“Yes, sir,” said Gan Garrett. There seemed to be little else to say.
Sacheverell Breakstone needed no prompting. “Yes, my boy,” he went on, “truth is what we want from you. Truth and accuracy, but especially truth. Don’t spend too much worrying on niggling little details. Supposing—mind you, I’m just thinking aloud—but supposing we put a woman in the picture. Now you and I know that there wasn’t any woman in Devarupa’s life. That’s accuracy. But he loved all humanity, didn’t he? And aren’t women more than half of humanity? So if we show him say loving a woman—you understand this is just groping with words—isn’t that truth in the deeper sense? You understand?”
“Yes, sir. I am here to give the cachet of academic authority to all the non-academic changes you wish to ring on the story of Devarupa.”
Breakstone hesitated, then burst out into a heavy laugh. “Good man. You do understand me. No pretense about you. We’ll get on, we will. You can understand the creative mind. Because that’s what I am, mind you. All this”—his broad gesture included every bit of Metropolis—“is my creation. And the creative mind creates its own truth which is higher than facts. All my life I’ve wanted to do a life of Devarupa—with all due reverence, you understand, but still showing he was a real man. A man of and for men. And I’m the man to do. They don’t call me the Little Hitler of Sollywood for nothing.”
Garrett smiled to himself. No one with any knowledge of twentieth-century history could well consider a “Hitler” the ideal interpreter of that saint among men, the great Devarupa. But the evil that conquerors do may often be interred with their bones; he remembered from literary study how Caesar and Napoleon had become just such metaphorical figures of power, with no allusion to their manifold infamies.
“Well,” Breakstone announced, “it’s been wonderful having this talk with you, Garner.”
“Garrett.”
“I said Garrett. It’s been a pleasure to hear your ideas on Devarupa, and that’s a real suggestion of yours about the woman. You’re no hidebound academician, I can see that. Now if you’ll take the left-hand walk for about two hundred meters, you’ll find Uranov’s office. He’s working on the script today—his third day, in fact. He’s lasting well. You talk it over with him. And enjoy yourself in Sollywood.”
Garrett let the swizard jangle as he shook hands with his boss. Breakstone glanced at it. “Hm-m-m. Nice thing. Dinosaur of some kind, eh? Odd material; what’s it made of?”
“Lovestonite.”
“Lovestonite? Well, well. What next? The motto of Metropolis, by the way; remember that. What next? You understand? Always something new. Come see me any time you’re in trouble, but you won’t need to. We understand each other. Good luck.” Even as Garrett left, the Little Hitler of Sollywood had pulled several switches and begun dictating a letter to the Department of Allocation, giving instructions to a set designer, and receiving from his Calcutta exhibitor.
The few people that Garrett passed on his way down the writers’ corridor looked fretful and hagridden—almost like men from the Twentieth Century. The responsibility of turning out the major entertainment device of the world weighed heavily upon them. For though Breakstone’s description of the “greatest art form of the centuries” might have been exaggerated, the solid picture was certainly the most widespread and important. With its own powerful impact, plus the freedom of a World State and the world-wide spread of Basic English, it had attained an influence that even the old two-dimensional pictures had never known.
Garrett heard a rich, deep voice behind the door as he knocked. There was a pause, and he held up his plaque for scrutiny through a one-way glass. The door dilated, and as he entered the room’s occupant turned the switch on his dictotyper which altered it from recording to turning out a typed script.
“So!” said Hesekth Uranov. “You’re S.B.’s newest find. You’re the bright boy that’s to ride herd on me, huh?”
Uranov represented the new interbred type that was rising to dominance in the world. It was rare by now, of course, to see any sample of such a pure racial type as the sheer Irishness of the black-haired, blue-eyed girl in the liner—doubtless a fortuitous throwback—but it was almost equally rare to see such a successful fusion as Hesketh Uranov. His skin was a golden brown, closest perhaps to the Polynesian, but not exactly that of any pure racial type. His aquiline nose, his thick lips, his slightly slanted eyes seemed not so much a heterogeneous collection of racial fragments as the perfectly right lineaments of a new race.
Garrett was still trying to find the friendly response to this unfriendly greeting when Uranov said, “You drink? I thought not. Historian— However.” He upended the bottle. “Stay in Sollywood long enough and you’ll learn worse than this, my boy. What’re you sticking your hand out for? Can’t wait to get your researcher’s fingers on my script?”
“All I want,” said Garrett patiently, “is that bottle.” He took it.
After that swig, Uranov looked at him with new respect. “Maybe you’re all right. But I doubt it. S.B. sent you.”
“Look,” said Gan Garrett. “I’ve seen S.B. for only five minutes. I’ve heard about you as Metropolis’ ace writer for five years. So you have—sixty times twenty-four times three hundred and sixty-five—you have roughly half a million times as much cause to dislike him as I have. But I’ll still enter the race with you.”
“O.K.,” said Uranov. “Don’t mind if I bark. I just don’t like anybody much these days, which is, of course, the perfect mood in which to approach a script on Devarupa.”
“What’re you doing to that script?” Garrett sat down, near the bottle. “S.B. babbled something about a woman.”
Uranov groaned. “I know. These epics have the highest erotic value of any form
