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Willard’s eyes opened wide and he could not prevent himself from saying, “Why?”
“Because I want to urge you on. What’s more, if the compu-drama turns out to be too hard to do, if it won’t work, or if you turn out something that will not do-my hard luck-you can keep the hundred thousand. It’s a risk I’m ready to take.”
“Why? What’s the catch?”
“No catch. I’m gambling on immorality. I’m a popular writer but I have never heard anyone call me a great one. My books are very likely to die with me. Do Three in One as a compu-drama and do it well and that at least might live on, and make my name ring down through the ages,” he smiled ruefully, “or at least some ages. However-”
“Ah,” said Willard. “Now we come to it.”
“Well, yes. I have a dream that I’m willing to risk a great deal for, but I’m not a complete fool. I will give you the hundred thousand I promised before you start and if the thing doesn’t work out you can keep it, but the payment will be electronic. It : however, you turn out a product that satisfies me, then you will return the electronic gift and I will give you the hundred thousand globo-dollars in gold pieces. You have nothing to lose except that to an artist like yourself, gold must be more dramatic and worthwhile than blips in a finance-card. “ And Laborian smiled gently.
Willard said, “Understand, Mr. Laborian! I would be taking a risk, too. I risk losing a great deal of time and effort that I might have devoted to a more likely project. I risk producing a docudrama that will be a failure and that will tarnish the reputation I have built up with Lear. In my business, you’re only as good as your most recent product. I will consult various people-” “On a confidential basis, please.”
“Of course! And I will do a bit of deep consideration. I am willing to go along with your proposition for now, but you mustn’t think of it as a definite commitment. Not yet. We will talk further.”
Jonas Willard and Meg Cathcart sat together over lunch in Meg’s apartment. They were at their coffee when Willard said, with apparent reluctance as one who broaches a subject he would rather not, “Have you read the book? “
“Yes, I have.”
“And what did you think?”
“I don’t know,” said Cathcart peering at him from under the dark, reddish hair she wore clustered over her forehead. “ At least not enough to judge.”
“You’re not a science fiction buff either, then?”
“Well, I’ve read science fiction, mostly sword and sorcery, but nothing like Three in One. I’ve heard of Laborian, though. He does what they call ‘hard science fiction.”‘
“It’s hard enough. I don’t see how I can do it. That book, whatever its virtues, just isn’t me.”
Cathcart fixed him with a sharp glance. “How do you know it isn’t you?”
“Listen, it’s important to know what you can’t do.”
“And you were born knowing you can’t do science fiction?”
“I have an instinct in these things.”
“So you say. Why don’t you think what you might do with those three undescribed characters, and what you would want subliminally, before you let your instinct tell you what you can and can’t do. For instance, how would you do the Parental, who is referred to constantly as ‘he’ even though it’s the Parental who bears the children? That struck me as jackassy, if you must know.”
“No, no,” said Willard, at once. “I accept the ‘he.’ Laborian might have invented a third pronoun, but it would have made no sense and the reader would have gagged on it. Instead, he reserved the pronoun, ‘she,’ for the Emotional. She’s the central character, differing from the other two enormously. The use of ‘she’ for her and only for her focuses the reader’s attention on her, and it’s on her that the reader’s attention must focus. What’s more, it’s on her that the viewer’s attention must focus in the compu-drama.”
“Then you h ave been thinking of it. “ She gri
Willard stirred uneasily. “ Actually, Laborian said something of the sort, so I can’t lay claim to complete creativity here. But let’s get back to the Parental. I want to talk about these things to you because everything is going to depend on subliminal suggestion, if I do try to do this thing. The Parental is a block, a rectangle.”
“A right parallelepiped, I think they would call it in solid geometry.”
“Come on. I don’t care what they call it in solid geometry. The point is we can’t just have a block. We have to give it personality. The Parental is a ‘he’ who bears children, so we have to get across an epicene quality. The voice has to be neither clearly masculine nor feminine. I’m not sure that I have in mind exactly the timbre and sound I will need, but that will be for the voice-recorder and myself to work out by trial and error, I think. Of course, the voice isn’t the only thing.”
“What else?”
“The feet. The Parental moves about, but there is no description of any limbs. He has to have the equivalent of arms; there are things he does. He obtains an energy source that he feeds the Emotional, so we’ll have to evolve arms that are alien but that are arms. And we need legs. And a number of sturdy, stumpy legs that move rapidly.”
“Like a caterpillar? Or a centipede?”
Willard winced. “Those aren’t pleasant comparisons, are they?”
“Well, it would be my job to subliminate, if I may use the expression, a centipede, so to speak, without showing one. Just the notion of a series of legs, a double fading row of parentheses, just on and off as a kind of visual leitmotiv for the Parental, whenever he appears.”
“I see what you mean. We’ll have to try it out and see what we can get away with. The Rational is ovoid. Laborian admitted it might be egg-shaped. We can imagine him progressing by rolling but I find that completely inappropriate. The Rational is mind-proud, dignified. We can’t make him do anything laughable, and rolling would be laughable.”
“We could have him with a flat bottom slightly curved, and he could slide along it, like a penguin belly-whopping.”
“Or like a snail on a layer of grease. No. That would be just as bad. I had thought of having three legs extrude. In other words, when he is at rest, he would be smoothly ovoid and proud of it, but when he is moving three stubby legs emerge and he can walk on them.”
“Why three?”
“It carries on the three motif; three sexes, you know. It could be a kind of hopping run. The foreleg digs in and holds firm and the two hind legs come along on each side.”
“Like a three-legged kangaroo?”
“Yes! Can you subliminate a kangaroo?” “I can try.”
“The Emotional, of course, is the hardest of the three. What can you do with something that may be nothing but a coherent cloud of gas?”
Cathcart considered. “What about giving the impression of draperies containing nothing. They would be moving about wraithlike, just as you presented Le ar in the storm scene. She would be wind, she would be air, she would be the filmy, foggy draperies that would represent that.”
Willard felt himself drawn to the suggestion. “Hey, that’s not bad, Meg. For the subliminal effect, could you do Helen of Troy?” “Helen of Troy?”
“Yes! To the Rational and Parental, the Emotional is the most beautiful thing ever invented. They’re crazy about her. There’s this strong, almost unbearable sexual attraction-their kind of sex-and we’ve got to make the audience aware of it in their terms. If you can somehow get across a statuesque Greek woman, with bound hair and draperies-the draperies would exactly fit what we’re imagining for the Emotional-and make it look like the paintings and sculptures everyone is familiar with, that would be the Emotional’s leitmotiv.”
“You don’t ask simple things. The slightest intrusion of a human figure will destroy the mood.” “You don’t intrude a human figure. Just the suggestion of one. It’s important. A human figure, in actual fact, may destroy the mood, but we’ll have to suggest human figures throughout. The audience has to think of these odd things as human beings. No mistake.”
“I’ll think about it,” said Cathcart, dubiously.
“Which brings us to another thing. The melting. The triple-sex of these things. I gather they superimpose. I gather from the book that the Emotional is the key to that. The Parental and Rational can’t melt without her. She’s the essential part of the process. But, of course, that fool, Laborian, doesn’t describe it in detail. Well, we can’t have the Rational and Parental ru
“I agree.”
“What we must do, then, and this is off the top of my head, is to have the Emotional expand, the draperies move out and enswathe (if that’s the word) both Parental and Rational. They are obscured by the draperies and we don’t see exactly how it’s done but they get closer and closer until they superimpose.”
“We’ll have to emphasize the drapery,” said Cathcart. “We’ll have to make it as graceful as possible in order to get across the beauty of it, and not just the eroticism. We’ll have to have music.”
“Not the Romeo and Juliet overture, please. A slow waltz, perhaps, because the melting takes a long time. And not a familiar one. I don’t want the audience humming along with it. In fact, it would be best if it comes in occasional bits so that the audience gets the impression of a waltz, rather than actually hearing it.”
“We can’t see how to do it, until we try it and see what works.”
“Everything I say now is a first-order suggestion that may have to be yanked about this way and that under the pressure of actual events. And what about the orgasm? We’ll have to indicate that somehow.”
“Color.”
“Hmm.”
“Better than sound, Jonas. You can’t have an explosion. I wouldn’t want some kind of eruption, either. Color. Silent color. That might do it.”
“What color? I don’t want a blinding flash, either. “
“No. You might try a delicate pink, very slowly darkening, and then toward the end suddenly becoming a deep, deep red.”
“I’m not sure. We’ll have to try it out. It must be unmistakable and moving and not make the audience giggle or feel embarrassed. I can see ourselves ru