Laugh Lines

by Ben Bova

  “In Canada?”

  “In Canada.”

  Sheldon’s worried-hound face relaxed a little.

  Someone tapped timidly at the door. Finger yanked it open. A waiter stood there, bearing a tray with three snifters of brandy and three cigars on it.

  “S . . . sorry to take so long, Mr. Finger. Your special cigars were in the vault and . . . .”

  “Nah, don’t worry about it.” Finger ushered him in with a sweeping gesture of his arm. “It’s good timing. I’d hate to waste a good cigar on that little punk.”

  It was dawn.

  Finger sat on the edge of his bed and gazed down at Rita Yearling. Even under the bedclothes she looked incredibly beautiful.

  Best money I ever spent, he told himself.

  Her lovely eyelids fluttered and she awoke languorously. She smiled at Finger, stretched like a cat, then turned and looked out the porthole at the gray-white sky.

  “Ain’t it kinda early?”

  “I want to go up to the bridge and see the sunrise over the mountains. We’re almost back in port.”

  “Oh.”

  “How’re you feeling?”

  She stretched again. “Fine. Not an ache or pain anywhere.”

  He stroked her bare shoulder. “They did a beautiful job on you. When I had my Vitaform operations I was in agony for months.”

  “You didn’t take good care of your original body,” she chided, almost like Shirley Temple bawling out Wallace Beery. “I may have been older than you, but I took care of myself. The girls always said I had the best-kept body since Ann Corio.”

  “What about Mae West?” he joked.

  “That hag!” Rita’s luscious lips pulled back in a snarl, revealing slightly pointed teeth. “Her and her deepfreeze. As if anybody’d revive her in a hundred years.”

  Patting her in a fatherly way, Finger said, “I’m going to get dressed. I’ll call you in an hour or so. We can have breakfast up on the bridge.”

  “Okay.” She turned over and pulled up the covers.

  “I want to talk to you about Ron Gabriel. He’s going to be the head writer on the show, up in Canada.”

  “He’s the Cagney that was in here last night?”

  “Right. He can be troublesome . . . .”

  She smiled at him; there was no innocent little girl in her face. “I can handle him and a dozen more like him, any time.” Her tongue flicked across her sharp little teeth “Any time,” she repeated.

  It was bracing up on the bridge. The sea breeze stirred Finger, invigorated him. Up ahead he could see the smog bank that marked the beginning of Los Angeles’ territorial waters and the oil rigs that kept the city supplied with fuel.

  He paced the open deck of the flying bridge, glancing inside now and then to see how the ship was being handled. A solitary officer slouched lazily in a soft chair, toking happily, while the automated radar, sonar, robot pilot and computer steered the Adventurer toward its smog-shrouded pier.

  It always unnerved Finger just the slightest bit to realize that the ship’s crew was more machine than human. And with the exception of the captain, who was a boozer, most of the crewmen were heads.

  Finger turned his back on the lazing officer and stepped to the rail. Leaning over it slightly, he could see the white foam of the ship’s wake cutting through the oily waters. He looked up at his last glimpse of blue sky. Gripping the rail with both hands, he was suddenly on the deck of a whaling vessel out of New Bedford, an iron captain running a wooden ship.

  Thar she blows! he heard in his mind’s inner ear. And with the eye of imagination he saw a wild and stormy ocean, with the spout of a gigantic whale off near the white-capped horizon.

  After him, me hearties! Finger shouted silently. A five-dollar gold piece to the boat that harpoons him!

  He grunted to himself. Maybe a whaling show would make a good series. The econuts would object to it, but they object to everything anyway. Special effects would be expensive: have to make a dummy whale. Nobody’s seen a whale since the last Japanese expedition came back empty. Even the dolphins are getting scarce.

  A frown of concentration settled on his face. The government would probably help with a series like that. They’re always looking for outdoor stuff, so people will stay home and watch their three-dees instead of messing up the National Parks. And it could be a spectacular show—storms, shipwrecks, all that stuff. Got to be careful of the violence, though; get those parents and teachers on your neck and the sponsors disappear. Maybe a comedy show, with a crew that never catches a whale. A bunch of schmucks.

  No. Finger shook his head. A serious show. Iron men in wooden ships. Give the viewers some heroes to admire. He squared his shoulders and faced straight into the wind. Maybe I could do a sneak part in it, like Hitchcock used to do.

  He drew himself up to his full height. Hell, he told himself, I could be the whaling ship’s captain. Why not? I’ve got the look for it now.

  Why not do a whaling show instead of this science fiction thing with Gabriel?

  Because, his business sense told him, it would be too realistic. Historicals are dead. Nobody watched them. The Hallmark Hall of Fame killed them years ago and nobody’s had the guts to try them again. Too dull. And too realistic.

  Still, he thought, it’ll be good to have something like this in reserve. Doesn’t have to be realistic or even historical. Maybe a science fiction whaler, on another planet. Yeah! With a different monster every week! He smiled; felt almost giddy. Bernie, he told himself, you’re a genius. He made a mental note to look into the possibility of taking acting lessons. In secret. Like that football player for the Jets had done.

  And then the real idea hit him. It came in a flash, the whole of it, so completely detailed that he saw the columns of figures adding up to a fortune, nine digits worth. It was blinding. Terrifying. He sagged against the rail.

  “That’s it,” he whispered to himself. “That’ll do it! But it’s got to be done in secret.” He squeezed his eyes shut and locked the secret deep within his convoluted brain.

  “You looking for me?”

  Finger whirled, startled, and saw Brenda Impanema standing at the hatch that led inside to the bridge. She was out of costume now, wearing a comfortable kaftan that billowed in the breeze against her lean figure.

  “I got a phone message from the computer that said you wanted to see me,” Brenda said.

  Gathering himself together, Finger grumbled, “That was last night”

  “Gabriel’s two goons wouldn’t let me out of the bar until you two had finished your business talk,” she said. “By the time I got to my stateroom and saw the message, I figured you were asleep . . . or at least in bed.”

  From someone else, Finger would have taken that for insolence. But from Brenda—he smiled.

  “You were right. Smart girl.” Then he looked sharply at her. She seemed weary, red eyed. “You didn’t sleep good?”

  “Not very.”

  “Who were you with?”

  “Nobody,” she said.

  Finger considered the pros and cons for a moment. His ultimate, secret new idea glowed within him like a warming beacon. “Gabriel and I came to an agreement last night. We’re going to do the show up in Canada. Les will check on the available studios up there. The talent office will start looking for a suitable male lead this morning.”

  “What about the female lead?”

  “Rita Yearling.”

  Brenda’s mouth went tight.

  “Nobody’s going to find out about her previous life. That’s why I’ve got a publicity department, to keep things quiet.”

  “Sure,” Brenda said.

  “So you don’t like her,” Finger said. “That’s too bad.”

  Brenda looked away from him and let the salt wind blow at her hair. “No problem for me. I’m not going to have to work with her.”

  Taking a step closer to her, Finger said, “I still want you to go to Canada and keep an eye on things for me.”

 
“You mean service Ron Gabriel.”

  “No. He’s seen Rita and he’s gone crazy over her. She’ll keep him busy enough.”

  “You don’t know Ron.” Still looking away from Finger, she said, “I don’t want to go.”

  “You’re going!”

  “I don’t want to!”

  “You’ll do what I tell you. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I wouldn’t send you up there if Gabriel was going to make things tough for you. You know that.”

  “Like hell.”

  She still wouldn’t look at him. Feeling hurt, Finger said, “It’s for the good of the show. There’ll be a promotion in it for you.”

  “Wonderful,” Brenda said. “But I’d rather jump over the rail.”

  He could feel his face getting red with anger. “So jump already!” he snapped and stamped off to the hatch.

  8: The Team

  It was spring in Southern California. The rains had finally stopped and for a few weeks everything was green and flowering. As long as it was domed over or otherwise protected from the smog.

  Bill Oxnard’s Holovision Laboratory was perched high enough on a Malibu hillside to be out of the usual smog banks, although when there was inversion the tinted clouds crept up and engulfed even the highest of the hills. But at the moment it was a beautiful spring day. Oxnard could lean back in his desk chair and see the surfers ‘way down on the beach, in their colorful anticorrosion suits and motorized surfboards. In a few weeks—or perhaps days—he’d see the gardeners painting the lawns green and starting to worry about brush fires again. But for the moment, everything was beautiful.

  His phone buzzed. He clicked it on and his secretary’s grandmotherly face appeared on the screen.

  “Ms. Impanema’s here,” she said.

  Oxnard couldn’t keep himself from grinning. “Send her right in.”

  Maybe she’s the reason why I feel . . . he tried to identify exactly what it was that he did feel, and could only come up with a lame . . . happy.

  Brenda strode into his office: tall, leggy, brightly dressed in a flowered slit-skirt sari that was becoming the hit of the new Oriental decorative style. Oxnard himself still wore his regular business clothes: an engineer’s zipsuit of plain orange.

  “Hope I’m not late,” she said, smiling at him.

  Oxnard came around the desk and took her hand. “No. Right on the tick. Here, have a seat. How’s everything in Toronto? Have you eaten? Want some coffee or something?”

  She took the chair and let the heavy-looking handbag she was carrying clunk to the floor. “A Bloody Mary, if you can produce one. I haven’t had any breakfast. The damned airline didn’t serve anything again. It’s getting to be a regular scrooging with them.”

  Leaning over his desk to get at the phone, Oxnard called, “May . . . can you dig up two Bloody Marys and some breakfast?”

  His secretary’s face showed that she clearly disapproved of drinking on company time. But after all, it was his company. She nodded and switched off.

  “So what’s happening in Toronto?” Oxnard asked as he went back around the desk and sat down. For some reason he felt that he needed the desk between them.

  “Everything’s in a whirl,” Brenda replied. “Let’s see . . . when’s the last time we talked?”

  “A week after you first went up there. Ron hadn’t gone yet; he was still here.”

  She nodded. “Right . . . that was the flight where they didn’t serve any dinner. ‘Sorry to inconvenience you,’ she whined nasally, ‘but the food service on this flight has been rendered inoperative due to a malfunctioning of the ground-based portion of our logistical system.’ Fancy way of saying they didn’t stash any food aboard the plane.”

  They chatted easily for a while. May brought in a pair of drinks in plastic cups and a tray of real eggs and imitation bacon from the cafeteria. Brenda wolfed down everything hungrily. Oxnard answered a couple of routine phone calls while she ate, then told his secretary to hold all calls and visits.

  “So what’s happening in Toronto?” he asked again as she finished the last crumbs of her English muffin.

  “Everything,” Brenda said between dabs at her lips with a paper napkin. “It’s wild.”

  “Ron’s there? The scripts are being written?”

  “Well . . . .” she cocked her head slightly to one side, as if waiting for the right words to come out of the air. “He’s there . . . and there’s a lot of writing being done. The production team is starting to put the sets together . . . .”

  “But?”

  Brenda’s smile turned a little desperate. “Wasn’t it you who told me about Murphy’s Law?”

  He grinned. “If anything can go wrong with an experiment, it will.”

  “Right. Well, that’s what’s happening in Toronto.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “It’s worse than that. The show might never get on the air. All sorts of troubles have hit us.”

  Oxnard shook his head sympathetically. “Everything’s going smoothly on this end. The new transmitters and cameras have tested out fine. We’ll be ready to ship them up to Toronto right on schedule. And I’ve got some new ideas, too, about . . . well . . . .” Oxnard let his voice trail off. She’s got enough problems without listening to my untested brainstorms.

  “Will you be coming up to Toronto with the equipment?” Brenda asked.

  “No need to,” said Oxnard.

  “But I thought . . . .”

  “Oh, we’ll send a couple of technicians along. I wouldn’t dump the equipment on you without somebody to show your crew how to work it . . .”

  “I know,” she said. “But I thought you would come up yourself.”

  For some reason, Oxnard’s insides went fluttery.

  “I’d like to,” he said quickly. “But I can’t leave the lab here . . . I’m not just an executive, you know. I work here; the rest of the staff depends on me.”

  Brenda nodded and looked distressed. “Bill . . . I wouldn’t want you to hurt your own company, of course. But we need you in Toronto. Ron needs you. He’s being driven crazy up there, trying to whip the scripts into shape and handle the technical details of building the sets and working out the special effects and a million other things. I’ve tried to help him all I can, but you’re the one he needs. You’ve got the scientific know-how. Nobody else up there knows anything . . . .”

  He refused, of course. He explained to her, very carefully, how his laboratory operated and how much he was needed for day-by-day, hour-by-hour decisions. He took her down to the labs and shop, showed her what a small, tightly integrated group he had. He explained to her over and over that these men and women didn’t work for him, they worked with him. And he worked with them. Every day; ten, twelve hours per day.

  He explained it all morning. He explained it over lunch. He took the afternoon off and drove her down the coast so that they could be alone and away from phones and business conferences while he explained it thoroughly. He explained it over dinner at a candlelit table looking out at the surf, not far from La Jolla.

  He wanted to explain it to her in bed, in one of those plush La Jolla hotels, but at the last minute he lost his nerve. Brenda nodded and smiled and accepted everything he said without argument. But she kept repeating that Ron Gabriel, and the whole show, was in dire trouble and needed him. Now. In Toronto. And he kept getting the unspoken message from her that she needed him. Not that she promised anything or even hinted at it. But Oxnard realized that if he helped the show, helped Gabriel and Finger and Montpelier, he would be helping her.

  And Bill Oxnard found that more than anything else in the world, he wanted to help her.

  So he drove her back to the airport and agreed that he would join her in Toronto.

  “Only for the weekend,” he said. “I really can’t stay away from the lab during regular working days.”

  “I know,” she answered, as they hurried down the terminal corrido
r toward her flight’s loading gate.

  They made it to the gate with half a minute to spare. Brenda turned to him, breathless from running, while the gate computer examined her ticket and the overhead sensors scanned them both for everything from contraband lemons to plastic explosives.

  “I really appreciate it, Bill. I’ll set you up with a hotel room and try to make your weekend comfortable. Thanks for a fun day!”

  He stood there tonguetied, trying to think of an appropriate answer: something witty, maybe poetic.

  The computer’s scratchy voice upstaged him: “Final boarding for Flight 68. Final boarding.”

  She reached up on tiptoes and kissed him lightly on the cheek. Oxnard stood there grinning like a schoolboy as she scampered through the doorway of the access tunnel that led to the plane.

  Two nights later, on Friday, he followed her.

  The studio was impressive.

  It was huge, about the size of a modern jetliner hangar, Oxnard realized. But it looked even bigger because it was almost completely empty. The bare skeleton of its wall bracings and rows of rafter-mounted old-fashioned spotlights looked down on a bare wooden floor.

  “You won’t need all those lights,” Oxnard said to his guide. “With laser holography, you can . . . .”

  “We know all about it,” said Gregory Earnest. He was small and wiry, with thickly curled dark hair and beard that hid most of his face, so that Oxnard couldn’t see that he looked like one of Canada’s most numerous residents—a weasel. “We’re just as modern and up-to-date as you Yanks, you know.”

  Oxnard completely missed the edge to Earnest’s voice. They continued their tour of Badger Studios, with Earnest proudly showing off his company’s shops, equipment and personnel—most of them idle.

  They ended in the model shop, where a half dozen intense young men and women were putting together a four-meter-long plastic model. It lay along a table that was too short for it, overlapping both ends. To Oxnard it looked something like a beached whale in an advanced stage of decomposition.