Ben Bova - The Starcrossed

“Turn it off! Turn it off!”

They spent the rest of the afternoon like that, alternately turning on the three-dee, watching the Sasquatches hurt the pineapples, and turning off the three-dee. Finger moaned, he fainted, he swallowed pills. Montpelier went out for sandwiches; on Sunday the building’s cafeterias were closed.

He idly wondered how far the bankers’ revenge would go. If they can’t get B.F., will they come after me? He tried to put the thought aside, but ugly scenes from Mafia movies kept crawling into his skull.

Finger wolfed down his sandwich as if it were his last meal. They turned the game on one final time, and the Sasquatches were ahead by 38-7 with less than two minutes to play. Finger started calling airlines.

He set up seven different fights for himself, for destinations as diverse as Rio de Janeiro and Ulan Bator.

“I’ll dazzle them with footwork,” he joked weakly. His face looked far from jovial.

The phone chimed. With a trembling hand, Finger touched the ox button. The same comer that had showed the football game now presented a three-dee image of a gray-templed man sitting a a desk. He looked intelligent, wealthy, conservative and powerful. His suit was gray, with a vest. The padded chair on which he saw was real leather, Montpelier somehow sensed. The wall behind him was panelled in dark mahogany. A portrait of Nelson Rockefeller hung there.

“Mr. Finger,” he said in a beautifully modulated baritone. “I’m pleased to find you in your office this afternoon. My computer doesn’t seem to have your home number. Working hard, I see.”

“Yes,” Finger said, his voice quavering just the slightest bit. “Yes… you know how it is in this business, heh heh.”

The man smiled without warmth.

“I, uh… I don’t think I know you,” Finger said.

“We have never met. I am an attorney, representing a group of gentlemen who have invested rather substantial sums in Titanic Productions, Incorporated.”

“Oh. Yes. I see.”

“Indeed.”

“The gentlemen who’re backing ‘The Starcrossed.’”

The man raised a manicured forefinger. “The gentlemen are backing Titanic Productions, not any particular show. In a very real sense, Mr. Finger, they have invested in you. In your business acumen, your administrative capabilities, your… integrity.”

Finger swallowed hard. “Well, eh, ‘The Starcrossed’ is the show that we’ve sunk their… eh, invested their money into. It goes on the air in three weeks. That’s the premier date, second week of January. Friday night. Full network coverage. Its a good spot, and…”

“Mr. Finger.”

Montpelier had never seen B.F. stopped by such a quiet short speech.

“Yessir?” Finger squeaked.

“Mr. Finger, did you happen to’ watch the Montana Sasquatch football game this afternoon?”

“Uh…” Finger coughed, cleared his throat. “Why, um, I did take a look at part of it, yes.”

The man from New York let a slight frown mar his handsome features. “Mr. Finger, the bankers wham I represent have some associates who—quite frankly—I find very distasteful. These, ah, associates are spreading an ugly rumor to the effect that you have been betting quite heavily on the Honolulu professional football team. Quite heavily. And since Honolulu lost this afternoon, my clients thought it might be wise to let you know that this rumor has them rather upset”

“Upset,” Finger echoed.

“Yes. They fear that the money they have invested in Titanic Productions has been channeled into the hands of…” he showed his distaste quite visibly “…bookies. They fear that you have lost all their money and will have nothing to show for their investment. That would make them very angry, I’m afraid. And justifiably so.”

Finger’s head bobbed up and down. “I can appreciate that.”

“The proceedings that they would institute against you would be so severe that you might be tempted to leave the country or disappear altogether.”

“Oh, I’d never.…”

“A few years ago, in a similar situation, a man who tried to cheat them became so remorseful that he committed suicide. He somehow managed to shoot himself in the back of the head. Three times.”

What little color was left in Finger’s face drained away completely. He sagged in his chair.

“Mr. Finger, are you all right? Does the thought of violence upset you?”

Finger nodded weakly.

“I’m terribly sorry. It’s raining here in New York and I tend to get morbid on rainy Sunday afternoons. Please forgive me.”

Finger raised a feeble hand. “Think nothing of it.”

“Back to business, if you don’t mind. Mr. Finger, there is a series called ‘The Starcrossed’? And it will premier on the second Friday in January?”

“Eight p.m.” Montpelier said as firmly as possible.

“Ah. Thank you, young man. This show does represent the investment that my clients have made?”

“That’s right, it does,” Finger said, his voice regaining some strength. But not much.

“That means,” the New York lawyer went on, remorselessly, “that you have used my client’s money to acquire the best writers, directors, actors and so forth… the best that money can buy?”

“Sure, sure.”

“Which in turn means that the show will be a success. It will bring an excellent return on my clients’ investment Titanic Productions will make a profit and so will my clients. Is that correct?”

Sitting up a little straighter in his chair, Finger hedged, “Well now, television is a funny business. Nobody can guarantee success . I explained to…”

“Mr. Finger.” And again B.F. stopped cold. “My clients are simple men, at heart. If ‘The Starcrossed’ is a success and we all make money, all well and good. If it is not a success, then they will investigate just how their money was spent. If they find that Titanic did not employ the best possible talent or that the money was used in some other manner—as this regrettable betting rumor suggests, for instance—then they will hold you personally responsible.”

“Me?”

“Do you understand? Personally responsible.”

“I understand.”

“Good.” The lawyer almost smiled. “Now if you would do us one simple favor, Mr. Finger?”

“What?”

“Please stay close to your office for the next few weeks. I know you probably feel that you are entitled to a long vacation, now that your show is… how do they say it in your business? ‘In the can’? At any rate, try to deny yourself that luxury for a few weeks. My clients will want to confer with you as soon as public reaction to ‘The Starcrossed’ is manifested. They wouldn’t want to have to chase you down in some out-of-the-way place such a Rio de Janeiro or Ulan Bator.”

Finger fainted.

On the second Friday in January, twenty-odd members of the New England Science Fiction Association returned to their clubroom after their usual ritual Chinese dinner in downtown Boston. The clubroom was inside the lead walls of what once had housed MIT’s nuclear reactor until the local Cambridge chapter of Ecology Nowl had torn the reactor apart with their bare hands, a decade earlier, killing seventeen of their members within a week from the radiation poisoning and producing a fascinating string of reports for the obstetrics journals ever since.

The clubroom was perfectly safe now, of course. It had been carefully decontaminated and there was a trusty scintillation counter sitting on every bookshelf, right alongside musty crumbling copies of Astounding Stories of Super Science .

The NESFA members were mostly young men and women, in their twenties or teens, although on this evening they were joined by the President Emeritus, a retired lawyer who was regaling them with his Groucho Marx imitations.