Cory Doctorow - A Place So Foreign

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Cory%20Doctorow%20-%20A%20Place%20So%20Foreign.txt

A Place So Foreign

Cory Doctorow

From "A Place So Foreign and Eight More," a short story collection published in

September, 2003 by Four Walls Eight Windows Press (ISBN 1568582862). See

http://craphound.com/place for more.

Originally Published in Science Fiction Age, January 2000

--

Blurbs and quotes:

* Cory Doctorow straps on his miner's helmet and takes you deep into the

caverns and underground rivers of Pop Culture, here filtered through SF-coloured

glasses. Enjoy.

- Neil Gaiman

Author of American Gods and Sandman

* Few writers boggle my sense of reality as much as Cory Doctorow. His vision

is so far out there, you'll need your GPS to find your way back.

- David Marusek

Winner of the Theodore Sturgeon Award, Nebula Award nominee

* Cory Doctorow is one of our best new writers: smart, daring, savvy,

entertaining, ambitious, plugged-in, and as good a guide to the wired world of

the twenty-first century that stretches out before us as you're going to find.

- Gardner Dozois

Editor, Asimov's SF

* He sparkles! He fizzes! He does backflips and breaks the furniture! Science

fiction needs Cory Doctorow!

- Bruce Sterling

Author of The Hacker Crackdown and Distraction

* Cory Doctorow strafes the senses with a geekspeedfreak explosion of gomi kings

with heart, weirdass shapeshifters from Pleasure Island and jumping automotive

jazz joints. If this is Canadian science fiction, give me more.

- Nalo Hopkinson

Author of Midnight Robber and Brown Girl in the Ring

* Cory Doctorow is the future of science fiction. An nth-generation hybrid of

the best of Greg Bear, Rudy Rucker, Bruce Sterling and Groucho Marx, Doctorow

composes stories that are as BPM-stuffed as techno music, as idea-rich as the

latest issue of NEW SCIENTIST, and as funny as humanity's efforts to improve

itself. Utopian, insightful, somehow simultaneously ironic and heartfelt, these

nine tales will upgrade your basal metabolism, overwrite your cortex with new

and efficient subroutines and generally improve your life to the point where

you'll wonder how you ever got along with them. Really, you should need a

prescription to ingest this book. Out of all the glittering crap life and our

society hands us, craphound supreme Doctorow has managed to fashion some

industrial-grade art."

- Paul Di Filippo

Author of The Steampunk Trilogy

* As scary as the future, and twice as funny. In this eclectic and electric

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collection Doctorow strikes sparks off today to illuminate tomorrow, which is

what SF is supposed to do. And nobody does it better.

- Terry Bisson

Author of Bears Discover Fire

--

A note about this story

This story is from my collection, "A Place So Foreign and Eight More," published

by Four Walls Eight Windows Press in September, 2003, ISBN 1568582862. I've

released this story, along with five others, under the terms of a Creative

Commons license that gives you, the reader, a bunch of rights that copyright

normally reserves for me, the creator.

I recently did the same thing with the entire text of my novel, "Down and Out in

the Magic Kingdom" (http://craphound.com/down), and it was an unmitigated

success. Hundreds of thousands of people downloaded the book -- good news -- and

thousands of people bought the book -- also good news. It turns out that, as

near as anyone can tell, distributing free electronic versions of books is a

great way to sell more of the paper editions, while simultaneously getting the

book into the hands of readers who would otherwise not be exposed to my work.

I still don't know how it is artists will earn a living in the age of the

Internet, but I remain convinced that the way to find out is to do basic

science: that is, to do stuff and observe the outcome. That's what I'm doing

here. The thing to remember is that the very *worst* thing you can do to me as

an artist is to not read my work -- to let it languish in obscurity and

disappear from posterity. Most of the fiction I grew up on is out-of-print, and

this is doubly true for the short stories. Losing a couple bucks to people who

would have bought the book save for the availability of the free electronic text

is no big deal, at least when compared to the horror that is being irrelevant

and unread. And luckily for me, it appears that giving away the text for free

gets me more paying customers than it loses me.

You can find the canonical version of this file at

http://craphound.com/place/download.php

If you'd like to convert this file to some other format and distribute it, you

have my permission, provided that:

* You don't charge money for the distribution

* You keep the entire text intact, including this notice, the license below, and

the metadata at the end of the file

* You don't use a file-format that has "DRM" or "copy-protection" or any other

form of use-restriction turned on

If you'd like, you can advertise the existence of your edition by posting a link

to it at http://craphound.com/place/000013.php

--

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###

A Place So Foreign

==================

My Pa disappeared somewhere in the wilds of 1975, when I was just fourteen years

old. He was the Ambassador to 1975, but back home in 1898, in New Jerusalem,

Utah, they all thought he was Ambassador to France. When he disappeared, Mama

and I came back through the triple-bolted door that led from our apt in 1975 to

our horsebarn in 1898. We returned to the dusty streets of New Jerusalem, and I

had to keep on reminding myself that I was supposed to have been in France, and

"polly-voo" for my chums, and tell whoppers about the Eiffel Tower and the fancy

bread and the snails and frogs we'd eaten.

I was born in New Jerusalem, and raised there till I was ten. Then, one summer's

day, my Pa sat me on his knee and told me we'd be going away for a while, that

he had a new job.

"But what about the store?" I said, scandalised. My Pa's wonderful store, the

only General Store in town not run by the Saints, was my second home. I'd spent

my whole life crawling and then walking on the dusty wooden floors, checking

stock and unpacking crates with waybills from exotic places like Salt Lake City

and even San Francisco.

Pa looked uncomfortable. "Mr Johnstone is buying it."

My mouth dropped. James H Johnstone was as dandified a city-slicker as you'd

ever hope to meet. He'd blown into town on the weekly Zephyr Speedball, and skinny

Tommy Benson had hauled his three huge steamer trunks to the cowboy hotel. He'd

tipped Tommy two dollars, in Wells-Fargo notes, and later, in the empty lot

behind the smithy, all the kids in New Jerusalem had gathered 'round Tommy to

goggle at the small fortune in queer, never-seen bills.

"Pa, no!" I said, without thinking. I knew that if my chums ordered their

fathers around like that, they'd get a whipping, but my Pa almost never whipped

me.

He smiled, and stretched his thick moustache across his face. "James, I know you

love the store, but it's already been decided. Once you've been to France,

you'll see that it has wonders that beat anything that store can deliver."

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"Nothing's better than the store," I said.

He laughed and rumpled my hair. "Don't be so sure, son. There are more things in

heaven and earth then are dreamed of in your philosophy." It was one of his

sayings, from Shakespeare, who he'd studied back east, before I was born. It

meant that the discussion was closed.

I decided to withhold judgement until I saw France, but still couldn't shake the

feeling that my Pa was going soft in the head. Mr Johnstone wasn't fit to run an

apple-cart. He was short and skinny and soft, not like my Pa, who, as far as I

was concerned, was the biggest, strongest man in the whole world. I loved my Pa.

#

Well, when we packed our bags and Pa went into the horsebarn to hitch up our

team, I figured we'd be taking a short trip out to the train station. All my

chums were waiting there to see us off, and I'd promised my best pal Oly

Sweynsdatter that I'd give him my coonskin cap to wear until we came back. But

instead, Pa rode us to the edge of town, where the road went to rutted trail and

salt flats, and there was Mr James H Johnstone, in his own fancy-pants trap. Pa

and me moved our luggage into Johnstone's trap and got inside with Mama and

hunkered down so, you couldn't see us from outside. Mama said, "You just hush up

now, James. There's parts of this trip that we couldn't tell you about before we

left, but you're going to have to stay quiet and hold onto your questions until

we get to where we're going."

I nearly said, "To where we're going?" but I didn't, because Mama had never

looked so serious in all my born days. So I spent an hour hunkered down in

there, listening to the clatter of the wheels and trying to guess where we were

going. When I heard the trap stop and a set of wooden doors close, all my

guesses dried up and blew away, because I couldn't think of anywhere we would've

heard those sounds out in the desert.

So imagine my surprise when I stood up and found us right in our very own

horsebarn, having made a circle around town and back to where we'd started from!

Mama held a finger up to her lips and then took Mr Johnstone's soft, girlish

hand as he helped her down from the trap.

My Pa and Mr Johnstone started shifting one of the piles of hay-bales that

stacked to the rafters, until they had revealed a triple-bolted door that looked

new and sturdy, fresh-sawn edges still bright and yellow, and not the weathered

brown of the rest of the barn.

Pa took a key ring out of his vest pocket and unlocked the door, then swung it

open. Each of us shouldered our bags and walked through, in eerie silence, into

a pitch black room.

Pa reached out and pulled the door shut, then there was a sharp click and we

were in 1975.

#

1975 was a queer sight. Our apartment was a lozenge of silver, spoked into the

hub of a floating null-gee doughnut. Pa did something fancy with his hands and

the walls went transparent, and I swear, I dropped to the floor and hugged the

nubby rubber tiles for all I was worth. My eyes were telling me that we were

hundreds of yards off the ground, and while I'd jumped from the rafters of the

horsebarn into the hay countless times, I suddenly discovered that I was afraid

of heights.

After that first dizzying glimpse of 1975, I kept my eyes squeezed shut and held

on for all I was worth. After a minute or two of this, my stomach told me that I

wasn't falling, and I couldn't hear any rushing wind, any birdcalls, anything

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except Mama and Pa laughing, fit to bust. I opened one eye and snuck a peek. My

folks were laughing so hard they had to hold onto each other to stay up, and

they were leaning against thin air, Pa's back pressed up against nothing at all.

Cautiously, I got to my feet and walked over to the edge. I extended one finger

and it bumped up against an invisible wall, cool and smooth as glass in winter.

"James," said my Pa, smiling so wide that his thick moustache stretched all the

way across his face, "welcome to 1975."

#

Pa's ambassadorial mission meant that he often spent long weeks away from home,

teleporting in only for Sunday dinner, the stink of aliens and distant worlds

clinging to him even after he washed up. The last Sunday dinner I had with him,

Mama had made mashed potatoes and corn bread and sausage gravy and turkey,

spending the whole day with the wood-fired cooker back in 1898 (actually, it was

1901 by then, but I always thought of it as 1898). She'd moved the cooker into

the horsebarn after a week of wrestling with the gadgets we had in our 1975

kitchen, and when Pa had warned her that the smoke was going to raise questions

in New Jerusalem, she explained that she was going to run some flexible exhaust

hose through the door into 75 and into our apt's air-scrubber. Pa had shook his

head and smiled at her, and every Sunday, she dragged the exhaust pipe through

the door.

That night, Pa sat down and said grace, and he was in his shirtsleeves with his

suspenders down, and it almost felt like home -- almost felt like a million

Sunday dinners eaten by gaslight, with a sweaty pitcher of lemonade in the

middle of the table, and seasonal wildflowers, and a stinky cheroot for Pa

afterwards as he tipped his chair back and rested one hand on his belly, as if

he couldn't believe how much Mama had managed to stuff him this time.

"How are your studies coming, James?" he asked me, when the robutler had

finished clearing the plates and clattered away into its nook.

"Very well, sir. We're starting calculus now." Truth be told, I hated calculus,

hated Isaac Newton and asymptotes and the whole smelly business. Even with the

viral learning shots, it was like swimming in molasses for me.

"Calculus! Well, well, well --" this was one of Pa's catch-all phrases, like

"How _about_ that?" or "What do you know?" "Well, well, well. I can't believe

how much they stuff into kids' heads here."

"Yes, sir. There's an awful lot left to learn, yet." We did a subject every two

weeks. So far, I'd done French, Molecular and Cellular Biology, Physics and

Astrophysics, Esperanto, Cantonese and Mandarin, and an alien language whose

name translated as "Standard." I'd been exempted from History, of course, along

with the other kids there from the past -- the Chinese girl from the Ming

Dynasty, the Roman boy, and the Injun kid from South America.

Pa laughed around his cigar and crossed his legs. His shoes were so big, they

looked like canoes. "There surely is, son. There surely is. And how are you

doing with your classmates? Any tussles your teacher will want to talk to me

about?"

"No, sir! We're friendly as all get-out, even the girls." The kids in 75 didn't

even notice what they were doing in school. They just sat down at their

workstations and waited to have their brains filled with whatever was going on,

and left at three, and never complained about something being too hard or too

dull.

"That's good to hear, son. You've always been a good boy. Tell you what: you

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bring home a good report this Christmas, and I'll take you to see Saturn's rings

on vacation."

Mama shot him a look then, but he pretended he didn't see it. He stubbed out his

cigar, hitched up his suspenders, and put on his tailcoat and tophat and

ambassadorial sash and picked up his leather case.

"Good night, son. Good night, Ulla. I'll see you on Wednesday," he said, and

stepped into the teleporter.

That was the last time I ever saw him.

#

"He died from bad snails?" Oly Sweynsdatter said to me, yet again.

I balled up a fist and stuck it under his nose. "For the last time, yes. Ask me

again, and I'll feed you this."

I'd been back for a month, and in all that time, Oly had skittered around me

like a shy pony, always nearby but afraid to talk to me. Finally, I'd grabbed

him and shook him and told him not to be such a ninny, tell me what was on his

mind. He wanted to know how my Pa had died, over in France. I told him the

reason that Mama and Mr Johnstone and the man from the embassy had worked out

together. Now, I regretted it. I couldn't get him to shut up.

"Sorry, all right, sorry!" he said, taking a step backwards. We were in the

orchard behind the schoolyard, chucking rotten apples at the tree-trunks to

watch them splatter. "Want to hear something?"

"Sure," I said.

"Tommy Benson's sweet on Marta Helprin. It's disgusting. They hold hands -- _in

church_! None of the fellows will talk to him."

I didn't see what the big deal was. Back in 75, we had had a two-week session on

sexual reproduction, like all the other subjects. Most of the kids there were

already in couples, sneaking off to low-gee bounceataria and renting private

cubes with untraceable cash-tokens. I'd even tussled with one girl, Katebe

M'Buto, another exchange student, from United Africa Trading Sphere. I'd picked

her up at her apt, and her father had even shaken my hand -- they grow up fast

in UATS. Of course, I'd never let on to my folks. Pa would've broken an axle.

"That's pretty disgusting, all right," I said, unconvincingly.

"You want to go down to the river? I told Amos and Luke that I'd meet them after

lunch."

I didn't much feel like it, but I didn't know what else to do. We walked down to

the swimming hole, where some boys were already naked, swimming and horsing

around. I found myself looking away, conscious of their nudity in a way that I'd

never been before -- all the boys in town swam there, all summer long.

I turned my back to the group and stripped down, then ran into the water as

quick as I could.

I paddled around a little, half-heartedly, and then I found myself being pulled

under! My sinuses filled with water and I yelled a stream of bubbles, and closed

my mouth on a swallow of water. Strong hands pulled at my ankles. I kicked out

as hard as I could, and connected with someone's head. The hands loosened and I

shot up like a cork, sputtering and coughing. I ran for the shore, and saw one

of the Allen brothers surfacing, rubbing at his head and laughing. The four

Allen boys lived on a ranch with their parents out by the salt flats, and we

only saw them when they came into town with their folks for supplies. I'd never

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liked them, but now, I saw red.

"You pig!" I shouted at him. "You stupid, rotten, pig! What the heck do you

think you were doing?"

The Allens kept on laughing -- I used to know some of their names, but in the

time I'd been in 75, they'd grown as indistinguishable as twins: big, hard boys

with their heads shaved for lice. They pointed at me and laughed. I scooped up a

flat stone from the shore and threw it at the head of the one who'd pulled me

under, as hard as I could.

Lucky for him -- and me! -- I was too angry to aim properly, and the stone hit

him in the shoulder, knocking him backwards. He shouted at me -- it was like a

roar of a wild animal -- and the four brothers charged.

Oly appeared at my side. "Run!" he shouted.

I was too angry. I balled my fists and stood my ground. The first one shot out

of the water towards me, and punched me so hard in the guts, I saw stars. I fell

to the ground, gasping. I looked up at a forest of strong, bare legs, and knew

they'd surrounded me.

"It's the Sheriff!" Oly shouted. The legs disappeared. I struggled to my knees.

Oly collapsed to the ground beside me, laughing. "Did you see the way they ran?

The Sheriff never comes down to the river!"

"Thanks," I said, around gasps, and started to get dressed.

"Any time," he said. "Now, let's do some swimming."

"No, I gotta go home and help Mama," I lied. I didn't feel like going skinny

dipping anymore -- maybe never again.

Oly gave me a queer look. "OK. See you."

#

I went straight home, pelting down the road as fast as I could, not even looking

where I was going. I let the door slam behind me and took the stairs two at a

time up to the attic ladder, then bolted the trap-door shut behind me and sat in

the dark, with my knees in my chest.

Down below, Mama let out a half-hearted, "James? Is that you?" like she always

did since I came back home. I ignored her, like always, and she stopped worrying

about it, like always.

Pa's last trip had been to the Dalai Lama's court in 1975. The man from the

embassy said that he was going to talk with the monks about a "white-paper that

the two embassies were jointly presenting on the effect of mimetic

ambassadorships on the reincarnated soul." It was all nonsense to me. He'd never

arrived. The teleporter said that it had put him down gentle as you like on the

floor of the Lama's floating castle over the Caspian Sea, but the monks never

saw him.

And that was that.

It had been a month since our return. I'd ventured out into town and looked up

my chums, and found them so full of gossip that didn't mean anything to me; so

absorbed with games that seemed childish to me; so strange, that I'd retreated

home. I'd prowled around our house like a burglar at first, and when I came back

to the attic, all the numbness that had enveloped me since the man from the

State Department had teleported into our apt melted away and I started bawling.

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Cor...20Doctorow%20-%20A%20Place%20So%20Foreign.txt (10 of 41) [12/30/2004 2:09:28 PM]

Cory Doctorow - A Place So Foreign

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