“Be cool, kid,” Mort Taylor had told me earlier. “Don’t try to force it. The words’ll come, just like they always have.”
The Cranker and I stood facing each other, looking at the huge electronic scoreboards at opposite ends of the field. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the Head Editor wave his red starting flag at the Line Editor; and in the next instant the two plot topics selected by the officials flashed on the board.
I had five seconds to make my choice. Both of the topics looked tough, but this was the Prose Bowl and nothing came easy in the championship. I made an arbitrary selection and yelled out “Plot B!” to the Head Editor. He unfurled his white flag with the letter B on it, and immediately the PA announcer’s voice boomed, “Rex Sackett chooses Plot B!”
The crowd broke into thunderous applause; the sound of it was like a pressure against my eardrums. I could feel my pulse racing in hard irregular rhythm and my stomach was knotted up. I tried not to think about the thirty million people watching me on the TriDim close-ups.
The Line Editor’s claxon went off.
The Cranker and I broke for our typewriters. And all of a sudden, as I was sliding into my chair, I felt control and a kind of calm come into me. That was the way it always was with me, the way it always was with the great ones, Mort had said: no matter how nervous you were before the start of a match, once the horn sounded your professionalism took over and you forgot everything except the job you had to do.
I had a title even before I reached for the first sheet of paper beside the typewriter, and I had the first sentence as soon as I rolled the sheet into the platen. I fired out the title — THE MICAWBER DIAMOND — jabbed down the opening sentence and the rest of the narrative hook, and was into the second paragraph before I heard Culp’s machine begin its amplified hammering across the Line.
A hundred thousand voices screamed for speed and continuity. The Cranker’s rooting section and the Sackett Boosters made the most noise; I knew Sally would be leading the cheers on my side, and I had a sharp mental image of her in her red-and-white sweater with the big S on the front. Sweet, wonderful Sally...
I hunched forward, teeth locked around the stem of my old briar, and drove through two more paragraphs of stage-setting. End of page one. I glanced up at the south-end scoreboard as I ripped the sheet out of the platen and rolled in a new one. SACKETT 226, CULP 187. I laid in half page of flashback, working the adjectives and the adverbs to build up my count, powered through eight lines of descriptive transition, and came into the first passage of dialogue. Up on the board, what I was writing appeared in foot-high electronic printout, as if the words were emblazoned on the sky itself.
SAM SLEDGE STALKED ACROSS HIS PLUSH OFFICE, LEAVING FOOTPRINTS IN THE THICK SHAG CARPET LIKE ANGRY DOUGHNUTS. VELDA VANCE, ALLURINGLY BEAUTIFUL SECRETARY TO SLEDGE AND CHANDLER INVESTIGATIONS, LOOKED UP IN ALARM. “SOMEBODY MURDERED MILES CHANDLER LAST NIGHT,” HE GRITTED TO HER, “AND STOLE THE MICAWBER DIAMOND HE WAS GUARDING.”
It was solid stuff, I knew that. Not my best, but plenty good enough and just what the fans wanted. The sound of my name echoing through the great stadium put chills on my back.
“Sackett! Hack it! Sackett, hack it! Sackett hack it Sackett hack it!”
I finished the last line on page two and had the clean sheet into the machine in two seconds flat. My eyes found the scoreboard again as I pounded the keys: SACKETT 529, GULP 430. Hundred-word lead, but that was nothing in this early going. Without losing speed or concentration, I sneaked a look at what The Cranker was punching out.
THE DENEBIAN GREEN-BEAST CAME TOWARD HER, MOVING WITH A CURIOUSLY FLOWING MOTION, ITS TENTACLES SWAYING IN A SENSUAL DANCE OF ALIEN LUST. SHE STOOD FROZEN AGAINST A RUDDER OF ROCK AND STARED AT THE THING IN HORROR. THE UNDULATING TENTACLES REACHED TOWARD HER AND THE GREEN WAVES OF DAMP WHICH THE BEAST EXUDED SENT SHUDDERS THROUGH HER.
God, I thought, that’s top-line prose. He’s inspired; he’s pulling out all the stops.
The crowd sensed it too. I could hear his cheerleaders chanting, almost drowning out the cries from my own rooters across the way.
“Come on, Gulp! Write that pulp!”
I was in the most intense struggle of my life, there was no doubt about that. I’d known it was going to be rough, but knowing it and then being in the middle of it were two different things. The Cranker was a legend in his own time; when he was right, no one had his facility, his speed, his edge with the cutting transitions, his ability to produce under stress. If he could maintain pace and narrative drive, there wasn’t a writer on earth who could beat him—
SACKETT 920, GULP 874.
The score registered on my mind, and I realized with a jolt that my own pace had slacked off: Gulp had cut my lead by more than half. That was what happened to you when you started worrying about your opponent and what he was doing. I could hear Mort’s voice again, echoing in my memory: “The pressure will turn your head, kid, if you let it. But I don’t think it will. I think you’re made of the real stuff; I think you’ve got the guts and the heart.”
THE ANGER ON MICAWBER’S FACE MELTED AWAY LIKE SOAP IN A SOAP DISH UNDER A STREAM OF HOT DIRTY WATER.
I jammed out that line and I knew I was back in the groove, beginning to crank near the top of my form. The sound of my machine climbed to a staccato pulse. Dialogue, some fast foreshadowing, a string of four adjectives that drew a burst of applause from the Sackett Boosters. I could feel my wrists starting to knot up from the strain, and there was pain in my left leg where I’d pulled a hamstring during the semi-final match against the Kansas City Flash. But I didn’t pay any attention to that; I had written in pain before and I wasn’t about to let it bother me now. I just kept firing out my prose.
Only I wasn’t gaining back any of my lead, I saw then. The foot-high numerals read SACKETT 1163, GULP 1127. The Cranker had hit his stride too, and he was matching me word for word, sentence for sentence.
SHE HAD NO MORE STRENGTH LEFT TO RUN. SHE WAS TRAPPED NOW, THERE WAS NO ESCAPE. A SCREAM BURST FROM HER THROAT AS THE BEAST BOUNDED UP TO HER AND DREW HER INTO ITS AWFUL CLUTCHES, BREATHING GREEN FUMES AGAINST HER FACEPLATE. IT WAS GOING TO WORK ITS WILL ON HER! IT WAS GOING TO DO UNSPEAKABLE THINGS TO HER BODY!
“Gulp, Gulp, Gulp!”
THE NIGHT WAS DARK AND WET AND COLD AND THE RAIN FELL ON SLEDGE LIKE A MILLION TEARS FROM A MILLION LOST LOVES ON A MILLION WORLDS IN A MILLION GALAXIES.
“Sackett, Sackett, Sackett!”
Sweat streamed into my eyes, made the numerals on the board seem smeared and glistening: SACKETT 1895, CULP 1857. I ducked my head against the sleeve of my tunic and slid a new sheet into the machine. On the other side of the Line, The Cranker was sitting straight and stiff behind his typewriter, fingers flying, his shaggy head wreathed in cigarette smoke. But he wasn’t just hitting the keys, he was attacking them — as if they, not me, were the enemy and he was trying to club them into submission.
I reached back for a little extra, raced through the rest of the transition, slammed out three paragraphs of introspection and five more of dialogue. New page. More dialogue, then another narrative hook to foreshadow the first confrontation scene. New page. Description and some cat-and-mouse action to build suspense.