For the past several years, Clarion State College in Pennsylvania has been running summer classes in science fiction writing under the direction of sf author Robin Scott Wilson, with visiting instructors such as Fritz Leiber, Damon Knight, Kate Wilhelm, Samuel R. Delany, Joanna Russ and Harlan Ellison. Editors in New York have learned to pay attention when someone who has taught at Clarion comes to town raving about a new talent discovered in the class. There are three Clarion alumni in this book, Edward Bryant being one of them. In his first of two stories in these pages, Bryant tells of an inventor with a device to edit time, of a young boy terrified by the reality of his dreams, and of his governess, a catmother. You don’t know what a catmother is? Read the story.

JADE BLUE

Edward Bryant

“And this,” said Timnath Obregon, “is the device I have invented to edit time.”

The quartet of blurred and faded ladies from the Craterside Park Circle of Aesthetes made appreciative sounds: the whisper of a dry wind riffling the plates of a long out-of-print art folio.

“Time itself.”

“Fascinating, yes.”

“Quite.”

The fourth lady said nothing, but pursed wrinkled lips. She fixed the inventor in a coquettish gaze. Obregon averted his eyes. How, he wondered, did he deserve to be appreciated in this fashion? He had begun to wish the ladies would leave him to his laboratory.

“Dear Mr. Obregon,” said the hitherto silent one. “You have no idea how much we appreciate the opportunity to visit your laboratory. This district of Cinnabar was growing tedious. It is so refreshing to encounter an eminent personality such as yourself.”

Obregon’s smile was strained. “I thank you, but my fame may be highly transitory.”

Four faces were enraptured.

“My APE—” The inventor took a cue from the concert of rising eyebrows. “Ah, that’s my none-too-clever acronym for the artificial probability enhancer. My device seems on the brink of being invented simultaneously —or worse, first—by a competitor at the Tancarae Institute. One Dr. Sebastian Le Goff.”

“Then this machine is not yet, um, fully invented?”

“Not fully developed. No, I’m afraid not.” Obregon thought he heard one of the ladies tsking, an action he had previously believed only a literary invention. “But it’s very, very close to completion,” he hastened to say. “Here, let me show you. I can’t offer a full demonstration, of course, but—” He smiled winningly.

Obregon seated himself before the floor-to-ceiling crystal pillar which was the APE. He placed his hands on a brushed-metal console. “These are the controls. The keyboard is for the programming of probability changes.” He stabbed the panel with an index finger; the crystal pillar glowed fluorescent orange. “The device is powered inductively by the vortical time-streams which converge in the center of Cinnabar.” His finger darted again and the pillar resumed its transparency. “For now I’m afraid that’s all I can show you.”

“Very pretty, though.”

“I think blue would be so much more attractive.’’

“I found the most cunning sapphire curtain material yesterday.”

“Tea would be marvelous, Mr. Obregon.”

“Please, ladies. Call me Timnath.” The inventor walked to a tangle of plastic tubing on an antiseptic counter. “I’m a habitual tea drinker, so I installed this instant brewing apparatus.” He slid a white panel aside and removed five delicate double-handled cups. “The blend for today is black dragon pekoe. Satisfactory with everyone?”

Nodding of heads; brittle rustle of dying leaves.

“Cream and sugar?”

The tall one: “Goat cream, please.”

The short one: “Two sugars, please.”

The most indistinct one: “Nothing, thank you.”

The flirtatious one: “Mother’s milk, if you would.”

Obregon punched out the correct combinations on the teamaker’s panel and rotated the cups under the spigot.

From behind him one of the ladies said, “Timnath, what will you do with your machine?”

Obregon hesitated. “I’m not sure, really. I’ve always rather liked the way things are. But I’ve invented a way of changing them. Maybe it’s a matter of curiosity.”

Then he turned and distributed the tea. They sat and sipped and talked of science and the arts.

“I firmly believe,” said the inventor, “that science is an art.”

“Yes,” said the flirtatious lady. “I gather that you pay little attention to either the practical or commercial applications of technology.” She smiled at him from behind steepled fingers.

“Quite so. Many at the Institute call me a dilettante.”

The tall lady said, “I believe it’s time to go. Timnath, we thank you for allowing us to impose. It has been a pleasure.” She dashed her teacup to the tile floor. Her companions followed suit.

Startled by their abruptness, Obregon almost forgot to smash his own nearly empty cup. He stood politely as the ladies filed past him to the door. Their postures were strangely alike; each in her brown dress reminded him of the resurrectronic cassowaries he admired at the Natural History Club.

“A pleasure,” repeated the tall lady.

“Quite.” (The short one).

Exit the flirt. “Perhaps I’ll be seeing you again soon?” Her gaze lingered and Obregon looked aside, mumbling some pleasantry.

The fourth lady, the one whose features had not seemed to jell, paused in the doorway. She folded her arms so that the hands tucked into her armpits. She jumped up and down, flapping her truncated limbs. “Scraw! Scraw!” The soft door whuffed shut.

Taken aback, Obregon felt the need for another cup of tea and he sat down. On the table a small black cylinder stood on end. It could have been a tube of lipsalve. Apparently it had been forgotten by one of his guests. Curious, he picked it up. It was very light. He unscrewed one end; the cylinder was empty. Obregon raised the object to his nose. There was the distinct acrid tang of silver iodide emulsion.

“It appears,” said Obregon softly, “to be an empty film canister.”

A child’s scream in a child’s night. A purring, enfolding comfort. A loneliness of nightmares and the waking world and the indistinct borderland. A feline reassurance.

“Don’t cry, baby. I’ll hold you close and rock you.”

George buried his face in the soft blue fur which blotted his tears. “Jade Blue, I love you.”

“I know,” said the catmother softly. “I love you too. Now sleep.”

“I cant,” George said. “They’ll find me again.” His voice rose in pitch and his body moved restlessly; he clutched at Jade Blue’s warm flank. “They’ll get me in the shadows, and some will hold me down, and the one will reach for—”

“Dreams,” said Jade Blue. “They can’t hurt you.” Feeling inside her the lie. Her fingerpads caressed the boy’s head and drew it close again.

“I’m afraid.” George’s voice was distantly hysterical.

The governess guided the boy’s head. “Drink now.” His lips found the rough nipple and sucked instinctively. Her milk soothed, gently narcotic; and he swallowed slowly. “Jade Blue …” The whisper was nearly inaudible. “I love you.” The boy’s tense body began to relax.

Jade Blue rocked him slowly, carefully wiping away the thin trickle of milk from the corner of his mouth; then lay down and cuddled the boy against her. After a time she also slept.

And awoke, night-wary. She was alone. With an angry snarl, quickly clipped off, she struggled from the bed. Jade Blue extended all her senses and caught a subtle scent of fear, a soft rub of something limp on flagstones, the quick flash of shadow on shadow.

A black, vaguely anthropomorphic shape moved in the darkness of the doorway. There were words, but they were so soft as to seem exhaled rather than spoken: “Forget it, pussy.” A mouth gaped and grinned. “He’s ours, cat.”

Jade Blue screamed and leaped with claws outthrust. The shadow figure did not move; it squeaked and giggled as the catmother tore it apart. Great portions of shadowstuff, light as ash, flew about the room. The mocking laughter faded.

She paused in the doorway, flanks heaving, sucking in breath. Her wide, pupilless eyes strained to interpret the available light. Sharp-pointed ears tilted forward. The enormous house, very quiet; except—

Jade Blue padded swiftly down the hall, easily threading the irregular masses of inert sculpture. She ran silently, but in her mind:

Stupid cat! That shadow was a decoy, a diversion.

Foolish woman! The boy is my trust.

Find him. If anything has happened to him, I will be punished.

If anything has happened to him, I shall kill myself.

A sound. The game room.

They couldn’t have taken him far.

That bitch Merreile! I could tear out her throat.

How could she do it to him?

Close now. Quietly.

The double doors of the game room stood ajar. Jade Blue slipped between their baroquely carved edges. The room was large and echoing with the paraphernalia of childhood: glaze-eyed hobbyhorses, infinite shelves of half-assembled model kits, ranks of books and tapes and dot-cases, balls, mallets, frayed creatures spilling stuffing, instruments of torture, gaming boards, and an infrared spectrometer. The catmother moved carefully through George’s labyrinth of memories.

In a cleared space in the far end she found him. George lay on his back, spread-eagled, straining weakly against intangible fetters. Around him flocked the moving shadows, dark succubus-shapes. One of them crouched low over the boy and brushed shadow lips around flesh.

George’s mouth moved and he mewed weakly, like a kitten. He raised his head and stared past the shadows at Jade Blue.

The catmother resisted her first berserker reaction. Instead she stepped quickly to the near wall and found the lighting panel. She pressed a square and dim illumination glowed from the walls; pressed harder and the light brightened, then seared. Proper shadows vanished. The moving shadow creatures raveled like poorly woven fabric and were gone. Jade Blue felt an ache beginning in her retinas and dimmed the light to a bearable level.

On the floor George was semi-conscious. Jade Blue picked him up easily. His eyes were open, their movements rapid and random, but he was seeing nothing. Jade Blue cradled the boy close and walked down the long hallways to their bedroom.

George was dreamless the remainder of the long night. Once, closer to wakening, he stirred and lightly touched Jade Blue’s breasts. “Kitty, kitty,” he said. “Nice kitty.” Friendlier shadows closed about them both until morning.

When George awoke he felt a coarse grade of sand abrade the inside of his eyelids. He rubbed with his fists, but the sensation lingered. His mouth was dry. George experimentally licked the roof of his mouth; it felt like textured plastic. There was no taste. He stretched, winced, joints aching. The syndrome was familiar; it was the residue of bad dreams.

“I’m hungry.” He reclined against the crumpled blue satin. A seed of querulousness: “I’m hungry.” Still no response. “Jade Blue?” He was hungry, and a bit lonely. The two conditions were complementary in George, and both omnipresent.

George swung his legs off the bed. “Cold!” He drew on the pair of plush slippers; then, otherwise naked, he walked into the hall.

Sculptures in various stages of awakening nodded at George as he passed. The stylization of David yawned and scratched its crotch. “ ‘Morning, George.”

“Good morning, David.”

The replica of a Third Cycle odalisque ignored him as usual.

“Bitch,” George mumbled.

“Mommy’s boy,” mocked the statue of Victory Rampant.

George ignored her and hurried past.

The abstract Pranksters Group tried to cheer him up, but failed miserably.

“Just shut up,” said George. “All of you.”

Eventually the sculptures were left behind and George walked down a paneled hallway. The hall finally described a Klein turn, twisted in upon itself, and exited into the laboratory of Timnath Obregon.

Luminous pearl walls funneled toward the half-open door. George saw a quick swirl of lab smock. He was suddenly conscious of the silence of his steps. He knew he should announce himself. But then he overheard the dialogue:

“If his parents would come home, that might help.” The voice was husky, the vowels drawn out. Jade Blue.

“Not a chance,” said Obregon’s tenor. “They’re too close to City Center by now. I couldn’t even begin to count the subjective years before they’ll be back.”

George waited outside the doorway and listened.

Jade Blue’s voice complained. “Well, couldn’t they have found a better time for a second honeymoon? Or third, or fourth, or whatever.”

A verbal shrug. “They are, after all, researchers with a curious bent. And the wonders which lie closer to the center of Cinnabar are legendary. I can’t blame them for their excursion. They had lived in this family group a rather long time.”

“Oh shit, you idiot human! You’re rationalizing.”

“Not entirely. George’s mother and father are sentients. They have a right to their own life.”

“They also have responsibilities.” Pause. “Merreile. That fathersucking little—”

“They couldn’t have known when they hired her, Jade Blue. Her, um, peculiarities didn’t become apparent until she had been George’s governess for several months. Even then, no one knew the ultimate results.” ’

“No one knew! No one cared, you mean.”

“That’s a bit harsh, Jade—”

“Listen, you pale imitation of an open mind. Can’t you see? They’re the most selfish people alive. They want to take nothing from themselves, give nothing to their son.”

Silence for a few seconds.

Jade Blue again: “You’re a kind man, but so damned obtuse!”

“I’m quite fond of George,” said the inventor.

“And I also. I love him as one of my own. It’s too bad his own parents don’t.”

In the hallway George was caught in an ambivalence of emotion. He missed his parents horribly. But he also loved Jade Blue. So he began to cry.

Obregon tinkered with a worms’ warren of platinum filaments.

Jade Blue paced the interior of the laboratory and wished she could switch her vestigial tail.

George finished his milk and licked the last cookie crumb from his palm.

A large raven flapped lazily through a window in the far end of the lab. “Scraw! Scraw!”

“Ha!” The inventor snapped his fingers and glistening panes slid into place; the doors shut; the room was sealed. Apparently confused, the raven fluttered in a tight circle, screaming in hoarse echoes.

“Jade, get the boy down!” Obregon reached under the APE’s console and came up with a cocked and loaded crossbow. The bird saw the weapon, snap-rolled into a turn and dive, darted for the closest window. It struck the pane and rebounded.

George let Jade Blue pull him down under one of the lab tables.

Wings beat furiously as the raven caromed off a wall, attempting evasive action. Obregon coolly aimed the crossbow and squeezed the trigger. The short square-headed quarrel passed completely through the raven and embedded itself in the ceiling. The bird, wings frozen in mid-flap, cartwheeled through the air and struck the floor at Obregon’s feet. Stray black feathers autumnleafed to the floor.

The inventor gingerly toyed the body; no movement. “Fool. Such underestimation.” He turned to Jade Blue and his nephew, who were extracting themselves from beneath the table. “Perhaps I’m less distracted than you charge.”

The catmother licked delicately at her rumpled blue fur. “Care to explain all this?”

Obregon picked up the body of the raven with the air of a man lifting a package of particularly fulsome garbage. “Simulacrum,” he said. “A construct. If I dissected it properly I’d discover a quite sophisticated surveillance and recording system.” He caught Jade Blue’s green eyes. “It’s a spy, you see.” He dropped the carcass into the disposer where it vanished in a golden flare and the transitory odor of well-done meat.

“It was big,” said George.

“Good observation. Wingspread of at least two meters. That’s larger than any natural raven.”

“Who,” asked Jade Blue, “is spying?”

“A competitor, fellow named Le Goff, a man of no certain ethics and fewer scruples. A day ago he brought his spies here to check the progress of my new invention. It was all done very clumsily so that I’d notice. Le Goff is worse than a mere thief. He mocks me.” Obregon gestured toward the artificial probability enhancer.

“It’s that he wishes to complete before I do.”

“A crystal pillar?” said Jade Blue. “How marvelous.”

“Quiet, cat. My machine can edit time. I will be able to alter the present by modifying the past.”

“Is that all it does?”

Obregon seemed disgusted. “In my own home I don’t need mockery.”

“Sorry. You sounded pompous.”

The inventor forced a laugh. “I suppose so. It’s Le Golf who has driven me to that. All I’ve ever wanted was to be left in peace to work my theories. Now I feel I’m being forced into some sort of confrontation.”

“And competition?”

Obregon nodded. “Just why, I don’t know. I worked with Le Goff for years at the Institute. He was always a man of obscure motives.”

“You’re a good shot,” said George.

Obregon self-consciously set the crossbow on the console. “It’s a hobby. I’d only practiced with stationary targets before.”

“Can I try it?”

“I think you’re probably too small. It takes a great deal of strength to cock the bow.”

“I’m not too small to pull the trigger.”

“No,” said Obregon. “You’re not.” He smiled. “After lunch we’ll go out to the range. I’ll let you shoot.”

“Can I shoot a bird?”

“No, not a live one. I’ll have some simulacrae made up.”

“Timnath,” said Jade Blue. “I don’t suppose— No, probably not.”

“What.”

“Your machine. It can’t change dreams.”

Mother, Father, help me I don’t want the dreams any more. Just the warm black that’s all. Mother? Father? Why did you go when will you come back? You leave me left me make me hurt.

Uncle Timnath, get them bring them back. Tell them I hurt I need. Make them love me.

Jade Blue, rock me hold me love me bring them back now. No no don’t touch me there you’re like Merreile I don’t want more bad dreams don’t hurt don’t—

And Merreile would come into his bedroom each evening to take him from his toys and prepare him for bed. She would undress him slowly and slip the nightshirt over his head, then sit crosslegged at the foot of the bed while he lay back against the pillow.

“A story before sleeping? Of course, my love. Shall I tell again of the vampires?

“Do you remember my last telling, love? No? Perhaps I caused you to forget.” And she would smile, showing the bands of scarlet cartilage where most people had teeth.

“Once upon a time, there was a little boy, much like you, who lived in an enormous old house. He was alone there, except for his parents and his loving governess.

“Oh, quite true that there were vampires hiding in the attic, but they weren’t much like living creatures at all. They seldom ventured from the attic and the boy was never allowed to go there. His parents had forbidden him, despite the fact that the attic was filled with all manner of interesting and enjoyable things.

“The boy’s curiosity grew and grew until one night he slipped out of his room and quietly climbed the stairs to the attic. At the top of the flight he paused, remembering his parents’ warning. Then he recalled what he had heard about the strange treasures that lay within. He knew that warnings come from dull people and should be ignored. That barriers are made to be crossed. And then he opened the attic door.

“Inside were rows of tables stacked high with every sort of game and toy imaginable. Between were smaller tables laden with candy and cakes and pitchers of delicious drink. The boy was never happier.

“At that moment the vampires came out to play. They looked much like you and me, except that they were black and very quiet and just as thin as shadows.

“They crowded around the boy and whispered to him to come join their games. They loved the boy very much, because people came so seldom to the attic to visit. They were very honest (for folk so thin cannot hold lies) and the boy knew how silly his parents’ warnings had been. Then they went off to the magic lands in the far end of the attic and played for hours and hours.

“What games, darling? I will show you.”

And then Merreile would switch off the light and reach for him.

No, it can’t change dreams, Timnath had said, musing. Then, looking through the catmother’s eyes as though jade were glass, he said, Give me time; I must think on it.

They sat and talked in the blue bedroom.

“Did you ever have children like me?” George hugged his drawn-up knees.

“Not like you.”

“I mean, were they kittens, or more like babies?”

“Both if you like. Neither.” Her voice was neutral.

“You’re not playing fair. Answer me.” The child’s voice was ancient, petulant from long practice.

“What do you want to know?”

George’s fists beat a rapid tattoo on his knees. “Your children, what were they like? I want to know what happened to them.”

Silence for a while. Small wrinkles under Jade Blue’s lip, as though she held something bitter in her mouth. “They were never like anything.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Because they weren’t. They came from Terminex the computer. They lived in him and died in him; he placed the bright images in my brain.”

George sat straighter; this was better than a bedtime story. “But why?”

“I’m the perfect governess. My maternal instincts are augmented. I’ve hostages in my mind.” Each word was perfectly cut with gemstone edges.

Petulance softened to a child’s compassion. “It makes you very sad.”

“Sometimes.”

“When I’m sad I cry.”

“I don’t,” said Jade Blue. “I can’t cry.”

“I’ll be your son,” said George.

The hall of diurnal statues was still. Jade Blue prowled the shadows, seeking the slight sounds and odors and temperature differentials. The encroaching minutes frustrated and made her frantic. The many nights of sleepless watch—and the eventual betrayal by her body. Again she looked for a lost child.

Not in the game room this time; the hobbyhorses grinned vacantly.

Nor in the twenty gray parlors where George’s ancestors kept an embalmed and silent vigil from their wall niches.

Nor in the attic, dusty and spiderwebbed.

Not in the dining hall, arboretum, kitchens, aquatorium, library, observatory, family room or linen closets.

Not— Jade Blue ran down the oak hallway and the minute signs vindicated her caprice. She ran faster and when she hurled herself into the corner which kleined into the approach to Timnath Obregon’s laboratory, her stomach turned queasily.

The door slid open at a touch. The lab was dimly illuminated by the distorted yellow lights of Cinnabar. Several things occurred at once:

—In front of her, a startled figure looked up from the console of Obregon’s APE. A reeled measuring tape dropped and clattered on tile.

—Across the lab a group of capering shadow figures stopped the act they were committing on George’s prone body and looked toward the door.

—A screeching bird-shape flapped down from the dark ceiling and struck at Jade Blue’s eyes.

The catmother ducked and felt claws cut harmless runnels through fur. She rolled onto her back and lashed out, her own claws extended. She snagged something heavy that screamed and buffeted her face with feathered wings. She knew she could kill it.

Until the booted foot came down on her throat and Jade Blue looked up past the still-struggling bird-thing at whoever had been examining Obregon’s invention. “Sorry,” said the man, and pressed harder.

“George!” Her voice was shrill, strangled. “Help.” And then the boot was too heavy to let by any words at all. The darkness thickened intolerably.

The pressure stopped. Jade Blue could not see, but— painfully—she could again breathe. She could hear, but she didn’t know what the noises were. There were bright lights and Timnath’s concerned face, and arms lifting her from the floor. There was warm tea and honey poured into a saucer. George was hugging her and his tears put salt in the tea.

Jade Blue rubbed her throat gingerly and sat up; she realized she was on a white lab table. On the floor a little way from the table was an ugly mixture of feathers and wet red flesh. Something almost unrecognizable as a man took a ragged breath.

“Sebastian,” said Timnath, kneeling beside the body. “My dear friend.” He was crying.

“Scraw!” said the dying man; and died.

“Did you kill him?” said Jade Blue, her voice hoarse.

“No, the shadows did.”

“How?”

“Unpleasantly.” Timnath snapped his fingers twice and the glittering labrats scuttled out from the walls to clean up the mess.

“Are you all right?” George stood very close to his governess. He was shivering. “I tried to help you.”

“I think you did help me. We’re all alive.”

“He did, and we are,” said Timnath. “For once, George’s creations were an aid rather than a hindrance.”

“I still want you to do something with your machine,” said Jade Blue.

Timnath looked sadly down at the body of Sebastian Le Goff. “We have time.”

Time progressed helically, and one day Timnath pronounced his invention ready. He called George and Jade Blue to the laboratory. “Ready?” he said, pressing the button which would turn on the machine.

“I don’t know,” said George, half hiding behind Jade Blue. “I’m not sure what’s happening.”

“It will help him,” said Jade Blue. “Do it.”

“He may be lost to you,” said Timnath.

George whimpered. “No.”

“I love him enough,” said the governess. “Do it.” The crystal pillar glowed bright orange. A fine hum cycled up beyond the auditory range. Timnath tapped on the keyboard: GEORGE’S DREAMS OF THE SHADOW VAMPIRES ARE AS NEVER WERE. MERREILE NEVER EXISTED. GEORGE IS OPTIMALLY HAPPY.

The inventor paused, then stabbed a special button:

REVISE.

The crystal pillar glowed bright orange. A fine hum cycled up beyond the auditory range. Timnath tapped on the keyboard: GEORGE’S DREAMS OF THE SHADOW VAMPIRES ARE AS NEVER WERE. MERREILE NEVER EXISTED. GEORGE IS REASONABLY HAPPY.

Timnath considered, then pushed another button:

ACTIVATE.

“That’s it,” he said.

“Something’s leaving us,” Jade Blue whispered. They heard a scuff of footsteps in the outer hall. Two people walking. There was the clearing of a throat, a parental cough.

“Who’s there?” said Jade Blue, knowing.

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