Nebula Awards Showcase 2012

by James Patrick Kelly

  “Go home, boy. Go home to your version of Burned Barn…

  “The first Yyeir I saw, I dropped everything and started walking after it like a starving hound, just breathing. You've seen the pix of course. Like lost dreams. Man is in love and loves what vanishes.…It's the scent, you can't guess that. I followed until I ran into a slammed port. I spent half a cycles's credits sending the creature the wine they call stars’ tears.…Later I found out it was a male. That made no difference at all.

  “You can't have sex with them, y'know. No way. They breed by light or something, no one knows exactly. There's a story about a man who got hold of a Yyeir woman and tried. They had him skinned. Stories—”

  He was starting to wander.

  “What about that girl in the bar, did you see her again?”

  He came back from somewhere.

  “Oh, yes. I saw her. She'd been making it with the two Sirians, y'know. The males do it in pairs. Said to be the total sexual thing for a woman, if she can stand the damage from those beaks. I wouldn't know. She talked to me a couple of times after they finished with her. No use for men whatever. She drove off the P Street bridge.…The man, poor bastard, he was trying to keep that Sirian bitch happy single-handed. Money helps, for a while. I don't know where he ended.”

  He glanced at his wrist watch again. I saw the pale bare place where a watch had been and told him the time.

  “Is that the message you want to give Earth? Never love an alien?”

  “Never love an alien—” He shrugged. “Yeah. No. Ah, Jesus, don't you see? Everything going out, nothing coming back. Like the poor damned Polynesians. We're gutting Earth, to begin with. Swapping raw resources for junk. Alien status symbols. Tape decks, Coca-Cola, Mickey Mouse watches.”

  “Well, there is concern over the balance of trade. Is that your message?”

  “The balance of trade.” He rolled it sardonically. “Did the Polynesians have a word for it, I wonder? You don't see, do you? All right, why are you here? I mean you, personally. How many guys did you climb over—”

  He went rigid, hearing footsteps outside. The Procya's hopeful face appeared around the corner. The red-haired man snarled at him and he backed out. I started to protest.

  “Ah, the silly reamer loves it. It's the only pleasure we have left.…Can't you see, man? That's us. That's the way we look to them, to the real ones.”

  “But—”

  “And now we're getting the cheap C-drive, we'll be all over just like the Procya. For the pleasure of serving as freight monkeys and junction crews. Oh, they appreciate our ingenious little service stations, the beautiful star folk. They don't need them, y'know. Just an amusing convenience. D'you know what I do here with my two degrees? What I did at First Junction. Tube cleaning. A swab. Sometimes I get to replace a fitting.”

  I muttered something; the self-pity was getting heavy.

  “Bitter? Man, it's a good job. Sometimes I get to talk to one of them.” His face twisted. “My wife works as a—oh, hell, you wouldn't know. I'd trade—correction, I have traded—everything Earth offered me for just that chance. To see them. To speak to them. Once in a while to touch one. Once in a great while to find one low enough, perverted enough to want to touch me…”

  His voice trailed off and suddenly came back strong.

  “And so will you!” He glared at me. “Go home! Go home and tell them to quit it. Close the ports. Burn every god-lost alien thing before it's too late! That's what the Polynesians didn't do.”

  “But surely—”

  “But surely be damned! Balance of trade—balance of life, man. I don't know if our birth rate is going, that's not the point. Our soul is leaking out. We're bleeding to death!”

  He took a breath and lowered his tone.

  “What I'm trying to tell you, this is a trap. We've hit the supernormal stimulus. Man is exogamous—all our history is one long drive to find and impregnate the stranger. Or get impregnated by him; it works for women too. Anything different-colored, different nose, ass, anything, man has to fuck it or die trying. That's a drive, y'know, it's built in. Because it works fine as long as the stranger is human. For millions of years that kept the genes circulating. But now we've met aliens we can't screw, and we're about to die trying.…Do you think I can touch my wife?”

  “But—”

  “Look. Y'know, if you give a bird a fake egg like its own but bigger and brighter-marked, it'll roll its own egg out of the nest and sit on the fake? That's what we're doing.”

  “We've been talking about sex so far.” I was trying to conceal my impatience. “Which is great, but the kind of story I'd hoped—”

  “Sex? No, it's deeper.” He rubbed his head, trying to clear the drug. “Sex is only part of it—there's more. I've seen Earth missionaries, teachers, sexless people. Teachers—they end cycling waste or pushing floaters, but they're hooked. They stay. I saw one fine-looking old woman, she was servant to a Cu'ushbar kid. A defective—his own people would have let him die. That wretch was swabbing up its vomit as if it was holy water. Man, it's deep…some cargo-cult of the soul. We're built to dream outwards. They laugh at us. They don't have it.”

  There were sounds of movement in the next corridor The dinner crowd was starting. I had to get rid of him and get there; maybe I could find the Procya.

  A side door opened and a figure started towards us. At first I thought it was an alien and then I saw it was a woman wearing an awkward body-shell. She seemed to be limping slightly. Behind her I could glimpse the dinner-bound throng passing the open door.

  The man got up as she turned into the bay. They didn't greet each other.

  “The station employs only happily wedded couples,” he told me with that ugly laugh. “We give each other…comfort.”

  He took one of her hands. She flinched as he drew it over his arm and let him turn her passively, not looking at me. “Forgive me if I don't introduce you. My wife appears fatigued.”

  I saw that one of her shoulders was grotesquely scarred.

  “Tell them,” he said, turning to go. “Go home and tell them.” Then his head snapped back toward me and he added quietly, “And stay away from the Syrtis desk or I'll kill you.”

  They went away up the corridor.

  I changed tapes hurriedly with one eye on the figures passing that open door. Suddenly among the humans I caught a glimpse of two sleek scarlet shapes. My first real aliens! I snapped the recorder shut and ran to squeeze in behind them.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  James Tiptree Jr. was the pen name of Alice Bradley Sheldon. In a career that lasted just twenty years, she won the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Locus awards. She died in 1987.

  INTRODUCTION

  Since 1978, when Suzette Haden Elgin founded the Science Fiction Poetry Association, its members have recognized achievement in speculative poetry by presenting the Rhysling Awards, named after the blind poet of Robert A. Heinlein's story “The Green Hills of Earth.” Every year, each member of the SFPA is allowed to nominate one work from the previous year in two categories: “Best Long Poem” (fifty lines or more) and “Best Short Poem” (forty-nine lines or fewer). All nominated poems are collected in The Rhysling Anthology, from which the SFPA membership votes for the award winners.

  In 2006, the SFPA created the Dwarf Star Award to honor poems of ten or fewer lines.

  The SFWA is proud to present the winning poems in each category in this volume. Here is “In the Astronaut Asylum,” winner of the Rhysling Award for Best Long Poem of 2010.

  “I gave my life to guesswork

  on the ambiguous hope

  the stars could be real”

  From “Asylum for Astronauts”

  by Bruce Boston & Marge Simon

  I. The Saturday Night Dance

  Come all ye to Bedlam Town

  When sun come up the stars go down

  When stars go down beneath our feet

  Then ’tis a merry time to meet

  In the Astronaut Asylu
m

  Events sometimes transpire

  As if on the second planet out

  From Aldebaran

  Ex-Astronauts are madmen

  They dream of decaying orbits

  And the passionate embrace

  Of isomorphic aliens

  The doors of the asylum

  Are like airlock doors

  Aboard a starship

  Or perhaps like wheeled hatches

  Between pressurized chambers

  In a submarine

  In the Astronaut Asylum

  Even the doctors and the staff

  Often believe they are on Mars

  Inhabiting sheltered underground corridors

  And cabins

  Or strapped in shipboard limbo

  Somewhere between the stars

  Two or three moons

  (Or four or more)

  Often orbit

  Above the asylum

  (Or below)

  The astronauts are falling, falling

  Into agonized writhing

  Within the sweat-soaked sheets

  And stiff cotton straight-jackets

  Of Interstellar Nightmares

  (& Yes, we perceive the weak ones

  On the far side of the bars;

  Sometimes they come for interviews

  During visiting hours)

  Some of the Astronauts

  Refuse to remove their spacesuits

  Even for the Saturday Night Dance

  & Oft-times when Earth's moons align

  They dance upon Asylum ceilings

  II. The Asylum's History

  I asked of one mad Cosmonaut:

  What is your wish? What do you want?

  “To travel faster than light speed

  Upon my sturdy Bedlam steed”

  Once upon a time

  In France, a hilltop monastery

  Remodeled

  During the early 1900's

  Into an observatory

  The 21st century asylum retains

  The three distinctive domes

  Refurbished

  Minus telescopes

  The central dome is pressurized

  With an exotic atmosphere

  The star-farer who resides therein

  The only one who might survive inside—

  I know

  Because the other patients

  Told me so

  III. Theories of Madness

  Come, let's go to Bedlam Street

  Star-faring ladies for to meet

  Who stare transfixed upon the glow

  Of Earthly seas above, below

  During Thursday's group therapy session

  One of the west-wing Astronauts

  Advances her innovative theory:

  Here is the secret (don't flinch

  While I whisper in your ear; you know,

  Despite that pinched lip, that glazed look

  You carefully cultivate, pretending that

  None of this has any,

  Anything to do with you), here ’tis—

  All go mad, not just the far-travelers,

  Not just those surfers of light-speed,

  Not merely those who've dared the wormholes,

  No—

  All.

  Somewhere out past the orbit of the moon

  Madness comes—

  Slow, mind, for those who think they travel safe,

  Travel sane and measured—

  Sometimes they die before the disease rooted deep

  Within them hatches,

  Like an alien egg

  Unleashing what into our minds?

  What fungus grows about our eyes

  Before we succumb?

  Live long enough, and it comes to this.

  The Cosmonauts in the East Wing

  Offer contradictory explanations

  Maintaining the human body

  Is like a SETI antenna

  Receiving messages

  From diverse alien civilizations

  Strewn throughout our Milky Way

  Galaxy, and beyond

  They fashion crinkled aluminum foil helmets

  To ward off the signals

  Shielding themselves

  From interstellar insanity

  And the maddening music

  Of the spheres

  IV. A Conversation

  With Your Uncle-Astronaut

  On Bedlam Row, in madman's mire

  We orbit swift, a dizzy gyre

  Or bask in dying stars’ dim glow

  And dream of things you'll never know

  Or maybe you are the Astronaut-Uncle,

  Visiting on the landscaped grounds

  At a picnic table

  In sunlight

  Out past the triple dome shadows

  During a moment so real

  (despite taking place within

  Asylum gates)

  You perceive each leaf of grass,

  Every blade-shadow

  As one of you turns toward the other

  And says: “Listen—

  After the last Apollo Mission

  I felt concerned

  Mankind had forgotten how to walk

  Upon the Moon—”

  One of you pauses,

  Contemplative of a cloud

  And the unseen daylit stars beyond.

  “Now, after being stranded on Ceres,

  After penetrating the surfaces

  Of Jovian moons

  And dancing upon Asylum ceilings,

  I feel confident

  One might step anywhere.”

  V. The Youngest Cosmonaut

  Come with me to Bedlam Row

  And see the mad go to and fro

  These Astronauts who only trust

  Their phantom bags of lunar dust

  One of the cosmonauts

  Is only 6 years old

  On the cusp

  Of becoming five

  Suffering from reverse entropy

  Ever since his final re-entry

  This is either gospel truth

  Or perhaps the staff

  Has confused him

  With someone else

  One of the orderlies

  Recently lamented:

  “Communication is impossible

  We record his words

  & Run the tapes backwards

  “But no one can recall:

  Precisely what was it he said

  In his reverse Russian

  When he last spoke to us

  Tomorrow?”

  VI. Epilog

  Three Cosmonauts

  Inexplicably disappeared

  During the recent solar eclipse

  & No one could explain

  The staff's panic attacks

  Slip Bedlam's locks,

  Hide Bedlam's Keys;

  We'll drown beneath

  These star-filled seas

  On nights when the moon is full

  The Astronauts stride

  Thru sparkling lunar dust

  Traipsing asylum corridor floors all aglow

  Leaving luminous footprints to follow

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Stories and poems by Kendall Evans have appeared in Amazing Stories, Fantastic, Weird Tales, Asimov's, Dreams and Nightmares, Nebula Awards Showcase 2008, Mythic Delirium, Strange Horizons, Space and Time, and many others. He is currently at work on a ring cycle of four connected chapbook-length dramatic poems: The Mermaidens of Ceres, Battle Dance of the Valkyrie, Sieglinda's Journey to the Stars, and The Rings of Ganymede. In addition to winning the Rhysling Award for “In the Astronaut Asylum,” he is a previous winner for “The Tin Men,” a collaboration with David C. Kopaska-Merkel.

  Samantha Henderson's poetry has been published in Weird Tales, Goblin Fruit, Mythic Delirium, Stone Telling, Star*Line, Strange Horizons, and Lone Star Stories. Her short fiction has been published in Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy, Clarkesworld, Fantasy, Abyss & Apex, and the anthologies
Running with the Pack and Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded. She is the author of the Scribe Award–nominated Ravensloft novel Heaven's Bones and the Forgotten Realms novel Dawnbringer.

  AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

  I was born in India and lived in Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, the Netherlands, and Scotland before moving to California, and my internal landscape is a patchwork of places, myths, languages. “Pishaach” is the first story I tried telling from that fragmented perspective, about my sort of outsider position.

  The perspective makes it a deeply personal story, but only one thread is autobiographical—Shruti, the protagonist, cannot change enough to leave her liminal state and become a full member of one culture or the other. The normal mythic solutions don't work, and she has to deal.

  “Pishaach” was one of my submission stories to the Clarion 2007 workshop. We workshopped it in week one. Two days later I heard from Delia Sherman that she'd talked Ellen Datlow into looking at it for The Beastly Bride. I looked up from my computer to my short stack of books I couldn't do without—more than half of which were edited by Datlow & Windling. That was a high-pressure rewrite!

  I'd call most of what I write mythic fiction. Some is also steampunk, and a little SF sneaks in; I'm not great with boundaries, and often cross genre and form lines. I'm also (slowly) writing a dissertation about how people understand comics, doing worldbuilding research for novels I can't start till I have a thesis draft, and thinking out loud at shweta-narayan.livejournal.com.

  On the day Shruti's grandfather was to be cremated, her grandmother went into the garden of their apartment complex to pick roses for a garland. She never came back. Shruti's father and uncle went on to the crematorium with the body and the priest, while Shruti's mother sat cross-legged on the floor in her heavy silk sari and wailed on Auntie's shoulder, and the police searched for Ankita Bai.

  Shruti climbed up to a sunlit windowsill, crumpling her stiff new pink dress. She leaned against the mosquito screen to peer down at the garden, its layered tops of coconut palms, mango trees, banana palms, and frangipani bushes spreading their greens over bright smears of rose and bougainvillea. Mama blew her nose noisily and sniffled, then wiped her face on the embroidered end of her sari. Auntie rolled her eyes.

  The doorbell buzzed. Shruti's brother and cousin raced off to answer it, and came back almost bouncing with excitement. With them was a policeman, cap in hand.

  “You should ask my sister questions,” said Gautam importantly. “Ankita Nani always talked to her.”