Sharyn McCrumb - Zombies of the Gene Pool

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.