Agent to the Stars, John Scalzi [paper ebook reader .TXT] 📗

would be split between mentor and student. After six months, pending mentor approval, Amanda could represent up to six of these clients full-time, with all commissions and fees going to her from that point forward. To myself, I figured that any clients she didn’t want to keep after six months I would drop in any event.

Amanda was happy because even with a reduced commission rate, she stood to make far more money over the next six months than she could have off her own clients, and would get an automatically expanded client list at the end of it. Plus, of course, my invaluable mentoring services. I was happy because I offloaded my clients. The only one who might not be entirely happy with it was Miranda, because she knew that the reports I was supposed to read and comment on were actually going to be read and commented on by her. But she didn’t say anything about it. I was going to have to get her raise soon.

Amanda went of in a haze of blissfulness and promises to “get right on it.” She was like a Mouseketeer on “Let’s Represent Someone” day. I could almost see her skip to her pod. I hoped her first experience with Tea Reader would not send her too much into shock.

“That was a dirty trick,” Miranda said to me.

“What do you mean?” I said. “Look at her. What are her chances of getting a decent client list on her own?”

“Not to her,” Miranda said. “To me. Now I’m going to have to add babysitting to my list of things to do.”

“She’ll be fine,” I said. “And anyway, I thought you liked her.”

“I do like her,” Miranda said. “And she will be fine. Eventually.” She put her face closer to mine. “But in the short term, I might as well be a crossing guard, for all the hand-holding I’m going to do. Now. I’m off to get your waterbottle.” She walked out of the office.

I was going to have to get her a raise very soon.

*****

I knocked on the conference room door. It was unoccupied. I entered the conference room with the water bottle and the dolly, closed the door, locked it behind me.

“You have got to be kidding,” Joshua said.

Joshua had returned back to the aquarium and had stayed in the conference room after our meeting was done. My job had been to find a unobtrusive way to get him from the conference room to my place. Carl wouldn’t tell me how he had gotten Joshua into the building unnoticed, and he wasn’t giving me any tips on how to get him out. Think of it as your first challenge, he said. Were I palming off the first known extraterrestrial on a subordinate to take care of, I think I’d be a little more concerned.

“We give you three hours to come up with something, and this is the best you can do,” Joshua said. “I’m not scared yet, but I’m getting there.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I had to improvise.” I wheeled the bottle over and sat it next to the tank. I had figured that a five-gallon water bottle would be big enough to fit Joshua in. Now I wasn’t so sure.

Neither was he. He extended a tendril out of the aquarium and sent it down into the bottle and waved it around, as if to check it for roominess. “How long will it take to get to your place?” he said.

“Probably an hour, maybe more,” I said. “I live in La Canada. The 405 will be jammed up, but once we get over to the 210, it should be pretty quick. Is it going to be a problem?”

“Not at all,” Joshua said. “Who doesn’t enjoy being crammed into a five-gallon plastic bottle for an hour?”

“You don’t have to stay in the bottle once we get to the car,” I said. “Once we’re out of here, you can spread out.” This wrinkle in the plan was as new to me as it was to him. I had assumed he’d stay in the bottle the whole trip. But my car upholstery was a small price to pay for interplanetary peace. I’d just have to remember to get one of those little pine tree air fresheners.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Joshua said. “The conversation where you try to explain to a highway patrolman why you have 40 pounds of gelatin in your passenger seat is one I think we’d both rather avoid.”

I laughed. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sort of amazed you know what a highway patrolman is.”

“Why?” Joshua said. “You’ve been beaming ‘CHiPs’ into space for decades.” He wiggled his tendril again, and then sighed. He must have picked that up purely as a sonic affectation because he had no lungs from which to exhale. “All right, here I go, ” he said, and started putting himself into the bottle.

He came dangerously close to filling up the bottle. In the last few seconds, a thought popped into my skull: I’m going to need another bottle. It didn’t occur to me to question the logic of that thought. He was gelatinous, he should be able to divide up. It became academic when he topped out about three millimeters from the top of the mouth of the bottle.

“Comfortable?” I asked.

“Remind me to stuff you into a medium-sized suitcase and ask you that same question,” Joshua said. His voice was diminished and tinny, no doubt due to the relatively tiny amount of surface area he had to vibrate.

“Sorry,” I said. “Listen, do you need this open? I’m thinking it might be better if I put the top back on this thing.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Joshua said. “Keep it open.”

“Okay,” I said. “I didn’t know. I suppose you need to breathe.”

“It’s not that,” Joshua said. “I’m claustrophobic.”

“Really?”

“Look,” Joshua said. “Just because I come from a highly advanced alien species doesn’t mean I can’t be intensely neurotic. Can we go now? I already feel like I want to scream.”

I hiked the dolly up on its wheels, wheeled over to the door, unlocked it, and headed out into the hallway. It was still early enough in the day that the office was still busy. I was worried that someone might ask me why I was wheeling a five-gallon water bottle around until I remembered that I was on the second floor, the land of senior agents. A senior agent would naturally assume it was my job to wheel water bottles around. I was probably safe until I hit the lobby.

Which is in fact where I got noticed. As I passed the receptionist’s desk on the way to the parking lot, some guy at the desk turned around. “Tom Stein?” he asked.

The Just Keep Moving command left my brain a tenth of a second after the Look Around reflex kicked in. By then, of course, it was too late; I had already stopped and looked back. “Yes?”

The man jogged the short distance over and extended his hand. “Glad I caught you,” he said, as we shook. “Your assistant said you had already left.”

“I had,” I said. “I just had to stop elsewhere and pick something up.”

“I can see that,” he said, glancing down at the waterbottle. “I guess you’ve gone past office supplies.”

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Jim Van Doren. I write for The Biz.”

The Biz was a weekly bit of libel written in a snide, knowing sort of tone that implied the folks who slapped together The Biz were just coming from lunch with movie company heads, who couldn’t wait to slip them the latest gossip. Neither I nor anyone I knew knew anyone who had ever actually spoken to anyone at the magazine. No one knew how the magazine got written. No one knew anyone who actually would pay to read it.

Van Doren himself was about my age, blond and balding, sort of pudgy. He looked like what happened to former USC frat boys about three months after they realize that their college days were never, ever coming back.

“Van Doren,” I said. “No relation to Charles, I assume.”

“The guy from Quiz Show? I wish,” Van Doren said. “His dad won a Pulitzer Prize, you know. Wouldn’t mind getting one of those myself.”

“You’d probably have to work for a magazine that didn’t devote six pages to an illustrated article about porno pictures on the Internet,” I said. “You remember, the one where big star’s heads were cut and pasted on to pictures of women having sex with dogs and glass bottles? The one that just about every movie studio in the city sued you over.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with that story,” he said.

“That’s good,” I said. “Michelle Beck is my client. She was rather unamused by the picture that had her taking it up the back door from George Clooney while eating out Gwenyth Paltrow. As her agent, I’d be required to break your nose on her behalf. Of course, I’d take my ten percent, too.” I started walking towards the lobby door.

Van Doren, who was not taking the hint, followed. “Actually, Tom, I knew you were Michelle Beck’s agent. It’s sort of why I came here. Heard that you got her twelve and a half for Earth Resurrected. That’s not bad.”

I opened the lobby door with one hand and propped it open with my foot as I maneuvered the dolly through the entry way. “The agency hasn’t made any announcement about that to the press, much less The Biz,” I said. “Where did you hear about it?”

Van Doren grabbed the door and held it for me. “I got it from Brad Turnow’s office,” he said. “They faxed out an announcement to the press, and I got the figure from his receptionist when I called to follow up.”

I made a mental note to have Brad fire his receptionist. “I can’t comment about my client’s affairs,” I said, “If you’re looking for something, I’m not going to give it to you.”

“I’m not here to do anything on Michelle Beck,” Van Doren said. “I’m hoping to do a story on you.”

“On me?” I said. “Really, Van Doren. I’m not that interesting. And there are no pictures of me on the Net having sex with anyone.”

“Look, we know we lost a lot of goodwill on that story,” Van Doren said. This statement was on the same level as the captain of the Titanic saying, I guess we’ve taken on a little water. “We’re trying to get away from that sort of thing now. Do some real journalism. The story I’m doing, for example, is ‘The Ten Hottest Young Agents in Hollywood.’”

“You getting ten agents to talk to you?” I wheeled over to my car, a Honda Prelude.

“I’ve got six so far,” he said. “including one of your guys here — Ben Fleck. You know him?”

“I do,” I said. “I wouldn’t call him one of the ten hottest young agents in Hollywood.”

Van Doren grimaced. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “Frankly, none of the really good young agents want to talk. That’s why I’m really hoping to do something on you. I mean, twelve and a half million! I’d say that makes you the hottest agent in Hollywood at the moment, period. You’re the money guy, in all senses of the term. This is cover story material, Tom. You need help getting that in the trunk?” he gestured to the water bottle.

I just did not want this guy here.

“No thanks,” I said. “It’s going up front.”

“Well, here,” he said, stepping around to the dolly. “I’ll hold this while you get the door open.”

What could I do? I gave him the