by 4 Ye Gods!
In his Lear jet, thirty thousand feet above Nebraska, Mr. Kortright was speaking to Nostradamus on Blue.
'It's a neat idea, sure,' he said, 'and I like it in principle. But you've got to ask yourself, maybe you're aiming your stuff at the wrong slice of the market, okay? I mean, do the people really want to know about Napoleon? Do they really give a two-cent fuck about the advent of nuclear war? That sort of thing just kind of depresses people, Nos, you know? Why do you always have to be so goddam gloomy?'
There was an agitated buzzing from the end of the wire. Kortright sighed, murmured something about maybe having lunch Thursday, and replaced the receiver. He ate a pickled onion.
'Odin for you on Red, Mr. Kortright.'
Kortright swallowed a few shreds of peel and picked up the phone. 'Odin,' he said, 'how's tricks? Afraid you missed the boat again this time, but we'll keep trying for you, you know that.'
The receiver turned into a serpent in his hand and Kortright put a broad, friendly smile on his face. Nobody likes having a disgruntled client.
'Look, I've been thinking, he said. 'What we need for you is a brand new vehicle. You know, launch you from an entirely different angle. I mean, we've tried blood and human sacrifice and all that; how about making you, well, cuddlier? You know,' said Kortright, keeping a straight face in spite of himself, 'lovable. We could say you originally came here from another planet and you got stranded, and we're trying to fix it so's you can go home...'
The serpent glowed blue and sprouted another head. Kortright made a comforting gesture with his hands.
'Okay,' he said soothingly. 'We'll put that one on ice--for now. What you really need,' he went on, 'is a Gospel.'
There was an interested hiss from the serpent.
Kortright thought for a moment, and then smiled.
'With a good Gospel,' he said, 'we could go places with you. We could get sponsorship, you know? Commercial backing. We could make the big time.'
The serpent coiled itself round Kortright's ankle and started to eat his shoelaces. This was, the agent told himself, a good sign.
'How about something like this?' he said. 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was Kawaguchi Integrated Circuits, and all rights in the Word were reserved, so that unauthorised publication thereof in any form of cover or binding or electronic data retrieval system other than that supplied by the publisher rendered the user liable to civil and criminal prosecution...
The serpent bit him.
Jason Derry leaned back, wiped the soap suds out of his eyes and reached for the rubber duck.
On the one hand, he said to himself.