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“The what?”
“You know. After the last melting, the superimposition remains permanent and we have the adult form that is all three components together. There, I think, we’ll have to make them more human. Not human, mind you. Just more human. A faint suggestion of human form, not just subliminal, either. We’ll need a voice that is somehow reminiscent of all three, and I don’t know how the recorder can make that work. Fortunately, the triple-beings don’t appear much in the story.”
Willard shook his head. “ And that brings us to the rough fact that the compu-drama might not be a possible project at all.”
“Why not? You seem to have been offering potential solutions of all kinds for the various problems.”
“Not for the essential part. look! In King Lear, we had human characters, more than human characters. You had searing emotions. What have we got here? We have fu
“For one thing, an animated cartoon is two-dimensional. Even with elaborate animation it is flat, and its coloring is without shading. It is invariably satiricial-”
“I know all that. That’s not what I want you to tell me. You’re missing the important point. What a compu-drama has, that a mere animated cartoon does not, are subliminal suggestions such as can only be created by a: complex computer in the hands of an imaginative genius. What my compu-drama has that an animated cartoon doesn’t is you, Meg.”
“Well, I was being modest. “
“Don’t be. I’m trying to tell you that everything -everything- is going to depend on you. We have a story here that is dead serious. Our Emotional is trying to save Earth out of pure idealism; it’s not her world. And she doesn’t succeed, and she won’t succeed in my version, either. No cheap, happy ending.”
“Earth isn’t exactly destroyed.”
“No, it isn’t. There’s still time to save it if Laborian ever gets around to doing a sequel, but in this story the attempt fails. It’s a tragedy and I want it treated as one-as tragic as Lear. No fu
Cathcart said dryly, “It looks as though you will insist I can.” “I do so insist.”
“Then you had better see about getting the ball rolling, and you leave me alone while you’re doing it. I need time to think. Lots of time.”
The early days of the shooting were an unmitigated disaster. Each member of the crew had his copy of the book, carefully, almost surgically trimmed, but with no scenes entirely omitted.
“We’re going to stick to the course of the book as closely as we can, and improve it as we go along just as much as we can,” Willard had a
He turned to the head voice-recorder. “How have you been working on that?” “I’ve tried to fuse the three voices. “
“Let’s hear. All right, everyone quiet.”
“I’ll give you the Parental first,” said the recorder. There came a thin, tenor voice, out of key with the blockish figure that the Image man had produced. Willard winced slightly at the mismatch, but the Parental was mismatched-a masculine mother. The Rational, rocking slowly back and forth, had a somewhat self-important voice; enunciation over-careful, and it was a light baritone.
Willard interrupted. “Less rocking in the Rational. We don’t want the audience to become seasick. He rocks when he is deep in thought, and not all the time.”
He then nodded his head at Dua’s draperies, which seemed quite successful, as did her clear and infinitely sweet soprano voice.
“She must never shriek,” said Willard, severely, “not even when she is in a passion.”
“She won’t,” said the recorder. “The trick is, though, to blend the voices in setting up the triple- being, in having each one distantly identifiable.”
All three voices sounded softly, the words not clear. They seemed to melt into each other and then the voice could be heard enunciating.
Willard shook his head in immediate discontent. “No, that won’t do at all. We can’t have three voices in a kind of intimate patchwork. We’d be making the triple-being a figure of fun. We need one voice which somehow suggests all three.”
The voice-recorder was clearly offended. “It’s easy to say that. How do you suggest we do it?”
“I do it,” said Willard, brutally, “by ordering you to do it. I’ll tell you when you have it. And Cathcart-where is Cathcart?”
“Here I am,” she said, emerging from behind her instrumentation. “Where I’m supposed to be.”
“I don’t like the sublimination, Cathcart. I gather you tried to give the impression of cerebral convolutions.”
“For intelligence. The triple-beings represent the intelligence-peak of these aliens.”
“Yes, I understand, but what you managed to do was to give the impression of worms. You’ll have to think of something else. And I don’t like the appearance of the triple-being, either. He looks just like a big Rational.”
“He is like a big Rational,” said one of the imagists.
“Is he described in the book that way?” asked Willard, sharply. “Not in so many words, but the impression I get-”
“Never mind your impression. I’ll make the decisions.”
Willard grew fouler-tempered as the day wore on. At least twice he had difficulty controlling his passion, the second time coming when he happened to notice someone watching the proceedings from a spot at one edge of the lot.
He strode toward him angrily. “What are you doing here?”
It was Laborian, who answered quietly, “Watching. “
“Our contract states-”
“That I am to interfere in the proceedings in no way. It does not say I ca
“I’m not disapproving. I’m here only to answer questions if you care to ask them.” “Questions? What kind of questions?”
Laborian shrugged. “I don’t know. Something might puzzle you and you might want a suggestion.”
“I see,” said Willard, with heavy irony, “so you can teach me my business.”
“No, so I can answer your questions.”
“Well, I have one.”
“Very well,” and Laborian produced a small cassette recorder. “If you’ll just speak into this and say that you are asking me a question and wish me to answer without prejudicing the contract, we’re in business.”
Willard paused for a considerable time, staring at Laborian as though he suspected trickery of some sort, then he spoke into the cassette.
“Very well,” said Laborian. “What’s your question?”
“Did you have anything in mind for the appearance of the triple-being in the book?” “Not a thing,” said Laborian, cheerfully.
“How could you do that?” Willard’s voice trembled as though he were holding back a final “you idiot” by main force.
“Easily. What I don’t describe, the reader supplies in his own mind. Each reader does it differently to suit himself, I presume. That’s the advantage of writing. A compu-drama would have an enormously larger audience than a book could have, but you must pay for that by having to present an image.”
“I understand that,” said Willard. “So much for the question, then.” “Not at all. I have a suggestion.”
“Like what?”
“Like a head. Give the triple-being a head. The Parental has no head, nor the Rational, nor the Emotional, but all three look up to the triple-beings as creatures of intelligence beyond their own. That is the entire difference between the triple-beings and the three Separates. Intelligence.”
“A head?”
“Yes. We associate intelligence with heads. The head contains the brain, it contains the sense organs. Omit the head and we ca
Work had, of course, ceased on the set. Everyone had gathered in as closely as they thought judicious to listen to the conversation between director and author.
Willard said, “What kind of head?”
“ Your choice. All you need is a bulge suggesting a head. And eyes. The viewer is sure to get the idea.”
W illard turned away, shouting, “Well, get back to work. Who called a vacation? Where are the imagists? Back to the machine and begin trying out heads.”
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 a
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?”