Beefy reached for Oxnard’s hand. His own heavy paw went through Oxnard’s.
The other bankers gasped. Beefy stared at his own hand, then grabbed at Oxnard’s image. He got nothing but air.
“Actually I’m ’way over here,” Oxnard said, as a couple of technicians pushed aside the screen that had hidden him from their view. He looked up from the tiny monitor he had been watching and saw the bankers, more than fifty yards across the huge empty studio. Beefy was standing under the spotlight, gaping at Oxnard’s three-dimensional image; the others were half out of their chairs, craning for a view of where Oxnard really was standing.
“How about that?” Finger crowed and started pounding his palms together. The bankers took up the applause. Even Beefy clapped, grudgingly.
Turning back to the camera, Oxnard said, “If you gentlemen will forgive my little deception, we can proceed with the show. I think you’ll find it entertaining.”
It was.
For twenty minutes, the bankers saw strange and wonderful worlds taking shape not more than ten feet before their eyes. Birds flew, mermaids swam, elephants charged at them, all with flawless three-dimensional solidity. They visited the top of Mt. Everest (a faked set from the old MCA-Universal studios), watched a cobra fight a mongoose, then went on a whirlwind tour of all the continents and major seas of the world. A beautiful chanteuse sang to them in French, a Minnesota sexual athletics class competed for originality and style. The windup was a glider flight through the Grand Canyon, while the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sang “America the Beautiful.”
“Breathtaking!”
“Perfect!”
“Awe-inspiring!”
“Terrific!”
As the lights came back up, Bernard Finger took the floor again, beaming at the four bedazzled bankers.
“Well,” he asked, “what do you think? Do we have something here, or do we have something?”
“I liked the Balinese broad,” said Beefy. “She had something, all right.”
“She’s right here. We flew her in from Ft. Worth, where she was working. Also a few members of the Minnesota team. I was planning to introduce you gentlemen to them all at a little cocktail party this evening.”
Oxnard, walking across the studio toward them, could see that they were impressed with Finger’s foresight and generosity.
All except Flinty. “That’s well and good,” he said, steepling his bony fingers as he sat back in his chair. He cocked an eye at Finger, standing poised before him. “But we haven’t come to Titanic for technical products; your business, Bernie, is show business. What have you got that will get Titanic to the top of the ratings?”
Finger’s teeth clicked shut. It was the only sign of distress he showed. Immediately they parted again in a cheery smile.
“Listen,” he said, “shows are a dime a dozen. We’re planning a whole raft of ’em… every kind of show, from quizzes to really deep drama—Simon and Allen, stuff like that. It’s the technical side that we wanted to show you today.”
Oxnard stopped a few feet behind their chairs. He could see the sort of desperate look on Finger’s face. Beefy and the other two bankers seemed anxious to move on to the cocktail party. Montpelier and Brenda both had disappeared. Glancing over his shoulder, Oxnard saw that the engineers and technicians had cleared out, too. There was no one in the studio except Finger, the four bankers and himself.
The studio looked like a gaunt framework: big, mostly empty, skeletal girders showing where other rooms have walls and ceiling panels. It reminded Oxnard of an astronomical observatory, although it wasn’t doomed. An unfinished chamber, he thought. Full of sound and fury; signifying nothing. He felt a little surprised at his sudden burst of literary pretension.
“I’ll admit the technical side is impressive,” Flinty was saying adamantly. “But nobody’s going to watch travelogues very long, no matter how perfectly they’re broadcast. You need shows, Bernie. Come up with good shows and we’ll come up with money for you.”
“But…” Finger’s composure broke down for the first time. “I need the money now.”
Flinty got slowly to his feet. Oxnard could see a crooked little grin forming on his granite-tight face. “Now? Really? You need the money now?”
He put a bony arm around Finger’s shoulder and, trailed by the other bankers, they walked toward the red-glowing EXIT sign.
Oxnard stood there alone in the vast, empty studio, with nothing but the echo of Flinty’s cackling laughter to keep him company. Just as he realized that he didn’t know what to do, he heard a movement behind him.
Turning, he saw Brenda. She looked very serious.
“It’s been a long day,” she said.
“Yeah.” He suddenly realized he was very tired.
“Come on; I’ll buy you a drink.”
“Thanks. But I suppose I should get along home.” Idiot! he raged at himself. Why’d you say that?
Brenda pointed casually toward the exit and they started walking toward it.
“Wife and kids?” she asked.
Oxnard shook his head. “Worse. A fifty-person lab that needs me to make decisions and sign paychecks.”
“You’re there every day?”
“Bright and early.”
“But you do eat and sleep, don’t you?”
Why am I trying to run away? “Sure,” he said. “Now and then.”
They were at the exit door. She let him push it open for her.
“Well then,” Brenda said as they stepped into the hallway, “why don’t we have dinner together? I know B.F. will want to have a debriefing later tonight.”
The debriefing came in the middle of dinner. Oxnard let Brenda drive him through the swirling pink smog—scented like rancid orchids, even through the noseplugs—to a small restaurant in the Valley. They had just finished the wine and asked for a second bottle when the owner trudged up to their table with a portable phone. He placed it on the edge of the table, so they could both see the screen.
Finger looked ominously unwell.
“They didn’t put up the money?” Brenda asked.
Glowering from inside a rumpled Roman toga, Finger said, “They wanted the option on our new holosystem.”
Oxnard was about to ask where the our came from, but Brenda preempted him. “What did you give them?”
“Sweet talk. Four solid hours of sweet talk and a horde of teeny-boppers from every part of the world.”
“And?”
“They’ll put up the money for one show. One series, that is. We can use the new system and see if the audience likes the series well enough to put us in the Top Ten. If not, they foreclose and take everything.”
“Not my new system!” Oxnard blurted.
“The option,” Finger answered tiredly. “They’ll get the option. And sooner or later they’ll get you too, if they really want you. Don’t think you could fight ’em.”
“But…”
Again Brenda was quicker. “They’ll put up the money for one new series? We’ve got that much?”
“Yeah.”
“Then we’ll have to make it a Top Ten series. We’ll have to get the best writers and producers and…”
Finger shook his head wearily. “They’re not putting up that much money.”
Oxnard was struck by the contrast in their two expressions. Finger looked utterly tired, on the verge of defeat and surrender. Brenda was bright, alive, thinking furiously.
“What we need first is an idea,” she said.
“For the series?” Oxnard asked, almost under his breath.
“And I know just who to go to!” Brenda’s eyes flashed with excitement. “Ron Gabriel!”
Finger’s eyes flashed back. “No! I will not work with that punk! Neverl I told you before, nobody calls me a lying sonofabitch and gets away with it. And he did it to my face! To my goddamned face! He’ll never work for Titanic or anybody else in this town again. I swore itl”