Next day I stuck my head in before I went to lunch, and I congratulated myself on not pushing him too hard the first day. Hillary was off in his corner again, but his mouth was moving and all four girls were doing the things that secretaries do when they are about two hours behind in their work.
Eight days later the thing dropped on my desk. I wet a finger with keen anticipation, but the spit wasn’t dry before I was plowing into Hillary’s office trailing loose sheets.
“Are you kidding?” I yelled.
He was out of his chair over by the window staring out. All he did was hunch up his shoulders. The girls were standing around trying to act invisible.
“Hillary,” I said trying to laugh. “Don’t be playing gags on old George. Where is it? Where’s Oscar’s play?”
“I—I’m afraid that’s it,” he said without turning his head.
“This—this fluff? This pablum?”
“Well—I thought I’d try something light to begin with.”
“Light? This is no play. This is Pollyanna. It’s been done. Where’s your conflict? Your problem? Your suspense? Dammit, where’s your characters?”
“I’ll get warmed up tomorrow,” Hilliary said, but he didn’t have much conviction in his voice.
He tried. He really did. I heard him thrashing around for a whole hour the next morning. By afternoon he was on his way to the hospital in an ambulance with two men holding him down.
All I could get out of the doctors was, “complete nervous breakdown.” I finally found a hard-up intern and bribed him to spy for me. He reported that Hillary had the whole staff stumped. He was acting more like a dope addict with withdrawal symptoms or a drunk with the D.T.’s.
I got in touch with Hillary’s sanitarium. The head psychiatrist was in Europe, so I cabled him and flew him back. He took over, and pretty soon I had the word I dreaded.
“Your wonder boy will recover,” he told me, “but that’s a wonder in itself. I presume he told you of his experiments to achieve total recall?”
I said yes.
“What he probably failed to tell you was that we all tried to dissuade him.”
“That he didn’t mention, but I worried about it.”
“Yes, well you might have. When Hillary Hardy succeeded in stripping away the last remnant of protective insulation in his memory he exposed himself not only to its full factual content, but also he lay naked every past emotional upset, every pain, fear, dread and sorrow he had ever experienced. It is no longer possible for him to recall an experience and ponder it objectively. He relives it.”
“Yes, I get that,” I said, “but what’s so—”
“Did you ever hit your thumb with a hammer?” the doctor with the traditional, gray goatee interrupted.
“Sure, a couple of times.”
“Ever lose a sweetheart or have a loved one die?”
I nodded.
“Suppose that to even think about such experiences you had to endure all the actual physical or emotional pain of the original incident? The crushing blow of the hammer? The heartache and tears of your loss? And suppose further, that you were trying to write a play, and in order to bring genuine emotion to it you forced yourself to endure these pains and emotional stresses, minute after minute—”
“God!” I said. “But you said he’d recover?”
“In a few weeks, yes. Gradually we will reduce sedation until he can control his memories again, but never ask him to write another dramatic work. Another attack like this one could drive him irretrievably insane.”
It wasn’t too hard to understand. After all, what is creative writing but setting down little bits of yourself? And the demands of literature are for human problems, conflicts, struggles.
Young as he was, Hillary was no different from the rest of us. Sure, he was full of reading and second hand bits of business, but he dug deeply into his own private pot of pain for his genuine dramatic effects. And where others dig with a long-handled ladle, Hillary dipped with his bare soul—and he got scalded.
Getting him well and keeping him that way was a matter of putting the lid back on the pot, so to speak. Nobody ever invited him to write another word. I saw to that. He’s still with me, because after he went bankrupt on the sanitarium deal he had nowhere to turn. After taxes and the rooking the real estate boys gave him, his royalties were tied up for years to come.
He did get better, though. And he even works a little. Turns out scripts for mild little comic books, the Honey-Bunney type that are approved by parent-teacher censors. They don’t sell very well. No conflict. No guts.”
Earth Alert!
by Kris Neville
What defense could she raise against mutant science—telepathy, invisibility, teleportation—especially since Earth was not aware of its danger!
Chapter I
When Julia (she pronounced the name without the “a” at the end) was twenty-four, she inherited $22,000 from an obscure uncle in California. After deducting taxes and administrative expenses, the California State Court ordered the money transferred to her bank account. It came to $20,247.50.
She had been working in a local book store. “I haven’t the vaguest idea why it came to me,” she told the curious and covertly envious customers. “I guess he just didn’t know anybody else.”
She was a small, slender girl. Her eyes were bright and enthusiastic, her open smile so friendly that it was infectious.
The first afternoon when the money was actually in the bank under her own name, her father asked, “Well, what are you going to do with it?” He was genuinely curious. He owned his own home and was about to retire on a pension. He felt uncomfortable in the face of $20,247.50—for which he was not able even to imagine a use.
Julia said, “I haven’t exactly made up my mind yet.” She intended to shop around for a husband, but she did not say this. She thought it would sound very callous to say: I’m going to buy me a husband: I’ve always wanted one.
*
Julia gave two weeks notice at the book store. When the time was up she took her last pay check and went to one of the modest dress shops and bought herself a conservative brown suit.
“You have a very nice figure,” the clerk told her.
“Thank you.” She studied him critically and then shook her head sadly. He wouldn’t do.
I’ve got to be sure I get the right one, she thought. I’ll know him when I see him, she reassured herself. It certainly isn’t this one.
There ought, she thought, to be a lot of eligible bachelors in Hollywood. The movies ought to attract them.
*
Two days later she walked down to the bank and instructed the teller to transfer $5,000 of her money to a checking account in her name at the Security First National Bank in Los Angeles.
She told her father she was going to take a little vacation.
“There’s plenty of eligible bachelors here,” he said.
“Why dad!” she exclaimed indignantly. “ . . . And anyway, none of them ever has asked me.”
“God help the man you set your mind on, that’s all I can say.”