James Tiptree Jr. - 10000 Light Years From Home
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TEN-THOUSAND LIGHT YEARS FROM
HOME
James Tiptree Jr
[03 dec 2001—proofed and re-released for #bookz]
INTRODUCTION
There is one particular joy that only editors share. This is the biting edge of pleasure experienced
upon reading a good story by a totally unknown and unsold author. If the story is not only good but very
good the pleasure is obviously even greater. Like other authors in the science fiction field I find myself
wearing different hats from time to time; editor more often than not, critic when pressed, insulted
letter-writer when bothered. The editorial hat is the most comfortable one to wear. Since I first began
editing in the early 1950’s I have discovered, chortled over and published the first stories of at least a
half-dozen authors. Some of them later vanished into the interstellar night from whence they came; others
went on to become established professionals. Which brings us instantly to the name of James Tiptree, Jr.
I remember the story well. It was a bad day in the editing business. The slush pile—for that is what it
is crudely called in the trade—was piled high and tottering with bad stories. I had a deadline. I was tired.
I tried reading one more story; then I was no longer tired. Here was a story by a professional, a man who
knew how to interest me, entertain me, and tell me something about the world and mankind’s affairs all at
the same time. I wrote at once and was pleased to hear, some years later, that the word from me arrived
just one day before a check from John W. Campbell. Now that is the way to start a career in science
fiction.
Tiptree is a professional because he cares about his work and keeps on caring. He reworks it
himself until he has it right, then reworks it some more aiming at an unobtainable perfection. He is fun to
work with because he actually thanks an editor for pointing out something that needs brushing up. But
most of all he is a professional because he writes the kind of fiction that is worth reading and is a pleasure
to read at the same time.
There is a temptation in an introduction of this kind to be very biographical and spend a good deal of
time on the author’s lovely dark hair or firm waistline despite his advancing years. I shall resist this
because the fiction, the stories before you, are what really counts. The fact that their author enjoys
observing bears in the wilds of Canada or skindiving deep in Mexico is not really relevent. Nor is the
information that he spent a good part of World War II in a Pentagon subbasement. These facts may clue
you to the obviosity that James Tiptree, Jr. is well-traveled and well-experienced in the facts, both sordid
and otherwise, of our world. But internal evidence in the stories informs us of that just as easily.
The stories are what we must look at—and here they are: the first collection by an author who can
only go on to greater successes. I found them a pleasure to read—and I know that you will too.
Harry Harrison – San Diego, 1973
AND I AWOKE AND FOUND ME HERE ON THE COLD HILL’S SIDE
He was standing absolutely still by a service port, staring out at the belly of the Orion docking above
us. He had on a gray uniform and his rusty hair was cut short. I took him for a station engineer.
That was bad for me. Newsmen strictly don’t belong in the bowels of Big Junction. But in my first
twenty hours I hadn’t found anyplace to get a shot of an alien ship.
I turned my holocam to show its big World Media insigne and started my bit about What It Meant
to the People Back Home who were paying for it all.
“—it may be routine work to you, sir, but we owe it to them to share—”
His face came around slow and tight, and his gaze passed over me from a peculiar distance.
“The wonders, the drama,” he repeated dispassionately. His eyes focused on me. “You
consummated fool.”
“Could you tell me what races are coming in, sir? If I could even get a view—”
He waved me to the port. Greedily I angled my lenses up at the long blue hull blocking out the
starfield. Beyond her I could see the bulge of a black and gold ship.
“That’s a Foramen,” he said. “There’s a freighter from Belye on the other side, you’d call it
Arcturus. Not much traffic right now.”
“You’re the first person who’s said two sentences to me since I’ve been here, sir. What are those
colorful little craft?”
“Procya,” he shrugged. “They’re always around. Like us.”
I squashed my face on the vitrite, peering. The walls clanked. Somewhere overhead aliens were
off-loading into their private sector of Big Junction. The man glanced at his wrist.
“Are you waiting to go out, sir?”
His grunt could have meant anything.
“Where are you from on Earth?” he asked me in his hard tone.
I started to tell him and suddenly saw that he had forgotten my existence. His eyes were on
nowhere, and his head was slowly bowing forward onto the port frame.
“Go home,” he said thickly. I caught a strong smell of tallow.
“Hey, sir!” I grabbed his arm; he was in rigid tremor. “Steady, mark.”
“I’m waiting... waiting for my wife. My loving wife.” He gave a short ugly laugh. “Where are you
from?”
I told him again.
“Go home,” he mumbled. “Go home and make babies. While you still can.”
One of the early GR casualties, I thought.
“Is that all you know?” His voice rose stridently. “Fools. Dressing in their styles. Gnivo suits,
Aoleelee music. Oh, I see your newscasts,” he sneered. “Nixi parties. A year’s salary for a floater.
Gamma radiation? Go home, read history. Ballpoint pens and bicycles—”
He started a slow slide downward in the half gee. My only informant. We struggled confusedly; he
wouldn’t take one of my sobertabs but I finally got him along the service corridor to a bench in an empty
loading bay. He fumbled out a little vacuum cartridge. As I was helping him unscrew it, a figure in
starched whites put his head in the bay.
“I can be of assistance, yes?” His eyes popped, his face was covered with brindled fur. An alien, a
Procya! I started to thank him but the red-haired man cut me off.
“Get lost. Out.”
The creature withdrew, its big eyes moist. The man stuck his pinky in the cartridge and then put it up
his nose, gasping deep in his diaphragm. He looked toward his wrist.
“What time is it?”
I told him.
“News,” he said. “A message for the eager, hopeful human race. A word about those lovely, lovable
aliens we all love so much.” He looked at me. “Shocked, aren’t you, newsboy?”
I had him figured now. A xenophobe. Aliens plot to take over Earth.
“Ah Christ, they couldn’t care less.” He took another deep gasp, shuddered and straightened. “The
hell with generalities. What time d’you say it was? All right, I’ll tell you how I learned it. The hard way.
While we wait for my loving wife. You can bring that little recorder out of your sleeve, too. Play it over to
yourself some time ... when it’s too late.” He chuckled. His tone had become chatty—an educated voice.
“You ever hear of supernormal stimuli?”
“No,” I said. “Wait a minute. White sugar?”
“Near enough. Y’know Little Junction bar in D.C.? No, you’re an Aussie, you said. Well, I’m from
Burned Barn, Nebraska.”
He took a breath, consulting some vast disarray of the soul.
“I accidentally drifted into Little Junction Bar when I was eighteen. No. Correct that. You don’t go
into Little Junction by accident, any more than you first shoot skag by accident.
“You go into Little Junction because you’ve been craving it, dreaming about it, feeding on every hint
and clue about it, back there in Burned Barn, since before you had hair in your pants. Whether you know
it or not. Once you’re out of Burned Barn, you can no more help going into Little Junction than a
sea-worm can help rising to the moon.
“I had a brand-new liquor I.D. in my pocket. It was early; there was an empty spot beside some
humans at the bar. Little Junction isn’t an embassy bar, y’know. I found out later where the high-caste
aliens go—when they go out. The New Rive, the Curtain by the Georgetown Marina.
“And they go by themselves. Oh, once in a while they do the cultural exchange bit with a few frosty
couples of other aliens and some stuffed humans. Galactic Amity with a ten-foot pole.
“Little Junction was the place where the lower orders went, the clerks and drivers out for kicks.
Including, my friend, the perverts. The ones who can take humans. Into their beds, that is.”
He chuckled and sniffed his finger again, not looking at me.
“Ah, yes. Little Junction is Galactic Amity night, every night. I ordered... what? A margharita. I
didn’t have the nerve to ask the snotty spade bartender for one of the alien liquors behind the bar. It was
dim. I was trying to stare everywhere at once without showing it. I remember those white
boneheads—Lyrans, that is. And a mess of green veiling I decided was a multiple being from someplace.
I caught a couple of human glances in the bar mirror. Hostile flicks. I didn’t get the message, then.
“Suddenly an alien pushed right in beside me. Before I could get over my paralysis, I heard this
blurry voice:
“You air a futeball enthushiash?”
“An alien had spoken to me. An alien, a being from the stars. Had spoken. To me.
“Oh, god, I had no time for football, but I would have claimed a passion for paper-folding, for dumb
crambo—anything to keep him talking. I asked him about his home-planet sports, I insisted on buying his
drinks. I listened raptly while he spluttered out a play-by-lay account of a game I wouldn’t have turned a
dial for. The ‘Grain Bay Pashkers’. Yeah. And I was dimly aware of trouble among the humans oa-my
other side.
“Suddenly this woman—I’d call her a girl now—this girl said something, in a high nasty voice and
swung her stool into the arm I was holding my drink with. We both turned around together.
“Christ, I can see her now. The first thing that hit me was discrepancy. She was a nothing—but
terrific. Transfigured. Oozing it, radiating it.
“The next thing was I had a horrifying hard-on just looking at her.
“I scrooched over so my tunic hid it, and my spilled drink trickled down, making everything worse.
She pawed vaguely at the spill, muttering.
I just stared at her trying to figure out what had hit me. An ordinary figure, a soft avidness in the
face. Eyes heavy, satiated-looking. She was totally sexualized. I remembered her throat pulsed. She had
one hand up touching her scarf, which had slipped off her shoulder. I saw angry bruises there. That really
tore it, I understood at once those bruises had some sexual meaning.
“She was looking past my head with her face like a radar dish. Then she made an ‘ahhhh’ sound that
had nothing to do with me and grabbed my forearm as if it were a railing. One of the men behind her
laughed. The woman said, ‘Excuse me,’ in a ridiculous voice and slipped out behind me. I wheeled
around after her, nearly upsetting my futeball friend, and saw that some Sirians had come in.
“That was my first look at Sirians in the flesh, if that’s the word. God knows I’d memorized every
news shot, but I wasn’t prepared. That tallness, that cruel thinness. That appalling alien arrogance.
Ivory-blue, these were. Two males in immaculate metallic gear. Then I saw there was a female with them.
An ivory-indigo exquisite with a permanent faint smile on those bone-hard lips.
“The girl who’d left me was ushering them to a table. She reminded me of a goddamn dog that
wants you to follow it. Just as the crowd hid them, I saw a man join them too. A big man, expensively
dressed, with something wrecked about his face.
“Then the music started and I had to apologize to my furry friend. And the Sellice dancer came out
and my personal introduction to hell began.”
The red-haired man fell silent for a minute enduring self-pity. Something wrecked about the face, I
thought; it fit.
He pulled his face together.
“First I’ll give you the only coherent observation of my entire evening. You can see it here at Big
Junction, always the same. Outside of the Procya, it’s humans with aliens, right? Very seldom aliens with
other aliens. Never aliens with humans. It’s the humans who want in.”
I nodded, but he wasn’t talking to me. His voice had a druggy fluency.
“Ah, yes, my Sellice. My first Sellice.”
“They aren’t really well-built, y’know, under those cloaks. No waist to speak of and short-legged.
But they flow when they walk.
“This one flowed out into the spotlight, cloaked to the ground in violet silk. You could only see a fall
of black hair and tassels over a narrow face like a vole. She was a mole-gray. They come in all colors,
their fur is like a flexible velvet all over; only the color changes startlingly around their eyes and lips and
other places. Erogenous zones? Ah, man, with them it’s not zones.
“She began to do what we’d call a dance, but it’s no dance, it’s their natural movement. Like
smiling, say, with us. The music built up, and her arms undulated toward me, letting the cloak fall apart
little by little. She was naked under it. The spotlight started to pick up her body markings moving in the
slit of the cloak. Her arms floated apart and I saw more and more.
“She was fantastically marked and the markings were writhing. Not like body paint—alive. Smiling,
that’s a good word for it. As if her whole body was smiling sexually, beckoning, winking, urging, pouting,
speaking to me. You’ve seen a classic Egyptian belly dance? Forget it—a sorry stiff thing compared to
what any Sellice can do. This one was ripe, near term.
“Her arms went up and those blazing lemon-colored curves pulsed, waved, everted, contracted,
throbbed, evolved unbelievably welcoming, inciting permutations. Come do it to me, do it, do it here
and here and here and now. You couldn’t see the rest of her, only a wicked flash of mouth. Every
human male in the room was aching to ram himself into that incredible body. I mean it was pain. Even the
other aliens were quiet, except one of the Sirians who was chewing out a waiter.
“I was a basket case before she was halfway through.... I won’t bore you with what happened next;
before it was over there were several fights and I got out. My money ran out on the third night. She was
gone next day.
“I didn’t have time to find out about the Sellice cycle then, mercifully. That came after I went back to
campus and discovered you had to have a degree in solid-state electronics to apply for off-planet work. I
was a pre-med but I got that degree. It only took me as far as First Junction then.
“Oh, god, First Junction. I thought I was in heaven—the alien ships coming in and our freighters
going out. I saw them all, all but the real exotics, the tankies. You only see a few of those a cycle, even
here. And the Yyeire. You’ve never seen that.
“Go home, boy. Go home to your version of Burned Barn....
“The first Yyek I saw I dropped everything and started walking after it like a starving hound, just
breathing. You’ve seen the pix of course. Like lost dreams. Man is in love and loves what vanishes....
It’s the scent, you can’t guess that. I followed until I ran into a slammed port. I spent half a cycle’s credits
sending the creature the wine they call stars’ tears.... Later I found out it was a male. That made no
difference at all.
“You can’t have sex with them, y’know. No way. They breed by light or something, no one knows
exactly. There’s a story about a man who got hold of a Yyeir woman and tried. They had him skinned.
Stories—”
He was starting to wander.
“What about that girl in the bar, did you see her again?”
He came back from somewhere.
“Oh, yes. I saw her. She’d been making it with the two Skians, y’know. The males do it in pairs.
Said to be the total sexual thing for a woman, if she can stand the damage from those beaks. I wouldn’t
know. She talked to me a couple of times after they finished with her. No use for men whatever. She
drove off the P Street bridge.... The man, poor bastard, he was trying to keep that Skian bitch happy
single-handed. Money helps, for a while. I don’t know where he ended.”
He glanced at his wrist again. I saw the pale bare place where a watch had been and told him the
time.
“Is that the message you want to give Earth? Never love an alien?”
“Never love an alien—” He shrugged. “Yeah. No. Ah, Jesus don’t you see? Everything going out,
nothing coming back. Like the poor damned Polynesians. We’re gutting Earth, to begin with. Swapping
raw resources for junk. Alien status symbols. Tape decks, Coca Cola and Mickey Mouse watches.”
“Well, there is concern over the balance of trade. Is that your message?”
“The balance of trade.” He rolled it sardonically. “Did the Polynesians have a word for it, I wonder?
You don’t see, do you? All right, why are you here? I mean you, personally. How many guys did you
climb over—”
He went rigid, hearing footsteps outside. The Procya’s hopeful face appeared around the corner.
The red-haired man snarled at him and he backed out. I started to protest.
“Ah, the silly reamer loves it. It’s the only pleasure we have left.... Can’t you see, man? That’s us.
That’s the way we look to them, to the real ones.”
“But—”
“And now we’re getting the cheap C-drive, well be all over just like the Procya. For the pleasure of
serving as freight monkeys and junction crews. Oh, they appreciate our ingenious little service stations,
the beautiful star folk. They don’t need them, y’know. Just an amusing convenicence. D’you know what
I do here with my two degrees? What I did at First Junction. Tube cleaning. A swab. Sometimes I get to
replace a fitting.”
I muttered something; the self-pity was getting heavy.
“Bitter? Man, it’s a good job. Sometimes I get to talk to one of them.” His face twisted. “My wife
works as a—oh, hell, you wouldn’t know. I’d trade—correction, I have traded—everything Earth
offered me for just that chance. To see them. To speak to them. Once in a while to touch one. Once in a
great while to find one low enough, perverted enough to want to touch me—”
His voice trailed off and suddenly came back strong.
“And so will you!” He glared at me. “Go home! Go home and tell them to quit it. Close the ports.
Burn every god-lost alien thing before it’s too late! That’s what the Polynesians didn’t do.”
“But surely—”
“But surely be damned! Balance of trade—balance of life, man. I don’t know if our birth rate is
going, that’s not the point. Our soul is leaking out. We’re bleeding to death!”
He took a breath and lowered his tone.
“What I’m trying to tell you, this is a trap. We’ve hit the supernormal stimulus. Man is
exogamous—all our history is one long drive to find and impregnate the stranger. Or get impregnated by
him, it works for women too. Anything different-colored, different nose, ass, anything, man has to fuck it
or die trying. That’s a drive, y’know, it’s built in. Because it works fine as long as the stranger is human.
For millions of years that kept the genes circulating. But now we’ve met aliens we can’t screw, and we’re
about to die trying.... Do you think I can touch my wife?”
“But—”
“Look. Y’know, if you give a bird a fake egg like its own but bigger and brighter-marked, it’ll roll its
own egg out of the nest and sit on the fake? What’s what we’re doing.”
“You’ve only been talking about sex.” I was trying to conceal my impatience. “Which is great, but
the kind of story I’d hoped—”
“Sex? No, it’s deeper.” He rubbed his head, trying to clear the drug. “Sex is only part of it, there’s
more. I’ve seen Earth missionaries, teachers, sexless people. Teachers—they end cycling waste or
pushing floaters, but they’re hooked. They stay. I saw one fine-looking old woman, she was servant to a
Cu’ushbar kid. A defective—his own people would have let him die. That wretch was swabbing up its
vomit as if it was holy water. Man, it’s deep... some cargo-cult of the soul. We’re built to dream
outwards. They laugh at us. They don’t have it.”
There were sounds of movement in the next corridor. The dinner crowd was starting. I had to get rid
of him and get there; maybe I could find the Procya. A side door opened and a figure started towards us.
At first I thought it was an alien and then I saw it was a woman wearing an awkward body-shell. She
seemed to be limping slightly. Behind her I could glimpse the dinner-bound throng passing the open door.
The man got up as she turned into the bay. They didn’t greet each other.
“The station employs only happily wedded couples,” he told me with that ugly laugh. “We give each
other... comfort.”
He took one of her hands. She flinched as he drew it over his arm and let him turn her passively, not
looking at me. “Forgive me if I don’t introduce you. My wife appears fatigued.”
I saw that one of her shoulders was grotesquely scarred.
“Tell them,” he said, turning to go. “Go home and tell them.” Then his head snapped back toward
me and he added quietly, “And stay away from the Syrtis desk or I’ll kill you.”
They went away up the corridor.
I changed tapes hurriedly with one eye on the figures passing that open door. Suddenly among the
humans I caught a glimpse of two sleek scarlet shapes. My first real aliens! I snapped the recorder shut
and ran to squeeze in behind them.
THE SNOWS ARE MELTED, THE SNOWS ARE GONE
The cold silent land was lightening as the human figure walked up to the ridge. On pale rock the
figure was a dark fork, too thin. Serpent-shouldered. It sank into a patch of scrub below the crest, turned
a small face up to the sky, crouched again.
A shadow flitted, circling the ridge. A large dog; no, a very large wolf. The animal drifted onto the
rocks above the human, froze. The stiff line of its brush showed an old break. The dawn was coming fast
now, but to the west the valley was still dark. Faint howling rose from the valley, then ceased.
The dog-wolf faded off the ridge, reappeared by the bushes where the human crouched. The figure
bowed its head; as the wolf came near. Dawn light flickered on his canines. He snapped sideways,
carrying away a dark cap.
A flood of light spilled out, flew as the human tossed it back. The wolf dropped the cap, sat down
and began to worry at something on its chest.
Daylight sprang up the sky. In the niche below the rocks the figure was now clearly visible, a young
girl in rough jacket and breeches, shaking out her hair. The shoulders of her jacket ended in pads. It had
no arms. Nor had she, none at all. A phocomorph. She settled herself beside the wolf, who showed now
as bulge-headed with oddly curling fur.
He had drawn out a small object which lay between them on the rock. They were face to face,
dawn glinting yellow from his eyes, blue in the girl’s. His paw went to the object, clicked.
“Patrol to base,” the girl said softly.
Tiny squeak of reply.
“We’re at the ridge. The river’s about five kilometers west. There’s a trail below us, it hasn’t been
used since the rains. We heard the dogs. We’ll wait here till dark, after that we’ll be in radio shadow.
We’ll signal when we’re out, maybe night after next.”
Louder squeaking, a woman’s voice. Wolf jaws widened, girl-lips grinned,
“We always take care. Patrol out.”
The wolf clicked off and then bent and delicately gripped her boot tip in his teeth. The armless girl
pulled her foot free, flexed her slim prehensile toes in the cold light. When the other boot came off she
used her toes to unhitch the pack harness from his dense fur. He stretched hugely, flung himself down and
rolled, revealing a rich cream underbelly.
The girl toed out a food pack and canteen. He got up and carried it to a spring beside the outcrop,
pawing it under to fill. They ate and drank, the girl lying on her back and dangling the canteen over her
face by its strap. Once she let out a gurgle of laughter. His paw struck her head, pushed her face into her
knees. They finished eating, went to relieve themselves. It was broad daylight now, the sun sailing straight
up from the eastern hills as if on a wire. A wind rose with it, keening over the rocky rim.
The wolf belly-crawled to the crest, watched awhile, returned to the girl. They pulled brush around
themselves and curled together on the laterite shelf.
The sun mounted, struck through the wind’s chill. No bird flew, no furred animal appeared. In the
brush tangle, silence. Once a mantis-like thing rattled near the lair. A yellow eye opened at ground level.
The thing whirred away, the eye closed.
During the afternoon the wind carried a thin cawing sound to the outcrop. In the brush yellow eyes
were joined by blue. The murmur faded, the eyes disappeared again. Nothing more happened. The
equatorial sun dropped straight down the west into the valley, quieting the wind.
As shadow flowed over the outcrop the brush was pulled aside. Girl and wolf came out together to
the stream and lapped, she bending like a snake. They ate again, and the girl toed the pack together,
fastened it to the wolf’s harness. He nosed the transmitter into its pouch in his chest wool and picked up
a boot for her to thrust her foot in. When she was shod he hooked a fang into the dark cap. She let her
pale hair coil into it and he pulled it over her head, adjusting it carefully away from her eyes. It was dark
now, a quarter-moon behind them in the east. She twisted to her feet, a human spring, and they set off
down the escarpment into the valley.
Arid scrubland eroded by old floods became forest as they descended. The pair moved watchfully
in single file, following a vague trail down. When the moon had passed zenith they halted to carry out
laborious rearrangements of brush and stones. Then they went on down through the trees, halted again to
labor. Trails branched here; when they moved on it was with greater care. Faint odors were in this air.
The moon was setting ahead of them when they reached the ruined river gorge. Beyond the rocks a
broad sheet of silver muttered in the night. They crossed at a riffle, climbed a rock ledge, moved quietly
downstream. The scent was a stench now—smoke, fish, bodies, excrement, coming from a bend around
the crags. A dog’s howl rose was joined by another, cut off in yelps.
Girl and wolf came on the crags. Below them were three ragged thatches huddled in a cove. Smoke
rose from a single ash pile. The huts were in shadow. A last moonray silvered a pile of offal by the shore.
The two on the crag watched silently. It was warmer here, but no insect flew. In the huts below a
child whimpered, was silenced. Nothing visited the offal pile. The moon set, the river turned dark. A fish
splashed.
The wolf rose, drifted away. The girl listened to the river. He returned and she followed him upriver
to a high cranny in the ledges out of sight of the cove. In the river below the water gurgled around a line
of crazy stakes. The two ate and drank in silence. When the world lightened they were curled together in
sleep.
Sunlight struck their wall, shadows shrank to the east. From the cove came the shrilling of children,
deeper voices. A clatter, a cry. In the high cranny, sunlight reflected yellow glints behind dry weeds. The
wind was rising, blowing toward the sun across the river. Between the gusts came snarls, chirrupings,
undecipherable shouts, the crackle of fire. The eyes waited.
In midmorning two naked women came around the bend below, dragging something along the
shore. Seven more straggled after, paused to gesture and jabber. Their skin was angry red, pale at crotch
and armpits. White scars stood out, symmetrical chevrons on the bulging bellies. All had thick, conelike
nipples; two of them appeared close to term. Their hair was matted, rusty-streaked.
Above on the crags, blue eyes had joined yellow. The women were wading into the river now, their
burden revealed as a crude net which they proceeded to string between the stakes. They shrieked at
each other, “Weh weh! Ee, ah!” A small flock of children was drifting around the bend. Several of the
larger children carried babies. “Eee! Gah!” they echoed, high-voiced. A stake collapsed, was retrieved
with shrieks, would not stand, was abandoned.
Presently larger figures appeared on the shore path. The men. Six of them, naked and ruddy like the
women but much more scarred. None was beyond first youth. The smallest was dark, all the others had
carroty hair and beards. Behind them trailed three dogs, tail-tucked, ready to flee.
The men shouted imperiously and walked on upriver. The women came out of the water and trotted
after them. At the next bend the whole party waded in and commenced to splash and flail, driving the fish
down to the nets. A baby screamed. The pair on the rocks watched, intent.
One of the men noticed the dogs skulking by the net and hurled a stone. They raced away, turned,
crept back. This man was the largest of the group, active and well-formed. As the splashing people
neared the nets the big man looked ahead, saw the gap in the nets and ran along on the shore to pull it
taut. On the cliff above, wolf eyes met human. Wolf teeth made a tiny click.
The fish were foaming in the nets now. The humans closed upon them, hauling at the nets, fish
sluicing and leaping through, dogs splashing in to snap. Shouts, screams, floundering bodies. They
dragged the squirming mass ashore, dropped it to grab at escaping fish. The young giant stood erect,
grinning, biting alternately at a fish in each hand. At his feet children scrambled in the threshing nets. He
gave a loud wordless shout, threw the fish high.
Finally the women dragged the catch away along the shore path to the huts and the river was empty
again. Girl and wolf stretched, lay down unrelaxed. Smoke blew around the bend. If was hot in the rocks
now, out of the wind. Below on the sand fish-parts glittered but no flies appeared. From the cove,
silence; interrupted briefly by a child’s wail. The sun was dropping toward the valley run, shadows
spreading on the river below. The wind followed the sun away.
Presently dusk filled the canyon and the sky turned lilac behind a half-moon. A column of smoke
was rising from the cove. In the stillness voices pealed singly, became a rhythmic chorus underlaid with
pounding. This continued for a time, interspersed with shouts, bursts of shrieking. The smoke column
wavered, gouted sparks. More shrieks, general clamor. The uproar died to grumbles, then to silence.
The rocks ticked in the night chill.
The wolf left the cranny. The girl sighed, remained. Around the bend a dog began to howl, squealed
and was still. The girl toed intricate patterns in a patch of sand. The wolf returned wet-legged, and they
ate and drank. While the moon set they slept.
Before dawn they had left that place and circled back across the river to the side on which they had
entered the valley. The canyon wall was eroded to a tumble here. The two went slowly several times
between shore and rocks as the sky paled. Finally they sat down to wait at the water’s edge behind a
screen of alders. Across the river were the huts.
When light struck into the canyon the girl rose and faced the wolf. Her jacket wrapped her waist,
ended in a wide loop. He caught one tooth in the loop, flicked it free and had the jacket open. Beneath
the jacket she was bare. She stood patiently while he nosed the jacket back across her shoulders like a
cape. Her shoulders were smooth scarless knobs above her small breasts. The cold air puckered her
pink nipples, stirred the little beards of silk in what should have been her armpits.
The wolf was laying the folds of jacket so that they mimicked arms. Satisfied, he jerked his big head
and then began to tug at the flexible waistband of her breeches, drawing them down deftly to expose her
body and upper thighs. As he worked she began to smile, moved. He growled faintly. The wind blew on
her bareness. She leaned against his warm fur. They waited.
Sounds were coming from the thatches across the river. Figures appeared, ambling down to the
shore to stand or squat. Girl and wolf watched an alder grove across the river to one side of the huts.
Presently the foliage was agitated. A man was coming through. Wolf-head nodded; it was the big one.
The man appeared moving familiarly along a sand spit, and stood to urinate.
Carefully the wolf drew back a low branch. The girl took an awkward pace forward, putting her
naked body in full sunlight. The man’s head swung, fixed on her. His body tensed. She gave a low call,
swaying herself.
Muscles surged in the man’s legs, his feet spurned sand. Instantly the branch thrashed back around
her and the wolf was yanking up her breeches, tugging her jacket around. Then they were running, pelting
through the alders, racing out of the river bottom on the line toward their trail.
Splashing behind them turned upstream. The wolf had chosen well, there was a deep basin which
the man must get around to reach their shore. They bounded up the bluff, the girl agile as a hare. When
they were out of the canyon the wolf veered into the trees.
The man came over the bluff to see the girl running alone up the tunnellike path far ahead. He
plunged after her, strong legs, eating space. But she was at the electric age for running, child-thin and
trained hard. When he slowed after his first burst she was going tirelessly, a peculiar weaving motion of
her torso making up the balance for missing arms. As she ran her eyes roamed in search of the slashes
they had left upon the trees beside the trail.
Suddenly there were new voices behind her—the dogs had joined the chase. The girl frowned,
speeded up. A big gray shadow swerved alongside, stopped with lifted leg beside a tree, then another.
The girl smiled, let her pace slow.
Shortly she heard the dogs’ voices change when they came to the wolf-sign. Shouts from the man,
yelps. No more sound of dogs.
She ran on. It was trot and trot now uphill, with the sun towering to noon. She was panting hard
when she came to the first of the places they had arranged. She leaped aside, glimpsing a gray form
among the trees, and jogged on up the rising ground.
Behind her came a sharp yell and then the grunts and flounder of the bogged man. She leaned
against a dead termitary. The trees were thinning here, the wind blew through to carry her tiredness
away.
The wolf appeared, jerked his head irritably. She turned and trotted on into the wind. Over the
treetops she could see the blue line of rimrock far ahead. Trot and trot. The man held her in view now
and he was gaining.
Finally she swerved again and heard behind her the crack of breaking branches and the angry shout.
When she paused the wolf was by her. They listened together to the sounds of struggle coming through
the fading gusts of wind. She resumed of her own accord, knowing now that she could not outrun him.
The wolf remained, watchful.
The sun was yellowing into the horizon’s dust when she topped the final ridge and turned to look.
This was the limit of the wild-men’s trails; would he follow on beyond? She could hear nothing. The wolf
appeared, motioning her to a sunlit ledge. He butted her into position with his nose and pulled her jacket
apart. She sang out a sweet trill, ending in laughter.
As the echo died the wolf pushed her running down the rocks past their old camping place. In a
moment he joined her, grinning toothily, and then vanished to one side while she jogged on alone across
the unrolling shadows. When she glanced behind a ruddy figure was bobbing down the rocks. No dogs
were with him.
Shadows pooled underfoot, became twilight around her as they ran. Twilight turned to moonlight;
the wolf ranged ahead of her, his crooked tail held high; and she followed its flag across the plain. This
was old goat land, knobbed with clumps of thorn trees whose young were springing up everywhere now
that the goats were gone.
Presently the wolf let her slow to walking, pausing now and again to listen for the footfalls behind.
No other sound was here.
At last they halted. He drifted back silent as fog, to return briskly and lead her to a thorn clump.
Here she freed her feet and drank and ate greedily and drank again while he inspected and licked her
feet. But he would not let her unharness him, nor release her hair, and he made her put her boots on
before he got out the transmitter.
“We’ve got one. He’s very strong. Is Bonz all right?”
Questions rattled at them. The wolf cut off and pushed the girl’s body earthward into the dry thorn
chaff. Then he removed himself from her warm odors and leaped up an ant castle to lie facing back the
way they had come. His head, sunk onto his crossed paws, showed a fine tremor. One yellow eye was
open under the heavy brow. After a time his withers jerked, were still.
The sounds forced from his throat reached her in the night but her sleep was deep. She found him
spasming at the base of the ant castle, the great jaws throwing slaver in the moonlight. She flung herself
onto the writhing neck, clamping her thighs along his head to force her knees between his teeth. He
bucked, screamed. The fangs clashed, caught in the ridge of padding fitted inside both her knees. She
held his mouth open as they rolled, a dark stain spreading on her leg. He had already slashed his tongue,
she could not see how badly.
When the synchrony passed she released him, crouched murmuring over his head. His tongue
ceased bleeding. Slowly his nictitating membranes retracted and the moonlight lit green ghostfire in his
open eyes. He lifted his head. She nuzzled him, then pushed. He sighed and put his nose to his chest fur.
A vial was harnessed there. He worried out a bolus, gulped. Then he got up, walked stiffly away. There
was water nearby. When he returned she was asleep; he left her and leaped heavily up to his post.
Dawn showed them to be on an amba, a high tableland backed by a turreted line of cliffs. These
cliffs were their goal, but there was the empty plain to cross. The girl was well out upon it, trotting alone,
when the man’s figure appeared around an outcrop. He wavered, ready to turn back. But then the sight
of his prey gripped him and he was racing hard on her trail.
She speeded up and held the space between them almost constant for a kilometer before he began
to gain. She forced her legs. It was wind against wind now across the barren amba. The amba was sliced
with deep gullies. As her speed failed she was able to take advantage of the remembered course,
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TEN-THOUSANDLIGHTYEARSFROMHOMEJamesTiptreeJr[03dec2001—proofedandre-releasedfor#bookz]INTRODUCTIONThereisoneparticularjoythatonlyeditorsshare.Thisisthebitingedgeofpleasureexperienceduponreadingagoodstorybyatotallyunknownandunsoldauthor.Ifthestoryisnotonlygoodbutverygoodthepleasureisobviouslyevengrea...
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