The Return of the Black Widowers (48 page)

"Even the refrigerator?"Trumbull asked.

"Especially
the refrigerator."

"Hold on. There's something all of us are overlooking," Trumbull said. "Maybe Asimov wrote the story longhand because a pen and a pad of paper were all he had to work with onboard the ship, but there's no publisher that would accept the story that way when the time came to submit the book. I don't care if you're Isaac Asimov, I don't care if you're Stephen King, you can't turn in a handwritten manuscript. That means that at some point Beard would have had to type the story into his computer in order to
print out a copy he could submit. What if he typed it in, but never got around to printing it out?"

"The original manuscript would still have to be somewhere," Rubin said. "It's not like he'd throw it out."

"Probably not, but who knows?" Trumbull said. "Maybe he did. Or maybe he lost it. Or maybe it's still somewhere in his apartment despite all of Gary's efforts to turn it up. But it doesn't matter. Gary doesn't need to find the manuscript, he just needs to find the story. If an electronic copy exists, he's got what he needs."

"I wish it were that simple," Nemerson said. "I checked the computer. The only stories on it were Beard's own work. Other than the one for
Farthest Frontiers,
they were either stories he'd already published or unfinished fragments a page or two long."

"Did you check every file? Even encrypted ones?"

Nemerson nodded. "Beard wasn't exactly what you'd call a power user of the computer. He only had word-processor documents, and not a lot of them. And nothing was encrypted." He looked around the table. "Does anyone else have any ideas?"

"I have one," Avalon said, "but you're not going to like it."

"What?"

"If there is literally no trace of the story and you're sure you've searched everywhere it might be, you've got to consider the possibility that the story never existed in the first place. Think about it—as far as we know, you are the only person who has ever heard of this story, and the only reason you think it exists is because Beard told you about it at the end of a long night of drinking following a memorial service that must have been traumatic for both of you. Maybe he desperately wished he'd gotten a story from Asimov and was shaken by the realization that now it was too late. His subconscious converted his desire into a fantasy that he
had
gotten a story, and maybe because he'd had a few too many drinks that night, he was temporarily unable to distinguish fantasy from reality."

"I don't buy it," Nemerson said. "We'd been drinking, and
maybe that had something to do with why he told me about the story that night and why he didn't remember telling me about it later, but it's not as if we'd reached the point of seeing pink elephants. When he talked about the story, everything he said was very concrete, very specific. All the details about the circumstances of the cruise, for instance—it's true that Isaac was on the cruise, I've checked that. Isaac's wife even remembers him staying in their cabin on the last day to write something, although she didn't remember what it was. No, I'm confident Isaac really did write a story for
Farthest Frontiers
and that there's a copy somewhere in Beard's apartment—I just can't figure out where."

Nemerson glanced around the table, but no one said anything.

"I'm sorry to say we don't seem to be able to help you this time," Trumbull said.

Nemerson sighed. "Well, I appreciate your trying. Maybe I'll do one more search of the apartment, top to bottom, but if that doesn't work—"

"I'm not sure that will be necessary, sir." Henry stepped away from the sideboard, where he had been listening quietly.

"Do you have an idea, Henry?" said Nemerson.

"I do," Henry said. "I am somewhat reluctant to share it with you, because I am not certain it is correct and its implications are rather serious—but the more I hear you gentlemen talk about the situation, the more likely it seems."

"Spit it out, Henry," Rubin said.

"I don't think Mr. Nemerson needs to search any further for the missing story," Henry said, "for the simple reason that I suspect he has already found it."

"I don't understand," Nemerson said.

"You found fifteen stories in Beard's apartment," Henry said, "including one you described as having been written by Beard himself. I believe that is the story you are looking for."

"Impossible!" Nemerson said.

"Consider," Henry said. "The only reason you thought that
story was written by Beard is presumably because his name appeared on the manuscript. But as Mr. Trumbull pointed out earlier, Beard would have had to retype Asimov s story at some point before submitting the anthology to his publisher, and it's a trivial matter to type 'Abraham Beard' on the first page instead of 'Isaac Asimov.' Of course, it is only trivial mechanically—ethically, it's an exceptionally severe offense, perhaps the worst an editor could commit against one of his own authors, particularly one who, posthumously, could no longer defend himself.

"But think about what you have told us. Here is a man who started as a writer side by side with Isaac Asimov, writing for the same publications, but who never achieved more than a fraction of the recognition or success. Such recognition as he did achieve was as an editor, not as a writer, and didn't extend beyond the rather limited world of science fiction publishing. We know he never gave up his desire to achieve success as a writer. It is widely believed that he delayed publication of his second anthology, possibly for years, while he worked on a story of his own to include. We know his third anthology, which given his age and poor health he must have realized would be his last, had already taken even longer to prepare than the second, and from the evidence of the files you found on his computer, it may well have been for the same reason. After all, he had already purchased fifteen stories for the book, if you count the Asimov story and the other fourteen you found—all that was left was for him to complete his own story, and he'd have had the sixteen stories he needed and been done. If he
had
finished a story of his own, especially one as good as the one you described, surely he would have wasted no time in submitting the book to his publisher. The fact that he didn't submit it makes me suspicious that the story with his name on it was not actually his work.

"I imagine that he tried to write a story—he may well have tried for years. But all you found were fragments of a page or two in length, so apparently he wasn't able to do it. When he came out of the hospital for the last time, he may well have known it was
the last time. And as he sat at the computer, trying desperately to produce a story good enough to include in his last book, surely he must have been haunted by the memory of Isaac Asimov, one of the most prolific authors in American history, stepping into a cruise ship cabin one morning and emerging the next day with a finished novelette. And not just any novelette—a great novelette, one good enough to appear in
Farthest Frontiers."

Henry walked to the foot of the table and fixed Nemerson with a penetrating stare. "You're thirty-two years old, Mr. Nemerson, you're married, you've had some success in your chosen field, and you have practically your whole life ahead of you. But try to imagine what it would be like if you were eighty-two, and dying, and quite possibly a failure in your own eyes, and you saw only one last chance to save your reputation. Maybe the only way you could do so was degrading and despicable— but it was there, it was an available option. And who would ever know? He had the only copy of Asimov's story that existed; he could retype it, destroy the original, and no one would be the wiser. And perhaps he asked himself, who would be hurt? Isaac Asimov, who already had more than four hundred books and countless awards to his name?

"What he did, assuming that he did actually do it, was inexcusable. The act I suspect him of is deeply dishonest, and even if it were true that it hurt no one, which I do not believe, it would still be wrong in every way. But I do not agree that it is impossible."

"No," Nemerson said, "I suppose it's not impossible."

"Gary, you mentioned that Beard didn't appear to be a sophisticated computer user," Trumbull said. "If that's so, he probably didn't know that many word processors automatically save a backup copy each time you modify a document. If he ever typed the story in with Asimov's name on it and only later changed it to his own, you might be able to find an archived backup that shows the original version."

"You can do better than that," Drake said. "I can put you in
touch with some researchers at Columbia who have devised statistical techniques to analyze a piece of text and determine how likely it is to be the work of a given writer. You might remember the case, several years back, where this technique was used to unmask the anonymous author of
Primary Colors,
the political
roman a clef.
You can provide plenty of samples of both Asimov's and Beard's work, so it should be a simple matter to run the analysis."

"And it is possible that this analysis will show that I am wrong," Henry said. "If so, I apologize sincerely. But I am afraid this is the explanation that makes the most sense to me."

"Yes, I guess it does to me, too," Nemerson said, "now that you've walked us through it. But I just can't believe he would do it. How could he?"

"It may give you some measure of comfort," Henry said, "to remind yourself that he didn't actually carry the plan out to completion. He never submitted the manuscript in its current form. Perhaps he was just entertaining the idea in a moment of despair, and if he had survived his illness, perhaps he would have changed the name on the story back and spent a few more years working on a story of his own. And perhaps in time he'd have written one, and perhaps it would have been good."

"I don't know," Nemerson said. "Do you really think he deserves the benefit of the doubt?"

"We all do," Henry said.

Return to Table of Contents

By Isaac Asimov

One of the last books Isaac Asimov completed before his death in 1992 was the memoir
I. Asimov
,
in which he wrote 166 essays concerning the major events and undertakings of his life. Among the topics he discussed was how he came to write mystery short stories in general and the Black Widowers stories in particular.

 
have always wanted to write mystery short stories. At the start I was committed to science fiction, of course, and some of my science fiction short stories were very much like mysteries. This was true of several of my robot stories, for instance.

I also wrote a series of five science fiction stories about a character named Wendell Ruth, who solved mysteries without ever leaving home. The first of these, "The Singing Bell," appeared in the January 1955 [issue of
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction].

The Wendell Urth stories were fun, but they didn't quite satisfy my desires. I wanted to write a "straight" mystery, with no science fiction angle to it. I did write one in 1955, but
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (EQMM)
rejected it. I finally placed it in
The Saint Mystery Magazine,
where it appeared in the January 1956 issue, under the name "Death of a Honey-Blonde." It was set in a chemistry department, however, so that, while it was not science fiction, I had not entirely freed myself from science.

It was not a very good story and I was disheartened. Nevertheless, the urge to write short mysteries persisted.
EQMM
regularly publishes "first stories," usually short-shorts by writers who had never published before. My chagrin finally bubbled over and I thought, "If these amateurs can do it, why can't I?"

So I wrote a short-short on November 12, 1969, and had it in the mail two hours after I had thought of the idea.
EQMM
took it and ran it under the title "A Problem in Numbers" in the May 1970 issue of the magazine.

But that dealt with a chemistry department, too, as, for that matter, had
The Death Dealers,
my one straight mystery novel up to that time. It irritated me. I wanted to write nonscience mysteries. Why? Science and science fiction had been so good to me. Why should I abandon a faithful wife (so to speak) to lust after some flirtatious stranger?

Well, I had done science fiction. I wanted new worlds to conquer. I had always loved mystery short stories from childhood and I wanted to do mysteries too. Besides, if you want a less idealistic reason, I found mysteries easier to write than science fiction. . . .

My first sale of a story to
EQMM
did not lead to a flood of mystery writing. After all, I never lacked for other things to do. In early 1971, however, Eleanor Sullivan, the beautiful blond managing editor of
EQMM,
wrote me a letter
asking
for a story. Eagerly, I agreed, but now I had to think of a plot.