Writers of the Future Volume 34

by L. Ron Hubbard

  Inside their rooms, Shallan helped Jasnah undress, though she hated touching the woman. She shouldn’t have felt that way. The men Jasnah had killed were terrible creatures, and she had little doubt that they would have killed her. But it wasn’t the act itself so much as the cold callousness of it that bothered her.

  Still feeling numb, Shallan fetched Jasnah a sleeping robe as the woman removed her jewelry and set it on the dressing table. “You could have let the other three get away,” Shallan said, walking back toward Jasnah, who had sat down to brush her hair. “You only needed to kill one of them.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Jasnah said.

  “Why? They would have been too frightened to do something like that again.”

  “You don’t know that. I sincerely wanted those men gone. A careless barmaid walking home the wrong way cannot protect herself, but I can. And I will.”

  “You have no authority to do so, not in someone else’s city.”

  “True,” Jasnah said. “Another point to consider, I suppose.” She raised the brush to her hair, pointedly turning away from Shallan. She closed her eyes, as if to shut Shallan out.

  The Soulcaster sat on the dressing table beside Jasnah’s earrings. Shallan gritted her teeth, holding the soft, silken robe. Jasnah sat in her white underdress, brushing her hair.

  There will be times when you must make decisions that churn your stomach, Shallan Davar.…

  I’ve faced them already.

  I’m facing one now.

  How dare Jasnah do this? How dare she make Shallan a part of it? How dare she use something beautiful and holy as a device for destruction?

  Jasnah didn’t deserve to own the Soulcaster.

  With a swift move of her hand, Shallan tucked the folded robe under her safearm, then shoved her hand into her safepouch and popped out the intact smokestone from her father’s Soulcaster. She stepped up to the dressing table, and—using the motion of placing the robe onto the table as a cover—made the exchange. She slid the working Soulcaster into her safehand within its sleeve, stepping back as Jasnah opened her eyes and glanced at the robe, which now sat innocently beside the nonfunctional Soulcaster.

  Shallan’s breath caught in her throat.

  Jasnah closed her eyes again, handing the brush toward Shallan. “Fifty strokes tonight, Shallan. It has been a fatiguing day.”

  Shallan moved by rote, brushing her mistress’s hair while clutching the stolen Soulcaster in her hidden safehand, panicked that Jasnah would notice the swap at any moment.

  She didn’t. Not when she put on her robe. Not when she tucked the broken Soulcaster away in her jewelry case and locked it with a key she wore around her neck as she slept.

  Shallan walked from the room stunned, in turmoil. Exhausted, sickened, confused.

  But undiscovered.

  Paying It Forward

  by Jerry Pournelle

  * * *

  Dr. Jerry Pournelle was born in Louisiana in 1933. His formal education included a bachelor’s degree in engineering, a master’s degree in statistics and systems engineering, and two PhDs (psychology and political science). He credited his broad spectrum of practical knowledge to working in such fields as the military, aviation, aerospace, higher education, politics and computers. He was the founder of the Citizen’s Advisory Council on National Space Policy and an influential voice in the world of computers and digital technology. For example, he wrote the longest-running column in computer journalism with his user’s column, called “Computing at Chaos Manor,” published in Byte Magazine. As a political thinker, he invented the two-axis political spectrum (alias the “Pournelle chart,” which you can learn about online at Baen.com.)

  In science fiction, Pournelle was a titan. Among his bestsellers are the blockbusters The Mote in God’s Eye, Lucifer’s Hammer, Footfall and Oath of Fealty, which were in collaboration with fellow WotF judge Larry Niven, though Jerry had many bestsellers in his own right. He edited numerous anthologies and wrote a range of nonfiction pieces for the SF media. He was also a former president of the Science Fiction Writers of America. Dr. Pournelle received the L. Ron Hubbard Lifetime Achievement Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Arts in 2006. Pournelle served as a WotF judge since 1986 and judged Contest entries through the third quarter of 2017. His memory lives on with this Contest.

  “There’s no such thing as instant success in writing, and it’s still important to learn the craft, but one of the best ways of doing that is through success in WotF with its no-nonsense workshops and advice from working successful writers (including me). Not every WotF winner becomes a successful writer, but an astonishing number of them have managed that.” —Dr. Jerry Pournelle

  Paying It Forward

  A very long time ago I wrote a book and nobody had ever read it. I had a good friend named Robert Heinlein. I asked him if he would read the book for me and tell me if he thought it was any good. That is about the biggest favor any writer can ask another writer to do. Because as Robert once said, most writers don’t want criticism, they want praise. But he read it, he tore it apart, he showed me places he thought I should rewrite and when I finished it, he sent it to his agent, and it sold. And I’ve been writing books ever since, and I’ve also had the same agent ever since.

  Some years later I was talking to Robert and I said I don’t know how I’m going to repay you for all the help you’ve given me. He said, “You can’t. There isn’t any way you’re going to, so you pay it forward.”

  So I’ll repeat Mr. Heinlein’s advice to writers, because if you pay attention to his dictums, you don’t need to know much else. And if you want to be a writer, you’ve got to do several things.

  The first one is you have to write. You have to actually put your tail in a chair and your fingers on a typewriter or keyboard. You have to write.

  You have to finish it. You can’t just keep writing things and starting them and carrying them around and hauling them out of your briefcase and reading them to your friends in bars. You have to finish what you write.

  And having finished it, you have to stop mucking with it. And get it done and send it to somebody who actually has money to buy it with and presses to print it on. It does you no good to have your best friend read your story or the geek down the street or even your high school teacher. They’re not going to buy it from you. The only opinion that counts about your story is whether or not somebody will pay you money for it. And the only reason to rewrite it, as Mr. Heinlein said, is if somebody says, “I like that, but it needs this and this, and if you do that, I’ll buy it.” Then it’s worth it. Otherwise write a new story. Your words are not so precious that you can’t just set them aside when it didn’t work and start over.

  I was talking to a young man tonight and he told me about two novels he’s trying to sell. I listened to the ideas and they were both on subjects about which he didn’t know very much, but he thought would be interesting. And yet he works in a profession in which there are dozens of darn good stories.

  He thinks what he does is dull. Fine, but think about what might happen and it might not be dull. There he knows the details, he knows what’s going on.

  And don’t try to keep working with the stuff already done. Don’t try to go back and fix it. Just set it aside and go write a new story.

  And if you do that, if you write, you finish what you write, you get it out to people who can buy it, and if you don’t sit around endlessly rewriting, then at some point you’ll learn to write.

  Now in my experience, it takes somewhere around half a million to a million words before you get to the point where you are no longer thinking about what you’re writing, and the technique of how you’re doing it, and where to put your fingers on the keyboard, and all of the other mechanics of writing and grammar and style. After enough practice, you begin thinking about the story and you tell the story without thinking “I’m writing!” You’
re just writing it. When you get to that point, then you’ve got a chance. And until you get to that point, maybe you do, but you probably don’t. Because you were building it brick by brick. And building brick by brick usually doesn’t make for a very good building—especially if you didn’t know what it was going to be, when you keep adding bricks hoping that eventually it is going to look like something you want.

  The other advice I would give new writers, is advice Mr. Heinlein gave me a long time ago that has served me well: if you’re going to choose grammars and styles, choose good standard grammatical English and what we used to call “high grammatical style.” Don’t experiment. Don’t write with experimental spellings. Don’t try to write phonetic spellings. Don’t, in other words, try to improve the English language. Use it as correctly as possible.

  The reason for that is simple: The number of people who will be irritated by your writing with good standard grammar is very low. The number of people who will simply not want to read it because you wrote with some nonstandard experimental grammar is very high. For example, there are people who think that it would be politically a good thing to change the impersonal pronoun in English from he to she. Sounds like a good idea, but it makes dreadful reading. It’s very hard to read stories that use little gimmicks like that. Just regular high style and good grammar.

  And if you don’t know good grammar, go learn it. Get a good spell-checking program. Get a good grammatical checking program. Try to fool the grammar program. It will tell you things you know are bad advice. Fine, try to fool it into thinking it’s good. And when you get to the point where you can write by all the rules and you can follow all the rules, even though they don’t lead you to anything you like, now you are permitted to go play around with the rules and break them and do things to make your work more dramatic and more effective. But if you don’t know what the rules are in the first place, how do you know whether what you’re doing is a good thing or not?

  So Mr. Heinlein essentially made that speech to me forty years ago and I’m paying it forward here.

  What Lies Beneath

  written by

  Cole Hehr

  illustrated by

  Maksym Polishchuk

  * * *

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Cole Hehr lives in Norman, Oklahoma with his girlfriend Ariana and works as a direct-care counselor for at-risk teenagers and young adults.

  A lifelong fan of the written word, Cole began writing fiction after earning a bachelor’s degree in history in 2013 and belatedly realized that he preferred storytelling to academia.

  When he isn’t reading or writing, Cole enjoys lifting weights and teaching others about fitness and nutrition. “What Lies Beneath” is his first sale.

  ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

  Maksym “Max” Polishchuk was born in 1999 in Lviv, an ancient Ukrainian city located at the crossroads of Western and Eastern Europe. Lviv, with its diverse culture and rich history, ultimately became one of the primary sources of Maksym’s inspiration, who was always fascinated by the history concealed behind each ancient structure.

  Such fascination with history, coupled with the discovery of texts of Tolkien and J. K. Rowling, is what ultimately ignited Maksym’s interest in illustration. Art was the only way of transforming the stories and worlds he saw in his imagination into something more tangible. In order to help him achieve his dreams, his mother sent him to an art studio, which he attended almost daily over the span of six years, and which helped him nurture his talents and skills.

  Maksym moved to the US just before his freshman year of high school. Even though his world was transformed completely, the one thing that remained constant was art. Today, Maksym studies political science and international relations at Loyola University Chicago in hopes of creating a better world that is not limited solely by the boundaries of the canvas.

  What Lies Beneath

  I refused to let the incense waver even when I felt the cool touch of steel against the back of my neck.

  “One stroke is all it would take and the world would be free of you.”

  I leaned forward, still sitting cross-legged, and placed the incense in the bronze cylinders that sat atop each grave plaque. Two for my spouse, two for my son, and two for my daughter. I cocked my head, glancing down at the shining steel that pressed against my neck. The hand that held it was steady; I didn’t feel the hint of a shiver or shake in the blade, and it had followed my leaning with practiced ease.

  “You aren’t the first to think so.” I worked to keep my voice even, without inflection. A threat was one thing, invading the sanctity of my family’s gravesite was altogether another. “But you would be the first to make your attempt in this sacred place.”

  I lifted the small jade platter and nudged the excess ash from each stick of incense onto it. The smell of sandalwood filled the night air as tiny threads of gray smoke curled into the air above my family’s graves. “What kin of yours did I slay?”

  The voice that answered me was as hard and sharp as the blade at my neck. “My father.”

  “I’ve killed many fathers,” I said. “Many brothers, sisters, wives and mothers. Sons and daughters. Who was he?”

  “Etrolus, Polemarch of Nadamia.” I recalled the name and the man that bore it. Stolid, well-built. A soldier among soldiers. Etrolus deserved better than the edge of my sword across his throat, but that was what I had given him. Honor and respect aside, he had stood against me. Now he lay beneath a slab of marble in his family’s tomb.

  I set down the plate full of smoking ash and turned back to regard the man behind me. He stood tall, wearing the black tunic of a soldier. The sword held to my neck a mere moment before now hung at his side. His face was as sharp and grim as the blade he carried. Bands of wrought bronze adorned his wrists and he bore the thin, aged scars on his shins and forearms of horseman’s armor. Silver threaded through his curly hair at the temples and peppered his beard.

  “I killed your father nearly forty summers ago. You’ve just now come for revenge, son of Etrolus?” I asked. Faces of foes long past flitted through my mind.

  The other man shook his head. He spoke through clenched teeth. “No. I’ve come to ask your help.”

  My thoughts ground to a halt at that. People once used to ask for my assistance. A long time ago. When I first became what I am, and they thought there was anything left other than my killing hands. I couldn’t recall the last time anyone had asked for my aid while knowing my identity. In the decades since, it has only ever been for vengeance that any one came to me. Many men and women sought me out to avenge their parents; most of them were eighteen or nineteen, at the youngest. Young lives, snuffed out by my ancient hands.

  “What could you possibly need from me?”

  The man’s chest rose and fell with a deep, steadying breath. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to keep his anger in check or to keep from breaking down—one seemed as likely as the other. “I need you to help save my son. You were a man, once. You visit these graves every year. If there is some spark of that man left, then I ask for his aid.”

  My heart had stopped beating two centuries ago, but for the first time since my family’s passing, I felt a tightness in my chest. I looked back at the grave stones, each block of marble topped with burning incense. I’d made my bargain for immortality so that I could take vengeance on those who tore my family from me. My foes were gone, their seed burned from the earth. I knew that for a certainty because I had seen to it. I’d killed the last imperial family member just after I slew Etrolus.

  I could have let someone kill me decades ago, but I resisted death at every turn. I refused to die, and the reason why ate at my heart like a worm: I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing my family in the afterlife, seeing the knowledge of what I had become dawn in their eyes. How many souls, torn from the mortal coil, had passed into the Graylands and told tales of my butchery and d
estruction?

  “Your son,” I said. “How old is he?”

  “Twelve summers.”

  I closed my eyes. Maira and Ladirus had been ten and twelve when a soldier put them to the sword alongside their mother. I thrashed against the memory, forcing it back down beneath the calm, cold weight of more than two hundred years.

  “Tell me what must be done.”

  I sat beside Polemarch Magrius while the priests slaughtered the bull. Acolytes gathered the blood in gilt bowls and drizzled drops of gore into the flaming braziers, while the more experienced priests began carving and dismembering the carcass, marking every organ for this god or that goddess. Beneath the smell of roasting meat and burning herbs rose the stench of manure, old blood, and animal fear-sweat. I’d hated temples when I lived, and I liked them even less in undeath.

  “You asked me to save your son, yet we sit in a temple watching old men kill beasts,” I said. The nearest acolyte spared me a hurried glance before returning to his duties. Was he too young to know my face? That idea would have been a welcome relief.

  “I wished to consult the gods about my plan,” Magrius said. He watched as the priest raised the smoking heart free from its flaming tripod of bronze and held it overhead. A good sign, from Magrius’s expression. I never could tell the difference between a bad piece of animal innards and a good one when it came to omens.

  “You have yet to tell me this plan. Or what manner of trouble your son is in. My life is long, my patience is not.” Magrius sighed and rubbed his calloused hands together. He wore only the bands of his office for jewelry. “My son was taken by the cult of Setrepais. I believe they have given him to the sea serpent, though I know not why. I only know that he yet lives. The haruspex sees no death in his future.”

  “A detachment of spearmen could deal with this cult,” I pointed out.