K. W. Jeter - Seeklight

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Seeklight by K.W. Jeter

INTRODUCTION TO SEEKLIGHT

In the mail the other morning, from an unpublished writer a

little to the west of here, came a letter which took me back ten

years to the living room of 143 Avondale Place, Syracuse, New

York, where I, the then Schubert Foundation Playwriting Fellow,

was trying to push my failing Dodge and beginning marriage on

an income of $250.00 a month while simultaneously applying

myself to collected works which then might have numbered all of

one hundred and fifty pages.

The Writer (from the west of here that is; I no longer live at

Avondale Place) wanted to know what the truth of getting

started in publishing was. How did you sell a story? Was it really

true as it appeared to him that you had to have connections to

place your work? How did writers get going anyway? Was it

possible to do your work and mail it out and get in print or did

you need contacts? What contacts, anyway? He was pretty

discouraged, the young writer went on, but not ready to give up

yet. Perhaps I had some suggestions. Markets? Contacts?

Back to the living room in Syracuse where the same questions

rattled through my mind and corpus for almost a full year. It is

possible that the subculture of professionally published novelists,

poets and short-story writers is not a cabal to be achieved only

through dark rites of initiation-and-persecution but if this is so,

you could not have proven it by me in the academic year of

1964-5, a feeling which to a certain degree persists emotionally

even to this day. How indeed does one break into this business?

How can one emerge from the mass of unpublished writers to

professional publication? What is the secret?

It is not easy to break into this business and my

correspondent from Philadelphia was right, it does appear from

the outside as if it were a mysterious cabal with equally

mysterious but rigorous social customs; one becomes a writer

only by becoming personally acceptable to a formal or less formal

board of review. It does little good to advise that this is not the

case; that while the medium of the literary novel and short-story

is closed nearly tight nowadays, insular and self-limiting, the

category market—gothics, westerns, mysteries and particularly

science-fiction—remain open to those who can meet the rather

stringent requirements of the categories and that science-fiction

in particular, if it has been characterized by nothing else for its

near-fifty years as a discrete sub-category of fiction, must be

praised for its openness, its willingness not only to publish work

by newcomers of no prior social acceptability but to welcome

that work and to quickly elevate its best talent to the top of the

field within a shorter period of time than almost any other

category would so do. It is true that Philip Roth won the

National Book Award at 26, that Joyce Carol Oates was winning

O'Henry Prizes in her early twenties and won the NBA (after two

appearances final list) at 31. But Roth and Oates are exceptions,

not only exceptional writers—of course they are—but exceptional

examples of luck.

Not to digress however, people in early middle age have the

habit of running on, sometimes in a disjointed fashion, on issues

peripheral to what should really concern them. Let us drag

ourselves away from the NBA or middle-aged American literary

novelists to the far more vital and salutory matter of this

particular book.

I proposed the idea of trying to make the course of new's-f

writers easier rather than more difficult and Roger Elwood, the

energetic and capable editor-in-chief of this new Laser Book

program, came right back at me within days asking me to put

my time where my mouth was. Let me discover the newer

writers, let me develop projects with them, introduce them to the

markets. If I felt that the markets should be more receptive to

the new than they are at present (although as I have said

above,'s-f really isn't that bad compared to most other fields)

then take up the cause myself.

So that was the way in which this book was proposed and that

was how it began.

K. W. Jeter, whose SEEKLIGHT follows as the first of these

novels in whose publication I have assisted, is a

twenty-four-year-old Californian, a state university graduate who

prefers to keep his persona out of his work, a position which I

share in relation to my own and with which I am in hearty

agreement. Other than knowing that he is married, widely-read

in's-f (this would be obvious without testimony simply from the

novel) and utterly committed to his work, I know only that he is

greatly and diversely talented and that given a reasonable

contribution of luck, that luck without which none of us would

ever have achieved any success (this is not paranoia; life is luck,

breath is luck, love is luck) he may achieve a major career within

this field. SEEKLIGHT is one of the three or four best's-f novels I

have ever read and on any level is a distinguished contribution to

the field; it promises to be an auspicious start to an auspicious

career but even if it did not it is, on its own terms, a wholly

successful and gripping novel which should provide its readers

with hours of entertainment and, after the fact and by

implication, a rather deeper level of inference which emerges

from the book only as the consequence of its full statement. The

"statement" however may be taken or more properly left; this is,

in my opinion, a work of art but it is first and last and more

important a work of craft and delight.

With more pride than it is perhaps seemly to admit, I gladly

turn over to you SEEKLIGHT and K. W. Jeter.

Barry Malzberg

New Jersey.

Prologue

It would be so easy to die. He pressed his face against the

rain-soaked ground, curling himself into a ball under the

storm's slashing weight. A twist of lightning that shouted

through the wind revealed his hands, clenched into the muddy

hillside. In the moment of pale light they seemed corpse-like and

drained of blood.

Somewhere at the base of the hill, one of his pursuers'

mounts screamed as it wheeled in fear, goaded by its rider into

the face of the storm. An echoing chorus from the other equines,

more like sobbing children than animals, came out of the

darkness below. It was followed by shouts and curses from the

subthane's men, as they whipped the animals into submission.

He managed to get his hands and knees under himself.

Crouching, he listened to the cries and noises at the hill's foot. In

the dark, with the rain and wind distorting the world, it was

impossible to tell if the pursuers were moving away, giving up

here and searching elsewhere; or starting to force their mounts

up the hill face with its jumble of wet-slick boulders.

His left leg slewed out from under him as he tried to stand.

He dropped back to his knees as he felt the edge of pain slice

through the numbness. He rolled

onto his right side and felt with his hands for the pain's

source. The wetness that drenched his thigh was thick and hot,

welling out faster than the rain could wash it away. He lifted

his hands close to his face, and another jag of lightning showed

them, stained with blood that looked more black than red. The

wound had opened further, the stiff clot on his skin breaking

away to reveal the warm interior of this huge, silently

screaming mouth, framed by the ragged edges of cloth.

Then this is it, part of him thought, a part that had already

seemed to separate from his body seconds—or years, measured

in the storm's time— ago. The part receded a few feet away and

looked down at the rest, the arms and one leg tracing slow

letters in the muddy space between two boulders, the face

puffed and masked with fever. Seventeen years old—the

thinking fragment was filled with a sad calm—and 1 didn't even

start to find out.

Another scream filtered through the storm, but this was

above him on the hillside. He realized dimly, as if it were no

longer of any importance, that the pursuers must have

encircled him.

He was no longer listening for the sounds of their

movements. The part that had floated free of his body sunk

back down to his swollen face, as if for some final departing

kiss. It fell back into the flesh, merging, and he opened his eyes

to the full pressure of the storm. The rain no longer stung. And

it had a voice. Is that a language, too? he wondered,

marvelling. The idea enchanted him. Perhaps, if he listened as

hard as he could, he would be able to understand, it would thin

out and become pellucid as all the other tongues he had heard.

Motionless, he

strained, listening to the compound, mingled voice. Finally,

like glass dissolving—

"Traitor's son," the voice whispered in its own tongue.

He closed his eyes. The words changed, but what was said

with them always remained the same.

"Blood of thanes. Traitor's son."

Soon enough, his pursuers would be standing around him,

and then they would press the points of their weapons against

his chest, lean their weight on them and leak the few remaining

drops of his life into the mud. Their faces would be hard and

shiny under the rain. The feeling of calm turned bitter under

his forehead, a throb of hate and despair.

"Traitor's son."

He remembered the key. Reaching to his neck with one hand,

he drew it out by its long fine chain from beneath his shirt, the

fabric plastered right to his skin. His hand enfolded the flat

square of white metal—a dull light seemed to seep from

between his tightly clenched fingers. The throbbing in his head

turned into a vast wave of regret as he realized that whatever

door the key was meant to open would now stay closed forever.

"Traitor's son." Now that he understood its language, the

storm's voice wouldn't go away. It seemd as if he had been

hearing those words, in all the different tongues, all his life.

He twisted slowly on the ground.

Chapter I

The whispering followed Daenek around the marketplace, the

lowered voices seeming to slide between the stalls like the

grinning, stark-ribbed canines prowling for scraps on the

pavement. Two old village women nodded their shawled heads,

their leathery faces even more wrinkled by their mouths curling

in disdain as the child passed the stall they tended. His head

barely came up to the level of the racks of husk-covered

vegetables, so that the women only recognized him by the dark

hair, unlike that of any of the village children. "His is the blood of

thanes," whispered one crone. The other nodded in satisfaction

at the sneering obscenity into which the last word was twisted.

The boy threaded his way through the market, past the rows

of stalls and, behind them, faces with every variation of fear and

hostility that had become familiar to him. Sometimes he

squeezed past a knot of villagers clustered in the narrow passage

as they fingered the vegetables or slabs of preserved meat,

extracted a few coins from their sweat-darkened purses and

placed their purchases in the stained cloth sacks they swung

from their arms. They would look down as he passed between

them, and draw away. Then the voices would start again.

"Thane's blood." Close-set eyes narrowed on the small figure.

"Traitor's son."

Daenek stopped in front of one of the stalls. Behind the bins,

in a small glass cabinet dangled a tiny model of the great

seedships that had come from— his brows clenched as he tried to

remember the world—Earth. But that was ancient history,

though. Daenek stood on tiptoe and studied the little silver

cylinder—he had heard that it used to move up and down inside

the glass box, shooting flames from one end, but now it just hung

midway on its invisible thread, useless and pathetic—until the

stallkeeper scowled him away.

"A hard bunch," said a voice behind him. He turned and saw

a busker squatting behind a battered folding table at the head of

one of the streets leading off the marketplace. His hands shuffled

a pack of cards, the edges worn to feathers, as he winked and

motioned Daenek to come closer with a tilt of his lean head. "A

right hard bunch, they are."

"I don't like them," said Daenek matter-of-factly. He watched

the cards slither through the long fingers.

"Can't blame you," said the busker. "They've been no blessing

to my pockets, either." A sigh. "I'm right afraid I must be soon to

my own village again."

"Where's that?"

The busker fanned the cards out on the table. "Where it is," he

said without looking up. "When I get back I'll send a troop of my

brothers out to see what good they can do with these

stone-hearted stone-cutters."

Daenek stepped away and looked down the nar-row street. In

front of the cramped buildings women were sitting with the tops

of their coveralls spread open to reveal their pale shoulders, even

though there was no sun to catch this early. Quarry-workers, too

young or slack to have saved up the brideprice needed to take

their choice off the street for good, sauntered in the middle of

the road, jingling the coins in their pockets. Doors opened and

closed with small sounds, couples going in and out of the low

houses.

A priest stood in one of the marketplace's maze-like aisles. Its

heavy brown robes hung in folds over its' tubular metal arms as

it attempted to pass out its little pamphlets to the ignoring

villagers. Daenek took one from the shining, oddly-jointed hand,

and thought he saw the photocells in the expressionless face

grow brighter beneath its cowl. THE VOICE THAT IS GREAT

WITHIN YOU read the pamphlet's outside in crudely printed

letters. It fluttered to the pavement as Daenek dropped it and

walked on.

At one end of the marketplace a canine crouched and giggled

beneath one of the stalls. Its hairless skin was mottled with pink

and liver-colored spots. The loony eyes rolled in pleasure as the

boy squatted down and scratched behind its round, human-like

ears.

"Hey. Git 'way from there."

Daenek looked up and saw a man's face, flushed and

coarse-grained as a chunk of meat on one of the butchers' racks,

glaring over the edge of the stall. "You're drivin' everybody

away," the face growled through its thick lips.

The canine moaned in fear and ran off, its back bowed, the

thin tail wrapped against its belly. Daenek stood up and backed

away from the stall, watching the man behind it as he returned

his sour attention to his trays of fruit. The little green spheres

that had turned brown and pulpy were picked out one by one

and thrown onto the ground.

Daenek turned away, bored. The crowd's heat and the

high-pitched buzzing of flies made his head ache. Maybe—he

looked back into the knots of people in the marketplace, trying to

spot one person in particular—maybe it was almost time to

leave. He scraped a ridge of dust along the pavement with his

shoe, then felt something that was both hard and wet crack

against the back of his head.

He spun around—there was no one behind him. He touched

the stinging spot on his skull, then looked at his hand. A tiny

spot of red mingled in something sticky. At his feet was one of

the rotten fruit from the stall opposite him, the hard stone

visible through the shattered pulp. The stallkeeper's eyes were

bent on his own hands as they fussed over the trays.

A second passed as the boy stared at the coarse-faced man.

Suddenly, a tall woman, her face rigid with anger, appeared,

striding out of the marketplace's center. One hand clenched the

silver handle of the slender black rod she used to point to the

items in the stalls that she wished to buy, and to pick her way

along the narrow path that led through the hills above the

village. She and Daenek lived in the small house at the end of the

path, and the silver-headed stick would be laid in the corner

beside the door when they arrived back home, in readiness for

the next trip to the marketplace. But now the stick had another

purpose.

The man behind the stall looked up in time to see the stick

come whistling through the air and land with a sharp crack on

his forehead. "A child!" the Lady Marche said fiercely, landing

another blow above the man's ear. "Not yet seven! For shame!"

The stick flew again, hitting across the man's wide back as he

crouched behind the stall.

"Naaaww!" howled the man, covering his head with his hands.

"Fer God's sake, I didn't chuck the damn thing at the kid!"

"Shame enough that it should be done in front of you." The

stick's point jabbed into the pavement.

A snickering laugh sounded from a few feet away. A boy, three

or four years older than Daenek, stepped into the path from

around the corner of another stall. A grin seemed to almost

divide his broad, pale face in two. Another of the rotten fruits

was cradled in his hand.

The older boy stared boldly at the woman as she strode

towards him, his confident expression not changing until a

second before the stick whipped across his shoulders. He

shrieked, his face rushing full with blood as he fell and scrabbled

on the pavement.

"Think better," said the Lady Marche, giving a perfunctory

rap for the stick on the bobbing head, "of flinging refuse at

anyone, let alone a ward of the throne."

"A traitor's son," muttered a voice from the crowd of villagers

that had gathered from all over the marketplace.

She turned around, sweeping her cold gaze across the sullen

faces. "A protectee of—" Her voice hesitated, then continued at a

lower pitch. "—of the Regent."

A few of the faces in the crowd bent into smirks, as if a small

triumph had been acknowledged.

"And a child," she said, her voice sharp with authority, "like

other children. Pity those who could fear one!"

"Yahhh," screamed the older boy, now crouching on his knees.

His red face was wet with tears. "You better watch out! My

father'll getcha—he's the sub-thane, and he'll do it, too! Just you

wait!"

"Child," said the woman, extending the tip of her stick

towards him—it transfixed his glassy eyes, "you may have

inherited your repellent nature from your father, but his is at

least somewhat tempered with age. He knows what is expected

of him, and better, what would happen to him should he forget."

She looked over her shoulder at the crowd behind her, including

them in her speech. "There is a court in the capital, and this

child—" The stick swung to indicate Daenek. "—is under its

protection." She turned to Daenek and spoke quietly to him:

"Let's to home."

The crowd parted, backing up against the stalls as the lady

and the boy passed through them. The faces of the crowd were

still set in their expressions of dull resentment and repressed

anger. One of them found his voice, a tall youth dressed in the

same black fabric as the boy who had thrown the fruit, but with

a short, rust-pitted knife tucked in his belt. "Ah, Someday," the

youth whispered as they went by him, "his protection ends. And

then he'll get it like what his father did."

The Lady Marche either did not hear or chose to ignore him.

She and Daenek reached the other side of the marketplace, the

boy half-running to keep up with her quick strides. They passed

quickly through the squat village buildings and out to the open

spaces beyond.

Chapter II

Where the hills above the village levelled off, the narrow trail

ran straight as a knife edge pressed into the ground. The fields

were covered thick with weeds, taller than Daenek could reach,

and dried stiff and golden by the summer sun. The stalks rustled

in the wind and bent over the path.

Daenek stopped and craned his neck to watch a field bat flap

upwards, its belly yellow with pollen, like a fur sun. Then,

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ScannedbyHighroller.Proofedby.MadeprettierbyuseofEBookDesignGroupStylesheet.SeeklightbyK.W.JeterINTRODUCTIONTOSEEKLIGHTInthemailtheothermorning,fromanunpublishedwriteralittletothewestofhere,camealetterwhichtookmebacktenyearstothelivingroomof143AvondalePlace,Syracuse,NewYork,whereI,thethenSchubertFou...

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K. W. Jeter - Seeklight

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