Now and Forever (9 page)

CHAPTER 33

It was twilight when he reached the first row of orange trees.

It was deepening twilight when he saw the familiar crowds of sunflowers in each yard and the sign,
EGYPTIAN VIEW ARMS,
swaying above the verandah.

The sun was almost gone as he walked up the last sidewalk, mounted the porch steps, stood before the screen door, and pressed the doorbell. It chimed quietly. A slender shadow appeared on the hall stair.

“Nef,” he said at last, quietly.

“Nef,” he said, “I'm home.”

LEVIATHAN '99
*

“RADIO DREAM”

In 1939, when I was nineteen, I fell in love with the radio dramas of Norman Corwin.

I met him later, when I was twenty-seven, and he encouraged me to write my Martian stories, thus causing
The Martian Chronicles
to be born.

Along through the years my dream was to one day have Norman Corwin direct one of my radio dramas.

When I returned from my year in Ireland, after writing the screenplay for John Huston's
Moby Dick,
I was still deeply under the influence of Herman Melville and his leviathan whale. Simultaneously I was still under the spell of Shakespeare, who had entered my life when I was in high school.

After I'd been home from Ireland for a while, I began to consider taking the Melville mythology and placing it in outer space.

NBC had recently encouraged Norman Corwin and me to collaborate on a one-hour radio drama. When I finished my first script of
Leviathan '99,
about spaceships instead of sailing ships, mad astronaut captains instead of seafaring captains, and the blinding white comet replacing the great white whale, I turned in the script to Norman, who then sent it on to NBC.

At that time television was increasing in popularity, diminishing radio, and NBC responded to my script by saying, “Can you break this down into three-minute segments, which we can broadcast over a period of days?”

Stunned, Norman and I withdrew the script and I sent it to BBC Radio in London, who produced it, with Christopher Lee playing the lead of the insane captain of the spaceship
Cetus.

The radio production was excellent, but of course my dream of having something produced and directed for radio by Corwin still remained unborn. Suffering from what I now call my “delusions of Shakespeare,” I dared to double the length of my
Leviathan '99
script and staged it as a play at a Samuel Goldwyn studio soundstage in the spring of 1972. Unfortunately, adding an additional forty pages to the script destroyed my original intent. The essential story was lost. The critics' reviews were unanimous in their vitriol.

In the years that followed I produced
Leviathan '99
here and there, gradually whittling away extraneous pages in an attempt to get it back somewhere near the original one-hour version done for radio.

Thirty years later this novella is my final effort to focus and revitalize what began as a radio dream for Norman Corwin. Whether or not it deserves to appear in this incarnation is for you to decide.

DEDICATED WITH GREAT ADMIRATION

to Herman Melville

CHAPTER 1

Call me Ishmael.

Ishmael? In this year 2099 when strange new ships head beyond the stars instead of merely toward them? Attack the stars instead of fearing them? A name like Ishmael?

Yes.

My parents flew with the first brave ones to Mars. Turned less than brave, gone sick for Earth, they returned home. Conceived on that journey, I was born in space.

My father knew his Bible and recalled another outcast who wandered dead seas long years before Christ.

And I being, at that time, the only child fleshed and delivered forth in space, how better to name me than as my father did.

And he did indeed call me … Ishmael.

Some years ago I thought I would ride all the seas of wind that roam this world. Whenever it is a damp November in my soul, I know it is high time to brave the skies again.

So I soared up among bird cries, bright kites, and thunderheads on a Saturday, late summer in this year of 2099, borne upon my own jet-packet power. I flew over and away toward Cape Kennedy in my wild journey hung upon the air, a fledgling bird among the memories of old da Vinci's antique aircraft dreams. I was warmed by the real fire of great birds of steel, and felt the floodgates of the vast and waiting universe swing open my soul.

There were great concussions at a distance: the furnace heat of Kennedy and its thousands of rockets, burning in towers all about. When the fires died at last, only a simple wind whispered.

Then, quickly and calmly, I descended into town, where a river flowed for me to walk upon, a moving sidewalk.

Shadows stirred all about me as I glided through architectural arches and doors. Where was I going? Not to a cold metal barracks for tired spacemen, no, but a beautiful, quietly programmed, machined Garden of Eden. I was to attend an academy for astronauts to train for a great voyage beyond the stars, a mission about which as of yet I knew nothing.

Such a place is a world between: part meadow for mind, part gymnasium for flesh, and part theological seminary, reaching ever skyward in its thoughts. For does space not have the look of a vast cathedral?

So I walked among shifting shadows and entered the reception foyer of the school's dormitory. I registered by pressing my hand to an identity panel, which read my sweaty prints like some modern witch of palmistry, and instantaneously chose my roommate for my coming mission.

There was a buzz, a hum, a bell, and a voice—female, sibilant, mechanical—came from somewhere above: “Ishmael Hunnicut Jones; twenty-nine years; height, five-foot-ten; eyes, blue; hair, brown; bone frame, light. Please attend: floor one, room nine. Cubicle roommate, Quell.”

And I repeated, “Quell.”

“Quell?” another voice cried behind me. “My God, that's terrible.”

Yet another voice added, “God help you, Mr. Jones.”

I turned to find three astronauts of varying sizes and demeanors, all some years older than me, facing me, holding drinks. One was held out to me.

“Take this, Ishmael Jones,” said the first man, who was tall and thin. “You'll need it if you're going upstairs to meet that monster,” he said. “Drink up.”

“But first,” said the second, holding out his hand to stay my arm, “how do you fly, shallow or deep?”

“Why, deep, I think,” I said. “Deep space.”

“By the timid mile or the great light-year?”

“Light-year, yes,” I thought, then said.

“You may drink with us, then.”

The third man, who had been silent to this point, spoke up. “I'm John Redleigh. This fellow here,” with a nod toward the tall man, “is Sam Small. And he,” indicating the remaining man, “is Jim Downs.”

And so we drank. Small declared, “We give you permission to share our space, and also with God's permission. Do you go to unravel a comet's tail?”

“I think I do.”

“Have you searched for comets before?”

“Now's my time.”

“Well said. Look there.”

The three men turned and nodded toward a vast video screen across the reception hall. As if aware of our regard, it pulsed to life, and displayed an immense photo of a blinding white comet pulling planets in its wake.

“The lovely destroyer of the universe,” said Small. “The eater of the sun.”

“Can comets do that?” I asked.

“That, and more.
Especially
that one.”

Downs said, “Why, if God should manifest here, He'd come as a comet. Are you one for jumping down the throat of such a holy presence, boy, and dancing in its bright guts?”

“I am,” I said, reluctantly, “if it should be absolutely inescapable.”

“Then let's drink to him, aye, men? Let's drink to young Ishmael Hunnicut Jones.”

At which moment I heard a faint electronic buzz, a pulse, at some distance. I listened, and the buzz grew louder with each pulse, as if it was coming nearer.

“That,” I said. “What's that?”

“That?” said Redleigh. “That sound like a scourge of locusts in flight?”

I nodded.

“A scourge of locusts?” said Small. “That's a fine way to refer to our captain.”

“Captain?” I said. “Who is he?”

Redleigh said, “Let it be for now, Mr. Jones. You'd best get to your room and meet up with Quell. My God, yes, go meet Quell.”

“From beyond the great Andromeda Nebula, he is,” Downs said, in a confidential tone. “Tall, huge, immense, and …”

“A spider,” the first mate interjected.

“Yes, yes,” Downs continued. “A vast, tall, giant green spider.”

“But … ,” said Small, frowning slightly at his companions, “most benevolent. You will like him, Mr. Jones.”

And I replied, “I will?”

Redleigh said, “Get along. We'll meet again. Go meet your spider roommate. Good luck.”

I tipped back my glass to take a last swallow. And then I turned, eyes shut, and said to myself, Luck. My God!

I touched a button beside a door panel that slid open, and I walked along a dimly lit corridor till I came to room number 9. I touched the identity pad and the door glided open wide.

But wait, I said to myself. I can't go in. Look at my hands. Great God, they're shaking.

I stood there, unmoving. My roommate was inside, I knew. He had come from a far world and was a giant spider, or so they had said. Hell, I thought, step in.

I took three steps into the room and froze.

For in the far corner of the cubicle there was a huge shadow. Something was there, but not there.

“It can't be,” I whispered to myself. “It simply can't be.”

“A spider,” something whispered from the far side of the room.

The large shadow trembled.

I flinched back into the doorway.

“And,” the whisper continued, “a shadow of a spider? No. Stand still.”

I stood still as commanded and watched as the room was illuminated and the shadow fell away and there before me was a great figure, a creature some seven feet tall and colored the most peculiar shade of green.

“Well,” came the whisper again.

I replied as steadily as I could. “What can I say?”

“Anything,” came the whisper.

“Once,” I replied, “I went to see Michelangelo's
David.
It was tall. I circled it.”

“And?”

“You look to be at least as big around as that great work.”

I moved forward and began to circle the creature, which didn't move. I was, nevertheless, trembling.

The shadows continued to melt, and the shape of the creature became more apparent.

“Quell,” came the whisper again. “That is my name. I have come a long way, some ten million miles and five light-years. Here on your world, judging by your size, I'd say your god has just one half-cracked eye awake. On our world, God jumped with a shout of creation, thus our great height.”

And the creature stood, even taller.

I stared at the face and said, “You—your mouth hardly moves.”

The thing named Quell replied, “But my thoughts move as do yours. So,” said the creature, “tell me, Jack, would you slay the giant?”

“I—” I stammered.

“I read the beanstalk in your mind.”

“Damn!” I cried. “Forgive me,” I said. “This is my first meeting with a telepath.”

“Let me save you from damnation,” said my roommate. “Once more, my name is Quell. And yours?”

“You know my name,” I said. “You read minds.”

“But out of politeness,” Quell replied, “I pretend otherwise.”

The great creature reached down with one of his appendages. I put forward my hand, and we touched.

“Ishmael Hunnicut Jones,” I said.

“Well,” said Quell. “That name has traveled out of your Bible and into this age of space.”

“Which is much the way you've come,” I said.

“Five light-years off,” said Quell. “I was in deep freeze for five whole years, as cold as death. I slept the time away. It is good to be awake again. Am I not strange?”

“Oh, no,” I said.

“Oh, yes,” said Quell, with something like a laugh. “If thoughts fly, I catch them. That must be strange to you. And you must also be thinking that I have too many eyes, too many ears, far too many fingers, greenish skin—certainly strange. And yet I look at you and see that you have only two eyes, two tiny ears, five little fingers on each of only two hands. So then we are both—look at us—quite amusing. And both, finally … human.”

“Yes,” I said, seeing the truth in this. “Oh yes, that is human.”

Quell was provoked to some sort of humor, for he went on and said, “So now, Ishmael, shall I grind your bone to make my bread, or shall we be friends?”

I flinched, prepared to back off, but I caught myself and laughed instead, and said, “Friends, yes friends, I think.”

And Quell repeated, “Friends.”

 

Later we left our cubicle and went exploring, down into the lower levels of the immense academy.

We walked among the philosophical robots who sat silhouetted among firefly lights to speak in tongues from ancient times.

“Plato,” I said. “Aristotle,” I went on. “Behold us. What do you see?”

And the Plato robot said, “Two terrible and fine, ugly and beautiful children of nature.”

And Quell asked, “Ah, but what is
nature
?”

Socrates answered, sparks showering, “God surprising himself with odd miracles of flesh.”

And Aristotle, a strange little plastic robot, continued: “And theirs is nothing odder or miraculous, then.”

Quell reached out and touched my forehead with one of his long, finely tufted finger-legs and said, “Ishmael.”

I responded warmly, and touched the downy chest of my new friend. “Quell, from the far islands of the great Andromeda Nebula. Quell.”

“We shall study together,” said Quell.

“Listen together, learn together, explore together,” I added.

And we did indeed listen to the voice of our robot philosopher teachers, who continued to speak in tongues various and strange during the next days, weeks, and months of our training. No one told us where we'd be going, what would be asked of us, or how long we would remain Earth-bound in these vast caverns of learning.

But finally the day came that the robot instructors' talk, their babble, their murmurs, faded. We arrived at the lecture hall one morning and everything was still. On the video screen were our names, and the words, “Orders received. Report for duty.”