Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html SMART DRAGONS, FOOLISH ELVES Alan Dean Foster Introduction HUMOR AND FANTASY have had a long and happy marriage. Every society has felt the need now and then to leaven heavy doses of religion and mythology with laughter, lest the populace feel too oppressed by the gods. Not only did healthy injections of humor help to lighten the life loads of otherwise impoverished peoples, it served to humanize the vast unknowables of existence. Believing that Zeus, or Odin, or Shiva could find themselves on the cosmic whoopee cushion every now and then just like Uncle Cheng probably made the night seem a little less dark, the vastness of space and time a smidgen less overbearing. So the people told funny stories; sometimes respectfully, sometimes not. Clearly the gods had a sense of humor, because including them in amusing tales did not result in imminent destruction and devastation. No matter how serious the religion or mythology, some irreverent soul always found room for a good laugh. Today only the parameters have changed. The universe is Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html better understood and therefore less threatening, but we still find space in religion for humor. The mythologies are different, though. The old gods repose comfortably in the Valhalla Retirement Home, having been replaced by com- puters, satellite communications, and psychoanalysis. Sci- ence, not mythology, rules the day. Yet much of the old hangs around, having slipped comfortably into new clothes. Human concerns are still universal. Many of the stories in this collection would make sense to readers of a hundred or even a thousand years ago. It would do our ancestors good to know that their offspring can still laugh and smile at themselves. Fantasy can be much more than escapism. Like the Arabian Nights, the imaginative tales in this collection often have points to make about the human condition: about love and truth, greed and lust, children and reality, what is really important in life and what is peripheral or overrated. The best stories are the ones that can make us think as well as smile. That's as true of fantasy fiction as it is of stand-up humor. Fantasy is a tool that enables the writer to go beyond the constraints of everyday life to make a point. The vehicle can be ethnic mythology, puberty, Roman history, love, beer, a Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html grand quest or a tiny afterthought. The humor can be contained in a quick punchline or an elaborate buildup. A story can make us laugh out loud or simply smile know- ingly. Humor can be light, dark, and every shade in between, depending on what setting the toaster has been left on. I like to believe that in addition to making us laugh or smile, each of the stories in this collection has something to say to us. Laughter lingers longest when it also makes a point. We usually remember the stories that cut deeper than those that merely anesthetize. Some of the authors in this collection are noted for their humorous fiction. Most are not. Quite the contrary, they are famed for the dark and serious, or expansive and adventur- ous, or the biting, or the poetical. But not humor. Not for making the reader grin and chuckle. Those are the ones I particularly prize. Because there's laughter in all of us, even in long-faced, somber authors charged with explaining the Meaning of It All to desperate readers. Sometimes it's a little slow manifesting itself, is all. The reason is that genuinely amusing fiction is the toughest kind to write. Succinctly Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html put, "Funny is hard." Keep that in mind as you put aside your casual evening's reading of Proust or Solzhenitsyn and dig into something really serious. Like this book. If it makes you smile, then it's done its job. If it makes you think, you've received a bonus. Take two stories, drink plenty of liquids, and stay in bed. That done, have you heard the one about . . . ? —Alan Dean Foster Prescott, Arizona How nice to be able to open a collection of the extraordinary with a quite ordinary tale. After all, what could be more ordinary than buying a car? Cars are unremarkable utilitarian objects that we deal with every day of our lives. Still, it would be a fairly simple matter to concoct a story about a remarkable car. One that kills, like Stephen King's Christine. Or one that metamorphoses into a starship, as in the movie The Last Starfighter. But once-you've tossed out the punchline, so to speak, where's your story? Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html No, no. Better to keep it simple, ordinary, unspectacular. Robert Silverberg has been writing simple, ordinary stories about everyday situations and events for a long time now. Ifs the ease and skill with which he brings off whatever he wants to try that's spectacular. This quiet little story, for example. You have to take it ... —————————————^————————————— As Is ROBERT SILVERBERG "As is," the auto dealer said, jamming his thumbs under his belt. "Two hundred fifty bucks and drive it away. I'm not pretending it's perfect, but I got to tell you, you're getting a damned good hunk of car for the price." "As is," Sam Norton said. "As is. Strictly as is." Norton looked a little doubtful. "Maybe she drives well, Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html but with a trunk that doesn't open—" "So what?" the dealer snorted. "You told me yourself you're renting a U-Haul to get your stuff to California. What do you need a trunk for? Look, when you get out to the Coast and have a little time, take the car to a garage, tell 'em the story, and maybe five minutes with a blowtorch—" "Why didn't you do that while you had the car in stock?" The dealer looked evasive. "We don't have time to fool with details like that." Norton let the point pass. He walked around the car again, giving it a close look from all angles. It was a smallish dark-green four-door sedan, with the finish and trim in good condition, a decent set of tires, and a general glow that comes only when a car has been well cared for. The upholstery was respectable, the radio was in working order, the engine was—as far as he could judge—okay, and a test drive had been smooth and easy. The car seemed to be a reasonably late model, too; it had shoulder-harness safety belts and emergency blinkers. There was only one small thing wrong with it. The trunk didn't open. It wasn't just a case of a jammed lock, either; Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html somebody had fixed this car so the trunk couldn't open. With great care the previous owner had apparently welded the trunk shut; nothing was visible back there except a dim line to mark the place where the lid might once have lifted. What the hell, though. The car was otherwise in fine shape, and he wasn't in a position to be too picky. Overnight, practically, they had transferred him to the Los Angeles office, which was fine in terms of getting out of New York in the middle of a lousy winter, but not so good as far as his immediate finances went. The company didn't pay moving costs, only transportation; he had been handed four one-way tourist-class tickets, and that was that. So he had put Ellen and the kids aboard the first jet to L.A., cashing in his own ticket so he could use the money for the Moving job. He figured to do it the slow but cheap way: rent a U-Haul trailer, stuff the family belongings into it, and set out via turnpike for California, hoping that Ellen had found an apartment by the time he got there. Only he couldn't trust his present clunker of a car to get him very far west of Parsippany, New Jersey, let alone through the Mojave Desert. So here he was, trying to pick up an honest used job for about five hundred bucks, which was all he could afford Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html to lay out on the spot. And here was the man at the used-car place offering him this very attractive vehicle—with its single peculiar defect—for only two and a half bills, which would leave him with that much extra cash cushion for the expenses of his transcontinental journey. And he didn't really need a trunk, driving alone. He could keep his suitcase on the back seat and stash everything else in the U-Haul. And it shouldn't be all that hard to have some mechanic in L.A. cut the trunk open for him and get it working again. On the other hand, Ellen was likely to chew him out for having bought a car that was sealed up that way; she had let him have it before on other "bargains" of that sort. On the third hand, the mystery of the sealed trunk appealed to him. Who knew what he'd find in there once he opened it up? Maybe the car had belonged to a smuggler who had had to hide a hot cargo fast, and the trunk was full of lovely golden ingots, or diamonds, or ninety-year-old cognac, which the smuggler had planned to reclaim a few weeks later, except that something unexpected had come up. On the fourth hand— The dealer said, "How'd you like to take her out for another test spin, then?" Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html Norton shook his head. "Don't think I need to. I've got a good idea of how she rides." "Well, then, let's step into the office and close the deal." Sidestepping the maneuver, Norton said, "What year did you say she was?" "Oh, about a 'sixty-four, 'sixty-five." "You aren't sure?" "You can't really tell with these foreign jobs, sometimes. You know, they don't change the model for five, six, ten years in a row, except in little ways that only an expert would notice. Take Volkswagen, for instance—" "And I just realized," Norton cut in, "that you never told me what make she is, either." "Peugeot, maybe, or some kind of Fiat," said the dealer hazily. "One of those kind." "You don't know?" Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html A shrug. "Well, we checked a lot of the style books going back a few years, but there are so damn many of these foreign cars around, and some of them they import only a few thousand, and—well, so we couldn't quite figure it out." Norton wondered how he was going to get spare parts for a car of unknown make and uncertain date. Then he realized that he was thinking of the car as his, already, even though the more he considered the deal, the less he liked it. And then he thought of those ingots in the trunk. The rare cognac. The suitcase full of rubies and sapphires. He said, "Shouldn't the registration say something about the year and make?" The dealer shifted his weight from foot to foot. "Matter of fact, we don't have the registration. But it's perfectly legitimate. Hey, look, I'd like to get this car out of my lot, so maybe we call it two twenty-five, huh?" "It all sounds pretty mysterious. Where'd you get the car, anyway?" "There was this little guy who brought it in, about a year ago, a year last November, I think it was. Give it a valve