She took the towel from the bottom drawer of her desk and he draped it around his shoulders, tucking it carefully inside the collar of his shirt. Then he bent and placed his head under the faucet of the water cooler and gasped when Betty turned it on. He let the icy stream run over his head and the back of his neck for a few moments, then straightened up and dried himself off. Betty lent him her comb. He felt weaker but better, and when he looked in the mirror he looked almost human. Almost.
“Lock the door behind you,” L.M. said when Barney came into the office, then grunted as he bent over to clip a telephone wire with a pair of angle-nose wire cutters. “Are there any more, Sam?”
“That’s the last one,” Sam said in his gray, colorless voice. Sam was pretty much of a gray, colorless man, which was assuredly protective coloration since he was L.M.’s own personal, private accountant and was reputed to be a world authority on corporative finance and lax evasion. He clutched a folder of papers protectively to his chest and flicked his eyes toward L.M. “That is no longer necessary,” he said.
“Maybe, maybe,” L.M. said, puffing as he fell into his chair. “But if I even say the word
“What do you mean?” Barney looked back and forth from one expressionless face to the other. “Is this some kind of gag?”
“What L.M. means,” Sam said, “is that Climactic Studios will soon be bankrupt.”
“On the rocks, the work of a lifetime,” L.M. said in a hollow voice.
Sam nodded once, as mechanically as a ventriloquist’s dummy, and said, “That is, roughly, the situation. Normally it would be at least three more months before our financial report would be sent to the banks, who, as you know, own the controlling percentage of this corporation. However, for some reason unknown to us, they are sending their accountants to examine the books this week.”
“And… ?” Barney asked, feeling suddenly lightheaded. The silence lengthened unbearably until he jumped to his feet and began to pace the room. “And they’ll find the company is on the rocks, and that all the profits are on paper”—he turned and pointed dramatically to L.M.—“and that all the hard cash has been bled off into the untaxable L.M. Greenspan Foundation. No wonder you’re not suffering. The company may go down the drain, but L.M. Greenspan goes marching on.”
“Watch it! That’s no way for an employee to talk to the man who gave him his first break—”
“And his last one too—right here!” Barney said, and chopped himself on the neck with the edge of his hand, much harder than he had planned. “Listen, L.M.,” he pleaded, rubbing the sore spot, “until the ax falls we still have a chance. You must have thought there was the possibility of a salvage operation or you wouldn’t have got involved in this deal with Professor Hewett and his machine. You must have felt that a big box-office success would get the pressure off, make the firm solvent again. We can still do it.”
L.M. shook his head morosely. “Don’t think it doesn’t hurt to shake hands with the knife that stabs you in the back, but what else can I do? A big box-office hit, sure, even a big picture in the can and we could laugh at the teeth of the banks. But you can’t make a picture in a week.”
“L.M.” he said dramatically. “You’re going to have a heart attack.”
“Bite your tongue!” L.M. gasped, and clutched a roll of fat roughly near that vital organ. “Don’t say that. One coronary’s enough to last a lifetime.”
“Listen to this. You go home with Sam to work on the books tonight, you take them with you. You get sick. It could be indigestion, it could be a coronary. Your doctor says it could be a coronary. The fees you’ve been paying him he should deliver at least that one small favor. Everyone runs around and shouts for a few days and the books are forgotten about and then it is the weekend, and nobody even considers looking at the books until Monday, maybe Tuesday.”
“Monday,” Sam said firmly. “You don’t know banks. No books on Monday and they’ll have a hired car full of doctors over to the house.”
“All right, Monday then. That will be time enough.”
“So Monday—but what difference does it make? Frankly, I’m puzzled,” L.M. said, and knitted his brow and looked puzzled.
“It makes this difference, L.M. On Monday I will bring you the new picture in the can. A picture that will have to gross two, three million on length, width of screen and color alone.”
“But you can’t!”
“But we can. You’re forgetting about the vremeatron. This gadget works. Remember last night when you thought we had all gone for about ten minutes?” L.M nodded reluctantly. “That was how long we were gone from here and now. But we were an hour or more in the Viking times. We could do it again. Take the company and everything we need back there to shoot the picture, and use just as much time as we need to do it right before we came back.”
“You mean… ?”
“Correct. When we come back with the film in the can we need only have been gone
“Why didn’t they ever think of this before?” L.M. gasped with happy appreciation.
“For a lot of reasons…”
“Do you mean to tell me…” Sam leaned so far forward in his chair that he was almost out of it, and the hint of some expression, perhaps a smile?, touched his face. “Do you mean that we will have to pay production costs for just
“I do not mean that,” Barney snapped. “I can tell you in advance that there are going to be some headaches for bookkeeping. However, to cheer you up, I can guarantee that we can shoot on location—with more extras—for about one-tenth the cost of filming in Spain.”
Sam’s eyes glittered. “I don’t know the details of this project, L.M., but some of the factors make very good sense.”
“Can you do it, Barney? Pull this thing off?”
“I can do it if you give me all the help I ask for and no questions. This is Tuesday. I see no reason why we can’t have everything we need sewn up by Saturday.” He counted off on his fingers. “We’ll have to get the contracts signed with the principals, get enough raw film to last for all the shooting, the technicians, at least two extra cameras…” He began to mumble to himself as he ran through all they might possibly need. “Yes,” he said finally, “we can do it.”
“Still, I don’t know,” L.M. said pensively. “It’s a wild idea.”
The future teetered on the balance and Barney groped desperately for inspiration.
“Just one more thing,” he said. “If we’re on location for, say, six months, everyone has to be paid six months’ salary. But we rent the cameras and sound equipment, all of the expensive hardware, we will only have to pay for a few
“Barney,” L.M. said, sitting up straight in his chair, “you’ve got yourself a deal.”
5
“You haven’t heard the last of Cinecitta yet, Mr. Hendrickson.”
“Barney.”
“Not yet, Barney, not by a long shot. The new realism came out of Italy after the war, then the kitchen-sink film that the British picked up. But you’ll see, Rome ain’t dead yet. Guys like me come over here to Hollywood for a bit, pick up some techniques—”
“Pick up some loot.”
“…can’t deny that, Barney, working for the Yankee dollar. But you know, you’re not going to get much on color this time of day.” He swung the 8-mm Bolex that hung on a thong from his wrist. “I should have loaded this HP with Tri-X. It’s five in the afternoon.”
“Don’t worry, Gino, you’ll have plenty of light, take my word for that.” He looked up as the warehouse door
