The Year's Best Science Fiction 9

DOUBLE STANDARD Fredric Brown

April 11—I’m wondering whether what I’m feeling is shock, fear or wonder that the rules might be different, the other side of the glass. Morality, I’d always thought, was a constant. And it must be; two sets of rules wouldn’t be fair. Their censor simply slipped up; that’s all it could have been.

Not that it matters, but it happened during a Western. I was Whitey Grant, Marshal of West Pecos, a fine rider, a fine fighter, an all-around hero. A gang of badmen came to town looking for me, real gunslingers, and since everyone else in town was afraid to go up against them, I had to take them on all by myself. Black Burke, the leader of the outlaws, told me afterward (I’d only had to knock him out, not kill him) through the bars of the jail that he thought it was a bit like High Noon and maybe it was, but what does that matter? High Noon was only a movie and if life happens to imitate fiction, so what?

But it was before that, while we were still “on the air,” that I happened to look out through the glass (we sometimes call it “the screen”) into the other world. One can do this only when one happens to be facing the screen directly. In the relatively rare times when this happens we get glimpses into this other world, a world in which people also exist, people like us, except that instead of doing things or having adventures they are simply sitting and watching us through the screen. And for some reason that is a mystery to me (one of many mysteries), never do we on two different evenings happen to see the same person or group of persons watching us from this other world.

That’s what I was doing when I looked through last night. In the living room into which I happened to be looking, a young couple sat. They were close together on a sofa, very close together, only a dozen feet away from me, and they were kissing. Well, we allow kisses occasionally here, but only brief and chaste ones. And this kiss didn’t look to be either. They were simply twined in each other’s arms, lost in and holding what looked like a passionate kiss, a kiss with sexual implications. Three times in pacing toward and from the screen I saw them, and they were still holding that kiss.

By the time I caught my third glimpse of them they were still holding it and twenty seconds at least must have elapsed. I was forced to avert my eyes; it was simply too much. Kissing at least twenty seconds! Probably longer if they started before my first look or continued after my last one. A twenty-second kiss! What kind of censors have they got over there, to be so careless?

What kind of sponsors to let censors be so careless?

After the Western was over and the glass opaque again, leaving us alone in our own world, I wanted to talk it over with Black Burke and did talk quite a while through the bars, but I decided no, I shouldn’t bring up what I had seen. They’ll probably hang Burke soon, after his trial tomorrow. He’s being brave about it, but why should I put another worry on his mind? Killer or no, he isn’t a really bad guy, and hanging is enough for him to have to think about! Who knows what his next incarnation will be—if any?

April 15—I am deeply disturbed now. It happened again last night. And it was worse! This time most definitely a shock. The few nights between that first time and this even worse one, I’d been afraid, almost, to look out. I’d turned toward the glass as seldom and as briefly as possible. But when I had seen through it there’d been nothing amiss. A different living room each time, but never one with a young couple alone together in it, violating the Code. People sitting around behaving themselves, watching us. Kids, sometimes. The usual.

But last night!

Really shocking. A young couple alone again—not, of course, the same couple or the same living room. There wasn’t any sofa in this one, just two big overstuffed chairs —and they were both sitting in the same chair, she was on his lap.

That was all I saw my first glimpse. I was a doctor and conditions at the hospital were pretty hectic and kept me rushing from emergency to emergency, saving lives. But near the end (that’s what we call it when the final commercial comes on and we can no longer see out nor can those in the outside world any longer see us) I was delivering some good advice to a younger doctor and faced away from him to do it, which put me looking into the screen, or through the glass, and I saw them again.

And either they had moved or else I saw something I had not noticed in my first glimpse. Oh, they were watching the screen all right and not kissing. But!

The girl was wearing shorts, very short shorts, and his hand was on her thigh—and not even just resting there, but moving slightly, caressing! What sort of a den of iniquity is it out there that such a thing would be permitted? A man caressing a woman’s bare thigh! Anyone in our world would shiver at the very thought of it.

I am shivering now, just thinking about it.

What’s wrong with their censors anyway?

Is there some difference between worlds that I do not understand? The unknown is always frightening. I am frightened. And shocked.

April 22—A full week has passed since the second of the two disturbing episodes and until last night I had begun to feel reassured. I had begun to think that the two Code violations I had observed were isolated instances of indecency, things that had slipped through by mistake.

But last night I saw—or rather heard, in this case— something that was a most flagrant violation of a completely different section of the Code.

Perhaps before describing it I should explain the phenomenon of “hearing.” Very seldom do we hear sounds from the other side of the screen. They are too faint to penetrate the glass, or they are drowned out by our own conversations or the sounds we make, or by the music that plays during otherwise silent sequences. (I used to wonder about the source of that music since, except in sequences that take place in night clubs, dance halls or the like, there are never any musicians around to produce it, but finally I decided that it is simply a mystery that we are not supposed to understand.) For one of us actually to hear identifiable sounds from the other world requires a combination of circumstances. It can happen only during a sequence in which there is absolute silence, sans even music, in our own world. And even then it can be heard by only one of us at a time, since one of us must be very, very near the glass. (We call this a “tight close-up.”) Occasionally, under these ideal circumstances, one of us can hear, clearly enough to understand, a phrase or even an entire sentence spoken in the world outside.

For a moment last night these ideal circumstances prevailed for me and I heard a complete sentence spoken, as well as being able to see the speaker and the spoken-to. They were an ordinary-looking middle-aged couple sitting (but decorously apart) on a sofa facing me. The man said— and I am sure I heard him correctly, for he spoke quite loudly, as though the woman was a bit hard of hearing:

“G —, honey, that’s awful. Let’s shut the d--- thing off and go down to the corner for a beer, huh?”

The first of the two words for which I use dashes was the name of the Deity and is a perfectly proper word when used reverently and in context. But it certainly didn’t sound as though he was using it reverently, and the second word was very definitely profanity.

I am deeply disturbed.

April 30—There is no real reason for me to make an entry tonight to add to the other notes I have made recently. I am more or less doodling and will no doubt throw this page away when I have finished with it. I am writing it simply because I have to be writing something and might as well do this as something even more meaningless.

You see, I am writing this “on screen,” as we call it. Tonight I am a newspaper reporter sitting in front of my typewriter in the city room of a newspaper.

I have, however, already played my active part in this adventure, and am now in the background, required only to look busy and keep typing. Since I am a touch typist and do not need to watch the keys, tonight I have ample opportunity to take occasional glances through the glass into the other world. I find myself again seeing a young couple alone together. Their “set” is in their bedroom and obviously they are married, since they are watching from their beds. Beds, plural, of course. I am pleased to see that they are following the Code, which permits married couples to be shown talking to each other from twin beds a reasonable distance apart, but more than understandably forbids their being shown together in a double bed; no matter how far apart they lie, this is definitely suggestive.

Just took another glance. Apparently they aren’t much interested in watching the screen from their side. Instead, they are talking. Of course, I cannot hear what they are saying to each other; even if there were absolute silence on our side, I am too far back from the glass. But he is asking her a question and she is nodding, smilingly.

Suddenly she sweeps back the covers and swings her feet out of bed, sits up on her side of it.

She is naked.

Dear God, how can you permit this? It is impossible. In our world, there is no such thing as a naked woman. It just cannot be.

She stands up and I cannot tear my eyes away from the impossibly beautiful, beautifully impossible, sight of her. Out of the corner of one eye I can see that he has thrown back the covers on his bed and he, too, is naked. He is beckoning to her and, for a brief moment, she stands there laughing, looking at him and letting him look at her.

Something strange, something I have never felt before, something I did not know was possible is happening in my loins. I try to tear my eyes away, but I cannot.

She crosses the two steps between the beds and lies down beside him. Suddenly he is kissing and caressing her. And now—

Can such things be?

It is true, then! There is no censorship for them; they can and do do the things that in our world may be only vaguely suggested as off-stage happenings. How can they be free when we are not? It is cruel. We are being denied equality and our birthright.

Let me out of here! Let me out!

Let me out!

Help, anyone, help!

Let me out of this box!