Amazon Author Central: Tracking your ignominy in real time

Posted on February 2, 2013 by Richard Bowker

Want an easy way to feel like a failure? Become an author and check out Amazon Author Central, which provides a wealth of statistics about how badly your books are doing. The depressing news is updated hourly, so you can check back multiple times during the day to increase your feelings of worthlessness. Here, for example, is a snapshot of how I stack up against other fiction writers over the past month. The trend slopes upward a bit, but in a fairly narrow range of mediocrity.

Amazon also offers graphs by category (I’m close to breaking into the top thousand in science fiction!) and by individual book. In the old days, authors would get their bad news via semiannual unintelligible statements from publishers. Are we better off today? I suppose. Theoretically, you could use all this information to plot your marketing strategies or judge their effectiveness, if you’re the sort of author who has marketing strategies. But mostly it’s just another way of wasting your time when you should be working on your next book. After all, that’s the one that’s going to make you famous!

Portal, an online novel: Chapter 17

Posted on January 26, 2013 by Richard Bowker

Lying in his dismal hospital bed, Kevin has convinced Larry to return to the refugee camp and look for their families. Do they even exist in this world? Can Larry help them? He decides that he has to find out. So he sneaks off from Coolidge Palace, makes his way through Cheapside, and talks his way into the desperately crowded camp. And now he has to search it . . .

***************

Chapter 17

“Help me, help me, I’m dying!”

An old man was kneeling on the ground by the gate. He grabbed my leg and wouldn’t let go.

The other people ignored him. His eyes were watery; he didn’t have any teeth. His whole body was shaking.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “There’s nothing–”

“I have no one,” he said. “I can’t make it to the food line. Please help, else I’ll die.”

“I’m sorry,” I repeated. “I don’t . . . I can’t . . . ” I pulled away from him; he wasn’t strong enough to stop me.

Maybe this was a big mistake, I thought.

My next thought was: It really stinks in here.

I moved away from the gate and looked around. I thought the place had been crowded before, but now there were people everywhere, jammed together for as far as I could see alongside the narrow dirt paths. All the animals were gone, too, except for some sad-looking horses and donkeys. I remembered the cows and goats and oxen tied to the wagons that people were driving into the city the day Kevin and I arrived. Eaten by now, I figured, or dead of starvation.

I started walking. That first night, things had been kind of mellow in the camp: people singing, kids playing, old men smoking pipes in front of fires . . . Now all the mellowness was gone. People were mostly just sitting down, on the ground or in their wagons, wrapped in blankets, staring back at me with dead eyes. A lot of the men were holding rifles in their laps. With soldiers afraid to enter the camp, I guess I understood why. There were lots of people walking along the paths, too; some of them looked pretty scary, like they’d kill you if they thought you had a loaf of bread on you. I really didn’t feel like asking anyone if they knew a Barnes family from Glanbury. Just looking at people made me nervous.

So I walked. And I thought: How am I going to find anyone in this huge, crowded place? What if I don’t recognize my family? What if my father has a beard, or Cassie has a different hairstyle, or they’re all so bundled up that I walk right past them?

I wandered around for a long time until I started to get tired. I stopped at an intersection of two paths and tried to decide what to do. Should I just give up? I couldn’t stay here forever. I still had a long walk back through Cheapside to headquarters.

I realized that I had a lump in my throat. Now that I was here, now that I’d taken the risk and gotten myself in trouble with Professor Palmer and Lieutenant Carmody, I really didn’t want this to be a waste of time. I really wanted to find my family, or Kevin’s family, or someone. Mostly I wanted my original idea to come true–I wanted to help my mother.

Then I saw a fight break out. “You filthy picker!” someone shouted. And two kids my age were dragging another kid down to the ground, where they started punching and kicking him.

I started to turn away. Not my problem, like the old man by the gate. But no one else was breaking up the fight, and it looked like the kid on the ground was going to get killed.

Something made me go over there. “Hey!” I shouted, and I dragged one of the kids away from the fight. He was short but tough-looking. He glared at me. “What’s your problem, mate?” he demanded.

Meanwhile the kid they were beating up managed to scramble away. He got to his feet and looked at me for a second, then started to run away. The other kid took off after him. The tough-looking kid broke away from my grasp and punched me in the stomach. I gasped for breath and my legs buckled; he really knew how to punch. But he didn’t stay to punch me again; instead, he turned and ran after the other kids.

When I managed to catch my breath I started running after all of them. Because the kid they had been beating up was Stinky Glover. Not as fat as in our world, but I’d recognize that face anywhere.

I couldn’t find them, though. They were lost in the maze of paths. I kept going until I was sure it was useless, and then I stopped to catch my breath again.

A picker. That was slang in this world for a thief. It figured that Stinky would be a picker.

I had lost him, and that was bad. But still, I was excited. If Stinky was here, then Kevin was right. Why couldn’t my family or his family be here too? I just had to keep looking.

But where? Just wandering around wasn’t working. There had to be a better way.

In the distance I saw people lined up. For food? The privies? I went over to the line. Everyone had a bucket. They were waiting for water, I realized.

The line moved fairly quickly. I walked alongside, trying to glance at the people in it. As usual, they looked back at me suspiciously. Who was I? Was I going to cut in front of them? I didn’t recognize anyone. At the front of the line was a little stream that went through a corner of the camp. People were filling their buckets from the stream. There were plenty of soldiers there to keep the line orderly. I recognized one of them–he had been loading the sacks of grain that wicked hot first day. He nodded to me. “What’re you doing here, mate?” he asked.

“Just looking for someone.”

“Most everyone passes by here sooner or later. No lack of water at least. And it’s not giving everyone the flux the way it did back in September. Still not the cleanest stream in the world, y’understand.”

Mr. Harper had mentioned the flux. I figured it was something like diarrhea. “What happens when the stream freezes?” I asked.

“Ah. None of us’ll be here by that time, I trust. If we are, there’ll be worse things to worry about than the flux.”

He fell silent, and I studied the people in line. Even though it only took a few seconds to fill your buckets, the line stretched out a long ways. If it was this bad getting water, I wondered what it was like getting food–if there still was any food. People probably spent a lot of their day just standing in line.

I stuck my hands stuck in my armpits to keep them warm. Sometimes I’d walk up and down the line. Sometimes I sat on a tree stump nearby. Occasionally there was a fight when someone tried to cut into the line, and the soldiers would move quickly to break it up. But for the most part people just shuffled along in silence waiting their turn. A lot of them looked too tired to fight, or to care about anything.

At some point I noticed a distant booming. Artillery, I decided. Had the final battle started? The booming quickly became constant. An old woman standing in line started to weep.

It was getting late. I wasn’t going to make it back to headquarters before curfew. I had my pass, but that wasn’t going to do much good if some policeman decided to shoot me. And how much trouble was I was going to be in if I did make it back? I was afraid to leave, though. If I left, would I ever be able to return?

I was getting hungry. And thirsty, watching all that water go by. I must’ve stopped paying attention for a while. I know I was feeling sorry for myself, even with these people all around me who were a lot worse off than I was, even with Kevin lying bored to death in the hospital. So I didn’t see her until she had already gone to the river and filled her buckets.

Long black hair, shining blue eyes–I knew it was her, even wearing a long skirt and a shapeless jacket. Even looking exhausted and worried.

My first response was the same one I felt in English class, in the cafeteria, in the world neither of us inhabited now. I couldn’t say anything to her. I was just too shy. She had already gone past me when I got over it. Things had changed. This was important.

“Nora!” I called out.

She just kept walking.

I went after her. “Nora?” I repeated when I had caught up to her.

There was no recognition, just puzzlement and suspicion, in those blue eyes. “My name’s not Nora,” she said, and my heart sank.

Should authors feel bad when they kill off a character?

Posted on January 23, 2013 by Richard Bowker

Here I talk about the problem that pops up when you kill off a character in a series, only to realize later you’d like to have him around. A more interesting issue is your emotional relationship with characters you create. Should it bother you when you kill them off? I was talking to a reader about Pontiff, where (not much of a spoiler alert) a sympathetic character dies at the climax. She wasn’t especially bothered by this, because it was a bit of a twist on what she was expecting, but it made perfect sense in the context of the plot. Which was the effect I had hoped to achieve.

But I had grown to like that character. I wished her nothing but the best! I was sorry she had to die! This didn’t stop me from killing her, all the same. It wasn’t a question of morality; it was a question of aesthetics. Your readers aren’t going to care about your characters if you don’t care about them yourself. But you’re the boss — not the characters.

This brings me to the case of the angelic character Little Nell in Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop The novel was serialized, as all of his novels were, so readers could follow the decline of the little girl’s health week by week. Wikipedia says:

The hype surrounding the conclusion of the series was unprecedented; Dickens fans were reported to storm the piers of New York City, shouting to arriving sailors (who might have already read the last installment in the United Kingdom), “Is Little Nell alive?” In 2007, many newspapers claimed the excitement at the release of the last volume of The Old Curiosity Shop was the only historical comparison that could be made to the excitement at the release of the last Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Dickens lived life and wrote fiction in a higher key than anyone else. so it’s not surprising that he was as upset by her death as his readers were.

Dickens was traumatized by the death of Little Nell. As he was writing it he felt as though he were experiencing the death of one of his children. It also brought back painful memories of the death of his sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth.

But a novelist has gotta do what a novelist has gottta do.

Here, if you can bear to read it, is Dickens’ description of Little Nell in death:

She was dead. No sleep so beautiful and calm, so free from trace of pain, so fair to look upon. She seemed a creature fresh from the hand of God, and waiting for the breath of life; not one who had lived and suffered death. Her couch was dressed with here and there some winter berries and green leaves, gathered in a spot she had been used to favor. “When I die, put near me something that has loved the light, and had the sky above it always.” Those were her words.

She was dead. Dear, gentle, patient, noble Nell was dead. Her little bird, a poor, slight thing the pressure of a finger would have crushed, was stirring nimbly in its cage, and the strong heart of its child-mistress was mute and motionless forever! Where were the traces of her early cares, her sufferings, and fatigues? All gone. Sorrow was dead, indeed, in her; but peace and perfect happiness were born, imaged in her tranquil beauty and profound repose.

This is great stuff, although you may be inclined to agree with Oscar Wilde: “One would have to have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without dissolving into tears…of laughter.”

Writing advice (good and bad) from Flavorwire

Posted on January 20, 2013 by Richard Bowker

Flavorwire is one of those annoying listicle-based sites. But it does have some good pieces about books and writing. Here is a list of quotations from writers about revising your work. The pithiest (and most vivid) is from Raymond Chandler:

Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.

Most of the writers (except Nick Hornby) are big on cutting stuff out. This doesn’t always work for me, because I tend to underwrite my first drafts. But your mileage may vary.

And here is a list of what the author considers bad writing advice from famous authors. This one seems like a bit of a stretch. Many of the quotes are obviously exaggerations to make a point (for example, Richard Ford’s “Don’t have children”). And the author seems to misunderstand a couple of them. For example, she doesn’t like this famous quote from George Orwell:

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

Her comment: “Never use anything you’ve seen before? That seems like a tall order.” But as a commenter points out, that’s not what Orwell said — he’s talking about figures of speech you’re used to seeing. Big difference.

Is the paranormal “unconstrained whimsicality”?

Posted on January 20, 2013 by Richard Bowker

Apropos of my discussion of the paranormal and Marlborough Street, here (via Jerry Coyne) is an excerpt from an article by the Oxford chemist Peter Atkins:

One aspect of the paranormal versus real science should not go unremarked. As in other forms of obscurantist pursuit, such as religion, it is so easy to make time-wasting speculations. The paranormal is effectively unconstrained whimsicality. Original suggestions in real science emerge only after detailed study and the lengthy and often subtle process of testing whether current concepts are adequate. Only if all this hard work fails is a scientist justified in edging forward human understanding with a novel and possibly revolutionary idea. Real science is desperately hard work; the paranormal is almost entirely the fruit of armchair fantasizing. Real science is a regal application of the full power of human intellect; the paranormal is a prostitution of the brain. Worst of all, it wastes time and distorts the public’s vision of the scientific endeavour.

(Neither Coyne nor Atkins takes any prisoners.)

This seems perfectly true to me. And this is an aid in writing fiction that involves the paranormal: you get to make up the rules, and no one gets to tell you That’s really not how it works. You are the one doing the “armchair fantasizing”; you’re not advancing human understanding, but you may entertain a few people. The hero in Marlborough Street can find missing persons and occasionally dip into someone else’s mind; the heroine of Summit with great mental effort can force a person to change the way he thinks and acts. The only limitation is the limitation of all fiction: internal consistency. It’s your fictional universe, but once you’ve set up its rules, you have to live by them.

Portal, an online novel: Chapter 16

Posted on January 19, 2013 by Richard Bowker

Kevin appears to have survived drikana. Once the quarantine was over, he and Larry, along with Professor Palmer, escaped the invading Canadians in Cambridge and rowed back across the river to Boston, nearly getting killed in the process. Now more adventures await them . . .

**********************

Chapter 16

That nighttime journey from Cambridge back to Boston was the second time we had been shot at in this world. It wouldn’t be the last.

Except for blue-uniformed policemen carrying nightsticks, the streets of Boston were deserted as we headed for the hospital. The policemen eyed our wagon as we raced past them, but no one tried to stop us. I think the sergeant would’ve shot anyone who tried.

Within a few minutes he pulled up in front of a large brick building with a sign in front that said Massachusetts General Hospital. “Wait here,” the sergeant ordered us. He got down from the wagon and went inside. A few minutes later he returned with a couple of people carrying a stretcher. They lifted Kevin out of the wagon and onto the stretcher. The professor and I followed along as they brought him inside. We never saw the sergeant again.

The building didn’t smell like hospitals in our world. It stank, really. And it was dark, with just an occasional oil lamp lighting the corridors, and not all that clean. Somewhere a woman was screaming in pain. As we walked, a bearded guy who was apparently a doctor started questioning us about Kevin’s drikana. When had the symptoms appeared? Who had been present at the onset? How had we treated the illness? He wasn’t happy to learn that we hadn’t bled Kevin. “The height of folly,” he said.

“Except that the patient still lives,” Professor Palmer growled.

We passed through a door with a red “C” on it, and then into a small room with no furniture except for a bed, a chair, a little table with a candle on it, and a chamber pot. There was one small, barred window. Kevin was put into the bed, and the doctor examined the three of us. It turned out that the professor had been nicked in the shoulder by a bullet back on the river and hadn’t said anything about it. The doctor bandaged him up, but other than the bullet wound he couldn’t find anything wrong with us.

“You will be examined further in the morning,” he said. “In the meantime, none of you is to leave this room.”

“In the meantime,” the professor said, “we demand that you send a message to Lieutenant William Carmody, chief of staff to General Solomon Aldridge, informing him of our presence here. Also, send word immediately to my old friend Doctor George Dreier, who is the president of this august institution. Tell him that Professor Alexander Palmer has taken up residence in his hospital and would like to chat about the accommodations. And bring us some food; we’ve had a taxing night.”

The doctor didn’t look too happy about getting those orders. He simply nodded and left without a word. We were by ourselves finally. And safe. The professor sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. “A little too much excitement for someone my age, lads,” he said.

“Are we going to be stuck here?” I asked.

“I’m afraid Kevin may be in hospital for a while,” he replied. “Even though the claustration is officially over, they’ll want to be especially careful that he doesn’t suffer a relapse. A drikana outbreak in the city would be just too devastating to contemplate. As for us–I expect we’ll be able to leave once they’ve poked at us enough to be assured we don’t have the disease.”

I noticed that Kevin had already fallen asleep. “Will we be able to visit him?” I asked. “He’s going to get awfully lonely in here. This place is creepy.”

“That should be possible, Larry. I’ll talk to Doctor Dreier.”

I decided I was getting pretty tired, too. I closed my eyes. “You were really brave on the river, Professor,” I said.

“One becomes brave when one has no other choice,” he replied. “Now we can all relax a little.” And that’s the last thing I remembered until I opened my eyes and saw Lieutenant Carmody standing in the room.

“Very glad to find you have all survived,” he said. “I’m informed you’re all in reasonably good health as well, thank God.” Gray light shone through the small window. I figured it was about dawn. As usual, the lieutenant was freshly shaved, and his uniform was gleaming.

“You might have asked your sentries on the shore to refrain from shooting at us,” the professor replied. “I received a welcoming present in the shoulder from one of them.”

“We did send out an order, actually, but unfortunately orders from headquarters do not always reach the men in the field. And if they do, all too often they’re ignored or forgotten.”

“No wonder we’re losing this war,” the professor muttered. “Anyway, what have we been missing in the past week?”

“We are established on the grounds of the palace, and progress continues, although Professor Foster’s behavior has left something to be desired. He has not taken your absence well.”

“I’ll take care of Benjamin. How are negotiations with the enemy progressing?”

“Vice President Boatner and Lord Percival ably represent our interests,” the lieutenant replied. “Unfortunately, the enemy seems to think there is little to negotiate. ‘Unconditional surrender or death’ would be a reasonable summary of their position.”

“Not especially conducive to a diplomatic solution. And the situation in the city?”

“Not pleasant, I’m afraid,” the lieutenant replied. “There is a strict curfew in force, dusk to dawn, and we’ve had to divert soldiers to help the police maintain order. So far things are relatively calm, but I wouldn’t want to guess how much longer they will remain so. People are cold and hungry and frightened, and there is little hope that their situation will improve.”

The curfew helped explain why the streets had been so deserted last night, I figured.

“At any rate,” the lieutenant went on, “I’m delighted you made it to Boston safely, and we’d like to get you back to work as soon as possible.”

“Yes,” the professor said. “We may need a dispensation from Doctor Dreier to get Larry and me out of here, however.”

“I’m sure he’ll listen to reason.”

They went off to find the doctor, and I stayed behind with Kevin. There was a loaf of bread and a pot of tea on a table next to Kevin’s bed. The bread was stale, though, and the tea was cold. Kevin woke up while I was trying to swallow a few bites. I gave him some bread and explained what was going on.

“You mean I’m gonna be stuck in this place by myself?” he asked.

“Looks like it. But I’ll come and visit you as often as they’ll let me.”

“Thanks,” Kevin said. “They really don’t mess around with this disease, do they?”

I shook my head. “Look at the bars on that window over there. I bet they’re to keep drikana patients from escaping.”

“I can see why they’re scared,” Kevin said. “I wouldn’t wish this disease on my worst enemy. Still, it’s gonna be really boring in here.”

“Yeah, but it’s better than most of the alternatives.”

“No kidding.”

Lieutenant Carmody and Professor Palmer returned then with sort of good news. The doctor had no objection to the professor and me leaving, but Kevin had to stay in the hospital for at least a couple more weeks. “He is also very interested in some of the medical theories I have picked up from you boys,” the professor said. “An extraordinarily open-minded man, for a doctor. Larry, let’s go. Kevin, we’ll be back to visit. I’ll see if I can find a chess set and some books to keep you entertained.”

It felt awful leaving Kevin behind, but there was nothing we could do about it. We went outside, and Peter was waiting there with the lieutenant’s carriage. It was good to see him again. He brought us straight to Coolidge Palace, and we got out to inspect the work going on. I just kind of tagged along, actually; there wasn’t a lot I could help with at this point.

The balloons looked pretty much ready to use, now that they had figured out how to stop the leaks. They were still experimenting with the best way of heating the air, but that seemed like a detail. People had seen the balloons flying over the palace grounds and had gotten very excited. “Airships,” they called them.

Professor Foster was very proud of his electric fence, but there was concern about how much power his batteries could generate, and what distance the fence would be able to cover. Professor Palmer questioned him sharply, and as usual he got confused and defensive. “It will work,” he insisted. “You can count on me. You can count on electricity.”

No one looked convinced.

Lieutenant Carmody left Professor Palmer in charge after a while and returned to headquarters. I hung around all day, doing whatever people asked me to, and in the evening the professor and I went to headquarters too. He was pretty tired. I figured his shoulder was bothering him, but he wouldn’t admit it. “There is much still to be done, and precious little time,” he said. “I fear I won’t be able to visit Kevin as often as I’d like.”

“I can go by myself,” I pointed out.

“Traveling through the city alone will be quite dangerous,” he responded.

“I survived drikana and the Canadians,” I said. “Not much is going to scare me anymore.”

That brought a smile to his face. “Good point,” he admitted. “But courage doesn’t keep you safe. We should talk to Lieutenant Carmody. Perhaps Peter can drive you.”

We found the lieutenant in his room. He was okay with having Peter drive me once in a while, but not every day. “I’m sorry that Kevin is in hospital,” he said, “but winning the war must take precedence.”

“I worry about Larry on the city streets by himself,” the professor said.

The lieutenant considered. “We could give him a military pass,” he said. “That might keep him out of trouble if the police pick him up after curfew.”

“That’s better than nothing, I suppose.”

So I got a pass, and they found me a beat-up winter coat that looked like it would be even more useful. It was definitely getting colder now. I couldn’t imagine how people in the camps would survive, once winter really set in. On the other hand, everyone expected the war to be over before that happened.

The next morning Peter drove me to the hospital. It turned out to be near the river, down the hill from Coolidge Palace. I brought along a couple of books, a deck of cards, and a chess set that the professor had borrowed from a colonel who was too busy to use it. The streets were still crowded during the day, but it was hard to go a block without people running up to the carriage begging for food. The restaurants were all closed, I noticed, and there were armed guards outside the few grocery stores that were still open.

Kevin was overjoyed to see me. “This place is horrible,” he said. “There’s nothing to do, no one to talk to. They just bring you a lousy meal every once in a while and empty your chamber pot and then disappear. And that doctor with the beard is still mad that you guys didn’t bleed me.”

“And no TV,” I pointed out.

Kevin sighed. “No TV. No nothing.”

So we played chess (I lost every game), and we played cards, and we talked–about this world and our world, sort of all mixed in together. I had to go after a couple of hours, but I came back the next day, and the next, and every day after that.

A couple of times I had to walk, but that was okay. I was familiar with the route, and I always got back to headquarters well before the dusk curfew. Nobody bothered me, although I saw a fight or two and some people trying to break into a store. Professor Palmer started to worry less about me–not that he had much time to worry, with all the stuff he was supervising at Coolidge Palace. At the officer’s mess, the food got skimpier and skimpier. Standing in line to wash up in the morning, I overheard the officers worrying that the situation couldn’t last much longer. Even Bessy, the huge woman who brought out the hot water, was starting to look thin.

As for Kevin–physically he kept getting better, although he too looked thin. His mental state was another story. He had too much time to think, and the more he thought, the unhappier he got. It was the same old stuff: we wouldn’t find the portal, we’d never get home, we’d be stuck here forever. But now it all seemed more real to him. “We’re going to die here,” he said one day. “Next week or in, like, sixty years, it’s gonna happen.”

“If we can just get back to Glanbury–”

“But we might not even be able to do that,” he pointed out, “if New England loses the war.”

“We won’t lose.”

But Kevin was too depressed to be convinced. “Larry,” he said, “remember that first day, sitting in the brig? Remember how we wondered if our families were in the camp?”

“Yeah, I guess so. You were the one who was wondering.”

“Well, I still am. I was thinking: If we can’t get back home, maybe at least we can find another version of our families here.”

“That’d be creepy,” I said. “What if you met yourself?”

“That wouldn’t be creepy. It’d be cool.”

I thought about it. Hadn’t I wondered if I existed in the Burger Queen world? But still . . . “I know Stinky Glover was in the Burger Queen world, and Nora Lally,” I said. “But this world split off from ours hundreds of years ago. What are the odds they’d be here?”

“Beethoven lived in this world,” Kevin pointed out. “And look at Calvin Coolidge, for crying out loud. If there was a Calvin Coolidge here, why can’t there be an Albright family and a Barnes family?”

“Well, Glanbury’s just a small farming town. There can’t be anywhere near as many people living there in this world as in ours. I mean, think about it. The right people have to fall in love and get married, generation after generation, every since the two universes split off. Even if it’s possible that our families are here, what are the odds?”

“I don’t know,” Kevin said. “But I think you should go look for them.”

“You want me to go to the Fens camp? That’s nuts!”

“Why?”

“Things are getting scary out there, Kevin. Professor Palmer is worried about me even coming to the hospital. And the camps are a whole lot worse. They won’t let anyone out anymore, and people inside are getting desperate. I was talking to a couple of soldiers at headquarters, and they said they wouldn’t go into the camp with anything less than a platoon.”

Kevin considered. “I can’t make you go,” he said. “But what if they’re in the camp? What if Cassie and Matthew and your Mom and Dad are just a couple of miles away from here?”

“Come on, Kevin, they’re not the same people. Even if they have the same DNA or whatever, all their experiences are different. So they’d be different.”

“Maybe you wouldn’t be that different–how do you know?”

“What do we have in common? Farming? Smallpox? Drikana?”

Kevin seemed to lose his energy all of a sudden. Maybe it was my mentioning his disease. “Suit yourself,” he said, lying back on his pillow. “I’ll go myself when I get sprung from here.”

“Look, I’ll think about it, okay?”

“Okay,” he replied. “Thanks, Larry.” He didn’t sound like he meant it.

But I did think about it. I had to admit I was curious, but was I curious enough to walk through Cheapside and talk my way into the camp? If I got in, could I get back out? I had my pass, but how much good was that going to do? I guess I was braver than I used to be, but going to the camp really seemed stupid.

When I visited Kevin the next day, he didn’t bring it up, but I could tell he was still thinking about it too. And he was still depressed about being in the hospital, and in this world.

Walking back to headquarters afterwards, I saw a woman begging outside a tavern, with a child Matthew’s age by her side. They were both wearing rags, basically. The mother looked desperate, and the child looked like he was too tired and hungry to care what happened to him. There were lots of beggars now, and most people just walked past them.

I didn’t have anything to give her, but she started me thinking about my own mother. If she was in the camp, how could she stand it? At home she was worried about perverts from Rhode Island getting hold of us. What would she do if there was real danger all around her?

And then I thought: What if I could help her? Bring her food, maybe even get her out of the camp.

I got excited thinking about this, and it took me a while to realize that something weird was happening. I had slipped from imagining my real mother being in the camp to thinking about my “other” mother–the one from this world.

And it didn’t seem to make any difference. I had been arguing with Kevin that the Emma Barnes in this world would be a different person from my Emma Barnes. Now I had fallen into thinking the opposite: She was my mom, no matter where she was.

Did I believe that?

I guess I sort of did. And if so, why didn’t I agree with Kevin? Why wasn’t I itching to go find my family?

The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do just that.

I imagine this was the process Kevin had gone through, lying there in his hospital bed with nothing to do but think. Practically everything about this world was different and strange. But if we could find our families . . . well, they might be different, but I was pretty sure they wouldn’t be strange. There would be some way in which my mom was still my mom, my dad was still my dad.

If they were here.

I lay awake that night in my cold attic room thinking about it some more. In the morning I was still thinking about it as I washed up outside, then ate a hard biscuit and some thin porridge in the mess. I went over to Coolidge Palace with Professor Palmer, but I didn’t say anything about going to the Fens camp; he would’ve gone nuts. It turned out he didn’t even want me to visit Kevin anymore.

“But I haven’t had any problems at all going to the hospital,” I pointed out.

“Yes, but it keeps getting worse in the city,” he responded. “I hear there was a riot at Dock Square yesterday.”

“I don’t go anywhere near Dock Square. And Kevin is expecting me.”

He just shook his head. “I can’t allow it, Larry,” he said. “Things are just too dangerous, and you are too valuable to us. If Peter could take you, then wait and bring you back, that would be acceptable. But Lieutenant Carmody can’t spare him any longer.”

This wasn’t good. Especially since I didn’t feel very valuable. On the palace grounds, mostly I just hung around and got in the way. Professor Palmer was usually in meetings or supervising something. Once I saw President Gardner, along with Vice President Boatner and Lord Percival, but he barely nodded to me. The three of them looked pretty tired. I heard that the Portuguese and Canadian diplomats were meeting with them off and on inside the palace, but no one had any idea how the negotiations were coming. For all any of us knew, the war could be over at any minute, with New England surrendering and all our efforts wasted.

After lunch I decided that I couldn’t stand it, so I just wandered away. The soldiers with the big plumed hats at the gate knew me, and they let me out without a problem.

I was fine as I walked through the heart of the city, but I began to get nervous as I came to Cheapside. When Kevin and I had walked through it before, it had been nighttime, and we hadn’t really seen just how run-down the place was, with its narrow dirt lanes and wretched shacks. No more hogs snuffling around in the alleys, though–they’d all been eaten long ago, I supposed. And no more music and laughter from inside the saloons. The only people I saw were hunched in doorways, and they stared at me suspiciously. I began to be conscious of my warm coat, which had looked pretty shabby when the lieutenant had first handed it to me. But I thought: these people don’t have enough energy to attack me.

At last I made it through Cheapside and reached the military buildings outside the camp. It felt strange to see them again, after so much had happened.

Near the barracks I spotted Chester, the guy who was in the brig with us. He was digging a big hole in the ground with some other soldiers. “Graves,” he said when he saw me. “Need lots of graves.”

I shuddered and hurried on.

There seemed to be a lot more soldiers guarding the camp, and the fence looked higher and sturdier. I searched for a familiar face, and finally spotted one. “Caleb!” I called out.

He was standing in front of the barracks, talking to some other soldiers. His beard was scruffier than I remember and, like everyone, he looked thinner. He glanced over when I called his name and smiled. “Hello, mate!” he said. “What brings you back here? I hear you was involved in that secret business back at the Palace.”

“I got the day off. I was wondering–can I get into the camp?”

“Now why would you want to do that, mate?” he asked. “It’s nasty in there. Everyone who’s inside just wants to get out.”

“I’m looking for a friend.”

He shook his head. “Know where he’s camped?”

“Not really.”

“Then you’ll not have much luck, I fear.”

“But I need to try,” I said, starting to feel desperate.

Caleb shrugged. “Suit yourself. Let’s go find Sergeant Hornbeam. Easy enough to get in, I suppose. The trick is getting back out. Used to be folks could wander outside, as long as they came back before curfew. Those days are gone now. Too many people, not enough of anything else.”

He brought me inside the barracks to a little office next to Colonel Clarett’s–the one where I had first met Lieutenant Carmody. Sergeant Hornbeam was sitting there writing on a sheet of paper.

“Sergeant, look who’s come back to visit!” Caleb said.

The sergeant looked up at me. If I was expected him to be happy to see me, I was mistaken. He just seemed puzzled and maybe a little annoyed. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“He wants to go visiting in the camp,” Caleb said.

“By yourself? Is Lieutenant Carmody with you?”

“No, uh, just me. But I’ve got a pass from him.”

I dug it out and gave it to him. He studied it. “Odd,” he muttered, then handed the pass back to me. “Hold onto it,” he said. “But take my advice and don’t go into the camp.”

“I’ll be careful,” I promised.

He shook his head. “We only go in there to cart out the dead now. But suit yourself. Show the pass to get back out. If there’s a problem, tell the guards to find me.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

He waved me away, and Caleb escorted me out of the barracks.

“So,” Caleb said as we walked over to the camp gates, “what does headquarters have up its sleeve? Flying airships, that’s what Fred heard. Hundreds of feet above Coolidge Palace.”

“I can’t really talk about it, Caleb.”

“Could you just tell me if there’s something, mate? Folks is getting mighty nervous, I don’t mind telling you. There’s also rumors that the president’s going to surrender by week’s end. So are we fighting, or are we giving up? It’d be good to know what’s what.”

“I don’t know about surrendering,” I said. “But I know they’re working on some things at Coolidge Palace, and I’m pretty sure they’re going to help.”

“As long as they’re still trying, that’s a good sign. Here you go, mate.”

We had reached the main gates. There were several soldiers standing guard. A crowd of people on the other side of the fence was yelling at one of them, demanding to be let out. The guards just ignored them.

“This here is Larry from headquarters, Sergeant,” Caleb said to the soldier in charge. “He’s to be let in and out of the camp, though why he wants to go in there is beyond me.”

“He’ll learn soon enough,” the sergeant replied with a shrug. “Take a couple of men and go to the side gate. Fix bayonets, in case you have to clear a path.”

“Right.” Caleb found a couple of his friends, and we went along the fence till we reached another gate, also heavily guarded, but with only a few people on the other side. Caleb and the guards put their bayonets on, then unlocked the gate and pretty much shoved me inside, while pushing back the people who lunged forward, trying to get out.

“Thanks, Caleb!” I shouted as I made my way through the people.

“Fare you well, mate!” he said. “And be careful!”

And there I was, back inside the camp.

The paranormal and Marlborough Street

Posted on January 13, 2013 by Richard Bowker

When I was writing Marlborough Street (ebook now available!) I did a good bit of reading about the paranormal, especially “psychic detectives,” since my hero, Alan Simpson, was such a beast, the reluctant owner of a gift that allowed him to find missing persons, living and dead.

I decided that there wasn’t much there. The scientific study of the paranormal didn’t reveal anything, and the anecdotes weren’t much better. I recall reading the autobiography of one self-proclaimed psychic detective, and by the end I realized that she hadn’t really solved a single crime or directly found a single missing person. As evidence of her prowess she would point to vague hints she had provided the police that later proved to be generally accurate. But that’s the stuff of newspaper horoscopes — if you say “I see a dark forest near a lake,” occasionally you will end up being sort of right. But which forest? Which lake? How near the lake? Where’s the body?

But I went ahead and wrote the novel, because, you know, reality is not a novelist’s problem. I liked the idea of a protagonist whose gift was more a curse than a blessing (and I used the same general concept in Summit for a character with a very different kind of psychic ability). Anyway, Alan spends a good bit of time pondering the fickle nature of his “gift,” as in this passage, in which it has once again let him down:

He had long ago come to the conclusion that his gift had a consciousness of its own and was determined to be perverse. The worst possible frame of mind was to care about what it gave him.

He recalled the time he had volunteered for a psi experiment at Harvard. He was a freshman, and temporarily in love with rationality. Surely ESP was the next great frontier of science, and surely he could help to conquer it. And if it helped him to understand himself, so much the better.

The researcher was a middle-aged psychology professor who, secure in his tenure, had evidently tired of running rats and wanted to dabble in the occult. In this experiment, a computer randomly generated simple drawings. The subject sat in a booth and tried to reproduce the drawings.

Nothing could be easier. Alan sat down and drew better than he had ever drawn before. The images flowed easily and vividly: a cow crossing railroad tracks, two black boys listening to the radio, a vase of roses lying on its side… When he handed in his booklet he was grinning with delight. You’re onto something now, Professor, he wanted to say.

Then he waited. If the professor was onto something, he wasn’t letting Alan know about it. Finally Alan camped outside his door during office hours and managed to get a few minutes of his time.

“Simpson, Simpson…” The fellow poked around his desk, littered with blue books and overflowing ashtrays, until he found Alan’s folder. “Ah, yes. A. Simpson. Chance level. Some interesting drawings, though.”

It took a moment to sink in. And as it did he was inside the professor’s mind for an instant of utter clarity: God, I’m tired. Maybe that sweet little thing with the black tights will show up. Dental bills. A Cognitive-Affective Theory of… Perhaps you’d like to discuss your paper over a…

Chance level. I should mention the black tights, Alan thought. What were the odds on that?

But then he realized what his gift was up to. If I mention the black tights, they’ll probably be wrong too. And Alan started to laugh. “Sorry to bother you,” he said. “Just curious.”

He didn’t feel like laughing now. No VW, no Julia, no cat—but he knew the gift remained, lurking in the shadows of his psyche, waiting to play its next trick. Alan kicked an empty motor-oil can and headed for the exit.

I like the idea of the paranormal lurking mischievously in the background, determined not to be caught by science and rationality. Do I believe it? Well, no. But it makes for a good story.

Portal, an online novel: Chapter 15

Posted on January 12, 2013 by Richard Bowker

The Canadian soldiers are approaching Cambridge. It’s time for Professor Palmer and the boys to retreat to Boston with the New England soldiers. They decide to spend one last night at home — to celebrate Harvest Day.

And then Kevin comes down with the dread disease drikana. Now they all have to be quarantined for seven days, with the enemy invading their city. Will Kevin survive? Even if he does, will the Canadians discover them and burn down the house with the three of them inside?

Kevin and Larry are a long way their old lives, where all they had to worry about was getting wet willies from Stinky Glover . . .

*******************

Chapter 15

We went back inside to take care of Kevin. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, pale and shivering, trying to throw up. “Am I dying?” he managed to whisper.

“You are very ill, Kevin,” the professor replied, “but we will take care of you.”

I wrapped a blanket around him.

Was he better? Worse? I changed my mind every few minutes, and finally decided he was about the same. Which meant he still had a chance. “Larry, what did I do to deserve this?” he whispered as he lay back, gasping, after one long stretch over the chamber pot.

“Hang in there, Kev,” I told him.

“I just want to go to school. I just want to be with my family.”

“It’ll be all right.”

“This is awful. They’ll never know what happened to me. I’ll die, and–” He started to cough, and then he began retching again. He was right. It was awful.

In the middle of the afternoon he drifted off to sleep again. I was exhausted. Just sitting was a strain.

“Go to my room and rest,” the professor urged me. “I’ll take care of Kevin.”

I didn’t want to leave him, but I wasn’t doing much good sitting there, so I went across the hall and lay down on the professor’s bed. I probably fell asleep right away. This time I didn’t dream of balloon rides. I dreamed of stepping into the portal and, instead of finding a new world, this one started spinning around me. I got dizzier and dizzier, and I realized: the germs have got me. Drikana. I’m going to die. And I thought: I hate this world, I hate this world . . .

I opened my eyes. The room was dark. I blinked and shook my head. Was I dizzy? Was I dying?

No, it was just a dream. I was hungry. I had to pee. But I felt okay. I got up and went back across the hall. Kevin was still asleep. The professor was reading a book by candlelight.

“This is good, right?” I asked him. “I mean, that he can sleep?”

“It is good.”

“And if he makes it through the night . . . ?”

“That will be a very good sign. But there’s nothing certain about the course of the disease, Larry. Even if Kevin survives the first two days, he will still be very weak. Often victims succumb to another disease that overtakes them in their weakened state. In rare cases, the drikana returns, and that is certain death.”

“I just want to be able to hope,” I said.

“So do I, Larry. So do I.”

We heard the sound of gunfire in the distance. I noticed that the curtain was drawn. “We’ll have to be careful about candles and lamps at night,” I remarked.

The professor nodded. “It’s lucky we’re not on a main thoroughfare,” he said. “But our situation is still perilous.”

“How are we going to get to Boston after the claustration is over?”

The professor put down the book and rubbed his eyes. “Let us first survive these first few days,” he said. “There’ll be time to decide what we do after that.”

So we took turns watching Kevin through the night. He woke up after a while, and the professor tried feeding him a little broth, but he couldn’t keep it down. I read to him, and he seemed to like that, but he was too weak to pay much attention. I wasn’t very sleepy, so I just kept on reading, even after Kevin had closed his eyes and fallen back asleep. I was too worried to just sit there and think. Was I dizzy yet? What would I do if Kevin died? What would happen if the Canadians showed up? It was probably better not to think about those things. But it was hard to avoid, sitting in the dark bedroom in the middle of the night with your friend maybe dying next to you.

Finally I nodded off again. When I woke up, it was light out. The professor was sitting in his chair, asleep. I looked over at Kevin. He was awake. “This sucks, you know that, Larry?” he said.

I could have kissed him.

“Am I gonna be all right?” he asked.

“Of course you are.”

His voice was weak, he was too exhausted to move very much, and he had no appetite, but he was definitely better. “You are a strong young man,” the professor pronounced after he had examined Kevin. In private, he told me that Kevin still wasn’t out of danger, but I don’t think I really believed him. Kevin was okay, and the professor and I were still okay, and drikana wasn’t going to defeat us.

By the end of the day we could feed Kevin some broth. By the next morning he wanted to know what was going on–weren’t we supposed to leave Cambridge? Where were the Canadians? Professor Palmer explained to him about claustration, and how we’d had to stay behind.

“You mean this is, like, enemy territory now? And we’re stuck here?”

“We haven’t seen any Canadians yet, but yes, I expect they have taken over Cambridge at this point.”

Kevin thought this over. “And you stayed behind to save me,” he said.

The professor put on his gruff voice. “We really had no choice, you see. The entire household must be claustrated when any inhabitant falls ill with the disease. It’s the law.”

“All right,” Kevin replied. “But, thanks just the same. I’d be dead without you.”

The professor nodded. “Of course, of course.” Then he turned away, and I think maybe his eyes were moist.

So then it was a question of getting Kevin stronger and hoping the Canadians didn’t notice us until the seven days were up. No fire during the day, no matter how cold it got; candlelight only behind thick curtains at night. We went outside as little as possible–to visit the privy, to take care of the animals. Once I was out in the barn, and I heard the sound of wagon wheels and soldiers’ voices, not that far away, and I prayed the animals would keep quiet until they passed. Lieutenant Carmody’s warning kept buzzing around in my brain–when they saw the claustration sign they wouldn’t take us prisoner, they’d simply burn us up. Could there be a worse death? The sounds faded eventually, and we were still safe.

Eventually we began talking about our escape. “Anything we attempt will be dangerous,” the professor explained, “but it should not be impossible to get to Boston. I have lived here much of my life, and I know the backroads well. On a clear night we should be able to reach the river without going near the Massachusetts Road–I have sketched out a route already. The Canadians won’t be patrolling these roads, I think–their enemy is ahead of them, not behind them.”

“But what happens when we reach the river?” I asked. “How do we get across?”

“The Canadians won’t have had time to build up positions along the entire length of the Charles, even if that is their strategy,” the professor replied. “They’re probably massed on either side of the road. We’ll need to work our way upriver. I know an inlet where Harvard keeps a small boathouse for its students. If we’re lucky, it will have escaped the enemy’s notice, and we can get a boat there and row across to the Boston side.”

“Will Kevin be strong enough to travel like this?”

“We don’t leave until Kevin is ready. He can ride in the back of the carriage, but it will surely be a bumpy trip.”

“I can make it,” Kevin said.

The professor shook his head. “Not until the seven days are up, at the earliest.”

I thought of the lieutenant’s final warning: We’d be shot if we showed up in Boston before those seven days. People didn’t fool around here when it came to drikana.

Kevin had a question, too. “What happens to Susie?”

“We’ll have to leave Susie at the boathouse,” the professor replied. “It can’t be helped, I’m afraid.”

That was just awful. The professor’s horse was like part of the family. But there was nothing we could say. It was clear we couldn’t get her across the river.

So we took care of Kevin, and we waited.

The seventh night was clear and cold. Kevin was still very weak, but eager to leave. “I’m ready,” he insisted. “Let’s get out of here.”

Professor Palmer was hesitant. “A day or two more would do you a world of good,” he said.

“Every day we’re here makes it more dangerous for all of us,” Kevin replied. Couldn’t argue with that. So the professor agreed: it was time to go.

There were things to be done first. We burned all Kevin’s bedclothes–a requirement at the end of claustration. Professor Palmer took down the sign; that was a big relief. We unloaded the books and papers we had so carefully put into the professor’s carriage a week ago; we weren’t going to row them across the river. It seemed like way more than a week had gone by since we had packed the carriage, since that happy Harvest Day. If the professor was sad that we had to leave all his stuff behind, he didn’t let on. Then we hitched up Susie, who seemed plenty surprised to have to go to work at this time of night. Last of all, we brought Kevin out and made him as comfortable as we could in the back of the carriage.

“Ready?” Professor Palmer asked.

“Ready.”

We headed off. I took one look back at the house, wondering if I’d ever see it again. Then we turned a corner, and it disappeared.

The night was quiet, and we seemed to make a huge amount of noise as we clopped along in the moonlight. Leaves floated down from the trees like small dark ghosts. I thought of the pretend scariness of Halloween, and how different this was. The enemy was out there somewhere, ready to kill us.

Susie seemed confused about where we were heading; this certainly wasn’t one of her regular routes. The professor led us through little lanes and narrow paths, staying away from the main roads. Sometimes it looked like there wasn’t a path at all, and we were cutting across a meadow or through someone’s backyard. We didn’t see or hear anyone else; the town seemed entirely deserted.

“You okay, Kev?” I whispered to him after we went over a big bump.

“Hangin’ in there,” he replied, but he didn’t sound all that great. “You know what I miss this time of year?”

“What’s that?”

“The World Series. I wonder if the Red Sox–”

“Save the baseball talk for General Aldridge, Kevin.”

“Not much farther to go,” the professor said.

We made one final turn, and then I could see the rippling of water in the distance and the outline of a long, dark structure. “The boathouse,” he whispered. We had made it!

We pulled up in front of the building. “Quickly,” the professor said, getting down from the carriage. “Larry, bring the lantern. We may have to risk a light inside.”

I turned to get the lantern. And that’s when I heard the voice.

“Stop right there! Turn around and get down! Both of you, raise your hands where I can see ’em.”

I turned, my heart pounding, and saw the shape of a man aiming a rifle at me. I did as I was told.

“Laurent,” he called out. “Wake up and give us some light if you please.”

He had one of those French-Canadian accents. In a few seconds a second soldier appeared out of the boathouse; he lit a lantern and held it up.

Both of the men had long hair and beards. The one with the rifle was big and burly; Laurent was smaller, and looked nervous. They were wearing dirty gray uniforms with the jackets unbuttoned.

“Put the lantern down and search them for weapons,” the burly soldier ordered Laurent. He seemed to be the boss.

Laurent came over and patted us down. “Trying to get to Boston, eh?” the other soldier asked meanwhile.

We didn’t reply.

“They don’t look like spies, Robert,” Laurent said when he was done. He pronounced it “Row-bare.”

“And what exactly do spies look like?” Robert snapped. “Do they wear red uniforms with ‘New England’ written on the sleeves?”

“We’re not spies,” the professor said. “We’re merely residents of Cambridge who delayed in evacuating.”

“Well, you delayed too long,” Robert said. “This is Canadian territory now. D’ye think we’re too stupid to guard this boathouse?”

“Shall we shoot them, Robert?” Laurent asked.

Robert looked annoyed. “No, fool, we bring them to headquarters and have them interrogated. Even if they’re not spies, they may have valuable information. Get some rope and tie them up.”

“Where’s the rope?”

Robert muttered what sounded like a French swear under his breath. “Hold the rifle and give me the lantern,” he said. “If either of them moves, shoot them both.”

“But I thought you said–”

Robert said the French word louder, then grabbed the lantern from Laurent and went back into the boat house. The professor and I stayed where we were. Laurent aimed the rifle at us in the moonlight.

And that’s when Kevin moved in the back of the carriage.

“What’s that?” Laurent demanded.

“That,” said the professor, “is our drikana patient.”

“Mon Dieu!” Laurent whispered, and he shifted the rifle and blessed himself. “Robert!” he called out. “Robert!”

Robert came back out of the boathouse a moment later, carrying another rifle along with the lantern. “What the devil is it?” he demanded, when he saw that neither of us had moved.

“D-drikana,” Laurent said, pointing to the carriage. “In the back.”

Robert went over to the carriage, shined the lantern inside, and saw Kevin lying down amid pillows and blankets.

“We were under claustration,” the professor said. “That’s why we were delayed in leaving.”

Why is he telling them about that? I wondered. They’ll want nothing to do with drikana, Lieutenant Carmody had said. They’d just burn us alive.

“Now let’s shoot them,” Laurent begged, proving my point.

“If you shoot us,” the professor pointed out, “you’ll have to bury us.”

Robert backed away from the carriage. “How do we know it’s drikana?” he said.

“Why else would we stay behind enemy lines instead of leaving with everyone else?” the professor replied.

“Please let’s shoot them,” Laurent said.

“Shut up!” Robert ordered him. “The claustration, it is over?” he asked the professor.

“It ended tonight. And now you can kill us and deal with our bodies, or you can let us row our patient over to the city.”

So then I understood what the professor was up to. The best solution for the Canadians was to let us go and bring the disease across the river into Boston. Let New England deal with us.

Robert got the point. “The boy is definitely ill,” he said. “Could be consumption, I suppose.”

“Could be,” the professor agreed. “But it’s drikana.”

Laurent looked very unhappy. “My sister died of it,” he said.

“It is not a pleasant disease.”

“Laurent, get a boat out for ’em,” Robert ordered. “They’re going to Boston.”

Laurent didn’t have to be told twice. He ran back into the boathouse, and soon after that we could hear him dragging a boat out into the water.

“This gun will be trained on you as you cross,” Robert said to us. “If I see you turning back, you’ll all be dead before you reach the shore.”

“We understand,” the professor replied. “Believe me, we have no desire to return to Cambridge.”

Robert motioned with the rifle. “Get the boy,” he ordered.

We put our hands down–my arms were really tired–and went to get Kevin. “Sorry,” he said.

“Sorry for what?” I replied. “Come on, Kev. Let’s get into the boat.”

The professor and I half-carried Kevin along a narrow path to the dock, where the boat was waiting. Laurent was standing as far away from us as he could on the dock. We arranged Kevin in the boat as well as possible, but he looked pretty uncomfortable. “We need the blankets,” Professor Palmer said to Laurent, and he motioned with the rifle to go back and get them. “Larry, you stay with Kevin,” the professor said.

“Say goodbye to Susie for us,” I said.

He patted me on the head and then returned to the carriage. “That was a smart move by the professor,” Kevin said while we waited.

“I bet he planned it all along, and just didn’t want to tell us.”

He returned in a minute with the blankets and pillows. “Can you row?” he asked me.

“A little.” Thank goodness I had taken lessons at camp last summer.

“We’ll take turns. You begin.”

Robert was on the dock now, too. “To Boston,” he reminded us. “Return, and you die.”

I picked up the oars, fit them into the oarlocks, and moved us away from the dock. “So far so good,” I said.

“Indeed,” the professor replied. “Unfortunately, now it begins to be really dangerous.”

Why? I didn’t want to ask. I focused on getting us out of the inlet and onto the river. I was pretty rusty at rowing, but I got back the hang of it quickly. The dock was out of sight once we were on the river, and I wondered how the Canadian soldiers were going to track us. Had Robert just been bluffing? The river was calm; its surface was like glass in the moonlight. There were just a few dim lights on either shore. And there wasn’t a sound except for the swooshing of the oars. It felt incredibly peaceful.

When we were about in the middle of the river, the professor said, “I’ll take over now.”

“I’m not tired,” I said. “I can make it the whole way.”

“Larry, let me take over,” he repeated. “I want you to get down in the bottom of the boat with Kevin.”

“Why?”

“Because I expect the New England soldiers will start shooting at us any moment now.”

“Huh? But the claustration is over! We’re okay.”

After a few weeks with us, the professor didn’t need a translation of “okay”. “They don’t know who we are,” he said. “They just see a boat heading toward them from enemy territory. They’re first instinct will be to shoot at it. Now do as I say and get down with Kevin.”

I didn’t really have a choice. I awkwardly switched positions with the professor, then scrunched down next to Kevin. “Scary, huh?” I said.

“Wouldn’t it be great just to feel safe again?” he replied.

“Not gonna happen anytime soon.”

We approached the Boston shore. The professor was a pretty good rower, for someone his age. “Won’t be long now,” he muttered. And then he shouted, “This is Alexander Palmer! Let us come ashore!”

He barely got the second sentence out when the guns started firing. The sound was like a punch in the stomach. The bullets sprayed the water around us. One of them nicked an oarlock. Kevin and I huddled together.

“Alexander Palmer!” the professor repeated at the top of his lungs. “I’m Professor Alexander Palmer! Don’t shoot! Let us come ashore!”

There was a pause. “You all right?” I asked the professor.

“Yes, yes. But their aim will get better as we get closer.” He shouted out his name again, and then added: “We are friends of Lieutenant William Carmody. We have no weapons.”

They fired a couple more shots at us, then I heard a shout from the shore that I couldn’t understand. But the shooting stopped after that, and we continued to make our way toward Boston. I sat up a little, and I saw a lantern ahead of us. “Over here,” a voice called out. “Stay in the boat.”

We eased up to the bank. A squad of soldiers approached, with rifles aimed at us. “You have the drikana patient with you?” one of them demanded.

“We do,” Professor Palmer replied.

The soldier came up to the boat. He was a short, plump lieutenant, and he carried a pistol instead of a rifle.

“He is much improved,” the professor said. “And the claustration is complete.”

The lieutenant peered in at Kevin. “Hi,” Kevin said.

“Sergeant,” the lieutenant called out. “Have you found the order from headquarters?”

“Yes, sir,” one of the other soldiers replied.

“What time does it expire?”

“Midnight, sir.”

The lieutenant took out his watch and made a big deal of checking it. What a jerk, I thought. We hadn’t left Cambridge till after midnight. Obviously the time was up. “Very well,” he said. “I don’t approve, but the order is clear. Sergeant, find a wagon and get these people to hospital without delay. And keep everyone away from them.”

“Yes, sir.” The sergeant headed off away from the bank.

The lieutenant turned back to us. “Can he walk?”

“We can help him,” Professor Palmer replied.

“Follow the sergeant up the path. Don’t touch anyone. Don’t talk to anyone.”

“Let’s go, lads,” the professor said without replying to the lieutenant.

The lieutenant stepped back away from us as we got out of the boat. “Corporal,” he said to another soldier, “burn the boat and everything in it.”

“Welcome back to Boston, eh?” the professor said to us as we headed towards the path leading away from the river, and all the soldiers shrank back.

“Could have been worse,” I said.

“Indeed it could,” the professor replied. “Indeed it could.”

Patricia Cornwell has problems that you and I are never going to have

Posted on January 12, 2013 by Richard Bowker

The mystery novelist Patricia Cornwell is suing her former financial management firm for tens of millions of dollars. I read about it in the Boston Globe; here is the story reprinted in another newspaper (the Globe version is behind a paywall). This gives you a flavor of what the suit is about:

Cornwell said she was flabbergasted to learn, upon her questioning in 2009, that her net worth was only eight figures, which was her annual income in each of the previous four years.

When she took a closer look at the books, she said, she discovered that Anchin had borrowed money in her name for real estate investments without her knowledge. She says money from the sale of her Ferrari was unaccounted for, and she had to pay close to $200,000 in taxes on a helicopter because the firm wrongly registered it in New York.

She also says that Anchin mishandled a financial transaction involving 48 rare books, leaving the money unaccounted for, and that she found a $5,000 check that Snapper had written for a bat mitzvah gift to his daughter from Cornwell.

In addition, Cornwell’s wife, a Boston-area neurologist, also claims she was bilked by the firm.

Here is Cornwell venting about the case in the Huffington Post.

And here are my banal. uninformed comments:

She had a helicopter???
She had an eight figure income? That’s a lot of figures, for someone who isn’t a professional basketball player.
I can see an author getting bilked; authors live in a different world. But a neurologist, too?

I read one of Cornwell’s early Scarpetta novels; I vaguely remember it as being OK, but not quite good enough to make me want to read another. Clearly the way to untold wealth in the writing biz is to come up with an ongoing series that keeps all your old novels in print and selling. But clearly that’s not necessarily the path to happiness and peace of mind. I have this idea that, if I had enough money (well short of eight figures), I’d just invest it conservatively and continue to live more or less the way I live now, so I wouldn’t have to worry about money ever again. But I’m probably deluded. Probably if I had as much money as Patricia Cornwell, I’d want a helicopter too.

Richard Ben Cramer has died

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Richard Bowker

He was the author of the great book about the 1988 presidential election, What It Takes, which I talked about here. A flop when it came out, over the years it has become recognized as a classic of political reporting. Here is a nice appreciation.

What explains the enduring appeal of a book about the run-up to a dispiriting election that featured the awkwardly patrician George Bush versus the awkwardly meritocratic Michael Dukakis? Cramer etched a psychologically revealing account of what it takes to run for president, and he wrote it with such brio, with such humor, that it is a delight to simply savor the words.

It must not have been easy to spend six years of your life creating a masterpiece, and then see it fail. But Cramer must have felt some satisfaction from the recognition he finally received. What It Takes is currently #18 on Amazon in paperback, #156 in the Kindle edition (only $9.99). You should buy it.