Old Mars Page 51
The thought of that little replica Athy, far from the sun, greener than green, waiting, gave me screaming nightmares.
Warm-up complete. I straightened myself at the piano. A flex of the fingers, and into the opening of “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.” And on strode Count Jack Fitzgerald, arms wide, handkerchief in one hand, beaming, the words pealing from his lips. Professional, consummate, marvelous. I never loved him more dearly than striding into the spotlights. The auditorium lit up with soft flashes of color: Uliri lighting up their bioluminescent mantles, their equivalent of applause.
Count Jack stopped in midline. I lifted my hands from the keys as if the ivory were poisoned. The silence was sudden and immense. Every light froze on, then softly faded to black.
“No,” he said softly. “This will not do.”
He held up his hands, showed each of them in turn to the audience. Then he brought them together in a single clap that rang out into the black vastness. Clap one, two, three. He waited. Then I heard the sound of a single pair of tentacles slapping together. It was not a clap, never a clap, but it was applause. Another joined it, another and another, until waves of slow tentacle claps washed around the auditorium. Count Jack raised his hands: enough. The silence was instant. Then he gave himself a round of applause, and me a round of applause, and I him. The Uliri caught the idea at once. Applause rang from every tier and level and joist of the Martian Queen’s concert hall.
“Now, let’s try that again,” Count Jack said, and without warning, strode off the stage. I saw him in the wings, indicating for me to milk it. I counted a good minute before I struck up the introduction to “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.” On he strode, arms wide, handkerchief in hand, beaming. And the concert hall erupted. Applause: wholehearted, loud-ringing, mighty applause, breaking like an ocean from one side of the concert hall to the other, wave upon wave upon wave, on and on and on.
Count Jack winked to me as he swept past into the brilliance of the lights to take the greatest applause of his life.
“What a house, Faisal! What a house!”
For Edgar Rice Burroughs,
Leigh Brackett, Catherine Moore,
Ray Bradbury, and Roger Zelazny,
who inspired this book,
and Robert Silverberg,
who should have been in it.
By George R. R. Martin
A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE
Book One: A Game of Thrones
Book Two: A Clash of Kings
Book Three: A Storm of Swords
Book Four: A Feast for Crows
Book Five: A Dance with Dragons
Dying of the Light
Windhaven (with Lisa Tuttle)
Fevre Dream
The Armageddon Rag
Dead Man’s Hand (with John J. Miller)
Old Mars (with Gardner Dozois)
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
Dreamsongs: Volume I
Dreamsongs: Volume II
A Song for Lya and Other Stories
Songs of Stars and Shadows
Sandkings
Songs the Dead Men Sing
Nightflyers
Tuf Voyaging
Portraits of His Children
Quartet
EDITED BY GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
New Voices in Science Fiction,
Volumes 1–4
The Science Fiction Weight-Loss Book
(With Isaac Asimov and Martin Harry Greenberg)
The John W. Campbell Awards,
Volume 5
Night Visions 3
Wild Cards I–XXII
CO-EDITED WITH GARDNER DOZOIS
Warrior I and II
Songs of the Dying Earth
Songs of Love and Death
Down These Strange Streets
By Gardner Dozois
NOVELS
Strangers
Nightmare Blue (with George Alec Effinger)
Hunter’s Run (with George R. R. Martin and Daniel Abraham)
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
When the Great Days Come
Strange Days: Fabulous Journeys with
Gardner Dozois
Geodesic Dreams
Morning Child and Other Stories
Slow Dancing Through Time
The Visible Man
EDITED BY GARDNER DOZOIS
The Year’s Best Science Fiction #1–30
The New Space Opera (with Jonathan Strahan)
The New Space Opera 2 (with Jonathan Strahan)
Modern Classics of Science Fiction
Modern Classics of Fantasy
The Good Old Stuff
The Good New Stuff
The “Magic Tales” series 1–37 (with Jack Dann)
Wizards (with Jack Dann)
The Dragon Book (with Jack Dann)
A Day in the Life
Another World
About the Editors
George R. R. Martin is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of many novels, including the acclaimed series A Song of Ice and Fire—A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and A Dance with Dragons. He won both the Hugo and Nebula awards for his novelette “Sandkings,” and, in 2012, he was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the World Fantasy Convention. As a writer-producer, he has worked on The Twilight Zone, Beauty and the Beast, and various feature films and pilots that were never made. He lives with the lovely Parris in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Gardner Dozois has won fifteen Hugo Awards and thirty-seven Locus Awards for his editing work, plus two Nebula Awards for his own writing. He was the editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction for twenty years, and is the author or editor of over a hundred books, including The Year’s Best Science Fiction. In 2011 Dozois was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.