The John Varley Reader (41 page)

Okay, so it
wasn't
so simple. But there it was.

Nobody blamed any of this on me, so while John Foreman looked around for ways to get his picture going again, other producers came calling. Over the next ten years I worked on several projects. I was offered
Star Trek III,
but turned it down because I knew nothing about
Star Trek,
and don't even like it. And I wrote three screenplays that I still think would make good movies, including an adaptation of Heinlein's
Have Spacesuit, Will Travel.
Nothing happened with them. This is not at all unusual in that business.
Everybody
in Hollywood has good, unproduced scripts lying around in studio vaults.

During those ten years, between bouts of rewriting
Millennium,
I lived in Eugene but spent a lot of time in Hollywood. I stayed at great hotels: the Beverly Wilshire, the Chateau Marmont, the Westwood Marquis, Le Mondrian. I was treated to lunch and dinner at all the fanciest restaurants. I visited or worked at all the major studios except Universal: Fox, Warner Brothers, Columbia, Disney. None of them looked like they do in the movies, with hundreds of extras milling about the streets in exotic costumes, big stars in limos, stagehands shifting props and scenery and lights. In fact, most of them looked like they ought to have tumbleweeds bouncing down the streets. In appearance, they varied from a bit frayed around the edges to downright decrepit, except Disney, which was neat and clean and looked pretty much like my old high school. I strolled down Goofy Drive, expecting to hear the class bell ringing. At the Burbank Studios I hung around at the Waltons' West Virginia home, which was a hollow shell. I saw appalling indifference to cinema history, from gigantic model warships used in
In Harm's Way
left out in the weather to fall apart, to old storage sheds with film canisters spilling out onto the ground and unreeling. Who knows what was on those old reels? Lost, all lost.

At one point I had an office right at the MGM gate. You can see my window in any number of studio documentaries. I could sit there, not working very hard, and watch Erik Estrada arriving to work on
CHiPs,
which was about the only thing filming there at the time. I could amble down the avenue with the bungalows that used to belong to Metro's biggest stars—and there were none bigger—and now all housed production companies. I saw Esther Williams' giant swimming pool, now dry. The lot has been renamed Sony Pictures Studios, which I'm sure makes Louis B. Mayer spin rapidly in his grave.

During that time I worked on a development project with Jeffrey Katzenberg, later the K of SKG. S for Spielberg, G for Geffen. I met Charlton Heston, Art Linkletter, Jon Voight, Mel Gibson, Joanne Woodward, Peter O'Toole, Sigourney Weaver, Gary Busey, and Kirk Douglas, among others. All of them were shorter than I had imagined, except Sigourney. None of this has anything to do with
Millennium,
but it's so much fun to drop names and I figured this was the best place to do it.

A while later Richard Rush, who made the wonderful
The Stunt Man,
was signed to direct the project, and we started a rewrite to bring the script more in line with his personal vision. I soon learned that all directors want to do that. It was fun working with Richard, but I soon began to think he was going to turn my story into
The Stunt Man II.
Our most memorable meeting was when he flew us to Catalina Island in his plane for buffalo burgers at the airport restaurant. The airport on Catalina is on the highest point, so I'm probably one of the few people to visit there who's never been to the only town on the island, Avalon.

Finally everything was in place, just about nine years after I wrote the first screenplay, and I was invited to Toronto to work with Michael Anderson. He directed
The Dam Busters,
which George Lucas stole from when filming the climactic battle in
Star Wars.
He also directed the Best Picture of 1958,
Around the World in 80 Days,
and had a lot of great stories to tell about Mike Todd, the insane producer of that spectacle. Michael was no stranger to salvaging pictures that were in trouble. He said that on the first day of shooting
Orca,
the expensive mechanical killer whale that was supposed to be the star of the show caught fire, burned, and
sank,
never to be seen again. They had to shoot without it. Maybe that should have warned me.

I have to say that moviemaking is quite the most exciting pursuit I've ever been involved in. There is an air of urgency, and most of the things you do are far from everyday reality. The people involved are creating illusions very carefully and it is fascinating. I must also report that it is the dullest work imaginable. You've heard the expression “boring as watching paint dry.” It's that dull. In fact, a lot of the movie business
is
watching paint dry. It can take many hours to set up one shot that lasts five seconds, then many hours to set up the next shot. Only the grips and the director are busy most of the time. A writer is usually the least busy of all . . . until suddenly an actor doesn't like the way a line plays, and then you are very busy indeed.

I had a ball. And at the end we got to blow everything up.
Big
explosions!

What happened, in hindsight, is that I lost the vision. I should have bailed out on the third or fourth director. But the project had acquired a life of its own,
it wouldn't die,
and I didn't want to abandon it. I kept thinking I could eventually steer it back on course, but by the end the script was covered with so many fingerprints it would have baffled a forensic scientist. When rewrites are added to a script in production they are printed on paper of a different color and tipped in to the original. By the last day of shooting I don't think there were any two pages of the same color.

So that's how it happened. I console myself by remembering that Harlan Ellison, one of the best writers working in SF movies and television, wrote a rotten script. William Goldman, maybe the best screenwriter
ever,
wrote a rotten script. So it can happen to any of us. I learned a lot, mostly what
not
to do, and when to stand firm or get out. I love the movies, I see one almost every day. I'll get another shot, maybe at my most recent novel,
Red Thunder,
and I know I'll do better.

I WAS JERKED awake by the silent alarm vibrating my skull. It won't shut down until you sit up, so I did. All around me in the darkened bunkroom the Snatch Team members were sleeping singly and in pairs. I yawned, scratched my ribs, and patted Gene's hairy flank. He turned over. So much for a romantic send-off.

Rubbing sleep from my eyes, I reached to the floor for my leg, strapped it on, and plugged it in. Then I was running down the rows of bunks toward Ops.

The situation board glowed in the gloom. Sun-Belt Airlines Flight 128, Miami to New York, September 15, 1979. We'd been looking for that one for three years. I should have been happy, but who can afford it when you wake up?

Liza Boston muttered past me on the way to Prep. I muttered back and followed. The lights came on around the mirrors, and I groped my way to one of them. Behind us, three more people staggered in. I sat down, plugged in, and at last I could lean back and close my eyes.

They didn't stay closed for long. Rush! I sat up straight as the sludge I use for blood was replaced with super-charged go-juice. I looked around me and got a series of idiot grins. There was Liza, and Pinky and Dave. Against the far wall Cristabel was already turning slowly in front of the airbrush, getting a Caucasian paint job. It looked like a good team.

I opened the drawer and started preliminary work on my face. It's a bigger job every time. Transfusion or no, I looked like death. The right ear was completely gone now. I could no longer close my lips; the gums were permanently bared. A week earlier, a finger had fallen off in my sleep. And what's it to you, bugger?

While I worked, one of the screens around the mirror glowed. A smiling young woman, blonde, high brow, round face. Close enough. The crawl line read
Mary Katrina Sondergard, born Trenton, New Jersey, age in 1979: 25
. Baby, this is your lucky day.

The computer melted the skin away from her face to show me the bone structure, rotated it, gave me cross sections. I studied the similarities with my own skull, noted the differences. Not bad, and better than some I'd been given.

I assembled a set of dentures that included the slight gap in the upper incisors. Putty filled out my cheeks. Contact lenses fell from the dispenser and I popped them in. Nose plugs widened my nostrils. No need for ears; they'd be covered by the wig. I pulled a blank plastiflesh mask over my face and had to pause while it melted in. It took only a minute to mold it to perfection. I smiled at myself. How nice to have lips.

The delivery slot clunked and dropped a blonde wig and a pink outfit into my lap. The wig was hot from the styler. I put it on, then the pantyhose.

“Mandy? Did you get the profile on Sondergard?” I didn't look up; I recognized the voice.

“Roger.”

“We've located her near the airport. We can slip you in before take-off, so you'll be the joker.”

I groaned and looked up at the face on the screen. Elfreda Baltimore-Louisville, Director of Operational Teams: lifeless face and tiny slits for eyes. What can you do when all the muscles are dead?

“Okay.” You take what you get.

She switched off, and I spent the next two minutes trying to get dressed while keeping my eyes on the screens. I memorized names and faces of crew members plus the few facts known about them. Then I hurried out and caught up with the others. Elapsed time from first alarm: twelve minutes and seven seconds. We'd better get moving.

“Goddam Sun-Belt,” Cristabel groused, hitching at her bra.

“At least they got rid of the high heels,” Dave pointed out. A year earlier we would have been teetering down the aisles on three-inch platforms. We all wore short pink shifts with blue and white diagonal stripes across the front, and carried matching shoulder bags. I fussed trying to get the ridiculous pillbox cap pinned on.

We jogged into the dark Operations Control Room and lined up at the gate. Things were out of our hands now. Until the gate was ready, we could only wait.

I was first, a few feet away from the portal. I turned away from it; it gives me vertigo. I focused instead on the gnomes sitting at their consoles, bathed in yellow lights from their screens. None of them looked back at me. They don't like us much. I don't like them, either. Withered, emaciated, all of them. Our fat legs and butts and breasts are a reproach to them, a reminder that Snatchers eat five times their ration to stay presentable for the masquerade. Meantime we continue to rot. One day I'll be sitting at a console. One day I'll be
built in
to a console, with all my guts on the outside and nothing left on my body but stink. The hell with them.

I buried my gun under a clutter of tissues and lipsticks in my purse. Elfreda was looking at me.

“Where is she?” I asked.

“Motel room. She was alone from ten P.M. to noon on flight day.”

Departure time was 1:15. She had cut it close and would be in a hurry. Good.

“Can you catch her in the bathroom? Best of all, in the tub?”

“We're working on it.” She sketched a smile with a fingertip drawn over lifeless lips. She knew how I liked to operate, but she was telling me I'd take what I got. It never hurts to ask. People are at their most defenseless stretched out and up to their necks in water.

“Go!” Elfreda shouted. I stepped through, and things started to go wrong.

I was facing the wrong way, stepping
out
of the bathroom door and facing the bedroom. I turned and spotted Mary Katrina Sondergard through the haze of the gate. There was no way I could reach her without stepping back through. I couldn't even shoot without hitting someone on the other side.

Sondergard was at the mirror, the worst possible place. Few people recognize themselves quickly, but she'd been looking right at herself. She saw me and her eyes widened. I stepped to the side, out of her sight.

“What the hell is . . . hey? Who the hell—” I noted the voice, which can be the trickiest thing to get right.

I figured she'd be more curious than afraid. My guess was right. She came out of the bathroom, passing through the gate as if it wasn't there, which it wasn't, since it only has one side. She had a towel wrapped around her.

“Jesus Christ! What are you doing in my—” Words fail you at a time like that. She knew she ought to say something, but what?
Excuse me, haven't I seen you in the mirror?