Zombies of the Gene Pool

Barbara sniffed. 'Curtis Phillips was always crazy, if you ask me. Not that the rest of them were much of a contrast. Anyhow, it's a good thing for you I didn't know about such goings-on in 1954, Jim Conyers, or I'd have thought twice about marrying you.' Another thought occurred to her. 'What about Earlene Riley and Angela Arbroath? You can't say they didn't visit!'

'Angie was a high school kid, and built like a pipe cleaner back then. Not exactly a femme fatale. Most of us treated her like a kid sister. And Earlene was a pudding-faced girl who used sex to build her self-esteem.'

Barbara stared. 'Jim! Do you mean she thought she was worth something because that pack of drips wanted to sleep with her? Lo-ord God! They would have slept with an Angus heifer if they could have caught one!'

Jim's smile was rueful. 'Well, I wouldn't have!' he told her. 'I had the prettiest girl in east Tennessee as my one and only.'

She put down the brush and came to hug him. As he enfolded her in his arms and lay back on the bed, he thought how good his life had been, and for the thousandth time he was glad he had never told Barbara about that one little incident with Earlene Riley. He wondered if Pat Malone remembered it.

Several rooms farther down the hall, Ruben Mistral was pacing, while his preppy minion, still wearing a coat and tie, sat at the writing table by the window, notebook at the ready, in case there were instructions to be carried out. 'He's not dead!' said Bunzie for the umpteenth time. 'The son of a bitch isn't dead!'

The minion, a recent USC film school graduate named Geoff, ventured an opinion. 'Excuse me, sir? Are you sure he's really Pat Malone? We never asked to see his driver's license.'

Bunzie snarled. 'Of course it's him! He may not look the same, but there's nothing wrong with that steel trap he calls a mind. His memory is perfect! Why couldn't he have gone ga-ga instead of poor old Brendan? Did you notice how out of it Surn was?'

'Not especially, sir. I had never met him before. He did seem less forthright than Mr. Malone.'

'So did Attila the Hun. I should have known Pat's death was too good to be true! At that party tonight he remembered enough damaging tidbits to keep the Enquirer presses rolling for a month! If he tries to get chatty in front of the reporters, so help me I'll kill him!'

'Would you like me to see that he is barred from the activities tomorrow?' said Geoff, whose job was to anticipate such assignments.

It was tempting, and Bunzie hesitated, thinking of the serenity of a reunion without the Lanthanides' stormy petrel, but as appealing as the suggestion was, it was too risky. 'He'd call a press conference the minute our backs were turned,' he sighed. 'He'd use the hotel fax machine to blitz the media. By the time we schlepped back to the hotel with the time capsule, he'd probably be booked on Oprah, Geraldo, and Donahue! I think we're going to have to take him with us-so that we can keep an eye on him.'

Geoff, whose threshold of modesty was considerably lower than his boss's, doodled a question mark on his note pad. 'Has he really got all that much to tell? It was a long time ago, after all. Sounds like boyish pranks to me.'

'That's a point,' murmured Bunzie. 'Maybe you're right. After all, we live in a world where Supreme Court nominees smoke pot, and elected officials get caught screwing around. Compared to that, we're small potatoes.'

Geoff thought of adding, 'And since you're not as famous as all that, who'd care,' but he thought better of it. Instead he said, 'It's not as if there were any terrible secrets within the group.'

Bunzie was silent for almost a full minute before he replied. 'No, I suppose not. But you can never tell what will strike the public fancy in the silly season! Remember when a moose fell in love with a cow and made Newsweek? All the same, I want you to stay with him tomorrow. Keep him away from the reporters! And the editors, too! Don't let him get off by himself with anyone.'

'Sure. No problem.' Geoff was careful not to react to this pronouncement. Privately, though, he was thinking, Holy shit! I wonder what those guys were up to back then!

'It went fine tonight. Just fine,' said Lorien Williams for the third time. 'You were great! Have you taken your medication yet?'

Brendan Surn, who was wearing his homespun monk's robe, was sitting on the edge of his bed, apparently unmoved by the evening's events. He had smiled his vague smile as Lorien helped him change clothes, and he watched the end of a television movie while she got into her pajamas. In response to Lorien's question about his pills, he looked about him for clues that he had taken it, a glass of water, the bottle of pills, but there was no physical evidence to jog his memory. He shook his head, giving her that helpless little smile that meant he didn't know.

Lorien rummaged about in her suitcase. 'No, of course you haven't!' she announced. 'I hadn't even unpacked them yet. Here, open the bottle while I get you some water.'

Surn worked diligently on the childproof cap. From the bathroom, Lorien called out to him over the sound of running water, 'Did you enjoy the evening?'

He thought about her question until she returned. 'Yes, it was quite nice,' he said, accepting the glass from her.

'It was interesting to meet them all,' said Lorien, sitting down on the edge of the bed to continue the chat. 'I wish I could have met Curtis Phillips and Peter Deddingfield, though.'

Brendan Surn frowned. 'Weren't they there?'

'No, Brendan,' said Lorien gently. 'They are dead. It was Pat Malone who came back. And I don't own anything of his that I could get autographed.'

He gave her a vague smile. 'Pat Malone forgot that he was dead.'

Lorien, who was never sure whether or not Surn was joking, thought it best to overlook that remark. 'Well, you are going to have a long day tomorrow, Brendan!' she said briskly. 'There will be a lot of reporters and a lot of unfamiliar situations. Let's go through it all again, shall we? And then I think you should get some sleep.'

'I'm not tired,' said Surn. 'Is there some work that I should be doing?'

His assistant stifled a yawn. 'Do you want to finish your monthly letter to that fanzine you contribute to?' She went over to a small suitcase and extracted a sheaf of papers and a mimeographed journal bound in yellow construction paper. 'I've made the notes here about the topics you wanted to comment on to each participant.'

Although Phosgene was a science fiction fanzine, or more specifically a letterzine, its subjects ranged far afield of the genre. Any given issue might contain essays from various contributors on the subject of Central European politics, solar energy, abortion, or tropical fish diseases. Subscribers would write letters about whatever they cared to discuss, and in the next issue everyone else would comment, usually briefly, on each of the opinions expressed. The fact that almost no one had the slightest pretension to expertise on any of these topics did not deter them from pontificating. Indeed, one might suppose that anyone who had any proficiency in the subject would not be there in the first place, because he could find a better forum for his ideas, i.e. a place where they might actually have some influence. As it was, the soi-disant philosophers of fandom preached at each other while the world went by. Offering sermons from the mount of his celebrity to the subscribers of Phosgene was one of Brendan Surn's few vanities.

Lorien Williams consulted her notes. 'Let's see… We have Lois Hutton talking about women in combat, and you wanted to say…'

Surn waved his hand. 'Tell her that NASA experiments proved that middle-aged women would make the best astronauts. Surely they could be equally effective as soldiers.' He giggled. 'Besides, who'd miss them?'

Lorien wrote everything down except for that last comment. She felt that Surn was a prisoner of his generation, but that he should be protected from the scorn of his more enlightened younger acquaintances. 'The next writer is Gareth Whitney from Culpeper, Virginia.'

'Yes. I like him. Tell him that I agree with him that even if A. P. Hill had not been shot, he would not have survived the Civil War, for reasons of health, and that while I cannot agree that he was the equal of Stonewall Jackson, I do think that as a brigade commander, he was exceptional.'

Lorien scribbled down this reply. 'Ready for the next one? They're arguing about Harlan again.'

Surn smiled. 'Oh, Harlan. Leave them to it. They're having such a good time, and he can take care of himself. I won't comment. What else?'

'Worldcon.'

'San Francisco,' sighed Surn. 'Snog in the fog!'