Isaac Asimov - The Mammoth Book of Golden Age SF

Marss smoked one cigarette after another, Bernstein turned a gold pencil over in his nervous fingers. Johnson paced like a caged tiger, and burly Kessler stared at the machine, saying nothing at all. Johnson was muttering as he paced. Then he stopped and shook his fist under Mike’s nose.

“Man! Do you know what you’ve got there? Why waste time playing around here? Can’t you see you’ve got the world by the tail on a downhill pull? If I’d ever known this—”

Mike appealed to me. “Ed, talk to this wild man.”

I did. I can’t remember exactly what I said, and it isn’t important. But I did tell him how we’d started, how we’d plotted our course, and what we were going to do. I ended by telling him the idea behind the reel of film I’d run off a few minutes earlier.

He recoiled as though I were a snake. “You can’t get away with that! You’d be hung — if you weren’t lynched first!”

“Don’t you think we know that? Don’t you think we’re willing to take that chance?”

He tore his thinning hair. Marrs broke in. “Let me talk to him.” He came over and faced us squarely.

“Is this on the level? You going to make a picture like that and stick your neck out? You’re going to turn that… that thing over to the people of the world?”

I nodded. “Just that.”

“And toss over everything you’ve got?” He was dead serious, and so was I. He turned to the others. “He means it!”

Bernstein said, “Can’t be done!”

Words flew. I tried to convince them that we had followed the only possible path. “What kind of a world do you want to live in? Or don’t you want to live?”

Johnson grunted. “How long do you think we’d live if we ever made picture like that? You’re crazy! I’m not. I’m not going to put my head in a noose.”

“Why do you think we’ve been so insistent about credit and responsibility for direction and production? You’ll be doing only what we hired you for. Not that we want to twist your arm, but you’ve made a fortune, all of you, working for us. Now, when the going gets heavy, you want to back out!”

Marss gave in. “Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re wrong. Maybe you’re crazy, maybe I am. I always used to say I’d try anything once. Bernie, you?”

Bernstein was quietly cynical. “You saw what happened in the last war. This might help. I don’t know if it will. I don’t know — but I’d hate to think I didn’t try. Count me in!”

Kessler?

He swiveled his head. “Kid stuff! Who wants to live forever? Who wants to let a chance go by?”

Johnson threw up his hands. “Let’s hope we get a cell together. Let’s all go crazy.” And that was that.

We went to work in a blazing drive of mutual hope and understanding. In four months the lip-readers were through. There’s no point in detailing here their reactions to the dynamite they dictated to Sorenson every day. For their own good we kept them in the dark about our final purpose, and when they were through we sent them across the border into Mexico, to a small ranch Johnson had leased. We were going to need them later.

The print duplicators worked overtime, but Marrs worked harder. Press and radio shouted the announcement that, in every city of the world we could reach, there would be held simultaneously the premieres of our latest picture. It would be the last we needed to make. Many wondered aloud at our choice of the word “needed.” We whetted their curiosity by refusing to release any advance information about the plot, and Johnson so well infused the men with their own now-fervent enthusiasm that not much could be pried out of them but conjecture. The day we picked for release was Sunday. Monday, the storm broke.

I wonder how many prints of that picture are left today. I wonder how many escaped burning or confiscation. Two world wars we covered, covered from the unflattering angles that, up until then, had been represented by only a few books hidden in the dark recesses of libraries. We showed, and named , the war-makers, the cynical leaders who signed and laughed and lied, the blatant patriots who used the flaring headlines and the ugly atrocities to hide behind their flag while life turned to death for millions. Our own and foreign traitors were there, the hidden ones with Janus faces. Our lip-readers had done their work well; no guesses these, no deduced conjectures from the broken records of a blasted past, but the exact words that exposed treachery disguised as patriotism.

In foreign lands the performances lasted barely one day. Usually, in retaliation for the imposed censorship, the theaters were wrecked by rampaging crowds. (Marrs, incidentally, had spent hundreds of thousands bribing officials to allow the picture to be shown without previous censorship. Many censors, when that came out, were shot without trial.) In the Balkans, revolutions broke out, and various embassies were stormed by mobs. Where the film was banned or destroyed, written versions spontaneously appeared on the streets or in coffeehouses. Bootlegged editions were smuggled past customs guards, who looked the other way. One royal family fled to Switzerland.

Here in America it was a racing two weeks before the federal government, prodded into action by the raging of press and radio, in an unprecedented move closed all performances, “to promote the common welfare, insure domestic tranquility, and preserve foreign relations.” Murmurs — and one riot — rumbled in the Midwest and spread until it was realized by the powers that be that something had to be done, quickly, if every government in the world were not to collapse of its own weight.

We were in Mexico, at the ranch Johnson had rented for the lip-readers. While Johnson paced the floor, jerkily fraying a cigar, we listened to a special broadcast by the U.S. attorney general himself:

… furthermore, this message was today forwarded to the Government of the United States of Mexico. I read: “ The Government of the United States of America requests the immediate arrest and extradition of the following :

“ Edward Joseph Lefkowicz, known as Lefko .” (First on the list. Even a fish wouldn’t get into trouble if he kept his mouth shut.)

“ Miguel Jose Zapata Laviada .” (Mike crossed one leg over the other.)

“ Edward Lee Johnson .” (He threw his cigar on the floor and sank into the chair.)

“ Robert Chester Marrs .” (He lit another cigarette. His face twitched.)

“ Benjamin Lionel Bernstein .” (He smiled a twisted smile and close his eyes.)

“ Carl Wilhelm Kessler .” (A snarl.)

These men are wanted by the Government of the United States of America, to stand trial on charges ranging from criminal syndicalism, incitement to riot, misprision of treason—

I clicked off the radio. “Well?” to no one in particular.

Bernstein opened his eyes. “The rurales are probably on their way. Might as well go back and face the music—” We crossed the border at Juarez. The FBI was waiting.

Every press and radio chain in the world must have had coverage at that trial, every radio system, even the new and imperfect television chain. We were allowed to see no one but our lawyer. Samuels flew from the West Coast and spent a week trying to get past our guards. He told us not to talk to reporters, if we ever saw them.

“You haven’t seen the newspapers? Just as well— How did you ever get yourselves into this mess, anyway? You ought to know better.”

I told him.

He was stunned. “Are you all crazy?”

He was hard to convince. Only a united, concerted effort by all of us made him believe that such a machine was in existence. (He talked to us separately, because we were kept isolated.) When he got back to me, he was unable top think coherently.