The Starcrossed

Earnest was still in a state of shock. Dulaq had polished off two desserts and was sitting back in his chair, mouth slack and eyes drooping, obviously falling asleep. Gloria and Rita had joined hands over the table now, as well as feet underneath. They spoke to each other as if no one else was in the restaurant.

But Earnest reconciled himself with the thought, at least we ought to get some good publicity out of the old gasbag.

Gabriel was acutally pulling at his hair.

“But why?” His voice was rising dangerously, like the steam pressure in a volcano vent just before the eruption.

“Why can’t they fight with laser guns? That’s what people will use seven hundred years in the future!”

His beneficent smile absorbing all arguments, Good explained, “Two reasons: first, if children tried to use lasers they could hurt themselves…”

“But they can’t buy lasers! People don’t buy lasers for their kids. There aren’t any laser toys.”

Good waited for Gabriel to subside, then resumed: “Second, most states have very strict safety laws about using lasers. You wouldn’t be able to employ them on the sound stage.”

“But we weren’t going to use real lasers! We were going to fake it with flashlights!”

Real lasers are too expensive, Montpelier added silently, from the slippery edge of sobriety.

“No, I’m sorry.” Good’s smile looked anything but that. “Lasers are on FINC’s list of forbidden weapons and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Lasers are out. Have them use swords, instead.”

“Swords!” Gabriel screamed. “Seven hundred years in the future, aboard an interstellar spaceship, you want them to use swords! Aaarrgghhhh…”

Gabriel jumped up on the booth’s bench and suddenly there was a :butterknife in his hand. Good, sitting beside him, gave a startled yell and dived under the table. Gabriel clambered up on top of the table and started kicking Good’s notes into shreds that were wafted into the air and sucked up into the ceiling vents.

“I’ll give you swords!” he screamed, jumping up and down on the table like a spastic flamenco dancer. Montpelier’s beer toppled into his lap.

Good scrambled out past Montpelier’s legs, scuttled out of the booth on all fours, straightened up and started running for his life. Gabriel gave a war screech that couldn’t be heard outside the booth, even though it temporarily deafened Montpelier, leaped off the table and took off in pursuit of the little censor, still brandishing his butterknife.

They raced past Connors and Brenda, who had just gotten up from their booth and were heading for the foyer.

“What in hell was that?” Connors shouted.

Brenda stared after Gabriel’s disappearing, howling, butterknife-brandishing form. The waiters and incoming customers gave him a wide berth as he pursued Good out beyond the entryway.

“Apache dancers, I guess,” Brenda said. “Part of the floorshow. Very impromptu.”

Connors shook his head. “Never saw nuthin’ like them back in Texas and we got plenty Apaches.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Hey,” he said, remembering. “You were gonna make a phone call fer me.”

Since their table was not soundproofed, Earnest heard Gabriel’s cries for blood and vengeance before he saw what was happening. He turned to watch the censor fleeing in panic and the enraged writer chasing after him.

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.

14: THE EXODUS

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