Isaac Asimov's SF-Lite

by Gardner R. Dozois

  “Music has charms to soothe a savage breast,” the great Congreve wrote three hundred years ago, and the music that charmed the savage breasts of the worldlings in that season was a series of very strange tunes and songs. One of them had the strange name “Five Footfalls; glooch, klownk, geeze, klupple, bonk” and the name was far from the strangest thing about that song. Well, it was a real recording of the footsteps of the people of Cloud-Nine Planet. The five-legged persons of Cloud-Nine Planet had their five feet and legs all different, and those were the sounds of their footfalls when they walked. And wordlings would have to get used to the sound and the fact of the Cloud-Niners walking before the Cloud-Niners arrived. World persons could not help listening to such strange pieces of music as this. Some people found those sounds delightful and enchanting. And some people quivered with fear at the sound of the murderously stalking, fearsome, five-footed Cloud-Niners.

  Mary Deare Dander now practiced an hour a day at walking on five different sorts of stilts at the same time. Mary Deare had become a prototype and a role-leader at many things.

  The metamorphosis of Mary Deare was coming along nicely, and all the substance of it came to her over the ivory grapevine and through the dozen special facets of her thousand-faceted eyes.

  She was the richest and most beautiful person in the world, and the most enchantingly strange.

  ***

  Oh noble teeth and noble eyes

  Beyond all reasoned uses!

  None other like her shall arise

  In land of Golden Gooses.

  Buck Tooth Boogie.

  ***

  And how was the visit of the Cloud-Nine people when they finally came?

  It was cryptic: that is the only word for it. But it did fulfill the Niners’ old crab-tree Latin motto: “Eveneunt, Eridiunt, Exiviunt” which is rendered “They arrived, they laughed, they departed again.”

  The Cloud-Niners had specified only a medium-sized meeting hall and, adjoining it, a spacious withdrawing room with padded floor and walls.

  Only one hundred world people saw them at all, and that for only a few moments. The Cloud-Nine people were clad in a neutral sort of space vestiture and were normal of teeth and eyes and feet. Well yes, the only way you could describe them was as “Squamous, omnipotent, and kind.”

  The one hundred VIP worldlings were splendid with hippopotamus teeth and thousand-faceted giant insect eyes. And they were wobbly on five-stilted asymmetric contraptions.

  Mary Deare Dander, of course, was the spokesperson for the worldlings.

  “Our meeting is of the highest historical importance—” she began, and each of the Cloud-Niners pointed a finger at one of the Worldlings. The sign probably meant “Prodigious Welcome” or something like that.

  “Let history stand still and be humbled,” Mary Deare was saying. “This is the first moment of a new era.”

  The Cloud-Niners were absolutely twinkling and gurgling with some sort of delight or anticipation. They pointed their fingers at the worldlings again, and several of them seemed on the verge of speaking. But then all of them rushed into the padded withdrawing room, and you wouldn’t believe what happened there!

  They leapt and tumbled and beat their heads on the padded floor and walls. They laughed and laughed and laughed with a whooping rowdiness which is a little bit beyond the capacity of humans. What an orchestration of laughter! It was like ten million of those old milk cans banging down ten million steps of a celestial stairway. It was like a million donkeys laughing at one of the seven outrageous donkey jokes.

  Twice the Nine-Clouders controlled themselves a little bit and came back into the hall with the worldlings.

  “This is First Encounter,” Mary Deare Dander spoke around her hippopotamus teeth. “This is—”

  But the Cloud-Niners each pointed a finger at a worldling; and then rushed into the padded withdrawing room again overcome with a high hilarity about something.

  And then, after an especially loud hurricane of merriment, the Cloud-Niners all went up through the ceiling in that droll way of theirs, and entered into hover-cars that they had whistled down from the low sky. Then they were gone, and their laughter fell like hunks of happy thunder down onto the earth.

  Yes, the visit of the Cloud-Niners would have to be called “cryptic.” That’s the only word for it.

  Of course the laughter of the Cloud-Niners had all been recorded. And of course an attempt at decoding it was made. There would surely be treasures of information to be got from it when it was properly interpreted. And of course Mary Deare Dander was in charge of the great project. Well, who would you put in charge of it? Who else had sufficient prestige to head such a world-wide project?

  But as yet the “Project Decode Laugh” has not borne significant fruit.

  ***

  The “Niners” were pleasant and squamous and stout,

  But what in the hell were they laughing about?

  Buck Tooth Boogie.

  JESSE REVENGED

  Don Webb

  “Jesse Revenged” was purchased by Gardner Dozois, and appeared in the December 1986 issue of Asimov’s, with an illustration by John Lakey, It was another one of those stories, like Neal Barrett's “Perpetuity Blues,” that became an underground cult classic almost as soon as it hit print—in fact, connoisseurs of the gonzo still speak admiringly of it. It may well be one of the weirdest “Wild West” stories ever written, as you'll soon discover. . . .

  In addition to several more sales to Asimov’s, each as exuberantly unclassifiable as the last, Don Webb is also a small-press veteran whose fiction has appeared in over sixty magazines in the United States, Great Britain, France, Norway, and India. His stories have also been included in Interzone, Amazing, New Pathways, Fantasy Tales, When the Music’s Over, and elsewhere, and he is also the author of the very strange “collection ” called Uncle Ovid’s Exercise Book. He lives with his wife Rosemary in Austin, Texas.

  * * *

  The community of Oneida has become Amarillo, Tascosa is beginning to fade into the dust, and, a few weeks ago, Admiral Sampon blockaded the navy of Admiral Cervera in Santiago Bay. It is the summer of 1898. Robert Ford, the man who shot Jesse James in the back, has left the Ozarks and moved to Amarillo. He lives in the third floor of the yellow-painted wooden Amarillo Hotel. He’s changed his name to Aubrey Sorrentino and affected an Italian accent

  He sits on the wide porch of the Amarillo and slowly fans himself. Lesser men would be blinded by the gleam from his refulgent ebon leather boots. But Aubrey sits with his boots up, face lit by the black light, and very slowly sips a Texas Tumbleweed.

  Aubrey doesn’t know that his doom is already coming by train from California.

  He’s plotting how to extend his hotel bill. Maybe he'll borrow money from a wealthy rancher using his phony Count title and his phony Old World charm. The reward money from shooting Jesse seventeen years ago has long since been converted to wine, women, and song. He'll have another cigar by and by.

  Heavy rain last night, and the ridiculous wooden cobbles the city bought in the spring have begun to swell. Every' now and then one pops out of the grid, shooting eight or ten feet into the air. The horses hitched in front of the hotel are getting a mite skittish. Aubrey wishes it were cooler.

  In California, having completed his lecture on philosophical conceptions and practical results, William James boards an eastbound train. His brother Henry had arrived a week before, ostensibly to autograph copies of the just-released In the Cage at a Navajo bookstore in nearby Arizona. They have a private car.

  William doesn’t speak to Henry until they pass through Tombstone. He’s just corrected proofs of Human Immortality. He’s still peeved at Henry for siding with Frank and against him on the idea of the specious present. In Tombstone he recites the James brothers’ creed to break the silence, “Never rob from a friend, a Southerner, a preacher, or a widow. Amen.”

  “Amen,” says Henry.

  Henry opens up a small hand-to
oled leather valise. Inside are two pairs of pearl-handled revolvers. One pair had been Jesse’s, the other is Frank’s, who is too old for this. Henry hands Jesse’s guns to William.

  William says, “I see you’re already interested in the dense symbolism and complicated characterization that will come to dominate your later work.”

  Henry nods grimly.

  As the warm stars of the Panhandle night begin to shine through the lavender and orange Texas sunset, Aubrey makes his way to his room. He opens his last bottle of Kentucky bourbon and dips his pen in the inkwell the Chinese boy has brought. The two civilizing claims that the six-year-old city of Amarillo has are a five-story hotel and two Chinese gofers, Joe Fong Yang and Joe Fong Yin. Aubrey begins the thirty-seventh chapter of his autobiography, Robert Ford My Story. Aubrey writes, “To Carthage I come, where a cauldron of unholy loves sang about my ears. Since I had developed elephantiasis in my testicles six months ago in New Orleans I was tone-deaf. So I went to Amarillo.” He is referring to Carthage, Texas, but the words—at least the first string of them—are St. Augustine’s. The man who shot Jesse James in the back is not above plagiarism. Aubrey takes a long swig of bourbon and decides to stretch his legs. He locks his bio carefully away in a Confederate Army strongbox.

  When Aubrey reaches the door of the Amarillo, no more sunset remains. He walks toward the depot, a thousand schemes hatching in his brain. A swarthy gypsy lights a kerosene lamp in front of a buffalo hide tent.

  Madam Rose

  Reader and Advisor

  Palm Head and Cards

  Read

  The tent’s new. The hides smell and look a little stiff. Aubrey walks up to the swarthy man. “How much?”

  “Palm read ten cents. Head read ten cents. Cards read fifteen cents. Triple reading thirty cents.”

  Aubrey hands the man a quarter and a nickel. The gypsy sticks his head through the folds and says, “Triple reading.” Aubrey enters. The man walks up the street toward the saloon.

  Rosa, an ancient and enigmatic gypsy, quietly and efficiently does the three readings. Across the candles, she stares sad and sullen at the elderly stranger. Finally she says, “You’ve got troubles.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like death. I can see in your palm that someone’s coming to kill you. Someone influenced by the novels of Ivan Turgenev. Someone who’s an excellent marksman and a damn fine writer.”

  Aubrey feels his bowels turn into cold aspic. He’s naked without a gunbelt. But he still appreciates the value of money, he’ll get his thirty cents worth. He asks Rosa, “This someone, does he come alone?”

  “No. I feel he’s traveling with an older bearded man. An older man who distrusts all monistic absolutisms.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “No. Just the two. Coming from the direction of the setting sun.”

  Aubrey knows the first man is Henry, the writer. The second could be either Frank or William. Both are good shots—maybe as good as Jesse. He can’t remember if the subject of monistic absolutisms came up when they were planning bank jobs.

  “Are they going to kill me?”

  “They’ll try. I think the younger one will succeed.”

  “But it’s not certain?”

  “Mister, if I thought the future was fixed, would I charge thirty cents trying to help people avoid it?”

  Aubrey is relieved.

  Outside the tent another wooden cobble rockets into the air.

  The train stops around midnight to take on water and coal near the eastern Arizona border. Henry awakens. He’s forgotten the photographer. Dammit. He’d promised John Singer Sargent pictures of the shootout. Henry wonders if they should call the whole thing off. They’ve done that too often waiting to the end of this novel or that book. Maybe they can hire a photographer in Amarillo. The train begins rolling.

  Aubrey Sorrentino buys the swarthy man another watered whiskey. Four drunk cowpokes simulate a poker game near the saloon door. Aubrey shows the Romani a wad of bills. The outer bills are U.S. currency, the inner and more numerous are Confederate boodle. The Romani smiles and pulls a knife from his belt. He plunges the knife into a photo of Henry James, pinning it to their wobbly table. The chai has bad teeth. Aubrey buys the man a bottle and then heads back to his hotel.

  Aubrey’s sleep is fitful but no more fitful than any night since he shot Jesse. Phantoms of the remaining James brothers appear every night. Sometimes singly. Sometimes the whole gang: Frank James, William James, Henry James, Josiah Royce, Hermann von Helmholtz, William Dean Howells, and Doc Holiday.

  They’d had their petty revenges over the years, but now they were going for hot lead. Aubrey’s cheeks still burn at the thought of Henry’s devastating review of Aubrey’s first novel, Missouri Christmas, in the North American Review. That review had closed publishers’ doors on two continents. But he’d show them. He’d kept in shape and could outshoot all of them except maybe Frank or Henry.

  The train pulls into Amarillo about an hour after dawn. The gypsy waits in the shadow of the depot. The James brothers step down. They travel light, only a bag apiece. Their eyes are as cold as an Amarillo winter. The gypsy draws his bowie knife, presses himself flat against the wooden frame of the station. The James brothers talk. William’s going to rent a room. Henry’s going to try getting a photographer. William walks southward and Henry walks northward, gypsyward.

  The gypsy shifts slightly preparing to spring. Henry’s predator hearing informs him. Henry drops the suitcase and jumps around the depot’s corner facing the gypsy. The gypsy lunges, but Henry’s gun is quicker. A bright red rose blooms in the gypsy’s chest. Henry asks the falling man if he knows of any photographers working in the Amarillo area, but it is too late. Henry pauses to cut another notch in his pistol grip.

  The dining room of the Amarillo Hotel opens onto the main lobby. Aubrey sits, back against the wall, watching the lobby and shoveling down biscuits and gravy. Aubrey chokes as William walks in. William turns without breaking his stride and flashes Aubrey a huge smile. Aubrey knows how George Armstrong Custer, old Yellow Hair himself, felt when he looked up the canyon walls at Little Bighorn.

  William signs in. The manager says, “Gee, Mr. James, it’s an honor to have you and your brother here. I surely enjoyed The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. ”

  “Thanks,” says William.

  William pages back through the hotel’s register until he finds Aubrey Sorrentino. He draws a line through the name and writes in Robert Ford. He pushes the register back to the manager. The manager’s eyes widen but he says nothing, only (and almost imperceptibly) nods.

  Robert Ford runs up to his room for the security of his guns. Later on he will almost shoot a chambermaid.

  William makes himself comfortable in his fourth-floor room. He sips on the glass of buttermilk he’d got in the dining room. About eleven, Henry comes in. From Henry’s haggard hangdog look, William knows there’s not a photographer to be had.

  When noon comes, the James brothers go to the wide porch of the hotel. William pulls a revolver and motions everybody off the street. It’s quiet and hot. William steps into the street and shouts, “Robert Ford. I am calling you out.”

  The waiting is intolerable.

  Then Ford appears in an all-black outfit. His black Stetson is edged with Mexican silver. He walks calmly out of the hotel, nodding amicably to Henry, who sits on a bench. He steps off the porch. His eyes lock on William with rattlesnake intensity.

  He goes for his gun.

  As William goes for his gun, one of the rain-soaked wooden cobbles shoots into the air between him and Ford. William shoots the cobble. He has a flash of satori concerning human cognitive processes.

  Robert isn’t distracted. His bullet tears into William just below the rib cage.

  Robert wheels and fires at Henry. Henry’s on his feet shooting. Robert misses. Henry doesn’t.

  Henry runs to his dying brother.

  He says, “William,
you’ve got to make it.”

  “I’m a goner. But we got him. We got Ford.”

  “I don’t want to lose two brothers to Ford.”

  “Get Frank out of retirement. Get him to take up my career so I can be remembered. In my bag I’ve got some notes on the variety of religious experience he should find invaluable.” William’s breathing stops.

  Henry stands. The silence is deafening.

  THE CRITIC ON THE HEARTH

  Isaac Asimov

  “The Critic on the Hearth” was purchased by Gardner Dozois, and appeared in the November 1992 issue of Asimov’s. It was one of a long series of stories about the curious misadventures of George and Azazel that have appeared in the magazine under four separate editors, since the first one was published by George Scithers; the majority of them have been assembled in the collection Azazel. In this one, George and his multidimensional demonic pal square off against the dreaded Critical Establishment itself—which, of course, proves to be no match for them at all. . . .

  A good case could be made for the proposition that the late Isaac Asimov was the most famous SF writer of the last half of the twentieth century. He was the author of more than four hundred books, including some of the best-known novels in the genre (The Caves of Steel, I, Robot, and the Foundation trilogy, for example); his last several novels kept him solidly on the nationwide bestseller lists throughout the '80s; he won two Nebulas and two Hugos, plus the prestigious Grandmaster Nebula; he wrote an enormous number of nonfiction books on a bewilderingly large range of topics, everything from the Bible to Shakespeare, and his many books on scientific matters made him perhaps the best-known scientific popularizer of our time; his nonfiction articles appeared everywhere from Omni to TV Guide; he was one of the few SF writers whose face was recognizable to the general public, due to his frequent appearances on late-night and daytime talk shows (he even did television commercials)—and he is also the only SF writer famous enough to ever have had an SF magazine named after him, Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine. A mere sampling of Asimov's other books, even restricting ourselves to fiction alone (we should probably say to SF alone, since he was almost as well known in the mystery field), would include The Naked Sun, The Stars Like Dust, The Currents of Space, The Gods Themselves, Foundation’s Edge, The Robots of Dawn, Robots and Empire, and Foundation and Earth. His most recent fiction titles include two expansions of famous Asimov short stories into novel form, The Ugly Little Boy and Nightfall, written in collaboration with Robert Silverberg. Upcoming is his last novel, Forward the Foundation.