Expanded Universe Part 15

"A person who won't be blackmailed, can't be blackmailed."

-L. Long

PIE FROM THE SKY.

Since we have every reason to expect a sudden rain of death from the sky sometime in the next few years, as a result of a happy combination of the science of atomics and the art of rocketry, it behooves the Pollyanna Philosopher to add up the advantages to be derived from the blasting of your apartment, row house, or suburban cottage.

It ain't all bad, chum. While you are squatting in front of your cave, trying to roast a rabbit with one hand while scratching your lice-infested hide with the other, there will be many cheerful things to think about, the a.s.sets of destruction, rather than tortu1ring your mind with thoughts of the good old, easy days of taxis and tabloids and Charlie's Bar Grill.

There are so many, many things in this so-termed civilization of ours which would be mightily improved by a once over lightly of the Hiros.h.i.+ma treatment. There is that dame upstairs, for instance, the one with the square bowling ball. Never again would she take it out for practice right over your bed at three in the morning. Isn't that some consolation?

No more soap operas. No more six minutes of good old Mom facing things bravely, interspersed with eight minutes of insistent, syrupy plugging for commercial junk you don't want and would be better off without. Never again will you have to wait breathlessly for "same time, same station" to find out what beautiful Mamie Jukes, that priceless moron, does about her nameless babe. She will be gone, along with the literary prost.i.tute who brought her into being.

No more alarm clocks. No more alarm clocks! No more of the frenzied keeping of schedules, appointments, and deadlines that they imply. You won't have to gulp your coffee to run for the 8:19 commuters' special, nor keep your eye on the clock while you lunch. A few of the handy little plutonium pills dropped from the sky will end the senseless process of running for the bus to go to work to make the money to buy the food to get the strength to run for the bus. You will swap the pressure of minutes for the slow tide of eternity.

But best of all, you will be freed of the plague of the alarm that yanks you from the precious nirvana of sleep and sets you on your weary feet, with every nerve screaming protest. If you are snapped suddenly out of sleep in the Atomic Stone Age, it will be a mountain lion, a wolf, a man, or some other carnivore, not a mechanical monstrosity.

Westbrook Pegler will no longer exhibit to you his latest hate, nor will Lolly Parsons stuff you with her current girlish enthusiasm. (If your pet dislikes among the columnists are not these two, fill in names to suit yourself; none of them will bother you after the fission treatment.) In fact, all the impact of world-wide troubles will fade away. Divorces, murders, and troubles in China will no longer smite from headline and radio. Your only worries will be your own worries.

No more John L. Lewis.

No more jurisdictional strikes.

No more "Hate-Roosevelt" clubs.

No more "Let's-Hate-Eleanor,-Too" clubs.

No more Petrillo.

No more d.a.m.n fools who honk right behind your car while the lights are changing. I'll buy this one at a black market price right now.

No more Gerald L. K. Smith... . ai~d, conversely, no more people who think that the persecution of their particular minority is the only evil in the entire world worth talking about, or working to correct.

No more phony "days." You won't have to buy a red carnation to show that Mom is alive nor a white one to show that she's not. (It's even money that you will have lost track of her in the debacle and not know whether she is alive or dead.) No more "Boy's Day" in our city governments with pre-adolescent little stinkers handing out fines and puritanical speeches to tired street walkers while the elected judge smiles blandly for the photographers. No more "Eat More Citrus Fruit" or "Eat More Chocolate Candy"

or "Read More Comic Books" weeks thought up by the advertising agents of industries.

While we are on the subject of phony buildups, let's give a cheer for the elimination of debutantes with press agents, for the blotting out of "cafe" society, for the consignment to oblivion of the whole notion of the "coming-out" party. The resumption of the comingout party in the United States, with its attendant, incredibly callous, waste, at the very time that Europe starves, is a scandal to the jay birds. A few atom bombs would be no more than healthy fumigation of this imbecilic evil.

No more toothsome mammals built up by synthetic publicity into movie "stars" before they have played a part in a picture. This is probably a relatively harmless piece of idiocy in our whipped-cream culture, but the end of it, via A-bombs, may stop Sarah Bernhardt from spinning in her grave.

No more over-fed, under-worked, rapacious female tyrants. I won't say "mothers-in-law"; your motherin-law may be a pretty good Joe. If not, you may have a chance to cut her up for steak.

There is actually nothing to prevent American women from being able, adult, useful citizens, and many of them are. But our society is so rigged that a worthless female can make a racket of it-but not after a brisk one-two with uranium! The parasites will starve when that day comes, from the cheerful idiots of the Helen Hokinson cartoons to the female dinosaurs who use sacrosanct s.e.x as a club to bullyrag, blackmail, and dominate every man they can reach.

The parasite males will die out, too. Yes, pal, if you can manage to zig while the atomic rockets zag you will find society much changed and in many respects improved.

There are a lot of other minor advantages you should get firmly in mind now, lest you fall prey to a fatal nostalgia after this great, fantastic, incredible, somewhat glorious and very fragile technological culture crashes about your ears. Subway smell, for example. The guy who coughs on the back of your neck in the theater. Men who bawl out waitresses. The woman who crowds in ahead of you at the counter. The person who asks how much you paid for it. The preacher with the unctuous voice and the cash register heart. The millionairess who wills her money to found a home for orphan guppies. The lunkhead who dials a wrong number (your number) in the middle of the night and then is sore at you for not being the party he wanted. The sportsman who turns his radio up loud so that he can boo the Dodgers while out in his garden. The Dodgers. People who don't curb their dogs. People who spit on sidewalks. People who censor plays and suppress books. Breach-of-promise suits. People who stare at wounded veterans.

A blinding flash, a pillar of radioactive dust, and all this will be gone.

I don't mean to suggest that it will all be fun. Keeping alive after our cities have been smashed and our government disintegrated will be a grim business at best, as the survivors in central Europe could tell you. In spite of the endless list that could be made of the things we are better off without I d~ not think it will be very much fun to scrabble around in the woods for a bite to eat. For that reason I am thinking of liquidating, in advance, the next character who says to me, "Well, what difference does it make if we are atombombed-you gotta die sometime!"

I shall shoot him dead, blow through the barrel, and say, "You asked for it, chum."

Conceding that we will all die some day, is that a reason why I should let this grinning ape drag me along toward disaster just because he will take no thought of tomorrow?

Since there are so many of him the chances of us, as a nation, being able to avert disaster are not good. Perhaps some of us could form an a.s.sociation to live through World War III. Call it the League for the Preservation of the Human Race, or the Doom's Day Men, or something like that. Restrict the members.h.i.+p to survivor types, sound in tooth and wind, trained in useful trades or science, reasonably high I.Q.'s and proved fertility. Then set up two or three colonies remote from cities and other military targets.

It might work.

Maybe I will start it myself if I can find an angel to put up the dough for the original promotion. That should get me in as anex-officio member, I hope. I have looked over my own qualifications and I don't seem to measure up to the standards.

My ancestors got into America by a similar dodge. They got here early, when the immigration restrictions were pretty lax. Maybe I can repeat.

I am sure I shall not resign myself to death simply because Joe Chucklehead points out that atomization is quick and easy. Even if that were good I would not like it. Furthermore, it is not true.

Death comes fast at the center of the blast; around the edges is a big area of the fatal burn and the slow death, with plenty of time to reconsider the disadvantages of chucklehead- ness in the Atomic Age, before your flesh sloughs off and you give up the ghost. No, thank you, I plan to disperse myself to the country.

Of course, if you are so soft that you like innerspring mattresses and clean water and regular meals, despite the numerous advantages of blowing us off the map, but are not too soft to try to do something to avoid the coming debacle, there is something you can do about it, other than forming Survival Leagues or cultivating an att.i.tude of philosophical resignation.

If you really want to hang on to the advantages of our slightly wacky pseudo-civilization, there is just one way to do it, according to the scientists who know the most about the new techniques of war-and that is to form a sovereign world authority to prevent the Atomic War.

Run, do not walk, to the nearest Western Union, and telegraph your congressman to get off the dime and get on with the difficult business of forming an honestto-goodness world union, with no jokers about Big Five vetoes or national armaments.. . to get on with it promptly, while there is still time, before Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., is reduced to radioactive dust-and he with it, poor devil!

FOREWORD.

While I was failing at World-Saving, I was beginning to achieve my second objective: to spread out, not limit myself to pulp science fiction. THEY DO IT WITH MIRRORS was my first attempt in the crime-mystery field, and from it I learned three things: a) whodunn its are fairly easy to write and easy to sell; b) I was no threat to Raymond Chandler or Rex Stout as the genre didn't interest me that much; and c) Crime Does Not Pay- Enough (the motto of the Mystery Writers of America).

It may amuse you to know that this story was considered to be (in 1945) too risque; the magazine editor laundered it before publication. You are seeing the original "dirty" version; try to find in it anything at all that could bring a blush to the cheek of your maiden aunt.

In late 1945 this magic mirror existed in a bar at (as I recall) the corner of Hollywood and Gower Gulch; the rest is fiction.

"Anything you get free costs more than

worth-but you don't find it out until later."

-Bernardo de la Paz -.

THEY DO IT WITH MIRRORS.

An Edison Hill Crime Case

I was there to see beautiful naked women. So was everybody else. It's a common failing.

I climbed on a stool at the end of the bar in Jack Joy's Joint and spoke to Jack himself, who was busy setting up two old-fas.h.i.+oneds. "Make it three," I said. "No, make it four and have one with me.

What's the pitch, Jack? I hear you set up a peep show for the suckers."

"Hi, Ed. Nope, it's not a peep show-it's Art."

"What's the difference?"

"If they hold still, it's Art. If they wiggle around, it's illegal. That's the ruling. Here." He handed me a program.

It read:

THE JOY CLUB.

PRESENTS.

The Magic Mirror

Beautiful Models in a series of Entertaining and Artistic Pageants 10 p.m."Aphrodite" Estelle 11 p.m. "Sacrifice to the Sun" Estelle and Hazel 12 p.m. "The High Priestess" Hazel 1 a.m. "The Altar Victim" Estelle 2 a.m. "Invocation to Pan" Estelle and Hazel

(Guests are requested to refrain stomping, whistling, or otherwise disturbing the artistic serenity of the presentations) The last was a giggle. Jack's place was strictly a joint. But on the other side of the program I saw a new schedule of prices which informed me that the drink in my hand was going to cost me just twice what I had figured. And the place was jammed. By suckers-including me.

I was about to speak to Jack, in a kindly way, promising to keep my eyes closed during the show and then pay the old price for my drink, when I heard two sharp beeps!-a high tension buzzer sound, like radio code- from a spot back of the bar. Jack turned away from me, explaining, "That's the eleven o'clock show." He busied himself underneath the bar.

Being at the end of the bar I could see under the long side somewhat. He had enough electrical gear there to make a happy Christmas for a Boy Scout-switches, a rheostat dingus, a turntable for recordings, and a hand microphone. I leaned over and sized it up. I have a weakness for gadgets, from my old man.

He named me Thomas Alva Edison Hill in hopes that I would emulate his idol. I disappointed him-I didn't invent the atom bomb, but I do sometimes try to repair my own typewriter.

Jack flipped a switch and picked up the hand mike. His voice came out of the juke box: "We now present the Magic Mirror." Then the turntable picked up with Hymn to the Sun from Coq d'Or, and he started turning the rheostat slowly.

The lights went down in the joint and came up slowly in the Magic Mirror. The "Mirror" was actually a sheet of gla.s.s about ten feet wide and eight high which shut off a little balcony stage. When the house lights were on bright and the stage was dark, you could not see through the gla.s.s at all; it looked like a mirror. As the house lights went out and the stage lights came on, you could see through the gla.s.s and a picture slowly built up in the "Mirror."

Jack had a single bright light under the bar which lighted him and the controls and which did not go out with the house lights. Because of my position at th end of the bar it hit me square in the eye. I had to bloci it with my hand to see the stage.

It was something to see.

Two girls, a blonde and a brunette. A sort of altar oi table, with the blonde sprawled across it, volup'.

Th brunette standing at the end of the altar, grabbing th blonde by the hair with one hand while holding 2 fancy dagger upraised with the other. There was 2 backdrop in gold and dark blue-a sunburst in 2 phony Aztec or Egyptian design, but n.o.body was look ing at it; they were looking at the girls.

The brunette was wearing a high show-girl heac dress, silver sandals, and a G-string in gla.s.s jewels Nothing more. No sign of a bra.s.siere. The blonde wa~ naked as an oyster, with her downstage knee drawn uj just enough to get past sufficiently broad-minded cen sors.

But I was not looking at the naked blonde; I wa~ looking at the brunette.

It was not just the two fine upstanding b.r.e.a.s.t.s flO] the long graceful legs nor the shape of her hips an thighs; it was the overall effect. She was so beautiful i hurt. I heard somebody say, "Great jumping jeepers!' and was about to shush him when I realized it was me Then the lights went down and I remembered t breathe.

I paid the clip price for my drink without a quivel and Jack a.s.sured me: "They are hostesses betweer shows." When they showed up at the stairway leadin~ down from the balcony he signalled them to come ove~ and then introduced me.

"Hazel Dorn, Estelle d'Arcy-meet Eddie Hill."

Hazel, the brunette, said, "How do you do?" but th blonde said, "Oh, I've met the Ghost before. How's business Rattled any chains lately?"

I said, "Good enough," and let it pa.s.s. I knew her al right-but as Audrey Johnson, not as Estelle d'Arcy. She had been a steno at the City Hal1~when I was doing an autobiography of the Chief of Police. I had not liked her much; she had an instinct for finding a sore point and picking at it.

I am not ashamed of being a ghost writer, nor is it a secret. You will find my name on the t.i.tle page of Forty Years a Cop as well as the name of the Chief-in small print but it is there: "with Edison Hill."

"How did you like the show?" Hazel asked, when I had ordered a round.

"I likedyou," I said, softly enough to keep it private. "I can't wait for the next show to see more of you."

"You'll see more," she admitted and changed the subject. I gathered an impression that she was proud of her figure and liked to be told she was beautiful but was not entirely calloused about exhibiting it in public.

Estelle leaned across the bar to Jack. "Jackie Boy," she said in sweetly reasonable tones, "you held the lights too long again. It doesn't matter to me in that pose, but you had poor old Hazel trembling like a leaf before you doused the glim."

Jack set a three-minute egg timer, like a little hourgla.s.s on the bar. "Three minutes it says-three minutes you did."