Harry Harrison: The Technicolor Time Machine

“Well translate it, you’re the technical adviser. Hold on.” He picked up the phone.

“I could translate it, it would be extremely difficult but possible, but what would be the point? He cannot read.”

“Just hold on, Lyn. No, not you, Sam. I know, Sam… Of course I saw the estimate, I made it myself. No, you don’t have to ask me where I’m getting the LSD… Be realistic yourself. Yesterday neither of us was born not, I agree… what you don’t realize is that this picture can be produced within the figure I outlined, give or take fifty thousand… Don’t use the word impossible, Sam. The impossible may take a while, but we do it, you know the routine… What?… On the phone? Sam, be reasonable. I’ve got three rings of Barnum and Bailey in the office right now, this isn’t the time to go into details… Brush-off? Me? Never!… Yes, by all means, ask him. L.M. has been in on this picture from the beginning, every step of the way, and you’ll find that he’ll back me up in my own footsteps every step of the way … Right… And the same to you, Sam.”

He dropped the phone into the cradle and Charley Chang said, “She could be captured in the raid, in the opening, she could fight with him with true hatred, but hatred would, in spite of itself, turn to love.”

“I’ve never been captured in a raid before,” Slithey husked from the corner.

“A good idea, Charley,” Barney agreed.

“And even if he could read—he cannot write,” Lyn said.

“We’ve had that problem with foreign actors more than once,” Barney told him. “Staple the true translation to the contract, have it notarized as a true translation by a bilingual notary, have the party of the second part make his mark and affix his thumb print on each document, both witnessed by two impartial witnesses, and it will stand up in any court in the world.”

“There may be some difficulty in locating a bilingual English-Old Norse notary—”

“Ask casting, they can find anyone.”

“Here they are, Mr. Hendrickson,” his secretary said, coming in through the open door and placing a bottle of Benzedrine tablets before him on the desk.

“Too late,” Barney whispered, staring at them, unmoving. “Too late.”

The telephone and the intercom sounded at the same moment and he groped out two of the pills and washed them down with the cold, black, cardboardy coffee.

“Hendrickson here,” he said flipping the key.

“Barney, I would like to see you in my office at once,” L.M.’s voice said.

Betty had answered the phone. “That was L.M. Greenspan’s secretary,” she said. “L.M. would like to see you in his office at once.”

“I get the message.”

His thigh muscles hurt when he stood up and he wondered how long it would take for the bennies to show some effect. “Stay with it, Charley, I’ll want a synopsis, a couple of sheets, as soon as possible.”

When he started toward the door Ivan Grissini’s hand darted toward his lapel, but he moved away from it with reflex efficiency. “Stick around, Ivan, I’ll want to talk to you after I see L.M.” The chorus of voices was cut off as he closed the door behind him. “Lend me your towel, will you, Betty,” he asked.

She took the towel from the bottom drawer of her desk and he draped it around his shoulders, tucking it carefully inside the collar of his shirt. Then he bent and placed his head under the faucet of the water cooler and gasped when Betty turned it on. He let the icy stream run over his head and the back of his neck for a few moments, then straightened up and dried himself off. Betty lent him her comb. He felt weaker but better, and when he looked in the mirror he looked almost human. Almost.

“Lock the door behind you,” L.M. said when Barney came into the office, then grunted as he bent over to clip a telephone wire with a pair of angle-nose wire cutters. “Are there any more, Sam?”

“That’s the last one,” Sam said in his gray, colorless voice. Sam was pretty much of a gray, colorless man, which was assuredly protective coloration since he was L.M.’s own personal, private accountant and was reputed to be a world authority on corporative finance and lax evasion. He clutched a folder of papers protectively to his chest and flicked his eyes toward L.M. “That is no longer necessary,” he said.

“Maybe, maybe,” L.M. said, puffing as he fell into his chair. “But if I even say the word bank when the wires aren’t cut my heart gives palpitations. I got not so good news for you, Barney.” He bit off the end of a cigar. “We’re ruined.”

“What do you mean?” Barney looked back and forth from one expressionless face to the other. “Is this some kind of gag?”

“What L.M. means,” Sam said, “is that Climactic Studios will soon be bankrupt.”

“On the rocks, the work of a lifetime,” L.M. said in a hollow voice.

Sam nodded once, as mechanically as a ventriloquist’s dummy, and said, “That is, roughly, the situation. Normally it would be at least three more months before our financial report would be sent to the banks, who, as you know, own the controlling percentage of this corporation. However, for some reason unknown to us, they are sending their accountants to examine the books this week.”

“And… ?” Barney asked, feeling suddenly lightheaded. The silence lengthened unbearably until he jumped to his feet and began to pace the room. “And they’ll find the company is on the rocks, and that all the profits are on paper”—he turned and pointed dramatically to L.M.—“and that all the hard cash has been bled off into the untaxable L.M. Greenspan Foundation. No wonder you’re not suffering. The company may go down the drain, but L.M. Greenspan goes marching on.”

“Watch it! That’s no way for an employee to talk to the man who gave him his first break—”

“And his last one too—right here!” Barney said, and chopped himself on the neck with the edge of his hand, much harder than he had planned. “Listen, L.M.,” he pleaded, rubbing the sore spot, “until the ax falls we still have a chance. You must have thought there was the possibility of a salvage operation or you wouldn’t have got involved in this deal with Professor Hewett and his machine. You must have felt that a big box-office success would get the pressure off, make the firm solvent again. We can still do it.”

L.M. shook his head morosely. “Don’t think it doesn’t hurt to shake hands with the knife that stabs you in the back, but what else can I do? A big box-office hit, sure, even a big picture in the can and we could laugh at the teeth of the banks. But you can’t make a picture in a week.”

You can’t make a picture in a week! The words hissed and sizzled through the caffeine-clogged, Benzedrine-loaded channels of Barney’s brain, levering up a reluctant memory.

“L.M.” he said dramatically. “You’re going to have a heart attack.”

“Bite your tongue!” L.M. gasped, and clutched a roll of fat roughly near that vital organ. “Don’t say that. One coronary’s enough to last a lifetime.”

“Listen to this. You go home with Sam to work on the books tonight, you take them with you. You get sick. It could be indigestion, it could be a coronary. Your doctor says it could be a coronary. The fees you’ve been paying him he should deliver at least that one small favor. Everyone runs around and shouts for a few days and the books are forgotten about and then it is the weekend, and nobody even considers looking at the books until Monday, maybe Tuesday.”

“Monday,” Sam said firmly. “You don’t know banks. No books on Monday and they’ll have a hired car full of doctors over to the house.”

“All right, Monday then. That will be time enough.”