The Technicolor Time Machine

5

“You haven’t heard the last of Cinecittá yet, Mr. Hendrickson.”

“Barney.”

“Not yet, Barney, not by a long shot. The new realism came out of Italy after the war, then the kitchen-sink film that the British picked up. But you’ll see, Rome ain’t dead yet. Guys like me come over here to Hollywood for a bit, pick up some techniques—”

“Pick up some loot.”

“…can’t deny that, Barney, working for the Yankee dollar. But you know, you’re not going to get much on color this time of day.” He swung the 8-mm Bolex that hung on a thong from his wrist. “I should have loaded this HP with Tri-X. It’s five in the afternoon.”

“Don’t worry, Gino, you’ll have plenty of light, take my word for that.” He looked up as the warehouse door opened and Amory Blestead came in. “Over here, Amory,” he said. “This is our cameraman, Gino Cappo. Amory Blestead, technical adviser.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Amory said, shaking hands, “I always wondered how you got those repulsive effects in Autumn Love.”

“You mean in Porco Mondo? Those weren’t effects. That’s just the way that part of Yugoslavia looks.”

“Christ!” He turned to Barney. “Dallas told me to tell you they’ll be down with Ottar in about five minutes.”

“About time. We’ll have the Prof warm his machine up.”

Barney climbed painfully into the back of the army truck and dropped onto the boxes. He had managed to grab about an hour’s sleep on the couch in his office before another urgent message from L.M. had dragged him awake and up to L.M.’s office for an extended wrangle over budgeting. The pace was beginning to tell.

“I have recalibrated all my instruments,” Professor Hewett said, tapping happily on a dial face, “so that now I can guarantee the utmost precision temporally arid geographically in all future time transports.”

“Wonderful. See if you can recalibrate us to arrive just after our last trip, close to the same time, the same day, The light was good—”

The door crashed open, and loud, guttural singing filled the warehouse. Ottar stumbled in with Jens Lyn and Dallas Levy each clutching one of his arms, holding him up rather than restraining him, since he was obviously roaring drunk. Tex Antonelli came behind them wheeling a handtruck loaded with packing cases. It needed all three of them to heave the Viking up into the truck, where he passed out, mumbling happily to himseli. They piled the boxes in around him.

“What’s all this?” Barney asked.

“Trade goods,” Lyn said, pushing the crate labeled JACK DANIELS in over the tailgate. “Ottar signed the contract. I was very surprised to discover an Icelandic notary public here—”

“You can find anything in Hollywood.”

“And Ottar agreed to study English once he was back in his own house. He has developed a decided taste for distilled beverages and we agreed on a payment of one bottle of whiskey a day for every day of study.”

“Couldn’t you have fobbed him off with some rotgut?” Barney asked as a second crate of Jack Daniels slid into the truck. “I can see myself trying to justify this on the gyp sheet.”

“We did try,” Dallas said, shoving in a third case. “Slipped him some Old Overcoat 95 per cent grain neutral spirits, but it was no sale. He developed an educated palate early. Two months, five cases, that’s the bargain.”

Jens Lyn climbed in and Barney admired his knee-high engineer’s boots, puttees, many-pocketed hunting jacket and sheath knife. “Why the Jungle Jim outfit?” he asked.

“A simple matter of survival and creature comfort,” Lyn said, making room for the sleeping bag and a packing crate that Dallas pushed up to him. “I have DDT for the body lice that are sure to abound, halazone tablets for the drinking water and a quantity of tinned food. The diet of the time is restricted, and I am sure unwholesome to modem tastes. Therefore I have taken a few simple precautions.”

“Fair enough,” Barney said. “Climb m and lock up the tailgate, let’s get rolling.”

Though the vremeatron still whined and crackled with the same intensity, there was no longer the tension there had been on the first trip. The conditioned reflexes of mechanized man took over and the voyage through time became just as commonplace as a ride in a high-speed elevator, a trip in a jet plane, a descent in a submarine or a blast-off in a rocket. Only Gino, the newcomer, showed some apprehension, darting rapid glances at the bank of electronic gadgetry and the sealed warehouse. But in the face of the others’ calm—Barney managed to doze off Airing the transition while Dallas and the Danish philologist quarreled over the opening of one of the whiskey bottles and the resultant loss thereby of a day’s English lessons—he relaxed a little. When the transition did occur he half rose, startled, but sat down again when the bottle was passed to him, though his eyes did widen considerably when the ice-blue sky appeared outside and the tang of salt spray filled the truck.

“That’s a pretty good trick,” he said, pointing his light meter. “How’s it done?”

“For details you have to ask the Prof here,” Barney said, gasping over too large a swallow of the whiskey. “Very complex. Something about moving through time.”

“I get it,” Gino said, stopping his diaphragm down to 3.5. “Something like the time zones when you fly from London to New York. The sun doesn’t seem to move and you arrive at the same time you took off.”

“Something like that.”

“Good light. We can get some good color with light like this.”

“If you drive don’t drink,” Dallas said, leaning out to hand the bottle to Tex, who sat behind the wheel in she cab. “One slug and let’s get on the trail, pardner.”

The starter whined the motor to life and, looking out over the cab, Barney saw that they were following the tire tracks of another truck, clearly visible in the damp sand and gravel. Memory pushed up through the layers of fatigue and he hammered on the metal roof of the cab over Tex’s head.

“Blow your horn,” he shouted.

They were coming to the rocky headland and the horn sounded as they swung around it. Barney stumbled over the crates and trod on the sleeping Viking as he rushed to the rear of the truck. There was the rising grumble of another engine as an identical army truck passed them, going in the opposite direction. Barney reached the open rear and clutched the bent-wood canvas support over his head. He had a quick glimpse of himself in the rear of the other truck, white-faced and wide-eyed and gaping like a moron. With a feeling of sadomasochistic pleasure he raised his open hand, thumb to nose, and wiggled his fingers at his shocked other self. The rock headland came in between them.

“Get much traffic around here?” Gino asked.

Ottar sat up, rubbing his side, muttering something foul under his breath. Jens quieted him easily with a lone drag from the bottle as they braked to a sliding stop in the loose gravel.

“Primrose Cottage,” Tex shouted back, “last stop.”

Reeking smoke still drifted down from the chimney hole of the squat, turf house, but there was no one in sight. Weapons and clumsy tools littered the ground. Ottar half fell, half jumped from the truck and bellowed something, then clutched at his head with instant regret.

“Hvar erut per rakka? Komit út!”[6] He held his head again and looked around for the bottle, which Jens Lyn had wisely tucked out of sight. The servants began tremblingly to appear.

“Let’s get moving,” Barney said. “Get these cases unloaded and ask Dr. Lyn where he wants them. Not you, Gino, I want you to come with me.”

They climbed the low hill behind the house, pushing through the short, stubbly grass and almost tripping over a ragged and wild-looking sheep that went baaing down the hill away from them. From the top they had a clear view of the curving bay that swept away from them on both sides, and the vast, slate-gray ocean. A long roller came in, breaking up on the beach, then hissing away again through the pebbles. A grim-looking island with cliff sides that fell straight to the foaming ocean stood in the middle of the bay, and farther off, just a dark blur on the horizon, was another, lower island.

“Pan right around in a circle, 360 degrees, so we can Study it later. Zoom in for a close-up on that island.”

“What about going inland a bit, take a look at the land there?” Gino asked, squinting through the viewfinder.

“Later, if there’s time. But this is going to be a sea picture and with all this free ocean I want to use it.”

“Along the shore then, we should see what’s behind the point there.”

“That’s all right—but don’t go alone. Take Tex or Dallas with you so you stay out of trouble. Don’t get more than a fifteen-minute walk away, so we can find you when we have to leave.” Barney glanced along the shore and noticed the rowboat; he took Gino’s arm and pointed. “There’s an idea. Get Lyn to translate and have a couple of the locals row you offshore a bit. Give me some shots of the way this place looks coming in from the sea…”

“Hey,” Tex said, pulling himself over the brow of the hill, “they want you down at the shack, Barney. Pow-wow of some kind.”

“Just in time, Tex. Stay with Gino here and keep an eye on him.”

“I’ll stick to him like glue. ‘Va buona, eh cumpa’?”

Gino shot him a dark, suspicious look. “Vui sareste italiano?”

Tex laughed. “Me? No, I’m Americano, but I got ginzo relatives all around the Bay of Naples.”

“Di Napoli! so’ napoletano pur’io!” Gino shouted happily.

Barney left them enthusiastically pumping hands and discovering mutual relations, and went down to the house. Dallas was sitting on the tailgate of the truck smoking a cigarette held in his cupped hand. “The rest of them are inside,” he said, “and I’m keeping an eye on the shop to make sure we got transportation home. Lyn said to send you in when you come.”

Barney looked at the low door of the house with complete lack of enthusiasm. It stood partly open and more smoke appeared to be coming from it than was coming out of the chimney. “See that you do watch it,” he said. “I can think of a lot more attractive spots to be shipwrecked.”

“The same idea had occurred to me,” Dallas said quietly and lifted his other hand to show the automatic pistol he was holding. “Ten shots. I never miss.”

Pushing the door wide, Barney stooped and entered the house. The smoke from the smouldering fire was thick around his head, and he was almost grateful, since it served to mask some of the other odors that hung richly in the air. He recognized old fish, tar, locker-room lilac, plus others that he did not want to recognize. For the moment he was almost blind, coming in out of the sun, since the only light here came through the door and some openings that had apparently been kicked in the wall.

“Jæja, kunningi! Þu skalt drekka med mér!”[7]

Ottar’s hoarse voice shivered the air, and, as his eyes adjusted a bit, Barney could make out the men seated around a thick plank table, with Ottar at one end hammering on the boards with his fist.

“He wants you to join him in a drink,” Lyn said. “This is a very important step, hospitality, bread and salt, that sort of thing.”

“Öl!”[8] Ottar bellowed, picking a small barrel up from the stamped earth floor.

“Drink what?” Barney asked, frowning into the darkness.

“Ale. They make it from barley, their staple crop. It is an invention of these north Germanic tribes, the ancestor you might say of our modem beer. Even the word has come down to us, though slightly changed in pronunciation of course—”

“Drekk!”[9] Ottar ordered as he slopped full a horn and handed it to Barney. It really was a cow’s horn, Barney saw, curved and cracked and none too clean. Jens Lyn, the professor and Amory Blestead were also clutching horns. He raised it to his lips and took a sip. It was flat, sour, watery and tasted terrible.

“Good,” he said, hoping his expression could not be seen in the darkness.

“Já, gott ok vel,”[10] Ottar agreed and poured more of the loathsome beverage into Barney’s cup so that it slopped over and ran stickily down his arm inside his sleeve.

“If you think that’s bad,” Amory said hollowly, “wait until you taste the food.”

“And here it comes now.”

The professor pointed to the end of the room where one of the servants was rooting about in a large wooden chest against the wall. As he straightened up, the man kicked one of the rounded dark mounds that littered the floor there and a pained lowing trembled the air.

“The livestock… ?” Barney could not finish.

“Kept in the house, that’s right,” Amory said. “That’s What adds a certain, subtle fragrance to the air in here.”

The servant, who looked not unlike an uncurried sheepdog, with his long blond hair that fell down and concealed his eyes, trudged over with a lumpish object clutched in each grimy paw and dropped them onto the table before Barney. They cracked against the wood like falling rocks.

“What’s this?” Barney asked, eyeing them suspiciously out of the comer of his eye as he transferred the horn to his other hand and tried to shake the rivulet of ale out of the sleeve of his cashmere jacket.

“The chunk on the left is cheese, a native product, and the other is knaekbrød, hard bread,” Jens Lyn said. “Or is it the other way around?”

Barney tried a nibble of each, or rather clattered his teeth against them, in rum. “That’s great, really great.’ he said, throwing them back onto the table and looking at the glowing dial of his watch. “The light’s going and we should start back soon. I want to talk to you, Amory, outside, if you can tear yourself away from the party.”

“My pleasure,” Amory said, shuddering as he finished most of his hom, then turned the thick dregs out onto the floor.

The sun had dropped behind an icy band of cloud and a cold breeze was blowing in from the sea; Barney shivered and pushed his hands into his jacket pockets.

“I need your help, Amory,” he said. “Draw up a list of everything we’re going to need to shoot this picture on location here. It doesn’t look as though we’ll be able to help ourselves locally with any commissary supplies-”

“Second that motion!”

“So we’ll have to bring it all with us. I want to do all the cutting here, so set up a cutting room in one of the trailers.”

“You’re looking for trouble, Barney. It will be a devil of a job to turn out even a rough cut here. And what about dubbing? Or the musical score?”

“We’ll do the best we can. Hire a composer and couple of musicians, maybe use a local orchestra.”

“I can hear that already.”

“It doesn’t matter if we have to dub most of the sound again. What does matter is bringing back the film in the can…”

“Mr. Hendrickson,” Jens Lyn called, pushing open the door and coming toward them. He fumbled in the breast pocket of his bush jacket. “I just remembered, there was a message I was supposed to give you.”

“What is it?” Barney asked.

“I have no idea. I presumed it was confidential. Your secretary handed it to me just as we were leaving.”

Barney took the crumpled envelope and tore it open. It contained a single sheet of yellow paper with a brief, typed message. It read: