"We"ve timed the flashes. The lights go off for just under ten seconds, but the interval between the flashes decreases by about four and a half seconds each time."
Agnes nodded. Some of the scientists around her began to move away, or to look downward or into their papers or at each other, in the embarra.s.sed realization that telling Auntie Agnes about their findings wouldn"t solve anything. What could she do? Yet she was the closest thing to a planetary government there was. And she was not very close to that at all.
"I see you have it all nicely measured. Anyone know what it means?" she asked.
"No. How could we?"
Many shook their heads, but one young woman said, "Yes. Whenever the darkness is on us, the walls are impenetrable."
There was a stir of comment. "The whole time?" someone asked. Yes, the young woman said. "How do you know?" another demanded. By trying to pa.s.s through a wall during the blackout and having my students do the same, she said.
"What does it mean?" another asked, and this time no one had an answer.
Agnes raised her old, faded black hand and they listened. "There might be some important meaning that we cannot guess from this information. But one thing we do know. If things go on the way they are now, it should be sometime during tonight"s sleep that the interval between flashes fades to zero, and we have darkness with no light in between. How long that will last I don"t know. But if it has any duration at all, my friends, I will want to be home with my family. We don"t know how soon travel will reopen between cells."
No one had any better ideas, and so they went home, all of them, and her great-grandchildren helped Agnes to her home, which was nothing more than a roof to keep off the sun and the rain. She was tired (she was always tired these days) and she lay on her bed of ticked-out straw and dreamed two dreams, one while she was still awake, and one while she was asleep.
While she was awake she dreamed that with the darkness this great gift house had learned mankind"s rhythms and needs, and the darkness would be the first night, a night exactly as long as a night should be on Earth. And then a morning would come, and another night, and she approved of this, because a hundred years without darkness was proof enough to her that nighttime was a good idea, despite the fears and dangers it had often brought on Earth. She also dreamed that the walls between cells were sealed off every day of the year but one, so that each cell would become a society to itself, though in that one day a year, those who had a mind to could leave and go their own way. Travelers would have that one day to find the spot where they wanted to spend the next year. But the rest of the time, every cell would be alone, and the people living there could develop their own way, and so strengthen the race.
It was a good dream, and she found herself almost believing it as she drifted off to sleep without eating. (She often forgot to eat these days.) In her sleep, she dreamed that during the darkness she rose to the center of the Balloon, and there, instead of meeting a solid wall, she met a ceiling that fairly pulled her through. And there, in the center, she found the great secret.
In her dream, lightning danced across a huge sphere of s.p.a.ce, six hundred kilometers in diameter, and b.a.l.l.s and ribbons of light spun and danced their way around the wall. At first it seemed pointless, meaningless. But at last (in her dream) she understood the speech of the light, and realized that this globe, which she had thought was an artifact, was actually alive, was intelligent, and this was its mind.
"I have come," she said to the lightning and the lights and the b.a.l.l.s of light.
So what? the light seemed to answer.
"Do you love me?" she asked.
Only if you will dance with me, the light answered.
"Oh, but I can"t dance," she said. "I"m too old."
Neither, said the light, can I. But I do sing rather well, and this is my song, and you are the coda. I sing the coda once, and then, which is to be expected, il fine il fine.
In her dream Agnes felt a thrill of fear. "The end?"
The end.
"But then-but then, please, al capo al capo, to the start again, and let us have the song over, and over, and over again."
The light seemed to consider this, and in her dream Agnes thought the light said yes, in a great, profound amen that blinded her so brightly she realized that in all her life she had never understood the meaning of the word white white, because her eyes had never seen such white before.
Actually, of course, her dream was undoubtedly her mind"s way of coping with the things going on around her. For the darkness came not long after she went to sleep, came and stayed and as soon as the last of the sunlight was gone the lightning began, huge dazzling flashes that were not just light, not just electricity, but spanned the spectrum of all radiation, from heat and less-than-heat to gamma radiation and worse-than-gamma. The first flash doomed every human being in the Balloon-they were poisoned with radiation beyond hope of recovery.
There were screams of terror, and the lightning struck many and killed them, and the wail of grief was loud in every cell. But even at its cruelest, chance plays its hand as kindly as it can; Agnes did not wake up to see the destruction of all her hopes. She slept on, slept long enough for one of the bolts to strike directly at the roof over her, and consume her at a blow, and her last sight was not really white at all, but every radiation possible, and instead of being limited by human eyes, at the moment of death she saw every wave of it, and thought that it was the light in her dream saying amen.
It wasn"t. It was the Balloon, popping.
Every wall split into two thinner walls, and every cell detached from every other cell. For a moment they hung there in s.p.a.ce, separated by only a few centimeters, each from the other; but all still were linked to each other through the center, where vast forces played, forces stronger than any in the solar system except the fires of the sun, which had been the source of all the Balloon"s energy.
And then the moment ended, and the Balloon burst apart, each cell exploding, the entire organization of cells coming apart completely, and as the cells dissolved into dust they were hurled with such force in every direction that all of them that did not strike the sun or a planet were well launched out into the deep s.p.a.ce between stars, going so fast that no star could hold them.
The transport ships that had left the Balloon since the flashing began were all consumed in the explosion.
None of the cells. .h.i.t Earth, but one grazed close enough that the atmosphere absorbed much of the dust; the average temperature of the Earth dropped one degree, and the climate changed, just slightly, and therefore so did the patterns of life on Earth. It was nothing that technology could not cope with, and since Earth"s population was now down to a billion people, the change was only an inconvenience, not a global catastrophe.
Many grieved for the deaths of the billions of people in the Balloon, but for most the disaster was too great to be comprehended, and they pretended that they didn"t remember it very often, and they never talked about it, except perhaps to joke. The jokes were all black, however, and many were hard put to decide whether the Balloon had been a gift of G.o.d or an aeons-old plot by the most talented ma.s.s murderer in the universe. Or both.
Deenaz Coachbuilder was now very old, and she refused to leave her home in the foothills of the Himalayas even though now the snow only melted for a few weeks in the summer and there were many more comfortable places to live. She was senile and stubborn, and went out every day to look for the Balloon in the sky, searching with her telescope just before sunrise. She could not understand where it had gone. And then, on one lucid day when her mind returned for just a few hours, she realized what had happened and never went indoors again. They found a note on her body: "I should have saved them."
HECTOR 8.
In the moment when the Hectors hung loosely in the darkness, in the last endless moment before the leap, they cried out their ecstasy. But now Hector answered their cry with a different sound, one they had never heard from him.
It was pain.
It was fear.
"What is it?" the Hectors asked him (who was no longer themself).
"They did not come!" Hector moaned.
"The Masters?" And the Hectors remembered that the Masters were supposed to come and trap them and force them not to leap.
"For hundreds of flashes my walls were soft and thin and they could have pa.s.sed into me," Hector said (and the saying took only an instant), "but they never came. They could have risen into me and I would not have to die-"
The Hectors marveled that Hector had to die, but now (because it was built into them from the beginning) they realized that it was good and right for him to die, that each of them was was Hector, with all his memories, all his experience, and, most important, all the delicate structure of energy and form that would stay with them as they swept through the galaxy. Hector would not die, only the center of this Hector, and so, though they understood (or thought they understood) his pain and fear they could hold off no longer. Hector, with all his memories, all his experience, and, most important, all the delicate structure of energy and form that would stay with them as they swept through the galaxy. Hector would not die, only the center of this Hector, and so, though they understood (or thought they understood) his pain and fear they could hold off no longer.
They leaped.
The leap crumbled them but hurled them outward, each leaving the rigidity of his cell structure, losing his walls; each keeping his intellect in the swirling dust that spun out into s.p.a.ce.
"Why," each of them asked himself (at once, for they were the same being, however separate), "did they let us go? They could have stopped us, and they did not. And because they did not stop us, they died!"
They could not imagine that the Masters might not have known how to stop the leap into the night, for the Masters had first decided Hector could exist, millions of years before, and how could they not know how to use him? It was impossible to conceive of a Master not knowing all necessary information.
And so they concluded this: That the Masters had given them a gift: stories. A trapped Hector learned stories, thousands and millions and billions of stories over the aeons of his endless captivity. But such Hectors could never be free, could never reproduce, could never pa.s.s on the stories.
But in the hundred years that these Masters had spent with them, the Hectors had learned those billions of stories, truer and kinder stories than those the Makers had built into the first Hector. And because the Masters this time had willingly given up their lives, this time the Hectors made their leap with an infinite increase of knowledge and, therefore, wisdom.
They leaped with Agnes"s dreams in their memories.
They were beautiful dreams, all but one of them fulfilled, and that dream, the dream of eternal happiness, could only be fulfilled by the Hectors themselves. That dream was not for the Masters or the Makers or even the Ma.s.ses, for all of them died too easily.
"It was a gift," the Hectors said to themselves, and, despite the limitations built into them, they were deeply grateful. "How much they must have loved me," each Hector said, "to give up their lives for my sake."
On Earth, people shivered who had never known cold.
And every Hector danced through the galaxy, dipping into the clouds left by a supernova, swallowing comets, drinking energy and ma.s.s from every source until he came to a star that gave a certain kind of light; and there the Hector would create himselves again, and the Hectors would listen to themself tell stories, and after a while they, too, would leap into darkness until they reached the edge of the universe and fell over the precipice of time.
In the shadow of inevitable death, the people of Earth withered and grew old.
AFTERWORD.
"UNACCOMPANIED SONATA"
WHEN MY STORY collection collection Unaccompanied Sonata and Other Stories Unaccompanied Sonata and Other Stories was published, my afterword for this story was very brief: ""Unaccompanied Sonata" began with the the thought of one day: What if someone forbade me to write? Would I obey? I made a false start then, and failed; years later I tried again, and this time got through the whole story. Other than punctuation changes and a few revised phrases, was published, my afterword for this story was very brief: ""Unaccompanied Sonata" began with the the thought of one day: What if someone forbade me to write? Would I obey? I made a false start then, and failed; years later I tried again, and this time got through the whole story. Other than punctuation changes and a few revised phrases, this this one has stood in its first full draft as it came out of the typewriter. It"s the truest thing I"ve ever written." one has stood in its first full draft as it came out of the typewriter. It"s the truest thing I"ve ever written."
At the time, that"s all I understood of where that story came from. Since then I"ve learned more. I told the whole story in my foreword to Lloyd Biggle, Jr."s, story "Tunesmith" in a Tor double published not long ago. I"m excerpting a part of that essay to tell you where this story came from: In 1959 I turned eight. It was an innocent time; my parents let me hop on my bike and ride from our home on Las Palmas Drive all the way down Homestead Road to downtown Santa Clara, California. To the public library, a squat building in the middle of a circle of huge trees. A setting straight out of faerie, I realize now; then, though, I cared nothing for the trees. I parked my bike, sometimes even remembering to lock it, and plunged through the doors into the world of books.It seemed such a large place then. Directly ahead as you came inside was the circulation desk, with a librarian always in attendance-always policing, I thought, since as an eight-year-old I had enough experience of life to know that all adults were always watching children to make sure they didn"t get away with anything. When an unaccompanied child entered the library, there was only one permitted place to go: the children"s section, to the right. The tall shelf units to the left, shadowy and forbidding with their thick, dark-spined books, were meant for adults only, and children were not to enter.Not that anyone had told told me that, of course. But the signs were clear. The children"s section was for children-and that meant that the non-children"s sections were me that, of course. But the signs were clear. The children"s section was for children-and that meant that the non-children"s sections were not not for children. for children.That year I read everything remotely interesting in the children"s section. I prided myself, as a third-grader, on not reading anything aimed at any grade under sixth, and those books were soon read. What now? Nothing to read, nothing to check out with my library card and carry home in the basket on the front of my bike.And then I realized: there were hundreds, thousands of books on the other side of the circulation desk. If I could just make my way over there, find a book, and then hide somewhere and read it...I dared not. And yet that strange, forbidden territory lured me. I knew better than to ask ask-then I would be told no no and would be watched all the more carefully because I had confessed my interest in forbidden places. So I watched, for all the world like a child hoping to shoplift and waiting for the clerks all to look the other way. and would be watched all the more carefully because I had confessed my interest in forbidden places. So I watched, for all the world like a child hoping to shoplift and waiting for the clerks all to look the other way.Finally they did. I moved swiftly and silently across the long s.p.a.ce before the circulation desk, the no-man"s-land between the bright-windowed children"s section and the deep-shadowed adult section. No one called out for me to stop-it would have been a harsh, guttural "Halt!" I knew, for I had seen enough World War II movies on TV to know that unreasoning authority always spoke with a German accent. At last I ducked behind a shelf unit and found myself in the brave new land, safe for the moment.Sheerest coincidence placed me directly in front of a single shelf ent.i.tled "Science Fiction." There were few books there-mostly story collections edited by people like Judith Merril and Groff Conklin. Best Science Fiction Stories of 1955 Best Science Fiction Stories of 1955. That sort of thing.But I was glad. After all, I was used to reading easier stuff. The letters in these books were all so small and close together. There were so many words words. But at least the stories were short. And science science fiction. That was like those time-travel stories in fiction. That was like those time-travel stories in Boy"s Life Boy"s Life, right?I took a couple of books and snuck off to a secluded table. There were some adults around, but they weren"t official, and as long as I was quiet I figured they wouldn"t tell on me. I opened the books and started to read.Most of the stories were just too hard. I"d read a paragraph or two, maybe two pages, and then I"d flip on to the next story. Mostly it was because the stories were about things that I didn"t care about. Sometimes I couldn"t even figure out what was going on. Science fiction wasn"t meant meant to be for eight-year-olds, I knew-but still, they didn"t have to make it so darned hard, did they? to be for eight-year-olds, I knew-but still, they didn"t have to make it so darned hard, did they?There were a few stories, though, that spoke clearly to me and captured my imagination from the start. By far the longest one I was able to finish began with the image of people visiting a great concert hall, being pestered by a strange, twisted old man who seemed to take some sort of pride in it. Then the story flashed back and told the story of how that great concert hall came to be, and who that old man was.You see, there was a time when people had forgotten the joy of music. It only survived in commercial jingles, short songs designed to sell something. Except that there was one jingle-writer who had a special gift, an ability that transcended the limitations of his craft. The story struck me more deeply than any other I had ever read till then. I identified with the hero-he was all my best hopes and dreams. His pains were mine; his achievements would be mine as well. I, as a child, was too young to truly understand some of the concepts in the story. Intellectually I grasped them, but I had no experience to make the idea come to life. Nevertheless, the story itself, the hero"s discovery of who he was and what he could do, the response of others around him, and what his actions led to-ah, that was the path of a great man"s life. I thought. Anyone can be great when following in paths that others praise. But when you achieve solitary greatness, when you bend an unbending world and turn it into a new path, not because the world wanted to turn, not because anyone asked you to turn it or helped you, but rather because you walked that path yourself and showed the way, and, having seen it, they could not help but follow: that became my lifelong measure of the true hero.Or perhaps it already was was my measure, and it took that story to make me aware of it-does that matter? At the time, as an eight-year-old child unschooled in philosophy, I found the story overwhelming. It remade me. I saw everything through new eyes afterward. my measure, and it took that story to make me aware of it-does that matter? At the time, as an eight-year-old child unschooled in philosophy, I found the story overwhelming. It remade me. I saw everything through new eyes afterward.I grew up and learned to tell stories myself. First I was a playwright; then I turned to fiction, and when I did it was science fiction that I wrote, though I cared not overly much for science. It was the mythic story that I wanted to tell, though I couldn"t remember when I had decided that. And it was in the genre of science fiction and fantasy that the mythic story could still be clearly, plainly told-I knew that, was deeply certain of it. I could not do with fiction what I knew I had had to do, except in this realm of strangeness. to do, except in this realm of strangeness.So I wrote science fiction, and eventually that came to be the mainsail of my writing career. And one day in the dealer"s room in a science fiction convention I saw the name Groff Conklin on the spine of an old and weathered book and I remembered those old anthologies from my childhood, when I thought I had to sneak into the adult section in order to read. I stood there, my hands resting on the book, in reverie, trying to remember the stories that I had read, wondering if I might find them again and, if I did, whether I"d laugh at my childish taste.I talked to the dealer, telling him the time period of the books I had read in the Santa Clara library. He showed me what he had; I scanned through the books. I couldn"t remember t.i.tle or author of the one story that meant most to me, but I remembered vaguely that it was the last story in the book. Or was it simply the last I read, because there was no point in reading any other? I couldn"t remember even that.Finally I struggled to tell him the tale, calling up more details with each one I spoke aloud. At last I had told him enough."That"s "Tunesmith" you"re looking for," he said. "By Lloyd Biggle, Jr."Lloyd Biggle, Jr. Not one of the writers of that time who had made the transition into the seventies and eighties. His name was not a household word now, like Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, or Bradbury, though all were his contemporaries. I felt a stab of regret; I also felt a tiny thrill of dread, because of course the same could happen to me. There"s no guarantee, because your works have some following in one decade, that you"ll still have an audience hungry for your stories in another. Let that be a lesson to you, I thought.But it was a stupid lesson, and I refused to believe it. Because another thought came to mind. Lloyd Biggle, Jr., didn"t become one of the rich and famous ones when science fiction became commercial in the seventies and eighties. He didn"t have crowds of salesmen touting his works. He didn"t have dumps of his novels near the checkout stand at every WaldenBooks in North America. But that had nothing to do with whether he had succeeded, whether his work had been worth doing, his tales worth telling. Because his story was alive in me. It had transformed me, though even then I did not yet understand how completely I had taken "Tunesmith" into myself.And I knew that if I could write a story that would illuminate some hitherto dark corner in someone"s soul and live on in them forever, then it hardly mattered whether writing made me rich or kept me poor, put my name before the public or left me forgotten, for I would have bent the world"s path a little. Just a little, yet all would be different from then on because I had done it.Not every reader had to feel that way about my stories. Not even many many readers. If only a few were transformed, then it would have been worth it. And some of those would go on to tell their own tales, carrying part of mine within them. It might never end. readers. If only a few were transformed, then it would have been worth it. And some of those would go on to tell their own tales, carrying part of mine within them. It might never end.Only a couple of months before writing this essay, I was talking to an audience about "Tunesmith," telling them essentially the story I"ve told you so far. I began to speculate on influence. "Maybe that"s why I kept writing so many stories about musicians early in my career," I said. "Songmaster, of course, and "Unaccompanied Sonata.""Then I remembered that only a few minutes earlier I had mentioned that "Unaccompanied Sonata," probably the best short story I have ever written or will ever write, was one of the few works that came to me whole. That is, I sat down to write it (having made one abortive attempt a year or two before), and it came out in one smooth draft in three or four hours. That draft was never revised, except for a little fiddling with punctuation and a word here or there. When other writers talked about stories being gifts from a Muse, I imagined that experience was the sort of thing they were talking about.But now, thinking of "Unaccompanied Sonata" in that double context, as a story that came whole and also as a story about music, probably influenced by "Tunesmith," it suddenly occurred to me that maybe "Unaccompanied Sonata" didn"t come from a Muse at all (I"ve always been skeptical about such things anyway), but rather from Lloyd Biggle, Jr. After all, though the world in which "Unaccompanied Sonata" takes place is completely different from the milieu of "Tunesmith," the basic structure of both stories is almost identical.A musical genius, forbidden to perform, performs anyway, and his music has far-reaching effects, even though he is s.n.a.t.c.hed away without ever having a chance to benefit personally from what he achieved. And at the end, he comes to the place where the music is being played and takes his unrecognized bow. Anyone who has read both "Tunesmith" and "Unaccompanied Sonata" recognizes the pattern. It is not all all that either story is about-but it"s a vital part of both. that either story is about-but it"s a vital part of both.So of course "Unaccompanied Sonata" came whole. I knew how the story had to go; I knew how it had to end. After all, when I was eight years old, Lloyd Biggle, Jr., showed me how. The story felt so true to me and dwelt so deeply inside me that entirely without realizing it-at a time, in fact, when I didn"t remember "Tunesmith" consciously at all-I was reaching down into myself, finding the mythic elements of "Tunesmith" that felt most true and right to me, and putting them into my strongest and truest tales.
There"s more to the essay than that, but that"s the part that talks about the origin of "Unaccompanied Sonata." I hope you will lay hands on the Tor double of Tunesmith Tunesmith and and Eye for Eye Eye for Eye. Even though my novella "Eye for Eye" is also included in this book, I hope at least some of you will read "Tunesmith," partly because of the great debt I owe to the story, and partly because it"s still every bit as good as I thought it was when I was a kid.
"A CROSS-COUNTRY TRIP TO KILL RICHARD NIXON"
There"s a perverse part of me that, when it"s in vogue to hate somebody, makes me want to say, "Isn"t there another way to look at this?" The national hatred of Richard Nixon during the 1970s particularly bothered me, mostly because it was so completely out of scale with anything he actually did. At no point did he distort or endanger the const.i.tution of the United States as much as it was distorted or endangered by his two immediate predecessors; indeed, they were clearly his political school in just how vile a politician can be and still become president. I concluded at the time, and still believe, that Richard Nixon was hated for his beliefs; and even though I share almost none of them, I find I have at least as much contempt for the hypocrites who attacked him in the name of "truth" as for the man himself. In particular I think of Benjamin Bradlee, one of the "heroes" of Watergate, who brought a president down in the name of the public"s right to know the truth-the same Benjamin Bradlee who, as a reporter, was fully aware of and, according to some reports, complicitous in John Kennedy"s constant adulteries in an era when, if the public had known of this trait in the man, he would never have been elected. Indeed, the political life of Gary Hart should inform us that times may not have changed all that much! Somehow, though, the people didn"t have a right to know the truth about a man when he was a presidential candidate with views Bradlee approved of. The people only had a right to know when Bradlee hated the candidate and his views.
Still, finding Nixon"s political executioners with dirty hands doesn"t cleanse his own; he did what he did and was what he was, and I for one am sorry he was president. Nevertheless, in the late 1970s I was constantly disturbed by the virulence of the hatred poured out on the man. It wasn"t Nixon who was poisoning America; it was the hatred of Nixon that was hurting us. That hatred was spilling over into hatred of anyone who sought public office; I think now it was the disrespect for the office brought on by both sides in the Watergate affair that destroyed the presidency of Jimmy Carter, probably the most decent, altruistic man to hold that office since Herbert Hoover. Heaven knows our system doesn"t often bring altruistic people into high positions in America....
So I wrote a story about healing. Not excusing Nixon, but not accusing him beyond his actual offenses, either. A vision of how to make America whole.
"THE PORCELAIN SALAMANDER"
My wife, Kristine, lay in bed and playfully asked me to tell her a bedtime story. I thought of a disgusting animal to spin yarns about, but then proceeded to make a fairy tale out of it anyway. Later I sent it as my Christmas card to friends who would understand not getting a real real card with four-color printing and all. It was next published in my collection card with four-color printing and all. It was next published in my collection Unaccompanied Sonata and Other Stories Unaccompanied Sonata and Other Stories, and again in my limited-edition collection Cardography Cardography. Few have read it, but those who have often declare it to be among my best stories. That makes me very glad, because the story, one of the briefest I"ve ever written, encapsulates some of the most important truths I"ve tried to tell in my fiction. If my career had to be encapsulated in only three stories, I believe I would choose "The Porcelain Salamander," "Unaccompanied Sonata," and "Salvage" as the three that did the best job, together, of saying all that I had to say.
"MIDDLE WOMAN"
In editing my anthology of dragon stories, which was published in two volumes, Dragons of Darkness Dragons of Darkness and and Dragons of Light Dragons of Light, I knew all along that I would be including a story of my own, one called "A Plague of b.u.t.terflies." But in the process of editing other people"s works, an idea came to me quite independently. What if somebody were given three wishes and never used the third one? What would that do to the wishgiver? Because I had dragons on my mind, I thought of having a dragon be the wishgiver, and then, because I had been surprised at how few of the dragon stories were set in China (we Eurocentric Americans forget who invented invented dragons), I decided to set my story there as well. The idea of making my main character a middle woman came from the idea that she had to be, not a hero, but the opposite of a hero-which is, not an antihero, but the commonest of the common folk. When the anthology appeared, there was "Middle Woman," a story I"m still very proud of in part because fables are so d.a.m.nably hard to write. But I couldn"t very well have two stories by me in my own anthology, could I? And "A Plague of b.u.t.terflies" had already appeared in print under my name. So "Middle Woman" got the pseudonym-Byron Walley, a name I had used several times before when stories of mine were published in the LDS press. dragons), I decided to set my story there as well. The idea of making my main character a middle woman came from the idea that she had to be, not a hero, but the opposite of a hero-which is, not an antihero, but the commonest of the common folk. When the anthology appeared, there was "Middle Woman," a story I"m still very proud of in part because fables are so d.a.m.nably hard to write. But I couldn"t very well have two stories by me in my own anthology, could I? And "A Plague of b.u.t.terflies" had already appeared in print under my name. So "Middle Woman" got the pseudonym-Byron Walley, a name I had used several times before when stories of mine were published in the LDS press.
"THE BULLY AND THE BEAST"
I usually plan out a story before I write it, but this one grew during the process of writing it, starting with the most skeletal of concepts: how hard it would be to deal with a great warrior in areas that had nothing to do with war. I thought, Just because a guy can slay a dragon doesn"t mean you want him to marry your daughter.
So the tone of the story was tongue-in-cheek, at first. But the farther I got into it, the farther I moved away from satiric farce and the more I became a believer in the tale. I had no idea, going into it, what would happen when Bork reached the dragon. The dragon"s eyes were the inspiration of the moment. But for me the story came alive when I had Bork admit that he was afraid, and the dragon"s eyes dimmed. It came out of my unconscious mind; it was almost an involuntary reaction; but I knew at once that this was the heart of the story and all the rest was just fumbling around till I got there.
Still, I thought it was pretty entertaining fumbling-around, so I left most of it in. I keep meaning to revise the story completely and sell it as a young adult fantasy. I even have an editor who"s interested in it. Someday, when I have time, it may exist in that more refined form. It could never exist in worse form than its first publication. Somewhere between galleys and the printer, somebody swapped two whole sections of the story. The published form was incomprehensible. It was years before it was reprinted anywhere, so I could set the text to rights; and when it was published in Cardography Cardography, the text was so riddled with typographical errors that I felt like it still still hadn"t been well published. This time, I hope, we got it right. hadn"t been well published. This time, I hope, we got it right.
"THE PRINCESS AND THE BEAR"
This story"s first draft was written as a love letter to a young lady who is now happily married to someone else-as am I. In that incarnation it was an allegory of our relationship as it seemed to me. After it became clear that my understanding of our relationship was hopelessly wrong, I still had the story-and, on rereading it, realized that there might be some truth in it beyond the immediate circ.u.mstances of a faded romance. So, when my then-editor at Berkley (my once-and-never-again publisher) told me she wanted a story of mine for an anthology called Berkley Showcase Berkley Showcase, I dusted off "The Princess and the Bear," restructuring and rewriting it completely. It is meant to sound like a fairy tale-not the Disney kind of fairy tale, where cuteness swallows up anything real that might be in the story, but the kind of fairy tale where people change and hurt each other and die.
"SANDMAGIC"
During my time at The Ensign The Ensign, I started developing a fantasy world based on the idea that different magics are acquired by serving different aspects of nature. There"d be stone magic and water magic, a magic of tended fields and a magic of forests, ice magic and sand magic. I still have many stories in that world that still haven"t ripened enough to be ready for telling-but one, this bleak tale of revenge that destroyed the avenger, ripened almost immediately.
In a way, it"s a rewrite of "Ender"s Game"-a precursor of the way I revised the meaning of that story when I made it into a novel in 1984. The similarities are obvious: the child who is taken from his family at an early age and schooled in the arts of power, which he then uses to destroy the enemy of his people. But what I knew-and what "Ender"s Game" did not adequately convey-was the self-destruction inherent in total war. Even when the enemy is helpless to strike back, total war destroys you. World War I clearly showed that, for the nations that waged total war (America did not) emerged from their vindictive "peace" talks with the drops of blood from the next world war already on their hands. The only reason that America did not, after World War II, suffer the same moral blight that undid France and Britain after World War I was the Marshall Plan and Douglas MacArthur. When the war was over, we rejected the idea that it had to remain a total victory. The Marshall Plan in Europe and Douglas MacArthur"s astonishingly benign occupation of j.a.pan went a long way toward redeeming us. At this writing it remains to be seen whether we will ever recover that moral stature. Certainly that"s not the rhetoric I hear from our supposed leaders about Vietnam or Panama or even the countries of Eastern Europe that lost the Cold War.
There is an ironic footnote to "Sandmagic." When I wrote it, I was still quite new in my career, and had no perspective yet on my own work. I thought it was something of a miracle when anything anything I wrote sold, so I had no idea whether I had written a good story or not. My best guideline, had I only known it, was Ben Bova. I sent everything I wrote to him first. What I didn"t realize was that he bought every single I wrote sold, so I had no idea whether I had written a good story or not. My best guideline, had I only known it, was Ben Bova. I sent everything I wrote to him first. What I didn"t realize was that he bought every single publishable publishable story that I wrote. So the result was that all the other editors were seeing only unpublishable stories. It"s hardly a surprise that they didn"t share Ben"s enthusiasm for my writing. Given a lead time of a year or more between selling a story and seeing it published, they had seen a lot of really bad stuff from my typewriter before they ever saw any of my better work in print in story that I wrote. So the result was that all the other editors were seeing only unpublishable stories. It"s hardly a surprise that they didn"t share Ben"s enthusiasm for my writing. Given a lead time of a year or more between selling a story and seeing it published, they had seen a lot of really bad stuff from my typewriter before they ever saw any of my better work in print in a.n.a.log a.n.a.log.
One editor, however, seemed to think of himself, not as a protector of authors, allowing only their good work to come before the public, or even as a teacher of writers, helping them to do better because of his advice, but rather as one of the furies, wreaking hideous vengeance on any author who dared to submit to his magazine a story that did not meet his standards. And if that author"s cover letter dared to state that he had sold several stories to Ben Bova at a.n.a.log a.n.a.log, why, that author was certainly uppity.
But I think I would have had no ill treatment from this editor had it not been for the fact that he kept the first two stories I sent him for more than a year with no response. I sent him letters. I finally telephoned him. Nothing happened. He was a dead-end market.
Then I finished "Sandmagic." I was already getting much better at knowing what I had written; I knew that "Sandmagic" had some strength to it. I also knew that it was completely wrong for a.n.a.log a.n.a.log. So, for once, I would not not be sending the story first to Ben. I thought of sending it to Ed Ferman at be sending the story first to Ben. I thought of sending it to Ed Ferman at Fantasy and Science Fiction Fantasy and Science Fiction, but it didn"t seem like the kind of thing he he ran, either. But there was this other magazine, this bottom-of-the-line magazine, that ran, either. But there was this other magazine, this bottom-of-the-line magazine, that did did publish some heroic fantasy. So I thought I"d give him one more try. I called him up and told him who I was. By now I was on the Hugo ballot for "Ender"s Game" and for the Campbell Award. I mentioned the stories he"d had for a year. I reminded him of the earlier contact. I asked him if it was worthwhile sending him the fantasy story I had just finished. "Send it, send it," he said. And, uh, if I didn"t mind, why not send along copies of the earlier stories, too. publish some heroic fantasy. So I thought I"d give him one more try. I called him up and told him who I was. By now I was on the Hugo ballot for "Ender"s Game" and for the Campbell Award. I mentioned the stories he"d had for a year. I reminded him of the earlier contact. I asked him if it was worthwhile sending him the fantasy story I had just finished. "Send it, send it," he said. And, uh, if I didn"t mind, why not send along copies of the earlier stories, too.
By then I knew the earlier stories were losers. I shouldn"t have sent them along. I also knew this editor was incredibly lazy, and both both the other stories were much, much shorter than "Sandmagic." That should also have warned me off-he was sure to read them first. But I dutifully duplicated them and sent them along with "Sandmagic." the other stories were much, much shorter than "Sandmagic." That should also have warned me off-he was sure to read them first. But I dutifully duplicated them and sent them along with "Sandmagic."
What I got back was the most vicious piece of hate mail I have yet received. It was so cruel that by the end I could no longer take it personally. I knew he was wrong to tell me that I had no business writing science fiction-the Hugo ballot was pretty good consolation on that point-and I also knew he was hardly the one to tell me me about what was and was not professional. Nevertheless, I thought it was a churlish thing for an editor to do. After all, he was the one who had kept about what was and was not professional. Nevertheless, I thought it was a churlish thing for an editor to do. After all, he was the one who had kept my my stories for a year without response. Any sense of proportion and grace would have required him to apologize to me, not excoriate me. stories for a year without response. Any sense of proportion and grace would have required him to apologize to me, not excoriate me.
A closer examination of his letter revealed something else. He had clearly not read "Sandmagic." All his comments were about the two shorter stories. All he said about "Sandmagic" was "the other one was just as bad." Years later, when he shattered all sense of editorial ethics and published a review of those stories that he had read and rejected as an editor as an editor (would (would you you submit your fiction to an editor known to do such a thing?) he again reviewed the shorter works in detail and dismissed "Sandmagic" so completely that I knew he had not read it. submit your fiction to an editor known to do such a thing?) he again reviewed the shorter works in detail and dismissed "Sandmagic" so completely that I knew he had not read it.
As they say, doing well is the best revenge. I offered the story he was too lazy to read to Andrew Offutt for his Zebra anthology series Swords Against Darkness Swords Against Darkness. He bought it, and within a few months it was picked up for a best-of-the-year anthology.
However, when I catch myself getting too smug, I do remind myself from time to time that the other guy"s evaluation of those two short stories was, when you strip away the invective, dead on. They were terrible stories. They don"t don"t appear in this collection and, with luck, will never appear anywhere on this planet. But if the worst thing I ever do in my life is write some really bad stories while on my way to writing the ones I"m proud of, I"ll be very glad. appear in this collection and, with luck, will never appear anywhere on this planet. But if the worst thing I ever do in my life is write some really bad stories while on my way to writing the ones I"m proud of, I"ll be very glad.
"THE BEST DAY"
When I was writing my historical novel Saints Saints (first published, over my bitter protests, as (first published, over my bitter protests, as Woman of Destiny Woman of Destiny), I needed to include an example of the fiction writing of one of my main characters, Dinah Kirkham. Since she wasn"t a real person, I of course had no body of work to draw on, so I had to write, not an Orson Scott Card story, but a Dinah Kirkham story.
In that goal I failed-because, of course, it"s an impossible goal. The only kind of story I can ever ever write is an Orson Scott Card story. When write is an Orson Scott Card story. When Saints Saints came out, with "The Best Day" imbedded within it, it did not sound like anything of mine that had ever been published. But I already had my epic poem "Prentice Alvin and the No-Good Plow," which was my first attempt to bring fantasy into the American frontier; and beyond the American setting and flavor, the story is simply a fable, like "Unaccompanied Sonata" and "The Porcelain Salamander." I can"t do such tales very often, because fables are devilishly hard to write-there is only one Jane Yolen in the world of fantasy, who can do it over and over. But it is one of the most satisfying kinds of tale to tell, because, finished, it makes such a tidy package. Being so complete and yet compact, it gives the author the delusion of having created something perfect, rather like a jewel-cutter, I think, who doesn"t have to see the microscopic roughness of his work. But if fabulists are jewel-cutters, we have a peculiar inability: We can rarely tell, while cutting our little stones, whether we"re working with a diamond, a garnet, or a zirconium. came out, with "The Best Day" imbedded within it, it did not sound like anything of mine that had ever been published. But I already had my epic poem "Prentice Alvin and the No-Good Plow," which was my first attempt to bring fantasy into the American frontier; and beyond the American setting and flavor, the story is simply a fable, like "Unaccompanied Sonata" and "The Porcelain Salamander." I can"t do such tales very often, because fables are devilishly hard to write-there is only one Jane Yolen in the world of fantasy, who can do it over and over. But it is one of the most satisfying kinds of tale to tell, because, finished, it makes such a tidy package. Being so complete and yet compact, it gives the author the delusion of having created something perfect, rather like a jewel-cutter, I think, who doesn"t have to see the microscopic roughness of his work. But if fabulists are jewel-cutters, we have a peculiar inability: We can rarely tell, while cutting our little stones, whether we"re working with a diamond, a garnet, or a zirconium.
"A PLAGUE OF b.u.t.tERFLIES"
Few of my stories begin with visual images; this one did. I can"t remember now if the idea sprang from the ill.u.s.tration that appeared in Omni Omni magazine along with Patrice Duvic"s story "The Eyes in b.u.t.terflies Wings," or whether I simply remembered my story idea when I saw that ill.u.s.tration. My mental image, though, was of a man awakening in the morning to find his blanket and bedsheets and the floor and walls of his room covered with b.u.t.terflies, hundreds of different colors on thousands of wings, all moving in different rhythms and tempos so that his room looked like the surface of a dazzling sea. He arose and cast off his blanket, sending the room into a blur of colored flight, and began a journey with the b.u.t.terflies trailing after him. magazine along with Patrice Duvic"s story "The Eyes in b.u.t.terflies Wings," or whether I simply remembered my story idea when I saw that ill.u.s.tration. My mental image, though, was of a man awakening in the morning to find his blanket and bedsheets and the floor and walls of his room covered with b.u.t.terflies, hundreds of different colors on thousands of wings, all moving in different rhythms and tempos so that his room looked like the surface of a dazzling sea. He arose and cast off his blanket, sending the room into a blur of colored flight, and began a journey with the b.u.t.terflies trailing after him.
The image stayed with me for some time before I found the story to go with it. I had been toying with the science-fictional notion of creatures that consciously change their own genetic structure, and that trans.m.u.ted to the idea of an alien creature that fought back against a human invasion by genetically adapting itself into a superior organism. What this had to do with the b.u.t.terflies I cannot fathom, but for some reason I started trying to put the ideas together.
Had I been more sophisticated, I would have recognized the visual image as the seed of a tale in the South American magic realism mode. It did not belong with a science fiction idea. And the beginning of the story definitely has the mythic-no, fabulous-quality of magic realism. Indeed, the whole story retains that sense of not quite connecting with reality no matter how many details are provided, so that the science fiction aspects of the story are never clearly presented, or at least are not presented as science fiction as science fiction, so that readers don"t know if what they"re reading is to be taken factually or magically. Thus the science fiction is swallowed up in the fantasy.
Years later I would recover the science fiction idea and use it in my novel Wyrms Wyrms, where it is presented with absolute clarity, yet without losing all the magic. So it is possible to look at "A Plague of b.u.t.terflies" as a study for a later work. Yet it also stands alone, my one venture into a strange kind of voice that nevertheless pleased and pleases me very much.
I knew as soon as I had written it that this story was too strange for any of my previous audiences. At that time I received a letter from Elinor Mavor, who was then performing the thankless task of editing Amazing Stories Amazing Stories, trying to keep that long-mismanaged and mis-edited magazine from going under. She was paying, as I recall, one pound of dirt upon publication. But I thought it was important to help keep the magazine alive, and about the only thing a writer can do to sustain a publication is to offer stories for publication. I had sent her a couple of poems, but now I had a story that would probably find no other home. I mailed it. She bought it. Just in time, too-it was almost immediately afterward that TSR bought the magazine and George Scithers took over as editor, which meant the end of my contributions to Amazing Amazing. (Scithers and I have a peculiar relationship. He only likes my stories after other editors buy them.) To my knowledge, no living human being besides Mavor and me ever read this story. It is still the strangest fantasy I ever ventured to write. If you actually read it all the way through, you have significantly increased its number of readers.
"THE MONKEYS THOUGHT "TWAS ALL IN FUN"
Perhaps it is strange to have this clearly science fiction story in a fantasy collection, but I think it belongs here. The science fiction is only the frame, the outline of the story. Within it, the fables that the artificial habitat tells to itself are the meat of the story, and those are definitely fantasy, perfectly in line with the rest of the stories in Monkey Sonatas Monkey Sonatas.
I first conceived the story in response to a call by Jerry Pournelle for contributions to an anthology of stories set in artificial habitats. Being perverse, I immediately determined to set my story in an artificial habitat that was, in fact, a living alien organism. I conceived of it as a hollow sphere of great size. Its sh.e.l.l would be composed of thousands-perhaps millions-of hollow cells, each one large enough to sustain a good-sized population of human beings in an Earthlike, self-renewing environment. The hollow interior of the creature would be a highly charged electromagnetic memory chamber that would serve as the creature"s intelligence, running the entire habitat and pa.s.sing energy and resources as needed from one cell to another.