The Mind Digger Page 2
Forinstance, right now I can return to the day, hour, minute and second Iwent to school for the first time. I can remember the look on theteacher's face and hear the screams of twenty-six kindergarten kids. Ican smell the freshly oiled floors and the newly painted walls. I canfeel the wart on my mother's finger, the one I was holding onto for dearlife."
The almost fanatic glow in his eager, young face impressed me. Realismof memory! Could that be the essence of his successful first play? Didhis down-to-earth touch account for _Updraft's_ surprising audienceappeal?
I pleaded, "Don't let me down now, Hillary. I gambled thousands ofdollars on your first play. If you can repeat we'll both enjoy an evenbetter pay-off. Besides, have you looked into what your taxes will be?"
"Taxes? No, I really haven't, but I'm sure I have enough to last anotheryear. Sorry, Mr. Crocker. Maybe later, but right at the moment--"
His broad-shouldered, lean athletic form drifted through my door and wasgone.
Two weeks later _Parodisiac_ arrived, typed on fools-cap, uncorrected,with pencil notations and coffee-spots on it, but it was by-lined,"Hillary Hardy," and after a single, quick scanning I was overjoyed topay the expense of transcribing it to more durable paper. The play waspowerful, witty and emotion-stirring. It was a work of art.
And on the last page was scribbled in the border: "I looked into my taxbill, and found you were right. I'm almost broke after Uncle Sam takeshis cut, so here is the play you asked for. Hope you like it. (signed)H. H."
There was a P.S. "Expect to hit _birth_ this week."
When I phoned him at the sanitarium, asking for Sam Buckle, the name hehad left originally with Ellie, he refused to come to the phone. So Iwired him. "Quit worrying about taxes. I accept your earlier offer to beyour agent as well as producer. Good luck on your experiments."
_Parodisiac_ was much too good to hold for the closing of _Updraft_.Indeed, the first play was showing no signs of weakening, so I beganrounding up talent outside the original cast. This was a cinch. MeredithCrawley finished Act I, Scene I, and accepted the male lead withoutturning another page. So did Alicia Pennington, even though it meantgiving up a personal appearance tour to publicize her latest Hollywoodrelease that was supposed to win her an Oscar.
Not that I had to go after talent like this to put _Parodisiac_ across.It was so potent I believe I could have made it a hit with a cast out ofa burleycue revue.
The season was getting late, so I did the unthinkable. I cut normalrehearsal time in half and slammed it at the big town without even atrial run in the back-country. Nobody connected with the showobjected--not even Hec Blankenship, my publicity manager. In fact it washe who suggested the sleeper treatment.
With nothing more than last-minute newspaper notices we opened thebox-office to a completely uninformed public, and did it knock thecritics for a loop! Only a couple showed up for the first performance,along with less than a third-full house of casual first-nighters.
* * * * *
People wandered out stunned. A substitute drama-critic from the _Times_looked me up after the show, and there were tears of gratitude in hiseyes. "My review of this play will establish my reputation," he told me."If the boss had had any notion of what you were pulling, he'd have beenhere himself. But what about the author? I thought you were going tohave to call the police when you failed to produce the author."
* * * * *
It had been rough. The skimpy crowd had milled about for a half hourscreaming "Author, author!" Meanwhile, I was too choked up after thelast heart-wrenching scene to get up and make a speech.
Everything had gone perfectly. Even the brief rehearsal time failed toleave any rough edges. Crawley and Pennington were so carried away withtheir parts that they easily doubled their considerable dramatic staturethat first performance. The supporting cast caught fire, too, and,well--the likes of it is rarely seen anywhere.
The lines seemed to come out of the actors' hearts, not their mouths.Cue-lines blended with the dialogue interplay, the artificiality ofstage-sets, costumery and make-up disappeared, and the simple, yetprofound drama unreeled like a bolt of vividly printed silk, flowingsmoothly, strongly, absorbingly to the tragic-comical climax that leftthe emotions reeling from the suspense and warm with relief.
Two days later I looked at the figures on advance ticket sales and couldfind only one conceivable complaint. _Parodisiac_ would make HillaryHardy so much money that not even taxes could force him to produceanother for a great while.
What promised to be a major irritation, fending off the press from Hardyand protecting his anonymity, was converted into a masterpublicity-stroke by Hec Blankenship. He swore the few of us who knewabout Hardy's youth and whereabouts, to complete secrecy, then heproceeded to build his publicity around the "mystery-author."
"But he's got a past!" I objected when Hec first presented the scheme."Old friends and relatives will spill the beans."
"Have you really looked into Hillary's past?" Hec asked.
I confessed I hadn't. Hec said that he had. It developed that HillaryHardy was not our boy's real name. In his passion for anonymity he hadbeen changing his name every time he changed locations, which was often.Hec had traced his background through three moves that brought theauthor across the country, but the trail petered out at a ranch inWyoming where Hillary had worked a month as a cow-hand.
The mystery-author gag worked. Inside of two weeks our promotion expensedwindled to almost nothing. Columnists were fighting for the privilegeof pouring out free copy on both plays. Some of their speculations as toHardy's real identity were pretty fabulous--Winston Churchill, NoelCoward and even a certain, witty ex-presidential candidate for theDemocratic party--but no one found him out, and the advance selloutbegan gaining a week every day.
Now, I have made and lost my share of theater fortunes, and I havelearned a certain caution. At the moment I was quite content to ridewith my two smash-hits and leave Hardy to his experiments. Strangely, itwas he who called upon me for action.
A month after launching _Parodisiac_ he showed up at my office, lookingleaner and more intense than ever. His crew-cut was growing out, but itwas from neglect rather than a sudden artistic temperament, I was sure.
After locking the doors and cancelling my morning appointments, I said,"Well, golden boy, what brings you to civilization?"
His smile was still strong and warm, but it was no longer youthful.There was a look of deep wisdom in his blue eyes that finally justifiedthe magnificent play he had written.
"Money," he answered briefly.
"Haven't my checks been reaching you?" I asked in amazement.
"Oh, yes. Very gratifying," he said pacing a groove in the deep carpetpile. "But I'm moving into prenatal memory now, and I accomplished it byadministrations of a new B vitamin derivative. I have a staff ofbiochemists working for me producing this substance, but it's fearfullyexpensive. I need more of it, larger lab facilities to produce itsecretly. I want to buy the sanitarium."
"Buy the--"
"Lock, stock and personnel," he nodded. "I'm three months before birth,already. My goal is conception."
A big, brassy gong chimed in my brain. "That sounds like this_dianetics_ business that was going the rounds awhile back."
Hardy nodded. "In some respects, yes. But I have a single goal, totalrecall, and I'm taking a more comprehensive approach. Psycho-therapyhelped a great deal, but I have traced-out every angle of mnemonics,improved on most and invented some new ones. The final problem is one ofimproving synaptic potentials and actual tissue tone in the brain.Biochemistry is giving me the answers. With enough of the new B vitaminderivative I'm confident I can reach conception--and a totality ofrecall."
"But Hardy, what have you got when you get there? I still say, what'sthe percentage?"
* * * * *
The look he gave me was puzzled but completely tolerant. "You raved tome about my last play, yet you don't see what I'm ge
tting at?" Hestopped pacing and sat opposite me with his muscular hands knotted intofists on my desk.
"George," he said with quiet intentness, "I will be the first man sincecreation to have the full potential of his brain at his creativedisposal."
"How do you figure that?"
"The brain has three principal functions. It can store information forrecall, it can analyze and correlate this information and finally it cansynthesize creatively. Now the latter two functions are inherentlydependent upon the quality of the first, or memory recall. As a trulythinking animal, man considers he has reached some acme of perfectionbecause his brain is so superior to the lower animals. Actually, thereal gulf is between what man _has achieved_ and what he _can achieve_with his