Chapter 9

His walk along the lake path had been both long and slow, and Amy's call hadn't been the only thing Mort had thought about as he picked his way over or around the occasional downed tree or paused to skip the occasional flat stone across the water (as a boy he had been able to get a really good one - what they called 'a flattie' - to skip as many as nine times, but today four was the most he'd been able to manage). He had also thought about how to deal with Shooter, when and if Shooter turned up again.

It was true he had felt a transient - or maybe not-so-transient - guilt¹ when he saw how close to identical the two stories were, but he had worked that one out; it was only the generalized guilt he guessed all writers of fiction felt from time to time. As for Shooter himself, the only feelings he had were annoyance², anger . . . and a kind of relief. He was full of an unfocussed rage; had been for months. It was good to finally have a donkey to pin this rotten, stinking³ tail on.

Mort had heard the old saw about how, if four hundred monkeys banged away on four hundred typewriters for four million years, one of them would produce the complete works of Shakespeare. He didn't believe it. Even if it were true, John Shooter was no monkey and he hadn't been alive anywhere near that long, no matter how lined his face was.

So Shooter had copied his story. Why he had picked 'Sowing Season' was beyond Mort Rainey's powers of conjecture⁴, but he knew that was what had happened because he had ruled out coincidence, and he knew damned well that, while he might have stolen that story, like all his others, from The Great Idea Bank of the Universe, he most certainly had not stolen it from Mr John Shooter of the Great State of Mississippi.

Where, then, had Shooter copied it from? Mort thought that was the most important question; his chance to expose Shooter as a fake and a cheat might lie buried within the answer to it.

There were only two possible answers, because 'Sowing Season' had only been published twice - first in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, and then in his collection, Everybody Drops the Dime⁵. The dates of publication for the short stories in a collection are usually listed on the copyright page at the front of the book, and this format⁶ had been followed in Everybody Drops the Dime. He had looked up the acknowledgement for 'Sowing Season' and found that it had been originally published in the June, 1980, issue of EQMM. The collection, Everybody Drops the Dime, had been issued by St Martin's Press in 1983. There had been subsequent printings since then - all but one of them in paperback⁷ - but that didn't matter. All he really had to work with were those two dates 1980 and 1983 ... and his own hopeful belief that, aside from agents and publishing-company lawyers, no one paid much attention to those lines of fine print on the copyright page.

Hoping that this would prove true to John Shooter, hoping that Shooter would simply assume - as most general readers did - that a story he had read for the first time in a collection had no prior existence, Mort approached the man and finally stood before him on the edge of the road.

1 guilt   

n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责

参考例句：

• She tried to cover up her guilt by lying.她企图用谎言掩饰自己的罪行。
• Don't lay a guilt trip on your child about schoolwork.别因为功课责备孩子而使他觉得很内疚。

2 annoyance   

n.恼怒，生气，烦恼

参考例句：

• Why do you always take your annoyance out on me?为什么你不高兴时总是对我出气？
• I felt annoyance at being teased.我恼恨别人取笑我。

3 stinking   

adj.臭的，烂醉的，讨厌的v.散发出恶臭( stink的现在分词 )；发臭味；名声臭；糟透

参考例句：

• I was pushed into a filthy, stinking room. 我被推进一间又脏又臭的屋子里。
• Those lousy, stinking ships. It was them that destroyed us. 是的！就是那些该死的蠢猪似的臭飞船！是它们毁了我们。 来自英汉非文学 - 科幻

4 conjecture   

n./v.推测，猜测

参考例句：

• She felt it no use to conjecture his motives.她觉得猜想他的动机是没有用的。
• This conjecture is not supported by any real evidence.这种推测未被任何确切的证据所证实。

5 dime   

n.（指美国、加拿大的钱币）一角

参考例句：

• A dime is a tenth of a dollar.一角银币是十分之一美元。
• The liberty torch is on the back of the dime.自由火炬在一角硬币的反面。

6 format   

n.设计，版式；[计算机]格式，DOS命令:格式化(磁盘)，用于空盘或使用过的磁盘建立新空盘来存储数据；v.使格式化，设计，安排

参考例句：

• Please format this floppy disc.请将这张软盘格式化。
• The format of the figure is very tasteful.该图表的格式很雅致。

7 paperback   

n.平装本，简装本

参考例句：

• A paperback edition is now available at bookshops.平装本现在在书店可以买到。
• Many books that are out of print are reissued in paperback form.许多绝版的书籍又以平装本形式重新出现。