"Angel" -- A Visitor of a Different Kind

The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo

On July 21, nearly halfway into my 26-week project to blog about each of the 26 stories included in Alien Contact, I introduced Story #12 -- Pat Cadigan's "Angel."

When I posted my original blog about "Angel," I had Pat's permission at that time to reprint her story online in its entirety -- and I really wanted to do so, right here on More Red Ink. But io9.com had expressed an interest in a guest blog post from Pat, and, as a follow-up, I suggested they also post her story, "Angel," to which they agreed.

So, after much impatient waiting on my part, Pat Cadigan's very astute, very personal guest blog post -- entitled "Why Science Fiction Writers Love Meeting the Other" -- is now available on io9 for your reading pleasure.

In her guest blog post, Pat writes:

One of the first SF books I ever bought was an anthology called Invaders of Earth, edited by Groff Conklin.... Invaders of Earth was divided into three sections — invaders in the past, the present, and the future. I wish I could lay hands on that old book and name all the stories and authors.¹ I do remember Mildred Clingerman's "Minister Without Portfolio," in which a grandmother fails to recognise green-skinned people as aliens because she's colour-blind; there was also a story by Donald Wollheim about an attempted invasion by alien weather, and "The Greatest Tertian," told by Martians who uncover evidence on a dead Earth of its greatest hero, Sherk Oms.

Times sure have changed.

They've changed so much that if you were to put Conklin's Invaders of Earth side by side with Alien Contact, edited by Marty Halpern, you'd be tempted to think they were books from different planets. Which, of course, they are. The past isn't merely a different country — it's a whole different world.

There are nearly 1,500 words to this guest blog post; and if you enjoy reading speculative fiction, and alien contact stories in particular, you'll find much to appreciate in her essay.

And then, much to my delight, a few days later io9 graciously posted the full text of Pat's multi-award-nominated story "Angel." I still wish the story was here, on my blog, but I realize that the io9 website gets thousands (and thousands) of daily hits, which will definitely bring "Angel" -- and Pat Cadigan -- to the attention of a wider audience. I hope you enjoy the story as much as I do!

P.S. One of the commenters to Pat's guest blog post included the following quote, which impressed me enough to include it here, just in case you don't read those blog comments:

Did you ever notice how in the Bible, when ever God needed to punish someone, or make an example, or whenever God needed a killing, he sent an angel? Did you ever wonder what a creature like that must be like? A whole existence spent praising your God, but always with one wing dipped in blood. Would you ever really want to see an angel?

— The Prophecy, 1995, First Look Pictures

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Footnote:

1 Courtesy of the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB.org), here are the contents to Groff Conklin's Invaders of Earth; sadly the listing isn't broken down in the three groups -- past, present, and future -- to which Pat refers. However, the online listing does include four additional uncredited essays having to do with the past and future. One other comment: I'm presenting the stories here as they are listed on ISFDB; you'll note that they are not in any particular order, so I'm assuming this may be the order (the Introduction aside) in which the stories appear in the anthology:

Invaders of Earth, Groff Conklin, editor, Vanguard Press, 1952.

"The Waveries" (1945) by Fredric Brown

"Tiny and the Monster" (1947) by Theodore Sturgeon

"Castaway" (1941) by Robert Moore Williams

"Not Only Dead Men" (1942) by A. E. van Vogt

"The Man in the Moon" (1943) by Henry A. Norton

"Impulse" (1938) by Eric Frank Russell

"Minister Without Portfolio" (1952) by Mildred Clingerman

"Crisis" (1951) by Edward Grendon

"Angel's Egg" (1951) by Edgar Pangborn

"Pen Pal" (1951) by Milton Lesser

"Pictures Don't Lie" (1951) by Katherine MacLean

"An Eel by the Tail" (1951) by Allen Kim Lang [as by Allen K. Lang ]

"Invasion from Mars" (1938) by Howard Koch

"The Discord Makers" (1950) by Mack Reynolds

"Child of Void" (1949) by Margaret St. Clair

"This Star Shall Be Free" (1949) by Murray Leinster

"A Date to Remember" (1949) by William F. Temple

"Will You Walk a Little Faster?" (1951) by William Tenn

"The Greatest Tertian" by Anthony Boucher

"Top Secret" (1948) by Donald A. Wollheim [as by David Grinnell ]

"Enemies in Space" (1907) by Karl Grunert

"Storm Warning" (1942) by Donald A. Wollheim [as by Millard Verne Gordon ]

"Introduction" by Groff Conklin

SFSignal's Close Encounters Concludes: Nov. 14

SFSignal.com's close encounters with the contributing authors to Alien Contact concludes with Pat Cadigan and this final "Alien Contact" interview.

On Tuesday, October 25, SF Signal began a series of guest blog posts and interviews with some of the contributors to my Alien Contact anthology. If you've missed any of these interviews/blog posts, you may want to start here.

Alien Contact Anthology -- Story #12

If you are wondering what's up with this Alien Contact anthology (forthcoming from Night Shade Books in November) and this "Story #12" -- you may want to begin here.

"Angel" by Pat Cadigan

This story was originally published in the May 1987 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and is approximately 6,800 words in length. And this was an excellent issue of IASFM, too. Just look at the names on the cover! -- plus additional stories by Bruce Boston, Dave Smeds, Steve Rasnic Tem, and Roger Dutcher & Robert Frazier.

If I may, I'd like to repeat three sentences from a blog post I wrote just over a year ago, on May 17, 2010. In that post I introduced a story -- "The Taste of Night" -- that appeared in my co-edited anthology Is Anybody Out There? (Daw Books, 2010), and following that mini introduction, I posted the entire text of the story, serialized over three blog posts. If you look to the right of this blog post, under the header MOST POPULAR POSTS, you will see that, even more than a year later, that story remains one of the most read entries on this blog. Here are those three sentences:

I first met Pat Cadigan at my first ArmadilloCon in Austin, Texas, in 1988, and we've remained friends ever since. I recall writing to Pat prior to that convention, informing her that I was specifically reading some of her fiction ahead of time so that we could chat about it during the con. I was then, and always will be, a fan of her work.

Bottom line, there was no way that I would be involved in this anthology project and not include a story by Ms. Pat Cadigan. In fact, I had four stories from which to choose, and I read them each multiple times, but in the end I selected "Angel."

I asked Pat to share some thoughts on the story, and this is what she wrote:

"Angel" is still one of my favourite stories....it's my justification for never throwing anything away. I had thrown away the original typed draft because I couldn't come up with an ending. Later I reconstructed the story from handwritten drafts, and typed it up on the new computer I'd just bought—and there was the ending, along with the whole point of the story.

This story was actually a few years in the making.... What was significant about the time when I finally finished the story, what had changed between the time I started it and the time I finished it were two things: 1) I had just finished my first novel, and 2) I was a new mother. The former was a major milestone for me—after years of producing short fiction, I had had to learn how to think in terms of a whole forest rather than focusing on a single, intriguing tree, as it were. But the latter was really the more dramatic change. Having my son changed everything. Not just in the obvious ways, either. I like to believe that I became not just a better writer but a better person, not because I had all the answers but because I understood that I didn't. I like to think that I was finally able to finish "Angel" because being a parent showed me that there could be no neat ending, that you can try to do what's best but there's no certainty.

Understanding extraterrestrials will take some doing when we don't really understand ourselves—especially those of us who, through no choice of our own, were born outsiders.

Pat Cadigan's Story Is Again One of the Best

I am once again pleased to announce that Pat Cadigan's short story, "The Taste of Night," originally published in my co-edited anthology Is Anybody Out There? (with Nick Gevers, from Daw Books, June 2010), will be included in Gardner Dozois's The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection, forthcoming in July 2011 from St. Martin's/Griffin. The Dozois volume is available for preorder, but it's still too early in the publishing process and thus no cover art is as yet available.

"The Taste of Night" (along with five other stories from IAOT?) has previously been posted on this blog in its entirety. The following link will take you to the main IAOT? page, from which you can access all six stories as well as additional details on the anthology. If, however, you just wish to read Pat Cadigan's story at this time, you can click here: "The Taste of Night."

I do hope you'll take the time to read this wonderful story, if you haven't already done so.

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Pat Cadigan's Story Is One of the Best

I am pleased to announce that Pat Cadigan's short story, "The Taste of Night," originally published in my co-edited anthology Is Anybody Out There? (with Nick Gevers, from Daw Books, June 2010), will be included in Jonathan Strahan's The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Five (which, by the way, I will also be copyediting), to be published by Night Shade Books in March 2011.

"The Taste of Night," along with five other stories from IAOT?, has previously been posted on this blog in its entirety. The following link will take you to the main IAOT? page, from which you can access all six stories as well as additional details on the anthology. If, however, you just wish to read Pat Cadigan's story at this time, you can click here: "The Taste of Night."

If you haven't read this story yet -- and why haven't you? -- please take the time to do so. Now. Please.

[Pat: You are awesome! -- me]


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"The Taste of Night" by Pat Cadigan (Part 3 of 3)

The Taste of Night
by Pat Cadigan

[Continued from Part 2]

Nell labored toward wakefulness as if she were climbing a rock wall with half a dozen sandbags dangling on long ropes tied around her waist. Her mouth was full of steel wool and sand. She knew that taste -- medication. It would probably take most of a day to spit that out.

She had tried medication in the beginning because Marcus had begged her to. Anti-depressants, anti-anxiety capsules, and finally anti-psychotics -- they had all tasted the same because she hadn't been depressed, anxious, or psychotic. Meanwhile, Marcus had gotten farther and farther away, which, unlike the dry mouth, the weight gain, or the tremors in her hands, was not reversible.

Call-Me-Anne had no idea about that. She kept trying to get Nell to see Marcus, unaware they could barely perceive each other anymore. Marcus didn't realize it either, not the way she did. Marcus thought that was reversible, too.

Pools of colour began to appear behind her heavy eyelids, strange colours that shifted and changed, green to gold, purple to red, blue to aqua, and somewhere between one colour and another was a hue she had never found anywhere else and never would.

Sight. Hearing. Smell. Taste. Touch. __________.

C-c-c-contact…

The word was a boulder trying to fit a space made for a pebble smoothed over the course of eons and a distance of lightyears into a precise and elegant thing.

Something can be a million lightyears away and in your eye at the same time.

Sight. Hearing. Smell. Taste. Touch. ___________.

C-c-c-con…nect.

C-c-c-commmmune.

C-c-c-c-c-communnnnnnnnicate.

She had a sudden image of herself running around the base of a pyramid, searching for a way to get to the top. While she watched, it was replaced by a new image, of herself running around an elephant and several blind men; she was still looking for a way to get to the top of the pyramid.

The image dissolved and she became aware of how heavy the overhead lights were on her closed eyes. Eye. She sighed; even if she did finally reach understanding -- or it reached her -- how would she ever be able to explain what blind men, an elephant, and a pyramid combined with Columbus's ships meant?

The musty smell of surrender broke in on her thoughts. It was very strong; Call-Me-Anne was still there. After a bit, she heard the sound of a wooden spoon banging on the bottom of a pot. Frustration, but not just any frustration: Marcus's.

She had never felt him so clearly without actually seeing him. Perhaps Call-Me-Anne's surrender worked as an amplifier.

The shifting colours resolved themselves into a new female voice. "…much do either of you know about the brain?"

"The Taste of Night" by Pat Cadigan (Part 2 of 3)

The Taste of Night
by Pat Cadigan

[Continued from Part 1]

"Are you all right?"

The man bent over her, hands just above his knees. Most of his long hair was tied back except for a few long strands that hung forward in a way that suggested punctuation to Nell. Round face, round eyes with hard lines under them.

See. Hear. Smell. Taste. Touch. ________.

Hand over her right eye, she blinked up at him. He repeated the question and the words were little green balls falling from his mouth to bounce away into the night. Nell caught her lower lip between her teeth to keep herself from laughing. He reached down and pulled the hand over her eye to one side. Then he straightened up and pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. "I need an ambulance," he said to it.

She opened her mouth to protest but her voice wouldn't work. Another man was coming over, saying something in thin, tight silver wires.

And then it was all thin, tight silver wires everywhere. Some of the wires turned to needles and they seemed to fight each other for dominance. The pain in her eye flared more intensely and a voice from somewhere far in the past tried to ask a question without morphing into something else but it just wasn't loud enough for her to hear.

Nell rolled over onto her back. Something that was equal parts anxiety and anticipation shuddered through her. Music, she realized; very loud, played live, blaring out of the opening where the men were hanging around. Chords rattled her blood, pulled at her arms and legs. The pain flared again but so did the taste of night. She let herself fall into it. The sense of falling became the desire to sleep but just as she was about to give in, she would slip back to wakefulness, back and forth like a pendulum. Or like she was swooping from the peak of one giant wave, down into the trough and up to the peak of another.

Her right eye was forced open with a sound like a gunshot and bright light filled her mouth with the taste of icicles.

* * *

"Welcome back. Don't take this the wrong way but I'm very sorry to see you here."

Nell discovered only her left eye would open but one eye was enough. Ms Dunwoody, Call-Me-Anne, the social worker. Not the original social worker Marcus had sent after her. That had been Ms. Petersen, Call-Me-Joan, who had been replaced after a while by Mr. Carney, Call-Me-Dwayne. Nell had seen him only twice and the second time he had been one big white knuckle, as if he were holding something back -- tears? hysteria? Whatever it was leaked from him in twisted shapes of shifting colours that left bad tastes in her mouth. Looking away from him didn't help -- the tastes were there whether she saw the colours or not.

It was the best they could do for her, lacking as she was in that sense. At the time, she hadn't understood. All she had known was that the tastes turned her stomach and the colours gave her headaches. Eventually, she had thrown up on the social worker's shoes and he had fled without apology or even so much as a surprised curse, let alone a good-bye. Nell hadn't minded.

Ms. Dunwoody, Call-Me-Anne, was his replacement and she had managed to find Nell more quickly than she had expected. Ms. Dunwoody, Call-Me-Anne, had none of the same kind of tension in her but once in a while she exuded a musty, stale odor of resignation that was very close to total surrender.

Surrender. It took root in Nell's mind but she was slow to understand because she only associated it with Ms. Dunwoody, Call-Me-Anne's unspoken (even to herself) desire to give up. If she'd just had that missing sense, it would have been so obvious right away.

Of course, if she'd had that extra sense, she'd have understood the whole thing right away and everything would be different. Maybe not a whole lot easier, since she would still have had a hard time explaining sight to all the blind people, so to speak, but at least she wouldn't have been floundering around in confusion.

"The Taste of Night" by Pat Cadigan (Part 1 of 3)

I wanted to promote -- and celebrate -- the publication on June 1 of Is Anybody Out There? (Daw Books), my co-edited anthology with Nick Gevers, and what better way to do this than to share with readers some of the fiction contained therein! (By the way, have you read the first review of IAOT? that I posted on May 15?)

I first met Pat Cadigan at my first ArmadilloCon in Austin, Texas, in 1988, and we've remained friends ever since. I recall writing to Pat prior to that convention, informing her that I was specifically reading some of her fiction ahead of time so that we could chat about it during the con. I was then, and always will be, a fan of her work.

And so, in its entirety (well, actually, in three parts, so check back every couple days) -- and with the kind permission of the author -- is the short story "The Taste of Night" by Pat Cadigan.

About this story Pat writes: "When it comes to the question of why we haven't heard from/seen any aliens, I'm partial to the explanation that we are constantly receiving communication from them but it's so alien, we don't recognize it for what it is. Maybe there's a lot of stuff that's been going right over our heads (pardon the expression, once you read the story) and for a very long time. I can't prove this theory but as far as I know, no one has disproved it, either. Makes for a good story, I think..."

The Taste of Night
by Pat Cadigan

The taste of night rather than the falling temperature woke her. Nell curled up a little more and continued to doze. It would be a while before the damp chill coming up from the ground could get through the layers of heavy cardboard to penetrate the sleeping bag and blanket cocooning her. She was fully dressed and her spare clothes were in the sleeping bag, too -- not much but enough to make good insulation. Sometime in the next twenty-four hours, though, she would have to visit a laundromat because phew.

Phew was one of those things that didn't change; well, not so far, anyway. She hoped it would stay that way. By contrast, the taste of night was one of her secret great pleasures although she still had no idea what it was supposed to mean. Now and then something almost came to her, almost. But when she reached for it either in her mind or by actually touching something, there was nothing at all.

Sight. Hearing. Smell. Taste. Touch. ________.

Memory sprang up in her mind with the feel of pale blue stretched long and tight between her hands.

The blind discover that their other senses, particularly hearing, intensify to compensate for the lack. The deaf can be sharp-eyed but also extra sensitive to vibration, which is what sound is to the rest of us.

However, those who lose their sense of smell find they have lost their sense of taste as well because the two are so close. To lose feeling is usually a symptom of a greater problem. A small number of people feel no pain but this puts them at risk for serious injury and life-threatening illnesses.

That doctor had been such a patient woman. Better yet, she had had no deep well of stored-up suspicion like every other doctor Marcus had taken her to. Nell had been able to examine what the doctor was telling her, touching it all over, feeling the texture. Even with Marcus's impatience splashing her like an incoming tide, she had been able to ask a question.

A sixth sense? Like telepathy or clairvoyance?

The doctor's question had been as honest as her own and Nell did her best to make herself clear.

If there were some kind of extra sense, even a person who had it would have a hard time explaining it. Like you or me trying to explain sight to someone born blind.

Nell had agreed and asked the doctor to consider how the other five senses might try to compensate for the lack.

That was where the memory ended, leaving an aftertaste similar to night, only colder and with a bit of sour.

* * *

Nell sighed, feeling comfortable and irrationally safe. Feeling safe was irrational if you slept rough. Go around feeling safe and you wouldn't last too long. It was just that the indented area she had found at the back of this building -- cinema? auditorium? -- turned out to be as cozy as it had looked. It seemed to have no purpose except as a place where someone could sleep unnoticed for a night or two. More than two would have been pushing it, but that meant nothing to some rough sleepers. They'd camp in a place like this till they wore off all the hidden. Then they'd get seen and kicked out. Next thing you knew, the spot would be fenced off or filled in so no one could ever use it again. One less place to go when there was nowhere to stay.

Nell hated loss, hated the taste: dried-out bitter crossed with salty that could hang on for days, weeks, even longer. Worse, it could come back without warning and for no reason except that, perhaps like rough sleepers, it had nowhere else to go. There were other things that tasted just as bad to her but nothing worse, and nothing that lingered for anywhere nearly as long, not even the moldy-metal tang of disappointment.

* * *