The Technicolor Time Machine

content.”

“I’ll do just that.”

“But not for a while, yet.” The truck braked to a stop nearby. “We have the professor tied up exclusively for a couple of years, just until we get our investment back of course.”

“Of course,” Jens said bitterly, watching them unload a stretcher from the truck. “Profits first and culture be damned.”

“That’s the name of the game,” Barney said, watching as the philologist was carefully slid into the truck. “You can’t stop the world and get off, so you just have to learn to live on it.”

15

“Better to die like men than live like cowards,” Ottar bellowed. “For Odin and Frigg—follow me!” He held his shield before him as he threw the door open, and two arrows thudded into it. Shouting with rage, he spun his ax and charged out of the burning building. Slithey, waving a sword, followed him, as did Val de Carlo, blowing loudly on the lurhorn, then all of the others.

“Cut. Print that!” Barney shouted and dropped down into his safari chair. “That winds it up gang. Go get your lunch so they can pack up the kitchen.”

The propmen were spraying foam onto the trough of burning oil and it stank abominably. All the lights except one went out and Gino had the camera open, taking out the film. Everything was under control. Barney waited until the rush was over, then went outside too. Ottar was sitting on an upended barrel, folding the arrows back into his shield.

“Watch this, arrows coming,” he called out to Barney and held up the shield. The springs whipped the concealed arrows into position with a thunk-thunk.

“A wonderful invention,” Barney said. “We’ve finished the shooting for now, Ottar, so I’m going to move the company ahead to next spring. Do you think you’ll have the palisade completed by then?”

“Easy. You keep your bargain, Ottar keeps his. We can cut logs for wall easy with the steel saws and axes you leave. But you leave food for the winter so we can eat.”

“I’ll get the supplies first before we move the company. Is everything clear? Any questions?”

“Clear, clear,” Ottar mumbled, concentrating on getting the arrows back inside the shield. Barney looked at him suspiciously.

“I’m sure you remember it all, but just for the record’s sake let’s run through it once more, quickly. We leave you the food, all the cereals and dried and canned stuff I can get from the studio commissary. That way you don’t have to spend the summer and fall laying down food for the winter, so you can take the time to build some more shells of log buildings and a log wall around the camp. If what the Doc said is right you shouldn’t be bothered by the Cape Dorset until the spring when the pack ice closes in near the shore here and the seals band together and raise pups on it. That’s when the hunters come, they’ll all be farther north now. And even if they bother you before then you should be okay behind the log wall.”

“Kill them, cut them up.”

“Try not to, will you please? Ninety percent of this film has been shot and I’d feel better if you didn’t get yourself slaughtered before we finished it. We’ll check up on you in February and March, then bring the company as soon as we know the redskins are close by. Give them some trade goods to pay them to launch an attack on the stockade, bum part of it down and that is that. Agreed?”

“And Jack Daniels whiskey.”

“That’s in your contract…”

A brassy moan drowned his words, rising and falling unevenly.

“Must you?” Barney asked Val de Carlo, who had the length of the lurhorn curled around his body, the nodulated flat plate of the opening over his shoulder, and was blowing on it.

“This is a wild horn,” Val said. “Listen.” He licked his lips and applied them to the mouthpiece, and, with much puffing and cheek reddening, produced a barely recognizable version of “The Music Goes ’Round and ’Round.”

“Stick to acting,” Barney said. “You have no future as a musician. You know, I keep thinking I’ve seen that kind of hom somewhere before, outside of a museum I mean.”

“They’ve got it on every pack of Danish butter. It’s a trade mark.”

“Maybe that’s where. It sounds like a sick tuba.”

“Spiderman Spinneke would love it.”

“He might at that,” Barney squinted as an idea hit him, then snapped his fingers. “That’s what I was thinking about, the Spiderman. He plays all kinds of weirdo instruments in that beat joint the Fungus Grotto. I heard him once, backed up with a brass section and a drum.”

Val nodded. “I’ve been there. He’s supposed to be the only jazz tuba player in captivity. It’s the most terrible noise I ever heard.”

“It’s not that bad—and it might be just what we want. It gives me a thought.”

Ottar thunked his arrows in and out and Barney leaned against the wall listening to the lurhorn until Dallas pulled up in the jeep.

“Ready to go,” he reported. “All the commissary people are waiting and a couple of grips who volunteered because they wanted to see if Hollywood was still there.”

“Enough to move the supplies?” Barney asked. “Everyone on the lot will have gone home by now.”

“More than enough.”

“Let’s go.”

One of the big trailer trucks had backed onto the platform and a dozen men were lounging around it. Professor Hewett had the door to the control cabin tied open and Barney looked in.

“Saturday afternoon, and cut it as close as you can.”

“To the microsecond. We shall arrive precisely after the moment the platform left on the last trip.”

It took an effort of will for Barney to realize that, despite all that had happened during the previous months, it was still Saturday afternoon in Hollywood, the same day on which they had begun the operation. The weekend crowds were jamming up on the freeways, the supermarket parking lots were full, and at the top of Benedict Canyon Drive, behind his private golf course on the top floor of his mansion, L.M. Greenspan was suffering his phony heart attack. For a moment Barney considered telephoning him with a progress report, then decided not to. Only a few hours had passed for L.M. and he wouldn’t be worrying yet. Best to let sleeping studio owners lie. Maybe he should ring up the hospital and see how Jens Lyn was doing, it had been weeks since—no it hadn’t, just minutes here. He probably wasn’t even at the hospital yet. Time travel took a lot of getting used to.

“It’s a scorcher,” one of the cooks said. “I shoulda brought my sunglasses.”

The high sound-stage doors were rolled back, and when the time platform appeared all the men winced at the sudden onslaught of subtropical light. The northern Newfoundland sky was always a pale blue and the sun never burned down like this. Barney moved the men out of the way while the big diesel truck rumbled to life, then clanked down from the time platform. There was a holiday air about the occasion as they climbed into the truck and rolled through the empty studio streets.

At the commissary warehouse the holiday ended.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the studio guard said, spinning his club on its thong. “But I’ve never seen you before, and even if I had I couldn’t let you into this warehouse, no sir.”

“This paper…”

“I’ve seen the paper, but I have my orders.”

“Give me a war ax,” one of the grips shouted. “I’ll get that door open!”

“Kill! Kill!” another called out. They had been too long in the eleventh century and had picked up some of the Vikings’ simple solutions to most problems.

“Don’t come any closer!” the guard ordered, stepping away and dropping his hand toward his gun.

“All right you jokers, enough of that,” Barney ordered. “Just sit quiet while I straighten this out. Where’s your phone?” he asked the guard.