A Paradigm of Earth
Page 36
“Me who does what?” he said.
“Provides the balance,” said Delany.
“I hope so,” he said, and he too didn’t smile yet. Morgan, however, knew he would, and so, by her glinting glance, did Delany, wheeling her chair around on a dime to lead the way out of the kitchen.
journal:
How the aliens came to us and left again. What it was. I dream about that long pale face, those feverish warm hands. I dream of cats, that curl up on our chests at high summer, to warm themselves. That blue gaze, too open to be so enigmatic.
Like the cat that after many years learned to play, to turn my shoes upside down in search of demons, I am learning to see the demons, learning to play with them, thinking there is something vital in that change, something more innocent than passion, if only I could find it, turning the world upside down, hoping that whatever falls out will be fun to play with. Or even, will be the answer, the real reason why that blue touch on my face was burning, burning through all reasoning, burning away the demons.
Where am I bound? If Blue’s emissary to the stars, I’ll be emissary to this world. Hard work but not as hard as it was to trust when those blue hands came toward my face and I thought I would die if Blue touched me. Maybe I did. Don’t some religions call pure consciousness “self-destruction” and long for it as fiercely as I longed to be alien?—and here I am, human again, and I don’t even mind, strangely enough.
Sometimes I am tempted to write as if Blue were going to read my journal, or dream as if Blue were going to share my dreams, or live as if Blue were going to meet me when I am old, to share memories of our ordeals. But Blue is gone, and I am more alone than I ever prepared to be. Blue is gone, vanished into the dusky sky, vanished into the night the color of those eyes, the color of that hair, the color of that mind, the color of nothing. Gone along that path I cannot follow, even with death. Up there in that strange mothership they will take Blue apart more guickly than we worked together to put that beautiful person together, and I can only hope it is with as much love. Meanwhile here they will take me apart too, and not easily, and not with love, by and large anyway, and all I will have when I am left alone at last will be the common memories, the story I will have told until I have only memories of a memory. Of love. Of a lover.
Ah. Love, I will say, and they will think I mean sex. Well, we did try everything eventually, but there was a time in language when “lover” meant one who loves, and one who is loved, and that’s how I want to use it. I did my best not to be trapped into admitting it, but for Blue I admitted that I love, that I love the world in all its strange and alien splendor. And now it is easy to admit it to anyone, for Blue is gone, and if I learned anything from what has been done by those who hate, I learned that there’s no sense in keeping any secrets.
The only way to be strong is to be completely vulnerable—
—and if they believe that, I can tell them what it was like.
…every heart, every heart to love must come, but like a refugee …
——LEONARD COHEN, “ANTHEM,” THE FUTURE
Also by Candas Jane Dorsey
Black Wine
Praise for A Paradigm of Earth
“In a radical departure from her austere first novel, Black Wine (1997), Canadian author Dorsey has produced a powerful character study filled with colorful and highly emotive language … . Morgan’s development from a depressed, hollow shell of a person to someone who can both love and be loved is detailed with impressive skill. Those interested in gender and feminism, as well as fans of thoughtful, emotion-centered SF, have a treat in store.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Although socially marginal, Dorsey’s characters are ordinary enough, believable because of their flaws, and become extraordinary through their circumstances and relationships.”
—Booklist
“A Paradigm of Earth overflows with two qualities that are rare in literature: goodness and sanity. To capture them seems like a modest achievement. But it is not. This wonderful, moving SF parable of humans and aliens negotiating community and risking the boundaries of self is a most humane document—brave, funny, heartbreaking, sexy, dangerous, and trustworthy. Candas Jane Dorsey is a writer with perfect human pitch. That, too, is easy to underestimate. A humdinger of a novel.”
—Patrick O’Leary
“In Candas Dorsey’s powerful novel, A Paradigm of Earth, an alien world sends its emissaries to Earth to learn about humanity, and one of them finds a home in a house-of-all-sorts in the Canadian midwest among the yearningly alienated and disaffected. Their story burns with intensity beneath Dorsey’s deceptively smooth and eloquent style.”
—Phyllis Gotlieb
Acknowledgments
A work of fiction is always unconsciously pieced together in part from the ragbag of real experience, but that process can happen consciously too. In this book, I have taken a certain gleeful pleasure in salting the mine with some references to reality. Among others, the artistic works and contributions of (in no particular order) Edouard Lock and La La La Human Steps (especially Businessman in the Process of Becoming an Angel, 1984), Ferron, Leonard Cohen, Caetano Veloso, Earl Klein, Rachmaninoff, John Crowley, Bob Dylan, Colin Simpson, Jane Siberry, Jack Dorsey, Marie Dorsey, Jaclyn Dorsey, Michael Dorsey, Sara Dorsey, Robin Dezall, Bambino Farelinelli and his creator (“Love one another with a pure heart fervently …”), Ronnie Burkett and his Theatre of Marionettes, Judith Merril, Brian Fawcett (Cambodia and Public Eye), Ken Brown (The Cambodia Pavilion), Sarah Smith, Joanne Sydiaha, Ankie Engel, Greer Ilene Gilman (Moonwise), Zhauna Alexander (Amelia’s Aquarium), Steeleye Span, Sima Khorrami, Peter Sutherland, Chantal de Rementeria, Gay Haldeman, Dede Weil, Dean Stoker, Guy Kay (Tigana), Evergon, Jon Lomberg, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ma Rainey, Samuel R. Delany, Doug Barbour, Spider Robinson, Derwyn Whitbread, Jane Duncan, Judy Chicago, Margaret Atwood, Maria Formolo, Edgar Meyer, Rickie Lee Jones, Ian Tamblyn, Rachel Pollack, Annie Dillard and even Ian Fleming have contributed to the tapestry, either through my references that can be caught by the reader or simply by inspiring at some point the spirit or intention of the work. Sharon Grant Wildwind invented in a piece of fiction the idea of kids in the future having recycling routes, and I use it with her permission. A poem written by a fellow student in a poetry class in 1971 (“the energy needed to live / alone is so great”) has stayed powerfully with me although I have unfortunately forgotten the author’s name. I have also forgotten the name of the dance company in Winnipeg in 1994 whose brilliant adagio dance to Rachmaninoff’s Vespers is paid homage in Jakob Ngogaba’s Night Through Slow Glass. These are only a few of the influences on this book.
First Contact novels are common. We all know what we have to do. This is a book not about aliens but about love. Thanks to all whom I loved and who loved me through the years of its creation. You know who you are.
Thanks to David Hartwell at Tor for his breadth of experience, editorial persistence, and friendship; thanks to his assistants Jim Minz (then) and Moshe Feder (later). Thanks to a community of writers and readers, and especially thanks to all the people who offered or were drafted to read all or parts of this book while it was in progress, including but not limited to (in alphabetical order) Timothy Anderson, Peter Brand, Bev Estock, Pamela Freeman, Betty Gibbs, Amber Hayward, Nalo Hopkinson, Farah Mendlesohn, John Park, Ursula Pflug, Cordelia Sherman, Donna Simone, Michael Skeet, Gerry Truscott, Elisabeth Vonarburg, Mary Woodbury, and no doubt others shamefully forgotten: thank you all for important comments and support.
Thank you too to the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Canada Council for the Arts for providing financial support directly for the writing of this book or for my writing work in general. Such patronage is essential for the existence of artists in general and of Canadian culture on the world stage.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
A PARADIGM OF EARTH
/> Copyright © 2001 by Candas Jane Dorsey
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Edited by David G. Hartwell
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
Book design by Heidi Eriksen
eISBN 9781429973120
First eBook Edition : March 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dorsey, Candas Jane.
A paradigm of earth / Candas Jane Dorsey. p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
ISBN 0-312-87796-X (hc)
ISBN 0-312-87797-8 (pbk)
1. Human-alien encounters—Fiction. 2. Infants—Fiction. 3. Canada—Fiction. I. Title.
PR9199.3.D56 P37 2001
813'.54—dc21
2001034767
First Hardcover Edition: October 2001
First Trade Paperback Edition: November 2002
Table of Contents
Title Page
Prologue
1 - Morgan among the gargoyles
2 - A house is not a home
3 - Explaining kitty litter to the aliens
4 - An old-fashioned policeman
5 - A new tenant
6 - A touch of arthritis
7 - Simpler as an alien
8 - “You have to change your life”
9 - Through slow glass
10 - Company for dinner
11 - Hardball
12 - Dancing lessons
13 - A birthday present
14 - Vespers
15 - A triumph of community relations
16 - A local grammar
17 - My home’s across the Blue Ridge Mountains, and I never expect to see you any more …
18 - Finale, benedicte
Also by Candas Jane Dorsey
Praise for A Paradigm of Earth
Acknowledgments
Copyright Page