L Ron Hubbard - Battlefield Earth

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Introduction.

Recently there came a period when I had little to do. This was novel in a life

so crammed with busy years, and I decided to amuse myself by writing a novel

that was pure science fiction.

In the hard-driven times between 1930 and 1950, I was a professional writer not

simply because it was my job, but because I wanted to finance more serious

researches. In those days there were few agencies pouring out large grants to

independent workers. Despite what you might hear about Roosevelt “relief,” those

were depression years. One succeeded or one starved. One became a top-liner or a

gutter bum. One had to work very hard at his craft or have no craft at all. It

was a very challenging time for anyone who lived through it.

I have heard it said, as an intended slur, “He was a science fiction writer,

”and have heard it said of many. It brought me to realize that few people

understand the role science fiction has played in the lives of Earth's whole

population.

I have just read several standard books that attempt to define “science fiction”

and to trace its history. There are many experts in this field, many

controversial opinions. Science fiction is favored with the most closely knit

reading public that may exist, possibly the most dedicated of any genre.

Devotees are called “fans,” and the word has a special prestigious meaning in

science fiction.

Few professional writers, even those in science fiction, have written very much

on the character of "sf". They are usually too busy turning out the work itself

to expound on what they have written. But there are many experts on this subject

among both critics and fans, and they have a lot of worthwhile things to say.

However, many false impressions exist, both of the genre and of its writers. So

when one states that he set out to write a work of pure science fiction, he had

better state what definition he is using.

It will probably be best to return to the day in 1938 when I first entered this

field, the day I met John W. Campbell, Jr., a day in the very dawn of what has

come to be known as The Golden Age of science fiction. I was quite ignorant of

the field and regarded it, in fact, a bit diffidently. I was not there of my own

choice. I had been summoned to the vast old building on Seventh Avenue in dusty,

dirty, old New York by the very top brass of Street and Smith publishing

company- an executive named Black and another, F. Orlin Tremaine. Ordered there

with me was another writer, Arthur J. Burks. In those days when the top brass of

a publishing company- particularly one as old and prestigious as Street and

Smith-'invited" a writer to visit, it was like being commanded to appear before

the king or receiving a court summons. You arrived, you sat there obediently,

and you spoke when you were spoken to.

We were both, Arthur J. Burks and I, top-line professionals in other writing

fields. By the actual tabulation of A. B. Dick, which set advertising rates for

publishing firms, either of our names appearing on a magazine cover would send

the circulation rate skyrocketing, something like modern TV ratings.

The top brass came quickly to the point. They had recently started or acquired a

magazine called Astounding Science Fiction. Other magazines were published by

other houses, but Street and Smith was unhappy because its magazine was mainly

publishing stories about machines and machinery. As publishers, its executives

knew you had to have people in stories. They had called us in because, aside

from our A. B. Dick rating as writers, we could write about real people. They

knew we were busy and had other commitments. But would we be so kind as to write

science fiction? We indicated we would.

They called in John W. Campbell, Jr., the editor of the magazine. He found

himself looking at two adventure-story writers, and though adventure writers

might be the aristocrats of the whole field and might have vast followings of

their own, they were not science fiction writers. He resisted. In the first

place, calling in top-liners would ruin his story budget due to their word

rates. And in the second place, he had his own ideas of what science fiction

was.

Campbell, who dominated the whole field of sf as its virtual czar until his

death in 1971, was a huge man who had majored in physics at Massachusetts

institute of Technology and graduated from Duke University with a Bachelor of

Science degree. His idea of getting a story was to have some professor or

scientist write it and then doctor it up and publish it. Perhaps that is a bit

unkind, but it really was what he was doing. To fill his pages even he, who had

considerable skill as a writer, was writing stories for the magazine.

The top brass had to directly order Campbell to buy and to publish what we wrote

for him. He was going to get people into his stories and get something going

besides machines.

I cannot tell you how many other writers were called in. I do not know. In all

justice, it may have been Campbell himself who found them later on. But do not

get the impression that Campbell was anything less than a master and a genius in

his own right. Any of the stable of writers he collected during this Golden Age

will tell you that. Campbell could listen. He could improve things. He could

dream up little plot twists that were masterpieces. He well deserved the title

that he gained and kept as the top editor and the dominant force that made

science fiction as respectable as it became. Star Wars, the all-time box office

record movie to date (exceeded only by its sequel), would never have happened if

science fiction had not become as respectable as Campbell made it. More than

that-Campbell played no small part in driving this society into the space age.

You had to actually work with Campbell to know where he was trying to go, what

his idea was of this thing called “science fiction.” I cannot give you any

quotations from him; I can just tell you what I felt he was trying to do. In

time we became friends. Over lunches and in his office and at his home on

weekends- where his wife Dona kept things smooth- talk was always of stories but

also of science. To say that Campbell considered science fiction as “prophecy”

is an oversimplification. He had very exact ideas about it.

Only about a tenth of my stories were written for the fields of science fiction

and fantasy. I was what they called a high-production writer, and these fields

were just not big enough to take everything I could write. I gained my original

reputation in other writing fields during the eight years before the Street and

Smith interview.

Campbell, without saying too much about it, considered the bulk of the stories I

gave him to be not science fiction but fantasy, an altogether different thing.

Some of my stories he eagerly published as science fiction- among them Final

Blackout. Many more, actually. I had, myself, somewhat of a science background,

had done some pioneer work in rockets and liquid gases, but I was studying the

branches of man's past knowledge at that time to see whether he had ever come up

with anything valid. This, and a love of the ancient tales now called The

Arabian Nights, led me to write quite a bit of fantasy. To handle this fantasy

material, Campbell introduced another magazine, Unknown. As long as I was

writing novels for it, it continued. But the war came and I and others went, and

I think Unknown only lasted about forty months. Such novels were a bit hard to

come by. And they were not really Campbell's strength.

So anyone seeking to say that science fiction is a branch of fantasy or an

extension of it is unfortunately colliding with a time-honored professional

usage of terms. This is an age of mixed genres. I hear different forms of music

mixed together like soup. I see so many different styles of dance tangled

together into one “dance” that I wonder whether the choreographers really know

the different genres of dance anymore. There is abroad today the concept that

only conflict produces new things. Perhaps the philosopher Hegel introduced

that, but he also said that war was necessary for the mental health of the

people and a lot of other nonsense. If all new ideas have to spring from the

conflict between old ones, one must deny that virgin ideas can be conceived.

So what would pure science fiction be?

It has been surmised that science fiction must come from an age where science

exists. At the risk of raising dispute and outcry- which I have risked all my

life and received but not been bothered by, and have gone on and done my job any

way- I wish to point out some things:

Science fiction does not come after the fact of a scientific discovery or

development. It is the herald of possibility. It is the plea that someone should

work on the future. Yet it is not prophecy. It is the dream that precedes the

dawn when the inventor or scientist awakens and goes to his books or his lab

saying, “I wonder whether I could make that dream come true in the world of real

science.”

You can go back to Lucian, second century A.D., or to Johannes Kepler (1571-

1630)- who founded modern dynamical astronomy and who also wrote Somniom, an

imaginary space flight to the moon- or to Mary Shelley and her Frankenstein, or

to Poe or Verne or Wells and ponder whether this was really science fiction.

Let us take an example: a man invents an eggbeater. A writer later writes a

story about an eggbeater. He has not, thereby, written science fiction. Let us

continue the example: a man writes a story about some metal that, when twiddled,

beats an egg, but no such tool has ever before existed in fact. He has now

written science fiction. Somebody else, a week or a hundred years later, reads

the story and says, “Well, well. Maybe it could be done.” And makes an

eggbeater.

But whether or not it was possible that twiddling two pieces of metal would beat

eggs, or whether or not anybody ever did it afterward, the man still has written

science fiction.

How do you look at this word “fiction?” It is a sort of homograph. In this case

it means two different things. A professor of literature knows it means “a

literary work whose content is produced by the imagination and is not

necessarily based on fact; the category of literature comprising works of this

kind, including novels, short stories, and plays.” It is derived from the Latin

fictio, a making, a fashioning, from fictus, past participle of fingere, to

touch, form, mold.

But when we join the word to “science” and get “science fiction,” the word

“fiction” acquires two meanings in the same use: 1) the science used in the

story is at least partly fictional; and 2) any story is fiction. The American

Heritage Dictionary of the English

Language defines science fiction as “fiction in which scientific developments

and discoveries form an element of plot or background; especially a work of

fiction based on prediction of future scientific possibilities.”

So, by dictionary definition and a lot of discussions with Campbell and fellow

writers of that time, science fiction has to do with the material universe and

sciences; these can include economics, sociology, medicine and suchlike, all of

which have a material base.

Then what is fantasy?

Well, believe me, if it were simply the application of vivid imagination, then a

lot of economists and government people and such would be fully qualified

authors! Applying the word “imaginative” to fantasy would be like calling an

entire library “some words. “ Too simplistic, too general a term.

In these modern times many of the ingredients that make up “fantasy” as a type

of fiction have vanished from the stage. You hardly even find them in

encyclopedias anymore. These subjects were spiritualism, mythology, magic,

divination, the supernatural, and many other fields of that type. None of them

had anything really to do with the real universe. This does not necessarily mean

that they never had any validity or that they will not again arise; it merely

means that man, currently, has sunk into a materialistic binge.

The bulk of these subjects consists of false data, but there probably never will

come a time when all such phenomena are explained. The primary reason such a

vast body of knowledge dropped from view is that material science has been

undergoing a long series of successes. But I do notice that every time modern

science thinks it is down to the nitty-gritty of it all, it runs into (and

sometimes adopts) such things as the Egyptian myths that man came from mud, or

something like that. But the only point I am trying to make here is that there

is a whole body of phenomena that we cannot classify as “material. “ They are

the nonmaterial, nonuniverse subjects. And no matter how false many of the old

ideas were, they still existed; who knows but what there might not be some

validity in some bits of them. One would have to study these subjects to have a

complete comprehension of all the knowledge and beliefs possible. I am not

opening the door to someone's saying I believe in all these things: I am only

saying that there is another realm besides dedicated- and even simple-minded-

materialism.

“Fantasy, “ so far as literature is concerned, is defined in the dictionary as

“literary or dramatic fiction characterized by highly fanciful or supernatural

elements. “ Even that is a bit limited as a definition.

So fantasy could be called any fiction that takes up elements such as

spiritualism, mythology, magic, divination, the supernatural, and so on. The

Arbian Nights was a gathering together of the tales of many, many countries and

civilizations- not just of Arabia as many believe. It s actual title was A

Thousand and One Nights of Entertainment. It abounds with examples of fantasy

fiction.

When you mix science fiction with fantasy you do not have a pure genre. The two

are, to a professional, separate genres. I notice today there is a tendency to

mingle them and then excuse the result by calling it “imaginative fiction. “

Actually they don't mix well: science fiction, to be credible, has to be based

on some degree of plausibility; fantasy gives you no limits at all. Writing

science fiction demands care on the part of the author; writing fantasy is as

easy as strolling in the park. (In fantasy, a guy has no sword in his hand;

bang, there's a magic sword in his hand.) This doesn't say one is better than

the other. They are simply very different genres from a professional viewpoint.

But there is more to this: science fiction, particularly in its Golden Age, had

a mission. I cannot, of course, speak for my friends of that period. But from

Campbell and from “shooting the breeze” with other writers of the time, one got

the very solid impression that they were doing a heavy job of beating the drum

to get man to the stars.

At the beginning of that time, science fiction was regarded as a sort of awful

stepchild in the world of literature. But worse than that, science itself was

not getting the attention or the grants or the government expenditures it should

have received. There has to be a lot of public interest and demand before

politicians shell out the financing necessary to get a subject whizzing.

Campbell's crew of writers were pretty stellar. They included very top-liner

names. They improved the literary quality of the genre. And they began the boom

of its broader popularity.

A year or so after The Golden Age began, I recall going into a major

university's science department. I wanted some data on cytology for my own

serious researches. I was given a courteous reception and was being given the

references when I noticed that the room had been gradually filling up. And not

with students but with professors and deans. It had been whispered around the

offices who was in the biology department, and the next thing I knew, I was

shaking a lot of hands held out below beaming faces. And what did they want to

know: What did I think of this story or that? And had I seen this or that writer

lately? And how was Campbell?

They had a literature! Science fiction!

And they were proud of it!

For a while, before and after World War II, I was in rather steady association

with the new era of scientists, the boys who built the bomb, who were beginning

to get the feel of rockets. They were all science fiction buffs. And many of the

hottest scientists around were also writing science fiction on the side.

In 1945 I attended a meeting of old scientist and science fiction friends. The

meeting was at the home of my dear friend, the incomparable Bob Heinlein. And do

you know what was their agenda? How to get man into space fast enough so that he

would be distracted from further wars on Earth. And they were the lads who had

the government ear and authority to do it! We are coming close to doing it. The

scientists got man into space and they even had the Russians cooperating for a

while.

One can't go on living a naive life believing that everything happens by

accident, that events simply follow events, that there is a natural order of

things and that everything will come out right somehow. That isn't science.

That's fate, kismet, and we're back in the world of fantasy. No, things do get

planned. The Golden Age of science fiction that began with Campbell and

Astounding Science Fiction gathered enough public interest and readership to

help push man into space. Today, you hear top scientists talking the way we used

to talk in bull sessions so long ago.

Campbell did what he set out to do. So long as he had his first wife and others

around him to remind him that science was for people, that it was no use to just

send machines out for the sake of machines, that there was no point into going

into space unless the mission had something to do with people, too, he kept

winning. For he was a very brilliant man and a great and very patient editor.

After he lost his first wife, Dona, in 1949- she married George O. Smith- and

after he no longer had a sounding-board who made him keep people in stories, and

when he no longer had his old original writing crew around, he let his magazine

slip back, and when it finally became named Analog, his reign was over. But The

Golden Age had kicked it all into high gear. So Campbell won after all.

When I started out to write this novel, I wanted to write pure science fiction.

And not in the old tradition. Writing forms and styles have changed, so I had to

bring myself up to date and modernize the styles and patterns. To show that

science fiction is not science fiction because of a particular kind of plot,

this novel contains practically every type of story there is-detective, spy,

adventure, western, love, air war, you name it. All except fantasy; there is

none of that. The term “science” also includes economics and sociology and

medicine where these are related to material things. So they're in here, too.

In writing for magazines, the editors (because of magazine format) force one to

write to exact lengths. I was always able to do that- it is a kind of knack. But

this time I decided not to cut everything out and to just roll her as she

rolled, so long as the pace kept up. So I may have wound up writing the biggest

sf novel ever in terms of length. The experts- and there are lots of them to do

so- can verify whether this is so.

Some of my readers may wonder that I did not include my own serious subjects in

this book. It was with no thought of dismissal of them. It was just that I put

on my professional writer's hat. I also did not want to give anybody the idea I

was doing a press relations job for my other serious works.

There are those who will look at this book and say, “See? We told you he is just

a science fiction writer!” Well, as one of the crew of writers that helped start

man to the stars, I'm very proud of also being known as a science fiction

writer. You have satellites out there, man has walked on the moon, you have

probes going to the planets, don't you? Somebody had to dream the dream, and a

lot of somebodies like those great writers of The Golden Age and later had to

get an awful lot of people interested in it to make it true.

I hope you enjoy this novel. It is the only one I ever wrote just to amuse

myself. It also celebrates my golden wedding with the muse. Fifty years a

professional- 1930-1980.

And as an old pro I assure you that it is pure science fiction. No fantasy.

Right on the rails of the genre. Science is for people. And so is science

fiction.

Ready? Stand by. Blast off!

L. Ron Hubbard

October 1980

- Part I -

Chapter 1

“Man, “ said Terl, “is an endangered species. “

The hairy paws of the Chamco brothers hung suspended above the broad keys of the

laser-bash game. The cliffs of Char's eyebones drew down over his yellow orbs as

he looked up in mystery. Even the steward, who had been padding quietly about

picking up her saucepans, lumbered to a halt and stared.

Terl could not have produced a more profound effect had he thrown a meat-girl

naked into the middle of the room.

The clear dome of the Intergalactic Mining Company employee recreation hall

shone black around and above them, silvered at its crossbars by the pale glow of

the Earth's single moon, half-full on this late summer night.

Terl lifted his large amber eyes from the tome that rested minutely in his

massive claws and looked around the room. He was suddenly aware of the effect he

had produced, and it amused him. Anything to relieve the humdrum monotony of a

ten-year[1] duty tour in this gods-abandoned mining camp, way out here on the

edge of a minor galaxy.

In an even more professional voice, already deep and roaring enough,

Terl repeated his thought. “Man is an endangered species. “

Char glowered at him. “What in the name of diseased crap are you reading?”

Terl did not much care for his tone. After all, Char was simply one of several

mine managers, but Terl was chief of minesite security. “I didn't read it. I

thought it. “

“You must've got it from somewhere, “ growled Char. “What is that book?”

Terl held it up so Char could see its back. It said, “General Report of

Geological Minesites, Volume 250, 369. “Like all such books it was huge but

printed on material that made it almost weightless, particularly on a low-

gravity planet such as Earth, a triumph of design and manufacture that did not

cut heavily into the payloads of freighters.

"Rughr, " growled Char in disgust. “That must be two, three hundred Earth-years

old. If you want to prowl around in books, I got an up-to-date general board of

directors' report that says we're thirty-five freighters behind in bauxite

deliveries.“

The Chamco brothers looked at each other and then at their game to see where

they had gotten to in shooting down the live mayflies in the air box. But Terl's

next words distracted them again.

“Today, “ said Terl, brushing Char's push for work aside, “I got a sighting

report from a recon drone that recorded only thirty-five men in that valley near

that peak. “ Terl waved his paw westward toward the towering mountain range

silhouetted by the moon.

“So?” said Char.

“So I dug up the books out of curiosity. There used to be hundreds in that

valley. And furthermore, “ continued Terl with his professorial ways coming

back, “there used to be thousands and thousands of them on this planet. “

“You can't believe all you read, “ said Char heavily. “On my last duty tour-it

was Arcturus IV-'

“This book, “ said Terl, lifting it impressively, “was compiled by the culture

and ethnology department of the Intergalactic Mining Company. “

The larger Chamco brother batted his eyebones. “I didn't know we had one. “

Char sniffed. “It was disbanded more than a century ago. Useless waste of money.

Yapping around about ecological impacts and junk like that. “ He shifted his

bulk around to Terl. "Is this some kind of scheme to explain a nonscheduled

vacation? You're going to get your butt in a bind. I can see it, a pile of

requisitions this high for breathe-gas tanks and scoutcraft. You won't get any

of my workers. “

“Turn off the juice, “ said Terl. “I only said that man-'

“I know what you said. But you got your appointment because you are clever.

That's right, clever. Not intelligent. Clever. And I can see right through an

excuse to go on a hunting expedition. What Psychlo in his right skull would

bother with the things?”

The smaller Chamco brother grinned. “I get tired of just dig-dig-dig, ship-ship-

ship. Hunting might be fun. I didn't think anybody did it for-'

Char turned on him like a tank zeroing in on its prey. “Fun hunting those

things! You ever see one?” He lurched to his feet and the floor creaked. He put

his paw just above his belt. “They only come up to here! They got hardly any

hair on them except their heads. They're a dirty white color like a slug.

They're so brittle they break up when you try to put them in a pouch. “ He

snarled in disgust and picked up a saucepan of kerbango. “They're so weak they

couldn't pick this up without straining their guts. And they're not good eating.

“ He tossed off the kerbango and made an earthquake shudder.

“You ever see one?” said the bigger Chamco brother.

Char sat down, the dome rumbled, and he handed the empty saucepan to the

steward. “No, “ he said. “Not alive. I seen some bones in the shafts and I

heard. “

“There were thousands of them once, “ said Terl, ignoring the mine manager.

“Thousands! All over the place.“

Char belched. “Shouldn't wonder they die off. They breathe this oxygen-nitrogen

air. Deadly stuff. “

“I got a crack in my face mask yesterday, “ said the smaller Chamco brother.

“For about thirty seconds I thought I wasn't going to make it. Bright lights

bursting inside your skull. Deadly stuff. I really look forward to getting back

home where you can walk around without a suit or mask, where the gravity gives

you something to push against, where everything is a beautiful purple and

there's not one bit of this green stuff. My papa used to tell me that if I

wasn't a good Psychlo and if I didn't say sir-sir-sir to the right people, I’d

wind up at a butt end of nowhere like this. He was right. I did. It 's your

shot, brother.“

Char sat back and eyed Terl. “You ain't really going hunting for a man, are

you?”

Terl looked at his book. He inserted one of his talons to keep his place and

then thumped the volume against his knee.

“I think you're wrong, “ he mused. “There was something to these creatures.

Before we came along, it says here, they had towns on every continent. They had

flying machines and boats. They even appear to have fired off stuff into space.”

“How do you know that wasn't some other race?” said Char. “How do you know it

wasn't some lost colony of Psychlos?"

“No, it wasn't that, “ said Terl. “Psychlos can't breathe this air. It was man

all right, just like the cultural guys researched. And right in our own

histories, you know how it says we got here?”

"Ump, " said Char.

“Man apparently sent out some kind of probe that gave full directions to the

place, had pictures of man on it and everything. It got picked up by a Psychlo

recon. And you know what?”

“Ump, “ said Char.

“The probe and the pictures were on a metal that was rare everywhere and worth a

clanking fortune. And Intergalactic paid the Psychlo governors sixty trillion

Galactic credits for the directions and the concession. One gas barrage and we

were in business. “

“Fairy tales, fairy tales, “ said Char. “Every planet I ever helped gut has some

butt and crap story like that. Every one. “ He yawned his face into a huge

cavern. “All that was hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago. You ever notice

that the public relations department always puts their fairy tales so far back

nobody can ever check them?”

"I’m going to go out and catch one of these things, “ said Terl.

“Not with any of my crews or equipment you ain't, “ said Char.

Terl heaved his mammoth bulk off the seat and crossed the creaking floor to the

berthing hatch.

“You're as crazy as a nebula of crap, “ said Char.

The two Chamco brothers got back into their game and intently laser-blasted the

entrapped mayflies into smoky puffs, one by one.

Char looked at the empty door. The security chief knew no Psychlo could go up

into those mountains. Terl really was crazy. There was deadly uranium up there.

But Terl, rumbling along a hallway to his room, did not consider himself crazy.

He was being very clever as always. He had started the rumors so no questions

would get out of hand when he began to put into motion the personal plans that

would make him wealthy and powerful and, almost as important, dig him out of

this accursed planet.

The man-things were the perfect answer. All he needed was just one and then he

could get the others. His campaign had begun and begun very well, he thought.

He went to sleep gloating over how clever he was.

Chapter 2

It was a good day for a funeral, only it seemed there wasn't going to be one.

Dark, stormy-looking clouds were creeping in from the west, shredded by the

snow-speckled peaks, leaving only a few patches of blue sky showing.

Jonnie Goodboy Tyler stood beside his horse at the upper end of the wide

mountain meadow and looked with discontent upon the sprawled and decaying

village.

His father was dead and he ought to be properly buried. He hadn't died of the

red blotches and there was no question of somebody else catching it. His bones

had just crumbled away. So there was no excuse not to properly bury him. Yet

there was no sign of anyone doing so.

Jonnie had gotten up in the dawn dark, determined to choke down his grief and go

about his correct business. He had yelled up Windsplitter, the fastest of his

several horses, put a cowhide rope on his nose, and gone down through the

dangerous defiles to the lower plain and with a lot of hard riding and herding

pushed five wild cattle back up to the mountain meadow. He had then bashed out

the brains of the fattest of them and ordered his Aunt Ellen to push the

barbecue fire together and get meat cooking.

Aunt Ellen hadn't cared for the orders. She had broken her sharpest rock, she

said, and couldn't skin and cut the meat, and certain men hadn't dragged in any

firewood lately.

Jonnie Goodboy had stood very tall and looked at her. Among people who were

average height, Jonnie Goodboy stood half a head taller, a muscular six feet

shining with the bronzed health of his twenty years. He had just stood there,

wind tangling his corn-yellow hair and beard, looking at her with his ice-blue

eyes. And Aunt Ellen had gone and found some wood and had put a stone to work,

even though it was a very dull one. He could see her now, down there below him,

wrapped in the smoke of slow-roasting meat, busy.

There ought to be more activity in the village, Jonnie thought. The last big

funeral he had seen was when he was about five years old, when Smith the mayor

had died. There had been songs and preaching and a feast and it had ended with a

dance by moonlight. Mayor Smith had been put in a hole in the ground and the

dirt filled in over him, and while the two cross-sticks of the marker were long

since gone, it had been a proper respectful funeral. More recently they had just

dumped the dead in the black rock gulch below the waterpool and let the coyotes

clean them up.

Well, that wasn't the way you went about it, Jonnie told himself. Not with his

father, anyway.

He spun on his heel and with one motion went aboard Windsplitter. The thump of

his hard bare heel sent the horse down toward the courthouse.

He passed by the decayed ruins of cabins on the outskirts. Every year they caved

in further. For a long time anybody needing a building log hadn't cut any trees:

they had just stripped handy existing structures. But the logs in these cabins

were so eaten up and rotted now, they hardly even served as firewood.

Windsplitter picked his way down the weed-grown track, walking watchfully to

avoid stepping on ancient and newly discarded food bones and trash.

He twitched his ear toward a distant wolf howl from up in a mountain glen.

The smell of new blood and the meat smoke must be pulling the wolves down,

thought Jonnie, and he hefted his kill-club from where it dangled by a thong

into his palm. He'd lately seen a wolf right down in the cabins, prowling around

for bones, or maybe even a puppy or a child. Even a decade ago it wouldn't have

happened. But every year there were fewer and fewer people.

Legend said that there had been a thousand in the valley, but Jonnie thought

that was probably an exaggeration. There was plenty of food. The wide plains

below the peaks were overrun with wild cattle, wild pigs, and bands of horses.

The ranges above were alive with deer and goats. And even an unskilled hunter

had no trouble getting food. There was plenty of water due to the melting snows

and streams, and the little patches of vegetables would thrive if anybody

planted and tended them.

No, it wasn't food. It was something else. Animals reproduced, it seemed, but

man didn't. At least not to any extent. The death rate and the birth rate were

unbalanced, with death the winner. Even when children were born they sometimes

had only one eye or one lung or one hand and had to be left out in the icy

night. Monsters were unwanted things. All life was overpowered by a fear of

monsters.

Maybe it was this valley.

When he was seven he had asked his father about it. “But maybe people can't live

in this place, “ he had said.

His father had looked at him wearily. “There were people in some other valleys,

according to the legends. They're all gone, but there are still some of us.“

He had not been convinced. Jonnie had said, “There's all those plains down there

and they're full of animals. Why don't we go live there?”

Jonnie had always been a bit of a trial. Too smart, the elders had said. Always

stirring things up. Questions, questions. And did he believe what he was told?

Even by older men who knew a lot better? No. Not Jonnie Goodboy

Tyler. But his father had not brought any of this up. He had just said wearily,

“There's no timber down there to build cabins. “

This hadn't explained anything, so Jonnie had said, “I bet I could find

something down there to build a cabin with. “

His father had knelt down, patient for once, and said, “You're a good boy,

Jonnie. And your mother and I love you very much. But nobody could build

anything that would keep out the monsters. “

Monsters, monsters. All his life Jonnie had been hearing about the monsters.

He'd never seen one. But he held his peace. The oldsters believed in monsters,

so they believed in monsters.

But thinking of his father brought an unwelcome wetness to his eyes.

And he was almost unseated as his horse reared. A string of foot-long mountain

rats had rushed headlong from a cabin and hit Windsplitter's legs.

What you get for dreaming, Jonnie snapped to himself. He put Windsplitter's four

hoofs back down on the path and drummed him forward the last few yards to the

courthouse.

Chapter 3

Chrissie was standing there, her leg being hugged as always by her younger

sister.

Jonnie Goodboy ignored her and looked at the courthouse. The old, old building

was the only one to have a stone foundation and stone floor. Somebody had said

it was a thousand years old, and though Jonnie didn't believe it, the place sure

looked it.

Even its seventeenth roof was as sway-backed as an overpacked horse. There

wasn't a log in the upper structure that wasn't gaping with worm holes. The

windows were mainly caved in like eyeholes in a rotted skull. The stone walkway

close to it was worn half a foot deep by the bare horny feet of scores of

generations of villagers coming here to be tried and punished in the olden days

when somebody had cared. In his lifetime Jonnie had never seen a trial, or a

town meeting for that matter.

“Parson Staffor is inside, “ said Chrissie. She was a slight girl, very pretty,

about eighteen. She had large black eyes in strange contrast to her corn-silk

hair. She had wrapped around herself a doeskin, really tight, and it showed her

breasts and a lot of bare leg.

Her little sister, Pattie, a budding copy of the older girl, looked bright-eyed

and interested. “Is there going to be a real funeral, Jonnie?"

Jonnie didn't answer. He slid off Windsplitter in a graceful single motion. He

handed the lead rope to Pattie, who ecstatically uncoiled herself from

Chrissie's leg and snatched at it. At seven Pattie had no parents and little

enough of a home, and her sun rose and set only on Jonnie's proud orders.

“Is there going to be meat and a burying in a hole in the ground and

everything?” demanded Pattie.

Jonnie started through the courthouse door, paying no heed to the hand Chrissie

put out to touch his arm.

Parson Staffor lay sprawled on a mound of dirty grass, mouth open in snores,

flies buzzing about. Jonnie stirred him with his foot.

Parson Staffor had seen better days. Once he had been fat and inclined to

pomposity. But that was before he had begun to chew locoweed-to ease his

toothaches, he said. He was gaunt now, dried up, nearly toothless, seamed with

inlaid grime. Some wads of weed lay on the stones beside his mouldy bed.

As the toe prodded him again, Staffor opened his eyes and rubbed some of the

scum out of them in alarm. Then he saw it was Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, and he fell

back without interest.

“Get up,” said Jonnie.

“That's this generation,” muttered the parson. “No respect for their elders.

Rushing off to the bushes, fornicating, grabbing the best meat pieces.”

“Get up,” said Jonnie. “You are going to give a funeral.”

“A funeral? ' moaned Staffor.

“With meat and sermons and dancing.”

“Who is dead?”

“You know quite well who's dead. You were there at the end.”

“Oh, yes. Your father. A good man. Yes, a good man. Well, maybe he was your

father.”

Jonnie suddenly looked a little dangerous. He was standing there at ease, but he

was wearing the skin of a puma that he himself had slain and he had his kill-

club on a wrist thong. The club seemed to jump of its own volition into his

palm.

Parson Staffor abruptly sat up. “Now don't take it wrong, Jonnie. It 's just

that things are a little mixed up these days, you know. Your mother had three

husbands one time and another, and there being no real ceremonies these days-'

“You better get up,” said Jonnie.

Staffor clawed for the corner of an ancient, scarred bench and pulled himself

upright. He began to tie the deerskin he usually wore, and obviously had worn

far too long, using a frayed wovengrass rope. “My memory isn't so good these

days, Jonnie. One time I could remember all kinds of things. Legends, marriage

ceremonies, hunt blessings, even family quarrels.” He was looking around for

some fresh locoweed.

“When the sun is straight up,” said Jonnie, “you're going to call the whole

village together at the old graveyard and you're-”

“Who's going to dig the hole? There has to be a hole, you know, for a proper

funeral.”

"I'll dig the hole,” said Jonnie.

Staffor had found some fresh locoweed and began to gum it. He looked relieved.

“Well, I’m glad the town doesn't have to dig the hole. Horns, but this stuff is

green. You said meat. Who is going to kill and cook it?”

“That's all taken care of.”

Staffor nodded and then abruptly saw more work ahead. “Who's going to assemble

the people?” "I’ll ask Pattie to tell them.”

Staffor looked at him reproachfully. “Then there's nothing for me to do until

straight-up. Why'd you wake me up?” He threw himself back down on the dirty

grass and sourly watched Jonnie walk out of the ancient room.

Chapter 4

Jonnie Goodboy sat with his knees to his chest, his arms wrapped around them,

staring into the remains of the dance fire.

Chrissie lay on her stomach beside him, idly shredding the seeds from a large

sunflower between her very white teeth. She looked up at Jonnie from time to

time, a little puzzled but not unduly so. She had never seen him cry before,

even as a little boy. She knew he had loved his father. But Jonnie was usually

so tall and grand, even cold. Could it be that under that goodlooking, almost

pretty face he felt emotions for her, too? It was something to speculate about.

She knew very well how she felt about Jonnie. If anything happened to Jonnie she

would throw herself off the cliff where they sometimes herded wild cattle to

their death, an easy way to kill them. Life without Jonnie Goodboy would not

only not be worth living, it would be completely unbearable. Maybe Jonnie did

care about her. The tears showed something.

Pattie had no such troubles. She had not only stuffed herself with roast meat,

she had also stuffed herself with the wild strawberries that had been served by

the heap. And then during the dancing she had run and run and run with two or

three little boys and then come back to eat some more. She was sleeping so

heavily she looked like a mound of rags.

Jonnie blamed himself. He had tried to tell his father, not just when he was

seven, but many times thereafter, that something was wrong with this place.

Places were not all the same. Jonnie had been- was- sure of it. Why did the pigs

and horses and cattle in the plains have little pigs and horses and cattle so

numerously and so continuously? Yes, and why were there more and more wolves and

coyotes and pumas and birds up in the higher ranges, and fewer and fewer men?

The villagers had been quite happy with the funeral, especially since Jonnie and

a couple of others had done most of the work.

Jonnie had not been happy with it at all. It wasn't good enough.

They had gathered at sun straight-up on the knoll above the village where some

said the graveyard had been. The markers were all gone. Maybe it had been a

graveyard. When Jonnie had toiled- naked so as not to stain his puma-skin cloak

and doe britches-in the morning sun, he had dug into something that might have

been an old grave. At least there was a bone in it that could have been human.

The villagers had come slouching around and there had been a wait while Pattie

tore back to the courthouse and awakened Parson Staffor again. Only twenty-five

of them had assembled. The others had said they were tired and asked for any

food to be brought back to them.

Then there had been an argument about the shape of the grave hole. Jonnie had

dug it oblong so the body could lie level, but when Staffor arrived he said it

should be straight up and down, that graves were dug straight up and down

because you could get more bodies into a graveyard that way. When Jonnie pointed

out that there weren't any burials these days and there was plenty of room,

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