Zombies of the Gene Pool

it?'

'Amitriptyline. It's used to treat depression.' She seemed to have forgotten Marion's presence. 'That would explain a lot. He used to get so caught up in wild schemes-like fandom-and then later he would berate himself for having wasted his time on them. Yes, I suppose he might even have been manic depressive. Although, I have to say that he didn't seem to behave much differently last night from the way he was in the old days, so I don't see that the medicine was doing him much good.'

'I wonder if they've notified his next of kin. Did he have any? I thought you mentioned once that he was married.'

'That was in the fifties,' Angela reminded her. 'And his wife was about ten years older than he was. Don't ask me to explain that. I do remember that there was a lot of chauvinistic letter writing in fandom in those days, with those runty little shits asking each other what he saw in her. Nobody ever thought to marvel that she'd seen anything in him. Well, as I say, it's a long time ago. She may have died.'

'Maybe so. By the way, have you ever heard of Richard Spivey?' asked Marion, trying to appear casual.

Angela shook her head. 'If he's a new writer, don't expect me to know him. I haven't kept up.'

'I don't know who he is,' Marion admitted. 'But I sure do wish I knew what killed Pat Malone so conveniently. Not that the police would confide in me.'

'Get Jim Conyers to ask them. He's a lawyer around here, and he's probably old friends with the sheriff.'

Marion looked at her with renewed respect. 'What a perfectly simple, brilliant idea.'

Angela nodded. 'Well, I hope you find out something,' she said. 'As cantankerous as Pat was, I never wanted him to be dead.'

There was a soft tapping at the door. 'I'll get it,' said Marion, eying her hostess' kimono. She went to the door and eased it open. 'Yes?'

Lorien Williams stood there, twisting her hands and looking anxious. 'Excuse me, is Miss-um-you know, Angela. Could I speak to her, please?'

Marion glanced back at Angela, who waved for her to let the visitor in.

'Is anything the matter?' she asked as Lorien edged past her, head down and slouching. Behind her, Marion looked over at Angela and mouthed: Who knows?

'I wondered if you could take a look at Mr. Surn,' she said to Angela. 'I think somebody said you were a nurse.'

Angela paled. 'What's the matter with Brendan?'

Marion said, 'Shall I call an ambulance?' She was remembering the huddled form of Pat Malone, slumped on the bathroom floor.

'No. It isn't that bad. I mean, it isn't a heart attack or anything. It's just that sometimes he has… well, bad spells. There are times when he doesn't know me, and he gets very angry. I don't blame him, of course. I'd get angry, too, if-' Lorien's voice trailed off uncertainly.

Angela looked from Marion to Lorien and back again. 'I'll just go in the bathroom and change,' she said.

'I'm going to look for Jim Conyers,' said Marion.

Meanwhile, back at the electric Scout meeting, Jay Omega had succeeded in logging on to a nationwide computer chat on Delphi, and he established his own conference, devoted to 'a discussion of the Lanthanides.' He labeled his file more fandango, reasoning that the word 'Fandango' would be a red flag to anyone who remembered Pat Malone, and that everyone else would give it a miss. This was not entirely true; a few people chimed in wanting to discuss the lambada, an association which eluded the sedentary Omega, and a few college-age chemists tried to get up a discussion of the periodic chart, but after a quarter of an hour, someone from Indiana actually did check in, responding with: 'IS THIS ABOUT P. B. MALONE? AND, IF SO, WHAT ABOUT HIM? HE'S DEAD.' The message purported to be from one J. A. Bristol.

Jay typed back: 'YES, BUT NOT FOR AS LONG AS YOU THINK‹ PERHAPS I NEED TO TALK TO SOMEBODY IN MISSISSIPPI ABOUT VERIFYING P.M.'s 1958 DEMISE.'

Meanwhile, other people chimed in with their own opinions of Malone's novel, and of The Last Fandango. Jay replied: 'CAN WE TABLE THESE TOPICS? BIOGRAPHICAL DATA URGENTLY NEEDED. IS ANYONE ON FROM CUPERTINO, CA?'

Of course there was. Cupertino, which is in California's Silicon Valley, has more computers than bathtubs. The response to Jay's request was almost immediate. 'Kenny,' another collegian, said: 'NEVER HEARD OF THIS MALONE GUY, BUT I LIVE IN CUPERTINO, SO?'

Jay consulted the notes he had scribbled down, containing everything he could remember about Pat Malone. 'PLEASE CHECK PHONE DIRECTORY FOR AN ETHEL OR A MRS. PAT/PB MALONE,' he told Kenny.

Two other conference crashers were ignoring Jay's line of questioning to pursue an argument of their own about the symbolism that one of them saw in River of Neptune.

In exasperation, Jay fired at them: 'HAVE IT ON GOOD AUTHORITY THAT THE NOVEL PROPHESIES THE COMING OF NINTENDO. YOU HAVE NOW REACHED EQUILIBRIUM. GO AWAY!-HAS ANYONE OUT THERE EVER SEEN PAT MALONE? LATELY?'

'NO, BUT I SAW ELVIS AT PIZZA HUT LAST WEEK.'

Jay was beginning to understand why the police hauled people in for questioning: so that they could hit them. He ignored this last bit of baiting and waited for serious replies. What did he need to know about Malone, anyway? He made notations on one of his data sheets:

'Malone's hometown?' Get Marion to find out.

'Cupertino, Ca-Ethel Malone-Verify.' Beside that he wrote: Kenny.

'If dead, what happened to his possessions.' He scratched that one out. The book in the dead man's suitcase had belonged to Curtis Phillips. Malone had only autographed it. Jay put in a new item: 'Compare handwriting samples.'

'Mississippi-Malone's death-Verify.'

'Richard Spivey?'

'Malone-Physical description.'

'Cause of death.'-Marion working on it.

'Elavil.' Ditto.

'Washington Med School. Body donated?'

He glanced back at the computer screen. Three messages were waiting for him. One said: 'MOONFIRE SPEAKING, I THOUGHT PAT MALONE WAS AN IRISH PINK ROCK GROUP-ALL FEMALE.' Another respondent had shot back: 'NO! HE WAS THE SALMAN RUSHDIE OF FANDOM' The third note was from Kenny: 'ETHEL IS IN THE PHONE BOOK. NOW WHAT?'

It helped that the desk clerk had become convinced that everyone connected with science fiction was crazy. After the barrage of requests she had endured that day (pickle jar cover, corpse removal, indefinite use of a telephone line), Marion's request for a list of all the Lanthanides' room numbers seemed positively reasonable to her. She copied them out on the back of a Sunday Buffet flier and handed it over with a weary sigh. What would they be wanting next? Electric soap? She closed her eyes to check out her headache on the Richter scale. At least she was now psychologically ready for the Tennessee war gamers' convention coming up in September.

Armed with this guide to the other guests' whereabouts, Marion first checked the restaurant to see who was there: nobody she recognized. Either they went to dinner early, or they had called down for room service. As she studied the diners in the restaurant, though, she realized that there was a familiar look about at least a dozen of them. Many of them were bespectacled and heavyset, and they wore T-shirts with slogans on them and hairdos that had never been fashionable. Several of them were reading paperbacks while they ate; the others appeared to be arguing. Fans! Marion backed slowly toward the door before she turned and fled.

'Well,' she said to herself as she waited for the elevator, 'at least it will give me a pretext for dropping in on people. I can warn them that the fen have arrived.' Waving, she caught the attention of the long-suffering desk clerk. 'Yoo hoo!' she called as the doors were closing. 'Will you please not give out these room numbers to anyone else?'