In the story, the monster is finally exposed as an alien female from a species whose females first mate with their males and then devour them. The creature’s outward appearance is that of an attractive human woman — very attractive, especially in panties — but under that shell it is little more than poison glands and ravening appetite. Its downfall comes when it tries to seduce a seemingly mild-mannered science-fiction writer who divines its true nature just in time and dispatches it in a grisly scene involving a small, dull hatchet and a paring knife.
Just before this scene, the alien monster also threatens the life of the writer’s next-door neighbor, a young woman of stunning, exotic beauty, with shoulder-length black hair and olive skin. In slaughtering the monster, the writer also saves this young woman’s life, and she demonstrates her gratitude appropriately, in a scene Malcolm described in almost as much loving detail as he had the monster’s bloody death.
In the final scene, the heroic writer is shown explaining everything to a close friend of his. They are together in a bar, and the friend has just bought the writer ten beers in celebration. “Best of all,” the writer is saying, “I already owned the hatchet and the paring knife, so cutting off this relationship, as you might say, didn’t cost me one red cent. I’ll sure miss one thing, though.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, when it all started, before the creature showed her true nature, the dame sure was good in bed.”
Malcolm hesitated over those last few lines for quite a while. Somehow, they seemed to strike a false note. But then he shrugged away his doubts. What the hell, he thought. It’s better than anything Joe Hoffman ever wrote.
And just to prove to the world how true that was, that very evening, at work, after all his fellow workers had gone home, he printed out the entire story on the office laser printer, and then he made numerous photocopies of it (WARNING: THESE MACHINES ARE TO BE USED FOR WESTERN BELL UNIVERSAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS OFFICIAL BUSINESS ONLY. ANY PERSONAL USE CONSTITUTES A VIOLATION OF THE WESTERN BELL UNIVERSAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS CODE OF BUSINESS CONDUCT AND IS GROUNDS FOR TERMINATION) and mailed the copies out to the other members of the writers’ workshop for their critique.
Take that, Hoffman, he thought happily as he sealed the copies in large envelopes from the supply room, stamped them on the postage meter in the mail room, and dropped them in the sack some anonymous company gofer would pick up in the morning and deliver to the Post Office.
* * * * *
Three weeks passed before the writers’ workshop met, and during that time, Malcolm did not reread the story his fellow writers would be critiquing. On Saturday morning, as he was eating breakfast preparatory to leaving for the workshop meeting, he decided to skim “Sleeping in the Devil’s Bed” quickly to refresh his memory of it, and immediately he realized what an awful mistake he had made.
Why, this is crap! he thought.
This isn’t how I normally write, he assured himself, feeling the bony fingers of despair latching onto his soul. I’m better than this.
He hoped that was true.
Years before, he had complained (all right: whined) to Marlene that there must be a cabal of New York editors who met in an underground cave lit by flickering candles where they agreed to reject anything written by Malcolm Erskine. How else explain his lack of success?
“Bullshit,” Marlene had said scornfully. “Don’t kid yourself. There’s no cabal and no secret agreement. They reject your stuff because they read it and see that it’s all crap.”
Had he been fooling himself all these years? Was his writing, in fact, all crap? No: consider the good reviews his books had received. They had also received some bad reviews, but there was no point in paying attention to those.
Oh, well, Malcolm thought, might as well put a good face on it and bear it.
Which turned out to be hard to do.
Joe Hoffman, of course, led off the critiquing round. “I do think, Malcolm, that I’ve read this story a few times in collections of old works from the pulp magazines. And I’m forced to say — am, in fact, unable to refrain from saying — that the old pulpers did a better job of it than you did in the current opus.”
Why, Malcolm wondered, can’t this guy speak English? Why does he always produce those long, carefully thought out sentences and deliberate archaisms? Does that come along with success? Will I start talking that way, some day? Will I, one must wonder, ever have reason to do so — which is to say, will I ever be as successful as he? Christ, now I’m thinking the way he talks!
“I’m not really sure that a detailed analysis of this story would be too terribly productive,” Hoffman went on. “Suffice it to say that I choose to dismiss it as a minor Erskine effort — a jeu d’esprit, one might say.”
If one were inclined to say such pretentious things, Malcolm thought. Prick.
“However,” Hoffman continued, “I must object to the details of one scene. On page 28 —” riffle, riffle as all the others flipped through their copies of the story to find the offending scene “— where you describe the unsuccessful attempt by the lesser science-fiction writer trained in the martial arts to fend off the attack by the Marlinga, the details of the physical encounter are utterly improbable. I feel that I can speak authoritatively on this subject since, as you may know, I am a science-fiction writer trained in the martial arts, and I can assure you, Malcolm, that the physical movements you’ve described are quite unbelievable.”
And he looked just like you, too, before the Marlinga got him, Malcolm thought. Of course I know about your martial arts training, you jerk. You mention it every chance you get. Why don’t you ever submit anything to this workshop, Hoffman? Afraid to give me a chance at your stuff in public?
Larry Lefkowitz, a younger member of the group, chimed in next. Malcolm had noticed before that Lefkowitz almost always spoke right after Hoffman, whose protégé he seemed to have become. “As you know, Malcolm, and as I have urged upon you before, I feel that the goal of the writer must always be truth, that is, the presentation of the truth to the masses, whether they want to hear it or not.”
When, Malcolm wondered, had this child started sounding like Hoffman? And what made the boy feel he had the right to lecture his elders and betters? And why was Malcolm sitting here taking this? And how severe would the legal penalties be if he strangled the kid?
“I, of course,” Lefkowitz continued, “am putting my efforts into a novel that I know will change the world. Unlike you, I’m not concentrating on mere entertainment. However, that’s your choice, and under the terms of the workshop, it’s my duty to help you write better entertainment. Or at least to improve your chances of attaining some degree of commercial success. That said, given the nature of the sub-genre you have chosen to write in, I’m willing to accept the silly tough-guy patois used by your protagonist, but other than that I do wonder why you don’t strive for more originality and inventiveness in these rip-roaring action-adventure tales of yours. What I want to know most of all is, why, in everything you write, do you always have your hero ending up with a beautiful young woman with black hair and olive skin and almond-shaped eyes?”
“I do not!” Malcolm protested.
“Yes, you do. It’s in every one of your novels, and now it’s even in this short story. L-o-o-o-n-g short story.”
Everyone laughed.
Malcolm gritted his teeth. “Maybe it’s wish fulfillment, okay? You have yours. I have mine. It’s my fantasy world and my protagonist, so I’ll have him end up with whatever kind of girl I want him to.”
“Which is to say, a beautiful young woman with black hair and olive skin and almond-shaped eyes.” This from Gloria Samson, whom Malcolm had always found attractive before today. Now she launched into an attack on his story that made it sound like the worst waste of paper and ink she had ever read.
“It’s not that bad,” Malcolm said weakly.
“I think it is,” Gloria said.
Bitch, Malcolm thought. Hormones out of whack, or what? He said
nothing, though.
“Trés bourgeois,” Lefkowitz sneered.
“One thing I have to say,” Joe Hoffman added, “is that although we’re all sympathetic regarding your marital problems —”
How the hell did he know already? Malcolm wondered.
“Not all of us,” Gloria Samson muttered.
“I’m surprised Marlene hung around this long,” someone else said.
“— I think you should maintain a more objective attitude toward them,” Hoffman concluded. “I don’t think you should convert Marlene into the central monster in your story.”
Good God! Malcolm thought. It’s true! The story really is all about Marlene the Malignant. It’s not about some outer-space monster at all!
How humiliating to have to have Joe Hoffman point that out to him.
More than ever, he felt like an outsider in the group. Maybe I really wasn’t cut out to be a science-fiction writer, Malcolm thought gloomily. Maybe I ought to try something else, some other field. Maybe non-fiction.
* * * * *
It was one year later that the inspiration to write Business Secrets from the Stars struck.
For a moment, Malcolm was moved to submit the manuscript for the book to the workshop as he wrote it, but then wisdom prevailed. For one thing, the members of the workshop, so dedicated to trying to produce serious fiction, would never understand such a book as it was meant to be understood. For another, one of them might understand the book and its potential all too well and steal the idea. Malcolm was not the fastest writer in the world, and he could easily imagine one of the other workshop members staying up for seventy-two hours straight and producing his book before he did.
Malcolm trusted no one. Once, he had trusted Marlene. That, he was determined, would be his last mistake of that sort.
But he knew almost from the start, from the opening words of Business Secrets from the Stars, that the book would be his ticket to the top. And so he was able to sit quietly at the meetings of the writers’ workshop and feel a superior certainty when comparing himself to his Piketonian fellows. He could see now that they were stuck in place, getting nowhere, repeating themselves, churning out hackneyed work in a genre with a diminishing readership. Their focus was narrow and seemed, with each monthly meeting, to be getting narrower.
Even the ones who did try to break out into the mainstream didn’t know how to go about doing so.
They just don’t get it, Malcolm thought. They don’t understand how the world works.
Larry Lefkowitz, for example. He had finally stopped writing science fiction stories that were thinly disguised political lectures. Now he was working on a long, mainstream novel that was a thinly disguised — but l-o-o-o-o-ng — political lecture. It started with a brief scene depicting rabblerousers in pre-Revolutionary France singing, “A la lanterne, les aristos!” Then it leaped to contemporary America, where the sinister ruling class of plutocrats had instructed all the power companies to install exceedingly high lampposts. The book’s tentative title was The Second American Revolution, and the rabblerousing slogan of its heroes was, “Lower the lampposts!”
Malcolm was astonished at how seriously his fellow workshoppers took all of this. When it was his turn to comment on the chapters they had all read for this month’s workshop, Malcolm said, “I think you should make the parallel clearer. Have them shout ‘Lower the lampposts!’ in French.”
Lefkowitz looked surprised, then interested. “I like that! Thanks, Malcolm. I’ll do it.”
Malcolm could hardly keep his face straight. The book was doomed anyway, but just in case it had had a chance, that touch of wackiness would kill it for sure.
Although the whole lamppost conspiracy thing is kind of clever, Malcolm thought. I wonder if I could use that somehow in Business Secrets from the Stars. He pondered the idea for a while but then gave up on it.
Why should he borrow anything from any of these people, anyway? They were insignificant compared to what he would soon be.
Of course, none of them had yet realized that Malcolm was destined to be the biggest literary and media star that Piketon had ever produced or probably ever would. So to outward appearances he remained a lesser figure in the gatherings, and Joe Hoffman remained the star. That didn’t bother Malcolm quite as much as it once had.
Enjoy your chieftainship, you prick, Malcolm thought with calm inner joy. It won’t last.
He looked around the room at the others. They were stuck on Earth. He was on his way to the stars.
* * * * *
CHAPTER FOUR
Ah, spawn of my spawn, starspawnspawn, be always aware, always alert, always on the watch for the Enemy. It may come in a pleasant guise — for example, a pretty good job with decent benefits. It may even appear in the form of a beautiful woman of considerable desirability and unusual skills. But the Enemy’s true mission is always to sap your strength, to feast upon your vital juices, and to leave you a drained husk. Do not be deceived, O Earthian hero! Do not become a meal for a Black Widow spider! Yours is a higher destiny!
— Business Secrets from the Stars, through the mouth of Malcolm Erskine, from the channeled spirit of Lukas of Aldebaran, who had scars of his own.
When Marlene and Malcolm first met, she was a receptionist at Western Bell, working at the front desk of the office where Malcolm had just been hired as a programmer. Marlene was small, lean, lively, animated, extremely pretty, with dark-brown hair which she wore at about chin length. At his first sight of her, Malcolm felt as though he’d been, if not quite punched in the stomach, at least slapped there.
On their first date, they talked and talked and discovered an instant compatibility in almost everything — music, movies, books, plays, food and drink, dislike for various fellow employees. He told her all about his writing dreams and the small but promising success he had had at that point. She, misled by the absurd portrait of the writer’s life depicted in Hollywood movies, assumed he would soon be rich and, not too many years later, would die of cirrhosis of the liver, leaving whomever he had married a very rich widow.
On their second date, Marlene showed Malcolm that what he had always thought was sex was in fact a pale substitute for the real thing. Marlene was the real thing.
That night, he asked himself, How can I let this get away from me?
By morning, the question had changed. Can I, he asked himself, survive a steady diet of this?
Not to worry, Malcolm.
The supply of rapture diminished quickly after their wedding, which took place three months after that second date. He had been in no physical danger from Marlene, after all.
Psychological danger was a different matter entirely.
After marriage, Marlene disclosed an ambitious facet to her personality that had been well hidden before. Their combined salaries provided a comfortable life for a childless young couple, with a reasonable ration of luxuries, but Marlene wanted much, much more.
First she signed up for one of the programs under which Western Bell paid for college courses taken by its employees.
These programs covered business courses only. Malcolm had once tried to get the company to pay for an art appreciation course he was interested in. The attempt had brought him some very angry interoffice mail from someone who officed on a very high floor. Even those employees who wanted to take business courses usually had trouble getting approval for time off and getting the company to pay the tuition and buy the books. The programs existed on paper to make Western Bell look good, not to do its employees any good.
But Marlene was very good at getting other people to do things for her, and she had no problem getting the company to pay the tuition for her courses.
In a very few years, she had completed her degree in accounting and had quit Western Bell for a nicely paid job working for the largest commercial enterprise in the state, First Arapahoe Savings and Extortion. The youngish couple’s circumstances should have improved considerably because of Marlene’s higher salary, but she
preferred to spend most of the extra income on herself and save the rest of it in a savings account with only her name on it. Major improvements in their lifestyle, she explained not very patiently, would have to come from increases in Malcolm’s earnings.
And speaking of which, “Why aren’t you doing something to advance yourself?” Marlene asked frequently. “You could take some courses, like I did, something useful, and either move up the ladder at Western, or else come over to First, like me.”
And then Malcolm made his second biggest mistake since marrying Marlene, the biggest having been the marriage itself. One of the times she said this to him — the last time, in fact — he sneered and replied, “Oh, sure, something really fascinating, like a bookkeeping course. Gag. And then I could move up to some really brain-dead job, like Assistant Comptroller, or something.”
Marlene narrowed her little eyes and pursed her little mouth. Only the day before, she had said something admiring about Fred Seicht, Assistant Comptroller at First Arapahoe Savings and Extortion. “A damned sight more useful than art appreciation, anyway,” she said in what he should have recognized by now as a dangerous tone.
“Right. Sure. I guess an Assistant Comptroller would be more interested in how much a painting could be sold for than in what the artist was trying to say, right?”
“Right, because the artist was probably saying, ‘How the hell am I going to pay this month’s rent if I don’t sell this crummy painting?’ And that reminds me, what the hell do you think you’re doing buying yourself a computer to do your stupid writing on?”
“I can write faster and more easily on a computer. I explained that to you. There’s no comparison between using a computer and using a typewriter.”
“Oh, yeah, I understand that, all right. What I’m wondering is why you need a computer. It’d make a difference to a real writer. I can see that. But not to you.”
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