Chip just glares at me. I reach into my pocket and take out a piece of paper. A piece of paper very similar to that which I’d given Juan only a few days before.
“If you don’t want your rifle given to the PFM, along with a suitably edited copy of the video, I want $50 million sent to this account. By tomorrow. And another 50 mil. every year, on the anniversary of Loni’s death, to guarantee that Ollie Ramirez won’t continue his researches.”
He stares. His lips move but nothing comes out. He’s beyond speech.
“That may seem like a lot to you and me,” I say, “but on profits of 6.3 billion, it’s not so much. Plus, of course, there’s the matter of evading all the investigations, bad publicity, and the collapse of your company’s stock. Along with jail for everyone concerned.”
I lean back in my chair and consider the possibilities. “Of course,” I say, “your superiors may decide that their most sensible action now is to kill you. So I suggest you stay in your room, under guard, until the money is delivered.” I smile. “And since I don’t trust you or your company in the least, the evidence will be hidden, and released automatically if anything unfortunate should happen to me.”
I stand. My bodyguards look in my direction. Chip hasn’t said anything in a long time.
“Maybe now,” I say, “you should go find a phone or something.”
Chip goes back to his room, and one of my guards goes in with him. And as for me, I think I shall raise a magic editing wand, perform a cinematic dissolve from this scene by the pool, and go straight to the happy ending.
Porter-Bakker Pharmaceuticals paid up. Some of their lower-level executives resigned, but by that point I wasn’t very interested because I was busy rescuing my movie. I shelled out 10 million in cash, received executive producer credit and a percentage of the gross, and Bruce Kravitz provided Loni’s replacement, a fine actress named Karen Wilkes. She didn’t fill a bikini as well as Loni but added a kind of crazed evil to the part of the gangster’s girlfriend that made the role memorable. The wicked Mrs. Trevanian was foiled and gathered up her cloak of evil and went back to Los Angeles.
I didn’t split the Porter-Bakker money with Ossley. After all, he was already being paid not to continue his drug research.
So everything ends really well for me. It’s unfortunate that justice wasn’t meted out to Loni’s killer, but even if Chip went to jail, it wouldn’t bring Loni back. And of course I’m sorry that Loni had to die—but if she had to die, at least it was in a way that got me both publicity and a fortune. And a good movie, which is nothing to sneeze at.
Of course, I didn’t die. Which is always a plus.
And the best part comes later, in a meeting with Hadley and Tom King. We’re in Hadley’s cabana, eating seafood tacos, drinking iced caramel macchiatos made by his barista, and hashing out the shooting schedule. We’re trying to work out how and where we’re shooting the ending.
I finish a taco and lick my fingers.
“And by the way,” I tell Tom, “I’m not going to shoot that second chickenshit ending, the one where I give the drugs to the cops instead of selling them and living happily ever after. That’s just not my character. My character keeps the money.”
Hadley looks up at me in alarm. “Sean,” he says, “the producers want that chickenshit ending.”
“I’m the producer now,” I tell him, and flash him my Klingon look.
He wabbles and waffles, but in the end caves in.
What choice does he have? I’m the man who saved his picture. I’m the boy who made money from tragedy, happiness from misery, diamonds from tequila.
Desperation Reef is going to be a hit. I know this because Loni’s getting killed gave it the sort of publicity that the studio would have paid hundreds of millions of dollars for. All the people who have seen the tabloid headlines or who watch the entertainment news will want to be part of the story—part of my story.
They will pay money to be closer to me. And I will let them. I will accept their love, and their love will make me happy, and in return I will give them everything I have. I will give them brilliant things.
I will give them diamonds.
Phyllis Eisenstein
Phyllis Eisenstein’s short fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s, Analog, Amazing, and elsewhere. She’s probably best known for her series of fantasy stories about the adventures of Alaric the Minstrel, born with the strange ability to teleport, which were later melded into two novels, Born to Exile and In the Red Lord’s Reach. Her other books include the two novels in the Book of Elementals series, Sorcerer’s Son and The Crystal Palace, as well as stand-alone novels Shadow of Earth and In the Hands of Glory. Some of her short fiction, including stories written with husband Alex Eisenstein, has been collected in Night Lives: Nine Stories of the Dark Fantastic. Holding a degree in anthropology from the University of Illinois at Chicago, for twenty years she was a member of the faculty of Columbia College, where she taught creative writing, also editing two volumes of Spec-Lit, a softcover anthology showcasing SF by her students. She now works as a copy editor in a major ad agency, and still lives, with her husband, in her birthplace, Chicago.
Here, in the first new Alaric story in decades, the minstrel sets off in a caravan headed deep into the trackless desert, where evil spirits howl in the night and mirages are commonplace—but, as it turns out, not all dangers are illusionary, by any means.
THE CARAVAN TO NOWHERE
Phyllis Eisenstein
The dark-eyed man wore long, sun-faded robes and a thick, dirty-white wrapping about his head like most of the other men gathered in the tavern that night, but Alaric realized quickly that he was not one of them. They were all talkers, drinkers, men who laughed easily, who pulled willing women onto their knees and lifted their tankards with any excuse, bellowing at each other and the landlord across the trestle tables. They were men who spent carelessly, and Alaric’s songs had already gained him some benefit from their drunken generosity.
But the dark-eyed man sat quietly in his corner, nursing a single goblet of wine and watching the crowd. The hand that raised the goblet was roughened with work, the forearms, bared by flaring, turned-back sleeves, tanned and sinewy. A hardworking man, Alaric thought, stopping at the only tavern in a town on the fringe of the Western Desert with purpose in his eyes.
This evening, Alaric sang bawdy songs to the raucous room, his clear, carrying voice rising above the din in rhymes to make the drinkers laugh and choruses to make them join in the music. His lute was barely audible, and often he scarcely bothered to pluck the strings, but none of his listeners seemed to care. Young though he was, his trove of songs was well tested in scores of taverns just like this one, and he knew their effect. But the dark-eyed man never laughed or joined the choruses, and Alaric understood he was waiting for something.
Meandering through the room, still singing while nodding his thanks for the coppers dropped into the open deerskin pouch at his belt, he came at last to the dark-eyed man’s small table. And there, on the wood whose finish was scarred by the spillage of countless goblets of wine, lay a silver coin. The dark-eyed man lowered his gaze to it as Alaric approached and then looked up into the young minstrel’s face.