IGMS Issue 28 Page 7

  As if to belie the flaws I observed, the automaton scored a resounding blow against Lybron's armor. The swordsman staggered, a wide dent evident in his left shoulder plate, but he managed to duck away from the automaton's following swing. Madrigal gripped the railing before him with his good hand, himself coiled as tightly as the master springs that lay in the automaton's chest.

  Sweat beaded on Lybron's forehead, glistening in the sunlight. He was getting the worst of it now, giving ground more often than he took it. The automaton moved too quickly, responding to Lybron's movements almost before he made them. Confidence had been replaced by grim determination. Even on the defensive, he fought with deadly grace, closer to a dance than a battle. But he was flagging, hard on breath, and the automaton continued implacably.

  I knew Lybron was too focused on fending off our automaton to take advantage of - or even see - the tiny openings I had observed. It was only a matter of time before the mechanical swordsman bested Lybron, and the crowd knew it. There were no more whistles or shouts of encouragement, but every eye watched the melee with rapt attention.

  A bell sounded the end of the first combat round. It was a concession to the human participant; our swordsman could have fought for hours without tiring, but this was a contest of skill, not endurance. The automaton halted its attack immediately, set the point of its sword on the ground, and rested both palms on the hilt. It could have been a statue. Lybron conjured a smile to his face, but I could see the strain it took to stand straight and wave to the crowd. His breath came in pants. The next round of combat would not go well for him.

  "Come, Cetta." Madrigal kept his face impassive, but I detected a self-satisfied jaunt to his steps as I followed him into the combat yard. Lybron eyed us, but I stared pointedly past him. At Madrigal's direction I examined the automaton, seeing that none of the joints had seized, that no sign of wear or weakness had appeared on its limbs. There was none; Lybron had not managed to lay a single solid blow on the automaton. My hand lingered at the helmet. I wanted to remove it, to see if perhaps an adjustment to the gyroscope . . . but Madrigal would never permit it.

  One of the duke's representatives in blue and white livery approached Madrigal. Madrigal made me a curt motion with his good hand: leave us. Of course. I was just a tool. Just a pair of hands. Not worthy to know what the duke had to say. Not smart enough, in Madrigal's eyes, to see the automaton's flaws or how to mend them. Indignation like bitter venom ran in my veins.

  I stalked back towards the stands, seething, but hesitated as I came near Lybron. His eyes flitted to mine, not smiling this time, but wary. What business could I have with him? He was the opponent.

  I glanced at Madrigal, but he was intent in conversation with the duke's man. Leaning close to Lybron, I spoke quickly and softly.

  Madrigal surveyed the mechanical man on the workbench. One arm was completely mangled. The network of small pneumatic tubes that controlled the fingers was severed and leaked fluid like pale, greasy blood. One of the small blue gems that served as the automaton's eyes had been knocked from its socket, and the head twisted at an awkward angle where it had met the hard arena floor. I worked to replace the shattered forearm casing in satisfied silence.

  "Careful with that," Madrigal snapped, but he wasn't looking at me. Consumed in thought, he examined the schematics rolled out before him. He grumbled to himself - I caught something about gimbles and minimizing external torque - and made a short notation. He was already formulating improvements, new possibilities.

  I did not betray my master, whatever you might think. I don't enjoy seeing the mechanical man bested and broken. But, understand, I saw its weakness. I always see its weaknesses. Madrigal is a genius at his craft, but he is blind to some things. It falls to me to point them out, however I must.

  Our mechanical man could have bested Lybron today. It could have earned the champion's laurels and the thousand crown prize from the duke. That might be enough for my master, but it's not enough for me. He can hit me, he can belittle me, he can pretend I'm worthless. None of that matters. What matters is that when we're finished, Madrigal and I, our mechanical man won't merely be the best - it will be perfect.

  Calling the Train

  by Jeff Stehman

  * * *

  Sam lay on the shore, his one remaining leg still in the green water. The gator's death roll had shattered an arm and ribs, smashed his face. An unexpected end to a desperate plan. He'd known he might be shot, execution style, in some dark alley. But dying out here? Like this?

  The pain was fading. Everything was fading. The smell of the swamp, the hum of the insects; all so distant. Only the sound of a train whistle was clear.

  The bastards he was after would remain untouchable, yet Sam felt calm, detached from the drama. Even from dying.

  The train whistled again.

  No, not a train. He opened his one good eye and tipped his head back. A black face, upside down and with salt-and-pepper hair, came into view.

  "Ouch. Gator must've been huge." The old man stepped to Sam's side, raised a harmonica and sounded the mournful wail of a train. "That oughta do it," he said, crouching down.

  "Do what?"

  "Call the train for you."

  Sam went through the motions of looking around, though he couldn't move much.

  The old man chuckled. "Strange, I know. It'll be over soon."

  "It should be over."

  "Nope. Gotta wait for the train."

  "What train?"

  "The train come to fetch your soul."

  Sam considered that. "Seems like an infernal way to get to heaven."

  "Son, if heaven it be, they'd collected you already. Train's headed the other way."

  "I've been baptized."

  The old man chuckled again. "Takes more than preacher man pouring water on your head. You gotta believe, and you and I both came up short."

  "You've judged me? I don't recall having a say."

  "No judging. I just call the train."

  "There's no tracks through this swamp."

  "I've been doing this for more than a hundred years. Ain't no place this train don't go."

  "A hundred years?"

  "Since my dying day. I call the train, then help you pass the time till it shows. That last bit ain't necessary, but it seems the decent thing."

  "Gator get you too?"

  "Nope, an alley. Too much to drink on a cold, wet night. A man come and called the train for me. White feller, like yourself. Young, but a bone-weary look about him."

  "And the train took you?"

  "I didn't get on. The young man handed me this here harmonica and climbed aboard himself."

  The drama came rushing back. "There's a way I could stay?" Maybe he could still make the bastards pay.

  "The train's coming. Someone's gotta get aboard, and it ain't likely to be me."

  "But I've got to stay. These men . . . how about a wager?"

  The old man said nothing.

  Sam said, "I used to blow a mean harp. I bet I can call that train better than you."

  "Bet with what? Near as I can tell, you only got but one good leg, one good arm, and one good eye. I don't need any of those."

  "I have information." Sam dug a slip of paper out of his breast pocket. "It's directions to a spot in the swamp. I'm told what's there will bring down some corrupt men."

  "And that's valuable?"

  "They killed the woman who gave it to me, and I was willing to risk my life for it. Now I'm willing to bet my soul."

  "Well, none of that means much to me, but seems you got a fire inside all of a sudden. I'll give you a chance." The old man raised the harmonica and called the train, a long wail with a couple extra bursts of steam for punctuation. "Do better than that, I'll let you keep it." He took the paper from Sam's hand and replaced it with the harmonica. "Go ahead."

  Sam smiled. He knew this would work. It had to.

  He set the harmonica against his lips. He couldn't bring up his left hand. The
harp wheezed as he drew breath in, and it wheezed when he blew out. He reset it on his lips and tried again.

  A perfect wail sounded through the swamp. Now it was Sam's turn to chuckle. "How's that?"

  The old man shook his head. "That, son, is the train."

  "But . . ."

  "Here." The man put the paper back in Sam's pocket and patted it. "Wouldn't want you to lose that." He took the harmonica.

  The ground rumbled under Sam. "But I've gotta . . ."

  "You gotta go. Information, powerful people; those things mean nothing now."

  "The wager . . ." Sam could hear the screech of steel on steel.

  "You lost. Too broke up to play. That was plain enough. But like I said, I like helping people pass the time until the train shows."

  InterGalactic Interview With Shawna McCarthy

  by Darrell Schweitzer

  * * *

  Shawna McCarthy is a former assistant editor and later full editor of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. She also edited books for Bantam-Spectra, and edited the magazine Realms of Fantasy from its beginning in 1994 to its recent demise. She has been nominated for the Hugo for Best Professional Editor three times and won it once. She is active as a literary agent.

  This interview is from a guest presentation at the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society, January 27, 2012. It makes more sense if you realize that the interviewer and Shawna both worked for George Scithers when he was editor of Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine in the late 1970s and early '80s, although Shawna was at the New York office and I was in Philadelphia and we didn't know each other at the time.

  SCHWEITZER: Let's start by talking about the beginnings of your career. I first knew of you when you began to work at the New York office of Asimov's SF. Did George Scithers hire you?

  McCARTHY: Yes, George hired me. I had heard through the grapevine that there was an opening for an editorial assistant at Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine, and I thought that since I spent most of my time reading science fiction paperbacks under my desk at my other job, that this would probably be a pretty idea position for me. So I sent my resume off to George. I was so excited seeing a little Asimov's envelope in the mail, and he invited me in for an interview. He wanted to test how fast I could read, first of all. He gave me a short story to read and said, "Okay, read this. I am going to time you," which is a sure-fire way to get a fast reader to read slowly. I managed to get through in apparently good enough time for him, and then he asked me if I would buy it, and I said I thought it was well-done, if a little predictable, which is what he wanted to hear, I guess, because he hired me. I don't know what I was doing the first year or so. I think I was handling the traffic, the manuscripts that came in from Philadelphia and I would manage their progression through the proofreader and the copyeditor and the printer and the blues - that was an old-fashioned thing that you used to have. When something was printed letterpress, you'd get a copy that came out on blue paper. That was your last chance to make any corrections, but it cost a fortune so you'd better not have to make any corrections. I think that was what I did for the first year or so. I don't remember exactly when it was that George left.

  SCHWEITZER: His last issue was March of 1982. He would have left, probably, at the end of 1981.

  McCARTHY: I started in 1978 or 1979. I mostly did the traffic. I think I did some slush reading. I don't know how much we got from you guys. Do you remember?

  SCHWEITZER: I think we referred a few things to you, but I have the impression that you were not selecting stories.

  McCARTHY: I think I was doing editing, though. George would have me read them and if they needed work George would have me write to the author and they would do whatever it was. But it was so long ago and I was so very young that I don't remember anymore.

  SCHWEITZER: Do you remember when Barry Longyear wrote a story called "SHAWNA Ltd."?

  McCARTHY: Oh, yeah. That was because I had this idea and I was talking to him about it over drinks, sadly enough, and he thought it funny enough, so he wrote a story around it. What was it called? The Super Hegelian . . . I don't remember.

  SCHWEITZER: It spelled "Shawna."

  McCARTHY: It spelled Shawna. S.H.A.W.N.A. That was fun. I still have that issue.

  SCHWEITZER: This presumably changed your life.

  McCARTHY: [Laughs] I became internationally famous, almost overnight. But it certainly did. I remember walking home shortly after I had been hired. I was so happy. I just loved my job. I got to work with the most brilliant people in the world, the funniest, the smartest. I got to launch people's careers and I got to travel. It was just the best job ever. To this day I regret ever having left it. They lured me over to Bantam after I won the Hugo, saying they were starting this Spectra Science Fiction imprint and they really needed me. Back then, and still today I suppose people think that books are where it's at. Even more today, books, such as they are, are still where it's at more than magazines - having just lost one of my own. But, you know, I was tempted over to the Dark Side. I remember being so bored working on books, because there are no deadlines to speak of. It's not like anyone was waiting at the printer for the copy to come in and no one was watching their mailbox waiting for the magazine to arrive. So I felt if we don't make it for September, we'll put it in October. It was not a big deal. It was just an entirely different kind of thing.

  SCHWEITZER: You must have been the person coping with deadlines for Asimov's.

  McCARTHY: Yes. I was definitely watching the clock.

  SCHWEITZER: This became a notable contrast when George became editor of Amazing a few years later. He would keep all of the stories, already typeset and illustrated, in the drawer, so he could put an issue together in an evening, whereas at TSR [the publisher] there was for all their other magazines this hellish thing called "Deadline Week." We had Deadline Evening. It took about two hours.

  McCARTHY: I always had inventory set up in advance. Then I'd have index cards saying how many pages, and was it a left opening or a right opening or a double-spread. I could put an issue together on paper in half an hour, but then pulling all the stuff took a little bit longer. So before they had computers and floppy disks and CDs and stuff, we actually had typeset manuscripts that had to be pulled. Those were the days, a long time ago.

  SCHWEITZER: What was the best thing you ever found in the slush pile?

  McCARTHY: I am going to say either Ian MacDonald or Robert Charles Wilson. One or the other. For Ian MacDonald, I remember I broke all my rules reading his first short story. It was called "The Catherine Wheel." It was single-spaced on English paper - that eight and a half by fourteen paper that they have - and the type was just teeny-tiny. But I read the first line almost by accident, because I had a solid rule that I was never going to read a single-spaced manuscript, and the first line was, like "Wow," and before I knew it I had read the entire thing, and it was like, "Holy crap, this is really good!" I bought it. I told him that hereafter, "You may never, never send me a single-spaced manuscript again. I don't care if you live in Ireland." And Robert Charles Wilson's first short story was really good, and when I moved over to Bantam I commissioned his first novel. Now I represent him, so it has all been a nice happy family.

  SCHWEITZER: What's the worst thing you ever found in the slush pile?

  McCARTHY: God . . . [Laughs.] I used to have a file of It Came From the Slush Pile lines. Let's see if I can remember one of my favorites: "Ooo, those Devonian women . . . hootchie-koo!" [Laughs.]

  SCHWEITZER: Did George start the practice of Funny Files, or do all editors do that?

  McCARTHY: I think all editors do that. I had my own separate file which stood me in good stead on many a convention panel when I had absolutely nothing else to talk about.

  SCHWEITZER: Can I tell you my favorite bad line. I think we got this at Amazing. It was a scene in which somebody had just taken an injection and remarked, "Gee, you'd think that here in the year 2463 we'd have a better way to do this," close quote, "he continued his runni
ng dysentery."

  [McCarthy laughs. Much laughter from audience.]

  SCHWEITZER: Did you as an editor feel that you were a teacher of a sort, that part of your job was to train and recruit writers?

  McCARTHY: Yes and no. At the start when I was at Asimov's because I had the luxury of having assistants and it was a full-time job and I got paid a full-time salary with benefits; so I had a lot more time to nurture and work with and explain to people. But once I was editing Realms I was on my own. They weren't paying me a full-time salary. I had to earn a living on the side. So I became less able. Still there might be something that would strike me and which would need just a little bit of a tweak, but mostly not so much in my later years. I guess I kind of lost patience with it too. I love to teach. I taught a writing workshop at the New School for five or six years. Most of my students have gone on to become published writers, and I am very, very proud of that. I really enjoyed doing that workshop. It was one of my favorite things ever, because you could actually see people grow in front of you. So much of writing is being able to read your own work objectively, and the best way to learn how to do that is read someone else's work and realize, "Oh, I can probably do this to myself if I had the nerve." It was just amazing watching them grow. So, when I am in a teaching mode, yes, I love doing that, but as an editor I don't have as much time to do it as I'd like to anymore.

  SCHWEITZER: How much time does it take to tell someone that the language is clumsy and the ending doesn't make any sense? Something short like that?

  McCARTHY: That doesn't really register with most people, because if they thought the language was clumsy and the ending didn't make any sense, they wouldn't send it out in the first place. They think it's perfect and you're crazy and you don't know what the hell you are talking about and wouldn't know a good story if you tripped over it. People don't listen unless you can really be specific and circle something on the manuscript and say, "What does this mean?" "Why is he speaking Spanish here? He's German." Things like that. People don't see their work in an objective way. They just get pissed off and say, "What do you mean this writing is clumsy? What the hell do you know?"