Glancing over his shoulder, Darger saw the burning dwarf, now blackened to a cinder, emerge from a room engulfed in flames, capering and dancing. The modem, though disconnected, was now tucked under one arm, as if it were exceedingly valuable to him. His eyes were round and white and lidless. Seeing them, he gave chase.
“Aubrey!” Surplus cried. “We are headed the wrong way!”
It was true. They were running deeper into the Labyrinth, toward its heart, rather than outward. But it was impossible to turn back now. They plunged through scattering crowds of nobles and servitors, trailing fire and supernatural terror in their wake.
The scampering grotesque set fire to the carpets with every footfall. A wave of flame tracked him down the hall, incinerating tapestries and wallpaper and wood trim. No matter how they dodged, it ran straight toward them. Clearly, in the programmatic literalness of its kind, the demon from the web had determined that having early seen them, it must early kill them as well.
Darger and Surplus raced through dining rooms and salons, along balconies and down servants’ passages. To no avail. Dogged by their hyper-natural nemesis, they found themselves running down a passage, straight toward two massive bronze doors, one of which had been left just barely ajar. So fearful were they that they hardly noticed the guards.
“Hold, sirs!”
The mustachioed master of apes stood before the doorway, his baboons straining against their leashes. His eyes widened with recognition. “By gad, it’s you!” he cried in astonishment.
“Lemme kill ’em!” one of the baboons cried. “The lousy bastards!” The others growled agreement.
Surplus would have tried to reason with them, but when he started to slow his pace, Darger put a broad hand on his back and shoved. “Dive!” he commanded. So of necessity the dog of rationality had to bow to the man of action. He tobogganed wildly across the polished marble floor between two baboons, straight at the master of apes, and then between his legs.
The man stumbled, dropping the leashes as he did.
The baboons screamed and attacked.
For an instant all five apes were upon Darger, seizing his limbs, snapping at his face and neck. Then the burning dwarf arrived and, finding his target obstructed, seized the nearest baboon. The animal shrieked as its uniform burst into flames.
As one, the other baboons abandoned their original quarry to fight this newcomer who had dared attack one of their own.
In a trice, Darger leaped over the fallen master of apes, and was through the door. He and Surplus threw their shoulders against its metal surface and pushed. He had one brief glimpse of the fight, with the baboons aflame, and their master’s body flying through the air. Then the door slammed shut. Internal bars and bolts, operated by smoothly oiled mechanisms, automatically latched themselves.
For the moment, they were safe.
Surplus slumped against the smooth bronze, and wearily asked, “Where did you get that modem?”
“From a dealer of antiquities.” Darger wiped his brow with his kerchief. “It was transparently worthless. Whoever would dream it could be repaired?”
Outside, the screaming ceased. There was a very brief silence. Then the creature flung itself against one of the metal doors. It rang with the impact.
A delicate girlish voice wearily said, “What is this noise?”
They turned in surprise and found themselves looking up at the enormous corpus of Queen Gloriana. She lay upon her pallet, swaddled in satin and lace, and abandoned by all, save her valiant (though doomed) guardian apes. A pervasive yeasty smell emanated from her flesh. Within the tremendous folds of chins by the dozens and scores was a small human face. Its mouth moved delicately and asked, “What is trying to get in?”
The door rang again. One of its great hinges gave.
Darger bowed. “I fear, madame, it is your death.”
“Indeed?” Blue eyes opened wide and, unexpectedly, Gloriana laughed. “If so, that is excellent good news. I have been praying for death an extremely long time.”
“Can any of God’s creations truly pray for death and mean it?” asked Darger, who had his philosophical side. “I have known unhappiness myself, yet even so life is precious to me.”
“Look at me!” Far up to one side of the body, a tiny arm—though truly no tinier than any woman’s arm—waved feebly. “I am not God’s creation, but Man’s. Who would trade ten minutes of their own life for a century of mine? Who, having mine, would not trade it all for death?”
A second hinge popped. The doors began to shiver. Their metal surfaces radiated heat.
“Darger, we must leave!” Surplus cried. “There is a time for learned conversation, but it is not now.”
“Your friend is right,” Gloriana said. “There is a small archway hidden behind yon tapestry. Go through it. Place your hand on the left wall and run. If you turn whichever way you must to keep from letting go of the wall, it will lead you outside. You are both rogues, I see, and doubtless deserve punishment, yet I can find nothing in my heart for you but friendship.”
“Madame . . .” Darger began, deeply moved.
“Go! My bridegroom enters.”
The door began to fall inward. With a final cry of “Farewell!” from Darger and “Come on!” from Surplus, they sped away.
By the time they had found their way outside, all of Buckingham Labyrinth was in flames. The demon, however, did not emerge from the flames, encouraging them to believe that when the modem it carried finally melted down, it had been forced to return to that unholy realm from whence it came.
* * *
The sky was red with flames as the sloop set sail for Calais. Leaning against the rail, watching, Surplus shook his head. “What a terrible sight! I cannot help feeling, in part, responsible.”
“Come! Come!” Darger said. “This dyspepsia ill becomes you. We are both rich fellows, now! The Lady Pamela’s diamonds will maintain us lavishly for years to come. As for London, this is far from the first fire it has had to endure. Nor will it be the last. Life is short, and so, while we live, let us be jolly!”
“These are strange words for a melancholiac,” Surplus said wonderingly.
“In triumph, my mind turns its face to the sun. Dwell not on the past, dear friend, but on the future that lies glittering before us.”
“The necklace is worthless,” Surplus said. “Now that I have the leisure to examine it, free of the distracting flesh of Lady Pamela, I see that these are not diamonds, but mere imitations.” He made to cast the necklace into the Thames.
Before he could, though, Darger snatched away the stones from him and studied them closely. Then he threw back his head and laughed. “The biters bit! Well, it may be paste, but it looks valuable still. We shall find good use for it in Paris.”
“We are going to Paris?”
“We are partners, are we not? Remember that antique wisdom that whenever a door closes, another opens? For every city that burns, another beckons. To France, then, and adventure! After which, Italy, the Vatican Empire, Austro-Hungary, perhaps even Russia! Never forget that you have yet to present your credentials to the Duke of Muscovy.”
“Very well,” Surplus said. “But when we do, I’ll pick out the modem.”
SHARON LEE SAYS . . .
I am, with my partner-in-crime, Steve Miller, the author of eight published science fiction novels, seven in the Liaden Universe®. Number eight, The Tomorrow Low came out in February 2003. Novel number nine (Liaden Universe® novel number eight), Balance of Trade, was published in February 2004. We have edited the anthology Low Port, which hit the shelves in August 2003.
I’ve also written a couple dozen shorter works, some with Steve, some all by my onesie. Scout’s Progress and Local Custom won first and second place, respectively, in the 2002 Prism Awards for best sf/futuristic/paranormal romances of 2001 (the Prisms are given by the Futuristic Fantasy and Paranormal Chapter of Romance Writers of America). I’ve also seen published a murder mystery, Barnburner. My first
professionally published science fiction story was “A Matter of Ceremony,” in Amazing, 1980.
From August 1997 through August 2000, I served as executive director of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America; did a term as vice president from 2001–2002, and a term as president from 2002–2003.
I started reading science fiction and fantasy at a tender age, including the Rootabaga Stories, which my mother introduced me to in order to wean me away from that sci-fi stuff. . . .
I live in Central Maine with my lovely and talented husband of many years, three cats, absurd amounts of computer equipment, and way too many books.
Sharon’s Web site is at http://www.korval.com/.
APPRECIATING KATHERINE MACLEAN
SHARON LEE
In April 1953 a story entitled “Six Fingers” by Katherine MacLean appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories.
I didn’t read the story then, having been something less than a year old at the time of its publication—and slow for my age, besides.
When I did finally get around to reading the story, some twelve or thirteen years later, its title was “The Diploids”—and it changed my life.
It wasn’t one of those big, flashy changes in which my moneyed future as a top-selling author of speculative fiction was revealed in a lightning bolt accompanied by shrill hosanas from the local angel’s choir. No, it was a quieter, more basic change than any tin-whistle epiphany, and it was years before I realized what had happened. In fact, I think the damn thing’s still at work, there in my back-brain, informing my choices, and my expectations.
That was the first time I met Katie MacLean, in that peculiar, intimate, third-hand way that one meets an author through her story. I was just shy of thirteen; she was a woman grown. She promised me things, and I believed her.
What did she—what did the story—promise? Three things specifically, discovered only later, when I had found the promised condition, not knowing until the instant of discovery that I had been searching for it.
The first thing—the very first promise—was Wit. Somewhere, there was a place—and I would find it, when I became old, and bold, enough—where people loved words and the meaning of words so much that they punned; that they wrote, and spoke, with exuberance, with passion, with precision.
The second promise was Acceptance, despite—or because of—whatever oddities one might bear. Diversity was strength; the unexpected was powerful.
And the third promise, saving the best for last:
That a person named Katherine could write science fiction stories—science fiction stories with heart, about people, the problems they encountered, and the human solutions they evolved—and see them published alongside stories written by people named Robert, Fred, and Harry; and that there need be no compromises, no missishness, in those stories. That was the third promise—and the greatest.
* * *
The second time I met Katie I was myself a woman grown, and two of the three promises she had made to me were fulfilled. I knew and rejoiced in the company of people who loved words, and who used them well—as comforts and as weapons.
I had written science fiction stories and seen them published alongside people named Steve, Ray, Esther, and Marina; I had coauthored novels and seen them published, too.
This time, the contact came not through a story, but through the magic of e-mail.
We discovered that we were neighbors, in the way that people who live in the same sparsely populated state tend to feel neighborly, and we struck up a conversation—inconsequential chat, threaded through the work of our days, the weather, the state of the barn roof, her teaching dance therapy—
And then Katie was gone. I had asked her a question; I knew she didn’t ignore questions, but people get busy, they get lives, they get bored. Faintly worried, and telling myself I was an idiot for worrying, I went back to work.
Three days later, an e-mail from Katie arrived in my in-box; she was sorry to have cut our conversation short, but the state of the barn roof had deteriorated dramatically, and her husband had determined to fix it.
“At his age?” Katie inquired, rhetorically.
Having dissuaded him from this mad and potentially tragic meeting with a ladder, Katie climbed the rungs and did the repair herself.
At this point, I was absolutely infatuated, and when it came time, some years after I had given over my day-job and decided that being president of SFWA might be good for some thrills, it was my very great pleasure to append the name of Katherine MacLean to the list of SFWA Authors Emeritus.
* * *
The 2003 Nebula Awards® ceremony was held in Philadelphia. And there I met Katie MacLean for the third and most definitive time.
Asked before the event what she would like as a memento, Katie wished only for a reference so that she might land a job teaching English on an island nation whose name escapes me at the moment.
Asked if she would mind giving a presentation to those who would come to meet and to celebrate her, she threatened, half-seriously, or perhaps a little more, to “rant.”
But she didn’t rant.
She told us stories—about an early talent and a desire to be an artist, which her parents discouraged, thinking that they had thereby protected her from the Bohemian crowd. How despite the best efforts of those who cared about her most, she fell in with science fiction writers and other odd folk, married a man who promised to introduce her to “interesting” people, and so embarked upon the adventure of her life.
The audience—we were riveted as she told on, the narrative dancing joyously—disdainfully—along the edge of catastrophe, until at the end of the tale it was revealed that what her hearers had believed to be a single thread, lost and forgotten within the angled complexities of the telling, was in fact only one small part of an intricate and flawless verbal origami.
As I listened, enspelled, I could feel the others, Katie’s stories that I had read so long ago . . . stirring. Deepening, taking on substance, expanding, changing. And I realized that there had been a fourth promise made, all those years ago; a promise so subtle that I hadn’t known it had been made.
Those who take joy in their lives, and in their craft, who tell the truth as they observe it with an eye both clinical and ironic—they will change the lives and the perceptions of those who come after. And that creating the opportunity for that change to occur—is work worthy of a lifetime.
Thank you, Katie.
KATHERINE MACLEAN
Katherine MacLean, SFWA’s 2003 Author Emeritus, has been publishing science fiction stories for more than fifty years. When I reread my ancient, fragile, treasured copy of her short story collection The Diploids, I was struck by how applicable “Games” is to our time, as well as to the time of its first publication, in 1953.
Her bibliography can be found online at http://isfdb.tamu.edu/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Katherine%20MacLean.
GAMES
KATHERINE MACLEAN
Ronny was playing by himself, which meant he was two tribes of Indians having a war.
“Bang,” he muttered, firing an imaginary rifle. He decided that it was a time in history before the white people had sold the Indians any guns, and changed the rifle into a bow. “Wizz-thunk,” he substituted, mimicking from an Indian film on TV the graphic sound of an arrow striking flesh.
“Oof.” He folded down onto the grass, moaning, “Uhh-ooh . . .” relaxing into defeat and death.
“Want some chocolate milk, Ronny?” asked his mother from the kitchen.
“No thanks,” he called back, climbing to his feet to be another man. “Wizzthunk, wizzthunk,”—he added to the flights of arrows as the best archer in the tribe. “Last arrow. Wizzzzz,” he said missing one enemy for realism. The best archer in the tribe spoke to other battling braves. “Who has more arrows? They are advancing. No time, I’ll have to use my knife.” He drew the imaginary knife, ducking an arrow as it wizzed past his head.
* * *
Then he was the tribal chief st
anding nearby on a slight hill, and he saw that too many of his warriors were dead, too few left alive. “We must retreat. We must not all die and leave our tribe without warriors to protect the women and children. Retreat, we are outnumbered.”
Ronny decided that the chief was heroically wounded, his voice wavering from weakness. He had been propping himself against a tree to appear unharmed, but now he moved so that his braves could see he was pinned to the trunk by an arrow and could not walk. They cried out.
He said, “Leave me and escape. But remember. . . .” No words came, just the feeling of being what he was, a dying old eagle, a chief of warriors, speaking to young warriors who would need the advice of seasoned humor and moderation to carry them through their young battles. He had to finish his speech, tell them something wise.
Ronny tried harder, pulling the feeling around him like a cloak of resignation and pride, leaning indifferently against the tree where the arrow had pinned him, hearing dimly in anticipation the sound of his aged voice conquering weakness to speak wisely what needed to be said. They had many battles ahead of them, and the battles would be against odds, with so many dead already.
They must watch and wait, be flexible and tenacious, determined and persistent—but not too rash; subtle and indirect—but not cowardly; and above all, be patient with the triumph of the enemy, and not maddened into suicidal attack.
His stomach hurt with the arrow wound, and his braves waited to hear his words. He had to sum a part of his life’s experience in words. Ronny tried harder to make it real.
Then suddenly it was real.
He was an old man, guide and adviser in an oblique battle against great odds. He was dying of something, and his stomach hurt with a knotted ache, like hunger, and he was thirsty. He had refused to let the young men make the sacrifice of trying to rescue him. He was trapped in a steel cage, and dying, because he would not surrender to the enemy, nor cease to fight them. He smiled and said, “Do not be fanatical. Remember to live like other men, but remember to live like yourself . . .”
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