"Is that the best Soviet science can do?"
"No. A team will be dispatched to triangulate the exact location, if that is what Comrade Chutesov desires."
"Comrade Chutesov only desires the loan of the equipment necessary to locate that point. Comrade Chutesov will handle the matter herself. Comrade Chutesov would not trust this to a man. Comrade Chutesov will never trust a man ever again."
"Yes, Comrade Chutesov," said the consul general. "You will not require backup agents on this matter?"
"I already have them, if the fools were able to pass themselves off as untrained migrant workers-which I think may have been too much for them."
And Anna Chutesov downed the remainder of the tumbler of warm alcohol, telling herself bitterly that all men were like straight vodka, colorless and so damned transparent.
Chapter 16
Larry Lepper hated robots. "I hate robots," he said.
"These aren't robots," said Bill Banana, head of the famous Banana-Berry Animation Studios, in a soothing voice. Normally Bill Banana saved his soothing voice for his girlfriends. When you were the head of the largest cartoon factory in the history of television, you did not soothe, you barked. Sometimes you did neither. Sometimes you just fired people when they refused to let you have your way.
Bill Banana did not want to fire Larry Lepper. He wanted to hire him. Larry Lepper, despite his youthful appearance, was the greatest animator in the business.
"I don't do robots," insisted Larry Lepper. "I did robots over at Epic Studios. You could fill a junkyard with the robots I designed for Epic. No more."
"These robots are different," soothed Bill Banana. He leaned back in his office chair, surrounded by life-size papier-mache statues of his studio's cartoon creations. They looked more realistic than he did.
"I thought you said they weren't robots," said Larry Lepper.
Bill Banana spread his hands in an expansive gesture. He broke out in a pleased grin. Somehow, his grin looked wider than outspread arms. He had good reason to grin. When you grossed three million dollars a year and were responsible for exactly seventy-eight percent of the cartoons shown on Saturday morning, you were king of your industry. Even if it was an industry in which artistic skill, technical brilliance, and storytelling ability were reduced three percent each year as a hedge against rising production costs, so that after nearly thirty years of animation, the Banana-Berry Studio was reduced to cranking out cartoons that were only one step above flip-page books.
"They aren't robots. Exactly." Bill Banana grinned.
"Robots are robots," said Larry Lepper. "You can call them Gobots, Transformers, or Robokids, but they're still robots."
"Robokids made us a cool quarter-million last year," said Bill Banana seriously, rolling a stubby cigar to the other side of his mouth.
"The ratings sucked. You made it all on toy-licensing deals."
"That's where the action is these days. You know that. And don't knock Robokids. It was brilliant. I should know, I came up with it myself. Kids who transform into robots. No one had ever thought it up before. They had trucks that turned into robots and jet airplanes that turned into robots. They even had robots that turned into other robots. But Robokids? Original."
"I'm not working on robot shows," repeated Larry Lepper. "I'm sick of them. Here," he said, unzipping a black portfolio that was the size of an executive's desktop. "Let me show you my latest concept."
Bill Banana accepted the Bristol Board reluctantly. He looked at the drawing, cigar ash falling on the board with each puff.
"Buster Bear?" he barked.
"Look, this robot trend's gotta peak soon," Larry said eagerly. "Be the first guy out of the gate for a change."
"No good. No one will buy a Buster Bear toy. Look at him. He looks like a cream puff. Maybe we could change him, though. Call him Blaster Bear. Stick a whatchamcallit an Izzy-in his paw."
"Uzi," said Larry Lepper wearily.
"We'll call it an Izzy. That way we can copyright the design and spin off the gun as a separate toy."
"And copyright the character yourself? Nothing doing," said Larry Lepper, snatching back the presentation piece before cigar ash burned holes in it. "Thanks, but no thanks."
"So let me tell you about my new show," said Bill Banana, happy to get Buster Bear off the negotiating table.
Larry Lepper wiped at his shiny forehead unhappily. He was only thirty-four, but he had already lost most of his hair. Oddly, his high forehead made him look younger than his years.
"No robots," said Larry Lepper.
"We call them Spideroids. They're not robots, exactly. They're giant spiders, see, but they turn into androids. An android is a robot that looks like a real person. My manicurist explained it to me."
"How original," said Larry Lepper dispiritedly.
"I knew you'd get it!" Bill Banana said excitedly, slapping the desk with a beefy smack. "I knew that you, Larry Lepper, of all the guys working in the industry today, would see the awesome potential of this concept. How fast can you come up with the designs? I'll put you on at our top salary."
Larry Lepper quietly zippered the presentation piece marked "Buster Bear" into his portfolio like a man closing the lid on his dreams.
"I'll do the model sheets," he said dully. "Get someone else to do the animation."
"Done," agreed Bill Banana, reaching across the desk to shake Larry Lepper's limp hand. He was not entirely happy, because it meant he'd have to hire other artists to do the stuff that Larry wouldn't, but it was dealable. He just wouldn't pay Lepper the top rate. The dumb schmuck hadn't worked for Banana-Berry in five years and would never know the difference.
"When do you need it?" asked Larry Lepper. "Monday morning. The sponsors are gonna show up at nine."
"But this is Friday. I'll have to work all weekend."
"Work here. I'll give you a studio, have your food sent in, and if you want, a girl. Or a boy. Or both. I treat my employees right."
"Just leave me alone all weekend and I'll see what I can do," said Larry Lepper miserably, visions of drawing stupid robots for the rest of his life dancing in his mind's eye.
By Sunday evening Larry Lepper had generated a roomful of Spideroid model sheets, showing front and side views of different spider characters. He had jumping spiders, spinning spiders, and climbing spiders. There were brave spiders, mean spiders, and, for comic relief, silly spiders. They looked pretty sharp-if you liked spiders.
The problem was, Larry couldn't figure out plausible android transformations for any of them. Designing robots that became cars or planes was easy. But spiders had eight legs. Larry didn't know what to do with the extra legs. If he kept them, the androids still looked like spiders. And he couldn't ignore the extra legs. If the show sold, the model sheets would be turned over to a toy company for immediate production so that the toys would hit the stores the week the show premiered.
Larry tossed his pen into the inkwell in frustration. In his portfolio he had designs for dozens of funny animal characters which, if he had gotten them on the air twenty years ago, would have made him famous.
But Larry Lepper had not been an animator twenty years ago. He had been a child dreaming of drawing cartoons for a living and maybe, just maybe, owning his own theme park like his idol, Walt Disney. He never told anyone this, but Larry was more interested in operating his own version of Disneyland than he was cartooning. That was where the real money was. Animation was just the road to the greater dream.
Larry Lepper had pursued his dream-disappointing his father, who had had his heart set on Larry following him into the family hardware business-and come to Hollywood. He was good. But more important, he was fast. And he had found work.
Drawing robots that turned into motorcycles and flying saucers that became robots, all fighting mindlessly, and not a single human character in any of the scripts-that was the depressing part. If they wouldn't let him draw Buster Bear or Squirrel Girl or any of his other creations, at least they could give him a real-life person to draw once in a while.
Instead, he was stuck trying to come up with a plausible android counterpart for a giant spider with eight laser-beam eyes and vise grips for feet. He decided to work on the character's names instead. But even that defeated him.
"What the hell is another word for 'spider'?" he muttered aloud.
" 'Arachnid,' " said a metallic voice from the open door. "It is the scientific term."