Approaching Oblivion

by Harlan Ellison

  The Catman made no move to touch the thief. There was no point to it. “You can’t avoid me much longer.”

  “Perhaps not.” He vanished as the panther slid toward him on its belly, bunching itself to strike.

  “But then, perhaps I don’t want to,” he said.

  The Catman hissed again, and the falcon flew to his armored wrist. “Then why not come quietly. Let’s be civilized.”

  The thief chuckled deep in his throat, but without humor. “That seems to be the problem right there.” The cheetahs passed through space he no longer occupied.

  “You’re simply all too bloody marvelous civilized; I crave a little crudeness.”

  “We’ve had this conversation before,” said the Catman, and there was an odd note of weariness in his voice…for an officer of the law at last in a favorable position with an old adversary. “Please surrender quietly; the cats are nervous tonight; there was a glasscab accident on the thirty-sixth and they wafted a strong blood scent. It’s difficult holding them in check.”

  As he spoke, the pavane of strike and vanish, hold and go, pounce and invisibility continued, around and around the perimeter ring. Overhead, the Fuller Geodex absorbed energy from the satellite power stars Day Dusk&Dawn Co, Ltd. had thrown into the sky, converted the energy to the city’s use, providing from its silver mesh latticework the juice to keep London alive. It was the Geodex dome that held sufficient backup force to keep the perimeter ring strong enough to thwart the thief. He dodged in and out of reach of the cats; the falcon tracked him, waiting.

  “It’s taking you longer to do it each time,” said the Catman.

  The thief dematerialized five times rather quickly as the two cheetahs worked an inwardly spiraling pattern, pressing him toward a center where the panther waited patiently. “Worry about yourself,” he said, breathing hard.

  The falcon dove from the Catman’s shoulder in a shallow arc, its wingspread slicing a fourth of the ring at head-height. The thief materialized, lying on his back, at the inner edge of the ring behind the Catman.

  The panther bunched and sprang, and the thief rolled away, the stretch suit suddenly open down one side as the great cat’s claws ripped the air. Then the thief was gone…

  …to reappear behind the panther.

  The thief held the ladybug deranger in his palm. Even as the panther sensed the presence behind him, the thief slapped the deranger down across the side of the massive head. Then the thief blinked out again.

  The panther bolted, rose up on its hind legs and, without a sound, exploded.

  Gears and cogs and printed circuits and LSI chips splattered against the inside of the perimeter ring…bits of pseudoflesh and infra-red eyeballs and smears of lubricant sprayed across the invisible bubble.

  The empty husk of what had been the panther lay smoking in the center of the arena. The thief appeared beside the Catman. He said nothing.

  The Catman looked away. He could not stare at the refuse that had been black swiftness moments before. The thief said, “I’m sorry I had to do that.”

  There was a piping, sweet note in the air, and the cheetahs and the falcon froze. The falcon on the Catman’s shoulder, the cheetahs sniffing at the pile of death with its stench of ozone. The tone came again. The Catman heaved a sigh, as though he had been released from some great oppression. A third time, the tone, followed by a woman’s voice: “Shift end, Officer. Your jurisdiction ends now. Thank you for your evening’s service. Goodspeed to you, and we’ll see you nextshift, tomorrow at eleven-thirty P.M.” The tone sounded once more—it was pink—and the perimeter ring dissolved.

  The thief stood beside the Catman for a few more moments. “Will you be all right?”

  The Catman nodded slowly, still looking away.

  The thief watched him for a moment longer, then vanished. He reappeared at the far side of the Geodex and looked back at the tiny figure of the Catman, standing unmoving. He continued to watch till the police officer walked to the heap of matted and empty blackness, bent and began gathering up the remnants of the panther. The thief watched silently, the weight of the Antarean soul-radiant somehow oppressively heavy in the bag of confounders.

  The Catman took a very long time to gather up his dead stalker. The thief could not see it from where he stood, so far away, but he knew the Catman was crying.

  The air sparked around him…as though he had not quite decided to teleport himself…and in fact he had not been able to make the decision…and the air twinkled with infinitesimal scintillae…holes made in the fabric of normal space through which the displaced air was drawn, permitting the thief to teleport…the sparkling points of light actually the deaths of muons as they were sucked through into that not-space…and still he could not decide.

  Then he vanished and reappeared beside the Catman.

  “Can I help you?”

  The Catman looked away quickly. But the thief saw the tears that had run down the Catman’s black cheeks. “No, thank you, I’ll be all right. I’m almost finished here.” He held a paw.

  The thief drew a deep breath. “Will you be home for dinner tonight?”

  The Catman nodded. “Tell your mother I’ll be along in a little while.”

  The thief went away from there, in twenty level leaps, quickly, trying not to see a black hand holding an even blacker paw.

  They sit silently at the dinner table. Neil Leipzig cannot look at his father. He sits cross-legged on the thin pneumatic cushion, the low teak table before him; the Estouffade de boeuf on his plate vanishes and reappears. It is wallaby, smothered in wine sauce and “cellar vegetables” from sub-level sixteen-North. It continues to appear and disappear.

  “Stop playing with your food,” Neil Leipzig’s mother says, sharply.

  “Leave me alone; I’m not hungry,” he says.

  They sit silently. His father addresses his food, and eats quickly but neatly.

  “How was your shiftday?” Neil Leipzig’s mother says.

  Neither of the men looks up. She repeats the question, adding, “Lew.” His father looks up, nods abstractedly, does not answer, returns to his plate.

  “Why is it impossible to get a civil word out of you in the evening,” she says. There is an emerging tone in her voice, a tone of whitewater rapids just beyond the bend. “I ask: why is it impossible for you to speak to your family?”

  Keep eating, don’t let her do it to you again, Neil Leipzig thinks. He moves the cubes of soybean curd around in the sauce madère until they are all on the right side of the plate. Keep silent, tough up, he thinks.

  “Lewis!”

  His father looks up. “I think I’ll go downstairs and take a nap, after dinner.” His eyes seem very strange; there is a film over them; something gelatinous; as though he is looking out from behind a thick, semi-opaque membrane; neither Neil nor his mother can read the father’s thoughts from those eyes.

  She shakes her head and snorts softly, as though she is infinitely weary of dealing with those who persist in their arrogance and stupidity; there was none of that in what the father had said. Let him alone, can’t you? Neil Leipzig thinks.

  “We’re out of deeps,” the mother says.

  “I won’t need them,” the father says.

  “You know you can’t sleep without a deep, don’t try and tell me you can. We’re out, someone will have to order more.”

  Neil Leipzig stands up. “I’ll order them; finish your dinner.”

  He goes into the main room and punches out the order on the board. He codes it to his mother’s personal account. Let her pay, he thinks. The confirmation tones sound, and he returns to the table. From the delivery chute comes the sound of the spansules arriving. He stands there staring down at his parents, at the top of his father’s head, black and hairless, faintly mottled; at his mother’s face, pale and pink, heavily freckled from the treatment machine she persists in using though the phymech advises her it is having a deleterious effect on her skin: she wants a tan for her own reasons but is too
fair and redheaded for it to take, and she merely freckles. She has had plasticwork done on her eyes, they slant in a cartoon imitation of the lovely Oriental curve.

  He is brown.

  “I have to go out for a while.”

  His father looks up. Their eyes meet.

  “No. Nothing like that,” he lies. His father looks away.

  His mother catches the exchange. “Is there something new between you two?”

  Neil turns away. She follows him with her eyes as he starts for the tunnel to his own apartments. “Neil! What is all this? Your father acts like a burnout, you won’t eat, I’ve had just about enough of this! Why do you two continue to torment me, haven’t I had enough heartache from the both of you? Now you come back here, right here, right now, I want us to have this out.” He stops.

  He turns around. His expression is a disguise.

  “Mother, do us both a favor,” he says, quite clearly, “kindly shut your mouth and leave me alone.” He goes into the tunnel, is reduced to a beam of light, is fired through the tunnel to his apartments seven miles away across the arcology called London, is retranslated, vanishes.

  His mother turns to her husband. Alone now, freed of even the minor restraints imposed on her by the presence of her son, she assumes a familiar emotional configuration. “Lewis.”

  He wants to go lie down. He wants that very much.

  “I want to know!”

  He shakes his head gently. He merely wants to be left alone. There is very little of the Catman now; there is almost too much of Lewis Leipzig. “Please, Karin…it was a miserable shiftday.”

  She slips her blouse down off one perfect breast. The fine powder-white lines of the plasticwork radiate out from the meaty nipple, sweep down and around and disappear under the lunar curve. He watches, the film over his eyes growing darker, more opaque. “Don’t,” he says.

  She touches a blue-enameled fingernail to the nipple, indenting it slightly. “There’ll be bed tonight, Lewis.”

  He starts to rise.

  “There’ll be bed, and sex, and other things if you don’t tell me, Lewis.”

  He slumps back into his round-shouldered dining position. He can hear the whine of generators far back in his memory. And the odor of dead years. And oil slicks across stainless steel. And the rough sensuality of burlap.

  “He was out tonight. Robbery on the ninetieth level. He got away with three tubes of the Antarean soul-radiant.”

  She covers her breast, having won her battle with nasty weaponry, rotted memories. “And you couldn’t stop him.”

  “No. I couldn’t stop him.”

  “And what else?”

  “I lost the panther.”

  Her expression is a combination of amazement and disgust. “He destroyed it?” Her husband nods; he cannot look at her. “And it’ll be charged against your account.” He does not nod; she knows the answer.

  “That’s it for the promotion, and that’s it for the permutations. Oh, God, you’re such a burnout…I can’t stand you!”

  “I’m going to lie down.”

  “You just sit there. Now listen to me, damn you, Lewis Leipzig. Listen! I will not go another year without being rejuvenated. You’ll get that promotion and you’ll get it bringing him in. Or I’ll make you wish I’d never filed for you.” He looks at her sharply. She knows what he’s thinking, knows the reply; but he doesn’t say it; he never does.

  He gets up and walks toward the dropshaft in the main room. Her voice stops him. “You’ll make up your mind, Lewis.”

  He turns on her. The film is gone from his eyes. “It’s our son, Karin. Our son!”

  “He’s a thief,” she says. The edge in her voice is a special viciousness. “A thief in a time when theft is unnecessary. We have everything. Almost everything. You know what he does with what he steals. You know what he’s become. That’s no son of mine. Yours, if you want that kind of filth around you, but no son of mine. God knows I have little enough to live for, and I’m not going to allow your spinelessness to take that from me. I want my permutation. You’ll do it, Lewis, or so help me God—”

  He turns away again. Hiding his face from her, he says, “I’m only permitted to stalk him during regulation hours, you know that.”

  “Break the regs.”

  He won’t turn around. “I’m a Catman. I can’t do that. I’m bound.”

  “If you don’t, I’ll see that someone else does.”

  “I’m beginning not to care.”

  “Have it your way.”

  “Your way.”

  “My way then. But my way whichever way.”

  He vanishes into the main room and a moment later she hears the dropshaft hiss. She sits at the table staring into the mid-distance, remembering. Her face softens and flows and lines of weariness superimpose themselves over her one-hundred-and-sixty-five-year-old youthful face. She drops her face into her hand, runs the fingers up through her thick coppery hair, the metal fingernails making tiny clicking noises against the fibers and follicles. She makes a sound deep in her throat. Then she stiffens her back and rises. She stands there for several moments, listening to the past; she shrugs the robe from her slim, pale body and follows her husband’s path to the dropshaft.

  The dining salon is empty. From the main room comes the hiss of the dropshaft. Menials purr from the walls and clean up the dining area. Below, punishment and coercion reduce philosophies to diamond dust and suet.

  Seven miles away, the thief reappears in his cool apartments. The sights and sounds of what he has overheard and seen between his parents, hidden in the main room till his father left his mother, tremble in his mind. He finds himself rubbing the palm of his left hand up the wall, rubbing over and over without control; his hand hurts from the friction but he doesn’t stop. He rubs and rubs till his palm is bloody. Then he vanishes, illegally.

  Sub-level one: eleven-Central was converted to ocean. Skipboats sliced across from Oakwood on the eastern shore to Caliban on the western cliffs. In the coves and underwater caves sportsmen hunted loknesses, bringing home trophies that covered large walls. Music was bubblecast across the water. Plankton beaneries bobbed like buoys near the tourist shores. Full Fathom Five had gotten four stars in The Epicure and dropshafts carried diners to the bottom to dine in elegance while watching the electro stims put on their regularly scheduled shows among the kelp beds. Neil Leipzig emerged into the pulsing ocher throat of the reception area, and was greeted by the maître d’.

  “Good evening, Max. Would Lady Effim and her party be here yet?”

  The maître d’ smiled and his neck-slits opened and closed to reveal a pink moistness. “Not yet, Mr. Leipzig. Would you care to wait at the bar? Or one of the rooms?”

  “I’ll be at the bar. Would you let them know I’m here when they arrive?”

  The thief let the undulant carry him into the bar and he slid into a seat beside the great curved pressure window. The kelp beds were alive with light and motion.

  “Sir?”

  The thief turned from watching the light-play. A domo hovered at the edge of the starburst-shaped table. “Oh. A chin-chin, please, a little heavier on the Cinzano.” The domo hummed a thankyou and swirled away. Neil Leipzig turned back to the phantasmagoria beyond the pressure window. A bubble of music struck the window and burst just beyond the thief’s nose. He knew the tune.

  “Neil.”

  The thief saw her reflection, dimly, in the window. He did not turn around for a moment, gathering his feelings. “Joice,” he said, finally. “Nice to see you again.”

  “Then why don’t you turn around so you can.”

  He let the seat turn him toward her.

  She was still remarkable. He wanted to see dust marks on her loveliness, product of treachery and floating ethics, but he knew she had not really been treacherous, and if there had been an ethical failure, it had been his.

  “May I sit?”

  “I’m going to be joining a party in a few minutes, but please…” He
waved her to the seat beside him. She settled into it, crossing her legs. The chiton opened and revealed smooth thigh vanishing up into ivory fabric. “How have you been?”

  “I’ve been excellent, Neil. Breve sends his best.”

  “That was unnecessary.”

  “I’m trying to be reasonable, Neil. It’s been a long time and I’m uncomfortable with it this way between us.”

  “Be comfortable. I’ve got it all straight.”

  “I’m trying to be friendly.”

  “Just be reasonable, that’ll be enough.”

  The domo came bobbing through the room and hovered beside the table. It set the chin-chin down. The thief sipped and nodded acceptance. “Lady?” the domo hummed.

  “Nothing for me, thanks.”

  The domo shot straight up and went away just below ceiling height.

  “Are you still doing dust?” she asked.

  He stiffened and his eyes came to her face with anger as he stopped watching the domo. “Your manners haven’t improved any with time.”

  She started to say I’m sorry. But his anger continued to sheet: “If we run out on that topic, we can always discuss Breve’s throat!”

  “Oh, God, Neil, that’s unfair…unfair and lousy!”

  “I understand from one of the twinkle boys that Breve’s using some new steroid vexing agent and a stim-sensitive synthetic that lets him vibrate it like mad. Must be terrific for you…when he’s not with twinkles.”

  Joice pressed a fingertip against the room-call plate set into the surface of the starburst-shaped table. Near the reception area Max heard the tone on his console, noted it was Neil Leipzig’s table, punched up an empty, and made a mental note to let Lady Effim know the thief was in a room, when she and her party arrived. At the starburst-shaped table, the number 22 pulsed in the translucent face of the room-call plate.

  “All right. Neil. Enough already. Overkill doesn’t become you.”

  She stood up.

  “And mealy-mouth attempts at bonhomie don’t become you.”