Conceding that we will all die some day, is that a reason why I should let this grinning ape drag me along toward disaster just because he will take no thought of tomorrow?
Since there are so many of him the chances of us, as a nation, being able to avert disaster are not good. Perhaps some of us could form an association to live through World War III. Call it the League for the Preservation of the Human Race, or the Doom's Day Men, or something like that. Restrict the membership to survivor types, sound in tooth and wind, trained in useful trades or science, reasonably high I.Q.'s and proved fertility. Then set up two or three colonies remote from cities and other military targets.
It might work.
Maybe I will start it myself if I can find an angel to put up the dough for the original promotion. That should get me in as annex - officio member, I hope. I have looked over my own qualifications and I don't seem to measure up to the standards.
My ancestors got into America by a similar dodge. They got here early, when the immigration restrictions were pretty lax. Maybe I can repeat.
I am sure I shall not resign myself to death simply because Joe Chucklehead points out that atomization is quick and easy. Even if that were good I would not like it. Furthermore, it is not true. Death comes fast at the center of the blast; around the edges is a big area of the fatal burn and the slow death, with plenty of time to reconsider the disadvantages of chuckleheadness in the Atomic Age, before your flesh sloughs off and you give up the ghost. No, thank you, I plan to disperse myself to the country.
Of course, if you are so soft that you like innerspring mattresses and clean water and regular meals, despite the numerous advantages of blowing us off the map, but are not too soft to try to do something to avoid the coming debacle, there is something you can do about it, other than forming Survival Leagues or cultivating an attitude of philosophical resignation.
If you really want to hang on to the advantages of our slightly wacky pseudo - civilization, there is just one way to do it, according to the scientists who know the most about the new techniques of war - and that is to form a sovereign world authority to prevent the Atomic War.
Run, do not walk, to the nearest Western Union, and telegraph your congressman to get off the dime and get on with the difficult business of forming an honest - to - goodness world union, with no jokers about Big Five vetoes or national armaments.. . to get on with it promptly, while there is still time, before Washington, D.C., is reduced to radioactive dust - and he with it, poor devil!
FOREWORD
While I was failing at World - Saving, I was beginning to achieve my second objective: to spread out, not limit myself to pulp science fiction. THEY DO IT WITH MIRRORS was my first attempt in the crime - mystery field, and from it I learned three things: a) who - dunnits are fairly easy to write and easy to sell; b) I was no threat to Raymond Chandler or Rex Stout as the genre didn't interest me that much; and c) Crime Does Not Pay - Enough (the motto of the Mystery Writers of America).
It may amuse you to know that this story was considered to be (in 1945) too risquй; the magazine editor laundered it before publication. You are seeing the original "dirty" version; try to find in it anything at all that could bring a blush to the cheek of your maiden aunt.
In late 1945 this magic mirror existed in a bar at (as I recall) the corner of Hollywood and Gower Gulch; the rest is fiction.
"Anything you get free costs more than
worth - but you don't find it out until later."
- Bernardo de la Paz
THEY DO IT WITH MIRRORS
An Edison Hill Crime Case
I was there to see beautiful naked women. So was everybody else. It's a common failing.
I climbed on a stool at the end of the bar in Jack Joy's Joint and spoke to Jack himself, who was busy setting up two old - fashioneds. "Make it three," I said. "No, make it four and have one with me. What's the pitch, Jack? I hear you set up a peep show for the suckers."
"Hi, Ed. Nope, it's not a peep show - it's Art."
"What's the difference?"
"If they hold still, it's Art. If they wiggle around, it's illegal. That's the ruling. Here." He handed me a program.
It read:
THE JOY CLUB
PRESENTS
The Magic Mirror
Beautiful Models in a series of Entertaining
and Artistic Pageants
10 p.m. "Aphrodite" Estelle
11 p.m. "Sacrifice to the Sun" Estelle and Hazel
12 p.m. "The High Priestess" Hazel
1 a.m. "The Altar Victim" Estelle
2 a.m. "Invocation to Pan" Estelle and Hazel
(Guests are requested to refrain stomping, whistling, or otherwise disturbing the artistic serenity of the presentations)
The last was a giggle. Jack's place was strictly a joint. But on the other side of the program I saw a new schedule of prices which informed me that the drink in my hand was going to cost me just twice what I had figured. And the place was jammed. By suckers - including me.
I was about to speak to Jack, in a kindly way, promising to keep my eyes closed during the show and then pay the old price for my drink, when I heard two sharp beeps! - a high tension buzzer sound, like radio code - from a spot back of the bar. Jack turned away from me, explaining, "That's the eleven o'clock show." He busied himself underneath the bar.
Being at the end of the bar I could see under the long side somewhat. He had enough electrical gear there to make a happy Christmas for a Boy Scout - switches, a rheostat dingus, a turntable for recordings, and a hand microphone. I leaned over and sized it up. I have a weakness for gadgets, from my old man. He named me Thomas Alva Edison Hill in hopes that I would emulate his idol. I disappointed him - I didn't invent the atom bomb, but I do sometimes try to repair my own typewriter.
Jack flipped a switch and picked up the hand mike. His voice came out of the juke box: "We now present the Magic Mirror." Then the turntable picked up with Hymn to the Sun from Coq d'Or, and he started turning the rheostat slowly.
The lights went down in the joint and came up slowly in the Magic Mirror. The "Mirror" was actually a sheet of glass about ten feet wide and eight high which shut off a little balcony stage. When the house lights were on bright and the stage was dark, you could not see through the glass at all; it looked like a mirror. As the house lights went out and the stage lights came on, you could see through the glass and a picture slowly built up in the "Mirror."
Jack had a single bright light under the bar which lighted him and the controls and which did not go out with the house lights. Because of my position at the end of the bar it hit me square in the eye. I had to block it with my hand to see the stage.
It was something to see.
Two girls, a blonde and a brunette. A sort of altar or table, with the blonde sprawled across it, volup'. The brunette standing at the end of the altar, grabbing the blonde by the hair with one hand while holding 2 fancy dagger upraised with the other. There was 2 backdrop in gold and dark blue - a sunburst in 2 phony Aztec or Egyptian design, but nobody was looking at it; they were looking at the girls.
The brunette was wearing a high show - girl head dress, silver sandals, and a G - string in glass jewels Nothing more. No sign of a brassiere. The blonde was naked as an oyster, with her downstage knee drawn up just enough to get past sufficiently broad - minded censors.
But I was not looking at the naked blonde; I was looking at the brunette.
It was not just the two fine upstanding breasts nor the long graceful legs nor the shape of her hips an thighs; it was the overall effect. She was so beautiful it hurt. I heard somebody say, "Great jumping jeepers!' and was about to shush him when I realized it was me
Then the lights went down and I remembered t breathe.
I paid the clip price for my drink without a quiver and Jack assured me: "They are hostesses between shows." When they showed up at the stairway leading down from the balcony he signaled them to come over and then introduced me.