–and its various possible associations with the main unit. But by the time this information became available to her, 113-A had been placed under heavy guard. Professor Mantelish had made one attempt to smuggle it out to her.
Huff-huff!
–but had been unable to walk past the guards with it. Tranest agents had made several unsuccessful attempts to pick up the plasmoid. She knew that another group had made similarly unsuccessful attempts. The Devagas. She did not yet know the specific nature of 113-A’s importance. But it was important.
As for the rest of it…
Trigger: Trigger Argee might be able to tell them why Trigger was important. Doctor Fayle certainly could. So could the top ranks of the Devagas hierarchy. Lyad, at the moment, could not. She did know that Trigger Argee’s importance was associated directly with that of plasmoid 113-A. This information had been obtained from a Devagas operator, now dead. Not Balmordan. The operator had been in charge of the attempted pickup on Evalee. The much more elaborate affair at the Colonial School had been a Tranest job. A Devagas group had made attempts to interfere with it, but had been disposed of.
Pluly: Lyad had strings on Belchik. He was afraid of the Devagas but somewhat more terrified of her. His fear of the Devagas was due to the fact that he and an associate had provided the hierarchy with a very large quantity of contraband materials. The nature of the materials indicated the Devagas were constructing a major fortified outpost on a world either airless or with poisonous atmosphere. Pluly’s associate had since been murdered. Pluly believed he was next in line to be silenced.
Balmordan: Balmordan had been a rather high-ranking Devagas Intelligence agent. Lyad had heard of him only recently. He had been in charge of the attempts to obtain 113-A. Lyad had convinced him that she would make a very dangerous competitor in the Manon area. She also had made information regarding her activities there available to him.
So Balmordan and a select group of his gunmen had attended Pluly’s party on Pluly’s yacht. They had been allowed to force their way into the sealed level and were there caught in a black-light trap. The gunmen had been killed. Balmordan had been questioned.
The questioning revealed that the Devagas had found Doctor Fayle and the 112-113 unit, almost immediately after Fayle’s disappearance. They had succeeded in creating some working plasmoids. To go into satisfactory operation, they still needed 113-A. Balmordan had not known why. But they no longer needed Trigger Argee. Trigger Argee was now to be destroyed at the earliest opportunity. Again Balmordan had not known why. Fayle and his unit were in the fortress dome the Devagas had been building. It was in the area Lyad had indicated. It was supposed to be very thoroughly concealed. Balmordan might or might not have known its exact coordinates. His investigators made the inevitable slip finally and triggered a violent mind-block reaction. Balmordan had died. Dead-braining him had produced no further relevant information.
The little drumfire of questions ended abruptly. Trigger glanced at her watch. It had been going on for only fifteen minutes, but she felt somewhat dizzy by now. The Ermetyne just looked a little more wilted.
After a minute, Commissioner Tate inquired politely whether there was any further information the First Lady could think of to give them at this time.
She shook her head. No.
Only Professor Mantelish believed her.
But the interrogation was over, apparently.
Voila. Everything the reader needs to know to tie up any loose ends — all of it written by Schmitz very economically. The entire sequence is 875 words in length. The material which directly involves Geth Fayle and Doctor Azol is not more than 250 words — about one page in print.
As opposed to the endless, slow-moving scenes in chapters 6-9 (and elsewhere) where the same information is dragged out over and again, in a context where it simply confuses and fatigues the reader. And for no purpose at all.
The other problem, by the way — this is usually the byproduct of interjecting too much exposition where it isn’t needed — is that the heart of the story gets buried. There is a mystery in the story unfolding in the first half of the novel: why is Trigger acting so far out of character? But that real mystery is simply buried under the mass of material concerning the meaningless “mystery” of how the plasmoid got stolen in the first place. So the reader’s interest in the story gets blunted twice over — once by the tedium of the exposition, and then again by missing the genuine puzzle of the central character’s actions.
I’m sure, by now, people are wanting to ask me: Well fine, Eric, but then why did Schmitz put it in?
The answer’s simple. He put it in because writers screw up, now and then. And this particular screw-up, too much exposition, is probably the most common error committed by most SF writers, including very good and experienced ones.
The error is what you might call an “occupational hazard” of being a science fiction or fantasy writer. Writing F&SF poses a particular challenge which is not faced by most writers in most genres. Except for historical fiction, most non-SF/F writers don’t have to worry about general background as such. By which I mean the overall setting, not the personal background of the characters. Literally — what planet are we on?
(And even lots of historical writers don’t have to deal with general setting. A modern audience is so familiar with the American West that a western writer does not, for instance, have to explain what a horse is, or a Colt revolver or how it works.)
Think, for a moment, how much of this kind of general background is automatically assumed in a mystery novel. The detective gets into his car. Does the writer have to explain what a car is? Nope. He goes to visit his friend the police lieutenant at the police station. Does the writer have to explain what a policeman is, or how high the rank of lieutenant is? Nope. And so on and so forth.
But science fiction and fantasy writers, unless they’re writing a “near future” novel or the equivalent, do have to worry about it. They are not simply telling a story, they are simultaneously required to provide you with the entire setting in which the story takes place.
Doing this is tricky. Provide the reader with too little background information, and they can’t follow the story. Too much, and the story starts getting buried under the information.
Either mistake is possible but, in practice, SF writers are far more likely to commit the second. Most SF writers — and all good ones — spend a lot of time thinking through their setting and its logic. The problem is that when they finally get down to actually writing the story, it is not easy for them to distinguish between the information which they had to figure out in order to make sure the background made sense, and what is actually needed by the reader to follow the story itself. So, usually unconsciously, they wind up putting in too much “just to be safe.”
The ultimate problem is simply that by the time an SF writer gets down to writing the story, he or she is usually too close to it to be able to see clearly what background information is really needed and what isn’t.
That’s precisely why good editing can make such a difference. Because an editor, coming at the story fresh, is in a far better position than the writer to see what’s really needed and what isn’t in the way of background. Just because they haven’t been involved in building the prop scenery, they can spot the unneeded extra lumber more easily. Standing in front of the scene, instead of behind it where the scenery is held together by all the lumber and hardware, they can tell the author which 2×4 is sticking out onto the stage and which facade has too much paint on it. They just intrinsically have a better perspective.
This is why, by the way — like most authors I know — I routinely accept at least 90% of the editorial changes proposed in my own novels. In probably 3/4 of the instances, I can’t really see what the problem is. But unless it’s something I feel really strongly about, which happens rarely, I will defer to my editor’s judgment. Because I understand that he or she is more likely to spot something that I’m missing simply because I’ve lived with that story for too long.
I have no idea who edited A Tale of Two Clocks (the original title for Legacy) when it was published, almost 40 years ago. Nor do I care. Whoever it was, they did a mediocre job. That’s putting it bluntly, but honestly. It’s possible, of course, that the editor did spot this problem, brought it to Schmitz’s attention, and Schmitz just got stubborn about it. But given the long history of the close working relationship between Schmitz and John Campbell — and the fact that you almost never see this mistake in the Schmitz stories which Campbell edited — I think that’s unlikely. I can’t prove it, of course, but I believe the editor just fell down on the job. And thereby did Schmitz a disservice.