Laugh Lines

by Ben Bova

  “They screwed you out of your own invention,” Gabriel said, with real pain in his voice. “Just like they’ve screwed me out of my royalties.”

  “It was my own stupid fault,” Oxnard said. “I was so wrapped up in the technical work that I didn’t pay any attention to the legal side.”

  “Why the hell should you have to?” Gabriel demanded. “If those pricks were honest men you wouldn’t have to worry about them sticking it to you. They wear clean clothes, but their skins are slimy. The bastards.”

  Gabriel showed Oxnard his own three-dee set and they turned it on. The Keir Dullea simulacrum appeared in miniature, hovering in the far corner of the living room, riding a model spacecraft across a simulated Martian crater. The images looked solid, but they sparkled and shimmered.

  “Most of that’s in the transmission system,” Oxnard said, squinting at the scintillations in the images. “But I think I can improve the picture quality a little, if you have a toolkit handy.”

  Gabriel produced a toolkit. Oxnard went happily to work on the mahogany-like plastic console that housed the three-dee receiver, tinkering with the controls in the back.

  Brenda, meanwhile, outlined Titanic Productions’ precarious fiscal situation. By the time Oxnard rejoined the conversation, she was saying:

  “Of course, he’s screaming that he’ll never deal with you again. Repeat, never. But he knows that he needs a good show right away and you’ve got the imagination and talent to create it for him.”

  Gabriel was lying flat on the Rya carpet, stretched out in front of the sofa on which Brenda was sitting. She had her legs tucked demurely under her, Oxnard noticed. Keir Dullea had ridden off into the sunset, so Oxnard turned off the set.

  “No, I won’t work for Finger. That sonofabitch is just too slimy to deal with. He’d sell his own mother to the cannibals.”

  “But you wouldn’t have to deal with Finger,” Brenda urged. “You could work with Les . . . .”

  “That turd!”

  “And me.”

  Gabriel heaved a deep sigh, making the towel around his middle flutter slightly. “It would be nice, baby. I’d really like to work with you. You’re one of the few honest people left in this town . . . .”

  “I’d enjoy working with you, too, Ron. You know that.”

  Oxnard found himself frowning at both of them.

  “But . . .” Gabriel said, his voice distant and small, “I’ve gotten so emotionally involved . . . .”

  “You?”

  “Yeah. With this ‘Romeo and Juliet’ project. I really wanted to tackle Shakespeare. Bring the Old Bard up to date. There’s no greater challenge to a writer. I wanted to show them all that I could do it”

  Brenda shook her head. “No, I don’t think ‘Romeo and Juliet’ would be right for The Tube. Those New York bankers want something sound and safe . . . not Shakespeare. They need something much more conventional, like science fiction.”

  “Science fiction!” Gabriel complained. “Is that all those frogbrains can think of? I’m sick of science fiction; it’s on every network, every show. Why can’t we do something new, fresh, original?”

  “Like ‘Romeo and Juliet?’” Oxnard asked, sitting down beside Brenda.

  “Yeah, why not?” Gabriel countered.

  “Ron, Titanic won’t go for a show that deals with the networks or the studios,” Brenda said. “That’s realism! You know how they steer clear of that. Why, even the news programs get permission before they put anything real on the air.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Tiredly.

  Oxnard said, “No starcrossed lovers, then.”

  Brenda started to reply, but Gabriel said, “What was that?”

  “Huh? Oh, I said . . . no starcrossed lovers. You know, Romeo and Juliet.”

  Gabriel sat bolt upright. “Starcrossed lovers! Holy shit! That’s it!” He leaped to his feet. “That’s it! Wow, what an idea!”

  The towel started sliding downward and Gabriel made an automatic grab for it as he pranced around the room. “That’s it!” he said again. “That’s it!”

  Brenda was grinning but she looked just as befuddled as Oxnard felt. “What? Tell us.”

  Pouncing atop the three-dee console, Gabriel shouted: “They want science fiction and I want Shakespeare. We’ll merge ‘em . . . .” He stood on the console, stretched to his full height, flung his arms over his head and boomed:

  “THE STARCROSSED!”

  The towel fell to the floor.

  Time lost its meaning. At some point the rain slackened, then died away altogether. The windows of the living room started to show the misty gray promise of a new day. Inside the room, Bill Oxnard felt himself being drawn into the chaotic vortex of creation. It was like being present at the creation of a new world.

  “There’re these two families, see,” Gabriel was saying, oblivious of his nudity, “on two different spaceships. They’re merchants . . . they go from planet to planet, trading goods. You know, spices, hardware . . . .”

  “With a gambling casino in the back,” Brenda suggested.

  Gabriel eyed her. “Maybe . . . maybe it would work. Well, anyway. One family has this guy, the youngest son of the head of the family.—”

  “And the other family has a daughter.”

  “Right! The two families land on the same planet at the same time, see?”

  Brenda nodded vigorously. “We could have a different planet every week . . . and the same major characters. That’s just what a good series needs!”

  “Sure,” Gabriel agreed. “Good guest stars and the same regulars each week.”

  “So the boy and girl fall in love,” Brenda said.

  Gabriel was rubbing his hands together anxiously. “Right. But their families don’t like it. They compete with each other, see, for the interstellar trade. They don’t . . . .”

  “Wait a minute,” Oxnard said. “If these are interstellar ships there’s going to be a time factor involved. You know, the twin paradox.”

  “The what?” Gabriel looked blank.

  “If you travel at almost the speed of light, there’s a time dilation. The two families wouldn’t age at the same rate. The boy will get older than the girl or vice versa.”

  “Oh that,” Gabriel said. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll just make the ships go faster than light”

  “But you can’t do that. It’s physically impos . . . .”

  Gabriel flapped a hand at him. “We’ll use a space warp. Been doing that for years.”

  “But it’s not . . .”

  “It’s dramatic license,” Brenda said.

  Oxnard shook his head but kept silent.

  “Okay,” Gabriel said. “Every week the kids are trying to get together and every week the families try to keep ‘em apart. We can have them stowing away on each other’s ships, captured by the natives on the planets, lost in space . . . zowie, there’s a million storylines in this!”

  “And we can have subplots every week,” Brenda said eagerly. “With all sorts of different characters and cultures on each planet they visit. It’s terrific!”

  On and on they went, as the sky brightened outside and birds began to welcome the not-quite-risen sun. Gabriel pranced into his office and Brenda and Oxnard followed him into the cramped, cluttered little room. With an unlit pipe clamped between his teeth, Gabriel turned on his voicewriter; their free-for-all conversation began clattering out of the machine in black and white.

  They sketched out the major characters while Gabriel ransacked the bookshelves lining the walls to find his Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare. The voicewriter dutifully typed up a summary of the series’ basic theme and outline, plus outlines for the first three hour-long segments. Then they went into details of characterizations, the types of actors needed, the costuming. Oxnard found himself doing most of the talking when it came to describing the spaceships and their equipment.

  Finally it got uproariously funny. They began giggling at every line coming out of the voicewriter. When
the machine obediently began typing, “Ha-Ha-Ha,” they broke up completely. Gabriel fell out of his desk chair onto the floor. Brenda had tears streaming down her cheeks. Oxnard felt as if his insides would burst. And they couldn’t stop laughing. Not until the machine ran out of paper and shut itself off. Seventeen sheets of “Ha-Ha-Ha” littered the office floor.

  They staggered into the kitchen, breathless and squinting at the morning light. As coffee perked and orange juice defrosted, the blonde in the knit sweater came along. She was wearing stretch slacks and jewelry now, as well as the sweater.

  “You guys sure were having a good time,” she said.

  “Stay for breakfast,” Gabriel told her.

  She smiled sweetly and kissed him on the nose. “Can’t, honey. Got to get back to the studio. I’m a working girl, you know. Not like you writers. ‘Bye!”

  And off she flounced.

  Sobering, Oxnard mumbled, “I ought to get back to my lab, too.”

  “They can do without you for one day,” Brenda said.

  “They did. Yesterday.”

  “Grab a couple hours’ sleep first,” Gabriel said. “You can use the guest room.”

  “Might be a good idea at that,” Oxnard let himself yawn. His eyes felt very heavy.

  He was about to push himself up from the kitchen table when Gabriel put a steaming mug of coffee down in front of him and said:

  “Listen, I appreciate all the advice you gave me about the spaceships and all. I want you to be my technical advisor for the series.”

  “The series?”

  “Yeah. ‘The Starcrossed.’ Remember?”

  “I’m no technical advisor. I run a laboratory . . . .”

  Brenda was sitting across the table from him, with a curious expression on her sleepy face.

  Gabriel said, “You know this science stuff. I’m going to need somebody I can trust, if we’re going to do this series right. Right, Brenda?”

  She nodded and murmured, “Aye-aye, master.”

  “But my responsibility’s to the lab. That’s . . . .”

  Gabriel wagged a finger at him. “You don’t have to leave the lab. All I’ll need is some advice now and then. Probably handle most of it on the phone. Maybe read the scripts when they’ve gotten to second draft.”

  “My big chance in show biz,” Oxnard said.

  “It’ll be a helluva help,” Gabriel said. “To me personally.”

  Brenda nodded. “Finger will want you on the scene as a consultant anyway, on your new holographic process.”

  “I suppose so,” Oxnard admitted.

  Gabriel grasped him by the shoulder. “Go on, get some sleep. We can talk about it later.”

  Oxnard nodded and got up wearily from the table. Padding down the hall toward the guest room, he wondered what Gabriel and Brenda were going to do while he slept. Hell, you know what they’re going to do. The thought irked him. Greatly.

  The guest room was midnight dark. Oxnard was completely blind the instant he let the door snap shut behind him. He took two cautious steps forward, hoping to make a less-than-shincracking contact with the bed, and stumbled against something soft.

  It squirmed and he fell on top of it.

  “Hey, whatcha . . . oh, Ron, it’s you,” a sleepy voice murmured.

  They were sprawled on a sea of pillows that the girl had evidently strewn across the guest room floor.

  “No, it’s not Ron.” Oxnard whispered, feeling rather flustered. He wished he had pockets to put his hands into.

  “Oh? Who’re you?”

  “Uh . . . Bill,” he said into the darkness. He still couldn’t see anything, but he felt her soft body and breathed in a tawny scent.

  “What’s goin’ on?” another lissome voice whispered.

  “It’s Bill,” said the first girl.

  “Oh, gee, that’s nice.”

  Oxnard felt another soft, warm body snuggle close to him. Four hands began fumbling with his robe. He thought furiously about the lab and his responsibilities. And about Brenda. He tried to remind himself that he was, after all, an adult who could take care of himself. He didn’t need . . . didn’t want . . . maybe they . . . but . . . .

  Finally, he said to himself: So this is show business.

  3: The Agent

  Jerry Morgan had two hysterical unemployed actresses in his waiting room, one tightlipped producer who was trying to break into comedy writing, and a receptionist who had just given two days’ notice. The actresses and producer were all formerly employed by Titanic Productions: a significant phenomenon, as Sherlock Holmes would have said if he’d been a theatrical and literary agent with an office off the Strip.

  At the moment Morgan had a worse problem on his hands: a morose Ron Gabriel. It wasn’t like Gabriel to be downcast: ebullient, brassy, argumentative, noisy, egregious, foolhardy, irreverent—all those yes. Morgan was accustomed to seeing Gabriel in those moods. But morose? And—fearful?

  Morgan studied his client’s face on the big view screen set into the wall of his private office. He had considered getting the phone company to put in a three-dee viewer, but so far hadn’t gotten around to it.

  “So it’s been more than a week since Brenda brought the idea to Titanic,” Gabriel was saying, his voice low, “and I haven’t heard a word from her or anybody else.”

  “Neither have I, Ron,” said Morgan as pleasantly as he could manage. “But, hell, you know Finger. He never moves all that quickly.”

  “Yeah, but Brenda would’ve gotten back to me if there’d been some good news . . . .”

  Morgan glanced at the outline and fact sheet for “The Starcrossed” that rested on a corner of his desk.

  “Did you give her the same poopsheet you gave me?” he asked.

  Gabriel nodded. “We did it that morning, right on the voicewriter. Haven’t seen her since. She just took off . . . .”

  “She’s probably waiting for Finger to finish reading it. You know he can’t get through more than one page a day. His lips get tired.”

  Not even the joke stirred Gabriel. “They’ve torn it up,” he said miserably. “I know they have. Finger took one look at my name on the cover and tore it into little pieces. Then he must’ve fired Brenda and she’s too sore at me to even let me know about it”

  “Nonsense, Ron. You know . . . .”

  “Call him!” Gabriel said, his face suddenly intense, his voice urgent. “Call Finger and find out what he did with it! Make a personal pitch for the show. I’m broke, Jerry. Flat busted. I need something! That show . . . .”

  With a sigh, Morgan said, “I’ll call Les Montpelier. He’ll know what’s happened.”

  Morosely, Gabriel nodded and shut off the connection.

  Three hours later, Morgan took off his sunglasses and peered into the dimly lit bar. Vague shapes of men and women were sitting on barstools; beyond them, the narrow room widened and brightened into a decent restaurant.

  The hostess was dressed in the very latest Colonial high-necked, long-sleeved, floor-skirted outfit with the bosom cut out to show her bobbing breasts.

  “Lookin’ for somebody?” she said in her most cultured tones.

  “Mr. Montpelier was supposed to meet me here,” Morgan said, still trying to make out the faces of the men at the bar.

  “Oh yeah, he was here, but he went on back into the restaurant. Said he couldn’t wait and you could find him at his table. Big tipper.”

  Silently grumbling at the Freeway traffic jams that had made him late, Morgan worked past the executives and bar girls and quickly found Montpelier sitting alone at a booth near a window.

  He waved and put on his heartiest smile at he approached the booth. The slim, redbearded Montpelier smiled back and Morgan saw a mirror image of his own phony graciousness.

  “Hi, Les! How the hell are ya?” Morgan said as he slid into the booth.

  “Just great, Jerry! And you? Geez, it’s been a helluva long time since we’ve seen each other.”

  As Montpelier motion
ed for a waiter, Morgan said: “Well, you know how this town is. You can be in bed with the same guy for months and then never see him again for years.”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  The waiter was professionally icy. “Cocktail, m’seur?”

  “A Virgin Mary for me, please,” Morgan said.

  Montpelier grinned at him. “Off the toxics?”

  Morgan grinned back. The Game, he sighed to himself. The everlasting Game. “I was never on it, Les. I drink a little wine with a meal, that’s all. The hard stuff never appealed to me. I prefer smoking.”

  “Then why the camouflage?”

  “The Virgin Mary? I like tomato juice . . . and besides, there are people in this town who don’t trust an agent that doesn’t drink.”

  “Hell,” Montpelier said, “I’ve seen it just the opposite. I know an agent who drinks nothing but milk in public. Says, ‘What kind of an agent would people think I am if I didn’t have an ulcer?’ One of the biggest juicers in town, in private.”

  You got that from an old TV show, Morgan replied silently.

  The waiter brought Morgan’s drink. Montpelier clinked his own half-finished rum sour with it and they began the serious business of inspecting the menus.

  It wasn’t until the salads had been served that the conversation got to the subject. Morgan deliberately avoided an opening gambit, which in itself was one of The Game’s most frequently used opening gambits: let the other guy bring up the subject, makes him appear to be more anxious than you are.

  “What’s this brilliant new idea Gabriel’s got? Brenda seems very impressed with it.”

  “I thought you knew about it,” Morgan said.

  “Yeah—in general. B.F.‘s got it tucked under his arm, though. Hasn’t let anybody see any details yet.”