Time Travel Omnibus, page 940
“What are you trying to do, Mr. Lucas?”
“When I was a kid growing up in Modesto, I used to read comic books and pulp science fiction magazines.” He turned and looked at Jimmy. “I’m willing to bet there’s a whole generation who’d love to see an ambitious movie with interesting special effects, not just giant rubber monsters on strings. Unfortunately, studios aren’t willing to bet on it. I’ve pitched and pitched my new movie, The Star Wars. They can’t imagine giving me the budget I want—ten million dollars!—to make a sci-fi movie they ‘know’ won’t make money.”
“Oh, I bet it could be one of the biggest money-makers of all time.”
“I appreciate the sentiment, but even I’m not that naïve.” Lucas shook his head. “Why am I talking to a script runner about this?”
“Because I’ll listen,” Jimmy said. “I love science fiction, too.”
“Great, then I’ll have an audience of one if I make The Star Wars. I’m trying to do a really big science fiction movie, but the execs don’t see what I see, no matter how I describe it to them.”
Jimmy pounced with his suggestion. “A picture’s worth a thousand words, Mr. Lucas—and film is a visual medium. Instead of just giving a verbal pitch, maybe . . . bring some illustrations. Do you know any artists who can paint something spectacular and imaginative? Give them a real eye-full of what they’re going to be investing in. That could make all the difference.”
Lucas raised his eyebrows. “I do have a friend who works at Boeing painting pictures of new aircraft designs, Ralph McQuarrie. I’ve seen him doodle and play with ideas. Maybe I should give him my movie treatment, commission him to do a set of paintings of my alien landscapes, strange ships, creatures, and characters.” Now the man stood taller, his shoulders square with new confidence. “That just might do it! I was about to cancel my pitch at Twentieth-Century Fox because I didn’t think I had a chance. Ralph can do some paintings for me in time.” Already intent, deeply focused, Lucas hurried off after saying a curt goodbye.
Sitting on his bicycle, Jimmy watched the man go. This was the last cruxpoint he and Dr. Hawking had been able to select. He hoped he had done enough, sparked enough imagination, fertilized a field that would bear fruit beyond mundane concerns. If he succeeded, there would be an entire cultural shift, a social mindset that made mankind think forward, look to the skies, and boldly go where no man had gone before.
Maybe that version of Earth would have a chance against an alien invasion, since Jimmy’s original Earth had no chance at all. When the time machine activated again, he didn’t know what kind of world he was going back to.
When the marauding invasion fleet cruised into the solar system, they scanned Earth broadcasts. The alien subcommander had been hoping for easy pickings. The economics of conquering planet after planet simply did not allow for a long, drawn-out siege against vigorous resistance.
“Such a fertile world,” the subcommander said. “We have made no prior contact with this . . . Earth?”
“They have never seen us, have no reason to expect us,” said the strategic advisor, lifting a tentacle. “We have enough ships to intimidate them, though we cannot sustain a long battle.”
“They will crumble easily,” predicted the subcommander.
“Excuse me,” said the communications officer. “I have deconstructed their broadcasts and tapped into their library databases. I found a disturbing cultural trend. It seems these humans have been anticipating something like us for the past century. Observe.” He played clips of movies he had plucked from the cacophony of transmissions.
“The inhabitants of Earth have a popular entertainment category called science fiction. Their best-selling novel in the genre describes a harsh desert planet and a vigorous resistance against a large galactic empire similar to our own. One of their longest running and most successful televised entertainment series concerns their own exploration and expansion into the galaxy. Among their most lucrative filmed entertainments is tellingly titled Star Wars, filled with images of spectacular space battles. Subcommander, if even a fraction of these images is true, our fleet stands no chance.”
“So these humans are ready for us. Somehow they were forewarned.” After a few long and silent moments, the subcommander turned to his strategic advisor. “Do you concur?”
The advisor looked extremely troubled. “Given this information, Subcommander, I cannot recommend that we proceed. We do not have the military capability to withstand a protracted resistance.”
The subcommander growled, then nodded. He could not afford another failure. He was sure to be executed this time unless he easily and inexpensively conquered a new world. If these creatures could imagine such things for entertainment, how much more prepared must their military be!
“Very well, target another solar system,” he said. “There will be plenty of others to choose from. Let us go find an unimaginative race instead.”
Note: Frank Herbert’s Dune, the best-selling science fiction novel of all time, was rejected more than twenty times before it was finally published by a company that produced auto-repair manuals.
Star Trek was originally cancelled after only two seasons, until a group of science fiction fans led by Bjo Trimble launched a massive letter-writing campaign such as the networks had never before seen, and the show was renewed.
Even after the success of his film American Graffitti, George Lucas could not find a studio willing to invest in his science fiction movie Star Wars. However, when he commissioned his artist friend Ralph McQuarrie to paint extravagant scenes from the proposed movie, 20th Century Fox immediately picked up the project.
OCCUPATION DUTY
Harry Turtledove
Pheidas wasn’t thrilled about going upcountry from Gaza—who would have been? But when you were a nineteen-year-old conscript serving out your term, nobody gave a curse about whether you were thrilled. You were there to do what other people told you—and on the double, soldier!
He got into the armored personnel carrier with all the enthusiasm of someone climbing into his own coffin. None of the other young Philistinians climbing aboard looked any happier than he did. The reason wasn’t hard to figure: there was a small—but not nearly small enough—chance they were doing exactly that.
The last man in slammed the clamshell doors at the rear. The big diesel engine rumbled to life. “Next stop, Hierosolyma,” the sergeant said.
“Oh, boy,” said Pheidas’ buddy Antenor.
He spoke softly, but Sergeant Dryops heard him anyway. “You better hope Hierosolyma’s our next stop, kid,” the noncom said. “If we stop before we get there, it’s on account of we’ve got trouble with the Moabites. You want trouble with the stinking ragheads? You want trouble with them on their terms?”
Antenor shook his head to show he didn’t. That wasn’t going to be good enough. Before Pheidas could say as much, Dryops beat him to the punch.
“You want trouble with them on their terms?” he yelled.
“No, Sergeant,” Antenor said loudly. Dryops nodded, mollified. And Antenor’s reply not only took care of military courtesy, it was also the gods’ truth. The Moabites caused too much trouble any which way. As far as they were concerned, their rightful border was the beach washed by the Inner Sea. The Philistinians? Invaders. Interlopers. Never mind that they’d been on the land for more than three thousand years. In the history-crowded Middle East, that wasn’t long enough.
They don’t even believe in Dagon, Pheidas thought as the APC clattered north and east, one of a long string of armored fighting vehicles. It wasn’t that he wanted the miserable Moabites worshiping the same god he did. If that didn’t ruin the divine neighborhood, he didn’t know what would. But too many Moabites didn’t believe Dagon was a god. Some thought he was a demon; others denied he was there at all. They felt the same way about the other Philistinian deities, too.
Antenor’s mind must have been running in the same direction as Pheidas’, for he said: “They’re jealous of us. They’ve always been jealous of us.”
“Sure,” Pheidas said. You learned that in school. Right from the beginning, the Philistinians had been more progressive than the tribes of the interior. They were the ones who’d first learned how to work iron, and they’d done their best to keep the hill tribes from finding out how to do it. Some things didn’t change much. The Moabites were still backward, but there were an awful lot of them, and they didn’t mind a bit if they died in the service of their own grim tribal gods.
Around Gaza, the land was green and fertile. The Philistinians always had a knack for making the desert bloom. That was why so many nasty neighbors had coveted their country, almost from the very beginning.
Pheidas nudged Antenor. “Hey!” he said.
“What?” Antenor had been about to light a cigarette. He looked annoyed at getting interrupted.
“You were good in school. What was the name of that guy Lord Goliath knocked off?”
“Oh. Him.” Antenor frowned, trying to remember. After a moment, he did—he had been good in school. “Tabitas, that’s what. Tabitas of the Evraioi.”
“That’s right!” Pheidas nodded. He couldn’t have come up with it himself, but he knew it as soon as he heard it. “Crazy, isn’t it? Here we are all these years later, going off to do the same cursed job all over again.”
“Miserable mountain rats don’t go away,” Sergeant Dryops said. “They want to make us go away, but that ain’t gonna happen, either.” He paused. “Is it?”
“No, Sergeant!” This time, all the troopers in the APC sang out as loud as they could. Once bitten, twice raucous. Dryops not only nodded, he even smiled a little. Pheidas wondered if the world would end. It didn’t. The world was a tough old place.
As he peered out from time to time through the firing port by his head, Pheidas watched it get tougher, too. The people of the hills and the people of the coast had been enemies since the days of Goliath and Tabitas, maybe longer. Sometimes it seemed the landscapes were enemies, too.
Things went from green to brown as soon as the land started climbing and getting rougher—as soon as it went from a place where more Philistinians lived to one were there were more Moabites. Chickens and goats and skinny stray dogs roamed the streets of Moabite villages. The houses and shops looked a million years old despite their rust-streaked corrugated iron roofs. Pheidas wouldn’t have wanted to drive any of the ancient, beat-up cars. The sun blasted everything with the force of a tactical nuke.
Spray-painted squiggles in the pothook Moabite script marred whitewashed walls. Pheidas could read it. Learning enough Moabite to get by was part of basic training. PHILS OUT! was the most common graffiti. Pheidas didn’t mind that one so much. He didn’t like the Moabites any better than they liked his people. He would have been happy to stay out if his commanders hadn’t told him to go in.
But then he saw one that said CHEMOSH CUTS OFF DAGON’S SCALY TAIL! Chemosh was the Moabites’ favorite god. For lots of them, he was the only tribal god. A few even said he was the only god, period. You really had to watch out for fanatics like that. They were the kind who turned terrorist.
The scrawl that really raised his hackles, though, was THE SWORD BUDDHA AND THE FOUR WITH CHEMOSH! The Turks of Babylon were newcomers to these parts; they’d brought the Sword Buddha down off the steppe hardly more than a thousand years ago. But Aluzza, Allat, Manah, and Hubal had been worshiped in Arabia for a very long time. And Babylon and Arabia were both swimming in oil, which these days counted for even more than the strength of their gods.
Sergeant Dryops saw that one, too. He muttered into his gray-streaked red mustache. Pheidas couldn’t make out all of what he said. From what he could understand, he was surprised the steel by Dryops’ head didn’t melt.
“We’ve got friends, too,” the veteran noncom said when his language grew a little less incandescent. “The Ellenes in Syria don’t like the Moabites any better than we do. And they really don’t like the Turks.”
That made Pheidas feel a little better—until Antenor went and spoiled it by saying: “They don’t have much oil, though.”
Dryops looked at him as if he’d found him on the sole of his marching boot. “Blood’s thicker than oil, by the gods,” he growled.
Antenor didn’t say anything at all. His silence seemed more devastating than speech. There were ties between Philistinians and Ellenes, yes. But they were ancient. Some of the Philistinians’ ancestors had come from Crete before settling on the mainland here. But the languages now were as different as Galatian and Irish—more different, maybe, because they’d been separate longer. And Babylon outweighed Syria about three to one.
A couple of Moabite men in headcloths and white cotton robes—good cover against the sun—scowled at the armored column as it clattered past. Scowls were basically honest. As long as nobody did anything more than scowl . . . Pheidas could look out through the firing port instead of shooting through it. That suited him fine.
It wasn’t far from Gaza to Hierosolyma, not as the crow flew. But a crow didn’t fly back through the years, and Pheidas felt he’d fallen into a different century when his convoy rolled into the hill town. Gaza was a city of steel and glass and reinforced concrete, a city that looked across the Inner Sea to the whole wide world. Hierosolyma, hidden in the hills, was built of golden limestone and wood and brick, and looked as if it had been there forever. Had it seemed very different when the Turks sacked it, when the Romans wrecked it, when Philip of Macedon besieged the Persian garrison there, or when Lord Goliath took it away from the Evraioi? Pheidas had his doubts.
Men in robes and women in long, baggy dresses only made the impression of age stronger. Some of the men did wear modern shirts and trousers, but none of the women—none—chose the skimpy, clinging styles that were all the rage down by the sea. As far as girl-watching went, it would be a barren time.
But it wouldn’t be dull. Graffiti on whitewashed walls was thicker and fiercer here than it had been in the villages to the southwest. Philistinian soldiers with assault rifles patrolled the narrow, twisting streets. They never traveled in parties smaller than four; the Moabites had assault rifles, too, and other, nastier, toys, and used them whenever they figured they could get away with it.
The APC rattled past a couple of firebombed buildings. A wine bottle full of gasoline with a cloth wick was a low-tech weapon, which didn’t mean it wasn’t effective. Then Pheidas stopped worrying about gasoline bombs, because something a demon of a lot bigger went off much too close. The APC swayed and shook and almost flipped over. Then it stopped so suddenly, it pitched all the soldiers in the fighting compartment into a heap.
“Get off me, Dagon damn you!” Sergeant Dryops shouted. “Open the doors and pile out. Somebody’s gonna need help.”
As usual, a man with a loud voice and a clear notion of what he wanted stood a good chance of getting it. The soldiers unscrambled themselves. Antenor opened the doors at the back of the carrier. The men jumped out, weapons at the ready.
“Gods!” Pheidas exclaimed. He ran forward, boots thudding on cobblestones that might have known the scritch of hobnailed Roman marching sandals.
Someone had driven a car into the Philistinian column—a car with a bomb inside. Then he’d set it off. The car was nothing but twisted steel and flames, with thick black smoke rising from it. Mixed with the chemical stinks was one that held a certain ghastly appeal—it smelled like burnt roast pork. Pheidas’ stomach did a slow lurch: that wasn’t pork burning.
The murder bomber hadn’t just blown himself up. That would have been too much to hope for. He’d wrecked a Philistinian command car almost as thoroughly as the one that carried the bomb. Pheidas didn’t think anybody in there could be alive. And the blast had overturned an APC and set it on fire. Burned and wounded Philistinian soldiers came stumbling out of it.
“Anybody left inside?” Pheidas shouted. He wouldn’t have left a Moabite to cook in there . . . Well, right this minute, maybe he would.
“Did the driver get away?” asked a soldier bleeding from a cut on the forehead.
“We’ll find out.” Pheidas and Antenor both dashed around the burning chassis to see. The driver’s compartment was separate from the one where the soldiers sat, and had its own escape hatches.
If the driver hadn’t got out—and it didn’t look as if he had—he never would now. The APC’s front end had taken the brunt of the blast. With the best will in the world, try to force your way through those flames and you’d end up like one of the babies the Phoenicians up the coast fed to the fires in the old days—and, some people whispered, even now.
A shriek behind Pheidas made him whirl, rifle at the ready. A Moabite woman lay on the ground, blood pouring from a gash in her thigh. Part of Pheidas hoped she would just bleed out. But that wasn’t how he’d been trained. He ran over and yanked up her dress so he could bandage the gash.
“What are you doing to her?” The question came in harsh, guttural Moabite. “Why are you putting hands on her?”
Pheidas glanced up. The Moabite standing over him couldn’t have been more than a couple of years older than he was. The fellow had a gash under one eye, but he didn’t know or care. He seemed to think Pheidas would drop his pants and start humping the wounded woman any second now.
“I’m going to fix her leg if I can,” Pheidas answered, using Moabite herself. Speaking the language always made him feel he had a mouth full of rocks. “If you know first aid, you do it instead.”
“Not me. Not me, by Chemosh’s white beard!” The young Moabite backed away. “You better not do anything dirty to her, that’s all.”
“Are you crazy?” Pheidas said, and then he forgot about the kid. He had to tie off a bleeder. He’d learned how to do that, but he’d never actually done it before. He thanked Dagon that he didn’t lose his lunch. He pinned the wound closed, gave the woman a pain shot, and put a bandage around everything. When he finished, his hands were covered with blood. He wiped them on her dress. It was already so bloody, a little more gore wouldn’t matter.
