Ben Bova - The Starcrossed

Krishna, Shiva and Vishnu , Westerly prayed. Why have they done this to me?

“Sure,” he told Dulaq. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay. No long speeches.”

“Right.”

Dulaq let go of him and Westerly ducked through the accordion-fold door of the little sickroom, rubbing his wrist.

The doctor was at his cubbyhole desk.

“You examined him thoroughly?” Westerly asked.

“Yep,” said the doctor.

“Did he talk that way before he hit his head?”

The doctor glowered at him.

Westerly had dinner with Rita Yearling, who seemed incredibly beautiful, utterly sure of herself and dismally cold toward him.

His hotel suite was sumptuously furnished, including a strange electronic console of shining metal and multicolored buttons that squatted bulkily in the far corner of the sitting room. Gregory Earnest had explained that the device was a three-dee phone station, which would link him instantaneously via satellite with Fingers private office in Los Angeles.

Somehow the phone loomed in his mind like an alien presence as he and Rita ate their dinner at the other end of the sitting room, near the windows.

Rita was polite, respectful and distant. The vibes coming from her were strictly professional, totally impersonal.

“Do you know Bernie Finger very well?”

“Of course.”

“He discovered you?”

“Yes.”

“Through an agent?”

“Oh, on his own.”

“Where was that?”

“It doesn’t really matter, does it?”

“No, I guess not. Um… what do you think of Ron Gabriel?”

“His brain’s in his crotch.”

“And your costar, Dulaq?”

“No brains at all.”

And so it went, right through dinner, all the way through to the ice cream dessert that neither of them would do more than taste.

A part of Westerly’s mind was almost amused. Here he was having dinner with the loveliest woman he had seen in years and he was bored silly by her. While she referred to other people as brainless, she came across as heartless, which in many ways was infinitely worse.

Finally he pushed aside his coffee cup and glanced at his wrist. “Finger will be calling in a few minutes, if he’s on time.”

“He’s always on time,” Rita said. She got up from her chair, a vision of Venus, Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, Harlow, Hayworth, Monroe—and equally cold, unalive.

“I’ll let you two talk business together,” Rita said.

Westerly got up and went to the door with her. She stopped just as he reached for the doorknob.

Without so much as a smile, Rita said, “B.F. won’t mind if we ball, but we’ll hafta keep it quiet from Gabriel. Ron thinks he’s got me falling for him.”

“Oh,” was just about all that Westerly could manage.

“Just let me know where and when,” she said.

He opened the door and she left the room.

For several minutes Westerly leaned against the closed door, his mind spinning. It’s not me , he kept telling himself. She really said it and that’s the way it is with her. It means as much to her as filling out an application blank at the unemployment office.

Still his hands trembled. He wished for the pleasant euphoria that a pinch of coke would bring. Or even the blankness of cat, the synthetic hypnotic drug that he started taking when Virginia was still in chemotherapy.

The phone chimed.

For an instant, Westerly didn’t understand what the sound was. He had started the day in Rome, stopped in London and now—he remembered Earnest’s instructions on operating the three-dee phone. He went to the desk near the rolling dinner table and picked up the handset. The red button, he mused. Turning toward the strange, squat apparatus across the room, he thumbed the red button.

The far half of the room seemed to disappear, dissolving into a section of Bernard Finger’s Los Angeles office. The bright blue sky of early twilight was visible in the window behind Finger’s imposing high-backed chair.

“H… hello,” Westerly said shakily.

“Surprises you, eh?” Finger said back at him. “Just like being in the same room. That’s how good Oxnard’s new three-dee system is. It’s the system we’re using on ‘The Starcrossed’ and that’s what’s gonna make it a great show.”

“I’m glad we’ve got something going for us,” said Westerly.

“Huh?” Whaddaya mean by that?” Finger said.

Westerly pulled up his chair. This wasn’t going to be a pleasant chat, he realized. “Well,” he said, “I’ve only been here a few hours, but this is the way it looks to me…”

He outlined what he had heard and seen, from his opening discussions with Earnest through his talk with Gabriel and the accident with Dulaq and its aftermath. He stopped short of telling about his dinner with Rita. Finger looked slightly upset at first, angry when he heard Gabriel’s name, then ultimately bored of the whole litany of problems.

“You finished?” he asked when Westerly stopped.

“That seems like enough for the first day.”

“H’mmp.” Finger got up from his desk and the camera tracked him. To Westerly, it looked as if half his sitting room was shifting around, the walls and furnishings moving, as Finger paced slowly toward a sofa that appeared in one corner and then centered itself in his view.

Finger sat on the sofa and touched a button that was set into its arm. On the wall behind him, a professional football game suddenly appeared on a flat, two-dimensional wall-sized TV screen.

“You see that?”

“Pro football. That’s our competition?”

Finger shook his head. “That’s our salvation, if everything works out right.”

“What do you mean?” asked Westerly.

Glancing furtively on either side of himself, Finger said, “This is a private, scrambled connection. If you try to tell anybody about this, I’ll deny it and sue you. I’ll make sure that you never work again anywhere! ”

“What in hell…”

“Shut up and listen. Part of the money that the bankers put up for ‘The Starcrossed’ is now invested in the Honolulu Pineapples.”

“The what?”

“The football team! The Honolulu Pineapples! If they win the Superbowl, Titanic Productions is out of the red.”

Westerly’s mind was reeling again. For a moment he couldn’t remember if he had brought the pills with him or not. I was going to dump them in the Ganges, but I think I left them…

“I’ll give you the whole story,” Finger was saying, “because you’re the guy who’s got to come through for me.”

…in the zipper compartment of the flightbag.

“The bankers gave me enough money for one series. If it hits, Titanic gets more money to pull us out of debt. Got that? But we’re up to our assholes in bills right now, baby! Now! Not the end of next season, but now!”

None of this is real , Westerly told himself.

“So I’m using some of the bankers’ money to keep our heads above water, pay a few bills here and there. And the rest of it I’m betting on the Pineapples. As long as they keep winning, we can keep treading water. If they take the Superbowl, we’re home free.”

“What’s this got to do with ‘The Starcrossed’?” Westerly heard himself ask.

“Don’t you understand? The money for the show is already spent!” Finger’s voice was almost pleading. For what? Understanding? Mercy? Appreciation? “There isn’t any more money for ‘The Starcrossed.’ It’s spent. Bet on the Pineapples. The budget you’ve got is all you’re going to get. There’s not another nickel in the drawer.”

“There’s no money for writers?”

“No”

“No money for better actors?”