I Remember Babylon
First published in Playboy, March 1960
Collected in Tales of Ten Worlds
This is one of the rare cases where I violated Sam Goldwyn’s excellent rule: ‘If you gotta message, use Western Union.’ This story was a message, five years before the first commercial communications satellite was launched, warning of their possible danger. Apart from some minor political earthquakes, everything in it has since come true.
My name is Arthur C. Clark, and I wish I had no connection with this whole sordid business. But as the moral—repeat, moral—integrity of the United States is involved, I must first establish my credentials. Only thus will you understand how, with the aid of the late Dr Alfred Kinsey, I have unwittingly triggered an avalanche that may sweep away much of Western civilisation.
Back in 1945, while a radar officer in the Royal Air Force, I had the only original idea of my life. Twelve years before the first Sputnik started beeping, it occurred to me that an artificial satellite would be a wonderful place for a television transmitter, since a station several thousand miles high could broadcast to half the globe. I wrote up the idea the week after Hiroshima, proposing a network of relay satellites twenty-two thousand miles above the Equator; at this height, they’d take exactly one day to complete a revolution, and so would remain fixed over the same spot on the Earth.
The piece appeared in the October 1945 issue of Wireless World; not expecting that celestial mechanics would be commercialised in my lifetime, I made no attempt to patent the idea, and doubt if I could have done so anyway. (If I’m wrong, I’d prefer not to know.) But I kept plugging it in my books, and today the idea of communications satellites is so commonplace that no one knows its origin.
I did make a plaintive attempt to put the record straight when approached by the House of Representatives Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration; you’ll find my evidence on page thirty-two of its report, The Next Ten Years in Space. And as you’ll see in a moment, my concluding words had an irony I never appreciated at the time: ‘Living as I do in the Far East, I am constantly reminded of the struggle between the Western World and the USSR for the uncommitted millions of Asia… When line-of-sight TV transmissions become possible from satellites directly overhead, the propaganda effect may be decisive…’
I still stand by those words, but there were angles I hadn’t thought of—and which, unfortunately, other people have.
It all began during one of those official receptions which are such a feature of social life in Eastern capitals. They’re even more common in the West, of course, but in Colombo there’s little competing entertainment. At least once a week, if you are anybody, you get an invitation to cocktails at an embassy or legation, the British Council, the US Operations Mission, L’Alliance Française, or one of the countless alphabetical agencies the United Nations has begotten.
At first, being more at home beneath the Indian Ocean than in diplomatic circles, my partner and I were nobodies and were left alone. But after Mike compèred Dave Brubeck’s tour of Ceylon, people started to take notice of us—still more so when he married one of the island’s best-known beauties. So now our consumption of cocktails and canapés is limited chiefly by reluctance to abandon our comfortable sarongs for such Western absurdities as trousers, dinner jackets, and ties.
It was the first time we’d been to the Soviet Embassy, which was throwing a party for a group of Russian oceanographers who’d just come into port. Beneath the inevitable paintings of Lenin and Marx, a couple of hundred guests of all colours, religions, and languages were milling around, chatting with friends, or single-mindedly demolishing the vodka and caviar. I’d been separated from Mike and Elizabeth, but could see them at the other side of the room. Mike was doing his ‘There was I at fifty fathoms’ act to a fascinated audience, while Elizabeth watched him quizzically—and rather more people watched Elizabeth.
Ever since I lost an eardrum while pearl-diving on the Great Barrier Reef, I’ve been at a considerable disadvantage at functions of this kind; the surface noise is about twelve decibels too much for me to cope with. And this is no small handicap when being introduced to people with names like Dharmasiriwardene, Tissaveerasinghe, Goonetilleke, and Jayawickrema. When I’m not raiding the buffet, therefore, I usually look for a pool of relative quiet where there’s a chance of following more than fifty per cent of any conversation in which I may get involved. I was standing in the acoustic shadow of a large ornamental pillar, surveying the scene in my detached or Somerset Maugham manner, when I noticed that someone was looking at me with that ‘Haven’t we met before?’ expression.
I’ll describe him with some care, because there must be many people who can identify him. He was in the mid-thirties, and I guessed he was American; he had that well-scrubbed, crew-cut, man-about-Rockefeller-Center look that used to be a hallmark until the younger Russian diplomats and technical advisers started imitating it so successfully. He was about six feet in height, with shrewd brown eyes and black hair, prematurely grey at the sides. Though I was fairly certain we’d never met before, his face reminded me of someone. It took me a couple of days to work it out: remember the late John Garfield? That’s who it was, as near as makes no difference.
When a stranger catches my eye at a party, my standard operating procedure goes into action automatically. If he seems a pleasant-enough person but I don’t feel like introductions at the moment, I give him the Neutral Scan, letting my eyes sweep past him without a flicker of recognition, yet without positive unfriendliness. If he looks like a creep, he receives the Coup d’oeil, which consists of a long, disbelieving stare followed by an unhurried view of the back of my neck. In extreme cases, an expression of revulsion may be switched on for a few milliseconds. The message usually gets across.
But this character seemed interesting, and I was getting bored, so I gave him the Affable Nod. A few minutes later he drifted through the crowd, and I aimed my good ear toward him.
‘Hello,’ he said (yes, he was American), ‘my name’s Gene Hartford. I’m sure we’ve met somewhere.’
‘Quite likely,’ I answered, ‘I’ve spent a good deal of time in the States. I’m Arthur Clarke.’
Usually that produces a blank stare, but sometimes it doesn’t. I could almost see the IBM cards flickering behind those hard brown eyes, and was flattered by the brevity of his access time.
‘The science writer?’
‘Correct.’
‘Well, this is fantastic.’ He seemed genuinely astonished. ‘Now I know where I’ve seen you. I was in the studio once when you were on the Dave Garroway show.’
(This lead may be worth following up, though I doubt it; and I’m sure that ‘Genea Hartford’ was phony—it was too smoothly synthetic.)
‘So you’re in TV?’ I said. ‘What are you doing here—collecting material, or just on vacation?’
He gave me the frank, friendly smile of a man who has plenty to hide.
‘Oh, I’m keeping my eyes open. But this is really amazing, I read your Exploration of Space when it came out back in, Ah—’
‘Nineteen fifty-two; the Book-of-the-Month Club’s never been quite the same since.’
All this time I had been sizing him up, and though there was something about him I didn’t like, I was unable to pin it down. In any case, I was prepared to make substantial allowances for someone who had read my books and was also in TV; Mike and I are always on the lookout for markets for our under-water movies. But that, to put it mildly, was not Hartford’s line of business.
‘Look,’ he said eagerly, ‘I’ve a big network deal cooking that will interest you—in fact, you helped to give me the idea.’
This sounded promising, and my coefficient of cupidity jumped several points.
‘I’m glad to hear it. What’s the general theme?’
‘I can’t talk about it here, but could we meet at my hotel, around three tomorrow?’
‘Let me check my diary; yes, that’s OK.’
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br /> There are only two hotels in Colombo patronised by Americans, and I guessed right the first time. He was at the Mount Lavinia, and though you may not know it, you’ve seen the place where we had our private chat. Around the middle of Bridge on the River Kwai, there’s a brief scene at a military hospital, where Jack Hawkins meets a nurse and asks her where he can find Bill Holden. We have a soft spot for this episode, because Mike was one of the convalescent naval officers in the background. If you look smartly you’ll see him on the extreme right, beard in full profile, signing Sam Spiegel’s name to his sixth round of bar chits. As the picture turned out, Sam could afford it.
It was here, on this diminutive plateau high above the miles of palm-fringed beach, that Gene Hartford started to unload—and my simple hopes of financial advantage started to evaporate. What his exact motives were, if indeed he knew them himself, I’m still uncertain. Surprise at meeting me, and a twisted feeling of gratitude (which I would gladly have done without) undoubtedly played a part, and for all his air of confidence he must have been a bitter, lonely man who desperately needed approval and friendship.
He got neither from me. I have always had a sneaking sympathy for Benedict Arnold, as must anyone who knows the full facts of the case. But Arnold merely betrayed his country; no one before Hartford ever tried to seduce it.
What dissolved my dream of dollars was the news that Hartford’s connection with American TV had been severed, somewhat violently, in the early fifties. It was clear that he’d been bounced out of Madison Avenue for Party-lining, and it was equally clear that his was one case where no grave injustice had been done. Though he talked with a certain controlled fury of his fight against asinine censorship, and wept for a brilliant—but unnamed—cultural series he’d started before being kicked off the air, by this time I was beginning to smell so many rats that my replies were distinctly guarded. Yet as my pecuniary interest in Mr Hartford diminished, so my personal curiosity increased. Who was behind him? Surely not the BBC…
He got round to it at last, when he’d worked the self-pity out of his system.
‘I’ve some news that will make you sit up,’ he said smugly. ‘The American networks are soon going to have some real competition. And it will be done just the way you predicted; the people who sent a TV transmitter to the Moon can put a much bigger one in orbit round the Earth.’
‘Good for them,’ I said cautiously. ‘I’m all in favour of healthy competition. When’s the launching date?’
‘Any moment now. The first transmitter will be parked due south of New Orleans—on the equator, of course. That puts it way out in the open Pacific; it won’t be over anyone’s territory, so there’ll be no political complications on that score. Yet it will be sitting up there in the sky in full view of everybody from Seattle to Key West. Think of it—the only TV station the whole United States can tune in to! Yes, even Hawaii! There won’t be any way of jamming it; for the first time, there’ll be a clear channel into every American home. And J. Edgar’s Boy Scouts can’t do a thing to block it.’
So that’s your little racket, I thought; at least you’re being frank. Long ago I learned not to argue with Marxists and Flat-Earthers, but if Hartford was telling the truth, I wanted to pump him for all he was worth.
‘Before you get too enthusiastic,’ I said, ‘there are a few points you may have overlooked.’
‘Such as?’
‘This will work both ways. Everyone knows that the Air Force, NASA, Bell Labs, IT&T, Hughes, and a few dozen other agencies are working on the same project. Whatever Russia does to the States in the propaganda line, she’ll get back with compound interest.’
Hartford grinned mirthlessly.
‘Really, Clarke!’ he said. (I was glad he hadn’t first-named me.) ‘I’m a little disappointed. Surely you know that the United States is years behind in pay-load capacity! And do you imagine that the old T3 is Russia’s last word?’
It was at this moment that I began to take him very seriously. He was perfectly right. The T3 could inject at least five times the pay load of any American missile into that critical twenty-two-thousand-mile orbit—the only one that would allow a satellite to remain fixed above the Earth. And by the time the US could match that performance, heaven knows where the Russians would be. Yes, heaven certainly would know…
‘All right,’ I conceded. ‘But why should fifty million American homes start switching channels just as soon as they can tune in to Moscow? I admire the Russians, but their entertainment is worse than their politics. After the Bolshoi, what have you? And for me, a little ballet goes a long, long way.’
Once again I was treated to that peculiarly humourless smile. Hartford had been saving up his Sunday punch, and now he let me have it.
‘You were the one who brought in the Russians,’ he said. ‘They’re involved, sure—but only as contractors. The independent agency I’m working for is hiring their services.’
‘That,’ I remarked dryly, ‘must be some agency.’
‘It is; just about the biggest. Even though the United States tries to pretend it doesn’t exist.’
‘Oh,’ I said, rather stupidly. ‘So that’s your sponsor.’
I’d heard those rumours that the USSR was going to launch satellites for the Chinese; now it began to look as if the rumours fell far short of the truth. But how far short, I’d still no conception.
‘You are so right,’ continued Hartford, obviously enjoying himself, ‘about Russian entertainment. After the initial novelty, the Nielson rating would drop to zero. But not with the programme I’m planning. My job is to find material that will put everyone else out of business when it goes on the air. You think it can’t be done? Finish that drink and come up to my room. I’ve a highbrow movie about ecclesiastical art that I’d like to show you.’
Well, he wasn’t crazy, though for a few minutes I wondered. I could think of few titles more carefully calculated to make the viewer reach for the channel switch than the one that flashed on the screen: ASPECTS OF THIRTEENTH-CENTURY TANTRIC SCULPTURE.
‘Don’t be alarmed,’ Hartford chuckled, above the whirr of the projector. ‘That title saves me having trouble with inquisitive Customs inspectors. It’s perfectly accurate, but we’ll change it to something with a bigger box-office appeal when the time comes.’
A couple of hundred feet later, after some innocuous architectural long shots, I saw what he meant.
You may know that there are certain temples in India covered with superbly executed carvings of a kind that we in the West scarcely associate with religion. To say that they are frank is a laughable understatement; they leave nothing to the imagination—any imagination. Yet at the same time they are genuine works of art. And so was Hartford’s movie.
It had been shot, in case you’re interested, at the Temple of the Sun, Konarak. I’ve since looked it up; it’s on the Orissa coast, about twenty-five miles northeast of Puri. The reference books are pretty mealymouthed; some apologise for the ‘obvious’ impossibility of providing illustrations, but Percy Brown’s Indian Architecture minces no words. The carvings, it says primly, are of ‘a shamelessly erotic character that have no parallel in any known building’. A sweeping claim, but I can believe it after seeing that movie.
Camera work and editing were brilliant, the ancient stones coming to life beneath the roving lens. There were breath-taking time-lapse shots as the rising sun chased the shadows from bodies intertwined in ecstasy; sudden startling close-ups of scenes which at first the mind refused to recognise; soft-focus studies of stone shaped by a master’s hand in all the fantasies and aberrations of love; restless zooms and pans whose meaning eluded the eye until they froze into patterns of timeless desire, eternal fulfilment. The music—mostly percussion, with a thin, high thread of sound from some stringed instrument that I could not identify—perfectly fitted the tempo of the cutting. At one moment it would be languorously slow, like the opening bars of Debussy’s ‘L’Après-midi’; then the drums would swiftly work the
mselves up to a frenzied, almost unendurable climax. The art of the ancient sculptors and the skill of the modern cameraman had combined across the centuries to create a poem of rapture, an orgasm on celluloid which I would defy any man to watch unmoved.
There was a long silence when the screen flooded with light and the lascivious music ebbed into exhaustion.
‘My God!’ I said, when I had recovered some of my composure. ‘Are you going to telecast that?’
Hartford laughed.
‘Believe me,’ he answered, ‘that’s nothing; it just happens to be the only reel I can carry around safely. We’re prepared to defend it any day on grounds of genuine art, historic interest, religious tolerance—oh, we’ve thought of all the angles. But it doesn’t really matter; no one can stop us. For the first time in history, any form of censorship’s become utterly impossible. There’s simply no way of enforcing it; the customer can get what he wants, right in his own home. Lock the door, switch on the TV set—friends and family will never know.’
‘Very clever,’ I said, ‘but don’t you think such a diet will soon pall?’
‘Of course; variety is the spice of life. We’ll have plenty of conventional entertainment; let me worry about that. And every so often we’ll have information programmes—I hate that word “propaganda”—to tell the cloistered American public what’s really happening in the world. Our special features will just be the bait.’
‘Mind if I have some fresh air?’ I said. ‘It’s getting stuffy in here.’
Hartford drew the curtains and let daylight back into the room. Below us lay that long curve of beach, with the outrigger fishing boats drawn up beneath the palms, and the little waves falling in foam at the end of their weary march from Africa. One of the loveliest sights in the world, but I couldn’t focus on it now. I was still seeing those writhing stone limbs, those faces frozen with passions which the centuries could not slake.
The Star Page 28
