Walk on the Wild Side - By Karl Edward Wagner Page 0,6

close look at anything you have to show. Quite a break, considering you’ve never written a script before. Ought to be right in your line though—both shows are set back in your salad days.

“One’s a sitcom about a screwball gang of American soldiers in a POW camp back in the Indo-China wars. Dorina Vallecia plays the commandant’s daughter, and she’s a hot property right now. The other’s a sitcom about two hapless beatnik drug pushers back in the Love Generation days. This one looks like a sure hit for next season. It’s got Garry Simson as the blundering redneck chief of police. He’s a good audience draw, and they’ve got a new black girl, Livia Stone, to play the bomb-throwing activist girl friend.”

“No,” said the writer in a tight voice.

“Now wait a minute,” protested the agent. “There’s good money in this—especially if the show hits it off. And it wasn’t easy talking to these guys, let me tell you!”

“No. It isn’t the money.”

“Then what is it, for Christ’s sake! I’m telling you, there’s a bunch of old-time writers who’ve made it big in television.”

“No.”

“Well, there’s an outside chance I can get you on the script team for a new daytime Gothic soaper. You’ve always had a fondness for that creepy stuff.”

“Yes. I always have had. No.”

The agent grimaced unhappily. “I don’t know what I can do for you. I really don’t. I tell you there’s no market for your stuff, and you tell me you won’t write for the markets that are there.”

“Maybe something will come up.”

“I tell you, it’s hopeless.”

“Then there’s nothing more to say.”

The agent fidgeted with the fastenings of his attache case. “We’ve been friends a long time, you know. Damn it, why won’t you at least try a few scripts? I’m not wanting to pry, but the money must look good to you. I mean, its been a long dry spell since your last sale.”

“I won’t say I can’t use the money. But I’m a writer, not a hired flunky who hacks out formula scripts according to the latest idiot fads of tasteless media.”

“Well, at least the new social security guarantees an income for everyone these days.”

The writer’s lined face drew cold and white. “I’ve never bothered to apply for the government’s dole. Turning my personal life over to the computers for a share of another man’s wages seems to me a rather dismal bargain.”

“Oh.” The agent felt embarrassed. “Well, I suppose you could always sell some of these books—if things got tight, I mean. Some of these editions ought to be worth plenty to a rare book collector, wouldn’t they?”

“Good night,” said the writer.

Like a friend who has just discharged his deathbed obligations, the agent rose to his feet and shook hands with the writer. “You really ought to keep up with today’s trends, you know. Like television—watch some of the new shows, why don’t you? It’s not so bad. Maybe you’ll change your mind, and give me a call?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You even got a television in this house? Come to think, I don’t remember seeing a screen anywhere. Does that antique really work?” He pointed to an ancient fishbowl Stromberg-Carlson, crushed in a corner, its mahogany console stacked with crumbling comic books.

“Of course not,” said the writer, as he ushered him to the door. “That’s why I keep it here.”

The last writer sat alone in his study.

There was a knock at his door.

His stiff joints complained audibly as he left his desk, and the cocked revolver that lay there. He swung open the door.

Only shadows waited on his threshold.

The writer blinked his eyes, found them dry and burning from the hours he had spent at his manuscript. How many hours? He had lost all count of time. He passed a weary hand over his face and crossed the study to the bourbon decanter that stood, amber spirits, scintillant crystal, in its nook, as always.

He silently toasted a departed friend and drank. His gaze fell upon a familiar volume, and he pulled it down with affection. It was a tattered asbestos-cloth first of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

“Thank God you’re dead and gone,” he murmured. “Never knew how close you were—or how cruelly wrong your guess was. It wasn’t government tyranny that killed us. It was public indifference.”

He replaced the yellowed book. When he turned around, he was not alone.

A thousand phantoms drifted about his study. Spectral figures in a thousand costumes, faces that told a thousand stories. Through their swirling ranks the writer could see