Stalking the Nightmare

by Harlan Ellison

  Washington Jones looked over at me and it hit me then.

  Fort’s theory about the Era of Anything. This was the Time for Space Travel. The baby was ready to be born, so ready that a psychiatrist, trying to find something else, could discover it and recognize its significance. So maybe Fort had been right.

  A week before the takeoff, Ludwig woke before dawn feeling as if she would die.

  It turned out to be a burst appendix, so they operated. Ludwig would be laid up for a long time.

  I was shuttled out to the Kalahari jump-point and received my penultimate briefings from Stein, who was in charge of the project.

  He was nervous when he talked to me and he was envious, too. He kept talking about how the acceleration would take me through what he called “Bounces” or “Progressions.” He pronounced them bunces and prugrooshens.

  I felt, listening to him, as if I were royalty. He spoke to me with deference.

  He said that they had sent six of the ships out on remote control voyages and that five of them had returned.

  The night before takeoff my dream was back so near and close that I seemed but inches away. I saw my fluted-organ-pipe cathedral and me above it. I came awake all sweat and tears, for the building had talked to me and though I couldn’t recall now what had been said, I was scared. I lay there and wrestled with myself and my desires for a long time. Then I called Stein. I felt I must, even if it took away my chance. If I was insane then I had to be replaced.

  “All of you have had that dream, or one similar to it,” he said. “All six of you.” He looked at me and his face was very sad. “I never dream,” he said softly.

  It wasn’t much of a ship, as far as size. When you’re used to monstrosities, you’d expect a starship to be that much more impressive, that much larger. But it wasn’t.

  It was just a teardrop, with a small room in the bulge that was mine. There were extrudable wings and tail for atmosphere landings, wherever I was going, and a cleverly geared set of drop-wheels guaranteed to hold on the shiftiest desert or marsh. And in my cubicle, all around, there were instruments.

  There were instruments that watched me, instruments that hooked into me, fed me, bathed me, relieved me, metered me, and weighed me.

  I said goodbye to the others and on the proper day, at the proper time, they locked me into the cubicle. And somewhere the countdown began. But I didn’t know that. I’d been drugged. Lying on my gelatin-pad couch, I was insensitive to the rustlings and clangings and preparations. A machine was carrying me, on orders set forth by another machine, using calculations done by a third. I’d have manual control only when I came within safe range of that star, and then only if a machine decided I should.

  Which star? A machine would calculate that, too.

  I had the distinct impression I was supercargo on this flight. And yet, more essential than the finest, most cleverly made machine ever assembled. I was grateful that machines did not have whims or temperament.

  I slept while things happened and technicians sweated. I slept while pencils toted figures from graph-dials. I slept while a tiny bead of cadmium and thirty-six other trace metals built a field of force around itself, while the Earth whirled blindly beneath me. I slept while people died and others were reborn in the story which had no answer—then.

  The ship was towed into its berth, and I tossed restlessly and then did not toss at all when the force bead unleashed its power, throwing the tiny ship far into the darkness, and pushing me smoothly, deeply into the gel-pad. I did not waken while a soundless force pushed me past the speed of light in “progressions” and to a multitude of speeds in “bounces.”

  But there wasn’t any dream in this sleep. There was no need for the dream now.

  I was different when I awoke. I didn’t know how, but I was different. Not altered, just different. How can I put it?—have you ever seen a goldfish bowl after the water has been in it for a few days? All bubbled and odd-looking, not at all clear the way it had been at first. Well, that was me. All bubbled and changed, but still the same in most ways.

  I was better, somehow. And calm.

  I remained in that tranquil state for a long time. Months perhaps. There are records.

  The machines tended to me, and that was a good thing, for I was under the spell of that sense of comfort and tightness. Then, finally—

  The star has no name—not now—not any more. But once we knew its name, a long time ago.

  I could not have headed for any other place had I wanted to. Fate and Destiny had planned it that way; Fate and Destiny had been keeping steady company for a long, long time.

  The machines ratcheted and catalogued and analysed, and the ship slowed so the points of light in the darkness surrounding me were stationary again, instead of moving and wheeling.

  There were twenty-one planets. I took the twelfth. Instinctively. The machines did not interfere with my course selection.

  I came down slowly. The planet was misty and quiet. I did not bother to check whether the air was Earth-breathable. I knew it would be.

  We have been lost a long, long time, I think. But it was a short time in the history of the race. Why we were allowed to remain lost, I do not yet know, but I will know.

  I broke down through the clouds of pink mist, and it was where I’d known it would be. There is no such thing as Chance. In an ordered universe, all is planned.

  It didn’t look alien any more, my cathedral. It looked like a home I’d once known, a long time before, and was seeing again with eyes of reminiscence. I knew this place. I knew it with racial memory, damped out by time and Earth living, by Earth gravity.

  I knew it again.

  I knew my home.

  It was there. The organ pipes towered. The strange apertures yawned.

  I came down to land.

  To see where we are going; to see what we are to become.

  And I knew it would be stunning, what we are to become, for as the ship settled among the pastel ground-mists, our ancestors and our descendants began to emerge from those strange apertures.

  It was the Cathedral of Man.

  But man could not use those entrances.

  There were still changes to come. Many changes. We had been lost … and now were found.

  DJINN, NO CHASER

  “Who the hell ever heard of Turkish Period?” Danny Squires said. He said it at the top of his voice, on a city street.

  “Danny! People are staring at us; lower your voice!” Connie Squires punched his bicep. They stood on the street, in front of the furniture store. Danny was determined not to enter.

  “Come on, Connie,” he said, “let’s get away from these junk shops and go see some inexpensive modern stuff. You know perfectly well I don’t make enough to start filling the apartment with expensive antiques.”

  Connie furtively looked up and down the street—she was more concerned with a “scene” than with the argument itself—and then moved in toward Danny with a determined air. “Now listen up, Squires. Did you or did you not marry me four days ago, and promise to love, honor and cherish and all that other good jive?”

  Danny’s blue eyes rolled toward Heaven; he knew he was losing ground. Instinctively defensive, he answered, “Well, sure, Connie, but-“

  “Well, then, I am your wife, and you have not taken me on a honeymoon—”

  “I can’t afford one!”

  “—have not taken me on a honeymoon,” Connie repeated with inflexibility. “Consequently, we will buy a little furniture for that rabbit warren you laughingly call our little love nest. And little is hardly the term: that vale of tears was criminally undersized when Barbara Fritchie hung out her flag.

  “So to make my life bearable, for the next few weeks, till we can talk Mr. Upjohn into giving you a raise—”

  “Upjohn!” Danny fairly screamed. “You’ve got to stay away from the boss, Connie. Don’t screw around. He won’t give me a raise, and I’d rather you stayed away from him—”

  “Until th
en,” she went on relentlessly, “we will decorate our apartment in the style I’ve wanted for years.”

  “Turkish Period?”

  “Turkish Period.”

  Danny flipped his hands in the air. What was the use? He had known Connie was strong-willed when he’d married her.

  It had seemed an attractive quality at the time; now he wasn’t so sure. But he was strong-willed too; he was sure he could outlast her. Probably.

  “Okay,” he said finally, “I suppose Turkish Period it’ll be. What the hell is Turkish Period?”

  She took his arm lovingly, and turned him around to look in the store window. “Well, honey, it’s not actually Turkish. It’s more Mesopotamian. You know, teak and silk and …”

  “Sounds hideous.”

  “So you’re starting up again!” She dropped his arm, her eyes flashing, her mouth a tight little line. “I’m really ashamed of you, depriving me of the few little pleasures I need to make my life a blub, sniff, hoo-hoo …”

  The edge was hers.

  “Connie … Connie …” She knocked away his comforting hand, saying, “You beast.” That was too much for him. The words were so obviously put-on, he was suddenly infuriated:

  “Now, goddammit!”

  Her tears came faster. Danny stood there, furious, helpless, out-maneuvered, hoping desperately that no cop would come along and say, “This guy botherin’ ya, lady?”

  “Connie, okay, okay, we’ll have Turkish Period. Come on, come on. It doesn’t matter what it costs, I can scrape up the money somehow.”

  It was not one of the glass-brick and onyx emporia where sensible furniture might be found (if one searched hard enough and paid high enough and retained one’s senses long enough as they were trying to palm off modernistic nightmares in which no comfortable position might be found); no, it was not even one of those. This was an antique shop.

  They looked at beds that had canopies and ornate metalwork on the bedposts. They looked at rugs that were littered with pillows, so visitors could sit on the floors. They looked at tables built six inches off the floor, for low banquets. They inspected incense burners and hookahs and coffers and giant vases until Danny’s head swam with visions of the courts of long-dead caliphs.

  Yet, despite her determination, Connie chose very few items; and those she did select were moderately-priced and quite handsome … for what they were. And as the hours passed, and as they moved around town from one dismal junk emporium to another, Danny’s respect for his wife’s taste grew. She was selecting an apartment full of furniture that wasn’t bad at all.

  They were finished by six o’clock, and had bills of sale that totaled just under two hundred dollars. Exactly thirty dollars less than Danny had decided could be spent to furnish the new household … and still survive on his salary. He had taken the money from his spavined savings account, and had known he must eventually start buying on credit, or they would not be able to get enough furniture to start living properly.

  He was tired, but content. She’d shopped wisely. They were in a shabby section of town. How had they gotten here? They walked past an empty lot sandwiched in between two tenements—wet-wash slapping on lines between them. The lot was weed-overgrown and garbage-strewn.

  “May I call your attention to the depressing surroundings and my exhaustion?” Danny said. “Let’s get a cab and go back to the apartment. I want to collapse.”

  They turned around to look for a cab, and the empty lot was gone.

  In its place, sandwiched between the two tenements, was a little shop. It was a one-storey affair, with a dingy facade, and its front window completely grayed-over with dust. A hand-painted line of elaborate script on the glass-panel of the door, also opaque with grime, proclaimed: MOHANADUS MUKHAR, CURIOS.

  A little man in a flowing robe, wearing a fez, plunged out the front door, skidded to a stop, whirled and slapped a huge sign on the window. He swiped at it four times with a big paste-brush, sticking it to the glass, and whirled back inside, slamming the door.

  “No,” Danny said.

  Connie’s mouth was making peculiar sounds.

  “There’s no insanity in my family,” Danny said firmly. “We come from very good stock.”

  “We’ve made a small visual error,” Connie said.

  “Simply didn’t notice it,” Danny said. His usually baritone voice was much nearer soprano.

  “If there’s crazy, we’ve both got it,” Connie said.

  “Must be, if you see the same thing I see.”

  Connie was silent a moment, then said, “Large seagoing vessel, three stacks, maybe the Titanic. Flamingo on the bridge, flying the flag of Lichtenstein?”

  “Don’t play with me, woman,” Danny whimpered. “I think I’m losing it.”

  She nodded soberly. “Right. Empty lot?”

  He nodded back, “Empty lot. Clothesline, weeds, garbage.”

  “Right.”

  He pointed at the little store. “Little store?”

  “Right.”

  “Man in a fez, name of Mukhar?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Right.”

  “So why are we walking toward it?”

  “Isn’t this what always happens in stories where weird shops suddenly appear out of nowhere? Something inexorable draws the innocent bystanders into its grip?”

  They stood in front of the grungy little shop. They read the sign. It said:

  BIG SALE! HURRY! NOW! QUICK!

  “The word unnatural comes to mind,” Danny said.

  “Nervously,” Connie said, “she turned the knob and opened the door.”

  A tiny bell went tinkle-tinkle, and they stepped across the threshold into Mahanadus Mukhar’s shop.

  “Probably not the smartest move we’ve ever made,” Danny said softly. The door closed behind them without any assistance.

  It was cool and musty in the shop, and strange fragrances chased one another past their noses.

  They looked around carefully. The shop was loaded with junk. From floor to ceiling, wall to wall, on tables and in heaps, the place was filled with oddities and bric-a-brac. Piles of things tumbled over each other on the floor; heaps of things leaned against the walls. There was barely room to walk down the aisle between the stacks and mounds of things. Things in all shapes, things in all sizes and colors. Things. They tried to separate the individual items from the jumble of the place, but all they could perceive was stuff … things! Stuff and flotsam and bits and junk.

  “Curios, effendi,” a voice said, by way of explanation.

  Connie leaped in the air, and came down on Danny’s foot.

  Mukhar was standing beside such a pile of tumbled miscellany that for a moment they could not separate him from the stuff, junk, things he sold.

  “We saw your sign,” Connie said.

  But Danny was more blunt, more direct. “There was an empty lot here; then a minute later, this shop. How come?”

  The little man stepped out from the mounds of dust-collectors and his little nut-brown, wrinkled face burst into a million-creased smile. “A fortuitous accident, my children. A slight worn spot in the fabric of the cosmos, and I have been set down here for … how long I do not know. But it never hurts to try and stimulate business while I’m here.”

  “Uh, yeah,” Danny said. He looked at Connie. Her expression was as blank as his own.

  “Oh!” Connie cried, and went dashing off into one of the side-corridors lined with curios. “This is perfect! Just what we need for the end table. Oh, Danny, it’s a dream! It’s absolutely the ne plus ultra!”

  Danny walked over to her, but in the dimness of the aisle between the curios he could barely make out what it was she was holding. He drew her into the light near the door. It had to be:

  Aladdin’s lamp.

  Well, perhaps not that particular person’s lamp, but one of the ancient, vile-smelling oil burning jobs: long thin spout, round-bottom body, wide, flaring handle.

  It was algae-green with tarnish, brown with
rust, and completely covered by the soot and debris of centuries. There was no contesting its antiquity; nothing so time-corrupted could fail to be authentic. “What the hell do you want with that old thing, Connie?”

  “But Danny, it’s so perfect. If we just shine it up a bit. As soon as we put a little work into this lamp, it’ll be a beauty.” Danny knew he was defeated … and she’d probably be right, too. It probably would be very handsome when shined and brassed-up.

  “How much?” he asked Mukhar. He didn’t want to seem anxious; old camel traders were merciless at bargaining when they knew the item in question was hotly desired.

  “Fifty drachmae, eh?” the old man said. His tone was one of malicious humor. “At current exchange rates, taking into account the fall of the Ottoman Empire, thirty dollars.”

  Danny’s hps thinned. “Put it down, Connie; let’s get out of here.”

  He started toward the door, dragging his wife behind him. But she still clutched the lamp; and Mukhar’s voice halted them. “All right, noble sir. You are a cunning shopper, I can see that. You know a bargain when you spy it. But I am unfamiliar in this timeframe with your dollars and your strange fast-food native customs, having been set down here only once before; and since I am more at ease with the drachma than the dollar, with the shekel than the cent, I will cut my own throat, slash both my wrists, and offer you this magnificent antiquity for … uh … twenty dollars?” His voice was querulous, his tone one of wonder and hope.

  “Jesse James at least had a horse!” Danny snarled, once again moving toward the door.

  “Fifteen!” Mukhar yowled. “And may all your children need corrective lenses from too much tv-time!”

  “Five; and may a hundred thousand syphilitic camels puke into your couscous,” Danny screamed back over his shoulder.