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.