Space Inc (anthology)

Attached Please Find My Novel by Sean P. Fodera

There you have the letter that started it all. Simple. Formulaic, for the most part—”here’s my book; I like the books you publish; read mine and get back to me.” Even if it hadn’t made me curious, I would have read it anyway. That was my job.

I had to admit this was a new approach for a submission. From an academic, obviously. Probably one about to lose his job, or move to another collegium; hence his expiring EdNet address. But 270 refrains? And an audio file? Unless he was trying to recapture the days of the bards and minstrels with an epic sf poem, I didn’t know what to expect.

But this “Dr.” Aly’wanshus’ mysterious approach had doubly caught my attention, as science fiction was my pet project at K&T. Hardly anyone was writing science fiction at the time; an understandable turn of events on a colony world where nearly everyone’s parent or grandparent had been among the first humans to arrive. Even the people back on Earth (“Homers” in colony slang) now perceived folks from “outer space” as being no more distant than someone half a globe away, though those of us who had made the trip once or twice could tell them it was a bit farther. Still, there was enough life left in my favorite genre to warrant the rediscovery of works from the pre-colonial days, and the publication of novels by a handful of young colonial writers dreaming about faster-than-light fighters and space battles.

I’d read lots of junk during the year-and-change since I’d begun K&T Publishers’ open-door policy on submissions. It was a simple enough policy, if unique on Christea and the other colony worlds. We would review any booktext sent to us, from anyone.

Actually, every ’text that came in was personally read by yours truly, Del Bradden, searching for a winner. I was only an assistant editor, working for Mr. Cyril Burke, our executive editor, but I had found a terrific one just a year before “Dr.” Aly’wanshus sent me his message: Jeremy Raschon’s Starseeker. The fifth best-selling novel on ColNet that year, and the best-selling novel in K&T’s seventy-two-year history. If I hadn’t found Starseeker, I doubt we would have retained the policy so long.

There were, at the time, only the original eight colony worlds: Christea (though we weren’t the first), Almedia, Kuron, Wales, Jerral, New Rome, Beacon, and Hurst. Broadbent and Leeside had only just been discovered, and were not yet settled.

And among these worlds, there were seven colonial publishers: two on Christea; none on Wales or Beacon. Competition was fierce. A small number of Earth academics took notice of our literary output, but not in significant numbers. Colonial publications just didn’t show good sales on SolNet. We were basically limited to ColNet.

We had a total potential audience of approximately seventeen million. Most of those were on the heavily populated worlds of Kuron, Christea, and Almedia (“heavily” is a relative term, as Kuron, the most crowded, had just under five million people). The rest were on the more recently settled worlds—”provincials” with little interest in general fiction (erotica and tech manuals were the top sellers on Beacon, Wales, and Jerral).

The other publishers required writers to send their ’texts through a licensed Mediator. Earth’s government was smart when it started licensing mediators… “agents” as they used to be known. Since almost every human ever born probably fancies himself a writer at some time in his life, the population explosion on Earth in the late 2000s also caused an explosion in would-be authors. Agents already had a lock on the market, as any file submitted to a publisher that didn’t come from a recognized agent would be automatically rejected by the comp system.

So agents started proliferating. And the government noticed. “Hey,” someone in the Hague said, “these literary agents are becoming as powerful as the lawyers used to be. Time for them to be licensed.” Vote-stamp-sign: Agents with licenses become government-sanctioned mediators. Unlicensed agents find other jobs. And the government starts getting a cut of the mediator’s third of the author’s earnings.

“A third?” you ask. Of course they’re entitled to a third. They’re licensed mediators, so they must be worth it. After all, they perform the mysterious task of popping the book-text into NetMail. It wasn’t as if just anyone could do it for themselves—remember, only a recognized mediator could get a ’text through the system. Personally, I think if Shakespeare had an agent/mediator, that line about the lawyers would have read differently.

Despite the absurdity of such procedures, I am still glad to have discovered this profession, of which few colonists are even aware. I owe it all to my unique family and education. The colonies only have a handful of small collegia, which just don’t rate with the big Earth universities. However, everyone in the colonies has a degree or two, since it’s easy to advance one’s education by completing coursework on EdNet. No need to even physically attend a collegium, though that gives a deeper experience to the education.

My father always hated that the colonies are so far from Earth, making true interactive Net services almost impossible— time lag, you know. Despite the fact that we could get large transport ships jumped up faster-than-light, no one had managed to get the nets to clear that hurdle. Homers had the option of using EdNet in realtime, or actually attending one of their prestigious universities.

Thankfully, Dad is a brilliant man. One day, while teaching his physics class at the collegium, and using a NetPedia reference on screen, he had a Eureka! moment. Well… it actually took him a few more years to make Packet-Comm a reality. But, when he’d finished, it was possible to communicate with Earth, or other far-flung locations, instantly. Okay, so there’s a three-second lag to Earth.

Suddenly EdNet, BuyNet, and the other NetServs were practical for the colonists. And Dad was (and still is) collecting licensing and royalty chits nonstop; a good portion of which go back into public works, On the colonies, the name Randall Bradden is always spoken in admiring tones.

When I came of age, he told me: “Del, you’re going to Earth to attend university in person. Let all those EdNet grads pay for a real education for you.”

So off I went. I studied Literature as my Primary, with a Secondary in Business and Finance, and a Tertiary in the Sciences (Dad needed to get his chits’ worth.) But I have the best implants money can buy, so it wasn’t too difficult.

While there, I took an internship at a venerable old publishing house. They actually maintained offices with staff. No telecommutes for them, except one executive editor.

During my time at Holburn House, I learned a lot. And really fell in love with the business. I knew I’d be applying to one of the colonial publishers when I went home. There was no question of my staying on Earth—my student permit would expire, and they’d be sending me back to the colonies. Besides, Christea was home.

So… how did that internship lead to K&T deciding to shrug at the system and become so writer-friendly?

Well, I take full credit for it. There is even an archive recording of the moment I got the idea, though I wasn’t the center of the cams’ attention that day.

During my internship, there was a retirement party for Mr. Malcolm Ramos. All 234 years’ worth of him. One of the most distinguished editors in the business. He could easily have become a mediator at any time in his career, but he just loved editing.

At the party, he gave a talk about how the industry had changed during his career.

“When I came to this house in 2047,” Mr. Ramos recounted, “we had an open-door policy on booktexts. The last year of it, mind you, but anyone could submit to us.

“The Web, as SolNet was called then, led to so many would-be authors finding us and submitting, we just couldn’t keep on top of it.” He chuckled. “Eight billion people on Earth in those days, and most of them submitted to us that year.”

My instincts told me he was exaggerating, but I had little personal experience with bicentenarians. We colonials shy away from age-defying treatments—a normal 125 always seemed a sufficiently lengthy life to most of us. But I was intrigued.

As he sipped from his water glass, I called up to the dais, “Did you find anything worthwhile?”

“Oh, yes. We developed two eTimes Bestsellers out of that batch. One of them only made it to number fifty on the list, but that was high enough for bragging rights.” Mr. Ramos raised his forefinger with a smile. “And we found a handful of midlist titles—the stuff you call ‘fill’ these days.

“You know,” he continued, “there could have been more good stuff in there, but there were just too many submissions coming in. If only there had been fewer people in the pool, we could have read a lot more before we gave up.”

He spoke quite a bit more—some interesting, some rambling, some downright incomprehensible—and you can view the archive recording for the rest, if you want. But that little bit had already hatched the idea in my head.

I returned to Christea with my degrees, and sent employment queries to several publishers. Only K&T was hiring for an actual in-office job, as I’d had at Holburn, and was satisfyingly Christean, so I took the position. Del Bradden became the newest assistant editor (in-person degrees and internships actually do mean something on a resumé—no starting as an editorial assistant for me).

I established myself and learned more about the company. Not wanting to seem too eager or eccentric, I waited through three personnel reviews (all stellar, I might add) before presenting my idea to Mr. Burke.

“An odd request, Del,” Mr. Burke commented when I asked to be allowed to open things up to un-mediated ’texts. Thankfully, he was first-generation Christean, like my father, and still thought like a pioneer. To make the idea more appealing, I offered to do the reading on my own time (though I’d be compensated if I actually found anything publishable). It was agreed.

A subroutine was written into our sorting algorithm. Un-mediated ’texts would be sent to my comp for review, rather than rejected outright. And we quietly started letting people know they could submit to us this way, though I still received my usual share of mediated works for reading at the office.

The mediators weren’t thrilled by our new policy, and threatened to stop submitting, but as we were a small Christean house, it was a useless threat. A few mediators made a point of telling us that certain top titles would have come to K&T if not for our policy, but Mr. Burke knew better. He made a point of reading each one of those, and was convinced he wouldn’t have published them anyway.

Luckily for me, Mr. Ramos had been correct about the pool size. Most Christeans are still pretty much your rugged pioneer types rather than would-be authors. So we weren’t inundated with Christean ’texts.

Once we published Raschon’s Starseeker and my project was better publicized, submissions from the other colonies increased. Nothing from Earth, but what Homer would want to be published by a colonial?

I opened the file attached to “Dr.” Aly’wanshus’ message, and settled back to listen to the good doc’s novel.

The most amazing sound issued from my speakers. It wasn’t amazing in that it was sweet and melodic like no music could ever be. Nor could I say I’d never heard its like before, because I certainly had. I’d heard it while taking a history course at university; a course that covered the discovery of each of the colony worlds and included audio/ visual details of the few alien races we had encountered.

This was the sound of the speaking voice of an Aaul’inah.

The Aaul’inah are a secretive race. The exploration ship Chicago had discovered the planet Aaul’in, which lies not far from the mid-colonies. But they were turned away by the Aaul’inah when they tried to enter the atmosphere. No human has landed there since.

We did manage to finally communicate with them, after a small Aaul’inah ship crashed on Hurst while scouting the colony. The one survivor had a translation device with which they were monitoring our communications. We managed to reverse-engineer it, and could finally speak with them—not perfectly, but sufficiently.

Theirs is a flowing, tonal language, that sounds much like musical instruments. And it has a musical structure to it that goes beyond anything humans can produce. I’m told linguists believe that the language hides many layers of meaning in the subaudible bands that we cannot comprehend.

Whatever else, it is exceedingly beautiful to the human ear.

I stopped the playback, and looked back at the query. “Office of Alien Studies.” I recalled my father telling me a few years before that the collegium had been thinking about offering a position to an Aaul’inah, but didn’t recall him saying that it had happened.

I clicked over to the collegium’s linguistics bank, and linked myself into the Aaul’inah translation matrix. Then, I opened the file again, experiencing a brief pause while the files connected.

When the story began, I was initially distracted by how the translation matrix took what was essentially a grand operatic performance and turned it into a piece of prose. Wonderful prose that would still need some small editing to be publishable in English.

That quickly became a secondary thought, because what I was hearing was the most fantastic story of interdimensional adventure I had ever come across in my short lifetime of reading and publishing science fiction.

The next nine days were agony.

I’d asked my father to check on “Dr.” Aly’wanshus for me. All he reported was that Alien Studies had offered to sponsor an exchange program with Aaul’in. When the reply came, this “Doctor” said that his people would never agree to permit a human on their world. However, he would come to Christea in a personal research effort to see if his people could coexist and intermingle with humans. He had apparently arrived two years ago.

Finally, the second message arrived.

I was hitting the reply key before I’d even finished reading the first sentence.

The reply came back just as swiftly.

Ever mysterious. But not a meeting I wanted to decline.

I arrived at the boarding house near the Landing Ground a few minutes early. It was the usual sort of place where travelers could settle in for a day or two before catching their ship. Quaint yet pleasant.

The door was open, but I knocked and entered when a voice told me to do so.

There was a small desk in the corner of the parlor just off the entry hall, and the woman there appeared to be shopping BuyNet for towels. She looked up at me.

“You must be here to meet the Doctor,” she stated.

“How’d you know?” I asked with a smile.

“No bags. Not dressed for travel.” She smiled, “And he left me a note that he was expecting a visitor about now. His room is the third on the left, top of the stairs.” She turned back to her comp.

I started toward the stairs.

“May I ask you something?”

I stopped and turned. “Sure.”

She looked uncertain. “Normally, I don’t concern myself with the affairs of my guests—they don’t stay long enough. I get all types, including some nonhumans. But… the Doctor’s a singer. I’d always thought they don’t like us much. But he’s been perfectly pleasant, polite, and quiet. He seems different than I’ve been led to believe. Do you know why?”

She wouldn’t have been satisfied with the simple “No” that almost came from my lips. And being rather ignorant on the matter myself, all I could do was reassure her and hope I wasn’t wrong. “I can’t really say. This is our first meeting. I know he’s an academic, and I don’t think he’s up to anything nefarious.”

She smiled again. “Thank you. I’ve always gone by my own experience—not judging things based on other folks’ say-so. If the other singers are like him, they’ll be welcome in my house.” And she turned back to the comp.

I went up the stairs, found the door, and knocked.

A voice called out, “Come in, please, Mr. Bradden.”

I opened the door, and met my first Aaul’inah. I had learned somewhat about them at university and also done some refresher reading in the last week. So I wasn’t too surprised to find that “Dr.” Aly’wanshus was pretty much a textbook example of the Aaul’inah.

He stood about five and a half feet tall and was covered from top to bottom by a tan-colored pelt that wasn’t quite fur or quite feathers. His eyes were set to the sides of a wide nasal passage, and appeared to operate independently of one another, much like Earth chameleons. His lips were fleshy, and the upper hung down over his mouth when he wasn’t speaking. His arms and legs appeared to be slightly shorter than ours, but I knew the joints were far more supple than my own.

The Doctor held out a six-fingered hand and grasped my own in a hearty handshake. “Welcome to my rooms. I am so thrilled to have you here.” His voice was fluid and clear, and seemed to have little trouble with the English words. There remained an undertone of music, even when not speaking his own language.

The handshake ended, long enough to express eagerness, short enough to prove he understood when to stop.

“A pleasure to finally meet you, ‘Doctor’ Aly’wanshus.” I stated honestly.

He, for lack of a better word, smiled. “I’ll not trouble you with the proper pronunciation, Mr. Bradden. Please have a seat.”

Thanking him, I took the offered seat. I noticed as he took the one opposite that the motion seemed at once both graceful and awkward for him. No doubt the result of some time accustoming himself to human furniture.

“I notice you hesitate when you say my title. One can almost hear the quotation marks from my message around it. You wonder, perhaps, why they appear there?” He appeared quite relaxed and comfortable with me.

While I was nervous at meeting my first Aaul’inah, professional and personal curiosity overwhelmed that. I nodded. “I did wonder.”

Again, that smile. “Quite understandable. Although I am not a medical doctor, nor do I have any advanced degrees from a human collegium, that is the nearest title your language has to express my position in my culture.” The smile seemed to dim.

“The nearest, but not exact, yes?” I asked. “Should we be using some more prestigious title for you?”

The smile faded. “No, ‘Doctor’ is fine. As you will learn, I hold two positions in my society. Being an educator is my chosen life’s work. But there is another more difficult task that I must undertake.”

His voice and manner changed, becoming more forceful. “Mr. Bradden, I have read or listened to a great deal of human literature. Of all I have read, the science fiction stories you published attracted me the most. Explorers going out beyond their own known universe, seeking whatever is out there for good or ill. Those stories spoke to me—made me realize that I was doing something similar. I felt this story, Beyond Here, waiting to come out. As one of my kind who desires contact with humans, the title is somewhat meaningful to me. And so I dictated it. As my time at the collegium drew to a close, I decided to submit my work to you.”

I was puzzled. “I’m not so familiar with your people. Is your book somehow related to this ‘task’ you mentioned?”

“No. And yes, I suppose,” he responded, suddenly revealing four small budlike ears that erupted from the pelt at the sides of his head. “But I will get to that. Your language is quite simple, compared to our own, and I learned the spoken and written forms quickly. But, for me, it was only natural to dictate my book in my own language. And I am quite happy to have your attention. It is my situation that constantly reasserts itself in my mind, distracting me from our literary discussion.”

“Your situation?”

He gave a quick birdlike nod. “I should like to explain. I assume you have the usual human familiarity with my people? Basic external physiology? General language sonotype?”

“Yes.”

His ears settled back a bit as he began to tap his cheek with one finger. In a human, I could have taken it for thoughtfulness or nervousness; in him, I had no idea.

“Before we discuss my novel—and I am very interested to hear from you on that—I am going to tell you something about my people. I will hope that you are as trustworthy and discreet as Randall.”

I couldn’t help myself. I blurted out, “My father! You know my father?”

His smile returned. “Yes. And from your reaction, I know now that he has been trustworthy and discreet. We met at the collegium, but I will tell you more of that shortly. I only ask that you permit me to finish what I have to say before asking any questions.”

If his novel wasn’t enough to make me adhere to his request—and I assure you it was—Dr. Aly’wanshus of Aaul’in had a willingly captive audience now.

He began:

“My people have believed for many millennia that we were alone in the universe. In truth, we have never even contemplated the existence of other beings or systems beyond our own. Unlike humans, who have long had a tradition of literature that speculates about other life and worlds, we have no literature of the fantastic—no true literature at all. Writing is limited strictly to religious purposes for recording certain important events.

“Believing ourselves the only intelligent life in the universe, we have developed a philosophy of life, a religion, if you will. We have always believed that the universe is a deity—the Unali’wahnah. Everything in the universe, which we believed consisted of only the few planets of our solar system, our two moons and sun, make up the physical being of Unali’wahnah.

“We believe that we, the Aaul’inah, are the very mind of Unali’wahnah. As though each of us is one ‘brain cell’ of It. Thus, every action we take, every statement we make, every interaction we conduct, is a function of the thoughts of Unali’wahnah. This is why, were you to visit our world, you would see that most things are quite peaceful, orderly, and deliberate. After all, who would wish to disrupt the thoughts of a god?

“And so it was for countless millennia… until your ship came.

“We had developed technology, as innovation is seen as the maturing of Unali’wahnah. One of our advances was space travel. Some two hundred or so of your years ago, it was decided by our leadership council that we would reach out to the moons, for as part of Unali’wahnah’s mind, the Aaul’inah should have a presence there. And so it was that we had ships to turn the Chicago away.

“It was fear that made us do so. Genuine, all-encompassing fear. Suddenly, after so long alone, another part of Unali’wahnah—a part that should not exist—had come to us. And when we sent it away, it left and didn’t come back. As the action of the mind of Unali’wahnah, our people should have automatically perceived this as a correct action. But, there was concern that we might have mistakenly denied Unali’wahnah another part of Its maturation.

“We had the capability of tracking this mysterious visitor, for we had long ago developed the technology to look out across Unali’wahnah, though we had apparently never looked in the proper direction to discover your kind. By tracking the Chicago, we discovered that there were other worlds, with living beings on them.

“Our leaders debated among themselves in closed council sessions for many years, and finally determined to officially ignore your existence. But, secretly, scouts were sent out, and we monitored your transmissions and nets. You may have discovered the scout on Hurst, but many others have monitored your colonies for a long time.

“Then, not only were our leaders and space teams aware of you, but our population became aware as well. For your people began to transmit messages to our planet, in a crude version of our language. Our leaders tried to deny your existence, saying that the transmissions were a garbled test of a new communications system for the moon bases. But it was too late.

“My colleagues and I are determined to discover the truth about your people. We knew the truth of your existence because we are the hereditary heirs to seats on the council. Our parents were Obligated to keep us informed, should any of us need to succeed them on short notice. Obviously, we were forbidden from telling others about you.

“I am the senior member of the group. I will be the first of the ‘new thinkers’ to join the council, but we will not have a significant number of like-minded councillors for many years yet. In any event, it will be a difficult and lengthy process to get our people to recognize you in any substantial way. That is the daunting task that looms before me.

“Although we are expected to replace our parents at the appropriate time, we must also have an occupation until that time. I wished to be an educator, and was assigned to educate young adult Aaul’inah in space sciences. Such is my claim to the human title ‘Doctor’ or ‘Professor.’

“When the transmission came from the collegium inviting us to exchange personnel, it was summarily dismissed by the council. But I knew of it and had the means to reply. So I secretly managed to leave our world and came to your collegium.

“Your father was among those with whom I worked. He is a brilliant physicist and he taught me much about the unseen universe, as well as how to improve communications between our planets.

“I sent you my novel both because your father spoke so highly of you, and because of my admiration for the books you have edited. I suppose I wanted to see if my effort was worthy of your attention. At the very least, it pleases me to have met both of the Bradden men—the man of science and the man of letters.

“My ship leaves in two days, and I will be essentially stranded on Aaul’in for many years. The time draws near for me to succeed my mother on the council. I must return home and discover whether my original excuse for this absence is still acceptable to my parents. If I am successful, I will take my seat on the council and begin to strive for open relations between our peoples.

“If I am unsuccessful, I will face the penalty for disobeying the orders of the council. I will spend the rest of my life in solitude; cut off from my people; unable to take my part in the mind of Unali’wahnah”

He didn’t settle back into his chair, as a human who’d finished telling a story would, but the finger tapping stopped. It suddenly occurred to me that he’d been tapping to keep musical time while making such a lengthy speech in a foreign language—like a metronome with an odd timing I couldn’t quite follow.

“This is certainly different from how I’d thought this meeting might go,” I said.

He laughed a strong, hearty, musical laugh. “I don’t suppose it is like anything I anticipated two years ago either. When I came here, I had no idea what to expect. And I have tried to repay the things I have learned with the many things I have taught my colleagues at the collegium, and the little I’ve shared with you today.”

Now he sat forward, and it was obvious our species shared at least that outward expression of eagerness. “Please. I am so happy to have you here, but I’ve taken up more than enough of your valuable time. I must ask you about my novel.”

I sat forward as well. “I’m in no hurry, Doctor. If what you say is true, I won’t likely get the opportunity to share a conversation with an Aaul’inah for some time, if ever again. However, you’ve done me a great honor today. And I’m going to repay it now.

“In simple terms, Beyond Here is fabulous. Doctor, you have created the most riveting, original science fiction story I have ever come across. We humans are inured to space travel and alien races these days—the Aaul’inah excepted, I suppose. I can get decent re-creations of the classic sf story types from Terence Jool and Skye Perrin…”

“I did like Perrin’s Starship Waterloo” Aly’wanshus commented, “Though it wasn’t as good as that Heinlein in your Twentieth-Century Classics collection last year.”

I nodded. “That is my point. We’re stuck on trite ideas of interstellar adventure and bipedal aliens—despite having relationships with four species that don’t fit that bill. We just don’t seem able to produce truly new ideas any more.

“You, however, have. I mean, we’ve done tales of interdimensional travel, alternate universes, and the like. But the one you’ve created is totally unique. And you’ve actually managed to capture the human element of your explorers, without our stereotypes.

“I want to publish Beyond Here. I have to publish Beyond Here.”

His earbuds appeared again. “I am honored, Mr. Bradden.”

“It’s Del.”

“Del.” His earbuds slowed, settling back into place. “Del, I am not certain that would be possible. Publication would reveal my presence here. And everything my friends and I are working for would be compromised.”

“Not necessarily.” I quickly continued. “The work has to be translated into English, and slightly edited. It can be published under a human pseudonym. As much as I would love to broadcast all over NewsNet that K&T and Del Bradden are publishing the very first English-language novel by a nonhuman, I’m willing to forgo the recognition just so I can publish this book.”

“You barely know me, Del. Why would you do that for me?”

I sighed, “I wish this could be the great uniting moment for our peoples, Doctor. But, at the very least, let me make you a published author. I’d hate to send you home with this novel still in your trunk.”

He laughed again, “Two years ago, I wouldn’t have understood what you meant by that. I wouldn’t have known what an author or a trunk was, or why it might be important. Today… I want to give you your wish.”

My jaw dropped. I’d thought the politics of his situation would outweigh all the rest.

He reached out to shake my hand. “Your father tells me it is customary to seal a business transaction like so.”

I reached out as well. “In my business, we usually finalize it with a contract and payment.”

“We will need to keep the contract itself secret, Del. Your father did arrange to use his corporation to quietly handle my affairs on Christea. I suppose the ‘royalties’—is that the term?—can go into the spending account he set up for me when I arrived. Perhaps someday I will return to spend it. Or others of my kind will make use of it.” Our hands met.

So… why am I sitting here telling you all this? Is Del Bradden a man of his word or not? Is he so eager to publicize his grand publishing achievement that he’d betray an alien being too far away to do anything about it?

No. It’s because circumstances change. Sometimes in ways we can’t conceive.

Ordinarily, the acquisition stage of book publication is boring to the general public. And it may be so in this case. I’ll give you the short version.

I returned to the office late in the afternoon and made a quick comm call to my father. He was smiling the instant he saw me on his screen. Apparently, Aly’wanshus had informed him of our meeting. Dad said he was thrilled that the cat was out of the bag with me. We agreed on how to set up the contract, and to have a long talk over (and after) dinner that night.

I printed out the basic translation for Mr. Burke’s review. The author, I said, was an eccentric crewman from one of the original colony ships, who lived in Star Falls (the conveniently distant town where my father had set up the Doctor’s account). I told Mr. Burke we could have the book for a song, and the author wanted any money from it to accrue to his account for any family members who might come to Christea at some later date.

Mr. Burke read it that night, and loved it. “Could use a bit of editorial polish, Del. But, I think you’ve got something special here. Give the old fellow ten percent above our usual first-timer advance. We all owe quite a bit to the ones who weren’t born here.”

About twenty minutes after the contract was signed, and the advance transferred, Dr. Aly’wanshus’ ship lifted off. And he left Christea for good.

Even in this age of the electronic distribution of books over ColNet and SolNet, book production is not instantaneous. Well… quality book production, anyway. And I’m a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to my work. It took me a few months to properly edit Beyond Here. Not because it needed a lot of work, but simply because any revisions I made had to be absolutely perfect. At the very least, I owed it to Aly’wanshus to be sure I delivered the closest thing to his original vision for the story. When I keyed it in as approved for distribution, I was sure I had delivered.

Mr. Burke agreed to do some publicity for the novel. We made no false claims about the author; just called him “a brilliant new talent in a classic mold.”

Beyond Here was released to the general public under the pseudonym Steven Forrester. And sold like no novel had since the colonies were founded.

The reviews glowed like… well… like Aly’wanshus’ fictitious transition coil drive. “Rich in detail and language.” “A literary masterwork from a lost genre.” “Should be required reading at all secondary school levels.” And my favorite: “Here’s hoping Forrester’s follow-up is already on his editor’s comp.”

Ten months at #1 on every bestseller list, out here and on Earth.

In truth, the book lasted at #1 longer than that. But when it had been out for six months, things started to change.

I was promoted to full editor, with my science fiction releases coming out under our (my) new StarSong line.

Four months later, I arrived at the office one morning. My new assistant, Helene, also came in every day, and she greeted me cheerily. I was lucky to find someone who loved her job as much as I loved mine. I even made a promise to myself that if she stayed a year I’d let her choose a work-from-home day, if she wanted one.

I dropped into my chair, and read my internal messages. Meeting at midmorning. Lunch with Mr. Burke. Drinks with influential mediator in the evening.

Then, I opened my external messages.

And there it was.

It was the first of three such submissions that arrived on my comp that week. One more arrived the next week—two more the following. And it continues to this day. So far, I’ve published every one of them.

I often wonder if the Aaul’inah authors will ever reveal their very successful contact with humans to the rest of their kind. Dr. Aly’wanshus had hoped to change the ideas of his people. All I can do to assist him is to keep their secret as long as they wish.

Sean P. Fodera spent his high school and college years attending SF cons and dreaming of working (and writing) in the science fiction and fantasy field. An unrevealed number of years later, he became the Director of Contracts, Subsidiary Rights and Electronic Publishing at a major New York science fiction/fantasy publishing house. “Attached Please Find My Novel” is Sean’s first professionally published short story, and marks the fulfillment of the second of his genre dreams. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his lovely wife Amy and their two adorable children Christina and Austin.