Laugh Lines

by Ben Bova

  Morgan munched a lettuce leaf thoughtfully, then said, “It’s the kind of idea that could save Titanic from the wolves.”

  “Wolves?” Montpelier looked startled. “There’re no wolves at our doors.”

  With a shrug, Morgan said: “I must have heard wrong, then. Anyway, it’s a powerful idea. It’s got scope.”

  “What’s it all about?”

  Morgan leaned back and put his fork down. This was the part he liked best. It was like fishing. Only instead of standing hips-deep in an Alpine stream, he was sitting in a plush restaurant, wearing last year’s zipsuit, trying to hook a wary young executive who was dressed like Buffalo Bill Cody. Trout are fairer game, Morgan told himself.

  “It’s got everything you could ever want in a successful series. Drama, action, love interest—a couple of attractive young central characters, lots of continuous characters and color. Plus exotic new settings every week, with plenty of scope for guest stars and in-depth characterizations. Plenty of spinoffs, too. And byproducts . . . .”

  “What is it, for Chrissake?”

  Morgan inwardly smiled. Montpelier had blown his cool: Twenty points for our side.

  “It’s called ‘The Starcrossed.’”

  Montpelier’s anxious frown dissolved as he savored the title.

  “The Starcrossed,’” he murmured.

  “It draws its dramatic punch,” Morgan quoted from Gabriel’s poopsheet, tucked into his zipper pocket, “from the depths of the human heart in conflict with itself. The origins of this idea trace back through Shakespeare and the Renaissance, back into Medieval romance, and even . . . .”

  Montpelier’s face went sour. “It’s not that damned ‘Romeo and Juliet’ thing he was trying to peddle at Mercury, is it?”

  “Of course not,” Morgan snapped and immediately wished he hadn’t. Too quick, he sees through it. Lose ten points.

  “Well, what is it then?”

  “It draws on some of the same material as the ‘Romeo and Juliet’ idea . . .”

  “Ah-hah!”

  “But it’s a completely new concept. Fully science fictional. No historical or contemporary parts to it at all.”

  “No realism?” Montpelier asked, with an expression that was close to a sneer.

  “None.”

  “I know Gabriel. He’s always trying to sneak some realism in.”

  With a grin, Morgan realized that Montpelier had suckered himself. He had set up a strawman; now all Morgan had to do was to knock it down.

  “Let me tell you about this idea,” Morgan said, hunching forward over the table conspiratorially. He hesitated just long enough to make Montpelier hold his breath, then started quoting again from the poopsheet:

  “Picture a starship floating through space, just like any ordinary starship, like you see on all the shows, but this ship’s been designed by the man who invented the three-dee process. Accurate. Technically detailed. A perfect jewel, shining in the black velvet of the infinite interstellar wilderness. Now, aboard that starship . . . .”

  It was dark outside and people were starting to trickle in for dinner before Montpelier stopped asking questions about the show. Morgan was hoarse, as much from the nervous strain of improvising answers as from talking steadily for so many hours.

  Montpelier was nodding. “It’s got scope all right. I like the whole idea. It’s got depth.”

  “Uh-huh,” Morgan grunted. Then, as noncommittally as possible, he asked, “How’s B.F. reacting to it?”

  Montpelier shook his head. “If it was anybody else except Gabriel, B.F. would’ve snapped it up.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  “As it is,” Montpelier went on, “he’s stuck me with the job of getting along with Gabriel and not letting Ron get to the top.”

  “Oh?” Morgan felt his head go light.

  “It’s a pretty shitty job.” Montpelier complained. “I’ll have to handle Gabriel and keep him away from B.F. We’ll have to settle on a damned executive producer; maybe Sheldon Fad. He’s hot right now.”

  “Yes,” Morgan agreed, with a genuine smile. “I think he’d be fine.”

  When Montpelier finally left the restaurant, there were stars in his eyes. Or dollar signs, Morgan reflected as he bade the executive goodbye and promised to be in touch with him the next day for some “hard-nosed, eyeball-to-eyeball, tough-assed money talk.”

  Morgan went to the men’s room, threw up as he always did after one of these extended bull-flinging lunches, cleaned himself up, then found a phonebooth out near the bar. He sat down, closed the door firmly, and punched out Ron Gabriel’s number.

  It was busy. With a sigh, Morgan punched Gabriel’s private number. Also busy. With a deeper sigh, he tried the writer’s ultraprivate “hot line” number. He can’t be carrying on three conversations at once. Morgan realized it was more a fond hope than a statement of fact.

  A sultry brunette appeared on the tiny screen. “Mr. Gabriel’s line,” she moaned.

  “Uh . . . .” With a distant part of his mind, Morgan was pleased that he could still be shaken up by apparitions such as this one. “Is, uh, Mr. Gabriel there? This is Jerry Morgan, his agent.”

  “I’ll see, Mr. Morgan,” she breathed.

  The screen went gray for an instant, then Gabriel’s hardbitten features came on the tiny screen.

  “Well? How’d it go?”

  Morgan said, “I just finished having lunch with Les Montpelier . . . .”

  “God, you sound awful!” Gabriel said.

  “I did a lot of talking.”

  Gabriel’s face fell. “They don’t want the show. They hated the idea.”

  “I talked it all out with Montpelier,” Morgan said. “Finger’s read the poopsheet and . . . .” He hesitated.

  “And?”

  It was criminal to tease Gabriel, but Morgan got the chance so seldom.

  “And what?” Gabriel demanded, his voice rising.

  “And . . . well, I don’t know how to say it, Ron, so I might as well make it straight from the shoulder.”

  Gabriel gritted his teeth.

  “They’re buying it. We talk money tomorrow.”

  For an instant, nothing happened. No change in Gabriel’s facing-the-firing-squad expression. Then his jaw dropped open and his eyes popped.

  “What?” he squawked. “They bought it?” He leaped out of view of the phone’s fixed camera, then reappeared some ten meters further away. He jumped up and down. “They bought it! They bought it! Ha-ha! They bought it! Those birdbrains bought it!”

  The sultry brunette, another girl whom Morgan vaguely remembered as Gabriel’s typist and a third woman rushed into the room. Gabriel was still bounding all over the place, crowing with delight.

  With the smile of a man who’s put in a hard but successful day’s work, Morgan clicked off the phone and started on his way home.

  4: The Producer

  Sheldon Fad lay awake, staring at the ceiling as the sun rose over the Santa Monica Hills. Gloria snored lightly beside him, a growing mountain of flesh.

  The baby was due in another month or so and Gloria had been no fun at all since she had found herself pregnant. No fun at all. Zero. Sheldon wondered, at quiet times like this, if it was really his baby that she was carrying. After all, she got pregnant suspiciously fast after moving in with him.

  He frowned to himself. It all seemed so macho at first. An actress and dancer, lithe and exciting, Gloria had attached herself to Sheldon’s arm when she could have gone with any guy in Los Angeles. They were all after her. He had ignored the stories about the vast numbers who had succeeded in their quest. That was all finished, she had told him tearfully, the night she moved in. All she wanted was him.

  Yeah, Sheldon told himself. Just me. And a roof over her head. And not having to go to work. And a two-pound box of chocolates every day. And her underwear dripping in the bathtub every time he tried to take a shower. And her makeup littered all over the bathroom, the bedroom, even in the refrigerator.r />
  A bolt, as the song says, of fear went through him as he realized that in a month—probably less—there’d be an infant sharing this one-bedroom apartment with them. What did Shakespeare say about infants? Mewling and puking. Yeah. And dirty diapers. A crib in the corner next to the bed; Gloria had already mentioned that.

  Shit! Sheldon knew he had to get out of it. He turned his head on the pillow and gazed sternly at Gloria’s face, serene and deeply asleep. It’s not my kid, he told himself savagely. It’s not!

  And what if it is? another part of his mind asked. You didn’t want it. She told you she was fixed. You believe her? And her line about hemophilia, so she can’t have an abortion? Even if it is your kid, you didn’t ask for this.

  He sat up in bed, fuming to himself. Gloria didn’t move a muscle, except to breathe. Her belly made a giant mound in the bedsheet.

  No sense trying to go back to sleep. He swung his legs out of the bed and got to his feet. Stretching, he felt his vertebrae pop and heard himself grunt with the pain-pleasure that goes with it. He padded into the bathroom.

  Twenty minutes later he was booming down the Freeway, heading for the Titanic Tower, listening to the early morning news:

  “ . . . and smog levels will be at their usual moderate to heavy concentrations, depending on location, as the morning traffic builds up. Today’s smog scent will be jasmine . . . .”

  It was still clear enough to see where you were driving. The automatic Freeway guidance system hadn’t turned on yet. Music came on the radio and began to soothe Sheldon slightly. Then he saw the Titanic Tower rising impressively from the Valley.

  “I’ll ask Murray what to do,” Sheldon said to himself. “Murray will know.”

  It was still hours before most of the work force would stream into the Tower. Sheldon nodded grimly to the bored guards sitting at the surveillance station in the lobby. They were surrounded by an insect’s eye of fifty TV screens showing every conceivable entryway into the building.

  As Sheldon passed the guard, a solitary TV screen built into the wall alongside the main elevator bank flashed the words: GOOD MORNING MR. FAD. YOU’RE IN QUITE EARLY.

  “Good morning, Murray,” said Sheldon Fad. Then he punched the button for an elevator.

  The Multi-Unit Reactive Reasoning and Analysis Yoke was rather more than just another business computer. In an industry where insecurity is a major driving force and more money has been spent on psychoanalyses than scripts, Murray was inevitable. One small segment of the huge computer’s capacity was devoted to mundane chores such as handling accounts and sorting out bills and paychecks. Most of the giant computer complex was devoted to helping executives make business decisions. It was inevitable that the feedback loops in the computer’s basic programming—the “Reactive Reasoning” function—would eventually come to be used as a surrogate psychotechnician, advisor and father confessor by Titanic’s haggard executives.

  Sheldon Fad didn’t think of Murray as a machine. Murray was someone you could talk to, just like he talked to so many other people on the phone without ever meeting them in the flesh. Murray was kindly, sympathetic, and damned smart. He had helped Sheldon over more than one business-emotional crisis.

  Well, there was one machine-like quality to Murray that Sheldon recognized. And appreciated. His memory could be erased. And was, often. It made for a certain amount of repetition when you talked to Murray, but that was better than running the risk of having someone else “accidentally” listen to your conversations. Someone like Bernard Finger, who wasn’t above such things, despite the privacy laws.

  In all, talking to Murray was like talking to a wise and friendly old uncle. A forgetful uncle, because of the erasures. But somehow that made Murray seem all the more human. He even adapted his speech patterns to fit comfortably with the user’s style of speaking.

  At precisely 7:32 Sheldon plopped tiredly into his desk chair. He felt as if he’d been working nonstop for forty days and nights. He took a deep breath, held it for twenty heartbeats, then exhaled through his mouth. He punched buttons on his desk-side console for orange juice and vitamin supplements. A small wall panel slid open, a soft chime sounded and the cold cup and pills were waiting for him.

  Sheldon swallowed and gulped, then touched the sequence of buttons on the keyboard that summoned Murray.

  GOOD MORNING SHELDON, the desktop viewing screen flashed, chartreuse letters against a gray background. WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU THIS MORNING?

  “This conversation is strictly private,” Sheldon said. He noticed that his voice was trembling a little.

  OF COURSE. PLEASE GIVE ME THE CORRECT ERASURE CODE.

  “‘Nobody knows the troubles I’ve seen,’” replied Sheldon.

  THAT’S FINE, Murray printed. NOW WE CAN TALK IN PRIVATE AND THE TAPE WILL BE ERASED BETTER THAN THEY DO IN WASHINGTON.

  Sheldon couldn’t help grinning. He had told Murray all about Washington politics long ago.

  “This is a personal problem,” he began, “but I guess it affects my work, as well . . . .”

  A PERSONAL PROBLEM IS A BUSINESS PROBLEM, Murray answered.

  Sheldon outlined his feelings about Gloria, omitting nothing. Finally, feeling more exhausted than ever, he asked, “Well?”

  Murray’s screen stayed blank for a heartbeat—a long time for the computer to consider a problem. Then:

  ABOUT THE SEX I DON’T KNOW. I’M BEYOND THAT SORT OF THING, YOU KNOW. BUT IF THE GIRL ISN’T MAKING YOU HAPPY AND YOU’RE NOT MARRIED TO HER, WHY DON’T YOU JUST TELL HER YOU WANT TO SPLIT.

  “It’s not that easy. She’d make a scene. It’d get into the news.”

  OH. SO. AND THAT WOULD BE BAD FOR BUSINESS.

  “That’s right. B.F. doesn’t like to hear about rising young producers making messes of their personal lives.”

  BUT YOU’RE ONE OF HIS FAIR-HAIRED BOYS!

  “That was last season. I had the only Titanic show to be renewed for this year.”

  FORTY-SIX SHOWS TITANIC PUTS ON LAST SEASON AND YOURS IS THE ONE RENEWED. GOOD WORK.

  That came from Murray’s general business memory bank, Sheldon realized. “That’s about average for the industry,” he said defensively. “Titanic didn’t do any worse than Fox or Universal.”

  WE’RE GETTING SIDETRACKED, Murray pointed out.

  “Right. Well . . . in addition to trying to figure out what to do with Gloria, I’ve got this new project on my hands . . . and it’s a crucial one. The whole future of Titanic depends on it.”

  SEE? THEY’RE DEPENDING ON YOU!

  “Yes, but . . .” Sheldon felt miserable. “Look at it from my point of view. If I don’t get rid of Gloria somehow, I’m not going to be able to give my best to this new show. If I do get rid of her and she raises a stink, and the new show flops, B.F. will blame it all on me.”

  YOU’RE IN A DOUBLE BIND, ALL RIGHT.

  “There’s more,” Sheldon said. “The show’s creator, Ron Gabriel, doesn’t get along with B.F. at all. I’m in the middle on that, too. And Gabriel wants to put on the most extravagant space opera you’ve ever seen, while I’ve got to stay within a budget that won’t even buy peanut butter!”

  AGAIN IN THE MIDDLE.

  “Exactly.”

  SO? WHAT ELSE?

  Sheldon pondered for several moments, while the sickly greenish letters glowed on the screen.

  “I guess that’s about all,” he said at last. “I’ve got a meeting with Gabriel and his agent later this morning. I know Gabriel’s going to make impossible demands . . . and he . . . he’s so . . . loud! He shouts and screams. Sometimes he hits!”

  SO SUE HIM.

  “I don’t want him to hit me!”

  WHAT DO YOU WANT?

  For the first time since he had become acquainted with Murray, Sheldon felt some slight impatience. “What do I want? I want to get rid of Gloria without a fight that’ll ruin my career. I want to make a hit of this stupid idea of Gabriel’s without driving the company broke. I want to get out
of the middle!”

  ALL RIGHT. ALL RIGHT, DON’T GET SO WORKED UP. HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE AND ULCERS NEVER SOLVED ANY PROBLEMS.

  “But what can I do?”

  I’M SEARCHING MY MEMORY BANKS FOR A CORRELATION. AND AT THE SAME TIME USING MY ANALYTICAL PROGRAMMING TO ATTACK THE PROBLEM. AHAH! THAT’S IT.

  “What?” Sheldon leaned forward in his chair hopefully.

  GET OUT OF THE COUNTRY

  “Get out . . . .” He sagged back.

  IF YOU PRODUCE THIS SHOW OUTSIDE THE U.S., YOU CAN TELL GLORIA THAT YOU’LL BE AWAY FOR SEVERAL MONTHS. CAN’T BE HELPED. BUSINESS. CAREER. ALL THAT SORT OF STUFF.

  “But she’ll see through . . . .”

  CERTAINLY SHE WILL. SHE WILL UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU’RE REALLY TELLING HER. BUT SHE WON’T BE ABLE TO DO MUCH ABOUT IT. AND IF SHE’S THE SORT OF GIRL YOU TOLD ME SHE IS, SHE’LL SEE THE WISDOM IN PICKING UP SOME OTHER MAN TO SUPPORT HER.

  Wearily, Sheldon asked, “But who in his right mind would let an eight-months-pregnant woman grab him . . . . ?”

  YOU’D BE SURPRISED. THERE ARE LOTS OF MEN RIGHT HERE IN THIS COMPANY WITH ALL SORTS OF HANGUPS.

  “You think she’d really find somebody else?”

  CERTAINLY. IN THE MEANTIME, YOU CAN FIND A REALLY CHEAPO OUTFIT TO PRODUCE YOUR NEW SHOW AND GET OFF THE FISCAL HOOK THAT WAY. PRODUCTION COMPANIES OUTSIDE THE U.S. WORK MUCH MORE CHEAPLY THAN OUR OWN UNIONIZED PEOPLE.

  “Where?” Sheldon asked, suddenly eager to travel. “Yugoslavia? Argentina? New Zealand?”

  NONE OF THE ABOVE. YOU’VE GOT TO BALANCE YOUR TRAVEL EXPENSES AGAINST THE EXPENSES OF PRODUCTION. CALCULATIONS ARE THAT CANADA WILL BE THE CHEAPEST BET.

  “Canada?” Sheldon felt his enthusiasm sinking.

  CANADA. MEXICO LOOKS CHEAPER ON THE SURFACE, BUT MY SUBROUTINES TELL ME THAT YOU’VE GOT TO BRIBE EVERYBODY IN THE GOVERNMENT, FROM THE CUSTOMS INSPECTORS TO THE TRAFFIC COPS, IF YOU WANT TO DO BUSINESS DOWN THERE. RAISES THE COSTS BEYOND THOSE OF A CANADIAN OPERATION. THE CANADIANS ARE HONEST AS WELL AS PRETTY CHEAP.

  “Canada?” Sheldon repeated. His mind filled with visions of snow, sled dogs, pine trees, Nelson Eddy in a red Mounties jacket.