A, B, C

by Samuel R. Delany

  “Don’t be silly, Lee. What can you do?”

  “At least find out…at least…”

  Over the intercom someone was screaming.

  “If you die, will that do any good, Lee?”

  “It will if I can find out what’s killing off the rest of them.”

  Then on the vision screen, the ship began to break apart. God, the screaming—

  chapter nine

  “Skip the next couple of pages,” the boy said.

  So Joneny turned them over. His eyes caught up the words again at:

  …so that when I heard Captain Alva shrieking over the clattering speaker, “Help, oh, for God’s sake, will somebody help us,” what could I do?

  I radioed down to Meeker, “Get an intercity ferry ready. I’m going over there to take a look.”

  “But, Captain,” Meeker said, “if you get caught—”

  “The last one lasted ten hours. That should give me time enough to get there and back.”

  “The one before that lasted sixteen minutes. This one could be longer, shorter, or the same. And what about the sand count—”

  “I’m going, Meeker. Get the shuttle ready.”

  When I was swinging out of my office five minutes later, suddenly someone from an adjoining corridor barked, “Captain!”

  “What is it, Judge Cartrite?”

  “Meeker just informed me you were heading over to Sigma-9.”

  “And what the hell business is it of yours?” I snapped.

  “Captain, I forbid you to go. And if you do go, I certainly forbid you to come back.”

  That brought me up short. “And where do you come off with the authority to say what I can or cannot do?”

  “If you remember, I have charge of the responsibility of morals on this ship. I feel that if you returned from Sigma-9 it would be demoralizing….”

  “For God’s sake, Judge, what are you afraid of?”

  “Suppose you bring the Destroyer back with you?”

  “The Destroyer?”

  “Yes, the green-eyed creature that is wrecking—”

  I interrupted him. “Well, at least you’re off blaming it on the One-Eyes. I’m going, Judge.”

  I wasn’t paying too much attention to him because I was both frightened and furious.

  I got to the boat, locked the locks behind me, unplugged my ears, opened my eyes, and radioed myself clear. The triple ports swung back and I barreled out into the sand. The meter read three point seven. The Sigma-9 grew in the view screen like a shimmering egg.

  The robot receiver announced: “Your ears are unplugged”—I switched on my radio—“and your eyes are seeing.”

  The hatch opened up, and as I drifted into the lock, the sand meter swung down. The tunnel attached itself, and as I stepped out, my stomach retreated against my backbone in fear of what I might find. I felt a slight mental tingling, which I assumed at first was part of my own anticipation. I walked up the empty corridor and the tingling grew stronger until, as I was walking toward the navigation offices, I realized there was something ringing in my head like a buzzer. I turned toward the City Plaza, wondering where on the road to destruction I was.

  Suddenly I saw a few people ahead. They were staggering silently away from me. One fell, then two more. The others wove to the side; one leaned against a column for a moment, then slipped to the ground as well.

  I tried my belt radio, thinking maybe I could zero in on where the remaining forces of the City were held up. When I turned the switch, the buzzing left my head and became real. Just as I was trying to figure out what to do, the hum on the speaker began to rise and fall and then resolved itself into a voice. “Who are you?”

  “Huh?” I said in surprise, and wanted to know—though I didn’t say it—who the hell are you?

  “I am the Destroyer. Your people call me the Destroyer. Who are you, come to hunt the Destroyer?”

  It was weird. I thought maybe somebody who’d lost their nuts had gotten hold of what communications devices were left.

  “Where are you?” I demanded. The radio wasn’t two-way, but in my frustration, I guess I must have forgotten it. I remember I called out, “Where are you? I’m trying to help you!”

  And the radio blared out in the oscillating voice: “I’m here.”

  Then it happened. I think most of it happened in my head. Things just went crazy—emotions, thoughts, impressions—and through the whirling chaos around me, something great and shimmering staggered into the concourse, the form of a man—naked, huge, but like some sort of ghost, with flowing eyes.

  The thing startled me, so I just cried out, “Stop that!”

  And it stopped. My head jarred back into place on my shoulders, and I could see the figure glittering, fading, disappearing, and reaffirming itself across the shattered wreckage over the plaza.

  “I am here,” it repeated, but this time the voice reverberated from the vague area of its head.

  “What are you doing!” I demanded, and was only then struck by the impossibility that I had all along been communicating.

  “Help me,” it said. “I—I don’t know.”

  “You’re killing us,” I cried. “That’s what you’re doing!”

  “I approached slowly,” it said. “Very carefully into their minds—but they died screaming. Their minds are not big enough.” It swayed and staggered, gaining form and losing it like a dream.

  My heart was pounding, though I was beginning to recover. “But you’re not killing me,” I said.

  “You told me to stop. I’m not in your mind now, just the image in your eyes and ears.”

  I wasn’t too sure what it was talking about, so I said, “Well, bring your image a little closer; but don’t do anything that will…hurt my mind. I want to see you.”

  Three steps carried him across the floor till he stood, green-eyed and towering, above me.

  “You don’t really see me,” he said. “I took this image from their minds, to try to come closer with. But their minds break up even when I come slowly.”

  “And what about me?” I asked, unsure what I was really talking about.

  “I came to you fast, and you yelled stop; so I stopped.”

  “Oh,” I said, “well, thanks.” I remembered what coming fast had meant. Suddenly I remembered. “Where is Captain Alva?”

  “He’s dead, and so are most of the others…there; they are all dead now.”

  “All…?”

  “They didn’t say stop.”

  Suddenly it hit me. “Well then, you stay stopped, damn you! All? What in the—Don’t move ever again! Why didn’t you stop anyway? What the hell do you think you are?” I screamed it, and maybe some more besides; I don’t remember. When I stopped, I was quivering, both mad and scared.

  It didn’t say anything; it just shook there in front of me. At last I could only ask, “What are you?”

  And more softly, as if it had understood on a deeper level, it repeated, “I don’t know.”

  Then it occurred to me to ask: “Where are you from?”

  “Outside, outside the City. I exist in the—the sand, you call it, the meson fields outside the starships.”

  “You’re—” The idea came to me as something too big trying to fit in the too-small space of my head. “You’re…a living being from the sea and the sand?”

  He nodded.

  I had been going up until now on a hysterical drive that had battered up against what it met without question. But now the impossibilities began to flood my mind and I struck at them with questions.

  “But who—how—how can you communicate with me?”

  “I can’t, really,” it explained. “I took apart their minds, and I know your words and your images, but your minds are too small for me. I can’t really communicate with you, but I know what you are thinking. I took the image so you could see something of me. But I took the image from your people.”

  I let the breath, which had somehow stopped, come back into my lungs. “I see.”


  “I did not realize,” it went on, “that you were alive until just now when you told me to stop. That was the first time any of you addressed me directly.”

  Again I nodded.

  “The image comes to me of one of your people breaking open an anthill to see what is inside. That is how I broke open your ships. I saw the confusion, but I did not realize it was wrong until you told me.”

  “You are a very different sort of life-form than we are,” I said. “Are your people common all over interstellar space?”

  “No people. There is only me.”

  “You must be very lonely,” I said.

  “Lonely?”

  And I actually heard the rising inflection of interrogation.

  “I…lonely,” and then something odd happened. The room began to quiver around me, and for a moment I thought the chaos was going to begin.

  “Yes, I am very lonely. But I did not know it until you told me the word.”

  The quivering began again, and there was a shift in color values.

  “For pity’s sake,” I called out, “what’s happening to you?”

  And from the green eyes I suddenly saw tears flowing, flooding over those shimmering cheeks.

  “You see, I am doing what you would call crying.”

  “Try and control yourself,” I said. “I…understand….It would be hard to discover that you were all alone. You discover that as soon as you meet somebody.”

  “Yes.” There was a pause. “As soon as you meet somebody who is not alone, like you.”

  “You don’t think I’m alone?” I said.

  Again a pause, and the colors returned more or less to normal. “You are, I see from your mind, but not as much as I am.” Again the pause, then the quivering, then the kaleidoscope. It said, “I love you.”

  “What?”

  The words repeated, and there was less sensory confusion.

  “You love me?” I asked. “Why?”

  “Because you are a power among your people, you are alone and not alone.”

  It was complete confusion, and at the same time I thought I saw.

  “That’s…very flattering.”

  “Will you love me?”

  That brought me up short. I had been feeling all sorts of empathy with this creature, had begun to understand, if not forgive its destruction, but this…?

  “I don’t even know what that would mean,” I said. “I don’t want to laugh at you, but I couldn’t even begin to comprehend what loving you would mean.”

  “The word is from your mind,” came its answer. “If I give you something that you want very much, will you love me?”

  “I still don’t…”

  It interrupted me: “More than anything else, you want descendants who will be able to live among the stars, and you know as well that most of your people could not do so now. I will promise you that I will break apart no more of your ships, and that your progeny will be able to live among the stars, as well as communicate with me, throughout all time.”

  I guess everybody has a pressure point that you just have to touch to make everything go bang. The colors changed this time because my irises suddenly opened. The quivering was inside me. I don’t know what the emotion was.

  It said, “You love me,” and opened its great glittering arms. “Come,” and I started forward.

  What happened next—oh, all the powers and audience of the stars, what happened? I don’t know—the colors, the pain, the sensations that caught me up and broke me apart in swirls of metallic ice, that burned me with myriad thoughts, complete and incomplete. The colors? Breaking from white through red, down through cascading green, soaring through gold that glittered and turned to emeralds, emerald as his eyes. The pain? Transparent as pleasure, loosed in my knees and cool in my loins, to surge again and flood the whole column of me, explode and glisten on my fingers, writhe in the center of tension, wave upon wave, on a clean beach. The sensations? They rose, rose, fell, and rose again, mounting till I screamed and laughed and covered my mouth with open fingers, as the whole musculature of my body tensed and flattened against itself, quivering toward a release that came surging forward through my pelvis from the base of my spine to flower there, burn, and bloom….I held all his flickering presence, gentle as mist in my arms, hard as metal.

  Next entry:

  The Sigma-9 tore apart, heaving, two minutes after my intercity shuttle took off. The radio interference knocked my eyes coal black and something was goofy in the gravity spin, so I drifted all the way back in free fall, feeling as if I had a stiff hangover.

  I radioed for entrance, and after the robot went through its little bit, suddenly a voice cut in. “This is Smythers of the judicial office, Captain Lee. Judge Cartrite has told us we are not to allow you entrance to the City.”

  “You what?”

  “I said Judge Cartrite doesn’t want—”

  “You open that damn lock this instant, or when I get in there I’ll tear you to pieces.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Put Cartrite on the phone. He’s been waiting for me to jet outside the City, but he’s out of his mind if he thinks he is going to keep me locked up here.”

  “We have two others here and the three of us are to examine you. Maybe if you went away and came back some other time, Judge Cartrite—”

  “Have you all gone nuts?”

  “No, Captain, but our rituals—”

  “I don’t give a damn about your rituals!”

  “Captain,” it was another voice, “can you tell me what note this is?”

  Something that sounded for all the world like a trumpet rang through the speaker.

  “No, I can’t,” I said. “Why should I?”

  “Well, it’s part of the ritualistic examination Judge Cartrite set up for your entrance. The note of the trumpet signifies the call that came to our ancestors—”

  “I’ll kill you,” I said. “When I find out who you are, I’m going to declare you insane and have you put in the Death’s Head. Now let me in. I said I was coming back and I’ve come back. Suppose I told you I’ve found out what caused the wreck of the other cities. Suppose I told you that I can stop it from happening here…if you let me in.”

  There was silence.

  “You’ve found the green-eyed leader of the rebellious One-Eyes?”

  “You haven’t brought him back with you?” demanded the other.

  “Of course I haven’t,” I snapped. “And it’s no man, one- or two-eyed.”

  “Well, what was it?” asked the third lawyer, the one with the trumpet.

  “Why don’t I just sit here and let you guess until you decide time is running out.”

  “I’m going to get Judge Cartrite,” I heard one say, and tootle his trumpet.

  Two minutes later, before the judge got there, one of them—you could hear him gnashing his nails—said, “I’m going to let her in.”

  And the triple lock rolled back. I figured they’d be crying before the judge got through with them, but I didn’t really care.

  Twenty minutes later I was talking to Judge Cartrite on the phone, and I told him enough that I think his hair began to singe. But I didn’t let the cat out of the bag. For the next week I kept to my quarters. The first day my feet were sore from the no gravity of the ride back, but after that I was just being careful.

  Finally I went down to the Market. “Parks,” I said. His assistant was doodling over at the desk. Behind us the rows on rows of embryo flasks were banked to the ceiling. “Parks, I’ve got a problem; maybe you can help me.”

  “What is it, Captain?”

  “I’m pregnant, Parks.”

  “You’re what?”

  “I said I am going to have a baby.”

  He sat down on the desk. “But…how?”

  “That’s a very good question,” I said. “And I’m not too sure of the answer. But I want you to get it out of me.”

  “You mean an abortion?”

  “Hell, no,�
� I said. “I want you to remove it with tender loving care and get it into one of those embryo flasks of yours.”

  “I still don’t see….I mean everybody on the ship is kept harmonally sterile. How did you…” Then he said, “Are you sure?”

  “Examine me,” I said.

  He did and told me, “Well, I guess you are. When do you want it transferred?”

  “Right away,” I said. “Keep it alive, Parks. I’d bring it to term myself, but there’s nobody in the whole nation that has the muscle left to go through labor and come out alive.”

  “It’ll be alive,” said Parks.

  I had a local anesthetic and watched the whole business through a series of mirrors. It was fascinating; and when I was finished, I was hungry as could be. I went upstairs, had dinner in my room, and thought some more.

  While I was thinking, Parks suddenly buzzed me from the Market. “Captain Lee, Captain Lee—” and then he got caught on something that sounded like choking.

  “Is the kid all right?” I demanded.

  “Oh, yeah, he’s fine. But Captain, the rest, they’re dying. They’re dying all over the place. I’ve lost half the supply already.”

  “Has the radiation on our ship gone up?” My first thought was that the Destroyer had broken its promise and moved in on us. But the wreck of the Sigma-9 still drifted along with us.

  “It’s you, Captain. Check yourself, that’s all I can think of. I checked your embryo, and it’s soaked with radiation. I can’t understand why it’s still alive. But it is, and doing very well. But some time or other, this place was blasted by enough hard gamma to upset everything and kill off half the stores here. Even I’m feeling a little woozy and had to undergo decontamination.”