The Top of the Volcano: The Award-Winning Stories of Harlan Ellison

by Harlan Ellison

  “Give me a minute,” Blood said. He was really concentrating. His body was tense as a wire. His eyes were closed, his muzzle quivering. I let him work.

  It was possible. Just maybe possible. I knew that they made really dumb flicks in the downunders, the kind of crap they’d made back in the 1930s and ’40s, real clean stuff with even married people sleeping in twin beds. Myrna Loy and George Brent kind of flicks. And I knew that, once in a while, a chick from one of the really strict middle-class downunders would cumup, to see what a hairy flick was like. I’d heard about it, but it’d never happened in any theater I’d ever been in.

  And the chances of it happening in the Metropole, particularly, were slim. There was a lot of twisty trade came to the Metropole. Now, understand, I’m not specially prejudiced against guys corning one another…hell, I can understand it. There just aren’t enough chicks anywhere. But I can’t cut the jockey-and-boxer scene because it gets some weak little boxer hanging on you, getting jealous, you have to hunt for him and all he thinks he has to do is bare his ass to get all the work done for him. It’s as bad as having a chick dragging along behind. Made for a lot of bad blood and fights in the bigger roverpaks, too. So I just never swung that way. Well, not never, but not for a long time.

  So with all the twisties in the Metropole, I didn’t think a chick would chance it. Be a toss-up who’d tear her apart first: the boxers or the straights.

  And if she was here, why couldn’t any of the other dogs smell her…?

  “Third row in front of us,” Blood said. “Aisle seat. Dressed like a solo.”

  “How’s come you can whiff her and no other dog’s caught her?”

  “You forget who I am, Albert.”

  “I didn’t forget, I just don’t believe it.”

  Actually, bottom-line, I guess I did believe it. When you’d been as dumb as I’d been and a dog like Blood’d taught me so much, a guy came to believe everything he said. You don’t argue with your teacher.

  Not when he’d taught you how to read and write and add and subtract and everything else they used to know that meant you were smart (but doesn’t mean much of anything now, except it’s good to know it, I guess).

  (The reading’s a pretty good thing. It comes in handy when you can find some canned goods someplace, like in a bombed-out supermarket; makes it easier to pick out stuff you like when the pictures are gone off the labels. Couple of times the reading stopped me from taking canned beets. Shit, I hate beets!)

  So I guess I did believe why he could whiff a maybe chick in there, and no other mutt could. He’d told me all about that a million times. It was his favorite story. History he called it. Christ, I’m not that dumb! I knew what history was. That was all the stuff that happened before now.

  But I liked hearing history straight from Blood, instead of him making me read one of those crummy books he was always dragging in. And that particular history was all about him, so he laid it on me over and over, till I knew it by heart…no, the word was rote. Not wrote, like writing, that was something else. I knew it by rote, means you got it word-for-word.

  And when a mutt teaches you everything you know, and he tells you something rote, I guess finally you do believe it. Except I’d never let that leg-lifter know it.

  II

  What he’d told me rote was:

  Over sixty-five years ago, in Los Angeles, before the Third War even got going completely, there was a man named Buesing who lived in Cerritos. He raised dogs as watchmen and sentries and attackers. Dobermans, Danes, schnauzers and Japanese Akitas. He had one four-year-old German shepherd bitch named Ginger. She worked for the Los Angeles Police Department’s narcotics division. She could smell out marijuana. No matter how well it was hidden. They ran a test on her: there were 25,000 boxes in an auto parts warehouse. Five of them had been planted with marijuana sealed in cellophane, wrapped in tin foil and heavy brown paper, and finally hidden in three separate sealed cartons. Within seven minutes Ginger found all five packages. At the same time that Ginger was working, ninety-two miles farther north, in Santa Barbara, cetologists had drawn and amplified dolphin spinal fluid and injected it into chacma baboons and dogs. Altering surgery and grafting had been done. The first successful product of this cetacean experimentation had been a two-year-old male puli named Ahbhu, who had communicated sense-impressions telepathically. Cross-breeding and continued experimentation had produced the first skirmisher dogs, just in time for the Third War. Telepathic over short distances, easily trained, able to track gasoline or troops or poison gas or radiation when linked with their human controllers, they had become the shock commandos of a new kind of war. The selective traits had bred true. Dobermans, greyhounds, Akitas, pulis and schnauzers had become steadily more telepathic.

  Ginger and Ahbhu had been Blood’s ancestors.

  He had told me so, a thousand times. Had told me the story just that way, in just those words, a thousand times, as it had been told to him. I’d never believed him till now.

  Maybe the little bastard was special.

  I checked out the solo scrunched down in the aisle seat three rows ahead of me. I couldn’t tell a damned thing. The solo had his (her?) cap pulled way down, fleece jacket pulled way up.

  “Are you sure?”

  “As sure as I can be. It’s a girl.”

  “If it is, she’s playing with herself just like a guy.”

  Blood snickered. “Surprise,” he said sarcastically.

  The mystery solo sat through Raw Deal again. It made sense, if that was a girl. Most of the solos and all of the members of roverpaks left after the beaver flick. The theater didn’t fill up much more, it gave the streets time to empty, he/she could make his/her way back to wherever he/she had come from. I sat through Raw Deal again myself. Blood went to sleep.

  When the mystery solo got up, I gave him/her time to get weapons if any’d been checked, and start away. Then I pulled Blood’s big shaggy ear and said, “Let’s do it.” He slouched after me, up the aisle.

  I got my guns and checked the street. Empty.

  “Okay, nose,” I said, “where’d he go?”

  “Her. To the right.”

  I started off, loading the Browning from my bandolier. I still didn’t see anyone moving among the bombed-out shells of the buildings. This section of the city was crummy, really bad shape. But then, with Our Gang running the Metropole, they didn’t have to repair anything else to get their livelihood. It was ironic; the Dragons had to keep an entire power plant going to get tribute from the other roverpaks; Ted’s Bunch had to mind the reservoir; the Bastinados worked like fieldhands in the marijuana gardens; the Barbados Blacks lost a couple of dozen members every year cleaning out the radiation pits all over the city; and Our Gang only had to run that movie house.

  Whoever their leader had been, however many years ago it had been that the roverpaks had started forming out of foraging solos, I had to give it to him: he’d been a flinty sharp mother. He knew what services to deal in.

  “She turned off here,” Blood said.

  I followed him as he began loping toward the edge of the city and the bluish-green radiation that still flickered from the hills. I knew he was right, then. The only things out here were screamers and the access dropshaft to the downunder. It was a girl, all right.

  The cheeks of my ass tightened as I thought about it. I was going to get laid. It had been almost a month, since Blood had whiffed that solo chick in the basement of the Market Basket. She’d been filthy, and I’d gotten the crabs from her, but she’d been a woman, all right, and once I’d tied her down and clubbed her a couple of times she’d been pretty good. She’d liked it, too, even if she did spit on me and tell me she’d kill me if she ever got loose. I left her tied up, just to be sure. She wasn’t there when I went back to look, week before last.

  “Watch out,” Blood said, dodging around a crater almost invisible against the surrounding shadows. Something stirred in the crater.

  Trekking across the nomanslan
d, I realized why it was that all but a handful of solos or members of roverpaks were guys. The War had killed off most of the girls, and that was the way it always was in wars…at least that’s what Blood told me. The things getting born were seldom male or female, and had to be smashed against a wall as soon as they were pulled out of the mother.

  The few chicks who hadn’t gone downunder with the middle-classers were hard, solitary bitches like the one in the Market Basket; tough and stringy and just as likely to cut off your meat with a razor blade once they let you get in. Scuffling for a piece of ass had gotten harder and harder, the older I’d gotten.

  But every once in a while a chick got tired of being roverpak property, or a raid was got-up by five or six roverpaks and some unsuspecting downunder was taken, or—like this time, yeah—some middle-class chick from a downunder got hot pants to find out what a beaver flick looked like, and cumup.

  I was going to get laid. Oh boy, I couldn’t wait!

  III

  Out here it was nothing but empty corpses of blasted buildings. One entire block had been stomped flat, like a steel press had come down from Heaven and given one solid wham! and everything was powder under it. The chick was scared and skittish, I could see that. She moved erratically, looking back over her shoulder and to either side. She knew she was in dangerous country. Man, if she’d only known how dangerous.

  There was one building standing all alone at the end of the smashflat block, like it had been missed and chance let it stay. She ducked inside and a minute later I saw a bobbing light. Flashlight? Maybe.

  Blood and I crossed the street and came up into the blackness surrounding the building. It was what was left of a YMCA.

  That meant “Young Men’s Christian Association.” Blood had taught me to read.

  So what the hell was a young men’s christian association? Sometimes being able to read makes more questions than if you were stupid.

  I didn’t want her getting out; inside there was as good a place to screw her as any, so I put Blood on guard right beside the steps leading up into the shell, and I went around the back. All the doors and windows had been blown out, of course. It wasn’t no big trick getting in. I pulled myself up to the ledge of a window, and dropped down inside. Dark inside. No noise, except the sound of her, moving around on the other side of the old YMCA. I didn’t know if she was heeled or not, and I wasn’t about to take any chances. I bowslung the Browning and took out the .45 automatic. I didn’t have to snap back the action—there was always a slug in the chamber.

  I started moving carefully through the room. It was a locker room of some kind. There was glass and debris all over the floor, and one entire row of metal lockers had the paint blistered off their surfaces; the flash blast had caught them through the windows, a lot of years ago. My sneakers didn’t make a sound coming through the room.

  The door was hanging on one hinge, and I stepped over—through the inverted triangle. I was in the swimming pool area. The big pool was empty, with tiles buckled down at the shallow end. It stunk bad in there; no wonder, there were dead guys, or what was left of them, along one wall. Some lousy cleaner-up had stacked them, but hadn’t buried them. I pulled my bandanna up around my nose and mouth and kept moving.

  Out the other side of the pool place, and through a little passage with popped light bulbs in the ceiling. I didn’t have any trouble seeing. There was moonlight coming through busted windows and a chunk was out of the ceiling. I could hear her real plain now, just on the other side of the door at the end of the passage. I hung close to the wall, and stepped down to the door. It was open a crack, but blocked by a fall of lath and plaster from the wall. It would make noise when I went to pull it open, that was for certain. I had to wait for the right moment.

  Flattened against the wall, I checked out what she was doing in there. It was a gymnasium, big one, with climbing ropes hanging down from the ceiling. She had a squat, square, eight-cell flashlight sitting up on the croup of a vaulting horse. There were parallel bars and a horizontal bar about eight feet high, the tempered steel all rusty now. There were swinging rings and a trampoline and a big wooden balancing beam. Over to one side there were wall-bars and balancing benches, horizontal and oblique ladders, and a couple of stacks of vaulting boxes. I made a note to remember this joint. It was better for working out than the jerry-rigged gym I’d set up in an old auto wrecking yard. A guy has to keep in shape, if he’s going to be a solo.

  She was out of her disguise. Standing there in the skin, shivering. Yeah, it was chilly, and I could see a pattern of chicken-skin all over her. She was maybe five-six or -seven, with nice tits and kind of skinny legs. She was brushing out her hair. It hung way down the back. The flashlight didn’t make it clear enough to tell if she had red hair or chestnut, but it wasn’t blonde, which was good, and that was because I dug redheads. She had nice tits, though. I couldn’t see her face, the hair was hanging down all smooth and wavy and cut off her profile.

  The crap she’d been wearing was thrown around on the floor, and what she was going to put on was up on the vaulting horse. She was standing in little shoes with a kind of funny heel on them.

  I couldn’t move. I suddenly realized I couldn’t move. She was nice, really nice. I was getting a real big kick out of just standing there and seeing the way her waist fell inward and her hips fell outward, the way the muscles at the side of her tits pulled up when she reached to the top of her head to brush all that hair down. It was really weird the kick I was getting out of standing and just staring at a chick do that. Kind of very, well, woman stuff. I liked it a lot.

  I’d never stopped and just looked at a chick like that. All the ones I’d ever seen had been scumbags that Blood had smelled out for me, and I’d snatch’n’grabbed them. Or the big chicks in the beaver flicks. Not like this one, kind of soft and very smooth, even with the goose bumps. I could have watched her all night.

  She put down the brush, and reached over and took a pair of panties off the pile of clothes and wriggled into them. Then she got her bra and put it on. I never knew the way chicks did it. She put it on backwards around her waist, and it had a hook on it. Then she slid it around till the cups were in front, and kind of pulled it up under and scooped herself into it, first one, then the other; then she pulled the straps over her shoulder. She reached for her dress, and I nudged some of the lath and plaster aside, and grabbed the door to give it a yank.

  She had the dress up over her head, and her arms up inside the material, and when she stuck her head in, and was all tangled there for a second, I yanked the door and there was a crash as chunks of wood and plaster fell out of the way, and a heavy scraping, and I jumped inside and was on her before she could get out of the dress.

  She started to scream, and I pulled the dress off her with a ripping sound, and it all happened for her before she knew what that crash and scrape was all about.

  Her face was wild. Just wild. Big eyes: I couldn’t tell what color they were because they were in shadow. Real fine features, a wide mouth, little nose, cheekbones just like mine, real high and prominent, and a dimple in her right cheek. She stared at me really scared.

  And then…and this is really weird…I felt like I should say something to her. I don’t know what. Just something. It made me uncomfortable, to see her scared, but what the hell could I do about that, I mean, I was going to rape her, after all, and I couldn’t very well tell her not to be shrinky about it. She was the one cumup, after all. But even so, I wanted to say hey, don’t be scared, I just want to lay you. (That never happened before. I never wanted to say anything to a chick, just get in, and that was that.)

  But it passed, and I put my leg behind hers and tripped her back, and she went down in a pile. I leveled the .45 at her, and her mouth kind of opened in a little o shape. “Now I’m gonna go over there and get one of them wrestling mats, so it’ll be better, comfortable, uh-huh? You make a move off that floor and I shoot a leg out from under you, and you’ll get screwed just the same, e
xcept you’ll be without a leg.” I waited for her to let me know she was onto what I was saying, and she finally nodded real slow, so I kept the automatic on her, and went over to the big dusty stack of mats, and pulled one off.

  I dragged it over to her, and flipped it so the cleaner side was up, and used the muzzle of the .45 to maneuver her onto it. She just sat there on the mat, with her hands behind her, and her knees bent, and stared at me.

  I unzipped my pants and started pulling them down off one side, when I caught her looking at me real funny. I stopped with the jeans. “What’re you lookin’ at?”

  I was mad. I didn’t know why I was mad, but I was.

  “What’s your name?” she asked. Her voice was very soft, and kind of furry, like it came up through her throat that was all lined with fur or something.

  She kept looking at me, waiting for me to answer.

  “Vic,” I said. She looked like she was waiting for more.

  “Vic what?”

  I didn’t know what she meant for a minute, then I did. “Vic. Just Vic. That’s all.”

  “Well, what’re your mother and father’s names?”

  Then I started laughing, and working my jeans down again. “Boy, are you a dumb bitch,” I said, and laughed some more. She looked hurt. It made me mad again. “Stop lookin’ like that, or I’ll bust out your teeth!”

  She folded her hands in her lap.

  I got the pants around my ankles. They wouldn’t come off over the sneakers. I had to balance on one foot and scuff the sneaker off the other foot. It was tricky, keeping the .45 on her and getting the sneaker off at the same time. But I did it.

  I was standing there buck-naked from the waist down and she had sat forward a little, her legs crossed, hands still in her lap. “Get that stuff off,” I said.

  She didn’t move for a second, and I thought she was going to give me trouble. But then she reached around behind and undid the bra. Then she tipped back and slipped the panties off her ass.