IGMS Issue 7 Page 16

  Well, even political sheep sometimes said something that had a good result. Now Val wouldn't even have to persuade Peter of the need to keep Ender away from Earth. It would be all his idea instead of hers.

  Theresa once again sat on the bed, crying. Strewn about her were printouts of the Demosthenes and Locke essays that she knew would keep Ender from returning home.

  "I can't help it," she said to her husband. "I know it's the right thing -- just as Graff wanted us to understand it. But I thought I'd see him again. I really did."

  John Paul sat beside her on the bed and put his arms around her. "It's the hardest thing we ever did."

  "Not giving him up in the first place?"

  "That was hard," said John Paul, "but we didn't have a choice. They were going to take him anyway. This time, though. You know that if we went on the nets and put up vids of us pleading for our son to come home -- we'd have a pretty good chance."

  "And our little boy is going to wonder why we don't do it."

  "Not he's not."

  "Oh, you think he's so smart he'll figure out what we're doing? Why we're doing nothing?"

  "Why wouldn't he?"

  "Because he doesn't know us," said Theresa. "He doesn't know what we think or feel. As far as he can tell, we've forgotten all about him."

  "One thing I feel good about, in this whole mess," said John Paul. "We're still good at manipulating our genius children."

  "Oh, that," said Theresa dismissively. "It's easy to manipulate your children when they're absolutely sure you're stupid."

  To: hgraff%educadmin@ifcom.gov

  From: demosthenes@LastBestHopeOfEarth.pol

  Re: You know the truth

  You know who decides what to write. No doubt you can even guess why. I'm not going to try to defend my essay, or how it's being used by others.

  You once used the sister of Andrew Wiggin to persuade him to go back into space and win that little war you were fighting. She did her job, didn't she? Such a good girl, fulfills all her assignments.

  Well I have an assignment for her. You once sent her brother to her, for comfort and company. He'll need her again, more than ever, only he can't come to her. No house by the lake this time. But there's no reason she can't go out into space to be with him. Enlist her in the IF, pay her as a consultant, whatever it takes. But she and her brother need each other. More than either of them needs Life On Earth.

  Don't second guess her on this. Remember that she's smarter than you are, and she loves her younger brother more than you do, and besides, you're a decent man. You know this is right and good. You always try to bring about what's right and good, don't you?

  Do us both a favor. Take this letter and shred it and stick it where the sun don't shine.

  Your devoted and humble servant -- everybody's devoted and humble servant -- the humble and devoted servant of truth and noble jingoism -- Demosthenes.

  The Talk

  by David Lubar

  Artwork by Lance Card

  * * *

  An assortment of reactions ran through the class when the announcement was made. Behind me, I could hear Kenny Harcourt snickering. On my right, I saw Mary Beth Adderly whisper something to Kara Chen. Kara blushed. On my left Tyler Horvath looked up at the speaker with no expression. Next to him, Eddie Moldour was grinning smugly.

  I listened as the announcement was repeated. "All girls please report to the auditorium," Principal Sestwick said.

  We knew what that meant. It was time for The Talk. It was no great mystery. They'd get the girls together and explain stuff about puberty and growing up. It was also no big deal -- for guys. We had it simple and easy.

  "All boys please report to the gym," Principal Sestwick added.

  "Great," I said, turning around toward Bobby Mussleman. "Maybe we'll get to play dodge ball while they talk to the girls."

  "That sounds good," Bobby said. "Wouldn't be fair if they made us sit here and work."

  We got up and headed to the gym, while our teacher, Mr. Mercante, made a few half-hearted attempts to keep us from running, pushing, or talking too loudly. At the gym doors, we merged with the boys from the other three sixth-grade classes.

  I expected to see our gym teacher waiting for us. Instead, Principal Sestwick came in and went over to a microphone that had been set up at one end of the gym.

  "Sit down, boys," he said.

  I grabbed a spot on the floor, next to Eddy. "What's up?" I asked.

  "No idea," he said.

  "In the next few years," the principal began, "you'll begin to notice some changes."

  Next to me, Eddy squinted at his hand; then, in a fake scream, he whispered, "I've got hair on my knuckles. Oh no, save me. I'm changing."

  I choked down the laugh that was threatening to explode out of my mouth. It was a good thing I wasn't drinking milk -- the spray would have shot three or four feet from my nose. "Cut it out," I managed to say when I'd gotten back in control.

  The principal was still talking, even though Eddy and I weren't the only ones who were horsing around. "Some of this might be frightening or confusing to you," he said, "but please keep in mind that everything that happens is perfectly natural."

  He paused and looked across the crowd, then went on with the talk. "The first signs might be very small. One day, you'll find yourself reading the newspaper. And not just sports and comics, but also the news."

  "What's he talking about?" I asked Eddy.

  "No idea," Eddy said.

  "I read the paper," Tyler said.

  Someone behind him said, "Who cares?" and smacked him on the head.

  "You'll find yourself keeping track of your money," Principal Sestwick said. "You might even make out a budget. Eventually, you'll even consider opening a checking account as a first step toward establishing credit."

  Principal Sestwick took a deep breath, then went on. "As these changes occur, you'll even find yourself looking at insurance policies, as well as . . ."

  He kept on talking. I was almost too shocked to listen. Around us, I could see kids staring at the principal with amazement. These things he was talking about . . . "These are things our parents do," I said aloud as the realization struck me. "He's saying we're going to do them, too!"

  "Not me," Eddie said. "I'm never doing any of that stuff. No way."

  A shudder rippled through me. "But our parents --"

  "Shut up." Eddie cut me off. "Don't talk about it."

  I had to agree with him. Not me, I thought. Never.

  A few minutes later, The Talk was over. We all got up, rising like zombies, stiff and stunned, and dazed. On the way back to class, we ran into the girls. They were looking mostly pretty giggly. A few of them looked embarrassed, but all in all they looked a lot better than the boys around me.

  Kara caught my eye. She was more mature than most of the girls, and she didn't seem embarrassed to be coming back from the girl's version of The Talk.

  "What did you boys do?" she asked.

  "Dodge ball," I said before I even had a chance to think.

  "Lucky you," Kara said.

  "Yeah. Lucky us."

  Split Decision

  by David Lubar

  Artwork by Lance Card

  * * *

  "So, New York or Chicago?"

  "I don't know," Greg said. "I think you're crazy going to either place. You can't run away."

  "Sure I can," I said. "All my dad cares about is that stupid woman he married. I can't believe she's going to have a baby. I'm out of here. The only question is -- New York or Chicago?"

  "Ask Spooky Sheila," Greg said.

  "No way. She creeps me out." I glanced at the back of the room toward Sheila Delphini's desk. She was playing with her hair, braiding and unbraiding several strands, and paying no attention to the teacher. Not that I was paying any attention, either. Why take notes when you aren't planning to stick around?

  "But she'll tell you what will happen," Greg said. "I've heard she's got some kind of way to se
e the future."

  I'd heard the same rumors. Kids had whispered stories about Sheila for years. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to believe any of that stuff. But it couldn't hurt to see what she thought about my problem. When the bell rang at the end of the period, I walked over to her desk.

  "I've got a question," I said.

  She raised her eyes up toward me without lifting he head. Her irises were so light blue, they almost seemed clear. A chill ran through my body and along my arms.

  "You're going to split," she said.

  "How'd you know?"

  She didn't answer. Maybe she'd heard me talking to Greg. I'd have to be more careful. If my dad found out, he'd murder me.

  "Should I go to New York or Chicago?"

  She reached out and grabbed my hand. Then she closed her eyes. She took a long, slow breath. I waited. She breathed. Behind me, I heard people shuffle in for the next class. Just as I was about to pull my hand away, her body jerked like she'd been slashed across the back with a whip. Her fingers dug into my palm. She opened her eyes, but didn't say anything.

  "Tell me."

  She released my hand. "The future can hurt."

  "I don't care. Tell me."

  "New York if she has a boy. Chicago if she has a girl."

  It took me a moment to realize what she was talking about. "My dad's wife?" I couldn't bring myself to call her my stepmother.

  Sheila nodded. A single tear trickled from her left eye. She was starting to creep me out.

  "But I don't want to wait . . ."

  She shrugged. I fled. Something about her made my stomach feel like I'd swallowed razor blades dipped in acid.

  I caught up with Greg in the hall and told him what she'd said. "Crazy, huh?" I asked.

  "Maybe. But have you gotten any better advice?"

  "Nope."

  "Then wait. See what pops out."

  "No way."

  I wasn't going to wait. I had to get out of there. But I needed to make sure I didn't get caught. My chance came sooner than I'd expected. Saturday, late in the afternoon, Dad's wife went into labor. She was three weeks early. It was my perfect opportunity to split. They probably wouldn't even notice I was gone until tomorrow. The moment they left for the hospital, I crammed clothes into a duffel bag and headed for Sawtooth Ridge. Lots of trains went through there. I could hop one for New York or Chicago. I just needed to know which way to go.

  I pulled out my cell phone and called Greg. "I need a huge favor. Go to the hospital -- okay? Wait at the place where they put the new babies. You know where I mean?"

  "Yeah. I know. Are you really doing this?"

  "I am. So help me out, okay?"

  "All right. I'll call when I have news."

  I hung up and went over to the tracks. The ridge was on a steep grade, so the trains slowed down a lot as they came through. I'd read books where people hopped trains. It didn't sound hard, as long as you were careful. I wasn't worried about getting hurt. Sheila said I'd go to New York or Chicago, so obviously I was going to survive the trip.

  It was getting dark. There were no lights anywhere near the ridge. I didn't like the idea of hopping a train when I couldn't see what was going on. I called Greg again, but there was no answer. It figured I couldn't count on him.

  "Forget the stupid prediction," I said. I decided I'd take the next train that came along.

  About ten minutes later, an eastbound train came crawling up the ridge. "New York," I said. That would be fine. I waited until the engine and the first couple cars passed, then started jogging along. I had to be careful -- the tracks were close together.

  I saw a boxcar with a sliding door. I grabbed the handle and pulled myself toward it.

  As I was dangling from the outside of the boxcar, my phone rang. It was stupid to try to answer it, but habits are hard to break. When phones ring, we grab them. I fumbled with one hand, got my phone out of my pocket, and flipped it open.

  "Twins," Greg said.

  "What?"

  "A boy and a girl."

  The words entered my brain, and sat there like a foreign phrase. They didn't seem to tell me what I needed to know. Before I could say anything to Greg, the train rocked as it entered a sharp curve at the bottom of the ridge. The phone slipped from my fingers. I leaned over to try to catch it, and lost my balance. As I started to fall, I panicked and hooked an arm through the boxcar door handle. My duffel bag, which I'd looped over my neck, swung out from my other shoulder.

  The phone clattered to the ground. I didn't care. Something else had my attention. Ahead, far too close, I saw a westbound train headed right for me. I tried to swing the duffel bag out of the way, but I couldn't get any leverage.

  As the other train reached me, I heard Sheila's words.

  "New York if she has a boy. Chicago if she has a girl."

  She'd had both. I felt a jolting pain when the duffel bag got snagged by the passing train. I tried to yank my arm free, but it was wedged in the door handle.

  Sheila was right. I was going to New York and Chicago. As pain beyond anything I'd ever known exploded through my body, I remembered her first words.

  "You're going to split."

  Right.

  InterGalactic Interview With James Morrow

  by Darrell Schweitzer

  * * *

  [conducted at Readercon, 2007]

  Born in Philadelphia in 1947, James Morrow spent his adolescent years making short 8mm fantasy films with his friends, including adaptations of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart." His affection for satiric and philosophical fiction comes largely from the novels he studied in his high school World Literature course.

  A self-described "scientific humanist," his work not only satirizes organized religion but also elements of humanism and atheism. The author is best known for his magnum opus, the Godhead Trilogy. The first installment, Towing Jehovah, winner of the World Fantasy Award, recounts the efforts of a supertanker captain to entomb the corpse of God in an Arctic glacier. The sequel, Blameless in Abaddon, tells of a small-town judge who prosecutes the Corpus Dei before the World Court. In The Eternal Footman, God's skull goes into geosynchronous orbit above Times Square, causing a plague of despair.

  Other James Morrow novels include This Is the Way the World Ends (1986), a Nebula finalist, and Only Begotten Daughter (1990), winner of the World Fantasy Award. His early short fiction is collected in Bible Stories for Adults, including the Nebula Award-winning fable, "The Deluge." City of Truth, his one and only novella, also received a Nebula Award. Jim's current project is Prometheus Wept, which he describes as "a combination of Frankenstein and Lolita."

  The author presently lives in State College, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Kathryn, his son, Christopher, and their dogs. He devotes his leisure time to his family, his Lionel electric trains, and his DVD collection of guilty-pleasure Hollywood epics.

  SCHWEITZER: So what's all this stuff about reason? Your latest novel, The Last Witchfinder is not so much about witches and devils but about rejecting the belief in them.

  MORROW Morrow: The Last Witchfinder doesn't deal with what many people mean by witches, witches as a feminist cult of healing and cosmic consciousness, nor is it about the sort of witchcraft we associate with the Third World, having to do with, again, curing disease, or perhaps with raising the dead. I am addressing the big problem that emerged in early Renaissance Europe, and which quickly became a kind of holocaust: the problem of the specifically Christian heresy of Satanism.

  If you told fortunes in those days or practiced some other esoteric pursuit -- herbal healing, whatever -- you were vulnerable to the charge of Devil worship. The problem was not the practices per se, but the redefinition of them as evidence of a Satanic compact. Today Catholic scholars would argue that this kind of persecution was itself heretical, and should have been perceived as such. And, indeed, in the medieval era the Catholic Church held it to be anathema to go after witches. />
  But, for whatever reasons, theologians in the early Renaissance began noticing how damn much demonology there is in the New Testament. Jesus is forever casting out evil spirits and consigning demons to the bodies of pigs, wicked spirits that were once inside people. So you can't really argue that Christian demonology is an aberration. Sad to say, the persecutions trace to theologians paying attention to what's actually happening in the Gospels. It's not all that's happening, but there is an enormous amount of demonology in the New Testament, which seems to suggest a Satan, a Devil, a Dark One, has dominion over this world, and once you've interpreted the Gospels in that way, you start looking around for the agents of that Devil.

  SCHWEITZER: Do you think the witch-hunting came from the top down or the bottom up? That is, was it a means used by the authorities to control the masses, or was it a matter of popular hysteria over matters people could not control -- the Black Death, Muslim pirates raiding the coasts of Europe, famines, etc. -- demanding action from the government?

  MORROW: I imagine both were going on at the same time. But what interests me -- as a person who takes a very dim view of religious arguments about how the world works -- is the top-down, institutionalized persecution of supposed witches. It was highly systematic, codified in the Malleus Malificarum of Kramer and Sprenger. There was a whole elaborate infrastructure of ecclesiastical and civil courts to prosecute the agents of Lucifer.

  Of course, one can also psychologize about outbreaks of witch persecution. This is especially common in the case of Salem: there are scholars who say, "Well it wasn't really about theology, it was really all about neighbors settling scores with one another." Or they'll say, "The Puritans were obviously taking their fears of the Indians and projecting them onto their neighbors." Arthur Miller's play The Crucible seems to say the Salem tragedy was really about the frustrated libidos of the girls who brought the accusations. Some historians even insist it was really all about the girls going batty because they were eating bread contaminated with ergot, a fungal disease of rye plants.