Ellison Wonderland (17 page)

I could then proceed without air for long periods, even as a camel can go without water for periods of great duration. Of course I would have to have an occasional suck to restore what I had used up in between; in an emergency, I could go without for a long while, but then I would need a
long
suck to replace completely.

How it had occurred, down in the nucleoprotein level, I was not that much of a biochemist to understand. What I knew I knew by hypno–courses I had taken many years before in the Deimos University required courses. I knew these things, but had never studied enough to be able to analyze them. Given time and sufficient references, I was sure I could unravel the mystery; for unlike Earth scientists, who discounted almost–instantaneous mutation as a fantasy, I
had
to believe . . . for it had happened to me. I had only to feel my face, my puffed and now ballooned face to know it was true. So I had more to work with than they did.

At that moment, I realized I had been standing erect for some minutes, my face nowhere near the Fluhs. Yet I was breathing comfortably.

Yes, I had something to work with, where they did not, for I was living the nightmare fantasy they said was impossible.

That was six months ago. Now it is well into night, and judging from the way the Fluhs are dying, there will be nothing when light comes. Nothing left to breathe. Nothing for my noon meal.

It was so dark. The stars were too far off to care about Hell or what lived there. I should have known, of course. In the eternal darkness of twelve months' night, the Fluhs die. They don't gray–ash as the ones I first picked did. No, instead they retreat into the ground. They grow smaller and smaller, as though they were a motion picture, being run backward. They get tinier and finally disappear entirely. Whether they encyst themselves, or just die completely, I'll never know, for the ground is much too hard to dig in, and what little I've been able to scrape away, where the scoria–like formations extend into the ground, reveal nothing but small holes where the blossoms descended.

My head was starting to hurt again, and my sac was emptying out all the faster, for my breathing — which I had learned to make shallow — was deepening with the effort. I started back toward the ship.

It was many miles around the planet. For I had been living in caves and subsisting on the rations brought with me, for the past three “days.” I had been trying to track down a thriving patch of Fluhs, not only to get oxygen to replenish my emptying sac, but to further study their strange metabolism. For my oxygen supply in the hutch was fast diminishing; something had gone broke in the system when I landed . . . or perhaps the same particles that had caused the ship's reactors to explode had caused invisible damage in the oxygen recirculator. I didn't know. But I did know I had to learn to live on what Hell could give me . . . or die.

It had been a difficult decision. I had wanted very much to die.

I was standing in the open, with the heated cowl of my air–suit grotesquely drawn about my head and sac, when I saw the flickering in the deep. It burned steadily for an instant, then continued to flicker, as it fell toward the tiny planet.

I realized almost at once that it was a ship. Unbelievable, unbelievable, but somehow, in some manner I could never understand, God had sent a ship to take me from this place. I started running, back toward my hutch, what was left of my ship.

I stumbled once, and fell, only to scramble along on all fours till I could get my balance. I continued running, and by the time I had reached the hutch, my sac was nearly empty, and my head was splitting. I got inside and dogged the lock, then leaned against it in exhaustion, drawing deeply deeply for the air inside.

I turned toward the radio gear, even before the ache was gone from my head, and threw myself roughly into the plot–seat. I had almost forgotten how valuable the set could be; lost out here, so far over the Edge, I had never even given serious consideration to the possibility of being found. Actually, had I stopped to consider, it was not so peculiar after all; my ship had not exploded that far off the trade routes. True, I was far out, but any number of circumstances could combine to bring another ship my way.

And they had.

And it had.

And it was.

I flipped on the beacon signal, and set it to all–bands, hearing the bdeep–bdeep–bdeep of it in the hutch, going out, I knew, to that ship circling the planet. That done, I turned slowly in the plot chair, hands on my knees —

— only to catch sight of myself in the burnished wall of the recirculator. I saw my sac, grotesque, monstrous, hideous, covered with a week's stubble of spikey beard growth, my mouth drawn down in a gash. I was hardly human any longer.

When they came, I would not open the lock for them.

Finally, I allowed them in. There were three of them, young, clean–limbed, trying to hide their horror at what I had become. They came in and stripped out of their bulky pressure suits. The hatch was crowded, but the girl and one of the men squatted on the floor and the other man perched on the plot tank's edge.

“My name — ” I didn't know whether to say “is” or “was” so I slurred it easily, “Tom Van Horne. I've been here about four or five months, I'm not sure which.”

One of the young men — he was staring at me frankly, he could not take his eyes off me, in fact — replied, “We belong to the Human Research Foundation. Expedition to evaluate some of the worlds out past the Edge for colonization. We — we — saw the other half of your ship. There was a wom — ”

I stopped him. “I know. My wife.” They stared at the port, the deckplate, the bulkhead.

We talked for some time, and I could see they were interested in my theories of near–instantaneous mutation. It was their field, and soon the girl said, “Mr. Van Horne, you have stumbled on something terribly vital to us all. You
must
come back with us and help us get to the heart of — of — your, uh, your change.” She blushed, and it reminded me a little of my wife.

Then the other two started in. They used me as a buffer, asking questions and answering them, and trying to inveigle me, to warm me to the prospect of returning. I was caught up in a maelstrom of enthusiasm. A feeling of belonging stole over me, and I forgot. I forgot how the ship had gone out like a match; I forgot how she had stood there frozen in the companionway, blue and strange; I forgot all the years I had spent bumming in space; I forgot the months here; and most of all I forgot the change.

They pleaded with me, and said we would go right now. I hesitated for an instant, not even knowing why, but subconsciously crying to myself to not listen. Then I relented, and got into my air–suit. When I pulled the heated cowl up about my sac, they all stared for a long moment, until the girl nudged one of the fellows, and the other broke into a nervous titter.

They jollied me, telling me how important my discovery would be to mankind. I listened; I was wanted. It was good, so good, after what had seemed an eternity on Hell.

We left my hutch, and started across the short space between their ship and my life cubicle. I was pleased and surprised to see how shining their ship was; they were proud of it, they took good care of it. They were the new breed — the high–strung, intelligent scientists with the youthful ideas and the glory in them. They weren't tired old folks like me. The ship was lighted by automatic floods that had come out on the hull, and the vessel shone in the night of Hell like a great glowing torch. I thought about going back into deep space once more.

We came up to the ship, and one of the men depressed a stud that started a humming inside the ship. A landing ramp slid down from far above as the outer lock opened, and I knew this was a more recent model than my ship had been. But then, that didn't disturb me; I had been a poor space bum before I met her. She had been all the drive I'd ever needed.

I took a step forward, up the ramp, and two things happened, almost simultaneously:

I caught a glimpse of myself in the glowing shell of the ship. It was not a pretty picture. My ghoul's mouth, drawn down and to the side like a knife wound. My eye, a mere slit of brightness, the sac so hideous and vein–marked. I stopped on the ramp, with them directly behind me.

And the second thing happened.

I heard her.

Somewhere . . . far off . . . in a bright amber cavern hung down with scintillant stalactites . . . swathed in a shimmering aura of goodness and cleanliness and hope . . . younger than the next instant . . . radiantly beautiful and calling to me . . . calling with a voice of music that was the sound of suns flaring and stars twinkling and earth moving and grass growing and small things being happy . . . it was she!

I listened there for a moment that spanned forever.

My head tilted to the side, I listened, and I knew what she said was truth, so simple and so pure and so real, that I turned and edged past them on the ramp, and regained Hell again.

Her voice stopped in a moment of my touching ground.

They stared at me, and for a short time they said nothing. Then one of the men — the short, blond fellow with alert blue eyes and hardly any neck — said, “What's the matter?”

“I'm not going,” I said.

The girl ran down the ramp to me. “But why?” she cried.

I couldn't tell her, of course. But she was so small, so sweet, and she reminded me of my wife, when I had first met her, so I answered, “I've been here too long; I'm not very nice to look at — ”

“Oh — ” and she tried to stop me, but it was a sob, so it did not interfere.

“ — and you may not understand this but I — I've been, well, content here. It's a hard world, and it's dark, but she's up there — ” I looked toward the black sky of Hell, “ — and I wouldn't want to go away and leave her alone. Can you understand that?”

They nodded slowly, and one of the men said, “But this is more than just you, Van Horne. This is a discovery that means a great deal to everyone on Earth.”

“It's getting worse and worse there every year. With the new anti–agathic drugs, people just aren't dying, and they've still got the Catho–Presybite Lobby to keep any really effective birth control laws from being enacted. The crowding is terrible; that's one of the chief reasons we're out here, to see how Man can adapt to these worlds. Your discovery can aid us tremendously.”

“And you said the Fluhs were gone,” the other man said. “Without them, you'll die.” I smiled at them; she had said something, something important about the Fluhs.

“I can still do some good,” I replied quickly. “Send me a few young people. Let them come here, and we will study together. I can show them what I have found, and they can experiment here. Laboratory conditions could never match what I've found on Hell.”

That seemed to do it. They looked at me sadly, and the girl agreed . . . the other two matched her agreement in a moment.

“And, and — I couldn't leave her here alone,” I said again.

“Goodbye, Tom Van Horne,” she said, and she pressed my hand between her mittened ones. It was a kiss on the cheek, but her helmet prevented it physically, so she clasped my hand.

Then they started up the ramp.

“What will you do for air, with the Fluhs gone?” one of the men asked, stopping halfway up.

“I'll be all right, I promise you. I'll be here when you return.” They looked at me with doubt, but I smiled, and patted my sac, and they looked uncomfortable, and started up the ramp again.

“We'll be back. With others.” The girl looked down at me. I waved, and they went inside. Then I loped back to the hutch, and watched them as they shattered the night with their fire and fury. When they were gone, I went outside, and stared up at the dim, so–faraway points of the dead stars.

Where she circled, up there, somewhere.

And I knew I would have something for my noon meal, and all the meals thereafter. She had told me; I suppose I knew it all along, but it hadn't registered, but she had told me: the Fluhs were not dead. They had merely gone down to replenish their own oxygen supply from the planet itself, from the caves and porous openings where the rock trapped the air. They would be back again, long before I needed them.

The Fluhs would return.

And some day I would find her again, and it would be an unbroken time.

This world I had named, I had named not properly. Not Hell.

Not Hell at all.

There really isn't much to say about this next story, save that I've tried to make a bit of a caustic comment on the “faithful” and their faith. I have no quarrel with those who wish to
believe
— whether they believe in a flat Earth, the health–giving properties of sorghum and blackstrap molasses, Scientology, the Hereafter, orgone boxes, a ghostwriter for Shakespeare, or that jazz about the manna in the desert — except to point out that nothing in this life (and presumably the next) is certain; and faith is all well and good, but even the most devout should leave a small area of their thoughts open for such possibilities as occur in

It took almost a year to select Herber. A year of wild speculation; a year of growing pride at the knowledge of humanity's certain place in the forefront of the Universal Community; it was the year after the Masters of the Universe flashed through Earth's atmosphere and broadcast their message.

From nowhere: they came down in their glowing golden ark — more than one hundred and sixty kilometers long, a great patch over the eye of the sun — and without argument demonstrated to every man, woman and child on Earth that they did, indeed, rule the Universe.

They caused rain. They stopped rain. They created rainbows. They caused storm clouds to wipe away the rainbows. They raised sunken continents. They leveled mountains. They opened a shaft to the molten center of the planet. They imbued the mute stones of the fields with the power of levitation and erected monuments of breathtaking beauty. They froze the entire population of Earth in its tracks, stopped death, blotted out all other sound—while the message was telepathically spoken in a thousand different languages and dialects.

The message merely said: “Send us a representative from Earth.”

But certain scientists received more. They were given detailed instructions for the construction of what they called an “inverspace ship.” Other certain scientists were given directions to the Center, to the home world of the Masters; a world far off somewhere across the light–years and across numberless galaxies.

And the inverspace ship had been constructed. The theories seemed so simple . . . now.

But who was to go? The great men and women who pondered the question knew the awesome responsibility of the emissary. Care in the selection became so overwhelmingly paralyzing that it was finally decided the problem was too complex and dangerous to be left in the hands of mere humans. They set the machines to the task.

They linked the Mark XXX, the UniCompVac, the Brognagov Master Computer and thousands of lesser brains, shunted them on-line with the deadfall circuit and the Sanhedrin Network, and coded in the question prepared by three hundred and fifty-five of the world's top programmers.

The basic program contained random factors and extrapolations in excess of sixteen billion variables. Even with a worldwide hookup it took the mass mind seven months merely to establish the parameters of the equation. It took another four months, sixteen days, for the readout that named Wilson Herber.

Of the billions teeming the planet,
only
Wilson Herber met all the necessary qualifications for Earth's emissary to the Masters of the Universe.

They came to Wilson Herber in his mountain retreat, and were initially greeted by threats of disembowelment if they didn't get the hell away and leave him in peace and quiet!

But judicious reasoning — and the infinitely complex veiled threats of an entire world — eventually brought the ex–statesman around.

Herber was, without challenge, the wealthiest man in the world. The cartel he had set up during the first sixty years of his life was still intact, now entirely run by managers and technicians and executives bound to him by the secret and terrible facts contained in the dossiers in a vault whose location was know only to the old man. The spiderweb organization of Wilson Herber's holding spanned every utility and human service, drew upon virtually every raw material and necessity anyone might consider of value, controlled – at least in part – the thoughts and movements of every intelligent creature on the face of the planet in a given day. Incalculably wealthy, powerful beyond measure, wise as only one who has it all can be unconcernedly wise, Wilson Herber had set the machine of his cartel to humming, turned it over to lesser mortals, and moved on to the World Federation Hall where he served as a Senior Ombudsman for ten years. Then had assumed the mantle of Coordinator of the Federation. Another ten years' service to the noblest master of them all, the human race.

Then, five years before the golden ark had come, at the age of eighty-five, early middle-years in a time of anti-agathic DNA rearrangement, Wilson Herber retired, secluded himself utterly.

But judicious reasoning, and cataclysmic threats, brought the wisest, richest, most powerful, most cunning man in the world back to the Hall. That, of course, was what they thought – those who had leveled the threats.

“I'll take the credentials,” he said to the Coordinator, the assembled Ombudsmen, the Federation Council. “I'll go out there and let them know we're ready to join with them.”

Despite the longevity reprogrammed into his DNA, he had eschewed any cosmetic enhancement: he was a shrunken gnome of a man with thin gray hair and leathery dark skin. His eyes were made of ground glass, his chin was a dagger point.

“Establish us on a sound footing with their highest councils,” the Coordinator said, his voice magnificent in the Hall. “Let them know we walk hand-in-hand with them, as equals.”

“Till we learn all they can teach us, at which time we usurp their preeminence, yes?”

The communications web broadcasting Herber's investiture went to standby on time-delay. The world audience did not hear the remark. Nor did the audience see the Coordinator hem and haw and finally, under Herber's predatory stare, grin a vulpine grin, shrug, and say, “You always know best, sir.”

Wilson Herber, as was his way, had struck directly to the heart of human nature, to the heart of the mission, to the heart of the problem.

He smiled as he left the Hall. Having struck to the heart, all that was required was that one squeeze the heart till it bled or burst.

The home planet of the Masters slowly materialized out of inverspace.

It shimmered like dew on grass, faded in and out, then solidified. Incredible: the Masters of the Universe had gained control of all time and space: they had devised the ultimate, perfect protection for the home world: it was partially in normal space, partially in inverspace. It existed in the interstices, safe there/not there.

Herber, cushioned in a special travel–chair, sat beside Captain Arnand Singh, watching the shimmering mirage wheeling beneath their ship.

“More impressive than I'd expected, yes, Captain?”

The Moslem nodded. He was a huge man, yet he gave the impression of compression, efficiency. And nobility. “This is almost like a hadj, Mr. Herber.”

“Eh? Hadj? Which is?”

“What my people long ago called a pilgrimage to Mecca, the holy city. Now here we are, the first humans to make the pilgrimage to the new Mecca . . . ”

Herber cut him off. “Listen, old son; just remember this:
we're
the chosen people. Earth is the center, no matter
what
they think. As good as them, probably better: quicker, stronger, cleverer. And they know it, too. Take my word for it. Otherwise they wouldn't have come all that way to solicit us. They came to
us
, remember? They gave us the invitation, not the other way around. So get all those old subservient hadj ideas out of your head. Proud, my boy, be proud. We're coming to establish diplomatic relations, to show them how it should be done.”

Singh did not reply. But he smiled quickly. What bravado the old man displayed. They were the first humans to meet the Masters, and Herber was treating it as though it were a routine business trip to a foreign embassy in New Boston.

All that was flensed from his thoughts as the control panel bleeped the signal for slipout into normal space.

Herber's diplomatic ship settled down through the many-colored alluvial layers of inverspace and abruptly passed into normal space-time.

In normal space, the home world was even more impressive.

Twelve-kilometer-high buildings of delicate pastel tracery reached for the sky. Huge ships plied back and forth among the five major continents. Artifical suns burned in the quarries. Intelligent fish carried cargo across the great sea. Beams of moted light crisscrossed the sky.

“We can learn a great deal from these people, Singh,” Herber said quietly, almost reverently. His pinched and wrinkled features settled into a familiar, comfortable expression of contemplative expectation. “Form follows function,” he said, whispering the litany. “All this of masters and Master . . . we shall see …”

Herber raised the beamer to his lips. With narrowed eyes and tightened mouth he watched only one of the aspects of the Masters' knowledge that could destroy his cartel: the great ships carrying cargo through the skies of the home world winked out of existence and reappeared far from the vanishing point. Instantaneous transportation of goods. His voice was strained as he spoke into the beamer:

“We are the emissaries from Earth, here to offer you the fellowship and knowledge of our planet. We hope our friends of the golden world are well. We come as equals and ask landing instructions.”

They waited. Herber watched with hungry eyes. Singh pointed out the spaceport, an enormous, sprawling eighty–kilometer–wide affair with gigantic loading docks, golden ships aimed at the skies, and hundreds of alien ships from as many different worlds. The Captain settled slowly toward the port.

And the answer came back, already translated into English for them. It filled the cabin of the starship that had been built with the science of the Masters for these humans who had come a great distance as equals:

Please go around to the service entrance. Please go around to the service entrance. Please go around …

When I first arrived in New York, the city was in the midst of its Monsoon Season: January to December. After mooching room, board and writing counsel from Lester del Rey and his wife Evelyn for a few days, I moved into one of the great abodes of memorabilia in my life — a hotel on West 114th Street, where already resided Robert Silverberg, the
writener,
who had been attending Columbia University and selling stories on the side (or vice versa). In the first week of my residence, I completed three short stories. The first was sold to Larry Shaw, then editor of
Infinity,
and provided rent for several weeks to come. The second sold to
Guilty
Detective Story Magazine, and provided food for the tummy. The third was prompted by the dreadful weather, the silver rain that fell past my third floor window hour after hour. It did not sell till three years later, to the British magazine
Science Fantasy.
I rather liked the yarn, and could never understand why American science–fiction magazines were not devious enough to slip in a little straight fantasy every now and then. But since they don't, I'm pleased to be able to have that third–written story in print again in this country, reminding me of my days of childhood naturalism in New York, when I stood before my grimy window and rather hysterically murmured