The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 6 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Judith Merril

  When a stranger catches my eye at a party, my standard operating procedure goes into action automatically. If he seems a pleasant enough person, but I don’t feel like introductions at the moment, I give him the Neutral Scan, letting my eyes sweep past him without a flicker of recognition, yet without positive unfriendliness. If he looks a creep, he receives the coup d’oeil, which consists of a long, disbelieving stare followed by an unhurried view of the back of my neck; in extreme cases, an expression of revulsion may be switched on for a few milliseconds. The message usually gets across.

  But this character seemed interesting, and I was getting bored, so I gave him the Affable Nod. A few minutes later he drifted through the crowd and I aimed my good ear toward him.

  “Hello,” he said (yes, he was American), “my name’s Gene Hartford. I’m sure we’ve met somewhere.”

  “Quite likely,” I answered, “I’ve spent a good deal of time in the States. I’m Arthur Clarke.”

  Usually that produces a blank stare, but sometimes it doesn’t. I could almost see the IBM cards flickering behind those hard brown eyes, and was flattered by the brevity of his access time.

  “The science writer?”

  “Correct.”

  “Well, this is fantastic.” He seemed genuinely astonished. “Now I know where I’ve seen you. I was in the studio once, when you were on the Dave Garroway show.”

  (This lead may be worth following up, though I doubt it; and I’m sure that “Gene Hartford” was phony—it was too smoothly synthetic.)

  “So you’re in TV?” I said. “What are you doing here— collecting material, or just on vacation?”

  He gave me the frank, friendly smile of a man who has plenty to hide.

  “Oh, I’m keeping my eyes open. But this really is amazing; I read your Exploration of Space when it came out back in, ah—”

  “1952; the Book-of-the-Month Club’s never been quite the same since.”

  All this time I had been sizing him up, and though there was something about him I didn’t like, I was unable to pin it down. In any case, I was prepared to make substantial allowances for someone who had read my books and was also in TV; Mike and I are always on the lookout for markets for our underwater movies. But that, to put it mildly, was not Hartford’s line of business.

  “Look,” he said eagerly. “I’ve a big network deal cooking that will interest you—in fact, you helped to give me the idea.”

  This sounded promising, and my co-efficient of cupidity jumped several points.

  “I’m glad to hear it. What’s the general theme?”

  “I can’t talk about it here, but could we meet at my hotel, around three tomorrow?”

  “Let me check my diary; yes, that’s O.K.”

  There are only two hotels in Colombo patronized by Americans, and I guessed right first time. He was at the Mount Lavinia, and though you may not know it, you’ve seen the place where we had our private chat. Around the middle of The Bridge on the River Kwai, there’s a brief scene at a military hospital, where Jack Hawkins meets a nurse and asks her where he can find Bill Holden. We have a soft spot for this episode, because Mike was one of the convalescent naval officers in the background. If you look smartly you’ll see him on the extreme right, beard in full profile, signing Sam Spiegel’s name to his sixth round of bar-chits. As the picture turned out, Sam could afford it.

  It was here, on this diminutive plateau high above the miles of palm-fringed beach, that Gene Hartford started to unload—and my simple hopes of financial advantage started to evaporate. What his exact motives were, if indeed he knew them himself, I’m still uncertain. Surprise at meeting me, and a twisted feeling of gratitude (which I would gladly have done without) undoubtedly played a part, and for all his air of confidence he must have been a bitter, lonely man who desperately needed approval and friendship.

  He got neither from me. I have always had a sneaking sympathy for Benedict Arnold, as must anyone who knows the full facts of the case. But Arnold merely betrayed his country; no one before Hartford ever tried to seduce it.

  What dissolved my dream of dollars was the news that Hartford’s connection with American TV had been severed, somewhat violently, in the early Fifties. It was clear that he’d been bounced out of Madison Avenue for Party-lining, and it was equally clear that his was one case where no grave injustice had been done. Though he talked with a certain controlled fury of his fight against asinine censorship, and wept for a brilliant—but unnamed—cultural series he’d had kicked off the air, by this time I was beginning to smell so many rats that my replies were distinctly guarded. Yet as my pecuniary interest in Mr. Hartford diminished, so my personal curiosity increased. Who was behind him? Surely not the BBC ...

  He got round to it at last, when he’d worked the self-pity out of his system.

  “I’ve some news that will make you sit up,” he said smugly. “The American networks are soon going to have some real competition. And it will be done just the way you predicted; the people who sent a TV transmitter behind the Moon can put a much bigger one in orbit round the Earth.”

  “Good for them,” I said cautiously. “I’m all in favor of healthy competition. When’s the launching date?”

  “Any moment now. The first transmitter will be parked due south of New Orleans—on the equator, of course. That puts it way out in the open Pacific; it won’t be over anyone’s territory, so there’ll be no political complications on that score. Yet it will be sitting up there in the sky in full view of everybody from Seattle to Key West. Think of it— the only TV station the whole United States can tune into! Yes, even Hawaii! There won’t be any way of jamming it; for the first time, there’ll be a clear channel into every American home. And J. Edgar’s Boy Scouts can’t do a thing to block it.”

  So that’s your little racket, I thought; at least you’re being frank. Long ago I learned not to argue with Marxists and Flat-Earthers, but if Hartford was telling the truth I wanted to pump him for all he was worth.

  “Before you get too enthusiastic,” I said, “there are a few points you may have overlooked.”

  “Such as?”

  “This will work both ways. Everyone knows that the Air Force, NASA, Bell Labs, I.T.&T. and a few dozen other agencies are working on the same project. Whatever Russia does to the States in the propaganda line, she’ll get back with compound interest.”

  Hartford grinned mirthlessly.

  “Really, Clarke!” he said (I was glad he hadn’t first-named me). “I’m a little disappointed. Surely you know that the States is years behind in payload capacity! And do you imagine that the old T.3 is Russia’s last word?”

  It was at this moment that I began to take him very seriously. He was perfectly right. The T.3 could inject at least five times the payload of any American missile into that critical 22,000-mile orbit—the only one that would deliver a satellite apparently fixed above the Earth. And by the time the U.S. could match that performance, heaven knows where the Russians would be. Yes, Heaven certainly would know....

  “All right,” I conceded. “But why should fifty million American homes start switching channels just as soon as they can tune into Moscow? I admire the Russian people, but their entertainment is worse than their politics. After the Bolshoi, what have you? And for me, a little ballet goes a long, long way.”

  Once again I was treated to that peculiarly humorless smile. Hartford had been saving up his Sunday punch, and now he let me have it.

  “You were the one who brought in the Russians,” he said. “They’re involved, sure—but only as contractors. The independent agency I’m working for is hiring their services.”

  “That,” I remarked dryly, “must be some agency.”

  “It is; just about the biggest. Even though the States tries to pretend it doesn’t exist.”

  “Oh,” I said, rather stupidly. “So that’s your sponsor.”

  I’d heard those rumors that the U.S.S.R. was going to launch satellites for the Chinese; now it beg
an to look as if the rumors fell far short of the truth. But how far short, I’d still no conception.

  “You are so right,” continued Hartford, obviously enjoying himself, “about Russian entertainment. After the initial novelty, the Nielsen rating would drop to zero. But not with the programs I’m planning. My job is to find material that will put everyone else out of business when it goes on the air. You think it can’t be done? Finish that drink and come up to my room. I’ve a highbrow movie about ecclesiastical art that I’d like to show you.”

  Well, he wasn’t crazy, though for a few minutes I wondered. I could think of few titles more carefully calculated to make the viewer switch channels than the one that flashed on the screen:

  aspects of thirteenth century tantric sculpture.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” Hartford chuckled, above the whir of the projector. ‘That title saves me having trouble with inquisitive Customs inspectors. It’s perfectly accurate, but we’ll change it to something with a bigger box-office appeal when the time comes.”

  A couple of hundred feet later, after some innocuous architectural long-shots, I saw what he meant....

  You may know that there are certain temples in India, covered with superbly executed carvings of a kind that we in the west scarcely associate with religion. To say that they are frank is a laughable understatement; they leave nothing, to the imagination—any imagination. Yet at the same time they are genuine works of art. And so was Hartford’s movie.

  It had been shot, in case you’re interested, at the Temple of the Sun, Konarak. “An awkward place to reach,” Hartford told me, “but decidedly worth the trouble.” I’ve since looked it up; it’s on the Orissa coast, about twenty-five miles northeast of Puri. The reference books are pretty mealy-mouthed; some apologize for the “obvious” impossibility of providing illustrations, but Percy Brown’s Indian Architecture minces no words. The carvings, it says primly, are of “a shamelessly erotic character that have no parallel in any known building.” A sweeping claim, but I can believe it after seeing that movie.

  Camera work and editing were brilliant, the ancient stones coming to life beneath the roving lens. There were breathtaking time-lapse shots as the rising sun chased the shadows from bodies intertwined in ecstasy; sudden startling close-ups of scenes which at first the mind refused to recognize; soft-focus studies of stone shaped by a master’s hand in all the fantasies and aberrations of love; restless zooms and pans whose meaning eluded the eye until they froze into patterns of timeless desire, eternal fulfillment. The music— mostly percussion, with a thin, high thread of sound from some stringed instrument that I could not identify—perfectly fitted the tempo of the cutting. At one moment it would be languorously slow, like the opening bars of Debussy’s L’Après-midi; then the drums would swiftly work themselves up to a frenzied, almost unendurable climax. The art of the ancient sculptors, and the skill of the modern cameraman, had combined across the centuries to create a poem of rapture, an orgasm on celluloid which I would defy any man to watch unmoved.

  There was a long silence when the screen flooded with light and the lascivious music ebbed into exhaustion.

  “My God!” I said, when I had recovered some of my composure. “Are you going to telecast that?”

  Hartford laughed.

  “Believe me,” he answered, “that’s nothing; it just happens to be the only reel I can carry round safely. We’re prepared to defend it any day on grounds of genuine art, historic interest, religious tolerance—oh, we’ve thought of all the angles. But it doesn’t really matter; no one can stop us. For the first time in history, any form of censorship’s become utterly impossible. There’s simply no way of enforcing it; the customer can get what he wants, right in his own home. Lock the door, switch on the TV set to our—dare I call it our blue network?—and settle back. Friends and family will never know.”

  “Very clever,” I said, “but don’t you think such a diet will soon pall?”

  “Of course; variety is the spice of life. Well have plenty of conventional entertainment; let me worry about that. And every so often we’ll have information programs—I hate that word propaganda—to tell the cloistered American public what’s really happening in the world. Our special features will just be the bait.”

  “Mind if I have some fresh air?” I said. “It’s getting stuffy in here.”

  Hartford drew the curtains and let daylight back into the room. Below us lay that long curve of beach, with the outrigger fishing boats drawn up beneath the palms, and the little waves falling in foam at the end of their weary march from Africa. One of the loveliest sights in the world, but I couldn’t focus on it now. I was still seeing those writhing stone limbs, those faces frozen with passions which the centuries could not slake.

  That slick voice continued behind my back.

  “You’d be astonished if you knew just how much material there is. Remember, we’ve absolutely no taboos. If you can film it, we can telecast it.” He walked over to his bureau and picked up a heavy, dog-eared volume. “This has been my bible,” he said, “or my Sears, Roebuck, if you prefer. Without it, I’d never have sold the series to my sponsors. They’re great believers in science, and they swallowed the whole thing, down to the last decimal point. Recognize it?”

  I nodded; whenever I enter a room, I always monitor my host’s literary tastes. “Dr. Kinsey, I presume.”

  “I guess I’m the only man who’s read it from cover to cover, and not just looked up his own vital statistics. You see, it’s the only piece of market research in its field. Until something better comes along, we’re making the most of it. It tells us what the customer wants, and we’re going to supply it.”

  “All of it? Some people have odd tastes.”

  “That’s the beauty of the movie you just saw—it appeals to just about every taste.”

  “You can say that again,” I muttered.

  He saw that I was beginning to get bored; there are some kinds of single-mindedness that I find depressing. But I had done Hartford an injustice, as he hastened to prove.

  “Please don’t think,” he said anxiously, “that sex is our only weapon. Expose is almost as good. Ever see the job Ed Murrow did on the late sainted Joe McCarthy? That was milk and water compared with the profiles we’re planning in Washington Confidential.

  “And there’s our Can You Take It? series, designed to separate the men from the milksops. We’ll issue so many advance warnings that every red-blooded American will feel he has to watch the show. It will start innocently enough, on ground nicely prepared by Hemingway. You’ll see some bullfighting sequences that will really lift you out of your seat—or send you running to the bathroom—because they show all the little details you never get in those cleaned-up Hollywood movies.

  “We’ll follow that with some really unique material that cost us exactly nothing. Do you remember the photographic evidence the Nurnberg war trials turned up? You’ve never seen it, because it wasn’t publishable. There were quite a few amateur photographers in the concentration Camps, who made the most of opportunities they’d never get again. Some of them were hanged on the testimony of their own cameras, but their work wasn’t wasted. It will lead nicely into our series Torture Through the Ages—very scholarly and thorough, yet with a remarkably wide appeal...

  “And there are dozens of other angles, but by now you’ll have the general picture. The Avenue thinks it knows all about Hidden Persuasion—believe me, it doesn’t. The world’s best practical psychologists are in the east these days. Remember Korea, and brainwashing? We’ve learned a lot since then. There’s no need for violence any more; people enjoy being brainwashed, if you set about it the right way.”

  “And you,” I said, “are going to brainwash the United States. Quite an order.”

  “Exactly—and the country will love it, despite all the screams from Congress and the churches. Not to mention the networks, of course. They’ll make the biggest fuss of all, when they find they can’t compete with us.”
>
  Hartford glanced at his watch, and gave a whistle of alarm. “Time to pack,” he said. “I’ve got to be at that unpronounceable airport of yours by six. There’s no chance, I suppose, that you can fly over to Macao and see us sometime?”

  “Not a hope; but I’ve got a pretty good idea of the picture now. And incidentally, aren’t you afraid that I’ll spill the beans?”

  “Why should I be? The more publicity you can give us, the better. Although our advertising campaign doesn’t go into top gear for a few months yet, I feel you’ve earned this advance notice. As I said, your books helped to give me the idea.”

  His gratitude was quite genuine, by God; it left me completely speechless.

  “Nothing can stop us,” he declared—and for the first time the fanaticism that lurked behind that smooth, cynical facade was not altogether under control. “History is on our side. We’ll be using America’s own decadence as a weapon against her, and it’s a weapon for which there’s no defense. The Air Force won’t attempt space piracy by shooting down a satellite nowhere near American territory. The FCC can’t even protest to a country that doesn’t exist in the eyes of the State Department. If you’ve any other suggestions, I’d be most interested to hear them.”