Cautionary Tales Read online

I stood for a moment, my eyes blank. I shuddered. Then, slowly, I pulled off my fancy dress. Persona naked, I went to the bed and lay down on it. Lucifer didn’t seem to mind that I was weeping continuously as he proceeded to do with my body what pleased him, indefatigably. It was all in simulation, but the mirrors made it quite clear what was happening in great variety. I couldn’t close my eyes to it; he required me to look, to see every detail. If I looked away, he did it again, and again, until I watched. Because the sound and sight was all there was; if I didn’t see it, I didn’t react, and he wanted the reaction of a child. I had a total course in normal and aberrant sexual expression. Every time I tried to demur, faintly, as he perpetuated some new outrage, he said that it was almost done, and reminded me of the alternative, and I let it continue. It became a dullness, a series without meaning other than amazement, horror, and disgust. I was almost beyond shock, and it showed—which was what he wanted.

  At last his disgusting passions were exhausted; he had acquainted the innocent girl with so much that she would never thereafter find any novelty in any sexual act. Nothing, pleasant or unpleasant, remained to be learned. He had, as he put it, thoroughly deflowered her innocence.

  I got up, put my hands to my helmet, and lifted it off my head. The game scene vanished. I blinked, reorienting to reality as I tore off my gloves and socks. I was in the bedroom of our house, and I stood beside our bed.

  My husband left his portable console and stepped toward me. “Are you all right? Some of the things you were saying—”

  I held up a hand in a stop gesture. “Please don’t touch me,” I said. “It will be a while before I—before I’m ready for that. I’m still thinking like a ten-year-old girl, after making such an effort to identify with Nettie. Even as an adult, I found some of it mind bending. That monster had notions I never dreamed of! They knew she was ten.”

  “They wanted underage girls? It wasn’t just random?”

  “And underage boys,” I said, my disgust brimming. “Did you get it all?”

  “Completely,” he said. “Everything has been recorded. Every image, every word, every motion, every identity. I saw the indications as we locked on to the perpetrators, thanks to this special equipment, and every member of the audience who paid to watch. I believe we shall have a clean sweep of this live-action virtual porn ring, and no child will have to testify. The Interact white slavers will be finished. But of course I couldn’t see the actual images while I made the electronic record. When you started crying I wasn’t sure how much of it was acting. How bad was it?”

  “Very bad,” I said. “A dreadful tissue of hints, distortions, threats, and outright lies, yet fiendishly persuasive to a child. He led her on mercilessly, coercing her into cooperation. It could have destroyed Nettie. Children today may know more of life and sex than earlier generations ever did, but this—this is something else. Now we know why children have been committing suicide in such numbers.”

  “And with no record of anything untoward on the Interact,” he said. “And to think how readily our daughter could have been the next. It was just our fortune that she had the wit to mention that ad for the Bluebeard game.”

  “And that we had the wit to be suspicious, and to contact the Interact proprietors, who were looking for a way to verify their suspicions,” I agreed. The numbness was gradually abating, though I know that I would never be able to abolish every vestige of the horror of the virtual encounter. If I, a grown, experienced woman, had been halfway freaked out by those sexual acts, how much worse for a child! “So that we could set up this little sting operation.”

  “And that she was willing to let us use her game persona and identity, so they could verify her authenticity, and use it to blackmail her into submission,” he said. Then he frowned. “If it’s as bad as it evidently is, what about our deal with Nettie?”

  I shuddered. “To let her view the full video recording? We can’t do that! I hope she never sees some of those perversions.”

  “But what kind of parents are we, if we renege? We made a deal, and she honored her part of it. She would never forgive us.”

  “Oh, she’ll forgive us,” I reminded him wanly. “You are forgetting the escape clause.”

  He knocked his forehead with the heel of his hand. “That if we don’t show her that video, we must pay a consequence of her choosing, without limit. We thought that was academic.”

  “Well, it isn’t,” I said. “We will suffer the consequence.”

  “What could a ten year old girl demand? A ton of ice cream? An end to all curfews? An annual pass to Mouse House?”

  “Let’s hope it’s that innocent,” I said, dreading it. Because Nettie had a diabolical imagination. Almost like that of Lucifer, in her fashion. We were in for it.

  Note: In 1995 Charles Platt, who had been my editor at AVON, was guest editing an issue of the leading British Science Fiction and Fantasy magazine INTERZONE. He asked me for a story. I had a notion of his tastes, so wrote a provocative one relating to the then early Internet phenomenon, illustrating one of its dangers. My effort is dated now, but I think the intervening years have amply vindicated my prophecy, and not just with child porn. Do you know what your child is doing online? “Bluebeard” was published in the April 1995 issue.

  Caution: biographical essay

  2. Root Pruning

  What makes a creative writer? It is obviously something other than intelligence, imagination, or ambition, though these surely help. I have pondered this question often, and tentatively conclude that it is root pruning.

  You know what regular pruning is. Trees or plants are cut back to smaller size, and they then may bush out more thickly and look prettier, as man imposes his aesthetics on nature. It’s a regular thing with gardeners, though I always wince at how it must feel to the plants. Which suggests another quality of effective writing: empathy. A person who feels the pain of others seems more likely to be able to write effectively about it.

  But there’s another kind of pruning, typically used with small trees. They prune back the roots so as to make a ball, so the tree can be transported and transplanted. The roots grow out again from that ball in the new location, and all is well. The pain of the tree is invisible. I had to do it with a small volunteer mulberry tree that grew by our driveway. Probably a bird dropped the seed, randomly. The location wasn’t ideal, as the soil was mostly gravel, but it was gamely trying, with its intriguingly curvaceous leaves and brightly orange roots. Picture the Ace of Clubs: the leaves were roughly like that. Picture a fresh carrot: the root color. It was about six feet tall, rather thin and rangy. But then trucks were running over it, pushing it flat, breaking off branches, including the main stem, about four feet off the ground. So I rescued it by transplanting it to a safer site near our house. But I had to cut back the reaching roots to do it. I gave it fresh soil and plenty of water, but the loss of some branches and roots was hard on it. For a week the poor little tree wilted and shed its leaves, suffering, and I feared it would not survive. Then I found one single smallest leaf that remained, and buds along the trunk and branches for other leaves. It was making it! Since then, two years, it has branched and leafed splendidly. One day it will make a fine tree. I hope it understands that I damaged it in the clumsy transplanting in order to save it.

  But what about root pruning a person? That is, stripping back the intellectual and emotional basis and transplanting him elsewhere? I believe I understand, because it happened to me. I was born in England in 1934. My parents were active in the British Friends Service Committee, feeding starving children during the Spanish Civil War of 1936–39. It was too dangerous for their own children, so we remained mostly in England until 1938, with our maternal grandparents, cared for by a nanny. Then when I was four we rejoined our parents in Spain. In 1940 my father was arrested by the dictatorship, without a basis, and rescued only by dint of a smuggled-out post card and the threat of withdrawal of significant British aid. So they let him out, but on condition he leave the country
. Thus we came to America in August 1940, on the last passenger ship out, as World War Two raged in Europe. I had my sixth birthday on the ship, with a cake made of sawdust, because the war made pastries scarce. I have been in America ever since.

  So what does this have to do with root pruning? That is the subtext. My technical history is only a shadow of my emotional history, as is the case with every human being. You see, the beginning of my memory is not with my parents, but with the nanny who cared for us. She was the one who was with us, who took us to the park, who did everything for us. When my parents returned to pick us up and take us to Spain, they were on the verge of being strangers, just two identities on my horizon. The nanny was the prime nurturing figure of my life. When I lost her, I lost my heart. The damage didn’t show, because it wasn’t physical, but I had been emotionally orphaned. I had been root pruned.

  My sister and I survived in Spain, getting to know our parents, cared for by other nannies, and we started to learn Spanish. Then came my father’s expulsion, and we came to America. Again we had to start over, with a half-new language and a whole new country. Then my parents’ marriage strained and foundered, and I was in that limbo of severed attachment. I took three years and five schools to make it through first grade. I wet my bed at night for several years, and developed assorted nervous tics, such as jerking my hands or tossing my head every few seconds. I stopped growing, and in 9th grade was the smallest member of my class, male or female. I never lived more than two years in any one place until I went to boarding school, 9th through 12th grades. It was another root pruning. I used to daydream of waking up and discovering that it was all a bad dream, and I would be back home and happy in England with the nanny. It never happened, and finally I came to terms with America. I separated myself emotionally from my fracturing family and forged my own identity. I became a heavy reader, losing myself in the idealized worlds of fiction. Some folk sneer at escapism, but for me it was vital. The bed wetting and tics faded, and I grew most of another foot.

  It was in college after two years, when I was required to decide on a major, that I pondered a day and a night and realized that I wanted to be a writer. It was like a guiding star turning on, and from that time it has been my beacon, as my subsequent career shows. I never thought of being a writer before then, and never wanted to do anything else since then. Writing defines my life, and now, in my 70’s, I know I’ll never retire. I’ll always be writing, until I die, halfway through a great novel.

  So what motivates me? Yes, I was well educated and can express myself well, as this essay should show. Yes, I have discipline, so that I can complete projects I undertake without the crutch of a regular paycheck or a boss looking over my shoulder. Yes, I am strongly independent in thought and inclination. Yes, I got key breaks that enabled me to make it; luck is a potent career force for any writer. But no, I am not mentally disturbed, though I was once ridered (that is, excluded) by my insurance for all mental diseases. That was a false alarm; when I complained of chronic fatigue and my doctor couldn’t find anything physically wrong with me, he concluded it must be all in my head. It was thirty years later that they discovered my thyroid imbalance and treated it, easing my fatigue and depression. What I am is an ordinary, smart, motivated, imaginative person who was jolted out of my satisfied life, thrown into emotional badlands, and who discovered in the realms of fiction and fantasy a type of salvation. I no longer depend on the emotional framework crafted by others; I craft my own. I am most truly alive when I am writing.

  And I think that’s the key. Truly dedicated writers are likely to have been thrust out of their comfort zones and required to generate their own realities, which can become better than what fate otherwise offers. I doubt I am unique in this respect. I suspect that if you delved into the backgrounds of other writers, you would discover a similar emotional pattern, though the physical and intellectual details might be quite different. They have been root pruned—and survived.

  Note: From time to time I get asked questions about what it takes to make it as a writer, and I answer as well as I can, trying to be reasonably original within an essentially unoriginal framework. I wrote “Root Pruning” in 2006, I think for an amateur magazine.

  Caution: Jesus cursed

  3. Cartaphilus

  Then he met Leyla. At first he thought she was just another luscious young woman, to be used and thrown away. He was mistaken.

  Not about her appearance. She had a cute sultry face, wild short purple hair, delightfully massive thighs in tights, and a tattoo of a flying bat on her back, eighteen inches across. The rest of her was in proportion. It had been a century since he had seen her like.

  He headed for her, forging through the throng at the night outdoor party. But a beefy young man cut in between them, closing on the girl.

  So? He put his left hand on the man’s shoulder from behind and hauled him back. “Mine,” he said.

  “Oh, yeah? Listen, you fake barbarian—”

  Suddenly the sharp tip of his spear was nudging the man’s throat. “Yeah. Don’t try my patience.”

  “Hey, you can’t use a weapon here? It’s not allowed.”

  “Too bad.” His left hand blurred as it slapped the man’s face hard enough to smash his nose and knock him to the ground. The man considered a moment more, blood welling out, then concluded that retreat was the best option. That probably saved his life.

  The woman had not flinched. She seemed intrigued “You sucker punched him.”

  “The hell.”

  “You can’t do that with me.”

  She was asking for it. Sometimes a woman he wanted cooperated. Then he was reasonably gentle. Sometimes she didn’t. Then he wasn’t. Regardless, she was his, once he decided. This one had a bad attitude.

  His left hand moved—and missed her face. She had pulled back just enough. That was odd, because few people had enough speed to escape even when they saw the blow coming.

  He whipped the spear around to touch her throat. Only it didn’t. She had moved again, slightly but enough.

  “My turn,” she said. She jumped toward him.

  He flung himself back, in an automatic battle reflex, but somehow she followed. One of her evocative legs got tangled between his, and he fell backwards to the ground. She landed on top of him, her remarkable breasts against his chest, her sweet mouth against his. She kissed him, then lifted her head, smiling faintly.

  “What the hell?” he asked, amazed. No woman had ever done that to him before.

  “You can’t escape me,” she said. “Now shall we adjourn to somewhere more private?”

  She wanted him! “Yeah.”

  Soon they were sitting in a cheap rental tent, one of many pitched around the fringe of the party site. It was barely large enough to accommodate the two of them, sitting or lying, but that was enough. Token privacy, that others would honor. Tents were part of the appeal of such gatherings. “Before we do this,” she said, as she removed her tight halter, “there must be two things.”

  “Yeah?”

  “First, an introduction. I don’t screw with strangers.” She smiled, and he had to smile with her. “I am Leyla. I am a witch. Do you have a problem with that?”

  A witch! That explained a lot. They could govern their forms, to a degree, so tended to be beautiful. They also tended to be lusty. “No.”

  She nodded, satisfied. “Who are you?”

  “Cartaphilus. I am cursed.” He waited for the inevitable question.

  She surprised him. “Aren’t we all!”

  Maybe she had never heard of him, so didn’t care. Witches did have powers, usually minor. She might think his curse was a perpetual hangnail.

  He was eager for the culmination. “What’s the other thing?”

  “I need to satisfy you that you truly can’t force me. Anything I do with you I do because I want to. My will governs, even when I cater to your will. Are you satisfied?”

  There was that attitude again. It needed to be expunged. “No.”


  “Then make your move, barbarian.”

  She was referring to his costume, which really wasn’t a costume, but passed for one at parties like this. “I am not a barbarian. I am a Roman soldier.”

  “You’re stalling, Cart.”

  That did it. He lunged for her, grasping for her shoulders to push her to the ground. And missed, hitting the ground himself. He wrapped his arms around her torso—and missed again, his arms clasping nothing. He dropped his body on hers—and missed once more, landing beside her. Somehow she was always not quite where she was supposed to be.

  “Perhaps you should stop fooling around and get serious,” she suggested insolently.

  He lurched into her—and crashed through the side of the tent, bringing it down on them both. “What the hell!”

  “Hell has nothing to do with it,” she said.

  He worked to put the tent back in order. “What are you doing?”

  “I thought you’d never ask. I told you, I’m a witch. I have magic. Specifically, I am aware of what is about to happen to me, within about five seconds. I can avoid it if I choose. With that warning, I can move as fast as you can. You can’t hit me, slap me, choke me, or even kiss me unless I choose to let you. It’s an automatic response; I don’t have to think about it. Now are you satisfied?

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s do it.” She removed her tights, baring the lower portion of her body. She was every bit as splendid nude as clothed. Her pubic hair was also in the shape of a bat. It was a nice touch.

  Cartaphilus quickly stripped, setting aside his spear, Roman armor, and lion’s mane cloak. He got over her, his hard member poised.

  “On my leave,” she murmured.

  “The hell.” He held her in place and thrust.

  Her hips bucked up to collide with his. His member was squashed painfully between them, entry impossible. He grunted and fell back, grasping his injury.

  “Perhaps you didn’t hear me say ‘on my leave,’ Cart,” she said, sitting up.