Untitled (40 page)

  Buck up. In the face of elitist pretensions. One must go out in style. This Corso's vow. Despite liquor-sticky shirt, soapy trousers, and satchel containing only a return Amtrak ticket, a toothbrush, and a recent issue of
Fantascience Journal.
With a picture of Hugo Gernsback on the cover.

  "What'll you have Corso. Can't decide, huh. Used to ordering through the drive-up window, hey. Okay, let me get us started." Multrum rattles off a litany of dishes. The server brings their drinks. Corso allowed one sip. Before Multrum launches into business.

  "Now listen to me Corso. You and I both know you're in deep shit with Wankel and Butte Books. But I've negotiated you one final extension. However, the grace period hinges on you going over there in person and kissing some ass."

  "Exactly my own strategy Clive. Of course, Kowtow and touch cap. Not too proud to beg. Yes, certainly. I already have an appointment later this afternoon with Roger."

  "Excellent! Then back home to dig into
Neutron Cannon
."

  "Ah,
The Black Hole Gun
."

  "Sure, whatever. But before then, you're going to do both of us a big favor. You're going to knock out a tie-in novel. Vestine Opdycke from Shuman and Shyster called me, desperate for a last-minute replacement for Jerome Arizona. Arizona bailed on this project, and they need it yesterday."

  His second drink of the day is inflating Corso's brain. Leery of visionary states. But no immediate untoward incidents. No smerps or thoats rampaging through the restaurant. As they once did in the Wal-Mart. Where the beasts received no cheerful hello. From the oblivious store greeter.

  Allowing a drift of mellowness to overtake his anxiety-plagued day. "But Arizona is usually so reliable. Never misses a deadline."

  "True. But that was before he was caught by the local cops in bed with two sixteen-year-olds."

  "Oh."

  "So, are you onboard."

  "But what's the nature of the project."

  "A novelization of the S
tarmaker
movie."

  Corso misbelieves his ears. "The Stapledon classic."

  "I think that's the guy's name."

  "But there's already a book. Hundreds of pages of impeccable speculative text. They must have used that as a source of the script. Can't they just reissue the original."

  "The movie doesn't exactly follow the original anymore. Just the new love interests and space battles alone demand a different version. C'mon, it's easy money. No royalties though. Strictly work for hire."

  Corso is bewildered. Lowering his glance to his immaculate napkin in his lap. How to answer. Traducing one's youthful idol. But quick cash. And a foot in the door at Schuman and Shyster. Maybe a good way to dissolve one's block. Crib from a master. What choice does one have.

  Corso raises his eyes to Multrum's face.

  The agent's brow is mutating to a jutting ledge. Features thickening. Facial pelt growing. Stained horsey teeth protruding. Multrum has devolved. To Neanderthal status. And so have the other diners. And staff. Walking awkwardly with curved backs and bowed legs. Their neckties cinching their enlarged necks. Like barbed wire overgrown by a tree.

  Multrum grows impatient. His voice remains unchanged. Thankfully. No primordial grunts to misinterpret. "Well Corso what's your answer."

  Even as Corso rummages for his own voice, Multrum continues to devolve. Scales. Fangs. Horns. Spiked tail. Multrum now an anthropomorphic saurian. A dinosaur in Hugo Boss. And the rest of the patrons. Similarly antediluvian. One female dinosaur. Categorized by her dress. Picks up her steak with disproportionately small forelimbs. And pops it entire into her slavering, razortoothed mouth.

  Sweat soaks Corso's shirt. Reptilian stench emanates from his table partner. Must phrase one's acceptance of the odious assignment in the most genial terms. Lest agent take offense. And disembowel one with a casual kick.

One's third female gatekeeper of the day. The receptionist at Butte Books. Cheeks still hamstery with adolescent avoirdupois. Purple nail polish. Gingery hair secured in two outjutting tails on either side. Of a face both too wise and utterly naive. A recent graduate, no doubt. Of a prestigious school. That should be ashamed of itself. For culturing and feeding innumerable such starry-eyed hapless romantics. Into publishing's voracious lowwage maw.

  "Ah, Mr. Fairfield to see Mr. Wankel."

  "Go right in please."

  Corso expected to wait. The easy access discommodes him. For he needs to utilize a jakes.

  "Is there, um, a restroom I could avail myself of first."

  "Certainly. Here's the key. Left down that corridor."

  Carrying the sacred key. Almost as if he works here. At the firm which ignored all his suggestions. For the cover of
Cosmocopia.
And instead of Whelan or Eggleton. He got the defiantly pastel work of Murrell Peurifoy. Whose
oeuvre
consists almost entirely of covers for humorous fantasy novels. And the image Peurifoy supplied for the eponymous device of Corso's book. Looked like a hybrid of a juicer, the postmodern VW Bug, and a penile extension pump.

  Through the limited-access door. Into the uttermost stall. Hanging satchel from a coat hook. Gratefully dropping one's trousers and boxers. Taking a seat. Peristaltic relief. Still blessedly easy to obtain. Unlike the mental variety.

  Additional patrons entering noisily. A familiar voice and an unknown one. Wankel himself the former. Jovial banter above hardy plashing of piss.

  "So you're meeting with Corso Fairly Fried. What's his story these days."

  "Pathetic case. Fair amount of talent. But he's gotten too deep into this whole mythos of the genre thing. Thinks SF is some kind of mystical calling. Instead of just another job. Imagines he's writing for a fraternity of supermen. Instead of a bunch of dorky, over-intelligent fifteen-year-olds."

  Laughter from the unidentified interlocutor. "Jesus! Can't he see it's all interchangeable. Mysteries, technothrillers, westerns. Just a load of identical crap. Well, I know one thing. I won't make
that
mistake. I'm not getting trapped in this dead-end field. Another year or two and I'm outta here. I've already got some feelers out at
Maxim."

  Zippers laddering upward.
"Maxim,
huh. Must meet a lot of beautiful women there."

  "You bet."

  Sounds of hand-washing. Departure. And a sob betokening black desolation in the farthermost stall.

  Corso Fairly Fried. His public image. Known to everyone but oneself. Passion and dedication to one's chosen field. Derided and cast aside. One's motivation laughable. If not predicated strictly on commercialism. Not to mention exclusion of any artistic striving. To build upon the work of past heroes. Giants of the medium. Who no doubt received similar treatment. From their own traitorous editors.

  And when he faces Wankel. The temptation will be there. To spit in his eye. Or punch same. But he of course cannot. For Multrum would rend his impetuous and violent client into bite-sized pieces. To be shared with the other velociraptors. Corso's only choice. To swallow his shame. And carry on.

  Back to the receptionist. Return the key. Into Wankel's sanctum.

  Roger Wankel standing by a table near the window. View of steel and glass canyons. Assaultive in their uncaring facades. Birds in flight. Boyish shock of tawny hair angling across the editor's wide brow. Close-set eyes. Nose and lips chosen from a child's catalog of facial features then misplaced in an adult facial template. Sorting through a stack of cover proofs. Perhaps Peurifoy already engaged to limn
The Black Hole Gun.
If so, one has only a dual question. Is that window shatterproof. And how far to the ground.

  "Corso! A real pleasure to see you! How's Ginny doing."

  "You must mean Jenny. She's fine." Unspoken of course. That she is fine with someone else.

  "Great, great. Now I assume you're here to talk about the extension. Never thought it would get approved. But Multrum's one tough negotiator. You're lucky to have him on your team."

  "Yes. He has a thick hide."

  "True, true. Now what can you share with me to convince me you've got a handle on this project."

  Restraining oneself from "sharing" venomous accusations. Of venality and double-dealing. Instead babbling in a stream-ofconsciousness fashion. About likely plot developments. Which might occur. To Corso's protagonist. Russ Radikans. Owner of the Black Hole Gun. Ancient artifact of a vanished race. The Acheropyte. And Russ's lover. Zulma Nautch. Starship pilot. Of the
Growler.
Zulma's evil clone sister. Zinza, deadly assassin. And so forth. With Wankel taking it all in. And nodding sagely. The hypocritical bastard.

  A knock at the office door. Which Wankel ignores. But a workman enters regardless. Mustache, dirty brown coveralls, hammer hanging from a loop, work gloves tucked in a back pocket. And without a word. The man begins to dismantle one of the office walls. Using a putty knife. To peel sheets of thin substance away. Not plaster or particleboard, but a resinous veneer. To reveal not girders and joists. But rather the raw blue air several dozen stories up. A breeze strokes Corso's cheek.

  Corso flummoxed into silence. Wankel confused. But only by his author's hesitation. "Go on, I'm listening." So that Corso realizes. This is another hallucination. And he tries to continue. Tries to embrace the unpredictable unreality of his senses.

  Now several more workmen arrive. All twins to the first. A busy horde of disassemblers. They fall to aiding the original in deconstructing the walls. Until soon Corso and Wankel sit at the top of a lofty naked pillar. A few square feet of carpeted floor. Exposed on all sides. To Manhattan's brutal scrutiny. Since the rest of the office has inexplicably vanished. A stage set struck. By the Hidden Puppet Masters. Who intend to decimate. Corso's solipsistic self.

  Breezes riffle Corso's hair. He cannot go on. Because of the actions of one workman. Who has stepped confidently off the pillar. And now climbs the sky itself. As if the air were a gentle blue slope. He heads for the "sun." And as he approaches the orb he does not shrink. But rather puts the sun into its true scale. A disk as big as a hubcap. And donning his gloves. The workman begins to unscrew the sun.

  At the same time the other workmen have shut down Wankel. Employing a switch at the back of his neck. Corso's enduring suspicions of the existence of some such switch now validated. And they pick up the editor's chair with him in it. And tip it upside down. But Wankel remains attached. Grinning moronically.

  And then as the sun is finally completely unthreaded from its socket descends the ultimate darkness.

As if Russ Radikans
just employed his
Black Hole Gun
on his very Creator.

"Corso my boy. Wake up!"

  That plummy voice. Steeped in all the luxuries of a cozy life. So familiar. From a credit-card commercial. And one for Saturn automobiles. And many a convention panel. Not to mention the occasional phone conversation. In the nighted hours. When despair crept up. On the protégé. And he dialed the mentor's home phone. A number millions of fans would have killed for. One such being the vanished younger Corso himself. And even now when one is accorded one's own small professional stature. Still half-disbelieving. One has been granted such a high privilege.

  Corso unshutters his eyes. He is recumbent. Half naked. Atop a wheeled stretcher. Shielded by dirty curtains on rings. From the pitiful and pitying gazes of fellow sufferers. Evidently in a hospital emergency room. And by his side sits Malachi Stiltjack.

  Stiltjack wears an expensive charcoal suit. Many yards of Italian fabric girdling his extensive acreage. Of a finer cut even than Multrum's. Vest. Watch chain. Other dandyish accoutrements. Silver hair razor-cut and styled to perfection. His middleaged shiny pontifical face beaming. Presumably at Corso's reattainment of consciousness.

  "What – what happened to me?"

  "You passed out in your editor's office. Bad show my boy. Many of us have longed for such an escape, but it's pure cowardice to make such a melodramatic exit. Reflects poorly on your endurance and stamina. How could you handle a multicity book tour if one little bout of tedium causes you to crumple like an empty potato-chip packet. So they'll ask. In any case, an ambulance rushed you here. I tracked you down when you failed to meet me."

  "Oh Christ, Wankel will put me at the top of his shit list now for sure."

  Wry expression on Stiltjack's face. "And you weren't there already."

  Corso chagrined. "You know then about me missing my deadlines."

  "But who doesn't.
Locus
even did a sidebar on your predicament in the December issue. Didn't you see it then."

  "I let my subscription lapse. Money was tight. And reading
Locus
just makes me nervous. All those big-money deals, all those brilliant, joyous, glad-handing
professionals.
How does it all relate to the actual dreaming – "

  "Come now Corso you should know better than to believe all that printed hyperbole. None of us is ever really secure. Most writers just put up a good front."

  An ungenerous feeling of anger and envy at his friend. "Easy enough for you to say Malachi with your castle and contracts and – and concubines!"

  The padrone unoffended by the peon's eruption. Magnanimous and solicitous from on high. "Now, now Corso such resentment ill becomes you. But I understand completely that it's your creative blockage talking. That's the crux of your trouble. Not your material circumstances. Or your wife's desertion."

  A wail of despair. "My God has
Locus
run a sidebar on that too!"