The Life Business Read Online Free PDF Page A

McLeary," says Martinmas,
interrupting my thoughts.
    For a moment I can't
think of any way to reply.
    Inside the silent
bubble of his cell, the old man's still talking. He's raised his
head now, and he's looking in our direction as if he can see
through the one-way mirror. Leaning against the room's far wall
there's an orderly watching everything with her arms crossed on her
chest.
    "So that isn't Peter?"
As soon as I've uttered it the question seems monumentally
stupid.
    "No," says Martinmas.
"He's very convincing, isn't he? But he's not Peter. That's Billy
Flanagan in there. You'll soon grow used to how many other people
he is as well. Every day of the year, it seems like, Billy digs out
a memory he thinks is his own. But it's someone else's, really – if
it's a memory at all, and not just Billy's way of attempting to
rationalize to himself the things he's done. To justify them, or
maybe even to try to undo them, in a sense, by bringing his victims
back to life. I'm certain, for example, that he genuinely did like
Peter, the unfortunate kid he and Lar Meekin found that night at
Magilligan Point. It didn't stop him... getting rid of the
evidence, though."
    I swallow.
    "Which side was he
on?" I say.
    "Who knows?" says
Martinmas. "Not the side of Peter Greenham."
    A nurse bustles past
us, on her way to somewhere in a cloud of antiseptic.
    I look at the floor,
back up at the window. "How many people did Billy kill?"
    Martinmas shrugs. "Who
knows?" he says again. "Enough. Too many. Who can judge? That's not
what we're here for. Our job is to try to understand him so we know
better how to cope with others like him."
    "That's what we should
be doing, is it?" I say, still staring through the window.
    "Yes," says
Martinmas.
    He's right, of course,
however much I'd like him to be wrong.
    For a few more moments
Martinmas and I stand side by side watching as a mumbling,
broken-down old man tries to rid himself of all his serpents.
    Then we go off to the
canteen, where Martinmas buys me a coffee.

About the
author
    John Grant is
author of some sixty books, of which about twenty-five are fiction,
including novels like The World , The Hundredfold
Problem , The Far-Enough Window , The Dragons of
Manhattan and Leaving Fortusa . His "book-length fiction" Dragonhenge , illustrated by Bob Eggleton, was shortlisted
for a Hugo Award in 2003; its successor was The Stardragons .
His first story collection, Take No Prisoners , appeared in
2004. His anthology New Writings in the Fantastic was
shortlisted for a British Fantasy Award. His novella The City in
These Pages appeared in early 2009 from PS Publishing; PS will
publish another of his novellas, The Lonely Hunter , in
2011.
    In nonfiction, he has
coedited with John Clute The Encyclopedia of Fantasy and
written in their entirety all three editions of The Encyclopedia
of Walt Disney's Animated Characters . Among his latest
nonfictions have been Warm Words & Otherwise: A Blizzard of
Book Reviews , Discarded Science , Corrupted
Science and Bogus Science . He is currently working on Denying Science (to be published by Prometheus in 2011).
    As John Grant he has
received two Hugo Awards, the World Fantasy Award, the Locus Award,
and various other international literary awards. Under his given
name, Paul Barnett, he has written a few books (like the space
operas Strider's Galaxy and Strider's Universe ) and
for a number of years ran the world-famous fantasy-artbook imprint
Paper Tiger, for this work earning a Chesley Award and a nomination
for the World Fantasy Award. His website is at www.johngrantpaulbarnett.com .

 
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