The Early Asimov Volume 3

Chapter One

Author! Author!

It occurred to Graham Dorn, and not for the first time, either, that there was one serious disadvantage in swearing you'll go through fire and water for a girl, however beloved. Sometimes she takes you at your miserable word.

This is one way of saying that he had been waylaid, shanghaied and dragooned by his fiancee into speaking at her maiden aunt's Literary Society. Don't laugh! It's not funny from the speaker's rostrum. Some of the faces you have to look at!

To race through the details, Graham Dorn had been jerked onto a platform and forced upright. He had read a speech on 'The Place of the Mystery Novel in American Literature' in an appalled tone. Not even the fact that his own eternally precious June had written it (part of the bribe to get him to speak in the first place) could mask the fact that it was essentially tripe.

And then when he was weltering, figuratively speaking, in his own mental gore, the harpies closed in, for lo, it was time for the informal discussion and assorted feminine gush.

- ...Oh, Mr. Dorn, do you work from inspiration? I mean, do you just sit down and then an idea strikes you - all at once? And you must sit up all night and drink black coffee to keep you awake till you get it down?

- Oh, yes. Certainly. (His working hours were two to four in the afternoon every other day, and he drank milk.)

- ...Oh, Mr. Dorn, you must do the most awful research to get all those bizarre murders. About how much must you do before you can write a story?

-  About six months, usually. (The only reference books he ever used were a six-volume encyclopedia and year-before-last's World Almanac.)

-  Oh, Mr. Dorn, did you make up your Reginald de Meister from a real character? You must have. He's oh, so convincing in his every detail.

-  He's modeled after a very dear boyhood chum of mine. (Dorn had never known anyone like de Meister, He lived in continual fear of meeting someone like him. He had even a cunningly fashioned ring containing a subtle Oriental poison for use just in case he did. So much for de Meister.)

Somewhere past the knot of women, June Billings sat in her seat and smiled with sickening and proprietary pride.

Graham passed a finger over his throat and went through the pantomime of choking to death as unobtrusively as possible. June smiled, nodded, threw him a delicate kiss, and did nothing.

Graham decided to pass a stern, lonely, woman-less life and to have nothing but villainesses in his stories forever after.

He was answering in monosyllables, alternating yesses and noes. Yes, he did take cocaine on occasion. He found it helped the creative urge. No, he didn't think he could allow Hollywood to take over de Meister. He thought movies weren't true expressions of real Art. Besides, they were just a passing fad. Yes. he would read Miss Cram's manuscripts if she brought them. Only too glad to. Reading amateur manuscripts was such fun, and editors are really such brutes.

And then refreshments were announced, and there was a sudden vacuum. It took a split-second for Graham's head to clear. The mass of femininity had coalesced into a single specimen. She was four feet ten and about eighty-five pounds in weight. Graham was six-two and two hundred ten worth of brawn. He could probably have handled her without difficulty, especially since both her arms were occupied with a pachyderm of a purse. Still, he felt a little delicate, to say nothing of queasy, about knocking her down. It didn't seem quite the thing to do.

She was advancing, with admiration and fervor disgustingly clear in her eyes, and Graham felt the wall behind him. There was no doorway within armreach on either side.

'Oh, Mr. de Meister - do, do please let me call you Mr. de Meister. Your creation is so real to me, that I can't think of you as simply Graham Dorn. You don't mind, do you?'

'No, no, of course not,' gargled Graham, as well as he could through thirty-two teeth simultaneously set on edge. 'I often think of myself as Reginald in my more frivolous moments.'

'Thank you. You can have no idea, dear Mr. de Meister, how I have looked forward to meeting you. I have read all your works, and I think they are wonderful.'

'I'm glad you think so.' He went automatically into the modesty routine. 'Really nothing, you know. Ha, ha, ha! Like to please the readers, but lots of room for improvement. Ha, ha, ha!'

'But you really are, you know.' This was said with intense earnestness. 'I mean good, really good. I think it is wonderful to be an author like you. It must be almost like being God.'

Graham stared blankly. 'Not to editors, sister.'

Sister didn't get the whisper. She continued, 'To be able to create living characters out of nothing; to unfold souls to all the world; to put thoughts into words; to build pictures and create worlds. I have often thought than an author was the most graciously gifted person in creation. Better an inspired author starving in a garret than a king upon his throne. Don't you think so?'

'Definitely,' lied Graham.

'What are the crass material goods of the world to the wonders of weaving emotions and deeds into a little world of its own?'

'What, indeed?'

'And posterity, think of posterity!'

'Yes, yes. I often do.'

She seized his hand. There's only one little request. You might,' she blushed faintly, 'you might give poor Reginald - if you will allow me to call him that just once - a chance to marry Letitia Reynolds. You make her just a little too cruel to him. I'm sure I weep over it for hours together sometimes. But then he is too, too real to me.'

And from somewhere, a lacy frill of handkerchief made its appearance, and went to her eyes. She removed it, smiled bravely, and scurried away. Graham Dorn inhaled, closed his eyes, and gently collapsed into June's arms.

His eyes opened with a jerk. 'You may consider,' he said severely, 'our engagement frazzled to the breaking point. Only my consideration for your poor, aged parents prevents your being known henceforward as the ex-fiancee of Graham Dorn.'

'Darling, you are so noble.' She massaged his sleeve with her cheeks. 'Come, I'll take you home and bathe your poor wounds.'

'All right, but you'll have to carry me. Has your precious, loveable aunt got an axe?'

'But why?'

'For one thing, she had the gall to introduce me as the brainfather, God help me, of the famous Reginald de Meister.'

'And aren't you?'

'Let's get out of this creep-joint. And get this. I'm no relative by brain or otherwise, of that character. I disown him. I cast him into the darkness. I spit upon him. I declare him an illegitimate son, a foul degenerate, and the offspring of a hound, and I'll be damned if he ever pokes his lousy patrician nose into my typewriter again.'

They were in the taxi, and June straightened his tie. 'All right, Sonny, let's see the letter.'

'What letter?'

She held out her hand. 'The one from the publishers.'

Graham snarled and flipped it out of his jacket pocket. 'I've thought of inviting myself to his house for tea, the damned flintheart. He's got a rendezvous with a pinch of strychnine.'

'You may rave later. What does he say? Hmm - uh-huh -"doesn't quite come up to what is expected - feel that de Meister isn't in his usual form - a little revision perhaps towards - feel sure the novel can be adjusted - are returning under separate cover-"'

She tossed it aside. 'I told you you shouldn't have killed off Sancha Rodriguez. She was what you needed. You're getting skimpy on the love interest.'

'You write it! I'm through with de Meister. It's getting so club-women call me Mr. de Meister, and my picture is printed in newspapers with the caption Mr. de Meister. I have no individuality. No one ever heard of Graham Dorn. I'm always: Dorn, Dorn, you know, the guy who writes the de Meister stuff, you know.'

June squealed, 'Silly! You're jealous of your own detective.'

'I am not jealous of my own character. Listen! I hate detective stories. I never read them after I got into the two-syllable words. I wrote the first as a clever, trenchant, biting satire. It was to blast the entire false school of mystery writers. That's why I invented this de Meister. He was the detective to end all detectives. The Compleat Ass, by Graham Dorn.

'So the public, along with snakes, vipers and ungrateful children takes this filth to its bosom. I wrote mystery after mystery trying to convert the public -'

Graham Dorn drooped a little at the futility of it all.

'Oh, well.' He smiled wanly, and the great soul rose above adversity. 'Don't you see? I've got to write other things. I can't waste my life. But who's going to read a serious novel by Graham Dorn, now that I'm so thoroughly identified with de Meister?'

'You can use a pseudonym.'

'I will not use a pseudonym. I'm proud of my name.'

'But you can't drop de Meister. Be sensible, dear.'

'A normal fiancee,' Graham said bitterly, 'wou'd want her future husband to write something really worthwhile and become a great name in literature.'

'Well, I do want you to, Graham. But just a little de Meister once in a while to pay the bills that accumulate.'

'Ha!' Graham knocked his hat over his eyes to hide the sufferings of a strong spirit in agony. 'Now you say that I can't reach prominence unless I prostitute my art to that unmentionable. Here's your place. Get out. I'm going home and write a good scorching letter on asbestos to our senile Mr. MacDun-lap.'

'Do exactly as you want to, cookie,' soothed June. 'And tomorrow when you feel better, you'll come and cry on my shoulder, and we'll plan a revision of Death on the Third Deck together, shall we?'

'The engagement,' said Graham, loftily, 'is broken.'

'Yes, dear. I'll be home tomorrow at eight.'

That is of no possible interest to me. Good-bye!'

Publishers and editors are untouchables, of course. Theirs is a heritage of the outstretched hand and the well-toothed smile; the nod of the head and the slap of the back.

But perhaps somewhere, in the privacy of the holes to which authors scurry when the night falls, a private revenge it taken. There, phrases may be uttered where no one can overhear, and letters may be written that need not be mailed, and perhaps a picture of an editor, smiling pensively, is enshrined above the typewriter to act the part of bulls-eye in an occasional game of darts.

Such a picture of MacDunlap, so used, enlightened Graham Dorn's room. And Graham Dora himself, in his usual writing costume (street-clothes and typewriter), scowled at the fifth sheet of paper in his typewriter. The other four were draped over the edge of the waste-basket, condemned for their milk-and-watery mildness.

He began:

'Dear Sir -' and added slowly and viciously, 'or Madam, as the case may be.'

He typed furiously as the inspiration caught him, disregarding the faint wisp of smoke curling upward from the overheated keys:

'You say you don't think much of de Meister in this story. Well, I don't think much of de Meister, period. You can handcuff your slimy carcass to his and jump off the Brooklyn Bridge. And I hope they drain the East River just before you jump.

'From now on, my works will be aimed higher than your scurvy press. And the day will come when I can look back on this period of my career with the loathing that is its just -'

Someone had been tapping Graham on the shoulder during the last paragraph. Graham twitched it angrily and ineffectively at intervals.

Now he stopped, turned around, and addressed the stranger in his room courteously: 'Who the devilish damnation are you? And you can leave without bothering to answer. I won't think you rude.'

The newcomer smiled graciously. His nod wafted the delicate aroma of some unobtrusive hair-oil toward Graham. His lean, hard-bitten jaw stood out keenly, and he said in a well-modulated voice:

'De Meister is the name. Reginald de Meister.'

Graham rocked to his mental foundations and heard them creak.

'Glub,' he said.

'Pardon?'

Graham recovered. 'I said, "glub," a little code word meaning which de Meister.'

'The de Meister,' explained de Meister, kindly.

'My character?- My detective?'

De Meister helped himself to a seat, and his finely-chiseled features assumed that air of well-bred boredom so admired in the best circles. He lit a Turkish cigarette, which Graham at once recognized as his detective's favorite brand, tapping it slowly and carefully against the back of his hand first, a mannerism equally characteristic.

'Really, old man,' said de Meister. 'This is really excruciat-inly funny. I suppose I am your character, y'know, but let's not work on that basis. It would be so devastatin'ly awkward.'

'Glub,' said Graham again, by way of a rejoinder.

His mind was feverishly setting up alternatives. He didn't drink, more, at the moment, was the pity, so he wasn't drunk. He had a chrome-steel digestion and he wasn't overheated, so it wasn't a hallucination. He never dreamed, and his imagination - as befitted a paying commodity - was under strict control. And since, like all authors, he was widely considered more than half a screwball, insanity was out of the question.

Which left de Meister simply an impossibility, and Graham felt relieved. It's a very poor author indeed who hasn't learned the fine art of ignoring impossibilities in writing a book.

He said smoothly, 'I have here a volume of my latest work. Do you mind naming your page and crawling back into it. I'm a busy man and God knows I have enough of you in the tripe I write.'

'But I'm here on business, old chap. I've got to come to a friendly arrangement with you first. Things are deucedly uncomfortable as they are.'

'Look, do you know you're bothering me? I'm not in the habit of talking to mythical characters. As a general thing, I don't pal around with them. Beside which, it's time your mother told you that you really don't exist.'

'My dear fellow, I always existed. Existence is such a subjective thing. What a mind thinks exists, does exist. I existed in your mind, for instance, ever since you first thought of me.'

Graham shuddered. 'But the question is, what are you doing out of my mind? Getting a little narrow for you? Want elbow room?'

'Not at all. Rather satisfact'ry mind in its way, but I achieved a more concrete existence only this afternoon, and so I seize the opportunity to engage you face to face in the aforementioned business conversation. You see, that thin, sentimental lady of your society -'

'What society?' questioned Graham hollowly. It was all awfully clear to him now.

'The one at which you made a speech' - de Meister shuddered in his turn - 'on the detective novel. She believed in my existence, so naturally, I exist.'

He finished his cigarette and flicked it out with a negligent twist of the wrist.

'The logic,' declared Graham, 'is inescapable. Now, what do you want and the answer is no.'

'Do you realize, old man, that if you stop writing de Meister stories, my existence will become that dull, wraithlike one of all superannuated fictional detectives. I'd have to gibber through the gray mists of Limbo with Holmes, Lecocoq and Dupin.'

'A very fascinating thought, I think. A very fitting fate.' Reginald de Meister's eyes turned icy, and Graham suddenly remembered the passage on page 123 of The Case of the Broken Ashtray:

His eyes, hitherto lazy and unattentive, hardened into twin pools of blue ice and transfixed the butler, who staggered back, a stifled cry on his lips, Evidently, de Meister lost none of his characteristics out of the novels he adorned.

Graham staggered back, a stifled cry on his lips.

***