Sleeping Dogs
The pain in this one is the pain of a mind blocked from all joy and satisfaction by an outworn idea, an idée fixe, a monomaniacal hangup that tunnels the vision. Think of someone you know, even someone you love, trapped into a corrupt or self-destructive or anti-social behavior pattern by an inability to get around the roadblock of erroneous thinking. Pathetic.
The story is about a man and a woman. The woman is the good guy, the man is the dummy. When it appeared in Analog, Kelly Freas did a drawing that showed the man as the stronger of the two, his body positioned in such a way that it looked as if he was protecting the lesser female. Wrong. I tried to get Ben Bova, the editor of Analog , to get Kelly to alter the drawing, but it was too close to the publication deadline, so it went in that way.
But, much as I admire and respect Kelly, I took it not so much as a sexist attitude on his part — Polly wouldn’t permit such an evil to exist — as an unconscious understanding of the massmind of the general Analog readership, which is, at core and primarily, engineers, technicians, scientists, men of the drawing board and the spanner.
So I wasn’t perplexed or saddened when the story came in at the bottom of Analog’s Analytical Laboratory ratings. Where else would a story that says machismo is bullshit and a woman thinks more reasonably than a man come in? Diana King at the magazine assures me the short stories always come in last, but I think she’s just trying to help me over a bad time; I handle rejection, I just don’t handle it well.
Nonetheless, I’m including it in this collection, an addition to the stories that appeared in previous editions of this book, not only to give you a little extra for your money, but because it’s the latest in my Earth-Kyba War stories. And what with “The Crackpots” here, the first of the series, it makes a nice little package.
There’s not much else to say about it. This isn’t the most soul-sundering tale I’ve ever tried to write, it’s just an attempt to do an actual, honest-to-God science fiction story for Analog. To see if I could do it on my own terms. And to see if I could gig the Analog readers of thirty-and-more years’ good standing, who would have coronary arrest at seeing Ellison in the hallowed pages of their favorite magazine. You can imagine my joy when I saw the is sue on the newsstands, with my name on the front cover with Isaac Asimov’s, knowing that Analog’s faithful would be gagging, and knowing the little jibe I had waiting for them inside with Sleeping dogs.
THE ONLY “POSITIVE” THING Lynn Ferraro could say about the destruction of the cities of Globar and Schall was that their burning made aesthetically-pleasing smears of light against the night sky of Epsilon Indi IV.
“The stiffness of your back tells me you don’t approve, Friend Ferraro.” She didn’t turn at his words, but she could feel her vertebrae cracking as she tensed. She kept her face turned to the screens, watching the twin cities shrink as the flames consumed them, a wild colossus whose pillared legs rose to meet a hundred meters above the debacle.
“A lot of good my disapproval does, Commander.”
He made a sighing sound at her response. “Well, you have the satisfaction of knowing your report will more than likely terminate my career.”
She turned on him, her facial muscles tight as sun-dried leather. “And a hell of a lot of good that does the people down there!”
She was an Amicus Hostis , a Friend of the Enemy, placed on board the Terran dreadnought Descartes , Solar Force registry number SFD/199–660, in this the forty-first year of the Earth-Kyba War, to prevent atrocities, to attempt any kind of rapprochement with the Kyben, should a situation present itself in which the Kyben would do other than kill or be killed. And when it had become clear that this lunatic, this butcher, this Commander Julian Drabix was determined to take the planet — at any cost — no matter how horrifyingly high — scorched earth if nothing short of that monstrousness would suffice — when it had become clear her command powers would be ignored by him, she had filed a light-wave report with Terran Central. But it would take time for the report to reach Central, time for it to be studied, time for a report-judgment and time for instructions to be light-fired back to the Descartes. And Drabix had not waited. Contravening the authority of the Amicus , he had unleashed the full firepower of the dreadnought.
Globar and Schall burned like Sodom and Gomorrah.
But unlike those God-condemned hellholes of an ancient religion, no one knew if the residents of Globar and Schall were good, or evil, or merely frightened natives of a world caught in the middle of an interstellar war that seemed destined never to end.
“All I know,” Drabix had said, by way of justification, “is that planet’s atmospheric conditions are perfect for the formation of the crystalline form of the power-mineral we need. If we don’t get it, Kyba will. It’s too rare, and it’s too important to vacillate. I’m sorry about this, but it has to be done.” So he had done it.
She had argued that they didn’t even know for certain if the mineral was there , in the enormous quantities Drabix believed were present. It was true the conditions were right for its formation, and on similar worlds where the conditions were approximated they had found the precious crystals in small amounts … but how could even such a near-certainty justify destruction so total, so inhuman?
Drabix had chosen not to argue. He had made his choice, knowing it would end his career in the Service; but he was a patriot; and allegiance overrode all other considerations.
Ferraro despised him. It was the only word that fit. She despised everything about him, but this blind servitude to cause was the most loathsome aspect of his character.
And even that was futile, as Globar and Schall burned.
Who would speak the elegy for the thousands, perhaps millions, who now burned among the stones of the twin cities?
When the conflagration died down and the rubble cooled, the Descartes sent down its reconnaissance ships; and after a time, Commander Drabix and Friend Ferraro went to the surface. To murmur among the ashes.
Command post had been set up on the island the natives called Stand of Light because of the manner in which the sunlight from Epsilon Indi was reflected back from the sleek boles of the gigantic trees that formed a central cluster forest in the middle of the twenty-five-kilometer spot of land. Drabix had ordered his recon teams to scour the planet and bring in a wide sample of prisoners. Now they stood in ragged ranks up and down the beach as far as Lynn Ferraro could see; perhaps thirty thousand men and women and children. Some were burned horribly.
She rode on the airlift platform with Drabix as he skimmed smoothly past them, just above their heads.
“I can’t believe this,” Drabix said.
What he found difficult to accept was the diversity of races represented in the population sample the recon ships had brought in. There were Bleshites and Mosynichii in worn leathers from the worlds of 61 Cygni, there were Camogasques in prayer togas from Epsilon Eridani, there were Kopektans and Livides from Altair II and X; Millmen from Tau Ceti, Oldonians from Lalande 21185, Runaways from Rigel; stalk-thin female warriors of the Seull Clan from Delta Cephei III, beaked Raskkans from the hollow asteroids of the Whip belt, squidlike Silvinoids from Grover; Petokii and Vulpeculans and Rohrs and Mawawanians and creatures even Drabix’s familiarity with the Ephemeris could not identity.