Strange Days: Fabulous Journeys With Gardner Dozois

by Gardner R. Dozois

  Something enormous leaped out from the gloom, and enveloped him in a single, scaly green hand. The fingers were a good three feet long each, and their grip was as cold and hard as iron. The hand lifted him easily into the air, while he squirmed and kicked futilely.

  Barry stared up into the creature’s face. “Yop!” he said. A double row of yellowing fangs lined a frog-mouth large enough to swallow him up in one gulp. The blazing eyes bulged ferociously, and the nose was a flat smear. The head was topped off by a fringe of hair like red worms, and a curving pair of ram’s horns.

  “Pay up for the use a my bridge,” the creature roared, “or by Oberon’s dirty socks, I’ll crunch you whole!”

  It never ends, Barry thought. Aloud, he demanded in frustration. “What bridge?”

  “A wise guy!” the, monster sneered. “That bridge, whadda ya think?” He gestured upward scornfully. “The bridge over us, dummy! The Bridge a Morrig the Fearsome! My bridge. I got a royal commission says I gotta right to collect toll from every creature that sets foot on it, and you better believe that means you, buddy. I got you dead to rights. So cough up!” He shook Barry until the salesman’s teeth rattled. “Or else!”

  “But I haven’t set foot on it!” Barry wailed. “I just walked under it!”

  “Oh,” the monster said. He looked blank for a moment, scratching his knobby head with his free hand, and then his face sagged. “Oh,” he said again, disappointedly. “Yeah. I guess you’re right. Crap.” Morrig the Fearsome sighed, a vast noisome displacement of air. Then he released the salesman. “Jeez, buddy, I’m sorry,” Morrig said, crestfallen. “I shouldn’t’a’oughta have jerked ya around like that. I guess I got overanxious or sumpthin. Jeez, mac, you know how it is. Tryin’ to make a buck. The old grind. It gets me down.”

  Morrig sat down, discouraged, and wrapped his immensely long and muscular arms around his knobby green knees. He brooded for a moment, then jerked his thumb up at the bridge. “That bridge’s my only source a income, see?” He sighed gloomily. “When I come down from Utgard and set up this scam, I think I’m gonna get rich. Got the royal commission, all nice an’ legal, everybody gotta pay me, right? Gonna clean up, right?” He shook his head glumly. “Wrong. I ain’t making a lousy dime. All the locals got wings. Don’t use the bridge at all.” He spat noisily. “They’re cheap little snots, these fairyfolk are.”

  “Amen, brother,” Barry said, with feeling. “I know just what you mean.”

  “Hey!” Morrig said, brightening: “You care for a snort? I got a jug a hooch right here.”

  “Well, actually . . .” Barry said reluctantly. But the troll had already reached into the gloom with one long, triple-jointed arm, and pulled out a stone crock. He pried off the top and took a long swig. Several gallons of liquid gurgled down his throat. “Ahhhh!” He wiped his thin lips. “That hits the spot, all right.” He thrust the crock into Barry’s lap. “Have a belt.”

  When Barry hesitated, the troll rumbled, “Ah, go ahead, pal. Good for what ails ya. You got troubles too, aintcha, just like me—I can tell. It’s the lot a the workin’ man, brother. Drink up. Put hair on your chest even if you ain’t got no dough in your pocket.” While Barry drank, Morrig studied him cannily. “You’re a mortal, aintcha, bud?”

  Barry half-lowered the jug and nodded uneasily.

  Morrig made an expansive gesture. “Don’t worry, pal. I don’t care. I figure all a us workin’ folks gotta stick together, regardless a race or creed, or the bastards’ll grind us all down. Right?” He leered, showing his huge, snaggly, yellowing fangs in what Barry assumed was supposed to be a reassuring grin. “But, say, buddy, if you’re a mortal, how come you got funny nose like that, and a tail?”

  Voice shrill with outrage, Barry told his story, pausing only to hit the stone jug.

  “Yeah, buddy,” Morrig said sympathetically. “They really worked you over, didn’t they?” He sneered angrily. “Them bums! Just like them little snots to gang up ona guy who’s just tryin’ ta make an honest buck. Whadda they care about the problems a the workin’ man? Buncha booshwa snobs! Screw ‘em all!”

  They passed the seemingly bottomless stone jug back and forth again. “Too bad I can’t do none a that magic stuff,” Morrig said sadly, “or I’d fix ya right up. What a shame.” Wordlessly, they passed the jug again. Barry sighed. Morrig sighed too. They sat in gloomy silence for a couple of minutes, and then Morrig roused himself and said, “What kinda scam is it you’re tryin’ ta run? I ain’t never heard a it before. Lemme see the merchandise.”

  “What’s the point—?”

  “C’mon,” Morrig said impatiently. “I wantcha ta show me the goods. Maybe I can figure out a way ta move the stuff.”

  Listlessly, Barry snapped open a case. Morrig leaned forward to study the console with interest. “Kinda pretty,” the troll said; he sniffed at it. “Don’t smell too bad, either. Maybe make a nice planter, or sumpthin.”

  “Planter?” Barry cried; he could hear his voice cracking in outrage. “I’ll have you know this is a piece of high technology! Precision machinery!”

  Morrig shrugged. “Okay, bub, make it march.”

  “Ah,” Barry said. “I need someplace to plug it in . . .” Morrig picked up the plug and inserted it in his ear. The computer’s CRT screen lit up. “Okay,” Morrig said. “Gimme the pitch. What’s it do?”

  “Well,” Barry said slowly, “let’s suppose that you had a bond portfolio worth $2,147 invested at 83/4 percent compounded daily, over eighteen months, and you wanted to calculate—”

  “Two thousand four hundred forty-three dollars and sixty-eight and seven-tenths cents,” said the troll.

  “Hah?”

  “That’s what it works out to, pal. Two hundred ninety-six dollars and change in compound interest.”

  With a sinking sensation, Barry punched through the figures and let the system work. Alphanumerics flickered on the CRT: $296.687.

  “Can everybody in Faerie do that kind of mental calculation?” Barry asked.

  “Yeah,” the troll said. “But so what? No big deal. Who cares about crap like that anyway?” He stared incredulously at Barry. “Is that all that thing does?”

  There was a heavy silence.

  “Maybe you oughta reconsider that idea about the planters . . .” Morrig said.

  Barry stood up again, a trifle unsteady from all the hooch he’d taken aboard. “Well, that’s really it, then,” he said. “I might just as well chuck my samples in the river—I’ll never sell in this territory. Nobody needs my product.”

  Morrig shrugged. “What do you care how they use ‘em? You oughta sell ‘em first, and then let the customers find a use for ‘em afterward. That’s logic.”

  Fairy logic, perhaps, Barry thought. “But how can you sell something without first convincing the customer that it’s useful?”

  “Here.” Morrig tossed off a final drink, gave a bone-rattling belch, and then lurched ponderously to his feet, scooping up both sample cases in one hand. “Lemme show you. Ya just gotta be forceful.”

  The troll started off at a brisk pace, Barry practically having to run to keep up with his enormous strides. They climbed back up the curving wooden steps, and then Morrig somehow retraced Barry’s wandering route through the streets of Faerie town, leading them unerringly back to the home of the short-tempered, pinocchio-nosed fairy who had cast the first spell on Barry—the Hag of Blackwater, according to Morrig.

  Morrig pounded thunderously on the Hag’s door, making the whole house shake. The Hag snatched the door open angrily, snarling, “What’s to—GACK!” as Morrig suddenly grabbed her up in one enormous hand, yanked her out of the house, and lifted her up to face level.

  “Good evenin’, ma’am,” Morrig said pleasantly.

  “A murrain on you, lummox!” she shrieked. “Curst vile rogue! Release me at once! At once, you foul scoundrel! I’ll—BLURK.” Her voice was cut off abruptly as Morrig tightened his grip, squeezing the breath out of her. Her face turned
blood-red, and her eyes bulged from her head until Barry was afraid that she was going to pop like an overripe grape.

  “Now, now, lady,” Morrig said in a gently chiding tone. “Let’s keep the party polite, okay? You know your magic’s too weak to use on me. And you shouldn’t’a’oughta use no hard language. We’re just two workin’ stiffs tryin’ ta make a honest buck, see? You give us the bad mouth, and, say, it just might make me sore.” Morrig began shaking her, up and down, back and forth, his fist moving with blinding speed, shaking her in his enormous hand as if she were a pair of dice he was about to shoot in a crap game. “AND YOU WOULDN’T WANT TA MAKE ME SORE, NOW, WOULD YOU, LADY?” Morrig bellowed. “WOULD YOU?”

  The Hag was being shaken so hard that all you could see of her was a blur of motion. “Givors!” she said in a faint little voice. “Givors, I pray you!”

  Morrig stopped shaking her. She lay gasping and disheveled in his grasp, her eyes unfocused. “There!” Morrig said jovially, beaming down at her. “That’s better, ain’t it? Now I’m just gonna start all over again.” He paused for a second, and then said brightly, “‘Evenin’, ma’am! I’m sellin’ . . . uh . . . ” He scratched his head, looking baffled, then brightened. “. . . compukers!” He held up a sample case to show her; she stared dazedly at it. “Now I could go on and on about how swell these compukers are, but I can see you’re already anxious ta buy, so there ain’t no need ta waste yer valuable time like that. Ain’t that right?” When she didn’t answer, he frowned and gave her a little shake. “Ain’t that right?”

  “A-aye,” she gibbered. “Aye!”

  Morrig set her down, keeping only a light grip on her shoulder, and Barry broke out the sales forms. While she was scribbling frantically in the indicated blanks, Morrig rumbled, “And, say, now that we’re all gettin’ along so good, how’s about takin’ your spell offa my friend’s nose, just as a gesture a good will? You’ll do that little thing for me, won’tcha?”

  With ill-grace, the Hag obliged. There was a pop, and Barry exulted as he felt his nose shrink down to its original size. Part of the way home, anyway! He collected the sales forms and returned the receipts. “You can let go of her now,” he told Morrig.

  Sullenly, the Hag stalked back into her house, slamming the door behind her. The door vanished, leaving only an expanse of blank wood. With a freight-train rumble, the whole house sank into the ground and disappeared from sight. Grass sprang up on the spot where the house had been, and started growing furiously.

  Morrig chuckled. Before they could move on, another fairy woman darted out from an adjacent door. “What bought the Hag of Blackwater, so precious that straight she hastens to hide herself away with it from prying eyes?” the other fairy asked. “Must indeed be something wondrous rare, to make her cloister herself with such dispatch, like a mouse to its hole, and then pull the very hole in after her! Aye, she knew I’d be watching, I doubt not, the selfish old bitch! Ever has she been jealous of my Art. Fain am I to know what the Hag would keep from my sight. Let me see your wares.”

  It was then that Barry had his master-stroke. “I’m sorry,” he said in his snidest voice, “but I’m afraid that I can’t show it to you. We’re selling these computers by exclusive license of the Queen, and of course we can’t sell them to just anyone. I’m afraid that we certainly couldn’t sell you one, so—”

  “What!” the fairy spluttered. “No one is better connected at Court than I! You must let me buy! And you do not, the Queen’s majesty shall hear of this!”

  “Well,” said Barry doubtfully, “I don’t know . . .”

  Barry and Morrig made a great team. They were soon surrounded by a swarm of customers. The demand became so great that they had no trouble talking Snailface into taking his spell off Barry as part of the price of purchase. In fact, Snailface became so enthusiastic about computers, that he bought six of them. Morrig had been right. Who cared what they used them for, so long as they bought them? That was their problem, wasn’t it?

  In the end, they only quit because they had run out of sales forms. Morrig had a new profession, and Barry returned to Earth a happy man.

  Soon Barry had (with a little help from Morrig, who was still hard at work, back in Faerie) broken all previous company sales records, many times over. Barry had convinced the company that the floodtide of new orders was really coming from heretofore untouched backwoods regions of West Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, and everyone agreed that it was simply amazing how many hillbillies out there in the Ozarks had suddenly decided that they wanted home computer systems. Business was booming. So, when, months later, the company opened a new branch office with great pomp and ceremony, Barry was there, in a place of honor.

  The sales staff stood respectfully watching as the company president himself sat down to try out one of the gleaming new terminals. The president had started the company out of his basement when home computers were new, and he was only a college dropout from Silicon Valley, and he was still proud of his programming skills.

  But as the president punched figures into the keyboard, long, curling, purple moose antlers began to sprout from the top of his head.

  The sales staff stood frozen in silent horror. Barry gasped; then, recovering swiftly, he reached over the president’s shoulder to hit the cancel key. The purple moose horns disappeared.

  The Old Man looked up, puzzled. “Is anything wrong?”

  “Only a glitch, sir,” Barry said smoothly. But his hand was trembling. He was afraid that there were going to be more such glitches.

  The way sales were booming—a lot more.

  Evidently, the fairyfolk had finally figured out what computers were really for. And Barry suddenly seemed to hear, far back in his head, the silvery peals of malicious elven laughter.

  It was a two-way system, afterall . . .

  The Mayan Variation

  Introduction to The Mayan Variation

  I adore baseball stories. When I edited F&SF, I published a baseball issue every summer. Science fiction, fantasy and horror all blend well with baseball. Hell, even mystery and romance do.

  SF has seen some wonderful baseball stories, from Esther Friesner’s “Jesus at the Bat” to W.P. Kinsella’s classic, Shoeless Joe, which was made into a classic film, Field of Dreams. The sf field doesn’t have classic football stories or classic basketball stories. Just classic baseball stories.

  You’re about to read one of them.

  Why is baseball the stuff literature is made of? I could wax rhapsodic about the game, but that isn’t the reason. I’m a basketball fan and I adore golf, but I really don’t want to read stories about them.

  I even believe all the sports metaphors about sport being larger than life, about sport as a training ground for life, about what happens in sport sets the stage for what happens in life.

  Yep. I buy all that. But I don’t want to read about it when it comes to football or hockey. Just baseball.

  So what is it about baseball? What makes baseball different from all of America’s other sporting pastimes?

  I think Ron Shelton explained it in the opening speech he wrote for Annie Savoy in my favorite baseball movie, Bull Durham. He compared baseball to a religion. In fact, he called baseball a religion, and for some of us, it is.

  We approach it the same way. Some of us are Christmas and Easter only. Some of us attend every day. And some of us are rabid atheists, trying to prove that the religion isn’t worthy, that the church doesn’t exist.

  Like Annie Savoy, I happen to believe in the Church of Baseball. The religious aspect of the game is why baseball stories work and why the current hot ticket, golf stories (even golf stories written by Bull Durham writer, Ron Shelton) don’t. Golf, while it has its own mystique (and it has a heck of a mystique for golfers; I know. I married one.), doesn’t allow its aficionados to sit in a sanctuary every day. Golf fans have to traipse all over the course. They even have to bring their own chairs.

  Football fans sit on benches and are forced
to wear too much clothing, because it’s usually cold. Basketball fans don’t go to the court for occasional reflection. They go for the adrenaline rush.

  But baseball fans—baseball fans get a worship service every time they walk into the park (and how many other professional games are played in a park?), complete with history (the stats are flashed throughout the game, in case you didn’t remember them yourself), ritual food (hot dogs, beer, peanuts, and Crackerjacks), and ritual music (from the national anthem at the beginning of the game to “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” sung in the seventh inning stretch). Ritual music that, by the way, requires its singers to stand—just like they do when they sing hymns in church.

  And because we have the Church of Baseball, baseball fans react with religious fervor whenever their sport is violated. Whether the violations happen because of a rules change or because a silly owner believes a new chrome and steel stadium is better than the old ivy covered ballpark, or whether the violations happen because players get greedy and strike or because the Commissioner of Baseball shows herself to be a bigot doesn’t matter. What matters is that a violation occurred, and violations in a holy place aren’t just annoying. They’re wrong.

  A violation doesn’t stop the fans from attending church, but it does change the way they feel about the game. And, someday, it will change the way the game is played.

  Gardner knows this. He and his wife Susan Casper are baseball fans (although she’s a bigger fan than he is. When we started making the annual Worldcon pilgrimage to ballparks, Gardner sent me a grumpy e-mail. She’s watching games on TV again, he wrote. I put the blame solely on you. Probably because, if Susan was watching, Gardner was watching and he was getting pulled back into the church, one worship service at a time.).