The Best of Connie Willis

by Connie Willis

  “If they lived,” I said. “If somebody didn’t shoot them.”

  “I can’t let you go to the post office anymore,” he said. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “What about Mrs. Talbot’s magazines?”

  “Go check on the fire,” he said.

  I went back inside. David had come back and was standing by the fireplace again, looking at the wall. Mom had set up the card table and the folding chairs in front of the fireplace. Mrs. Talbot was in the kitchen cutting up potatoes, only it looked like it was onions the way she was crying.

  The fire had practically gone out. I stuck a couple of wadded-up magazine pages in to get it going again. The fire flared up with a brilliant blue and green. I tossed a couple of pinecones and some sticks onto the burning paper. One of the pinecones rolled off to the side and lay there in the ashes. I grabbed for it and hit my hand on the door of the stove.

  Right in the same place. Great. The blister would pull the old scab off and we could start all over again. And of course Mom was standing right there, holding the pan of potato soup. She put it on the top of the stove and grabbed up my hand like it was evidence in a crime or something. She didn’t say anything, she just stood there holding it and blinking.

  “I burned it,” I said. “I just burned it.”

  She touched the edges of the old scab, like she was afraid of catching something.

  “It’s a burn,” I shouted, snatching my hand back and cramming David’s stupid logs into the stove. “It isn’t radiation sickness. It’s just a burn!”

  “Do you know where your father is, Lynn?” she said as if she hadn’t even heard me.

  “He’s out on the back porch,” I said, “building his stupid greenhouse.”

  “He’s gone,” she said. “He took Stitch with him.”

  “He can’t have taken Stitch,” I said. “He’s afraid of the dark.” She didn’t say anything. “Do you know how dark it is out there?”

  “Yes,” she said, and went and looked out the window. “I know how dark it is.”

  I got my parka off the hook by the fireplace and started out the door.

  David grabbed my arm. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  I wrenched away from him. “To find Stitch. He’s afraid of the dark.”

  “It’s too dark,” he said. “You’ll get lost.”

  “So what? It’s safer than hanging around this place,” I said and slammed the door shut on his hand.

  I made it halfway to the woodpile before he grabbed me again, this time with his other hand. I should have gotten them both with the door.

  “Let me go,” I said. “I’m leaving. I’m going to go find some other people to live with.”

  “There aren’t any other people! For Christ’s sake, we went all the way to South Park last winter. There wasn’t anybody. We didn’t even see those looters. And what if you run into them, the looters that shot Mr. Talbot?”

  “What if I do? The worst they could do is shoot me. I’ve been shot at before.”

  “You’re acting crazy, you know that, don’t you?” he said. “Coming in here out of the clear blue, taking potshots at everybody with that crazy letter!”

  “Potshots!” I said, so mad I was afraid I was going to start crying. “Potshots! What about last summer? Who was taking potshots then?”

  “You didn’t have any business taking the shortcut,” David said. “Dad told you never to come that way.”

  “Was that any reason to try and shoot me? Was that any reason to kill Rusty?”

  David was squeezing my arm so hard I thought he was going to snap it right in two. “The looters had a dog with them. We found its tracks all around Mr. Talbot. When you took the shortcut and we heard Rusty barking, we thought you were the looters.” He looked at me. “Mom’s right. Paranoia’s the number-one killer. We were all a little crazy last summer. We’re all a little crazy all the time, I guess, and then you pull a stunt like bringing that letter home, reminding everybody of everything that’s happened, of everybody we’ve lost …” He let go of my arm and looked down at his hand like he didn’t even know he’d practically broken my arm.

  “I told you,” I said. “I found it while I was looking for a magazine. I thought you’d all be glad I found it.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll bet.”

  He went inside and I stayed out a long time, waiting for Dad and Stitch. When I came in, nobody even looked up. Mom was still standing at the window. I could see a star over her head. Mrs. Talbot had stopped crying and was setting the table. Mom dished up the soup and we all sat down. While we were eating, Dad came in.

  He had Stitch with him. And all the magazines. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Talbot,” he said. “If you’d like, I’ll put them under the house and you can send Lynn for them one at a time.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I don’t feel like reading them anymore.”

  Dad put the magazines on the couch and sat down at the card table. Mom dished him up a bowl of soup. “I got the seeds,” he said. “The tomato seeds had gotten soaked, but the corn and squash were okay.”

  He looked at me. “I had to board up the post office, Lynn,” he said. “You understand that, don’t you, that I can’t let you go there anymore? It’s just too dangerous.”

  “I told you,” I said. “I found it. While I was looking for a magazine.”

  “The fire’s going out,” he said.

  After they shot Rusty I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere for a month for fear they’d shoot me when I came home, not even when I promised to take the long way around. But then Stitch showed up and nothing happened and they let me start going again. I went every day till the end of summer and after that whenever they’d let me. I must have looked through every pile of mail a hundred times before I found the letter from the Clearys. Mrs. Talbot was right about the post office. The letter was in somebody else’s box.

  Afterword for “A Letter from the Clearys”

  I wrote “A Letter from the Clearys” when we were living in a town in the Rocky Mountains called Woodland Park, up the pass from Colorado Springs. Woodland Park was at that time a little town with dirt roads, lots of pine trees, aspens, and wildflowers, and a gorgeous view of Pikes Peak.

  What it didn’t have was home mail delivery. I had to walk up to the post office to get the mail. With my dog. So I suppose you can figure out where I got the idea for the story.

  But I also remember the post office for what was the worst day of my writing life up till then, and one of the worst two or three of my whole career. In those days you had to mail your manuscript in to the magazine instead of e-mailing it, and you had to enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) so the editor could send it back to you with a rejection slip attached.

  Since this meant numerous trips to the post office, I used to buy extra stamps and make out two manila envelopes and two SASEs at the same time, one for the magazine I was sending it to and a second set for the magazine I’d send it to after the first one rejected it.

  I got lots of rejection slips in those days (usually literally a slip of paper only an inch wide with “We are sorry, but your manuscript does not meet the needs of our publication” typed on it), but I was always able to keep my spirits up by telling myself that even though this one had been rejected, there was still a chance I might sell the one I had out to Galileo. Or to Asimov’s.

  But on this particular day when I went to get the mail, I found not a rejected manuscript, but a yellow slip telling me to go to the counter. Oh, goody, I thought. My grandmother’s sent me a present, and traipsed up to the counter to collect it.

  It wasn’t a present, or even a package. It was a stack of manila envelopes with my handwriting on them, all eight of the stories I had had out at the time, all rejected. Not a single one left at Omni or F and SF for me to convince myself I might sell.

  Hmm, I thought on the long walk home. Maybe they’re trying to tell me something. And the something was obviously that I
should quit, give up, stop making an idiot of myself, and go back to teaching school.

  What saved me from doing just that was those already made-out and stamped envelopes and SASEs. I mean, stamps were expensive, and what would it hurt to send everything out one last time?

  Luckily, one of the stories in that batch—“The Child Who Cries for the Moon”—sold to an anthology, A Spadeful of Spacetime, which encouraged me enough that I kept writing till I eventually sold to Galileo, and to Asimov’s and Omni and F and SF. And till I wrote “A Letter from the Clearys” and “Fire Watch,” which won the Nebula. And changed the whole course of my life.

  But it was close. And even though it sounds like a funny little anecdote now, there was nothing funny about it at all when it happened.

  So, to any struggling young writers who may be reading this, my message to you is, “Keep slogging on no matter how many rejection slips you get or how discouraged you are.” Or, as my hero Winston Churchill would put it, “Never, never, never give up.”

  AT THE RIALTO

  Seriousness of mind was a prerequisite for understanding Newtonian physics. I am not convinced it is not a handicap in understanding quantum theory.

  —EXCERPT FROM DR. GEDANKEN’S KEYNOTE ADDRESS TO THE 1989

  INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF QUANTUM PHYSICISTS ANNUAL

  MEETING, HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA

  I got to Hollywood around one-thirty and started trying to check into the Rialto. “Sorry, we don’t have any rooms,” the girl behind the desk said. “We’re all booked up with some science thing.”

  “I’m with the science thing,” I said. “Dr. Ruth Baringer. I reserved a double.”

  “There are a bunch of Republicans here, too, and a tour group from Finland. They told me when I started work here that they got all these movie people, but the only one so far was that guy who played the friend of that other guy in that one movie. You’re not a movie person, are you?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m with the science thing. Dr. Ruth Baringer.”

  “My name’s Tiffany,” she said. “I’m not actually a hotel clerk at all. I’m just working here to pay for my transcendental posture lessons. I’m really a model/actress.”

  “I’m a quantum physicist,” I said, trying to get things back on track. “The name is Ruth Baringer.”

  She messed with the computer for a minute. “I don’t show a reservation for you.”

  “Maybe it’s in Dr. Mendoza’s name. I’m sharing a room with her.”

  She messed with the computer some more. “I don’t show a reservation for her, either. Are you sure you don’t want the Disneyland Hotel? A lot of people get the two confused.”

  “I want the Rialto,” I said, rummaging through my bag for my notebook. “I have a confirmation number. W37420.”

  She typed it in. “Are you Dr. Gedanken?” she asked.

  “Excuse me,” an elderly man said.

  “I’ll be right with you,” Tiffany told him. “How long do you plan to stay with us, Dr. Gedanken?” she asked me.

  “Excuse me,” the man said, sounding desperate. He had bushy white hair and a dazed expression, as if he had just been through a horrific experience. Or had been trying to check in to the Rialto.

  He wasn’t wearing any socks. I wondered if he was Dr. Gedanken. Dr. Gedanken was the main reason I’d decided to come to the meeting. I had missed his lecture on wave/particle duality last year, but I had read the text of it in the ICQP Journal, and it had actually seemed to make sense, which is more than you can say for most of quantum theory. He was giving the keynote address this year, and I was determined to hear it.

  It wasn’t Dr. Gedanken. “My name is Dr. Whedbee,” the elderly man said. “You gave me the wrong room.”

  “All our rooms are pretty much the same,” Tiffany said. “Except for how many beds they have in them and stuff.”

  “My room has a person in it!” he said. “Dr. Sleeth. From the University of Texas at Austin. She was changing her clothes.” His hair seemed to get wilder as he spoke. “She thought I was a serial killer.”

  “And your name is Dr. Whedbee?” Tiffany asked, fooling with the computer again. “I don’t show a reservation for you.”

  Dr. Whedbee began to cry.

  Tiffany got out a paper towel, wiped off the counter, and turned back to me. “May I help you?” she asked.

  Thursday, 7:30–9 P.M. Opening Ceremonies. Dr. Halvard Onofrio, University of Maryland at College Park, will speak on the topic, “Doubts Surrounding the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.” Ballroom.

  I finally got my room at five-thirty after Tiffany went off duty. Till then I sat around the lobby with Dr. Whedbee, listening to Abey Fields complain about Hollywood.

  “What’s wrong with Racine?” he said. “Why do we always have to go to these exotic places, like Hollywood? And St. Louis last year wasn’t much better. The Institut Henri Poincaré people kept going off to see the arch and Busch Stadium.”

  “Speaking of St. Louis,” Dr. Takumi said, “have you seen David yet?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Oh, really?” she said. “Last year at the annual meeting you two were practically inseparable. Moonlight riverboat rides and all.”

  “What’s on the programming tonight?” I said to Abey.

  “David was just here,” Dr. Takumi said. “He said to tell you he was going out to look at the stars in the sidewalk.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” Abey said. “Riverboat rides and movie stars. What do those things have to do with quantum theory? Racine would have been an appropriate setting for a group of physicists. Not like this … this … Do you realize we’re practically across the street from Grauman’s Chinese Theatre? And Hollywood Boulevard’s where all those gangs hang out. If they catch you wearing red or blue, they’ll—” He stopped. “Is that Dr. Gedanken?” he asked, staring at the front desk.

  I turned and looked. A short roundish man with a mustache was trying to check in. “No,” I said. “That’s Dr. Onofrio.”

  “Oh, yes,” Abey said, consulting his program book. “He’s speaking tonight at the opening ceremonies. On the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Are you going?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said, which was supposed to be a joke, but Abey didn’t laugh.

  “I must meet Dr. Gedanken. He’s just gotten funding for a new project.”

  I wondered what Dr. Gedanken’s new project was—I would have loved to work with him.

  “I’m hoping he’ll come to my workshop on the wonderful world of quantum physics,” Abey said, still watching the desk. Amazingly enough, Dr. Onofrio seemed to have gotten a key and was heading for the elevators. “I think his project has something to do with understanding quantum theory.”

  Well, that let me out. I didn’t understand quantum theory at all. I sometimes had a sneaking suspicion nobody else did, either, including Abey Fields, and that they just weren’t willing to admit it.

  I mean, an electron is a particle except it acts like a wave. In fact, a neutron acts like two waves and interferes with itself (or each other), and you can’t really measure any of this stuff properly because of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and that isn’t the worst of it. When you set up a Josephson junction to figure out what rules the electrons obey, they sneak past the barrier to the other side, and they don’t seem to care much about the limits of the speed of light, either, and Schrödinger’s cat is neither alive nor dead till you open the box, and it all makes about as much sense as Tiffany’s calling me Dr. Gedanken.

  Which reminded me, I had promised to call Darlene and give her our room number. I didn’t have a room number, but if I waited much longer, she’d have left. She was flying to Denver to speak at C.U. and then coming on to Hollywood sometime tomorrow morning. I interrupted Abey in the middle of his telling me how beautiful Racine was in the winter and went to call her.

  “I don’t have a room yet,” I said when she answered. “Should I leave a message on your
answering machine, or do you want to give me your number in Denver?”

  “Never mind all that,” Darlene said. “Have you seen David yet?”

  To illustrate the problems of the concept of wave function, Dr. Schrödinger imagines a cat being put into a box with a piece of uranium, a bottle of poison gas, and a Geiger counter. If a uranium nucleus disintegrates while the cat is in the box, it will release radiation, which will set off the Geiger counter and break the bottle of poison gas. Since it is impossible in quantum theory to predict whether a uranium nucleus will disintegrate while the cat is in the box, and only possible to calculate uranium’s probable half-life, the cat is neither alive nor dead until we open the box.

  —FROM “THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF QUANTUM PHYSICS,” A

  SEMINAR PRESENTED AT THE ICQP ANNUAL MEETING BY A. FIELDS,

  PH.D., UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA AT WAHOO

  I completely forgot to warn Darlene about Tiffany, the model-slash-actress.

  “What do you mean, you’re trying to avoid David?” she had asked me at least three times. “Why would you do a stupid thing like that?”

  Because in St. Louis I ended up on a riverboat in the moonlight and didn’t make it back until the conference was over.

  “Because I want to attend the programming,” I said the third time around, “not a wax museum. I am a middle-aged woman.”

  “And David is a middle-aged man, who, I might add, is absolutely charming. In fact, he may be the last charming man left in the universe.”

  “Charm is for quarks,” I said and hung up, feeling smug until I remembered I hadn’t told her about Tiffany. I went back to the front desk, thinking maybe Dr. Onofrio’s success signaled a change.

  Tiffany asked, “May I help you?” and left me standing there.

  After a while I gave up and went back to the red and gold sofas. “David was here again,” Dr. Takumi said. “He said to tell you he was going to the wax museum.”