The John Varley Reader

by John Varley

  Again, I was lucky. I hadn’t even considered getting an agent. I sold some stories, started attracting some attention, and one day got a letter from Kirby McCauley asking if I was looking for representation. I wasn’t, and was a little dubious of someone who seemed to be beating the bushes for clients. But I asked some of my new friends, and was told Kirby was very good, with a wonderful client list. He could hustle my works in foreign markets—which have been a significant source of income over the years—and had an affiliation with an agency in Hollywood. I went to New York, met him and instantly liked him, and we shook hands. That has been the basis of a relationship that has lasted about twenty-eight years now.

  I can’t begin to say how valuable Kirby has been to me, as agent and friend. He takes care of all the negotiating and business stuff that gives me a blinding headache. He has been there countless times to help me over a bad patch, as a writer’s income tends to be sporadic: big chunks, and then nothing for a long time. I have made a living at this business for thirty years now, but I won’t pretend it hasn’t been dicey at times.

  But it’s the only life for me.

  As Sergeant Pepper said, we’re getting very near the end.

  Here’s a story from a time capsule. I wrote “The Bellman” back in the late seventies after Harlan Ellison asked me to contribute to an anthology. I’m sure many of you were not even born when the first Dangerous Visions book was published, to universal acclaim. It was followed soon after by Again Dangerous Visions, and was to conclude, logically enough, with The Last Dangerous Visions, And then something happened . . .

  I don’t know exactly what it was, it was probably a series of things, but for some reason Harlan and the original publisher parted company. Ever since then, well over twenty years now, Harlan has been wandering in the publishing wilderness, and so far even his considerable powers of persuasion have been unable to get the book in print.

  Did I say book? The last I heard TLDV was to be three thick volumes, with a cover price around one hundred dollars. I don’t know if those are 1978 dollars.

  Being Harlan, he was able to hang on to this story, and many others by other writers, long past the expiration of his rights to it. Half a dozen times in the past two decades, times when I really needed the money, I have reluctantly gone to him and said I really have to sell “The Bellman.” It’s been years, Harlan. Be fair. Each time he convinced me to hang tough. No browbeating, no threats, never an angry word. It’s just that when Harlan gets to talking about TLDV his passion is infectious; you end up wanting to let him keep the story for just one more year.

  I still do want that, I still hope to see TLDV in hard covers one day soon . . . but by then “The Bellman” will no longer be unpublished fiction, because I finally decided I couldn’t wait any longer. Do I feel guilty? Yes, a bit. But I’m not the only one, and even if all the stories in it are not new on that fine publication day, I’m sure the book will be the blockbuster of the twenty-first century.

  The whole Dangerous Visions concept was a simple one. Harlan wanted stories you couldn’t sell elsewhere, stories that were too controversial for the conventional magazines and book publishers. Dangerous stories.

  Many of the stories in the first two volumes did seem daring at the time, but the most dangerous stuff in the books was probably the introductions and afterwords Harlan wrote for each story. Taken together, it seemed there was almost as much wordage by the outspoken editor as by the collected authors . . . which is as it should be, since no one I know can churn up your guts as effectively as Harlan Ellison.

  I don’t really know if this story is “dangerous.” It no longer looks as radical as it did when I wrote it, but so very, very much has happened since then. We’re in a new millennium, and in many ways it is more wonderful and terrible than any of us poor SF prophets imagined it.

  You decide.

  THE BELLMAN

  THE WOMAN STUMBLED down the long corridor, too tired to run. She was tall, her feet were bare, and her clothes were torn. She was far advanced in pregnancy.

  Through a haze of pain, she saw a familiar blue light. Air lock. There was no place left to go. She opened the door and stepped inside, shut it behind her.

  She faced the outer door, the one that led to vacuum. Quickly, she undogged the four levers that secured it. Overhead, a warning tone began to sound quietly, rhythmically. The outer door was now held shut by the air pressure inside the lock, and the inner door could not be opened until the outer latches were secured.

  She heard noises from the corridor, but knew she was safe. Any attempt to force the outer door would set off enough alarms to bring the police and air department.

  It was not until her ears popped that she realized her mistake. She started to scream, but it quickly died away with the last rush of air from her lungs. She continued to beat soundlessly on the metal walls for a time, until blood flowed from her mouth and nose. The blood bubbled.

  As her eyes began to freeze, the outer door swung upward and she looked out on the lunar landscape. It was white and lovely in the sunlight, like the frost that soon coated her body.

  Lieutenant Anna-Louise Bach seated herself in the diagnostic chair, leaned back, and put her feet in the stirrups. Dr. Erickson began inserting things into her. She looked away, studying the people in the waiting room through the glass wall to her left. She couldn’t feel anything—which in itself was a disturbing sensation—but she didn’t like the thought of all that hardware so close to her child.

  He turned on the scanner and she faced the screen on her other side. Even after so long, she was not used to the sight of the inner walls of her uterus, the placenta, and the fetus. Everything seemed to throb, engorged with blood. It made her feel heavy, as though her hands and feet were too massive to lift; a different sensation entirely from the familiar heaviness of her breasts and belly.

  And the child. Incredible that it could be hers. It didn’t look like her at all. Just a standard squinch-faced, pink and puckered little ball. One tiny fist opened and shut. A leg kicked, and she felt the movement.

  “Do you have a name for her yet?” the doctor asked.

  “Joanna.” She was sure he had asked that last week. He must be making conversation, she decided. It was unlikely he even recalled Bach’s name.

  “Nice,” he said, distractedly, punching a note into his clipboard terminal. “Uh, I think we can work you in on Monday three weeks from now. That’s two days before optimum, but the next free slot is six days after. Would that be convenient? You should be here at 0300 hours.”

  Bach sighed.

  “I told you last time, I’m not coming in for the delivery. I’ll take care of that myself.”

  “Now, uh . . . ,” he glanced at his terminal, “Anna, you know we don’t recommend that. I know it’s getting popular, but—”

  “It’s Ms. Bach to you, and I heard that speech last time. And I’ve read the statistics. I know it’s no more dangerous to have the kid by myself than it is in this damn fishbowl. So would you give me the goddam midwife and let me out of here? My lunch break is almost over.”

  He started to say something, but Bach widened her eyes slightly and her nostrils flared. Few people gave her any trouble when she looked at them like that, especially when she was wearing her sidearm.

  Erikson reached around her and fumbled in the hair at the nape of her neck. He found the terminal and removed the tiny midwife she had worn for the last six months. It was gold, and about the size of a pea. Its function was neural and hormonal regulation. Wearing it, she had been able to avoid morning sickness, hot flashes, and the possibility of miscarriage from the exertions of her job. Erikson put it in a small plastic box, and took out another that looked just like it.

  “This is the delivery midwife,” he said, plugging it in. “It’ll start labor at the right time, which in your case is the ninth of next month.” He smiled, once again trying for a bedside manner. “That will make your daughter an Aquarius.”

  “I don�
��t believe in astrology.”

  “I see. Well, keep the midwife in at all times. When your time comes, it will reroute your nerve impulses away from the pain centers in the brain. You’ll experience the contractions in their full intensity, you see, but you won’t perceive it as pain. Which, I’m told, makes all the difference. Of course, I wouldn’t know.”

  “No, I suppose you wouldn’t. Is there anything else I need to know, or can I go now?”

  “I wish you’d reconsider,” he said, peevishly. “You really should come into the natatorium. I must confess, I can’t understand why so many women are choosing to go it alone these days.”

  Bach glanced around at the bright lights over the horde of women in the waiting room, the dozens sitting in examination alcoves, the glint of metal and the people in white coats rushing around with frowns on their faces. With each visit to this place the idea of her own bed, a pile of blankets, and a single candle looked better.

  “Beats me,” she said.

  There was a jam on the Leystrasse feeder line, just before the carousel. Bach had to stand for fifteen minutes wedged in a tight mass of bodies, trying to protect her belly, listening to the shouts and screams ahead where the real crush was, feeling the sweat trickling down her sides. Someone near her was wearing shoes, and managed to step on her foot twice.

  She arrived at the precinct station twenty minutes late, hurried through the rows of desks in the command center, and shut the door of her tiny office behind her. She had to turn sideways to get behind her desk, but she didn’t mind that. Anything was worth it for that blessed door.

  She had no sooner settled in her chair than she noticed a handwritten note on her desk, directing her to briefing room 330 at 1400 hours. She had five minutes.

  One look around the briefing room gave her a queasy feeling of disorientation. Hadn’t she just come from here? There were between two and three hundred officers seated in folding chairs. All were female, and visibly pregnant.

  She spotted a familiar face, sidled awkwardly down a row, and sat beside Sergeant Inga Krupp. They touched palms.

  “How’s it with you?” Bach asked. She jerked her thumb toward Krupp’s belly. “And how long?”

  “Just fightin’ gravity, trying not to let the entropy get me down. Two more weeks. How about you?”

  “More like three. Girl or boy?”

  “Girl.”

  “Me, too.” Bach squirmed on the hard chair. Sitting was no longer her favorite position. Not that standing was all that great. “What is this? Some kind of medical thing?”

  Krupp spoke quietly, from the corner of her mouth. “Keep it under your suit. The crosstalk is that pregnancy leave is being cut back.”

  “And half the force walks off the job tomorrow.” Bach knew when she was being put on. The union was far too powerful for any reduction in the one-year child-rearing sabbatical. “Come on, what have you heard?”

  Krupp shrugged, then eased down in her chair. “Nobody’s said. But I don’t think it’s medical. You notice you don’t know most of the people here? They come from all over the city.”

  Bach didn’t have time to reply, because Commissioner Andrus had entered the room. He stepped up to a small podium and waited for quiet. When he got it, he spent a few seconds looking from face to face.

  “You’re probably wondering why I called you all here today.”

  There was a ripple of laughter. Andrus smiled briefly, but quickly became serious again.

  “First the disclaimer. You all know of the provision in your contract relating to hazardous duty and pregnancy. It is not the policy of this department to endanger civilians, and each of you is carrying a civilian. Participation in the project I will outline is purely voluntary; nothing will appear in your records if you choose not to volunteer. Those of you who wish to leave now may do so.”

  He looked down and tactfully shuffled papers while about a dozen women filed out. Bach shifted uncomfortably. There was no denying she would feel diminished personally if she left. Long tradition decreed that an officer took what assignments were offered. But she felt a responsibility to protect Joanna.

  She decided she was sick to death of desk work. There would be no harm in hearing him out.

  Andrus looked up and smiled bleakly. “Thank you. Frankly, I hadn’t expected so many to stay. Nevertheless, the rest of you may opt out at any time.” He gave his attention to the straightening of his papers by tapping the bottom edges on the podium. He was a tall, cadaverous man with a big nose and hollows under his cheekbones. He would have looked menacing, but his tiny mouth and chin spoiled the effect.

  “Perhaps I should warn you before—”

  But the show had already begun. On a big holo screen behind him a picture leaped into focus. There was a collective gasp, and the room seemed to chill for a moment. Bach had to look away, queasy for the first time since her rookie days. Two women got up and hurried from the room.

  “I’m sorry,” Andrus said, looking over his shoulder and frowning. “I’d meant to prepare you for that. But none of this is pretty.”

  Bach forced her eyes back to the picture.

  One does not spend twelve years in the homicide division of a metropolitan police force without becoming accustomed to the sight of violent death. Bach had seen it all and thought herself unshockable, but she had not reckoned on what someone had done to the woman on the screen.

  The woman had been pregnant. Someone had performed an impromptu Caesarian section on her. She was opened up from the genitals to the breastbone. The incision was ragged, hacked in an irregular semicircle with a large flap of skin and muscle pulled to one side. Loops of intestine bulged through ruptured fascial tissue, still looking wet in the harsh photographer’s light.

  She was frozen solid, posed on a metal autopsy table with her head and shoulders up, slumped against a wall that was no longer there. It caused her body to balance on its buttocks. Her legs were in an attitude of repose, yet lifted at a slight angle to the table.

  Her skin was faint blue and shiny, like mother-of-pearl, and her chin and throat were caked with rusty brown frozen blood. Her eyes were open, and strangely peaceful. She gazed at a spot just over Bach’s left shoulder.

  All that was bad enough, as bad as any atrocity Bach had ever seen. But the single detail that had leaped to her attention was a tiny hand, severed, lying frozen in the red mouth of the wound.

  “Her name was Elfreda Tong, age twenty-seven, a life-long resident of New Dresden. We have a biographical sheet you can read later. She was reported missing three days ago, but nothing was developed.

  “Yesterday we found this. Her body was in an air lock in the west quadrant, map reference delta-omicron-sigma 97. This is a new section of town, as yet underpopulated. The corridor in question leads nowhere, though in time it will connect a new warren with the Cross-Crisium.

  “She was killed by decompression, not by wounds. Use-tapes from the air-lock service module reveal that she entered the lock alone, probably without a suit. She must have been pursued, else why would she have sought refuge in an air lock? In any case, she unsealed the outer door, knowing that the inner door could not then be moved.” He sighed, and shook his head. “It might have worked, too, in an older lock. She had the misfortune to discover a design deficiency in the new-style locks, which are fitted with manual pressure controls on the corridor phone plates. It was simply never contemplated that anyone would want to enter a lock without a suit and unseal the outer door.”

  Bach shuddered. She could understand that thinking. In common with almost all Lunarians, she had a deep-seated fear of vacuum, impressed on her from her earliest days. Andrus went on.

  “Pathology could not determine time of death, but computer records show a time line that might be significant. As those of you who work in homicide know, murder victims often disappear totally on Luna. They can be buried on the surface and never seen again. It would have been easy to do so in this case. Someone went to a lot of trouble to remove th
e fetus—for reasons we’ll get to in a moment—and could have hidden the body fifty meters away. It’s unlikely the crime would have been discovered.

  “We theorize the murderer was rushed. Someone attempted to use the lock, found it not functioning because of the open outer door, and called repair service. The killer correctly assumed the frustrated citizen in the corridor would go to the next lock and return on the outside to determine the cause of the obstruction. Which he did, to find Elfreda as you see her now. As you can see,” he pointed to a round object partially concealed in the wound, “the killer was in such haste that he or she failed to get the entire fetus. This is the child’s head, and of course you can see her hand.”

  Andrus coughed nervously and turned from the picture. From the back of the room, a woman hurried for the door.

  “We believe the killer to be insane. Doubtless this act makes sense according to some tortured pathology unique to this individual. Psychology section says the killer is probably male. Which does not rule out female suspects.

  “This is disturbing enough, of course. But aside from the fact that this sort of behavior is rarely isolated—the killer is compelled eventually to repeat it—we believe that Ms. Tong is not the first. Analysis of missing persons reveals a shocking percentage of pregnant females over the last two years. It seems that someone is on the loose who preys on expectant mothers, and may already have killed between fifteen and twenty of them.”

  Andrus looked up and stared directly at Bach for a moment, then fixed his gaze on several more women in turn.