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Aug. 3rd, 2007 07:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
titusnowlWhat's the quick'n'dirty rule for how much time a page of script takes up? I think I need to considerably excise Simon's speech-making in Chapter Two - I've already cut out half of what he's said and omitted a page and a half which actually sort of matters because it explains how they figure out who Angel Face is...
Dateline: 1929 or 1930
A parade - crowded streets - tickertape - a brass band - horse guard flanking an open car wherein sits a man of regal moustache in a Prussian uniform. Pull back - we hear a voice muttering:
GOLTER: Exactly twenty-four feet, eight inches - should go off just at head level - procession will arrive in fifteen minutes - just look at them all down there, like ants - and oh how they'll swarm once I've done my work!
As he's speaking, pull back further: a bearded anarchist kneels at a window, with a bomb in one hand and bulging pockets. A voice, soft and playful, from offscreen:
SIMON: Yes, it should be an interesting spectacle.
Cut to view the speaker, a tall, well-built man of about 30, with dark hair, cold blue eyes and an angelic smile.
SIMON: Extraordinarily interesting. From a purely artistic point of view, it's a pity we shan't be able to watch it.
Another young man, fair-haired and rather pretty, steps into the scene. This is ROGER. He is not smiling. He carries a double-barreled shotgun, which he has pointed easily but resolutely in Golter's direction.
Golter's right hand strays toward a pocket; Roger moves the shotgun to follow, but Simon just laughs softly.
SIMON: Just pass along those pineapples, Beautiful - but leave the pins in.
Golter, wild-eyed, empties his pockets and passes three bombs over to Simon, who does something with them, as Roger keeps an unsmiling face and two barrels trained on the bomber. Then, as the parade music grows louder:
SIMON: Here you are, Beautiful - just put 'em back in your pockets.
Simon pulls Golter to him, swings him around as if they're dancing, deposits the bombs on his person and pushes him away again.
GOLTER: What did you do that for?
SIMON: I have my own reasons. We'll be going now - do you mind?
Golter looks suspicious - fearful - confused - then a dawning realization crosses his face.
GOLTER: You're not copper, then?
Simon smiles.
SIMON: Unfortunately for you, no. [He laughs lightly.] I'm only a little divine intervention. And just look at the clock - it's time for the saints to go marching out. Toddle along, Roger.
Simon turns and strolls toward the door nonchalantly, followed by Roger, who backs out to keep the Golter in his sights.
They emerge at street level. Roger climbs into a waiting automobile - a huge silver thing like a Deusenberg - being piloted by a dark and somber-looking young man; Roger greets him with his first grin, which suits his face far better than the serious look he'd had while working, but Norman (for such is the somber youth's name) does not return it. Meanwhile Simon is out-of-focus on the edge of the shot, writing on the door with chalk; he climbs into the car himself.
Cut to the parade, growing closer.
Cut to the bomber, still standing confused, then making a decision.
Cut to the Prussian prince, now directly below the windows.
Cut to the bomber pulling the pins out ---
and cut to the street, where we see a fireball blow out the upper-story windows.
The three young men in their very large car drive away unconcerned. We see that the chalk-mark on the door is a stick figure with a halo.
The credits are animated in a sort of Art Deco homage to "Catch Me If You Can," set to a jazzy interpretation of the theme song from the Roger Moore TV show. It begins with the chalked-on stick figure climbing off the door and into the animated sequence. The majority of the actual animation I leave up to the animators, the only important imagery being that the stick figure's halo falls off its head and unfolds into unhaloed figures representative of Norman and Roger; at the end of the credits they pile into a car and the car drives out of the animation, becoming:
The Hirondel, pouring across a winding road in the moonlit English countryside.
PAT, a slim blonde with a cool expression, is nestled up against Simon's side. They are both in full evening dress.
PAT: You see, lad, dinner with the Hannassays isn't fatal after all.
SIMON: It would be far more interesting if it were.
PAT: You could have started throwing knives at the orchestra. They needed it.
SIMON: Believe me, darling, I seriously considered it. The place settings the Hannassays provided weren't balanced properly.
All the houses they pass are dark, except one, up on a hill, which is flashing brightly at even intervals. The car slows as they approach it, and Pat sits up and takes notice.
PAT: What is that?
He pulls over and cuts the motor, and with it the music in the soundtrack. We can hear the rustle of Pat's sleeve, and the chirping of insects, and the sound of a motor running, a loud one, growing louder.
SIMON: It's a dynamo.
He opens the door and begins to climb out. Pat reaches over and puts her hand on his sleeve.
PAT: Where are you going, Saint?
He grins at her.
SIMON: I'm going to investigate. A perfectly ordinary citizen might be running a dynamo to manufacture his own electric light - although this sounds a lot heavier than the breed you usually find. But I'm sure no perfectly ordinary citizen uses his dynamo to make electric sparks that size to amuse the children. Life's been rather tame lately, and one never knows...
PAT: I'll come with you.
Simon grimaces, but he knows better than to argue with her.
SIMON: O.K., kid.
They stroll down the lane toward the house together.
The house is in a hedged garden thickly grown with trees. Simon disconnects the alarm on the gate in the hedge-fence, holds the gate open for Patricia, bows to her as she passes through, then follows and closes it behind them.
Cut to show the house. The windows are dark and it looks abandoned, but there is still that strange light.
They pass around behind it, the noise of the dynamo growing louder. As they round the corner, Simon stops so abruptly that Pat finds herself two paces ahead of him.
SIMON, whispering: This is fun!
The back of the house contains a very large greenhouse, twenty-five yards long with ten-foot ceilings. The light is pulsing from its roof; the walls are masked with dark curtains. Simon and Patricia step to it quietly and find a small gap in the curtains through which they can peer.
The inside of the greenhouse is bare. A rough concrete floor extends up walls a few feet, forming a sort of trough. At one end of the trough is tethered a goat. At the other end of the trough is a small platform on which stand a small group of observers and a small man with wild white hair and shabby clothes, working a complicated switchboard.
On the floor, between the platform and the goat, is a thing like a cloud, only not like a cloud. It is a misty violet colour, with strange sparks and streaks of fire shooting through it like tiny comets.
The cloud begins to move, slowly at first, then faster, and the cloud's size and luminance grow with its speed until it fills the whole width of the concrete trough, shining brilliantly so that it nearly hurts to look at, moving at the speed of a man running.
Simon manages to break his wide-eyed stare away from the cloud and glance back at the platform, where the white-haired man is now holding a sort of remote-control.
Cut to the goat. The cloud touches it. For a moment, there is a stark black outline of a goat in the middle of the cloud. Then there is nothing. The cloud uncoils into a smear of mist and floats up away from the small pile of black dust which was once a goat.
The men on the platform begin to talk excitedly.
Simon turns and pulls Patricia away.
SIMON: We'll get out of here. We've seen enough for one night.
They turn and literally run into a very large man who is holding a gun at them. Simon, without seeming startled in the least, smacks the gun away with one arm and kicks the man in the balls. Then he and Patricia run away very fast across the lawn.
They vault into the car and tear away. Simon looks uncharacteristically dark and intent. Patricia is silent for some time.
PAT: I can't help feeling I've seen one of those men before, or a picture of him...
SIMON: Which one? The Secretary of State for War? The Director of the War Office? Or the infamous Mad Professor, K. B. Vargan?
Patricia looks puzzled. Simon's grim expression breaks, and he reaches out to slip an arm around her shoulders.
PAT: Saint, you're on the trail of more trouble. I know the signs.
SIMON: It's more than that, dear. Tonight I've seen a vision. And if it's a true vision it means that I'm going to fight something more horrible than I've ever fought before...
Fade.
The next day:
A light and airy flat. The walls are hung with small and discreet mirrors and large and indiscreet examples of antique weaponry. Simon is sitting on a table, poring through a newspaper and occasionally scribbling on it with a pen. The table around him is covered with more papers, strewn haphazardly. Pat is trying to straighten it up, but every time she gets a stack made, Simon throws another paper off to one side and upsets it again.
Enter Roger and Norman. Roger is brandishing a paper of his own and pokes at it as he heads straight toward Simon.
ROGER: The things that happen when you're let out loose after dark -
SIMON: You'll have to take it up with my nurse, Beautiful.
Patricia gives up on the cleaning and comes to lean against the table near Simon. Norman gives her a small smile; she smiles back, then turns the same smile to Roger. Simon slips an arm around Pat's waist. Roger and Norman take seats and light cigarettes.
SIMON: Well, you've heard all about Vargan's Marvellous Invention. Now the question is -
ROGER: The question is what is it?
SIMON: That's not the question, honey, but I'll answer it anyway: The Devil.
Roger blinks at him.
SIMON: That's what the Clarion called it. Something we haven't got simple words to describe. A scientist would pretend to understand it, but whether he actually did or not is another matter. It's got something to do with modifying the structure of a gas so it can be made to hold a tremendous charge of electricity, like a thunder-cloud does - only it isn't a bit like a thundercloud. It's also something to do with a ray - only it isn't a ray, either. If you like, it's something entirely impossible - only it happens to exist. And the point is that this gas, whatever it is and however it works, is just the flimsiest sort of sponge in the atmosphere, and Vargan knows how to soak it up with millions of volts and amperes of compressed lightning.
ROGER: And when the goat got into the cloud -
SIMON: It was exactly the same as if it had butted into a web of live wires. Exit goat. Sweet idea, isn't it?
NORMAN: The Secretary of War has seen it, and the Director of the War Office. Who else?
SIMON: Angel Face. Angel Face saw it. That's the part that wasn't in the papers - there was a third third-party on hand. AN adorable pet, built on the lines of something between Primo Carnera and an overgrown gorilla, but not too agile with the trigger finger - otherwise I mightn't be here. But which country he's working for is yet to be discovered.
ROGER, frowning: You think --
SIMON: Frequently. But that was one think I didn't need a cold towel round my head for. Vargan's little discovery will be of interest to any wideawake foreign agent.
Simon tamps a cigarette gently and lights it with slow and exaggerated deliberation while the others think.
ROGER: If there should be another war --
NORMAN: Who's waiting for a chance to make war?
Simon picks up the newspapers and goes through them again. Pat rolls her eyes at the renewed mess of her stacks. Simon summarizes headlines as he passes the papers to the other men.
SIMON: A proclamation from Mussolini... a speech from a French delegate before the League of Nations... a break in the Oil Trust... a merger between three different chemicals corporations... riots in India... a bull raid on the steel market...
ROGER: But people would never stand for another war so soon. Every country is disarming -
SIMON: Bluffing with everything they know, and hoping that one day somebody'll be taken in. The people never want a war - it's sprung on them by the statesmen with the business interests behind them, and somebody writes a 'We-Don't-Want-To-Lose-You-But-We-Think-You-Ought-To-Go' song for the brass bands to play, and millions of poor fools go out and die like heroes without ever being quite sure what it's all about. It's happened before. Why shouldn't it happen again?
NORMAN: People may have learnt their lesson.
Simon makes an impatient gesture.
SIMON: I've given you the facts. Now, suppose you saw a man rushing down the street with a contorted face, screaming his head off, foaming at the mouth, and brandishing a large knife dripping with blood. If you like to be a fool, you can tell yourself that it's conceivable that his face is contorted because he's trying to swallow a bad egg, he's screaming because someone had just trodden on his toe, he's foaming at the mouth because he's just eaten a cake of soap, and he's just killed a chicken for dinner and is tearing off to tell his maiden aunt all about it. On the other hand, it's simpler and safer to assume that he's a homicidal maniac. In the same way, if you like to be fools, and refuse to see a complete story in what spells a complete story to me, you can go home right now.
ROGER: I suppose our job is to find Tiny Tim and see that he doesn't pinch the invention while the Cabinet is deciding what to do about it?
NORMAN: The Cabinet might find the decision taken out of their hands... without the intervention of Tiny Tim...
Simon looks at the two thoughtfully, as if seeing them for the first time.
SIMON: If we do nothing but suppress Tiny Tim, England will possess a weapon of war immeasurably more powerful than all the armaments of every other nation. If we stole that away, you might argue that sooner or later some other nation will probably discover something just as deadly, and then England will be at a disadvantage. But there are hundreds of Tiny Tims, and we can't suppress them all. Eventually when the war came we would find the enemy prepared to use our own weapon against us. There are gathered here today three slightly shop-soiled musketeers and one blessed angel. All of us have, in the course of our young lives, broken half the Commandments and most of the private laws of several countries. And yet, somehow, we've managed to keep intact certain ridiculous ideals - which seem to our perverted minds to justify our sins. Fighting is one of those ideals. Battle, murder, and sudden death. In fact, I guess we ought to be the last three men on the planet who should be fighting to STOP a war. But we're the exception. Most of the world is made of of people who DON'T live for battle, murder, and sudden death. Who wouldn't go singing and shouting and swaggering into battle, who'd just be herded into it like dumb cattle to the slaughter. And the three of us just happen to have tripped plumb over the blueprints for the newest slaughterhouse. Will you think me quite mad if I put it to you that three shabby, hell-busting outlaws might, by the grace of God...
There is a pause. Roger looks ready to jump out of his chair. Norman looks thoughtful.
SIMON: ... That invention must cease to be. And the brain that conceived it, which could recreate it - that must also cease to be. It is expedient that one man should die for many people...
Dateline: 1929 or 1930
A parade - crowded streets - tickertape - a brass band - horse guard flanking an open car wherein sits a man of regal moustache in a Prussian uniform. Pull back - we hear a voice muttering:
GOLTER: Exactly twenty-four feet, eight inches - should go off just at head level - procession will arrive in fifteen minutes - just look at them all down there, like ants - and oh how they'll swarm once I've done my work!
As he's speaking, pull back further: a bearded anarchist kneels at a window, with a bomb in one hand and bulging pockets. A voice, soft and playful, from offscreen:
SIMON: Yes, it should be an interesting spectacle.
Cut to view the speaker, a tall, well-built man of about 30, with dark hair, cold blue eyes and an angelic smile.
SIMON: Extraordinarily interesting. From a purely artistic point of view, it's a pity we shan't be able to watch it.
Another young man, fair-haired and rather pretty, steps into the scene. This is ROGER. He is not smiling. He carries a double-barreled shotgun, which he has pointed easily but resolutely in Golter's direction.
Golter's right hand strays toward a pocket; Roger moves the shotgun to follow, but Simon just laughs softly.
SIMON: Just pass along those pineapples, Beautiful - but leave the pins in.
Golter, wild-eyed, empties his pockets and passes three bombs over to Simon, who does something with them, as Roger keeps an unsmiling face and two barrels trained on the bomber. Then, as the parade music grows louder:
SIMON: Here you are, Beautiful - just put 'em back in your pockets.
Simon pulls Golter to him, swings him around as if they're dancing, deposits the bombs on his person and pushes him away again.
GOLTER: What did you do that for?
SIMON: I have my own reasons. We'll be going now - do you mind?
Golter looks suspicious - fearful - confused - then a dawning realization crosses his face.
GOLTER: You're not copper, then?
Simon smiles.
SIMON: Unfortunately for you, no. [He laughs lightly.] I'm only a little divine intervention. And just look at the clock - it's time for the saints to go marching out. Toddle along, Roger.
Simon turns and strolls toward the door nonchalantly, followed by Roger, who backs out to keep the Golter in his sights.
They emerge at street level. Roger climbs into a waiting automobile - a huge silver thing like a Deusenberg - being piloted by a dark and somber-looking young man; Roger greets him with his first grin, which suits his face far better than the serious look he'd had while working, but Norman (for such is the somber youth's name) does not return it. Meanwhile Simon is out-of-focus on the edge of the shot, writing on the door with chalk; he climbs into the car himself.
Cut to the parade, growing closer.
Cut to the bomber, still standing confused, then making a decision.
Cut to the Prussian prince, now directly below the windows.
Cut to the bomber pulling the pins out ---
and cut to the street, where we see a fireball blow out the upper-story windows.
The three young men in their very large car drive away unconcerned. We see that the chalk-mark on the door is a stick figure with a halo.
The credits are animated in a sort of Art Deco homage to "Catch Me If You Can," set to a jazzy interpretation of the theme song from the Roger Moore TV show. It begins with the chalked-on stick figure climbing off the door and into the animated sequence. The majority of the actual animation I leave up to the animators, the only important imagery being that the stick figure's halo falls off its head and unfolds into unhaloed figures representative of Norman and Roger; at the end of the credits they pile into a car and the car drives out of the animation, becoming:
The Hirondel, pouring across a winding road in the moonlit English countryside.
PAT, a slim blonde with a cool expression, is nestled up against Simon's side. They are both in full evening dress.
PAT: You see, lad, dinner with the Hannassays isn't fatal after all.
SIMON: It would be far more interesting if it were.
PAT: You could have started throwing knives at the orchestra. They needed it.
SIMON: Believe me, darling, I seriously considered it. The place settings the Hannassays provided weren't balanced properly.
All the houses they pass are dark, except one, up on a hill, which is flashing brightly at even intervals. The car slows as they approach it, and Pat sits up and takes notice.
PAT: What is that?
He pulls over and cuts the motor, and with it the music in the soundtrack. We can hear the rustle of Pat's sleeve, and the chirping of insects, and the sound of a motor running, a loud one, growing louder.
SIMON: It's a dynamo.
He opens the door and begins to climb out. Pat reaches over and puts her hand on his sleeve.
PAT: Where are you going, Saint?
He grins at her.
SIMON: I'm going to investigate. A perfectly ordinary citizen might be running a dynamo to manufacture his own electric light - although this sounds a lot heavier than the breed you usually find. But I'm sure no perfectly ordinary citizen uses his dynamo to make electric sparks that size to amuse the children. Life's been rather tame lately, and one never knows...
PAT: I'll come with you.
Simon grimaces, but he knows better than to argue with her.
SIMON: O.K., kid.
They stroll down the lane toward the house together.
The house is in a hedged garden thickly grown with trees. Simon disconnects the alarm on the gate in the hedge-fence, holds the gate open for Patricia, bows to her as she passes through, then follows and closes it behind them.
Cut to show the house. The windows are dark and it looks abandoned, but there is still that strange light.
They pass around behind it, the noise of the dynamo growing louder. As they round the corner, Simon stops so abruptly that Pat finds herself two paces ahead of him.
SIMON, whispering: This is fun!
The back of the house contains a very large greenhouse, twenty-five yards long with ten-foot ceilings. The light is pulsing from its roof; the walls are masked with dark curtains. Simon and Patricia step to it quietly and find a small gap in the curtains through which they can peer.
The inside of the greenhouse is bare. A rough concrete floor extends up walls a few feet, forming a sort of trough. At one end of the trough is tethered a goat. At the other end of the trough is a small platform on which stand a small group of observers and a small man with wild white hair and shabby clothes, working a complicated switchboard.
On the floor, between the platform and the goat, is a thing like a cloud, only not like a cloud. It is a misty violet colour, with strange sparks and streaks of fire shooting through it like tiny comets.
The cloud begins to move, slowly at first, then faster, and the cloud's size and luminance grow with its speed until it fills the whole width of the concrete trough, shining brilliantly so that it nearly hurts to look at, moving at the speed of a man running.
Simon manages to break his wide-eyed stare away from the cloud and glance back at the platform, where the white-haired man is now holding a sort of remote-control.
Cut to the goat. The cloud touches it. For a moment, there is a stark black outline of a goat in the middle of the cloud. Then there is nothing. The cloud uncoils into a smear of mist and floats up away from the small pile of black dust which was once a goat.
The men on the platform begin to talk excitedly.
Simon turns and pulls Patricia away.
SIMON: We'll get out of here. We've seen enough for one night.
They turn and literally run into a very large man who is holding a gun at them. Simon, without seeming startled in the least, smacks the gun away with one arm and kicks the man in the balls. Then he and Patricia run away very fast across the lawn.
They vault into the car and tear away. Simon looks uncharacteristically dark and intent. Patricia is silent for some time.
PAT: I can't help feeling I've seen one of those men before, or a picture of him...
SIMON: Which one? The Secretary of State for War? The Director of the War Office? Or the infamous Mad Professor, K. B. Vargan?
Patricia looks puzzled. Simon's grim expression breaks, and he reaches out to slip an arm around her shoulders.
PAT: Saint, you're on the trail of more trouble. I know the signs.
SIMON: It's more than that, dear. Tonight I've seen a vision. And if it's a true vision it means that I'm going to fight something more horrible than I've ever fought before...
Fade.
The next day:
A light and airy flat. The walls are hung with small and discreet mirrors and large and indiscreet examples of antique weaponry. Simon is sitting on a table, poring through a newspaper and occasionally scribbling on it with a pen. The table around him is covered with more papers, strewn haphazardly. Pat is trying to straighten it up, but every time she gets a stack made, Simon throws another paper off to one side and upsets it again.
Enter Roger and Norman. Roger is brandishing a paper of his own and pokes at it as he heads straight toward Simon.
ROGER: The things that happen when you're let out loose after dark -
SIMON: You'll have to take it up with my nurse, Beautiful.
Patricia gives up on the cleaning and comes to lean against the table near Simon. Norman gives her a small smile; she smiles back, then turns the same smile to Roger. Simon slips an arm around Pat's waist. Roger and Norman take seats and light cigarettes.
SIMON: Well, you've heard all about Vargan's Marvellous Invention. Now the question is -
ROGER: The question is what is it?
SIMON: That's not the question, honey, but I'll answer it anyway: The Devil.
Roger blinks at him.
SIMON: That's what the Clarion called it. Something we haven't got simple words to describe. A scientist would pretend to understand it, but whether he actually did or not is another matter. It's got something to do with modifying the structure of a gas so it can be made to hold a tremendous charge of electricity, like a thunder-cloud does - only it isn't a bit like a thundercloud. It's also something to do with a ray - only it isn't a ray, either. If you like, it's something entirely impossible - only it happens to exist. And the point is that this gas, whatever it is and however it works, is just the flimsiest sort of sponge in the atmosphere, and Vargan knows how to soak it up with millions of volts and amperes of compressed lightning.
ROGER: And when the goat got into the cloud -
SIMON: It was exactly the same as if it had butted into a web of live wires. Exit goat. Sweet idea, isn't it?
NORMAN: The Secretary of War has seen it, and the Director of the War Office. Who else?
SIMON: Angel Face. Angel Face saw it. That's the part that wasn't in the papers - there was a third third-party on hand. AN adorable pet, built on the lines of something between Primo Carnera and an overgrown gorilla, but not too agile with the trigger finger - otherwise I mightn't be here. But which country he's working for is yet to be discovered.
ROGER, frowning: You think --
SIMON: Frequently. But that was one think I didn't need a cold towel round my head for. Vargan's little discovery will be of interest to any wideawake foreign agent.
Simon tamps a cigarette gently and lights it with slow and exaggerated deliberation while the others think.
ROGER: If there should be another war --
NORMAN: Who's waiting for a chance to make war?
Simon picks up the newspapers and goes through them again. Pat rolls her eyes at the renewed mess of her stacks. Simon summarizes headlines as he passes the papers to the other men.
SIMON: A proclamation from Mussolini... a speech from a French delegate before the League of Nations... a break in the Oil Trust... a merger between three different chemicals corporations... riots in India... a bull raid on the steel market...
ROGER: But people would never stand for another war so soon. Every country is disarming -
SIMON: Bluffing with everything they know, and hoping that one day somebody'll be taken in. The people never want a war - it's sprung on them by the statesmen with the business interests behind them, and somebody writes a 'We-Don't-Want-To-Lose-You-But-We-Think-You-Ought-To-Go' song for the brass bands to play, and millions of poor fools go out and die like heroes without ever being quite sure what it's all about. It's happened before. Why shouldn't it happen again?
NORMAN: People may have learnt their lesson.
Simon makes an impatient gesture.
SIMON: I've given you the facts. Now, suppose you saw a man rushing down the street with a contorted face, screaming his head off, foaming at the mouth, and brandishing a large knife dripping with blood. If you like to be a fool, you can tell yourself that it's conceivable that his face is contorted because he's trying to swallow a bad egg, he's screaming because someone had just trodden on his toe, he's foaming at the mouth because he's just eaten a cake of soap, and he's just killed a chicken for dinner and is tearing off to tell his maiden aunt all about it. On the other hand, it's simpler and safer to assume that he's a homicidal maniac. In the same way, if you like to be fools, and refuse to see a complete story in what spells a complete story to me, you can go home right now.
ROGER: I suppose our job is to find Tiny Tim and see that he doesn't pinch the invention while the Cabinet is deciding what to do about it?
NORMAN: The Cabinet might find the decision taken out of their hands... without the intervention of Tiny Tim...
Simon looks at the two thoughtfully, as if seeing them for the first time.
SIMON: If we do nothing but suppress Tiny Tim, England will possess a weapon of war immeasurably more powerful than all the armaments of every other nation. If we stole that away, you might argue that sooner or later some other nation will probably discover something just as deadly, and then England will be at a disadvantage. But there are hundreds of Tiny Tims, and we can't suppress them all. Eventually when the war came we would find the enemy prepared to use our own weapon against us. There are gathered here today three slightly shop-soiled musketeers and one blessed angel. All of us have, in the course of our young lives, broken half the Commandments and most of the private laws of several countries. And yet, somehow, we've managed to keep intact certain ridiculous ideals - which seem to our perverted minds to justify our sins. Fighting is one of those ideals. Battle, murder, and sudden death. In fact, I guess we ought to be the last three men on the planet who should be fighting to STOP a war. But we're the exception. Most of the world is made of of people who DON'T live for battle, murder, and sudden death. Who wouldn't go singing and shouting and swaggering into battle, who'd just be herded into it like dumb cattle to the slaughter. And the three of us just happen to have tripped plumb over the blueprints for the newest slaughterhouse. Will you think me quite mad if I put it to you that three shabby, hell-busting outlaws might, by the grace of God...
There is a pause. Roger looks ready to jump out of his chair. Norman looks thoughtful.
SIMON: ... That invention must cease to be. And the brain that conceived it, which could recreate it - that must also cease to be. It is expedient that one man should die for many people...
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Date: 2007-08-04 05:23 am (UTC)