Jay Lake - Last Plane to Heaven

Though I could be completely wrong in your case, I have a deep and troubling feeling that you almost never read short stories. As I say, I could be wrongbut the odds are in my favor. There was a time, now long past, when everyone who read, read short stories. What happened? I think I know and I am about to tell you.

Two things. The first is simply that more and more people read reviews. (To explain why that happened would take us too far afield.) Reviews of fiction are almost entirely of novels. Reviews of novels are much easier to write. There is the jacket copy, smiling its idiot smile and offering a helping hand to the reviewer. One may generally write the whole thing after reading the first chapter, one or two chapters from the middle, and the last chapter. This though the novel has twenty or thirty chapters. Furthermore (I bet you didnt know this), publishers often send along a sample review with the review copy of the book. Should you see exactly the same review in two publications, you will know what happened. To feign originality, change a word here and there. Exciting becomes thrilling, very becomes exceedingly, and so forth (or on). This at least looks (appears) more honest. The people who read reviews nearly always buy novels as a result, so the thing feeds upon itself.

That first reason is easy enough to explain and to understand. The second is much more difficult. Reading short stories takes a certain tough-mindedness. A novel is a kiss in the moonlightsoft, romantic, gentle, and perfumed. A short story is you and another naked in a dark and sweltering room without a bed. No breeze enters the open windows; beyond the screens, mosquitoes buzz in the dark. You come together and the others body is slick with sweat, like your own. Someones heart is pounding; perhaps they both are, but its hard to tell. If you dont understand what I mean, read a few of these; youll understand it better then.

The kiss in the moonlight often appeals to a tender mind. That hot, humid room frightens it to paralysis.

That said, there are people who cannot read fiction at all. You know the type. Somehow she never found the right man. Somehow he never found the right girl. Generally they are neat and orderly and perhaps a little acrophobic. Often they make ideal employees, provided they are not asked to take responsibility. They are hard but brittle.

Clearly you are not one of them.

Tough-mindedness used to be the rule. If you dont believe me, listen to a few old songs: Im a ox-drivin man from the Kane County line / An Ill whip any man touches one ox o mine! / Ill beat him with the ox-goad, you see if I dont try. / So its poke them cattle onward, boys. Root hog, er die!

She jumped on her pony so airy and rode like she carried the mail, / With eyes just as wide as the prairie long side of the Santa Fe Trail.

Ive quoted two from memory where I might have quoted a hundred. If youve read them, you understand what I mean. If youve sung them, thats better yet. If youre a purist, you may slang me all you like for quoting from memory lyrics that are not precisely like those you found in some book. Those songs have been sung and sung again, edited, altered, and trimmed to fit for a century and more. The people were like that, tough as an old boot, and they told each other stories around the fire.

Dont get me wrongtheres nothing wrong with a kiss in the moonlight. But that moonlight kiss should not be all there is. It should be a beginning, not an end. Many of you, I fear, think of Jay Lake mainly or even exclusively as a novelist. He is, and a great one. Even so, he began (as nearly all of us do) as a short story writer, and he was a well-known and much admired short story writer before Mainspring. So test yourself. Read Last Plane to Heaven, the story that has given its title to this whole book. If you cant finish it, youve failed. If you finished it and enjoyed it (I know that if you dont enjoy it you wont finish it) but find there are certain things you dont understand, read it again. If you enjoyed it the second time and understand it a little better, you dont have to read it a third time unless you want to. Youve made it. Youre on the team.

Before I run completely out of words, I want to assure you that the title of this collection was not drawn out of a hat. As soon as you read The Houses of the Favored, you should understand what I just told you. Starship Mechanic will drive it home.

Here I had planned to tell you what you ought to admire most about these stories. Had is the operative word. There are so many things to admire that I cant choose one or even two. First of all their range; Jays steed is fast and sure of foot, and it jumps canyons and climbs mountains. Their modernity toothey could not have been written fifty years ago; many could not have been written twenty-five years ago. Certainly they would not have been published, read, and understood then. Their originality, certainly.

And the steely glint of the captains eyes.

Nichols tried to light a cigarette, one of those fucking Paki horse turds. Know why God made the stans? His palm cupped the flame against the steppe winds. Mustve been burning his fingers, but if he didnt care, I sure as hell didnt.

Hell if I know. The dust out here was like to drive me to tears, Oakley wraparounds or not. That shit got in the cracks of everything. My shoulders ached like a son of a bitch, too, after standing around all day with a SAM tube on my shoulder. I shifted the Stinger, listening for that familiar tubercular roar of old Sov-built engines. The Antonov was overdue.

He got his horse turd lit, took a long, coughing drag. Shits got to come out somewhere, thats why. A gap-toothed grin, where a couple of Uzbek hash merchants had kicked him hard a few months back. Hed eaten their ears a bit later. The stans are the asshole of the Earth. America, were the tits. Land of milk and honey.

Tits was right, I thought. But honey? Something chattered out there. I scanned the northeast over the hardpan. Nothing but scattered grass and endless identical miles, while the dust was making a silver-brown hash of the Gobi sky.

No sign of the Antonov.

Maybe Id heard the windsock snapping.

Aint you gonna ask? he said, after another deep drag.

Ask what?

Where the worlds pussy is?

I knew better than to walk into that one, so I just returned his grin. I still had all my teeth.

Aw, fuck it. Nichols pitched the flaring cigarette into the wind. It bounced past the wheel ruts on the desert floor then vanished into dust, leaving a flare on my vision.

Dont do that shit, man.

Snipers? His laugh was as harsh as his cigarettes. Here? Hiding behind what? The sky, maybe. Youre the pussy, Allen. Pussy of the world, right here.

Snipers my ass. I was less confident than him on that. Not much less, but a careful troopie lived to see chow call. Only you can prevent forest fires.

Smokey the fucking Mongolian bear!

Then the Antonov was overhead, growling out of the dust in a reek of fuel and old metal, the pilot looking for the windsock.