Going Alien

Copyright Information

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

GOING ALIEN

Copyright © 2012 by Jeffrey A. Carver

A Starstream Publications Ebook

Discover other ebooks by Jeffrey A. Carver at

www.starrigger.net/ebooks.htm

Cover art by rolffimages

Type design by Dave Smeds

Frontispiece illustration from Galaxy magazine

Copyright © 1975 by Connor Freff Cochran, used by permission of the artist

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

*****

Original Publication

Shapeshifter Finals first appeared in the anthology Warriors of Blood and Dream, edited by Roger Zelazny, Avon Books, 1995. Copyright © 1995 Jeffrey A. Carver.

Love Rogo first appeared the anthology Futurelove: A Science Fiction Triad, edited by Roger Elwood, Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1977. Copyright © 1977 Jeffrey A. Carver.

What Gods Are These? first appeared in Galileo magazine, issue #9, 1978. Copyright © 1978 Jeffrey A. Carver.

Life-Tides first appeared in the anthology Habitats, edited by Susan Schwartz, DAW Books, 1984. Copyright © 1984 Jeffrey A. Carver.

Alien Persuasion first appeared in Galaxy magazine September 1975, UPD Publishing Corp. Copyright © 1975 Jeffrey A. Carver.

Though All the Mountains Lie Between first appeared in the Science Fiction Times and the anthology Dragons of Darkness, edited by Orson Scott Card, Ace Books. Copyright © 1980 by Jeffrey A. Carver

*****

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Frontispiece

Introduction

* * *

Shapeshifter Finals

Love Rogo

What Gods Are These?

Life-Tides

Alien Persuasion

Though All the Mountains Lie Between

* * *

About the Author

Frontispiece

Cephean the Cynthian, from Alien Persuasion

Interior illustration by Freff, for Galaxy magazine

Introduction

Welcome to Going Alien, the second of my two story collections! The first was Reality and Other Fictions, published just a couple of months before this one. It doesn't matter which order you read the two collections in. They're not chronological. In fact, here's how the stories were divvied up: The stories in this book have aliens. The stories in the other book have other wonders, but no aliens.

What kinds of aliens are in these stories? Friendly ones. Unfriendly ones. Kill-or-be-killed foes. Subtle dangers. Beasts that just need to be understood. Beasts that can help us understand.

One story seems particularly timely to me, as I write this introduction, even though I wrote the story years ago. The London Olympic Games are currently filling the television schedules, and one of the events I look forward to is the freestyle wrestling. I'm not really a sports fan by most standards, but I wrestled as a student, and freestyle is as close to the same kind of wrestling as the Olympics get. It raises the question in a science fictional mind: Do you suppose the Olympics will ever evolve into an interstellar sport? I hope they do. In the first story in this collection, we get a glimpse of something like that: the Games of the IntraGalactic Interworld Multicultural Amateur Wrestling League, or IIMAWL for short. It's not quite as heady as the Olympics, but as demanding and full of surprises for the contestants.

When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was a young-adult novel called Stadium Beyond the Stars, by Milton Lesser. It was one of those books that I took out of the library over and over, so many times I'm surprised they didn't just give it to me. It was about an Olympic-style athlete bound for the interstellar games on . . . well, I forget what world. His sport is spacesuit racing. But his journey to the competition is interrupted by contact with an alien race called the Rollers. He has to decide which is more important: competing in the games, or completing a peaceful first contact with a new species. Great stuff, if a little dated for the modern audience.

Of course, these stories are not all about sports. They're about romantic love (human-human), the empathic love of animals (be careful what you wish for), difficulty of communication, alien invasion, and coming of age. Two of them became the basis of novels, or in one case, a pair of novels. They cover quite a span of time in my life, and quite a span in where my head was at in different times in my life. As I said in my introduction to the other book, I've not been a very prolific short story writer. Just eleven published in all, at the time of this writing. They seemed to come along at particular times in my life, and those life differences are reflected in the mood and content of each story. As in the first collection, I have left the stories pretty much as they were first published, except for correcting some errors and some unfortunate changes made by earlier editors.

I'll have more to say about the individual stories as we go. For now, maybe I should just say, I hope you enjoy them!

This book is dedicated to the tireless Anne King, who has given countless hours to assisting in the formatting of this ebook and many others. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

—Jeffrey A. Carver, August 2012

Shapeshifter Finals

Behind the story:

Much of my fiction draws, one way or another, from my own life. That might seem an odd thing to say, given that most of my fiction takes place far from Earth, and far from the present. Nevertheless, it's true. In my novel Neptune Crossing, there are several scenes set in mining operations on the frozen surface of Triton. Those scenes drew from my experience as a college student on summer break, working on an automotive assembly line. Not the technical detail, of course—but the feeling, the gestalt of what it was to be thrown into a relentless work environment where respect was scarce and mastery difficult, even though the work itself was rote.

The story that follows draws from my life, too, but in a more obvious way. What—have I wrestled a shapeshifter in intragalactic games, as the hero of this story is about to? No. But I was a high school wrestler, in my hometown of Huron, Ohio, and some elements of this story were lifted from my own experiences, or those of my teammates. How did that happen?

Shapeshifter Finals is exceptional in my published stories in that it owes its genesis to a direct invitation. One Sunday morning in 1993, the telephone rang. My wife answered it. Her voice went funny, and she turned to me, I swear, with stars in her eyes. She said, "It's Roger Zelazny! At that moment, time went sort of funny, and I sat bolt upright in bed. He says he's sorry to interrupt your work time, but he has a question for you. She might as well have said, It's the Angel Gabriel, and he'd like to have a word with you."

And here a word of explanation. I had previously written a book in a shared universe of Roger's devising, and it came out with his name properly incorporated into the title: Roger Zelazny's Alien Speedway: Clypsis. But never during that project had I met or spoken directly with him. He was still a demigod of science fiction, as far as I was concerned. Why would he be calling me, for God's sake?

He was calling to invite me to write a story for him. He was editing an anthology, Warriors of Blood and Dream, about soldiers and martial arts in various science fictional forms, and he was looking for something different. He remembered reading somewhere that I had been a high school wrestler. Would I consider writing a science fiction story for him about wrestling?

I hesitated. I stammered. I gulped. I said, I don't, um, actually write that many short stories. I'm, uh, more of a long . . . novel . . . sort of writer.

Roger was quiet.

Deeply grateful that we didn't have videophones (Skype was far in the future), I hemmed. I hawed. I finally stuttered that I'd think about it, and if an idea came to me, I'd see what I could do.

Roger thanked me politely, and hung up.

Three days later, the idea for this story came to me. I sat down and wrote furiously, forgetting whatever else I was working on. I polished it, and I sent it to Roger. He liked it, and bought it for his anthology. I later put it up on my website for online reading, but this is the first time it's ever been collected since that anthology.

By the way, I never dreamed at the time that one of my daughters would become a high school wrestler, and follow in my footsteps in a wholly unexpected way. Unlike my hero, here, she never went up against a shapeshifter.

_______________

The crowd roared as the first pair of wrestlers engaged in competition out on the center mat. Aww-riiiiii-choooo-guyyyys! HUGGA-HUGGGA-HUGGGA-HUGGGA! Wickety-(psicry!)-wickety- (psicry!)-wickety-(psicry!) Hog Donovan peeked over in the direction of the match, but tried not to get drawn into watching it. Neither of the contestants in the ninety-three pound class was human, and better he should keep his mind on his own upcoming match.

Gaaiiee! Gaaiiee! Brackit-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it! Wheeeooop-ooop-ooop! The assortment of cries from the stands was damned disconcerting, the crowd being over half extraterrestrials. It was the opening bout, finals round, in the 57,463rd Annual Games of the IntraGalactic Interworld Multicultural Amateur Wrestling League—and the first games ever to be hosted by Earth. Hog Donovan prayed that the human fans could drown out all the ETs when he got to the mat himself. He was as nervous as a laboratory rat on speed, and he was going to need all the psychological boost he could get.

Hog paced the warmup area in his tights and warmup jacket, trying to still the butterflies in his stomach. It would be at least forty minutes yet before they called him to the mat, for the hundred thirty-eight pound finals. An eternity! Hog threw himself into his warmup exercises and tried to blank out everything else.

Bye-bye baby, baby bye-bye . . . The refrain of a popular song repeated mercilessly in his head, warring with the cheers of the crowd.

Hog grunted, working up a good sweat. Hog indeed! He was long and whiplike, and bore his nickname only because his old heavyweight friend, Hermie Harmin'  Harmon, had dubbed him Hog in retribution for his jokes about Harmon's rhinolike neck. Those were the old days, but the name had stuck . . .

The crowd roared, and Hog was startled to realize that the first match was over—the victor a mecurial-skinned creature from Tau Ceti. The next weight class was up, and—hey!—this was the only other human finalist, a wiry little Brit named Johnnie Johnson, up against some sort of centipede from the Vega asteroids.

Hog ducked through to the sidelines to yell encouragement. Give 'im hell, Johnnie! he hollered as the Earthman trotted onto the mat. His voice was drowned out by a loud buzzing. Up in the stands, a large contingent of centipede fans were rubbing their upper limbs together, en masse, cheering on their fellow Vegan.

Hog suppressed a shudder as he watched Johnnie engage the centipede from a standing position. All those legs. And they were so . . . insectlike. And quick. With a chitter and a blur of speed, the centipede caught Johnnie's left ankle with several of its legs, and tripped him for a two-point takedown. The crowd buzzed in appreciation.

Get up! Keep moving! Hog yelled.

Tap tap. Hog started at the rap on the top of his head, and turned to see Coach Tagget urging him away from the sidelines. But coach—

Hog, go warm up. Don't fret over Johnnie, you're just scaring yourself. Tagget rapped him on the skull again. Don't forget—

I know, I know, the brain is the most important muscle, Hog repeated by rote, as he turned back to the warmup area.

"Think about your match. Think," Coach Tagget urged, as Hog resumed his stretches. After a moment, satisfied with Hog's progress, the coach left to go watch Johnnie himself.

Think, right. Think about the fact that he was about to wrestle an alien named Belduki-Elikitango-Hardart-Colloidisan, an Ektra shapechanger capable of assuming about a thousand different multiworld multicultural body configurations. He was thinking about it, all right. And he was having trouble keeping his knees from shaking.

Bye-bye baby, baby bye-bye . . .

He remembered how smug the Earth promoters had been when the IIMAWL rules committee had offered to make terran rules the norm for this tournament, in honor of the hosting world. Of course, none of the promoters had even thought about the fact that Earth's wrestlers would be competing against sentient bugs, snakes, gorillas . . . and shapeshifters . . . except that they'd finally decreed a return to the more modest, and protective, tights in place of skimpy singlets. In other respects, the referees' interpretation of Earth's rules had turned out to be a tad subjective, to say the least.

Johnnie—NO!

The single shout from the Brit's coach was drowned out by a rising buzz from the crowd. Hog jumped up, trying to see what was happening. The centipede buzz crescendoed. Hog ducked through an opening in the sidelines crowd to get a better view.

Uh-oh. Johnnie was in big trouble. The centipede had him halfway onto his back, with about six legs pushing his shoulders toward the mat. Hog knelt on the sidelines, twisting and arching sympathetically as Johnnie struggled against the inexorable leverage of all those limbs. Johnnie's coach, a wiry little man, was screaming, Scoot out! Scoot out! and making futile sweeping gestures with his arms.

Hog cupped his hands and screamed, PULL HIS ANTENNAS! PULL HIS ANTENNAS!

The match seemed to freeze abruptly, as the centipede cocked its head and glared across the mat at Hog with all four eyes. Its hairy antennas bristled. Hog gulped, regretting his impulsive yell. The thing looked as if it might just abandon the match and come on over and stomp him for his remark. It appeared to have completely forgotten its opponent.

Johnnie seized the opportunity. For an instant, it looked as though he might actually grab the thing's antennas—which would have been a definite foul—but instead, Johnnie managed to get an elbow inside the thing's legs and knock out several locked joints, loosening the centipede's grip. The crowd buzzed, and the centipede turned back to its opponent, but Johnnie was already wriggling quickly out of its arms.

That's it! That's it! That's it! screamed the coach, waving wildly.

Johnnie was frantically trying to complete his escape. He had one leg out now and was up on the other knee. The human crowd was screaming.

The centipede spasmed with rage and tackled Johnnie with a dozen legs. They fell together to the mat with a whump, knocking the breath out of Johnnie. Before Hog could even rise up on his toes to yell, Johnnie was on his back under the centipede, the ref was down on five elbows, peering to see if shoulder blades were touching the mat, and—slap! tweeeeeeeet!—just like that, Johnnie was pinned and the match was over.

The centipede humped its back and drew away from its human opponent, chittering triumphantly. Johnnie sat up, gasping. The centipede crowd went crazy rubbing their limbs.

Hog caught Coach Tagget's eye and turned away, sighing, to return to the warmup