Gateways (38 page)

The interloper continued its descent into the dark below where not even her large flat eyes could penetrate. The water spread out its oily taste.

The big squid held her station, trying to be thoughtful, to hold the memory, but the shoals of past flickered and merged so easily with the present.

Pushing her siphon to one side and locking her mantle, she filled with water and jetted to just below the roof of the world. It was night. The fish were coming. The shape had made her uneasy. She wished for males to console her.

She was lonely now, and beautiful, and so full of eggs.

While I’ve always been considered, at first blush, an Arthur C. Clarke kind of writer (and I am), I’ve said for decades that the two careers and bodies of work I most admire in science fiction are those of Fred Pohl and Brian Aldiss. Fred, chiefly because he writes so well on so many subjects, and can never be pinned down as to what he does best—and Brian for much the same reason. Fred’s take on social issues in works as diverse as
Space Merchants
and
Chernobyl
resonate to this day. “Day Million” is a perennial, startling each new generation of readers. I’ve been haunted by “The Gold at the Starbow’s End” for decades.
Man Plus
compels on so many levels. And the Heechee stories are both literature and great fun—a difficult combination in any field of writing.

Fred has been a sparkling, sparking presence in science fiction for at least seventy years now, as fan and editor of both books and magazines, as solo writer and collaborator, as pulp writer and avant-garde experimentalist.

And as inspiration and cattle prod for generations of chronologically younger, but (I hope) no less brash admirers.

—G
REG
B
EAR

I often get asked what my favorite science fiction book is, and, well, the answer is
Gateway
by Frederik Pohl.

Why is it my favorite? That’s hard to answer without spoiling the surprises that are to come, but let me say this:
Gateway
is one of only a handful of novels to have ever won
both
the Hugo
and
the Nebula award for best novel of the year.

The Hugo is science fiction’s People’s Choice Award, given by the members of the annual World Science Fiction Convention. And the Nebula is the “Academy Award” of the field, given by writers to other writers. As it happens, I myself have been lucky enough to win them both—but each for a
different
book. It’s very hard for a single novel to be both a rousing crowd-pleaser as well as being stylistically inventive and rich with touches that might appeal to other professionals. But in
Gateway
, Fred Pohl manages both.

This book has huge, cosmic concepts at its core, as well as a very powerful, heart-wrenching human story. Among other things, it’s a novel about artificial intelligence—the computer psychiatrist dubbed Sigfrid Von Shrink is one of the most memorable characters in all of science fiction. It’s also a novel about far-out physics.
And
it’s a novel about an all-too-human, all-too-fallible man named Robinette Broadhead.

Gateway
was originally conceived of as a stand-alone novel, but it’s since spawned several sequels, starting with the wonderfully titled
Beyond the Blue Event Horizon
, which was also nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula.

As I write these words, Frederik Pohl is about to turn ninety years old—and his career as a science fiction professional has spanned over seventy years; his first professional sale came in 1937, when he was just seventeen. His is one of the most remarkable bodies of work in the history of science fiction, and this book is
his
—indeed, as I said, the entire field’s—very best.

By age six, Jason was the ringleader of the other boys in the orphanage. They only lost interest in the new games he invented when he set up the crèche and tried to deliver a sermon, like he’d heard the Reverend Clayton deliver. They were impresed by the way he’d repaired the teddy bear but his sermons bored them.

The Claytons loved him, named him Hendrix after a great aunt, and for a while he thought they might adopt him. When they didn’t, he went back to looking for the one family he’d been told would. The other boys were curious as to just who had told him and when he tried to describe what had happened, they stared at him wide-eyed, then silently turned and left, not believing a word he’d said. After that he never mentioned it again. It hadn’t made much sense, even to him. It had happened a few months before, just after supper, when he had been alone in the living room playing with the crèche, setting up the figures of Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus in a row and preaching at them, keeping his voice low so nobody would hear him.

He was waving his arms like he’d seen Mr. Clayton do—it seemed to be part of any sermon—when he was suddenly struck by the silence. He couldn’t hear the rattle of pots and pans in the kitchen and the shouts of the boys in the other room building castles with Lego blocks had faded away.

He felt like he was smothering in a big pillow of silence.

Then there was a sudden warmth and a feeling of affection. He had felt like that the day he had been born, a day he remembered distinctly, though when he told the other boys they had hooted and run away to the kitchen to beg the cook for cookies. It had been totally black—he couldn’t remember anything before that. Then there had been a sudden flash of light and
somebody was holding him and he felt nothing but warmth and reassurance.

He had been wrapped in paper towels and taken to the foundling home, given what felt like a kiss, and then he fell asleep in the blankets of the heated bassinet. He remembered all of it.

This time he felt flashes in his head and once more a wave of reassurance. Nobody spoke but he suddenly knew that within a few weeks somebody would adopt him—somebody he wouldn’t like but who would be a great teacher and from whom he would learn a lot. And for a while it would be fun.

Who would it be? He would know when the time came. He would become a very great man and perform great deeds. His life would be hard, but life was hard for everybody and he could always count on the love and protection of . . . somebody.

Then the silence began to fade and little wisps of noise began to seep through the silence. He clutched the baby Jesus to himself and felt a smile and suddenly the baby Jesus turned to gold. It would become his favorite toy; it represented a great man.

How would he know who would adopt him? He would know, he felt, but he musn’t let anybody else take him away. Then the room filled with boys and the silence had gone and the baby Jesus had turned back to plaster.

There was a string of would-be adoptive parents after that, almost all of whom loved his red hair and thought he was cute. He coughed in their faces and one time when it looked serious—the wife was fat and pleasant-looking and hugged him until it almost hurt—he stuck a finger down his throat and vomited all over her dress front.

The most dangerous couple after that was a cheerful, middle-aged man and his thin, quiet wife whom Jason could tell the Claytons approved of highly. Their name was Murray and Jason turned them down by saying quietly, “Fuck you, Mr. Murray”—a word he’d heard from the cook when she’d burned herself on the stove.

In one sense, the least likely were the Zions. They were street preachers, Reverend Clayton said, whatever that was. Mr. Zion was rude and loud, although Jason thought his wife looked friendly.

Every third sentence Rudy Zion said was a Biblical quotation, most of which Jason recognized. The silence had told him he would be adopted by a great teacher and while Jason didn’t think Rudy Zion was great, there was no doubt he could learn a lot from him.

He found a small, sturdy chair and climbed up on it and quoted the Bible
right back at Mr. Zion. The adoption went through within a few weeks. He would miss the Claytons but he had learned as much as he could from them and he knew the voice was right, he could feel it on the inside.

When the time came to leave, he packed his few belongings in a small suitcase, wrapping the plaster Jesus in a worn sweater to protect it. It flashed gold just before he put it in the case. He’d made the right decision, Jesus had been a very great man, there was no one more important.

Until now.

Rudy Zion was middle-aged, getting fat, and had graying red hair that must have been as red as Jason’s when he was younger. The first thing he and his wife did when they got home was to give Jason a bath, scrubbing him until it hurt. After that he was measured up for a suit of pure white edged with glitter and he had his hair curled until it was a mass of red ringlets.

When they were through, a puzzled Jason asked, “What am I supposed to do?”

Rudy Zion looked at his creation proudly and said, “We’re going to preach on the street and convert the poor and the lonely. I don’t preach in the big-box churches—you don’t save souls by the thousands, young Jason, you save them one by one. The down and outers who don’t have a place to sleep and not much to eat. When those people come to Jesus, they mean it. God lives through them every minute of the day, not just when they let him in the front door on Sunday.”

“You can make money that way?” Jason asked.

Rudy looked wise. “When you save a man’s soul, he doesn’t chintz on you. You’ve given him the most valuable thing anybody ever gave him in his life and in return it may not be much but he’s going to give you everything he’s got. When he comes to Jesus, he’s going to ask him for salvation every night when he goes to bed and every morning when he gets up.”

Jason stared. “What’s ‘big-box’ churches?”

Rudy frowned. “The Costcos and Walmarts of preaching where the choirs number in the hundreds and the congregations in the thousands. But remember what I said—you only save souls one by one.”

He was right, Jason thought—already he was learning things. “Are there any boys around here?” He missed the other kids at the orphanage.

“None that I want you to meet. I’ll introduce you to the little girl next door and you can be friends with her. Don’t want you growing up queer.”

After Zion had fallen asleep on the couch—Jason smelled the liquor on his breath and figured he would sleep for a couple of hours—he dressed up in the suit of which he was very proud and hung a gold cross around his
neck, admired himself in the mirror, then went out to meet the boys Rudy Zion didn’t want him to meet.

He didn’t find them, they found him. Three of them stared at him for a long minute, then two of them sauntered over and one of them grabbed at the gold cross and the other tripped him so he fell on the dirty sidewalk. Jason was angry and humiliated, rolled over and grabbed one in the crotch and twisted and sliced at the other with the side of his hand. Within minutes they were limping away with bloody noses and one was holding up his pants and crying.

The one who had stayed back held out his hand and said, “My name’s Matt. Glad to meet you.”