FSF, January-February 2010 (11 page)

Esner sat back. The conversation wasn't going where he'd wanted it to go. Tensi had turned away, I guess, to hide her response.

"Should we even read their fiction?” Gale said. “They told us to embrace these changes. Look at what happened. Aren't they, in some metaphorical sense, traitors to the human race?"

I don't remember the rest of the morning all that well but I remember the silence that followed. Esner had us get in the reading chairs; he'd take the writing chair. As people moved about, Sonisa went up and placed her metal hand on Gale's forearm and said something quietly; Sonisa had that look, half-friendship, half-condescension, of someone giving advice. Gale's face hardened and she pulled her arm away. Last night everyone had wanted to sit next to Gale; now there was a vacancy in the reading chair next to her. The young guy from Angkor sat as far away as he could.

Esner did this exercise several times where we would go through a section of one of his books in progress; one day it was
Invasion Minds
, another time it was
The Resurrection
, but he would give us scenarios where we would hope the character would do something different. As he'd respond to the new situation, he talked about the response he was making and why, and how he handled different readings because in the end, the book would sit on a world and have concurrent readers wanting different things at the same time.

I think it was that afternoon, but maybe it was the next day, when Gale and I were assigned neighborhood watch. Esner showed us how to handle the cell phones, so we went out to each item indicated on the phone screen, made a call to the building or the bench or the tree by the bench, and made sure the cells were functioning fine. At some point, we were told, there might be a little blip, some anomalous growth, which had to be corrected right away. It was boring work, but you had to concentrate on the screen, so it wasn't like pulling the weeds where we could talk while we worked. I expected Gale to point out how easy it would be for the Minds to interfere with the programming, to turn all these organics cancerous.

"You know,” she said, “only one of us needs to do this. Would you mind if I went to the library to look some things up?"

How could I say yes? I wanted to be with her. How could I say no? I wanted to say yes to everything she asked.

She didn't go directly to the library, she told me later. She first went to Esner's place. Tensi was out with the gardeners and Esner was supposed to be left alone to write. According to Gale, or according more to my memory of what Gale said, Esner was happy to see her. She apologized, and he accepted. She told him she wanted to hear more about these stories. He told her titles—none of which I remember—and the names of the writers, back in the days when writers actually applied ink to paper. He had copies. She could read them. He'd go get them. She said she would love to read them later, she'd taken up enough of his time. When she told me this, I wasn't sure if she was taking advantage of his sincerity or of his attraction to her.

She next went to the library to read about these stories, to find out about these people. She found me calling the tables and chairs in a restaurant. She was clearly agitated, and I, knowing nothing of her adventures, wondered what had happened. I asked if she was okay; she said something to the effect that she was fine. She wanted to use the phone. “I'm just too full of energy to watch you work.” At first I was happy just to watch her, but she held her body so tightly, she stared too intensely at the screen, she moved directly from the exterior of a store to the internal cabinets, to the counter, that my gaze felt invasive. I ended up staring at the curve of wood, taken in by how this world was more curved than flat, trying to occupy my mind with something other than the knowledge that I barely existed in whatever world Gale Brisa was seeing.

I think it was that night we did Gale's chapter. She sat between Esner and Tensi, and they talked more about these stories Esner was interested in, all the ones that imagined a variety of futures, everything from inhospitable worlds made hospitable to humans fighting aliens for galactic supremacy, all of it rather depressing when you thought of our situation, ninety-eight or ninety-nine worlds, whatever it was back then, circling the Sun, following the orbit Mars once used when Mars still existed, all of us wondering, in the backs of our minds, which world would go next, what minor error or oversight would cancer-growth into the death of another world, another nine or ten thousand souls, all their stories gone.

Everyone at dinner seemed to be in a good mood, maybe because Esner and Gale were now getting along. It was like we'd all forgotten the kind of things she'd said during the week, or the rest of us didn't add it up until we read the story itself.

Alice lives on Haynlayn back during the time of the Thousand Worlds, and she's lost a father, an aunt, two cousins, and a brother to the war against the Minds. The brother she'd despised until he was declared dead, and now she can only think about how much she misses him. On her worlds tour, she purposely goes to the worlds that have some contact with Minds. Because she's from Haynlayn, the source of conflict with the Minds, she normally would be forbidden entry on certain worlds. But she has a set of forged documents: She has a different last name and a different DNA profile, one more likely to match the gene pools found on Confluence, a Mind-friendly world.

She makes her way around, finds groups of students her age, and on one Mind-friendly world, she ends up joining a group that explores the mystical side of life. They contact the remembered dead who live in Mindspace. One member of the group claims to have communicated with something or someone that claimed to be one of the Minds. Finally Alice makes contact with the Last Ones.

I've sat in library reading chairs. You sometimes watch the other readers. You lose focus when someone laughs out loud or when someone says, Oh, my. However, each person is reading something different: You can only see their external reaction to an internal event unfolding within their skulls. But here, there was a sudden silence; you suddenly knew that everyone had stopped breathing. A chair creaked. Someone had sat up, and I listened to the shifting of the chair and of fabric as they removed the headsets.

"Listen,” Esner said. “You are writers. Not priests. Keep reading."

A set of footsteps receded; a door closed. Some people have to dramatize the level to which they've been offended.

The rest of us stayed with Alice, who was as shocked as we. No one ever talked about the Last Ones, the humans who didn't fight, who didn't flee, but who allowed their minds to be recorded before their actual space was turned into Mindspace. Alice befriends one. He, perhaps she, calls themself Junior. At times Junior takes human form, changing sex and clothes, and sometimes Junior is a pyramid or a sphere; one time he's a dragon.

Alice arranges a private conversation with Junior so no other Last Ones or Minds can eavesdrop. “Help us,” she says. “You can help cause damage. You can help us bring down the Minds."

"Why?” Junior asks.

"Isn't it obvious? The human race is in trouble. They've taken everything. We have no extra resources. No place to grow. They kill us."

"Then don't attack. If you don't attack, they won't kill."

"What's the difference? With nowhere to go, we'll eventually die out."

"You should all come here,” he says. “No one ever need die again."

Despondent, feeling almost lifeless, Alice returns to Haynlayn knowing the coordinates of where the Last Ones live. She passes on the necessary numbers to the authorities. A month later, after the next attack, after the Last Ones have been wiped out, she discovers that she misses Junior.

When we talked about the piece, Amar wanted to talk about the irony of the ending and Sonisa wanted to know if Alice was working as a spy for Haynlayn, but the guy from Angkor and the old guy and the woman with furrowed hair were adamant. Did Gale really think the Minds were all that Evil? Did she really think the Last Ones all deserved to die like that? Wasn't that genocide?

Gale had told me this was a pastiche of Esner's writing, and during the whole reading I had wondered: Where are the thrills, the chases, the ticking clocks? Most readers, when they decide to read everything Esner's written, start with his second book,
Battle Plan
. Only his true fans read his first novel. “It's like
All the Deaths of Love
,” I said out loud. Tristam travels from world to world to track down the next of kin of two friends...they died in the war against the Minds. Alice is kind of like that. She's trying to find someone who'll help her fight against the Minds, someone who can really do something."

Did my comment save the day? If nothing else, it got them to look at Esner, to gauge his response. “I think,” he said, “this story felt like a dead end to the writer. I think that's why she's thinking of these new stories, stories that look to the future."

Gale said nothing. Her body was just as rigid as it had been this afternoon when she came back from the library. Her eyes were dark, a darkness I hadn't seen since the night my mother stormed out of the kitchen and out the door. As discussion wound down into awkward conversation, as Tensi offered us something to drink before bed, I tried to smile at Gale, but she only glared. Everyone looked one way or another, but it was as if she'd become invisible.

Somehow I imagined I'd say the right words. I once had thought I could talk my mother into staying. It was a strange desire because Gale's story had put me off. While the rest of us were drinking wine or beer or water, Gale rose and walked off into our room. Esner started to follow, but stopped. I saw Tensi give him a hard look. I wasn't sure if she was saying, Give her space (or) Don't you dare.

When I went into the room, Gale was packing.

"What's wrong?” I asked.

"I can't stay."

I wanted to say, If you have that thin a skin, you better cancel the other workshops.

She started to tell me what had happened this afternoon, how she'd seen Esner, then gone to the library. “I checked. All the stories he wanted to show me. None of them are in any human library."

"Then where did he get them?"

She looked at me as if I were stupid, but she didn't bother to explain. “He's an utter hypocrite,” she said. “Writes about the so-called glorious days when we fought the Minds. And then goes and talks to them. I did a long trace. That's how he does his research. That's why his details are so good. That's why he understands so well the strategy of the Minds."

"It's not like your story is anti-Minds. Alice is left with nothing."

"I don't write propaganda,” she said to me. “But I won't make my living by being in contact with the Minds."

I was looking for something to say. I think I tried to tell her what a wonderful writer she was.

"You're not so bad yourself,” I remember her saying. She looked at me for a moment, and I thought this would seal our mutual understanding. I wanted to pull her to me in a long embrace, but by the time the thought was done, she had turned and walked out the door, walking straight ahead. Several approached her. “If you have any questions,” she said, jerking her head in my direction, “ask him."

They came to me, Esner glaring. In the end, they didn't want to believe that Gale had left for the reasons she'd stated. They were all certain I'd made a sexual advance. I spent the rest of the week wishing I'd packed with her, had been quick enough to turn myself into her travel companion. I don't like to think back on the rest of the week, of how often I sat alone even when there were people sitting on either side of me.

After I left Santa Fe, I attended other workshops, and I learned to dislike writer after writer. I kept hoping that I'd run into Gale. You always hear stories about how people on their worlds tours keep meeting up. Once or twice, I saw her from a distance, but when I ran up to her, it turned out to be a woman vaguely shaped like Gale.

On Bombay I meet Dosamai, whose mother had died while the ephemeral patterns of her brain were being recorded to be stored in the Minds. Dosamai's mother had grown up on an anti-Mind world, and she had felt ambivalent about the Minds. But there was family pressure. “Don't do this, dearheart, to your children. Please think of your grandchildren. They will want to talk to you. How can you leave them all alone? How can you be so selfish?” Dosamai's mother acquiesced and allowed her brain to be scanned.

And something went wrong and there was no Dosamai's mother, no grandmother for future generations, not in the flesh, not in Mindspace, and Dosamai was certain the Minds had done this because of her mother's attitude toward them. At this point, Dosamai was emotionally ready to leave Bombay, and falling in love provided a socially acceptable motive. And who better to take her away than someone who rejected the Minds? I liked her. I liked her toughness. I admired her willingness to deal with all the assimilation programs my world demands of all future residents. I wasn't old enough to know that a woman who falls in love with her rescuer will, in the end, always be disappointed by him. I was wise enough to know that I would think of Gale more often than she thought of me and that I would never see her again.

Ten years later, there was great controversy over a novel by Ana Calamar. For years she'd been writing closed narratives. If you wanted to read an open version, one that would respond to your reading, Ana Calamar had two assistants who handled that; you were instructed to read about their personalities and literary views before choosing which version of an open book you would read. The novel that drew all that attention was called
Our Future
.

In it, a group of anti-Mind rebels kill everyone on a world in close contact with the Minds. The strategic leader has spent her youth in contact with the Minds, and that is how she developed the necessary knowledge to plan a successful operation. Her team convert the emptied world into a starship and fly off to restart humanity in another solar system. The plot concerns all the efforts to put a stop to the plan, so as a reader, you're forced to sympathize with the underdogs, the killers of 9,587 people. Between chapters, Ana Calamar provides brief profiles of some of the people who died in the takeover, some people terrible, some wonderful, some a mixture of both. But by the end you have a sneaking suspicion that Ana Calamar believes that the trip to a new world, whether it exists or not, is worth these deaths.