The Other Nineteenth Century (36 page)

Read The Other Nineteenth Century Online

Authors: Avram Davidson

Elsewhere:
But the Jacks o’ the North represented a greater menace: a multitude of King Storks against the status quo of the petty few King Logs: Casey might (if allowed) tip the molten mixture out of the caldron before the mold was fixed. But the Jacks would destroy caldron and mixture and furnace and all. No safe, controlled descent towards watchful waiting. All-destroying savagery, instead. And Casey offered a package deal. Cancel his status as the chattel of the Green King, agree to return him whence he came, back him up all along the line—and he would rid them of the Jacks o’ the North.
Neither Here nor There:
Once, the only single once (but that was in another country), as one of a tiny company among whom the sacred cigarette with the greenish herb which was not tobacco circulated from hand to hand and mouth to mouth like a sacrament around the candlepoint of light in the darkness, and then, later, floating upon the sweet sea of euphoria (but this was long ago and far away and besides, the lad was young), something else began to happen to him. Time ceased to exist. That which he had just said, he had never
said; that which he had just said, he had always been saying; that which he had just said, he was yet to say. He saw his words as though embossed on sand, he saw them vanish away as though absorbed in sand. Nothing happened, everything was about to happen, action was distilled into inaction, inaction was pregnant with action.
Something not at all the same as that but yet inescapably reminiscent of that was in this strange compelling silently unmoving scene which drew and had drawn him in. Amazement still held him in thrall but now present was the sudden element of terror. Was he to remain here fixed and unmoving forever, another motionless figure in this scene neither living nor dead?
Exegesis:
Did Casey smoke dope? And if he did, was it only once and long ago? Or was it often and recently? Did he inhale? Was it dope that brought him to the In-Between? Or was it the good Doctor Brannard’s ghost box? The Green King summoned him—would it have profited him one whit, had he steered a wide course of drugs and hard physics?
The simplest demonstrable mindfuck in physics is the experiment in which a beam of light is revealed to be either wavelike or particulate in nature—whichever one the experimenter chooses. After which, and called upon to explain themselves, scientists split the difference and call it a “wavicle.”
AD didn’t bother being consistent with the mechanism that swept Casey out of reality as we know it altogether, because it was a negligible matter, what Alexander Pope called the
Machinery:
that Part which the Deities, Angels or Daemons (or Scientists) were to play in the matter. Calling upon Deities, Angels, Daemons, or Scientists to do your enabling for you, is to admit that it cannot be done by sensible means.
Besides, I like the thought that the story itself partakes of quantum uncertainty. Two plots diverge and race away from each
other on timelike arcs, only to meet again somewhere In-Between.
Let’s not reconcile them.
Elsewhere:
The Battle of the Plains of Quore had been of the illustrious and classical kind. Arquebusiers in black-and-gold, arquebusiers in red-and-gold, had filed and defiled to the music of drums and trumpets and oboes until they were within fire-shot of each other. Then the heralds had stepped forward, and the augurs. Thumbs were pricked and squeezed, blood was ceremoniously declared to have been shed, both sides were asked to accept this as sufficient. Both sides ceremoniously refused. The black and white bones were cast, the omens taken, the choice of first fire given and accepted. Heralds and augurs retired, walking backwards. Fifteen volleys were exchanged, the side with the fewest men then standing was adjudged to have lost and was permitted to retire with its wounded and its banners. Commissioners presently followed to accept its change of rule. Thus, the battle; thus the war.
But this newest and latest battle by the Jacks o’ the North against the Seat of the King of the Yellow was something else again. The attack had actually occurred in the night! without heralds! without augurs!
without warning
—
!
The comment most frequently quoted was the Yellow King’s, “This isn’t war, this is chaos.” However, as he had said it in exile and defeat, it was doubtful if his was the ultimate and definitive comment after all.
The chessboard “armies” of the Kings of the Colors were worthless in this new kind of warfare. But there was another body of disciplined fighters: the gamesmen. The slayers.
Interpolation:
The narrative seems to have lost sight of Ada: our heroine: She Who Programs. She is nobody to lose sight of. Too,
there are no surprises in the late synopsis, and AD was a writer of ample and commodious surprises, the ground shifting underfoot, revelation abruptly veering into the Unknown. AD was saving his inventions for the actual writing. I, perforce, cannot wait that long.
What is she doing in her well-appointed room in that stone tower in the Nordmost north of the frozen North? Her guardian watches over her, enamored and ignorant of his own infatuation (for it has been so long since the last female of his kind died that he has forgotten what that state
feels like
), and even he, shrewdest of anthropoids, does not know. To what purpose do her nimble fingers trip so lightly over the brass mill of fate, the cog-wheeled decoder of runes, which y-clept Mickelrede?
Weaving.
The brass gears and teeth of the mighty difference engine spin under her hands, and she looks upon their permutations with cool and knowing eyes. Which device she had tricked and politicked the Six into capturing for her. To what purposes does this warrior-faced woman, this chill and cerebral immortal, this long-experienced and deep-thinking minder of her own counsels weave?
Why, to her own, of course.
Elsewhere
: A faction within the runesmen warned Casey Swift that the Chief could not be depended on—that, in fact, the greater Swift’s success, the less likely the Chief was to be dependable.
But Casey was not actually aiming all this at the Chief. He was aiming it at the Green King.
The hand that binds is the hand that loosens
. Cunning king, would he want the balance of power entirely thrown up for grabs by the total destruction of the Jacks? Not bloody likely. And it was he, after all, who had had Casey brought to the world of In-Between in the first place.
Time passed. Events occurred.
The slayers and their new commander had driven the Jacks back into the very frosts and snows of the wild North. And then it was,
as he knew it must be, that Casey saw the ignorant armies slow to a crawl … then go stiff and rigid … and all motion cease …
And back he went through the jeweled mists and into the cortex of his own old body once again. Forever. Forever? Perhaps not forever …
For hers is the hand that loosens
And hers is the hand that binds
Hers is the hand that releases
And hers is the hand that winds
Envoi:
“the idea for this came to me one night in 1963 in Berkeley Cal. when in the near night sky I saw an unexplained aerial phenomenon like a moray eel or a leopard shark. Not sure why I never finished this, it looked real good at the time. It was to have involved gladiators, probability theory, and the slide rule. Chee.”
—AD, 02 October 1976
What could represent the vanishing past more clearly than the slide-rule? Would today’s high-tech students even recognize a slide-rule, let alone worship one?
Michael Swanwick, an extraordinary, award-winning author of speculative fiction, has taken the posthumous fragments and shards of an incomplete manuscript, and fashioned them into a narrative that is unique in form and style, and a unique blend of two great writers’ minds.
—
Grania Davis
“The Account of Mr. Ira Davidson” first appeared in
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
, May 1976.
“Buchanan’s Head” first appeared in
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
, February 1983.
“Business Must Be Picking Up” first appeared in
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine,
May 1978.
“The Deed of the Deft-Footed Dragon” first appeared in
Night Cry,
Fall 1986.
“Dr. Bhumbo Singh” first appeared in
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
, October 1982.
“Dragon Skin Drum” first appeared in
Kenyon Review,
Vol. XXXIII, No. 1, Winter 1961.
“El Vilvoy de las Islas” first appeared in
Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine,
August 1988.
“The Engine of Samoset Erastus Hale, and One Other, Unknown” first appeared in
Amazing Science Fiction Stories
, July 1987.
“Great Is Diana” first appeared in
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction,
August 1958.
“The Lineaments of Gratified Desire” first appeared (as “Price of a Charm”) in
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine
, December 1963.
“The Man Who Saw the Elephant” first appeared (as “What More Is There to See?”) in
Yankee Magazine
, October 1971.
“Mickelrede” (with Michael Swanwick) first appeared in
Moon Dogs
by Michael Swanwick (NESFA Press, 2000).
“The Montavarde Camera” first appeared in
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction,
May 1959.
“O Brave Old World!” first appeared in
Beyond Time
, ed. Sandra Ley (Pocket Books, 1976).
“The Odd Old Bird” first appeared in
Weird Tales,
no. 293.
“One Morning with Samuel, Dorothy, and William” first appeared in
Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine
, December 1988.
“Pebble in Time” (with Cynthia Goldstone) first appeared in
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction,
August 1970.
“The Peninsula” first appeared in
Amazing Science Fiction Stories,
November 1985.
“The Singular Incident of the Dog on the Beach” first appeared in
Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine
, December 1986.
“Summon the Watch!” first appeared in
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine,
October 1971.
“Traveller from an Antique Land” first appeared in
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine,
September 1961.
“Twenty-Three” first appeared in
Asimov’s Science Fiction,
July 1995.
“What Strange Stars and Skies” first appeared in
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction,
December 1963.
Edited by
GRANIA DAVIS
AND HENRY WESSELLS
A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK
NEW YORK
The Avram Davidson Treasury
The Other Nineteenth Century
“He is not antagonistic toward all mechanical devices; he is quite fond of the water wheel and maintains a strict neutrality toward the spinning jenny.”
Thus spoke author Michael Kurland, describing Avram in the recent mystery story collection,
The Investigations of Avram Davidson.
Science fiction is a form of virtual time-travel. Most writers and readers of SF like to travel into the distant future. But Avram Davidson (1923-1993) was often a time traveler into the past, both in his writing and in his own life. The old, the archaic, the antique fascinated him. Snuff was his preferred recreational drug. He loved to delve into the mysteries of the past in his stories, and in his
Unhistory
essays. Futuristic technology did not attract him. Avram never nuked his food (horrors!) in a microwave, but was famous for his slowly simmered kettles of soup. This was a man who never drove a car, whose transportation system was his feet.
Avram was also famous for his stories, which brought him many prestigious awards, if little material wealth. “The Necessity of his Condition” won the (Ellery) Queen’s Award for best mystery story in 1957. In 1958 his classic exploration of the breeding habits of safety pins and bicycles, “Or All the Seas with Oysters,” won the Hugo Award for best science fiction short story. In 1962 his homage to Rudyard Kipling, “The Affair at Lahore Cantonment,” won the Edgar Award for best short mystery story. 1965 saw two nebula Award nominations—“The House the Blakeneys Built,” for best short fiction, and
Rogue Dragon
for best novella. 1966 saw two more: for
The Clash of Star-Kings
(a.k.a.
Tlaloc
) in the best novel category, and
The Kar-Chee Reign
for best novella.
In 1975 his Doctor Eszterhazy tales, set in a fantastical Eastern
European monarchy before the Great War, first saw print. One of them, “Polly Charms, the Sleeping Woman,” was a finalist for the Nebula Award for best novella. They were collected as
The Enquiries
of
Doctor Eszterhazy,
and won that year’s World Fantasy Award for best collection. (A later Eszterhazy story, “The Odd Old Bird,” is reprinted in this collection.)
Avram picked up an Edgar nomination for best short story in 1977 for “Crazy Old Lady,” then hit a streak of World Fantasy Awards. He was nominated for best short fiction in 1978, for “Manatee Gal Won’t You Come Out Tonight.” In 1979 he was nominated for “A Good Night’s Sleep” for best short fiction, and for
The Redward Edward Papers
for best collection. That same year he won (finally!) the World Fantasy Award for best short fiction, for his story “Naples.”
In 1980 “There Beneath the Silky-Tree and Whelmed in Deeper Gulphs Than Me,” was nominated for the Nebula Award for best novella. In 1983 another Eszterhazy tale, “Eszterhazy and the Autogondola-Invention,” was nominated for the Nebula Award for best novella and in 1984 yet another Eszterhazy story, “Young Doctor Eszterhazy,” was nominated for the Nebula Award for best novella.
In 1986 “The Slovo Stove” was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for best short fiction. And finally, in 1986, he received the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement. Add to this one more Nebula nomination for post-lifetime achievement, for his 1999 novella
The Boss in the Wall
(posthumously completed by Grania Davis).
Most of these stories can be found in the recent Locus-Award-Winning, World-Fantasy-Award-nominated collection,
The Avram Davidson Treasury
(Tor, 1999).
This latest collection,
The Other Nineteenth Century
, contains Avram’s stories set in the not-so-distant past. These are his tales of the Nineteenth Century and related eras, a time of gaslights and steam runabouts and snuff. In this book you will find alternate histories,
unusual events, and strange and steamy gadgets. Turn up the gaslight and enjoy the shadows on the wall.
I want to thank my esteemed co-editor Henry Wessells, who came up with the idea for this book; George Scithers (who contributed story Afterwords) and Darrell Schweitzer of Owlswick Literary Agency; and Teresa Nielsen Hayden of Tor Books, who brought the idea to life. I also want to thank Jack Dann, my co-editor on the recent Avram Davidson Jewish fantasy collection,
Everybody Has Somebody in Heaven
(Devora Press), who taught me new editorial tricks. I especially want to thank Ms. Sarah Fishman, who has prepared a preliminary catalogue of the Avram Davidson Archive. And thanks, of course, to our beloved readers, families, and friends.
GRANIA DAVIS
San Rafael, California
North Shore Oahu, Hawaii

Other books

So Near So Far by C. Northcote Parkinson
Remember the Morning by Thomas Fleming
Ida Brandt by Herman Bang
Treasured Submission by Maggie Ryan