The Starcrossed

by Ben Bova

  “They have commercial networks in Canada,” Fad replied, dripping with honey.

  “You seen any of their shows?”

  “Well…”

  “They stink! They’re even worse than ours.”

  Gabriel smiled in the darkness, uncertain whether Finger’s “ours” referred to all of American commercial TV or merely to Titanic’s steady string of fiascoes.

  “But we’ll be using our own top staff to run things. The Canadians will be working under our supervision.”

  “And the writing? We’re going to put up with Ron Gabriel? That loudmouth?”

  “We’ll handle him,” Fad answered. “He’ll be the top writer, but the scripts will actually be turned out by Canadians. They work cheaper and they listen to what you tell them.”

  Gabriel’s smile faded. He started moving carefully toward the voices. As he got out of the kitchen and into what looked like a dining area, he could see a doorway framed in light; the door was closed, but light from the next room was seeping through the poor fit between the door and its jamb.

  “I’ve even got a start on the theme music,” Fad was saying, with more than the usual amount of oil in his voice. “It’s from Tchaikovsky…”

  Fad must have worked the computer terminal, because the opening strains of the Romeo and Juliet Overture wafted into the suite. Finger must have reached the volume control, because the music was immediately turned down to a barely audible hum.

  “Now about the production values…” Fad began.

  Gabriel kicked the door open and strode into the living room, chin tucked down in his collar, right fist balled in his jacket pocket as if he had a gun.

  Fad was standing beside the computer terminal, at one end of a long sofa. Finger was sitting on the sofa. He was so startled that he dropped the glass he’d been holding. Fad jumped back two steps, a frightened Gary Cooper, so scared that the fringes of his buckskin jacket were twitching.

  “Okay you guys,” Gabriel said, in his Cagney voice.

  “Who the hell are you?” Finger demanded.

  “Never mind that.” Gabriel walked slowly toward the sofa.

  Backing away from him, Fad squeaked, “Is that a gun in your pocket?”

  “Does a bear shit in the woods?”

  “What’re you doing here?” Finger asked. His voice cracked just the tiniest bit

  “You guys have been making life tough for Ron Gabriel. Now I’m going to give you what’s coming to you.”

  Fad looked as if he was going to collapse. But Finger stared intently at Cagney’s face.

  “Gabriel,” he said. “Is that you?”

  “Who else, buhbula?” Ron took his hand from his pocket and scratched his nose. “Now what’s all this shit about going to Canada?”

  “The show’s going to be shot in Canada,” Finger said testily. “If I decide to do the show, that is. And how the hell did you get in here?”

  “Whattaya mean, if you decide to do it?” Gabriel shot back. “It’s the best damned idea you’ve seen in years.”

  “Ideas don’t make successful shows. People do.”

  “Which explains why you’ve got a string of flops on your hands.”

  “Goddammit Gabriel!” Finger’s voice rose. “I’m not going to take any of your crap!”

  “Go stuff yourself with it, bigshot! I’m a creative artist. I don’t need your greasy paws on my ideas!”

  Fad edged around the sofa and tried to interpose himself between the two men. “Now wait, fellas. Let’s not…”

  “Where the hell’s the phone?” Finger turned as he sat, searching the room. “I’ll get the security guards up here so fast…”

  “You reach for that phone and I’ll break your arm,” Gabriel warned. “You’re going to listen to me for a change.”

  “I’m gonna get you thrown overboard, is what I’m gonna do!”

  “The hell you are!”

  “Fellaaas… be reasonable.”

  “Loudmouth creep.”

  “Moneygrubbing asshole!”

  “Fellaaas…”

  It was a cosmic coincidence that at precisely that moment the love theme from Romeo and Juliet started on the computer-directed stereo. Such moments are rare, but they happen.

  And precisely at that moment, the most exquisitely beautiful girl Gabriel had ever seen stepped sleepily into the living room, rubbing her eyes. She wore nothing but a whiff of a pink nightgown, only long enough to reach to her thighs and utterly transparent. Her long golden hair was sleep tousled. Her face was all childish innocence, especially the sky-blue eyes, although her mouth was sensuous. Her body had everything the eternal woman possessed: the litheness of youth combined with the soft fullness of newly ripened maturity.

  “What’s all the shouting about?” she asked in a little girl voice. Petulantly: “You woke me up.”

  Finger scowled mightily and got up from the sofa. “See what you’ve done?” he grumbled at Gabriel. “You woke her up!” To the girl/woman he said soothingly, “It’s all right, baby. We were just having a discussion. I’ll be back with you in a few minutes. You just go back to sleep.”

  Gabriel remained rooted to the spot where he was standing. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. His blood seemed congealed in his veins. It was like being petrified, mummified, frozen into a cryogenic block of liquid helium. Yet his brain was whirling, feverish, spinning like a Fourth of July pinwheel shooting off sparks in every direction.

  She made a little moue with her full, ripe lips and turned to head back to the bedroom.

  “Wait!” Gabriel’s voice sounded strained and desperate, even to himself.

  She stopped and looked back at him, with those incredible blue eyes.

  “Wha… I mean… who… what’s your name? Who are you?”

  “Never mind!” Finger urged the girl toward the bedroom with an impatient gesture.

  “No, wait!” Gabriel shouted. He unfroze himself and moved toward her. “What’s your name? I’ve got to knowl”

  “Rita,” she said, almost shyly. “Rita Yearling. Why do you hafta know?”

  “Because I’m in love with you,” answered Gabriel, with absolute honesty.

  7: THE AGREEMENT

  Bernard Finger was not the kind of narrow-minded man to let his personal life interfere with business.

  “Go on back to bed, Rita,” he said in as fatherly a tone as he could produce.

  She blinked once in Gabriel’s direction. Finger could see the effect her long lashes had on the writer: the Cagney makeup seemed to be melting and Gabriel shuddered violently.

  “Goodnight,” she breathed.

  Gabriel watched her go back into the bedroom. To Finger, he looked like a puppy watching its master take a train to Australia. Gabriel was no longer a free-swinging, independent, irreverent sonofabitch. He wanted something that Finger possessed. That was a basis for doing business.

  “Ron,” he said, as the bedroom door closed behind Rita Yearling.

  Gabriel stared at the door. His eyes seemed to be unfocused.

  “Ron!” Finger called more sharply.

  The writer shook himself, as if suddenly awakening from an incredible dream.

  “Who is she?” Gabriel asked. “Where did you find her?”

  Finger indicated the sofa with a gesture and Gabriel obediently sat down. Pulling a chair close to him, Finger said to Fad, “Get us some brandy and cigars.” The producer nodded once, briskly, and went to the phone.

  “I’ve never seen anyone like her.” Gabriel’s voice was still awestruck. “Who is she?”

  “Titanic’s always searching for fresh talent,” Finger said. “We have scouts everywhere. But we found Rita right here in L.A.; right under our noses.” It was even the truth, Finger realized with an inward laugh.

  “She’s fantastic!”

  Fad sat at the end of the sofa, close enough to be included in the conversation if Finger so chose, yet far enough away so that he could continue a private-seeming talk with Ga
briel. Kid’s got some good sense, Finger noted.

  “What would you say,” Finger asked Gabriel, “if I told you that Rita is one of the most accomplished actresses I’ve ever seen?”

  “Who cares?” Gabriel said.

  With a knowing grin, Finger added, “What would you say if I told you that I’m considering her for the female lead in ‘The Starcrossed’?”

  Gabriel actually gulped. Finger could see his Adam’s Apple bob up and down. To a lesser man, what was about to happen would seem like taking milk away from an infant; but Bernard Finger was equal to the situation. False scruples had never interefered with his business acumen—nor true scruples, for that matter.

  “I think she’s a natural for the part,” Finger went on, enjoying the perspiration that was breaking out on Gabriel’s Cagneyish face. “She’s got looks, talent, exper… eh, youth.”

  “The show couldn’t miss with her in it,” Fad chimed in.

  “Yeah,” said Gabriel.

  Finger slapped his palms on his thighs, a sharp cracking sound that startled the other two men. “Listen,” he said. “Let’s let bygones be bygones. I know you and I have had our differences in the past, Ron. But let’s work together to make ‘The Starcrossed’ a big hit. Titanic needs a hit and you need a hit. So let’s work together, instead of against each other.”

  Gabriel nodded. He still seemed to be stunned. “Okay,” he mumbled.

  Looking over at Fad, Finger said: “Our producer’s come up with the idea of doing the show in Canada. It’ll let us stretch our money further. What we save in production costs we can add to production values: better sets, better scripts, better talent…”

  Gabriel was visibly trying to pull himself together, get his brain back in gear.

  “This is going to be an expensive show to produce. Starships and exotic planets every week… expensive sets, expensive props, big-name guest stars every week… it’s all very expensive.”

  “And costly,” Fad echoed. Finger shot him down with a sharp glance.

  Gabriel frowned. “Artistic control.”

  “What about it?”

  “I want artistic control,” Gabriel said. He was returning to the real world. “This show has got to have one strong conceptual vision, a consistent point of view… we can’t have directors and assistant producers and script girls screwing things around from one week to the next.”

  Finger was too experienced to give in immediately, but after fifteen minutes of discussion, he had his arm around Gabriel’s shoulders as they walked together toward the door.

  “You’ve convinced me,” Finger was saying expansively. “When you’re right, you’re right. Artistic control will be in your hands. One guy has got to keep the central vision of the show consistent from week to week. That’s important.”

  “And it’ll be written into my contract,” Gabriel said warily.

  “Of course! Everything down in black and white so there’s no misunderstanding.”

  They shook hands at the door. Gabriel still looked uneasy, almost suspicious. Finger had his friendliest smile on.

  “My agent will get in touch with you tomorrow,” Gabriel said.

  “Who you got… still Jerry Morgan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good man, We’ll work out the clauses with no trouble.”

  Gabriel left and Finger closed the door firmly. Fad was standing in the middle of the living room, shaking his head. He looked like Gary Cooper with an ulcer.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “You let him have artistic control of the series! He’ll want to do everything has way! The expense…”

  Finger raised a calming hand. “Listen. Right now he’s on the other side of that door, going through his pockets to see what I stole from him. And he won’t find a thing missing. Tonight he’ll have wet dreams about Rita and tomorrow morning he’ll phone Jerry Morgan and tell him to be sure to get a clause about artistic control into his contract.”

  “But we can’t…”

  “Who gives a damn about artistic control?” Finger laughed at the perplexed producer. “There’s a million ways to get around such a clause. We’ll have clauses in there about financial limits and decisions, clauses that tie him up six ways from Sunday. And even in his artistic control clause we’ll throw in the line about no holding up production with unreasonable demands. Ever see anybody win a lawsuit by proving his demands were not unreasonable? We got him by the balls and he won’t know it until we go into production.”

  “In Canada?”

  “In Canada.”

  Sheldon’s worried-hound face relaxed a little.

  Someone tapped timidly at the door. Finger yanked it open. A waiter stood there, bearing a tray with three snifters of brandy and three cigars on it.

  “S… sorry to take so long, Mr. Finger. Your special cigars were in the vault and…”

  “Nah, don’t worry about it.” Finger ushered him in with a sweping gesture of his arm. “It’s good timing. I’d hate to waste a good cigar on that little punk.”

  It was dawn.

  Finger sat on the edge of his bed and gazed down at Rita Yearling. Even under the bedclothes she looked incredibly beautiful.

  Best money I ever spent, he told himself.

  Her lovely eyelids fluttered and she awoke languorously. She smiled at Finger, stretched like a cat, then turned and looked out the porthole at the gray-white sky.

  “Ain’t it kinda early?”

  “I want to go up to the bridge and see the sunrise over the mountains. Were almost back in port.”

  “Oh.”

  “How’re you feeling?”

  She stretched again. “Fine. Not an ache or pain anywhere.”

  He stroked her bare shoulder. “They did a beautiful job on you. When I had my Vitaform operations I was in agony for months.”

  “You didn’t take good care of your original body,” she chided, almost like Shirley Temple bawling out Wallace Beery. “I may have been older than you, but I took care of myself. The girls always said I had the best-kept body since Ann Corio.”

  “What about Mae West?” he joked.

  “That hag!” Rita’s luscious lips pulled back in a snarl, revealing slightly pointed teeth. “Her and her deepfreeze. As if anybody’d revive her in a hundred years.”

  Patting her in a fatherly way, Finger said, “I’m going to get dressed. I’ll call you in an hour or so. We can have breakfast up on the bridge.”

  “Okay.” She turned over and pulled up the covers.

  “I want to talk to you about Ron Gabriel. He’s going to be the head writer on the show, up in Canada.”

  “He’s the Cagney that was in here last night?”

  “Right. He can be troublesome…”

  She smiled at him; there was no innocent little girl in her face. “I can handle him and a dozen more like him, any time.” Her tongue flicked across her sharp little teeth “Any time,” she repeated.

  It was bracing up on the bridge. The sea breeze stirred Finger, invigorated him. Up ahead he could see the smog bank that marked the beginning of Los Angeles’ territorial waters and the oil rigs that kept the city supplied with fuel.

  He paced the open deck of the flying bridge, glancing inside now and then to see how the ship was being handled. A solitary officer slouched lazily in a soft chair, toking happily, while the automated radar, sonar, robot pilot and computer steered the Adventurer toward its smogshrouded pier.

  It always unnerved Finger just the slightest bit to realize that the ship’s crew was more machine than human. And with the exception of the captain, who was a boozer, most of the crewmen were heads.

  Finger turned his back on the lazing officer and stepped to the rail. Leaning over it slightly, he could see the white foam of the ship’s wake cutting through the oily waters. He looked up at his last glimpse of blue sky. Gripping the rail with both hands, he was suddenly on the deck of a whaling vessel out of New Bedford, an iron captain running a wooden ship.

&n
bsp; Thar she blows! he heard in his mind’s inner ear. And with the eye of imagination he saw a wild and stormy ocean, with the spout of a gigantic whale off near the whitecapped horizon.

  After him, me hearties! Finger shouted silently. A fivedollar gold piece to the boat that harpoons him!

  He grunted to himself. Maybe a whaling show would make a good series. The econuts would object to it, but they object to everything anyway. Special effects would be expensive: have to make a dummy whale. Nobody’s seen a whale since the last Japanese expedition came back empty. Even the dolphins are getting scarce.

  A frown of concentration settled on his face. The government would probably help with a series like that. They’re always looking for outdoor stuff, so people will stay home and watch their three-dees instead of messing up the National Parks. And it could be a spectacular show—storms, shipwrecks, all that stuff. Got to be careful of the violence, though; get those parents and teachers on your neck and the sponsors disappear. Maybe a comedy show, with a crew that never catches a whale. A bunch of schmucks.

  No. Finger shook his head. A serious show. Iron men in wooden ships. Give the viewers some heroes to admire. He squared his shoulders and faced straight into the wind. Maybe I could do a sneak part in it, like Hitchcock used to do.

  He drew himself up to his full height. Hell, he told himself, I could be the whaling ship’s captain. Why not? I’ve got the look for it now.

  Why not do a whaling show instead of this science fiction thing with Gabriel?

  Because, his business sense told him, it would be too realistic. Historicals are dead. Nobody watched them. The Hallmark Hall of Fame killed them years ago and nobody’s had the guts to try them again. Too dull. And too realistic.

  Still, he thought, it’ll be good to have something like this in reserve. Doesn’t have to be realistic or even historical. Maybe a science fiction whaler, on another planet. Yeah! With a different monster every week! He smiled; felt almost giddy. Bernie, he told himself, you’re a genius. He made a mental note to look into the possibility of taking acting lessons. In secret. Like that football player far the Jets had done.

  And then the real idea hit him. It came in a flash, the whole of it, so completely detailed that he saw the columns of figures adding up to a fortune, nine digits worth. It was blinding. Terrifying. He sagged against the rail.