9 Tales of Space and Time

by Anthology

  Dr. Murdock went to his laboratory. Everything was in perfect order. And on the laboratory table lay the records and notes which Hargo had taken with him.

  Suddenly the truth dawned upon them. “We’re back where we started from,” Mrs. Murdock wailed. “We’re prisoners again.”

  So that is how the Murdocks returned to their home on the Mantu Islands. That Mrs. Murdock became white again is a matter of record. It is also a matter of record that both the doctor and his wife continued to live on their little island until all life there was wiped out during World War III.

  Nor did Paytone live long to enjoy his economic power in New Guinea and Australia. It is true that he became the wealthiest man in Australia and took pleasure in making life miserable for those white men whom he could impoverish. He had quite a reputation for being a man of unusual mental powers and of ability to surround himself with brilliant assistants, black, of course, and devoutly religious. But it is one thing to have great power; it is quite another thing to dominate a continent permanently. And by a strange quirk of fate, the same atomic war that wiped out the Murdocks brought sudden death to Paytone.

  It seems strange to us today in 2454 that anyone could want to keep secret a discovery as important as Dr. Murdock’s, a discovery that has done for mankind just what Dr. Murdock said it would do, namely, make the human race intelligent enough to govern itself. But we must remember that the twentieth century was the age of secrecy, in science, in politics, in business, and even in art. It was the age of the iron curtain, the bamboo curtain, and security regulations in every so-called civilized society. It is interesting to note that when they talked about the various freedoms, no one mentioned freedom from stupidity. Indeed, a careful study of available records indicates that, in that age, no one believed it possible that he might be stupid. In those days, five hundred years ago, people even thought that the possession of a television set and atomic weapons was evidence of their sanity and wisdom.

  FRANK FENTON

  6

  THE CHICKEN OR THE EGGHEAD

  Frank Fenton is one of Hollywood’s most talented and consistently employed writers. He has had two novels published, a play produced on Broadway, and before coming to Hollywood he was frequently published in the slick magazines as well as in journals like the old American Mercury. He first turned his talented hand to science fiction in a collaboration with Joe Petracca on an amusing fantasy about the Hollywood of the future called “Tolliver’s Travels,” which we published in New Tales of Space and Time.

  In “The Chicken or the Egghead” Fenton again uses the Hollywood scene for his background, but this time, in a wildly risible but still pertinent way, he portrays the Hollywood of today—a Hollywood beset by budget difficulties, TV competition, loyalty trials, and other ulcer-producing problems. Psychiatry, political theory, sociology, and magic drugs (not of the so-called “wonder” variety) are the science-fiction elements of a fantasy that also comes close to being one of the most penetrating comments yet made on a very disturbing factor in current American life.

  Frankly, the motif for the intellectual fabric of the story is in the nature of a daring departure, even for science fiction, because of the urgent immediacy of the controversial subject it treats. Such an application to such events should certainly prove to be intriguing, coming as it does from the pen of one of the very few screen writers still employed in the Hollywood studios. Its publication here is indicative of the advantage of writing directly for book rather than magazine publication. For we suspect that this story, despite its wonderful comedy slant, might be taboo for even science-fiction magazines. We also suspect that “The Chicken or the Egghead” will soon be widely discussed in a variety of circles not necessarily demoted to science fiction.

  6

  THE CHICKEN OR THE EGGHEAD

  HIS NAME WAS FRANCIS CARY. HE LIVED IN A SMALL STUDIO apartment just off the Sunset Strip in Hollywood, and he made a somewhat precarious living by writing occasional scripts for the films. He was a good-looking man and quite personable in a faintly sardonic way. But though he had many acquaintances, he had few actual friends. And this can only be accounted for by the fact that he was an egghead.

  In the unhappy jargon of these unhappy times, an egghead, of course, is a synonym for an intellectual, and as such a creature, Francis Cary was inevitably tagged. In Hollywood, of late, many such fellows have become marked and lonely men. It is easy to say that Cary was marked for this designation because he had worked his way through Harvard in sprightlier days as a busboy and later as a waiter. It is also easy to point to his several degrees and the Phi Beta Kappa key he wore. But his true difficulty was that he had not gotten over these things. In fact he had gone from bad to worse and subsequently written a novel castigating the capitalist system. Since no more than five hundred people had ever bought or read this book, the capitalist system was not seriously damaged by his assault. In fact, the failure of the book had driven Cary out of the chill and heartless East and into the sunny and listless environs of southern California. In this balmy clime he eventually lost his fervor for the working class and for working itself. And after serving his country for three years in the South Pacific he returned to become a true dilettante. He wrote a play about the sex life of the Polish fishermen south of Ventura, and although this drama was a relative flop on Broadway, it remained on that fabled street long enough for Cary to earn considerable theatrical repute. And this enabled him to gain employment in the studios as a writer.

  To him, this was a grim ordeal. But it paid the rent and it bought books. It was also a stake with which he could afford to go prospecting for another novel—a novel about the despair of the intellectual, the plight of the egghead. When at some bar he was asked the title of his work in progress, he would answer bitterly, The Chicken or the Egghead, and the inquirer would thereupon drop the subject, having had practically no interest in it in the first place. “What goes on with you?” Hollywood asks, and the actor out of work says, “The rent!” The idle writer replies, “I’m doing a book.”

  Actually, he was not writing so much as reading. The condition of the world so confused him that he sought explanations for its lunacy in Santayana, Russell, Toynbee and Schweitzer. And during this period Arod Summer borrowed the books after he had read them.

  Arod is Dora spelled backward, while Summer once had been spelled Loudermilk. But she was beautiful to see. Her hair was golden blonde and her eyes were sky blue. Her body was exquisitely proportioned, and half the male adults of the United States and Canada lusted after her. Whenever she appeared on the great new screens of the cinema, the box office enjoyed a rare enrichment. Unhampered by any thespian talent whatever, she simply moved across the screen and became the delight of mankind.

  To Cary she was an incredible phenomenon. Not because of her sensual allure and radiance, which were obvious, but because, for reasons impenetrable by him, she worshiped him. His cash was low and his best suit was becoming frayed and he showed her no special interest, yet she adored him. She was a great and rising star and oil millionaires knelt at her feet; beautiful actors, famed athletes, powerful industrialists, clamored for her favor, but she smiled and scorned them all.

  She would sneak away from a glamorous premiere or any such exclusive brawl of celebrities and knock at Cary’s door, however late the hour might be, and despite the would-be lovers she had left in the lurch. If he let her in, she was happy just to be there and near him. She would make coffee and browse among his tumbled books. She would admire the prints he had collected and pinned to the wall, and his one original, a painting called the ‘Beast of Alamogordo,’ that presumed to symbolize the meaning of the A bomb. She knew he prized this conceit and so would stand admiring it, while he sat trying not to admire her magnificent figure. “It’s marvelous, utterly marvelous,” she would say, though he knew she did not understand it, since he found it completely incomprehensible himself. It was that kind of art known to aficionados as Abstract, and for all of its c
raft and cunning it still reminded him of something trapped on a microscope slide.

  Once he said as much and she laughed merrily with a kind of practiced theatrical mirth—not at the painting but at his wit. She laughed merrily every time she imagined that he said something witty and superior. And it disgusted him.

  “What did you think of Toynbee?” he asked when she brought the book back.

  “He’s awful deep,” she said. “Awful.”

  “Do you think that Western civilization has a chance?” he asked.

  “Don’t be silly!” she said and laughed merrily, and there came to him the strange feeling that she knew more about it than Toynbee. She knew the world would go on, in spite of the beast of Alamogordo.

  “Why do you come here,” he said, indicating the studio walls and the scrambled volumes, “when you can have anything in the world by holding up your little finger?”

  She held it up smiling. “I can’t,” she said. “See?”

  “What is you want?” he asked curiously.

  “You,” she said.

  “What is there about me?” he asked coldly.

  “I love you,” she said simply and picked up Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, turning the pages idly and with a little frown of pretended interest.

  He stared at her thoughtfully and wondered why it should matter so much to him that she was a boob, that her stupidity and ignorance were as spectacular as her physical splendor. The uneasy notion that he had become eccentric and queer accosted him, so that he even wondered if some latent homosexuality might not be creeping over him in his middle years. He thrust the notion aside and regarded her purely—or impurely—from the neck down, becoming at once reassured by a powerful impulse to cart her off to the bed in the other room. The impulse was so powerful that he raised his eyes to her face and as though divining what had just occurred to him, she smiled. But when she spoke the urge swiftly vanished. “I kinda think,” she said, “that people ought to be honest about their feelings, and that’s what’s wrong with the world today. If some guy is cute and a girl goes for him in a big way, I don’t think she oughta hide her true feelings—not for just the sex bit, but for character and that kind of thing. A guy sending a girl is one thing, but when she finds he’s real Clyde, that’s different.”

  “It’s two o’clock, Arod,” he said, “and you ought to go home and get some sleep. I’ll take you.”

  “No, I’ll go alone,” she said. And she looked gravely at him. “Sometimes I like to be alone, so I can dream.”

  And so she left him, and through the window he saw her yellow Cadillac swerve down the hill and turn the corner like a police car in hot pursuit of a traffic violator.

  He sighed and wondered whether or not she should see a psychiatrist—or whether he should himself. He turned back from the window. The expensive perfume she wore still haunted the air and her cigarette still burned in the ash tray, red from her mouth. He laughed out loud and sat down to read in peace, but the perfume of Chanel overcame the prose of Marcel Proust.

  It was at this time that he bought a small television set from a stuntman who was broke, and for many nights he did not read a book but stared at the little screen, at once revolted and fascinated. It was peopled by clowns and pitchmen, detectives and vaudevillians. Garish blondes, all looking like Arod Summer, delivered opinions on the problems of mankind. In this satanic theater, mayhem seemed to be the most staple commodity and almost every half-hour, on one channel or another, a murder was being done or a beating administered. And during the interludes between these crimes came unctuous newscasters telling, with a kind of morbid relish, the disasters of the day.

  And it was during this period that the Great Communist Conspiracy was brought to bay and summarily demolished. One after another, the conspirators appeared on the television screen and were excoriated and exposed by the Congressional Committee. Most of them seemed to be writers of one sort or another, and Cary had known several of them personally. They appeared scornful and defiant, like the French aristocrats of old, riding in their tumbrels to the guillotine.

  It was a kind of shocking expose, and as the list of names lengthened daily, a kind of fear went through the town. Men spoke carefully about it and wondered who would be next.

  Arod Summer said to Cary, “They won’t get you for this, will they?”

  “For what?” he said.

  “For a Red.”

  “A Red,” he said, “a Spic, a Wop, a Hebe, a Piet, a Jute, a Nig. It’s a matter of semantics.”

  “But you were never a Commie?” she pressed, looking at him, for the first time fearfully.

  “No” he said coldly.

  “What is it?” she asked with relief.

  “Communism?”

  She nodded and brought him his coffee.

  He said thoughtfully, “Lenin thought it was a million little paths finally making a human highway. He neglected to add that it was necessary to pave them with human skulls.”

  “Is he head of it?”

  “He’s dead. He was a sardine trying to rationalize the ocean in terms of sardines.”

  “What’s it about?” she asked. “Almost everybody’s talking about it.”

  He looked at her with a kind of pity. “It’s for the masses,” he said, “the people, the mobile vulgus. It’s a political pitch like trying to get everybody to smoke the same God-damned cigarette. It’s another con game and the people are the mark, the big mark.”

  “Why don’t we go to Las Vegas for the week end?” she said.

  “I have no money,” he said.

  “I could lend you some.”

  “No,” he said, and at that moment he heard his name mentioned on the screen and stared with surprise. It was mentioned quite casually by a writer, Milton Gay, who was at the moment naming names for the Committee, and apparently listing all persons to whom he had ever been introduced.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Cary murmured.

  “See!” Arod cried. “There you are! You lied to me!”

  “All right,” he said, seizing the golden opportunity, “you better get out of here. Get to Las Vegas. Say that you never knew me. Say I was just one of thousands trying to seduce you.”

  She looked at him wildly a moment. Then a great calm came over her. “No,” she said quietly, “I’m sticking with you— whatever you’ve done, whatever you are. I have faith.”

  “You want to ruin a great career?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. And she walked to the window and stood there, looking out on the vista of Hollywood, a lake of neon lights in the valley below.

  The psychiatrist’s name was Davison Funck. He was very fat and extraordinarily brilliant. He smoked one pipe after another and had the same wistful, ironic smile for all circumstances, however tragic or absurd or banal. A profound and devious man, he had a remarkable talent for listening to anybody and understanding what was not being said. He looked benignly at Cary, who was his friend, and said, “I see no reason why you should be upset. When there is a net out for sharks, surely a few tuna and minnows will also be hauled in.”

  “I am not upset,” Cary said calmly. “This dreamy idiot named me and as a consequence I had to appear and be questioned. To my amazement I found they had gotten hold of a copy of a novel I once wrote damning the system. Aside from the fact that I was an amateur and the book was roasted by experts, I was flabbergasted to find that it still existed. I even read it again, and found it very bad.”

  “And what was the outcome?” Funck asked, reloading his huge pipe.

  “Nothing,” Cary said. “What outcome could there be?”

  “How would I know?” Funck said.

  “Why not—you know everything,” Cary said.

  Funck smiled but did not disagree.

  “I was cleared.” Cary went on.

  “Then what disturbs you?”

  Cary shook his head.

  Funck smiled. “I will tell you, Francis,” he said, “You are really disturbed because you
are an intellectual, and the times are very unfortunate for this type of affliction. Being an intellectual, it is difficult for you to belong to the right wing. Being intelligent, it is impossible for you to belong to the extreme left. So you have no wings. You are bird reduced to the limitations of a biped, and therefore extremely vulnerable. You will be suspected by both the right and the left. To use a colloquialism, you are caught dead in the middle.”

  “What would you advise then?”

  “One of two things,” Funck said urbanely. “Find a cave and become a recluse, or conform. I would suggest conforming. Become innocuous. Do innocuous things. Write innocuous movies and novels. Marry an innocuous woman and have innocuous children. The world will have to do this someday, and then it will become happy, innocuously happy. I see it as the final utopia, the true aspiration of man. In fact, I have concocted, I believe, a small pill for just such a purpose—a medicament that will induce normalcy in a human being much as certain potions induce sleep.”

  Cary stared at him curiously.

  Funck smiled confidently. “No, I have not become insane,” he said. “I really think I have accomplished it. And why not? It’s no more miraculous than the antibiotics or the fission of the uranium atom—or the pathology of love.”

  Cary suddenly laughed. Then he asked, “What do you call this nostrum?”

  Funck pronounced it carefully, a long Latin hyphenate.

  “It sounds very important,” Cary said.

  “That’s why it’s in Latin,” Funck said, “That’s why all prescriptions are in Latin.”

  “Have you ever tried this on anybody?”

  “On one of my cats,” said Funck, “an extremely eccentric ringtail cat and a brilliant animal. In a few days he was killing birds, scratching the furniture, and caterwauling at night just like his companions. We achieved perfect feline normalcy.”