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  PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF PAMELA SARGENT

  “Sargent is a sensitive writer of characterization rather than cosmic gimmickry.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “One of the genre’s greatest writers.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  “Pamela Sargent is an explorer, an innovator. She’s always a few years ahead of the pack.”

  —David Brin, award-winning author of the Uplift Saga

  “Over the years, I’ve come to expect a great deal from Pamela Sargent. Her worlds are deeply and thoroughly imagined.”

  —Orson Scott Card, author of Ender’s Game

  “Pamela Sargent’s cool, incisive eye is as sharp at long range, visionary tales as it is when inspecting our foreground future. She’s one of our best.”

  —Gregory Benford, astrophysicist and author of Foundation’s Fear

  “If you have not read Pamela Sargent, then you should make it your business to do so at once. She is in many ways a pioneer, both as a novelist and as a short story writer. … She is one of the best.”

  —Michael Moorcock, author of Elric of Melniboné

  “[Sargent is] a consummate professional [who] exhibits an unswerving consistency of craft.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  Alien Child

  “An excellent piece of work—the development of the mystery … is well done. Ms. Sargent’s work … is always of interest and this book adds to her stature as a writer.”

  —Andre Norton, author of the Solar Queen series

  “Count on Pamela Sargent to write a science fiction novel that is both entertaining and true to human emotion. I wish I had had this book when I was a teen because all the loneliness, all the alienation, all the apartness I felt from my family would have made more sense.”

  —Jane Yolen, author of The Devil’s Arithmetic and Cards of Grief

  “This story of Nita, a girl growing up in an insulated environment where she gradually comes to realize that she might be the last person left on Earth, has conflict and suspense from the beginning. … Vividly depicted.”

  —School Library Journal

  “This finely crafted work never falters with false resolution. … An honest and compelling examination of ‘What if …?’”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “An engaging narrative in Sargent’s capable hands. An essence of otherworldliness is present in the gentle guardians, and since Sven and Nita are raised solely by the two aliens, there is a freshness in their perceptions of their own species. … Clearly and simply presented—thoughtful—a worthy addition to any SF collection.”

  —Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA)

  “Sargent does not lower her standards when she writes young adult fiction. Like the best of young adult writers, her artistic standards remain as high as ever, while her standards of clarity and concision actually rise. … The intelligence and resourcefulness she showed in The Shore of Women are undiminished in Alien Child.”

  —Orson Scott Card, author of Ender’s Game

  “Thoughtful, serious, and written without condescension, the novel contains all of the qualities we have come to expect from this author.”

  —Science Fiction Chronicle

  The Golden Space

  “Pamela Sargent deals with big themes—genetic engineering, immortality, the ultimate fate of humanity—but she deals with them in the context of individual human lives. The Golden Space reminds me of Olaf Stapledon in the breadth of its vision, and of Kate Wilhelm in its ability to make characters, even humans in the strangest forms, seem like real people.”

  —James Gunn, writer and director of the film Guardians of the Galaxy

  “Clearly, The Golden Space is a major intellectual achievement of SF literature. It will not be possible for any honest story of immortality hereafter to ignore it; it is a landmark.”

  —The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

  “Brilliantly handled—all of us have got to hand an accolade to the author.”

  —A. E. van Vogt, author of The World of Null-A

  “Sargent writes well, the many ideas are fresh, and their handling is intelligent to the extreme.”

  —Asimov’s Science Fiction

  “What next, after universal immortality becomes a fact of life? Pamela Sargent’s brilliant book, The Golden Space, shatters the imaginative barrier that has held stories about immortality to a simplistic pasticcio of boredom, degeneration, and suicide.”

  —The Seattle Times

  The Mountain Cage

  “[Sargent] is one of our field’s true virtuosos, and in The Mountain Cage: and Other Stories she gives us thirteen stunning performances, a valuable addition to a repertoire that I hope will keep on growing.”

  —James Morrow, author of Only Begotten Daughter

  The Shore of Women

  “That rare creature, a perfect book.”

  —Orson Scott Card, author of Ender’s Game

  “A cautionary tale, well-written, with excellent characterization, a fine love story, as well as much food for thought … An elegant science fiction novel.”

  —Anne McCaffrey, author of the Pern series

  “Pamela Sargent gives meticulous attention to a believable scenario. … A captivating tale both from the aspect of the lessons that the author tries to impart and from the skills she has used to tell it.”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  “How many perfect science fiction novels have I read? Not many. There are at most three or four such works in a decade. Pamela Sargent’s The Shore of Women is one of the few perfect novels of the 1980s. … Her story of a woman exiled from a safe high-tech city of women, the man ordered by the gods to kill her, and their search for a place of safety, is powerful, beautiful, and true.”

  —The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

  “A compelling and emotionally involving novel.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “I applaud Ms. Sargent’s ambition and admire the way she has unflinchingly pursued the logic of her vision.”

  —The New York Times

  Ruler of the Sky

  “This formidably researched and exquisitely written novel is surely destined to be known hereafter as the definitive history of the life and times and conquests of Genghis, mightiest of Khans.”

  —Gary Jennings, bestselling author of Aztec

  “Scholarly without ever seeming pedantic, the book is fascinating from cover to cover and does admirable justice to a man who might very well be called history’s single most important character.”

  —Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, anthropologist and author of Reindeer Moon

  Child of Venus

  “Masterful … as in previous books, Sargent brings her world to life with sympathetic characters and crisp concise language.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  The Mountain Cage

  and Other Stories

  Pamela Sargent

  Introduction:

  THE OTHER PERCEIVER

  by

  Barry N. Malzberg

  “The Summer’s Dust” is a remarkable achievement, a novelette of stunning implication, probably the only turn on A.J. Budrys’s “The End of Summer” and the theme of medically induced immortality itself which significantly advances the theme. This is really something, I thought, reading it and when I was done turned to the copyright page: was this original to the volume? Published in the late 1990s? Surely a work this impressive could only be very recent. If it were not recent, it would have been
embedded in the canon of the genre and I, self-appointed expert and custodian would have known it well.

  But no, it’s neither that recent nor is it embedded in the canon. “The Summer’s Dust,” a story of tragic dimension whose tragedy could only have been realized in terms of science fiction (take out the science and it all topples) was published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in July, 1981. This story is over two decades old.

  Shocking. Truly troubling. Okay, we cannot read everything our friends publish (and Pamela Sargent, a great writer, is, more importantly to me, my friend) and it is increasingly difficult as we age, as time contracts and the undone expands to keep constant the way that was possible when all the world was fresh and alive and to be an aspirant writer was the very heaven. But a story this fine, this central to everything to which science fiction aspires? Why was this unknown to me? A mortification, to be sure, but this goes beyond mortification. For more than three decades, Pamela Sargent has been putting work like this into the public forum, and too little has been made of much. Yes, “Danny Goes to Mars” in this volume won a Nebula Award in 1993, no small accomplishment and no small recognition either. But there is something anomalous to the presence of that award on the vita sheet; Pamela Sargent’s record: one Nebula final ballot, one win. One Hugo final ballot (for the same story): second place. Notable: this is an efficient writer. But the paucity of awards nominations, the relative lack of critical recognition in her own country, this is unreasonable. Sargent’s is another of those careers whose relative visibility functions as reproof of modern publishing, readership, critical apparatus.

  Well, if we don’t like the public, then “We have to get a whole new electorate” as some politician is reputed to have said to H.L. Mencken. I say “in her own country” because Sargent was a celebrity in Spain when her Spanish publisher brought her to the country some years ago for a series of lectures and appearances. She was pursued on the streets for her autograph, lionized; she is regarded in Spain as one of the great American writers. Why she has not obtained that kind of honor in her own country is not clear. Remember that remark about “reproof.”

  “The Novella Race,” I am happy to say, I do know. It appeared in one of the latter Orbit volumes in the mid-1970s, a devastating, deadpan portrait of fiction writing as event and dead end. It sets up—and is nonetheless superior to—my own collaboration with Bill Pron2ini on the subject, “Prose Bowl.” A nifty, devastating story in which your faithful undersigned, imperfectly masked, can be sensed making dilatory progress through the competition, one of the more disaffected of the contestants.

  Through all of these thirty years, Pamela Sargent has kept working. This is a signal and remarkable achievement: it is better to be a good person than to be a good writer (one would like to be both, of course) and Pamela Sargent, that great writer, is a person of even greater quality. Through insults and publisher derangements, through malfeasance, pomp and the swagger of fools, she has stayed on, she has done her work, she has been more than dutiful. Indomitable! This, the third of her collections—and I do not minimize the others—is signatory, an accomplishment.

  I really should have read “The Summer’s Dust” twenty years ago. Rectify my stupidity or languor: read at once and prayerfully. Her work itself is intense, a rigorous, an embracing prayer.

  New Jersey:

  April 2001

  THE SLEEPING SERPENT

  1

  Yesuntai Noyan arrived in Yeke Geren in early winter, stumbling from his ship with the unsteady gait and the pallor of a man who had recently crossed the ocean. Because Yesuntai was a son of our Khan, our commander Michel Bahadur welcomed the young prince with speeches and feasts. Words of gratitude for our hospitality fell from Yesuntai’s lips during these ceremonies, but his restless gaze betrayed his impatience. Yesuntai’s mother, I had heard, was Frankish, and he had a Frank’s height, but his sharp-boned face, dark slits of eyes, and sturdy frame were a Mongol’s.

  At the last of the feasts, Michel Bahadur seated me next to the Khan’s son, an honor I had not expected. The commander, I supposed, had told Yesuntai a little about me, and would expect me to divert the young man with tales of my earlier life in the northern woods. As the men around us sang and shouted to servants for more wine, Yesuntai leaned toward me.

  “I hear,” he murmured, “that I can learn much from you, Jirandai Bahadur. Michel tells me that no man knows this land better than you.”

  “I am flattered by such praise.” I made the sign of the cross over my wine, as I had grown used to doing in Yeke Geren. Yesuntai dipped his fingers into his cup, then sprinkled a blessing to the spirits. Apparently he followed our old faith, and not the cross; I found myself thinking a little more highly of him.

  “I am also told,” Yesuntai went on, “that you can tell many tales of a northern people called the Hiroquois.”

  “That is only the name our Franks use for all the nations of the Long House.” I gulped down more wine. “Once, I saw my knowledge of that people as something that might guide us in our dealings with them. Now it is only fodder on which men seeking a night’s entertainment feed.”

  The Noyan lifted his brows. “I will not ask you to share your stories with me here.”

  I nodded, relieved. “Perhaps we might hunt together sometime, Noyan. Two peregrines I have trained need testing, and you might enjoy a day with them.”

  He smiled. “Tomorrow,” he said, “and preferably by ourselves, Bahadur. There is much I wish to ask you.”

  Yesuntai was soon speaking more freely with the other men, and even joined them in their songs. Michel would be pleased that I had lifted the Noyan’s spirits, but by then I cared little for what that Bahadur thought. I drank and thought of other feasts shared inside long houses with my brothers in the northern forests.

  Yesuntai came to my dwelling before dawn. I had expected an entourage, despite his words about hunting by ourselves, but the Khan’s son was alone. He gulped down the broth my wife Elgigetei offered, clearly impatient to ride out from the settlement.

  We saddled our horses quickly. The sky was almost as gray as the slate-colored wings of the falcons we carried on our wrists, but the clouds told me that snow would not fall before dusk. I could forget Yeke Geren and the life I had chosen for one day, until the shadows of evening fell.

  We rode east, skirting the horses grazing in the land our settlers had cleared, then moved north. A small bird was flying toward a grove of trees; Yesuntai loosed his falcon. The peregrine soared, a streak against the gray sky, her dark wings scimitars, then suddenly plummeted toward her prey. The Noyan laughed as her yellow talons caught the bird.

  Yesuntai galloped after the peregrine. I spied a rabbit darting across the frost-covered ground, and slipped the tether from my falcon; he streaked toward his game. I followed, pondering what I knew about Yesuntai. He had grown up in the ordus and great cities of our Prankish Khanate, been tutored by the learned men of Paris, and would have passed the rest of his time in drinking, dicing, card-playing, and claiming those women who struck his fancy. His father, Sukegei Khan, numbered two grandsons of Genghis Khan among his ancestors, but I did not expect Yesuntai to show the vigor of those great forefathers. He was the Khan’s son by one of his minor wives, and I had seen such men before in Yeke Geren, minor sons of Ejens or generals who came to this new land for loot and glory, but who settled for hunting along the great river to the north, trading with the nearer tribes, and occasionally raiding an Inglistani farm. Yesuntai would be no different; so I thought then.

  He was intent on his sport that day. By afternoon, the carcasses of several birds and rabbits hung from our saddles. He had said little to me, and was silent as we tethered our birds, but I had felt him watching me. Perhaps he would ask me to guide him and some of his men on a hunt beyond this small island, before the worst of the winter weather came. The people living in the regions nearby would not trouble hunters. Our treaty with the Ganeagaono, the Eastern Gatekeepers of the Long House, prot
ected us, and they had long since subdued the tribes to the south of their lands.

  We trotted south. Some of the men watching the horse herds were squatting around fires near their shelters of tree branches and hides. They greeted us as we passed, and congratulated us on our game. In the distance, the rounded bark houses of Yeke Geren were visible in the evening light, wooden bowls crowned by plumes of smoke rising from their roofs.

  The Great Camp—the first of our people who had come to this land had given Yeke Geren its name. “We will build a great camp,” Cheren Noyan had said when he stepped from his ship, and now circles of round wooden houses covered the southern part of the island the Long House people called Ganono, while our horses had pasturage in the north. Our dwellings were much like those of the Manhatan people who had lived here, who had greeted our ships, fed us, sheltered us, and then lost their island to us.

  Yesuntai reined in his horse as we neared Yeke Geren; he seemed reluctant to return to the Great Camp. “This has been the most pleasant day I have passed here,” he said.

  “I have also enjoyed myself, Noyan.” My horse halted at his side. “You would of course find better hunting away from this island. Perhaps—”

  “I did not come here only to hunt, Bahadur. I have another purpose in mind. When I told Michel Bahadur of what I wish to do, he said that you were the man to advise me.” He paused. “My father the Khan grows ever more displeased with his enemies the Inglistanis. He fears that, weak as they are, they may grow stronger here. His spies in Inglistan tell him that more of them intend to cross the water and settle here.”

  I glanced at him. All of the Inglistani settlements, except for the port they called Plymouth, sat along the coast north of the long island that lay to the east of Yeke Geren. A few small towns, and some outlying farms—I could not see why our Khan would be so concerned with them. It was unfortunate that they were there, but our raids on their westernmost farms had kept them from encroaching on our territory, and if they tried to settle farther north, they would have to contend with the native peoples there.