The Creator's hands glided down out of arc-light sun. They placed the granuled monster in false green summer wilds, they waded it in broths of teeming bacterial life. Planted in serene terror, the lizard machine basked. From the blind heavens the Creator's voice hummed, vibrating the Garden with the old and monotonous tune about the footbone connected to the… anklebone, anklebone connected to the… legbone, legbone connected to the… kneebone, kneebone connected to the…
A door burst wide.
Joe Clarence ran in very much like an entire Cub Scout pack. He looked wildly around as if no one were there.
«My God!» he cried. «Aren't you set up yet? This costs me money!»
«No,» said Terwilliger dryly. «No matter how much time I take, I get paid the same.»
Joe Clarence approached in a series of quick starts and stops. «Well, shake a leg. And make it real horrible.»
Terwilliger was on his knees beside the miniature jungle set. His eyes were on a straight level with his producer's as he said, «How many feet of blood and gore would you like?»
«Two thousand feet of each!» Clarence laughed in a kind of gasping stutter. «Let's look.» He grabbed the lizard.
«Careful!»
«Careful?» Clarence turned the ugly beast in careless and nonloving hands. «It's my monster, ain't it? The contract?»
«The contract says you use this model for exploitation advertising, but the animal reverts to me after the film's in release.»
«Holy cow.» Clarence waved the monster. «That's wrong. We just signed the contracts four days ago ?»
«It feels like four years.» Terwilliger rubbed his eyes. «I've been up two nights without sleep finishing this beast so we can start shooting.»
Clarence brushed this aside. «To hell with the contract. What a slimy trick. It's my monster. You and your agent give me heart attacks. Heart attacks about money, heart attacks about equipment, heart attacks about ?»
«This camera you gave me is ancient.»
«So if it breaks, fix it; you got hands? The challenge of the shoestring operation is using the old brain instead of cash. Getting back to the point, this monster, it should've been specified in the deal, is my baby.»
«I never let anyone own the things I make,» said Terwilliger honestly. «I put too much time and affection in them.»
«Hell, okay, so we give you fifty bucks extra for the beast, and throw in all this camera equipment free when the film's done, right? Then you start your own company. Compete with me, get even with me, right, using my own machines!» Clarence laughed.
«If they don't fall apart first,» observed Terwilliger.
«Another thing.» Clarence put the creature on the floor and walked around it. «I don't like the way this monster shapes up.»
«You don't like what?» Terwilliger almost yelled.
«His expression. Needs more fire, more… goombah. More mazash!»
«Mazash?»
«The old bimbo! Bug the eyes more. Flex the nostrils. Shine the teeth. Fork the tongue sharper. You can do it! Uh, the monster ain't mine, huh?»
«Mine.» Terwilliger arose.
His belt buckle was now on a line with Joe Clarence's eyes. The producer stared at the bright buckle almost hypnotically for a moment.
«God damn the goddam lawyers!»
He broke for the door.
«Work!»
The monster hit the door a split second after it slammed shut.
Terwilliger kept his hand poised in the air from his over-hand throw. Then his shoulders sagged. He went to pick up his beauty. He twisted off its head, skinned the latex flesh off the skull, placed the skull on a pedestal and, painstakingly, with clay, began to reshape the prehistoric face.
«A little goombah,» he muttered. «A touch of mazash.»
They ran the first film test on the animated monster a week later.
When it was over, Clarence sat in darkness and nodded imperceptibly.
«Better. But… more honorific, bloodcurdling. Let's scare the hell out of Aunt Jane. Back to the drawing board!»
«I'm a week behind schedule now,» Terwilliger protested. «You keep coming in, change this, change that, you say, so I change it, one day the tail's all wrong, next day it's the claws ?»
«You'll find a way to make me happy,» said Clarence. «Get in there and fight the old aesthetic fight!»
At the end of the month they ran the second test.
«A near miss! Close!» said Clarence. «The face is just almost right. Try again, Terwilliger!»
Terwilliger went back. He animated the dinosaur's mouth so that it said obscene things which only a lip reader might catch, while the rest of the audience thought the beast was only shrieking. Then he got the clay and worked until 3 A.M. on the awful face.
«That's it!» cried Clarence in the projection room (he next week. «Perfect! Now that's what I call a monster!»
He leaned toward the old man, his lawyer, Mr.Glass, and Maury Poole, his production assistant.
«You like my creature?» He beamed.
Terwilliger, slumped in the back row, his skeleton as long as the monsters he built, could feel the old lawyer shrug.
«You seen one monster, you seen 'em all.»
«Sure, sure, but this one's special.» shouted Clarence happily. «Even I got to admit Terwilliger's a genius!»
They all turned back to watch the beast on the screen, in a titanic waltz, throw its razor tail wide in a vicious harvesting that cut grass and clipped flowers. The beast paused now to gaze pensively off into mists, gnawing a red bone.
«That monster,» said Mr.Glass at last, squinting. «He sure looks familiar.»
«Familiar?» Terwilliger stirred, alert.
«It's got such a look,» drawled Mr.Glass in the dark, «I couldn't forget, from someplace.»
«Natural Museum exhibits?»
«No, no.»
«Maybe,» laughed Clarence, «you read a book once, Glass.»
«Funny…» Glass, unperturbed, cocked his head, closed one eye. «Like detectives, I don't forget a face. But, that Tyrannosaurus Rex where before did I meet/urn?»
«Who cares?» Clarence sprinted. «He's great. And all because I booted Terwilliger's behind to make him do it right. Come on, Maury!»
When the door shut, Mr.Glass turned to gaze steadily at Terwilliger. Not taking his eyes away, he called softly to the projectionist, «Walt? Walter? Could you favour us with that beast again?»
«Sure thing.»
Terwilliger shifted uncomfortably, aware of some bleak force gathering in blackness, in the sharp light that shot forth once more to ricochet terror off the screen.
«Yeah. Sure,» mused Mr.Glass. «I almost remember. I almost know him. But… who?»
The brute, as if answering, turned and for a disdainful moment stared across one hundred thousand million years at two small men hidden in a small dark room. The tyrant machine named itself in thunder.
Mr.Glass quickened forward, as if to cup his ear.
