Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction

by Leigh Grossman

  It did not make much difference, really. They all got it in the first few hours of the war; as did London and Moscow, Washington and Peking, Detroit and Delhi, and many, many more.

  The defensive systems on all sides seemed to operate well, except that there were never enough anti-missiles. Defensive systems were expensive compared to attack rockets. It was cheaper to build a deterrent than to defend against it.

  The missiles flashed up from submarines and railway cars, from underground silos and stratospheric jets; secret ones fired off automatically when a certain airbase command post ceased beaming out a restraining radio signal. The defensive systems were simply overloaded. And when the bombs ran out, the missiles carried dust and germs and gas. On and on. For six days and six firelit nights. Launch, boost, coast, re-enter, death.

  * * * *

  And now it was over, the CIA man thought. The missiles were all gone. The airplanes were exhausted. The nations that had built the weapons no longer existed. By all the rules he knew of, the war should have been ended.

  Yet the fighting did not end. The machine knew better. There were still many ways to kill an enemy. Time-tested ways. There were armies fighting in four continents, armies that had marched overland, or splashed ashore from the sea, or dropped out of the skies.

  Incredibly, the war went on. When the tanks ran out of gas, and the flame throwers became useless, and even the prosaic artillery pieces had no more rounds to fire, there were still simple guns and even simpler bayonets and swords.

  The proud armies, the descendents of the Alexanders and Caesars and Temujins and Wellingtons and Grants and Rommels, relived their evolution in reverse.

  The war went on. Slowly, inevitably, the armies split apart into smaller and smaller units, until the tortured countryside that so recently had felt the impact of nuclear war once again knew the tread of bands of armed marauders. The tiny savage groups, stranded in alien lands, far from the homes and families that they knew to be destroyed, carried on a mockery of war, lived off the land, fought their own countrymen if the occasion suited, and revived the ancient terror of hand-wielded, personal, one-head-at-a-time killing.

  The CIA man watched the world disintegrate. Death was an individual business now, and none the better for no longer being mass-produced. In agonized fascination he saw the myriad ways in which a man might die. Murder was only one of them. Radiation, disease, toxic gases that lingered and drifted on the once-innocent winds, and—finally—the most efficient destroyer of them all: starvation.

  Three billion people (give or take a meaningless hundred million) lived on the planet Earth when the war began. Now, with the tenuous thread of civilization burned away, most of those who were not killed by the fighting itself succumbed inexorably to starvation.

  Not everyone died, of course. Life went on. Some were lucky.

  A long darkness settled on the world. Life went on for a few, a pitiful few, a bitter, hateful, suspicious, savage few. Cities became pestholes. Books became fuel. Knowledge died. Civilization was completely gone from the planet Earth.

  * * * *

  The helmet was lifted slowly off his head. The CIA man found that he was too weak to raise his arms and help. He was shivering and damp with perspiration.

  “Now you see,” Ford said quietly, “why the military men cracked up when they used the computer.”

  General LeRoy, even, was pale. “How can a man with any conscience at all direct a military operation when he knows that that will be the consequence?”

  The CIA man struck up a cigarette and pulled hard on it. He exhaled sharply. “Are all the war games…like that? Every plan?”

  “Some are worse,” Ford said. “We picked an average one for you. Even some of the ‘brushfire’ games get out of hand and end up like that.”

  “So…what do you intend to do? Why did you call me in? What can I do?”

  “You’re with CIA,” the general said. “Don’t you handle espionage?”

  “Yes, but what’s that got to do with it?”

  The general looked at him. “It seems to me that the next logical step is to make damned certain that They get the plans to this computer…and fast!”

  * * * *

  Copyright © 1962 by Condé Nast Publications, Inc.

  MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY

  (1930-2001)

  More than a decade after her death, MZB remains one of the field’s most puzzlingly complex figures. She was an inspirational figure to many groups and individuals, all of whom saw her as one of their own. It wasn’t enough for her to be a friend to people (as well as a fine writer and editor); many among her family and friends needed to claim her as a symbol of their causes, which in many cases contradicted each other. Regardless of whether she was Pagan or Episcopalian; gay or straight; or some combination of all the things people wanted her to be, if Marion was a symbol of anything, it was warmth, tolerance, and open-mindedness.

  After years of writing for fanzines, Bradley sold “Women Only” and “Keyhole” to Vortex Science Fiction in 1953. The Door Through Space, her first (albeit short) novel, came out in 1957; by this time her stories were selling regularly. The next year, the first of what would eventually be thirty-five Darkover novels, The Planet Savers, was serialized in Amazing. Part planetary romance, part sword and sorcery, and all grounded in science fiction, the Darkover books had the excitement and feel of high fantasy without any of the stigma still attached to fantasy in those days before the publication of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings in the U.S.

  The Darkover books sold well enough that Bradley was able to tackle more controversial projects, like her feminist retelling of the King Arthur story in The Mists of Avalon (1983). Because the book became a huge best-seller it’s easy to forget how reluctant publishers were to touch it when she was first writing it in the late 1960s. Bradley, who loved editing magazines and short fiction venues, also started Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine in 1988 and for years edited an annual anthology called Sword and Sorceress for DAW Books.

  Bradley’s relationship history is complicated, and a number of contradictory stories have circulated. She was married twice, although she and her second husband had lived separate lives for years before his arrest on child molestation charges. Years of fairly rough living and emotional stress affected her health as well; she had multiple heart attacks and years of declining health (mostly screened from her fans by those closest to her) before the massive heart attack that killed her.

  One of Bradley’s brothers, Paul Edwin Zimmer, and her oldest child, David R. Bradley, were also published SF writers.

  The Door Through Space is set in the same universe as Bradley’s Darkover novels and stories. It is an expansion of “Bird of Prey,” first published in Venture magazine in May, 1957.

  THE DOOR THROUGH SPACE, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  First published by Ace Books as an Ace Double, 1962

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I’ve always wanted to write. But not until I discovered the old pulp science-fantasy magazines, at the age of sixteen, did this general desire become a specific urge to write science-fantasy adventures.

  I took a lot of detours on the way. I discovered s-f in its golden age: the age of Kuttner, C.L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, Ed Hamilton and Jack Vance. But while I was still collecting rejection slips for my early efforts, the fashion changed. Adventures on faraway worlds and strange dimensions went out of fashion, and the new look in science-fiction—emphasis on the science—came in.

  So my first stories were straight science-fiction, and I’m not trying to put down that kind of story. It has its place. By and large, the kind of science-fiction which makes tomorrow’s headlines as near as this morning’s coffee, has enlarged popular awareness of the modern, miraculous world of science we live in. It has helped generations of young people feel at ease with a rapidly changing world.

  But fashions change, old loves return, and now that Sputniks clutter up the sky with new and unfamiliar moons, the readers of s
cience-fiction are willing to wait for tomorrow to read tomorrow’s headlines. Once again, I think, there is a place, a wish, a need and hunger for the wonder and color of the world way out. The world beyond the stars. The world we won’t live to see. That is why I wrote The Door Through Space.

  —Marion Zimmer Bradley

  CHAPTER ONE

  Beyond the spaceport gates, the men of the Kharsa were hunting down a thief. I heard the shrill cries, the pad-padding of feet in strides just a little too long and loping to be human, raising echoes all down the dark and dusty streets leading up to the main square.

  But the square itself lay empty in the crimson noon of Wolf. Overhead the dim red ember of Phi Coronis, Wolf’s old and dying sun, gave out a pale and heatless light. The pair of Spaceforce guards at the gates, wearing the black leathers of the Terran Empire, shockers holstered at their belts, were drowsing under the arched gateway where the star-and-rocket emblem proclaimed the domain of Terra. One of them, a snub-nosed youngster only a few weeks out from Earth, cocked an inquisitive ear at the cries and scuffling feet, then jerked his head at me.

  “Hey, Cargill, you can talk their lingo. What’s going on out there?”

  I stepped out past the gateway to listen. There was still no one to be seen in the square. It lay white and windswept, a barricade of emptiness; to one side the spaceport and the white skyscraper of the Terran Headquarters, and at the other side, the clutter of low buildings, the street-shrine, the little spaceport cafe smelling of coffee and jaco, and the dark opening mouths of streets that rambled down into the Kharsa—the old town, the native quarter. But I was alone in the square with the shrill cries—closer now, raising echoes from the enclosing walls—and the loping of many feet down one of the dirty streets.

  Then I saw him running, dodging, a hail of stones flying round his head; someone or something small and cloaked and agile. Behind him the still-faceless mob howled and threw stones. I could not yet understand the cries; but they were out for blood, and I knew it.

  I said briefly, “Trouble coming,” just before the mob spilled out into the square. The fleeing dwarf stared about wildly for an instant, his head jerking from side to side so rapidly that it was impossible to get even a fleeting impression of his face—human or nonhuman, familiar or bizarre. Then, like a pellet loosed from its sling, he made straight for the gateway and safety.

  And behind him the loping mob yelled and howled and came pouring over half the square. Just half. Then by that sudden intuition which permeates even the most crazed mob with some semblance of reason, they came to a ragged halt, heads turning from side to side.

  I stepped up on the lower step of the Headquarters building, and looked them over.

  Most of them were chaks, the furred man-tall nonhumans of the Kharsa, and not the better class. Their fur was unkempt, their tails naked with filth and disease. Their leather aprons hung in tatters. One or two in the crowd were humans, the dregs of the Kharsa. But the star-and-rocket emblem blazoned across the spaceport gates sobered even the wildest blood-lust somewhat; they milled and shifted uneasily in their half of the square.

  For a moment I did not see where their quarry had gone. Then I saw him crouched, not four feet from me, in a patch of shadow. Simultaneously the mob saw him, huddled just beyond the gateway, and a howl of frustration and rage went ringing round the square. Someone threw a stone. It zipped over my head, narrowly missing me, and landed at the feet of the black-leathered guard. He jerked his head up and gestured with the shocker which had suddenly come unholstered.

  The gesture should have been enough. On Wolf, Terran law has been written in blood and fire and exploding atoms; and the line is drawn firm and clear. The men of Spaceforce do not interfere in the old town, or in any of the native cities. But when violence steps over the threshold, passing the blazon of the star and rocket, punishment is swift and terrible. The threat should have been enough.

  Instead a howl of abuse went up from the crowd.

  “Terranan!”

  “Son of the Ape!”

  The Spaceforce guards were shoulder to shoulder behind me now. The snub-nosed kid, looking slightly pale, called out. “Get inside the gates, Cargill! If I have to shoot—”

  The older man motioned him to silence. “Wait. Cargill,” he called.

  I nodded to show that I heard.

  “You talk their lingo. Tell them to haul off! Damned if I want to shoot!”

  I stepped down and walked into the open square, across the crumbled white stones, toward the ragged mob. Even with two armed Spaceforce men at my back, it made my skin crawl, but I flung up my empty hand in token of peace:

  “Take your mob out of the square,” I shouted in the jargon of the Kharsa. “This territory is held in compact of peace! Settle your quarrels elsewhere!”

  There was a little stirring in the crowd. The shock of being addressed in their own tongue, instead of the Terran Standard which the Empire has forced on Wolf, held them silent for a minute. I had learned that long ago: that speaking in any of the languages of Wolf would give me a minute’s advantage.

  But only a minute. Then one of the mob yelled, “We’ll go if you give’m to us! He’s no right to Terran sanctuary!”

  I walked over to the huddled dwarf, miserably trying to make himself smaller against the wall. I nudged him with my foot.

  “Get up. Who are you?”

  The hood fell away from his face as he twitched to his feet. He was trembling violently. In the shadow of the hood I saw a furred face, a quivering velvety muzzle, and great soft golden eyes which held intelligence and terror.

  “What have you done? Can’t you talk?”

  He held out the tray which he had shielded under his cloak, an ordinary peddler’s tray. “Toys. Sell toys. Children. You got’m?”

  I shook my head and pushed the creature away, with only a glance at the array of delicately crafted manikins, tiny animals, prisms and crystal whirligigs. “You’d better get out of here. Scram. Down that street.” I pointed.

  A voice from the crowd shouted again, and it had a very ugly sound. “He is a spy of Nebran!”

  “Nebran—” The dwarfish nonhuman gabbled something then doubled behind me. I saw him dodge, feint in the direction of the gates, then, as the crowd surged that way, run for the street-shrine across the square, slipping from recess to recess of the wall. A hail of stones went flying in that direction. The little toy-seller dodged into the street-shrine.

  Then there was a hoarse “Ah, aaah!” of terror, and the crowd edged away, surged backward. The next minute it had begun to melt away, its entity dissolving into separate creatures, slipping into the side alleys and the dark streets that disgorged into the square. Within three minutes the square lay empty again in the pale-crimson noon.

  The kid in black leather let his breath go and swore, slipping his shocker into its holster. He stared and demanded profanely, “Where’d the little fellow go?”

  “Who knows?” the other shrugged. “Probably sneaked into one of the alleys. Did you see where he went, Cargill?”

  I came slowly back to the gateway. To me, it had seemed that he ducked into the street-shrine and vanished into thin air, but I’ve lived on Wolf long enough to know you can’t trust your eyes here. I said so, and the kid swore again, gulping, more upset than he wanted to admit. “Does this kind of thing happen often?”

  “All the time,” his companion assured him soberly, with a sidewise wink at me. I didn’t return the wink.

  The kid wouldn’t let it drop. “Where did you learn their lingo, Mr. Cargill?”

  “I’ve been on Wolf a long time,” I said, spun on my heel and walked toward Headquarters. I tried not to hear, but their voices followed me anyhow, discreetly lowered, but not lowered enough.

  “Kid, don’t you know who he is? That’s Cargill of the Secret Service! Six years ago he was the best man in Intelligence, before—” The voice lowered another decibel, and then there was the kid’s voice asking, shaken, “But what the hel
l happened to his face?”

  I should have been used to it by now. I’d been hearing it, more or less behind my back, for six years. Well, if my luck held, I’d never hear it again. I strode up the white steps of the skyscraper, to finish the arrangements that would take me away from Wolf forever. To the other end of the Empire, to the other end of the galaxy—anywhere, so long as I need not wear my past like a medallion around my neck, or blazoned and branded on what was left of my ruined face.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Terran Empire has set its blazon on four hundred planets circling more than three hundred suns. But no matter what the color of the sun, the number of moons overhead, or the geography of the planet, once you step inside a Headquarters building, you are on Earth. And Earth would be alien to many who called themselves Earthmen, judging by the strangeness I always felt when I stepped into that marble-and-glass world inside the skyscraper. I heard the sound of my steps ringing into thin resonance along the marble corridor, and squinted my eyes, readjusting them painfully to the cold yellowness of the lights.

  The Traffic Division was efficiency made insolent, in glass and chrome and polished steel, mirrors and windows and looming electronic clerical machines. Most of one wall was taken up by a TV monitor which gave a view of the spaceport; a vast open space lighted with blue-white mercury vapor lamps, and a chained-down skyscraper of a starship, littered over with swarming ants. The process crew was getting the big ship ready for skylift tomorrow morning. I gave it a second and then a third look. I’d be on it when it lifted.

  Turning away from the monitored spaceport, I watched myself stride forward in the mirrored surfaces that were everywhere; a tall man, a lean man, bleached out by years under a red sun, and deeply scarred on both cheeks and around the mouth. Even after six years behind a desk, my neat business clothes—suitable for an Earthman with a desk job—didn’t fit quite right, and I still rose unconsciously on the balls of my feet, approximating the lean stooping walk of a Dry-towner from the Coronis plains.