Read The Cat Who Walks Through Walls for Free Online Page B

and I will avoid starting one until we arrange such an isolation chamber for me to work in. This place isn’t big enough and neither is yours. Mmm, even before we go to the hub, I want to call the Manager’s office and see what larger compartments are available. We’ll need two terminals also.”
    “Why two, dear? I don’t use a terminal much.”
    “But when you do, you need it. When I’m using this one in word-processing mode, it can’t be used for anything else—no newspaper, no mail, no shopping, no programs, no personal calls, nothing. Believe me, darling; I’ve had this disease for years, I know how to manage it. Let me have a small room and a terminal, let me go into it and seal the door behind me, and it will be just like having a normal, healthy husband who goes to the office every morning and does whatever it is men do in offices—I’ve never known and have never been much interested in finding out.”
    “Yes, dear. Richard, do you enjoy writing?”
    “No one enjoys writing.”
    “I wondered. Then I must tell you that I didn’t quite tell you the truth when I said that I had married you for your money.”
    “And I didn’t quite believe you. We’re even.”
    “Yes, dear. I really can afford to keep you as a pet. Oh, I can’t buy you yachts. But we can live in reasonable comfort here in Golden Rule—not the cheapest place in the Solar System. You won’t have to write.”
    I stopped to kiss her, thoroughly and carefully. “I’m glad I married you. But I will indeed have to write.”
    “But you don’t enjoy it and we don’t need the money. Truly we don’t!”
    “Thank you, my love. But I did not explain to you the other insidious aspect of writing. There is no way to stop. Writers go on writing long after it becomes financially unnecessary…because it hurts less to write than it does not to write.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “I didn’t either, when I took that first fatal step—a short story, it was, and I honestly thought I could quit anytime. Never mind, dear. In another ten years you will understand. Just pay no attention to me when I whimper. Doesn’t mean anything—just the monkey on my back.”
    “Richard? Would psychoanalysis help?”
    “Can’t risk it. I once knew a writer who tried that route. Cured him of writing all right. But did not cure him of the need to write. The last I saw of him he was crouching in a corner, trembling. That was his good phase. But the mere sight of a word processor would throw him into a fit.”
    “Uh…that bent for mild exaggeration?”
    “Why, Gwen! I could take you to him. Show you his gravestone. Never mind, dear; I’m going to call the Manager’s housing desk.” I turned back to the terminal—
    —just as the damn thing lit up like a Christmas tree and the emergency bell chimed steadily. I flipped the answer switch. “Ames here! Are we broached?”
    Words sounded while letters streamed across the face of the CRT, and the printer started a printout without my telling it to—I hate it when it does that.
    “Official to Dr. Richard Ames: The Management finds that the compartment you now occupy designated 715301 at 65-15-0.4 is urgently needed. You are notified to vacate at once. Unused rent has been applied to your account, plus a free bonus of fifty crowns for any inconvenience this may cause you. Order signed by Arthur Middlegaff, Manager’s Proxy for Housing. Have a Nice Day!”
     
IV
    “I go on working for the same reason a hen goes on laying eggs.”
    H. L. MENCKEN 1880-1956
    My eyes grew wide. “Oh, goody-goody cheesecakes! Fifty whole crowns—golly! Gwen! Now you can marry me for my money!”
    “Do you feel well, dear? You paid more than that for a bottle of wine just last night. I think it’s perfectly stinking. Insulting.”
    “Of course it is, darling. It is intended to make me angry, in addition to the inconvenience of forcing me to move. So I won’t.”
    “Won’t move?”
    “No, no. I’ll move at once.