Keith Laumer - Big Show.pdf - Keith Laumer - widez2

THE BIG SHOW

Lew Jantry awoke with soft feminine arms around him, a warm body

snuggled against his, perfumed hair tickling his chin.

He didn't open his eyes at once; he was too old a trouper for that. Instead,

he rapidly sorted through his recollections, orienting himself before making

a move. He was in a bed, that was a starting point; and the quality of the

light shining through his closed lids indicated it was full daylight-or its

equivalent. That was no help: both the Jantry and Osgood bedrooms

featured large east-exposure windows with fluffy curtains. He'd have to

speak to Sol about that: a fellow needed a little sharper demarcation of

environmental detail to avoid role-fatigue.

Lew opened one eye half a millimeter, made out the smooth curve of a

shoulder, the sleek line of a bare back. Still no clue that would answer the

burning question: was he in bed with his real wife, or his TV wife?

The seconds were ticking past. Jantry thought furiously, trying to summon

up the memory of the circumstances under which he had turned in. Had he

slept an hour, a minute, or all night? Had he been at home, in the class A

Banshire Towers Apartment of a medium-rated actor, with Marta, his lawful

wedded spouse? Or had he dropped off on the set, in the cardboard and

plastic mock-up where he spent twelve of every twenty-four hours, with

Carla, his co-star on The Osgoods? Damn! He remembered cocktails, the

Bateses dropping in, late talk; but that had been a scene in Rabinowitz's

latest script of the blab-blab school-or had it? Was he thinking of the

Harrises, the bores in the next apartment at the Banshire? Uh-huh, that

was it. Al Harris had rattled on and on about his new two hundred channel

set, with the twenty screen monitor attachment, where a sharp viewer with

a good wrist could keep in touch with practically every top show

simultaneously, at least well enough to hold up his end of a cultured

conversation . . .

Satisfied, Lew relaxed, slid his hand casually down toward the curved hip

beside him. The woman moved, twisted her head back to impale him with a

sharp black eye.

"You're ten seconds off-cue, Buster!" Carla's sub-vocalized voice rasped in

the pickup set in the bone back of his right ear. "And let's watch those

hands! This is a family-type show, and my husband Bruno is a dedicated

viewer!"

* * *

Lew's face snapped in a smile, lazy, marital, degree one, a stylized grimace

that would instantly dispel all implications of lust from the minds of

well-conditioned viewers. Meanwhile, he was stalling, groping for his line.

Where the hell was the prompter?

"Hi, darling," the dubber's voice sounded in the pick-up set in the bone back

of Lew's left ear, just as the audience would hear it. "Today's the day of

the big event. Excited?" In the background, he could hear the hundred piece

orchestra sliding into "Camptown Races." He grabbed at the cue.

"Sure-but, uh, with you in the stands, rooting for him, who could lose?" he

improvised, mouthing the words distinctly for the vocal stand-in to mime

later.

"What who, you boob?" Carla's voice hissed in his right ear. "I'm having a

baby at two o'clock!"

"Oh, Freddy Osgood-sometimes I think I'm the luckiest girl in the world,

having you all to myself!" the canned line crackled in his left ear.

"A baby?" Lew blurted, struggling to pick up the thread.

"What did you think, you schlock-a litter of kitties?" Carla snarled in his

right ear.

"I didn't know you were-I mean, that you'd-that we'd-" Lew caught himself.

"Congratulations," he ad-libbed desperately.

"We'd better hurry and get ready; we're going water-skiing with the Poppins

before we're due at the Vitabort Center," his left ear cooed.

"Sure," Lew agreed, glad of the chance of escape. He threw back the

blanket, caught just a glimpse of a saucy derriere before Carla squalled and

yanked the sheets back up.

"Cut!" A godlike bellow rattled Lew's occipital sutures. The wall with the

window slid aside to admit the charging bulk of Hugo Fleischpultzer himself.

"Jantry, you just set the industry back fifty years!" the director howled.

"Whattaya mean, insulting five hundred million clean-living Americans with

the sight of a bare behind first thing in the morning! It'll take the psychan

channels two weeks of intensive primetime therapy to clear out the damage

you done! You're fired! Or you would be if it wasn't for the lousy Guild! Not

that I mean anything by the word 'lousy'!"

* * *

Carla Montez sat up, holding the covers to her chin, pointed a scarlet-nailed

finger at Lew.

"I want a divorce!" she screamed. "Tell Oscar to write this louse out of the

script for screening no later than Friday in the late early mid-afternoon

segment!"

"Now, Carla, baby, you know that's impossible," Abe Katz, the makeup man

soothed, reaching past Fleischpultzer's bulk to adjust the star's eyelashes.

"I'm sorry, Hugo," Lew said. "I just got a little mixed up for a second. You

know how it's been since we went to nonstop sitcom: a three hour shift at

home, three on the set, half my meals here, half there, barely time to scan

the scripts-"

"See?" Carla shrilled. "He practically admits he prefers being with that

blowsy dame he's supposedly married to-"

"I do not-I mean Marta's no blowsier than you are!" Lew flared. "I mean,

neither one of you is blowsy! And I love being cooped up with you in this

make-believe egg crate for half my life!"

"The kids!" Carla sobbed. "What will become of the kids? Joey, and little

Suzie, and that new one, Irving or whatever, that we hired last week for the

cousin!"

"Rusty, his air name is," Hugo boomed. "Carla's right, we got to think of the

little ones. We don't want to go making a broken home out of a fine

American family, which it's the favorite escape of millions, just over a little

misunderstanding like this. Lew, I'll give you one more chance-"

"Oh, no you won't!" A furious contralto cut across the conversation. All eyes

turned to the pert, green-eyed woman who had just burst onto the set.

"I've watched my husband crawl into bed with that harpie for the last time!

I'm here to scratch her eyes out!"

"Marta! No!" Lew, leaping from the bed, collided with Carla, leaping in the

opposite direction. They struck the floor together, a confused mass of

flailing limbs, complicated by the actress' efforts to simultaneously escape,

attack, and observe the conventions of modesty.

"Look at them-right in front of me!" Marta keened. "Lew! How could you!"

"Carla baby-watch the hairdo!" Abe Katz called.

"Quiet on the set!" Hugo's bass roar dominated the scene. Carla came to

her feet, swathed in the sheet, as Lew struggled to arrange a blanket,

Navajo style, about himself.

"Now, Marta honey," he said hastily. "Don't leap to conclusions! It's just

that I was tuckered out from staying up late worrying about little Egbert.

How is Eggie? Did he pull through the crisis OK?"

"You fiend!" Marta wailed. "Our son's name is Augustus!"

"Ah-I was thinking of Augustus, of course." Lew scrambled for verbal

footing. "Today's the day of the Little League tryouts, right? And-"

"Monster! You don't know your real family from that horrible TV family of

yours! It's that nasty little midget that plays Sammy Osgood that's the ball

player! Our Augustus plays the violin!"

"Sure-I remember perfectly! And his sister, Cluster, is a whiz on the

glockenspiel!"

"Murderer! Our daughter's name is Finette! And she hates German food! I'm

through with you, you . . . you Bluebeard!" She turned to flee. As Lew

jumped after her, Carla aimed a roundhouse slap that connected with a

report like a dropped light bulb.

"Keep away from me, you deviate!" she yelped.

"Look at the hairdo," Abe mourned.

"Mr. Fleischpultzer!" A penetrating voice sounded. A small, pouty-faced man

in an expensive gray Gooberlon executive coverall had appeared from

behind a fly.

"Why-if it isn't the sponsor, Mr. Harlowe Goober of Goober Industries,"

Hugo babbled. "Welcome to the set, Mr. Goober, which we were just

horsing around a little, you know, high spirits and all that-"

"I'm canceling the show," Goober barked. "I've noticed for some time the

gradual disintegration of the moral tone of this network. This orgy is the

final straw. I'm taking my trade to NABAC!"

"But-Mr. Goober-"

"Unless-that person is replaced at once!" Goober pointed dramatically at

Lew Jantry.

"But . . . but . . . but . . . his contract!" Hugo blurted. "And what about the

script? They're about to have a baby!"

"Let him die in childbirth," Goober proposed, and stamped off the set.

"My lawyer will call you, you bum!" Marta shrilled. "Married to an actor is

bad enough-but an out-of-work actor . . . !"

"But the Guild," Lew rallied weakly. "Hugo, say something!"

"Half the Guild's working on Goober-sponsored accounts." Fleischpultzer

shrugged. "They won't buck him."

"We'll have him suicide when it comes out he's an embezzler." Carla's voice

sounded above the hubbub. "And I'll meet that handsome obstetrician . . . "

"You mean-" Lew swallowed hard, watching the set empty as all personnel

moved to disassociate themselves from failure. "You mean I'm washed up

in TV? But what will I do? All those hours of leisure time-"

"View TV," Hugo said. "Or maybe get a job in a factory."

"And stand by an automated machine two hours a day, watching telly? You

don't understand, Hugo! I'm an artist, not a . . . a drone!"

"Well . . . there is just one remote possibility," Hugo said reluctantly. "But

no-you wouldn't go for it."

"Anything!" Lew said hastily. "Anything at all, Hugo!"

"Well-if I work it right, I think I can get you a spot in a new documentary."

"I'll take it!"

"Sign here!" Hugo whipped out a thick bundle of contract documents. Lew

grabbed the pen.

"I'll be in a star slot, of course?"

"Natcherally. Would I do you that way?"

Lew signed. "Thanks a million, Hugo." He sighed, gathering his blanket

about him. "What set do I report to?"

Hugo shook his head. "No set, Lew. The pic ain't being shot here."

"You don't mean-not-not on location?"

"You guessed it."

"Omigod. Where?"

"A place called Byrdland."

"Birdland?" Lew brightened.

"Byrdland. It's in Antarctica."

"It's the biggest, finest Eskimo reservation on the globe!" Hugo's parting

words rang in Lew Jantry's ears as he peered out through the bubble canopy

of the automatic one-passenger flitter that was ferrying him on the last

stage of the journey south. Across the blue-black sheen of the South Polar

Sea, a line of dazzling white cliffs loomed ahead. Dropping rapidly, the

machine skimmed low over the peaks, settling toward a rugged terrain

resembling nothing so much as a vast frosted cake, a jumble of glassy

blocks and smooth-drifted whiteness. Now he could make out the porous

texture of the surface below, the network of wind-scoured ridges rushing up

at him with surprising swiftness-

At the last possible instant, Lew realized that the robot voice of the

autopilot, over the rushing of the wind, was squawking "Mayday! Mayday!"

He grabbed the safety-frame lever, yanked it hard in the same moment that

the craft struck with an impact that turned the universe into a whirling

pinwheel of stars.

It seemed like a long time before pieces stopped raining down around him.

Lew kicked free of the frame, dropped to the hard ground. The crash had

burst the pod of the copter like a pumpkin, but he himself seemed to be

intact. The weather suit was keeping him warm, in spite of the stiff wind

that whipped the floury snow against his legs. Lew shaded his eyes and

stared out across the desolate landscape. No sign of the Eskimo agent's

office, or even of the tribal structures of the aborigines. Lew snorted. He'd

invoke Section Nine, Paragraph Three of his contract on this one, all

right-the part that provided bonuses for inconvenience occasioned by

inadequate travel and housing accommodation for artists on field

assignment. And the hardship clause would come in, too. Oh, boy, wait till

he got hold of Hugo, he'd make that shrewdie regret the day he fast-talked

Lew Jantry into a fiasco like this one.

He flipped back the cover of his wristphone and snapped an order to the

operator. There was no reply. He raised his voice, then held the tiny

transceiver to his ear. The reassuring carrier tone was conspicuously

lacking.

"Damn!" Lew yelled, then swallowed hard as the true seriousness of his

Keith Laumer - Big Show.pdf

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