Harry Harrison - The Technicolor Time Machine

“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?

“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?”