Over the Edge

by Harlan Ellison

  From hand to hand it traveled, down through the centuries, with death and shapes in the night following its journey.

  A thousand hands, a thousand men of cultures shrouded in antiquity. Till it found its way from an ocean floor to the hand of an adventurer who also worked in silver. He cleaned it and polished it and mounted it. Then women owned it.

  And each woman became famous. The names are legend. But always they coveted more, and finally reaped their rewards in blood. The soul mote came across another ocean, where it went from the treasure hordes of Osmanski Cossacks to the coffers of Polish noblewomen, from the dowries of Parisian demimondaines to the chamois gold-sacks of English vicars, from the pockets of cutpurses to the New World.

  And there it passed from brooch to pendant, ring to lavaliere…and was lost.

  …and was found:

  by a Croatian workman who had no idea what it was, and threw it with a spadeful of refuse, into the hollow center of the cornerstone of a great skyscraper. And the building rose one hundred and fifteen storeys over the sleeping soul of the great rock god Dis. Who knew the time was approaching.

  Night hung crucified outside the ninety-fifth floor window of Stierman’s office. The night and the men in the room seemed as one. They both accused Stierman. His mouth was dry. He knew at least two of these seven were with the Organization. But which two were deathmen of that “business firm” and which were merely angry entrepreneurs, he did not know. But all seven had partnered him in the construction of the Stierman building. And any one of the seven could ruin him.

  “We were all served today,” one of them said. He slapped the Grand Jury subpoena onto Stierman’s desk.

  “You’ll pay for this.” It was the one with the reptilian eyes. He was frightening. Stierman could not speak.

  “How much did you skim, Stierman? How much?”

  That was number three.

  The other four all spoke at once. “Do you have any idea what happens if this building falls?” “We’re all in this together, but it’s you, Stierman, it’s you!” “Swiss account, Stierman? Is that where you put it?” “I oughta kill you, you scum!”

  The building in which they sat was sinking. The foundations had been filled with garbage, with substandard materials; the ground itself had been soft. The building was vanishing into the ground. Nothing strange about it, nothing magical, merely inadequate building procedures. Frank Stierman had pocketed almost four point six million dollars from the construction costs of the building, and it had shown up in the final product.

  The second floor was now below street level. Access to the Stierman Building was obtained by entrance through a hastily-cut door in the side of a second-floor office. From the foyer and the basements, one had to take an elevator upstairs to get out at the ground floor. The tenants had all vacated. The corporations and professional men had fled. Stierman’s seven partners were on the verge of ruin, and the insurance companies had already laughed in their faces.

  “Speak up, you sonofabitch!”

  Stierman knew his only chance to survive this meeting was to bluff: naked, survival bluff.

  At least till he could get out of the country. Brazil. Then Switzerland. Then…anywhere.

  “My God, you men have known me fifteen years—have you ever known me to do a dishonest thing? What the hell’s wrong with you?” Charm. Trust. Frank Stierman.

  He’s had an amazing career. Came out of nowhere. One of the biggest developers in Manhattan. Zeckendorf looks like a kid making sand castles next to Stierman. Trust him all the way. Helluva guy. Charming.

  Sand in the cement. Quite a lot of sand.

  Specifications cut close to the line. Quite close.

  Very silken attorneys.

  A little juice to the surveyors.

  A little juice to the building commission.

  A little juice to the Councilmen.

  Oversubsidized. Oversold. Overworked.

  Trust and charm. Frank Stierman.

  It was working. The wide blue eyes. The strong chin. The cavalry-scout ruggedness. It was working. Which two are patched into the Organization? Work, mouth, work this man out of the East River where fish eat garbage.

  “Okay, so we’ve got a situation here. We’ve got a contingency we never expected. The ground is settling. Okay, we’re losing the building. Maybe.

  “And…” he paused, significantly, “maybe not!”

  They listened. He dredged lies from the silt of his mind. “I had half a dozen structural engineers in here today, land assayers, environmental impact guys, geologists, men who know what to do with this kind of situation. Now I’m not going to tell you that we’re out of the woods…Jesus, we’ve got some rough sledding ahead of us. But we know there was faulty workmanship in the construction, we know the damned contractors who sank the pylons shorted us on the quality of the fill…we know we’re going to have some losses…but we’re friends! That counts for a lot. We’re going to have to—”

  Dis stirred.

  Frank Stierman, naked save for loincloth, found his back against a rock wall, found a bronze blade in his right hand, found himself staring across what had been the conference room of his office at a creature of scales and fish-gills that writhed on eight legs with a head of vapor and eyes in the vapor that burned into his own.

  He screamed and threw the sword at the thing…

  Seven men were staring at Frank Stierman. He had no idea what had happened, but he knew he had lost all ground. In the middle of an impassioned plea for reason and patience, he had suddenly fallen back against a wall, screamed like a madman, and lost all tonus in his face. Whatever Frank Stierman had been a moment before, now he was unreliable…perhaps insane. Seven men stared back at him, their resolve now solidified not by anger and suspicion, but by the realization that they were dealing with a lunatic.

  The connecting door to Stierman’s private office opened, and a woman entered.

  “Frank, can I see you for a moment?”

  Stierman was trembling. The creature. That head, made of…of some kind of vapor…what was happening to him? “Not now, Monica. This is very important.”

  “I agree, Frank. Important. I have to speak to you now.”

  “Monica, I—”

  “Frank, don’t make me talk here, in front of these men!”

  “You’d better go on, Frank. We want to talk about all this in private for a moment, anyhow.”

  “Yes. Go ahead, Stierman.”

  “It’s all right. Go ahead and talk to her.”

  Oh my God, dear God, it’s falling apart!

  When the door was closed behind him, Stierman turned to his wife and said, “Why are you doing this to me? You know what’s at stake in there.”

  “I’m getting out, Frank.”

  “Don’t be a bitch!”

  “I’m getting out. That’s the bottom line, Frank. I was served today, by the Grand Jury…”

  “Don’t worry about a thing. I had structural engin—”

  “Don’t lie to me, Frank. I know you too well.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “I’m going to help them, Frank. They said I wouldn’t be held responsible. They know you got me to sign my name on the contracts as a dodge. I can’t go through any more of this with you, Frank. After that southern thing, I thought—”

  “My God, Monica, don’t do this to me! Look, I’m begging you.”

  “Stop it, Frank.”

  “You’re pregnant, you’re going to have my child, how can you do this to me?”

  “That’s the reason, Frank. Because I am pregnant, because I can’t let a child come into the world with you for its father. I’m getting out. Now, Frank. I came down to tell you, so you wouldn’t count on me when you talk to those men. Save yourself, Frank.”

  She turned to go. He reached across the desk and lifted the obsidian bookend and took three steps behind her. She turned just as he raised the weight. Her eyes were cool, waiting.

  He slammed the bookend acro
ss her forehead.

  She stumbled back, head jerking as though struck from three different directions. Her head opened and the white ash of bone was suddenly coated with blood. She flailed back, eyes glazing, and crashed into the dark window. Then the glass bowed, gave, and she was gone, silently, into the night.

  Stierman dropped the bookend. His arms came up and his hands groped before him, shaking violently. He twitched with cold, a sudden cold that came from a place he could not name. Gone, she was gone, he was alone.

  The words burned on the teakwood wall.

  AH-WEGH THOGHA

  He wanted to scream, but the trembling was on him, the insane twitching that he could not stop. His body was helpless in the spastic grip of the seizure. Gone, she was gone, they were in the next room, the building going down into the earth, those words, what were those words…

  “Ah-wegh thogha!” His throat had never been formed to shape those words, but it did.

  Dis woke.

  He hungered for his body.

  Time is a plaything for the gods. It only has substance for those who use it. Men fear time and bow to it. Gods cup it and mold it and use it. For a lark, they even waste it.

  Time ceased its movement.

  Dis called for his body.

  From seven far lands they came with the stones. From deep within the earth two of them were brought, by creatures that did not walk. From Mecca, the worshippers defiled their own temple with theft, and brought it. From across the lost snow lands of Tibet they came with yet another. Seven great religions were gutted. Seven sources of power were lost. All in the moment without time.

  Came, and brought with them the seven stones of power, the body of Dis.

  To the skyscraper in Manhattan.

  And Dis took back what had always been his.

  Within the cornerstone, the black soul mote glowed and pulsed with the undying fire that lived within. The mote grew, and absorbed the cornerstone. It flowed black and strong, mighty and changing, absorbing the skyscraper as it had absorbed the bulk of Stonehenge.

  The building shifted, shaped itself, and inside its growing body Frank Stierman knew a moment of madness before he was absorbed into the rock-flesh of Dis. His face, frozen in that moment of undying death, an eternity of broiling insanity through which he would gibber forever. The face of Mag, burned into the stone.

  Dis came alive, and replaced his soul.

  And rose, and darkness washed up again from the concrete covered earth that was his essence.

  Above the city the bulk of Dis rose, spraddle-legged, enormous.

  All this was rock. All this was flesh of his flesh. All this belonged to Dis, to be absorbed, to permit him to grow as he had never grown before.

  To feed Dis.

  Now men would know why the rock god had gone to sleep.

  ERNEST AND THE MACHINE GOD

  Gods in their Heaven, all’s right with the world.

  Selena: fighting desperately to keep her eyes open.

  The road: North Carolina, like a snake, rock mountain wall to the left, sheer drop into nowhere on the right.

  The night: black, dead and staring, like the eyes of a man lying on a kitchenette floor in a motel in Washington, D.C. Somewhere back there behind Selena.

  The fear: that they could trace her, through his department, or through the woman who had rented them the motel room. And catch her. And put her in prison. And then kill her, for killing him.

  The car: a 1951 Packard, sea-green, huge as a Tyrannosaurus, bought late the day before, for thirty-two dollars, all she had had in her purse (all she had been able to take off his body) from a street-corner used car lot in the filthy Negro section of Fredericksburg, Virginia.

  The destination: Florida. Getaway. Hideaway.

  Her eyes slid quickly guillotine closed. The uneven ratcheting of gravel under the front tires brought her sharply awake again. She pulled the car back onto the road. Over the edge, out through the right-side windows, she knew there was a sheer drop into the valley below. It was too deep and too black even to estimate the fall. Enough to kill a car, and its driver.

  The road twisted back and around, heading up and up, always up and up. Fog slithered toothlessly across the road at every minor dip, and the center line had been dimmed to headlights many years before by wheels and weather. The lanes were one each way, and too narrow for a compact, much less the behemoth she spun through the turns. It smelled of vomit in the back seat. Thirty-two dollars. A dead man lying face-up on a linoleum floor, a corkscrew still in his hand.

  There was no guard-railing or built-up shoulder over there on her right. It ended with frost-chipped road edge, thin rut of dirt, and the drop into the abyss. Her eyes closed slowly, flickering, drooping lids over dull film of sleep…

  …and woke suddenly as the right front tire left the road, skimmed across the dirt, and rode in empty air…

  …her eyes snapped open, and instinctively she wrenched the wheel back hard left. The right front tire spun against the side of the edge, still clawing emptiness, but the Packard lurched left and forward as she hit the accelerator, and the tire chewed its way through loose topsoil and regained the road, the car now plunging hard left, suddenly rushing up the short incline at the base of the rock wall, tilting, and running along the side of the wall almost horizontally.

  The car struck an outcropping with a monstrous clang, and Selena was thrown against the steering wheel, crushing her breasts against the ungiving circle. Sudden gray washed over her and she fell back, feet flopping off the pedals, arms limp at her sides. The car rebounded, suddenly stalled, and in the North Carolina night there was only silence…

  …and the sound of a storm, far off in the mountains…

  Nowhere is North Carolina. Nowhere is the land of fear. Nowhere is flight without destination, only a looming back there, where all flights begin.

  Selena, in fog gray, lived it again…

  Three years at Duke University had taught Selena all she needed to know: that college was a dead end for her. The degree of cunning she brought to her academic life was more than she needed to get a steady 3.2 average. It was tantamount to hunting a flea with an elephant gun. She had been fascinated briefly by some of the experimental studies done by Rhine and others in parapsychology labs, but even that had palled quickly; they were fools, tinkering with improbabilities. Selena doted on reality.

  Reality for Selena took essential form in one word: manipulation.

  Hidden deep in the entrails of that word was its power-source, the word: power.

  There was an electrical fascination for her in getting people to do what she wanted them to do. Often it was to their advantage, occasionally not. But they were gambited, and that was the essence of the relationship. After which, Selena vanished in mist and memory.

  She had been the most beautiful girl in Minneapolis. From high school on, she had always had her way. It became a constant, an accepted thing—she would date the most eligible boys, she would win the queenship of the senior prom, she would take first place honors on the debating team—and it became a way of life—they came to her to find out what the theme of the annual school fair should be, they came to her to find out if the new girl should be asked into the sorority, they came to her to be maneuvered, to have their decisions made for them—and it finally passed into the realm of an unnoticed seventh sense. Selena could see and hear and smell and touch and taste and remember and…

  Order people to her will. Almost unconsciously after her teens. She no longer had to work at it. They came to her and gave her what she wanted, and Selena took it as her due. And when she had left Minneapolis far behind her; when she had left Chicago behind her; when she had left New York behind her; then she no longer needed to ask people to do what she wanted them to do, to enter the regimented little ranks of her life, and march to the intricate route-step she had set for them.

  College, and two brief marriages, and a modeling career, and boredom. Oh God, deadly boredom. The end result of ge
tting whomever and whatever she wanted. Boredom…scintillant, murk-deep boredom, driving her to Washington, D.C. Where there were men who ordered entire nations to their will. In that city, she would find the ones who could compete with her on her own level.

  But it had been the same for Selena. The same as it had been in Minneapolis, when she had challenged Teddy to climb through the old, broken culvert pipe, and he had done it, though shivering with fear; and a rusted nail protruding from a block of scrap wood had torn his thigh, and he had gotten lockjaw. But had done it. For her. The same as it had been at Duke, when she had seduced the assistant professor of psychology, to get the final term mark that would continue her scholarship, and he had done it, though cursing himself for his weakness; and he had been sacked the following year, when it had come to light, but that didn’t matter to Selena for by then she had moved on. But he had done it. For her. The same as it had been in Chicago when she had befuddled the poor homosexual art director of a men’s magazine, and gotten him to choose her for their centerfold thereby making three thousand dollars for her. What had happened to him had been unpleasant, but Selena never heard about it; she had moved on. It had been the same in New York. And in Washington, D.C. The same. Always the same. Selena always got her way, shivered with delight at making these movers & shakers move and shake to her designs.

  Until she had met the man from the government department.

  He had been stronger than she had expected. And he had not thought of it as a game. What Selena had not realized in time, was that he was a male counterpart of her. He was used to winning.

  The contention had been a sheaf of papers, light-blue in color, that had come from a sealed file in his department. What each of them had wanted to do with those papers became unimportant the moment he stole them. Became less than unimportant in the motel, when the showdown came, and each planned on winning. Selena had used all of her standard gambits—those that had worked on the best, and the worst. None of the gambits had any effect. But then, neither had his…on her. They had jousted with one another for an hour, in all the subtle, mysterious ways of the manipulators, and in the end he had come for her with the vicious corkscrew in his hand. The corkscrew he had used less than an hour before to open two bottles of a fine Medoc, only to discover both had gone sour; and then he’d twisted open the magnum of champagne.