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.