Nebula Awards Showcase 2012 (16 page)

       “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. Burn every god-lost alien thing before it’s too late! That’s what the Polynesians didn’t do.”
       “But surely—”
       “But surely be damned! Balance of trade—balance of
life
, man. I don’t know if our birth rate is going, that’s not the point. Our soul is leaking out. We’re bleeding to death!”
       He took a breath and lowered his tone.
       “What I’m trying to tell you, this is a trap. We’ve hit the supernormal stimulus. Man is exogamous—all our history is one long drive to find and impregnate the stranger. Or get impregnated by him, it works for women too. Anything different-colored, different nose, ass, anything, man
has
to fuck it or die trying. That’s a drive, y’know, it’s built in. Because it works fine as long as the stranger is human. For millions of years that kept the genes circulating. But now we’ve met aliens we can’t screw, and we’re about to die trying.... Do you think I can touch my wife?”
       “But—”
       “Look. Y’know, if you give a bird a fake egg like its own but bigger and brighter-marked, it’ll roll its own egg out of the nest and sit on the fake? What’s what we’re doing.”
       “You’ve only been talking about sex.” I was trying to conceal my impatience. “Which is great, but the kind of story I’d hoped—”
       “Sex? No, it’s deeper.” He rubbed his head, trying to clear the drug. “Sex is only part of it, there’s more. I’ve seen Earth missionaries, teachers, sexless people. Teachers—they end cycling waste or pushing floaters, but they’re hooked. They stay. I saw one fine-looking old woman, she was servant to a Cu’ushbar kid. A defective—his own people would have let him die. That wretch was swabbing up its vomit as if it was holy water. Man, it’s deep... some cargo-cult of the soul. We’re built to dream outwards. They laugh at us. They don’t have it.”
       There were sounds of movement in the next corridor. The dinner crowd was starting. I had to get rid of him and get there; maybe I could find the Procya. A side door opened and a figure started towards us. At first I thought it was an alien and then I saw it was a woman wearing an awkward body-shell. She seemed to be limping slightly. Behind her I could glimpse the dinner-bound throng passing the open door.
       The man got up as she turned into the bay. They didn’t greet each other.
       “The station employs only happily wedded couples,” he told me with that ugly laugh. “We give each other... comfort.”
       He took one of her hands. She flinched as he drew it over his arm and let him turn her passively, not looking at me. “Forgive me if I don’t introduce you. My wife appears fatigued.”
       I saw that one of her shoulders was grotesquely scarred.
       “Tell them,” he said, turning to go. “Go home and tell them.” Then his head snapped back toward me and he added quietly, “And stay away from the Syrtis desk or I’ll kill you.”
       They went away up the corridor.
       I changed tapes hurriedly with one eye on the figures passing that open door. Suddenly among the humans I caught a glimpse of two sleek scarlet shapes. My first real aliens! I snapped the recorder shut and ran to squeeze in behind them.

~ * ~

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James Tiptree Jr. was the pen name of Alice Bradley Sheldon. In a career that lasted just twenty years, she won the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Locus awards. She died in 1987.

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~ * ~

INTRODUCTION

Since 1978, when Suzette Haden Elgin founded the Science Fiction Poetry Association, its members have recognized achievement in speculative poetry by presenting the Rhysling Awards, named after the blind poet of Robert A. Heinlein’s story “The Green Hills of Earth.” Every year, each member of the SFPA is allowed to nominate one work from the previous year in two categories: “Best Long Poem” (fifty lines or more) and “Best Short Poem” (forty-nine lines or fewer). All nominated poems are collected in
The Rhysling Anthology,
from which the SFPA membership votes for the award winners.

In 2006, the SFPA created the Dwarf Star Award to honor poems of ten or fewer lines.

The SFWA is proud to present the winning poems in each category in this volume. Here is “In the Astronaut Asylum,” winner of the Rhysling Award for Best Long Poem of 2010.

IN THE ASTRONAUT
ASY
LUM

K
endall E
v
ans and Samantha Henderson

“
I gave my life to guesswork

on the ambiguous hope

the stars could be real
”

From “Asylum for Astronauts”

by Bruce Boston & Marge Simon

I. The Saturday Night Dance

Come all ye to Bedlam Town

When sun come up the stars go down

When stars go down beneath our feet T

hen
‘
tis a merry time to meet

In the Astronaut Asylum

Events sometimes transpire

As if on the second planet out

From Aldebaran

Ex-Astronauts are madmen

They dream of decaying orbits

And the passionate embrace

Of isomorphic aliens

The doors of the asylum

Are like airlock doors

Aboard a starship

Or perhaps like wheeled hatches

Between pressurized chambers

In a submarine

In the Astronaut Asylum

Even the doctors and the staff

Often believe they are on Mars

Inhabiting sheltered underground corridors

And cabins

Or strapped in shipboard limbo

Somewhere between the stars

Two or three moons

(Or four or more)

Often orbit

Above the asylum

(Or below)

The astronauts are falling, falling

Into agonized writhing

Within the sweat-soaked sheets

And stiff cotton straight-jackets

Of Interstellar Nightmares

(& Yes, we perceive the weak ones

On the far side of the bars;

Sometimes they come for interviews

During visiting hours)

Some of the Astronauts

Refuse to remove their spacesuits

Even for the Saturday Night Dance

& Oft-times when Earth’s moons align

They dance upon Asylum ceilings

~ * ~

II. The Asylum
’
s History

I asked of one mad Cosmonaut:

What is your wish? What do you want?

“
To travel faster than light speed

Upon my sturdy Bedlam steed
”

Once upon a time

In France, a hilltop monastery

Remodeled

During the early 1900’s

Into an observatory

The 21st century asylum retains

The three distinctive domes

Refurbished

Minus telescopes

The central dome is pressurized

With an exotic atmosphere

The star-farer who resides therein

The only one who might survive inside—

I know

Because the other patients

Told me so

~ * ~

III. Theories of Madness

Come, let
’
s go to Bedlam Street

Star-faring ladies for to meet

Who stare transfixed upon the glow

Of Earthly seas above, below

During Thursday’s group therapy session

One of the west-wing Astronauts

Advances her innovative theory:

Here is the secret (don’t flinch

While I whisper in your ear; you know,

Despite that pinched lip, that glazed look

You carefully cultivate, pretending that

None of this has any,

Anything to do with you), here ‘tis—

All go mad, not just the far-travelers,

Not just those surfers of light-speed,

Not merely those who’ve dared the wormholes,

No—

All.

Somewhere out past the orbit of the moon

Madness comes—

Slow, mind, for those who think they travel safe,

Travel sane and measured—

Sometimes they die before the disease rooted deep

Within them hatches,

Like an alien egg

Unleashing what into our minds?

What fungus grows about our eyes

Before we succumb?

Live long enough, and it comes to this.

The Cosmonauts in the East Wing

Offer contradictory explanations

Maintaining the human body

Is like a SETI antenna

Receiving messages

From diverse alien civilizations

Strewn throughout our Milky Way

Galaxy, and beyond

They fashion crinkled aluminum foil helmets

To ward off the signals

Shielding themselves

From interstellar insanity

And the maddening music

Of the spheres

~ * ~

I
V. A Conversation

With Your Uncle-Astronaut

On Bedlam Row, in madman
’
s mire

We orbit swift, a dizzy gyre

Or bask in dying stars
’
dim glow

And dream of things you
’
ll never know

Or maybe
you
are the Astronaut-Uncle,

Visiting on the landscaped grounds

At a picnic table

In sunlight

Out past the triple dome shadows

During a moment so real

(despite taking place within

Asylum gates)

You perceive each leaf of grass,

Every blade-shadow

As one of you turns toward the other

And says: “Listen—

After the last Apollo Mission

I felt concerned

Mankind had forgotten how to walk

Upon the Moon—”

One of you pauses,

Contemplative of a cloud

And the unseen daylit stars beyond.

“Now, after being stranded on Ceres,

After penetrating the surfaces

Of Jovian moons

And dancing upon Asylum ceilings,

I feel confident

One might step anywhere.”

~ * ~

V. The Youngest Cosmonaut

Come with me to Bedlam Row

And see the mad go to and fro

These Astronauts who only trust

Their phantom bags of lunar dust

One of the cosmonauts

Is only 6 years old

On the cusp

Of becoming five

Suffering from reverse entropy

Ever since his final re-entry

This is either gospel truth

Or perhaps the staff

Has confused him

With someone else

One of the orderlies

Recently lamented:

“Communication is impossible

We record his words

& Run the tapes backwards

“But no one can recall:

Precisely what was it he said

In his reverse Russian

When he last spoke to us

Tomorrow?”

~ * ~

VI. Epilog

Three Cosmonauts

Inexplicably disappeared

During the recent solar eclipse

& No one could explain

The staff’s panic attacks

Slip Bedlam
’
s locks.

Hide Bedlam
’
s Keys;

We
’
ll drown beneath

These star-filled seas

On nights when the moon is full

The Astronauts stride

Thru sparkling lunar dust

Traipsing asylum corridor floors all aglow

Leaving luminous footprints to follow

~ * ~

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Stories and poems by Kendall Evans have appeared in
Amazing Stories, Fantastic, Weird Tales, Asimov
’
s, Dreams and Nightmares, Nebula Awards Showcase 2008, Mythic Delirium, Strange Horizons, Space and Time,
and many others. He is currently at work on a ring cycle of four connected chapbook-length dramatic poems:
The Mermaidens of Ceres, Battle Dance of the Valkyrie, Sieglinda
’
s Journey to the Stars,
and
The Rings of Ganymede.
In addition to winning the Rhysling Award for “In the Astronaut Asylum,” he is a previous winner for “The Tin Men,” a collaboration with David C. Kopaska-Merkel.

Samantha Henderson’s poetry has been published in
Weird Tales, Goblin Fruit, Mythic Delirium, Stone Telling, Star*Line, Strange Horizons,
and
Lone Star Stories.
Her short fiction has been published in
Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy, Clarkesworld, Fantasy, Abyss
& 
Apex,
and the anthologies
Running with the Pack
and
Steampunk II: Steampunk
Reloaded.
She is the author of the Scribe Award-nominated Ravensloft novel
Heaven
’
s Bones
and the Forgotten Realms novel
Dawnbringer.