James Tiptree Jr - 10000 Light Years From Home.pdf - James Tiptree Jr - widez2

TEN-THOUSAND LIGHT YEARS FROM

HOME

James Tiptree Jr

[03 dec 2001—proofed and re-released for #bookz]

INTRODUCTION

There is one particular joy that only editors share. This is the biting edge of pleasure experienced

upon reading a good story by a totally unknown and unsold author. If the story is not only good but very

good the pleasure is obviously even greater. Like other authors in the science fiction field I find myself

wearing different hats from time to time; editor more often than not, critic when pressed, insulted

letter-writer when bothered. The editorial hat is the most comfortable one to wear. Since I first began

editing in the early 1950’s I have discovered, chortled over and published the first stories of at least a

half-dozen authors. Some of them later vanished into the interstellar night from whence they came; others

went on to become established professionals. Which brings us instantly to the name of James Tiptree, Jr.

I remember the story well. It was a bad day in the editing business. The slush pile—for that is what it

is crudely called in the trade—was piled high and tottering with bad stories. I had a deadline. I was tired.

I tried reading one more story; then I was no longer tired. Here was a story by a professional, a man who

knew how to interest me, entertain me, and tell me something about the world and mankind’s affairs all at

the same time. I wrote at once and was pleased to hear, some years later, that the word from me arrived

just one day before a check from John W. Campbell. Now that is the way to start a career in science

fiction.

Tiptree is a professional because he cares about his work and keeps on caring. He reworks it

himself until he has it right, then reworks it some more aiming at an unobtainable perfection. He is fun to

work with because he actually thanks an editor for pointing out something that needs brushing up. But

most of all he is a professional because he writes the kind of fiction that is worth reading and is a pleasure

to read at the same time.

There is a temptation in an introduction of this kind to be very biographical and spend a good deal of

time on the author’s lovely dark hair or firm waistline despite his advancing years. I shall resist this

because the fiction, the stories before you, are what really counts. The fact that their author enjoys

observing bears in the wilds of Canada or skindiving deep in Mexico is not really relevent. Nor is the

information that he spent a good part of World War II in a Pentagon subbasement. These facts may clue

you to the obviosity that James Tiptree, Jr. is well-traveled and well-experienced in the facts, both sordid

and otherwise, of our world. But internal evidence in the stories informs us of that just as easily.

The stories are what we must look at—and here they are: the first collection by an author who can

only go on to greater successes. I found them a pleasure to read—and I know that you will too.

Harry Harrison – San Diego, 1973

AND I AWOKE AND FOUND ME HERE ON THE COLD HILL’S SIDE

He was standing absolutely still by a service port, staring out at the belly of the Orion docking above

us. He had on a gray uniform and his rusty hair was cut short. I took him for a station engineer.

That was bad for me. Newsmen strictly don’t belong in the bowels of Big Junction. But in my first

twenty hours I hadn’t found anyplace to get a shot of an alien ship.

I turned my holocam to show its big World Media insigne and started my bit about What It Meant

to the People Back Home who were paying for it all.

“—it may be routine work to you, sir, but we owe it to them to share—”

His face came around slow and tight, and his gaze passed over me from a peculiar distance.

“The wonders, the drama,” he repeated dispassionately. His eyes focused on me. “You

consummated fool.”

“Could you tell me what races are coming in, sir? If I could even get a view—”

He waved me to the port. Greedily I angled my lenses up at the long blue hull blocking out the

starfield. Beyond her I could see the bulge of a black and gold ship.

“That’s a Foramen,” he said. “There’s a freighter from Belye on the other side, you’d call it

Arcturus. Not much traffic right now.”

“You’re the first person who’s said two sentences to me since I’ve been here, sir. What are those

colorful little craft?”

“Procya,” he shrugged. “They’re always around. Like us.”

I squashed my face on the vitrite, peering. The walls clanked. Somewhere overhead aliens were

off-loading into their private sector of Big Junction. The man glanced at his wrist.

“Are you waiting to go out, sir?”

His grunt could have meant anything.

“Where are you from on Earth?” he asked me in his hard tone.

I started to tell him and suddenly saw that he had forgotten my existence. His eyes were on

nowhere, and his head was slowly bowing forward onto the port frame.

“Go home,” he said thickly. I caught a strong smell of tallow.

“Hey, sir!” I grabbed his arm; he was in rigid tremor. “Steady, mark.”

“I’m waiting... waiting for my wife. My loving wife.” He gave a short ugly laugh. “Where are you

from?”

I told him again.

“Go home,” he mumbled. “Go home and make babies. While you still can.”

One of the early GR casualties, I thought.

“Is that all you know?” His voice rose stridently. “Fools. Dressing in their styles. Gnivo suits,

Aoleelee music. Oh, I see your newscasts,” he sneered. “Nixi parties. A year’s salary for a floater.

Gamma radiation? Go home, read history. Ballpoint pens and bicycles —”

He started a slow slide downward in the half gee. My only informant. We struggled confusedly; he

wouldn’t take one of my sobertabs but I finally got him along the service corridor to a bench in an empty

loading bay. He fumbled out a little vacuum cartridge. As I was helping him unscrew it, a figure in

starched whites put his head in the bay.

“I can be of assistance, yes?” His eyes popped, his face was covered with brindled fur. An alien, a

Procya! I started to thank him but the red-haired man cut me off.

“Get lost. Out.”

The creature withdrew, its big eyes moist. The man stuck his pinky in the cartridge and then put it up

his nose, gasping deep in his diaphragm. He looked toward his wrist.

“What time is it?”

I told him.

“News,” he said. “A message for the eager, hopeful human race. A word about those lovely, lovable

aliens we all love so much.” He looked at me. “Shocked, aren’t you, newsboy?”

I had him figured now. A xenophobe. Aliens plot to take over Earth.

“Ah Christ, they couldn’t care less.” He took another deep gasp, shuddered and straightened. “The

hell with generalities. What time d’you say it was? All right, I’ll tell you how I learned it. The hard way.

While we wait for my loving wife. You can bring that little recorder out of your sleeve, too. Play it over to

yourself some time ... when it’s too late.” He chuckled. His tone had become chatty—an educated voice.

“You ever hear of supernormal stimuli?”

“No,” I said. “Wait a minute. White sugar?”

“Near enough. Y’know Little Junction bar in D.C.? No, you’re an Aussie, you said. Well, I’m from

Burned Barn, Nebraska.”

He took a breath, consulting some vast disarray of the soul.

“I accidentally drifted into Little Junction Bar when I was eighteen. No. Correct that. You don’t go

into Little Junction by accident, any more than you first shoot skag by accident.

“You go into Little Junction because you’ve been craving it, dreaming about it, feeding on every hint

and clue about it, back there in Burned Barn, since before you had hair in your pants. Whether you know

it or not. Once you’re out of Burned Barn, you can no more help going into Little Junction than a

sea-worm can help rising to the moon.

“I had a brand-new liquor I.D. in my pocket. It was early; there was an empty spot beside some

humans at the bar. Little Junction isn’t an embassy bar, y’know. I found out later where the high-caste

aliens go—when they go out. The New Rive, the Curtain by the Georgetown Marina.

“And they go by themselves. Oh, once in a while they do the cultural exchange bit with a few frosty

couples of other aliens and some stuffed humans. Galactic Amity with a ten-foot pole.

“Little Junction was the place where the lower orders went, the clerks and drivers out for kicks.

Including, my friend, the perverts. The ones who can take humans. Into their beds, that is.”

He chuckled and sniffed his finger again, not looking at me.

“Ah, yes. Little Junction is Galactic Amity night, every night. I ordered... what? A margharita. I

didn’t have the nerve to ask the snotty spade bartender for one of the alien liquors behind the bar. It was

dim. I was trying to stare everywhere at once without showing it. I remember those white

boneheads—Lyrans, that is. And a mess of green veiling I decided was a multiple being from someplace.

I caught a couple of human glances in the bar mirror. Hostile flicks. I didn’t get the message, then.

“Suddenly an alien pushed right in beside me. Before I could get over my paralysis, I heard this

blurry voice:

“You air a futeball enthushiash?”

“An alien had spoken to me. An alien , a being from the stars. Had spoken. To me.

“Oh, god, I had no time for football, but I would have claimed a passion for paper-folding, for dumb

crambo—anything to keep him talking. I asked him about his home-planet sports, I insisted on buying his

drinks. I listened raptly while he spluttered out a play-by-lay account of a game I wouldn’t have turned a

dial for. The ‘Grain Bay Pashkers’. Yeah. And I was dimly aware of trouble among the humans oa-my

other side.

“Suddenly this woman—I’d call her a girl now—this girl said something, in a high nasty voice and

swung her stool into the arm I was holding my drink with. We both turned around together.

“Christ, I can see her now. The first thing that hit me was discrepancy . She was a nothing—but

terrific. Transfigured. Oozing it, radiating it.

“The next thing was I had a horrifying hard-on just looking at her.

“I scrooched over so my tunic hid it, and my spilled drink trickled down, making everything worse.

She pawed vaguely at the spill, muttering.

I just stared at her trying to figure out what had hit me. An ordinary figure, a soft avidness in the

face. Eyes heavy, satiated-looking. She was totally sexualized. I remembered her throat pulsed. She had

one hand up touching her scarf, which had slipped off her shoulder. I saw angry bruises there. That really

tore it, I understood at once those bruises had some sexual meaning.

“She was looking past my head with her face like a radar dish. Then she made an ‘ahhhh’ sound that

had nothing to do with me and grabbed my forearm as if it were a railing. One of the men behind her

laughed. The woman said, ‘Excuse me,’ in a ridiculous voice and slipped out behind me. I wheeled

around after her, nearly upsetting my futeball friend, and saw that some Sirians had come in.

“That was my first look at Sirians in the flesh, if that’s the word. God knows I’d memorized every

news shot, but I wasn’t prepared. That tallness, that cruel thinness. That appalling alien arrogance.

Ivory-blue, these were. Two males in immaculate metallic gear. Then I saw there was a female with them.

An ivory-indigo exquisite with a permanent faint smile on those bone-hard lips.

“The girl who’d left me was ushering them to a table. She reminded me of a goddamn dog that

wants you to follow it. Just as the crowd hid them, I saw a man join them too. A big man, expensively

dressed, with something wrecked about his face.

“Then the music started and I had to apologize to my furry friend. And the Sellice dancer came out

and my personal introduction to hell began.”

The red-haired man fell silent for a minute enduring self-pity. Something wrecked about the face, I

thought; it fit.

He pulled his face together.

“First I’ll give you the only coherent observation of my entire evening. You can see it here at Big

Junction, always the same. Outside of the Procya, it’s humans with aliens, right? Very seldom aliens with

other aliens. Never aliens with humans. It’s the humans who want in.”

I nodded, but he wasn’t talking to me. His voice had a druggy fluency.

“Ah, yes, my Sellice. My first Sellice.”

“They aren’t really well-built, y’know, under those cloaks. No waist to speak of and short-legged.

But they flow when they walk.

“This one flowed out into the spotlight, cloaked to the ground in violet silk. You could only see a fall

of black hair and tassels over a narrow face like a vole. She was a mole-gray. They come in all colors,

their fur is like a flexible velvet all over; only the color changes startlingly around their eyes and lips and

other places. Erogenous zones? Ah, man, with them it’s not zones.

“She began to do what we’d call a dance, but it’s no dance, it’s their natural movement. Like

smiling, say, with us. The music built up, and her arms undulated toward me, letting the cloak fall apart

little by little. She was naked under it. The spotlight started to pick up her body markings moving in the

slit of the cloak. Her arms floated apart and I saw more and more.

“She was fantastically marked and the markings were writhing. Not like body paint—alive. Smiling,

that’s a good word for it. As if her whole body was smiling sexually, beckoning, winking, urging, pouting,

speaking to me. You’ve seen a classic Egyptian belly dance? Forget it—a sorry stiff thing compared to

what any Sellice can do. This one was ripe, near term.

“Her arms went up and those blazing lemon-colored curves pulsed, waved, everted, contracted,

throbbed, evolved unbelievably welcoming, inciting permutations. Come do it to me, do it, do it here

and here and here and now . You couldn’t see the rest of her, only a wicked flash of mouth. Every

human male in the room was aching to ram himself into that incredible body. I mean it was pain . Even the

other aliens were quiet, except one of the Sirians who was chewing out a waiter.

“I was a basket case before she was halfway through.... I won’t bore you with what happened next;

before it was over there were several fights and I got out. My money ran out on the third night. She was

gone next day.

“I didn’t have time to find out about the Sellice cycle then, mercifully. That came after I went back to

campus and discovered you had to have a degree in solid-state electronics to apply for off-planet work. I

was a pre-med but I got that degree. It only took me as far as First Junction then.

“Oh, god, First Junction. I thought I was in heaven—the alien ships coming in and our freighters

going out. I saw them all, all but the real exotics, the tankies. You only see a few of those a cycle, even

here. And the Yyeire. You’ve never seen that.

“Go home, boy. Go home to your version of Burned Barn....

“The first Yyek I saw I dropped everything and started walking after it like a starving hound, just

breathing. You’ve seen the pix of course. Like lost dreams. Man is in love and loves what vanishes ....

It’s the scent, you can’t guess that. I followed until I ran into a slammed port. I spent half a cycle’s credits

sending the creature the wine they call stars’ tears.... Later I found out it was a male. That made no

difference at all.

“You can’t have sex with them, y’know. No way. They breed by light or something, no one knows

exactly. There’s a story about a man who got hold of a Yyeir woman and tried. They had him skinned.

Stories—”

He was starting to wander.

“What about that girl in the bar, did you see her again?”

He came back from somewhere.

“Oh, yes. I saw her. She’d been making it with the two Skians, y’know. The males do it in pairs.

Said to be the total sexual thing for a woman, if she can stand the damage from those beaks. I wouldn’t

know. She talked to me a couple of times after they finished with her. No use for men whatever. She

drove off the P Street bridge.... The man, poor bastard, he was trying to keep that Skian bitch happy

single-handed. Money helps, for a while. I don’t know where he ended.”

He glanced at his wrist again. I saw the pale bare place where a watch had been and told him the

time.

“Is that the message you want to give Earth? Never love an alien?”

“Never love an alien—” He shrugged. “Yeah. No. Ah, Jesus don’t you see? Everything going out,

nothing coming back. Like the poor damned Polynesians. We’re gutting Earth, to begin with. Swapping

raw resources for junk. Alien status symbols. Tape decks, Coca Cola and Mickey Mouse watches.”

“Well, there is concern over the balance of trade. Is that your message?”

“The balance of trade.” He rolled it sardonically. “Did the Polynesians have a word for it, I wonder?

You don’t see, do you? All right, why are you here? I mean you , personally. How many guys did you

climb over—”

He went rigid, hearing footsteps outside. The Procya’s hopeful face appeared around the corner.

The red-haired man snarled at him and he backed out. I started to protest.

“Ah, the silly reamer loves it. It’s the only pleasure we have left.... Can’t you see, man? That’s us .

That’s the way we look to them, to the real ones.”

“But—”

“And now we’re getting the cheap C-drive, well be all over just like the Procya. For the pleasure of

serving as freight monkeys and junction crews. Oh, they appreciate our ingenious little service stations,

the beautiful star folk. They don’t need them, y’know. Just an amusing convenicence. D’you know what

I do here with my two degrees? What I did at First Junction. Tube cleaning. A swab. Sometimes I get to

replace a fitting.”

I muttered something; the self-pity was getting heavy.

“Bitter? Man, it’s a good job. Sometimes I get to talk to one of them.” His face twisted. “My wife

works as a—oh, hell, you wouldn’t know. I’d trade—correction, I have traded—everything Earth

offered me for just that chance. To see them. To speak to them. Once in a while to touch one. Once in a

great while to find one low enough, perverted enough to want to touch me—”

His voice trailed off and suddenly came back strong.

“And so will you!” He glared at me. “Go home! Go home and tell them to quit it. Close the ports.

James Tiptree Jr - 10000 Light Years From Home.pdf

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