THE SWARMERS ARE BAD FOR US. US-the Skimmers. Or was Warren included? He must be.
Rosa stumbled toward him and the island seemed to grow.
"Wha"? Land! We go there!"
He wrinkled the salt-caked skin around his eyes, focusing on her face, but it looked different, strange. He didn"t know this woman. She was nothing to him.
She stepped closer and he hit her. She whimpered and sat on the deck, peering up at him in confusion.
He ignored her, feeling elated and calm. He gauged the small shifts in the wind and sighted in on the dark ma.s.s ahead. The reef stood out clearly now. And...
There was something moving on the beach.
Even at this distance he could make them out. Long green bodies lay in the sand, moving slowly inland. They were crawling with painful effort, dragging themselves along, but a few had already made it to the green margin of vegetation.
Swarmers. A Swarm that was learning to crawl out of the sea, practicing on a deserted island in the Pacific. Swarmers entering the next stage of their development.
The island was suddenly nearer and Rosa was pounding at him weakly, shrieking. He had been standing there, numb, trying to think, to understand.
"Crazy? Crazy? Crazy? We We die die out here." out here."
"What?" he said, distracted. The raft was veering, but it would come close to the reef.
"You "fraid! "Fraid the rocks." She gaped at him, eyes bulging. "No man man would..." would..."
"Shut up." They were rushing down on the island and the current was picking up.
"Na...na, I won"t. Gimmie." She looked around wildly. "I swim."
She scrabbled along the deck, picking at the planking. In a moment she found a larger board and tried to pry it up.
Warren breathed deeply and felt a calm swell up from his chest. He would do one last thing for her, and then be alone.
He walked over to the struggling woman, judged the correct angle and levered the board out of the deck with a rasping of nails. She s.n.a.t.c.hed at it.
They were running by the reef now and Warren could see the forms on the beach clearly. They had stubby thick fins at the side that worked slowly against the sand. They crawled like turtles.
No, land wasn"t the answer. The Swarmers were on the land now. They"d take it eventually, just as they"d taken the oceans. A man who clung to the land was finished. No, the answer...
Warren turned and looked out to sea. The rim of the world was an irregular line in the dusk. A sweeping circular arc, broken here and there by clouds. Clean, free. WSW.
Rosa went over the side with a splash. There was a narrow path through the reef no more than fifty yards away and she made for it, floating partially on the board.
Warren automatically studied the water, but no green forms followed her. If the Swarm wasn"t large here they might not notice her before she reached the beach.
He ran an eye along her probable path, estimating, and worked it out. It was good to be calculating again. Rosa would make the sh.o.r.e in a few more minutes.
It was surprisingly difficult to see her, though, for darkness was falling rapidly now. Under the wind the sea was breaking up into oily facets that reflected the dull orange of the sunset on the clouds. An ocean of mirrors.
He peered down at the water. Mirrors. What did he see there?
"No man... man..." she"d said. Maybe not Maybe he was something more, now. The Skimmers could tell him that.
He felt the tug of the lines in his hand and made a slight correction in the heading to steady a yaw in the raft.
He was gathering speed. When the thin scream came out of the dusk behind him he did not turn around.
Afterword.
Ever since Heinlein, the most frequent hero to appear in science fiction has been The Competent Man. That"s only natural-SF is the most optimistic genre in the literary world. But I"ve always felt The Competent Man was presented a little naively. He"s usually a scientist or engineer, but most of the scientists I know are far more complex in their competence than the people you"ll meet in science fiction.
In this story I"ve tried to deal a little more realistically with the cla.s.sic theme of encounter between man and extraterrestrials. The focus isn"t on the Swarmers and Skimmers themselves, but on the fact that they are alien alien: their motivations cannot be understood except perhaps by a.n.a.logy, and it is their very strangeness that gives them such psychic impact on the human race.
It may well be that the most important first adjustment mankind will make to an alien intelligence will be emotional. It"s a totally new problem. We don"t know how to deal with it and our gut response may decide everything.
One thing is certain: we will have to make compromises. The man who is rigid and can"t compromise his own self image won"t avoid this-he will instead run the risk of losing much of what makes him human.
Generally when a man stresses one aspect of his personality he pays a price. How high can it go?
In this story the price he pays is high. I"ve tried to get the reader to buy as much of Warren"s point of view as possible, to accept his universe as valid. It isn"t hard to believe. That"s the horror of it.
Because you see, the alien doesn"t have to be some extraterrestrial life form. Every person on this planet is undergoing a continuous encounter with the incredibly strange world our technology is creating for us just around the corner. It is alien. We have to come to terms with it. So we adjust, we change, we accept. And often we don"t know what price we have had to pay, either.
Introduction to BED SHEETS ARE WHITE.
The last few years, with the s...o...b..lling acceptance of speculative fiction in the groves of Academe, a number of sf writers-myself included-have been tapped to teach at various college writing workshops in sf and fantasy. From these workshops have come an amazing number of talented new writers. Most of whom teach us us new tricks. new tricks.
The best of these workshops was started at Clarion College in Pennsylvania, by Professor Robin S. Wilson (who under the name Robin Scott has a story just a little further on in this volume, thereby proving that we "teachers" have to keep renewing our credentials with our "students"). In 1968, "69 and "70 the Workshop was held at Clarion, and in 1971 it was moved to Tulane in New Orleans. From these four years of Clarion/Tulane alone, several dozen writers have emerged whose names appear with pleasing regularity in the magazines of the field. Some of them are in this book: Ed Bryant, Joan Bernott, and Evelyn Lief. Others will appear in The Last Dangerous Visions The Last Dangerous Visions. But right now, let me tell you a thing about Evelyn.
When I got to Clarion in 1968, I"d only guest-lectured at one Workshop previously, and I was unsure of myself. Deciding my terror could be put to good advantage, I formulated the policy of terrorizing my students. On the first day of cla.s.s, I was presented for workshopping a selection of stories written toward the end of the previous week, stories written while yet another sf writer had been in guest-lecturer attendance. These stories were, for the most part, undistinguished, sloppy, ungrammatical, devoid of originality, hackneyed, imaginatively constipated, lacking in meaningful characterization, self-indulgent and badly-typed.
In short, the usual nonsense one finds at workshops when the students are larking.
(PAUSE FOR A WORD FROM THE SPONSOR.
(My fellow instructors at Clarion/Tulane are the best G.o.ddamed bunch of writing teachers the world has ever known. I"ve been at other workshops where the "talent" imported to do the teaching was on a much higher reputational level, and if three out of a hundred conferees turned out to be saleable, turned out to derive even the slightest slightest worth from their two, four or six week stay at the workshop, it was in the nature of a miracle. Out of a hundred students at Clarion/Tulane in the four years of its existence, more than worth from their two, four or six week stay at the workshop, it was in the nature of a miracle. Out of a hundred students at Clarion/Tulane in the four years of its existence, more than half half have sold, continue to sell, and seem on their way to making successful careers at have sold, continue to sell, and seem on their way to making successful careers at writing what they want to write writing what they want to write. It is not by chance that so many Clarion/Tulane graduates are included in the DV series. I am a cold and heartless sonofab.i.t.c.h when it comes to buying stories for these books, and I a.s.sure you they could torture my mother with the Boot and thumbscrews before I"d buy a story on the basis of friendship or any other ground than that I thought it was a good story.
(Thus, be apprised that my fellow instructors-Fritz Leiber, Joanna Russ, Samuel R. Delany, Damon Knight, Kate Wilhelm, Robin Scott Wilson, Frederik Pohl and James Sallis-are the very best. Bar none.
(Even so, they are-to a person-gentler souls than your editor. I conceive of writing as a holy ch.o.r.e, and it is my feeling that students who come to a workshop for a six-week crash program are there for one reason and one reason only: to write. I push them. I chivvy and hara.s.s them and work them around the clock. They write a story a day and they workshop for hours and write through the night, until...by the end of my week"s stint as visiting tormenter...they collapse and have their barriers down totally for the soothing teaching of whomever follows me. My fellow teachers understand my tactic-and Damon hates hates following me because he then has to deal with a corps of quivering basket cases-but it following me because he then has to deal with a corps of quivering basket cases-but it seems seems to get results, and they to get results, and they do do write. write.
(So when I say the ma.n.u.scripts were not the best, at my arrival, I cast no badmouth at whichever instructor it was who preceded me that year. He or she was simply easier on them than I am. Nonetheless, shock tactics were in order.) I selected one of the bad batch and decided to use it as a hideous example to the other students.
It happened to be a story by Evelyn Lief.
It took me the better part of an hour to tear that little 1000-word short story to shreds. To flay it, to masticate it, to denounce its author in the vilest possible terms. "This piece of s.h.i.t isn"t fit to line the bottom of a bird cage. Miss Lief, you aren"t a writer, you"re a ghoul. You should have worked with Burke and Hare. This wretched abomination has as much charm and grace and symmetry as a thalidomide baby. As a writer I"m offended, as an editor I"m repelled, as a human being I"m nauseated. This is a grotesquerie unsullied by the presence of beauty in any form whatsoever. It is unstructured, illogical, moronic, ungrammatical, despicable in the extreme. Rather than simply tearing it to shreds and stomping on it-" which I proceeded to do, to the horror of the cla.s.s and Robin Wilson "-I should stuff it up whatever available orifice in your body I might find, including the a.n.a.l one from which it clearly emerged. You are a talentless creature, an affront to anyone seriously considering writing a craft, a chacma baboon in human guise. If you ever dare dare to submit something as noxious as this again, I will beat the c.r.a.p out of you. Is that clear? Stop crying and answer me! Is that clear, is that perfectly, crystal clear?" to submit something as noxious as this again, I will beat the c.r.a.p out of you. Is that clear? Stop crying and answer me! Is that clear, is that perfectly, crystal clear?"
Evelyn Lief went back to her room, with fury and ferocity scrawled a note that said something like f.u.c.k YOU HARLAN ELLISON YOU DON"T KNOW SO G.o.dDAM MUCH! and she put it up over her typewriter and started writing.
The next day she handed in "Bed Sheets are White," I kissed her with deep affection, and bought the story for Again, Dangerous Visions Again, Dangerous Visions.
Here it is, and here is what one of the most talented young writers I know, Evelyn Lief, has to say for herself: "I"m twenty five years old, five feet and two inches with brown hair and brown eyes. In the winter of 1967 I started reading science fiction, and started writing stories that summer. In the fall I won second prize in a short story contest judged by Fred Pohl and during the summer of 1968 I attended the first Clarion Workshop in Fantasy and Science Fiction. That year I sold my first story, "Bed Sheets are White." I sold my second story to David Gerrold for his anthology in the fall of 1968. It is called "Every Fourth House." I attended the Clarion Workshop again during the summer of 1969, but didn"t sell another story until September 1970. I sold that one, "The Inspector," to Robin Wilson for the Clarion anthology (Signet, 1971).
"I was born in Brooklyn in 1945, but lived most of my life in Queens and Long Island, with a sister four years younger and a brother fifteen years younger.
"I"ve spent several years of my life in a Zionist-socialist movement called Hashomer-Hatzair (The Young Guard), and six months with this group on a kibbutz in Israel. I"ve hitchhiked through Israel, spent a few days traveling in Europe (where I want to return) hitchhiked up and down the coast of California during the summer of 1970, and have traveled countless times to Washington D.C. for antiwar demonstrations.
"I"ve had two and a half years of college (Queens College) where I studied art before dropping out during the spring of 1967, took a few months to reacquaint myself with myself and then began writing. When I work with words I feel more able to find and express those things that need telling. I expect to be writing all my life. It"s a part of me that helps me to sort things out in my head. There is a pleasure in the process of giving order to chaos and yet retaining the essence of life around and inside me, of telling a good story, of reaching a reader who says, "Yes, I know that feeling. I understand."
"I"m now living in a three story brownstone on the edge of Bedford-Stuyvesant, a white ghetto of two houses inside the black ghetto. My house is a commune (now of 10 people, last week six, and who knows how many next week) that is just beginning to get it together, buying together, doing things together, and having an occasional spontaneous encounter group to work out our problems. The women here, including myself, are part of the growing women"s liberation movement in spirit, and sometimes in action. Right now I"m working as a typist at New York University Graduate School of Social Work, where I have an electric typewriter and a great deal of free time which I use to write my stories. I only plan to work a few months at a time, so I can have several free months to write and travel."
BED SHEETS ARE WHITE.
Evelyn Lief .
KEEP OUR HIGHWAYS CLEAN.
DON"T LITTER.
KEEP CLEAN, KEEP WHITE.
The traffic moved slowly.
Gart"s palms were sticky. His shirt clung to his stomach.
Noon. Two hundred fifty more miles. I"ll never make it in time.
Gart drove his car forward two feet. He knew he was wedged in by the sound of b.u.mpers clashing in front and behind him.
White cars reflected the sun"s light.
When Gart looked straight ahead the light blinded him. So he looked down into the car.
My eyes hurt. Maybe I"ve got a pair of sungla.s.ses.
Gait opened the glove compartment, bent down and looked in.
Nothing. Oh yes. Last week. I remember. They pa.s.sed a law against them. Just about the last thing to go.
Wish I had a pair of sungla.s.ses.
The line of cars started moving slowly forward. Then, one after another, the cars jerked to a halt.
Not even halfway there.
So tired.
Should never have tried to make the trip in one day. Should have listened to Rita.
Sungla.s.ses. Yeah.
I remember when we still had the gray-blue and gray-black roads. With only a white line down the middle. No line now. Just all white.
He shut his eyes, and held his hands over them.
Ah, nothing.
Gart pressed down and took his hands away quickly.
Red.
The side of his head was red. Blood trickled down past his ear and under his chin.
I was pushed against him. People were on all sides of me.
Above the ma.s.s of heads surrounding me I could see a mounted cop. I turned to go the other way. The fuzz was there too.
They were circling. Making the circle smaller and smaller.
NOWHERE TO GO.
The guy with the b.l.o.o.d.y head fell down. Couldn"t see him. But I could feel him next to my feet.
The crowd was pushing against me. They were shoving me toward the empty s.p.a.ce over that guy"s body.
I"d have to step on him or fall.
NO.
I pushed back, but only managed to stay in the same place.
A chant started, unclear at first. Then: DOWN WITH LADYBIRD. WE WANT OUR DIRT.