The Ultimate Egoist (22 page)

What else could we want? It occurred to both of us that Griff was really up a tree; that he was telling the truth as far as he knew it, and that he thought we were both screwy. I began to think so myself.

Berbelot said, “Griff, didn’t you hear that dialogue near the end, when those two kids were by that sea wall?”

Griff nodded.

“Think back now,” Berbelot went on. “What did the boy say to the girl when he put his muzzle into her hair?”

“ ‘I love you,’ ” said Griff self-consciously, and blushed. “He said it twice.”

Berbelot and I looked at each other. “Let’s see that recording,” I said.

Well, we did, in Griff’s luxurious private projection room. I hope I never have to live through an hour like that again. If it weren’t for the fact that Berbelot was seeing the same thing I saw, and feeling the same way about it, I’d have reported to an alienist. Because that program came off Griff’s projector positively shimmering with innocuousness. My script was A-1; Berbelot’s plugs were right. On that plug that had started everything, where the man and the girl were gabbing in the theater lobby, the dialogue went like this:

“And how do you like the play, Mr. Robinson?”

“Utterly charming … and that goes for you, too, my dear. What
is
that perfume you are using?”

“Berbelot’s
Doux Rêves
. What do you think of it?”

“You heard what I said about the play.”

Well there you are. And, by the recording, Griff had been right about the repetitious three little words in the Azores sequence. I was floored.

After it was over, Berbelot said to Griff: “I think I can speak for Mr. Hamilton when I say that if this is an actual recording, we owe you an apology; also when I say that we do not accept your evidence until we have compiled our own. I recorded that program as it came over my set, as I have recorded all my advertising. We will see you tomorrow, and we will bring that sound film. Coming, Hamilton?”

I nodded and we left, leaving Griff to chew his lip.

I’d like to skip briefly over the last chapter of that evening’s nightmare. Berbelot picked up a camera expert on the way, and we had the films developed within an hour after we arrived at the fantastic “house that perfume built.” And if I was crazy, so was Berbelot; and if he was, then so was the camera. So help me, that blasted program came out on Berbelot’s screen exactly as it had on my set and his. If anyone ever took a long distance cussing-out, it was Griff that night. We figured, of course, that he had planted a phony recording on us, so that we wouldn’t sue. He’d do the same thing in court, too. I told Berbelot so. He shook his head.

“No, Hamilton, we can’t take it to court. Associated gave me that broadcast, the first color commercial, on condition that I sign away their responsibility for ‘incomplete, or inadequate, or otherwise unsatisfactory performance.’ They didn’t quite trust that new apparatus, you know.”

“Well, I’ll sue for both of us, then.” I said.

“Did they buy all rights?” he asked.

“Yes … damn! They got me, too! They have a legal right to do anything they want.” I threw my cigarette into the electric fire, and snapped on Berbelot’s big television set, tuning it to Associated’s XZB.

Nothing happened.

“Hey! Your set’s on the bum!” I said. Berbelot got up and began fiddling with the dial. I was wrong. There was nothing the matter with the set. It was Associated. All of their stations were off the air—all
four of them. We looked at each other.

“Get XZW,” said Berbelot. “It’s an Associated affiliate, under cover. Maybe we can—”

XZW blared out at us as I spun the dial. A dance program, the new five-beat stuff. Suddenly the announcer stuck his face into the transmitter.

“A bulletin from Iconoscope News Service,” he said conversationally. “FCC has clamped down on Associated Television and its stations. They are off the air. The reasons were not given, but it is surmised that it has to do with a little strong language used on the world premiere of Associated’s new color transmission. That is all.”

“I expected that,” smiled Berbelot. “Wonder how Griff’ll alibi himself out of that? If he tries to use that recording of his, I’ll most cheerfully turn mine over to the government, and we’ll have him for perjury.”

“Sorta tough on Associated, isn’t it?” I said.

“Not particularly. You know these big corporations. Associated gets millions out of their four networks, but those millions are just a drop in the bucket compared with the other pies they’ve got their fingers in. That color technique, for instance. Now that they can’t use it for a while, how many other outfits will miss the chance of bidding for the method and equipment? They lose some advertising contracts, and they save by not operating. They won’t even feel it. I’ll bet you’ll see color transmission within forty-eight hours over a rival network.”

He was right. Two days later Cineradio had a color broadcast scheduled, and all hell broke loose. What they’d done to the Berbelot hour and my “Seashell” was really tame.

The program was sponsored by one of the antigravity industries—I forget which. They’d hired Raouls Stavisk, the composer, to play one of the ancient Gallic operas he’d exhumed. It was a piece called “Carmen” and had been practically forgotten for two centuries. News of it had created quite a stir among music lovers, although, personally, I don’t go for it. It’s too barbaric for me. Too hard to listen to, when you’ve been hearing five-beat all your life. And those old-timers had never heard of a quarter tone.

Anyway, it was a big affair, televised right from the huge Citizens’ Auditorium. It was more than half full—there were about 130,000 people there. Practically all of the select highbrow music fans from that section of the city. Yes, 130,000 pairs of eyes saw that show in the flesh, and countless millions saw it on their own sets; remember that.

Those that saw it at the Auditorium got their money’s worth, from what I hear. They saw the complete opera; saw it go off as scheduled. The coloratura, Maria Jeff, was in perfect voice, and Stavisk’s orchestra rendered the ancient tones perfectly. So what?

So, those that saw it at home saw the first half of the program the same as broadcast—of course. But—and get this —they saw Maria Jeff, on a close-up, in the middle of an aria, throw back her head, stop singing, and shout raucously: “The hell with this! Whip it up, boys!”

They heard the orchestra break out of that old two-four music—“Habañera,” I think they called it—and slide into a wicked old-time five-beat song about “alco-pill Alice,” the girl who didn’t believe in eugenics. They saw her step lightly about the stage, shedding her costume—not that I blame her for that; it was supposed to be authentic, and must have been warm. But there was a certain something about the way she did it.

I’ve never seen or heard of anything like it. First, I thought that it was part of the opera, because from what I learned in school I gather that the ancient people used to go in for things like that. I wouldn’t know. But I knew it wasn’t opera when old Stavisk himself jumped up on the stage and started dancing with the prima donna. The televisors flashed around to the audience, and there they were, every one of them, dancing in the aisles. And I mean dancing. Wow!

Well, you can imagine the trouble that that caused. Cineradio, Inc., was flabbergasted when they were shut down by FCC like Associated. So were 130,000 people who had seen the opera and thought it was good. Every last one of them denied dancing in the aisles. No one had seen Stavisk jump on the stage. It just didn’t make sense.

Cineradio, of course, had a recording. So, it turned out, did FCC.
Each recording proved the point of its respective group. That of Cineradio, taken by a sound camera right there in the auditorium, showed a musical program. FCC’s, photographed right off a government standard receiver, showed the riot that I and millions of others had seen over the air. It was too much for me. I went out to see Berbelot. The old boy had a lot of sense, and he’d seen the beginning of this crazy business.

He looked pleased when I saw his face on his house televisor. “Hamilton!” he exclaimed. “Come on in! I’ve been phoning all over the five downtown boroughs for you!” He pressed a button and the foyer door behind me closed. I was whisked up into his rooms. That combination foyer and elevator of his is a nice gadget.

“I guess I don’t have to ask you why you came,” he said as we shook hands. “Cineradio certainly pulled a boner, hey?”

“Yes and no,” I said. “I’m beginning to think that Griff was right when he said that, as far as he knew, the program was on the up and up. But if he was right, what’s it all about? How can a program reach the transmitters in perfect shape, and come out of every receiver in the nation like a practical joker’s idea of paradise?”

“It can’t,” said Berbelot. He stroked his chin thoughtfully. “But it did. Three times.”

“Three— When—”

“Just now, before you got in. The secretary of state was making a speech over XZM, Consolidated Atomic, you know. XZM grabbed the color equipment from Cineradio as soon as they were blacked out by FCC. Well, the honorable secretary droned on as usual for just twelve and a half minutes. Suddenly he stopped, grinned into the transmitter, and said, ‘Say, have you heard the one about the traveling farmer and the salesman’s daughter?’ ”

“I have,” I said. “My gosh, don’t tell me he spieled it?”

“Right,” said Berbelot. “In detail, over the unsullied airwaves. I called up right away, but couldn’t get through. XZM’s trunk lines were jammed. A very worried-looking switchboard girl hooked up I don’t know how many lines together and announced into them: ‘If you people are calling up about the secretary’s speech, there is nothing wrong with it. Now please get off the lines!’ ”

“Well,” I said, “let’s see what we’ve got. First, the broadcasts leave the studios as scheduled and as written. Shall we accept that?”

“Yes,” said Berbelot. “Then, since so far no black-and-white broadcasts have been affected, we’ll consider that this strange behavior is limited to the polychrome technique.”

“How about the recordings at the studios? They were in polychrome, and they weren’t affected.”

Berbelot pressed a button, and an automatic serving table rolled out of its niche and stopped in front of each of us. We helped ourselves to smokes and drinks, and the table returned to its place.

“Cineradio’s wasn’t a television recording, Hamilton. It was a sound camera. As for Associated’s … I’ve got it! Griff’s recording was transmitted to his recording machines by wire, from the studios! It didn’t go out on the air at all!”

“You’re right. Then we can assume that the only programs affected are those in polychrome, actually aired. Fine, but where does that get us?”

“Nowhere,” admitted Berbelot. “But maybe we can find out. Come with me.”

We stepped into an elevator and dropped three floors. “I don’t know if you’ve heard that I’m a television bug,” said my host. “Here’s my lab. I flatter myself that a more complete one does not exist anywhere.”

I wouldn’t doubt it. I never in my life saw a layout like that. It was part museum and part workshop. It had in it a copy or a genuine relic of each and every phase of television down through the years, right from the old original scanning disk sets to the latest three-dimensional atomic jobs. Over in the corner was an extraordinarily complicated mass of apparatus which I recognized as a polychrome transmitter.

“Nice job, isn’t it?” said Berbelot. “It was developed in here, you know, by one of the lads who won the Berbelot scholarship.” I hadn’t known. I began to have real respect for this astonishing man.

“Just how does it work?” I asked him.

“Hamilton,” he said testily, “we have work to do. I would be talking all night if I told you. But the general idea is that the vibrations
sent out by this transmitter are all out of phase with each other. Tinting in the receiver is achieved by certain blendings of these out of phase vibrations as they leave this rig. The effect is a sort of irregular vibration—a vibration in the electromagnetic waves themselves, resulting in a totally new type of wave which is still receivable in a standard set.”

“I see,” I lied. “Well, what do you plan to do?”

“I’m going to broadcast from here to my country place up north. It’s eight hundred miles away from here, which ought to be sufficient. My signals will be received there and automatically returned to us by wire.” He indicated a receiver standing close by. “If there is any difference between what we send and what we get, we can possibly find out just what the trouble is.”

“How about FCC?” I asked. “Suppose—it sounds funny to say it—but just suppose that we get the kind of strong talk that came over the air during my ‘Seashell’ number?”

Berbelot snorted. “That’s taken care of. The broadcast will be directional. No receiver can get it but mine.”

What a man! He thought of everything. “O.K.,” I said. “Let’s go.”

Berbelot threw a couple of master switches and we sat down in front of the receiver. Lights blazed on, and through a bank of push buttons at his elbow, Berbelot maneuvered the transmitting cells to a point above and behind the receiver, so that we could see and be seen without turning our heads. At a nod from Berbelot I leaned forward and switched on the receiver.

Berbelot glanced at his watch. “If things work out right, it will be between ten and thirty minutes before we get any interference.” His voice sounded a little metallic. I realized that it was coming from the receiver as he spoke.

The images cleared on the view screen as the set warmed up. It gave me an odd sensation. I saw Berbelot and myself sitting side by side—just as if we were sitting in front of a mirror, except that the images were not reversed. I thumbed my nose at myself, and my image returned the compliment.

Berbelot said: “Go easy, boy. If we get the same kind of interference the others got, your image will make something out of that.”
He chuckled.

“Damn right,” said the receiver.

Berbelot and I stared at each other, and back at the screen. Berbelot’s face was the same, but mine had a vicious sneer on it. Berbelot calmly checked with his watch. “Eight forty-six,” he said. “Less time each broadcast. Pretty soon the interference will start with the broadcast, if this keeps up.”