Isaac Asimov's SF-Lite

by Gardner R. Dozois

  “Not lines ten and sixty-eight, she’s not. Besides, Bryant was a Theist, which is the same thing as a Satanist.” She handed me her refusal slip and a fat manila envelope. “Our protests are in there.” She lowered her voice. “What does the word ‘thanatopsis’ really mean?”

  “It’s an Indian word. It means, ‘One who uses her religion to ditch class and get a tan.’ ”

  I went inside, got Shakespeare out of the vault in the library and went into the office. Ms. Harrows already had the Shakespeare file and her box of Kleenex out. “Do you have to do this?” she said, blowing her nose.

  “As long as Edwin Sumner’s in my class, I do. His mother’s head of the President’s Task Force on Lack of Familiarity with the Classics.” I added Delilah’s list of protests to the stack and sat down at the computer.

  “Well, it may be easier than we think,” she said. “There have been a lot of suits since last year, which takes care of Macbeth, The Tempest, Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Winter’s Tale, and Richard III.”

  “Delilah’s been a busy girl,” I said. I fed in the unexpurgated disk and the excise and reformat programs. “I don’t remember there being any witchcraft in Richard III.”

  She sneezed and grabbed for another Kleenex. “There’s not. That was a slander suit. Filed by his great-great-grandsomething. He claims there’s no conclusive proof that Richard III killed the little princes. It doesn’t matter anyway. The Royal Society for the Restoration of Divine Right of Kings has an injunction against all the history plays. What’s the weather supposed to be like?”

  “Terrible,” I said. “Warm and sunny.” I called up the catalog and deleted Henry IV, Parts I and II, and the rest of her list. “Taming of the Shrew?”

  “Angry Women’s Alliance. Also Merry Wives of Windsor, Romeo and Juliet, and Love's Labour's Lost.”

  “Othello? Never mind. I know that one. Merchant of Venice? The Anti-Defamation League?”

  “No. American Bar Association. And Morticians International. They object to the use of the word ‘casket’ in Act III.” She blew her nose.

  ***

  It took us first and second period to deal with the plays and most of the third to finish the sonnets. “I’ve got a class fourth period and then lunch duty,” I said. “We’ll have to finish up the rest of them this afternoon.”

  “Is there anything left for this afternoon?” Ms. Harrows asked.

  “As You Like It and Hamlet," I said. “Good heavens, how did they miss Hamlet?"

  “Are you sure about As You Like It?” Ms. Harrows said, leafing through her stack. “I thought somebody’d filed a restraining order against it.”

  “Probably the Mothers Against Transvestites,” I said. “Rosalind dresses up like a man in Act II.”

  “No, here it is. The Sierra Club. ‘Destructive attitudes toward the environment.’ ” She looked up. “What destructive attitudes?”

  “Orlando carves Rosalind’s name on a tree.” I leaned back in my chair so I could see out the window. The sun was still shining maliciously down. “I guess we go with Hamlet. This should make Edwin and his mother happy.”

  “We’ve still got the line-by-lines to go,” Ms. Harrows said. “I think my throat is getting sore.”

  ***

  I got Karen to take my afternoon classes. It was sophomore lit and we’d been doing Beatrix Potter—all she had to do was pass out a worksheet on Squirrel Nutkin. I had outside lunch duty. It was so hot I had to take my jacket off. The College Students for Christ were marching around the school carrying picket signs that said, “Shakespeare was a Secular Humanist.”

  Delilah was lying on the front steps, reeking of suntan oil. She waved her “Shakespeare is Satan’s Spokesman” sign languidly at me. “ ‘Ye have sinned a great sin,’ ” she quoted. “ ‘Blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou has written.’ Exodus Chapter 32, Verse 30.”

  “First Corinthians 13:3,” I said. “ ‘Though I give my body to be burned and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.’ ”

  ***

  “I called the doctor,” Ms. Harrows said. She was standing by the window looking out at the blazing sun. “He thinks I might have pneumonia.”

  I sat down at the computer and fed in Hamlet. “Look on the bright side. At least we’ve got the E and R programs. We don’t have to do it by hand the way we used to.”

  She sat down behind the stack. “How shall we do this? By group or by line?”

  “We might as well take it from the top.”

  “Line one. ‘Who’s there?’ the National Coalition Against Contractions.”

  “Let’s do it by group,” I said.

  “All right. We’ll get the big ones out of the way first. The Commission on Poison Prevention feels the ‘graphic depiction of poisoning in the murder of Hamlet’s father may lead to copycat crimes.’ They cite a case in New Jersey where a sixteen-year-old poured Drano in his father’s ear after reading the play. Just a minute. Let me get a Kleenex. The Literature Liberation Front objects to the phrases, ‘Frailty, thy name is woman,’ and ‘O, most pernicious woman,’ the ‘What a piece of work is man’ speech, and the queen.”

  “The whole queen?”

  She checked her notes. “Yes. All lines, references, and allusions.” She felt under her jaw, first one side, then the other. “I think my glands are swollen. Would that go along with pneumonia?”

  Greg Jefferson came in, carrying a grocery sack. “I thought you could use some combat rations. How’s it going?”

  “We lost the queen,” I said. “Next?”

  “The National Cutlery Council objects to the depiction of swords as deadly weapons. ‘Swords don’t kill people. People kill people.’ The Copenhagen Chamber of Commerce objects to the line, ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.’ Students Against Suicide, the International Federation of Florists, and the Red Cross object to Ophelia’s drowning.”

  Greg was setting out the bottles of cough syrup and cold tablets on the desk. He handed me a bottle of valium. “The International Federation of Florists?” he said.

  “She fell in picking flowers,” I said. “What was the weather like out there?”

  “Just like summer,” he said. “Delilah’s using an aluminum sun reflector.”

  “Ass,” Ms. Harrows said.

  “Beg pardon?” Greg said.

  “ASS, the Association of Summer Sunbathers objects to the line, ‘I am too much i’ the sun,’ ” Ms. Harrows said, and took a swig from the bottle of cough syrup.

  ***

  We were only half-finished by the time school let out. The Nuns’ Network objected to the line, “Get thee to a nunnery,” Fat and Proud of It wanted the passage beginning, “Oh, that this too too solid flesh should melt,” removed, and we didn’t even get to Delilah’s list, which was eight pages long.

  “What play are we going to do?” Wendy asked me on my way out.

  “Hamlet,” I said.

  "Hamlet?" she said. “Is that the one about the guy whose uncle murders the king and then the queen marries the uncle?”

  “Not anymore,” I said.

  Delilah was waiting for me outside. " ‘Many of them brought their books together and burned them,’ ” she quoted. “Acts 19:19.”

  " ‘Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me,’ ” I said.

  ***

  It was overcast Wednesday but still warm. The Veterans for a Clean America and the Subliminal Seduction Sentinels were picnicking on the lawn. Delilah had on a halter top. “That thing you said yesterday about the sun turning people black, what was that from?”

  “The Bible" I said. “Song of Solomon. Chapter one, verse six.”

  “Oh,” she said, relieved. “That’s not in the Bible anymore. We threw it out.”

  Ms. Harrows had left a note for me. She was at the doctor’s.

  I was supposed to meet with her third period.

  “Do we get to start today?” Wendy asked.

  “
If everybody remembered to bring in their slips. I’m going to lecture on Shakespeare’s life,” I said. “You don’t know what the forecast for today is, do you?”

  “Yeah, it’s supposed to be great.”

  I had her collect the refusal slips while I went over my notes. Last year Delilah’s sister Jezebel had filed a grievance halfway through the lecture for “trying to preach promiscuity, birth control, and abortion by saying Anne Hathaway got pregnant before she got married.” Promiscuity, abortion, pregnant, and before had all been misspelled.

  Everybody had remembered their slips. I sent the refusals to the library and started to lecture.

  “Shakespeare—” I said. Paula’s corder clicked on. “William Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564, in Stratford-on-Avon.”

  Rick, who hadn’t raised his hand all year or even given any indication that he was sentient, raised his hand. “Do you intend to give equal time to the Baconian theory?” he said. “Bacon was not born on April 23, 1564. He was born on January 22, 1561.”

  ***

  Ms. Harrows wasn’t back from the doctor’s by third period, so I started on Delilah’s list. She objected to forty-three references to spirits, ghosts, and related matters, twenty-one obscene words (obscene misspelled), and seventy-eight others that she thought might be, such as pajock and cockles.

  Ms. Harrows came in as I was finishing the list and threw her briefcase down. “Stress-induced!” she said. “I have pneumonia, and he says my symptoms are stress-induced!”

  “Is it still cloudy out?”

  “It is seventy-two degrees out. Where are we?”

  “Morticians International,” I said. “Again. ‘Death presented as universal and inevitable.’ ” I peered at the paper. “That doesn’t sound right.”

  Ms. Harrows took the paper away from me. “That’s their ‘Thanatopsis’ protest. They had their national convention last week. They filed a whole set at once, and I haven’t had a chance to sort through them.” She rummaged around in her stack. “Here’s the one on Hamlet, ‘Negative portrayal of interment preparation personnel—’ ”

  “The gravedigger.”

  “ ‘—And inaccurate representation of burial regulations. Neither a hermetically-sealed coffin nor a vault appear in the scene.’ ”

  We worked until five o’clock. The Society for the Advancement of Philosophy considered the line, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” a slur on their profession. The Actors’ Guild challenged Hamlet’s hiring of non-union employees, and the Drapery Defense League objected to Polonius being stabbed while hiding behind a curtain. “The clear implication of the scene is that the arras is dangerous,” they had written in their brief. “Draperies don’t kill people. People kill people.”

  Ms. Harrows put the paper down on top of the stack and took a swig of cough syrup. “And that’s it. Anything left?”

  “I think so,” I said, punching reformat and scanning the screen. “Yes, a couple of things. How about, ‘There is a willow grows aslant a brook/That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.’ ”

  “You’ll never get away with ‘hoar,’ ” Ms. Harrows said.

  ***

  Thursday I got to school at seven-thirty to print out thirty copies of Hamlet for my class. It had turned colder and even cloudier in the night. Delilah was wearing a parka and mittens. Her face was a deep scarlet, and her nose had begun to peel.

  “ ‘Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings as in obeying the voice of the Lord?’ ” I asked. “First Samuel 15:22.” I patted her on the shoulder.

  “Yeow,” she said.

  ***

  I passed out Hamlet and assigned Wendy and Rick to read the parts of Hamlet and Horatio.

  “ ‘The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold,’ ” Wendy read.

  “Where are we?” Rick said. I pointed out the place to him. “Oh. ‘It is a nipping and an eager air.’ ”

  “ ‘What hour now?’ ” Wendy read.

  “ ‘I think it lacks of twelve.’ ”

  Wendy turned her paper over and looked at the back. “That’s it?” she said. “That’s all there is to Hamlet? I thought his uncle killed his father and then the ghost told him his mother was in on it and he said ‘To be or not to be’ and Ophelia killed herself and stuff.” She turned the paper back over. “This can’t be the whole play.”

  “It better not be the whole play,” Delilah said. She came in, carrying her picket sign. “There’d better not be any ghosts in it. Or cockles.”

  “Did you need some Solarcaine, Delilah?” I asked her.

  “I need a Magic Marker,” she said with dignity.

  I got her one out of the desk. She left, walking a little stiffly, as if it hurt to move.

  “You can’t just take parts of the play out because somebody doesn’t like them,” Wendy said. “If you do, the play doesn’t make any sense. I bet if Shakespeare were here, he wouldn’t let you just take things out—”

  “Assuming Shakespeare wrote it,” Rick said. “If you take every other letter in line two except the first three and the last six, they spell ‘pig,’ which is obviously a code word for Bacon.”

  “Snow day!” Ms. Harrows said over the intercom. Everybody raced to the windows. “We will have early dismissal today at 9:30.”

  I looked at the clock. It was 9:28.

  “The Over-Protective Parents Organization has filed the following protest: ‘It is now snowing, and as the forecast predicts more snow, and as snow can result in slippery streets, poor visibility, bus accidents, frostbite, and avalanches, we demand that school be closed today and tomorrow so as not to endanger our children.’ Buses will leave at 9:35. Have a nice spring break!”

  “The snow isn’t even sticking on the ground,” Wendy said. “Now we’ll never get to do Shakespeare.”

  ***

  Delilah was out in the hall, on her knees next to her picket sign, crossing out the word “man” in “Spokesman.”

  “The Feminists for a Fair Language are here,” she said disgustedly. “They’ve got a court order.” She wrote “person” above the crossed-out “man.”

  “A court order! Can you believe that? I mean, what’s happening to our right to freedom of speech?”

  “You misspelled ‘person,’ ” I said.

  PERPETUITY BLUES

  Neal Barrett, Jr.

  “Perpetuity Blues” was purchased by Gardner Dozois, and appeared in the May 1987 issue of Asimov’s, with an illustration by Laura Lakey. Barrett became one of the magazine's most popular writers in the last half of the '80s, and gained wide critical acclaim with a string of pungent, funny, and unclassifiably weird stories like “Ginny Sweethips' Flying Circus,'' “Stairs,” “Highbrow,” “Trading Post,” “Class of '61”. . . and particularly the story that follows, which has become an underground cult classic, and may well be one of the funniest stories we've ever read.

  Born in San Antonio, Texas, Neal Barrett, Jr. grew up in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, spent several years in Austin, hobnobbing with the likes of Lewis Shiner and Howard Waldrop, and now makes his home with his family in Fort Worth, Texas. He made his first sale in 1959, and has been a full-time freelancer for the past twelve years. His books include Stress Pattern, Karma Corps, the four-volume Aidair series, the critically acclaimed novel Through Darkest America, and its sequel, Dawn’s Uncertain Light. His most recent book is a very strange new novel, The Hereafter Gang.

  * * *

  On Maggie’s seventh birthday she found the courage to ask Mother what had happened to her father.

  “Your father disappeared under strange circumstances,” said Mother.

  “Sorghumdances?” said Maggie.

  “Circumstances,” said Mother, who had taught remedial English before marriage and was taking a stab at it again. “Circumstances: a condition or fact attending an event or having some bearing upon it.”

  “I see,” said Maggie. She didn’t, but knew it wasn’t saf
e to ask twice. What happened was Daddy got up after supper one night and put on his cardigan with the patches on the sleeves and walked to the 7-Eleven for catfood and bread. Eight months later he hadn't shown up or called or written a card. Strange circumstances didn’t seem like a satisfactory answer.

  Mother died Thursday afternoon. Maggie found her watching reruns of “Rawhide” and “Bonanza.” Maggie left South Houston and went to live with Aunt Grace and Uncle Ned in Marble Creek.

  “There’s no telling who he might of met at that store,” said Aunt Grace. “Your father wasn’t right after the service. I expect he got turned in Berlin. Sent him back and planted him deep in Montgomery Wards as a mole. That’s how they do it. You wait and lead an ordinary life. You might be anyone at all. Your control phones up one day and says ‘the water runs deep in Lake Lagoda’ and that’s it. Whatever you’re doing you just get right up and do their bidding. Either that or he run off with that slut in appliance. I got a look at her when your uncle went down to buy the Lawnboy at the End-of-Summer Sale. Your mother married beneath her. I don’t say I didn’t do the same. The women in our family got no sense at all when it comes to men. We come from good stock but that doesn’t put money in the bank. Your grandfather Jack worked directly with the man who invented the volleyball net they use all over the world in tournament play. Of course he never got the credit he deserved. This family’s rubbed elbows with greatness more than once but you wouldn’t know it. Don’t listen to your Uncle Ned’s stories. And for Christ’s sake don’t ever sit on his lap.”

  Maggie found life entirely different in a small town. There were new customs to learn. Jimmy Gerder and two other fourth graders took her down to the river after school and tried to make her take off her pants. Maggie didn’t want to and ran home. After that she ran home every day.

  Uncle Ned told her stories. Maggie learned why it wasn’t a good idea to sit on his lap. “There was this paleontologist,” said Uncle Ned, “he went out hunting dinosaur eggs and he found some. There was this student come along with him. It was this girl with nice tits is who it was. So this paleontologist says, ‘be careful now, don’t drop ’em, these old eggs are real friable.’ And the girl says, ‘hey that’s great, let’s fry the little fuckers.’ ” Uncle Ned nearly fell out of his chair.