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You were right. Smart girl. Then he looked sharply at her. She seemed weary, red eyed. You didn t
sleep good?
Not very.
Who were you with?
Nobody, she said.
Finger considered the pros and cons for a moment. His ultimate, secret new idea glowed within him like
a warming beacon. Gabriel and I came to an agreement last night.
We re going to do the show up in Canada. Les will check on the available studios up there. The talent
office will start looking for a suitable male lead this morning.
What about the female lead?
Rita Yearling.
Brenda s mouth went tight.
Nobody s going to find out about her previous life. That s why I ve got a publicity department, to keep
things quiet.
Sure, Brenda said.
So you don t like her, Finger said. That s too bad.
Brenda looked away from him and let the salt wind blow at her hair. No problem for me. I m not going
to have to work with her.
Taking a step closer to her, Finger said, I still want you to go to Canada and keep an eye on things for
me.
You mean service Ron Gabriel.
No. He s seen Rita and he s gone crazy over her. She ll keep him busy enough.
You don t know Ron. Still looking away from Finger, she said, I don t want to go.
You re going!
I don t want to!
You ll do what I tell you. That s all there is to it.
Thanks.
I wouldn t send you up there if Gabriel was going to make things tough for you. You know that.
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Like hell.
She still wouldn t look at him. Feeling hurt, Finger said.
It s for the good of the show. There ll be a promotion in it for you.
Wonderful, Brenda said. But I d rather jump over the rail.
He could feel his face getting red with anger. So jump already! he snapped and stamped off to the
hatch.
It was spring in Southern California. The rains had finally stopped and for a few weeks everything was
green and flowering. As long as it was domed over or otherwise protected from the smog.
Bill Oxnard s Holovision Laboratory was perched high enough on a Malibu hillside to be out of the usual
smog banks, although when there was inversion the tinted clouds crept up and engulfed even the highest
of the hills. But at the moment it was a beautiful spring day. Oxnard could lean back in his desk chair and
see the surfers way down on the beach, in their colorful anticorrosion suits and motorized surfboards. In
a few weeks or perhaps days he d see the gardeners painting the lawns green and starting to worry
about brush fires again. But for the moment, everything was beautiful.
8: THE TEAM
His phone buzzed. He clicked it on and his secretary s grandmotherly face appeared on the screen.
Ms. Impanema s here, she said.
Oxnard couldn t keep himself from grinning. Send her right in.
Maybe she s the reason why I feel ... he tried to identify exactly what it was that he did feel, and could
only come up with a lame... happy.
Brenda strode into his office: tall, leggy, brightly dressed in a flowered slit-skirt sari that was becoming
the hit of the new Oriental decorative style. Oxnard himself still wore his regular business clothes: an
engineer s zipsuit of plain orange.
Hope I m not late, she said, smiling at him.
Oxnard came around the desk and took her hand. No.
Right on the tick. Here, have a seat. How s everything in
Toronto? Have you eaten? Want some coffee or something?
She took the chair and let the heavy-looking handbag she was carrying clunk to the floor. A Bloody
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Mary, if you can produce one. I haven t had any breakfast. The damned airline didn t serve anything
again. It s getting to be a regular scrooging with them.
Leaning over his desk to get at the phone, Oxnard called, May . . . can you dig up two Bloody Marys
and some breakfast?
His secretary s face showed that she clearly disapproved of drinking on company time. But after all, it
was his company. She nodded and switched off.
So what s happening in Toronto? Oxnard asked as he went back around the desk and sat down. For
some reason he felt that he needed the desk between them.
Everything s in a whirl, Brenda replied. Let s see ... when s the last time we talked?
A week after you first went up there. Ron hadn t gone yet; he was still here.
She nodded. Right . . . that was the flight where they didn t serve any dinner. Sorry to inconvenience
you, she whined nasally, but the food service on this flight has been rendered inoperative due to a
malfunctioning of the ground-based portion of our logistical system. Fancy way of saying they didn t
stash any food aboard the plane.
They chatted easily for a while. May brought in a pair of drinks in plastic cups and a tray of real eggs
and imitation bacon from the cafeteria. Brenda wolfed down everything hungrily. Oxnard answered a
couple of routine phone calls while she ate, then told his secretary to hold all calls and visits.
So what s happening in Toronto? he asked again as she finished the last crumbs of her English muffin.
Everything, Brenda said between dabs at her lips with a paper napkin. It s wild.
Ron s there? The scripts are being written?
Well. . . . she cocked her head slightly to one side, as if waiting for the right words to come out of the
air. He s there . . . and there s a lot of writing being done. The production team is starting to put the sets
together....
But?
Brenda s smile turned a little desperate. Wasn t it you who told me about Murphy s Law?
He grinned. If anything can go wrong with an experiment, it will.
Right. Well, that s what s happening in Toronto.
That s too bad.
It s worse than that. The show might never get on the air. All sorts of troubles have hit us.
Oxnard shook his head sympathetically, Everything s going smoothly on this end. The new transmitters
and cameras have tested out fine. We ll be ready to ship them up to Toronto right on schedule. And I ve
got some new ideas, too, about . . . well. . . . Oxnard let his voice trail off. She s got enough problems
without listening to my untested brainstorms.
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Will you be coming up to Toronto with the equipment?
Brenda asked.
No need to, said Oxnard.
But I thought....
Oh, we ll send a couple of technicians along. I wouldn t dump the equipment on you without somebody
to show your crew how to work it....
I know, she said. But I thought you would come up yourself.
For some reason, Oxnard s insides went fluttery.
I d like to, he said quickly. But I can t leave the lab here . . . I m not just an executive, you know. I
work here; the rest of the staff depends on me.
Brenda nodded and looked distressed. Bill ... I wouldn t want you to hurt your own company, of
course.
But we need you in Toronto. Ron needs you. He s being driven crazy up there, trying to whip the scripts
into shape and handle the technical details of building the sets and working out the special effects and a
million other things.
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