by Rog Phillips
job with that outfit."
She came toward me with a wild expression on her face.
"Get out!" she screamed. "Get out of my house! I won't have it! Youcatch that train and get out of town. Do you hear?"
"But, Aunt Matilda!" I protested.
* * * * *
In the end I had to get out or she would have had a stroke. She wasshaking like a leaf, her skin mottled and her eyes wild, as I went downthe front steps with my bag.
"You get that train, do you hear?" was the last thing she screamed at meas I hurried toward Main Street.
However, I had no intention of leaving town with Aunt Matilda upset thatway. I'd let her have time to cool off, then come back. Meanwhile I'dtry to get to the bottom of things. A thing as big as wall TV in fullcolor and stereophonic sound must be the talk of the town. I'd find outwhere they had their office and go talk with them. A career withsomething like that would be the best thing I could ever hope to find.And getting in on the ground floor!
It surprised me that Aunt Matilda could be so insanely greedy. I shookmy head in wonder. It didn't figure.
I had breakfast at the hotel cafe and made a point of telling thewaitress, who knew me, that it was my second breakfast, and that I hadintended to catch the morning train back to Chicago, but maybe Iwouldn't.
After I finished eating I asked if it would be okay to leave my suitcasebehind the counter while I looked around a bit. She showed me where toput it so it would be out of the way.
When I paid for my breakfast I half turned away, then turned backcasually.
"Oh, by the way," I said. "Where's this wall TV place?"
"This what?" she said.
"You know," I said. "Color TV like a picture you hang on a wall."
All the color faded from her face. Her eyes went past me, staring. Iturned in the direction she was staring, and on the wall above theplateglass front of the cafe was a picture.
That is, there was a picture frame and a pair of dark glasses that tookup most of the picture, with the lower part of a forehead and the upperpart of a nose. I had noticed it once while I was eating and had assumedit was a display ad for sun glasses. Now I looked at it more closely,but could detect no movement in it. It still looked like an ad for sunglasses.
"I don't know what you're talking about," I heard the waitress say, hervoice edged with fear.
"Huh?" I said, turning my head back to look at her. "Oh. Well, nevermind."
I left the cafe with every outward appearance of casual innocence; butinside I was beginning to realize for the first time the possibilitiesand the danger that could lie in the use of this new TV development.
That had been a Big-Brother-is-Watching-you setup back there in thecafe, except that it had been a girl instead of a man, judging from thestyle of sun glasses and the smoothness of the nose and forehead.
I had wondered about the broadcasting end of things. Now I knew. Thathad been the TV "eye," and somewhere there was a framed picture hangingon the wall, bringing in everything that took place in the cafe,including everything that was said. Everything _I_ had said, too. It wasan ominous feeling.
Aunt Matilda had almost had a stroke trying to get me out of town. Now Iknew why. She was caught in this thing and wanted to save me. Four daysago she had probably not fully realized the potentiality for evil of theinvention, but by the time I showed up she knew it.
Well, she was right. This was not something for me to tackle. I wouldkeep up my appearance of not suspecting anything, and catch that trainAunt Matilda wanted me to catch.
* * * * *
From way out in the country came the whistle of the approaching milkrun, the train that would take me back to Chicago. In Chicago I would goto the F.B.I, and tell them the whole thing. They wouldn't believe me,of course, but they would investigate. If the thing hadn't spread anyfarther than Sumac it would be a simple matter to stop it.
I'd hurry back to the cafe and get my suitcase and tell the waitressI'd decided to catch the train after all.
I turned around.
Only I didn't turn around.
That's as nearly as I can describe it. I did turn around. I know I did.But the town turned around with me, and the sun and the clouds and thecountryside. So maybe I only thought I turned around.
When I tried to stop walking it was different. I simply could not stopwalking. Nothing was in control of my mind. It was more like stepping onthe brakes and the brakes not responding.
I gave up trying, more curious about what was happening than alarmed. Iwalked two blocks along Main Street. Ahead of me I saw a sign. It wasthe only new sign I had seen in Sumac. In ornate Neon script it said,"PORTRAITS by Lana."
* * * * *
I don't know whether my feet took me inside independently of my mind ornot, because I was sure that this was the place and I wanted to go inanyway.
Not much had been done to modernize the interior of the shop. Iremembered that the last time I had been here it had been a stampcollector headquarters run by Mr. Mason and his wife. The counter wasstill there, but instead of stamp displays it held a variety of standardportraits such as you can see in any portrait studio. None of the TVportraits were on display here.
The same bell that used to tinkle when I came into the stamp storetinkled in back of the partition when I came in. A moment later thecurtain in the doorway of the partition parted, and a girl came out.
How can I describe her? In appearance she was anyone of a thousandsmartly dressed brunettes that wait on you in quality photographstudios, and yet she wasn't. She was as much above that in cut as theaverage smartly dressed girl is above a female alcoholic after a ten-daydrunk. She was perfect. Too perfect. She was the type of girl a manwould dream of meeting some day, but if he ever did he would run likehell because he could never hope to live up to such perfection.
"You have come to have your portrait taken?" she asked. "I am Lana."
"I thought you already had my portrait," I said. "Didn't you get it fromthat eye in the hotel cafe?"
"It's not the same thing," Lana said. "Through an eye you remain avariable in the Mantram complex. It takes the camera to fix you, so thatyou are an iconic invariant in the Mantram." She smiled and half turnedtoward the curtain she had come through. "Would you step this way,please?" she invited.
"How much will it cost?" I said, not moving.
"Nothing, of course!" Lana said. "Terrestrial money is of no use to mesince you have nothing I would care to buy. And don't be alarmed. Noharm will come to you, or anyone else." A fleeting expression of concerncame over her. "I realize that many of the people of Sumac are quitealarmed, but that is to be expected of a people uneducated enough tostill be superstitious."
I went past her through the curtain. Behind the partition I expected tosee out-of-this-world scientific equipment stacked to the ceiling.Instead, there was only a portrait camera on a tripod. It had a longbellows and would take a plate the same size as that picture of thechurch I had seen.
"You see?" Lana said. "It's just a camera." She smiled disarmingly.
* * * * *
I went toward it casually, and suddenly I stopped as though another mindcontrolled my actions. When I gave up the idea I had had of smashing thecamera, the control vanished.
There was no lens in the lens frame. "Where's the lens?" I said.
"It doesn't use a glass lens," Lana said. "When I take the picture alens forms just long enough to focus the elements of your body into aMantram fix." She touched my shoulder. "Would you sit down over there,please?"
"What do you mean by a Mantram fix?" I asked her.
She paused by the camera and smiled at me. "I use your language," shesaid. "In some of your legends you have the notion of a Mantram, or whatyou consider magical spell. In one aspect the notion is of magical wordsthat can manipulate natural forces directly. The notion of a devil dollis a little closer. Only instead of actual substance fro
m thesubject--hair, fingernail parings, and so on--the Mantram matrix takesthe detailed force pattern of the subject, through the lens when itforms. So, in your concepts, what results is an iconic Mantram. But itoperates both ways. You'll see what I mean by that."
With another placating smile she stepped behind the camera and withoutwarning light seemed to explode from the very air around me, without anysource. For a brief second I seemed to see--not a glittering lens--but ablack bottomless hole form in the metal circle at the front of thecamera. And--an experience I am familiar with now--I seemed to rush intothe bottomless darkness of that hole and back again, at the rate ofthousands of times a second, arriving at some formless destination andeach time feeling it take on more of form.
"There. That wasn't so bad, was it?" Lana said.
I felt strangely detached, as though I were in two places at the sametime. I told her so.
"You'll get used to it," she assured me. "In fact, you will get to enjoyit. _I_ do. Especially when I've made several prints."
"Why are you doing this?" I asked. "Who are you? _What_ are you?"
"I'm a photographer!" Lana said. "I'm connected with the natural historymuseum of the planet I live on. I go to various places and takepictures, and they go into exhibits for the people to watch."
She pulled the curtain aside for me to leave.
"You're going to let me leave? Just like that?" I said.
"Of course." She smiled again. "You're free to go wherever you wish, toyour aunt's or back to Chicago. I was glad to get your portrait. Inreturn, I'll send you one of the prints. And would you like one of youraunt's? Actually, when she came in to have her picture taken it was forthe purpose of sending it to you. She was my first customer. I've takena special liking to her and given her several pictures."
"Yes," I said. "I would like one of Aunt Matilda."
When I emerged from the shop I discovered to my surprise that the trainwas just pulling into the depot. An urge to get far away from Sumacpossessed me. I trotted to the cafe to get my bag, and when the trainpulled out I was on it.
* * * * *
There's little more to tell. In Chicago once again, I spent a mostexasperating two days trying to inform the F.B.I., the police, or anyonewho would listen to me. My fingers couldn't dial the correct phonenumber, and at the crucial moment each time I grew tongue-tied. My lastattempt was a letter to the F.B.I., which I couldn't remember to mail,and when I finally did remember I couldn't find it.
Then the express package from Sumac came. With fingers that visiblytrembled I took out the two framed pictures, one of Aunt Matilda in theprocess of dusting the front room. All of her pictures that she hadhidden from me were back in their places on the walls. While I watchedher move about, she went into the sewing room, and there I saw a pictureon the wall that looked familiar.
It was of me, an opened express package at my feet, a framed pictureheld in my hands, and I was staring at it intently.
In the picture I was holding, Aunt Matilda looked in my direction andwaved, smiling in the prim way she smiles when she is contented. Iunderstood. She had me with her now.
I laid the picture down carefully, and took the second one out of thebox.
It was not a picture at all, it was a mirror!
It couldn't be anything except a mirror. And yet, suddenly, I realizedit wasn't. The uncanny feeling came over me that I had transposed intothe mirror and was looking out at myself. Even as I got that feeling Ishifted and was outside the mirror looking at my image.
I found that I could be in either place by a sort of mental shift,something like staring at one of the geometrical optical illusions youcan find in any psychology textbook in the chapter on illusions, andseeing it become something else.
It was strange at first, then it became fun, and now, as I write this,it is a normal thing. My portrait is where it should be--on the medicinecabinet in the bathroom, where the mirror used to be.
But I can transpose to any of the copies of my portrait, anywhere. ToAunt Matilda's sewing room, or to the museum, or to Lana's privatecollection. The only thing is, it's almost impossible to tell when Ishift, or where I shift to. It just seems to happen.
The reason for that is that my surroundings, no matter in what directionI look, are exactly identical with my real surroundings. My physicalsurroundings are duplicated exactly in all my portraits, just as AuntMatilda's are in the portrait of her that hangs on my study wall. She isthe invariant of each of her iconic Mantrams and her surroundings arethe variables that enter and leave the screen. I am the invariant in myown portraits, wherever they are. So, except for the slight _twist_ inmy mind that takes place when I _shift_, that I have learned torecognize from practice in front of my "mirror" each morning when Ishave, and except for the portrait of Aunt Matilda, I would never beable to suspect what happens.
If Lana had taken my picture without my knowing it and I had never seenone of her collection of portraits, nor ever heard of an iconic Mantram,I would have absolutely nothing to go on to suspect the truth that Iknow. Except for one thing.
I don't quite know how to explain it, except that I must actuallytransfer to one of my portraits, and, transferring, I am more realthan--what shall I call it?--the photographic reproduction of my realsurroundings. Then, sometimes, the photographic reproduction, the iconicillusion, that is my environment when I am _in_ one of the portraits ofme, fades just enough so that I can look "out" into the reality where myportrait hangs, and see, and even hear the _watchers_, as ghosts in mysolid "reality."
* * * * *
Quite often I can only hear them, and then they are voices out ofnowhere, sometimes addressing me directly, just as often talking to oneanother and ignoring my _presence_. But when I can see them too, theyappear as ghostly but sharply clear visions that seem to be present inmy solid-looking environment. There, but somewhat transparent.
I have often seen and talked to Lana in this manner, in her far-offworld, where I am part of her private collection. In fact, I can almostalways tell when I _shift_ to my portrait in her gallery, because I amsuddenly exhilarated and remain so until I shift back, or to some otherportrait. That is so even when she is not there but out on one of hermany photographic expeditions.
When she is there, and is watching me, and my thoughts are quiet and mymind receptive, she becomes visible. A ghost in my study, or the labwhere I work, or--if I am asleep--in my dreams. Like an angel, or agoddess. And we talk.
* * * * *
Back in the physical reality, of course, no one else can hear her voice.My real body is going through its routine work almost automatically butmy mind, my consciousness, is focused into my portrait in Lana'sgallery, and we are talking. And of course in the real world I amtalking too, but my associates can't see who I'm talking to, and itwould be useless to try to explain to them.
So I'm getting quite a reputation as a nut! Can you imagine that?
But why should I mind? My reality has a much broader and more complexscope than the limited reality of my associates. I might be fired, oreven sent to a state hospital, except for the fact that Lana foreseessuch problems and teaches me enough things in my field that are unknownto Earth, so that my employers consider me too valuable to lose.
If this story were fiction the ending would have to be that I am in lovewith Lana and she with me, and there would be a nice conclusive endingwhere she comes back to Earth to marry me and carry me back to herworld, where we would live happily ever after. But the truth of thematter is that I'm not in love with Lana, nor she with me. Sometimes Ithink I am her favorite portrait, but nothing more.
But really, everything is so interesting. Lana's gallery where I hang,the museum where there are new faces each time I look out, and newvoices when I can't see out, Aunt Matilda's sewing room where she is atthe moment, and all Sumac as she goes about her normal pattern ofliving.
It is a rich, full life that I live, shifting here and th
ere inconsciousness while my physical body goes about its necessary tasks, asoften unguided as not. (What a reputation I'm getting forabsent-mindedness, too!)
And out of it all has come a perspective that, when I feel it strongly,makes me feel almost like a god. In that perspective all my portraits(and there are many now, on many worlds and in many places on thisworld!) blend into one. That one is the stage of my life. But not astage, really. A show window. Yes, that is it. A show window, where the_watchers_ pass.
I live in a show window that opens out in many worlds and many placesthat are hidden from me by a veil that sometimes grows thin, so I cansee through it. And from the other side of that veil, even when I cannotsee through it, come the voices of the watchers, as they pass by, orpause to look at me.
And I am not the only one! There are others. More and more of them, asLana comes back on her photographic expeditions for the museum.
None that I have met understand what it is about as fully as I do. Somehave an insight into the true state of things, but very very few.
But that is understandable. Lana can't give the same time to them thatshe gives to me. There aren't that many hours in a day! And, you see, Iam her favorite.
If I were not, she would never have permitted me to tell you all this,so I must be her favorite!
Doesn't that make sense?
I _AM_ her favorite!
THE END
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from _Amazing Stories_ January 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on