“Is that so?” Stevenson lurched into a sitting position. He grasped the cup of tea in his trembling hands, warming them.
“Absolutely. Remember, this is all part of a dream. And what is your dream, Louis, your most cherished dream? To make a success of this writing business, isn’t it? Financial independence so you can win this American lady you’ve come mooning after. Well, in this dream you’re having right now, you’ve met a man from the Future—that’s me—and I’ve come back through time to tell you that you’ve got it, baby. All you wanted. Everything. Mrs. Osbourne too.”
“What nonsense. I’m dying penniless, unknown, and (I fear) unloved.” Stevenson’s eyes grew moist. “I came such a long way to do it, too. She sent me away! What does she care if I expire in this wilderness?”
“Louis, Louis, work with me, all right?” Joseph leaned forward, looking earnest. “This is your dream. This dream says you’re going to become a famous author. You write slam-bang adventure stories.”
“I write abominably derivative fiction. The only good stuff’s from life, my essays and the travel books.”
“Come on, Louis, let’s make this bird fly. You’ll write adventure novels about the sea and historical times. People love them. You’re a hit. You’re bigger than Sir Walter Scott, all right?”
“He couldn’t write a lucid sentence if his life had depended on it,” Stevenson sneered. “Oh, this is all the rankest self-conceit anyway.”
“Then what will it hurt you to listen? Now. I represent the Chronos Photo-Play Company. Let me explain what a photo-play is. We have patented a method of, uh, making magic-lantern pictures into a sort of effect of moving tableaux, if you can grasp that. Maybe you’ve read about the cinematograph? Oh, gee, no, you haven’t.” Joseph consulted his timepiece. “You’ll just miss it. Never mind—So, in the Future, we have these exhibitions of our photo-plays and people pay admission to come in and watch them, the way they’d watch a real live play or an opera, with famous players and everything. But since we don’t have to pay live actors or even move scenery, the profit margin for the exhibitor is enormous. See?”
Stevenson gaped at him a moment before responding. “I was wrong. I apologize. You may or may not be the Devil, but you’re most assuredly a Yankee.” “No, no, I’m a dream. Anyway. People are crazy about these photo-plays, they’ll watch anything we shoot. We’ve adapted all the great works of literature already. Shakespeare, Dickens, all those guys. So now, my masters are looking for new material, and since you’re such a famous and successful writer they sent me to ask if you’d be interested in a job.”
“I see.” Stevenson leaned back, stretching out his long legs and crossing them. “Your masters want to adapt one of my wonderful adventure stories for these photo-plays of theirs?”
“Uh, actually, we’ve already done everything you wrote. Several times.”
“I should damned well hope I got royalties, then!”
“Oh, sure, Louis, sure you did. You’re not only famous, you’re rich. Anyway what my masters had in mind was you coming up with something completely new. Never-before-seen. Just like all your other stuff, you know, with that wonderful Robert Louis Stevenson magic, but different. Exclusively under contract for them.”
“You mean they want me to write a play?” Stevenson looked intrigued.
“Not exactly. We don’t have the time. This dream isn’t going to last long enough for you to do that, because it’s a matter of historical record that you’re only going to lie here another—” Joseph consulted his timepiece again, “—forty-three hours before you’re found and nursed back to health. No, see, all they need you to do is develop a story treatment for them. Four or five pages, a plot, characters. You don’t have to do the dialogue; we’ll fill that out as we film. We can claim it’s from long-lost notes found in a locked desk you used to own, or something.”
“This is madness.” Stevenson sipped his tea experimentally.
“Delirium. But what have you got to lose? All you have to do is come up with a concept and develop it. You don’t even have to write it down. I’ll do that for you. And to tell you the honest truth—” Joseph leaned down confidentially, “—this is a specially commissioned work. There’s this wealthy admirer of yours in the place I come from, and he’s willing to pay anything to see a new Robert Louis Stevenson picture.”
“Wouldn’t he pay more for a whole novel? I could make one up as we go along and dictate the whole thing to you, if we’ve got two more days here. You’d be surprised at how quickly stories unfold when the Muse is with me.” Stevenson squinted thoughtfully up at the stars through the branches of the oak tree.
Joseph looked slightly embarrassed. “He’s… not really much of a reader, Louis. But he loves our pictures, and he’s rich.”
“You stand to make a tidy sum out of this, then.”
“Perceptive man, Mr. Stevenson.”
Stevenson’s eyes danced. “And you’ll pay me millions of money, no doubt.”
“You can name your price. Money is no object.”
“Dollars, pounds, or faery gold?” Stevenson began to chuckle and Joseph chuckled right along with him in a companionable manner.
“You’ve got the picture, Louis. It’s a dream, remember? Maybe I’ve got a trunkful of gold doubloons here, or pieces of eight. I’m authorized to pay you anything for an original story idea.”
“Very well then.” Stevenson gulped the tea down and flung the cup away. “I want a cigarette.”
The other man’s chuckle stopped short.
“You want a cigarette?”
“I do, sir.”
“You want—Jeepers, Louis, I haven’t got any cigarettes!”
“How now? No cigarettes? This is my dream and I can have anything I want. No cigarette, no story.” Stevenson laced his slender fingers together and smiled.
“Look, Louis, there’s something you should know.” Joseph bent forward seriously. “Cigarettes are not really good for your lungs. Trust me. They’ll make your cough worse, honest. Now, look, I’ve got gold certificates here for you.” “It’s cigarettes or nothing, I say.”
“But I tell you I can’t get any—” The other seized the hair at his temples and pulled in vexation. Then he halted, as if listening to an inner voice. “Hell, what can I lose?”
He opened the lid of the trunk and brought out his pad of yellow lined paper. Casting a reproachful glance at Stevenson he scribbled something down and fed his message into the invisible slot. Almost immediately the reply emerged. He scanned it, wrote something more and fed it back. Another quick reply. Stevenson watched all this with amusement.
“He’s got a wee devil in the box poking his letters back out,” he speculated.
“All I want is to make the man happy,” Joseph retorted. “Fame, I offer him. Riches, too. What does he do? He turns capricious on me. Lousy mortal.” He read the next communication and his eyes narrowed. Hastily he backed away from the trunk, putting a good eight feet between himself and it.
“What’s amiss now?” inquired Stevenson. “Old Nick’s in a temper, doubtless.”
“I’d cover my ears if I were you,” replied the other through gritted teeth. As if on cue the trunk gave a horrific screech. It shook violently; there was a plume of foul smoke; there was one last convulsive shudder: then a cigarette dropped from the orifice, very much the worse for wear, mashed flat and in fact on fire.
Joseph ran forward and snatched it up. He blew out the flame and handed the smoldering mess to Stevenson.