Clifford D. Simak - Empire (Sci-Fi Classic)

"Behold!" shrieked the evangelist. "Behold, a miracle! Angels singing for us! Kneel! Kneel and pray!"

Nobody stood.

Andy McIntyre was drunk again. In the piteous glare of mid-morning, he staggered homeward from the poker party in the back of Steve Abram's harness shop. The light revealed him to the scorn of the entire village.

At the corner of Elm and Third he ran into a maple tree. Uncertainly he backed away, intent on making another try. Suddenly the tree spoke to him:

"Alcohol is the scourge of mankind. It turns men into beasts. It robs them of their brains, it shortens their lives ..."

Andy stared, unable to believe what he heard. The tree, he had no doubt, was talking to him personally.

The voice of the tree went on: "... takes the bread out of the mouths of women and children. Fosters crime. Weakens the moral fiber of the nation."

"Stop!" screamed Andy. "Stop, I tell you!"

The tree stopped talking. All he could hear was the whisper of wind among its autumn-tinted leaves.

Suddenly running, Andy darted around the corner, headed home.

"Begad," he told himself, "when trees start talkin' to you it's time to lay off the bottle!"

In another town fifty miles distant from the one in which the tree had talked to Andy McIntyre, another miracle happened that same Sunday morning.

Dozens of people heard the bronze statue of the soldier in the courtyard speak. The statue did not come to life. It stood as ever, a solid piece of golden bronze, in spots turned black and green by weather. But from its lips came words ... words that burned themselves into the souls of those who heard. Words that exhorted them to defend the principles for which many men had died, to grasp and hold high the torch of democracy and liberty.

In somber bitterness, the statue called Spencer Chambers the greatest threat to that liberty and freedom. For, the statue said, Spencer Chambers and Interplanetary Power were waging an economic war, a bloodless one, but just as truly war as if there were cannons firing and bombs exploding.

For a full five minutes the statue spoke and the crowd, growing by the minute, stood dumbfounded.

Then silence fell over the courtyard. The statue stood as before, unmoving, its timeless eyes staring out from under the ugly helmet, its hands gripping the bayoneted rifle. A blue and white pigeon fluttered softly down, alighted on the bayonet, looked the crowd over and then flew to the courthouse tower.

Back in the laboratory, Russ looked at Greg.

"That radio trick gives me an idea," he said. "If we can put a radio in statues and trees without interfering with its operation, why can't we do the same thing with a television set?"

Greg started. "Think of the possibilities of that!" he burst out.

Within an hour a complete television sending apparatus was placed within the field and a receptor screen set up in the laboratory.

The two moved chairs in front of the screen and sat down. Russ reached out and pulled the switch of the field control. The screen came to life, but it was only a gray blur.

"It's traveling too fast," said Greg. "Slow it down."

Russ retarded the lever. "When that thing's on full, it's almost instantaneous. It travels in a time dimension and any speed slower than instantaneity is a modification of that force field."

On the screen swam a panorama of the mountains, mile after mile of snow-capped peaks and valleys ablaze with the flames of autumn foliage. The mountains faded away. There was desert now and then a city. Russ dropped the televisor set lower, down into a street. For half an hour they sat comfortably in their chairs and watched men and women walking, witnessed one dog fight, cruised slowly up and down, looking into windows of homes, window-shopping in the business section.

"There's just one thing wrong," said Greg. "We can see everything, but we can't hear a sound."

"We can fix that," Russ told him.

He lifted the televisor set from the streets, brought it back across the desert and mountains into the laboratory.

"We have two practical applications now," said Greg. "Space drive and television spying. I don't know which is the best. Do you realize that with this television trick there isn't a thing that can be hidden from us?"

"I believe we can go to Mars or Mercury or anywhere we want to with this thing. It doesn't seem to have any particular limits. It handles perfectly. You can move it a fraction of an inch as easily as a hundred miles. And it's fast. Almost instantaneous. Not quite, for even with our acceleration within time, there is a slight lag."

By evening they had an audio apparatus incorporated in the set, had wired the screen for sound.

"Let's put this to practical use," suggested Greg. "There's a show at the New Mercury Theater in New York I've been wanting to see. Let's knock off work and take in that show."

"Now," said Russ, "you really have an idea. The ticket scalpers are charging a fortune, and it won't cost us a cent to get in!"

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