287: The next morning ...
Herb ’n’ Lorna, Chapter 7 continues
THE NEXT MORNING, Herb went to see his uncle Ben. “Uncle Ben,” he said, “I want to go back to Chacallit.”
“Good!” said Ben. “So do I. I’ve got an idea that is going to revolutionize the coarse-goods business.”
Herb looked at his uncle with the wariness he’d inherited from his mother. “This isn’t going to lose you money, is it, Uncle Ben?”
Benjamin colored, thrust his hands into his pockets, and cleared his throat. “It’s not kind of you to ask a question like that, Herb,” he said. “The Doughboy’s Dozen was a dandy idea, and I should have made out all right with it.” He pressed his lips together for a moment. “Commerce is a matter of subtleties, Herb,” he said, shaking his head. “Subtleties and chances. And luck. You’ve got to take chances if you’re going to get anywhere. You’ve got to understand the subtleties. You’ve got to have luck. I wasn’t lucky.”
“I don’t follow you, Uncle Ben,” said Herb.
“I made a little mistake, Herb,” said Ben. He held his hand up, showing a small gap between his thumb and forefinger. “A little mistake. I thought the war would last longer. I figured we’d still be in it now. If it had lasted another five months, just five months, we’d have come out all right on the Doughboy’s Dozen. If it were still on now, we’d be comfortable, Herb, very comfortable.”
“Uncle Ben!” said Herb.
“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” said Ben. “I don’t mean I wish it had lasted longer. I just mean that if it had, we’d be comfortable.” He shook his head. “Very comfortable,” he added. There was a silence between them for a while. Then Ben said suddenly, “But never mind that! It’s all over and done with, and I’ve got a terrific idea! Not only is it a good idea, but it doesn’t take any of our money.”
“That sounds like a great idea,” said Herb. “What is it?”
Ben grinned and reached into his pocket. He brought out something that he quickly concealed with both hands. He held his hands out, one cupped over the other, hiding and protecting something precious, as he might have held a tiny bird. Slowly, he opened his hands. There, cupped in Ben’s hands, was the world’s first piece of animated coarse goods.
Herb burst out laughing. “Gosh!” he said. “Will you look at that workmanship!”
Ben’s prototype was a crude piece of work. The two wax figures were badly modeled, thickset, lumpy, graceless. The mechanism was nothing more than a pair of heavy wire forms joined by a loop (not unlike the link swivels that Lorna once fashioned) and kept apart by a tiny coil spring. A crank turned a cam against the wire on which the man, the upper figure, was molded, and the action of the cam provided the jerky up-and-down motion that was all the animation of which the couple was capable. The act they performed was crude and basic. The woman just lay there; the man pounded away at her, up and down, in and out, grimly, mechanically.
“It needs work,” said Ben. “I know that. I don’t have the talent to do anything better than this. But you do. You do, Herb. You’re mechanically inclined. This kind of thing — much better than this, mind you, but this kind of thing — could be very successful, Herb. It could fit into a little case, like a pocket watch. It could go onto a chain just like a watch. Or it could take the place of a fob. Or maybe it would just be something a guy would carry in his pocket. The stem could make it work. You’d turn the stem instead of this crank, and — well, you see what I’m getting at, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said Herb, his mind already occupied with a set of interesting ideas prompted by the clumsy little couple. “I do.”
Ben’s idea was a good one, and Herb saw that it was immediately. Animated coarse goods could sell for much higher prices, at a much greater margin of profit, than static carvings. If Ben could get such things manufactured in Chacallit without risking any money, he might recoup the losses he’d taken on the Doughboy’s Dozen. Herb worked night and day for a week to produce a more successful prototype, fabricated from two female figures that had been part of a shipment of conventional, static coarse goods from Chacallit. First, he had to make the tools his work would require. Then he had to transform one of the figures into a male. He wasn’t entirely pleased with the success of this operation, but he knew that he wasn’t likely to achieve anything better, so he went on to the articulation of the figures.
Painstakingly, he cut the figures apart at the elbow, shoulder, hip, and knee joints and across their abdomens, so that he could achieve more versatile and fluid movement than Ben’s figures had been able to manage. As far as it was possible to do so, he concealed the articulating mechanism within the figures, which required him to drill through the arms and legs and to carve cavities in the figures where his tiny wires, cables, and pulleys could be concealed. The challenge to his ingenuity was exhilarating, much more so than designing the expandable shelves or the secret drawers or devising a repair for the mess-kit cup handles had been, and Herb took great pleasure in the work. In a week, he had finished, and, on the whole, he was pleased. Ben was overjoyed.
“Brilliant work, Herb!” he said. “Brilliant! You’re a genius at this, my boy. You’ve got a great future! Collectors are going to be after these, and they’re going to want different positions, different ways of — well — moving, and so on. You’re going to be able to name your price. You’ve got talent, Herb, real talent.”
Herb shook his head. “No, Uncle Ben,” he said. “I did this for you, but I won’t do any more. I’m getting out of coarse goods. I’m in love with Lorna Huber. She’s a wonderful girl, and I’m sure she’d be ashamed of me if she knew about this.”
[to be continued on Thursday, June 30, 2022]
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In Topical Guide 287, Mark Dorset considers Art: Movable Models of the Human Figure (Share the Experience) and Technical Explanations: The Musculoskeletal Structure of the Human Body that Enables It to Assume a Wide Variety of Sexual Positions from this episode.
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