Zombies of the Gene Pool

by Sharyn McCrumb

  Mistral nodded happily. "That's all right, then. I guess it's all over but the photocopying."

  "And the bidding. But you must let me worry about that."

  Locked in the attic of Ruben Mistral's consciousness, Bunzie pounded and pleaded to be let out, but his chances of having any say-so in the proceedings was nil. He might mourn his old friend in private, and even wonder about the circumstances of his death, but this was business, in which he was never permitted to interfere.

  Marion knew that her appearance in the manager's office wasn't going to brighten his day any. The long-suffering hotel official had already endured a peculiar, media-infested science fiction get-together, the murder of one of the guests, and the arrival of police on the scene to disrupt the normal routine and intimidate the other patrons of the lodge. All he needed now was a self-appointed amateur sleuth wasting his time with ingenuous questions. Marion hoped she didn't look too much like a scatterbrained crank.

  She phrased her request to the desk clerk with what she hoped was polite authority, and after a few stammered objections and a five-minute wait, the clerk led her back to the office of Coy A. Trivett, manager of the Mountaineer Lodge. It was a small, sparsely furnished room, decorated with framed photographs of mountain scenes and a hardware-store calendar from Elizabeth-ton. The carpeting matched that in the lobby, and the worn chintz loveseat had been salvaged from the lobby seating area during last spring's renovations. Trivett himself, a blond man in his thirties, looked like a high school athlete who was thinking of running to fat. At the moment he wore the tentative smile of one who has resolved to be civil despite all temptations to the contrary.

  "Is everything all right?" he asked in the anxious tones of one who knows better.

  Marion introduced herself, placing a slight stress on the honorific "doctor" with which she prefaced her name. 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 inform
ed 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?"

  Marion considered it. "Neither, that I recall. One of them was to Curtis Phillips from Pat Malone. Maybe he got it back when Curtis died. It seems strange, though, doesn't it?"

  "Everything about Pat Malone is strange. I don't suppose you were able to find out how he died?"

  "Mr. Trivett doesn't think they know yet. But he did say that they took his medicine bottle along to be tested."

  "What was in it?"

  "Elavil. Prescribed to Spivey. And before you ask, I have no idea what that is. You're the science person, not me."

  "Is there anybody here with any medical background? Maybe we could ask them."

  Marion ticked each of the Lanthanides' names off on her fingers. "Angela!" she said. "She works in a hospital, doesn't she? I suppose you want me to see if she knows what Elavil is.'"

  Jay Omega glanced at his watch. "I think I can call the bulletin board back now to see if they have any advice for me. You might also ask Angela for any information on Pat Malone's supposed death in 1958. What authority did they have for believing him dead? While you're at it, ask her if she's positive that he was Pat Malone."

  "They certainly acted as if he was," said Marion with a grim smile. "He created more stir than Ted Bundy at a beauty pageant."

  "I wonder if Ruben Mistral contacted Pat Malone's next of kin about the time capsule. See if you can find the answer to that one, too."

  Marion sighed. "This has a familiar ring to it. I talk to people while you talk to machines."

  "No, Marion," said Jay with wounded innocence. "I'll be talking to people, too. I'm just using machines to do it."

  "All right," she sighed. "I'll go and grill the suspects." At the door, Marion hesitated and looked back. "Jay, you don't really think he was murdered, do you?"

  He shrugged. "I haven't given it much thought. I'm sure the police will tell us. Right now I just want to know who he was.

  When Marion had gone, Jay went to his computer and typed in Alt-D and then M to allow him to manually enter the electronic bulletin board phone number from the Guinness beer mat. He typed in the number, hit return, and waited while the computer dialed the number. After two rings the line was answered, and after he typed in his identification, a welcome screen from the bulletin board asked him if he wanted to check his electronic mail. He hit return and found that there was one message waiting. He pressed R Y, return. After a moment's pause the message appeared:

  TO Dr. Mega-FROM Sysop. SUBJECT: Please Advise. All right, all right, I'm here. You didn't have to shout. (Don't use all caps next time.) Remember when I made you subscribe to Delphi? I know that all you use it for is to snag cheap air fares, but it does have other uses. I hope you can remember your pass word. If so, call the Tennessee local tymnet number, 615-928- 1191, and log into Delphi the way you do at home. Go to conference, then type who. This will list current conference conversations. Hopefully you will see a conference name that looks promising for your line of inquiry. You don't need to join it. You can issue the command who is ‹User Name›, and that will give you a profile of the people currently in the conference: where they live, what they like, etc. If you want to talk in their conference, type join ‹Conference name or num-ber› and then you can barge in and start asking them questions. If your topic is really offbeat, you can create your own conference, and let the strange ones find you. (What have you gotten yourself into now, Dr. Mega?) I'll be around for most of the evening in case you get in further trouble, need bail money, whatever. May St. Solenoid be with you. JS .

  Jay made notes of the instructions in Joel's message, sent a quick reply of thanks to him, and logged off the bulletin board. Then he turned off the television, yawned and stretched, and sat down at the keyboard of his computer. "It's going to be a damn long night in fandom," he muttered.

  Marion found Angela Arbroath in her room recuperating from a marathon session of nostalgia and journalism. "I hope I'm not disturbing you," said Marion, strolling past Angela into the room as if she were sure of her welcome. "This must have been quite an exciting day for you!"

  Angela, who was wearing a flowered kimono and leather thongs, looked tired. She had scrubbed off her make-up, so that her lips had a bloodless look to them and her wrinkles stood out in high relief against her pale skin. "I guess the news about Pat sort of overshadowed all the rest of it," she said apologetically.

  Marion sat down on the unused one of the twin beds, and settled in for a long chat. "I am sorry about what happened to Pat Malone," she said. "I didn't know him, but I found the body, you know, so you can imagine how it has made me feel. I wondered, though-are you certain that it was Pat Malone?"

  The older woman smiled. "He knew things that only one of the Lanthanides could have known. You weren't there, were you, when he turned up at the party last night? Within minutes they were all bickering as if it were more than thirty years ago. He knew just what to say to infuriate them." She sighed. "He always did."

  "Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to kill him?"

  "Hon, I can't think of anyone who didn't. At one time or another, Pat Malone antagonized every correspondent he ever had, every close friend, every sweetheart. Did you ever read The Last Fandango?"

  "No. I've certainly heard about it, though. Was it ever actually published?"

  "In a manner of speaking. It was mimeographed and distributed by the Fantasy Amateur Press Association. And in the book he severely criticized the Fantasy Amateur Press Association."

  Marion nodded. "Yes, I knew about that. I've never seen one, though."

  "It was nothing fancy. Just pages and pages of typing. No illustrations, no sophisticated typesetting, nothing to make it visually pleasing. Nothing to make it pleasing, period." She looked away. "I cried when I read it. He said so many awful things about all the people that I knew. And the worst of it was, I couldn't really deny any of it. It's just that he saw them so uncharitably." She smiled bitterly. "And about me? Oh, he said that I lacked only beauty to be a femme fatale. He was most unsparing of people's feelings. But, of course, he was hardest on himself."

  "In what way?"

  "He wanted people to know what an idiot he thought he had been for succumbing to fandom, so he outlined his whole experience in getting involved in science fiction, and he outlined the disillusionment that made him leave."

  Marion tried to temper her excitement.
"Did he mention the Lanthanides?"

  "Yes, of course. He said that Surn was pompous, and George was a fool, and he was critical of everyone, but the most damning thing he did was simply to chronicle their bickering, and their naivete, and their youthful arrogance. He made them-and himself, you understand-look like arrogant clowns. And then he proceeded to do the same thing to the rest of fandom as well."

  "Could anyone who read The Last Fandango have known the things he talked about last night?"

  Angela looked puzzled, but she considered the question. "I don't think so," she said. "He mentioned a few pranks that weren't included in his memoir. If he had written down every stupid thing they did, his book would have been longer than War and Peace."

  "So he knew a lot of embarrassing secrets?"

  "I suppose so. Not that anyone ought to care about who was sleeping with who after so long a time." She smiled reflectively. "But I guess Barbara Conyers just might at that. Anyhow, why did you ask me if he knew anything dangerous? He wasn't murdered."

  "Not that we know of," Marion admitted. "But it seemed possible. The hotel manager told me that the police took Pat Ma-lone's prescription medicine along with them. It was Elavil. We wondered if you knew what that was."

  Angela Arbroath sat up straight. Her expression became thoughtful. "Pat Malone was using Elavil?"

  "Apparently so. Or at least he had it in his possession. The name on the bottle said 'Richard Spivey.' What is 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."