Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume One

by Short Story Anthology

  "But how long will I stay here?"

  The old man looked sad and spoke kindly for the first time: "Forever. You never used your time, so you have nothing to rely on as anchorage in normal space."

  "But everyone here thinks there's a way out. I know it! They keep walking, trying to find an exit."

  "Fools. There is no way back."

  "But you don't seem to be the sort of person who wasted his life. Some of the others I've seen, yes. I can seen that; but you?"

  The old man's eyes grew misty. He spoke with difficulty. "Yes, I belong here . . ."

  Then he turned and, like one in a dream, lost, wandered away. Lunatic, observing phenomena. And then gone in the grayness of time gorged limbo. Part of a glacial period slid past Ian Ross and he resumed his walk without destination.

  And after a long, long time that was timeless but filled with an abundance of time, he met Catherine.

  He saw her as a spot of darkness against the gray limbo. She was quite a distance away, and he walked on for a while, watching the dark blotch against gray, and then decided to change direction. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered: he was alone with his memories, replaying again and again.

  The sinking of the Titanic wafted through him.

  She did not move, even though he was approaching on a direct line.

  When he was quite close he could see that she was sitting cross-legged on nothingness; she was asleep. Her head was propped in one hand, the bracing arm supported by her knee. Asleep.

  He came right up to her and stood there simply watching. He smiled. She was like a bird, he thought, with her head tucked under her wing. Not really, but that was how he saw her. Though her cupped hand covered half her face he could make out a sweet face, very pale skin, a mole on her throat; her hair was brown, cut quite short. Her eyes were closed; he decided they would be blue.

  The Greek Senate, the Age of Pericles, men in a crowd-property owners-screaming at Lycurgus's exhortations in behalf of socialism. The shadow of it sailed past not very far away.

  Ian stood staring, and after a while he sat down opposite her. He leaned back on his arms and watched. He hummed an old tune the name of which he did not know.

  Finally, she opened her brown eyes and stared at him.

  At first momentary terror, startlement, chagrin, curiosity. Then she took umbrage. "How long have you been there?"

  "My name is Ian Ross." he said.

  "I don't care what your name is!" she said angrily. "I asked you how long you've been sitting there watching me."

  "I don't know. A while."

  "I don't like being watched; you're being very rude."

  He got to his feet without answering and began walking away. Oh well.

  She ran after him. "Hey, wait!"

  He kept walking. He didn't have to be bothered like that. She caught up with him and ran around to stand in front of him. "I suppose you just think you can walk off like that!"

  "Yes. I can. I'm sorry I bothered you. Please get out of my way if you don't want me around."

  "I didn't say that."

  "You said I was being rude. I am never rude; I'm a very well-mannered person, and you were just being insulting."

  He walked around her. She ran after him.

  "All right, okay, maybe I was a little out of sorts. I was asleep, after all."

  He stopped. She stood in front of him. Now it was her move. "My name is Catherine Molnar. How do you do?"

  "Not too well, that's how."

  "Have you been here long?"

  "Longer than I wanted to be here, that's for sure."

  "Can you explain what's happened to me?"

  He thought about it. Walking with someone would be a nice change. "Let me ask you something." Ian Ross said, beginning to stroll off toward the phantom image of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon wafting past them. "Did you waste a lot of time, sitting around, not doing much, maybe watching television a lot?"

  They were lying down side by side because they were tired. Nothing more than that. The Battle of Ardennes, First World War, was all around them. Not a sound. Just movement. Mist, fog, turretless tanks, shattered trees all around them. Some corpses left lying in the middle of no-man's land. They had been together for a space of time . . . it was three hours, it was six weeks, it was a month of Sundays, it was a year to remember, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times: who could measure it? There were no signposts, no town criers, no grandfather clocks, no change of seasons, who could measure it?

  They had begun to talk freely. He told her again that his name was Ian Ross, and she said Catherine.. Catherine Molnar again. She confirmed his guess that her life had been empty. "Plain," she said. "I was plain. I am plain. No, don't bother to say you think I have nice cheekbones or a trim figure; it won't change a thing. If you want plain, I've got it."

  He didn't say she had nice cheekbones or a trim figure. But he didn't think she was plain.

  The Battle of the Ardennes was swirling away now.

  She suggested they make love.

  Ian Ross got to his feet quickly and walked away.

  She watched him for a while, keeping him in 3 sight. Then she got up, dusted off her hands though there was nothing on them, an act of memory, and followed him. Quite a long time later, after trailing him but not trying to catch up to him, she ran to match his pace and finally, gasping for breath, reached him.

  "I'm sorry," she said.

  "Nothing to be sorry about."

  "I offended you."

  "No, you didn't. I just felt like walking."

  "Stop it, Ian. I did. I offended you."

  He stopped and spun on her. "Do you think I'm a virgin? I'm not a virgin."

  His vehemence pulled her back from the edge of boldness. "No, of course you're not. I never thought such a .thing." Then she said. "Well . . . I am."

  "Sorry," he said, because he didn't know the right thing to say, if there was a right thing.

  "Not your fault," she said. Which was the right thing to say.

  From nothing to nothing. Thirty-four years old, the properly desperate age for unmarried, unmotherhooded, unloved, Catherine Molnar. Janesville, Wisconsin. Straightening the trinkets in her jewelry box, ironing her clothes, 'j removing and refolding the sweaters in her drawers, hanging the slacks with the slacks, skirts with the skirts, blouses with the blouses, coats with the coats, all in order in the closet, reading every word in Time and Reader's Digest, learning seven new words every day, never using seven new words every day, mopping the floors in the three-room apartment, putting aside one full evening to pay the bills and spelling out Wisconsin completely, never the WI abbreviation on the return envelopes, listening to talk radio, calling for the correct time to set the clocks, spooning out the droppings from the kitty box, repasting photos in the album of scenes with round-faced people, pinching back the buds on the coleus, calling Aunt Beatrice every Tuesday at seven o'clock, talking brightly to the waitress in the orange and-blue uniform at the chicken pie shop, repainting fingernails carefully so the moon on each nail is showing, heating morning water for herself alone for the cup of herbal tea, setting the table with a cloth napkin and a placemat, doing dishes, going to the office and straightening the bills of lading precisely. From nothing to nothing. Thirty-four.

  They lay side by side but they were not tired. There was more to it than that.

  "I hate men who can't think past the pillow," she said, touching his hair.

  "What's that?"

  "Oh, it's just something I practiced, to say after the first time I slept with a man. I always felt there should be something original to say, instead of all the things I read in novels."

  "I think it's a very clever phrase." Even now, he found it hard to touch her. He lay with hands at his sides.

  She changed the subject. "I was never able to get very far playing the piano. I have absolutely no give between the thumb and first finger. And that's essential, you know. You have to have a long reach, a good spread, I think
they call it, to play Chopin. A tenth: that's two notes over an octave. A full octave, a perfect octave, those are just technical terms. Octave is good enough. I don't have that."

  "I like piano playing," he said, realizing how silly and dull he must sound and frightened (very suddenly) that she would find him so, that she would leave him. Then he remembered where they were and he smiled. Where could she go? Where could he go?

  "I always hated the fellows at parties who could play the piano . . . all the girls clustered around those people. Except these days it's not so much piano; not too many people have pianos in their homes anymore. The kids grow up and go away and nobody takes lessons and the kids don't buy pianos. They get those electric guitars."

  "Acoustical guitars."

  "Yes, those. I don't think it would be much better for fellows like me who don't play, even if it's acoustical guitars."

  'They got up and walked again.

  Once they discussed how they had wasted their lives, how they had sat there with hands folded as time filled space around them, swept through, was drained off, and their own "chronons" (he had told her about the lunatic; she said it sounded like Benjamin Franklin; he said the man hadn't looked like Benjamin Franklin, but maybe, it might have been) had been leached of all potency.

  Once they discussed the guillotine executions in the Paris of the Revolution, because it was keeping pace with them. Once they chased the Devonian and almost caught it. Once they were privileged to enjoy themselves in the center of an Arctic snowstorm that held around them for a measure of measureless time. Once they saw nothing for an eternity but were truly chilled-unlike the Arctic snowstorm that had had no effect on them-by the winds that blew past them. And once he turned to her and said, "I love you, Catherine."

  But when she looked at him with a gentle smile, he noticed for the first time that her eyes seemed to be getting gray and pale.

  Then, not too soon after, she said she loved him, too.

  But she could see mist through the flesh of his hands when he- reached out to touch her face.

  They walked with their arms around each other, having found each other. They said many times, and agreed it was so, that they were in love and being together was the most important thing in that endless world of gray spaces, even if they never found their way back.

  And they began to use their time together, setting small goals for each "day" upon awakening. We will walk that far; we will play word games in which you have to begin the name of a s female movie star from the last letter of a male movie star's name that I have to begin off the a last letter of a female movie star; we will ex-' change shirt and blouse and see how it feels for a while; we will sing every camp song we can remember. They began to enjoy their time together. They began to live.

  And sometimes his voice faded out, and she could see him moving his lips but there was no sound.

  And sometimes when the mist cleared she was invisible from the ankles down and her body moved as through thick soup.

  And as they used their time, they became alien in that place where wasted time had gone to rest.

  And they began to fade. As the world had leached out for Ian Ross in Scotland, and for Catherine Molnar in Wisconsin, they began to vanish from limbo. Matter could neither be created nor destroyed, but it could be disassembled and sent where it was needed for entropic balance.

  He saw her pale skin become transparent.

  She saw his hands as clear as glass.

  And they thought: too late. It comes too late.

  Invisible motes of their selves were drawn off and were sent away from that gray place. Were sent where needed to maintain balance. One and one and one, separated on the wind and blown to the farthest corners of the tapestry that was time and space. And could never be recalled. And could never be rejoined.

  So they touched, there in that vast limbo of wasted time, for the last time, and shadows existed for an instant, and then were gone; he first, leaving her behind for the merest instant of terrible loneliness and loss, and then she, without shadow, pulled apart and scattered, followed. Separation without hope of return.

  There was the faintest keening whine of matter fleeing.

  There was the soundless echo of a diminishing moan.

  The universe was poised to accept restored order.

  And then balance was regained; as if they had never been.

  Great events hushed in mist swirled past. Ptolemy crowned King of Egypt, the Battle of Teutoburger Forest, Jesus crucified, the founding of Constantinople, the Vandals plundering Rome, the massacre of the Omayyad family, the Court of the Fujiwaras in Japan. Jerusalem falling to Saladin . . . and on and on . . . great events . . . empty time . . . and the timeless population trudged past endlessly . . . unaware that finally, at last, hopelessly and too late . . . two of their nameless order had found the way out.

  Susan, by Harlan Ellison

  As she had done every night since they met, she went in bare feet and a cantaloupe-meat-colored nightshift to the shore of the sea of mist, the verge of the ocean of smothering vapor, the edge of the bewildering haze he called the Brim of Obscurity.

  Though they spend all their daytime together, at night he chose to sleep alone in a lumpy, Volkswagen-shaped bed at the southernmost boundary of the absolutely lovely forest in which their home had been constructed. There are the border between the verdant woods and the Brim of Obscurity that stretched on forever, a sea of fog that roiled and swirled itself into small, murmuring vortexes from which depths one could occasionally hear something like a human voice pleading for absolution (or at least a backscratcher to relieve this awful itch!), he had made his bed and there, with the night-light from his old nursery, and his old vacuum-tube radio that played nothing but big-band dance music from the 1920s, and a few favorite books, and a little fresh fruit he had picked on his way from the house to his resting-place, he slept peacefully every night. Except for the nightmares, of course.

  And as she had done every night for the eight years since they had met, she went barefooted and charmed, down to the edge of the sea of fog to kiss him goodnight. That was their rite.

  Before he had even proposed marriage, he explained to her the nature of the problem. Well, the curse, really. Not so much a problem; because a problem was easy to reconcile; just trim a little nub off here; just smooth that plane over there; just let this big dangle here and it will all meet in the center; no, it wasn't barely remotely something that could be called "problem." It was a curse, and he was open about it from the first.

  "My nightmares come to life," he had said.

  Which remark thereupon initiated quite a long and detailed conversation between them. It went through all the usual stages of good-natured chiding, disbelief, ridicule, short-lived anger at the possibility he was making fun of her, toying with her, on into another kind of disbelief, argument with recourse to logic and Occam's Razor, grudging acceptance, a brief lapse into incredulity, a return to the barest belief, and finally, with trust, acceptance that he was telling her nothing less than the truth. Remarkably (to say the least) his nightmares assumed corporeal shape and stalked the night as he slept, dreaming them up. It wouldn't have been so bad except:

  "My nightmares killed and ate my first four wives," he had said. He'd saved that part for last.

  But she married him, nonetheless. And they were extremely happy. It was a terrific liaison for both of them. But just to be on the safe side, because he loved her very much, he took to sleeping in the lumpy Volkswagen bed at the edge of the forest.

  And every morning--because he was compelled to rise when the sunlight struck his face, out there in the open--he would trek back to their fine home in the middle of the forest, and he would make her morning tea, and heat and butter a muffin, or possibly pour her a bowl of banana nut crunch cereal (or sometimes a nice bowl of oatmeal with cinnamon or brown sugar sprinkled across the surface), and carry it in to her as she sat up in bed reading or watching the Home Shopping Channel. And for eight years sh
e had been absolutely safe from the nightmares that ripped and rent and savaged everything in sight.

  He slept at the Brim of Obscurity, and he was a danger to no one but himself. And whatever means he used to protect himself from those darktime sojourners, well, it was an armory kept most secret.

  That was how they lived, for eight years. And every night she would go barefoot, in her shift, and she would follow the twenty-seven plugged-together extension cords--each one thirty feet long--that led from he house to his night-light; and she would come to him and kiss him goodnight. And they would tell each other how happy they were together, how much every moment together meant to them, and they would kiss goodnight once more, and she would go back to the house. He would lie reading for a time, then go to sleep. And in the night, there at the short of fog, at the edge of the awful sea of mist, the nightmares would come and scream and tear at themselves. But they never got anywhere near Susan, who was safely in her home.

  So as she had done every night since they had met, she followed the extension cords down through the sweet-smelling wind-cooled hedges and among the whispering, mighty trees to his bed. The light was on, an apple ready to be nibbled sat atop a stack of books awaiting his attention; the intaglio of a tesseract (or possibly a dove on the wing) lay in the center of a perfectly circular depression in his pillow where he had rested his head. But the bed was empty.

  She went looking for him, and after a time she found him sitting on the shore of fog, looking out over the Brim of Obscurity. But she heard him crying long before she saw him. The sound of his deep, heartfelt sobbing led her to him.

  And she knelt beside him, and he puts his arms around her, and she said "I see now that I've made you unhappy. I don't know how, but I can see that I've come into your life and made it unpleasant. I'm sorry, I'm truly sorry."

  But he shook his head, and continued to shake it, to say no...no, that isn't it...you don't understand.

  "I'm so sorry..." she kept saying, because she didn't understand what it meant, his shaking his head like that.