by Isaac Asimov
He strode toward him angrily. “What are you doing here?”
It was Laborian, who answered quietly, “Watching. “
“Our contract states-”
“That I am to interfere in the proceedings in no way. It does not say I cannot watch quietly.” “You’ll get upset if you do. This is the way preparing a compudrama works. There are lots of glitches to overcome and it would be upsetting to the company to have the author watching and disapproving.”
“I’m not disapproving. I’m here only to answer questions if you care to ask them.” “Questions? What kind of questions?”
Laborian shrugged. “I don’t know. Something might puzzle you and you might want a suggestion.”
“I see,” said Willard, with heavy irony, “so you can teach me my business.”
“No, so I can answer your questions.”
“Well, I have one.”
“Very well,” and Laborian produced a small cassette recorder. “If you’ll just speak into this and say that you are asking me a question and wish me to answer without prejudicing the contract, we’re in business.”
Willard paused for a considerable time, staring at Laborian as though he suspected trickery of some sort, then he spoke into the cassette.
“Very well,” said Laborian. “What’s your question?”
“Did you have anything in mind for the appearance of the triple-being in the book?” “Not a thing,” said Laborian, cheerfully.
“How could you do that?” Willard’s voice trembled as though he were holding back a final “you idiot” by main force.
“Easily. What I don’t describe, the reader supplies in his own mind. Each reader does it differently to suit himself, I presume. That’s the advantage of writing. A compu-drama would have an enormously larger audience than a book could have, but you must pay for that by having to present an image.”
“I understand that,” said Willard. “So much for the question, then.” “Not at all. I have a suggestion.”
“Like what?”
“Like a head. Give the triple-being a head. The Parental has no head, nor the Rational, nor the Emotional, but all three look up to the triple-beings as creatures of intelligence beyond their own. That is the entire difference between the triple-beings and the three Separates. Intelligence.”
“A head?”
“Yes. We associate intelligence with heads. The head contains the brain, it contains the sense organs. Omit the head and we cannot believe in intelligence. The headless oysters or clams are mollusks that seem no more intelligent to us than a spring of grass would be, but the related octopus, also a mollusk, we accept as possibly intelligent because it has a head-and eyes. Give the triple-being eyes, too.”
Work had, of course, ceased on the set. Everyone had gathered in as closely as they thought judicious to listen to the conversation between director and author.
Willard said, “What kind of head?”
“ Your choice. All you need is a bulge suggesting a head. And eyes. The viewer is sure to get the idea.”
W illard turned away, shouting, “Well, get back to work. Who called a vacation? Where are the imagists? Back to the machine and begin trying out heads.”
He turned suddenly and said, in an almost surly fashion, to Laborian. “Thank you! “ “Only if it works,” said Laborian, shrugging.
The rest of the day was spent in testing heads, searching for one that was not a humorous bulge, and not an unimaginative copy of the human head, and eyes that were not astonished circles or vicious slits.
Then, finally, Willard called a halt and growled, “We’ll try again tomorrow. If anyone gets any brilliant thoughts overnight, give them to Meg Cathcart. She’ll pass on to me any that are worth it.” And he added, in an annoyed mutter, “I suppose she’ll have to remain silent.”
Willard was right and wrong. He was right. There were no brilliant ideas handed to him, but he was wrong for he had one of his own.
He said to Cathcart, “Listen, can you get across a top hat?”
“A what?”
“The sort of thing they wore in Victorian times. Look, when the Parental invades the lair of the triple-beings to steal an energy source, he’s not an impressive sight in himself, but you told me you could just get across the idea of a helmet and a long line that will give the notion of a spear. He’ll be on a knightly quest.”
“Yes, I know,” she said, “but it might not work. We’ll have to try it out.”
“Of course, but that points the direction. If you have just a suggestion of a top hat, it will give the impression of the triple-being as an aristocrat. The exact shape of the head and eyes becomes less crucial in that case. Can it be done?”
“Anything can be done. The question is: will it work? “
“We’ll try it.”
And as it happened, one thing led to another. The suggestion of the top hat caused the voice- recorder to say, “Why not give the triple-being a British accent? “
Willard was caught off-guard. “Why?”
“Well, the British have a language with more tones than we do. At least, the upper classes do. The American version of English tends to be flat, and that’s true of the Separates, too. If the triple-being spoke British rather than English, his voice could rise and fall with the words-tenor and baritone and even an occasional soprano squeak. That’s what we would want to indicate with the three voices out of which his voice was formed.”
“Can you do that?” said Willard. “I think so.”
“Then we’ll try. Not bad-if it works.”
It was interesting to see how the entire group found themselves engaged in the Emotional.
The scene in particular where the Emotional was fleeing across the face of the planet, where she had her brief set-to with the other Emotionals caught at everyone.
Willard said tensely, “This is going to be one of the great dramatic scenes. We’ll put it out as widely as we can. It’s going to be draperies, draperies, draperies, but they must not be entangled one with the other. Each one must be distinct. Even when you rush the Emotionals in toward the audience I want each set of draperies to be a different off-white. And I want Dua’s drapery to be distinct from all of them. I want her to glitter a little, just to be different, and because she’s our Emotional. Got it?”
“Got it,” said the leading imagist. “We’ll handle it.”
“And another thing. All the other Emotionals twitter. They’re birds. Our Emotional doesn’t twitter, and she despises the rest because she’s more intelligent than they are and she knows it. And when she’s fleeing-” he paused, and brooded a bit. “Is there any way we can get away from the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’?”
“ W e don’t want to,” said the soundman promptly. “Nothing better for the purpose has ever been written.”
Cathcart said, “Yes, but we’ll only have snatches of it now and then. Hearing a few bars has the effect of the whole, and I can insert the hint of tossing manes.” “Manes?” said Willard, dubiously.“
Absolutely. Three thousand years of experience with horses has pinned us down to the galloping stallion as the epitome of wild speed. All our mechanical devices are too static, however fast they go. And I can arrange to have the manes just match, emphasize, and punctuate the flowing of the draperies.”
“That sounds good. We’ll try it.”
Willard knew where the final stumbling block would be found. The last melting. He called the troupe together to lecture them, partly to make sure they understood what it was they were all doing now, partly to put off the time of reckoning when they would actually try to put it all into sound, image, and sublimination.
He said, “ All right, the Emotional’s interest is in saving the other world-Earth-only because she can’t bear the thought of the meaningless destruction of intelligent beings. She knows the triple-beings are carrying through a scientific project, necessary for the welfare of her world and caring nothing for the danger into which it puts the alien world-us.
“She tries to warn the alien world and fails. She knows, at last, that the whole purpose of melting is to produce a new set of Rational, Emotional and Parental, and then, with that done, there is a final melting that would turn the original set into a triple-being. Do you have that? It's a sort of larval form of Separates and an adult form of triples.
“But the Emotional doesn't want to melt. She doesn't want to produce the new generation. Most of all, she doesn't want to become a triple-being and participate in what she considers their work of destruction. She is, however, tricked into the final melt and realizes too late that she is not only going to be a triple-being but a triple-being who will be, more than any other, responsible for the scientific project that will destroy the other world.
“All this Laborian could describe in words, words, words, in his book, but we've got to do it more immediately and more forcefully, in images and sublimination as well. That's what we're now going to try to do.”
They were three days in the trying before Willard was satisfied.
The weary Emotional, uncertain, stretching outward, with Cathcart's sublimination instilling the feeling of not-sure, not-sure. The Rational and Parental enfolded and coming together, more rapidly than on previous occasions-hurrying for the superimposition before it might be stopped-and the Emotional realizing too late the significance of it all and struggling-struggling-
And failure. The drenching feeling of failure as a new triple-being stepped out of the superimposition, more nearly human than anyone else in the compu-drama-proud, indifferent.
The scientific procedure would go on. Earth would continue the downward slide.
And somehow this was it-this was the nub of everything that Willard was trying to do-that within the new triple-being the Emotional still existed in part. There was just the wisping of drapery and the viewer was to know that the defeat was not final after all.
The Emotional would, somehow, still try, lost though it was in a greater being.
They watched the completed compu-drama, all of them, seeing it for the first time as a whole and not as a collection of parts, wondering if there were places to edit, to reorder. (Not now, thought Willard, not now. Afterwards, when he had recovered and could look at it more objectively.)
He sat in his chair, slumped. He had put too much of himself into it. It had seemed to him that it contained everything he wanted it to contain; that it did everything he wanted to have done; but how much of that was merely wishful thinking?
When it was over and the last tremulous, subliminal cry of the defeated-but-not-yet-defeated Emotional faded, he said, “Well.”
And Cathcart said, “That’s almost as good as your King Lear was, Jonas.”
There was a general murmur of agreement and Willard cast a cynical eye about him. Wasn’t that what they would be bound to say, no matter what?
His eye caught that of Gregory Laborian. The writer was expressionless, said nothing.
Willard’s mouth tightened. There at least he could expect an opinion that would be backed, or not backed, by gold. Willard had his hundred thousand. He would see now whether it would stay electronic.
He said, and his own uncertainty made him sound imperious, “Laborian. I want to see you in my office.”
They were together alone for the first time since well before the compu-drama had been made. “Well?” said Willard. “What do you think, Mr. Laborian?”
Laborian smiled. “That woman who runs the subliminal background told you that it was almost as good as your King Lear was, Mr. Willard.”
“I heard her.”
“She was quite wrong. “ “In your opinion?”
“Yes. My opinion is what counts right now. She was quite wrong. Your Three in One is much better than your King Lear.”
“Better?” Willard’s weary face broke into a smile.
“Much better. Consider the material you had to work with in doing King Lear. You had William Shakespeare, producing words that sang, that were music in themselves; William Shakespeare producing characters who, whether for good or evil, whether strong or weak, whether shrewd or foolish, whether faithful or traitorous, were all larger than life; William Shakespeare, dealing with two overlapping plots, reinforcing each other and tearing the viewers to shreds.
“What was your contribution to King Lear? You added dimensions that Shakespeare lacked the technological knowledge to deal with; that he couldn’t dream of; but the fanciest technologies and all that your people and your own talents could do could only build somewhat on the greatest literary genius of all time, working at the peak of his power.
“But in Three in One, Mr. Willard, you were working with my words which didn’t sing; my characters, which weren’t great; my plot which tore at no one. You dealt with me, a run-of-the-mill writer and you produced something great, something that will be remembered long after I am dead. One book of mine, anyway, will live on because of what you have done.
“Give me back my electronic hundred thousand, Mr. Willard, and I will give you this.”
The hundred thousand was shifted back from one financial card to the other and, with an effort, Laborian then pulled his fat briefcase onto the table and opened it. From it, he drew out a box, fastened with a small hook. He unfastened it carefully, and lifted the top. Inside it glittered the gold pieces, each one marked with the planet Earth, the western hemisphere on one side, the eastern on the other. Large gold pieces, two hundred of them, each worth five hundred globo-dollars.
Willard, awed, plucked out one of the gold pieces. It weighed about one and a quarter ounces. He threw it up in the air and caught it.
“Beautiful,” he said.
“It’s yours, Mr. Willard,” said Laborian. “Thank you for doing the compu-drama for me. It is worth every piece of that gold.”
Willard stared at the gold and said, “You made me do the compu-drama of your book with your offer of this gold. To get this gold, I forced myself beyond my talents. Thank you for that, and you are right. It was worth every piece of that gold.”
He put the gold piece back in the box and closed it. Then he lifted the box and handed it back to Laborian.
Part Two: On Science Fiction
The Longest Voyage
Suppose you want to take a trip across the country from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon.
That’s roughly 3,000 miles. A trip around the world along the equator is only a little over eight times that, 25,000 miles.
To go from the Earth to the moon is only about nine times the equatorial jaunt, about 240,000 miles. Beyond that? Well, Venus at its closest is just over a hundred times the distance to the moon; it is about 25,000,000 miles away. And right now, Pluto is just about as near to Earth as it ever gets, but it is over a hundred times the distance to Venus. It is about 2,800,000,000 miles away.
So far we’ve stayed in our solar system, but beyond that are the stars. Even the nearest star is nearly 9,000 times as far away as Pluto is right now. The nearest star is Alpha Centauri and it is 25,000,000,000,000 miles away. And that’s the nearest star.
The distance across the Milky Way galaxy is 23,000 times the distance from Earth to Alpha Centauri. The distance from here to the Andromeda galaxy, the nearest large galaxy to our own, is about twenty-three times the diameter of the Milky Way galaxy. And the distance from here to the farthest quasar is about 4,000 times that from here to the Andromeda.
What about time? It takes a few days to get to the moon; a few months to get to Venus or Mars; a few years to get to the giant planets of the solar system. But that’s about as far as we can go and have it make reasonable sense.
To get to even the nearest star, at the present state of the art, would take hundreds of thousands of years. All that NASA has so far done in sending probes as far as Saturn has been to play games in our backyard. It is interstellar travel, trips to the stars, that represent the longest voyage.
And it is in trips to the stars that science fiction writers and readers are most interes
ted. Our solar system is too well known and too limited. The solar system (outside Earth) is not at all likely to bear life of any kind-certainly not intelligent life. So we’ve got to take the longest voyage and get to the stars, if we’re to find extraterrestrial friends, competitors, and enemies. As long ago as 1928, in The Skylark of Space, E. E. (Doc) Smith took the first science-fictional trip to the stars, and how the readers loved it.
Good old Doc was a little vague on just how his interstellar ships managed to cross those huge spaces, however, and, to tell you the truth, we’re not much better off now. Let’s list the possibilities:
1. We can keep accelerating; going faster and faster and faster until we’re going fast enough to cover vast interstellar and intergalactic distances in a matter of months, or even days. objection: Physicists are strongly of the opinion that the speed of light in a vacuum, 186,000 miles per second, is as fast as anyone can go. At that speed, it will still take years to reach the nearest star, millions of years to reach the nearest large galaxy.
2. Even if we’re limited to the speed of light, that could be good enough. As one approaches the speed of light, the rate of time passage on the speeding object slows steadily, and at the speed of light itself, the rate of time passage is zero. At light speed, then, the crew of a starship would cover enormous distance practically instantaneously. objection: Interstellar and intergalactic space is littered with occasional hydrogen atoms. At light speed, these atoms would strike the ship with the energy and force of cosmic ray particles and would quickly kill the starship’s crew and passengers. Probably, the ship would have to go no faster than one-tenth light speed, and at that speed the time effects are not great enough to help us much.
3. Suppose we attach a kind of “atom-plow” arrangement in front of the starship. It would scoop up all the atoms in front of it, thus preventing cosmic ray problems and, in addition, gathering material to serve as fuel for its nuclear fusion engines. objection: Such atom-plows would have to be many thousands of miles across to be effective. Building such things would represent enormous and perhaps insuperable problems.