Laugh Lines

by Ben Bova

  “Mr. Finger,” he said in a beautifully modulated baritone. “I’m pleased to find you in your office this afternoon. My computer doesn’t seem to have your home number. Working hard, I see.”

  “Yes,” Finger said, his voice quavering just the slightest bit. “Yes . . . you know how it is in this business, heh-heh.”

  The man smiled without warmth.

  “I, uh . . . I don’t think I know you,” Finger said.

  “We have never met. I am an attorney, representing a group of gentlemen who have invested rather substantial sums in Titanic Productions, Incorporated.”

  “Oh. Yes. I see.”

  “Indeed.”

  “The gentlemen who’re backing “The Starcrossed.’”

  The man raised a manicured forefinger. “The gentlemen are backing Titanic Productions, not any particular show. In a very real sense, Mr. Finger, they have invested in you. In your business acumen, your administrative capabilities, your . . . integrity.”

  Finger swallowed hard. “Well, eh, ‘The Starcrossed’ is the show that we’ve sunk their . . . eh, invested their money into. It goes on the air in three weeks. That’s the premier date, second week of January. Friday night. Full network coverage. It’s a good spot, and . . . .”

  “Mr. Finger.”

  Montpelier had never seen B.F. stopped by such a quiet short speech.

  “Yessir?” Finger squeaked.

  “Mr. Finger, did you happen to watch the Montana Sasquatch football game this afternoon?”

  “Uh . . . .” Finger coughed, cleared his throat. “Why, um, I did take a look at part of it, yes.”

  The man from New York let a slight frown mar his handsome features. “Mr. Finger, the bankers whom I represent have some associates who—quite frankly—I find very distasteful. These, ah, associates are spreading an ugly rumor to the effect that you have been betting quite heavily on the Honolulu professional football team. Quite heavily. And since Honolulu lost this afternoon, my clients thought it might be wise to let you know that this rumor has them rather upset.”

  “Upset,” Finger echoed.

  “Yes. They fear that the money they have invested in Titanic Productions has been channeled into the hands of . . . .” he showed his distaste quite visibly “ . . . bookies. They fear that you have lost all their money and will have nothing to show for their investment. That would make them very angry, I’m afraid. And justifiably so.”

  Finger’s head bobbed up and down. “I can appreciate that.”

  “The proceedings that they would institute against you would be so severe that you might be tempted to leave the country or disappear altogether.”

  “Oh, I’d never . . . .”

  “A few years ago, in a similar situation, a man who tried to cheat them became so remorseful that he committed suicide. He somehow managed to shoot himself in the back of the head. Three times.”

  What little color was left in Finger’s face drained away completely. He sagged in his chair.

  “Mr. Finger, are you all right? Does the thought of violence upset you?”

  Finger nodded weakly.

  “I’m terribly sorry. It’s raining here in New York and I tend to get morbid on rainy Sunday afternoons. Please forgive me.”

  Finger raised a feeble hand. “Think nothing of it.”

  “Back to business, if you don’t mind. Mr. Finger, there is a series called ‘The Starcrossed’? And it will premier on the second Friday in January?”

  “Eight p.m.” Montpelier said as firmly as possible.

  “Ah. Thank you, young man. This show does represent the investment that my clients have made?”

  “That’s right, it does,” Finger said, his voice regaining some strength. But not much.

  “That means,” the New York lawyer went on, remorselessly, “that you have used my client’s money to acquire the best writers, directors, actors and so forth . . . the best that money can buy?”

  “Sure, sure.”

  “Which in turn means that the show will be a success. It will bring an excellent return on my clients’ investment. Titanic Productions will make a profit and so will my clients. Is that correct?”

  Sitting up a little straighter in his chair, Finger hedged, “Well now, television is a funny business. Nobody can guarantee success. I explained to . . . .”

  “Mr. Finger.” And again B.F. stopped cold. “My clients are simple men, at heart. If ‘The Starcrossed’ is a success and we all make money, all well and good. If it is not a success, then they will investigate just how their money was spent. If they find that Titanic did not employ the best possible talent or that the money was used in some other manner—as this regrettable betting rumor suggests, for instance—then they will hold you personally responsible.”

  “Me?”

  “Do you understand? Personally responsible.”

  “I understand.”

  “Good.” The lawyer almost smiled. “Now if you would do us one simple favor, Mr. Finger?”

  “What?”

  “Please stay close to your office for the next few weeks. I know you probably feel that you are entitled to a long vacation, now that your show is . . . how do they say it in your business? ‘In the can’? At any rate, try to deny yourself that luxury for a few weeks. My clients will want to confer with you as soon as public reaction to ‘The Starcrossed’ is manifested. They wouldn’t want to have to chase you down in some out-of-the-way place such as Rio de Janeiro or Ulan Bator.”

  Finger fainted.

  16: The Reaction

  On the second Friday in January, twenty-odd members of the New England Science Fiction Association returned to their clubroom after their usual ritual Chinese dinner in downtown Boston. The clubroom was inside the lead walls of what once had housed MIT’s nuclear reactor—until the local Cambridge chapter of Ecology Now! had torn the reactor apart with their bare hands, a decade earlier, killing seventeen of their members within a week from the radiation poisoning and producing a fascinating string of reports for the obstetrics journals ever since.

  The clubroom was perfectly safe now, of course. It had been carefully decontaminated and there was a trusty scintillation counter sitting on every bookshelf, right alongside musty crumbling copies of Astounding Stories of Super Science.

  The NESFA members were mostly young men and women, in their twenties or teens, although on this evening they were joined by the President Emeritus, a retired lawyer who was regaling them with his Groucho Marx imitations.

  “Okay, knock it off!” said the current president, a slim, long-haired brunette who ran the City of Cambridge’s combined police, fire and garbage control computer system. “It’s time for the new show.”

  They turned on the three-dee in the corner and arranged themselves in a semicircle on the floor to see the first episode of “The Starcrossed.”

  But first, of course, they saw three dozen commercials: for bathroom bowl cleaners, bras, headache remedies, perfumes, rectal thermometers, hair dyes, and a foolproof electronic way to cheat on your school exams. Plus new cars, used cars, foreign cars, an airline commercial that explained the new antihijacking system (every passenger gets his very own Smith & Wesson .38 revolver!), and an oil company ad dripping with sincerity about the absolute need to move the revered site of Disneyland so that “we can get more oil to serve you better.”

  The science fiction fans laughed and jeered at all the commercials, especially the last one. They bicycled, whenever and wherever the air was safe enough to breathe.

  Then the corner of the room where the three-dee projector cast its images went absolutely black. The fans went silent with anticipation. Then a thread of music began, too faint to really pick out the tune. A speck of light appeared in the middle of the pool of blackness. Then another. Two stars, moving toward each other. The music swelled.

  “Hey, that tune is ‘When You Wish Upon a Star!’”

  “Sssshhh.” Nineteen hisses.

  The two stars turned out to be st
arships and bold letters spelled out “The Starcrossed” over them. The fans cheered and applauded.

  Two minutes later, after another dozen commercials, they were gaping.

  “Look at how solid they are!”

  “It’s like they’re really here in the room. No scintillations at all.”

  “It’s a damned-near perfect projection.”

  “I wish we had a life-sized set.”

  “You can reach out and touch them!”

  “I wouldn’t mind touching her!”

  “Or him. He’s got muscles. Not like the guys around here.”

  “And she’s got . . .”

  Twelve hisses, all from female throats, drowned him out.

  Fifteen minutes later, they were still gaping, but now their comments were:

  “This is pretty slow for an opening show.”

  “It’s pretty slow, period.”

  “That hockey player acts better in the Garden when they call a foul on him.”

  “Shuddup. I want to watch Juliet breathe.”

  Halfway into the second act they were saying:

  “Who wrote this crud?”

  “It’s awful!”

  “They must be dubbing Romeo’s speeches. His mouth doesn’t sync with the words.”

  “Who cares? The words are dumb.”

  They laughed. They groaned. They threw marshmallows at the solid-looking images and watched the little white missiles sail right through the performers. When the show finally ended:

  “What a wagonload of crap!”

  “Well, at least the girl was good-looking.”

  “Good-looking? She’s sensational!”

  “But the story. Ugh!”

  “What story?”

  “There was a story?”

  “Maybe it’s supposed to be a children’s show.”

  “Or a spoof.”

  “It wasn’t funny enough to be a spoof.”

  “Or intelligent enough to be a children’s show. Giant amoebas in space!”

  “It’ll set science fiction back ten years, at least.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” the President Emeritus said, clutching his walking stick. “I thought it was pretty funny in places.”

  “In the wrong places.”

  “One thing, though. That new projection system is terrific. I’m going to scrounge up enough money to buy a life-sized three-dee. They’ve finally worked all the bugs out of it.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Right. Let’s get a life-sized set for the clubroom.”

  “Do we have enough money in the treasury?”

  “We do,” said the treasurer, “if we cancel the rocket launch in March.”

  “Cancel it,” the president said. “Let’s see if the show gets any better. We can always scratch up more money for a rocket launch.”

  In Pete’s Tavern in downtown Manhattan, the three-dee set was life-sized. The regulars sat on their stools with their elbows on the bar and watched “The Starcrossed” actors galumph across the corner where the jukebox used to be.

  After the first few minutes, most of them turned back to the bar and resumed their drinking.

  ”That’s Francois Dulaq, the hockey star?”

  “Indeed it is, my boy.”

  “Terrible. Terrible.”

  “Hey, Kenno, turn on the hockey game. At least we can see some action. This thing stinks.”

  But one of the women, chain smoking while sipping daiquiris and petting the toy poodle in her lap, stared with fascination at the life-sized three-dimensional images in the corner. “What a build on him,” she murmured to the poodle.

  In the Midwest the show went on an hour later.

  Eleven ministers of various denominations stared incredulously at Rita Yearling and immediately began planning sermons for Sunday on the topic of the shamelessness of modern women. They watched the show to the very end.

  The cast and crew of As You Like It caught the show during a rehearsal at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis. They decided they didn’t like it at all and asked their director to pen an open letter to Titanic Productions, demanding a public apology to William Shakespeare.

  The science fiction classes at the University of Kansas—eleven hundred strong—watched the show in the University’s Gunn Amphitheater. After the first six minutes, no one could hear the dialogue because of the laughing, catcalls and boos from the sophisticated undergraduates and grad students. The professor who held the Harrison Chair and therefore directed the science fiction curriculum decided that not hearing the dialogue was a mercy.

  The six-man police force of Cisco, Texas, voted Rita Yearling “The Most Arresting Three-Dee Personality.”

  The Hookers Convention in Reno voted Francois Dulaq “Neatest Trick of the Year.”

  The entire state of Utah somehow got the impression that the end of the world had come a step closer.

  * * *

  In Los Angeles, the cadaverous young man who wrote television criticism for the Free Press-News-Times smiled as he turned on his voice recorder. Ron Gabriel had stolen three starlets from him in the past year. Now was the moment of his revenge.

  He even felt justified.

  The editor-in-chief of the venerable TV Guide, in his Las Vegas office, shook his head in despair. “How in the world am I going to put a good face on this piece of junk?” he asked a deaf heaven.

  In Oakland, the staff of the most influential science fiction newsletter watched the show to its inane end—where Dulaq (playing Rom, or Romeo) improvises a giant syringe from one of his starship’s rocket tubes and kills the space-roving Giant Amoeba with a thousand-liter shot of penicillin.

  Charles Brown III heaved a mighty sigh. The junior editors, copyreaders and collators sitting at his feet held their breath, waiting for his pronouncement.

  “Stinks,” he said simply.

  High on a mountainside in the Cascade Range, not far from Glacier Park, a bearded writer clicked off his three-dee set and sat in the darkness of his mist-enshrouded chalet. For many minutes he simply sat and thought.

  Then he snapped his fingers and his voice recorder came rolling out of its slot on smoothly oiled little trunnions.

  “Take a letter,” he said to the simple-minded robot and its red ON light winked with electrical pleasure. “No, make it a telegram. To Ron Gabriel. The ‘puter has his address in its memory. Dear Ron: Have plenty of room up here in the hills if you need to get away from the flak. Come on up. The air’s clean and the women are dirty. What more can I say? Signed, Herb. Make it collect.”

  And in Bernard Finger’s home in the exclusive Watts section of Greater Los Angeles, doctors shuttled in and out, like substitute players for the Honolulu Pineapples, manfully struggling to save the mogul of Titanic Productions from what appeared to be—from the symptoms—the world’s first case of manic convulsive paranoid cardiac insufficiency, with lockjaw on the side.

  BARD SPINS AS “STARCROSSED” DRAGS

  Variety

  NEW THREE-DEE TECHNIQUE IS ONLY SOLID FEATURE OF “STARCROSSED”

  NY Times-Herald-Voice

  CAPSULE REVIEW

  By Gerrold Saul

  “The Starcrossed,” which premiered last night on nationwide network three-dee, is undoubtedly the worst piece of alleged drama ever foisted on the viewers.

  Despite the gorgeous good looks of Rita Yearling and the stubborn handsomeness of hockey star Frankie Dulake, the show has little to offer. Ron Gabriel’s script—even disguised under a whimsical penname—has all the life and bounce of the proverbial lead dirigible. While the sets were adequate and the costumes arresting, the story made no sense whatsoever. And the acting was nonexistent. Stalwart though he may be in the hockey rink, Dulaq’s idea of drama is to peer into the cameras and grimace.

  The technical feat of producing really solid three-dimensional images was impressive. Titanic Productions’ new technique will probably be copied by all the other studios, because it makes everything else look pale and wan by compariso
n.

  If only the script had been equal to the electronics.

  LA Free Press-News-Times

  TV GUIDE

  America’s Oldest and Most Respected Television Magazine

  Contents

  The Starcrossed:” Can a Science Fiction Show Succeed by Spoofing Science Fiction?

  Technical Corner: New Three-Dee Projection Technique Heralds End of “Blinking Blues”

  The New Lineups: Networks Unveil “Third Season” Shows, and Prepare for “Fourth Season” in Seven Weeks

  A Psychologist Warns: Portraying Love in Three-Dee Could Confuse Teenagers

  Nielsen Reports: “Kongo’s Mayhem” and “Shoot-Out” Still Lead in Popularity

  MITCH WESTERLY, MYSTERY MAN OF TELEVISION

  Playperson

  WHY RITA YEARLING CRIED WHEN SHE FLEW TO TORONTO

  TV Love Stars

  DULAQ NOT SCORING, CANADIAN MAPLE STARS NOT WINNING

  Sporting News

  CAN A GAY PORTRAY A STRAIGHT ON TV? AND IF SO, WHY?

  Liberty

  NEW THREE-DEE PROJECTION SYSTEM FULLY SUCCESSFUL

  Scintillation-Free Images Result from Picosecond Control Units Developed by Oxnard Laboratory in California

  Dr. Oxnard Claims System Can Be

  Adapted to ‘Animate’ Still Photos;

  Obviate Need for Actors in TV

  Electronics News

  17: The Outcome

  Bill Oxnard grimaced with concentration as he maneuvered his new Electric TR into Ron Gabriel’s driveway. Ordinarily it would have been an easy task, but the late winter rainstorm made visibility practically nil and there was a fair-sized van parked at the curb directly in front of the driveway.

  The front door of the house was open and a couple of burly men in coveralls were taking out the long sectional sofa that had curled around Gabriel’s living room. They grunted and swore under their breaths as they swung their burden around the Electric TR. The sofa was so big that if they had dropped it on the sportscar, they would have flattened it.