“That’s in the second scene,” Montpelier murmured.
“Yes. From puts his hand on Ben’s shoulder . . . that’s got to come out.”
“Huh? Why?”
Good’s smile turned sickening. “Can’t you see? It’s too suggestive. One man standing behind another man and then touching him on the shoulder! Children will be watching this show, after all!”
Gabriel looked across the table at Montpelier. Even though half the writer’s face was covered by dark glasses,
Montpelier could read anguish and despair in his expression.
“I shorely do love my wife,” Connors was telling
Brenda, between bites of steak. “But, well, hell, honey . . .
I travel an awful lot. And I’m not exactly repulsive. When
I see somethin’ I like, I don’t turn my back to it.”
“That’s understandable,” Brenda said. She toyed with her salad for a moment, then asked, “And what does your wife do while you’re away on all these business trips?”
He dropped his fork into his lap. “Whattaya mean?”
Brenda widened her eyes. “I mean, does she fill in the time with volunteer work or social clubs or at the golf course? She doesn’t stay home with the children all the time, does she?”
Connors scowled at her. “No, I reckon she doesn’t. We belong to the country club. And she’s a voluntary librarian, over t’the school.”
“I see.”
He retrieved his fork and studied it for a moment, then changed the subject as he went back to the attack on his steak. “I wanted t’get yore opinion about how many TNT products we can use on the show? As props, I mean.”
“Well,” Brenda said, “the action’s supposed to be taking place seven hundred years in the future. I don’t think too many existing products will be in keeping with the scenario....”
Connors’ face brightened. “They’ll still be usin’ wristwatches, won’t they? We make wristwatches. And pocket radios, calculators, all sorts of stuff.”
“Yes, but if they’re the same products that are being advertised during the commercial breaks, then the viewers will. . . .”
“Well, spit, why not? The viewers’ll think that TNT’s stuff’s so good people’ll still be usin’ ‘em seven hunnert years from now. That’s terrific!”
“I don’t know if that will work. . . .”
“Shore it will. And I’ll tell yew somethin’ else, honey.
I don’t want any shows about computers breakin’ down or going ‘ crazy or any of that kinda stuff. We make computers that don’t break down or go crazy and we ain’t gonna sponsor any show that says otherwise.”
Brenda nodded. “I can understand that.”
“And where do you get your hair done?” Gloria Glory was asking Rita.
Earnest watched with growing concern as the two women chatted about clothes, hairdos, cosmetics, vitamins. Is Gloria probing Rita to find out about her real age? Does she know about Rita’s earlier life and her Vitaform Processing?
Across the table from him, Dulaq was demolishing a haunch of venison, using both hands to get at the meat.
If he had thumbs on his feet he’d use those, too. Earnest told himself with an inward wince of distaste.
Then he felt something odd. Something soft and tickly was rubbing against his left ankle. A cat? Not in a place like this. Don’t be absurd. There it was again, touching his ankle, just above his low-cut boots and below the cuff of his Fabulous Forties trousers.
He pulled his left foot back abruptly. It bumped into something. Glancing surreptitiously down to the floor, Earnest saw the heel of a woman’s shoe peeking out from under the tablecloth. A pink shoe. Gloria’s shoe. And the tickling, rubbing sensation started on his right ankle.
She’s playing toesies with me!
Earnest didn’t know what to do. One doesn’t rebuff the most powerful columnist in the business. Not if one wanted to remain in the business. Yet....
He frankly stared at Gloria’s face. She was still chatting with Rita, eyes focused—glowing, actually—on the beautiful starlet. But her toes were on Earnest’s ankle.
Suddenly his stomach heaved. He fought it down, manfully, but the thought of getting any closer to that mountain of female flesh distressed him terribly. She’s fat and ugly and . . . old! But what really churned his guts was the realization that whatever Gloria wanted, Gloria got.
There were no exceptions to the rule; in her own powerful way, she was quite irresistible.
Maybe it’s Dulaq she’s after. How to let her know she had the wrong ankle? Earnest pondered the problem and decided that the best course of action was a cautious retreat.
Slowly he edged his right foot back toward the safety of his own chair, where his left foot cowered. He tried not to look directly at Gloria as he did so, but out of the corner of his eye he noticed a brief expression of disappointment cross her bloated face.
His feet tucked firmly under his chair. Earnest watched as Gloria squirmed slightly and seemed to sink a little lower in her seat. Dulaq chomped away on his venison, oblivious to everything else around him. She’s made contact with him, Earnest raged to himself, he hasn’t even noticed it. He’ll ruin us all!
Rita was saying, “And I take all the megavitamins. Have you tried the new multiple complexes? They’re great for your complexion and they give you scads of energy. . . .”
Earnest squeezed his eyes shut with the fierceness of concentrated thought. She’s after Dulaq and he doesn’t pay attention to her, we’re all sunk. I’ll have to get into the act and (his stomach lurched) volunteer for duty with her. At least, she’ll be flattered enough to forget about Dulaq.
Trying not to think of what he’d have to do if Gloria liked him or was after him in the first place. Earnest quietly slipped off one boot and stuck his toes out cautiously toward Dulaq’s side of the table.
His stockinged toes bumped into a leg. He quickly pulled back. Trying not to frown, he wished he could see what was going on under the table. Gloria’s leg shouldn’t be extended so far; she was missing Dulaq entirely, no doubt
Very carefully, he sent his toes on a scouting mission around Gloria’s extended foot, trying to find where Dulaq’s massive hooves might be. And he bumped into another leg. Rita gave a stifled little yelp as he touched the second leg. It was hers.
Earnest froze. Only his eyes moved and they ping-ponged back and forth between Gloria and Rita. They’re playing toesies with each other! he realized, horrified.
But from the smiles on both their faces, he saw that he was the only one startled by the idea.
Dulaq kept on eating.
“. . . and here in Act Two, shot twenty-seven,” Eiton Good was saying, “you can’t have the girl and the man holding each other and kissing that way. This is a family show.”
Montpelier hadn’t bothered to order dinner. He kept a steady flow of beer coming to the table. It was a helluva way to get drunk, but Good didn’t seem to consider beer as sinful as hard liquor. Or wine, for some reason. So Montpelier sipped beer and watched the world get fuzzier and fuzzier.
As Ron Gabriel bled to death.
“They can’t hug and kiss?” Gabriel was a very lively corpse. He was bouncing up and down as he sat in the booth. The seat cushions complained squawkingly under him. “They’re lovers, for god’s sake....”
“Please!” Good closed his eyes as tightly as his mind. “Do not take the Deity’s name in vain.”
“What?” It was a noise like a goosed duck.
“You don’t seem to understand,” Good said with nearly infinite patience, “that children will be watching this show. Impressionable young children.”
“So they can’t see two adults kissing each other? They can’t see an expression of love?”
“It could affect their psyches. It would be an inconsistency in their young lives, watching adults act lovingly toward each other.”
Gabriel shot a glance at Montpelier. The executive merely leaned his head on his hand and propped his elbow on the table next to the beer. It was an age-old symbol of noninvolved surrender.
“But . . . but. . . .” Gabriel sputtered and flapped back through several pages of Good’s notes, startling the gentleman. “. . . back here in shot seventeen, where the two Capulets beat up the Montague . . . you didn’t say anything about that. I was worried about the violence....”
“That’s not ‘violence,’ Mr. Gabriel,” Good said, with a knowing condescension in his voice. “That’s what is called ‘a fight scene.’ It’s perfectly permissible. Children fight all the time. It won’t put unhealthy new ideas into their heads.”
“Besides,” Montpelier mumbled, “maybe we can get
Band-Aids or somebody to sponsor that segment of the show.”
Good smiled at him.
“What about the night life in this hyar town?” Connors was asking. “I hear they got bellydancers not far from here.”
Brenda nodded. “Yes, that’s right. They do.”
“Y’all wanna come along with me?”
“I’d love to, but I really can’t. We start shooting again tomorrow and I have to get up awfully early.”
Connors’ normally cheerful face turned sour. “Shee-it, I shore don’t like the idea of prowlin’ around a strange city all by meself.”
Thinking about the Mexican wife and six children back home in Texas, Brenda found herself in a battle with her conscience. She won.
“I’ll tell you what, Mr. Connors . . . there are a couple of girls here at the hotel—they’re going to be used as extras in some of our later tapings. But they’re not working tomorrow.” Not the day shift! “Would you like me to call one of them for you?”
Connors’ face lit up. “Starlets?” he gasped.
Hating herself, Brenda said, “Yes, they have been called that.”
Earnest was still in a state of shock. Dulaq had polished off two desserts and was sitting back in his chair, mouth slack and eyes drooping, obviously falling asleep. Gloria and Rita had joined hands over the table now, as well as feet underneath. They spoke to each other as if no one else was in the restaurant.
But Earnest reconciled himself with the thought, at least we ought to get some good publicity out of the old gasbag.
Gabriel was actually pulling at his hair.
“But why?” His voice was rising dangerously, like the steam pressure in a volcano vent just before the eruption.
“Why can’t they fight with laser guns? That’s what people will use seven hundred years in the future!”
His beneficent smile absorbing all arguments. Good explained, “Two reasons: first, if children tried to use lasers they could hurt themselves....”
“But they can’t buy lasers! People don’t buy lasers for their kids. There aren’t any laser toys.”
Good waited for Gabriel to subside, then resumed:
“Second, most states have very strict safety laws about using lasers. You wouldn’t be able to employ them on the sound stage.”
“But we weren’t going to use real lasers! We were going to fake it with flashlights!”
Real lasers are too expensive, Montpelier added silently, from the slippery edge of sobriety.
“No, I’m sorry.” Good’s smile looked anything but that.
“Lasers are on FINC’s list of forbidden weapons and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Lasers are out. Have them use swords, instead.”
“Swords!” Gabriel screamed. “Seven hundred years in the future, aboard an interstellar spaceship, you want them to use swords! Aaarrgghhhh....”
Gabriel jumped up on the booth’s bench and suddenly there was a butterknife in his hand. Good, sitting beside him, gave a startled yell and dived under the table.
Gabriel clambered up on top of the table and started kicking Good’s notes into shreds that were wafted into the air and sucked up into the ceiling vents.
“I’ll give you swords!” he screamed, jumping up and down on the table like a spastic flamenco dancer. Montpelier’s beer toppled into his lap.
Good scrambled out past Montpelier’s legs, scuttled out of the booth on all fours, straightened up and started running for his life. Gabriel gave a war screech that couldn’t be heard outside the booth, even though it temporarily deafened Montpelier, leaped off the table and took off in pursuit of the little censor, still brandishing his butterknife.
They raced past Connors and Brenda, who bad just gotten up from their booth and were heading for the foyer.
“What in hell was that?” Connors shouted.
Brenda stared after Gabriel’s disappearing, howling, butterknife-brandishing form. The waiters and incoming customers gave him a wide berth as he pursued Good out beyond the entryway.
“Apache dancers, I guess,” Brenda said. “Part of the floorshow. Very impromptu.”
Connors shook his head. “Never saw nuthin’ like them back in Texas and we got plenty Apaches.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“Hey,” he said, remembering. “You were gonna make a phone call fer me.”
Since their table was not soundproofed, Earnest heard
Gabriel’s cries for blood and vengeance before he saw what was happening. He turned to watch the censor fleeing in panic and the enraged writer chasing after him.
No one else at the table took notice: Dulaq was snoring peacefully; Gloria and Rita were making love with their eyes, fingertips and toes.
Earnest smiled. The little bastard’s finished now, for sure. I -won’t even have to phone Finger about him. The show is mine.
14: THE EXODUS
It was snowing.
Toronto International Jetport looked like a scene from Doctor Zhivago. Snowbound travelers slumped on every bench, chair and flat surface where they could sit or lie down. Bundled in their overcoats because the terminal building was kept at a minimum temperature ever since Canada had decided to Go Independent on Energy, the travelers slept or grumbled or moped, waiting for the storm to clear and the planes to fly again.
Ron Gabriel stood at the floor-to-ceiling window of Gate 26, staring out at the wind-whipped snow that was falling thickly on the other side of the double-paned glass.
He could feel the cold seeping through the supposedly vacuum-insulated window. The cold, gray bitterness of defeat was seeping into his bones. The Unimerican jetliner outside was crusted over with snow; it was beginning to remind Gabriel of the ancient wooly mammoths uncovered in the ice fields of Siberia.
He tamed and surveyed the waiting area of Gate 26.
Two hundred eleven people sitting there, going slowly insane with boredom and uncertainty. Gabriel had already made dates with seventeen of the likeliest-looking girls, including the chunky security guard who ran the magnetic weapons detector.
He watched her for a moment. She was sitting next to the walkthrough gate of her apparatus, reading a comic book. Gabriel wondered how bright she could be, accepting a date from a guy she had just checked out for the flight to Los Angeles. Maybe she’s planning to come to L.A; he thought. Then he wondered briefly why he had tried to make the date with her, when he was leaving Toronto forever. He shrugged. Something to do. If we have to stay here much longer, maybe I can get her off into....
“Ron!”
He swung around at the sound of his name.
“Ron! Over here!”
A woman’s voice. He looked beyond the moribund waiting travelers, following the sound of her voice to the corridor outside the gate area.
It was Brenda. And Bill Oxnard. Grinning and waving at him.
Gabriel left his trusty suitcase and portable typewriter where they sat and hurried through the bundled bodies, crumpled newspapers, choked ashtrays and tumbled suitcases of the crowd, out past the security girl—who didn’t even look up from her Kookoo Komix—and out into the corridor.
“Hey, what’re you two doing here? You’re not trying to get out of town, are you?”
“No,” Brenda said. “We wanted to say goodbye to you at the hotel, but you’d already left.”
“I always leave early,” Gabriel said.
“And when we heard that the storm was expected to last several hours and the airport was closed down, we figured you might like some company,” Oxnard explained.
“Hey, that’s nice of you. Both of you.”
“We’re sorry to see you leave, Ron,” Brenda said; her throaty voice sounded sincere.
Gabriel shrugged elaborately. “Well . . . what the hell is left for me to stay here? They’ve shot the guts out of my scripts and they won’t let me do diddely-poo with the other writers and the whole idea of the show’s been torn to shreds.”
“It’s a lousy situation,” Oxnard agreed.
Brenda bit her lip for a moment, then—with a damn the torpedoes expression on her face—she said, “I’m glad you’re going, Ron.”
He looked at her. “Thanks a lot.”
“You know I don’t mean it badly. I’m glad you found the strength to break free of this mess.”
“I had a lot of help,” Gabriel said, “from Finger and
Earnest and the rest of those bloodsuckers.”
Brenda shook her head. “That’s not what I’m talking about. I thought Rita really had you twisted around her little finger.”
“She did,” Gabriel admitted. “But I got untwisted.”
“Good for you,” Brenda said. “She’s trouble.”
Oxnard said, “I just hate to see you getting screwed out of the money you ought to be getting.”
“Oh, I’m getting all the money,” Gabriel said. “They can’t renege on that . . . the Screen Writers Guild would start napalming Titanic if they tried anything like that. I’ll get paid for both the scripts I wrote....”
“But neither one’s going to be produced,” Oxnard said.
“Earnest has scrapped them both.”
“So what? I’ll get paid for ‘em. And I’ve been getting my regular weekly check as Story Editor. And they still have to pay me my royalties for each show, as the Creator.”
With a smile, Brenda asked, “You’re going to let them keep your name on the credits?”
“Hell no!” Gabriel grinned back, but it was a Pyrrhic triumph. “They’ll have to use my Guild-registered pen name: Victor Lawrence Talbot Frankenstein.”
“Oh no!” Brenda howled.
Oxnard frowned. “I don’t get it.”
“Frankenstein and the Wolfman,” Gabriel explained. “I save that name for shows that’ve been screwed up. It’s my way of telling friends that the show’s a clinker, a grade
B horror movie.”
“His friends,” Brenda added, giggling, “and everybody in the industry.”
“Oh.” But Oxnard still looked as if he didn’t really understand.
Laughing at the thought of his modest revenge, Gabriel said, “Lemma grab my bags and take you both to dinner.”
“The restaurants are closed,” Oxnard said. “We checked.
They ran out of food about an hour ago.”
Gabriel held up one hand, looking knowledgeable:
“Have no fear. I know where the aircrews have their private cafeteria. One of the stewardesses gave me the secret password to get in there.”
Oxnard watched the little guy scamper back through the now-dozing security girl’s magnetic detector portal and head for his bags, by the window. It was still snowing heavily.
“Victor Lawrence Talbot Frankenstein?” he muttered.
Brenda said to him, “It’s the only satisfaction he’s going to get out of this series.”
“He’s getting all that money....”
She rested a hand on his shoulder and said, “It’s not really all that much money, compared to the time and effort he’s put in. And . . . well. Bill . . . suppose your new holographic system won the Nobel Prize. . . .”
“They don’t give Nobels for inventions.”
“But just suppose,” Brenda insisted. “And then one of the people who decide on the Prize comes to you and says they’re going to name Gregory Earnest as the inventor.
You’ll get the money that goes with the Prize, but he’ll get the recognition.”
“Ohh. Now I see.”
Gabriel came back, lugging his suitcase and typewriter.
As they started down the corridor, Oxnard took the typewriter from him.
“Thanks.”
“Nothing to it.”
Brenda said, “Looks like we’ll be here a long time.”
“Good,” said Oxnard. “It’ll give me a chance to ask you some questions about a new idea of mine.”
“What’s that?” Gabriel asked.
Oxnard scratched briefly at his nose. “Oh, it’s just a few wild thoughts I put together . . . but it might be possible to produce a three-dee show without using any actors.
You. ...”
“What?” Gabriel looked startled. Brenda pursed her lips.
Oxnard nodded as they walked. “After watching how pitiful Dulaq is as an actor, I got to thinking that there’s no fundamental reason why you couldn’t take one holographic picture of him—a still shot—and then use a computer to electronically move his image any way you want to ... you know, make him walk, run, stand up, sit down. Some of the work they’ve been doing at the VA with hemiplegics....”
Gabriel stopped and dropped his suitcase to the floor.
Brenda and Oxnard took a step or two more, then turned back toward him.
“Don’t say anything more about it,” Gabriel warned.
“Why not?” Oxnard looked totally surprised at his reaction. “You could do away with....”
“He’s right,” Brenda agreed. “Forget about it. You’ll produce nothing but trouble.”
Oxnard stared at them both. “But you could lower the costs of producing shows enormously. You wouldn’t have to hire any act....”
Gabriel put a hand over his mouth. “For Chrissake, you wanna start a revolution in L.A.? Every actor in the world will come after you, with guns!”
Oxnard shrugged as Gabriel took his hand away. “It’s just an idea . . . might be too expensive to work out in real-time.” He sounded hurt.
“It would cause more trouble than it’s worth,” Brenda said, as they resumed walking. “Believe me, a producer would have to be utterly desperate to try a scheme like that.”
HONOLULU PINEAPPLES WIN EIGHTH STRAIGHT,
38-6 QB Gene Toho Passes
For Three Scores
Gregory Earnest stood beside the reclining plush barber chair, watching the skinny little old man daub Francois Dulaq’s rugged features with makeup.
“What is it this time, Francois?” he asked, barely suppressing his growing impatience.
Dulaq’s eyes were closed while the makeup man carefully filled in the crinkles at the corners and painted over the bags that had started to appear under them.
“I gotta leave early t’day. Th’team’s catchin’ the early plane to Seattle.”
Earnest felt startled. “I thought you were taking the special charter flight, later tonight. You can still be in Seat- the tomorrow morning, in plenty of time for the game.”
“Naw ... I wanna go wit’ th’guys. They’re startin’ t’razz me about being’ a big TV star . . . and da coach ain’t too happy, neither. Sez I oughtta get t’th’practices ... my scorm’s off and th’guys’re gettin’ a little sore at me.”
“But we can’t shoot your scenes in just a few hours,”
Earnest protested.
“Sure ya can.”
Earnest grabbed the nearest thing at hand, a tissue box, and banged it viciously on the counter-top. Dulaq opened one eye and squinted at him, in the mirror.
“Francois, you’ve got to understand,” Earnest said.
“We’ve stripped your scenes down as far as we can. We haven’t given you anything more complicated to say than
‘Let’s go,’ or ‘Oh, no you don’t.’ We’re dubbing all the longer speeches for you. But you’ve got to let us photograph you! You’re the star, for goodness’ sake! The people have to see you on the show!”
“I ain’t gonna be a star of nuthin’ if I don’t start scorin’ and th’team don’t start winnin’.”
Earnest’s mind spun furiously. “Well, I suppose we could use Fernando to stand in for the long shots and the reverse angles, when your back’s to the camera.”
“He still limpin’?”
“A little. That was some fight scene.”
“Dat’s th’only fun I’ve had since we started dis whole show.”
The makeup man pursed his lips, inspected his handiwork and then said, “Okay, mon ami. That’s the most I can do for you.”
Dulaq bounded up from the chair.
“Come on,” Earnest said, “you’re already late for the first scene.”
As they left the makeup room and headed down the darkened corridor toward the studio, Dulaq put his arm around Earnest’s shoulders. “Sorry I gotta buzz off, but th’team’s important, y’know.”
“I know,” Earnest said, feeling dejected. “It’s just . . . well, I thought we were going to have dinner tonight.”
Dulaw squeezed him. “Don’ worry. I’ll be back Wensay night. I’ll take d’early plane. You meet me at th’ airport, okay?”
Earnest brightened. “All right. I will.” And he thrilled to the powerful grip he was in.
“But you can’t walk out on us!” Brenda pleaded.
Mitch Westerly was slowly walking along the windswept parking lot behind Badger’s square red-brick studio building.
The night was Arctic cold and dark; even the brilliant stars seemed to radiate cold light.
“It’s h ... hopeless,” Westerly said.
His head was bent low, chin sunk into the upraised collar of his mackinaw, hands stuffed into the pockets. The wind tousled his long hair. Brenda paced along beside him, wrapped in an ankle-length synthetic fur coat that was warmed electrically.
“You can’t give up now.” Brenda said. “You’re the only shred of talent left in the crew! You’re the one who’s been holding this show together. If you go. .”
Westerly pulled one gloved hand out of his pocket.
Under the bluish arclamps the leather looked strange, otherwordly. The hand was trembling, shaking like the strengthless hand of a palsied old man.
“See that?” Westerly said. “The only way I can get it to stop ... make my whole body shop shaking ... is to pop some cat. Nothing less will do the trick anymore.”
“Cat? But I thought...”
“I kicked it once ... in the mountains, far away from here. But I’m right back on it again.”
Brenda looked up at the director’s face. It looked awful and not merely because of the lighting. “I didn’t know,
Mitch. How could....”
It took an effort to keep his teeth from chattering. Westerly plunged his hand back into his pocket and resumed walking.
“How can anybody stay straight in this nuthouse?” he asked. “Dulaq is bouncing in and out of the studio whenever he feels like it. Half the time we have to shoot around him or use a double. Rita’s spending most of her time with that snake from F1NC ... I think she’s posing for pictures for him. He told me he’s an amateur photographer.”
Brenda huffed, “Oh for god’s sake!”
“And when she’s on the set all she wants to do is look glamorous. She can’t act for beans.”
“But you’ve gotten four shows in the can.”
“In four weeks, yeah. And each week my cat bill goes up. Earnest is making a fortune off me.”
“Earnest? He’s supplying you with cat?”
“It’s all legal... he tells me.”
“Mitch . . . can you stay for just another three weeks?
Until we get the first seven shows finished?”
He shook his head doggedly. “I’d do it for you, Brenda ... if I could. But I know what I went through the last time with cat. If I don’t stop now I’ll be really hooked.
Bad. It’s me or the show ... another three weeks will kill me. Honest.”
She said nothing.
Earnest has a couple of local people who can direct the other three segments. Hell, the way things are going, anybody could walk off the street and do it.”
Brenda asked, “Where will you go? What will you do?”
‘To the mountains, I guess.”
“Katmandu again?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. I’d like to try Aspen, if Finger will let me off the hook. I owe some debts. ...”
“I’ll take care of that,” Brenda said firmly. “B.F. will let you go, don’t worry.”
He looked at her from under raised eyebrows. “Can you really swing it for me?”
Brenda said, “Yes. I will . . . but what will you do in Aspen?”
He almost smiled. “Teach, maybe. There’s a film colony there... lots of eager young kids.”
“That would be good,” Brenda said.
He stopped walking. They were at his car. “I hate to leave you in this mess, Brenda. But I just can’t cut it anymore.”
“I know,” she said. “Don’t worry about it. You’re right, the show’s a disaster. There’s no sense hanging on.”
He reached out and grasped her by the shoulders.
Lightly. Without pulling her toward him. “Why are you staying?” he asked. “Why do you put up with all this bullshit?”
“Somebody’s got to. It’s my job.”
“Ever think of quitting?”
“Once every hour, at least.”
“Want to come to Aspen with me?”
She stepped closer to him and let her head rest against his chest. “Its a tempting thought. And you’re very sweet to ask me. But I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Reasons. My own reasons.”
“And they’re none of my business, right?”
She smiled up at him. “You’ve got enough problems.
You don’t need mine. Go on, go off to the mountains and breathe clean air and forget about this show. I’ll square it with B.F.”
Abruptly, he let go of her and reached for the car door.
“Can I drop you off at the hotel?”
“I’ve got my own car.” She pointed to it, sitting alone and cold looking a few empty rows down the line.
“Okay,” he said. “Goodbye. And thanks.”
“Good luck, Mitch.”
She walked to her car and stood beside it as he gunned his engine and drove off.
PINEAPPLES CLINCH PLAYOFF SLOT
AS TOHO LEADS 56-13 MASSACRE
If I look like Orson Welles, Gregory Earnest told himself as he strode purposefully onto the set. Script by Gregory
Earnest. Produced by Gregory Earnest. Directed by Gregory Earnest.
He stood there for a magnificent moment, clad in the traditional dungarees and tee shirt of a big-time director, surrounded by the crew and actors who stood poised waiting for his orders.
“Very well,” he said to them. “Let’s do this one right.”
Four hours later he was drenched with perspiration and longing for the safety of his bed.’
Dulaq had just delivered the longest speech in his script:
“Oh yeah? We’ll see about dat!”
He stood bathed in light, squinting at the cue cards that had his next line printed in huge red block letters, while the actor in the scene with him backed away and gave his line:
“From, we’re going to crash! The ship’s out of control!”
Dulaq didn’t answer. He peered at the cue card, then turned toward Earnest and bellowed, “What th’hell’s dat word?”
“Cut!” Earnest yelled. His throat was raw from saying it so often.
“Which one?” the script girl asked Dulaq.
“Dat one ... wit’ de ‘S.’ “
“Stabilize,” the girl read.
Dulaq shook his head and muttered to himself, “Stabilize.
Stabilize. Stabilize.”
This is getting to be a regular routine, Brenda told herself.
I feel like the Welcome Wagon Lady ... in reverse.
She was at the airport again, sitting at the half-empty bar with Les Montpelier. His travelbags were resting on the floor between their stools.
“I don’t understand why you’re staying,” Montpelier said, toying with the plastic swizzle stick in his Tijuana
Teaser.
“B.F. asked me to,” she said.
“So you’re going to stick it out until the bloody end?” he asked rhetorically. “The last soldier at Fort Zinderneuf.”
She took a sip of her vodka gimlet. “Bill Oxnard still comes up every weekend. I’m not completely surrounded by idiots.”
Montpelier shook his head, more in pity than in sorrow.
“I could ask B.F. to send somebody else up here ... hell, there’s no real reason to have anybody here. The seventh show is finished shooting. All they have to do now is the editing. No sense starting the next six until we get the first look at the ratings.”
“The editing can be tricky,” Brenda said. “These people that Earnest has hired don’t have much experience with three-dee editing.”
“They don’t have much experience with anything.”
They work cheap, though.”
Montpelier lifted his glass. “There is that. I’ll bet this show cost less than any major network presentation since the Dollar Collapse of Eighty-Four.”
“Do you think that there’s any chance the show will last beyond the first seven weeks?” Brenda asked.
“Are you kidding?”
“Thank god,” she said. “Then I can go home as soon as the editing’s finished.”
The PA. system blared something unintelligible about a flight to Los Angeles, Honolulu and Tahiti.
“That’s me,” Montpelier said. “I’d better dash.” He started rumbling in his pocket for cash.
“Go on, catch your plane,” Brenda said. “I’ll take care of the tab.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Give B.F. my love.”
“Will do.” He grabbed his travelbags and hurried out of the bar.
Brenda turned from watching him hurry out the doorway to the three-dee set behind the bar. The football game was on. Honolulu was meeting Pittsburgh and the Pineapples’ star quarterback. Gene Toho, was at that very minute throwing a long pass to a player who was racing down the sideline. He caught the ball and ran into the end zone. The referee raised both arms to signal a touchdown.
Brenda raised her glass. “Hail to thee, blithe spirit,” she said, and realized she was slightly drunk.
The guy on the stool at her left nudged her with a gentle elbow. “Hey, you a Pineapples fan?”
He wasn’t bad looking, if you ignored the teeth, Brenda decided. She smiled at him. “Perforce, friend. Perforce.”
Even though he knew better than anyone else exactly what to expect, the sight still exhilarated Bill Oxnard.
He was sitting in the darkened editing room—more a closet than a real room. He knew that what he was watching was a holographic image of a group of actors performing a teleplay. (A poor teleplay, but that didn’t matter much, really.)
Yet what he saw was Francois Dulaq, life-sized, three-dimensional, full, real, solid, standing before him. He was squinting a little and seemed to be staring off into space.
Oxnard knew that he was actually trying to read his cue cards. He wore an Elizabethan costume of tights, tunic and cape. A sword dangled from his belt and got in his way whenever he tried to move. His boots clumped on the wooden deck of the set. But he was as solid as real flesh, to the eye.
“You!” Dulaq was saying, trying to sound surprised.
“You’re here!”
“You” was Rita Yearling, who in her own overly heated way, was every bit as bad an actor as Dulaq. But who cared? All she had to do was try to stand up and breathe a little. Her gown was metallic and slinky; it clung in all the right places, which was everywhere on her body. She was wearing a long flowing golden wig and her child- innocent face gave the final touch of maddening desirability to her aphrodisiacal anatomy.
“I have waited for you,” she panted. “I have crossed time and space to be with you. I have renounced my family and my home because I love you.”
“Caught up with you at last!” announced a third performer, stepping out of the shadows where the holo image ended. This one was dressed very much like Dulaq, complete with sword, although his costume was blood red whereas Dulaq’s was (what else?) true blue.
“You’re coming back with me,” the actor recited to Rita Yearling. “Our father is lying ill and dying, and only the sight of you can cure him.”
“Oh!” gasped Rita, as she tried to stuff both her fists in her mouth.
“Take yer ban’s off her!” Dulaq cried, even though the other actor had forgotten to grasp Rita’s arm.
“We can dub over that,” an engineer muttered in the darkness beside Oxnard.
“Don’t try to interfere, Montague dog,” said the actor.
“Stand back or I’ll blast you.” But instead of pulling out the laser pistol that was in the original script, he drew his sword. It flexed deeply, showing that it was made of rubber.
“Oh yeah?” adlibbed Dulaq. And he drew his rubber sword.
They swung at each other mightily, to no avail. The engineers laughed and suddenly reversed the tape. The fight went backwards, and the two heroes slid their swords back into their scabbards. Halfway. Then the tape went forward again and they fought once more. Back and forth.
It looked ludicrous. It was ludicrous and Oxnard joined in the raucous laughter of the editing crew.
“Lookit the expression on Dulaq’s face!”
“He’s trying to hit Randy’s sword and he keeps missing it!”
“Hey, hey, hold it ... right there . . . yeah. Take a look at that terrific profile.”
“Cheez . . . is she built!”
Oxnard had to admit that structurally, Rita was as impressive as the Eiffel Tower—or perhaps the Grand Teton Mountains.
“A guy could bounce to death off those!”
“What a way to go!”
“C’mon, we got work to do. It’s almost quittin’ time.”
The fight ran almost to its conclusion and then suddenly the figures got terribly pale. They seemed to blanch out, like figures in an overexposed snapshot. The scene froze with Dulaq pushing his sword in the general direction of his antagonist, the other actor holding his sword down almost on the floor so Dulaq could stab him and Rita in the midst of a stupefyingly deep breath.
“See what I mean?” came the chief engineer’s voice, out of the darkness. “It does that every couple minutes.”
Oxnard looked down at the green glowing gauges on the control board in front of him. “I told them not to light the set so brightly,” he said. “You don’t need all that candlepower with laser imaging.”
“Listen,” said the chief engineer, “if they had any smarts, would they be doin’ this for a living?”
Oxnard studied the information on the gauges.
“Can we fix it?” one of the editors asked. Oxnard smelled pungent smoke and saw that two of the assistants were lighting up in the dimness of the room.
“Well have to feed the tape through the quality control computer, override the intensity program and manually adjust the input voltage,” Oxnard said.
The chief engineer swore under his breath. “That’ll take all humpin’ night.”
“A few hours, at least.”
“There goes dinner.”
Oxnard heard himself say, “You guys don’t have to hang around. I can do it myself.”
He could barely make out the editor’s sallow, thin face in the light from the control board. “By yourself? That ain’t kosher.”
“Union rules?”
“Naw ... but it ain’t fair for you to do our work. You ain’t gettin’ paid for it.”
Oxnard grinned at him. “I’ve got nothing else to do.
Go on home. I’ll take care of it and you can get back to doing the real editing tomorrow.”
One of the assistants walked out into the area where the holographic images stood. He wasn’t walking too steadily. Taking the joint from his mouth, he blew smoke in Dulaq’s “face.”
“Okay, tough guy,” he said to the stilled image. “If you’re so tough, let’s see you take a swing at me. G’wan ... I dare ya!” He stuck his chin out and tapped at it with an upraised forefinger. “Go on ... right here on the button. I dare ya!”
Dulaq’s image didn’t move. “Hah! Chicken. I thought so.”
The guy turned to face Rita’s image. He walked all around her, almost disappearing from Oxnard’s view when he stepped behind her. Oxnard could see him, ghostlike, through Rita’s image. The other assistant drew in a deep breath and let it out audibly. “Boy,” he said, with awe in his voice, “they really are three-dimensional, aren’t they? You can walk right around them.”
“Too bad you can’t pinch ‘em,” said the chief engineer.
“Or do anything else with ‘em,” the assistant said.
Oxnard lost track of time. He simply sat alone at the control desk, working the buttons and keys that linked his fingers with the computer tape and instruments that controlled what stayed on the tape.
It was almost pleasant, working with the uncomplaining machinery. He shut off the image-projector portion of the system, so that he wouldn’t have to see or hear the dreadful performances that were on the tape. He was interested in the technical problem of keeping the visual quality of the images constant; that he could do better by watching the gauges than by watching the acting.
All of physics boils down to reading a dial, he remembered from his undergraduate days. He chuckled to himself.
“And all physicists are basically loners,” he said aloud. Not because they want to be. But if you spend enough time reading dials, you never learn how to read people.
Someone knocked at the door. Almost annoyed, Oxnard called, “Who is it?” without looking up from the control board.
Light spilled across his field of view as the door opened.
“What are you doing here so late?”
He looked up. It was Brenda, her lean, leggy form silhouetted in the light from the hallway.
“Trying to make this tape consistent, on the optical quality side,” he said. Then, almost as an afterthought,
“What about you? What time is it?”
“Almost nine. I had a lot of paperwork to finish.”
“Oh.” He took his hands off the control knobs and gestured to her. “Come on in. I didn’t realize I’d been here so long.”
“Aren’t you going back to L.A. tomorrow?” Brenda asked. She stepped into the tiny room, but left the door open behind her.
He nodded. “Yes. That’s why I thought I’d stick with this until the job’s done. The editors can’t handle this kind of problem. They’re good guys, but they’d probably rum the tape.”
“Which show are you working on?” Brenda asked, pulling up a stool beside him.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. They all look alike to me.”
Brenda agreed. “Will you be at it much longer?”
“Almost finished . . . another ten-fifteen minutes or so.”
“Can I buy you dinner afterward?” she asked.
He started to say no, but held up. “I’ll buy you some dinner.”
“I can charge it off to Titanic. Let B.F. buy us both dinner.”
With a sudden grin, he agreed.
He worked in silence for a few minutes, conscious of her looking over his shoulder, smelling the faint fragrance of her perfume, almost feeling the tickling of a stray wisp of her long red hair.
“Bill?”
“What?” Without looking up from the control board.
“Why do you keep coming up here every weekend?”
“To make sure the equipment works okay.”
“Oh. That’s awfully good of you.”
He clicked the power off and looked up at her. “That’s a damned lie,” he admitted, to himself as much as to her.
“I could stay down at Malibu and wait for you to have some trouble. Or send one of my technicians.”
Brenda’s face didn’t look troubled or surprised. ‘Then why?”
“Because I like being with you,” he said.
“Really?”
“You know I do.”
She didn’t look away, didn’t laugh, didn’t frown. “I hoped you did. But you never said a word. . . .”
Suddenly his hands were embarrassingly awkward appendages.
They wouldn’t stay still.
“Well,” he said, scratching at his five o’clock shadow,
“I guess I’m still a teenager in some ways . . . retarded ... I was afraid . . . afraid you wouldn’t be interested in me.”
“You were wrong,” she said simply.
She leaned toward him and his hands reached for her and he kissed her. She felt warm and safe and good.
They decided to have dinner in his hotel room. Oxnard felt giddy, as if he were hyperventilating or celebrating New Year’s Eve a month early. As they drove through the dark frigid night toward the hotel, he asked:
“The one thing I was afraid of was that you’d walk out on the show, like everybody else has.”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” Brenda said, very seriously.
“Why not?”
“B.F. wouldn’t let me.”
“You mean you allow him to run your whole life? He tells you to freeze your . . . your nose off here in Toronto all winter, on a dead duck of a show, and you do it?”
She nodded. “That’s right.”
He pulled the car into the hotel’s driveway as he asked,
“Why don’t you just quit? There are lots of other studios and jobs....”
“I can’t quit Titanic.”
“Why not? What’s Finger got on you?”
“Nothing. Except that he’s my father and I’m the only person in the world that he can really trust.”
“He’s your father?”
Brenda grinned broadly at him. “Yes. And you’re the only person in the whole business who knows it. So please don’t tell anyone else.”
Oxnard was stunned.
He was still groggy, but grinning happily, as they walked arm-in-arm through the hotel lobby, got into an elevator and headed for his room. Neither of them noticed the three-dee set in the lobby; it was tuned to the evening news. A somber-faced sports reporter was saying:
“There’s no telling what effect Toho’s injury will have on the playoff chances of the Honolulu Pineapples. As everyone knows, he’s the league’s leading passer.”
The other half of the Folksy News Duo, a curly haired anchorperson in a gingham dress, asked conversationally,
“Isn’t it unusual for a player to break his leg in the shower?”
“That’s right, Arlene,” said the sports announcer. “Just one of those freak accidents. A bad break,” he said archly,
“For the Pineapples and their fans.”
The woman made a disapproving clucking sound.
“That’s terrible.”
“It certainly is. They’re probably going crazy down in
Las Vegas right now, refiguring the odds for the playoff games.”
“You don’t understand!” Bernard Finger shouted.
“Every cent I had was tied up in that lousy football team! I’m broke! Ruined!”
15. THE WARNING
He was emptying the drawers of his desk into an impossibly thin attache case. Most of the papers and mememtoes—including a miniature Emmy given him as a gag by a producer, whom Finger promptly fired—were missing the attache case and spilling across the polished surface of the desk or onto the plush carpet.
The usually impressive office reminded Les Montpelier of the scene in a war movie where the general staff has to beat a fast retreat and everybody’s busy stripping the headquarters and burning what they can’t carry.
“But you couldn’t have taken everything out of Titanic’s cash accounts,” Montpelier said, trying to remain calm in the face of Finger’s panic.
“Wanna bet?” Finger was bent over, pulling papers out of the bottommost drawer, discarding most of them and creating a miniature blizzard in the doing.
Montpelier found himself leaning forward tensely in his chair. “But we still get our paychecks. The accounting department is still paying its bills. Isn’t it?”
Finger straightened up and eyed him with a look of scorn for such naivete. “Sure, sure. You know Morrie Witz, down in accounting?”
“Morrie the Mole?”
“Who else? He worked out a system for me. We keep enough in the bank for two weeks of salaries and bills.
Everything else we’ve been investing in the Pineapples.
Every time they win, we bet on ‘em again. The odds keep going down, but we keep making sure money. Better than the stock market.”
“Then you must have a helluva cash reserve right now,” Montpelier said.
“Its already bet!” Finger bawled. “And the Pineapples play the Montana Sasquatches this afternoon. . . .” He glanced at the clock on his littered desk. “They’re already playing.”
“Shall I turn on the game?” Montpelier asked, starting to get up from his chair.
“No! I can’t bear to watch. Without Toho they’re sunk.”
Montpelier eased back into the chair.
“Yes!” Finger burst. “Turn it on. I can’t stand not knowing!”
He went back to rummaging through the desk drawers as Montpelier walked across the room to the control panel for the life-sized three-dee set in the corner.
“The Pineapples still have their defensive team intact,”
Montpelier reasoned. “And Montana’s not that high-scoring a team. . . .”
He found the right channel and tuned in the game. The far corner of the office dissolved into a section of a football field. A burly man in a Sasquatch uniform was kneeling, arms outstretched, barking out numbers. The crowd rumbled in the background. It was raining and windy; it looked cold in Montana.
The camera angle changed to an overhead shot and Montpelier saw that the Sasquatches were trying to kick a field goal. The ball was snapped, the kicker barely got the kick past a pair of onrushing Pineapple defenders, who ruined their orange and yellow uniforms by sprawling in the mud.
Again the camera angle changed, to show the football sailing through the uprights of the goal post. The announcer said, “It’s gooood!” as the referee raised both arms over his head.
Finger groaned.
“It’s only a field goal,” Montpelier said.
“So as the teams prepare for the kickoff,” the announcer said cheerily, “the score is Montana seventeen, Honolulu zero.”
With a gargling sound, Finger pawed through the attache case. He grabbed a bottle of pills as he yelled,
“Turn it off! Turn it off!” and poured half the bottle’s contents down his throat
Montpelier turned the game off, just catching a view of the scoreboard clock. Only eight minutes of the first quarter had elapsed.
He turned to Finger. “What are you going to do?”
His face white, Titanic’s boss said softly, “Get out of town. Get out of the country. Get off the planet, if I can.
Maybe the lunar colony would be a safe place for me . . . if I could qualify. I’ve got a bad heart, you know.”
Like an ox, Montpelier thought. Aloud, he asked, “But you’ve been through bankruptcy proceedings before. Why are you getting so upset over this one?”
Raising his eyes to an unhelpful heaven. Finger said, “The other bankruptcy hearings were when we owed money to banks. Or to the government. What we owe now, we owe to the mob. When they foreclose, they take your head home and mount it on the goddamn wall!”
“The gamblers. . . .”
Finger wagged his head. “Not the gamblers. I’m square with them. The bankers who backed us on ‘The Starcrossed.’ It’s their money I’ve been betting. When the show flops they’re gonna want their money back. With interest.”
“Ohhh.”
“Yeah, ohhh.” Finger knuckled his eyes. “Turn the game on again. Maybe they’re doing something. . . .”
The three-dee image solidified, despite annoying flickers and shimmers, to show an orange-and-yellow Pineapple ball carrier break past two would-be tacklers, twist free of another Sasquatch defender and race down the sidelines.
The crowd was roaring and Finger was suddenly on his feet, screaming.
“Go! Go! Go, you black sonofabitch!”
There was only one Sasquatch left in the scene, closing in on the Pineapple runner. They collided exactly at the Montana ten yard line. He twisted partially free, and as he began to fall, another Sasquatch pounced on him. The ball squirted loose.
“Aarrghh!”
What seemed like four hundred men in muddied uniforms piled on top of each other. There was a long moment of breathless suspense while the referees pulled bodies off the mountain of rain-soaked flesh.
Finger stood frozen, his fists pressed into his cheeks.
The bottom man in the pile was a Sasquatch. And under him was the ball.
“Turn it off! Turn it off!”
They spent the rest of the afternoon like that, alternately turning on the three-dee, watching the Sasquatches hurt the Pineapples, and turning off the three-dee. Finger moaned, he fainted, he swallowed pills. Montpelier went out for sandwiches; on Sunday the building’s cafeterias were closed.
He idly wondered how far the bankers’ revenge would go. They can’t get B.F., will they come after me? He tried to put the thought aside, but ugly scenes from Mafia movies kept crawling into his skull.
Finger wolfed down his sandwich as if it were his last meal. They turned the game on one final time, and the Sasquatches were ahead by 38-7 with less than two minutes to play. Finger started calling airlines.
He set up seven different flights for himself, for destinations as diverse as Rio de Janeiro and Ulan Bator.
“I’ll dazzle them with footwork,” be joked weakly. His face looked far from jovial.
The phone chimed. With a trembling hand, Finger touched the on button; The same corner that had showed the football game now presented a three-dee image of a gray-templed man. sitting a a desk. He looked intelligent, wealthy, conservative and powerful. His suit was gray, with a vest. The padded chair on which he saw was real leather, Montpelier somehow sensed. The wall behind him was panelled in dark mahogany. A portrait of Nelson Rockefeller hung there.
“Mr. Finger,” he said in a beautifully modulated baritone.
“I’m pleased to find you in your office this afternoon.
My computer doesn’t seem to have your home number. Working hard, I see.”
“Yes,” Finger said, his voice quavering just the slightest bit. “Yes . . . you know how it is in this business, heh heh.”
The man smiled without warmth.
“I, uh . . . I don’t think I know you,” Finger said.
“We have never met. I am an attorney, representing a group of gentlemen who have invested rather substantial sums in Titanic Productions, Incorporated.”
“Oh. Yes. I see.”
“Indeed.”
“The gentlemen who’ve backing “The Starcrossed.”
The man raised a manicured forefinger. “The gentlemen are backing Titanic Productions, not any particular show. In a very real sense, Mr. Finger, they have invested in you. In your business acumen, your administrative capabilities, your .., integrity.”
Finger swallowed hard. “Well, eh, “The Starcrossed’ is the show that we’ve sunk their ... eh, invested their money into. It goes on the air in three weeks. That’s the premier date, second week of January. Friday night. Full network coverage. It’s a good spot, and....”
“Mr. Finger.”
Montpelier had never seen B.F. stopped by such a quiet short speech.
“Yes sir?” Finger squeaked.
“Mr. Finger, did you happen to watch the Montana Sasquatch football game this afternoon?”
“Uh. . . .” Finger coughed, cleared his throat. “Why, um, I did take a look at part of it, yes.”
The man from New York let a slight frown mar his handsome features. “Mr. Finger, the bankers whom I represent have some associates who—quite frankly—I find very distasteful. These, ah, associates are spreading an ugly rumor to the effect that you have been betting quite heavily on the Honolulu professional football team. Quite heavily. And since Honolulu lost this afternoon, my clients thought it might be wise to let you know that this rumor has them rather upset.”
“Upset,” Finger echoed.
“Yes. They fear that the money they have invested in
Titanic Productions has been channeled into the hands of. . . .” he showed his distaste quite visibly “. . . bookies.
They fear that you have lost all their money and will have nothing to show for their investment. That would make them very angry, I’m afraid. And justifiably so.”
Finger’s head bobbed up and down. “I can appreciate that.”
“The proceedings that they would institute against you would be so severe that you might be tempted to leave the country or disappear altogether.”
“Oh, I’d never....”
“A few years ago, in a similar situation, a man who tried to cheat them became so remorseful that he committed suicide. He somehow managed to shoot himself in the back of the head. Three times.”
What little color was left in Finger’s face drained away completely. He sagged in his chair.
“Mr. Finger, are you all right? Does the thought of violence upset you?”
Finger nodded weakly.
“I’m terribly sorry. It’s raining here in New York and I tend to get morbid on rainy Sunday afternoons. Please forgive me.”
Finger raised a feeble hand. “Think nothing of it.”
“Back to business, if you don’t mind. Mr. Finger, there is a series called ‘The Starcrossed’? And it will premier on the second Friday in January?”
“Eight p.m.” Montpelier said as firmly as possible.
“Ah. Thank you, young man. This show does represent the investment that my clients have made?”
“That’s right, it does,” Finger said, his voice regaining some strength. But not much.
“That means,” the New York lawyer went on, remorselessly, “that you have used my client’s money to acquire the best writers, directors, actors and so forth . . . the best that money can buy?”
“Sure, sure.”
“Which in turn means that the show will be a success.
It will bring an excellent return on my clients’ investment.
Titanic Productions will make a profit and so will my clients. Is that correct?”
Sitting up a little straighter in his chair. Finger hedged, “Well now, television is a funny business. Nobody can guarantee success. I explained to. . . .”
“Mr. Finger.” And again B.F. stopped cold. “My clients are simple men, at heart. If ‘The Starcrossed’ is a success and we all make money, all well and good. If it is not a success, then they will investigate just how their money was spent. If they find that Titanic did not employ the best possible talent or that the money was used in some other manner—as this regrettable betting rumor suggests, for instance—then they will hold you personally responsible.”
“Me?”
“Do you understand? Personally responsible.”
“I understand.”
“Good.” The lawyer almost smiled. “Now if you would do us one simple favor, Mr. Finger?”
“What?”
“Please stay close to your office for the next few weeks.
I know you probably feel that you are entitled to a long vacation, now that your show is ... how do they say it in your business? ‘In the can’? At any rate, try to deny yourself that luxury for a few weeks. My clients will want to confer with you as soon as public reaction to The Starcrossed’ is manifested. They wouldn’t want to have to chase you down in some out-of-the-way place such a Rio de Janeiro or Ulan Bator.”
Finger fainted.
16: THE REACTION
On the second Friday in January, twenty-odd members of the New England Science Fiction Association returned to their clubroom after their usual ritual Chinese dinner in downtown Boston. The clubroom was inside the lead walls of what once had housed MTTs nuclear reactor— until the local Cambridge chapter of Ecology Now! Had torn the reactor apart with their bare hands, a decade earlier, lolling seventeen of their members within a week from the radiation poisoning and producing a fascinating string of reports for the obstetrics journals ever since.
The clubroom was perfectly safe now, of course. It had been carefully decontaminated and there was a trusty scintillation counter sitting on every bookshelf, right alongside musty crumbling copies of Astounding Stories of Super Science.
The NESFA members were mostly young men and women, in their twenties or teens, although on this evening they were joined by the President Emeritus, a retired lawyer who was regaling them with his Groucho Marx imitations.
“Okay, knock it off!” said the current president, a slim, long-haired brunette who ran the City of Cambridge’s combined police, fire and garbage control computer system.
“It’s time for the new show.”
They turned on the three-dee in the corner and arranged themselves in a semicircle on the floor to see the first episode of “The Starcrossed.”
But first, of course, they saw three dozen commercials: for bathroom bowl cleaners, bras, headache remedies, perfumes, rectal thermometers, hair dyes, and a foolproof electronic way to cheat on your school exams. Plus new cars, used cars, foreign cars, an airline commercial that explained the new antihijacking system (every passenger gets his very own Smith & Wesson .38 revolver!), and an oil company ad dripping with sincerity about the absolute need to move the revered site of Disneyland so that “we can get more oil to serve you better.”
The science fiction fans laughed and jeered at all the commercials, especially the last one. They bicycled, whenever and wherever the air was safe enough to breathe.
Then the corner of the room where the three-dee projector cast its images went absolutely black. The fans went silent with anticipation. Then a thread of music began, too faint to really pick out the tune. A speck of light appeared in the middle of the pool of blackness. Then another. Two stars, moving toward each other. The music swelled.
“Hey, that tune is ‘When You Wish Upon a Star!’”
“Sssshhh.” Nineteen hisses.
The two stars turned out to be starships and bold letters spelled out “The Starcrossed” over them. The fans cheered and applauded.
Two minutes later, after another dozen commercials, they were gaping.
“Look at how solid they are!”
“It’s like they’re really here in the room. No scintillations at all.”
“It’s a damned-near perfect projection.”
“I wish we had a life-sized set.”
“You can reach out and touch them!”
“I wouldn’t mind touching her!”
“Or him. He’s got muscles. Not like the guys around here.”
“And she’s got....”
Twelve hisses, all from female throats, drowned him out.
Fifteen minutes later, they were still gaping, but now their comments were:
“This is pretty slow for an opening show.”
“It’s pretty slow, period.”
“That hockey player acts better in the Garden when they call a foul on him.”
“Shuddup. I want to watch Juliet breathe.”
Halfway into the second act they were saying:
“Who wrote this crud?”
“It’s awful”
“They must be dubbing Romeo’s speeches. His mouth doesn’t sync with the words.”
“Who cares? The words are dumb.”
They laughed. They groaned. They threw marshmallows at the solid-looking images and watched the little white missiles sail right through the performers. When the show finally ended:
“What a wagonload of crap!”
“Well, at least the girl was good-looking.”
“Good-looking? She’s sensational!”
“But the story. Ugh!”
“What story?”
“There was a story?”
“Maybe it’s supposed to be a children’s show.”
“Or a spoof.”
“It wasn’t funny enough to be a spoof.”
“Or intelligent enough to be a children’s show. Giant amoebas in space!”
“It’ll set science fiction back ten years, at least.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” the President Emeritus said, clutching his walking stick. “I thought it was pretty funny in places.”
“In the wrong places.”
“One thing, though. That new projection system is terrific.
I’m going to scrounge up enough money to buy a life-sized three-dee. They’ve finally worked all the bugs out of it.”
“Yeah.”
“Right. Let’s get a life-sized set for the clubroom.”
“Do we have enough money in the treasury?”
“We do,” said the treasurer, “if we cancel the rocket launch in March.”
“Cancel it,” the president said. “Let’s see if the show gets any better. We can always scratch up more money for a rocket launch.”
In Pete’s Tavern in downtown Manhattan, the three-dee set was life-sized. The regulars sat on their stools with their elbows on the bar and watched “The Starcrossed” actors galumph across the corner where the jukebox used to be.
After the first few minutes, most of them turned back to the bar and resumed their drinking.
“That’s Francois Dulaq, the hockey star?”
“Indeed it is, my boy.”
“Terrible. Terrible.”
“Hey, Kenno, turn on the hockey game. At least we can see some action. This thing stinks.”
But one of the women, chain smoking while sipping daiquiris and petting the toy poodle in her lap, stared with fascination at the life-sized three-dimensional images in the corner. “What a build on him,” she murmured to the poodle.
In the Midwest the show went on an hour later, Eleven ministers of various denominations stared incredulously at Rita Yearling and immediately began planning sermons for Sunday on the topic of the shamelessness of modem women. They watched the show to the very end.
The cast and crew of As You Like It caught the show during a rehearsal at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis.
They decided they didn’t like it at all and asked their director to pen an open letter to Titanic Productions, demanding a public apology to William Shakespeare.
The science fiction classes at the University of Kansas—eleven hundred strong—watched the show in the University’s Gunn Amphitheater. After the first six minutes, no one could hear the dialogue because of the laughing, catcalls and boos from the sophisticated undergraduates and grad students. The professor who held the Harrison Chair and therefore directed the science fiction curriculum decided that not hearing the dialogue was a mercy.
The six-man police force of Cisco, Texas, voted Rita
Yearling “The Most Arresting Three-Dee Personality.”
The Hookers Convention in Reno voted Francois Dulaq
“Neatest Trick of the Year.”
The entire state of Utah somehow got the impression that the end of the world had come a step closer.
In Los Angeles, the cadaverous young man who wrote television criticism for the Free Press-News-Times smiled as he turned on his voice recorder. Ron Gabriel had stolen three starlets from him in the past year. Now was the moment of his revenge.
He even felt justified.
The editor-in-chief of the venerable TV Guide, in his Las Vegas office, shook his head in despair. “How in the world am I going to put a good face on this piece of junk?” be asked a deaf heaven.
In Oakland, the staff of the most influential science fiction newsletter watched the show to its inane end—where Dulaq (playing From, or Romeo) improvises a giant syringe from one of his starship’s rocket tubes and kills the space-roving Giant Amoeba with a thousand-liter shot of penicillin.
Charles Brown III heaved a mighty sigh. The junior editors, copyreaders and collators sitting at his feet held their breath, waiting for his pronouncement.
“Stinks,” he said simply.
High on a mountainside in the Cascade Range, not far from Glacier Park, a bearded writer clicked off his three-dee set and sat in the darkness of his mist-enshrouded chalet. For many minutes he simply sat and thought.
Then he snapped his fingers and his voice recorder came rolling out of its slot on smoothly oiled little trunions.
“Take a letter,” he said to the simple-minded robot and its red on light winked with electrical pleasure. “No, make it a telegram. To Ron Gabriel. The ‘puter has his address in its memory. Dear Ron: Have plenty of room up here in the hills if you need to get away from the flak. Come on up. The air’s clean and the women are dirty. What more can I say? Signed, Herb. Make it collect.”
And in Bernard Finger’s home in the exclusive Watts section of Greater Los Angeles, doctors shuttled in and out, like substitute players for the Honolulu Pineapples, manfully struggling to save the mogul of Titanic Productions from what appeared to be—from the symptoms—the world’s first case of manic convulsive paranoid cardiac insufficiency, with lockjaw on the side.
BARD SPINS AS “STARCROSSED” DRAGS
Variety
NEW THREE-DEE TECHNIQUE IS ONLY SOLID
FEATURE OF “STARCROSSED”
NY Times-Herald-Voice
CAPSULE REVIEW
By Gerrold Saul
“The Starcrossed,” which premiered last night on nationwide network three-dee, is undoubtedly the worst piece of alleged drama ever foisted on the viewers.
Despite the gorgeous good looks of Rita Yearling and the stubborn handsomeness of hockey star Frankie Dulake, the show has little to offer. Ron Gabriel’s script—even disguised under a whimsical penname—has all the life and bounce of the proverbial lead dirigible. While the sets were adequate and the costumes arresting, the story made no sense whatsoever. And the acting was nonexistent. Stalwart though he may be in the hockey rink, Dulaq’s idea of drama is to peer into the cameras and grimace.
The technical feat of producing really solid three-dimensional images was impressive. Titanic Productions’ new technique will probably be copied by all the other studios, because it makes everything else look pale and wan by comparison.
If only the script had been equal to the electronics!
LA Free Press-News-Times TV guide
America’s Oldest and Most Respected Television Magazine
Contents
“The Starcrossed:” Can a Science Fiction Show Succeed by Spoofing Science Fiction?
Technical Corner: New Three-Dee Projection Technique
Heralds End of “Blinking Blues”
The New Lineups: Networks Unveil “Third Season” Shows, and Prepare for “Fourth Season” in Seven Weeks
A Psychologist Warns: Portraying Love in Three-Dee
Could Confuse Teenagers
Nielsen Reports: “Mongo’s Mayhem” and “ShootOut”
Still Lead in Popularity
MITCH WESTERLY, MYSTERY MAN
OF TELEVISION
Playperson
WHY RITA YEARLING CRIED WHEN SHE
FLEW TO TORONTO
TV Love Stars
DULAQ NOT SCORING, CANADIAN MAPLE STARS NOT WINNING Sporting News CAN A GAY PORTRAY A STRAIGHT ON TV?
AND IF SO, WHY?
Liberty
NEW THREE-DEE PROJECTION SYSTEM
FULLY SUCCESSFUL
Scintillation-Free Images Result from
Picosecond Control Units Developed by
Oxnard Laboratory in California
Dr. Oxnard Claims System Can Be
Adapted to ‘Animate’ Still Photos;
Obviate Need for Actors in TV
Electronics News
17: THE OUTCOME
Bill Oxnard grimaced with concentration as he maneuvered his new Electric TR into Ron Gabriel’s driveway.
Ordinarily it would have been an easy task, but the late winter rainstorm made visibility practically nil and there was a fair-sized van parked at the curb directly in front of the driveway.
The front door of the house was open and a couple of burly men in coveralls were taking out the long sectional sofa that had curled around Gabriel’s living room. They grunted and swore under their breaths as they swung their burden around the Electric TR. The sofa was so big that if they had dropped it on the sportscar, they would have flattened it.
Brenda looked upset as she got out of the righthand seat.
“They’re taking his furniture!” She dashed into the house.
Oxnard was a step behind her. It only took three long strides to get inside the foyer, but the rain was hard enough to soak him, even so.
There were no lights on inside the house. The furniture movers had left a hand torch glowing in the living room.
Oxnard watched them re-enter the house, trailing muddy footprints and dripping water, to grab the other chairs in the living room.
Brenda said, “Bill! and they’ve turned off his electricity!”
She was very upset and Oxnard found himself feeling pleased with her concern, rather than jealous over it She’s really a marvelous person, he told himself.
They looked around the darkened house for a few minutes and finally found Ron Gabriel sitting alone in the kitchen, in candlelight.
“Ron, why didn’t you tell us?” Brenda blurted.
Gabriel looked surprised and, in the flickering light of the lone candle, a bit annoyed.
Tell you what?”
“We would have helped you, wouldn’t we. Bill?”
“Of course,” Oxnard said. “If you’re broke, Ron, or run out of credit....”
“What’re you talking about?” Gabriel pushed himself up from the table. He was wearing his old Bruce Lee robe.
“We’ve been following the reviews of The Starcrossed” said Brenda. “We saw what a panning the scripts took.
They’re blaming you for everything....”
“And when we saw them taking away your furniture.
“And no electricity....”
A lithe young girl walked uncertainly into the kitchen, dressed in a robe identical to Gabriel’s. The candlelight threw coppery glints from her hair, which flowed like a cascade of molten red-gold over her slim shoulders.
With a you guys are crazy look, Gabriel introduced,
“Cindy Steele, this is Brenda Impanema and Bill Oxnard, two of my loony friends.”
“Hello,” said Cindy, in a tiny little voice.
Brenda smiled at her and Oxnard nodded.
“We were going to have a quiet little candlelight dinner,”
Gabriel said, “just the two of us. Before the Ding-Dong Furniture Company came in with my new gravity-defying float-chair. And the Salvation Army came by to pick up my old living room furniture, which I donated to them. And my friends started going spastic for fear that I was broke and starving.”
“Is that what. . . .” Brenda didn’t quite believe it.
But Oxnard did. He started laughing. “I guess we jumped to the wrong conclusion. Come on,” he held out a hand to Brenda, “we’ve got a candlelight dinner of our own to see to.”
Gabriel’s eyebrows shot up. “Yeah? Really?” He came around the table and looked at the two of them closely.
“Son of a gun.” He grinned.
They walked out to the foyer together, the four of them,
Gabriel between Oxnard and Brenda, Cindy trailing slightly behind, twirling a curl of hair in one finger.
“Hey look,” Gabriel said. “Come on back after dinner.
For dessert. Got a lot to tell you.”
“Oh, I don’t think....” Brenda began.
“We’ll be back in a couple of hours,” Oxnard said.
“We’ve got a lot to tell you, too.”
“Great. Bring back some pie or something.”
“And give us at least three hours,” Cindy said, smiling and walking the fingers of one hand across the back of Gabriel’s shoulders. “I’m a slow cooker.”
It was just after midnight when Gabriel, Brenda and Oxnard tried out the new floatchairs. They were like an arrangement of airfoam cushions out of the Arabian Nights, except that they floated a dozen centimeters above coppery disks that rested on the floor.
“It’s like sitting on a cloud” Brenda said, snuggling down on the cushions as they adjusted to fit her form.
“Takes a lot of electricity to maintain the field, doesn’t it?” Oxnard asked.
“You bet,” snapped Gabriel. “And you clowns thought they’d turned off my power.”
“Where’s Cindy?” asked Brenda.
Gabriel gave a tiny shrug.. “Probably fell asleep in the whirlpool bath. She does that, sometimes. Nice kid, but not too bright.”
“So what’s your news?” Oxnard asked, anxious to tell his own.
Leaning back in his cushions, Gabriel said, “You know all the flak they’ve been throwing at me about the scripts for The Starcrossed’? Well my original script—the one that little creepy censor and Earnest tore to shreds—is going to get the Screen Writer’s award next month as the best dramatic script of the year.”
“Ron, that’s great!”
Gabriel crowed, “And the Guild is asking the Canadian Department of Labor to sue Badger for using child labor the high school kids who wrote scripts without getting paid!”
“Can they do that?”
Nodding, Gabriel said, “The lawyers claim they can and they’re naming Gregory Earnest as a co-defendant, along with Badger Studios.”
“The suit won’t affect Titanic, will it?” Brenda asked, looking around.
“Can’t It’s limited to Canadian law.” “That’s good; B.F.’s had enough trouble over The Starcrossed.’”
“Nothing he didn’t earn, sweetie,” Gabriel said.
“Maybe so,” Brenda said. “But enough is enough. He’ll be getting out of the hospital next week and I don’t want him hurt anymore.”
Gabriel shook his head. “You’re damned protective of that louse.”
Oxnard glanced at Brenda. She controled herself perfectly.
He knew what was going through her mind: He may be a louse, but he’s the only louse in the world who’s my father.
“Has the show been cancelled yet?” Gabriel asked.
“No,” Brenda said. “Its being renewed for the remainder of the season.”
“What?”
Oxnard said, “Same reaction I had. Wait’ll you hear why.”
“What’s going on?” Gabriel asked, suddenly aquiver with interest.
“Lots,” Brenda said. ‘Titanic is receiving about a thousand letters a week from the viewers. Most of them are science fiction fans complaining about the show; but they have to watch it to complain about it. The Nielsen ratings have been so-so, but there’s been a good number of letters asking for pictures of Rita and personal mail for her. She’s become the center of a new Earth Mother cult—most of the letters are from pubescent boys.”
“My god,” Gabriel moaned.
“Goddess,” corrected Oxnard.
“Also,” Brenda went on, “Rita’s apparently got her talons into Keith Conors, the TNT man. So the show’s assured of a sponsor for the rest of the season. She’s got him signing commitments ‘til his head’s spinning.”
With a rueful nod, Gabriel admitted, “She can do that.” “The New York bankers seem pleased. The show is making money. The critics hate it, of course, but it’s bringing in some money.”
“I’ll be damned,” Gabriel said.
“Never overestimate the taste of the American public,”
Brenda said.
Oxnard added, “And the show’s bringing money into my lab, as well. People are seeing how good the new system is and they’re showering us with orders. We’re working three shifts now and I’m expanding the staff and adding more floor space for production.”
Gabriel gave an impressed grunt
“What Bill doesn’t seem to realize,” Brenda said, “is that it’s really his holographic system that’s created so much interest in ‘The Starcrossed.’ Nobody’d stare at Rita Yearling for long if she didn’t look so solid.”
“I don’t know about that,” Oxnard protested.
“It’s true,” Brenda said. “All the networks and production companies have placed orders for the new system.
Everybody’ll have it by next season.”
“Then there goes Titanic’s edge over the competition,”
Gabriel said, sounding satisfied with the idea.
“Not quite,” Oxnard said.
“What do you mean?”
How to phrase this? he wondered. Carefully, Oxnard said, “Well ... I made a slip of the tongue to a reporter from an electronics newspaper, about computerizing the system so you can animate still photos....”
“You mean that thing about getting rid of the actors?”
“Somehow B.F. heard about it while he was recuperating from his seizure,” Brenda took over, “and made Bill an offer to develop the system for Titanic.”
“So I’m going to work with him on it,” Oxnard concluded.
Gabriel’s face froze in a scowl. “Why? Why do anything for that lying bastard?”
Oxnard shot a glance at Brenda, then replied, “He was sick. Those New York bankers were pressuring him. So I agreed to work with him on it. It impressed the bankers, helped make them happier with a small return on “The Starcrossed.’” Call it a present to a prospective father-in- law, he added silently.
“You oughtta have your head examined,” Gabriel said.
“He’ll just try to screw you again.”
“I suppose so,” Oxnard agreed cheerfully.
But Gabriel chuckled. “I think I’m going to drop a little hint about this to some of my acting friends. They’ve got a guild, too....”
Brenda said, “Do me a favor, Ron? Wait a month . . . until he’s strong enough to fight back.”
“Why should I?”
“For me,” she said.
He stared at her. “For you?”
“Please.”
He didn’t like it, that was clear. But he muttered,
“Okay. One month. But no longer than that.”
Brenda gave him her best smile. “Thanks, Ron. I knew you were just a pussycat at heart.”
Gabriel shook his head. “It’s just not fair! Dammit, Finger goes around screwing everybody in sight and comes up smelling like orchids. Every goddamned time! He works you to death, Brenda, sticks you with all the shit jobs. .. .”
“That’s true,” she admitted.
“Leaves me high and dry....”
“You got your award,” Oxnard said.
“Can’t eat awards. I need work! There’s nothing coming in except a few little royalties and residuals. And your mother-humping B.F. has spread the word all over town that I’m too cranky to work with.”
Oxnard broke in, “Come to work with me, Ron.”
Gabriel’s eyes widened. “What?”
“Sure,” Oxnard said. “Listen to me, both of you. Why should you have to put up with all this lunacy and nonsense?
Ron, how long can you stand to be trampled by idiots like Earnest and that Canadian censor? Come to work with me? I need a good writer to direct our advertising and public relations staffs. You can be a consultant . . . work one day a week at the lab and spend the rest of the time free to write the books you’ve always wanted to write.”
Before Gabriel could answer, Oxnard turned to Brenda.
“And you too. You’re a top-flight administrator, Brenda.
Come to work with me. Why should you give yourself ulcers and high blood pressure over some dumb TV show?
We can be a team, a real team—the three of us.”
She looked shocked.
Oxnard turned back to Gabriel. “I mean it, Ron. You’d enjoy the work, I know.” He looked back and forth, from Gabriel to Brenda and back again. “Well? How about it?
Will you both come to work at Oxnard Labs?”
In unison they replied, “What? And quit show business?”