Crosstime Traffic, page 3
Eventually, I inquired, and was told that they had no such story, the editor didn’t remember any such story, and did the slush reader really say that, because they didn’t believe me.
I still have the reader’s letter. He said that.
The story was gone—and I didn’t have a carbon. I’d run out of carbon paper just before writing it, and didn’t want to take time to get more, not while the writing was going so well. I figured it wouldn’t hurt, just one story with no carbon.
I mean, of course that was the one they lost. (Of mine; I’ve heard from other writers that that editor lost a lot of manuscripts over the years.)
Life is much easier in these days of cheap photocopies and writing on computers, where I can just plug in a disk and print a new copy as needed. Back then, though, it was typewriter and carbon paper. All I had left was the rough drafts—and they were rough, all right. The story had gone through several false starts and variations before reaching its final form. And by the time I was convinced the story was lost, I was on my way back to college.
So I put it aside and tried to forget about it, with the intention of someday digging it out and reconstructing it.
And for once, someday actually came.
Susan Shwartz was editing the second Arabesques anthology, and invited me to submit a story. I didn’t have any stories around that were appropriate, and a novel was nearing deadline, so I didn’t have time to come up with an entirely new one. In a sudden inspiration, I pulled out the rough draft of “The Palace of Llarimuir,” which was rather Oriental in setting and feel, and rewrote it into “The Palace of al-Tir al-Abtan.” The only change necessary to make it an “Arabian Nights“ sort of story was to change the names from vaguely Celtic coinages to genuine Arabic.
In fact, the Arabic names fit the whole thing better than the originals.
It didn’t really fit the anthology that well, though, and Susan didn’t take it. Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine did.
“The Final Folly of Captain Dancy” happened after watching the adventure movie, “Nate and Hayes.” Throughout that, it seemed as if the heroes were making up elaborate schemes, risking their lives carrying them out, and not telling anybody what their plans were.
What would have happened, I wondered, if one of them had gotten killed? How could the rest of Bully Hayes’ crew have carried on? All these complicated plots that depended on other people carrying out their parts in time...
The idea stewed for awhile, then gradually started growing. I had no idea how long the story was going to be—for awhile I thought it might be a novel, but it wrapped itself up neatly as a novella, the only one I’ve ever written. I like it.
And while I was always a few steps ahead of the characters, no, I did not know, while I was writing it, how it was all going to come out.
And finally, as a coda to these fantasy adventures, we have “After the Dragon Is Dead,” which is a consideration of just what does happen after the final fade-out.
So that’s the lot. These are not all my short fiction, by any means—I’ve left out most of my work in horror, series fantasy, and hard SF. And of course, I’m still writing more. All those will have to wait for some future volume or volumes. This time around I’ve focused on alternate realities and personal favorites.
I hope you’ll enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.
Paranoid Fantasy #1
The alarm went off, and Nathan woke up.
He glanced out through the bulletproof glass of the window by his bed; seeing no obvious danger, he unstrapped himself, sat up, and turned off the burglar alarm, muttering the charm, “Rabbit, rabbit,” as he did so. He took the silver cross from around his neck and dressed for the day, starting with chainmail undershirt and lead-lined jockey shorts.
After replacing the garlic at each window, he burned a cone of incense, with the appropriate prayers, to placate the gods. Carefully, his hands protected by rubber gloves, he took his defanged white mouse, Theodosius, from its massive cage, then headed down to the corner restaurant for breakfast, being certain to lock the door behind him, both the three regular locks and the special one the police couldn’t open. Always watching for the things that come through the walls, he ate heartily, after feeding a little of everything to Theodosius to check for poison.
Shortly thereafter Nathan, briefcase in hand, was off to his downtown office. As if from nowhere, his obnoxious neighbor Eddie appeared before him. Nathan had been too busy not stepping on the cracks in the sidewalk to see him coming.
Eddie cried out, “Hi, Nathan! How’s business?”
Nathan made a sign to ward off the evil eye, glanced about for other menaces, then muttered something about being late.
“Aw, hell, Nathan, so you’ll be a few minutes late! I missed the entire day yesterday, and nothing’s happened to me! You worry too much, you know that? Why are you always...hey! What’s that? Hey! Help!” This last was said as several large trolls and assorted gargoyles suddenly leaped out of the nearby shrubbery. With nasty giggles and remarks about foolhardiness, they grabbed Eddie, trussed him up tightly, and carried him off.
Nathan watched them go, then continued on his way to the bus stop, unconcerned. He was safe from that bunch. It was the Others that worried him, and they only come out at night.
Why I Left Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers
Harry’s was a nice place—probably still is. I haven’t been back lately. It’s a couple of miles off I-79, a few exits north of Charleston, near a place called Sutton. Used to do a pretty fair business until they finished building the Interstate out from Charleston and made it worthwhile for some fast-food joints to move in right next to the cloverleaf; nobody wanted to drive the extra miles to Harry’s after that. Folks used to wonder how old Harry stayed in business, as a matter of fact, but he did all right even without the Interstate trade. I found that out when I worked there.
Why did I work there, instead of at one of the fast-food joints? Because my folks lived in a little house just around the corner from Harry’s, out in the middle of nowhere—not in Sutton itself, just out there on the road. Wasn’t anything around except our house and Harry’s place. He lived out back of his restaurant. That was about the only thing I could walk to in under an hour, and I didn’t have a car.
This was when I was sixteen. I needed a job, because my dad was out of work again and if I was gonna do anything I needed my own money. Mom didn’t mind my using her car—so long as it came back with a full tank of gas and I didn’t keep it too long. That was the rule. So I needed some work, and Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers was the only thing within walking distance. Harry said he had all the help he needed—two cooks and two people working the counter, besides himself. The others worked days, two to a shift, and Harry did the late night stretch all by himself. I hung out there a little, since I didn’t have anywhere else, and it looked like pretty easy work—there was hardly any business, and those guys mostly sat around telling dirty jokes. So I figured it was perfect.
Harry, though, said that he didn’t need any help.
I figured that was probably true, but I wasn’t going to let logic keep me out of driving my mother’s car. I did some serious begging, and after I’d made his life miserable for a week or two Harry said he’d take a chance and give me a shot, working the graveyard shift, midnight to eight A.M., as his counterman, busboy, and janitor all in one.
I talked him down to 7:30, so I could still get to school, and we had us a deal. I didn’t care about school so much myself, but my parents wanted me to go, and it was a good place to see my friends, y’know? Meet girls and so on.
So I started working at Harry’s, nights. I showed up at midnight the first night, and Harry gave me an apron and a little hat, like something from a diner in an old movie, same as he wore himself. I was supposed to wait tables and clean up, not cook, so I don’t know why he wanted me to wear them, but he gave them to me, and I needed the bucks, so I put them on and pretended I didn’t notice that the apron was all stiff with grease and smelled like something nasty had died on it a few weeks back. And Harry—he’s a funny old guy, always looked fiftyish, as far back as I can remember. Never young, but never getting really old, either, y’know? Some people do that, they just seem to go on forever. Anyway, he showed me where everything was in the kitchen and back room, told me to keep busy cleaning up whatever looked like it wanted cleaning, and told me, over and over again, like he was really worried that I was going to cause trouble, “Don’t bother the customers. Just take their orders, bring them their food, and don’t bother them. You got that?”
“Sure,” I said, “I got it.”
“Good,” he said, “We get some funny guys in here at night, but they’re good customers, most of them, so don’t you screw up with anyone. One customer complains, one customer stiffs you for the check, and you’re out of work, you got that?”
“Sure,” I said, though I’ve gotta admit I was wondering what to do if some cheapskate skipped without paying. I tried to figure how much of a meal would be worth paying for in order to keep the job, but with taxes and all it got too tricky for me to work out, and I decided to wait until the time came, if it ever did.
Then Harry went back in the kitchen, and I got a broom and swept up out front a little until a couple of truckers came in and ordered burgers and coffee.
I was pretty awkward at first, but I got the hang of it after a little bit. Guys would come in, women, too, one or two at a time, and they’d order something, and Harry’d have it ready faster than you can say “cheese”, practically, and they’d eat it, and wipe their mouths, and go use the john, and drive off, and none of them said a damn thing to me except their orders, and I didn’t say anything back except “Yes, sir,” or “Yes, ma’am,” or “Thank you, come again.” I figured they were all just truckers who didn’t like the fast-food places.
That was what it was like at first, anyway, from midnight to about one, one-thirty, but then things would slow down. Even the truckers were off the roads by then, I guess, or they didn’t want to get that far off the Interstate, or they’d all had lunch, or something. Anyway, by about two that first night I was thinking it was pretty clear why Harry didn’t think he needed help on this shift, when the door opened and the little bell rang.
I jumped a bit; that bell startled me, and I turned around, but then I turned back to look at Harry, ’cause I’d seen him out of the corner of my eye, y’know, and he’d got this worried look on his face, and he was watching me; he wasn’t looking at the customer at all.
About then I realized that the reason the bell had startled me was that I hadn’t heard anyone drive up, and who the hell was going to be out walking to Harry’s place at two in the morning in the West Virginia mountains? The way Harry was looking at me, I knew this must be one of those special customers he didn’t want me to scare away.
So I turned around, and there was this short little guy in a really heavy coat, all zipped up, made of that shiny silver fabric you see race-car drivers wear in the cigarette ads, you know? And he had on padded ski pants of the same stuff, with pockets all over the place, and he was just putting down a hood, and he had on big thick goggles like he’d been out in a blizzard, but it was April and there hadn’t been any snow in weeks and it was about fifty, sixty degrees out.
Well, I didn’t want to blow it, so I pretended I didn’t notice, I just said, “Hello, sir; may I take your order?”
He looked at me funny and said, “I suppose so.”
“Would you like to see a menu?” I said, trying to be on my best behavior—hell, I was probably overdoing it; I’d let the truckers find their own menus.
“I suppose so,” he said again, and I handed him the menu.
He looked it over, pointed to a picture of a cheeseburger that looked about as much like anything from Harry’s grill as Sly Stallone looks like me, and I wrote it down and passed the slip back to Harry, and he hissed at me, “Don’t bother the guy!”
I took the hint, and went back to sweeping until the burger was up, and as I was handing the plate to the guy there was a sound out front like a shotgun going off, and this green light flashed in through the window, so I nearly dropped the thing, but I couldn’t go look because the customer was digging through his pockets for money, to pay for the burger.
“You can pay after you’ve eaten, sir,” I said.
“I will pay first,” he said, real formal. “I may need to depart quickly. My money may not be good here.”
The guy hadn’t got any accent, but with that about the money I figured he was a foreigner, so I waited, and he hauled out a handful of weird coins, and I told him, “I’ll need to check with the manager.” He gave me the coins, and while I was taking them back to Harry and trying to see out the window, through the curtain, to see where that green light came from, the door opened and these three women come in, and where the first guy was all wrapped up like an Eskimo, these people weren’t wearing anything but jeans. Women, remember, and it was only April.
Hey, I was just sixteen, so I tried real hard not to stare and I went running back to the kitchen and tried to tell Harry what was going on, but the money and the green light and the half-naked women all got tangled up and I didn’t make much sense.
“I told you I get some strange customers, kid,” he said, “Let’s see the money.” So I gave him the coins, and he said, “Yeah, we’ll take these,” and made change—I don’t know how, because the writing on the coins looked like Russian to me, and I couldn’t figure out what any of them were. He gave me the change, and then looked me in the eye and says, “Can you handle those women, boy? It’s part of the job; I wasn’t expecting them tonight, but we get strange people in here, I told you that. You think you can handle it without losing me any customers, or do you want to call it a night and find another job?”
I really wanted that paycheck; I gritted my teeth and said, “No problem!”
When you were sixteen, did you ever try to wait tables with six bare boobs right there in front of you? Those three were laughing and joking in some foreign language I never heard before, and I think only one of them spoke English, because she did all the ordering. I managed somehow, and by the time they left Harry was almost smiling at me.
Around four things slowed down again, and around four-thirty or five the breakfast crowd began to trickle in, but between two and four there were about half a dozen customers, I guess; I don’t remember who they all were any more, most of them weren’t that strange, but that first little guy and the three women, them I remember. Maybe some of the others were pretty strange, too, maybe stranger than the first guy, but he was the first, which makes a difference, and then those women—well, that’s gonna really make an impression on a sixteen-year- old, y’know? It’s not that they were particularly beautiful or anything, because they weren’t, they were just women, and I wasn’t used to seeing women with no shirts.
When I got off at seven thirty, I was all mixed up; I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I was beginning to think maybe I imagined it all.
I went home and changed clothes and caught the bus to school, and what with not really having adjusted to working nights, and being tired, and having to think about schoolwork, I was pretty much convinced that the whole thing had been some weird dream. So I came home, slept through until about eleven, then got up and went to work again.
And damn, it was almost the same, except that there weren’t any half-naked women this time. The normal truckers and the rest came in first, then they faded out, and the weirdos started turning up.
At sixteen, you know, you think you can cope with anything. At least, I did. So I didn’t let the customers bother me, not even the ones who didn’t look like they were exactly human beings to begin with. Harry got used to me being there, and I did make it a lot easier on him, so after the first couple of weeks it was pretty much settled that I could stay on for as long as I liked.
And I liked it fine, really, once I got used to the weird hours. I didn’t have much of a social life during the week, but I never had, living where I did, and I could afford to do the weekends up in style with what Harry paid me and the tips I got. Some of those tips I had to take to the jewelers in Charleston, different ones so nobody would notice that one guy was bringing in all these weird coins and trinkets, but Harry gave me some pointers—he’d been doing the same thing for years, except that he’d gone through every jeweler in Charleston and Huntington and Wheeling and Washington, P.A., and was halfway through Pittsburgh.
It was fun, really, seeing just what would turn up there and order a burger. I think my favorite was the guy who walked in, no car, no lights, no nothing, wearing this electric blue hunter’s vest with wires all over it, and these medieval tights with what Harry called a codpiece, with snow and some kind of sticky goop all over his vest and in his hair, shivering like it was the Arctic out there, when it was the middle of July. He had some kind of little animal crawling around under that vest, but he wouldn’t let me get a look at it; from the shape of the bulge it made it might have been a weasel or something. He had the strangest damn accent you ever heard, but he acted right at home and ordered without looking at the menu.
Harry admitted, when I’d been there awhile, that he figured anyone else would mess things up for him somehow. I might have thought I was going nuts, or I might have called the cops, or I might have spread a lot of strange stories around, but I didn’t, and Harry appreciated that.
Hey, that was easy. If these people didn’t bother Harry, I figured, why should they bother me? And it wasn’t anybody else’s business, either. When people asked, I used to tell them that sure, we got weirdos in the place late at night—but I never said just how weird.
And I never got as cool about it as Harry was; I mean, a flying saucer in the parking lot wouldn’t make Harry blink. I blinked, when we got ’em—we did, but not very often, and I had to really work not to stare at them. Most of the customers had more sense; if they came in something strange they hid it in the woods or something. But there were always a few who couldn’t be bothered. If any state cops ever cruised past there and saw those things, I guess they didn’t dare report them. No one would’ve believed them anyway.
