The Technicolor Time Machine

by Harry Harrison

  “Who’s arguing?” Barney said, weighing the script happily. “Come on along, Charley, we’ll have the story conference right away.”

  Charley sniffed the twilight air as they came out of the warehouse. “What a lot of stinks,” he said. “I never realized it before. What great air we had there on the island.” He looked down at his feet while he walked. “Feels funny to be wearing shoes again.”

  “The native’s return,” Barney said. “I’ll bring the script in and you can get some clothes from wardrobe to replace your beachcomber’s rags and grab a shave. Get over to L.M.’s office as soon as you can. Is it a good script?”

  “Maybe it’s too early to say—but in a way I think it’s the best thing I have ever done. Working the way I did, no outside distractions you know—if you don’t count the eyes! And Clyde was a big help, a good clean typist. He’s a poet, did you know that?”

  “I thought he was a cook?”

  “He’s a lousy cook, I ended up doing all the cooking. He only took the job in the commissary to pay his rent. He’s a damn good poet, and great on dialogue. He helped me a lot there. Do you think we can get him a credit on this film?”

  “I don’t see why not. And don’t forget that shave.”

  Barney went into L.M.’s office and dropped the script onto the desk. “Finished,” he said.

  L.M. weighed it carefully in both hands, then held it at arm’s length so he could read the cover sheet.

  “Viking Columbus. A good title. We’ll have to change it You delivered like you said, Barney, so maybe now you can tell me the secret of in one hour producing a script. Tell Sam, he wants to hear too.” Sam was almost invisible, immobile against the dark wallpaper, until he nodded his head.

  “No secret, L.M., it’s the vremeatron. You saw it in action. Charley Chang went back in time to a nice quiet spot where he worked very hard to produce this script. He stayed as long as he needed, then we brought him back to almost the same moment when he left. Hardly any time at all elapsed here while he was away, so from your point of view it looks like it took just an hour to produce a complete script.”

  “A script in an hour!” L.M. said, beaming happily. “This is going to revolutionize the business. Don’t be cheap, Barney. Give me the highest hourly rate you can imagine, then double it—twice! I don’t care about money. I want to do the right thing and see that Charley Chang gets the greatest rate per hour ever paid to man, paid for one hour of his time.”

  “You missed the point, L.M. Maybe only an hour of your time went by, but Charley Chang worked more than two months on that script, Saturdays and Sundays included, and he has to get paid for that time.”

  “He can’t prove it!” L.M. said, scowling fiercely.

  “He can prove it. He punched a time clock every day and I have the time cards right here.”

  “He can sue! One hour it took, one hour I pay for.”

  “Sam,” Barney pleaded, “talk to him. Tell him you don’t get nothing for nothing in this world. Eight weeks’ pay is still beans for a great script like this.”

  “I liked the one-hour script better,” Sam said.

  “We all liked the one-hour script better, except there never was a one-hour script. This is just a new way of working, but we still have to pay the same amount for the work whatever happens.”

  The buzz of the phone interrupted and L.M. picked it up, first listening, then answering with a monosyllabic series of grunts, finally slamming the handpiece back into the cradle.

  “Ruf Hawk is on his way up,” L.M. said. “I think maybe we can use him for the lead, but also I think he is under contract to an independent for another picture. Feel him out, Barney, before his agent gets here. Now—about this one hour…”

  “Later we discuss the one hour, please, L.M. It’ll work out.”

  Ruf Hawk came in, stopping for a moment in the doorway and turning his head in profile so they could see how good he looked. He looked good. He looked good because that was really the only thing in life that he cared about. While all around the world, in countless movie houses, women’s hearts beat faster when they watched Ruf lock some lucky starlet in his firm embrace, little did these countless women know that their chances of getting locked in that embrace were exactly zero. Ruf did not like women. Not that he was a queer or something, he didn’t like men either. Or sheep or raincoats or whips, etc. Ruf just liked Ruf, and the light of love in his eyes was nothing more than a reflected gleam of narcissistic appreciation. He had been just one more slab of beefcake on muscle beach until it was discovered that he could act. He couldn’t act really, but it had been also discovered that he could act what he had been told to act. He would follow exactly whatever instructions were given to him, repeating the same words and actions over and over again with infinite bovine patience. Between takes he refreshed himself by looking into a mirror. His incompetence had never been revealed, because, in the kind of pictures he appeared in, before anyone could notice how bad he was the Indians would attack or the dinosaurs stampede or the walls of Troy would get torn down or something else mildly distracting would happen. Therefore Ruf was happy, and when the producers looked at box-office receipts they were happy, and everyone agreed that he had plenty of mileage left in him before his gut began to spread.

  “Hi, Ruf,” Barney said, “just the man we want to see.”

  Ruf raised his hand in greeting and smiled. He didn’t talk much when he hadn’t been told to talk.

  “I’m not going to beat around the point, Ruf, all I’m going to say is that we’re going to make the world’s greatest picture and we were talking about a lead and your name was mentioned, and I said right out loud if we are going to do a Viking picture, then Ruf Hawk is the most vilkingest Viking I can think of.”

  Ruf showed no signs of emotion or interest at this revelation. “You’ve heard of Vikings, haven’t you, Ruf?” Barney asked.

  Ruf smiled slightly.

  “You remember,” Barney said, “tall guys with big axes and horns on their helmets always sailing around in ships with a carved dragon in front…”

  “Oh, yeah, sure,” Ruf said, his attention captured at last. “I’ve heard of Vikings. I’ve never played a Viking.”

  “But in your heart of hearts you have always wanted to play a Viking, Ruf, it couldn’t be any other way. This is the kind of role that is made for you, the kind of role you can sink your teeth into, the kind of role that will make you look great in front of the camera.”

  The thick eyebrows slowly crawled together to form a frown. “I always look great in front of the camera.”

  “Of course you do, Ruf, that’s why we have you here. You haven’t got any big commitments, any other pictures, do you?”

  Ruf frowned even deeper as he thought. “Got a picture coming up end of next week, something about Atlantis.”

  L.M. Greenspan glanced up from the script and matched his frown to Rufs. “I thought so. My apologies to your agent, Ruf, but we gotta find someone else.”

  “L.M.,” Barney said. “Read the script. Enjoy it. Let me talk to Ruf. You’ve forgotten that this film will be in the can by Monday, which will give Ruf three days to rest up before Atlands sinks.”

  “I’m glad you mentioned the script because it has some grave faults, big ones.”

  “How can you tell—you’ve only read ten pages? Read it a bit more, then we’ll talk about it, the writer is waiting outside right now. Any changes that are needed he can make them practically while you wait.” He turned back to Ruf. “You’re going to get your wish and play that Viking. We’ve got a new technical process whereby we go on location to shoot the picture, and, though we’ll be back in only a couple of days, you get paid for a feature-length picture. What do you think of that?”

  “I think you better talk to my agent. Anything to do with money I don’t say a word.”

  “That’s the way it should be, Ruf, that’s what agents are for and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  “It just won’t do
,” L.M. said in a voice of doom. “From Charley Chang I expected better. The opening won’t do.”

  “I’ll get Charley in now, L.M., and we’ll thrash this out, find the trouble and lick it.”

  Barney looked at the clock: 8:00 P.M. And get hold of this slab of muscle’s agent. And fight the script through a rewrite and shoot Charley back to Catalina—and his teeth and eyes—to do the job. And find actors for the supporting roles. And get every single item lined up that they might need for a couple of months of shooting, then get the entire company moved back in time. And shoot the picture in the eleventh century, which should raise some interesting problems of its own. And get the entire thing done, finished and in the can by Monday morning. And here it was eight o’clock of a Wednesday night. Plenty of time.

  Sure, nothing to it, plenty of time.

  Then why was he sweating?

  7

  “A miracle of logistics, that’s what I call it, Mr. Hendrickson, getting all this done in less than four days,” Betty said, as they walked along the column of trucks and trailers that stretched along the concrete roadway leading to sound stage B.

  “That’s not what I would call it,” Barney said, “but I’m always very careful what words I use in front of women. How does the list check out?”

  “All systems go. All the departments have turned in their check lists completed and signed. They’ve really done wonderfully.”

  “Fine—but where is everybody?”

  They had passed almost all the vehicles and Barney realized that, other than a few drivers, he had seen nobody.

  “It was after you left last night to get the raw film, and everyone was sitting around and we couldn’t leave and that sort of thing. Well, you know, one thing led to another…”

  “No, I don’t know. What sort of things led to what sort of things?”

  “It was fun, really, and we did miss you. Charley Chang ordered two cases of beer from the commissary because he said he hadn’t had a beer in a year, and someone else got some drinks and sandwiches, and before you knew it there was a real swinging party going. It went on very late, so I guess they must all be pooped and still asleep in the trailers.”

  “Are you sure? Did anyone make a head count?”

  “The guards weren’t drinking and they said no one left the area so it must be all right.”

  Barney looked at the row of silent trailers and shrugged. “Good enough, I guess. We’ll do a roll call after we arrive and send back for anyone who is missing. Let them sleep during the trip, it’s probably the best way. You better get some sleep yourself if you have been up all night.”

  “Thanks, bossman. I’ll be in trailer twelve if you need me.”

  The sound of rapid hammering echoed from the gaping doors of the sound stage, where the carpenters were putting the final bit of flooring onto the time platform. Barney stopped just inside the door and lighted a cigarette and tried to work up an enthusiastic attitude toward the jerry-rigged fabrication that was to take the company on location in the Orkneys. A rectangular channel-iron frame had been welded to the professor’s specifications, then floored with heavy planks. As soon as the first bit of planking was down at the front end a windowed control room had been built and Professor Hewett had mounted his enlarged vremeatron—which in addition to being larger seemed to have far more festooned wires and glittering coils than the original—and a heavy-duty diesel motor-generator. Almost two dozen large truck tires had been fastened to the bottom of the platform to absorb any landing shock, a pipe railing had been put along the sides and a rickety-looking pipe structure went across the top to delimit the edges of the time field. The whole thing looked insubstantial and shoddy and Barney decided that the best thing he could do would be not to think about it.

  “Start it up,” Professor Hewett said, crawling out from behind his apparatus with a smoking soldering iron in his hand. A grip bent over the diesel engine, which groaned and turned over, then coughed out a cloud of blue exhaust and broke into hammering life.

  “How is it going, Prof?” Barney asked through the open door. Hewett turned and blinked at him.

  “Mr. Hendrickson, good morning. I presume you are enquiring about the condition of my vremeatron mark two, and I am pleased to answer in the affirmative. It is ready to begin operation at any time, the circuits are all tested and I am ready whenever you are.”

  Barney looked at the carpenters, who were hammering home the last boards, then kicked a scrap of wood off the platform. “We’ll leave at once—unless you’ve found a way to beat the return trip trouble?”

  Hewett shook his head no. “I have experimented with the vremeatron to see if this barrier can be crossed, but it is impossible. When we return in time we cut an arc through the continuum, using energy to warp our own time lines out of the world time line. The return trip, after a visit in the past, no matter how prolonged the visit, is a reverse voyage along the same time-vector that was established by the original time motion. In a sense the return voyage may be called endotempic, an absorption of time energy, just as the outward or backward voyage was exotempic. Therefore we can no more return to a point in time before the time of our original parting from the world time line, than a dropped ball on rebound can bounce higher than its original point when first dropped. You understand?”

  “Not a single word. Could you try it again—in English this time?”

  Professor Hewett picked up a clean piece of pine board, licked the tip of his ball-point pen and drew a simple diagram.

  “Examine this,” he said, “and all will be instantly clear. The line A'Z' is the world time line, with A' the past and Z' the future. The point B represents our consciousness, today, our ‘right now’ in time. The line AZ is the time line of the vremeatron making a voyage in time, or our own time lines as we travel with it. You will note that we leave the world line at point B, today, and arc back through the extratemporal continuum to arrive at—say 1000 A.D., at point C. Therefore the arc BC is our voyage. We re-enter the world time line at C and stay for a while, moving with the world line, and the duration of our visit is represented by the line CD. Do you follow?”

  “So far,” Barney said, tracing the lines with his fingertip. “So keep talking while I still know what you’re talking about.”

  “Surely. Now note the arc DE, our return voyage in time to an instant in time, perhaps just a fraction of a second after the time we orginally left, point B that is. I can control the arrival at point E until it comes just after point B—but I can never arrive before point B. The graph must always read BE, never EB.”

  “Why?”

  “I am glad you asked that question, because that is the heart of the matter. Look again at the graph and you will note point K. This is the point where are BC crosses arc DE. That point K must exist or it would be impossible to make the return voyage, for K is the interchange of energy point, where the scales of time are balanced. If you put point E between D and B the arcs will not cross, no matter how close they come, the energy will not balance, the trip will not be made.”

  Barney unknotted his brows and rubbed the sore spot between his eyes. “All of which adds up,” he said, “to the fact that we can’t come back to a time earlier than the time we left.”

  “Precisely.”

  “So all the time we have used up this week is gone forever?”

  “Correct.”

  “So if we want the picture to be completed by ten o’clock Monday morning we have to go back in time and stay there until it is done.”

  “I could not have phrased it more succinctly myself.”

  “Then let’s get this show on the road since it is already Saturday morning. The carpenters are finished so it’s time to roll.”

  The first vehicle in the parade was a jeep: Tex was asleep in the front seat and Dallas in the back. Barney went over and leaned on the horn button, then found himself staring down the barrel of a long six-shooter held in Tex’s quivering grip.

  “I got a headache,” Tex
said hoarsely, “and I wish you wouldn’t do that.” He reluctantly slid the gun back into the holster.

  “Nervy this morning, aren’t we?” Barney said. “What you need is some nice fresh air. Let’s go.”

  Tex gunned the jeep to life while Dallas stumbled over to the platform and dragged two metal ramps into place at the back. As soon as the jeep had been driven aboard he pulled the ramps in after it.

  “That’s all for the first trip,” Barney said. “We’ll find a level spot and come back for the rest. Take it away, Professor, back to the same landing site as the other trips, but right weeks later.”

  Hewett mumbled to himself as he set the dials, then activated the vremeatron. The mark two was an improvement on the original model in that it compacted all the electrocution and nausea symptoms into a single quick twang of sensation—as though the passengers were harp strings plucked by a celestial finger—which was finished almost before it began. The sound stage vanished and salt spray and sharp, clear air took its place. Tex moaned softly and pulled up the zipper on his jacket.

  “Over there, that meadow looks like a good spot,” Barney said, pointing to a fairly level field that ran down to the beach. “Drive me over there, Tex, and Dallas stay with the professor.”

  The jeep ground up the rise in compound low, the popping of its exhaust sending the black-faced gulls screaming in circles over their heads.

  “Looks big enough,” Barney said, climbing out and kicking at a tuft of short grass. “You can drive back and tell the Prof to jump forward in time a bit and to land the platform over here, just to make sure he can find the right spot when we start bringing the company back.”

  Barney dropped to the ground and dug a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, but it was empty. He crunched it up and threw it away while Tex wheeled the jeep in a circle and roared back to the platform. The ramps were still down and the jeep bounced up them again. Barney had a clear view as Dallas pulled the ramps in and the professor turned to the vremeatron.