FSF, January 2008 Read online

  Quite aside from the main text, those of us who care deeply for science fiction will find much here to give pause and thought. Brian Aldiss's remark that, once impoverished by its isolation, science fiction now stands in danger of being impoverished by its popularity. Ortiz's observations concerning those writers who “looking for a new way of skinning the literary cat, found a new plaything in the blue-collar world of genre science fiction.” Or his description of the avant-garde world, which winds up sounding an awful lot like the sf world:

  "A groundswell of lessons learned from one another drove the avant-garde community along with a mixture of iconoclasm, homage, naivete, eclecticism, a demand for seriousness, and a certain amount of flippancy and prankishness."

  Ed spoke of dynamic contrasts as the wellspring of his art, his and Carol's lives being replete with same. They lived in Levittown, the very icon of the American suburb; yet daughter Susan had no notion how to respond when introduced to “normal people” in friend's homes. “It sometimes felt a little like we Emshwillers were the Munsters or the Addams Family of our neighborhood,” son Peter says. “...No one else's parents cared deeply about art and politics but couldn't have cared less about making money or acquiring things.” Besides their children, Carol admits, she and Ed spoke only about art and movies, and they did that all the time—carrying forward the fire and enthusiasm most of us lose after college and our early careers. Attendees recall them “mooning over each other” at a 1985 Nashville convention, together almost forty years at that point but then spending long periods apart, Ed teaching in California, Carol in New York.

  Interviewers frequently ask why, after forty-some years of writing, I remain drawn to teaching it. The answer, I tell them, is contained in the question. All too easily and soon one becomes professionalized, focusing on the mechanics, the production, the practicalities. Teaching makes me remember why this is so important to me, why I have worked so hard and long at it, why I started doing it in the first place.

  So does this book.

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  It's a Wonderful Life by Michaela Roessner

  Michaela Roessner is the author of several novels, including Walkabout Woman and Vanishing Point. Our readers might recall her story “Horse-Year Women” from our Jan. 2006 issue. She says that her new story ties together several threads: an Aikido student who is currently enlisted in the Coast Guard partly so he can attend film school when his tour of duty is over; her Vietnam vet husband; hearing her friend Marta Randall mourn the loss of certain old buildings in Berkeley; and her own interest in the conventions of wish fulfillment stories.

  And then there's the fact that ‘tis the holiday season....

  Dodging all the folks wearing white lab coats who were rushing about, Cal stuck close to the far side of the hallway, using his mop handle to nudge his wheeled bucket along the corridor of the subbasement third floor. He tried to make himself as thin as possible against the wall, tried to look like less of a janitor/slacker by pulling the zipper of his work jumpsuit higher over the black T-shirt underneath; the one that said “Cannes Fan” in the faded silver lettering of too many trips through the washing machine.

  The younger technicians had been drafted into hauling down new, revamped equipment. They were having trouble pulling it all out of the service elevator, pushing it the length of the hall, then jostling it through the designated room's double-wide swinging doors.

  The older ones shuffled papers on clipboards, checking off crisp little check marks on long lists, frowning, not looking up even once or breaking stride, not questioning for a moment that the surrounding chaos would part before them like the Red Sea did for Charleton Heston—they were that confident of their status.

  Cal glanced into the room as he passed. Busy bees. Busy bees. The engineers, physicists, administrators, technicians, security spooks, and who knows else swarmed over banks of machines, tiers of switches, and a vipers’ nest worth of electrical cables. The tangle of cables reminded Cal of Indiana Jones's snake pit.

  It was always like this. The secret separate parts that had been abuilding in the different departments all coming and fitting together into a big-ass, room-filling, three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.

  Cal shoved his galvanized metal mop bucket forward. All it meant to him was that in the end there'd be, yet again, one less room for him to clean down here. He glanced over his shoulder, back the way he'd come from slopping down the Control Center at the end of the hallway by the regular elevators and the stairway. Along the hall, between the Control Center and where he stood, he could see the double-wide doors of four other rooms, two on each side of the hallway, facing each other. Their glass windows were blacked out; their doors sealed shut.

  Cal wondered, in an idle sort of way, how far the Brass would cut his hours if they ran out of rooms on this floor for the big experiment. They still had five that hadn't been used. One directly across from the room being prepped, and four more on down the line, all the way to the freight elevator.

  At the rate of roughly one room every year, he still might not be retired by the time they had to seal off the whole danged floor. At worst he'd be docked to two-thirds pay, since he cleaned the other two floors of the subbasement. Knowing these folks, though, most likely they'd just dig themselves a fourth subbasement floor and keep on trucking. He could probably keep working at full-time pay until he keeled over.

  "Watch out, please! Coming through! Sorry!” A female engineer-type shouted in warning. Cal shoved off to the opposite wall, dodging a machinery-laden juggernaut bearing down on him. He recognized it as recording equipment.

  Even with long, flatbed dollies, the young researchers left deep-grooved marks on the floor's gray linoleum. Deeper and blacker smudges than the last time. Cal raised his eyebrows, scraped his lower teeth over the brush edge where his gray mustache turned down onto his upper lip. He might soon have one less room to clean, but he'd be putting in extra time scrubbing up that tread. Merry Christmas to you, too, he thought at the retreating white-coated backs.

  One of the clipboards—a tall, distinguished-looking African American man—snapped his fingers at Cal. “Calvin! Calvin Hallet! You have to leave this floor now."

  Cal tipped his head down the hall. “I still haven't cleaned the two rooms left on this side, Dr. Williams.” Dr. Williams looked like Morgan Freeman but sounded like Samuel Jackson.

  "That's all right. We're deadlining today so you're off-routine. This floor will be secured and locked down in fifteen minutes. All nonessential personnel have to go."

  Cal nodded. He knew the drill better than some of the younger researchers. He'd been on board since the very first time. Since the very first sealed-off room. Of course nobody ever sent the janitor a memo. But he'd recognized the signs that today was the day the deal would go down.

  "I'll put away my gear and head on up,” he said. Cal reversed his direction. The janitor closet and the restrooms on this floor were around the corner from the Control Center, in a short stub of a corridor. He looked through the experiment room's windows again on the way. Things inside were shaping up like clockwork.

  Banks of silvery stainless steel consoles lined the walls, blinking with a blitzkrieg of red and green lights like an overdone Christmas display. Cal suppressed a smile. He knew that most of it was just bells and whistles for registering and logging data.

  The contraptions with the real mojo were the two simple-looking big chronometers, same as always, and the oversized switch like a circuit breaker handle. And the ten-by-ten-by-ten-foot glass-walled cube that formed a transparent room-within-a-room in the middle of the floor. Inside this clear cage was the “carriage,” as they called it. It balanced on an intricate sled-like arrangement of metal tubing bolted to the floor.

  This time the carriage was a canoe-sized flat-bottomed boat. A technician stood inside the glass booth, leaning over and twiddling with some machinery tucked under the boat's floorboards.

  Last year's carriage had been a vinta
ge 1940's Volkswagen—a true German folks’ wagon, complete with khaki paint job and Nazi swastikas on the side panels. It could have come straight off the set of The Great Escape or Stalag 17.

  Before he swung his gear around the corner to his closet, Cal glanced at the clock over the elevator: 11 a.m. He got off work at 2:30 in the afternoon. The lab coats were so busy down here, so excited, he knew they'd skip lunch altogether today. Probably dinner too. He might as well go up and mop the cafeteria now instead of at 1:30 p.m. after the lunch hour—normally his last chore of the day before clocking out. He'd take his own lunch break while he was at it.

  * * * *

  The cafeteria, up on the first subbasement floor, usually bustled with food preparations this late in the morning.

  Not today. Marilyn, who ran the place, had one of the two young army privates who worked under her doing a major clean-up on the ovens. She had the other one immersed in the nasty job of dredging out a kitchen sump. They were both on loan from the base in Oakland.

  Cal wondered if Admin. had also failed to send Marilyn a memo. If not, she'd still picked up on today's vibe. All she'd set out for lunch was a minimum of sandwich makings and three chafing dishes staying warm over sterno on a table near the register. The long bank of stainless steel food tubs lined up under the cafeteria's sneeze guard lay gleaming and empty.

  Marilyn was holding down her industrial strength electric mixer into a big bowl, whipping up something chocolatey. She nodded at Cal and his broom, mop, and bucket, obviously not surprised by his early arrival. “Mornin', Cal,” she called over the sound of the beaters.

  "Good mornin', Marilyn,” Cal said, tipping an imaginary cap at her, like he always did. Only difference was that usually they said, “Good afternoon,” to each other.

  Cal liked Marilyn. She never said much. Never smiled much, but never frowned, either. She looked a bit like Kathy Bates, in any of Kathy Bates's non-crazy roles.

  Marilyn was a tough, sturdy gal, an ex-Navy cook. Cal had never asked her but he guessed that Marilyn had gotten her job the same way he'd gotten his: by taking her military resume with her to the Department of Defense offices across the Bay in San Francisco.

  "Good day for cleaning up,” Cal said.

  "That it is,” Marilyn replied, shutting off the mixer.

  Cal swept the cafeteria floor and was just finishing mopping when two young men in white coats showed up for lunch. The lab rats. They had to be. Even R & D with the D.O.D. allowed the condemned a last meal. None of the other white coats would be taking time to eat today, but they'd be sure that these two got a bite.

  Last year's lab rats had been gleaming-blond Aryan types. Cal had guessed they spoke fluent German even before he'd seen the Nazi carriage two floors down.

  These two were more of a mixed bag.

  The Anglo kid was disjointedly lanky, with plain brown hair. Cal knew he'd seen the kid around the subbasement complex sporting a full mustache and a struggling beard. The kid had shaved off the trimmings—undoubtedly ordered to for the experiment. Or mission. Whatever they'd told the poor bastard. Now the area of his upper lip and chin stood out paler than the rest of his wan face, making him look vulnerable.

  The other guy was a young Korean-American. Cal remembered him a little better. A good-looking, golden-faced kid with the sort of thick, shiny black hair that never thins to baldness. He radiated both respectfulness and self-confidence. The Brass must have just loved this guy.

  For the life of him, Cal couldn't figure out where the Brass were going to try to send these two. If they wore any of their period clothing for the trip, the lab coats and scrub-room overpants hid it.

  The lab rats bellied up to the table with the heated chafing dishes. Pale kid raised one of the rounded covers and Cal got a big warm whiff of tender pot roast. Marilyn didn't fix pot roast often, but when she did it was food for the gods. The other two chafing dishes held buttery, sage-perfumed pork chops on steamed collards and Chicken Kiev on wild rice.

  Once they loaded up their plates and their trays, the kids swiped their I.D. cards through the charge slot at Marilyn's register. They seated themselves at the far end of the cafeteria where the floor had already dried.

  Cal put his mop in the bucket to soak, washed his hands in the men's lavatory just outside the cafeteria, then came back in and went over to the do-it-yourself food station to make himself a sandwich.

  Marilyn was spreading the chocolate on top of a cake. She nodded toward the chafing dishes and their perfumed aromas. “Help yourself, Cal. They left plenty."

  Cal shook his head. “No, thanks. They might want seconds.” Then he added, too quietly for Marilyn's workers to hear, just in case they were listening, “Dead men walking."

  Marilyn raised her eyebrows a tad and shrugged. She came out from behind the counter carrying a wide platter filled to its edges by a tall angel food cake with milk chocolate frosting. She placed it on the serving station next to the chafing dish table, in direct line-of-sight to the lab rats. They couldn't fail to see it. “I wish I could put out some good wine or beer for them,” she said to Cal. “It doesn't seem fair. Pretty cold, even for the D.O.D., to pull this on them just before Christmas."

  Cal nodded. He doubted, however, that the holidays made much of a difference. At least not to these two kids. After the very first experiment, he felt pretty sure that all lab rats had been chosen, not just for their talents and skills, but also on the basis of a lack of family baggage. For sure no spouses or children. Parents probably dead or the patriotic blinkered sort who'd buy being told that their children were secretly M.I.A. in glorious service to their country. Probably not even brothers or sisters. Or aunts or uncles—at least not close enough to care.

  Cal took his tray to sit a few tables away from the kids. Then he picked it up again and stood, indecisive, thinking. Finally he walked over to their table. He couldn't help a small smile when he saw their plates heaped to overflowing with Marilyn's fabulous grub. He'd forgotten what it was like to be that young and that hungry.

  "Awfully empty in here today. Mind if I join you?"

  The two lab rats looked up, surprised. Cal knew that usually nobody ruffled the smooth waters of the facility's caste system. Physicists broke bread with physicists. The security spooks ate with the other security spooks.

  But this was Berkeley after all, or close enough to it—Emeryville. Up top and outside of the hidden D.O.D. complex, polite counterculture manners tended to dominate. Besides, these two had probably lived in the area at least long enough to know that a raggedy-ass, skinny, hippie-looking old guy working as a janitor could turn out to be a hallowed-but-burned-out poet laureate in disguise. Or something,

  The Korean kid spoke first. “Sure, man.” He smiled. Nicely. “Have a seat. Take a load off."

  Awkward Anglo Boy scrambled to push a chair out for Cal. Up close, the kid's eyes matched his hair. Except they weren't a plain brown. They glowed with intelligence.

  Cal felt even worse for these boys. Good kids. Helluva thing.

  Cal took a couple of bites of his sandwich; chewed, swallowed, then spoke. “So, today's the big day,” he said—a statement, not a question. “Anybody wished you bon voyage yet?"

  The lab rats stared at him nervously.

  Cal waved his hand. “It's all right. I've been working here, in this building, for almost thirty years. I've seen it all."

  They still looked a little anxious but somewhat reassured. And curious. They were too smart not to figure out instantly that anybody who'd been around for thirty years might have interesting tales to tell. The sort of tales the Brass would have declined to share with them. Cal wondered if they'd ever been curious about the sealed and blocked-off rooms downstairs.

  He knew they had to be searching their brains for anything they might have heard about him. If they came up with anything, it would be info readily available: That he wasn't an abdicated poet laureate, but instead a worn-out old Viet Nam vet that the D.O.D. had taken pity on and given th
is thankless but steady employment to, back when he'd already been worn-out but no older than they were now.

  But that wasn't even the half of it. The only reason he'd joined the army in the first place was for the G. I. Bill, to go to college—just about the only option a poor and silly kid from the Midwest who wanted to go to school to learn to be a film director had in those days. But nobody here knew anything about that. Or cared.

  Cal took the initiative again. “Look. I'm not going to ask. I don't want to know. But just think about something, will you? Wherever they're sending you to ... to whenever they're sending you....” He paused, started over one more time. “Whatever it is they want you to do, it's big, right?

  Both kids looked ready to jump clean out of their lab coats and scrub pants.

  Cal waved his hands. “Seriously. I don't want to know. I don't want to talk you out of anything. Or into anything. I just want you to think about something. Can you hear me out? Look at me.” He spread his hands, indicating his gray custodian's uniform. “What could it hurt?"

  They both settled back down. The Korean kid nodded cautiously.

  "Look, whatever they've been doing, you have to have figured out that it hasn't been going too well. Otherwise the world would be a lot better place, right?"

  Their faces looked frozen but Cal got the feeling that they were still nodding in agreement, somewhere deep inside.

  "I'm not saying that they're wrong. But maybe they're trying just too hard. Trying too damned big. Going too far back."

  The brown-haired kid's eyes narrowed, but in concentration, not disapproval.

  Encouraged, Cal reached hard to come up with an example. Not the Holocaust. That would strike too close to home. Way too recent. He'd bet good money that last year's blond lab rats had been sent back to pull off everybody's favorite fantasy of an assassination.