Modern Classics of Science Fiction

by Gardner Dozois

  Before I could recover, they were all over me, raining kicks and blows. One wrenched the gun from my hand. I must have lost consciousness, for the next thing I remember is lying in the dirt while the soldiers tore off my tunic. Attalos stood over me with a bloody bandage around his leg, leaning on a soldier. He looked pale and frightened but resolute. The second man I had shot lay still.

  “So that is where he keeps his infernal devices!” said Attalos, indicating my belt. “Take it off, men.”

  The soldiers struggled with the clasp of the belt until one impatiently sawed through the straps with his dagger. The gold in my money pouch brought cries of delight.

  I struggled to get up, but a pair of soldiers knelt on my arms to keep me down. There was a continuous mumble of talk. Attalos, looking over the belt, said:

  “He is too dangerous to live. Even stripped as he is, who knows but what he will soar into the air and escape by magic?”

  “Do not kill him!” said Aristotle. “He has much valuable knowledge to impart.”

  “No knowledge is worth the safety of the kingdom.”

  “But the kingdom can benefit from his knowledge. Do you not agree?” Aristotle asked the Persian.

  “Drag me not into this, pray,” said Artavazda. “It is no concern of mine.”

  “If he is a danger to Makedonia, he should be destroyed at once,” said Attalos.

  “There is but little chance of his doing harm now,” said Aristotle, “and an excellent chance of his doing us good.”

  “Any chance of his doing harm is too much,” said Attalos. “You philosophers can afford to be tolerant of interesting strangers. But, if they carry disaster in their baggage, it is on us poor soldiers that the brunt will fall. Is it not so, Artabazos?”

  “I have done what you asked and will say no more,” said Artavazda. “I am but a simple-minded Persian nobleman who does not undertand your Greek subtleties.”

  “I can increase the might of your armies, General!” I cried to Attalos.

  “No doubt, and no doubt you can also turn men to stone with an incantation, as the Gorgons did with their glance.” He drew his sword and felt the edge with his thumb.

  “You will slay him for mere thuperstition!” wailed Aristotle, wringing his hands. “At least, let the king judge the matter.”

  “Not superstition,” said Attalos, “murder.” He pointed to the dead soldier.

  “I come from another world! Another age!” I yelled, but Attalos was not to be diverted.

  “Let us get this over with,” he said. “Set him on his knees, men. Take my sword, Glaukos; I am too unsteady to wield it. Now bow your head, my dear barbarian, and –”

  In the middle of Attalos’ sentence, he and the others and all my surroundings vanished. Again there came that sharp pain and sense of being jerked by a monstrous catapult …

  * * *

  I found myself lying in leaf mold with the pearl-gray trunks of poplars all around me. A brisk breeze was making the poplar leaves flutter and show their silvery bottoms. It was too cool for a man who was naked save for sandals and socks.

  I had snapped back to the year 1981 of the calendar of my world, which I had set out from. But where was I? I should be near the site of the Brookhaven National Laboratories in a vastly improved super-scientific world. There was, however, no sign of super-science here; nothing but poplar trees.

  I got up, groaning, and looked around. I was covered with bruises and bleeding from nose and mouth.

  The only way I had of orienting myself was the boom of a distant surf. Shivering, I hobbled towards the sound. After a few hundred paces, I came out of the forest on a beach. This beach could be the shore of Sewanhaki, or Long Island as we called it, but there was no good way of telling. There was no sign of human life; just the beach curving into the distance and disappearing around headlands, with the poplar forest on one side and the ocean on the other.

  What, I wondered, had happened? Had science advanced so fast as a result of my intervention that man had already exterminated himself by scientific warfare? Thinkers of my world had concerned themselves with this possibility, but I had never taken it seriously.

  It began to rain. In despair I cast myself down on the sand and beat it with my fists. I may have lost consciousness again.

  At any rate, the next thing I knew was the now-familiar sound of hooves. When I looked up, the horseman was almost upon me, for the sand had muffled the animal’s footsteps until it was quite close.

  I blinked with incredulity. For an instant I thought I must be back in the classical era still. The man was a warrior armed and armored in a style much like that of ancient times. At first he seemed to be wearing a helmet of classical Hellenic type. When he came closer I saw that this was not quite true, for the crest was made of feathers instead of horsehair. The nasal and cheek plates hid most of his face, but he seemed dark and beardless. He wore a shirt of scale mail, long leather trousers, and low shoes. He had a bow and a small shield hung from his saddle and a slender lance slung across his back by a strap. I saw that this could not be ancient times because the horse was fitted with a large, well-molded saddle and stirrups.

  As I watched the man stupidly, he whisked the lance out of its boot and couched it. He spoke in an unknown language.

  I got up, holding my hands over my head in surrender. The man kept repeating his question, louder and louder, and making jabbing motions. All I could say was “I don’t understand” in the languages I knew, none of which seemed familiar to him.

  Finally he maneuvered his horse around to the other side of me, barked a command, pointed along the beach the way he had come, and prodded me with the butt of the lance. Off I limped, with rain, blood, and tears running down my hide.

  You know the rest, more or less. Since I could not give an intelligible account of myself, the Sachim of Lenape, Wayotan the Fat, claimed me as a slave. For fourteen years I labored on his estate at such occupations as feeding hogs and chopping kindling. When Wayotan died and the present Sachim was elected, he decided I was too old for that kind of work, especially as I was half crippled from the beatings of Wayotan and his overseers. Learning that I had some knowledge of letters (for I had picked up spoken and written Algonkian in spite of my wretched lot) he freed me and made me official librarian.

  In theory I can travel about as I like, but I have done little of it. I am too old and weak for the rigors of travel in this world, and most other places are, as nearly as I can determine, about as barbarous as this one. Besides, a few Lenapes come to hear me lecture on the nature of man and the universe and the virtues of the scientific method. Perhaps I can light a small spark here after I failed in the year 340 B.C.

  When I went to work in the library, my first thought was to find out what had happened to bring the world to its present pass.

  Wayotan’s predecessor had collected a considerable library which Wayotan had neglected, so that some of the books had been chewed by rats and others ruined by dampness. Still, there was enough to give me a good sampling of the literature of this world, from ancient to modern times. There were even Herodotos’ history and Plato’s dialogues, identical with the versions that existed in my own world.

  I had to struggle against more language barriers, as the European languages of this world are different from, though related to, those of my own world. The English of today, for instance, is more like the Dutch of my own world, as a result of England’s never having been conquered by the Normans.

  I also had the difficulty of reading without eyeglasses. Luckily, most of these manuscript books are written in a large, clear hand. A couple of years ago I did get a pair of glasses, imported from China, where the invention of the printing press has stimulated their manufacture. But, as they are a recent invention in this world, they are not so effective as those of mine.

  I rushed through all the history books to find out when and how your history diverged from mine. I found that differences appeared quite early. Alexander still marched to t
he Indus but failed to die at thirty-two on his return. In fact he lived fifteen years longer and fell at last in battle with the Sarmatians in the Caucasus Mountains.

  I do not know why that brief contact with me enabled him to avoid the malaria mosquito that slew him in my world. Maybe I aroused in him a keener interest in India than he would otherwise have had, leading him to stay there longer so that all his subsequent schedules were changed. His empire held together for most of a century instead of breaking up right after his death as it did in my world.

  The Romans still conquered the whole Mediterranean, but the course of their conquests and the names of the prominent Romans were all different. Two of the chief religions of my world, Christianity and Islam, never appeared at all. Instead we have Mithraism, Odinism, and Soterism, the last an Egypto-Hellenic synthesis founded by that fiery Egyptian prophet whose followers call him by the Greek word for “savior.”

  Still, classical history followed the same general course that it had in my world, even though the actors bore other names. The Roman Empire broke up, as it did in my world, though the details are all different, with a Hunnish emperor ruling in Rome and a Gothic one in Antioch.

  It is after the fall of the Roman Empire that profound differences appear. In my world there was a revival of learning that began about nine hundred years ago, followed by a scientific revolution beginning four centuries later. In your history the revival of learning was centuries later, and the scientific revolution has hardly begun. Failure to develop the compass and the full-rigged ship resulted in North America’s (I mean Hesperia’s) being discovered and settled via the northern route, by way of Iceland, and more slowly than in my world. Failure to invent the gun meant that the natives of Hesperia were not swept aside by the invading Europeans, but held their own against them and gradually learned their arts of iron-working, weaving, cereal-growing, and the like. Now most of the European settlements have been assimilated, though the ruling families of the Abnakis and Mohegans frequently have blue eyes and still call themselves by names like “Sven” and “Eric.”

  I was eager to get hold of a work by Aristotle, to see what effect I had had on him and to try to relate this effect to the subsequent course of history. From allusions in some of the works in this library I gathered that many of his writings had come down to modern times, though the titles all seemed different from those of his surviving works in my world. The only actual samples of his writings in the library were three essays, Of Justice, On Education, and Of Passions and Anger. None of these showed my influence.

  I had struggled through most of the Sachim’s collection when I found the key I was looking for. This was an Iberic translation of Lives of the Great Philosophers, by one Diomedes of Mazaka. I never heard of Diomedes in the literary history of my own world, and perhaps he never existed. Anyway, he had a long chapter on Aristotle, in which appears the following section:

  Now Aristotle, during his sojourn at Mytilene, had been an assiduous student of natural sciences. He had planned, according to Timotheus, a series of works which should correct the errors of Empedokles, Demokritos, and others of his predecessors. But, after he had removed to Macedonia and busied himself with the education of Alexander, there one day appeared before him a traveler, Sandos of Palibothra, a mighty philosopher of India.

  The Indian ridiculed Aristotle’s attempts at scientific research, saying that in his land these investigations had gone far beyond anything the Hellenes had attempted, and the Indians were still a long way from arriving at satisfactory explanations of the universe. Moreover, he asserted that no real progress could be made in natural philosophy unless the Hellenes abandoned their disdain for physical labor and undertook exhaustive experiments with mechanical devices of the sort which cunning Egyptian and Asiatic craftsmen make.

  King Philip, hearing of the presence of this stranger in his land and fearing lest he be a spy sent by some foreign power to harm or corrupt the young prince, came with soldiers to arrest him. But, when he demanded that Sandos accompany him back to Pella, the latter struck dead with thunderbolts all the king’s soldiers that were with him. Then, it is said, mounting into his chariot drawn by winged gryphons, he flew off in the direction of India. But other authorities say that the man who came to arrest Sandos was Antipatros, the regent, and that Sandos cast darkness before the eyes of Antipatros and Aristotle, and when they recovered from their swoon he had vanished.

  Aristotle, reproached by the king for harboring so dangerous a visitor and shocked by the sanguinary ending of the Indian’s visit, resolved to have no more to do with the sciences. For, as he explains in his celebrated treatise On the Folly of Natural Science, there are three reasons why no good Hellene should trouble his mind with such matters.

  One is that the number of facts which must be mastered before sound theories become possible is so vast that if all the Hellenes did nothing else for centuries, they would still not gather the amount of data required. The task is therefore futile.

  Secondly, experiments and mechanical inventions are necessary to progress in science, and such work, though all very well for slavish Asiatics, who have a natural bent for it, is beneath the dignity of a Hellenic gentleman.

  And, lastly, some of the barbarians have already surpassed the Hellenes in this activity, wherefore it ill becomes the Hellenes to compete with their inferiors in skills at which the latter have an inborn advantage. They should rather cultivate personal rectitude, patriotic valor, political rationality and aesthetic sensitivity, leaving to the barbarians such artificial aids to the good and virtuous life as are provided by scientific discoveries.

  This was it, all right. The author had gotten some of his facts wrong, but that was to be expected from an ancient historian.

  So! My teachings had been too successful. I had so well shattered the naïve self-confidence of the Hellenic philsophers as to discourage them from going on with science at all.

  I should have remembered that glittering theories and sweeping generalizations, even when wrong, are the frosting on the cake; they are the carrot that makes the donkey go. The possibility of pronouncing such universals is the stimulus that keeps many scientists grinding away, year after year, at the accumulation of facts, even seemingly dull and trivial facts. If ancient scientists had realized how much laborious fact-finding lay ahead of them before sound theories would become possible, they would have been so appalled as to drop science altogether. And that is just what happened.

  The sharpest irony of all was that I had placed myself where I could not undo my handiwork. If I had ended up in a scientically advanced world, and did not like what I found, I might have built another time machine, gone back, and somehow warned myself of the mistake lying in wait for me. But such a project is out of the question in a backward world like this one, where seamless columbium tubing, for instance, is not even thought of. All I proved by my disastrous adventure is that space-time has a negative curvature, and who in this world cares about that?

  You recall, when you were last here, asking me the meaning of a motto in my native language on the wall of my cell. I said I would tell you in connection with my whole fantastic story. The motto says: “Leave Well Enough Alone,” and I wish I had.

  Cordially yours,

  Sherman Weaver.

  THEODORE STURGEON

  The Other Celia

  The late Theodore Sturgeon was one of the true giants of the field, a man who produced stylish, innovative, and poetically intense fiction for more than forty years, a writer who was as important to H. L. Gold’s Galaxy-era revolution in the ’50s as he’d been to John W. Campbell’s Golden Age revolution at Astounding in the ’40s. Sturgeon’s stories such as “It,” “Microcosmic God,” “Killdozer,” “Bianca’s Hands,” “Maturity,” “The Other Man,” and the brilliant “Baby is Three” – which was eventually expanded into Sturgeon’s most famous novel, More Than Human – helped to expand the boundaries of the SF story, and push it in the direction of artistic maturity. In Sturgeo
n’s hands, the SF story would be made to do things that no one had ever believed it capable of doing before, and several generations of SF writers to come would cite him as a major – in some cases, the major – influence on their work.

  Most people would probably have chosen “Baby Is Three” for this book, and it is indeed a seminal work … but somehow it was the sly little story that follows, a vivid glimpse of the strangeness that underlies the everyday world, that was the Sturgeon story I’ve never been able to get out of my mind, and which was the one that insisted that I pick it for this anthology. And, indeed, I think that it is Sturgeon at the very top of his form … which places it among the best work ever done in the genre.

  Theodore Sturgeon’s other books include the novels Some of Your Blood (in some ways his best, although it is neither SF or fantasy), Venus Plus X, and The Dreaming Jewels, and the collections A Touch of Strange, Caviar, The Worlds of Theodore Sturgeon, Not Without Sorcery, and The Stars Are the Styx. His most recent book is the posthumously published Godbody.

  If you live in a cheap enough rooming house and the doors are made of cheap enough pine, and the locks are old-fashioned single-action jobs and the hinges are loose, and if you have a hundred and ninety lean pounds to operate with, you can grasp the knob, press the door sidewise against its hinges, and slip the latch. Further, you can lock the door the same way when you come out.

  Slim Walsh lived in, and was, and had, and did these things partly because he was bored. The company doctors had laid him up – not off, up – for three weeks (after his helper had hit him just over the temple with a fourteen-inch crescent wrench) pending some more X-rays. If he was going to get just sick-leave pay, he wanted to make it stretch. If he was going to get a big fat settlement – all to the good; what he saved by living in this firetrap would make the money look even better. Meanwhile, he felt fine and had nothing to do all day.