Introduction
Jay Lake
I don’t even know where to start with talking about Carrie Vaughn. I’ve known her for most of the past decade, though for the life of me I can’t remember exactly where and how we met. (I’ve known a lot of people for most of the past decade.) She’s an erudite, entertaining and gentle-souled woman with a love of horses and fiction, almost certainly in that order. She’s also an amazing conversationalist, an author with a broad and mutable fandom, and an awfully pleasant human being.
When I looked over the table of contents for this collection, which is sort of “Carrie Vaughn’s Greatest Hits,” it pleased me to see two of her stories that I’d acquired as an editor included herein. “This is the Highest Step in the World” originally appeared in All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories, co-edited by David Moles and myself. “The Heroic Death of Lieutenant Michkov” originally appeared in Polyphony, Vol. 1, edited by Deborah Layne and myself.
Can I pick ’em, or what?
As it happens, she’s famous for writing about werewolves. (And justly so, as her standing on the New York Times bestseller lists most certainly attests.) But that fame does Carrie a disservice by concealing her true breadth and depth as a writer. She is not a one-trick pony; far from it. Between those two stories on which at least traces of my fingerprints can be found lies Carrie’s whole range of human experience and fictive conceit. This volume is filled with pieces that I wish I’d had the chance to acquire and publish, and I’m very pleased to see them in one place. Fantasy, science fiction; contemporary, secondary world; realistic, magical—Vaughn covers an enormous ground with her narrative conceit.
Read through here and see where the paths of Vaughn’s imagination take you. She approaches aviation, theme parks and prophecy with a balanced equanimity. Like all good story-tellers, she’ll make you believe the deeply improbable long enough that you won’t think to question what you’re reading til long after, if ever.
These aren’t all pieces with happy endings, but then life isn’t always a piece with happy endings. These are all pieces that will make you think; about yourself, about the people you love (or possibly hate), about loss and victory, about our technology and about our place in the world as people.
And in truth, people are what it’s all about. People are what Vaughn’s writing is all about. Her novels sell so well because Kitty Norville is so real. This book in your hand will bring ten new insights, ten new slices of life, ten new realities into your head. Sit back, read, relax, and let these people into your life for a few hours.
You won’t regret it for a moment. And, much as I have been for years, you’ll walk away even more of a fan of Carrie Vaughn than you already thought you were. Don’t stay on the path, stray from it, and follow her into the woods of story.
Jay Lake
Portland, OR
Dedication
To Jeanne Cavelos (the ball was already rolling,
a little, but she gave it a great big push)
This is the Highest Step in the World
North of Tularosa, New Mexico. August 16, 1960. 0525.
Wearing the pressure suit, the oxygen supply, instrument pack and other equipment strapped to his back, Joe weighed over three hundred pounds. He moved ponderously. His breath fogged the inside of the plastic face shield of his helmet. The canned air smelled metallic and dry.
Clambering into the four and a half foot wide gondola was an effort. His ground crew eased him to his perch. Compared to the fully contained and sealed gondolas of earlier projects, the Excelsior III gondola seemed flimsy: half a steel shell with a cutaway door, completely open.
Someone had painted a sign on the lower edge of the doorway: “This is the highest step in the world.”
Don’t fly too high. Your wings might melt.
Bullshit.
High above the gondola, a helium-filled polyethylene balloon strained into the pre-dawn sky, a silver teardrop reflecting floodlights. Joe’s breath caught and his stomach churned. On paper, this mission looked like suicide.
His crew progressed to the end of a thousand-item checklist.
“Ready, Captain?” Daniel’s voice was muffled through Joe’s protective gear. Through the barrier of the helmet, the world seemed strangely silent, distant.
Joe gave him a thumbs-up. Please, God, make this one good.
A messenger ran from the meteorologist’s van, legs and arms pumping. “The mission is cancelled! Storm’s coming, abort!”
At the same time a pop sounded, a tiny explosion that meant the balloon’s restraint lines had released.
Free at last, the balloon bucked and lurched up, hauling Joe with it.
100,000 feet above Tularosa. 0705.
At high altitude, the helium expanded in the low atmospheric pressure. The balloon transformed from a long teardrop shape to a sphere, three hundred feet high. Three million cubic feet of helium strained in all directions.
Joe couldn’t move his right hand.
At about forty thousand feet, where the weight of the atmosphere began to thin until it was almost a memory, he discovered that the right glove of his suit had failed to pressurize.
The partial-pressure suit he wore was lined with tubes, bladders that filled with pressurized oxygen and compressed against his body, replacing the atmosphere and countering the physiological problems that accompanied travel in extreme altitudes: pooling blood, bursting vessels, and the like. He’d felt the suit’s comforting squeeze press against his body as he left safe altitude, except in his hand. The seal must have broken.
He should have radioed the ground as soon as he realized what was happening. They’d abort the flight, he’d have to come home, and they’d be right. He knew what would happen. His hand would swell as his blood pooled, the pressure inside his body straining to burst into the low atmosphere, like the helium in the balloon. Circulation would cease, and his hand would freeze. It was already stiffening painfully.
But it wouldn’t kill him.
Your wings might melt.
He should have radioed and aborted the flight, vented helium and sunk back to earth. But this had to be the best flight yet. Excelsiors I and II hadn’t flown past 80,000 feet. Except for the problem with his glove, everything was going smoothly, by the book. He couldn’t let a little discomfort ruin that. He’’d already talked to the ground crew about the storm, and they decided that completing the mission was worth the risk. There was a good chance the storm would pass to the north, and Joe would probably be back on the ground before it posed a threat. He’d convinced them that the mission was important enough to take the risk.
He wouldn’t let down his team. If they were willing to risk a storm, he could risk an injured hand. He could take a little pain. If he couldn’t move that hand, he’d mak
e do. When ground control asked how he was doing, he said fine, and tried to keep the strain out of his voice.
The altimeter pointed at 102,800, some twenty miles above the surface of the earth.
Now the real fun began.
Dangling from the balloon, the gondola twisted, panning his view one way and the other. The horizon curved. He was high enough to see the shape of the planet. Clouds had gathered. Far to the west, roiling cumulus banks swelled, the hint of a thunderstorm. He hoped he didn’t have to worry about it.
He disconnected the radio. From now on, it was just him and the tape recorder. Slowly, methodically, Joe stood. He was cold, his joints were stiff, his suit awkward. His right hand was useless. He inched toward the doorway of the gondola. The clouds below looked very far away, featureless batting rather than the fluffy cotton balls he saw at lower altitude. They looked solid.