Zombies of the Gene Pool

Chapter 5

"I am looking," said Marion Farley. "It isn't on the map, I tell you!"

It was a blazing day in late July, and the reunion journey to Tennessee had begun. Jay Omega was driving his other car (the gray Oldsmobile he used for trips and for times that his MG was in the shop; i.e. the car he used), and Marion had been assigned to the front passenger seat on the condition that she act as navigator and that she use her reading glasses when consulting the map. She was dressed for the expedition in khaki shorts, an Earth Day T-shirt, and several layers of sun block. Jay had suggested that the outfit needed chukka boots and a riding crop to really complete the look, but Marion was not amused.

Erik Giles, in a white suit and straw hat, looking like a clean-shaven version of Mark Twain, was settled into the backseat, reading the current issue of Atlantic.

"I thought they saved Wall Hollow," said Marion, running her finger over the area south of Johnson City. "I mean, I thought that a new town bearing that name still existed. Didn't the TVA move the church and several of the town buildings to higher ground? I thought that some of the residents moved there."

"They did," said Jay Omega. "I asked Wulff in civil engineering about it. Dams are his specialty. According to him, the present village of Wall Hollow is one street, with half a dozen buildings, one general store, and a scattering of houses. It's smaller than it was in the old days before the lake. Rand-McNally didn't think it worth mentioning."

Erik Giles leaned forward and peered between the seats for a closer look at the map of Tennessee. "Never mind," he said. "I know how to get there. See if you can find Hampton on the map."

With her nose almost touching the map, Marion finally announced, "Hampton. Got it. Highway 321. It doesn't look very large, either."

"I don't suppose it is. It wasn't much more than a crossroads in the early fifties. Back when we lived on the farm, the little diner and service station there kept a black bear in a cage as a tourist attraction. Tourists used to buy bottles of chocolate soda to feed it, and the bear would hold the bottle in its forepaws and chug it down in one gulp."

Marion looked stern. "If that is an example of the good old days, I'm thankful to have missed them."

"Look at the map again," said Jay Omega, hoping to forestall another of Marion's lectures. "We're not going to Wall Hollow, are we? I thought the reunion was being held somewhere nearby."

Marion consulted the reunion brochure, a three-paneled flier on baronial ivory paper. It had been printed in considerable style by MistralWorld, Inc. and mailed to everyone connected with the science fiction genre. On the front was a blue computer-designed graphic of Atlantis sinking beneath the waves, and above it in gold-foil avant garde script were the words: Return of the Lanthanides. The first panel gave a brief history of the Lanthanides and the fate of Dugger's farm, probably taken from a reference work on science fiction, since several of the less important members were omitted altogether (Woodard, Giles, Conyers). The center panel gave a schedule of events, culminating with the Saturday trek to the newly drained Fan Farm to recover the time capsule (proceedings to be filmed by the television program A Current Affair). The literary auction would take place on Sunday morning, followed by a press conference with the surviving Lanthanides and their newly acquired publisher, the high bidder of the auction. The last panel, authorship credited to George Woodard of Alluvial, listed the contents of the time capsule and a brief description of the mini-con weekend that led to its creation. One of the two back panels provided a map of the Gene C. Breedlove Lake area of east Tennessee, with instructions on how to get there by air or car, and the last panel said "MistralWorld Productions" in the customary and instantly recognizable flourish.

"There is a map on the back of the folder," Marion announced. "According to this, we are staying at a state park motel on the shores of Breedlove Lake."

Jay Omega snickered. "Not the Breedlove Inn?"

"Alas, no," grinned Marion. "It's called the Mountaineer Lodge. It's beside the dam, on the western side of the lake, a few miles from the present Wall Hollow."

"The best local motel by a dam site," chuckled Erik Giles.

Marion turned to stare at him. "I thought you didn't make puns anymore."

He sighed. "It's the reunion. God knows what I shall be saying and doing after a few hours of their collective presence. Singing 'Shrimp Boats,' I expect. I hope we don't shock the editors."

Marion consulted the brochure. "Not much chance of that. I believe they will be lodging at the Holiday Inn in Johnson City so as not to cramp your style."

"I suppose Bunzie will have them bused in for the auction."

"You wouldn't shock the editors, anyway," said Jay Omega. "Writers are supposed to be eccentric. Besides, they're filming this reunion, aren't they? If you all clown around, the media will love it. It will be good for the auction."

"They're having a literary auction in Wall Hollow, Tennessee?" said Marion. "That doesn't sound like publishing as we know it, Jay, because your editor wouldn't cross the street…"

"I know," said Jay, "but this is a publicity deal. Remember that the whole thing is going to be filmed for national television, and Mistral is connected with the movies. Even New York is impressed by the presence of movie people."

"It's Bunzie's doing, I am certain," said Erik Giles. "He had an instinctive grasp of publicity. He faxed press releases to Publishers Weekly and to all the major newspapers, announcing the reunion. A couple of reporters are actually being sent down to cover it. To me it all sounds like a scheme to get an outrageous sum for the anthology. I confess that I am not averse to such a plan."

"It will probably work, too," said Marion after a moment's consideration. "People don't buy books unless they've heard of them. All of this star-studded publicity could turn this into a bestseller."

"That would be a pleasant surprise after all these years."

"Aren't you worried about what the English department will say when they find out who you really are?" asked Jay Omega.

Erik Giles looked startled. "What do you mean?"

"C. A. Stormcock."

The professor smiled. "I imagine that the department will forgive that youthful indiscretion if I promise not to lapse again."

"Don't you think you might like to write science fiction again?"

He shook his head. "Definitely not. To quote Mr. Woody Alien, I plan to take the money and run."

"Well, the auction should provide you with plenty of that," said Jay Omega.

"Do you think Alien Books will be there to bid?" asked Giles.

"No," said Jay, reddening a little at the mention of his neglectful publishers. "They only do paperbacks. I don't think they could afford a deal of this magnitude."

"They're probably all in summer school, anyhow," giggled Marion, who contended that Alien Books filled its editorial vacancies by calling the Runaway Hotline.

"Well, it should be a very profitable venture for you, Erik," said

Jay. "Imagine getting thousands of dollars for a short story thirty-five years later. What was your story about, anyhow?"

Erik Giles smiled ruefully. "I've been trying to remember. I believe that all our stories were very much in the style we later became known for. Surn did a story on colonialism set on a distant planet; my old friend-er-Pete-Deddingfield, I mean, wrote a poetic alien encounter thing that reminded me of Moby Dick. Or maybe / wrote that one. We lived in each other's pockets in those days, and some of us dabbled in each other's styles. Well, if Pete wrote that one, then I think I wrote one about a man dying of radiation poisoning."

Marion shuddered. "In 1954?"

"Oh, yes. The Fan Farm library had a paperback copy of Hiroshima by John Hersey, and I remember being very struck by his account of the aftermath of the bombing."

"It will be an interesting story to read in today's world," Jay remarked.

Giles blushed. "I hope I got my details right. We didn't do much research in our Fan Farm days. Too far from a library."

"Do you remember anyone else's story?"

"Dugger wrote a high-tech yarn from the point of view of an alien PFC. He was drawing on his army experiences. I remember laughing a lot when he read it. Dugger had a keen sense of irony." He paused for a moment, remembering his friend. "Let's see, who have I forgotten? Woodard. I can't remember Woodard's story. I never could. Not even five minutes after I'd read one of them. And, of course, poor old Curtis wrote about demons."

Marion nodded. "Curtis Phillips. I don't suppose any of you realized back then?"

"No, of course not. We thought he was a fine storyteller with a gifted imagination and a genius for description. We had no idea."

"Such a pity," sighed Marion. "He was a gifted writer."

"I'm not following this," said Jay Omega. "What didn't they realize? What was a pity?"

"About Curtis Phillips," said Marion. "The great fantasy author who wrote Demon in My View. He was considered the successor to Lovecraft, and he wrote a whole series of novels and stories relating his characters' lives and even world events to the intercessions of demons."

"I haven't read any of Phillips' books, but I've heard of him. He's supposed to have been a brilliant fantasy writer. What is so tragic about him?"

"He was writing nonfiction," said Marion softly.

The four-lane highway that led from southwest Virginia into east Tennessee was built to run through the flattest and widest of the valleys so that it missed most of the beautiful mountain scenery of the Blue Ridge, but it was the fastest and most efficient route. On this trip, no one bothered to look at the scenery. When the three professors ran out of conversation, Jay Omega turned the car radio to the local National Public Radio station and lost himself in a program of classical music, while Erik Giles dozed in the backseat.

Marion soon lost interest in the novel she had brought along. The bulletin board was right about Warren, she thought. Deprived of other distractions, she thought about the weekend ahead, and the phrase there but for the grace of God go I came to mind and would not be dispelled.

The prospect of attending a reunion of old fans of science fiction reminded Marion of the days when she had been a member of fandom herself, and her memories were not altogether pleasant ones. I wonder why Erik asked us to come along with him, she thought. They had never asked him to explain the invitation, which, after all, could be considered an honor, but after the initial excitement wore off, Marion found herself questioning her colleague's motives. Erik Giles had hinted that he was worried about his health and that he did not want to travel alone, but he seemed completely recovered from his heart attack of the year before, and she wondered if that was the real reason for his asking them or just a convenient excuse. Of course, meeting the famous Lanthanides, and all the agents and movie people who attended them, might be good for Jay's career, but she doubted if he had the drive to pursue it. Although Jay Omega was a nationally published novelist, he was essentially a hobby writer, quite content to be an electrical engineer. He had no reason-financial or otherwise-to put forth the time and effort to become a successful full-time writer. He was happy in engineering, and in that profession he was considerably better paid than most writers. If Jay had wanted to try for a serious career as a novelist, Marion would have helped him, but she knew better than to push him. You couldn't change people. She had learned that finally, after ten years and half that many relationships.

That was one thing fandom had taught her. Within its ranks she had met many talented people who could have made a fortune illustrating comic books, designing dresses, developing computer games… but. She sighed, remembering the frustration she had felt in her relationships with her fan friends. After years of stymied friendships and bitter romances, she had learned that you cannot give people ambition as if it were a virus. It is not. It is a genetic trait, and either it is waiting deep inside you to evolve, or else it is entirely absent, and it cannot be imparted to someone full of talent but lacking the drive to succeed. Nothing that anyone can do-not praise, or scolding, or work on one's behalf-can make them try.

Marion had watched her brilliant acquaintances fritter away talent that she would have killed for. The comic book creators answered endless pages of correspondence on their computers, ignoring their own deadlines, while their artistic creations died of neglect. Another gifted friend scrapped her dream of becoming a costume designer in favor of a new boyfriend who wanted to go and live in the wilds of Oregon. The computer whiz went home one night and put a bullet through his head.

Edward Arlington Robinson, thought Marion, mentally acknowledging the quote. When life became painful she always turned to literature. That was how she had become an English professor; it had been the ultimate escape from a marriage that she later compared to two years in an opium den. Only Jeremy hadn't done drugs; he had done dragons. To a sober outsider the addictions had seemed similar and equally incomprehensible.

Marion had met Jeremy when they were undergrads. He had been a computer science major, and she was a smart girl with enough personal problems to keep the psych department busy for years. She was overweight; she had no idea how to manage her thick, curly hair; and she came from a cold and repressive family. Batting a thousand, thought Marion in retrospect. Hello, Middle Earth! She had possessed all the qualities necessary for psychological emigration: she had been rejected by the world, and she was perceptive enough to know it. So she left. She still went to her classes-well, most of the time-and her parents received dutiful letters that discussed the weather and asked after the cats, but Marion was gone. She had found the real people, and joined their ranks.

The real people. Another literary reference. She wondered if Frederic Brown had ever realized the enormous impression his short story made on young egos. It was a simple fantasy story, probably suggested by the coincidence that began the tale: you are humming a song, and suddenly that very song comes on the car radio. The story's hero discovers that most of the people in the world are not real, they are like walk-on players in a film. Just there to set the stage, to create an illusion of reality. But a few people are real, the characters for whom the drama exists. Those people think and feel and care about things; everyone else is an automaton who ceases to function as soon as a real person leaves the scene. The reason the song came on the car radio was that the driver humming the tune was a real person, and he was able to will things to happen.

It was an excellent fantasy story; Fredric Brown was one of the best. But to the troubled adolescent Marion that story was not just an entertaining tale, it was a serious philosophy that explained her feelings of alienation.

When Marion read that story, she knew at once that she was one of them. She knew that she could think and feel, that she was more alive somehow than most of the bubblebrains in her dorm. So that was it. They weren't real. She didn't exactly believe that they were robots, or hallucinations, but on some deeper spiritual level she felt that she possessed something that they lacked. In medieval times, she might have termed it a soul.

Armed with her new understanding of the world, Marion neglected her classes and her correspondence in favor of the search for more real people. Every now and then she would find one- someone with whom she got along especially well from the moment they met-and she'd catch herself thinking, Ah. He's real, too.

Jeremy had been the realest of the real. They had shared the same ecological politics, the same yearning for things medieval, and the same bewilderment over contemporary society. For two years they had a wonderful relationship, exasperating their parents and their respective university departments, before Marion grew tired of the game and of Jeremy's endless defiant failures. "I couldn't take mid-terms," he would explain earnestly. "Because I had to go to Maryland for a meeting of the Shire that week. After all, I am a baron." Such priorities had seemed logical when they were dating, but when Marion was a student wife, working low-wage jobs to pay his tuition, the logic in his actions escaped her entirely. She began to feel like the sober guest at a beer blast. Finally, deciding to bet her money on her own abilities instead of his, Marion enrolled in graduate school, moved out, and never looked back.

Still, she wasn't sure she had ever got the old philosophy out of her system. She had consciously renounced it a few years later when she discovered that most of her real friends bickered endlessly and accomplished very little. Later she came to the uneasy realization that her concept of real and unreal people was very similar to the chauvinistic male's idea of women, the bigot's perception of other races, and, most troubling of all, similar to the way in which serial killers view their victims: they're not real, but I am. They don't matter, but I do. That was when the philosophy of exclusion had begun to frighten her.

Now, of course, she told herself that everyone had a soul and feelings, and that mundanes were very worthwhile people, but sometimes the old attitude came back anyhow. Just last week, Marion had been in line at the Chinese restaurant's lunch buffet, and the pixy-faced young woman in front of her had taken forever, staring at the rice and bean curd as if she couldn't remember what they were. Marion had caught herself thinking, Well, she's not real! The realization that she had thought that about someone even for an instant was an unsettling feeling. It gave her kinship with people she would rather not think of at all, and it made her wonder where such arrogance might have led. Did any of the Lanthanides share this view of reality? Now that she thought of it, it was just the opposite of Curtis Phillips' problem: Marion thought that most people weren't real and didn't matter; Curtis Phillips had fervently believed that demons were, and did.

"So tell me about Curtis Phillips," said Jay Omega, as if on cue. (Marion could never decide if Jay was real or not, but he was utterly unlike Jeremy, and that was enough.)

"Poor Curt," said Erik Giles, who had suddenly awakened. "He had such talent."

"When someone mentions Curtis Phillips, I always think of Richard Dadd," said Marion. She glanced at Jay to see if he recognized the name. It was obvious that he did not. Dadd was one of the things Marion had learned about in her "Middle Earth" period. "Richard Dadd was a mid-nineteenth-century English artist who became famous for his wonderfully complex paintings of fairy life. His paintings-surrealistic in style and much ahead of their time-were much admired, right up until the night that the artist cut his father's throat."

"Another practitioner of nonfiction?" asked Jay.

"Apparently so. He seemed to be having delusions about demons, and hearing voices ordering him to kill, so perhaps he was painting what he saw. He was tried and found insane, and they put him in Broadmoor, where he spent the remainder of his life painting increasingly bizarre landscapes peopled by demons." In lecture mode, Marion prattled happily on. "The asylum kept his paintings, and many of them are still on display there. They're worth a fortune."

"It sounds very like poor Curtis," Erik Giles agreed. "He didn't kill anyone, of course, but after the early success of his horror novels, his behavior became more and more erratic, and I believe there were a few episodes of violence with various editors."

"What sort of episodes?" asked Jay, possibly in search of inspiration.

"I believe he mailed a dead opossum to one of them. And he threatened another one with a razor. He confounded the local police a few times by confessing to murders."

"Murders?"

"Yes. President Kennedy, Janis Joplin, and, I believe, Joan of Arc. I'm told that every police department has cranks whose hobby is confessing. He once wrote to me saying that he had killed George Woodard and Pat Malone, but since Pat had been dead for a couple of years and I had a letter from George that same day, I dismissed it as wishful thinking."

"It sounds as if he needed psychiatric treatment," said Jay.

"He got it. That was when it was decided that he had to be institutionalized. I am told that he continued to write his fantasy stories even while he was in Butner, and in fact two of his short story collections were written there. In the end, of course, his personality became too fragmented for the discipline of composition, and he degenerated into-well, I didn't go and visit him in those final years. I did go once in the mid-sixties, and he seemed lucid enough then."

"Did he seem well enough to be released?" asked Marion.

"Oh, no. He asked about Brendan and Peter, and I told him what they were doing, and then he told me about his demons and what they were doing. I never went back."

"Do you suppose the asylum owns the copyright to Curtis Phillips' later work?" asked Marion. "You know, the way Broad-moor owns the Dadd collection?"

"I don't know. I doubt it, though. Curtis was so well known before he was committed that I would have expected his family to take legal steps to administer his estate."

"It will be interesting to see if anyone turns up to represent his interests at the auction."

"Bunzie will know about all that. His people contacted us, because we all had to agree to let Bunzie's agent represent us in the book deal. He thought negotiations would be much simpler if we had only one representative working for the entire group."

"He has put a lot of work into this reunion," said Marion, taking another look at the brochure.

Erik Giles grinned. "He hates to see other people screw up. Besides, he can delegate most of the arrangements to his staff."

"I suppose he can," said Marion, but she made a mental note to observe Bunzie carefully. She tended to distrust altruistic people.

Jay Omega slowed the car. "Look! A 'Welcome to Tennessee sign. Shall we go in search of the Mountaineer Lodge, stop for dinner, or go and look at the lake?"

Marion shivered. "I don't think I want to look at the lake just yet."

"Nor do I," said Erik Giles.