Quickly Luke slid the check into his pocket and got the two drinks Carter’s two fingers had signaled for and then as unobtrusively as possible led the way out the back door and into a dimly lighted alley. And luck, having hit Luke so hard and suddenly, stayed with him; no Martian followed them.
“Carter, thanks a million. And forgive me for trying to brush you off—I was just starting out on a final and solitary jag and—well, skip it. But what the hell’s the check for?”
“Ever read a book called Hell in Eldorado?”
“Read it? I wrote it. But that was twelve or fifteen years ago, and it was a stinking Western.”
“Exactly. Except for the stinking; it was a fairly good Western, Luke.”
“But it’s dead as a dodo. You don’t mean Bernstein is reissuing it?”
“Not Bernstein, no. But Midget Books is bringing out a new pocket edition. The market in Westerns is booming and they’re desperate for them. And they paid a very sweet advance guarantee to reissue your old Western.”
Luke frowned. “What do you mean, Carter? Not that I want to act as though I’m looking a gift horse in the proverbial, but since when is four hundred bucks a very sweet advance on a pocket book deal? Not that it isn’t a fortune to me right now, but—”
“Down, boy,” Carter said. “Your share of that advance was three grand, and that’s damn good for a pocket book reissue. But you owed Bernstein over two and a half grand on all those advances you’ve been getting, and they deducted. That check you’ve got there is clear and you don’t owe anybody anything.”
Luke whistled softly. That made it different all right. Carter said, “Bernstein—Bernie himself—called me up last week. Mail was being returned from where you lived before and he didn’t know how to reach you. I told him if he wanted to send the check care of me, I’d—find you somehow. And he said—”
“How did you find me?”
“Found out from Margie you were in Long Beach—seems you called her some weeks ago but then never called back, and you hadn’t given her an address. But I’ve been coming over here evenings, making the rounds of the taverns. Knew I’d run into you sooner or later.”
“Miracle you did,” Luke said. “My first time in one since that night I called Margie. And my last one for—I mean, it would have been my last time for God knows how long if you hadn’t found me. But now go on about what Bernie said.”
“Said to tell you to forget the science-fiction book. Science fiction’s dead. Extraterrestrial stuff is just what people want to escape from right now. They’ve got Martians, in their hair. But people are still reading and there’s a big swing to mystery and a bigger one to Westerns. Said to tell you that if you’ve actually started that science-fiction book—Have you by the way?”
“No.”
“Good. Anyway, Bernie was fair about it; he said that he’d commissioned it and given you advances against it and that if you actually did have any of it done, he’d pay you a word rate for however much you’ve actually done—but that you can then tear it up and throw it away. He doesn’t want it, and he wants you to stop work on it.”
“Not hard when I haven’t got even an idea for it. I think I had one once, in that shack of yours, but it slipped away. The night the Martians came.”
“What are your plans now, Luke?”
“Tomorrow I’m going on—” Luke stopped suddenly. With a check for over four hundred dollars in his pocket he wouldn’t be going on relief tomorrow after all. What were his plans? With the depression drop in prices he could live for months on that much money. Solvent again, he could even look up Margie. If he wanted to. Did he want to?
“I don’t know,” he said, and it was the answer to Carter’s question and his own.
“Well, I know,” Carter said. “I know what you’re going to do if you’ve got any sense. You think you’re burned out as a writer because you can’t write science fiction any more. But you’re not. You just can’t write science fiction—and for the same reason you and everybody else doesn’t want to read it any more. It’s dead. But what’s wrong with Westerns? You wrote one once—or was it only one?”
“One novel. A few short stories and novelettes. But I don’t like Westerns.”
“Do you like digging ditches?”
“Well—not exactly.”
“Look at this.” Carter Benson’s wallet was in his hand again and he took something from it and handed it to Luke.
It looked like another check. It was another check. There was barely enough light for Luke to read it. One thousand dollars, made out to Luke Devereaux, signed by W. B. Moran, Treas., Bernstein Publishers, Inc.
Carter reached across and took the check out of Luke’s hand. “Not yours yet, son. Bernie sent it to me to give to you as an advance on another Western novel—if you agree to write one. He says to tell you that if you do, and if it’s no worse than Hell in Eldorado you’ll make at least five thousand out of it.”
“Gimme,” Luke said. He took back the check and stared at it lovingly.
His slump was over. Ideas were beginning to crowd him toward his typewriter. A lonely Western plain at dusk, a cowboy riding…
“Attaboy,” Carter said. “Now do we hang one on to celebrate?”
“Hell, yes—or—wait a minute. Would you mind awfully if we didn’t? Or at least postponed it?”
“Whatever you say. Why? Feel like diving in?”
“Exactly. I feel hot and think I should get that novel going while the mood lasts. And I’m still sober so far; this is only my fourth drink, so it’s not too late. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Hell, no. I understand, and I’m glad you feel that way. Nothing like the sudden turn of a near leaf.” Carter put down his glass on a window sill beside him and pulled out a notebook and pencil. “Just give me your address and phone number while we’re together.”
Luke gave him both. Then stuck out his hand. “Thanks to hell and back. And you won’t have to write to Bernie, Carter. I’ll write him tomorrow—and tell him the Western’s already started.”
“Attaboy. And listen, Margie’s been worrying about you. I could tell from the way she talked when I called her. And I had to promise I’d give her your address if I found you. Is that okay?”
“Sure, but you won’t have to. I’ll call her myself tomorrow.” He wrung Carter’s hand again and hurried off.
He felt so exhilarated and excited that it wasn’t until he was on the stairs going up to his room that he discovered that he still had a half-full glass of whiskey and soda in his hand and that, fast as he’d walked, he’d carried it so carefully for ten blocks that he hadn’t spilled a drop.
He laughed at himself and stopped on the landing to drink it off.
In his room he took off his suit coat and necktie and rolled up his sleeves. Put the typewriter and a stack of paper on the table and pulled up a chair. Ran paper in the typewriter. Yellow paper only. He’d already decided to do rough draft on this one so he wouldn’t have to stop to look up anything. Whatever pints came up that might indicate a spot of research could be taken care of on the final version.
Title? You didn’t need a good title for a Western. Just so it indicated action and sounded like a Western. Something like Guns Across the Border or Guns Across the Pecos.
Sure, he’d settle for the Guns Across part except that he didn’t want to write a border story again—Hell in Eldorado had been a border story—and he didn’t know anything about the Pecos country. Better take something in Arizona; he’d traveled quite a bit around Arizona and could handle the descriptions much better.
What rivers were there in Arizona? Hmmm, the Little Colorado, but that was too long. The name, not the river. And a Trout Creek, but Guns Across the Trout would sound silly. Guns Across the Date would sound worse.
He had it. The Gila. Guns Across the Gila. It would even seem alliterative to people who didn’t know it was pronounced Heela and not Gilla. And even if one pronounced it right it was still a plenty good title.
He centered it in caps at the top of the page.
Under it, “by Luke Devers.” That was the by-line he’d used on Hell in Eldorado and a few other Westerns he’d written, the shorts and the novelettes. Devereaux had seemed a little fancy for the horse-opera trade. Bernie probably would want him to use it again. If he didn’t, if he figured the reputation Luke had built in science fiction under his own name would carry over and help sales on a Western, that was all right too. Bernie could use either by-line he wanted to, for a thousand advance and another four thousand in eventual earnings. That was better than he’d averaged on his science-fiction novels.
A little farther down he centered “Chapter I,” then spaced down a few more lines and shoved the carriage to the left. Ready to start writing.
And he was going to start right now and let the plot, or at least the details of the plot, work themselves out as he wrote.
There aren’t many plots for Westerns anyway. Let’s see; he could use the basic plot he’d used in one of his novelettes, Thunder on the Range. Two rival ranches, one run by the villain and one by the hero. And one ranch, this time, would be on each side of the Gila River and that would make the title perfect. Villain, of course, has a big ranch and hired gunmen; the hero a small ranch with maybe a few cowpokes who aren’t gunmen.
And a daughter, of course. For novel length there’s got to be a dame.
The plot was coming fast now.
Changing point of view. Start out with the point of view—over the shoulder—of a gunslinger hired by the villain, just coming to join up at the big ranch. But the gunslinger is a good guy at heart and is going to fall in love with the good rancher’s daughter. And change sides and save the day for the right side when he finds out that—
Tried and true. A lead-pipe cinch.
Luke’s fingers poised over the keyboard, hit the tab key for a paragraph indention, then started typing:
As Don Marston drew nearer the figure that waited for him on the trail, the figure resolved itself into a grim-eyed hombre whose hands held a stubby carbine crosswise on the pommel of his saddle and …
Back and forth the typewriter’s carriage, slowly at first and then faster and faster as he got into the swing of it. Forgotten in the click of keys everything but the rush of words.
And suddenly a Martian, one of the smaller ones, was sitting astride the typewriter carriage, riding it.
“Whoopie!” he yelled. “Hi-yo, Silver! Away! Faster, Mack, faster!”
Luke screamed.
And—
9.
“Catatonia, Doctor?” the interne asked.
The ambulance physician rubbed his lantern jaw for a moment, staring down at the still figure that lay on Luke’s bed.
“Very strange,” he said. “Catatonic state at present, certainly, but it’s probably only a phase, like the other phases.” He turned to Luke’s landlady, who was standing in the doorway of the room. “You say you heard a scream first?”
“That’s right. An’ I thought it was from his room and I come out in the hall to listen, but there was his typewriter banging away so I thought he was aw right and went back. An’ then, two-three minutes later, glass crashed and that time I opened his door and went in. And there was his window busted and him laying outside it on the fire escape. Good thing for him there was a fire escape, throwing hisself out the window thataway.”
“Strange,” the doctor said.
“You’re gonna take him, ain’t you, doctor? Especially him bleeding like that.”
“We’ll take him all right. But don’t worry about the bleeding. It’s superficial.”
“Not on my bedclothes it ain’t. Art’ who’s going to pay for that busted window?”
The doctor sighed. “That is not within my province, Madam. But we’d better stop the bleeding from those cuts before we move him. I wonder if you would be so kind as to boil us some water?”
“Sure, Doctor.”
When the landlady had left the interne glanced curiously at the doctor. “Did you really want her to boil water or—?”
“Of course not, Pete. I wanted her to boil her head, but she wouldn’t have agreed to that. Always ask women to boil water if you want to get rid of them.”
“It seems to work. Shall I clean up those cuts with alky here or should we take him in first?”
“Clean them up here, please, Pete. I want to look around a little. And there’s a chance he might come out of it and be able to walk down those two flights under his own power.”
The doctor walled over to the table on which stood a typewriter with paper in it. He started to read and stopped a moment at the by-line. “By Luke Devers,” he said. “Sounds vaguely familiar, Pete. Where have I heard the name Luke Devers recently?”
“I don’t know, Doc.”
“Start of a Western. A novel, I’d say, since he put down Chapter I. Reads all right for three paragraphs—and then here’s a place where a key punched right through the paper. I’d say that’s how far he got when something happened to him. A Martian, no doubt.”
“Is there any other reason why people go crazy, Doc?”
The doctor sighed. “There used to be other reasons. I guess they’re not worth going crazy over, now. Well, that must have been when he screamed. And then—the landlady’s right; he kept on typing for a few more lines. But come over and read them.
“In a second, Doc. This is the last cut I’m working on.”
A minute later he went over to the typewriter.
“It makes sense up to there,” the doctor said, pointing. “That’s where a key punched through. And after that—”
“HI YO SILVER HI YO SILVER HI YO SILVER HI YO SILVER HI YO SILVER AWAY HI YO AWAY SILVER HI SILVER YO AWAY AWAY DOWN SOUTH IN THE LAND OF SILVER HI YO AWAY,” the interne read.
“Sounds like a telegram the Lone Ranger might send his horse. Make anything out of it, Doc?”
“Not much. I’d guess it ties in somehow with whatever happened to him, but I can’t guess how. Well, I’m new on this run, Pete. Any red tape or do we just take him in?”
“We check his wallet first.”
“What for?”
“If he’s got any money, any quantity of it, he’ll have to go to one of the private sans. And if he’s got ‘in case of accident notify’ identification, we notify first; maybe his relatives will foot the bill for private care and we’re out from under. We’re so overcrowded we have to look for an out before taking anybody.”
“Is his wallet on him?”
“Yeah, hip pocket. Just a second.” The interne rolled the motionless figure on the bed far enough over to take the wallet from the pocket. He brought it to the light to open it. “Three bucks,” he said.
“Aren’t those folded papers checks?”
“Maybe they are.” The interne took them out and unfolded first one and then the other. He whistled softly. “Over fourteen hundred bucks. If they’re good—”
The doctor was looking over his shoulder. “They are, unless they’re forgeries. That’s a reputable publishing company. Say—Luke Devereaux they’re made out to. Luke Devers must be just a pen name, but even so it was close enough to sound familiar.”
The interne shrugged. “I still haven’t heard it. But then I don’t read much fiction. Haven’t time.”
“I didn’t mean it was familiar that way. But there’s a girl, a nurse over at General Mental, who’s been passing the word around to every doctor and psychiatrist in Long Beach to let her know if one of them gets a Luke Devereaux for a patient. He’s her ex-husband, I believe. Her name is Devereaux too—I forget the first name.”
“Oh. Well, then we got someone to notify all right. But how about these checks? Is he solvent or isn’t he?”
“With fourteen hundred dollars?”
“But is it? They aren’t endorsed. And right now he’s in no shape to do any endorsing.”
“Ummm,” said the doctor thoughtfully. “I see what you mean. Well, as I said, I think the cata
tonia is a temporary phase, in his case. But if he’s pronounced insane, would his endorsement be valid?”
“You got me, Doc. But why worry about it, at least until after you’ve talked to this dame, his ex-wife. She must have something in mind, and maybe it’s to take responsibility—and that would let us off the hook.”
“Good idea. And I think I remember there’s a phone right out in the hall on this floor. Hold the fort, Pete. And keep an eye on him—he could snap out of that at any time.”
The doctor went out into the hall and came back five minutes later. “Well, we’re in the clear all right,” he said. “She’s taking over. A private san—at her expense if there’s any difficulty about those checks. And a private ambulance will come get him. All she asks of us is we wait ten or fifteen minutes till it gets here.”
“Good deal.” The interne yawned. “Wonder what made her suspect he would end up this way. Instable personality?”
“Partly that. But she was especially afraid something would happen if he went back to writing—seems he hasn’t been doing or even trying any writing since the Martians came. And she said that when he really gets into a story and is working hard and fast on it, concentrating, he used to jump ten feet and fly into a violent tizzy at even a slight interruption. When he was writing, she used to have to go around the house on tiptoe and—well, you see what I mean.”
“I guess some guys are like that, when they concentrate hard on something. Wonder what a Martian did to him tonight?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. Whatever it was, it happened in the heat of creation just when he was getting started on a novel. I would like to know what happened though.”
“Why don’t you ask me, Gentlemen?”
They whirled around. Luke Devereaux was sitting up, on the edge of the bed. There was a Martian in has lap.
“Huh?” said the doctor, not very brilliantly.
Martians, Go Home Page 9