“The Stone City” was first published in New Voices in Science Fiction, a hardcover anthology I edited for Macmillan in 1977, but its roots went all the way to the 1973 worldcon in Toronto. John W. Campbell, Jr., the longtime editor of Analog and Astounding, had died in 1971, and Analog’s publisher, Conde Nast, had established a new award in his honor, for the best new writer to enter the field during the previous two years. The first time the award was given, I was one of the finalists, along with Lisa Tuttle, George Alec Effinger, Ruth Berman, and Jerry Pournelle. The Campbell was voted by the fans and would be given out at the Toronto worldcon, with the Hugos. If not quite a Hugo itself, it was the next best thing.
My nomination took me utterly by surprise, but it thrilled and delighted me, even though I knew I had no hope of winning. Nor did I. Pournelle took home that first Campbell Award, although Effinger finished so close in the balloting that Torcon awarded him a plaque for second place, the only time I’ve seen that done. I have no idea where I finished, but for me, at that time, the old cliche was true: it really was an honor just to be nominated.
Afterward, at some of the parties, I told a couple of editors named Dave that there needed to be an anthology devoted to the new award, as there were for the Hugo and the Nebula. I was angling for a sale, of course; in 1973, I was still at the point where every one was precious. I got more than I bargained for; both editors named Dave agreed that a Campbell Awards anthology was a fine idea, but they said I had to put it together. “I’ve never edited an anthology,” I argued. “So this will be your first,” they replied.
It was. It took me a year to sell New Voices (to an editor named Ellen), and a couple more before all my authors delivered their promised stories, which is why the anthology showcasing the 1973 John W. Campbell Award nominees was published in 1977.
One of my writers gave me no trouble whatsoever, though. Since I was one of the finalists, I got to sell a story to myself.
There is a certain freedom that comes from knowing that the editor is not likely to reject your submission, no matter what you do. On the other hand, there is a certain amount of pressure as well. You don’t want the readers thinking you just pulled some sorry old turkey out of the trunk, after all.
“The Stone City” was the story that grew from that freedom and that pressure. Though one of the core stories of my future history, this one is also a bit subversive. I wanted to season it with a little Lovecraft and a pinch of Kafka, and plant the suggestion that, when we go far enough from home, rationality, causality, and the physical laws of the universe itself begin to break down. And yet, of all the stories that I’ve ever written, “The Stone City” is the one that comes closest to capturing the yearnings of that boy stretched out in the summer grass beside the Kill van Kull, staring up at Orion. I don’t know that I ever evoked the vastness of space or that elusive “sense of wonder” any better than I did here.
In 1977 a new science fiction magazine named Cosmos was launched, edited by David G. Hartwell. David asked me for a story, and I was pleased to oblige. If “Bitterblooms” has a certain chill to it, that may be because it was one of the first things I wrote after moving to Dubuque, Iowa, where the winters were even more brutal than those I’d weathered in Chicago. Over the years I have done a number of stories inspired by songs. “Bitterblooms” is one of those as well. (Anyone who can tell me the name of the song that inspired it will win … absolutely nothing.) Hartwell liked the story well enough to feature it on the cover of the fourth issue of Cosmos. Unfortunately the fourth issue of Cosmos also proved to be the last issue of Cosmos. (It wasn’t my fault.) I had headed for Dubuque in the spring of 1976, to take a job teaching journalism at a small Catholic woman’s college. Though my writing was going well, I was still wasn’t earning enough from my fiction to support myself as a full-time writer, and the chess tournaments had all dried up. Also, I had married in 1975, and had a wife to put through college. The position at Clarke College seemed the perfect answer. I would only be teaching two or three hours a day, after all. Four at the most. That would leave me half of every day to write my stories. Wouldn’t it?
Anyone who has ever taught is laughing very loudly right now. The truth is, the demands on a teacher’s time are much greater than they appear. You are only in the classroom a few hours a day, true … but there are always lessons to be prepared, lectures to be written, papers to read, tests to grade, committees to attend, textbooks to review, students to counsel. As the journalism teacher, I was also expected to serve as faculty advisor to the school newspaper, the Courier, which was great fun but got me in no end of trouble with the nuns, since I refused to be a censor.
I soon found that I had neither the time nor the energy to devote to my fiction while Clarke was in session. If I wanted to get any writing done, I had to take advantage of the long summer vacation, and the shorter breaks at Christmas and Easter.
The Christmas break in the winter of 1978-79 was the most productive period I ever had during my years at Clarke. In a few short weeks, I completed three very different stories. “The Way of Cross and Dragon” was science fiction, “The Ice Dragon” was a fairy tale fantasy, and “Sandkings” married an SF background to a horror plot. All three stories are included in this retrospective. I will discuss “Sandkings” and “The Ice Dragon” when we reach them.
As for “The Way of Cross and Dragon,” it is certainly my most Catholic story. Though I’d been raised Roman Catholic and had attended a Catholic prep school, I’d stopped practicing during my sophomore year at Northwestern. At Clarke, however, surrounded by nuns and Catholic girls, I found myself wondering what the Church might become, out among the stars.
Ben Bova had recently left Analog to become fiction editor for a slick new magazine called Omni, that published science fact as well as science fiction. “The Way of Cross and Dragon” became my first sale to this new market. The story was nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula, lost the latter to Edward Bryant’s “giAnts,” but won the former as the Best Short Story of 1979 … on the same night that “Sandkings” won for Best Novelette, at Noreascon 2 in Boston.
They were my second and third Hugos … and since Boston was a good deal closer than Australia, I was actually present for these two. That night, I walked into the Hugo Losers Party with a rocket in each hand, grinning ear to ear, and Gardner Dozois sprayed whipped cream in my hair. I partied with my friends for half the night, and afterward went upstairs with a beautiful woman. (I was happily divorced by that time.) We made love as stars shone through the window, and bathed us in their light.
Nights don’t come much better than that.
A SONG FOR LYA
The cities of the Shkeen are old, older far than man’s, and the great rust-red metropolis that rose from their sacred hill country had proved to be the oldest of them all. The Shkeen city had no name. It needed none. Though they built cities and towns by the hundreds and the thousands, the hill city had no rivals. It was the largest in size and population, and it was alone in the sacred hills. It was their Rome, Mecca, Jerusalem; all in one. It was the city, and all Shkeen came to it at last, in the final days before Union.
That city had been ancient in the days before Rome fell, had been huge and sprawling when Babylon was still a dream. But there was no feel of age to it. The human eye saw only miles and miles of low, red-brick domes; small hummocks of dried mud that covered the rolling hills like a rash. Inside they were dim and nearly airless. The rooms were small and the furniture crude.
Yet it was not a grim city. Day after day it squatted in those scrubby hills, broiling under a hot sun that sat in the sky like a weary orange melon; but the city teemed with life: smells of cooking, the sounds of laughter and talk and children running, the bustle and sweat of brickmen repairing the domes, the bells of the Joined ringing in the streets. The Shkeen were a lusty and exuberant people, almost childlike. Certainly there was nothing about them that told of great age or ancient wisdom. This is a young race, said the signs, this is
a culture in its infancy.
But that infancy had lasted more than fourteen thousand years.
The human city was the real infant, less than ten Earth years old. It was built on the edge of the hills, between the Shkeen metropolis and the dusty brown plains where the spaceport had gone up. In human terms, it was a beautiful city; open and airy, full of graceful archways and glistening fountains and wide boulevards lined by trees. The buildings were wrought of metal and colored plastic and native woods, and most of them were low in deference to Shkeen architecture. Most of them … the Administration Tower was the exception, a polished blue steel needle that split a crystal sky.
You could see it for miles in all directions. Lyanna spied it even before we landed, and we admired it from the air. The gaunt skyscrapers of Old Earth and Baldur were taller, and the fantastic webbed cities of Arachne were far more beautiful—but that slim blue Tower was still imposing enough as it rose unrivaled to its lonely dominance above the sacred hills.
The spaceport was in the shadow of the tower, easy walking distance. But they met us anyway. A low-slung scarlet aircar sat purring at the base of the ramp as we disembarked, with a driver lounging against the stick. Dino Valcarenghi stood next to it, leaning on the door and talking to an aide.
Valcarenghi was the planetary administrator, the boy wonder of the sector. Young, of course, but I’d known that. Short, and good-looking, in a dark, intense way, with black hair that curled thickly against his head and an easy, genial smile.
He flashed us that smile then, when we stepped off the ramp, and reached to shake hands. “Hi,” he began, “I’m glad to see you.” There was no nonsense with formal introductions. He knew who we were, and we knew who he was, and Valcarenghi wasn’t the kind of man who put much stock in ritual.
Lyanna took his hand lightly in hers, and gave him her vampire look: big, dark eyes opened wide and staring, thin mouth lifted in a tiny faint smile. She’s a small girl, almost waiflike, with short brown hair and a child’s figure. She can look very fragile, very helpless. When she wants to. But she rattles people with that look. If they know Lya’s a telepath they figure she’s poking around amid their innermost secrets. Actually she’s playing with them. When Lyanna is really reading, her whole body goes stiff and you can almost see her tremble. And those big, soul-sucking eyes get narrow and hard and opaque.
But not many people know that, so they squirm under her vampire eyes and look the other way and hurry to release her hand. Not Valcarenghi, though. He just smiled and stared back, then moved on to me.
I was reading when I took his hand—my standard operating procedure. Also a bad habit, I guess, since it’s put some promising friendships into an early grave. My talent isn’t equal to Lya’s. But it’s not as demanding either. I reach emotions. Valcarenghi’s geniality came through strong and genuine. With nothing behind it, or at least nothing that was close enough to the surface for me to catch.
We also shook hands with the aide, a middle-aged blond stork named Nelson Gourlay. Then Valcarenghi ushered everybody into the aircar and we took off. “I imagine you’re tired,” he said after we were airborne, “so we’ll save the tour of the city and head straight for the Tower. Nelse will show you your quarters, then you can join us for a drink, and we’ll talk over the problem. You’ve read the materials we sent?”
“Yes,” I said. Lya nodded. “Interesting background, but I’m not sure why we’re here.”
“We’ll get to that soon enough,” Valcarenghi replied. “I ought to be letting you enjoy the scenery.” He gestured toward the window, smiled, and fell silent.
So Lya and I enjoyed the scenery, or as much as we could enjoy during the five-minute flight from spaceport to Tower. The aircar was whisking down the main street at treetop level, stirring up a breeze that whipped the thin branches as we went by. It was cool and dark in the interior of the car, but outside the Shkeen sun was riding toward noon, and you could see the heat waves shimmering from the pavement. The population must have been inside huddled around their air conditioners, because we saw very little traffic.
We got out near the main entrance to the Tower and walked through a huge, sparkling-clean lobby. Valcarenghi left us then to talk to some underlings. Gourlay led us into one of the tubes and we shot up fifty floors. Then we waltzed past a secretary into another, private tube, and climbed some more.
Our rooms were lovely, carpeted in cool green and paneled with wood. There was a complete library there, mostly Earth classics bound in synthaleather, with a few novels from Baldur, our home world. Somebody had been researching our tastes. One of the walls of the bedroom was tinted glass, giving a panoramic view of the city far below us, with a control that could darken it for sleeping.
Gourlay showed it to us dutifully, like a dour bellhop. I read him briefly though, and found no resentment. He was nervous, but only slightly. There was honest affection there for someone. Us? Valcarenghi?
Lya sat down on one of the twin beds. “Is someone bringing our luggage?” she asked.
Gourlay nodded. “You’ll be well taken care of,” he said. “Anything you want, ask.”
“Don’t worry, we will,” I said. I dropped to the second bed, and gestured Gourlay to a chair. “How long have you been here?”
“Six years,” he said, taking the chair gratefully and sprawling out all over it. “I’m one of the veterans. I’ve worked under four administrators now. Dino, and Stuart before him, and Gustaffson before him. I was even under Rockwood a few months.”
Lya perked up, crossing her legs under her and leaning forward. “That was all Rockwood lasted, wasn’t it?”
“Right,” Gourlay said. “He didn’t like the planet, took a quick demotion to assistant administrator someplace else. I didn’t care much, to tell the truth. He was the nervous type, always giving orders to prove who was boss.”
“And Valcarenghi?” I asked.
Gourlay made a smile look like a yawn. “Dino? Dino’s OK, the best of the lot. He’s good, knows he’s good. He’s only been here two months, but he’s gotten a lot done, and he’s made a lot of friends. He treats the staff like people, calls everybody by his first name, all that stuff. People like that.”
I was reading, and I read sincerity. It was Valcarenghi that Gourlay was affectionate toward, then. He believed what he was saying.
I had more questions, but I didn’t get to ask them. Gourlay got up suddenly. “I really shouldn’t stay,” he said. “You want to rest, right? Come up to the top in about two hours and we’ll go over things with you. You know where the tube is?”
We nodded, and Gourlay left. I turned to Lyanna. “What do you think?”
She lay back on the bed and considered the ceiling. “I don’t know,” she said. “I wasn’t reading. I wonder why they’ve had so many administrators. And why they wanted us.”
“We’re Talented,” I said, smiling. With the capital, yes. Lyanna and I have been tested and registered as psi Talents, and we have the licenses to prove it.
“Uh-huh,” she said, turning on her side and smiling back at me. Not her vampire half-smile this time. Her sexy little girl smile.
“Valcarenghi wants us to get some rest,” I said. “It’s probably not a bad idea.”
Lya bounced out of bed. “OK,” she said, “but these twins have got to go.”
“We could push them together.”
She smiled again. We pushed them together.
And we did get some sleep. Eventually.
Our luggage was outside the door when we woke. We changed into fresh clothes, old casual stuff, counting on Valcarenghi’s notorious lack of pomp. The tube took us to the top of the Tower.
The office of the planetary administrator was hardly an office. There was no desk, none of the usual trappings. Just a bar and lush blue carpets that swallowed us ankle-high, and six or seven scattered chairs. Plus lots of space and sunlight, with Shkea laid out at our feet beyond the tinted glass. All four walls this time.
Valcarenghi an
d Gourlay were waiting for us, and Valcarenghi did the bartending chores personally. I didn’t recognize the beverage, but it was cool and spicy and aromatic, with a real sting to it. I sipped it gratefully. For some reason I felt I needed a lift.
“Shkeen wine,” Valcarenghi said, smiling, in answer to an unasked question. “They’ve got a name for it, but I can’t pronounce it yet. But give me time. I’ve only been here two months, and the language is rough.”
“You’re learning Shkeen?” Lya asked, surprised. I knew why. Shkeen is rough on human tongues, but the natives learned Terran with stunning ease. Most people accept that happily, and just forgot about the difficulties of cracking the alien language.
“It gives me an insight into the way they think,” Valcarenghi said. “At least that’s the theory.” He smiled.
I read him again, although it was more difficult. Physical contact makes things sharper. Again, I got a simple emotion, close to the surface—pride this time. With pleasure mixed in. I chalked that up to the wine. Nothing beneath.
“However you pronounce the drink, I like it,” I said.
“The Shkeen produce a wide variety of liquors and foodstuffs,” Gourlay put in. “We’ve cleared many for export already, and we’re checking others. Market should be good.”
“You’ll have a chance to sample more of the local produce this evening.” Valcarenghi said. “I’ve set up a tour of the city, with a stop or two in Shkeentown. For a settlement of our size, our nightlife is fairly interesting. I’ll be your guide.”
Dreamsongs 2-Book Bundle Page 17
