Again, Dangerous Visions

by edited by Harlan Ellison

  Terry Carr, through dint of sheer hard work, became the very best book editor we ever had.

  Now the Specials are dead, and Terry is back on a freelance basis. But who he is, and what he did, will live on.

  As editor, Terry brought forth the following excellent collections:

  Science Fiction for People Who Hate Science Fiction (Doubleday, 1966; Funk & Wagnalls, 1968)

  New Worlds of Fantasy 1/2/3 (Ace, 1967, 1970, 1971)

  The Others (Gold Medal, 1969)

  On Our Way to the Future (Ace, 1970)

  Universe ½ (Ace, 1971, 1972)

  and in collaboration with long-time Ace editor Donald A. Wollheim he edited the superior series of World's Best Science Fiction (1965–71) from Ace. This series alone, had Terry never worked on any other anthology, made his name and gave him the deserved stature all science fiction fandom has bestowed on him. For, early in the game, Terry and Don's "best" became the definitive "best," despite other editors' claims to the contrary.

  As writer, Terry wrote Warlord of Kor (Ace, 1963) and co-wrote a novel he wishes to be forgotten. Threats of kidnapping and tickling to death his writer wife, Carol, could not extract the title of the book from Mr. Carr, and so, apart from some students at William Rainey Harper College in Palatine, Illinois who know, the information will go to Mr. Carr's grave and the out-of-print department of Monarch Books. Perhaps that's for the best. One never knows.

  As writer, he penned a great short story, "The Dance of the Changer and the Three", which was nominated in 1969 for both Hugo and Nebula, though this editor beat him out for the former and Kate Wilhelm took the latter. Mr. Carr has consistently carped about this experience, claiming all manner of dark and ugly chicane was involved in his upset. Even noble editors can be spoil-sports, it would seem.

  Now, Carr, what have you to say for yourself?

  "Born Grants Pass, Oregon, February 19, 1937, which means I'm over 30 but was still under the mark when the original caution about who's trustworthy was made. February 19 also means I'm Aquarius or Pisces, depending on what authority you believe. My life is marked by inconsistencies like that, if it's marked by anything. Lived in the hills of Oregon for my first five years—real country stuff, with my father gold mining on the property and all. We moved to San Francisco after Pearl Harbor and that's where I did most of my growing up. College at S. F. City College for two years, where I was taking a course in space flight before Sputnik, and learned all about weather balloons. More college at University of California at Berkeley, during a time when the administration was scolding the students for their apathy, ahaha. I was apathetic too, and didn't graduate; got married instead. It didn't last, and after the breakup in 1961 I moved to New York where, having no better profession, I tried writing for a living. Astounded myself more than anyone by selling everything I wrote, but was still starving due to not writing enough, a familiar story. Went to work as a literary agent for a year and a half but didn't like it, so I jumped at the chance for an editorial position at Ace Books when Don Wollheim offered it. Worked there for seven years. Job vanished in 1971, along with large chunks of the country, during the Great Recession that seems to have been a reality for everyone except Mr. Nixon.

  "Discovered science fiction initially by stumbling across Balmer & Wylie's WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE in the school library while looking for a book on astronomy; it had been misfiled, but after reading it I didn't complain. A few months later I found a couple of back issues of Amazing Stories in a city dump, and from there it was downhill the rest of the way. Got involved in science fiction fandom when I was twelve, became one of the most voluminous fan publishers ever, until professional things left me without time for it. Five Hugo nominations for best fan magazine, but only one win, that being co-edited with the late Ron Ellik. Later had Nebula and Hugo nominations for a short story, 'The Dance of the Changer and the Three,' but was beaten by dirty politics in both cases. Don't print that.

  "I'm 6'3", 185 pounds, brown hair, hazel eyes, no birthmarks except a couple of slight identations behind the ears as a result of being born a forceps baby; you'd have trouble finding them, though, unless I showed you, so they're no good for any FBI dossier that may exist. Have been married for lo these ten years to Carol Carr, who's pretty and sexy and funny and manages to write even less than I do, which is a wonder. What else do you want to know?"

  Incidentally, Terry informs me—and you—that he will no longer be editing World's Best Science Fiction with Donald Wollheim, but will be initiating a new series of "best" volumes for Ballantine Books.

  OZYMANDIAS

  Terry Carr

  They came up out of the groundstars howling and leaping, laughing and pushing, singing into the night a strange, tuneless, polyphonal chant. They proceeded past the markers and twice around them, still giggling and chanting, and spread out in a wavering line that went up the hill like a snake. It took them ten minutes to go from the markers to the boundary, a distance of no more than fifty paces for a walker—but these were not walkers, they were robbers, and they had the laws to follow.

  Sooleyrah was in the lead, because he was the best dancer among them—the most graceful and quick and, even more important, the most inventive. No approach to the vaults could be made in just the same way any had been made before, and if the watcher, who was always second in line, noticed a pattern developing that he thought he might have seen before, it was his job to trip the leader, or shove him, or kick him, or whatever was necessary to shake him into a new rhythm or direction. On those raids when the leader invented enough new variations, and the watcher made sure there were no repeats from the past, then they had a successful raid. When leader and watcher failed, there were explosions, blindings, gases, and sometimes the sound-without-sound, and then there was death.

  But Sooleyrah was in good form tonight, and even Kreech, who was watcher, had to admit that.

  "Go good," he chanted. "Go good, good, good, go good." Then he tripped Sooleyrah, but only for the fun of it, and danced in a circle till the leader bounded up and continued.

  "Watchers got easy, yeah easy," Sooleyrah sang. "Easy trip leader, no reason; damn no reason." He did a double-back step, and whirled, his flying foot narrowly missing Kreech's mouth.

  "Reason next time," he sang, and laughed.

  Behind him, Kreech did the whirling step, just missing the next in line, and he too laughed; then the third man followed it, and the kick and laugh traveled back down the hill, undulating in the darkness. Sooleyrah, slim and graceful and dark-bearded, did a slide, three jumps, then rolled on the ground, leading always upward, toward the vaults. They stood black and distant against the night sky at hillcrest, jagged storehouses of darkness.

  "Don't matter anyway," Kreech told him. "Don't matter, Sooleyrah, don't leader matter. Go good, go bad, no difference." He rolled, following Sooleyrah up the hill, and the small bells he carried in his tattered shirt pocket tinkled dully. "You heard he said, don't matter."

  "Hell damn, yeah," Sooleyrah sang. "Damn yeah, damn fat boy, damn he knows." He paused, straining on tiptoes to look back down the line. The fat boy was only a little way behind them, puffing and gasping already as he tried to follow the upward dance; he wasn't accustomed to it, as anyone could see. His gray-washed tunic was splotching dark with sweat; his hair, cut short at ear-length, fell in sweat-strings down his forehead.

  Kreech paused, turned, looked back, and so did the next man, and the next, and so on until the one in front of the fat boy turned suddenly to stare at him; and the fat boy yipped, startled, then caught on to it and turned to look back himself.

  Sooleyrah laughed again, and returned to his dance. "Damn fat boy no good anyway," he sang. "No good, know nothing, no good, know nothing."

  "Hell damn yourself," Kreech said. "Damn fat boy almost a thinker. Damn almost."

  Sooleyrah snorted, and did a particularly difficult series of jump-steps deliberately for the confounding of the almost-thinker back down the line. "Damn-almost as good as nowh
ere, nowhere," he sang. "That's thinkers now anyway, nowhere, nowhere. Nowhere."

  "Except fat boy," Kreech said.

  "Hell fat boy," Sooleyrah said, lapsing from song in his disgust. "Fat boy don't know, but you know, I know. Vaults still there—there!"—he pointed up the hill, still dancing—"so what's fat boy know? So we dance, we sing, careful, damn careful."

  They were halfway up the hill now, the luminescent groundstars merging into a bright mist spread over the valley below, where only occasional widely spaced bones of buildings thrust up into the open night air. The rest of the valley, all the way to the mountains, was groundstars from here.

  Above them, up the hill, blackness grew and deepened with each step, and the massive vaults loomed black against the weak, scattered light of the skystars. The vaults covered the crown of the hill, most of them broken or crumbled or even exploded by now—the result of centuries of raids by the valley robbers. Those that still stood were all empty inside, or so the thinkers had said, but Sooleyrah didn't believe them. There were always more vaults to open—always had been, always would be. Hell damn foolishness to say there weren't, or wouldn't be.

  If the vaults all became empty, there would be no toys, no starboxes, no tools to replace those worn and broken or maybe thrown away dull, and no samesongs or pictures or any of the other things that had been stored there for the valley people. Which was ridiculous, and unthinkable, and Sooleyrah wouldn't think it.

  So he danced on upward, darting to right and left, rolling and tumbling, laughing into the empty air, while behind him, one by one, the others pointed after him to the vaults, and danced and tumbled, and echoes of his laugh faded back down the line.

  Lasten, the fat boy, was frightened. He had never been on a raid before, had never been trained for it. He knew he would make some disastrous mistake at any moment, and then the others would turn on him. Or, if they did get to the vaults without trouble, it would be a night for the Immortals.

  Probably gas or the sound-without-sound, he thought. Not so afraid of a blinding—least you can get back down the hill from that. But it be something killing for me, yeah.

  Well, he was lucky to be alive anyway: all the other thinkers had been killed the night before. Massacred by the robbers—just lined up in the hub-square and stoned to death. Oh, the screaming and panic, the ones who tried to run with their ankles hobbled, the manic singing and shouting of the robbers—Lasten shuddered, hating himself for his cowardice, hating the way he had hidden in an unused basement where groundstars were so thick they made a shimmering fog. Hiding, he had heard all of it anyway, had even seen some of the worst scenes, the most vivid ones; they'd invaded his mind in waves of terror from the thinkers or, sometimes, exultation and a kind of crazed kill-frenzy from the robbers. For Lasten, the fat boy, was a weird, one of the 10% of human mutations that managed to live in each generation.

  Some were born with extra toes, or no feet at all; these were the common ones, the ones who lived as easily as anyone else, accepting tithes from the market thieves as they rocked back and forth in the dirt and listened for rumors to sell. Others were born already dead or dying, with jellied skulls or tiny hearts unable to support life. And a few, a very few, had extra things that no one else had: not just extra hands or grotesquely oversized private parts (like Kreech, like Kreech), but talents. Lasten's father, for instance, had had a talent for numbers; he could remember how many seasons ago a thing had happened, or how often it had happened during his lifetime, or even put numbers together in his head to make new numbers. And Sooleyrah claimed he had a place somewhere in his head where everything was always level, and that was why he was such a good dancer.

  Lasten could hear people's minds. Not their thoughts, for people don't have thoughts inside; Lasten heard emotions and mind-pictures, whatever was strongest in the consciousness of those around him. Red hate, boiling and exploding; sometimes pure fear, blue-white, rigid; sex fantasies that echoed disturbingly in Lasten's own mind. They came at him unbidden; he couldn't shut them out when they were really strong, as they had been last night. Blood, blood on the ground, dark blood spurting from crushed skulls, a trail of red where one man had tried to drag his battered body away to safety. And screaming: Lasten had heard the screams of both the killers and the dying, and had found himself, when it was over, huddled in a corner and still screaming himself, his throat hoarse and ragged. He was crying, and he had emptied his stomach and his bowels simultaneously, helpless to stop either.

  And it had all been unnecessary, because they wouldn't have killed him anyway. He wasn't yet a thinker.

  Yeah, only thinkers got the death, only official thinkers. Dumb robbers don't know I'm a thinker too, just not entered yet. Dumb robbers don't know hell damn thing.

  Lasten tripped over his feet trying to accomplish a whirling jump-step; he fell gasping to the ground, and for a second he thought he'd lie there, let the line pass him while he caught his breath. But the next in line kicked him sharply, kicked him again and again, and Lasten moaned and struggled to his feet. He ran weakly to catch up to the line ahead, sweating and whimpering. He knew he'd never get back alive from this raid. Probably none of them would.

  Should try to get away, roll out into the dark where they can't see, maybe they'd go right on by. Couldn't stop to look for me, no; rest of the line has to keep up or the approach goes bad, sure it does. Damn dumb robbers.

  But he didn't have the quickness to get out of sight before they'd catch him and drag him back into line, and he knew it. Yeah, damn dumb robbers were going to get themselves killed, blown up, burned—and fat boy thinker Lasten was going to get killed with them, because he couldn't get away.

  "Fat boy fell down," Kreech laughed, stepping high behind Sooleyrah's had. "Daipell kicked him, kicked him, kicked him, fat boy got up."

  Sooleyrah paused, looked angrily back down the hill. The fat boy was back in line now, clumsily following the steps. Sooleyrah could hardly see him now, they had progressed so far up into the skystar darkness; but the fat boy's size stood out against the brightness of the valley groundstars below.

  "Fat boy messes up my approach, I'll kill him, smash him with rocks, rocks," Sooleyrah chanted. "Yeah, like the rest, make him a thinker too. No good, any thinker." Abruptly he whirled, and did an easy dance-skip straight up the hill. Kreech immediately followed him.

  "Told you leave him back, leave him back," Kreech sang. "No good dancer yeah you're right, damn right. No good for the rest."

  "Fat boy dances right or I damn smash him with rocks," Sooleyrah said.

  "We don't smash nobody if we're dead too. No good dancer, no good approach, no good at the vaults. Get ourselves dead, because of fat boy."

  Sooleyrah slowed his dancing even more than he already had. He did a waddle-step, then giggled and broke into a tension-high laugh. "Go slow, go easy for fat boy. Go easy so he can follow, so we get into vaults right, no killing tonight. Waddle waddle, kind of dance fat boy does all the time anyway." He giggled again. "Make sure no killing at vaults, show damn almost-thinker vaults still there. Yeah, let him see for himself, no different from always, always . . ."

  Kreech leaped forward quickly and tripped him. Their feet tangled together and they both fell, Sooleyrah's lean form sprawling loosely, Kreech's bulkier body hitting the sparse grass heavily. Sooleyrah rolled over quickly and was on his feet almost immediately. Kreech grunted and bounded up too.

  "Go bad there," he sang. "Too much the same, go bad, go lousy. Got to go good, Sooleyrah, go good, go good."

  The next man in line caught up to them, and he deftly tripped Kreech and fell to the ground beside him, following the lead. Sooleyrah whooped his laughter, whirled and danced on up the hill.

  "Yeah, go good tonight," he sang. "Just let fat boy thinker see, yeah, then tomorrow we smash him, damn yeah."

  And it was all so useless, so senseless. Lasten puffed and sweated trying to follow the lead of the man ahead of him in the line, trying to duplicate each movement, each
step, every twist or hop or gesture; that was the rule when the robbers went up to the vaults, and if you didn't follow it they might stop long enough to kill you. Senselessly, uselessly.

  Because it didn't matter. The whole ritual of the dance-approach, the singsong chanting, the leader and the watcher . . .all unnecessary. The robbers thought they were conquering taboos by the skill of their dancing whenever they made a successful approach to the vaults, and they thought they'd failed when instead they encountered the vault-fires, the blindings, the deaths . . .but fat boy Lasten who had been trained as a thinker knew better.

  Damn yeah, know better than dumb robbers.

  The robbers could have walked straight up the hill to the vaults, no wandering snakelike line, no jumping and dancing, no chanting. They could have approached any of the vaults, and they would have gotten in without incident . . .or else they would have been gassed or blinded or killed. Sometimes a raid would get through the Immortals' defenses, and sometimes it would mean danger and death, but it had nothing to do with the dance or the rituals.