Once More With Footnotes

was upon the screen, with of course the exception of the beckoning flicker of the cursor.
     
                  Dogger's hand moved upon the face of the keyboard. It ought to work both ways. If belief was the engine of it all, it ought to be possible to hitch a ride if you really were mad enough to try it. Where to start?
     
                  A short story would be enough, just to create the character. Chimera already existed, in a little bubble of fractal reality created by these ten fingers.
     
                  He began t o type, hesitantly at first, and then speeding up as the ideas began to crystallise out.
     
                  After a little while he opened the kitchen window. Behind him, in the darkness, the printer started up.
     
    -
     
                  The key turned in the lock.
     
                  The cursor pulsed gently a s the two of them came in, talked, made coffee, talked again in the body language of people finding they really have a lot in common. Words like "holistic approach" floated past its uncritical beacon.
     
                  "He's always doing things like this," she said. "It's the drinking and smoking. It's not a healthy life. He doesn't know how to look after himself."
     
                  Erdan paused. He found the printed output cascading down the table, and now he put down the short MS half read. Outside a siren wailed, dopplered closer, shut off.
     
                  "I'm sorry?" he said.
     
                  "I said he doesn't look after himself."
     
                  "I think he may have to learn," he said. He picked up a pencil, regarded the end of it thoughtfully until the necessary skills clicked precisely in his head, and made a few insertion s. The idiot hadn't even specified what kind of clothing he was wearing. If you're really going to write first person, you might as well keep warm. It got damn cold out on the steppes.
     
                  "You've known him a long time, then?"
     
                  "Years."
     
                  "You don't look li ke most of his friends."
     
                  "We were quite close at one time. I expect I'd better see to the place until he comes back." He pencilled in but the welcoming firelight of a Skryling encampment showed through the freezing trees. Skrylings were okay, they consid ered that crazy people were great shamen, Kevin should be all right there.
     
                  Nicky stood up. "Well, I'd better be going," she said. The tone and pitch of her voice turned tumblers in his head.
     
                  "You needn't," he said. "It's entirely up to you, of course."
     
                  There was a long pause. She walked up behind him and looked over his shoulder, her manner a little awkward.
     
                  "What's this?" she said, in an attempt to turn the conversation away from its logical conclusions.
     
                  "Just a story of his. I'd better mail it i n the morning."
     
                  "Oh. Are you a writer, too?"
     
                  Erdan glanced at the wordprocessor. Compared to the Bronze Hordes of Merkle it didn't look too fearsome. A whole new life was waiting for him, he could feel it, he could flow out into it. And change to suit.
     
                  "Just breaking into it," he said.
     
                  "I mean, I quite like Kevin," she said quickly. "He just never seemed to relate to the real world." She turned away to hide her embarrassment, and peered out of the window.
     
                  "There's a lot of blue lights down on the railway line," she said.
     
                  Erdan made a few more alterations. "Are there?" he said.
     
                  "And there's people milling about."
     
                  "Oh." Erdan changed the title to The Traveller of the Falconsong. What was needed was more development, he could see that. He'd writ e about what he knew.
     
                  After a bit of thought he added Book One in the Chronicles of Kevin the Bardsinger.
     
                  It was the least he could do.
     

For most of the 1970s I worked for the Bath and West Evening Chronicle group of newspapers, mostly as a sub-editor but also as a jobbing feature