ve, sweetheart," I told her. "Because it's only being
played today. The world's first ball game ever broadcast in color."

"There was a game on Elmer's TV," Doreen insisted. "The picture was
bigger and the colors prettier, too."

"Absolutely impossible." I was a little sore. I hate kids who tell fibs.
"There never was a game broadcast in color before. And, anyway, you
won't find a color tube this big any place outside of a laboratory."

"But it's true, Bill." Marge looked at me, wide-eyed. "Elmer only has a
little seven-inch black and white set his uncle gave him. But he's
rigged up some kind of lens in front of it, and it projects a big color
picture on a white screen."

I saw that she was serious. My eyes bugged slightly. "Listen," I said,
"who is this Elmer character? I want to meet him!"

"He's my cousin from South America," Doreen answered. "He thinks
grownups are stupid." She turned to Marge. "I have to go to the
bathroom," she said primly.

"Through that door." Marge pointed.

Doreen trotted out, clutching her hat box.

* * * * *

"Elmer thinks grownups are stupid?" I howled. "Listen, how old is this
character who says silly-zation is doomed and can convert a black and
white broadcast into color?"

"He's thirteen," Marge told me. I goggled at her. "Thirteen," she
repeated. "His father is some South American scientist. His mother died
ten years ago."

I sat down beside her. I lit a cigarette. My hands were shaking. "Tell
me about him. _All_ about him."

"Why, I don't know very much," Marge said. "Last year Elmer was sick,
some tropic disease. His father sent him up here to recuperate. Now
Alice--that's his aunt, Doreen's mother--is at her wits' end, he makes
her so nervous."

I lit another cigarette before I realized I already had one. "And he
invents things? A boy genius? Young Tom Edison and all that?"

Marge frowned. "I suppose you could say that," she conceded. "He has the
garage full of stuff he's made or bought with the allowance his father
sends him. And if you come within ten feet of it without permission, you
get an electric shock right out of thin air. But that's only part of it.
It--" she gave a helpless gesture--"it's Elmer's effect on everybody.
Everybody over fifteen, that is. He sits there, a little, dark,
squinched-up kid wearing thick glasses and talking about how climatic
changes inside fifty years will flood half the world, cause the collapse
of c