Ben Bova - The Starcrossed

No one else at the table took notice Dulaq was snoring peacefully; Gloria and Rita were making love with their eyes, fingertips and toes.

Earnest smiled. The little bastard’s finished now, for sure. I won’t even have to phone Finger about him. The show is mine.

It was snowing.

Toronto International Jetport looked like a scene from Doctor Zhivago . Snowbound travelers slumped on every bench, chair. and flat surface where they could sit or lie down. Bundled in their overcoats because the terminal building was kept at a minimum temperature ever since Canada had decided to Go Independent on Energy, the travelers slept or grumbled or moped, waiting for the storm to clear and the planes to fly again.

Ron Gabriel stood at the floor-to-ceiling window of Gate 26, staring out at the wind-whipped snow that was falling thickly on the other side of the double-paned glass. He could feel the cold seeping through the supposedly vacuum-insulated window. The cold, gray bitterness of defeat was seeping into his bones. The Unimerican jetliner outside was crusted over with snow, it was beginning to remind Gabriel of the ancient wooly mammoths uncovered in the ice fields of Siberia.

He turned and surveyed the waiting area of Gate 26. Two hundred eleven people sitting there, going slowly insane with boredom and uncertainty. Gabriel had already made dates with seventeen of the likeliest-looking girls, including the chunky security guard who ran the magnetic weapons detector.

He watched her for a moment. She was sitting next to the walkthrough gate of her apparatus, reading a comic book. Gabriel wondered how bright she could be, accepting a date from a guy she had just checked out for the flight to Los Angeles. Maybe she’s planning to come to L.A. , he thought. Then he wondered briefly why he had tried to make the date with her, when he was leaving Toronto forever. He shrugged. Something to do. If we have to stay here much longer, maybe I can get her off into…

“Ron!”

He swung around at the sound of his name.

“Ron! Over here!”

A woman’s voice. He looked beyond the moribund waiting travelers, following the sound of her voice to the corridor outside the gate area.

It was Brenda. And Bill Oxnard. Grinning and waving at him.

Gabriel left his trusty suitcase and portable typewriter where they sat and hurried through the bundled bodies, crumpled newspapers, choked ashtrays and tumbled suitcases of the crowd, out past the security girl—who didn’t even look up from her Kookoo Komix —and out into the corridor.

“Hey, what’re you two doing here? You’re not trying to get out of town, are you?”

“No,” Brenda said. “We wanted to say goodbye to you at the hotel, but you’d already left.”

“I always leave early,” Gabriel said.

“And when we heard that the storm was expected to last several hours and the airport was closed down, we figured you might like some company,” Oxnard explained.

“Hey, that’s nice of you. Both of you.”

“We’re sorry to see you leave, Ron,” Brenda said; her throaty voice sounded sincere.

Gabriel shrugged elaborately. “Well… what the hell is left for me to stay here? They’ve shot the guts out of my scripts and they won’t let me do diddely-poo with the other writers and the whole idea of the show’s been torn to shreds.”

“It’s a lousy situation,” Oxnard agreed.

Brenda bit her lip for a moment, then— with a damn the torpedoes expression on her face—she said, “I’m glad you’re going, Ron.”

He looked at her. “Thanks a lot.”

“You know I don’t mean it badly. I’m glad you found the strength to break free of this mess.”

“I had a lot of help,” Gabriel said, “from Finger and Earnest and the rest of those bloodsuckers.”

Brenda shook her head. “That’s not what I’m talking about. I thought Rita really had you twisted around her little finger.”

“She did,” Gabriel admitted “But I got untwisted.”

“Good for you,” Brenda said. “She’s trouble.”

Oxnard said, “I just hate to see you getting screwed out of the money you ought to be getting.”

“Oh, I’m getting all the money,” Gabriel said. “They can’t renege on that… the Screen Writers Guild would start napalming Titanic if they tried anything like that. I’ll get paid for both the scripts I wrote…”

“But neither one’s going to be produced,” Oxnard said. “Earnest has scrapped them both.”

“So what? I’ll get paid for ’em. And I’ve been getting my regular weekly check as Story Editor. And they still have to pay me my royalties for each show, as the Creator.”

With a smile, Brenda asked, “You’re going to let them keep your name on the credits?”

“Hell no!” Gabriel grinned back, but it was a Pyrrhic triumph. “They’ll have to use my Guild-registered pen name: Victor Lawrence Talbot Frankenstein.”

“Oh no!” Brenda howled.

Oxnard frowned. “I don’t get it.”

“Frankenstein and the Wolfman,” Gabriel explained. “I save that name for shows that’ve been screwed up. It’s my way of telling friends that the show’s a clinker, a grade B horror movie.”

“His friends,” Brenda added, giggling, “and everybody in the industry.”

“Oh.” But Oxnard still looked as if he didn’t really understand.

Laughing at the thought of his modest revenge, Gabriel said, “Lemma grab my bags and take you both to dinner.”

“The restaurants are closed,” Oxnard said. “We checked. They ran out of food about an hour ago.”

Gabriel held up one hand, looking knowledgeable: “Have no fear. I know where the aircrews have their private cafeteria. One of the stewardesses gave me the secret password to get in there.”

Oxnard watched the little guy scamper back through the now-dozing security girl’s magnetic detector portal and head for his bags, by the window. It was still snowing heavily.

“Victor Lawrence Talbot Frankenstein?” he muttered.

Brenda said to him, “It’s the only satisfaction he’s going to get out of this series.”

“He’s getting all that money…”

She rested a hand on his shoulder and said, “It’s not really all that much money, compared to the time and effort he’s put in. And… well, Bill… suppose your new holographic system won the Nobel Prize…”

“They don’t give Nobels for inventions.”

“But just suppose,” Brenda insisted. “And then one of the people who decide on the Prize comes to you and says they’re going to name Gregory Earnest as the inventor. You’ll get the money that goes with the Prize, but he’ll get the recognition.”

“Ohh. Now I see.”

Gabriel came back, lugging his suitcase and typewriter. As they started down the corridor, Oxnard took the typewriter from him.

“Thanks.”

“Nothing to it.”

Brenda said, “Looks like well be here a long time.”

“Good,” said Oxnard. “It’ll give me a chance to ask you some questions about a new idea of mine.”

“What’s that?” Gabriel asked.

Oxnard scratched briefly at his nose. “Oh, it’s just a few wild thoughts I put together… but it might be possible to produce a three-dee show without using any actors. You…”

“What?” Gabriel looked startled. Brenda pursed her lips.

Oxnard nodded as they walked. “After watching how pitiful Dulaq is as an actor, I got to thinking that there’s no fundamental reason why you couldn’t take one holographic picture of him—a still shot—and then use a computer to electronically move his image any way you want to… you know, make him walk, run, stand up, sit down. some of the work they’ve been doing at the VA with hemiplegics…”