Tour of Duty: Stories and Provocation

by Michael Z. Williamson

  Three months later I left for Basic Training, and it took the USAF three years to straighten out the paperwork from Permanent Resident to Naturalized Citizen, complicated by the fact that it was illegal to make any copy of the document in those days.

  If you see me at public functions, you will find a lot of immigrants, including me, congregate. No matter where we came from, we share the bond of having chosen, and worked, to be Americans. Skin color, religion, political affiliation, have far less interest or impact to me than that unique connection. I noticed this in the military, where lots of immigrants wound up in my unit, and at science fiction conventions, which I started attending.

  At my first convention, I managed to break my watch. I have never replaced it. It didn’t really matter what time it was, and I threw myself in headfirst. No one knew it was my first convention. I’ve always fit into that crowd.

  I had lots of letters to editor, recipes, and such published from age eighteen, with a very high hit rate. I wrote stuff for KeepAndBearArms.com that went viral, and eventually got reprinted for money. I sold some erotica, and got requests for more.

  I wrote a short story, which I submitted to several magazines, only to have it rejected. It wasn’t great. I did eventually salvage some of the characters and elements for other stories.

  It’s almost a stereotype that science fiction authors have an odd employment history. I got caught in the first round of military cutbacks in the late 1980s, wound up getting my reenlistment cancelled, and was out the gate on a week’s notice. I had to get all the essential stuff I didn’t have—an apartment, a bed, kitchen utensils, a cat—on credit. Then I had to find a job in a sucky area for jobs. Champaign-Urbana being a small town with a large college has lots of well-educated, needy, underpaid applicants for jobs. I took some hourly positions in fabrication shops, and doing machine maintenance, and even as shift manager at a pizza place, until I could get enrolled for school with the GI bill to help. I also enlisted in the Army National Guard.

  During this time, I hung out a lot with the Society for Creative Anachronism, and someone with a small business asked if I’d both craft armor and weapons for them to sell, and be a sales rep for those and other products. Every weekend, I was at Drill, or a convention, or a reenactment. I stopped working day jobs and did school weekdays. The money wasn’t great, but it was enough to see me through classes.

  A funny thing happened on the way to my degree. I went to a convention in Minneapolis. I arrived after a day of school, a night of driving, and no sleep, so I wasn’t really lucid after ten hours of setup and selling. A friend of mine introduced me to a friend of hers, wearing leather and spandex and nothing else except boots and a sword. We got to talking, and talking some more, and had a great time. She was curvy and cute, great to talk to, and almost psychic. While I was trying to come up with a clever way to say “Is there somewhere more quiet we can go?” she asked me, “So, should we find somewhere more private?”

  Good idea.

  I actually was dating someone at the time, though not exclusively. I made a point of saying so, that I was free for the weekend, but couldn’t promise more than that. So we had the weekend.

  A funny thing about one night stands. They don’t always last one night. A month later, she drove all the way to Milwaukee to join me at a convention there, and a month after that, she stopped by the apartment in Illinois on her way to Florida.

  She never got to Florida, and still hasn’t. She managed, very politely, to divert my date for that weekend into an accomplice and roommate, move us into a rental house, find another roommate, and wind up my Significant Other.

  Twenty-two years later, twenty of them married, Gail is still here. The bitch just won’t leave. On the other hand, I haven’t had any reason to throw her out. But it’s a one night stand. Honest.

  I paid my way through college several ways. I had the GI bill. I had National Guard drills and volunteered as support for whatever extra days they needed people for. I was a stripper (yes, really) for decent money, though not often enough. The small enterprise I worked for moved and folded. We started our own small business. I worked on blades—repairs, sharpening, custom crafting, and selling retail at SF conventions, SCA events and occasional other events. She helped with sales, costumes, and the tax paperwork.

  Gail went back to school, too, having previously attended University of Minnesota and a local college. She managed fast food, then wound up doing office management.

  Winters were the slow season, and I spent those times trying to build up inventory, scrape money from what small events there were, stringing my wife’s income along into a fine thread, and writing.

  I left school without a degree, though I have more than enough credit for a master’s. The problem is, it’s in electronic controls, history, English, physics, and none of it complete as a program. I was making enough from events, and enjoying it, that I didn’t miss the official stamps (I do hold a Journeyman’s certificate in HVAC, and a certificate in electrical controls).

  Gail’s research suggested that if we moved, we could keep the same cost of living but earn more money. I wasn’t tied down to any location. The only complication was that I had transferred back to the Air National Guard at this point, and would have a four hour drive for drill. It was workable, until I could find a slot in a unit closer to home.

  So we moved to the Indianapolis area, staying with friends until we got settled, and yes, managing to earn twice as much money for the same cost of living.

  So I kept doing it, we managed with some great years and lean years, and in the late ’90s, my firearm articles started getting published. Summers were, and still are, hectic with events. I took four years of winters to write Freehold, which is not my best writing, of course, but was heartfelt and earnest at the time.

  SF, though, especially military SF, is not a sellers’ market. Several experienced authors advised me to “write short stories,” build up a following with sales, then get a novel sold. It used to work that way. That was falling by the wayside at the turn of 2000, and is pretty much no longer valid advice, in my opinion.

  My shorts got rejected, often because they sucked. I knew my grasp of language was sufficient. I knew I had good plots and characters, but something in the construction was missing.

  By the time I wrote the short story that begins this collection, I thought I had a reasonable grasp of the art, and the friends I could trust to be honest not only liked it, but had discussions among themselves about it. Of course, that didn’t mean it would work for any particular periodical. It was frustrating.

  I groused about this fact on Baen’s Bar, where I’d been holding lengthy debates on the history of weapons and the logistics around them. I was always careful to spell and punctuate properly. It’s what I do, and this was a publisher’s site. I didn’t want to make the people who use the language for a living cringe with my errors.

  So I complained about all these rejections of, “Alas, we can’t use it at this time.” “Alas, it doesn’t quite grab us.”

  “Alas, it doesn’t fit our current needs.”

  They were saying, “Dear aspirant: Sorry, try again.” Why pretty it up with archaic wordage?

  Jim Baen replied, “Perhaps they’re trying to be alliterative. Alack, alas, alay . . .” He wrote a whole paragraph of alliterative A-words, which ended with, “That said, send me one. single. chapter. of something you’re working on and I’ll take a look at it.”

  After a brief adrenaline shock I shooed my wife from the office (er, kitchen), and I emailed him “One. Single. Chapter. Of Freehold.”

  He replied, “I. Have. Read. It,” and offered some small advice, which of course I took. He suggested I add a bit on a page about a departure from Earth, describing the shuttle in detail. I didn’t see the point. It was a plot device more than anything, connecting two scenes. But, Mister Baen had been doing this as long as I’d been alive. I took his advice under consideration, and yes, it turned a break into a segue. An
astute editor, that Mister Baen, which is of course why I’d been trying to court his attention.

  He then asked for another chapter. A week later, he asked for another. He was politely unhappy with some rambling parts, which I fixed. We went on. Finally, he said, “Just send me the rest of the book,” and told me to politely remind him once a month. Six months after that, I got a late night email that said, “Mike, let’s call it a deal. I’ll take Freehold for (respectable sum of money for someone desperately broke at that time), and have Marla send you our boilerplate contract.”

  I did consult with my friend Dave Drake to make sure I understood all the ramifications of said contract. But I said yes.

  I still only have one TV in the house, and it’s used more for movies and games than TV. I got cable when it was necessary for Olympic coverage. My son plays the games. If it weren’t for the computer (no games here, either) I wouldn’t need a screen at all, really. I spend most of the time writing, ranting and creating. I do fewer events than I used to, but still quite a few. Some are large for promotion and profit. Some are small for promotion and to hang out with friends. I still forge blades and do repairs, but it’s a money-making hobby, not really a job. I also do product reviews to provide feedback to manufacturers, and to then promote the stuff that holds up well. I’ve reviewed tactical lights, cameras, guns, backpacks, survival rations, training videos, any number of items relevant to disaster preparedness.

  So here I am, doing what I love doing, getting paid for it, and telling you about it.

  It’s been a hell of a ride so far.

  TOUR OF DUTY: STORIES

  The Humans Call it Duty

  The story that triggered my rant on Baen’s Bar, that got me recognized and published in major media, is this one, even though it wasn’t published until several years afterward. This is not a great story, even for a new writer. Asimov’s “Nightfall,” for example, written long ago by a then younger man, is a great story. Still, I’m not unhappy with this one. As I said, it engenders a lot of discussion among my fans, which is a clear sign that the story works.

  It was rejected by pretty much every major SF magazine, because it’s not the type of thing they want to publish. That’s no criticism of them. We each have our market.

  However, one foreign magazine sent back a form checklist letter, complete to a hand-added addendum that “This is a simple tale of revenge and killing and is not science fiction,” and conspicuously did not check the “Please send us your next work” box.

  Indeed.

  I have to wonder if they skimmed it and didn’t catch that the character isn’t human. It’s also possible they wanted the purist SF where there’s no story without specific science elements, though I’d argue that nonhuman intelligence is a key science point.

  The coda of that was that their government-subsidized magazine failed the next year, while Joe Haldeman and Martin Harry Greenberg thought it was a good enough story—for a beginner—to be included in “Future Weapons of War” a couple of years after that.

  Cap slipped through the undergrowth. He was stealthy, for there were things that would kill him if they found him, men and animals both. He surprised rabbits and bouncers and other prey as he appeared like ghosts through the leaves, and they scattered before him, but he was not hunting now.

  The sound of Guns had alerted him from his patrol. They came from somewhere near his friend, and he hurried to investigate. Guns were an indication of hunting, and David was alone, with many enemies in the dark woods. He increased his pace, mouth wide to reduce the rasp of his breath, and squeezed between two boles, then under the dead, rotten log he’d passed on the way out. His patrol had only been half done, and he hoped David would understand.

  He drew up short. The scents in his nose sorted themselves. That one was Gun smell, and not from David or another friend. That was smell from David’s Gun. That was the smell of David, and the smell of blood. Cap dropped flat on the forest floor and eased his way under a brushbush. He gazed deeply into the dappled murk, and widened his ears and nose. The Enemy was not nearby.

  He moved quickly, striding forward, dreading what he would find. There was a dip in the ground, leaves hastily tossed to cover it. A few scrapes revealed a hand, then an arm. The sweet-sour smell told him already, but he kept digging until he saw the face, then more. It was David, dead. Cold flowed through him as he stared at the body, ragged holes blown through it by Guns. All David’s harness and gear was missing. The thing he called a Comm was gone, and Cap knew that was bad. If an enemy had the Comm, he had to get it back or destroy it. He didn’t know why, but that had been one of the things drilled into him from an early age. A Duty, it was called.

  He whimpered in pain, for David had been his friend his entire life. Somehow, he had to do what must be done, and return to the fenced Home where David and he lived. He wasn’t sure what happened after that, but he knew what he’d been taught, and knew he had to do it. First, he reburied David’s body, sad and wishing other humans were here. They knew what to say for the dead, and Cap couldn’t say it for them.

  Standing and peering around, he spotted the route taken by the Enemy. He would come to that soon enough, but first, he had to do what David called a Datadump. That tree there should work, and he trotted toward it. He scrambled aloft until the branches would barely take his weight, swaying in the late evening breeze. He pressed the broad pad on the shoulder of his harness, and sat patiently. It was a human thing, and he didn’t know what it was exactly, only that he was to climb a tall tree and press the pad every day at sunset. That, too was a Duty. It beeped when it had done what it was supposed to, and he eased back down the limbs and trunk, flowing to the ground like oil.

  Now to the hunt.

  The path the Enemy left marked them as amateurs. David and his friends left much less sign of their passing, although he could still follow them easily enough. There were some friends, those who David called Black Ops, who were almost as adept as he, and could kill silently and quickly. He wished for their company now. They were hunters as he, even if human, and would understand his feelings. But those fellow hunters were not here, and he must tread carefully. It was his Duty to his friend to continue doing what he was trained to, and to recover the Comm. After that, it would be a pleasure to kill those who had killed David. That was his Duty to himself.

  There they were. He dropped into the weeds and became invisible, watching them patiently. There was no hurry, for they could not get away from his keen hunter’s skill. He sat and listened, grasping what few words he could, and waiting for the right moment.

  “—odd to find one rebel out like this, along our patrol route,” said one.

  “They’re all weird, if you ask me. They don’t want law, don’t want schools, and don’t want support. Why anyone these days would be afraid of the government is beyond me,” said another. He felt like a leader, and Cap guessed him to be the Sergeant. There were eight of them, so this was what David called a Squad, and Sergeant was the Squad Leader. They were enemies. He was sure, because the clothing was wrong, they smelled wrong, and David’s people had Squads of twenty.

  “It is their planet. Was,” said another. He carried a large Gun, the kind for support fire. He was another primary target. “I guess they were happy, but a strange bunch of characters,” he agreed.

  “Well, we’ve got a prize, and a confirmed kill, so that should make Huff happy.” He was turning the Comm around in his hands. He made a gesture and handed it to another, who stuffed it into his harness. Cap made note of that one’s look and smell as Sergeant continued, “He wanted to prove that initiating lethal force was a good idea, and this should help. We’ll sweep another few klicks tonight, then pick up again tomorrow. Jansen, take point,” Sergeant said.

  “Sure thing, Phil,” said the first one.

  The Squad rose to their feet and trudged away. They might imagine they were stealthy, compared to city people, but Cap easily heard them move out, three person-lengths apart, Jansen fir
st, then Gunner, then Sergeant, then the rest. Cap rose out of hiding, and followed them, ten person-lengths back. He stayed to the side, under the growth, and avoided the direct path they were taking. The Squad had Guns, and he did not, but he had all the weapons he needed, if he could get close enough.

  It was only a short time until one said, “I’ll catch up. Pee break.”

  “Shoulda gone before we left, geek,” Sergeant said.

  “Sorry. I’ll only be a few seconds.”

  Cap watched as the Enemy stood to the side and relieved himself. He jogged sideways along their path, hidden by leafy undergrowth, and waited until the last man passed by his chosen target. He crouched, braced, and as the man fumbled with his pants, threw himself forward. His victim heard him, and his head snapped up in terror. He was wearing the Goggles people wore to let them see in the dark, but it was too late. Cap swept over him before he could scream, unsheathed, cut, and landed rolling. The body gurgled, dropped, twitched and was still.

  One.

  Cap slipped quickly away, through more brushbushes, and carefully climbed a tree. He wanted to be high enough to observe, but low enough to use the limbs to escape if he had to. He peered through the woods, eyes seeing by the moonlight, and waited for the Enemy to respond.

  They weren’t a very good enemy, he thought. They hadn’t noticed yet. That was good, he supposed, although a part of him was insulted at the poor competition. He dropped lightly back to the ground and moved back to the kill. Sniffing and listening carefully, he made sure no one was nearby, then hoisted the body up and dragged it carefully off. He buried it under a deadfall, where the ants and flies would take care of it, and erased any sign of his passing. There was no time to rest, but he’d taken a few bites before burying the body. He could go on.