Harry Harrison - The Technicolor Time Machine

“Watch this, arrows coming,” he called out to Barney and held up the shield. The springs whipped the concealed arrows into position with a thunk-thunk.

“A wonderful invention,” Barney said. “We’ve finished the shooting for now, Ottar, so I’m going to move the company ahead to next spring. Do you think you’ll have the palisade completed by then?”

“Easy. You keep your bargain, Ottar keeps his. We can cut logs for wall easy with the steel saws and axes you leave. But you leave food for the winter so we can eat.”

“I’ll get the supplies first before we move the company. Is everything clear? Any questions?”

“Clear, clear,” Ottar mumbled, concentrating on getting the arrows back inside the shield. Barney looked at him suspiciously.

“I’m sure you remember it all, but just for the record’s sake let’s run through it once more, quickly. We leave you the food, all the cereals and dried and canned stuff I can get from the studio commissary. That way you don’t have to spend the summer and fall laying down food for the winter, so you can take the time to build some more shells of log buildings and a log wall around the camp. If what the Doc said is right you shouldn’t be bothered by the Cape Dorset until the spring when the pack ice closes in near the shore here and the seals band together and raise pups on it. That’s when the hunters come, they’ll all be farther north now. And even if they bother you before then you should be okay behind the log wall.”

“Kill them, cut them up.”

“Try not to, will you please? Ninety percent of this film has been shot and I’d feel better if you didn’t get yourself slaughtered before we finished it. We’ll check up on you in February and March, then bring the company as soon as we know the redskins are close by. Give them some trade goods to pay them to launch an attack on the stockade, bum part of it down and that is that. Agreed?”

“And Jack Daniels whiskey.”

“That’s in your contract…”

A brassy moan drowned his words, rising and falling unevenly.

“Must you?” Barney asked Val de Carlo, who had the length of the lurhorn curled around his body, the nodulated flat plate of the opening over his shoulder, and was blowing on it.

“This is a wild horn,” Val said. “Listen.” He licked his lips and applied them to the mouthpiece, and, with much puffing and cheek reddening, produced a barely recognizable version of “The Music Goes ’Round and ’Round.”

“Stick to acting,” Barney said. “You have no future as a musician. You know, I keep thinking I’ve seen that kind of hom somewhere before, outside of a museum I mean.”

“They’ve got it on every pack of Danish butter. It’s a trade mark.”

“Maybe that’s where. It sounds like a sick tuba.”

“Spiderman Spinneke would love it.”

“He might at that,” Barney squinted as an idea hit him, then snapped his fingers. “That’s what I was thinking about, the Spiderman. He plays all kinds of weirdo instruments in that beat joint the Fungus Grotto. I heard him once, backed up with a brass section and a drum.”

Val nodded. “I’ve been there. He’s supposed to be the only jazz tuba player in captivity. It’s the most terrible noise I ever heard.”

“It’s not that bad—and it might be just what we want. It gives me a thought.”

Ottar thunked his arrows in and out and Barney leaned against the wall listening to the lurhorn until Dallas pulled up in the jeep.

“Ready to go,” he reported. “All the commissary people are waiting and a couple of grips who volunteered because they wanted to see if Hollywood was still there.”

“Enough to move the supplies?” Barney asked. “Everyone on the lot will have gone home by now.”

“More than enough.”

“Let’s go.”

One of the big trailer trucks had backed onto the platform and a dozen men were lounging around it. Professor Hewett had the door to the control cabin tied open and Barney looked in.

“Saturday afternoon, and cut it as close as you can.”

“To the microsecond. We shall arrive precisely after the moment the platform left on the last trip.”

It took an effort of will for Barney to realize that, despite all that had happened during the previous months, it was still Saturday afternoon in Hollywood, the same day on which they had begun the operation. The weekend crowds were jamming up on the freeways, the supermarket parking lots were full, and at the top of Benedict Canyon Drive, behind his private golf course on the top floor of his mansion, L.M. Greenspan was suffering his phony heart attack. For a moment Barney considered telephoning him with a progress report, then decided not to. Only a few hours had passed for L.M. and he wouldn’t be worrying yet. Best to let sleeping studio owners lie. Maybe he should ring up the hospital and see how Jens Lyn was doing, it had been weeks since—no it hadn’t, just minutes here. He probably wasn’t even at the hospital yet. Time travel took a lot of getting used to.

“It’s a scorcher,” one of the cooks said. “I shoulda brought my sunglasses.”

The high sound-stage doors were rolled back, and when the time platform appeared all the men winced at the sudden onslaught of subtropical light. The northern Newfoundland sky was always a pale blue and the sun never burned down like this. Barney moved the men out of the way while the big diesel truck rumbled to life, then clanked down from the time platform. There was a holiday air about the occasion as they climbed into the truck and rolled through the empty studio streets.

At the commissary warehouse the holiday ended.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the studio guard said, spinning his club on its thong. “But I’ve never seen you before, and even if I had I couldn’t let you into this warehouse, no sir.”

“This paper…”

“I’ve seen the paper, but I have my orders.”

“Give me a war ax,” one of the grips shouted. “I’ll get that door open!”

“Kill! Kill!” another called out. They had been too long in the eleventh century and had picked up some of the Vikings’ simple solutions to most problems.

“Don’t come any closer!” the guard ordered, stepping away and dropping his hand toward his gun.

“All right you jokers, enough of that,” Barney ordered. “Just sit quiet while I straighten this out. Where’s your phone?” he asked the guard.

Barney took a chance that someone might be there and called the administration building first. He hit pay dirt. Sam, L.M.’s personal accountant, was there, undoubtedly cooking the books in private.

“Sam,” he said, “it’s good to talk to you again, how’ve you been… What?… Sorry, I forgot. It’s just been a couple of hours for you, natch, but it’s been months for me… No, of course I haven’t been drinking, I’ve been shooting the film… That’s right, it’s almost complete… Sam, no… don’t get excited… This is no more a one-day picture than the script was a one-hour script. We’ve been working hard. Look, I’ll explain it all later, but right now I want you to help me. I want you to talk to one of the studio guards, a real thick-headed job, must be a new man. Tell him to unlock the commissary warehouse so we can clean out all the dry cereals and canned stuff… No, we are not getting very hungry already, this is trade goods for the natives. Pay for the extras… Sam, what do you mean you have to think about it… if we can pay them off in Quaker Oats instead of greenbacks what possible difference can it make?”

It wasn’t easy, it never was with Sam, but he was finally convinced. Sam—who hated to spend money even if it was only Quaker Oats—took his temper out on the guard, who emerged from the phone booth red-faced and angry.