The Essential Ellison Part 93

"I'm a coward, yes, I'll admit it;" Moth said helplessly. "But, please, let me sit."

"Oh, for Christ's sake, sit already! But just shut your mouth; don't speak to me!" He turned once again to the port.

Moth sat down, folded his hands on the table, did not speak, stared steadily at the young man's profile.

After a few moments the young man turned his face. He looked at Moth. "You make me sick. I'd like to punch you in the face, you disgusting coward."

"Yes," said Moth miserably, "I wouldn't stop you. I'm a coward, as you say."

"Worse! Worse than just a coward. A hypocrite, a silly posturing fool! You spent your whole life playing the big man, the big stud, the cavalier. The tough, cynical mover and shaker. But you weren't any smarter or tougher than any other simpleminded jerk who thought with his groin."

"I made mistakes," Moth said. "Just like everybody else. There's never enough experience. I thought I knew what I was doing. I fell in love with her."

"Oh, that's terrific," the young man said. The tone was frankly vicious. "Terrific. You fell in love. You moron! She was nineteen. You were over twice her age. Why did you let her whipsaw you into marriage? Come on, you idiot, why?"

"She said she loved me, thought I was better than other men, said if I didn't marry her she would go away and I'd never see her again. I was in love, I'd only been in love once before. No, that isn't right: I'd only loved once before. The thought of never seeing that face again filled me with fear. That was it: I was afraid I'd never see her again: I couldn't live with that."

"So you married her."

"Yes."

"But you couldn't sleep with her, couldn't make love to her. What did you expect from her? She was a child."

"She talked like a woman. She said all the right things an adult woman says. I didn't realize she was still confused, didn't know what she wanted."

"But you couldn't make love to her, isn't that so?"

"Yes, it's so. She was like a child, a daughter; my thoughts weren't straight; I didn't realize that was what was happening. All interest in s.e.x just vanished; for her, for any woman. I thought-"

"What she thought. That you were impotent. That you were falling apart. She got more frightened every day. A lifetime to spend with a man who would never show her any pa.s.sion."

"But there was love. I loved her. Without reserve. I showed it in a million ways, every hour of the day that we spent together."

"Gifts."

"Yes, gifts. Touches. Hugs and kisses and smiles."

"Purchases. You tried buying her."

"No, never that."

"Rented, then. It was the same."

The young man clenched and unclenched his hands. They seemed to have movement directed from somewhere outside him. The hands moved and seemed to want to strike Moth. The man in clown-white could not have failed to notice, but he did not flinch, did not move away. He sat waiting for the next a.s.sault, willing victim.

"How did it feel when you found out she was sleeping with him?"

"It hurt terribly. Worse than anything I'd ever felt. There was a ball of pain in the bottom of my lungs, like something inside breathing, a second heart. I don't know; and every time it breathed, the pain was worse."

The young man sneered. "And what did you do about it, big man?"

"I wanted to kill him."

"Why him? He was only picking up on the available goodies. You leave something lying around unused, there'll always be someone who'll put it to use."

Moth sat forlornly, "It was the way she was doing it."

The young man laughed nastily. "You a.s.s. There's always some stupid rationalization cuckolds like you fasten on to make it seem dramatic. If it hadn't been this way, it would have been another; and you'd have found some aspect of that in bad taste. Can't you understand it's all excuses?"

"But when I found out, and asked her to leave, she said she would go to stay with her family, to think it out. But she moved in with him."

The young man moved suddenly. He leaned across and grabbed Moth's s.h.i.+rt. He pulled him halfway across the table and his voice became a low snarl of hatred. "Then what did you do, hero? Huh, what happened then?"

Moth spoke softly, as if ashamed. "I loaded a gun and went down there to his apartment and kicked in the door. I put my shoe flat against the jamb right beside the lock and pulled back and slammed it as hard as I could. It popped the lock right out of the frame. I went straight through the living room of that awful little apartment and into the bedroom, and they were on the bed naked. It was just the way I'd been seeing it in my head, with him on top of her, except they'd heard the lock shatter and he was trying to get untangled from the sheets and I caught him with one foot on the floor."

The young man shook Moth. Not too hard, but hard enough to show how angry he was, how disgusted he was. Beyond them, the megaflow took on a scar-tissue appearance, inflamed, nastily pink with burned blue tinges. He continued shaking Moth gently, as if jangling coins from a small bank.

"I rushed him and shoved the gun into his mouth. I heard him start to moan something and then his teeth broke when the muzzle of the gun went into his mouth. I pushed him flat on his back, down onto the bed, and I kneeled with my right leg on his chest, and I told her to get dressed, that I was taking her out of there."

The young man shoved him back. Moth sat silently.

"What a stupid, miserable, pitiful little mind you are. None of that is true, is it?"

Moth looked away. Softly, he said, "No. None of it."

"What did you do when you found out she was with him, after four months of marriage?"

"Nothing."

"You loaded the gun and did nothing."

"Yes."

"You couldn't even bring yourself to make the act real, could you?"

"No. I'm a coward. I wanted to kill him, and then kill myself."

"But not her."

"No. Never her. I loved her. I couldn't kill her, so I wanted to kill everything else in the world."

"Get away from me, you pathetic little s.h.i.+t. Just get up and walk away from me and don't talk to me any more. You ran away. You're running now. But you're not going to escape."

Moth said, "In time, I'll forget.""You'll never completely forget it. Time will dull it, and maybe it'll be supportable. But you'll never forget."

"Perhaps not," Moth said, and stood up. He turned away, and as he turned away, the light that had blazed madly in the young man's eyes dimmed and went out. He turned back to the scar-tissue of the megaflow and stared at nothingness.

Moth walked through the lounge, breathing deeply.

He pa.s.sed a beautiful woman with pale yellow hair and almost white eyebrows who was sitting in company with two nondescript men at a table for four. As Moth came abreast of her, she reached out and touched his arm. "I feel more sorrow for you than animosity," she said, in a gentle and deep voice. Her words were filled with rich tones.

Moth sat down in the empty chair. The two men seemed not to see him, though they listened to the conversation between Moth and the beautiful woman.

"No one should ever be judged heartless because he tended to his own personal survival," she said. She held an unlit cigarette in a short holder. One of the men in attendance moved to light it, but she waved him away sharply. Her attention was solidly with Moth.

"I could have saved one of them," Moth responded. He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, as though seeing again a terrible vision from the past. "The fire, the Home ballooning with flames from the windows, the sound of their screams. They were so old, so helpless."

The pale yellow hair s.h.i.+mmered as the beautiful woman shook her head. "You were only the caretaker of their lives; it wasn't written on stone that you had to die for them. You were conscientious, you were a good administrator; there was never the slightest impropriety in the Home. But what could you do? You were afraid! Everyone has a secret fear. For some it's growing old, for others it's snakes or spiders or being buried alive. Drowning, being laughed at in public, closed-in s.p.a.ces, being rejected. Everyone has something."

"I didn't know it was fire. I swear to G.o.d I didn't realize. But when I came down the hall that night and smelled the smoke, I was paralyzed. I stood there in the hall, just staring at the wire-screen door to the dormitory section. We always kept it locked at night. It wasn't a jail... it was for their own protection: they were so old, and some of them roamed at night. We couldn't keep watch all the time, it just wasn't feasible."

"I know, I know," the beautiful woman said, soothing him. "It was for their own protection. They had their television in the dorm, and bathroom facilities. It was lovely up there, just the same as the private rooms on the lower floors. But they roamed, they walked at night; they might fall down stairs or have an attack and there would be no one to help them, no call b.u.t.ton for you or an orderly nearby. I understand why you kept the screen locked."

Moth spread his hands helplessly. He looked this way and that, as if seeking a white light that would release him from the pain of memory. "I smelled the smoke, and as I stood there, not knowing what to do, almost ready to rush forward and unlock the door and go inside, a blast of heat and flame came right through the screen! The heat was so intense I fell back. But even then... even then I would have done something, but the cat..."

The beautiful woman nodded. "It was the sight of the cat that terrified you, that made you suddenly realize it was rue that hid down there in your mind, waiting to possess you. I understand, anyone would understand!"

"I don't know how it got through the screen. It... it strained itself through, and it was on rue, burning, one of the old woman's cats. It was on fire. The smell of the fur, the crackling, it was burning like fat in a rue. It screamed, oh G.o.d the sound of the screaming, the tail all black and the parts of it bubbling..."

"Don't!" the beautiful woman said, feeling Moth's pain. "Don't torment yourself. You ran. I understand why you ran. There was nothing you could do."

"No one knew I had had the choice. I stood outside and watched, and once I saw a face at one of the windows. It was wrapped in flames, an old man, his long hair burning. It was ghastly, terrible, I couldn't bear it. I cried and screamed up at them, and the ones who had escaped, some of the orderlies tried to get back up there, and one of them was killed, when the ceiling fell in. But no one knew I had had a chance to save them, I might have saved them, perhaps only one of them, but I could have done something."

"No," the woman with the pale hair rea.s.sured him, "no. You would have been burned alive, too. And there had been the cat. No one ever need know."

"But I know!"

"You survived. That's what counts."

"The pain. The knowledge, the pain."

"It will pa.s.s."

"No. Never."

One of the two men moved again to light her cigarette. She put the cigarette and the holder on the table. Moth shook himself as if awakening from a nightmare, and stood up. He turned away from the woman and her silent companions. The light in her eyes faded.

Moth walked through the lounge.

The gigantic vessel plowed on through the roiling megaflow jelly, bound for the end of appreciable s.p.a.ce, asymptotically struggling toward the verge of time, pulling itself forward inexorably to the precipice of measurable thought. The voyage included only three stops: embarkation, princ.i.p.al debarkation and over the edge. The voyagers sat dull and silent, occasionally sipping off drinks that had been ordered through the punchb.u.t.ton system on each chair. The only sounds in the lounge were the susurrations as the panels in the tables opened to allow drinks to rise to the surface, the random sounds of fingernails or teeth on gla.s.s, and the ever-present hiss of the megaflow as it rampaged past the vessel. Voices could be heard in the boiling jelly, carried through the hull of the vessel, like voices of the dead, whispering for their final hearing, their day in the court of judgment. But no coherent thoughts came with those voices, no actual words, no messages from the beyond that could be of any use to the voyagers within.

Entombed outside time and s.p.a.ce and thought, the voyagers sat silently within their trip s.h.i.+p, facing in any direction they chose. Direction did not matter. The vessel only traveled in one direction. And they, within, entombed.

Moth wandered through the lounge, sitting here for a few moments to tell a fat man of how he had taken a girl who worked for him as a secretary away from her husband and children, had set her up in an expensive apartment, and then, weary of her, had left her with the unbreakable lease and no funds, even without a job because it simply isn't good business to be having an affair with someone who works for you. particularly not with a woman who is so suicide-p.r.o.ne. And he told the fat man how he had set up a trust fund for the children after it was over, after the girl who had worked for him as a secretary had become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Wandered through the lounge, sitting there for a long time confessing to an old woman with many rings how he had mercilessly used his' age and illness to bind his sons and daughters to him till long past the time when they could find joyful lives for themselves, with no intention of ever signing over his wealth to them. Wandered through the lounge sitting over there for a time to reveal to a tall, thin chocolate-colored man how he had betrayed the other members of a group to which he had belonged, naming names and, from the dark interior of the back seat of a large automobile, pointing out the ones who had led the movement, and watching as they had been battered to their knees in the rain and the mud, and wincing as the thugs with the lead pipes had smashed in the back of each head, very professionally, very smoothly, only one solid downstroke for each man. Wandered through the lounge and talked to a pretty young girl about the devious mind games he had played with lovers, unnerving them and unsettling them and forcing them to spend all their time trying to dance and sing their dances and songs of life for his amus.e.m.e.nt, until their dances had degenerated into feeble tremblings and their songs had died away to rattles. Wandered through the lounge being penitent, remorseful, contrite. Sat and recanted, rued, confessed, humbled himself and wept occasionally.

And each person, as he walked away leaving them to their secret thoughts, flickered for a moment with life in the eyes, and then the lights died and they were once again alone.

He came to a table where a thin, plain-looking young woman sat alone, biting her thumbnail."I'd like to sit down and discuss something with you," he said. She shrugged as if she didn't care, and he sat.

"I've come to realize we're all alone," he said.

She did not reply. Merely stared at him.

"No matter how many people love us or care for us or want to ease our burden in this life," Moth said, "we are all, all of us, always alone. Something Aldous Huxley once said, I'm not sure I know it exactly. I've looked and looked and can't find the quote, but I remember part of it. He said: 'We are, each of us, an island universe in a sea of s.p.a.ce.' I think that was it."

She looked at him without expression. Her face was thin and without remarkable features. No engaging smile, no intricate intriguing bone structure, no sudden dimple or angle that revealed her as even momentarily attractive. The look she gave him was the one she had perfected. Neutral.

"My life has always been sad music," Moth said, with enormous sincerity. "Like a long symphony played all in minors. Wind in trees and conversations heard through walls at night. No one looked at me, no one wanted to know. But I maintained; that's all there is. There's one day, and the end of it, and night, and sleep that comes slowly, and then another day. Until there are as many behind as there are ahead. No questions, no answers, alone. But I maintain. I don't let it bend me. And the song continues."

The unprepossessing young woman smiled faintly.

She reached across and touched his hand.

Moth's eyes sparkled for a moment.

Then the gigantic vessel began to slow.

They sat that way, her hand on his, until the tambour windows rolled up and they were encysted totally. And soon the gigantic vessel ceased its movement. They had arrived at the edge, at the point of debarkation.

Everyone rose to leave.

Moth stood and walked away from them. He walked back through the lounge and no one spoke to him, no one touched him. He came to the door to his stateroom and he turned.

"Excuse me," he said. They watched, silently.

"Is there anyone here who will change places with me, please? Anyone who will take my place for the rest of the voyage?" He looked out at them from his white makeup, and he waited a decent time.

No one answered, though the unremarkable young woman seemed to want to say something. But she didn't.

Moth smiled. "I thought not," he said softly.

Then he turned and the door to his stateroom rolled up and he went inside. The door rolled down and everyone left the gigantic vessel quietly.

After a moment the debarkation port irised shut, and the gigantic vessel began to move again. On into final darkness, from which there was no return.

"Quae nocent docent."

WHAT PAINS US TRAINS US.

XIVTHECLa.s.sICS.

"[...] a writer may have a message, an emotion, a philosophy to impart in his fiction, and these are the most marvelous kinds of serendipity. But his first job is to entertain. To inform comes second. To entertain comes first."

"A Voice from the Styx," Psychotic, September 1968 In an earlier reference to Harlan's first professional story, it was noted that "the basic conflict between human fear and human determination" would be the major thrust of the later aggregate. The major works that confirm this uncompromising position, and hold up under both critical and popular scrutiny, must be stories that somehow embody what we have gleaned from the dozens of preceding selections (not to mention the hundreds more not included here).