The Worlds of George O

by George O. Smith

  AMELIA:

  "Grandmother?"

  MEDDLER: "Oh yes, indeed. Your son is my father."

  AMELIA: "But I'm not married."

  MEDDLER: "But you will be. Now, Gran'pa, you sit here--"

  MARTIN, interrupting angrily: "You cut this 'Gran'pa' stuff right now."

  MEDDLER: "I'm sorry. But I've been taught that it's quite impolite to call my grandparents by their given names. Of course, you don't look like the old duffer that I know as gran'pa."

  MARTIN: "Duffer?"

  MEDDLER: "Calm down. Calm down. Start making like romance. You know, you're not even engaged to gran'ma yet."

  AMELIA: "Don't call me gran'ma!"

  MEDDLER: "Pardon me. I know it's impertinent, but now that I see you in your youth, you're quite a dish. I can understand why gran'pa threw over this Laura Phillips girl. It's hard to believe that you will become that sweet little old lady."

  AMELIA: "Mr. Martin, what's he talking about?"

  MARTIN: "Amelia, he says he's a time traveler from the future who can prove that we met, got married, and--"

  AMELIA, interrupting: "Don't go any further!"

  MARTIN: "I'm afraid he's right. He says it's history, and we can't change history, can we?"

  AMELIA: "But I hardly know you."

  MEDDLER: "Well, now, if you'd known one another, I wouldn't have to introduce you, would I?"

  AMELIA: "Maybe somebody ought to explain this to me."

  MEDDLER: "Fine! A much better start. A highball to relax, maybe?"

  AMELIA: "I think I need one."

  SOUND: Glasses tinkling, cork opening, pouring.

  MEDDLER: "There! Now, a little more romantic setting. Soft lights. Sit beside him, Gran'ma, and I'll leave you two to canoodle a bit. I've some other business--"

  AMELIA: "But Harry?"

  MEDDLER: "Oh, Harry. Forget it. I'll take care of Harry!"

  SOUND: Doorbell buzzes angrily.

  MARTIN: "Yipes! That'll be Laura. Run! Hide! Do something!"

  MEDDLER: "Oh relax, Gran'pa. I'll take care of everything."

  SOUND: Door buzzer, with banging on the door panels, doorknob rattling, followed by footsteps and door opening.

  MEDDLER: "Ah, you're Miss Laura Phillips. Miss Phillips, may I present Mr. Harry-"

  DIRECTION: Voice trails off to make the last name unintelligible.

  MUSIC: "Exploring Tomorrow" theme rising to full volume as the Meddler's voice trails away.

  Run the theme stanza, end with orchestral stab.

  ANNOUNCER: "Tonight, on 'Command Theatre' we're listening to the radio adaptation of a science fiction novelette, 'Meddler's Moon.' Well, Mr. Smith, how do you like your work on the air?"

  GEORGE O.: "This sort of thing is kind of time travel in itself. Right out of my past into my present."

  * * * *

  MUSIC: Start with theme, fading to background level for the following: JOHN W. CAMPBELL: "Charles Martin wasn't the only one having trouble with the little man who wasn't there. Everyone was, because the future can't be handled logically. It's logically impossible because, you see, the future doesn't exist yet. And if it doesn't exist, then, obviously, it isn't logical. But then, it's going to exist, so--well--you see what I mean. Logic is just hopeless."

  MUSIC: Fades at the end of Campbell's intermission. Two to five seconds of silence:

  HARRY: "I should ought to clobber you."

  MEDDLER: "Oh now, be reasonable, Harry. That wouldn't prove anything."

  HARRY: "But Amelia's

  my girl!"

  MEDDLER: "Get over it, Harry. They're probably arranging their engagement right now."

  LAURA, angrily: "You meddler!"

  MEDDLER: "I'm not a meddler, Laura. I'm just an instrument of fate."

  LAURA: "Fate? Poor Charles, thrown into the cage with that blonde lioness!"

  HARRY: "You stop calling my girl bad names. You hear me?"

  MEDDLER: "You're acting like a pair of spoiled children.

  Stop it! I regret that

  you've lost your loves, but--

  really no one ever died of unrequited love."

  HARRY: "Mine wasn't unrequited."

  MEDDLER: "It might as well be, once they're happily married."

  LAURA: "

  Happily Married!"

  MEDDLER: "You wouldn't want them to be unhappy, would you?"

  LAURA: "I'd like a little happiness, myself."

  MEDDLER: "So would we all. But stop and think a bit.

  If a number of human lives

  depended upon you giving up a love affair, would you go on and marry the man anyway?"

  LAURA: "That's hardly fair."

  MEDDLER: "Then I'll put it up to Harry. Harry, if your own life depended upon preventing a wrong marriage, would you stand by and let them go ahead?"

  HARRY: "Make your own point.

  You're the meddler."

  MEDDLER: "All right.

  My life depends upon it.

  My father's life depends upon it.

  Unless Charles Martin and Amelia Carter marry, neither my father nor I can be born.

  Realizing this, I used my grandfather's time machine--yours, Gran'pa--to come back to give them a formal introduction. Now, you can't blame me for wanting to live, so I came back and fixed it up."

  LAURA: "Yes--you're a great little fixer-upper!"

  HARRY: "Maybe we ought to fix you up and go on as we please about it."

  MEDDLER: "You don't know much about time and history, do you."

  HARRY: "No, but I could make up a--"

  MEDDLER, interrupting:

  "No, you could

  not! You couldn't change a thing!"

  LAURA: "Why not?"

  MEDDLER: "If your father and mother had never met, could you have been born?"

  LAURA: "Now, don't be so utterly ridiculous!"

  MEDDLER: "Never be scornful about stating a simple fact. I exist! Therefore I am!

  Say it as you please. To you, Charles and Amelia have yet to be married, and you think you can stop them. To me, Charles and Amelia were married fifty years ago, and they are my grandparents. The sensible thing to do is to accept the fact. Wipe it off the slate. Pick up the pieces and go on from there."

  LAURA: "Such as?"

  MEDDLER: "Well, now, you're both very attractive people. This matter might well start a common bond of memories--"

  HARRY, interrupting: "She ain't my type."

  LAURA: "I've seen better, myself."

  MEDDLER: "Egad, this

  is a primitive era! I tell them what is best for all of us, and they want to--what's the term, Harry?"

  HARRY: "Clobber you."

  MEDDLER: "Ah, yes. Clobber me.?

  HARRY: "That's the best idea I've heard all night."

  LAURA: "No, Harry. Not here. Outside on the street where I can stop making like a lady. Then I'll help you."

  MEDDLER: "Oh, you can beat me up, but you can't change something that's already happened, now, can you?"

  LAURA: "I've taken all I can. I'm going home."

  HARRY: "Uh--er--ah, uh, can I, er, ah, take, yuh--"

  MEDDLER: "Now, that's a fine practical arrangement. Find sympathy in one another. It's the better thing to do. And maybe you'll find happiness in one another."

  MUSIC: Orchestral stab, followed by opening bars of the theme music, trailing off to two to five seconds of silence.

  AMELIA: "Charles, can't we get out of this somehow?"

  CHARLES: "Well, Amelia, if I cut my throat, I can't invent the time machine, and then he couldn't come back to mess up our lives by forcing me to marry you."

  AMELIA, wailing: "Ooooh--you'd rather commit suicide than marry me!"

  CHARLES: "Amelia, stop it. That's not so."

  AMELIA, sarcastically: "So--you'd rather marry me than commit suicide?"

  CHARLES: "Confound it! Stop the bawling and let me think."

  AMELIA, slowly and thoughtfully: "Charles, do you--think he'd go away--if we m
ade it look like--like everything was running smooth?"

  CHARLES, quickly: "Whadda y'mean?"

  AMELIA: "Suppose we stopped squabbling--and complaining--and make it look as if we'd been making up to one another. Mightn't he think everything was going his way? Maybe he'd go back where he came from. Then we could do as we please."

  CHARLES: "Won't work, Amelia. That character is our grandson. Right now he already knows what we're going to do."

  AMELIA: "Maybe he does know, but we don't. Aren't you willing to give it a try?"

  CHARLES, in a tone of despair: "All right. I'll try. But it's futile!" (Voice changes to furtive curiosity) "Just what did you have in mind?"

  AMELIA: "Why, I just

  know he'll be checking in tonight. We could make it look as if we'd--been--getting acquainted."

  CHARLES: "And just what have we been doing for the past couple of hours?

  Playing tiddly winks--HEY! Hey! Hey, let go of my necktie!"

  AMELIA, speaking through Charles's unintelligible interjections: "I'm just messing you up a little bit. If we'd really been getting acquainted, we'd hardly look as if we'd been here with folded hands, would it?" (Pause) "Charles! Stop that!"

  CHARLES: "If we'd really been getting acquainted, you wouldn't mind having your hair a bit mussed up, would you?"

  AMELIA: "Suppose not. There! Now we look as if we'd been coeducational wrestling. Now--where's my bag?"

  CHARLES: "What for?"

  AMELIA: "Lipstick. You should have a smear or two."

  CHARLES: "With you looking like a magazine cover? Lipstick is a two-way smear, right?"

  AMELIA, hesitantly: "Ah--yeah--I suppose so."

  CHARLES: "Amelia, you sound as if Harry was the only man you've ever kissed."

  AMELIA: "And if we get around to it, Charles Martin, you'll be the only man who's ever been kissed just because history said he had to be." (Pause) "So there. So if I gotta, I gotta!"

  CHARLES: "Once--for history."

  AMELIA, after medium-long pause, giggles, another medium-long pause: "Let's see you now."

  CHARLES: "Um--you need more of a spread."

  AMELIA: "Mmmm--umrnmmm." (Long pause, throaty chuckle) "You need a touch right there. Hold still a minute."

  CHARLES, after a pause, lets out a satisfied sigh: "Ah-hah! There's one thing that history didn't mention."

  AMELIA: "What's that, Charles?"

  CHARLES: "History didn't say that this could be fun."

  AMELIA, following pause: "Be funny, wouldn't it?"

  CHARLES: "What could be funny?"

  AMELIA: "If Junior's trick worked."

  CHARLES: "Meaning?"

  AMELIA: "That we found out--after we went back--that we really liked it?"

  CHARLES, dubiously: "Yeah--wouldn't it!" (Pause)

  SOUND, following pause: Door buzzer, "shave and a hair-cut" tattoo.

  AMELIA: "Charles?"

  CHARLES, after a short pause: "Yes?"

  AMELIA: "Isn't that the doorbell?"

  CHARLES: "Yeah. So let 'im wait!"

  SOUND: Door buzzer again, sounding impatient.

  CHARLES: "Now, remember to look flustered, as if he is interrupting something."

  AMELIA: "Try to wipe your face, too. As if you were trying to hide the evidence."

  SOUND: Footsteps, doorknob.

  MEDDLER: "Ah, good! I see that everything is progressing fine."

  CHARLES: "All right. All right. Now--now--now--er, go away."

  MEDDLER: "Oh, I'm not going to stay. I just wanted to see how things are getting along. I know when I'm not wanted."

  CHARLES: "Then how come you came here in the first place?"

  MEDDLER: "Right now, you think you hate me for my interference. But I'll remind you that, fifty years from now, the pair of you will be sending me off in the time machine to

  do this job of interference. And you, Gran'ma--"

  AMELIA, interrupting: "Don't call me gran'ma!"

  MEDDLER, laughing: "You're still my gran'ma, and you'll tell me what I've known all along: that you and gran'pa wasted your first kisses trying to fool me into leaving.

  But now I'll trot along--be back tomorrow. Don't keep gran'ma out too late, Gran'pa!"

  AMELIA: "But what did you do with Harry?"

  CHARLES: "And Laura?"

  MEDDLER: "Oh, I fixed that up just fine. Harry volunteered to escort Gran'pa's former girl friend home."

  AMELIA; "Harry--with Laura!?"

  CHARLES: "Laura--with Harry!?"

  SOUND: Door closing.

  AMELIA. wistfully: "Charles?"

  CHARLES: "Yes, Amelia?"

  AMELIA: "To heck with history. Kiss me once--for me!"

  MUSIC: Orchestral stab, followed by theme music long enough to signify the end of "Act One" Silence.

  * * * *

  ANNOUNCER: "George O. Smith, the author of the show we're listening to tonight, is right here in the studio with us. Mr. Smith, how do you like it?"

  GEORGE O.: "I like it fine. But there's one problem. I know how the ending comes out."

  * * * *

  SOUND: Door buzzer, light and hesitant.

  CHARLES groans, coming awake: "Egad!"

  SOUND: Rustle of bedclothes, footsteps in bare feet. Unlatching the door.

  CHARLES: "Laura! For goodness sake, It's three o'clock in the morning."

  LAURA: "I know what time it is."

  CHARLES: "Bub--but--"

  LAURA: "I came to see what you were doing."

  CHARLES: "I've been trying to think."

  LAURA: "You

  look as if you have everything all settled."

  CHARLES: "So what can I do?"

  LAURA: "Well, you might wash that blonde hussy's magenta lipstick off your silly face."

  CHARLES: "Now Laura--Laura--I--I can--I can explain."

  LAURA, sarcastically: "I'm listening. Convince me--go on and convince me that you got all smeared up without enjoying it. Convince me."

  CHARLES: "Well--you went home with Harry the Beef Trust, didn't you?"

  LAURA: "I didn't see anyone around to make any other offer."

  CHARLES: "But I was--" (Voice trails away)

  LAURA, haughtily: "I know. You were working like a little beaver, making history come out right."

  CHARLES: "So what am I supposed to do? Bang my head against brick walls? Tilt at windmills? Confound it, am I the only one around here who has sense enough to know when I'm licked?"

  LAURA: "You might not be so easily licked if Amelia Carter was as ugly as a mud fence."

  CHARLES, sarcastically: "Well, it does make my defeat less difficult to bear!"

  LAURA: "So let's make it complete, then. Have this expanded to fit her pudgy little hand."

  CHARLES, disappointed: "My ring! But Laura--but--"

  LAURA: "Good-bye, Charles."

  CHARLES: "Please wait--don't go."

  LAURA: "What's to stay for? To be the maid of honor?"

  CHARLES: "If you came to quarrel with me, you yourself are doing everything to prove Junior's point. If he were here, he'd be cheering you on, and using my telephone to call Harry to take you home."

  LAURA: "I didn't come here to fight

  with you, Charles. I came here to fight for you.

  But you're not fighting!"

  CHARLES: "But Junior knows all the moves. Everything I try rums out to be his way."

  LAURA: "Like your experimental smooching session?

  CHARLES: "Yeah--that, too! He was amused."

  LAURA: "I'm not. Your game may have started out as a deliberate frame-up, but it ended ginger-peachy for him."

  CHARLES: "I try to tell you--he knows every move. He came back to tell me that

  you went home with Harry."

  LAURA: "And fifty years from now, you and Amelia will dodder over to his time machine and kiss your brat of a grandson good-bye as he takes off for the introduction. That's the program, isn't it?"

  CHARLES "But what can we do?"

&n
bsp; LAURA: "Charles, you say that everything's fixed and solid, that nothing can be changed."

  CHARLES: "That's the way it is."

  LAURA: "But what might happen if you could un-fix Junior's little apple cart?"

  CHARLES: "Then we could go on as if he hadn't arrived."

  LAURA: "Couldn't you?"

  CHARLES: "I can't prevent what's already happened. He exists! He is! He's alive and here--in the flesh!"

  LAURA, voice drops to disappointment: "So--I suppose you can't change that, can you."

  CHARLES: "Unfortunately, no."

  LAURA, very slowly and hesitant, reluctantly: "Well, then--goodbye, Charles. If he exists, he exists."

  CHARLES: "Confound it, he does exist!" (Pause) "But wait a minute, Laura. Junior does exist, but what if Junior was a different kind of a guy?"

  LAURA, quickly: "What do you mean?"

  CHARLES: "Look, Laura, Junior is my grandson, right?"

  LAURA: "Um?"

  CHARLES: "If I don't marry Amelia, he can't be born. He can't exist unless we follow every move, right down to the last letter of the history he talks about. Right?"

  LAURA: "Yes, but--?

  CHARLES, interrupting: "But let's assume that the future is not a firm and solid recital of recorded history."

  LAURA: "Everybody has been saying that all along but you and Junior, but you keep pointing at Junior's history book and shouting 'No!'"

  CHARLES: "But suppose that Junior's history book is only one of many possible histories."

  LAURA: "So how do you explain his solid existence?"

  CHARLES: "Floating a brick on water is not impossible. It's just extremely unlikely."

  LAURA: "Stop talking like a mathematics professor discussing infinity. Get down to the important point."

  CHARLES: "Until Junior arrived with his books and his papers to show me--us--

  how we are going to act, we might assume that his existence was no more assured than any other future probability."

  LAURA: "Ummmm, go on, Charles."

  CHARLES: "But with his papers and books, he convinces us of his existence, and he becomes a very strong probability. In other words, he exists because he did the fixing that put history on the road that leads directly to him."

  LAURA: "Well, you could rob a bank and get tossed in jail. And that would stop you from marrying anybody."

  CHARLES: "No, we can't change things that drastically. So Junior exists as a multi-sigma probability. But we might slip a little change in Junior's character."