"Novelty, Mr. Field. I have studied the imaginative magazines closely
and it occurs to me that they are already beginning to specialize. One
of them uses highly technical stories, another adheres to stories of
other planets in this system. _Orion_ will link each story with all the
others in it. Instead of a hundred interpretations of the life patterns
of _Orion_ we shall have but one. Of course casual stories we buy will
have to be revamped to fit in."
"That's where I come in," I guessed.
"Exactly. But don't you feel that we will wind up with a fascinating
pseudo-history of Orion, and that such a magazine would create a furore
with its realistic slant?"
"I guess so."
It tasted like my first olive. But Wallace Starr was obviously burning
with enthusiasm. He sounded just a little like a crackpot. A rich
crackpot, maybe.
"It will be hard work, Mr. Field. But rewarding. Are you prepared to
accept my proposition?" He spoke like a man who means business.
I hesitated. It is well-known that the mortality rate among new fiction
magazines is high. I had writing contracts to fill, I was doing okay.
Editing a monthly is a full-time job.
"About salary--" I hinted.
He named a figure that made my hair curl. What could I say but, "When
do we start, Boss?"
* * * * *
Starr wasn't like any editor I've known. He wasn't like an editor at
all. He wasn't much like _anybody_ I've known. Which puts him in a
class all by himself. He was brown and thin and had peculiarly big
eyes, like a grasshopper's.
He spent so much money getting started I figured he wasn't long for
this racket. But he did have a knack and the first couple issues, while
not wildly successful, went over well.
One morning he called me into his office. From the tone of that dry
voice of his I knew I was in for it.
"What's all this?" he buzzed, rattling a manuscript in front of me.
From the cheap yellow paper I knew it was the lead novelette of the
forthcoming issue. Ric Planter was one of our top writers and also a
very bad boy. Ric loved to put an editor on the spot, bless his little
pointed head.
"Didn't he change that ending?" I asked. The tic in my left eye started
up. I had never had this twitch until the first time I saw Starr. I
think it was something about those eyes of his. Every time I looked at
him....
"He changed it all right!" Starr hissed. "He turned the Kiriki into
villains. When their benevolent plan to spread patterned contentment
throughout the circle of outer planets was just taking hold he had the
semi-civilized Green Ones rise up and destroy their power by smashing
their means of telepathic communication."
"How could he do that?" I clucked.
"Supersonic wave interrupter of some kind."
I hadn't meant that, and somehow I couldn't help grinning. Trust
Ric to latch on to the Kiriki vulnerable point. The Kiriki, as
Starr had outlined them, were highly communal. Like our ants, only
very much more advanced. They depended on this intricate pattern of
inter-communication, mind with mind, for their very existence, since
each Kiriki was by birth fitted to perform only one basic function
in their communal society. Their ingenious "Army of Patterned
Contentment" was helpless, when reduced by the adaptable Green Ones to
individuals.
"Will you please stop laughing," Starr rasped. "This hack writer of
yours has outraged the history of an ancient, noble race!"
"I didn't get a chance to read his revision," I defended myself. Starr
had grabbed it off my desk as he went through. "I told Planter the
Kiriki were good guys, not bad guys."
"Good guys, bad guys!" Starr cried. "How naive can we be. Let us hope
that our readership is on a different intelligence level, otherwise our
great plan will fail miserably."
* * * * *
It was the way he said it, and I don't think he meant to. He was mad
and the fact that my dialog had lapsed to comic book levels gave him
the idea, perhaps, that I was too dumb to worry about. There had
been other hidden meanings behind other things he'd said or done. My
subconscious mind was working on it.
"What plan is that?" I ventured mildly.
"Never mind! Get busy on this--this _libel_."
My left eye twitched. "Okay. I'll change it myself. I know Planter's
style. By the way, when am I getting that secretary you promised me? My
desk's flooded. I need a girl bad."
"Ah, yes." It was supposed to be a smile, I guess. "Very soon.
Meanwhile, kindly fill out this form."
I took it without comment and went back to my office. This made
altogether the fifth form Starr had dreamed up for me to fill out. Must
be some weird complex he had, wanting to know what color socks I prefer
and if my mother kept goats.
Anyhow, I grinned, as I grabbed up the phone and dialed Ric Planter's
number, it gave Starr ideas for my Christmas presents for the next
twenty years.
"Yeah," Ric's sleepy voice yawned. "It's me. What a head."