They built their laboratory in a sparsely populated area of Los Angeles called Topanga Canyon. Naturally their initial work was primitive and crude. Their decision to make one simple bodily alteration for the first attempt might have stemmed, subconsciously at least, from one of Marvin’s own problems. The result was Sam Super Stud. Marvin put him in a film called Sam the Rammer which was attacked, condemned and banned in every country on Terra. Needless to say, it did terrific business.
Marvin and Lebachuck barely had time to create their second Lifestyler, Rita Zowie, before the Los Angeles county sheriff’s office broke into the lab, seized the equipment and put Marvin and Lebachuck under arrest for violating county ordinance 3982—practicing strange and unnatural alterations of the human form without sanction of the Genetic Review Board.
W. R. Silverman, one of the best civil-rights lawyers in the country, got them off with three years’ suspended sentence, a million-dollar fine and a solemn promise never to repeat their crime on Terra.
Ten years had already elapsed since the first manned star probe had passed the orbit of Pluto. Warp routes had been discovered bringing thousands of G and K type stars within reach. Of these many had planetary systems, some had planets adaptable to human life, and eight had worlds where man could live in comfort.
Marvin took the most radical step of his radical career. Along with Sam Super Stud, Rita Zowie, Lebachuck and his nine assistants and four hundred crates of hideously expensive laboratory gear, he traveled to Sifra Messa, one of the pleasantest of the inhabitable worlds, and began his entertainment concerns anew beyond the jurisdiction of grandmotherly Terran rule.
Now, with an ever-expanding stable of Lifestylers, they began to crank out films in astounding number. The colonies gobbled them up. Even on Terra where the films were still illegal, millions of copies got by Customs.
In 2025 when the interstellar holovision relays were put in orbit, Marvin constructed a separate holovision studio for each of his Lifestylers. forerunners of the modern Lifestyler Temples. Broadcasts were jammed by Terra but the rest of the colonies watched avidly. Tourists began to make the long intersteller crossings just to see their favorite Lifestyler in person.
Meanwhile profits poured into Mutagen—for that was the name Lebachuck had chosen for the colony. Attracted by the glamour, the high salaries and the absence of Terran research restrictions, some of the best genetic engineers joined Lebachuck. Aspiring artists came from all over the galaxy with descriptions of “Concept Bodies,” hoping that theirs would be judged an idea of merit and originality, of wit and charm, and that they themselves would be midwifed into their own creations. With such a concentration of talent, it was only a matter of time before Lifestyling became a true art form, in fact the greatest art form ever conceived of by man. Even conservative Terra finally acquiesced and allowed broadcasts to reach her hungry audiences. (Still, Lifestyling was not without its risks. “Creative synthesis” was one of the most difficult branches of genetic engineering; eighty percent of the potential Lifestylers died during rebirth or else lived out the rest of their lives improperly mutated, monsters and freaks.)
And so Marvin Goldstein lived to see his life’s work legti-mized. He died in 2039 of a heart attack, a result of overwork, and left his considerable fortune for genetic research in the service of humanity. At his funeral the president of the Federation of Worlds said:
“Every age has its prophet . . . who lights the heavens like a comet and passes on. . . . Marvin Goldstein was such a man. I look forward to seeing what improvements he will make on angel physiognomy.”
“Lex will be appearing in a few minutes now,” the tour guide said, consulting her watch. “The door on the left leads to the amphitheater. Take any seat you like. Have a wonderful time and thank you all for coming.”
II
Nick and Hali moved through the rear exit of the pyramid and found themselves in the amphitheater they had seen from the air. It descended in front of them in steps, wide enough to serve as seats, and curved around on either side until the ends met the rock face. Indeed the majestic sandstone wall seemed to be the featured exhibit around which the amphitheater had been built.
Several hundred people were seated along the steps, some eating picnic lunches or scanning magasettes, others simply basking in the sun. Nick bought pillows from one of the many vendors who moved between the steps hawking their wares in various alien tongues, and ice cream, that classic Terran treat, from another. Then they found seats and waited, trying to lick the ice cream away before it melted.
Nick was squinting at the rock face intently.
“The arena is so big,” she said, “will we be able to see him? Perhaps we should move closer?”
“Lex is big too,” Nick said, without letting his eyes wander from the wall. “Alter the pituitary and man keeps growing and growing and growing.”
“Do you mean to say he is . . . ?”
Nick held up a hand for silence. He whispered: “Look!”
At first she saw nothing. Then she thought she saw faint ripples emanating from a point seventy feet up the rock face, as waves spread from a pebble dropped in a pond, although it might have been her imagination or perhaps heat crazing the air.
A point appeared at the center of the waves, swelled to the size of a saucer and continued to grow. At first it looked like an opening in the wall, for our senses always try to explain phenomena in terms of the familiar. But as the hole grew bigger the truth could no longer be ignored: the hole was suspended in space some ten feet in front of the wall.
It cast a shadow.
Within the hole a palpable grayness could be seen, a fog to end all fogs. Yet unlike fog it did not drift from the mouth of the hole; the hole contained it. And ever larger it grew, now ten feet across, now twelve.
“What is it?” Hali whispered.
When Nick didn’t answer she shook his arm in demand.
“Transdimensional window,” he muttered.
“What’s that?”
“Later..
Hali gave up and turned her attention back to the hole. It had stabilized at a fifteen-foot diameter, although the edges continued to tremble and shift, defying her eyes to focus upon them. Within the hole, within the grayness, a form appeared, a dark, distant shadow. As it approached the mouth of the hole it gradually took on color and definition, first a figure vaguely human, then a face, finally an eye, an eye so huge that the pupil might have been a pond of ink and the blood vessels roots of trees reaching across the whites for nourishment. The eyelashes were thick as cables, the side of the nose, just visible along the left border of the hole, mountainous. The eye peered all around, like a little boy peeking through the knothole in a fence, trying to take in everything, then slipped upward to be replaced by an earthquake fissure of a mouth.
“Hello, pilgrims!” boomed a jolly voice.
“Hello, Lex’” they chorused in response.
“Glad to see you!” And you could tell by his voice that he really was. “I sure hope you've been giving to all your brothers and sisters—and your alien brothers and sisters too! By all means, give of your possessions. But don’t forget the other kinds of giving. Try to give of yourself—that’s the most important gift you have. Give your time, give your warmth, give your understanding. If we all reach out to one another the galaxy will be a little less lonely. It sure is a long way between the stars! I'll bet some of you pilgrims traveled a hundred light-years to be with me today.”