Black Is the Fashion for Dying by Jonathan Latimer

never failed to awe him, the ordered functioning of Karl’s brain at an office conference. The bewildering jig-saw statistics of production, the mixed apples, cabbages and sealing wax of motion picture making—actors, costs, story, sets, time—always emerging from the electronic banks behind the jowled mask as elementary arithmetic, simple digits capable of being added or subtracted by a child. A kind of mathematical fascism, Lorrance thought. It actually terrified him.
    â€œFive cuts, then,” Karl was saying. “And two retakes. One at the Boys’ Club, one in Forsythe’s study. The Club’s still standing so we won’t have to build that. One wall of the study will do. Half a day’s shooting. Four thousand dollars.”
    â€œWe’ll have to pay Hunter to come back,” Saul Grafton said, peering near-sightedly at his cost sheet.
    â€œI’ve figured that.”
    The others seated around the desk, Al Johnson and his two production assistants, Chuck Eastman, concerned only with cutting, and Van Markel, who had designed Dark Circle’s sets, nodded. Lorrance wondered if they realized the miracle of automation that was taking place, one brain doing the work of six. And quite capable of doing the work of sixty, or six million.
    Al Johnson asked, “What about the Observatory sequence?”
    â€œEliminate.”
    â€œBut we’ve twenty thousand sunk in the set!”
    â€œThat’s already been spent,” Karl explained, patiently for him. “What’s the cost to junk it?”
    â€œWell, nothing, I guess.”
    â€œAnd with it gone, most of the allegory’s gone, too.”
    Chuck Eastman, thumbing through his copy of the script, said, “Except for the ending on the waterfront.”
    â€œYes, we’ll have to redo that. I have a solution that’ll answer everything. Even the tag ends of fantasy we can’t cut out.” Karl closed his eyes and the electronic banks took over. “The preacher comes down with Forsythe just as he does now, intending to exorcise the devil with bell, book and candle. Only, Forsythe kills Nick before he can do this, and in killing him proves Nick was only a man after all.”
    â€œWon’t that make a jerk out of the minister?” Chuck Eastman asked cautiously.
    â€œNo. We dialogue it to show that without him Forsythe wouldn’t have had nerve enough to go after Nick, thus proving that without religion man is incapable of—”
    A buzzing sound came from under the desk. Karl’s puffy eyelids slid apart, exposed two balefully glowing eyes. “I said no phone calls, T. J.”
    â€œBut I did—I told Miss Earnshaw,” Lorrance stuttered through the chaos of fearful inadequacy the eyes always produced. “I remember distinctly—” Why was it automatically his fault? “I went out—”
    But Karl was already raising the telephone to his mouth. “Well?” he growled.
    Someone spoke on the other end. Karl exclaimed, “What!” and then after a pause, rapidly, “ God! I’ll be right there!”
    He dropped the receiver, not bothering even to aim it at the cradle, kicked back his chair, snatched his hat from the rack and ran heavily from the office. Lorrance stared at the open door, bewildered, then turned inquiringly to the others. Their faces were equally blank. Finally Chuck Eastman broke the silence.
    â€œJesus!” he said. “Boulder Dam must have burst!”
    Lorrance ran out of the office, down the narrow corridor and the flight of stairs that led to the quadrangle, saw Karl, trotting now, passing the fishpool. He caught up with him a few yards short of the door to Stage 17. “What is it, Karl?” he burbled foolishly, knowing there would be no answer. “What’s wrong?”
    Karl plunged through the two doors, elbowed aside some men in his path and trotted along the canvas backdrop until he reached