“What experience do they have?What credits?”
“Well,” Earnest squirmed, “not much, truthfully.” Holding down the lid, Gabriel said to Earnest, “Hey, you look like the heaviest one here. Stand on it.”
Obediently, Earnest stepped up on the jiggling, slanting lid. Gabriel began to click the suitcase shut.
“Where’d you get these writers?” he asked again.
Earnest stood on the now-closed suitcase, looking foolish and miserable. “Uh, we had a contest...”
“A contest?”
“In the local high schools...”
Brenda gasped.
Oxnard began to laugh.
Gabriel got to his feet. His nose was about at the height of Earnest’s solar plexus.
“You didn’t say what I just heard,” he said.
“What?”
Looking murderously up into Earnest’s flustered face, Gabriel said, “You didn’t tell me just now that the story treatments I’ve been beating out my brains over for the past two weeks were written by high school kids who sent them in as part of a writing contest.”
“Uh... well....”
“You didn’t imply,” Gabriel went on, his voice low, “that you haven’t spent penny number one on any writers at all.”
“We can use the money on....”
Oxnard didn’t think that Gabriel, with his short arms, could reach Earnest’s head. But he did, with a punch so blurringly swift that Oxnard barely saw it. He heard the solid crunch of fist on bone, though, and Earnest toppled over backwards onto the bed, his face spurting blood. “Sonofagun,” Oxnard said, “you broke his nose after all.” Earnest bounced up from the bed and fled from the room, wailing and holding his bloody nose with both hands.
Brenda looked displeased. “You shouldn’t have done that. It just complicates things.”
Gabriel was rubbing his knuckles. “Yeah. I should’ve belted him in the gut a few times first. Would’ve been more satisfying.”
“He’s probably going straight to the lawyers. Or the police,” she said.
Starting for the door, Oxnard said, “I’m going to the American consulate. They can’t hold an American citizen prisoner like this.”
“No. Wait,” Brenda said. “Let me handle this.”
“I don’t care how you do it,” Gabriel said, “but I want out.”
Brenda faced him squarely. “Ron, that would be the end of everything. The show, the series, the whole Titanic company...”
“What do I care? Those bastards have been screwing me....”
“Ron, please!” Now it was Brenda who was pleading, and Oxnard wished he were in Gabriel’s place.
“I’m walking,” Gabriel insisted. “High school kids in a writing contest... making models and sets like tinker-toys....”
“I’ll straighten things out,” Brenda said, as strongly as Gabriel. “That’s why I’m here. That’s why you wanted me here, wasn’t it?”
“Well...” He kicked lightly at the suitcase, still on the floor.
Brenda turned to Oxnard. Her eyes are incredibly green, he noticed for the first time. “Bill, if I get B.F. to straighten out Earnest and give you authority to act as science consultant, will you stay?”
“I’ve really got to get back...”
She bit her lower lip, then said, “But you can come up here on weekends, can’t you? To make sure that the crew’s building things the right way?”
With a shrug, he agreed, “Sure, I suppose I could do that.”
Turning to Gabriel again, Brenda went on, “And Ron, if I get you complete authority over the scripts and make Earnest bring in some real writers and a story editor, will you stay?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Gabriel scuffed at the suitcase again, like a kid punishing the floor for tripping him. “Because these flatwormbrained idiots are just going to screw things over, one way or the other. They’re a bunch of pinheads. Working with them is hopeless.”
“But we’ll form a team, the three of us,” Brenda said. “You head up the writing and creative side, Ron. Bill will handle the scientific side. And I’ll make sure that Titanic does right by you.”
Gabriel shook his head.
“Listen,” Brenda said, with growing enthusiasm. “They haven’t made a decision on the male lead for the series. Suppose I tell B.F. that if we don’t get a major star the show will fold. He’ll understand that kind of talk. We can go out and get a big name, that’ll force everybody else to live up to the star’s level.”
