A Thousand Deaths (51 page)

What was a good name, now, for the main character? Eldrēs hadn't even given him that much. Mark something. Mark Abbott. Mark Cummings. Mark Molnar. Courane's mother had been Hungarian, and he always told himself that he should use more ethnic names. All right, Mark Molnar of the Time Patrol. What Time Patrol? There
had
to be a Time Patrol. What did they do? Simple enough: they patrolled time. Why? Because—

—because people need protecting, that's why. And the Time Patrol kept the time lines safe for democracy. The very existence of the Time Patrol presupposed the existence of somebody or something else who was gleefully screwing up the time lines.

Somebody, maybe, like Eldrēs, thought Courane.

He considered that for a moment. Nah, he concluded. Eldrēs wasn't really the Dragon Lady type. Sure, she'd said that she enjoyed cruelty; but, really, Courane knew lots of people like that, although they wouldn't admit it so readily. He didn't believe she was capable of any real temporal vandalism.

That gave Courane an idea for the bad guy: Rack Packard, The Attila of Time. And all his little Huns.

It had everything: it had romance; it had danger; it had assonance and alliteration. It was disgusting.

Of course, it was only a preliminary approach to the first draft of a sketch of an outline for the first chapter;
but
already he sensed that
Time Spy
was not going to be a deathless classic of science fiction, despite what Eldrēs said about a Courane revival in the distant future.
Time Spy
would turn out to be a book of familiar character types driving so fast around the story's turns that the reader might never realize how disjointed and illogical the plot actually was. The secret was not to give the audience much of a straightaway, no time to catch its breath, no time to do any critical thinking.

With a sinking heart, Courane realized what
Time Spy
would be like: it would be just like
Space Spy
, a book that many people enjoyed, a book that no one remembered.

It did him no good to know that, for better or worse, he had worked up to his potential on
Space Spy.
His parents, his grade school teachers, and his ex-wife would have no cause to disparage him. They had always told him that if he worked hard and did all that he could, no one could ask for more. All anyone could expect from him was his best, and Courane had always given his best. He would go on giving his best in
Time Spy,
but he already knew what that would get him.
Time Spy
would be forgotten before it was created, a lost curiosity from an antique age for an academic scavenger like Eldrēs to pick over.

"Why bother?" murmured Courane. He coughed, and it was a moment before he realized that the cough hadn't caused him more searing agony. His eyes opened wider. Eldrēs had told him the truth. The pain had seeped away and left him feeling fine, perfectly well—not drugged and semiconscious, but as good as if he'd never had the surgery in the first place.

"See?" said Eldrēs, as she drew the curtains closed around the bed again.

"If I could patent this," said Courane, "I'd never have to write again."

"Don't worry about it. Your writing days are almost over anyway."

Courane glared at her. "You've got the worst bedside manner of anybody I've ever met."

She shrugged.
"In
bed I'm fine. Beside the bed, maybe I'm a little too blunt."

"Blunt," said Courane.

"So you tried working, and you found out I'm as good as my word. Extra-strength pain relief from the World of Tomorrow."

"That's just fine," said Courane, "but wouldn't it make it easier on both of us if you just gave me a peek at my finished manuscript? I mean, it is my work, isn't it? I don't understand—"

Eldrēs raised a hand to interrupt him. "I don't want you bringing that up anymore. I told you the story; I gave you my reasons. You take 'em or leave 'em; it's up to you. If you give me any more trouble, I can go get a previously unknown novel out of Sherman Ross Hladky."

"Who?" asked Courane, genuinely puzzled.

"Sherman Ross Hladky. The science fiction writer next on the list below you, as far as lasting contributions to popular literature go. He wrote
The Brain Feeders
and
Terror of the Mind Solvent."

"Never heard of him."

"What can I say?" said Eldrēs, spreading her hands. "You and Hladky have a lot in common."

"Hladky sounds Hungarian," said Courane thoughtfully.

"It wasn't his real name. He was born Roger Sherman Ross. He dropped the Roger and added the Hladky because he thought it would make his name more memorable."

"I guess he was wrong," said Courane.

"Well, what do you think?"

"Come back later, and I'll try to have some work finished for you."

"Good boy."

"Even when I'm perfectly healthy, you know," said Courane, "I don't write very fast. I aim at two or three thousand words a day. That's at home, comfortable, surrounded by all my office equipment and source material. Here on this ward with my belly ripped open, trying to work in pencil with one hand taped to a board, I don't expect I can keep up my regular pace."

"Speed isn't important," said Eldrēs. "Quality is more important. I need something I can show my chief. If you give me a first-rate manuscript, it will drastically alter the way the future thinks of you. When it begins to think of you at all."

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "You have such a charming way of encouraging me," he said.

After Eldrēs left, he opened the notebook and looked at the scrap of outline. He felt oppressed. Despite his freedom from pain, he resented Eldrēs. She was bullying him, and he hated being bullied. She was right, though; there wasn't anything he could do about it. Not as long as she controlled him so thoroughly. The injections every four hours were supposed to dull the pain and keep him moderately comfortable. Courane could think of no way to explain his situation to the doctor or nurse—not without creating serious doubts about his own sanity.

He closed the notebook and placed it back on the bedstand, then tried to relax. He closed his eyes, and quickly the pain began to increase. "Nurse!" he called loudly. Somebody on the ward was always yelling for the nurse. Now it was his turn.

As deplorable as the hospital was, Courane thought Eldrēs's intellectual tyranny was even more hateful. She was making him loathe his own talent and ability. He was a chronic procrastinator, and he often told people how much he actually detested writing. That wasn't true, of course; at least, it hadn't been until now.

He decided to rebel. He refused to let himself be shoved around any longer. Maybe Eldrēs thought she could make him jump through her circus hoop because she stepped out of his science fiction writer's fantasy. Courane had been startled at first, of course. Now he was disenchanted. Apparently, even in the radiant realm of the future, there were unwelcome and obnoxious people.

Lunch came, but he was in too much pain to even guess what was on the plate. The orderly took it back untouched. Much later the nurse came with a shot of Demerol. Once again, Courane waited in vain for the injection to take effect, for the opiate to obliterate his discomfort. Once again, it did not happen. He clutched the side rails of the hospital bed and told himself to bear up under the pain, to suffer through it with the kind of quiet courage his fictional protagonists had in such abundance. Courage wilted under torture, he discovered. Cursing and weeping, he put out his free hand and took the pencil and notebook. He took up Chapter One where he had left it.

"And how was your day?" asked Eldrēs sometime later.

"I'm hungry," said Courane.

"I knew you would be. I brought you something." She handed him a bag from Burger King.

Courane raised his eyebrows. In the bag were two bacon double cheeseburgers, a large order of fries, and a vanilla shake. "Thanks," he said. "It's just what I wanted. How did you know?"

She shrugged. "I asked you."

"You mean this afternoon? I don't remember you asking me about that."

Eldrēs shook her head. "No, about a week from now, your time. You met me today, but that doesn't mean I haven't visited you already somewhere else along your time line. In your future. And I have, several times."

"Why would you want to talk to me all out of order? It doesn't make sense to me."

"I can't tell you. You'll find out when you get there. Maybe I just wanted to find out how cooperative you were going to be. Maybe it was something else entirely. It's not important today. Eat your food."

The burgers were good, improved considerably by raw hunger and by the ugliness of everything else around him. "Well," he said, "thanks again."

Eldrēs reached across the bedstand and took the notebook. She opened it and began reading what he'd written that day. She nodded her head slowly. It made Courane feel uncomfortable, as if he were enduring some kind of audition or tryout. He waited for Eldrēs to respond in some way, to make some positive sign of enjoyment or unambiguous rejection. "I'm not reading this for fun," she said, without looking up, as if she'd read his mind. "This is business for me, not pleasure. I don't even really enjoy science fiction, you know."

"I like to have some kind of input," said Courane. "I'd like your reaction."

"My reaction doesn't matter. As long as you keep our bargain, I'll give you what I promised. My opinion of your writing isn't part of it. It's irrelevant."

"It's not irrelevant to me."

"Then take a look at this." She gave him a sheet of dark brown paper covered with pale yellow print.

"What is it?"

"A newspaper clipping. Our paper's been recycled so many times, it's almost black. Read it."

Courane looked up at her in astonishment. "It's a review of
Time Spy.
From the 115/31
Daily Pansophist.
What's 115/31? A place?"

Eldrēs smiled. "In a way."

Courane stared at her for another moment, then he looked back at the review. " 'Sandor Courane,' " he read aloud, " 'was one of a number of fiction-creating independent laborers who flourished from the middle of the twentieth century until it became clear that consumers no longer needed their commodity. Courane himself was neither particularly skilled nor especially successful, even in his own lifetime. In the years since his death, both his name and his product have disappeared into oblivion. Lately, however, word has come from literary salvage operator Eldrēs that she is obtaining posthumously written bulk fiction from a Courane in a nearby quasi-reality. To prevent interference and maintain the integrity of Eldrēs's project, the IDS label of the quasi-reality is being kept secret.'

"Bulk fiction?" objected Courane. "Is that what I'm turning out? It sounds like I'm operating a science fiction feed and grain store." He went back to reading. " 'The first chapter of this new lot, to be titled
Time Spy
in its entirety, was logged yesterday. Initial reactions were cool.' " Courane looked up. "Is that all they've got to say? 'Cool'?" He tried to crumple the paper, but it wouldn't wad up. When he opened his hand, the paper flattened out again without so much as a wrinkle.

"Well," said Eldrēs, "it's only the first chapter. You can't expect them to get all excited over an early fragment."

"But I don't even have the whole first chapter written yet," he said, indicating the notebook.

"Uh-oh, watch out. You're trying to comprehend paradoxes again."

Courane got angry. "I'm not going to let you push me around anymore," he shouted.

The patient across the aisle rattled the chain on his handcuffs. "Break their face, white boy!" he called. The other patient couldn't hear Eldrēs, but he could hear Courane clearly enough.

"Take it easy," said Eldrēs soothingly.

"I don't care where you come from," said Courane hoarsely, still furious. "I don't care if you're from the Collection Agency from the End of Time, or Atlantis, or west of the goddamn moon. I don't care what you're selling, what tricks you can do, or what you can do for me. Maybe if you talked to me like a decent person and treated me like I had the least little bit of intelligence, I'd be perfectly happy to go along with you on this rotten book. But no, you come storming in here pulling your Agent of Destiny number. And you wonder why I'm not wearing out my pencil so all your friends in Tomorrowland can make undelighted comments about my work. You and your future can go to hell!"

Eldrēs leaned forward and put two fingers beneath Courane's jaw on the right side. With her other hand she touched the emblem on her breast. Immediately he was caught in a seizure of absolute anguish, of pain far greater than anything he'd ever experienced. Then, just as suddenly, she released him.

"All right?" she asked.

"I won't cooperate," he muttered through clenched jaws. "I'll suffer the pain. I'll go ahead and die rather than do what you want."

"That's simply not true, Courane," said Eldrēs. "You know it's not true. If you think about it for a moment, you'll admit to yourself that you're just not that brave. I don't really want to hurt you. I want you to finish
Time Spy
because it's your work, because it's something that you really want to do. And because, after all, this book will be your own best monument. You're creating your own memorial here. You have the chance to write a postscript to your life, with full knowledge of who'll be reading what you have to say about yourself. This is a gift to you, Courane, a precious gift, even if maybe you can't see it that way yet."

"What difference does it make, if
Time Spy
won't be any better than
Space Spy,
and nobody in your world has any respect for that book? Having you take my pain away is a good reason to work, but why should I worry about introducing myself to your friends? Okay, you mentioned monuments and memorials. Most markers in cemeteries are worn away by the weather, and if you can read them at all, they don't have any meaning to anybody but the immediate family. What I have to say in
Time Spy
won't have any significance in your time line."