James Blish - Anywhen

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ANYWHEN

JAMES BLISH

Each of the stories in this book was directly commissioned by a magazine editor, an opportunity I

used in each case to try an experiment of one kind

or another. I've used this collection to second-guess one of the experiments, as follows:

In September of 1965, Kyril Bonfiglioli found himself host in Oxford to five science-fiction

writers (Brian W. Aldiss, Poul Anderson, James G. Ballard,

Harry Harrison, and myself) and an artist (Judith Ann Lawrence), and commissioned from us all

material for what was to be the first issue of Impulse,

a successor (now dofunct) to England's long-established professional magazine Science-Fantasy.

The five stories and the cover were all to develop the

theme of a man who sacrifices his life for a cause-or who doesn't. Except for this bare

statement, which as I recall was Mr. Aldiss' suggestion, we

had no other instructions except (for the writers) to stay inside ten thousand words.

My contribution to that "OxCon issue" was a novelette called "A Hero's Life". It was written in

a vast hurry to meet Mr. Bonfiglioli's deadline, and

I didn't realize until too late to start something else that I had too much material to fit

comfortably inside ten thousand words. Hence, I've taken

the opportunity to rewrite it, as the novella which leads off this book.

Treetops, Woodlands Road,JAMES BLISH

Harpsden (Henley), O?xon

1970

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Also in Affow by James Blish

Jack of Eagles

Midsummer Century

71te Seeding Stars

A Case of Conscience

The Quincunx of Time

Fallen Star

71se Testament of Andros

CITIES IN FLIOHT SERIES

They Shall Have Stars

A Life for the Stars

-Farthman, Come Home

A Clash of Cymbals

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James Blish

ANYWHEN

ARROW BOOKS

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Arrow Books Limited

3 Fitzroy Square, London W1

An imprint of the Hutchinson Publishing Group

London Melbourne Sydney Auckland

Wellington Johannesburg and agencies

throughout the world

First published in Great Britain by Faber & Faber Ltd 1971

Arrow edition 1978

(D James Blish 1956, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1965,

1966,1967,1968,1971

CONDITIONS OF SALE: This book shall not, by

way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired

out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's

prior consent in any form of binding or cover other

than that in which it is published and without a

similar condition being imposed on the subsequent

purchaser. This book is published at a net price and

is supplied subject to the Publishers Association

Standard Conditions of Sale registered under the

Restrictive Trade Practices Act, 1956

Made and printed in Great Britain

by The Anchor Press Ltd

Tiptree, Essex

ISBN 0 09 916000 5

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HARRY HARRISON

a good companion

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Contents

A Style in Treason (1967) 13

The Writing of the Rat (1956)51

And Some Were Savages (1960) 67

A Dusk of Idols (1961) 94

None so Blind (1962) 122

No Jokes on Mars (1965) 128

How Beautiful with Banners (1966)138

Skysign (1968) 151

Acknowledgements 185

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A Style in Treason

CHAPTER ONE

The Karas, a fragile transship-she was really little more than a ferry, just

barely meriting a name-came fluttering out of the interstitium. into the

Flos Campi system a day late in a ball of rainbows, trailing behind her two

gaudy contrails of false photons, like a moth unable to free herself of her

cocoon. The ship's calendar said it was Joni 23, 5914, which was probably

wrong by at least ten years; however, nobody but a scholar of that style of

dating could have been precise about the matter.; the Karas was a day later

than she should have been; just what day was at best only a local

convention.

In the salon, Simon de Kuyl sighed and laid out the tarots again. Boadacea,

the biggish fourth planet of the Flos Campi array and Simon's present port

of call, was yet a week ahead in urspace, and he was already tired. He had

reasons. His fellow passengers had been dull beyond belief, with the

possible-because wholly unknown-exception of the entity Who had spent the

entire voyage in his cabin, with a diplomatic seal spidered over the palm

plate on its door; and Simon suspected that they would have bored him even

had he not had to present himself to them as a disillusioned Sagittarian

mystic, embittered at himself for ever having believed that the Mystery

that lay (or didn't lie) at the galactic centre would someday emerge and

set the rest of the universe to rights, and hence in too unpredictable a

temper to be worth being polite to. Conceivably, indeed probably, some of

the other passengers were trying to be as repellent 13

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A Style in Treason

to strangers as was Simon, but the probability did not make their surfaces

any more diverting.

But of course none of these things-the ship, the delay, the passengers, the

pose-was more than marginally to blame for his weariness. In these days of

treason, politeness, easy travel, and indefinitely prolonged physical

vigour, everyone was tired, just a little but all the time. After a while,

it became difficult to remember who one was supposed to be-and to remember

who one was, was virtually impossible. Even the Baptized, who had had their

minds dipped and then rechannelled with only a century's worth of memories,

betrayed to the experienced eye a vague, tortured puzzlement, as though

still searching in the stilled waters for some salmon of ego they had been

left no reason to suspect had ever been there. Suicide was unconcealedly

common among the Baptized, and Simon did not think the reason (as the

theoreticians and ministers insisted) was really only a minor imperfection

in the process, to be worked out in time.

There was plenty of time; that was the trouble. People lived too damn long,

that was all. Erasing the marks, on the face or in the mind, did not unwind

the years; the arrow of entropy pointed forever in the same direction;

virginity was a fact, not just a state of membrane or memory. Helen,

reawakening in Aithra's Egyptian bed flensed of her history, might bemuse

Menelaus for a while, but there will always be another Paris, and that

without delay-time past is eternally in time present, as Ezra-Tse had said.

The ten-thousand-year-old analogy came easily to him. He was supposed to

be, and in fact was, a native of High Earth; and in his persona as a

Sagittarian (lapsed) would be expected to be a student of such myths, the

more timedimmed the better-hence, in fact, his interminable shipboard

not-quite-game of tarot solitaire. Staying quite automatically in character

was in his nature, as well as being one of his chiefest skills.

And certainly he had never allowed himself to be Bap14

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A Style in Treason

tized, though his mind had been put through not a few lesser changes in the

service of High Earth, and might yet be forced into a greater one if his

mission on Boadacea went awry. Many of his memories were painful, and all of

them were painfully crowded together; but they were his, and that above all

was what,gave them their worth. Some professional traitors were valuable

because they had never had, and never could have, a crisis of identity.

Simon knew without vanity-it was too late for that-that High Earth had no

more distinguished a traitor than he, precisely because he had such crises

as often as once a year, and hadn't lost one yet.

"Your indulgence, reverend sir," said a voice at his back. A white hand,

well kept but almost aggressively masculine, came over his shoulder and

moved the Fool on to the Falling Tower. "It is boorish of me to intervene,

but it discomforts me to see an implication go a-begging. I fear I am

somewhat compulsive."

The voice was a new one: therefore, belonging to the person who had been

sequestered in the diplomatic cabin up to now. Simon turned, ready to be

surly.

His next impulse was to arise and run. The question of who the creature was

evaporated in recognition of just what it was.

Superficially, he saw a man with a yellow page-boy coiffure, wearing

pale-violet hose, short russet breeches, and a tabard of deeper violet, as

well as a kangaroo-shiv, a weapon usually affected only by ladies. A

duplicate of the spider on the doorseal was emblazoned in gold on his left

breast. Superficially; for Simon was fortunate-in no way he could

explain-to be 'able to penetrate this seeming.

The "diplomat" was a vombis, or what in those same myths Simon had been

thinking of earlier was called a Proteus: a creature which could imitate

perfectly almost any life-fonn within its size range. Or nearly perfectly;

for Simon, like one in perhaps five thousand of his colleagues, was

sensitive to them, without ever being able to specify in is

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A Style in Treason

what particular their imitations of humanity were deficient. Other people,

even those of the sex opposite to the one the vombis had assumed, could find

no Raw in them. In part because they did not revert when killed, no human

had ever seen their "real" form-if they had one-though of course there were

legends aplenty. The talent might have made them ideal double agents, had it

been possible to trust them-but that was only an academic speculation, since

the vombis were wholly creatures of the Green Exarch.

Simon's third impulse, like that of any other human being in like

circumstances, was to kill this one instantly upon recognition, but that

course had too many obvious drawbacks, of which the kangaroo-shiv was the

least important. Instead, he said with only moderate ungraciousness: "No

matter. I was blocked anyhow."

:'You are most kind. May I be seated?"

'Since you're here." ,

"Thank you." The creature sat down gracefully, across the table from Simon.

"Is this your first trip to Boadacea, reverend sir?"

Simon had not said he was goingto Boadacea, but after all, it was written

on the passenger list for anyone to see.

"Yes. And you?"

"Oh, that is not my destination; I am for deeper into the cluster. But you

will find it an interesting world-especially the variations in the light;

they make it seem quite dreamlike to a native of a planet with only a

single, stable sun. And then, too, it is very old."

"What planet isn't?"

"I forget, you are from High Earth, to whom all other worlds must seem

young indeed. Nevertheless, Boadacea is quite old enough to have many

curious nations, all fiercely independent, and a cultural pattern which

overrides all local variations. To this all the Boadaceans are intensely

loyal."

"I commend them," Simon said; and then added sourly, "it is well for a man

to have a belief he can cling to."

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James Blish - Anywhen

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