I said I would. Now and then, in fact, when I feel strong enough, I do. “Rouse and Chandes Washington and Harra Gleme will be the worse for it,” I said. “They’re all guilty of Leake’s murder, by Ravenal statutes, and they’ll all be living in the Colony a good long while.”
“Not a pleasant place,” the Master agreed. The Colony is an island near Ravenal’s equator—it reminds me of the ancient Devil’s Island, a hot, jungle sort of place you couldn’t ever leave. Of course, this was Ravenal, so there was a Research Establishment hooked in to the Colony, and the three thieves and murderers and forgers would spend most of their time digging holes, collecting dirt samples, and picking plants. “But they brought it on themselves, Gerald. And the others you know here are recovering well, I understand.”
Detective-Major Gross had recovered, at least. He’d taken the bundle of facts we handed him, added in his own check on Rouse’s whereabouts at the time of Ramsay Leake’s death (there had been an alibi, and even more tricksy than usual, and as brittle as that window glass once Gross got to taking it apart—no need to bother you with the flimsy details), and shuffled it all into a neat pile which he handed off to a City Two official attorney. The trial and conviction had been very rapid, by anybody’s standards—Ravenal does go in for efficiency a good deal—and Gross went back to the old stand, investigating one crime or another and cursing citizens, and the occasional tourist. We did get a thank-you from him, though it seemed to pain him a little to deliver it.
The dig people were going about their various businesses, too—Bitsy Bowyer and Paula Shore were set for another Survivalist hole, this one somewhere in a state called Montagne, I think it is, and Dean Rell was in line for Gro Rouse’s old spot at the library—pardon me, First Files Building. I wondered what his office was going to look like—a lot, I thought, like Paula Shore’s. Freda Hocksher, whom I never did get to meet, was still teaching at Lavoisier. Drang Mathias was going about his business, too, and undoubtedly planning to turn into a wheel any week now.
I’d seen rather a lot of Corri Reges, and of course I’d seen Mac. Corri was busy as all Hell—she was getting set to run for President of the Misfits, if Glatz could be levered out, and she rather thought he could.
“People don’t like him much,” she told me.
“People never like a President much,” I said. “In a fan club, it goes with the job. Become President yourself, and people will hate you.”
She nodded. “I know,” she said in her little viola voice. “But it’s a chance to go down in history, Knave. To be part of the roll of Presidents of the Ravenal Misfits. How can I ignore that?”
I nodded. “You can’t, of course,” I said. “Even if the history is the underground history of an underground sf fan club.”
“You never know,” Corri said. “Some Moskowitz may be writing it, in secret, right now.”
What the Hell, it’s possible.
And if some Moskowitz really is writing that history, damn it, I’ll be in it, too. I’d seen a lot of Corri Reges, and of Mac too—at Misfit meetings. I’m just another name on the membership lists, but that’s something.
I’m kind of proud of it, in fact. Gerald Knave, honorary corresponding member of the Ravenal Misfits. I can’t go around boasting about it—there are rules, after all—but just between us, I can mention it here.
Damn proud of it, in fact.
THE END
AUTHOR’S NOTE
There are a few things to be said.
First, of course, it might need to be said—people are touchy just lately—that both Knave and I have more respect and admiration for Robert A. Heinlein than either of us can well say. Nothing said by any person in this report is to be taken as a denigration of himself or his work; indeed, no sf writer mentioned, quoted from, or alluded to by Knave or by any Misfit lacks the respect and admiration we both gladly give him or her. The forgery is of course a forgery and not to be taken as indicative of Heinlein’s real, and lasting, work.
Second, special thanks are due, and hereby willingly given, from the author to Jeff Harris, who afforded him the time and space, at great cost, to write the thing—and afforded him much more, as well.
And third, the author’s gratitude is most lovingly extended to rebekah, Chatte and jen, for great help with a series of knotty problems early in the work, and to Raven for much help with this and other work.
The Counterfeit Heinlein Page 19
