Astounding! (4 page)

“Yep.”

“Days like this, I’m glad I’m not stuck indoors behind a desk. And some people think it never stops raining here!” With a merry laugh, she trundled down the sidewalk.

Carter shook his head and went to fetch his mail. He froze, however, when he saw that his box contained the familiar manila envelope. It was too soon—he’d received J. Harper’s last submission less than two weeks ago. Besides, surely Harper wouldn’t dare send in another story after receiving that awful rejection letter.

But dammit, the envelope sat there with Carter’s name, address, and title as neatly printed as always.

There was no other mail. Carter hesitated a long time before reaching in to take the envelope, as if he were afraid it might sprout teeth and bite his hand off. But it simply sat there, silently accusing, until he sighed and pulled it out.

The stairs were especially steep and claustrophobic, and the fourth-floor hallway smelled like pot.

Carter’s phone buzzed just as he was in the middle of jiggling open his front door. He spent a moment fumbling phone, keys, and envelope but managed to get the envelope and keys onto the little table without dropping anything.

“I e-mailed you about your story’s brilliance,” he said into the phone. “Do you need to hear me say it too?”

“Sure. It’s not like I can be overpraised. Fanboy me, Carter.”

Carter raised his voice an octave and pretended to be breathless with excitement. “Ooh, Freddy! Mr. Morgan! You are such a genius! Will you autograph something for me? Will you autograph
me
?”

“You make a cruddy fanboy.”

“Yeah? Well, I know what you look like when you have the flu, buster. Hard to feel giddy over you with that image in my head.” As he spoke, he toed off his shoes and shoved them against the wall with his foot. He walked to the kitchenette with the phone still held to his ear.

Freddy laughed. “Yeah, okay, I’ll give you that. Remember the time you were trying to nurse me back to health and I puked all over your feet?”

Carter grunted and grabbed a pitcher of water from the fridge. “It was a pretty memorable event.”

“Yep. But I also remember that you didn’t flip out, and you made sure to clean me up, change the bedding, and make me some tea before you washed yourself. You’re a good guy, Car.”

This time Carter snorted. “You don’t have to butter me up to get me to print your story, you know. You’re the big shot doing a favor for his pathetic old ex.”

“Jesus, Carter. You know very well that’s not how I think of you.” Freddy’s exasperated sigh was loud even over the phone. “Anyway, I called to invite you to go camping with us. Keith’s never been in a tent and he’s a wuss, so we’re gonna rent an RV. One of those big fuckers that’s a horrible fossil-fuel guzzler. We figure we’ll fly up to Seattle, pick you up, then get the RV and make our way down the coast or something. Or we can do the Cascades. Hell, we can do both.”

Carter poured himself a glass of water. “Wouldn’t you rather just do that with Keith?” He downed half the glass.

“Nope. We want your company. Besides, Keith’s too chicken to pilot anything bigger than his Benz, and I don’t want to have to do all the driving.” He paused briefly. “You can, uh, bring a friend. If you want.”

They didn’t often discuss Carter’s pathetic romantic life. Since he and Freddy broke up years earlier, he’d dated the same man more than once on only a few occasions. And none of those relationships had lasted long enough to see more than a single issue of
Astounding!

“I don’t know, Freddy….”

“Come on. When’s the last time you took a vacation? Bring your editing along if you want to. You can do it with breathtaking mountain vistas in front of you instead of that view you’ve got of the empty lot.”

“They built condos there last year. They’re ugly. And there’s a yoga studio on the first floor.”

“Well, see?” Freddy said, as if that decided it.

Carter held up the glass of water and swished the liquid around a little. He wished it was something stronger. “I’ll think about it.”

“You think about things too much, Carter Evans. That’s your fatal flaw. You think and think, and then the opportunity slips on by. You should just
do
more often.”

The last time Carter did something without planning it ahead of time, he ended up sending that nasty letter to J. Harper. But he didn’t share that with Freddy. “Just give me a few days. Okay?”

“Four. You have four days. And then you’ll agree and we’ll rent the gas-guzzling monster and we’ll all have a rollicking good time.”

“I’m going to get some work done now,” Carter replied, not committing to anything. “I have a story to edit and a submission to screen.”

“And I have some characters to brutally kill off. Four days, bucko.” Freddy disconnected the call.

Figuring that four days would give him plenty of time to think up a plausible refusal, Carter put the glass down on the counter. He walked back to the front-door table, where the manila envelope lay accusingly. How the hell could J. Harper even consider submitting another story to him after that letter? Maybe Harper was crazy. That would certainly explain the weirdly awful stories. Or maybe the envelope contained ricin or anthrax, and Carter would soon be dying a painful, lonely death.

Well, at least then he wouldn’t have to watch his beloved magazine die first.

“Melodrama much?” he muttered before tearing the envelope open.

No suspicious powder fell out. The envelope contained only a manuscript entitled “The Vynsmak of Hoolaty” and a separate typewritten sheet. But although J. Harper’s cover letters usually came on pristine sheets of heavy paper stock, this page looked a little ragged, as if someone had handled it for a while before stuffing it into the envelope.

Curiosity beat trepidation, and Carter read the letter.

Dear Mr. Evans,

I hope the salutation doesn’t offend you. I admire you a great deal, you see. I have read every issue of your magazine—in fact, I have read some issues more than once. It is my favorite printed material.

I apologize for my lack of gender specificity. I am male.

I know my stories are terrible, Mr. Evans. You can’t imagine how much effort I put into my work, how much time I spend reading good stories to unlock the authors’ secrets. But you are right. I am not a writer.

I am well aware that you have no obligation at all to cater to my requests, sir. I have done nothing for you but bother you with my submissions. But still I must ask you—no, I must beg you, because it is a matter of greatest importance.

Please, Mr. Evans. Publish my story. Publish any of my stories. Just one. You can preface it with all the critical commentary it deserves. You can pretend it’s a joke. You can say any awful things about me that you wish. Just publish one story and I promise I will never write another. You’ll never hear from me again. But you can be assured that you are granting a boon that is valuable beyond measure.

Yours most humbly,

J. Harper

Okay. So that answered that question—the guy was nuts. He’d formed some kind of strange obsession with
Astounding!
and had apparently decided that seeing his own tale in print was a life-or-death matter. It was sad. But Carter had to admit that the whole thing was also slightly endearing. After all, Harper could have fixated on any number of magazines, but he’d chosen Carter’s. And his letter was so sweet and sincere and achingly pitiful that Carter felt worse than ever about the mean letter he’d sent.

He carried the manuscript into his office, collapsed into his chair with a quiet grunt, and began to read. He owed Harper that much at least. Maybe this one was better. Maybe it could be salvaged with judicious editing.

But only one page in, Carter set the manuscript down on his desk. This one was not better, nor would any amount of red ink improve it. It wasn’t even good enough to be drivel.

And the worst thing was that despite
Astounding!
’s death rattle, despite the fact that he genuinely wanted to help Harper, there was just no way he could force himself to print this garbage.

He’d write another letter, he decided. A personalized rejection letter, but not a venomous one. He would compliment Harper’s persistence and recommend self-publication. Nowadays, anyone could do it. Hell, if Harper wanted, he could collect all his stories into an anthology, draw up a cover, and put the whole thing into print. It was cheap. He could give copies to his entire family for Christmas.

Carter got as far as the first few words—
Dear Mr. Harper, Thank you for
—but then couldn’t type any more. His fingers flat-out refused to press the keys. The cursor blinked at him, daring him.

As if they were acting under someone else’s orders, Carter’s hands picked up the envelope and turned the address side up. Not Carter’s address—he didn’t need to see that. But Harper’s address, neatly printed in blue ink in the upper left corner. Portland. The guy lived in Portland, less than two hundred miles away. Only three hours’ drive, if there was no traffic and if Carter’s car lasted that long.

“Stop thinking, Carter Evans.” Damn. He’d lost control of his mouth as well. “Stop thinking and
do
.”

With the manila envelope still clutched in his grip, he went in search of his keys.

T
HERE
WAS
traffic. Not just through Seattle, where I-5 was a parking lot, but all the way through Tacoma and Olympia too, even though the morning rush hour had long since passed. Then things moved at a reasonable pace for a while, but only until an accident on the Interstate Bridge brought Carter to a near standstill again, and he wondered why wrecks and breakdowns always happened in the least convenient locations. Maybe it was the gods’ way of screwing with mortals.

He didn’t know Portland all that well; he rarely left Seattle. But he’d mapped out the route before he left home, and he had no trouble finding where J. Harper lived. It was a modest neighborhood of neatly kept older houses, most of them small. He imagined the little bungalows had originally been homes to blue-collar workers, the sort of guys who used to put in their thirty years at the plant and then retire so they could putter around in their workshops and drive their wives crazy.

Harper apparently lived in a tiny yellow clapboard duplex with a neatly trimmed lawn and slightly overgrown bushes. It was sandwiched between a stucco apartment building and an odd rectangular structure that seemed to be a defunct antique store. Lacy white curtains covered the windows on Harper’s half of the duplex.

Carter parked along the curb on the opposite side of the street, but he remained in his car for a long time. He should have used the long drive to plan this part out, but instead he’d sung along with the radio, composing his own lyrics as he did. When he wasn’t belting out off-key tunes, he was thinking about the next issue of
Astounding!
Quite possibly the last issue. He already knew which stories he would include. Freddy’s would grab the most attention, of course, but the others were terrific as well. Two of them were from first-time authors who were probably on their way to bigger and better things. Carter mentally drafted and redrafted his Note from the Editor, sometimes lamenting over the magazine’s imminent demise, sometimes blathering on as if everything was peachy. He still wasn’t sure which approach he’d finally take.

A truck came rumbling down the street, braking when it reached the traffic circle a block away. Carter watched until it was all the way down the hill. Then he got out of the car, holding the manila envelope tightly in one hand.

It was the middle of the afternoon on a Tuesday. Harper probably wasn’t even home. He was most likely at work somewhere, selling shoes or teaching algebra or mopping floors or whatever he did to pay the bills. Carter jaywalked across the street, climbed the three concrete steps, and rang the doorbell. The minuscule porch looked freshly swept, and a rosebush wound its way along the iron railing, although it was too early in the season for blooms.

“Hello?”

“I…. Uh.” Carter’s brain refused to function, and his mouth went on strike. The man in the doorway looked like one of the heartthrobs from the 1950s movies Freddy used to love—the all-American types who played war heroes and white-hatted cowboys. They showed up at Hollywood parties with pretty starlets while secretly hosting all-male sleepovers. This guy was maybe six feet tall, broad-shouldered, and well built without looking like he spent all his time in the gym. His dark blond hair was trying to escape gelled neatness into curls, his eyes were an intense blue that flirted with violet, and his chin was broad and square and prominent, with a slight cleft. He wore an unremarkable olive sweater and blue jeans.

“Tab Hunter,” Carter said.

“I’m sorry. You have the wrong address.” The man started to close the door.

“No! Wait! I mean… the actor. Tab Hunter. You look like him.”

“Oh.” The man smiled hesitantly, revealing straight white teeth. “Um, thanks. I like his movies.”

Carter tried very hard to force some rational speech past his lips. “Sorry. That wasn’t….” He took a deep breath. “I’m looking for Mr. Harper.”

The man seemed to relax a little. “That’s me. Can I help you?” His gaze strayed to the manila envelope, but it was bent in Carter’s grip and Harper probably didn’t recognize it as his own.

“Not exactly. I mean, sort of. I was hoping I could talk to you. My name is Carter Evans and I—”

But he didn’t get to finish. Harper gasped and fell back a step, his face draining of color. “Is this a joke of some kind?” he whispered.

“No! I’m really him. The editor-in-chief of
Astounding!
magazine.” And currently its only full-time employee, but he skipped that bit. “You and I have had sort of… a correspondence.” He waved the envelope slightly, as if that would explain everything.