by James Blish
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PREFACE
A STYLE IN TREASON
WRITING OF THE RAT
AND SOME WERE SAVAGES
A DUSK OF IDOLS
NONE SO BLIND
NO JOKES ON MARS
HOW BEAUTIFUL WITH BANNERS
SKYSIGN I
II
III
IV
V
VI
ANYWHEN
James Blish
ARGONAUT
ePUB Edition (v1.0)
This is a strange, compelling collection of seven short stories about the Universe and some of its oddities. The stories, all written during the 1960s, are carefully presented and never allow one to lose sight of the humanity behind each circumstance.
A STYLE IN TREASON presents a future in which treason has been organized to supplant diplomacy. In a believable and understated manner THE WRITING OF THE RAT demonstrates man's place in the Universe. AND SOME WERE SAVAGES is a rationale of why we sterilize space vehicles and why we should continue to do so. With fantastic overtones, NONE SO BLIND is an almost straight description of the world of the blind. No JOKES ON MARS tells of blackmail and efforts to conserve life. Sanitation, or lack of it, is the basis for A DUSK OF IDOLS and in How BEAUTIFUL WITH BANNERS, a dedicated scientist is caught between new life and old and unwittingly is the core of revolution.
James Blish, who has written more than fifteen novels and several collections of short stories, is a particularly imaginative and well-respected writer; his latest novel is BLACK EASTER. Mr. Blish lives in England with his wife Judy, and is currently working on a history of witchcraft.
Book Club Edition
ANYWHEN
James Blish
DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC. GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A much shorter version of "A Style in Treason" was published in Impulse, March 1966, as "A Hero's Life"; that version © 1966 by Impulse. That same text plus a new prologue (not included in this book) and with the present title was published in Galaxy, June 1970; that version © 1970 by Universal Publishing and Distributing Corporation.
"The Writing of the Rat," first published in Galaxy, June 1956; © 1956 by Galaxy Publishing Corp.
"And Some Were Savages," first published in Amazing Stories, November 196o; © 196o by Ziff-Davis Publishing Company.
"None So Blind," first published by Fantasy & Science Fiction, May 1962, as "Who's In Charge Here?"; © 1962 by Mercury Press, Inc.
"No Jokes on Mars," first published by Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1965; © 1965 by Mercury Press, Inc.
"A Dusk of Idols," first published in Amazing Stories, March 1961; © 1961 by Ziff-Davis Publishing Company.
"How Beautiful With Banners," first published in Orbit i, © 1966 by Berkley Publishing Corporation.
All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 1970 by James Blish
All Rights Reserved
Printed in the United States of America
to HARRY HARRISON
a good companion
PREFACE
Each of the stories in this book was directly commissioned by a magazine editor, an opportunity I used in each case to try an experiment of one kind or another. I've used this collection to second-guess one of the experiments, as follows:
In September of 1965, Kyril Bonfiglioli found himself host in Oxford to five science-fiction writers (Brian W. Aldiss, Poul Anderson, James G. Ballard, Harry Harrison, and myself) and an artist (Judith Ann Lawrence), and commissioned from us all material for what was to be the first issue of Impulse, a successor (now defunct) to England's long-established professional magazine Science-Fantasy. The five stories and the cover were all to develop the theme of a man who sacrifices his life for a cause—or who doesn't. Except for this bare statement, which as I recall was Mr. Aldiss' suggestion, we had no other instructions except (for the writers) to stay inside ten thousand words.
My contribution to that "OxCon issue" was a novelette called "A Hero's Life." It was written in a vast hurry to meet Mr. Bonfiglioli's deadline, and I didn't realize until too late to start something else that I had too much material to fit comfortably inside ten thousand words. Hence, I've taken the opportunity to rewrite it, as the novella which leads off this book. The original sketch which appeared in Impulse has never been published in the United States.
JAMES BUSH
Alexandria, Virginia
1967
A STYLE IN TREASON
CHAPTER ONE
The Karas, a fragile transship—she was really little more than a ferry, just barely meriting a name—came fluttering out of the interstitium into the Flos Campi system a day late in a ball of rainbows, trailing behind her two gaudy contrails of false photons, like a moth unable to free herself of her cocoon. The ship's calendar said it was Joni 23, 5914, which was probably wrong by at least ten years; however, nobody but a scholar of that style of dating could have been precise about the matter; the Karas was a day later than she should have been; just what day was at best only a local convention.
In the salon, Simon de Kuyl sighed and laid out the tarots again. Boadacea, the biggish fourth planet of the Flos Campi array and Simon's present port of call, was yet a week ahead in urspace, and he was already tired. He had reasons. His fellow passengers had been dull beyond belief, with the possible—because wholly unknown—exception of the entity who had spent the entire voyage in his cabin, with a diplomatic seal spidered over the palm plate on its door; and Simon suspected that they would have bored him even had he not had to present himself to them as a disillusioned Sagittarian mystic, embittered at himself for ever having believed that the Mystery that lay (or didn't lie) at the galactic center would someday emerge and set the rest of the universe to rights, and hence in too unpredictable a temper to be worth being polite to. Conceivably, indeed probably, some of the other passengers were trying to be as repellent to strangers as was Simon, but the probability did not make their surfaces any more diverting.
But of course none of these things—the ship, the delay, the passengers, the pose—was more than marginally to blame for his weariness. In these days of treason, politeness, easy travel, and indefinitely prolonged physical vigor, everyone was tired, just a little but all the time. After a while, it became difficult to remember who one was supposed to be—and to remember who one was, was virtually impossible. Even the Baptized, who had had their minds dipped and then rechannelled with only a century's worth of memories, betrayed to the experienced eye a vague, tortured puzzlement, as though still searching in the stilled waters for some salmon of ego they had been left no reason to suspect had ever been there. Suicide was unconcealedly common among the Baptized, and Simon did not think the reason (as the theoreticians and ministers insisted) was really only a minor imperfection in the process, to be worked out in time.
There was plenty of time; that was the trouble. People lived too damn long, that was all. Erasing the marks, on the face or in the mind, did not unwind the years; the arrow of entropy pointed forever in the same direction; virginity was a fact, not just a state of membrane or memory. Helen, reawakening in Aithra's Egyptian bed flensed of her history, might bemuse Menelaus for a while, but there will always be another Paris, and that without delay—time past is eternally in time present, as Ezra-Tse had said.
The ten-thousand-year-old analogy came easily to him. He was supposed to be, and in fact was, a native of High Earth; and in his persona as a Sagittarian (lapsed) would be expected to be a student of such myths, the more time-dimmed the better—hence, in fact, his interminable shipboard not-quite-game of tarot solitaire
. Staying quite automatically in character was in his nature, as well as being one of his chiefest skills.
And certainly he had never allowed himself to be Baptized, though his mind had been put through not a few lesser changes in the service of High Earth, and might yet be forced into a greater one if his mission on Boadacea went awry. Many of his memories were painful, and all of them were painfully crowded together; but they were his, and that above all was what gave them their worth. Some professional traitors were valuable because they had never had, and never could have, a crisis of identity. Simon knew without vanity—it was too late for that—that High Earth had no more distinguished a traitor than he, precisely because he had such crises as often as once a year, and hadn't lost one yet.
"Your indulgence, reverend sir," said a voice at his back. A white hand, well-kept but almost aggressively masculine, came over his shoulder and moved the Fool onto the Falling Tower. "It is boorish of me to intervene, but it discomforts me to see an implication go a-begging. I fear I am somewhat compulsive."
The voice was a new one: therefore, belonging to the person who had been sequestered in the diplomatic cabin up to now. Simon turned, ready to be surly.
His next impulse was to arise and run. The question of who the creature was evaporated in recognition of just what it was.
Superficially, he saw a man with a yellow page-boy coiffure, wearing pale-violet hose, short russet breeches, and a tabard of deeper violet, as well as a kangaroo-shiv, a weapon usually affected only by ladies. A duplicate of the spider on the doorseal was emblazoned in gold on his left breast. Superficially; for Simon was fortunate—in no way he could explain—to be able to penetrate this seeming.
The "diplomat" was a vombis, or what in those same myths Simon had been thinking of earlier was called a Proteus: a creature which could imitate perfectly almost any life-form within its size range. Or nearly perfectly; for Simon, like one in perhaps five thousand of his colleagues, was sensitive to them, without ever being able to specify in what particular their imitations of humanity were deficient. Other people, even those of the sex opposite to the one the vombis had assumed, could find no flaw in them. In part because they did not revert when killed, no human had ever seen their "real" form—if they had one—though of course there were legends aplenty. The talent might have made them ideal double agents, had it been possible to trust them—but that was only an academic speculation, since the vombis were wholly creatures of the Green Exarch.
Simon's third impulse, like that of any other human being in like circumstances, was to kill this one instantly upon recognition, but that course had too many obvious drawbacks, of which the kangaroo-shiv was the least important. Instead, he said with only moderate ungraciousness: "No matter. I was blocked anyhow."
"You are most kind. May I be seated?"
"Since you're here."
"Thank you." The creature sat down gracefully, across the table from Simon. "Is this your first trip to Boadacea, reverend sir?"
Simon had not said he was going to Boadacea, but after all, it was written on the passenger list for anyone to see.
"Yes. And you?"
"Oh, that is not my destination; I am for deeper into the cluster. But you will find it an interesting world—especially the variations in the light; they make it seem quite dreamlike to a native of a planet with only a single, stable sun. And then, too, it is very old."
"What planet isn't?"
"I forget, you are from High Earth, to whom all other worlds must seem young indeed. Nevertheless, Boadacea is quite old enough to have many curious nations, all fiercely independent, and a cultural pattern which overrides all local variations. To this all the Boadaceans are intensely loyal."
"I commend them," Simon said; and then added sourly, "it is well for a man to have a belief he can cling to."
"The point is well taken," said the vombis. "Yet the pride of Boadacea springs from disloyalty, in the last analysis. The people believe it was the first colony to break with Old Earth, back in the first days of the Imaginary Drive. It is a breach they mean to see remains unhealed."
"Why not?" Simon said, shrugging. "I'm told also that Boadacea is very wealthy."
"Oh, excessively; it was once a great temptation to raiders, but the nations banded together against them with great success. Yet surely wealth does not interest you, reverend sir?"
"Marginally, yes. I am seeking some quiet country in which to settle and study. Naturally, I should prefer to find myself a patron."
"Naturally. I would suggest, then, that you try the domain of the Rood-Prince. It is small and stable, the climate is said to be clement, and he has a famous library." The creature arose. "For your purposes I would avoid Druidsfall; life there, as in most large cities, might prove rather turbulent for a scholar. I wish you success, reverend sir."
Placing its hand formally upon the jewelled shiv, the creature bowed slightly and left. Simon remained staring down at his cards, thinking icily but at speed.
What had all that meant? First of all, that his cover had been broken? Simon doubted that, but in any event it mattered little, since he would go almost into the open directly after landing. Assuming that it had, then, what had the creature been trying to convey? Surely not simply that life in Druidsfall would be even more turbulent for a traitor than for a lapsed divine. Naturally, it would expect Simon to know that; after all, Druidsfall was the center of the treason industry on Boadacea—that was why Simon was going there.
Or was it that Boadacea would be difficult for an ordinary traitor to buy, or was not for sale at all? But that might be said of any worthwhile planet, and no professional would let such a reputation pass without testing it, certainly not on the unsupported word of a stranger.
Besides, Simon was after all no ordinary traitor, nor even the usual kind of double agent. His task was to buy Boadacea while seeming to sell High Earth, but beyond that, there was a grander treason in the making for which the combined Traitors' Guilds of both planets might only barely be sufficient: the toppling of the Green Exarch, under whose subtle, nonhuman yoke half of humanity's worlds had not even the latter-day good sense to groan. For such a project, the wealth of Boadacea was a prerequisite, for the Green Exarch drew tithes from six fallen empires older than man—the wealth of Boadacea, and its reputation, which the vombis had invoked, as the first colony to have broken with Old Earth.
And such a project would necessarily be of prime interest to a creature of the Exarch. Yet security on it could not possibly have been broken. Simon knew well that men had died horribly for travelling under such assumptions in the past; nevertheless, he was sure of it. Then what—?
A steward walked slowly through the salon, beating a gong, and Simon put the problem aside for the moment and gathered up his cards.
"Druidsfall. One hour to Druidsfall. All passengers for the Flos Campi system please prepare for departure. Druidsfall in one hour; next port of call is Fleurety."
The Fool, he thought, has come to the Broken Tower. The next card to turn might well be the Hanged Man.
CHAPTER TWO
Boadacea proved indeed to be an interesting world, and despite all of Simon's preliminary reading and conditioning, quite as unsettling as the vombis had predicted.
Its sun, Flos Campi, was a ninety-minute microvariable, twinned at a distance of one light-year with a blue-white, Rigellike star which stood—or had stood throughout historical times—in high southern latitudes. This meant that every spot on the planet had a different cycle of day and night. Druidsfall, for example, had only four consecutive hours of quasi-darkness at a time, and even during this period the sky was indigo rather than black at its deepest—and more often than not flaring with auroras, thanks to the almost incessant solar storms.
Everything in the city, as everywhere on Boadacea, bespoke the crucial importance of fugitive light, and the fade-out-fade-in weather that went with it, all very strange after the desert glare of High Earth. The day after
the Karas had fluttered down had dawned in mist, which cold gales had torn away into slowly pulsating sunlight; then had come clouds and needlelike rain which had turned to snow and then to sleet—more weather in a day than the minarets of Jiddah, Simon's registered home town, saw in a six-month. The fluctuating light and wetness was reflected most startlingly by its gardens, which sprang up when one's back was turned and did not need so much to be weeded as actually fought. They were constantly in motion to the ninetyminute solar cycle, battering their elaborate flowerheads against back walls which were everywhere crumbling after centuries of such soft, implacable impacts. Half the buildings in Druidsfall glistened with their leaves, which were scaled with so much soft gold that they stuck to anything they were blown against—the wealth of Boadacea was based anciently in the vast amounts of uranium and other power-metals in its soil, from which the plants extracted the inevitable associated gold as radiation shielding for their spuriously tender genes. Everyone one saw in the streets of Druids-fall, or any other such city, was a mutation of some sort—if he was not an outworlder—but after a few days in the winds they were all half yellow, for the gold scales smeared off the flying leaves like butter. Everyone was painted with meaningless riches—the very bedsheets glittered ineradicably with flakes of it; and brunettes—especially among the elaborate hair styles of the men—were at a premium.
Druidsfall proper was the usual low jumble of decayed masonry, slightly less ancient slums, and blank-faced offices, but the fact that it was also the home city of the Guild—hence wholly convenient, if not congenial, for Simon—gave it character. The traitors had an architectural style of their own, characterized by structures put together mostly of fragmented statues and petrified bodies fitted to each other like puzzle pieces or maps. Traitors on Boadacea had belonged to an honored social class for seven hundred years, and their edifices made it known.