Ascendancies Read Free Page B

society-of-mind. The daemon is a capturer of imagination. That’s his reason for being.
    When the daemon is on top of his game, he can whip up a story from his shadowy basement of mentality. A story is a tower of blocks, one with some coherent structure of feeling. A story says something evocative about the world, it somehow means something… Then the conscious mind can bind that in wire, slap on a label and ship it.
    That’s how I write stories. That’s how these works came into being. Thanks for putting up with that confession. I rather hope to do a lot more of that. I don’t do it with any particular regularity because I’m not fully in control of the process. The same goes for a lot of artists. You learn to live with that.
    So: a few closing notes now somehow seem necessary. Let me explain the title of this book. From some mysterious cataloging bug or cyber-mechanical oversight, a book called “Ascendancies” was attributed to me back in 1987. “Ascendancies” frequently appears in bibliographies of mine. For years, people have written me eager fan mail determined to locate my book, “Ascendancies”. I never wrote that book. I don’t think I ever used the word, either. Still “Ascendancies” is quite a pretty-looking word, almost a palindrome: “Seicnadnecsa.” It’ll do.
    Better yet, the sudden appearance of a genuine “Ascendancies” by Bruce Sterling, a full twenty years in the future after its announced publication date, is a time-travel paradox that will drive bibliographers nuts. Deeply confusing my audience, librarians, and the industry in toto: hey, just another service we offer.
    In conclusion, I’d like to formally thank every rugged, determined, anonymous consumer who, through a host of small purchases, has given American science fiction something like an economic basis. Nobody ever thanks these noble people; they’re considered to be some kind of vast, rumbling mass audience, but, well, they’re all individuals. Every one of them is individual. Reading is a solitary pursuit. Writing as an art is the mingling of one mind with one other. But there are lots of American readers, and thank goodness. In some smaller society with a smaller language, I’d have quite likely done this sort of thing anyway, yet never been paid one shekel, ruble, peso, real or dinar. So that was great luck for all concerned, eh? Fate has truly been kind! Let’s hope we all do more of that!

PART I:
    THE SHAPER/MECHANIST STORIES

Swarm
    â€œI will miss your conversation during the rest of the voyage,” the alien said.
    Captain-Doctor Simon Afriel folded his jeweled hands over his gold-embroidered waistcoat. “I regret it also, ensign,” he said in the alien’s own hissing language. “Our talks together have been very useful to me. I would have paid to learn so much, but you gave it freely.”
    â€œBut that was only information,” the alien said. He shrouded his bead-bright eyes behind thick nictitating membranes. “We Investors deal in energy, and precious metals. To prize and pursue mere knowledge is an immature racial trait.” The alien lifted the long ribbed frill behind his pinhole-sized ears.
    â€œNo doubt you are right,” Afriel said, despising him. “We humans are as children to other races, however; so a certain immaturity seems natural to us.” Afriel pulled off his sunglasses to rub the bridge of his nose. The star-ship cabin was drenched in searing blue light, heavily ultraviolet. It was the light the Investors preferred, and they were not about to change it for one human passenger.
    â€œYou have not done badly,” the alien said magnanimously. “You are the kind of race we like to do business with: young, eager, plastic, ready for a wide variety of goods and experiences. We would have contacted you much earlier, but your technology was still too feeble to afford us a