Levels: The Host Read online

  Praise for Levels: The Host

  “Emshwiller can build suspense, and has a good sense of ironic fitness.”

  –Locus Magazine

  “The book has a certain page-turning power. It kept me reading to find out what would happen to poor Watly Caiper….”

  –Amazing Stories

  “[Emshwiller] handles [his story] masterfully and with a sense of theater that seems to both emerge naturally from his background and bode well for future dealings with Hollywood. This one could make a very good movie.”

  –Analog

  “There has always been a small, underappreciated group of imaginative fiction writers… who deal with real, human characters. Now, with his first novel, The Host, Peter Emshwiller has joined that group…. The Host’s vivid characters… its playful take on the English language, and its feeling of ‘could be-ness’ will leave you wanting more. Which is good, because a sequel is due out next year.”

  –Gallery Magazine

  “Other novels that received a lot of attention and acclaim this year included:…The Host by Peter R. Emshwiller (Bantam Spectra)…”

  –The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Ninth Annual Collection

  “…Emshwiller is unafraid to wrestle with and take bold stands on controversial moral issues…”

  –Raymond’s Reviews

  The best cyberpunk works are distinguished from previous work with similar themes by a certain style… There is often a sense of moral ambiguity; simply fighting “the system” (to topple it, or just to stay alive) does not make the main characters “heroes” or “good” in the traditional sense. [Emshwiller’s The Host is one of the] classic Cyberpunk novels which [is now] out-of-print.

  –Lincoln City Libraries BookGuide

  “… [Nothing] can quite compare to wandering the dusty shelves of a secondhand bookstore and discovering a hidden gem, wedged deep within a stack of well-read paperbacks… The Host and [its sequel] Short Blade offer a significant level of world-building, social commentary, and gender exploration.”

  –Beauty in Ruins

  LEVELS

  book one

  THE HOST

  Peter R. Emshwiller

  The Art of Persuasion Group

  Dedication

  Dedicated to my incredible poovus, Margaret, for all her help, support, and love; my wonderful new family, Rich, Vicky, Melissa, and Mary Elizabeth; my great and talented sisters, Eve and Susan; and both my mothers, the genius Carol and the late, great Ed. (Miss you, Dad.) And to Amy, for thinking I had something here.

  Who says there’s no such thing as family anymore?

  LEVELS: THE HOST

  Published by The Art of Persuasion Group / July 2014. ISBN 978-0-9906073-0-4

  Copyright © 2014 by Peter R. Emshwiller.

  Cover art copyright © 2014 by Peter R. Emshwiller and Margaret Mayo McGlynn.

  All rights reserved.

  First published as a Bantam Spectra Book / May 1991 (ISBN 0-553-289M-5, OPM 0987634321)

  Original copyright © 1991 by Peter R. Emshwiller.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

  Contents

  AUTHOR’S FORWARD 25th Anniversary Edition

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE: THE SETUP

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  PART TWO: MAXIMUM CULPABILITY

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  PART THREE: UNDERNEATH IT ALL

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  AUTHOR’S FORWARD 25th Anniversary Edition (with extra butter)

  Corny and clichéd as it sounds, I first conceived of the basic setting for this book while sitting on a park bench, sketching on a paper napkin. It was springtime in Manhattan in the mid 1980s. I drew a picture of what was right in front of me: a New York City street scene stretching off into a distant vanishing point, dead center on the paper. I stared at the sketch and, after a while, added a horizontal line right smack-dab through the middle of it at the fifth-story level. It was a classic “light-bulb” moment.

  Soon after that, I began working on this novel. I started by mulling. And mulling. Mulling in the shower, mulling on the subway, mulling in the Xerox copy center I worked at back then. Everyone around me thought I’d gone off a tad. Like bad cheese. I mulled so much I could barely hold a conversation. Barely walk a straight line. But eventually, finally, I stopped mulling and started actually writing. I wrote on and off during the next three years. Sometimes I wrote frenetically in every free moment I could steal, while other times I’d take multiple months away from the damn thing… especially if I’d written myself into some cliffhanger corner I couldn’t for the life of me solve. (Strangely, the solutions always turned out to have been right in front of me the entire time.)

  I did this first, rough, handwritten draft entirely on yellow legal pads (using my super-special lucky pen), much of it scribbled down in Greenwich Village’s historic White Horse Tavern between pints of beer. (I would sit and work in the very booth where, legend had it, Dylan Thomas drank himself to death. I liked the drama of that story, but I wasn’t planning on repeating his performance. At least not until I finished the book.) Since I didn’t map anything out ahead of time or outline or preplan the novel in any way (I was using what I’d later learn was called the “blind discovery” technique), most of the surprises and twists came as complete shocks to me, too. This was really cool. I loved it when my own subconscious would jump out and yell gotcha! It was almost like I was happily munching on a big bowl of popcorn and watching the story unfold in front of me just as my future readers would experience it.

  Later, across town from my “office” in the White Horse Tavern and back in my tiny East Village apartment, I’d ignore the constant wail of sirens outside the window as best I could. I was busy trying to decipher my crazy left-hander’s chicken scratching so I could type the whole thing out on the used electric typewriter my mom had given me. This was, in essence, the second draft. I found the act of typing up my handwritten stuff was also an act of revising.

  Yes, those were the ancient days of typewriters, not quite as long ago as stone tablet times, but pretty close. The ribbons & whiteout era. Nowadays it’s even hard for me
to imagine how the hell I wrote an entire novel without using a computer. (No cut & paste?? No global changes??? WTF??)

  Anyway, long-story-slightly-less-long, Amy Stout over at Bantam/Spectra books was nice enough to buy and publish this thing (and its sequel, Short Blade, which was still barely a twinkle in my eye when she agreed to purchase it). I originally envisioned these books as part of a trilogy, but there was a big shakeup at Bantam soon after the second novel came out, and the third book was never bought (or, sadly, even written). One of these days I’d really like to remedy that. Perhaps soon.

  And now to bring you up to date. Not to brag (much) but in the twenty-something years since it first came out (I’m that old?), this-here book has been optioned by a veritable Who’s Who of Hollywood (does the name Jerry Bruckheimer ring a bell? Yeah, you heard me). But it has yet to be made into, um, an actual film. However, as part of this ongoing process, numerous scripts have been commissioned by all the various producers who took options. I’ve managed to get my hands on all of them (don’t ask how) and I must say it’s a very interesting experience reading them. Some were pretty close to the book and pretty freakin’ good, some were not close to the book at all and yet were great (I wished I’d thought of half of the stuff these brilliant screenwriters came up with), and, finally, some of the screenplays seemed to have nothing whatsoever to do with the book and read like bad episodes of Mannix. Ah, Hollywood. Humbling and maddening all at once.

  Okay, down to copper tacks: I haven’t changed The Host much for this ebook edition, other than in four small ways.

  One: I really wanted the text of this edition to be the exact same book that came out back in 1991 but, after much deliberating, I decided to delete one tiny, passing mention of the World Trade Center buildings I had included in a description of my futuristic Manhattan skyline. Honestly, I just didn’t want it to trigger horrible memories of the dark events of 9/11 in the middle of what is, hopefully, just a fun, escapist, popcorny romp.

  Two: Since I didn’t own the rights to the original cover (painted by the wonderful Paul Youll for the paperback), I needed to create a new one. As a former artist/illustrator myself (and with the help of a wife who is a professional graphic designer and artist, among many other things), I figured we collaborate and do it “in-house.” It was great fun. Hardly any bickering. Hardly.

  In the end it’s pretty much the cover I’d always envisioned. It’s not that different, in fact, from what I sketched on the napkin all those years ago. Ironically (considering the #1 change, above), when showing it around recently, one guy mentioned that the twin Empire State buildings combined with the flying spaceships gave him an unpleasant 9/11 vibe. Crap. The last thing we wanted. (Heavy sigh.)

  Three: When they bought the original manuscript, one of the few things Bantam asked me to change was the name P-pajer. I’m not sure why. Face it, my book is full of weird-ass names. But maybe they thought it was confusing to have a name with a hyphen right up near the front of it like that? Maybe the copyeditor was allergic to name hyphens? Dunno. It wasn’t that important to me at the time, so I agreed to change it to Pepajer. Since it was in those pre-personal-computer days, I actually went through my manuscript with a fine point black pen and hand-changed every dash in the name into an e by adding a little loop around it.

  But for this ebook edition I’ve given P-pajer back her original moniker, just ‘cause I like the way it looks and sounds. The double Ps are pronounced like the beginning of the word papyrus. Nice peppy plosives popping from your plump puckered lips.

  Four: And finally, the title. In the decades since this novel was first published there have been a surprising numbers of books (and movies!) called The Host. (Most of ‘em written by folks way more famous than I am. Stephanie Meyer, anyone?) After much hemming and hawing and late night whining (“But it was my title first! Waaaaah!”), I finally decided to modify the name enough so that it was clearly differentiated from these more recent projects. Levels is now the name of the series of novels (thanks for coming up with that title, Lucas Foster!), and The Host is now the subtitle which refers to this first book. The sequel will be released as Levels: Short Blade. (And, if I ever get around to finishing the trilogy, the last book will be called something like Levels: Jesusland.)

  I hope you enjoy reading this thing. I did. No joke. I have to admit, when, in preparation for this rerelease, I finally sat down and read it again from beginning to end after all these years… I had way more fun than I expected. Tons of fun. I actually like this crazy thing a lot. It’s a helluva ride, I think. I hope you think so, too.

  Make yourself a nice big bowl of popcorn, sit back, and enjoy.

  –June 2014, Peter R. Emshwiller

  PROLOGUE

  Something about California.

  Something curious happened out there, word had it. Something interesting, they said. Something big. All official channels were silent on the subject, but word of mouth was buzzing with vague, strange tales. By the time these stories traveled across the continent, across the entire United Countries of America, through the borders of Arizonia and the Nuclear Nations and the Drug Zones and Jesusland and Pennyork and all the other countries, by the time they reached from the Republic of California to Brooklyn, they had become nebulous and blurry. Amorphous gossip. People talked on street corners. People speculated and elaborated. Whatever it had started out as, it was distorted, mutated—probably bore little resemblance to the truth. Or to the facts, either.

  California. Something about the Republic of California. Something had happened out there. Something those here weren’t supposed to know about. Something those in power wanted to contain. Something involving violence, perhaps. Little people, big changes.

  Some said it was mass destruction. Earthquakes, the bomb, war. . . . But most said it was an uprising—a takeover of some kind. Revolution. No one used the word revolution—no. But it was there, unspoken, floating just beneath the surface of every conversation. Revy. It was a tough word to say out loud. A tough word to think about. The connotations of that one simple word . . . enormous. So no one said it. But it was there.

  And during this, during these drifting rumors and quiet mutterings and murmurings, perhaps because of them, something moved in the people. Something shifted slightly. Tilted. Twisted. It was not a specific, tangible thing, but even in Brooklyn you could feel it in the air. A vibration. An electricity. A charge that went from negative to positive. An excitement that . . . something was going to happen soon here. Here. People felt a pulling together.

  The news reports said nothing. The news reports always said nothing. There were hardly ever any real bulletins anyway, except about the local countries. Once in a while you’d hear something bland about the other, more western ones. Nothing important. And there was never anything at all about overseas. The distant lands outside of the UCA had been totally out of bounds since well before Cedetime. Shut out completely. For all anyone knew, things might have become very nice over there in the Outerworld in all this time since Euroshima. But nobody knew, or cared, really. There were probably lots of low wars going on there. There always were. Fights over territory, economics, or religion—all of which really were the same thing in the end. But this California talk, this was different. It made people hinky. Uneasy. Fidgety.

  There was unrest about. Unspecified, unfocused unrest. Lots of it. The streets were thick with it. Clogged with it. The streets of Brooklyn, and even the streets—the bottom ones—in the country of Manhattan itself.

  Watly Caiper didn’t care. Not at all. He had more important things to think about. Personal things. Things involving his goals, his ambitions. His life. Things were moving for him. All that rumor stuff was of no concern. None at all. Let other people think on it. He didn’t care. Caring was something Watly used to do. That was his mother’s influence. That was her way. Now . . . now he cared about himself. Now he cared about his dreams, his plans.

 
His plans.

  Tiny toenails and hyperventilating cries. Fine wispy locks and contented gurgles. Small toothless smiles and first words. The pink cheeks, warm to the touch, and that bubbly cooing. Grasping hands—always grasping. Eyes focusing, tracking, gazing lovingly. Hiccups. Spit-up on a towel. The smell of shit—somehow sweeter and less offensive than your own. Hugs and cuddles and tiny feather kisses. The laughs, the incredible impossible giggles. Dependency goaded, prodded, nudged into a painful independence, like you’d coax out a burp. Someday. Somehow. Raising another self until that self can do it alone. And on. Babies. Children. Kids. Being in on it. In on the formation of another person. A different person. Better, maybe. A person to carry on. The new wave. The pass-along.

  “You don’t pay back,” Watly’s mother would say. “You pay forward.” And so.

  This is where Watly Caiper’s mind was. This was the nature of his thoughts. The Republic of California was not a concern. Unrest was not a concern. Revy was not a concern. Leading a revolution was the last thing on his mind. The last thing. If you had mentioned it, he would have laughed and slipped quietly away. There was a time he would not have laughed. Or slipped away. There was a time he would have cared. But that was long ago. That was then and now was now. Now he was out for himself. And for his passion.

  Mothering.

  PART ONE

  THE SETUP

  The me is a movable thing.

  – Watly Caiper

  CHAPTER 1

  Thump thump thump.

  He was a real pig of a man. Size of a house, with little tufts of black and gray hair peeking from each nostril. The sign in front of his desk said his name was Mr. Oldyer and that he was Examination Five.

  Thump thump thump.

  Oldyer. Ol-die-yer. That’s how the clerk had pronounced it. Ol-die-yer. Rhymes with mold buyer.

  Thump thump thump.

  He had no hair to speak of except for that nose stuff and, Watly suspected, an ugly mat of it all down his back. He didn’t just look fat, he looked bloated—inflated, pumped up with fluid or jelly or something. His eyes seemed almost buried amid little puffs and folds of extra lumpy flesh. The two thick lids looked permanently bruised. And beneath it all—beneath these pinkish flaps and lumps—two glistening pupils could still be seen. They watched coldly and aloofly, with that special mixture of hatred and condescension that always appears when one gives a little scrap of power to a little scrap of a mind.