Mary put out her cigarette and lit another. “What clause?” Darcy asked.
“The clause that says we haven’t been selling to just one universe when we sign those contracts. We’ve been giving one publisher in that particular universe rights to sell any book we give them to every other universe. And we don’t get one extra fucking cent!”
“Let me put it this way,” Leonard muttered from the other end of the sofa. “Seems the contracts go into uncertainty and then don’t match the worlds they were written in. They drift. You end up with a different contract than the one you started with.” He chuckled mirthlessly. “A lot of you writers would say that’s nothing new.”
“But I get royalties,” Darcy said, “don’t I?”
“That’s just on sales in Parallel World 3,” Leonard replied. “I checked your contracts. You get your share of book club money and foreign sales and everything else, but only from sales in that universe. They get to keep everything else. That’s probably how they can pay such nice advances to everybody.” He glared at the blank TV screen. “That’s how some dipshit little assistant editor can have an office big enough to hold the goddamn Frankfurt Book Fair in.”
“But—” Darcy began.
“I put in a call to that physicist Sterling Blake,” Mary said. “Our agents’ association put him on retainer a while back. He said something about uncertainty creeping into our continuum, about the wave functions of perception shifting or whatever. I think it means we’re in a different universe from the one we were in a few days ago.” She let out her breath. “Blake has some new equations to play with now, so of course he’s just thrilled to death.”
They were all silent for a long time. At last Darcy said, “Does it really matter? Elysium House paid me some serious money. They did beautiful editions, even if I can’t get any author’s copies. I could retire and never have to worry about money again, and you and the other agents are raking in plenty from the deals anyway.”
“That isn’t the point,” Leonard said.
Darcy had known that even as she spoke. The agents would never forgive themselves for letting all those alternate rights slip away, however inadvertently. And she, along with her now-wealthy colleagues, would have to live with the knowledge that, even in other continua, publishers could still rip you off and not pay you what your work was really worth.
Not that this newly acquired wisdom should have come as much of a surprise to any writer.
Mary and Leonard were feeling a little better by the time Darcy left them to go back to her hotel. The two agents had to be philosophical about matters. Anyway, according to the grapevine, it looked as though this alternate rights business was heading toward a downturn of sorts. Mary hadn’t heard of any new alternate rights contracts being signed for nearly a month, and a couple of agents she knew had reported that their calls were no longer going through to a couple of continua. Time to collect as much as they could for their clients just in case things got even more uncertain and they ended up cut off from other parallel worlds altogether. They probably wouldn’t be able to sue for any uncollected payments later on unless attorneys in this universe got even more ingenious than they already were.
Darcy was set. She had to look at it that way. If Donahue’s audience had been more interested in whether she knew Stephen King or in how she was going to spend her money than in her books, she could live with that. Edwina Maris might get better reviews, but raves on the front page of the New York Times Book Review hadn’t noticeably fattened Edwina’s bank account. If Elysium House was ripping Darcy off, then at least there would still be all those millions of readers in Gertrude Banner’s world reading In Terms of Terror and Terror Takes No Time Out.
She had to think of it that way. It was the work that mattered. Her true reward was the writing itself, wasn’t it? No one could deprive her of the vivid moments she spent in worlds of her own creation, or of the sense of accomplishment she felt after finishing a final draft.
But then the image of a publisher somewhere, sitting in the midst of splendor greater than that of the Hearst estate at San Simeon, came to her. The bastards of this world, and every other world, always won in the end; they didn’t care about the writers they exploited. Darcy ground her teeth. She would have to get hold of the Lucky Scribes and ask them for some advice. She could feel a writer’s block coming on.
Afterword to “All Rights”:
“All Rights” may be seen as a companion piece to a story that appears later in this volume, “The Novella Race.” Both are about writing, but “All Rights” is more about the business of writing, which seems appropriate for a tale that features writers. Dedicated and devoted readers, and also younger and more naive writers, can sometimes feel dismay and disillusionment upon discovering that the most popular topics of discussion among gatherings of writers are not aethestics, favorite classics of literature, the artistic demands of the craft, or even the nuts and bolts of putting a story together; but instead money, contracts, and publishers.
I wrote this story during a time when being a writer at all seemed an utterly futile endeavor. A deepening depression, along with life’s more pressing practicalities, were increasingly propelling me toward a decision to give up writing as a profession. In the end, I didn’t, but maybe that’s because while writing “All Rights,” I was still able to find some humor in the fate of the vast majority of American writers, from the best to the worst—namely, to be invisible, ignored, and forgotten, at least in this continuum. All the more reason, I suppose, for writing to be its own reward, since that is likely to be the only enduring reward most of us ever receive.
DANNY GOES TO MARS
“Mars is essentially in the same orbit [as Earth]. Mars is somewhat the same distance from the sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe.”
—J. Danforth Quayle, Vice-President of the United States, as quoted in Mother Jones, January 1990
The Vice-President had known that this White House lunch would be different. For one thing, the President’s voice kept shifting from his Mr. Rogers pitch to his John Wayne tone, and that always made Dan nervous. For another, the former Chief of Staff was there as a guest, and that bothered him.
John Sununu might have mouthed off in public about how much Dan had learned on the job, but away from the cameras, his big M.I.T. brain couldn’t be bothered with even saying hello to the Vice-President. Not that it really mattered, since Nunu, as most of the White House staff called him behind his back, had pretty much treated everybody that way, except when he was having a temper tantrum. Almost everyone had been relieved when the former Chief of Staff had been eased out of that position.
Now, here he was in the White House again, sitting around at this intimate lunch as if he still had the President’s full confidence. Maybe the President needed Big John’s help on some scientific deal or other; Dan hoped it was that, and not something political. He squinted slightly, thinking of Robert Stack. That was the ticket, putting on that Robert Stack I’m-a-nice- guy-but-don’t-mess-with-me kind of expression.
“A squeaker,” the President said, “a real squeaker. Almost didn’t pull it out. The Democrats—bad. Attack from the right—even worse. Got something up our sleeve, though—they’ll say, Never saw that coming.”
The Vice-President tried to look attentive. Sometimes he couldn’t figure out what the President was talking about. Once he had worried about that, before discovering that many members of the White House staff had the same problem.
“Council on Competitiveness, and, uh, the space thing, too—you’re our man there,” the President was saying now. Marilyn had guessed that the President might be toying with the idea of a space spectacular, and Big John, whatever his lacks in the political arena, was one of the few advisors who could understand the scientific ins and outs. It made sense, what with that big breakthrough in developing an engine fo
r space travel. Dan didn’t know exactly how it worked, but it could get a ship to the Moon almost overnight—if there was an “overnight” in space.
“Mars,” the President said. “About time.”
“Mars?” Dan sat up. That was an even better idea than going to the Moon.
“We’re sending out feelers.” The former Chief of Staff adjusted his glasses, looking as if this project was his idea. Maybe it was; maybe that was how he had gotten back into the President’s good graces. “The Japanese have hinted they might foot most of the bill if one of their people is among the astronauts. The Saudis’ll pick up the rest if we get one of their men on board. The Russians would do almost anything to take their people’s minds off the mess over there, and we can use one of those long-term habitat modules they’ve developed for the crew’s quarters. Putting a cosmonaut on the crew in return for that would be a hell of a lot cheaper than sending more aid down that rathole.”
“Impressive,” the President said. “Won’t cost us.”
“We can get this going before the mid-term elections,” Big John muttered. “America’s reaching for the stars again—that should play pretty goddamned well, and you can use the brotherhood angle, too.” He shifted his stocky body in his chair. “A crash program for building the ship will create jobs. The crew can be trained, and the ship ready to go, by the summer of ninty-five. Two weeks or less to Mars, depending on where it is in relation to Earth’s orbit, and back in plenty of time for the Presidential primaries.”
“With the new nuclear fission-to-fusion pulse engine,” Dan said, “that’s possible.” He’d picked up a few things during his meetings with the Space Council. He was a little annoyed that no one had even hinted at the possibility of a Mars trip, but then he was usually the last guy to find anything out. “With that kind of engine, we could cross from, say, Mercury to Jupiter in less than a hundred days.” He had heard one of the NASA boys say that. Or had it been less than thirty days? Not that it made that much difference, at least to him.
The former Chief of Staff lifted his brows in surprise. Sununu had a habit of looking at him like that sometimes, the way Dan’s high-school teachers and college professors had looked at him when he actually managed to come up with a correct answer.
“But you know,” the Vice-President continued, “you could take longer to train the crew, and have this whole Mars deal going on during the primary season. That might actually help me more, having it happen right while I’m running.”
“Two terms,” the President said, sounding a lot more like John Wayne than Mr. Rogers this time. “Straight line from nineteen-eighty. I want a Republican in the White House in two-thousand-and-one. Maybe the Navy band could play that music at the inauguration, you know, the piece in that movie—”
“Also Sprach Zarathustra,” the former Chief of Staff said, then turned toward the Vice-President. “The theme from 2001” He had that funny smile on his face, the one that made his eyes seem even colder.
“What I was thinking, though,” Dan said, “is that people have short memories.” That was a piece of political wisdom he had picked up, partly because his own memory wasn’t so great. “So it might make more sense to have a ship on Mars right in the middle of the primaries. It’d sure be a help to be able to make speeches about that, and—”
“Unless something goes wrong. That could really fuck up the campaign, a big space disaster.” Big John folded his arms over his broad chest. “But we’ll just have to see that doesn’t happen. Besides, that sucker has to be back before the primaries.” His smile faded. “See, the thing is—”
“On the crew, Dan,” the President interrupted. “Still young, and you’re in good shape—think it’ll work.”
The Vice-President set down his fork. “What would work?”
The former Chief of Staff unfolded his arms. “The President is saying that he’d like you to go to Mars.”
Dan was too stunned to speak.
“If you’ll volunteer, that is,” the President said.
The Vice-President steadied himself, hoping his eyes had not widened into his Bambi-caught-in-the-headlights look. Big John might be willing to shove him aboard a ship heading for Mars just to get back in the good graces of the White House, but the President, for a guy without a whole lot of principles, was a gentleman. A man who never forgot to write thank-you notes wasn’t the kind of person to force his Veep on a risky space mission.
“Well.” Dan frowned. “Do I really have to do this?”
Big John said, “It may be the only way we can get you elected. It sure as hell would give you an edge, and you’re going to need one. The President was getting it from the right, but you’re going to be getting it from the moderate Republicans.” He sneered. “We’re only talking a two or three week trip, hardly more than a space shuttle flight. Come back from Mars, and you wouldn’t just be the Vice-President—you’d be a hero.” He said the words as if he didn’t quite believe them.
“Hard to run against a hero,” the President said. He pressed his hands together, then flung them out to his sides. “Moderates—trouble. But it’s up to you, Dan. Think you can handle this Mars thing—make sure there’s good people on the crew with you—but you gotta decide.”
The Vice-President swallowed, trying for his Robert Stack look once more. He was about to say he would have to talk it over with Marilyn, but Big John would give him one of his funny looks if he said that.
“I’ll consider it very seriously,” he said. If Marilyn thought this was a good idea, he might have to go along with it.
“You do that,” the former Chief of Staff said quietly.
He explained it all to his wife after dinner. There would be the months of training, but a house would be provided for him, and the family could visit him in Houston. They could even move there temporarily, but Dan wasn’t about to insist on that. His son Tucker was in college, so it wouldn’t much matter to him where they lived, but the move might be disruptive for Corinne and Ben.
“I can see it, in a way,” he said. “If I do this, I might be unbeatable. On the other hand, it didn’t work for John Glenn.”
“But this is Mars, honey,” Marilyn said. “John Glenn didn’t go to Mars.” She brushed back a lock of brown hair, then frowned. Dan had the sinking feeling that this whole business had already been decided. Whatever his fears about the journey, he was more afraid of facing the President and telling him he had decided not to volunteer. Besides, this space stuff might finally put an end to all the mockery. Maybe there wouldn’t be any more jokes about his lousy grades and his golf trips and being on beer duty during his stint in the National Guard. Maybe that bastard Garry Trudeau would finally stop depicting him as a feather in his Doonesbury comic strip.
“I’d miss you a lot,” Marilyn said.
“I’d miss you, too.” He slipped an arm over her shoulders. “But it isn’t like it’s going to be one of those three-year-round-trip deals. If that’s what it was, I would have said no right on the spot. They said it would be safe.”
She rested her head against his chest. “Nobody could top this, you know. I doubt you’d have any challengers in the primaries afterwards, and the Democrats won’t have the easy time they expected against you. Even then—”
He owed it to Marilyn. He wouldn’t have gotten this far without her; in a way, it was too bad she couldn’t go to Mars with him. She’d had to give up her law practice in Indiana when he was first elected to Congress, and later, her hopes of finding a job when he was running for Vice-President. She had wised him up after his election to the Senate, after the story about his colleague Tom Evans and that Parkinson babe broke; if he had listened to Marilyn in the first place, he wouldn’t have been in Palm Beach with them that weekend. She had given him good advice and sacrificed plenty for him. The least he could do was make her First Lady.
“What should I do?” he asked.
Marilyn drew away from him and sat up. “There’s only one thing to do,” she murmured. “Th
is is too big for us to decide by ourselves, so we have to put it in God’s hands. He’ll show us what’s right.”
He folded his hands, bowed his head, and tried to summon up a prayer. He definitely needed the Lord’s help on this one, but had the feeling that God was likely to agree with the President.
When Dan agreed to become an astronaut, it seemed that a great weight was lifted from his shoulders. The announcement brought the expected press and television coverage, along with varying reactions from stunned commentators, but the conventional wisdom was that he could probably handle his Vice-Presidential duties as well in Houston or on Mars as he could anywhere else.
There was a press conference to endure with his four fellow crew members, and the interviews, but he got through them all without any major gaffes, except for calling the moons of Mars Photos and Zenith. That snotty nerd George Will had tried to get him on some old remarks he had made about the Red Planet having canals, but Dan had muddied the waters with a bunch of memorized statistics he had mastered in the years since, along with a comment about having been under the spell of some Ray Bradbury stories. It was smart of his staff to feed him that stuff about Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles along with the other information. Dan had not only made Will look like a bully, but had also given viewers the impression that the Vice-President actually read books.
In Houston, at least, he would not have to do many interviews, on the grounds that they might interfere with his training. This did not keep some reporters from trying to get leaked information about his progress.
There was little for them to discover. Surprisingly, the training was not nearly as rigorous as he had expected. The other American on the crew, Ashana Washington, was both a physicist and an experienced pilot; she would technically be in command of the expedition. Prince Ahmed was also a pilot, although the ship itself would be piloted automatically during the voyage. Sergei Vavilov and Kiichi Taranaga each had a string of degrees in various subjects requiring big brains, and since they, like Prince Ahmed, spoke fluent English, the Vice-President, to his great relief, would not have to try to learn a foreign language.
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