Wagner Publishing
ALICE glanced up at the rundown building as she paid the cab driver. She frowned. Could this really be the New York headquarters of the famous Wagner Publishing Company, the publisher of all her novels? She stepped around the derelicts near the entrance, walked past a sleazy-looking guard by the doorway, and entered the building’s lobby. There was no mistake. The building directory listed Wagner Publishing, Suite 401.
When she pressed the call button for the elevator, feeling a bit uneasy, the guard laughed unpleasantly. “No elevator this week, Lady,” he said. “The stairs are over there.” He laughed again.
She felt growing concern as she walked to the stairway, remembering that her financial and literary future depended on this publisher. Weren’t the big New York publishing houses supposed to have fancy offices on 5th Avenue?
Alice was breathing hard when she reached the fourth floor landing and pushed through the fire door. She looked around, feeling somewhat reassured. Apparently Wagner occupied the entire 4th floor of the building. The elevator lobby was nicely decorated and furnished. It was adorned with a large gilded Wagner Books logo and a long glass-covered display exhibiting the covers of some of their recent publications. She noted that although her most recent novel, ‘E’ as in Earthworms, had just come out and was selling very well, it was not among the paperback books in the display case. Prominently featured were George H. W. Bush’s recent Saddam, Boris, and I, along with Fabulous Washington Sex Scandals, Madonna’s Secret for Thinner Thighs, The Financial Secrets of Football All-Stars, and How to Psychoanalyze Your Cat. Non-books, she thought. I hope at least that stuff pays the bills here.
Alice smoothed a wrinkle at the sleeve of her lose white jacket and brushed a fleck of lint from the side of her elegant light blue dress as she approached the reception desk. “Miss,” she said, “I have an appointment Janet Renfrew. Please tell her that Alice Lancaster is here.” Alice liked the sound of “Lancaster,” which was her pen name. It looked better on a book than “Lang,” the name she was born with, or “Brown,” the name of her late husband.
The receptionist picked up the handset of her telephone, dialed a number, chewed her gum for a while, and then replaced it in its cradle. “I can’t reach Janet because the phone system is acting up again. Guess you can go on back to her office. It’s in the back of Room 447. Go straight back to the first partition and turn right, then left to the wall and another two rights and a left. Ya can’t miss it.”
Alice wondered briefly if this was a joke but decided that the receptionist didn’t seem sufficiently amused. She ventured through the door and was immediately confronted by a barricade of cardboard boxes filled with books. She took a long detour around the obstacle, took several turns along the lines the receptionist had suggested, and was soon completely lost in a warren of narrow passages, small offices, partitions, piles of printed matter, and desks. No room numbers were visible anywhere.
A young man wearing faded jeans, a tee shirt advertising a defunct 60’s acid-rock group, worn running shoes, and a new-looking camel-hair sport coat approached her. “Can I help you?” he asked.
She asked him how to find Janet Renfrew, and he guided her along several more hallways to a room filled with people, all talking rather aggressively into telephones. “That’s our collections group,” he said.
“Book collections?” Alice asked.
“No,” he replied. “Bill collections. Go to the far end the room. Janet’s in the little glassed-in nook back there by the windows.” He smiled and waved, then turned away.
Relieved at finding Janet, Alice threaded her way to the door of the indicated cubicle. Through the glass door panel she could see a young woman with curly black hair, presumably Janet Renfrew, whom she had not yet met in person. The woman seemed to be screaming into a telephone.
Alice wondered if she was intruding on a private matter, maybe a lover’s quarrel. She thought perhaps she should sneak away and wait outside for a time. But before she could put this plan into action, the woman inside saw her, smiled and waved, mouthed the words “your agent,” and rapidly terminated the telephone conversation.
She strode to the door and opened it wide. “Alice! My dear!” she said, embracing her. “I’m Janet. So we meet at last. Come on in. Can I get you some coffee? Sit down! Did you have any trouble finding your way here? How’s the writing going? You must tell me about the new book you’re working on.”
Alice sat in the chair by the cluttered desk. On the desk was an open manuscript which had the obvious stain of a recent coffee spill on its center. Alice was feeling uncomfortable and confused. She wondered if she had made a mistake coming here. Last month Alice had not been present when her agent had negotiated the new contract and advance for her yet-to-be-written novel. Then, to her surprise, Janet had invited her here and sent a plane ticket. Alice would have brought her agent along, but he was away on a West Coast business trip.
Janet had taken over her books at Wagner from her previous editor, Damien Howell, who had been fired last year in the aftermath of the most recent of a continuing series of leveraged buyouts, corporate takeovers, and consolidations of publishing lines and imprints. Damien had been a wonderful editor. He had been largely responsible for successfully launching her writing career and had helped her to put her life back together after Steve died.
Alice was still uncertain about Janet as a replacement for Damien. Janet had been involved mainly in the production phases of her last book. She had, to her credit, arranged for the Earthworms paperback to have a cover that had beautiful art work and was embossed with large gold letters and a peekaboo cutout. That was a first, and Alice had liked it very much. Janet and Alice had so far communicated only by fax, the Internet, and telephone. There had been several pleasant and encouraging telephone conversations, but this was their first meeting.
“Getting here from La Guardia was no problem,” Alice said. “I just jumped in a cab, and three traffic jams later I arrived. Finding your office once I was on the right floor of the building was far more challenging. There was a nice young man in jeans and a camel-hair coat who was very helpful.”
“Oh, sure,” said Janet. “That was Albert Jukes. He’s my boss’s boss, the Executive Publisher of the Corporation. Isn’t he nice?”
Alice blinked. “I must be getting old,” she said. “I thought he was an office boy. Isn’t he rather young for a position like Executive Publisher?”
“He’s older than he looks,” Janet said. “Albert likes to walk while he’s thinking, so he frequently runs into our visitors. He calls it ‘management by walking around’. Would you like some coffee?”
Alice nodded. “Yes, please. Black.”
Janet picked up the telephone and dialed a number, hung up and dialed a second number, then a third. Finally she slammed down the receiver. “Shit!” she said. “This telephone system is utterly worthless. Who needs ‘voice messaging’ when you want to ask the damned receptionist to bring in some fucking coffee?” She stalked out of the cubicle, returning after a while with two steaming mugs. She handed Alice a mug bearing the Wagner corporate logo emblazoned in gold.
“Well,” Janet said, putting both elbows on her desk, placing one hand under her chin, and looking across at Alice, “we’re going to be working together, and we need to get better acquainted. So tell me how a nice girl like you wandered into the business of writing disaster thrillers that are crawling with bugs.”
Alice laughed. “Sometimes I wonder about that myself,” she said. “I was a couple of years out of college and working as a newspaper reporter for the Tallahassee Democrat. My late husband was a sharp lawyer with political ambitions. We had a nice house and a very active social life aimed at furthering his career. But after a while, I found that I needed some creative outlet as a pressure relief valve. I’m a naturally inquisitive person, and I thought about doing some freelance investigative reporting. There were plenty of things going on in Florida that were potential subjects for investigation. But my husband, Steve, was concerned that if I looked under the wrong rock I might antagonize one of his rich clients. So I decided to do something else.
“I found that I was always buying a certain kind of paperback at the supermarket, the ones with the pictures of crawly creatures and metallic letters on the cover. Whenever I was feeling depressed or over stressed, I’d read one of those and I’d feel better. Then one day, it suddenly hit me that I’m actually a much better writer than the people who were writing those books. I had plenty of source material form my job at the Democrat, so I decided to try writing one myself. The result was ‘A’ as in Arachnids, my first novel, published by Wagner. I adopted the Alice Lancaster pseudonym to avoid embarrassing Steve, but he still wasn’t too happy about my second career.”
“You implied your husband is dead,” said Janet.
“Yes,“ said Alice, “Steve was killed in a mountain climbing accident in Switzerland at just about the time when my second novel was coming out.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” said Janet, looking directly at Alice.
“It was a long time ago,” said Alice and sniffed.
Janet nodded. “So tell me about your plans for your latest project.”
Alice took a cautious sip of the coffee and placed the mug on the desk. She reached into her briefcase, extracted the summaries of her earlier books and the outline of the one presently in progress. She handed the packet to Janet. Then she took a deep breath and started her carefully prepared opening. “You must have read this outline of my new book already, when the new contract was being negotiated last month. You’ll recall that all of my books are techno-disaster thrillers with similar themes involving plagues of dangerous insects and vermin. Arachnids was about spiders from a failed genetics experiment attacking a small isolated university town. My most recent published novel, ‘E’ as in Earthworms, is along the same lines. Earthworms from a worm farm in a small Mississippi town are mutated by a hazardous chemical spill and develop an enzyme that dissolves human and animal flesh. My agent says that Earthworms is my breakthrough book. It’s only been out for a month, but he projects that by the end of the year it could sell over 100,000 copies, provided Wagner is willing to go into a second print run.” She paused, hoping to hear a confirmation from Janet.
“Just a minute,” Janet said. She rummaged through several drawers of her desk, then stood, cursed, and walked to a file cabinet against the wall. After looking unsuccessfully in two of its drawers, she extracted a folder from the third drawer. She returned to her desk and scanned its contents for a moment. “Yes, it is doing very well,” she said. “So far at least,” she added cautiously.
Good, Alice thought, she’s noncommittal but positive. Her agent had plans to negotiate next time for a multi-book contract and a much bigger advance.
“In fact,” said Janet, “it’s doing well enough that for your new one we’re considering a major promotion, with advertising and a big push to the bookstore chains. How would you feel about going on a promotional tour?”
“I’d love to,” said Alice. “I enjoy talking about my writing, and I think I do it well.”
“Good,” said Janet, “so let’s talk about what you have in mind for your next book.”
“Of course,” said Alice. She pointed to the outline she had placed on the desk. “As you will recall, the new novel is called ‘F’ as in Fire Ants,” she said cheerfully. “It’s set in Waxahachie, Texas.”
“Wax-a-hachie, ...” Janet repeated slowly, “an unusual name for a town, sounds Native American. Why does it sound so familiar?”
“Perhaps you remember it because it’s been in the news lately,” Alice answered. “It’s a small town south of Dallas, the County Seat of Ellis County, Texas, where the Department of Energy has recently spent over eight billion dollars to build the Superconducting Super Collider, the world’s biggest particle accelerator. They had some startup problems, but now the accelerator is completed and running. There have been several recent news reports and magazine features about it.”
Janet frowned and looked suspiciously down at the outline. “Wait a minute, Alice. Your new book isn’t science fiction, is it?” There was a rising note of alarm in her voice.
“No, of course not,” Alice assured her. “As I told you, it’s a techno-disaster thriller involving dangerous insects, strictly within the genre. Scientists from the SSC laboratory will be characters in the book, but I had scientists in ‘C’ as in Cockroaches, too. Nasty ones. The most important characters are the Waxahachie townspeople and the local cotton farmers. The disaster element comes from colonies of fire ants, mutated by the radiation from the accelerator, that grow to enormous size and attack the community.”
“Fire ants?” Janet looked puzzled. “Is that something you invented?”
“Oh no,” said Alice, “they’re quite real. They’re a very nasty pest, an aggressive variety of ant that has been moving north into Texas from Mexico for the last few decades. They’re difficult to kill, they have a poisonous, debilitating bite, and they have a way of coordinating attacks so that a group of fire ants will crawl onto the victim and all bite at the same time. It’s believed that they use some kind of pheromone chemical to signal when it’s time to sting.”
Just then, Albert Jukes, a newspaper in his hand, opened the door. “Excuse me for interrupting, but you’ve got to see this, Janet. Remember how Promotions decided to go for a full page ad in the Times for the new Bush book? Well, it looks as if they had a minor typo in the copy!” He held up the page of advertising which bore the title “Sodom, Boris, and I by George H. W. Bush” in very large letters.
“Oh, God!” said Janet, striking her forehead.
“But think positive,” Alice said brightly. “Perhaps it will boost sales to gays!”
After Albert left to spread the news further and they had stopped laughing, Janet said, “It sounds like the fire ants of yours would be great at picnics.”
“Oh, they’ll definitely put in an appearance at a picnic,” said Alice, “but for the purposes of my novel an item of great interest is their tendency to attack electrical devices, particularly those that hum, and to eat the electrical insulation. Apparently they’re the main cause of electrical fires and the failure of large electrical appliances, particularly air conditioners, in the Waxahachie area. Think of that in relation to all the electrical equipment at the Superconducting Super Collider.”
Janet wrinkled her nose. “Are these big ants? They sound awful.”
“Actually not,” said Alice. “As ants go, they’re very small but very aggressive. They’ve already killed off most of the larger ant varieties in Texas, along with much of the small animal population like rabbits, moles, and field mice. Perhaps fire ants are so aggressive and poisonous as a way of compensating for their small size.”
“Uh huh,” Janet nodded, “I know men like that.”
Alice reviewed the project, going over the outline of the novel and her recent progress in writing and research, and emphasizing her track record of always meeting her book deadlines. She could tell that Janet was growing progressively more enthusiastic. Now is the time, she decided, to bring up her request. She reminded herself that she must not let Janet know how important this was to her. She flashed her most charming smile. “I should mention that there’s a favor I’d like to ask of Wagner in connection with this book, Janet,” she said.
Janet suddenly looked suspicious. “What’s that?” she asked sharply.
“As with my other books, I’ll need to go to Waxahachie and do some on-location research and interviews for a few weeks. For that to be effective, I’ll need the cooperation of the people who run the Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory. But if I tell them I’m there to do a disaster novel in which the laboratory is attacked by giant mutant fire ants, you can imagine what their reaction will be. I’d be about as welcome as an astrologer at an astrophysics convention.”
Janet frowned. “Astrologer?” she said. “I don’t understand.”
“I’ll need valid press credentials,” said Alice. “The Randolph Corporation, which owns Wagner, also publishes a big line of magazines. One of them is Search, the weekly science magazine. I need you to obtain press credentials for me from Search under my real name of Alice Lang that will get me into the SSC laboratory as a science reporter.”
Janet blinked, then rolled her eyes heavenward. “My God, I can’t do that, Alice,” she said. “Professional ethics are involved. If any news organization was caught giving out phony press credentials, they’d lose credibility, and nobody would trust their reporters.”
Nobody trusts their reporters now, Alice thought. “Look, Janet,” she said, “the credentials don’t have to be phony. As I told you, I was a full-time newspaper reporter when I wrote ‘A’ as in Arachnids and ‘B’ as in Blow Flies. It was only after my husband was killed that I used the insurance money as a stake to quit my job and support myself with freelance writing. But I always liked writing science stories, and I found that I could do them better than the other reporters. Even though I don’t have much science training, I think I have a real knack for science reporting.” She didn’t mention that one of the reasons she quit the Democrat was because she wasn’t allowed to do more. They had nailed her to the Lifestyle section.
“In fact,” Alice continued, “Arachnids was based on a news story I did for the Democrat about a research project at Florida State University in which a lot of spiders escaped from their cages. I could perhaps arrange to do the SSC story for the Democrat, I still have friends there, but I’d get far more cooperation if I had press credentials from a national magazine. Search could commission Alice Lang to write a real story about the SSC laboratory. Perhaps about the women technicians and scientists there, or the effect of the laboratory on the lives of the townspeople. If afterwards somebody named Alice Lancaster writes a successful disaster novel about the SSC, even if they discover the connection it would be, shall we say, just a spin-off of the research for the magazine story.” She felt instinctively that she’d convinced Janet, and she smiled.
“Hmmm ...,” said Janet, brightening. “That’s not bad, Alice. If they commissioned you to do such a story, they would certainly provide you with press credentials and maybe even arrange some contacts for you. Slipping you into the laboratory would also make a good angle to reveal later when we promote the book. Come to think of it, I used to see a guy who now works for Search in editorial. I haven’t heard from him for a while, but he’s very nice. Perhaps it’s time for me to renew the acquaintance ...” She reached for the telephone.