The Technicolor Time Machine

Ottar, looking very noble and heroic, the eyes of an eagle, smiled out across the sea and belched. Barney nodded agreement and had another drink.

“You are a wise man, Ottar. I’ll tell you something I never told anyone before because I am getting drunk on your daily wage and you probably understand one word in ten that I am saying. Do you know what I am? I am mediocre. Do you have any idea what a terrible admission that is to make? If you’re lousy you soon know it and you get booted out and go to work in a filling station. If you are a genius you know it and you got it made. But if you’re mediocre you are never quite sure of it and you blame it on the breaks and keep doing just one more picture until you have done seventy-three pieces of cinematic crap and there is not going to be a number seventy-four. The funny part is that number seventy-four could have been a good picture. God knows it certainly would have been different. Down the drain. The picture died unborn, poor picture now in picture limbo. Dead picture, no pic-ure…”

“What is this picture?”

“I told you, a work of art. Entertainment. Like your what-do-you-call-them, sagas…”

“I’ll sing a song from a saga. I sing good.”

Ottar stood, took a drink to clear his throat, and sang in a roaring voice that blended with the sound of the waves below.

Strike, strike, sword,
Thing of my heart where the worm is living!
Faces with anger my sons will bring vengeance.
Death has no fear. The voice of the Valkyrs
Brings new guests to the ale-hall of Odin.
Death comes. The table holds a banquet.
Life is done now. Laughing I die!

Ottar stood for a moment—then roared even louder, with anger. “That was Ragnar’s song when King Aella murdered him and Aella died. I wish I could have slain him.” He shook his fist at the unsympathetic sky.

Barney was having trouble with his vision, but he found that if he closed one eye he could see well enough. Ottar loomed over him, a figure from the dawn of the world, with his leather garments and flowing hair, the last light of sunset picking out red highlights on his skin. The saga was real to him, and life and art were one. The song was the battle and the battle became the song.

The idea hit Barney with startling suddenness and he gasped.

Well why not? If he hadn’t been half potted, drinking on the shore of this ancient sea with a man who should have been dead for a thousand years, it would never have occurred to him. Well why not? Everything else about this business was madness, why not the final touch of insanity? He had the freedom and the power—and he was washed up in any case. Why not?

“Come with me,” he said, climbing to his feet and attempting to pull the immobile form of the Viking after him.

“Why?” Ottar asked.

“To see pictures.” Ottar was unimpressed. “To get more whiskey.”

This was a lot better reason and they went back to camp together, Barney leaning a good deal on the other man, who seemed scarcely aware of it.

“The rushes ready?” Barney asked, poking his head into the studio trailer.

“Coming out of the drier now, Mr. Hendrickson,” the technician said.

“Right. Set the screen up outside and let’s see them. Show the other takes first, then put today’s on.”

“Whiskey?” Ottar asked and Barney said, “Sure, sit right down here and I’ll get it.”

There was a certain amount of difficulty in finding the right trailer in the dark, as well as unusually large numbers of items underfoot to stumble over, then the problem finding the right key for the lock. By the time Barney made his way back with the bottle a folding screen had been set up, as well as some safari chairs. He and Ottar settled themselves comfortably, with the bottle between them, the projector whirred and they watched the film in the wonderfully appropriate theater of open sky and stars.

At first Ottar had trouble seeing the projected films as picture, his untrained eye not connecting the moving patterns with reality. But he was not unacquainted with representational art, three-dimensional in wood carving and two-dimensional in paintings, and when he recognized the beach and his house he shouted with wonder.