James Tiptree Jr. - Houston, Houston Do You Read

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JAMES TIPTREE, JR.

Houston, Houston,

Do You Read?

James Tiptree, Jr., aside from the award-winning story that follows this

introduction, has been justly lauded as one of the excellent writers to appear

in science fiction in recent years. Precise biographical data, however, have

been difficult to come by. However, with the author's assistance, the

following facts have at last been collected and are hereby presented to the

reader.

James Tiptree, Jr., was born in September 1967, in the import section of the

McLean Giant Food Store. His birth occurred in front of a display of Tiptree's

English Marmalade, which appeared to him to be a nice inconspicuous name that

editors would not recall having rejected. The subsequent acceptance of his

next thirty or forty stories shocked and nonplussed him, but gave him the

opportunity to form many genuine epistolary friendships, since he had the bad

habit of writing fan letters to writers he admired. In the course of a

correspondence with Jeffrey D. Smith, a fanzine editor in Baltimore, he gave a

biographical interview, in which he mentioned having been brought up by a pair

of explorer-adventurers who alternated life in the Congo and the Midwest. He

also reported that he had enlisted in the Army Air Force in World War II,

becoming a photo intelligence officer, and subsequent to what was then hoped

to be the outbreak of World Peace, he went in for a little business, a little

government work, and finally settled upon a doctorate and a short research and

teaching career in one of the "soft" sciences. (A "soft" science is one where

you bounce back when you trip.) He refrained from mentioning to his friends

that he had started life as a serious painter, because a companion

personality, Racoona Sheldon, then being slowly born, seemed to need that as a

biographical touch. Tiptree's writing career took a parabolic form, the

downside of the curve being accounted for by a depression which caused his

stories to grow blacker and more few. The coup de grace was given him in

October 1977, when it was revealed that he did not exist. He feels that it

was, though brief, a wondrous existence. He is survived by a short story or

two in press and a novel to be published by Berkley as well as one Hugo, for

THE GIRL WHO WAS PLUGGED IN, and two Nebula Awards for LOVE IS THE PLAN, THE

PLAN IS DEATH, in 1973, and for HOUSTON, HOUSTON, DO YOU READ?, in 1976.

Lorimer gazes around the big crowded cabin, trying to listen to the voices,

trying also to ignore the twitch,, in his insides that means he is about to

remember

something bad. No help; he lives it again, that long- t

ago moment. Himself running blindly-or was he

pushed?-into the strange toilet at Evanston Junior

High. His fly open, his dick in his hand, he can still

see the grey zipper edge of his jeans around his pale

exposed pecker. The hush. The sickening wrongness

of shapes, faces turning. The first blaring giggle. Girls.

He was in the girls' can. -

He flinches wryly now, so many years later, not looking at the women's faces.

The cabin curves around over his head surrounding him with their alien things:

the beading rack, the twins' loom, Andy's leather work, the damned kudzu vine

wriggling everywhere, the chickens. So cosy.... Trapped, he is. Irretrievably

trapped for life in everything he does not enjoy. Strutturelessness. Personal

trivia, unmeaning intimacies. The claims he can somehow never meet. Ginny: You

never

talk to me . . . Ginny, love, he thinks involuntarily. The hurt doesn't come.

Bud Geirr's loud chuckle breaks in on him. Bud is joking with some of them,

out of sight around a bulkhead. Dave is visible, though. Major Norman Davis on

the far side of the cabin, his bearded profile bent toward a small dark woman

Lorimer can't quite focus on. But Dave's head seems oddly tiny and sharp, in

fact the whole cabin looks unreal. A cackle bursts out from the "ceiling"-the

bantam hen in her basket.

At this moment Lorimer becomes sure he has been drugged.

Curiously, the idea does not anger him. He leans or rather tips back, perching

cross-legged in the zero gee, letting his gaze go to the face of the woman he

has been talking with. Connie. Constantia Morelos. A tall moonfaced woman in

capacious green pajamas. He has never really cared for talking to women.

Ironic.

"I suppose," he says aloud, "it's possible that in some sense we are not

here."

That doesn't sound too clear, but she nods interestedly. She's watching my

reactions, Lorimer tells himself. Women are natural poisoners. Has he said

that aloud too? Her expression doesn't change. His vision is taking on a

pleasing local clarity. Connie's skin strikes him as quite fine,

healthy-looking. Olive tan even after two years in space. She was a farmer, he

recalls. Big pores, but without the caked look he associates with women her

age.

"You probably never wore make-up," he says. She looks puzzled. "Face paint,

powder. None of you have."

"Oh!" Her smile shows a chipped front tooth. "Oh yes, I think Andy has."

"Andy?"

"For plays. Historical plays, Andy's good at that."

"Of course. Historical plays."

Lorimer's brain seems to be expanding, letting in light. He is understanding

actively now, the myriad bits and pieces linking into pattern. Deadly

patterns, he perceives; but the drug is shielding him in some

way. Like an amphetamine high without the pressure.

Maybe it's something they use socially? No, they're

watching, too. '•

"Space bunnies, I still don't dig it," Bud Geirr laughs infectiously. He has a

friendly buoyant voice people like; Lorimer still likes it after two years.

"You chicks have kids back home, what do your folks think about you flying

around out here with old Andy, h'mm?" Bud floats into view, his arm draped

around a twin's shoulders. The one called Judy Paris, Lorimer decides; the

twins are hard to tell. She drifts passively at an angle to Bud's big body: a

jut-breasted plain girl in flowing yellow pajamas, her black hair raying out.

Andy's read head swims up to them. He is holding a big green spaceball,

looking about sixteen.

"Old Andy." Bud shakes his head, his grin flashing, under his thick dark

mustache. "When I was your age-.: folks didn't let their women fly around with

me."

Connie's lips quirk faintly. In Lorimer's head the pieces slide toward

pattern. I know, he thinks. Do you. know I know? His head is vast and

crystalline, very nice really. Easier to think. Women.... No compact

generalization forms in his mind, only a few speaking ;f faces on a matrix of

pervasive irrelevance. Human, of course. Biological necessity. Only so, so . .

. diffuse? Pointless? . . . His sister Amy, soprano con tremolo: `50f course

women could contribute as much as men if you'd treat us as equals. You'll

see!" And then marrying that idiot the second time. Well, now he., can see.

"Kudzu vines," he says aloud. Connie smiles. How they all smile.

"How 'boot that?" Bud says happily. "Ever think j we'd see chicks in zero gee,

hey, Dave? Artits-stico. Woo-ee!" Across the cabin Dave's bearded head turns

to him, not smiling.

"And of Andy's had it all to his self. Stunt your, growth, lad." He punches

Andy genially on the arm, Andy catches himself on the bulkhead. But can't be

drunk, Lorimer thinks; not on that fruit cider. But he

doesn't usually sound so much like a stage Texan either. A drug.

"Hey, no offense," Bud is saying earnestly to the boy, "I mean that. You have

to forgive one underprilly, underprivileged, brother. These chicks are good

people. Know what?" he tells the girl, "You could look stupendous if you fix

yourself up a speck. Hey, I can show you, old Buddy's a expert. I hope you

don't mind my saying that. As a matter of fact you look real stupendous to me

right now."

He hugs her shoulders, flings out his arm and hugs Andy too. They float upward

in his grasp, Judy grinning excitedly, almost pretty.

"Let's get some more of that good stuff." Bud propels them both toward the

serving rack which is decorated for the occasion with sprays of greens and

small real daisies.

"Happy New Year! Hey, Happy New Year, y'all!"

Faces turn, more smiles. Genuine smiles, Lorimer thinks, maybe they really

like their new years. He feels he has infinite time to examine every event,

the implications evolving in crystal facets. I'm an echo chamber. Enjoyable,

to be the observer. But others are observing too. They've started something

here. Do they realize? So vulnerable, three of us, five of them in this

fragile ship. They don't know. A dread unconnected to action lurks behind his

mind.

"By god we made it," Bud laughs. "You space chickies, I have to give it to

you. I commend you, by god I say it. We wouldn't be here, wherever we are.

Know what, I jus' might decide to stay in the service after all. Think they

have room for old Bud in your space program, sweetie?"

"Knock that off, Bud," Dave says quietly from the far wall. "I don't want to

hear us use the name of the Creator like that." The full chestnut beard gives

him a patriarchal gravity. Dave is forty-six, a decade older than Bud and

Lorimer. Veteran of six successful missions.

"Oh my apologies, Major Dave old buddy." Bud chuckles intimately to the girl.

"Our commanding ossifer. Stupendous guy. Hey, Doc!" he calls. "How's your

attitude? You making out dinko?"

"Cheers," Lorimer hears his voice reply, the complex stratum of his feelings

about Bud rising like a kraken in the moonlight of his mind. The submerged

silent thing he has about them all, all the Buds and Daves and big,

indomitable, cheerful, able, disciplined, slow-minded mesomorphs he has cast

his life with. Meso-ectos, he corrected himself; astronauts aren't

muscleheads. They like him, he has been careful about that. Liked him well

enough to get him on Sunbird, to make him the official scientist on the first

circumsolar mission. That little Doc Lorimer, he's cool, he's on the team. No

shit from Lorimer, not like those other scientific assholes. He does the bit

well with his small neat build and his deadpan remarks. And the years of

turning out for the bowling, the volleyball, the tennis, the skeet, the

skiiing that broke his ankle, the touch football that broke his collarbone.

Watch that Doc, he's a sneaky one. And the big men banging him on the back,

accepting him. Their token scientist . . . The trouble is, he isn't any kind

of scientist any more. Living off his postdoctoral plasma work, a lucky hit.

He hasn't really been into the math for years, he isn't up to it now. Too many

other interests, too much time spent explaining elementary stuff. I'm a

half-jock, he thinks. A foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier and I'd be

just like them. One of them. An alpha. They probably sense it underneath, the

beta bile. Had the jokes worn a shade thin in Sunbird, all that year going

out? A year of Bud and Dave playing gin. That damn exercycle, gearing it up

too tough for me. They didn't mean it, though. We were a team.

The memory of gaping jeans flicks at him, the painful end part the grinning

faces waiting for him when he stumbled out. The howls, the dribble down his

leg. Being cool, pretending to laugh too. You shit heads, I'll show you. 1 am

not a girl.

Bud's voice rings out, chanting "And a hap-pee New Year to you all down

there!" Parody of the oily NASA

tone. "Hey, why don't we shoot'em a signal? Greetings to all you Earthlings, I

mean, all you little Lunies. Hap-py New Year in the good year whatsis." He

snuffles comically. "There is a Santy Claus, Houston, ye-ew nevah saw nothin'

like this! Houston, wherever you are," he sings out. "Hey, Houston! Do you

read?"

In the silence Lorimer sees Dave's face set into Major Norman Davis,

commanding.

And without warning he is suddenly back there, back a year ago in the cramped,

shook-up command module of Sunbird, coming out from behind the sun. It's the

drug doing this, he thinks as memory closes around him, it's so real. Stop. He

tries to hang onto reality, to the sense of trouble building underneath.

-But he can't, he is there, hovering behind Dave and Bud in the triple

couches, as usual avoiding his official station in the middle, seeing beside

them their reflections against blackness in the useless port window. The outer

layer has been annealed, he can just make out a bright smear that has to be

Spica floating through the image of Dave's head, making the bandage look like

a kid's crown.

"Houston, Houston, Sunbird," Dave repeats; "Sunbird calling Houston. Houston,

do you read? Come in, Houston."

The minutes start by. They are giving it seven out, seven back; seventy-eight

million miles, ample margin.

"The high gain's shot, that's what it is," Bud says cheerfully. He says it

almost every day.

"No way." Dave's voice is patient, also as usual. "It checks out. Still too

much crap from the sun, isn't that right, Doc?"

"The residual radiation from the flare is just about in line with us," Lorimer

says. "They could have a hard time sorting us out." For the thousandth time he

registers his own faint, ridiculous gratification at being consulted.

"Shit, we're outside Mercury." Bud shakes his head. "How we gonna find out who

won the Series?"

He often says that too. A ritual, out here in

eternal night. Lorimer watches the sparkle of Spica drift by the reflection of

Bud's curly face-bush. His own whiskers are scant and scraggly, like a blond

Fu Manchu. In the aft corner of the window is a striped glare that must be the

remains of their port energy accumulators, fried off in the solar explosion

that hit them a month ago and fused the outer layers of their windows. That

was when Dave cut his head open on the sexlogic panel. Lorimer had been banged

in among the gravity wave experiment, he still doesn't trust the readings.

Luckily the particle stream has missed one piece of the front window; they

still have about twenty degrees of clear vision straight ahead. The brilliant

web of the Pleiades shows there, running off into a blur of light.

Twelve minutes . . . thirteen. The speaker sighs and clicks emptily. Fourteen.

Nothing.

"Sunbird to Houston, Sunbird to Houston. Come in, Houston. Sunbird out." Dave

puts the mike back in its holder. "Give it another twenty-four."

They wait ritually. Tomorrow Packard will reply Maybe.

"Be good to see old Earth again," Bud remarks.

"We're not using any more fuel on attitude," Dave reminds him. "I trust Doc's

figures."

It's not my figures, it's the elementary facts of celestial mechanics, Lorimer

thinks; in October there's only one place for Earth to be. He never says it.

Not to a man who can fly two-body solutions by intuition once he knows where

the bodies are. Bud is a good pilot and a better engineer; Dave is the best

there is. He takes no pride in it. "The Lord helps us, Doc, if we let Him."

"Going to be a bitch docking if the radar's screwed up," Bud says idly. They

all think about that for the hundredth time. It will be a bitch. Dave will do

it. That was why he is hoarding fuel.

The minutes tick off.

"That's it," Dave says-and a voice fills the cabin, shockingly.

"Judy?" It is high and clear. A girl's voice.

"Judy, I'm so glad we got you. What are you doing on this band?"

Bud blows out his breath; there is a frozen instant before Dave snatches up

the mike.

"Sunbird, we read you. This is Mission Sunbird calling Houston, ah, Sunbird

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