This Way to the End Times

by Robert Silverberg

  In many if not all species it is the aggressive behavior which appears first, and then changes to copulatory behavior when the appropriate signal is presented (e.g., the three-tined stickleback and the European robin). Lacking the inhibiting signal, the male’s fighting response continues and the female is attacked or driven off.

  It seems therefore appropriate to speculate that the present crisis might be caused by some substance, perhaps at the viral or enzymatic level, which effects a failure of the switching or triggering function in the higher primates. (Note: Zoo gorillas and chimpanzees have recently been observed to attack or destroy their mates; rhesus not.) Such a dysfunction could be expressed by the failure of mating behavior to modify or supervene over the aggressive/predatory response; i.e., sexual stimulation would produce attack only, the stimulation discharging itself through the destruction of the stimulating object.

  In this connection it might be noted that exactly this condition is a commonplace of male functional pathology, in those cases where murder occurs as a response to, and apparent completion of, sexual desire.

  It should be emphasized that the aggression/copulation linkage discussed here is specific to the male; the female response (e.g., lordotic reflex) being of a different nature.

  Alan sat holding the crumpled sheet a long time; the dry, stilted Scottish phrases seemed to help clear his head, despite the sense of brooding tension all around him. Well, if pollution or whatever had produced some substance, it could presumably be countered, filtered, neutralized. Very very carefully, he let himself consider his life with Anne, his sexuality. Yes; much of their loveplay could be viewed as genitalized, sexually gentled savagery. Play-predation . . . . He turned his mind quickly away. Some writer’s phrase occurred to him: “The panic element in all sex.” Who? Fritz Leiber? The violation of social distance, maybe; another threatening element.

  Whatever, it’s our weak link, he thought. Our vulnerability . . . . The dreadful feeling of rightness he had experienced when he found himself knife in hand, fantasizing violence, came back to him. As though it was the right, the only, way. Was that what Barney’s budworms felt when they mated with their females wrong-end-to?

  At long length, he became aware of body need and sought a toilet. The place was empty, except for what he took to be a heap of clothes blocking the door of the far stall. Then he saw the redbrown pool in which it lay, and the bluish mounds of bare, thin buttocks. He backed out, not breathing, and fled into the nearest crowd, knowing he was not the first to have done so.

  Of course. Any sexual drive. Boys, men, too.

  At the next washroom he watched to see men enter and leave normally before he ventured in.

  Afterward he returned to sit, waiting, repeating over and over to himself: Go to the lab. Don’t go home. Go straight to the lab. Three more hours; he sat numbly at 26°N, 81°W, breathing, breathing. . . .

  DEAR DIARY. BIG SCENE TONITE, Daddy came home!!! Only he acted so funny, he had the taxi wait and just held on to the doorway, he wouldn’t touch me or let us come near him. (I mean funny weird, not funny ha-ha.) He said, I have something to tell you, this is getting worse not better. I’m going to sleep in the lab but I want you to get out, Anne, Anne, I can’t trust myself anymore. First thing in the morning you both get on the plane for Martha’s and stay there. So I thought he had to be joking, I mean with the dance next week and Aunt Martha lives in Whitehorse where there’s nothing nothing nothing. So I was yelling and Mother was yelling and Daddy was groaning, Go now! And then he started crying. Crying!!! So I realized, wow, this is serious, and I started to go over to him but Mother yanked me back and then I saw she had this big knife!!! And she shoved me in back of her and started crying too: Oh Alan, Oh Alan, like she was insane. So I said, Daddy, I’ll never leave you, it felt like the perfect thing to say. And it was thrilling, he looked at me real sad and deep like I was a grown-up while Mother was treating me like I was a mere infant as usual. But Mother ruined it raving, Alan the child is mad, darling go. So he ran out of the door yelling, Be gone. Take the car. Get out before I come back.

  Oh I forgot to say I was wearing what but my gooby green with my curl-tites still on, wouldn’t you know of all the shitty luck, how could I have known such a beautiful scene was ahead we never know life’s cruel whimsy. And Mother is dragging out suitcases yelling, Pack your things hurry! So she’s going I guess but I am not repeat not going to spend the fall sitting in Aunt Martha’s grain silo and lose the dance and all my summer credits. And Daddy was trying to communicate with us, right? I think their relationship is obsolete. So when she goes upstairs I am splitting. I am going to go over to the lab and see Daddy.

  Oh PS Diane tore my yellow jeans she promised me I could use her pink ones ha-ha that’ll be the day.

  I RIPPED THAT PAGE OUT of Amy’s diary when I heard the squad car coming. I never opened her diary before, but when I found she’d gone I looked. . . . Oh, my darling little girl. She went to him, my little girl, my poor little fool child. Maybe if I’d taken time to explain, maybe—

  Excuse me, Barney. The stuff is wearing off, the shots they gave me. I didn’t feel anything. I mean, I knew somebody’s daughter went to see her father and he killed her. And cut his throat. But it didn’t mean anything.

  Alan’s note, they gave me that but then they took it away. Why did they have to do that? His last handwriting, the last words he wrote before his hand picked up the, before he

  I remember it. “Sudden and light as that, the bonds gave. And we learned of finalities besides the grave. The bonds of our humanity have broken, we are finished. I love—”

  I’m all right, Barney, really. Who wrote that, Robert Frost? The bonds gave. . . . Oh, he said, tell Barney: The terrible rightness. What does that mean?

  You can’t answer that, Barney dear. I’m just writing this to stay sane, I’ll put it in your hidey-hole. Thank you, thank you, Barney dear. Even as blurry as I was, I knew it was you. All the time you were cutting off my hair and rubbing dirt on my face, I knew it was right because it was you. Barney, I never thought of you as those horrible words you said. You were always Dear Barney.

  By the time the stuff wore off I had done everything you said, the gas, the groceries. Now I’m here in your cabin. With those clothes you made me put on—I guess I do look like a boy, the gas man called me “Mister.”

  I still can’t really realize, I have to stop myself from rushing back. But you saved my life, I know that. The first trip in I got a paper, I saw where they bombed the Apostle Islands refuge. And it had about those three women stealing the Air Force plane and bombing Dallas, too. Of course they shot them down, over the Gulf. Isn’t it strange how we do nothing? Just get killed by ones and twos. Or more, now they’ve started on the refuges. . . . Like hypnotized rabbits. We’re a toothless race.

  Do you know I never said “we” meaning women before? “We” was always me and Alan, and Amy of course. Being killed selectively encourages group identification. . . . You see how saneheaded I am.

  But I still can’t really realize.

  My first trip in was for salt and kerosene. I went to that little Red Deer store and got my stuff from the old man in the back, as you told me—you see, I remembered! He called me “Boy,” but I think maybe he suspects. He knows I’m staying at your cabin.

  Anyway, some men and boys came in the front. They were all so normal, laughing and kidding. I just couldn’t believe, Barney. In fact I started to go out past them when I heard one of them say, “Heinz saw an angel.” An angel. So I stopped and listened. They said it was big and sparkly. Coming to see if man is carrying out God’s Will, one of them said. And he said, Moosenee is now a liberated zone, and all up by Hudson Bay. I turned and got out the back, fast. The old man had heard them, too. He said to me quietly, “I’ll miss the kids.”

  Hudson Bay, Barney, that means it’s coming from the north too, doesn’t it? That must be about 60°.

  But I have to go back once again, to get some fishhooks. I ca
n’t live on bread. Last week I found a deer some poacher had killed, just the head and legs. I made a stew. It was a doe. Her eyes; I wonder if mine look like that now.

  I WENT TO GET THE fishhooks today. It was bad, I can’t ever go back. There were some men in front again, but they were different. Mean and tense. No boys. And there was a new sign out in front, I couldn’t see it; maybe it says Liberated Zone, too.

  The old man gave me the hooks quick and whispered to me, “Boy, them woods’ll be full of hunters next week.” I almost ran out.

  About a mile down the road a blue pickup started to chase me. I guess he wasn’t from around there, I ran the VW into a logging draw and he roared on by. After a long while I drove out and came on back, but I left the car about a mile from here and hiked in. It’s surprising how hard it is to pile enough brush to hide a yellow VW.

  Barney, I can’t stay here. I’m eating perch raw so nobody will see my smoke, but those hunters will be coming through. I’m going to move my sleeping bag out to the swamp by that big rock, I don’t think many people go there.

  Since my last lines I moved out. It feels safer. Oh, Barney, how did this happen?

  Fast, that’s how. Six months ago I was Dr. Anne Alstein. Now I’m a widow and bereaved mother, dirty and hungry, squatting in a swamp in mortal fear. Funny if I’m the last woman left alive on Earth. I guess the last one around here, anyway. Maybe some are holed up in the Himalayas, or sneaking through the wreck of New York City. How can we last?

  We can’t.

  And I can’t survive the winter here, Barney. It gets to 40° below. I’d have to have a fire, they’d see the smoke. Even if I worked my way south, the woods end in a couple hundred miles. I’d be potted like a duck. No. No use. Maybe somebody is trying something somewhere, but it won’t reach here in time . . . and what do I have to live for?

  No. I’ll just make a good end, say up on that rock where I can see the stars. After I go back and leave this for you. I’ll wait a few days to see the beautiful color in the trees one last time.

  Good-bye, dearest dearest Barney.

  I know what I’ll scratch for an epitaph.

  HERE LIES THE SECOND MEANEST PRIMATE ON EARTH

  I GUESS NOBODY WILL EVER read this, unless I get the nerve and energy to take it back to Barney’s. Probably I won’t. Leave it in a Baggie, I have one here; maybe Barney will come and look. I’m up on the big rock now. The moon is going to rise soon, I’ll do it then. Mosquitoes, be patient. You’ll have all you want.

  The thing I have to write down is that I saw an angel, too. This morning. It was big and sparkly, like the man said; like a Christmas tree without the tree. But I knew it was real because the frogs stopped croaking and two blue jays gave alarm calls. That’s important; it was really there.

  I watched it, sitting under my rock. It didn’t move much. It sort of bent over and picked up something, leaves or twigs, I couldn’t see. Then it did something with them around its middle, like putting them into an invisible sample pocket.

  Let me repeat—it was there. Barney, if you’re reading this, there are things here. And I think they’ve done whatever it is to us. Made us kill ourselves off.

  Why?

  Well, it’s a nice place, if it wasn’t for the people. How do you get rid of people? Bombs, death rays—all very primitive. Leave a big mess. Destroy everything, craters, radioactivity, ruin the place.

  This way there’s no muss, no fuss. just like what we did to the screwfly. Pinpoint the weak link, wait a bit while we do it for them. Then only a few bones around; make good fertilizer.

  Barney dear, good-bye. I saw it. It was there.

  But it wasn’t an angel.

  I think I saw a real estate agent.

  AFTER-IMAGES

  — MALCOLM EDWARDS —

  EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

  MALCOLM EDWARDS HAS BEEN A central figure in the British science-fiction world for some forty years, although it is not for fiction that he is known but for his work as an editor and critic. In 1976, after taking a degree in anthropology at Cambridge, he joined the London-based publishing house of Gollancz as a copy editor, but swiftly rose through the ranks to attain the title of Publishing Director. In that capacity he built a distinguished list, overseeing the publication of works by most of the major science fiction writers of the day. After thirteen years at Gollancz he moved over to Grafton, another important British science-fiction publisher, again with the title of Publishing Director, and when Grafton was absorbed into the HarperCollins publishing empire he remained one of its key executives, now designated Deputy Managing Director. In 1998 Edwards changed companies yet again, becoming Managing Director of Orion Books and then Group Publisher, and when Orion purchased Gollancz a few years later he found himself in charge of the company where he had begun his publishing career. He is now semi-retired, but still plays an active role in the Orion and Gollancz science-fiction programs.

  He has published critical essays in such major critical journals of science fiction as Vector, Foundation, and Science Fiction Commentary, was one of the early contributors to the indispensable Science Fiction Encyclopedia, and is the author or co-author of a number of useful reference books, among them Spacecraft in Fact and Fiction (1979) and The Complete Book of Science Fiction Lists (1988).

  It is his career as a science-fiction writer, however, that would have earned him a place in his own Book of Lists, had there been a category for Least Prolific Science-Fiction Writers. His oeuvre consists of precisely one story, the powerful apocalyptic tale “After-Images”, which was published in the Spring 1983 issue of the British science-fiction magazine Interzone. It attracted immediate attention, was given the British Science Fiction Association’s award as the best short story of the year, and was reprinted in several anthologies—and, apparently content to rest on his laurels at that point, Edwards has offered us no new stories ever since. Its blazing vision of a world at the edge of destruction makes us wonder what the rest of his career as a storyteller would have been like, but apparently the other stories and novels of Malcolm Edwards will remain forever in some alternative universe.

  —R. S.

  AFTER-IMAGES

  — MALCOLM EDWARDS —

  AFTER THE EVENTS OF THE previous day Norton slept only fitfully, his dreams filled with grotesque images of Richard Carver, and he was grateful when his bedside clock showed him that it was nominally morning again. He always experienced difficulty sleeping in anything less than total darkness, so the unvarying sunlight, cutting through chinks in the curtains and striking across the floor, marking it with lines that might have been drawn by an incandescent knife, added to his restlessness. He had tried to draw the curtains as closely as possible, but they were cheap and of skimpy manufacture—a legacy from the previous owner of the flat, who for obvious reasons could not be bothered to take them with her when she moved—and even when, after much manoeuvring, they could be persuaded to meet along much of their length, narrow gaps would always appear at the top, near the pleating.

  Norton felt gripped by a lassitude born of futility, but as on the eight other mornings of this unexpected coda to his existence, fought off the feeling and slid wearily out of bed. After dressing quickly and without much thought, he pulled back the curtains to admit the brightness of the early-afternoon summer sun.

  The sun was exactly where it had been for the last eight days, poised a few degrees above the peaked roof of the terraced house across the road. It had been a stormy day, and a few minutes before everything had stopped a heavy shower had been sweeping across London; but the squall had passed and the sun had appeared—momentarily, one would have supposed—through a break in the cloud. The visible sky was still largely occupied by lowering, soot-colored clouds, which enfolded the light and gave it the peculiar penetrating luminosity which presages a storm; but the sun sat in its patch of blue sky like an unblinking eye in the face of the heavens, and Norton and the others spent their last days and nights in a malign parody of the
mythical, eternally sunlit English summer.

  Outside the heat was stale and oppressive and seemed to settle heavily in his temples. Drifts of rubbish, untended now for several weeks, gave off a ripe odor of decay and attracted buzzing platoons of flies. Marlborough Street, where Norton lived, was one of a patchwork of late-Victorian and Edwardian terraces filling an unfashionable lacuna in the map of north London. At one end of the road was a slightly wider avenue which called itself a High Road on account of a bus route and a scattering of down-at-heel shops. Norton walked towards it, past houses which gave evidence of their owners’ hasty departure, doors and windows left open. The house across the road, which for three days had been the scene of an increasingly wild party held by most of the few teenagers remaining in the area, was now silent again. They had probably collapsed from exhaustion, or drugs, or both, Norton thought.

  At the corner Norton paused. To the north—his left—the street curved away sharply, lined on both sides by shabby three-storey houses with mock-Georgian facades. To the south it was straight, but about a hundred yards away was blocked off by the great baleful flickering wall of the interface, rising into the sky and curving back on itself like a surreal bubble. As always he was drawn to look at it, though his eyes resisted as if under autonomous control and tried to focus themselves elsewhere.

  It was impossible to say precisely what it looked like, for its surface seemed to be an absence of color. When he closed his eyes it left swimming variegated after-images: protoplasmic shapes which crossed and intermingled and blended. When Norton forced himself to stare at it, his optic nerves attempted to deny its presence, warping together the flanking images of shopfronts so that the road seemed to narrow to a point.