Lights in the Deep (35 page)

“I will need,” she continued, “a place of quiet refuge. Somewhere I can meditate. I think that’s the right human word? I feel as if I am seeing the world and everything in it for the first time, all over again. I must be free of distractions. And I will need to be in contact with someone of whom I can ask questions. Many questions.”

“There must be many planets in mantis territory suitable for this,” I said.

“No,” she replied. “Only one.”

“One?”

“Yes. It’s a sparse world. Not much to look at, really. Upon which there is a single, modest chapel.”

A tiny thrill went up my spine.

“And I expect you’ll be wanting me to go with you,” I said.

“Only if you wish it. I cannot compel you to do this thing.”

“It’s okay. I’d have gone back even if you didn’t ask. But not before I’ve had a chance to visit Earth again, and make proper goodbyes to the many people I left behind during the first war.”

“Of course.”

“Thank you.”

“No, Padre, thank
you.”

“It’s going to be difficult,” I said. “This journey you’re proposing to take. In all the thousands of years of human history, countless men and women have walked the same path. The results have not always been good ones. There can be no guarantees. You might get frustrated. Or worse.”

“That is why I will need you, to be my guide.”

“But I’m just—”

“Padre, what did Captain Adanaho tell you? What would her
spirit
say if it could speak to you now?”

I looked through the lid of the casket.

“That I can’t put off the inevitable,” I said.

“Then we shall walk the path together?” the Queen Mother asked.

“Yes, I think we’ll have to.”

“Good.”

A small chime in the compartment alerted us to the fact that the mantis shuttle was on final approach for dock. I took another long look through the top of the casket, then straightened my uniform and followed the Queen Mother out into the corridor that lead to the gangway hatch.

▼ ▲ ▼ ▲ ▼

As of the publication of this book, “The Chaplain’s Legacy” is the longest piece of fiction I’ve ever sold to
Analog
. I was nervous that its length might take it over the edge, in terms of what either Stan Schmidt or his successor, Trevor Quachri, would allow. I was delighted when Trevor sent word that he was taking the story, and doubly delighted by the size of the check that arrived in my mail box a couple of months later.

As noted in the afterword for “The Chaplain’s Assistant”, this story forms part of an arc that I eventually novelized. Baen Books has officially picked up the novel,
The Chaplain’s War
, for publication in 2014, and I am supremely pleased to be seeing this story released in its expanded form. Even with 30,000 words—between the original short story and the sequel novella—there is a whole lot more “there” there, where the Chaplain’s Assistant universe is concerned. Once I got my teeth into the character of Harrison Barlow, I found I had a lot of ground to cover: who he is, where he comes from, what he went through before being stranded on Purgatory, what he went through after escaping from the nameless world where The Professor met his demise, and so forth. It was a delight being able to flesh things out to their fullest potential, and I was especially grateful to have Toni Weisskopf’s experienced editorial hand guiding me along the way.

Thus if you pick up a copy of
The Chaplain’s War
when it sees print, you may notice a few differences between what you’ve read here, and what you read there. I am told that fans who first read Ender’s Game in
Analog
have noticed the same thing. When comparing the book to its original short fiction form. Hopefully folks will forgive me for tweaking stuff or making some modifications to suit the needs of a new editor. Such is the way of the “fix up book” as Mike Resnick says they used to be called: short fiction pieces laced together at the edges to make full novels, back in the old days when almost everyone writing science fiction was writing it for the magazines first and foremost.

As has been the case often in my career, my publication journey travels a time-honored, old-fashioned path. I will admit to being somewhat proud of that. And I am proud of this story too.

The Hero’s Tongue: Larry Niven

I stumbled across Larry Niven in 1992.

At the B. Dalton bookstore in Cottonwood Mall, Salt Lake City, to be precise.

No, not Larry Niven the man. Larry Niven the writer.

Having just finished the first two books in W. Michael Gear’s
Forbidden Borders
series, I was impatient. The third book wasn’t due out for at least a year, and I wasn’t quite ready to return to my tried-and-true library of Pocketbooks
Star Trek
novels. So I trotted off to my favorite bookstore and idly scanned the shelves. Hoping for one or more titles to leap out at me. Kind of like a literary blind date.

At that time, Larry Niven was a name I’d only ever seen in passing: in the back pages of
Omni
magazine—amidst the book club selections. So when I spotted the books
N-Space
and
Playgrounds of the Mind,
something in my unconscious said, “Hey, you keep seeing that guy pop up, why not give him a try?”

Little did I know that
N-Space
and
Playgrounds of the Mind
were not, in fact, novels. Little did I also know that those two books would absolutely consume and regurgitate my imagination over the next four months, such that I would never look at science fiction the same ever again.

Much has been written in other places about The Great Larry Niven, most of it before I was old enough to drive. But at that particular point in my life I didn’t know Larry Niven from Adam, and had absolutely no idea how much of an impact he’d had on the literary science fiction field in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. To me he was just another writer, and the stories and excerpts in
N-Space
and
Playgrounds of the Mind
so thoroughly captivated me—fresh, without preconceptions, prejudices, or expectations—I went on to buy and read virtually every book Larry had ever written, or would ever write from that point forward.

Such was the level of my enjoyment of his work.

I mentioned earlier—with my piece on Allan Cole & Chris Bunch—that it’s impossible to read a million-plus words of a writer’s work, and not have that writer’s sensibilities, cadence, idioms, sense of humor, etc., rub off on you. In both large and small ways. So it is again with Larry Niven. The man I credit above all others for not only showing me a new and amazing way to tell science fiction stories—the “hard” way—but also for teaching me to love short science fiction as an art form. Because he does it so damned well.

Some writers credit Ray Bradbury or Harlan Ellison in this regard.

Me? All credit to Larry Niven! And to those two paperbacks. Which I have read and re-read so many times over the years, they’ve grown yellowed and fragile. Overused, one might say. Though in a loving and tender way.

Not long after I broke into professional science fiction myself, I met Larry Niven in person, at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, California. It was my big chance to do what I’d been too afraid to do in 1993, at CONduit in Salt Lake: accost Larry and impress upon him my admiration for his work.

I thought I could keep my cool. Being a recent winner of the very contest Larry himself judged. I thought I could maintain my professional (albeit brand new!) demeanor.

I am embarrassed to say I went full fanboy. Full! Fanboy!

Thankfully, Larry was a patient chap, who suffered my exclamations with a smile. His wife too. They were gracious and kind.

I did it to them again the following year, when I brought and pressed my abused copies of
N-Space
and
Playgrounds
of the Mind into Larry’s hands, with a pen, and said, “Larry, these books are
why I write
short science fiction! Would you please sign them?”

Again, he suffered my exclamations with a smile.

Little did I know that my Writer Dad, Mike Resnick, would eventually line me up to collaborate with Larry Niven, for Arc Manor’s
Stellar Guild
series. A project which I wrapped up at the same time I finished my edits for the very book you’re now holding in your hands.

Being able to collaborate with Larry Niven—to write in one of his worlds—has been one of those serendipitous things for which I could not possibly have planned. Dreamed, yes. But not planned. A junior point guard just starting out in the NBA does not
plan
to scrimmage with or take pointers from the great John Stockton. A guitar player two steps out of his garage, making waves in local venues, does not
plan
to play with or open for Eric Clapton or Jimmy Page.

Perhaps the best compliment Larry ever gave me during the process, was that my style seemed to so closely match his own, he had a difficult time telling the difference between my prose and his.

You can’t buy that kind of thing. Nor steal it. It is a gift. More valuable than diamonds or platinum. I shall take it to my grave as one of the straight-up most heart-warming things anyone has ever said to me, about my writing. Your basic good feeling, as Tom Clancy said in his introduction to
N-Space.

So, everything you’ve been reading in this book, it’s partially Larry’s doing. Without my having adored Larry’s work first, I’d have never gotten up the nerve to try my hand at making my own stories.

Because in the same four months when I was reading Larry for the first time, a locally-produced science fiction radio serial called
Searcher and Stallion
had picked me up to work on some sci-fi scripts for them. So that between doing the scripts and thinking,
hot damn, this is fun,
and reading Larry’s stories and thinking,
hot damn, this is amazing, and people pay Larry to do this,
I got it into my brain that maybe I could do what Larry does too.

Twenty years later I’ve been the 2012 triple-nominee for the Hugo, Nebula, and Campbell awards, and I’ve won the Writers of the Future award, as well as the
Analog
magazine “AnLab” readers’ choice award—
Analog
being the premier “hard” science fiction magazine in the English language, where Larry himself still publishes. Seems to me I can’t talk about my career or my successes without speaking of the tremendous influence Larry’s had, and still has. Just because he’s terrific at what he does.

So I’ll give a big salute to the man who created the Kzinti and the Ringworld and the Smoke Ring. Who peopled his books and stories with amazing men, women, and aliens; some of whom think as well as you or I do, just differently. Pak Protectors and Outsiders and Grendels and Pierson’s Puppeteers. A menagerie of delightful, incredible, and essentially believable creatures. Who often exist in stupendously amazing yet utterly scientifically plausible places.

Folks, that’s not easy to render. Trust me.

But Larry makes it look effortless.

Exanastasis

Exanastasis (Greek
): resurrection, rising again.

Atreus studied the sweep of the Milky Way, remembering the first time his uncle had taken him into the hills away from the city. They’d lain on their backs in their sleeping bags, staring up into space and competing to see who could spot the most movers—satellites and space stations orbiting at various distances.

He reflexively reached down to pull the lip of his bag up to his chin, and discovered that there was no bag.

What?

Reality suddenly collapsed into place.

The wreck. His lunar rover had flipped, crushing him into the regolith. Air had been escaping through cracks in his helmet when he’d tried to scream, and vomited thick arterial blood into his starred facebowl.

Atreus’s body jerked violently at the visceral memory, and he sat up. Looking around, he saw that he was on a dais sculpted from the central peak of a tiny crater. An invisible dome of phocarbonite crystal rose upward from the crater’s low rim wall.

Swinging his feet over the edge of the dais, Atreus found the crater floor polished, and warm to the touch of his bare toes. Gentle lights were set into the basalt at regular intervals, illuminating a wide set of stairs that led down the slope of the short peak to where a blue-cloaked and hooded figure hovered half a meter in the air.

The floating creature’s head looked straight up towards the dais, but its face was a darkened void, revealing nothing.

“Erebos,” Atreus said, recognizing the color of the cloak.

“Father,” replied the cloaked being.

“Why have you revived me?”

“It was not my choice.”

Atreus wiped his palms across his face, savoring the sensation. “The others?”

“They thought it might be easier to convince you this way.”

Atreus snorted. “Since when have your brothers and sisters ever needed to
convince
me of anything? The time when my opinion mattered, passed long ago.”

“Not all of us feel that way.”

Atreus studied the levitating creature for a quiet moment.

“No, I suppose you don’t. You were always respectful, Erebos.”

“Which is why I voted to let you stay dead.”

Atreus stood up, discovering himself to be hairless as well as naked. He took a few experimental steps and found his motor control over the clone body to be surprisingly good—his children had improved the consciousness transfer process.

“What, my son, is so needful that your brothers and sisters would go to the trouble of bringing me back in the flesh? If it’s information you want, surely you could have copied me from the Vault, and mined the copy for relevant data.”

“Data, perhaps. But wisdom? No.”

Again, Atreus snorted. “Hah! Wisdom. You all grew too smart for that. It’s why you let me die in the first place. The accident must have been enormously convenient for you.”

Erebos remained silent, his hovering form unmoved. “I told them you’d feel this way. Which is why I knew we couldn’t come to you empty-handed. We have therefore prepared a gift, as a token of our good faith.”