“Huh? To our world? The good old USA, where I was born, like the song says?”
“Well, I meant the castle. But answer the question any way you want to.”
“I dunno. The only thing that worries me is my parents. They must have given up hope by now.”
“And mine.”
“Sure wish there was a way to get a message back.”
“Just a message?”
Gene nodded. “I like Castle Perilous. It’s the ultimate trip, to use an expression out of the sixties.”
“Let’s trip back to the castle. I want to take a nap.”
“At once, milady.” Gene got to his feet and strapped on his sword.
Linda packed the wicker basket while Gene folded up the square of white linen they had used for a ground cloth. Then they both headed up the hill. The portal leading back to the castle stood among some trees just over the rise.
“I’m glad Snowclaw finally found a way back to his world,” Gene said.
“Poor baby. He was practically dying from the heat.”
“Yeah. He was in pretty bad shape. His fur was coming off in hunks.”
“I miss him.”
“So do I.”
Four
35th and Madison
When Alice Sussman heard the name of the author who was out at the front desk, she had to run to the files. Sure enough, the Spade Books backlist did show five titles published under the name of C. Wainwright Smithton. The titles hadn’t been reprinted in years — decades.
She went to her “who’s who” shelf and consulted several reference books. C. Wainwright Smithton was mentioned once or twice but information was sketchy. He was British, but emigrated here, wrote for the pulps in the thirties and forties, and published a few science fiction novels over the next two decades. His work had attracted much critical attention. One book referred to him as an “elusive genius.”
As senior editor of science fiction and fantasy, it was Alice’s duty to show hospitality to important writers who dropped in to visit — even if no one had ever heard of them.
“Very nice to meet you, Mr. Smithton,” Alice said as she took the hand of the handsome white-haired gentleman in the checked overcoat. “You haven’t been in to see us in quite some time.”
“Oh, thirty years, I should say,” Smithton said with a laugh. “I had a little trouble tracking down Spade Books, until I learned it had been bought out by the Bishop Publishing Galaxy.”
“Spade Books still exists, Mr. Smithton, and it’s doing fine. In fact, it’s one of our strongest fiction lines. Won’t you please come back to my office?”
Alice got him settled down with a cup of coffee on the couch in her office. She took the chair.
“What can we do for you, Mr. Smithton?”
“Oh, you can give me a book contract with an advance in six figures and one hundred percent of subsidiary rights.” He grinned.
She grinned back. “We’d love to see a proposal from you, Mr. Smithton. I’m sure you still have many fans out there who’d buy a book with your name on it. After all, you’re one of the veteran writers in the field.”
“I’d be surprised if any of my old fans were still alive. I haven’t had anything in print for years and years.”
“Yes, I know. We put out reissues of backlist titles every month. Your name has come up several times during our weekly editorial meetings. Uh … I’m sorry to say we haven’t actually done anything about it yet, but —”
“Quite all right, Ms. Sussman. You couldn’t have, anyway. The rights have long since reverted to me, and I was out of contact for so long. I’m not complaining. I’ve been out of the country for years. I just recently came back to New York to look into some financial affairs of mine. Unfortunately, things haven’t worked out the way I’d expected, and, frankly … to use the modern idiom, I’m having cash-flow problems.”
Alice sat back and crossed her legs. “I see. Well, we’d certainly like to do all we can to help. But of course —”
“I certainly don’t expect a contract and a check today. A few days would be fine.”
Alice chuckled. “That’s asking a lot of the machinery around here. Generally it takes a few weeks to produce a contract, and another few weeks to grind out a check. Minimum.”
“I understand. Of course, I wouldn’t expect special treatment just walking in here after thirty years —”
“Well, we’d like to do anything we can. We’ll certainly look into reprinting some of your books, Mr. Smithton. I’m afraid I can’t promise you anything at the moment, but —”
“You’re very kind. What titles do you think would go these days?”
She teethed her lower lip. “Well … ”
“Fortress Planet, perhaps?”
“A classic, and one of my favorites,” she lied whitely.
“You flatter me. Blood Beast of the Demon Moon?”
“Is that a horror number?”
“On the cusp. How about my fantasy,
“Your work has been somewhat … neglected.”
“I’m a has-been, you mean. Forgotten.”
“Hardly,” she said.
“Oh, it’s true. And I never was prolific —”
“Unfortunately, quantity does count, as well as quality.”
“— but it seems to me that I never did receive the last few royalty statements that were due.”
Alice sat up. “Oh.”
“I realize that thirty years is a long time, and your records … ”
“Well, as a matter of fact, we do have a number of open files. Authors whose estates or heirs we can’t locate. It may very well be —” She got up. “Won’t you please wait here while I check with our accounting and legal departments?”
He cashed the check at a local bank and walked down Madison Avenue, heading for a little curio shop he used to know in the Lower East Side.
It had been tough persuading Alice Sussman — and the people in accounting — to cut him a royalty check this very day. The domination spell he had cast over the entire office had barely worked. Back home, everyone in the Bishop Publishing Galaxy would have been his willing slave. They all would have leaped out a ten-story window for him, single file. Here — forget it. The spell had only oiled the machinery a little bit. But it had worked. Done the job.
Well, there’d been a little give-and-take. Allie (at lunch she told him to call her that) had just about insisted that he submit an outline and sample chapters of a new book. Instead, over chicken lo mein, he spun out the plot of a sequel to
All in all, New York hadn’t changed as much as he’d expected. Numerous landmarks had disappeared, replaced by austere modern structures (he rather disliked the ubiquitous Bauhaus influence), but plenty of familiar sights were still left. He remembered this part of town well.
He began to notice that there were more distressed people milling about than he recalled seeing during the Great Depression. He passed a slovenly middle-aged woman who carried two great bags stuffed with debris. She was followed by an emaciated man in a filthy overcoat who seemed to have difficulty controlling his tongue. These
