Zombies of the Gene Pool Read online

  Jay sighed. "Where is Worldcon this year?"

  Professor Giles smiled. "It isn't that. And it isn't the MLA, either, which is just Worldcon hosted by Chaucer scholars." He looked intently at Jay Omega. "You do know who I am?"

  Jay understood at once that Erik Giles was referring to his literary past as C. A. Stormcock, and since he seemed to expect an affirmative response, Jay decided to admit that he did. "Marion mentioned it to me a while back," he said.

  "Yes, I thought so. Restraint is not one of Marion's virtues." Giles grinned at his colleague's unease. "And what was your reaction?"

  "To the fact that you passed up fame? Well, I suppose I thought that it was a little strange. I mean, so many people seem to want to be famous writers, and science fiction is such a cult anyway, that it seemed odd for anybody who got mixed up in it in the first place to just walk away from an achievement like yours."

  Professor Giles smiled sadly. "In a kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. When Marion found out who I was, she asked me the same thing, and I told her I grew up. It wasn't much of an explanation, but it was true. As time went on, I began to be less enchanted with my accomplishments. To give you one small example-I learned that almost any reasonably clever person can make puns. The truly intelligent person refrains from doing so."

  Jay couldn't for the life of him make puns, but he decided not to argue the point. He was still wondering about the mysterious invitation, but Erik Giles had launched into a one-sided discussion of philosophy-probably a holdover from his days in science fiction.

  "I am one of those unfortunate people who cannot appreciate a compliment unless I respect the person giving it," he said, with the air of someone who has given the subject much thought. "A great many people liked my book-but what else had they read? I felt hampered by their opinions and their expectations. There are a good many six-book critics in the genre."

  "Six-book-?"

  "People who have read six books and think that it entitles them to be critics. The sort of person who doesn't recognize a pastiche of Lysistrata because he's unfamiliar with the original."

  Jay nodded. He had heard Marion say much the same thing, although at greater length and with considerably more venom.

  "Anyhow, I got tired of being Gulliver. What I really wanted to do was to explore my potential as a writer."

  "And what are you writing now?" asked Jay uneasily, thinking of the New Age Cafe readings. He wondered if Erik Giles was churning out slices of monotony in the present tense.

  "I'm not. I discovered I couldn't do literary fiction. I'd got out of the habit of being tedious. So I said the hell with it, and now I teach undergraduate courses and do a bit of scholarly research to keep the department happy. How about you? Burned out yet?"

  Jay was saved from having to reply by the appearance of Marion, who still glittered from her recent bout of intellectual combat. Her dark hair was tucked behind her ears, and her reading glasses were balanced precariously on the top of her head. Clearly she was still in office mode. "Somebody told me they'd seen you come in here," she said, scowling.

  "Good afternoon," said Jay tentatively, in case she hadn't got all the rage out of her system.

  Erik Giles was chuckling. "Finished your conference?"

  "It is a fortunate thing that electric pencil sharpeners are too small to accommodate the heads of sophomores," Marion growled. "Well, at least I set him straight on his chronology."

  "We heard," said Jay.

  Marion sighed. "I know that tone of voice. You sound like someone making small talk with a hand grenade. I'm fine, really!" She managed a smile. "What have you two been up to?"

  "Erik was just telling me that he wants us to go somewhere with him."

  "Oh?" Marion looked interested. "And where is that?"

  "To dinner," said Professor Giles quickly. "This is going to be a long story, and I feel that I owe you both a steak just for listening to it."

  Marion sighed. "I wish more authors felt that way."

  The Wolfe Creek Inn was an eighteenth-century farmhouse that had been converted into an elegant restaurant. When the pasture lands adjoining the university were sold off one by one for apartment complexes and gas stations, most of the large old houses were torn down as detriments to the land value, or perhaps because they clashed with the current ambience of neon and asphalt. The Wolfe family farmstead was salvaged by a resourceful couple of Peace Corps veterans, who had not managed to make much of a dent on the problems in Bolivia during their years there, but who had learned carpentry themselves, a skill infinitely more useful than their majors in political science. They figured the Wolfe house would be easier to tackle than the Bolivian rural economy, so they bought the eighteenth-century house with its graceful wraparound porches, its oak floors buried under fifties linoleum, its huge stone fireplaces, its field mouse population, and its dry rot. The house was priced at only fifty-one thousand dollars, a price roughly equal to the cost of restoring it. With loans from their long-suffering parents, the Peace Corps veterans rewired, refinished, and rehabilitated every square inch of the old mansion and turned the result into a cozy, antique-filled restaurant much favored by faculty members and visiting parents. The meals were priced at roughly the average monthly income in Bolivia. Undergrads eager to impress their dates confined their visits to Friday and Saturday nights, particularly during football season, but tonight-a Tuesday in late May-the place was nearly empty.

  Giles-Party-of-Three, as the waitress called them, was tucked into a pine-paneled alcove decorated with Bob Timberlake prints in rough wood frames. They were trying to read the hand-lettered menus by the light of the candle in a red jar, which doubled as a centerpiece on the oilskin tablecloth.

  "This looks like a seance," said Marion, watching their shadows flicker against the pine wall.

  "It is," said Erik Giles. "I'm about to raise a number of ghosts."

  He waited until the waitress had taken their order and had gone to fetch the drinks before he began. "You want to know where it is that I have to go, but in order to explain that I'll have to backtrack." He began to trace patterns on the tablecloth with his knife. "Do you know much about science fiction fandom?" "I read science fiction," said Jay. "Does that count?" "No," said Marion. "Erik means the organized subculture that grew up around the genre. It began in New York in the thirties when the people who had been writing to the letters columns of the pulp science fiction magazines began writing to each other instead. Then clubs sprang up, and people began to publish amateur fanzines, reviewing books and arguing about topics of science or technology. By the fifties, it had become an end in itself."

  Professor Giles smiled. "By then, there were people who scarcely bothered to read the genre, because they were so busy with the social aspects of fandom."

  "I missed all that," said Jay. "I was into crystal radio sets as a kid, and after that computers. So you two were fans?"

  Marion blushed. "If you grow up as a social misfit in a small town, it can be a very attractive option. I was smart when girls were supposed to be bubblebrains, and I wasn't very pretty in high school, which is a real burden for the teenage ego. Fandom is good about accepting people for being kind and clever, without caring about age, sex, race, or appearance."

  Erik Giles looked thoughtful. "Why was I in fandom? I wanted to be a writer, I guess, and these people encouraged me. It's easy to get 'published' in fanzines. Of course, later I realized-" He shook his head sadly. "Well, it doesn't matter. I was explaining the reunion, wasn't I? Have you ever heard of the Lanthanides?"

  "Sure," said Jay, reaching for a bread stick. "The lanthanide series is a group of fourteen elements on the periodic chart, consisting of lanthanum, cerium, samarium-"

  "Hush! We're discussing literature, not chemistry!" said Marion. "I think that Erik is referring to a group of writers back in the Golden Age of Science Fiction." Erik smiled. "I'd put the Golden Age a little farther back than that group of chowderheads. The early forties, maybe. Whereas,
the Lanthanides began publishing in-"

  "1957?" asked Jay Omega.

  "About then," Giles agreed.

  Marion stared at him. "How did you know, Jay? You never read that stuff!"

  Erik Giles laughed. " 'What do they know of literature who only literature know?' " he said, misquoting his beloved Kipling.

  "Jay guessed correctly the date of the Lanthanides' fiction debut because he was right about the origin of the term. The group's name was chosen from a chemistry book, and the lanthanide series begins with element number 57, which is the year the members thought they'd all be published authors."

  He sighed. "It took a bit longer than that, of course, even for the luckiest members, and some of them never even got published."

  "Pretty good name for a science fiction group, though," said Jay with a glint of mischief in his eyes. "The lanthanides are the rare-earth series of elements."

  The older man nodded. "Yes, that was the real reason we chose it. We thought rare earth described our visions rather well. And, of course, the name itself-Lanthanides-is from the Greek lanthanein, meaning to be concealed, which is perfect for a secret society of adolescent crackpots."

  "Now, wait a minute, Erik. Those writers were-" Marion gasped. "We?"

  He smiled modestly. "Yes, I was a member of the Lanthanides. Of course, back in 1954 we were just a bunch of redneck beatniks in Wall Hollow, Tennessee."

  "Tennessee?" echoed Marion. "Wasn't Brendan Surn one of the Lanthanides? I thought he was from Pittsburgh."

  "He was. And Curtis was from Baltimore, Mistral was a Brooklynite, and Peter Deddingfield and I grew up in Richmond. But the year that the group was formed, most of us were in our early twenties, and our job prospects were middling. It was 1954. We didn't want to become the men in the gray flannel suits, and nothing else was paying too well. Anyway, we weren't ready to settle down.

  "Dale Dugger and George Woodard were just back from Korea and Fort Dix, New Jersey, respectively. A couple of us were just out of college-with or without degrees-and a few were tired of the jobs they did have. We all knew each other the way science fiction fans do-through correspondence and a mimeographed fanzine-and we decided to get together. Nobody had anything better to do."

  Marion frowned. "This is not an era I've done much reading about. It's the beginning of Sixth Fandom according to S-F fannish history. I'm familiar with Walt Willis and the Wheels of IF… Lee Hoffman and Quandry… Wasn't there a fanzine associated with the group?"

  "Alluvial. George Woodard still publishes it. Or at least something called that. Of course, none of the rest of us have contributed to it in years."

  "I never knew Stormcock was a member of the Lanthanides."

  Erik Giles smiled modestly. "I wrote The Golden Gain while I was there." His fingers trembled a bit on the hilt of the table knife, and he suddenly looked old.

  "So you formed a commune?" Jay prompted.

  "Slanshack!" murmured Marion, correcting him.

  "Back then, with Joseph McCarthy's witch hunters hiding under every bed, I don't think we would have called it a commune, but by your generation's standards I guess it was. We called it the Fan Farm. Actually, Dale Dugger's daddy had died while Dale was overseas, leaving him a hardscrabble farm in the east Tennessee hills, and we decided that life didn't get any cheaper than that, so we all packed our belongings and typewriters, and descended on Dugger's farm. We planned to live on beans and hot dogs while we each wrote the science fiction equivalent of the Great American Novel, and then we figured we'd all drive away in Cadillacs and live on steaks for the rest of our lives." He smiled, remembering their youthful naivete.

  The waitress appeared just then, balancing three plate-sized skillets on a tray. "I have two prime ribs and a broiled-flounder-no-butter."

  "The fish is mine," said Erik Giles. "Doctor's orders."

  Marion attended to her dinner for a few minutes, but her thoughtful expression indicated that she was more interested in the conversation than the food. "So you actually lived with Surn and Deddingfield in-what did you say the name of the place was?"

  "Wall Hollow, Tennessee. That's where the post office was, anyhow. Dugger's Farm was seven miles up a hollow. It was beautiful country. Green-forested mountains that looked like haze against the sky.

  "The Green Hills of Earth," murmured Marion.

  "No," said Giles, catching the reference. "He wasn't there. I didn't meet him until the late sixties."

  "Well, your crowd didn't do too badly," said Marion, thinking it over. "Maybe you didn't leave the farm in Cadillacs, but you certainly produced some giants in the field of science fiction."

  "Peter Deddingfield," nodded Jay. "Even I've heard of him. I loved the Time Traveler Trilogy."

  "He writes in a very literary style," said Marion, offering her highest praise. "Critics have compared him to Herman Melville."

  "Well, I like him anyway," said Jay.

  Marion frowned. "And Brendan Surn is the greatest theorist in the genre. I think he's required reading in NASA. I always think that he looks like a snow lion with that white mane of hair and his white beard. Who else was in the group?"

  "That you would have heard of? Pat Malone, of course."

  "He's a legend. What was he really like?"

  "You mustn't rely on my judgment," said Erik Giles. "I didn't know at the time which of my friends to be impressed by."

  Jay Omega, who had no memory for authors' names and was thus at a dead loss at Trivial Pursuit, was trying to place Pat Malone. "Should I have heard of him?" "Yes!" said Marion. "He wrote River of Neptune, which wasn't a classic or anything, but it was a very promising work for a young writer, but then Pat Malone did another book that will be remembered forever in fandom-The Last Fandango. It wasn't officially published-just mimeographed and distributed by FAPA, the Fantasy Amateur Press Association-but it was so caustic and critical of certain fans that it became an underground classic. He revealed their sexual preferences,.their lapses in hygiene, and their petty machinations in fan politics. I hear that it was really hot stuff in its day."

  Erik Giles nodded. "It was an unpleasant duty that Pat positively reveled in doing. The glee in his tone is at times unmistakable."

  "I imagine that publication cost him a few friends," said Jay. "I have friends in engineering who dream of doing that on a faculty level, but they dare not."

  "I would strongly discourage it," said Marion, with a repressive glare suggesting that she suspected which engineer harbored such a fantasy. "Because a professor who did that would have to live with the consequences, while Pat Malone did not. He simply dropped out of sight. Apparently he became very embittered with science fiction because of his disillusionment with all his old associates and he gafiated."

  Jay stared. "I beg your pardon?" He was picturing Japanese rituals of disembowelment.

  Marion blushed at having been caught speaking fanslang. "gafia. It's an acronym for getting away from it all. It means dropping out of the world of science fiction."

  "And lived happily ever after?"

  "Apparently not. My source materials say that he died in mysterious circumstances. The word is that he was found dead on a mountaintop in Mississippi."

  "There are no mountaintops in Mississippi," Jay pointed out.

  Erik Giles laughed. "A grasp of material facts has never been a strong point in fandom. That was the story that went around the grapevine back then, and I never heard otherwise."

  "Those are all the Lanthanides I know about," said Marion. "I confess I've never heard of Dale Dugger or George- What was his name?"

  "Woodard. He's still around. He never published much of anything, but he lives in Libertytown, Maryland now, and, as I told you, he puts out a fanzine called Alluvial. That and his incessant correspondence seem to take most of his energy. Aside from that, he teaches algebra."

  "And Dale Dugger?"

  A spasm of pain crossed Erik Giles' face. "He died some years ago. He became an alcoholic, and finally at the end, a
street person. I heard about it later. Wish there was something I could have done."

  "There aren't many of you left then," said Marion, doing a mental tally.

  "No. There's Surn, but he's quite feeble now, I hear. And Woodard. Angela Arbroath. Jim and Barbara Conyers, and Ruben Mistral."

  "Mistral," murmured Jay. "That name sounds familiar. He's a screenwriter, isn't he?"

  "Yes. When I knew him his name was Reuben J. Bundschaft. We called him Bunzie. He's probably got more money than Surn and Deddingfield by now, with all those movie deals. Still, I hear he's coming to this little show."

  "What show is that?"

  Erik Giles sighed. "The Lanthanides are having a reunion."

  Noticing the lack of enthusiasm in his announcement, Marion said gently, "Don't you want to go?"

  "There's more to it than that. I have to tell you why there's a reunion, and why we didn't have it in 1984 like we'd planned."

  "Why didn't you?"

  "Because Wall Hollow, Tennessee is at the bottom of a lake."

  It was late. After cheesecake and several cups of coffee, the three professors had finally called it a night and said their good-byes on the porch of the Wolfe Creek Inn. Jay was driving Marion home. She leaned back in the passenger seat of Jay's temporarily functional MG, clutching her headscarf against the wind that whipped through a crack between the canvas roof and the windscreen. "I was just thinking about Erik Giles and his extraordinary reunion," she called above the roar of the wind and the 1600 engine.

  "Quite a story!" Jay agreed.

  "After he told us about it, I remembered hearing bits of it before. The underwater slanshack. It's a legend in science fiction circles, of course. But before my time," she added hastily.