“Yeah,” the troll said. “But so what? No big deal. Who cares about crap like that anyway?” He stared incredulously at Barry. “Is that all that thing does?”
There was a heavy silence.
“Maybe you oughta reconsider that idea about the planters . . .” Morrig said.
Barry stood up again, a trifle unsteady from all the hooch he’d taken aboard. “Well, that’s really it, then,” he said. “I might just as well chuck my samples in the river—I’ll never sell in this territory. Nobody needs my product.”
Morrig shrugged. “What do you care how they use ‘em? You oughta sell ‘em first, and then let the customers find a use for ‘em afterward. That’s logic.”
Fairy logic, perhaps, Barry thought. “But how can you sell something without first convincing the customer that it’s useful?”
“Here.” Morrig tossed off a final drink, gave a bone-rattling belch, and then lurched ponderously to his feet, scooping up both sample cases in one hand. “Lemme show you. Ya just gotta be forceful.”
The troll started off at a brisk pace, Barry practically having to run to keep up with his enormous strides. They climbed back up the curving wooden steps, and then Morrig somehow retraced Barry’s wandering route through the streets of Faërie town, leading them unerringly back to the home of the short-tempered, Pinocchio-nosed fairy who had cast the first spell on Barry—the Hag of Blackwater, according to Morrig.
Morrig pounded thunderously on the Hag’s door, making the whole house shake. The Hag snatched the door open angrily, snarling, “What’s to—GACK!” as Morrig suddenly grabbed her up in one enormous hand, yanked her out of the house, and lifted her up to face level.
“Good evenin’, m’am,” Morrig said pleasantly.
“A murrain on you, lummox!” she shrieked. “Curst vile rogue! Release me at once! At once, you foul scoundrel! I’ll—BLURK.” Her voice was cut off abruptly as Morrig tightened his grip, squeezing the breath out of her. Her face turned blood-red, and her eyes bulged from her head until Barry was afraid that she was going to pop like an overripe grape.
“Now, now, lady,” Morrig said in a gently chiding tone. “Let’s keep the party polite, okay? You know your magic’s too weak to use on me. And you shouldn’t’a’oughta use no hard language. We’re just two workin’ stiffs tryin’ ta make a honest buck, see? You give us the bad mouth, and, say, it just might make me sore.” Morrig began shaking her, up and down, back and forth, his fist moving with blinding speed, shaking her in his enormous hand as if she were a pair of dice he was about to shoot in a crap game. “AND YOU WOULDNT WANT TA MAKE ME SORE, NOW, WOULD YOU, LADY?” Morrig bellowed. “WOULD YOU?”
The Hag was being shaken so hard that all you could see of her was a blur of motion. “Givors!” she said in a faint little voice. “Givors, I pray you!”
Morrig stopped shaking her. She lay gasping and disheveled in his grasp, her eyes unfocused. “There!” Morrig said jovially, beaming down at her. “That’s better, ain’t it? Now I’m just gonna start all over again.” He paused for a second, and then said brightly, “Evenin’, m’am! I’m sellin’ . . . uh . . .” He scratched his head, looking baffled, then brightened “. . . compukers!” He held up a sample case to show her; she stared dazedly at it. “Now I could go on and on about how swell these compukers are, but I can see you’re already anxious ta buy, so there ain’t no need ta waste yer valuable time like that. Ain’t that right?” When she didn’t answer, he frowned and gave her a little shake. “Ain’t that right?”
“A-aye,” she gibbered. “Aye!”
Morrig set her down, keeping only a light grip on her shoulder, and Barry broke out the sales forms. While she was scribbling frantically in the indicated blanks, Morrig rumbled, “And, say, now that we’re all gettin’ along so good, how’s about takin’ your spell offa my friend’s nose, just as a gesture a good will? You’ll do that little thing for me, won’tcha?”
With ill grace, the Hag obliged. There was a pop, and Barry exulted as he felt his nose shrink down to its original size. Part of the way home, anyway! He collected the sales forms and returned the receipts. “You can let go of her now,” he told Morrig.
Sullenly, the Hag stalked back into her house, slamming the door behind her. The door vanished, leaving only an expanse of blank wood. With a freight-train rumble, the whole house sank into the ground and disappeared from sight. Grass sprang up on the spot where the house had been, and started growing furiously.
Morrig chuckled. Before they could move on, another fairy woman darted out from an adjacent door. “What bought the Hag of Blackwater, so precious that straight she hastens to hide herself away with it from prying eyes?” the other fairy asked. “Must indeed be something wondrous rare, to make her cloister herself with such dispatch, like a mouse to its hole, and then pull the very hole in after her! Aye, she knew I’d be watching, I doubt not, the selfish old bitch! Ever has she been jealous of my Art. Fain am I to know what the Hag would keep from my sight. Let me see your wares.”
It was then that Barry had his master-stroke. “I’m sorry,” he said in his snidest voice, “but I’m afraid that I can’t show it to you. We’re selling these computers by exclusive license of the Queen, and of course we can’t sell them to just anyone. I’m afraid that we certainly couldn’t sell you one, so—”
“What!” the fairy spluttered. “No one is better connected at Court than I! You must let me buy! An you do not, the Queen’s majesty shall hear of this!”
“Well,” said Barry doubtfully, “I don’t know . . .”
###
Barry and Morrig made a great team. They were soon surrounded by a swarm of customers. The demand became so great that they had no trouble talking Snailface into taking his spell off Barry as part of the price of purchase. In fact, Snailface became so enthusiastic about computers that he bought six of them. Morrig had been right. Who cared what they used them for, so long as they bought them? That was their problem, wasn’t it?
In the end, they only quit because they had run out of sales forms.
Morrig had a new profession, and Barry returned to Earth a happy man.
###
Soon Barry had (with a little help from Morrig, who was still hard at work, back in Faërie) broken all previous company sales records, many times over. Barry had convinced the company that the flood-tide of new orders was really coming from heretofore untouched backwoods regions of West Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, and everyone agreed that it was simply amazing how many hillbillies out there in the Ozarks had suddenly decided that they wanted home computer systems. Business was booming. So, when, months later, the company opened a new branch office with great pomp and ceremony, Barry was there, in a place of honor.
The sales staff stood respectfully watching as the company president himself sat down to try out one of the gleaming new terminals. The president had started the company out of his basement when home computers were new and he was only a college dropout from Silicon Valley, and he was still proud of his programming skills.
But as the president punched figures into the keyboard, long, curling, purple moose antlers began to sprout from the top of his head.
The sales staff stood frozen in silent horror. Barry gasped; then, recovering swiftly, he reached over the president’s shoulder to hit the cancel key. The purple moose horns disappeared.
The Old Man looked up, puzzled. “Is anything wrong?”
“Only a glitch, sir,” Barry said smoothly. But his hand was trembling.
He was afraid that there were going to be more such glitches.
The way sales were booming—a lot more.
Evidently, the fairyfolk had finally figured out what computers were really for. And Barry suddenly seemed to hear, far back in his head, the silvery peals of malicious elven laughter.
It was a two-way system, after all . . .
AFTERWORD TO GOLDEN APPLES OF THE SUN
Michael’s account of the origin of this story is fundamenta
lly accurate, although I recall that it was preceded by some discussion about Jack’s announced desire to write a story that made use of his recent experiences as a door-to-door salesman. (Jack was then working for a cable TV company, doing door-to-door soliciting of people to have cable installed, and very successful he was at it, too; Jack, in fact, is a terrific salesman, able to sell almost anything to almost anybody—which is interesting, since it would be difficult to imagine two worse salesmen than Michael and me.) At any rate, when I made my joke about the Queen of the Fairies, it was immediately apparent to everyone that this dovetailed neatly with Jack’s desire to write a door-to-door salesman story, and the core idea and plot of the story developed rapidly.
Jack did the first partial draft of the story, and the bulk of the material throughout the door-to-door selling sequence is fundamentally his. Michael then did a draft of the story, extending the storyline, adding new plot elements—Morrig the Fearsome was wholly of Michael’s devising, for instance, although having him talk like a ‘30s Socialist or Labor Union Organizer was my idea—and finishing the story in rough draft.
I then did my usual unifying draft, working on the story pretty steadily for about a week even though I was laid up flat on my back in bed as a result of having suffered a major back-spasm. Although I did contribute some new sections of my own—most notably the scene in which Barry runs into Titania in a rundown roadside bar in South Jersey—it seems to me that my major contribution to the story was probably in fluffing up the texture here and there, and shining up the detail work. I spent a good deal of time working out the pseudo-Spenserian dialect most of the Faerie folk speak, for instance, and digging obscure references out of books of mythology and fairy lore—“By the Oak of Mughna”, “Cernunnos shrivel me”—for the characters to sprinkle through their dialogue. I also thought that a story set in Faërie should feature moments of wonder and lyricism as well as the funny stuff, and so I did my best to work some evocative touches in here and there, notably in the scene after Barry wakes up at the fountain and wanders off through the Faërie town. The fairy knight riding the bat-winged frog was solely Michael’s invention, and, of course, the hopping one-eyed creature is an old friend of Jack’s, to whom he has given employment in at least one other story.
Michael has told the story of our cutting the manuscript for Penthouse. The cut version was published in the March 1984 issue as “Virgin Territory,” a name none of us particularly liked (if it was intended to convey the wink wink nudge nudge impression that the story was salacious, there must have been a lot of disappointed Penthouse readers out there that month). The story was later picked up by Art Saha for The Year’s Best Fantasy Stories: 11, where it appeared under the original title, “Golden Apples of the Sun” (which someone at the magazine told me we couldn’t use because it “was a quote from a Ray Bradbury story”), with some of the cut material restored.
Michael has already claimed unblushing responsibility for the appalling pun concealed in the title—so be sure to blame him for it.
RUNNING WILD
JACK DANN
Between 1981 and 1985, I wrote ten stories with the talented people who appear between these covers.
How the hell did we do it?
We are all very private people, and our work habits are somewhat similar: we sit down at our respective desks, stare at our computer screens or blank typewriter pages, look for anything we can find to distract us from the agonizing task at hand, and then slowly—and with nightmarish visions of writer’s block a’dancing in our heads—we eke out the words. We work . . . and slowly, patiently rework.
Gardner is a night-person; his metabolism can still function at 4 a.m. Many a night, I’ve dozed on the couch to the tapping of his typewriter. The cats would be padding about, Gardner would be hunkered over his ancient Remington typewriter on the manuscript-strewn kitchen table, while cats navigated between the precarious piles and padded around the room, as if impatient for him to complete the story.
My habit is to be up at 6 a.m. I prefer the dusty morning light; the first taste of fresh coffee; my portable television playing silently on my desk; the words of a current story or novel an amber glow on the implacable, black CRT screen sitting atop my old executive desk. The whole day stretches before me, full of promise. The phone does not ring in the early hours, and if it does, my answering machine is set to one ring. And that’s how I work, eking out two to four pages a day, sitting alone and slowly, slowly pounding out the words.
But collaborations . . . indeed, they are a different animal altogether.
###
I remember a visit to Gardner and Sue’s apartment in Philadelphia in March of 1981. We had spent the weekend informally workshopping stories and novels, schmoozing, going downtown, eating at my favorite restaurants, seeing friends, and constantly talking shop. I suppose that this is about as close to writers’ heaven as we get. Memory serves me that the weekend was topped off by a party with Michael Swanwick, Marianne Porter, Tess Kissinger, and Bob Walters—however, Gardner doesn’t remember it that way. He thinks that, at best, Michael was the only other guest at the house that night. Well, taking the chance that I might be fictionalizing the past—something we all tend to do—this is the way I remember it:
While the party was in full swing (but then who knows, maybe it was just Michael sitting there, big-as-life, throwing spitballs at me), I was sitting at the kitchen table, typing furiously at a story that was to become “Down Among the Dead Men.”
Yet, when I’m writing at home, I can’t concentrate if the television downstairs is on too loud, much less work in the midst of a party. I tend to yell and “behave in a self-involved manner,” as my wife, Jeanne, puts it.
Could this be the same person who was sitting in Gardner and Sue’s living room and typing furiously on Gardner’s paleolithic typewriter while exchanging jokes, bad puns, and blunted witticisms with his friends?
The story I was writing, “Down Among the Dead Men,” is a grittily realistic horror story about life in a concentration camp. How could it have been written—or how could the first eight or nine pages have been written—under those circumstances?
Background: I had written a story entitled “Camps,” in 1979, which was quite popular. Gardner told me that he had an idea for a story set in a camp, and since I had already done the background work, it seemed to him that it would be a natural collaboration. His idea was of a vampire preying on other inmates. The difficulty was that he felt that the vampire should be an inmate rather than a guard.
My first reaction was very negative, but subtle, smooth, silver-tongued Gardner can be very persuasive. (Again, regarding the shifts memory can wreak with reality, Gardner recalls that I was initially enthusiastic about the idea; so here we are again!) He gently suggested I “just take a shot at it. Don’t worry about it, just write whatever comes into your head. We can fix everything up later.”
We were discussing it when the guests arrived; and in a fit of perverse humor, I sat down and began typing.
For, you see, I had nothing to lose.
And because there was a party going on, and because I wasn’t really taking this story seriously, the words flowed strong and fresh. I felt as if I were simply an observer watching the story unfold.
“Down Among the Dead Men” turned out to be one of our most serious stories, and perhaps one of the best. It dealt without compromise with difficult, explosive material; but perhaps the key here is that the idea of collaborating—no matter how difficult or wild or outre the material—fooled this writer into believing it would be easy to write.
As opposed to sweating blood eking out a novel or a solo story, I perceived this to be fun!
Why?
Because I was relieved of responsibility.
Everything I wrote could be fixed if need be.
This was complete, unadulterated freedom.
This was the way writing was supposed to be: a joyous exhalation of words, the pounding of fingers on keys, the rush o
f unfettered imagination without any worry about that leaden, ugly, fear-inspiring, ego-containing monster: craft.
But I had only fooled myself—or Gardner, that prestidigitator par excellence, had fooled me—into thinking that I could break all the ties that bind.
Whatever I fucked up could be fixed. So why worry?
And in fact it is true.
Once we had material to work with, everything could be fixed. But in those eight or nine pages that I typed so quickly that night, there was little that needed changing. For the craft that narrows and focuses you also sticks to you; you can no more shake it off than you can the flesh on your bones.
But for a while, when I was in the “trance of collaboration,” I thought I could shake all limits. I could write anything. As a result the words just bubbled up out of my unconscious. I had put the little man inside my head, my lifelong editor, to sleep for a short, precious while.
And that is a wonderful, one-of-a-kind, running wild, no-one-can-touch-me-now freedom.
I could do it because Gardner was there . . .
Just as in other collaborative stories Gardner and Michael and Jay and Sue and Jeanne and Barry were there.
Just as I’ve been there for them.
You simply can’t fall down . . .
Well, maybe you can; but if you do, if the story turns out to be bombsville, well you’re not alone, honey.
Sumbitch if that bomb of a story wasn’t Michael’s fault. Or Gardner’s fault. Or Sue’s fault.
Because my part was just fine (even if I can’t tell which part mine was)!
###
I’ve been on both sides of collaborations . . . and in the middle, too! I am more comfortable with the first stage, doing the original draft, for then I don’t have to muck around with anyone else’s words. But before any words are put to paper, the idea is expanded into a plot. Difficult as plotting might be when one is working alone, there is a certain synergy that develops when you start brainstorming with others. Ideas seem to take fire. Someone offers a suggestion; another runs with it. And somehow plot, theme, character, and background begin to take form.
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