Zippers laddering upward. "Maxim, huh. Must meet a lot of beautiful women there."
"You bet."
Sounds of hand-washing. Departure. And a sob betokening black desolation in the farthermost stall.
Corso Fairly Fried. His public image. Known to everyone but oneself. Passion and dedication to one's chosen field. Derided and cast aside. One's motivation laughable. If not predicated strictly on commercialism. Not to mention exclusion of any artistic striving. To build upon the work of past heroes. Giants of the medium. Who no doubt received similar treatment. From their own traitorous editors.
And when he faces Wankel. The temptation will be there. To spit in his eye. Or punch same. But he of course cannot. For Multrum would rend his impetuous and violent client into bite-sized pieces. To be shared with the other velociraptors. Corso's only choice. To swallow his shame. And carry on.
Back to the receptionist. Return the key. Into Wankel's sanctum.
Roger Wankel standing by a table near the window. View of steel and glass canyons. Assaultive in their uncaring facades. Birds in flight. Boyish shock of tawny hair angling across the editor's wide brow. Close-set eyes. Nose and lips chosen from a child's catalog of facial features then misplaced in an adult facial template. Sorting through a stack of cover proofs. Perhaps Peurifoy already engaged to limn The Black Hole Gun. If so, one has only a dual question. Is that window shatterproof. And how far to the ground.
"Corso! A real pleasure to see you! How's Ginny doing."
"You must mean Jenny. She's fine." Unspoken of course. That she is fine with someone else.
"Great, great. Now I assume you're here to talk about the extension. Never thought it would get approved. But Multrum's one tough negotiator. You're lucky to have him on your team."
"Yes. He has a thick hide."
"True, true. Now what can you share with me to convince me you've got a handle on this project."
Restraining oneself from "sharing" venomous accusations. Of venality and double-dealing. Instead babbling in a stream-ofconsciousness fashion. About likely plot developments. Which might occur. To Corso's protagonist. Russ Radikans. Owner of the Black Hole Gun. Ancient artifact of a vanished race. The Acheropyte. And Russ's lover. Zulma Nautch. Starship pilot. Of the Growler. Zulma's evil clone sister. Zinza, deadly assassin. And so forth. With Wankel taking it all in. And nodding sagely. The hypocritical bastard.
A knock at the office door. Which Wankel ignores. But a workman enters regardless. Mustache, dirty brown coveralls, hammer hanging from a loop, work gloves tucked in a back pocket. And without a word. The man begins to dismantle one of the office walls. Using a putty knife. To peel sheets of thin substance away. Not plaster or particleboard, but a resinous veneer. To reveal not girders and joists. But rather the raw blue air several dozen stories up. A breeze strokes Corso's cheek.
Corso flummoxed into silence. Wankel confused. But only by his author's hesitation. "Go on, I'm listening." So that Corso realizes. This is another hallucination. And he tries to continue. Tries to embrace the unpredictable unreality of his senses.
Now several more workmen arrive. All twins to the first. A busy horde of disassemblers. They fall to aiding the original in deconstructing the walls. Until soon Corso and Wankel sit at the top of a lofty naked pillar. A few square feet of carpeted floor. Exposed on all sides. To Manhattan's brutal scrutiny. Since the rest of the office has inexplicably vanished. A stage set struck. By the Hidden Puppet Masters. Who intend to decimate. Corso's solipsistic self.
Breezes riffle Corso's hair. He cannot go on. Because of the actions of one workman. Who has stepped confidently off the pillar. And now climbs the sky itself. As if the air were a gentle blue slope. He heads for the "sun." And as he approaches the orb he does not shrink. But rather puts the sun into its true scale. A disk as big as a hubcap. And donning his gloves. The workman begins to unscrew the sun.
At the same time the other workmen have shut down Wankel. Employing a switch at the back of his neck. Corso's enduring suspicions of the existence of some such switch now validated. And they pick up the editor's chair with him in it. And tip it upside down. But Wankel remains attached. Grinning moronically.
And then as the sun is finally completely unthreaded from its socket descends the ultimate darkness.
As if Russ Radikans
just employed his
Black Hole Gun
on his very Creator.
"Corso my boy. Wake up!"
That plummy voice. Steeped in all the luxuries of a cozy life. So familiar. From a credit-card commercial. And one for Saturn automobiles. And many a convention panel. Not to mention the occasional phone conversation. In the nighted hours. When despair crept up. On the protégé. And he dialed the mentor's home phone. A number millions of fans would have killed for. One such being the vanished younger Corso himself. And even now when one is accorded one's own small professional stature. Still half-disbelieving. One has been granted such a high privilege.
Corso unshutters his eyes. He is recumbent. Half naked. Atop a wheeled stretcher. Shielded by dirty curtains on rings. From the pitiful and pitying gazes of fellow sufferers. Evidently in a hospital emergency room. And by his side sits Malachi Stiltjack.
Stiltjack wears an expensive charcoal suit. Many yards of Italian fabric girdling his extensive acreage. Of a finer cut even than Multrum's. Vest. Watch chain. Other dandyish accoutrements. Silver hair razor-cut and styled to perfection. His middleaged shiny pontifical face beaming. Presumably at Corso's reattainment of consciousness.
"What – what happened to me?"
"You passed out in your editor's office. Bad show my boy. Many of us have longed for such an escape, but it's pure cowardice to make such a melodramatic exit. Reflects poorly on your endurance and stamina. How could you handle a multicity book tour if one little bout of tedium causes you to crumple like an empty potato-chip packet. So they'll ask. In any case, an ambulance rushed you here. I tracked you down when you failed to meet me."
"Oh Christ, Wankel will put me at the top of his shit list now for sure."
Wry expression on Stiltjack's face. "And you weren't there already."
Corso chagrined. "You know then about me missing my deadlines."
"But who doesn't. Locus even did a sidebar on your predicament in the December issue. Didn't you see it then."
"I let my subscription lapse. Money was tight. And reading Locus just makes me nervous. All those big-money deals, all those brilliant, joyous, glad-handing professionals. How does it all relate to the actual dreaming – "
"Come now Corso you should know better than to believe all that printed hyperbole. None of us is ever really secure. Most writers just put up a good front."
An ungenerous feeling of anger and envy at his friend. "Easy enough for you to say Malachi with your castle and contracts and – and concubines!"
The padrone unoffended by the peon's eruption. Magnanimous and solicitous from on high. "Now, now Corso such resentment ill becomes you. But I understand completely that it's your creative blockage talking. That's the crux of your trouble. Not your material circumstances. Or your wife's desertion."
A wail of despair. "My God has Locus run a sidebar on that too!"
"Not at all. But the grapevine – "
"Do my goddamn peers ever stop gossiping long enough to collect their awards."
"Let's put aside the all-too-human deficiencies of our comrades for the moment Corso and consider my diagnosis. Think a minute. If I were the one suffering the blockage, would all my money and possessions make me feel one whit happier. Of course not. Same thing with one's physical health. Psychological or somatic, an easy and natural functioning is the one essential to your peace of mind. Clear up your creative logjam, and you'll be back on top of the world."
"An easy prescription. But hard to administer to oneself."
"Let's work on it together a little longer. It's not that late in the evening. We can still have dinner. But first we need to get you disch
arged."
Doctor summoned. Corso reluctantly given a clean bill of health. Possibly a small case of food poisoning adduced. From Papoon Skloot's. Spoiled coelacanth in the prehistoric kitchen. Which would serve all the egregiously wealthy diners right. Bidden by a surly yet attractive red-haired nurse to dress oneself. Nurse not lingering to peek at Corso's neglected manhood. As half-fantasized. By a lonely and too-little-of-late-fondled profes sional daydreamer. And soon out on the twilit streets.
Stiltjack swinging a cane with a golden grip. Casting a radiant appreciative gaze at the whole wide world. Scurrying business drones. Sweaty delivery persons. Idling teenagers. A cherry for his picking. Or kicking. Should any viciously magisterial whim overtake him. Droit du seigneur. My mundane subjects. Corso striding silently alongside. Certain that if any pigeon shits. The excrement will hit the one who presents the most abject target.
"Now then tell me about your problems lad."
Corso complies. Recounts his disenchantment with the work. Displacement of tropes into real life. And the fugue states. And even as he describes his disease. He nervously awaits another strike. But nothing. Yet Corso's sigh of relief is undone. By Stiltjack's next words.
"So you've got the dicky fits. I thought they wouldn't have hit you for another few years yet. But they do occur in direct proportion to one's talents. So I shouldn't be surprised."
Corso simultaneously flattered and alarmed. "The dicky fits."
"Named after you-know-who of course. Our patron saint."
"But you mean to say – "
"That I've had them too. But of course! Every cold-stone writer of science fiction goes through them at one point or another. Most come out the other side. But of course a few don't. With luck you won't be numbered among the latter."
"It's an occupational disease then."
"Oh it's not a disease. It's a privileged glimpse of reality."
Corso stops. "What are you saying Malachi."
"Aren't you listening to me. You've been vouchsafed a vision. Of the plastic, unstable nature of reality. The illusory character of the entire cosmos. It's the god's-eye perspective. Conceptual breakthrough time."
Corso's tone sneering. "And I suppose then that you've benefited immensely from these visions. Maybe even learned how to become a deity yourself. Maybe I'm just a character in one of your fictions."
"Well, yes, I have become rather a demigod. As to who created whom, or whether we're both figments of some larger entity – well, the jury is still out."
"I would appreciate some disproof of your insanity."
"Naturally. How's this."
The surging pedestrian crowd freezes in place. And the traffic too. On the sidewalk appear Sharon Walpole, Clive Multrum, and Roger Wankel. In their standard configurations. But then each morphs to his or her abnormal state. Walpole's prosthetic lobster claw. Multrum's reptilian guise. Wankel's android fixity. Corso approaches the marmoreal figures. Pokes them. Turns to Stiltjack.
"Satisfied now. Or shall I trot out Jenny and her new beau. I believe they're attending a car show in Duluth at the moment. I could bring onstage that derelict from Penn Station as well. His name by the way is Arthur Pearty. A fascinating fellow once you really get to know him."
"No. Not necessary. Just send these – these specters away."
The editors and agent vanish. Life resumes. Stiltjack moves blithely onward. Corso numbly following. The world's deceptive insubstantiality now confirmed. A thin shambles. A picture painted on rice paper. Corso sick to his stomach.
"It's best not to cause such large-scale disruptions. The universe, whatever it is, is not our toy. We did not create it. We do not run the hourly shadow show. We are unaware of the ultimate rationale for its existence. But a small tweak here and there. Aimed a personal betterment. Such little perquisites are permitted those of us who have come out the other side of the dicky fits."
"But, but – but even if you decide to go on living, how can you continue to write science fiction! In the face of such knowledge."
Malachi pausing. To signal importance of his words. "Well, as to motivation now Corso it's all a question of whose imagination is superior, isn't it. Weird as the universe is when you finally comprehend it, a trained mind such as yours or mine demands that our own imagination be even more potent in its conceptions. If you're a real science-fiction writer, that is. Now why don't we go enjoy a fine meal. I can guarantee that we won't be interrupted."
And Corso laughs
loud enough to cause strangers
to gape
for his appetite
is suddenly prodigious
and not just for food.
– For Horselover Fat, Jonathan Herovit and, of course, the Ginger Man.
Mother's Milt
Pat Cadigan
Milt appeared at breakfast, about as unsavory a sight as you could ever see at 7:30 on a summer morning: long stringy hair threatening to dip into the bowl of cereal, old faded sweatshirt with the sleeves hacked off, showing wiry arms with a river of tattoos flowing up and down them, even older jeans faded to baby blue overlaid with a sheen of brown.
"Say hi to Milt, Lynn," my mother told me, planting a quart of milk on the table next to his technicolor elbow. "I bailed him out of jail last night instead of your father."
"Hi, Milt," I said.
His head moved slightly; I saw one watery hazel eye peering at me between the strands of hair and I could tell he was amused by the wary tone in my voice. I might have been amused, too, if I'd been in his position, but I wasn't. I looked at my mother. As usual, the creases in her crisp, white coverall seemed sharp enough to cut flesh. My mother never failed to do mornings extremely well, even if she'd been up very late the night before.
"Drunk driving," she said. Sitting down at Milt's left with her own bowl of cereal. "We can't go on like that."
"Drunk driving isn't funny, Ma," I said. Milt sat up straight. He looked like a knife-murderer.
"I meant your father," she said, "not Milt. Milt was in on a shoplifting charge."
"I know who you meant."
Milt glanced at my mother. She patted his arm. "Don't worry. I said you could stay, so you can stay. If you want to."
"And if I don't," he said, turning that psycho face to me, "ain't you afraid of forfeiting the bail?"
"My mother isn't afraid of anything," I said. "Haven't you figured that out yet?"
Before my mother left for work at Busy Hands, she presented Milt with a complete list of his chores for the day, reading it aloud to him just in case he was, in her words, literate-embarrassed. "Do the dishes, tidy the living room, vacuum all the rugs, dust all the downstairs furniture, change the linens on the beds upstairs – there are three bedrooms, including the one you're staying in – and clean both bathrooms. Do a good job and I'll give you a treat when I get home from Busy Hands."
He took the list from her in what I thought of as Standard Dumb Amazement, blinking when she stood on tiptoe to pat him on the head, and then stared after her as she bustled out the door leading to the garage. Bustled was the only word for the way my mother moved; once you'd seen her do it, you understood exactly what it looked like. He went to the window over the sink and watched her drive away.
Finally, he turned back to me, holding the list the way I'd seen people hold bills from auto repair shops. "Is she kidding?" he asked me.
I spread a thin layer of cream cheese on the other half of my pumpernickel bagel. "Are you in jail?"
He laughed, crumpled the list, and tossed it over his shoulder into the sink. "What I am is outta here."
I got up, went to the junk drawer, and pulled out the gun. "I don't think so."
Those watery hazel eyes got very large. "Holy shit, girl! What are you doing?"
"Come on, Milt, what do you think?"
His gaze went from the gun to me, back to the gun and back to me.
"Give up?" I said. He started to raise his hands, just the way people did on TV. "The dishes. I'm helping yo
u do the dishes."
He took at step toward me and I aimed at his crotch. Most people make the mistake of aiming a gun at a man's head or chest, but believe me, setting your sights lower will get their attention much better.
"Do I have to persuade you that I can and will use this on you? Do you think this is the first time I've had breakfast with a convicted felon on my mother's sufferance?"
He squinted at me. "Who are you people? What are you?"
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