Green Sky Press

Kristen and I awoke in our tower room in the beautiful and elegant Hotel Del Coronado, and just stayed in bed for a while, free for once from her medical routine and my deadlines. Presently we had need of the toilet and the shower, then I ordered breakfast while my dear brushed out her hair.

As we ate we scrolled through the San Diego newsmags on our omnicoms. Nothing really commanded our attention. Comic-Con wasn't for a month yet, and we'd both been to the Zoo and all the museums many times.

So we put the room-service cart in the foyer, locked the room with my omnicom, and made sure that the copy of the software on Kristen's was also functional. Then we had a nice walk along the beach. Sailboats, harbor-excursion boats, and a big grey mountain of Navy steel drifted on the water, with the city for a backdrop. A gentle breeze off the ocean was letting sea gulls hover in place, while a couple of pelicans sat on some disused pilings, looking alien and ungainly, thinking deep gronky thoughts.

We talked about nothing of any great importance, except for the smiles that went with the words. I held her hand for a while, then let go of it so that I could put my arm around her shoulder. In this fashion we returned to our room, where housekeeping had done its work, and returned to bed for a little while. Afterwards, as Kristen dozed a bit and I admired the sweet curve of her bare back, for some reason I remembered that the movies, in the old days, signalled that a couple had just had sex by showing them smoking in bed.

The first Surgeon General's report on smoking and lung cancer came out in 1964. Reports confirming the first and adding evidence for other diseases caused by smoking followed in 1965, 1966, 1967, and 1968. In 1968 Congress noted that people were still smoking, though the number of smokers had fallen from an estimated 55% of the population to 42%. Furthermore, the tobacco companies were still denying the medical evidence, and advertising more than ever.

Accordingly, Congress began holding hearings on the tobacco problem. The Social-Democrats, the Socialists, the brand-new Green Party, and most of the independents wanted to fund a federal anti-smoking campaign, to be paid for by increased cigarette taxes and fines on the tobacco industry. But they couldn't agree on how much to spend, how harshly to treat the tobacco barons, and whether to outlaw smoking entirely. This enabled the Republicans, with the help of the Libertarians, to prevent anything from being done at all.

Just about everyone was disgusted at this outcome, but someone never identified decided to do something about it. We didn't have anywhere near a complete human genome in 1968, but apparently we had enough to create the world's first artificial disease.

Everyone carries the cold germ all the time. The genetically-altered rhinovirus later dubbed the Green Cold (because of a Republican charge that the Green Party was behind it) appeared in late April of 1970. Hundreds of millions of people died around the world; most smokers, but also most people with weak lungs or chronic respiratory conditions. The survivors were genetically altered by the disease so that nicotine (and heroin, which activates the same pattern of brain receptors) was no longer addictive and gave no pleasure.

The whole world was in shock. Advanced countries like the U.S. and most of Europe had taken up smoking in a big way during the War, and since then Russia, China, and the freed countries of Asia had followed suit, to be "modern" and "Western." Then, from 1964 to 1970 the tobacco companies had aggressively promoted smoking everywhere to make up for the domestic sales lost to the Surgeon General's annual reports.

1970 was like one of those mass extinctions you find in the fossil record. Families were wiped out, the entertainment industry and the military in particular perished wholesale, governments fell, towns were depopulated. The effect of losing so many presidents, kings, governors, congressmen, members of parliaments, TV and movie actors, and popular singers of every kind, was far out of proportion to the actual numbers— and the numbers were horrific.

By June, around the time of my high-school graduation, the Green Cold had run its course. But I didn't go to my graduation, or my senior prom. Although I didn't smoke myself— very few teenagers did! — I had grown up with two parents who smoked constantly. They were chain smokers, a term which meant each cigarette was lit from the butt of the one before. Every breath we drew in, at home, was full of tobacco smoke.

Most of the family took ill, but I was in an oxygen tent in a military hospital throughout May and June. Never mind missing my graduation and prom; it was touch and go whether I would live.

My Mom died on May 10, 1970, and Dad died on June 3. They were 44 and 48, respectively. Kristen came to their funeral and held my hand through it.

My parents' death was the end of our family. Owen was in the Air Force, and I went to San Diego State to save money and get well, with the vague idea of going to CalTech later on (it never happened). Matt and Suzanne were too young to live without some kind of parent, so Dad's family whisked them off to central California and began trying to make them Republicans and Protestants, despite promising otherwise.

I tried to stay in touch with my family, but we were becoming strangers to each other. Owen was busy with his duties at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona, and never wrote or called. When he did call we ended up arguing. His way of dealing with our folks' deaths was to throw away his Catholic upbringing and become a "born-again" Protestant, a "Jesus freak" in the language of the times. I'd always been as good a student of theology as of everything else; but how do you reason with someone who's decided his gut feelings trump centuries of learning and study and doctrine?

My little brother Matt was also slipping away. He'd been accepted into the family of Dad's big sister, but Aunt Helen seemed to expect him to be her younger brother instead of her nephew. Maybe it was a reaction to the death of her husband, but she scolded him whenever he displayed "Papist" or "Socialist" ideas. Matt didn't write or call often, but when he did, he seemed to be blaming me for his situation.

Telephone calls to destinations more than a certain number of miles away were called "long distance" and cost a lot per minute. I wrote letters to my brothers (on actual paper, using a "typewriter", a mechanical keyboard with no memory) and to Suzanne, but budgeted my telephone money to call my 9-year-old sister. She was desperately unhappy —heartbroken about Mom and Dad, missing her big brothers terribly, homesick for San Diego, and mad and hurt about the way her foster family was trying to change her religion and her politics, such as they were at that age. Owen got leave for Christmas and visited Suzanne and Matt, but it wasn't a success. He argued religion with his brother and sister, and religion and politics with the foster families.

There was nothing I could do. My health was still shaky; on too many mornings it felt like I was all broken up inside. Health aside, my Mom had always been my best friend. I'd hear something or see something I wanted to share with her, remember all over again that I couldn't, and there was that broken feeling again.

Kristen lost none of her immediate family, but no one was entirely unaffected. John Madking, who also lost both parents, turned on her savagely when she tried to help. So, on the days I felt able to climb out of bed and attend my meager selection of classes (I was only taking Differential Equations, Introduction to Computers, Creative Writing, and Archery that semester) Kristen and I would sit in the cafeteria or one of the lounges and talk, or just walk around the campus holding hands. We weren't dating, but we were a comfort to each other.

"Everyone will be so sorry they missed you!" Mistress Anna said. "If only your reunion had been any weekend this month but this one, or June Crown had been in Calafia this year!"

Mistress Anna was a 16-year-old redhead with a full complement of freckles, and just a little baby fat. The green gown she wore suited her. The medallions around her neck were the Order of the Laurel, for mastery of the arts, and the Order of the Golden Trident, the Calafian service award. She was making me feel old, because she was the daughter of two people I'd never heard of, who'd both joined the Barony since my day.

"Don't distress yourself, my lady," I said. "My lady wife and I didn't expect any kind of tourney; we were just driving by and saw the tents. I'm one of the guests of honor at Comic-Con this year, so I'll see all my old friends then."

"My lords and ladies!" cried the herald on the field. He wore a green cape with crossed gold trumpets over his medieval costume, and carried a green staff with gold bands. "Alfgar the Wombat challenges Alois of the Murky Wood, because the sky is blue!"

Indeed the sky was a shining perfect blue. May and June were usually overcast in San Diego, a condition called "May Gray" and "June Gloom". But today had been stolen from July. The beaming sun shone unopposed over Morley Field, reflecting off the eight or ten medieval tents that had drawn us to the fighting practice.

By the second semester of my freshman year I was beginning to feel and act like my old self. My health was back, my depression no longer crippling, and my course load was back to my high-school standards. My National Merit scholarship, my share of my folks' money, and the settlement from the City for my dislocated shoulder, didn't make me rich. But I didn't need to get a job; I could study full time.

In February 1971, about a week before my birthday, I left Montezuma Hall with the idea of catching Kristen as she got out of her chemistry class and asking her to lunch.

There were lots of open lawn areas at San Diego State in those days, before they filled them all with buildings. One such separated the Campus Center from the Bookstore, and the brand-new Library from the Math building. As I came down the steps of the Campus Center, I saw half a dozen student-aged people setting up a white tent, under the direction of an older man in a wheelchair.

The Medieval Recreation Society was founded in 1957 and died away by 1965 or so. Another group of people started the Society for Creative Anachronism, independently, in 1967, and a lot of the old MRS gang joined up. By 1971 there were groups in New York, Boston, Chicago, Denver, and Phoenix besides the original Bay-Area groups, but southern California was just getting the notion. I took a flyer from one of the girls in costume who were handing them out, and sat down on the grass to see what would happen.

A student in a green plaid kilt, with a prominent mustache on a merry face, told the assembled onlookers that this was a demonstration of the art of fighting with sword and shield by the Society for Creative Anachronism, a group that recreated the Middle Ages. What followed looked very real. It was evidently not choreographed, anyway. One man in a suit of mail and black plate fought another whose mail was covered by a green tabard with an oak leaf on it. Then another mailed figure fought a fourth with bronze Greek armor over red skirt and shirt, a bronze helmet with a horsehair plume on top, a big bronze shield with a black serpent on it, and a long red cape. Then the first guy, in the black armor, fought the Greek. Then the guy in the plain mail fought the guy with the oak leaf. Then they had a four-way fight, with the combatants advancing from the four corners to the center of the field, every man for himself.

The ladies and the man in the wheelchair watched the whole thing from the tent, while the Irishman in the kilt announced each fight. Then some trouble-maker decided things were going too smoothly.

We were halfway through the noon hour, and the edges of the lawn were packed solid with people sitting and standing to watch the fighting. Suddenly, in a pause between fights, a voice challenged the master of ceremonies: "Why aren't you fighting?"

It was a reasonable question, from one perspective. There were only four men fighting, and we'd been through every combination of two at a time. On the other hand, someone had to announce things, and the Irishman was good at it. But the only other man there who wasn't fighting was in a wheelchair.

Neal, the Irishman, could have said he was needed to announce the fights; that he chose not to fight; that he had a cold; or even, that no one had to fight just because he was a man. At this point women weren't allowed to fight in the SCA, but men had never been required to.

Instead, after peering fruitlessly in the direction of the voice (he was nearsighted, and not wearing his glasses), Neal got on his high horse. "I don't have to answer that question!" he snapped, and turned his back with a flourish of his kilt.

The trouble-maker, a short, skinny student with glasses and a scruffy beard, wasn't having any of that. He began chanting "Coward! Coward! Coward!" and the crowd followed his lead. Within moments the whole perimeter of the field was calling "Coward! Coward! Coward!" in unison. Flushed red, the Irishman turned and snarled, "I'll fight any one of you!"

That stopped some of the chanting, and started some laughter. The trouble-maker sat mute. I was debating saying to him, "Well? What are you waiting for?" when something else happened.

In one corner of the crowd, on my right beyond the rabble rouser, another student was sitting, enjoying the show hugely. As he leaned forward, laughing and holding his stomach, some others behind him were whispering back and forth, pointing to him, and nodding. Three or four pairs of hands suddenly shoved him forward. He rolled over onto the field, saw where he was, and leapt to his feet, proclaiming, "I accept the challenge!"

So the fighters lent him one of their rattan tourney swords, one of their round shields, and a helmet made from a freon can, a helmet being the only armor required in those days. One of the ladies announced that Neal Guildenthistle challenged Carillo the Freak, the name that the newcomer, drama student Rene Carillo, chose for the occasion.

Then Rene swarmed all over Neal, and in short order beat him. "That was pretty good," one of the other fighters said. "Want to go again?"

Presently, then, it was announced that Lysander of Sparta challenged Carillo the Freak. Lysander stood there in his beautiful suit of Greek armor, crouched behind his big round shield, his short sword with the padded tip at the ready. Carillo charged, swinging wildly.

Wham! The short sword slammed into the freon-can helmet. As Carillo fell, the lightning-quick Spartan hit him twice more. And then once more, on top of the helmet, when it looked like he might be getting up.

Mistress Anna clapped her hands. "Three times on the way down, and once when they bounce!" she quoted.

"Right," I said. "That's where that custom comes from. Does Calafia still follow it?"

"Oh yes," said Sir Thomas. He was the son of the original Baron of Calafia, the man in the wheelchair in my story. Gene therapy had repaired Mezentius' spine, enabling him to stand, then walk, then lead a full active life: Count Sir Mezentius had trained his son to fight.

"I can't answer that without asking his permission," I said. "You know him, though. He became a fighter himself, and I know he's been King at least once."

I was never more than a marginal member of the SCA, or the SGU (The Society of the Golden Unicorn) which later replaced it. For one thing, my seizure at the Model U.N. had given me a distaste for role-playing. For another, Kristen didn't see much point in it. Kristen and I were also very busy, her with her pre-med classes and student government, me with my usual heavy load of science and math classes. I was trying to decide what my field would be by the total immersion method: take courses in everything, and see what was most interesting.

But I did pick an SCA name, David Scholarius, though I never made up a persona to go with it, and I did go to an occasional tournament, learn some SCA dances, and add recorder playing to my musical repertoire. I made some good friends, too: Forrest Lowe and his brother Tony; David Samson; and the Suominens, who'd been in MRS. Tina and Maddy Suominen were the only women I ever met who were as beautiful as Kristen, and Tina's ten-year-old daughter, Aino, looked like she might be another when she grew up.

My friendship with the Calafian crowd led one of them, David Samson, to ask if I wanted to split the space rent on the trailer he lived in, just off campus. He was between roommates, and his budget was hurting. I jumped at the chance. Half of Dave's trailer was actually less space than my dorm room, but it wasn't lonely. Dave Samson and Forrest Lowe felt like long-lost older brothers, and I was missing my family.

Moving into Dave's trailer was a key part of me becoming a writer, rather than a physicist, an astronomer, a geneticist, or a computer programmer. Dave had books in his trailer that I'd never read. My four years of classical Latin had me well up on classical history, but Dave had books on late Roman history, Arthurian Britain, and the Byzantine Empire. He introduced me to the Regency romances of Georgette Heyer, and the works of C. S. Forester. He showed me the bound collections of Analog in the campus library. I'd read Galaxy, Fantastic, Amazing, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction for years. Astounding, later renamed Analog, had eluded me. It was incredible how much good science fiction I'd been missing, and how much of what I'd read in books had originally appeared in Astounding.

You could say I became a writer in my sleep. All the poetry and fiction I'd written over the years, then shoved into boxes or threw away, had prepared me. Now my sleeping mind combined my years of Latin, fiction and non-fiction about the historical Arthur, Mallory's Morte D'Arthur, modern historical fiction set in the Middle Ages, Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword, the SCA, me and Kristen, my parents' deaths ...

I began having serial dreams about Arthur being taken from Britain to Avalon after the last battle with Mordred, and recruited to lead the fight against the pagan elves who were out to exterminate the civilized ones. The dreams began each night where they'd left off the night before, and they were in Latin, as Dave could testify because I was talking in my sleep. Out of those dreams came Arthur's Vow, In the Mountain's Shadow, The Tulànus, Battle of the Kings, and The Road of Wolves, which made my name as a writer.

It was April when I moved into Dave's trailer, and the Arthur dreams were still filling my nights in June, when I learned I wasn't an epileptic, after all.

I hadn't seen much of my family since our parents died. Owen had come up one summer when he had leave, and Matt had stopped by one evening when he and his first wife were visiting his foster-family. Suzanne's husband Paul was a tenured professor of political science, so they took us out to dinner, or vice versa, whenever a conference or symposium brought them to our neck of the woods.

But the whole family hadn't been together since 1970. So when Suzanne learned that I'd be in San Diego for my high-school reunion on the same weekend that Paul was speaking at the San Diego Grand, she reserved a room at a fancy restaurant she liked in La Jolla, and got everyone to agree to come.

I'd been dreading the Hoover reunion; after all, I hadn't seen any of my classmates since graduation, and who knew how they'd changed? But everyone had been glad to see me, and many of them said nice things about my writing. The family thing seemed nothing to worry about. They were my brothers, weren't they? And I'd seen them a few times over the years.

I can't give you a blow-by-blow. If I could, you'd skip over it anyway, because it'd be unbearable. And I wasn't taking notes anyway. By the time I realized this wasn't the simple family dinner I'd expected, the inquisition was well under way. On one side was me, and Kristen because she was my wife. On the other side was Owen and his new wife Pattie, and Matt and his fiancée Mindi, soon to be his second wife. Suzanne and Paul they were leaving alone, until Suzanne asked what was going on. Then she joined me as a defendant.

I swear I have no idea what brought it all on. I wasn't impressed by Pattie or Mindi, who seemed very small-minded and conventional, and very Protestant and right-wing. But I'm sure I was polite to them, even when they kept squelching or deriding any subject I tried to talk about.

Or maybe the problem was the money. All four of us kids had received an equal share of Mom and Dad's insurance money, social-security money, and Dad's Air-Force and Convair pensions. But Owen and Matt had wanted me to split the police-department settlement with them, that I got because the cop held me down and dislocated my shoulder, and then interfered with proper medical treatment for my seizure. Their foster-folks argued, in court, that since the money was paid to Mom and Dad, rather than to me, it should have been split four ways. The judge had agreed with my lawyer that the harm had been done to me alone, so the money was mine alone, even if my parents had been holding it for me as a minor.

I thought Owen and Matt had gotten over that a long time ago. I guess not. Or maybe they were showing off, in a weird sort of way, to their new wife and wife-to-be: "Look, I can stand up to anybody, even my brother the science-fiction writer."

I just don't know. I remember when the three of us were a united band against the world, however much we squabbled among ourselves; and anyone who even looked mean at Suzanne had better run for cover, because her brothers would make him sorry. But somehow time and separation had turned them into this middle-aged Air Force E-9, and this hardware-store manager for the Western U.S., who were shouting at me.

"Look, guys," I tried again. I pushed my half-eaten meal away from me; my stomach was in knots. "What's the problem here?"

Through the rising dizziness and the shrinking edges of my vision came recognition. It had been a long time since I'd been surprised like this.

I straightened up. I'd been bent over with stomach cramps, I realized. Somehow we were outside in the parking lot, standing by our rented car. No one else was there. I had no idea how we'd gotten there, or how much time had passed.

"Hotel," I gasped, as I half-fell, half-crawled into the car. I could feel the change coming on, a sensation like rings of water pulsing down through my body. "Quick, before—"

"Shh," Kristen said. The windows were opaque and the car was driving itself. She pulled me off the back seat onto the floor, and held my head. "It's all right, I've got you," said my love.

I woke up in our hotel bed, with Kristen sitting at the bed side. I ached from head to foot, I was so exhausted I didn't want to move, and so hungry I could eat two horses.

"Strange," I replied, my voice an octave higher than usual. Strange was an understatement. My kinesthetic sense, the sense that tells us where our limbs are even when our eyes are closed, was going crazy. I knew it would fade in time, but when I wake up it's the first thing I notice. My new breasts felt like two water balloons sitting on my chest. My penis was gone; actually, it had changed into a clitoris and was still there, surrounded by folds of skin, but it felt completely different. My skin felt different, too, because the writer's paunch had been redistributed all over my body to provide the layer of fat under the skin that makes a woman look and feel the way she does.

My other senses were also sharpened, and this would last until I changed back. My hearing was better, my taste more sensitive, and my sense of smell was telling me I badly needed a bath. "Help me up, darling, I stink."

"Well, of course you do," said my doctor wife. "Besides all the sweat of the change, your body has flushed itself of testosterone, and replaced it with female hormones. Whoops, look out." My hips were wider, and my center of balance different; I'd almost fallen down.

Having your lover wash you is one of the best kinds of sex there is, especially when you're so weak you can't wash yourself. I watched the shower spray wash the hairs of my male beard and mustache down the drain. Right now I felt like a male stuck in a female body, but I knew that would pass. Give me a few weeks as a female, and my feelings about things would change. Even now I looked fully female, except that my hair hadn't grown longer. But who says women have to have long hair? I even had ovaries (is that where my testicles go?), but they had no eggs in them. So I was fully female, but barren (no loss).

Speaking of things going down the drain, "I hope you remembered to bring tampons, love." The fact that I was always having my period when I changed was the reason I called my transformation, with double meaning, my Curse.

As for sex, as a male I'm only interested in females. But females, I find (and many full-time females have agreed with this), are less interested in bodies than in personalities. As a female, I love whom I loved as a male, and it doesn't distress me. Kristen loves me, not just my male body, and so I am content. What could have been a great tragedy is not even an issue.

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Werewolves Are Bunk

Chapter 3. Sunday

Sunday, June 18, 1995 AD (2748 AUC)
San Diego, California

Werewolves Are Bunk

Chapter 3. Sunday

Sunday, June 18, 1995 AD (2748 AUC) San Diego, California

Sunday, June 18, 1995 AD (2748 AUC)
San Diego, California