I wondered if we could attempt an escape, and decided there were too many s’ndar for us to make it. Our duty hadn’t changed: we had to keep the Senator alive until we could transfer him to friendly hands.
We passed wrecked and burned-out vehicles, and the dried shells of s’ndar who’d been left where they’d fallen—their silenced mandibles hanging slackly by threads of dry tissue.
Then we were being herded down into a dry sewer, crouched and shuffling—while the round sewer pipe was somewhat more accommodating to the shorter, squatter s’ndar.
After twenty minutes the s’ndar ordered a rest, and we stopped. I tried to push up to where Kent was, but was shoved back and ordered not to move.
Petersen was doubled over, gasping.
“Sir,” I said. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” he said. “Just out of shape. It was the cell … the damned cell … nothing to do but go crazy.”
He looked into my eyes, and I realized the Senator might not have been speaking metaphorically. His gaze was awful. Stricken. Not quite there somehow. It occurred to me that, for all his slick, football player toughness, Petersen had probably never endured real deprivation before. Certainly not on the scale we’d been suffering since our capture.
I turned to the s’ndar. My TAD was gone, but theirs worked. “That air strike was just the first phase,” I told them. “They’re softening up the target before our rifle platoons get sent in to clean up. They know you’re here, and they won’t stop until they find you.”
A single s’ndar shape pushed its way back towards me. I recognized her torn raiment; it was the priestess.
“We will move forward rapidly now,” she said.
“Look at us,” I told her, waving my hand at Petersen for emphasis. “We’re in no condition to keep up the pace. In another hundred meters you’d be dragging us. So we’ll have to go slow. I hope that doesn’t scare you too much, but that’s the way it is.”
The priestess appeared to sag in on herself, if only a bit.
“Yes,” she said. “We are scared.”
She studied my face. “You hide it well, but my fear makes you happy.”
“Only because you’re the enemy,” I answered. Then I sighed deeply. “The shame of it is, you didn’t have to be. There was no reason for it.”
“I agree,” she said. “But of course I would: you invaded us. It is you who are the enemy.”
And suddenly I knew who the real enemy was.
“My sister died here,” I said, as the low rumble of more bombs filled the sewer pipe, then fell silent. “She was excited by the idea of your alien culture—and she was killed for her enthusiasm. But she wouldn’t have been here at all—none of us would be here—if not for the Conglomerate playing us off against each other.”
“The ‘deal’ you spoke of,” said the priestess.
“Yes,” I said. “Back on Earth we treat the Conglomerate like saviors. You know something interesting? We’ve never even seen them.”
Her eyes widened. “Never?”
“Just radio transmissions and text messages, and those robotic transport ships that show up in orbit. If they’re so advanced, it should be an easy thing for them to pacify a planet with or without human help. So what’s in it for them, using us like this? And why couldn’t they just leave your world alone? Why do they care if you’re at war?”
“Our particular hive has never known these answers,” she said. “And since the arrival of humans, we’ve never cared to know. We want you gone. That is the sole thing that concerns us.”
“Have you ever stopped to ask why humans would even want to be on your planet in the first place?”
The priestess was silent. As were every other s’ndar and human in the sewer. Petersen just looked at me, his limbs slightly shaking as the adrenaline from exertion began to wear off.
“We’re here because of them,” I said. “You’re fighting an invading force because of them. Maybe it’s time for both sides to take a deep breath and think about that.”
She stared at me. “Go on,” she said at last.
“If you stop fighting, my people have no reason to be here.”
“A truce?”
“It would give us time to find out what the Conglomerate really wants,” I said.
“And to prevent them from getting it,” added the Senator, who was quick on the uptake, despite his condition.
She turned to the Senator. “Do you have the power to order a cease-fire?”
He nodded his head. “I outrank every General Officer on this planet,” Petersen said, seeming to regain some of his former stature. “I’m sure I can convince our side to enter a temporary cease-fire.”
“What good is temporary?” she asked.
“It gives us breathing space while we each try to talk our superiors into making it permanent.”
“My superiors will assume you are lying to us,” said the priestess.
Suddenly Peterson smiled. “When we stop talking war and start talking negotiations, now we are in my bailiwick,” he said. “I propose a trade.”
“A trade?”
“I want you to come back to Earth with me as a good-will ambassador of your race, someone who can confirm what I have to tell them. View it as a public display of friendship and mutual trust.” He turned to me. “And Sergeant Colford here will stay behind in the same capacity and speak to your people.”
“Why me?” I demanded.
“Because you lost a sister in this war, and were incarcerated for some months. If you can forgive them and point to the real enemy, I think it will bolster the arguments of whatever s’ndar is speaking to his people on our behalf.”
I considered. Could a cease-fire agreement—made in a sewer pipe between a staff sergeant, a priestess, and a Senator who was light years from Washington—actually have any legs?
We’re now in the process of finding out.
I hope my sister didn’t die for nothing. I hope my months of being chained in solitary served some purpose. I hope the priestess can sway her people and the Senator can sway his. I even hope that someday I find out what the Conglomerate wants, and that I stop thinking of them as the enemy.
Mostly, though, I hope I can stop being a peacekeeper …
… and start being a peacemaker.
Mike Resnick labored long with me, to bring this story up to professional spec. It was our first ever collaboration, back when I had only two short fiction publications to my credit. Mike’s number one point—through all the toil, much of which I am embarrassed to have put him through—was that any good story demands change from its key characters. Programs like Star Trek can get away with leaving the cast off right where they began, but for literary fiction to have the necessary emotional impact to make it compelling, the main people in the story have to arrive at new places in their heads and in their hearts. If not always physically, in their bodies.
I’ve tried to remember this lesson, when writing successive stories.
“Peacekeeper” obviously relies on my U.S. Army familiarity. Mike had an outstanding invitation from the editors of The Mammoth Book of SF Wars to give them a story, and since Mike had handed me my trophy at the Writers of the Future gala event just a few months earlier—me, decked out in my Army ASUs—Mike decided it might be a good idea to kill two birds with one stone: help a newcomer out with some teaching, and a new story sale, while also helping himself out by getting the chops of someone who was actually in the service; and didn’t just know military stuff through popular folklore.
An Iraq war veteran once told me that this story hums with verisimilitude, for the various iterations of Operation Iraqi Freedom. I chalk that up to having spent a lot of time with veterans of OIF and OEF; men and women who’ve been overseas and “seen the beast” as it were. I’m hopeful that this verisimilitude is present for civilian readers as well. I wanted something that would be gritty, but not cliché, nor Hollywood.
As for the moral theme of the story, that’s entirely
Mike. Again, his teaching to me—like Mickey yammering in the ear of Rocky Balboa—was that the story wouldn’t be a story unless the main character underwent a significant change of heart. Earlier iterations had Sergeant Colford walking out of the mess more or less the same man as when he went into the mess. The story was thus a “picture frame” look at war (and prisoner-of-war life) on an alien world.
And yes, I wrote “Peacekeeper” before I wrote “The Chaplain’s Assistant.” There are similarities between the two—especially when you consider the changes Mike wanted me to make to the former. I consider it the privilege of the writer to revisit an idea or a concept more than once, without having to so thoroughly redress the movie set that things become exhaustively different.
Ultimately, Mike got a story he felt was competent by his standards, and I got a huge helping hand, in the form of a tough, old, experienced pro, reaching down to assist a fledgling guy who was still brand new to the publishing business. Mike showed a lot of patience with me, on this work. And I am grateful for that. It’s to Mike’s credit that he never lost his temper nor his sense of humor. Every time I goofed up, he simply pushed back and said, “I won’t give you the answer straight out, kid, but here’s a few clues to maybe take you in the right direction …”
***
Teacher: Dave Wolverton
Dave—many readers know him by the pen name David Farland—was recently interviewed by KSL television in Salt Lake City, who pronounced him the Godfather of Utah’s literay Science Fiction and fantasy community. That title is well-deserved. There are arguably thousands of us who have passed through Dave’s hands, if you include all his many workshop appearances, panel lectures at events like Life, The Universe, and Everything, and his ongoing role as the Coordinating Judge for the L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers and Illustrators of the Future Contest.
Find me a bestseller in the SF/F field—Brandon Sanderson? James Dashner?—and if that person has roots in Utah, (s)he has probably sat at Dave Wolverton’s feet.
I was therefore very eager and anxious to make a good impression on Dave, when I approached him at the CONduit SF/F convention in Salt Lake City, in May 2009. One of my stories which I’d entered into Writers of the Future, was a Finalist for Quarter One of the 26th annual iteration of said Contest. I felt—at the time—that this story (“Outbound”, which eventually saw print in the November 2010 issue of Analog magazine) was the best story I’d ever written. Over the holiday period of 2008 I’d poured every lick of what I’d learned and what I knew about storytelling, into that one singular piece. I knew in my heart it was me firing on all cylinders. And I hoped very much that maybe Dave could clue me in as to how much longer it would take the Quarter One judges to reach a decision.
“I think I have your story,” Dave told me, his eyes unfocused as he thought about the Finalist manuscripts he’d been sent by Joni Labaqui, the Contest Administrator.
I could have just died. Dave Wolverton. The Dave Wolverton. The Godfather of Utah’s SF/F literary scene. He had my story! It was being judged by Dave for the Contest!
Which meant a hell of a lot to me (later) when Joni had to let me know that my story did not win. Because in the depths of utter and total despair—no rejection has ever so thoroughly crushed me—I had Dave’s critique (which he was then allowed to release to me) to buoy my spirits. Dave said (in his letter) that he didn’t know why the other judges hadn’t liked the story. He’d certainly liked it. And while he did have some suggestions for potential changes that might be made, he felt like it was a strong piece even if I changed nothing.
When I sent the story to editor Stan Schmidt at Analog (in the wake of my eventual Contest win, with “Exanastasis”, for Quarter Three) I opened my cover letter stating, “Dear Stan, Dave Wolverton said he liked this story a lot, and I hope you do too.”
So, it’s fair to say that Dave Wolverton fairly delivered me into my professional writing career. And he’s continued to be an enthusiastic teacher and booster ever since. To include helping me with my novel projects—novel writing being, for me, an entirely different animal, compared to short fiction writing.
Dave’s got an uncanny, almost unconscious grasp of what I call “classically epic” storytelling. The kind of storytelling that makes Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings resonate with generation after generation of fans. The kind of storytelling that helped make the Twilight books and movies into such mega-sellers. Storytelling that continues to show up in the works of authors from across the country and around the world—can Dave now claim to be the international Godfather of SF/F?—who are busting the tape with their bestsellers.
I occasionally think it’s not fair that us local Utah boys get to have the kind of access that we have, to Dave. As teachers go, this is a mighty man. Someone people pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars to come from all over the globe to see, and learn from. And there he is at LTUE every year, saying hello to all his friends, and all of his students (both former and current) and spreading his ethereal pixie dust of success on our heads; like a bearded Willy Wonka promising golden tickets, if only we will just keep trying, and maybe take a little bit of his advice.
I’ve spoken before, about some of Utah’s SF/F elder statesmen. Dave is definitely among their ranks. A pillar of the scene. And it’s been both my delight and my privilege to get to know not just Dave, but also his wonderful wife Mary, and to include Dave in my somewhat select circle of industry counselors: men and women from whom I will absolutely entertain any suggestion, cherish any nugget of wisdom, and ponder every bit of insight. This man helps build blockbuster careers, he does. Even in the face of tremendous professional and personal difficulty.
When Dave is gone, I suspect all of us—whom he has helped—are going to pool our resources and erect some kind of memorial in his honor. Like the fictional Argonath on the river Anduin. How else to honor a man who has so thoroughly enriched and fostered the Utah speculative community? One pictures giant stone statues of Dave, Tracy Hickman, L.E. Modesitt, Jr., and several other Utah SF/F writers, their stone hands collectively beckoning us through the doors at LTUE every February: come, learn, enjoy, and succeed!
My hat is off to you, Dave. Thank you for putting so much effort into so many of our lives, for so long, and with so much creative spark. You light so many candles in this genre. I hope all of us shining brightly together, serve as a testament to your hope and faith in us.
***
Life Flight
Audio Journal Transcript: Day 1
Papa was proud of me when he went to sleep. I’m one of the only boys picked to stay awake—because I’m smart and can do math. Nobody on the Osprey is going to be awake for the entire trip. There won’t be enough food, water, or air onboard for everyone. So to start off they picked a couple of adults—and two boys and two girls—to stay up while we begin the trip to Delta Pavonis. Which is a very long way from Earth.
Mama was proud too. She squeezed me so hard before she laid down with Papa and went to sleep. She was crying, but told me it was OK. She wasn’t upset. She just doesn't want to miss anything while I am awake—she thinks I will be older by the time she sees me again. I suppose she is right. She made me promise to keep this journal while she is asleep. So that she can go back and hear my voice, and know all about the time in-between.
Audio Journal Transcript: Day 8
Kroger is the other boy, besides me. I never met him before all the families boarded the Osprey. I’m not sure I like him much, and it doesn’t seem like he likes me much either. So the two adults—Kevin and Cassie—have kept Kroger and me apart during the first few days. I help at one end of the ship, he helps at the other. Which is fine. The Osprey is big! Cassie showed me a computer model of our ship, compared to a skyscraper. If our ship could stand on its end it would be far taller than anything in New York or Hong Kong.
I’m not lonely, though.
Leah and Molly are the two girls. One short and round like me, the other tall and skinny like Kroger. At fi
rst the girls didn’t seem to want to have much to do with me. But by the third day Leah smiled at me in the lunch room—what Kevin keeps calling the galley.
Back on Earth the girls didn’t pay any attention to me. But Leah pays attention. I found out she likes kitty cats. I like kitty cats too. I wish they’d let us bring some on the ship.
Molly is more like Kroger. Rude. She told me I was fat, and I told her to shut up because it’s mean to call someone that. Molly said the truth hurts, and stuck her tongue out at me. Just like my classmates back home. I got angry, but Cassie told me to not let it bother me. She was going to talk to Molly and would get Molly to be nice.
The teachers on Earth always said the same thing.
It never worked.
Tomorrow Kevin is going to begin showing me how the navigation and nuclear fusion drive computers work. He says the Osprey has the best computers money can buy. They run just about everything onboard, including the machines that make the air and keep it clean and full of oxygen. Kevin says he will be teaching me how to program the computers, once I understand how they function. I think that ought to be fun.
Audio Journal Transcript: Day 35
The computers are better than anything I ever had in school. You can talk to them and they actually understand you, and will talk back. They all sound like grown-up women with nice voices. I told Kevin and Cassie that we ought to start naming each of them. Cassie asked me why, when the computers are just machines. Not real people. I told her that if our trip to Delta Pavonis is as long as she keeps saying it is, the computers will learn to be people. They seem smart enough for it.
Leah wants to know why there are only girl computers, and no boy computers. Cassie said it’s because girls are smarter than boys, which made Leah and Molly smile big. I think Cassie was just being funny, but Leah and Molly spent all day feeling proud of themselves. I keep telling them that boys are just as smart, otherwise the adults would have kept four girls awake, instead of two, but Leah and Molly aren’t listening.
Racers of the Night: Science Fiction Stories by Brad R. Torgersen Page 34