The John Varley Reader

by John Varley

  “Two thirty-five elapsed upside time,” Cristabel announced.

  “Je-zuz.”

  It is a deadening routine. You grab the harness around the wimp’s shoulders and drag it along the aisle, after consulting the seat number painted on its forehead. The paint would last three minutes. You seat it, strap it in, break open the harness and carry it back to toss through the gate as you grab the next one. You have to take it for granted they’ve done the work right on the other side: fillings in the teeth, fingerprints, the right match in height and weight and hair color. Most of those things don’t matter much, especially on Flight 128 which was a crash-and-burn. There would be bits and pieces, and burned to a crisp at that. But you can’t take chances. Those rescue workers are pretty thorough on the parts they do find; the dental work and fingerprints especially are important.

  I hate wimps. I really hate ’em. Every time I grab the harness of one of them, if it’s a child, I wonder if it’s Alice. Are you my kid, you vegetable, you slug, you slimy worm? I joined the Snatchers right after the brain bugs ate the life out of my baby’s head. I couldn’t stand to think she was the last generation, that the last humans there would ever be would live with nothing in their heads, medically dead by standards that prevailed even in 1979, with computers working their muscles to keep them in tone. You grow up, reach puberty still fertile—one in a thousand—rush to get pregnant in your first heat. Then you find out your mom or pop passed on a chronic disease bound right into the genes, and none of your kids will be immune. I knew about the paraleprosy; I grew up with my toes rotting away. But this was too much. What do you do?

  Only one in ten of the wimps had a customized face. It takes time and a lot of skill to build a new face that will stand up to a doctor’s autopsy. The rest came pre-mutilated. We’ve got millions of them; it’s not hard to find a good match in the body. Most of them would stay breathing, too dumb to stop, until they went in with the plane.

  The plane jerked, hard. I glanced at my watch. Five minutes to impact. We should have time. I was on my last wimp. I could hear Dave frantically calling the ground. A bomb came through the gate, and I tossed it into the cockpit. Pinky turned on the pressure sensor on the bomb and came running out, followed by Dave. Liza was already through. I grabbed the limp dolls in stewardess costume and tossed them to the floor. The engine fell off and a piece of it came through the cabin. We started to depressurize. The bomb blew away part of the cockpit (the ground crash crew would read it—we hoped—that part of the engine came through and killed the crew: no more words from the pilot on the flight recorder) and we turned, slowly, left and down. I was lifted toward the hole in the side of the plane, but I managed to hold onto a seat. Cristabel wasn’t so lucky. She was blown backwards.

  We started to rise slightly, losing speed. Suddenly it was uphill from where Cristabel was lying in the aisle. Blood oozed from her temple. I glanced back; everyone was gone, and three pink-suited wimps were piled on the floor. The plane began to stall, to nose down, and my feet left the floor.

  “Come on, Bel!” I screamed. That gate was only three feet away from me, but I began pulling myself along to where she floated. The plane bumped, and she hit the floor. Incredibly, it seemed to wake her up. She started to swim toward me, and I grabbed her hand as the floor came up to slam us again. We crawled as the plane went through its final death agony, and we came to the door. The gate was gone.

  There wasn’t anything to say. We were going in. It’s hard enough to keep the gate in place on a plane that’s moving in a straight line. When a bird gets to corkscrewing and coming apart, the math is fearsome. So I’ve been told.

  I embraced Cristabel and held her bloodied head. She was groggy, but managed to smile and shrug. You take what you get. I hurried into the restroom and got both of us down on the floor. Back to the forward bulkhead, Cristabel between my legs, back to front. Just like in training. We pressed our feet against the other wall. I hugged her tightly and cried on her shoulder.

  And it was there. A green glow to my left. I threw myself toward it, dragging Cristabel, keeping low as two wimps were thrown headfirst through the gate above our heads. Hands grabbed and pulled us through. I clawed my way a good five yards along the floor. You can leave a leg on the other side and I didn’t have one to spare.

  I sat up as they were carrying Cristabel to Medical. I patted her arm as she went by on the stretcher, but she was passed out. I wouldn’t have minded passing out myself.

  For a while, you can’t believe it all really happened. Sometimes it turns out it didn’t happen. You come back and find out all the goats in the holding pen have softly and suddenly vanished away because the continuum won’t tolerate the changes and paradoxes you’ve put into it. The people you’ve worked so hard to rescue are spread like tomato surprise all over some goddam hillside in Carolina and all you’ve got left is a bunch of ruined wimps and an exhausted Snatch Team. But not this time. I could see the goats milling around in the holding pen, naked and more bewildered than ever. And just starting to be really afraid.

  Elfreda touched me as I passed her. She nodded, which meant well-done in her limited repertoire of gestures. I shrugged, wondering if I cared, but the surplus adrenaline was still in my veins and I found myself grinning at her. I nodded back.

  Gene was standing by the holding pen. I went to him, hugged him. I felt the juices start to flow. Damn it, let’s squander a little ration and have us a good time.

  Someone was beating on the sterile glass wall of the pen. She shouted, mouthing angry words at us. Why? What have you done to us? It was Mary Sondergard. She implored her bald, one-legged twin to make her understand. She thought she had problems. God, was she pretty. I hated her guts.

  Gene pulled me away from the wall. My hands hurt, and I’d broken off all my fake nails without scratching the glass. She was sitting on the floor now, sobbing. I heard the voice of the briefing officer on the outside speaker.

  “. . . Centauri Three is hospitable, with an Earth-like climate. By that, I mean your Earth, not what it has become. You’ll see more of that later. The trip will take five years, shiptime. Upon landfall, you will be entitled to one horse, a plow, three axes, two hundred kilos of seed grain . . .”

  I leaned against Gene’s shoulder. At their lowest ebb, this very moment, they were so much better than us. I had maybe ten years, half of that as a basket case. They are our best, our very brightest hope. Everything is up to them.

  “. . . that no one will be forced to go. We wish to point out again, not for the last time, that you would all be dead without our intervention. There are things you should know, however. You cannot breathe our air. If you remain on Earth, you can never leave this building. We are not like you. We are the result of a genetic winnowing, a mutation process. We are the survivors, but our enemies have evolved along with us. They are winning. You, however, are immune to the diseases that afflict us . . .”

  I winced and turned away.

  “. . . the other hand, if you emigrate you will be given a chance at a new life. It won’t be easy, but as Americans you should be proud of your pioneer heritage. Your ancestors survived, and so will you. It can be a rewarding experience, and I urge you . . .”

  Sure. Gene and I looked at each other and laughed. Listen to this, folks. Five percent of you will suffer nervous breakdowns in the next few days, and never leave. About the same number will commit suicide, here and on the way. When you get there, sixty to seventy percent will die in the first three years. You will die in childbirth, be eaten by animals, bury two out of three of your babies, starve slowly when the rains don’t come. If you live, it will be to break your back behind a plow, sun-up to dusk. New Earth is Heaven, folks!

  God, how I wish I could go with them.

  INTRODUCTION TO “The Persistence of Vision”

  The next three stories have very little in common. Only two things that I can think of, actually. For one, all three were given one or both of the two major science fiction awards:
the Hugo, given out annually at the World Science Fiction Convention and voted on by the convention membership—the readers themselves—or the Nebula, awarded by the Science Fiction Writers of America—the professionals.

  Awards are something people seem to like, judging from how many fields of human endeavor give them out. Getting awards is gratifying, unless you are a curmudgeon on the scale of George C. Scott or Marlon Brando. But they are right, you know. Humphrey Bogart pointed out that it was ridiculous to compare performances in different roles. Some are hard, some are easy, some don’t require much acting at all, which is good, because many Hollywood stars can’t really “act” much. Friends vote for friends. People spend money campaigning for votes.

  Bogey suggested that all actors perform in the same vehicle, like Hamlet, and then let the matter be decided by a panel of judges. Makes sense to me.

  I said the stories had two things in common. The other is something I’ve begun to call “The P Factor.” All of my Hugo and Nebula stories begin with the letter P.

  Means nothing, of course. But I can’t help wondering, especially when you add in the fact that the closest any of my other works ever came to winning the Hugo was “The Phantom of Kansas,” which I’m told lost the award because I happened to have two stories on the final ballot that year. (Of course, the story that won was pretty good, too.) (Very good; it was “The Bicentennial Man,” by Isaac Asimov.)

  Shortly after I got started writing short stories Thomas M. Disch wrote an editorial somewhere (I can’t recall which magazine it was in) about what he called “The Labor Day Group.” This was a bunch of writers, not an actual conspiracy but just those of us whose careers started in the seventies—Vonda McIntyre was in it, and Spider Robinson, and myself and half a dozen others. His thesis was that we always had the Hugo Award in our minds when we set out to write a story. He accused us of more or less “pandering” to the Hugo voters, which is, admittedly, a rather small proportion of the mass of science fiction readers, the ones who pay the money to join the World Science Fiction Convention in any particular year and thus are eligible to vote on the Hugo Awards. The Worldcon is held in a different city every year, and nowadays has grown to five thousand attendees or more. It is held on the Labor Day weekend. Thus, Disch’s term came from the fact that we came out of organized fandom, that we could all be found together on Labor Day because we’d never miss a Worldcon. There we presumably exchanged tips on just what the Hugo voters wanted in an SF story. Not too stylistically challenging, uplifting rather than depressing, concerned more with a positive outlook on life rather than existential angst. That sort of thing.

  First, let me say that at the time of the editorial I had never been to a Worldcon. To this day I’ve only been to two of them.

  And second, since it’s considered bad taste to campaign for a Hugo, and since nobody I know has the budget to flood the airwaves with promos like we saw last year for Chicago and I’m seeing right now for Cold Mountain, the only way I know of to pander to Hugo voters is to write a good story. I’ll admit, when I finish one I picture myself standing up on a podium somewhere accepting that silver rocketship . . . but I’ve never had that thought beforehand, or while writing.

  Sorry. Just had to get that off my chest. And like I said, awards are meaningless in the end. Who needs them?

  Now I have to get back to work on my next novel, which will be a sequel to my recent book Red Thunder. I’ve decided I’ll have a color on the title, like John D. Mac-Donald did with the Travis McGee books. Right now I’m divided. How about Purple Thunder? Pink Thunder?

  Puce, Petunia, Poppy, Peppermint, Periwinkle . . .

  I’ve known several blind people in my life. The first was Elmer, who ran the news and candy and cigar stand in the post office in Corsicana, Texas, where my grand-parents lived. When I was in town, Granddaddy and I would walk a few blocks to the post office every day to get the mail, and we’d always stop and talk to Elmer. Elmer would put his hand on my head to see how much I’d grown (usually a lot; I finally topped out at six-foot-six). I spent many pleasant afternoons there, sitting and reading the comics and SF magazines. The only things I have ever stolen in my life were SF paperbacks, but I never shoplifted from Elmer. Not even the SF monkey on my back could have driven me that low . . . and besides, I was far from sure Elmer wouldn’t hear me slipping the book into my jeans. He was that good.

  Corsicana was my refuge from the miseries of the Gulf Coast when I was growing up. I spent large parts of my summers there, and my family did the four-hour drive—one way; that’s nothing in Texas—at least one weekend a month, usually two. It was paradise for a small boy. There was a park with a dozen weird, zany, one-of-a-kind pieces of play equipment made entirely of rusty iron and splintery wood that must have been designed by a mad child-hating engineer. Just looking at them would make a personal injury attorney drool like a Pavlov dog. Any one of them could pinch off a finger in a second. I loved playing on those things. Last time I was back it was all gone, replaced by soft, harmless plastic stuff. Ralph Nader had come to Corsicana . . . and ruined it. I swear, this generation is a bunch of fraidy-cats.

  But the best thing by far about Corsicana was Granddaddy’s store. It was a five-and-ten, part of the chain called Duke & Ayres, which you’ve probably not heard of unless you’re from Texas. It was like Woolworth’s, only smaller and cheaper. It was long and narrow with a high tin ceiling and only two aisles between the wooden counters. The female sales force would stand behind the counters and wait on you.

  There were newfangled fluorescent fixtures hanging from the ceiling, which you had to turn on individually. I used to sit on Granddaddy’s shoulders and pull the strings as he took me down one aisle and up the other. After five minutes of flickering, we had light. When I got big enough I ran down the aisles every morning at seven, jumping up to pull them. In the summer there were ceiling fans to turn on, too.

  Upstairs wasn’t used, and it would have been a good setting for a Stephen King story. It was a series of rooms connected in no logical way that had at one time been professional offices. Probably back in the oil boom, the twenties. Corsicana had been bigger then. Now the second floor was used for storage, and in a five-and-ten that meant you could find anything up there. Anything. There were old dental chairs with blood still drying on the spit sinks. There were heaps of old magazines and newspapers, metal greeting card racks, piles of postcards and glass and a glass cutting table, old clothes from the turn of the century, acres of cobwebs. It all smelled of spiders and mouse turds, must, mold, mildew, and dry rot. There were dust bunnies the size of Bengal tigers. There was no lighting, and we deemed it “no fair” to bring a flashlight. In short, a paradise for children.

  Most of all, there were the mannequins. Some were full-sized, bald, and naked (and sexless, of course; no nipples on the breasts in those days). A few had clothes. They all moved there in the darkness when you turned your back. If that wasn’t good enough, there were the body parts. Boxes overflowing with severed arms, legs, heads, and torsos. You could put them together, you could take them apart, violently. You can forget your FAO Schwartz and your kindergarten storytime. That attic was the place to come up with stories, and me and my friends came up with ones that would curl Dr. Frankenstein’s toes.

  Granddaddy sold just about everything in that store, and at the cheapest prices in town. A large part of his customer base was the Negro population, who literally lived on the other side of the tracks, so I knew a lot more black people than your typical Texas white boy of that day and age. And every year he outsold the much larger local Woolworth’s and Newberry’s. He sold more eyeglasses than the optometrist, Dr. Jungermann. There was a candy counter with fifty kinds of tooth poison heaped up in big vertical glass cases. I was allowed to sample anything I wanted, and later helped scoop it out for sale by the pennyworth. There was a long toy counter. I spent most of my time on the floor back there, the salesladies stepping over me as I performed the critical, vital, exacting job of p
roduct testing, making sure each item was truly play-worthy. Nasty work, but somebody’s got to do it. I was also in charge of quality control. See, if something was broken in shipping Granddaddy noted the fact, informed the manufacturer so he wouldn’t have to pay for it . . . and then gave it to me or my sisters. Broken? Big deal. It was going to be trashed by us playing hard with it soon enough anyway, so who cared if it started off slightly chipped? Christmas morning at Granddaddy’s could rival the displays at Neiman’s in Dallas, that’s how much broken stuff we got.

  None of this except the part about Elmer has anything to do with the story that follows, but I just couldn’t turn this book in without mentioning Corsicana.

  I could be mistaken, but I think Tom Disch may have used the following story, “The Persistence of Vision,” as a case in point of Labor Day Group machinations or whatever to win a Hugo Award. If so, it worked. And if so, so be it. I am more proud of this story than of anything I have written before or since. Yet, as I have heard some authors say before, I don’t feel entirely responsible for it. I can pinpoint the source: a newspaper story about a generation of children growing up blind and deaf because their mothers contracted rubella while pregnant. A tremendous bump in the population of deaf-mutes was on its way, much like the Baby Boom, and there simply weren’t enough people around who could cope with their special needs. I don’t know what became of them—I suspect that most of them managed to do a lot in spite of their handicaps, because the human animal is an almost infinitely adaptable thing—but their plight inspired this story. Then it more or less wrote itself, and by the end I was crying, and I didn’t know why. Frankly, I had no idea where it came from, but I’d like to do it again, every night.

  I have had more response to this story, both in letters and in person, than to anything else I ever wrote. It’s one of those things of which people say, “It changed my life.” I can’t tell you how great that makes me feel. It was written during the time of the growth of the disability rights movement, before there were parking places and special rest room stalls for the handicapped. Many, but by no means all, of the people who thanked me for writing it were disabled. It seems to touch people deeply.