Arkwright (3 page)

He gave her an expectant look, as if hoping that she'd recognize his byline. “I'm sorry, Mr. Skinner—”

“Harry.”

“But I haven't read much science fiction except my grandfather's.”

A sad smile, accompanied by an even sadder sigh. “Story of my life,” Harry said quietly. “Thirty-nine books, and I'll probably be forgotten ten minutes after I'm dead.”

“I always said you should have picked a better pseudonym.” Maggie walked over to one of the armchairs and lowered herself into it. “Something more memorable than the shade of paint you put on your house.”

“George Hallahan.” George carried his drink to the couch. “Not a writer … or at least not science fiction.”

Kate nodded, and then something tickled the back of her mind. She remembered a piece she'd written a couple of years earlier when she'd covered a conference at MIT regarding interstellar exploration; several speakers had made reference to the work of a former Manhattan Project scientist, a physicist from the Institute of Advanced Study by name of …

“Dr. George Hallahan.” She stared at him. A legend in the theoretical physics community. “You knew Grandpapa.”

“An old and dear friend. He'd call from time to time when he needed help with something.” Seeing the astonished look on her face, George grinned. “No, you won't find my name in any of the acknowledgments. The security agreements I'd signed when I was doing military research at General Atomics would have meant getting a visit from the FBI if they'd learned I was telling a science fiction writer how nuclear rocket engines worked. Besides, it didn't hurt Nat's reputation to let his readers believe that he dreamed up that techy stuff all by himself.”

“Not to mention his plots,” Harry muttered.

“Hush. Not true, and you know it.” Maggie turned to Kate. “It doesn't sound like it, but Harry and Nat were best friends, practically brothers. What you're hearing is the sound of sibling rivalry.”

Kate discreetly glanced at her watch. It was almost one o'clock. If she stayed much longer, she'd hit the weekend traffic on the pike going back to Boston. “Well, it's been a pleasure to meet all of you, but—”

Maggie held up a hand. “This is important, and I promise we won't take much more of your time. It concerns your grandfather's will.”

“Oh?”

An apologetic smile. “I wish I could tell you otherwise, but it's not what you think, if you're thinking what I expect you'd be. Nat's lawyer let me take a look at it, so I'll spare you the anxiety of waiting to hear from him. Your grandfather left nothing to his family. Not you, not your mother, and not any of the relatives hanging around outside.” A dry laugh. “Mr. Sterling found a case of
The Galaxy Patrol
in the basement. Signed Gnome Press first editions, just a little brown around the edges. Quite valuable. He'll be giving them to everyone here, just so no one goes home empty-handed.”

“Bet half of them wind up on eBay,” Harry said.

“Disappointed?” George seemed to be studying Kate's reaction.

She shrugged. “Not really. I barely knew Grandpapa, and he and Mom didn't get along at all. I really shouldn't expect that he'd leave us”—she waved a hand around the office—“all this.”

“No.” Maggie crossed her legs. “The house is being put on the market. The furniture will be auctioned. His books are being purchased by an antiquarian book dealer in New York, and we're negotiating with science fiction art collectors in Chicago and Alabama for his paintings. His savings will be liquidated, as well, once the estate's debts are settled. Fortunately, there are not many. Nat was nothing if not frugal.” She smiled. “Even his papers are going somewhere else … the Eaton Collection at the University of California–Riverside. No cash for that, I'm afraid, but the estate will be getting a nice tax write-off.”

“I see. And who's getting the money?”

“The Arkwright Foundation.”

“The what?”

“Nat stated in his will that a nonprofit foundation is to be established in his name to underwrite various worthy projects. As executor of his literary estate, it will be my responsibility to make sure that all future income from his books—royalties, reprint sales, residuals from his media properties, and so forth—will be funneled directly into the foundation, where it will be invested into various enterprises that will increase the income over time.”

“Uh-huh. I see.” Kate set down the champagne and folded her arms together. “And what's to prevent the Arkwright Foundation from becoming your own money market account?”

Maggie's lips pursed, and her eyes became glacial. George cleared his throat. “You have a right to be suspicious,” he said, quietly diplomatic, “but I assure you, on both my word of honor and the memory of our friend, that nothing of the sort will happen. In fact, that's the reason we've asked you here. We'd like to ask you to join us on the foundation's board of directors.”

“Me? But I—”

“Barely knew him,” Harry said, finishing her thought for her. “Yeah, we know. Believe me, Nat regretted this more than you'll ever know.”

“I'm going to have to believe you, because he sure didn't let me know.”

“Your mother stood in the way,” George continued. “Their enmity is something we can't undo, but we can step around her by asking you to be the family's representative in the Arkwright Foundation.”

“I see,” Kate said, although she really didn't. To buy herself a moment, she picked up her drink. The champagne had lost its sparkle, but it wet a throat that had gone dry. “You still haven't told me what the foundation is all about. What's its purpose? Establish a wild bird sanctuary? Save whales? Provide free science fiction books to underprivileged kids?”

None of the three said anything for a few seconds. Harry and George looked at Maggie, silently deferring to her.

“We could tell you,” Maggie said at last, “but it's a long story and one you might not believe if you heard it here and now. Perhaps it's better if you found out yourself.”

Standing up from her chair, Maggie walked over to the desk. Opening a drawer, she pulled out a white cardboard box. “This is the last thing your grandfather wrote,” she said, carrying it across the room. “An autobiography he'd been working on over the last several months or so. He didn't finish it … and frankly, I'm glad he didn't. I asked him not to write the damned thing, but he wouldn't listen.”

Kate took the box from her and opened it. Inside lay a short sheaf of typewritten paper, probably no more than sixty or seventy pages in all. The cover sheet read
My Life in the Future,
with her grandfather's byline below it. “Why didn't you want him to write it?”

Maggie hesitated. “There are things about him that shouldn't be published.”

“She's right,” Harry said. “Your grandfather had secrets that shouldn't have been revealed while he was still alive … while a lot of people are still alive.” George nodded in agreement.

“It's an incomplete manuscript, though, so no doubt you'll have questions.” Maggie returned to her seat. Groaning softly, she bent down to pick up her handbag from where she'd left it on the side table. “You'll probably want to call us,” she went on, opening it to fish out a silver card holder. “Here's my card. Harry and George will give you theirs too.”

“I don't have one,” Harry said, “but my number's in the Philly phone book.” Catching a look from Maggie, he shrugged. “So I'm cheap. Sue me.”

“I can be reached at the institute,” George said. “I'll tell my secretary to put you through if you call.”

Kate glanced at the card Maggie handed her:
KROUGH LITERARY AGENCY
, with a Park Avenue address in New York. “Why don't you just tell me?” she asked.

“Think of this as investigative journalism,” Maggie replied. “Just don't publish the results.”

“Okay, but how do I know you'll tell me the truth?”

“You can trust us,” George said, a sly smile upon his face. “We're the Legion of Tomorrow.”

 

4

My Life in the Future
sat untouched on Kate's desk for the next couple of weeks while she worked on the nuclear power plant story. Autumn winds were pulling the leaves from the trees before she had a chance to pick it up again; by then, the conversation she'd had with her grandfather's friends had faded to the back of her mind, becoming little more than a curious incident.

Her mother didn't apologize for skipping the funeral, but she seemed a little more interested when Kate told her about having met Maggie, Harry, and George. She didn't know the two men but told Kate that she'd known Maggie over the years; apparently, she got along with Grandpapa's agent, because she asked how she was doing. Yet she wasn't surprised that her father hadn't remembered either her or Kate in his will and was only mildly put out to discover that he'd left everything to the Arkwright Foundation.

“Figures he'd do that,” she said, sitting across the breakfast nook from Kate when her daughter came to visit her. “Even in the end, he cared nothing for his family.”

Hearing this, Kate remembered something Maggie had said: how her grandfather had actually cared for her but that her mother had stood in the way. “Mom, why didn't you and Grandpapa get along?” she asked. “What did he do that was so terrible?”

Her mother stared down at her coffee cup. “It's better that you don't know.”

Kate hesitated. “Did he … umm … touch you, or…?”

“No.” Sylvia Arkwright shook her head. “Grandpapa may have been many things, but child molester wasn't one of them.” She picked up her coffee, and Kate noticed that her hand trembled slightly. “But he was cold toward me most of my life, and I knew even as a young girl that he really didn't love me. It wasn't until she was dying that your grandmother told me why.”

“And that is?”

Her mother said nothing for a few moments and instead gazed out the kitchen window. “She made me swear that I wouldn't tell you until Grandpapa was gone,” she said at last. “I'm not sure I'm ready to break that promise yet. It's a little too painful, and I'm just not willing to share that with anyone. Even you.”

It was this conversation that reignited Kate's interest in her grandfather's unfinished autobiography. Upon returning home, she picked it up from her desk and carried it into the den. There was a message on her phone from the guy she'd been dating for a while; he complained that he hadn't seen her in a couple of weeks and wanted to know if they could get together soon. Kate had never been good at maintaining relationships, but she realized that if she didn't let him know that she was still interested in him, he'd slip out of her life the way so many of her other former boyfriends had. All she needed to do was make a quick call and promise to get together with him for dinner and a show.

Of course she would. Then she turned to the first page of Grandpapa's autobiography, and that idea faded from her mind.

 

5

“My life changed,” Nathan Arkwright would later write, “the day I picked up the June 1939 issue of
Astounding Science Fiction
and read in ‘In Times to Come' that there would be a convention of science fiction fans in New York during the first week of July. Since it was intended to coincide with the New York World's Fair in Flushing Meadows, it was being called the World's Science Fiction Convention. Although I knew at once that I had to go, little did I realize that it would shape my destiny…”

Sunday morning church bells were still echoing through midtown Manhattan when Nat strolled down West Fifty-ninth Street. He didn't know exactly where Caravan Hall was, but that was where the piece in
Astounding
had said the convention was being held. As it turned out, it was a couple of blocks from the Hudson River waterfront, and he didn't have to look hard to find it. A handful of young men standing out front holding copies of the latest issues of
Amazing, Astounding,
and
Thrilling Wonder
told him that he'd come to the right place.

Oddly, two police officers stood beside the steps leading to the front door. They were eyeing everyone who walked in, and Nat couldn't help but notice that one of them was tapping his nightstick against his leg. This didn't look good. Nat decided that he'd better make sure he was in the right place, so he approached three guys standing across the street from the hall. One of them, a skinny fellow with a row of protuberant front teeth, gazed at Nat as he stepped up to them.

“Excuse me, but—” Nat began.

“You're looking for the World's Science Fiction Convention?”

Nat nodded.

“Upstairs. Second floor.” He nodded toward the door. “Who are you?”

“Nat Arkwright, from Brooklyn.”

“Fred Pohl, from Queens.” He offered a handshake as he nodded to the others. “Don Wollheim and Cyril Kornbluth.”

Nat shook hands with each of them, trying not to show his nervousness. He recognized Wollheim and Pohl as bylines from stories he'd read; they weren't major writers, to be sure, but he was envious to meet fellows not much older than himself who'd succeeded in selling stories to the pulps. But it wasn't just that. Nat had never before met anyone else who shared his passion for science fiction; no one else at Brooklyn High had the slightest bit of interest in this sort of thing, and he found himself anxious to fit in.

“How did you find out about this?” Cyril asked. He was a big, broad-shouldered fellow whose sharp eyes peered at Nat from behind horn-rimmed glasses.

“Saw a bit about it in that magazine.” Nat pointed to the copy of
Astounding
tucked under Cyril's arm. It was the new issue, with a cover story, “Black Destroyer,” by someone he'd never heard of, A. E. van Vogt. “Close enough to where I live, so I decided to drop in.”