The Return of the Black Widowers Read online

  Nemerson took a sip of water. "So, the second book came out, and it did great business. It even revived interest in the first book, which was reissued, so the publisher had a double hit on its hands. You can probably guess what happened next: They asked him to edit a third volume. And he agreed. He spread the word throughout the science fiction community that this was going to be the final volume, that he was determined to make it the best of the three, and that he wouldn't release it until he was satisfied that it was, even if it meant waiting till the year two thousand.

  "Well, the year two thousand came and went, but no book. We knew he'd bought at least some stories—everyone knew of certain writers who had received contracts and checks from Beard, which they talked about with great pride, knowing that they'd be included when Farthest Frontiers finally came out. But it didn't come out. And then six months ago, just after his eighty-second birthday, Beard was admitted to the hospital with pneumonia. He fought it for a few weeks and even recovered enough to come home, but a week later he was in the hospital again, and this time he didn't make it.

  "The question immediately came up, what was going to happen with Farthest Frontiers? It was all people could talk about. Singleman, the publisher, decided it needed someone to go through his papers and see how close to publishable the book was, so they called me."

  "Why you?" Halsted asked. "No offense, but you're a young man, in your thirties. I have to assume there are more experienced editors they could have called on for so important a book."

  "I've had a bit of success as a novelist over the past ten years," Nemerson said, "but more, to be frank, as an anthologist. My first collection, Across the Fourth Dimension, won the World Fantasy Award for best anthology, and two of the stories in my latest are on the final ballot for the Nebula. I've actually become quite well known as an anthologist. In fact, Locus magazine once called me 'the next Abe Beard.' "

  "So," Drake said, "was the book publishable?"

  "Absolutely. I went through his apartment and turned up manuscripts for fourteen stories he had bought, plus a fifteenth he had written himself, and they were all excellent. Even his—in fact, his was probably one of the two or three best in the book. A few of the older ones he'd bought back in the early nineties had some dated references, but it was nothing I couldn't work with the authors to fix. The earlier volumes each had sixteen stories, not fifteen, but one less story this time, that's not a big deal. All in all, I was thrilled with what I'd found."

  "So what's the problem?" Drake said.

  "It's what I didn't find. There were stories by Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke, Roger Zelazny, Samuel Delany, Harlan Ellison, Orson Scott Card, Michael A. Burstein, Octavia Butler, even Kurt Vonncgut, but there was no story by Isaac Asimov."

  "So? Maybe he didn't write one," Gonzalo said. "When did Asimov die, Manny? Wasn't it around nineteen ninety?"

  "Nineteen ninety-two," Manny said.

  "And I remember you telling us he was ill for a while before that. Maybe he just wasn't able to write one."

  "But he was," Nemerson said. "I know he was."

  "How do you know that?" Drake asked.

  "Because Abraham Beard told me."

  "I think you know that Isaac was something of a mentor to me," Nemerson said. "He helped me get started when I was just a scrawny, teenaged science fiction fan with dreams of one day being a writer. I wrote him letters, and even though he had no reason to, he wrote back and encouraged me. When I moved to New York to go to college, he took me under his wing, introduced me to some of the editors he knew, helped me get started. He even wrote an introduction for Across the Fourth Dimension, and I doubt I could have sold the book without it.

  "When he died, his family held a memorial service, and one of the people who attended the service was Abraham Beard. I introduced myself to him after the ceremony and offered to take him out to dinner. To my delight, he accepted, and we spent a long night at Sardi's, drinking red wine and telling each other our Isaac Asimov stories. They'd met a few years earlier, apparently, on a science fiction-themed cruise they'd both been booked on as guest lecturers, and I believe Beard may have published him once or twice in his Astonishing days as well.

  "Toward the end of the evening, we started talking about Farthest Frontiers. The book was already three years in the making then, and he told me in confidence that he'd only bought a few stories, maybe three or four. But one of the ones he had bought was by Isaac Asimov.

  "He wouldn't tell me anything about the story, he was very secretive that way, even after an evening of drinking had loosened his tongue. But he said it was a really good story, in his opinion one of the best Isaac had ever written. Apparently, he had badgered Isaac to write it while they were on the cruise, and Isaac had hidden himself away in his cabin on the last day and emerged the next morning with a novelette, written out in longhand on a pad of legal paper.

  " 'There's your story,' he told Beard, and handed him the pad with a big smile. Isaac took great pride in being almost superhumanly prolific, and he probably saw Beard's request as a challenge.

  "Anyway, that's what Beard told me. You should have seen his eyes when he described getting home, unpacking his bags, reading the story, and realizing that far from being the tossed-off quickie he'd expected, it was—in his words—a story good enough to rival 'Nightfall,' or 'Foundation,' or any of the robot stories. I thought about asking if I could see the story, but I figured he'd say no, and anyway I didn't ask.

  "And that was the last I heard of it. The one time Beard and I saw each other after that was at a science fiction convention a few years later. I asked him how Farthest Frontiers was coming and he just said, 'I never talk about a work in progress, especially not with the competition.' It wasn't even like he was trying to be nasty, it was just a statement of fact, as if he didn't remember our conversation at all. But I figured he was probably getting some heat from his publisher by then, and I didn't want to press the point.

  "I didn't think about the story again until I got the call from Singleman. Naturally, the first thing I did when they put me in touch with Beard's estate was to go to his apartment and look for the manuscript. At first, when I didn't find it, I wasn't worried— I knew it had to be somewhere, and in the meantime I had fifteen other amazing stories to read. But eventually I was finished reading them and I went through Beard's files and bookshelves a second time. When that didn't work, I tried to think where else he might have put the manuscript for safekeeping—I looked behind the pictures on the walls, I rolled up the rugs, I flipped through the pages of every book in the apartment, I unpacked the closets, I unfolded the man's undershirts and checked behind the toilet tank—I did everything I could think of. And I found some interesting things—for example, a correspondence between Beard and Heinlein from the forties that might make an interesting book in itself. But what I didn't find is what I was looking for: Isaac's story. And it's driving me crazy. First of all, I know Beard would want the story included in the book, and second of all, a new Isaac Asimov story . . . I want to read it."

  Nemerson stopped and shook his head. "I don't know whether Beard hid it deliberately, in order to keep it safe, or accidentally, as a result of carelessness, but one way or the other it's now-missing, and I don't have much time to find it. Singleman wants to move quickly to get Farthest Frontiers into stores, and I have to give them something. The question is, where is the story?"

  He sat back in his chair and looked at the men around him. For a moment, no one spoke.

  Finally, Rubin said, "I knew Isaac pretty well myself, and the part that doesn't sound right to me is his writing in longhand on a legal pad and not keeping a copy when he finished, especially if the story came out as well as Beard said. All right, he was on a ship, and he had to make do with the materials at hand—but wouldn't he at least have asked Beard to send the story back to him later so he could make a copy for his records? I suppose one possibility is that he did ask for the story back, and then maybe he just never returned it
to Beard for some reason, accounting for why the manuscript is now missing."

  "No," Nemerson said. "I've been through Isaac's records, even the papers he sent to be archived at Boston University, and there's no manuscript that fits the description. Besides, even if Isaac had asked to get a copy back, Beard wouldn't have sent him the original, he'd have sent a copy. Or if he had sent the original, he'd have kept a copy. Either way, there would still be a copy of some sort for me to find at Beard's apartment."

  Avalon made a tent of his fingers and tapped them against his chin. "Tell me something. You said that Singleman put you in touch with Beard's estate. I assume if it had been a relative of Beard's you met with, you would have said they put you in touch with Beard's wife, or his brother, or his daughter, or whomever, but not his 'estate.' So can we conclude that the person you met with was a lawyer?"

  "That's right," Nemerson said. "Beard was an only child and never married. His lawyer said he had no living relatives."

  Avalon went on in his solemn baritone. "In a case where an author is represented after his death solely by an attorney and there are no clear inheritors, it is not uncommon for intellectual-property assets to be frozen and held in escrow pending a determination as to their value, ownership, and proper disposition. The assignment you undertook for his publisher could be an example of such a determination process. Isn't it possible that the story you're looking for is in the lawyer's possession?"

  "I'm afraid not," Nemerson said. "Beard's lawyer gave me access to all materials in his possession. There wasn't much, and the story wasn't there. Just to be sure, I described exactly what I was looking for, and the lawyer said he'd never seen it."

  Halsted raised a hand. "When we were talking earlier, Geoff mentioned the idea of storing valuables in a safe-deposit box. Surely Beard would have considered the Asimov manuscript one of his most valuable possessions. Have you checked whether he had a safe-deposit box?"

  "He had two," Nemerson said, "and I arranged to have both opened. We found some stock certificates, a few photos of his parents, his passport, and his social security card—but no story."

  "How thorough was your search of his apartment?" Gonzalo asked. "You say you went through all his books, for instance, but did you look at the undersides of his shelves? Did you move the bookshelves away from the walls? Did you look under the wallpaper?"

  "There's no wallpaper, just paint," Nemerson said, "but yes, I did check under the shelves. And not only the shelves—I checked under his TV set, under his computer, under his mattress. I even unscrewed all the electrical outlets to see if any of them were fakes. I was extremely thorough. I think I've made it clear to you just how important it is to me that I find this story, and I promise I searched every place in the apartment that might possibly be large enough to hold a manuscript."

  "Even the lighting fixtures?" Gonzalo said.

  "Even the paper towel tube in the kitchen. Even the flour bin in the kitchen."

  "Even the refrigerator?"Trumbull asked.

  "Especially the refrigerator."

  "Hold on. There's something all of us are overlooking," Trumbull said. "Maybe Asimov wrote the story longhand because a pen and a pad of paper were all he had to work with onboard the ship, but there's no publisher that would accept the story that way when the time came to submit the book. I don't care if you're Isaac Asimov, I don't care if you're Stephen King, you can't turn in a handwritten manuscript. That means that at some point Beard would have had to type the story into his computer in order to print out a copy he could submit. What if he typed it in, but never got around to printing it out?"

  "The original manuscript would still have to be somewhere," Rubin said. "It's not like he'd throw it out."

  "Probably not, but who knows?" Trumbull said. "Maybe he did. Or maybe he lost it. Or maybe it's still somewhere in his apartment despite all of Gary's efforts to turn it up. But it doesn't matter. Gary doesn't need to find the manuscript, he just needs to find the story. If an electronic copy exists, he's got what he needs."

  "I wish it were that simple," Nemerson said. "I checked the computer. The only stories on it were Beard's own work. Other than the one for Farthest Frontiers, they were either stories he'd already published or unfinished fragments a page or two long."

  "Did you check every file? Even encrypted ones?"

  Nemerson nodded. "Beard wasn't exactly what you'd call a power user of the computer. He only had word-processor documents, and not a lot of them. And nothing was encrypted." He looked around the table. "Does anyone else have any ideas?"

  "I have one," Avalon said, "but you're not going to like it."

  "What?"

  "If there is literally no trace of the story and you're sure you've searched everywhere it might be, you've got to consider the possibility that the story never existed in the first place. Think about it—as far as we know, you are the only person who has ever heard of this story, and the only reason you think it exists is because Beard told you about it at the end of a long night of drinking following a memorial service that must have been traumatic for both of you. Maybe he desperately wished he'd gotten a story from Asimov and was shaken by the realization that now it was too late. His subconscious converted his desire into a fantasy that he had gotten a story, and maybe because he'd had a few too many drinks that night, he was temporarily unable to distinguish fantasy from reality."

  "I don't buy it," Nemerson said. "We'd been drinking, and maybe that had something to do with why he told me about the story that night and why he didn't remember telling me about it later, but it's not as if we'd reached the point of seeing pink elephants. When he talked about the story, everything he said was very concrete, very specific. All the details about the circumstances of the cruise, for instance—it's true that Isaac was on the cruise, I've checked that. Isaac's wife even remembers him staying in their cabin on the last day to write something, although she didn't remember what it was. No, I'm confident Isaac really did write a story for Farthest Frontiers and that there's a copy somewhere in Beard's apartment—I just can't figure out where."

  Nemerson glanced around the table, but no one said anything.

  "I'm sorry to say we don't seem to be able to help you this time," Trumbull said.

  Nemerson sighed. "Well, I appreciate your trying. Maybe I'll do one more search of the apartment, top to bottom, but if that doesn't work—"

  "I'm not sure that will be necessary, sir." Henry stepped away from the sideboard, where he had been listening quietly.

  "Do you have an idea, Henry?" said Nemerson.

  "I do," Henry said. "I am somewhat reluctant to share it with you, because I am not certain it is correct and its implications are rather serious—but the more I hear you gentlemen talk about the situation, the more likely it seems."

  "Spit it out, Henry," Rubin said.

  "I don't think Mr. Nemerson needs to search any further for the missing story," Henry said, "for the simple reason that I suspect he has already found it."

  "I don't understand," Nemerson said.

  "You found fifteen stories in Beard's apartment," Henry said, "including one you described as having been written by Beard himself. I believe that is the story you are looking for."

  "Impossible!" Nemerson said.

  "Consider," Henry said. "The only reason you thought that story was written by Beard is presumably because his name appeared on the manuscript. But as Mr. Trumbull pointed out earlier, Beard would have had to retype Asimov s story at some point before submitting the anthology to his publisher, and it's a trivial matter to type 'Abraham Beard' on the first page instead of 'Isaac Asimov.' Of course, it is only trivial mechanically—ethically, it's an exceptionally severe offense, perhaps the worst an editor could commit against one of his own authors, particularly one who, posthumously, could no longer defend himself.

  "But think about what you have told us. Here is a man who started as a writer side by side with Isaac Asimov, writing for the same publications, but who never achieve
d more than a fraction of the recognition or success. Such recognition as he did achieve was as an editor, not as a writer, and didn't extend beyond the rather limited world of science fiction publishing. We know he never gave up his desire to achieve success as a writer. It is widely believed that he delayed publication of his second anthology, possibly for years, while he worked on a story of his own to include. We know his third anthology, which given his age and poor health he must have realized would be his last, had already taken even longer to prepare than the second, and from the evidence of the files you found on his computer, it may well have been for the same reason. After all, he had already purchased fifteen stories for the book, if you count the Asimov story and the other fourteen you found—all that was left was for him to complete his own story, and he'd have had the sixteen stories he needed and been done. If he had finished a story of his own, especially one as good as the one you described, surely he would have wasted no time in submitting the book to his publisher. The fact that he didn't submit it makes me suspicious that the story with his name on it was not actually his work.

  "I imagine that he tried to write a story—he may well have tried for years. But all you found were fragments of a page or two in length, so apparently he wasn't able to do it. When he came out of the hospital for the last time, he may well have known it was the last time. And as he sat at the computer, trying desperately to produce a story good enough to include in his last book, surely he must have been haunted by the memory of Isaac Asimov, one of the most prolific authors in American history, stepping into a cruise ship cabin one morning and emerging the next day with a finished novelette. And not just any novelette—a great novelette, one good enough to appear in Farthest Frontiers."