Asimov's Science Fiction 10-11/2001 Read online

  Stegosaurus has been changed to Triceratops on the rationale that they would actually use chronologically local blood. Triceratops being the common as well as the proper name, it does not need to be italicized.

  Since Carnosauria is now a disputed clade, I've revised all reference to carnosaurs. A pity, though. Carnosaur is a lovely word.

  According to The Complete Dinosaur (Farlow & Brett-Surman, eds., Indiana University Press), which despite the title is the closest thing there is to an authoritative text, dromaeosaur is the proper spelling, and I have so restored it.

  Finally, allow me to thank you for buying a Michael Swanwick™ story. We here in the Production Department think of our purchasers not as gullible marks, but rather as members of our family of fine prose products. Remember, tripe is available at a slightly reduced rate.

  All best,

  Michael Swanwick

  Senior Executive Writer

  February 12, 1998

  Dear Sheila,

  I know you don't like these form letters, but WHOSE FAULT IS IT ? Every month you buy another god-damned story and then expect me to have new biographical data for you. There is no new biographical data—nothing new ever happens to me because I HAVE NO LIFE ANY MORE! I just sit at my desk and write you stories! That's all! There ain't no more! You've taken it all! Rant! Snort! Shriek!

  (Pant! Pant! Pant!)

  All right. Okay. I'm back in control again. Here's the data you requested:

  Though Michael Swanwick usually has Kellogg's Almond Crunch cereal for breakfast, he recently stopped at the Dunkin Donuts for two Boston Cremes. Since he last appeared in Asimov's he's been to the post office almost every day and often found mail waiting for him there. Sometimes he stares out the window of his office at the parking lot adjacent his house. He is currently working on a story for our next issue.

  And that pretty much says it all. Well, and hoping you are the same....

  All best,

  Michael

  March 5, 1998

  Dear Sheila:

  Once again, it's that time of month (well, it's every twenty-one days, technically, but “tritenight” doesn't have the same ring to it) when I have to let you know how my biography has changed since last you bought a story from me.

  And what a fabulous twenty-one days it has been! Since last we communicated, I have achieved full spiritual masterhood and been recognized by the Dalai Lama and the ascended masters as the one true Western Bodhisattva. My selfless labors on your behalf, writing fabulous short fiction for money that wouldn't keep a dog alive, were a significant factor in my elevation. There was even talk of my transcending the material plane entirely and going straight to Nirvana. Indeed, I was tempted. But well I knew that your need was greater than mine.

  Such is my humility. So great is my love for science fiction.

  That's all. Be sure to mention that Jack Faust was published last year to ringing acclaim, and that as of when the magazine went to press it was up for the BSFA Award. Also that I'm writing a new novel and that it's the very best kind of novel, one that breaks your heart in the first chapter and heals it in the last, and in between fills your mind with joyous wonder.

  Nam Myoho Renge Kyo,

  Michael

  March 20, 1998

  Dear Sheila:

  Sweet Jesus, have three weeks passed so quickly? Time for a new identity again. Let's see. (Mutter, mutter.) Okay, howzabout this:

  Born on a mountaintop in Tennessee,

  Kilt him a b'ar when he was only three...

  No, I did that in January. Lemme think. Okay, here we go:

  Michael Swanwick is one of the most brilliant and varied writers we know and so popular that we've completely lost track of exactly how many awards he's currently up for! Lately, he's been prolific as well, turning out a dazzling array of fiction, ranging from hard science to weird fantasy, from the bizarre (who else but Michael would set a story on a planet-sized grasshopper?) to the darkly tragic. Here, in yet another change of pace, he presents us with a collection of nine effortless—effortless for him, that is!—short-shorts, that are by turn humorous, horrific, and deeply moving. We can hardly wait to see what he comes up with next!!!

  There. That'll hold the little bastards for another month. Hey, is this mike still on?

  Yours for better children's TV,

  Michael

  July 7, 1998

  Dear Sheila:

  Well, I imagine you've already heard the splendid news about my creating my own religion! Yes, Pseudoscientology™ is the ladder that will take me out of the dank marsh of genre and into the glorious spiritual light of multinational tax-free incorporation. No doubt you'll want to include the Church's mailing address and donation coupon in your blurb.

  But that's not all I'm up to! I've spent elements of the summer digging for fossils in China (my worldview-revising caudipteryxes and sinosauropteryxes are currently on view in National Geographic's Explorer's Hall in Washington, D.C.), relocating my legal address so I can run for the Senate in the next election (look out, Trent Lott!), and setting simultaneous world records in weight lifting and figure skating—the first human ever to excel in both sports. Not bad for a retired president of the National Reserve Bank.

  Beside these accomplishments, my Hugo nomination for Jack Faust, my Nebula and World Fantasy Awards, my twenty-plus nominations overall for various major awards (so many, I've lost count!), the incredible productivity I've enjoyed this past year turning out story after story, and even the exciting new novel I'm working on right now—all these shrink to nothing. Your disk is enclosed.

  All best,

  Michael

  June 29, 1999

  Dear Sheila:

  Biographical information. I have no new biographical information. I don't actually do anything, just sit here in the unheated cardboard box that serves me as an office and write story after story to feed into the monstrous maw of the literary-industrial complex whose lackey you are, typing as the blood runs down the tattered stumps of what once were my fingers, deep into the night, feeding my family nothing but crusts of stale bread.... No, wait. That's Fyodor Dostoevski. I keep getting the two of us confused.

  I'll try again. I've just sold a new novel about dinosaurs, time travel, and the ultimate fate of humanity, to Avon Books. I've been writing like a banshee, so many stories I lost track of their number. And I'm going to be GOH at the national Swedish SF convention in October.

  Other than that, pretty much nothing.

  All best,

  Michael

  September 30, 2000

  Dear Sheila:

  Stop. Stop. For the love of God.... You've inflicted that dread Xerox on me so many times now, I've completely forgotten who I am. Did you ever see the movie Zelig, about the man with so slight an identity that he becomes a human chameleon, changing into whatever those nearest desire him to be? That's what you've done to me.

  In the last week I've been a guest DJ for Snoop Doggy Dogg, a radical lesbian terrorist in the Hothead Paisan Brigade, a tax accountant for H&R Block, and an advisor on manuscript preservation for the Vatican Library. You've ruined my life!

  On the positive side, you can expect new stories any day now from James Patrick Kelly, Connie Willis, Walter Jon Williams, L. Timmel Duchamp, Mary Rosenblum, John Kessel, Ursula K. LeGuin....

  Yours disjointedly,

  The Collective Writers of Asimov's

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  The Longest Way Home by Robert Silverberg

  part 1 of 3

  Robert Silverberg has written dozens of novels and hundreds of short stories in the course of a career that began in 1954. Among his best-known books are Dying Inside, Lord Valentine's Castle, and Nightwings. He has had more nominations for the Hugo and Nebula awards than any other writer, and has won four Hugos and five Nebulas. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, the writer Karen Haber.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  The first explosions seemed
very far away: a string of distant, muffled bangs, booms, and thuds that might have been nothing more than thunder on the horizon. Joseph, more asleep than not in his comfortable bed in the guest quarters of Getfen House, stirred, drifted a little way up toward wakefulness, cocked half an ear, listened a moment without really listening. Yes, he thought: thunder. His only concern was that thunder might betoken rain, and rain would spoil tomorrow's hunt. But this was supposed to be the middle of the dry season up here in High Manza, was it not? So how could it rain tomorrow?

  It was not going to rain, and therefore Joseph knew that what he thought he had heard could not be the sound of thunder—could not, in fact, be anything at all. It is just a dream, he told himself. Tomorrow will be bright and beautiful, and I will ride out into the game preserve with my cousins of High Manza and we will have a glorious time.

  He slipped easily back to sleep. An active fifteen-year-old boy is able to dissolve into slumber without effort at the end of day.

  But then came more sounds, sharper ones, insistent hard-edged pops and cracks, demanding and getting his attention. He sat up, blinking, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles. Through the darkness beyond his window came a bright flash of light that did not in any way have the sharpness or linearity of lightning. It was more like a blossom unfolding, creamy yellow at the center, purplish at the edges. Joseph was still blinking at it in surprise when the next burst of sound erupted, this one in several phases, a low rolling roar followed by a sudden emphatic boom followed by a long, dying rumble, a slow subsiding. He went to the window, crouching by the sill and peering out.

  Tongues of red flame were rising across the way, over by Getfen House's main wing. Flickering shadows climbing the great gray stone wall of the façade told him that the building must be ablaze. That was incredible, that Getfen House could be on fire. He saw figures running to and fro, cutting across the smooth, serene expanse of the central lawn with utter disregard for the delicacy of the close-cropped turf. He heard shouting and the sound, unmistakable and undeniable now, of gunfire. He saw other fires blazing toward the perimeter of the estate, four, five, maybe six of them. A new one flared up as he watched. The outbuildings over on the western side seemed to be on fire, and the rows of haystacks toward the east, and perhaps the field-hand quarters near the road that led to the river.

  It was a bewildering, incomprehensible scene. Getfen House was under attack, evidently. But by whom, and why?

  He watched, fascinated, as though this were some chapter out of his history books come to life, a reenactment of the Conquest, perhaps, or even some scene from the turbulent, half-mythical past of the Mother World itself, where for thousands of years, so it was said, clashing empires had made the ancient streets of that distant planet run crimson with blood.

  The study of history was oddly congenial to Joseph. There was a kind of poetry in it for him. He had always loved those flamboyant tales of far-off strife, the carefully preserved legends of the fabled kings and kingdoms of Old Earth. But they were just tales to him, gaudy legends, ingenious dramatic fictions. He did not seriously think that men like Agamemnon and Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan had ever existed. No doubt life on Old Earth in primitive times had been a harsh, bloody affair, though probably not quite as bloody as the myths that had survived from that remote era suggested; but everyone was quite sure that the qualities that had made such bloodshed possible had long since been bred out of the human race. Now, though, Joseph found himself peering out his window at actual warfare. He could not take his eyes away. It had not yet occurred to him that he might be in actual danger himself.

  All was chaos down below. No moons were in the sky this night; the only illumination came from the flickering fires along the rim of the garden and up the side of the main wing of the house. Joseph struggled to make out patterns in the movements he saw. Bands of men were running up and down the garden paths, yelling, gesticulating furiously to each other. They appeared to be carrying weapons: rifles, mainly, but some of them just pitchforks or scythes. Now and again one of the riflemen would pause, drop to one knee, aim, fire into the darkness.

  Some of the animals seemed to be loose now, too. Half a dozen of the big racing-bandars from the stable, long-limbed and elegantly slender, were capering wildly about, right in the center of the lawn, prancing and bucking as though driven mad by panic. Through their midst moved shorter, slower, bulkier shapes, stolid shadowy forms that most likely were the herd of dairy ganuilles, freed of their confinement. They were grazing placidly, unconcerned by the erupting madness all about them, on the rare shrubs and flowers of the garden. The house-dogs, too, were out and yelping: Joseph saw one leap high toward the throat of one of the running men, who without breaking stride swept it away with a fierce stroke of his scythe.

  Joseph, staring, continued to wonder what was happening here, and could not arrive at even the hint of an answer.

  One Great House would not attack another. That was a given. The Masters of Homeworld were bound, all of them, by an unbreakable webwork of kinship. Never in the long centuries since the Conquest had any Master struck a blow against another, not for anger's sake, not for greed's.

  Nor was it possible that the Indigenes, weary after thousands of years of the occupation of their world by settlers from Old Earth, had decided finally to take back their planet. They were innately unwarlike, were the Indigenes: trees would sing and frogs would write dictionaries sooner than the Indigenes would begin raising their hands in violence.

  Joseph rejected just as swiftly the likelihood that some unknown band of spacefarers had landed in the night to seize the world from its present masters, even as Joseph's own race had seized it from the Folk so long ago. Such things might have happened two or three thousand years before, but the worlds of the Imperium were too tightly bound by sacred treaties now, and the movements of any sort of hostile force through the interstellar spaces would quickly be detected and halted.

  His orderly mind could offer only one final hypothesis: that this was an uprising at long last of the Folk against the Masters of House Getfen. That was the least unlikely theory of the four, not at all impossible, merely improbable. This was a prosperous estate. What grievances could exist here? In any case the relationship of Folk to Masters everywhere was a settled thing; it benefited both groups; why would anyone want to destabilize a system that worked so well for everyone?

  That he could not say. But flames were licking the side of Getfen House tonight, and barns were burning, and livestock was being set free, and angry men were running to and fro, shooting at people. The sounds of conflict did not cease: the sharp report of gunfire, the dull booming of explosive weapons, the sudden ragged screams of victims whose identity he did not know.

  He began to dress. Very likely the lives of his kinsmen here in Getfen House were in peril, and it was his duty to go to their aid. Even if this were indeed a rebellion of the Folk against the Getfens, he did not think that he himself would be at any risk. He was no Getfen, really, except by the most tenuous lines of blood. He belonged to House Keilloran. He was only a guest here, a visitor from Helikis, the southern continent, ten thousand miles away. Joseph did not even look much like a Getfen. He was taller and more slender than Getfen boys of his age, duskier of skin, as southerners tended to be, dark-eyed where Getfen eyes were bright blue, dark-haired where Getfens were golden. No one would attack him. There was no reason why they should.

  Before he left his room and entered the chaos outside, though, Joseph felt impelled by habit and training to report the events of the night, at least as he understood them thus far, to his father at Keilloran House. By the yellow light of the next bomb-burst Joseph located his combinant where he had set it down at the side of his bed, thumbed its command button, and waited for the blue globe betokening contact to take form in the air before him.

  The darkness remained unbroken. No blue globe formed.

  Strange. Perhaps there was some little problem with the circuit. He nudg
ed the “off” button and thumbed the initiator command again. In the eye of his mind he tracked the electrical impulse as it leaped skyward, connected with the satellite station overhead, and was instantly relayed southward. Normally it took no more than seconds for the combinant to make contact anywhere in the world. Not now, though.

  “Father?” he said hopefully, into the darkness before his face. “Father, it's Joseph. I can't see your globe, but maybe we're in contact anyway. It's the middle of the night at Getfen House, and I want to tell you that some sort of attack is going on, that there have been explosions, and rifle shots, and—”

  He paused. He could hear a soft knocking at the door.

  “Master Joseph?” A woman's voice, low, hoarse. “Are you awake, Master Joseph? Please. Please, open.”

  A servant, it must be. She was speaking the language of the Folk. He let her wait. Staring into the space where the blue globe should have been, he said, “Father, can you hear me? Can you give me any sort of return signal?”

  “Master Joseph—please—there's very little time. This is Thustin. I will take you to safety.”

  Thustin. The name meant nothing to him. She must belong to the Getfens. He wondered why none of his own people had come to him yet. Was this some sort of trap?

  But she would not go away, and his combinant did not seem to be working. Mystery upon mystery upon mystery. Cautiously he opened the door a crack.

  She stared up at him, almost worshipfully.