The John Varley Reader

by John Varley

  More common, and in some ways more terrifying, is amnesia that affects the short-term memory. You remember things up to a point, and from then on are unable to change new experiences into memories. Such a person can live in a perpetual state of astonishment, becoming aware of himself a hundred times a day, trying to figure out why it’s not 1948 anymore, and where all the time went. In such a situation, the only mercy I can see is that he will soon forget how horrible his life has become. An excellent movie, Memento, was recently made about a man with this type of amnesia.

  Now, fast forward some years. I got an email from Janis Ian. She said I probably didn’t know who she was, and introduced herself as “a semi-famous singer/songwriter.” Well, I probably would not have known who she was . . . if I’d been catatonic during the late 1960s. Her best-known hits were “Society’s Child” (when she was fifteen!) and “At Seventeen,” but she has been writing and performing wonderful music ever since then.

  It turns out she is a science fiction reader, likes my work, and had one of the better ideas for an anthology I had ever heard. She wanted to commission stories from various writers that would be based on lyrics from her work.

  I’m not usually very good at writing a story to order but I didn’t want to miss being in this book, and there was an idea I’d been kicking around for a while. I wondered if it could be made to fit. So I turned to the song lyrics she had sent me, and these words leaped out at me from page one: In Fading Suns and Dying Moons.

  Well, if that isn’t a science fiction title I don’t know what is. Even better, it fit nicely with my idea, without any cutting and splicing at all.

  Once again, this idea had to do with beings from a different dimension, and how we might interact with them. Once again, the fastest way to acquaint the reader with the concept of a fourth dimension was to use the book Flatland, since the author had already covered just about everything one needed to know about higher and lower dimensions.

  One might ask if I found this a bit derivative, even repetitive. Well, I didn’t find it repetitive at all, for a simple reason.

  I forgot.

  No, I do not suffer from retrograde amnesia, like the man in the previous story. My only excuse is that I seldom go back and reread my stories after they’ve seen publication, unless they are being collected, as they are here. Let me tell you, when I read the references to Flatland in “Just Another Perfect Day,” I broke out in a cold sweat. It is every writer’s nightmare. What if I’d unconsciously stolen from somebody else . . . ?

  However, I still like both stories, and I think they are different enough from each other that they can stand together or alone, whichever one prefers.

  One more thing I didn’t remember . . .

  I don’t put much stock in the idea of science fiction writers predicting the future, though some readers evidently expect it of us. I am familiar with the list of technological predictions that have come true, from nuclear submarines to synchronous-orbit satellites, and that’s all great, but it’s not why a writer writes stories, at least none of the writers I know.

  Somehow more disturbing is when life imitates art. Tom Clancy must have felt a shiver when the aircraft were used as human-guided missiles (if you can call them human) on September 11, 2001, something he had put into one of his novels, except the plane was flown into the Capitol Building during a joint session of Congress. But, of course anybody who thought about it, and who understood there were no limits to the crimes some fanatic monsters are willing to commit, could have foreseen that much.

  I in no way claim any degree of prescience for the mention of a vanished World Trade Center in “Just Another Perfect Day.” In fact, I’d forgotten it was even in there, and discovering it again made my skin crawl. I even thought of taking the reference out for this publication, as some filmmakers doctored shots that included the Twin Towers in the weeks and months following 9/11. It still hurts to even think of those images, and I’m sure it will continue to for the rest of my life, but we just have to keep remembering.

  After all, some of the perpetrators are still alive . . . a condition I hope is soon remedied.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Reading the galleys for this book, I just had to mention one more odd coincidence that has happened since I wrote these introductions.

  A man named George Wing wrote a movie called 50 First Dates, and it was produced and released a few weeks ago, starring Jim Carrey. It’s about a woman who loses her recent memory every time she goes to sleep. She eventually keeps a diary to bring her up to date on the last few years. My story was written in 1989 . . .

  Should I sue?

  Naaaah. I remember David Gerrold telling of a terrible moment he had concerning his Star Trek episode, “The Trouble With Tribbles.” In that story, a few cute little furry critters bred until they had overrun the Enterprise. Somebody pointed out that Robert Heinlein had written a novel, The Rolling Stones, in which cute little furry critters called “flat cats” bred until they had . . . you guessed it. In a cold sweat, David contacted Heinlein who, being the gentleman he always was, pointed out that he had stolen the idea from Ellis Parker Butler, who wrote a story called “Pigs is Pigs,” (later made into a wonderful Walt Disney short), which described a pair of guinea pigs and their offspring overrunning a train station in Scotland, and that Butler probably stole it from Noah.

  And though it pains me to admit it, I saw the movie, and George Wing made better use of the idea than I did.

  IN FADING SUNS AND DYING MOONS

  THE FIRST TIME they came through the neighborhood there really wasn’t much neighborhood to speak of. Widely dispersed hydrogen molecules, only two or three per cubic meter. Traces of heavier elements from long-ago supernovae. The usual assortment of dust particles, at a density of one particle every cubic mile or so. The “dust” was mostly ammonia, methane, and water ice, with some more complex molecules like benzene. Here and there these thin ingredients were pushed into eddies by light pressure from neighboring stars.

  Somehow they set forces in motion. I picture it as a Cosmic Finger stirring the mix, out in the interstellar wastes where space is really flat, in the Einsteinian sense, making a whirlpool in the unimaginable cold. Then they went away.

  Four billion years later they returned. Things were brewing nicely. The space debris had congealed into a big, burning central mass and a series of rocky or gaseous globes, all sterile, in orbit around it.

  They made a few adjustments and planted their seeds, and saw that it was good. They left a small observer/recorder behind, along with a thing that would call them when everything was ripe. Then they went away again.

  A billion years later the timer went off, and they came back.

  I had a position at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, but of course I had not gone to work that day. I was sitting at home watching the news, as frightened as anyone else. Martial law had been declared a few hours earlier. Things had been getting chaotic. I’d heard gunfire from the streets outside.

  Someone pounded on my door.

  “United States Army!” someone shouted. “Open the door immediately!”

  I went to the door, which had four locks on it.

  “How do I know you’re not a looter?” I shouted.

  “Sir, I am authorized to break your door down. Open the door, or stand clear.”

  I put my eye to the old-fashioned peephole. They were certainly dressed like soldiers. One of them raised his rifle and slammed the butt down on my door-knob. I shouted that I would let them in, and in a few seconds I had all the locks open. Six men in full combat gear hustled into my kitchen. They split up and quickly explored all three rooms of the apartment, shouting out “All clear!” in brisk, military voices. One man, a bit older than the rest, stood facing me with a clipboard in his hand.

  “Sir, are you Dr. Andrew Richard Lewis?”

  “There’s been some mistake,” I said. “I’m not a medical doctor.”

  “Sir, are you Dr.—�
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  “Yes, yes, I’m Andy Lewis. What can I do for you?”

  “Sir, I am Captain Edgar and I am ordered to induct you into the United States Army Special Invasion Corps effective immediately, at the rank of second lieutenant. Please raise your right hand and repeat after me.”

  I knew from the news that this was now legal, and I had the choice of enlisting or facing a long prison term. I raised my hand and in no time at all I was a soldier.

  “Lieutenant, your orders are to come with me. You have fifteen minutes to pack what essentials you may need, such as prescription medicine and personal items. My men will help you assemble your gear.”

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.

  “You may bring any items relating to your specialty. Laptop computer, reference books . . .” He paused, apparently unable to imagine what a man like me would want to bring along to do battle with space aliens.

  “Captain, do you know what my specialty is?”

  “My understanding is that you are a bug specialist.”

  “An entomologist, Captain. Not an exterminator. Could you give me . . . any clue as to why I’m needed?”

  For the first time he looked less than totally self-assured.

  “Lieutenant, all I know is . . . they’re collecting butterflies.”

  They hustled me to a helicopter. We flew low over Manhattan. Every street was gridlocked. All the bridges were completely jammed with mostly abandoned cars.

  I was taken to an airbase in New Jersey and hurried onto a military jet transport that stood idling on the runway. There were a few others already on board. I knew most of them; entomology is not a crowded field.

  The plane took off at once.

  There was a colonel aboard whose job was to brief us on our mission, and on what was thus far known about the aliens: not much was really known that I hadn’t already seen on television.

  They had appeared simultaneously on seacoasts worldwide. One moment there was nothing, the next moment there was a line of aliens as far as the eye could see. In the western hemisphere the line stretched from Point Barrow in Alaska to Tierra del Fuego in Chile. Africa was lined from Tunis to the Cape of Good Hope. So were the western shores of Europe, from Norway to Gibraltar. Australia, Japan, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and every other island thus far contacted reported the same thing: a solid line of aliens appearing in the west, moving east.

  Aliens? No one knew what else to call them. They were clearly not of Planet Earth, though if you ran into a single one there would be little reason to think them very odd. Just millions and millions of perfectly ordinary people dressed in white coveralls, blue baseball caps, and brown boots, within arm’s reach of each other.

  Walking slowly toward the east.

  Within a few hours of their appearance someone on the news had started calling it the Line, and the creatures who were in it Linemen. From the pictures on the television they appeared rather average and androgynous.

  “They’re not human,” the colonel said. “Those coveralls, it looks like they don’t come off. The hats, either. You get close enough, you can see it’s all part of their skin.”

  “Protective coloration,” said Watkins, a colleague of mine from the museum. “Many insects adapt colors or shapes to blend with their environment.”

  “But what’s the point of blending in,” I asked, “if you are made so conspicuous by your actions?”

  “Perhaps the ‘fitting in’ is simply to look more like us. It seems unlikely, doesn’t it, that evolution would have made them look like . . .”

  “Janitors,” somebody piped up.

  The colonel was frowning at us.

  “You think they’re insects?”

  “Not by any definition I’ve ever heard,” Watkins said. “Of course, other animals adapt to their surroundings, too. Arctic foxes in winter coats, tigers with their stripes. Chameleons.”

  The colonel mulled this for a moment, then resumed his pacing.

  “Whatever they are, bullets don’t bother them. There have been many instances of civilians shooting at the aliens.”

  Soldiers, too, I thought. I’d seen film of it on television, a National Guard unit in Oregon cutting loose with their rifles. The aliens hadn’t reacted at all, not visibly . . . until all the troops and all their weapons just vanished, without the least bit of fuss.

  And the Line moved on.

  We landed at a disused-looking airstrip somewhere in northern California. We were taken to a big motel, which the Army had taken over. In no time I was hustled aboard a large Coast Guard helicopter with a group of soldiers—a squad? a platoon?—led by a young lieutenant who looked even more terrified than I felt. On the way to the Line I learned that his name was Evans, and that he was in the National Guard.

  It had been made clear to me that I was in charge of the overall mission and Evans was in charge of the soldiers. Evans said his orders were to protect me. How he was to protect me from aliens who were immune to his weapons hadn’t been spelled out.

  My own orders were equally vague. I was to land close behind the Line, catch up, and find out everything I could.

  “They speak better English than I do,” the colonel had said. “We must know their intentions. Above all, you must find out why they’re collecting . . .” and here his composure almost broke down, but he took a deep breath and steadied himself.

  “Collecting butterflies,” he finished.

  We passed over the Line at a few hundred feet. Directly below us individual aliens could be made out, blue hats and white shoulders. But off to the north and south it quickly blurred into a solid white line vanishing in the distance, as if one of those devices that make chalk lines on football fields had gone mad.

  Evans and I watched it. None of the Linemen looked up at the noise. They were walking slowly, all of them, never getting more than a few feet apart. The terrain was grassy, rolling hills, dotted here and there with clumps of trees. No man-made structures were in sight.

  The pilot put us down a hundred yards behind the Line.

  “I want you to keep your men at least fifty yards away from me,” I told Evans. “Are those guns loaded? Do they have those safety things on them? Good. Please keep them on. I’m almost as afraid of being shot by one of those guys as I am of . . . whatever they are.”

  And I started off, alone, toward the Line.

  How does one address a line of marching alien creatures? Take me to your leader seemed a bit peremptory. Hey, bro, what’s happening . . . perhaps overly familiar. In the end, after following for fifteen minutes at a distance of about ten yards, I had settled on excuse me, so I moved closer and cleared my throat. Turns out that was enough. One of the Linemen stopped walking and turned to me.

  This close, one could see that his features were rudimentary. His head was like a mannequin’s, or a wig stand: a nose, hollows for eyes, bulges for cheeks. All the rest seemed to be painted on.

  I could only stand there idiotically for a moment. I noticed a peculiar thing. There was no gap in the Line.

  I suddenly remembered why it was me and not some diplomat standing there.

  “Why are you collecting butterflies?” I asked.

  “Why not?” he said, and I figured it was going to be a long, long day. “You should have no trouble understanding,” he said. “Butterflies are the most beautiful things on your planet, aren’t they?”

  “I’ve always thought so.” Wondering, Did he know I was a lepidopterist?

  “Then there you are.” Now he began to move. The Line was about twenty yards away, and through our whole conversation he never let it get more distant than that. We walked at a leisurely one mile per hour.

  Okay, I told myself. Try to keep it to butterflies. Leave it to the military types to get to the tough questions: When do you start kidnapping our children, raping our women, and frying us for lunch?

  “What are you doing with them?”

  “Harvesting them.” He extended a hand toward the Line, and as if sum
moned, a lovely specimen of Adelpha bredowii fluttered toward him. He did something with his fingers and a pale blue sphere formed around the butterfly.

  “Isn’t it lovely?” he asked, and I moved in for a closer look. He seemed to treasure these wonderful creatures I’d spent my life studying.

  He made another gesture, and the blue ball with the Adelpha disappeared. “What happens to them?” I asked him.

  “There is a collector,” he said.

  “A lepidopterist?”

  “No, it’s a storage device. You can’t see it because it is . . . off to one side.”

  Off to one side of what? I wondered, but didn’t ask.

  “And what happens to them in the collector?”

  “They are put in storage in a place where . . . time does not move. Where time does not pass. Where they do not move through time as they do here.” He paused for a few seconds. “It is difficult to explain.”

  “Off to one side?” I suggested.

  “Exactly. Excellent. Off to one side of time. You’ve got it.”

  I had nothing, actually. But I plowed on.

  “What will become of them?”

  “We are building a . . . place. Our leader wishes it to be a very special place. Therefore, we are making it of these beautiful creatures.”

  “Of butterfly wings?”

  “They will not be harmed. We know ways of making . . . walls in a manner that will allow them to fly freely.”

  I wished someone had given me a list of questions.

  “How did you get here? How long will you stay?”

  “A certain . . . length of time, not a great length by your standards.”

  “What about your standards?”

  “By our standards . . . no time at all. As to how we got here . . . have you read a book entitled Flatland?”