Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt

  Cryptic: The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt © 2009 by Cryptic, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  “Jack McDevitt, This One’s for You” © 2009 by Robert J. Sawyer.

  All rights reserved.

  Please see page 589 for individual story credits.

  Dust jacket Copyright © 2009 by Lee Moyer.

  All rights reserved.

  Interior design Copyright © 2009 by Desert Isle Design, LLC.

  All rights reserved.

  First Edition

  ISBN

  978-1-59606-195-8

  Subterranean Press

  PO Box 190106

  Burton, MI 48519

  www.subterraneanpress.com

  For Scott Ryfun,

  the Voice of the Golden Isles

  CONTENTS:

  Introduction by Robert J. Sawyer

  Foreword by Jack McDevitt

  Part I: Unlikely Connections

  Cryptic

  The Fort Moxie Branch

  Nothing Ever Happens in Rock City

  Tweak

  Melville on Iapetus

  Lighthouse (w/Mike Shara)

  Cool Neighbor (w/Mike Shara)

  Whistle

  In the Tower

  Part II: Lost Treasures

  Ignition

  Indomitable

  Last Contact

  Never Despair

  Windows

  Dutchman

  The Tomb

  Promises To Keep

  To Hell With the Stars

  The Mission

  Part III: Out There

  Report from the Rear

  Black To Move

  The Far Shore

  Sunrise

  Kaminsky at War

  Part IV: Touching the Infinite

  Fifth Day

  Deus Tex

  Gus

  Welcome to Valhalla (w/Kathryn Lance)

  Tyger

  Auld Lang Boom

  Part V: Inventions and Fallout

  Cruising Through Deuteronomy

  The Candidate

  Act of God

  Ellie

  Time’s Arrow

  Dead in the Water

  Henry James, This One’s for You

  Time Travelers Never Die

  JACK MCDEVITT,

  THIS ONE’S FOR YOU

  by Robert J. Sawyer

  I remember when I first encountered Jack McDevitt’s writings. A full twenty years ago, back in 1988, Bantam Books sent every member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America a copy of their new anthology Full Spectrum—first in what became a distinguished series—in hopes of garnering Nebula Awards attention for the stories in the book. I read them all, but only a few have stuck with over the years, and foremost among those is Jack’s “The Fort Moxie Branch” (which did indeed get nominated for the Nebula, as well as the Hugo).

  Here, it was clear to me, was an author who loved writing, and who cherished the art of fiction. His Fort Moxie branch library contained very special books—books unknown to the world, books abandoned by their authors or forgotten by history, books such as Hemingway’s Watch by Night, Melville’s Agatha, and The Complete Works of James McCorbin, whoever the heck he might be (but canny readers will see significance in his initials).

  I was reminded of that book-loving Jack McDevitt a short time ago when I read his much more recent “Henry James, This One’s For You,” also a Nebula finalist. That story is in part about how we choose which works will be remembered and which forgotten.

  There’s a wistful quality to Jack’s ruminations on one’s literary legacy, and yet his own seems safe, as I’ll explain in a moment—even though, in a field full of teenage wunderkinds, Jack didn’t come to writing until his mid-forties.

  Jack McDevitt was born in Philadelphia in 1935, and now lives in Brunswick, Georgia, with his wonderful wife Maureen. My (often faulty) math skills tell me that Jack must be in his early seventies—but he could pass for twenty years younger. Recently, he kindly blurbed my own latest novel, Rollback, about rejuvenation, I wonder…

  Jack had a full life before coming to science fiction. He’d been a Navy officer, an English teacher, a Philadelphia taxi driver, a customs officer, and a motivational trainer. It wasn’t until 1980 that Maureen suggested he try his hand at writing SF. The result is one of the most important bodies of work in the SF field in the last quarter-century.

  Jack’s first publication was just a year later—a remarkably short apprenticeship in this field—with “The Emerson Effect” in the late, lamented Twilight Zone magazine. And it didn’t take long for the award nominations to start coming in.

  His first of fourteen Nebula nominations came in 1983 for “Cryptic,” the title story of the wonderful collection you’re now holding in your hands. His first award win was in 1986 for the remarkable SETI novel The Hercules Text, which took the Locus Award for Best First Novel, and also received a special citation for the Philip K. Dick Award. The Hercules Text was one of Terry Carr’s new Ace Specials, published as part of the line that launched the careers of Kim Stanley Robinson, Michael Swanwick, Lucius Shepard, and William Gibson.

  In 1992, Jack won the world’s largest cash prize for SF writing, the $10,000 Premio UPC de Ciencia Ficción, for his novella “Ships in the Night,” and in 1997 his novella Time Travelers Never Die won the Homer Award, voted on by the members of CompuServe’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Forums (and it was also nominated for the Hugo and the Nebula).

  In 2002, his novel DeepSix took the Southeastern SF Achievement Award—and then, at last, the biggies started rolling in. In 2004, Jack’s Omega won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award (the SF field’s principal juried award), and in 2006, he received the Life Achievement Southeastern SF Achievement Award. And then, at last, on his thirteenth nomination—the most of any author without a win—Jack’s Seeker took the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s Nebula Award, the academy award of the SF field, for Best Novel of 2006 (and his Odyssey was nominated for the same award the following year).

  All the nominations and wins are enough to ensure Jack’s legacy, but it doesn’t address the question of why McDevitt books have proved so popular. And, make no mistake, they are popular: without anyone really noticing, Jack has become one of the top-selling authors in the science-fiction field; Ginjer Buchanan, who edits his novels for Ace, tells me he’s now within spitting distance of the New York Times bestsellers list, an extraordinarily rare achievement for books that aren’t media tie-ins—and Ginjer is determined to put him on the list soon.

  Once you read the 200,000 words collected here, the reasons for Jack’s popularity will be obvious. In a field that often contains clunky prose, Jack’s writing is exemplary: not just smooth and clean, but charming. In a field that often gives short shrift to the human in its pursuit of the grandly cosmic, Jack’s writing is warm and intimate; it appeals as much to the heart as to the head.

  It’s that charm, that warmth, that sticks with you—and, if you are ever lucky enough to meet the man in person, you’ll see that he shares those traits. Jack is, above all else, a nice guy. He’s friendly, welcoming, supportive, kind, and wise. There’s no one in the SF field I more look forward to seeing at conventions.

  That isn’t to say that Jack is softhearted, or softheaded. Indeed, he and I recently attended a conference entitled “The Future of Intelligence in the Cosmos,” jointly sponsored by the NASA Ames Research Center and the SETI Institute. I was too chicken to give a talk of my own—after all, others on the agenda included Marvin Minsky and Frank Drake. But Jack stepped up to the plate (demonstrating the
skills he’d honed as a motivational speaker) and gave a stirring, mercifully PowerPoint-free, presentation entitled “Invent a Printing Press and Hang On.” In it, he argued that the way to ensure the long-term survival of our species was to emphasize the development of critical thinking in high schools (Jack keeps this skill honed for himself with frequent games of chess). Yes, Jack wants us all to be goodhearted, to look with awe and wonder at the stars—but also to use our reasoning powers and to take responsibility for our actions.

  Indeed, my friend Jack has a little catch phrase. Whenever we part, he always says, “Be good, Rob.”

  Be as good a person as he? I try.

  Be as good a writer as he? I can only hope.

  I can’t give the same advice back to him. Jack is good, in all the ways that adjective can be applied. How good, you’re about to find out; just turn the page.

  FOREWORD

  by Jack McDevitt

  More than half a century ago, I sat in the large overstuffed armchair in our living room captivated by Lester Del Rey’s “Helen O’Loy.” I was twelve years old, in grade school, home for lunch, and still in my Lone Ranger phase. I’d discovered science fiction eight years earlier, watching stunned as Flash Gordon piloted his magnificent rocket ship in circles above the sterile landscapes of Mongo. So I was already a lifelong fan, captivated by John Carter and Dejah Thoris, by Conan and the Legion of Space.

  But “Helen O’Loy” packed a different kind of punch from anything I’d seen earlier. Not that it was necessarily better. Just different. A man in love with a beautiful robot. (I don’t think the term ‘android’ was in use yet.) Ultimately, we learn that, after a glorious lifetime, the husband dies, as humans inevitably do. And Helen’s note to a friend arrives, of course, at the climax: “He died in my arms just before sunrise… Don’t grieve too much for us, for we have had a happy life together…” She will turn herself off and be buried with him. No one is ever to know the truth. It was the first time I can recall reading a story of any kind with tears running down my cheeks. Certainly nothing we were looking at over in the seventh grade ever had that sort of effect. I can’t imagine I was worth much that afternoon while we talked about geography and who imported what from whom. (We always did our geography in the afternoon, and there was, for reasons I never understood, a great deal of fuss about imports.)

  On an early summer evening a few years later, I sat outside in a rocking chair—we lived in a row home in South Philadelphia and everything around me was made out of brick or concrete—caught up in Ray Bradbury’s “Mars Is Heaven.” The rocket from Earth had landed on Martian soil and discovered a small town with picket fences and two-story houses that would not have been out of place in South Jersey. There are hedges and lawns and driveways. And a church.

  The crew waits as the captain checks his instruments and finally walks over to the hatch and opens it. Music drifts in.

  Somebody is playing a piano.

  It’s “Beautiful Dreamer.”

  Maybe those early jolts are so unforgettable precisely because they are early. But I think there’s more to it that that.

  It’s been impossible to forget the kid created so many years ago by Jerome Bixby in “It’s a Good Life.” I think that was my first encounter—more like a collision—with irony operating at anything like that level. I can still see that crowd of local residents, local victims, gathered in a living room, with one of their number dead on the floor, and snow coming down out of season to ruin the crops, and they’re going on in nervous, terrified voices about what a good life it is because the little boy who mindlessly wields such lethal power wants them to be happy. Will kill them if they aren’t.

  And who could come away from Damon Knight’s aliens, with their manual titled To Serve Man, not marked for life? The manual, of course, is written in their own language. And they’re playing the role of benefactors, friends of the human race. Inviting people to ride their ships, to head off to a better world, until one of the characters learns to read the language. “It’s a cookbook,” he says.

  I went to a school where they thought Edgar Allen Poe was scary.

  I ran into my first fictional ethical dilemma in Tom Godwin’s “The Cold Equations,” when a star pilot confronts a terrible choice: Stand by while a young woman ejects herself through an airlock, or allow her extra weight to destroy them both.

  There were other riveting moments: a basketball that gained energy from friction rather than losing it, a subway that got lost beneath the streets of Boston, a poet stranded in space writing about the cool green hills of Earth. And a superdense moon, previously unknown, orbiting Mars three feet off the ground, drilling holes through any elevations in the landscape. “Look out, Harry, here it comes again.”

  Murder by black hole. The Jesuit navigator who confronts the painful truth about the star of Bethlehem. And Charlie, who evades retardation just long enough to find out what he is about to lose.

  And Asimov’s “Nightfall.”

  What a treasure. If anyone would like a story idea, how about having aliens come in after we’re gone, and discover a volume of, say, the fifty best science fiction stories of all time. It’s all they have of us. Except for a few scattered ruins, Bradbury and the others are all that remain. What would they think of us?

  Science fiction, ultimately, is about what might happen, in Heinlein’s classic phrase, “if this goes on.” What are the consequences for us if we learn how to reverse the aging process? If we discover how to double our IQ’s? If we can track down a happiness gene and thereby guarantee a pleasant, untroubled existence to our children? Would we want that? Years ago I visited the Page School at the Capitol and we talked about whether unlimited happiness is a good idea. The kids, always ahead of the rest of us, had some doubts. People who can be happy in the face of serious setbacks would probably make pretty good slaves.

  And maybe there’s something to be said for being unhappy in the face of loss. Who could really stand being around people who were tirelessly, relentlessly, happy?

  The happiness gene shows up in “Tweak.”

  Science fiction seems to be most effective in its shorter form. Maybe that’s because it’s generally aimed at making a single point—What if this goes on? Or what if something had happened differently? Or what if we were able to get a breakthrough in, say, transportation? Inevitably, the issue is What if? Rather than commenting on the impositions of society, or the vagaries of human nature, we tinker with technology.

  After I came out of the Navy, I spent ten years as an English teacher and theater director. It became obvious very quickly that my original idea about how to conduct a high school class, which was that all I needed to do was to mention Charles Lamb, and maybe do it with a little showbiz, was in error. My students did not scramble, as I was sure they would, to read his comments on life, death, and winning the love of beautiful women. Toward the end of the first year, while I watched eyes roll anytime I mentioned King Lear, I figured out that I had the wrong approach. (I’ve never been a quick study.) I needed something to ignite a fire. It was not my job, despite what I’d understood, to warp my kids’ brains with classics they weren’t, with a few exceptions, ready to read. What I decided would be most useful, what would be most valuable for them, was to demonstrate how much fun books could be. To pass on the passion.

  Some experiments went wrong. Even Sherlock Holmes couldn’t cut it. Eventually I decided to go back to what had turned on the lights for me. I tried The Martian Chronicles and Heinlein’s Future History. We staged stories in the classroom and cut off at the critical moment. When the hatch opens and they hear “Beautiful Dreamer.” Read the rest tonight.

  Was it successful? Eventually, we had to establish a bookstore in the school.

  Once they get started, kids become eclectic readers. At Mt. St. Charles Academy in Woonsocket, RI, I encountered students who tried their hand at Plato simply because the subject had come up in class. Somebody would comment that Plato thought democracy was more or
less mob rule. And next day there would be a general debate. It was the sort of experience, as much as anything else in my life, that left me with a sense that the human race, despite everything, is worth saving.

  My first published story was “A Pound of Cure.” And yes, I was never very good at titles. It won the Freshman Short Story contest at LaSalle in 1954, and they printed it in the school’s literary magazine, Four Quarters. It was science fiction, and I thought I was on my way.

  Shortly afterward, I read David Copperfield, saw how accomplished Dickens was, decided it was not a field for somebody with my limited talents, and wrote nothing else for a quarter century.

  Eventually my wife Maureen persuaded me to try again, since I was always saying how someday I wanted to write SF, having failed in my other very early ambition, which was to play short for the Phillies.

  To me, it was a pointless exercise. But more or less to keep Maureen happy I put together a story, “Zip Code,” about a guy who worked in a post office, and who was in love with one of the other clerks. But he could not bring himself to make a move because he thought the young lady was too daunting. Eventually, a letter from Ralph Waldo Emerson, mailed over a century earlier, shows up, containing some lines from one of the essays. The letter, apparently part of an ongoing correspondence, assures the recipient that “you can do virtually anything if you believe in yourself.” But of course you have to take the plunge. You have to be willing to commit.

  I don’t think that, at the time, I saw the irony in my adopting that particular theme. But it made the point I’d long before urged on my students. Believe in yourself. Don’t leave anything undone simply because you’re afraid of failure.

  T.E.D. Klein shocked me when he bought it for The Twilight Zone Magazine. He changed the title to “The Emerson Effect,” and promptly sent me a check. I spent the next few months expecting to hear that the publishing house had burned down.

  I discovered I loved writing. And the conviction that I could sell what I wrote made a task that had once seemed insurmountable, suddenly appear routine. Not that I didn’t bounce a few stories during those early years. There was something about an alien pizza place. And another written around a combination pool table/time machine.