Manning Stern grinned. 'That the editor was also surprising? I'm used to it — your reaction, I mean. I don't think I'll ever be quite used to being a woman ... or a human being, for that matter."
"Isn't it rather unusual? From what I know of the field ..."
"Please God, when I find a man who can write, don't let him go all male-chauvinist on me! I'm a good editor, said she with becoming modesty (and don't you ever forget it!) and I'm a good scientist. I even worked on the Manhattan Project — until some character discovered that my adopted daughter was a Spanish War orphan. But what we're here to talk about is this consistent-scheme gimmick of yours. It's all right, of course; it's been done before. But where I frankly think you're crazy is in planning to do it exclusively."
Norbert Holt opened his briefcase. "I've brought along an outline that might help convince you ..."
An hour later Manning Stern glanced at her watch and announced, "End of office hours! Care to continue this slug-fest over a Martini or five? I warn you — the more I'm plied, the less pliant I get."
And an hour after, that she stated, "We might get some place if we'd stay some place. I mean the subject seems to be getting elusive."
"The hell," Norbert Holt announced recklessly, "with editorial relations. Let's get back to the current state of the opera."
"It was paintings. I was telling you about the show at the — "
"No, I remember now. It was movies. You were trying to explain the Marx Brothers. Unsuccessfully, I may add."
"Un ... suc ... cess ... fully," said Manning Stern ruminatively. "Five Martinis and the man can say unsuccessfully successfully. But I try to explain the Marx Brothers yet! Look, Holt. I've got a subversive orphan at home and she's undoubtedly starving. I've got to feed her. You come home and meet her and have pot-luck, huh?"
"Good. Fine. Always like to try a new dish."
Manning Stern looked at him curiously. "Now was that a gag or not? You're funny, Holt. You know a lot about everything and then all of a sudden you go all Man-from-Mars on the simplest thing. Or do you? ... Anyway, let's go feed Raquel."
And five hours later Holt was saying, "I never thought I'd have this reason for being glad I sold a story. Manning, I haven't had so much fun talking to — I almost said 'to a woman'. I haven't had so much fun talking since — "
He had almost said since the agnoton came. She seemed not to notice his abrupt halt. She simply said, "Bless you, Norb. Maybe you aren't a male-chauvinist. Maybe even you're ... Look, go find a subway or a cab or something. If you stay here another minute, I'm either going to kiss you or admit you're right about your stories — and I don't know which is worse editor-author relations."
MANNING STERN committed the second breach of relations first. The fan mail on Norbert Holt's début left her no doubt that Surprising would profit by anything he' chose to write about.
She'd never seen such a phenomenally rapid rise in author popularity. Or rather you could hardly say rise. Holt hit the top with his first story and stayed there. He socked the fen (Guest of Honor at the Washinvention), the pros (first President of Science Fiction Writers of America), and the general reader (author of the first pulp-bred Science fiction book to stay three months on the best seller list).
And never had there been an author who was more pure damned fun to work with. Not that you edited him; you checked his copy for typos and sent it to the printers. (Typos were frequent at first; he said something odd about absurd illogical keyboard arrangement.)
But just being with him, talking about this, that and those ... Raquel, just turning sixteen, was quite obviously in love with him — spraying that he'd have the decency to stay single till she grew up and "You know, Manningcita, I am Spanish; and the Mediterranean girls ..."
But there teas this occasional feeling of oddness. Like the pot-luck and the illogical keyboard and that night at SCWA ...
"I've got a story problem," Norbert Holt announced there. "An idea, and I can't lick it. Maybe if I toss it out to the literary lions ..."
"Story problem?" Manning said, a little more sharply than she'd intended. "I thought everything was outlined for the next ten years."
"This is different. This is a sort of paradox story, and I can't get out of it. It won't end. Something like this: Suppose a man in the remote year X reads a story that tells him how to work a time machine. So he works the time machine and goes back to the year X minus 2000 — let's say, for instance, our time. So in 'now' he writes the story that he's going to read two thousand years later, telling himself how to work the time machine because he knows how to work it because he read the story which he wrote because — "
Manning was starting to say "Hold it!" when Matt Duncan interrupted with, "Good old endless-cycle gimmick. Lot of fun to kick around, but Bob Heinlein did it once and for all in By His Bootstraps. Damnedest tour de force I ever read; there just aren't any switcheroos left."
"Ouroboros," Joe Henderson contributed.
Norbert Holt looked a vain question at him; they knew that one word per evening was Joe's maximum contribution.
Austin Carter picked it up. "Ouroboros, the worm that circles the universe with its tail in its mouth. The Asgard Serpent, too. And I think there's something in Mayan literature. All symbols of infinity — no beginning, no ending. Always out by the same door where you went in.
See that magnificent novel of Eddison's, The Worm Ouroboros; the perfect cyclic novel, ending with its recommencement, stopping not because there's a stopping place, but because it's uneconomical to print the whole text over infinitely."
"The Quaker Oats box," said Duncan. "With a Quaker holding a box with a Quaker holding a box with a Quaker holding a .. ."
It was standard professional shop-talk. It was a fine evening with the boys. But there was a look of infinitely remote sadness in Norbert Holt's eyes.
That was the evening that Manning violated her first rule of editor-author relationships.
THEY were having Martinis in the same bar in which Norbert had, so many years ago, successfully said unsuccessfully.
"They've been good years," he remarked, apparently to the olive.
There was something wrong with this evening. No bounce. No yumph.
'That's a funny tense," Manning confided to her own olive. "Aren't they still good years?"
"I've owed you a serious talk for a long time."
"You don't have to pay the debt. We don't go in much for being serious, do we? Not so dead-earnest, catch-in-the-throat serious."
"Don't we?"
"I've got an awful feeling," Manning admitted, "that you're building up to a proposal, either to me or that olive. And if it's me, I've got an awful feeling I'm going to accept — (and Raquel will never forgive me."
"You're safe," Norbert said dryly. "That's the serious talk. I want to marry you, darling, and I'm not going to."
"I suppose this is the time you twirl your black mustache and tell me you have a wife and family elsewhere?"
"I hope to God I have!"
"No, it wasn't very funny, was it?" Manning felt very little, aside from wishing she were dead.
"I can't tell you the truth," he went on. "You wouldn't believe it. I've loved two women before; one had talent and a brain, the other had beauty and no brain. I think I loved her. The damnedest curse of Ouroboros is that I'll never quite know. If I could take that tail out of that mouth ..."
"Go on," she encouraged a little wildly. "Talk plot-gimmicks. It's easier on me."
"And she is carrying ... will carry ... my child — my children, it must be. My twins ..."
"Look, Holt. We came in here editor and author — remember back when? Let's go out that way. Don't go on talking. I'm a big girl, but I can't take ... everything. It's been fun knowing you and all future manuscripts will be gratefully received."
"I knew I couldn't say it. I shouldn't have tried. But there won't be any future manuscripts. I've written every Holt I've ever read."
"Does that make sense?" Man
ning aimed the remark at the olive, but it was gone. So was the Martini.
"Here's the last." He took it out of his breast-pocket, neatly folded. "The one we talked about at SCWA — the one I couldn't end. Maybe you'll understand. I wanted somehow to make it clear before ..."
The tone of his voice projected a sense of doom, and Manning forgot everything else. "Is something going to happen to you? Are you going to — Oh, my dear, no! All right, so you have a wife on every space station in the asteroid belt; but if anything happens to you ..."
"I don't know," said Norbert Holt. "I can't remember the exact date of that issue ..." He rose abruptly. "I shouldn't have tried a goodbye. See you again, darling — the next time round Ouroboros."
She was still staring at the empty Martini glass when she heard the shrill of brakes and the excited up-springing of a crowd outside.
SHE read the posthumous fragment late that night, after her eyes had dried sufficiently to make the operation practicable. And through her sorrow her mind fought to help her, making her think, making her be an editor.
She understood a little and disbelieved what she understood. And underneath she prodded herself, "But it isn't a story. It's too short, too inconclusive. It'll just disappoint the Holt fans — and that's everybody. Much better if I do a straight obit, take up a full page on it ..."
She fought hard to keep on thinking, not feeling. She had never before experienced so strongly the I-have-been-here-before sensation. She had been faced with this dilemma once before, once on some other time-spiral, as the boys in SCWA would say. And her decision had been ...
"It's sentimentality," she protested. "It isn't editing. This decision's right. I know it. And if I go and get another of these attacks and start to change my mind ..."
She laid the posthumous Holt fragment on the coals. It caught fire quickly.
THE next morning Raquel greeted her with, "Manningcita, who's Norbert Holt?"
Manning had slept so restfully that she was even tolerant of foolish questions at breakfast. "Who?" she asked.
"Norbert Holt. Somehow the name popped into my mind. Is he perhaps one of your writers?"
"Never heard of him."
Raquel frowned. "I was almost sure ... Can you really remember them all? I'm going to check those bound volumes of Surprising."
"Any luck with your ... what was it? ... Holt?" Manning asked the girl a little later.
"No, Manningcita. I was quite unsuccessful."
... unsuccessful ... Now why in Heaven's name, mused Manning Stern, should I be thinking of Martinis at breakfast time?
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