Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (464 page)

Notes

¹
http://baens-universe.com/articles/Why_Science_Fiction_

²
http://www.starshipnivan.com/blog/?p=3336

* * * *

C. W. Johnson
is a physics professor at San Diego State University, where he also has taught a course on science and science fiction. He has had several SF stories published, including in
Analog
, the flagship magazine of hard SF.

(1950– )

When I was working in a bookstore in Philadelphia as a college student, I happened on a copy of
Startide Rising
(1983), a thick book which had recently won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. It was one of the densest books I’ve ever read, and I couldn’t put it down; Brin asks his readers to follow a huge cast of characters, more of whom are dolphins than humans, and understanding the plot requires a reasonably high comfort level with both physics and poetry. And it’s probably one of the best novels I’ve ever read.

At his best David Brin packs as much content as will possibly fit into a book; once in a while there’s a little too much. He’s also a terrific science writer, who was a working scientist for many years.

A California native, Brin earned his BS in astronomy from the California Institute of Technology, and his MS (in applied physics) and PhD (in space science) are both from the University of California at San Diego. For years he taught both astrophyics and creative writing at the college level, but he now writes full-time.

Much of his fiction is set in the Uplift universe established in Brin’s first novel,
Sundiver
(1980), in which humans and “uplifted” dolphins and chimps that have been given sapience and equality face a hostile universe.
Startide Rising
is in the same universe, along with the Hugo winning The Uplift War (1987). Althogether, Brin has published nearly twenty books and about fifty stories, as well as scientific papers on a wide variety of topics, such as optics, astonautics, and the nature of comets. His non-uplift post-apocalyptic novel The Postman (1985) was made into a movie featuring Kevin Costner.

Brin is married to fellow scientist Dr. Cheryl Brigham. They have three children and live in southern California.

First Published in
The River of Time
, June 1986

I lean here against this polished wooden surface—while the drums pound and smoke blows around—and my mind feels like a wild thing, completely out of control.

Clawing sensations scrape at me from the inside, like something living, alien, desperate to escape. And to make matters worse, for weeks I’ve hardly slept, dreading the dream images that come…

…eyes in the sky. And a fiery mountainside.

* * * *

Even as I stand here, this damned day keeps throwing memories at me, like soggy rags dragged out of a pile of old discarded clothes—things I thought I’d buried away for good. Right now, for instance, I can’t help remembering how weird I thought my old man was, when I was a kid.

Oh, he was a pip, he was. For example, whenever he caught me in a lie, he would beat me twice.

The first thing he’d do was he’d take me into the house and lecture me, reasonable-like, about how it was immoral to tell lies, how a real man would face the truth, and all that kind of stuff. Then he’d make me bend over and take my licking like a man. That part was okay, I guess. I didn’t like the lecture, but he didn’t hit very hard.

It was later in the day he’d scare me half to death. And all the time in between I’d be so frightened I couldn’t hardly breathe.

I think, now that you get right down to it, he punished me
three
times each time he found out I’d lied…a spanking indoors for being unethical, a Chinese water torture of a wait, and then a terrific pasting out next to the garage for getting caught.

I think the wait was so I could think about how I could have talked my way out of it without lying…or come up with a better lie, one without holes in it.

When he knocked me around outside he kept telling me how stupid it was to waste an untruth—how a man’s credibility was as important to his survival as his wind, his stamina, or his ability to make friends.

My father was like that. Indoors he talked as if he were trying to teach me how to be moral and upright. Outside, in the twilight, he acted as if tomorrow I was going to be dumped into the Amazon, or Devil’s Island, or deepest darkest Wall Street, and it was his job to see to it I could make it in a jungle.

One good thing I can say about him—he never got mad when I told him, to his face, that he was nuts. He just laughed and said it was an interesting proposition—and that his duty to teach me to survive didn’t include policing my opinions.

In all this smoke and noise and stream-of-consciousness rambling tonight, it occurs to me for the first time that maybe the old man may have been right after all.

Maybe he had a feeling I’d wind up in a place like this, hunted, trapped, my survival depending on the credibility of a lie.

* * * *

These eyes in the sky keep coming back. And the picture of a burning mountain. I try to shrug them aside, but another image comes, uninvited, unwelcome…

A closeup of the moon…

* * * *

Hey, I’m not illiterate. Though my life depends on seeming as if I am. Like Bogart said to Bacall, I’ve looked at a book, maybe two. It’s just that I adapt real good. And right now I’ve got to adapt to being Chuck Magun.

Chuck. Yeah. Cut this memory crap and think about Chuck. Reinforce Chuck.

Chuck looks a lot like I used to look, naturally. I couldn’t change that. He’s a big guy with shoulders and everything heaped up six three or so. He looks kind of mean. Chuck lifts weights every day and runs a few miles along the riverfront.

He’s got an old Harley torn apart in his living room, and either the TV or a country station is on all the time. Chuck drinks in local bars, curses at all the bad plays when football is on, and likes tearing up some back road with his dirt bike,. Profanity is a natural part of breathing to Chuck,, but he never loses his temper.

He reads motorcycle magazines and maintenance manuals with a guilty, hungry nervousness. He can’t scan more than six or eight sentences without suddenly looking up with a shy grin on his face, as if expecting to be kidded, or maybe killed. Mostly he doesn’t read. He’s a fully qualified member of the Great Unwashed. At least I hope so.

Chuck may be getting married soon…

* * * *

(… A closeup of the moon…the stars bitterly bright…purple cat-slitted eyes …)

* * * *

What was that? A quake? Did the bar shake? Why is my hand trembling?

Maybe I should stay away from provocative topics for a little while. As long as I’m standing here mumbling to a pretend listener in my own mind, I might as well do some background. Take up the time.

Ever been a bouncer?

You say no, my imagined friend? Well, let me explain. It’s not a trivial trade.

Bouncers meet all the chicks. There seems to be a sort of fascination towards that husky bearded type of guy who stands alone with watchful eyes at the edge of the bar with a big flashlight in his pocket and a beer that hardly gets touched during the night. Maybe it’s that here’s a big stud whose whole purpose in life is to make sure women don’t get bothered in or around the Yankee Dollar. That is, if they don’t want to be.

The ladies here keep flirting with Chuck. He doesn’t mind, but
I
hate it. Their attentions make me nervous. I don’t like strangers looking too close. Sure, none of them could disguise himself as a young woman—especially the way fashions reveal so much these days. Still, I have Chuck’s girlfriend join him here each night to shake the chicks loose.

Hell, it’s not their fault. Neither is it Chuck’s. So much for bouncer lesson number one.

* * * *

Lesson number two is pick a place where kids hang out. You get a hell of a lot more aggravation, minute by minute, but it’s a damn sight better than working bored sick in some topless place when some drunk jumps onto the runway to dance with the stripper, and now
you’ve
got to jump up there to friendly-like ask him to join you in beer while the poor girl has a terrified smile on her face and just a little bikini bottom on her ass, and everyone in the house can see that big weighted flashlight you’re holding behind your back, and you’re wondering if your sphincter’s going to hold because that drunk has got six friends at the bar just as “friendly” .

That happened twice in Weed. I damn near broke character, as well as some poor lumberjack’s head, before I quit.

Weed was a lot like Crescent City, wet and pungent. Only here the fog is made of ocean spray and clouds crawling upriver on their way to skirmish with the mountains. In Weed the morning haze was pure mosquitoes.

The kids who come to the Yankee Dollar to hear bluegrass and chivy sips of beer from their older brothers and sisters don’t know how to be mean yet. They’re so tied up in teenage smells and teenage aggravation. I remember when I was that age so I try to be tolerant.

It’s funny how tonight I can recollect things like that from twenty years ago, but until recently I had trouble thinking much more than a week either way. Today I saw a jet flying high overhead. A fast little navy fighter, I guess. It got me thinking…

* * * *

…The growl of engines…launching to a fanfare from Beethoven…laughter and clean flight…

* * * *

Stop that! Divert! What is the matter with me? Where are these visions coming from?

Ignore ’em. That’s what I’ll do. Nothing like that ever happened…Think about something else. Think about the kids. Think about the kids and bouncer lessons.

* * * *

I guess I like the kids enough. I watch ‘em close, though. The worst they usually do is try to sneak pitchers outside or do J’s in the corner. I put a stop to that fast, and have a rep for the sharpest eye in bouncerdom.

No way I’m gettin’ hauled up before a judge for “contributing to delinquency.” A judge might be one of the ones They are watching. They catch wind of me, and pfff! There goes both Chuckie and me.

“Hey, Chuck!”

“Yeah, what! What you want?” I bellow. Full Chuck bellow from the edge of the bar.

They stand in the doorway ten feet away, three underage lodgepoles in denim—scraggly Thin scraggly moustaches and zits. They want to pull something I’d catch them at easy. So they’re about to appeal to Chuck’s sense of camaraderie. I gotta smile.

“Hey, Chuck, can we bring in some beers? You’re cool, man. We’ll keep it under the table …”

Turn grin to grimace.

“Hell, no. You guys get that stuff out of here! Drink it at home and then come back. Or better yet, don’t come back!”

They cuss me, laughing. I cuss back to maintain image, but my heart really isn’t in it tonight.

Five minutes later they’re back. Must have chugged the whole six-pack from the way they slosh and giggle as they come in, giving me a wink. Jesus! Can you remember chugging just to get a stomach full of beer? Doing it because a boy’s got to have some sort of rite of passage when the girls just won’t put out and we don’t send young men after eagle feathers anymore?

That’s bouncer lesson number three. Like your clientele. Establish empathy. But never identify too closely. It’ll drive you nuts.

* * * *

The surface of the bar is smooth, like ivory keys, like the smooth-rubbed stick in a trusty airplane…With my eyes closed, the pounding of the drums blends with the crowd noises and seems to become the growling of engines. A red haze under my eyelids turns into a fire…fire on a mountainside.

My fingers press into the bar, the tendons humming momentarily as if to something from Stravinsky…

And Parmin did have purple eyes.

Agh! Ignore it. Ignore it!

The Blue Ridge Mountain Boys are picking up a fast number beneath the spots, in a swirling haze of tobacco smoke. I imagine the smoke contains other things, as well, but it’s hard to tell as my sense of smell isn’t what it was. In fact, for reasons I’d rather not go into, it’s pretty well nonexistent. I do a quick scan around the room to make sure no one’s passing around a J too obviously. I’m no party pooper. Like I said, I have this thing about being busted.

I’ll give the Boys credit. They sure do give that hillbilly music a shitkicking beat. The dancers on the floor are capering and screaming “Eeee-Haw!” … that city-boy version of the mountain yell.

Chuck likes this band. He’s gotten drunk with them a few times and he fixes their bikes for less than he usually charges. Once, though, when he’d had a bit too much, Chuck let them persuade him to join them with a borrowed harmonica. He’d intended just to clown around, but got carried away. He bent over that mouth organ and played.

By the time I came to my senses the crowd was whooping it up, the Boys thumping me on the back, and I was blinking in the spotlight, wondering what I had let happen.

I almost left town then and there. But that’s when Elise had just broken her arm dirt-biking with Chuck for the first time. I guess he felt guilty, so I stayed.

* * * *

Strange purple eyes, hooded and cat-slitted…a smile as subtle as any man’s…A look of ages. You don’t hide from eyes like those.

“You are a Protector,” he said. “A fraction of your species cannot help themselves in this respect. Without something or someone to protect, they wither and die.”

“Parmin, you are full of it.”

Again that smile. A voice like a reed organ. “Do you think I don’t know what you are, soul-nephew? Why were you, after all, among the first chosen for our Cabal…?”

* * * *

There’s dancing out on the sawdust now. Pairs of girls prance around the edges as if it’s some tribal custom to let hetero couples have the center. I always found that an interesting phenomenon. No male-male dancing—not at a bar like this one, though it’s all open at Farrell’s down the block. Times’ve changed.

Despite recent trendiness, few of these kids know anything about bluegrass, though some of the boys affect harmonicas. No matter. If it’s country it must be salubrious, so they hop around with thumbs in suspenders and fingers splayed to give their dance a superficial country air.

I can’t believe it. Did I just subvocalize the word “salubrious” ? Oh, damn, damn, damn!

What have I been doing, letting myself think like that? How long did I lapse? I look at my watch.

No watch. Wait, I don’t wear one anymore. What’s wrong with me!

Calm down. You’ve only been intellectualizing since the beginning of the set. Too little time to do any real harm. It’s never been proved that They can put a tracer on subvocalized thought. That was just a theory. Still, maybe they can. So cut the two-dollar words, hmmm? When did philosophy ever do anybody any good anyway?

Joey asks me to help him move a keg. Sure. Anything’s better than standing here thinking. The crowd is too well behaved to serve as a distraction.

Down at the other end of the bar we heave the monster beer-barrel onto the platform and connectthe tap. Straightening up, I rub the grease off my hands and look around the room. That’s when I see her.

She stands by the door and the coldness comes over me like an Amarillo norther. I cringe a little, briefly driven to make myself invisible as she peers around, blinking in the sharp light of the stage spots. But there’s no dignified way to make two meters of hair and muscle transparent. She sees Chuck, smiles and starts to walk over. And while she’s between there and here the magic thing happens again.

The coldness leaves me.

She’s pretty. She moves well. She’s what Chuck needs.