Seeklight

K. W. Jeter, whose SEEKLIGHT follows as the first of these novels in whose publication I have assisted, is a twenty-four-year-old Californian, a state university graduate who prefers to keep his persona out of his work, a position which I share in relation to my own and with which I am in hearty agreement. Other than knowing that he is married, widely-read in’s-f (this would be obvious without testimony simply from the novel) and utterly committed to his work, I know only that he is greatly and diversely talented and that given a reasonable contribution of luck, that luck without which none of us would ever have achieved any success (this is not paranoia; life is luck, breath is luck, love is luck) he may achieve a major career within this field. SEEKLIGHT is one of the three or four best’s-f novels I have ever read and on any level is a distinguished contribution to the field; it promises to be an auspicious start to an auspicious career but even if it did not it is, on its own terms, a wholly successful and gripping novel which should provide its readers with hours of entertainment and, after the fact and by implication, a rather deeper level of inference which emerges from the book only as the consequence of its full statement. The “statement” however may be taken or more properly left; this is, in my opinion, a work of art but it is first and last and more important a work of craft and delight.

With more pride than it is perhaps seemly to admit, I gladly turn over to you SEEKLIGHT and K. W. Jeter.

Barry Malzberg

New Jersey

Seeklight

Prologue

It would be so easy to die. He pressed his face against the rain-soaked ground, curling himself into a ball under the storm’s slashing weight. A twist of lightning that shouted through the wind revealed his hands, clenched into the muddy hillside. In the moment of pale light they seemed corpse-like and drained of blood.

Somewhere at the base of the hill, one of his pursuers’ mounts screamed as it wheeled in fear, goaded by its rider into the face of the storm. An echoing chorus from the other equines, more like sobbing children than animals, came out of the darkness below. It was followed by shouts and curses from the subthane’s men, as they whipped the animals into submission.

He managed to get his hands and knees under himself.

Crouching, he listened to the cries and noises at the hill’s foot. In the dark, with the rain and wind distorting the world, it was impossible to tell if the pursuers were moving away, giving up here and searching elsewhere; or starting to force their mounts up the hill face with its jumble of wet-slick boulders.

His left leg slewed out from under him as he tried to stand.

He dropped back to his knees as he felt the edge of pain slice through the numbness. He rolled onto his right side and felt with his hands for the pain’s source. The wetness that drenched his thigh was thick and hot, welling out faster than the rain could wash it away. He lifted his hands close to his face, and another jag of lightning showed them, stained with blood that looked more black than red. The wound had opened further, the stiff clot on his skin breaking away to reveal the warm interior of this huge, silently screaming mouth, framed by the ragged edges of cloth.