The Starcrossed

by Ben Bova

  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 pingponged 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,” Elton 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 thus 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 acutally 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 had 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 turned 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 well 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 LA.? 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 Seattle tomorrow morning, in plenty of time for the game.”

  “Naw… I wanna go wit th’guys. They’re startin’ t’razz me about bein’ a big TV star… and de coach ain’t too happy, neither. Sez I oughtta get t’th’practices… my scorin’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 countertop. 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’ sakel The people have to see you on the show!”

  “I ain’t gonna be a star of nuthin’ if I don’t start scoria’ 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.”