Part 1 (1/2)
A Place so Foreign.
by Cory Doctorow.
A note about this story
This story is from my collection, ”A Place So Foreign and Eight More,” published by Four Walls Eight Windows Press in September, 2003, ISBN 1568582862. I've released this story, along with five others, under the terms of a Creative Commons license that gives you, the reader, a bunch of rights that copyright normally reserves for me, the creator.
I recently did the same thing with the entire text of my novel, ”Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” (c.r.a.phound.com/down), and it was an unmitigated success. Hundreds of thousands of people downloaded the book -- good news -- and thousands of people bought the book -- also good news. It turns out that, as near as anyone can tell, distributing free electronic versions of books is a great way to sell more of the paper editions, while simultaneously getting the book into the hands of readers who would otherwise not be exposed to my work.
I still don't know how it is artists will earn a living in the age of the Internet, but I remain convinced that the way to find out is to do basic science: that is, to do stuff and observe the outcome. That's what I'm doing here. The thing to remember is that the very *worst* thing you can do to me as an artist is to not read my work -- to let it languish in obscurity and disappear from posterity. Most of the fiction I grew up on is out-of-print, and this is doubly true for the short stories. Losing a couple bucks to people who would have bought the book save for the availability of the free electronic text is no big deal, at least when compared to the horror that is being irrelevant and unread. And luckily for me, it appears that giving away the text for free gets me more paying customers than it loses me.
A Place So Foreign
My Pa disappeared somewhere in the wilds of 1975, when I was just fourteen years old. He was the Amba.s.sador to 1975, but back home in 1898, in New Jerusalem, Utah, they all thought he was Amba.s.sador to France. When he disappeared, Mama and I came back through the triple-bolted door that led from our apt in 1975 to our horsebarn in 1898. We returned to the dusty streets of New Jerusalem, and I had to keep on reminding myself that I was supposed to have been in France, and ”polly-voo” for my chums, and tell whoppers about the Eiffel Tower and the fancy bread and the snails and frogs we'd eaten.
I was born in New Jerusalem, and raised there till I was ten. Then, one summer's day, my Pa sat me on his knee and told me we'd be going away for a while, that he had a new job.
”But what about the store?” I said, scandalised. My Pa's wonderful store, the only General Store in town not run by the Saints, was my second home. I'd spent my whole life crawling and then walking on the dusty wooden floors, checking stock and unpacking crates with waybills from exotic places like Salt Lake City and even San Francisco.
Pa looked uncomfortable. ”Mr Johnstone is buying it.”
My mouth dropped. James H Johnstone was as dandified a city-slicker as you'd ever hope to meet. He'd blown into town on the weekly Zephyr Speedball, and skinny Tommy Benson had hauled his three huge steamer trunks to the cowboy hotel. He'd tipped Tommy two dollars, in Wells-Fargo notes, and later, in the empty lot behind the smithy, all the kids in New Jerusalem had gathered 'round Tommy to goggle at the small fortune in queer, never-seen bills.
”Pa, no!” I said, without thinking. I knew that if my chums ordered their fathers around like that, they'd get a whipping, but my Pa almost never whipped me.
He smiled, and stretched his thick moustache across his face. ”James, I know you love the store, but it's already been decided. Once you've been to France, you'll see that it has wonders that beat anything that store can deliver.”
”Nothing's better than the store,” I said.
He laughed and rumpled my hair. ”Don't be so sure, son. There are more things in heaven and earth then are dreamed of in your philosophy.” It was one of his sayings, from Shakespeare, who he'd studied back east, before I was born. It meant that the discussion was closed.
I decided to withhold judgement until I saw France, but still couldn't shake the feeling that my Pa was going soft in the head. Mr Johnstone wasn't fit to run an apple-cart. He was short and skinny and soft, not like my Pa, who, as far as I was concerned, was the biggest, strongest man in the whole world. I loved my Pa.
Well, when we packed our bags and Pa went into the horsebarn to hitch up our team, I figured we'd be taking a short trip out to the train station. All my chums were waiting there to see us off, and I'd promised my best pal Oly Sweynsdatter that I'd give him my c.o.o.nskin cap to wear until we came back. But instead, Pa rode us to the edge of town, where the road went to rutted trail and salt flats, and there was Mr James H Johnstone, in his own fancy-pants trap. Pa and me moved our luggage into Johnstone's trap and got inside with Mama and hunkered down so, you couldn't see us from outside. Mama said, ”You just hush up now, James. There's parts of this trip that we couldn't tell you about before we left, but you're going to have to stay quiet and hold onto your questions until we get to where we're going.”
I nearly said, ”To where we're going?” but I didn't, because Mama had never looked so serious in all my born days. So I spent an hour hunkered down in there, listening to the clatter of the wheels and trying to guess where we were going. When I heard the trap stop and a set of wooden doors close, all my guesses dried up and blew away, because I couldn't think of anywhere we would've heard those sounds out in the desert.
So imagine my surprise when I stood up and found us right in our very own horsebarn, having made a circle around town and back to where we'd started from!
Mama held a finger up to her lips and then took Mr Johnstone's soft, girlish hand as he helped her down from the trap.
My Pa and Mr Johnstone started s.h.i.+fting one of the piles of hay-bales that stacked to the rafters, until they had revealed a triple-bolted door that looked new and st.u.r.dy, fresh-sawn edges still bright and yellow, and not the weathered brown of the rest of the barn.
Pa took a key ring out of his vest pocket and unlocked the door, then swung it open. Each of us shouldered our bags and walked through, in eerie silence, into a pitch black room.