Bob Shaw - Light of Other Days

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"Light of Other Days" is one of the three short stories that

tied for first place in the penultimate ballot. Its author, Bob

Shaw, is a newspaper reporter who has sold a small but steady

stream of tales to the science fiction maga;.ines. He confesses

he is addicted to puns and whiskeyand the "e" in that

"whiskey" goes toward revealing something of his origins; for

Bob Shaw is a sturdy Irishman in his mid-thirties, Belfast

born and bred. He is married and has three children. He says

he admires the writing of Lawrence Durrell; the only science

fiction writer he will commit himself to naming is Anthony

Burgess. Though by no means as prolific a writer as Burgess,

Shaw is now working on his first novel, which has been

contracted for by Avon.

LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS

Bob Shaw

Leaving the village behind, we followed the heady sweeps of

the road up into a land of slow glass,

I had never seen one of the farms before and at first found

them slightly eeriean effect heightened by imagination and

circumstance. The car's turbine was pulling smoothly and

quietly in the damp air so that we seemed to be carried over

the convolutions of the road in a kind of supernatural silence.

On our right the mountain sifted down into an incredibly

perfect valley of timeless pine, and everywhere stood the great

frames of slow glass, drinking light. An occasional flash of

afternoon sunlight on their wind bracing created an illusion of

movement, but in fact the frames were deserted. The rows of

windows had been standing on the hillside for years, staring

into the valley, and men only cleaned them in the middle of

the night when their human presence would not matter to the

thirsty glass.

They were fascinating, but Selina and I didn't mention the

windows. I think we hated each other so much we both were

reluctant to sully anything new by drawing it into the nexus of

our emotions. The holiday, I had begun to realize, was a

stupid idea in the first place. I had thought it would cure

everything, but, of course, it didn't stop Selina being pregnant

and, worse still, it didn't even stop her being angry about

being pregnant.

Rationalizing our dismay over her condition, we had circu-

lated the usual statements to the effect that we would have

liked having childrenbut later .on, at the proper time.

Selina's pregnancy had cost us her well-paid job and with it

the new house we had been negotiating for and which was far

beyond the reach of my income from poetry. But the real

source of our annoyance was that we were face to face with

the realization that people who say they want children later

always mean they want children never. Our nerves were

thrumming with the knowledge that we, who had thought

ourselves so unique, had fallen into the same biological trap

as every mindless rutting creature which ever existed.

The road took us along the southern slopes of Ben Cru-

achan until we began to catch glimpses of the gray Atlantic far

ahead. I had just cut our speed to absorb the view better when

I noticed the sign spiked to a gatepost. It said: "SLOW

GLASSQuality High, Prices LowJ. R. Hagan." On an

impulse I stopped the car on the verpe, wincing slightly as

tough grasses whipped noisily at the bodywork.

"Why have we stopped?" Selina's neat, smoke-silver head

turned in surprise.

"Look at that sign. Let's go up and see what there is. The

' stuff might be reasonably priced out here."

Selina's voice was pitched high with scorn as she refused,

but I was too taken with my idea to listen. I had an illogical

conviction that doing something extravagant and crazy would

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Bob Shaw - Light of Other Days

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