ABBYY PClDicFk hTerrae tno sbfouyrmer2.0 ABBYY PClDicFk hTerrae tno sbfouyrmer2.0 www.ABBYY.com www.ABBYY.com Contents Marion Zimmer Bradley Introduction 1 Dorothy J. Heydt Moonrise 6 Jennifer Roberson Final Exam 14 L. A. Taylor Counterexample 26 Mary C. Aldridge The Adinkra Cloth 38 Pat Cirone To Father a Sohn 56 Susan Urbanek Linville Born in the Seventh Year 75 Peter L. Manly Dragon Three Two Niner 87 Lynne Armstrong-Jones The Case of Kestra 106 Lawrence Watt-Evans The Palace of al-Tir al-Abtan 116 Mercedes Lackey Nightside 133 Jacqueline Lichtenberg Aventura 153 Jo Clayton Change 171 Phyllis Ann Karr The Truth About the Lady of the Lake 189 Diana L. Paxson The Dancer of Chimaera 194 Elisabeth Waters The Lesser Twin 207 Kit Wesler The Bane of the Red Queen 216 Deborah Millitello The Reluctant Vampire 219 Tanya Huff Be It Ever So Humble 223 INTRODUCTION I've been asked again and again why I, with a good deal of success in writing fiction, chose to become an editor. This goes back to my early experiences in science fiction fandom. Like many of my predecessors in all kinds of fiction, including such disparate purveyors of fiction as Charlotte Bronte and Howard P. Lovecraft, my first experience in literature was editing and publishing a "fanzine." The self-publishing and editing endeavors of the Bronte sisters are too well known to need extensive comment, and Oscar Wilde found his first audience in a college magazine. One of the ways in which science fiction and fantasy fiction differ from any other genre of fiction in which I've written (and I have written, over the last half-century, in every genre field except hard science fiction and hard-core detective fiction) is that fantasy and science fiction writers, almost without exception, regard one another not as rivals but as highly valued friends and colleagues; not temperamental prima donnas but like members of one large orchestra, or choir, whose allegiance is given only to the music. About such art as is ABBYY PClDicFk hTerrae tno sbfouyrmer2.0 ABBYY PClDicFk hTerrae tno sbfouyrmer2.0 www.ABBYY.com www.ABBYY.com featured in my magazine, I know only enough to know I don't know much of anything. That is why one of the first things I did after the magazine was well es- tablished was to put the illustrative artwork into the very capable hands of Rachel Holmen, who does know something about the subject; and, judging by the feedback I've received, it was the best move I ever made. But while art may not be my field of expertise, fiction is my field; so one of the most rewarding experiences, in this field or any other, is to discover new talent. This is one of the main reasons why I wanted to publish a magazine in the first place. (It was with amazement that I learned, by way of a convention's editorial panel, that all editors don't share my delight in the slush pile, many of them regarding it as no more than, at best, a necessary evil.) But from the very first I read every story that was submitted to the magazine, and I still do; the slush pile is the high point of my day. The main criterion I use for choosing stories is: Can I see this story in print, do I want to read this in print? I look for what I call "the sense of wonder"-that thing which makes me feel that with every word of a given story I'm learning something, finding out something I couldn't find anywhere else; stories which make me feel curiosity, adventure, delight; which make me feel that my imagination is at full stretch, that there's nothing else in the world I'd rather be doing than reading that particular story right now. I set up something called the Cauldron (I got the idea from Analog, which did something similar, and the name from the legendary cauldron of gold at the end of the rainbow), where the readers vote for their favorite stories (Rachel added artwork, beginning with issue #14) in each issue, and the authors and artists who win get a small additional payment. I don't always agree with the readers-half the stories in this volume were not in the top three places in the Cauldron votes-but I value the feedback. It's always interesting to see what grabs my readers' attention, what they particularly like and dislike. I think of editing as Herman Melville professed (tongue in cheek) to think of whalers: they went out to get the best and freshest light in the very source of whale-oil fuel; I go out and hunt up writers at the source, not filtered through other editors. And I love it. Which is a good thing, or I could never do it long enough to discover all these great writers. And here are many of those it's been my pleasure to discover, to present, to encourage. It's such a pleasure to present them, by way of this anthology, to a mass market. I trust you'll like them too. About Dorothy J. Heydt and "Moonrise" ABBYY PClDicFk hTerrae tno sbfouyrmer2.0 ABBYY PClDicFk hTerrae tno sbfouyrmer2.0 www.ABBYY.com www.ABBYY.com Although I've known her now for about thirty years, I can't claim to have discovered Dorothy Heydt; I believe she had been published elsewhere before I bought the first of many stories from her. I met her originally through the Society for Creative Anachronism, where she was a member of a Renaissance music group and the possessor of one of the finest singing voices I have ever heard. I know for sure that I published quite a few of her stories in Sword and Sorceress and in my various Darkover anthologies before I published her in the magazine. Whether or no, as soon as I read this story, I knew I was going to feature it in my first issue. Before I acquired Rachel Holmen as a capable managing editor, I was working with another lady I'll not name here for various reasons, whose talents were substantial but did not include any previous knowledge of our field. Since I had kept control of the literary content of the magazine, while her talents were almost entirely in the production line, I was amazed to discover that not only did she not share my enthusiasm for "Moonrise" but that-as she told me after it was in print-she had entirely failed to understand it, to the level where she told me that she believed some penultimate paragraph must have been omitted by the printer; and it had no point whatsoever. I don't know what they teach in colleges nowadays; because, although my friend had a somewhat better education in most ways than mine, I had to explain it to her in words of one syllable, that while "taking the magic out of the moon" might restore a werewolf to normal, "taking the magic out" of Mars by landing on it could be expected to bring fighting to an end-Mars being the God of War. But in all the other comments I ever got about "Moon-rise," not one complained about not understanding Dorothy's story; so I imagine that the average reader of fantasy is better educated than even a college- graduate nonreader. When I was a kid there used to be a belief that fans were all intellectually superior to nonfans. I doubt if even those who used the notion really believed it, but maybe it was true, and is still true-insofar as any reader is at least superior in at least one way to almost any nonreader. Moonrise Dorothy J. Heydt Martin put on his professional smile and walked through the press-room door. If CBS in its infinite unwisdom chose to assign him to the Mars landing, rather than to something crucial like the Senate confirmation hearings or the Pan-Arabian war, he would put a good face on it and acquire merit for future assignments. This good intention lasted about ten seconds, or until he saw, through the wall/window that separated the press and VIP areas, the lean profile and ABBYY PClDicFk hTerrae tno sbfouyrmer2.0 ABBYY PClDicFk hTerrae tno sbfouyrmer2.0 www.ABBYY.com www.ABBYY.com pewter-colored hair of Senator Vilkas, three thousand miles from where he should have been. Martin backtracked out the door and threaded his way between dignitaries to Vilkas's chair. "Senator? Martin Raymer, CBS News. Senator, what are you doing here?" Vilkas's smile was his trademark, startlingly white against his tanned face. "Space Committee chairman. Rank still hath its privileges." "Why aren't you at the confirmation hearings? If Davidson gets in as Secretary of State, he'll set American foreign policy back fifty years." "I left a list of questions and a prepared statement with Senator McCartney. She can cope." "India and Pan-Arabia could be at war by the end of the week," Martin reminded him, pulling his newsscan from his breast pocket. The Senator glanced at the headlines racing by, waved the scan aside. "I know," he said. "That's why this is important." "Vandenberg, Phobos," the wall speaker said. "We've picked up the Bifrost on its second pass. You ought to be getting the picture about now." The screen lit up, brick red from border to border, flecked with craters. A silvery triangle crossed it slowly from left to right, fragile-looking as a child's paper airplane. Vilkas muttered something in a language Martin didn't know. "Senator," Martin began again. "Marty, shut up," said the Senator firmly. "I said, this is important." Berkeley in August was empty of students. Most of the street people had drifted into San Francisco in search of tourists' spare change. They had taken the fog with them, and the sun was setting through clear air. Soon the moon would rise, and he was still on Telegraph. Nearly two miles to go. Damn you. As he crossed Durant a gust of wind blew a fragment of newspaper into his face. He caught it and looked at it: a piece of an old Chronicle, with Herb Caen's column in it, from the day Apollo 11 had lifted off. "Today begins the violation of the last virgin ..." He crumpled it and threw it back into the street. Serve you right. Two weeks old, it would be, because they had lifted off at the new moon and tonight was the full. He turned east onto Bancroft and began to climb, with the University on his left and a row of frat houses on his right. Both looked nearly deserted, the University left to faculty who were getting some work done, the frats left to caretakers who could relax and party every night. (Somebody would "nave to come and clean the plastic cups out of the bushes.) He cut between International House and the football stadium and followed quiet hill streets to the beginning of the fire trail. The moon had risen by now, but he was sheltered by the hills for a few minutes yet. Damn you. Why won't you let me be? ABBYY PClDicFk hTerrae tno sbfouyrmer2.0 ABBYY PClDicFk hTerrae tno sbfouyrmer2.0 www.ABBYY.com www.ABBYY.com He climbed the fire trail at a half-run that took him deep into Tilden Park before the moonlight began to discolor the evening sky. He met no other human on the trail, only a nearly grown doe that ran away at the sight of him. People never came here at night, and the deer would have to take their chances. Soon he reached a big bay laurel that stood in the ravine deep between two branches of the road. Nobody would be scrambling all the way down here, not even to answer any calls of nature. He undressed swiftly, stuffed his folded clothes inside the hollow between the branches of the bay laurel, and dropped his shoes and socks on top. That was the only thing he had any control over: to see to it that his clothes would still be there when he was done. Once, when he'd been late, he'd run off with his shoes on, kicked them off somewhere, and never seen them again. And I'd had them only a week. Damn you. It had begun when he was fifteen and still living in Plac-erville. He'd woken from a confused dream, the kind of dream they'd told him in health ed was only natural and normal, to find that he wasn't in bed anymore. He was out in the foothills a mile from home, wearing nothing but the legless shreds of his pajama bottoms. It was four o'clock in the morning with the moon going down, and a sheep was lying between his feet with its throat torn out. He had managed to get home and wash without anyone's seeing him. His mother eventually asked after the missing pajamas, but had taken "I dunno; I put them in the laundry and that's the last I saw of them" for an answer. By then it was a month later, and it had happened again. After the third time there was an article in the local paper: somebody had seen a big timber wolf among the sheep. He had fired both barrels of his shotgun into it, but it had run away as though it hadn't been touched. Of course not, stupid, he'd thought when he read that. You need a silver bullet. They might have figured that out too, eventually, but at the end of that year he graduated from high school and went to Berkeley. It was easier to cover up there; nobody knew what you did or where you went, and not even the University challenged you on it so long as you kept your grades up. His roommate was an engineering major who wasn't into noticing little things like a roomie who never came home one night a month. He never remembered afterward what had happened, though sometimes there would be clues left behind: a line or two of newspaper story, a sheep or deer or dog lying half-eaten at his feet. Never a human being, not yet; thank God. Once he had gone to the Newman Hall just before moon-rise, hoping-he didn't know what. Maybe that the holy influence would subdue him, or that some traditionalist priest would have the presence of mind to read an exorcism? In any event, he'd woken up in Tilden anyway-apparently the holy influence had ABBYY PClDicFk hTerrae tno sbfouyrmer2.0 ABBYY PClDicFk hTerrae tno sbfouyrmer2.0 www.ABBYY.com www.ABBYY.com been enough to send him running like hell into the hills. Occasionally he still toyed with the idea of telling one of the chaplains what was going on. They might even believe him-the Paulist Fathers were pretty practical types, and this was Berkeley, after all. Or he could go join a peace march and get himself arrested-but they might not put him in solitary, and God help anybody they gave him for a cellmate. Six to ten hours a month, moonrise till sometime after midnight. If clouds covered the moon it didn't last as long, but he'd make it up the following month. It was worse than being a girl. His sister had rotten cramps for three days a month; he fetched her aspirin when he was at home, and hot water bottles, and carefully didn't mention that he would have traded anytime. So far as he'd been able to learn-it wasn't the sort of thing you could come out and ask your parents about-he was the only one in the family. But the family name meant "wolf," so maybe it had happened before. He spent his first couple of years as a biology major, and learned a bit about dominant and recessive genes, but nothing that helped. After that he'd switched to prelaw, figuring he might need it. Maybe he should have chosen premed instead, as an excuse for doing nothing at Berkeley but study. It went without saying that he had no social life. He had few acquaintances, no close friends, and he'd never dared to get close to girls. Rumors were beginning to circulate-lurid ones no doubt, but soap-opera stuff compared to the truth. He'd wanted to make something out of his life-something still fuzzy and unclear to him at fifteen, and since then he hadn't dared to plan for anything better than staying alive. He found he was leaning against the bay laurel, his fingernails dug into its bark, the pungent smell of its leaves strong in his nostrils, while the light of the cruel moon poured down on him. Something strange was going on: or rather, it wasn't going on. He looked up at the moon, down at his hands: white under the moonlight, fragile long- fingered things with flimsy nails. He was standing manshaped on two legs, while the full moon rode on high overhead, and even for August the air was cold against his naked skin. Something had happened. He pulled his clothes out of the tree and got dressed. Slowly, not quite trusting his luck, he walked back down the path. "The moon like a flower in heaven's high bower, with silent delight sits and smiles on the night." The speaker was invisible in the shadows where he stood, but easy to trace by his voice (and a wisp of pot smoke that reached out and grabbed one by the nostrils). "What did you say?" "I said, wow, man, look at the moon. You wouldn't think, from here, those bastards had been walking on it. America's hero, Neil Armstrong," he said bitterly. "He's taken all the magic out of the moon. Hey, you got any spare change?" ABBYY PClDicFk hTerrae tno sbfouyrmer2.0 ABBYY PClDicFk hTerrae tno sbfouyrmer2.0 www.ABBYY.com www.ABBYY.com "Will paper do?" He fumbled a bill out of his wallet, saw it was a five, and gave it to him anyway. He paced down Telegraph, avoiding curbs and power poles by dead reckoning, thinking hard. He would go into the space program- no, he couldn't, spacemen had to be small enough to fit into the capsules, and he was already six feet two and probably still growing. He'd go into engineering like his roommate; no, by God, he'd stay in law and go into politics- "Fifty meters," said the speaker. Chin balanced on his clasped hands, his eyes fixed on the readout screen, Senator Vilkas looked like an elderly abbot in prayer. Completing the image, his lips were moving silently: not "Pater Noster," but "seventeen, sixteen, fifteen ..." "In fact, the Bifrost landed about half an hour ago," Martin was saying, while his autocamera panned slowly between the screen and his face. "But their signal, traveling at light-speed, takes half an hour to reach us. In a few moments we should know whether they made it. Senator Vilkas, do you have anything to say on this historic occas-" "Hush," Vilkas said. "Let's listen." There was a burst of static that flared up and died away. "The Bifrost has landed. Our touchdown time was 06:22:14"- but the room had erupted into cheers. "The Bifrost has landed safely on the surface of Mars," Martin told the autocamera. "In about an hour, if everything checks out, Commander Hunter will open the hatch and become the first man to set foot on Mars-really, in half an hour, but because of the time delay-" "That's a point," Vilkas said, suddenly taking notice of him. "Does it count when it happens, or when we find out about it? Marty, let's see your scan." He glanced over the headlines: war in Pan-Arabia, rioting in Calcutta, chaos in New York. Half an hour till man set his impudent foot on Mars. He settled back in his chair and waited for the fighting to stop. About Jennifer Roberson and "Final Exam" I can't claim credit for discovering Jennifer Roberson; that honor, like so many others of discovering writers, belongs to my friend and mentor, Don Wollheim. He was, during my first years in science fiction, one of the few who always tried to publish fantasy, as opposed to the hard-core hard-technology fiction preferred during the forties and late fifties by John W. Campbell, and the (mostly young white male engineering) students who were the majority of articulate readers of science fiction in those days. Of course, many silent non- participating readers and writers of fantasy or weird fiction, as opposed to science fiction, were women; the majority of readers of hard-core science ABBYY PClDicFk hTerrae tno sbfouyrmer2.0 ABBYY PClDicFk hTerrae tno sbfouyrmer2.0 www.ABBYY.com www.ABBYY.com fiction were male, or if female, obsessed or themselves engineers or scientists, or would-be writers. But they didn't usually edit it (excepting the very knowledgeable Cele Goldberg at Amazing Stories, and one or two of John Campbell's assistants). Don, perhaps freed from fears about his own masculinity by one of the few remarkably stable marriages in the whole of the genre-he alone among the noteworthy editors of his day remained married to his first wife (who is now, with his daughter, at the head of his DAW Books)-Don, like me, never lost his delight in discovering good writers. In the last year of his life, stopping in at DAW to pay my respects, I found him chuckling with delight at something he'd just discovered in the slush. He discovered more writers than anyone else in the field, and while he once spoke very dismissively of a well-known fan publisher, saying that he "was and always would be an amateur," as opposed to a professional, he never tired of discovering new talent. I freely admit that without his belief and help, there would be no such writer or editor as Marion Zimmer Bradley. And if they wanted to tell the truth, a lot of other writers would have to say the same. Of course, almost all of them deserted him for other publishers as soon as they could get bigger advances elsewhere. And I must say that he encouraged them all to spread their wings. So Don, who was a father to all of us in the fifties, must take credit for formally discovering Jennifer. Due to the accidents of the schedule, I actually published her first short story while her first novel was in production at DAW. But it was he who suggested I get in touch with her. I think this is a fun story. I'll bet you will, too, after you read it. Final Exam Jennifer Roberson He was, she thought, a rather ordinary man. Certainly unremarkable in looks, although his eyes were rather nice. Warm, brown eyes, but just a trifle myopic; he peered back at her worriedly. She found this rather amusing, in view of the circumstances. A distinctly common young man, she thought, nodding to herself. Nice eyes, yes, but then eyes weren't everything, were they? His other attributes, such as they were, were clearly nondescript. Mousy brown hair (clean but in need of cutting); features of a distinctly average cast (although the nose was a bit too long); and the height and weight of at least half a hundred men who inhabited her father's castle, which made him utterly ordinary and not in the least heroic. But then, he wasn't a hero, so she supposed it didn't matter. She chewed her bottom lip, thinking of her father. No doubt he would worry, once he came round to it. After all, his youngest daughter had disappeared through no fault of her own. It was entirely likely right at this ABBYY PClDicFk hTerrae tno sbfouyrmer2.0 ABBYY PClDicFk hTerrae tno sbfouyrmer2.0 www.ABBYY.com www.ABBYY.com very moment he was summoning up all the royal armies, since there was nothing else for them to do and setting them to the task ofcombing the woods for her, threatening whippings for one and all if they didn't turn her up. Well, they wouldn't. He had made sure of that. He. He sat there peering at her myopically, wondering, now that he had her, what to do with her. She sighed. Rearranged her skirts. Crossed her legs beneath the table and gazed straight back at him. He also sighed. He didn't know what to say. And so he said the very first thing he could think of: "You arc a virgin, aren't you?" At home she would have been shocked, because being shocked was expected of her. But she wasn't at home at present and therefore the expected responses were completely unnecessary, which meant she could say whatever she felt. What she felt was laughter; this wasn't what she had been warned by all of her chamber ladies to expect from ravishers. Supposedly, ravishers never asked such things, regarding virginity as unimportant, since, if she were one, she wouldn't be for much longer, and therefore it really didn't matter. But he hadn't ravished her yet. She lifted red eyebrows (not auburn; red) in the eloquent manner she had been most carefully taught. The peculiarly feminine language of elegantly arched brows was meant to convey carefully measured, outraged condescension. But she hadn't practiced much, and she wasn't very good at it; besides, her eyebrows always mutinied and remained rebel-liously straight. Still, it was up to her to try; her women had labored so hard. "I beg your pardon?" She used the fluting, plummy tones all the other ladies of rank employed. He blinked, reddened, attempted to loosen the high collar of his wheat-colored apprentice's tunic. "I'm sorry. I'm not doing this very well. I'm new at it, you see . . . you're my first victim." "Am I?" She brightened. She was never first in anything, having four sisters in front of her. He nodded gravely. "But I had to ask, you know. The spell requires a virgin." "Spell?" She brightened still more. "You mean-magic?" "Oh, yes." His embarrassment faded, replaced with indulgent self- confidence, which she thought alien to his open, boyish features and therefore looked a trifle odd. "It's all in the books, you know: the virgin daughter of a king." Ah. Well, she was the daughter of a king. And she was a virgin. But she didn't tell him yet, hoarding it for herself. "A gentleman never asks." The confidence disappeared. "He doesn't?" "No." "Then how does one find out?" ABBYY PClDicFk hTerrae tno sbfouyrmer2.0 ABBYY PClDicFk hTerrae tno sbfouyrmer2.0 www.ABBYY.com www.ABBYY.com It was a fair question, she thought. But she didn't have an answer. "Perhaps one just knows." "But I don't know." He was looking worried again. "It has to be a virgin. Otherwise it won't work." She considered it a moment. Then leaned forward and asked, carefully, "What won't work?" "The spell," he said testily. "I told you that already." "Yes, well, you have ... but you haven't told me why." She set an elbow against the table and leaned her chin into the heel of her hand. "I think it's only fair, me knowing why. After all, you did bring me here against my will." "I did, didn't I?" His tone and expression were glum. "Well, I'm sorry if I frightened you ... but I was only doing what I was told." "To steal women." "To steal a woman," he clarified. "Specifically, the virgin daughter of a king." He shrugged. "I might have asked-I'm the sort who would rather ask, really-but the books all said it was quite impossible to find a willing virgin princess, so I'd better be ready to steal one." He sighed. "If I wanted the spell to work." "Which, of course, you do." She nodded angrily, then leaned farther forward yet. "What is this spell/or?" He brightened. Apparently even this young man, caught squarely between boyhood and adulthood, enjoyed doing the one thing she'd learned all men liked to do: talk about himself. "It's for my final exam," he explained. "I'm only an apprentice wizard, you see ... but I'm behind all the others. If I fail this time, they'll dismiss me from school and I'll never graduate." She frowned; she herself disliked lessons, preferring instead to sit in a window seat and dream. Or to read a book, which, she had been told numerous times, was really quite the same. "Would it be so bad if you were dismissed? I mean, what kind of a school expects young men to steal young women simply to satisfy graduation requirements?" He sighed heavily. "This one does, I'm afraid. It's stated clearly in the catalogue: 'in order to graduate, all spells must be completed according to the requirements of the various courses included in the student's specific curricula.' " She nodded; an exacting requisite. "Which course is this one you've stolen me for?" He drew himself up on his stool. "I am not allowed to Say." She was astonished. After all, he'd stolen her-