Kage Baker - The Literary Agent

VIP免费
2024-11-18 4 0 45.05KB 17 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Kage%20Baker%20-%20The%20Literary%20Agent.htm
THE OBJECT, had it been seen when it arrived, might have been described as a cheap aluminum trunk.
In fact it was not a trunk, nor was it made of aluminum, and it was certainly not cheap. Nor was there
anyone present who might have seen or attempted to describe it. So much for the sound of a tree falling
in the forest.
Nevertheless the Object _was_ there, between one second and the next, soundless, spinning slowly and
slower still until it wobbled to a gentle stop. For a moment after that nothing much happened. Clouds
roiled past it, for it had arrived on the seaward face of a coastal mountain range. It sizzled faintly as
moisture beaded on it. Underneath it, ferns and meadow grasses steadily flattened with its unrelieved
weight.
Then the lid flew back and from the chest's interior a cloud of yellow gas boiled away. A man sat up
inside, unfolding with some pain from his coiled fetal position. He exhaled a long jet of yellow smoke,
which was whipped away at once by the driving mountain wind. Retching he pulled himself free and
tumbled over the side of the Object, sprawling at his length beside it.
He lay perfectly still there a while and then sat up, alert, apparently fully recovered from his ordeal. He
groped in his vest pocket and pulled out what appeared to be a watch. Actually it _was_ a sort of a watch,
certainly more so than the Object was a trunk. He consulted the timepiece and seemed satisfied, for he
snapped it shut and got to his feet.
He appeared to be a man; actually he _was _a sort of man, though human men do not travel in trunks or
breathe stasis gas. He was of compact build, stocky but muscular, olive-skinned. His eyes were hard as
jet buttons. They had a cheerful expression, though, as he squinted into the wind and viewed the fog
walling up the miles from the Bay of Monterey.
Leaning over into the Object he drew out the coat of his brown worsted suit, and slipped it on easily. He
shot his cuffs, adjusted his tie, closed the lid of the Object that was not a trunk -- but for the sake of
convenience we'll call it a trunk from here on -- and lifted it to his shoulders, which gave him some
difficulty, for the thing had no handles and was as smooth as an ice cube.
Clutching it awkwardly, then, he set off across the meadow. His stride was meant to be purposeful. The
date was September 8, 1879.
He followed a wagon road that climbed and wound. He clambered through dark groves of ancient
redwoods, green and cold. He crossed bare mountainsides, wide open to the cloudy air, where rocks like
ruins stood stained with lichen. None of this made much of an impression on him, though, because he
wasn't a scenery man and the thing that we have agreed to call a trunk kept slipping from his shoulder.
Finally he set it down with what used to be called, in that gentler age, an oath.
"This is for the birds," he said.
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Kage%20Baker%20-%20The%20Literary%20Agent.htm (1 of 17) [10/16/2004 3:14:22 PM]
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Kage%20Baker%20-%20The%20Literary%20Agent.htm
The trunk made a clicking sound and from no visible orifice spewed out a long sheet of yellowed paper.
He tore it off, read what was written there, and looked for a moment as though he wanted to crumple and
fling it away. Instead he took a fountain pen from an inside coat pocket. Sitting on the smooth lid of the
trunk he scribbled a set of figures on the paper and carefully fed it back into the slot that you could not
have seen if you had been there.
When he had waited long enough to determine that no reply was forthcoming, he shouldered his burden
again and kept climbing, quicker now because he knew he was near his destination. The road pushed up
into a steadily narrowing canyon, and the way grew ever steeper and overhung with oak trees.
At last he saw the dark outline of a wagon in the gathering dusk, up ahead where the road ended. He
made out the shape of a picketed horse grazing, he heard the sound of creek water trickling. A few swift
paces brought him to his destination, where he set his burden down and looked at the figure he had
traveled so far to see, sprawled under the tree by the coals of a dying fire. He snapped off a dry branch
and poked up flames. He did not need them to see the object of his journey, but courtesy is important in
any social encounter.
The fire glittered in the eyes of the man who lay there, wide-set eyes that stared unseeing into the
branches above him. A young man with a long doleful face, shabbily dressed, he lay with neither coat nor
blanket in a drift of prickly oak leaves. He had yet to write _The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde_ or _Treasure Island_, and from the look of him it was unlikely he'd live long enough to do so.
The other scanned him and shook his head disapprovingly. Malnutrition, tubercular lesions, malaria, a
hideous case of eczema on both hands. "Tsk tsk tsk." He drew a little case from his pocket. Something he
sprayed on the scabbed hands, something he injected into one wrist. He peeled the back from a
transdermal patch and stuck it just behind the young man's ear.
Then he turned his attention to the fire again. He built it up to a good blaze, filled the tin kettle at the
creek and set more water to boil. It had not yet begun to steam when the young man twitched violently
and rose up on his elbows. He stared at his visitor, who put his hands on his trouser-knees and leaned
over him with a benevolent smile.
"Robert Louis Stevenson! How's it going?"
"Whae the Hell are you?" croaked he.
"Allow me to introduce myself: Joseph X. Machina." The other grabbed his limp hand and shook it
heartily. "At your service, even if I am just a hallucination. Would you like some tea? It's about ready."
The young man did not reply, but stared at him with eyes of extraordinary size and luminosity. His
visitor, meanwhile, rummaged amid his belongings in the back of the wagon.
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Kage%20Baker%20-%20The%20Literary%20Agent.htm (2 of 17) [10/16/2004 3:14:22 PM]
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Kage%20Baker%20-%20The%20Literary%20Agent.htm
"Say, you didn't pack any tea. But then you didn't really come up here to camp, did you? You ought to do
something about that death wish of yours." He found a tin cup and carried it back to the fire. "Luckily, I
always carry a supply with me." He sat down and from an inner pocket produced a teabag.
"What's that?" inquired Stevenson.
"Orange Pekoe, I think." The other peered at the tag. "Yeah. Now, here's your tea, and let's make you
nice and comfortable -- " He found Stevenson's coat, made a pillow of it and propped up his head. "There
we are."
He resumed his seat on the trunk and drew from the same inner pocket a bar of chocolate in silver foil.
He unwrapped one end of it and took a bite.
"Now, Mr. Stevenson, I have a proposition for you," he said. Stevenson, who had been watching him in
increasing fascination, began to laugh giddily.
"Is the trunk to carry off my soul?" he gasped. "Is the Accuser of the Brethren different in California? I'd
have wagered you'd look more like a Spanish Grandee in these parts. Do you change your coat with the
times? Of course you would, wouldn't you? Yet you haven't quite the look of a Yankee. In any case,
_Retro, Sathanas!_"
"No, no, no, don't worry. I'm not that guy. I'm merely a pleasant dream you're having. Here, have some of
this." Joseph broke off and handed a square of chocolate to Stevenson, who accepted it with a smirk.
"Sweeties from Hell!" The idea sent him into a giggling fit that started him coughing. The other watched
him closely. When he recovered he pulled himself up on his elbow and said, "Well then -- you haven't
any cigarettes, I suppose."
"Sorry, I don't smoke."
"Lucifer not smoke?!" This time he laughed until he wept, wiping his eyes on his frayed sleeves.
Consumptives do not wipe their eyes on their handkerchiefs. "Oh, I hope I remember this when I wake.
What an idea for a comic narrative."
"Actually that was sort of what I wanted to talk to you about," Joseph went on imperturbably, finishing
the last of his chocolate in a bite.
"Is that so?" Stevenson lurched into a sitting position. He grasped the cup of tea in his trembling hands,
warming them.
"Absolutely. Remember, this is all part of a dream. And what is your dream, Louis, your most cherished
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Kage%20Baker%20-%20The%20Literary%20Agent.htm (3 of 17) [10/16/2004 3:14:22 PM]
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Kage%20Baker%20-%20The%20Literary%20Agent.htm
dream? To make a success of this writing business, isn't it? Financial independence so you can win this
American lady you've come mooning after. Well, in this dream you're having right now, you've met a
man from the Future -- that's me -- and I've come back through time to tell you that you've _got_ it, baby.
All you wanted. Everything. Mrs. Osbourne too."
"What nonsense. I'm dying penniless, unknown, and (I fear) unloved." Stevenson's eyes grew moist. "I
came such a long way to do it, too. She sent me away! What does _she _care if I expire in this
wilderness?"
"Louis, Louis, work with me, all right?" Joseph leaned forward, looking earnest. "_This is your dream._
This dream says you're going to become a famous author. You write slam-bang adventure stories."
"I write abominably derivative fiction. The only good stuff's from life, my essays and the travel books."
"Come on, Louis, let's make this bird fly. You'll write adventure novels about the sea and historical
times. People love them. You're a hit. You're bigger than Sir Walter Scott, all right?"
"_He_ couldn't write a lucid sentence if his life had depended on it," Stevenson sneered. "Oh, this is all
the rankest self-conceit anyway."
"Then what will it hurt you to listen? Now. I represent the Chronos Photo-Play Company. Let me explain
what a photo-play is. We have patented a method of, uh, making magic-lantern pictures into a sort of
effect of moving tableaux, if you can grasp that. Maybe you've read about the cinematograph? Oh, gee,
no, you haven't." Joseph consulted his timepiece. "You'll just miss it. Never mind -- So, in the Future, we
have these exhibitions of our photo-plays and people pay admission to come in and watch them, the way
they'd watch a real live play or an opera, with famous players and everything. But since we don't have to
pay live actors or even move scenery, the profit margin for the exhibitor is enormous. See?"
Steven gaped at him a moment before responding. "I was wrong. I apologize. You may or may not be the
Devil, but you're most assuredly a Yankee."
"No, no, I'm a dream. Anyway. People are crazy about these photo-plays, they'll watch anything we
shoot. We've adapted all the great works of literature already. Shakespeare, Dickens, all those guys. So
now, my masters are looking for new material, and since you're _such_ a famous and successful writer
they sent me to ask if you'd be interested in a job."
"I see." Stevenson leaned back, stretching out his long legs and crossing them. "Your masters want to
adapt one of my wonderful adventure stories for these photo-plays of theirs?"
"Uh, actually, we've already done everything you wrote. Several times."
"I should damned well hope I got royalties, then!"
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Kage%20Baker%20-%20The%20Literary%20Agent.htm (4 of 17) [10/16/2004 3:14:22 PM]
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Kage%20Baker%20-%20The%20Literary%20Agent.htm
"Oh, sure, Louis, sure you did. You're not only famous, you're rich. Anyway what my masters had in
mind was you coming up with something completely _new_. Never-before-seen. Just like all your other
stuff, you know, with that wonderful Robert Louis Stevenson magic, but different. Exclusively under
contract for them."
"You mean they want me to write a play?" Stevenson looked intrigued.
"Not exactly. We don't have the time. This dream isn't going to last long enough for you to do that,
because it's a matter of historical record that you're only going to lie here another -- " Joseph consulted
his timepiece again, " -- forty-three hours before you're found and nursed back to health. No, see, all they
need you to do is develop a story _treatment_ for them. Four or five pages, a plot, characters. You don't
have to do the dialogue; we'll fill that out as we film. We can claim it's from long-lost notes found in a
locked desk you used to own, or something."
"This is madness." Stevenson sipped his tea experimentally.
"Delirium. But what have you got to lose? All you have to do is come up with a concept and develop it.
You don't even have to write it down. I'll do that for you. And to tell you the honest truth -- " Joseph
leaned down confidentially, " -- this is a specially commissioned work. There's this wealthy admirer of
yours in the place I come from, and he's willing to pay anything to see a _new _Robert Louis Stevenson
picture."
"Wouldn't he pay more for a whole novel? I could make one up as we go along and dictate the whole
thing to you, if we've got two more days here. You'd be surprised at how quickly stories unfold when the
Muse is with me." Stevenson squinted thoughtfully up at the stars through the branches of the oak tree.
Joseph looked slightly embarrassed. "He's ... not really much of a reader, Louis. But he loves our
pictures, and he's rich."
"You stand to make a tidy sum out of this, then."
"Perceptive man, Mr. Stevenson."
Stevenson's eyes danced. "And you'll pay me millions of money, no doubt."
"You can name your price. Money is no object."
"Dollars, pounds or faery gold?" Stevenson began to chuckle and Joseph chuckled right along with him
in a companionable manner.
"You've got the picture, Louis. It's a dream, remember? Maybe I've got a trunkful of gold doubloons
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Kage%20Baker%20-%20The%20Literary%20Agent.htm (5 of 17) [10/16/2004 3:14:22 PM]
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Kage%20Baker%20-%20The%20Literary%20Agent.htm
here, or pieces of eight. I'm authorized to pay you _anything_ for an original story idea."
"Very well then." Stevenson gulped the tea down and flung the cup away. "I want a cigarette."
The other man's chuckle stopped short.
"You want a cigarette?"
"I do, sir."
"You want -- Jeepers, Louis, I haven't got any cigarettes!"
"How now? No cigarettes? This is my dream and I can have anything I want. No cigarette, no story."
Stevenson laced his slender fingers together and smiled.
"Look, Louis, there's something you should know." Joseph bent forward seriously. "Cigarettes are not
really good for your lungs. Trust me. They'll make your cough worse, honest. Now, look, I've got gold
certificates here for you."
"It's cigarettes or nothing, I say."
"But I tell you I can't _get_ any -- " The other seized the hair at his temples and pulled in vexation. Then
he halted, as if listening to an inner voice. "Hell, what can I lose?"
He opened the lid of the trunk and brought out his pad of yellow lined paper. Casting a reproachful
glance at Stevenson he scribbled something down and fed his message into the invisible slot. Almost
immediately the reply emerged. He scanned it, wrote something more and fed it back. Another quick
reply. Stevenson watched all this with amusement.
"He's got a wee devil in the box poking his letters back out," he speculated.
"All I want is to make the man happy," Joseph retorted. "Fame, I offer him. Riches, too. What does he
do? He turns capricious on me. Lousy mortal." He read the next communication and his eyes narrowed.
Hastily he backed away from the trunk, putting a good eight feet between himself and it.
"What's amiss now?" inquired Stevenson. "Old Nick's in a temper, doubtless."
"I'd cover my ears if I were you," replied the other through gritted teeth. As if on cue the trunk gave a
horrific screech. It shook violently; there was a plume of foul smoke; there was one last convulsive
shudder: then a cigarette dropped from the orifice, very much the worse for wear, mashed flat and in fact
on fire.
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Kage%20Baker%20-%20The%20Literary%20Agent.htm (6 of 17) [10/16/2004 3:14:22 PM]
摘要：

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Kage%20Baker%20-%20The%20Literary%20Agent.htmTHEOBJECT,ha...

展开>> 收起<<
Kage Baker - The Literary Agent.pdf

共17页,预览6页

还剩页未读， 继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

相关推荐

更多
立即下载
分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：17 页 大小：45.05KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-11-18

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务

作者详情

相关内容

更多

热门标签

人际关系 动力学连接体 力的合成 配电装置 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 17
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注