Zombies of the Gene Pool

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