Ben Bova - The Starcrossed

“Ron, those are the only writers we can afford,” Earnest said, his voice taking on a faint hint of pleading. “We don’t have the money for other writers.”

Gabriel let go of the suitcase and the lid bounced up again. “As if that explains it all, huh? We go on the air with a public announcement: ‘Folks, please excuse the cruddy quality of the scripts. We couldn’t afford better writers.’ That’s what you want to do?”

“Maybe if you worked with the writers…”

“You won’t even let me meet them!”

Earnest shifted back and forth on his feet uneasily. “Well, maybe I was wrong there…”

But Gabriel was peering at the suitcase again. “It won’t work.”

“I told you it wouldn’t,” Oxnard said.

Brenda added, “Try putting it on the floor and then leaning on it.”

Earnest gaped at her, shocked.

Gabriel picked up the open suitcase and carefully placed it on the floor. “Where’d you get these so-called writers from?” he asked, squatting down to lean on the lid again.

Earnest had to step around the bed to keep him in sight. “Uh… from here in the city, mostly.”

“What experience do they have?” What credits?”

“Well,” Earnest squirmed, “not much, truthfully.”

Holding down the lid, Gabriel said to Earnest, “Hey, you look like the heaviest one here. Stand on it.”

Obediently, Earnest stepped up on the jiggling, slanting lid. Gabriel began to click the suitcase shut.

“Where’d you get these writers?” he asked again.

Earnest stood on the now-closed suitcase, looking foolish and miserable. “Uh, we had a contest…”

“A contest?”

“In the local high schools…”

Brenda gasped.

Oxnard began to laugh.

Gabriel got to his feet. His nose was about at the height of Earnest’s solar plexus.

“You didn’t say what I just heard,” he said.

“What?”

Looking murderously up into Earnest’s flustered face, Gabriel said, “You didn’t tell me just now that the story treatments I’ve been beating out my brains over for the past two weeks were written by high school kids who sent them in as part of a writing contest.”

“Uh… well…”

“You didn’t imply,” Gabriel went on, his voice low, “that you haven’t spent penny number one on any writers at all.”

“We can use the money on…”

Oxnard didn’t think that Gabriel, with his short arms, could reach Earnest’s head. But he did, with a punch so blurringly swift that Oxnard barely saw it. He heard the solid crunch of fist on bone, though, and Earnest toppled over backwards onto the bed, his face spurting blood.

“Sonofagun,” Oxnard said, “you broke his nose after all.”

Earnest bounced up from the bed and fled from the room, wailing and holding his bloody nose with both hands.

Brenda looked displeased. “You shouldn’t have done that. It just complicates things.”

Gabriel was rubbing his knuckles. “Yeah. I should’ve belted him in the gut a few times first. Would’ve been more satisfying.”

“He’s probably going straight to the lawyers. Or the police,” she said.

Starting for the door, Oxnard said, “I’m going to the American consulate. They can’t hold an American citizen prisoner like this.”

“No. Wait,” Brenda said. “Let me handle this.”

“I don’t care how you do it,” Gabriel said, “but I want out.”

Brenda faced him squarely. “Ron, that would be the end of everything. The show, the series, the whole Titanic company…”

“What do I care? Those bastards have been screwing me…”

“Ron, please!” Now it was Brenda who was pleading, and Oxnard wished he were in Gabriel’s place.

“I’m walking,” Gabriel insisted. “High school kids in a writing contest… making models and sets like tinkertoys…”

“I’ll straighten things out,” Brenda said, as strongly as Gabriel. “That’s why I’m here. That’s why you wanted me here, wasn’t it?”

“Well…” He kicked lightly at the suitcase, still on the floor.

Brenda turned to Oxnard. Her eyes are incredibly green , he noticed for the first time. “Bill, if I get B.F. to straighten out Earnest and give you authority to act as science consultant, will you stay?”

“I’ve really got to get back…”

She bit her lower lip, then said, “But you can come up here on weekends, can’t you? To make sure that the crew’s building things the right way?”

With a shrug, he agreed, “Sure, I suppose I could do that.”

Turning to Gabriel again, Brenda went on, “And Ron, if I get you complete authority over the scripts and make Earnest bring in some real writers and a story editor, will you stay?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Gabriel scuffed at the suitcase again, like a kid punishing the floor for tripping him. “Because these flatwormbrained idiots are just going to screw things over, one way or the other. They’re a bunch of pinheads. Working with them is hopeless.”

“But we’ll form a team, the three of us,” Brenda said. “You head up the writing and creative side, Ron. Bill will handle the scientific side. And I’ll make sure that Titanic does right by you.”

Gabriel shook his head.

“Listen,” Brenda said, with growing enthusiasm. “They haven’t made a decision on the male lead for the series. Suppose I tell B.F. that if we don’t get a major star the show will fold. He’ll understand that kind of talk. We can go out and get a big name. That’ll force everybody else to live up to the star’s level.”

Gabriel’s eyebrows inched upward. “A big name star?”

“Right.” Brenda smiled encouragingly.

Oxnard could see wheels within wheels at work inside Gabriel’s head.

“Okay,” the writer said at last. “You go talk to B.F. But first… get Rita Yearling over here. I want to talk with her. About who she thinks would make a good costar.”

Oxnard looked at Brenda. She understood perfectly what was going on in Gabriel’s mind. And she didn’t like it.

But she said, “All right, Ron. If that’s what you want.” Flat. Emotionless.

She started for the door. Gabriel stooped down and pushed the suitcase under the bed. Oxnard called out: “Wait up, Brenda. I’m going with you.”

The studio was alive at last. It rang with the sounds of busy workmen: carpenters hammering; electricians yelling to each other from atop giddy-tall ladders; painters and lighting men and gofers carrying the tools of their trades across the vast floor of the hangar-sized room.

Four different sets were being erected in the four comers of the studio, fleshing over its bare metal walls and reaching upward to the girders that supported row after row of lights which seemed to stare down at the beehive below in silent disbelief.

Ron Gabriel was standing in the middle of the big, clangorous whirl. He wore what had come to be known over the past few months as his “official working costume:” a pair of cutoff Levis and a tee shirt with Starcrossed lettered on front and back. Somewhere in the offices and workshops adjoining the studio, the art director was dreaming up a special symbol for the show. Gabriel would get Badger or Titanic to make tee shirts for the entire cast and crew with the symbol on them, no matter who protested about the cost.

Standing beside him, in a conservative one-piece business suit, was Sam Lipid. He was only slightly taller than Gabriel, roundish, with a prematurely balding pate. His face was soft and young looking. Lipid was Production Manager for the show and Gabriel’s major point of contact with Badger Films. Gregory Earnest had given Gabriel a wide berth ever since bouncing off the bed in his hotel room, months earlier. There had been same talk of a lawsuit, but Brenda got Titanic to pay for a nose job and Earnest wound up looking better than he ever had before Gabriel socked him.