Nebula Awards Showcase 2008 (24 page)

But I couldn’t get it free. He was too heavy, like Malka. But I wouldn’t give up or let go. I kept pulling and pulling on that sword, and I didn’t feel Molly pulling at me again, and I didn’t notice the griffin starting to scrabble toward me over King Lir’s body. I did hear Schmendrick, sounding a long way off, and I thought he was singing one of the nonsense songs he’d made up for me, only why would he be doing something like that just now? Then I did finally look up, to push my sweaty hair off my face, just before the griffin grabbed me up in one of its claws, yanking me away from Molly to throw me down on top of King Lir. His armor was so cold against my cheek, it was as though the armor had died with him.

The griffin looked into my eyes. That was the worst of all, worse than the pain where the claw had me, worse than not seeing my parents and stupid Wilfrid anymore, worse than knowing that I hadn’t been able to save either the king or Malka. Griffins can’t talk (dragons do, but only to heroes, King Lir told me), but those golden eyes were saying into my eyes, “Yes, I will die soon, but you are all dead now, all of you, and I will pick your bones before the ravens have mine. And your folk will remember what I was, and what I did to them, when there is no one left in your vile, pitiful anthill who remembers your name. So I have won.” And I knew it was true.

Then there wasn’t anything but that beak and that burning gullet opening over me.

Then there was.

I thought it was a cloud. I was so dazed and terrified that I really thought it was a white cloud, only traveling so low and so fast that it smashed the griffin off King Lir and away from me, and sent me tumbling into Molly’s arms at the same time. She held me tightly, practically smothering me, and it wasn’t until I wriggled my head free that I saw what had come to us. I can see it still, in my mind. I see it right now.

They don’t look anything like horses. I don’t know where people got that notion. Four legs and a tail, yes, but the hooves are split, like a deer’s hooves, or a goat’s, and the head is smaller and more—pointy—than a horse’s head. And the whole body is different from a horse; it’s like saying a snowflake looks like a cow. The horn looks too long and heavy for the body, you can’t imagine how a neck that delicate can hold up a horn that size. But it can.

Schmendrick was on his knees, with his eyes closed and his lips moving, as though he was still singing. Molly kept whispering, “Amalthea…Amalthea…” not to me, not to anybody. The unicorn was facing the griffin across the king’s body. Its front feet were skittering and dancing a little, but its back legs were setting themselves to charge, the way rams do. Only rams put their heads down, while the unicorn held its head high, so that the horn caught the sunlight and glowed like a seashell. It gave a cry that made me want to dive back into Molly’s skirt and cover my ears, it was so raw and so…hurt. Then its head did go down.

Dying or not, the griffin put up a furious fight. It came hopping to meet the unicorn, but then it was out of the way at the last minute, with its bloody beak snapping at the unicorn’s legs as it flashed by. But each time that happened, the unicorn would turn instantly, much quicker than a horse could have turned, and come charging back before the griffin could get itself braced again. It wasn’t a bit fair, but I didn’t feel sorry for the griffin anymore.

The last time, the unicorn slashed sideways with its horn, using it like a club, and knocked the griffin clean off its feet. But it was up before the unicorn could turn, and it actually leaped into the air, dead lion half and all, just high enough to come down on the unicorn’s back, raking with its eagle claws and trying to bite through the unicorn’s neck, the way it did with King Lir. I screamed then, I couldn’t help it, but the unicorn reared up until I thought it was going to go over backwards, and it flung the griffin to the ground, whirled and drove its horn straight through the iron feathers to the eagle heart. It trampled the body for a good while after, but it didn’t need to.

Schmendrick and Molly ran to King Lir. They didn’t look at the griffin, or even pay very much attention to the unicorn. I wanted to go to Malka, but I followed them to where he lay. I’d seen what the griffin had done to him, closer than they had, and I didn’t see how he could still be alive. But he was, just barely. He opened his eyes when we kneeled beside him, and he smiled so sweetly at us all, and he said, “Lisene? Lisene, I should have a bath, shouldn’t I?”

I didn’t cry. Molly didn’t cry. Schmendrick did. He said, “No, Majesty. No, you do not need bathing, truly.”

King Lir looked puzzled. “But I smell bad, Lisene. I think I must have wet myself.” He reached for my hand and held it so hard. “Little one,” he said. “Little one, I know you. Do not be ashamed of me because I am old.”

I squeezed his hand back, as hard as I could. “Hello, Your Majesty,” I said. “Hello.” I didn’t know what else to say.

Then his face was suddenly young and happy and wonderful, and he was gazing far past me, reaching toward something with his eyes. I felt a breath on my shoulder, and I turned my head and saw the unicorn. It was bleeding from a lot of deep scratches and bites, especially around its neck, but all you could see in its dark eyes was King Lir. I moved aside so it could get to him, but when I turned back, the king was gone. I’m nine, almost ten. I know when people are gone.

The unicorn stood over King Lir’s body for a long time. I went off after a while to sit beside Malka, and Molly came and sat with me. But Schmendrick stayed kneeling by King Lir, and he was talking to the unicorn. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I could tell from his face that he was asking for something, a favor. My mother says she can always tell before I open my mouth. The unicorn wasn’t answering, of course—they can’t talk either, I’m almost sure—but Schmendrick kept at it until the unicorn turned its head and looked at him. Then he stopped, and he stood up and walked away by himself. The unicorn stayed where she was.

Molly was saying how brave Malka had been, and telling me that she’d never known another dog who attacked a griffin. She asked if Malka had ever had pups, and I said, yes, but none of them was Malka. It was very strange. She was trying hard to make me feel better, and I was trying to comfort her because she couldn’t. But all the while I felt so cold, almost as far away from everything as Malka had gone. I closed her eyes, the way you do with people, and I sat there and I stroked her side, over and over.

I didn’t notice the unicorn. Molly must have, but she didn’t say anything. I went on petting Malka, and I didn’t look up until the horn came slanting over my shoulder. Close to, you could see blood drying in the shining spirals, but I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t anything. Then the horn touched Malka, very lightly, right where I was stroking her, and Malka opened her eyes.

It took her a while to understand that she was alive. It took me longer. She ran her tongue out first, panting and panting, looking so thirsty. We could hear a stream trickling somewhere close, and Molly went and found it, and brought water back in her cupped hands. Malka lapped it all up, and then she tried to stand and fell down, like a puppy. But she kept trying, and at last she was properly on her feet, and she tried to lick my face, but she missed it the first few times. I only started crying when she finally managed it.

When she saw the unicorn, she did a funny thing. She stared at it for a moment, and then she bowed or curtseyed, in a dog way, stretching out her front legs and putting her head down on the ground between them. The unicorn nosed at her, very gently, so as not to knock her over again. It looked at me for the first time…or maybe I really looked at it for the first time, past the horn and the hooves and the magical whiteness, all the way into those endless eyes. And what they did, somehow, the unicorn’s eyes, was to free me from the griffin’s eyes. Because the awfulness of what I’d seen there didn’t go away when the griffin died, not even when Malka came alive again. But the unicorn had all the world in her eyes, all the world I’m never going to see, but it doesn’t matter, because now I have seen it, and it’s beautiful, and I was in there too. And when I think of Jehane, and Louli, and my Felicitas who could only talk with her eyes, just like the unicorn, I’ll think of them, and not the griffin. That’s how it was when the unicorn and I looked at each other.

I didn’t see if the unicorn said goodbye to Molly and Schmendrick, and I didn’t see when it went away. I didn’t want to. I did hear Schmendrick saying, “A dog. I nearly kill myself singing her to Lir, calling her as no other has ever called a unicorn—and she brings back, not him, but the dog. And here I’d always thought she had no sense of humor.”

But Molly said, “She loved him too. That’s why she let him go. Keep your voice down.” I was going to tell her it didn’t matter, that I knew Schmendrick was saying that because he was so sad, but she came over and petted Malka with me, and I didn’t have to. She said, “We will escort you and Malka home now, as befits two great ladies. Then we will take the king home too.”

“And I’ll never see you again,” I said. “No more than I’ll see him.”

Molly asked me, “How old are you, Sooz?”

“Nine,” I said. “Almost ten. You know that.”

“You can whistle?” I nodded. Molly looked around quickly, as though she were going to steal something. She bent close to me, and she whispered, “I will give you a present, Sooz, but you are not to open it until the day when you turn seventeen. On that day you must walk out away from your village, walk out all alone into some quiet place that is special to you, and you must whistle like this.” And she whistled a little ripple of music for me to whistle back to her, repeating and repeating it until she was satisfied that I had it exactly. “Don’t whistle it anymore,” she told me. “Don’t whistle it aloud again, not once, until your seventeenth birthday, but keep whistling it inside you. Do you understand the difference, Sooz?”

“I’m not a baby,” I said. “I understand. What will happen when I do whistle it?”

Molly smiled at me. She said, “Someone will come to you. Maybe the greatest magician in the world, maybe only an old lady with a soft spot for valiant, impudent children.” She cupped my cheek in her hand. “And just maybe even a unicorn. Because beautiful things will always want to see you again, Sooz, and be listening for you. Take an old lady’s word for it. Someone will come.”

They put King Lir on his own horse, and I rode with Schmendrick, and they came all the way home with me, right to the door, to tell my mother and father that the griffin was dead, and that I had helped, and you should have seen Wilfrid’s face when they said that! Then they both hugged me, and Molly said in my ear, “Remember—not till you’re seventeen!” and they rode away, taking the king back to his castle to be buried among his own folk. And I had a cup of cold milk and went out with Malka and my father to pen the flock for the night.

So that’s what happened to me. I practice the music Molly taught me in my head, all the time, I even dream it some nights, but I don’t ever whistle it aloud. I talk to Malka about our adventure, because I have to talk to someone. And I promise her that when the time comes she’ll be there with me, in the special place I’ve already picked out. She’ll be an old dog lady then, of course, but it doesn’t matter. Someone will come to us both.

I hope it’s them, those two. A unicorn is very nice, but they’re my friends. I want to feel Molly holding me again, and hear the stories she didn’t have time to tell me, and I want to hear Schmendrick singing that silly song:

 

Soozli, Soozli,

speaking loozli,

you disturb my oozli-goozli.

Soozli, Soozli,

would you choozli

to become my squoozli-squoozli…?

 

I can wait.

 

T
he Rhysling Awards are presented by the Science Fiction Poetry Association. Although they are not a Nebula or an SFWA award, poetry is as much a part of the science fiction and fantasy genre as prose, and our anthology would not be complete if it did not include the year’s Rhysling winners.

In addition to the winners for the short poem and long poem awards, in this volume we present for the first time the winner of a new category, the Dwarf Stars Award, which is for poems less than ten lines in length.

Joe Haldeman is one of the most respected and versatile writers in the science fiction field, a multiple Hugo and Nebula Award winner, as well as one of the field’s leading poets and a past winner of the Rhysling Award.

 

S
ay “science fiction poetry” to the average science fiction reader, and you might get a cautious nod. Most of them at least know it exists, and a significant number of them read it.

Say “science fiction poetry” to the average poet, though, and you may feel a distinct chill in the room. “Of course you can write about anything you want,” he or she might articulate, “but why would you choose to write about Han Solo and little hobbits and planets exploding? Why not write about something interesting?”

This sort of thing doesn’t happen in a venue where you can sit down and explain things. It’s usually a faculty cocktail party, where you can’t hear yourself think for the din of academic survival going on, or a book “do” where the poet you’re talking to is engaged in a different kind of survival game. But suppose it was otherwise, some kind of neutral ground—suppose you’re at a high school reunion (not your own, but one your wife dragged you to) and you’re bored and you sit down next to a stranger who’s also bored, and you just start to chat, and she says she’s a poet. You say, “That’s an odd coincidence; I’m a poet, too.” And about one minute later, you admit that you write science fiction poetry, and she offers the above question. This time you can answer.

First you define the line (which you know to be a fuzzy border) between real science fiction and the stuff that Hollywood markets under our name. She does know about Margaret Atwood and Ursula K. LeGuin, and maybe Doris Lessing. But isn’t most of it pretty horrible? You tell her Sturgeon’s Law—“Ninety percent of everything is crap”—and ask her what percentage of published academic poetry would she characterize as crap. She ruefully agrees with you and Sturgeon, and might also agree that any genre deserves to be evaluated by its best.

(At this point you could just whip out a copy of
The 2006 Rhysling Anthology
and lay it on her. But under the circumstances, you’re unlikely to have a copy with you. Tux and all.)

I would offer to refresh her drink and then offer this: Science fiction is a literary genre, true, but unlike most other genres it’s also a way of thinking. A way of solving problems, of looking at the universe. That’s as true in poetry as in prose. (I wouldn’t offer the uncomfortable corollary that a work can be mediocre or even bad writing and still be good science fiction, if its idea is new and interesting.)

To that observation I’d add one that she already knows, being a poet. There’s a basic difference between a story and a poem, regardless of genre. A story usually proceeds in a more or less algorithmic way—a series of situations, scenes, that finally add up to a conclusion. Poetry is completely different, even narrative poetry. You do read it one line at a time, but what it adds up to is not a conclusion, in the sense of a problem being solved. It has a “radiative” quality; at best, a kind of epiphany that couldn’t have been produced by mere prose.

Combine that with the peculiar worldview of science fiction—that the universe is the province of change, and the province of wonder—and you have something uniquely worthwhile, both in poetry and in science fiction.

At this point, if she isn’t backing away slowly with a look on her face that says, “Oh, please God, save me from this übergeek,” you might tell her about the Rhysling Awards and anthology, and whip out your pocket computer and use Google and Amazon to send her a copy. She might be a better poet for it.

The Rhysling Award (named after Heinlein’s blind poet in “The Green Hills of Earth”) has three categories, long poem, short poem, and Dwarf Stars; the winners are reprinted here. To give you an idea of the variety of subjects and approaches science fiction poetry subsumes, let me list a precis of the winners and runners-up here:

Short Poem Category

Winner:
“The Strip Search” by Mike Allen. A clever riff on “Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter”—the author dies and demons detect a shred of hope not abandoned, and dissect him to find it.

 

Second Place:
“Tsunami Child” by David C. Kopaska-Merkel. Chilling evocation of a revenant “survivor” of the tsunami.

 

Third Place:
“South” by Marge Simon. A complete science fiction story told in twenty-five lines, of a couple who stay behind when the rest of the population flees global cooling.

 

Long Poem Category

Winner:
“The Tin Men” by Kendall Evans and David C. Kopaska-Merkel. An ambitious epic whose nine irregular stanzas and epilogue describe the fates of a number of starships, some with cryonic crews and some mechanical throughout, as they explore the cosmos and find a variety of fates.

 

Second Place:
“Old Twentieth: A Century Full of Years” by Joe Haldeman. This poem provides the subtext for the novel of the same name. It’s a rhymed double sestina, a dauntingly complex form. I only know of two others, Swinburne’s “The Complaint of Lisa” and part of John Ashbery’s 1991 book,
Flow Chart
, where he copied out the end words of Swinburne’s poem and wrote his own. Mine provides a history of the twentieth century by examining its twelve most important years in twelve lines each.

 

Third Place:
“First Cross of Mars” by Drew Morse. A delicate mixture of religious and erotic meditation, set on a thoroughly realistic Mars.

 

If you’d like to see more of this kind of work, or are interested in writing science fiction poetry yourself, you could get in touch with the Science Fiction Poetry Association, at www.sfpoetry.com.