"And get ourselves thrown out by the postmaster when we hang around for six or eight hours looking for somebody who doesn't show up."
"Nonsense. Writers haunt mailboxes; it's part of the disease. As for the postmaster, leave him to me."
"I suppose I have to." They were already walking up the low, broad steps into the building.
But it proved just as the editor had predicted. When the gaunt fellow behind the counter asked, "Help you gents?" McGregor said, "Yes. Could you tell me what time you usually put mail in your boxes? We're supposed to meet someone here then."
The man accepted that as casually as McGregor had said it. "Usually about eleven," he answered. "You've got some time to use up."
"Any place we could get a cup of coffee?" Pete asked, not wanting to be entirely left out.
"There's a delicatessen down the block there," the man said. He pointed west. "Reckon they can help you."
The coffee at Giuliano's was scalding hot and strong enough to growl, but good. While Pete and McGregor were drinking it, a Japanese man wearing a suit and hat came in; a lot of the people on the street in Gardena were Orientals. The man bought half a pound of cotto salami, paid the clerk and thanked him, and walked out.
"Acculturation." McGregor chuckled. His gaze sharpened, as if coming into focus. "Hmm?seems to me you could do something with that. Suppose you had an alien race, now, just coming into contact with technologically superior Terrans?"
The resulting conversation had the deli clerk listening, pop-eyed, from behind his counter and Pete frantically scribbling notes. He barely remembered to look at his watch. "It's half-past ten," he said. "We'd better get back, in case they're early today."
The Astonishing editor got up (to the clerk's obvious disappointment), but was not a man easily derailed from his train of thought. "All very well," he said as they walked back toward the post office, "but what about the attitude of the aliens' priests? No matter how much Terran gadgets eased life for their people, wouldn't they see them as black magic? And how would that affect their society?"
"You could take different approaches to that," Pete said. "The priests might even be right, for their special set of circumstances."
"So they might. My God, there's no one right answer! What I want to see is a good, solid, internally consistent story that carries its underlying assumptions?whatever those are?as far as they can go."
A couple of people were already waiting by the post office boxes, and several more came in after Pete and McGregor. "They can't all be writers," Pete whispered behind his hand.
The editor rolled his eyes. "You'd be amazed."
At five after eleven a mailman with a fat bag and a jingling ring full of keys pushed through the small crowd and began filling the boxes. McGregor nudged Pete in the ribs, but he had also seen the envelopes going into number 148.
Pete looked round, wondering which (if any) of the men near him was the mysterious Mark Gordian. Surely not the bald little man in overalls; he looked as if he didn't read anything, let alone write. The fellow who looked like a doctor was more likely, or the muscular man wearing a loud tie.
He got a lesson on how much such speculation was worth when the person who opened the box proved to be a freckled, redheaded woman with glasses. She might have been a couple of years younger than he was, and looked comfortably casual in a rust-colored blouse and green pedal pushers.
McGregor chuckled beside him. "I suppose there's no reason Gordian can't be married."
"I guess not," Pete agreed. He was taken aback all the same; he had used so much energy thinking about Mark Gordian the writer and Mark Gordian the enigma that Mark Gordian the person was outside his reckoning.
The woman paid no attention to him or McGregor. They followed her outside. She was opening the mail. One envelope plainly had a check in it; that went into her purse. After she opened another one, she said, "Oh, shit," crumpled up the sheet of paper inside, and threw it away. She did not seem angry, merely irritated; it was how a man would swear. Pete blinked.
Her car was parked a couple of spaces down from his Chevy. He frowned a little; she drove a cheap, ugly Volkswagen Bug. Having spent several months getting shot at by Germans, he did not care for the idea of buying automobiles from them.
She was unlocking the car door when he called, "Excuse me, are you Mrs. Gordian?"
For a second she did not react. Then she looked up in surprise. "I don't think I know you," she said, "but yes, I'm Miss Gordian." Pete felt stupid for not noticing she wore no ring, and only a little better because McGregor had missed it too.
The editor nodded to her in apology. He said, "You are related to Mark Gordian, aren't you?"
Her eyes narrowed. Pete thought she was going to drive away without answering, and got ready to dive into his car after her. Instead, though, she began to ask, "Who are?" She stopped. "You're James McGregor." It sounded like an accusation.
"Yes." He indicated Pete. "This is Peter Lundquist."
Her eyebrows shot up. "Why, so it is!" she exclaimed. It was as if she recognized him, and he was sure he had never seen her before. She hesitated again. "Why are you looking for Mark Gordian?"
Pete gave it to her in one word: "'Reactions.'"
He could see it hit home. "Oh," she said, and kicked at the sidewalk. "Oh, shit." This time it sounded like resignation. "You were already working on it?"
His heart thuttered inside his chest. He forced himself to steadiness. "Yes."
"Are you related to Mark Gordian?" McGregor persisted.
One corner of her mouth quirked upward. "In a manner of speaking. I am Mark Gordian."
Pete had never seen the Astonishing editor with a foolish expression on his face, but suspected he bore a similar one on his own. McGregor's rally was a visible thing. "Fair enough, I suppose," he said. "There's E. Maine Hull, after all, and C. L. Moore, and I understand Andre Norton is a woman too. Pleased to meet you, 'Mark.' "
She was still studying the two of them. "I'm not nearly sure I'm pleased to meet you. Who else knows you're here?" It was a sharp challenge; Pete thought her close to bolting again.
"My wife, of course," the editor said, and Pete echoed him. McGregor added, "There's a detective back in New York who's interested in the typewriter you use."
"I daresay he would be." She chuckled without much humor. "No one else? Not the FBI or the CIA?"
Pete spread his hands. "What would we have to show them? They'd laugh themselves sick at us Buck Rogers types. And besides," he added with characteristic independence, "what business is it of theirs, anyway?"
"Yes, you would be one to say that, wouldn't you?" Again he had the feeling she knew a good deal about him. She nodded slowly, as if coming to a decision. "All right, follow me home if you like. If anyone is, you're entitled to an explanation." She did not wait for an answer, but stooped to get into the Volkswagen. Its raucous air-cooled engine roared to life.
About ten minutes later she pulled into the driveway of a freshly built tract house; the front lawn still had the half-threadbare look that tender new grass gives. Pete parked his Chevrolet across the street. She was locking her car while he and McGregor walked over.
She waved at the house. "Isn't it splendid? I've only been in about four months. Eleven thousand five hundred dollars and a four-and-a-half percent loan."