Zombies of the Gene Pool

Lorien looked away. 'It's in Orlando this year, actually,' she said in a tone of studied casualness.

'It doesn't seem very long ago,' mused Brendan Surn, staring out into the dark void of the Watauga valley. 'The San Francisco Worldcon. And living here. But they all look so old. Did I write a story about that once? About a man who comes out of a daydream to find that he has aged fifty years in two minutes?'

Lorien patted his hand. 'That was Fredric Brown, Brendan. In Nightmares and Geezenstacks.' Sometimes she felt that remembering titles and authors was all the help she could give him, but he seemed pleased at this shared memory.

'So it was,' he said with a sudden smile. 'I remember it!'

Erik Giles looked down at his third cup of coffee. 'I really shouldn't be doing this,' he remarked. 'Either I'll pace all night or I'll have to sleep in the bathtub.'

Angela Arbroath patted his hand. 'Go on, Stormy! Have a caffeine orgy. After the shock we've had tonight, we ought to be drinking something a lot stronger than coffee.'

On the other side of the table, Jay and Marion glanced at each other, wondering if this could be considered an opening for the introduction of a touchy subject. Shortly after the reunion party disbanded, Erik had come wandering out into the lobby, still chatting with Angela Arbroath, and Marion had hurried out of the coffee shop to snare them with the promise of coffee. So far, introductions and pleasantries had dominated the conversation, but now the hour grew late, and the other tables in the coffee shop had emptied one by one until they were alone. Now seemed like a good time to discuss the dramatic events of the evening's reception.

'I imagine it gave you quite a shock,' said Jay Omega, 'and it's partly our fault, for which I apologize. We ran into the fellow just as we were coming back from dinner. He was coming through the front doors with his suitcase at the same time we were entering, so naturally I helped him with the doors.'

Marion smirked. 'Virtue is its own punishment.'

'Then when he asked me where the Lanthanides reunion was being held, we couldn't very well plead ignorant. I told him that outsiders were not permitted to attend, but he just smiled and said that he was invited.'

'And, of course, I asked who he was,' said Marion, taking up the tale. 'Jay wouldn't have challenged him, but I'm much more assertive. Imagine my surprise when he said he was Pat Malone. It was on the tip of my tongue to say, 'But you're dead'; however, even I can't manage to be that abrupt.'

Jay smiled. 'You underestimate yourself.' To Giles and Angela

Arbroath he explained, 'In order to convey the impression that

he was expected at the party, the fellow said, 'I expect the Lanthanides have been looking high and low for me,' and Marion muttered, 'I thought those were the places to look.' '

'We figured it out, of course,' said Marion. 'We came in here for coffee and talked it over. It was a death hoax, wasn't it?'

'Apparently so,' said Erik Giles dryly. 'Even if I believed in resurrection of the body, I don't think the deity would waste it on Pat Malone.'

'It was inconsiderate of him,' said Angela Arbroath. 'Just the sort of silly prank that fifties fans went in for, not caring about the feelings of those who were taken in by it.'

'I suppose he came back to get in on the money and the notoriety?' asked Jay.

'I hope so,' said Erik, 'It would be much more like him to come back in order to upset things, don't you think, Angela?'

She considered it. 'Not out of sheer mischief,' she said at last. 'But I will grant you that Pat was an idealist, and if he thought any of you were selling out, or capitalizing on your old days at Dugger's farm, then he might very well feel self-righteous about putting a stop to things.'

'But he's over sixty now, too!' Erik protested. 'Surely he could use a bit of cash as badly as the rest of us!'

Angela stared at him. 'How odd!' she cried. 'I've only just realized that we don't know a single thing about the resurrected Pat Malone! We were all so much in shock that no one thought to ask him what he has been doing all these years. We treated him as if he really were a ghost.'

'Even if he did come to spoil things, how much trouble could he cause?' asked Marion. 'You all are a bunch of writers. How many guilty secrets could you have?' She laughed at her own joke.

Everyone else looked thoughtful.

George Woodard had brushed his teeth, put on his striped pajamas, and cried a few tears of sheer frustration. Now he was ticking off a list of his most sympathetic friends, trying to decide if there was someone he could safely call to discuss the current crisis, but he could think of no one who wouldn't be delighted at the irony and embarrassment of it. George realized that he could crank up the science fiction rumor mill with one phone call, but in doing so, he would not receive one word of consolation or consideration for his plight. It wasn't worth it. Let everybody find out from someone else. He couldn't be bothered.

Earlene was not the first person he thought of to call, but her name did come up in his ruminations. He decided against it. She would probably force a full account of the evening's confrontation from him, and somehow she would contrive to blame George for the fact that it happened at all. Serves you right for going, she would say. No, Earlene would not be pleased that Pat Malone remembered her so clearly. George wasn't pleased, either, of course, but he consoled himself by thinking that it certainly wasn't true.

It had been true thirty-five years ago, but the 'hot little number' that Malone recalled had cooled off to glacial proportions several decades back. Now she gave every appearance of being able to fall into a deep sleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. George puzzled over this apparent contradiction in the essence of reality. How could something which was technically true be so utterly false? The polite fiction maintained by everyone else- that Earlene was a dull little housewife-was certainly more accurate, but it ignored a good portion of her life. It was as if Earlene were two people: he had married one, but was forced to live with the other.

For a brief moment, George caught himself wondering if the old Earlene would have continued to exist had she married Pat Malone, but that thought was too damaging to his ego for him to dwell on it for long. He rummaged in his suitcase for the emergency Baby Ruth he had hidden in a sock, and began to quell his anxieties in his customary manner.

In the Holiday Inn in Johnson City, the editors and reporters had taken over the cocktail lounge. They were glad for a chance to get together, although such meetings were far from rare. They just didn't happen in New York. All of the occupants of the lounge worked in Manhattan within a half mile of each other, but in order to socialize, they had to attend conferences in various cities, or turn up as fellow lecturers at a writers' workshop somewhere. If this were a Thursday night in New York, a third of them would be doing their laundry; the other two-thirds would still be at the office.

The fact that Johnson City was a relatively small town did not unduly depress them, because (1) while many of them had fled to New York from small towns, they were well able to tolerate small doses of rural Americana; and (2) the publishing business is a small town.

Although the editors were ostensibly camped in Tennessee to engage in a bidding war, their camaraderie was unaffected by the potential rivalry. They were veterans of many such campaigns, and it was, after all, someone else's money that they were playing with. Except for the possibility of added prestige for a literary coup, which might result in money or perks, the Lanthanides Anthology Auction might as well be a Monopoly tournament. Their attitude toward the other group of professionals present- the various media representatives who had turned up for the occasion-was cordial, but more reserved. They didn't want to seem overly interested in the glitz business, and until one of them owned the current project, they had nothing quotable to say anyhow. Besides, editors secretly fear that journalists have the Great American Novel stashed in typing-paper boxes in their closets, and that given proximity to a book editor, they will try to market it. The editors' dread of becoming a literary hostage- trapped in a corner, listening to an endless plot summary-kept them packed into a tight little herd for protection. They imagined the reporters circling them like lions, seeking to pounce upon the weakest member of the herd.

The journalists in turn kept to their own corner of the lounge, swapping war stories about covering the vice- president, discussing software, and exchanging interesting fax numbers (Billy Joel's, for example). They were equally wary of the editors, who, after all, might want to get their names in the paper or might be seized with a guilt-ridden urge to wave to the folks on TV. Among themselves they also swapped horror stories about the most obnoxious 'civilians' who had tried to impose on them lately.

At the beginning of the evening the two factions had staked out opposite sides of the room, holding court around their own tables, with occasional furtive glances toward the other enclave, but as the evening wore on, and