The Collected Short Fiction of C.J. Cherryh

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THE COLLECTED SHORT FICTION OF

C.J. CHERRYH

C.J. CHERRYH

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Table of Contents

Introduction

SUNFALL

Introduction

Prologue

The Only Death in the City ( Paris)

The Haunted Tower ( London)

Ice ( Moscow)

Nightgame ( Rome)

Highliner ( New York)

The General ( Peking)

Introduction to MasKs

MasKs ( Venice)

VISIBLE LIGHT

New Introduction

Original Introduction

Frontpiece

Cassandra

Threads of Time

Companions

A Thief in Korianth

The Last Tower

The Brothers

Endpiece

OTHER STORIES

The Dark King

Homecoming

The Dreamstone

Sea Change

Willow

Of Law and Magic

The Unshadowed Land

Pots

The Scapegoat

A Gift of Prophecy

Wings

A Much Briefer History of Time

Gwydion and the Dragon

Mech

The Sandman, the Tinman, and the BettyB

INTRODUCTION

I started writing when I was ten, when I hadn't read any short stories—or if I had, I didn't think of them as short stories. Stories are as long as stories need to be, and no longer, and I'd never read one that wasn't, from Poe to Pyle. So it never occurred to me that there were classes and classifications of stories. I read stories that appealed to me. I wrote stories until I satisfied the story. Mostly my stories, the ones I wrote, worked out to about two hundred pages handwritten. When I learned to type (self-taught) the stories (also self-taught) blossomed to five hundred pages single-spaced.

The typing picked up to a high speed. The stories, fortunately, did not proportionately increase in length. I sold professionally—my first novel went to DAW Books, which has graciously proposed this collection of short stories.

But at the time I was writing that first novel, common wisdom said that the route to professional writing lay through short stories and the magazines.

I just didn't think of stories that short. Novels it was. Novels it stayed—until I had several on the stands.

Then I began to say to myself that I could write short stories, if I figured out how they worked. Now, be it understood, a short story is really not a novel that takes place in three to five thousand words. It's a very different sort of creature, compressed in time and space (usually), and limited in characterization (almost inevitably).

Since characters and near archaeological scope are a really driving element of my story-telling, I began to see why I'd never quite written short.

But when I began thinking of the problem in that light, I began to see that the tales I'd used to tell aloud on certain occasions, whether around the campfire or in the classroom, tolerably well fit the description. So I wrote one out: the Sisyphos legend. And a modern take on Cassandra. The latter won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story, surprising its creator no end, and I have since written short stories mostly on request, and when some concept occurs to me which just doesn't find itself a whole novel.

It's rare that I'm not working on a novel. Short stories often happen between novels. Consequently my output is fairly small. But I love the tale-telling concept, the notion that I can spin a yarn, rather than construct something architectural and precise. So I think most of my short stories are more organic than not. I became aware, when I thought closely about it, that that Poe fellow I liked was a short story writer—in fact, I'd learned he was the father of the short story—but I'd just never analyzed what he did; and to me it still seems more like tales than architectural structure. You fall into them. Same with Fritz Leiber's wonderful Mouser stories. I never counted the words in them. I just lapped them up for what they were—and thenanalyzed just how he did it, because it seemed to me, and still seems, that he was one of the most natural, seamless tale-tellers of the last two centuries. I like that kind of story I hope I can do a few. I enjoy the chance to do them. I write the kind I like to read. Or the kind the idea of which starts to nag me, so I have to write it, or it begins to occupy my subconscious to such an extent I get nothing else done.

But most are because someone asks me to. The first question writers ever get asked by the general public is "Where do you get your ideas?" Just imagine, if someone said, "Write a story about—an island. People stranded on an island." Well, that would work. Being a science fiction writer, I can think of various definitions of "island" and various definitions of "people," from ship in trouble to stuck elevator to real tract of sand. Then you tell me that it has to be short—and I have to say, well, we can't go too deeply into the people, but we can have a situation. We can have a compression of time and a really dire necessity That's a source of ideas. If I were set down on an island in a crisis, I can assure you I'd have ideas. . . as I think my readers would have, themselves. So Ideas aren't the be-all and end-all. The question that drives the short story is—what's unique about your situation? What's the question, what's the problem? And how are you going to fix it?

It's not the only way to do it, but it's one way to do it. It's not a formula, it's a set of questions. And I hope if anything a few of my tales leave you thinking of your own solutions. Thanks to Betsy Wollheim, my extremely patient and dedicated publisher, who thought of doing this volume, and who kept after the project until it all worked. You have the result of her persistence in your hands.

—CJ Cherryh, Spokane, 2003

SUNFALL

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I've always thought well of cities. They're ecological (think of all those millions turned loose with axes to burn firewood in the forest, each with an acre or two, and contemplate the footprint they'd leave in, say, the Adirondacks or the Rockies.) And they're a library of our culture and our past (consider Rome, Osaka, Los Angeles, and Chattanooga, as history and cuisine and human psychology.) Might all cities be haunted—repositories of the restless spirits of all the lives that have ever passed there? Might they shape their modern inhabitants subtly and constantly, as new individuals tread old, old paths and cross old, old bridges for the same reasons as thousands of years ago?

Sunfall is the wonder and the power of cities. I take it as one of the highest compliments that Fritz Lieber, whose writing I greatly admired, loved it, and troubled to tell me so—he was a kindred soul on this point. Myself, I love the woods. I love the wild places. Ask me where I'd go for a vacation and it invariably involves the open country. Ask me where I'd live, however, and it would always be in the center, in the beating heart of a city. And I'm very happy with these stories. I'm delighted to see them in another edition.

CJC

1981

PROLOGUE

On the whole land surface of the Earth and on much of the seas, humankind had lived and died. In the world's youth the species had drawn together in the basins of its great rivers, the Nile, the Euphrates, the Indus; had come together in valleys to till the land; hunted the rich forests and teeming plains; herded; fished; wandered and built. In the river lands, villages grew from families; irrigated; grew; joined. Systems grew up for efficiency; and systems wanted written records; villages became towns; and towns swallowed villages and became cities.