Strange Days: Fabulous Journeys With Gardner Dozois (51 page)

The cat stared at the wizard.

The wizard stared at the cat.

The cat shrugged.

After a moment, the wizard shrugged too.

They both sighed.

“Lunch tomorrow?” the wizard asked, and the cat said, “Suits me.” Behind them, one of the triceratops finished off its second egg cream, and made a rattling noise with the straw.

The wizard left the money for the check near the cash register, and added a substantial tip.

They went out of the restaurant together, out into the watery city sunshine, and strolled away down the busy street through the fine mild airs of spring.

Playing the Game

Introduction to Playing the Game

If you’ve never read “Playing the Game,” you should read the story before reading this introduction, lest I give the game away. Those of us who have had the pleasure of reading this story will wait for you here till you’re done.

Done? OK. When I was a teenager, my friends and I used to amuse ourselves by imagining alternate universes that were exactly like our own in every detail but one, that one being ridiculously trivial—a universe, for example, in which Eliot had titled his masterpiece not “The Waste Land” but “Joe’s Eats To Go,” or in which the word “macaroni” was pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable rather than the third. (All my imagined changes tended to be verbal, one sign among many that pointed to my winding up a writer one day.) We all had read Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder,” so we knew these seeming trivialities would cause major differences many years down the road, in the alternate timelines we seeded wholesale, then—ah, profligate youth!—abandoned. I was most thrilled, though, not by the world-shaking consequences of our cosmic tweaks, but by the tweaks themselves. How would I respond if, one day, everybody did pronounce “macaroni” differently, and I was the only one who realized the difference? If I were the only human being who registered that something was, however slightly, Wrong?

At the time of these adolescent musings, I was (unsurprisingly) a devoted reader of
Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine,
and when “Playing the Game” appeared there in 1982, I read it as I read every issue of that clumsily titled but wonderful magazine, with engagement and wonder. But only as I re-read the story this morning did I realize that my 17-year-old self was playing, in essence, the same game as Jimmy Rodgers, only without Jimmy’s grave understanding of the horrific
quid pro quo:
Fiddle with reality, and reality fiddles with you. I’ve been fiddling with reality ever since, as have all of you, and look where it’s got us.

Before I go, I must urge you to re-read the opening paragraphs of this story, just to appreciate again how deftly the essential weirdness of Jimmy’s situation is stated from the outset in a way almost impossible to notice. It’s the “Purloined Letter” approach to exposition, and I admire it without reservation. A final point, as trivial as “Joe’s Eats To Go,” but possibly of interest to the writers among you. Joe Haldeman tells his students that his only rule concerning character names is never to name a character Fred, because then you’re doomed to write, “Fred said,” “Fred said,” endlessly. I tell my students a second rule as well, that you never want your character to have the same name as a famous person, unless that’s part of your point. I only just now realized, as I typed “Jimmy Rodgers,” above, that the protagonist of this story has the same name as the late Mississippi singer-songwriter Jimmie Rodgers, the “Singing Brakeman” who, in many ways, created the country-music industry. Now, for the life of me, I can’t think of any thematic reason this character should have the same name as the man who sang “Pistol Packin’ Papa,” so I am forced to conclude that the similarity is, as they say in the fine print, purely accidental; and to conclude, furthermore, that the accident doesn’t hurt this story a bit. There are no rules.

Andy Duncan

Another Introduction to Playing the Game

This chilling little story is quintessential Gardner—a childhood fantasy turned inside out and made dark. All of the colors on his palette wind up dark, it seems, by the time the canvas is finished.

You would hardly guess that he had a dark side, if you met him without having read his work. He’s a natural-born comic and raconteur, though his humor is bizarre and unpredictable.

About thirty years ago, Gardner and I were invited to Damon Knight’s Milford writing workshop as the token Young Turks. (Gardner was responsible for my being invited; he’d introduced me to Knight.) The Milford was an annual meeting of a couple of dozen science fiction writers, who got together at Damon Knight’s huge house in Milford, Pennsylvania, to pass around problem stories for advice. Some of the biggest names in science fiction were under that roof: Kate Wilhelm, Harlan Ellison, Gordon R. Dickson, Ben Bova, Keith Laumer, Joanna Russ, Norman Spinrad, Gene Wolfe. Gardner and I were invited on a kind of trial basis. He turned out to have special talent, even then, for going to the heart of a story and seeing what was not working. He did lack a certain sense of restraint, though—the protocol at Milford was strict: one person at a time speaks, in roundtable style; not even the author under inspection is allowed to say anything until his or her turn.

But Gardner was irrepressible in his enthusiasm, and after he had spoken out of turn a few times, Damon gave the people on either side of him plastic croquet mallets, and told them to whale away at him if he spoke out of turn. This Pavlovian conditioning did work after a fashion.

Gardner and I became fast friends there, and one of us—probably him—suggested that we form a spin-off, using the Milford pattern, inviting a number of other writers of our generation to get together at some central place.

One problem was that writers of our generation didn’t have big mansions in Pennsylvania. We had crummy apartments scattered along 1500 miles of East Coast. One of our number who did have a big enough place was my brother Jack, who had a row house in the Guilford section of Baltimore. The Guilford/Milford coincidence was a sign, of course, reinforced by an odd linguistic coincidence. Outsiders saw the Milford attendees as a sinister concentration of literary power, and called them the Milford Mafia.

We immediately dubbed ourselves the Guilford Gafia—G.A.F.I.A. being a time-honored science-fictional acronym for “getting away from it all.”

In a way, that’s what we did. We locked ourselves up in Jack’s house for a week with a refrigerator full of food, a big coffee urn, and a keg of beer, and talked and wrote and talked some more. The hard core of the group, besides Gardner and my brother and me, were Jack Dann, George Alec Effinger, and Ted White. Other people joined us occasionally for one or two meetings, like Robert Thurston, Phyllis Eisenstein, and Roger Zelazny. But the hard core met a couple of times a year through most of the seventies.

Eventually we suffered the same fate as the Milford. We got to know one another’s tastes so well that we could pretty accurately predict what everyone was going to say about any given story. Our careers went in various directions, and so did we, though most of us still keep in touch, scattered from New York to Australia.

Gardner’s success with the analytical side of Milford/Guilford probably was a factor in his “gafiation” from writing into the world of editing, where he is of course his generation’s huge success story, with enough pointy-ended Hugo Awards for “Best Editor” bristling around his house to present a real hazard. But when he put on his editor hat, first for
Galaxy
magazine and then for
Asimov’s
and the annual
Year’s Best SF,
he spent less and less time on his own fiction, which has been a real loss to the field.

If he had stayed behind the keyboard rather than midwifing stories for hundreds of others, science fiction would be a darker place, but much richer.

Joe Haldeman

Playing the Game

by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann

The woods that edged the north side of Manningtown belonged to the cemetery, and if you looked westward toward Endicott, you could see marble mausoleums and expensive monuments atop the hills. The cemetery took up several acres of carefully mown hillside and bordered Jefferson Avenue, where well-kept wood-frame houses faced the rococo painted headstones of the Italian section.

West of the cemetery there had once been a district of brownstone buildings and small shops, but for some time now there had been a shopping mall there instead; east of the cemetery, the row of dormer-windowed old mansions that Jimmy remembered had been replaced by an ugly brick school building and a fenced-in schoolyard where kids never played. The cemetery itself, though—that never changed; it had always been there, exactly the same for as far back as he could remember, and this made the cemetery a pleasant place to Jimmy Daniels, a refuge, a welcome island of stability in a rapidly changing world where change itself was often unpleasant and sometimes menacing.

Jimmy Daniels lived in Old Town most of the time, just down the hill from the cemetery, although sometimes they lived in Passdale or Southside or even Durham. Old Town was a quiet residential neighborhood of whitewashed narrow-fronted houses and steep cobbled streets that were lined with oak and maple trees. Things changed slowly there also, unlike the newer districts downtown, where it seemed that new parking garages or civic buildings popped out of the ground like mushrooms after a rain. Only rarely did a new building appear in Old Town, or an old building vanish. For this reason alone, Jimmy much preferred Old Town to Passdale or Southside, and was always relieved to be living there once again. True, he usually had no friends or school chums in the neighborhood, which consisted mostly of first- and second-generation Poles who worked for the Mannington shoe factories, which had recently begun to fail. Sometimes, when they lived in Old Town, Jimmy got to play with a lame Italian boy who was almost as much of an outcast in the neighborhood as Jimmy was, but the Italian boy had been gone for the last few days, and Jimmy was left alone again. He didn’t really mind being alone all that much—most of the time, anyway. He was a solitary boy by nature.

The whole Daniels family tended to be solitary, and usually had little to do with the close-knit, church-centered life of Old Town, although sometimes his mother belonged to the PTA or the Ladies’ Auxiliary, and once Jimmy had been amazed to discover that his father had joined the Rotary Club. Jimmy’s father usually worked for Weston Computers in Endicott, although Jimmy could remember times, unhappier times, when his father had worked as a CPA in Johnson City or even as a shoe salesman in Vestal. Jimmy’s father had always been interested in history, that was another constant in Jimmy’s life, and sometimes he did volunteer work for the Catholic Integration League. He never had much time to spend with Jimmy, wherever they lived, wherever he worked; that was another thing that didn’t change. Jimmy’s mother usually taught at the elementary school, although sometimes she worked as a typist at home, and other times—the bad times again—she stayed at home and took “medicine” and didn’t work at all.

That morning when Jimmy woke up, the first thing he realized was that it was summer, a fact testified to by the brightness of the sunshine and the balminess of the air that came in through the open window, making up for his memory of yesterday, which had been gray and cold and dour. He rolled out of bed, surprised for a moment to find himself on the top tier of a bunk bed, and plumped down to the floor hard enough to make the soles of his feet tingle; at the last few places they had lived, he hadn’t a bunk bed, and he wasn’t used to waking up that high off the ground. Some times he had trouble finding his clothes in the morning, but this time it seemed that he had been conscientious enough to hang them all up the night before, and he came across a blue shirt with a zigzag green stripe that he had not seen in a long time. That seemed like a good omen to him, and cheered him. He put on the blue shirt, then puzzled out the knots he could not remember leaving in his shoelaces. Still blinking sleep out of his eyes, he hunted futilely for his toothbrush; it always took a while for his mind to clear in the mornings, and he could be confused and disoriented until it did, but eventually memories began to seep back in, as they always did, and he sorted through them, trying to keep straight which house this was out of all the ones he had lived in, and where he kept things here.

Of course. But who would ever have thought that he’d keep it in an old coffee can under his desk!

Downstairs, his mother was making French toast, and he stopped in the archway to watch her as she cooked. She was a short, plump, dark-eyed, olive-complexioned woman who wore her oily black hair pulled back in a tight bun. He watched her intently as she fussed over the hot griddle, noticing her quick nervous motions, the irritable way she patted at loose strands of her hair. Her features were tightly drawn, her nose was long and straight and sharp, as though you could cut yourself on it, and she seemed all angles and edges today. Jimmy’s father had been sitting sullenly over his third cup of coffee, but as Jimmy hesitated in the archway, he got to his feet, and began to get ready for work. He was a thin man with a pale complexion and a shock of wiry red hair, and Jimmy bit his lip in disappointment as he watched him, keeping well back and hoping not to be noticed. He could tell from the insignia on his father’s briefcase that his father was working in Endicott today, and those times when his father’s job was in Endicott were among the times when both of his parents would be at their most snappish in the morning.

He slipped silently into his chair at the table as his father stalked wordlessly from the room, and his mother served him his French toast, also wordlessly, except for a slight, sullen grunt of acknowledgment. This was going to be a bad day—not as bad as those times when his father worked in Manningtown and his mother took her “medicine,” not as bad as some other times that he had no intention of thinking about at all, but unpleasant enough, right on the edge of acceptability. He shouldn’t have given in to tiredness and come inside yesterday, he should have kept playing the Game . . . Fortunately, he had no intention of spending much time here today.

Jimmy got through his breakfast with little real difficulty, except that his mother started in on her routine about why didn’t he call Tommy Melkonian, why didn’t he go swimming or bike riding, he was daydreaming his summer away, it wasn’t natural for him to be by himself all the time, he needed friends, it hurt her and made her feel guilty to see him moping around by himself all the time . . . and so on. He made the appropriate noises in response, but he had no intention of calling Tommy Melkonian today, or of letting her call for him. He had only played with Tommy once or twice before, the last time being when they lived over on Clinton Street (Tommy hadn’t been around before that), but he didn’t even
like
Tommy all that much, and he certainly wasn’t going to waste the day on him. Sometimes Jimmy had given in to temptation and wasted whole days playing jacks or kick-the-can with other kids, or going swimming, or flipping baseball cards; sometimes he’d frittered away a week like that without once playing the Game. But in the end he always returned dutifully to playing the Game again, however tired of it all he sometimes became. And the Game had to be played alone.

Yes, he was definitely going to play the Game today; there was certainly no incentive to hang around here; and the Game seemed to be easier to play on fine, warm days anyway, for some reason.

So as soon as he could, Jimmy slipped away. For a moment he confused this place with the house they sometimes lived in on Ash Street, which was very similar in layout and where he had a different secret escape route to the outside, but at last he got his memories straightened out. He snuck into the cellar while his mother was busy elsewhere; and through the back cellar window, under which he had placed a chair so that he could reach the cement overhang and climb out onto the lawn. He cut across the neighbors’ yards to Charles Street and then over to Floral Avenue, a steep macadam dead-end road. Beyond was the start of the woods that belonged to the cemetery. Sometimes the mud hills below the woods would be guarded by a mangy black and brown dog that would bark, snarl at him, and chase him. He walked faster, dreading the possibility.

But once in the woods, in the cool brown and green shade of bole and leaf, he knew he was safe, safe from everything, and his pace slowed. The first tombstone appeared, half buried in mulch and stained with green moss, and he patted it fondly, as if it were a dog. He was in the cemetery now, where it had all begun so long ago. Where he had first played the Game.

Moving easily, he climbed up toward the crown of woods, a grassy knoll that poked up above the surrounding trees, the highest point in the cemetery. Even after all he had been through, this was still a magic place for him; never had he feared spooks or ghouls while he was here, even at night, although often as he walked along, as now, he would peer up at the gum-gray sky, through branches that interlocked like the fingers of witches, and pretend that monsters and secret agents and dinosaurs were moving through the woods around him, that the stunted azalea bushes concealed pirates or orcs . . . But these were only small games, mood-setting exercises to prepare him for the playing of the Game itself, and they fell away from him like a shed skin as he came out onto the grassy knoll and the landscape opened up below.

Jimmy stood entranced, feeling the warm hand of the sun on the back of his head, hardly breathing, listening to the chirruping of birds, the scratching of katydids, the long, sighing rush of wind through oak and evergreen. The sky was blue and high and cloudless, and the Susquehanna River gleamed below like a mirror snake, burning silver as it wound through the rolling, hilly country.

Slowly, he began to play the Game. How had it been, that first time that he had played it, inadvertently, not realizing what he was doing, not understanding that he was playing the Game or what Game he was playing until after he had already started playing? How had it been? Had everything looked like this? He decided that the sun had been lower in the sky that day, that the air had been hazier, that there had been a mass of clouds on the eastern horizon, and he flicked through mental pictures of the landscape as if he were rifling through a deck of cards with his thumb, until he found one that seemed to be right. Obediently, the sky grew darker, but the shape and texture of the clouds were not right, and he searched until he found a better match. It had been somewhat colder, and there had been a slight breeze . . .

So far it had been easy, but there were more subtle adjustments to be made. Had there been four smokestacks or five down in Southside? Four, he decided, and took one away. Had that radio tower been on the crest of that particular distant hill? Or on
that
one? Had the bridge over the Susquehanna been nearer or further away? Had that Exxon sign been there, at the corner of Cedar Road? Or had it been an Esso sign? His blue shirt had changed to a brown shirt by now, and he changed it further, to a red pinstriped shirt, trying to remember. Had that ice cream stand been there? He decided that it had not been. His skin was dark again now, although his hair was still too straight . . . Had the cemetery fence been a wrought iron fence or a hurricane fence? Had there been the sound of a factory whistle blowing? The smell of sulphur in the air? Or the smell of pine . . . ?

He worked at it until dark; and then, drained, he came back down the hill again.

The shopping mall was still there, but the school and schoolyard had vanished this time, to be replaced by the familiar row of stately, dormer-windowed old mansions. That usually meant that he was at least close. The house was on Schubert Street this evening, several blocks over from where it had been this morning, and it was a two-story, not a three-story house, closer to his memories of how things had been before he’d started playing the Game. The car outside the house was a ‘78 Volvo—not what he remembered, but closer than the ‘73 Buick from this morning. The windshield bore an Endicott parking sticker, and there was some Weston Computer literature tucked under the eyeshade, all of which meant that it was probably safe to go in; his father wouldn’t be a murderous drunk this particular evening.

Inside the parlor; Jimmy’s father looked up from his armchair, where he was reading Fuller’s
Decisive Battles of the Western World,
and winked. “Hi, sport,” he said, and Jimmy replied, “Hi, Dad.” At least his father was a black man this time, as he should be, although he was much fatter than Jimmy ever remembered him being, and still had this morning’s kinky red hair, instead of the kinky black hair he should have. Jimmy’s mother came out of the kitchen, and she was thin enough now, but much too tall, with a tiny upturned nose, blue eyes instead of hazel, hair more blonde than auburn . . .

“Wash up for dinner, Jimmy,” his mother said, and Jimmy turned slowly for the stairs, feeling exhaustion wash through him like a bitter tide. She wasn’t
really
his mother, they weren’t really his parents. He had come a lot closer than this before, lots of other times . . . But always there was some small detail that was
wrong,
that proved that this particular probability-world out of the billions of probability-worlds was not the one he had started from, was not
home.

Still, he had done much worse than this before, too. At least this wasn’t a world where his father was dead, or an atomic war had happened, or his mother had cancer or was a drug addict, or his father was a brutal drunk, or a Nazi, or a child molester . . . This would do, for the night . . . He would settle for this, for tonight . . . He was so tired . . .

In the morning, he would start searching again.

Someday, he would find them.