Roger Zelazny - Four for Tomorrow (ss)

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FOUR FOR TOMORROW

COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

Co.

Publishing Co.

The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth, copy-

right ©, 1965, by Mercury Press, Inc.

Press, Inc.

AUTHOR'S DEDICATION:

To My Mother

First Ace printing: March, 1967

Second Ace printing: February, 1973

Printed in U.SA.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 7

THE FURIES 14

THE GRAVEYARD HEART 59

THE DOORS OF HIS FACE,

THE LAMPS OF HIS MOUTH 130

A ROSE FOR ECCLESIASTES 171

INTRODUCTION

by Theodore Sturgeon

There has been nothing like Zeiazny in the science fic-

tion field since—

Thus began the first draft of this introduction and there

it stayed for about 48 hours while I maundered and

chuntered on ways to finish that sentence with justice and

precision. The only possible way to do it is to knock off

the last word. And even then it misses the truth, for the

term "science fiction" gives the comment a kind of club

membership which trims verity. So much which is pub-

lished as science fiction is nothing of the kind. And more

and more, science fiction is produced and not called

science fiction (and paid for heartily—i.e. On the Beach,

Dr. Strangelove, Seven Days in May, 1984, etc. ect. et

al—which makes the pro science fiction writers candi-

dates for persecution mania). Suffice it for now to say

that you'll be hard put to it to find a writer like Zeiazny

anywhere.

Genuine prose-poets we have seen, but quite often

they fail when the measures of pace and structure are

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applied. And we have certainly had truly great story-

tellers, whose narrative architecture is solidly based,

soundly built, and well braced clear to tower-tip; but

more often than not, this is done completely with a

homogenized, nuts-and-bolts kind of prose. And there

has been a regrettably small handful of what I call "peo-

ple experts"—those especially gifted to create memor-

able characters, something more than real ones well-

photographed . . ...living ones who change, as all living

things change, not only during the reading, but in the

memory as the reader himself lives and changes and

becomes capable of bringing more of himself to that

which the writer has brought him. But there again, "peo-

ple experts" have a tendency to turn their rare gift into a

preoccupation (and create small ardent cliques who

tend to the same thing) and skimp on matters of struc-

ture and content. An apt analogy would be a play su-

perbly cast and skilfully mounted, for which somebody

had forgotten to supply a script.

And if you think I am about to say that Zeiazny de-

livers all these treasures and avoids all these oversights,

that he has full measures of substance and structure,

means and ends, texture, cadence and pace, you are

absolutely right.

Three factors in Zeiazny's work call for isolation and

examination; and the very cold-bloodedness of such a

declamation demands amendment. Let me revise it to

two and a pointing finger, a vague and inarticulate

wave toward something Out (or Up, or In) There

which can be analyzed about as effectively as the in-

ternal effect of watching the color-shift on the skin of a

bubble or that silent explosion somewhere inside the

midriff which is one of the recognitions of love.

First, Zeiazny's stories are fabulous. I use this word in

a special and absolutely accurate sense. Aesop did not,

and did not intend to, convey a factual account of an

improbably vegetarian fox equipped with speech and

with human value judgments concerning a bunch of un-

reachable grapes. He was saying something else and

something larger than what he said. And it has come to

me over the years that the greatness of literature and

the importance of literary entities (Captain Ahab, Billy

Budd, Hamlet, Job, Uriah Heep) really lies in this fabu-

lous quality. One may ponderously call them Jungian

archetypes, but one recognizes them, and/or their situ-

ational predicaments, in one's own daily contacts with

this landlord, that employer, and one's dearly beloved.

A fable says more than it says, is bigger than its own

parameters. Zeiazny always says more than he says; all

of his yams have applications, illuminate truths, donate

to the reader tools (and sometimes weapons) with

which he was not equipped before, and for which he can

find daily uses, quite outside the limits of his story.

Second, there is, as one reads more and more of this

extraordinary writer's work, a growing sense of excite-

ment, a gradual recognition of something which (in me,

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anyway) engenders an increasing awe. It conies,

strangely enough, not from any of his many excellences,

but from his flaws. For he has flaws—plenty of them.

One feels at times that a few (a very few, I hasten to

add) of his more vivid turns of phrase would benefit by

an application of Dulcote (an artists' material, a trans-

parent spray which uniformly pulls down brightness and

gloss where applied). Not because they aren't beautiful

—because most of them are, God knows—but because

even so deft a wordsmith as Zeiazny can forget from

time to time that such a creation can keep a reader from

his speedy progress from here to there, and that his

furniture should be placed out of the traffic pattern. It

I bang my shin on a coffee table it becomes a little be-

side the point that it is the most exquisitely crafted arti-

fact this side of the Sun King. Especially since it was the

Author himself who put me in a dead run. And there is the

matter of exotic references—the injection of one of those

absolutely precise and therefore untranslatable German

philosophic terms, or a citation from classical mythology.

This is a difficult thing to criticize without being mis-

understood. A really good writer has the right, if not the

duty, of arrogance, and should feel free to say anythng

he damn pleases in any way he likes. On the other hand,

writing, like elections, copulation, sonatas, or a punch in

the mouth, is communication, an absolute necessity to

the very existence of human beings in every area, con-

crete or abstract, which may be denned as that per-

formed by human beings which evokes response in kind

from other human beings. Communication is a double-

ended, transmitter-receiver phenomenon or it doesn't

exist. And if it evokes a response not in kind ("what the

hell does that mean?" instead of "well of course!") it

exists but it is crippled. There is a fine line, and hazy,

between following the use of an exotic intrusion with a

definition, which can be damned insulting to a reader

who does understand it, and throwing him something

knobby and hard to hold without warning or subsequent

explanation. Yes, a reader should do part of the work;

the more he does the more he participates, and the more

he is led to participate the better the story (and writer).

On the other hand, he shouldn't be stopped, thrown out

of the current in which the author has placed him, by

such menaces to navigation, however apt. It comes down

to an awareness of who's listening—to whom the com-

munication is addressed—and what he deserves. He de-

serves a great deal, because he's at the other end of

something which could not exist without him. Those of

him (for he is many) who need pampering do not de-

serve it. Those who can take anything a really good

author can throw at him are an author's joy—but always

a small part of that multifaceted and very human entity.

The Reader. There is always, for a resourceful writer, a

way to maximize communication by means acceptable

to a writer's arrogance; all he has to do is to think of it.

10

In a writer less resourceful than Zeiazny we readily

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forgive his inability to think of it, but this writer doesn't

have that excuse. Which brings this comment down to its

point: Roger Zeiazny is a writer of such merit that one

judges him by higher standards than those one uses on

others—a cross he will bear for all his writing life. Hap-

pily, the shoulders that bear it are demonstrably well

muscled.

The larger point, derived from this consideration of

flaws, has to do with the kind of flaws they are. For in

none of the things I have mentioned, nor in the ones I

could, is a single one stemming from inability. Every

single one is the product of growth, expansion, trial,

passage, flux. There is nothing so frightening to be said

about a writer (although some writers are not frightened

by it) as the laudatory comment "finish." A perfectly

faceted diamond is beautiful to behold, and is by its very

existence proof of high skill and hard work; but it has

nowhere to go, intrinsically, from there. A great tree

reaches its ultimate "finish" when it is killed; and it may

then become toothpicks or temples, but as a tree it is

dead and gone. Only that which is in constant, day-by-

day, cell-by-cell change is alive. And it is in this area

that I have detected and increasingly feel a sense of awe

in Zeiazny's work, for he is young and already a giant;

he has the habit of hard work and of learning, and shows

no slightest sign of slowing down or of being diverted.

I do not know him personally, but if I did, if I ever do, I

would want more than anything else to convey to him

the fact that he can and has evoked this awe—that the

curve he has drawn with his early work can be extended

into true greatness, and that if he follows his star as a

writer all other things will come to him. If ever anything

seems more important to him—he must know that it isn't

If ever anything diverts him from writing, he must know

to the marrow that whatever it is or appears to be, it is a

n

lesser thing than his gift. He gives no evidence to date

that he has stopped growing or that he ever will.

Do you know how rare this is?

The four stories in this book, listed here by my own in-

tensely personal (and therefore, to you, perhaps fallible)

system of ascending excellence, are all of that wondrous

species which makes me envy anyone who has not read

them and is about to.

The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth is all

size and speed, which would be a good story if told

purely in a write-what-happens, this-is-the-plot style, and

which would also be a good story if it confined itself to

what went on in the heads and in the hearts of its peo-

ple, and which is a good story on both counts.

The Furies is a tour de force, the easy accomplishment

of what most writers would consider impossible, and a

few very good ones insuperably difficult. Seemingly with

the back of his hand, he has created milieu, characters

and a narrative goal as far out as anyone need go; he

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makes you believe it all the way, and walks off breathing

easily leaving you gasping with a fable in your hands.

The Graveyard Heart is in that wonderful category

which is, probably, science fiction's greatest gift to lit-

erature and to human beings: the "feedback" story, the

"if this goes on" story; an extension of some facet of the

current scene which carries you out and away to times

and places you've never imagined because you can't;

and when it's finished, you turn about and look at the

thing he extended for you, in its here-and-now reality,

sharing this very day and planet with you; and you know

he's told you something, given you something you didn't

have before, and that you will never look at this aspect

of your world with quite the same eyes again.

A Rose for Ecclesiastes is one of the most important

stories I have ever read—perhaps I should say it is one

12

of the most memorable experiences I have ever had. It

happens (well, I told you this was an intensely personal

assignment of ranki) that this particular fable, with all

its truly astonishing twists and turns, up to and most

painfully including its wrenching denouement, is an

agonizing analogy of my own experience; and this astro-

nomically unlikely happenstance may well make it what

it is to me and may not reach you quite as poignantly. If

it does it will chop you up into dog meat. But as objec-

tive as I can be, which isn't very, I still feel safe in stat-

ing that it is one of the most beautiful written, skillfully

composed and passionately expressed works of art to

appear anywhere, ever.

Briefly, let me commend to your attention two novels

by Roger Zeiazny, This Immortal and The Dream

Master,9 and sum up everything I have said here, and

a good many things I have not said; sum up all the

thoughts and feelings I hold concerning the works of

Roger Zeiazny, past and to come; sum up what has

struck me at each of the peaks of all of his narratives,

and without fail, so far, at that regretful moment when I

have turned down the last page of any and all of them;

sum up all this in one word, which is:

Grateful.

Theodore Sturgeon

Sherman Oaks, California.

*Both ACE Books.

13

THE FURIES

As an afterthought, -Nature sometimes tosses a bone to

those it maims and casts aside. Often, it is in the form of

a skill, usually useless, or the curse of intelligence.

When Sandor Sandor was four years old he could name

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all the one hundred forty-nine inhabited worlds in the

galaxy. When he was five he could name the principal

land masses of each planet and chalk them in, roughly,

on blank globes. By the time he was seven years old he

knew all the provinces, states, countries and major cities

of all the main land masses on all one hundred forty-nine

inhabited worlds in the galaxy. He read Landography,

History, Landology and popular travel guides during

most of his waking time; and he studied maps and travel

tapes. There was a camera behind his eyes, or so it

seemed, because by the time he was ten years old there

was no city in the galaxy that anyone could name about

which Sandor Sandor did not know something.

And he continued.

Places fascinated him. He built a library of street

guides, road maps. He studied architectural styles and

principal industries, and racial types, native life forms,

local flora, landmarks, hotels, restaurants, airports and

seaports and spaceports, styles of clothing and personal

ornamentation, climatic conditions, local arts and crafts,

14

dietary habits, sports, religions, social institutions, cus-

toms.

When he took his doctorate in Landography at the age

of fourteen, his oral examinations were conducted via

closed circuit television. This is because he was afraid to

leave his home—having done so only three times before

in his life and having met with fresh trauma on each

occasion. And this is because on all one hundred forty-

nine inhabited worlds in the galaxy there was no remedy

for a certain degenerative muscular disease. This disease

made it impossible for Sandor to manipulate even the

finest prosthetic devices for more than a few minutes

without suffering fatigue and great pain; and to go out-

side he required three such devices—two legs and a right

arm—to substitute for those which he had missed out on

receiving somewhere along the line before birth.

Rather than suffer this pain, or the pain of meeting per-

sons other than his Aunt Faye or his nurse, Miss Barbara,

he took his oral examinations via closed circuit television.

The University of Brill, Dombeck, was located on the

other side of that small planet from Sander's home, else

the professors would have come to see him, because they

respected him considerably. His 855-page dissertation,

"Some Notes Toward a Gravitational Matrix Theory

Governing the Formation of Similar Land Masses on

Dissimilar Planetary Bodies," had drawn attention from

Interstel University on Earth itself. Sandor Sandor, of

course, would never .see the Earth. His muscles could

only sustain the gravitation of smaller planets, such as

Dombeck.

And it happened that the Interstel Government, which

monitors everything, had listened in on Sander's oral ex-

aminations and his defense of his dissertation.

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Associate Professor Baines was one of Sander's very

few friends. They had even met several times in person,

in Sandor's library, because Baines often said he'd

15

wanted to borrow certain books and then came and spent

the afternoon. When the examinations were concluded,

Associate Professor Baines stayed on the circuit for sev-

eral minutes, talking with Sandor. It was during this

time that Baines made casual reference to an almost

useless (academically, that is) talent of Sander's.

At the mention of it, the government man's ears had

pricked forward (he was a Rigellian). He was anxious

for a promotion and he recalled an obscure memo. . . .

Associate Professor Baines had mentioned the fact that

Sandor Sandor had once studied a series of thirty ran-

dom photos from all over the civilized galaxy, and that

the significant data from these same photos had also

been fed into the Department's L-L computer. Sandor

had named the correct planet in each case, the land mass

in 29, the county or territory in twenty-six, and he had

correctly set the location itself within fifty square miles

in twenty-three instances. The L-L comp had named the

correct planet for twenty-seven.

It was not a labor of love for the computer.

So it became apparent that Sandor Sandor knew just

about every damn street in the galaxy.

Ten years later he knew them all.

But three years later the Rigellian quit his job, dis-

gusted, and went to work in private industry, where the

pay was better and promotions more frequent. His

memo, and the tape, had been filed, however. . . .

Benedick Benedict was born and grew up on the wa-

tery world of Kjum, and his was an infallible power for

making enemies of everyone he met.

The reason why is that while some men's highest plea-

sure is drink, and others are given to gluttony, and still

others are slothful, or lechery is their chief delight, or

F?innn-doing, Benedick's was gossip—he was a loud-

mouth.

16

Gossip was his meat and his drink, his sex and his

religion. Shaking hands with him was a mistake, often a

catastrophic one. For, as he clung to your hand, pump-

ing it and smiling, his eyes would suddenly grow moist

and the tears would dribble down his fat cheeks.

He wasn't sad when this happened. Far from it. It was

a somatic conversion from his paranorm reaction.

He was seeing your past life.

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He was selective, too; he only saw what he looked for.

And he looked for scandal and hate, and what is often

worse, love; he looked for lawbrealdng and unrest, for

memories of discomfort, pain, futility, weakness. He saw

everything a man wanted to forget, and he talked about

it.

If you are lucky he won't tell you of your own. If you

have ever met someone else whom he has also met in

this manner, and if this fact shows, he will begin talking

of that person. He will tell you of that man's or woman's

life because he appreciates this form of social reaction

even more than your outrage at yourself. And his eyes

and voice and hand will hold you, like the clutch of the

Ancient Mariner, in a sort of half dream-state; and you

will hear him out and you will be shocked beneath your

paralysis.

Then he will go away and tell others about you.

Such a man was Benedick Benedict. He was probably

unaware how much he was hated, because this reaction

never came until later, after he had said "Good day," de-

parted, and been gone for several hours. He left his hear-

ers with a just-raped feeling—and later fear, shame, or

disgust forced them to suppress the occurrence and to

try to forget him. Or else they hated him quietly, be-

cause he was dangerous. That is to say, he had powerful

friends.

He was an extremely social animal: he loved atten-

tion; he wanted to be admired; he craved audiences.

17

He could always find an audience too, somewhere. He

knew so many secrets that he was tolerated in important

places in return for the hearing. And he was wealthy too,

but more of that in a moment.

As time went on, it became harder and harder for him

to meet new people. His reputation spread in geometric

proportion to his talking, and even those who would hear

him preferred to sit on the far side of the room, drink

enough alcohol to partly deaden memories of themselves,

and to be seated near a door.

The reason for his wealth is because his power ex-

tended to inanimate objects as well. Minerals were rare

on Kjum, the watery world. If anyone brought him a

sample he could hold it and weep and tell them where

to dig to hit the main lode.

From one fish caught in the vast seas of Kjum, he

could chart the course of a school of fish.

Weeping, he could touch a native rad-pearl necklace

and divine the location of the native's rad-pearl bed.

Local insurance associations and loan companies kept

Benedict Files—the pen a man had used to sign his con-

tract, his snubbed-out cigarette butt, a plastex hanky

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with which he had mopped his brow, an object left in

security, the remains of a biopsy or blood test—so that

Benedick could use his power against those who renege

on these companies and flee, on those who break their

laws.

He did not revel in his power either. He simply en-

joyed it. For he was one of the nineteen known para-

norms in the one hundred forty-nine inhabited worlds in

the galaxy, and he knew no other way.

Also, he occasionally assisted civil authorities, if he

thought their cause a just one. If he did not, he suddenly

lost his power until the need for it vanished. This didn't

happen too often though, for an humanitarian was Bene-

dick Benedict, and well-paid, because he was labora-

18

tory-tested and clinically-proven. He could psychomet-

rize. He could pick up thought-patterns originating out-

side his own skull. . . .

Lynx Links looked like a beachball with a beard, a fat

patriarch with an eyepatch, a man who loved good food

and drink, simple clothing, and the company of simple

people; he was a man who smiled often and whose voice

was soft and melodic.

In his earlier years he had chalked up the most im-

pressive kill-record of any agent ever employed by In-

terstel Central Intelligence. Forty-eight men and seven-

teen malicious alien life-forms had the Lynx dispatched

during his fifty-year tenure as a field agent. He was one

of the three men in the galaxy to have lived through

half a century's employment with ICI. He lived com-

fortably on his government pension despite three wives

and a horde of grandchildren; he was recalled occasion-

ally as a consultant; and he did some part-time mission-

ary work on the side. He believed that all life was one

and that all men were brothers, and that love rather

than hate or fear should rule the affairs of men. He had

even killed with love, he often remarked at Tranquility

Session, respecting and revering the person and, the

spirit of the man who had been marked for death.

This is the story of how he came to be summoned

back from Hosanna, the World of the Great and Glorious

Flame of the Divine Life, and was joined with Sandor

Sandor and Benedick Benedict in the hunt for Victor

Corgo, the man without a heart.

Victor Corgo was captain of the Wallaby. Victor Corgo

was Head Astrogator, First Mate, and Chief Engineer

of the Wallaby. Victor Corgo was the Wallaby.

One time the Wallaby was a proud Guardship, an

ebony toadstool studded with the jewel-like warts of

19

fast-phrase projectors. One time the Wallaby slapped

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proud about the frontier worlds of Interstel, meting out

the unique justice of the Uniform Galactic Code—in

those places where there was no other law. One time the

proud Wallaby, under the command of Captain Victor

Corgo of the Guard, had ranged deep space and become

a legend under legendary skies.

A terror to brigands and ugly aliens, a threat to Code-

breakers, and a thorn in the sides of evildoers every-

where, Corgo and his shimmering fungus (which could

bum an entire continent under water level within a sin-

gle day) were the pride of the Guard, the best of the

best, the cream that had been skimmed from all the rest.

Unfortunately, Corgo sold out.

He became a heeL ,

... A traitor.

A hero gone bad . . .

After forty-five years with the Guard, his pension but

half a decade away, he lost his entire crew in an ill-

timed raid upon a pirate stronghold on the planet Kilsh,

which might have become the hundred-fiftieth inhabited

world of Interstel.

Crawling, barely alive, he had made his way half

across the great snowfield of Brild, on the main land

mass of Kilsh. At the fortuitous moment. Death making

its traditional noises of approach, he was snatched from

out of its traffic lane, so to speak, by the Drillen, a

nomadic tribe of ugly and intelligent quadrapeds, who

took him to their camp and healed his wounds, fed him,

and gave him warmth. Later, with the cooperation of the

Drillen, he recovered the Wallaby and all its arms and

armaments, from where it had burnt its way to a hun-

dred feet beneath the ice.

Crewless, he trained the Drillen.

With the Drillen and the Wallaby he attacked the

pirates.

20

He won.

But he did not stop with that.

No.

When he learned that the Drillen had been marked for

death under the Uniform Code he sold out his own spe-

cies. The Drillen had refused relocation to a decent

Reservation World. They had elected to continue occu-

pancy of what was to become the hundred-fiftieth in-

habited world in the galaxy (that is to say, in Interstel).

Therefore, the destruct-order had been given.

Captain Corgo protested, was declared out of order.

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