Gordon Dickson - Future love

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futurelove

FUTURELOVE

A Science Fiction triad

Introduction by GORDON R. DICKSON

The Dobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. Indianapolis/New York

form Published by the Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. Indianapolis New York

Manufactured in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Introduction vii;

THE GREATEST LOVE

page 1 by Anne McCaffrey

PSI CLONE

page 70 by Joan Hunter Holly

LOVE ROGO

page 157 by Jeffrey A. Carver

INTRODUCTION

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Everybody wants to write, it seems. Few, however, actually do so; and in turn

only a few of these end up getting their work published. Indeed, ever since the

early storytellers first stood up before the cave fires of stone-age hunters, a dream

has persisted of some method which could turn story-making from a mysterious

and individual art to something anyone with determination could do.

In the heyday of the pulps, the nineteen-twenties through the nineteen-forties, a

number of systems tried to do just this, mainly by reducing a story to something

called "plot," and then by further breaking down this business of plot into

component parts which could then be reassembled to form the basis of a story

anyone could write. It was not, of course, really necessary to learn a system to do

this. Anyone could reduce a plot to its components of character, situation,

problem and resolution:

CHARACTER: A young man, SITUATION: Sure that his father has been

murdered by his mother and the man she afterwards married,

PROBLEM: Is determined to make the murderers admit what they have done.

SOLUTION: He hits on the mechanism of having the murderers watch a

reenactment of their crime so that, while seeing what they have done being

performed, they betray themselves.

An excellent narrative plan, at base. The only problem is that it requires someone

who is already a skillful writer to make the emerging story both memorable and

effective, as William Shakespeare did with Hamlet.

The truth of the matter has always been that the genius of story-making lies in the

individual writer and in his or her special use of the material chosen, not in the

material itself. The same idea becomes two different stories when filtered through

the minds of two different writers. Within the covers of this book are stories by

three writers, all dealing with the theme of human love. But the fact that their

theme is the same only emphasizes the diversity of creativity and invention of the

writers themselves—which is the important element.

Anne McCaffrey, who is probably well known to most readers of this book,

examines in her story a mother love that goes beyond the physical, in a new and

different sense of that phrase; a sense, in fact, not possible until present-day

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medical technology gave us the means of realizing it. The particular gift of Anne

McCaffrey is that she can infuse such an intense human light and warmth into a

hitherto-unknown, laboratory-cold subject that it takes on the familiar, common

quality of our everyday readerly lives.

Joan Holly, who has also been writing SF successfully for years, deals with a

different kind of parent-child pattern. Again there is a love situation emerging out

of a relationship which would have been impossible before present-day science

gave it to us as something that could happen. But here again, through Joan Holly's

creativity, we have an intense, swift-running story, like a landslide channeled

between canyon walls so deep they almost shut out the light.

Jeffrey Carver goes one step beyond the interaction of ordinary human love. He

plunges the reader into a small whirlpool of individual lives, carried along with

the rushing current of power, plunging ever more swiftly toward the brink of a

waterfall. Here, the love is not between human and human, but between human

and something else—a love that in the end betrays.

The fabric of these three stories is part of the time in which they were written. As

with stories written in any period, however, their threads stretch back to the very

earliest patterns of storytelling. Science fiction, which started out with the

conventions of nineteenth-century fantasy, has in less than a century developed

techniques peculiar to itself—techniques, however, which are now being

borrowed by the mainstream of fiction.

Many mainstream writers do not realize whom they have to thank for these

techniques. This is not surprising, however, since even many SF writers have no

idea where the roots of their special techniques lie. Besides the old tradition of

fantasy out of which it developed, science fiction itself owes a particular debt of

gratitude to the nineteenth-century storytellers—not only to recognized earlier

writers of the genre, such as H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, but to many of the

other people then writing in Western literature, who wrote either proto-science

fiction or fantasy verging on science fiction, simply as variations of the short-

story forms in which they were accustomed to expressing themselves.

What began to distinguish science fiction from other writing in that early time

was the idea of what might be called technologized fantasy. From this came the

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so-called hardware science fiction of the early pulp era—a direct descendant of

the tales of Wells and Verne. This was the science fiction of rockets and robots

and other futuristic machines, and in the nineteen-thirties it achieved its first real

development into something like present-day science fiction in the magazine

Astounding, under its editor, John W. Campbell.

John Campbell took hardware science fiction and insisted that it have something

more to it than technology. What Campbell wanted was to tie all this into what he

called an "idea story," a story that used all the trappings of what was then science

fiction to demonstrate a logical point about Man and his present or future

possibilities.

This "idea story" was really the thematic story—a story built around a theme. Its

roots in the modern era go back to Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Following World

War II, science fiction writing began to expand into this larger area of thematic

story proper; developing ever more depth and breadth in the nineteen-fifties and -

sixties, to emerge in the present decade with its emphasis on "people" stories with

themes growing out of the character and motivation of human beings in a possible

world.

The three stories in this book are excellent illustrations of exactly this

metamorphosis; in a very true sense, evidence of science fiction's coming of age

in twentieth-century literature.

FUTURELOVE

GORDON R. DICKSON

THE GREATEST LOVE

Anne McCaffrey

"You certainly don't live up to your name, Doctor Craft," Louise Baxter said,

acidly emphasizing my name. "I trust your degree is from a legitimate medical

college. Or was it the mail order variety?"

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I didn't dignify the taunt with a reply. Being a young woman, I held my Cornell

Medical School diploma too valuable to debase it in argument with a psychotic.

She continued in the sweetly acerbic voice that must have made her subordinates

cringe, "In the fashion industry, you quickly learn how to tell the 'looker' from the

'putter.' It's very easy to classify your sort."

I refrained from saying that her sort—Cold Calculating Female posing as

Concerned Mother—was just as easy for me to classify. Her motive for this

interview with her daughter's obstetrician was not only specious but despicable.

Her opening remark of surprise that I was a woman had set the tone of insults for

the past fifteen minutes.

"I have told you the exact truth, Mrs. Baxter. The pregnancy is proceeding

normally and satisfactorily. You may interpret the facts any way you see fit." I

was hoping to wind up this distasteful interview quickly. "In another five months,

the truth will out."

Her exclamation of disgust at my pun was no more than I'd expected. "And you

have the gall to set yourself up against the best gynecologists of Harkness

Pavilion?"

"It's not difficult to keep abreast of improved techniques in uterine surgery," I said

calmly.

"Ha! Quack!"

I suppressed my own anger at her insult by observing that her anger brought out

all the age-lines in her face despite her artful makeup.

"I checked with Harkness before I came here," she said, trying to overwhelm me

with her research. "There are no new techniques which could correct a bicornuate

womb!"

"So?"

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"So, don't try to con me, you charlatan," and the elegant accent faltered into a flat

midwestern twang. "My daughter can't carry to term. And you know it!"

"I'll remind you of that in another five months, Mrs. Baxter." I rose to indicate

that the interview was at an end.

"Ach! You women's libbers are all alike! Setting yourselves up above the best

men in the country on every count!"

Although I'm not an ardent feminist, such egregious remarks are likely to change

my mind, particularly when thrown in without relevance and more for spite than

for sense.

"I fail to see what Women's Liberation has to do with your daughter, who is so

obviously anxious to fulfill woman's basic role."

The angry color now suffused Louise Baxter's well-preserved face down to the

collar of her ultrasmart man-tailored pants suit. She rose majestically to her feet.

"I'll have you indicted for malpractice, you quack!" She had control of her voice

again and deliberately packed all the psychotic venom she could into her threats.

"I'll sue you within an inch of your life if Cecily's sanity is threatened by your

callous stupidity."

At that point the door opened to admit Esther, my office nurse, in her most

aggressive attitude.

"If Mrs. Baxter is quite finished, doctor," she said, stressing the title just enough

to irritate the woman further, "your next patient is waiting."

"Of all the-"

"This way, Mrs. Baxter," Esther said firmly as she shepherded the angry woman

toward the door.

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Mrs. Baxter stalked out, slamming the street door so hard I winced, waiting for

the glass to come shattering down.

"How did that virago ever produce a sweet girl like Cecily?" I mused.

"I assume that Cecily was conceived in the normal manner," said Esther.

I sat down wearily. I'd been going since four-thirty A.M. and I didn't need a

distasteful interview with Baxter's sort at five P.M. "And I assume that you heard

everything on the intercom?"

"For some parts, I didn't need amplification," said my faithful office nurse at her

drollest. "Since this affair started, I don't dare leave the intercom hook up.

Someone's got to keep your best interests at heart."

I smiled at her ruefully. "It'll be worth it-"

"You keep telling yourself—"

"—to see that girl get a baby."

"Not to mention the kudos accruing to one Doctor Allison S. Craft, O.B.,

G.Y.N.?"

I gave her a quelling look which she blithely ignored. "Well," I said, somewhat

deflated, "there must be something more to life than babies who insist on predawn

entrances."

"Have a few yourself, then," Esther suggested with a snort, then flipped my coat

off the hook and gestured for me to take off the office whites. "I'm closing up and

I'm turning you out, doctor."

I went.

I had a lonely restaurant supper, though Elsie, who ran the place, tried to cheer me

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up. Once I got home, I couldn't settle down. I wanted someone to talk to. All

right, someone to gripe to. Sometimes, like now, I regretted my bachelor-girl

status. Even if I had had a man in mind, I really couldn't see much family life, the

kind I wanted to enjoy, until I had a large enough practice to bring in an associate.

On a twenty-four-hour off-and-on schedule that such an arrangement provided, I

could hardly see marriage. Not now. Especially not now.

I poured myself a drink for its medicinal value and sat on my back porch in the

late spring twilight.

So—Louise Baxter would sue me if her daughter miscarried. I wondered if she'd

sue me if her daughter didn't. I'd bet a thousand bucks, and my already

jeopardized professional standing, that the impeccable, youthful-looking Louise

Baxter was shriveling from the mere thought of being made a "grandmother."

Maybe it would affect her business reputation—or crack the secret of her actual

age. Could she be fighting retirement? I laughed to myself at the whimsy. Cecily

Baxter Kellogg was twenty-seven, and no way was Louise Baxter in her sixties.

However, I had told Mrs. Baxter the truth, the exact truth: the pregnancy was well

started, and the condition of the mother was excellent, and everything pointed to a

full-term, living child.

But I hadn't told the whole truth, for Cecily Baxter Kellogg was not carrying her

own child.

Another medical "impossibility" trembled on the brink of the possible. A man

may have no greater love than to lay down his life for a friend, but it's a far, far

greater love that causes one woman to carry another's baby: a baby with whom

she has nothing, absolutely nothing, in common, except nine months of intimacy.

I amended that: this baby would have a relationship, for its proxy mother was its

paternal aunt.

The memory of the extraordinary beginning of this great experiment was as vivid

to me as the afternoon's interview with Mrs. Baxter. And far more heart-warming.

It was almost a year ago to this day that my appointment schedule had indicated a

2:30 patient named Miss Patricia Kellogg. Esther had underscored the "Miss"

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with red and also the abbreviation "p.n." for prenatal. I was known to be

sympathetic to unwed mothers and had performed a great many

abortions—legally, too.

There was nothing abashed about Patricia Kellogg as she walked confidently into

my office, carrying a briefcase.

"I'd better explain, Dr. Craft, that I am not yet pregnant. I want to be."

"Then you need a premarital examination for conception?"

"I'm not contemplating marriage."

"That… ah… used to be the usual prelude to pregnancy."

She smiled and then casually said, "Actually, I wish to have my brother's child."

"That sort of thing is frowned on by the Bible, you know," I replied with, I

thought, great equanimity. "Besides presenting rather drastic genetic risks. I'd

suggest you consult a psychologist, not an obstetrician."

Again that smile, tinged with mischief now. "I wish to have the child of my

brother and his wife!"

"Ah, that hasn't been done."

She patted the briefcase. "On a human."

"Oh, I assume you've read up on those experiments with sheep and cows. They're

all very well, Miss Kellogg, but obstetrically it's not the same thing. The

difficulties involved…"

"As nearly as I can ascertain, the real difficulty involved is doing it."

I rose to sit on the edge of the desk. Miss Kellogg was exactly my height seated,

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and I needed the difference in levels. Scarcely an unattractive woman, Patricia

Kellogg would be classified by men as "wholesome."

"girl-next-door," rather than the sexy bird their dreams featured. She was also not

at all the type to make the preposterous statements and request she had. Recently,

however, I had come to appreciate that the most unlikely women would stand up

and vigorously demand their civil and human rights.

Miss Kellogg was one to keep you off balance, for as she began doling out the

contents of her briefcase, she explained that her sister-in-law had a bicornuate

uterus. During my internship in Cornell Medical, I had encountered such a

condition. The uterus develops imperfectly, with fertile ovaries but double

Fallopian tubes. The victim conceives easily enough but usually aborts within six

weeks. A full-term pregnancy would be a miracle. I glanced through the clinical

reports from prominent New York and Michigan hospitals, bearing out Miss

Kellogg's statements and detailing five separate spontaneous abortions.

"The last time, Cecily carried to three months before aborting," Pat Kellogg said.

"She nearly lost her mind with grief.

"You see, she was an only child. All her girlhood she'd dreamed of having a large

family. Her mother is a very successful businesswoman, and I'd say that Cecily

was a mistake as far as Louise Baxter is concerned. I remember how radiantly

happy Cecily and Peter, my brother, were when she started her first pregnancy six

years ago. And how undaunted she was after the first miss. You've no idea how

she's suffered since. I'm sorry; maybe you do, being a woman."

I nodded, but it was obvious to me, from the intensity of her expression, that she

had empathized deeply with the sister-in-law's disappointments.

"To have a child has become an obsession with her."

"Why not adoption?"

"My brother was blinded in the Vietnam War."

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futureloveFUTURELOVEAScienceFictiontriadIntroductionbyGORDONR.DICKSONTheDobbs-MerrillCompany,Inc.Indianapolis/NewYorkCopyright©1977byRogerElwoodAllrightsreserved,includingtherightofreproductioninwholeorinpartinanyformPublishedbytheBobbs-MerrillCompany,Inc.IndianapolisNewYorkManufacturedintheUnitedS...

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