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TEN-THOUSAND LIGHT YEARS FROM HOMEBy James Tiptree, Jr.Introduction by Harry HarrisonAnd I Awoke And Found Me Here On The Cold Hill’s Side ss The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction March 1972The Snows Are Melted, The Snows Are Gone nv Venture November 1969The Peacefulness of Vivyan ss Amazing July 1971Mamma Come Home [“The Mother Ship”] nv The Worlds of IF Science Fiction June 1968Help [“Pupa Knows Best”] nv The Worlds of IF Science Fiction October 1968Painwise nv The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction February 1972Faithful to Thee, Terra, in Our Fashion [“Parimutuel Planet”] nv Galaxy January 1969The Man Doors Said Hello To ss Worlds of Fantasy Winter 1970The Man Who Walked Home ss Amazing May 1972Forever to a Hudson Bay Blanket ss Fantastic August 1972I’ll Be Waiting for You When the Swimming Pool Is Empty ss Protostars, ed. David Gerrold & Stephen Goldin, Ballantine, 1971I’m Too Big But I Love to Play nv Amazing March 1970Birth of a Salesman ss Analog March 1968Mother in the Sky with Diamonds nv Galaxy March 1971Beam Us Home ss Galaxy April 1969INTRODUCTIONThere is one particular joy that only editors share. This is the biting edge of pleasure experienced upon reading a good story by a totally unknown and unsold author. If the story is not only good but very good the pleasure is obviously even greater. Like other authors in the science fiction field I find myself wearing different hats from time to time; editor more often than not, critic when pressed, insulted letter-writer when bothered. The editorial hat is the most comfortable one to wear. Since I first began editing in the early 1950’s I have discovered, chortled over and published the first stories of at least a half-dozen authors. Some of them later vanished into the interstellar night from whence they came; others went on to become established professionals. Which brings us instantly to the name of James Tiptree, Jr.I remember the story well. It was a bad day in the editing business. The slush pile—for that is what it is crudely called in the trade—was piled high and tottering with bad stories. I had a deadline. I was tired. I tried reading one more story; then I was no longer tired. Here was a story by a professional, a man who knew how to interest me, entertain me, and tell me something about the world and mankind’s affairs all at the same time. I wrote at once and was pleased to hear, some years later, that the word from me arrived just one day before a check from John W. Campbell. Now that is the way to start a career in science fiction.Tiptree is a professional because he cares about his work and keeps on caring. He reworks it himself until he has it right, then reworks it some more aiming at an unobtainable perfection. He is fun to work with because he actually thanks an editor for pointing out something that needs brushing up. But most of all he is a professional because he writes the kind of fiction that is worth reading and is a pleasure to read at the same time.There is a temptation in an introduction of this kind to be very biographical and spend a good deal of time on the author’s lovely dark hair or firm waistline despite his advancing years. I shall resist this because the fiction, the stories before you, are what really counts. The fact that their author enjoys observing bears in the wilds of Canada or skindiving deep in Mexico is not really relevent. Nor is the information that he spent a good part of World War II in a Pentagon subbasement. These facts may clue you to the obviosity that James Tiptree, Jr. is well-traveled and well-experienced in the facts, both sordid and otherwise, of our world. But internal evidence in the stories informs us of that just as easily.The stories are what we must look at—and here they are: the first collection by an author who can only go on to greater successes. I found them a pleasure to read—and I know that you will too.Harry HarrisonSan Diego, 1973AND I AWOKE AND FOUND ME HERE ON THE COLD HILL’S SIDEHe was standing absolutely still by a service port, staring out at the belly of the Orion docking above us. He had on a gray uniform and his rusty hair was cut short. I took him for a station engineer.That was bad for me. Newsmen strictly don’t belong in the bowels of Big Junction. But in my first twenty hours I hadn’t found anyplace to get a shot of an alien ship.I turned my holocam to show its big World Media insigne and started my bit about What It Meant to the People Back Home who were paying for it all.“—it may be routine work to you, sir, but we owe it to them to share—”His face came around slow and tight, and his gaze passed over me from a peculiar distance.“The wonders, the drama,” he repeated dispassionately. His eyes focused on me. “You consummated fool.”“Could you tell me what races are coming in, sir? If I could even get a view—”He waved me to the port. Greedily I angled my lenses up at the long blue hull blocking out the starfield. Beyond her I could see the bulge of a black and gold ship.“That’s a Foramen,” he said. “There’s a freighter from Belye on the other side, you’d call it Arcturus. Not much traffic right now.”“You’re the first person who’s said two sentences to me since I’ve been here, sir. What are those colorful little craft?”“Procya,” he shrugged. “They’re always around. Like us.”I squashed my face on the vitrite, peering. The wallsclanked. Somewhere overhead aliens were off-loading into their private sector of Big Junction. The man glanced at his wrist.“Are you waiting to go out, sir?”His grunt could have meant anything.“Where are you from on Earth?” he asked me in his hard tone.I started to tell him and suddenly saw that he had forgotten my existence. His eyes were on nowhere, and his head was slowly bowing forward onto the port frame. “Go home,” he said thickly. I caught a strong smell of tallow.“Hey, sir!” I grabbed his arm; he was in rigid tremor. “Steady, mark.”“I’m waiting... waiting for my wife. My loving wife.” He gave a short ugly laugh. “Where are you from?”I told him again.“Go home,” he mumbled. “Go home and make babies. While you still can.”One of the early GR casualties, I thought.“Is that all you know?” His voice rose stridently. “Fools. Dressing in their styles. Gnivo suits, Aoleelee music. Oh, I see your newscasts,” he sneered. “Nixi parties. A year’s salary for a floater. Gamma radiation? Go home, read history. Ballpoint pens and bicycles—”He started a slow slide downward in the half gee. My only informant. We struggled confusedly; he wouldn’t take one of my sobertabs but I finally got him along the service corridor to a bench in an empty loading bay. He fumbled out a little vacuum cartridge. As I was helping him unscrew it, a figure in starched whites put his head in the bay.“I can be of assistance, yes?” His eyes popped, his face was covered with brindled fur. An alien, a Procya! I started to thank him but the red-haired man cut me off. “Get lost. Out.”The creature withdrew, its big eyes moist. The man stuck his pinky in the cartridge and then put it up his nose, gasping deep in his diaphragm. He looked toward his wrist.“What time is it?”I told him.“News,” he said. “A message for the eager, hopeful human race. A word about those lovely, lovable aliens we all love so much.” He looked at me. “Shocked, aren’t you, newsboy?”I had him figured now. A xenophobe. Aliens plot to take over Earth.“Ah Christ, they couldn’t care less.” He took another deep gasp, shuddered and straightened. “The hell with generalities. What time d’you say it was? All right, I’ll tell you how I learned it. The hard way. While we wait for my loving wife. You can bring that little recorder out of your sleeve, too. Play it over to yourself some time... when it’s too late.” He chuckled. His tone had become chatty—an educated voice. “You ever hear of supernormal stimuli?”“No,” I said. “Wait a minute. White sugar?”“Near enough. Y’know Little Junction bar in D.C.? No, you’re an Aussie, you said. Well, I’m from Burned Barn, Nebraska.”He took a breath, consulting some vast disarray of the soul.“I accidentally drifted into Little Junction Bar when I was eighteen. No. Correct that. You don’t go into Little Junction by accident, any more than you first shoot skag by accident.“You go into Little Junction because you’ve been craving it, dreaming about it, feeding on every hint and clue about it, back there in Burned Barn, since before you had hair in your pants. Whether you know it or not. Once you’re out of Burned Barn, you can no more help going into Little Junction than a sea-worm can help rising to the moon.“I had a brand-new liquor I.D. in my pocket. It was early; there was an empty spot beside some humans at the bar. Little Junction isn’t an embassy bar, y’know. I found out later where the high-caste aliens go—when they go out. The New Rive, the Curtain by the Georgetown Marina.“And they go by themselves. Oh, once in a while they do the cultural exchange bit with a few frosty couples of other aliens and some stuffed humans. Galactic Amity with a ten-foot pole.“Little Junction was the place where the lower orders went, the clerks and drivers out for kicks. Including, my friend, the perverts. The ones who can take humans. Into their beds, that is.”He chuckled and sniffed his finger again, not looking at me.“Ah, yes. Little Junction is Galactic Amity night, every night. I ordered... what? A margharita. I didn’t have the nerve to ask the snotty spade bartender for one of the alien li...
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