Page 87 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

Hitler’s Ghost

I grinned. “That could be grounds for blackmail, or sale to the
highest-bidding tabloid.”
Ludwig almost looked shocked. “That would not be advancing
human knowledge. The process is intellectual property, not its
results.”
“Indeed. Noble sentiments. I can see why Penultimate Press
would select you for this contract. Let me have your address, and I’ll
send it to you. Sign it, return it and we’ll get the advance moving
through our business office.”
He nodded, impatient to be back at his keyboard. “I’ll e-mail it to
you. This is your address on the card, right?” I tried nodding back,
but his gaze was glued to the screen. “Yes. Well, goodbye, then.” I
rose, stretched a bit, and sauntered off to buy some peanuts for the
frustrated squirrels and pigeons.
The “noble sentiments” crack I’d made came back to haunt me a
few months later. Penultimate Press announced it had gone bankrupt
and was ceasing operations not long after Ludwig received his
“advance.” I drew my own payment from Al Magnus’s non-profit
front organization and took a trip posthaste to Hawaii to see how the
surf looked from different balconies of resort hotels with beachfront
penthouses. Were I to hang around the scene of these non-crimes,
despite erasure of my false identity, I would be endangering the entire
enterprise; so a long vacation was always advisable. And I wasn’t
then terribly curious about how any of the literally gifted crackpots
fared after my role in their financing ended. News had a way of
finding me, however; I suppose if I really didn’t want to know I’d
have given up my daily perusal of newspapers and news broadcasts.
But that was a habit I’d acquired long before starting this weird
commitment to making dreams come true.
So I did find out about Roy Ludwig’s fate. Or as much as could be
learned without exposing myself to scrutiny. Someone had taken a
shot at him; it could have been a coincidence—one of those cases of
being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But it left him partially
paralyzed, unable to speak or move his limbs. He would not write
another line of code. As yet another victim of random violence he
would not have been newsworthy, save for a controversy in which he
was embroiled immediately prior to the shooting. He had indeed
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