When we’d got the sub-lim head built we started on the control system for it. I’d had a Hell of an idea for that. Problem was to inject the Images just where they were needed to back up the action. For a time I thought we were going to have to do it manually, then I realized I was crazy, all we needed was a split roller somewhere on the film track and metallic flashes on the master print to trigger our relays. We fixed the roller, then we rigged a solenoid on the stop-frame trigger, keyed it to a microswitch and we were home and dry. Bridge the roller with a wet finger and the spare cross turned, the flash went off behind it; each cue on the master roll would bring a new frame into the sub-lim gate, each frame would register on the screen as a split-second rogue image. All we needed now was a pilot film to cook.
J.B. had been working on that while I was playing with the mech. Don’t ask me how he talked Jeff into trebling the overdraft, but he did it somehow; when J.B. starts operating stones have haemorrhages. Hill Studios was back on its feet and we’d got a staff of nearly twenty again. He’d dreamed up Little Andy himself and written the pilot script. We got a combined print a week after the projector was fixed and I got busy on it, making a sort of trackreading of the action and marking the frames where I wanted a sub-lim pulse to help the audience get the message. The emotion sequence was pretty simple; J.B. had scripted to keep it that way. The opening of the reel was happy, there was a middle section that needed a sad treatment, then there were a series of gags, then things went happy again for the fadeout. I cued for fifty or sixty frames of each Image, trying to grade the timing so the effect would come on the audience gradually, then build up. While I was working on the print J.B. started eating carpet, the bank balance was getting redder and redder and he was scared the labs were going to clamp down on processing: if that happened, we were through. I told him there wasn’t a thing to worry about: if we wanted a bigger loan all we had to do was get the bank boys round, show them a film and load the cans to make ‘em love us, but there wasn’t time for playing games like that. J.B. wanted results on the pilot and he wanted them fast.
The cutting took a while because the system was still crude. Like I said, it was only rigged to give one flash per frame, so if I wanted fifty images to register that meant fifty frames on the sub-lim roll and fifty cues on the master. I finished in the end, and took the crazy-looking reel through to Freddy and watched him lace the cans and run a final check to see the roller was bridging O.K., then I went and told J.B. we were set to blast. We ran the first test just two months after I walked into his office with those drawings.
We jammed a couple of dozen people into the viewing theatre, cameramen, secretaries, everybody we could lay hold of. Jeff was there, he hated the whole idea, but J.B. had soft-talked him into coming along. And Connie, she was still giving me the freeze treatment every chance she got. That was a pity, because she was a great girl. Connie the cat, Connie the little lion ... that was what she reminded me of, Doc, a lion. Tawny hair and tawny eyes, and she walked like she knew what she was worth.
J.B. had decided we’d show the pilot twice. The first time it would go through straight, with no sub-lim, so we could get the normal reaction. Then we’d run it again with hot cans. That meant the test rig would be circuited, pumping Freddy’s Images at the audience. We’d developed a new slang, that was what we meant when we talked about hot cans...J.B. gave a talkdown, saying we were going to see the same thing twice, then he buzzed Freddy and the mech started and the lights went out. The main title came on the screen.
I tell you, Doc, that picture stank. It didn’t raise a grin. When the lights came on at the end even the secretaries were yawning, and J.B. was looking like thunder. Nobody ever got round to telling him when a story stank, he always had to find out for himself. Freddy rewound and laced, I gave him the thumbs-up through the port and we started over.
For a minute nothing happened. The film was just like it was before. I felt the bottom was dropping out of my stomach, I stood at the back, wondering if the flash was triggering or if I’d got a break in the roller circuit. Then slowly I realized something. I was feeling good.
Doc, I tell you, it was crazy. I just felt great. Little Andy was great, the world was great, J.B. was a great boss, Connie was a great guy, everything was fine. I wondered was I going scatty, then I got it.
This was the happy section...
I couldn’t help myself. I was in that rotten little film, following it like it was the best thing that ever hit the screen. When Little Andy was scared, I couldn’t breathe. When he came out on top of a gag, I wanted to cheer. We got to the sad sequence and one of the girls started in crying like she’d never leave off. It curled ‘em up, Doc, it laid ‘em in the aisles. There never was a film like that, not ever before.
Came the funnies, I started to giggle. Wasn’t a thing I could do. It was just ... well, the world was so crazy, you know, there was nothing to do but laugh ... I’d got my arm round Connie, and she was rolling her head on my shoulder and howling, and we couldn’t have hated each other if we’d tried. She kept pointing at the screen and trying to say something, then she’d sort of choke and start laughing all over again. Up in front, J.B. was banging the chair arms and throwing his head back and having hysterics at his own junk. There was no fighting it, you had to go. I’d never seen anything like it. Then there was the happy section at the end and the lights came up and we felt great, just great....
That was the only time I watched a Little Andy show with hot cans. Doc, it is great. It’s great for the jaybirds, but if you can sort of think, you know what I mean. Doc ... afterwards, it’s like you went down on your knees and bayed the moon...
I guess Connie was the first to come round. I was still hanging on to her, she looked up at me, she said, “Johnny, did you...” She giggled and crammed a hand over her mouth. Controlled herself. She said, “Did you ... do whatever that was?”
“I did.”
She said, “It’s ... great. Just great.” She wiped her eyes. Poor old Connie, she was in a Hell of a mess with the tears and all...She said, “You’re worth a million pounds.” I fixed a date with her that night, told her we’d paint the town. The way she was feeling she couldn’t have said no to a thing, and I don’t miss a chance like that, Doc.
I told Freddy the show had gone over fine. It was queer, the look he gave me. Like the whole world was a party and he hadn’t got an invite. You see he was the only one couldn’t get a lift from the Images, they wouldn’t work for him. I said he was a great guy, to keep right on at the job, I’d see J.B. about getting him a raise. He said, “Thanks, Mr. Harper, sir, thanks very much indeed....” You know, Doc, he sounded like he meant it...
I took Connie round the swank bars. I threw the money about. Money didn’t matter, the more I thought about sub-lim the more loot I could see rolling in. I got stinking drunk, Doc, I’ll tell you...
She got the whole story out of me. Oh, it was a question here, a touch there, I gabbled it all out because I thought it didn’t matter, she couldn’t understand what the cans were or how we hotted them. She understood enough though. She understood Hill Studios had got something nobody on God’s sweet earth could refuse to buy, that we could write our own cheques from here on in and that I was the key man in the whole shebang. The way she played up to me I felt a mile high.
I tried to be sort of modest, you know ? I told her about Freddy, I said, “Honest to God, the little guy’s the one that matters. He’s the only one can make the Images. I can use ‘em, but Freddy has to draw them...”
We were alone in a quiet bar, the lights were low. She said, “What are you doing about him, Johnny?”
I hooted. “Do? Raise him. Raise him fifty a week, a hundred. Yeah, give him a hundred a week. Worth every penny.”
She banged her cigarette in the tray and glared at me, she said, “What are you doing, Johnny, you gone crazy?”
“What? Now, honey...”
She said, “Did you tell him? Did you talk crazy money like that?”
I kind of touched her hair. I said, “What in Hell’s that scent?”
She got mad. She said, “Listen, Johnny, tell me what you said. You say a thing like that to him ?”
“Course not, but what the Hell, we got to keep him...”
She said, “So you play to lose. A hundred a week, Johnny, what’ll he do ? What would you do, go down the road and get two? You put a price on him, he knows what he’s worth...”
“Well, what the Hell—”
She crossed her long legs and there was a sort of frothing of lace. She said, “Raise him a quid. And pat his head every Friday. That way he knows he’s nothing but an op.”
It took a time to sink in because I was plenty stewed, then I started to giggle. I said, “Connie, my pet, who has the brains. . . .” She said primly, “Me, Johnny. Tell you what. Pay me the hundred a week, I’ll use them all the time.”
I looked her up and down a long, long while, and those tawny eyes, it was like they were saying things. You know, all sorts of things. I said, “Connie, I might just do that...”
We got out to the car and she sort of slid down in the seat and she didn’t care about her skirt. She said, “Johnny...”
“What?”
She found my hand in the half-dark. She said sleepily, “Going to be a big man. Going to the top.”
I said, “Could be.”
She was sort of close. She said, “Johnny, take me along. You can do it if you want....”
We stayed in the car a good while, and as far as it went it was great.
* * * *
It’s a long way to the top, Doc, a damn long way. I got Connie moved out of the main office, made her my personal secretary. I got a girl to work under her, so she’d have nothing to do but polish her nails. Then I had to fix up to manufacture the sub-lim adaptations. We wouldn’t just need units for our own gear, we’d need them to supply to anybody that bought our films. Before production could start there had to be a prototype, so we tore the test rig apart and rebuilt it in a single housing so it looked like something that might work. We had trouble ironing out all the bugs, because the end-product would have to fit half a dozen different types of mech and telecine gear. Right in the middle of things, as though we didn’t have trouble enough, we had trouble with Jeff. Like I said, he wouldn’t stand for sub-lim. J.B. tried to get me to fix a reel just for Jeff to see but he was too smart, one time with hot cans had been enough, he wouldn’t watch any more. There was a big row. I was in on it. Jeff shot his mouth off for maybe an hour, not even J.B. could get a word in. He sort of raved about morality and warping people’s minds and a lot of crap like that. J.B. tried to tell him we were in too deep, we couldn’t pull back, but that didn’t make no difference to Jeff. He was like that when he got an idea in his head. I told Connie afterwards. I was telling Connie nearly everything.
I was too mad to keep still, I sort of paced up and down the office while I was talking. I said, “It’s like he’s got a complex, you know, like the captain going down with the boat. Wants us all to pack up and go home, says he’s not putting his name on anything that’s got sub-lim mixed up in it. And you know Jeff, once he gets a thing in his head he won’t shift.”
Connie laughed at that, she thought it was pretty funny. She said, “Jeff’s a nice guy, it’s just he’s got a bit old. Sort of set in his ways. I’ll be sorry to see him out to grass, but maybe it’s time.” I asked her who was going to put Jeff out and when, she just purred and used those cat-eyes on me, and the eyes said you wait and see...
I had a call from J.B. that night. You could tell he was mad on the phone. He’d had Jeff round to his place, tried to gin him into saying yes. Sub-lim hadn’t worked neither did the gin, I could have told him he was wasting his time. He asked me what I thought, I said I didn’t know. He said he wanted to see me, said to get round there fast. I asked could I bring Connie and make it a party, he said the Hell with that, to come on my own and make it fast. I put the phone down. I’d never heard him so set, and when J.B. gets set on something, better get out of his way, brother. I got the Jag out and went over to his house, a week later I was a partner in Hill Studios.
Jeff took it bad. He resigned on the spot, and we found him his coat and told him we hoped he’d keep in touch, then I shook hands with J.B. and we were all set to go. I moved into Jeff’s office. It was about ten times bigger than mine and it had a carpet. I’d never had an office with a carpet, it was a pity I didn’t have time to admire it.
Connie spent about ten minutes showing me how pleased she was, and that bucked me up a lot, because what with the work and the trouble with Jeff I hadn’t seen much of her for weeks. Well, she’d asked for the top, and that was where we were headed. I told her to get lost for a few hours, I’d got work to do. I sent for Freddy. Next problem was to get the television boys to see things our way. I needed some more Images.
We got the circus down from Town and showed them the pilot with hot cans. There wasn’t any argument, they signed us up for a series of fifty, and that was the end of our money worries. The studio was in an old house that stood in its own grounds and we bought what extra land we needed, shoved bulldozers through everything on it and started putting up a couple of sound stages. J.B. bought a dozen writers, he knows when he’s licked, and we started vetting the first scripts and fixing production schedules. And I raised Freddy another pound; that made him the best-paid op in the business.
I passed out most of the routine work. I’d got a team building a new control system; instead of the pulses, we planned to use low frequency signals on the track itself, that way we could programme the gear to insert patterns of any number of flashes off one frame. It made life easier, and it also meant our control was better, we could play an emotion up or down, hold it at a pitch, peak it just at the right time. It all depends on the Image strength. Doc, the number of flashes a second, the duration of the pulses. We can trim it just how we like. I tell you, Little Andy is nothing. We don’t need the film, Doc, we could make you writhe just looking at an empty screen. The Video’s only the excuse for what happens to you....
Biggest headache was getting the sub-lim units installed at the transmitter end. We licked the problem eventually. We made up a film about sub-lim, what it was, how it worked, and the Images that went with it told you it was great, you had to buy it. You know how we used that film. Doc, you can work it out for yourself . . . anybody didn’t like the idea, we just got them down to the studios, showed them our movie. Every independent telecine is wearing cans now, Doc, every machine. And they can do anything you want. They’re still showing Little Andy, all they’ve done is make us a nation of saps; that’s nothing, they haven’t even started. What say we wanted a change of government, Doc, or to kick all the foreigners out of the country or set up pelota as the national game. Do you see what this thing is, Doc? We could do it, all it needs is the film and the Images that make you know it’s true.... That’s why I came to you, Doc, that’s why I want out, but now I don’t think there’s time....
After the first show was telecast J.B. went wild. The papers were full of Little Andy; the cheap dailies got it straight away, but inside the month the great nationals were giving the junk spread after spread. I guess people all over the world started wondering what the Hell had bitten us. By the time the second film was ready I’d named Connie as dialogue director and she’d had her physique splashed across every paper in the country. I guess I should have worried more, but there wasn’t time; the place was like a madhouse most of the day, with workmen tearing down walls, installing gear, units shooting scenes in every damn corner they could find. I got to my office one morning, couldn’t get in the door for cables. And somebody had got a pneumatic drill going just outside, you couldn’t think. I grabbed Connie and got out, went and found a quiet bar where we could talk. She said J.B. had got an idea for a new series, he wanted to start work on it right away.
That got me. I was the guy who should be told a thing like that, not Connie. I said,
“The Hell with it, he can’t start anything else. We haven’t got the space or the time, we haven’t got the staff. We shall need the new stages for Little Andy, we can’t start something fresh.”
She sort of looked at her nails. She said, “Fact is, Johnny, we’ve got more space. We bought Orbit Films a week ago. The whole lot, stages, everything.”
I couldn’t wait to get back to Hill. We managed to stop the building boys long enough to talk. J.B. tried to calm me down. Sure we’d expanded, sure I hadn’t been told, hadn’t I got enough worries on the technical side, anyhow? Each man to his job, that was what J.B. said. He said not to worry, there was enough profit for everybody. He said within twelve months we’d have sub-lim cans on every telecine in the country, in two years we’d have the whole world. The Hell with that. I said, “Look, J.B., let’s take this slow. They find us out, they find out what we’re doing, they’ll hang us off the trees right there in the road.... Let’s make films,” I said to him. “Let’s stick at that. I’m a film man, I don’t want to own a planet. . . .” But I couldn’t get through to him. He just slapped me on the back and said not to worry, he’d look after everything. I tried Connie afterwards, she blew cold. “O.K. Johnny,” she said, “play it your way. I don’t care.”
New Writings in SF 4 - [Anthology] Page 14