I finished this in one long session. It bounced around for a few months, and finally sold to The Twilight Zone Magazine. It later was reprinted in Great Stories From The Twilight Zone Magazine and in Donald A. Wollheim’s The 1983 Annual World’s Best SF.
NEW KID ON THE BLOCK
SUSAN CASPER
We came up with “The Clowns” after a stomach-stretching dinner at a local steak house. Whenever Gardner and I discuss the events of that evening we sound a lot like Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold doing a skewed rendition of “Ah Yes, I Remember It Well.” And if Jack were present he’d smilingly agree with both of us, not from a sense of diplomacy, but simply because his memory isn’t any better than ours.
Actually, I had known Gardner, Jack, Michael, and Jay (Jack Haldeman) for years without ever becoming part of the writing circle. I swore up and down, to anyone who would listen, that I never wanted to write, never would write, that all writers were crazy. I believed it, too. (I was probably right.) I had tried my hand at a novel when I was a teenager, heavily inspired by the works of Harold Robbins and then given up, for good, I thought. But, I did hate the fact that I was semi-excluded from the patter that went on around me constantly. Perhaps it was that fact that set me to put my first little story on paper in 1983, though I truly believe that writing is a contagious disease with a very long incubation period and that I had caught it years before without knowing. What I truly don’t know is whatever possessed me to show that awful little story to Jack Dann and Gardner, but it was their encouragement that led me to keep on trying.
I was as yet an unsold writer when I started the piece that would become my first collaboration. I had started a story about a suburban housewife who notices a unicorn running down the street. So far so good, but where do I go with it. I showed the fragment to Gardner and we discussed some ideas, none of which struck sparks. The piece sat in my drawer for months, untouched. I awoke one morning to find Gardner smiling at me nervously. He had obviously been up all night and there was a curious look in his eyes. I honestly don’t remember what I thought he was up to, but it was neither my birthday nor our anniversary. I waited him out. “You weren’t planning to finish that unicorn piece you had lying around, were you?” he asked. Thus “The Stray” was born.
“The Clowns” was another story. I do know that I wasn’t exactly invited into this collaboration. Dragooned would be a better term.
Jack Dann had come down to visit for a weekend or so, and Michael had been over for most of the day. The three of them were wrapped up in discussing their various projects. It had never occurred to me to become involved in the “Fiction Factory” as they jokingly called their collaborative team. For one thing, I was the new kid on the block, careerwise, and for another, they wrote mostly science fiction, while my work tended to be either fantasy or horror. But there was another reason why I was reluctant to become involved. After all, if things weren’t going well, Jack and Michael could always go home and cool off. But if Gardner and I had differences, well, we still had to sit across from each other at the dinner table. Too risky. So, mostly I tried to keep busy while they worked, and tried even harder (usually vainly) to enforce a no-business-at-dinner rule that we had worked out. And we didn’t work that night, as I recall—at least not at first. We had a large dinner that left us all hazy and groaning, then spent the evening discussing weird things that had happened to us. That was when Gardner brought up the story of “this guy in the Village who kept seeing clowns.” Jack’s eyes began to glow. He turned to me. “And you write horror, don’t you? This is perfect,” he said. He roughed out the general idea, using two kids as protagonists and wrote an opening paragraph. I know that Gardner remembers being left out of the discussion, but it’s my memory that he was always included. I seem to recall that he had planned to write this one by himself and we had stolen his idea. So, I’m a thief. I admit it. Half a thief, anyway.
In some ways it was one of the easiest pieces I’ve ever worked on, because when the going got tough I could turn it over to someone else. Also, it is easier, at least for me, to see where someone else has taken a wrong turn than it is to define the mistakes I’ve made myself. Or maybe the story just got to me. I expected that being the new kid on the block, my ideas would get overruled a lot, but in some ways it was Gardner and I who rode roughshod over Jack because we could discuss our ideas more easily and present him with a united front—not that we did this intentionally, it just worked out that way. We really had few disagreements on where to go with the piece. I think we turned out a good piece of fiction, and I learned a lot from the experience.
Of course, while all this was going on, we were each working on our solo fiction. It was not long after we got started on “The Clowns” that I came up with another idea for a modern fairytale. It started with the postcard, but again, I wasn’t quite sure where it should go. I roped Gardner in on this one from the beginning. I discussed it with him and he had some very good ideas. We talked about what to do with it and where it should go and we worked on it in turns, with Gardner doing the final, smoothing draft.
Collaborating with these guys has been fun and I sincerely hope that we get to do it again. Unfortunately, writing novels, editing, and individual work has kept us all busy. Jack is unable to come to Philadelphia as often as he once did, and Binghamton is just as far for us. But we all look forward to the day when we can get rolling again.
“Jack, Gardner, I have this idea . . .”
THE STRAY
SUSAN CASPER & GARDNER DOZOIS
You always think of a unicorn as a horse with a horn, I reflected as it galloped past my window, and this did look quite a bit like a horse, but in some odd indefinable way it also looked just as much like a giant cat, or an otter, or a fox, or like any other sleek, smooth-furred, swift-moving, graceful creature. I opened the window, and leaned out for a better look. Yes, it was a unicorn, all right. It was silver (silver, not gray—there was a definite metallic sheen to its coat), with a cream-colored mane and tail. The single horn was gleaming white, and spiraled, and very long. In spite of the Unicorn Tapestry pictures, it had no fringy little billygoat beard—in fact, a goat was one of the few sorts of creatures it didn’t look like.
I didn’t waste a minute thinking that I was crazy. The natural assumption was that someone was making a movie outside, and that this was something whomped-up by the Special Effects Department, like those poor elephants that had to stand around wearing fur overcoats in Star Wars. Or perhaps it was a publicity stunt. It probably said Eat at Joe’s in huge neon letters on the other side.
I had some shopping to do anyway, and so this seemed like the perfect time to go out. I grabbed my purse and let myself out the front door. The unicorn was just cantering back down the block, returning in the direction from which it had come. Too bad Jenny goes over to Stacey’s house on Sundays, I thought, watching it run gracefully along. She was six, and she would have loved this. Then the unicorn saw me, and stopped. It daintily raised one foot, like a setter pointing, and then it tilted its head back and flared its nostrils. It was smelling me, catching my scent on the breeze. Then it looked at me, right at me, and, still staring at me, pawed impatiently at the ground with one silver hoof, as if it were waiting for something.
As if it were waiting for me.
Its movements were flowing, graceful, completely natural. A pretty damn good mockup, I thought, feeling the first pangs of doubt. There didn’t seem to be any cameraman in evidence—in fact, there was no one around at all this time of the morning. So, at the risk of ruining somebody’s long shot, I started walking toward him. He snorted, tossed his head, and shuffled his front legs nervously. I stopped, startled, less sure by the second that this was a publicity stunt or a movie gimmick, but he wasn’t running away, and didn’t really look very dangerous—he was still staring at me gravely, with bright, intelligent eyes—and so, hesitantly, I started walking toward him again.
He snorted again when I was a few steps away, softl
y, a gentle whickering sound, and then I was beside him, gingerly stretching out my hand, and then I was touching him.
He was covered with some sort of thick silky hair or fine-grained fur, and he was softer than anything I had ever touched, softer than the finest Angora. He was warm to the touch, and I could feel muscles twitch under his coat from time to time as he shifted position slightly. This close to him, I could hear him breathing, a deep, rhythmical sound, and I could smell him—a warm, spicy odor, not at all horselike, not at all unpleasant. I could feel his warm breath on my face. There could be no doubt anymore. This was no mechanical mockup—this was real.
Bemused, I stroked him, rubbing my hand through his thick mane, patting the graceful arch of his neck. He made a sighing sound of contentment and leaned into my fingers. We were almost eye to eye now, and his eyes watched me steadily and thoughtfully as I patted him—his eyes were large and liquid and extraordinarily beautiful, silver on ebony, flecked with specks of molten gold, like no eyes I had ever seen. I scratched his head, and then, gingerly, I brushed at the base of his horn with my fingers, but I could find no seam or junction; as far as I could tell, it grew naturally out of his forehead. Surely it would be more obvious than that if the horn had been grafted on surgically, and besides, grafted onto what? I knew of no breed of horse in the world that was even remotely like this—if it even was a horse in the first place. Right now it seemed to be purring, a decidedly unhorselike thing to do.
I had been right the first time: it was a unicorn. Plain and simple as that—nothing else but exactly what it was. I kept stroking him, and he nuzzled against my hand in a way that made me wish I had a carrot to give him. “I thought you guys were only supposed to let virgins touch you.” I said ruefully, ruffling his mane. “Well,” I continued, “I hate to tell you this, but this time you blew it. A virgin I am not. You’re too late. By about fifteen years, too late. You should have come around while I was still at Swarthmore.” But the dumb beast didn’t seem to care. He whickered and butted his nose against my shoulder, and I took this for my cue to scratch him behind the ears—which indeed it seemed to be, for he bent his neck and sighed with pleasure. I kept scratching. He rested his head lightly on my shoulder, rolling his huge eyes and looking soulfully up at me, and then he licked me on the cheek.
I kept on patting the unicorn for what seemed like hours—and perhaps it was. But at last I began to become aware of the passage of time again. It was getting on toward afternoon, and I had things to do before Jenny got home.
I had found a unicorn, but unicorn or no unicorn, I still had to go to the Pathmark.
I stepped back away from him, and he stepped right after me, nuzzling at my hands. “Well . . .” I said. “Well, it’s been lovely . . . but I have to go now. I’ve got shopping . . .” He was staring at me, his eyes still bright and soulful, and suddenly I felt like a fool, standing there making polite social excuses to a mythological creature. “Okay, then,” I said briskly, and I gave him one last solid pat on the neck in farewell. “Gotta go now. Goodbye!” And I turned, briskly, and briskly walked away.
I hadn’t gotten very far when I heard clopping footsteps behind me, and looked around. He was following me. I stopped, feeling a trace of uneasiness. “Sorry, boy.” I said firmly. “I’ve got to go now.” He came up and nuzzled me again, and I made shooing motions at him. “Go away, now! Go on—git! Shoo!” But he didn’t shoo—he just stood there and stared at me, his eyes sad and wet.
Exasperated, I turned and walked away again, walking much faster this time, but, sure enough, he kept following me. I began to run, and behind me I could hear him break into a trot. No way I was going to outrun that great beast, but fortunately I knew an easy way to lose him. A bit breathless—I’m not the jogging type, generally—I reached the place where my car was parked, and climbed into it, slamming the door behind me. Quickly, I started the car and drove away. I could see the unicorn in the rear-view mirror—he was standing by the curb and staring after me, craning his neck, looking faintly puzzled. I felt a pang of sadness, and hoped that he would find his way home again, wherever home was . . .
The supermarket was a madhouse, as usual, and by the time I got out of there I was tired and irritable, and the encounter with the unicorn was already beginning to seem like some strange waking dream, the vivid colors of it leached away by the world’s petty gray routine. I thought about it all the way home, wondering now if it had happened at all. I had just about decided it could not have happened, when I got out of the car and saw the unicorn again. Not only was he still waiting there patiently for me, but my daughter Jenny was actually sitting on his back, drumming her little heels gleefully against his shaggy ribs.
My heart lurched; surprise, a momentary touch of fear that quickly faded, dismay, irritation—and a strange kind of relief, a guilty joy at seeing him again.
My daughter waved. She jumped down from the unicorn’s back and rushed toward me like a small excited whirlwind, hugging me, spinning around me wildly, nearly knocking me over. “Mommy!” she yelled. “Mommy, can we keep it?”
“We most certainly cannot,” I said indignantly, but Jenny had already scooted back to the unicorn, and was doing a sort of mad little dance of joy around it, whining in excitement, like a puppy. “Jenny!” I called sternly. “We cannot keep it!” The unicorn whickered softly in greeting me as I came slowly up to it, and reached out to nuzzle my hands. “None of that,” I said grumpily. I glanced at my wildly capering daughter, and then leaned forward to whisper exasperatedly into the unicorn’s ear. “Listen! Let me tell you again. I am not a virgin, understand? Not. There was Steve, and Robbie, and Sam, and Trevor, and Herbie, that slimy little toad . . .” The unicorn licked my face, a touch as soft as a falling leaf. “You’ve made some kind of mistake,” I continued doggedly. “You shouldn’t be here, not with me. Find somebody else. Or go back to whatever fairytale you galloped out of . . .” The unicorn looked at me reproachfully, and my voice faltered to a stop.
My daughter had gotten tired of dancing. She had buried her face in the unicorn’s mane, and was hugging him tightly; he nuzzled her hair, and licked her on the ear. “Oh, Mommy,” she whispered. “He’s wonderful. He’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Well, we can’t keep him,” I said weakly. “So don’t get too attached to him.”
But already it was starting to rain, a sooty city rain that left streaks along the unicorn’s shining silver flanks. The unicorn was staring at me with his great sad eyes, and I felt myself beginning to melt.
“Oh, Mommy, it’s raining. We can’t leave him out in the rain—”
The garage door was big enough to get him inside with no problem. At first I’d meant to make him stay in the garage, but Jenny pointed out that the door into the basement floor was almost as large as the garage door itself, and after a while I relented, and let the unicorn squeeze himself through that door, too. There were only a couple of interconnected rumpus rooms down there, and the only thing of any value was Herbie’s pool table, unused since the divorce, and that the unicorn could smash to flinders for all I cared.
“All right Jenny, but remember, it’s only for tonight . . .”
Of course, we kept him.
Actually, he turned out to be remarkably little trouble. He seemed content to stay downstairs most of the time, as long as we visited him frequently and patted him a lot, and after a while we noticed that he didn’t seem to either eat or eliminate, so two of the major problems that would have arisen if we’d been keeping an ordinary horse in our rumpus room never came up at all. To my relief, he didn’t insist on trying to follow me to work on Monday, and although I half-hoped that when I came back from the office that evening, he’d be gone, I was also a bit more than half-glad when I came down the basement steps and heard him whinny to me in greeting.
Some of my friends adjusted with amazing ease to the fact that I now had a unicorn living in the basement, and those who couldn’t adjust soon stopped coming ar
ound at all. One of those who couldn’t adjust was Ralph, the guy I was seeing at the time, and I was broken up about that for a day or two, but the unicorn snorted and gave me a look that seemed to say, him you’re better off without, you can do better than that, and after a while I came to agree with him.
Jenny and I spent many evenings brushing the unicorn’s beautiful coat and trying to think of a name for him, but although we made up list after list, none of the names seemed to fit. Mythological creatures are so intensely themselves that names are superfluous, I guess. “The unicorn” was all the name he needed.
So we settled down together, the months went by, and we had our first dusting of snow.
I was making tuna salad one frosty winter morning when Jenny came running excitedly into the kitchen. “Mommy!” she said breathlessly. “Mommy, the unicorn went into the closet!”
“That’s nice,” I said, continuing to dice an onion.
“And he’s making a nest in there, and everything!”
“Uh-oh,” I said. I put down the knife and rushed out of the room, Jenny scampering at my heels.
It was the large walk-in storage closet in the basement, but it was still a closet, and the unicorn had made a nest in there all right, pulling down old coats and dresses and treading and pawing them all into a nice fluffy mound. I leaned wearily against the doorjamb—I had been through this before with innumerable tabby cats, and knew what to expect, but Jenny was peeking timidly around my hip and saying in a hushed little voice, “Mommy, what is it?” and so I sighed, and knelt, and peered more closely myself.
Inside the warm semi-darkness of the storage closet, the unicorn softly whickered. She looked tired and rumpled and very proud of herself.
Of course, she had kittens in there. Kittens, colts, foals, whatever you want to call them. Babies. Baby unicorns.
Slow Dancing Through Time Page 21
