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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

  Eye of Flame

  Fantasies

  Pamela Sargent

  To Connie,

  who deserves a book of her own

  Pamela Sargent, Writer

  Writer: it can mean so many things—wordsmith, reporter, story-teller, illusionist, artist, visionary. Most professional writers are fortunate if they can combine two of those elements on a regular basis. Pamela Sargent is one of the rare ones who combines them all. She gives herself over to her story, and that enables the reader to succumb to it, too. In the best sense of the word, she seduces you into her conception and reveals it to you with concision.

  She has been doing this consistently for more than thirty years, and at a
level of quality that most writers are happy to achieve a quarter of the time. Her meticulous sense of place, her ability to create real, tangible, convincing environments for her stories shines out in “The Broken Hoop” and in “Outside the Windows,” both of which bring you into the story so effortlessly that the reader is immersed on the strength of the quality of the place of the story. This is very hard to do, even harder to do well. Pamela Sargent makes it look easy.

  Another example of her literary dressage is found in the way in which she focuses attention without obviously pointing a crucial story element out. She uses theme-and-variations on images to mark the events that shape her stories. Consider the recurring telephone images in “Ringer” and the way they culminate in the last four paragraphs of the story. Hers is a very deft touch, the sure sign of the mastery of the craft of story-telling. Do not think slightingly of craft: in writing, as in any art, the craft comes first, providing solid support for the art, so that it all hangs together and works with the unity of horse and rider in passage and piaffe.

  She handles first person narration very well—and that’s a lot trickier to do than it looks. “Big Roots” and “Bond and Free” show off her first-person characterizations in all their strength. She is able to see through the eyes and the lives of her characters in a way that dazzles. Plus she tells you bang-up stories in the process.

  Another of Pamela Sargent’s gifts is the wonderful ability to imply, to bring a sense of more beyond the story than is presently apparent on the page. This is most effectively displayed in the two shorter works in this collection, “The Shrine” and “The Leash.” In very different ways, each story contrasts the perception of the characters with the larger implications of what she is telling in the immediate instances. This is another form of the on-the-page seduction at which she excels, and it makes these two fairly short tales particularly affecting, so that the possibilities of the stories linger in the mind, evocative as perfume.

  “Eye of Flame,” taking place in the long-vanished Mongolian culture, manages to bridge that formidable gap in time and locale, making that society accessible and genuinely comprehensible to the reader, so that the behavior of the fascinating people in the story makes contextual sense. This, believe me, is very difficult to pull off—anachronisms and current social issues have an unnerving tendency to try to creep into the tale. Pamela Sargent is able to take the time on its own terms, and to accept the characters as part of their time and culture, without apology or softening the rough parts.

  To top it all off, she slings the language around acrobatically but not interferingly, letting her style serve the story instead of the other way around. She has a fine sense of internal rhythm, particularly in characterization. Her writing is vivid and generous but not intrusive—and although I don’t want to contribute to any confusion between writer and work, in this vivid, generous, non-intrusive way, her work is very much like Pam herself.

  Read and enjoy. But take a little advice from me: don’t wolf all of the stories down at once. Savor each one. You’re not likely to find better literary nourishment anywhere.

  Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  June, 2003

  The Broken Hoop

  There are other worlds. Perhaps there is one in which my people rule the forests of the northeast, and there may even be one in which white men and red men walk together as friends.

  I am too old now to make my way to the hill. When I was younger and stronger, I would walk there often and strain my ears trying to hear the sounds of warriors on the plains or the stomping of buffalo herds. But last night, as I slept, I saw Little Deer, a cloak of buffalo hide over his shoulders, his hair white; he did not speak. It was then that I knew his spirit had left his body.

  Once, I believed that it was God’s will that we remain in our own worlds in order to atone for the consequences of our actions. Now I know that He can show some of us His mercy.

  I am a Mohawk, but I never knew my parents. Perhaps I would have died if the Lemaîtres had not taken me into their home.

  I learned most of what I knew about my people from two women. One was Sister Jeanne at school, who taught me shame. From her I learned that my tribe had been murderers, pagans, eaters of human flesh. One of the tales she told was of Father Isaac Jogues, tortured to death by my people when he tried to tell them of Christ’s teachings. The other woman was an old servant in the Lemaîtres’ kitchen; Nawisga told me legends of a proud people who ruled the forests and called me little Manaho, after a princess who died for her lover. From her I learned something quite different.

  Even as a child, I had visions. As I gazed out my window, the houses of Montreal would vanish, melting into the trees; a glowing hoop would beckon. I might have stepped through it then, but already I had learned to doubt. Such visions were delusions; to accept them meant losing reality. Maman and Père Lemaître had shown me that. Soon, I no longer saw the woodlands, and felt no loss. I was content to become what the Lemaîtres wanted me to be.

  When I was eighteen, Père Lemaître died. Maman Lemaître had always been gentle; when her brother Henri arrived to manage her affairs, I saw that her gentleness was only passivity. There would no longer be a place for me; Henri had made that clear. She did not fight him.

  I could stay in that house no longer. Late one night, I left, taking a few coins and small pieces of jewelry Père Lemaître had given me, and shed my last tears for the Lemaîtres and the life I had known during that journey.

  I stayed in a small rooming house in Buffalo throughout the winter of 1889, trying to decide what to do. As the snow swirled outside, I heard voices in the wind, and imagined that they were calling to me. But I clung to my sanity; illusions could not help me.

  In the early spring, a man named Gus Yeager came to the boarding house and took a room down the hall. He was in his forties and had a thick, gray-streaked beard. I suspected that he had things to hide; he was a yarnspinner who could talk for hours and yet say little. He took a liking to me and finally confided that he was going west to sell patent medicines. He needed a partner. I was almost out of money by then and welcomed the chance he offered me.

  I became Manaho, the Indian princess, whose arcane arts had supposedly created the medicine, a harmless mixture of alcohol and herbs. I wore a costume Gus had purchased from an old Seneca, and stood on the back of our wagon while Gus sold his bottles: “Look at Princess Manaho here, and what this miracle medicine has done for her—almost forty, but she drinks a bottle every day and looks like a girl, never been sick a day in her life.” There were enough foolish people who believed him for us to make a little money.

  We stopped in small towns, dusty places that had narrow roads covered with horse manure and wooden buildings that creaked as the wind whistled by. I remember only browns and grays in those towns; we had left the green trees and red brick of Pennsylvania and northern Ohio behind us. Occasionally we stopped at a farm; I remember men with hatchet faces, women with stooped shoulders and hands as gnarled and twisted as the leafless limbs of trees, children with eyes as empty and gray as the sky.

  Sometimes, as we rode in our wagon, Gus would take out a bottle of Princess Manaho’s Miracle Medicine and begin to sing songs between swallows. He would get drunk quickly. He was happy only then; often, he was silent and morose. We slept in old rooming houses infested with insects, in barns, often under trees. Some towns would welcome us as a diversion; we would leave others hastily, knowing we were targets of suspicion.

  Occasionally, as we went farther west, I would see other Indians. I had little to do with them, but would watch them from a distance, noting their shabby clothes and weatherworn faces. I had little in common with such people; I could read and speak both French and English. I could have been a lady. At times, the townsfolk would look from one of them to me, as if making a comparison of some sort, and I would feel uncomfortable, almost affronted.

  We came to a town in Dakota. But instead of moving on, we stayed for several days. Gus began to change, and
spent more time in saloons.

  One night, he came to my room and pounded on the door. I let him in quickly, afraid he would wake everyone else in the boarding house. He closed the door, then threw himself at me, pushing me against the wall as he fumbled at my nightdress. I was repelled by the smell of sweat and whiskey, his harsh beard and warm breath. I struggled with him as quietly as I could, and at last pushed him away. Weakened by drink and the struggle, he collapsed across my bed; soon he was snoring. I sat with him all night, afraid to move.

  Gus said nothing next morning as we prepared to leave. We rode for most of the day while he drank; this time, he did not sing. That afternoon, he threw me off the wagon. By the time I was able to get to my feet, Gus was riding off; dust billowed from the wheels. I ran after him, screaming; he did not stop.

  I was alone on the plain. I had no money, no food and water. I could walk back to the town, but what would become of me there? My mind was slipping; as the sky darkened, I thought I saw a ring glow near me.

  The wind died; the world became silent. In the distance, someone was walking along the road toward me. As the figure drew nearer, I saw that it was a woman. Her face was coppery, and her hair black; she wore a long yellow robe and a necklace of small blue feathers.

  Approaching, she took my hand, but did not speak. Somehow I sensed that I was safe with her. We walked together for a while; the moon rose and lighted our way. “What shall I do?” I said at last. “Where is the nearest town? Can you help me?”

  She did not answer, but instead held my arm more tightly; her eyes pleaded with me. I said, “I have no money, no place to go.” She shook her head slowly, then released me and stepped back.