Charles L. Grant - Glow of Candles, Unicorn's eye

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A GLOW OF CANDLES,
A UNICORN'S EYE*
Charles L. Grant
I mentioned the fact that writers need to serve an apprenticeship in order to master their craft.
Charles Grant surely did, In one of the hardest and most thankless jobs any writer has ever taken
on. His exalted title was Executive Secretary of the Science Fiction Writers of America; but the
reality behind-the hyperbole was that he was the person who did everything the volunteer committee
people and officers of SFWA were supposed to do, but didn't. And he learned-as Is proven by
stories like "A Glow of Candles, A Unicorn's Eye."
There are no gods but those that are muses. You may quote me on that if you are in need of an
argument. It's original. One of the few truly original things I have done with my life, in my
life, throughout my life, which has been spent in mostly running. Bad grammar that, I suppose. But
nevertheless true for the adverb poorly placed.
And how poorly placed have I been.
Not that I am complaining, you understand. I could have, and with cause, some thirty years
ago, and for the first thirty-seven I did-though the causes were much more nebulous. But the
complaints I have now are of the softer kind, the kind that grows out of loving, and are meant-in
loving-not to be heard, not to be taken seriously.
For example, consider my beard. Helena loved it, once she became accustomed to its prickly
assaults. But I do not need it anymore. There is no need for the hiding because I have been
forgiven my sins-or so it says here on this elegant paper I must carry with me in case the message
has been lost-forgiven my
*Winner, Nebula, for Best Novelette of 1978.
trespasses. But I like the stupid beard now. Its lacing of gray lends a certain dignity to a face
that is never the same twice in one week. And it helps me to forget what I am beneath the costumes
and the makeup and the words that are not mine. Yet it's not a forgetting that is demanded by
remorse, nor is it a forgetting necessitated by a deep and agonizing secret.
It is a forgetting of years, to keep me from weeping.
Because the secret is out.
Has been, in fact, since the first evening I presented this prologues device not original,
but originally apt.
No secret, then.
But I like the beard anyway.
And so did my Helena, whose hair-such hairl-was once so wonderfully long.
Attend then--or so says the script I no longer need to guide me-but before you decide
where applause is warranted, be sure that you understand, be sure that you know exactly what you
are applauding. We are still, after all, and in the last sight of the law, criminals, you know. I
nearly murdered, and she nearly surrendered.
And I think that they will catch up with us at the last. Not because we have escaped and
were pardoned. But because we have escaped and have been free.
1
Gordon was alone and friendless ....
Well, not really, but at the time there wasn't much that I wanted more. I tried to be
careful, however, not to disrupt the taping session by allowing my reinforced skepticism and
growing discomfort to put lines in my face where character should be, and where, I prayed
constantly, it would stay before the bottom dropped out of this market, too, and I had to return
to so-called regular employment to build up my account. To cover myself then, I placed right palm
to right cheek in what I had been taught was an overt display of not-quite-hopeless despair
coupled subtly with the proper degree of Shakespearean melancholy, Then, working at not flinching,
I lowered my buttocks onto the conveniently flat rock behind me and stared at the river. They
called it a river. Actually, it was something less than two hundred meters of recycled water not
nearly deep enough to drown a gnat .
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. . . . his weary but undaunted brain struggling mightily for the miraculous wherewithal
to extricate him from his precarious dilemma ....
The subvocal narration buzzing in my left ear so I could follow the cues raised in me
first a gagging sensation, then an impulse to swat at a nonexistent fly. I managed to swallow
several times without its showing, then shifted my palm to my chin and supported it by resting my
elbow on one knee. I could have brought it off. But my concentration slipped. The fact that I was
naked, cold, and resignedly anticipating a drenching from the slate-gray clouds massing
efficiently overhead goaded me into a mistake. After five minutes of gazing I could not help but
frown instead of assuming the attitude of intense problem-solving on the subconscious level. And
when it was done, there was no taking it back. . . and I knew it without anyone's prompting.
Unfortunately, no one bothered to turn off the tiger.
I heard it, a grumbling that should have come from the clouds. I rose quickly as it
stalked into view, a creature so magnificent in the terror that it instilled that I could not take
my eyes from its pelt, its face, the waterlike rippling of its muscles at shoulder and haunch.
A dark-feathered bird swept in front of it, but its gaze did not leave me for even the
length of a blink.
Slowly, I backed toward the river, crouched, my fingers hooked into pitiful imitations of
claws. Eveiything inside me from heart to stomach had suddenly become weightless and was floating
toward my throat, and I felt a curious giddiness that split the air into fluttering dark spots
before coalescing into stripes, massive paws, and disdainful curled lips exposing sharp white
death.
It should have leaped when it reached the boulder I had been sitting on. And it did. And
despite the training, the quiet talks, the assurances of my continuing good health . . . despite
it all, I screamed.
The tiger struck me full on the chest, its front paws grabbing for a hold, its rear claws
reaching to disembowel. I fell as I used the creature's momentum to spin us around, dropping off
the edge of the low bank and into the water. There were three rows of fire across my ribs, six
more on my shoulder blades, but I held the tiger under, a minute, more, until at last it quieted
and I thrust it away from me and staggered back to land. The entire sequence could not have lasted
more than three minutes from start to finish, but I felt as though a dozen years had been suddenly
added to my life. What there was of it.
I fell, gasping, spitting out water, then rolled onto my back and stared at my hands. They
were bloody, and I sat up abruptly, looking around wildly for someone to patch me.
This was not supposed to happen.
I was to be strong, clever, luring the beast to its drowning... but I was not supposed to
be clawed.
Immediately, a white-coated tech raced out from behind me and waded into the water with
two assistants, the better to lug the simulacrum back to the shop for another repair job and, I
imagined, another shot at another sucker like me. A fourth man, his shirt and trousers rumpled and
soiled, wandered over to me and slapped in quick succession antiseptic and medpatches onto my
injuries. I smiled at him. He scowled. I knew what was bothering him. If I couldn't be cajoled
into doing it again, he would have to do some pretty fancy editing to keep the blood from showing.
I think he expected me to feel sorry for him. As though it were my fault.
And when he was done, with not a word of condolence, or, even of encouragement, I moved
stiffly back to my rock and sat, waiting with dripping hair while those clouds waited to soak me
until, finally, the artfully gnarled bole of a beautiful oak on the opposite bank split open with
a zipperlike tear, r and the director stepped out.
"Great," I muttered, and dropped my hands into my lap.
The director paused for a moment as if reorienting him- .. self, sighed, and retrieved a
powered megaphone from the ' rushes on the riverbank. He sniffed, looked everywhere but at me, and
yanked a crimson beret down hard over an impossibly battered left ear. '
"You're Gordon Anderson, right?" The voice should have '' been godlike, undei the
circumstances. Unfortunately, it
wasn't. It squeaked. i
I nodded.
"You okay?"
Bless you, I thought sourly, and nodded. .
"Shouldn't have done that."
I didn't know whether he meant me or the tiger.
"Gordon Anderson," he said again, as if tasting it for some hint of its flavor, or for
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some trace of its poison.
He stared at the sky, sighed once more, and then I aealized I was expected to stand up.
That I refused to do. The last . time I was naked and standing, my female costar had nearly
strangled laughing. It had almost cost me the job, but she had felt sorry for me and blamed it on
her lunch.
Besides, those patches weren't new. The antiseptic was weak and I was hurting, badly.
Meanwhile, the squeaking continued.
"Sorry about the animal, but you're supposed to be experienced at this sort of thing,
Anderson. That's what they told me at casting. You're supposed to be experienced. A stage actor,
right? You're supposed to know about these things, Anderson, if I know anything about that sort
of... living, Am I getting through to you, Anderson? You're supposed to know!"
I could think of little more to do at the moment but nod again. My fingers kept returning
to the patches, touching, pressing, wondering how I was supposed to handle the flood sequence
without ripping open the bandages and bleeding to death. I would see the Diagmed people afterward,
of course, but I had a feeling they could do nothing for me. The healing would be speeded up, but
there probably would be scars. And why not?
"You're supposed to be brave, yet frightened, Anderson," the voice piped on, as though my
screams hadn't been real enough. "Fearless, yet hinting at grave doubts as to your next plan of
action. There is a flood coming, Anderson, a flood! Do you have any idea what that means?"
"I'll drown," I said, just loud enough for him to misunderstand.
"I don't think you're right for this job, Anderson, to tell you the truth," the director
said after a carefully measured dozen beats of pacing, and waiting for word that the tiger was all
right. "You . . . you are required, you see, to set an example, the perfect example, for the
audience-in case you've forgotten. You must radiate courage, determination, and just a drop of
apprehension. You have trials yet to come, remember, trials that you cannot possibly imagine. And
these trials that you cannot possibly imagine are filling you with challenge and trepidation. And,
I might add, those children out there who are watching will want to be with you! They have to
understand not only the vicissitudes of -life, but also their symbolic representations in your
journey. If they don't, they're only going to get nightmares. Do you follow me, Anderson? I say,
do you follow me?"
Whither thou directeth, midget, I thought, then quickly nodded and raised my hands in a
virtuoso combination
display of supplication (for the continuance of the job), ,! surrender (to the director's artistic
authority), and defiance (for the sole benefit of the tapeman who was still running his :J idiotic
machine).
The director grinned.
I clamped my hands firmly on my knees and straightened
to my full sitting height. '!
"That's fine, Anderson. I knew we would be able to
communicate once you got to know me a little better. Now, u
we have about thirty minutes or so before the flood. Why i
don't you take a short break and prepare yourself? We can .
run through the close-ups later on, when the flood goes
down. Is that all right with you?" ;1
"Whatever you say, boss," I said. And after he had tramped off somewhere to commune with
whatever he communed with to make these tapes, I slid off the rock to the carefully trimmed grass,
crossed my legs, and folded my hands over my stomach. After a doubtful glance at the sky, I closed
my eyes, wrinkled my brow in practiced concentration, and fell ^' asleep.
When I dreamed, it was of a small glass unicorn surrounded by low-burning candles.
The flood came precisely on cue-the director wouldn't
have had it otherwise-but the finely woven strands of
safety line that should have prevented me from being swept
away into the next sound stage snapped under the pressure.
Luckily, I was out of position and managed to grab on to the
director's oak, where they found me tightly gripping the
trunk when the waters subsided. When I opened my eyes
and they realized I was far more frightened than injured,
they let me be. Except for the director, who slapped me on
the back, patted me slyly on the left cheek (both of them),
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and strode bellowing off toward the setting of the next .
scene-the earthquake. _
Slowly, testing one limb at a time, I unwrapped myself from the plastic tree and snatched
at the robe one of the .` crewmen held out for me. After a moment's hard glare at the ' water and
the sky, I stumbled off to the dressing room we all used in common. There was no one inside the
long, narrow building when I arrived, and for that one small favor I was eternally grateful. I
dried myself as best I could with my hands refusing to close, my arms disobeying the commands
from my muddled brain, then I sat in front of my mirror and watched a single drop of water fall
from my chin.
I stared at my reflection. Stared at the array of small and large jars, long and short
tubes, hairpieces and skin dyes, falseflesh and false eyes. Stared at them all until they blurred
into a parody of a rainbow; stared, grunted, and swung my fist into their midst, smashing until
all were scattered on the floor.
Stared at the mirror, at the reflection, at the high creased forehead and brown eyes and
slightly hooked nose and slightly soft chin. My fist came up to my shoulder. Trembled. I wanted to
split open my knuckles on that face in the mirror, and drive cracks through the world that existed
behind my back.
But at the moment-and only at the moment-it was all the world I had, and my hand dropped
slowly to the table, where it rested on a ragged bit of cloth I used out of habit to wipe off my
face.
In the beginning the idea had been a tempting one. Begun by the British and expanded by
the Americans, the tapes were the foundation of a dream-induced system through which young people
would hopefully be matured without actually suffering through the birth pangs of adolescence.
Hospital wards with soft colors, nurses with kind faces, and for two hours and twenty minutes
every other day the young were wired and hooked and taped to a machine, which I and others like
me, those actors with no place to go, inhabited. We -wrestled with tigers, endured floods, endured
women and men and disasters personal. It was, as the narration stressed again and again and again-
who knows how often? -all very symbolic, and all very real.
Watch! the voice ordered.
Take care, the voice cautioned.
Watch, and take care, and listen, and apply . . . apply... apply . . . listen . . .
apply...
A debriefing, then, which lasted for something like an hour. More, if you were new to
growing without aging. Less, if you'd been in the system for a year or more.
The first children/adults would not be through the entire program for, the director once
told me, at least another ten months. But, if you listened to him carefully and believed his
raving, things were moving along just splendidly.
I could see it without much prompting.
Eleven-year-olds with graying hair and wrinkles and a walk that bordered on the burlesque
of infirmity.
A girl twelve with the mind of a woman.
A boy ten with the rebellion sponged-exorcised out of him, exorcised and leaving him
without dreams of how it had been when he had been ...but he never had been ...young.
It was, admittedly, exciting. And the nightmares I had about the possible consequences
were only just that. So I rationalized whenever I went to the studio. After all, frankly, it was a
job. An actor's job. Just about the only one left.
I had been in Lofrisco, wandering about that coast-long cityplex, when Vivian-my-agent
called me and brought me back to Philayork. It was the break, she told me confidentlythe chance
for exposure, and the cash, that I needed.
"Listen, Gordy," she'd said, "these kids will know you for the rest of their lives! Not by
name, but they'll recognize your face! They'll want to see you on stage-if that's what you're
still after--on the comunit channels, the cinema bowls. You'll have it made, you idiot. You can't
pass this up."
And, to be honest, I hadn't. But neither had I forgotten the near-empty houses I had
played to when I had managed to wheedle permission to leave those joyhall holovid arenas and
cinema bowls.
Near empty.
Partially full.
There had been five in which I was an understudy. I didn't much care. It was live, actors
and audience, and I drifted from one theater to another waiting for the chance to get in on the
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file:///G|/rah/Glow%20of%20Candles,%20a%20Unicorn's%20Eye.txtVersion0.5dtd033100AGLOWOFCANDLES,AUNICORN'SEYE*CharlesL.GrantImentionedthefactthatwritersneedtoserveanapprenticeshipinord\ertomastertheircraft.CharlesGrantsurelydid,Inoneofthehardestandmostthanklessjobs\anywriterhasevertakenon.Hisexaltedt...

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