Why Not You and I?

NEITHER BRUTE NOR HUMAN

The first time that Damon Harrington saw Trevor Nordgren was in 1974 at Discon II in Washington, D.C. It was the thirty-second World Science Fiction Convention, and Harrington’s first convention of any sort. He and four friends had piled into a chugging VW van (still bearing a faded psychedelic paint job and inevitably dubbed “The Magic Bus”) and driven approximately nonstop from Los Angeles; they were living out of the van in the parking lot of someone’s brother who had an apartment on Ordway Street, a short walk from the con hotel.

They had been reading each other’s name badges, and their eyes met. Harrington was of average height and build, with wheat-colored hair and a healthy California tan and good enough features to fit the Hollywood image of the leading man’s best buddy. He had entered adolescence as a James Dean lookalike, emerged as a Beach Boy, and presently clung to the beard and ponytail of the fading hippie years. Nordgren was half a head taller and probably ten pounds heavier, and only regular sit-ups could have kept his abdomen so flat. He was clean-shaven, with a tousled nimbus of bright blond hair, and blue eyes of almost unsettling intensity dominated a face that might have belonged to a visionary or fallen angel. They were both wearing bell-bottomed jeans; Harrington sandals and a tie-dyed T-shirt, Nordgren cowboy boots and a blue chambray workshirt with hand-embroidered marijuana leaves.

Damon Harrington smiled, feeling extremely foolish in the silly Styrofoam boater hat the con committee had given them to wear for the meet-the-pros party. Discon with its thousands of fans and frenetic pace was a bit overawing to the author of half a dozen published stories. He’d had to show his S.F.W.A. card to get his pro hat and free drink voucher, and already Harrington was kicking himself for not staying in the hucksters’ room. He’d carried along a near-mint run of the first dozen issues of The Fantastic Four, saved from high school days, and if he could coax one of the dealers out of a hundred bucks for the lot, he could about cover his expenses for the trip.

“Hey, look,” Harrington protested, “I’m only doing this for the free drink they gave up for being put on display.”

Trevor Nordgren tipped his Styrofoam boater. “Don’t forget this nifty ice bucket.”

Harrington swirled the ice cubes in his near empty plastic cup, trying to think whether Trevor Nordgren should mean anything to him, painfully aware that Nordgren was puzzling over his name as well. An overweight teenage fan, collecting autographs on her program book, squinted closely at each of their badges, stumped away with the air of someone who had just been offered a swell deal for the Washington Monument. She joined a mass of autograph seekers clumped about a bewhiskered Big Name Author.

“God, I hate this!” Nordgren crunched his ice cubes. He glowered at the knots of fans who mobbed the famous authors. In between these continents of humanity, islands of fans milled about the many not-quite-so-big-name authors, while other fans stalked the drifting Styrofoam hats of no-name authors such as Harrington and Nordgren. An ersatz Mr Spock darted up to them, peered at their name badges, then hurried away.

“It would help if they just would give us T-shirts with our names printed across the back,” Harrington suggested. “That way they could tell from a distance whether we were worth attention.”

A well-built brunette, braless in a T-shirt and tight jeans, approached them purposefully, selecting a copy of the latest Orbit from a stack of books cradled against her hip. “Mr Nordgren? Mr Harrington? Would you two mind autographing your stories in Orbit for me?”

“My pleasure,” said Nordgren, accepting her book. He scribbled busily.

Harrington struggled over being “mistered” by someone who was obviously of his own age group. He hadn’t read Nordgren’s story in the book — had only reread his own story in search of typos — and he felt rather foolish.

“Please, call me Trevor,” Nordgren said, handing the book to Harrington. “Did you read ‘The Electric Dream’?”

“I thought it was the best thing in the book.” She added: “I liked your story, too, Mr Harrington.”

“Is this your first con?” Nordgren asked.

“First one. Me and my old man rode down from Baltimore.” She inclined her head toward a hulking red-bearded biker who had materialized behind Nordgren and Harrington, a beer bottle lost in one hairy fist. “This is Clay.”

She retrieved her book, and Clay retrieved her.

“My first autograph,” Harrington commented.

Nordgren was gloomily watching her departure. “I signed a copy of Acid Test about half an hour ago.”

Recognition clicked in Harrington’s memory: a Lancer paperback, badly drawn psychedelic cover, bought from a bin at Woolworth’s, read one weekend when a friend brought over some Panama red.

“I’ve got a copy of that back in L.A. That was one far-out book!”

“You must have one of the twelve copies that were sold.” Nordgren’s mood openly brightened. “Look, you want to pay for a drink from these suckers, or run up to my room for a shot of Jack Daniel’s?”

“Is the bear Catholic?”

When Nordgren poured them each a second drink, they agreed wholeheartedly that there was no point in returning to the ordeal of the meet-the-pros party. Nordgren had actually read Harrington’s story in Orbit and pronounced it extremely good of its type; they commiserated in both having been among the “and others” on the cover blurb. They were both products of the immediate post-war baby boom; incredibly, both had been in Chicago for the bloody demonstrations during the Democratic primary, though neither had been wounded or arrested. Nordgren was in the aftermath of an unpleasant divorce; Harrington’s lover of the Flower Children years had lately returned to Boston and a job with the family law firm. Nordgren preferred Chandler to Hammett, Harrington preferred Chandler’s turn of a phrase; they agreed modern science fiction writers were nothing more than products of the market. The Stones and the Who were better than the Beatles, who actually weren’t innovative at all, and listening to Pink Floyd while tripping had inspired at least one story from them both. Val Lewton was an unsung genius, to which ranks Nordgren added Nicholas Ray and Harrington Mario Bava, and Aldrich had peaked with Kiss Me Deadly.

They hit it off rather well.

Nordgren punished the bottle, but Harrington decided three drinks were his limit on an empty stomach, and concentrated on rolling joints from some leafy Mexican Nordgren had brought down from New York. They had both sold stories to Cavalier, and Harrington favorably remembered Nordgren’s one about the kid and the rubber machine in the redneck filling station. Harrington scraped along as cashier at an all-night self-service gas station, which afforded him lonely hours to write. Nordgren had been writing full time up until the divorce (he admitted to a possible cause-effect relationship there), and he was just completing his tenth novel — the second under his real name. Nordgren confessed to having paid the bills by writing several porno novels for Bee Line and Essex House, under the unsubtle pseudonym Mike Hunt.

He was quite proud of the Essex House novels, which he said developed science fiction themes that Britain’s New Wave would have deemed far too outrageous, and he produced a copy of Time’s Wanton and incomprehensibly inscribed it to Harrington. It was about a woman who used her psychic powers to project her consciousness through time, Nordgren explained, emptying the bottle, and she took possession of various important historical personages and goaded them through extravagant sexual excesses that changed the course of history. It was, said Nordgren, a theme not dissimilar to his almost completed novel, Out of the Past, in which a Victorian medium projected her consciousness into the present day to control a teenage girl’s mind. Harrington warned Nordgren that the market for fantasy novels was about nil, but Nordgren thought he could push the psychic powers angle enough to qualify as science fiction. Harrington allowed that his only novel to date had been a near miss — a post-nuclear holocaust thing sold to Powell Publications, a Los Angeles shoestring operation that folded with his Iron Night already in galleys.

It was a tough game, and they both agreed they considered themselves outlaws. Nordgren suggested they check out the parties for some free drinks, and Harrington suggested they look for something to eat. Somewhere along the way Nordgren ran into some New York friends and was carried off, and Harrington wandered into the night in search of cheap pizza.

They managed to get together several more times over the course of the convention. Harrington found a three-year-old copy of F&SF containing what he considered his best story published to date, and he presented it to Nordgren in return for Time’s Wanton. They exchanged addresses, agreed to stay in touch, and parted on the best of terms.

They actually did stay in touch, although correspondence was sporadic. Nordgren wrote long letters of comment on books and films he’d caught; Harrington was inclined to talk shop and discuss possible fiction markets. Nordgren kept him posted about his progress on Out of the Past, its completion, its rejection by various publishers. Harrington sold a short story to F&SF and was contemplating a major revision of Iron Night after having had it rejected by every publisher in the English-speaking world. Nordgren asked to read the manuscript, offered some badly needed criticisms (“Writing a short story all in present tense may be artsy as hell, but an entire novel?”), and grudgingly Harrington followed some of his advice.

On its second time out, the newly revised Iron Night sold to Fairlane, who expressed interest in an immediate sequel. The $2 500 advance was rather more than the sum total of Harrington’s career earnings as an author up until then, and he was sufficiently assured of financial success to quit his job at the U-Sav-Here and send tidings to Nordgren that he was now a full-time professional writer. His letter crossed in the mail with Nordgren’s; Trevor had just sold Out of the Past to McGinnis & Parry.

McGinnis & Parry elected to change the title to The Sending and went on to market it as “an occult thriller that out-chills The Exorcist!” They also proclaimed it to be Nordgren’s first novel, but it was after all his first hardcover. Harrington received an advance copy (sent by Nordgren) and took personally Trevor’s dedication to “all my fellow laborers in the vineyard.” He really did intend to read it sometime soon.

They were very much a pair of young lions at the Second World Fantasy Convention in New York in 1976. Harrington decided to attend it after Nordgren’s invitation to put him up for a few days afterward at his place (an appalling dump in Greenwich Village which Trevor swore was haunted by the ghost of Lenny Bruce) and show him around. Nordgren himself was a native of Wisconsin who had been living in The City (he managed to pronounce the capitals) since student days at Columbia; he professed no desire to return to the Midwest.

They were together on a panel— Harrington’s first — designated “Fantasy’s New Faces”—although privately comparing notes with the other panelists revealed that their mean date of first publication was about eight years past. The panel was rather a dismal affair. The moderator had obviously never heard of Damon Harrington, introduced him as “our new Robert E. Howard,” and referred to him as David Harrington throughout the panel. Most of the discussion was taken over by something called Martin E. Binkley, who had managed to publish three stories in minor fanzines and to insinuate himself onto the panel. Nordgren was quite drunk at the outset and continued to coax fresh Jack Daniel’s and ice from a pretty blonde in the audience. By the end of the hour he was offering outrageous rebuttals to Binkley’s self-serving pontification; the fans were loudly applauding, the moderator lost all control, and the panel nearly finished with a brawl.

That evening found Nordgren’s state of mind somewhat mellower, if no closer to sobriety. He and Harrington slouched together behind a folding table at the meet-the-pros autographing party, while Nordgren’s blonde cupbearer proudly continued her service.

“Together again!” Harrington toasted, raising the drink Nordgren had paid for.

“The show must go on,” Nordgren rejoined. He looked about the same as he had two years ago, although the straining pearl buttons on his denim shirt bespoke a burgeoning beer-belly. Harrington had in the interim shaved his beard, trimmed his hair to the parted-in-the-middle-blown-dry look, and just now he was wearing a new denim leisure suit.

Fairlane had contributed two dozen copies of Iron Night, free to the first lucky autograph seekers, so for about fifteen minutes Harrington was kept busy. He grew tired of explaining to unconcerned fans that the novel was set in a post-nuclear holocaust future, and that it was not at all “In the Conan tradition!” as the cover proclaimed. After that, he managed to inscribe two copies of New Dimensions and three of Orbit over the next half hour.

Nordgren did quite a brisk trade in comparison, autographing a dozen copies of The Sending (on sale in the hucksters’ room), as many copies of Acid Test (which had begun to gather a cult reputation), and a surprising number of short stories and essays from various magazines and anthologies. The room was crowded, hot, and after an hour Nordgren was patently bored and restive. In the jostled intervals between callers at their table, he stared moodily at the long lines queued up before the tables of the mighty.

“Do you ever wonder why we do this?” he asked Harrington.

“For fame, acclaim — not to mention a free drink?”

“Piss on it. Why do we put ourselves on display just so an effusive mob of lunatic fringe fans can gape at us and tell us how great we are and beg an autograph and ask about our theories of politics and religion?”

“You swiped that last from the Kinks,” Damon accused.

“Rock stars. Movie stars. Sci-fi stars. What’s the difference? We’re all hustling for as much acclaim and attention as we can wring out of the masses. Admit it! If we were pure artists, you and I and the rest of the grasping lot would be home sweating over a typewriter tonight. Why aren’t we?”

“Is that intended to be rhetorical?”

“All right, I’ll tell you why, said he, finishing his drink.” Nordgren finished his drink, dug another ten-dollar bill out of his jeans, and poked it toward his cupbearer.

“It’s because we’re all vampires.”

“Sweetheart, better make that mo Bloody Marys!” Harrington called after her.

“I’m serious, Damon,” Nordgren persisted, pausing to scrawl something across a copy of The Sending. “We’re the psychic vampires beloved of fiction. We need all these fans, all this gaudy adulation. We derive energy from it all.”

He handed the book back to its owner. “Have you read this?”

The fan was embarrassed. “No, sir — I just today bought it.” He continued bravely: “But a friend of mine sat up all night reading it, and she said it gave her nightmares for a week!”

“So you see, Damon,” Nordgren nodded. He pointed a finger at the fan. “I now possess a bit of your frightened friend’s soul. And when you read The Sending, I shall possess a fragment of your soul as well.”

The blonde returned bearing drinks, and the stricken fan made his escape.

“So you see, Damon,” Nordgren asserted. “They read our books, and all their attention is directed toward the creations of our hungry imaginations. We absorb a little psychic energy each time they read us; we grow stronger and stronger with each new book, each new printing, and each new fiction. And see — like proper vampire fodder, our victims adore us and beg for more.”

Trevor squinted at the blonde’s name badge. “Julie, my love, how long have I known you?”

“Since we met in the elevator this morning,” she remembered. “Julie, my love. Would you like to drop up to my room with me now and peruse my erotic etchings?”

“Okay. You going to sign your book for me?”

“As you see, Damon.” Nordgren pushed back his chair. “The vampire’s victims are most willing. I hereby appoint you my proxy and empower you to sign anything that crosses this table in my name. Good night.”

Harrington found himself staring at two Bloody Marys.

The visit with Nordgren in New York was a lot of fun, and Damon promised to return Trevor’s hospitality when the World Fantasy Convention came to Los Angeles the following year. Aside from the convention, Harrington’s visit was chiefly remarkable for two other things — Nordgren’s almost embroiling them in a street fight with a youth gang in front of the Hilton, and their mutual acquisition of an agent.

“Damon, my man,” Nordgren introduced them. “Someone I’d like you to meet. A boxer needs a manager, and a writer needs an agent. There is Helen Hohenstein, and she’s the goddamn smartest, meanest, and best-looking agent in New York. Helen, love, this is our young Robert E. Howard.”

“I saw your panel,” she said.

“Sorry about that,” Harrington said.

Helen Hohenstein was a petite woman of about forty whose doll-like face was offset by shrewd eyes — Harrington balked at deeming them predatory. She had passed through the revolving door in various editorial positions at various publishers, and she was now starting her own literary agency, specializing in science fiction and fantasy. She looked as if she could handle herself well under about any situation, and probably already had. Harrington felt almost intimidated by her, besides not especially willing to sacrifice 10 per cent of his meager earnings, but Nordgren was insistent.

“All kidding aside, Damon. Helen’s the sharpest mind in the game today. She’s worked her way up through the ranks, and she knows every crooked kink of a publisher’s subnormal brain. She’s already got a couple major paperback publishers interested in The Sending— and, baby, we’re talking five figures! It’s a break for us she’s just starting out and hungry for clients — and I’ve sold her on you, baby! Hey, think about it — she’ll buy all those stamps and manila envelopes, and collect all those rejection slips for you!”

That last sold Harrington. They celebrated with lunch at the Four Winds, and when Hohenstein revealed that she had read most of Harrington’s scattered short fiction and that she considered him to be a writer of unrealized genius, Damon knew he had hitched his wagon to the proper star.

A month later, Harrington knew so for a certainty. Hohenstein tore up Fairlane’s contract for the sequel to Iron Night, wrote up a new one that did not include such pitfalls (unnoticed by Damon in his ecstasy to be published) as world rights forever, and jumped the advance to $3500, payable on acceptance instead of on publication. Fairlane responded by requesting four books a year in the “Saga of Desmond Killstar” series, as they now designated it, and promised not to say a word about Conan. Damon, who would have been panic-stricken had he known of Helen’s machinations beforehand, now considered his literary career assured throughout his lifetime.

He splurged on a weekend phone call to Nordgren to tell him of his success. Nordgren concurred that Hohenstein was a genius; she had just sold paperback rights to The Sending to Warwick Books for $100,000, and the contract included an option for his next novel.

The Sending had topped the paperback bestseller lists for three straight weeks, when Trevor Nordgren flew first class to Los Angeles that next World Fantasy Convention. He took a suite at the con hotel and begged off Harrington’s invitation to put him up at his two-room cottage in Venice afterward. Helen was flying out and wanted him to talk with some Hollywood contacts while he was out there, so he wouldn’t have time for Damon to show him the sights. He knew Damon would understand, and anyway it was due to be announced soon, but Warwick had just signed a $250,000 paperback deal for The Rending, so Trevor had to get back to New York to finish the final draft. McGinnis & Parry had put up another $100,000 for hardcover rights, and Helen had slammed the door on any option for Nordgren’s next — that one would be up for bid.

Harrington could hear the clatter of loud voices as he approached Nordgren’s suite. A pretty redhead in a tank top answered his knock, sizing him up with the door half open.

“Hey, it’s Damon!” Nordgren’s voice cut above the uproar. “Come on in, baby! The party’s already started!”

Nordgren rose out of the melee and gave him a sloshing hug. He was apparently drinking straight Jack Daniel’s out of a pewter mug. He was wearing a loose shirt of soft suede, open at the throat to set off the gold chains about a neck that was starting to soften beneath a double chin, and a silver concho belt and black leather trousers that had been custom tailored when he was twenty pounds lighter.

Harrington could not resist. “Christ, you look like a peroxide Jim Morrison!”

“Yeah — Jimbo left me his wardrobe in his will. What’re you drinking? JD, still? Hey, Mitzi! Bring my friend James Dean a gallon of Jack Daniel’s with an ice cube in it! Come on, Damon— got some people I want you to meet.”

The redhead caught up with them. “Here you are, Mr Dean.”

It was a stronger drink than Damon liked to risk this early in the afternoon, but Trevor swept him along. Most of the people he knew, or at least recognized their faces. There was a mixed bag of name authors, various degrees of editors and publishers, a few people Harrington recognized from his own Hollywood contacts, and a mixture of friends, fans, groupies and civilians. Helen Hohenstein was talking in one corner with Alberta Dawson of Warwick Books, and she waved to Damon, which gave him an excuse to break away from Trevor’s dizzying round of introductions.

“I must confess I’ve never read any of your Killstar books,” Ms Dawson felt she must confess, “although I understand they’re very good for their type. Helen tells me that you and Trevor go way back together; do you ever write occult fiction?”

“I suppose you could call my story in the new Black Dawns anthology that Helen is editing a horror story. I really prefer to think of myself as a fantasy writer, as opposed to being categorized as a specialist in some particular sub-subgenre.”

“Not much profit to be made in short stories.” Ms Dawson seemed wistful. “And none at all with horror fiction.”

“I gather The Sending is doing all right for you.”

“But The Sending is mainstream fiction, of course,” she said almost primly, then conceded: “Well, occult mainstream fiction.”

The Rending, it developed, was about a small New York bedroom community terrorized by werewolves. Nordgren’s startling twist was that the werewolves were actually the town children, who had spread the curse among themselves through a seemingly innocent secret kid’s gang. However Alberta Dawson would categorize the novel, The Rending went through three printings before publication at McGinnis & Parry, and the Warwick paperback topped the bestseller charts for twenty-three weeks. Harrington was no little amused to discover that the terrorized community included a hack gothics writer named David Harrison.

Fairlane Books filed for bankruptcy, still owing the advance for Harrington’s latest Killstar opus and most of the royalties for the previous six.

“This,” said Damon, when Helen phoned him the news, “is where I came in.”

In point of fact, he was growing heartily sick of Desmond Killstar and his never-ending battles against the evil mutant hordes of the Blighted Earth, and had been at a loss as to which new or revived menace to pit him against in #8.

“We’ll sue the bastards for whatever we can salvage,” Helen promised him. “But for the good news: Julie Kriegman is the new science fiction editor at Summit, and she said she’d like to see a new fantasy-adventure series from you — something on the lines of Killstar, but with a touch of myths and sorcery. She thought the series ought to center around a strong female character — an enchantress, or maybe a swordswoman.”

“How about a little of both?” Harrington suggested, glancing at the first draft of Killstar #8. “I think I can show her something in a few weeks. Who’s this Kriegman woman, and why is she such a fan of mine?”

“Christ, I thought you knew her. She says she knows you and Trevor from way back. She remembers that you drink Bloody Marys.”

Death’s Dark Mistress, the first of the Krystel Firewind series, was good for a quick five grand advance and a contract for two more over the next year. The paperback’s cover was a real eye-catcher, displaying Krystel Firewind astride her flying dragon and brandishing her enchanted broadsword at a horde of evil dwarves. That the artist had chosen to portray her nude except for a few certainly uncomfortable bits of baubles, while Harrington had described her as wearing plate armor for this particular battle, seemed a minor quibble. Damon was less pleased with the cover blurb that proclaimed him “America’s Michael Moorcock!”

But Summit paid promptly.

Trevor Nordgren was Guest of Honor at Cajun Con VII in New Orleans in 1979, and Harrington (he later learned it was at Trevor’s suggestion) was Master of Ceremonies. It was one of those annual regional conventions that normally draw three to five hundred fans, but this year over a thousand came to see Trevor Nordgren.

The film of The Sending had already grossed over $40 million, and Max de Lawrence was rumored to have purchased film rights to The Rending for an even million. Shaftesbury had outbid McGinnis & Parry, paying out $500,000 for hardcover rights to Nordgren’s latest, The Etching, and Warwick Books was paying a record $2 million for a package deal that gave them paperback rights to The Etching, Nordgren’s next novel, and a series of five paperback reissues of his earlier work.

Nordgren was tied up with a barrage of newspaper and television interviews when Harrington checked into the Monteleone, but by late afternoon he phoned Damon to meet him in the lobby for a quick look at the French Quarter. Harrington was just out of the shower, and by the time he reached the lobby, Nordgren had been cornered by a mob of arriving fans. He was busily signing books, and for every one he handed back, two more were thrust toward him. He saw Damon, waved, and made a quick escape.

They fled to Bourbon Street and ducked into the Old Absinthe House, where they found seats at the hollow square bar. Nordgren ordered two Sazeracs. “Always wanted to try one. Used to be made with bourbon and absinthe, or brandy and absinthe, or rye and absinthe — anyway, it was made with absinthe. Now they use Pernod or Herbsaint or something instead of absinthe. Seems like they still ought to use absinthe in the Old Absinthe House.” Harrington watched with interest the bartender’s intricate preparation. “Thought they were going to eat you alive back there in the lobby.”

“Hell, let them have their fun. They pay the bills — they and a few million who stay at home.”

Nordgren sipped the dark red cocktail that filled the lower part of a highball glass. “Hey, not bad. Beats a Manhattan. Let’s have two more — these’ll be gone by the time the next round’s ready. So tell me, Damon — how you been?”

“Things are going pretty well. Summit has accepted Swords of Red Vengeance, and I’m hard at work on a third.”

“You’re too good a writer to waste your energy on that sort of stuff.”

“Pays the bills.” Damon swallowed his Sazerac before he reminded Trevor that not all writers were overnight millionaires. “So what’s after The Etching?”

Nordgren was already on his second Sazerac. “This one’s called The Bending. No — just kidding! Christ, these little devils have a kick to them. Don’t know what they’ll want me to title it. It’s about a naive young American secretary who marries an older Englishman whose previous wife was lost when their yacht sank. They return to his vast estate, where the housekeeper makes life miserable for her because she’s obsessed with her worship of the previous wife, and…”

“Was her name Rebecca?”

“Damn! You mean somebody beat me to the idea? Well, back to square one. Let’s have another of these and go grab a quick bite.”

“My round, I believe.”

“Forget it — my treat. You can buy us dinner.”

“Then how about a po’ boy?”

“Seriously — I’d like that. Not really very hungry, but I know I’ve got to keep something in my stomach, or I’ll be dead before the con is half over.”

At a hole-in-the-wall sandwich shop they picked up a couple meatball po’ boys to go. Harrington wanted to try the red beans and rice, but Nordgren was in a hurry to get back to the Monteleone. Fans spotted Nordgren as they entered the hotel, but they caught an elevator just in time and retreated to Trevor’s room, where he ordered a dozen bottles of Dixie beer.

Nordgren managed half his sandwich by the time room service brought the beer. “Want the rest of this, Damon? I’m not all that hungry.”

“Sure!” Harrington’s last meal had been plastic chicken on the flight from Los Angeles. “Say, you’re losing weight, aren’t you?”

“My special diet plan.” Nordgren unlocked his suitcase and dug out a chamois wallet, from which he produced a polished slab of agate and a plastic bag of cocaine. “Care for a little toot before we meet the masses?”

“For sure!” Damon said through a mouthful of sandwich. “Hey, I brought along a little Columbian for the weekend. Want me to run get it?”

“Got some Thai stick in the suitcase.” Trevor was sifting coke onto the agate. “Take a look at these boulders, man! This shit has not been stepped on.”

“Nice work if you can get it.”

Nordgren cut lines with a silver razor blade and handed the matching tooter to Harrington. “Here. Courtesy of all those hot-blooded little fans out there, standing in line to buy the next bestselling thriller from that master of chills — yours truly, Trev the Ripper.”

Trevor did look a good deal thinner, Damon thought, and he seemed to have abandoned the rock star look. His hair was trimmed, and he wore an expensive-looking silk sport coat over an open-collared shirt. Put on the designer sunglasses, and welcome to Miami. Wealth evidently agreed with Nordgren.

“You’re looking fit these days,” Harrington observed between sniffles. Damon himself was worrying about a distinct mid-thirties bulge, discovered when he shopped for a new sport coat for the trip. He was considering taking up jogging.

“Cutting down on my drinking.” Nordgren cut some more lines. “I was knocking back two or three fifths a day and chasing it with a case or so of brew.”

“Surprised you could write like that.” Privately, Harrington had thought The Etching little more than a 200,000-word rewrite of The Picture of Dorian Gray, served up with enough sex and gore to keep the twentieth-century reader turning the pages.

“Coke’s been my salvation. I feel better. I write better. It’s all that psychic energy I’m drawing in from all those millions of readers out there.”

“Are you still on about that?” Damon finished his lines. “Can’t say I’ve absorbed any energy from my dozens of fans.”

“It’s exponential,” Nordgren explained, sifting busily. “You ought to try to reach the greater audience, instead of catering to the cape-and-pimples set. You’re getting labeled as a thud-and-blunder hack, and as long as publishers can buy you for a few grand a book, that’s all they’ll ever see in you.”

Damon was stoned enough not to take offense. “Yeah, well, tell that to Helen. She’s been trying to peddle a collection of my fantasy stories for the last couple years.”

“Are these some of the ones you were writing for Cavalier and so on? Christ, I’ll have to ask her to show me a copy. You were doing some good stuff back then.”

“And pumping gas.”

“Hey, your time is coming, baby. Just think about what I’ve said. You wrote a couple of nice horror stories a few years back. Take a shot at a novel.”

“If I did, the horror fad would have peaked and passed.”

The phone rang. The con chairman wanted them to come down for the official opening ceremonies. Nordgren laid out a couple monster lines to get them primed, and they left to greet their public.

Later that evening Nordgren made friends with an energetic blonde from the local fan group, who promised to show him the sights of New Orleans. When it appeared that most of these sights were for Trevor’s eyes only, Damon wandered off with a couple of the local S.C.A. bunch to explore the fleshpots and low dives of the French Quarter.

Soon after, much to Harrington’s amazement, Warwick Books bought his short story collection, Dark Dreams. They had rejected it a year before, but now Trevor Nordgren had written a twenty page introduction to the book. Helen as much as admitted that Warwick had taken the collection only after some heavy pressure from Nordgren.

As it was, Dark Dreams came out uniformly packaged with Warwick’s much-heralded Trevor Nordgren reprint series. TREVOR NORDGREN Introduces got Nordgren’s name across the cover in letters twice the size of Harrington’s name, and only a second glance would indicate that the book was anything other than the latest Trevor Nordgren novel. But Dark Dreams was the first of Harrington’s books ever to go into a second printing, and Damon tore up the several letters of protest he composed.

He was astonished by Nordgren’s versatility. The Warwick package included a new, expanded edition of Time’s Wanton, a reprint of AcidTest (with a long, nostalgic introduction), a collection of Nordgren’s early short fiction entitled Electric Dreams (with accompanying introductions by the author), as well as Doors of Perception and Younger Than Yesterday— two anthologies of essays and criticism selected from Nordgren’s writings for the Chicago Seed, East Village Other, Berkeley Barb, and other underground newspapers of the ’60s.

Nordgren had by now gathered a dedicated cult following, in addition to the millions who snapped up his books from the checkout counter racks. Virtually any publication with a vintage Trevor Nordgren item in its pages began to command top collector’s prices, Harrington noticed upon browsing through the hucksters’ room at the occasional conventions he attended. Trevor Nordgren had become the subject of interviews, articles, and critical essays in everything from mimeographed fanzines to People to Time. Harrington was amused to find a Trevor Nordgren interview headlining one of the men’s magazines that used to reject stories from them both.

Warwick was delighted with sales figures from the Trevor Nordgren Retrospective, as the reprint package was now dignified, and proudly announced the purchase of five additional titles — two new collections of his short fiction and expanded revisions of his other three Essex House novels. In addition (and in conjunction with McGinnis & Parry as part of a complicated contractual buyout), Nordgren was to edit an anthology of his favorite horror stories (Trevor Nordgren Presents) and would prepare a nonfiction book discussing his personal opinions and theories of horror as a popular genre (The View Through the Glass Darkly).

The Max de Lawrence film of The Rending grossed $60 million in its first summer of release, and The Etching was still on the paperback top ten lists when The Dwelling topped the bestseller charts in the first week. Nordgren’s latest concerned a huge Victorian castle in a small New England town; presumably the mansion was haunted, but Nordgren’s twist was that the mansion had a life of its own and was itself haunting the community. The idea was good for a quarter of a million words, several million dollars, and a complete tax write-off of the high Victorian castle on the Hudson that Nordgren had refurbished and moved into.

Julie Kriegman was fired by the new corporate owners of Summit Books, and the new editor called Krystel Firewind sexist trash and killed the series with #5. Helen Hohenstein broke the news to Harrington somewhat more gently.

“At least Summit paid you.”

Damon’s only immediate consolation was that the call was on Helen’s dime. “Can we sell the series someplace else, or do I wrap sandwiches with the first draft of #6?” Thank God he hadn’t sprung for that word processor Nordgren had urged upon him.

“It doesn’t look good. Problem is that every paperback house that wants to already has one or two swords-and-sorcery series going. Do you think you could write high fantasy? That’s getting to be big just now. You know — lighten up a little on the violence and bare tits, give your imaginary world more of a fairy-tale atmosphere, maybe link in a bunch of Celtic myths and that sort of thing?”

“I can try it.” Harrington imagined Krystel Firewind stripped of sword and armor and a few inches of bustline, gowned in shimmering damask or maybe flowing priestess’ robes.

“Great! Keep this to yourself for now, but Columbine has hired Alberta Dawson away from Warwick to be their senior editor and try to rejuvenate their paperback line. She’s looking for new material, and she owes me. So get me some chapters and a prospectus soonest. Okay?”

“Will do.”

“Oh — and Damon. Plan this as a trilogy, could you?”

Harrington read over a few popular works on Celtic mythology and ancient European history to get some names and plot ideas, then started the rewrite of Krystel Firewind #6. This he was able to flesh out into a trilogy without much difficulty by basing his overall theme on the struggle of Roman Britain against the Saxon invasions. After her sex-change from Desmond Killstar, it was simple enough to transform Krystel Firewind into a half-elfin Druidic priestess. All that was needed was to change names, plug in his characters, and toss in a little magic.

Alberta Dawson was delighted with Tallyssa’s Quest: Book One of The Fall of the Golden Isles. She agreed to a contract for the entire trilogy, and confided to Hohenstein that she’d sensed all along that Damon Harrington was a major literary talent. Tallyssa’s Quest was launched with a major promotional campaign, complete with dump bins and color posters of the book’s cover. The cover, a wraparound by some Italian artist, was a rather ethereal thing depicting a billowingly berobed Tallyssa astride her flying unicorn and brandishing her Star of Life amulet to defend her elfin companions from a horde of bestial Kralkings. Harrington would much rather the cover hadn’t billed him as “The New Tolkien,” but Columbine had paid him his first five-figure advance.

Nordgren phoned him up at 2 in the morning, coked out of his skull, and razzed him about it mercilessly. He was just coming out of a messy paternity suit involving a minor he’d shacked up with at some convention, so Damon gave him an hour of his patience. Since Tallyssa’s Quest had gone into a third printing in its first month, Harrington was not to be baited.

When The Dwelling premiered as a television miniseries, Nordgren was a guest on The Tonight Show. He was obviously wired and kept breaking up the audience with his off-the-wall responses to the standard where-do-you-get-your-ideas sort of questions. Trevor had taken to smoking a pipe, perhaps to keep his hands from shaking, and the designer sunglasses were de rigueur Damon was startled to see how much weight he’d lost. Nordgren managed to get in enough plugs for his new opus, The Coming, to have qualified as a paid political announcement. Harrington had skimmed an advance copy of the thing — it appeared to be a 300,000-word rewrite of Lovecraft’s “The Outsider”—and had pondered the dangers of mixing cocaine and word processors.

There was a major problem with crowd control at the World Science Fiction Convention in Minneapolis, so that they were forced to abandon their tradition of signing books together. The con committee had had to set a special room aside just for Trevor Nordgren. At one point a news reporter counted over 750 fans standing in line to enter the signing room, many with shopping bags filled with Trevor Nordgren books and magazine appearances. Con committee members tried in vain to enforce the one-person-one-autograph rule, and a near riot broke out when uniformed hotel security guards finally escorted Nordgren to his suite after two and a half hours of signing books. Nordgren placated them by promising to set up a second autographing session the next day.

Something that looked like an ex-linebacker in a three-piece suit greeted Harrington when he knocked on the door of Nordgren’s suite. After all the Hammett and Chandler he’d read, Damon felt cheated that he couldn’t see the bulge of a roscoe beneath the polyester, but he surmised one was there.

“Damon Harrington to see Mr Nordgren,” he said to the stony face, feeling very much like a character in a Chandler novel. He wished he had a fedora to doff.

“That’s okay, John. He’s a lodge brother.”

Evidently Nordgren was unscarred by last year’s lawsuit, since neither of the girls who were cutting lines on the glass-topped table were as old as Trevor if they could have combined both their ages. Nordgren had lately taken to wearing his hair slicked and combed straight back, and he reminded Harrington of a dissolute Helmut Berger posing for a men’s fashion spread in Esquire.

“After meeting your bodyguard there, I fully expected to find you seated in a wheelchair, wearing a silk dressing robe, and smoking Russian cigarettes through a long amber holder.”

“Melody Heather. Meet my esteemed friend and drinking buddy, Damon Harrington. Damon, join us.”

“Weren’t you in Apocalypse Now?” one of them asked brightly.

“Quite right,” Nordgren assured her. “And turn a deaf ear when he promises to get you a role in his next film.”

They were almost certain Nordgren was kidding them, but not quite, and kept a speculative watch on Damon.

“The big party isn’t until later tonight,” Nordgren said, handing him the tooter, “but I felt I must unwind after sustaining terminal writer’s cramp from all those autographs. Why not get a good buzz with us now, then rejoin the party after ten?”

“Can’t see how you can go through all that.”

“All that psychic energy, baby.”

“All that money, you mean.”

“A little PR never hurt anyone. Speaking of which, Damon — I noticed quite a number of little darlings decked out in flowing bedsheets and pointed ears and carrying about boxed sets of The Fall of the Golden Isles in ardent quest of your signature. Is rumor true that Columbine has just sprung for a second trilogy in the series?”

“Helen has just about got them to agree to our terms.”

“Christ, Damon! We’re better than this shit!” Nordgren banged his fist on the table and sent half a gram onto the carpet. One of the girls started to go after it, but Trevor shook his head and muttered that he bought it by the kilo.

“You don’t look particularly ready to go back to the good old days of 3¢ a word on publication,” Damon suggested.

“And paying the bills with those wonderful $1,000 checks from Bee Line for 60,000 words worth of wet dreams. Did I tell you that a kid came up to me with a copy of Stud Road to sign, and he’d paid some huckster $150 for the thing!”

Damon almost choked on his line. “Remind me to put my copy of Time’s Wanton in a safe deposit box. Christ, Trevor — you’ve got enough money from all this to write anything you damn well please.”

“But we somehow write what the public wants from us instead. Or do you get off by being followed about by teenage fans in farcical medieval drag with plastic pointy ears begging to know whether Wyndlunne the Fey is going to be rescued from Grimdoom’s Black Tower in Book Four of The Trilogy of Trilogies’?”

“We both have our fans,” Damon said pointedly. “And what dire horrors lie in wait for some small suburban community in your next mega-word chart-buster?”

“Elves,” said Nordgren.

The last time that Damon Harrington saw Trevor Nordgren was at the World Fantasy Convention in Miami. Because of crowd problems, Nordgren had stopped going to cons, but a Guest of Honor invitation lured him forth from his castle on the Hudson. He had avoided such public appearances for over a year, and there were lurid rumors of nervous breakdown, alcoholism, drug addiction, or possibly AIDS.

The Changeling, Nordgren’s latest and biggest, concerned an evil race of elves who lurked in hidden dens beneath a small suburban community, and who were systematically exchanging elfin babies for the town’s human infants. The Changeling was dedicated to Damon Harrington—“in remembrance of Styrofoam boaters.” The novel dominated the bestseller lists for six months, before finally being nudged from first place by The Return of Tallyssa: Book Six of the Fall of the Golden Isles.

Harrington squeezed onto an elevator already packed with fans. A chubby teenager in a Spock Lives! t-shirt was complaining in an uncouth New York accent: “So I ran up to him when the limo pulled up, and I said to him ‘Mr Nordgren, would you please sign my copy of The Changeling?’ and he said ‘I’d love to, sweetheart, but I don’t have the time,’ and I said ‘But it’s just this one book,’ and he said ‘If I stop for you, there are twenty invisible fans lined up behind you right now with their books,’ and I thought ‘You conceited turkey, and after I’ve read every one of your books!’” The elevator door opened on her floor, and she and most of her sympathetic audience got off. As the door closed, Harrington caught an exclamation: “Hey, wasn’t that…”

A hotel security guard stopped him as he entered the hallway toward his room, and Harrington had to show him his room key and explain that he had the suite opposite Trevor Nordgren’s. The guard was scrupulously polite, and explained that earlier fans had been lining up outside Nordgren’s door with armloads of books. Damon then understood why the hotel desk had asked him if he minded having a free drink in the lounge until they had prepared his suite after some minor vandalism wrought by the previous guests.

A bell captain appeared with his baggage finally, and then room service stocked his bar. Harrington unpacked a few things, then phoned Nordgren’s suite. A not very friendly male voice answered, and refused to do more than take a message. Harrington asked him to tell Mr Nordgren that Mike Hunt wished to have a drink with him in the suite opposite. Thirty seconds later Nordgren was kicking at his door.

“Gee, Mr Hunt!” Nordgren gushed in falsetto. “Would you please sign my copy of The Other Woman? Huh? Huh? Would you?” He looked terrible. He was far thinner than when they’d first met, and his skin seemed to hang loose and pallid over his shrunken flesh — reminding Harrington of a snake about to shed its skin. His blue eyes seemed too large for his sallow face, and their familiar arrogance was shadowed by a noticeable haunted look. Harrington thought of some fin de siécle poet dying of consumption.

“Jack Daniel’s, as usual? Or would you like a Heineken?”

“I’d like just some Perrier water, if you have it there. Cutting down on my vices.”

“Sure thing.” Damon thought about the rumors. “Hey, brought along some pearl that you won’t believe!”

“I’ll taste a line of it, then,” Nordgren brightened, allowing Damon to bring him his glass of Perrier. “Been a while since I’ve done any toot. Decided I didn’t need a Teflon septum.”

When Nordgren actually did take only one line, Harrington began to get really concerned. He fiddled with his glass of Jack Daniel’s, then managed: “Trevor, I’m only asking as an old friend — but are you all right?”

“Flight down tired me out, that’s all. Got to save up my energy for that signing thing tonight.”

Damon spent undue attention upon cutting fresh lines. “Yeah, well. I mean, you look a little thin, is all.”

Instead of taking offense, Trevor seemed wearily amused. “No, I’m not strung out on coke or smack or uppers or downers or any and all drugs. No, I don’t have cancer or some horrid wasting disease. Thank you for your concern.”

“Didn’t mean to pry.” Damon was embarrassed. “Just concerned, is all.”

“Thanks, Damon. But I’m off the booze and drugs, and I’ve had a complete check-up. Frankly, I’ve been burning the old candle at both ends and in the middle for too long. I’m exhausted body and soul, and I’m planning on treating myself to a long R&R while the royalties roll in.”

“Super! Why not plan on spending a couple weeks knocking around down on the coast with me, then? We’ll go down to Ensenada.”

A flash of Nordgren’s bitter humor returned. “Well, I’d sure like to, young feller,” he rasped. “But I figger on writin’ me one last big book. Then I’ll take all the money I got put aside, and buy me a little spread down in Texas — hangup my word processor and settle down to raise cattle. Just this one last book is all I need.”

The signing party was a complete disaster. The con committee hadn’t counted on Nordgren’s public and simply put him at a table in the hotel ballroom with the rest of the numerous pros in attendance. The ballroom was totally swamped by Nordgren’s fans — many from the Miami area who forced their way into the hotel without registering for the convention. Attempts to control the crowd led to several scuffles; the hotel overreacted and ordered security to clear the ballroom, and numerous fights and acts of vandalism followed before order could be restored. Nordgren was escorted to his suite, where a state of siege existed.

Completely sickened by the disgusting spectacle, Harrington afterward retreated to the Columbine Books party, where he was thoroughly lionized, and where he discovered an astonishing number of fellow writers who had known all along that he had the stuff of genius in him, and who were overjoyed that one of their comrades who had paid his dues at last was rewarded with the overdue recognition and prosperity he so deserved. Harrington decided to get knee-walking, commode-hugging drunk, but he was still able to walk, assisted by the wall, when he finally left the party.

Standing with the other sardines waiting to be packed into the elevator, Harrington listened to the nasal whine of the acne farm with the shopping bag full of books who had just pushed in front of him: “So all my friends who couldn’t afford to make the trip from Des Moines gave me their books to get him to autograph too, and I promised them I would, and then they announced His Highness would sign only three books for each fan, and then they closed the autographing party with me still standing in line and for an hour and a half! I mean, I’m never buying another book by that creep! Nordgren doesn’t care shit about his fans!”

“I know!” complained another. “I wrote him an eight-page fan letter, and all I got back was a postcard!”

Harrington managed to get most of the vomit into the shopping bag, and as the crowd cringed away and the elevator door opened, he stumbled inside and made good his escape.

His next memory was of bouncing along the wall of the corridor that led to his room and hearing sounds of a party at full tilt in Nordgren’s suite. Harrington was surprised that Trevor had felt up to throwing a party after the debacle earlier that evening, but old habits must die hard, and Damon thought that a few more drinks were definitely called for after the elevator experience.

The door to Nordgren’s suite was open, so Harrington shouldered his way inside. The place was solidly packed with bodies, and Harrington clumsily pushed a route between them, intent on reaching the bar. By the time he was halfway into the party, it struck him that he didn’t know any of the people here — somewhat odd in that he and Nordgren generally partied with the same mob of writers and professionals who showed up at the major cons each time. The suite seemed to be packed entirely with fans, and Harrington supposed that they had crashed Nordgren’s party, presumably driving the pros into another room or onto the balcony.

Harrington decided the crowd was too intense, the room too claustrophobic. He gave up on reaching the bar and decided to try to find Nordgren and see if he wanted to duck over to his suite for a quick toot and a chance to relax. Peering drunkenly about the crowded room, Harrington noticed for the first time that everyone’s attention seemed to be focused toward the center. And there he recognized Nordgren.

“Trevor, my man! ” Damon’s voice sounded unnaturally loud and clear above the unintelligible murmur of the crowd.

He jostled his way toward Nordgren, beginning to get angry that none of the people seemed inclined to move aside despite his mumbled excuse-me’s and sorry’s. Nordgren might as well have been mired in quicksand, so tightly ringed in by fans as he was, and only Trevor’s height allowed Harrington to spot him. Damon thought he looked awful, far worse than earlier in the day.

Nordgren stretched out his hand to Harrington, and Damon’s first thought was that he meant to wave or to shake hands, but suddenly it reminded him more of a drowning victim making one last hopeless clutching for help. Shoving through to him, Harrington clasped hands.

Nordgren’s handgrip felt very loose, with a scaly dryness that made Damon think of the brittle rustle of overlong fingernails.

Harrington shook his hand firmly and tried to draw Nordgren toward him so they could speak together. Nordgren’s arm broke off at his shoulder like a stick of dry-rotted wood.

For a long breathless moment Harrington just stood there, gaping stupidly, Nordgren’s arm still in his grasp, the crowd silent, Nordgren’s expression as immobile as that of a crucified Christ. Then, ever so slowly, ever so reluctantly, as if there were too little left to drain, a few dark drops of blood began to trickle from the torn stump of Nordgren’s shoulder.

The crowd’s eyes began to turn upon Harrington, as Nordgren ever so slowly began to collapse like an unstrung marionette.

Harrington awoke the following noon, sprawled fully dressed across a couch in his own suite. He had a poisonous hangover and shuddered at the reflection of his face in the bathroom mirror. He made himself a breakfast of vitamin pills, aspirin, and Valium, then set about cutting a few wake-up lines to get him through the day.

Harrington was not really surprised to learn that Trevor Nordgren had died in his sleep sometime during the night before.

Everyone knew it was a drug overdose, but the medical examiner’s report ruled heart failure subsequent to extreme physical exhaustion and chronic substance abuse.

Several of the science fiction news magazines asked Harrington to write an obituary for Trevor Nordgren, but Harrington declined. He similarly declined offers from several fan presses to write a biography or critical survey of Nordgren, or to edit proposed anthologies of Nordgren’s uncollected writings, and he declined Warwick’s suggestion that he complete Nordgren’s final unfinished novel. Martin E. Binkley, in his Reader’s Guide to Trevor Nordgren, attributed this reticence to “Harrington’s longtime love-hate relationship with Nordgren that crystalized into professional jealousy with final rejection.”

Damon Harrington no longer attends conventions, nor does he autograph books. He does not answer his mail, and he has had his telephone disconnected.

Columbine Books offered Harrington a fat one million advance for a third trilogy in the best-selling Fall of the Golden Isles series. When Harrington returned the contract unsigned to Helen Hohenstein, she was able to get Columbine to increase the advance to one and a half million. Harrington threw the contract into the trash.

In his dreams Harrington still sees the faceless mass of hungry eyes, eyes turning from their drained victim and gazing now at him. Drugs seem to help a little, and friends have begun to express concern over his health.

The mystery of Damon Harrington’s sudden reclusion has excited the imagination of his public. As a consequence, sales of all of his books are presently at an all-time high.