Zombies of the Gene Pool

She found that use of her title helped to prevent people from mistaking her for an idiot. 'It was I who found the body,' she explained. 'And I just wanted to see how the investigation was going. In case the police want to talk to me,' she added in an inspired afterthought.

'I believe they will,' Trivett told her. She noticed a lingering trace of a local accent in his carefully precise speech. 'I had a call from them a little while ago, and they asked whether your group would be staying on through tomorrow. They said they'd be over in the morning to talk to you people.'

Marion's eyes widened. 'Do they suspect foul play?'

'They didn't say exactly. But they took the fellow's medicine along with them for testing. Were you a friend of his?'

'I had just met him,' said Marion. 'But he was rather famous. I guess most people in science fiction have heard of Pat Malone.'

The hotel manager blinked in surprise. 'Who?'

'I suppose he wasn't exactly a celebrity outside the genre, but, believe me, in science fiction, Pat Malone was a name to conjure with.'

'Ma'am, who are you talking about?'

'Pat Malone. The gentleman who died here last night.'

Trivett frowned in confusion. 'Was that his stage name or something?'

'No. Why?'

'Because the dead man was a Mr. Richard Spivey. At least according to his driver's license. I don't know anything about a Pat Malone.'

On the editors' bus, en route to the Johnson City Holiday Inn, Enzio O'Malley was complaining loudly to all and sundry. 'Some of this stuff is handwritten!' he wailed. 'I haven't had to read handwriting since I edited the college poetry magazine!'

'Be thankful it's legible,' said Lily Warren. 'I was afraid they'd find a time capsule filled with muddy water-that is, if they found anything at all.'

'This is going to take me hours to read.'

'Fortune cookies take him hours to read,' muttered the Del Rey editor sotto voce.

'Has anybody looked at any of this stuff?' asked Lily. 'I wondered if some of these stories are early drafts of pieces they rewrote and published later. I'd hate to pay six figures for a draft of Starwind Rising.'

'This story by Dale Dugger is pretty good,' said a short dark girl who couldn't have been more than twenty- three. She had recently been transferred from the romance division to science fiction, and she was still unfamiliar with her new territory. 'Has he got a back list?'

After a few moments of stifled laughter from her rival editors, Lily Warren said gently, 'No, Debbie. Dale Dugger died of alcohol-related disorders in Nashville. He isn't significant.'

Enzio O'Malley scowled. 'Well, at least we can assume that he wasn't a temperamental old bastard like the famous ones.'

'I thought Mr. Conyers was very nice,' said Debbie.

Lily Warren sighed. 'He's just a lawyer. The famous ones are Surn, Mistral, Phillips, Deddingfield, and possibly Erik Giles, who wrote the C. A. Stormcock book.'

'He thinks he's famous,' said O'Malley. 'I asked him to autograph my photocopy of his time-capsule short story, and he refused point blank.'

Lily Warren laughed. 'I always suspected you of being a closet fan, O'Malley.'

'Are all the authors represented in the manuscript?' someone else asked.

Lily flipped through the pages of faint typescript and badly photocopied holograph manuscripts. 'I don't see Deddingfield,' she said. 'Everyone else is there.'

Someone from the back of the bus called out, 'Has anyone read the story by George Woodard?'

'I'm saving that for late tonight,' said O'Malley. 'For a sedative.'

'All right,' said Jay Omega. 'I think I can fly this thing.' As soon as Marion had gone, Jay went out to the car and retrieved his Tandy 1400HD laptop from the trunk. At nearly twelve pounds, it was a bit heavy to be a portable machine, at least compared to the latest technology, but Jay was used to it. He liked the keyboard and the backlit screen, and he couldn't see any point in dropping a thousand bucks on a newer model just to save himself a few pounds of luggage. He could write books on it, send faxes with it, and, when he hooked it up to a telephone, he could access the world.

Several minutes later he was back in his room establishing a command center. He had dragged the round worktable over beside the bed, within reach of the telephone wall jack. He unplugged the touch-tone phone on the nightstand, and in its place he plugged in the computer modem. He set up the computer in the center of the worktable and attached it to the modem.

Now all he had to do was make some phone calls.

Jay Omega took out his wallet. Tucked away with his Radio Shack credit card, his SFWA membership, and his frequent flier ID was a cardboard Guinness beer coaster with Joel Schumann's telephone number scribbled on the back. Beneath that was a second number, inscribed: Bulletin Board-J.S., Sysop. It was this second number that he needed. The notation beside that number indicated that Joel Schumann was the systems operator (i.e. sysop) for an electronic bulletin board to which a number of computer enthusiasts in his area subscribed. Through Schumann's bulletin board, users could contact other people on other bulletin boards anywhere in the world, but because everyone wasn't always logged on, it could take days for the right person to receive a message. Jay decided that he needed some advice before proceeding. Although he dutifully paid his twenty-dollar yearly dues to keep the system operating, bulletin board chatting wasn't something he had much time or inclination for. Once a week he checked the messages to see if someone were trying to reach him, and occasionally he scanned the screens of typewritten conversations to see if anything more substantial than Robo-cop was being discussed. Most of the time it wasn't, so he let it go at that. Now, though, he needed some advice, and he was pretty sure that Joel Schumann was the place to start.

Jay dialed the number, hoping that one of the four lines was free. A click told him that it was, and almost instantly his screen lit up with the logo of Joel Schumann's bulletin board. Jay logged on and typed in his password: Frodo, which was the name of Marion Farley's cat. He had no idea how she had come up with that name, and it never occurred to him to ask. After a moment's pause the system pronounced him cleared for entry and informed him that he had seventy-two minutes to spend before being disconnected.

'I hope that will be enough,' muttered Jay. After a moment's thought, he typed in a message to 'ALL': PLEASE ADVISE, I NEED TO CONTACT S-F FANS FROM ALL OVER THE COUNTRY TO TRACK DOWN A MISSING PERSON. URGENT AND IMPORTANT MATTER. TIME IS LIMITED. i'm IN A MOTEL NEAR JOHNSON CITY, TN, USING LAPTOP. PLEASE ADVISE FASTEST AND MOST EFFECTIVE WAY TO CONTACT FANDOM.-J. OMEGA.

After reading through the lines to make sure he hadn't misspelled anything, Jay transmitted the message and logged off. Now he had to wait for somebody to read his message and leave a reply. Because it was a Saturday he knew that it wouldn't take long for an answer. He decided to call back in half an hour. While he waited, he ambled over to the television and began to flip through the channels, testing his theory that at any given hour of the day, Star Trek is always playing somewhere. It wasn't, but he did find an old episode of the British series Blackadder, a program which Marion ranked somewhere between chocolate and sex. He had settled back on the bed, happily immersed in a parody of court life in the sixteenth century, when Marion burst in.

'You won't believe what the hotel manager said!' she cried.

Jay turned down the volume on the set. 'Try me.'

'He said the dead man was someone called Richard Spivey.'

'He could have changed his name, I suppose. It would have made it harder for fandom to track him down. Did you look in his wallet?'

Marion shivered. 'No. I didn't want to search the corpse. That's why I'm an English major. But he did have books autographed by some of the Lanthanides.'

'To Spivey or to Pat Malone?'