Once More With Footnotes

probably said things like Since you ask, I do think green 2CV s have the anti-nuclear sticker laminated into their rear window before they leave the factory. If he had been on the usual form he achieved after a pint of white wine he'd probably passed a remark about dungarees on women, too. It had been one of those ro ws where every jocular attempt to extract himself had opened another chasm under his feet.
     
                  And then shed broken, no, shattered the silence with all those comments about Erdan, macho wish-fulfillment for adolescents, and there'd been comments about Rambo, and then he'd found himself arguing the case for people who, in cold sobriety, he detested as much as she did.
     
                  And then he'd come home and written the last chapter of Erdan and the Serpent of the Rim, and out of pique, alcohol, and rebellion he'd killed his hero off on the last page. Crushed under an avalanche. The fans were going to hate him, but he'd felt better afterwards, freed of something that had held him back all these years. And had made him quire rich, incidentally. That was because of compute r s, because half the fans he met now worked in computers, and of course in computers they gave you a wheelbarrow to take your wages home; science fiction fans might break out in pointy ears from time to time, but they bought books by the shovelful and read them round the clock.
     
                  Now he'd have to think of something else for them, write proper science fiction, learn about black holes and quantums ...
     
                  There was another point nagging his mind as he yawned his way back to the kitchen.
     
                  Oh, yes. Erdan the Barb arian had been standing on his doorstep. Funny, that.
     
                  This time the hammering made small bits of plaster detach themselves from the wall around the door, which was an unusual special effect in a hallucination. Dogger opened the door again.
     
                  Erdan was st anding patiently next to his milk. The milk was white, and in bottles. Erdan was seven feet tall and in a tiny chain mail loincloth; his torso looked like a sack full of footballs. In one hand he held what Dogger knew for a certainty was Skung, the Sword o f the Ice Gods.
     
                  Dogger was certain about this because he had described it thousands of times. But he wasn't going to describe it again.
     
                  Erdan broke the silence.
     
                  "I have come," he said, "to meet my Maker."
     
                  "Pardon?"
     
                  "I have come," said the barbari an hero, "to receive my Final Reward." He peered down Dogger's hall expectantly and rippled his torso.
     
                  "You're a fan, right?" said Dogger. "Pretty good costume ..."
     
                  "What," said Erdan, "is fan?"
     
                  "I want to drink your blood," said Skung, conversation ally.
     
                  Over the giant's shoulder — metaphorically speaking, although under his massive armpit in real life — Dogger saw the postman coming up the path. The man walked around Erdan, humming, pushed a couple of bills into Dogger's unresisting hand, opined again st all the evidence that it looked like being a nice day, and strolled back down the path.
     
                  "I want to drink his blood, too," said Skung.
     
                  Erdan stood impassively, making it quite clear that he was going to stay there until the Snow Mammoths of Hy-Kooli came home.
     
                  History records a great many foolish comments, such as, "It looks perfectly safe", or "Indians? What Indians?" and Dogger added to the list with an old favourite which has caused more encyclopedias and life insurance policies to be sold than y ou would have thought possible.
     
                  "I suppose," he said, "that you'd better come in."
     
                  No one could look that much like Erdan. His leather jerkin looked as though it had been stored in a compost heap. His fingernails were purple, his hands calloused, his c hest a trelliswork of scars. Something with a mouth the size of an armchair appeared to have got a grip on his arm at some time, but couldn't have liked the taste.
     
                  What it