by Carol
Science Fiction
Discoveries
Edited by
Carol and Frederik Pohl
Bantam Books
WITNESS a most remarkable rejuvenation . . .
COME ALONG on a poetic journey through the underworld of a distant planet . . .
DISAPPEAR into the mysterious center of a Black Hole . . .
WATCH a race of vast, godlike creatures who find Earth a very entertaining plaything!
SCIENCE FICTION DISCOVERIES
Edited by Carol and Frederik Pohl
Eight brilliant journeys into the fantastic
published for the first time
Frederik Pohl, four-time Hugo Award-winner, editor of some thirty science fiction anthologies and author of more than forty books, is an acknowledged master of his field.
Each book that bears the crest “A Frederik Pohl Selection” reflects the taste, integrity and discrimination that have made his own works so highly respected by critics and enjoyed by millions of readers.
Frederik Pohl Selections published by Bantam Books Ask your bookseller for the books you have missed
DHALGREN by Samuel R. Delany
THE FEMALE MAN by Joanna Russ
HIERO’S JOURNEY by Sterling E. Lanier
SCIENCE FICTION DISCOVERIES
Edited by Carol and Frederik Pohl
TETRASOMY TWO by Oscar Rossiter
TRITON by Samuel R. Delany
SCIENCE FICTION DISCOVERIES
A Bantam Book / August 1976
“Starlady” Copyright © 1976 by George R. R. Martin.
“The Never-Ending Western Movie" Copyright © 1976 by Robert Sheckley.
“The Age of Libra" Copyright © 1976 by Scott Edelstein.
“To Mark the Year on Azlaroc” Copyright © 1976 by Fred Saberhagen.
“An Occurrence at the Owl Creek Rest Home" Copyright © 1976 by Arthur Jean Cox.
“The Force That Through the Circuit Drives the Current" Copyright © 1976 by Roger Zelazny.
“Deathrights Deferred" Copyright © 1976 by Doris Piserchia.
“Error Hurled" Copyright © 1976 by Babette Rosmond.
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1976 by Carol and Frederik Pohl.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.
For information address: Bantam Books, Inc.
ISBN 0-553-08635-9
Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc. Its trademark; consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a bantam, is registered in the United States Patent Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, Inc., 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10019.
Contents
Introduction (A Dialogue)
Starlady by George R. R. Martin
The Never-Ending Western Movie by Robert Sheckley
The Age of Libra by Scott Edelstein
To Mark the Year on Azlaroc by Fred Saberhagen
An Occurrence at the Owl Creek Rest Home by Arthur Jean Cox
The Force That Through the Circuit Drives the Current by Roger Zelazny
Deathrights Deferred by Doris Piserchia
Error Hurled by Babette Rosmond
Introduction (A Dialogue),
Introduction
(A Dialogue)
Carol Pohl:
This is, let’s see, the fourth anthology Fred and I have done together, but it’s the first one made up out of original stories. It’s also the first one in which I came to the stories cold.
What we had done on the reprint anthologies was for Fred to pick out some stories he had read, liked very much and remembered. They came in the form of musty old stacks of magazines and flaking tearsheets, and he would dump these on me, and I would pick out of the lot the ones that I really enjoyed. We figured that any story he remembered as really good, and I thought very good in reading for the first time, pretty much had to please a lot of readers.
This time, though, the manuscripts were submitted to us by the writers or their agents, and I was the one who read them first.
Frederik Pohl:
In the long run, we both read everything, but I’m willing to admit Carol had the hard job this time. After she passed them on with her comments I could sometimes skim. She had to read every word.
C.P.: There were times when it seemed that I had to wade through tons of not-very-good, but also not-ob-viously-very^bad, stories in order to find one that I really liked. I'd hate to be the editor of a magazine. You get the feeling, ‘Til never find a story I really like, they're all going to be halfway passable and we'll be sorry we ever started this thing"—and then something wild and weird, or a funny romp, or a dear and touching story comes up, and you can hope again.
F.P.: When we started, I wondered if Carol would be particularly interested in “woman's angle" science fiction.
C.P.: That's a sexist remark. It is true that two of my favorites in this book are by women, but they're really not specially about women.
And I didn't really care whether the authors were women or not. I liked these stories, as stories. There are a lot of good women writers in science fiction today, I'm very happy to say; I like Rosamond Campion and Doris Piserchia very much; and I like Katherine MacLean and Joanna Russ and others, too. But I also like the male authors in this book, along with Lester del Ray, Alfie Bester, William Tenn ... I even like stories by Fred Pohl. Some of them.
F.P.: There were, however, a fair number of stories that I would have bought that Carol just couldn't see.
C.P.: And the other way around, too.
But I think it's true that I have a personal bias. I am not all that in love with technology. There are women who are, MIT-technical types who groove on quasars and time machines. I m not one.
The way I read most of the stories was to stack them in a pile by my bed, reading a few every night, making notes to pass on, until I felt too sleepy to go on. (Usually when that happened I felt it told me something about the story.) And quite often when there were too many gadgets, too much technical material, I felt my brain beginning to fog over.
But when something came along like "Error Hurled” or "The Age of Libra” or the "Owl Creek” story, I didn’t get sleepy. I cared about the people, and about what was happening to them.
F.P.: Altogether—I didn’t keep records throughout all of it—I think we read something like four hundred and fifty manuscripts to find these eight that we both agreed we wanted to publish. Most of them were easy decisions; one or two, one of us liked enough to carry the other along, but there were a few stories where we didn’t see eye to eye at all. Either I was crazy about it and Carol thought it was appalling, or the other way around. Those we reluctantly returned to the writers, each time explaining that it was the other person who was the villain.
Eight out of four hundred and fifty sounds like a very low proportion. What makes it worse is that nearly all of the authors submitting work were professionals. (Magazine editors probably buy about the same percentage of submitted stories, but they have "slush piles”—stacks of manuscripts from amateurs—to dilute their reading. We had very little of that.)
Of course, what cut the percentage was that two diverse people had to approve. I could have quarried at least one completely different anthology out of the stories we read.
C.P.: So could I.
F.P.: And they both would probably be good anthologies, too. But the stories that pleased both of us—both the old pro (me) and the relative newcomer (Carol)—only amounted to enough to make one book. And this is it.
C.P.: And
, frankly, Tm very proud of this anthology—not because of anything I’ve done, or we’ve done, but because I think they re great stories.
I hope you’ll think so, tool
—Carol and Frederik Pohl
Science Fiction Discoveries
Starlady
by George R. R. Martin
George R. R. Martin earns his living as a director of chess tournaments. Many people are weekend writers; Martin is a weekend worker, flying to places like Cleveland, Miami, Indianapolis and Los Angeles to supervise the 64-square joustings, and a writer all the rest of his time. He is 25 years old, and already a man to be reckoned with in science fiction.
This story has no hero in it. It’s got Hairy Hal in it, and Golden Boy, and Janey Small and Mayliss, and some other people who lived on Thisrock. Plus Crawney and Stumblecat and the Marquis, who’ll do well enough as villains. But it hasn’t got a hero . . . well, unless you count Hairy Hal.
On the day it all began, he was out late, wandering far from the Plaza in the dock section near the Upend of the Concourse. It was night-cycle; the big overhead light-panels had faded to black, and here the wall-lights were few and dim. Elsewhere, just down the Concourse, the Silver Plaza was alive with music; multi-colored strobes were flashing, and joy-smoke was belching from the air ducts. But Hal walked in darkness, through silent halls full of deserted loading trucks, past shadowed stacks of freight. Here, near the docks, Thisrock was much as the Imperials had known it. The corridors near the Plaza were all shops and disfigured plastic; the walls of the Concourse were covered with boasts and slogans and obscenities. But here, here, the only markings on the shining duralloy were the corridor numbers that the men of the Federal Empire had left. Hairy Hal knew the business was elsewhere. But he’d given up on business that night, and he was here.
Which was why he heard the whimper.
Why he followed it is something else again. The starslums were full of whimpers, plus screams and shouts and pleading. Hairy Hal was a child of the starslums, and he knew the rules. But that night he broke them.
In the black of a cross-corridor, up against some crates, he found Crawney and his men, with their victims. One victim was a youth. He stood in shadow, but Hal could make out a slender, graceful body, and his eyes. His eyes were immense. With him was a young woman, or maybe just a girl. She was backed up against the wall, under a yellow wall-light. Her face was pale, scared. And dark hair fell past her shoulders, so clearly she was off-world.
Crawney confronted them, a short slim man with black and red skull stripes and a mouth full of teeth that stuck out too far. He dressed in soft plastic, and he worked for the Marquis. Hal knew him, of course.
Crawney was unarmed. But the pair with him, the silent giants with the heads painted black, each of them carried a dark baton, and they waved them gracefully in front of them. Stingsticks. They kept the victims cornered.
So Hairy Hal, unnoticed, knelt in darkness and watched it all. It was a bleak episode, but one he’d seen before. There were soft threats from Crawney, delivered in a mild slurring voice. There were pleadings from the woman. There was a lightning pass from a stingstick, and a scream from the boy. Then whimpers, as he lay crumpled on the floor. Then another stingstick pass, a touch to the head, and the whimpering stopped.
Finally there were two rapes; Crawney, amused, just watched. Afterwards they took everything, and left her there crying beside the boy.
Hairy Hal waited until they were long gone, until even the echoes of their passage had faded from the corridor. Then he rose and went to the woman. She was naked and vulnerable. When she saw him, she gave a small cry and struggled to get up.
So he smiled at her. That was another of Hal’s trademarks; his smile. “Hey now, starlady,” he said. “Easy. Hal won’t hurt you. Your friend might need help.”
Then, while she watched through wide eyes, he knelt down near the boy and rolled him under the wall-light with one hand. The youth was blacked out from pain, but otherwise unhurt. But Hal didn’t notice that much. He was staring.
The youth was golden.
He was like no boy Hal had ever seen. His skin was soft cream gold, his hair was a shimmery silver-white. The ears were an elf’s, pointed and delicate, the nose small and chiseled, the eyes huge. Human? Hal didn’t know. But he knew it didn’t matter. Beauty was all that mattered, beauty and glowing innocence. Hairy Hal had found his Golden Boy.
The woman had dressed, in what Crawney had left of her clothing. Now she stood. “What can you do?” she said. “I’m Janey Small, from Rhiannon. Our ship . . .”
Hal looked up at her. “No, starlady,” he said. “No ship no more. Crawney got the name tabs, the Marquis’ll sell. Some insider will be Janey Small, from
Rhiannon. See? Happens, well, every day. Starlady should have stayed on the Concourse.”
“But,” the woman started. “We have to go to someone. I mean, the man with the striped head, he said he'd show us the good stuff. He hired the other two for us, as bodyguards. Can you take us to the police?” Her voice was even, quiet, and the teartracks on her face were dry now. She recovered fast. Hal admired her.
“Starlady landed on Thisrock,” he said. “No police here. Nothing. Should've hired a real bodyguard. Crew would give you a steer, usual. Crawney hit, instead. Starlady wasn't Promethean, wasn't insider, wasn't protected, probly four-class passage, right?” He paused, she nodded. “So, right. Crawney wanted tabs, starlady was stupid, easy hit.” Hal glanced down at Golden Boy, then up at the woman again. ‘With you?,” he asked.
“Yes. No.” She shook her head. “Not precisely. He was on the ship. No one could understand him, and no one seemed to know him, or where he was from. He started following me around. I don't know much about him, but he's good, kind. What's going to happen to us now?”
Hal shrugged. “Help get Golden Boy over Hal’s shoulder. Come with, to home.”
Hairy Hal's home; a four-room compartment on a cross corridor near the Concourse, just off the Silver Plaza. It was good for trade. The door was heavy duralloy. Inside was a large square chamber, with a low couch along one wall and opposite a built-in kitchen. Above the couch were racks of books and tapes; for a starslummer, Hal was an intellectual. A big plastic table filled most of the room, and closed doors led off to the bedrooms and the waste cube. A glowing globe sat in the center of the table, sending pink reflections scuttling across the walls as it pulsed.
Hairy Hal dumped Golden Boy, still out, on the couch, then sat down at the table. He pointed to a second chair, and Janey sat too. And then, before either of them could say anything, a bedroom door opened and Mayliss entered.
Mayliss was very tall, very regal; sleek legs and big breasts and a hard, hard face with small green eyes. She painted her head bright red to let people know what she was. What she was was one of Hal’s girls. At the moment, she was his only girl.
She stopped in the door to her bedroom, studied Janey and Golden Boy, then looked at Hal. “Spin,” she said.
So Hairy Hal spun it. “Starlady got hit,” he told her. “Crawney did a bodyguard grabtab, threw in rip an’ rape.” He shrugged.
Her face grew harder. “Hairy Hal scoped it all, right? Did nothing.” She sighed. “So?”
“Seal it, Mayliss,” Hal told her. He turned back to Janey Small, smiled his smile. “Starlady know what comes now?” he asked.
Janey wet her lip, hesitated. Finally she spoke. “If there really are no police, I guess we’re stuck here for a while.”
Hal shook his head. “For good. Better face that, or you’ll get hurt. Easy to get hurt on Thisrock, starlady, not like Rhiannon. Look.” With that, his left hand reached across his body, grabbed a comer of his heavy green cape, and flipped it back over his shoulder. Then he took his right arm by the wrist, and lifted it onto the table.
Janey Small did not gasp; she was a tough woman, Janey Small. She just looked. Hairy Hal’s right arm wasn’t really much of an arm. It bent and twisted in a half-dozen places where
an arm ought not to bend, and it was matchstick-thin. The skin was a reddish black, the hand a shriveled claw. Hal clenched his fist as it lay there, and the arm trembled violently.
Finally, when she’d looked enough, he reached over again with his left hand, and took it off the table.
Then he smiled at her. “Easy to get hurt,” he repeated.
She chewed her lip. “Can’t you get it replaced?”
He laughed. “Probly, starlady, on Rhiannon. Probly Prometheans could, too. But Hal’s here, and Thisrock forgot a lot during the Collapse. No. Not even if Hal was an insider, an’ Hal is no insider. Hairy Hal is a starslum pimp.”
Janey’s eyes widened. “I don’t care,” she said. “You’re better than those others. You helped us.”
Behind him, Mayliss laughed. Hal ignored her. “Hey now, starlady,” he said, smiling. “Listen and learn, an’ learn quick. Starslummers don’t help anyone, less they get a slice. Hal is no hero, he didn’t even try to stop that rip an’ rape, right? But Hal is offering you good, and straight, so listen to him spin. Starlady and Golden Boy can stay here till day-cycle. When the lights come on, they got to pick. One, go out and take their chances, and good luck. Two—” he cocked his head questioningly—“they stay, and work for Hal.”