosannas from certain quarters. H. L. Mencken gloated in the clover, and the newspapers hung on the triple-horned dilemma of anti-foreign, pro-patriotic, quasi-logical criticism. In Detroit the Ku Klux Klan burned an anemic cross on our doorstep, and the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, the NAACP, and the WCTU passed flattering resolutions. We forwarded the most vicious and obscene letters — together with a few names and addresses that hadn’t been originally signed — to our lawyers and the Post Office Department. There were no convictions south of Illinois.

Johnson and his boys made hay. Johnson had pyramided his bets into an international distributing organization, and pushed Marrs into hiring every top press agent on either side of the Rockies. What a job they did! In no time at all there were two definite schools of thought that overflowed into the public letter boxes. One school held that we had no business raking up old mud to throw, that such things were better left forgotten and forgiven, that nothing wrong had ever happened, and if it had, we were liars anyway. The other school reasoned more to our liking. Softly and slowly at first, then with a triumphant shout, this fact began to emerge; such things had actually happened, and could happen again, were possibly happening even now; had happened because twisted truth had too long left its imprint on international, sectional, and racial feelings. It pleased us when many began to agree with us, that it is important to forget the past, but that it is even more important to understand and evaluate it with a generous and unjaundiced eye. That was what we were trying to bring out.

The banning that occurred in the various states hurt the gross receipts only a little, and we were vindicated in Johnson’s mind. He had dolefully predicted loss of half the national gross because “you can’t tell the truth in a movie and get away with it. Not if the house holds over three hundred.” Not even on the stage? “Who goes to anything but a movie?”

So far things had gone just about as we’d planned. We’d earned and received more publicity, favorable and otherwise, than anyone living. Most of it stemmed from the fact that our doings had been newsworthy. Some, naturally, had been the ninety-day-wonder material that fills a thirsty newspaper. We were very careful to make enemies in the strata that can afford to fight back. Remember the old saw about knowing a man by the enemies he makes? Well, publicity was our ax. Here’s how we put an edge on it.

I called Johnson in Hollywood. He was glad to hear from us. “Long time no see. What’s the pitch, Ed?”

“I want some lip-readers. And I want them yesterday, like you tell your boys.”

“Lip-readers? Are you nuts? What do you want with lip-readers?”

“Never mind why. I want lip-readers. Can you get them?”

“How should I know? What do you want them for?”

“I said, can you get them?”

He was doubtful. “I think you’ve been working too hard.”

“Look—”

“Now, I didn’t say I couldn’t. Cool off. When do you want them? And how many?”

“Better write this down. Ready? I want lip-readers for these languages: English, French, German, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Flemish, Dutch, and Spanish.”

“Ed Lefko, have you gone crazy?”

I guess it didn’t sound very sensible, at that. “Maybe I have. But those languages are essential. If you run across any who can work in any other language, hang on to them. I might need them, too.” I could see him sitting in front of his telephone, wagging his head like mad. Crazy. The heat must have got Lefko, good old Ed.

“Did you hear what I said?”

“Yes, I heard you. If this is a rib—”

“No rib. Dead serious.”

He began to get mad. “Where you think I’m going to get lip-readers, out of my hat?”

“That’s your worry. I’d suggest you start with the local school for the deaf.” He was silent. “Now, get this into your head; this isn’t a rib, this is the real thing. I don’t care what you do, or where you go, or what you spend — I want those lip-readers in Hollywood when we get there or I want to know they’re on the way.”

“When are you going to get there?”

I said I wasn’t sure. “Probably a day or two. We’ve got a few loose ends to tie up.”

He swore a blue streak at the iniquities of fate. “You’d better have a good story when you do—” I hung up.

Mike met me at the studio. “Talk to Johnson?” I told him, and he laughed. “Does sound crazy, I suppose. But he’ll get them, if they exist and like money. He’s the Original Resourceful Man.”

I tossed my hat in a corner. “I’m glad this is about over. Your end caught up?”

“Set and ready to go. The films and the notes are on the way, the real estate company is ready to take over the lease, and the girls are paid up-to-date, with a little extra.”

I opened a bottle of beer for myself. Mike had one. “How about the office files? How about the bar, here?”

“The files go to the bank to be stored. The bar? Hadn’t thought about it.”

The beer was cold. “Have it crated and send it to Johnson.”

We grinned, together. “Johnson it is. He’ll need it.”

I nodded at the machine. “What about that?”

“That goes with us on the plane as air express.” He looked closely at me. “What’s the matter with you — jitters?”

“Nope. Willies. Same thing.”

“Me, too. Your clothes and mine left this morning.”

“Not even a clean shirt left?”

“Not even a clean shirt. Just like—”

I finished it. “—the first trip with Ruth. A little different, maybe.”

Mike said slowly, “A lot different.” I opened another beer. “Anything you want around here, anything else to be done?” I said no. “O.K. Let’s get this over with. We’ll put what we need in the car. We’ll stop at the Courville Bar before we hit the airport.”

I didn’t get it. “There’s still beer left—”

“But no champagne.”

I got it. “O.K. I’m dumb, at times. Let’s go.”

We loaded the machine into the car, and the bar, left the studio keys at the corner grocery for the real estate company, and headed for the airport by way of the Courville Bar. Ruth was in California, but Joe had champagne. We got to the airport late.

Marrs met us in Los Angeles. “What’s up? You’ve got Johnson running around in circles.”

“Did he tell you why?”

“Sounds crazy to me. Couple of reporters inside. Got anything for them?”

“Not right now. Let’s get going.”

In Johnson’s private office we got a chilly reception. “This better be good. Where do you expect to find someone to lipread in Chinese? Or Russian, for that matter?”

We all sat down. “What have you got so far?”

“Besides a headache?” He handed me a short list.

I scanned it. “How long before you can get them here?”

An explosion. “How long before I can get them here? Am I your errand boy?”

“For all practical purposes, you are. Quit the stalling. How about it?” Marrs snickered at the look on Johnson’s face.

“What are you smirking at, you moron?” Marrs gave in and laughed outright. I did, too. “Go ahead and laugh. This isn’t funny. When I called the state school for the deaf, they hung up. Thought I was some practical joker. We’ll skip that.

“There’s three women and a man on that list. They cover English, French, Spanish, and German. Two of them are working in the East, and I’m waiting for answers to telegrams I sent them. One lives in Pomona and one works for the Arizona School for the Deaf. That’s the best I could do.”

We thought that over. “Get on the phone. Talk to every state in the union if you have to, or overseas.”

Johnson kicked the desk. “And what are you going to do with them — if I’m that lucky?”

“You’ll find out. Get them on planes and fly them here, and we’ll talk turkey when they get here. I want a projection room, not yours, and a good bonded court reporter.”

He asked the world to appreciate what a life he led.

“Get in touch with us at the Commodore.” To Marrs: “Keep the reporters away for awhile. We’ll have something for them later.” Then we left.

Johnson never did find anyone who could lipread Greek. None, at least, who could speak English. The expert on Russian he dug out of Ambridge, in Pennsylvania, the Flemish and Holland Dutch expert came from Leyden, in the Netherlands, and at the last minute he stumbled on a Korean who worked in Seattle as an inspector for the Chinese government. Five women and two men. We signed them to an ironclad contract drawn by Samuels, who now handled all our legal work. I made a little speech before they signed.

“These contracts, as far as we’ve been able to make sure, are going to control your personal and business lives for the another year if we so desire. Let’s get this straight. You are to live in a place of your own, which we will provide. You will be supplied with all necessities by our buyers. Any attempt at unauthorized communication will result in abrogation of the contract. Is that clear?

“Good. Your work will not be difficult, but it will be tremendously important. You will, very likely, be finished in three months, but you will be ready to go any place at any time — at our discretion and, naturally, at our expense. Mr. Sorenson, as you are taking this down, you realize that this goes for you, too.” He nodded.

“Your references, your abilities, and your past work have been thoroughly checked, and you will continue under constant observation. You will be required to verify and notarize every page, perhaps every line, of your transcripts, which Mr. Sorenson here will supply. Any questions?”

No questions. Each was getting a fabulous salary, and each wanted to appear eager to earn it. They all signed.

The resourceful Johnson bought for us a small rooming house, and we paid an exorbitant fee to a detective agency to do the cooking and cleaning and chauffeuring required. We requested that the lip-readers refrain from discussing their work among themselves, especially in front of the house employees, and they followed the instructions very well.

One day, about a month later, we called a conference in the projection room of Johnson’s laboratory. We had a single reel of film.

“What’s that for?”

“That’s the reason for all the cloak-and-dagger secrecy. Never mind calling your projection man. This I’m going to run through myself. See what you think of it.”

They were all disgusted. “I’m getting tired of all this kid stuff,” said Kessler.

As I started for the projection booth I heard Mike say, “You’re no more tired of it than I am.”

From the booth I could see what was showing on the downstairs screen, but nothing else. I ran through the reel, rewound, and went back down.

I said, “One more thing, before we go any further, read this. It’s a certified and notarized transcript of what has been read from the lips of the characters you just saw. They weren’t, incidentally, ‘characters,’ in that sense of the word.” I handed the crackling sheets around, a copy for each. “Those ‘characters’ are real people. You’ve just seen a newsreel. This transcript will tell you what they were talking about. Read it. In the trunk of the car, Mike and I have something to show you. We’ll be back by the time you’ve read it.”

Mike helped me carry the machine from the car. We came to the door just in time to see Kessler throw the transcript as far as he could. He bounced to his feet as the sheets fluttered down.

He was furious. “What’s going on here?” We paid no attention to him, nor to the excited demands of the others until the machine had been plugged into the nearest outlet.

Mike looked at me. “Any ideas?”

I shook my head and told Johnson to shut up for a minute. Mike lifted the lid and hesitated momentarily before touching the dials. I pushed Johnson into his chair and turned off the lights myself. The room went black. Johnson, looking over my shoulder, gasped. I heard Bernstein swear softly, amazed.

I turned to see what Mike had shown them.

It was impressive, all right. He had started just over the roof of the laboratory and continued straight up in the air. Up, up, up, until the city of Los Angeles was a tiny dot on a great ball. On the horizon were the Rockies. Johnson squeezed my arm until it hurt.

“What’s that? What’s that? Stop it!” He was yelling. Mike turned off the machine.

You can guess what happened next. No one believed their eyes, nor Mike’s patient explanation. Twice he had to turn on the machine again, once going far back into Kessler’s past. Then the reaction set in.

Marss smoked one cigarette after another, Bernstein turned a gold pencil over in his nervous fingers. Johnson paced like a caged tiger, and burly Kessler stared at the machine, saying nothing at all. Johnson was muttering as he paced. Then he stopped and shook his fist under Mike’s nose.

“Man! Do you know what you’ve got there? Why waste time playing around here? Can’t you see you’ve got the world by the tail on a downhill pull? If I’d ever known this—”

Mike appealed to me. “Ed, talk to this wild man.”

I did. I can’t remember exactly what I said, and it isn’t important. But I did tell him how we’d started, how we’d plotted our course, and what we were going to do. I ended by telling him the idea behind the reel of film I’d run off a few minutes earlier.

He recoiled as though I were a snake. “You can’t get away with that! You’d be hung — if you weren’t lynched first!”

“Don’t you think we know that? Don’t you think we’re willing to take that chance?”

He tore his thinning hair. Marrs broke in. “Let me talk to him.” He came over and faced us squarely.

“Is this on the level? You going to make a picture like that and stick your neck out? You’re going to turn that… that thing over to the people of the world?”

I nodded. “Just that.”

“And toss over everything you’ve got?” He was dead serious, and so was I. He turned to the others. “He means it!”

Bernstein said, “Can’t be done!”

Words flew. I tried to convince them that we had followed the only possible path. “What kind of a world do you want to live in? Or don’t you want to live?”

Johnson grunted. “How long do you think we’d live if we ever made picture like that? You’re crazy! I’m not. I’m not going to put my head in a noose.”

“Why do you think we’ve been so insistent about credit and responsibility for direction and production? You’ll be doing only what we hired you for. Not that we want to twist your arm, but you’ve made a fortune, all of you, working for us. Now, when the going gets heavy, you want to back out!”

Marss gave in. “Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re wrong. Maybe you’re crazy, maybe I am. I always used to say I’d try anything once. Bernie, you?”

Bernstein was quietly cynical. “You saw what happened in the last war. This might help. I don’t know if it will. I don’t know — but I’d hate to think I didn’t try. Count me in!”

Kessler?

He swiveled his head. “Kid stuff! Who wants to live forever? Who wants to let a chance go by?”

Johnson threw up his hands. “Let’s hope we get a cell together. Let’s all go crazy.” And that was that.

We went to work in a blazing drive of mutual hope and understanding. In four months the lip-readers were through. There’s no point in detailing here their reactions to the dynamite they dictated to Sorenson every day. For their own good we kept them in the dark about our final purpose, and when they were through we sent them across the border into Mexico, to a small ranch Johnson had leased. We were going to need them later.

The print duplicators worked overtime, but Marrs worked harder. Press and radio shouted the announcement that, in every city of the world we could reach, there would be held simultaneously the premieres of our latest picture. It would be the last we needed to make. Many wondered aloud at our choice of the word “needed.” We whetted their curiosity by refusing to release any advance information about the plot, and Johnson so well infused the men with their own now-fervent enthusiasm that not much could be pried out of them but conjecture. The day we picked for release was Sunday. Monday, the storm broke.

I wonder how many prints of that picture are left today. I wonder how many escaped burning or confiscation. Two world wars we covered, covered from the unflattering angles that, up until then, had been represented by only a few books hidden in the dark recesses of libraries. We showed, and named, the war-makers, the cynical leaders who signed and laughed and lied, the blatant patriots who used the flaring headlines and the ugly atrocities to hide behind their flag while life turned to death for millions. Our own and foreign traitors were there, the hidden ones with Janus faces. Our lip-readers had done their work well; no guesses these, no deduced conjectures from the broken records of a blasted past, but the exact words that exposed treachery disguised as patriotism.

In foreign lands the performances lasted barely one day. Usually, in retaliation for the imposed censorship, the theaters were wrecked by rampaging crowds. (Marrs, incidentally, had spent hundreds of thousands bribing officials to allow the picture to be shown without previous censorship. Many censors, when that came out, were shot without trial.) In the Balkans, revolutions broke out, and various embassies were stormed by mobs. Where the film was banned or destroyed, written versions spontaneously appeared on the streets or in coffeehouses. Bootlegged editions were smuggled past customs guards, who looked the other way. One royal family fled to Switzerland.

Here in America it was a racing two weeks before the federal government, prodded into action by the raging of press and radio, in an unprecedented move closed all performances, “to promote the common welfare, insure domestic tranquility, and preserve foreign relations.” Murmurs — and one riot — rumbled in the Midwest and spread until it was realized by the powers that be that something had to be done, quickly, if every government in the world were not to collapse of its own weight.

We were in Mexico, at the ranch Johnson had rented for the lip-readers. While Johnson paced the floor, jerkily fraying a cigar, we listened to a special broadcast by the U.S. attorney general himself:

…furthermore, this message was today forwarded to the Government of the United States of Mexico. I read: “The Government of the United States of America requests the immediate arrest and extradition of the following :

“Edward Joseph Lefkowicz, known as Lefko.” (First on the list. Even a fish wouldn’t get into trouble if he kept his mouth shut.)

“Miguel Jose Zapata Laviada.” (Mike crossed one leg over the other.)

“Edward Lee Johnson.” (He threw his cigar on the floor and sank into the chair.)

“Robert Chester Marrs.” (He lit another cigarette. His face twitched.)

“Benjamin Lionel Bernstein.” (He smiled a twisted smile and close his eyes.)

“Carl Wilhelm Kessler.” (A snarl.)

These men are wanted by the Government of the United States of America, to stand trial on charges ranging from criminal syndicalism, incitement to riot, misprision of treason—

I clicked off the radio. “Well?” to no one in particular.

Bernstein opened his eyes. “The rurales are probably on their way. Might as well go back and face the music—” We crossed the border at Juarez. The FBI was waiting.

Every press and radio chain in the world must have had coverage at that trial, every radio system, even the new and imperfect television chain. We were allowed to see no one but our lawyer. Samuels flew from the West Coast and spent a week trying to get past our guards. He told us not to talk to reporters, if we ever saw them.

“You haven’t seen the newspapers? Just as well— How did you ever get yourselves into this mess, anyway? You ought to know better.”

I told him.

He was stunned. “Are you all crazy?”

He was hard to convince. Only a united, concerted effort by all of us made him believe that such a machine was in existence. (He talked to us separately, because we were kept isolated.) When he got back to me, he was unable top think coherently.

“What kind of defense do you call that?”

I shook my head. “No. That is, we know that we’re guilty of practically everything under the sun if you look at it one way. If you look at it another—”

He rose. “Man, you don’t need a lawyer, you need a doctor. I’ll see you later. I’ve got to get this figured out in my mind before I can do a thing.”

“Sit down. What do you think of this?” and I outlined what I had in mind.

“I think… I don’t know what I think. I don’t know. I’ll talk to you later. Right now I want some fresh air,” and he left.

As most trials do, this one began with the usual blackening of the defendant’s character, or the claim that he lacked one. (The men we’d blackmailed at the beginning had long since had their money returned, and they had sense enough to keep quiet. That might have been because they’d received a few hints that there might still be a negative or two lying around. Compounding a felony? Sure.) With the greatest of interest we sat in that great columned hall and listened to a sad tale.

We had, with malice aforethought, libeled beyond repair great and unselfish men who had made a career of devotion to the public weal, imperiled needlessly relations traditionally friendly by falsely reporting mythical events, mocked the courageous sacrifices of those who had dulce et gloria mori, and completely upset everyone’s peace of mind. Every new accusation, every verbal lance drew solemn agreement from the dignitary-packed hall. Against someone’s better judgment, the trial had been transferred from the regular courtroom to the Hall of Justice, and it was packed with influence, brass, and pompous legates from all over the world. Only congressmen from the biggest states, or those with the biggest votes, were able to crowd the newly installed seats. So you can see it was a hostile audience that faced Samuels when the defense had its say. We had spent the previous night together in the guarded suite to which we had been transferred for the duration of the trial, perfecting, as far as we could, our planned defense. Samuels has the arrogant sense of humor that usually goes with supreme self-confidence, and I’m sure he enjoyed standing there among all those bemedaled and bejowled bigwigs, knowing the bombshell he was going to hurl. He made a good grenadier. Like this:

“We believe there is only one defense possible, we believe there is only one defense necessary. We have gladly waived, without prejudice, our inalienable right to trial by jury. We shall speak plainly and bluntly, to the point.

“You have seen the picture in question. You have remarked, possibly, upon what has been called the startling resemblance of the actors in that picture to the characters named and portrayed. You have remarked, possibly, upon the apparent verisimilitude to reality. That I will mention again. The first witness will, I believe, establish the trend of our rebuttal of the allegations of the prosecution.” He called the first witness.

“Your name, please?”

“Mercedes Maria Gomez.”

“A little louder, please.”

“Mercedes Maria Gomez.”

“Your occupation?”

“Until last March I was a teacher at the Arizona School for the Deaf. Then I asked for and obtained a leave of absence. At present I am under personal contract to Mr. Lefko.”

“If you see Mr. Lefko in this courtroom, Miss… Mrs…. ”

“Miss.”

“Thank you. If Mr. Lefko is in this court, will you point him out? Thank you. Will you tell us the extent of your duties at the Arizona school?”

“I taught children born totally deaf to speak. And to read lips.”

“Do you read lips yourself, Miss Gomez?”

“I have been totally deaf since I was fifteen.”

“You lip-read in English only?”

“English and Spanish. We have… had many children of Mexican descent.”

Samuels asked for a designated Spanish-speaking interpreter. An officer in the back immediately volunteered. He was identified by his ambassador, who was present.

“Will you take this book to the rear of the courtroom, sir?” (To the Court): “If the prosecution wishes to examine that book, they will find that it is a Spanish edition of the Bible.” The prosecution didn’t wish to examine it.

“Will the officer open the Bible at random and read aloud?” He opened the Bible at the center and read. In dead silence the Court strained to hear. Nothing could be heard the length of the enormous hall.

Samuels: “Miss Gomez. Will you take these binoculars and repeat, to the court, just what the officer is reading at the other end of the room?”

She took the binoculars and focused them expertly on the officer, who had stopped reading and was watching alertly. “I am ready.”

Samuels: “Will you please read, sir?”

He did, and the woman repeated aloud, quickly and easily, a section that sounded as though it might be anything at all. I can’t speak Spanish. The officer continued to read for a minute or two.

Samuels: “Thank you, sir. And thank you, Miss Gomez. Your pardon, sir, but since there are several who have been known to memorize the Bible, will you tell the Court if you have anything on your person that is written, anything that Miss Gomez has no chance of viewing?” Yes, the officer had. “Will you read that as before? Will you, Miss Gomez—”

She read that, too. Then the officer came to the front to listen to the court reporter read Miss Gomez’s words.

“That’s what I read,” he affirmed.

Samuels turned her over to the prosecution, who made more experiments that served only to convince that she was equally good as interpreter and a lip-reader in either language.

In rapid succession Samuels put the rest of the lip-readers on the stand. In rapid succession they proved themselves as able and as capable as Miss Gomez, in their own linguistic speciality. The Russian from Ambridge generously offered to translate into his broken English any other Slavic language handy, and drew scattered grins from the press box. The Court was convinced, but failed to see the purpose of the exhibition. Samuels, glowing with satisfaction and confidence, faced the Court.

“Thanks to the indulgence of the Court, and despite the efforts of the distinguished prosecution, we have proved the almost amazing accuracy of lipreading in general, and these lip-readers in particular.” One judge absently nodded in agreement. “Therefore, our defense will be based on that premise, and on one other which we have until now found necessary to keep hidden — the picture in question was and is definitely not a fictional representation of events of questionable authenticity. Every scene in that film contained not polished professional actors but the original person named and portrayed. Every foot, every inch of film, was not the result of an elaborate studio reconstruction but an actual collection of pictures, an actual collection of newsreels — if they can be called that — edited and assembled in story form!”

Through the startled spurt of astonishment we heard one from the prosecution: “That’s ridiculous! No newsreel—”

Samuels ignored the objections and the tumult and put me on the stand. Beyond the usual preliminary questions I was allowed to say things my own way. At first hostile, the Court became interested enough to overrule the repeated objections that flew from the table devoted to the prosecution. I felt that at least two of the Court, if not outright favorable, were friendly. As far as I can remember, I went over the maneuvers of the past years and ended something like this:

“As to why we arranged the cards to fall as they did: both Mr. Laviada and myself were unable to face the prospect of destroying his discovery, because of the inevitable penalizing of needed research. We were, and we are, unwilling to better ourselves or a limited group by the use and maintenance of secrecy, if secrecy were possible. As to the only other alternative,” and I directed this straight at Judge Bronson, the well-known liberal on the bench, “since the last war all atomic research and activity have been under the direction of a board nominally civilian, but actually under the ‘protection and direction’ of the Army and Navy. This ‘direction and protection’, as any competent physicist will gladly attest, has proved to be nothing but a smothering blanket serving to conceal hide-bound antiquated reasoning, abysmal ignorance, and inestimable amounts of fumbling. As of right now, this country, or any country that was foolish enough to place any confidence in the rigid regime of the military mind, is years behind what would otherwise be the natural course of discovery and progress in nuclear and related fields.

“We were, and we are, firmly convinced that even the slightest hint of the inherent possibilities and scope of Mr. Laviada’s discovery would have meant, under the present regime, instant and mandatory confiscation of even a supposedly secure patent. Mr. Laviada has never applied for a patent, and never will. We both feel that such a discovery belongs not to an individual, a group, a corporation, or even to a nation, but to the world and those who live in it.

“We know, and are eager and willing to prove, that the domestic and external affairs of not only this nation, but of every nation are influenced, sometimes controlled, by esoteric groups warping political theories and human lives to suit their own ends.” The Court was smothered in sullen silence, thick and acid with hate and disbelief.

“Secret treaties, for example, and vicious, lying propaganda have too long controlled human passions and made men hate; honored thieves have too long rotted secretly in undeserved high places. The machine can make treachery and untruth impossible. It must, if atomic war is not to sear the face and fate of the world.

“Our pictures were all made with that end in view. We needed, first, the wealth and prominence to present to an international audience what we knew to be the truth. We have done as much as we can. From now on, this Court takes over the burden we have carried. We are guilty of no treachery, guilty of no deceit, guilty of nothing but deep and true humanity. Mr. Laviada wishes me to tell the Court and the world that he has been unable till now to give his discovery to the world, free to use as it wills.”

The Court stared at me. Every foreign representative was on the edge of his seat waiting for the judges to order us shot without further ado, the sparkling uniforms were seething, and the pressmen were racing their pencils against time. The tension dried my throat. The speech that Samuels and I had rehearsed the previous night was strong medicine. Now what?

Samuels filled the breach smoothly. “If the Court pleases; Mr. Lefko has made some startling statements. Startling, but certainly sincere, and certainly either provable or disprovable. And proof it shall be!”

He strode to the door of the conference room that had been allotted us. As the hundreds of eyes followed him it was easy for me to slip down from the witness stand and wait, ready. From the conference room Samuels rolled the machine, and Mike rose. The whispers that curdled the air seemed disappointed, unimpressed. Right in front of the bench he trundled it.

He moved unobtrusively to one side as the television men trained their long-snouted cameras. “Mr. Laviada and Mr. Lefko will show you…. I trust there will be no objection from the prosecution?” He was daring them.

One of the prosecution was already on his feet. He opened his mouth hesitantly, but thought better, and sat down. Heads went together in conference as he did. Samuels was watching the Court with one eye and the courtroom with the other.

“If the Court pleases, we will need a cleared space. If the bailiff will… thank you, sir.” The long tables were moved back, with a raw scraping. He stood there, with every eye in the courtroom glued on him. For two long breaths he stood there, then he spun and went to his table. “Mr. Lefko,” and be bowed formally. He sat.

The eyes swung to me, to Mike, as he moved to his machine and stood there silently. I cleared my throat and spoke to the Court as though I did not see the directional microphones trained at my lips.

“Judge Bronson.”

He looked steadily at me and then glanced at Mike. “Yes. Mr. Lefko?”

“Your freedom from bias is well known.” The corners of his mouth went down as he frowned. “Are you willing to be used as proof that there can be no trickery?” He thought that over, then nodded slowly. The prosecution objected but were waved down. “Will you tell me exactly where you were at any given time? Any place where you are absolutely certain and can verify that there were no concealed cameras or observers?”

He thought. Seconds. Minutes. The tension twanged, and I swallowed dust. He spoke quietly. “1918. November 11th.”

Mike whispered to me. I said, “Any particular time?”

Judge Bronson looked at Mike. “Exactly eleven. Armistice time.” He paused, then went on. “Niagara Falls. Niagara Falls, New York.”

I heard the dials tick in the stillness, and Mike whispered again. I said, “The lights should be off.” The bailiff rose. “Will you please watch the left wall, or in that direction? I think that if Judge Kassel will turn a little… we are ready.”

Bronson looked at me, and at the left wall. “Ready.”

The lights flicked out overhead and I heard the television crews mutter. I touched Mike on the shoulder. “Show them, Mike!”

We’re all showmen at heart, and Mike is no exception. Suddenly out of nowhere and into the depths poured a frozen torrent. Niagara Falls. I’ve mentioned. I think, that I’ve never got over a fear of heights. Few people ever do. I heard long, shuddery gasps as we started straight down. Down, until we stopped at the brink of the silent cataract, weird in its frozen majesty. Mike had stopped time at exactly eleven, I knew. He shifted to the American bank. Slowly he moved along. There a few tourists stood in almost comic attitudes. There was snow on the ground, flakes in the air. Time stood still, and hearts slowed in sympathy.

Bronson snapped, “Stop!”

A couple, young. Long skirts, high-buttoned army collar, dragging army overcoat, facing, arms about each other. Mike’s sleeve rustled in the darkness and they moved. She was sobbing and the soldier was smiling. She turned away her head, and he turned it back. Another couple seized them gayly, and they twirled breathlessly.

Branson’s voice was harsh. “That’s enough!” The view blurred for seconds.

Washington. The White House. The President. Someone coughed like a small explosion. The President was watching a television screen. Suddenly he jerked erect, startled. Mike spoke for the first time in court.

“That is the President of the United States. He is watching the trial that is being broadcast and televised from this courtroom. He is listening to what I am saying right now, and he is watching, on his television screen, as I use my machine to show him what he was doing one second ago.”

The President heard those fateful words. Stiffly he threw an unconscious glance around his room at nothing and looked back at his screen in time to see himself do what he had just done, one second ago. Slowly, as if against his will, his hand started toward the switch of his set.

“Mr. President, don’t turn off that set.” Mike’s voice was curt, almost rude. “You must hear this, you, of all people in the world. You must understand!

“This is not what we wanted to do, but we have no recourse left but to appeal to you, and to the people of this twisted world.” The President might have been cast in iron. “You must see, you must understand that you have in your hands the power to make it impossible for greed-born war to be bred in secrecy and rob man of his youth or his old age or whatever he prizes.” His voice softened, pleaded. “That is all we have to say. That is all we want. This is all anyone could want, ever.” The President, unmoving, faded into blackness. “The lights, please.” And almost immediately the Court adjourned.

That was over a month ago.

Mike’s machine has been taken from us, and we are under military guard. Probably it’s just as well we’re guarded. We understand there have been lynching parties broken up as near as a block or two away. Last week we watched a white-haired fanatic scream about us, on the street below. We couldn’t catch what he was shrieking, but we did catch a few air-borne epithets.

“Devils! Anti-Christs! Violation of the Bible!” Violations of this and that. Some, right here in the city, I suppose, would be glad to build a bonfire to cook us right back to the flames from which we’ve sprung. I wonder what the various groups are going to do now that the truth can be seen. Who can read lips in Aramaic, or Latin, or Coptic? And is a mechanical miracle a miracle?

This changes everything. We’ve been moved. Where, I don’t know, except that the weather is warm, and we’re on some military reservation, judging from the lack of civilians. Now we know what we’re up against. What started out to be just a time-killing occupation, Joe, has turned out to be a necessary preface to what I’m going to ask you to do. Finish this, and then move fast! We won’t be able to get this to you for a while yet, so I’ll go on for a bit the way I started, to kill time. Like our clippings:

Almost unanimously the press screamed; Pegler frothed, Winchell leered. We got the surface side of the situation from the press. But a military guard is composed of individuals, hotel rooms must be swept by maids, waiters must serve food, and a chain is as strong—We got what we think is the truth from those who work for a living.

There are meetings on street corners and homes, two great veteran groups have arbitrarily fired their officials, seven governors have resigned, three senators and over a dozen representatives have retired because of “ill health.” The general temper is ugly. International travelers report the same in Europe; Asia is bubbling, and transport planes with motors running stud the airports of South America. A general rumor is that a constitutional amendment is being rammed through to forbid the use of similar instruments by any individual, with the manufacture and leasing by the federal government to law-enforcement agencies or financially responsible corporations suggested; it is whispered that motor caravans are forming throughout the country for a Washington march to demand a decision by the Supreme Court on the truth of our charges; it is generally suspected that all news disseminating services are under direct Federal-Army control; wires are supposed to be sizzling with petitions and demands to Congress, which are seldom delivered.

One day the chambermaid said: “And the whole hotel might as well close up shop. The whole floor is blocked off, there’re MPs at every door, and they’re clearing out all the other guests as fast as they can be moved. The whole place wouldn’t be big enough to hold the letters and wires addressed to you, or the ones that are trying to get in to see you. Fat chance they have,” she added grimly. “The joint is lousy with brass.”

Mike glanced at me, and I cleared my throat. “What’s your idea of the whole thing?”

Expertly she spanked and reversed a pillow. “I saw your last picture before they shut it down. I saw all your pictures. When I wasn’t working, I listened to your trial. I heard you tell them off. I never got married because my boy friend never came back from Burma. Ask him what he thinks,” and she jerked her head at the young private who was supposed to keep her from talking. “Ask him if he wants some bunch of stinkers to start him shooting at some other poor chump. See what he says, and then ask me if I want an atom bomb dropped down my neck just because some chiselers want more than they got.” She left suddenly, and the soldier left with her. Mike and I had a beer and went to bed. Next week the papers had headlines a mile high.

We were freed all right, Bronson and the President being responsible for that. But the President and Bronson don’t know, I’m sure, that we were arrested immediately. We were told that we’ll be held in “protective custody” until enough states have ratified the proposed constitutional amendment. The Man Without a Country was in what you might call “protective custody,” too. We’ll likely be released the same way he was.

We’re allowed no newspapers, no radio, allowed no communication coming or going, and we’re given no reason, as if that was necessary. They’ll never let us go, and they’d be fools if they did. They think that if we can’t communicate, or if we can’t build another machine, our fangs are drawn, and when the excitement dies, we fall into oblivion, six feet of it. Well, we can’t build another machine. But, communicate?

Look at it this way. A soldier is a soldier because he wants to serve his country. A soldier doesn’t want to die unless his country is at war. Even then, death is only a last resort. And war isn’t necessary anymore, not with our machine. In the dark? Try to plan or plot in absolute darkness, which is what would be needed. Try to plot or carry on a war without putting things in writing. O.K. Now…

The Army has Mike’s machine. The Army has Mike. They call it military expediency, I suppose. Bosh! Anyone beyond the grade of moron can see that to keep that machine, to hide it, is to invite the world to attack, and attack in self-defense. If every nation, or if every man, had a machine, each would be equally open, or equally protected. But if only one nation, or only one man, can see, the rest will not long be blind. Maybe we did this all wrong. God knows, we thought about it often. God knows, we did our best to keep man out of his own trap.

There isn’t much time left. One of the soldiers guarding us will get this to you, I hope, in time.

A long time ago we gave you a key, and hoped we would never have to ask you to use it. But now is the time. That key fits a box at the Detroit Savings Bank. In that box are letters. Mail them, not all at once, or in the same place. They’ll go all over the world, to men we know, and have watched well, men clever, honest, and capable of following the plans we’ve enclosed.

But you’ve got to hurry! One of these bright days, someone is going to wonder if we’ve made more than one machine. We haven’t, of course. That would have been foolish. But if some smart young lieutenant gets hold of that machine long enough to start tracing back our movement, they’ll find that safety deposit box, with the plans and letters ready to be scattered broadside. You can see the need for haste — if the rest of the world, or any particular nation, wants that machine bad enough, they’ll fight for it. And they will! They must! Later on, when the Army gets used to the machine and its capabilities, it will become obvious to everyone, as it already has to Mike and me, that, with every plan open to inspection as soon as it’s made, no nation or group of nations would have a chance in open warfare. So if there is to be an attack, it will have to be deadly, and fast, and sure. Please God that we haven’t shoved the world into a war we tried to make impossible. With all the atom bombs and rockets that have been made in the past few years — Joe, you’ve got to hurry!