One of the two winners of this year’s Solstice Award is Alice Sheldon, who wrote under the name James Tiptree, Jr. Sheldon/Tiptree has been an enduring inspiration and focal point for the entire science fiction community—professionals, fans, critics, and academics—in discussing gender and sexuality in our fiction. Her influence in the conversation of genre continues into the present time, in no small part thanks to the award named in Tiptree’s honor, given to those in science fiction and fantasy who explore or expand our understanding of gender. Previous winners of the Tiptree Award include grandmasters Ursula K. Le Guin and Joe Haldeman.
We present here one of Tiptree’s most disturbing stories, about the fascination and dangers of exogamy.
He 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 walls
clanked. 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. “God 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 liquors behind the bar. It was dim. I was trying to stare everywhere at once without showing it. I remember those white boneheads—Lyrans, that is. And a mess of green veiling I decided was a multiple being from someplace. I caught a couple of human glances in the bar mirror. Hostile flicks. I didn’t get the message, then.
“Suddenly an alien pushed right in beside me. Before I could get over my paralysis, I heard this blurry voice:
“ ‘You air a futeball enthushiash?”
“An alien had spoken to me. An alien, a being from the stars. Had spoken. To me.
“Oh, god, I had no time for football, but I would have claimed a passion for paper-folding, for dumb crambo— anything to keep him talking. I asked him about his home-planet sports, I insisted on buying his drinks. I listened raptly while he spluttered out a play-by-lay account of a game I wouldn’t have turned a dial for. The ‘Grain Bay Pashkers’. Yeah. And I was dimly aware of trouble among the humans oa-my other side.
“Suddenly this woman—I’d call her a girl now—this girl said something, in a high nasty voice and swung her stool into the arm I was holding my drink with. We both turned around together.