Modern Classics of Science Fiction

by Gardner Dozois

  “The best maker of hand-blown glass in the world,” said Chi, “has killed in a duel the second-best maker of hand-blown glass in the world.”

  “For joining the movement to ceramics,” said Ilse, awed. Jannina felt a thrill: this was the bitter stuff under the surface of life, the fury that boiled up. A bitter struggle is foreseen in the global economy. Good old tax-issue stuff goes toddling along, year after year. She was, thought Jannina, extraordinarily grateful to be living now, to be in such an extraordinary world, to have so long to go before her death. So much to do!

  Old Al came back into the living room. “She’s in bed.”

  “Well, which of us…?” said the triplet-who-had-choked, looking mischievously round from one to the other. Chi was about to volunteer, out of his usual conscientiousness, thought Jannina, but then she found herself suddenly standing up, and then just as suddenly sitting down again. “I just don’t have the nerve,” she said. Velet Komarov walked on his hands toward the stairs, then somersaulted, and vanished, climbing. Ol Al got off the hand-carved chest he had been sitting on and fetched a can of ale from it. He levered off the top and drank. Then he said, “She really is stupid, you know.” Jannina’s skin crawled.

  “Oooh,” said Pao-yu. Chi betook himself to the kitchen and returned with a paper folder. It was coated with frost. He shook it, then impatiently dropped it in the pool. The redheaded triplet swam over and took it. “Smith, Leslie,” he said. “Adam Two, Leslie. Yee, Leslie. Schwarzen, Leslie.”

  “What on earth does the woman do with herself besides get married?” exclaimed Pao-yu.

  “She drove a hovercraft,” said Chi, “in some out-of-the-way places around the Pacific until the last underground stations were completed. Says when she was a child she wanted to drive a truck.”

  “Well, you can,” said the redheaded triplet, “can’t you? Go to Arizona or the Rockies and drive on the roads. The sixty-mile-an-hour road. The thirty-mile-an-hour road. Great artistic recreation.”

  “That’s not work,” said Old Al.

  “Couldn’t she take care of children?” said the redheaded triplet. Ilse sniffed.

  “Stupidity’s not much of a recommendation for that,” Chi said. “Let’s see – no children. No, of course not. Overfulfilled her tax work on quite a few routine matters here. Kim, Leslie. Went to Moscow and contracted a double with some fellow, didn’t last. Registered as a singleton, but that didn’t last, either. She said she was lonely and they were exploiting her.”

  Old Al nodded.

  “Came back and lived informally with a theater group. Left them. Went into psychotherapy. Volunteered for several experimental, intelligence-enhancing programs, was turned down – hm! – sixty-five come the winter solstice, muscular coordination average, muscular development above average, no overt mental pathology, empathy, average, prognosis: poor. No, wait a minute, it says, ‘More of the same.’ Well, that’s the same thing.”

  “What I want to know,” added Chi, raising his head, “is who met Miss Smith and decided we needed the lady in this Ice Palace of ours?”

  Nobody answered. Jannina was about to say, “Ann, perhaps?” but as she felt the urge to do so – surely it wasn’t right to turn somebody off like that, just for that! – Chi (who had been flipping through the dossier) came to the last page, with the tax-issue stamp absolutely unmistakable, woven right into the paper.

  “The computer did,” said Pao-yu and she giggled idiotically.

  “Well,” said Jannina, jumping to her feet, “tear it up, my dear, or give it to me and I’ll tear it up for you. I think Miss Leslie Smith deserves from us the same as we’d give to anybody else, and I – for one – intend to go right up there –”

  “After Velet,” said Old Al dryly.

  “With Velet, if I must,” said Jannina, raising her eyebrows, “and if you don’t know what’s due a guest, Old Daddy, I do, and I intend to provide it. Lucky I’m keeping house this month, or you’d probably feed the poor woman nothing but seaweed.”

  “You won’t like her, Jannina,” said Old Al.

  “I’ll find that out for myself,” said Jannina with some asperity, “and I’d advise you to do the same. Let her garden with you, Daddy. Let her squirt the foam for the new rooms. And now” – she glared round at them – “I’m going to clean this room, so you’d better hop it, the lot of you,” and dashing into the kitchen, she had the computer helmet on her head and the hoses going before they had even quite cleared the area of the pool. Then she took the helmet off and hung it on the wall. She flipped the cover off her wrist chronometer and satisfied herself as to the date. By the time she got back to the living room there was nobody there, only Leslie Smith’s dossier lying on the carved chest. There was Leslie Smith; there was all of Leslie Smith. Jannina knocked on the wall cupboard and it revolved, presenting its openable side; she took out chewing gum. She started chewing and read about Leslie Smith.

  Q: What have you seen in the last twenty years that you particularly liked?

  A: I don’t … the museum, I guess. At Oslo. I mean the … the mermaid and the children’s museum, I don’t care if it’s a children’s museum.

  Q: Do you like children?

  A: Oh no.

  (No disgrace in that, certainly, thought Jannina.)

  Q: But you liked the children’s museum.

  A: Yes, sir.… Yes.… I liked those little animals, the fake ones, in the – the –

  Q: The crèche?

  A: Yes. And I liked the old things from the past, the murals with the flowers on them, they looked so real.

  (Dear God!)

  Q: You said you were associated with a theater group in Tokyo. Did you like it?

  A: No … yes. I don’t know.

  Q: Were they nice people?

  A: Oh yes. They were awfully nice. But they got mad at me, I suppose.… You see … well, I don’t seem to get things quite right, I suppose. It’s not so much the work, because I do that all right, but the other … the little things. It’s always like that.

  Q: What do you think is the matter?

  A: You … I think you know.

  Jannina flipped through the rest of it: normal, normal, normal. Miss Smith was as normal as could be. Miss Smith was stupid. Not even very stupid. It was too damned bad. They’d probably have enough of Leslie Smith in a week, the Komarovs; yes, we’ll have enough of her, Jannina thought, never able to catch a joke or a tone of voice, always clumsy, however willing, but never happy, never at ease. You can get a job for her, but what else can you get for her? Jannina glanced down at the dossier, already bored.

  Q: You say you would have liked to live in the old days. Why is that? Do you think it would have been more adventurous or would you like to have had lots of children?

  A: I … you have no right.… You’re condescending.

  Q: I’m sorry. I suppose you mean to say that then you would have been of above-average intelligence. You would, you know.

  A: I know. I looked it up. Don’t condescend to me.

  Well, it was too damned bad! Jannina felt tears rise in her eyes. What had the poor woman done? It was just an accident, that was the horror of it, not even a tragedy, as if everyone’s forehead had been stamped with the word “Choose” except for Leslie Smith’s. She needs money, thought Jannina, thinking of the bad old days when people did things for money. Nobody could take to Leslie Smith. She wasn’t insane enough to stand for being hurt or exploited. She certainly wasn’t feeble-minded; they couldn’t very well put her into a hospital for the feeble-minded or the brain-injured; in fact (Jannina was looking at the dossier again) they had tried to get her to work there and she had taken a good, fast swing at the supervisor. She had said the people there were “hideous” and “revolting.” She had no particular mechanical aptitudes. She had no particular interests. There was not even anything for her to read or watch; how could there be? She seemed (back at the dossier) to spend most of her time either working or going on public tours of exotic places, cora
l reefs and places like that. She enjoyed aqualung diving, but didn’t do it often because that got boring. And that was that. There was, all in all, very little one could do for Leslie Smith. You might even say that in her own person she represented all the defects of the bad old days. Just imagine a world made up of such creatures! Jannina yawned. She slung the folder away and padded into the kitchen. Pity Miss Smith wasn’t good-looking, also a pity that she was too well balanced (the folder said) to think that cosmetic surgery would make that much difference. Good for you, Leslie, you’ve got some sense, anyhow. Jannina, half asleep, met Ann in the kitchen, beautiful, slender Ann reclining on a cushion with her so-chi and melon. Dear old Ann. Jannina nuzzled her brown shoulder. Ann poked her.

  “Look,” said Ann, and she pulled from the purse she wore at her waist a tiny fragment of cloth, stained rusty brown.

  “What’s that?”

  “The second-best maker of hand-blown glass – oh, you know about it – well, this is his blood. When the best maker of hand-blown glass in the world had stabbed to the heart the second-best maker of hand-blown glass in the world, and cut his throat, too, some small children steeped handkerchiefs in his blood and they’re sending pieces all over the world.”

  “Good God!” cried Jannina.

  “Don’t worry, my dear,” said lovely Ann; “it happens every decade or so. The children say they want to bring back cruelty, dirt, disease, glory, and hell. Then they forget about it. Every teacher knows that.” She sounded amused. “I’m afraid I lost my temper today, though, and walloped your godchild. It’s in the family, after all.”

  Jannina remembered when she herself had been much younger and Annie, barely a girl, had come to live with them. Ann had played at being a child and had put her head on Jannina’s shoulder, saying, “Jannie, tell me a story.” So Jannina now laid her head on Ann’s breast and said, “Annie, tell me a story.”

  Ann said: “I told my children a story today, a creation myth. Every creation myth has to explain how death and suffering came into the world, so that’s what this one is about. In the beginning, the first man and the first woman lived very contentedly on an island until one day they began to feel hungry. So they called to the turtle who holds up the world to send them something to eat. The turtle sent them a mango and they ate it and were satisfied, but the next day they were hungry again.

  “‘Turtle,’ they said, ‘send us something to eat.’ So the turtle sent them a coffee berry. They thought it was pretty small, but they ate it anyway and were satisfied. The third day they called on the turtle again and this time the turtle sent them two things: a banana and a stone. The man and woman did not know which to choose, so they asked the turtle which thing it was they should eat. ‘Choose,’ said the turtle. So they chose the banana and ate that, but they used the stone for a game of catch. Then the turtle said, ‘You should have chosen the stone. If you had chosen the stone, you would have lived forever, but now that you have chosen the banana, Death and Pain have entered the world, and it is not I who can stop them.’”

  Jannina was crying. Lying in the arms of her old friend, she wept bitterly, with a burning sensation in her chest and the taste of death and ashes in her mouth. It was awful. It was horrible. She remembered the embryo shark she had seen when she was three, in the Auckland Cetacean Research Center, and how she had cried then. She didn’t know what she was crying about. “Don’t, don’t!” she sobbed.

  “Don’t what?” said Ann affectionately. “Silly Jannina!”

  “Don’t, don’t,” cried Jannina, “don’t, it’s true, it’s true!” and she went on in this way for several more minutes. Death had entered the world. Nobody could stop it. It was ghastly. She did not mind for herself but for others, for her godchild, for instance. He was going to die. He was going to suffer. Nothing could help him. Duel, suicide or old age, it was all the same. “This life!” gasped Jannina. “This awful life!” The thought of death became entwined somehow with Leslie Smith, in bed upstairs, and Jannine began to cry afresh, but eventually the thought of Leslie Smith calmed her. It brought her back to herself. She wiped her eyes with her hand. She sat up. “Do you want a smoke?” said beautiful Ann, but Jannina shook her head. She began to laugh. Really, the whole thing was quite ridiculous.

  “There’s this Leslie Smith,” she said, dry-eyed. “We’ll have to find a tactful way to get rid of her. It’s idiotic, in this day and age.”

  And she told lovely Annie all about it.

  JAMES TIPTREE, Jr

  Her Smoke Rose Up Forever

  As most of you probably know by now, multiple Hugo- and Nebula-winning author James Tiptree, Jr – at one time a figure reclusive and mysterious enough to be regarded as the B. Traven of science fiction – was actually the pseudonym of the late Dr Alice Sheldon, a semi-retired experimental psychologist who also wrote occasionally under the name of Raccoona Sheldon. Dr Sheldon’s tragic death in 1987 put an end to “both” authors’ careers, but, before that, she had won two Nebula and two Hugo Awards as Tiptree, won another Nebula Award as Raccoona Sheldon, and established herself, under whatever name, as one of the best writers in SF.

  In fact, with her desire for a high bit-rate, her concern for societal goals, her passion for the novel and the unexpected, her taste for extrapolation, her experimenter’s interest in the reactions of people to supernormal stimuli and bizarre situations, her fondness for the apocalyptic, her love of color and sweep and dramatic action, and her preoccupation with the mutability of time and the vastness of space, Alice Sheldon was a natural SF writer. I doubt that she would have been able to realize her particular talents as fully in any other genre, and she didn’t even seem particularly interested in trying. At a time when many other SF writers would be just as happy – or happier – writing “mainstream” fiction, and chaff at the artistic and financial restrictions of the genre, what she wanted to be was a science-fiction writer; that was her dream, and her passion.

  Although “Tiptree” published two reasonably well-received novels – Up the Walls of the World and Brightness Falls From the Air – she was, like Knight and Sturgeon (two writers she aesthetically resembled), more comfortable with the short story, and more effective with it. She wrote some of the very best short stories of the ’70s: “The Screwfly Solution,” “The Girl Who Was Plugged In,” “The Women Men Don’t See,” “Beam Us Home,” “And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side,” “I’m Too Big But I Love to Play,” “The Man Who Walked Home,” “Slow Music.” Already it’s clear that these are stories that will last. They – and a dozen others almost as good – show that Alice Sheldon was simply one of the best short-story writers of our day.

  It has become accepted critical dogma recently that her later stories, written after the mystery of her identity had been penetrated, are not worth reading, but, like most things that Everyone Knows, this turns out to be not quite true. The best of the stories she wrote in the years before her death – “Yaqui Doodle,” “Beyond the Dead Reef,” “Lirios,” “The Earth Doth Like a Snake Renew” – are inferior only to Tiptree at the top of her prior form; compared to almost anybody else, they look pretty damn good. Even at her worst, she was never less than entertaining, and there was almost always something quirky and interesting to be found in even the most minor of her stories. I once said that much of the future of SF would belong to Tiptree, and indeed she has already had an enormous impact on upcoming generations of SF writers. Her footprints are all over cyberpunk, for instance, and stories like “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” and “Mother in the Sky with Diamonds” can be seen as directly ancestral to that form.

  Hope and despair battled continually in Alice Sheldon’s work, as in her life. “Her Smoke Rose Up Forever” is Alice at her blackest, and, in fact, may be one of the bleakest science-fiction stories ever written … but its power is undeniable. Once you read it, you may never be able to forget it.

  As James Tiptree, Jr, Alice Sheldon also published nine short-story collections: Ten Thousa
nd Light-Years from Home, Warm Worlds and Otherwise, Star Songs of an Old Primate, Out of the Everywhere, and Other Extraordinary Visions, Tales of the Quintana Roo, Byte Beautiful, The Starry Rift, the posthumously published Crown of Stars, and the recent retrospective collection Her Smoke Rose Up Forever.

  Deliverance quickens, catapults him into his boots on mountain gravel, his mittened hand on the rusty 1935 International truck. Cold rushes into his young lungs, his eyelashes are knots of ice as he peers down at the lake below the pass. He is in a bare bleak bowl of mountains just showing rusty in the dawn; not one scrap of cover anywhere, not a tree, not a rock.

  The lake below shines emptily, its wide rim of ice silvered by the setting moon. It looks small, everything looks small from up here. Is that scar on the edge his boat? Yes – it’s there, it’s all okay! The black path snaking out from the boat to the patch of tulegrass is the waterway he broke last night. Joy rises in him, hammers his heart. This is it. This – is – it.

  He squints his lashes, can just make out the black threads of the tules. Black knots among them – sleeping ducks. Just you wait! His grin crackles the ice in his nose. The tules will be his cover – that perfect patch out there. About eighty yards, too far to hit from shore. That’s where he’ll be when the dawn flight comes over. Old Tom said he was loco. Loco Petey. Just you wait. Loco Tom.

  The pickup’s motor clanks, cooling, in the huge silence. No echo here, too dry. No wind. Petey listens intently: a thin wailing in the peaks overhead, a tiny croak from the lake below. Waking up. He scrapes back his frozen canvas cuff over the birthday watch, is oddly, fleetingly puzzled by his own knobby fourteen-year-old wrist. Twenty-five – no, twenty-four minutes to the duck season. Opening day! Excitement ripples down his stomach, jumps his dick against his scratchy longjohns. Gentlemen don’t beat the gun. He reaches into the pickup, reverently lifts out the brand-new Fox CE double-barrel twelve-gauge.