by IGMS
"Then what good is it?" asked Pat.
"Not much," said Danny. "All I can do is try to keep the damage to a minimum."
"So what's your choice?" said Hermia. "My Family's on the way here right now, you can count on that. If you're going to choose not to stand with Danny, then he's got to get you away from here before they come. Go get in your cars and drive away and forget you ever knew Danny. Don't do anything to tip off the Families that you're his friends, or you'll end up as hostages. Get it?"
"Shit," said Sin. "That's just -- that's terrible."
"Exactly," said Hermia.
"Why did you make a Great Gate, man?" asked Hal.
"Because I'm a servant of spacetime," said Danny. "Because it's what I was born for. Because I faced a powerful enemy and beat him. Because I'm stupid."
"There's a feeble chance," said Hermia, "that it will be better. For instance, Danny's father and mother, if they went through a Great Gate, maybe they'd come back and use their power to destroy all the nuclear weapons in the world."
"Could they do that?" asked Hal.
"The question is, would they," said Hermia. "The Families don't have a history of trying to make life better for the drowthers."
"Drowthers -- that's us?" asked Xena.
"It sounds like the N word," said Pat.
"It's exactly like the N word, the way most people in the Families use it," said Danny. "But some of us want to use our power to protect you."
"Don't let them through the gate, man," said Hal.
"I told you how they'll make him do it," said Hermia.
"Then kill yourself first," said Hal. "That's what I'd do."
The words hung in the air.
"Maybe you would," said Danny. "But I'm not that kind of hero. I'm not any kind of hero."
"'With great power comes great responsibility,'" intoned Wheeler.
"If only," said Danny. "In the real world, with great power comes great suffering -- by the people who don't have the power."
"I wasn't kidding," said Hal. "You shouldn't exist. If you didn't exist, things would keep on going the way they have been since 632 or whenever."
"Spacetime would only create another like me," said Danny. "And maybe the next guy would be even worse than me."
"He did use his power to help us," said Laurette.
"You were knocking Coach Bleeder on his ass," said Hal.
"Yes," said Danny. "And making him drop his watch."
"To protect me?" asked Hal.
"And because it was funny," said Danny.
"It was funny," said Hal.
"Are you going to destroy the world, Danny?" asked Sin.
"I hope not," said Danny. "Here's what I hope. I hope that the Families will unite to use their power to stop all wars, to stop all the terrorists, to put an end to all the shit."
"Did they ever do that before, back before the gates were closed?" asked Hal.
"No," said Danny.
"Why would it be any different now?" said Hal.
"Because Danny's here," said Hermia. "If one of the Family starts acting like Stalin or Pol Pot or Idi Amin, Danny has the power to gate him to the bottom of the Atlantic, and they know it. They've got no way to stop him. As long as Danny's alive, he has a chance to keep it all under control."
"So you're going to be, like, the god of all gods," said Hal.
Danny sat down. "Yeah," he said.
"Plus graduate from high school on schedule," said Hal.
"Maybe I'm not going to be able to pull that off," said Danny.
"Why did you ever think you could?" asked Pat.
"Because I didn't know I could make a Great Gate when I came here," said Danny. "I didn't know anything. I just wanted to be normal."
Hal made a weighing motion with his hands. "Normal, or supreme god. Supreme god, or normal. So hard to decide." Then Hal reached out his hand to Danny. Offering a handshake.
"I'm in," said Hal.
"In what?"
"In the same shit soup as you," said Hal. "I'm your messenger. Or servant. Or whatever you need. I think you're a good guy. I think if anybody's going to have this kind of power, I'd rather it be you than anybody else I can think of, except maybe Winston Churchill, and he's dead."
Danny solemnly took his hand.
"So Hal gets to be your righthand man," said Wheeler. "Just because he was willing to talk to you when you came to Perry McCluer High."
"Because he's my friend," said Danny, "and he volunteered."
"Well I volunteer too," said Wheeler.
And in a few moments, they had all agreed.
"So get in your cars," said Danny, "and get away from here."
"I thought that was what we'd do if we said no," said Laurette.
"I don't want Hermia's people to know about you. Not yet. Go. You're my friends. Your intervention worked. We've told you everything that we know. We didn't pretty it up. And you chose to stand with me. So the first thing is, if I say get out of here, you get out. So they can't use you as hostages to control me."
They nodded.
"Don't act like drowthers," said Hermia impatiently. "He doesn't want nodding. He wants going!"
And with that, Danny gated them all, one at a time, out to the cars.
After a moment of disorientation and confusion, they scrambled into the cars and drove away.
"That was what you wanted, wasn't it?" asked Hermia. "You wanted me to tell them, right?"
"I didn't know that's what I wanted until you did it," said Danny. "But yes. They asked for the truth. They're not children, they're people. They deserve to have the knowledge to choose for themselves."
"They made a stupid decision," said Hermia.
"True," said Danny. "But all the decisions are stupid. I've made nothing but stupid decisions. You too."
Hermia grinned. "When there aren't any smart decisions, I suppose you just have to pick the stupid decision you like best."
"Your Family is coming, right?" asked Danny.
"I can't imagine they're not."
"Then it's time to move to a different location," said Danny.
"It's time for me to move to one place, and you to another," said Hermia. "Until we're ready to set up the meeting we want. Because they'll always know where I am, and we don't want them to know where you are."
So Danny gated Hermia to a place she knew in Paris. Then he wrote a note to the Greeks and left it on the table in his own little house in Buena Vista.
"I will let you send two people through a Great Gate," said the note. "Go home and wait for my messenger. After today, anybody from any Family who comes to this town will be sent to the Moon. Leave now."
Danny opened the front door, so they wouldn't have to break it down. No reason for the landlord to lose money.
Then Danny gated to Washington, DC, then on to Staunton, to Lexington, and then to Naples, Florida, gathering in his gates behind him so they couldn't trace him if they happened to have a gatesniffer that Hermia didn't know about.
Veevee knew at once that he had come through a gate into her condo. She came up from the beach through the gate he had left there for her. "Just in time for the season finale of The Good Wife," she said.
"Is that a TV show?" asked Danny.
"It's pure fantasy," she said. "There are no good wives."
"What about good husbands?" asked Danny.
"We'll see -- when you grow up. Want a sandwich?"
"I'll make my own," he said. "We told all my friends about what I can do."
"Well, that was selfish and stupid of you."
"They insisted," said Danny.
"That was stupid of them, but they didn't know what they were asking. You have no excuse."
"I know," said Danny. "But other people are going to be involved whether we like it or not. Might as well have some of them on our team, on purpose, by their own choice."
Veevee shrugged, then laughed. "It's going to be so entertaining, to see how this all comes out. Right up to the moment
when everything goes up in smoke."
"We're gods," said Danny. "What could go wrong?"
[To be continued in Issue 31]
InterGalactic Interview With Stanley Schmidt
by Darrell Schweitzer
* * *
Dr. Stanley Schmidt has been a professor of physics at Heidelberg College in Tiffin, Ohio. He began to publish science fiction, in Analog, in 1968. His first novel, The Sins of the Fathers, was serialized there November 1973-January 1974. His other novels include Newton and the Quasi-Apple, Lifeboat Earth, Tweedlioop, and Argonaut. He has been editor of Analog since 1978 and been nominated for the Hugo Award every year since. He has also edited numerous anthologies, most of them derived from Analog. He has recently announced his retirement from Analog and his intention to get back to more writing.
SCHWEITZER: Describe something of your background. Introduce yourself to the readers.
SCHMIDT: These days probably most people think of me as "the editor of Analog," but while I'm uncommonly pleased to be that, I still think of myself as a writer who currently edits, and take any chance to remind people that I'm a writer too, even though they don't see me in that role as often. According to readers' polls (and then-editor Ben Bova), I was one of Analog's most popular contributors during the 1970s, having begun selling stories here while I was in graduate school (and not sure whether I was allowed to be doing it). Since becoming editor, I've still published occasional stories (sometimes here, more often elsewhere), and several books, including five novels, some nonfiction, and a bunch of anthologies. Editing the magazine takes a lot of time and the same kind of energy that I need for fiction writing, so I haven't been very prolific in that department lately. But eventually I hope to get back to doing more of my own writing, conspicuously including fiction. In the meantime, I can't resist mentioning that most of my earlier books are still available, either from the original publishers or as print-on-demand or e-books through FoxAcre Press.
SCHWEITZER: How did you get interested in science fiction, and at what point did you realize this was going to be a major part of your life's work?
SCHMIDT: When I was about nine years old, my father (a third-generation reader of Astounding) commented that while I was reading a wide variety of nonfiction from the bookmobile that came to my rural school once a month, he thought it would be good to have some fiction in the mix, too. "I've tried," I told him. "It's boring."
"Maybe you should try some good science fiction," he said.
"You mean the crazy stuff with the rockets and robots?" I said (having been somewhat brainwashed by the prevalent attitudes of the early fifties, even though he'd taken me to see Destination Moon and I was fascinated by his comment that this was stuff that could really happen).
"It's not all crazy," he said. He handed me three volumes of early Astoundings that his uncle had bound and said, "Read what's at the bookmarks." I did, and two Weinbaums and a Padgett later I was hooked for life.
I didn't try writing SF until the seventh grade, when I had a friend with similar interests and aptitudes and we egged each other on. But I had started writing fiction much earlier, when a wise second-grade teacher encouraged me to write stories instead of wasting time rehashing material I already knew. Those were mostly about things like big-game hunting in Africa (adventure in exotic environments, even if not SF!), and she sometimes sent me to the principal's office to let him read them.
By the ninth grade I had become sufficiently emboldened, and learned enough about the procedures, to start submitting stories, which, not surprisingly, got only printed rejection slips. I kept doing so off and on in the next few years, with the idea that someday I might learn enough and/or get lucky enough to sell one. I knew enough about the realities of trying to make a living as a writer that I never expected to do so, but I did see it as an enjoyable sideline for the indefinite future, and if it happened to generate some income too, that would be a bonus. From junior high on, my career plan was to be a physics professor, teaching and researching for a living, while freelancing as a writer and musician but not trying to rely on either as a primary income source.
And, though I never dreamed that I would actually get the chance to do it, the thought did cross my mind that John W. Campbell's job must be a lot of fun.
SCHWEITZER: Let's talk a little about what you did before becoming editor of Analog.
SCHMIDT: I grew up in southwestern Ohio, with periods in urban, rural, and suburban surroundings, and up to a point pretty much followed the plan I've already sketched. I majored in physics at the University of Cincinnati, got a Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve, and got a job (which I liked much better than I expected to) as an assistant professor of physics at Heidelberg College (now Heidelberg University) in Tiffin, Ohio -- while continuing, as planned, to freelance as a writer and musician. I started Heidelberg's first courses in astronomy and science fiction, teaching the latter with methods shamelessly stolen from John Campbell and his successor Ben Bova. That had the side effect that in the process of helping my students learn about SF, I was also teaching myself to be a Campbell-style editor. I enticed Ben out as a guest speaker and to visit my class, and he says that's what made him want me to replace him when he left as editor.
Ben was an important influence in other ways, too. He encouraged me to write my first novel, The Sins of the Fathers, and I had what may have been the first-ever sabbatical for the purpose of writing an SF novel: Lifeboat Earth, a sequel to Sins, much of which appeared as a series of novellas in Analog before it all came out as a book.
One of the requirements for being granted a sabbatical was an agreement to stay with the college for at least three years afterward. Ben left Analog just one year later, so while I really wanted his job, I feared I would have trouble getting out of my faculty contract at Heidelberg. It was a gratifying and humbling surprise to have fans who happened to be lawyers coming up to me at a convention that summer and offering their services gratis if I needed help. As it turned out, I didn't: fortunately (for me, if not for anyone else) the college (like many) was having financial problems then, and I think they were glad to get rid of anybody they could without a lawsuit.
SCHWEITZER: How much do you think you were influenced, as a writer, by John Campbell before you came to have his job?
SCHMIDT: Immensely. I had always enjoyed reading stories from many sources, but Astounding/Analog was the one for which I felt a special affinity. In reading its stories (and John's editorials) I was constantly trying to understand how the pieces I especially liked achieved what they did, with an eye toward learning to do something comparable of my own. When I finally caught John's eye enough that he started giving me personal feedback, I learned more about storytelling from his first half dozen rejection letters and a few long conversations than from all the classes and books I'd seen before. And not just writing: the way he worked with me as a writer was the main model for the way I now work with other writers (though there are some significant differences between his style and mine).
SCHWEITZER: Well, technically what you got was Ben Bova's job, but you must have felt the ghost of John Campbell at your shoulder when you became editor. Was it like that? Were readers expecting you to be John Campbell? I know Ben has told some funny stories about how some of them refused to believe Campbell was dead, and Analog would get letters along the lines of, "Hey John, this Bova character seems to be intercepting your mail."
SCHMIDT: There were times when I would have liked nothing better than to have John's ghost at my shoulder; I would have liked to ask his advice. But I'm reasonably sure it would have been, "You're on your own, kid."
Lloyd Biggle once told me somebody asked him, "But can Schmidt fill Campbell's shoes?" I liked Lloyd's answer: "He doesn't need to. He has his own shoes."
But of course there were some funny incidents involving readers not understanding or accepting a changing of the guard. I got occasional letters addressed to John for at least the first ten years. And I immediately started gettin
g letters lambasting me for ruining the magazine, even though for the first few issues I was running almost entirely on inventory I inherited from Ben. It was at least five months before readers saw an issue that was actually "all mine."
SCHWEITZER: Since Analog, more than any other extant science fiction magazine, has an enormous weight of tradition behind it, how did you balance that tradition with a need to keep up with the SF field and the times? The wrong editor could either change the magazine so much he alienated the core readership, or allow it to turn into a fossil. Obviously you have done neither.
SCHMIDT: I've never felt particularly respectful of, or bound by, either tradition or a need to "keep up with the times" (in this or any other field). But I do view the magazine as having a core personality that maintains a certain continuity even as it evolves with passing time -- just as any human being does. The reason it works, I think, is that I'm as close as you can find to a "typical Analog reader" (not that there really is any such thing). My basic philosophy has been to try to make the magazine the one that I would like to read if I had to buy my own subscriptions and could only afford one. I would not stay long with a magazine that either kept doing the same thing over and over, or kept haring off in all directions just for the sake of novelty or because somebody else was doing it.
SCHWEITZER: How did you also manage to keep up the Analog tradition of unorthodox science without slipping down the slippery slope that leads to Dianetics, the Dean Drive, and the Hieronymus Machine?
SCHMIDT: I share John's interest in giving exposure to unpopular or "non- establishment" ideas that look as if they might have some merit, but I'm less inclined to getting all enthusiastic about things that haven't really made a very strong case for themselves -- perhaps at least partly because I spent more time than he did actually working as a physicist. I recognize that scientists can get so locked into a generally accepted way of thinking that they need to be shaken up by being exposed to something else from time to time.