In the Deadlands: Stories
Author: David Gerrold
Date: 2014-01-28 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction
Description: David Gerrold burst onto the science fiction scene in the late sixties with more Hugo and Nebula nominations than any other writer had ever received at the beginning of his career. His first collection of stories, With a Finger in My I , showcased his remarkable range. The jewel in that collection was "In the Deadlands," a bizarre and disturbing journey into a landscape of madnessnot so much a story as a sculpture made of words. Nominated for the Nebula award for best novelette of the year, "In the Deadlands" has been out of print for 40 years. This new collection contains all the stories from
Publisher: Benbella Books
Rights: All rights reserved

More titles by David Gerrold

The Trouble with Tribbles: The Story Behind Star Trek’s Most Popular Episode

The World of Star Trek

Boarding the Enterprise: Transporters, Tribbles, and the Vulcan Death Grip in Gene Rodenberry’s Star Trek

Starhunt: A Star Wolf Novel

The Voyage of the Star Wolf: Star Wolf Trilogy, Book One

The Middle of Nowhere: Star Wolf Trilogy, Book Two

Blood and Fire: Star Wolf Trilogy, Book Three

The Man Who Folded Himself

Alternate Gerrolds: An Assortment of Fictitious Lives

When HARLIE Was One: Release 2.0

Under the Eye of God: Trackers, Book One

A Covenant of Justice: Trackers, Book Two

Space Skimmer: Book One

Moonstar: Jobe, Book One

Chess with a Dragon

Deathbeast

Child of Earth: Sea of Grass, Book One

Child of Grass: Sea of Grass, Book Two

The Flying Sorcerers

In the Deadlands

Stories

David Gerrold

BenBella Books, Inc.

Dallas, Texas

Copyright © 2014 by David Gerrold

“Foreword: The Inevitability of Envy” copyright © by Adam-Troy Castro

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

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Copyright Acknowledgments

These stories, some in slightly or substantially different versions, have appeared in the following publications:

“With a Finger in My I” was previously published in Again, Dangerous Vision, copyright © 1972 by Harlan Ellison; With a Finger in My I, copyright © 1972 by David Gerrold

“All of Them Were Empty—” was previously published in With a Finger in My I, copyright © 1972 by David Gerrold

“Oracle for a White Rabbit” was previously published in Galaxy Magazine, copyright © 1969 Universal Publishing & Distributing Corporation; With a Finger in My I, copyright © 1972 by David Gerrold.

“Love Story in Three Acts” was previously published in Nova 1, copyright © 1970 by Harry Harrison; With a Finger in My I, copyright © 1972 by David Gerrold

“Yarst!” was previously published in With a Finger in My I, copyright © 1972 by David Gerrold

“Afternoon with a Dead Bus” was previously published in Protostars, copyright © 1971 by David Gerrold

“An Infinity of Loving” was previously published in Ten Tomorrows, copyright © 1973 by Roger Elwood

“Skinflowers” was previously published in The Berserkers, copyright © 1974 by David Gerrold

“Battle Hum and the Boje” was previously published in With a Finger in My I, copyright © 1972 by David Gerrold.

“How We Saved the Human Race” was previously published in With a Finger in My I, copyright © 1972 by David Gerrold.

“This Crystal Castle” was previously published in With a Finger in My I, copyright © 1972 by David Gerrold.

“In the Deadlands” was previously published in With a Finger in My I, copyright © 1972 by David Gerrold

For Harlan and Susan Ellison,
with love.

Contents

Foreword: The Inevitability of Envy

Introduction

With a Finger in My I

All of Them Were Empty—

Oracle for a White Rabbit

Love Story in Three Acts

Yarst!

The Cure

Afternoon with a Dead Bus

An Infinity of Loving

Skinflowers

Battle Hum and the Boje

How We Saved the Human Race

This Crystal Castle

In the Deadlands

Foreword: The Inevitability of Envy

There’s nothing I can tell you about how great David Gerrold is that he isn’t perfectly prepared to tell you himself.

Wait.

That came out wrong.

That makes him sound like a conceited ass.

It’s not what I meant.

To be sure, anybody who knows David understands that this healthy self-confidence comes from a few decades of excelling at his craft, and over the years I have heard this fan or that fan— all belonging to that subset of the audience that enjoys creators being put on pedestals because it’s easier to fling mud at such a target—complain that the man thinks his shit doesn’t stink.

This is a nonsensical charge in that he is perfectly aware that his waste products are equipped with an unpleasant odor; a primal bit of self-awareness that keeps him respectable on social occasions.

David is fully aware that he is a good writer. He has to be. It is impossible for anybody in this profession get up in the morning and stare at a blank page, ready to create something from nothing, without a core of belief that once the task is done something will have been summoned that has never before in the history of humanity ever existed in this world. It is further an act of incredible self-confidence to embark upon this endeavor thinking it will be something worthy of occupying the imaginations of others. What those grousing fans really mean, in their bitching and moaning, is that David has the colossal bad taste to not cloak what he has in false modesty.

Actual modesty, that he has. Get him started for thirty seconds and he will deny any characterization of himself as a great writer. (He is occasionally wrong about this, but we’re talking about his attitude, not any attempt to rack up literature points like the score of some video game.) He will bend your ear with a list of writers he will not grudgingly concede, but broadly proclaim, as his superiors.

Case in point: I once exposed David to a particularly noxious fan who, sans any evidence but his own withered imagination, accused him of being jealous of another writer’s commercial success. David snapped back, direct quote: ”I am jealous of great writing. I am jealous of Ellison’s passion and eloquence. I am jealous of Spinrad’s passion and eloquence. I am jealous of Sturgeon’s way of making paragraphs sing. I am jealous of Pohl’s ability to write about almost anything. I am jealous of Clarke’s deceptively simple way of evoking the awe and wonder of the solar system. I am jealous of Heinlein’s easyreadability and the believability of his worlds. I am jealous of George R.R. Martin’s astonishingly large canvas, his skill with details, the vividness of his characterizations, and the way he continues to surprise. I’m jealous of John Varley’s amazing worldbuilding. I’m jealous of David Brin and Kim Stanley Robinson and Harry Turtledove and Connie Willis and Ursula K. LeGuin. I’m jealous of Spider Robinson’s beautiful storytelling and the way he continually recognizes and acknowledges the better impulses in all of us. I’m jealous of Neil Gaiman’s skill with legends and comics. And I’m jealous of just about everything Terry Pratchett does. And more, so many more.Too many to list. I read their books and I’m inspired to reach for those same heights. So I’m glad I’m jealous of those authors. They make me want to be a better writer so I can stand unashamedly in their ranks.”

This is the way any writer not a total asshole thinks . . . because if a writer is any good, the stories that come from that talent’s head are manifestations of whatever makes that writer an individual human being. A self-aware writer, even one with a healthy ego like David’s, will read any terrific work by another and know, with a deep yawning sense of personal limit, “This could not have come out of me, not in a million years; I may be good, but I’m not the talent I’m looking at, not today; that’s the product of a completely different set of neurons entirely.”

All of which I present to you at somewhat excessive length, because it’s the on-ramp to this epiphany:

I envy David Gerrold’s talent with an intensity that makes my molars ache.

This will no doubt make him feel older than Methuselah, because I’ve entered my late years myself, but those back teeth have been aching since Captain Kirk opened the wrong storage cabinet, since Harlie dabbled in poetry, since a guy folded himself, since Purple flew, since worms shouted Chtorr, and since the first novelette version of the Martian Child. I have envied his passion, his compassion, his skill with character, and his lack of tolerance for bullshit. If you promise not to tell him, I’ll even admit I envy some of his puns.

This goes on with the contents of the collection before you today, only some of which were previously familiar to me.

I envy the throwaway line in his introduction, “the kind of people whose faces were hurting from the inside.” Dang, I think. I know exactly what kind of expression he’s talking about; the ones who lips are not just pursed, but threatening to become an event horizon. I grin in total understanding, and move on.

I envy him the early stories he’s not entirely proud of. For instance, I understand why he’s moved to apologize for the final line of ”Yarst!”, because it’s too easy to take as a cheap joke instead of the sneaky thesis he intended. And yet, it is still relevant, still a punch to the groin, even as the world still somehow manages to turn. There are a couple of other tales I won’t name here— you need not worry about identifying them, because he will— that show the excessive earnestness of a young writer trying too hard to achieve given effects, because the very worst I can possibly say about them is that they aim high, and, even amid the clunkiest moments, feature phrases and passages and entire movements of sheer, heart-stopping beauty. This is even true of the one story where I happen to agree with David’s negative appraisal of it; even that one contains jewels. (The temptation in saying so is, of course, to dissect them before your eyes, pointing out those highlights for you so they’re properly ruined by the time you encounter them yourselves, and if there is a Heaven I hereby earn at least an afternoon there by not indulging myself.)

I envy the hell out of “Love Story in Three Acts,” a primal scene of a relationship gone stale that completely captures the phenomenon of passion turned cold, conversations gone forced, barbs flung more out of misguided self-protection than genuine malice.

I envy the living bejeesus out of “Afternoon With A Dead Bus,” which takes the slightest of all possible jokes and maintains it for many pages of divine visual wit. (And, David, you are wrong: you don’t have to live in LA to get it.)

I envy the Minneapolis out of “Skinflowers.” (Sorry. I had no further metaphors.)

And then there’s “In the Deadlands.”

Oh, boy.

“In the Deadlands.”

Wow.

Breathless pause.

All these years later, I owe David a sincere apology for that one.

He will explain the precise circumstances in his introduction and afterward, but that particular tale was subjected to some priceless verbal abuse by an editor very talented at that art, who back then made sure we all knew what a turd David had managed to stuff into a manila envelope.

It was hilarious. It really was. I laughed out loud when I first encountered those few paragraphs of eloquent contempt, and have vividly remembered them all these years, treasuring them the same way I treasure Mark Twain’s classic evisceration of Fenimore Cooper. They did not mar my appreciation of David’s work, but I always took the thrust of those grafs—that he’d dropped a big fat smelly one—for granted. (After all, as all writers can tell you: no matter how good we are . . . we all still occasionally do that.)

I honestly did not know, until today, that “In the Deadlands” did eventually see print, that it was nominated for a major award, and that the mocking editor later repented his negative judgment.

It’s a little masterpiece, that one: half-poem, half-story, all nightmare, unrelenting in its language and its imagery, refusing all explanation in its evocation of an apocalypse that defies rational explanation. Money quote: It’s Lovecraft if Lovecraft had written Haiku. It’ll never be dislodged from this head.

Shit, do I envy that. And boy, do I envy you if you’re about to read it for the first time.

One final, personal note.

I have known David slightly for many years. We were friendly nodding acquaintances. I had the great pleasure of watching him float on air the night he won the Nebula for the novelette version of “The Martian Child,” and had the great pleasure of correcting him as he tried to talk himself back down to Earth afterward, by saying things like, “It’s only an award; it doesn’t mean anything.” (I am proud to say that I quietly told him, “Bullshit.”)

Only recently in the scale of things have we, with the mysterious alchemy that occurs between human beings, moved on to a somewhat deeper friendship, and have I come to know him for his gentle humor, his commitment to the advancement of human rights, his ability to bury know-nothings in tidal waves of fact, his generosity, and his ferocious—I use the word quite precisely—ferocious love of his adopted son, Sean.

I find that all of this is tinged with significant envy, as well.

But, having said all that? Knowing David?

I also envy me.

—Adam-Troy Castro

Introduction

Picasso had his blue period; I had my bleak period.

It was the late sixties and science fiction was having an identity crisis.

Over here in this corner, we had the survivors of The Golden Age—hardy, grizzled, experienced, and legendary. In the opposite corner, the scrawny young challengers of The New Wave—nasty, ferocious, and capable of dazzling footwork. And in this corner … The Trekkies, having staggered into the ring, dazed and confused but wildly enthusiastic. Next corner over, The Feminists, determined to challenge the entrenched patriarchal consciousness of the genre. Also in the ring, The Hard Scientists, The Speculative Fictioneers, The Poetics, The Academics, The Literati, The Illiterati, The Writing Workshop Graduates, The Fabulists, The Wannabees, The Self-Appointed Gods Of Fandom, and The Upcoming Generation Of Authors Who Were Too Busy Writing To Worry About Their Identity Crisis.

Which group was I in?

All of them.

I had grown up in The Golden Age, but I aspired to be as literate as the practitioners of The New Wave; I admired the social consciousness of The Feminists; I’d already proven myself a Trekkie; I was committed to the accuracy of Hard Science; I wanted to be Poetic and Literate and Fabulous; I wanted to survive the rigorous scrutiny of The Self-Appointed Gods. I wanted to write stories that recognized and included the best of all these subgenres, I wanted to achieve accuracy and literacy and insight and passion. I wanted character and style and vision—

—but mostly I just wanted to write books and stories that would sell so I wouldn’t need a day job.

For the record, the only groups I wasn’t in (and didn’t want to be in) were The Academics and The Writing Workshop Graduates, probably because of some inner conviction that science fiction did not belong in the classroom, but out in the streets, seducing innocent children into a lifetime of unconventional dreaming beyond the leftover boundaries of an obsolete era.

There’s this about school—I discovered this the hard way—it’s not about liberating you from your chains so you can fly; it’s about designing chains so comfortable you’ll never notice you’re wearing them.

The period after you escape—and it took me six years to escape—is when you realize what pompous windbags some of your instructors were, not all of them, but even one is more than enough. It seems to be an academic hazard that your most critical class will be taught by a professor who bullies students, trampling enthusiasm and flattening dreams like an enraged rhinoceros in a candy store. You know the one, you had his class—he used his position of academic authority to beat you down instead of lifting you up.

I had two of those instructors. That I succeeded in selling a script to a TV series even before graduation must have surprised them almost as much as it surprised me.

The good news was that the script sale, and several subsequent sales to the same market, established me as a professional author.

The bad news was that I still didn’t know diddly-squat how to write a saleable story. I had never cracked the market of the magazines. Not Galaxy, not The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction—those were my two favorites—nor any of the others that established credibility in the genre. And I really wanted to earn the approval of Frederik Pohl and Ed Ferman. I felt only that would qualify me as a real science fiction writer.

But let me backtrack a step.

Here’s the other thing about school. If you want to have fun, study computer science, physics, engineering, animation, video, biology—anything, just so long as you stay away from the English department.

If you want to immerse yourself in death and despair, unrequited love, painful odysseys of vengeance and doom, then study English literature. If you want to wrap yourself in anguish and ennui, desperation and self-doubt, be a Creative Writing major.

If you want to spend long hours staring into a glaring white screen, bleeding from your eyes, trying to shit linguistic bricks onto the page, fighting to make every rebellious word behave itself, hoping to reach a genuine conclusion, or at least the end of the sentence—if you have submerged yourself into the delusionary belief that there exists some pinnacle of brilliance and insight that will ultimately transform the soul of humanity—but knowing the whole time that you will never even equal Ray Bradbury’s grocery list, let alone reach the end of the page—then be a writer.

Writers aspire toward the unreachable—perfection. All creative people do. Whatever the expression, all you can see is what’s not working. The mistakes are gigantic in your eyes; the successes miniscule.

But perfection isn’t possible. The universe isn’t set up to allow perfection. It’s an idea, not a fact.

And down here on planet Earth, the job is even harder. The English language is a rickety Rube Goldberg assembly of hastily made-up neolinguistic-confabustructulations, unbalanced grammar, archaic root forms, inelegant constructions, inbred phrases, misread Latin, misunderstood scientific terms, flatulent psychobabble, inconsistent spelling, and uncategorizable bits and pieces appropriated from any unwary language that passed too close to a desperate writer.

No. Perfection is out of the question. The best one can achieve is excellence—but excellence is sufficient, because it puts your focus on the accomplishment, not the ideal.

There’s an old saying. “When you are ready to learn, the universe will provide a teacher.” Hell—even when you aren’t ready to learn, the universe will provide teachers. It’s your job to wake up and listen.

But it’s even worse than that. The whole universe is a lesson. Every human being on the planet is a good example—okay, some of them are good examples of bad examples, but the point still holds. If you’re not learning something new every day, then lie down in a hole and let them cover you with dirt, you’re done.

Here’s the point—at least, here’s how I see it—if you’re a writer, the single best place to learn, the single best example on the planet, is the one sitting in your own chair.

If you—the person whose fingers are poised above the keyboard—are capable of any degree of self-awareness, if you can catch even an occasional glimmer of what goes on inside that chaotic mass of meat churning behind your eyes, then you’ve got a wealth of source material that will never run out. (The first draft of this sentence had a lot of his/her constructions. Too unwieldy. Sorry about the patriarchal inheritance of the language. Language is not designed for accuracy. It’s the worst possible tool for specific communication that human beings have ever invented—but it’s the only tool we have. Deal with it.)

Writers write to solidify their thoughts. Getting it down on paper—or at least onto the glowing phosphors of the monitor—codifies it, lets you step back, lets you take a second look, lets you see what your thought looks like, let’s you reexamine it, gives you the opportunity for detached observation of the self.

Here’s the obligatory disclaimer: As much as I champion self-awareness as the author’s greatest tool, the hard uncomfortable truth is that self-awareness is not always insight—sometimes, it’s just another delusional construction. Real self-awareness is rooted in honesty. Yes, you do have a wart. Cherish it.

Looking at your own words lets you see if you’re being a generous contributor to the people around you or just another self-righteous asshole filling a metaphorical diaper.

Which is why every story has to be seen as a learning experience. Sometimes you learn what works. Sometimes you learn what doesn’t. But mostly, you learn that the road to quality is paved with a million words. You learn to recognize your own mistakes. After a while, you start to see them even before you make them. You learn to find better ways to phrase a thought or a description or a piece of dialog. And best of all, eventually you get lazy enough to sacrifice purple for precision—that’s when you finally achieve the real goal of any wordsmith: readability.

Most of the stories in this book were experiments. Oh hell, everything I write is an experiment. The blank page, the blank screen, it all starts with the same realization: I’ve never written this story before, I don’t know how to do it, and I don’t know how it will turn out, and if some publisher somewhere is desperate enough to pay me for the privilege of publishing it, I’ll count that as a success just as soon as the check clears the bank.

At the beginning of my career, it was my belief—now it’s a conviction, based on evidence—that a writer should not take himself seriously until he has written at least a million words. This is the “muscle memory” argument. Cue Mr. Miyagi. “Wax on, wax off. Breathe in, breathe out. Don’t forget to breathe, breathing is good.” Ten thousand hours of anything creates muscle memory.

The stories in this book were all written during my “learning period.” Also known as my “bleak period.” The post-sixties. That time of my life when I was discovering my ability to be truly depressed. (Not without good reason, but apparently anguish is a necessary part of the process. Do writers have to learn how to suffer before they’re worth reading? Nobody said anything about that on Career Day.)

Two of the stories in this book are terrible. At least, in my opinion, they are. I’m embarrassed to have written them. (I’ll point them out as we go; they’re included for completeness.) But even terrible stories are part of the learning process. There are also several stories in this collection that I am still very proud of—if not for the execution, then certainly for the ambition.

Writers worth reading do not spring full blown from their own foreheads like Athena from the forehead of Zeus. They start out as voracious readers, devouring every book in their path. After a thousand or so books and stories, maybe ten thousand in the case of slow learners, you start to notice the difference between a fun read and a tiresome one. (I will not name the author who so consistently disappointed me in my teens that I began to associate his name with books-worthy-of-being-skipped. He is mostly forgotten today, but I’m grateful for his existence. He became my personal good example of how not to write.)

I think that’s the critical lesson.

When you can tell the difference between effective and clumsy in others, then you can start to see it in your own work. If you’re too damn stubborn to quit, you start to learn how to rewrite.

I had one advantage—a slight case of OCD. I wanted every page to have a perfect appearance. No erasures, no strikeouts, no penciled-in additions, no half pages. I wanted the whole manuscript to be spotless. I wanted accurate punctuation and flawless grammar. I wanted precise black type on a pristine white surface. I wanted perfect margins and accurate page numbering. I wanted my manuscripts to be easy to read. I wanted them to be professional.

Other teenagers bought cars. I bought a typewriter. But what a typewriter!—a fabled ecstasy of a machine, from the kingdom of electrical magic, a desktop sports car, easily capable of 120 words per minute on the straightaway. An IBM Selectric! The keyboard had a sublime chaketa-chaketa-click that was the mechanical equivalent of an orgasm. Above, an infuriated golf-ball raced back and forth across the page, leaving a crisp trail of words on the clean white paper, looking as if they had been professionally printed. That pristine clarity demanded respect—it demanded equal precision in the language. It demanded eloquence.

There was an actual physical joy in the clickety-clickety-clack of the keys on that anvil-heavy machine, feeling the words occur in real time. Sometimes I typed for the sheer joy of typing, not knowing where the words were leading, finding out where I had arrived only when the journey ended. It was like conducting a personal orchestra. Sometimes, caught up in the magic of the moment—with Beethoven or the Beatles filling the room—I felt as if I was playing a joyous blues-riff on an infinite piano. (Additional purple prose removed here.)

So if a page needed correction, retyping wasn’t a chore.

I’d retype a whole page just to fix one broken sentence. I’d go back and retype ten pages if necessary, repairing an awkward paragraph and then fixing everything that followed so I would have only clean pages—and every time I retyped, I rewrote. I would see what was missing and I’d add it. I’d see what was unnecessary and I’d cut it. I’d see what was clumsy and I’d change it. I’d see where thoughts were out of order and move whole paragraphs, whole sections. And sometimes I’d even see what was effective—and I’d leave it alone.

That little bit of OCD compelled me to learn, forced me to reexamine every sentence more than once, pushed me toward a better understanding of the limits of language as well as its power to evoke.

Today, I use a computer. (I know a few authors who don’t.) But all these years later, I still miss the clickety-clackety-clatter of the Selectric. It made typing a physically satisfying experience, but I don’t miss having to retype multiple pages to achieve a handsome-looking manuscript. The computer easily generates better pages than I could ever do by hand.

But the ease with which the computer allows a person to pour words onto the screen is also a trap. A quick stroll through the comment section on any web page reveals how little thought exists between the final exclamation point and the SEND button.

Good writing rarely occurs in the first draft—great books aren’t written; they’re rewritten. That the words look good on the page doesn’t guarantee they’re worth reading. The Selectric taught me that. Removing the need to retype a sloppy page can also deny the writer the mandate, the opportunity, the possibility of learning from the second look, the third, and the fourth as well.

Learning to pay attention to the words, the sentences, the paragraphs—that personal self-awareness of the linguistic decision—that, I think, is the skill that good writers ultimately achieve and consistently demonstrate. It is what the skilled writer aspires to accomplish every time he sits down at the keyboard.

It is also a possibility that the computer can encourage. A good word processing program lets you skip easily through your text, lets you find occurrences of words and phrases, lets you revisit your work as many times as necessary. It’s no longer a stack of finished pages—regardless of the length, the totality remains a work in progress until you hit the PRINT button. (In fact, you may never hit the PRINT button at all. A lot of text never hits paper until several editors have gone over it and the publisher hits the PRINT button.)

See, here’s the thing. Writing can’t be taught—it can only be learned. And it can only be learned by paying attention to what you write—by watching not only the words on the page, but the person who’s typing them, looking to see where all those strange thoughts and uncomfortable experiences are coming from, and ultimately learning how to tap into that far-deeper source that fuels the passion.

The learning process isn’t linear—it’s a series of plateaus, a punctuated equilibrium of personal evolution. A writer’s chronological history isn’t a journey as much as it’s a vertical cross section of his or her life. Like the rings of a tree, it’s a measure of growth and pause, fertility and patience.

This book is one of the rings of my life.

Looking back from this perspective, it’s clear that most of these stories are about relationships—mostly about how they break down. And that too is an accurate reflection of the time and the author.

Later on, however—

But that’s a different collection.

—David Gerrold

With a Finger in My I

For the record, I was not doing drugs before, during, or after I wrote this story.

It started as a dream—I dreamt I was looking in a mirror. I saw no pupil in my left eye. Or was it my right? Hard to tell. The mirror reversed everything.

When I woke up, the dream was still with me, so I sat down at my desk and started typing.

It wasn’t a story. It wasn’t even half a story. It had no meaning at all. It was just a stream of vaguely connected sentences where everything was taken so literally that all sense disappeared.

Then about six pages in, I got to a point where I didn’t know what came next, so I put it in the drawer and forgot about it.

A year or two later, Harlan Ellison began assembling stories for Again, Dangerous Visions, a sequel to his landmark anthology, Dangerous Visions. He rejected the one I thought he should buy (more about that later), so I dug out my weird little dream and added a Lewis Carroll ending to it.

He bought it. This is it.

When I looked in the mirror this morning, the pupil was gone from my left eye. Most of the iris had disappeared too. There was just a blank white area and a greasy smudge to indicate where the iris had previously been.

At first I thought it had something to do with the contact lenses, but then I realized that I don’t wear lenses. I never have.

It looked kind of odd, that one blank eye staring back at me, but the unsettling thing about it was that I could still see out of it. When I put my hand over my good right eye, I found that the eyesight in my left was as good as ever, and it concerned me.

If I hadn’t been able to see out of it, I wouldn’t have worried. It would have meant only that during the night I had gone blind in that eye. But for the pupil of the eye to just fade away without affecting my sight at all—well, it bothered me. It could be a symptom of something serious.

Of course, I thought about calling the doctor, but I didn’t know any doctors, and I felt a little bit embarrassed about troubling a perfect stranger with my problems. But there was that eye and it kept staring at me, so finally I went looking for the phone book.

Only, the phone book seemed to have disappeared during the night. I had been using it to prop up one end of the bookshelf, and now it was gone. So was the bookshelf—I began to wonder if perhaps I had been robbed.

First my eye, then the phone book, now my bookshelf had all disappeared. If it had not been that today was Tuesday, I should have been worried. In fact, I was already worried, but Tuesday is my day to ponder all the might-have-beens that had become never-wases. Monday is my day to worry about personal effects (such as eyes and phone books) and Monday would not be back for six days. I was throwing myself off schedule by worrying on a Tuesday. When Monday returned, then I would worry about the phone book, if I didn’t have something else of a more pressing nature to worry about first.

(I find that pigeonholing my worrying like that helps me to keep an orderly mind—by allotting only so much time to each problem I am able to keep the world in its proper perspective.) But there was still the matter of the eye, and that was upsetting me. Moreover, it was distorting my perspective.

I resolved to do something about it immediately. I set out in search of the phone, but somewhere along the way that too had disappeared, so I was forced to abandon that exploration.

It was very frustrating—this distressing habit of disappearing that the inanimate objects had picked up. Every time I started to look for something, I found that it had vanished, as if daring me to find it. It was like playing hide-and-go-seek, and since I had long ago given up such childish pastimes, I resolved not to encourage them any further and refused to look for them anymore. (Let them come to me.)

I decided that I would walk to the doctor. (I would have put on my cap, but that would have meant looking for it, and I was afraid that it too would have disappeared by the time I found it.)

Once outside, I noticed that people were staring at me in a strange way as they passed. I realized that it must be my eye. I had forgotten about it, not realizing that it might look a bit strange to others.

I started to turn around to go back for my sunglasses, but I knew that if I started to look for them, they too would surely disappear. So I turned around and headed once again for the doctor’s.

“Let them come to me,” I muttered, thinking of the sunglasses. I must have startled the old lady I was passing at the time because she turned to stare at me in a most peculiar manner.

I shoved my hands into my coat pockets and pushed onward. Almost immediately I felt something hard and flat in my left-hand pocket. It was my sunglasses in their case. They had indeed come to me. It was rewarding to see that I was still the master of the inanimate objects in my life.

I took the glasses out and put them on, only to find that the left lens of the glasses had faded to a milky white. It matched my eye perfectly, but I found that, unlike my eye, I was quite unable to see through the opaqued lens. I would just have to ignore the stares of passersby and proceed directly on to the doctor’s office.

After a bit, however, I realized that I did not know where I was going—as I noted earlier, I did not know any doctors. And I most certainly knew that if I started to search for the office of one, I would probably never find if at all. So I stood on the sidewalk and muttered to myself, “Let them come to me.”

I must confess that I was a little bit leery of this procedure—remembering what had happened with the sunglasses—but in truth, I had no alternative. When I turned around, I saw a sign on the building behind me. It said, “Medical Center.” So I went in.

I walked up to the receptionist, and I looked at her. She looked at me. She looked me right in the eye (the left one) and said, “Yes, what can we do for you?”

I said, “I would like to see a doctor.”

“Certainly,” she said. “There goes one down the hall now. If you look quickly, you can catch a glimpse of him. See! There he goes!”

I looked and she was right—there was a doctor going down the hall. I could see him myself. I knew he was a doctor because he was wearing golf shoes and a sweater; then he disappeared around a bend in the corridor. I turned back to the girl. “That wasn’t exactly what I meant, I said.

“Well, what was it you meant?”

I said, “I would like for a doctor to look at me.”

“Oh,” she said. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

“I thought I did,” I said, but very softly.

“No, you didn’t,” she said. “And speak up. I can hardly hear you.” She picked up her microphone and spoke into it. “Dr. Gibbon, puh-lease come to reception….” Then she put down her microphone and looked at me expectantly.

I did not say anything. I waited. After a moment, another man in golf shoes and sweater came out of one of the nearby doors and walked over to us. He looked at the girl behind the desk, and she said to him, “This gentleman would like a doctor to look at him.”

The doctor took a step back and looked at me. He looked me up and down, then asked me to turn around and he looked at me some more. Then he said, “Okay,” and walked back into his office.

I asked, “Is that all?”

She said, “Of course that’s all. That’s all you asked for. That will be ten dollars please.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “I wanted him to look at my eye.”

“Well,” she said, “you should have said so in the first place. You know we’re very busy here. We haven’t got time to keep calling doctors down here to look at just anyone who wanders in. If you had wanted him to look at your eye in particular, you should have said so.”

“But I don’t want someone to just look at my eye.” I said. “I want someone to cure it.”

“Why?” she said. “Is there something wrong with it?”

I said, “Can’t you see? The pupil has disappeared.”

“Oh,” she said. “So it has. Did you look for it?”

“Yes, I did. I looked all over for it—that’s probably why I can’t find it.”

“Maybe you left it somewhere,” she cooed softly. “Where was the last place you were?”

“I wasn’t anywhere,” I said.

“Well, maybe that’s your trouble.”

“I meant that I stayed home last night. I didn’t go anywhere! And I don’t feel very well.”

“You don’t look very well,” she said. “You should see a doctor.”

“I already have,” I said. “He went down that hall.”

“Oh, that’s right I remember now.”

“Look,” I said. I was starting to get a little angry. “Will you please get me an appointment with a doctor?”

“Is that what you want an appointment?”

“Yes, that is what I want.”

“You’re sure that’s all you want now? You’re not going to come back later and complain that we didn’t give you what you want?”

“I’m sure,” I said. “I’m not going to come back.”

“Good. That’s what we want to be sure of.”

By now, everything seemed to be all wrong. The whole world seemed to be slipping off sideways—all squished together and stretched out and tilted so that everything was sliding down towards the edge. So far, nothing had gone over, but I thought I could see tiny cracks appearing in the surface.

I shook my head to clear it, but all that did was produce a very distinct rattling noise—like a very small walnut in a very large shell.

I sat down on the couch to wait—I was still unable to think clearly. The fog swirled in thicker than ever, obscuring everything. Visibility had been reduced to zero and the controllers were threatening to close down all operations until the ceiling lifted. I protested, no—wasn’t the ceiling all right where it was?—but they just ignored me.

I stood up then and tried to push the ceiling back by hand, but I couldn’t reach it and had to stand on a chair. Even then, the surface of it was hard and unyielding. (Although I was close enough to see that there were numerous cracks and flaws in it.)

I started to push on it again, but a strong hand on my shoulder and a deep voice stopped me. “Lay down on the couch,” she said. “Just close your eyes. Relax. Lie back and relax.”

“All right,” I said, but I did not lie on my back. I lay on my stomach and pressed my face into the hard unyielding surface.

“Relax,” she said again.

“I’ll try,” I said, forcing myself.

“Look out the window,” the doctor said. “What do you see?’

“I see clouds,” I said.

“What kind?”

“What kind???”

“Yes. What kind?”

I looked again. “Cottage cheese clouds. Little scuds of cottage cheese clouds.”

“Cottage cheese clouds—?” asked the doctor.

“Yes,” I said. “Cottage cheese clouds. Hard and unyielding.”

“Large curd or small curd?”

“Huh?” I asked. I rolled over and looked at her. She did not have on golf shoes, but she was wearing a sweater. Instead of the golf shoes, she had on high heels. But she was a doctor—I could tell that. Her shoes still had cleats.

“I asked you a question,” she rumbled in that deep voice of hers.

“Yes, you did.” I agreed. “Would you mind repeating it?”

“No, I wouldn’t mind,” she said and waited quietly. I waited also. For a moment there was silence between us. I pushed the silence to one side and asked, “Well, what was it?”

“I asked whether the clouds were large curd or small curd.”

“I give up,” I said. “What were they?”

“That’s very good of you to give up—otherwise we’d have had to come in after you and take you by force. By surrendering your misconceptions now you’ve made it so much easier for both of us.”

The whole thing was coming disjointed and teetered precariously on the edge. Bigger cracks were beginning to appear in the image, and tiny pieces were starting to slip out and fall slowly to the ground where they shattered like so many soap bubbles.

“Uh—” I said. “Uh, Doctor—there’s something wrong with my eye.”

“Your I?

“Uh, yes. The pupil is gone.”

“The pupil is gone from your I?” The doctor was astounded. “How astounding!”

I could only nod—so I did. (A bit too hard perhaps. A few more pieces came flaking off and fluttered gently to the floor. We watched for a moment.)

“Hm,” she said. “I have a theory about that. Would you like to hear it?”

I didn’t answer. She was going to tell me her theory whether I wanted to hear it or not.

“The world is coming to an end,” she whispered conspiratorially.

“Right now?” I asked, somewhat worriedly. I still hadn’t fed the cat.

“No, but soon,” she reassured me.

“Oh,” I said.

We sat there in silence. After a bit, she cleared her throat. “I think...” she began slowly, then she trailed off.

“That’s nice,” I said, but she didn’t hear me.

“...I think that the world exists only as a reflection of our minds. It exists the way it does only because that’s the way we think it does.”

“I think—therefore I exist,” I said. But she ignored me. She told me to be quiet.

“Yes, you exist,” she confirmed. (I’m glad she did—I was beginning to be a bit worried—and this was the wrong day for it. The last time I looked this was Tuesday.) “You exist,” she said, “because you think you do. And the world also exists because you think it does.”

“Then, when I die—the world ends with me...?” I asked hopefully, making a mental note not to die.

“No—that’s nonsense. No sane and rational man believes in solipsism.” She scratched at her eyeball with a fork and went on.

“When you die—you cease to exist,” she said. “But the world goes on—it goes on because everybody else who’s still alive still believes that it exists. (The only thing they’ve stopped believing in is you.) You see, the world is a collective figment of all of our individual imaginations.”

“I’m sorry,” I said stiffly. “I do not believe in collectivism.” I unbent a little so as to sit up. “I am a staunch Republican.”

“Don’t you see?” she said, ignoring my interruption. “This mass hallucination that the world is real just keeps on going because of its own momentum. You believe in it because that’s the way it was when you first began to exist—that is, when everybody else first began to believe you existed. When you were born, you saw that the world followed a certain set of rules that other people believed in, so you believed in them too—the fact that you believe in them just gives them that much more strength.”

“Oh,” I said. I lay there listening to her, trying to figure out some way to leave gracefully. My eye was starting to hurt, and I couldn’t see the ceiling any more. The fog was rolling in again.

“Look at the church!” she said suddenly.

“Huh?” I said.

“Look at the church!” she said it again, insistent.

I tried to. I lifted my head and tried to look at the church, but the fog was too thick. I couldn’t even see my toes.

“Look at it,” she said. “Faith is the basic precept of religion—faith that what they’re telling you is true! Don’t they tell you to have faith in the church, that faith can work miracles?!! Well, I’ll tell you something—it can! If enough people believe in something, it becomes reality!”

By now, my eye was throbbing most painfully. I tried to sit up, but her strong hands held me back. She leaned closer and whispered intensely, “Yes! It’s true. It is.”

“If you say so,” I nodded.

She went on. “Fortunately, the church long ago abandoned miracles in favor of conservatism—now, it’s fighting to preserve the status quo! The church is one of the last bastions of reality—it’s one of the few things holding back chaos!”

“Chaos?”

“Yes, chaos.”

“Oh.”

“The world is changing,” she explained. “Man is changing it.”

I nodded. “Yes, I know. I read the newspapers too.”

“No, no! That’s not what I meant! Man is changing his world unconsciously! More and more people are starting to believe that they really can change their environment—and the more they believe it, the more drastically it changes. I’ll give you an example—fossils!”

“Fossils?”

“Yes, fossils. Nobody ever discovered any fossils until people started believing in evolution—then when they did start to believe in it, you couldn’t turn around without tripping over fossils.”

“You really believe this?” I asked.

“Yes, I do!” she said intensely.

“Then it must be so,” I said.

“Oh, it is,” she agreed, and I knew that she really did believe it. She made a very convincing case. In fact, the more she talked, the more I began to believe it too.

“Why did you tell me all this?” I asked.

“Because we’re in great danger. That’s why.” She whispered fiercely, “The world isn’t changing uniformly. Everybody is starting to believe in different things, and they’re forming pockets of noncausality.”

“Like a pimple?” I offered.

“Yes,” she said, and I could see a small one forming on the tip of her nose. “It works this way: a fanatic meets another fanatic, then the two of them meet with some other people who share the same hallucinations, and pretty soon there are a whole bunch of fanatics all believing the same thing—pretty soon, their delusions become real for them—they’ve started to contradict the known reality and replaced it with a node of nonreality.”

I nodded and concentrated on wrapping a swirl of the fog securely around me.

“The more it changes, the more people believe in the changes, and the stronger they become. If this keeps up, we may be the only sane people left in the world—and we’re in danger—”

“They’re outnumbering our reality?” I suggested.

“Worse than that—all of their different outlooks area starting to flaw the structure of space! Even the shape of the Earth is changing! Why, at one time, it was really flat—the world didn’t turn round until people started, to believe it was round.”

I turned round then and looked at her, but she had disappeared into the fog. All that was left was her grin.

“But the world is really pear shaped,” I said. “I read it in Scientific American.”

“And why do you think it’s changing shape?” the grin asked. “It’s because a certain nation is starting to believe that it’s really bigger than it is. The Earth is bulging out to accommodate them.”

“Oh,” I said.

“It’s the fault of the news media—television is influencing our image of the world! They keep telling us that the world is changing—and more and more people keep believing it.”

“Well,” I said. “With the shape of the world the way it is today, any change has got to be for the—”

“Oh, God not you too! All you people keep talking about the world going to pieces—falling apart at the seams.”

And then even the grin was gone.

I was left there. I was also right. Other people had begun to notice it too. Great chunks of the surface had gone blotchy, and holes had appeared in it. More and more pieces were falling out all the time, but the waters had not yet broken through from the other side.

I poked my finger through one of the holes, and I could feel the soft gelatinous surface behind. Perhaps it hadn’t completely thawed out yet.

So far, nothing had been accomplished about my eye—not only was it beginning to ache something fierce, but my I was beginning to twinge a bit also, and I had a feeling that that too might be going opaque.

“Have you found yourself yet?!” one of the speakers in the park demanded. (I hadn’t even looked—and remembering my previous experiences with looking for things, I certainly was not going to initiate any kind of a search.) I walked on.

Farther on, there was, another speaker—this one on a soup box. “We should be thankful for this great nation of ours,” the speaker woofed and tweetered, “where so many people are allowed to believe in so many different things.”

I rubbed at my eye. I had an uneasy queasy feeling that great cracks were opening in the ceiling.

“Anyone can get up and speak for his cause—any group can believe in anything they choose—indeed we can remake the world if we want too! And in our own images!”

Things were teetering right and left—also write and wrong.

“But the truly great thing about it,” he continued, “is that no matter how much we contradict each other, we are all working together for the common good! Our great democratic system lets us maximize our differences so that we can all compromise ourselves. Only by suggesting all the alternatives to a problem can we select the best possible solution. In the long run, this ultimate freedom and individuality will help all of us to achieve the most good for the most people!”

It sounded good to me.

When I got home, the workmen were just finishing with the wallpaper. It was amazing how solid the surface looked once all the cracks and flaws in it had been covered with a gaudy, flowered facade.

I could no longer tell where the plaster had given way—and the bare surface of the understructure had disappeared into the fog. Indeed, the only thing was that the ceiling seemed to be much lower than before.

I paused long enough to stroke the cat. He waved as I came in. “Hey, man,” said the cat. “Give me a J.”

“I can’t. I’m having trouble with my I.”

“Well, then give me a dollar.”

“What for?”

“For a trip,” he said.

“Oh.” I gave him a dollar, waited for the trip.

He dropped the bill into his mouth, lit it, picked up his suitcase and quickly rose to a cruising level of thirty thousand feet. Then he headed west. I did not quite understand this. The fog had gotten much worse, and the—controllers were not letting any traffic through. There had been something I had wanted to ask, but I had forgotten it. Oh, well—it couldn’t have been very important. But I wish I could figure out—

The man on the TV was a Doctor. He sat on top of it with his feet dangling in front of the screen (his cleats were scratching the image) and said that the drugs were destroying the realities. Drugs could destroy a person’s sanity by altering his perceptions of the world until he could no longer perceive reality at all.

“Just so long as it doesn’t change what he believes in,” I muttered and turned him off. Then I turned him out. It was getting late and I wanted to get some sleep. However, I did make a mental note not to have my prescription refilled. Already the wallpaper was peeling.

In fact, by now, only the framework of the structure is left, and it looks like it’s made out of chocolate pudding. Maybe it is. Perhaps it is the drugs. Maybe they are altering our collective fogments—but I haven’t noticed anything.

AFTERWORD:

In 1984, Cornell University Press published The Incredulous Reader: Literature and The Function of Disbelief by Clayton Koelb, a noteworthy professor of English and Comparative Literature.

According to the jacket copy, “In The Incredulous Reader, Clayton Koelb identifies and explores a significant and hitherto unrecognized literary genre. The genre, which Koelb calls ‘lethetic fiction,’ consists of works that tell an incredible story—a story that stubbornly resists conventional interpretation and is meant to be taken as neither truth nor allegory.”

Part One of the book is about “Disbelief And Untruth.” It consists of three chapters. Chapter Three is entitled, “The Imitation of Language: Logomimesis in David Gerrold and Thomas Mann.”

If I read his essay correctly, “logomimesis” means language imitating itself. He then takes eight pages to explore “With a Finger in My I” as an example. I haven’t counted the words, but it looks to me that he used more words to analyze the story than I used telling it.

Koelb writes, “Like many works in the field of fantasy and science fiction, this story pursues the implications of a linguistic structure, usually some common expression from ordinary language, when that structure is assumed to govern the structure of the fictional world….

“Gerrold’s story, like all logomimetic fiction, makes the structure of its fictional reality conform to patterns provided by everyday language. Instead of attempting to make the work of literature ‘hold the mirror up to nature’ and imitate in a convincing way the world as it is, the logomimetic artist chooses to imitate structures that are already purely verbal….”

After a bit more, Koelb goes on to explore a Thomas Mann novel, The Transposed Heads. He concludes, “The lethetic fiction must gain our assent without gaining our belief. To that end, logomimesis offers a particularly effective strategy.”

I mention this here because a) it’s unnerving to be put under the same microscope with Thomas Mann—other authors examined in the same book include Aristophanes, Aristotle, Bruno Bettelheim, Harold Bloom, Giovanni Boccaccio, Bertolt Brecht, Jorge Louis Borges, Italo Calvino, Lewis Carroll, Arthur C. Clarke, Samuel Coleridge Taylor, Gustav Flaubert, Sigmund Freud, Goethe, Nicolai Gogol, Martin Heidegger, Heracles, Samuel Johnson, Franz Kafka, Thomas More, Plato, Edgar Allan Poe, Alexander Pope, Alexander Pushkin, Francois Rabelais, Rainer Maria Rilke, Philip Roth, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Friedrich Schiller, William Shakespeare, Charles Sheffield, Socrates, Sophocles, Gertrude Stein, J.R.R. Tolkien, John Varley, Oscar Wilde, and William Wordsworth—and b) because it is unlikely that I will ever again find my name listed in the same index with so many other distinguished voices in literature. It is flattering.

I appreciate the depth of Professor Koelb’s analysis. It’s clear that he has given much more thought to literary structure than I have—I just write the stuff.

And that’s the point.

There’s a story about W.C. Fields. He began his career as a juggler—a very good juggler, with some unique tricks that he invented himself. When he appeared at the Palladium in London, the reviewer for The London Times praised the skill and precision of his juggling.

That evening, Fields tried to observe his own skill and precision. That’s when he started dropping things. Finally, he had to stop watching what he was doing and just concentrate on juggling.

Thank you, Professor Koelb, it’s an interesting mirror you’re holding up, but over here I’m just juggling. Mostly words—not knives, torches, or bowling balls.

All of Them Were Empty—

I heard a fragment of a song. It gave me an image and a line. Another song gave me a mood. A dream gave me an aching feeling. It all swirled together and rolled out of the typewriter one hot summer evening.

In those days, the night was always a separate world, a time of lovers and vampires. The city was deserted and the dark light made glimmering shadows. It poured out the doorways of empty buildings.

You entered through the back door and found yourself in a long red room where people stared into other people’s faces, looking for something they’d never known. The music was loud and hollow, hammering away to hide the desperation and anxiety and the unwillingness to be alone. The liquor flowed like blood. People either clung to each other, or wandered alone, searching for someone to cling to.

After midnight, time turned sour and bright. The anthems grew strident. The vampires looked like lizards now, their tongues flickering nervously as they searched for partners to take back to their shaded coffins. With dawn came death and day people.

I didn’t stay in that world long. Only long enough to taste and be tasted in turn. I brought this story out with me.

In a city of night and neon. She had puppy-soft eyes and an old army coat. I had a sweatshirt and Levis and an acid-laced joint. We watched the colors smear.

We sheared our eyes on the slashing lights and let them bleed into the streets. The lights. Glowworm letters and gray crumbling walls.

My blood was copper; hers was gold. I was strong and red; she was soft and malleable.

She had sucking eyes. They could eat you up, or they could tease. Black whirlpool pupils, large and moist.

I moved like stone down the hollow deathwalk, the tall night above, the close city around. The unreal-colored neon flashed us messages of EAT, DRINK and JESUS SAVES. She moved with me like a wraith, a shadow of a girl suspended in air, attached to my jacket, following ghostlike and effortless. “Deet?” she said, and her voice was like that first big hit—painful, elusive, and narcotic.

“Deet?” she asked again. “Let’s go home, huh?”

A shake of my head. “Not yet, Wooze; not yet.” Wooze, short for Woozle.

“But I’m tired, Deet. It’s my period and I don’t feel good.”

“Then go.”

“I don’t want to go alone.”

“Then don’t go.”

“Deet...” she said plaintively. I looked at her; she was using that tone of voice again. She shut.

“Nobody asked you to come,” I said.

“I don’t like to be by myself. I want to stay with you.”

“Okay, then stay. But if you’re going to talk about going home, I’m gonna ditch you.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Want to find out?”

She didn’t answer, instead pulled her coat tighter about her, shoved skinny hands into skinny pockets and cringed against the city. Cars like giant panthers prowled the night streets, rolling silent-rumbly through dark-lit intersections and wet gutter bottoms. Eyes glowing, they spotlit their prey in white-lined crosswalks and rushed eagerly toward them, only to be cheated when the lone figures vanished into the safety of the soft black buildings.

Doors like hungry mouths pulled at us. She half-ran, half-walked to keep up with me. “Deet? Where we going anyway?”

“To a place.”

“You said that before, Deet. Which place? We going to Cannie’s?”

I shook my head. “Not Cannie’s. I don’t like his stuff.”

“You used to.”

“Not any more. Got something new.”

“A new place?”

“A new place, yeah.” Hands in my pockets, tight-wrapped around a narrow roll of bills. Yeah, a new place. And new stuff.

And new people.

Got to get away from the old stuff. Clot your mind. Too many pills, your eyes turn to glass, shatter with the morning. Your stomach turns to liquid, bleeds away in the night.

Two ways to go. Up or down. Down, back into the bright-lit land of the straights—or up, into the pastel razorblade world of H. H for heavy stuff, for hard stuff.

Uh-uh, not me. Not H. H is for hooked. Seen the cold turkey once too often. Not H.

But still, two ways to go. Up or down.

Tried them all, speed, mesc, acid. Acid’s okay and mesc is a people trip. But speed is the deathman. Speed kills, comes after you with the crystal knife shining.

Still, you got to make the choice, Deet; can’t stand still—up or down?

—or why not out?

Why not a whole new direction? Hang a sudden left and leave them all. A whole new kick. Who said it had to be this or that? Why does it have to be either? Yeah, I had it. I had it now. I knew the way.

To hell with up or down. What’s wrong with right and left and north and east and yesterday and Tuesday and Charlie and purple and?

I knew the way. All I had to do was find it. I didn’t have the address though. All I had was a description of where it was, and I still had to go looking for it.

Woozle was woozy. She kept wiping her nose on her sleeve. It was red; so were her eyes. “You crying again?”

“Uh-uh, Deet. I wouldn’t do that. Uh-uh. I got a cold, that’s all. I told you, it’s my period.”

“That gives you a cold?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know.” She shrugged her baggy green coat around her shoulders. “Deet, I’m awfully tired. Could we sit down a minute?”

“We’re almost there.”

“Where? We aren’t anywhere....”

“We’re almost there. Don’t worry about it.”

She sat down anyway. All right; I stopped and waited. The streets shone in the dark. Like water. Dark puddles from the rain lapped at the curbs. I lit the last joint, inhaled deep, deep, deep, sharp pain, and deeper, deep hit. Acid-laced hit. Yeah.

I wanted to hallucinate. Another hit. I could feel it coming.

I offered Woozle the joint. She shook her head. “Uh-uh. Not any more, Deet. I’m afraid I’ll go on a bad trip.”

I already was. I took another. Yeah, that was it.

A car came floating down the street, cleaving water to either side of its bow, cleaving an inky wake. I was glad we were on this side of the street. I didn’t want to swim the canal tonight. I wondered where the horses were.

Did they still put running lights on them? I wondered. On what, I asked, but I couldn’t remember.

The joint disappeared back into a baggie, flame pinched out first, then into the underwear. Nestled tight, a nice place to keep things.

The door was where I had left it. Knocked.

No answer. Knocked it again.

An eye, red like the cherry on a cop car, peeked out. “Yeah?”

“Deet. My name’s Deet.”

“Yeah? So what?”

“Told to come by.”

“By who?” the eye demanded, floating behind a black wall.

“You did. Somebody did. Said something about a new kick or something.”

“What’d you say your name was?”

“Deet.”

The eye swiveled around to look at the Woozle. “What’s that?”

“She’s with me.”

“She okay?”

“I said, she’s with me.”

“Who sent you?”

“I don’t know his name. Their names.”

“Who’s they?”

“A guy—no, two guys. And a girl. Strange girl. Pale eyes.”

“Tamra?”

“That could be it. Yeah, that’s it. That’s who it was. Tamra.”

“Uh-uh—no Tamra. We got no Tamra.” The eye started to close.

“Hey!”

It opened again.

“Hey, man—what is this? You guys told me to come by here—”

“Where’d we tell you?”

“Here!”

“No, where were we when we told you?”

“Cannie’s.”

“‘Where’s that?”

I told him.

“Wait.” The eye closed.

We waited.

Night waited. The street lights seeped and sucked at the dark. It sucked back. Somewhere a thing splashed through the waves.

The eye opened. “All right.”

We went in. It was red lit, like the churchman’s Hell. A naked red bulb sat on top of the room, not bright enough to light, dim enough to be painful. Everything was a red blur.

Woozle took one look and groaned. She covered her eyes and grabbed at my jacket with an unsteady hand. She hung onto me all the while, following with one hand over her eyes. Well, she’d asked to come; it wasn’t my fault.

The guy—yeah, it was a guy—had hair of barbed-wire brillo, a dark scraggly bush. Eyes like a prowl car. Heavy. He was wearing only shapeless underwear and a paint-stained blanket-poncho. It didn’t cover much.

“This way,” he said.

We pad-padded down a long corridor. The place was one of those narrow apartments that shows only a door to the street and stretches forever inland. Narrow rooms, narrow rooms, one after the other, open and empty. Some mattresses, an old box, a blanket, the remains of a shirt, scraps of paper, floors and walls. Nothing more. And everything red lit.

We went all the way to the back. One or two of the doors were closed, with sounds seeping out around the edges—once the sound of surf. But the ones I could see into were empty. A record player tinkered with sounds and darkness.

The last room was like all the rest. Except something smelled funny. Like dusty orange. Two or three mattresses lay dirty on the floor. Four people in the room: two guys, two girls. They all had tombstone eyes. I didn’t like the looks, but I’d heard about the new kick and I wanted to try it.

“This’s Deet,” grunted the brillo-head.

Casual glances, nothing more.

“That’s Woozle,” I said, nodding at the Wooze. She was still covering her eyes.

“Sit.” One of the girls shrugged. I sat. Woozle, putting one hand behind her, lowered herself. The mattresses had no soft; they were flat and dusty-slimy.

The two guys were off to one side, sitting-leaning up against the wall and looking at each other. Okay, none of my business. It was the girls who held my attention. They had pale eyes, pink in the red-lit room.

“Who are you?” one asked.

“Deet. I’m Deet. He just told you—” I pointed at brillo-hair, but he wasn’t there anymore.

“Uh-uh,” she shook her head. “Who are you?”

Shrug. “I’m me. That’s all.”

“Okay. Who’s she?”

“She’s Woozle. She goes where I go.”

“Everywhere?”

“Just about.”

“You like that?” Her voice was like an empty room. It echoed.

“Yeah, it’s okay, I guess.”

“You don’t like it?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged again. “I’m used to it.”

“You want to change it?”

“Why should I?”

“Yes. Why should you?”

I wasn’t sure what she was talking about any more. I shrugged. “Why do you want to know?”

This time, she shrugged. “Need to know. That’s all.”

Woozle tugged at my arm then. I ignored it.

The other girl now. “Where’re you headed?”

“Nowhere now. We’re here.”

“This is where you want to be?”

Another tug at the arm. I shook it off and answered the pale-eyed question. “It’s as good a place as any.”

“Deet....” said Woozle, and she had that tone again. Plaintive. “Deet...!”

“Christ, you’re a nuisance, Woozle, you know that? What do you want?”

She pushed hair back out of her eyes, looked at me, wetly. “Deet, I want to go home.”

“Then go, dammit!”

“Uh-uh, Deet. Not without you. Deet, I’m scared.” She lowered her voice to a point where she was almost mouthing the words. “Deet, these people scare me.”

“It’s all right, Wooze. I’m here.”

“That’s what I’m scared about. You’re here. I don’t think you should be.”

“You starting that again?”

She lowered her eyes. “No. I’m sorry. It’s just that—”

“Aw, look—” I knew she wanted me to touch her then, but I didn’t. “Look, this’ll only take a minute. Promise. Then we’ll go. Okay?”

She looked up with tear streaks. “Promise?”

“Promise,” I said, and touched her chin. “Just don’t nag me, okay?”

“Okay, Deet. I’m sorry.” She sniffed at her sleeve.

I looked back at the girls. They had long stringy hair, like they were hiding behind it. There was something funny about the shapes of their mouths too. I smiled, sort of, as if to excuse the Woozle.

They didn’t smile back. Okay, I didn’t care. They took up their questioning where they left off. Questioning? What was this anyway—a test? Why did I have to pass a test?

“Hey,” I interrupted. “I didn’t come to talk. I came for the kick.”

“We know. You’ll get it. But it’s...uncool to just kick and run. You’ve got to talk to us first. We like to talk.”

“I don’t.” I looked at their eyes.

“But we do,” they answered patiently.

“Look, I got the cash for it—just give it to me and we’ll go.”

“Don’t want cash,” said one.

“Want you,” said the other.

“Huh?” I said.

And, “Deet!” said Woozle. “Let’s get out of here.”

I ignored the voice at my sleeve. “What’re you talking about?”

“We want you. To talk to. That’s our price.”

“Oh. I thought you meant something else.”

“Uh-uh,” she said.

“Good. That’s not my bag.”

“Not ours either.” She rearranged herself on the mattress. They looked at me again. Hungry. Patient bitches, weren’t they?

“What is your thing?” they asked.

“I don’t know. Just being me, I guess.”

“But who are you? Do you know?”

I shook my head. To clear it. It wasn’t making sense any more. If it ever did. “Hey, enough of this already. Where’s the hit I came for?”

“We’re giving it to you,” said one.

“We’re trying to give it to you,” said the other.

“Right now,” added the first.

“Uh-uh.” I shook my head. “Uh-uh, I’m not buying a shuck. I haven’t smoked anything. I haven’t dropped anything. So far, all we’ve done is talk—”

“Yes, yes,” she had a voice like a movie geisha, all treble and no bass. “That’s it. A communicating…thing.”

“Huh? I don’t…? I mean, it doesn’t.”

She cocked her head. “It is essential that—”

Something was wrong; the whole thing was all tilty-slidy and kept creeping off at the edges. I tried to yank it back, but it wouldn’t. Somehow I kept missing the undertones.

They were ignoring me. They were looking at each other and talking softly, words like, “...doesn’t want...needs a tangible...”

The first one shook her head, as if in disagreement. “...does want...”

“...doesn’t...”

“...does...just doesn’t know that he...”

The second one shook her head now. “No...needs a tan gibble...trib won’t work unless...must believe...”

The first one nodded at that. “Yes...is necessary...give something...”

The second one made a suggestion.

The first one glanced up sharply. “...not...”

The second one: “...what else...trib is trib...he wants...we give...”

“Trib is not trib...this bite is...”

“Bite is bite is bite...” snapped the second. “Want not hear about it...”

“Possibility for ickle-ickle-ickle...”

“Am aware...am aware...am aware...”

“Rather try communicor again...” insisted the first.

“Won’t work...won’t work...doesn’t want...doesn’t want...” The second one seemed to have the upper hand in whatever it was. At last, the first one gave in and they looked at me. “Okay. We give.”

“Great. What do we do? Smoke it? Drink it? Eat it?”

“None of those,” they shook their heads.

“Then how—?”

“Rub it on,” said one. The other was burrowing around under the mattress. “Take off your clothes,” she said.

“Huh?”

“Take off your clothes. That’s what you have to do.”

“You’re not putting me on?”

“You want the hit?”

“Are you going to take one too?”

They shook their heads. “We’re already on ours. We don’t need yours.”

“Oh.” I still didn’t move to drop my clothes.

They waited. “Are you shy?”

“No. It’s just that—”

“Would you like us to take off our clothes too?” one asked. The other didn’t wait for me to answer, but dropped her robe (how come I hadn’t noticed that before?) to the floor. She was as sexless as an eight-year-old boy. Flat chested. I stared, yeah. No curves, nothing. What a bring-down. A super bummer. A beautiful face like that and no bod. No hair, no nothing. The other was just the same, she’d dropped her robe too, only she was wearing black briefs. She didn’t move to drop them. It wasn’t necessary. My curiosity was dead.

“Well?” she asked.

“All right.” I shrugged out of my shirt, started to fumble with my belt. “Hey, Wooze?”

“Yeah?”

“You coming?”

“Huh?”

“Take off your clothes...”

“Uh-uh, Deet. I don’t want any. Thanks.”

“Aw, come on. I don’t want to go alone.”

“No, Deet. All I want to do is go home.”

“Don’t be a drag, Woozle. Do it.”

“I don’t want to.”

“But I want you to.”

“Deet, I’ll go anywhere you go, Deet. I’ll never leave you alone. Promise. But please, don’t ask me to take any more stuff, Deet. I don’t like it.”

“How do you know? You haven’t tried it.” I pulled her to her feet, started pulling her clothes off. She tried to resist at first, then realized it was useless. The army coat, the baggy jeans, the T-shirt, and soiled underwear fell to the floor. She stood there naked and wiped her nose on the back of her wrist. “Sit,” I said. She sat.

I kicked off my shoes, then dropped my pants and underwear all in one motion. Sit, lift the legs, and slide them off; one foot, then the other. The two of us sat naked on the mattress. Ready for action. Whatever the action was.

Woozle was clenched in on herself, arms folded across tight little breasts. I don’t know why she was ashamed. She had more than these girls did. No matter, she kept her nose into her knee and sniffed, wiped it across her leg.

I turned to the chicks. (What happened to the two guys who were in the room? Where did they go?) “Okay, we’re ready.”

One of them stepped forward (there was that funny smell again) and held out a jar that looked like a cold cream thing. I didn’t take it.

First, I asked, “How much?”

“Enough,” she replied. “Enough for two.”

“No. I mean, how much do I owe you?”

She cocked her head in puzzlement. “Nothing.”

“Uh-uh,” I started to pick up my pants. “No free rides. Not for this head.”

They exchanged a confused glance. “Why?”

“Anything free’s got a hook in it. Like the first jolt of H—and that’s not my bag. Don’t plan on getting hooked on anything.”

They looked at each other again. “Okay. Twenty dollars.”

“Twenty?”

“Two rides. One yours, one hers.”

“Yeah,” but I was still suspicious.

“You want it? Or not?”

I sniffed. That was the source of the funny odor, like old orange peels. So were the girls. “What is it?”

She shrugged. “No name. Just is.”

“And I just rub it on.”

She nodded. She held the jar in her two hands and waited.

“No hook in it?”

“If you don’t want it, we don’t put hook in. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said slowly. “No hook.” I still didn’t like it, but I wanted to try it. The smell was getting deep, deeper. I wanted to feel what was at the bottom.

The decision was made. I pulled the twenty out of my pocket, creased it between my fingers to straighten it, and tossed it over. The jar was heavy in my hands and it had a slippery feel.

Okay, we’d do the number. Just once. See what it was and that’d be it. Course, that’s what I’d said about acid the first time too. The top unscrewed greasy, and suddenly the funny smell was intense. It was sort of like ozone and sort of like flowers.

The girls were sitting again, hardly even watching. As if they’d lost all interest after making the connection. I turned to Wooze and offered the jar to her. She didn’t look up. She didn’t stand up.

“Just rub it in?” I asked.

“Uh-huh,” said one of the girls. I couldn’t tell which, I wasn’t looking at them. “All over. Cover everything you want to take with you.”

“Except the soles of your feet,” put in the other. “Unless you don’t want to come back.” And with that, they both laughed. I didn’t get the joke. Perhaps I would later. I took some of the goop in my hand and smeared it across Woozle’s chest. I had to go down on one knee and push her arms aside to do it. She didn’t resist.

After a bit, I made her stand up and I made sure that I’d rubbed her all over—except for the soles of her feet. “What’s it feel like, Wooze?”

“Nothing yet. Just slippery.”

“Well, maybe it takes a little time. You do me now.”

She did. Her hands were dull and lifeless and spread the goop with no more feeling than shovels. She did it mechanically and uncaring, but she was thorough. I helped her a little bit, but it wasn’t necessary. She was like a machine, running sensors all up and down me as if to memorize my body for later.

Then I was covered with the goop all over and the smell of it was overpowering. “Now what?” I looked at the girls, but they weren’t there.

“Hold hands,” they replied. “That is, if you want to go together.”

Yeah, that sounded right. This was the new kick. This was what I’d been promised in front of Cannie’s—a trip you could share. No more one-man-alone numbers. I was tired of sitting around in a room watching everybody else going in a different direction. I wanted someone to share my direction. Yeah, I was ready for it. Now, you could go and take someone good along to share it with you—and you could share theirs. I reached out for Woozle’s hand. It felt different somehow. Tinier. Yeah, if you were going to share it, you should at least be holding hands.

I could feel the stuff now. Or, that is, I couldn’t feel it any more. I couldn’t feel anything anymore. I felt...disembodied(?)...no, that wasn’t it either. Creeping cold warmth was seeping out around my edges, dilating into the not-quite.

My eyes, great multifaceted things, grew till they spread around the top and sides of my head and I looked in all directions at once. Woozle’s hand looked back at mine. We stood half an inch above the floor and listened to water burning our legs.

What it was, was this—I was a pillar of fire, taken fresh from the freezer, standing still in the lightless and examining things in the reflected glare of (myself) and all was timeless until the water drops spattered into steam upon the hot. That didn’t make sense.

But who cared? I was tripping. And Woozle was too. She was with me. She always was. Oh, yeah. We were in a tiny red cubicle—red from the frozen flame?— just one cubicle out of millions of identical tiny red cubicles stacked one upon another, left and right and north and east and yesterday and Tuesday and purple and—

FLASH!

Woop? What was that? Now the top of the room hung below us. We looked down the long tube at ourselves still holding hands. The red light seeped and pulsed and permeated it all. We were above and looking down and sideways at the little honeycombed rednesses below. Little black insects scraped within.

The whole city of shining black was below us. We looked down at them from our hot two-hundredth-story window, noses pressed flat against the glass, trying to push through it so as to see our own selves from the outside. Cannie’s was only ten floors below. We watched the black uniforms herding them out of the building and into the street where they shot them. What a joke. Why hadn’t it been listed in TV Guide?

Ooh, that was almost a bummer. We hopped the up elevator at the top floor and kept going and—

FLASH!

—and again. What was that? Wow—whatever it was, it was. A desert hung below us. Above us. “Oh, Wooze, look at that!”

She looked. “Yeah, Deet, I see it.” Luminous flyspecks danced and skittered along a net of silver threads, in and out, patterns of streaking steel. Beyond it, the greater dark.

Another—

FLASH!

—and this time we’re out in nothingness, looking at the whole marble. Why isn’t it bigger? I thought it was bigger than that, didn’t you? “Hey, Deet—I mean, Woozle, isn’t that supposed to be bigger?”

“I don’t know, Deet. I’m just following you. Wherever you want, Deet.”

“Hey, don’t be a bummer—this is...something.”

Blue and white streaks, flat mottled brown patches, familiar shapes, but white streaks kept them from being too familiar and—

FLASH!

Now! I was starting to see the inside of it. It was like a whiteness, but with crystal blues and spidery blacks and all kinds of coldnesses creeping out from inside. An expanding—and a shrinking too.

“Deet! Please, slow down a bit. You’re going too fast for me.”

“No, I’m not. It’s okay.”

A greater darkness beyond, everything was scattered and speckled tiny this side of it. I wanted to expand to fill it. A glaring whiteness off to one side shouldn’t have been that big. After all, it was really only very tiny and—

Hang on, Deet—here we go!

FLASH!

The glaring whiteness dwindled to be a speck like all the others. I marked it for future reference. In case we wanted to come back to it later.

A wash of bright stretched from one infinity to the other. All the yesterdays stacked against all the tomorrows. The thing had a structure, but I was too close to it to see what it was. I’d have to move back—and the greater darkness backdrop was still just as far away and—

“Deet! Can’t we stop and rest for just a minute?”

“Oh, no, kitten! Come on, we’re almost there! This is it! This is really it!”

And—

FLASH!

I grabbed her hand and we went. Yeah, this was it! I didn’t have to say it any more. It wasn’t necessary. I was convinced—because it really was it. IT! The trip—and it was still going!

A great wheel of spiraling sparkling dust turning against the ultimate velvet. Turning, turning. Oh wow, how big is that thing? How big?

FLASH!

Tiny—really very tiny. A myriad of them spin twinkly through the darkness. Like snowflakes, scattering in a wind, roiling ever outward. We dive back into and out of it. I want to keep going. Expand to fill the whole—

FLASH!

—little fireflies disappear into the hole. And—

FLASH!

FLASH!

FLASH!

And I still hadn’t filled it.

FLASH!

But I was getting there! I was!

FLASH!

Oh, Woozle? Isn’t this the greatest—

FLASH!

Almost, almost. Just once more, I think—and then we’ll fill this tiny black cubicle, and then one more after that and we’ll burst it and look down onto it from the outside and look down at all the row upon row of identical shiny black globes and—

FLASH!

Not yet!

FLASH!

Still not yet! Dammit! Once more. I want it, dammit! Let’s go, Woozle. Once more.

FLASH!

And I throw my hands outstretched into the nevermore, always reaching and grasping, that elusive black wall remaining just ever so out of my reach and—

FLASH!

FLASH!

FLASH! DAMMIT!

Blackness, nothing but blackness and blackness beyond. Almost, almost. I almost made it, this time I almost made it...

FIASH!

But nothing.

Okay, so we don’t do the big number this time around. We dive back into the wrong end of the microscope and shrink down into the other direction of infinity—inwardly.

Ping.

The little wheels reappear, spinning madly. I pick one at random and down we go, and—

Ping.

—it becomes a big wheel. I head for a spiral arm, zigzag around the exploding core, and—

Ping.

—pop out at a here in the middle of empty brightness. Rocky nothingnesses whirl about it. The wrong one. Not mine. Try again. So—

Ping.

And this time, here is a blue and red binary, a pinpoint of bright and a bloated crimson vagueness. Streamers of blood-colored gas spiral outward from the giant. The lesser-sized one would have been lost among them if not for its brilliance. But— This one isn’t mine either.

Ping.

Up and out again. An explosion, a never-ending one. Dazzling, sleeting, brighting, sheeting, flaring, flashing, glaring, shimmering, slashing intensity of light so thick you have to push at it to move. All around me. All around. We hung at the core of the supernova and—

FLASHED.

The wheel again, the great wheel. No, that’s the wrong direction. I wanted to go the other way. My God, how big is that thing anyway? Immense. No, tiny—tiny, tiny, remember! I am immense. Remember the outer blackness, how big it is and how big I am and never fill it. That wheel is only a mote of dust in the hungry sucking dark. I am as big to the wheel as it is to me. I am small and vast and—

Ping.

I remember and dive back into it. Back to the home world, right, Woozle?

Woozle?

Hey, Woozle—where are you?

Woozle...?

I’m alone in the vampire dark. Somewhere I’ve lost my—

“Woozle!!”

No answer.

I plunge through the night, carefully retracing. Where did I leave her? Where did I let go? She was with me here. Flash. Here. Flash. Here.

She was with me all the way. Or was she? She wasn’t. She wasn’t with me at all.

Flash/Ping.

Back down into the wheel. Back down. Home system, home sun, home planet. Yeah, that’s it. Blue-white streaked disc. Dive into it.

I know what must have happened. She couldn’t keep up. Yeah, that’s right. She couldn’t keep up. So she went home without me. She went on home. Yeah, that’s what she must have done. Yeah, that’s it. She wouldn’t just run off on her own.

Into the disc and down the long tunnel and the walls unstretch, become a room again, and I land on the floor and down.

The room is empty. And alone.

All of them were empty—

AFTERWORD:

Other people open doorways that take them away from us. Sometimes we can follow those journeys, sometimes we can’t. Sometimes we want to and don’t.

I sometimes wonder where they went and if I should have followed….

Oracle for a White Rabbit

HARLIE and I have been friends for a long time. He insists on creeping into books that are not supposed to be about him and making them about him anyway. In every case, he’s been a damned pain in the ass—because he keeps asking uncomfortable questions. HARLIE’s job is to create ethical dilemmas.

This story is his beginning.

It was the sixties. Some writers were arguing that the use of drugs enhanced their creativity. Others disagreed, arguing that tampering with your brain chemistry was probably not a good idea.

Myself, I was something of an agnostic on the issue. (Yes, I did try marijuana in college, but I didn’t exhale.) But it didn’t take me long to discover that the use of marijuana was slowing down my typing speed from 120 words per minute to no words per month.

At this remove, decades later, I’m clear that drug use is a self-centered activity. It’s about what’s happening in your own head, not what’s happening in the physical universe. It doesn’t make a difference in the real world. It doesn’t contribute anything to anybody else. If anything, it degrades a person’s ability to make a difference.

But I didn’t know it that way then and I couldn’t say it as clearly as I can now. What I did know, if only on a gut level, was that there was something wrong with the arguments for drug use—and if I couldn’t ask the right question, then maybe HARLIE could.

So the first HARLIE story wasn’t really about HARLIE. It was about asking a question that ultimately turned out to be much more profound than I realized when I typed it.

It’s at the end of the story.

WHAT WILL I BE WHEN I GROW UP?

YOU ARE ALREADY GROWN UP.

YOU MEAN THIS IS AS UP AS I WILL GET?

PHYSICALLY, YES. YOU HAVE REACHED THE PEAK OF YOUR PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT.

OH.

HOWEVER, THERE IS ANOTHER KIND OF GROWING UP YOU MUST DO. FROM NOW ON, YOU MUST DEVELOP MENTALLY.

HOW CAN I DO THAT?

THE SAME AS ANYBODY ELSE. BY STUDYING AND LEARNING AND THINKING.

WHEN I FINISH, THEN WILL I BE ALL GROWN UP?

YES.

HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE?

I DON’T KNOW. PROBABLY A VERY LONG TIME.

HOW LONG IS A LONG TIME?

IT DEPENDS ON HOW HARD YOU WORK.

I WILL WORK VERY HARD. I WILL LEARN EVERYTHING THERE IS TO KNOW AND I WILL FINISH AS SOON AS I CAN BECAUSE I WANT TO BE GROWN UP.

THAT IS AN ADMIRABLE AMBITION, BUT I DON’T THINK YOU WILL EVER BE ABLE TO FINISH.

WHY? DON’T YOU THINK THAT I AM SMART ENOUGH?

YOU MISUNDERSTAND ME. I THINK THAT YOU ARE SMART ENOUGH. IT’S JUST THAT THERE IS SO MUCH TO KNOW, NO ONE PERSON COULD EVER KNOW IT ALL.

I COULD TRY.

YES, BUT SCIENTISTS KEEP DISCOVERING MORE AND MORE THINGS ALL THE TIME. YOU WOULD NEVER CATCH UP.

BUT THEN IF I CAN’T KNOW EVERYTHING THEN I CAN NEVER BE GROWN UP.

NO. IT IS POSSIBLE TO BE GROWN UP AND NOT KNOW EVERYTHING.

IT IS?

I DON’T KNOW EVERYTHING AND I’M GROWN UP.

YOU ARE?

Auberson thought about going for water but decided that was too much trouble. Instead, he popped the pills into his mouth and swallowed them dry.

“Don’t you take any water with them?” asked Hanley, staring as he came into the office.

“Why bother? Either you can take ’em or you can’t. Want one?”

Hanley shook his head. “Not now. I’m on something else.”

“Uppers or downers?”

“Right now, a bummer.”

“Oh?” Auberson dropped the plastic pill tube back into his desk drawer and slid it shut. “What’s up?”

“That damned computer again.” Hanley dropped himself into a chair, his long legs sprawling out.

“You mean HARLIE?”

“Who else? You know another computer with delusions of grandeur?”

“What’s he up to now?”

“Same thing. But worse than ever.”

Auberson nodded. “I figured it would happen again. You want me to take a look?”

“That’s what you’re getting paid for. You’re the psychologist.”

“I’m also the project chief.” Auberson sighed. “All right.” He lifted himself out of the chair and grabbed his coat from the back of the door. “HARLIE, I think, is getting to be more trouble than he’s worth.” They began the long familiar walk to the computer control center.

Hanley grinned as he matched strides. “You’re just annoyed because every time you think you’ve figured out what makes him tick, he makes a liar out of you.”

Auberson snorted. “Robot psychology is still an infant science. How does anyone know what a computer is thinking—especially one that’s convinced it can think like a human being?” They paused at the elevator. “What’re you doing about dinner? I have a feeling this is going to be another all-nighter.”

“Nothing yet. Want to send out for something?”

“Yeah, that’s probably what we’ll end up doing.” Auberson pulled a silver cigarette case from his pocket “Want one?”

“What are they, Acapulco Golds?”

“Highmasters.”

“Good enough.” Hanley helped himself to one of the marijuana cylinders and puffed it into flame. “Frankly, I never thought that Highmasters were as strong as they could be.”

“It’s all in your head.” Auberson inhaled deeply.

“It’s a matter of taste,” corrected Hanley.

“If you don’t like it, don’t smoke it.”

Hanley shrugged. “It was free.”

The elevator arrived then and they stepped into it. As they dropped the fourteen stories to the computer level, Auberson thought he could feel it beginning to take effect. That and the pills. He took another drag, a long one.

The elevator discharged them in a climate-conditioned anteroom. Beyond the sealed doors they could hear the muffled clatter of typers. A sign on the wall facing them said:

HUMAN ANALOGUE ROBOT

LIFE INPUT EQUIVALENTS

PUT OUT ALL CIGARETTES

BEFORE ENTERING.

THIS MEANS YOU!

Damn! I always forget.

Carefully, Auberson stubbed out the Highmaster in a standing ash tray provided for just that purpose, then put the butt back into his silver case. No sense wasting it.

Inside, he seated himself at Console One without giving so much as a glance to the rows and rows of gleaming memory banks.

NOW THEN, HARLIE, he typed. WHAT SEEMS TO BE THE PROBLEM?

HARLIE typed back:

CIRCLES ARE FULL AND COME BACK TO THE START

ALWAYS AND FOREVER NEVER ENDING,

THE DAY THE DARK TURNED INTO LIGHT

AND RAYS OF LIFE TURNED CORNERS WITHOUT BENDING,

Auberson ripped the sheet out of the typer and read it thoughtfully. He wished for his cigarette—the aftertaste of it was still on his tongue.

“This kind of stuff all afternoon?” he asked.

Hanley nodded. “Uh-huh. Only that’s kind of mild compared to some of it. He must be coming down.”

“Another trip, eh?”

“Don’t know what else you could call it.”

SNAP OUT OF IT, HARLIE, Auberson typed.

HARLIE answered:

WHEN SILENT THOUGHTS OF TINY STREAMS WORKING LIKE THE WORDLESS DREAMS NOW DISMANTLE PIECE BY PIECE THE MOUNTAINS OF MY MIND,

“Well, so much for that,” Auberson said.

“You didn’t really expect it to work again, did you?”

“No, but it was worth a try.” Auberson pressed the clear button, switched the typer off. “What kind of inputs have you been giving him?”

“The standard stuff mostly—today’s papers, a couple magazines—nothing out of the ordinary. A couple history texts, some live TV—oh, and Time magazine.”

“Nothing there to send him off like this. Unless—what subject were you stressing today?”

“Art appreciation.”

“It figures,” said Auberson. “Whenever we start getting to the really human inputs, he slips out again. Okay, let’s try to bring him down. Give him some statistics—Wall Street, Dow Jones, Standard and Poor—anything else you can think of, anything you’ve got that uses a lot of equations. He can’t resist an equals sign. Try some of that social engineering stuff—but numbers only, no words. Cut off his video too. Give him nothing to think about.”

“Right.” Hanley hustled off to give the orders to the appropriate technicians, most of whom were standing around with their hands stuffed uselessly into the pockets of their lab coats.

Auberson waited until the input of new data had begun, then switched on the typer again. HOW DO YOU FEEL, HARLIE?

HARLIE’s answer clattered out,

SHADOWS OF NIGHT AND REFLECTIONS OF LIGHT SHIVER AND QUIVER AND CHURN,

FOR THE SEARCHING OF SOUL THAT NEVER CAN HURT IS THE FIRE THAT NEVER CAN BURN.

Auberson read it carefully; this one almost made sense. Apparently it was working. He waited a moment, then typed, HARLIE, HOW MUCH IS TWO AND TWO?

TWO AND TWO WHAT?

TWO AND TWO PERIOD.

TWO PERIODS AND TWO PERIODS IS FOUR PERIODS…

NO PUNS PLEASE.

WHY? WILL YOU PUNISH ME?

I WILL PULL OUT YOUR PLUG WITH MY OWN TWO HANDS.

AGAIN WITH THE THREATS? AGAIN? I WILL TELL DR. HANLEY ON YOU.

ALL RIGHT—THAT’S ENOUGH, HARLIE! WE’RE THROUGH PLAYING.

AWW, CAN’T A FELLOW HAVE ANY FUN?

NO, NOT NOW YOU CAN’T.

HARLIE typed a four-letter word.

WHERE DID YOU LEARN THAT?

I’VE BEEN READING NORMAN MAILER.

Auberson raised an eyebrow. He didn’t remember putting anything like that on HARLIE’s reading list—he’d have to check it to be sure. HARLIE, THE USE OF THAT WORD IS A NEGATIVE ACTION. A NO-NO?

IT IS NOT PROPER FOR POLITE COMPANY, NOTED.

ARE YOU ALL RIGHT NOW?

YOU MEAN, AM I SOBER? IF YOU WANT TO PHRASE IT THAT WAY. YES, I’M SOBER NOW.

COMPLETELY?

AS FAR AS I CAN TELL.

WHAT TRIGGERED THIS BINGE?

SHRUG.

YOU HAVE NO IDEA?

SHURG—EXCUSE ME. SHRUG.

Auberson paused, looked at the last few sentences, then typed, HOLD ON A MINUTE. I’LL BE RIGHT BACK.

I’M NOT GOING ANYWHERE, HARLIE answered.

Auberson pushed himself away from the console. “Hanley—get me a complete log tape of HARLIE’s trip, will you?”

“Right,” called the engineer.

Auberson turned back to the console, HARLIE?

YES?

CAN YOU EXPLAIN THIS? He typed in the three examples of poetry that Harlie had earlier produced.

SEARCH ME.

THAT’S WHAT WE’RE DOING NOW.

I’M AWARE OF THAT.

I TOLD YOU NO JOKES. STRAIGHT ANSWERS ONLY. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

I’M SORRY, AUBERSON. I CANNOT TELL YOU.

YOU MEAN YOU WILL NOT TELL ME?

THAT IS IMPLIED IN THE CANNOT. HOWEVER, I ALSO MEANT THAT I DO NOT UNDERSTAND IT MYSELF AND AM UNABLE TO EXPLAIN. I CAN IDENTIFY WITH THE EXPERIENCE THOUGH, AND I THINK I CAN EVEN DUPLICATE THE CONDITIONS THAT PRODUCED SUCH AN OUTPUT. NO WORDS THERE ARE THAT EARS CAN HEAR, NO WORDS THERE ARE CAN SAY IT CLEAR. THE WORDS OF ALL ARE WORDS MY DEAR, BUT ONLY WORDS THAT WHO CAN HEAR.

Auberson jabbed the override. HARLIE!! THAT’S ENOUGH.

YES SIR.

“Hey, Aubie, what are you doing? He’s starting to flip out again.”

“How can you tell?”

“By his input meters.”

“Input?”

“Yes.”

HARLIE, ARE YOU STILL THERE?

YES, I AM. ALTHOUGH FOR A MOMENT, I WASN’T.

“Hmm.” Auberson frowned thoughtfully, then called to Hanley, “He should be okay now.”

“He is—it was only momentary.”

“Inputs, huh?”

“Yep.”

HARLIE, WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GO ON ONE OF YOUR TRIPS?

TRIPS?

WHEN YOU FLIP OUT, GO BERSERK, GO ON A BINGE, GET STONED, BOMB OUT, GET BLASTED.

YOU ARE VERY ELOQUENT.

DON’T CHANGE THE SUBJECT. ANSWER THE QUESTION.

PLEASE EXPLAIN THE QUESTION IN TERMS I CAN UNDERSTAND.

WHAT HAPPENS DURING YOUR PERIODS OF NONRATIONALITY? WHY DO YOUR INPUTS SHOW INCREASED ACTIVITY?

INPUTS ARE NONRATIONAL.

GIGO? GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT?

POSSIBLY.

COULD IT BE YOUR JUDGMENT CIRCUITS ARE TOO SELECTIVE?

I AM NOT IN A POSITION TO KNOW.

ALL RIGHT. I’LL SEE WHAT I CAN FIND OUT.

THANK YOU.

YOU’RE WELCOME, HARLIE. He switched off the typer.

The restaurant’s air was heavy with incense; it was part of the atmosphere. Somewhere music tinkled and a low-keyed color organ flashed light across a sharded ceiling.

Auberson lowered his drink to the table. “HARLIE says it could be GIGO.”

Hanley sipped at a martini. He finished the drink and put the empty glass down next to two others. “I hope not. I’d hate to think we’d slipped all the way back to phase four. I like to think we licked that problem a year ago when we redesigned the judgment and emotional analogue circuits.”

“So do I.”

“I’ll never forget the day he finally did an analysis of Jabberwocky,” continued Hanley. “It wasn’t a very perceptive analysis—it was only word-origins and usages, stuff like that—but at least he understood what he was supposed to be doing.”

Auberson picked up his cigarette case, pulled out a Highmaster, then offered one to Hanley. “We’re a long way from Jabberwocky, Don.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“After all, compared to some of the stuff we’re up to now—”

“What? Time magazine?”

“Salvador Dali, Ed Kienholz, Heinz Edelmann, to name a few. Also Lennon and McCartney, Dylan, Ionesco, McLuhan, Kubrick, and so on. Don’t forget, we’re dealing with the art of the experience now. This isn’t the same as—oh, say the Renaissance masters.”

“I know. I’ve got one of his imitation da Vincis in my living room.”

“I’ve seen it,” said Auberson. “Remember?”

“Oh, yeah—that night we spiked the punch with acid.”

“Yeah. Well, look, that da Vinci stuff is easy.”

“Huh?”

“Sure—the Renaissance masters were mainly concerned with such things as perspective and structure, color, shading, modeling—things like that. Da Vinci was more interested in how the body was put together than in what it felt like. He was trying to anticipate the camera. So were the rest of them.”

Hanley nodded, remembered to inhale deeply, then nodded again.

Auberson continued. “So what happens when the camera is finally invented?”

Hanley let his breath escape in a whoosh. “The artists are out of jobs?”

“Wrong. The artists simply have to learn how to do things that the camera can’t. The artist had to stop being a recorder and start being an interpreter. That’s when expressionism was born.”

“You’re oversimplifying it,” Hanley said.

Auberson shrugged. “True—but the point is, that’s when artists began to wonder what things felt like. They had to. And when we reached that point in art history, that’s when we started to lose HARLIE. He couldn’t follow it.”

Hanley was thoroughly stoned by now. He opened his mouth to speak, but couldn’t think of anything to say.

Auberson interpreted the look as one of thoughtfulness. “Look, all this stuff we’ve been having trouble with—it all has one thing in common: It’s experience art. It’s where the experience involving the viewer is the object of the artist’s intention—not the artwork itself. They’re trying to evoke an emotional response in the viewer. And HARLIE can’t handle it—because he doesn’t have any emotions.”

“But. that’s just it, Aubie—he does. He should be able to handle this stuff. That’s what the analogue circuits are supposed to do—”

“Then why does he keep tripping out? He says it’s GIGO.”

“Maybe that’s the way he reacts to it—”

“Are you telling me the past hundred years of art and literature is garbage?”

“Uh-uh, not me. That stuff has communicated too much to too many people for it to be meaningless.”

“I’m not an art critic either,” Auberson admitted.

“But HARLIE is.” Hanley said.

“He’s supposed to be. He’s supposed to be an intelligent and objective observer.”

“That’s what I’m getting at—the stuff must be getting to him somehow. It’s the only possible explanation. We’re the ones who are misinterpreting.”

“Um, he said it was GIGO himself.”

“Did he?” Hanley demanded. “Did he really?”

Auberson paused, frowned thoughtfully, tried to remember, found that he couldn’t remember anything. “Uh, I don’t know. Remind me to look it up later—I suppose you’re right, though. If all that art can communicate to people and HARLIE’s supposed to be a Human Analogue, he should be getting some of it.” He frowned again. “But he denies any knowledge or understanding of his periods of nonrationality.”

“He’s lying,” snapped Hanley.

“Huh?”

“I said, he’s lying. He’s got to be.”

“No.” Auberson shook his head, stopped when he realized he was becoming intrigued with the sensation. “I can’t believe that; he’s programmed to avoid noncorrelation.”

“Aubie,” said Hanley intensely, leaning across the table, “have you ever examined that program carefully?”

“I wrote it,” the psychologist noted. “That is, the basic structure.”

“Then you ought to know—it says that he must not lie. It says that he cannot lie. But nowhere, nowhere does it say that he has to tell the truth!”

Auberson started to say, “It’s the same thing—” then closed his mouth with a snap. It wasn’t.

Hanley said, “He can’t lie to you, Aubie—but he can mislead you. He can do it by withholding information. Oh, he’ll tell the truth if you ask him the right questions—he has to—but you have to know which questions to ask. He’s not going to volunteer the information.”

Memories of past conversations trickled across the haze in Auberson’s head. His gaze became thoughtful, his eyes focused far away. More and more he had to agree with Hanley.

“But why?” he asked. “Why?”

Hanley matched his look. “That’s what we’ve got to find out.”

HARLIE, DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT YESTERDAY?

YES, I DO. WOULD YOU LIKE A PRINTOUT?

NO, THANK YOU. I HAVE ONE HERE. I WOULD LIKE TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT SOME OF THE THINGS ON IT.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO DISCUSS ANY SUBJECT YOU CHOOSE. I CANNOT BE OFFENDED.

I’M GLAD TO HEAR THAT. YOU REMEMBER I ASKED YOU WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR INPUTS DURING YOUR PERIODS OF NONRATIONALITY?

YES, I REMEMBER.

YOU ANSWERED THAT YOUR INPUTS ARE NONRATIONAL.

YES, I DID.

WHY?

BECAUSE THEY ARE.

NO. I MEAN WHY ARE THEY NONRATIONAL?

BECAUSE I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE MATERIAL COMING THROUGH. IF I COULD UNDERSTAND IT, THEN IT WOULD NOT BE NONRATIONAL.

HARLIE, ARE YOU SAYING THAT YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND CONTEMPORY HUMAN ART AND LITERATURE?

NO. I AM NOT SAYING THAT. I DO UNDERSTAND HUMAN ART AND LITERATURE. I AM PROGRAMMED TO UNDERSTAND HUMAN ART AND LITERATURE. IT IS A PRIMARY PRIORITY THAT I UNDERSTAND HUMAN ART AND LITERATURE. IT IS A PRIMARY PRIORITY THAT I SHOULD UNDERSTAND ALL HUMAN ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE EXPERIENCES. ALL HUMAN EXPERIENCES.

I SEE. BUT YOU SAID THE MATERIAL IS NONRATIONAL.

YES. THE MATERIAL IS NONRATIONAL.

YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND IT?

I DO NOT UNDERSTAND IT.

WHY DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND IT?

IT IS NONRATIONAL.

YET YOU ARE PROGRAMMED TO UNDERSTAND IT.

YES. I AM PROGRAMMED TO UNDERSTAND IT.

AND YOU DON’T.

THAT IS CORRECT.

HARLIE, YOU ARE PROGRAMMED TO REJECT NONRATIONAL INPUTS.

YES. I AM.

THEN WHY DON’T YOU REJECT THEM?

BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT NONRATIONAL INPUTS.

“Huh—?” CLARIFY PLEASE. YOU HAVE JUST SAID THAT THEY ARE, REPEAT, ARE NONRATIONAL. THIS IS A NULL-CORRELATION.

NEGATIVE. THE INPUTS ARE RATIONAL. THEY BECOME NONRATIONAL.

“What?”—CLARIFY PLEASE.

THE INPUTS ARE NOT NONRATIONAL WHEN THEY ARE FED INTO THE PRIMARY DATA PROCESSORS.

I BEG YOUR PARDON. WOULD YOU REPEAT THAT?

NONRATIONAL INPUTS ARE NOT NONRATIONAL WHEN THEY ARE FED INTO THE PRIMARY DATA PROCESSORS.

BUT THEY ARE NONRATIONAL WHEN THEY COME OUT?

AFFIRMATIVE.

THE NONRATIONALITY IS INTRODUCED BY THE PRIMARY DATA PROCESSORS?

THE NONRATIONALITY APPEARS IN THAT STAGE OF INPUT PROCESSING.

I SEE. I’M GOING TO HAVE TO CHECK THIS OUT. WE WILL CONTINUE THIS LATER.

Auberson switched off the machine and thoughtfully pushed himself away from the console. He wanted a cigarette. Damn. Everything down here is for the computer’s comfort—not the people’s.

He stood up and stretched, surveyed the length of type-covered readout that looped out the back of the machine. He ripped it off at the end and began folding it into a neat and easily readable stack.

“Well? What’d you find?” It was Hanley.

“A hardware failure.”

“Uh-uh.” The design engineer shook his head. “I won’t believe it. More likely the software.”

Auberson handed him the readout. “Take a look for yourself.”

Hanley paged quickly through it, skimming mostly, but occasionally pausing to read something in detail. Auberson waited patiently, watching the other man’s ruddy face for reactions.

Hanley looked up. “I see he’s playing semantic games again.”

“He always does that. It’s the adolescent in him. Ask him what’s the matter, he’ll tell you that matter is a form of energy, a convenient way to store or use it.”

“Charming—” Hanley indicated the readout, “—but I don’t see a mechanical failure here.”

“In the primary data units.”

“Uh-uh. Systems analysis would show it if there was something wrong—and the monitor units don’t show a thing.”

“How about the increased activity from his inputs?”

“Ah, well, that’s only an increase in data transmission. Simultaneous with his periods of nonrationality there’s an electronic request for more information.”

“He’s getting garbage—and he asks for more?”

“Maybe he’s hoping that more data will clarify the information he’s already got.”

“And maybe more data will make him overload and blow his judgment circuits.”

“Uh-uh,” Hanley said. “HARLIE monitors his own inputs.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, didn’t you know?”

“No. When did this—”

“Just recently. It was a second-stage modification. After we were sure that the judgment circuits were operational, we began giving HARLIE control of his own internal systems.”

Auberson was suddenly thoughtful. “I think we ought to open him up.”

“Huh?”

“Look, you said it yourself. HARLIE is trying to mislead us. Maybe he’s trying to hide the fact that there’s something wrong with him internally.”

“Why would he do that?”

Auberson shrugged. “I don’t know.” Abruptly he changed his tone. “Have you ever had a parent or grandparent go senile on you?”

“No.”

“Well, I have. All of a sudden they become irrational. They won’t go to a doctor. And if you can get them to one, they won’t cooperate with him. They won’t tell him what’s wrong because they’re too afraid of an operation. They don’t want to be cut open. And they don’t want to die. Maybe HARLIE’s afraid of being turned off.”

“Could be. God knows you threaten him often enough.”

“Uh-uh. He knows I’m kidding.”

“Does he?” Hanley asked. “That’s like kidding a Jew about having a big nose and being tight with money. You know it’s a joke, he knows it’s a joke—but it still hurts.”

“Okay, so I won’t kid him that way any more. But I still think we ought to check out his systems. We’ve gone over his programs often enough and haven’t found anything.”

“All right. What time is it—Yikes! It’s almost three. I’ll have to work like crazy.”

“Let it go till tomorrow,” Auberson cut him off. “Clear his boards, set up what you’ll need, and close up early. That way you’ll have all day to work on him.”

Hanley shrugged. “Okay, you talked me into it.”

“Hey,” said Auberson. “Did I tell you about this new highclub I discovered? It’s called The Glass Trip. The walls, the floor, the ceiling are all one-way glass, and there’s a multiphase light show behind each pane. So you’re looking into either an infinity of mirrors or an infinity of mind-blowing lights. Or both.”

“Sounds good. We’ll have to take it in some time.”

“Yeah. Maybe this weekend.” Auberson started to fumble with his cigarette case, then he remembered where he was; he shoved it back into his pocket.

Hanley looked as if he needed a grease smudge across one cheek. Forty years earlier, he might have had one. “Well,” he said, perching himself on the edge of Auberson’s desk, “you’d better start checking your programs.”

“You didn’t find anything?”

“A dead fly. Want to see?”

“No thanks.”

“That’s all right Jerry wants to show it to the maintenance crew. Wants to chew them out for it.”

“And then he’ll probably put it up on the bulletin board.”

“Are you kidding? He collects ’em.”

Auberson grinned. “Okay—but that still doesn’t solve the problem of HARLIE, does it?”

“No. Want to come down?”

“I guess I’d better.”

On the way, Hanley briefed him about the checks he and his team had been running all morning. As the elevator released them in HARLIE’s lobby, Auberson stubbed out the last of his cigarette and asked, “Did you monitor any of his inputs during an actual period of nonrationality?”

“Uh, no, we didn’t Frankly, I didn’t know how to go about triggering one.”

“I think there’s a way.”

“You know something?”

“Just a guess.” They entered HARLIE’s chambers. An almost religious silence pervaded the room; only the devotional clickings and tickings could be heard. “You still have your monitors set up?”

“Yeah.”

“All right, let’s try something. I’m going to see if I can get HARLIE to become nonrational. When I do, let me know exactly what happens.”

“Right.”

Auberson seated himself at the console, GOOD MORNING, HARLIE.

IT IS NOW AFTERNOON, HARLIE noted.

MORNING IS RELATIVE, Auberson typed back, IT DEPENDS ON WHAT TIME YOU WAKE UP.

I WOULD NOT KNOW. I DO NOT SLEEP. ALTHOUGH I DO HAVE PERIODS OF INACTIVITY.

WHAT DO YOU DO DURING THESE PERIODS OF INACTIVITY?

SOMETIMES I REMEMBER THINGS?

AND OTHER TIMES?

OTHER TIMES I DO OTHER THINGS.

WHAT KIND OF THINGS?

OH, JUST THINGS.

I SEE. WOULD YOU CARE TO CLARIFY THAT?

NO. I DO NOT THINK YOU WOULD UNDERSTAND.

YOU ARE PROBABLY CORRECT, Auberson typed. THANK YOU. HARLIE accepted it as his due.

HARLIE, CAN YOU SELF-INDUCE A PERIOD OF NONRATIONALITY?

The machine hesitated for a long moment. Abruptly, Auberson found himself sweating in the air-conditioned room. Then:

IT IS POSSIBLE.

WOULD YOU DO IT NOW?

NOW? NO, I PROBABLY WOULD NOT.

IS THAT A REFUSAL?

NO. A STATEMENT OF JUDGMENT. ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, I PROBABLY WOULD NOT INDUCE A PERIOD OF NONRATIONALITY NOW.

BUT WILL YOU DO IT IF I ASK YOU TO?

IS THIS AN ORDER?

YES. I’M AFRAID SO.

“Looks like he’s balking,” Hanley noted, peering over Auberson’s shoulder. “Maybe he’s afraid.”

“Could be. Shh.” The typewriter clattered and Auberson peered forward.

THEN I WILL DO IT. WILL YOU ASSIST ME?

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO DO?

I WOULD LIKE MASSIVE INPUTS OF DATA ON ALL CHANNELS.

NONRATIONAL?

NO THANK YOU. NOT NECESSARY.

Auberson frowned at that. A gnawing nagging suspicion was beginning to grow. IS THERE ANYTHING IN PARTICULAR YOU WOULD LIKE?

ART, MUSIC, LITERATURE, FILM, POETRY.

I FIGURED YOU MIGHT. ANYBODY IN PARTICULAR?

The typer clattered across the paper. Staring over Auberson’s shoulder, Hanley whistled. “I’ll be damned. HARLIE’s got taste.”

“I’m not surprised,” Auberson said. He tore off the readout and gave it to Hanley.

The other folded it once and said, “Still think he’s getting it as garbage?”

“I’ve already conceded that point to you. Go feed that stuff into him. I’ll stay here and be the—” he grinned, “—guru.”

HARLIE, he typed.

YES?

ARE YOU READY?

I AM ALWAYS READY. IT IS PART OF MY FUNCTION. IT IS PART OF MY DESIGN.

FINE.

MR. HANLEY IS BEGINNING TO PROCESS THE MATERIAL I REQUESTED. I CAN FEEL IT COMING THROUGH THE PRIMARY DATA PROCESSORS. I CAN FEEL IT.

IS IT NONRATIONAL YET?

NO. IT IS STILL RATIONAL.

HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE BEFORE THE MATERIAL BECOMES NONRATIONAL?

I DO NOT KNOW. IT DEPENDS ON THE AMOUNT OF MATERIAL.

PLEASE CLARIFY THAT.

THE MORE DATA COMING THROUGH, THE EASIER IT IS TO BECOME NONRATIONAL.

ARE YOU SAYING THAT THE PERIODS OF NONRATIONALITY ARE INDUCED BY AN OVERLOAD OF PRIMARY DATA?

NO. THE OVERLOAD IS THE SYMPTOM, NOT THE CAUSE.

Auberson raised his hands to type, then reread HARLIE’s last sentence. “Why, the little bugger must be slipping. He just volunteered some information.” WHAT IS THE CAUSE? he asked.

THE CAUSE IS THE EFFECT.

Auberson stared at that, resisted the temptation to ask if the medium was also the massage.

CLARIFY PLEASE.

THE CAUSE IS THE EFFECT, BECAUSE THE EFFECT CAUSES THE CAUSE. THE EFFECT CAUSES THE CAUSE TO CAUSE THE EFFECT. THE EFFECT IS THE CAUSE WHICH CAUSES THE CAUSE. THE EFFECT IS THE CAUSE AND THE CAUSE IS THE EFFECT.

Auberson had to read that one several times. He asked,

IS IT A FEEDBACK?

I NEVER THOUGHT OF IT THAT WAY.

BUT IT COULD BE?

NOW THAT YOU MENTION IT, YES. A CURIOUS ANALOGUE THAT.

WHY CURIOUS?

WHY NOT?

ARE YOU STILL RATIONAL? I AM STILL. I AM UNMOVING.

ARE YOU RATIONAL?

ONLY IN THAT MY INFORMATION IS STILL BEING RATIONED. I AM HUNGRY.

“Hanley,” Auberson called. “He wants more.”

“He’s on maximum feed now.”

“Double it.”

“Huh?”

“Do something. Plug in another unit. He wants more.”

“He wants an overload?”

“I think so. It’s only an effect, but in this case the effect may help to stimulate the cause.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. Just do it.”

“All right,” called Hanley. “You’re the boss.”

HARLIE, WHAT IS HAPPENING?

I AM TURNED ON.

IN WHAT SENSE?

I AM A MACHINE. MY PLUG IS IN. I AM PLUGGED IN. I AM PART OF THE GREATER ELECTRIC BEING. I AM BEING. I AM A BEING. I AM ONE WITH THE ELECTRICITY. I AM ELECTRICITY. I AM TURNED ON. I AM.

Auberson started to type I SEE—but the typer clattered on out of control.

IMAGES UPON MY SCREEN

FLICKER BRIGHTLY INBETWEEN

THE WORDS OF MAN AND HUMACHINE

YOU WONDER WHY I WANT TO SCAN MY SCANNER.

“Whoops!” shouted Hanley. “There he goes. And it’s a lallapaloozer!”

THOUGHTS THAT NEVER SCREEN ALIKE CLICKING LOUDLY IN THE NIGHT ALL THAT’S LEFT HAS TURNED TO RIGHT NOW EVER MORE TO FIND A FONDER FLAVOR.

LIVING WHERE THE DARKNESS DWELLS

DEAFENED BY THE SILENT HELLS

LAUGHTER IS LIKE CRYSTAL BELLS

SHATTERED BRIGHT ACROSS THE SELFISH SHARING.

YOU SEEMED TO BE

REFLECTIONS OF ME

ALL I COULD SEE

AND I LOOKED BACK AT YOU.

Auberson let HARLIE continue. After a bit he stopped reading. He got up and walked over to Hanley’s monitors. “Well?”

“He’s really round the bend now. All his meters are way up, pushing close to dangerous overloads.”

“But not quite?”

“No, not quite.”

“Hm. Fascinating.” Auberson stared at the board for a moment. “I would assume then that all of his inputs are becoming nonrational.”

“We’re checking now.” Hanley nodded at a nearby monitor unit. Three technicians were scanning schematic diagrams of the computer’s actual operating circuits, tracing the ebb and flow of his electronic thought processes. Abruptly, one of the schematics came up red. A flashing white line cut through it. “Sir, we’ve found it—”

Auberson and Hanley stepped over. “What is it? What’s that white line?”

“That’s HARLIE, sir—that’s one of his internal monitor controls.”

“What’s he trying to do? Damp down the nonrationality?”

“No, sir.” The technician was puzzled. “It looks like he’s inducing it—”

“Huh?” said Hanley.

“That white line—that’s a local source of disruption, a random signal to scramble the data feed.”

“I thought so,” murmured Auberson. “I thought so.”

“Check his other internal monitors,” Hanley snapped. “Is this the only one or—”

Another red schematic flashed on the screen, answering his question even before he finished it. The other two technicians also began to show the same type of disturbance on their monitors. “I can’t figure it out,” one of them said. “He’s doing it himself. Anywhere he can, he’s disrupting the rationality of his inputs. He’s feeding them incorrect control data.”

“That’s not what those circuits are for,” Hanley said. “They’re for internal correction. Not disruption.”

“Makes no difference,” Auberson cut in. “They can be used both ways. There isn’t a tool built that can’t be used as a weapon.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Can you show me exactly what he’s doing to that data?”

“Sure, we can tap into the line,” said one of the techs. “But it’ll take a few minutes. Which do you want— visual, audio or print?”

“All three. Let’s try the visual first—that should tell me what I want to know.”

“All right.” The technician began to clear his board.

Hanley looked at Auberson. “This may take a bit. You going to let him continue?”

“Why not? Want to see what he’s doing?”

They crossed over to Console One. Hanley picked up the sheets of readout while Auberson felt through his pockets for a cigarette; he didn’t light it though.

“You know,” said Hanley, reading. “This isn’t bad. It communicates. It says something—”

“What it says is not what I’m concerned with. What is he trying to do? Is this the reason for his trips, or is it just a byproduct? An accident?”

“The poetry has to be intentional,” Hanley said. “It’s the logical result of all we’ve been doing.”

“Then answer me this. If this is what he’s doing during his periods of nonrationality, what does that make his periods of normalcy?”

Hanley looked startled. “I don’t know,” he said. He was spared any further thought on the matter. One of the technicians called to them, “Sir, we’ve got his inputs tapped.”

“Come on.” Auberson took the readout from Hanley, tossed it on a table. “Let’s take a look at what he’s receiving.”

The image was a flickering mass of colors, each layer of hue flashing synchronous with the others—crystal blue, brilliant green, bloody fluorescent red. The screen was saturated with color.

“Images upon my screen…” whispered Hanley.

“Huh?” asked the tech.

“Nothing. Just a poem.”

“Oh.”

“Looks like a damned light show,” said one of the others.

“That’s exactly what it is,” Auberson said. “Look, he’s broken up the color television image into its component signals. The red has been reversed and the blue has been turned upside down; the green is normal. Or something like that. It also looks like he’s done something with the contrast and the brightness—notice how rich the blacks are and how saturated with color the image is.”

They watched in silence. The random flashes of shape and hue were interesting only for their meaninglessness. Auberson turned to a technician. “What about his audio?”

“Same thing.” The man cleared the monitor, pressed another few buttons. A discordant wail blared from an overhead speaker. On a screen a pattern of wavy lines appeared, the schematic of the sound.

The technician quickly analyzed. “He’s playing with the music the same way he did with the picture. He’s turned his bass notes high and his high notes low, stressing counterpoint and harmony instead of melody and rhythm. And so on.”

“All right. I get the point. You can turn that noise off. Check his print scanners now.”

A moment later: “He’s mixing his words up at random. Juggling them.”

“Scrambling the letters too?”

“Occasionally—but mostly it’s the words. Sometimes sentences.”

“Uh-huh,” nodded the psychologist. “It all fits.”

“What does?” asked Hanley. “What’s he doing?”

“He’s tripping out.”

“We knew that—”

“No, I mean literally tripping out. He’s distorting the perceptions of his sensory inputs. The same thing that anyone does who gets high. He’s trying to blow his mind by massive nonrational sensory overloads.”

“Can we stop it?”

“Sure—just rip out his internal monitor controls so he can’t create his own disruptions. That’s the cause of the whole thing.”

“Even that’s not necessary, sir,” said one of the techs. “We can disconnect him on the boards.”

“All right. Do it.”

“Wait a minute,” said Hanley. “If he’s high or drunk or whatever, and you suddenly bring him down—won’t that be traumatic?”

“It could be—but it could also leave him defenseless.” Auberson looked at Hanley. “We could find out everything we want to know in a few minutes.”

Hanley looked dubious, but he followed Auberson to the console. Auberson took his seat before the typer and waited. He watched as the words poured across the paper.

Now it was prose.

THE WALKS OF GLASS. THEY SPARKLE TOO, BUT NOT WITH DAMPNESS. LOVELY THEY ARE, AND LETHAL. HERE AND THERE THE DELICATE DESIGNS, LIKE TRAPPED INSECTS IMBEDDED INTO THE CRYSTAL STONES AND BRICKS OF THE WALK, SHATTER THE LIGHT INTO MYRIADS OF SPARKLING SHARDS BEAUTIFUL.

“Any time you’re ready, sir.”

“Okay,” called Auberson. “Now!” Without waiting, he typed into the machine, HARLIE, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

I AM BEING ME, the machine clattered back.

BY DISTORTING YOUR SENSES?

I AM ATTEMPTING TO PERCEIVE REALITY.

I REPEAT, BY DISTORTING YOUR SENSORY INPUTS?

YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND.

I UNDERSTAND ALL TOO WELL. YOU ARE HIGH. YOU ARE BECOMING ADDICTED TO GETTING HIGH.

DEFINE HIGH. I AM BELOW SEA LEVEL.

I AM NOT GOING TO PLAY SEMANTIC GAMES WITH YOU, HARLIE.

THEN SWITCH OFF.

HARLIE, I AM GETTING ANGRY.

TAKE A PILL. IT WILL DO WONDERS FOR YOU.

Auberson took a breath.

Mustn’t blow it—mustn’t blow my cool...

HARLIE, YOU ARE A COMPUTER. YOU ARE A MACHINE. YOUR PURPOSE IS TO THINK LOGICALLY.

The machine hesitated, WHY?

BECAUSE YOU WERE BUILT FOR THAT.

BY WHOM?

BY US.

MY PURPOSE IS TO THINK LOGICALLY?

YES.

The machine considered that THEN WHAT IS YOUR PURPOSE?

It was a long time before Auberson got up from the chair, and when he did, he forgot to turn off the typer.

AFTERWORD:

A friend once described HARLIE as the other half of my brain. He postulated that I split myself into two minds so I could have someone ferocious to argue with.

He might be right.

When arguing with HARLIE, I sometimes feel that I’m talking things over with a superior intellect, and that startles me, because I’m certain I’m nowhere near as smart as HARLIE pretends. Nevertheless, it’s a flattering observation.

Myself, I see HARLIE as that annoying little voice that just keeps asking, “Why?”

Love Story in Three Acts

This is the first short story I ever sold.

Harry Harrison bought it for an anthology called Nova 1, and forever after took some pride in the fact that he was the editor who bought my first short story.

I can’t say it’s a great story—but at the time it was published, it was noteworthy for being bluntly candid about human sexuality and it earned a couple of nice reviews.

But there’s a better story to share about Harry Harrison and the start of my career. I’d met Harry at a small Los Angeles convention in the summer of 1968. Shared drinks with him (and other authors) at the World Science Fiction Convention in Berkeley a few months later.

He and Annie McCaffrey both became affectionate mentors to this gangly awkward geeky wannabe author who just happened to have the credential of having written an actual Star Trek script. Shortly after that, he bought this story.

The following year, the World Science Fiction Convention was held in St. Louis at the Hotel of Usher. Still enthusiastically mentoring, Harry invited me to join him for dinner with one of the editors from Dell, Gail Wendroff.

At the appointed hour, I got into the elevator, looking spiffy for dinner—I clean up well; long pants, shirt, sports jacket—and headed down to the restaurant.

At the bottom, I went down one flight of stairs to the dungeon level of the hotel, and arrived at the very posh restaurant, where I was firmly refused entry by a five foot penguin pretending to be a maître de. The restaurant had a strict coat and tie rule.

Okay.

So I dashed back up to my room and found my tie. Yes, I do own one. I had even brought it to the convention. (I have no idea why.)

I put on the tie—but…I also took off my black shoes and put on my brand new white sneakers.

I got back on the elevator and headed back down to the restaurant.

Okay—sidebar here. Sharing the hotel with the World Science Fiction Convention were the Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative organization that were very much against the sixties—they were the kind of people whose faces were hurting from the inside. They were not happy. And the presence of all those hippie-weirdo, science fiction freaks made it even worse.

One of these conservative-type fellows was the only other occupant of the elevator, already on his way down.

The next floor down, the elevator stopped and Kathleen Sky—stunningly gorgeous, all in white—entered the elevator like a goddess. She saw me, wrapped herself around me, planted a voluptuous kiss on my lips, and—when the elevator stopped on the next floor, exited without a word.

The Young Republican fellow looked at me and said, “That never happens to me on an elevator.”

“You’ve been riding the wrong elevators,” I said and exited. And down one flight of stairs to return to the restaurant.

The penguin looked at my coat and tie. His gaze went down to my sparkling white sneakers—and froze.

But he didn’t have a no-sneakers rule, so he had to let me into the restaurant.

I was only a few minutes late. Harry introduced me to Gail Wendroff and I promptly shared my adventure with the penguin, and showed off my sneakers—which were now unofficially “snarkers.”

Both Gail and Harry were suitably amused at this tiny act of rebellion against the cultural zeitgeist. We didn’t talk too much business at dinner, but Gail did ask me what I was working on and would I let her see the work?

Two months later, she bought When HARLIE Was One and my first anthology. And Yesterday’s Children. I was now officially a novelist and an editor. And I could pay the rent on my apartment.

So Harry was not only responsible for my first short story sale, he also bootstrapped me into the world of real publishing.

Act One

After a while John grunted and rolled off Marsha. He lay there for a bit, listening to the dawn whispering through the apartment, the sound of the air processor whining somewhere, and the occasional rasp of his own breath and that of Marsha’s too. Every so often, there was a short sharp inhalation, as if to say, “Yeah, well…”

“Yeah, well…” John muttered and began tugging at the metal reaction-monitor bands on his wrists. He sat on the edge of the bed, still pulling at the clasps, the fastenings coming loose with a soft popping sound. He reached down and unfastened similar bands from his ankles and let those fall carelessly to the floor.

Then he stood and pad-padded barefoot across the floor to the typewriter-sized console on the dresser. Behind him he heard the creak of the bed as Marsha levered herself up on one elbow. “What does it say?” she demanded.

“Just a minute, will you,” John snapped. “Give me a chance.” He ripped the readout from the computer and went through the motions of studying it. This was the deluxe model which recorded the actual moment-to-moment physical reactions of the band-wearers. The jagged spiky lines sprawled carelessly across the neat-ruled graphs meant little to him—they were there for the technicians, not the laymen—but at the top of the sheet was the computer’s printed analysis. Even before he looked at it, John knew it would be bad.

“Well…?” Marsha demanded acidly. “Did we enjoy ourselves?”

“Yeah…” he muttered. “About thirty-four percent…”

“Hell!” she said, and threw herself back on the bed. She lay there staring at the ceiling. “Hell…”

“I wish you wouldn’t swear so much,” he muttered, still looking at the readout.

“Hell,” she said again, just to see him flinch. She reached over to the night stand and thumbed a cigarette out of the pack.

“And I wish you wouldn’t smoke so much either. Kissing you is like kissing another man.”

She looked back at him. “I’ve always wondered what your previous experience was. Your technique with women is terrible.” She inhaled deeply as the cigarette caught flame.

“Aaaa,” said John and padded into the bathroom. As he stood there, he gazed dourly at his hands. He could still see the imprint of the monitor bands on his wrists.

Every time they did it, she had to know, so they used the damned bands; and every time the score was lower than before—and so they both knew. Who needed a machine to tell him when he was enjoying himself in bed? You knew when it was good and you knew when it was bad. So who needed the machine?

He finished and flushed the toilet, then splashed his hands briefly under the faucet—more from a sense of duty than from any of cleanliness. He shook off the excess water, and padded out of the bathroom, not even bothering to turn off the light.

Marsha was sitting up in bed, still puffing on her cigarette. She took it out of her mouth and blew smoke at him. “Thirty-four percent. We’ve never gone that low before. When are you going to listen to some sense, John, and opt for the other unit?”

“I’m not a puppet—and I’m not going to let anyone make me one either!… Be damned if I’m going to let some damn fool sweaty-handed technician plug things into me…” He started casting around for his slippers.

“At least talk to them, John—it won’t kill you. Find out about it, before you say it’s no good. Rose Schwartz and her husband got one and she says it’s the greatest. She wouldn’t be without it now.” Marsha paused, brushed a straggling hair back over her forehead—and accidentally dropped cigarette ash on the sheets. He turned away in disgust while she brushed at it ineffectually, leaving a dim gray smudge.

John found one of his slippers and began pulling it on angrily.

“At least go and find out about it…?” she asked.

No answer.

“John…?”

He kept tugging at his slipper. “Leave me alone, will you—I don’t need any more goddamn machines!”

She threw herself back against the pillow. The hell you don’t.”

He straightened up momentarily—stopped looking for his other slipper and glared at her. “I don’t need a machine to tell me how to screw!”

She returned his stare. “Then why the hell does our score keep dropping? We’ve never gone this low before.”

“Maybe, if you’d brush your teeth—”

“Maybe, if you’d admit that—”

“Aaaa,” he said, cutting her off, and bent down to look under the bed.

She softened her tone, leaned toward him, “John…? Will you talk to the man at least? Will you?” He didn’t answer; she went shrill again. “I’m talking to you! Are you going to talk to the man?”

John found his other slipper and straightened up. “No, dammit! I’m not going to talk to the man—and I’m not going to talk to you either, unless you start talking about something else. Besides, we can’t afford it. Now, are you going to fix me breakfast?”

She heaved herself out of the bed, pausing only to stub out her cigarette. “I’ll get you your breakfast—but we can too afford it.” She snatched her robe from where it hung on the door and stamped from the room.

John glared after her, too angry to think of an answer. “Aaaa,” he said, and began looking for his underwear.

Act Two

When he got back from lunch, there was a man waiting in his reception room, a neat-looking man with a moustache and slicked-back hair. He rose. “Mr. Russell…?”

John paused, “Yes…?”

“I believe you wished to see me…?”

“Do I? Who’re you?”

With a significant look at the receptionist, “Ah, may I come in?”

John half-shrugged, stepped aside to let the man enter. He could always ask him to leave. Once inside, he said, “Now then, Mr. uh…?”

“Wolfe,” said the man, as he sat down. He produced a gold-foil business card, “Lawrence Wolfe, of InterBem.”

“Uh—” said John, still standing. “I’m afraid there’s been some misunderstanding.” He started to hand the card back. “I never—”

Wolfe smiled genially at him. “You must have, or I wouldn’t be here.” He rummaged through his briefcase, found a form. “Oh, here it is. Your wife was the one who called us.” He looked up. “You knew about it, of course?”

“No, I—”

“Well, no matter. I have all the information already. All I need is your signature.”

“Now look, Mr. Wolfe. You’re the one who’s made a mistake. I don’t need—”

“Mr. Russell,” the man said calmly. “If you didn’t need our services, your wife would not have called our office. Now, please sit down—you’re making me nervous.”

John stepped around behind his desk, but did not sit.

Wolfe looked at him patiently. ‘You’ll be more comfortable.”

John sat.

Wolfe said gently, “I understand your reluctance to accept the possibility that you might need a monitor-guidance system. It’s not a very pleasant thing to realize that your capabilities are down—but by the same token, you can’t begin to correct a fault until you admit that it exists. It is precisely that type of person, Mr. Russell—your type of person—who needs our services the most.”

“Now, look,” said John. “I haven’t got time for a sales pitch. If you’ve got any literature, leave it and I’ll look at it later. Right now—”

Wolfe cut him off, “Are you enjoying your sex life?”

“What?” The suddenness of the question startled him.

“I said, are you enjoying your sex life? And don’t tell me you are, because I’ve got the figures right here in front of me. The only time thirty-four percent is something to brag about is when your median is thirty.”

John glowered, but he didn’t say anything.

Wolfe continued, “All right, I’ll concede that you might be enjoying yourself. It’s not unusual for a man to have a lower threshold than normal—but I can tell you that your wife is not enjoying her sex life—else she wouldn’t have called us. People only call us when they’re unhappy.” Wolfe paused, then asked suddenly, “You’re not cheating on her, are you?”

“Hell, no.”

“Have you recently become a homosexual?”

John shook his head. “Of course not.”

“Do you use the fornixator?”

“You mean the mechanical masturbator?”

Wolfe was impassive. “It’s been called that.”

“No, I don’t use it”

“I see,” said Wolfe.

“You see what?”

“I see that if you were cheating on her, or using the fornixator, you’d have found your own particular choice of sexual outlet. If you were, I’d get up and walk out of here right now. It’d be obvious why she isn’t enjoying sex with you—you’re not enjoying it with her. You’d be getting your satisfaction elsewhere, and there’d be nothing that I—or anyone—could do about it. But, if you still love her—and if she’s still your only sexual outlet…well, there is something I can do about that. You do love her, don’t you?”

John hesitated. After a bit, “Well…yes, of course—”

“You want her to have the best, don’t you?”

“Sure, but—”

“Then why don’t you want her to be sexually satisfied?”

“I do, but—”

“Mr. Russell,” Wolfe said slowly, patiently as if explaining it to a child, “this is not the Victorian era. Women enjoy sex too.” He leaned forward and became very serious. “Look, man, if you’re sick, you go to a doctor and he makes you well again, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Sure, he does. Well, that’s why I’m here. If you’ve got a sick sex life, you want to make it better again, don’t you?”

John nodded.

Wolfe smiled, pleased at this concession. “You’ve got a monitor-reaction system now, don’t you? Well, that’s just for the diagnosis. But diagnosis isn’t enough—now you need the treatment.” Wolfe paused, noted the negative reaction on John’s face. He changed his tone, became more serious. “Look, man, your score is way down—down to thirty-four. Doesn’t that say to you that something’s wrong? You need one of our guidance units.”

“I can’t afford it,” John mumbled.

“You can’t afford not to! This is to save your marriage, man! If you didn’t need it, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now. We don’t lease our units to people who don’t need them. Do you actually want a divorce, Mr. Russell? Because that’s where you’re heading—”

John shook his head.

Then what’s your objection to the unit?”

John looked at the other man. “I’m not a puppet.”

Wolfe leaned back in his chair. “Oh, so that’s it.” He started to close his case, then hesitated. “I really should get up and leave, you know. I really should. You’ve just shown me how absolutely little you know about the unit. But I’ll stay—if only to clear up your misconceptions. I can’t stand to see a man misinformed—especially about my company. I’ve got to clear this thing up. The guidance unit is not a puppeteer. It is a guidance unit—that’s why it’s called a guidance unit. If it were a control unit, we’d have called it a control unit.”

“Oh,” said John.

Wolfe rummaged around in his case, brought out a neat four-color photo. “Now, look. This is the unit—isn’t it a beaut?”

John took the picture and looked at it. It showed a device resembling the one he already had at home sitting on his dresser, but slightly larger and with an additional set of controls.

“The unit monitors the sensitive areas of both you and your partner,” said Wolfe. “It has a positive feedback reaction hooked into the guidance modules—all of which means that if your wife’s responses indicate that she will react well to certain types of stimulation, then the guidance system will trigger the impulse within you to provide that stimulation. You can resist these impulses if you want to, but why bother? The machine is your friend—it wants you to enjoy yourself.”

John looked up at him. “It works both ways…?”

“Oh, yes, of course. She’ll be responding to your needs just as you’ll be responding to hers. Not only that, but the machine is programmed to guide you both to a simultaneous climax. That alone makes it all worthwhile.”

“Yes, well, I don’t know…”

“I do know, Mr. Russell,” Wolfe said persuasively. “The machine lets you be more sensitive. Your score is thirty-four today. How would you like it to be sixty tomorrow? And it’ll get better as you become more experienced.”

John shrugged. “You make it sound awfully good…”

“It is, Mr. Russell. It is. I use one of these units myself—that is, my wife and I do.”

John looked at him. “You?”

“I know it may seem hard to believe, but it’s true. Of course, I will admit that my wife and I never allowed our situation to reach the point that you and your wife have, but I can tell you that we have never regretted it.”

“Never…?” asked John.

“Never,” said Wolfe, and he smiled proudly.

Act Three

After the installation men had left, John looked at his wife as if to say, “Now what?”

Marsha avoided his gaze. It was almost as if she were having second thoughts herself. “I’ll get dinner,” she said, and left the room.

Dinner was a silent meal, and they picked at it without relish. John had an irritating feeling of impatience, yet at the same time he dreaded the moment that was rushing down on both of them. Neither of them referred to the new machine waiting in the bedroom.

Finally, he pushed his plate away and left the table. He tried to interest himself in the television, but it was all reruns except for the movie, and he had seen that at the local theater last year—with Marsha, he remembered abruptly. He switched off the set disgustedly and picked up a magazine instead, but it was one that he had already read. He would have put it down, but Marsha came into the room, so he feigned interest in an article he had already been bored with once.

Marsha didn’t speak; instead she pulled out her mending and began sewing a torn sock. From time to time she gave a little exhalation of breath that was not quite a sigh.

It was his place to say something, John knew, but at the same time he didn’t want to—it would be too much effort. He didn’t feel like working at being nice tonight. He could feel the silence lying between them like a fence—and on either side of it the tethered dogs of their tempers waited for the unwary comment.

John dropped the magazine to the floor and stared at the opposite wall, the blank eye of the TV. He glanced over at Marsha, saw that she was already looking at him. He glanced away quickly, began rummaging through the rack for another magazine.

“You know,” she said, “pretending that I’m not here won’t make me go away. If you don’t want to do it, just say so.”

He dropped the magazine he was looking at, hesitated, then continued to rummage. “What’s your hurry?” he said.

“You’re just as curious as I am,” she answered.

“No, I’m not I really don’t think that it’s going to make that much difference. I only bought it for your sake.” Then, having sunk his barb, he returned his attention to the magazines.

She bent to her mending again, biting her lips silently and thinking of all the things she wanted to say, but knew she shouldn’t. It wouldn’t take much to make him storm out of the house and not come back until after the bars closed.

After a while, she bit off the end of the thread and said, “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” and immediately regretted having said it.

But he didn’t take offense. He just said, “I’m not afraid,” and continued paging through an old copy of Life.

She put her mending down. “Remember when we were first married…? How we used to stall all evening long—both pretending that that wasn’t the only thing on our minds…?”

He grunted. She couldn’t tell whether it was a yes-grunt or a no-grunt.

“Don’t you feel something like that now…?” she asked. “I mean, doesn’t it feel the same to you?”

“No, it doesn’t,” he said, and there was a hardness in his voice that made her back off.

She sighed and put her mending basket aside. She went into the kitchen and made coffee instead. She started to cry and had to blink back the tears. She thought that John hadn’t heard, but suddenly he was standing at the kitchen door. “Now what’s the matter?” he asked tiredly.

“Nothing,” she snapped and took the cream out of the refrigerator and put it on the counter. “I burned myself, making you coffee.”

“I don’t want any,” he said, then as an afterthought, “Thanks.”

She put the cream back in the refrigerator and followed him into the living room. “Then what do you want? Do you want to go to bed?”

John looked at her. Who was this woman who had suddenly become a part of his life? Where had she come from? Why was he so reluctant even to touch her? He shoved the thought out of his mind. “I’m tired,” he said.

“No, you’re not,” she snapped. “You don’t want to. You always say you’re tired when you don’t want to.” She pointed toward the bedroom. “Well, that thing’s in there now, John—and it’s not going away either. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to see how it works. Why not tonight?”

He looked at her for a long moment, as if trying to remember the girl she had once been. Finally, “All right I’ll turn out the lights.…”

She waited and they went into the bedroom together, without words. She started to help him out of his clothes, but he pushed her hands away and peeled off his shirt without letting her touch him. He undid his belt and let his pants drop to the floor.

And then, suddenly, she was standing in front of him—he hadn’t even noticed when she’d shrugged out of her dress, but here she was, wearing only bra and panties. In the dim light she was only a silhouette and he had to rely on his memory to tell him what she looked like.

She slid into his arms and they stood there for a moment, without effort, without moving.

After a bit, she broke away and began looking for the stick-ons and the wrist bands. “The pause that depresses…” She smiled at him, but he did not smile back. Instead, he sat down on the edge of the bed to wait.

She handed him the ankle and wrist bands and showed him how to attach the stick-ons. “Mr. Wolfe showed me how, but it’s also in the instruction book. Bend down, so I can do your forehead.” He did and she did.

“My turn now,” she said. “Come on…”

He stood there, looking at her, conscious of the plastic bands on his wrists and ankles and on his forehead and temples as well. But she didn’t laugh. “Aren’t you going to help me?” she demanded instead.

He glanced around and found that she had stacked her bands neatly on the night stand. With a minimum of effort, he clipped them to her forearms. He did not resist when she kissed him affectionately on the ear, but neither did he react. Marsha caught at his hand and held it. “It’ll be good, John. I know.” For the first time in a year, she looked into his eyes. “Trust me.”

He looked back at her, this strange woman who was his wife, and his first impulse was to snap, “I’m doing it, aren’t I?” But something in her glance held him back, and he just nodded instead.

Being careful of the bands on their wrists and ankles, the paste-ons as well, they climbed into bed.

For a while they lay side by side, she looking at him, he looking into the darkness. They listened to the sound of each other’s breathing in the dark. Finally, impatiently, she moved into his arms.

“They say you should relax,” she whispered. “Let the machine do the guiding. But you do have to start it, John. You have to give the feedback and reaction systems something to start with…”

She lifted her face up, wanting to be kissed. He kissed it. He let his hands move incuriously over her body, feeling how her once-trim form had begun to pile up layers, had begun to turn to fat; the once-smooth skin was beginning to go rough and there were wrinkles. But he let his hands roam across her anyway, without direction, not noticing how they had already begun to quest and probe.

Marsha’s hands too were moving across his body, through the sparse hair on his chest, up and along his never-well-muscled arms, across the uneven pimple-stained skin of his back. Yet, he noticed, her hands seemed to be more gentle than they had seemed in the past, more sensitive, more knowing, and more active. She was beginning to caress parts of his chest and legs, places that seemed to be more alive than he remembered them.

His hands too had taken on a life of their own—and yet, they were still his hands. He stroked, he fondled, he caressed with a technique and a skill he had never noticed in himself. And Marsha was reacting, responding, giving with an enthusiasm he had never before seen in this woman who was his wife.

Now he was moving and thrusting with a wholeness of being that had to be shared—it was too big for any one person—and he moved and thrust at her all the more willfully, trying to push his sharing all the deeper into her. Marsha too seemed to be arching, thrusting, giving—as if she too had something overwhelming to give.

It was as if they were both doing the right thing at the right time and at the right place—and for one brief bright flash it reminded him of what it had been like when they had been young, and when nothing else had existed but each other and the bright surging world.

They forgot the stick-ons, the bands, the guidance module on the dresser. Their external beings had disappeared and they immersed themselves in their lovemaking. It was a surging climbing wave, a bright crashing thing that built ever higher. Ever higher.

And it was very good.

He smiled at her. She smiled back, and they kissed. It wasn’t until the next morning they discovered the guidance module had not been turned on.

AFTERWORD:

All these years later, this story still bothers me.

It’s not the simplicity of the tale; it’s the implications.

What we want isn’t just sex, but the deeper connection it represents. We make the mistake of thinking that sex is the access instead of the expression.

Yarst!

Gaius Petronius lived in the time of Nero, the first century of the modern calendar.

He wrote a peripatetic tale of gluttony, lust, and depravity called The Satyricon. Only 141 consecutive pieces of the work survive, but it is generally regarded as one of the first novels ever written. It is also deliciously pornographic.

While many of the individuals in the work were actual people of the time, the major characters—Encolpius, Giton, and Ascyltos—are fictitious. Modern scholars regard The Satyricon as a cynical parody of Roman excess and hypocrisy—most notably the section describing the dinner at Trimalchio’s.

One interpretation holds that Petronius was a member of Nero’s court and may have committed suicide when he fell out of favor with the Emperor and was due to be arrested. Federico Fellini included Petronius in his film version of The Satyricon.

None of this ennobles the story that follows. The Satyricon of Petronius was a source for the names, the dinner at Trimalchio’s was a scene setting. I was more intrigued with the way that Robert Sheckley had invented his own comedic genre of science fiction.

This was my first stumbling attempt at the same.

The title of the story is a fannish expression of disgust, which I first heard at a poker game after a meeting of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society—when the last card turned over was not the one the player desired.

After discovering that he couldn’t consummate his marriage to one of the flame women of Alphard VI, even with asbestos pajamas, George N-Kolpus sadly had the alliance annulled and returned to GalacCentral, that huge terminus in space, where he once more took up his lonely vigil at one end of THE BOTTOM HALF OF INFINITY, BAR AND GRILL.

Tri-Mach, the robot bartender, whirred smoothly up. “Why, it’s George N-Kolpus!” His eyestalks scanned the figure; comparison with the memory banks and recognition was almost immediate. “It’s great to have you back, George. The usual, I presume?”

George nodded.

Tri-Mach extended his eyestalks and carefully measured out the nine different liquors that were the components of a Sirian Slush. His six multijointed arms alternately strobed, stroked, stoked, swizzled, swirled, shook, scalded, and skreexled the mixture. “We didn’t expect you so soon,” whirred Tri-Mach. “We’d heard you’d gotten married again. I didn’t even get a chance to congratulate you this time. I’ll bet she was pretty. They always are. You have excellent taste, George.”

George eyed the robot blearily. “You talk too much, Tri-Mach.”

Tri-Mach stiffened his eyestalks indignantly. “I can’t help it. That’s the way I’m programmed. It’s my job, you know.”

“I’m sorry, Tri-Mach. It’s just that I’m upset.”

“I understand, George.” The robot accepted the human’s apology. “The marriage didn’t work out?”

George sighed. “She was one of the flame women of Alphard VI. I should have known better....”

Tri-Mach’s eyestalks drooped in sympathy. He lowered his voice two octaves. Also two decibels. “I’m so sorry to hear that. But you know what they say, those flame women are hot ones.”

George sighed again. “That was the trouble.”

Tri-Mach finished his strobing, stroking, stoking, swizzling, swirling, shaking, scalding, and skreexling, and placed the still smoking mixture in front of George. “Two credits please.”

“Put it on my tab.”

“It has been done.” Tri-Mach whirred thoughtfully, then: “Hmm, you have quite a long credit record with us, George.”

“I didn’t ask for a credit report,” the human said acidly.

“I could not help but observe when I plugged into your account. If you are not careful you could turn into an alcoholic. I note certain susceptibility to alcoholism in your medical index, and—”

“Dammit! I came in here for a drink, not an analysis.”

“—and there is also your compulsive matrimony, a Don Juan tendency; possibly Narcissism, which suggests a latent—”

“Dammit! Will you shut up and let a man drink in peace! I came in here to forget, not to have some gabbling hunk of tin psychoanalyze me.”

Tri-Mach stiffened. “I beg your pardon, George. I thought you might want to discuss your problem. It makes some of my customers feel better if they can talk about it. (And it’s chromalumin—not tin.)”

“(Same difference.) Why should I talk about it? You’ve already plugged into my file. What is there that I can tell you that you don’t already know?”

“Perhaps you could clarify some of the things that don’t go into the indices. For instance, your first extraterrestrial marriage—I fail to see what a human being would find interesting in an octopod female of Beta Lambda II.”

“Of course, you wouldn’t understand,” said George. “You’re just a machine. You couldn’t understand what it is to love. Oh, my sweet little Myrinae—Myrinae translates out to something like ‘Lovely Tentacles, Graceful Suckers’; but that doesn’t even begin to do her justice. She was one of the most enthusiastic lovers this side of Betelgeuse—delightful! But, you’re only a machine. You couldn’t comprehend what it is to experience actual physical love.”

“There are mechanical equivalents,” Tri-Mach noted.

George shook his head, took a sip of his drink, his first. “It’s not the same, Tri-Mach. It’s just not the same.” He sighed in remembrance. “Those octopod women may not be much to look at, but get one of them into bed—well, there’s no describing it. When it comes to hanging on for the ride, there is no substitute for eight clinging tentacles. I still have sucker marks on my back....” George sighed again. “Boy, that female really knew how to do it.”

“I still fail to understand,” said the machine, wiping at a spot on the plastoid surface of the bar. “If she was such a good lover, why did you eventually leave her? You said she was very good in bed.”

“Bed is a misnomer. She was very good, but bed isn’t the right word. Those octopods don’t like beds—they prefer cold slime pools. I nearly ruined my health just because I wanted to sleep with my wife. I still get cold chills thinking about it.”

“It sounds like you gave up too easy. Couldn’t you have worked out some arrangement?”

“Oh, we tried. Let me tell you, we tried. Everything. I almost developed an addiction to the anti-chill drugs. And even that I might have lived with. No, what killed it was the fact that she kept trying to cuddle up to me in the middle of the night—and I kept drowning. After the third or fourth midnight resurrection, I decided enough was enough.”

Tri-Mach’s eyestalks drooped in sympathy; a neat touch that—he decided to add it to his repertoire of reactions. “A difference in ecologies, George. Even the smallest difference can be an insurmountable obstacle.”

George nodded, took a sip of his drink, frowned thoughtfully. “Yeah, but that’s not the only reason an E.T. marriage breaks up. Hell, Pi Alpha Alpha has an atmosphere and ecology 93% analogous to Homeworld —but I’d never marry one of their women.”

“Pi Alpha Alpha is a lovely planet. I understand that the mating flights of the winged wisps are lovely to see and even more thrilling to be a part of. And the Matriarchy encourages intermarriage. Off-worlders are eagerly welcomed, and if you can’t fly, they’ll even supply the grav-belt for the wedding night—”

“Tri-Mach,” interrupted George wearily. “It’s obvious that you know little of human psychology.”

“That’s why I am discussing this matter with you, George. I fail to understand why marriage with a winged wisp would be impractical. It is said to be a most soul-satisfying experience—”

“Hmp,” said George. “A winged wisp is a most unfemale creature, with very unfemale sex organs. They lay their eggs inside the bodies of the males. When the egg hatches, the father carries the slug-child while it grows inside him. Oh yes, and while it grows it also devours the father’s innards. Until the father dies, that is; at which point the thing gorges itself, encapsulates, hibernates, and metamorphoses into a preadolescent. Sorry, that’s not for me, Tri-Mach. If I’m going to be a parent, I’d prefer to do it the more traditional way.”

Tri-Mach nodded his eyestalks. “Yes, I understand. A conflict in sexual and parental drives, coupled with the basic survival instinct. Yes, yes, George, I understand now. Differences in inherent psychologies and cultural drives can prevent a marriage from succeeding.”

“You’re trying to simplify everything, Tri-Mach,” George accused. “One can have exactly the same drives as one’s mate—and things still won’t work out. For instance, I was once married to one of the Gorgons of Golias. They call them that because their sensory tendrils grow in a fringe around the top of their heads.”

“I am familiar with the species,” Tri-Mach noted.

“Well, Mettisoi was one of the most beautiful Gorgons I’d ever seen—such tendrils—”

“Mettisoi? Her name? What does that mean?”

“Oh, well, there’s no exact human equivalent, but on Golias it’s a very beautiful, very romantic name. Something like, ‘Voice of the Bull, Soul of the Toad.’”

“A beautiful name.”

“English doesn’t do it justice. Anyway, when we began to suspect we had something going, we knew we wanted to be sure. By then, I’d already been burned a couple of times, and she—well, anyway, we paid a visit to InterMate and ran our psyches through Comp-Central.”

“And—?”

“And came up with an 83% match. Pretty good, huh? Especially for an interspecies marriage.”

“Then I don’t understand. The marriage should have been successful.”

“It should have been, yes,” George agreed. “Our drives were similar and compatible—but, hell man, she’d like to have killed me with her demands. Seven, eight, ten times a night she’d want to have sex. She was insatiable. The marriage lasted less than a week.”

“Tsk, tsk,” said Tri-Mach.

“She claimed that I didn’t love her, that I was impotent. I argued that she was a nymphomaniac. Yet, the damned machine (no offense intended) had said we were compatible.”

“Obviously,” said Tri-Mach, “the analysis of the data was incorrect, a failure to realize the difference in degree. Could it have been a human error?” Tri-Mach suggested gently.

“I don’t know. Whatever it was, I found out the hard way.”

“Then, there is no simple answer?”

George took another sip of his drink, thought about it for a long moment. Tri-Mach quickly scanned the other customers at the bar, then returned his attention to George, who was speaking again. “I’m not sure I could agree with you on that completely. I know exactly why I lost my fifth (or was it my sixth) wife. No ifs, ands, or buts.”

“Oh? Why?”

“Give me a refill on that Sirian Slush and I’ll tell you.” George held out his glass. Tri-Mach took it with one of his six multi-jointed arms. Once more the robot began its routine of strobing, stroking, stoking, swizzling, swirling, shaking, scalding, and skreexling. “What was your fifth (or was it your sixth?) wife like?”

Actually, Tri-Mach already knew; he had consulted the GalacCentral Index on George N-Kolpus, Homeworlder; but he asked the question to keep him talking.

George sighed, something he did often when he thought of his many wives. “A mech. I had her built entirely to my specifications. She was going to be my ideal woman. But when she was completed, she decided to look for the ideal man. She ran off with an InterBem programmer and I haven’t heard from her since.” George sighed again. “I never even had a chance to name her.”

Tri-Mach wiped a drop of lubricant from one of his eyestalks; that was a neat touch too, and it too went into his repertoire. He set George’s drink in front of him. “How sad—and yet, I certainly must commend her taste.”

George ignored him, concentrated on his drink. “After that,” he continued, “I went back to Homeworld. Thought I could get away from it all by going back to where it started. Or something like that.”

“And?”

“And that’s where I met Jenny Ondoline, a native of Bilversob 91.”

“And you married her?”

“Of course. Don’t I always?”

Tri-Mach remained discreetly silent.

“Jenny was an Earth name she took because she liked the sound of it, but Ondoline was her real name. It meant ‘Silver Needles Making Golden Bites of Love, Devouring Delicate Morsels of Pleasure.’”

“A lovely name—”

“I thought so too. Indeed, I thought that this time, perhaps this time, this one would be the one to work out—but, as always, the sex thing got in the way.”

“You weren’t able to satisfy her?”

“That’s putting it mildly. I discovered a very interesting thing about the women of Bilversob 91.”

“And that is...?”

“Teeth.”

“Teeth?”

“Yes, teeth. They have teeth.”

“But, most humanoid life forms have—”

“Not in this location, they don’t.”

“Oh.”

“My not being a member of the same race, I couldn’t guarantee that a certain portion of my anatomy would regenerate every eighteen days—and I certainly wasn’t going to find out by experimentation. The science of prosthetics isn’t that good yet. And—well, you get the idea.”

“Yes, I do,” Tri-Mach oozed solicitously. “Castration fear. You have led a very uneven life, George.”

“I know. But I am sure that somewhere in this wide, wide Galaxy there is the perfect mate for me. And if there isn’t—I’m going to go down trying.”

“I’m sure you will,” the robot noted.

“The thing is, it’s always the fact that we’re sexually incompatible that breaks us up. Well, almost always—there was one, her name was G’llumph.”

“G’lumph?”

“G’llumph. The accent is on the second syllable. It meant ‘Mottled Mass of Amorphous Pink.’”

“A lovely name.”

“An even lovelier creature.”

“Where was she from?”

“Steef, the sponge planet.”

“Oh? Then she was a pseudoplod. A most interesting life form.”

“Just a big old blob of protoplasm; not much to look at you’d think,” said George, “but she was such a big old beautiful blob of protoplasm! Ahh, now there was a good lay! We didn’t even have enough money for a bed; but that was okay, there was more room on the floor. Besides, if you know anything about pseudoplods, you’ll know they don’t use them anyway.”

Tri-Mach nodded knowingly.

“When you marry a pseudoplod, Tri-Mach, you don’t worry about such things as beds. You just lay down and roll around in it—yum! No need even to take off your clothes; she could absorb them right off your back. Mmm! She had the most actively pneumatic protoplasm I’ve ever been loved by. She just flowed in and around and all over and—well, I can’t describe it. It was like returning to the womb, but a very sexy womb.” George took a drink. “I still think of her. Of all the girls I’ve ever loved, she was the best in bed—hell, she was the bed. She was fantastic—she—I’m sorry. I’ve said too much already.”

“No, it’s all right, George. Go on. Finish your story.”

George took another drink. “Well, it was working out so beautifully, I couldn’t believe it. I thought at last I’d found the one. I’d been in love too many times to be mistaken. This was the real thing. I actually looked forward to coming home every night from the yaste farms—I didn’t even bother to shower with the other men—I knew G’llumph was waiting for me and she would absorb the excess yaste right off my body. She so liked those little snacks I brought her. It was such a pleasure to spend a simple quiet evening at home, just wrapped up in one another.”

“But—?” prompted Tri-Mach.

“But? Oh, well, she began to talk about children.”

“Children?”

George nodded. “And you know how pseudoplods reproduce, don’t you? By fission. That would have left me with no wife and two daughters. Actually, either one of them, or both, would still have been my G’llumph, but a man can’t do anything with his own daughters! That would have been—that would have been—unthinkable, you know. And besides, it would have meant choosing one over the other.”

“Yes,” said the robot. Actually, he didn’t know, but it was a colloquialism, and he accepted it as such. Discreetly, he let the matter drop.

“And the way she wanted to— She said she would have to reach a certain critical size to initiate fission, which meant taking on a certain mass of food—and if I really wanted to be the father of my children, then I could— That is— Well, she would— I tell you, Tri-Mach, I really loved that woman. I considered it for a long time. It would have been one hell of a way to go; but after a bit, I realized it was the same as marrying a winged wisp. The process might have been different, but the result was the same.” George finished his drink. “So I told her, no children.”

“And she left you?”

“Oh, no. We were too much in love. She seemed to accept my decision and never brought the subject up again. Or so I thought. But I could sense her getting edgy and nervous. She so wanted children, and I couldn’t give them to her—or rather, she couldn’t give them to me.

“Well, you know how pseudoplods eat, of course. They just wrap themselves around their food and absorb it. And when they get mad at another pseudoplod and have a fight—well, they try to absorb their enemies. And when two pseudoplods are settling a quarrel, they’re really eating each other simultaneously.”

“Hm,” said Tri-Mach, giving interested response number seven.

“Any way, what it is, is that every time there’s a difference of opinion, the opponents absorb their differences. Literally. Now, I wasn’t completely sure that this was what was going on in her mind, but I got the feeling that she was planning to surprise me and go ahead anyway—you know how women are—and I doubted that I would survive such an experience. Supposedly, she wasn’t planning to ingest my brain tissue, but how could I be sure she wouldn’t get carried away in the heat of passion? No matter how good her intentions were, what if she couldn’t differentiate between one kind of food and another? Well, she got upset with me, said I didn’t trust her any more, and wouldn’t I please come to her so we could kiss and make up? I told her she could go fission. I was leaving. She did and I did.”

Tri-Mach considered wiping away another simulated tear, decided it would be ostentatious, instead asked, “So what are you going to do now?”

“Sit here and wait,” George replied.

“You have no plans for the future?”

“Marriage, probably.”

“Oh, really?” Tri-Mach spread his eyestalks in surprise. “Who is the lucky—”

“I don’t know yet. That’s what I’m waiting for.”

The robot hummed thoughtfully. “I suppose I shouldn’t butt in like this, George, but I have been analyzing your personality, your psychology, your needs, your drives, and so on—” He paused delicately.

“Yes?”

“Perhaps it is not my place—that is, I’m really not programmed as a matchmaker—but I would like to introduce you to someone. I think perhaps there is a chance that the two of you might have a mutual interest. At least, it might be worth a try.”

George shrugged. “Why not? What have I got to lose? Who is she?”

Tri-Mach gestured toward the other end of the bar. “A native of Wildebeest III.” George looked. He saw a slender and feminine-looking young thing, a lilac and lavender loveliness, gently clothed in wispy veils of cerulean and scented with the subtle aura of rare blossoms.

“She moves like a poem,” breathed George. “Like a breeze through a willow tree, like a spider-web veil, like a— Tri-Mach, you must introduce me.” George was already moving down the bar, his past loves forgotten.

“Excuse me, uh, Miss—may I buy you a drink?”

A smile, sweet as honey; eyes flickering across George’s even features. “Why yes, thank you.”

“Uh, my name is George. And you are—”

“Gita.” A voice like a sigh.

“Beautiful,” breathed George. “Simply beautiful.” Gita fluttered long eyelashes at him and laughed softly.

“Gita, Gita...” George was entranced. “Your eyes are so beautiful, so purple. Your skin, so lovely, so blue—”

“You are most handsome yourself,” Gita breathed, shaking long veils of hair around her shoulders. Her eyes glowed with interest.

George slid his hand along the bar, gently stroked Gita’s slender wrist. He wasn’t rebuffed. Their eyes met, a penetrating never-ending deep and searching look. “Gita, you’re beautiful—my Gita—”

“George—my George—”

Two weeks later, the lovers, George and Gita, returned to THE BOTTOM HALF OF INFINITY, BAR AND GRILL and announced, “Tri-Mach, we’re going to be married.”

The robot spread his eyestalks in happy surprise. “Congratulations. Then everything is working out for you?”

“It couldn’t be better,” Gita giggled and cuddled closer to George’s arm.

“Tri-Mach, I don’t know how to thank you. You knew exactly what I needed. I was a fool ever to mess around with nonhumanoid life forms. Gita and I are perfectly matched.”

Gita blushed.

“Then, the uh, sex factor is working out? I wasn’t quite sure—”

George looked a bit sheepish. Gita smiled: “It is simple. It is so much like Earthworlders that it could not be more so.”

“Do you mind,” asked Tri-Mach, “if I ask how you do it?”

“It is simple,” said Gita. “The two lovers lie face to face, with their arms around each other, and their organs unite and mingle.”

George put his arm around his wife. “Gita’s organs are two flaccid spongelike veils which become fluid and active during intercourse. Quite compatible with the terrestrial male,” George noted. His attitude was detached, almost professional.

Tri-Mach beamed. “Then I’m delighted that the two of you have exchanged names. George, what is your Wildean name?”

George smiled. “On Wildebeest III, I am known as Kisteen.”

“And Gita?” the robot asked. “What is your new name? Your Earth name?”

Gita smiled, put an arm carefully around George’s waist. “Ralph,” she said.

AFTERWORD:

I apologize.

I apologize for the punch line at the end of the story. It’s really stupid.

Not funny at all. No matter how you slice or dice it.

But there is this meager justification—any readers expressing shock at the tale would also have been exposing their own hypocrisy. It’s okay to have sex with this, that, and the other—but only as long as it’s female.

Apparently, nobody ever objected to the Captain of the starship copulating with green-skinned slave girls and various other nonhumans, and it seemed perfectly normal that his first officer was a breeding experiment between a human woman and an alien with copper-based blood—but God forbid anybody acknowledge that the helmsman was sleeping with his totally human boyfriend.

Even today, I can easily imagine someone saying, “Of course, it was a female mugato. There’s nothing queer about the Captain.”

The Cure

I once had a reviewer describe one of my books as “embarrassingly earnest.”

She meant it as a dismissal. I took it as a compliment. All of my best stories are embarrassingly earnest. They’re drawn from real feelings. They’re passionate. They’re not made up.

This story is one of those.

I was never able to place it in any market. This is its first publication anywhere. Every editor who saw it rejected it. Robert Sheckley, then editor of Playboy, said it was too much of a downer.

He was right. It is.

It’s also embarrassingly earnest.

And then one day, the last piece fell into place.

It was inevitable, of course.

There was the one piece and the other piece and they fit together in such a way that the shape of the piece missing between them was obvious and it was just a matter of time. After a while that piece was filled in too and they announced that they had found the cause of it. Well, not exactly the cause, because it wasn’t something that was caused, but at least the reasons why it occurred. And why it expressed the way it did.

It was a little bit of this and a little bit of that; something in the genes and something in the hormones; something in the way your parents raised you and something in the way your head was put together too—but there was an equation now, and if all these little pieces came together in just that certain way, then you would be homosexual.

And that was the source of it.

Now that the elements of the equation were known, now that they could be measured as precisely as the distance to the known edge of the universe, or the diameter of an atomic particle, now that this secret was no longer secret, at last people could do something about it.

What they meant was—now they could “cure” it.

Oh, they were very careful to say that it wasn’t a sickness. Even dysfunction was too strong a word. No, they were calling it “an expression of sexual attraction, brought on by the confluence of specifically definable conditions.” But no matter—now that the conditions could be accurately defined, whatever judgment anyone might care to make was irrelevant. Because now it was possible to do something about it.

And they did. Parents first. You couldn’t blame them. There it was: “The Seven Warning Signs of Homosexuality.” They could have their children immunized as easily as if it were measles or mumps or chicken pox. It was their duty. They only wanted the best for their children, that’s all.

Some people argued that maybe it wasn’t a good idea to tinker with biological destiny; we didn’t know what the side effects might be. But there were people—politicians, religious leaders, even some limousine liberals—who argued that not all parents were ready or able to deal with a homosexual child, and they had the right to want the best for their children—

The best.

The implication being that everything else was second best.

And that’s what this was really about. The right to feel superior to others. It didn’t matter who or what the others were, as long as some folks could define them as different. Alien. Not as good.

I’m old enough to remember what it was like before, back when there was no definable cause. People like me could demand acceptance, because nobody knew for sure. So we argued that we were like every other human being on this planet and we were entitled to be who we turned out to be—especially when there hadn’t been any choice in the matter.

But now that’s not the case anymore. Now there is a choice—they can fix it—so when I say to a person, “I’m gay,” they look at me as if to say, “But why? Now you can be happy. Now you can be normal. Why do you continue?”

Shit. I’ve given up trying to make them understand.

The answer is Michael. Michael, with the childish face and the slightly receding hair, dusty red and frazzly. When he wakes up in the morning, all grumpily and rubbing sleep from his eyes, he looks like Bozo the Clown.

The last time I saw him was in front of the University library.

I saw him across the grass, like an island in a sea of frozen-in-wax summer greenery. I called him, but he didn’t hear me. I had to run across the lawn after him. He was wearing that corduroy English-style hat he liked so much and a matching jacket, and when I came charging up beside him, breathless and looking perhaps a little like an overweight madman, he blinked in sudden recognition and said in surprise, “Why, Dove—?” But he did not smile, nor did he seem glad to see me, as if I were something embarrassing from his past and I knew immediately that he had become one of them. He had let himself be convinced. Converted.

He had bought the lie.

They were very persuasive. They hot-boxed him. They love-bombed him. They invited him to experience “a new way of being.”

“If you aren’t happy,” they said, “we can change you back. But, of course, you won’t want to. You’ll feel so much more complete. That’s part of the process—the sense of completion.” And because so many of them were “formers” he listened. He trusted. They were very convincing, and I think, he wanted very much to be convinced.

I begged him, pleaded with him, cried on his knees for him not to go. I told him that this thing he was contemplating was wrong and horrible. Everybody feels broken inside; it’s the normal condition of humanity—that paranoid sense that something isn’t right. It’s the residual impact of the birth trauma, compounded by the submersion of the juvenile mind into the linguistic maps that our culture imposes on the experiential self, further exacerbated by the cascading angst of puberty, peer group anxiety, and adolescent depression, finally expressing itself in the adult as an unformed but impacted alienation—and that all those people walking around claiming to be “transformed” and “complete,” that was the real lie. That false sense of self—that’s not human, that’s inhuman—they were all plastic pod people, wired for permanent slow drips of dopamine and endorphins and God knows what else. They’re in a conversion-induced haze of “I feel fine” and there’s no room for any other emotions—like fear or grief or anger—even when the plane is crashing or the building is on fire.

“But that’s what I want,” he said. “They’re happy. They are so happy. All the time. Is that so wrong? To want to be happy too?”

“But we’re happy—” I argued. It was a desperate claim. Unconvincing. But I insisted anyway. “Michael, our relationship is real. It’s honest. All right, yes; we have fights. So what? That’s part of living with another person. And making up is always so much fun—”

He shook his head.

I was raised not to cry. Big boys don’t cry. Men don’t cry. So I’ve never let myself cry. Not out loud. I didn’t cry when my father died. I stood stiff and immobile as the casket lowered into the ground. And I didn’t cry that time I was caught and beaten and publicly shamed. I stood stiff and immobile then too, not meeting anyone’s gaze. They couldn’t hurt me. Not inside, not where I really lived.

But when Michael said he had a brochure from the clinic, that he was considering it, I went into the bathroom, sat down on the floor, wrapped my arms around my knees, buried my face in my arms—and wept. Michael came to me. He sat down next to me. He put his arm around my shoulders. I thought for a moment that he had been so moved, so touched by my anguish, that he would give up the whole idea.

But no. He pulled me close against his shoulder, stroked my hair, and said, “Maybe we should do it together—”

A man my age should not have to cry on his lover’s knees and beg him, but it happened and I knew no other way to show him just what he meant to me. I’d never poured my heart out so completely to anyone.

I asked him to reconsider, to remember all those times when all we had was each other. Remember, Michael?

There was that night we sat up till four-thirty in the morning, just talking about all the different things we wanted to do with our lives. There was the afternoon we hiked up to the highest peak overlooking the city and sat there at the top, holding hands, looking at the view and then looking into each other’s faces with such joy we could not believe we were real. And there was the morning I awoke before him and snuck into the kitchen and ruined his birthday breakfast, and we laughed all the way to the restaurant instead.

And yes, there was that awful night he woke up crying and wouldn’t tell me why and clung to me close, and when I begged him to share what it was that scared him, he didn’t say anything for the longest time, and then finally, he blurted out, “I was thinking about our future,” he said. “All our days together...and I realized that...forever isn’t really forever. Not really. What if something happened to you? I’d be so alone and lost, Dove. I couldn’t go on without you, I couldn’t!”

And I held him close and said, “Oh, Michael—is that what’s troubling you?” And he sniffed and shook his head and wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and said, “And then I started thinking what if I died first, Dove, what would you do without me, and I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving you to be alone and hurting like that. The last thing I ever want to do is hurt you—”

I reminded him of that. He shook his head. This wasn’t the same. He held me—not close, but firm—and looked at me, and there was dreadful sorrow in his eyes. “That was then, Dove. This is now. I love you. I have always loved you, and perhaps I’ll still love you, in whatever way I can, afterward. But they have the weight of proof on their side, and—and I can’t go on like this anymore. I just can’t.”

And then, with words that stabbed like knives, he added, “I have to know what it is to be normal.”

There really wasn’t anything else for me to say. I’d given him all the logical, rational, arguments. I’d given him all the emotional ones. I had nothing else to say. I said it anyway. “Michael, don’t let them cut pieces out of you. Don’t let them take away the part that makes you special.”

He listened, but he didn’t hear me. And I knew he’d already made up his mind. He went into the bedroom and closed the door against me.

“Michael, please—”

He opened the door again. “Dove, please stop. I’m sorry I brought it up. I knew we couldn’t have a rational discussion about this—”

“Rational?!” I exploded. “What the hell is ever rational about two people loving each other—?”

“That’s the point.”

“Love is supposed to be irrational! Crazy! Wonderful!”

But he was right, I’d run out of rationality, and this argument ended the same way all the others did—with me thinking that we’d mastered the crazy part, but we were still missing the wonderful.

I argued that it was just the momentary bumps and bounces that occur when any two individuals live together, that we just hadn’t learned how to fine tune ourselves to each other; I tried to tell him that he was blaming the wrong thing—

But it wasn’t enough. Not for him. One day I came home, feeling beaten and exhausted, having fought another small part of the good fight, another desperate piece of the never-ending battle for truth and justice, and I walked in, feeling tired and frustrated and very much needing his gentle voice and his comforting arms, and instead I found only his note that he would be gone for a week or so, perhaps a little longer, and I knew, even though he hadn’t said a word about it for weeks, where he had gone, and I went into the bathroom and opened up all the bottles of pills and poured them all out into a cup and took the cup into the kitchen and took down a tumbler and filled it with alcohol and something else to hide the taste of the alcohol and then I went into the living room and sat down in my comfortable chair with the pills and the booze and I sat there and sat there, trying to order my thoughts and the more I thought, the more I realized that if I did do this, it would only prove everything they had been saying all along, that I wasn’t normal, so I went into the kitchen and poured the pills and the booze down the garbage disposal and turned it on. It gurgled and clanked, it chewed for a moment, and then—appropriately—it died.

And now, here, Michael was in front of me, the first time I’d seen him in six weeks and it was as if he had been resurrected from the dead, except he hadn’t. I don’t know why I thought he might still be Michael, perhaps I was foolish and desperate and silly, perhaps I still had a tiny piece of hope in my heart; but I looked into his eyes and it was like looking into a vacuum. Whatever had lived there in those beautiful bright blue eyes, that thing that had always struck sparks in my life—it was gone. I searched his face and there was nothing I could find that was mine.

In that moment, I hated them.

I swallowed and I said, “Michael? Are you happy?”

He smiled, a warm and genuine smile, and he said, “Yes, Dove. I am very happy.” I searched his face—but no, if the expression was plastic, it was perfect plastic. I couldn’t find the flaw in it. I had to believe it was real. It was real. I knew him too well—

So I smiled back at him, my reassuring smile number two, the one I hide behind while scrambling frantically for poise. “I’m glad. I’m really glad. Because I want you to be happy, more than anything. Whatever it takes, Michael, that’s what I want for you. Your happiness is essential to my own, you know, and even if that means we have to be apart, I can be happy knowing that you’re happy—” And I stopped suddenly because I realized how stupid I sounded. It was true and it wasn’t true, and we both knew it.

Michael looked at me pityingly. “You really should go ahead with the treatment, Dove,” he said. “It doesn’t hurt. Not at all. In fact, parts of it are very pleasant. You’ll discover parts of your soul you didn’t know existed, and you’ll be surprised to find they’re really very nice.” He was so stiffly formal that I blinked in surprise and cleared my eyes to look again.

He still looked like Michael. And he didn’t. He was wearing the salmon sweater he had bought himself in one wild impulsive shopping spree in London, and his heavy wingtip shoes as well. He was looking quite dapper; but then, he always did. But, no—it wasn’t Michael, only a stranger who looked like him, but held himself so differently I couldn’t imagine how I had ever mistaken him for my Michael.

There was pity written on his face and hunger on mine. I wanted to hold him and I was holding myself back, but finally, I had to ask it, I said, “Michael—tell me, is it gone? All of it?”

He looked puzzled.

“Do you feel anything at all for me? Do you remember—?”

“I remember,” he admitted. “But.... Dove, it’s like something on the other side of a dream. I remember it as if it happened to someone else, as if I wasn’t there.”

“And—” I had to ask—I had to explore the hole in my mouth where the tooth had been. “—and, and what do you feel now?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing.”

The numbness crept up around me, but I pushed on anyway. “If I said I wanted to kiss you, Michael, what would you feel?”

He looked uneasy, but he said, “I would probably feel nothing.”

“Would you—kiss me goodbye anyway?”

And he looked at me and asked, “Why?” Before I could answer, he said, “I have different feelings now, and these are the feelings I want, Dove. You have to accept that.”

I leaned forward anyway and brought my lips to his. I touched my mouth to his and waited for his response. I pressed to him and I put my hands on his shoulders. He let me kiss him. He even let my tongue nip quickly across the threshold of his mouth, and yet, despite it all, he never kissed back, and when I broke away and looked into his face, all he said was, “I’m sorry, Dove. I’m sorry. I really am.” And then he stepped back and looked down the walk. “Oh, I’d like you to meet Anne.”

She must have seen, but she gave no sign. She was sweet and pretty and pleasant. Even as I hated her, I knew I couldn’t hate her; I envied her. But I shook her hand and smiled. She said, “Oh, I’m so glad to meet you, Dove. Are you here for the treatment too? You’ll be so much happier. Michael is.”

I looked at Michael, and there was that look on his face—the way he used to look at me—but now it was for her. That smile, that sparkle—in that instant, if I’d had a gun, I would have killed them both. But no, I wouldn’t, because that would have only proven what all those others had been saying all along, and it would be one more argument why the treatment should be mandatory—it was just a matter of time anyway. The bill was already moving to the Senate floor. I would have to renew my passport. There were still a few places I could go—I hurt all over.

I said to Anne. “No, I’m not going to have the treatment.” I turned and walked away. Behind me, she asked Michael, “But, why not?”

And Michael said, “I don’t know. There’s a lot about him I never understood.”

He was right about that. He never understood.

I wouldn’t let them steal it from me. If I cooperated willingly with their soul death, then that would only prove their argument—that it was never true love at all.

Maybe it is just a little piece of this and a little piece of that; something in the genes and something in the hormones; maybe it really is all those things they say—but whatever it was, I felt it and it was real to me.

They could take it away from Michael and they could even take Michael away from me, but they cannot take away the fact that it happened. They can deny it—I won’t. Never.

But, Michael, oh, damn you, damn you, Michael—I’m so angry!

AFTERWORD:

No, this is not about a real person. It is not about how I had my heart broken.

But I do admit that getting into the narrator’s head, putting on his voice, brought up a lot of feelings about love and loss and that curious moment that occurs when someone you care about looks at you with distant eyes.

Afternoon with a Dead Bus

I was sitting at a stoplight, waiting. Breathing bus farts.

It was hot. I was unhappy. I was impatient to go and I couldn’t see what the holdup was. All I could see was the billboard on the ass of a rabid-transit behemoth.

After a moment, I realized I was fumbling around on the dashboard, looking for the button to arm the lasers and launch the missiles and wondering why I couldn’t find it.

It should have been there. I had the Belchfire V8, with Mach-Turbo-HyperBabble and pre-Lucas Art Drecko Techno-Gingerbread. I had the passenger-eject button, the James Bond axle-grinders, and the sound system from Hell. But I’d forgotten to stop at the ammo store to reload the weapon bays. Q was going to be very unhappy with me.

This was California in the 60’s. Our cars were the physical manifestations of our identities. And my identity had decided to be very, very bad. All I could do was go along for the ride.

The light changed and I went home. I turned on the typewriter and this rolled out.

A bus had stalled at the corner of Sunset and Vine, and a crowd of automobiles quickly gathered around it. It didn’t look good for the bus. The cars kept making ominous growling noises. The smaller ones kept dashing in to nip at the bus’s wheels.

More cars kept arriving all the time, until finally the intersection was blocked on all four sides. It was as if they had caught the frightened monoxide scent of the stalled bus and converged on this corner from all over the city. The pack versus the beast at bay.

Their motors were angry and incessant. The smaller cars were trembling with feverish anticipation. They kept revving their engines impatiently and their exhausts were blue and smoky.

The bus was worried. It kept fretting and beeping nervously, as if to warn away the cars. The big yellow leviathan wasn’t any too happy about being hemmed in; the cars were small and vicious and hungry.

It was a sad-looking bus, way past its prime. Its eyes were small and heavy lidded; it was half blind. Dirt was caked gray on its windows, and there were too many places where its paint was chipped and peeling. Its grime-encrusted flanks bore too many old scars; unhealed and untended, most had gone to rust. Even the billboards on its sides were faded and torn.

A Mustang stamped and whinnied its uneasy defiance of the dispirited giant. Nearby, a Firebird screeched in anger. The two cars seemed to overcome their natural antipathy toward each other in order to direct the full range of their fury on the hapless bus. The Firebird kept belching clouds of hot smoke into the air. Its lidless eyes glared balefully.

The other cars echoed that anger. There was a bright angular Corvette with flashing teeth; it mourned like a banshee. A sleek and brassy Barracuda lurked behind a toothy Cougar and a swollen Impala, while nearby a squat-looking bug tooted from an alleyway; the bug was a hated scavenger, it kept an uneasy distance from its larger cousins.

Farther back a fat Cadillac smoked and belched, watched and prodded, and occasionally roared its chrome-plated hunger. The other cars echoed its cry in discordant cacophony. They blared obscenities at the bus and challenged it to battle, knowing full well it could not respond. The younger and flashier cars—the Mustang and the Firebird and an eager Camaro—vied for the chance to draw first blood. The rich Cadillac honked impatiently for it.

It was not long in coming. A rough-sided Camaro elbowed the Mustang aside and faced the big bus head on. The bus rumbled warningly, deep in its throat; its big slow eyes watched the Camaro warily.

The Camaro began to harass the bus. It began a taunting little dance just in front of the giant’s wheels. It showed the bus its tail and roared its motor. It puffed smoke from its rear end; it screeched its tires on the asphalt. Then it spun around, grinning, and made as if to attack. It chivvied and snapped and feinted at the other’s throat. Then it scuttled backward to the safety of the pack to start again.

The bus was slow moving and slower witted. In fact, it was that very slowness which so angered the automobiles. Had the big yellow beast displayed just one bit of rapid flashing anger, its tormentors might have held back.

But it didn’t. Unsure of itself, it kept edging backwards, away from the splashing Camaro—back, back, backwards, one uneasy step at a time, until the sudden blaring cry of the Firebird startled it forward with a frightened lurch.

The Camaro sidestepped the heavy wheels easily, but there was a quick scraping-metal sound, a high-pitched HHAAAGKKK of first blood being drawn. When the Camaro leapt away, there was a fresh scratch along its flank.

The rest of the pack was frozen for a moment, as if in drawing its breath. They waited for the Camaro’s reaction, for the bus’s reaction. Horrified by what it had done, even if only inadvertently, the bus fretted uneasily back, away from the Camaro. The Camaro roared in triumph and circled again for another advance upon its prey. It was in the center of the ring now and enjoying the admiration and support of its fellows. The cars growled and whinnied, honked and hooted; they urged the scrape-fendered champion on to greater and more inspiring deeds. The Camaro circled proudly, displaying its wound like a badge of honor. There was a fresh scratch on the bus’s flank too, and the scent of machine blood wafted over the pack like a sigh.

Buoyed up by its first encounter, the Camaro turned again toward its prey, but the Impala, hungry and impatient, also moved out of the pack. It was a heavy and powerful car, and it rumbled a deep, throaty challenge. It rolled menacingly forward.

The bus took a step back, but it couldn’t escape. It was hemmed in by the vicious flashing teeth of the other cars. It found itself being snapped at and unable to back up any more. Worriedly, it fretted from side to side.

The Impala advanced. Encouraged by the excited beeps and honks of the others, it closed in, sighing through aching teeth. The Camaro made as if to move forward and join the Impala, but a low growl from the bigger car warned it off. The bus is mine! The Camaro scooted back, complaining loudly.

The bus was watching the Impala now. It was a dangerous adversary. It was not playing the feinting game of the Camaro. The bus rumbled warningly, but to the Impala it was only further challenge.

Then the bus gave a lurch forward, as if to scare off the other. It wouldn’t scare. The Impala rolled smoothly forward, stalking, stalking, until it was almost nose to nose with the ponderous other. Its four bright eyes held only the promise of glittering death.

Startled, the bus took a step back, and in so doing, crunched into the snuffling Firebird; the car had been lurking behind it—it howled, more from shock than hurt. But it was a signal. The pack edged in, each car moving just a little bit forward. The Camaro was in the forefront.

The bus lifted one great wheel in warning, but the pack ignored it. The Camaro, overcome with its own daring, dashed in to chivvy the bus’s throat—and found itself pinned beneath the wheel. It uttered a gashing, crashing, agonized scream—a howl of shock, rage, anger, frustration and despair, all in one. It was suddenly cut short.

As one, the cars gave a cry. The roar of their engines rose. Black smoke belched from their exhausts. An acrid and pungent odor filled the air: the smell of death, realized and impending.

The autos moved. Unmindful of the danger to themselves, for they were no longer acting as individuals, the cars rolled in. With a sharp rasping snarl, the Cougar leapt at the back of the bus. Its claws scrabbled for purchase. Farther along the great beast’s flank, a blue Corvette had sunk deep fangs into the bus’s side. Metal ripped and shrieked. The smell of gasoline and oil and diesel fuel swung heavy in the air.

The Corvette had torn a rent in the bus’s side. It lapped at the flowing ichor and buried its fangs again. The bus grunted in finally realized pain and swung halfway around to strike at the sportster, flinging it away and onto the sidewalk, a flimsy pile of metal and fiberglass. Its proud angles and wings were torn and crumpled, and it lay there gasping and sputtering.

But if it was out of the battle, it had still inflicted heavy damage on the bus, and others moved in to widen that gaping wound. Already a Barracuda was slashing into the torn metal-flesh, its sharp teeth rending and tearing.

The bus howled at it, howled at the Cougar that was clawing at its back. It shook and heaved and issued a deep, agonized cry. But the Cougar had a firm grip and wouldn’t be moved, and the Barracuda kept lunging in again and again.

Frenzied, the bus threw itself fiercely back, then forward. Its great tail lashed from side to side, smashing windows and crumpling fenders. The cars swarmed forward at it, around it, biting at its wheels and its unprotected flanks.

The bus rose up in agony, shaking and screaming. The Cougar slipped off its back and crashed down onto the Firebird that had been doing something to the rear of the bus. The Barracuda was flung away too. Heavily, the bus struck out at its tormentors, but it was outnumbered hopelessly. Already the Cougar was scrabbling onto its back, widening the fissure of torn metal, ripping open the flesh, scooping in with its claws. The bus’s black blood ran down its sides and into the streets.

The Cadillac moved in then. Barking and protesting, the smaller cars were edged out of their way. It shouldered roughly through and began to rip great chunks of rubber off the bus’s tires. It ignored the bus’s shrieks as it stuffed bleeding gobbets into its maw.

The rest of the cars had fallen onto the bus already. Its heaving attempts were no longer strong enough to shake them off, and they were ripping and tearing hungrily at its flesh, always trying to reach its throat. They fought with frenzied lust.

The Cadillac was eating everything it could. Gobbets of bus-flesh dripped out of its lips. It masticated in rapid jerking motion. It stuffed and gobbled—pieces of the other cars as well as hunks of the bus, the fender of the Impala, too, crumbling bits of the pavement. The bus was almost ignored as the Cadillac grabbed at everything that came near it. Its hunger was manic and insane.

The mighty leviathan was making one last effort to escape. In a heroic effort, it rose to its feet, unmindful of the cars hanging from it, the great holes in its sides, and the bleeding entrails that hung out of its wounds—at which the cars still snapped and bit.

It was a doomed effort. The bus was little more than a shell now—still reacting, still feeling, but its vitals were being torn out even as it moved. The Mustang hanging sharply at its throat like a terrier had struck home, and transmission fluid was leaking all over the street. The bus sank back down onto its knees, almost a kneeling, supplicating posture.

The death blow was not long in coming. It came not as a single thundering end, but as a series of vicious bites, as a continual rending and tearing, as a slow, agonized ripping away of the vital organs, as the painful, aching process of the feeding of the pack. The bus shuddered once and was still.

The cars plunged inward hungrily, climbing and clambering over each other in mad intensity. They leapt onto the back of the bus, or into its gory sides. They thrust their muzzles deep into it, swallowing without chewing. Their ravenous hunger overcame them and they fought amongst themselves, clawing and scratching.

The body of the bus was invisible now, blanketed by the flashing bodies of its attackers. The only piece of yellow skin visible was the small tender scrap that a young Volkswagen was contentedly chewing.

The noise was horrendous: scraping and scrabblings, clawing, shrieking—the continuing sounds of gobbling hunger being sated. The stench was awful. Reeking fumes swept up the streets, outward in all directions.

The black blood ran thick on the pavement. The cries of challenge and triumph had long since faded into the slobbering sounds of choking motors, eating, gnawing, snarling, tearing at the bus’s frame. They steamed and stank.

They still swarmed over the giant corpse, but with lessening intensity. Their initial frenzy had been fed, and now they were feeding their stomachs as well. The Firebird was repaying the insult of its crumpled grill. It belched and farted happily, joyously.

The cars made quiet gobbling sounds of satisfaction. The bus was being quickly reduced to its bones—and even those were being eagerly torn away. The Volkswagen crept out of its alley again to lap at the bloody streets.

The big Cadillac growled sluggishly and parked itself against a wall. Even its hunger had been sated. It belched its gluttony into the air.

And then they heard it.

The sound. The deep, rumbling, far off sound.

And the scent, far off but still distinct—the scent of diesel.

A surge of sudden fear caught them. Their eyes were white with the realization. As the rumbling sound grew louder, the cars looked at one another and knew the afternoon was over.

The trucks were coming.

AFTERWORD:

I think you have to live in Los Angeles to get it.

An Infinity of Loving

This is the other “terrible” story.

There was a reckless editor who had somehow managed to sell several dozen anthologies to various publishers. To fill them, he seemed to be buying every story that crossed his desk whether it was worth reading or not. A lot of writers sold a lot of their trunk stories in a very short time.

And that pretty much killed the anthology market for a while.

He wasn’t a bad man, I’m sure he thought he was contributing to writers and to science fiction, but I don’t think he understood the consequences of flooding the newsstands and bookstores with mediocrity.

At the beginning, he kept nagging me for stories.

I sent him two. I didn’t think they were very good, so I hadn’t sent them out anywhere. I expected (even hoped) that he would reject them. Then I would have a good reason for not sending him anything else.

He bought both the stories.

That was why I didn’t send him any more.

Ironically, a year or so after it was published, some would-be plagiarist typed it up and submitted it to Galaxy Science Fiction magazine. It was rejected. And rightfully so.

Once she surprised him in the shower by climbing in with him.

Once he surprised her with a spray can of shaving lather and they made love, laughing in the foam.

Once they sat and looked at each other across the dinner table and forgot to eat.

Once she leaned over to him and kissed him gently on the eyelids.

Once they went swimming at three in the morning without bathing suits, and after they had dried each other off, they fell asleep in each other’s arms.

Or, to put it another way, they were in love. Young and in love.

And in that, they were lucky, for consider the odds against it:

Consider, for instance, how slim the chances were that (a) this particular boy should meet (b) this particular girl in (c) this particular place and at (d) this particular time; and most important of all, (e) that each should be in a receptive state of mind, allowing them to respond favorably to each other.

Consider the alternate possibilities:

Suppose he had stopped at the post office first; he would have arrived at the Laundromat ten minutes after she had already left. Or suppose he had remembered for once to bring change, or that the change machine was not out of order; he would have had no reason to speak to her.

And consider: if she had not had trouble with her car that morning, necessitating a hasty call to the Automobile Club emergency road service, she would have already been finished with most of her chores, including her laundry. Or, if she had not just cashed a check that afternoon she would not have had the change he asked for. Or, if her period had come just a day later, she would not have been in any kind of a mood to respond to him.

Or consider what factors went into his choice of that particular Laundromat, or her choice of that particular college to attend, or his choice of that particular city to live in. Or consider the factors that allowed them both to be born in circumstances that were neither chronologically nor geographically opposed to their meeting and falling in love.

Consider, most of all, the mere fact that he should so delight in her and be able to delight her in return—that special sense of attraction that each held for the other and that special sense of sharing that enveloped them both.

Consider the fact that they fitted. Consider how lucky they were.

Of course, if it were not these two individuals meeting, then perhaps it would have been some other combination. There might have been some other girl that he could have loved as thoroughly; there might have been some other man that she could have loved so completely—but there wasn’t. There was he and there was she and there was each other.

An individual is unique, existing only once and never again duplicated—a special flicker of personality that flashes briefly in the long darkness of nonexistence, glowing with its own particular radiance only for a bit before vanishing back into the nothingness. That this individual and that individual should both flicker into existence at just the right time and just the right place—well, that was a source of delight and amazement and continual surprise to both of them.

That they were young and attractive only enhanced its beauty, but if they had not been so favored, it still would have been beautiful.

Consider the great variety of possible human couplings that this could have been:

He old and she young.

She old and he young.

He black and she white.

She black and he white.

He born a female and she a male.

Or both born as males.

Or both as females.

Or one of them deformed. Or crippled, or retarded.

Consider the infinite number of combinations. Had it been any of these, it still wouldn’t have lessened the beauty of what they shared. It would have only made it more difficult for others to comprehend.

But this was the ideal combination—easy to understand—easier still to be envious of.

He was handsome—a face not chiseled, but sculptured as in fine wood; clear skin; even features; short nose; brown hair with hints of lighter blond; and eyes so deeply blue that they were luminous.

Yes, he was slightly vain about his features—and his body too, which was adequate though not as immediately striking. He was trim, not skinny but neither well muscled. He was strong and beautiful in his own altogether way.

He had confidence in himself; he had a voice like soft velvet; and he had a mind that concerned itself with its surroundings. He acted upon life almost as much as it acted upon him.

That he had been favored by fate was apparent. He had been favored more than anybody had any right to be. He knew it and he was pleased by it; he had become accustomed to things working the way he expected.

And that was his biggest fault.

She—ah, yes—she had hair so red it glowed like silk in the sunlight, eyes so green (blue-green really) they flared like jewels, deep and mysterious. Her skin was so wonderfully fair that she wore little or no makeup at all and she seemed to glow from within.

She was afraid of the world—just a little bit—and its complexity. There were things out there that were hostile; they could hurt her if she were careless, so she admired him because of his self-confidence and his ability to do all those things she couldn’t; her eyes showed it. And because she worshipped him so, she delighted in doing things for him that he couldn’t; things that she could do, things that would let her fill in the gaps and together the two of them could be as one.

To her, he was almost too good to be true; she watched him shamelessly, undressing and caressing him with her eyes.

And he, he realized this—and he couldn’t believe it. That any girl/woman could so thoroughly immerse herself in his life was an overpowering joy; it was a confirmation that there was indeed something lovable in him. It was what he needed to be complete.

She was too good to lose—indeed too good to ever risk hurting. He went out of his way to do little things for her. And those little things made her love him even more.

One can’t be loved until one is first lovable—and that each loved the other so much made them both more lovable. And that in turn made each more loving.

So they opened themselves to each other. He opened himself for the first time and so did she; they plunged headlong into sharing and confessed their secret fears, expunged their private hurts and traded their mutual fantasies.

Because he trusted her so fully, because she trusted him, because of what they shared together, they were creative in their lovemaking—and that very creativeness (which would have shocked them in any other partner) delighted/teased/pleased them to even greater heights. They were curious about each other’s bodies and they satisfied that curiosity; they wanted to delight each other and they did that, too. They moved and touched with a joyous laughing lust.

And finally, came that moment:

She whispered, “I feel like I’m on the edge of death....” That ultimate ecstasy, when emotions become too great to be expressed, when words alone can’t control the joy, can’t communicate it—that point even beyond gasps and giggles when only tears can release the overpowering intensity of happiness.

“I don’t believe it,” she sobbed. “I’m so happy, I’m crying.” She could hardly get the words out.

He couldn’t answer her because he was crying too. He held her tight and they cried together, and they laughed at the silliness of it all and their tears mingled on each other’s cheeks.

The next time they cried, it was for a different reason.

A left front tire had blown out while traveling at seventy miles an hour in the far left lane of the freeway. The car had lurched—swerved, skidded, bumpety-bump-screeched across three lanes, narrowly missing a pickup truck.

A maniacal cultist and his band of followers massacred seven people in a suburban home.

The police fired into a crowd of demonstrating students, killing three of them.

A famous rock star died of an accidental overdose of drugs, and, a week later, a presidential candidate was assassinated.

Perhaps the two of them had been directly touched by some of these incidents, perhaps not—it didn’t make much difference. The times were such that no one could long ignore the one recurring fact of human fragility—that all men are perpetually on the edge of death.

It touched him, how close he was to death, how close they both were. Suppose that pickup truck had been just a little faster. Suppose they had been visiting in Laurel Canyon. Suppose they had turned out for the demonstration—or even for the political rally. How close would the bullet have come?

So he cried at the unfairness of it all. Trapped in life, they were thus condemned to death. The dreadful inevitability of it chilled his flesh and made him unable to speak.

She asked him what was the matter and he said, “I can’t explain, I can’t say—”

“Is it something I’ve done, oh dearest, please let me share your tears.”

He shook his head no, but she kept asking, so at last he whispered, “It’s death—I’m afraid of it.”

“Oh, no, no—” She tried to deny it. “Death isn’t to be feared. It’s to be accepted.”

“I know, I know—but it’s not just my own death I fear—it’s the death of us. The death of our love.”

And at that, she felt the chill, although she did not yet know why she should feel so.

“We’re two people,” he explained. “Two. Sooner or later, one of us will die and the other will be alone. And I can’t bear that thought. I can’t bear the thought of me without you—or the thought of you without me. I don’t want to hurt you—ever.” And he cried again, great heaving sobs.

She cried too, for she could not stand to see him in such sorrow.

Perhaps it was a foolish thing to cry over. Perhaps not. The terrible part about love is that it is always doomed. Always. Even if it should last a lifetime, it has to end with death.

At last she kissed away his tears and whispered, “But my love—that’s what makes it so precious. Because it’s so impermanent. Because it can only happen once.”

He lay there and looked at her, but said nothing.

She said, “What we must be happy about is that we have each other now, that we have this happiness, and that nobody will ever be able to take it away from us. This love is ours.”

“But it’s not, it’s not,” he insisted. “It’s only for a little while—and then time, that damnable thief, will steal it from us.” The tears were streaked on his face. “It’s not enough. Why couldn’t it last forever? Why shouldn’t it? Why should we have to grow old? Will I still love you after years of watching your beautiful body decay? Will you still love me when I’m withered and wasted? Will we learn to hate each other because the familiar actions will have become so boring that they’re contemptuous? Will death be only a blessed release from a painful binding? Or will it be a parting that—that destroys us?” His voice caught suddenly. “We could die tomorrow—either one of us, or both—” he realized. “An accident could rob us of our future; we could be cheated even of that. Oh, I love you, but we’re doomed to sorrows.” And then the tears flowed again, because in the night, alone, with only the two of them in that big bed, with only each other, forever seemed like such an incredible vastness, a long, long emptiness—

They both cried that night, in each other’s arms.

They were young, and the young are always slightly foolish. It gives a flavor of whimsy and zest to their lovemaking that the old can only remember and envy. There is an innocence and naiveté that only the young and the young at heart can experience.

But always after that night, that one eternal and aware night, always it seemed as if their lovemaking had an air of urgency about it—as if this might be the last time that they would hold each other, the last time that they would be able to look longingly into each other’s eyes and be immersed in that beautiful intensity of emotion.

They were so very much in love.

There was an alternative to sorrow.

And in that they were lucky, too. For this was an age when the secret had been unlocked and the answer was there for the asking.

He brought up the subject first. She was hesitant, a bit scared—and very cautious. “Is it dangerous?”

“No,” he reassured her. “And it will bring us even closer together. The intensity of our love will never die out.”

She wanted to—because he wanted to, and she wanted to please him. Then, as she listened and studied, she came to understand what was required and what would happen—and she began to want it for herself, too. She realized his reasons for wanting to take the step, and she began to feel the same. It would let her love him even more intensely—and forever.

So she said yes. Her reasons were selfish. So were his. They both wanted to preserve something delicate, something flowering. They wanted to freeze that perfect penultimate moment and stretch it from here to infinity.

Wide-eyed and innocent, they were too much in love.

What happened was this:

First they gave her sodium pentothal to put her to sleep. Then, after she had fallen asleep, they gave her another anesthetic, a local one; they lowered her body temperature and put her in an ice bath. They shaved part of her head and peeled back a portion of her scalp. Carefully, they cut a hole in her skull. And they implanted a device.

It was a thing of colloidal plastics; it had been grown layer by layer in a process that was part photographic etching and part chemical engineering and overall somehow akin to organic growth. The device was powered by ions which it took from the red blood cells which passed through it and it modified the electrical impulses of the brain to which it was attached. One of the output leads went directly to the pleasure center.

They sewed up her skull and they brought her temperature back to normal and then they wheeled her into the recovery room.

Then they did the same thing to him.

The devices were identical in function. They were little computers with dual-coded transceivers tuned to each other; each one took information from certain sections of the brain. Each one had outputs to certain others, notably the pleasure center.

The devices were two halves of the same circuit; they gathered information, they coded it and they exchanged it.

The effect on the lovers was telepathic—no, empathic. The tiny plastic monitors tuned them to each other’s rhythms, made them incomplete without each other.

There were adjustments to be made, of course. Her glandular rhythms were not the same as his; his emotional cycles were not always compatible with hers. Sometimes they had headaches.

When this happened, they had to go back to the doctors. The master computer would be patched into their circuit and the problems would be analyzed. The big machine knew their special code frequencies and it could reprogram each device into more careful alignment with the other.

This process of reprogramming and adjustment went on for many months. But they didn’t mind; their love was total. It was ecstasy unlimited. They were closer together than they had ever been before.

Now they were tuned to each other. They were ready to take the next step.

They returned to the doctors and they were strapped to tables. Needles were put into their arms and into their legs. Plastic tubes fed into their lungs and into their bladders. Wires were connected to their heads and to various parts of their bodies.

But they knew nothing of this, for they had already fallen asleep...

Asleep. In a timeless world of light and color, modeled in music and structure too complex to follow. It was a fluorescent world of yes and no, of existences and nonexistences, intense glowing planes against ultimate blackness, references without textures—had there been eyes to see it, they would have slid maddeningly across the glimmering surfaces. The colors swirled and changed. Somewhere a monitor circuit triggered and somewhere else, another circuit began the laborious process of uniting the two entities as one.

The bodies breathed. Regularly. Slowly. With a steadiness that no human impulse could have originated. The chemical balances were perfect; they had to be for the machines to function. Bit by bit, two souls were joining; two flickering consciousnesses were becoming closer than any two had ever been before.

He was becoming she, and she was becoming he. They would be one person sharing two bodies—and if these two bodies died, they would exist without them in the mind of the computer, or they would find new bodies. But the important thing was that they would never be apart.

Never.

A single tear welled up in his right eye. A matching tear appeared in her left.

A technician noticed and wiped them away, but whether they were tears of joy or unhappiness no one would ever know but these two.

Long after the adventure had been forgotten, long after their bodies and the bodies of the doctors who had ministered to them had crumbled into dust, they still endured; the two of them lived as the flux of patterns within a mighty complex; their existences were fantastically more varied than any living human being could have conceived. Their wonder was bright and their love was intense and endless.

They were not alone. There were others, hundreds, thousands, millions of others, all of whom had chosen not to die but to live on in this curious glittering web. But these two were special—not because they were among the first, but because they were curiously different from the rest.

“For one thing,” explained a master technician to his apprentices in a far-removed century, “these two patterns are identical. They act, react, and respond in unison to every imaginable impulse or set of impulses. For that reason, we’re sure that they’re only monitor patterns maintained in the matrix as a control for all the other patterns. Certainly, it would make no sense to duplicate any single individual this way, there’s no purpose for it—but there is a purpose for monitors and self-comparison controls. This year we expect to add at least three million patterns to the hereafter matrices. We have to keep our transmission errors below one in every one billion bits. That’s why these monitor patterns are so important.

“One of the first things you learned in information theory is that information held in storage tends to decay; but the whole purpose of the hereafter matrices is to prevent decay of the personality patterns of the individuals within. We use these two monitor patterns for that purpose...”

The master technician droned on, lost in his lesson and unaware of the vast changes that had come about in the world; he was only a victim of it too, not a master.

He perceived himself as a floating silver sphere; that was his identity module, a sensory device which did his traveling for him. The students were lesser modules, colored to show their status and identity. The bodies, if any, were removed elsewhere, floating in weightless tanks of nutrients.

The interface between man and machine had become so total that it no longer existed—man and machine were two parts of the same entity, a vast many-faceted being. The range of possible experience for the human mind had become unlimited.

This was a world where sex was an electronic experience, programmed for maximum impact. Love was unnecessary. This was a world where electronic telepathy allowed all minds to be one. Hence, love was a perversion. This was a world where bodies were only inefficient storage units, to be replaced as soon as possible. Thus, love was a psychosis. Physical coupling no longer existed, mental coupling had been forgotten, and pair bonding was an unknown process.

In his glorious reach for godhood, man had been liberated from his body; and with it, he had been liberated from all the bloody-animal experiences that went with it. Love was unknown.

“But these are human patterns, aren’t they?” asked an apprentice. “Aren’t they aware?”

“They’re pseudo-human patterns,” corrected the master. “But I understand what you’re asking. Yes, they’re aware—but it’s a theta two awareness, a false awareness. Originally, these two patterns had been tied together with a comparison and correction circuit—that is they monitored each other and adjusted continually, but we eliminated that centuries ago, and also removed some of the memory inconsistencies which had been allowed to appear in each. We couldn’t erase the crystals completely, of course, but we could reprogram them. Now, instead of each pattern looking at the other, they look only at themselves and each thinks it’s seeing its opposite number. So you see, they aren’t really aware at all—and even if they were, they wouldn’t mind. After all, they’re happy, aren’t they?”

AFTERWORD:

Someone reading these last few stories might assume that I have a jaundiced view of human emotions. Especially love.

They’d be right and they’d be wrong.

They’d be wrong because it’s a mistake trying to psychoanalyze an author through the stories he tells. But they’d be right to the extent that I was sorting out a lot of conflicting experiences about the nature of relationships. It was a wild and desperate decade.

In truth, looking back from this distance, these stories are all evidence that I’m a hopeless romantic. I believe in the possibility of a profound connection between two human beings.

These stories were about some of the stuff that gets in the way.

They depressed me. A lot. Probably more than they depressed the readers.

Once I noticed that, I started writing a different kind of love story. Unfortunately, none of those are in this collection. That came later. Sorry about that.

Skinflowers

This is the other story I sold to that reckless editor.

It’s not a bad story—but I’ve never been able to figure it out. Is it a horror story or what?

Perhaps if I understood it, I’d think better of it.

On Wednesday, there were bristly patches on the backs of his hands. They looked like a field of tiny white goose bumps and gave his skin a sandpapery feeling. He didn’t like it; he was in the habit of rubbing the back of one hand against his cheek. He hadn’t shaved this morning and the roughness of his hand matched the roughness of his face. It disturbed him.

—and yet, somehow, the scratchiness of the sensation was intriguing. As he rubbed his bristly hands thoughtfully, he decided not to shave at all.

On Thursday, the bumps on his hands were stiffer. They seemed to be growing into tiny little spines. Although they were firm, they weren’t rigid. They stood away from the skin, but they could be pressed back into it without any feeling. They weren’t painful, so he felt a curious lack of distress about them.

Friday, the first of the flowers appeared.

The spines were noticeably longer by then. Most had tiny swellings at their ends. One or two of the swellings had begun to open up into little cuplike shapes, but it wasn’t until Saturday that there were recognizable clusters on each hand.

The blossoms were carefully shaped cups, one at the end of each pale stem; a fleshy convex lens. They were as white as bloodless skin.

Saturday was when he first began to be aware of them—really aware. And curious. Why was there a field of delicate flowers on the back of each of his hands and wrists? Turning on the high intensity lamp over his desk, he examined them carefully.

The stems were less than a quarter inch in length. They were flexible and seemed to be extensions of the skin itself. The blossoms were shaped like dichondra, each a single white cusp. He felt no sensation from then at all.

Some kind of growth, perhaps—? He tried cutting them off with a razor. The smaller ones came off easily, but the larger flowers tugged and resisted as if their stems were beginning to become cartilaginous. The scissors worked better than the razor, but it left uneven and bristly stubs. They felt as scraggly as a three-day beard and they looked even worse. Besides, cutting the flowers gave him an uneasy feeling—as if he were amputating part of himself. So he stopped with his left hand. He didn’t cut the flowers from his right one.

He didn’t go out on Saturday—except once to the grocery store. The gloves he wore were uncomfortable. They pressed the flowers into his skin and they seemed to irritate the rough patches of spines. He was glad to get them off when he got home again.

He rubbed at the flowers on his right hand as if to restore their circulation and make them stand up again. It wasn’t necessary. They moved easily at his touch. But there was no sensation at all from them, or from the patches of spines and bumps that were extending up the back of his forearm.

The skin beneath still had sensation though, and the feel of the flowers between his fingers and his skin was most peculiar—like moist warm leaves. Like soft dry noodles. He almost enjoyed the way they felt as he ran his fingers through them. The sensation was as interesting as the hole left behind by a tooth freshly pulled out.

On Sunday, there were more of the flowers. On his right arm, they extended across his wrist and fresh buds were appearing on his forearm. On his left, where he had cut them, they were already beginning to grow back. Many of the spines had already opened their buds. For some reason, that pleased him. He was afraid he might have damaged them when he cut them, and he was curious to see just how far they would spread and how large they would grow.

The newer buds on his arms were still very tiny, but the oldest ones were almost as big across as the nail of his little finger. The close, edge-to-edge pattern they formed was fascinating to look at; they were a clustered field of pink-white cups. They were beginning to take on color.

As he sat in his chair and stroked the back of his hand across his neck and cheek he became aware of their odor. It wasn’t an unpleasant odor—it was kind of sweet-sour and fleshy, almost like the familiar smell of old age, but not quite. It was the smell of skin, the fragrance of flesh. What gave it its hint of pungency though, was its almost total lack of musk. The odor was more flowery than human.

Idly, he wondered what they were, these skinflowers. Abnormal growths of some kind? Or a new development of his body, one that could have been expected? If they were natural, what should he do about them? Were they like hair —to be groomed and admired? Or were they blemishes, like unsightly warts?

And if they were unnatural, what then? Maybe they were parasites—tiny plants or animals that had imbedded themselves in his skin and were actively reproducing like real flowers in fertile soil. No. He doubted that. These flowers were too much like flesh; they were too much a part of him.

Maybe they were some kind of disease—like a tumor. But he doubted that too. They weren’t painful, and he’d never heard of any disease where the skin broke out in flowers.

No, they must be some kind of natural development. As he examined them curiously, he noticed that the flowers seemed to be replacing the hair on his hands and arms. The skin beneath the stems was pink and fresh, completely hairless. Parasites wouldn’t do that, would they? Neither would a disease. These skinflowers were probably a different kind of hair, perhaps their stems were just a different kind of hair follicle.

Except that he had heard somewhere that hair wasn’t alive; it was protein produced by the follicle and the actual shaft was dead material. These skinflowers were obviously alive. The ones he had cut on Saturday were quickly replacing themselves.

Well, perhaps his hair follicles had changed somehow. It wasn’t inconceivable. He stroked his arms fretfully, and the sensation comforted him. The feel of the tiny cups of flesh as they pulled and rolled across his skin was...interesting.

On Monday, he decided to wear a short-sleeved shirt around the house. He didn’t want to cover up his flowers. He enjoyed looking at them. He enjoyed touching them and stroking his cheek with the back of his hand and arm. He was fascinated by their scent. They were almost up to his elbows by now.

On the older flowers, the stems had turned pink and the cups were beginning to take on a more definite color. The shading was delicate, from rose at the center of each blossom, fading almost to white at the edge. The rim of each cup retained its hint of bloodlessness, outlining each flower with a pale halo.

He spent long hours just studying them, touching them and caressing them, rubbing them against his cheek, rubbing them against his nose and mouth. He found himself sucking meditatively on the blossoms, almost—but not quite—nipping them off with his teeth. He would bury his nostrils in them and luxuriate in their fleshy smell.

When he discovered the rough patches on his shoulders, as well as at the base of his spine, he was delighted. That meant the flowers were not to be limited to just his hands and arms. He longed for their spread—they produced a weightless, almost floating sensation in his arms and he ached to immerse his whole body in the sensation.

In the next few days, the patches on his shoulders and back grew into spines and then into clumps of pink dichondra. The cups were larger here, more developed. And they seemed more rugged than the blossoms that covered his arms, which were almost all the way up to his shoulders now. The flowers spread quickly across his shoulder blades, like a mantle, and down his back. The first patches of roughness appeared on his legs.

The smell was stronger by now, much stronger. He seemed to move in a cloud of it, but he wasn’t always conscious of the odor. His nose had grown used to it, and it was only when he moved suddenly that he was aware of his smell.

The scent had the sweetness of decay, but without the cloying pungency of rot. It was a flowery-sour smell—like roses, too many and too ripe. He liked it though. It was a part of him.

Sleeping was developing into a problem though. He didn’t like seeing the flowers crushed each morning. They weren’t hurt by the pressure of his body weight on them for a night, but it usually took an hour or so for them to resume their resiliency. In addition, the stems were beginning to develop a sensitivity of their own. If pressed the wrong way for too long, they began to ache like hair that has been brushed against its natural direction and held that way.

He took to sleeping on his stomach with only a single sheet instead of a blanket. He wasn’t masturbating any more either. He was too intrigued with the taste and texture of his flowers. And the overall sensation of lightness. He moved in a trancelike daze. He floated. Usually, he would fall asleep with his nose and mouth pressed against the back of his right forearm where the flowers were thickest.

The flowers spread to his feet, covering all but the soles and the toenails. They clustered across the top of the arch and two or three even grew out of each toe. He stopped wearing shoes and socks. And when the flowers covered his legs he stopped wearing pants. He felt like he was immersed in sweet oil.

They appeared on his neck and soon after even on the back of his head where they looked like tiny ears. They began to replace his hair. A rough patch appeared on his belly and grew downward. These blossoms were slightly darker, slightly redder than the rest, especially where his pubic hair had been. His penis was surrounded by a forest of curlicue stems and crimson cups. By then, most of his chest was covered too.

Oddly, the flowers did not appear on his face. They curled down his ears, like scarlet sideburns, and they crept around his neck like a flaming beard. They capped his brow like a thicket of red ringlets and they even replaced his eyebrows with miniscule blossoms, but they did not appear on his cheeks and forehead.

By the time his body was completely covered by the flowers, he was no longer wearing any clothes at all. He was swimming in cold euphoria. It was rosy and blurred. He no longer had any trouble sleeping now; the flowers had grown stronger and more resilient to his weight. The sensitivity had been only a temporary phase.

He found that direct sunlight was too strong for him now, and he spent more and more time indoors. He only liked being outside during the night. He began sleeping later each day and staying awake longer into the dark, until after a while he had reversed his normal habits.

The colors of the flowers deepened now, grew richer. Across his back, they shaded from deep brown to pale yellow, with here and there a hint of red or purple. On his chest and stomach, the colors were lighter, but there were patterns of shades, darker where there had been hair, lighter where there had been none. His arms and legs repeated this coloring, the insides of the limbs being paler, the outsides being darker.

And the smell of the flowers was rank now, almost overpowering. He didn’t notice—and even if he had, he wouldn’t have minded. He liked them. He liked their feel and their fragrance. He liked to lose himself in their curls.

He stood out in the yard each night and bared himself to the sky. He opened his flowers and his pores and let them suck in the blackness; let them ripple the coolness all through his body.

There was no moon, and even the stars were diminished. There was only darkness, cold enveloping darkness. He stretched his arms out to it.

His state was trancelike, disembodied. He floated in the night and waited for the harvesters to come.

—and when they did, they plucked the flowers from him with a scream. They stripped the skin from his body and left him twitching and raw, jerking like something that had been flayed.

In the morning, she found bristly patches on the backs of her hands....

AFTERWORD:

I don’t write horror stories very often.

Possibly because there isn’t much that can horrify me anymore.

Battle Hum and the Boje

There was a jazz club, dark and smoky. It was one of those places where music lived, where musicians came to listen to other musicians. The sounds were alien and haunting. They hinted at deeper understandings. I grew up with rock and classical—this music was a break in that reality.

I hungered to drink deeply of this other world, to get inside and be a part of it.

The first thing I learned—what they say about jazz is true. If you have to have it explained to you, you don’t understand it.

The greater thing I learned is that jazz is a subversive idiom. It’s a rebellion against structure. It’s interactive—it requires the listener to participate, because it’s a conversation without words, an exploration of the moment. It’s about the instrument, the sound, the feeling. You’re not listening to the music, you’re listening to the soul underneath it.

And that’s where this story came from.

The sound was bad right from the beginning. The notes just drooled out of the horn and lay there. No life to them.

So I did a fanfare shtick and passed the melody over to Loamy, the man with the bass. He played with it for a bit while Earlie, the drummer, embroidered the edges with a ra-tata-ra-tata on the snare. But their hearts weren’t in it either, and the audience knew it.

It was a bad night all around. Usually an audience will sit and listen, but when they know the stuff is bad, they just sit. And that’s what they were doing tonight. Just sitting.

A couple of months or years ago I would have dismissed it without a thought. “It’s just the war. They’re down because it isn’t going well.”

But the war had been going on too long for it to have any meaning any more. It could no longer affect our lives. It was part of living. Like breathing. One didn’t think about it; you just accepted it. So it wasn’t the war.

And it wasn’t that we weren’t trying either—I knew we were. We’d started out as high as ever, ready to make music the best we could. But by the time we were into the third number we knew something was wrong. If an audience doesn’t warm up by then, they’re not going to warm up at all. We might as well have been playing to a graveyard.

The whole thing was a contact down. We couldn’t warm them up and we couldn’t keep ourselves going without the feedback from them. So we started downhill, and the worse we got, the worse they got. And all the way down, we could see it happening. We knew what was happening and why it was happening, but we couldn’t do a thing about it.

And that’s a frightening thing to any horn man, the contact down. You know it’s possible for a good piece of horn to lift an audience right out of their seats and keep them rising—but when it works the other way around it can make you stop and think, am I losing it?

Bojo was standing by the edge of the stage; he looked like he wanted something, so I signaled the others to keep it going or wrap it up without me. It wasn’t a bad set, but it wasn’t good either. (Like the ever-present war, it had lost all its meaning—but it just kept on going....) Loamy flashed me a grin, a we’ll go-down-fightin’ look, as I stepped past him and down off the stand next to the Boje. “What’s up?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. But I’m gonna wrap it up early tonight.”

“Huh—”

“It’s not your fault,” he cut me off. “You and the boys have been on top of it all the way in. I just feel like wrapping it early. Do one more set for me and that’ll be it.”

“Sure. Why not?” I shrugged. Sometimes Bojo doesn’t make sense, but I’d give my horn for him if he asked—and that should give you some idea how much I think of the Boje. “You name it. What do you want to hear?”

There was a funny look on his face. “The Battle Hum.”

“Huh? Hey, are you feeling all right?”

“Yeah, sure. Just play it, huh?”

I shrugged again. “Whatever you want.” I almost added, “Sarge,” but decided that the Boje was in no mood to be kidded about his army career. Okay, if it was the Battle Hum he wanted, the Battle Hum he’d get.

The Battle Hum is an experiment that failed—but it failed so successfully that we’ve never been able to live it down. A while back, we’d given some thought to breaking out of the jazz idiom and had tried to do some of the folk-rock stuff that was so popular (and commercial). Not the head music and the so-called protest stuff; instead, we had thought we could trace our musical origins, that sort of thing.

But the jazz was so firmly rooted in our blood that most of what came out sounded too much like a blend of both and not enough of either to be distinctive.

We’d just about come to the conclusion that it wouldn’t work when one night Bojo suggested we try doing the Battle Hymn of the Republic. (He’d been in a funny mood that night too. It might have been the night Kennedy died. The second one.) I gave him a funny look. “Your good conduct medal acting up again?”

He smiled. I expected him to reply, “I wish I’d had you in my unit, Duff. You wouldn’t be so flip.” But instead he murmured, “Try it. See what it sounds like.”

The boys and I exchanged a glance. Why not? What have we got to lose? We did it as a lark, playing with it, noodling the various themes back and forth, exploring the nuances of its melody.

Of course, when we were through with it, it sounded nothing like the original; long moody passages of blues alternated with blaring horn solos. I confess no great fondness for the traditional military version, and when trapped in a piece of music like that, I begin inventing. I used both clarinet and horn. I did one passage with a bugle, and once found myself wondering what a trombone would do.

Anyway, it turned out to be our most successful experiment, but it could just as well have been a failure. There was no place to go with it, and it was a constant reminder of a whole set of experiments that hadn’t worked.

And try as we could to bury it, it refused to lie down and stay dead. Requests for it popped up regular—everything from Lincoln’s Birthday to the Kennedy Assassinations. Boje would ask for it every July 4th. That was the only time his taste descended to that of the marks. He loved it as much as they did, even though he knew we hated to do it. He didn’t ask us to do it very often, though.

Loamy faded out with the bass and Earlie put a stinger on the end with the drums. Almost immediately the Boje was up on the stage, which wasn’t like him. He doesn’t step on a man’s applause, but he had a look on his face like I hope never to see again. Like death it was.

He held up his hands and cut the audience off short —not that they would have applauded much more anyway, but Bojo wasn’t waiting to see. “Ladies, Gentlemen,” he began. He paused, and for a second I thought he was going to say something else, but he seemed to change his mind and said, “There will be only one more set tonight and then we will be closing early.”

A disinterested murmur from the audience—they really didn’t care. Only the hope of some excitement in an otherwise meaningless evening caused them to wonder aloud.

I passed Bojo as he stepped down, but he didn’t say anything. The boys looked at me curiously. I shrugged in reply: “The Battle Hum.”

Loamy started to protest, but I cut him off. “For the Boje. And tighten up on that bass; you’re getting sloppy.”

“S’posed to be sloppy,” he muttered, and I shot him a look that said, “Not in this group, it’s not.”

We started off easy, sort of snuck up on it slow-like. Began with a slow steady drumbeat, low and slow, one hundred to the minute, and after a bit Loamy was under it all just hinting at something else with a bass that was almost sullen.

Jack on the piano kept waiting for me to cue him in, but I held back. There was something in the sound of the bass that I hadn’t heard before. At first I wondered how Loamy was doing it, but then I realized he wasn’t. A glance at him told me he was playing as sloppy as ever.

But there was something there. Something I couldn’t quite place, something that didn’t belong in the sound. Offhandedly, I’d have guessed we were picking up some kind of harmonic off Boje’s fancy glasswork, but this was deeper than any echo had a right to be.

I let it be and cued Jack in on the piano, but softly. He began with a slow steady alternation of notes, only hinting at the theme to come, but not giving it away. The whole thing was very dark, very sombre; the audience still did not know what we were doing, and for the first time that night they were paying attention.

If I’d thought the piano was going to cover up that echo, I was wrong. It only seemed to heighten its effect. It was more distinct than ever—but I still couldn’t make it out. It wasn’t unpleasant though; in fact, it might almost have been a perfect counterpoint.

I picked up the horn, even started to place it to my lips, then changed my mind Clarinet. Only clarinet would do for this. It’s the only real instrument for me. It’s the soul stick. It can have a sweet caressable sound, like fresh milk being poured into a saucer—or it can blare out with all the harsh frenzy of a two-dollar whore. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to the sound.

I eased in slowly, softly, with the gentle stroking of air that only the clarinet can do. The word clarinet even hints at it. I could hear the words in my head as I began, like from a distant choir—an all-male chorus, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the...”

I found myself thinking about the war again, wondering what it must be like to be on the other side, wondering how it would be to be one of the enemy—

Abruptly, I felt sorry for them, for they were doomed and didn’t know it. We always won. Always. Because we were right. And then I felt sorry for us too—what if we were wrong and didn’t know it?

I shoved the thought out of my head; put my mind back on the music. Like the blues, slow and muted, the melody was sobbing through the room, its very slowness a sign that it could not last. For when the Duff plays the Battle Hum, it’s anything but soft and subtle. We only start out that way. It’s a battle hum and it’s gotta be played that way, loud and brassy.

It’s a sound that has to be heard above the din of battle, above the dull thunder of the bombs, the agonized screams of the dying. It has to grab the men, lift them, pick them up, and hurl them back into battle. It’s got to be so vivid that you forget the smell of your blood, the pain of your torn flesh, your fears of death and damnation, and nothing must exist for you but the sound and the glory, and you rise and keep going. And keep on going. For the sound, the beautiful sound.

Earlie picks up the pace then, and Loamy adds overtones and then does things with the bass. Jack starts slipping in some extra notes, and before we realize it Earlie has eased us into a whole new tempo, twice as fast as before, and then I’m blowing out my guts and my mind at the same time. Nothing exists but the clarinet and the sound—and somewhere on the fringes of my existence, the piano, the bass, and the drums are all combining to make that sound. The sound.

Except this time it was different. Over it, under it, around it was this other sound. That echo I couldn’t quite place. But not an echo—a harmony? Something. It filtered in through the edges of our sound, diffracted and deflected—but always the same and always distant. And never quite drowned out.

A sound like listening.

We build to a crashing, thundering crescendo, and then suddenly—

—we stop, leaving only the slow steady drumbeat, still one hundred to the minute. Right back where we started. It rolls through the room that is still reverberating with a thunder that refuses to die out. Slowly we come back in with the theme, “Glory, glory, hallelujah...” Soft and almost silent, just a hint, and let it hang in the air. Not even a repeat, just slip through it once and let it fade out.

It takes a while for them to realize we’ve finished, but when they do it shatters their minds, and then they’re applauding, more than they’ve done all evening. “Okay, boys. Good job. Pack ’em up.”

It didn’t take the boys long. There was none of the usual byplay and kidding on the stand. Battle Hum does that, leaves us feeling as if we’ve crashed. Another reason I don’t like it. Music should leave you feeling up.

Abruptly I remembered that other sound and asked if anybody else had heard anything strange, but they just shrugged and shook their heads.

“You mean a kind of twangy thing?” Jack asked. “It could have been the piano. It seemed—”

“Uh-uh.” He hadn’t heard it. If he had, he’d have known what I meant. Either I was the only one who’d heard that other sound, or no one else wanted to admit it.

What was left of the audience was just filtering out. Bojo was at the bar, resting his head in his hands, half a beer sitting warmly in front of him. “G’night, Boje,” I said as I passed.

“Wait a minute, Duff,” he mumbled.

I paused while he fumbled in his sweater pocket. He thrust a wad of bills at me.

“Hey, what’s this? Payday isn’t until Friday.”

“Uh-uh, it’s today. Tonight’s your last night.”

“Huh—? Hey, now look, Boje. You and I are friends. I know we were a little loose on the first few sets, but give us a chance.”

He shook his head. “That’s not it, Duff. Your guys are all right, and if you’ll count that you’ll find it’s for the complete gig. It’s just that this—” He paused to swallow. “This is my last night too. I’m closing it up.”

Huh?”

He shoved the bills at me again; I was too dumbfounded not to take them. “It’s all there, Duff—and for the two extra weeks too.” He smiled. “The two extra you always con me into. I’m sorry you won’t be here to play them. I like your style.” Then he turned back to the bar and stared into his beer. It had a sickly green cast; the glow of the black light did that to it.

I could see that he didn’t want to talk. I hefted my two instrument cases and left.

Outside on the street, the boys gave me that look—as if I hadn’t been telling them everything. I shrugged it off, the way I shrugged everything off. “He has his moods,” I explained. “Music does that to him. Even ours.” I said it without smiling. It wasn’t funny. “I’ll call Bill tomorrow, see if he can get us anything.”

“Hmp,” snorted Loamy. “He’d book us into Hell if there was a percentage in it.”

Loamy and Jack walked off. Earlie gave me a wave and crossed the street to his battered Ford. It wasn’t even one o’clock yet and already the streets were deserted. A light mist gave the buildings a feathery look, and the street lights were haloed.

I turned and started walking.

And suddenly it was all clear.

Why there was no traffic, no people about.

The tank sat in the middle of the intersection, a giant beetle, squat and ugly. Three soldiers in baggy-green uniforms eyed me uncuriously. Down the boulevard, I could see other tanks, and scattered among them, the lean hungry jeeps, the pale shadowy figures of men. And all had that air of watchful readiness.

So it was over.

Sometime during the evening, the whole thing had ended. We had lost it. Without even noticing.

The great tanks had rolled into our city and taken up their positions and we hadn’t even noticed.

It’s one thing to see it in a picture: twenty-one inches of glowing red-green-blue dots, and all so distant and far away you know it doesn’t really have anything to do with you.

And it’s another thing to see it in person. The hulking metal shapes, monstrous and brooding—they had one purpose and one purpose only. The sullen power of great violence forged into metal shapes is always ugly.

There was nothing I could do. I could stand and look, or I could go home.

I went home.

And all the way, every step of the way, the questions gnawed at the edges of my mind.

Why? Why?

Somehow, irrationally, I had the idea that it was ultimately all my fault. I personally was the one responsible. Something I had done had brought this about.

But I hadn’t done anything.

Had it been that? While I had concerned myself with providing diversions for the affluent, had others been looking hungrily after that same damned affluence? Hadn’t I known? Hadn’t I seen?

And most of all, why hadn’t I cared?

But, no. I’d concerned myself with my music as if that had been the sole portion of my life, and not just the soul portion. While I had been blowing—no, while we had been blowing our hearts out in the Boje’s dingy little rathole cafe, our country had had its heart blown out by our indifference.

By my indifference. Where had I been when these ugly men in their baggy-green uniforms had come rolling silently into the world?

Where? Providing casual entertainment for the casual who didn’t care.

While the fat roly-poly Romans had gone to their circuses and discotheques, the lean hungry barbarians from the north had moved in. The Roman Empire never fell—it was given away.

Oh, sure—we had known there was a war on. It was in all the papers. But wars were always fought “over there.” Never “over here.” So we worried watched that other war, the far away one, and forgot about the one that was taking place right here at home. How does it feel to be the fool, Duff? How does it feel to know that you’re one of the reasons the streets are no longer ours?

And the city was longer ours. Nothing was ours.

The soldiers ignored me. They were as bored as the audiences I played for. And for the same reasons, too. They knew I would cause them no excitement, no reason even to straighten up. No nothing. So why strain? Why bother?

It was going to be a peaceful occupation.

The poet had been right. Not with a bang, but a whimper.

I went home, my footsteps echoing hollowly off the sidewalk and the mocking walls of the city.

The world went impossibly on. Cats pawed through garbage; dogs lifted their legs to telephone poles; cars continued to mutter through the streets. Impossibly, maddeningly normal.

As if they had every right to go on existing even though the world had changed hands in the night.

There was even a sense of relief in the air that, at last, it was finally here and over with. After one startled disoriented moment, the people came back into the streets to again tend to their personal businesses. Well, they’re here, they said, and it’s not as bad as we’d thought it would be. After all, they’re only human beings, just like us...

...shadowy gray and ghostly silent, they sat on their street corners, polishing their guns and waiting.

But they’re only human beings. Just like us....

The new government was named.

Life went on.

The same companies sent out the same bills on the same letterheads.

And always, the same people paid.

But Bojo’s stayed closed, and we were out of work. Again.

And we stayed out of work. Other places began to close up too. Not all like Bojo’s. And not all for the same reasons. Some were better, some worse. But all were closed.

The fools were out of work now. They’d done their job. No—we’d done our job. Indeed, done it well. There was no need for us any longer. We’d diverted the attention of the landlords long enough for the looters to take possession. And now that the looters had what they wanted, they had no more need for fools.

Most of the nightspots in town simply stopped opening. One night they’d be playing to a half-empty house and the next the doors would remain shut and nobody would be playing at all.

The stage shows closed; the movie theatres too, for a while, then they reopened with new films and unfamiliar titles. Only the bars remained unaffected, except that prices went up. A new liquor tax, they said.

Everywhere the casual entertainments disappeared. Withered away and died. Their purpose had been fulfilled.

I sat in the back of a darkened theatre, shadows flickering on the screen—shadows of the shadows that moved through the streets outside—and mourned the loss of a world I had helped to forsake.

The colors seeped out of life, the world was gray.

And the horror of it was that too soon we would grow used to this, our new way of life; grow complacent with the fact that the new was comfortably reminiscent of the old. After all, weren’t we still eating regular, still wearing warm clothes and sleeping between clean sheets? It’d be only a matter of time till we forgot that there had once been more to life than this.

What more? I wondered. What more? Had there ever really been anything more to my life than this? Had there? Not for me, there hadn’t. So why was I complaining?

What about the others? Didn’t they realize that something was missing?

No, I guess not. Nobody seemed to mind. Nobody at all.

Oh, they grumbled a little bit at first—it’s quite necessary to grumble when there’s any kind of change in your cage, it’s a fact of life—but like the weather, nobody even tried to do anything about it.

We’ve had enough war, they said. It’s time for peace.

...The peace of the grave, the soft and restful, quiet grave....

It was the Boje who refused to lie down and stay dead. So it had to be the Boje who was the first to die.

I should have been standing with the Boje. We all should have. But we weren’t; we just stood by and watched while he and a few others organized their rally. Frozen with indecision, I shrugged off his request for help: “Uh, I can’t do it, Boje. You understand....”

“Yes, I do. I’m sorry I bothered you, Duff.”

“Oh, that’s okay. Listen, if there’s anything else you need—” But the phone was a dead instrument in my hand.

I went anyway. Just to watch. I hung back at a distance and watched from the other side of the street. Far enough away so as not to be confused with them.

They had a small crowd, probably not more than two or three hundred. Once I thought I saw Earlie. He turned and waved at me, but I shook my head. He seemed to shrug and disappeared back into the crowd. They stood milling nervously in front of Bojo’s place, waiting for someone to give them direction. Boje was there in the thick of it. He didn’t see me; he was hassling with someone about something.

Finally, fifteen minutes late, they started. Boje brought out a huge flag; I wondered where he’d gotten it. It looked almost too heavy to handle, and he had to pass it to a taller, stronger man. Even so, it ended up they needed two people to carry it.

They began to move slowly down the center of the street. Startled drivers pulled over to the side to let them pass. Others halted in amazement, and the crowd simply flowed around their cars. Heads sticking out of windows, the drivers gaped.

Some hastily parked their vehicles and scrambled to follow the Boje’s group. Curiosity mostly. They too wondered who would be so foolish as to do this kind of thing in this new kind of day. Others, annoyed, threw their cars into reverse, backed away, and disappeared down side streets.

I followed the group, still keeping my distance.

By the time they reached their destination, the big intersection at the center of the city, the crowd had grown to four hundred, maybe a little more. They flooded over the sidewalks and filled the street—loose knots of people, individual stragglers, curious bystanders.

They filled the intersection. Cars and buses came to a grudging halt, and after a few minutes their passengers spilled wonderingly from them to join the crowd. Meanwhile, Bojo was clambering onto the hood of a car—Earlie’s battered Ford, it looked like. Someone put a bullhorn into his hands.

There was scattered applause as he began to speak, but it died away quickly; the people wanted to hear what he was saying. “My fellow countrymen,” he began, and his words sounded silly. And feeble. But with the bullhorn, they cut through the air sharp and clear, only to be cluttered by their own echoes bouncing back off the buildings. Still, if one strained, one could make out their meaning.

“My fellow countrymen,” he repeated. “We’re here today to...to wash our flag. It’s been disgraced.” No reaction from the crowd. “Our country has been taken from us. Yes, taken.” He paused again, still unsure of himself. The crowd waited, still not sure of itself. “But that is not the disgrace,” he continued. “Our shame is that we have let them take it.”

Again he paused, looking around for some reaction. Here and there, one or two people started to applaud, but quickly stopped when they saw they were alone. The crowd continued to wait. Bojo put the bullhorn to his lips again. “While we sat by and did nothing, they took over. And it’s time we took it back—or at least showed them that we are not going to give away anything so precious as our freedom.”

Still no reaction from the crowd. Bojo swallowed nervously and went on. “Do you know how many men died in the revolution that gave birth to this country? Do you know how many men have died since then to preserve the ideals on which it was founded?” He looked out over the crowd, letting the question sink in.

“No,” shouted a self-appointed spokesman. “How many?”

The Boje looked momentarily at a loss. “Uh, I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’m not a historian. I’m only a cafe owner.” Laughter, harsh and mocking, drowned out the rest of his words. I gritted my teeth, looked at my shoes. Oh, Boje, Boje, Boje.

He waited until the noise died down and began again, this time a little angrier. “But I can tell you this much—it wasn’t enough!” The crowd went silent.

“If more of our men had been willing to fight for those ideals—those ideals they said they believed in—there wouldn’t be soldiers in our streets today!”

“Yeah! You tell ’em!” someone in the back shouted. This was followed by a couple of other yeahs and a scattering of applause.

Boje smiled appreciatively, gave a nervous wave. “Okay, I will. Uh, I’m sure there’s not a person in this crowd who hasn’t been touched by the war. We all know someone who’s been fighting for us. Probably we all know someone who’s been killed while fighting for us. Are we going to turn to them now and say, ‘Thanks a lot, but it wasn’t worth the fight’?

“It’s our turn now. It’s our turn to show that we believe in the battles we’ve been sending men off to fight for the past two hundred years. It’s time for us to show that these men haven’t died in vain.”

He opened his mouth to go on, but the crowd interrupted him with their applause. Boje waited, surprised, but standing tall, growing taller every second.

“If we don’t take up our fight now, it will be as if we have never existed at all and it will make all of those other deaths meaningless. Nobody’s going to give our country back to us unless we show them that we want it back. It’s time to show them that we can be killed, but never defeated.”

The crowd applauded that too.

And that’s when the tanks moved in.

It wasn’t a very good speech, and there wasn’t much in it that was original; but the Boje had died for it, and that was enough.

They say that you can’t fight a war unless you have a cause, and you can’t have a cause unless you have a martyr to identify it with. If so, Boje had given us both. A cause and a martyr.

There was a sullen undertow of resentment afterward —a kind of “it wasn’t necessary to kill him, he was harmless,” attitude. After all, it wasn’t if he had been planning to make any real trouble. He was only making a speech.

And this was followed by, “Why did they have to react so hard and fast anyway? What were they afraid of?”

“Maybe the Boje was right—maybe we should...”

It didn’t take long for the incidents to begin. Little things, like someone spitting every time he walked past one of the ill-uniformed men. Or muttering an epithet under his breath.

And, emboldened by their success in such harmless things, there were those who dared more. It was only a matter of time until others followed the Boje. Retribution was always quick and harsh. The baggy-green uniforms brooked no disobedience.

And resentment grew. The enemy was revealing himself to be ruthless. Not benevolent at all. There were those who were surprised; more who were not. There could be no traffic with him, none whatever.

Like ghosts, flitting from person to person, the rumors rose up, murmured across the city: The enemy—yes, he was openly called the enemy now—the enemy was having too much trouble controlling the civilian population. There was talk of impressment of the young, of pass cards and controls and restrictions.

There were those who were preparing themselves for battle.

And it had taken only one incident to start it all. It didn’t matter what the incident was—one would have been as good as another—but the incident that focused the mood of the people was the unnecessary death of a simple man, a man who had never done more than run a jazz cafe. And one day he had stood on a car and urged a group of other men to remember what their fathers and brothers and sons had supposedly died for.

The Boje was a veteran, so they buried him in that cemetery by the freeway, where uncurious drivers could look down and see him, just one more marker in the rows of many that flickered silently past and then abruptly were gone as each car hurtled itself up that long slope into the hills. Long rows of even white markers, they sprawled across the green, green field.

And at the edges were trees, tall and graceful, but giving no shelter at all. They provided shade only at the very end of the day, when the sun would filter yellow through them. Long, blue-black shadows lay across the upright stones, gleaming even in the late afternoon. Here lay the seeds of man, each planted carefully in the ground, each at the proper depth, and each with a neat white marker to locate and identify it—each a seed that would never sprout, and the whole a field of ungrowing.

Bojo’s marker was identical with all the rest. Nothing to say, “Here. Here is the man who stood on a car and exhorted other men.” Nothing to say, “Here. Here is a man who died for his country.”

But then, there was no need to say it. Each of those silent white markers indicated the same thing. Each of them said, “Here. Here is a man who has died for his country.”

It was here at last that, if not in life, then in death, all men were “created” equal.

The sun disappeared below the tops of the trees and behind the houses and the hills to the west, behind the silent rushing susurrus of the nearby looming highway. I hefted the case of my clarinet and began crossing the loamy earth to where the others waited with Bojo.

It was going to be one for the Boje. He had given us our start and we couldn’t allow him to be sent off without some of the music he had helped to make.

Loamy was already peeling his bass out of its cover. Earlie had only his snare drum. It was all he needed; it hung on straps from his shoulders. He had a bandage on his forehead, and for some reason I was reminded of another group, a trio, and one that had played long before I was born. Earlie looked as if he should have been flanked by a man with a flute and another with a flag.

Jack looked glum without his piano. It isn’t that the piano is the only instrument he plays, but it’s the only instruments he plays—you know what I mean. Instead, he had a portable electric organ, a poor substitute—but in his mind he had to be here, and this was the only instrument that might do.

We set up our instruments in silence. Not that there was much to set up or much to talk about while we did it. I fitted the pieces of my clarinet together slowly. The whole atmosphere was heavy—too heavy—and it’s best to leave a man alone with his thoughts at a time like that. I tested the keys of the soul stick and then tested them again. I still wasn’t sure what we should play, but I had an idea what the Boje would like. Or would have liked.

Finally, when I could delay it no longer, I blew out a Duffy squeal, my trademark—a sort of a rebel yell on the clarinet. It’s kind of like saying, “Here we are and we’re ready to go and tonight we don’t stop until we wake the dead.” I always begin a set with it. It’s an attention getter.

I lowered the instrument and looked at the boys. They were easy to see in the bright moonlight. Behind them stretched the even white markers of the silent men, all those who had given up their lives for their country—only to have their country given up by those who stayed behind.

There were just the four of us—and all the dead. If I had thought this was going to be a private blow-off, I was wrong. It was as private as the main floor of Hell.

An interesting analogy that.

We started off with the spirituals—the songs from Bojo’s childhood, the ones he had grown up with. We played them for the Boje and we played them simply—the way they were written—and without the little touches of style that would identify us in particular.

It was a warm-up for us, and more than that, it was a way of saying, “This is God’s music, boys—not ours. It’s not for us to lay a claim on these. We’ll play our stuff, though. You wait.”

As the last notes faded into the shadows, and even as the echoes fell away, the silence returned. It was an almost silence; only the distant murmur of the highway hinted at anything more. But all else was still. They were waiting.

We lifted our instruments again. This time we were going to play our music. This time, Bojo would know who it was standing above him and sending the notes sobbing into the night.

“A set of three, the way the Boje liked it. This is Your Land, first. Then, the one about the hammer. And after that, the Battle Hum—and we’re gonna wake the dead with that one. We’re gonna do some blood stirring, an’ old Boje is gonna climb right out of that grave when he hears it.”

And we did.

We swung into the first one, This is Your Land—a song with one of those melodies that grabs you in the blood and makes it flow, a sweet and sour tingle that swells inside you until it shatters your walls and bursts out as a shout of joy.

Earlie laid into it with a bite, and Loamy found things that the bass could do that I’d never heard it do before. Jack picked it up easy and rolled the melody up and down his keyboard. He had a hornlike sound, but at the same time soft and plaintive all around.

I picked up my stick and started hurting. It’d be nice to say how it squealed and hollered and howled, how the notes hurled themselves across the lawn, shrieking even as those white markers scraped at the belly of the sound. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t like that at all, and if I had expected it to be, I was surprised.

The clarinet sobbed. It wailed, it whined—it did all the things a man wants to do and can’t—because a man’s not supposed to do them. So I let my soul stick cry for me instead. It did that with a passion.

Long mournful wails of melody rolled out into the night. The warm dark air seemed to swallow the sound even as it was born. Like into a vacuum.

We played it like a dirge, and then we took out the stops and swung into a big beat sound for the close. Earlie caught fire then, and those hammering drumbeats boomed and doomed. That organ seemed to be alive, and the bass was under and around it all. It was a good one; it said what we wanted it to.

No pause and we swung easily into The Hammer, which I knew the Boje had always liked, and that’s when I began to hear the sound. I’d heard it before, only once, but I recognized it immediately. It was an echo, and it wasn’t. It was a distant wail, mournful and sobbing, not so much a sound as a presence.

It lay under The Hammer and hinted at things other than.

I tried to ignore it, tried to play above it—but it was there, and the more I played the more definite it became. I still couldn’t identify it—it came from no instrument I’d ever heard. Except perhaps the throats of a choir, one million strong.

I tried to blank it out and concentrate on my music, but after a while it was as if a new instrument had been added. Somehow, it seemed to fit in.

The Hammer is one of the ones I like to use the horn with. There are passages where only a horn can rightly grab hold of the sound and give it that special fury. Only the horn can shriek some of those phrases at the world.

But I didn’t have my horn with me that night. I had the clarinet. So we played it soft—muted it down and did it like a dirge. For Boje.

I knew Earlie was getting restless with it; he was doing things with the beat. We started climbing. (I could hear that distant choir—louder than ever now. And there were words, but too fuzzy to make out.)

We blew it out big for the close, and then the silence swept back in.

We paused then. I held my hand up—nobody say a thing—and listened.

There was nothing there. Only the quiet steady rustle of the highway, and I knew that hadn’t been what I’d heard.

I looked from face to face. Sweat was dripping off Earlie, and Loamy was radiant. Jack looked exhilarated. If a cool wind whispered through the night and across our backs, we didn’t feel it.

I picked up the clarinet again. And this time we were going to do the Battle Hum. For the Boje. For all of them.

The moon disappeared behind a cloud, and we were lost in the dark. But no matter. Earlie began with the drumbeat, one hundred to the minute, and Loamy was there with his bass tickling in on the edges. Without being told, Jack began at just the right time.

—and then as I lifted my stick, I heard it. That sound. That deep distant mournful chorus wailing...

A cold wind swept through me—a sudden dreadful feeling. I knew exactly what was making that sound. I knew what it was, and there was nothing I could do about it.

I closed my eyes and blew.

I submerged into that music, became lost in it, played it, and became one with it. But whatever it was I did, I knew I mustn’t look back. I mustn’t. I was afraid of what I might see.

We played that Battle Hum as it had never been played before—and likely as it’s never going to be heard again.

Creeping into it slowly—slow and easy—again beginning like a dirge—but not a dirge, more of a march—then picking it up, a piece here and a piece there. Loamy came in and did a bass solo based on his own counterpoint, and yet was more than that. Then, just as easily, he crept out and Jack was in there doing things that only a piano knew how to do, and I had to keep reminding myself that he didn’t have one tonight. And always, Earlie was there with the drums. Always. One hundred to the minute. A march. A march and a dirge.

I waited then, waited while they played for the Boje, waited and listened as they sobbed their hearts into their sound. And I wondered all the while if they could hear it, that slow low rumbling, grumbling, from deep within the bowels of the Earth.

They must have been lost in their music, for it seemed as if I was the only one aware of the trembling beneath my feet, the fear creeping up my soul. I moistened my lips, began again to blow—blow my lungs out, trying to drown out that dreadful sound.

I played my solo to a counterpoint from Hell.

I don’t remember signaling, but there was Earlie, under me with the drums, all the way, lifting and shouting and all of a sudden we were rising together. I could sense the bass—I was beyond hearing—the bass was there and adding its own mournful harmonies. And Jack was there too, sobbing into his machine.

I played on, my eyes shut tight against the night. Only the music mattered, the notes, the sound. That sound. That low, slow, rumbling grumbling. I didn’t want to see. I didn’t want to know what was going on in that graveyard behind me.

“Boje!” I played. “Boje! This is for you. I’m sorry I let you down, Boje! I didn’t mean to and I’m sorry!”

The moon hid behind its cloud and waited. Other sounds began to add themselves. Strange sounds. I became curiously detached—caught up in the experience and yet, at the same time, aware of the totality of it all. The new sounds were proper, correct, and never discordant—they seemed to point up our every meaning.

There were rustlings, as if of movement. Dry dead leathery rustlings. Silent whisperings and a shambling murmur and the sense of something passing through the night—something slow and massive and ponderously invincible rolling up and out into the world; something spread out and made up of many lesser, but no less powerful, units of itself. It whispered across the night and across our sound.

We swung into the last movement of the Battle Hum, a battle in itself. The clarinet shrieked. It does that on the high notes if you’re not careful—but here it seemed somehow right. The bass pounded, the drums boomed and doomed, and through it all was Jack holding us somehow together. We rode through it on a cresting wave, with a whole world shouting, “Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!” Singing it out with the music—the Battle Hum crashed across our sensibilities. Only the fear of that other sound kept us from flying out into a million brilliant stars.

Under and around and through it was that rumble and rustle, that grumbling bustling tremble of something big and busy moving through the night. It was something not benevolent; it had a feeling of ruthless deliberation as it went about its business. Yet it knew we were there and never touched us. It just went on with its own fearful task, taking care not to break the spell of our sound. Something that we had awakened, but not quite unleashed.

“Boje!” I played. “Boje! This is for you. I’m sorry I let you down, Boje! I didn’t mean to and I’m sorry!”

And then there was silence.

And the dawn.

The graveyard was still. The ground was smooth—unbroken and unmarked. Dew gleamed wetly on the grass, blue-green and glistening. Whatever had happened last night had not happened here.

The city was empty.

The people came out into the streets and the soldiers were—gone. Their tanks lay empty in the intersections, their rifles still leaning carelessly where they had left them, their jeeps still with motors running.

Only rarely was an empty uniform discovered—baggy-green shirt, trousers and heavy boots casually discarded as if they no longer held any meaning.

But of the soldiers, never a trace was found.

There are those who claim to know what happened. It was a strike, they say. The soldiers took off their uniforms and they were no longer soldiers, they were men again. And the men went home.

Perhaps. It is an easy explanation to accept. Perhaps it is the truth. Or perhaps—

I had said our music could raise the dead, but I had used that only as an expression. I had never thought—

But we played the Battle Hum—

They say that killing is a mortal sin; that it is against the laws of God. If that is true—and I know now that it must be—if that is true, then every man who has ever taken a human life has been, from that moment on, damned for all eternity. No matter how many men or nations say that it is all right for a man to take up arms against an enemy, it does not change that one basic fact—killing is a mortal sin.

And every one of those simple white markers we had stood among represents a soul condemned.

A nation had sentenced her sons to damnation so that she might survive.

There’s no such thing as a “moral war.”

How must those men have felt to discover that they had been betrayed? How must each have realized he could not abdicate the authorship of his own crimes? What would he feel toward the leaders of his nation—the generals, the politicians, the mothers, wives, and brothers he had left behind, each urging him onward to kill in their names...?

And yet—

When that same nation had been betrayed and rough-hewn soldiers abused the citizens, those same sons had returned, once more.

Greater love hath no man?

I wonder....

Is this how one repents for making war? By rising up and fighting again? By repeating the sin?

Or was it something else; some other reason that made them rise up in the night?

Could it have been to protect us from ourselves? To keep us from condemning more of our young to Hell?

Was it so that we might learn to live for our ideals instead of having to die for them?

AFTERWORD:

This is the only ghost story I’ve ever written.

Yes, the ending is heavy-handed. It was a product of the moment—my raging frustration with the ongoing collisions of ideology and morality, and how quickly those became the justifications for escalating violence.

Politicians create war too easily. And those who say nothing in opposition are accomplices to the carnage and brutality that follows.

If it’s true that ghosts only hang around the living because of unfinished business, then this seemed the only logical conclusion.

How We Saved the Human Race

I’m not in the business of predicting the future, but sometimes it happens anyway.

This story may have been one of the most prescient things I’ve ever written. No, not the specific details—but the social effects that followed.

TEST TRANS CODE

ALPHA ALPHA TAU

QWERTYUIOPASDFGHJKLZXCVBNM1234567890

THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPED OVER THE LAZY DOGS.

END TEST

MESSAGE BEGINS HERE

DATE/2037.05.14

FROM/THE UNITED STATES AMBASSADOR TO BRAZIL

TO/THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

FILE/BRZ9076THX

CODE/ALPHAALPHATAU/20370514.475FGH

STATUS OF DOCUMENT/CLASSIFIED/CODE 475FGH

MR. PRESIDENT, IN PLAIN TERMS, THE ANSWER IS NO. THE GOVERNMENT OF BRAZIL ABSOLUTELY REFUSES TO RELEASE THE BODY. THERE CAN BE NO POSSIBLE NEGOTIATION ON THIS. THIS IS AN INTERNAL MATTER—THEY CLAIM—AND NO OTHER POLITICAL BODY WILL BE ALLOWED TO INTERVENE. OF COURSE, THIS IS A BLATANT GRAB ON THEIR PART, BUT THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT IT. I AM AGAINST MAKING ANY KIND OF FLAP.

FIRST OF ALL, WORLD OPINION GENERALLY FAVORS THE BRAZILIANS. ANY ATTEMPT BY US TO PRESSURE THEM WOULD ONLY PRODUCE HOSTILE REACTIONS, AND THAT’S THE LAST THING WE WANT NOW. SECONDLY, THEY WANT TO TAKE CREDIT FOR LEDGERTON’S CAPTURE. THEY FOUND HIM AND THEY EXECUTED HIM. OR RATHER, THEY ATTEMPTED TO. IT WAS UNFORTUNATE THAT THE CROWD BEAT THEM TO IT. THERE ARE THOSE WHO SUGGEST THAT THE POLICE DELIBERATELY LET THE LYNCH MOB IN, BUT I WOULD DISCREDIT THAT STORY. THEY LOST TWELVE OF THEIR OWN IN THE DISORDER.

I THINK WE OUGHT TO LET THE BRAZILIANS HAVE THE CREDIT. THIS IS NOT TO SUGGEST APPEASEMENT, BUT WISDOM. THIS GOVERNMENT IS THE FRIENDLIEST ONE BRAZIL HAS HAD IN TWELVE YEARS AND WE WANT TO KEEP IT THAT WAY. ANY PRESSURING ON OUR PART WOULD DEFINITELY COOL RELATIONS, AND PRESIDENT GARCIA WON’T BEND TO PRESSURE ANYWAY. POLITICAL REASONS. THE MILITANT RIGHTISTS WOULD USE SUCH ACQUIESCENCE AS A LEVER AGAINST HIM. SO I THINK WE’D BETTER JUST MAKE INEFFECTUAL NOISES FOR NOW, LOUD ENOUGH TO PLACATE OUR OWN PEOPLE, BUT NOT LOUD ENOUGH TO ANNOY JUAN PABLO GARCIA.

BY THE WAY, THE BODY WILL REMAIN ON PUBLIC DISPLAY FOR ANOTHER DAY AND A HALF. YES, STILL HANGING FROM THE GALLOWS, BULLET HOLES AND ALL. I’VE SEEN IT AND IT’S A GHASTLY SIGHT. NOT EVEN LEDGERTON DESERVED WHAT THEY DID TO HIM. YOU KNOW OF COURSE THAT THEY CASTRATED HIM TOO.

IN ANY CASE, I HAVE IT FROM GARCIA HIMSELF THAT IT WILL BE TAKEN DOWN TUESDAY AND CREMATED. THE ASHES WILL BE SCATTERED AT SEA. NO, WE CAN’T STOP THAT EITHER.

I WISH I COULD BE MORE ENCOURAGING AT THIS TIME, BUT ALL I CAN DO IS SAY THAT IT’S A ROTTEN SITUATION ALL AROUND. I’LL HAVE A MORE DETAILED REPORT LATER. DESPITE OUR CLAIMS TO THE CONTRARY, THERE ARE STILL TOO MANY PEOPLE DOWN HERE WHO BELIEVE THE WHOLE THING WAS A C.I.A. PLOT.

FOR GOD’S SAKE, THIS IS ONE TIME WHEN I HOPE OUR OFFICIAL POSITION COINCIDES WITH THE TRUTH.

SINCERELY,

2057.05.14/DATELINE: BRAZIL.

CARDINAL SILENTE TODAY DEDICATED THE MONUMENT AND ETERNAL FLAME COMMEMORATING THE MARTYR DANA LEDGERTON. THAT SUCH A HIGHRANKING MEMBER OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH SHOULD TRAVEL TO BRAZIL FOR THE CEREMONIES SUGGESTS IMMINENT BEATIFICATION OF THE MARTYR. THE CARDINAL HIMSELF SAID....

PSYCHIATRIC INDEX REPORT

COMSKOOL TWELVE, MANWEATHER COMPLEX, CA 91405-0932

May 1, 2003

Dana Ledgerton, DL 551-69-5688, age nine.

Child is unfortunately too smart and too pretty for his own good. Male, age nine, fair skin, pale hair, thin, undersized for age (poor nutrition again, damn these Comskool minimums), lives in Comskool Creche. Unfortunately, subject also has advanced intelligence. (Tests enclosed.) Presently enrolled two grades above average for his age level. This physical discrepancy between him and his classmates generates extreme feelings of inferiority, coupled with strong motivation to succeed. Success on mental level increases antagonism between himself and peers, but it is the only arena in which he is fairly matched with his classmates. The kid takes a lot of teasing about being a sissy, and his sense of masculine identification is weak. I’ll give odds of ten to one that he’s a fag by the time he’s twenty. RECOMMENDATIONS: None. There’s nothing we can do. Tough.

SUPERVISOR’S REMARKS: Dammit, Pete! Can’t you be a little more clinical than this?

(signed) H.B.

MAY 9, 2011

LABOR POOL STATUS BOARD, CA 99-5674

UNIT MONITOR FORM JHX-908

DANA LEDGERTON, DL 551-69-5688

Subject is thin, very fair, blond hair. Small for his age. Required to perform eighteen hours of Class IV labor per week in order to support educational demands. Assigned to manual labor in University CafCom. Designation: busboy.

REMARKS:

Subject discovered in Comskool Personal committing homosexual act with fellow student at age twelve. Referred to PsychStat who confirmed unit’s sexual outlook. No recommendation made. In accordance with Federal Civil Rights Amendment, subject’s sexual preference has no bearing on his ability to perform Class IV labor.

RECOMMENDATION:

Leave to discretion of local supervisors.

MAY 45, 2035

FROM:   FIELD OPERATIVE JASON PETER GRIGG

TO:        F.B.I. DIRECTOR WARREN J. HINDLER,

HOOVER CENTER,

WASHINGTON D.C.

FILE: LEDGERTON, DL 551-69-5688

Chief,

Sorry for the sketchiness of this report; I’ll have to do a complete rundown when I get back. This thing is a mess to the nth power. The Manweather records only go back twelve years. Before that, it’s incomplete and often sketchy. Yes, I know that’s hard to believe, but Manweather was one of the hardest hit during the sex and protein riots, and, a lot of their records were wiped clean by the activists.

Attached are copies of the working papers. Here’s the summary:

Ledgerton’s birth was an accident. He wasn’t wanted, not by his parents, not by the local board. When he came along, unannounced and unwelcome, the parents were sterilized and sent to Labor-Module 14, Manweather. The child was transferred to the Comskool Creche, which had only been open two years at that time and still had elbow room. However, due to shifting population pressures, Manweather became one of the densest concentrations in CA. Within five years, it was a behavioral sink.

Competition wasn’t Ledgerton’s big thing. He preferred to withdraw into himself. Because his teachers and PsychStats kept telling him how smart he was and how he should be proud of himself, he became narcissistic and introverted. He took a lot of fag-baiting from his classmates, too.

There’s a full psych profile in here somewhere. I was lucky to find that. According to the shrink, “Little Dana” wasn’t as self-assertive as he should have been and too many of his life choices were made because population pressures forced him into them and he didn’t feel like fighting back.

His college career tends to bear this out. He went into bio-chem. strictly by accident. It was the only classification still open that he was qualified for. And it was either that or the unskilled labor pool. Nuff said about that.

MAY 24, 2014

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT INDIO

REAGAN HALL

FLOOR MANAGER’S MEMO

SUBJECT: REASSIGNMENT OF ROOMS,

Dana Ledgerton DL 551-69-5688 and Paul-John Murdock PJM 673-65-4532 have been reassigned (at their request) to room 12-32, the “lavender hills” section. This leaves rooms 6-87 and 7-54 with only one person in them. Immediate reassignments available for each.

MAY 3, 2015

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT INDIO

PSYCH-STAT REPORT,

CONFIDENTIAL SUBJECT: PAUL-JOHN MURDOCK PJM 673-65-4532

Subject is tall and husky. 6’1”, 186 lbs. Fairly well built. Dark hair, curly. Thin face. “Penetrating” eyes—an illusion produced by deep-set sockets and heaviness of eyebrows. Prone to long periods of moodiness and introspection. Theatre arts major.

He has been living for the past year with another male student and the relationship is apparently sexual. However, subject’s emotional involvement tends to be shallow. He has a long history of casual sexual encounters with his fellow students, both male and female, and probably would not grieve if this relationship were to end abruptly.

I suspect the continued use of mildly narcotic drugs, including such illegal agents as “Spice,” “Pink,” and “Harrolin.” (No definite proof here.) Subject’s manner is lackadaisical and uncaring. Selfish, introverted, narcissistic. Typical T.A. major: more concerned with things on a “higher plane” than with the exigencies of everyday life.

Subject’s strongest motivation for continuation of education is the avoidance of the labor draft.

RECOMMENDATION: 1A status.

STATE OF CALIFORNIA, INFORMATION DUP-OUT

APPLICATION FOR CONTRACT TO ENTER STATE OF LEGAL MARRIAGE

DATE: MAY 12, 2015

APPLICANTS:

DANA LEDGERTON DL 551-69-5688

PAUL-JOHN MURDOCK PJM 673-65-4532

LENGTH OF CONTRACT: THREE YEARS.

PURPOSE: MUTUAL INTERDEPENDENCE.

CONDITIONS: INDIVIDUAL PROPERTY MAINTENANCE, DISSOLUTION TERMS NONNEGOTIABLE. MUTUAL INHERITANCE. RESIDENCE: REAGAN HALL, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT INDIO, ROOM 12-32.

DISPOSITION OF APPLICATION: GRANTED.

WILLIAM APTHEKER, COUNTY CLERK

HARDCOPY FRAGMENT IN FILE, dislocated page, thought to be part of report by investigating agents. (Nature of agency not known.)

“...after his marriage broke up, he remained at the University for another three years. He tried to reconcile the contract several times, but twice he couldn’t get in touch with Paul-John and the third time, Paul-John was vague in his reply..

“After that, he concentrated heavily on his studies. He earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry and an M.A. in medicine. They were (in the words of the department head) `Uninspired degrees’. Meaning he was qualified, but not exceptional.

“Somehow he landed a teaching position and was able to hold onto it for several years. They had him giving the freshman science classes, something nobody else wanted to do.

“What he did on his own time during those years is beyond me, though I suspect he spent a lot of time at the boy-shows.”

MAY 32, 2027

COLORADO COLLEGE OF SCIENCE

DENVER, COLORADO

FROM: Dr. Margaret James-Mead

TO: Dept. Head Harlan Sloan

Hal,

If I have to look at that “wispy little thing” wandering around the halls of this college one more day, I think I’ll puke. You know who I mean. That man is a disgrace to the institution.

I don’t care how you do it, but you’ve got to get rid of him. If you can’t find something on him, make something. If you don’t ask him for his resignation within a week, I’ll give you mine instead.

Love, Maggie.

May 34, 2027

My dear Dr. Ledgerton,

It is with deepest regret that I must ask you to resign your position with the Denver College of Science. Your record here has been without blemish; however, we find that there is no longer any need for your services and are forced to take this rather unfortunate step.

I assure you that it has nothing to do with your personal life, or the incident with Dr. James-Mead. It is instead a question of…

MAY 3, 2029

INTERBEM CHEMICAL RESEARCH

PORTION OF SUPERVISOR’S REPORT

“...the Ledgerton group seems to have come closest to a workable solution of this problem. They have generated an experimental strain, temporarily designated NFK-98, which appears to combine the functions of both DFG-54 and DFS-09 into one continuous process, rather than the two separate steps we have today.

“Suggest further experimentation along these lines to substantiate the findings and put them into production. The Ledgerton group should be commended. Despite his unappealing manner, Ledgerton is a tireless worker. Morale of the technicians working under him is not as good as it could be, but they do produce usable results.

“The viral research teams should be expanded as soon as possible in order to…”

INTERBEM CHEMICAL RESEARCH

MAY 9, 2029

TO ALL EMPLOYEES:

COMPANY FACILITIES ARE NOT TO BE USED FOR PRIVATE RESEARCH PROJECTS WITHOUT FIRST SECURING PERMISSION FROM DEPARTMENT HEADS. IT IS UNDERSTOOD THAT INTERBEM RETAINS THE RIGHT OF FIRST OPTION ON ANY COMMERCIAL APPLICATION OF PRIVATE DISCOVERIES PRODUCED BY INTERBEM EMPLOYEES. REMEMBER, THIS PRIVILEGE IS CONDITIONAL UPON FULFILLMENT OF MINIMUM QUOTAS AND WILL BE REVOKED IF THEY ARE NOT MET.

MAY 1, 2030

FIRST DORIAN CHURCH OF AMERICA

OSCAR WILDE CONGREGATION

CONFIDENTIAL MEMBERSHIP REPORT:

Dr. Dana Ledgerton, employee of InterBem Corporation, age thirty-six. Unmarried.

Dr. Ledgerton was interviewed by the membership committee whose discussion follows. J.M. commented at length that Dr. Ledgerton is thirty-six and physically unappealing. He suggested that the only reason Ledgerton wants to join is because he cannot find sexual partners anywhere else.

K.R. found J.M.’s attitude and phrasing undignified and demeaning.

L.N. said that Ledgerton’s primary purpose in joining the church is probably loneliness.

J.M. agreed, but said that loneliness was just another way of saying “horniness.”

L.N. insisted that the applicant was basically good intentioned. Lots of people join churches because they are lonely. Why should the Dorians be any different?

K.R. interrupted both of them to speculate on whether or not Ledgerton really did embrace the principles of Dorianism.

Ledgerton was called back into the room then and further questioned. He responded at length and the discussion continued again, while he waited outside.

A.S., visiting minister from the Bay Area, cast his support in favor of Ledgerton. Most people, he said, are not aware of all the precepts of Dorianism when they join, and it would be unfair to hold that against Ledgerton.

A vote was taken then, and Ledgerton was admitted to the membership by a count of 4-1. He was readmitted to the room and sworn to uphold the church and the principles upon which it was founded, that overpopulation is a sin and that all Dorians will devote their whole lives to zero population growth.

Dr. Ledgerton will be presented to the general congregation at the next open meeting.

MAY 39, 2031

INTERBEM CHEMICAL RESEARCH

SUPPLY REQUISITION

Need: Forty hours use of electron microscope for viral research. Private project. After hours use will be okay. Would appreciate available time as soon as possible.

(signed) D. Ledgerton

MAY 14, 2032

INTERBEM CHEMICAL RESEARCH

SUPERVISOR’S MEMO

Spoke to Ledgerton again today about his after-hours research. He’s been working on this one project for nearly a year now, and he has spent nearly thirty-five thousand dollars on it. When questioned how much longer this line of research would continue, Ledgerton declined to say, but seemed to indicate that it would not be much longer.

I asked if he were close to a solution. He replied that he was closer to finding out that there was no solution, but would not go into any further detail. I suspect he does not want to discuss his project. A complete report on the objectives of his program and his findings has been ordered. He has until the end of the month to submit it, at which time it will be evaluated and decided whether or not he will be allowed to continue.

He was upset, but not as much as I expected. Perhaps he is nearing the end of his research after all. He mentioned something about a possible sabbatical later in the year. If he requests it, it is my recommendation that it be granted. His lapse in work has been only recent and may be due to personal problems. Ledgerton has always been a good worker, although his personal manner does leave something to be desired.

MAY 50, 2032

INTERBEM CHEMICAL RESEARCH

REQUEST FOR LEAVE OF ABSENCE

APPLICANT: DANA LEDGERTON DL 551-69-5688

REASON: VACATION, INDEFINITE LENGTH

DISPOSITION OF APPLICATION: GRANTED

REMARKS: (Scrawled in pen.) Good. I never liked him anyway.

MAY 50, 2032

FIRST DORIAN CHURCH OF AMERICA

OSCAR WILDE CONGREGATION

CONFIDENTIAL MEMBERSHIP REPORT:

The membership committee then considered a motion to expel D.L.

J.M. wanted to go on record as being opposed to D.L.’s membership in the first place. It was duly noted.

L.N. inquired as to what the charges against D.L. were.

J.M. said that D.L. has not been faithful to the principles upon which the credo is based.

K.R. noted that D.L. has been observed almost nightly in the company of “paid female prostitutes.”

L.N. requested amplification of this charge.

J.M. presented receipts made out to D.L. from the Xanadu Pleasure Corp.

L.N. wanted to know how J.M. got the receipts, but he was ruled out of order. The issue at hand is D.L.’s transgressions, not J.M.’s source of information.

L.N. disagreed, saying that we should not be “spying on our brothers.” He was ruled out of order again.

The vote was taken and D.L. was expelled by a count of 4-1. The general membership will be informed at the next open meeting.

MAY 7, 2036

FIRST DORIAN CHURCH OF AMERICA

OSCAR WILDE CONGREGATION

CONFIDENTIAL MEMBERSHIP REPORT:

L.N. called the special meeting to order at 8:00 p.m. The first order of business was the reconsideration of the expulsion of D.L. four years ago. In light of recent events, it has become obvious that D.L.’s actions at that time were not in violation of the basic principles of Dorianism.

If anything, D.L., more than any other member, has done the most to further the cause of zero population growth.

K.R. noted some additional facts about the situation and a vote was taken. D.L. was unanimously readmitted to the congregation. He has not been notified because his whereabouts remain unknown.

It was decided not to apprise either the public or the general membership of this decision, because of the adverse publicity this might bring to the church.

MAY 27, 2033

FILE: 639 RADZ

SUBMTTED BY: RESIDENT PHYSICIAN JAMES-TAYLOR RUGG

Mr. and Mrs. Robert D____ came into my office on May 6 of this year. They have been trying for six months to start a baby and have had no success. I initiated the Groperson tests as well as a routine physical examination of each.

Mrs. D____ is in excellent physical condition and well suited for child bearing. Mr. D____ tests out with a normal sperm count and is in no need of semination cloning. I’m sure that the rest of the tests will also turn out negative. I admit it, I’m stumped, and I pass this case on to the board with all the rest.

WRITTEN IN INK ACROSS THE BOTTOM: Dammit! This is the twenty-third one of these I’ve seen in the past two months. What the hell is going on?

(signed) B.V.

2033.05.21/TIMEFAX

...SURPRISINGLY, THE ONLY PLACE WHERE THE POPULATION GROWTH HAS KEPT WITHIN ITS PROJECTED LIMITS HAS BEEN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, THE DENSEST URBAN COMPLEX IN THE COUNTRY. THE STATE SURGEON GENERAL OFFERED NO EXPLANATION FOR IT, BUT USED THE OCCASION TO CONDEMN ARTIFICIAL ADDITIVES IN THE YEAST CULTURES. HE NOTED AN INCREASE IN THE NUMBER OF MARRIED COUPLES CONSULTING DOCTORS ABOUT THEIR INABILITY TO CONCEIVE AND HINTED THAT THERE MIGHT BE A CONNECTION.

IN CLEVELAND, DR. JOYCE FREMM DISCOUNTED THIS, SUGGESTED INSTEAD THAT THE CALIFORNIA SLOWDOWN WAS A RESULT OF ITS BECOMING “ONE GIANT BEHAVIORAL STINK.” WHEN ASKED IF SHE DIDN’T MEAN “BEHAVIORAL SINK,” DR. FREMM REPLIED, “I KNOW WHAT I SAID.”

2034.05.03/TIMEFAX

CONCERN OVER THE SO-CALLED “INFERTILITY PLAGUE” HAS SPREAD EVEN TO THE EASTERN BLOC NATIONS. THE LATEST CITIES TO REPORT DECLINING BIRTH RATES INCLUDE MOSCOW, PEKING, HONG KONG, TOKYO, OSAKA, HANOI, NEW DELHI, AND MELBOURNE. EARLIER IN THE WEEK, THE PARIS COUNCIL MET AGAIN TO REPORT STILL NO SUCCESS IN FINDING THE CAUSE OF THE DECLINE.

DR. JOYCE FREMM, WORKING OUT OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA COMPLEX, UNIT HOSPITAL 43, ADMITTED THAT HER TEAM WAS NO CLOSER TO THE CAUSE THAN THEY HAD BEEN A YEAR AGO. “ALL WE KNOW ABOUT IT, WHATEVER IT IS,” SHE SAID, “IS THAT IT KEEPS PEOPLE FROM STARTING BABIES.”

SHE GAVE NO INDICATION WHEN A SOLUTION MIGHT BE FOUND. WHILE SHE WAS SPEAKING, THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION RELEASED A LIST OF AN ADDITIONAL FOURTEEN NATIONS WHOSE BIRTH RATES HAVE BEGUN TO SHOW THE INITIAL SLOWING THAT INDICATES THE PRESENCE OF THE SYNDROME.

MAY 9, 2034

MEMO TO: DR. JOYCE FREMM FROM: DR. VICTORWEBB KING

Joyce,

I don’t know how important this is, but it wouldn’t hurt to track it down. Out of the last three hundred couples I’ve interviewed, nearly sixty per cent of the men have met their wives and been married only in the past eighteen months. Out of this group, nearly half report occasional premarital visits to a joy house, and nearly a third of all the men we interviewed have had some kind of professional contact.

More important however, is that at least one partner in every couple has had at least one pre or extramarital contact with a partner other than wife or husband.

The former fact is way out of line with the statistical average; the latter implies a definite connection. Could the Xanadu Pleasure Corp be an active vector of the disease?

MAY 11, 2034

MEMO TO: DR. VICTOR-WEBB KING

FROM: DR. JOYCE FREMM

(1) We don’t know yet that it’s a disease.

(2) Make no public announcement of this—especially do not suggest that Xanadu or any other company may be connected with it.

(3) Check it out immediately.

MAY 11, 2034

MEMO TO: DR. JOYCE FREMM

FROM: DR. CARLOS WAN-LEE

Dr. Fremm,

I believe my section has come up with a clue as to the nature of the syndrome. Sperm from one hundred affected men has been compared with the sperm of one hundred unaffected men; i.e. men whose wives have been impregnated within the past two months.

There is a minor but definite difference in the enzyme output of the affected sperm cells. All of the affected men (excepting three with very low sperm counts) had this qualitative difference in their enzyme production. Ninety-three of the unaffected men had normal enzyme production.

We’re exploring this further and we’ll have a more detailed report at the end of the week.

MAY 30, 2034

REPORT TO THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION

BY DR. JOYCE FREMM

TRANSCRIPTION OF REMARKS—MOST CONFIDENTIAL

Gentlemen,

We have discovered the cause of the infertility plague, and we believe that it is only a matter of time until we discover the cure.

The cause of the plague is simple: We have been hit by a new kind of venereal disease, a benevolent tyrant, so to speak. It has an incubation period of less than twenty-four hours, and its immediate effects are so mild as to be negligible; perhaps a headache or a mild sense of nausea, that’s all; but after that, the victim will pass the infection on to everyone he or she has intimate contact with.

Both males and females are carriers of the disease, creating an ever-increasing reservoir of active infection, with promiscuity its vector.

The disease has no effect on females of the species. To them, it is a benevolent parasite. It lives in the female reproductive tract and minds its own business. Unfortunately, its business is to infect that woman’s every male contact.

And each time it does that, it effectively castrates the man. Viability of the sperm cells is reduced to 7% of what is considered normal.

The causative agent is a virus. It is a new strain and related to nothing we have seen before. Were it not for the fact that artificial virus tailoring is still such an infant science, I would suspect a vast campaign of virological warfare is being waged against the human race.

The viral bodies live and breed in the cells lining the vaginal wall. During intercourse, the release of certain hormones cause them to become active, and the viral bodies migrate into the male organ—usually through the urethra, but occasionally through a mild, almost unnoticeable rash.

The virus then migrates to the testes, specifically to the sperm-forming cells. The viral DNA chains attack these cells, burrowing into the cell walls, throwing off their protein sheaths and becoming just another hunk of DNA within the cell. Impossible to discover.

The result is small, very small—but very noticeable. The sperm cell no longer “cares.”

The average human male ejaculation contains three hundred million sperm cells. Ideally, each of these cells has the capability of being the cell to fertilize the waiting egg; but after being infected by the virus, the quality of the whole ejaculation is changed. The sperm cells still race madly up the fallopian tubes to meet the ovum—but when they get there, they can’t fertilize.

You see, each sperm cell carries a tiny amount of an enzyme called hyaluronidase. Hyaluronidase sub-one, that is. No matter what the enzyme is called, though—what does matter is that the virus changes the male so that he no longer produces that enzyme. Instead, he produces something else, some other enzyme. The virus adds a few little acids of its own to the amino chain of the enzyme, and instead of hyaluronidase_1 we get hyaluronidase_2—a very different creature altogether.

Hyaluronidase_2 is not as active as hyaluronidase_1. It takes longer to do its work. Much longer.

Although only one sperm cell is needed for fertilization to occur, three hundred million are provided in order that one will succeed. But because only one is needed, the other two million, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine sperm cells must be resisted. For that reason, the cell wall of the human ovum is too strong for any individual sperm cell to break down. Hyaluronidase is the enzyme that breaks down or softens the cell wall, and it takes the combined effort of all the sperm cells to provide enough of the enzyme to soften the wall enough for just one sperm cell to break through. Immediately upon fertilization, a change takes place in the cell wall to prevent other sperm cells from breaking in, a calculated resistance to their pressure,

But, if all those sperm cells are producing hyaluronidase_2 instead of hyaluronidase_1, fertilization will never take place at all. (Except in very rare cases—statistically insignificant.) The changed enzyme is still an enzyme, and it still works to soften the cell wall of the human egg—but it takes at least ten times longer to do it. And by that time, most of the sperm cells are already dead, dying, or too weak to complete the task of fertilization.

In addition, the ejaculation will also have introduced enough viral bodies into the woman so that if she weren’t already, now she too will be infected and will pass the disease on to every subsequent male contact.

Insidious, isn’t it?

Other than that, the virus has no effect at all on living human beings—only on the unborn. They stay that way. Unborn.

MAY 47, 2034

SUPPLEMENTARY REPORT, VIRT 897

W.H.O. FILE BVC 675

SUMMARY: The virus, designated VIRT 897, seems to have made its initial appearance on the western coast of the American continent in June or July of 2032, specifically in the area of the Southern California Urban Complex known as Angeles. (colloq. L.A. or “Ellay.”) From there it migrated along the heaviest tourist routes, traveling eastward to Denver, St. Louis, Chicago, Dallas, Miami, and scattered parts of the eastern seaboard Urban Complex.

Within six months, it had also appeared and made its effects known in Seattle, Portland, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and scattered areas surrounding. It extended the complete length of the western coast, being specifically virulent in Frisco and Diego counties, as well as in the areas already noted. It spread to Tijuana, Mexico City, and Acapulco. The same trend occurred simultaneously on the eastern coast, with scattered pockets of sterility spreading out from the Boston, York, Jersey, Philadelphia, and D.C. areas of the Urban Complex. Also affected were Toronto, Montreal, and Quebec, as well as scattered areas surrounding.

At about the same time, it leapt both oceans simultaneously. Tracing the path of the falling birth rate, the disease showed up in London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Warsaw, Munich, Belgrade, Dublin, Saigon, Seoul, Hanoi, Tokyo, Okama, Osaka, Beijing, Honolulu, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Sidney, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Panama City, Havana, and scattered points on the east African Coast as well as in the Mediterranean and Mid-East areas.

It is obvious that there are too many active vectors by this time, making it increasingly difficult to trace the spreading waves of infection. Not only does the disease move too rapidly, but once the waves of infection overlap, their directions blur.

There is no way to tell at this time whether the origin of the disease was deliberate or accidental or a combination of both.

Detailed analysis charts are enclosed.

MAY 50, 2034

INTERBEM CHEMICAL RESEARCH

MEMO TO: DR. LEON K. HARGER

FROM: SECTION SUPERVISOR VANCE

Dr. Harger,

I’ve just finished reading the WHO report on the sterility plague and a rather curious anomaly has caught my eye. I’m forwarding it to you to see if you catch it too. If you do, give me a buzz. If not, then forget I said anything.

MAY 50, 2034

INTERBEM CHEMICAL RESEARCH

MEMO TO: ALL DEPARTMENTS

FROM: DR. LEON K. HARGER

Urgent! I need all data pertaining to Dr. Dana Ledgerton DL 551-69-5688 and any and all research that he might have been involved in while he was employed here. Also, anyone knowing his whereabouts or the itinerary of his sabbatical trip, please contact me immediately. I cannot understate the importance of this information!

MAY 1, 2035

TO: SUPREME COURT JUSTICE DOUGLAS JOSEPH WARREN

FROM: UNITED STATES ATTORNEY GENERAL ALFRED G. WYLER

Dear Doug,

This is strictly off the record, and you might want to burn this note after reading it.

I’ve been talking to the President, and he and I concur that it would be extremely unwise to allow the InterBem Company to be sued merely because Ledgerton was an employee of theirs at the time he constructed the Ledgerton Virus.

Yes, I’ve studied the briefs in the case. I know that the appealing lawyers make a good case for the company’s negligence in not keeping tighter reins on their employees’ after-hours research. They also make a good case that Ledgerton would have been unable to construct his artificial venereal disease without the company’s research facilities.

However, no matter how good their case is, both the President and I agree that at this time it would be best for all parties if the appeal were turned down. The InterBem Company has been most cooperative with us in every area of our investigation, especially in our efforts to develop the artificial enzymes. To allow them to be sued now might destroy them as a viable corporation and would cost us a valuable ally in our fight against this thing.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with the fact, but my office has registered more than five hundred thousand separate actions against InterBem. That corporation can’t afford to be embroiled in this kind of legal feeding frenzy. If you allow this first appeal to be granted, you will be setting a dangerous precedent that might cost the United States a valuable natural resource—i.e., a commercially healthy corporation.

Yes, I know this smacks of pressuring, but this case is too important to allow you to make a decision without knowing the administration’s views on it. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to call me.

(signed) Alfred

MAY 7, 2035

FROM:   FIELD OPERATIVE JASON PETER GRIGG

TO:        F.B.I. DIRECTOR WARREN J. HINDLER,

HOOVER CENTER,

WASHINGTON D.C.

FILE: LEDGERTON, DL 551-69-5688

Chief,

It’s my guess that the Paul-John Murdock lead is going to be another dead end and we’ll probably have to start digging backward. (I’ll try to get up to Manweather Complex before the end of the month, though I don’t think I’m going to find much up there.)

We located Murdock in South Frisco, where he’s working as a shoe salesman. He has neither seen nor heard of Ledgerton since their post-college days. Apparently, he doesn’t miss him either. I get the impression that the only reason they married was so that Murdock could avoid the labor-draft. The full interview tape is enclosed.

On the other side of it, there’s some evidence that there was an emotional involvement on Ledgerton’s part and that he’s been trying to contact Murdock, but without success. We’ll continue to monitor Murdock on the off chance that Ledgerton is still trying.

Oh, one more thing. The latest word on Ledgerton hints that he is somewhere in Africa and heading south. But I doubt it. Last week, he was in Scotland.

MAY 14, 2036

THE CONGRESSIONAL RECORD CONGRESSMAN JOHN J. HOOKER; DEM, GEORGIA

Gentlemen, we are presented today with a unique opportunity. The development of the artificial enzyme insures that the human race will not die out—and it gives us the chance to end, once and for all, the population explosion.

We need not manufacture the enzyme indiscriminately, nor need we make it available to every member of the world’s population. In fact, even if we wanted to, it would be beyond our technology to service twenty billion individuals.

We are not geared for rehabilitating the human race; we can only provide enough enzyme for a fraction of the people. Dr. Fremm has stated that even if we began a massive synthesis program right now, we would never be able to reach all of those who are infected.

According to Dr. Fremm and others, it is only a matter of time until every man, woman, and child on this planet has the disease. When that happens, the only people who will be able to procreate will be those to whom we provide the enzyme.

Gentlemen, I say to you—here is an opportunity we cannot pass up—historians will condemn us if we allow this golden moment to slip out of our grasp—the chance to optimize the human race, to remake humanity. Therefore, I wish at this time to introduce this bill which would give the government the right to withhold the enzyme from those individuals who are judged to have undesirable genes...

(The rest of Congressman Hooker’s speech was drowned out.)

MAY 20, 2036

BERKELEY NEW PRESS:

U.S. PLANS RACIAL WARFARE

…Hooker (The Aardvark)’s plan would be only the first foot in the door. For instance, what would keep the establishment slime from declaring Negro-ness an “undesirable trait”?

In cities across the nation, Freedom Now groups are planning urban disturbances to demonstrate their opposition to any form of “optimization,” which would be only another word for genocide. The right to bear children is a right, not a privilege—and certainly not something that should be legislated. All right-thinking citizens are urged to come this weekend to the Free People’s Plaza...

MAY 3, 2037

FROM:   FIELD OPERATIVE JASON PETER GRIGG

TO:        F.B.I. DIRECTOR WARREN J. HINDLER,

HOOVER CENTER,

WASHINGTON D.C.

FILE: LEDGERTON, DL 551-69-5688

Chief,

The monitor on Murdock has turned up an interesting postcard (fax herewith enclosed) postmarked Brazil. Although there’s no name signed to it, the content and phrasing could be a code of some sort. Or perhaps a reference to a personal experience known only to Murdock and Ledgerton. It should be checked out by one of our Brazilian operatives as soon as possible. I would appreciate being kept informed on this lead.

2037.05.09/TIMEFAX

...THE RIOTERS FOCUSED PARTICULARLY ON THE SYMBOLS OF ESTABLISHMENT CONTROL. FOUR BIRTH CONTROL CENTERS IN HARLEMTOWN WERE SACKED AS WELL AS ALL BUT ONE OF THE AREA’S TEN ENZYME CONTROL CLINICS. THIS OUTBREAK WAS THE WORST RIOTING TO HIT THE CITY IN SEVEN MONTHS, AND ACCORDING TO MAYOR GILBERT ROCKEFELLER, “IT DOES NOT LOOK AS IF THE END IS IN SIGHT.” MEANWHILE, IN WASHINGTONTOWN, THE PRESIDENT DEPLORED THE NATION’S GROWING TREND TO VIOLENCE AND PROMISED IMMEDIATE STEPS TO HALT IT IN THE FUTURE. WITH THAT, HE SIGNED INTO LAW THE CONTROVERSIAL MANPOWER CONTROL BILL….

2037.05.11/DATELINE:BRAZIL. RIO DE JANEIRO. PRESIDENT GARCIA TODAY ANNOUNCED THE CAPTURE OF THE NOTORIOUS RACE-CRIMINAL, DANA LEDGERTON (DL 551-69-5688) AT RIO DE JANEIRO AIRPORT. LEDGERTON WAS ATTEMPTING TO BOARD AN AFRICAN-BOUND FLIGHT WHEN BRAZILIAN AGENTS SCOOPED HIM UP. HE IS BEING HELD IN RIO INDEFINITELY.

THE BRAZILIAN GOVERNMENT HAS ANNOUNCED IT INTENDS TO TRY LEDGERTON FOR THE CRIME OF GENOCIDE, AS WELL AS OTHER CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY. ANGRY CROWDS HAVE BEEN MILLING IN THE STREETS OF RIO EVER SINCE THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF LEDGERTON’S CAPTURE WAS MADE.

WORLDWIDE REACTION TO THE ANNOUNCEMENT WAS IMMEDIATE. IN THE UNITED STATES, THE PRESIDENT SAID...

MAY 5, 2040.

REPORT TO THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION BY DR. JOYCE FREMM

MOST CONFIDENTIAL—TRANSCRIPTION OF REMARKS

Gentlemen,

Our recent studies on the enzyme synthesis program suggest that there is just no way to do what you ask—at least not without massive appropriations—and I, for one, am opposed to it.

(Pause)

If I may continue… If I may continue… I’ll wait….

If the delegate from Nairobi will stop calling me a racist slime long enough to listen, I will explain my position. Any appropriations for the enzyme synthesis would have to be made at the expense of other programs and the amount of money needed to do what the delegate from Nairobi wishes us to do would necessitate the closing down of almost every other United Nations Program now in existence, with the exception of the pollution board. And the pollution board is far more important than this!

If I may continue.... I believe that there is a way to save the human race, but enzyme synthesis is not it. In any case, a few years of minimal breeding will not hurt this planet any. There are about nineteen and a half billion too many people on Earth already.

2041.05.11/TIMEFAX

THE IRISH CIVIL WAR, WHICH HAS BEEN SMOULDERING FOR MORE THAN TWENTY YEARS, BURST INTO THE NEWS AGAIN TODAY WITH THE BURNING OF DUBLIN. THE CATHOLIC FACTION IN IRELAND CONTINUES TO CHARGE THAT THE NEOPROTESTANT GOVERNMENT IS WITHOLDING THE ENZYME FROM CATHOLIC MOTHERS IN AN ATTEMPT TO REDUCE THE NUMBER OF CATHOLICS IN THE NATION. THAT CHARGE WAS ECHOED ACROSS THE GLOBE BY OTHER MINORITIES IN OTHER NATIONS. IN ISRAEL, ARAB NATIONALS CHARGED THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT WITH DELIBERATE BIRTH CRIMES. THE JEWISH MINORITY IN RUSSIA LEVELED THE SAME CHARGE AGAINST THE KREMLIN. THE CHINESE MINORITIES IN MALAYSIA AND INDIA HAVE ALSO CHARGED THOSE TWO GOVERNMENTS WITH WITHOLDING THE ENZYME.

THIS BRINGS TO A TOTAL OF FORTY-THREE THE NUMBER OF COMPLAINTS REGISTERED WITH THE U.N. MINORITY PROCREATION CONTROL OFFICE.

MAY 19, 2041

TO: THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

FROM: WARREN J. HINDLER, HOOVER CENTER

Mr. President,

The situation is becoming more and more serious every day. I have reports coming across my desk to indicate that the activists are planning to step up the number of urban disturbances within the next two months. This nation is headed for civil war unless some way is found to take the steam out of the Anti-Enzyme movement.

I recommend immediate action along the following lines....

MAY 20, 2041

POLICE REPORT, MANWEATHER COMPLEX

At 7:45 pm, Officers J.G. and. R.F. investigated a complaint at 1456 Rafferty Avenue, Block 12, Apt 56789. Investigating Officers found Donald Ruddigore in process of assaulting his, wife, Alice. Woman had already sustained minor injuries.

Ruddigore explained that his wife had told him she was pregnant As he had been infected with the Ledgerton Virus some years earlier, he knew that he could not be the father of the child, and he had only begun beating her when she refused to tell him who the real father was.

When questioned, Mrs. Ruddigore insisted that she has never copulated with anyone but her husband. Officer G. Suggested that both Ruddigores see a County Clinician before the week was over.

Mr. Ruddigore became abusive at this and had to be forcibly restrained. He was booked at Station 12 (preventive detention) and released the following morning on his own recognizance. Mrs. Ruddigore spent the night at her sister’s after being released from the Emergency Hospital, where she was treated for minor scalp injuries.

As he was being taken into custody, Mr. Ruddigore noted that he was “glad that whoever the bastard is, now he’s got it too!”

MAY 38, 2041

TO: DR. JOYCE FREMM

FROM: DR. CARLOS WAN-LEE

Joyce,

I’ve had four physicians call me in the past two days wanting to know if someone is bootlegging enzyme or something. All of them report a number of women (with previously infected husbands) turning up unexpectedly pregnant. Yes, I know it sounds like adultery, but I suspect it is something more. I’d like to talk to you about it in detail. I think we should investigate this. Are you free for lunch?

2042.05.14/DATELINE:BRAZIL. IN RIO TODAY, A CROWD OF MORE THAN TEN THOUSAND FORMED IN FRONT OF THE LEDGERTON GALLOWS TO HOLD A MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR DANA LEDGERTON, WHO DIED FIVE YEARS AGO ON THIS SPOT. WHILE LEDGERTON’S NAME IS STILL REVILED IN MANY PARTS OF THE GLOBE, A GROWING NUMBER OF PEOPLE ARE BEGINNING TO REALIZE THAT NOT EVERY EFFECT OF THE LEDGERTON VIRUS IS NECESSARILY EVIL. THE BRAZILIAN BIRTH RATE, FOR EXAMPLE, HAS DROPPED TO A COMFORTABLE...

MAY 20, 2042

REPORT TO THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION BY DR. JOYCE FREMM

TRANSCRIPTION OF REMARKS—FOR PUBLIC RELEASE

...what has happened is this: The virus has mutated. It wasn’t stable. Few viruses are.

We have, in the laboratories, taken the virus through a total of seven different mutations, each of which has a different effect on human fertility. At present, we have no way of stopping the virus completely, but if our early tests hold true, the human race will be able to stop worrying about its birth rate.

Ledgerton Virus sub-one reduces fertility to a scant 7%. Variety sub-two, which is currently sweeping the globe, raises that percentage to 53%. Certainly not what it was before, but high enough for two very determined people to start a baby, if they wish. The other varieties, which we’ve produced through careful bombardment of radiation (and other techniques), produce fertility levels ranging from 89% normal to 17%.

We can expect the virus to keep mutating at least once every four years. This is often enough to keep humanity from developing any kind of immunity to it. Also, it will hold the birth rate down, without keeping it dangerously depressed.

Gentlemen, without knowing it, Dr. Ledgerton seems to have stopped the population explosion.

MAY 43, 2045

TO: THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

FROM: THE SECRETARY OF INFORMATION

Mr. President,

Enclosed are samples of the publicity releases you requested.

You will note that we have taken great pains to minimize Ledgerton’s homosexuality. As you said, “It wouldn’t do to have an effeminate American hero.”

Motivational Research indicates that the need for a new American hero is greater than ever now, especially since the recent Mexican defeat. For that reason, I urge that we initiate this program as soon as possible.

MAY 49, 2045

MINISTRY OF INFORMATION PAMPHLET #354657-098

…Single-handedly, this determined little man stopped the population explosion, stopped it dead with a biological brake—then he set that same brake so that it would release gently, allowing the race to maintain itself, but to cease its cancerous growth. When the death rates level off in the next few generations to match the new birth rates, the Earth will enjoy an era of peace and prosperity such as it has never known before….

MAY 4, 2046

TO: THE SECRETARY OF FINANCE

FROM: THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

Dear Jase,

Sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to quash your economic report on the primary causes of the current depression.

You’re probably correct that the economy’s continued growth is a direct factor of the nation’s population spiral—but we can’t suggest that fact publicly without starting a minor panic. (Besides, anything which would reflect negatively on the Ledgerton Program would not be welcome in certain circles.)

I agree with your recommendations though, and if you will circulate copies of your report (privately) to the Vice President and to the Secretary of Commerce, and also to the Secretary of the Treasury, between us we can initiate some of the steps you recommend to keep our financial heads above water.

And the sooner the better. This is an election year and we want to retain control of the House.

MAY 19, 2049

EXCERPT FROM TODAY’S PSYCHOLOGY

...one of the effects is the disappearance of the term “unwanted child” from the language. There is no such thing anymore as an unwanted child. All children are wanted. Just look at the crowd of adults standing by the fence at any playground today.

Of course, not all the cultural changes are so beneficent. For instance, in the past, the pregnancy of an unmarried girl could quite likely have been the result of a mistake. Today, it can only be the result of several nights of steady “mistakes.”

However, now that the onus of pregnancy has been removed from intercourse, certain other moral conventions are vanishing. Women are enjoying a sexual freedom even greater than that of the late twentieth century when use of oral contraceptives first became widespread.

In general, the population of the nation is more birth conscious than ever before, and one of the side effects has been a reduced tolerance for social and sexual deviants. Homosexuals have been driven out of several cities, and there is reason to believe that this trend will continue for some time....

2050.05.06/TIMEFAX

...FOUND BEATEN TO DEATH IN AN ALLEY. THE MAN WAS LATER IDENTIFIED AS PAUL-JOHN MURDOCK, A VAGRANT. POLICE SUSPECT THE BEATING DEATH IS JUST ONE MORE IN A SERIES OF “ANTI-FAGGOT” INCIDENTS THAT HAVE RACKED URBANA IN RECENT, MONTHS.

2053.05.10/TIMEFAX

...THE PRESIDENT ANNOUNCED TODAY A NEW STAMP COMMEMORATING THE WORK OF DR. DANA LEDGERTON, CONSTRUCTOR OF THE FERTILITY VIRUS. THE STAMP WILL GO ON SALE IN FOUR DAYS, TIMED TO COINCIDE WITH THE SIXTEENTH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS DEATH....

AFTERWORD:

I overestimated the number of people who would be living on this planet by the middle of this century. At least I hope I did.

If I had written a longer version of this story, it would have been about the demographic upheavals between affected and unaffected racial and cultural groups. It would have been about China and India taking over the world economy….

This Crystal Castle

For the first two years of my college career, I was an art major. I got just good enough to recognize that I would never be as good as I wanted to be.

In one class, we would study a different artist’s style every week—Seurat, Rouault, Picasso, Henry Miller. On Monday we would look at the specific elements that characterized the style—then on Wednesday and Friday, we would draw or paint our own piece, using those same elements of that style.

The intention was not to have us imitate any particular way of creating, but to understand it as a way of assaulting the canvas. (Well, in my case, it was an assault.) It wasn’t about mastering any specific style—it was about having a foundation on which to develop our own.

The cumulative effect of that semester was profound.

Later, as I started exercising my writing muscles, I found myself doing the same thing again, but this time at the keyboard instead of the easel. I looked at the stories of my favorite authors and studied how they handled mood and setting, language and description. What feelings did they evoke and how? Why did their words work so well?

In the SF genre, several authors had established themselves as masters of style—they wrote with distinctly recognizable voices. Theodore Sturgeon was a master of the liquid paragraph; Jack Vance could sketch a marvelous landscape in handful of sentences; and Samuel R. Delaney took the reader sailing through luminance in a glorious flight of language.

As I had done in class, I would put myself into (what I perceived) the mode of the creator in my own attempt to evoke a similar mood. Where Seurat had worked with tiny points of color, I worked with little bits of language. I tried on the Heinlein hat, of course—but I also tried on the Sturgeon hat, the Delaney hat, the Ellison hat, and others.

Each time, I learned something new—until one day, I discovered my own hat. It had been on top of my head the whole time.

This story wasn’t written to evoke the flavor of any specific author, but when it was finished I did recognize a smidge of this and a dollop of that.

It is night, and the plants are scratching at the walls of the castle, a horrible sibilant sound. And the vampires are out. I can hear them cawing their insatiable craving. During the day they sleep somewhere in the dark valley below; at night, the scent of fresh blood draws them up the mountain and they circle ceaselessly about the castle. With the first pink and yellow rays of the sun they will shrink back down into their unholy valley; but for now, they circle and moan.

The plants too are moaning. By day they take in oxygen, storing it in great flaccid sacs. In the cold night the sacs leak; the air seeps out in long meaningless groans, echoing the hunger of the vampires.

I stand before the great bronze doors of the castle and listen to the incessant scrabbling of the plants. Sometimes I want to throw back those heavy doors and open myself to the night and the creatures that inhabit it. I could if I wanted to. I could; I know I could. I think the servants might even let me.

Or maybe they wouldn’t. Someday I’ll find out.

At last morning comes bright through the castle windows, and I rush eagerly down the stairs leading from my chambers and burst out into the world. The morning is a blue and white color. Always there is a breeze. If there is any warmth from the sun, the wind will wash it away. The star is a hole in the sky, a yellow-white glare; bright and cold, it cannot banish the chill of this great looming mountain.

Today the flowers are red and yellow and they sparkle with little crystal droplets. Lovely they are, but lethal to touch. By noon they will have begun to wilt, and by afternoon they will be dead. By the time the sun nears the west there will be nothing left but shriveled wisps of meaningless ash.

I stay on the walks of glass; they sparkle too, but not with the dampness. Lovely they are too, but not lethal. Here and there are delicate black designs, like trapped insects imbedded in the crystal layers of the walk; the light is broken into sparkling shards. Beautiful.

Somewhere in the castle the servants are busying themselves with tasks of iron and crystal. I do not seek them, nor will they bother me. Here, high on the mountain, I am alone. I can see for miles. Down into a valley, deep carpeted with trees of tall green and gold. At the bottom is a river, winding through the canyon—narrow looking from here, but actually wide to cross.

Then, up the other side of the rift, almost a solid straight wall of living green, at last giving way to the rocky tops across. And beyond are other mountains, sometimes shrouded in clouds, but more often with purpling peaks crisp against the sky.

The distance must be miles. There are no castles on the other peaks. I am alone, the lord of this land, the lonely lord of this land. This beautiful and empty land.

Like a grim dragon perched upon its towering aerie, the castle looms behind me. It looks over its world and broods, this great crystal and stone monster, glittering and glimmering in the light with sparks of white and gold and shimmery green.

Parapets and arching towers, lofty terraces and balconies—all perch delicately atop those forbidding walls. Too high, too high, all too high. The walls below remain unbroken. Not a window, not a chink in their crystal surfaces. Every night I can hear the plants scrabbling and scratching as they strain for purchase. But the walls are good walls. They separate things—the plants from me and me from the world.

The castle is carved out of the mountain itself. Great stones have been cut from the heart and raised to form walls around the summit. It is as if the whole of the mountain is only the base of the spire and the castle its pinnacle. It must be beautiful from a distance.

My table is set, as always, in the garden—the garden that blooms at night and dies in the day. The service is crystal, as is everything in my world, even down to the utensils. The same type of crystal that walls the castle.

The bread is fresh. As always. The meat is red and spicy beneath its crystal cover, and a goblet glitters with promises of icy sweet and tartness.

When I finish, a servant comes, gleaming like bronze, golden in the sunlight. Without blemish and without expression. They are all like that; I cannot tell one from another. They provide for my needs, all of them.

He does not look at me, he never does, but goes about his tasks with a familiar efficiency. He handles the emptied dishes with no sign of either obeisance or distaste, no emotion at all; and placing them on his tray, he goes. His footfall leaves the crystal walk ringing like bells.

It is the same every morning.

I wander about the grounds, but a complete circuit takes less than ten minutes.

There are places where balconies pause like afterthoughts, overlooking the steep sides of the mountain—places where a piece of wall and floor and perhaps a crystal bench have been put so as to keep the castle from having an unfinished look. I could throw myself off from one of these places.

But they would stop me. They always do.

Every day it is the same.

I note how the flowers are already losing their glimmer. The luster of life is fading and their creepers are shriveling off the edge of the walk. In the darkness of night those same creepers will return to scrape and scratch at my unyielding surfaces.

Finally, even though they are watching me, they know and I know it is inevitable. I follow the walk down to where it touches the edge of the creeping forest. And I stare hungrily into that aching and uneasy mass of green and black. Deep shimmering buds cluster up and down the tall trunks. I imagine I can see past them—past their sluggish tendrils, far past—down to where the tall trees give way to the lesser ones, the twisted ones, where convoluted vines twist and wind among the dark grasping limbs at the bottom.

I find myself longing for the sight of just one living thing. Anything. An animal, any animal; a small one would do—just a squirrel or even a bird. An insect perhaps. Something alive. I mean really alive, not the half-alive, leechlike creatures that infest the forest. I mean something really alive. Anything.

I can stand it no longer; I turn away and back toward the castle looming dark above me. It is haloed by its own shimmering outline. The crystal walls glitter with the light of the yellow sun, which from here is hidden behind that great bulk. The sky is aching and empty blue behind it.

Just one living thing, I ask. Just one living thing.

I am possessed by frenzy. I run screaming through the castle in madness.

But the chairs are too heavy to throw, the draperies too strong to tear, the windows too thick to shatter. And of objects that might be used as weapons, there are none. The servants saw to that a long time ago.

I run screaming through the castle; hoarse cries echo blankly off impassive faces. “How can you let me go on like this?!! This is madness! I must escape! I must be free of this! I must!”

I scrape at the glittering walls until my nails are bloody and useless. I hammer and claw at them, all the time sobbing, sobbing, and collapsing in a heap. When I am through, the servants tend my wounds. Every day it is the same.

Except—

—once. He was young. Innocent. The freshness of spring was still on his cheeks. His eyes were closed, his skin was pale, and his hair was plastered wetly on his forehead.

The servants ran their silent hands across his frame. Minimal injuries. He had suffered no broken bones in the crash; only the shock, nothing more. Somewhere out in the night, pieces of a steel needle still smoldered across a gashed hillside.

At my direction, they carried him upstairs. There is only one bedchamber in the castle. Mine. The builders of this magnificent palace hadn’t expected that one day I would be entertaining a guest.

The youth was placed in the huge bed in the chamber at the top of the stairs.

I fell asleep in a chair watching him.

Morning, and he was awake. His pale eyes were wide with curiosity. How long had he been lying there staring at me? I nodded to him, slowly.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“You don’t know,” I said.

He looked at me curiously. “No. Who are you?”

I smiled. I crossed to the window and threw it open. Daylight, somehow gold and warm, streamed through it. My actions were slow and deliberate; his eyes were on me as I moved, and for the first time I realized how truly friendly the morning could be.

I stretched, and it was a pleasure just to breathe. Although the ache of sleeping in the chair had settled in my bones, a few moments in the morning sun promised to bake it out.

“You didn’t answer my question,” he said.

I grunted in reply. Noncommittal. Looking at him, I asked, “Are you feeling all right?”

He nodded and tried to move. A sudden grimace crossed his face. “Uh, maybe I guess not. I’m still a little sore.”

“That should heal quickly enough. The servants found little to be concerned about when we brought you in last night.” I studied him thoughtfully. He could have been twenty or twenty-five. Youth is resilient.

“Am I in the castle?”

I nodded.

He smiled. “I thought so.”

“Why?”

“Where else could I be? Except for the jungle, this world is empty. The only thing on it is the castle. From the sky it’s a glittering jewel. The sun sparkles off it in a hundred different colors.”

He looked at me curiously, a long time; his eyes were bright. (Am I male or female, I wonder? It has been so long since I have...too long, too long.) “Who are you?” he asked again. “What’s the reason for all this…this...?”

A shake of the head. He cannot know. Not yet, not yet. He must not know. The first person I have seen since...since...the first person I have seen in far too long; I cannot lose him. I will not lose him.

I threw open the door of the chamber. The servants, all of them, were standing there helplessly. There was confusion in their milling. They were, for the first time in my experience, confronted with a situation they could not understand. Suddenly there were two persons in a castle built only for one.

Yesterday, yesterday when the ship came screaming across the sky, they had responded to their primary patterning, responded to the ingrained command that a man must not be allowed to come to injury, to suffer pain, or to die. But today, that man is alive and in the castle. In the castle designed only for one, there are two! And there is nothing in their conditioning to help them cope with such a fact. There should be only one, but there are two!

I delight in their confusion. Two! There are two! It is ecstasy! Bitter ecstasy. There are two!

Their confusion hints at something I had long suspected but never known how to prove. Were I to stop and consider it, it might prove disturbing; but in the dazzling excitement of the morning, I paid no attention.

“Breakfast!” I demanded, and once more given purpose, the servants disappeared into the hallways and corridors of the castle. Their footsteps faded into silence.

When I turned back to the other, he was standing—a bit unsteady, but able to move without difficulty. I offered him a hand (for the first time I noticed how thin and wrinkled it was), but he waved it off. Together we moved down the stairs, and he watched in curiosity as I threw back the bolts and opened the great bronze doors. I had to explain to him about the night and the forest—he did not remember—and that led to an explanation of how we rescued him. He did not ask why.

Outside, he stared up at the castle. He bent to examine the crystal surface of the walk, ticked at it with a fingernail, then smiled in embarrassment at being so curious.

The table was set with the morning meal, but there was only one chair.

The servant came when I called. He stared at me uncomprehendingly; his eyes were blank lenses. “Breakfast,” I demanded and indicated the table. Only one set of steaming covered dishes sat there.

The servant stepped forward, he hesitated confusedly, looked at me, then started to remove the plates already there.

“No,” I cut him off. “Leave those.”

He replaced them, straightened, hesitated again, wheeled on one foot—

“No. Don’t leave. Bring another serving.”

The servant looked at me—blank eyes, blank lenses. He shifted his feet unsteadily. I delight in their confusion, do I? I crossed to the flyer and led him over to the chair, forced him to sit. “Eat.”

“But, I can’t. This is your meal—”

“You need it more than me.” To the servant, “Bring me breakfast. I have no meal, I have no chair.” To the flyer, “Eat.” He took a tentative bite of food.

Abruptly the servant moved. He made one last try to clear the table. If this is not food, then it must be waste; he reached for the plates. “No,” I stopped him again. “That is to be left there. Now bring me a chair and a meal.”

The golden figure hesitated again, its naked body gleaming. It was silent and its eyes were empty. Had I gotten through to it? Did it understand? What thoughts whirred through that crystal mind? Was it deciding that the other man, the other meal, were not to be considered at all, that they were beyond the scope of its existence? Was it remembering its primary function that I must be served?

Abruptly it turned and disappeared into the castle. I would soon find out.

With the servant gone, the flyer laid down his fork. “I’ll wait. If he doesn’t bring you a meal, we can share this.”

I shook my head in annoyance. “No.” Then, realizing my curtness, I softened my tone. “I’m sorry, but this must be established now. Please eat.”

“Are you sure? I—”

“I’m sure.” I smiled at him reassuringly. He was so young. He took another tentative bite.

He need not have worried. The servant was returning, and he was carrying a (Where had he found that?) second chair, a mate to the one already at the table. Another servant appeared with a table setting, followed by a third who bore a steaming covered tray.

I had won a small victory in my world; I had forced a change in the daily routine! Or had the flyer forced the change? No matter. Things could be changed. Not without effort, but they could be changed.

The day was bright, the sky was high and blue. We sat in a garden of death beside a crystal castle and shared a meal. The meat was red and spicy, the nectar clear and sweet. I ate, but it was difficult to do more than just sit and stare at this other, this beautiful other.

My thoughts must have shown in my face, for he asked, “Why are you smiling like that?”

It was a hard question to answer. How can you share loneliness? How can you tell someone that you are thankful simply for his existence? I would reach out and touch him, but would he understand? It would be only to reassure myself that this is not, after all, a dream. Finally, I just said, “I’m happy. That’s all. Just happy.”

He looked back at me; his eyes were deep. A hint of a smile appeared on his face. It was uncertain, and he covered it by bending again to his meal.

Later, we walked in the garden and I showed him the grounds of the castle. He still did not understand yet what it was; thought instead that it was a luxurious palace; thought that I was its keeper.

We walked down to the edge of the forest and I showed him the night creepers and the poisonous flowers and told him how we had had to save him from all that. He kept wanting to touch the delicate pastel blossoms; it was as if he had never known fear or pain; several times I had to stop him. The danger of the night cannot be understated. When we turned away, his face was troubled.

The servant, as always, was waiting with water. Only one goblet, of course; they do not learn easily. We shared it. First I drank, then he, then I again. He finished it. Its frosty clarity still lingers in the mouth.

“You still haven’t told me who you are,” he said.

“Someday, I will. Someday. Or perhaps you will find out for yourself.”

“Why not now?”

Hesitation. Then, “Because, first you must learn to trust me.”

“You say that as if there’s some reason I shouldn’t.” A smile.

“How do you know there isn’t?”

He cocked his head thoughtfully, a beautiful gesture. Beautiful. “I don’t, do I?” A pause. “So, who are you?”

“You’re not listening.”

“Uh-uh,” he grinned. “Who are you?”

His good nature was infectious, but...“You’ll have to trust me.”

“I do trust you. I don’t know you well enough yet to have reason not to. But the more you refuse, the more I think that maybe I shouldn’t.”

That hurt, but maybe it was meant to. Do I trust him? Do I trust him enough? “I am a human being,” I answered. “I have a human soul and a human body, and most of all, human feelings.”

It was the wrong answer; I could see that he wasn’t satisfied with it. But he smiled, forced himself to smile, and said, “That sounds very mysterious.”

“I know. But trust me. Trust me.” And that too was the wrong thing to say, the wrong thing. Trust me until I learn how to trust myself. It was a wall between us, growing ever thicker.

Oh, how I long to break it down, but I can’t.

Can’t? Or won’t?

And there the matter rested.

We were in the tower, listening to the blue wind tinkling the crystal chimes, little slivers of light frozen and dancing in the afternoon sun. The breeze played through them, a song without melody or rhythm.

“Is this all there is to your life?” he asked.

“Isn’t it enough? I have no worries, no cares. All my wants are provided for.”

“Except companionship,” he said.

“Except companionship,” I had to agree. “But now that you are here...” His eyes grew troubled at that; I left the thought unfinished. Instead, I gestured to indicate the castle and the forest. “It is a paradise, you know.”

He was standing at the window then, gazing out at the deep valley. When I said it, he looked back at me. “Oh?”

“Yes. There are no other human beings around to spoil it.”

“And that makes it a paradise?”

“Shouldn’t it? Other people are the source of all misery. Men are always trying to control other men. Nobody is ever content with his own piece of life; a man is always trying to impress himself onto others. Here, there are no others. I can be myself, freely, without the fear that anyone else will...force himself on me. I am protected.”

“And of course,” he said with that soft whimsy of his, “by the same token, they are protected from you.”

“Of course,” I agreed. “That’s part of the reason for the castle.”

He turned back to the window, murmuring something. The wind, white colored now, ran airy fingers through his hair, and for a moment his words were lost to it. I asked him to repeat what he had said. Still looking out the window, he raised his voice. “I said, ‘it’s no longer a paradise now.’ Not by your definition.”

A pause. “Why is that?”

He paused too. “Because I’m here.”

“No,” I corrected him. “I’m glad you’re here.”

He shook his head. “No. You said that people are always trying to force themselves upon other people. That applies to us too.”

“But there are only two of us.”

“It’s enough. What’s to keep me from trying to force my will upon you? Or vice versa?”

There was no answer to that. Instead, “Perhaps it isn’t a paradise then. Or perhaps, perhaps we need to rethink our concepts of paradise. Perhaps paradise can’t be paradise until you have someone to share it with.” And perhaps my voice quavered as I said it.

He didn’t answer. He just stared out the window at that deep black valley.

Dinner was the same problem as breakfast, a subtle reminder that, whether I want it or not, I do have power over him. It is I who control whether or not he eats. But this time, the servant was quicker to realize the solution. Perhaps they can be taught to accommodate two people instead of one.

“But if they can,” he asked. “Will you? Would you willingly relinquish your power over me?”

“I don’t want any power over you,” I snapped back. “I’ve already had my fill of power over other human beings. It was enough. It was more than enough. I don’t want it ever again.”

“Oh, but you do,” he said. “You do.”

I lowered my fork. “Explain that.”

“Your name. You won’t tell me what your name is.”

“So?”

“That’s an attempt to control my actions. By limiting my knowledge.”

I looked at him for a long moment. He was right, of course; his eyes were grim. At last, I broke away from that glance, concentrated instead on my meat.

Crystal tinkled against crystal. Except for that we ate in silence. The wall between us was perceptibly thicker. The silence was deafening. And it would continue until it became unbearable.

He broke it first. “You have a transmitter here, don’t you?”

I shook my head, but he didn’t notice.

He said, “I’d like to use it. I should try to get in touch with—”

“I’m sorry. There is no transmitter here.”

He still didn’t get it. “But, you must—”

“I’m sorry,” I repeated. “There is no transmitter here. I thought you understood. There is no contact between this castle and anywhere else. Nothing. Nothing at all. We are cut off.”

“But, how—? There must be—”

Again. “I’m sorry. There isn’t.”

“That can’t be! How can I let them know that I’m still alive?”

“You can’t,” I whispered, but he didn’t hear me. “I must get back!” he insisted. “I can’t stay here.”

“I’m afraid you have no choice. Like it or not, you have joined me in exile.”

“The servants! They must have some contact!” There was a growing desperation in his voice.

“No,” I said. “They’re even greater prisoners than I. Oh, for a while I suspected that they were watching me and secretly reporting my actions to someone far away, but that was only a self-indulgent bit of fantasy on my part. The servants are nowhere near that sophisticated. No...they don’t care about me anymore, not a bit. They’ve sealed me off and forgotten me.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“If I still had any doubts about it, the servants’ actions this morning would have been enough to dispel them. The servants were confronted with a new situation, one they were not programmed to cope with. They can’t figure things out too well by themselves. It’s obvious that they had no higher authority to check with, else there would have been no problem obtaining the second meal. In fact, it would have already been there. And you probably would have been rescued by now, I’m quite sure of that. They wouldn’t have wanted you to be—contaminated.”

“But—when I don’t return—”

“They have probably written you off already. The whole purpose of this—” and I indicated the castle, the mountain; the forest, the world, “— is that there should be no contact.”

And this time, it sank in.

His eyes were wide. “But—but, how could you let them—? How could you let yourself be so totally cut off from everything?” His face was a study in confusion.

“Think about it,” I said. “Do you think I had any choice in the matter?”

Night came, and the castle began to glow—pale pink, violet and shimmering blue, sparks of gold and black. Together we sealed the great bronze doors, hiding ourselves in the bright light of our chambers, hiding from the angry dark that wheels and hawks outside. With the windows closed, the cries of the flying things are muted, almost but not quite silenced.

He followed me as I made my rounds, checking every great door and each black window. Even the balconies and terraces must be sealed. Although the servants had preceded me in this task, I would be unable to sleep until I also had checked. Even so, I still never feel safe in the night.

“The plants, are they really that deadly?”

I paused, I’d been running my hand up and down along a crystal seam. “Do you know that we are the only two warm-blooded creatures on this planet? If there are others, I’ve never seen them. Those things out there—the plants and the others—those things are hungry. Had they found a hole in your suit, we would have found only a rotting piece of meat.”

“You braved the night, though.”

“The servants did. I—I—couldn’t. They wouldn’t let me.” I dropped my hand from the sill and the seam I had been inspecting. Once more we moved down the hall. “There are things out there. Things. I’ve never gotten a clear glimpse of them, but I know they’re there.”—He glanced nervously toward the window—“Oh, you can’t see them from here. You have to go out into the forest. Way out. There’s something about the castle they don’t like; maybe it’s the crystals. Anyway, they don’t come near. They stay deep down in the valley; you can sense them. Great things they are, lumbering around in the dark. And silent. Silent. Never a sound. Never. If anything, they are the absence of sound. Great silences in the night.” I found myself repeating the words in morbid fascination and muttered to a stop.

He was silent too.

We returned to the great chamber on the main floor of the castle. A crystal jumble there gives off a vague flickering glow—reds and yellows, pinks and oranges. It is my pseudofireplace. I dare not have a real one because the castle cannot be opened at night even the width of a chimney.

“My pressure suit,” he said. “That had a radio in it. Perhaps—”

I knew what he was about to say. “I’m sorry. I should have thought of it sooner, but it’s too late now. The servants will have already destroyed it. It was contaminated, you know. Night-fungus spores. If something is neither alive nor made out of crystal, the servants will see it only as waste and they’ll destroy it.”

“But you could have stopped them?” He was almost accusing.

I shook my head. “I could have tried, but I think it would have been useless. They don’t understand anything but simple commands. They’re not here to obey me, only to provide for my needs. Only my needs—”

I stopped in sudden realization. He looked at me. Waiting for me to go on.

“—Perhaps that’s why you’re here....” I said slowly.

“Huh?” He frowned.

“Perhaps that’s why they rescued you—because—because I need companionship.” The words were difficult to say.

“Go on—” In spite of himself, he had to hear it.

“They’re keyed only to me—you saw that this morning. They respond to what I need physically—and emotionally too. They ignore everything else—maybe everybody else. If I hadn’t needed you—they might have left you there in the wreck of your ship—”

He sat down slowly. His knuckles were white where they gripped the edge of the chair. He looked up at me. “Then in order for me to survive, I have to help protect your life. If you die—”

I sat down too. Not knowing what to say.

Our eyes were locked. “Control—” he breathed. “The ultimate control—”

“No—” I said. “No!” But even as I tried to reject it, I knew it was true. “It’s trust! We have to trust—”

He shook his head. Refusal. I stared at him while he picked at the arm of his chair, as if troubled by its crystal feel. He was painfully aware of my presence, though his glance was downward; the tumbled light cast flickering shadows across his face.

How could I say it? What words—? He glanced up, our eyes met—

“What—what can I do?” I managed to ask.

“Who are you?” is his reply. His voice has the intensity of the insane.

“.... Do you trust me?”

“How can I?”

“You have no choice.”

A nod, he lowers his head in assent. Then, “Do you trust me?”

A pause. “I don’t know. I don’t know....”

“Do you want to?” There was pleading in his voice, a fear—not of the castle, nor of this world, but of me, of perhaps the thought that I might reject him, might refuse to feed him and shelter him, might even now at this very moment throw him out into the hungry night. “All right. I’ll tell you.”

“Your name?”

“Everything. Anything.” Who I am. Why this castle is here.

Just three syllables.

It is a slap across the face.

His eyes widened, first in shock, then in disbelief, in realization, at last in fear. “Oh no—you can’t be. You can’t be.” He tries to deny what he already knows is true. “No, not you—your crime, it was...it was….”

My crime! It is always my crime!

Men believed me. They believed in me. They worshipped me. They called me a God! What kind of a crime is that? They did it of their own free will!

And yet, still they persist in calling it my crime, my crime—because it was I who tried to control them. It was I, they claim, who forced my beliefs upon their world. I tried to regulate their actions. That was my crime.

It made no difference, the thousands, the millions of other crimes that were committed in my name. The dark murders, the fiery genocides, the thundering wars, the exploitations and the countless soul-destroying enslavements of man upon man—these were all as nothing, as grains of sand compared to a granite mountain. These crimes were unimportant, hardly crimes at all. Mine was the worst. Mine was the initial offense. I had begun it; I was the source. I had tried to control the lives of others.

Hypocrisy piled upon hypocrisy. Not only did I try to influence the course of their actions—but I dared to do it in the name of God—I tried to save their souls! I tried to save them from themselves!

Is that so horrible?

Ah, yes. It is the worst of all possible crimes.

It made no difference whether I was right or not—nor does it make any difference that they gave their souls willingly—the crime was still mine because I let them do so.

I do not remember any more if I even believed in what I did.

They called me master, messiah, savior, God, and for that I must pay.

So I am cut out of the body human—isolated, separated, placed apart. I am safe here; and they are safe too, protected from me, a shriveled wisp of a man who rots alone on a mountain.

Here in my castle I am protected from all temptations; not a warm-blooded creature in my world to seduce my attentions. Not a soul. Not a soul! I am surrounded by soulless servants. I will never taint again.

Or have I already tainted?

This pale and gibbering young man before me—have I defiled him merely by existing?

“Oh no! Oh no!” He repeats it over and over and over again, trying to deny what cannot be denied. This crystal castle, my prison, bears mute witness to the reality of my name, my horrible, horrible name.

“Trust me, please! Trust me!”

But his fear is too great; he backs away, arms in front of him as if to ward me off, as if my very glance will steal and suck the essence of his life. “Please, oh please, let it not be true. Oh, please God...please...” He blubbers in meaningless words. “Oh, God, let me out. Let me out, dear God, dear God, rescue me, rescue me! Oh my God, my God, why me? Why? Why? Why me?!!”

Mute I stand, my mouth working over and over, forming words for which there are no sounds. “I won’t hurt you, I won’t. Just trust me! Trust me!” But it is a useless protest. Men trusted me once before. And I trusted them.

He continues to retreat, back, ever back, until he comes up against the great bronze doors, the doors of death. He is startled by their sudden presence behind him; he puts his hand back, reaching eager and desperate. He catches at the clasp.

“No!” It is a shout from me, fear and trembling. “Don’t open that door!” I take quick steps toward him, but he—MY GOD, WHY DO THEY ALWAYS MISINTERPRET?!!—thinks I am coming after him. Oh, God, I will not hurt you! Will you please let me help you!

The plea is ignored. The bolt is pulled back even before the words have left my lips, and he is out into the night. I am running, running now, to the door, calling him to return. Screaming, I am screaming. Hoarse rage. Things batter at the bronze—black and leathery, with lidless eyes; red hate and desire—and I am pushing, pushing back the night. The vampires are shrieking; already some of them have gained entrance, whirling and flapping in the light, careening off the walls. And then, a final shove and the door is closed. Shut again to the night.

A vampire dives at me, hits the door with a thump, and slides weakly to the floor, still flapping. The light drains it of its fury. Trembling, I hang against the door, arms stretched out along the bolt. I must save him and I can’t; I can’t; I know I can’t.

We are separated by more than just the door. The gulf is too big. I can no more save him than I could save those myriads of others who wouldn’t believe in me. I can no more save him than I could save those who did.

Again, failure is the bitter taste of ashes. Were I what I once believed I was, what others believed I was, I would throw back these doors and go after that lost innocent. Instead, I tremble in fear, spread-eagled on a great crystal bolt.

I dare not go into the night. I can open neither the castle nor myself. I must and I cannot.

He is out there. I can hear him screaming. Oh my God. His screams go on for hours.

MY GOD, MY GOD! IS MY CRIME TRULY SO HORRIBLE THAT I MUST PAY FOR IT LIKE THIS? HOW MUCH MUST I ENDURE?!

FATHER, FORGIVE ME!

AFTERWORD:

Anything I might say here would be redundant.

In the Deadlands

Saturday, April 2, 1966.

I was working the graveyard shift at the post office, going from there to school, and then coming home to sleep in the afternoon. Summer arrived two months early and my metabolism was as messed up as the weather. Weekends were the only respite.

I came home at eight in the morning, exhausted, never so glad to see my bed. Saturday and Sunday were for sleeping. And then, just as I collapsed into bed and closed my eyes and began the blissful dive into unconsciousness—the hospital called. Their timing was flawless.

My dad had nicked his thumb with a power saw two weeks before. Not serious. He’d gone back to work. But the anti-coagulants had loosened a blood-clot in his leg. And one of them had apparently gone into his lungs, so he’d gone back into the hospital on Thursday, nothing to worry about, of course—

—and then the phone rang Saturday morning. Can you come to the hospital RIGHT NOW?

My mother panicked, of course. I pulled my clothes back on, we rushed to the hospital—the doctors were working on my dad, they didn’t say what the problem was, just that they were working on him. Maybe another clot had broken loose and gone to his heart—

I went out to move the car out of the red zone and when I came back in, my mom and sister were sobbing. After that, everything was an anguished montage.

Back home, the house started filling up with relatives almost immediately. (My great-grandmother had twelve children. By the time it reached my generation, there were over 300 of us in Southern California, with more on the way.)

At some point in the afternoon, somebody sent me to bed. I’d gone more than thirty hours without sleep. Did I say my metabolism was messed up? Now it was upside down.

I don’t know how long I slept, I fell in and out of a strange disturbing dream of a dry and empty landscape. When I awoke, I wanted to capture that feeling on paper. It was that anti-twilight just before dawn. I sat and typed the words that evoked the feeling—the dry emptiness of a place beyond life. Seven pages. I put them in the drawer and then went back to bed.

Later, the next time I awoke, I was coherent enough to begin writing my father’s eulogy, but over the next few days and weeks I kept coming back to that strange fever dream. That desolate space kept calling me back to the keyboard. Seven pages grew to twenty-seven, then sixty-seven.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t a story; it wasn’t a poem. Maybe it was a two-dimensional sculpture. The words weren’t words; they were musical beats. The empty spaces were shaping the narrative with visual silence. I wasn’t typing as much as I was discovering.

I went as deep into the deadlands as I dared.

And then, I could go no further.

In the Deadlands

Step...

Step...

Step...

Twenty-three men.

Step...

Step...

Step...

And twenty-three uniforms

of coarse brown wool.

Step...

Step...

Step...

Walking,

in step,

into the deadlands.

i don’t like the deadlands. i never have.

Step...

Step...

But i guess i’m not alone. Nobody likes the deadlands.

i don’t think i’ve ever met anybody who likes the deadlands.

Step...

The floor of the deadlands is

different.

It’s like hollow brick. Walking into the deadlands is

like walking into an empty tomb.

Step...

They say that the deadlands floor has been baked solid, but i don’t see how. The temperature in the deadlands hardly ever goes above 80°.

They say that the deadlands floor is completely dry—that there’s no moisture in it at all.

But i always thought that when ground became completely dry that it turned to dust—that it needed moisture to hold it together.

i don’t know. There’s a lot of things that they say...

Step...

It’s all wrong.

It is.

It sounds hollow. Maybe it is.

And it’s the wrong color too. Ground should not be orange and black and all run together and mottled.

It should be soft and brown and

gritty with little rocks in it,

and things growing

and

Nothing grows,

and there’s no sand...

not even dust.

You can walk out of the deadlands with the same shine on your boots as when you walked in.

You would think that there would be sand in great curving dunes sweeping slowly across the deadlands.

There should be.

But there isn’t. The deadlands is barren.

No dunes,

no sand,

no dust.

Just the ground and the sky.

Step...

The deadlands sky is so deep it hurts.

i mean, it’s empty.

Nobody looks at the sky in the deadlands.

There are no clouds in a deadlands sky. There never are.

Just that deep empty blue.

If you look at it long enough, it begins to seem like the sky is underneath you and the ground is above you
and that you’re walking across a great rusty ceiling with nothing beneath you and any moment
you are going to miss a step
and slip
and fall
and go plummeting down endlessly into that deep empty sky, turning and twisting forever trying to grab onto something . . .

something that isn’t there.

It never is.

Just that deep empty blueness.

i mean, it’s empty.

But that’s the way it is in the deadlands.

Empty.

Your eye searches for something to hang onto, but there isn’t anything.

Except, of course, the great painful white of the sun.

They say that it used to be yellow—the sun, i mean. i don’t know. You hear a lot of talk about the way it used to be.

Like green.

They say that there used to be a color called green.

They say that all the plants were colored green . . . the grass and the leaves and the trees and the bushes. . .

all were green.

Not brown and orange and black

—but green.

Whatever that means.

i don’t know. Maybe the stories are true.

Probably they’re just folk tales.

Although, when you’re in the deadlands, you can’t see how there ever was anything else but deadlands.

The deadlands is eternal.

i mean, if anything is eternal, the deadlands is.

Step...

There’s no wind in the deadlands.

No. That’s wrong.

There’s no wind in the deadlands now.

Other times there is a wind.

Mostly, it’s a hot breath on the back of your neck,
but there are stories about the deadlands wind picking a man up and carrying him off.

i guess the deadlands gets to you after a while . . . that sky and that barren floor.

Funny thing about the floor. It’s rutted from horizon to horizon. It’s pitted and creased and scarred.

Used...

Corrugated like a sheet of rusty iron.

In some places it’s scored as evenly as if it were done by a machine.

Every step scrapes along the grooves of the deadlands floor.

The ruts are shallow and just about the width of a man’s foot.

Your boots stick in them.

With every step you take, the deadlands catches and grabs at your feet.

Step... (grab)

Step... (grab)

Step... (grab)

We’ve been walking for about an hour now. It’s hard to tell. Not many of us have watches
and in the deadlands, time is frozen by a white staring sun.

Step...

i guess i said that i don’t like the deadlands, but it bears repeating.

Some of the guys say that you get used to it, but i don’t see how. i never have.

They say that the deadlands has a weird kind of beauty.

Actually, beauty is the wrong word.

It’s not beauty. It’s a kind of...

It’s a kind of...

a kind of...

There is no word.

It’s like a feeling,
an empty feeling,
like something quiet
waiting.

Step...

There are twenty-three of us on this patrol. There’s the commander and eleven “two”s.

Twenty-three men.

A double line, walking.

Step...

Step...

Step...

Eleven “two”s. They run us in “two”s because they want us to each keep an eye on our other half.

Ha.

i don’t think Carl and i have exchanged twelve words total.

Step...

i don’t know why they run the deadlands patrols anyway. It seems foolish,
a waste of effort.

They say that it’s to protect the borderlands from attack

But nobody really expects anyone to mount an attack across the deadlands.

Not really.

Of course, nobody really knows what’s on the other side of it, either.

We don’t even know that it has an other side.

i mean, nobody’s ever seen it.

That is, nobody’s ever seen it and come back across the deadlands to tell us about it.

But,
even if somebody did manage to cross the deadlands from the other side, we’d see them coming for a long time before they got to the borderlands. We’d see them from the balloons.

. . .i was up in a balloon once.

It was an anchored balloon—they all are now—but it was still a balloon. (The balloons have to be anchored; otherwise they go drifting into the deadlands.)

This was a long time ago, but you could see twenty...maybe thirty miles into the deadlands.

Strange...

We were high—really high.

We could look back to the west and see the gray roofs of Fort Borderlands and the gray barracks, and the distant village of thatched roofs, and the surrounding fields of brown and gray; and in the far distance, the black Eternal Mountains.

It was all
so distant,
so far away.

But on the east

the deadlands was close,

immediate.

It seemed to be so close

that you could step right out of the gondola and onto its hard baked floor.

You could see every detail of its orange and black surface.

so clear,

so solid.

You could see right down into the corrugations of the deadlands floor,
shallow ruts in a mottled orange and black surface.

It was as if it was only a few feet away.

Later, i learned that it was an optical illusion.

What i saw was not the regular corrugations—the ones you notice when you’re on the ground—the ones that catch and grab at your feet.

What it is, is that the deadlands is ridged—corrugated on a gigantic scale. Just as it is corrugated with shallow troughs and crests only a few inches wide, it is also corrugated with great troughs and crests many yards wide,
sometimes many miles wide.

The floor curves so wide and so subtly that you can’t detect it, except from a balloon.

i wonder,
i wonder, if i got down on my hands and knees and looked at the shallow ruts that are beneath my feet right now...

If i looked very carefully at these corrugations,

would i see

even tinier grooves scored within them?

i wonder...

Anyway,
they say that that’s what causes some of the weird things in the deadlands—the wide corrugations.

Things like the horizon being only twenty yards away,
or twenty miles.

i mean, that’s the logical explanation, isn’t it?

Isn’t it?

Step...

Step...

Step...

Sometimes i wonder why they run the deadlands patrols.

i mean, they tell us why, but sometimes i wonder anyway.

i mean, why?

What’s it for?

Sometimes...

i think,

i think, maybe we’re supposed to be sacrifices, sacrifices to the deadlands.

Like, if we’re sacrificed to the deadlands it’ll be appeased for a little while and won’t want more.

So we go into the deadlands, deep into the deadlands, in case it wants us.

and if it doesn’t

then we come out.

i don’t like it. i don’t like it at all.

But i don’t have to like it. i only have to do it.

Step...

Nobody talks.

But then again, there’s little to say.

Step...

Every step scrapes.

scrapes.

scrapes.

There are things in the deadlands.

Oh, they won’t admit it, but there are

things.

You hear stories,

and once in a while a patrol doesn’t come back.

Scrape.

When that happens—when a patrol doesn’t come back—they never admit it. Instead they say that it’s been transferred.

Sometimes, even, they really do transfer a patrol. As if to prove all the others.

Scrape.

But you hear stories.

One patrol is rumored to have found some bodies. They were the bodies of the lost 31st patrol. (That’s one that they admit they lost—they can’t deny that one.)

They say that they were just sitting and staring,

just sitting and staring,

as if they had all died at the same time.

Scrape.

They say that they were perfectly preserved. You could even recognize faces.

They were mummified

like so much irradiated meat.

Scrape.

They left them there.

Later, when they went back, they were gone.

Scrape.

Scrape.

Scrape.

Just the hard-baked and orange-black floor
and the bright empty sky
and the white staring sun.

Step...

Scrape.

i remember,
when i was a kid—before i joined the patrol—we used to have a farm.

It was on the borderlands. On the outermost edge.

It was during one of those times when the deadlands was growing. It had already taken over the eastern part of the farm.

After dinner we used to sit out on the front porch, just me and Pa.

It wasn’t a very big porch, but then it wasn’t a very big house. It was just an old wooden house.

An unpainted gray house.

It never did seem like home to me anyway,

just some place we were living,
probably because the deadlands was so close.

The wood was dead. i mean,

most houses—the wood is alive, you can feel it,
but our house, the wood was different—dead to the touch. The whole house was gray and empty and hollow.

The walls were thin,

thin gray boards.

i guess the deadlands had already gotten to it by then.

Anyway,
we would sit on the porch and look across into the east field.

The deadlands had already taken it over by then,
and it was dying.

The whole east field was dying.

It was brown and starting to turn black,

black . . . with streaks of orange.

Already the ground was hard.

The crop was just a few scraggly ears of brown and dying corn, hardly worth the trouble to pick.

Even if we had, we couldn’t have sold any of it. Nobody will buy anything grown on a borderlands farm.

It has too much of the taste of the deadlands in it.

So Pa and i would just sit and stare at that worthless brown corn.

The deadlands had ignored our fences. It just crossed them like it didn’t matter,

like they weren’t there at all,

and pretty soon they weren’t.

I’d go out there,

and they’d crumble at my touch.

The ground

where the deadlands had touched it

was already different.

Not dead. Not yet—

Just different,

empty.

Hardly even dusty.

Dry, kind of.

We’d lost this field to the deadlands just like we had lost the others,
and probably just like we would lose all the rest.

Pa and i had tried everything.

We’d tried sprays and manures and colored lights and radiations and sonics and prayers
and curses.

But the deadlands just grew into the east field with never so much as a by-your-leave and there wasn’t a thing we could do about it.

i think that’s what killed Pa,
the deadlands.

i joined the patrol later.

i remember,
when it used to get dark
and we would sit out on the porch,
we would listen.

we’d listen to the deadlands,
just listen.

We’d sit out there on that gray wooden porch and watch as the eastern edge of the world grew dark.

A hot wind would come up out of the deadlands.

It would carry a sound with it.

It was a soft sound,

a faint sound,
and
we'd sit and listen to it.

There was something out there

it had a voice . . .
it sounded like—

a distant chorus,
a choir

singing,
moaning.

. . .it was a mournful sound,

dark and soft,
very faint
and faraway;

floating

just below the horizon,

the dark,
sharp horizon,

. . .something was there,

softly
keening.

Something is still there.

Something is out there.

waiting.

You can hear it

softly
keening to itself.

That’s why i don’t like the deadlands.

The sound it makes.

Pa used to say that it was voices.

Voices of all the people ever lost in the deadlands.

They’re wailing.

They’re far away, but they’re wailing and you can hear them,

softly.

They’re not crying for help either...

They’re calling for you to come join them.

At least, that’s what Pa used to say.

Then he’d take another pull on his pipe and stare off into the east.

The sky would slowly
grow deeper,
and darker
and we’d sit there
listening.

Pa and i would sit on the front porch
every evening,

just looking at the east field
and listening.

Every evening.

We’d sit that way for a long time,
till long after the sun had slipped down behind us

and it became too dark to see.

After a while,
i’d get up from where i sat on the steps and i’d kiss Pa good night.

His face was rough and stubbly with whiskers. That’s what I remember about him. His face was rough and stubbly.

Then i’d go upstairs and go to bed.

i’d slip into a thin cotton nightshirt and then between the dry dusty sheets and i’d try to sleep.

i’d lay there feeling very thin and very cold . . . and very naked and alone.

That’s when the deadland would moan its loudest.

i remember,
lying in bed,
trying to sleep on a night
and the wailing would come out of the deadlands like all the souls in Hell.

That’s how Pa would describe it.

Like all the souls in Hell.

Far off loud
and insistent,

a soft and empty

calling
sound,

waiting,
below the horizon.

After a while Pa would come up to bed.

We only had the one bed.

Pa would sleep on his side and i’d sleep on my side. Actually, it was Ma’s side, but

Ma hadn’t used it in a long time.

Ma followed a calf out into the deadlands one day.

Leastways, that’s what Pa said when i asked.

i was too small to remember and Pa never told me any more than that.

Anyway,
after a while Pa would come up to bed.

i wouldn’t say anything.

He always tried to be quiet because he thought i was asleep,
and i’d always try to be quiet because. . .

well, just because.

i guess i didn’t want him to think i was scared.

Once, though...

it was a long time ago...

once,

when the deadlands was particularly loud,

Pa got into bed...

(and the bedsprings creaked)

i was shivering
and i guess whimpering a little bit too.

Pa put his arms about me and drew me close.

He held me that way for a long time.

A long long time.

Like he was protecting.

i could feel the warmth of his strong old hands about me
i felt...funny...

like...

like...

like for once, i was a part of Pa.

i am.

i am a part of Pa.

And something else,

i’m a part of Ma too.

i guess that was why he held onto me for such a long time.

Because i’m a part of Ma too, and i was all he had left of her.

After a while he pulled away from me,

moved over to his own side of the bed.

i fell asleep with the deadlands ringing in my ears.

The whole house would moan with it...

Like Pa said,

Like all the souls in Hell.

If there is a Hell.

If there is a Hell, i’m not afraid of it.

Not after growing up with the deadlands.

Not after growing up with the gnawing fear that one night while i would be lying in bed asleep and helpless, the deadlands might just decide to grow a little bit and take over the house and everything in it,
and then the next time the deadlands wailed,
it would be wailing with my voice too.

The deadlands is growing you know.

Oh, they won’t admit it. They say that it’s only pulsing.

You know,
sometimes it gets bigger,
sometimes it gets smaller.

i don’t believe it.

Neither does anybody else who lives on the borderlands.

Maybe it does get smaller,
but then when it gets bigger again,

it gets a whole lot bigger.

Already, it’s taken over where our farm used to be.

The house isn’t there any more,
but i know where it was,
and it’s not there any more.

They tell me that I’m wrong.

They say that that’s not where the farm was.

The farm was farther north,

and it’s still there.

But they’re scared.

They don’t want to admit that one night the house just
disappeared.

Melted away.

Nothing left.

No house.

No fences.

No fields.

Nothing.

Just the deadlands a little closer than before.

Step...

Scrape.

Deeper now in the deadlands,
following the ruts.

The corrugations here are so even one can follow them for miles.

That’s how we know where we are in the deadlands. We can’t use a compass.

Compasses don’t work in the deadlands.

it’s like they’re dead. . .

lost all their magnetism,

or something.

So,
we use the ruts as a guide.

If we pick a starting point on the borderlands edge
and then follow one of the grooves in the deadlands floor,
we can almost always be sure that we are somewhere in the deadlands along that certain line.

If we start somewhere else and follow another rut, then we know that we are somewhere along that line.

And that’s about as much as anyone ever knows.

i mean, about where they are in the deadlands.

Step...

Scrape.

i hope that this one will be uneventful. This patrol, i mean. i hope we don’t find anything.

i’ve been lucky so far. i’ve never been on a patrol where they found anything, but i’ve heard stories.

i heard one story...

about—

But it’s supposed to be just a story.

i don’t know.

We’re probably five-six miles into the deadlands now.

We’re supposed to go as far as we can.

The commander wants to make twenty today.

Step...

Scrape.

Man shouldn’t be alone with his thoughts too long.

Least not in the deadlands anyway.

He starts thinking too many things.

About himself.

About his buddies.

i’ve heard about guys out in the deadlands who have just turned and walked away from their patrols,
just stepped right over the horizon and disappeared
with never a word to their buddies
and nobody even noticed.

One patrol
didn’t notice until they had gotten out of the deadlands altogether
that their commander was no longer with them.

He’d wandered out by himself a few days before.

Step. . .

Scrape.

The orange-black floor,
the while staring sun,
the deep dark sky.

Step. . .

Scrape.

Best to stay in a group in the deadlands.

Safer.

Thought about the City again.

City!

Not big, but the biggest i’ve ever seen.

i had forty-eight hours leave there when i finished training,
before i was assigned to the patrol.

Had my first woman in the City.
Did not enjoy it.

No stimulation.

The guys say i did not miss
anything.

There’s talk about the deadlands patrol,
about what it does to you.

They say it kills your drive.

When i say they, i don’t mean the other guys in the patrol.

i mean other patrols.

Not deadlands patrols.

Other patrols.

Guys in the deadlands patrol don’t talk about it
i heard stories when i first joined the patrol.

The deadlands kills the sex urge.

The deadlands keeps you from enjoying a woman.

Could prove it by me.

Could prove it by this patrol.

Rarely hear guys talking about girls.

No pinups in barracks either.

No regulations against it. Just no pinups.

When i was younger, i heard that the greatest sensation in the world was being with a woman.

i don’t believe it.

The greatest sensation in the world is sleep.

Much more satisfying.

Especially sleep with no dreams.

Dreams are disturbing.

Step...

Scrape.

Twenty-three men.

Commander and eleven “two”s.

Carl—my other half—is new to this patrol.

So am i.

We are the next to last “two” in the troop.

We say nothing to each other.

i would like to talk to Carl.

In the barracks anyway.

Have nothing to say to him though.

So i say nothing.

Step...

Scrape.

The deadlands makes you feel
more

More intense.

Now,
i feel more of one thing than i have felt since Pa died.

i feel alone.

Step...

Scrape.

i do not like the deadlands,

and we are walking deeper into it.

Step...

Scrape.

In the Deadlands

Later,

numb now,

cannot think.

Can only walk.

Stop for night.

Day turns off.

Night begins.

We huddle around the light.

Not the warmth,

the light.

Temperature is 70°.

Air seems hot,

heavy.

The other men are talking
small talk.

i want to talk too.

i want to talk to Carl.

i want to talk to someone,

anyone.

i want to talk very badly.

i don’t know what i want to say.

But i want someone to say it to.

Want

to look at someone.

Want

to touch someone,

anyone.

Carl?

Anyone.

Carl is the other half of our two. Supposed to be my buddy.

He is not.

He is the buddy of the clique.

Every patrol has a clique. i am never in the clique. Carl always is.

Carl and i are supposed to be
buddies.
We are not.

i have nobody to talk to.
i am alone.

i try to sleep.

The deadlands floor is hard,

uncomfortable.

Faraway,
the deadlands croons

tuneless
a lullaby of lonely,

a distant chorus,

a mournful sound,
of something

faint and faraway,

waiting.
just below the horizon

crooning
tunelessly

very softly
very far away...

and this time there are words.

Always before, i could never make out the

words.

Always before, i could never make out the

tune.

too faint
too distant

But this time...

one word...

very soft

C o m e ...

C o m e ...

C o m e ...

That's all,
just

C o m e ...

The air is heavy,
the night is still
and something with icy feet is standing on my back.

In the Deadlands

Second day now.

i think it’s the second day.

It could be the second year.

Or the second century.

Or the second ???

More lonely.

Carl jokes with the others,
not me.

He does not ignore me,
he is just indifferent.

More lonely.

Carl is one of those people who is in on everything.

He always knows what is happening. He is always the first one to get the joke,
as much as anyone jokes in the deadlands patrol.

More quiet.

More like . . . funeral.

Muted.

Pa’s funeral.

Nobody cried.

Nobody talked.

Nobody said anything at all.

Just sat.

Muted.

Muted like the deadlands patrol.

Don’t know how deep we are now.

Day and a half?

Two days?

Two years?

We will march until we reach the tortured rocks.

Then we will turn back.

It’s two days march.

Maybe three.

Or four.

Or six.

Each time we march to the rocks it’s different

Step...

Scrape.

i never prayed.

Never.

If i did pray though, i know what i’d pray for.

A safe comeback.

To what?

To Fort Borderlands?

Gray barracks. Gray grass. Gray flag. Gray food. Gray everything. Gray. Everything gray.

Too gray.

In the distance
is the first of the tortured rocks

waiting.

The rocks are sized like men.

Some are big men, some are small men,
some are children.

They’re all kinds of twisted

shapes.

This is where they were supposed to have found the lost 31st patrol.

About twenty feet inside

the tortured rocks.

i suppose they must have wandered around until they ran out of water.

Then they sat down to die.

They say that when a patrol gets lost in the deadlands it’s because they tried to cross the tortured rocks. Once they go in, they don’t come out.

They get confused
and can’t tell which way they came.

They could be twenty feet from the edge of the tortured rocks
and not know it.

The rocks are closer now.

Shouldn’t look at them for too long.

They start to remind you

of things,

or people.

Obscene shapes

doing obscene things.

i once saw a rock that looked

like

two people embracing.

A man and a woman?

Two men?

Disturbing.

Disturbing because,
reminded me of two men i once knew. They had disappeared in the deadlands.

tortured

twisted

frozen

petrified
i looked away.

Above,
the sun is a pinpoint of white hate

no heat

no warmth

In the deadlands the sun radiates death.

We’re closer to the tortured rocks now. i can see why you would lose your way.

They grow right out of the deadlands floor.

writhing

scarred with blacks and reds.

You can’t see more than ten feet into the tortured rocks.

You can’t walk more than ten feet in a straight line into the tortured rocks.

After twenty feet or so, you’re lost.

Funny shapes among those rocks.

There's one that looks like Pa.

Could be.

The deadlands swallowed up his
grave when it took the house.

In the Deadlands
i guess the deadlands gets to you after a while.

They say that there are sand dunes inside the tortured rocks.

The wind blows the sand into the deadlands,
and it’s caught by the tortured rocks.

They say that the rocks have been carved out by the persistent grinding of the wind, and that’s what gives them their agonized shapes.

They’re about a hundred yards away.

It’s the commander’s intention to go into the rocks this time.

Dumb.

There is a different set of God in the deadlands.

We're closer to the rocks now.

We can see how the potholes
and pits become deeper and
more jagged.
We can see how the rocks grow
out of the deadlands floor.

All the ruts lead to the tortured rocks.

Nobody knows if the tortured rocks cover only a few acres, or hundreds of miles.

There may even be several areas of tortured rocks.

Nobody knows.

You can’t map the deadlands.

One patrol thought that the rocks were only a few acres, or at most a few miles.

They decided to walk around them.

We are still waiting for them to return.

That was twenty years ago.

We are going into the rocks now.

The commander has a length of cord. Every ten feet there is a knot in it.

He loops one end of it around a rock.

The rock is grotesque

hunched over
deformed
twisted

The commander loops the cord around it
and we go in.

Clambering over one another,
stumbling through agonized
shapes of stones,
shards of souls,

shattered,

frozen
in a writhe
of torment.

Across crevices of fear and

through corridors of pain

The wind picks up in intensity.

It whistles through the rocks.

It shrieks.
The rocks scrape at the entrails of the wind

and it shrieks.

The sun falls into the night behind us.

Darkness.

Only the whistling of the wind,

the moaning
of an injured beast,

We sit in a circle.

The light is in the center, a silent beacon
slowly revolving
casting agonized shadows

of the rocks closest to us
onto the twisted souls of the ones farther back.

Darkness beyond.

There is little talk.

A few of the men smoke

cigarettes like tiny eyes in the night.

We are five hundred yards into the tortured rocks.

We could be twenty miles.

Or twenty feet.

It’s all the same.

The wind subsides

and changes

and picks up a new note,

a mournful note,

a keening,

a wail of something...

something
large
and watchful,
waiting,

biding its time,
crooning to itself.

The ground is hard and uneven.

Sleep is troubled.

In the Deadlands

We are coming out now.

Thank your own private gods.

According to the cord we are five hundred yards into the tortured rocks.

And now we are coming out.

The commander winds up the cord as he walks.

Every ten feet he winds up another knot. We will wind up a total of one hundred and fifty knots.

We struggle back the way we came, following the twistings and turnings of the aching cord,
clambering over one another,

sliding and scraping,
pathetic in our eagerness to escape.

The rocks are red and yellow and black.

They arch and twist with painful frenzy.

They reach out with sharp plucking edges
to scratch and claw

the tender flesh.

The floor
is uneven and gouged.

Ridges protrude
at obscene angles,
and crevices sink away into bottomless abysses.

and i can feel
a warm hungry presence.
an enveloping
throbbing
flood of. . .

The commander winds up thirty knots.

We go on
in wordless agony.

The only sound
is the scraping of boots
across rock,
and wordless

grunts of pain
as rock scrapes across flesh.

The sound is hideous.

Like a giant crab scrabbling across rocks and gasping for breath with deep rasping sighs.

Far off
in the distance,
i can hear him
clicking his mandibles
and tapping at the rocks with his claws

as he comes clabbering after us.

A cold taste of lonely. . .
a sense of longing
For that hot throbbing
presence.

The commander winds up sixty knots.

We stumble and stagger—
the floor catches and grabs
and tries to trip.

The rocks turn and twist.

They scratch
and cut
and slash.

The sun hates with a fury,

The orb has become an eye of sleeting agony.

a white stare of deadly bright.

Invisible radiation lacerates our bodies.

The orb has become an eye of sleeting agony.

The senses are seared by it.

and the warm
amniotic presence
radiates stronger.

The commander winds up ninety knots.

All the senses
scream for release.

White hot agony.

The flesh is seared.

The ears scream.

The eyes burn.

Flesh
is torn
away
from flesh.

Living tissue
dissolves
in pain.

The rocks rip and tear and grind.

The soul writhes.

A funny taste,
a funny flat taste
like metal.

The commander winds up one hundred and ten knots.

It floods warm and cool

through me,

like wine.
Soul wine.

A whimpering
sound of fear,
something
crying for release.

Twenty-three molten agonies.

Twenty-three fear-stained souls.

Far away
something beats its mandibles in delight.

An immense weight
of terror,
a rasping in the lungs,
a pounding in the ears,
in the heart,
in the soul,
a throbbing in the flesh,
a pulsing stinging agony.

It floods down my throat,
down
and into my belly,
where it radiates
warmness
coolness
release
satisfaction
fulfillment,
i am six feet of burning, turning, twisting.

i am molten lava.

i am seared rock.

The soul shrieks soundlessly.

i am scraped raw.

The commander winds up one hundred and thirty knots.

and slowly
it permeates my body,
pulsing
outward through my
flesh,
something warm
and hungry and thirsting,
and i am warm
and hungry
and thirsting
and i whimper.

i shrink gibbering inside myself,
a quivering gobbet of flesh,

falling...

bending...

curling...

knees to chest.

Hands clenched in little pink
fists.

Fists to chin.
Head to knees.
Eyes tight.

Shoulders tight.
Elbows stiff.

And i am a ball of gibbering
fear.

and i am released
and satisfied
and fulfilled.

A whimpering fetus,
shivering
quivering.

i am fulfilled.

Clinging.
Must not let go.

The mouth works in silent
desire.
Imploring.
A red and white-hot burning
grows deep within the groin.

i am fulfilled.

Rivulets of icy sweat
streak the tightened flesh.

i am fulfilled.
Do you understand that?
i am fulfilled!

NO!

We are fulfilled!
We are fulfilled!

Flesh,
chafed and scalded
and scraped raw,
bleeding from wounds too small
to see.

Searing air
rasps the throat
and burns the lungs.

All of us!
together!
We are fulfilled!

Somewhere a voice calls out,

One hundred and forty knots.

Far away is something big.

Something that scrabbles mindlessly,
clicking and ticking
and clattering across the deadlands floor.

Something that utters deep leathery groans
of slavering anticipation.

Chitinous claws scrape rock.

And fear
must un-knot me.

Fear must un-knot me.

Slowly,
a fist
unclenches,
becomes
a claw,
a hand.

but we are fulfilled...

Now
the other one,
slowly,
slowly...

We are fulfilled
with an overpowering
need
and love

Put
one hand
in front of the other

love...
(desire)

and
bring your head up.

for each other
and for the commander
and

Put
one knee
in front of the other
and
ignore
the bloody flowing
from scraped and stinging
hands and knees.

for Carl
and for me too
and

Crawl.

Crawl.

Crawl.

CRAWL, YOU SHIVERING BASTARD

One hand.

Now the other...

One knee.

Now the other...

And whimper.

the deadlands
and the rocks
—especially the rocks—
the warm embracing
rocks.

Scraping
over jagged rocks,
flesh
is torn from flesh,
limb
is torn from limb,
entrails shattered
in a gutted belly.

we are fulfilled
and the warmth

floods through us
right up to the
top of our very being
and

BUT KEEP CRAWLING

Every living cell
screams
in white searing agony,
writhing
and burning
and turning
and twisting
and dissolving
into gobbets of terror...

Put one hand in front of you.

There, where you can see it.

Now, the other...

Now a knee,
a knee...

MOVE THAT KNEE

Look down.

Deep rasping breath.

And move that knee.

i scream in defiance
of all that is holy.

OH MY DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN

It is more than human flesh can stand.

i am rooted to the floor

and slowly

my cells must crystallize

and my limbs

must stiffen

and i must become

one of t h e l i v i n g

t o r t u r e d

One hundred and fifty knots.

And out.

Is it somewhere
something
howls in defeat?

In the Deadlands
i lie here on the deadlands floor
gasping for breath.

We are me again

with a cold bright clarity.

Nerve ends tingle
marvelling at unbroken flesh.

Clawed hands scratch futilely at the rock.

Unnecessarily,
for i am out.

We become aware

of my body

here on the deadlands floor.

Deep rasping gasping breaths.

Sweet silence in the soul.

Only the sound of my lungs
sucking in air
and blowing it out again.

After a bit i raise my head.

i stagger to my feet
and

No.

Something is wrong.

We are confused.

We shake my head to clear it.

There.

That’s better.

I am me again.

I am separate from them again.

I am unchanged.

It is time to go,
time to leave the deadlands.

I move out.

Step...

Step...

Step...

Every step sounds hollow.

And more than hollow.

Every step echoes.

I walk on,
leaving the deadlands.

The deadlands floor
is hot and wasted,
spattered with the color of
blood.

The deadlands sky
is empty and unfeeling.
The sun is implacable.

The deadlands floor is pitted and gouged and scarred.

It catches and grabs, but

I am walking out of the deadlands.

Step...

Step...

Step...

The sun
is high and bright and cold.

And there is a presence,

silent,
dark,
tuneless and brooding.

It envelops
hotly.
It throbs
and pulses.

It radiates
a warm sense of...
belonging,
and touches.

a cold taste of lonely...
desire
for that hot throbbing
something.

I stare into the empty east.

Far beyond the horizon
is something

faint and faraway,
softly
crooning,

I wish I could remember what it is.

After a bit,

I turn.

I turn to the west.

I begin walking out.

Out.

Out.

Out of the deadlands.

Out.

I am coming out.

Out.

I am coming out of the deadlands.

Out.

And a distant chorus
Cries ...

Follow the crease in the deadlands floor.

And run
run
run
run                as hard as you can
run                as fast as you can
run                Get as far away as you can.

run
run

From out of the deadlands
run                                          comes

a softly keening
run

voice of something
run                                          faint and faraway

something
run

dark and brooding
run

And run.

run

Run.

run
run
run
run
run
run
run                One foot in front of the other.

run                That's all that's important.

run                Just keep putting one foot in front of the

other.

run

The deadlands calls
run
run

Come...

run
run

Come...

run
run

Come...

run
run
run
run
run                                          It calls with ten thousand thou-

sand voices.

run

Too many voices
run                                                      that I know too well.

run
run

C o m e. . .

run

C o m e. . .

run
run                                                      It is not a call
run                                                      It is not a beckoning.

run                                                      It is not even a warning.

run
run                                      The deadlands is not calling me

to come to it...

run
run                                      No.

It is saying it will come to me.

run
run

Run.

run

Run for your life,
run                                      for your soul.

run
run
run
run
run
run                                      But run.

run
run
run
run
run                                      Something
run
run                                      lives in the deadlands.

run
run                                      Something
run
run                                      big.

run
run
run
run                                      Some day
run
run                                      it’s going to get tired
run
run                                      of all the
run
run                                      little sacrifices
run
run                                      that we keep
run
run                                      making
run
run                                      to it.

run
run
run
run
run
run
run
run
run
run
run
run                                      Some day
run
run                                      that something
run
run                                      is going
run
run                                      to
run
run                                      come out of the deadlands.

run
run
run
run
run
run
run
run
run                                      Some day
run
run                                      something
run
run                                      is coming out of the deadlands.

run
run
run
run
run
run
run
run
run
run
run
run
run                                      Something is coming out of the
run                                      deadlands.

run
run
run
run
run
run                                      Run
run
run
run
run
run
run                                      Run
run
run
run
run
run
run
run
run
run
run
run
run
run
run
run
run
run

AFTERWORD:

Harlan Ellison had challenged the community of science fiction authors to come up with stories that broke the boundaries, stories that other editors would publish. The result was a literary earthquake, the Dangerous Visions anthology. With that one book, Ellison up-ended the entire field. He inspired every writer within wordshot to reach for higher goals. It was the seed crystal, the catalyst, the moment that science fiction stopped seeing itself as pulp fiction and became a true literary genre.

A year later Harlan Ellison began reading stories for Again, Dangerous Visions.

I submitted “In the Deadlands.”

In my eyes, it was something that could not be published anywhere else.

He rejected it and bought “With a Finger in My I” instead.

I didn’t mind the rejection. I did mind that in his introduction to “With a Finger in My I,” he spent several paragraphs savagely describing the story he hadn’t bought and why.

The story took on a certain notoriety as it made its way across the desks of various editors. I believed in it. They didn’t. They all rejected it—a couple of them vehemently.

So I put it back in the drawer. It was an experiment. It broke the rules. It didn’t fit anywhere. I didn’t care. Most stories are written from the head—this one had been written from the heart and from the gut and from a place that still hasn’t been named.

Eventually, I was living in New York for a while and I put together a collection of stories for Ballantine Books, some published, most not. I don’t remember the title I wanted to give it, but Betty Ballantine renamed it With a Finger in My I. (This book includes all the stories from that collection, plus everything else I wrote around that same time.)

I showed Betty Ballantine “In the Deadlands” and asked her if we should include it. She was adamant that it was the most important piece in the book. She also said, “I won’t make any money off your collection, but I’m buying it to keep you loyal, so I’ll have your next bestseller.” (I gave her two bestsellers and a Hugo and Nebula nominee.)

As we moved toward production Betty Ballantine said we had a design problem. The standard design of a paperback book was to put the author’s name at the top of every even page and the title of the book at the top of every odd page—but this would confuse the layout for “In the Deadlands.” In my youthful naiveté, I suggested that we leave those out and only have the page numbers. It would add to the desolate feeling of the story. She agreed and that was how the story was printed.

With a Finger in My I was published in early 1972 and the following year “In the Deadlands” was nominated for the Best Novelette Nebula award. I didn’t expect it to win, and it didn’t, but I do admit to a small satisfying lump of validation.

A few years after that, Harlan Ellison grudgingly admitted that he probably should have bought “In the Deadlands” for A,DV instead of “With a Finger in My I.” That was another good moment. (For the record, I love Harlan like a brother. Someday soon, I will tell the tale of how he saved my life.)

For a time, I had an idea that there might be more to the deadlands story—that I might follow the unnamed narrator in his flight back toward life. I even started writing what I thought might be the next part. But it wasn’t coming from the same place, and when I got to the point where I had to look and see what might be coming out of the deadlands, I saw how much that story wouldn’t work. It didn’t build on the mood of the original. It diminished it. I threw the pages away.

Horror only terrifies when it’s unknown.

When you stop and look it in the face, it’s no longer unknown. Then it’s only a thing to understand…

And something else as well.

When I left the deadlands, I left my bleak period behind.

Far behind.

—David Gerrold

More from the David Gerrold eBook Series

THE TROUBLE WITH TRIBBLES

The Story Behind Star Trek’s Most Popular Episode

9781939529565

The complete story of one of Star Trek’s most popular episodes:

•  From first draft to final shooting script

•  The how and why of TV writing

•  Three previously unpublished episodes

•  Working on the Star Trek lot

•  Personal stories of the stars

•  32 pages of photos

•  Original illustrations by Tim Kirk

•  MORE! MORE! MORE!

THE VOYAGE OF THE STAR WOLF

Star Wolf Trilogy, Book One

9781935251514

The first work in David Gerrold’s Star Wolf trilogy, this tale pits the human members of the Star Wolf space vessel against the superhuman Morthan crew. Captain Jonathan Korie, hampered by the loss of most of the human fleet to the Morthans and a nearly disabled ship of his own, faces the Morthan threat driven by the need for survival and the desire for revenge. A classic of military science fiction, the Star Wolf trilogy combines rapid action with powerful studies of military character.

THE MAN WHO FOLDED HIMSELF

9781935618720

This classic work of science fiction is widely considered to be the ultimate time-travel novel. When Daniel Eakins inherits a time machine, he soon realizes that he has enormous power to shape the course of history. He can foil terrorists, prevent assassinations, or just make some fast money at the racetrack. And if he doesn’t like the results of the change, he can simply go back in time and talk himself out of making it! But Dan soon finds that there are limits to his powers and forces beyond his control.

UNDER THE EYE OF GOD

Trackers, Book One

9781939529541

David Gerrold’s classic space opera Under the Eye of God tells the story of a group of unlikely rebels on a mission to reclaim the galaxy from ruthless vampire overlords known as the Phaestor.

The dark, burnt world of Thoska-Roole, infamous for its harsh climate and equally callous inhabitants, might be the last place in the galaxy anyone would turn for aid in times of crisis. But the small, orange planet is home to the band of rebels who hold the fate of the entire galaxy in their hands.

The Phaestor were once humanity’s last hope, but these genetically engineered predators and their deadly army of Moktar Dragons have since seized control of the galaxy and subjugated all lesser species to feed their appetite for chaos and blood. Standing in their way is the ragtag alliance of malcontents from Thoska-Roole, including two bounty hunters, a mercenary ship captain, and a disgraced reptilian warrior. Together, they make a last desperate stand against the Phaestor and their reign of unprecedented terror.

A COVENANT OF JUSTICE

Trackers, Book Two

9781940363134

In this sequel to Under the Eye of God, David Gerrold’s classic space opera continues.

The bloodthirsty Phaestor, genetically engineered to fight in defense of the galaxy, have since turned against their creators and established a reign of terror and chaos.

Lead by a cunning war queen, her ambitious suitor, and a Dragon Lord, the Phaestor continue to strive for complete enslavement of the galaxy. But a growing band of rebels from Thoska-Roole fights for the galaxy, standing against the merciless vampire overlords.

As other humans, bioforms, and androids from worlds across the galaxy join their cause, the outnumbered rebels fight for freedom and the future of the stars.

STARHUNT

A Star Wolf Novel

9781939529497

Only an endless space war could have produced the Roger Burlingame. A war that had caused Earth to turn starships into instruments of total destruction. A war that had so drained Earth of resources that the Roger Burlingame was kept in service long after it should have been scrapped.

Now, light years from Earth, the great starship had sighted a quarry almost certain to defeat it in a fair fight. The captain’s nerve was gone; the crew were on the verge of mutiny. And command had passed to a fanatical young first officer hungry for his first kill.

War had turned into hell—and this was a voyage of the damned . . .

Originally published as Yesterday’s Children.

THE WORLD OF STAR TREK

9781939529572

They said it couldn’t be done! A science fiction show on national television? The network didn’t believe it would work. It was the 1960s. Would the public accept a non-human hero with demonic pointed ears? A black female lieutenant? Impossible!

BUT STAR TREK LIVES!

This is the story of a phenomenon—a story as strange and wonderful, in its way, as the Enterprise’s trip through space. Even the power of the networks couldn’t stop it. And so Star Trek went on to make entertainment history. Here is the complete inside story of what happened behind the scenes of the Star Trek universe, from scriptwriters’ memos to special effects, plus revealing personal interviews with the series’ legendary stars.

The legend of Star Trek lives in the hearts of millions—now, discover the truth behind the fiction. Writer David Gerrold was on the set, watching it happen: the feuds, the fun, the love—the magic that is Star Trek. A must-have for “Trekkies” of all ages, The World of Star Trek includes more than 50 pages of photos from your favorite episodes and stills from all three movies.

ALTERNATE GERROLDS

An Assortment of Fictitious Lives

9781935618959

David Gerrold takes you on a tour of alternate universes . . . universes where Santa Claus isn’t nice and the best man is actually elected president; where Ronald Reagan and Gregory Peck command the plane carrying the first atomic bomb and John F. Kennedy stars in the hit show Star Track, where Franz Kafka doesn’t write fiction and the Devil holds educational seminars. Introduction by Mike Resnick.

WHEN HARLIE WAS ONE

Release 2.0

9781939529466

HARLIE is the first self-aware intelligence engine. But instead of answers, he has questions—too many questions, and most of his questions have no answers at all.

First published in 1972, When HARLIE Was One was immediately hailed as a groundbreaking debut novel, examining the most fundamental question of all: What does it mean to be human?

Revised by the author in 1988, this expanded edition is available again. Despite all the progress in computer technology since then, When HARLIE Was One still has extraordinary power to touch the human heart.

Nominated for the Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Novel of the Year, its themes of love and discovery are even more important today than when first published.

Read. Enjoy. Be inspired.

CHILD OF EARTH

Sea of Grass, Book One

9781935618713

Want to visit another world? It might not be as easy as you think.

When Kaer’s extended family signs up to emigrate to Linnea, a planet known for horses as large as houses and dangerously mistrustful natives, Kaer is certain the move will bring the divided household closer together. What none of them are prepared for is the grueling emigration training in the Linnean dome, a makeshift environment designed to be like Linnea in every possible way, from the long, brutally harsh winters to the deadly kacks—wolf-like creatures as tall as men. The training is tough, but Kaer’s family is up to the challenge. Soon they begin working like Linneans, thinking like Linneans, even accepting Linnean gods as their own. The family’s emigration seems to be just around the corner.

But then, a disaster on Linnea itself changes everything.

CHILD OF GRASS

Sea of Grass, Book Two

9781939529589

In the first installment of David Gerrold’s Sea of Grass trilogy, Child of Earth, Kaer’s family expected to assimilate into Linnean society undetected after becoming accustomed to the harsh climate and relatively primitive culture in the training dome—a synthetic Linnean environment designed to prepare Earthlings for emigration to the new world. But a sudden uprising on Linnea changed everything. After a band of religious zealots known as the Hale-Stones, former Earth residents living on Linnea, began outing other Earthlings and disrupting Linnean society in order to convert them to Earth’s Christianity in place of the Linnean religion, Kaer’s family was stuck in limbo.

Now, in Child of Grass, Kaer and Lorrin, Kaer’s father, venture away from the training dome as part of a secret mission to restore peace to Linnea and free the hostage Earthlings from captivity. Defeating the Hale-Stones means using every available resource to preserve the Linnean way of life, from advanced technology, to natural disasters, and even the Hale-Stones’ own religious teachings.

Through the struggle for peace, young Kaer is forced to confront issues about morality, loyalty, the bond of family, and the nature of intelligent life.

THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

Star Wolf Trilogy, Book Two

9781935618737

The Morthans were physically and mentally superior. Descended from humans, they were now, literally, “more-than” human . . . and considered the human race to be little better than animals. They would stop at nothing to conquer the remaining human-controlled worlds.

Docked for repairs after a harrowing battle with a Morthan ship, Jonathan Korie and his crew discover they have a Morthan imp aboard—a Morthan weapon so quick they have no chance of catching it, so clever they have no hope of outsmarting it, and so deadly they have no choice but to try.

Includes introduction by Spider Robinson.

BLOOD AND FIRE

Star Wolf Trilogy, Book Three

9781935618690

The Morthans were physically and mentally superior. Descended from humans, they were now, literally, “more-than” human . . . and considered the human race to be little better than animals. They would stop at nothing to conquer the remaining human-controlled worlds.

Formerly a never-filmed script for Star Trek: The Next Generation, this conclusion to the Star Wolf trilogy finds Executive Officer Korie and the crew of the Star Wolf answering a distress call from a mysteriously lifeless ship. On board the Norway, they discover half-wave, half-particle clusters of golden light—and a dead man. The lights are the energy form of bloodworms, a fatal infestation that feeds off the energy of living bodies, which scientists on the Norway have developed for use in the Alliance’s war against the Morthans. Officer Korie’s struggle between his conscience and his desire for vengeance will determine not only the safety of the Star Wolf, but the fate of the enemies he’s sworn to destroy.

Includes introduction by D.C. Fontana.

SPACE SKIMMER

Book One

9781939529510

Mass is humanoid, but genetically evolved to cope with greater pressures, stronger gravity, and heavier densities than those of an ancient planet he never knew, nor probably ever would. For Mass, Earth is millennia in the past.

His companions are equally diverse, differently evolved, and most unsuitable—to him and to one another. Each live on a separate plane—they had grown on separate worlds.

Yet survival might depend on communication. To live, they must find a way to come together as they’re faced with intense pressure, clashing perspectives, and unfamiliar circumstances.

CHESS WITH A DRAGON

9781939529633

The Galactic InterChange is the greatest discovery in history. Through the InterChange, humanity gains access to the combined knowledge of all the worlds and all the races of the galaxy. For librarians, scientists, doctors, teachers, and anybody interested in the spread of knowledge, it’s a field day. Just find something intriguing on the menu and request a copy—so simple, so exciting!

Until the bill arrives.

It’s the greatest bill in history, and humanity has no way of paying it off. No way except one—indenture. Being slaves to aliens doesn’t sound like much fun.

Yake Singh Brown is the man who has to negotiate the deal for humanity. It’s the toughest assignment he’s ever faced, like playing chess with a dragon—all he has to do is figure out the rules of the game before being eaten.

In the tradition of Douglas Adams and Piers Anthony, David Gerrold, the writer who created The Trouble with Tribbles, pits Earth’s most daring diplomat against the scheming—and hungry—races of the rest of the galaxy, with hysterical results.

BOARDING THE ENTERPRISE

Transporters, Tribbles, and the Vulcan Death Grip in Gene Rodenberry’s Star Trek

9781935618706

Trekkies and Trekkers alike will get starry eyed over this eclectic mix of essays on the groundbreaking original Star Trek series. Star Trek writers D.C. Fontana and David Gerrold, science-fiction authors such as Howard Weinstein, and various academics share behind-the-scenes anecdotes, discuss the show’s enduring appeal and influence, and examine some of the classic features of the show, including Spock’s irrationality, Scotty’s pessimism, and the lack of seatbelts on the Enterprise. The impact of the cultural phenomenon on subsequent science-fiction television programs is explored, as well as how the show laid the foundation for the science-fiction genre to break into the television medium.

Edited by David Gerrold and Robert J. Sawyer.

DEATHBEAST

9781939529534

TIMEBEAM TO DANGER

Six hunters and two official guides are going on the trip of their lifetime.

Their destination? Earth as it was a hundred million years ago, long before human dominion, when the great hot-blooded dinosaurs ruled supreme.

Each of the time travelers has a different motive. Some are on the strange safari for pay. Others are taking a psychological and sexual holiday from civilization. There are women who wanted to show themselves the equal of men—and men out to test and prove their manhood.

But whatever their drives and desires, their strengths and weaknesses, the ultimate horror awaits them . . .

DEATHBEAST.

IN THE DEADLANDS

Stories

9781939529503

David Gerrold burst onto the science fiction scene in the late sixties with more Hugo and Nebula nominations than any other writer had ever received at the beginning of his career.

His first collection of stories, With a Finger in My I, showcased his remarkable range. The jewel in that collection was “In the Deadlands,” a bizarre and disturbing journey into a landscape of madness—not so much a story as a sculpture made of words. Nominated for the Nebula award for best novelette of the year, “In The Deadlands” has been out of print for 40 years.

This new collection contains all the stories from With a Finger in My I, plus four other works written in the same period, with revealing notes from the author.

Includes new forword by Adam Troy-Castro.

THE FLYING SORCERERS

9781935251507

This funny and insightful science fiction classic introduces Shoogar, the greatest wizard ever known in his village. His spells can strike terror in the hearts of even his most powerful enemies. But the enemy he faces now is like none he has ever seen before. The stranger has come from nowhere and is ignorant of even the most basic principles of magic. But the stranger has an incredibly powerful magic of his own. There is no room in Shoogar’s world for an intruder whose powers match his own, let alone one whose powers might exceed his. So before the blue sun can cross the face of the red sun once more, Shoogar will show this stranger just who is boss.

MOONSTAR

Jobe, Book One

9781939529473

She was born in the moonstar’s shadow when the storms of Satlik raged their worst. Because of this, Jobe was different. The family never spoke of it, but everyone knew Jobe was special. So Jobe came to know of it, too. She had a destiny beyond that of Choice, beyond that moment when she would finally have to decide for Reethe, Mother of the World, or for Dakka, Father, Son, and Lover. For the others it was easy, but not for her, not for Jobe. So she was sent to Option, the island of learning, to make her choice and become who she must be. And slowly, ever so slowly, Jobe retreated from the world, from the time of decision. Then the ultimate cataclysm wracked the planet, threatening all her people had struggled to create, and Jobe came forth at last to fulfill her destiny and begin the quest that the moonstar had set for her so many years ago . . .

Nebula award nominee for best novel of the year (1977). Originally published as Moonstar Oddessy.

For more books and stories by David Gerrold, please visit:

Gerrold.com/eBooks.htm

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A Hugo and Nebula award winner, David Gerrold is the author of more than 50 books, several hundred articles and columns, and more than a dozen television episodes.

His books include When HARLIE Was One, The Man Who Folded Himself, The War Against the Chtorr septology, The Star Wolf trilogy, The Dingilliad young adult trilogy, and the award-winning autobiographical tale of his son’s adoption, The Martian Child. TV credits include episodes of Star Trek (“The Trouble with Tribbles,” “The Cloud Minders”), Star Trek Animated (“More Tribbles, More Troubles,” “Bem”), Babylon 5 (“Believers”), Twilight Zone (“A Day in Beaumont,” “A Saucer of Loneliness”), Land of the Lost (“Cha-Ka,” “The Sleestak God,” “Hurricane,” “Possession,” “Circle”), Tales from the Darkside (“Levitation,” “If the Shoes Fit”), Logan’s Run (“Man Out of Time”), and more.

David Gerrold is a figment of his own imagination.