Strange Days: Fabulous Journeys With Gardner Dozois (19 page)

Darkness. Silence.

At first, Kleisterman was aware of a sense of enclosure, was aware of the feel of the metal under his back, could even stir a little, move his fingers impatiently. But then his skin began to prickle over every inch of his body, as feathery probes made contact with his nerve endings, and, as the prickling began to fade, with it went all other sensation. He could no longer feel his body, no longer move; no longer wanted to move. He didn’t have a body anymore. There was nothing. Not even darkness, not even silence. Nothing. Nonexistence.

Kleisterman floated in the void, waiting for the torment to begin.

This kind of machine had many names—simulator, dream machine, iron maiden, imager, shadow box. It fed coded impulses through the subject’s nerves, directly into the brain. With it, the operator could make the subject experience anything. Pain, of course. Any amount of pain. With a simulator, you could torture someone to death again and again, for years of subjective time, without doing them any actual physical harm—not much comfort for the subject in that, though, since to them the experience would be indistinguishable from objective reality. Of course, the most expert operators scorned this sort of thing as hopelessly crude, lacking in all finesse. Not artistic. Pain was only one key that could be played. There were many others. The subject had no secrets, and, with access to the subject’s deepest longings and most hidden fears, the skilled operator, the artisan, the clever craftsman, could devise cunning scenarios much more effective than pain.

Kleisterman had been such an operator, one of the best, admired by his colleagues for his subtlety and ingenuity and skill. He had clandestinely “processed” thousands of subjects for his multinational, and had never felt a qualm, until suddenly one day, for no particular reason, he began to sicken. After Donaldson, Ramaswamy, and Kole, three especially difficult and unpleasant jobs, he had sickened further, and, for the first time in his life, began to have difficulty sleeping and, when he did sleep, began to have unquiet dreams. Then Melissa had somehow become the target of corporate malice, and had been sent to him for his ministrations. By rights, he should have declined the job, since he knew Melissa, and had even had a brief affair with her once, years before. But he had had his professional pride. He did not turn down the job. And somewhere deep in her mind, he had found himself, an ennobled and idealized version of himself as he had never been, and he realized that while for him their affair had been unimportant, for
her
it had been much more intensely charged—that, in fact, she had loved him deeply, and still did.

This discovery brought out the very worst in him, and in a fever of sick excitement, he created scenario after scenario for her, life after life, each scenario working some variation on the theme of her love for him; and each time, “his” treatment of her in the scenario became worse, his betrayal of her uglier and more humiliating, the pain and shame and anguish he visited on her more severe. He turned the universe against her in grotesque ways, too, so that in one life she died in a car wreck on the way to her own wedding, and in another life she died slowly and messily of cancer, and in another she was hideously disfigured in a fire, and in another she had a stroke and lingered on for years as a semi-aware paralytic in a squalid nursing home, and so on. Each life began to color the next, not with specific memories of other existences, but with a dark emotional residue, an unspoken, instinctual conviction that life was drab and bitter and harsh, with nothing to look forward to but defeat and misery and pain, that the dice were stacked hopelessly against you—as, in fact, they were. Then, tiring of subtlety, irresistibly tempted to put aside his own aesthetic precepts, he began to hit her, in the scenarios—at first just slapping her around in drunken rages, then beating her severely enough to put her in the hospital. Then, in one scenario, he picked up a knife.

Several lifetimes subjective later, the heart in her physical body finally gave out, and she died in a way that was no more real to her than the dozens of times she’d died before, but which put her at last beyond his reach. He had been dismayed to discover that in the deepest recesses of her mind, below the fear and hate and bitterness and grief, she loved him still, even at the last. He switched off the machine, and he awoke, as from a fever dream, as though he had been possessed by a demon of perversity that had only now been exorcised, to find himself alone in his soundproofed cubicle with the simulator and Melissa’s cooling body. He betrayed the corporation on his next assignment, freeing the subject rather than “processing” him, and from then on he had been on the run. He had found that he could successfully hide from the multinational. Hiding from himself had proved more difficult.

Light exploded in his head. It took a second for his vision to adjust, and to realize that the patch over his left eye had been removed. Dr. Au leaned in over him again, filling his field of vision like a god, and this time Kleisterman felt the painful yank of tape against his skin as Dr. Au ripped the other eye patch free. More light. Kleisterman blinked, disoriented and confused. He was out of the machine. Dr. Au was tugging at him, getting him to sit up. Dr. Au was saying something, but it was a blare of noise, harsh and hurtful to the ears. He pawed at Kleisterman again, and Kleisterman shook him off. Kleisterman sat, head down, on the edge of the metal bench until his senses readjusted to the world again, and his mind cleared. His skin prickled as sensation returned.

Dr. Au tugged at Kleisterman’s arm. “A red security flag came up on your credit account,” Dr. Au said. His voice was anxious, and his face was pinched with fear. “There was a security probe; I barely avoided it. You must leave. I want you out of here right away.”

Kleisterman stared at him. “But you agreed—” he said thickly.

“I want nothing to do with you, Mr. Ramirez,” Dr. Au said apprehensively. “Here, take your clothes, get dressed. You have some very ruthless forces opposed to you, Mr. Ramirez. I want nothing to do with them, either. No trouble. Leave now. Take your business elsewhere.”

Slowly, Kleisterman dressed, manipulating the clothes with stiff, clumsy fingers while Dr. Au hovered anxiously. The office was filled with watery grey light that seemed painfully bright after the darkness inside the simulator. Dust motes danced in suspension in the light, and a fly hopped along the adobe edge of the open window before darting outside again. A dog was barking out there somewhere, a flat, faraway sound, and a warm breeze puffed in for a second to ruffle his hair and bring him the smell of pine and juniper. He was perceiving every smallest detail with exquisite clarity.

Kleisterman pushed wordlessly by Dr. Au, walked through the outer office and out into the dusty hallway beyond. The floor was scuffed, grime between the tiles, and there were peeling water stains on the ceiling. A smell of cooking food came up the stairwell.
This is real,
Kleisterman told himself fiercely. This is real, this is really happening, this is the real world. The multinational boys aren’t subtle enough for this; they wouldn’t be satisfied with just denying me solace. Letting me go on. They’re not that subtle.

Are they?
Are they?

Kleisterman went down the narrow stairs. He dragged his fist against the rough adobe wall until his knuckles bled, but he couldn’t convince himself that any of it was real.

Golden Apples of the Sun

Introduction to Golden Apples of the Sun

First of all, starting a story with a pun is not fair. Because the reader is unprepared for the pun. Sometimes the reader misses the pun for days, maybe weeks, maybe years afterward. A titular pun, after all, becomes plain only in hindsight.

Michael Swanwick takes full credit for that pun, but I have my doubts. You see, in all the years I’ve known Michael (and I must say now that I don’t know him well), I’ve never heard him pun.

So I figure he had to be under the influence. Not of alcohol or any illegal drug—but of Dozois.

Let me explain the Dozois influence, if I can. It’s rather alarming at first, especially to newer writers who expect established pros to be—well—courteous, neat and quiet. I don’t know where new writers get that image. I know dozens, maybe hundreds, of professional writers and none of them are courteous, neat or quiet. Sometimes they pretend to be, but that’s a different story.

I admit I have been under the influence. I have made rude jokes, sparred verbally with all sorts of inappropriate people, and made horrible puns. (I did, however, get my pun training as a journalist. I was armed when I walked into the Dozois camp the first time.)

Even though I’ve been under the influence, I’ve managed to retain some decorum. I have never, for example, stuck a used lollipop up my nose. (Yes, there are people whose stories you have probably read who did that, one sober (we’re always sober it seems—which should frighten you even more) night in Providence, Rhode Island.) I have never touched Gardner’s knob, although I did hold him down while another woman not his wife searched him for it. (And it was a doorknob, people. Take your minds out of the gutter.)

But I must confess that I have, with Gardner’s help, scared waiters so badly they quit in the middle of serving our meal. I have asked other sf writers strange questions like: if your body parts can sing, what would their favorite songs be? I have even discussed UFO-inspired anal probes in an online chat, something I never would have done if Dozois weren’t influencing me from Philadelphia, almost an entire continent away.

Why do I tell you all of this in a serious volume dedicated to Gardner’s work? Because, in addition to being one of our very best writers, Gardner is also one of our very best instigators. Not just of mayhem at conventions although, since we live on different sides of the country, that’s mostly where we see each other so that’s where I’m certain he does these things. But he commits instigations of a collaborative nature.

Without Dozois, I contend, there would have been no pun in the title of “Golden Apples of the Sun.” There would have been no computer salesman in the land of Faerie, and there would not have been that wonderful image of Titania in a bar in Jersey.

Now, Michael Swanwick and Jack Dann can hold their own against the Instigator Dozois. I would contend that Jack is probably as big an instigator as Gardner, only Jack’s methods are a lot more subtle. Michael can elevate any free-ranging discussion, whether we’re talking about conjugating Latin verbs (don’t ask) or building a dinosaur from scratch. So yes, they’re a good match for the Instigator Dozois.

But that doesn’t make them immune.

I’ve never seen the three of them perform a brain-storming. The idea scares me, if the truth be told. I think there could be enough talent and free-flowing creativity in the room to be dangerous. An innocent bystander might get hurt.

(And I can just hear Gardner’s rejoinder:
Well, then, Kris. If
innocent
bystanders get hurt, you’ll have nothing to worry about.)

Gardner’s solo stories are usually serious. They’re powerful, literate examinations of our world and times, often with a sf premise. He doesn’t write enough of them (dammit, Dozois—start typing now!), but when he does, the world should sit up and notice.

As serious as Gardner’s solo stories usually are, his collaborations reflect the madcap Gardner that his friends know. The man who can wield a pun with the force of a dagger. The man who can devastate entire rooms with a single quip. The man who can scare waiters with a high-pitched giggle.

That man demurely says he “unifies” the collaborative stories he writes with Jack and Michael. Unifies. Sure. Maybe after he’s added something sufficiently goofy. Maybe after he’s invented his own Spenserian dialect.

Yeah, right. Dozois unifies—and instigates. Read Michael Swanwick’s account of how this story came to be in Gardner’s wonderful collection of collaborative stories,
Slow Dancing Through Time.
See whose comment started the cascade of ideas that led to this marvelous story.

I’ll give you a hint. It wasn’t Mr. Swanwick or Mr. Dann.

I tell you: Dozois is an instigator. And your first clue should be that pun in the title. Courtesy (wink, wink) of Michael Swanwick.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Golden Apples of the Sun

by Gardner Dozois, Jack Dann,
and Michael Swanwick

Few of the folk in Faerie would have anything to do with the computer salesman. He worked himself up and down one narrow, twisting street after another, until his feet throbbed and his arms ached from lugging the sample cases, and it seemed like days had passed rather than hours, and
still
he had not made a single sale. Barry Levingston considered himself a first-class salesman, one of the
best,
and he wasn’t used to this kind of failure. It discouraged and frustrated him, and as the afternoon wore endlessly on—there was something funny about the way time passed here in Faerie; the hazy, bronze-colored Fairyland sun had hardly moved at all across the smoky amber sky since he’d arrived, although it should certainly be evening by
now—
he could feel himself beginning to lose that easy confidence and unshakable self-esteem that are the successful salesman’s most essential stock-in-trade. He tried to tell himself that it wasn’t really
his
fault. He was working under severe restrictions, after all. The product was new and unfamiliar to this particular market, and he was going “cold sell.” There had been no telephone solicitation programs to develop leads, no ad campaigns, not so much as a demographic study of the market potential. Still, his total lack of success was depressing.

The village that he’d been trudging through all day was built on and around three steep, hive-like hills, with one street rising from the roofs of the street below. The houses were piled chockablock atop each other, like clusters of grapes, making it almost impossible to even find—much less
get
to—many of the upper-story doorways. Sometimes the eaves grew out over the street, turning them into long, dark tunnels. And sometimes the streets ran up sloping housesides and across rooftops, only to come to a sudden and frightening
stop
at a sheer drop of five or six stories, the street beginning again as abruptly on the far side of the gap. From the highest streets and stairs you could see a vista of the surrounding countryside: a hazy golden-brown expanse of orchards and forests and fields, and, on the far horizon, blue with distance, the jagged, snow-capped peaks of a mighty mountain range—except that the mountains didn’t always seem to be in the same
direction
from one moment to the next; sometimes they were to the west, then to the north, or east, or south; sometimes they seemed much closer or farther away; sometimes they weren’t there at
all.

Barry found all this unsettling. In fact, he found the whole
place
unsettling. Why go
on
with this, then? he asked himself. He certainly wasn’t making any headway. Maybe it was because he overtowered most of the fairyfolk—maybe they were sensitive about being so short, and so tall people annoyed them. Maybe they just didn’t like humans; humans
smelled
bad to them, or something. Whatever it was, he hadn’t gotten more than three words of his spiel out of his mouth all day. Some of them had even slammed doors in his face—something he had almost forgotten
could
happen to a salesman.

Throw in the towel, then, he thought. But . . . no, he
couldn’t
give up. Not yet. Barry sighed, and massaged his stomach, feeling the acid twinges in his gut that he knew presaged a savage attack of indigestion later on. This was virgin territory, a literally untouched route. Gold waiting to be mined. And the Fairy Queen had given this territory to him . . .

Doggedly, he plodded up to the next house, which looked something like a gigantic acorn, complete with a thatched cap and a crazily twisted chimney for the stem. He knocked on a round wooden door.

A plump, freckled fairy woman answered. She was about the size of an earthly two-year-old, but a transparent gown seemingly woven of spidersilk made it plain that she was no child. She hovered a few inches above the doorsill on rapidly beating hummingbird wings.

“Aye?” she said sweetly, smiling at him, and Barry immediately felt his old confidence return. But he didn’t permit himself to become excited. That was the quickest way to lose a sale.

“Hello,” he said smoothly. “I’m from Newtech Computer Systems, and we’ve been authorized by Queen Titania, the Fairy Queen
herself
to offer a
free
installation of our new home computer system—”

“That wot I not of,” the fairy said.

“Don’t you even know what a computer is?” Barry asked, dismayed, breaking off his spiel.

“Aye, I fear me, ‘tis even so,” she replied, frowning prettily. “In sooth, I know not. Belike you’ll tell me of ‘t, fair sir.”

Barry began talking feverishly, meanwhile unsnapping his sample case and letting it fall open to display the computer within. “—balance your household accounts,” he babbled. “Lets you organize your recipes, keep in touch with the stock market. You can generate full-color graphics, charts, graphs . . .”

The fairy frowned again, less sympathetically. She reached her hand toward the computer, but didn’t quite touch it. “Has the smell of metal on’t,” she murmured. “Most chill and adamant.” She shook her head. “Nay, sirrah, ‘twill not serve. ‘Tis a thing mechanical, a clockwork, meet for carillons and orreries. Those of us born within the Ring need not your engines philosophic, nor need we toil and swink as mortals do at such petty tasks an you have named. Then wherefore should I buy, who neither strive nor moil?”

“But you can play
games
on it!” Barry said desperately, knowing that he was losing her. “You can play Donkey Kong! You can play
Pac-Man! Everybody
likes to play PacMan—”

She smiled slowly at him sidelong. “I’d liefer more delightsome games,” she said.

Before he could think of anything to say, a long, long,
long
green-grey arm came slithering out across the floor from the hidden interior of the house. The arm ended in a knobby hand equipped with six grotesquely long, tapering fingers, now spreading wide as the hand reached out toward the fairy . . .

Barry opened his mouth to shout a warning, but before he could, the long arm had wrapped bonelessly around her ankle, not once but
four
times around, and the hand with its scrabbling spider fingers had closed over her thigh. The arm yanked back, and she tumbled forward in the air, laughing.

“Ah, loveling, can you not wait?” she said with mock severity. The arm tugged at her. She giggled. “Certes, meseems you cannot!”

As the arm pulled her, still floating, back into the house, the fairy woman seized the door to slam it shut. Her face was flushed and preoccupied now, but she still found a moment to smile at Barry. “Farewell, sweet mortal!” she cried, and winked. “Next time, mayhap?”

The door shut. There was a muffled burst of giggling within. Then silence.

The salesman glumly shook his head. This was a goddam tank town, was what it was, he thought. Here there were no knickknacks and bric-a-brac lining the windows, no cast-iron flamingoes and eave-climbing plaster kitty cats, no mailboxes with fake Olde English calligraphy on them—but in spite of that it was still a tank town. Just another goddamn middle-class neighborhood with money a little tight and the people running scared. Place like this, you couldn’t even
give
the stuff away, much less make a sale. He stepped back out into the street. A fairy knight was coming down the road toward him, dressed in green jade armor cunningly shaped like leaves, and riding an enormous frog. Well, why not? Barry thought. He wasn’t having a lot of luck door-to-door.

“Excuse me, sir!” Barry cried, stepping into the knight’s way. “May I have a moment of your—”

The knight glared at him, and pulled back suddenly on his reins. The enormous frog reared up, and leaped straight into the air. Gigantic, leathery, batlike wings spread, caught the thermals, carried mount and rider away.

Barry sighed and trudged doggedly up the cobblestone road toward the next house. No matter what happened, he wasn’t going to quit until he’d finished the street. That was a compulsion of his . . . and the reason he was one of the top cold-sell agents in the company. He remembered a night when he’d spent five hours knocking on doors without a single sale, or even so much as a kind
word,
and then suddenly he’d sold $30,000 worth of merchandise in an hour . . . suddenly he’d been golden, and they couldn’t say no to him. Maybe that would happen today, too. Maybe the next house would be the beginning of a run of good luck . . .

The next house was shaped like a gigantic ogre’s face, its dark wood forming a yawning mouth and heavy-lidded eyes. The face was made up of a host of smaller faces, and each of
those
contained other, even smaller faces. He looked away dizzily, then resolutely climbed to a glowering, thick-nosed door and knocked right between the eyes—eyes which, he noted uneasily, seemed to be studying him with interest.

A fairy woman opened the door—below where he was standing. Belatedly, he realized that he had been knocking on a dormer; the top of the door was a foot below him.

This fairy woman had stubby, ugly wings. She was lumpy and gnarled, and her skin was the texture of old bark. Her hair stood straight out on end all around her head, in a puffy nimbus, like the Bride of Frankenstein. She stared imperiously up at him, somehow managing to seem to be staring
down
her nose at him at the same time. It was quite a nose, too. It was longer than his hand, and sharply pointed.

“A great ugly lump of a mortal, an I mistake not!” she snapped. Her eyes were flinty and hard. “What’s toward?”

“I’m from Newtech Computer Systems,” Barry said, biting back his resentment at her initial slur, “and I’m selling home computers, by special commission of the Queen—”

“Go to!” she snarled. “Seek you to cozen me? I wot not what abnormous beast that be, but I have no need of mortal kine, nor aught else from your loathly world! Get you gone!” She slammed the door under his feet. Which somehow was every bit as bad as slamming it in his face.

“Sonofabitch!” Barry raged, making an obscene gesture at the door, losing his temper at last. “You goddamn flying fat pig.”

He didn’t realize that the fairy woman could hear him until a round crystal window above his head flew open, and she poked her head out of it, nose first, buzzing like a jarful of hornets. “Wittold!” she shrieked. “Caitiff rogue!”

“Screw off, lady,” Barry snarled. It had been a long, hard day, and he could feel the last shreds of self-control slipping away. “Get back in your goddamn hive, you goddamn pinocchio-nosed mosquito!”

The fairy woman spluttered incoherently with rage, then became dangerously silent. “So!” she said in cold passion.
“Noses,
is’t? Would vilify my nose, knave, whilst your
own
be uncommon squat and vile? A tweak or two will remedy
that,
I trow, and exchange the better for the worse!”

So saying, she came buzzing out of her house like an outraged wasp, streaking straight at the salesman.

Barry flinched back, but she seized hold of his nose with both hands and tweaked it savagely. Barry yelped in pain. She shrieked out a high-pitched syllable in some unknown language and began flying backward, her wings beating furiously,
tugging
at his nose.

He felt the pressure in his ears change with a sudden
pop,
and then, horrifyingly, he felt his face begin to
move
in a strangely fluid way, flowing like water, swelling out and out and
out
in front of him.

The fairy woman released his nose and darted away, cackling gleefully.

Dismayed, Barry clapped his hands to his face. He hadn’t realized that these little buggers could
all
cast spells—he’d thought that kind of magic stuff was reserved for the Queen and her court. Like cavorting in hot tubs with naked starlets and handfuls of cocaine, out in Hollywood—a prerogative reserved only for the Elite. But when his hands reached his nose, they almost couldn’t close around it. It was too large. His nose was now nearly two feet long, as big around as a Polish sausage, and covered with bumpy warts.

He screamed in rage. “Goddammit, lady, come back here and fix this!”

The fairy woman was perching half-in and half-out of the round window, lazily swinging one leg. She smiled mockingly at him. “There!” she said, with malicious satisfaction. “Art
much
improved, methinks! Nay, thank me not!” And, laughing joyously, she tumbled back into the house and slammed the crystal window closed behind her.

“Lady!” Barry shouted. Scrambling down the heavy wooden lips, he pounded wildly on the door. “Hey, look, a joke’s a joke, but I’ve got
work
to do!
Lady!
Look, lady, I’m
sorry,”
he whined. “I’m sorry I swore at you, honest! Just come out here and fix this and I won’t bother you anymore. Lady,
please!”
He heaved his shoulder experimentally against the door, but it was as solid as rock.

An eyelid-shaped shutter snapped open above him. He looked up eagerly, but it wasn’t the lady; it was a fat fairy man with snail’s horns growing out of his forehead. The horns were quivering with rage, and the fairy man’s face was mottled red. “Pox take you, boy, and your cursed brabble!” the fairy man shouted. “When I am foredone with weariness, must I be roused from honest slumber by your hurtle-burble?” Barry winced; evidently he had struck the Faerie equivalent of a night-shift worker. The fairy man shook a fist at him. “Out upon you, miscreant! By the Oak of Mughna, I demand SILENCE!” The window snapped shut again.

Barry looked nervously up at the eyelid-window, but somehow he
had
to get the lady to come out and fix this goddamn
nose.
“Lady?” he whispered.
“Please,
lady?” No answer. This wasn’t working at all. He’d have to change tactics, and take his chances with Snailface in the next apartment.

“LADY!” he yelled. “OPEN UP! I’M GOING TO STAND HERE AND SHOUT AT THE TOP OF MY LUNGS UNTIL YOU COME OUT! YOU WANT THAT? DO YOU?”

The eyelid flew open. “This passes bearing!” Snailface ranged. “Now Cernunnos shrivel me, an I chasten not this boisterous dotard!”