by C. L. Moore
NORTHWEST OF EARTH
C.L. Moore
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Contents
Title Page
Gateway Introduction
Contents
For a minute—for two minutes—nothing happened.
Praise for C. L. Moore
Introduction: Teaching the World to Dream by C. J. Cherryh
Shambleau
Black Thirst
Scarlet Dream
Dust of Gods
Julhi
Nymph of Darkness
The Cold Gray God
Yvala
Lost Paradise
The Tree of Life
Quest of the Starstone
Werewoman
Song in a Minor Key
Website
Also by C. L. Moore
Acknowledgments
Author Bio
Copyright
For a minute—for two minutes—nothing happened.
Then, watching the wall, Smith thought he could discern the shape of the symbol that had been traced. Somehow it was becoming clear among the painted characters. Somehow a grayness was spreading within the outlines he had watched his own hands trace, a fogginess that strengthened and grew clearer and clearer, until he could no longer make out the traceries enclosed within its boundaries, and a great, misty symbol stood out vividly across the wall.
He did not understand for a moment. He watched the grayness take on density and grow stronger with each passing moment, but he did not understand until a long curl of fog drifted lazily out into the room, and the grayness began to spill over its own edges and eddy and billow as if that wall were afire. And from very far away, over measureless voids, he caught the first faint impact of a power so great that he knew in one flash the full horror of what he watched.
The name, traced upon that wall with its own metal counterpart, had opened a doorway for the Thing which bore the name to enter. It was coming back to the world it had left millions of years ago. It was oozing through the opened door, and nothing he could do would stop it …
Praise for C. L. Moore
“These tales have a peculiar quality of cosmic weirdness, hard to define but easy to recognize, which marks them out as really unique … In these tales there is an indefinable atmosphere of vague outsideness and cosmic dread which marks weird work of the best sort. The distinctive thing about Miss Moore is her ability to devise conditions and sights and phenomena of utter strangeness and originality, and to describe them in a language conveying something of their outre, phantasmagoric, and dread-filled quality.”
—H. P. Lovecraft
“C. L. Moore was a pure romantic whose fantasies remain some of the most vivid and engaging of their kind.”
—Michael Moorcock, creator of Elric of Melniboné
“C. L. Moore’s shimmering, highly colored prose is unique in science fiction. She raised pulp sensibilities to a new level—and then, topped herself in her many collaborations with husband Henry Kuttner. But there’s a freedom and freshness of invention to the Northwest Smith stories that still sings true. Without C. L. Moore, could there be Andre Norton or CJ Cherryh or Anne McCaffrey?”
—Greg Bear, author of Blood Music and Darwin’s Radio
“While you’re reading one of her stories, you believe.”
—CJ Cherryh, author of Downbelow Station and Cyteen
“Moore’s slam-bang storytelling, her exotic touches and her love-to-hate-him antiheroes compel even a veteran SF fan to keep reading.”
—Paul Di Filippo, SciFi.com
“Mythic, heroic, energetic: Moore’s rangy, pale-eyed Northwest Smith came before John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee, before Sergio Leone’s Man With No Name, before my own Aud Torvingen. He might be from Mars, but he is the ur-hero of twentieth century adventure.”
—Nicola Griffith, author of Slow River and Ammonite
“There are strains of A. Merritt, Robert E. Howard, and even H. P. Lovecraft … Excellent.”
—Fritz Leiber, creator of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
“She had a skill, rare for the field at the time, of extracting the human drama from a science-fictional idea.”
—A Reader’s Guide to Science Fiction
Teaching the World to Dream
BY C. J. CHERRYH
Catherine Moore—one of the early stars in the science fiction universe, and one of my friends when I first came into the field. I’d grown up with her stories—Northwest Smith, et al., and she opened up vistas to me that just never fade. Sure, Venus and Mars aren’t what we thought they were. But her stories could be set on the inner planets of some other star—just imagine that!
Imagining was her forte. And her skills at description carry you into her worlds, wherever located. The first things of hers I ever read were the Jirel stories—they’re vivid to me to this day, and I was just a kid at the time.
She was married to another important SF writer, Henry Kuttner, and after his passing, continued in her own vein, producing world after world of unique stories. At the time very many writers were doing “Mars” stories or “Venus” stories, some of which have become dated. She wrote worlds so unique they aren’t bound by those labels. They slide between science and supernatural, what-if to once-upon-a-time; and their scope and sweep has a grandeur that just carries you along willy-nilly. While you’re reading one of her stories, you believe.
She created in Jirel one of the early female heroes; in Northwest Smith the sort of character that’s the archetype of Indiana Jones. She delineated unforgettable characters of both genders, having a great sense of adventure that certainly characterized her writing as well as her life. Her characters are young, but they’re timeless. They’re real, but they’re exotic. And they live, long past her too-brief creative lifetime. Her language and her style are what I would call easy, but beautiful—nothing old-fashioned, nothing contrived, just straightforward story-telling of the most unforgettable kind, with the ability to immerse readers of any age into worlds that are incredibly real and full of hazard. Her heroes are never hack-and-slash—they use their wits, and that’s part of her charm. We admire these people. We want to be them
. What more can you say of a character?
They’re important stories, landmarks in the evolution of both science fiction and fantasy, all rolled into one. I congratulate Paizo Publishing for their service in publishing these seminal works. I find it exciting that new readers are going to get a chance at what taught the writers of this new century to dream of alien worlds.
I knew her when she was older, at a time when some people just lose their sense of wonder and become distracted into glum attitudes. She had her sense of wonder perfectly intact, and she approached things with a courage that would have made Northwest Smith proud. She didn’t complain about her situation—she just went, and did, and showed us a real example of grace. I felt a real sense of loss when I knew she’d passed, and I remember her too vividly ever to let her go—she was that kind of person.
So when Paizo Publishing wrote me asking me to do this introduction, I didn’t hesitate about it—this is an important book. Read it. Make sure your kids and grandkids read it. It’s timeless, and it’s that good. I won’t spoil what you’re about to experience by giving you any further details, except to say that you’re about to go somewhere marvelous.
Read on.
C.J. Cherryh
Spokane, WA
July, 2007
C. J. CHERRYH is the Hugo- and Locus-Award-winning author of Downbelow Station and Cyteen, and has published more than sixty science fiction and fantasy novels.
SHAMBLEAU
MAN HAS CONQUERED Space before. You may be sure of that. Somewhere beyond the Egyptians, in that dimness out of which come echoes of half-mythical names—Atlantis, Mu—somewhere back of history’s first beginnings there must have been an age when mankind, like us today, built cities of steel to house its star-roving ships and knew the names of the planets in their own native tongues—heard Venus’s people call their wet world “Sha-ardol” in that soft, sweet, slurring speech and mimicked Mars’s guttural “Lakkdiz” from the harsh tongues of Mars’s dryland dwellers. You may be sure of it. Man has conquered Space before, and out of that conquest faint, faint echoes run still through a world that has forgotten the very fact of a civilization which must have been as mighty as our own. There have been too many myths and legends for us to doubt it. The myth of the Medusa, for instance, can never have had its roots in the soil of Earth. That tale of the snake-haired Gorgon whose gaze turned the gazer to stone never originated about any creature that Earth nourished. And those ancient Greeks who told the story must have remembered, dimly and half believing, a tale of antiquity about some strange being from one of the outlying planets their remotest ancestors once trod.
“Shambleau! Ha … Shambleau!” The wild hysteria of the mob rocketed from wall to wall of Lakkdarol’s narrow streets and the storming of heavy boots over the slag-red pavement made an ominous undernote to that swelling bay, “Shambleau! Shambleau!”
Northwest Smith heard it coming and stepped into the nearest doorway, laying a wary hand on his heat-gun’s grip, and his colorless eyes narrowed. Strange sounds were common enough in the streets of Earth’s latest colony on Mars—a raw, red little town where anything might happen, and very often did. But Northwest Smith, whose name is known and respected in every dive and wild outpost on a dozen wild planets, was a cautious man, despite his reputation. He set his back against the wall and gripped his pistol, and heard the rising shout come nearer and nearer.
Then into his range of vision flashed a red running figure, dodging like a hunted hare from shelter to shelter in the narrow street. It was a girl—a berry-brown girl in a single tattered garment whose scarlet burnt the eyes with its brilliance. She ran wearily, and he could hear her gasping breath from where he stood. As she came into view he saw her hesitate and lean one hand against the wall for support, and glance wildly around for shelter. She must not have seen him in the depths of the doorway, for as the bay of the mob grew louder and the pounding of feet sounded almost at the corner she gave a despairing little moan and dodged into the recess at his very side.
When she saw him standing there, tall and leather-brown, hand on his heat-gun, she sobbed once, inarticulately, and collapsed at his feet, a huddle of burning scarlet and bare, brown limbs.
Smith had not seen her face, but she was a girl, and sweetly made and in danger; and though he had not the reputation of a chivalrous man, something in her hopeless huddle at his feet touched that chord of sympathy for the underdog that stirs in every Earthman, and he pushed her gently into the corner behind him and jerked out his gun, just as the first of the running mob rounded the corner.
It was a motley crowd, Earthmen and Martians and a sprinkling of Venusian swampmen and strange, nameless denizens of unnamed planets—a typical Lakkdarol mob. When the first of them turned the corner and saw the empty street before them there was a faltering in the rush and the foremost spread out and began to search the doorways on both sides of the street.
“Looking for something?” Smith’s sardonic call sounded clear above the clamor of the mob.
They turned. The shouting died for a moment as they took in the scene before them—tall Earthman in the space-explorer’s leathern garb, all one color from the burning of savage suns save for the sinister pallor of his no-colored eyes in a scarred and resolute face, gun in his steady hand and the scarlet girl crouched behind him, panting.
The foremost of the crowd—a burly Earthman in tattered leather from which the Patrol insignia had been ripped away—stared for a moment with a strange expression of incredulity on his face overspreading the savage exultation of the chase. Then he let loose a deep-throated bellow, “Shambleau!” and lunged forward. Behind him the mob took up the cry again. “Shambleau! Shambleau! Shambleau!” and surged after.
Smith, lounging negligently against the wall, arms folded and gun-hand draped over his left forearm, looked incapable of swift motion, but at the leader’s first forward step the pistol swept in a practiced half-circle and the dazzle of blue-white heat leaping from its muzzle seared an arc in the slag pavement at his feet. It was an old gesture, and not a man in the crowd understood it. The foremost recoiled swiftly against the surge of those in the rear, and for a moment there was confusion as the two tides met and struggled. Smith’s mouth curled into a grim curve as he watched. The man in the mutilated Patrol uniform lifted a threatening fist and stepped to the very edge of the deadline, while the crowd rocked to and fro behind him.
“Are you crossing that line?” queried Smith in an ominously gentle voice.
“We want that girl!”
“Come and get her!” Recklessly Smith grinned into his face. He saw danger there, but his defiance was not the foolhardy gesture it seemed. An expert psychologist of mobs from long experience, he sensed no murder here. Not a gun had appeared in any hand in the crowd. They desired the girl with an inexplicable bloodthirstiness he was at a loss to understand, but toward himself he sensed no such fury. A mauling he might expect, but his life was in no danger. Guns would have appeared before now if they were coming out at all. So he grinned in the man’s angry face and leaned lazily against the wall.
Behind their self-appointed leader the crowd milled impatiently, and threatening voices began to rise again. Smith heard the girl moan at his feet.
“What do you want with her?” he demanded.
“She’s Shambleau! Shambleau, you fool! Kick her out of there—we’ll take care of her!”
“I’m taking care of her,” drawled Smith.
“She’s Shambleau, I tell you! Damn your hide, man, we never let those things live! Kick her out here!”
The repeated name had no meaning to him, but Smith’s innate stubbornness rose defiantly as the crowd surged forward to the very edge of the arc, their clamor growing louder. “Shambleau! Kick her out here! Give us Shambleau! Shambleau!”
Smith dropped his indolent pose like a cloak and planted both feet wide, swinging up his gun threateningly. “Keep back!” he yelled. “She’s mine! Keep back!”
He had no intention of using
that heat-beam. He knew by now that they would not kill him unless he started the gunplay himself, and he did not mean to give up his life for any girl alive. But a severe mauling he expected, and he braced himself instinctively as the mob heaved within itself.
To his astonishment a thing happened then that he had never known to happen before. At his shouted defiance the foremost of the mob—those who had heard him clearly—drew back a little, not in alarm but evidently surprised. The ex-Patrolman said, “Yours! She’s yours?“ in a voice from which puzzlement crowded out the anger.
Smith spread his booted legs wide before the crouching figure and flourished his gun.
“Yes,” he said. “And I’m keeping her! Stand back there!”
The man stared at him wordlessly, and horror and disgust and incredulity mingled on his weather-beaten face. The incredulity triumphed for a moment and he said again,
“Yours!”
Smith nodded defiance.
The man stepped back suddenly, unutterable contempt in his very pose. He waved an arm to the crowd and said loudly, “It’s—his!” and the press melted away, gone silent, too, and the look of contempt spread from face to face.
The ex-Patrolman spat on the slag-paved street and turned his back indifferently. “Keep her, then,” he advised briefly over one shoulder. “But don’t let her out again in this town!”
Smith stared in perplexity almost open-mouthed as the suddenly scornful mob began to break up. His mind was in a whirl. That such bloodthirsty animosity should vanish in a breath he could not believe. And the curious mingling of contempt and disgust on the faces he saw baffled him even more. Lakkdarol was anything but a puritan town—it did not enter his head for a moment that his claiming the brown girl as his own had caused that strangely shocked revulsion to spread through the crowd. No, it was something deeper-rooted than that. Instinctive, instant disgust had been in the faces he saw—they would have looked less so if he had admitted cannibalism or Pharol-worship.