Meet Me at Infinity

by James Tiptree Jr.

  “Oh dear,” cooed the Thing in the darkness, “it looked so good. Dense, though. Who made ‘em?”

  “I did,” muttered Herring, groping for the fuses. In the darkness he could hear the Thing groping too.

  “Oh, here’s one!” it trilled and began chewing loud and wet. “What’s your name, Tiger? You make smashing penuche.”

  Suddenly it was snuffling on his neck. And elsewhere.

  “Red,” he gulped, wildly clutching at his thin, bronzed flight shorts.

  “Reddy, baby,” the Thing was mumbling sloopily through the penuche, “don’t you really know what I am, Reddy dear?”

  “Wha—what are you?” Herring squealed, his thin, bronzed toes curling and uncurling as he struggled in the dark. To die like this, he thought, trapped in my own control room by a Thing from the abyss—

  “Why, Reddy-Beddy,” it tongued in his ear. “You poor deprived engineer! I’m a w––n!!!”

  “Great Lorenz!” Captain Herring gibbered faintly. “The old t-tales are t-t-true!” Then he passed out.

  On Ocarina’s control panel the quantameter was clicking. Googol minus eight, googol minus seven… . googol minus six…

  Under the violet lamp the reader lifted one mandible and let it sag. He laid down the page, picked up one of the pumice stones, and bit into it. Savoring the rich cadmium creme filling, he selected a small one-time tape and reversed its polarity to stick it on the manuscript.

  “Dear Being: Thank you for permitting us to inhale your emanations. We regret they are non-isomorphic with our needs. Due to the large input received it is not possible for us to comment live but we suggest that further study of the style and content of our send, say for about three cycles, would help you. We enclose a convenient species-null subscription form.”

  He placed the manuscript in the illuminated funnel where it dema-terialized while he plucked out the leaf at random from his pile and centered it under his lens. At that moment his lamp winked three times. He laid down his work and stretched hugely. Then, unfolding three meters of thorax from his Formi-balm Komfort Kase, the editor twitched out his light and flew away.

  Although Alii generally claimed to have done little writing before the first Tiptree stories in 1967, what she meant was that before Tiptree she hadn’t prepared much for publication. She wrote throughout her life: stories, essays, poems, novels. Most of these were unfinished or in early drafts.

  This story dates from the 1950s. Two early fragments survive. The earliest is the rejection letter at the end, a much longer piece than the one used in the final story. The second is the complete story except for the rejection letter. This is probably from the 1960s, because it is typed in the blue typewriter ribbon that Tiptree bedeviled editors with—but it’s single-spaced, so not prepared for submission. Neither fragment is titled, but the next one, under Tiptree’s name, is: “Please Do Not Play with the Time Machine or, I Screwed 15,924 Back Issues of Analog for the F.B.I.” This has a revised version of the story from the single-spaced manuscript, and the new rejection letter (and opening paragraph).

  She first sent the story out to Fred Pohl on June 5,1968. It didn’t sell until May 1971, to an amateur publisher for an anthology project that never got off the ground. In a letter to me in April 1971, Tiptree said of this story:

  Written while experimenting with a mixture touted as Wild Mares’ Milk which is basically yoghurt & vodka. Subtitle explanatory… also always wanted to type A. Privately circulated to people like Harry Harrison and Fred Pohl for chuckles, then sent in tentative seriousness to Harlan Ellison/… His comment: “A sad little old cliche gag.” He was right… but the stupid thing still makes me chuckle.

  PS Not to worry about the Thing having 3 ankles.

  Somewhere along the way the “Do Not” in the title contracted to “Don’t,” and of the subtitle, Tiptree said to me in a letter on May 20,1971:”… maybe it should be changed from Analog to Astounding, which actually is truer anyway. That was, it so happens, the first SF thing I ever wrote, in a letter to a friend in Vietnam in… 1958, for crissake.” (The letter in the original manuscript is dated 1955, so that may be the story’s true date of composition.) Here is the original rejection letter:

  ASTRONAUGHT

  “For the Truly Modern Man”

  3 May 1955

  Dear Sir or Madam, as the case may be:

  Your manuscript entitled “Herring and the Thin Bronzed Line” was received and reviewed by the staff of our Sex in Space Department with ennui. We regret to inform you that it has been rejected as amateurish.

  Initially, we wish to point out that our reader audience is sufficiently familiar with space travel to recognize instantly the error in describing the sound in passing Planck’s Constant as a “faint plop.” It is more accurately a distinct “ftoop,” similar to the withdrawing of a cork from a bottle, a sound with which, in fact, it has frequently been confused as the seasoned astronaut normally accompanies the passing of P/C with some small libation especially when traveling alone. Such descriptive errors, if printed, would undoubtedly cause Astronaughfs reputation for accuracy of onomatopoeia to suffer. This is a reputation which we treasure above all things except, of course, profits.

  A more important consideration in rejecting this manuscript is the fact, which, we are sure, will, when called to your attention, be immediately apparent to you, that, given the degravitized condition of the average space tramp, and given the constancy of mass in free fall, the Act to Which Your Story Was Leading Up (To) is utterly impossible of accomplishment without special equipment and would therefore tax the credulity of our esteemed readers. This has been carefully tested by a volunteer from our staff with the full cooperation of a volunteer from Mademoiselle in a specially constructed chamber simulating actual space tramp conditions. A cinematic recording was made of this daring experiment and is available on a rental basis to Teen Age groups who, we feel, may well profit by our experiment.

  Soundtrack is by Professor Lehrer of Boston. It may be mailed under plain wrapper.

  We nevertheless wish to extend our thanks, dear Sir or Madam a.t.c.m.b, for the submission of this manuscript, and to suggest further study of our magazine over a period of, let us say, three years, will better acquaint you with our editorial standards, which we hardly consider astronomical. A subscription order blank is enclosed. No stamps, please.

  Spaciously yours,

  The Editor.

  Virginia Kidd, Tiptree’s second agent (following Robert P. Mills), read this for the first time in the manuscript for this collection and offered it to Amazing Stories, which published it in the Fall 1998 issue.

  A Day Like Any Other

  Man is a product, like so much else, of the play of natural garble

  He decided to be a man today. He dressed in his executive dou-blestripe carefully with medallion: Gloves not to match boots. Masterfully in Sphinx to offisolarium, put in creative morning on landline option. Lunch conference multimedia potential Ontario: Note. After noon was payoff matinee with partner’s new secretary. She had gas pains but extra-dedicated. Appreciatively he put her name in the Fruit-of-the-Month file when he got

  Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,

  Where garble accumulates and men de

  During the night he was a hamster. He ran 15,924 revolutions of his 45 cm. exercise wheel. About 24 miles; too much for a male hamster. Tired, he debated the anomaly, finally let it

  Your hooves have stamped at the black garble of the wood,

  Even where horrible green parrots call and swing.

  My works are all stamped down into that garble mud.

  I knew that horseplay, knew it for a murderous th

  He awoke in the morning as a premenopausal housewife. He loved up the house all day, Windex on the windows, Soilex on the floors, Ovenex on the oven. In the evening he used Husbandex on the husband. His husband went to sleep

  Whose was the garble that slanted back this brow?

  Whose breath blew ou
t the light within this brain?

  Is this the garble the Lord God made

  He went out in the night as a child laughing, zap-whirling Hey Hey Hey Holy spring leg of Lamb ecstasy-strobe FREEZE! Electric joke cascade! Cool vomiting angel ho ho ho he killed everybody & threw the world away

  So long, Mom! I’m off to garble the Bomb!

  So don’t wait up for me

  Only in the morning buttoning his aqua lab coat he forgot he had thrown the world away until just. Too. Late. When he perceived this down the gleaming corridors he knew something terrible had happened, he had lost his last chance. No help in the frost-free cryostats, lost in the fume-hoods he cried and cried, cried or

  Bequeath us to no earthly shore until

  Is answered in the garble of our grave

  The seal’s wide spindrift gaze toward Paradi

  This miniature was originally submitted to Harry Harrison for his anthology series Nova on September 22, 1968. Neither Harrison, Harlan Ellison, nor Michael Moorcock could use it.

  When George Hay of the British academic SF magazine Foundation expressed an interest in reprinting some of Tiptree’s nonfiction, Tiptree also sent him a copy of “A Day Like Any Other.” Foundation never published the nonfiction, but they ran the short story in their third issue, March 1973.

  Here are the comments on the story that Tiptree sent to me in April 1971:

  A sober comment on the real world. Twenty-four hours. (Can you look me in the eye and say no?) Harlan said in part, “Quite a different can of worms. It has something. What, I have no idea.” And called it, correctly, “a pastiche.” The missing glue is undoubtedly in part the fact that the interpolated quotes are, I guess, not very old friends to all readers. Private faces in public places____

  By the way, Harlan is a first-rate editor sound of nose and work-manlike-sympatico about all the mechanics… as of course he should be.

  The quotes are in order from: Sherrington, “The Destiny of Man”; A. Pope, “Essay on Man”; Yeats’ “Portrait of a Black Centaur by Edmund Dulac” (oh, that “murderous horseplay”!); Edwin Markham, “The Man with the Hoe” (should have been required reading not only in Dixie for the last fifty years); Tom Lehrer, “Song for World War III”; and Hart Crane’s “Voyages II.” Do your life a favor, read a couple of these. Out loud.

  Press Until the Bleeding Stops

  When the man who loved the wooded valley awoke and saw the young men carrying gaily painted stakes, he listened. And with some difficulty, because of great horror, he understood. He looked around then and saw that things had gone further than he had realized; this was in fact the last valley. And he went in haste to the people who lived on the slopes of the valley, to tell them.

  They are going to drive a huge highway through the valley, he said, and the chain saws are going to fell the trees that give us air and the bulldozers are going to tear the earth and destroy her life and her waters that we drink. And the beauty and the quiet will be replaced by a horrible and unceasing din of machines spewing foul gases into the barren wind and the lovely soul of the earth that is here in this last valley will be gone forever.

  And the first of the people who lived beside the valley replied, Well this is terrible and grievous, thank God you told us, because our son needs to go to medical school and now we can sell our land and send him. And the next people said, That is indeed shocking news and we couldn’t approve more of what you’re doing but it’s no use our signing anything because we are leaving for an overseas assignment; here is ten dollars. And the next man said, This is a brutal outrage and I’m so glad you called it to my attention because my wife loves nature and she is in such frail health that the sight of this hideous destruction would finish her; I must get her away quickly and I wish you all the luck in the world. And a woman said, Yes it’s just awful and I’d love to sign your paper if only my husband wasn’t in the concrete business. And another man said, It’s a damn shame to spoil the woods but as they say, if you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em, and my brother-in-law wants me to go in with him on a fried chicken franchise. And another woman said, Yes it’s so sad about the trees and all the little animals, but think how happy all the people will be to drive through here and which is more important, a tree or a person? And the two girls who lived at the end of the valley said, That’s all middle-class shit, don’t you know there are babies burning?

  The man saw that the people were going to be no help at all. And then he remembered the great horn made from a mammoth’s tooth that had been buried in the secret heart of the woods. It was green by age and nature and he knew it had only been blown once before in a legendary emergency. So he dug it up and blew three long solemn blasts, like glaciers creaking. And when he put it down all the animals and every living thing in the woods was looking at him.

  Life of the earth, he cried, listen to me! Rabbits, stop munching the green leaves! Foxes, stop preying on the rabbits and the birds! Hawks, stop seeking out the voles and squirrels, and all you little birds stop eating the insects! And insects, stop sucking the juices of the plants, and you trees and ferns and creepers, still your feeding roots in the germy loam and listen to me! And you, stag of the forest, and you, raccoons fishing frogs in the stream, and all you frogs and newts and crickets and spiders and moles and mice in your burrows, listen to me and attend!

  My brothers the men, he told them, are now planning to blast a road through here! Their giant machines will rip away the living soil and grind up the field mice’s nests and the bob-white’s babies and knock down and crush the tall trees with all your homes and young ones and even the bees in their hives and ram you all broken into a great pile of death. And they will seal the flayed earth under a plain of concrete and the sweet rain will run off into a foul channel and the mold and mulm that was the life of the earth will pour into the far ocean where it will kill the fish. And no water will sink into the earth to refresh it, and even those trees which they will leave torn and crippled will die and the last of you animals and birds with them. And they will sow the clay with coarse wire-grass and spray poisons, and the stink of their burning fuels will fill the air with death. And the people who ride a stream of roaring machines will throw trash and crap unceasing to bring more kinds of death when your young ones eat it. And even you butterflies and winged creatures will end up as squashes on their hurtling metal. Join me and we will fight this thing!

  When the creatures heard this they looked at each other and at the man, and they understood, because the horn of legendary emergency had been blown. And the old badger of the cave whom nobody had ever seen before, advanced and spoke for them all, saying, Oh Man, we hear and understand! This is truly a time when we must stand together in battle for our lives. And we will! Moreover, it will be a sight never before seen, because behind us will arise the dread might and majesty of our Mother, the Earth, who is also the Mother of you men, though I have never understood why. She will strengthen us to invincible power. Even the soft wings of the mayflies and the very softest moles will take on the fury of our offended Mother. When your killing machines come they will be met by a terror never before seen and the men will know fear at last and flee!

  To which the man said, So be it. I will stand with you.

  And so one morning when the great yellow earth-gutting machines roared over the horizon into the little valley, there stood ready for them all the creatures of the forest. In the forefront the air was filled with moths and butterflies and every flying insect in waves and clouds, and underfoot the mice and the frogs and turtles in ranks, and all around them even the smallest blades of grass and leaves of the trees were drawn up and hard as spears. And behind them were the armies of woodchucks and squirrels and foxes unsmiling, right down to the raccoon babies unnaturally grim. And in their midst stood the proud stag of the forest with the sun gleaming on his antlers, and the man standing beside him. And every single one of them felt the power of their Mother the Earth surging through them, invincible at last, a thing which had never been kno
wn before. And swooping from the sky came the birds large and small in squadrons dazzling to the eye, and all this took place in perfect silence, which is the voice of Earth.

  When the first bulldozer driver saw them he yelled through his transceiver, Hey, look at the birds! And the second driver bellowed back, kee-rist there’s a hell of a lot of animals in there! And the third driver shouted, Look out, maybe they’re rabid or something, I can’t see anything; my glass is covered with bugs. And they all lurched to a stop.

  But the foreman came tearing up in his Jeep, yelling Gimme that shotgun, there’s a buck! By God, I haven’t shot a rack like that since I was a kid! And the support crew ran up after him and started shooting streams of chemical fog into the sky.

  The first bulldozer driver said, I feel sick. If you’re sick go home, the foreman shouted, by Jesus I’m going to get that buck.

  At that moment the man walked out of the woods and stood before them with his arms lifted, saying Stop! I command you in the name of our dread Mother, the Earth. This valley is under her protection forever. Turn and go!

  The second bulldozer driver asked, What is that gray thing? Do you hear some kind of squeaking?

  The foreman, sighting down his barrels told him, Nothing but a shadow, goddammit, you seeing ghosts?

  When the man heard those words he felt draftiness and faintness. He looked down at his body and saw that the air was mingling through him; he was in fact only a gray shadow. And he groaned and said, Yes, it is true. I am only a ghost. I am dead. Now I remember.