“You see that you make the delivery effective! I’ll worry about the words.”
“You don’t understand, Bill. I don’t care whether the speech is politically effective or not; my job is to carry out a characterization. I can’t do that if I put into the mouth of the character words that he would never use; it would sound as forced and phony as a goat spouting Greek. But if I read the speech in words he would use, it will automatically be effective. He’s a great orator.”
“Listen, Smythe, you’re not hired to write speeches. You’re hired to-”
“Hold it, Bill!” Dak cut in. “And a little less of that ‘Smythe’ stuff, too. Well, Rog? How about it?”
Clifton said, “As I understand it, Chief, your only objection is to some of the phrasing?”
“Well, yes. I’d suggest cutting out that personal attack on Mr. Quiroga, too, and the insinuation about his financial backers. It doesn’t sound like real Bonforte to me.”
He looked sheepish. “That’s a bit I put in myself. But you may be right. He always gives a man the benefit of the doubt.” He remained silent for a moment. “You make the changes you think you have to. We’ll can it and look at the playback. We can always clip it-or even cancel completely ‘due to technical difficulties.'” He smiled grimly. “That’s what we’ll do, Bill.”
“Damn it, this is a ridiculous example of-”
“That’s how it is going to be, Bill.”
Corpsman left the room very suddenly. Clifton sighed. “Bill always has hated the notion that anybody but Mr. B. could give him instructions. But he’s an able man. Uh, Chief, how soon can you be ready to record? We patch in at sixteen hundred.”
“I don’t know. I’ll be ready in time.”
Penny followed me back into my office. When she closed the door I said, “I won’t need you for the next hour or so, Penny child. But you might ask Doc for more of those pills. I may need them.”
“Yes, sir.” She floated with her back to the door. “Chief?”
“Yes, Penny?”
“I just wanted to say don’t believe what Bill said about writing his speeches!”
“I didn’t. I’ve heard his speeches-and I’ve read this.”
“Oh, Bill does submit drafts, lots of times. So does Rog. I’ve even done it myself. He-he will use ideas from anywhere if he thinks they are good. But when he delivers a speech, it is his, every word of it.”
“I believe you. I wish he had written this one ahead of time.”
“You just do your best!”
I did. I started out simply substituting synonyms, putting in the gutty Germanic words in place of the “intestinal” Latin jawbreakers. Then I got excited and red in the face and tore it to pieces. It’s a lot of fun for an actor to mess around with lines; he doesn’t get the chance very often.
I used no one but Penny for my audience and made sure from Dak that I was not being tapped elsewhere in the ship-though I suspect that the big-boned galoot cheated on me and listened in himself. I had Penny in tears in the first three minutes; by the time I finished (twenty-eight and a half minutes, just time for station announcements), she was limp. I took no liberties with the straight Expansionist doctrine, as proclaimed by its official prophet, the Right Honorable John Joseph Bonforte; I simply reconstructed his message and his delivery, largely out of phrases from other speeches.
Here’s an odd thing-I believed every word of it while I was talking.
But, brother, I made a speech!
Afterwards we all listened to the playback, complete with full stereo of myself. Jimmie Washington was present, which kept Bill Corpsman quiet. When it was over I said, “How about it, Rog? Do we need to clip anything?”
He took his cigar out of his mouth and said, “No. If you want my advice, Chief, I’d say to let it go as it is.”
Corpsman left the room again-but Mr. Washington came over with tears leaking out of his eyes-tears are a nuisance in free fall; there’s nowhere for them to go. “Mr. Bonforte, that was beauti/ui.”