"Five hundred thousand and that's my last offer."
"So why should Hazel and I risk our necks?" I added, "Pixel! Leave that insect alone!"
"Butterflies are not insects," Captain John Sterling said soberly. "They are self-propelled flowers. The Lady Hazel taught me that many years ago." He reached down and gently picked up Pixel. "How were you getting him to drink?"
I showed him, using water and my fingertip. Then Sterling improved on it, offering the kitten a tiny puddle in the palm of his hand. The kitten licked at it, and then was lapping cat-property, curling his dainty tongue down into the spoonful of water.
Sterling bothered me. I knew his origin, or thought I did, and thus had trouble believing in him even as I spoke with him. Yet it is impossible not to believe in a man when you see him, and hear him, crunching celery and potato chips.
Yet he had a two-dimensional quality. He neither smiled nor laughed. He was unfailingly polite but always dead serious. I had tried to thank him for saving my life by shooting what's-his-name; Sterling had stopped me. "My duty. He was expendable; you are not."
"Four hundred thousand. Colonel, are there any deviled eggs down there?"
I passed the stuffed eggs to Rufo. "Shall I tell you what to do with your sword in a stone? First, pull out the sword, then-"
"Let's not be crude. Three hundred and fifty thousand." "Professor, I wouldn't have it as a door prize. I was simply making a point."
"Better take an option, at least; you'll need it for the boff opening when they shoot this as a stereoseries."
"No publicity. That's one of the conditions imposed on me. If I do it."
"No publicity until after. Then there has to be publicity; it must wind up in the history books. Mannie, tell 'em why you have never published your memoirs of the Revolution."
Mr. Davis answered, "Mike sleeping. Not have people bother him. Nyet."
Uncle Jock said, "Manuel, you have an unpublished autobiography?"
My stepfather-in-law nodded. "Necessary. Prof dead, Wyoming dead, Mike dead maybe. Am only witness true story of Loonie Revolution. Lies, lots of lies, by cobbers not there." He scratched his chin with his left hand, the one I knew to be artificial. Or so I heard. This hand looked just like his right hand. A transplant? "Stored with Mike before out to Asteroids. We rescue Mike-then publish maybe." Davis looked at me. "Want to hear how I met my daughter Hazel?"
"Yes indeed!" I answered, and Sterling strongly agreed.
"Was Monday thirteen May, 2075, in L-City. Talk-talk in Stilyagi Hall, how to fight Warden. Not revolution, just sad stupid talk-talk, unhappy people. Skinny little girl sat on floor down front. Orange hair, no breasts. Ten, maybe eleven. Listens every word, claps hard, dead serious.
"Yellow Jackets, Warden's cops, break in, start killing. Too busy to keep track of skinny redheads. Jackets kill my best friend... when see her in action. Throws self through air, rolled in ball, hits Yellow Jacket in knees, down he goes. I break his jaw with left hand-not this hand; number-two-and step over him, dragging my wife Wyoming-not wife then-with me. Skinny flametop is gone, don't see her some weeks. But, friends, hard rock truth. Hazel as little girl fought so hard and smart that she saved her Papa Mannie and her Mama Wyoh both from Warden's finks long before she knew she was ours."
Manuel Davis smiled wistfully. "Did find her, Davis Family opted her-daughter, not wife. Still a baby. But not baby when counts! Worked hard to free Luna every day, every hour, every minute, danger don' stop her never. Fourth o' July, 2076, Hazel Meade Davis youngest comrade signing Declaration of Independence. No comrade rated it more!"
Mr. Davis had tears in his eyes. So did I.
Captain Sterling stood up. "Mr. Davis, I am humbly proud to have heard that story. Mr. Campbell, I have enjoyed your hospitality. Colonel Campbell, I hope you decide to fight with us; we need you. And now, if I may be excused, I must leave. As the Galactic Overlord does not take long lunch hours, I must not."
Uncle Jock said, "Shucks, John, you've got to have some R and R now and then. Come go dinosaur hunting with me again. Time spent in the Mesozoic won't affect your quest; the Overlord will never know you're away. That's the greatest beauty of timejumping."
"I would know that I was away. But I do thank you. I enjoyed that hunt." He bowed and left.
Dr. Harshaw said quietly, "There goes real nobility. When at last he destroys the Overlord, he will be erased. He knows it. It doesn't stop him."
"Why must he be erased?" I demanded.
"Eh? Colonel, I know that this is new to you... but you are, or have been, a fabulist yourself, have you not?"
"Still am, as far as I know. Finished a long one and sent it off to my agent just ten days ago. Must get back to work soon- got a wife to support."
"Then you know that, for plot purposes, especially in adventure stories, heroes and villains come in complementary pairs. Each is necessary to the other."
"Yes, but- Look, lay it on the bar. This man who just left is truly the character that Hazel-and her son, Roger Stone- created for their series The Scourge of the SpacewaysT'
"Yes. Hazel and her son created him. Sterling knows it. Look, sir, all of us are fictions, someone's fabulist dreams.
But usually we do not know it. John Sterling knows it, and is strong enough to stand up to it. He knows his role and his destiny; he accepts it."
"He doesn't have to be erased." Dr. Harshaw looked puzzled. "But you are a writer. Uh... a literary writer perhaps? Plotless?"
"Me? I don't know how to write literature; I write stories.
For printout or three-dee or even bound books, but all sorts. Sin, suffer, and repent. Horse opera. Space opera. War. Murder. Spies. Sea stories. Whatever. Hazel and I are going to revive her classic series, with Captain Sterling in the lead role. As always. So what's this noise about 'erasing' him?"
"You are not going to let him destroy the Galactic Overlord? You should, you must, as the Overlord is every bit as evil as Boskone."
"Oh, certainly! First thirteen weeks. Should have happened years back."
"But he couldn't. The series was dropped with both hero and villain still alive. Sterling has been forced to fight only a holding action ever since."
"Oh. Well, we'll fix that. Overlord delenda est!"
"Then what does Sterling do?" I started to answer, suddenly realized that the question was not inquiry but Socratic. For each fine cat, a fine rat. A hero of Sterling's stature must oppose a villain as strong as he is. If we kill off the Overlord, then we must dream up Son of Overlord, with just as many balls, teeth just as long, disposition just as vile, and steam coming out of his ears.
"I don't know. We'll think of something. Age him, maybe, and put him to pasture as commandant of the Star Patrol Academy. Some such. No need to kill him off. A job like that would not require a villain as horrendous as the Overlord." "Wouldn't it?" Harshaw asked quietly. "Uh- Maybe you would like to take over the series?" "Not me. I'm semi-retired. All I have now is The Stone-bender Family, a series strictly for laughs, no substantial villain required. Now I know the truth of the World as Myth I will never again create a real villain... and I thank Klono that I never have, not really, as I have only a limited belief in villainy."
"Well, I can't answer without Hazel anyhow; I'm the junior writer, in charge of punctuation and filling in weather and scenery; she controls plot. So I must change the subject. Uncle Jock, what was this you were saying to Captain Sterling about hunting dinosaurs? One of your jokes? Like the time you sawed off ten square klicks of the Ross Ice Shelf and towed it to Singapore, swimming sidestroke."