Over the Edge/An Edge in My Voice

by Harlan Ellison

  I had just turned fifty years old. Little more than a month earlier. And one of the fan dealers had taken note of that fact, and had produced an item to sell at this Westercon whereat I was Guest of Honor. And so this is how I finished my lecture:

  “And where does it all come to mean something, to have a purpose, this dreadful litany of rudeness and impositions? What is the point? Well, it comes to a fan/dealer having the notion that printing up T-shirts that say, oh so cleverly, 50 SHORT YEARS OF HARLAN ELLISON, to be sold at a convention where this Harlan Ellison is the Guest of Honor, without even suggesting that the man whose name he’s selling for five dollars a shot might be entitled to a royalty, much less be entitled to a moment’s thought that the T-shirt might be insulting, is acceptable behavior.

  “But no one makes those considerations, and dozens of such T-shirts are sold, and worn, as I can see from here that many of you have decked yourselves out in precisely that item of finery, and you come up to me, and you stand right in front of this alleged “Guest of Honor” and you ask for an autograph, or you ask a question, or you make a comment, wearing clothing that mocks my height (a fact of nature over which I have no control, as opposed to your bad manners, which are entirely of your own making), and not one of you thinks the subject of the T-shirt might be hurt by such an insensitive act. One must assume none of you gave it a consideration, because the alternative is the contemplation of someone who throws warm vomit.

  “And the subject of the T-shirt’s logo only smiles as he signs your autograph, appearing properly slavishly grateful for your attention, and the fifty-year-old man says nothing.

  “But like George Alec Effinger and Stephen King and Barry Malzberg and David Gerrold and Tim Kirk and many, many others who asked that their names not be mentioned…the short fifty-year-old man will resist more and more ever going among such people.

  “Because they are not kind. And one need not put up with unkindness from those who pretend to be all of the same family of noble dreamers, not when there are so many total strangers in the world who will be beastly without reason.

  “Children of our dreams, so many of you have said. Oh, how I was moved by what you wrote; oh, how you turned my life around; oh, how much this or that story meant to me when I was lonely and desperate. Children of our dreams.

  “Xenogenesis.

  “The children do not resemble the parents.

  “And many of you wonder why so many of those literary parents think positively of the concept that birth control might be made retroactive.”

  That was the end of it, or at least it should have been. But reality continues to challenge our best fantasies for the title of Most Unbelievable.

  In the weeks that followed the speech, as I said, I received a lot of mail about the presentation. All of it was of this sort, represented by an extract from a letter by a young man named Anthony Pryor, then living in Portland:

  Your speech at the banquet moved me greatly. I knew that some insane fans occasionally did unpleasant things to authors; but this…unthinkable!…And so, to show you that your anger, and the words with which you expressed that anger, did not fall on deaf ears, I want you to know that I, as well as many friends to whom I have spoken, will endeavor—if we are aware of it and have the means of dealing with it—to prevent such things as you discussed in your speech from happening. We may never get the chance. The psychotics will continue to insult, injure and anger authors despite our feeble efforts to stop them, but if we can prevent such things from happening just once, it will have been worthwhile.

  Which would lead one to believe that, yes, if one makes a case as strong as this, and delivers it with passion and conviction, that it will touch the soul of even the basest listener. Right. And pigs’ll fly.

  Here is a verbatim extract from the Westercon 37 daily update circulated at that event. It is dated Monday, July 2nd. It was distributed throughout the convention the morning after my presentation.

  RUMOR CONTROL: At roughly 4:15 A.M. several fire alarms were activated in the hotel and some floors were evacuated temporarily. To the best of our knowledge, this is what happened:

  A smoke detector was pulled out of the ceiling in the hallway on the 12th floor. This caused an alarm to go off.

  A fire alarm was pulled on floor 10.

  Activation of the fire alarms caused certain safety mechanisms to automatically engage in the hotel. Fire doors closed. An emergency ventilation system switched on.

  One blower stuck. Salon F began to fill with smoke from a smoldering fanbelt on the stuck blower.

  Although there was smoke, apparently there was no fire.

  We don’t know who broke the smoke detector or who pulled the alarm.

  All parties were closed down. We appreciate everyone’s calmness and cooperation.

  UPDATE 7:30 AM: At a meeting with Marriott management the significance of false alarms was stressed. The possibility of injury or death is great in any emergency evacuation.

  BECAUSE OF LAST NIGHT’S FALSE ALARM, WE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO ALLOW ANY ROOM PARTIES TONIGHT. IF WE CAN LOCATE THE INDIVIDUAL(S) RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ALARM, WE MAY (REPEAT: MAY) BE ABLE TO RE-NEGOTIATE THIS WITH THE HOTEL.

  If we can’t have room parties, we will have a large party in Salon E. This will mean HOTEL LIQUOR ONLY in this space.

  Hospitality Suite will be open in the Presidential Suite until 6 pm, non-alcohol. At 6 pm Hospitality will move to Ballroom level to accommodate the general dance and party Monday evening. This is in conformance with the “NO PARTIES” agreement we negotiated with the hotel.

  The Convention Committee sincerely regrets this major inconvenience. These pranks are a danger to everyone.

  And in her letter received by me the week after the convention, Mildred Downey Broxon went on to say, “Scuttlebutt has it that you were feeling as if the idiot who set off the fire alarm might have been influenced by your speech. I tend to doubt that. Such a person probably didn’t even listen to your speech and, if he heard it, failed to understand what you were saying. It is highly likely that one of these subhumans was to blame.

  “However, the incident following so closely on your speech may have caused those few who thought the matter exaggerated to take notice. Nothing like being rousted out at 4 AM, after all, to make one think. Long and bitterly.”

  And so, nature imitates nature, sans the art.

  There could have been more, much more, to this essay. I have at hand a long series of lamentations by Joe Straczynski on the new venue for fan abuse…Computer Bulletin Board Systems; and a late reply from Jean M. Auel detailing a demand for money “anywhere from $20 to $8000” by a fan; and a ghastly incident that happened to Joe L. Hensley…

  But you get the idea.

  And those of you in the sane, courteous ninety-five per cent…well, perhaps this concentrated jolt of nastiness will alert you to the other five per cent who roam and foam among us. The alleged Paul Osborns of the world. Those who come slouching to the party given by the noble dreamers with that little paper cup hidden behind their back.

  Warm vomit. Xenogenesis. Have a nice day.

  ROCK GOD

  Moist shadow men sang there. A strange song of dark colors. “Ah-wegh thogha!” Two pure white bulls were brought, and ritual purification was achieved by cutting their throats. Then the white goat, whose blood was sipped from its severed, dripping heart. Then the immense manlike figures of tree limbs and branches were set on fire, the bound human sacrifices in their depths shrieking as they burned. Then the moist shadow men, whom history would call the last Bronze Age people, the Wessex People, drew their animal-hide cloaks about them, cloaks of an animal that existed only in dreams, and they moved within the circle of standing Cyclopean stones and lintels. Moved within the dark circle of Stonehenge, and swayed back and forth, murmuring their prayers.

  Naked, cold, so cold in the winter wind, the great priest stood on the altar stone, and dropped his arms, and let his head droop forward, and invoked the loftiest, the low
liest prayer. To Dis.

  On the slaughter stone, the head of the virgin was turned toward the altar, and her shadowed eyes seemed suddenly afire with love of something unnameable. The lesser priests held their ritual knives ready.

  Away on the altar stone the great priest called Dis. Begged him to come. And there was sound in the earth. And there was sound in the stones. In the great stones. And there was sound in the rocks.

  And the priests kneeled to the girl who smiled and whose moist mouth silently begged for climax, and they did things to her, and then carried the meat to the altar stone, laying it at the feet of the great priest. While the worshippers swayed and invoked their god.

  Darkness flowed as the sounds of great heavings in the rocks grew louder. Then Dis came. Great, dark Dis came.

  They stared through the massive archway toward the heel stone. The first faint glimmer of sunrise splashed its polished dome with the unclean water of the blood sea. And the heel stone began to change.

  Dis came from the earth that was his flesh. The rock that was his bone. The stone that was his home that was his essence.

  The sunrise ceased. Night came again. Washing up out of the earth, darkness flowed and roiled and the world went dark as Dis came from the rock.

  The heel stone shifted shape and grew, and rising from the inanimate stone Dis took form. Hairless flesh as solid as mountains. The great corded legs ran like lava, flowing toward the sinister circle of Stonehenge. Flowed, and touched archway, trilothons, sarsen stone, slaughter stone, lintels, bluestone horseshoe…and they fed the body of Dis with their substance, and he grew. Massive, enormous, rising into the night that oozed up from the earth, as darkness covered the world. Greater than the stones, taller than the huge branch-figures wherein still smoldered the human sacrifices. Two hundred, three hundred feet, towering over the awed and supplicating Wessex People.

  Dis, rock god, had come again as he had come one hundred years before, and one hundred years before that.

  Words brought him. Needs brought him. Fear of not bringing him forth from his own body, the earth, had brought him. Belief had brought him. Now, again, as it had brought him once every century, to the low-fallen ones who worshipped him: not because he promised life after death, not because he promised salvation, not because he promised rich harvests and plentiful rain. Dis was not a God of promise. He was called forth because he would come, called or not. Because he was Dis, and his body was the very ground they walked, and they could do no other. Because it was necessary for him to stride the world once every century. There was no human explanation for his need…he was Dis…it was reason enough.

  More. Darkness seeped up into the skies. The world was dark. He rose, greater and greater still. Stonehenge vanished to become his legs, his torso, his arms, the terrifying shape of his head. Stonehenge fed his bulk and he loomed over them.

  A cry of hopelessness, low and animal, came from the Wessex People. From the throat of the great priest and his assistants, and from the throat of the acolyte priest whose name was not yet recorded.

  The great priest murmured his words, incantations he had been taught would keep Dis from harming those who worshipped him. There was no way for him to know: they had no effect, they were no protection. Dis had never desired their destruction, so they had been spared. Yet they believed. Helpless, yet they believed. And…

  This rising was not like the others that had occurred in the thousand centuries since Dis had miraculously appeared.

  The great priest sensed it first; then the acolyte. The others were frozen, uncomprehending, waiting.

  The great horned head of Dis turned; the rock god peered through the eternal darkness that flowed upward from the Earth, as if seeing the stars that were now hidden from all but his sight.

  Then the face turned down and for the first time Dis spoke to men.

  I will sleep.

  They listened. Fear greater than the fear they had always known at Dis’s coming choked them. They had thought in their dim way there was no greater fear, but now Dis spoke. The sound of volcanos. The sound of winds. Caverns. Pain. Vapor exploding through stone.

  I will sleep and dream.

  I will be safe.

  I will give you a thing.

  Possess it.

  The holiest of holies.

  I sleep within.

  And Dis reached into his body, thrust his taloned hand as big as the biggest trilothon into his body of rock that was flesh, and brought forth a mote of burning blackness. He held it up to his flaming eyes. Vistas of the underworld leaped and scintillated in the fire-pits of his eyes. The black light of the mote met the flames of his eyes and the light melted and merged and leapt and the fire entered the mote, and crimson became blackness and blackness became crimson, and all was within the mote, and it pulsed, pulsed, waned, subsided, lay quiescent.

  Then Dis bent and lowered his hand, laying the mote at the feet of the great priest.

  Keep safe my soul.

  I will come again one day.

  Unending pain if my soul is lost.

  This is my command.

  The great priest feared to look up, but his words were to his god, to assure him the life of all his people would be spent protecting the holiest of holies.

  But suddenly there was a bold sound from the throng of petrified worshippers, and the great priest had a moment’s presaging of terror as the young acolyte priest—who could not wait for succession, who lusted after power now—broke from the mass of dark praying shapes, raced across the open space and leaped onto the altar stone.

  “No!” the great priest moaned.

  “Great Dis!” the acolyte priest shouted, looking up into the face that his race’s memory would never be able to describe without a shudder. “Great Dis, we have served you for centuries! Now we ask a boon! I, Mag, demand for your faithful ones who pledge to protect your sleeping soul, the boon of—”

  None ever knew what token the acolyte might have demanded to raise himself to a position of power. The rock god reached down and darkness flowed from his taloned fingers. Black fire consumed the acolyte in an instant, and the pillar of black fire sparkled upward, thinned, became a lance-line no man could look into. Then Dis hurled the black fire into the ground, where it burned through and could be seen to shimmer. The sound of Mag’s soul shriveling was a trembling, terrible thing.

  Then Dis flowed back into the earth, the rocks became rocks once more, Stonehenge solidified, and all that remained was the power stone, the black mote stone, at the feet of the great priest, whose body shivered and spasmed from the nearness of the god’s vengeance.

  And when Dis was gone, to sleep his sleep of ages, the Wessex Folk saw there was a new rock in the Stonehenge circle. In its surface was imprinted the memory of a face that had belonged to one they’d known, contorted in agony beyond their ability to describe. But they would never forget: Mag, in the stone, striation lines of anguish, forever he would live in pain, dead inside the rock, forever blackly burning in agony, with his unvoiced demand.

  They took the mote and kept it holiest of holies, and Dis slept.

  Dis, most cunning, had separated himself seven times and one more. To let his flesh sleep with his soul was to permit the chance of destruction. His soul slept within the black mote of Stonehenge. But his flesh he cut seven ways, and there were seven risings, all on the same night. From the mystic number seven, from the seven unearthly risings had come seven stones to match the mote. They came to be known as the Seven Stones of Power. They were known to the world, for Dis knew a god exists only if there are believers; and as he must sleep, for reasons known only to gods, he must leave behind a legacy for legend, by which he would be remembered, against the time he would rise once more.

  The Seven Stones of Power:

  In Ireland, the Blarney Stone.

  The Stone of Scone that came from Scotland and now lived beneath the Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey.

  Hajar al-Aswad, the Black Stone, the great religious s
ymbol of Islam; kept sacred and safe in the Ka’bah sanctuary, the Sacred Mosque in Mecca.

  The Koh-i-noor diamond, which the Persians called the Mountain of Light.

  The lost Stone of Solomon that had vanished from Palestine and which was said to be the most treasured possession of the Dalai Lama in Lhasa.

  The Welsh Stone of Change—which some called merely the Plinth, for time and legends shimmer in the memory of the frightened—that had last been known to reside at the vacant seat of Arthur’s Round Table, the Siege Perilous, the seat and Stone that could only be claimed by the predestined finder of the Holy Grail.

  And the Amida of Diabutsu, the Great Buddha, in the Sacred Temple of Kyobe in Japan-that-was.

  These seven. And the soul mote.

  Legend and the ways of men kept these potent stones secreted. Yet there were chips, and bits, and from them came the Great Seal of Solomon, the silver crescent of the Great Anthrex, the Talisman of Suleiman the Magnificent, and the Circle of Isis. But they counted for little, despite their immense power.

  It was the seven stones, and the soul mote in which the essence of Dis dreamed his sinister dreams (of worlds where great lizards carried on commerce, where living light in the skies ruled creatures of flesh, where the gods drew breath that cleft the earth to its molten core) in which true power resided: sleeping.

  The soul mote was buried at Stonehenge, and time passed till even the Wessex People were gone, and their having passed that way was forgotten.

  This is what happened to the black soul mote.

  It was dug up by one who came in the night and was mad. And so, mad, he was not afraid. But his madness did not deter the terrible death that came to him, the flesh stripped from his body and eaten by things only partially human. But he had already traded the mote to one of Minoan Crete. That one passed it for great wealth to a thinker of Mycenaean Greece from whom it was taken in ransom by a priest of Isis. The Egyptian lost it to a Phoenician and he, in turn, lost it in a game of chance that took all he owned, as well as his life…