The Best of Walter Jon Williams Read online

  The Best of Walter Jon Williams Copyright © 2021 by Walter Jon Williams. All rights reserved.

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  “Introduction” Copyright © 2021 by Daniel Abraham. All rights reserved.

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  Dust jacket illustration Copyright © 2021 by Lee Moyer. All rights reserved.

  Interior design Copyright © 2021 by Desert Isle Design, LLC. All rights reserved.

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  Electronic Edition

  ISBN

  978-1-64524-003-7

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  See here for individual story credits.

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  Subterranean Press

  PO Box 190106

  Burton, MI 48519

  subterraneanpress.com

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  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  Daddy’s World

  The Golden Age

  Dinosaurs

  Surfacing

  Video Star

  The Millennium Party

  The Bad Twin

  The Green Leopard Plague

  Diamonds from Tequila

  Margaux

  Prayers on the Wind

  Wall, Stone, Craft

  Story Notes

  About Us

  Introduction

  by Daniel Abraham

  When I started my life as a serious reader of science fiction and fantasy lo these many years ago, there were giants in the field: Asimov and Zelazny, Jack Chalker and Larry Niven and Harry Harrison. And yes, Walter Jon Williams. My tastes were, as they are now, wide and voracious. I read books and stories to see worlds I’d never seen, think thoughts that would never have occurred to me, and along the way create my own sense of adventure and possibility. “Novel” meant a book of a certain size, sure. But more importantly for me, it meant new. That was when I fell in love with the stories of Walter Jon Williams. I have never fallen back out.

  In the age of branding and carefully crafted identity, Walter Jon Williams’ body of work is a rare and wonderful thing—it’s wide. A Stephen King story is a Stephen King story. A Philip K. Dick book is unmistakably a Philip K. Dick book. Authors—even the best of us—have the sandboxes we play in, the kinds of stories that we tell, and a similarity in the projects we take on. We’re constrained by the market and by our own enthusiasms, by the projects we’ve tried that failed and the ones that succeeded. Authors, myself very much included, find a literary identity forming that defines and constrains us.

  But not everyone goes that way.

  Pick up a Walter Jon Williams book, and you might have a science fictional comedy of manners with the gentleman thief Drake Maijstral. Dip into his shelf again, and you may come back with a high fantasy adventure like Quillifer the Knight. A weird world of arcane power and endless cityscape from the Metropolitan books. First-wave cyberpunk like Hardwired. High space opera (Dread Empire’s Fall) or near-future espionage (This is Not a Game) or vast disaster novel (The Rift). You could find yourself in a far future where people have intentionally split their own personalities to adapt to the rigors of space travel or between the sails of an 1880s tall ship or in a police station in rural New Mexico. A complete read of Walter’s work swoops back and forth through genres and forms like a rollercoaster, and no amount of reading will guarantee that you can predict what comes next.

  So what is a Walter Jon Williams story?

  There are some threads we can find in his work. They aren’t setting or tone or genre, but they’re there. First off, Walter Jon Williams stories are incandescently smart. Whether he’s drawing from the patterns and quirks of history or speculating forward into the science and technology that will exist generations from now, the stories share a deep curiosity. Even the saddest—and the man can do tragedy as well as anybody—have a thread of wonder and delight in them.

  For another thing, they are deeply felt. The characters are often flawed, sometimes broken, occasionally brilliant, but they are always deeply human. There’s an idea I’ve heard put forth—and which I more than half believe—that a writer’s characters follow them from story to story and project to project like a theater company performing different plays with the same actors. If that’s true, Williams has a casting director’s rolodex in his head. He can draw a lost child and a hardened murderer with the same grace and sympathy. He can make us love or hate a character, or when he wants to, do both at the same time.

  And finally, his work is crafted by a master.

  I have been lucky enough to workshop with Walter Jon Williams. I have learned more from listening to him than from any other single source in my career. His insights are sharp, based in experience, and—rarest of all among bits of writing advice—they’re useful.

  There is an interview with Michael Caine where he talks about the art of acting in the serious, simple terms of a craftsman. I try not to blink. Williams has an understanding of the process and art of writing at least as deep as Caine’s of acting. “There are three ways to hide a clue so that it’s memorable, but doesn’t tip your hand.” That’s some high-level wizardry right there.

  So, intelligent, empathetic, and beautifully written. That’s as close as you’re going to get to defining a Walter Jon Williams story.

  I’ve said in other places that the job of being a writer is a fine balance between, on the one hand, cultivating a deep and empathic understanding of the human heart and, on the other, not giving a shit what anyone else thinks. That’s who Walter is. Craft and wisdom and a lifelong dedication to his craft on one side, a vast and unconstrained—maybe unconstrainable—imagination on the other.

  The book you’re holding right now has a dozen different trips into those worlds. The stories range over four decades of Williams’ career, and they’re all as fresh as last month’s Asimov’s. It’s going to be tempting to read them all in one sitting, and I won’t blame you if you do. But there’s something to be said for taking these slow, savoring them, letting them be with you for a while before you take the next sip. They’re all going to take you different places.

  Welcome to The Best of Walter Jon Williams. You can trust me. That’s saying something.

  Daddy’s World

  One day Jamie went with his family to a new place, a place that had not existed before. The people who lived there were called Whirlikins, who were tall thin people with pointed heads. They had long arms and made frantic gestures when they talked, and when they grew excited threw their arms out wide to either side and spun like tops until they got all blurry. They would whirr madly over the green grass beneath the pumpkin-orange sky of the Whirlikin country, and sometimes they would bump into each other with an alarming clashing noise, but they were never hurt, only bounced off and spun away in another direction.

  Sometimes one of them would spin so hard that he would dig himself right into the ground, and come to a sudden stop, buried to the shoulders, with an expression of alarmed dismay.

  Jamie had never seen anything so funny. He laughed and laughed.

  His little sister Becky laughed, too. Once she laughed so hard that she fell over onto her stomach, and Daddy picked her up and whirled her through the air, as if he were a Whirlikin himself, and they were both laughing all the while.

  Afterwards, they heard the dinner bell, and Daddy said it was time to go home. After they waved goodbye to the Whirlikins, Becky and Jamie walked hand in hand with Momma as they walked over the grassy hills toward home, and the pumpkin-orange sky slowly turned to blue.

  The way home ran past El Castillo. El Castillo looked like a fabulous place, a castle with towers and domes and minarets, all gleaming in the sun. Music floated down
from El Castillo, the swift, intricate music of many guitars, and Jamie could hear the fast click of heels and the shouts and laughter of happy people.

  But Jamie did not try to enter El Castillo. He had tried before, and discovered that El Castillo was guarded by La Duchesa, an angular forbidding woman all in black, with a tall comb in her hair. When Jamie asked to come inside, La Duchesa had looked down at him and said, “I do not admit anyone who does not know Spanish irregular verbs!” It was all she ever said.

  Jamie had asked Daddy what a Spanish irregular verb was—he had difficulty pronouncing the words—and Daddy had said, “Some day you’ll learn, and La Duchesa will let you into her castle. But right now you’re too young to learn Spanish.“

  That was all right with Jamie. There were plenty of things to do without going into El Castillo. And new places, like the country where the Whirlikins lived, appeared sometimes out of nowhere, and were quite enough to explore.

  The color of the sky faded from orange to blue. Fluffy white clouds coasted in the air above the two-storey frame house. Mister Jeepers, who was sitting on the ridgepole, gave a cry of delight and soared toward them through the air.

  “Jamie’s home!” he sang happily. “Jamie’s home, and he’s brought his beautiful sister!”

  Mister Jeepers was diamond-shaped, like a kite, with his head at the topmost corner, hands on either sides, and little bowlegged comical legs attached on the bottom. He was bright red. Like a kite, he could fly, and he swooped through in a series of aerial cartwheels as he sailed toward Jamie and his party.

  Becky looked up at Mister Jeepers and laughed from pure joy. “Jamie,” she said, “you live in the best place in the world!”

  At night, when Jamie lay in bed with his stuffed giraffe, Selena would ride a beam of pale light from the Moon to the Earth and sit by Jamie’s side. She was a pale woman, slightly translucent, with a silver crescent on her brow. She would stroke Jamie’s forehead with a cool hand, and she would sing to him until his eyes grew heavy and slumber stole upon him.

  “The birds have tucked their heads,

  The night is dark and deep,

  All is quiet, all is safe,

  And little Jamie goes to sleep.”

  Whenever Jamie woke during the night, Selena was there to comfort him. He was glad that Selena always watched out for him, because sometimes he still had nightmares about being in the hospital. When the nightmares came, she was always there to soothe him, stroke him, sing him back to sleep.

  Before long the nightmares began to fade.

  Princess Gigunda always took Jamie for lessons. She was a huge woman, taller than Daddy, with frowzy hair and big bare feet and a crown that could never be made to sit straight on her head. She was homely, with a mournful face that was ugly and endearing at the same time. As she shuffled along with Jamie to his lessons, Princess Gigunda complained about the way her feet hurt, and about how she was a giant and unattractive, and how she would never be married.

  “I’ll marry you when I get bigger,” Jamie said loyally, and the Princess’s homely face screwed up into an expression of beaming pleasure.

  Jamie had different lessons with different people. Mrs. Winkle, down at the little red brick schoolhouse, taught him his ABCs. Coach Toad—who was one—taught him field games, where he raced and jumped and threw against various people and animals. Mr. McGillicuddy, a pleasant whiskered fat man who wore red sleepers with a trapdoor in back, showed him his magic globe. When Jamie put his finger anywhere on the globe, trumpets began to sound, and he could see what was happening where he was pointing, and Mr. McGillicuddy would take him on a tour and show him interesting things. Buildings, statues, pictures, parks, people. “This is Nome,” he would say. “Can you say Nome?”

  “Nome,” Jamie would repeat, shaping his mouth around the unfamiliar word, and Mr. McGillicuddy would smile and bob his head and look pleased.

  If Jamie did well on his lessons, he got extra time with the Whirlikins, or at the Zoo, or with Mr. Fuzzy or in Pandaland. Until the dinner bell rang, and it was time to go home.

  Jamie did well with his lessons almost every day.

  When Princess Gigunda took him home from his lessons, Mister Jeepers would fly from the ridgepole to meet him, and tell him that his family was ready to see him. And then Momma and Daddy and Becky would wave from the windows of the house, and he would run to meet them.

  Once, when he was in the living room telling his family about his latest trip through Mr. McGillicuddy’s magic globe, he began skipping about with enthusiasm, and waving his arms like a Whirlikin, and suddenly he noticed that no one else was paying attention. That Momma and Daddy and Becky were staring at something else, their faces frozen in different attitudes of polite attention.

  Jamie felt a chill finger touch his neck.

  “Momma?” Jamie said. “Daddy?” Momma and Daddy did not respond. Their faces didn’t move. Daddy’s face was blurred strangely, as if it had been caught in the middle of movement.

  “Daddy?” Jamie came close and tried to tug at his father’s shirt sleeve. It was hard, like marble, and his fingers couldn’t get a purchase on it. Terror blew hot in his heart.

  “Daddy?” Jamie cried. He tried to tug harder. “Daddy! Wake up!” Daddy didn’t respond. He ran to Momma and tugged at her hand. “Momma! Momma!” Her hand was like the hand of a statue. She didn’t move no matter how hard Jamie pulled.

  “Help!” Jamie screamed. “Mister Jeepers! Mr. Fuzzy! Help my Momma!” Tears fell down his face as he ran from Becky to Momma to Daddy, tugging and pulling at them, wrapping his arms around their frozen legs and trying to pull them toward him. He ran outside, but everything was curiously still. No wind blew. Mister Jeepers sat on the ridgepole, a broad smile fixed as usual to his face, but he was frozen, too, and did not respond to Jamie’s calls.

  Terror pursued him back into the house. This was far worse than anything that had happened to him in the hospital, worse even than the pain. Jamie ran into the living room, where his family stood still as statues, and then recoiled in horror. A stranger had entered the room—or rather just parts of a stranger, a pair of hands encased in black gloves with strange silver circuit patterns on the backs, and a strange glowing opalescent face with a pair of wraparound dark glasses drawn across it like a line.

  “Interface crashed, all right,” the stranger said, as if to someone Jamie couldn’t see.

  Jamie gave a scream. He ran behind Momma’s legs for protection.

  “Oh shit,” the stranger said. “The kid’s still running.”

  He began purposefully moving his hands as if poking at the air. Jamie was sure that it was some kind of terrible attack, a spell to turn him to stone. He tried to run away, tripped over Becky’s immovable feet and hit the floor hard, and then crawled away, the hall rug bunching up under his hands and knees as he skidded away, his own screams ringing in his ears…

  He sat up in bed, shrieking. The cool night tingled on his skin. He felt Selena’s hand on his forehead, and he jerked away with a cry.

  “Is something wrong?” came Selena’s calm voice. “Did you have a bad dream?” Under the glowing crescent on her brow, Jamie could see the concern in her eyes.

  “Where are Momma and Daddy?” Jamie wailed.

  “They’re fine,” Selena said. “They’re asleep in their room. Was it a bad dream?”

  Jamie threw off the covers and leaped out of bed. He ran down the hall, the floorboards cool on his bare feet. Selena floated after him in her serene, concerned way. He threw open the door to his parents’ bedroom and snapped on the light, then gave a cry as he saw them huddled beneath their blanket. He flung himself at his mother, and gave a sob of relief as she opened her eyes and turned to him.

  “Something wrong?” Momma said. “Was it a bad dream?”

  “No!” Jamie wailed. He tried to explain, but even he knew that his words made no sense. Daddy rose from his pillow, looking seriously at Jamie, and then turned to ruffle his hair.

&nbsp
; “Sounds like a pretty bad dream, trouper,” Daddy said. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

  “No!” Jamie buried his face in his mother’s neck. “I don’t want to go back to bed!”

  “All right, Jamie,” Momma said. She patted Jamie’s back. “You can sleep here with us. But just for tonight, okay?”

  “Wanna stay here,” Jamie mumbled. He crawled under the covers between Momma and Daddy. They each kissed him, and Daddy turned off the light. “Just go to sleep, trouper,” he said. “And don’t worry. You’ll have only good dreams from now on.”

  Selena, faintly glowing in the darkness, sat silently in the corner. “Shall I sing?” she asked.

  “Yes, Selena,” Daddy said. “Please sing for us.”

  Selena began to sing,

  The birds have tucked their heads,

  The night is dark and deep,

  All is quiet, all is safe,

  And little Jamie goes to sleep.

  But Jamie did not sleep. Despite the singing, the dark night, the rhythmic breathing of his parents and the comforting warmth of their bodies.

  It wasn’t a dream, he knew. His family had really been frozen. Something, or someone, had turned them to stone. Probably that evil disembodied head and pair of hands. And now, for some reason, his parents didn’t remember.

  Something had made them forget.

  Jamie stared into the darkness. What, he thought, if these weren’t his parents? If his parents were still stone, hidden away somewhere? What if these substitutes were bad people—kidnappers or worse—people who just looked like his real parents? What if they were evil people who were just waiting for him to fall asleep, and then they would turn to monsters, with teeth and fangs and a horrible light in their eyes, and they would tear him to bits right here in the bed…