Just Over the Horizon (The Complete Short Fiction of Greg Bear Book 1)

by Greg Bear

  “Yeah, I know all that stuff,” he said. “I was a driver once. Then I got promoted. What are they all doing back there?” He gestured up the road. “They’re really messing things up, ain’t they?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, wiping my eyes and cheeks with my sleeve.

  “You go back, and you tell them that all this revolt on the outer circles, it’s what I expected. Tell them Charlie’s here and that I warned them. Word’s getting around. There’s bound to be discontent.”

  “Word?”

  “About who’s in charge. Just tell them Charlie knows and I warned them. I know something else, and you shouldn’t tell anybody about this …” He whispered an incredible fact into my ear then, something that shook me deeper than what I had already been through.

  I closed my eyes. Some shadow passed over. The young fellow and everybody else seemed to recede. I felt rather than saw my truck being picked up like a toy.

  Then I suppose I was asleep for a time.

  In the cab in the parking lot of a truck stop in Bakersfield, I jerked awake, pulled my cap out of my eyes and looked around. It was about noon.

  There was a union hall in Bakersfield. I checked and my truck was full of fuel, so I started her up and drove to the union hall. I knocked on the door of the office. I went in and recognized the fat old dude who had given me the job in the first place. I was tired and I smelled bad but I wanted to quit and get it all done with as soon as I could.

  He recognized me but didn’t remember my name until I told him. “I can’t work the run anymore,” I said. The shakes were on me again. “I’m not the one for it. I don’t feel right driving them when I know I’m going to be there myself, like as not.”

  “Okay,” he said, slow and careful, sizing me up with a knowing eye. “But you’re more than just out. You’re busted. No more driving, no more work for us, no more work for any union we support. It’ll be lonely.”

  “I’ll take that kind of lonely any day,” I said.

  “Okay.”

  That was that. I headed for the door and stopped with my hand on the knob.

  “One more thing,” I said. “I met Charlie. He says to tell you word’s getting around about who’s in charge, and that’s why there’s so much trouble in the outer circles.”

  The old dude’s knowing eye went sort of glassy. “You’re the fellow got all the way into the City?”

  I nodded.

  He got up from his seat real fast, jowls quivering and belly doing a silly dance beneath his work blues. He flicked one hand at me, come ‘ere. “Don’t go. Just you wait a minute. Outside in the office.”

  I waited and heard him talking on the phone. He came out smiling and put his hand on my shoulder. “Listen, John, I’m not sure we should let you quit. I didn’t know you were the one who’d gone inside. Word is, you stuck around and tried to help when everybody else ran. The company appreciates that. You’ve been with us a long time, reliable driver, maybe we should give you some incentive to stay. I’m sending you to Vegas to talk with a company man …”

  The way he said it, I knew there wasn’t much choice and I better not fight it. You work union long enough and you know when you keep your mouth shut and go along.

  They put me up in a motel and fed me and by late moming I was on my way to Vegas in a black union car with a silent driver and air conditioning and some Newsweeks to keep me company.

  I arrived about two in the afternoon. The limo dropped me off in front of a four-story office building, glass and stucco, with listings for lots of divorce attorneys, one dentist, and five small companies with anonymous names. White plastic letters on a ribbed felt background in a glass case. There was no listing for the number I had been told to go to, but I went up and knocked anyway.

  I don’t know what I expected. A district supervisor opened the door and asked me a few questions and I said what I’d said before. I was adamant. He looked worried. “Look,” he said. “It won’t be good for you now if you quit.”

  I asked him what he meant by that but he just looked even more unhappy and said he was going to send me to someone higher up.

  That was in Denver, a long, sloping climb of four thousand feet—nearer my God to thee. The same black car took me there and Saturday morning, bright and early, I stood in front of a very large corporate building with no sign out front and a big, shiny bank on the bottom floor. I walked past the bank to a row of brass elevators, and took a private one to the very top.

  A secretary met me, hair done up tight and jaw grim and square. She didn’t like me, but she escorted me into the next office. A man sat behind a big desk. He had on MacArthur wire-rimmed glasses too big for his eyes. He rose as I came in and firmly shook my hand, then motioned for me to sit in a small armchair, and faced me, perching on the edge of the big desk. I swear I’d seen the fellow before, but maybe it was just a passing resemblance. He wore a narrow tie and a tasteful but conservative gray suit. His shirt was pastel blue. A big black leather Rembrandt Bible decorated the desk’s glass top beside an alabaster pen holder.

  “First, let me congratulate you on your bravery,” he said. “Reports from the field say noth­ing but good about you.” He smiled like that fellow on TV who’s always asking the audience to give him some help. Then his face got sincere and serious. I honestly believe he was sincere; he was also well trained in dealing with not-very-bright people. “I hear you have a report for me. From Charles Frick.”

  “He said his name was Charlie.” I told him the story. “What I’m curious about, what did he mean, this thing about who’s in charge?”

  “Charlie was in Organization until last year. He died in a car accident. I’m shocked to hear he got the Low Road.” He didn’t look shocked. “Maybe I’m shocked but not surprised. To tell the truth, he was a bit of a troublemaker.” He smiled brightly again and there was a little too much expression for a face his size.

  “What did he mean?”

  “John, I’m proud of all our drivers. You don’t know how proud we all are of you folks down there doing the dirty work.”

  “What did Charlie mean?”

  “Surely there must be some satisfaction in keeping the land clean of abortionists and pornographers, hustlers and muggers and murderers. Scrugging away the atheists and heathens and idol­worshippers. You people keep the scum away from the good folks, the plain good folks, sort of a gigantic and ancient sanitation squad. Now we know that driving’s maybe the hardest job we have in the company, and that not everyone can work indefinitely on the Low Road. Still, we’d like you to stay on. Not as a driver—unless you really want that, for the satisfaction of a tough job well done. No, if you want to move up—and you’ve earned it by now, surely—we have a place for you right here.” He placed his hand flat on the bible, then tapped the desk with a finger. “A place where you’ll be comfortable and—”

  That was enough for me. “I’ve already said I want out. You’re acting like I’m hot stuff and I’m just shit. You know that, I know that. What is going on?”

  His face hardened. “It isn’t easy up here, either, buster.” The “buster” bit tickled me. I laughed and got up from the chair. I’d been in enough offices and this fancy one just made me queasy. When I stood, he held up his hand and pursed his lips as he nodded. “Sorry about that. Sometimes I’m a little too brusque. There’s incentive, there’s certainly a reason why you should want to work here. If you’re so convinced you’re on your way to the Low Road, you can work it off here, you know.”

  “How can you say that?”

  Bright smile. “Charlie told you something. He told you about who’s in charge.”

  Now I could smell something terribly wrong, like with the union boss. I mumbled, “He said that’s why there’s trouble.”

  “It comes every now and then. We put it down gentle. I tell you where we really need good people, compassionate people. We nee
d them to help with the choosing.”

  “Choosing?”

  “Surely you don’t think the Boss does all the choosing directly?”

  I couldn’t think of a thing to say.

  “Listen, the Boss … let me tell you. A long time ago, the Boss decided to create a new kind of worker, one with more decision-­making­­ ability. Some of the supervisors disagreed, especially when the Boss said the workers would be around for a long, long time—that they’d be indestructible. Sort of like nuclear fuel, you know. Human souls. The waste builds up after a time, those who turn out bad, turn out to be chronically unemployable. They don’t go along with the scheme, or get out of line. Can’t just live and let live, can’t just get along with their fellow workers. You know the type. What do you do with them? Can’t just dump them somewheres and let them be—they’re indestructible, and that ain’t no joke—”

  “Chronically unemployable?”

  “You’re a union man. Think of what it must feel like to be out of work … forever. You’re eternally damned. Nobody will hire you.”

  I knew the feeling, both the way he meant it and the way it had happened to me.

  “The Boss feels the project half succeeded, so He doesn’t dump it completely. But He doesn’t want to be bothered with all the pluses and minuses, the bookkeeping.”

  “You’re in charge,” I said, my blood cooling.

  And I knew where I had seen him before.

  On television.

  God’s right-hand man.

  And human. Flesh-and-blood.

  We ran Hell.

  He nodded. “Now, that’s not the sort of thing we’d like to get around.”

  “You’re in charge, and you let the drivers take their perks from the loads, you let—” I stopped, instinct telling me I would soon be on a rugged trail with no turnaround.

  “I’ll tell you the truth, John. I have only been in charge here for a year, and my predecessor let things get out of hand. He wasn’t a religious man, John, and he thought this was a job like any other, where you could compromise now and then. I know that isn’t so. There’s no compromise here, and we’ll straighten out those inequities and bad decisions very soon. You’ll help us, I hope. You may know more about the problems than we do.”

  “How do you … how do you qualify for a job like this?” I asked. “And who offered it to you?”

  “Not the Boss, if that’s what you’re getting at, John. It’s been kind of traditional. You may have heard about me. I’m the one, when there was all this talk about after-death experiences and everyone was seeing bright light and beauty, I’m the one who wondered why no one was seeing the other side. I found people who had almost died and had seen Hell, and I turned their lives around. The management in the company decided a fellow with my ability could do good work here. And so I’m here. And I’ll tell you, it isn’t easy. I sometimes wish we had a little more help from the Boss, a little more guidance, but we don’t, and somebody has to do it. Somebody has to clean out the stables, John.” Again the smile.

  I put on my talking-to-the-man mask. “Of course,” I said. I hoped a gradual increase in piety would pass his sharp-eyed muster.

  “And you can see how this all makes you much more valuable to the organization.”

  I let light dawn slowly.

  “We’d hate to lose you now, John. Not when there’s security, so much security, working for us. I mean, here we learn the real ins and outs of salvation.”

  I let him talk at me until he looked at his watch, and all the time I nodded and considered and tried to think of the best ploy. Then I eased myself into a turnabout. I did some confessing until his discomfort was stretched too far—I was keeping him from an important appointment—and made my concluding statement.

  “I just wouldn’t feel right up here,” I said. “I’ve driven all my life. I’d just want to keep on, working where I’m best suited.”

  “Keep your present job?” he said, tapping his shoe on the side of the desk.

  “Lord, yes,” I said, grateful as could be.

  Then I asked him for his autograph. He smiled real big and gave it to me, God’s right-hand man, who had prayed with presidents.

  The next time out, I thought about the incredible thing that Charlie Frick had told me. Halfway to Hell, on the part of the run that he had once driven, I pulled the truck onto the gravel shoulder and walked back, hands in pockets, squinting at the faces. Young and old. Mostly old, but a few very young, in their teens or twenties. Some were clearly bad news … But I was looking more closely this time, trying to discriminate.

  And sure enough, I saw a few that didn’t seem to belong.

  The dead hung by the slats, sticking their arms through, beseeching. I ignored as much of that as I could. “You,” I said, pointing to a pale, thin fellow with a listless expression. “Why are you here?”

  They wouldn’t lie to me. I’d learned that inside the City. The dead don’t lie.

  “I kill people,” the man said in a high whisper. “I love to kill kids. You know, children. Real pleasure to me.”

  That confirmed my theory. I had known there was some­thing wrong with him. I pointed to an old woman, plump and white-haired, lacking any of the signs. “You. Why are you going to Hell?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “Because I’m bad, I suppose.”

  “What did you do that was bad?”

  “I don’t know!” she said, flinging her hands up. “I really don’t know. I was a librarian. When all those horrible people tried to take books out of my library, I fought them. I tried to reason with them … They wanted to remove Salinger and Twain and Baum …”

  I picked out another young man. “What about you?”

  “I didn’t think it was possible,” he said. “I didn’t believe that God hated me, too.”

  “What did you do?” These people didn’t need to confess.

  “I loved God. I loved Jesus. But, dear Lord, I couldn’t help it. I’m gay. I never had a choice. God wouldn’t send me here just for being gay, would he?”

  I spoke to a few more, until I was sure I had found all I had in this load. “You, you, you and you, out,” I said, swinging open the rear gate. I closed the gate after them and led them away from the truck. Then I told them what Charlie Frick had told me, what he had learned on the road and in the big offices.

  “Nobody’s really sure where it goes,” I said. “But it doesn’t go to Hell, and it doesn’t go back to Earth.”

  “Where, then?” the old woman asked plaintively. The hope in her eyes made me want to cry, because I just wasn’t sure.

  “Maybe it’s the High Road,” I said. “At least it’s a chance. You light out across this stretch, go back of that hill, and I think there’s some sort of trail. It’s not easy to find, but if you look carefully, it’s there. Follow it.”

  The young man who was gay took my hand. I felt like pulling away, because I’ve never been fond of homos. But he held on and he said, “Thank you. You must be taking a big risk.”

  “Yes, thank you,” the librarian said. “Why are you doing it?”

  I had hoped they wouldn’t ask. “When I was a kid, one of my Sunday schoolteachers told me about Jesus going down to Hell during the three days before he rose up again. She told me Jesus went to Hell to bring out those who didn’t belong. I’m certainly no Jesus, I’m not even much of a Christian, but that’s what I’m doing. She called it Harrowing Hell.” I shook my head. “Never mind. Just go,” I said. I watched them walk across the gray flats and around the hill, then I got back into my truck and took the rest into the annex. Nobody noticed. I suppose the records just aren’t that important to the employees.

  None of the folks I’ve let loose have ever come back.

  I’m staying on the road. I’m talking to people here and there, being cautious. When it looks
like things are getting chancy, I’ll take my rig back down to the City. And then I’m not sure what I’ll do.

  I don’t want to let everybody loose. But I want to know who’s ending up on the Low Road who shouldn’t be. People unpopular with God’s right-hand man.

  My message is simple. The crazy folks are running the asylum. We’ve corrupted Hell.

  If I get caught, I’ll be riding in back. And if you’re reading this, chances are you’ll be there, too.

  Until then, I’m doing my bit. How about you?

  The White Horse Child

  Here’s one of my most popular stories, reprinted dozens of times and even made into a multimedia CD-ROM. When Terry Carr bought it for his original hardcover anthology Universe 9 (1979) I was thrilled—Terry was one of the most respected editors in the field, and he said this story reminded him of Ray Bradbury.

  Ray’s work has always been one of my biggest influences, but “The White Horse Child” is the only one of my stories that even comes close to being Bradburyesque.

  I had strong inspiration. In my late teens and early twenties I experienced a series of dreams that exposed something about my inner, creative self. While I’ve seldom gotten story ideas from dreams, on occasion—and particularly in those years—dreams acted like a mindquake to reveal hidden layers and allow deep magma to reach the surface.

  One of the upwellings came in 1972. I was living by myself in an apartment on College Avenue in San Diego, California. Half-awake, lying in bed in the dark at some hour past midnight, I witnessed an equine beast push slowly through my bedroom wall. It was made of woven ice crystals, but otherwise bore a distinct resemblance to the horse in Fuselli’s “Nightmare,” and it relayed a message that seemed at first ominous—but in retrospect, after I was fully awake, turned out to be friendly and approving. That message was, and I quote it exactly, “You’re doing just fine, but don’t forget about me.”

  I had met this creature before.

  When I was nine years old, I had had a bad nightmare about a white cloud hovering over my bed. It had told me that it was going to eat me.