The Technicolor Time Machine

lenses and projectors to radiate, hot and steaming, from the silver screen. Her pictures made money. Most women didn’t like them. Her aura, now operating unhampered by time, space or celluloid, swept the room like a sensual sonar, clicking with passion unrestrained.

Betty sniffed loudly and swept out of the room, though she had to slow momentarily to get past the actress, who stood sideways in the doorway. It was said, truthfully, that Slithey had the largest bust in Hollywood.

“Slithey…” Barney said, and his voice cracked. Too many cigarettes, of course.

“Barney darling…” she said, as the smoothly hydraulic pistons of her rounded legs propelled her slowly across the office, “it’s been ages since I’ve seen you.”

With her hands on the desk top, she leaned forward and gravity tugged down at the thin fabric of her blouse and at least 98 per cent of her bosom swam into view. Barney felt he was flying upside down into a fleshy Grand Canyon.

“Slithey,” Barney said, springing suddenly to his feet: he had almost fallen into this trap before. “I want to talk to you about this picture we’re planning, but you see I’m busy just now…”

Inadvertently he had taken her arm—which throbbed like a great, hot, beating heart under his fingers as she leaned close. He snatched his hand away.

“If you’ll just hold on a bit, I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”

“I’ll just sit over there against the wall,” the husky-voice said. “I know I won’t be in the way.”

“You want me?” Dallas Levy asked from the open doorway, talking to Barney while his eyes made a careful survey of the actress. Hormone contacted hormone and she inhaled automatically. He slowly smiled.

“Yes,” Barney said, digging the contract out of the litter of papers on his desk. “Take this down to Lyn and tell him to get his friend to sign it. Any trouble?”

“Not since we found out he likes burnt beefsteak and beer. Anytime he starts acting up we slip him another steak and a quart of beer and he forgets his troubles. Eight steaks and eight quarts so far.”

“Get that signature,” Barney said, and his gaze fell accidentally on Slithey, who had oozed into the armchair and crossed her silk-shod legs. Her garters had little pink bows on them…

“What do you say, Charley?” Barney asked, collapsing into his swivel chair and spinning it about. “Any ideas yet?”

Charley Chang raised the thick volume he held in both hands. “I’m on page thirteen of this one and there are a few more books to go.”

“Background material,” Barney told him. “We can-rough out the main story lines now and you can fill in the details later. L.M. suggested a saga, and we can’t go wrong with that. We open in the Orkney Islands around the year 1000 when there is plenty of trouble. You have Norse settlers and Viking raiders and things are really hotting up. Maybe you open with a Viking raid, the dragon ship gliding across the dark waters, you know.”

“Like opening a Western with the bankrobbers silently riding into town?”

“That’s the idea. The hero is the chief Viking, or maybe the head man ashore, you’ll work that out. So there’s some fighting, then some more of the same, so the hero decides to move his bunch to the new world, Vinland, which he has just heard about.”

“Like the winning of the West?”

“Right. Then the voyage, the storm, the shipwreck, the landing, the first settlement, the battle with the Indians. Think big because we’re going to have plenty of extras. End on a high note, looking into the sunset.”

Charley Chang scribbled notes on the flyleaf of the book as Barney talked, nodding his head in agreement. “Just one thing more,” he said, holding up the book. “Some of the names of the guys in this book are really a gas. Listen to this, here’s one called Eyjolf the Foul, who has a friend name of Hergil Hnappraz. And Polarbear Pig, Ragnar Hairybreeks—a million more. We could play this for laughs… ?”

“This is a serious film, Charley, just as serious as any you have ever done from—”

“You’re the boss, Barney. Just a suggestion. But what about the love interest?”

“Work her in early, you know how to do it.”

“That role is made for me, Barney darling,” the voice whispered in his ear as warm arms wrapped him and he began to drown in a sea of resilient flesh.

“Don’t let him sweet-talk you, Slithey,” he heard a muffled voice say. “Barney Hendrickson is my buddy, indeed my old buddy, but a mighty good businessman to boot, shrewd, so no matter what you promise him, I’m sorry to have to say this, I gotta look closely at all contracts before we sign.”

“Ivan,” Barney said, struggling free of the perfumed octopoid embrace, “just take your client aside for a moment then I’ll be with you. I don’t know if we can do business, but at least we can talk.”

Ivan Grissini, who, despite the fact that his lank hair, hawk nose and rumpled, dandruff-speckled suit made him look like a crooked agent, was a crooked agent. He could smell a deal ten miles upwind in a hailstorm and always carried sixteen fountain pens that he filled ritually each morning before leaving for the office.

“Sit over here, baby,” he said, levering Slithey toward the comer with a long-practiced motion. Since she wasn’t stuffed with greenbacks he was immune to her charms. “Barney Hendrickson is a man good as his word, even better.”

The phone rang just as Jens Lyn came in waving the contract. “Ottar cannot sign this,” he said. “It is in English.”

“Well translate it, you’re the technical adviser. Hold on.” He picked up the phone.

“I could translate it, it would be extremely difficult but possible, but what would be the point? He cannot read.”

“Just hold on, Lyn. No, not you, Sam. I know, Sam… Of course I saw the estimate, I made it myself. No, you don’t have to ask me where I’m getting the LSD… Be realistic yourself. Yesterday neither of us was born not, I agree… what you don’t realize is that this picture can be produced within the figure I outlined, give or take fifty thousand… Don’t use the word impossible, Sam. The impossible may take a while, but we do it, you know the routine… What?… On the phone? Sam, be reasonable. I’ve got three rings of Barnum and Bailey in the office right now, this isn’t the time to go into details… Brush-off? Me? Never!… Yes, by all means, ask him. L.M. has been in on this picture from the beginning, every step of the way, and you’ll find that he’ll back me up in my own footsteps every step of the way … Right… And the same to you, Sam.”

He dropped the phone into the cradle and Charley Chang said, “She could be captured in the raid, in the opening, she could fight with him with true hatred, but hatred would, in spite of itself, turn to love.”

“I’ve never been captured in a raid before,” Slithey husked from the corner.

“A good idea, Charley,” Barney agreed.

“And even if he could read—he cannot write,” Lyn said.

“We’ve had that problem with foreign actors more than once,” Barney told him. “Staple the true translation to the contract, have it notarized as a true translation by a bilingual notary, have the party of the second part make his mark and affix his thumb print on each document, both witnessed by two impartial witnesses, and it will stand up in any court in the world.”

“There may be some difficulty in locating a bilingual English-Old Norse notary—”

“Ask casting, they can find anyone.”

“Here they are, Mr. Hendrickson,” his secretary said, coming in through the open door and placing a bottle of Benzedrine tablets before him on the desk.

“Too late,” Barney whispered, staring at them, unmoving. “Too late.”

The telephone and the intercom sounded at the same moment and he groped out two of the pills and washed them down with the cold, black, cardboardy coffee.

“Hendrickson here,” he said flipping the key.

“Barney, I would like to see you in my office at once,” L.M.’s voice said.

Betty had answered the phone. “That was L.M. Greenspan’s secretary,” she said. “L.M. would like to see you in his office at once.”

“I get the message.”

His thigh muscles hurt when he stood up and he wondered how long it would take for the bennies to show some effect. “Stay with it, Charley, I’ll want a synopsis, a couple of sheets, as soon as possible.”

When he started toward the door Ivan Grissini’s hand darted toward his lapel, but he moved away from it with reflex efficiency. “Stick around, Ivan, I’ll want to talk to you after I see L.M.” The chorus of voices was cut off as he closed the door behind him. “Lend me your towel, will you, Betty,” he asked.