The Very Best of F & SF v1 (23 page)

I had better
call Mr. Danceman and tell him what’s happened, she decided. Still shaky, she
made her way across the room to the fone; picking it up, she dialed from
memory.

It thought I was
a stimulus-factor on its reality tape, she said to herself. So it thought I
would die when it “died.” How strange, she thought. Why did it
imagine
that? It had never been plugged into the real world; it had “lived” in an
electronic world of its own. How bizarre.

“Mr. Danceman,” she
said when the circuit to his office had been put through. “Poole is gone. It
destroyed itself right in front of my eyes. You’d better come over.”

“So we’re
finally free of it.”

“Yes, won’t it
be nice?”

Danceman said, “I’ll
send a couple of men over from the shop.” He saw past her, made out the sight
of Poole lying by the kitchen table. “You go home and rest,” he instructed
Sarah. “You must be worn out by all this.”

“Yes,” she said.
“Thank you, Mr. Danceman.” She hung up and stood, aimlessly.

And then she
noticed something.

My hands, she
thought. She held them up. Why is it I can see through them?

The walls of the
room, too, had become ill-defined.

Trembling, she
walked back to the inert roby, stood by it, not knowing what to do. Through her
legs the carpet showed, and then the carpet became dim, and she saw, through
it, farther layers of disintegrating matter beyond.

Maybe if I can
fuse the tape-ends back together, she thought. But she did not know how. And
already Poole had become vague.

The wind of
early morning blew about her. She did not feel it; she had begun, now, to cease
to feel.

The winds blew
on.

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Harlan Ellison® has enjoyed a special
relationship with our magazine—he has been a book reviewer, our film reviewer,
our film editor, and a guiding spirit for several decades. He was recently the
subject of a documentary that I recommend highly,
Dreams with Sharp Teeth.
He has also been one of our leading contributors of fiction,
providing us with many memorable tales, from “Jeffty Is Five” to “All the Lies
That Are My Life” to “Susan.” Of them all, however, I think none are as
memorable or as potent as this one.

1

This
is a test
. Take notes. This will count as
¾
of your final grade. Hints:
remember, in chess, kings cancel each other out and cannot occupy adjacent
squares, are therefore all-powerful and totally powerless, cannot affect one
another, produce stalemate. Hinduism is a polytheistic religion; the sect of
Atman worships the divine spark of life within Man; in effect saying, “Thou art
God.” Provisos of equal time are not served by one viewpoint having media
access to two hundred million people in prime time while opposing viewpoints
are provided with a soapbox on the corner. Not everyone tells the truth.
Operational note: these sections may be taken out of numerical sequence: rearrange
them to suit yourself for optimum clarity. Turn over your test papers and
begin.

2

Uncounted layers
of rock pressed down on the magma pool. White-hot with the bubbling ferocity of
the molten nickel-iron core, the pool spat and shuddered, yet did not pit or
char or smoke or damage in the slightest, the smooth and reflective surfaces of
the strange crypt.

Nathan Stack lay
in the crypt—silent, sleeping.

A shadow passed
through rock. Through shale, through coal, through marble, through mica schist,
through quartzite; through miles-thick deposits of phosphates, through
diatomaceous earth, through feldspars, through diorite; through faults and
folds, through anticlines and monoclines, through dips and synclines; through
hellfire; and came to the ceiling of the great cavern and passed through; and
saw the magma pool and dropped down; and came to the crypt. The shadow.

A triangular
face with a single eye peered into the crypt, saw Stack; four-fingered hands
were placed on the crypt’s cool surface. Nathan Stack woke at the touch, and
the crypt became transparent; he woke though the touch had not been upon his
body. His soul felt the shadowy pressure and he opened his eyes to see the
leaping brilliance of the worldcore around him, to see the shadow with its single
eye staring in at him.

The serpentine
shadow enfolded the crypt; its darkness flowed upward again, through the Earth’s
mantle, toward the crust, toward the surface of the cinder, the broken toy that
was the Earth.

When they
reached the surface, the shadow bore the crypt to a place where the poison
winds did not reach, and caused it to open.

Nathan Stack
tried to move, and moved only with difficulty. Memories rushed through his head
of other lives, many other lives, as many other men; then the memories slowed
and melted into a background tone that could be ignored.

The shadow thing
reached down a hand and touched Stack’s naked flesh. Gently, but firmly, the
thing helped him to stand, and gave him garments, and a neck-pouch that
contained a short knife and a warming-stone and other things. He offered his
hand, and Stack took it, and after two hundred and fifty thousand years
sleeping in the crypt, Nathan Stack stepped out on the face of the sick planet
Earth.

Then the thing
bent low against the poison winds and began walking away. Nathan Stack, having
no other choice, bent forward and followed the shadow creature.

3

A messenger had
been sent for Dira and he had come as quickly as the meditations would permit.
When he reached the Summit, he found the fathers waiting, and they took him
gently into their cove, where they immersed themselves and began to speak.

“We’ve lost the
arbitration,” the coil-father said. “It will be necessary for us to go and
leave it to him.”

Dira could not
believe it. “But didn’t they listen to our arguments, to our logic?”

The fang-father
shook his head sadly and touched Dira’s shoulder. “There were... accommodations
to be made. It was their time. So we must leave.”

The coil-father
said, “We’ve decided you will remain. One was permitted, in caretakership. Will
you accept our commission?”

It was a very
great honor, but Dira began to feel the loneliness even as they told him they
would leave. Yet he accepted. Wondering why they had selected
him,
of all their people.
There were reasons, there were always reasons, but he could not ask. And so he
accepted the honor, with all its attendant sadness, and remained behind when
they left.

The limits of
his caretakership were harsh, for they ensured he could not defend himself
against whatever slurs or legends would be spread, nor could he take action
unless it became clear the trust was being breached by the other— who now held
possession. And he had no threat save the Deathbird. A final threat that could
be used only when final measures were needed: and therefore too late.

But he was
patient. Perhaps the most patient of all his people.

Thousands of
years later, when he saw how it was destined to go, when there was no doubt
left how it would end, he understood
that
was the reason he had been chosen to stay behind.

But it did not
help the loneliness.

Nor could it
save the Earth. Only Stack could do that.

4

1 Now
the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the
LORD
God had made. And he said unto the
woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

2 And
the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the
garden:

3 But
of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye
shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

4 And
the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

5
(Omitted)

6 And
when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it
was
pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to
be desired to make
one
wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat, and gave
also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

7 (Omitted)

8 (Omitted)

9 And
the
LORD
God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where
art
thou?

10 (Omitted)

11 And
he said, Who told thee that thou
wast
naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded
thee that thou shouldest not eat?

12 And
the man said, The woman whom thou gavest
to be
with me, she gave me of the tree,
and I did eat.

13 And
the
LORD
God said unto the woman, What
is
this
that
thou has done? And the woman said,
The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

14 And
the
LORD
God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this,
thou
art
cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the
field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of
thy life:

15 And
I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her
seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

—Genesis 3: 1-15

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION

(Give 5 points per right answer. )

1.
Melville’s
MOBY DICK
begins, “Call me Ishmael.” We say it is told in the
first
person. In what person
is Genesis told? From whose viewpoint?

2.
Who is the “good guy” in this story? Who
is the “bad guy”? Can you make a strong case for reversal of the roles?

3.
Traditionally, the apple is considered to
be the fruit the serpent offered to Eve. But apples are not endemic to the Near
East. Select one of the following, more logical substitutes, and discuss how
myths come into being and are corrupted over long periods of time: olive, fig, date,
pomegranate.

4.
Why is the word LORD always in capitals
and the name God always capitalized? Shouldn’t the serpent’s name be
capitalized, as well? If no, why?

5.
If God created everything (see Genesis,
Chap. I), why did he create problems for himself by creating a serpent who
would lead his creations astray? Why did God create a tree he did not want Adam
and Eve to know about, and then go out of his way to warn them against it?

6.
Compare and contrast Michelangelo’s
Sistine Chapel ceiling panel of the
Expulsion
from Paradise
with Bosch’s
Garden of Earthly Delights.

7.
Was Adam being a gentleman when he placed
blame on Eve? Who was Quisling? Discuss “narking” as a character flaw.

8.
God grew angry when he found out he had
been defied. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, didn’t he know? Why couldn’t
he find Adam and Eve when they hid?

9.
If God had not wanted Adam and Eve to
taste the fruit of the forbidden tree, why didn’t he warn the serpent? Could
God have prevented the serpent from tempting Adam and Eve? If yes, why didn’t
he? If no, discuss the possibility the serpent was as powerful as God.

10.
Using examples from two different media
journals, demonstrate the concept of “slanted news.”

5

The poison winds
howled and tore at the powder covering the land. Nothing lived there. The
winds, green and deadly, dived out of the sky and raked the carcass of the
Earth, seeking, seeking: anything moving, anything still living. But there was
nothing. Powder. Talc. Pumice.

And the onyx
spire of the mountain toward which Nathan Stack and the shadow thing had moved,
all that first day. When night fell they dug a pit in the tundra and the shadow
thing coated it with a substance thick as glue that had been in Stack’s
neck-pouch. Stack had slept the night fitfully, clutching the warming-stone to
his chest and breathing through a filter tube from the pouch.

Once he had
awakened, at the sound of great batlike creatures flying overhead; he had seen
them swooping low, coming in flat trajectories across the wasteland toward his
pit in the earth. But they seemed unaware that he— and the shadow thing—lay in
the hole. They excreted thin, phosphorescent strings that fell glowing through
the night and were lost on the plains; then the creatures swooped upward and
were whirled away on the winds. Stack resumed sleeping with difficulty.

In the morning,
frosted with an icy light that gave everything a blue tinge, the shadow thing
scrabbled its way out of the choking powder and crawled along the ground, then
lay flat, fingers clawing for purchase in the whiskaway surface. Behind it,
from the powder, Stack bore toward the surface, reached up a hand and trembled
for help.

The shadow
creature slid across the ground, fighting the winds that had grown stronger in
the night, back to the soft place that had been their pit, to the hand thrust
up through the powder. It grasped the hand, and Stack’s fingers tightened
convulsively. Then the crawling shadow exerted pressure and pulled the man from
the treacherous pumice.

Together they
lay against the earth, fighting to see, fighting to draw breath without filling
their lungs with suffocating death.

“Why is it like
this... what
happened
?” Stack screamed against the wind. The shadow creature did not
answer, but it looked at Stack for a long moment and then, with very careful
movements, raised its hand, held it up before Stack’s eyes and slowly, making
claws of the fingers, closed the four fingers into a cage, into a fist, into a
painfully tight ball that said more eloquently than words:
destruction.