Kuttner, Henry The Portal in the Picture

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"The majority anyhow." Then I said to myself, "Cut out the hedging, Burton, and
see what you can make of this gadget."
Actually, it wasn't so hard, even without the secret knowledge Falvi had imparted
to his boss conspirator. But being familiar with the "miracle" of electricity, I
handled the Malescan version of a television set with due caution.
I'm no expert, but I've had to pick up the rudiments of hook-ups at one-night
stands backstage in the days when I was working with semi-amateur groups. And
I know a little about video, Earth version. Malescan-style video might be
different, but I soon realized it wasn't too different to understand.
Pretty soon I discovered that Coriole hadn't known what he was doing. Obviously
he'd gone through his routine by rote, without knowing the reasons. Television
occupies a channel 6,000 kilocycles wide against radio's 10 kilocycles and there's
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just so much space on the normal band. Back in New York Paradise, that is I
knew we were getting around this by shifting video to a higher band in the
spectrum, and doing it with adapters.
This set had such an adapter. It was what Coriole had rewired, and I went
through the same motions more cautiously, automatically changing the
frequencies on which the set would receive. I went farther than Coriole. His
method had missed a whole band of upper frequencies.
It seemed almost too easy, but when I thought about it I saw it wasn't, given the
Malescan mentality. Malesco was a religious society Earth's is a mechanistic
society. Malescans were conditioned to skip a link in process because they didn't
know it was an important link. They believed in the priesthood as we believe hi
machines.
I'd be the last man to contend that we don't miss a few important links in our own
thinking, of course. How many people on Earth have a real sense of process? How
many can visualize and evaluate the process that goes into the making of a loaf of
bread, for example? Or know the use of the iconoscope with its mosaic light cells,
the real miracle of video?
I switched the screen on again and as before that businesslike fast light-up
occurred, with no rigmarole of Alchemic A's or background music. I had no idea
how to get what I wanted on the thing or even a very clear notion of what it was I
wanted.
But I twirled a dial experimentally at random and found myself apparently sailing
over a range of mountains studded here and there with shimmers of lights that
were probably villages. It was night. I could see the stars in their familiar patterns
and, far off at the edge of the sky, a glow thet looked like a city. The one I was in?
Probably maybe there was only one city in this world. Was Malesco the city, the
country, the world? One or all? I never knew.
I turned the dial again and the picture snapped off like a light and instantly
flickered into a focus on a mountain village. I seemed to be looking down the
main street of the little town, lighted by overhead incandescents that filtered
through the trees lining the street.
It looked like a pleasant small-town street back home except that the parked cars
were missing, and the adolescents strolling two by two wore strange garments
and clustered around a
corner building that was not a drugstore but perhaps a temple. I couldn't see
clearly, but I thought I caught a glimpse through the shadows of the leaves that
looked like red and yellow lions and shining salamanders painted on the walls.
I tried the dial again and was at some club meeting of middle-aged Malescan
women who seemed to be reading poetry to each other. I visited a theatre where a
version of Medea was being staged and it startled me very much until I realized
that Euripides belonged to a period of the past which we and the Malescans held
in common.
It wasn't until much later that Rufus Agricola edged out Claudius and the two
worlds split apart. I wondered briefly what had really happened at that point of
cleavage. In Caligula's time there were portents in the sky, weren't there? It must
have released quite a lot of energy, mat cosmic schism in space-time.
There seemed to be practically nowhere in Malesco city, state or world which
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this video screen couldn't picture with the right dialing. I sat there, feeling like a
spider at the center of an endless web reaching out over a world by coaxial cable
or relay towers or some version of miracle we don't use ourselves and spying on
every dweller here.
The priests were missing no bets. The wonder was that they hadn't caught Coriole
already unless they hadn't cared to. Could that be it? Was he not as important as
he thought, not as dangerous? Or were the Alchemists wise enough to permit
latitude for the blowing off of steam?
For ten minutes or so I swooped and soared over Malesco, my vision riding the
air-waves of an alien world, moving hi vast curves above the heads of
unsuspecting people whom I would never see or know. I tuned hi briefly on a [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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