Heavy Water: And Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

most resounding felicity, is it?” said Sixsmith.
    Absent or unavailable for over an hour, the gift of speech had been restored to Alistair—speech, that prince of all the faculties. “Or what if …” he said. “What if Chelsi just leaves the experiment lab earlier?”
    “Not hugely dramatic,” said Sixsmith. He ordered a carafe of wine and inquired as to the whereabouts of his braised chop.
    “Or what if she just gets wounded? During the escape. In the leg.”
    “So long as one could avoid the wretched cliche: girl impeded, hero dangerously tarrying. Also, she’s supernumerary to the raid on the Xerxian attack ship. We really want her out of the way for that.”
    Alistair said, “Then let’s kill her.”
    “Very well. Slight pall over the happy ending. No, no.”
    A waiter stood over them, sadly staring at the bill in its saucer.
    “All right,” said Sixsmith. “Chelsi gets wounded. Quite badly. In the arm. Now what does Brad do with her?”
    “Drops her off at the hospital.”
    “Mm. Rather hollow modulation.”
    The waiter was joined by another waiter, equally stoic; their faces were grained by evening shadow. Now Sixsmith was gently frisking himself with a deepening frown.
    “What if,” said Alistair, “what if there’s somebody passing who can take her to the hospital?”
    “Possibly,” said Sixsmith, who was half standing, with one hand awkwardly dipped into his inside pocket.
    “Or what if,” said Alistair, “or what if Brad just gives her directions to the hospital?”
    Back in London the next day, Luke met with Mike to straighten this shit out. Actually it looked okay. Mike called Mal at Monad, who had a thing about Tim at TCT. As a potential finesse on Mal, Mike also called Bob at Binary with a view to repossessing the option on “Sonnet,” plus development money at rolling compound, and redeveloping it somewhere else entirely—say, at Red Giant, where Rodge was known to be very interested. “They’ll want you to go out there,” said Mike. “To kick it around.”
    “I can’t believe Joe,” said Luke. “I can’t believe I knocked myself out for that flake.”
    “Happens. Joe forgot about Jake Endo and sonnets. Endo’s first big poem was a sonnet. Before your time. ‘Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art.’ It opened for like one day. It practically bankrupted Japan.”
    “I feel used, Mike. My sense of trust. I’ve got to get wised up around here.”
    “A lot will depend on how ‘Composed at—Castle’ does and what the feeling is on the ‘ ’Tis’ prequel.”
    “I’m going to go away with Suki for a while. Do you know anywhere where there aren’t any shops? Jesus, I need a holiday. Mike, this is all bullshit. You know what I really want to do, don’t you?”
    “Of course I do.”
    Luke looked at Mike until he said, “You want to direct.”

    When Alistair had convalesced from the lunch, he revised Offensive from Quasar 13 in rough accordance with Sixsmith’s suggestions. He solved the Chelsi problem by having her noisily eaten by a Stygian panther in the lab menagerie. The charge of gratuitousness was, in Alistair’s view, safely anticipated by Brad’s valediction to her remains, in which sanguinary revenge on the Nebulans was both prefigured and legitimized. He also took out the bit where Brad declared his love for Chelsi, and put in a bit where Brad declared his love for Tara.
    He sent in the new pages, which three months later Sixsmith acknowledged and applauded in a hand quite incompatible with that of his earlier communications. Nor did he reimburse Alistair for the lunch. His wallet, he had explained, had been emptied that morning—by which alcoholic, Sixsmith never established. Alistair kept the bill as a memento. This startling document showed that during the course of the meal Sixsmith had smoked, or at any rate bought, nearly a carton of cigarettes.
    Three months later he was sent a proof of Offensive from Quasar 13 . Three months