Dreamsongs 2-Book Bundle Page 9

  There were black days that summer when I felt as if my five years of college had been a total waste, that I would be forever trapped in Bayonne and might end up running the Tubs o’ Fun again at Uncle Milty’s down on 1st Street, as I had my first summer out of high school. Vietnam also loomed. My number had come up in the draft lottery, and by losing all that weight over the past year I had also managed to lose my 4-F exemption. I was opposed to the war in Vietnam, and had applied for conscientious objector status with my local draft board, but everyone told me that my chances of receiving it were small to none. More likely, I’d be drafted. I might only have a month or two of civilian life remaining.

  I had that much, however … and since I only had a part-time job, I had half of every day as well. I decided to use that time for writing fiction, as I’d resolved to do at Disclave. To work at it every day, and see how much I could produce before Uncle Sam called me up. My Parks Department job began in the afternoon, so the mornings became my time to write. Every day after breakfast I would drag out my Smith-Corona portable electric, set it up on my mother’s kitchen table, plug it in, flick on the switch that made it hummmmm, and set to writing. Nor would I allow myself to put a story aside until I’d finished it. I wanted finished stories I could sell, not fragments and half-developed notions.

  That summer I finished a story every two weeks, on the average. I wrote “Night Shift” and “Dark, Dark Were the Tunnels.” I wrote “The Last Super Bowl,” though my title was “The Final Touchdown Drive.” I wrote “A Peripheral Affair” and “Nobody Leaves New Pittsburg,” both of them intended as the first story of a series. And I wrote “With Morning Comes Mistfall” and “The Second Kind of Loneliness,” which follow. Seven stories, all in all. Maybe it was the spectre of Vietnam that goaded me, or my accumulated frustration at having neither a job, a girl, nor a life. (“Nobody Leaves New Pittsburg,” though perhaps the weakest story I produced that summer, reflects my state of mind most clearly. For “New Pittsburg,” read “Bayonne.” For “corpse,” read me.)

  Whatever the cause, the words came pouring out of me as they never had before. Ultimately, all seven of the stories that I wrote that summer would go on to sell, though for some it would require four or five years and a score of rejections. Two of the seven, however, proved to be important milestones in my career, and those are the two that I’ve included here.

  They were the two best. I knew that when I wrote them, and said as much in the letters I sent to Howard Waldrop that summer. “With Morning Comes Mistfall” was the finest thing that I had ever written, ever … until I wrote “The Second Kind of Loneliness” a few weeks later. “Mistfall” seemed to me to be the more polished of the two, a wistful mood piece with little in the way of traditional “action,” yet evocative and, I hoped, effective. “Loneliness,” on the other hand, was an open wound of a story, painful to write, painful to read. It represented a real breakthrough for my writing. My earlier stories had come wholly from the head, but this one came from the heart and the balls as well. It was the first story I ever wrote that truly left me feeling vulnerable, the first story that ever made me ask myself, “Do I really want to let people read this?”

  “The Second Kind of Loneliness” and “With Morning Comes Mistfall” were the stories that would make or break my career, I was convinced. For the next half-year, break looked more likely than make. Neither story sold its first time out. Or its second. Or its third. My other “summer stories” were getting bounced around as well, but it was the rejections for “Mistfall” and “Loneliness” that hurt the most. These were strong stories, I was convinced, the best work that I was capable of. If the editors did not want them, maybe I did not understand what makes a good story after all … or maybe my best work was just not good enough. It was a dark day each time one of these two came straggling home, and a dark night of doubt that followed.

  But in the end my faith was vindicated. Both stories sold, and when they did it was to Analog, which boasted the highest circulation and best rates of any magazine in the field. John W. Campbell, Jr., had died that spring, and after a hiatus of several months Ben Bova had been named to take his place as editor of SF’s most respected magazine. Campbell would never have touched either of these stories, I am convinced, but Bova intended to take Analog in new directions. He bought them both, after some minor rewrites.

  “The Second Kind of Loneliness” appeared first, as the cover story of the December 1972 issue. Frank Kelly Freas did the cover, a gorgeous depiction of my protagonist floating above the whorl of the nullspace vortex. (It was my first cover and I wanted to buy the painting. Freas offered it to me for $200… but I had only received $250 for the story, so I flinched, and bought the two-page interior spread and a cover rough instead. They’re both swell, but I wish that I’d gone ahead and bought the painting. The last time I inquired, its current owner was willing to sell for $20,000.)

  “With Morning Comes Mistfall” followed “Loneliness” into print, in the issue for May 1973. Two stories appearing in the field’s top magazine so close together attracted attention, and “Mistfall” was nominated for both the Nebula and Hugo Awards, the first of my works to contend for either honor. It lost the Nebula to James Tiptree’s “Love Is the Plan, the Plan Is Death,” and the Hugo to Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” but I received a handsome certificate suitable for framing and Gardner Dozois inducted me into the Hugo-and-Nebula Losers Club, chanting “One of us, one of us, one of us.” I can’t complain.

  That summer of 1971 proved to be a turning point in my life. If I had been able to find an entry-level job in journalism, I might very well have taken the road more traveled by, the one that came with a salary and health insurance. I suspect I would have continued to write the occasional short story, but with a full-time job to fill my days they would have been few and far between. Today I might be a foreign correspondent for the New York Times, an entertainment reporter for Variety, a columnist appearing daily in three hundred newspapers coast to coast … or more likely, a sour, disgruntled rewrite man on the Jersey Journal.

  Instead circumstances forced me to do what I loved best.

  That summer ended happily in other ways as well. To the vast surprise of all, my draft board granted me my conscientious objector status. (Perhaps “The Hero” had a bit to do with that. I’d sent it in as part of my application.) With my low lottery number, I was still called up to serve at the end of the summer … but now, instead of flying off to Vietnam, I was returning to Chicago for two years of alternative service with VISTA.

  During the next decade I would find myself directing chess tournaments and teaching college … but those were only things I did, to pay the rent. After the summer of ’71, when people asked me what I was, I always said, “A writer.”

  THE HERO

  The city was dead and the flames of its passing spread a red stain across the green-gray sky.

  It had been a long time dying. Resistance had lasted almost a week and the fighting had been bitter for a while. But in the end the invaders had broken the defenders, as they had broken so many others in the past. The alien sky with its double sun did not bother them. They had fought and won under skies of azure blue and speckled gold and inky black.

  The Weather Control boys had hit first, while the main force was still hundreds of miles to the east. Storm after storm had flailed at the streets of the city, to slow defensive preparations and smash the spirit of resistance.

  When they were closer the invaders had sent up howlers. Unending high-pitched shrieks had echoed back and forth both day and night and before long most of the populace had fled in demoralized panic. By then the attackers’ main force was in range and launched plague bombs on a steady westward wind.

  Even then the natives had tried to fight back. From their defensive emplacements ringing the city the survivors had sent up a hail of atomics, managing to vaporize one whole company whose defensive screens were overloaded by the sudden assault. But th
e gesture was a feeble one at best. By that time incendiary bombs were raining down steadily upon the city and great clouds of acid-gas were blowing across the plains.

  And behind the gas, the dreaded assault squads of the Terran Expeditionary Force moved on the last defenses.

  Kagen scowled at the dented plastoid helmet at his feet and cursed his luck. A routine mopping-up detail, he thought. A perfectly routine operation—and some damned automatic interceptor emplacement somewhere had lobbed a low-grade atomic at him.

  It had been only a near miss but the shock waves had damaged his hip rockets and knocked him out of the sky, landing him in this godforsaken little ravine east of the city. His light plastoid battle armor had protected him from the impact but his helmet had taken a good whack.

  Kagen squatted and picked up the dented helmet to examine it. His long-range com and all of his sensory equipment were out. With his rockets gone, too, he was crippled, deaf, dumb, and half-blind. He swore.

  A flicker of movement along the top of the shallow ravine caught his attention. Five natives came suddenly into view, each carrying a hair-trigger submachine gun. They carried them at the ready, trained on Kagen. They were fanned out in line, covering him from both right and left. One began to speak.

  He never finished. One instant, Kagen’s screech gun lay on the rocks at his feet. Quite suddenly it was in his hand.

  Five men will hesitate where one alone will not. During the brief flickering instant before the natives’ fingers began to tighten on their triggers, Kagen did not pause, Kagen did not hesitate, Kagen did not think.

  Kagen killed.

  The screech gun emitted a loud, ear-piercing shriek. The enemy squad leader shuddered as the invisible beam of concentrated high-frequency sound ripped into him. Then his flesh began to liquify. By then Kagen’s gun had found two more targets.

  The guns of the two remaining natives finally began to chatter. A rain of bullets enveloped Kagen as he whirled to his right and he grunted under the impact as the shots caromed off his battle armor. His screech gun leveled—and a random shot sent it spinning from his grasp.

  Kagen did not hesitate or pause as the gun was wrenched from his grip. He bounded to the top of the shallow ravine with one leap, directly toward one of the soldiers.

  The man wavered briefly and brought up his gun. The instant was all Kagen needed. With all the momentum of his leap behind it, his right hand smashed the gun butt into the enemy’s face and his left, backed by fifteen hundred pounds of force, hammered into the native’s body right under the breastbone.

  Kagen seized the corpse and heaved it toward the second native, who had ceased fire briefly as his comrade came between himself and Kagen. Now his bullets tore into the airborne body. He took a quick step back, his gun level and firing.

  And then Kagen was on him. Kagen knew a searing flash of pain as a shot bruised his temple. He ignored it, drove the edge of his hand into the native’s throat. The man toppled, lay still.

  Kagen spun, still reacting, searching for the next foe.

  He was alone.

  Kagen bent and wiped the blood from his hand with a piece of the native’s uniform. He frowned in disgust. It was going to be a long trek back to camp, he thought, tossing the blood-soaked rag casually to the ground.

  Today was definitely not his lucky day.

  He grunted dismally, then scrambled back down into the ravine to recover his screech gun and helmet for the hike.

  On the horizon, the city was still burning.

  Ragelli’s voice was loud and cheerful as it came crackling over the short-range communicator nestled in Kagen’s fist.

  “So it’s you, Kagen,” he said, laughing. “You signaled just in time. My sensors were starting to pick up something. Little closer and I would’ve screeched you down.”

  “My helmet’s busted and the sensors are out,” Kagen replied. “Damn hard to judge distance. Long-range com is busted, too.”

  “The brass was wondering what happened to you,” Ragelli cut in. “Made ’em sweat a little. But I figured you’d turn up sooner or later.”

  “Right,” Kagen said. “One of these mudworms zapped the hell out of my rockets and it took me a while to get back. But I’m coming in now.”

  He emerged slowly from the crater he had crouched in, coming in sight of the guard in the distance. He took it slow and easy.

  Outlined against the outpost barrier, Ragelli lifted a ponderous silver-gray arm in greeting. He was armored completely in a full duralloy battlesuit that made Kagen’s plastoid armor look like tissue paper, and sat in the trigger-seat of a swiveling screech-gun battery. A bubble of defensive screens enveloped him, turning his massive figure into an indistinct blur.

  Kagen waved back and began to eat up the distance between them with long, loping strides. He stopped just in front of the barrier, at the foot of Ragelli’s emplacement.

  “You look damned battered,” said Ragelli, appraising him from behind a plastoid visor, aided by his sensory devices. “That light armor doesn’t buy you a nickel’s worth of protection. Any farm boy with a pea shooter can plug you.”

  Kagen laughed. “At least I can move. You may be able to stand off an assault squad in that duralloy monkey suit, but I’d like to see you do anything on offense, chum. And defense doesn’t win wars.”

  “Your pot,” Ragelli said. “This sentry duty is boring as hell.” He flicked a switch on his control panel and a section of the barrier winked out. Kagen was through it at once. A split second later it came back on again.

  Kagen strode quickly to his squad barracks. The door slid open automatically as he approached it and he stepped inside gratefully. It felt good to be home again and back at his normal weight. These light gravity mudholes made him queasy after a while. The barracks were artificially maintained at Wellington-normal gravity, twice Earth-normal. It was expensive but the brass kept saying that nothing was too good for the comfort of our fighting men.

  Kagen stripped off his plastoid armor in the squad ready room and tossed it into the replacement bin. He headed straight for his cubicle and sprawled across the bed.

  Reaching over to the plain metal table alongside his bed, he yanked open a drawer and took out a fat greenish capsule. He swallowed it hastily, and lay back to relax as it took hold throughout his system. The regulations prohibited taking synthastim between meals, he knew, but the rule was never enforced. Like most troopers, Kagen took it almost continuously to maintain his speed and endurance at maximum.

  He was dozing comfortably a few minutes later when the com box mounted on the wall above his bed came to sudden life.

  “Kagen.”

  Kagen sat up instantly, wide awake.

  “Acknowledged,” he said.

  “Report to Major Grady at once.”

  Kagen grinned broadly. His request was being acted on quickly, he thought. And by a high officer, no less. Dressing quickly in loose-fitting brown fatigues, he set off across the base.

  The high officers’ quarters were at the center of the outpost. They consisted of a brightly lit, three-story building, blanketed overhead by defensive screens and ringed by guardsmen in light battle armor. One of the guards recognized Kagen and he was admitted on orders.

  Immediately beyond the door he halted briefly as a bank of sensors scanned him for weapons. Troopers, of course, were not allowed to bear arms in the presence of high officers. Had he been carrying a screech gun alarms would have gone off all over the building while the tractor beams hidden in the walls and ceilings immobilized him completely.

  But he passed the inspection and continued down the long corridor toward Major Grady’s office. A third of the way down, the first set of tractor beams locked firmly onto his wrists. He struggled the instant he felt the invisible touch against his skin—but the tractors held him steady. Others, triggered automatically by his passing, came on as he continued down the corridor.

  Kagen cursed under his breath and fought with his impulse to resist. He hated
being pinned by tractor beams, but those were the rules if you wanted to see a high officer.

  The door opened before him and he stepped through. A full bank of tractor beams seized him instantly and immobilized him. A few adjusted slightly and he was snapped to rigid attention, although his muscles screamed resistance.

  Major Carl Grady was working at a cluttered wooden desk a few feet away, scribbling something on a sheet of paper. A large stack of papers rested at his elbow, an old-fashioned laser pistol sitting on top of them as a paperweight.

  Kagen recognized the laser. It was some sort of heirloom, passed down in Grady’s family for generations. The story was that some ancestor of his had used it back on Earth, in the Fire Wars of the early twenty-first century. Despite its age, the thing was still supposed to be in working order.

  After several minutes of silence Grady finally set down his pen and looked up at Kagen. He was unusually young for a high officer but his unruly gray hair made him look older than he was. Like all high officers, he was Earth-born; frail and slow before the assault squad troopers from the dense, heavy gravity War Worlds of Wellington and Rommel.

  “Report your presence,” Grady said curtly. As always, his lean, pale face mirrored immense boredom.

  “Field Officer John Kagen, assault squads, Terran Expeditionary Force.”

  Grady nodded, not really listening. He opened one of his desk drawers and extracted a sheet of paper.

  “Kagen,” he said, fiddling with the paper, “I think you know why you’re here.” He tapped the paper with his finger. “What’s the meaning of this?”