Unconquered Countries-Four Novellas Read online

  also by Geoff Ryman

  The Warrior Who Carried Life (1985)

  The Child Garden (1989)

  Was (1992)

  UNCONQUERED COUNTRIES. Copyright © 1994 by Geoff Ryman. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  A Fall of Angels, or On the Possibility of Life Under Extreme Conditions copyright © 1994 by Geoff Ryman.

  Fan copyright © 1994 by Geoff Ryman.

  O Happy Day! copyright © 1985 by Geoff Ryman; first appeared in Interzone: The 1st Anthology.

  The Unconquered Country copyright © 1986 by Geoff Ryman.

  Design by Basha Zapatka

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Ryman, Geoff.

  Unconquered countries / Geoff Ryman.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-312-09929-0

  1. Fantastic fiction, English. 2. Science fiction, English.

  I. Title.

  PR6068.Y74U53 1994

  823'.9l4-dc20

  93-44033

  CIP

  First Edition: April 1994

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To the Creature, again.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  A Fall of Angels, or On the Possibility of Life Under Extreme Conditions

  Fan

  O Happy Day!

  The Unconquered Country

  Afterword

  INTRODUCTION

  by Samuel R. Delany

  In A Fall of Angels it’s Hellespont, the world of the Hellesian settlers, circling the star Daphne.

  In Fan it’s the world of working-class London.

  In O Happy Day! it’s the camp beside the railroad line.

  And in The Unconquered Country it’s the unconquered country itself.

  The four extraordinary novellas comprising this book portray, each of them, the detail and texture of a life on the inside—an inside that is bounded by a distant and virtual outside which surrounds or defines it.

  In all four, what is outside functions as an ideal reality of unimaginable freedom, power, and fear, more or less inaccessible to the main character inside—Raul Kundara, Billie, the narrator, or Third Child. At one point or another in each story, the main character or characters are positioned at a gate between inside and outside—even Third Child, through her relationship with the young soldier Crow, when he takes her to the Ceremony, is able to see the Neighbors and the People (the creatures of the outside) in a (briefly) nonwarlike mode. Even Billie, at the concert, manages to get through the coded door to the backstage area that, for her, represents the way to freedom.

  But having located such a pattern, we have to ask ourselves just what, in terms of the reading experience, we have found. I mention this because I think what the reader encountering these tales for the first time is likely to notice is not an underlying structural similarity so much as a gripping range of affect, of subject matter, of meaning.

  I first became aware of Ryman as a writer in 1985, shortly after the third story here—O Happy Day!—appeared in the first Interzone Anthology out of England. In the mid-eighties, sociobiology’s theoretical backlash against feminism’s material advances was at its peak—at least in terms of the attention it was being given by the media: Suppose males really were more violent than females through the very biology of their hormones? Somehow, the sociobiologists putting forth this proposition assumed that in the face of such a “fact,” women (and men) would have no other choice but to settle back and accept male violence for what it was, and give up trying to reorganize society in a way to contain or control it—presumably accepting the odd black-eye, date rape, or murder with a resigned smile and a mumbled, “…Boys will be boys.”

  But in an appeal to the coldest of cold equations, Ryman’s O Happy Day! proposes, rather, a Final Solution: Since only a minuscule number of men are needed, whether violent or pacific, to keep the race going, if they really are a social menace, get rid of them.

  But it’s here that we can see what Ryman’s repeated inside/ outside structure and the gates he positions between them allow him to do, for O Happy Day! is not the women’s story at all: In the tale, the women are entirely “outside.” Rather, Ryman focuses on a group of gay men who have been allowed to serve as clean-up squad in this concentration camp where heterosexual males are being exterminated en mass. The focus is entirely on what goes on at the gate between the inside and the outside. As such, he is able to make a pointed analysis, not so much of the potential of violence (read: threat, which was the sociobiological point) but of the propagation of violence: He is able to show how, as a structure, violence moves from outside to inside, completely ignoring the fence the women have erected to contain it; thus, it is revealed as a structure that has little to do with hormones, and as such is not containable (or eradicable) the way a disease might be quarantined (or eradicated). For all its sobering premise, O Happy Day! is a rather salutary tale—well worth reading for both its provocations (which are many) and for what it has to say about them.

  The Unconquered Country was finished in 1984, the same year as O Happy Day!, Ryman tells us in his Afterword (“a year in which,” Ryman writes, “I could do no wrong”). Here Ryman has given us a dark fantasy—only a step away from magic realism—that is at once science fiction and a pointed allegory of the inhumanly tragic Cambodian epilogue to the Vietnam nightmare. Its living houses, its biological farming and body-part sales serve to distance the story. At the same time, as we recognize the technology behind them, they give the tale moments of immediacy truly unsettling. (In one sense, this is the tale of the Hellesian settlers from A Fall of Angels looked at through a microscope.) Someone might argue that the religious ending mitigates the horror of the story, in a manner reminiscent of Flaubert’s classic tale, “Un Coeur simple,” without Flaubert’s coruscating and subversive ironies. But since the horror with which Ryman deals—the bridge on which we end is only another concentration camp—is so much beyond any ever envisioned by Flaubert, finally we have to ask: Would the story have been bearable without some respite?

  Whatever our answer, both The Unconquered Country and O Happy Day! are political science fiction at its most effective. And when O Happy Day! first appeared in England, the discussion around it quickly crossed the sea to become almost as heated here as it was abroad.

  When The Unconquered Country was first published in the United States as a separate novel in 1987 in paperback, people in the SF world passed it to one another with quiet exhortations: “Read this…this is extraordinary! This is something you’ve never encountered before!” They were right.

  As easily as we can call The Unconquered Country and O Happy Day! political science fiction, we can call Fan sociological science fiction. Set in an England that could as easily come about next week as next year, the story examines the growing part the entertainment media—particularly pop music—play in our lives, as their substance becomes less and less and their preordained form becomes greater and greater. In this tale, all Billie’s effort to reach her idol, to join with his world of travel and glamor even as she hopes to escape her dull, dull life and emotionally disturbed son, works as an allegory for the analytical effort required to see through the process to its essential, illusory core.

  Similarly, A Fall of Angels might be called “pure” science fiction—for those still looking for some sort of purity in the range of imaginary fomentation. The harsh, if human, society of the sett
lers makes an effective contrast with the soaring, transcendental world of the Angels and their mission to refuel the red giant suns with interstellar hydrogen by means of the Charlie Slides: This is Ryman’s one tale—here—where the basic drama occurs in the “outside,” even while the fundamental humanity remains within.

  All four of the Ryman novellas here are rich in ideas, insight, and drama—as are his three, full-length novels. The most recent of those, Was, is a disturbingly inventive take on the story behind the story of Frank L. Baum’s children’s classic, The Wizard of Oz, and Baum’s relation to the real Dorothy Gael, as well as the making of the 1939 MGM film with the young Judy Garland. (Ryman is one of those rare writers in whose work singular ideas—particularly admirable in a writer of a certain sort of science fiction—tend to gain the solidity of well-realized characters.) The bottom line is, as it must be in any such introduction, that I enjoyed these stories mightily. I’m sure you will, too. They exhibit both the clarity of surface and clarity of structure that mark a formidable writing talent.

  —New York

  November 1993

  A FALL OF ANGELS

  OR

  ON THE POSSIBILITY OF LIFE UNDER EXTREME CONDITIONS

  I

  from Remembrances of Bee

  The first thing you miss is the process of waking up, the delicious nestling back down into yourself, the curling of arms and legs about each other. Suddenly, coldly, you are aware.

  You see the room, all four metal walls and the floor and the ceiling all at once. You do not seem to be in it. You turn, but the room does not spin around you. You are ill with panic and confusion.

  A voice calls you by name, and gratefully you stutter, stammer, surprised to find that you are not speaking, that you have no voice.

  “You must try to remain calm,” the voice advises. It is honey smooth and female. “Try to remember the drill we practiced. Remember the drill? What is your name?”

  “Where is my body!”

  “What is your name? Tell me your name.”

  “What has happened? Where are my hands?”

  The animal reaction is fear. You are weaponless; you feel horribly naked and exposed. You want to beg to be allowed back into the shelter of yourself, but what has happened is final and permanent. Your body has been amputated.

  It lives on, in mild unconcern, perhaps curious as to what use you will be put. Those miraculous eyes, those gliding joints, those delicate hands are no longer yours. No longer will you change the universe by simply grabbing it. Your family, your friends, the whole mosaic of your memory belongs to someone, something, else. You hear no warm, close pumping, you are no longer reassured by your own subtle odors. You have no gender, or sense of smell or taste or touch.

  But a clock in your mind tells you the percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere. You turn upside down, but the room does not.

  You will never sleep or dream again. You are an Angel.

  It can take a year to adjust. Then you make up your mind to be what you are, and to do your duty. You are a tool, an imprint, a creation of Humankind, its messenger. They send you first to scout for wealth and homeworlds, tasting the air, mingling with the stone. You find uranium and tin; you call, and the Charlie Slides follow, like pigeons. They entrust you with work for Entropy Control.

  Inside you, there is a little, sharp corner of pain. But I still feel, it protests. They give you a partner. My first was Ai. We should have been compatible; perhaps we were too much alike. He felt all decisions should be his. When we disagreed, he claimed I was impossible to work with. I think of Ai sometimes. It might be that the pain of being an Angel blinded him, made him deny feeling. He tried to become a machine. He could not.

  Control understood. They teamed me with Bee, my lovely Bee.

  Bee had been chosen, not for intelligence, diligence, or loyalty as had Ai, but simply because he would love being an Angel. Bee had been a large, awkward, driven man. No place could be found for him. Angelhood released him.

  When I first met him, I was overwhelmed. I went very cold and formal. He darted in swift, straight lines: nervous, jerky, eager. He seemed to sing in a tumble of words and images. He teased me and cajoled me, made a sound like an elephant with his mind, to startle me. Gradually, I learned to follow him. Bee showed me freedom and taught me how to enjoy it, and for that I loved him.

  We plunged through suns and swam through the canyons of the sea. Bee took me to a world made of crystal that was the size of a house. We fell like rain through the blazing depths of the substratum where there is no time and it is white, blinding white, from the explosion that is both the beginning and the end. Humans cannot go there.

  Then one of our Controllers died. She was replaced with another, who also died. We still lived. We were Angels, no longer human. There are layers of realization within that realization, as there are layers within the universe. I had yet to penetrate them all.

  from the letters of Raul Kundara, written in his youth during his term as a Researcher for Entropy Control, Hellespont

  Hola Mari,

  I had hoped to send you an account of my arrival, but there was no time. Immediately, I was shuttled down from the Platform to this world. I am writing to you now, with apologies.

  Sliding was entirely without pain. I came down the cold side and was numb afterward. The station here is pleasant and well designed, prefab as it is. Hellespont is the third world on which the station has been placed. I have my own room. I share a water room only, with four others. Three are my elders and are regular officers. They have been with the station many years. I thought they would ask me about home. They showed no such interest. They joked instead about all the equipment I brought with me. Fourth is another researcher. His name is Gareth, very thin with carrot red hair, from wild Lenin. His project is radiation sliding. He talks about it frequently. There are nine researchers here on the station. They are all very involved with their work. Some are elders or even seniors, and I feel very honored to be here.

  We all have duty-work on the station. I have a cert in chemistry, so I help test the slided food. Once salt arrived scrambled as lithium. I also serve in the kitchens. The food is nourishing, but it all tastes of boiled metal.

  I wish you could see Hellespont. Its sun, Daphne, is huge and swollen, a red giant with a hazy outline, when you see it at sunset. The daysky is always clouded. Hellespont was an oceaned world, with forests and lakes, before Daphne began to relax. In winter, it rains here every night. Further south, on the plains, water boils during the day. It is exceeding hot! We sleep during the day and work at night when it is cooler. We cast off heat with Charlie Slides and wear coolsuits even when we sleep. There are no windows.

  At dawn, watersheets unfold over the valley. They catch the evaporation and save it. Even so, the morning air is always choked with mist. It wavers as it rises. Deep ditches channel the winter rains, but they are empty now.

  My first day, I went out to see the aglamaks, the criers. I like them. They blossom out at sunrise from the ground one by one with a sound like a yawn. Soon the whole valley dances with them, whooping and groaning. They look something like water hyacinths, bulbous as if meant to float, with fanned gills that they pump in and out. That makes the sound, the hooting. They are respirating then. I took one back. It curled up into its dayball, and simply fell apart when I tried to examine it.

  Aglamaks reproduce by worming tendrils through the soil. They are all linked with each other and the connection is never broken while they live. In times of drought, water is carried over many kilometers to them from their more fortunate brethren. Some masters teach that they are all one organism. The settlers here hate them. They do not taste good, and draw moisture from the fields.

  By day the valley is dry and empty. The aglamaks draw up small and tight. Much of the flora here flower, seed and die all in the space of a sunrise.

  Young Gareth wisely reminds me that true duty can consist of waiting. I have not yet spoken with the station senior.
The Chief Researcher, Mzobwe, has briefed me. “Our primary duty is to the control of entropy. All other work must take second place.” This means my project must wait until the Angels have finished their first reconnoiter of Daphne. “There is not likely to be much work for a biologist, there,” he said. There is much for me to do in the meantime. I will let you know what happens. My respects to my placer Robt, my chanter Bella, Nive and all her children, and of course to my ward Hal.

  Love to yourself and Tam, unless you have been lucky enough to find a replacement.

  Love,

  Toni

  Excerpts from

  Entropy Control and You,

  Narrative Version,

  by Senior Alvin Perfect, Master and Chanter

  The control of entropy is our purpose. It is our first duty. Yet what is entropy?

  The word is much misused. Placers speak of entropy when children neglect their studies. Teachers sometimes talk of the barbarism of olden times as times of entropy. The word has come to mean everything the Regimen opposes.

  Entropy is simply the loss of heat every time work is done. Its mathematical sign is S. It is embodied in the Second Law of Thermodynamics…

  The Second Law means that gradually the universe is becoming one even temperature. Heat needs a difference in temperature to do work. When all energy has been converted into heat energy and when all differences in temperature are evened out, work will become impossible. The universe will come to a halt without light or motion of any kind other than disordered, undirected molecular movement.

  S is the sapping of the lifeblood of the universe.

  S is the heat that freezes.

  S is the death of all things.

  All this will happen unless Humankind intervenes. So S is our symbol, the negation of entropy.

  How is this possible? We will trace the development of the Charlie Slide and the opportunity for service that resulted. We will discover how all our skills are united in this aim by the Regimen of Tanner Cahsway. We will see why you are placed, and why it is important that you do your duty.