Time Travel Omnibus, page 939
MUNDANE LANE
Kevin J. Anderson
No one would have believed in the last years of the twentieth century that human affairs were being watched from the vast, dark reaches of space. No one even considered the possibility that alien minds immeasurably superior to our own might regard this Earth with plans to invade.
No one even considered such a crazy idea, because in the last years of the twentieth century the genre of imaginative fiction had been forgotten. The very idea of a space program had died away from lack of interest before the first man could be shot into orbit. The Soviets had tried to launch a satellite called Sputnik, but the rocket blew up on the Cosmodrome launch-pad; the Communist Party members who had advocated the appalling waste of money were sentenced to a gulag. No one in the US or USSR ever suggested the idea again. The people of Earth were far too busy with their own problems to waste time with silly flights of fancy.
Thus, when the giant alien motherships loomed above Earth’s cities, the members of the human race—certainly doomed—looked up at the astounding vessels and simply could not comprehend what was about to happen . . .
In his cramped basement office of a Washington think tank four blocks from the White House, Jimmy Andrews sat in his creaking government-issue chair. The walls were thick cinderblock painted a heavy sea-foam green, a shade that some bureaucrat had chosen as the perfect color for all civil servants to enjoy.
Jimmy nudged thick black-rimmed glasses up on his nose and carefully opened the brittle yellowing pages of another issue of Amazing Stories. Copies of the long-vanished science fiction magazines were increasingly hard to find; very few had been printed before paper shortages in World War II killed the magazines entirely.
As a sure sign of wasteful government spending, Jimmy was paid to read the absurd pulp magazines for “ideas,” a job that many considered ridiculous. Now he eagerly devoured yet another story about metal men, master-minds of Mars, and mole creatures that lived beneath the Earth’s crust. The prose was rather awkward (even a fan like Jimmy could admit that), but the ideas—ah, the ideas!
On his desk, the red phone rang. He was so startled he knocked the fragile issue of Amazing Stories off the desktop. The red phone? Jimmy stared while it rang a second time. Until now, he had thought the phone was a mere prop. He used it as a paperweight.
Jimmy grabbed the phone on the third ring. It wouldn’t do to let whoever called on the red phone think he was gossiping at the water cooler. “Hello? Um, I mean, Jimmy Andrews’s desk. Um, I mean, Office of Unlikely Possibilities. May I help you?”
“This is General Ashcroft,” a gruff voice said. “Get your sorry self to the Oval Office—and I mean now! President Dole wants to see you immediately.”
“P-P-President Dole?”
“My spy cameras better show you running over here instead of walking, Andrews!” On the other end of the line, the red phone went dead.
Jimmy bolted out of the office. Panting and sweating, he scuttled down the sidewalk, bumping into pedestrians who seemed frozen into awestruck statues. Why wouldn’t they get out of the way? Then he glanced upward—and saw an enormous saucer hovering over the Capitol building, its shadow large enough to cover ten square blocks.
“The aliens really came!” he gasped. “The invasion fleet is really here.”
A police officer pointed to the sky. “What is that? Some new aircraft? Never seen anything like it.”
“Must be the Russians,” said another man on the sidewalk. “It’s gotta be the Russians.”
The cop scowled at him. “Of course it’s the Russians. Who else could it possibly be?”
Jimmy was about to explain the real alternative, when he remembered General Ashcroft’s impatience, and he began to run again.
The Oval Office was the stuff of legend, but not such imaginative legends as an invasion from space. Jimmy came to a halt, barely catching his breath. Today of all days he wished he had worn a suit and a tie, but he didn’t have a professional wardrobe like his fellow staff workers. His faded blue T-shirt was too tight over a potbelly that was the result of spending his lunch hours reading instead of jogging along the Potomac.
Fortunately, President Dole was too preoccupied to notice Jimmy’s clothes. Dole put his one good arm on the polished wood of the desk and leaned forward, beetling his heavy brows. “So, Mr. Andrews, I’m told you’re one of the only people left in the world who reads crazy sci-fi stuff. Now it’s time to earn back the salary that people said we were wasting on you. You’re part of a think tank, Mr. Andrews. I expect you to do some thinking for us.”
“Yes, Mr. President. How can I help? I’ve already seen the UFO.”
“UFO?” the President said. “Why do you call it that?”
“Unidentified Flying Object, sir,” said General Ashcroft, who stood stiffly at attention to one side of the President’s desk. “A term invented in a proposed Air Force project called Blue Book. We decided not to fund their investigations. It was pure silliness.”
Jimmy nearly choked. “Pure silliness? Excuse me, sir, but did I not notice a giant alien spacecraft overhead? Maybe if the Air Force had studied UFOs, we’d have had some warning!”
“That’s enough, gentlemen.” President Dole cut them off. “If anyone else read that science fiction stuff, we might have done some planning, but who in the world imagined there could be aliens out in space? Flying saucers that might want to invade the Earth? Inconceivable!”
“Actually, many people thought of it, Mr. President,” Jimmy said, standing proud. “A man named H.G. Wells wrote a book about an invasion from Mars back in 1898. It’s been long out of print, however. Even a century ago readers thought it was pure silliness.”
“The fact is, Mr. President,” General Ashcroft said, “we should have kept watching the skies. But no one ever thought.”
Jimmy sighed, “And now it’s too late to change the world.”
“It may not be too late,” President Dole said. “Not strictly speaking, anyway. You see, Mr. Andrews, you’re not the only crackpot we keep on the payroll. Another one of my pie-in-the-sky geniuses, a Dr. Hawking, claims to have concocted a time machine. His strange quantum theories, his speculations about time and wormholes, have made him a laughingstock among his peers—but if he says the time machine will work, then I’m willing to give it a shot.” Dole glanced toward the ceiling of the Oval Office. “Preferably before those aliens launch their weapons.”
“A time machine!” Jimmy could not keep the delight out of his voice. “And you want to send me back to . . . change history? Alter key events, do whatever I can to ensure that science fiction becomes popular? Yes, I see, we have to change our entire social mindset. Science fiction could inspire our scientists, give them new ideas. Yes, that would work!” He began to talk faster and faster. “If we can imagine the possibility of a threat from space, then it only follows that someone will imagine defenses against it. And the only way we can do that is by going back, oh . . . half a century, giving a few people the proper nudge. Editors, writers, fans, filmmakers. Science fiction can flourish instead of fade away!” He bowed. “And I understand why you’ve picked me to go, Mr. President. I’m the right man for the job.”
“And let’s not forget the fact,” Ashcroft interrupted, “that in our current crisis, you are completely expendable.”
It was 1961, and Jimmy Andrews promised to make it a different year than the one in which he had been born.
With his quantum time machine, Dr. Hawking had glimpsed other timelines, spotting what he called cruxpoints where the futures had changed. While Jimmy and the scientist hunched together in the government laboratory, plotting and planning, the aliens had issued a dire statement that sounded like a thunderbolt: Every human should prepare to die.
By that time, Jimmy and Dr. Hawking had identified three important cruxpoints. He looked into the scientist’s droopy eyes and thin skeletal face that had been wasted by ALS. Speaking through his voice synthesizer, Hawking pointed out, “You have to go before the invaders obliterate my time machine.”
Jimmy said, “These three points will have to be enough.” He gathered his notes, put together a disguise with frantic assistance from the White House, and then, feeling as if every cell in his body had turned into fizzing foam from a shaken can of warm soda pop, he had arrived back here. 1961.
Wearing a plaid sport coat and snappy Panama hat, he carried a case of catalogs and brochures in keeping with his persona as an auto parts salesman. He stood under the neon sign of a bar in downtown Manhattan known to be a frequent haunt of authors meeting their agents.
He looked around in the dim light, smelled cigarette smoke and old beer. Two men sat on stools pulled up to the dark wood of the bar; the meeting seemed somber, not celebratory. The one with the large, bushy beard was immediately recognizable; the other, unfamiliar man had a full tumbler of Scotch in his hand, which he sipped vigorously.
Jimmy came close enough to eavesdrop as the man with the Scotch said consolingly, “I tell you, Frank, we’ve tried everywhere. Twenty rejection letters. Nobody understands what you’re trying to do. And sci-fi novels can’t be more than sixty thousand words long. Nobody will read something as massive as what you’ve written—four hundred pages!”
“But this novel is my masterpiece, Lurton. Do you know how many years I’ve worked on it?”
“Nobody said it isn’t impressive, Frank.” Lurton sipped his Scotch again. “In fact, you’re a genius. Even I don’t understand half of what you put in that book, all those strange words. One editor said that nobody could read through the first hundred pages without getting confused and annoyed.”
“James Joyce probably had the same problems with Finnegans Wake,” the bearded man grumbled. “I absolutely believe people will read an imaginative and thought-provoking book, if anybody has the guts to publish it.”
“Remember your audience, Frank. There are few enough readers for sci-fi as it is, and most of them are twelve- to fifteen-year-old boys.”
“That’s why Paul Atreides is a fifteen-year-old boy.” Frank was clearly starting to get angry.
“But a desert planet with giant sandworms and some sort of addictive drug? Drugs, Frank? And what is all this religious guff? Give us bug-eyed monsters and scantily clad women. Your female character doesn’t even scream when she sees a sandworm! Nobody’ll believe that.”
“I believe in this book, Lurton. Bev believes in it, too, and if you can’t support what I want to do, then you don’t have any business being my agent.”
It was time for Jimmy to barge in before things got out of hand. “Excuse me, gentlemen. Are you by any chance Frank Herbert, the author?”
The bearded man looked surprised. “You’ve heard of me?”
“Certainly! I loved your first novel, The Dragon in the Sea. I certainly hope you’re working on something new. It’s been quite some time.”
“And I have quite a novel . . . but no publisher.” His large beard swallowed up his downturned lips.
“We’ve exhausted all the possibilities,” Lurton said—Lurton Blasingame, the agent. “As I was just explaining to my client, every possible publisher has turned down the manuscript. It’s time to move on.”
Jimmy swung his sample case up onto the bar. “Could I offer an idea? I’m an auto parts salesman. Have you heard of Chilton Books? They print auto-repair manuals, the best in the business. You could send Mr. Herbert’s manuscript there.”
Lurton finished his Scotch. “It would be nonsense to send a huge sci-fi novel to a publisher of auto-repair manuals. Thanks for the suggestion anyway.”
Jimmy pressed the issue. “Wait a minute, it may not be such a strange possibility. At our recent conference, the Chilton editor, Sterling Lanier, told me he’s a science fiction fan. He said that he wanted to publish something unusual, and not just the same old manuals.”
Frank Herbert had a gleam in his eyes. “Why not give it a try, Lurton? Maybe we could change the title to How to Repair Your Ornithopter.”
“You realize, Frank, this is the longest of long shots.”
“Maybe this man Lanier won’t be constrained by the rigid thinking of his fiction house peers,” Frank said. “Maybe he can market it to an audience other than twelve-year-old boys. I’m sure it’ll be a big seller.”
Lurton remained skeptical. “All right, but I warn you, Frank, this is the last time. If Chilton Books doesn’t go for it, I don’t think Dune World will ever be published.”
Frank extended his hand to shake Jimmy’s. “I appreciate the thought, mister. Could we buy you a drink?”
Jimmy desperately wanted to stay, but he shook his head. “I’m very sorry. I don’t have the time.”
Attendance at the 1968 World Science Fiction Convention was abysmally low, the smallest turnout yet for one of the annual gatherings. Originally scheduled for the posh Claremont Hotel in Oakland, California, the venue had been changed to the Rodeo Motel in downtown Emeryville. In Jimmy’s timeline, this would be the last such gathering before fandom collapsed as an organized entity. In his day there were no longer any science fiction conventions at all.
He wandered through the motel, poking his head in the various panels held in small meeting rooms, the minimally crowded autograph sessions with a few old writers from the pulp magazine days. He was thrilled to find others who had read every issue of Amazing and Astounding. In all his adult years, Jimmy had met only a couple of like-minded souls who didn’t consider him weird or immature to be reading “that strange spaceman stuff.”
This tiny World Science Fiction Convention had gathered the few remaining readers who didn’t mind being identified with the genre. By his guess, only a hundred or so people were there, most of them gloomy because of the recent news that the television show Star Trek had just been cancelled. When it aired, Star Trek was seen as not one small step, but a giant leap for science fiction, with intelligent and thought-provoking episodes (along with a pointy-eared alien and very short skirts on the female crewmembers).
Jimmy found a few fans sitting in the lobby, some of them dressed in costumes, others trading battered out-of-print books, all of them grumbling about the show’s cancellation. “There’s simply nothing we can do,” said one brown-haired woman with glasses who sat on a sofa, putting her chin in her hands. “I loved Star Trek. I even met Mr. Roddenberry at the Hugo ceremony last year.”
“We know, Bjo.”
“They’ll probably replace Star Trek with another doctor show,” groaned a beanpole-thin young man wearing a floppy Three Musketeers hat. “But what can you do? We’re not studio executives.”
Jimmy took a seat on the floor next to the fans. “You could write a letter.”
“What good would one letter do?” asked the woman named Bjo.
“Not just one letter—why not a whole campaign? There are at least a hundred people gathered right here at this motel. It would be a start. Then you could all tell your friends. There must be other fans in the world.”
“A few,” said the man in the Three Musketeers hat.
Bjo seemed delighted to have something to hold onto. “I’ll do it for Star Trek. I’ll write a letter. In fact, I’ll write a sample letter and mimeograph it so everybody has a starting point. You’ll all write to the studio, won’t you?” It didn’t sound like a question. “It’s time we stop hiding. As fans, we shouldn’t be ashamed of what we enjoy to read or watch.”
The skinny man said, “We’re embarrassed because we feel so alone.”
“Then we need to get organized,” Bjo said. “Even though the pulp magazines died, a couple of fan publications managed to survive. They’ve got mailing lists. They’ve got friends. It’ll be a genuine letter-writing campaign. We’ll bury Paramount with letters demanding that Star Trek be given another chance!”
“How can you think that’ll work, Bjo? It’s never been done before.”
She leaned forward. “Isn’t that what science fiction’s about? Imagining things that other people consider impossible?”
“This could be really important.” Jimmy clutched his hands together earnestly. “By putting together a letter-writing campaign, you’ll light a fire under fandom again. If we win this battle, then everybody in Hollywood will realize that we have power after all.”
“Sounds even more far-fetched than something written by Edgar Rice Burroughs,” said a quiet, chubby young man who had been dozing against the corner of the lobby sofa.
“I like ERB!” a woman next to him snapped, then her expression softened. “I didn’t know anybody still read him. Do you prefer John Carter of Mars or Carson of Venus?”
“We all prefer Star Trek.” Bjo got to her feet. Jimmy could see that she was going to take charge. This movement was in her hands now. If she could get Star Trek renewed for one year, if she could organize fandom and prove there was a strong audience for science fiction, it would certainly get the ball rolling.
“We don’t have much time,” Bjo said.
“None of us does,” Jimmy admitted.
He longed to stay with the fans and meet some of his favorite old authors, but he had far more important things to do. Saving the human race had to take precedent over the dealers’ room.
Jimmy pedaled his bicycle on the MGM Studio lot, gawking at the standing sets like a tourist. He was dressed as a script runner, but the papers in his bicycle basket were all blank. Timing now had to be impeccable.
He headed toward the main building just as a young man with dark hair and a neat beard emerged, shoulders slumped, his gaze downward. The cloud over his head was like a billboard announcing that he’d had another defeat.
Pedaling furiously, Jimmy brought the bike over to the sidewalk, skidded to a stop, and jingled his bell, startling the man. “Excuse me! You’re Mr. Lucas, aren’t you? George Lucas? I loved your student film.”
The bearded man looked at him. “My student film? You mean the futuristic one?”
“Yes, THX 1138. I especially loved the robot policemen.”
Lucas heaved a heavy sigh. “The only thing of mine anybody seems to know is American Graffiti. I swear their attention span is only two months long.” He forced an unconvincing smile. “What can you do? American Graffiti earned a lot of money, but now that I want to make something different and dear to my heart, I keep getting turned down.”
