Terrors (42 page)

Golda turned her head to the side. “Tell him, Martin.”

Martin van Buren MacTavish had been concentrating on his word-processor. In addition to storing, revising, and outputting the text that
was fed into it, the word-processor would function as a video game,
a holotape playback unit, a music-synthesizer capable of piping out any composition in the known history of melody (or of composing new selections to MacTavish’s specifications), or an emergency cook-stove.

“Huh?” Martin said.

“I want you to tell Tarkie about the project,” Golda prompted.

“Oh.” MacTavish fiddled with the word-processor a little more, then clicked it off and slipped it into
his sporran. “We had the girls in market research get us up a few figures,
jefe
, and they say that a really hot horror holoflik could sell on no fewer than twenty-kay worlds. Maybe as many as thirty-kay. We –”

Armbruster cut him off. “What about it, Swiggert?” He pulled at his cigar, tossed back a swig of rum. “You seen their figures?”

Swiggert nodded. “They look pretty convincing.” The red
parallelograms on his outfit faded to dull ochre and the black ones glowed. The bright glow of black diamonds produced an eerie effect all its own.

“Huh,” grunted Tarquin Armbruster IV. “And what do you have in mind? You going to bring back one of those lurching monsters from the old days?”

MacTavish slipped one hand inside his sporran and fumbled his word-processor back to life. The machine
had a Braille output plate, and although MacTavish was not blind, he had taught himself to read Braille with one sensitive thumb.

“I want to do a story called
The Dunwich Horror
,” he said.

Even though the matter-duplicator had been invented in
Dinganzicht
, in the electrotechnology division of Macrotech Association Ell Tee Dee, there were no matter-duplicators allowed in
Dinganzicht
. There had
been a bunch of them at first, and they had of course been hugely successful. But they’d made so much trouble that they had been banned.

Here’s one small example.

Lurleen Luria was a religious fanatic, possibly the only one ever in
Dinganzicht
. She had invented a religion based on the motion that one should eat only pimentos and think only of the number eight. She had a tough time winning converts
to her way of thinking. Yet, she was convinced that if everybody would just adopt her faith, her diet, and her pattern of thought, there would be universal brother- (and/or sister-)
hood, happiness, and tranquillity in the world.

Well, Lurleen thought to herself, if I’m the only one who understands that my religion is the one key to salvation, there would be universal salvation if everybody were
just like me.

She took to inviting people over to her place and walking them through a matter-duplicator input bin disguised as a hallway. She’d already set her matter-duplicator, using herself as the model specs, so the organs, cells even molecules of her guests were broken down into separate atoms and reassembled into new Lurleen Lurias. Who did, naturally, agree with the original Lurleen’s
dietary, intellectual, and religious notions.

They finally tracked down Lurleen and put her out of business (but not before a dozen security troopers got turned into new Lurleen Lurias). They never did get all the new Lurleens turned back into their original selves, though. What a mess!

When they tried to round up and dismantle all the matter-duplicators in
Dinganzicht
, the argument was made
that the sane, innocent, and responsible users of the machines were being punished along with the (relatively few) crazy, guilty, or irresponsible ones like Lurleen Luria. But nobody could figure out a way to keep matter-duplicators only in the “right” hands.

One of the problems of getting rid of the things was this. If somebody owned one, and a friend of his or hers also owned one, they could
dismantle the second duper, run it through the first, and reassemble the sections. Then they’d have not two of the gadgets, but three. And shortly, if they chose, four, five, or any number.

Well, they got ’em rounded up finally, but it was a tough job. In a bigger place than
Dinganzicht
, or a less organized one, it would have proved impossible.

That was a while ago, however. The current problem
at Macrotech Associates grew out of the current hot research project in the electrotechnology division, the same outfit that had ginned up the matter-duplicator.

The current hot research project was the instant communicator.

This was an attempt to tackle a problem that had first appeared with the development of space travel. Back in the days when everybody had lived on one planet, radio-spectrum
communication was plenty fast enough. At one time, in fact, folks had thought that light waves, radio waves and the like worked instantaneously. In time they
found that that they did take time to propagate, but cripes, they could circle the planet in an eighth of a second, so who cared?

But when you got up to interplanetary distances, you were talking about minutes, then hours, to send, “Hi,
Mom, we’re Number One,” and get back, “That’s a good boy, don’t forget to eat your supper.”

And once you got up to the interstellar scale, it could take
centuries
.

So Macrotech Associates, electrotechnology division, had an important project to work on. The brains that were working on the project were those of a bright young fellow named Alexander Ulianov and a brilliant young woman named Amy
2-3-4 Al-Khnemu.

Alex and Amy were making good progress, too. But the top brass at Macrotech Associates (as well as the general management of
Dinganzicht
) were keeping damned close watch over the project. They remembered matter-duplicators—did they ever!—and the whole Lurleen Luria fiasco.

In fact, there was a little colony of identical Lurleen Lurias still living. They had been sequestered.
Nobody knew which was the original (guilty) Lurleen and which her innocent victims. They were kept comfortable in a little compound where they were growing old together, happily living on pimentos and thinking of the number eight, while scientists from the psychotechnology division of Macrotech Associates happily studied them.

No, nobody wanted another matter-duplicator fiasco, and there was
a good deal of nervousness about the implications of Alexander Ulianov and Amy 2-3-4 Al-Khnemu’s work.

Tarquin Armbruster IV was more inclined to do a swashbuckler about pirates on the Spanish Main, or maybe even a Biblical epic, than a horror movie. Then again, he had a fondness for Westerns, too. But Golda Abromowitz and Martin van Buren MacTavish had the support of Gort Swiggert, and what
the comptroller had to say carried a lot of weight with Tark.

He told ’em to go ahead.

MacTavish had an easy time turning
The Dunwich Horror
into a screenplay. It was one of the best stories of an old New England author who had more often relied on atmosphere than events to make his stories work, but this one was unusual for him. It was graphic, full of plot and events, and it had a couple of
scenes in it that were real sockdollagers.

There was a big shambling guy in it named Wilbur Whateley. Wilbur went around in a baggy overcoat, summer and winter, like a flasher. About two-thirds of the way through the story Wilbur’s overcoat gets opened and the audience sees what’s inside, and is it ever something! Wow!

Wilbur has a brother, too, who isn’t seen until the grand climax of the yarn,
and if you think Wilbur was something to make strong men retch, wait ’til you see his twin!

In fact, that was the biggest problem that Golda Abromowitz had with
The Dunwich Horror
.

Marty MacTavish and his wonderful word-processor turned out a good script in record time. Casting went well, too. Golda was able to get Nefertiti Logan, current holder of the “this season’s blonde” title, to play
the exotic albino Lavinia Whately. For contrast, she hired the raven-tressed, flashing-eyed Gaza de Lure II to portray Sally Sawyer.

The male lead, the role of Professor Henry Armitage, she gave to a piece of beefcake called Rock Quartz. Rock used to stand in front of mirrors most of the time when he wasn’t actually on camera, and when he
was
on camera, he treated the lens like a mirror, too.
The effect on audiences was devastating.

Curtis Whateley—he of the undecayed branch of the Whateleys—was played by Roscoe Inelegante. Roscoe Inelegante wasn’t exactly the actor’s real name, but nobody quite knew what his real name was, and word had passed in Hollywood-between-the-Stars that it wasn’t wise to try and find out.

But who would play the Whateley boys, Wilbur and his fraternal twin?

There didn’t seem to be anyone in Hollywood quite capable of handling the roles.

A might get an actor to portray Wilbur-with-his-overcoat-on. Somebody like Karlos Karch who had previously parlayed a set of grotesque features and a growling, animalistic manner into a substantial career as a holocinematic maniac, brute, and general heavy.

But even Karch (who was, off-camera, a sweet-natured and
gentle man, faithful husband and doting father) couldn’t handle Wilbur-with-coat-off.

Martin van Buren MacTavish had turned up the original text describing Wilbur, and it was a doozie! Tentacles, mouths, fur, rudimentary eyes set in pinkish, ciliated orbits, a trunk with purple annular markings, ridgy-veined pads….

The beautiful Golda Abromowitz nearly lost her lunch when Marty showed her the
text.

They tried outfitting Karlos Karch with a cyborged rubber suit. It worked fairly well, and was totally disgusting to the eye.

The strangest thing, though, was this. Nefertiti Logan, Gaza de Lure II, and even Golda Abromowitz herself, found Karlos Karch a total turn-on when he wore his Wilbur Whateley suit. They either couldn’t or wouldn’t tell any of the men associated with the project
the reason.

Even Karlos wasn’t sure, but he and Martin van Buren MacTavish spent a long session with a bottle of Puerto Rican from Tarquin Armbruster’s private stock, and devised a theory. Nefertiti, Gaza, and Golda were all fantasizing, they decided, as to what it might be like to have an experience with all of those weird squirming tentacles and mouths and eyes and hair and ridgy-veined pads.

Karlos and Marty asked Gaza on the set the next day, but she just smiled dreamily and said, “Karlos, why don’t you put on your rubber suit and we’ll try your theory out.”

But Karlos didn’t go for that, so nobody ever really knew.

Anyway, things were going kind of poorly on the set by now. The Wilbur Whateley suit was less than satisfactory, and as for the role of Wilbur’s brother, that was a
complete conundrum. Marty MacTavish had turned up the original specs for Wilbur’s brother, given in the words of a character in the original story. The story, by the way, was long out of copyright, which was one of the brighter points in the day of both Tarquin Armbruster and Gort Swiggert in his harlequin suit.

Wilbur’s brother was, “Bigger’n a barn … all made o’ squirmin’ ropes … great bulgin’
eyes all over it … ten or twenty mouths or trunks a-stickin’ aout all along the sides, all a-tossin’ and openin’ an’ shuttin’ … all gray, with kinder blue or purple rings …
an’ Gawd in Heaven—thet haff face on top!
”

Well, they tried computer animation and they got some very interesting effects but they didn’t get Wilbur’s brother.

And they tried miniature models but they didn’t work.

And they
tried a full-scale mock-up but it looked more like Happy the Humbug than it did a monstrous cross-breed between human and giant alien.

Now it happened that just about at the point when
The Dunwich Horror
was in danger of winding up totally on the scrap-heap—and Tarquin Armbruster IV, Golda Abromowitz, and Colossal Galactic
Productions along with it—
Starrett
was approaching the triple star Fornax
1382.

Tarquin Armbruster IV and Golda Abromowitz decided that their last hope was to get some help from the superscientific whizzes in
Dinganzicht
. After all, any world that can produce the rollaway cat impellor should be able to provide a big boost to Colossal Galactic Productions.

Tarquin and Golda climbed aboard the ultralight shuttle
Clare Winger Harris
. They could have left
Starrett
from
a port near Hollywood, but they were in a hurry and it was quicker to zip across the hollow middle of
Starrett
and exit on the antipodal side. Quite near the island of Kaspak, as a matter of fact.

To reach Kaspak Portal, the
Harris
passed smack through the null-g point in the geometric center of
Starrett
.

The null-g point and the ultra-low-g zone surrounding it were the homes of a number of
fascinating species of life, both animal and vegetable. There was null-g lichen, for instance. There were floating blobs of water that hosted perfectly globular fishes of various colors. There were several species of footless birds that spent their entire lives in the air, never coming to earth (as it were), not even to lay their eggs or build nests (which they did in the null-g lichen).

One
interesting aspect of this null-g lichen was the complex, freeform network of neural-like filament that spread throughout the stuff. It had been theorized that consciousness and intelligence, rather than being discrete attributes of any particular species, were actually inescapable concomitants of
any
signaling network of sufficient size and complexity.

And the null-g lichen that floated in the
center of
Starrett
was big enough, and the network of signal-conducting, neural-like fibers it contained was complex enough, to come in well over the critical line.

It might not be altogether inaccurate to characterize
Starrett’s
null-g lichen as …
smart moss
!

And here was the ultralight shuttle
Clare Winger Harris
flittering upward Hollywood containing one fat, bald, sweaty-browed, cigar-chomping,
rum-swigging studio head named Tarquin Armbruster IV, and one seven-foot-tall, elegant, metallic-green, imitation-polar-bear-fur-covered production chief called Golda Abromowitz.