The Technicolor Time Machine

“Sure you do, Ottar. I’ve been telling everyone how great the song was and they all want to hear you sing, don’t you people?”

There was a welcoming chorus of “yesses” and some cheers. Slithey swam out of the darkness and took Ottar’s hand. “You’ll play it for me, darling, it will be my song,” she said, reciting a line from her last picture, which had been about some second-rate composer.

Ottar could not resist the personal touch. Still grumbling, but not meaning it, he stood where Barney told him to, and took the prop ax.

“Too light,” he said. “Made of wood. No good at all.”

He sang for them then, first in a chanting monotone, still examining the ax, then louder and with more enthusiasm as the song began to stir his emotions. With an angry shout as he finished the last line and swung the ax fiercely, knocking over and almost demolishing one of the spots. The audience broke into impulsive clapping and cheers, while he strode back and forth before them accepting his due.

“That was great,” Barney said. “Now we’ll try just one more little business before we let you go. You see that lamp stand over there with the coat and helmet hung on it? Well that’s an enemy sentry. You’re going to stalk and kill him, just as you really would.”

“Why?”

“Why? Ottar, what kind of question is that… ?” Barney knew what kind of a question it was—the kind that is very hard to answer. The why for an actor was easy enough, because acting was how he earned his bread. But why should Ottar do it?

“Forget that for a minute,” Barney said. “Come over here and sit down a minute, have a drink, and I’ll tell you a saga for a change.”

“You have a saga too? Sagas are good.”

In this pre-entertainment, preliteracy age the sagas were song and history, newspaper and book all rolled into one, and Barney knew it.

“That’s fine,” he said, and waved the camera on Ottar. “Just grab the bottle and listen to this story, the story of a great Viking, a great berserker and he was called Ottar…”

“Same name as me?”

“The same, and he was a famous warrior. He had a good friend whom he drank with and who fought beside him and they were the best friends in the world. But one day there was a battle and Ottar’s friend was captured and tied up and taken away. But Ottar followed and he waited, hidden near the enemy camp, until nightfall. He was thirsty after the battle and he drank, but he stayed quiet and hidden.”

Ottar took a quick sip from the bottle as he said this, then pressed his back against the trailer.

“Then it was dark and the time had come. He would free his friend. Stand, Ottar, he said to himself, stand and go save your friend who they will kill by morning. Stand!”

Barney hissed the last word, commandingly, and in a single lithe movement Ottar was on his feet, the bottle fallen and forgotten.

“Look, Ottar, look around this building and see the guard. Carefully—there he is!”

Ottar was part of the story now. He bent low and moved one eye slowly around the comer—then back.

“There is the guard, his back is turned. Creep up on him, Ottar, and slay him silently with your hands. Close them around his neck so that he dies without a sound. Quietly now, while his back is fumed.”

Ottar was out from behind the trailer, bent double and drifting as soundlessly as a shadow over the rutted ground, No one moved or uttered a word as he advanced. Barney glanced around and saw his secretary next to him, eyes fixed on the stalking Viking.

“Halfway to the guard, Ottar heard a sound. Someone was coming. He hid.” Ottar vanished into a patch of darkness and Barney whispered, “Get out there, Betty. Just walk on and exit stage left.” He took her arm and started her forward.

“Ottar hid, shrouded by the darkness as one of the women came by. She walked close but she did not see him. She went on. Ottar waited until it was quiet, then came forward again, closer and closer—until he could leap!”

Gino had to pan the camera rapidly as the Viking moved out and sprang, running—still in absolute silence —and hurled himself through the air onto the dummy. The helmet rolled aside and he had the steel rod of the lamp support between his fingers, bending it almost double in a single contraction of his muscles.

“Cut!” Barney said. “That was the story, Ottar, just the way you would have done it. Killed the guard and freed your friend. Very good, real good. Everyone now, let him know how much you liked that performance.”

While they cheered and whistled, Ottar sat up, blinking rapidly, slow memory returning as to where he was. He looked at the twisted metal, then threw it aside, grinning.

“That was a good story,” he said. “That was the way Ottar does it.”

“I’ll show you the rushes tomorrow,” Barney said. “Let you see the moving pictures of yourself doing all these things. Meanwhile—it’s been a long day. Tex—Dallas—will one of you take the jeep and drive Ottar home?”