The Immortals

This novel is -- in many peoples opinions -- the finest work I've done. It is certainly the work of which I am the most proud. While the book itself is out of print, it is available in electronic form for your reading.

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Excerpt from 'The Immortals'

Copyright 1996 by Tracy Hickman / Published by ROC
$19.95 (352p.) / ISBN 0-451-45402-2

Chapter 19: SUNSHINE

April 15th, 2010 / 1042 hrs.
Newhouse Center / 477th ERIS District
Wah Wah Valley, West Beaver County, Utah

Amanda was her name -- the only name she knew.
Somewhere in the records scattered in various places locally and nationally, her name was Amanda Delany, age seven, from Oakland, California. Born January 7th, 2004. Daughter of Eric Torence (deceased/V-CIDS/San Francisco) and Carolynne Delany (pre-deceased/V-CIDS/ERIS District 4). Diagnosed V-CIDS positive at the Hansen Memorial Orphans Home in Bakersfield, California on February 6th, 2010. Declared pre-deceased that same date.
Amanda knew none of that.
She sat in the dirt of the yard, her heavy jumper rustling slightly in the wind. She picked up the dirt and put it back. Picked up the dirt and put it back. She saw none of the dirt nor barely even felt the grains of sand as they slipped through her tiny, frozen fingers. She was inside herself -- a world complete, vacant and apart.
This was the play time, she knew although she barely understood what play meant now. There had been a time, part of her remembered, when play was a warm thing, a thing all sunshine and yellow and smiles. Playtime was Mommy and grass between your toes. Laughter, the deep green eyes and long lashes flashing before her face. It was tickles and squeals.
It was somewhere far from here.
Amanda didn't understand V-CIDS, quarantine, isolation or incarceration. She didn't comprehend the high sounding goals of her being here. She didn't accept her sacrifice on behalf of humanity. No one had asked her -- and she wouldn't have answered them if they did.
They brought her here, those large people who ruled her life. She suspected that they took her Mommy away from her, too. Now they shuffled her from room to room, from class to class, and droned words and pictures from the paper books at her day after day. She recognized the ducks and the mice on the pages and knew the words had meanings but only for that time and place that was now so far away. The green fields and the top-hatted frogs were in that other place that was removed from her by unimaginable distances.
So she listened quietly and obeyed. She sat and sifted the dirt. Her body struggled through the reality that was around her, yet she never lived here.
Her life was in that place of sunshine that she kept so far deep within herself that the chill of the world could not reach it. Her eyes were focused inward toward those dreams that grew more impossible day by day. She lived with her mother. She lived in the grass and sunshine. She lived far away in a place and time that even she could barely imagine. She lived within herself.
And rare it was that she ever saw anything more with her deep, brown eyes.
She was Amanda -- that was all that she knew.

* * * * *

Virgil angrily pulled his second boot on and snatched his hat from the table. "Where's the mayor or marshal or whatever you call the guy in charge around here. They can't keep me in here, that's fer sure. Not 'til I sees my lawyer or something."
Virgil stomped out of the examination room, pushing past both Olivia and Gene.
Gene shook his head and followed him. "You just don't get it, do you Cowboy? We've already received the paperwork on you. Reverend Weston got the thermalfax on you before you ever arrived. You've already been declared pre-deceased. That means that you have no rights."
"No rights?" Virgil had moved down the hall and was looking for an exit door. He found it and stuffed his head back into his hat. "Hell, boy, everybody's got rights."
"Not here!" Gene countered, trying to keep up with the long strides of the horseman's gate. "You're pre-deceased. That means that you're legally already dead."
Virgil stopped short of the exit doors. "You tellin' me that I'm pre-deceased?"
"Yes! Everyone here is!"
"And that means that I'm dead before I'm dead, don't it?"
"Exactly!"
"Well, then, if I'm already dead then thar ain't nothin' more they can do to me is thar?" Virgin jabbed his index finger pointedly into Gene's breast bone. "So if I decide that I'd rather git the hell out of here before they decide to fry me up like a bug in one of them bug zappers, what are they gonna do to me? Kill me? . . . Again?"
Gene opened his mouth but somehow no logical reply came out.
Virgil flashed his 'dumb-ass' crooked smile at Gene, shaking his head slightly. Then he turned, pushed open both the exit doors and stepped through.
He stopped short and stood in slack-jawed amazement.
A comic-book hero had just landed in the middle of the playground. Dust billowed suddenly in the children's yard, stirred to life by the dashing movement of the heavy wool cape. The heroic figure stood awkwardly, trying to regain his balance on his spindly limbs before he could deliver his trademark lines!
"Fear not, followers! Spiritwing, Defender of Truth, has returned to lead you!"
Spiritwing's long red stockings were threatening to droop around his ankles as he strode purposefully across the playground. He remained undeterred by the inconsiderate leggings. Superheros are never deterred. Within moments he stood before a dejected seven-year-old boy who was generally known as Barry but who was someone entirely different to the superhero now standing spread-legged before him.
"Lugnut! The Enforcer! I, Spiritwing, have need of your services once again!" Leaning over conspiratorially, the Defender of Truth, spoke in a whisper only loud enough to be heard by every child in the compound. "The evil Queen of the Ogres had cast a spell over the enchanted city! Everyone believes they are in a prison but we know better! We must rally our people and break this spell!"
"Yeah, O.K." Barry's words remained distant and disinterested.
The gloved hand at the end of the gray-tan thermal underwear reached out and grasped the young boy's shoulder with affection and bonding. "It is more than even you and I alone can conquer, Lugnut! We shall need the aid of the full Alliance of Heroes before this evil may be conquered. We must search among those who are asleep, whose spirits lay dormant and awaken the hero within them. Do you accept my quest!"
"Sure," said Barry with a yawn, not entirely sure what had been just said to him.
Virgil tipped his hat back on his head, as the Avenger of Wrongs made his way across the sand, his not-entirely-trusty Lugnut at his side. A few began to move about as though they were marionettes whose strings were sluggishly, tentatively being pulled in order to dance the dance of the dead.
But not all of them. For each one that stood, many others lay still in the dust, so still that Virgil thought they must be truly dead. With a start, he realized that several of them were. Others sat in the dust or leaned against the Hospice staring into a dark void the very thought of which frightened Virgil more than the dead.
"Dance the dance of the Spiritwing!" the gangly boy cried out from behind his rough-edged mask. Several of the children had gathered around him -- a puddle of semi-awareness in a sea of comatose children. "We will dispel the evil from this place. We'll fly like the eagle and be free! We'll . . ."
Suddenly, the great Defender of Truth stopped and stared directly at Virgil, slack jawed and amazed.
"Well," Virgil answered, hooking his thumbs into the waist band of his pants and giving the kid the eye. "What are you lookin' at, Mr. Masked Avenger?"
The gangly boy bolted. He cleared the short enclosure fence in a single bound, rapidly disappearing into the alleys between the barracks.
The few children who had been dancing the spooky little dance stopped at once with the departure of the boy. Their strings had been cut. They settled to the dust again, lifeless and dull.
"Well, Virgil," he said to himself, "You really ended up in the loony bin this time."
It was about then that he became aware of an insistent tugging at the bottom of his Levis. Virgil craned his head around and saw the matted top of a small girl's head. Her hand had grasped his jeans and was shaking them back and forth. She didn't actually look into his eyes, her own stare vacant and distant, yet her words were to him: a hollow litany from a past life.
"Mister, hey, mister. Mister, hey, mister . . ."
Virgil turned and stooped down to the level of the child. Her face was dirty beyond recognition and her hair color could only be guessed at. Her nose ran constantly, a thin trickle of blood visible in the mucus. This kid's got it, Virgil thought, this kid's gonna die.
It was the eyes that held him. They were deep and they were brown -- and they were vacant.
"What is it, littl' darlin'," Virgil said in his honey voice.
The girl glanced up at him, seeing him for only a moment before she retreated behind her eyes. "Mister, are you a for real cowboy?"
Virgil's eyes teared up. He thought he'd heard every lonesome sound there was. The girl's voice was a sound beyond tears -- a sound one makes when you've cried so long you can't cry ever again. He wondered how long it had been since this small child had asked anyone anything. Words without feeling -- words beyond feeling.
He quickly sniffed and wiped the moisture away from his eyes with two quick flicks of his hand. It wouldn't do for a real live cowboy to cry.
"Yes siree, bob, I sure am!" Virgil watched the girl's face as he spoke, quietly and softly. "Do you like cowboys, little missy?"
The unfocused eyes turned down toward the dirt. The girl simply stood there, doing nothing, saying nothing, yet making no motion to move away, to break the moment with him. She's like a little doe, Virgil thought, too scared to leave and too afraid to stay. She'll move -- but only when she's ready.
Moments passed between them. Virgil was mountain, however, and understood silence better than most city folk understand noise. He knew he had to get out of camp, but this strange little girl held him where he knelt.
"Yes." She spoke.
"Yes, you do like cowboys -- well, I like you, too." Virgil made no move, wary of frightening the wild creature so close to him. "What's your name, darlin'?"
Moments slid between them like a slow river. Virgil began to feel the sense of lazy time that the girl lived by.
"Amanda."
"Amanda," he repeated in quiet tones filled with softness. "Amanda is a beautiful name."
His time slowed to hers. Virgil felt the world growing more distant around them.
"Amanda," Virgil said, for he sensed he was coming into her secret, special place. "What can I do for you, darlin'?"
The girl looked at him. Their eyes locked and for the moment he saw into the depths of the three year old's soul. The girl's eyes filled with water, her lower lip trembled.
"Mister," she said in a quivering voice. "You smell like sunshine and grass."
Virgil smiled at her and sniffed through his own watery eyes. "Yes, ma'am, I suppose I do -- though I've smelt of worse." He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his handkerchief. Almost instinctively he reached out and wiped the girl's nose. As he did, Amanda reached out for him as well, her small, dust-caked hand running down the bristles of his unshaven face slowly with barely the touch of a breeze.
"Hey, you!"
A voice from another time. Another place.
"Hey, you leave that girl alone!"
Virgil glanced up. Some old woman was yelling at him.
"You get out of here right now! These kids are all sick and they don't need you around! Get out, you hear? Get out before I call the guard on you!"
When Virgil looked back, Amanda had turned away, her face a mask and her eyes a dull and unfocused sheen.
Virgil stood and stepped over the low fence. He looked up to where the Commons was. The nurse woman had told him to take his problems to this Weston fellow up in the church. Virgil determined to bring more to the man than just his own troubles.
"Leave kids alone!" Virgil muttered to himself. "Bull-Shee-it!"

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Reviews

I've been pleased by the reviews on my book. I hope you will take the time to read it -- there's so much there I want to share with you.

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Quick Index:

Jeff Grubb's Review;
Publishers Weekly Review;

Starlog Review

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Review: by Jeff Grubb on Alt.fan.dragonlance

The Immortals
A Novel By Tracy Hickman

Summary: Read This Book.

The Immortals is a novel by Tracy Hickman, famous with Margaret Weis for such popular fantasy series as Dragonlance, and Death Gate. However, this book sweeps everything that came before it away in a powerful and moving story of the near future. This is a well-written book. This is a complex book. This is an incredible book. This is an important book.
In the near future, America is threatened by an virulent AIDs-like virus, and the government finds the solution to be to ship those contaminated out into the Utah desert to internment camps. One man breaks into a camp to find his son, a victim of the virus. The father finds that there is more to the internment camps than is known to the world outside. But this is no techno-fantasy or rousing adventure novel, but rather a story of men and women reclaiming their humanity in the face of tragedy and death.
To say more would be to spoil the unfolding of the plot. Suffice to say that Hickman never cheats his readers. There are no miracles from beyond or bolts from the blue or cavalry riding over the hill. The book moves logically and relentlessly forward, and no one is spared, just like in real life.
Hickman's characters are amazing and diverse. Gay and straight, old and young, military and civilian, mad and sane, each holds our attention with a tight focus. These are not cookie-cutter figures from some WWII prison camp film, but real, breathing characters, which create a spectrum of individuals, all with their own personalities and motivations. The "bad guys" are bad guys for a reason.
And Hickman has a firm hand on madness, from military officers wrapping themselves in the flag to cover atrocities to religious leaders powered by faith in a world that god had abandoned, to guilt-ridden idealists, to one gonzo fellow-prisoner who I will think of every time I see a Marx Brothers movie.
Hickman also stresses the soul-crushing nature of authority and bureaucracy. He frightens me in that the future he proposes, the slow, steady decline to this horrible stage, is both reasonable and rational. He shows that not only that it can happen here, it can happen here with surprising and fluid ease. He paves the road to hell with believable acts by rational people, which makes it all the more frightening.
The Immortals is not a book about AIDS, or bureaucracy, or death. It is a book about redemption of the human soul in the face of atrocity and madness. It is a story of about life as well as death. It is a story about the human spirit, and it succeeds in end to provide resolution and in some small part restitution.
This is not an easy book. It not a comfortable book. It is not a book easily described and categorized. It made me angry. It made me weep, yet I could not put it aside. It made me face a lot of issues on a number of fronts, and has already ignited some heated discussions with friends. This is an incendiary tome, a calm, reasonable fireball of book.
I do not recommend books lightly, but I must send anyone reading this out to get a copy. First, because it is a very good book, but second, because it is a risky book. Tracy Hickman could have continued to put out novels in the fantasy genre, safe and secure in the loyal following that would purchase and enjoy them. Instead he jumped to science fiction, took on an unpopular and dark subject, and pulled no punches in his delivery.
What he has done is risky in the modern book world. Hickman risks losing some of his fantasy following who would not pick up an SF novel, while hard-core SF fans may be dubious about a book from a man who made his mark with dragons. And worst of all, tucked in the SF/Fantasy section, the larger world may not even know of this book's existence. And this is too good a book to ignore. For this reason, I'm taking to the net and spreading the word. Buy this book. Buy two, and give one to a friend. Its that damn good.
There are books which are written, and books which HAVE to be written, that are too important NOT to write. The Immortals is in the latter category, and it shows it - it gleams with an internal fury and glows of its own radiance. It is the best thing Tracy Hickman has ever done, and the best book you will read this year.
I'm posting this to alt.fan.dragonlance. Please feel free to repost it, unchanged, anywhere else in the net that you think that it would be applicable. Only by getting the word out can others find out about this wonderful book.
Thanks for your attention. Now go get a copy.

Jeff Grubb -- alt.fan.dragonlance

Publisher's Weekly

The Immortals
Tracy Hickman, Roc, $19.95 (352p.)
ISBN 0-451-45402-2
It's 2010, and an attempted cure for AIDS has mutated into a deadlier disease, V-CIDS. The U.S., under martial law, has set up "quarantine centers" in the Southwest. Searching for his gay son, Joh, media mogul Michael Barris smuggles himself into one of centers only to discover that it and the other centers are actually extermination camps. With a strange assortment of allies, including the leader of the camp's gay barracks, an army officer and a local cowboy, Barris precipitates an inmates' rebellion that promises the unraveling of the death-camp system and the overthrow of the government that established it. Here, Hickman is working with a classic SF theme that's been popular since the days when the Great Menace could be the Yellow Peril or invaders from Mars. It shares some its predecessors' common faults -- sentimentality, a doubious scenario, questionable technology -- but boasts some considerable virtues, including superior characterization, a carefully built setting and excellent pacing. This novel represents a radical departure for the author, who's known for more easily popular SF and fantasy (the Deathgate Cycle, etc.) He's to be commended for his daring and vision. (May)

Starlog

The Immortals by Tracy Hickman
(Roc, trade paperback(?), 352 pp, $19.95)
Books in the tradition of the very real Schindler's List (whose hero is specifically mentioned as an influence on this novel's protagonist, Michael Barris) or the speculative fiction The Handmaid's Tale present a challenge. They are powerful, disturbing books, taking hard, uncompromising looks at the nature of evil. The Immortals is one of these. Its premise is that in the year 2010 AIDS has mutated into the even deadlier V-CIDS virus, and that the Government, under the impulse of religious fundamentalists, has set up concentration camps for its victims.
Obviously, The Immortals is for the serious-minded. Dramatically, the novel succeeds because of its pacing, characters and Tracy Hickman's skill at keeping the action moving. This has the effect of keeping the reader's interest high; on the other hand, what The Immortals gains in suspense, it loses in literary values. A more intimate reflective narrative a la Margaret Atwood may have, ultimately, transcended the grimness of the tale and given it a more lasting, universal quality. Still, one can't judge The Immortals for what it deliberately is not. As it stands, it is an engrossing and scary dystopia, excellently realized.
-- Jean-Marc Lofficier
Starlog Magazine / June #227

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