Ben Bova - The Starcrossed

Brenda said, “They need the scripts, Ron. We’re working against a deadline now. If we’re not in production by…”

“In production?” Gabriel’s voice rose. “With what? Have you looked at these treatments? Have you tried to read any of them? The ones that are spelled halfway right, at least?”

“Are they that bad?” Oxnard asked.

“Bad?” Gabriel jumped to his feet. “Bad? They’re abysmal! They’re insufferable! They’re rotten! Junk, nothing but junk…”

He kicked at the paper on the floor and stomped over to the desk. “Listen to these treatments… these are the ideas they want to write about…” Riffling through the pile of papers on the desk, he pulled out a single sheet.

Oxnard started to say, “Maybe we ought to…”

“No, no… you listen. And you!” he jabbed a finger toward Brenda— “You better get back to Big Daddy in L.A. and tell him what the hell’s going on here. If we were in the States, I’d call the Civil Liberties Union. If I had a phone.”

“What about the story ideas, Ron?” she asked.

“Hah! Story ideas. Okay, listen… here’s one about two families working together to build a dam on a new planet that’s described as, get this now… ‘very much like upper Alberta Province, such as around Ft. Vermillion.’”

Oxnard looked at Brenda. She said, “Okay, so you don’t care for the setting. What’s the story idea?”

“That is the story ideal That’s the whole treatment… about how to build a dam! Out of logs, yet!”

Brenda made a disapproving face. “You picked the worst one.”

“Oh yeah? Lemme go down the list for you…”

Gabriel spent an hour reading story treatments to them:

• A monster from space invades one of the starships, but it turns out to be a dream that the hero is having.

• The heroine (Rita Yearling) gets lost on an unexplored planet and the natives find her and think she’s a goddess. She gets away by explaining astronomy to them.

• The heads of the two competing families of star traders engage in an Indian wrestling match in a frontier saloon “very much like those in upper Alberta Province, such as around Ft. Vermillion.”

• The hero and heroine are stranded on an unpopulated planet and decide to call themselves Adam and Eve. Before they can bite the apple, they are rescued.

• A war between the two families is averted when the women of both families decide to. stop cooking for their men if they fight.

By the end of the hour, Oxnard felt as if his head was stuffed with cotton wool. Brenda was stretched out on one of the sofas, looking equally dazed.

“And those are the best of them,” Gabriel finished grimly.

“That’s the best they can do?” Oxnard asked.

“Who’s doing the writing?” Brenda wanted to know.

Gabriel glowered from his desk chair. “How the hell should I know? This Earnest Yazoo from Beaver Studios…”

“Badger,” Oxnard corrected.

“Same damned thing,” Gabriel grumbled. “Earnest won’t let me meet any of the writers. I have to write memos, suggestions, rewrites… which means I have to start from scratch and write everything! All thirteen goddamned scripts. I’m gonna have to do it all myself.”

Brenda sat up and ran a hand through her hair. “But you can’t! Our agreement with Badger and the Canadian government says that at least fifty percent of the scripts have to be written by Canadian citizens.”

Gabriel threw a flistful of papers into the air.

“This is terrible,” Oxnard said.

“I would’ve walked out a week ago,” Gabriel told him, “if it wasn’t for the goddamned guards. They’ve got me locked up in here!”

Brenda looked at him. “That’s because you yelled so much about walking out on them when they first gave you the story treatments.”

Oxnard was shaking his head. “And I thought the modeling and sets were bad…”

“What?” Gabriel was beside him instantaneously. “What about the models and the sets? What’re they doing to them?”

Oxnard told him of his morning’s tour of the studio shops.

“That did it!” Gabriel screeched. “Get that sonofabitch in here! I’ll kill him!”

Wearily, Brenda asked, “Which sonofabitch do you mean?”

“Any of them! All of them! I’ll take them all on at once!”

Oxnard got up and stood beside the betoweled writer. “We’ll both take ’em on,” he said grimly. “I don’t like what they’re doing either.”

Brenda grinned at the two of them. “Laurel and Hardy, ready to take on the whole Canadian army. Okay… I’ll get you some action.”

She returned twenty minutes later with an already flustered-looking Gregory Earnest.

In the interval, a maid had cleared up most of the mess, Oxnard had ordered a bottle of beer for himself and Gabriel had started packing. The two men were in the bedroom when they heard the front door of the suite open and Brenda call, “Ron? Bill?”

“In here,” Gabriel yelled, as he tossed handfuls of socks into his open suitcase.

Oxnard saw that Earnest’s face was red and he was a trifle sweaty. Brenda must have filled his ears but good , he thought.

“What’re you doing?” Earnest asked as soon as he saw the half-filled suitcase on the bed.

“Leaving,” replied Gabriel.

“You can’t go.”

“The hell I can’t!”

Brenda walked over to the edge of the bed and sat down. “Ron,” she said, her voice firm, “I brought him here to listen to your problems. The least you can do is talk to him.”

“I’m talking,” Gabriel said as he rummaged through a dresser drawer and pulled out a heap of underwear.

Oxnard sat back in the room’s only chair and tried to keep himself from grinning.

“I, uh… understand,” Earnest said to Gabriel’s back, “that you’re not, uh, happy with the story material so far.” Gabriel turned and draped a bathrobe over the bed, alongside the suitcase. He started folding it.

“You understand correctly,” he said, concentrating on the folding. The robe was red and gold, with a barely discernible image of Bruce Lee on its back.

“Well,” said Earnest, “you knew when you came here that fifty percent of the scripts would have to be written by Canadians.”

“Canadian writers,” Gabriel said, as he tenderly placed the folded robe in the suitcase. “What you’ve given me was produced by a team of Mongoloid idiots. It’s hopeless. I’m leaving.”

“You can’t leave.”

“Watch me.”

“The guards won’t let you out of here.”

Oxnard raised his beer bottle. “Have you ever had your nose broken, Mr. Earnest?”

The Canadian backed away a short step. “Now listen,” he said to Gabriel, “you know that Titanic hasn’t given us the budget to take on big-name writers…”

“These guys couldn’t even spell a big name.”

“…and we’re on a very tight production schedule. You can’t walk out on us. It would ruin everything.”

Gabriel looked up at him for the first time. “I can’t make a script out of a turd. Nobody can. I can’t write thirteen scripts, or even six and a half, in the next couple of weeks. We need writers!”

“We’ve got writers…”

“We’ve got shit!” Gabriel yelled. “Excrement. Poop. Ka-ka. I’ve seen better-looking used toilet paper than the crap you’ve given me to work with!”

“It’s the best available talent for the budget.”

“Where’d you get these people?” Gabriel demanded. “The funny farm or the Baffin Island Old Folk’s Home?”

He snapped the suitcase lid shut, but it bounced right up again.

“Too much in there,” Oxnard said.

Gabriel gave him a look. “It’ll close. I got it here and I’ll get it out.” He pushed the lid down firmly and leaned on it.