Strange Days: Fabulous Journeys With Gardner Dozois (36 page)

And now here was the postcard—or another just like it—turning up again, right on schedule. She had had her month’s free trial, and now, having hooked her on the product, they were about to reel her in and scoop her up in a net and clean and gut her. Here came the price tag. Here came
the catch.
She
knew
it. In every sales pitch, behind every “free offer,” there was always a catch. There was
always
a price tag. Why hadn’t she remembered that? The sweeter and more generous the deal seemed, the higher the price tag was likely to be. They—whoever They were—weren’t in business for their
health,
after all.

Unsteadily, she sat down in one of her beat-up old armchairs, keeping her eyes riveted on that innocent-looking little postcard; as if it might slither sinisterly away under the highboy if she looked away for a second. She even knew who They were, had always known, really, although she’d tried to suppress that knowledge, too. Elves. Leprechauns. The Little People. The Good Folk . . .

Faeries, of course. Of
course
faeries. Who else?

The knowledge did not reassure her. Now that it was too late, she found herself remembering all the folktales and fairy stories she’d read as a child: the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Perrault, Yeats’s collection of Irish folklore,
The Blue Fairy Book . . .
All of them agreed on one thing: faeries were worse than used-car salesmen.

No matter how wonderful the service they performed, there was
always
a price, and it was usually far more than you were willing to pay.

With a sudden flurry of the heart, she even thought that she knew
what
the price would be.

Compressing her lips into a thin hard line, Judy got up and walked determinedly over to the front door. Hesitating only for the smallest fraction of a second, she picked up the postcard and held it up to the light.

In fine copperplate letters, it said:
MS. JUDY PENDER, YOUR THIRTY-DAY TRIAL PERIOD IS OVER! DID THE SERVICE MEET YOUR EXPECTATIONS? ARE YOU SATISFIED WITH THE PRODUCT?

“No,” Judy said weakly, her voice lacking conviction even to her own ears. “No, I’m not at all satisfied . . .”

OH, COME NOW, MS. PENDER
, the postcard chided in somehow tired-looking letters. She could almost hear it sigh.
DON’T DISSEMBLE. WE
KNOW
BETTER THAN
THAT!

Judy—who with Mark had found herself easily and naturally acting out several sexual fantasies she had never even thought of
mentioning
to any other man—began to blush.

THAT’S BETTER
, the card said, in florid purple ink this time.
IN FACT, WE KNOW PERFECTLY WELL THAT THE PRODUCT MORE THAN FULFILLS YOUR EVERY EXPECTATION. YOUR EVERY DREAM, FOR THAT MATTER. WE’RE EXPERTS. WE
KNOW
WHAT WE’RE DOING—IT’S OUR
BUSINESS,
AFTER ALL. SO LET’S HAVE NO MORE EVASIVENESS, MS. PENDER. MARK PROPOSED LAST NIGHT, CORRECT? AND YOU ACCEPTED. SO IT’S TIME, AND PAST TIME, TO ENTER INTO A BINDING AGREEMENT CONCERNING
PAYMENT
FOR THIS SERVICE . . .

“All right,” she said through tight lips. “Tell me. Just what is it you want?”

FOR SERVICES RENDERED . . .
said the card, and seemed to pause portentously
. . . YOUR FIRSTBORN CHILD
.

“I knew
it!” Judy cried. “I
knew
that’s what it was going to be! You’re
crazy!”

IT’S THE TRADITIONAL PRICE
, the card said.
NOT AT ALL EXCESSIVE, REALLY, CONSIDERING ALL WE’VE DONE TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE FOR THE BETTER.

“I won’t do it!” Judy said.

YOU DON’T HAVE MUCH CHOICE
, the card said.
YOU HAVE TO PAY YOUR DEBT TO US AT ONCE IF YOU DON’T WANT THE PRODUCT . . . SHIPPED BACK, AS IT WERE.

“Mark
loves
me,” Judy said fiercely. “It’s too late for you to change that
now.”

DON’T KID YOURSELF, MS. PENDER
, the card said.
IF WE CAN’T FINALIZE A BINDING AGREEMENT RIGHT
NOW,
YOU’LL HAVE AN EXTREMELY BITTER FIGHT WITH HIM THIS VERY MORNING. NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRY TO AVOID IT, IT
WILL
HAPPEN. HE’LL WALK OUT OF HERE, AND YOU’LL NEVER SEE HIM AGAIN. WE GUARANTEE
THAT.

“But, my firstborn
child . . .”
Judy whispered

A HIGH PRICE INDEED
, the card gloated.
AH, YES. A VERY HIGH PRICE. BUT THINK . . . REMEMBER . . . BE
HONEST
WITH YOURSELF. DO YOU REALLY WANT TO GO BACK TO “DARK SHADOWS” AND COLD SPAGHETTI? NOW THAT YOU’VE MET MARK, COULD YOU REALLY LIVE WITHOUT HIM?

“No,” Judy said, in the smallest of voices.

WE THOUGHT NOT
, the card said smugly.

Judy groped behind her for a chair, and sank into it. She dropped the card on the coffee table, and buried her face in her hands. After a moment or two, she raised her head wearily and looked over at the card again. It said:
COME, COME, MS. PENDER. IT’S NOT REALLY SUCH A TRAGEDY. BABIES ARE NUISANCES, ANYWAY. THEY SQUALL AND STINK, THEY CRAYON ON YOUR WALLS AND VOMIT ON YOUR CARPET . . . THEY WEIGH YOU
DOWN,
MS. PENDER. YOU’LL BE BETTER OFF WITHOUT IT, REALLY. YOU OUGHT TO BE GLAD WE’LL BE TAKING IT OFF YOUR HANDS. ALL THE MORE TIME YOU’LL BE ABLE TO SPEND WITH MARK . . .

There was a long pause, and then, in tacit surrender, Judy said, “Why in the world did you guys ever get into this mail-order scam?” Her voice was flat and weary, bitter and dull. “It doesn’t seem your style, somehow . . .”

MODERNIZATION IS A MUST, MS. PENDER
, the card said.
THE OLD WAYS JUST AREN’T VERY EFFECTIVE ANYMORE. WE HAVE TO KEEP UP WITH THE TIMES TOO, YOU KNOW.
It paused.
NOW . . . ENOUGH SHILLY-SHALLYING, MS. PENDER. YOU MUST DECIDE
NOW.
IF YOU AGREE TO PAY THE PRICE FOR OUR SERVICE—TO SPECIFY: YOUR FIRSTBORN CHILD—THEN SIGN HERE . . .

A dotted signature line appeared on the postcard.

Judy stared at it, her face haggard, and then slowly, hesitantly, reluctantly, with many a stop and start, she picked up a pen and leaned forward.

She signed her name.

After a moment, the card vanished, disappearing with a smug little pop.

Everything was quiet. Everything was still.

Judy held her breath for a few moments, then slowly let it out. She wiped her brow. Slowly, she began to smile.

She had had her tubes tied two years ago because it was the cheapest and surest form of birth control. It was a good thing that the Wee Folk didn’t
really
keep up with the times . . .

Whistling cheerfully, she strolled into the kitchen and finished making breakfast.

A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows

Introduction to A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows

Gardner Dozois, like any decent writer, is at least half a dozen people. In Gardner’s case his personality encompasses not only the writer but the serious and informed scholar of science fiction, the wit, the critic, the gourmet, the anthologist, the bon viveur, and the finest magazine editor of his generation. In addition to all this, Gardner Dozois’ psyche blessedly contains the most outrageous literary personality since Alexander Woollcott (who wasn’t nearly as funny, it should be pointed out).

There is also Gardner Dozois, Man of Ideas, evident in “A Night of Ghosts and Shadows.” It is often claimed that science fiction is a literature of ideas, which I wish were true more often than in fact it is, but “Ghosts and Shadows” is genuinely about a clash of ideas, and pretty fundamental ideas, too, having to do with life and death, with humanity’s place and purpose in the universe, with a person’s right to maintain his individuality in the face of historic and technological change.

With a lesser writer, these ideas would be set forth in talking-heads scenes, in which people threw ideas back and forth like a ball at a tennis match. But in Gardner’s story the ideas aren’t introduced right away—at the start we have the elderly protagonist alone in a room with his memories and a spectral group of time travelers who are, most likely, a product of his lonely fantasies, but who are emblematic of the story’s concern with time, with memory, and with the consequences of the decisions the protagonist has made in the past and will make now, decisions that will resonate into the distant future.

In a literature that celebrates change, Gardner has chosen to write about someone who
refuses
to change.

The story opens beautifully, with a description of the old man and his environment. We see his bedroom, the plaster on the ceiling, the significantly empty space on his shelf. We sense the man’s burden of memories, his once-great ambition, his loneliness. And then the story moves out of the man’s apartment and into his city, and we see the strangeness and the familiarity of the world in which the man lives, all described with care and detail and attention. The prose is in no hurry to get anywhere, but it’s so wonderfully evoked that we’re not impatient with it.

So when the talking-heads scene finally comes (and yes, there is one), the ideas at issue are so anchored in the reality of the story, in the specific personality of the protagonist, and in the solidly-visualized futurist speculation on which the story depends, that we don’t see it as a superficial literary tennis game, but as something fundamental to the story and its themes.

It’s a lovely story, and was nominated for a Nebula Award by the Science Fiction Writers of America in the novelette category. Of which more anon.

For the moment though, I’d like to set the record straight on a matter of vital historical importance. Not because I want to emphasize certain aspects of Gardner’s character—which doubtless will shine forth from other introductions in this volume—but because I was there when it occurred. I was a witness, and I can set the facts straight on what has become a legend within the science fiction community.

Yes. It really happened. The True and Terrible Tale of Gardner’s Knob.

It began, dear reader, on an autumn night in the year 199–, at the World Fantasy Convention in New Orleans. The four of us, Gardner and Sue and Rebecca Cartwright and I, had decided to go to dinner. I remember someone saying, “Let’s have a quiet dinner.” But such was the magnetism of Gardner’s personality that, during the course merely of crossing the hotel lobby on our way to the door, our party of four became a party of fourteen. The group by now included Roger Zelazny, Jane Lindskold, Wanda June Alexander, Sage Walker, Claire Eddy, and several others.

The staff at Tujague’s restaurant were, on the whole, fairly tolerant of a hilarious party of fourteen descending on them all at once and without reservations, but they did put us in our very own room, upstairs, where we wouldn’t disturb the regular customers.

A prescient move.

We had just settled in when another party arrived, this one consisting of author and screenwriter Melinda Snodgrass, her husband Carl Keim, the writer George R.R. Martin and his companion Parris, photographer and attorney Christine Valada, her husband the comics and screenwriter Len Wein, and writers/editors Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith.

This second party was put in a separate room, perhaps on the (again prescient) theory that adding the newcomers to our group might provoke some kind of critical mass, like putting two chunks of plutonium too closely together.

Unfortunately, if Tujague’s was operating on this theory, they failed to provide enough shielding. There was a door between our two rooms, which allowed the two groups to communicate. Gardner and George Martin, seated near the door on either side, took particular advantage of this, opening the door to offer insulting comments to the other party, then shutting the door shut before anyone on the other side could reply.

This was an old, old door, and had only one doorknob, the mate of which had been lost in distant times past. The knob was loose, and you could pull it out of its socket and reinsert it in the socket on the opposite side of the door. It became clear that whoever possessed the doorknob could open the door, hurl whatever comments occurred to his fertile imagination, and then shut the door, leaving the other side with no knob and no way of opening the door to respond.

George R.R. Martin, gloating like one of the villains in his fantasy novels, took the knob from our side of the door and shut the door in our faces, leaving us without a knob to stand on.

Obviously this was an insult not to be borne. Wanda June and Claire went to the other room—walking the long way, out into the corridor and back—where one of them distracted the enemy long enough for the other to pilfer the knob. This knob was ceremonially returned to Gardner, who used it to open the communicating door, abuse George vilely and deservedly, then shut the door before George could respond.

Baffled in this contest of wit and ingenuity, the other side resorted to violence. Carl Keim arrived carrying a carving knife. (I don’t know where he got it. Probably he carries it all the time.) At knife-point he demanded the return of the knob.

Let it not be said that Gardner Dozois responds well to threats. He took the knob, dropped it magnificently down the front of his trousers, and told Carl, “Come and get it, big boy!”

Carl, baffled and by now bright scarlet, retreated in consternation.

Enough time passed so that our guard was down when the raiding party arrived. Chris Valada and Kris Rusch each pinned one of Gardner’s arms to the chair, and Melinda Snodgrass ran up and jammed her hand down the front of Gardner’s pants.

I will not venture to guess what she encountered there, but it wasn’t a doorknob. The knob had been removed from Gardner’s boxers and handed to me for safekeeping.

The look of horror on Melinda’s face was highly entertaining. So were the colors that passed in swift succession across her face. (I remember they began with white, and ended with scarlet.)

Thus was the other side routed. Thus was the legend born.

(Honesty compels me to record that, to my chagrin, by this time nobody gave a damn whether I had a doorknob in my drawers or not. Thus do ordinary mortals fade in the presence of greatness.)

Which brings us to another dinner party, this one in Beverly Hills in that most anticipated of science-fictional years, 2001. It was the Nebula Award dinner, where Gardner, whose “A Night of Ghosts and Shadows” had been nominated against my “Daddy’s World,” was host to a table of nominees and writers. Gardner was his usual splendid self, keeping the table in mirth with a wicked series of one-liners that effectively punctured the pieties and pretensions of the speakers.

And by and by, the winner of the novelette category was announced. Who proved not to be Gardner but myself.

I am immodest enough to record that a cheer went up. But what particularly gratified me was that the cheer was led by Gardner, whose story had just been deprived of an award. Gardner was genuinely pleased that I’d won.

Which is by way of pointing out that, whatever stories may be told about knobs and other items of hardware in these introductions, Gardner Dozois is a class act. A true gentleman (albeit more in the Restoration than the Victorian sense of the word). And a good friend.

Here’s “A Night of Ghosts and Shadows.” Enjoy.

Walter Jon Williams