“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 a 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 Nowl 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 ail 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 comer 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 starships 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 its 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 lifesized 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.