Terra Incognita

by Connie Willis

  “Not all the movies,” I said, pointing at the disk in her hand. “Some remakes are better than the original.”

  “Won’t you get fired?” she said. “Putting the AS’s back in, I mean?”

  “Almost certainly,” I said. “ ‘But it is a fah, fah bettah thing I do than I have evah done before. It is a—’ ”

  “Tale of Two Cities, Ronald Colman,” she said, looking at the screens where Bogart was saying good-bye to Ingrid, at the disk, at the screens again, trying to work up to what she had to say.

  I said it for her. “You’re leaving.”

  She nodded, still not looking at me.

  “Where are you going? Back to River City?”

  “That’s from The Music Man,” she said, but she didn’t smile. “I can’t go any further by myself. I need somebody to teach me the heel-and-toe work Eleanor Powell does. And I need a partner.”

  Just for a moment, no, not even a moment, the flicker of a frame, I thought about what might have been if I hadn’t spent those long splatted semesters dismantling highballs, if I had spent them out in Burbank instead, practicing kick-turns.

  “After what you said the other night, I thought I might be able to use a positioning armature and a data harness for the lifts, and I tried it. It worked, I guess. I mean, it—”

  Her voice cut off awkwardly like she’d intended to say something more, and I wondered what it was, and what it was I’d said to her. That Fred might be coming out of litigation?

  “But the balance isn’t the same as a real person,” she said. “And I need experience learning routines, not just copying them off the screen.”

  So she was going someplace where they were still doing liveactions. “Where?” I said. “Buenos Aires?”

  “No,” she said. “China.”

  China.

  “They’re doing ten liveactions a year,” she said.

  And twenty purges. Not to mention provincial uprisings. And antiforeigner riots.

  “Their liveactions aren’t very good. They’re terrible, actually. Most of them are propaganda films and martial-arts things, but a couple of them last year were musicals.” She smiled ruefully. “They like Gene Kelly.”

  Gene Kelly. But it would be real routines. And a man’s arm around her waist instead of a data harness, a man’s hands lifting her. The real thing.

  “I leave tomorrow morning,” she said. “I was packing, and I found the disk and thought maybe you wanted it back.”

  “No,” I said, and then, so I wouldn’t have to tell her good-bye, “Where are you flying out of?”

  “San Francisco,” she said. “I’m taking the skids up tonight. And I’m still not packed.” She looked at me, waiting for me to say my line.

  And I had plenty to choose from. If there’s anything the movies are good at, it’s good-byes. From “Be careful, honey!” to “Don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars” to “Come back, Shane!” Even “Hasta la vista, baby.”

  But I didn’t say them. I stood there and looked at her, with her beautiful, backlit hair and her unforgettable face. At what I wanted and couldn’t have, not even for a few minutes.

  And what if I said “Stay”? What if I promised to find her a teacher, get her a part, put on a show? Right. With a Cray that had maybe ten minutes of memory, a Cray I wouldn’t have as soon as Mayer found out what I’d been doing?

  Behind me, on the screen, Bogart was saying, “There’s no place for you here,” and looking at Ingrid, trying to make the moment last forever. In the background, the plane’s propellers were starting to turn, and in a minute the Nazis would show up.

  They stood there, looking at each other, and tears welled up in Ingrid’s eyes, and Vincent could mess with his tears program forever and never get it right. Or maybe he would. They had made Casablanca out of dry ice and cardboard. And it was the real thing.

  “I have to go,” Alis said.

  “I know,” I said, and smiled at her. “ ‘We’ll always have Paris.’ ”

  And according to the script, she was supposed to give me one last longing look and get on the plane with Paul Henreid, and why is it I still haven’t learned that Heada is always right?

  “Good-bye,” Alis said, and then she was in my arms, and I was kissing her, kissing her, and she was unbuttoning the lab coat, taking down her hair, unbuttoning the pink gingham dress, and some part of me was thinking, This is important, but she had the dress off, and the pantaloons, and I had her on the bed, and she didn’t fade, she didn’t morph into Heada, I was on her and in her, and we were moving together, easily, effortlessly, our outstretched hands almost but not quite touching on the tangled sheets.

  I kept my gaze on her hands, flexing and stretching in passion, knowing if I looked at her face it would be freeze-framed on my brain forever, klieg or no klieg, afraid if I did she might be looking at me kindly, or, worse, not be looking at me at all. Looking through me, past me, at two dancers on a starry floor.

  “Tom!” she said, coming, and I looked down at her. Her hair was spread out on the pillow, backlit and beautiful, and her face was intent, the way it had been that night at the party, watching Fred and Ginge on the freescreen, rapt and beautiful and sad. And focused, finally, on me.

  MOVIE CLICHE #1: The Happy Ending. Self-explanatory.

  SEE: An Officer and a Gentleman, An Affair to Remember, Sleepless in Seattle, The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, Shall We Dance, Great Expectations.

  It’s been three years, during which time China has gone through four provincial uprisings and six student riots, and Mayer has gone through three takeovers and eight bosses, the next to last of whom moved him up to executive vice-president.

  Mayer didn’t tumble to my putting the AS’s back in for nearly three months, by which time I’d finished the whole Thin Man series, The Maltese Falcon, and all the Westerns, and Arthurton was on his way out.

  Heada, still costarring as Joan Blondell, talked Mayer out of killing me and into making a stirring speech about Censorship and Deep Love for the Movies and getting himself spectacularly fired just in time for the new boss to hire him back as “the only moral person in this whole poppated town.”

  Heada got promoted to set director and then (that next-to-last boss) to assistant producer in charge of new projects, and promptly hired me to direct a remake. Happy endings all around.

  In the meantime, I programmed happy endings for Happily Ever After and graduated and looked for Alis. I found her in Pennies from Heaven, and in Into the Woods, the last musical ever made, and in Small Town Girl. I thought I’d found them all. Until tonight.

  I watched the scene in the Indy again, looking at the silver tap shoes and the platinum wig and thinking about musicals. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom isn’t one. “Anything Goes” is the only number in it, and it’s only there because one of the scenes takes place in a nightclub, and they’re the floor show.

  And maybe that’s the way to go. The remake I’m working on isn’t a musical either—it’s a weeper about a couple of star-crossed lovers—but I could change the hotel dining room scene into a nightclub. And then, the boss after next, do a remake with a nightclub setting, and put Fred (who’s bound to be out of litigation by then) in it, just in one featured number. That was all he was in Flying Down to Rio, a featured number, thirtyish, slightly balding, who could dance a little. And look what happened.

  And before you know it, Mayer will be telling everybody the musical’s coming back, and I’ll get assigned the remake of 42nd Street and find out where Alis is and book the skids and we’ll put on a show. Anything’s possible.

  Even time travel.

  I accessed Vincent the other day to borrow his edit program, and he told me time travel’s a bust. “We were this close,” he said, his thumb and forefinger almost touching. “Theoretically, the Casimir effect should work for time
as well as space, but they’ve sent image after image into a negative-matter region, and nothing. No overlap at all. I guess maybe there are some things that just aren’t possible.”

  He’s wrong. The night Alis left, she said, “After what you said the other night, I thought maybe I could use a data harness for the lifts,” and I had wondered what it was I’d said, and when I showed her the opdisk, she’d said, “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Are you sure?”

  “It’s not on the disk,” I’d said, “it’s in litigation,” and it had stayed in litigation till the next day. And when I checked, it had been in litigation the whole time I looked for her.

  And for eight months before that, in a National Treasure suit the Film Preservation Society had brought. The night I saw Seven Brides, it had been out of litigation exactly two hours. And had gone back in an hour later.

  Alis had only been working at A Star Is Born for six months. Brides had been in litigation the whole time. Until after I found her. Until after I told her I’d seen her in it. And when I told her, she’d said, “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers? Are you sure?” and I’d thought she was surprised because the jumps and lifts were so hard, surprised because she hadn’t been trying to superimpose her image on the screen.

  Brides hadn’t come out of litigation till the next day.

  And a week and a half later, Alis came to me. She came straight from the skids, straight from practicing with the harness and the armature that she’d thought might work, “after what you said the other night.” And it had worked. “—I guess,” she’d said. “I mean—”

  She’d come straight from practice, wearing Virginia Gibson’s pink gingham dress, Virginia Gibson’s pantaloons, wearing her costume for the barnraising dance she’d just done. The barnraising dance I’d seen her in six weeks before she ever did it. And my theory about her having somehow gone back in time was right after all, even if it was only her image, only pixels on a screen. She hadn’t been trying to discover time travel either. She had only been trying to learn routines, but the screen she’d been rehearsing in front of wasn’t a screen. It was a negative-matter region, full of randomized electrons and potential overlaps. Full of possibilities.

  Nothing’s impossible, Vincent, I think, watching Alis do kick-turns in her sequined leotard. Not if you know what you want.

  Heada is accessing me. “I was wrong. The Ford Tri-Motor’s at the beginning of the second one. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Beginning with frame—”

  “I found it,” I say, frowning at the screen where Alis, in her platinum wig, is doing a brush step.

  “What’s wrong?” Heada says. “Isn’t it going to work?”

  “I’m not sure,” I say. “When’s the Fred Astaire suit going to be settled?”

  “A month,” she says promptly. “But it’s going right back in. Sofracima-Rizzoli’s claiming copyright infringement.”

  “Who the hell is Sofracima-Rizzoli?”

  “The studio that owns the rights to a movie Fred Astaire made in the seventies. The Purple Taxi. I figure they’ll settle. Three months. Why?” she says suspiciously.

  “The plane in Flying Down to Rio. I’ve decided that’s what I want.”

  “A biplane? You don’t have to wait for that. There are tons of other movies with biplanes in them. The Blue Max, Wings, High Road to China—” She stops, looking unhappy.

  “Do they have skids in China?” I say.

  “Are you kidding? They’re lucky to have bicycles. And enough to eat. Why?” she says, suddenly interested. “Have you found out where Alis is?”

  “No.”

  Heada hesitates, trying to decide whether to tell me something. “The assistant set director’s back from China. He says the word is, it’s Cultural Revolution 3. Book burnings, reeducation, they’ve shut at least one studio down and arrested the whole film crew.”

  I should be worried, but I’m not, and Heada, who knows everything, pounces immediately.

  “Is she back?” she says. “Have you had word from her?”

  “No,” I say, because I have finally learned how to lie to Heada, and because it’s true. I don’t know where she is, and I haven’t had word from her. But I’ve gotten a message.

  Fred Astaire has been out of litigation twice since Alis left, once between copyright suits for exactly eight seconds, the other time last month when the AFI filed an injunction claiming he was a historic landmark.

  That time I was ready. I had the Beguine number on opdisk, backup, and tape, and was ready to check it before the watch-and-warn had even stopped beeping.

  It was the middle of the night, as usual, and at first I thought I was still asleep or having one last flash.

  “Enhance upper left,” I said, and watched it again. And again. And the next morning.

  It looked the same every time, and the message was loud and clear: Alis is all right, in spite of uprisings and revolutions, and she’s found a place to practice and somebody to teach her Eleanor Powell’s heel-and-toe steps. And she’s going to come back, because China doesn’t have skids, and when she does, she’s going to dance the Beguine with Fred Astaire.

  Or maybe she already has. I saw her in the barnraising number in Brides six weeks before she did it, and it’s been four since I saw her in Melody. Maybe she’s already back. Maybe she’s already done it.

  I don’t think so. I’ve promised the current A Star Is Born James Dean a lifetime supply of chooch to tell me if anybody touches the Digimatte, and Fred’s still in litigation. And I don’t know how far back in time the overlap goes. Six weeks before she did it was only when I saw her in Seven Brides. There’s no telling how long before that her image was there. Under two years, because it wasn’t in 42nd Street when I watched it the first time, when I was first starting Mayer’s list, and yeah, I know I was splatted and might have missed her. But I didn’t. I would know her face anywhere.

  So under two years. And Heada, who knows everything, says Fred will be out of litigation in three months.

  In the meantime, I keep busy, doing remakes and trying to make them good, getting Mayer to talk ILMGM into copyrighting Ruby Keeler and Eleanor Powell, working for the Resistance. I have even come up with a happy ending for Casablanca.

  It is after the war, and Rick has come back to Casablanca after fighting with the Resistance, after who knows what hardships. The Café Américain has burned down, and everybody’s gone, even the parrot, even Sam, and Bogie stands and looks at the rubble for a long time, and then starts picking through the mess, trying to see what he can salvage.

  He finds the piano, but when he tips it upright, half the keys fall out. He fishes an unbroken bottle of scotch out of the rubble and sets it on the piano and starts looking around for a glass. And there she is, standing in what’s left of the doorway.

  She looks different, her hair’s pulled back, and she looks thinner, tired. You can see looking at her that Paul Henreid’s dead and she’s gone through a lot, but you’d know that face anywhere.

  She stands there in the door, and Bogie, still trying to find a glass, looks up and sees her.

  No dialogue. No music. No clinch, in spite of Heada’s benighted ideas. Just the two of them, who never thought they’d see each other again, standing there looking at each other.

  When I’m done with my remake, I’ll put my Casablanca ending in Happily Ever After’s comp for the tourates.

  In the meantime, I have to separate my star-crossed lovers and send them off to suffer assorted hardships and pay for their sins. For which I need a plane.

  I put the “Anything Goes” number on disk and backup, in case Kate Capshaw goes into litigation, and then ff to the Ford Tri-Motor and save that, too, in case the biplane doesn’t work.

  “High Road to China,” I say, and then cancel it before it has a chance to come up. “Simultaneous display. Screen one, Temple of Doom. Tw
o, Singin’ in the Rain. Three, Good News…”

  I go through the litany, and Alis appears on the screens, one after the other, in tap pants and bustles and green weskits, ponytails and red curls and shingled bobs. Her face looks the same in all of them, intent, alert, concentrating on the steps and the music, unaware that she is conquering encryptions and Brownian checks and time.

  “Screen eighteen,” I say. “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” and she twirls across the floor and leaps into the arms of Russ Tamblyn. And he has conquered time, too. They all have, Gene and Ruby and Fred, in spite of the death of the musical, in spite of the studio execs and the hackates and the courts, conquering time in a turn, a smile, a lift, capturing for a permanent moment what we want and can’t have.

  I have been working on weepers too long. I need to get on with the business at hand, pick a plane, save the sentiment for my lovers’ Big Farewell.

  “Cancel, all screens,” I say. “Center screen, High Road to—” and then stop and stare at the silver screen, like Ray Milland craving a drink in The Lost Weekend.

  “Center screen,” I say. “Frame 96-1100, no sound. Broadway Melody of 1940,” and sit down on the bed.

  They are tapping side by side, dressed in white, lost in the music I cannot hear and the time steps that took them weeks to practice, dancing easily, without effort. Her light brown hair catches the light from somewhere.

  Alis swings into a turn, her white skirt swirling out in the same clear arc as Eleanor’s—check and Brownian check—and that must have taken weeks, too.

  Next to her, casual, elegant, oblivious to copyrights and takeovers, Fred taps out a counterpoint ripple, and Alis answers it back and turns to smile over her shoulder.

  “Freeze,” I say, and she stops, still turning, her hand outstretched and almost touching mine.

  I lean forward, looking at the face I have seen ever since that first night watching her from the door, that face I would know anywhere. We’ll always have Paris.