Writers of the Future, Volume 27

by L. Ron Hubbard

  Hirokh showed no sign of offense. “We are ‘even,’ Envoy, in that we have each profoundly misjudged the other. For all their high-minded talk, I never believed humans actually cared what should happen to the Tokhin. I thought their indifference confirmed when they sent their new Envoy, a clearly broken man.

  “Yet you found a way to lead these people when they could not lead themselves. I compliment you, Envoy, and I marvel at the marriage you must have had, for it to leave you such strength despite your obvious despair.”

  Thomas found he could not look Hirokh in the eye to answer. Still, a part of Thomas would have liked to correct him. His marriage with Kayleigh had been far from perfect. Too often they were absorbed in their individual concerns instead of sharing their lives. Sometimes he allowed himself to forget how much he loved her; sometimes he thought he hated her. But the bond between them gradually grew, and he had believed someday they would get it just right, they would give each other everything they could. That hope, that anticipation, her killer had taken all that away.

  Thomas did not believe he would ever again experience such hope for the future, but he was daring to think he could offer it to the worshippers of the Two Gods.

  Cresting the hill to the grounds of the First Temple, Thomas recoiled at the scene before him. On his instructions marines had burned away the moss where the temple once stood, and several truckloads of clay bricks rested in piles near one edge of the circle. Around the perimeter of that circle crowded thousands and thousands of phren. It had to be half the Holy City’s populace. On the bright side, the crowd’s presence eased Thomas’ fear that the Solarans might drop a nuke on them today.

  Thomas motioned his marines to the front of the procession, but he could not guess whether they would be able to hold off the onslaught if all these Solarans attempted to fall on the Tokhin. But he would not back down.

  As Lieutenant Harding corralled the marines into a human barrier, Thomas led the parade to the dusty central circle. Turning to the crowd, he held high the blue brick from Khora’s slashed pouch. Tokhin and Solarans alike murmured in reaction. Waiting for them to quiet, Thomas cataloged everything that could go wrong. The Solaran spectators could surge forward and start a riot. The Tokhin could refuse to attempt to build a new temple. Or perhaps they would try, but not know how. Or if they knew how, they might still refuse to use the temple without Sha’ad Tokh.

  “This brick is from the First Temple!” Thomas cried at the Tokhin. The murmuring began again, but he shouted over it. “Beginning with this brick, we will build a new temple. Perhaps some of you here also have original bricks from the First Temple.” Thomas had no way of knowing, but he hoped that Khora had not been the only Tokhin to use his pouch to guard a remnant of the sacred temple. All those bricks had gone somewhere. “If so, step forward and help me build the new foundation.”

  On the sunken impression left by the former First Temple, Thomas laid his brick. He turned back to the group of Tokhin, and for a few moments none moved. Then High Priestess Khorana stepped forward from the crowd and walked up to Thomas. He thought perhaps she meant to confront him about her son’s death, but instead she reached under her cloak and withdrew a silver brick, which she displayed to the crowd. To a raucous cheer from the Tokhin, she set it down next to his.

  Other Tokhin came forward to add to the line of bricks, and slowly the base of a temple emerged from the dust. Somehow the Tokhin knew just where to leave a gap for the temple door.

  Wiping his forehead of sweat, Thomas stepped toward the throng of Solaran spectators and raised his voice for another calculated risk. “If there are any Tokhin living in secret among the Solarans, now is the time to come out of hiding. If you still think of yourselves as Tokhin, then you must not live out your whole lives as Solarans.”

  He crossed to four different points on the perimeter of the temple grounds and said the same for all the crowd to hear. They jeered, and no Tokhin rose to his challenge. Perhaps Khora had been wrong that a few were hidden among the Solarans, or perhaps they were yet too afraid to give up their camouflage.

  The temple grew rapidly. The bricks the Tokhin laid were not uniform, but locked together in a complex pattern, like tiles on an ancient space shuttle. Dry and free of moss for the moment, most were gray, but blue and silver mixed here and there in the swiftly growing wall. The colors at first seemed random, but eventually a shifting pattern emerged.

  Thomas had thought Tokhin temples were constructed of concentric rings of bricks. Now he could see that the bricks formed a single, unending spiral, tilting inward as it climbed.

  The temple continued to rise, and Thomas realized nearly every Tokhin had carried a brick through the parade. Even so, they were nearing the end of the procession, and the walls of the temple were hardly a meter off the ground. When the last Tokhin had set her brick in place, Thomas motioned the group to the piles of bricks nearby. But none made any move toward them.

  Then it happened.

  Thomas thought they had exhausted the procession, but when he glanced back at the temple several more Tokhin were lined up to add to the wall. And the line was growing.

  Phren emerged from the crowd on every side of the temple grounds. Thomas saw dozens step from among the Solarans, and then like the sun bursting through the haze earlier began a steady flow of hundreds out of the crowd, to add to the wall. It tilted inward as it spiraled up, but remained stable.

  Within minutes, Thomas could see that the newcomers outnumbered his original procession. There were at least a thousand of them. And still they came. All across the grounds embraced neighbors who could never before reveal themselves. Some of the original procession cheered their emerging comrades, but most stood in dumb amazement.

  Now the crowd filled the entire temple grounds, and the Solaran watchers receded from the swelling tide of Tokhin. Thomas realized that half or more of the Solaran watchers who jeered at him minutes before had not been Solaran at all.

  The highest tiers of the brick spiral nearly paralleled the ground, yet the pattern remained and no brick slipped out of place, even with the weight of Tokhin climbing the exterior to add more.

  Thomas stepped into the gap left for a door and saw some of the Tokhin had brought not bricks but pieces of marble, deposited inside the temple wall. Three phren crouched on the ground assembling the pieces according to some intricate design.

  The inside of the new, vastly old, temple was too small to hold even a tiny fraction of the throng. But with the First Temple in place, Thomas was sure the Tokhin would build new temples, then maybe go on to build new lives.

  Phren nudged Thomas out of the doorway, to decorate the interior of the temple with thin drapes and rugs, all magically spirited from pouches. One brought a small lamp, which sputtered and issued a sharp, bitter odor. Thomas inhaled and a weight lifted from his chest, which registered after a moment as the absence of any scent of moss.

  The marble construction was complete, a narrow pedestal. As Thomas watched, two more phren entered carrying something between them. They uncovered it to reveal a massive copy of The Word of Both. Far too large to hold in their pouches, these two had managed to smuggle the book under a cloak all the way from Doubletown. Reverently they set it on the pedestal.

  Now all the phren left the interior of the temple, and Thomas walked out with them to face an enormous crowd looking to him in anticipation.

  He had no idea what to do next.

  10.

  Thomas spotted High Priestess Khorana and stepped to her. “Can you say a blessing or . . . something?”

  Her midlimbs rose in affirmation, yet she said clearly, “No.” Seeing Thomas’ consternation, she added, “I cannot, but someone here can.”

  Khorana walked boldly toward the remaining Solarans, directly to an older phren woman standing at the front of the crowd. They clasped midlimbs. Khorana pulled the woman—her
mother?—out of the crowd and strode back to the temple.

  This was the last of the procession. The woman climbed to the top of the gently sloping temple and added her brick. It had an odd trapezoidal shape, and when slotted into place it left only a neat, circular opening at the top.

  Turning to face the crowd from the top of the temple dome, she began to recite a long blessing in the ancient Tokhin language. Among all the assembled worshippers, there was only one other who could understand her words, yet thousands wept for joy to hear the Old Tongue spoken again. The final words in her prayer were “Sha’ad Tokh,” repeated three times.

  The crowd took up the chant, “Sha’ad Tokh! Sha’ad Tokh! Sha’ad Tokh! . . .” Thomas thought he sensed a wistful tone to the chant, as if the Tokhin did not truly believe that Sha’ad Tokh survived to complete their temple.

  As the crowd continued to chant, the old woman descended from the temple. Thomas thought she was walking to him, but she stepped past to Hirokh, whom she caressed gently on the cheeks with both her forelimbs and midlimbs. Thomas could not have been more stunned if Hirokh had sprouted wings and taken flight.

  She backed away from Hirokh, and he approached Thomas. The Envoy was amazed to see that he was weeping openly. Hirokh stretched out forelimbs and midlimbs and embraced Thomas, who was too bewildered to feel revulsion.

  “I never thought to see this day in my lifetime,” Hirokh said. “May They Both bless you.”

  He walked toward the front row of Tokhin, then stopped and lowered onto midlimbs. His torso clenched and rippled, and he threw his head back and gasped as if giving birth.

  Finally he drew a deep, shuddering breath and stood. From beneath his cloak he drew a bright globe and held it aloft to the crowd. Marbled blue and silver swirls shimmered and shifted over its surface, echoing the pattern of the temple walls.

  Sha’ad Tokh.

  The nearest Tokhin fell forward onto midlimbs as they beheld it. To Thomas it seemed not a religious observance, but that they were too overcome with relief and wonder to stand.

  As each row of Tokhin knelt, those behind saw the orb and knelt in turn. The movement rippled outward in concentric circles as far as Thomas could see.

  When all of them were prone the chant resumed, but with greater passion. The crowd’s collective voice rumbled over the ground. “Sha’ad Tokh!”

  Hirokh stepped back to Thomas. He strode lightly, without his usual shuffling gait. Thomas realized that he had limped not from an injury, but because of the burden he had always carried.

  “You?” he asked in astonishment. “All along, you held Sha’ad Tokh?”

  “It had to be kept where no one would think to look for it,” he answered through tears of happiness and relief. “Besides, no one else could swallow it. Envoy, will you place it at the top of the temple?”

  “Me? I don’t think I should.”

  Hirokh persisted. “Please.” He hesitated. “Thomas. It is fitting to honor the Two Gods, Who brought you to us to hasten this moment.”

  Thomas found he could not refuse Hirokh, whom he had so recently learned to despise. “Come with me?” If this was against custom, Hirokh did not object.

  They started to walk toward the temple, but Khorana and the older woman stepped forward and placed midlimbs on their chests to halt them. They motioned to the crowd and it parted to reveal a group of phren lifting a tub of water from a fire, which Thomas had not seen them light.

  They brought the tub and set it before Hirokh, who removed his cloak, something Thomas had never before seen any phren do. At a gesture from Khorana, Thomas also undressed. With sponges from the tub, so hot that no moss grew, Khorana and the other woman bathed Thomas and Hirokh, who never put down Sha’ad Tokh. The women then covered both in long jewel-encrusted cloaks to an approving cheer from the crowd.

  Thomas and Hirokh climbed together to the top of the temple dome. As they ascended, Thomas marveled at the stability of the structure he had just witnessed assembled without benefit of mortar or plans or anything but ancient, dusty bricks.

  At the top, Hirokh handed him Sha’ad Tokh, so heavy Thomas had to brace it against his chest with both hands. Slowly he lowered it to slide smoothly into the gap at the top of the temple. Hirokh pounded it firmly into place with each of his forelimbs and midlimbs in turn.

  A great roar from the throng of worshippers buffeted them. Still kneeling on midlimbs, the crowd shouted even as they continued to cry with elation.

  The moss would be a meter high here tomorrow from the moisture of all their tears.

  After descending, Thomas faced Hirokh. “All those years. How did you manage?”

  “Do not be concerned for me,” he answered, wiping his face. “Many of my people have sacrificed their lives for the Two Gods. I am one of the lucky ones. I did not have to die to do it.”

  Thomas shook his head in disbelief. He knew what it was to cast off one’s entire life, but he had merely run away, not become a completely different person.

  “But all the things you did. How did you . . . How could you . . .”

  “There are Two Gods, and sometimes They require us to become two.” Tears continued to stream down Hirokh’s face, and Thomas realized they were not all for joy. “I only pray to Both that I can still remember who I was before.”

  Thomas sank to his knees, joining the multitude all around them. He stared up into the face of this creature, at once the most contemptible and the most noble person he had ever met, and for the first time he believed.

  There are Two.

  Making It

  by Mike Resnick

  Mike Resnick is, according to Locus, the all-time leading award-winner, living or dead, for short science fiction. He sold his first article at fifteen, his first story at seventeen and his first novel at twenty. He is the author of sixty-two science fiction novels, 250 stories and two screenplays, and has edited forty anthologies, as well as serving stints as the science fiction consultant for BenBella Books and as executive editor for Jim Baen’s Universe. He has also written mysteries and nonfiction, including a pair of Hugo-nominated books about writing. Mike has won five Hugos (from a record thirty-four nominations), a Nebula and other major awards in the US, France, Spain, Croatia, Poland and Japan, and has been short-listed for major awards in England, Italy and Australia. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages. He has been named the Guest of Honor at the 2012 Worldcon.

  Making It

  Writers of the Future has been turning out writers—by which I mean successful, best-selling, award-winning writers—for over a quarter of a century now. They’ve done it long enough and frequently enough that there’s no longer any doubt that this program is not a fluke, that they really do know how to pick and train talent.

  So let’s examine it from the other side. Yes, they know their stuff. They build writers. But can they build you into one?

  That leads to a plethora of questions. How do you make it as a writer? Do you start with short stories and build a reputation (and can you build one in these days of only a tiny handful of print magazines)? Do you start in an easier field (and is there any easy field)? Do you begin with novels? Nonfiction? Do you attend workshops and conventions, and start networking with other writers, or are they wastes of that rarest of a writer’s commodities: time?

  My answer isn’t likely to thrill anyone, because what I’m going to do is quote Rudyard Kipling: There are nine and sixty ways, of constructing tribal lays, and each and every one of them is right.

  Well, I’ll qualify it to this extent: every approach is right for those who have proved it is right for them.

  Eric Flint, a Writers of the Future winner, didn’t start writing until his late 40s. Within two years he was living on the best-seller list, where you can still find him. Kevin J. Anderson, a long-time lecturer and judge at Writ
ers of the Future, made the best-seller list originally by writing some outstanding Star Wars books, but he took that enormous audience with him and has been a best-seller ever since. Patrick Rothfuss won the contest and found himself on the Hugo ballot and the best-seller list half a dozen years later with The Name of the Wind. Tim Powers and I, lecturers and judges here, don’t live on the best-seller list—but we were the 2011 and 2012 Worldcon Guests of Honor.

  People and careers differ. I sold my first article at the age of fifteen, my first story at seventeen, my first novel at twenty. I had all the mechanical skills, but I lacked the maturity and ambition to apply myself and write anything award-worthy or even memorable, and it was another eighteen years and a couple of hundred forgettable books written under pseudonyms before I moved over to science fiction and wrote anything of value, anything I was anxious to sign my name to. That was a few best-sellers and more than 100 awards and nominations ago, which just shows that we don’t all develop at the same pace or in the same way.

  And that holds for the Writers of the Future winners and finalists too. Look down the list at Nina Kiriki Hoffman, and Nick DiChario, and Dave Wolverton, and Karen Joy Fowler, and Robert Reed, and Jay Lake, and Tobias S. Buckell, and Stephen Baxter, and Amy Sterling Casil, and K. D. Wentworth, and R. Garcia y Robertson, and Dean Wesley Smith and all the others. Each got to where he or she is by a different route, some faster than others.

  But they have certain things in common. We all do.

  First, there’s a love of writing. A lot of writers hate writing and love having written. Not the ones who make it. They love words, they love pushing nouns up against verbs and seeing the results, they love creating their very own worlds and then inviting you into them.