James Tiptree Jr - Houston, Houston Do You Read.pdf

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Houston,Houston, Do You Read?
JAMES TIPTREE Jr
James Tiptree, Jr., aside from the award-winning story that follows this introduction, has been justly
lauded as one of the excellent writers to appear in science fiction in recent years. Precise biographical
data, however, have been difficult to come by. However, with the author's assistance, the following facts
have at last been collected and are hereby presented to the reader.
James Tiptree, Jr., was born in September 1967, in the import section of the McLean Giant Food Store.
His birth occurred in front of a display of Tiptree's English Marmalade, which appeared to him to be a
nice inconspicuous name that editors would not recall having rejected. The subsequent acceptance of his
next thirty or forty stories shocked and nonplussed him, but gave him the opportunity to form many
genuine epistolary friendships, since he had the bad habit of writing fan letters to writers he admired. In
the course of a correspondence with Jeffrey D. Smith, a fanzine editor in Baltimore, he gave a
biographical interview, in which he mentioned having been brought up by a pair of explorer-adventurers
who alternated life in the Congo and the Midwest. He also reported that he had enlisted in the Army Air
Force in World War II, becoming a photo intelligence officer, and subsequent to what was then hoped to
be the outbreak of World Peace, he went in for a little business, a little government work, and finally
settled upon a doctorate and a short research and teaching career in one of the "soft" sciences. (A "soft"
science is one where you bounce back when you trip.) He refrained from mentioning to his friends that he
had started life as a serious painter, because a companion personality, Racoona Sheldon, then being
slowly born, seemed to need that as a biographical touch. Tiptree's writing career took a parabolic form,
the downside of the curve being accounted for by a depression which caused his stories to grow blacker
and more few. The coup de grace was given him in October 1977, when it was revealed that he did not
exist. He feels that it was, though brief, a wondrous existence. He is survived by a short story or two in
press and a novel to be published by Berkley as well as one Hugo, for THE GIRL WHO WAS
PLUGGED IN, and two Nebula Awards for LOVE IS THE PLAN, THE PLAN IS DEATH, in 1973,
and for HOUSTON, HOUSTON, DO YOU READ?, in 1976.
Lorimer gazes around the big crowded cabin, trying to listen to the voices, trying also to ignore the
twitch,, in his insides that means he is about to remember
something bad. No help; he lives it again, that long- t
ago moment. Himself running blindly-or was he
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pushed?-into the strange toilet at Evanston Junior
High. His fly open, his dick in his hand, he can still
see the grey zipper edge of his jeans around his pale
exposed pecker. The hush. The sickening wrongness
of shapes, faces turning. The first blaring giggle. Girls.
He was in the girls' can. -
He flinches wryly now, so many years later, not looking at the women's faces. The cabin curves around
over his head surrounding him with their alien things: the beading rack, the twins' loom, Andy's leather
work, the damned kudzu vine wriggling everywhere, the chickens. So cosy.... Trapped, he is.
Irretrievably trapped for life in everything he does not enjoy. Strutturelessness. Personal trivia, unmeaning
intimacies. The claims he can somehow never meet. Ginny: You never
talk to me . . . Ginny, love, he thinks involuntarily. The hurt doesn't come.
Bud Geirr's loud chuckle breaks in on him. Bud is joking with some of them, out of sight around a
bulkhead. Dave is visible, though. Major Norman Davis on the far side of the cabin, his bearded profile
bent toward a small dark woman Lorimer can't quite focus on. But Dave's head seems oddly tiny and
sharp, in fact the whole cabin looks unreal. A cackle bursts out from the "ceiling"-the bantam hen in her
basket.
At this moment Lorimer becomes sure he has been drugged.
Curiously, the idea does not anger him. He leans or rather tips back, perching cross-legged in the zero
gee, letting his gaze go to the face of the woman he has been talking with. Connie. Constantia Morelos. A
tall moonfaced woman in capacious green pajamas. He has never really cared for talking to women.
Ironic.
"I suppose," he says aloud, "it's possible that in some sense we are not here."
That doesn't sound too clear, but she nods interestedly. She's watching my reactions, Lorimer tells
himself. Women are natural poisoners. Has he said that aloud too? Her expression doesn't change. His
vision is taking on a pleasing local clarity. Connie's skin strikes him as quite fine, healthy-looking. Olive
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tan even after two years in space. She was a farmer, he recalls. Big pores, but without the caked look he
associates with women her age.
"You probably never wore make-up," he says. She looks puzzled. "Face paint, powder. None of you
have."
"Oh!" Her smile shows a chipped front tooth. "Oh yes, I think Andy has."
"Andy?"
"For plays. Historical plays, Andy's good at that."
"Of course. Historical plays."
Lorimer's brain seems to be expanding, letting in light. He is understanding actively now, the myriad bits
and pieces linking into pattern. Deadly patterns, he perceives; but the drug is shielding him in some
way. Like an amphetamine high without the pressure.
Maybe it's something they use socially? No, they're
watching, too. '•
"Space bunnies, I still don't dig it," Bud Geirr laughs infectiously. He has a friendly buoyant voice people
like; Lorimer still likes it after two years.
"You chicks have kids back home, what do your folks think about you flying around out here with old
Andy, h'mm?" Bud floats into view, his arm draped around a twin's shoulders. The one called Judy Paris,
Lorimer decides; the twins are hard to tell. She drifts passively at an angle to Bud's big body: a
jut-breasted plain girl in flowing yellow pajamas, her black hair raying out. Andy's read head swims up to
them. He is holding a big green spaceball, looking about sixteen.
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"Old Andy." Bud shakes his head, his grin flashing, under his thick dark mustache. "When I was your
age-.: folks didn't let their women fly around with me."
Connie's lips quirk faintly. In Lorimer's head the pieces slide toward pattern. I know, he thinks. Do you.
know I know? His head is vast and crystalline, very nice really. Easier to think. Women.... No compact
generalization forms in his mind, only a few speaking ;f faces on a matrix of pervasive irrelevance.
Human, of course. Biological necessity. Only so, so . . . diffuse? Pointless? . . . His sister Amy, soprano
con tremolo: `50f course women could contribute as much as men if you'd treat us as equals. You'll see!"
And then marrying that idiot the second time. Well, now he., can see.
"Kudzu vines," he says aloud. Connie smiles. How they all smile.
"How 'boot that?" Bud says happily. "Ever think j we'd see chicks in zero gee, hey, Dave? Artits-stico.
Woo-ee!" Across the cabin Dave's bearded head turns to him, not smiling.
"And of Andy's had it all to his self. Stunt your, growth, lad." He punches Andy genially on the arm,
Andy catches himself on the bulkhead. But can't be drunk, Lorimer thinks; not on that fruit cider. But he
doesn't usually sound so much like a stage Texan either. A drug.
"Hey, no offense," Bud is saying earnestly to the boy, "I mean that. You have to forgive one underprilly,
underprivileged, brother. These chicks are good people. Know what?" he tells the girl, "You could look
stupendous if you fix yourself up a speck. Hey, I can show you, old Buddy's a expert. I hope you don't
mind my saying that. As a matter of fact you look real stupendous to me right now."
He hugs her shoulders, flings out his arm and hugs Andy too. They float upward in his grasp, Judy
grinning excitedly, almost pretty.
"Let's get some more of that good stuff." Bud propels them both toward the serving rack which is
decorated for the occasion with sprays of greens and small real daisies.
"Happy New Year! Hey, Happy New Year, y'all!"
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Faces turn, more smiles. Genuine smiles, Lorimer thinks, maybe they really like their new years. He feels
he has infinite time to examine every event, the implications evolving in crystal facets. I'm an echo
chamber. Enjoyable, to be the observer. But others are observing too. They've started something here.
Do they realize? So vulnerable, three of us, five of them in this fragile ship. They don't know. A dread
unconnected to action lurks behind his mind.
"By god we made it," Bud laughs. "You space chickies, I have to give it to you. I commend you, by god
I say it. We wouldn't be here, wherever we are. Know what, I jus' might decide to stay in the service
after all. Think they have room for old Bud in your space program, sweetie?"
"Knock that off, Bud," Dave says quietly from the far wall. "I don't want to hear us use the name of the
Creator like that." The full chestnut beard gives him a patriarchal gravity. Dave is forty-six, a decade
older than Bud and Lorimer. Veteran of six successful missions.
"Oh my apologies, Major Dave old buddy." Bud chuckles intimately to the girl. "Our commanding
ossifer. Stupendous guy. Hey, Doc!" he calls. "How's your attitude? You making out dinko?"
"Cheers," Lorimer hears his voice reply, the complex stratum of his feelings about Bud rising like a
kraken in the moonlight of his mind. The submerged silent thing he has about them all, all the Buds and
Daves and big, indomitable, cheerful, able, disciplined, slow-minded mesomorphs he has cast his life
with. Meso-ectos, he corrected himself; astronauts aren't muscleheads. They like him, he has been
careful about that. Liked him well enough to get him on Sunbird, to make him the official scientist on the
first circumsolar mission. That little Doc Lorimer, he's cool, he's on the team. No shit from Lorimer, not
like those other scientific assholes. He does the bit well with his small neat build and his deadpan
remarks. And the years of turning out for the bowling, the volleyball, the tennis, the skeet, the skiiing that
broke his ankle, the touch football that broke his collarbone. Watch that Doc, he's a sneaky one. And the
big men banging him on the back, accepting him. Their token scientist . . . The trouble is, he isn't any kind
of scientist any more. Living off his postdoctoral plasma work, a lucky hit. He hasn't really been into the
math for years, he isn't up to it now. Too many other interests, too much time spent explaining elementary
stuff. I'm a half-jock, he thinks. A foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier and I'd be just like them. One
of them. An alpha. They probably sense it underneath, the beta bile. Had the jokes worn a shade thin in
Sunbird, all that year going out? A year of Bud and Dave playing gin. That damn exercycle, gearing it up
too tough for me. They didn't mean it, though. We were a team.
The memory of gaping jeans flicks at him, the painful end part the grinning faces waiting for him when he
stumbled out. The howls, the dribble down his leg. Being cool, pretending to laugh too. You shit heads,
I'll show you. 1 am not a girl.
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