But not ever going to be forgotten around here. Old friend, houseguest, fellow writer: we genuinely will not see his like again. Mike had the unique gift of making the people around him feel (and be) wittier, smarter, more creative than they usually were. So being in Mike’s company left one in an unusual state of creative grace — especially when (as in my case) I was nonetheless acutely aware that I would never, while still breathing anyway, be the effortless and subtle artist that this man was.<\/p>\n
Ten years ago now, Mike was Guest of Honor at Boskone. They contacted me and asked, would I write something in his honor for the program book?<\/p>\n
The honor was all mine, in being asked. This is what I wrote. Forgive me if I say: today, it resonates a bit…<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Next One<\/i><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The tall narrow limestone-faced building in Cambridge Gate, off Regent\u2019s Park, is one that relatively few people would give a second glance. This part of London isn\u2019t what it used to be; the nearness of Euston Station has increased the local traffic level well beyond the sedate, well-behaved stream of cabs and cars that would have passed its front doors even ten years ago. Nowadays, all the buildings around it have had double-glazing put in to cope with the noise and the fumes; and their occupants, if they ever look at the tall narrow building across the street, do so only to wish that they\u2019d had their glazing done when its occupants did\u2014when it was a lot cheaper. None of them have the slightest idea what that glazing cost: or that it would deflect bullets as readily as noise.<\/p>\n
When I go there, I appear to do so on my own nickel. Reimbursement appears eventually via my London literary agency in Fitzroy Street, disguised as royalty payments for a science series done years ago for the BBC. The call seldom comes at any ungodly hour; Herself is rarely so inconsiderate to her civilian consultants. So the trip means a morning drive to the train station, and the 8:45 train to Dublin, a cab from the station to Dublin Airport, and a cheap RyanAir flight to Stansted; then the shuttle train down to Liverpool Street Station, and the tube to Euston.<\/p>\n
As I walked the last few blocks down Euston Road, past Hodder\u2019s shiny new headquarters, last time, I wondered what Herself wanted now. The previous venture had involved, not precisely a wild goose chase, but a long perambulation through the Dolomites that began as an investigation into a near-forgotten branch of petty Tyrolean nobility and ended in a… well, never mind, I signed a confidentiality agreement. It hadn\u2019t precisely been dangerous, but the British Library had pulled my reader\u2019s ticket. Herself had been most apologetic, and had promised that the next job would be more pleasant.<\/p>\n
So… Around the corner, past a couple of cheap coach-tour hotels that had eaten the old townhouses at the bottom of the block. Past the entrance to the mews at the back of the building, glancing quickly back to see if any cars I knew were sitting there: but the parking lot was empty. Past the front windows of International Export, curtained in something that doesn\u2019t look like blast curtain, but is\u2014probably an unnecessary precaution. In through the unprepossessing front door: there\u2019s no security there. No visible<\/i> security. Down the long bare corridor to the elevator, one of the few in town these days with a human operator, a man with one arm a stump. He glanced at me, and I said, \u201cNine, please.\u201d<\/p>\n
Up we went. On Nine, the long hallway is carpeted, and ambient sound is almost completely missing. The 00\u2019s and their secretaries are all down on seven: up here you hear nothing much but the soft hiss of the hard-working air conditioners that cool down the Cray farm in the south-side computer room. The walls have only a few nondescript modern prints hanging here and there: Herself says there\u2019s already so much artwork at Clarence House that she gets tired of looking at it all the time.<\/p>\n
Down to the last door on the left, into the office, where her private secretary sat: he nodded me in through the paneled double doors, one of which is always standing open when you arrive. It closed behind me with that closing-safe sound that always makes me wonder how much it weighs.<\/p>\n
Behind the big teak desk, in the big leather chair, as usual, sat M. Ian Fleming long suspected the true details about her, but (wisely, for his time and his audience, who would have found them unbelievable) masked them. Only recently have the movies which sprang from his work begun to get closer to the reality…though no closer than gender.<\/p>\n
We do not call her M. Or rather, we know what M is short for, and since only the tabloids call Herself that, we avoid it.<\/p>\n
\u201cMa\u2019am,\u201d I said, as the doors closed behind me. I can\u2019t say it the British way: it sticks on my accent.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo sit down,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
I did, and she glanced up from the scattered paperwork and said, \u201cThe Quiet Man is coming in today.\u201d<\/p>\n
I blinked at that, for she didn\u2019t mean John Wayne. It was one of the affectionate in-house tags for one of her most effective operatives. A few other people on this floor referred to him as \u201cthe man in black\u201d, even though he wasn\u2019t always. What was interesting was that neither Joel Rosenberg nor any of the rest of the Minneapolis crowd had mentioned the imminent arrival…which suggested that this particular trip had nothing to do with a convention, or with one of Mike\u2019s too-infrequent trips to Welsh Wales.<\/p>\n
\u201cR&R,\u201d Herself said.<\/p>\n
I put my eyebrows up. \u201cMoscow? Rome? Bala Cynwyd?\u201d I said, thinking out loud about several ongoing crises which had recently come abruptly to an end. And then, with that weird sense of certainty you get sometimes, I said, \u201cBelgrade?\u201d<\/i> I had been wondering for days how anyone got hundreds of thousands of people to stand out in the cold in the streets of Belgrade night after night, in mid-winter. But if anyone could, it was John M. Ford doing \u201cAsk Doctor Mike\u201d, explaining (among other things) how you got the nonstick coating to stick to the frying pan…<\/p>\n
Herself didn\u2019t dignify the guess with an answer. She just glanced over at the file sitting off to one side of her desk. I had seen it once or twice before. It just kept getting thicker.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he could use a little time off,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The thought had occurred to me. Ghu only knew how much short fiction he\u2019d done in the last few years, not to mention the games work, and the novels. A schedule like that would ruin most mortals, and made me unwilling even to ask Mike, when we ran into each other, how Aspects: A Novel with Sorcery<\/i> was doing. But then I\u2019d become, in recent years, much more sensitive to questions which begin, \u201cWhere\u2019s the n<\/i>th book in your series\u2014\u201d, when you know that the item so eagerly asked-after is taking its own sweet time arriving and you can\u2019t explain why…<\/i>(or you can, but not in language likely to make sense to the listener).<\/p>\n
I knew how it was, too, to be kept away from work like that by circumstance, or other work less congenial. \u201cI don\u2019t know if he\u2019d agree,\u201d I said. But that file was so thick. And it wasn\u2019t galleys, either. \u201cStill… how does he manage to get all this writing done and still accumulate all these frequent-flyer miles? And then use<\/i> them.\u201d<\/p>\n
She smiled slightly. We knew, the whole building knew, what he used them on really<\/i>. Writing can make a wonderful cover. You can go anywhere, put your nose into all kinds of things, while claiming to be doing research. Even if you are.<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cMa\u2019am, where were you planning to send him? After all, consider where he goes in what the Service would consider his spare time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI have been,\u201d she said, putting the leg with the recently-replaced knee up on a needleworked ottoman. \u201cI was thinking... there.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cMa\u2019am? I mean, \u2018Excuse me?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere he goes in his spare time,\u201d she said, looking at me levelly over her G&T.<\/p>\n
I blinked. It seemed the proper moment to go obtuse.<\/p>\n
Herself sighed. \u201cThere are a lot of things going on in this government,\u201d she said, \u201cthat don\u2019t bear looking at closely. By anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
I agreed with that wholeheartedly enough. Some of the more recent releases of information under the thirty-year law had reinforced my feeling that politicians and research-and-development budgets should be kept far apart from one another.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe basic technology is really rather retro,\u201d she said: \u201cdates back to the sixties, in fact. A spin-off from one of our other operatives who operated a similar cover to the Quiet Man\u2019s: he wrote a book called The Chilian Club<\/i>. You\u2019ve read it?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe one where Stonehenge is destroyed at the end by the testing of an antigravity device? Yes.\u201d After a few seconds, I thought about some of the more outr\u00e9 reports coming out of \u201cArea 51\u201d of late, and wondered whether some intelligence-sharing had been going on.<\/p>\n
She got an amused look in her eye. \u201cYes,\u201d she said, doing the mind-reading trick, \u201cwhy not let Uncle Sam have the \u2018monkey model\u2019? It keeps both the high-level types at Defense and their R&D boys off our case while we attend to other business. You see, the basic device has… other applications.\u201d<\/p>\n
She went over to the other door, the one which I expected let into the room with the Cray farm. She opened it. Not the computer room: apparently a closet. It seemed dark in there.<\/p>\n
She beckoned me over. I went to her; looked into the darkness.<\/p>\n
And looked.<\/p>\n
And looked. Breath went out, and didn\u2019t come back for a long time.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, jeez,\u201d I said, at long last, very softly. \u201cIt\u2019s full of stars…\u201d<\/p>\n
Herself was watching me very closely. I barely noticed at first. Whatever medium was inside that doorway conducted thought, and emotion, the way air and water conduct sound. What I \u201cheard\u201d… Never you mind. After a few breaths I managed to pull back, turn away.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnother writer describes the technology well enough,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re \u2018exploiting a previously unexplored property of gravity.\u2019 Or so Sir Isaac told me, once we sat him down with Hawking and got him sorted out on the maths.\u201d<\/p>\n
My mouth was just too dry to swallow. \u201cTime travel\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMuch more than that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere else does it go?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnywhere imaginable… literally. \u2018Alternity\u2019 is a good enough word for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHis<\/i> word,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd appropriate. I won\u2019t bore you with the technical details. Decades it\u2019s taken us, but now that the processing power is affordable enough to hide in the Household\u2019s budget, we can control this technology.\u201d The \u2018we\u2019 did not sound like it meant the usual intelligence hierarchy. Maybe Herself caught my glance toward the south windows, but she let out one of those little treacly chuckles of hers, and said, \u201cCertainly not those jokers in the new offices down by the river. \u2018Military.\u2019 \u2018Intelligence.\u2019 Imagine what the oxymorons would make of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
I did, and shuddered. \u201cNo,\u201d she said, \u201cWe manage it within the family…which leaves us free to use it responsibly. Which means not very often. But when we do, we use it for a good reason. So,\u201d Herself said, and sat down again in the chair, swiveling to watch me, and the open door. \u201cThis is what I sent for you to ask. Where do we best send him for a holiday that will show him how much we appreciate him?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, God.\u201d I sat down again, without being given permission.<\/p>\n
A writer with more universes in his head than, well, than some minor gods. A poet, and a playwright, of great delicacy and skill: endlessly erudite, and easygoing about it: warmly appreciative of others\u2019 work, gifted in his own. Where do<\/i> you send him by way of thanks? Where is heart\u2019s desire?<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cI see your problem,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
I knew as well as anyone else in our trade\u2014well, one of our trades\u2014that the atopias writers create are not necessarily u<\/i>topias just because we\u2019ve created them. I could think quickly of several places I\u2019d written, with some relish, where I would never<\/i> want to go. Yet there were also places I\u2019d written and liked that would be quite pleasant…but would they qualify, in the long run, as the Door into Summer? And what about his<\/i> worlds? How does anyone not a mindreader make such an intimate judgment?<\/p>\n
But Herself was sitting there looking expectant, so I would have to at least try. \u201cCan I have a look at some samples?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSurely. It\u2019s not difficult: the interface is very intuitive.\u201d<\/p>\n
I held up one book. She gestured with her eyebrows at the doorway. I went up and looked through the door.<\/p>\n
\u2014a flash of light, a CRASH!, then the sound of someone saying \u201cOw, ow, OW, ow…\u201d. Followed by another very assured voice saying, \u201cThat man will recover because he got prompt medical attention. However\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
I burst out laughing as the holo-taping of Doctor Wally\u2019s Kitchen of Wonders<\/i> continued with its demonstration of the properties of dilithium. I was tempted to watch a while longer and see how many takes the taping required. \u201cIt did<\/i> have the funniest title of any Star Trek novel ever written,\u201d I said. \u201cAnd it was the funniest inside, too. But I really don\u2019t think he\u2019s going to want to crawl back in there. There were complications…\u201d I turned away.<\/p>\n
There must have been some slippage in the control interface, for a second later, a burly, dark-complected gentleman with profoundly ridged brows, wearing a maroon-and-black uniform with some kind of metallic sash over it, looked out through the doorway. He said most emphatically, “Before you go…one thing. If you would kindly thank him for the fruit juice. It has made life here…much more tolerable.”<\/p>\n
\u201cUh, sure, I\u2019ll do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
He ducked out of sight, leaving us looking at darkness again.<\/p>\n
We kept exploring. There were places of Mike\u2019s to be found on the other side of that door which weren\u2019t in conventional print. Glimpses through the darkness of realizations of all Mike\u2019s \u201choliday publications\u201d\u2014the exquisite pamphlets which show up from \u201cSpeculative Engineering\u201d, Mike\u2019s corporate identity, shortly after the New Year, every year: \u201cA Short History of Motion Pictures to 1600\u201d, \u201cCosmology: A User\u2019s Manual\u201d, \u201cTroy: The Movie\u201d. Shadows\u2014no, not<\/i> merely shadows\u2014strutted and fretted hilariously through some lesser-known material. Elerium,<\/i> the X-Com In-House Newsletter: the background \u201cfootage\u201d to a Starfleet memorandum regarding the translation of alien entertainment programs for the Terran market\u2014<\/p>\n MY LITTLE SEHLAT. Because of the pacific nature and academic values of Vulcan culture, this popular children\u2019s program seemed like a worthy possibility. However, extensive redubbing would be necessary. For example, in episode #24, \u201cNumbers Can Be Fun\u201d, problems in single-digit multiplication and division might replace Fermat\u2019s Last Theorem and the general solution to the n<\/i>-body problem. Also, we recommend entirely new film to replace the household-safety sequences that conclude each show, as the Federation Child Safety Council has no standard views on the dangers of playing with sequential time and unsupervised cloning.<\/p>\n MY MOTHER THE SHUTTLECRAFT. It was while viewing these recordings that Ensign Straczynski first began to show signs of career-related stress\u2014<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I laughed again until the tears came as that particular listing finished, but finally I had to say to Herself, \u201cI don\u2019t know…they\u2019re not what I\u2019d call restful<\/i>, not in the long term\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis?\u201d she said, holding up another book.<\/p>\n I glanced through the doorway. Snow blew by almost horizontally in a howling wind; snow was drifted deep everywhere in sight. I knew those mountains, and the pass beneath them, south of Andermatt in Switzerland. Down in the inn, which was now half-buried in the snow, a doctor, a mage, a vampire and an Imperial heir were sitting down to dinner, and there was about to be a murder. It was the late 1470\u2019s…sort of. \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d I said. \u201cIt\u2019s cold. He\u2019s not that wild about the cold. And think of the sanitation problems…\u201d<\/p>\n Herself raised her eyebrows. \u201cOh, come now. He\u2019s stayed in Great Tew…and he<\/i> wasn\u2019t the one who got the food poisoning.\u201d But she put that book down, picked up another.<\/p>\n \u2014the surface of the Moon, blinding white, razory black in the shadows\u2014<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d I said. \u201cIt\u2019s still kind of recent. Maybe too recent: sometimes you want a vacation from somewhere you\u2019ve spent a lot of work time lately, rather than going straight back there again\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n We went through everything on her desk, even Mike\u2019s \u201cParanoia\u201d module, which always gives me the willies: all the novels, all the shorts. I could not make up my mind, and finally it started to seem like folly to even try to second-guess Mike this way, no matter how good our intentions were. Finally I moved away again, all too conscious of Herself\u2019s eyes on me, and just stood in front of that starry darkness again for a while, wondering what clue I might have missed. The starlight went dim within the restless stirring of dark matter, the unborn idea moving on the face of the deep. Waiting for something….<\/p>\n I stood there and shook my head, for there was an unsettling familiarity to it. Sometimes, in the middle of what might seem long and fruitless work on a project, you suddenly find there\u2019s much more to work with than just fragmented images, lines of dialogue, chunks of an outline. In the dark of the back of your mind, you can suddenly feel the weight <\/i>of the real, whole thing\u2014the book, the screenplay. It lies there, waiting, indistinct but also somehow intimating that it\u2019s already complete and perfect, though still immaterial: all you<\/i> have to do is bring it through, into being. \u2014Then physicality sets in: the typewriter or the computer or the writing pad, contracts and deadlines, the first draft and the last. And too often, later, you feel\u2014holding the physical screenplay, the printed book\u2014that something went wrong in the execution; something got missed, and still lingers back there in the dark. You long\u2014I<\/i> do, anyway\u2014for the place where the circle closes, for some kind of writer\u2019s afterlife where you get to meet and celebrate your work as it should have been: as it seemed once in the darkness, perfect and whole, the special effects of the mind and the heart all in place and in splendor\u2014never filtered through flawed physicality, unstrained through a brain made of meat.<\/p>\n Is <\/i>this the place where the circle closes?<\/i> Or where it can be made to do so… if you bring the right raw materials with you?<\/i><\/p>\n Down in the street, audible over other street noise through the double glazing, a cab door shut. We both went to the window, peered out. The tall figure in the battered trenchcoat was leaning through the black cab\u2019s front window to pay off the driver. Not for Mike the Bentleys and the Vipers and Goddess only knows what-all finicky machinery of the flashy dressers down on Seven: Mike has more important things to do with his time than indulge in automachismo and the endless struggle with London traffic, one which not even 00\u2019s win these days. Herself looked down through the slightly green-tinged window, and then over at me, and said, \u201cWell. Last chance. When you want to say \u2018thanks\u2019, where do<\/i> you send the man who can create his own worlds?\u201d<\/p>\n I shook my head. \u201cI wish I could be more help to you, ma\u2019am,\u201d I said. \u201cBut this is Mike<\/i> we\u2019re talking about. Something will present itself…\u201d<\/p>\n Shortly he<\/i> did. In the bustle of his arrival, we both put the minor frustration aside\u2014it\u2019s always good to see Mike. He never changes much: tall and slim, the shoulders a little stooped, the sandy-fair hair thinning and a little askew, the gaze sometimes a little vague: or seeming <\/i>vague, until you realize where its real focus lies\u2014at a point of convergence you can\u2019t even see, and later feel fortunate to have been shown. Nothing vague about that glance at the moment, though: he was wondering what I was doing in her<\/i> office. He greeted Herself, courtly, and accepted her dry congratulations on \u201ca job well done\u201d: then turned to me, and we exchanged a good hug and a few words about the doings of significant others, and the next scheduled assault on a major used-book center on the borders of Wales.<\/p>\n The distraction had been creeping up on him: only now did he indulge it. The room throbbed with that waiting silence….not so much the horns of Elfland wildly blowing, as the stillness in which they would sound.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat the heck is that?\u201d<\/i> he said, and wandered over to the doorway.<\/p>\n And stopped. And gazed through.<\/p>\n We watched, at a little distance.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not that he doesn\u2019t know the way,\u201d Herself said, close to my ear, after a moment. \u201cHe would go eventually anyhow.\u201d<\/p>\n I nodded. \u201cBut anything to speed the process up…\u201d<\/p>\n He stood a long time before the door, gazing into the fecund dark. It stirred… but not by itself, for fecundity is not enough. Mere creativity is not enough, either. The great creators\u2014secondary, as Primary\u2014must bring one other vital ingredient into the darkness, for the spark to kindle, and the light to last: compassion for what they create. It was here, now. The air sang with it. And what is life,<\/i> sang one of Mike\u2019s voices in response, but an improvisation to the music?…<\/i><\/p>\n We watched him stand there, hands in the trenchcoat\u2019s pockets: watched the rapt look. I began to understand why Herself had been watching me so closely, earlier: I was not adviser, but guinea pig\u2014and didn\u2019t mind. After a moment, \u201cI never used to know what to say,\u201d I said very quietly to Herself, \u201cwhen someone would ask me \u2018Which one is your favorite book, your favorite universe?\u2019 You stammer, you make something up. Some friends who\u2019re writers would say, \u2018It\u2019s the last one I was working in.\u2019 That seemed like a good answer. Then another friend, another writer, said, \u2018It\u2019s the world you\u2019re working on now<\/i>. That\u2019s<\/i> the favorite.\u2019 And that seemed even better…\u201d<\/p>\n The Quiet Man stepped into the darkness, into the starlight. Silence: from what seemed far away, the sense of breath caught in wonder, the circle closed: and slowly, in the darkness, a smile.<\/p>\n Then, pouring through the doorway and washing out all color in the room, came the light, blinding\u2014though not to him, and not for long.<\/p>\n Herself shook her head. \u201cNot the last universe,\u201d she said, blinking. \u201cNot this one, either.<\/p>\n \u201cThe next<\/i> one.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" But not ever going to be forgotten around here. Old friend, houseguest, fellow writer: we genuinely will not see his like again. Mike had the unique gift of making the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[834,16],"tags":[921],"class_list":["post-1078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-absent-friends","category-conventions","tag-921"],"yoast_head":"\n