The Sandman, page 10
Then she sat up straight, digging her elbow in so suddenly that Thunder whined protestingly beside her. “And that spark came from you, lord! For you are master of the Uncreated. You must be come to bless the occasion and receive our thanks! Do you prefer blood sacrifice, or sex, or—”
Her own unheeding chatter suddenly made her blush right down to her breasts. The other big problem with her foot, which she hadn’t mentioned to the god, was that no other band would accept a limping bride, however clever. And she couldn’t marry any boy here, they were all her cousins. Up to this point her best hope had been to captivate some visiting hunter. But now—she looked full at him, as a girl should when assessing a possible sex partner, and her heart sank. So far as she could read his strange face, he looked acutely embarrassed! “Libations,” she blurted. “Some gods prefer drink offerings; that’s good, too. Just indicate your wishes, lord.”
The god fingered his neck stone, staring down at it. “To speak the truth, Ikat, I come because I am of two minds about your ‘new thing.’ You might call it ‘herding,’ by the way. The goats are already in their herds, you are merely moving them to your own design.”
“It shall be named as you say, lord, thank you,” Ikat said, delighted.
“But think carefully about it. You press forward to embrace new things. As you say, it is your job. But is every new thing a good thing?”
Ikat stared. “How could this be other than good? You are a god, lord, and know no hunger, but for us it is very different! Do you know what I dreamed yesterday night?” The god nodded, but Ikat, absorbed in her words, didn’t notice. “I dreamed that the little canyon was brimful of imprisoned goats, so full that we ate meat once a day!” She sighed with pleasure at the memory.
“Ikat, listen to me. Your band, all of humanity, is like a fish in the river, at a place where the stream splits into two channels. The choice the fish makes will change its life, its world, forever, and should not be taken lightly.”
Ikat clapped her hands in delight. “You can talk in word pictures, too! But I shouldn’t be surprised, the thought skills are yours. It is the best fun! Do you warn the fish, then, against the river channel ahead? What is it like?”
Suddenly, though he did not stir, the god seemed to be very tall. “I could show you,” he said quietly. Thunder the dog shivered beside her, and Ikat noticed for the first time how very shady the cedar was, how its broad cool boughs cast the deepest and most clinging shadows around the god. They were shadows of the uncreated, of things that were not now and might never be. And the chief horror was their namelessness. Ikat, the namer, could not name them, though she could see that some were big and some were little in the hand, and others were thought skills while yet others were arts of finger and leg and arm. There were literally no words yet, for the things that stirred there in the shadow of the god. The New Meeters who would name those things were themselves yet to be born.
Dizzy and sick, Ikat turned and hid her eyes against Thunder’s flank. “Forgive me, lord, I am not strong enough to see!”
“No—I should not have done that. It is not weakness, Ikat. It is your strength that prevents you from seeing, the strength of simplicity and innocence. . . . Tell me, what is the name of that river?”
Ikat swallowed her nausea. The god had actually apologized, and was trying to soothe her—amazing! It was up to her to respond. She seized on the plainness of his question with relief. “It—we have no special name for it, lord. It is just the river. Is it your will that I should find it a name?”
“I will name it for you,” the god said. “Call it Euphrates.”
More important issues distracted Ikat from this pronouncement. What about the “herding”? He had said he was in two minds about it. She thought about pleading for mercy, but discarded the idea. Too late to be humble, and anyhow it was her way to be bold. “Oh, Lord Shaper, if one wishes to prevent the birth of a child, it is far easier at the beginning. Perhaps the pregnancy has already come too far to abort it.”
He looked down at her, wrapping the antelope skin more firmly around himself. “Even the birth day is not too late. A child may die of its birthing. Have you no stillborns in the birthing tent?”
We will conceive again, she wanted to retort. Instead she said, “But you’ve already named the baby, lord, named it yourself!”
“So I did,” the god said, disconcerted.
Mistake, Ikat thought to herself, wincing. Even kindly Uncle Oren didn’t appreciate having his inconsistencies pointed out. No man did—how much less a god? She bowed her head to her knees again. “We are the grass under your feet, lord. Do to us as you will.”
For a moment, bent over, she knew he was still there, maybe thinking it over. Then Thunder gave a half whine, and Flint sneezed. She sat up and saw the deity was gone, evaporated like a puddle in the sun. “That was scary,” she told Flint, pulling his ears. “And, oh dear, what’s happening down at that canyon?” She couldn’t stand waiting anymore—suppose the god was down there right now, tossing goats over the wicker barriers like Ree slinging pebbles?
She hung the waterskin over her shoulder and hauled herself to her feet. Tying her skirt on, she began limping down the rocky slope. The dogs ran ahead, but she called them sharply to heel. Trained to chase and kill, the dogs might never learn the art of “herding.” “Heck, we haven’t learnt it ourselves,” Ikat sighed. “And it was such a good idea. . . .”
She paused, listening. They were coming; she could hear the voices! As soon as the first people came in sight she shrieked, “What happened?”
The children ran up the hill to her, seizing the waterskin and talking all together at the tops of their voices. More tired, the adults came on in a tight clot, arguing all the way. “Only a partial triumph, niece,” Uncle Rav said. “Half a dozen goats caught alive, no more. And all because of this bean-balled, wisp-brained, snot-arsed, misborn—” He shoved someone forward, someone entirely new.
“I’m sorry,” the strange young man said miserably, hanging his head. “But I really didn’t know. I still don’t.”
Ree said, “I keep trying to tell you!”
“We need that limber tongue of yours, Ikat,” Uncle Oren grumped, “to get it through his thick head. This is Neem, from a band up the river. A hunter, and thought we were hunting. Jumped in and speared half the goats before we could stop him!”
Ikat assessed the newcomer with one piercing glance. His beautifully flaked spear showed there was a clever flint-knapper in his band. And the tiger skin he wore—wow, if he killed that animal himself, he was a superb hunter indeed! “I’m Ikat, the New Meeter,” she said to him. “Since you killed, you should eat of the kill with us, that would only be fair.”
Neem’s face lightened at her words. “How kind you are,” he said. “I thought you’d hand me my head, for spoiling your trick, whatever it was!”
“Lend me your arm up this hill, for you see I have a limp, and I’ll forgive you.” Close beside him like this, Ikat could smell Neem’s strange and attractive odor, a whiff of male sweat and tiger leather. Aha, I see your plan, Lord Shaper, she said to herself, smiling. Admirably subtle! You will distract me with pleasures, perhaps even children, and count on my other child, the child of thought born this day, to die of neglect. But I am not so poor a parent as that!
Splatter
Will Shetterly
Will Shetterly is one of those people I feel like I’ve known forever. Will is a fine writer who, inexplicably, keeps doing other things instead, like nearly becoming governor of Minnesota, and nearly directing and releasing an independent film. He has had a beard long enough that I cannot remember what he looked like without one. He is also a nice man, gentle and perceptive. This is not a story I would have expected him to write, but then, nasty tales lurk in the nicest of us.
He sets his story during Sandman #14, the story I called “Collectors,” in The Doll’s House collection. (It’s also a pretty accurate portrait of the whole signing tour thing.)
SOMETIMES HE SUSPECTED HIS PUBLISHER CALLED EACH city before a signing tour to order, “Fans, assorted, at least two geeks in every batch.” Today, the geeks seemed to be a Demented Duo, a young man and woman dressed in black who placed a stack of his books before him and asked for an autograph doodle on the woman’s thigh that could be turned into a tattoo. He obliged them, pleased for just that moment that this last-minute appearance was so poorly publicized that no photographers were present. He knew he was grateful that they wanted his signature sketched on her skin with a felt-tip rather than a razor blade.
He drew a cartoon cat’s head with vampire teeth and a knowing wink, then added an indecipherable scrawl that might be Peter Confry or Please Crucify. They both thanked him profusely. He felt old as he realized he had miscategorized them. They were actually a Nice Young Couple who would not embarrass him with offers of obscure drugs or inventive sex that he would have to politely decline. This realization saddened him. It was always nice to be asked.
He inscribed their books and instantly forgot their names (Teri and Jon?), though he wrote thirteen times “To (her name) and (his name)—Best wishes! P-scrawl C-scrawl.” While he scribbled in the worn paperback copies of every novel of his except the new one, the hardcover that they’d bought here, they told him they had driven from Alabama just for this. Before they drove home, they would eat cheeseburgers side by side at McDonald’s with their copy of Hunting Butterflies open between them. Grandma liked to take care of the baby, and besides, their autographed copies of Confry’s complete works weren’t just to make them happy—those signed books were investments in their baby’s future.
He nodded and grinned, and told them he hoped they’d like the new one, and wondered when his driver would arrive to take him away. He glanced at the wall clock four times while the Nice Young Couple hugged their books and repeated that he’d have a place to stay if he ever came through Mobile, that their long drive home would seem to fly by ’cause she (Kathi with an i?) had brought a flashlight to read to him (Rod? Todd?) while they drove, or maybe they would splurge on a cheap motel room and finally have their honeymoon, alone for the weekend, reading chapters to each other. She added, “Except when, well, we are married, you know,” and they looked at each other and smiled. He told Confry, “I wouldn’t share her with anyone but you,” and she swatted him with a freshly autographed copy of I Hear the Heart of the Night, saying, “Dream on, Mr. In Control.” After a last awkward laugh, the Nice Young Couple that looked like a Demented Duo left.
Two fans from the standard selection remained in the mall bookstore: a balding Thirty-Something Exec and an overweight Commando-Wanna-be. Both had waited quietly for everyone else to leave, which put them into the subset of Shy Hoverers. The Thirty-Something Hoverer shook his head, smiled, and said, a little mockingly and yet sympathetically, “Fans.”
Confry’s stomach contracted at the word. Before he could select the right response from (a) Smile, say understandingly, “It’s a privilege to make others happy,” (b) Laugh, say seriously, “And thank God for them; they pay my bills,” or (c) Sneer, say mockingly, “So what don’t you like about my work?”, the Commando–Wanna-be thrust forward an often-handled first printing of Banshee’s Need.
“Sure.” Confry took the book and glanced up. “Who for?”
The Commando-Wanna-be looked over Confry’s head, as if there were something more interesting on the shelves behind him, then glanced out into the mall and mumbled, “Karl. With a k.”
“Karl, with a k.” Confry scribbled: “For Karl—Best wishes! P-scrawl C-scrawl.”
“Uh, thanks.” The Commando-Wanna-be looked at the books piled on the cloth-covered card table in front of Confry. “’S good.” He looked at the door at the back of the store. “Bye.” He looked at the manager by the cash register, turned on the heel of a polished army boot, and walked quickly into the mall.
“Glad you liked it!” Confry called to the man’s back. It was easy to sound sincere, though Banshee’s Need was his only book that made him feel defensive. It was his grimmest novel, and his first popular one. He had written it just after he lost his teaching job, while Jan, pregnant with Lisa, had supported them as a travel agent. He had written it more quickly than anything before or since. It was his only book told entirely from the point of view of a mass murderer.
He turned to the Thirty-Something. The man held out a hand without a book. “John Hunter.”
“Ah.” Confry smiled, stood, and shook the hand. “The convention?”
Hunter glanced to either side, though Confry had spoken quietly. “Didn’t want to say anything until your fans had gone. Be embarrassing if one tried to crash a private affair. For them, I mean, of course.”
Confry nodded. “A sold-out con is a sold-out con.”
“Yes. And, frankly, our collectors wouldn’t mingle well with most of your fans. People in my trade tend to be, well, conservative.”
“Eh. It’s refreshing to be invited to a convention where I’m not a star.”
“To me, you are.”
Confry laughed self-deprecatingly. “Critics complain about my fondness for trademarks, but I never had anyone drown in a bowl of Wheaties. Still, if a cereal convention wants to pay me to show up and sell more copies of my books, I won’t complain.”
Hunter set a pale leather briefcase on the card table and unsnapped it. The lid rose between them. Hunter reached in with the satisfaction of a Hollywood hit man about to display an automatic pistol or a former U.S. vice-president about to display an anatomically correct doll. “I have everything you wrote, of course, but I thought you might be getting writer’s cramp after a long signing, so I restricted myself to two.” He held out a copy of Hunting Butterflies.
Practice made Confry’s smile perfectly sincere. “I wouldn’t do signings if I didn’t enjoy them.” With one exception, he hated everything about signings and conventions: nights in bland hotels, flights at awkward hours, meals in restaurants that were convenient rather than good, meetings with journalists and store managers who would never read his books but who needed him for an interview or a signing to make themselves a little more money. The exception? He was neither so selfless nor so selfish that he could be annoyed when people told him they loved his work.
“And this.” Hunter took back the signed Hunting and offered a pristine copy of Buzzard Love.
“My God.” Confry held the book in both hands. “I thought it had a negative print run.”
“Two thousand five hundred copies.”
“Almost all remaindered.” Confry turned the book carefully and looked for a mark across the edge of the pages. “Not this one.” He opened it quickly enough that some collectors would have winced, but this book had been open before. “You read it?”
Hunter smiled. “No point in having something without enjoying it.”
Confry smiled too, a heartfelt smile that made him realize he was no longer looking at another Thirty-Something. He was looking at a man in blue chinos, a white short-sleeved shirt with an orange tie, and wire-framed glasses. He was looking at a man with watery brown eyes, receding dark hair, a bushy moustache, and a small scar on one cheek. He was looking at a man who had asked himself late at night what the good things in life could be, and had answered that among them were the writings of Peter Confry.
Confry flipped to the title page and poised his pen above it. “Deface it?”
“Please.”
He wrote, “For John Hunter, with the greatest pleasure, Peter Confry.” Each letter of his signature could be seen, or at least, inferred. “You know, I didn’t kill a single person in this.”
Hunter nodded. “It’s a young man’s book. But it’s very promising. When Quinn talked about his rage after Janet left, I felt it here.” Hunter placed his open hand over his heart.
“I—Thank you.”
“It seemed like a first draft for the scene in Banshee’s Need when Christopher’s in the baby-sitter’s basement.”
“Well.” Confry’s signature would add hundreds of dollars to the value of this book. He flipped toward the end, found the scene Hunter had mentioned, and opened the book wide, cracking its spine. After a glance at the words, he handed the book back and, feeling guilty for hurting it, said, “Writers always cannibalize themselves. I hadn’t realized the bits were so similar.”
Hunter smiled. “Not that similar. Quinn gets drunk and vomits. Christopher kills seventeen people with each tool of a Swiss Army knife.”
Confry laughed. “It’s the difference between a quiet academic novel and a book that pays for a Manhattan town house.”
Hunter shook his head. “You shouldn’t belittle your work. You’re too good.”
“Hey, the only reason you find my books near Joseph Conrad’s is we’re both filed under Fiction and Literature.”
“No. You understand the heart of darkness.”
Confry gave a loud laugh that made a teenager in the Human Sexuality section turn to stare. “Come on! You can’t compare my little hack-fests—”
“Of course not. Conrad looked from the outside and saw—” Hunter grinned. “The horror! The horror! But you look from the inside, and see—”
“Royalties without end.”
“Beauty. Love. Power. The attempt to remake the universe as it should be, even when we don’t know what it should be. The courage to act without regard for anyone’s opinion.”
Confry, still grinning, shook his head. “I try to show the effects on the little people—”
