The Early Asimov. Volume 1

by Isaac Asimov

She seized his hand. “There’s only one little request. You might,” she blushed faintly, “you might give poor Reginald-if you will allow me to call him that just once-a chance to marry Letitia Reynolds. You make her just a little too cruel to him. I’m sure I weep over it for hours together sometimes. But then he is too, too real to me.”

  And from somewhere, a lacy frill of handkerchief made its appearance, and went to her eyes. She removed it, smiled bravely, and scurried away. Graham Dorn inhaled, closed his eyes, and gently collapsed into June’s arms.

  His eyes opened with a jerk. “You may consider,” he said severely, “our engagement frazzled to the breaking point. Only my consideration for your poor, aged parents prevents your being known henceforward as the ex-fiancee of Graham Dom.”

  “Darling, you are so noble.” She massaged his sleeve with her cheek. “Come, I’ll take you home and bathe your poor wounds.”

  “All right, but you’ll have to carry me. Has your precious, loveable aunt got an axe?”

  “But why?”

  “For one thing, she had the gall to introduce me as the brain-father, God help me, of the famous Reginald de Meister.”

  “And aren’t you?”

  “Let’s get out of this creep-joint. And get this. I’m no relative by brain or otherwise, of that character. I disown him. I cast him into the darkness. I spit upon him. I declare him an illegitimate son, a foul degenerate, and the offspring of a hound, and I’ll be damned if he ever pokes his lousy patrician nose into my typewriter again.”

  They were in the taxi, and June straightened his tie. “ All right, Sonny, let’s see the letter.”

  “What letter?”

  She held out her hand. “The one from the publishers.”

  Graham snarled and flipped it out of his jacket pocket. “I’ve thought of inviting myself to his house for tea, the damned flintheart. He’s got a rendezvous with a pinch of strychnine.”

  “You may rave later. What does he say? Hmm-uh-huh-’doesn’t quite come up to what is expected-feel that de Meister isn’t in his usual form-a little revision perhaps towards-feel sure the novel can be adjusted-are returning under separate cover-’ “

  She tossed it aside. “I told you you shouldn’t have killed off Sancha Rodriguez. She was what you needed. You’re getting skimpy on the love interest.”

  “You write it! I’m through with de Meister. It’s getting so clubwomen call me Mr. de Meister, and my picture is printed in newspapers with the caption Mr. de Meister. I have no individuality. No one ever heard of Graham Dom. I’m always: Dom, Dom, you know, the guy who writes the de Meister stuff, you know.”

  June squealed, “Silly! You’re jealous of your own detective.”

  “I am not jealous of my own character. Listen! I hate detective stories. I never read them after I got into the two-syllable words. I wrote the first as a clever, trenchant, biting satire. It was to blast the entire false school of mystery writers. That’s why I invented this de Meister. He was the detective to end all detectives. The Compleat Ass, by Graham Dom.

  “So the public, along with snakes, vipers, and ungrateful children takes this filth to its bosom. I wrote mystery after mystery trying to convert the public”

  Graham Dom drooped a little at the futility of it all.

  “Oh, well.” He smiled wanly, and the great soul rose above adversity. “Don’t you see? I’ve got to write other things. I can’t waste my life. But who’s going to read a serious novel by Graham Dorn, now that I’m so thoroughly identified with de Meister?”

  “You can use a pseudonym.”

  “I will not use a pseudonym. I’m proud of my name.”

  “But you can’t drop de Meister. Be sensible, dear.”

  “Anormal fiancee,” Graham said bitterly, “would want her future husband to write something really worthwhile and become a great name in literature.”

  “Well, I do want you to, Graham. But just a little de Meister once in a while to pay the bills that accumulate.”

  “Ha!” Graham knocked his hat over his eyes to hide the sufferings of a strong spirit in agony. “Now you say that I can’t reach prominence unless I prostitute my art to that unmentionable. Here’s your place. Get out I’m going home and write a good scorching letter on asbestos to our senile Mr. MacDunlap.”

  “Do exactly as you want to, cookie,” soothed June. “And tomorrow when you feel better, you’ll come and cry on my shoulder, and we’ll plan a revision of Death on the Third Deck together, shall we?”

  “The engagement, “ said Graham, loftily, “is broken. “

  “Yes, dear. I’ll be home tomorrow at eight”

  “That is of no possible interest to me. Good-bye!”

  Publishers and editors are untouchables, of course. Theirs is a heritage of the outstretched hand and the well-toothed smile; the nod of the head and the slap of the back.

  But perhaps somewhere, in the privacy of the holes to which authors scurry when the night falls, a private revenge is taken. There, phrases may be uttered where no one can overhear, and letters may be written that need not be mailed, and perhaps a picture of an editor, smiling pensively, is enshrined above the typewriter to act the part of bulls-eye in an occasional game of darts.

  Such a picture of MacDunlap, so used, enlightened Graham Dom’s room. And Graham Dom himself, in his usual writing costume (street-clothes and typewriter), scowled at the fifth sheet of paper in his typewriter. The other four were draped over the edge of the wastebasket, condemned for their milk-and-watery mildness.

  He began:

  “Dear Sir-” and added slowly and viciously, “or Madam, as the case may be.”

  He typed furiously as the inspiration caught him, disregarding the faint wisp of smoke curling upward from the overheated keys:

  “You say you don’t think much of de Meister in this story. Well, I don’t think much of de Meister, period. You can handcuff your slimy carcass to his and jump off the Brooklyn Bridge. And I hope they drain the East River just before you jump.

  “From now on, my works will be aimed higher than your scurvy press. And the day will come when I can look back on this period of my career with the loathing that is its just-”

  Someone had been tapping Graham on the shoulder during the last paragraph. Graham twitched it angrily and ineffectively at intervals.

  Now he stopped, turned around, and addressed the stranger in his room courteously: “Who the devilish damnation are you? And you can leave without bothering to answer. I won’t think you rude.”

  The newcomer smiled graciously. His nod wafted the delicate aroma of some unobtrusive hair-oil toward Graham. His lean, hard-bitten jaw stood out keenly, and he said in a well-modulated voice:

  “De Meister is the name. Reginald de Meister.”

  Graham rocked to his mental foundations and heard them creak.

  “Glub,” he said.

  “Pardon?”

  Graham recovered. “I said, ‘glub,’ a little code word meaning which de Meister.”

  “The de Meister,” explained de Meister, kindly. “My character? My detective?”

  De Meister helped himself to a seat, and his finely-chiseled features assumed that air of well-bred boredom so admired in the best circles. He lit a Turkish cigarette, which Graham at once recognized as his detective’s favorite brand, tapping it slowly and carefully against the back of his hand first, a mannerism equally characteristic.

  “Really, old man,” said de Meister. “This is really excruciatin’ly funny. I suppose I am your charcter, y’know, but let’s not work on that basis. It would be so devastatin’ly awkward.”

  “Glub,” said Graham again, by way of rejoinder.

  His mind was feverishly setting up alternatives. He didn’t drink, more, at the moment, was the pity, so he wasn’t drunk. He had a chrome-steel digestion and he wasn’t overheated, so it wasn’t a hallucination. He never dreamed, and his imagination-as befitted a paying commodity-was under strict control. And since, like all authors, he was wide
ly considered more than half a screwball, insanity was out of the question.

  Which left de Meister simply an impossibility, and Graham felt relieved. It’s a very poor author indeed who hasn’t learned the fine art of ignoring impossibilities in writing a book.

  He said smoothly, “I have here a volume of my latest work. Do you mind naming your page and crawling back into it. I’m a busy man and God knows I have enough of you in the tripe I write.”

  “But I’m here on business, old chap. I’ve got to come to a friendly arrangement with you first. Things are deucedly uncomfortable as they are.”

  “Look, do you know you’re bothering me? I’m not in the habit of talking to mythical characters. As a general thing, I don’t pal around with them. Besides which, it’s time your mother told you that you really don’t exist.”

  “My dear fellow, I always existed. Existence is such a subjective thing. What a mind thinks exists, does exist. I existed in your mind, for instance, ever since you first thought of me.”

  Graham shuddered. “But the question is, what are you doing out of my mind? Getting a little narrow for you? Want elbow room?”

  “Not at all. Rather satisfact’ry mind in its way, but I achieved a more concrete existence only this afternoon, and so I seize the opportunity to engage you face to face in the aforementioned business conversation. You see, that thin, sentimental lady of your society-”

  “What society?” questioned Graham hollowly. It was all awfully clear to him now.

  “The one at which you made a speech-” de Meister shuddered in his turn-”on the detective novel. She believed in my existence, so naturally, I exist.”

  He finished his cigarette and flicked it out with a negligent twist of the wrist.

  “The logic,” declared Graham, “is inescapable. Now, what do you want and the answer is no.”

  “Do you realize, old man, that if you stop writing de Meister stories, my existence will become that dull, wraithlike one of all superannuated fictional detectives. I’d have to gibber through the gray mists of Limbo with Holmes, Lecocq, and Dupin.”

  “A very fascinating thought, I think. A very fitting fate.”

  Reginald de Meister’s eyes turned icy, and Graham suddenly remembered the passage on page 123 of The Case of the Broken Ashtray:

  His eyes, hitherto lazy and unattentive, hardened into twin pools of blue ice and transfixed the butler, who staggered back, a stifled cry on his lips.

  Evidently, de Meister lost none of his characteristics out of the novels he adorned.

  Graham staggered back, a stifled cry on his lip.

  De Meister said menacingly, “It would be better for you if the de Meister mysteries continue. Do you understand?”

  Graham recovered and summoned a feeble indignation. “Now, wait a while. You’re getting out of hand. Remember: in a way, I’m your father. That’s right. Your mental father. You can’t hand me ultimatums or make threats. It isn’t filial. It’s lacking in the proper respect and love.”

  “And another thing,” said de Meister, unmoved. “We’ve got to straighten out this business of Letitia Reynolds. It’s gettin’ deucedly borin’, y’know:’

  “Now you’re getting silly. My love scenes have been widely heralded as miracles of tenderness and sentiment not found in one murder mystery out of a thousand. -Wait, I’ll get you a few reviews. I don’t mind your attempts to dictate my actions so much, but I’m damned if you’ll criticize my writing.”

  “Forget the reviews. Tenderness and all that rot is what I don’t want. I’ve been driftin’ after the fair lady for five volumes now, and behavin’ the most insufferable ass. This has got to stop.”

  “In what way?”

  “I’ve got to marry her in your present story. Either that, or make her a good, respectable mistress. And you’ll have to stop making me so damned Victorian and gentlemanly towards ladies. I’m only human, old man.”

  “Impossible!” said Graham, “and that includes your last remark.”

  De Meister grew severe. “Really, old chap, for an author, you display the most appallin’ lack of concern for the well-bein’ of a character who has supported you for a good many years.”

  Graham choked eloquently. “Supported me? In other words, you think I couldn’t sell real novels, hey? Well, I’ll show you. I wouldn’t write another de Meister story for a million dollars. Not even for a fifty percent royalty and all television rights. How’s that?”

  De Meister frowned and uttered those words that had been the sound of doom to so many criminals: “We shall see, but you are not yet done with me.”

  With firmly jutting jaw, he vanished.

  Graham’s twisted face straightened out, and slowly-very slowly -he brought his hands up to his cranium and felt carefully.

  For the first time in a long and reasonably ribald mental life, he felt that his enemies were right and that a good dry cleaning would not hurt his mind at all.

  The things that existed in it!

  Graham Dorn shoved the doorbell with his elbow a second time. He distinctly remembered her saying she would be home at eight

  The peep-hole shoved open. “Hello!”

  “Hello!”

  Silence!

  Graham said plaintively, “It’s raining outside. Can’t I come in to dry?”

  “I don’t know. Are we engaged, Mr. Dorn?”

  “If I’m not,” was the stiff reply, “then I’ve been turning down the frenzied advances of a hundred passion-stricken girls-beautiful ones, all of them-for no apparent reason.”

  “Yesterday, you said-”

  “Ah, but who listens to what I say? I’m just quaint that way. Look, I brought you posies.” He flourished roses before the peep-hole.

  June opened the door. “Roses! How plebeian. Come in, cookie, and sully the sofa. Whoa, whoa, before you move a step, what have you got under the other arm? Not the manuscript of Death on the Third Deck?”

  “Correct. Not that excrescence of a manuscript This is something different”

  June’s tone chilled. “That isn’t your precious novel, is it?”

  Graham flung his head up, “How did you know about it?”

  “You slobbered the plot all over me at MacDunlap’s silver anniversary party.”

  “I did not I couldn’t unless I were drunk.”

  “Oh, but you were. Stinking is the term. And on two cocktails too.”

  “Well, if I was drunk, I couldn’t have told you the right plot”

  “Is the setting a coal-mine district?”

  “-Uh-yes.”

  “And are the people concerned real, earthy, unartificial, down-to-earth characters, speaking and thinking just like you and me? Is it a story of basic economic forces? Are the human characters lifted up and thrown down and whirled around, all at the mercy of the coal mine and mechanized industry of today?”

  “-Uh-yes.”

  She nodded her head retrospectively. “I remember distinctly. First, you got drunk and were sick. Then you got better, and told me the first few chapters. Then I got sick.”

  She approached the glowering author. “Graham.” She leant her golden head upon his shoulder and cooed softly. “Why don’t you continue with the de Meister stories? You get such pretty checks out of them.”

  Graham writhed out of her grasp. “You are a mercenary wretch, incapable of understanding an author’s soul. You may consider our engagement broken.”

  He sat down hard on the sofa, and folded his arms. “Unless you will consent to read the script of my novel and give me the usual story analysis.”

  “May I give you my analysis of Death on the Third Deck first?”

  “No.”

  “Good! In the first place, your love interest is becoming sickening.”

  “It is not.” Graham pointed his finger indignantly. “It breathes a sweet and sentimental fragrance, as of an older day. I’ve got the review here that says it.” He fumbled in his wallet.

  “Oh, bullfeathers. Are you going to s
tart quoting that guy in the Pillsboro (Okla.) Clarion? He’s probably your second cousin. You know that your last two novels were completely below par in royalties. And Third Deck isn’t even being sold.”

  “So much the better-Ow!” He rubbed his head violently. “What did you do that for?”

  “Because the only place I could hit as hard as I wanted to, without disabling you, was your head. Listen! The public is tired of your corny Letitia Reynolds. Why don’t you let her soak her ‘gleaming golden crown of hair’ in kerosene and get familiar with a match?”

  “But June, that character is drawn from life. From you!”

  “Graham Dorn! I am not here to listen to insults. The mystery market today is swinging towards action and hot, honest love and you’re still in the sweet, sentimental stickiness of five years ago.”

  “But that’s Reginald de Meister’s character.”

  “Well, change his character. Listen! You introduce Sancha Rodriguez. That’s fine. I approve of her. She’s Mexican, flaming, passionate, sultry, and in love with him. So what do you do? First he behaves the impeccable gentleman, and then you kill her off in the middle of the story.”

  “Hmm, I see-You really think it would improve things to have de Meister forget himself. A kiss or so-”

  June clenched her lovely teeth and her lovely fists. “Oh, darling, how glad I am love is blind! If it ever peeked one tiny little bit, I couldn’t stand it. Look, you squirrel’s blue plate special, you’re going to have de Meister and Rodriquez fall in love. They’re going to have an affair through the entire book and you can put your horrible Letitia into a nunnery. She probably be happier there from the way you make her sound.”

  “That’s all you know about it, my sweet. It so happens that Reginald de Meister is in love with Letitia Reynolds and wants her, not this Roderiguez person.”

  “And what makes you think that?”

  “He told me so.”

  “Who told you so?”

  “Reginald de Meister.”

  “What Reginald de Meister?”

  “ My Reginald de Meister.”

  “What do you mean, your Reginald de Meister?”

  “My character, Reginald de Meister.”

  June got up, indulged in some deep-breathing and then said in a very calm voice, “Let’s start all over.”