Margaret Ball - Fun With Hieroglyphics

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2024-11-24 0 0 39.97KB 21 页 5.9玖币

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Fun With Hieroglyphics

Margaret Ball

After thirty minutes of staring at a blank screen, I was finally inspired by the distinctive death-rattle sound

of Norah's old Chevy coughing itself to a halt at the curb outside - not to words, but at least to action. I

grabbed the mouse and clicked on the spreadsheet window I'd left minimized in the bottom left-hand

corner of the screen. The resulting display of Dennis's and my finances was not a cheerful sight, but it was

better than letting Norah look at the opening pages of my new book.

All 0,000 words and 0 K of it.

"Riva?" Norah called through the screen door as she came in with someone trailing her. "Is Jason ready

yet? Oh, this is my friend Stephanie. She's a tech writer at Xycorp, that's why she looks like a grownup."

"How many times do I have to tell you, I'm not a `tech writer'? My title is manager of hard-copy

composition and distribution resources," Stephanie corrected Norah. A faint line showed between her

two perfectly arched, perfectly shaped brows. Her mouth was painted a clear, bright red mouth-shape

and her eyes were outlined with curving, dark brown eye-shapes that matched her hair. At least, I

assumed it was hair. It didn't stick to her forehead or creep across her cheeks or cling to the back of her

neck the way everybody else's hair did in Austin's spring humidity and heat.

"Whatever," Norah agreed cheerfully. She sank down in a wicker chair that creaked under her plump

form. "How's the book coming, Riva?" She turned to Stephanie. "Riva's another writer, did I tell you?

But she never comes to Austin Writers League meetings—that's where I met Steph," she interpolated in

my direction before looking back at Stephanie. "Her Salla and my Jason are working on some kind of

truly dumb school project together."

"Theoretically," I agreed, happy to drop the subject of my nonexistent second book. "They said they

needed to do some research at the library. I dropped them off about an hour ago. They were going to

take the bus home. But if I know them, they haven't started their research yet; they're still kvetching about

the dumb project. Sorry, Norah. I'll bring Jason home when they show up."

"Well, it is dumb," Norah said. "Develop a 3-D diorama in an empty oatmeal box, illustrating the building

of the Pyramids."

"It does seem more like third-grade work than eighth-grade," I agreed. "But they've also got the option of

staging a one-act play dramatizing some incident of Egyptian history."

Norah groaned. "Twenty-two eighth-grade girls playing twenty-two versions of Cleopatra and the asp."

"Never happen," I said. "With Gene Kruzak teaching the Ancient History module, they'll never even

have heard of Cleopatra. They probably think she's a charm you find at the bottom of the oatmeal box."

"Your Salla knows about Cleopatra," Norah said. "I'll bet."

"Salla's too strong a feminist to play that part. If they do a play, she'll probably rewrite Egyptian history to

have Cleopatra recruiting an army and conquering Rome."

If I hadn't said that, would it have saved us all from what happened? The Paper-Pushers don't believe in

the power of words, for all they use so many of them. My people know better. Words—especially

mathemagical equantations—call spirits out of the air. And other things.

However, at the time I didn't feel any frisson of warning. The cold chills were caused by Norah's

renewing her inquiries about how the book was coming. She'd been too good a friend, for too long, for

me to actually lie to her. I did sort of wish the intimidatingly competent Stephanie hadn't been there too,

though, listening to my confession of failure with those perfectly shaped brows rising in perfect half-moon

crescents above her eyes.

"Everything else I've written . . . " I concluded, then glanced at Stephanie. "Er, Stephanie, you don't read

science fiction, do you?"

Stephanie gave me a patronizing smile. "In my position, I'm afraid it's all I can do to keep up with the

current psychological and technical literature."

"Right. Well. You know, Norah, I'm not so good at making up plots. That first book was just about stuff

that happened right here in Austin. And the stories I've been selling to anthologies are all based on things

that happened . . . in my homeland," I said, bearing Stephanie's presence in mind. "Now my editor says

she wants the new book to be set in this uni . . . I mean, country, not in Da . . . my homeland. And I

haven't done anything to write about here, at least not since . . . that stuff in the first book." Stephanie

didn't seem offended by all the elisions; in fact, she didn't even seem to be listening. She was tapping one

foot and staring off as if she could see right through the wall to the pile of laundry in our bedroom. Still,

there was no point in bringing up my—unusual—background with somebody who didn't already know

about it.

"You know what, Riva," Stephanie said suddenly. So much for my theory that she'd spaced out ten

minutes ago. "I've met a lot of women like you, and I think I can help you."

"You can?" Somehow Stephanie didn't seem like a good source for sword-and-sorcery adventure plots,

but who knows? Maybe she too had a Past.

"Sure. You're one of the standard types," Stephanie said. "I bet you quit your job to raise the kid, right?"

"Well . . . Not exactly. I tried working part-time for a few years . . . "

"And it didn't work out! Exactly! It's just too hard for women to divide their attention between the career

and the home."

Actually, what I'd found was that after I hit thirty-five, working as a swordswoman-for-hire was too

hard, period, but Stephanie was not interruptible.

"Now your daughter is old enough that she really doesn't need you, except to drive her places, and

you're at loose ends. The home-based businesses you may have tried didn't work out," Stephanie went

on.

I couldn't contradict her about Salla, anyway. Since she turned thirteen Salla hardly said anything to me

except, "Oh, Mooom!", "Will you drive me to the mall now?" and "How much longer are you gonna tie

up the computer, I want to get on my chat room."

"What you need, Riva," Stephanie announced confidently, "is someone to help you reenter the

professional world, get you started back in a career-track job. And I can do that for you."

"Um . . . " I didn't want to insult Stephanie, but she really didn't look like somebody who would have any

contacts at all with my old employers—people like Zolkir the Terrible and Rodograunizzo the Revolting.

Even if I'd wanted to get back into that business.

"Stephanie came to the Writers League tonight because she was recruiting tech writers for Xycorp,"

Norah put in.

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