The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 17

by Gardner Dozois

  “Sounds like I’m a flop. Why do you want me?”

  “Because, despite fools nipping at your ankles and a complete lack of support, a couple of those films are brilliant. Think what you could do if you had the support of a major studio!”

  “Don’t you care that if I come with you, I’ll never make these works of genius you tell me about?”

  “On the contrary, I can show them to you right now. What I’m doing is plucking you from an alternate version of our history. In our world you will have gone on to live exactly the life I’ve been telling you about. So we will still have all of those movies, but you won’t have to struggle to make them. Instead, you can make the dozens of other projects that you never could find backing for in this history. Before you shot Kane, you wanted to do Heart of Darkness. In 2048, still nobody has made a decent film of that book. It’s as if the world has been waiting for you.

  “In 2048 you will be celebrated instead of mocked. If you stay here, you will spend the rest of your life as an exile. If you must be an exile, be one in a place and time that will enable you to do the work that you love.”

  Welles moved a coffee cup, tapped ash into the saucer, and rested his cigar on the edge. “I have friends. I have family. What about them?”

  “You have no family: your parents are dead, your brother estranged; you’re divorced from your wife and, frankly, not interested in your daughter. Most of your friends have abandoned you.”

  “Joe Cotten hasn’t.”

  “You want Joseph Cotten? Look.” I called up the clip on the flatscreen, then slid it back in front of Welles. The screen showed a café patio. Street noises, pedestrians with UV hats, futuristic cars passing by. A man and a woman sat at a table under a palm tree. The camera closed in on the couple: Joseph Cotten, wearing white trousers and an open-necked shirt, and his wife, Lenore. “Hello, Orson,” they said, grinning. Cotten spoke directly into the camera. “Orson, Detlev tells me he’s going to show you this clip. Listen to what the man is saying – he’s telling the truth. It’s much nicer here than you can imagine. In fact, my biggest regret about coming to the future is that you’re not here. I miss you.”

  I stopped the image. “Another scout brought him to the future four years ago,” I said.

  Welles took another sip of brandy and set his glass down on Cotten’s nose. “If Joe had stood by me, the studio wouldn’t have been able to reshoot the ending of Ambersons.”

  I could see why my predecessors had all failed. For every argument I gave, Welles had a counterargument. It wasn’t about reason; he was too smart, and the reasons he offered for declining were not reasonable. He needed convincing on some visceral level. I had a brutal way to get there, and would have to use it.

  I moved the brandy glass off the screen. “We’re not quite done with the movies yet,” I said. “You have trouble controlling your weight? Well, let me show you some pictures.”

  First, an image of Welles from The Stranger, slender enough that you could even see his Adam’s apple. “Here you are in 1946. You still look something like yourself. Now here’s Touch of Evil, ten years later.” A bloated hulk, unshaven and sweating. The photos cycled, a dismal progression of sagging jaws, puffy cheeks, a face turned from boyishly handsome to suet, a body from imposing size to an obese nightmare. I had film clips of him waddling across a room, of his jowls quivering as he orated in some bad mid-sixties European epic. Numerous clips of him seated on talk show sets, belly swelling past his knees, a cigar clutched between the fingers of his right hand, full beard failing to disguise his multiple chins.

  “By the end of your life you weigh somewhere between three hundred and four hundred pounds. No one knows for sure. Here’s a photo of an actress named Angie Dickinson trying to sit on your lap. But you have no lap. See how she has to hold her arm around your neck to keep from sliding off. You can’t breathe, you can’t move, your back is in agony, your kidneys are failing. In the 1980s you get stuck in an automobile, which must be taken apart for you to be able to get out. You spend the last years of your life doing commercials for cheap wine that you are unable to drink because of your abysmal health.”

  Welles stared at the images. “Turn it off,” he whispered.

  He sat silently for a moment. His brow furrowed, his dark eyes became pits of self-loathing. But some slant of his eyebrows indicated that he took some satisfaction in this humiliation, as if what I had shown him was only the fulfillment of a prophecy spoken over his cradle.

  “You’ve gone to a lot of trouble, I can see,” he said quietly.

  I felt I was close now. I leaned forward. “This doesn’t have to happen. Our medical science will see that you never become that gross parody of yourself. We’ll keep you young and handsome for the rest of your life.”

  Welles stirred himself. “I’m dazzled by your generosity. What’s in it for you?”

  “Very good. I don’t deny it – we’re no charitable organization. You don’t realize the esteem in which your works are held in the future. A hundred years from now, Citizen Kane is considered the greatest movie ever made. The publicity alone of your return is worth millions. People want to see your work.”

  “You sound exactly like George Schaefer persuading me to come out to Hollywood after The War of the Worlds. I’m a genius, unlimited support, people love my work. And the knives were sharpened for me before I even stepped off the plane. Three years later Schaefer is out on the street, I’m a pariah, and his replacement won’t even watch my movie with me. So, have studio executives in the future become saints?”

  “Of course not, Orson. But the future has the perspective of time. RKO’s cuts to Ambersons did nothing to protect their investment. Your instincts were better than theirs, not just artistically, but even from the point of view of making money.”

  “Tell it to Charles Koerner.”

  “I don’t have to. It’s considered the greatest tragedy of cinema history. In 2048, nobody’s ever seen your movie. This print” – I touched the film canister – “is the only existing copy of your version. When it goes missing, and the negatives of the excised footage are destroyed, all that’s left is the botched studio version.”

  “This is the only print?”

  “The only print.”

  Welles ran his long-fingered hand through his hair. He heaved himself to his feet, went to the rail of the schooner, grabbed a shroud to steady himself, and looked up at the night sky. It was a dramatic gesture, as he undoubtedly knew. Without looking back at me, he said, “And your time machine? Where do you keep that?”

  “I have a portable unit in my bag. We can’t use it on the ship, but as soon as we are back on land – ”

  “ – we’re off to 2048!” Welles laughed. “It seems I dramatized the wrong H.G. Wells novel.” He turned back to me. “Or maybe not, Mr . . . ?”

  “Gruber.”

  “Mr. Gruber. I’m afraid that you’ll have to return to the future without me.”

  Rosethrush had spent a lot of money sending me here. She wasn’t going to let me try another moment universe if this attempt failed. “Why? Everything I’ve told you is the simple truth.”

  “Which gives me a big advantage in facing the next forty years, doesn’t it?”

  “Don’t be a fool. Your situation here is no better tomorrow than it was yesterday.” One of the rules is never to get involved, but I was into it now, and I cared about whether he listened to me or not. I could say it was because of my bank balance. I gestured toward the cabins, where Koerner and his family slept. “Worse, after tonight. You’re throwing away your only chance to change your fate. Do you want to mortgage your talent to people like Charles Koerner? Sell yourself for the approval of people who will never understand you?”

  Welles seemed amused. “You seem a little exercised about this – Detlev, is it? Detlev, why should this mean so much to you?” He was speculating as much as asking me. “This is just your job, right? You don’t really know me. But you seem to care a lot more than any job
would warrant.

  “What that suggests to me is that you must really like my movies – I’m flattered, of course – or you are particularly engaged with the problem of the director in the world of business. Yet you must work in the world of business every day.

  “So let me make a counter-proposition: You don’t take me back to the future; you stay here with me. I question whether any artist can succeed outside of his own time. I was born in 1915. How am I even going to understand 2048, let alone make art that it wants to see?

  “On the other hand, you seem quite familiar with today. You say you know all the pitfalls I’m going to face. And I’ll bet you know your twentieth century history pretty well. Think of the advantage that gives you here! A few savvy investments and you’ll be rich! You want to make movies – we’ll do it together! You can be my partner! With your knowledge of the future we can finance our own studio!”

  “I’m a talent scout, not a financier.”

  “A talent scout – we’ll use that, too. You must know who the great actors and actresses of the next thirty years are going to be – we’ll approach them before anyone else does. Sign them to exclusive contracts. In ten years we’ll dominate the business!”

  He paced the deck to the table, put a brandy glass in front of me, and filled it. “You know, if you hadn’t told me, I would never have thought you were anything other than a servant. You’re something of an actor yourself, aren’t you? A manipulator of appearances. Iago pouring words into my ear? Good, we can definitely use that, too. But don’t tell me, Detlev, there aren’t aspects of the future you wouldn’t like to escape from. Here’s your chance. We can both kiss the Charles Koerners of the world goodbye, or better yet, succeed in their world and rub their faces in it!”

  This was a new one. I had been resisted before, I had been told to get lost, I had faced panic and disbelief. But never had a target tried to seduce me.

  The thing was, what Welles was saying made a lot of sense. Maybe if I could bring him back I would come out okay, but that didn’t look like it was going to happen. Everything I had told him about himself – his lack of family connections, his troubles with the industry, his bleak prospects – applied to me in 2048. And since I had burned this moment universe by coming here, there was no way anyone from the future was going to come to retrieve me, even if they wanted to. I could make movies with Orson Welles – and eventually, I could make them without him.

  I stared at the Ambersons film canister on the table in front of me and got hold of myself. I knew his biography. Welles hadn’t just been abandoned by others. When necessary, he had seduced and abandoned even his most trusted friends. It was always love on his terms.

  “Thank you for the offer,” I said. “But I must go back. Are you coming with me?”

  Welles sat down in the chair beside me. He smiled. “I guess you’ll have to tell your studio head, or whoever sent you, that I was more difficult than he imagined.”

  “You’ll live to regret this.”

  “We shall see.”

  “I already know. I showed you.”

  Welles’s face darkened. When he spoke his voice was distant. “Yes, that was pleasant. But now, it seems our business is finished.”

  This was not going to play well when I got back to DAA. I had one chance to salvage my reputation. “Then, if you don’t mind, I’ll take this.” I reached across the table to get the print of Ambersons.

  Welles surged forward from his chair, startlingly quick, and snatched the canister before I could. He stood, holding it in his arms, swaying on the unsteady deck. “No.”

  “Come now, Orson. Why object to our having your film? In the hundred years after that botched preview in Pomona, no one has ever seen your masterpiece. It’s the Holy Grail of lost films. What possible purpose could be served by keeping it from the world?”

  “Because it’s mine.”

  “But it’s no less yours if you give it to us. Didn’t you make it to be admired, to touch people’s hearts? Think about – ”

  “I’ll tell you what to think,” Welles said. “Think about this.”

  He seized the canister by its wire handles, twirled on his feet as he swung it round him like a hammer thrower, and hurled it out into the air over the side of the boat. He stumbled as he let it go, catching himself on the rail. The canister arced up into the moonlight, tumbling, and fell to the ocean with only the slightest splash, disappearing instantly.

  I was working at my video editor when Moira came into the apartment. She didn’t bother to knock; she never did. I drained the last of my gin, paused the image of Anne Baxter that stood on my screen, and swiveled my chair around toward her.

  “Jesus, Det, are you ever going to unpack?” Moira surveyed the stacks of boxes that still cluttered my living room.

  I headed to the kitchen to refill my glass. “That depends – are you going to throw me out again?”

  “You know I didn’t want to,” she said. “It was Vijay. He’s always looking over my shoulder.” She followed me into the kitchen. “Is that twentieth-century gin? Let me have some.” She examined a withered lime that had been sitting on the windowsill above the sink since before my trip to 1942, then put it back down. “Besides, you’re all paid up for now.”

  For now. But Rosethrush had not put me back on salary. She was furious when I returned without Welles, though she seemed to enjoy humiliating me so much that I wondered if that alone was worth what it had cost her. She rode me for my failure at the same time she dismissed it as no more than might be expected. Her comments combined condescension and contempt: not only was I a loser, but I served as a stand in for the loser Welles.

  According to Rosethrush, Welles’s turning me down showed a fatal lack of nerve. “He’s a coward,” she told me. “If he came with you, he’d have to be the genius he pretended to be, with no excuses. His genius was all sleight of hand.”

  I didn’t mention Welles’s offer to me. Not arguing with her was the price I paid for avoiding another blackballing.

  On the editor, I was working on a restoration of The Magnificent Ambersons. By throwing the only existing print overboard, Welles had made my job a lot harder – but not impossible. The negatives of the discarded footage in the RKO archives hadn’t been destroyed until December, 1942, so I’d had time to steal them before I came back. Of course Rosethrush didn’t want Ambersons; she wanted Welles. Hollywood was always about the bottom line, and despite my sales job to Welles, few beyond a bunch of critics and obsessives cared about a hundred-year-old black-and-white movie. But I was banking on the possibility that a restoration would still generate enough publicity to restart my career.

  Or maybe I had other reasons. I had not edited a film since the end of my directorial ambitions, twelve years before, and working on this made me realize how much I had missed the simple pleasure of shaping a piece of art with my hands. The restored Ambersons was brilliant, harrowing, and sad. It told the story of the long, slow decline of a great mercantile family, destroyed by progress and bad luck and willful blindness – and by the automobile. It was the first great film to address the depredations of technological progress on personal relations in society; but it was also a human tragedy and a thwarted love story. And it centered on the life of George Minafer, a spoiled rich boy who destroyed himself while bringing misery to everyone around him.

  Moira gave up and took the lime off the windowsill. “Where’s a knife? You got any tonic?”

  I liked Moira; the very fact that she cared nothing about movies made her refreshingly attractive. But I had work to do. I went back to the editor while she poked around the kitchen. I hit play. On the screen Anne Baxter, as Lucy Morgan, was telling her father, played by Joseph Cotten, the legend of a mythical young Indian chief, Vendonah. Vendonah meant “Rides-Down-Everything.”

  “Vendonah was unspeakable,” Lucy said as they walked through the garden. “He was so proud he wore iron shoes and walked over people’s faces. So at last the tribe decided that it wasn’t
a good enough excuse for him that he was young and inexperienced. He’d have to go. So they took him down to the river, put him in a canoe, and pushed him out from the shore. The current carried him on down to the ocean. And he never got back.”

  I had watched this scene before, but for the first time the words sent a shiver down my spine. I hit pause. I remembered the self-loathing in Welles’s eyes when I had shown him the images of himself in decline, and now I saw that he had made a movie about himself – in fact, he’d made two of them. Both Kane and George Minafer were versions of Welles. Spoiled, abusive, accusing, beautiful boys, aching for their come-uppance. Which they had gotten, all three of them, almost as if they had sought it out, directing the world and the people around them to achieve that aesthetic result. No wonder Welles abused others, pushing until they said “no” – because at some level he felt he deserved to be said “no” to. Maybe he turned down my “yes” because he needed that “no.” The poor bastard.

  I stared at the screen. It wasn’t all sleight of hand – or if it was sleight of hand, it was brilliant sleight of hand. Welles had pulled a masterpiece out of the air the way he had pulled the key out of Barbara Koerner’s ear. Yet to keep his integrity, he had thrown the last print of that masterpiece into the ocean.

  Within a week I would have it back, complete, ready to give to the world, both a fulfillment of Welles’s immense talent and the final betrayal of his will, sixty-three years after his death. And I would be a player again.

  If I ever let anyone else see the film. If I didn’t? What, then, would I do to fill my days?

  Behind me, I heard Moira come back out of the kitchen, and the tinkle of ice in her glass. She was going to say something, something irrelevant, and I would have to tell her to get lost. But nothing came. Finally I turned on her, just as she spoke. “What’s this?” she asked.

  She was playing idly with an open box of junk. In her hands she held a trophy, a jagged Lucite spike on a black base.