Unidentified Funny Objects 6, page 9
Suzanne pointed to one side and down. "He's more in that direction."
"Hey, you can deliver his advance to him! Minus my fifteen percent and offerings to the gods for the manuscript to be finished and all other associated costs and expenses, of course."
She glared at him. "No! Don't you care what happens to the world?"
"Would you want me to work against my client, who has his faults but does nonetheless have a contract with me? Do you know what would happen if I broke my contract? There are forces in this world who love chaos. Lawyers, for example. They love it when no one else can figure out what they're doing, and if they heard I'd gone against Gothlack they'd all descend on me waving swords and subpoenas. That's a certainty, whereas I have only your word for it that this manuscript will destroy the world." Mani shrugged again as Suzanne stumbled out the door under the force of the geas. "Don't forget!" he called after her. "Three chapters and an outline!"
Inconstant had managed to loose himself and wander into the street, where he was blocking traffic and was surrounded by angry wagon drivers debating the most painful way to kill him. Suzanne (who had had those same feelings about Inconstant more than once) tried to walk toward the temple, but found herself yanked toward Inconstant by the geas. As she resignedly started to climb into the saddle, a wagon driver who was easily twice Suzanne's size grabbed her arm. "Is this your horse?"
Inspiration came to Suzanne's aid. "No. I'm stealing it."
The drivers backed away, grinning, as Suzanne viciously kicked Inconstant into motion again.
The huge temple of Inspiration in Nwe Yerk occupied most of a city block, rising upward for several stories. Its façade was covered with carvings representing various famous tales and writers, as well as the goddess herself and the lesser deities in her pantheon such as relentless Deadline and proud Contract. Suzanne had thought Inspiration's temple in her home city was impressive, but that seemed almost a hovel compared to this structure.
A long line of hopeful writers waited to enter the temple, clutching the manuscripts they would place in the offering trays for the priest-editors of Inspiration to judge for worthiness.
Unable to wait with Gothlack's geas tugging at her, Suzanne trudged up the steps alongside the line of hopefuls, trying to ignore their scandalized looks. The priest-editor at the entrance frowned at her, pointing to the rear of the line, then froze with his mouth open as Suzanne thrust the flaming manuscript at him. "Are . . . are you a goddess?" he gasped.
"Do I look like a goddess?"
The question made the priest-editor pause, his appalled gaze studying Suzanne's appearance, but caution won out over candor. "Inspiration has been known to take many forms—"
"I'm a writer! Just take the manuscript!" Suzanne yelled, tossing it at him.
The priest-editor caught the flaming manuscript, juggling it frantically until he realized it wasn't burning him.
Suzanne almost collapsed as the force of the geas finally vanished. "That's from the god of chaos, Gothlack. You have to destroy it."
The priest-editor looked from Suzanne to the manuscript. "But it's an offering to the goddess—"
"It'll destroy the world if anyone reads it! I only delivered it because Gothlack put me under a geas to bring the manuscript to his agent and to his publisher—"
"His publisher?" The priest-editor straightened and nodded. "Then this manuscript is an offering to Contract and Inspiration. I'll deliver it to the senior priestess-editor immediately."
"But—"
"Thank you on behalf of the goddess." The priest-editor vanished into the temple, leaving Suzanne standing in the entrance.
Calliope appeared, beaming happily, causing a chorus of awed and envious sounds from the waiting line of would-be writers as they saw Suzanne's muse. "How's your character's storyline doing?"
"It sucks. Why did you help Gothlack deliver that manuscript here?"
"I didn't help him, I helped you," Calliope said. "My writer."
"Thank you so very much. Your writer won't be writing much more after the world is destroyed. You do realize that, don't you?"
The muse nodded. "That would be a problem. I can't really help you with it since I have to pay my respects to Inspiration, but I'm sure you can plot out a satisfactory ending to the story."
"No!" Suzanne yelled. "No! This is not a story!"
Calliope smiled. "Of course it's a story. It's your story, filled with adventure and peril. What more could a writer want?"
Romance popped into Suzanne's head, but fortunately she managed to avoid saying it. There was no telling what kind of situations Calliope would get her into if the muse decided to try adding her idea of romance to Suzanne's life. Instead, Suzanne swung a fist at the muse as it vanished. She glared into the inner precincts of the building, shifted her sword, settled her armor, grasped her pen, and marched into the temple of Inspiration.
She paused to let her eyes adjust to the dimness of the vast nave, gazing at the tiny cells spaced along the sides of the area where the priest-editors awaited offerings from hopeful writers. The senior priestess-editor wouldn't be in one of those, Suzanne guessed, but would be much higher up somewhere in the sacred ivory towers where writers were never allowed.
Bracing herself for a blast of divine displeasure, Suzanne nonchalantly strolled to the staircase leading upward as if she had every right to go in that direction. She didn't encounter anyone else as the staircase went higher, growing broader and grander, letting out onto progressively nicer landings. Reaching the top landing, Suzanne stared anxiously down a magnificent corridor with a vaulted ceiling high overhead. At the far end she could see a door massive enough that Gothlack could have walked through it.
Inspiration still hadn't struck her witless, nor had the lesser god Block appeared to steal her writing ability, so Suzanne started down the hallway, only to almost run into a young priestess-editor hurrying out of a side door.
The priestess-editor halted and stared at Suzanne. "What are you doing here?"
"Uh . . . Inspiration led me here. So did my muse," Suzanne added.
"Your muse? Are you a writer? I'm sorry, but your offering doesn't meet our current needs," the editor recited rapidly.
Suzanne smiled in what she hoped was a winning way despite her general crazed appearance. "I didn't bring an offering. I had to come here because I was following my muse."
The priestess-editor sighed. "Every once in a while a new acolyte will come to me and ask why a writer did something that we can't understand. I just tell them not to worry about it, that the writer is just following their muse. Do you writers like following your muses?"
Suzanne shook her head. "Actually, I want to kill mine."
"Isn't that difficult? Our senior priestess says the only way a writer can kill a muse is if they don't want to do it."
The full extent of her problem finally became clear to Suzanne. "Really?"
"Yes." The priestess-editor glanced around with a guilty expression. "The senior priestess-editor will become very upset if she sees me talking to a writer. She'll probably make me do penance by copy-editing. I should go back to my cell."
"Wait, please! I need to kill a book."
That statement bought Suzanne a frown from the priestess-editor. "You want to kill a book and your muse?"
"Yes, though I'll settle for the book right now. But I'm not sure how to kill it."
The priestess pondered the question. "I'd try Marketing if I were you. Usually when a book dies everyone says Marketing is responsible, so they must kill a lot of books."
"But it can't be at Marketing, yet," Suzanne insisted. "I just delivered it to the temple. It was written by Gothlack, the god of chaos. Can you help me find the editor who has it?"
To Suzanne's surprise, the priestess-editor laughed. "No editor in their right mind would touch a god's manuscript. What do you think happens when you copyedit a god's writing? At the very least you annoy the god, at the worst you get cursed, and very likely it's all for nothing anyway because the god just creates a new rule of grammar rather than change their manuscript. How do you think we ended up with the fourth-person prepositional infinitive phrase rule?"
"I've always wondered about that."
"Then you understand why we don't want Gothlack, of all gods, creating new rules of grammar so he wouldn't have to agree to a copyedit. I guarantee you that manuscript was sent straight down to . . ." The priestess-editor glanced around nervously and whispered the rest. "To the guy in Marketing."
Suzanne gazed up and down the hallway. "Which way is Marketing?"
"I told you." The priestess-editor pointed straight down.
The grand stairway dwindled again as Suzanne headed back down without seeing any sign of Marketing. She passed ground level and kept going, the stairway getting narrower, the steps steeper, and the torches set at greater intervals so that Suzanne was soon creeping down through patches of darkness. The walls had become rough stone, covered with wet patches and pockets of slime. Suzanne became aware of rustling sounds, then came to a total halt as she spotted something like a giant rat's shadow crossing the staircase below her. Drawing her sword Guardian, Suzanne crept forward, her eyes and ears straining for any sign of danger.
Finally, the stairs ended facing a battered door with 'Marketing' painted on it in faded lettering. Suzanne, whose worries about the guy in Marketing had grown as her surroundings got more dismal, took a firm grip on her sword as she pushed open the door.
A very large room filled with desks met her eyes. Most of the desks were covered with piles of manuscripts and artwork, as was most of the floor space. Only one desk had an occupant, a man of indeterminate age blinking at her with large, dark eyes set in very pale skin. A carved wooden sign on his desk read Borgul – Marketing.
"Ready tomorrow," Borgul assured Suzanne in a hoarse voice, eyeing her sword.
Suzanne glanced around for danger, then sheathed her sword. "What will be ready?"
"Whatever the nice person with the sword wants."
"Actually, I want the manuscript which the god of chaos just delivered to this temple."
"Nasty swordmistresses can't have it!" the guy in Marketing replied, clutching a thick file folder to his chest.
"I can't let you read that manuscript!"
Borgul squinted at her, his expression baffled. "Read it? Why would we want to read it?"
Suzanne gazed back at him, also perplexed now. "I thought you chose the cover art and how to promote the book and—"
"Yes," Borgul interrupted in irritable tones. "What do those things have to do with reading the book?" He leaned back and sighed happily, still clutching the folder. "We have already chosen cover and tag line, so now nice manuscript just needs to go back upstairs to divine printers."
"Do the printers read it?"
Borgul looked at Suzanne as if trying to judge whether she was serious.
Suzanne reached out tentatively. "Is there any chance I could see the cover you—"
"No!" the guy in Marketing insisted, gripping the folder tighter. "It's mine."
Suzanne eyed Borgul, trying to think up a way to gain access to the manuscript. What could influence this . . . person? What did he like? Praying silently to Inspiration, Suzanne studied the room for clues.
Aside from the piles of manuscripts everywhere, the dominating features were illustrations on the walls of young women with impressive bust measurements and well-rounded rear-ends, all of them clad only in extremely inadequate amounts of chain mail armor. Each woman also carried a sword. Suzanne looked down at herself. She couldn't do anything about her bust or her rear end at the moment, but she still had her sword.
Pushing her chest and her sword forward, Suzanne smiled at the guy in Marketing. "You wouldn't be interested in going out with me somewhere, would you?"
Borgul's mouth dropped open. "Where does the nice swordswoman want to go?" he finally asked.
"Where?" Expertise honed in countless blind dates came to Suzanne's rescue. "There's a bar eight blocks west from here. I'll meet you there."
"Why not come now?"
"I . . . need to change into my chain mail first."
Borgul's eyes widened, then he grinned and darted out and up the stairs.
Suzanne waited only until the door closed, then lunged for the folder containing Gothlack's manuscript. The first thing she pulled out was the manuscript itself. While under the geas she hadn't been able to do anything to it, but now she tried holding it to a candle flame. The manuscript didn't burn. Neither would it rip, tear, cut, or be smeared by water or ink. Suzanne strained mightily to yank the last page free but only succeeded in pulling a muscle.
Breathing heavily from her efforts, Suzanne dumped Gothlack's manuscript back into the folder and drew out the cover art. She wasn't all that surprised to see the picture was dominated by a barbarian swordswoman from the Double-D Cup Clan, her chain mail halter top covering only a small fraction of her straining breasts. Suzanne squinted at the picture, trying to figure out if the woman was supposed to be grimacing with battle lust or in response to having her boobs pinched by the chain mail of the halter top.
Dropping the picture into the nearest trash can, Suzanne rummaged through the cover art files, stopping only when she came across one showing an indistinct image of a man sitting at a desk, gazing blandly into the distance, the background a flat, dreary expanse of land. The color scheme of the picture seemed to make use of every available shade of beige.
Replacing the original cover art with her own selection, Suzanne studied the Marketing sheet, on which her recent acquaintance had scrawled An epic adventure of amazing exploration. That sounded not only generic but entirely too interesting. Suzanne drew her pen, crossed out the words, pondered for a moment, then wrote carefully: An exhaustive interpretation of the philosophical implications of neo-pagan breathing rituals with extensive notations in the original Pruskian dialects. That should do it.
A brightening of the gloom marked the appearance of Calliope, reading over her shoulder. Before Suzanne could draw her sword and swing, Calliope slid through the air across the room and out of reach, shaking her head. "I'd never read that."
"That's the idea," Suzanne informed her muse.
"You're writing things you don't want people to read?"
"It's a, um, creative writing exercise."
"Oh." Calliope literally brightened a bit, throwing into greater relief the illustrations on the walls. "The spirit of Inspiration is moving you?"
"As a matter of fact, it is," Suzanne agreed, dropping the folder into a file tray marked Printers. "With any luck no one will ever actually read this book of Gothlack's."
"Won't the agent of chaos be upset about that?"
Suzanne shook her head. "He's got his fifteen percent and he's already given up on a sequel."
"Wonderful," her muse enthused. "Inspiration has aided you several times today. The goddess expects great things of you." Calliope lowered her voice as if sharing a secret. "The goddess believes that with my help you could someday die in obscurity and poverty, scribbling the final words of a novel which would make you famous a hundred years after your body was dumped into the paupers' field."
"She does?" Suzanne stared at her muse with a sinking feeling. "Please go tell Inspiration that I'm proud to serve her but I really don't deserve that."
"Of course you do! If I work on it, the goddess might even grant that you die young, perhaps of a horrible illness aggravated by your destitution, a talent cut down before it could fully flower!"
Suzanne's mouth worked, but no sound came out. She finally managed to croak out a reply. "No, thank you. I don't want to be a writer anymore."
Calliope's smile grew. "Writer of mine, you still don't understand. People don't become writers because they want to write, they become writers because they have to write. You don't have any choice."
"You said I could write my own story!" Suzanne wailed. "You told me I could plot out what happens!"
Her muse tilted her head to one side thoughtfully. "If you're really good at it . . ."
"Yes! I'm going to get very good at it!"
"Excellent!" Calliope beamed at Suzanne. "How about a nice trip to a beach?"
"A beach?" Suzanne imagined lying on warm sand, far from gods of any sort. Lured by the image, she followed Calliope without protest as the muse floated quickly up the stairs and out of the temple, then down the steps to the street where Inconstant stood tied to the rail. Mounting her horse, Suzanne tried to swing Inconstant to face south, but found herself pulled northward instead. "Hey," she called to her muse. "I thought you said a beach?"
"Yes," Calliope replied. "A beach where the waves make the most delightful tinkling sound as they crash onto the jagged rocks and break the ice rime formed by earlier spray. Inspiration loves the place."
"Ice? I don't—"
"You'll have to make sure you keep your pen next to your skin so the ink doesn't freeze. But to get there we'll have to get past the northern barbarian tribes. That will take some clever plotting, my writer!"
Suzanne tugged frantically at Inconstant's reins, but couldn't resist the pull from her muse and found herself pointing her horse's muzzle northward. She reached into her pocket for her pen and tried to hurl it away, but her hand wouldn't release it. "Please, Calliope, can't we try something a little less hazardous first? Something less likely to kill me?"
"You can't be immortal unless you're willing to die for your art."
Stuffing her pen back into her pocket and muttering prayers to Inspiration for a foolproof idea to get rid of Calliope, Suzanne followed her muse toward the northern gate out of Nwe Yerk. This time, unfortunately, Inspiration didn't come to her.
But at least she had met an agent. Suzanne pulled out her pen and some paper and started working on an outline for her novel. Maybe she would survive long enough to get the first three chapters done.
Jack Campbell is the pen name of John G. Hemry, a retired U.S. Navy officer. He writes The Lost Fleet series of military science fiction novels as well as the Beyond the Frontier continuation of The Lost Fleet, and The Lost Stars series (a spin-off of The Lost Fleet.) He has also written the Stark's War series and the Singlair/"JAG in space" series, and has written many shorter stories featuring space opera, fantasy, time travel and alternate history. His website is www.jack-campbell.com.
