The Technicolor Time Machine

4

Barney Hendrickson suppressed a groan, and the hand that raised the carton of black coffee to his lips tremored ever so slightly. He had forgotten how many hours—or centuries—it had been since he had had any sleep. One difficulty had followed another through the night, until the dawn of a new day brought its own problems. Dallas Levy’s voice buzzed in the earpiece of the phone like an irritated wasp while Barney sipped his coffee.

“I agree, I agree, Dallas,” he rasped in answer, his vocal cords eroded by three chain-smoked packs of cigarettes. “Just stick by him and keep him quiet, no one ever goes near those old storerooms… Well you’ve been on double time the last three hours… All right then, treble time now, I’ll okay the vouchers. Just keep him locked up and quiet until we decide what to do with him. And tell Dr Lyn to get up here as soon as he has finished talking to B.O. Plenty.”

Barney hung up the phone and tried to concentrate on the budget sheet before him. So far most of the entries were followed by penciled question marks; this was going to be a hard picture to cost. And what would happen if the police got wind of the Viking locked up down below? Could he be charged with kidnapping someone who had been dead almost a thousand years? “The mind reels,” he mumbled, and reached for the coffee again. Professor Hewett, still apparently as fresh as ever, paced back and forth the length of the office, spinning a pocket calculator and scribbling the results in a small notebook.

“Any results yet, Prof?” Barney asked. “Can we send anything bigger than that truck back in time?”

“Patience, you must learn patience. Nature yields up her secrets only with the greatest reluctance, and a misplaced decimal point can make disclosure impossible. There are many factors that enter the equations other than the accepted four dimensions of physical measurement in time. We must consider three additional dimensions, those of displacement in space, mass, a cumulative error, which I am of the opinion is caused by entropy—”

“Spare me the details, just the answer, that’s all I want,” His intercom buzzed and he told his secretary to show Dr. Lyn in. Lyn refused a cigarette and folded his long form into a chair.

“Out with the bad news,” Barney said. “Unless that is your normal expression. No luck with the Viking?”

“As you say, no luck. There is a communication problem, you realize, since my command of Old Norse is far from perfect, which must be coupled with the fact that Ottar has little or no interest in what I am trying to discuss with him. However, I do feel that with the proper encouragement he could be convinced that he should learn English.”

“Encouragement… ?”

“Money, or the eleventh-century equivalent. Like most Vikings he is very mercenary and will do almost anything to gain status and wealth, though of course he prefers to get it by battle and killing.”

“Of course. We can pay him for taking his language lessons, bookkeeping has worked out a rate of exchange and it’s all in our favor, but what about the time factor? Can you have him speaking English in two weeks?”

“Impossible! With a cooperative student this might be done, but not with Ottar. He is reluctant at best, in addition to the not considerable factor that he refuses to do anything until he is released.”

“Not considerable!” Barney said, and had the sudden desire to tug at a fistful of his own hair. “I can just see the hairy nut with his meat ax on the comer of Hollywood and Vine. That’s out!”

“If I might offer a suggestion,” Professor Hewett said stopping his pacing in front of Barney’s desk. “If Dr. Lyn were to return with this aborigine to his own time there would be ample opportunity to teach him English in his own environment, which would both reassure and calm him.”

“It would not reassure or calm me, Professor,” Lyn said coldly. “Life in that particular era tends to be both brutish and short.”

“I’m sure precautionary measures can be taken, Doctor,” said Hewett, giving his calculator a quick spin. “I would think that the philological opportunities would far outweight the personal factor…”

“There is of course that,” Lyn agreed, his unfocused eyes staring at nouns, roots, cases and genders long buried by time.

“Plus the important point that in this manner the time factor can be altered to suit our needs. Gentlemen, we can collapse or stretch time as we will! Dr. Lyn can have ten days, or ten months, or ten years, to teach the language to Ottar, and between the moment when we leave him in the Viking era and the moment when we see him again but a few minutes need have passed from our point of view.”

“Two months will be adequate,” Lyn snapped, “if you wish to take into consideration my point of view.”

“It’s agreed then,” Barney said. “Lyn will go back with the Viking and teach him English, and we’ll arrive with the company two months later Viking-time to start the production rolling.”

“I have not agreed,” Lyn persisted. “There are dangers…”

“I wonder what it would feel like to be the world’s single greatest authority on Old Norse?” Barney asked, having had some experience with the academic mind, and the wide-eyed expression on Lyn’s face revealed that his shaft had sunk home. “Right. We’ll work out the details later. Why don’t you go see if you can explain this to Ottar. Mention money. We’ll get him to sign a completion and penalties contract, so you’ll be safe enough as long as he wants his pay.”

“It might be possible,” Lyn agreed, and Barney knew that he was hooked.

“Right then. You get down to Ottar and put the deal to him, and while you’re getting his okay I’ll have the contract department draw up one of their barely legal, lifetime-at-hard-labor contracts.” He flipped on the intercom. “Put me through to contracts, will you, Betty. Has the Benzedrine arrived yet?”

“I called the dispensary an hour ago,” the intercom squeaked.

“Well call them again if you expect me to live past noon.”

As Jens Lyn went out, a slight Oriental wearing pink slacks, a cerise shirt, a Harris Tweed sports jacket and a sour expression entered.

“Well, Charley Chang,” Barney boomed, sticking out his hand, “long time no see.”

“It’s been too long, Barney,” Charley said, grinning widely and shaking the outstretched hand, “Good to work with you again.”

They disliked each other intensely and as soon as their hands separated Barney lit a cigarette, and the smile vanished into the unhappy folds of Chang’s normal expression. “What’s cooking, Barney?” he asked.

“A wide-screen, three-hour, big-budget film—and you’re the only man who can write it.”

“We’re running out of books, Barney, but I’ve always thought that there was a good one in the Song of Solomon, sexy without being dirty—”

“The subject has already been chosen, a wholly new concept of the Viking discoveries of North America.”

Chang’s frown deepened. “Sounds good, Barney, but you know I’m a specialist. I don’t think this is up my alley.”

“You’re a good writer, Charley, which means everything is up your alley. Besides, ha-ha, let’s not forget your contract,” he added, slipping the dagger a few inches out of the scabbard so it could be seen.

“No, we can’t forget the contract, ha-ha,” Charley said coldly. “I’ve always been interested in doing a historical.”

“That’s great,” Barney said, pulling the budget sheet toward him again. The door opened and a messenger pushed in a trolley loaded with books. Barney pointed at them. “Here’s the scoop from the library, everything you need to know. Just take a quick flip through them and I’ll be with you in a minute.”

“A minute, sure, sure,” Charlie said, looking coldly at the twenty-odd thick volumes.

“Five thousand seven hundred and seventy-three point two eight cubic meters with a loading of twelve thousand seven hundred and seventy-seven point six two kilograms at a power increase of twenty-seven point two per cent,” Professor Hewett suddenly said.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Barney snapped.

“Those are the figures you asked for, the size of load the vremeatron will be able to handle with an increased power supply.”

“Very nice. Now will you translate it into American.”

“Roughly speaking”—Hewett rolled his eyes up and mumbled quickly under his breath—“I would say that a fourteen-ton load could be temporally moved, measuring twelve feet by twelve feet by forty feet.”

“That’s more like it. That should hold anything we might possibly need.”

“Contract,” Betty said, dropping an eight-page multifolded document onto his desk.

“All right,” Barney said, slipping quickly through the crisp sheets. “Get Dallas Levy up here.”

“Miss Tove is waiting outside to see you.”

“Not now! Tell her my leprosy is acting up. And where are those bennies? I’m not going to get through this morning on coffee alone.”

“I’ve rung the dispensary three more times, there seems to be something about a staff shortage today.”

“Those unfeeling bastards. You better get down there and bring them back yourself.”

“Why Barney Hendrickson—it must have been years…”

The hoarse-voiced words hurtled across the office and left silence in their wake. Gossipmongers said that Slithey Tove had the acting ability of a marionette with loose strings, the brain of a chihuahua and the moral standards of Fanny Hill. They were right. Yet these qualities, or lack of qualities, did not explain the success of her pictures. The one quality that Slithey did have, in overabundance, was femaleness, plus the ability to communicate on what must have been a hormone level. She did not generate an aura of sex, but rather one of sexual availability. Which was true enough. This aura was strong enough to carry, scarcely diminished, through all the barriers of film, lenses and projectors to radiate, hot and steaming, from the silver screen. Her pictures made money. Most women didn’t like them. Her aura, now operating unhampered by time, space or celluloid, swept the room like a sensual sonar, clicking with passion unrestrained.

Betty sniffed loudly and swept out of the room, though she had to slow momentarily to get past the actress, who stood sideways in the doorway. It was said, truthfully, that Slithey had the largest bust in Hollywood.

“Slithey…” Barney said, and his voice cracked. Too many cigarettes, of course.

“Barney darling…” she said, as the smoothly hydraulic pistons of her rounded legs propelled her slowly across the office, “it’s been ages since I’ve seen you.”

With her hands on the desk top, she leaned forward and gravity tugged down at the thin fabric of her blouse and at least 98 per cent of her bosom swam into view. Barney felt he was flying upside down into a fleshy Grand Canyon.

“Slithey,” Barney said, springing suddenly to his feet: he had almost fallen into this trap before. “I want to talk to you about this picture we’re planning, but you see I’m busy just now…”

Inadvertently he had taken her arm—which throbbed like a great, hot, beating heart under his fingers as she leaned close. He snatched his hand away.

“If you’ll just hold on a bit, I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”

“I’ll just sit over there against the wall,” the husky-voice said. “I know I won’t be in the way.”

“You want me?” Dallas Levy asked from the open doorway, talking to Barney while his eyes made a careful survey of the actress. Hormone contacted hormone and she inhaled automatically. He slowly smiled.

“Yes,” Barney said, digging the contract out of the litter of papers on his desk. “Take this down to Lyn and tell him to get his friend to sign it. Any trouble?”

“Not since we found out he likes burnt beefsteak and beer. Anytime he starts acting up we slip him another steak and a quart of beer and he forgets his troubles. Eight steaks and eight quarts so far.”

“Get that signature,” Barney said, and his gaze fell accidentally on Slithey, who had oozed into the armchair and crossed her silk-shod legs. Her garters had little pink bows on them…

“What do you say, Charley?” Barney asked, collapsing into his swivel chair and spinning it about. “Any ideas yet?”

Charley Chang raised the thick volume he held in both hands. “I’m on page thirteen of this one and there are a few more books to go.”

“Background material,” Barney told him. “We can-rough out the main story lines now and you can fill in the details later. L.M. suggested a saga, and we can’t go wrong with that. We open in the Orkney Islands around the year 1000 when there is plenty of trouble. You have Norse settlers and Viking raiders and things are really hotting up. Maybe you open with a Viking raid, the dragon ship gliding across the dark waters, you know.”

“Like opening a Western with the bankrobbers silently riding into town?”

“That’s the idea. The hero is the chief Viking, or maybe the head man ashore, you’ll work that out. So there’s some fighting, then some more of the same, so the hero decides to move his bunch to the new world, Vinland, which he has just heard about.”

“Like the winning of the West?”

“Right. Then the voyage, the storm, the shipwreck, the landing, the first settlement, the battle with the Indians. Think big because we’re going to have plenty of extras. End on a high note, looking into the sunset.”

Charley Chang scribbled notes on the flyleaf of the book as Barney talked, nodding his head in agreement. “Just one thing more,” he said, holding up the book. “Some of the names of the guys in this book are really a gas. Listen to this, here’s one called Eyjolf the Foul, who has a friend name of Hergil Hnappraz. And Polarbear Pig, Ragnar Hairybreeks—a million more. We could play this for laughs… ?”

“This is a serious film, Charley, just as serious as any you have ever done from—”

“You’re the boss, Barney. Just a suggestion. But what about the love interest?”

“Work her in early, you know how to do it.”

“That role is made for me, Barney darling,” the voice whispered in his ear as warm arms wrapped him and he began to drown in a sea of resilient flesh.

“Don’t let him sweet-talk you, Slithey,” he heard a muffled voice say. “Barney Hendrickson is my buddy, indeed my old buddy, but a mighty good businessman to boot, shrewd, so no matter what you promise him, I’m sorry to have to say this, I gotta look closely at all contracts before we sign.”

“Ivan,” Barney said, struggling free of the perfumed octopoid embrace, “just take your client aside for a moment then I’ll be with you. I don’t know if we can do business, but at least we can talk.”

Ivan Grissini, who, despite the fact that his lank hair, hawk nose and rumpled, dandruff-speckled suit made him look like a crooked agent, was a crooked agent. He could smell a deal ten miles upwind in a hailstorm and always carried sixteen fountain pens that he filled ritually each morning before leaving for the office.

“Sit over here, baby,” he said, levering Slithey toward the comer with a long-practiced motion. Since she wasn’t stuffed with greenbacks he was immune to her charms. “Barney Hendrickson is a man good as his word, even better.”

The phone rang just as Jens Lyn came in waving the contract. “Ottar cannot sign this,” he said. “It is in English.”

“Well translate it, you’re the technical adviser. Hold on.” He picked up the phone.

“I could translate it, it would be extremely difficult but possible, but what would be the point? He cannot read.”

“Just hold on, Lyn. No, not you, Sam. I know, Sam… Of course I saw the estimate, I made it myself. No, you don’t have to ask me where I’m getting the LSD… Be realistic yourself. Yesterday neither of us was born not, I agree… what you don’t realize is that this picture can be produced within the figure I outlined, give or take fifty thousand… Don’t use the word impossible, Sam. The impossible may take a while, but we do it, you know the routine… What?… On the phone? Sam, be reasonable. I’ve got three rings of Barnum and Bailey in the office right now, this isn’t the time to go into details… Brush-off? Me? Never!… Yes, by all means, ask him. L.M. has been in on this picture from the beginning, every step of the way, and you’ll find that he’ll back me up in my own footsteps every step of the way … Right… And the same to you, Sam.”

He dropped the phone into the cradle and Charley Chang said, “She could be captured in the raid, in the opening, she could fight with him with true hatred, but hatred would, in spite of itself, turn to love.”

“I’ve never been captured in a raid before,” Slithey husked from the corner.

“A good idea, Charley,” Barney agreed.

“And even if he could read—he cannot write,” Lyn said.

“We’ve had that problem with foreign actors more than once,” Barney told him. “Staple the true translation to the contract, have it notarized as a true translation by a bilingual notary, have the party of the second part make his mark and affix his thumb print on each document, both witnessed by two impartial witnesses, and it will stand up in any court in the world.”

“There may be some difficulty in locating a bilingual English-Old Norse notary—”

“Ask casting, they can find anyone.”

“Here they are, Mr. Hendrickson,” his secretary said, coming in through the open door and placing a bottle of Benzedrine tablets before him on the desk.

“Too late,” Barney whispered, staring at them, unmoving. “Too late.”

The telephone and the intercom sounded at the same moment and he groped out two of the pills and washed them down with the cold, black, cardboardy coffee.

“Hendrickson here,” he said flipping the key.

“Barney, I would like to see you in my office at once,” L.M.’s voice said.

Betty had answered the phone. “That was L.M. Greenspan’s secretary,” she said. “L.M. would like to see you in his office at once.”

“I get the message.”

His thigh muscles hurt when he stood up and he wondered how long it would take for the bennies to show some effect. “Stay with it, Charley, I’ll want a synopsis, a couple of sheets, as soon as possible.”

When he started toward the door Ivan Grissini’s hand darted toward his lapel, but he moved away from it with reflex efficiency. “Stick around, Ivan, I’ll want to talk to you after I see L.M.” The chorus of voices was cut off as he closed the door behind him. “Lend me your towel, will you, Betty,” he asked.

She took the towel from the bottom drawer of her desk and he draped it around his shoulders, tucking it carefully inside the collar of his shirt. Then he bent and placed his head under the faucet of the water cooler and gasped when Betty turned it on. He let the icy stream run over his head and the back of his neck for a few moments, then straightened up and dried himself off. Betty lent him her comb. He felt weaker but better, and when he looked in the mirror he looked almost human. Almost.

“Lock the door behind you,” L.M. said when Barney came into the office, then grunted as he bent over to clip a telephone wire with a pair of angle-nose wire cutters. “Are there any more, Sam?”

“That’s the last one,” Sam said in his gray, colorless voice. Sam was pretty much of a gray, colorless man, which was assuredly protective coloration since he was L.M.’s own personal, private accountant and was reputed to be a world authority on corporative finance and lax evasion. He clutched a folder of papers protectively to his chest and flicked his eyes toward L.M. “That is no longer necessary,” he said.

“Maybe, maybe,” L.M. said, puffing as he fell into his chair. “But if I even say the word bank when the wires aren’t cut my heart gives palpitations. I got not so good news for you, Barney.” He bit off the end of a cigar. “We’re ruined.”

“What do you mean?” Barney looked back and forth from one expressionless face to the other. “Is this some kind of gag?”

“What L.M. means,” Sam said, “is that Climactic Studios will soon be bankrupt.”

“On the rocks, the work of a lifetime,” L.M. said in a hollow voice.

Sam nodded once, as mechanically as a ventriloquist’s dummy, and said, “That is, roughly, the situation. Normally it would be at least three more months before our financial report would be sent to the banks, who, as you know, own the controlling percentage of this corporation. However, for some reason unknown to us, they are sending their accountants to examine the books this week.”

“And… ?” Barney asked, feeling suddenly lightheaded. The silence lengthened unbearably until he jumped to his feet and began to pace the room. “And they’ll find the company is on the rocks, and that all the profits are on paper”—he turned and pointed dramatically to L.M.—“and that all the hard cash has been bled off into the untaxable L.M. Greenspan Foundation. No wonder you’re not suffering. The company may go down the drain, but L.M. Greenspan goes marching on.”

“Watch it! That’s no way for an employee to talk to the man who gave him his first break—”

“And his last one too—right here!” Barney said, and chopped himself on the neck with the edge of his hand, much harder than he had planned. “Listen, L.M.,” he pleaded, rubbing the sore spot, “until the ax falls we still have a chance. You must have thought there was the possibility of a salvage operation or you wouldn’t have got involved in this deal with Professor Hewett and his machine. You must have felt that a big box-office success would get the pressure off, make the firm solvent again. We can still do it.”

L.M. shook his head morosely. “Don’t think it doesn’t hurt to shake hands with the knife that stabs you in the back, but what else can I do? A big box-office hit, sure, even a big picture in the can and we could laugh at the teeth of the banks. But you can’t make a picture in a week.”

You can’t make a picture in a week! The words hissed and sizzled through the caffeine-clogged, Benzedrine-loaded channels of Barney’s brain, levering up a reluctant memory.

“L.M.” he said dramatically. “You’re going to have a heart attack.”

“Bite your tongue!” L.M. gasped, and clutched a roll of fat roughly near that vital organ. “Don’t say that. One coronary’s enough to last a lifetime.”

“Listen to this. You go home with Sam to work on the books tonight, you take them with you. You get sick. It could be indigestion, it could be a coronary. Your doctor says it could be a coronary. The fees you’ve been paying him he should deliver at least that one small favor. Everyone runs around and shouts for a few days and the books are forgotten about and then it is the weekend, and nobody even considers looking at the books until Monday, maybe Tuesday.”

“Monday,” Sam said firmly. “You don’t know banks. No books on Monday and they’ll have a hired car full of doctors over to the house.”

“All right, Monday then. That will be time enough.”

“So Monday—but what difference does it make? Frankly, I’m puzzled,” L.M. said, and knitted his brow and looked puzzled.

“It makes this difference, L.M. On Monday I will bring you the new picture in the can. A picture that will have to gross two, three million on length, width of screen and color alone.”

“But you can’t!”

“But we can. You’re forgetting about the vremeatron. This gadget works. Remember last night when you thought we had all gone for about ten minutes?” L.M nodded reluctantly. “That was how long we were gone from here and now. But we were an hour or more in the Viking times. We could do it again. Take the company and everything we need back there to shoot the picture, and use just as much time as we need to do it right before we came back.”

“You mean… ?”

“Correct. When we come back with the film in the can we need only have been gone ten minutes as far as you’re concerned.”

“Why didn’t they ever think of this before?” L.M. gasped with happy appreciation.

“For a lot of reasons…”

“Do you mean to tell me…” Sam leaned so far forward in his chair that he was almost out of it, and the hint of some expression, perhaps a smile?, touched his face. “Do you mean that we will have to pay production costs for just ten minutes?”

“I do not mean that,” Barney snapped. “I can tell you in advance that there are going to be some headaches for bookkeeping. However, to cheer you up, I can guarantee that we can shoot on location—with more extras—for about one-tenth the cost of filming in Spain.”

Sam’s eyes glittered. “I don’t know the details of this project, L.M., but some of the factors make very good sense.”

“Can you do it, Barney? Pull this thing off?”

“I can do it if you give me all the help I ask for and no questions. This is Tuesday. I see no reason why we can’t have everything we need sewn up by Saturday.” He counted off on his fingers. “We’ll have to get the contracts signed with the principals, get enough raw film to last for all the shooting, the technicians, at least two extra cameras…” He began to mumble to himself as he ran through all they might possibly need. “Yes,” he said finally, “we can do it.”

“Still, I don’t know,” L.M. said pensively. “It’s a wild idea.”

The future teetered on the balance and Barney groped desperately for inspiration.

“Just one more thing,” he said. “If we’re on location for, say, six months, everyone has to be paid six months’ salary. But we rent the cameras and sound equipment, all of the expensive hardware, we will only have to pay for a few days rental fees for them.”

“Barney,” L.M. said, sitting up straight in his chair, “you’ve got yourself a deal.”