This was crazy. I knew it was crazy. I knew it was all unreal, but somehow I was getting more and more afraid. “So the future is just the present writ large,” I said bitterly. “More bull.”

  “You tell her, pal,” the locker-room boy said.

  Hector, who had been listening quietly, broke in. “For a man from the future, you talk a lot like a native.”

  “You’re the king of bullshit, man,” Milo said. “ ‘Some people devote themselves to artwork’! Jesus!”

  I felt dizzy. “Scut down, Milo. That means ‘Fuck you too.’” I shook my head to try to make them go away. That was a mistake: the bus began to pitch like a sailboat. I grabbed for Ruth’s arm but missed. “Who’s driving this thing?” I asked, trying to get out of the seat.

  “Don’t worry,” said Graves. “He knows what he’s doing.”

  “He’s brain-dead,” Milo said.

  “You couldn’t do any better,” said Ruth, pulling me back down.

  “No one is driving,” said the burning man.

  “We’ll crash!” I was so dizzy now that I could hardly keep from being sick. I closed my eyes and swallowed. That seemed to help. A long time passed; eventually I must have fallen asleep.

  When I woke it was late morning and we were entering the city, cruising down Eglinton Avenue. The bus had a driver after all—a slender black man with neatly trimmed sideburns who wore his uniform hat at a rakish angle. A sign above the windshield said, YOUR DRIVER—SAFE, COURTEOUS, and below that, on the slide-in nameplate, WILBERT CAUL. I felt like I was coming out of a nightmare. I felt happy. I stretched some of the knots out of my back. A young soldier seated across the aisle from me looked my way; I smiled, and he returned it briefly.

  “You were mumbling to yourself in your sleep last night,” he said.

  “Sorry. Sometimes I have bad dreams.”

  “It’s okay. I do too, sometimes.” He had a round open face, an apologetic grin. He was twenty, maybe. Who knew where his dreams came from? We chatted until the bus reached the station; he shook my hand and said he was pleased to meet me. He called me “sir.”

  I was not due back at the library until Monday, so I walked over to Yonge Street. The stores were busy, the tourists were out in droves, the adult theaters were doing a brisk business. Policemen in sharply creased trousers, white gloves, sauntered along among the pedestrians. It was a bright, cloudless day, but the breeze coming up the street from the lake was cool. I stood on the sidewalk outside one of the strip joints and watched the videotaped come-on over the closed circuit. The Princes Laya. Sondra Nieve, the Human Operator. Technology replaces the traditional barker, but the bodies are more or less the same. The persistence of your faith in sex and machines is evidence of your capacity to hope.

  Francis Bacon, in his masterwork The New Atlantis, foresaw the utopian world that would arise through the application of experimental science to social problems. Bacon, however, could not solve the problems of his own time and was eventually accused of accepting bribes, fined £40,000, and imprisoned in the Tower of London. He made no appeal to God, but instead applied himself to the development of the virtues of patience and acceptance. Eventually he was freed. Soon after, on a freezing day in late March, we were driving near Highgate when I suggested to him that cold might delay the process of decay. He was excited by the idea. On impulse he stopped the carriage, purchased a hen, wrung its neck, and stuffed it with snow. He eagerly looked forward to the results of his experiment. Unfortunately, in haggling with the street vendor he had exposed himself thoroughly to the cold and was seized by a chill that rapidly led to pneumonia, of which he died on April 9, 1626.

  There’s no way to predict these things.

  When the videotape started repeating itself I got bored, crossed the street, and lost myself in the crowd.

  Introduction to “Out of All Them Bright Stars”

  by Nancy Kress

  Nancy Kress is so nice that if I wrote a character like her, you wouldn’t believe she could exist. But she does.

  I’ve taught a class with her; I’ve been a guest in her home; I’ve shared hours of conversation with her at writing workshops we both attended. I read her how-to-write column in Writer’s Digest with pleasure (only slightly tinged with envy that she got that gig and I didn’t). Above all, I read and love her fiction, and no story more than “Out of All Them Bright Stars,” a tale so real and fragile and lovely that to say more about it would be to risk damaging it, like touching a butterfly’s wing or the petal of a camellia. It’s the Heisenberg principle: you can’t analyze this story without moving it to another place, so it’s no longer the story that it would have been.

  So let me say just a few words about Nancy Kress herself.

  I’ve seen and read about a lot of talented people, celebrated artists of one kind or another. I’ve watched as an undeniably brilliant film director humiliated his loyal and creative and hardworking assistant in front of some of the senior people working on his film. The director’s attack was completely unjustified; indeed, he was attacking his assistant for something that was obviously entirely the fault of the director himself. And he did it cruelly, sarcastically, on and on. Everyone in the room was squirming. It was a vile thing to see. And, I was told afterward, it was completely normal. It was how this man treated the people he depended on.

  When I talked to his assistant afterward, though, he just laughed it off (though I’m not a fool; I could see how deeply hurt he was, how he barely contained his rage and pain). “That’s the price of working with a genius,” he said.

  I reached two important conclusions right then. First, I would never, never let this director touch any project of mine, if I could help it. Such an atmosphere of selfishness and cruelty does not bring the best work from underlings—nor is it designed to. Rather it is designed to make sure that no matter how good a job they do, they take no pride in their work, so that the finished film will belong solely, completely to this selfish “genius,” and no one else will even want to claim it. (And the director is completely in control of these outbursts. He never, never directs them toward the famous, powerful stars he deals with. He only acts this way with people who are powerless compared to him. Bravely done!) This director has since done several powerful films, and people constantly ask me, “Wouldn’t it be great if you could get him to direct Ender’s Game?” And I always answer, “Life is short. I would rather never see it filmed.”

  The second conclusion I reached was this: genius excuses nothing. A cruel and selfish tyrant who makes great movies is still a cruel and selfish tyrant. A wife-beater who writes great novels is no less a wife-beater. A child molester who is also a beloved comedian is still a child molester. A famous guy who kills his ex-wife…but my point is made.

  In our society we tolerate vile behavior from our celebrities. We elect and reelect womanizers and sexual harassers, while the press assures us that the moral character of the officeholder is irrelevant. When a princess who was sexually unfaithful to her philandering husband later died in a meaningless car wreck, she was suddenly revered as a saint, even though she died in the same week as a genuinely saintly woman, Mother Teresa—the contrast couldn’t have been clearer, but the holiness adhered to the celebrity. Actor after actor, musician after musician is arrested for assault, for vandalism, for drug use, for trafficking with prostitutes, for the sheer stupidity of taking drugs or weapons on an airplane, and somebody is always willing to write some article about how these torments are the “price of genius.” The list of talented people dead of drug overdoses gets longer and longer, and in every case there were dozens of friends and employees who knew they were using and did nothing—except, afterward, to talk about how the stresses of celebrity or creativity killed them.

  Here’s a clue: what killed them was drugs, and if any of their friends and employees had valued the person instead of the “genius,” they would have turned him in for his criminal possession of drugs and thereby, quite possibly, have saved his life.

  If we expected the same standard of behavior from our artists, our politicians, our celebrities that we expect from our coworkers, our family members, and our neighbors, then yes, some careers would have been cut very short—but some ruined lives might have been saved. Am I the only one who thinks that River Phoenix and Chris Farley might have been better off with the wake-up call of serious jail time than they are right now, dead? Am I the only one that notices that whatever talent they had became unavailable to us the moment they died?

  Genius excuses nothing—and genius is better served if we make no excuses. Faulkner did not write better because he was drunk. He wrote less, not more, because of alcohol. No actor or comic or singer ever gave a better performance because of drugs or drink. No politician who could not keep his marriage vow ever proved able to live up to any promises he made to the public, either—when honor is gone in one part of life, only a fool thinks it survives in any other.

  And yet, despite these obvious truths, the myth persists that somehow being a drunk or an addict or a philanderer or simply being a jerk to other people somehow goes along with being a genius. In fact, these traits actually seem to enhance the aura of genius, so that the sexual predator or the habitual drug user is regarded as “cool.” What nonsense! What destructive, cruel deception!

  And my answer to this myth? Let me set before you exhibit A: Nancy Kress.

  Oh, please God, no, says Nancy, flushing with embarrassment as she reads this. Card didn’t really say that about me, did he? Is he trying to destroy me forever? How can I show my face in public again with this hanging over me?

  What have I done that’s so embarrassing, I ask you? I merely declared Ms. Kress, in front of everybody, to be a person of unusual kindness, generosity, open-mindedness, decenc—who is, nevertheless, gifted with extraordinary talents which she has used to create many powerful, moving works of art.

  In other words, it is possible to be possessed of genius, to create beauty and tell the truth about the world, and still be a decent human being. Nancy Kress is not the only one, she’s just such an obvious and extreme example that no one can possibly argue with my assessment. She’s not a puritan about it, she’s not a fanatic about anything, in fact—she’s just…well, good.

  And she wrote “Out of All Them Bright Stars.”

  So don’t tell me any more of those lies about the price of genius. Genius doesn’t come from misbehavior, it comes in spite of it; and letting people get away with intolerable behavior because they’re “geniuses” ends up destroying the genius, in the long run—and hurting all those who follow their examples or who have to work with them or who love them through the process of disintegration.

  If you love the genius of artists, then love the artists, too. Love them as siblings love each other, as parents love children, as friends love friends. Don’t let them get away with any crap. And when you’re deciding who’s cool, give a thought to bestowing your admiration on the artists who actually live by the rules of human decency.

  OUT OF ALL THEM BRIGHT STARS

  Nancy Kress

  So I’m filling the catsup bottles at the end of the night, and I’m listening to the radio Charlie has stuck up on top of a movable panel in the ceiling, when the door opens and one of them walks in. I know right away it’s one of them—no chance to make a mistake about that—even though it’s got on a nice-cut suit and a brim hat like Humphrey Bogart used to wear in Casablanca. But there’s nobody with it, no professor from the college or government men like on the TV show from the college or even any students. It’s all alone. And we’re a long way out the highway from the college.

  It stands in the doorway, blinking a little, with rain dripping off its hat. Kathy, who’s supposed to be cleaning the coffee machine behind the counter, freezes and stares with one hand still holding the used filter up in the air like she’s never going to move again. Just then Charlie calls out from the kitchen, “Hey, Kathy, you ask anybody who won the Trifecta?” and she doesn’t even answer him. Just goes on staring with her mouth open like she’s thinking of screaming but forgot how. And the old couple in the corner booth, the only ones left from the crowd after the movie got out, stop chewing their chocolate cream pie and stare too. Kathy closes her mouth and opens it again and a noise comes out like “Uh—errrgh…”

  Well, that made me annoyed. Maybe she tried to say “ugh” and maybe she didn’t, but here it is standing in the doorway with rain falling around it in little drops and we’re staring like it’s a clothes dummy and not a customer. So I think that’s not right and maybe we’re even making it feel a little bad, I wouldn’t like Kathy staring at me like that, and I dry my hands on my towel and go over.

  “Yes, sir, can I help you?” I say.

  “Table for one,” it says, like Charlie’s was some nice steak house in town. But I suppose that’s the kind of place the government people mostly take them to. And besides, its voice is polite and easy to understand, with a sort of accent but not as bad as some we get from the college. I can tell what it’s saying. I lead him to a booth in the corner opposite the old couple, who come in every Friday night and haven’t left a tip yet.

  He sits down slowly. I notice he keeps his hands on his lap, but I can’t tell if that’s because he doesn’t know what to do with them or because he thinks I won’t want to see them. But I’ve seen the close-ups on TV—they don’t look so weird to me like they do to some. Charlie says they make his stomach turn, but I can’t see it. You’d think he’d of seen worse meat in Vietnam. He talks enough like he did, on and on and on, and sometimes we even believe him.

  I say, “Coffee, sir?”

  He makes a sort of movement with his eyes, I can’t tell what the movement means, but he says in that polite voice, “No, thank you. I am unable to drink coffee,” and I think that’s a good thing because I suddenly remember that Kathy’s got the filter out. But then he says, “May I have a green salad, please? With no dressing, please.”

  The rain is still dripping off his hat. I figure the government people never told him to take off his hat in a restaurant, and for some reason that tickles me and makes me feel real bold. This polite blue guy isn’t going to bother anybody, and that fool Charlie was just spouting off his mouth again.

  “The salad’s not too fresh, sir,” I say, experimental-like, just to see what he’ll say next. And it’s the truth—the salad is left over from yesterday. But the guy answers like I asked something else.

  “What is your name?” he says, so polite I know he’s really curious and not starting anything. And what could he start anyway, blue and with those hands? Still, you never know.

  “Sally,” I say. “Sally Gourley.”

  “I am John,” he says, and makes that movement with his eyes again. All of a sudden it tickles me—“John!” For this blue guy! So I laugh, and right away I feel sorry, like I might have hurt his feelings or something. How could you tell?

  “Hey, I’m sorry,” I say, and he takes off his hat. He does it real slow, like taking off the hat is important and means something, but all there is underneath is a bald blue head. Nothing weird like with the hands.

  “Do not apologize,” John says. “I have another name, of course, but in my own language.”

  “What is it?” I say, bold as brass, because all of a sudden I picture myself telling all this to my sister Mary Ellen and her listening real hard.

  John makes some noise with his mouth, and I feel my own mouth open because it’s not a word he says at all, it’s a beautiful sound, like a bird call only sadder. It’s just that I wasn’t expecting it, that beautiful sound right here in Charlie’s diner. It surprised me, coming out of that bald blue head. That’s all it was: surprise.

  I don’t say anything. John looks at me and says, “It has a meaning that can be translated. It means—” but before he can say what it means Charlie comes charging out of the kitchen, Kathy right behind him. He’s still got the racing form in one hand, like he’s been studying the Trifecta, and he pushes right up against the booth and looks red and furious. Then I see the old couple scuttling out the door, their jackets clutched to their fronts, and the chocolate cream pie not half-eaten on their plates. I see they’re going to stiff me for the check, but before I can stop them Charlie grabs my arm and squeezes so hard his nails slice into my skin.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he says right to me. Not so much as a look at John, but Kathy can’t stop looking and her fist is pushed up to her mouth.

  I drag my arm away and rub it. Once I saw Charlie push his wife so hard she went down and hit her head and had to have four stitches. It was me that drove her to the emergency room.

  Charlie says again, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m serving my table. He wants a salad. Large.” I can’t remember if John’d said a large or a small salad, but I figure a large order would make Charlie feel better. But Charlie doesn’t want to feel better.

  “You get him out of here,” Charlie hisses. He still doesn’t look at John. “You hear me, Sally? You get him out. The government says I gotta serve spics and niggers but it don’t say I gotta serve him!”

  I look at John. He’s putting on his hat, ramming it onto his bald head, and half standing in the booth. He can’t get out because Charlie and me are both in the way. I expect John to look mad or upset, but except that he’s holding the muscles of his face in some different way I can’t see any change of expression. But I figure he’s got to feel something bad and all of a sudden I’m mad at Charlie, who’s a bully and who’s got the feelings of a scumbag. I open my mouth to tell him so, plus one or two other little things I been saving up, when the door flies open and in bursts four men, and damn it if they aren’t all wearing hats like Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. As soon as the first guy sees John, his walk changes and he comes over slower but more purposeful like, and then he’s talking to John and to Charlie in a sincere voice like a TV anchorman giving out the news.