The Essential Ellison Part 50

Knox spent his recreation hours in the ward temple's interrogation chambers, quizzing malcontents. He began to collect fingers. They retained their look much longer than ears or c.o.c.ks.

Knox spent three years getting ahead, but he hardly noticed the pa.s.sage of time, it flew so fast.

Charlie Knox. Is. A man who.Had been trained."Not me, Charlie...please, Charlie, what are you doing, not me!""Stop backing away. I'll make it quick."

Across the bedroom. She picked up a pink mule with a pompon pouf on the toe. He followed. With the knife. She raised the bedroom slipper over her head, heel turned toward Knox threateningly.

"There's a mistake, Charlie!"

"No mistake."

"It wasn't my name on the list, honey, please!"

"They don't make mistakes."

A shoe is no d.a.m.ned defense.

"Charlie, not me, I love you, honey. "

He. Stops.

He. Sees movement out of the. Corner. Of his eye.

He looks for the first time.

"Not me, Charlie!"

His conditioning. Breaks.

Persons in black garments. There.

They have always been there. Now he sees. Them.

They stood watching Knox as he backed his wife into the corner at knife point.

"Oh, my G.o.d...Brenda! Do you see them?"

"Please, Charlie..."

"No, it's okay, I won't hurt you...do you see them?"

"See who, Charlie?"

Silence from them. Knox stared at them, fully, openly. And he realized they had been there often, watching him, on the raid, in the manufactory, in the furniture store, as he drove nails, in the bell tower, as he got ahead in the Party. They had always been there.

"I'm starting to remember, a lot of it is coming back."

"Charlie, what're you talking about...don't hurt me, honey."

"Brenda, listen: right there, standing right there, don't you see them?"

"I don't see anything, Charlie; are you all right? You wanna lay down a while, Charlie? The kids won't be home for a couple hours."

"I don't know where they came from, another world I guess, but that doesn't matter. They're training us, to go out there for them, out there somewhere. But we weren't cruel enough. They took up where we left ourselves off."

She lowered the slipper. He was rambling on now, saying things. The persons in black garments stood watching him, and there was almost a sadness on their faces, as though they had spent a great deal of time building something intricate and lovely and efficient, and now it had broken down. Their expressions did not speak of repair.

"They gave us the work on the line, and the words, and the missions, and the President's health. When did they come? How long ago? What do they want from-"

And he stopped.

He. Knew.

Charlie Knox is. A man who: Had been a man.

Had been trained.

To go out there where he would not have been able to survive without their training.

Charlie Knox is a man who understood what he had been.

What he had become.

What he would have to be.

To be. Out there.

"Oh, G.o.d..." Pain. And silence. Knox looked at his wife with eyes that might have belonged to the final moments of a golden retriever. "I won't do it."

"Won't do what, Charlie? Please, Charlie, talk sense, lie down a little.""You know I love you, honest to G.o.d I do."He turned the knife and gripped it with both hands and drove it deep into his own stomach.For Knox, the porch light had been turned off.

She sits on the edge of the bed and cannot take her eyes from the memory of the man she lived with for nine years. The memory remains, the form on the floor is someone vaguely familiar but undeniably a stranger.

Finally, she rises, and begins to dust the room. She cleans thoroughly, mechanically, despite the dim black shapes she sees from the corner of her eye, shapes she takes to be dust. And so she cleans. Thoroughly. Mechanically.

Brenda Knox. Is. A woman who.

The only thing we have to fear on this planet is man.

-CARL GUSTAV JUNG.

With Virgil Oddum at the East Pole The day he crawled out of the dead cold Icelands, the glaciers creepings down the great cliff were sea-green: endless rivers of tinted, faceted emeralds lit from within. Memories of crippled chances shone in the ice. That was a day, and I remember this clearly, during which the purple sky of Hotlands was filled with the downdrifting balloon spores that had died rus.h.i.+ng through the beams of the uv lamps in the peanut fields of the silver crescent. That was a day remembering clearly-with Argo squatting on the horizon of Hotlands, an enormous inverted tureen of ruby gla.s.s.

He crawled toward me and the ancient f.u.x I called Amos the Wise; crawled, literally crawled, up the land-bridge of Westspit onto Meditation Island. Through the slush and sludge and amber mud of the Terminator's largest island.

His heat-envelope was filthy and already cracking, and he tore open the velcro mouth flap without regard for saving the garment as he crawled toward a rotting clump of spillweed.

When I realized that he intended to eat it, I moved to him quickly and crouched in front of him so he couldn't get to it.

"I wouldn't put that in your mouth," I said. "It'll kill you."

He didn't say anything, but he looked up at me from down there on his hands and knees with an expression that said it all. He was starving, and if I didn't come up with some immediate alternative to the spillweed, he was going to eat it anyhow, even if it killed him.

This was only one hundred and nineteen years after we had brought the wonders of the human race to Medea, and though I was serving a term of penitence on Meditation Island, I wasn't so sure I wanted to make friends with another human being. I was having a hard enough time just communicating with f.u.xes. I certainly didn't want to take charge of his life...even in as small a way as being responsible for saving it.

Funny the things that flash through your mind. I remember at that moment, with him looking at me so desperately, recalling a cartoon I'd once seen: it was one of those standard thirsty-man-crawling-out-of-the-desert cartoons, with a long line of crawl-marks stretching to the horizon behind an emaciated, bearded wanderer. And in the foreground is a man on a horse, looking down at this poor dying devil with one clawed hand lifted in a begging gesture, and the guy on the horse is smiling and saying to the thirsty man, "Peanut b.u.t.ter sandwich?"

I didn't think he'd find it too funny.

So I pulled up the spillweed, so he wouldn't go for it before I got back, and I trotted over to my wickyup and got him a ball of peanut cheese and a nip-off bulb of water, and came back and helped him sit up to eat.

It took him a while, and of course we were covered with pink and white spores by the time he finished. The smell was awful.

I helped him to his feet. Pretty unsteady. And he leaned on me walking back to the wickyup. I laid him down on my air-mattress and he closed his eyes and fell asleep immediately. Maybe he fainted, I don't know.

His name was Virgil Oddum; but I didn't know that, either, at the time.

I didn't ever know much about him. Not then, not later, not even now. It's funny how everybody knows what he did, but not why he did it, or even who he was; and until recently, not so much as his name, nothing.

In a way, I really resent it. The only reason anybody knows me is because I knew him, Virgil Oddum. But they don't care about me or what I was going through, just him, because of what he did. My name is Pogue. William Ronald Pogue, like rogue; and I'm important, too. You should know names.

Jason was chasing Theseus through the twilight sky directly over the Terminator when he woke up. The clouds of dead balloon spores had pa.s.sed over and the sky was amber again, with bands of color was.h.i.+ng across the bulk of Argo. I was trying to talk with Amos the Wise.

I was usually trying to talk with Amos the Wise.

The xenoanthropologists at the main station at Perdue Farm in the silver crescent call communication with the f.u.xes ekstasis-literally, "to stand outside oneself. " A kind of enriched empathy that conveys concepts and emotional sets, but nothing like words or pictures. I would sit and stare at one of the f.u.xes, and he would crouch there on his hindquarters and stare back at me; and we'd both fill up with what the other was thinking. Sort of. More or less overcome with vague feelings, general tones of emotion...memories of when the f.u.x had been a hunter; when he had had the extra hindquarters he'd dropped when he was female; the vision of a kilometer-high tidal wave once seen near the Seven Pillars on the Ring; chasing females and endlessly mating. It was all there, every moment of what was a long life for a f.u.x: fifteen Medean years.

But it was all flat. Like a drama done with enormous expertise and no soul. The arrangement of thoughts was random, without continuity, without flow. There was no color, no interpretation, no sense of what it all meant for the dromids.

It was artless and graceless; it was merely data.

And so trying to "talk" to Amos was like trying to get a computer to create original, deeply meaningful poetry. Sometimes I had the feeling he had been "a.s.signed" to me, to humor me; to keep me busy.

At the moment the man came out of my wickyup, I was trying to get Amos to codify the visual nature of the f.u.xes' religious relations.h.i.+p to Castor C, the binary star that Amos and his race thought of as Maternal Grandfather and Paternal Grandfather. For the human colony they were Phrixus and h.e.l.le.

I was trying to get Amos to understand flow and the emotional load in changing colors when the double shadow fell between us and I looked up to see the man standing behind me. At the same moment I felt a lessening of the ekstasis between the f.u.x and me. As though some other receiving station was leaching off power.

The man stood there, unsteadily, weaving and trying to keep his balance, staring at Amos. The f.u.x was staring back. They were communicating, but what was pa.s.sing between them I didn't know. Then Amos got up and walked away, with that liquid rolling gait old male f.u.xes affect after they've dropped their hindquarters. I got up with some difficulty: since coming to Medea I'd developed mild arthritis in my knees and sitting cross-legged stiffened me.

As I stood up, he started to fall over, still too weak from crawling out of Icelands. He fell into my arms, and I confess my first thought was annoyance because now I knew he'd be another thing I'd have to worry about.

"Hey, hey," I said, "take it easy."

I helped him to the wickyup, and put him on his back on the airmattress. "Listen, fellah," I said, "I don't want to be cold about this, but I'm out here all alone, paying my time. I don't get another s.h.i.+pment of rations for about four months and I can't keep you here."

He didn't say anything. Just stared at me.

"Who the h.e.l.l are you? Where'd you come from?"

Watching me. I used to be able to read expression very accurately. Watching me, with hatred.

I didn't even know him. He didn't have any idea what was what, why I was out there on Meditation Island; there wasn't any reason he should hate me.

"How'd you get here?"

Watching. Not a word out of him.

"Listen, mister: here's the long and short of it. There isn't any way I can get in touch with anybody to come and get you. And I can't keep you here because there just isn't enough ration. And I'm not going to let you stay here and starve in front of me, because after a while you're sure as h.e.l.l going to go for my food and I'm going to fight you for it, and one of us is going to get killed. And I am not about to have that kind of a situation, understand? Now I know this is chill, but you've got to go. Take a few days, get some strength. If you hike straight across Eastspit and keep going through Hotlands, you might get spotted by someone out spraying the fields. I doubt it, but maybe."

Not a sound. Just watching me and hating me.

"Where'd you come from? Not out there in Icelands. Nothing can live out there. It's minus thirty Celsius. Out there." Silence. "Just glaciers. Out there."

Silence. I felt that uncontrollable anger rising in me.

"Look, jamook, I'm not having this. Understand me? I'm just not having any of it. You've got to go. I don't give a d.a.m.n if you're the Count of Monte Crespo or the lost Dauphin of Threx: you're getting the h.e.l.l out of here as soon as you can crawl. " He stared up at me and I wanted to hit the b.a.s.t.a.r.d as hard as I could. I had to control myself. This was the kind of thing that had driven me to Meditation Island.

Instead, I squatted there watching him for a long time. He never blinked. Just watched me. Finally, I said, very softly, "What'd you say to the f.u.x?"

A double shadow fell through the door and I looked up. It was Amos the Wise. He'd peeled back the entrance Hap with his tail because his hands were full. Impaled on the three long, sinewy fingers of each hand were six freshly caught dartfish. He stood there in the doorway, b.l.o.o.d.y light from the sky forming a corona that lit his blue, furry shape; and he extended the skewered fish.

I'd been six months on Meditation Island. Every day of that time I'd tried to spear a dartfish. Flash freeze and peanut cheese and box-ration, they can pall on you pretty fast. You want to gag at the sight of silvr wrap. I'd wanted fresh food. Every day for six months I'd tried to catch something live. They were too fast. That's why they weren't called slowfish. The f.u.xes had watched me. Not one had ever moved to show me how they did it. Now this old neuter Amos was offering me half a dozen. I knew what the guy had said to him.

"Who the h.e.l.l are you?" I was about as skewed as I could be. I wanted to pound him out a little, delete that hateful look on his face, put him in a way so I wouldn't have to care for him. He didn't say a word, just kept looking at me; but the f.u.x came inside the wickyup-first time he'd ever done that, d.a.m.n his slanty eyes!-and he moved around between us, the dartfish extended.

This guy had some kind of hold over the aborigine! He didn't say a thing, but the f.u.x knew enough to get between us and insist I take the fish. So I did it, cursing both of them under my breath.

And as I pried off the six dartfish I felt the old f.u.x pull me into a How with him, and stronger than I'd ever been able to do it when we'd done ekstasis, Amos the Wise let me know that this was a very holy creature, this thing that had crawled out of the Icelands, and I'd better treat him pretty fine, or else. There wasn't even a hint of a picture of what or else might be, but it was a strong How, a strong How.

So I took the fish and put them in the larder, and I let the f.u.x know how grateful I was, and he didn't pay me enough attention to mesmerize a gnat; and the How was gone; and he was doing ekstasis with my guest lying out as nice and comfy as you please; and then he turned and slid out of the wickyup and was gone.

I sat there through most of the night watching him, and one moment he was staring at me, and the next he was asleep; and I went on through that first night just sitting there looking at him gonked-in like that, where I would have been sleeping if he hadn't showed up. Even asleep he hated me. But he was too weak to stay awake and enjoy it.

So I looked at him, wondering who the h.e.l.l he was, most of that night. Until I couldn't take it any more, and near to morning I just beat the c.r.a.p out of him.

They kept bringing food. Not just fish, but plants I'd never seen before, things that grew out there in Hotlands east of us, out there where it always stank like rotting garbage. Some of the plants needed to be cooked, and some of them were delicious just eaten raw. But I knew they'd never have showed me any of that if it hadn't been for him.

He never spoke to me, and he never told the f.u.xes that I'd beaten him the first night he was in camp; and his manner never changed. Oh, I knew he could talk all right, because when he slept he tossed and thrashed and shouted things in his sleep. I never understood any of it; some offworld language. But whatever it was, it made him feel sick to remember it. Even asleep he was in torment.

He was determined to stay. I knew that from the second day. I caught him pilfering stores.

No, that's not accurate. He was doing it openly. I didn't catch him. He was going through the stash in the transport sheds, mostly goods I wouldn't need for a while yet, and items whose functions no longer related to my needs. He had already liberated some of those items when I discovered him burrowing through the stores: the neetskin tent I'd used before building the wickyup from storm-hewn fellner trees; the spare air-mattress; a hologram projector I'd used during the first month to keep me entertained with a selection of laser beads, mostly Noh plays and conundramas. I'd grown bored with the diversions very quickly: they didn't seem to be a part of my life of penitence. He had commandeered the projector, but not the beads. Everything had been pulled out and stacked.

"What do you think you're doing?" I stood behind him, fists knotted, waiting for him to say something snappy.

He straightened with some difficulty, holding his ribs where I'd kicked him the night before. He turned and looked at me evenly. I was surprised: he didn't seem to hate me as much as he'd let it show the day before. He wasn't afraid of me, though I was larger and had already demonstrated that I could bash him if I wanted to bash him, or leave him alone if I chose to leave him alone. He just stared, waiting for me to get the message.