Approaching Oblivion

by Harlan Ellison

  He was half-asleep. Lying up against the incline of the arroyo, his thoughts fading in and out of focus like a radio signal from a transmitter beyond the hills. Oh, bad dreams. Not even subtle, not even artful metaphors. The spider was clearly his mother, the head pink and heavily freckled, redheaded, and slanting Oriental cartoon eyes. The Mameluke chained between the pillars was bald and old, and the face held an infinite weariness in its expression. The Praetorian with the flame thrower was himself, the searing wash of jellied death appearing and vanishing, being and being gone. He understood. Only a fool would not understand; he was weary, as his father was weary, but he was no fool. He burned the webbing. Again and again. Only to have it spring into existence each time. He came fully awake before the cone-muzzle of the weapon touched his shoulder.

  Came awake with the web untouched, covering the world from horizon to horizon, the spider crawling down the sky toward the weary black man hanging between the pillars.

  “You were told I’d be coming,” he said. It was only darkness in front of him, but darkness within a darkness, and he knew someone stood there, very close to him, the weapon pointed at his head.

  He knew it. Only a fool would not have known. Now he was awake, and he was no fool.

  The voice that answered from the deeper darkness was neither male nor female, neither young nor old, neither deep nor high. It sounded like a voice coming from a tin cup. Neil knew he had been honorably directed; this was the place, without doubt. He saluted Lady Effim’s word of honor with a smile. The voice from the tin cup said, “You’re supposed to giving me a word, isn’t it?”

  “The word you want is Twinkle.”

  “Yeah, that was to being the word. I’m to your being took downstairs now. C’mon.”

  The thief rose and brushed himself off.

  He saw movement from the corner of his eye. But when he turned to look, there was nothing.

  He followed the shadow as it moved toward the cave mouth. There was no Moon, and the faraway ice-chips of the stars gave no heat, gave no light. It was merely a shadow he followed: a shadow with its weapon carried at port arms.

  They passed into the mouth of the cave, and the dirt passage under their feet began to slope down sharply almost at once. There were two more shadows inside the mouth of the cave, hunkered down, looking like piles of rags, features indistinct, weapon barrels protruding from the shapeless masses like night-blooming flowers of death.

  One of them made a metallic sound when it brushed against the wall. It. Neither he nor she. It.

  Neil Leipzig followed the shadow down the steep slope, holding on to the rock wall for support as his feet sought purchase. Ahead of him, his guide seemed to be talking to himself very, very softly. It sounded like a mechanical whirring. The guide was not a domo.

  “Here you’ll stop it,” the guide said, when they had descended so deep into the cave passage that the temperature was cool and pleasant. He moved in the darkness, and the thief saw a heat-sensitive plate in the rock wall suddenly come to life with light as the guide touched it. Then a door irised open in the rock wall, and light flooded out, blinding him for a moment. He covered his eyes. The guide gave him a shove through the iris. It was neither polite help nor surly indignity. He merely shoved Neil through to get him inside. It was an old-style elevator, not a dropshaft and not a light-ray tunnel. He had no idea how long it had been here, but probably before the arcology of London.

  He looked at his guide in the full light.

  He felt, for the first time since…he felt for the first time that he wanted to go home, to stop, to go back, to return to himself before…to return to the past…

  The guide was a gnome of spare human parts and rusting machinery. He was barely four feet tall, the legs bowed with the enormous weight of a metal chest like the belly of an old-time wood-burning stove. The head was hairless and the left half was a metal plate devoid of eyes, or nose, or mouth, or skin, or sweat, or pore. It was pocked and flaking metal, riveted through in uneven lines to the bone of the half of the head that was still flesh-covered. His left arm was fastened at the shoulder by a pot-metal socket covered with brazing marks. Depending from the socket were long, curved, presumably hollow levers containing solenoids; another ball socket for elbow, another matched pair of hollow levers, ball socket wrist, solenoid fingers. His right arm was human. It held the cone-muzzled weapon: an archaic but nonetheless effective disruptor. Input sockets—some of them the ancient and corroded models housewives had found in the walls of their homes, into which they had plugged vacuum cleaners and toasters—studded both thighs, inside and out. His penis was banded with expansible mesh copper. He was barefoot; the big toe was gone on the right foot; it had been replaced with a metal stud.

  Neil Leipzig felt sick. Was this—?

  He stopped the thought. It had never been like this before, no reason to think it would be like this here. It couldn’t be. But he felt sick. And filthy.

  He was certain he had seen movement out of the corner of his eye, up there in the arroyo.

  The elevator grounded, and the door irised open. He stepped out ahead of the gnome. They were in an underground tunnel, higher and wider than the one above, well lit by eterna lamps set into the tunnel’s arched roof. The guide set off at a slow lope, and the thief followed him; illegal, yes…but how did they live down here, like troglodytes; was this the look of his future…he erased the thought…and could not stop thinking it.

  They rounded a bend and kept going. The tunnel seemed to stretch on indefinitely. Behind him, around the bend, he thought he heard the elevator door close and the cage going back up. But he could not be certain.

  They kept on in a straight line for what seemed an eighth of a mile, and when it became clear to Neil that they were going to keep going for many miles in this endless rabbit run, the guide took a sudden right turn into a niche in the right-hand wall the thief had not even suspected was there.

  The niche opened into a gigantic cavern. Hewn from solid rock for a purpose long forgotten, decades before, it stretched across for several miles and arched above them in shadows the thief’s eyes could not penetrate. Like the pueblo Amerinds of old, whoever lived here had carved dwellings from the rock faces and ledges. From the floor of the cavern below them, all the way up into the shadows, Neil could see men and women moving along the ledges, busy at tasks he could not name. Nor would he have bothered:

  All he could see, all he could believe, was the machine that dominated the cavern floor, the computer that rose up and up past the ledge on which they stood, two hundred feet high and a quarter mile in diameter.

  “Mekcoucher,” the half-human gnome said, his voice filled with—

  Neil looked down at him. The expression was beatific. Love. Awe, love, desire, respect, allegiance, love. The blasted little face twisted in what was supposed to be a sigh of adoration. Love. Mek-coo-shay. The French had invented the word, but the dregs of the Barcelona arcology had conceived the deed. Mekcoucher.

  The thief touched the gnome’s head. The guide looked up without surliness or animosity. His eye was wet. His nose, what there was of his nose, was running. He sobbed, and it came from deep in his stove chest, and he said again, a litany, “Mekcoucher. This am all I be here about, dearest shine bright. Fursday, this Fursday, I me I get turn.” Neil felt a terrible kinship and pity and recycling of terror. This little thing, here beside him on this ledge, this remnant of what had once been a man, before it had begun dreaming of metal surfaces, of electric currents, of shining thighs, this thing had been no better than Neil Leipzig. Was this the future?

  Neil could understand the gnome’s orison to the machine. It was an installation to inspire homage, to lift up the heart; it was so large and so complex, it inspired deification, idolatry; it was a machine to engender devotion.

  It was a sex-partner to consume one such as Neil Leipzig with trembling lust.

  They started down the ledge toward the floor of the cavern, the thief with his arm around the gnome�
�s shoulders, both of them moist-eyed and finding it difficult to breathe. At one point, Neil asked the gnome if they could stop, if they could sit down with their backs to the rock wall and just look at the incredible bulk and shapes and shining metal surfaces of the machine in the center of their world.

  And they sat, and they watched.

  “This is where my place I been stay long time,” said the gnome, staring across at the machine. They were now only a hundred feet above the floor of the cavern, and the computer rose up before them, filling their eyes.

  Neil asked the gnome his name. “Fursday,” he said. “This Fursday, I me I get turn to joy.”

  A life centralized around his love-partner. No name other than the name that told everyone he would go to Heaven on Thursday. Neil shuddered, but it was a trembling of expectation and desire. And it was there, sitting and remembering the first time, three years earlier…remembering the times since…inadequate, searching, fulfilling but not fulfilling the way this installation, this carnal machine could fulfill…he knew it…he felt it…his bones vibrated like tuning forks, his heart was pudding.

  And it was there, sitting beside the gnome, that Mr. Robert Mossman found him.

  He came down the ledge behind them, walking lightly, never dislodging a shard of limestone, hardly breathing, the pounder in his right hand. The pounder hit the brain with a laser beam that had the impact of a cannonball dropped from a great height. It could turn the inside of the victim’s skull to gruel without marring the outside surface. It made for neat corpses. It was final. It was utterly illegal.

  The thief knew there had been noise behind them in the tunnel; there had been movement in the arroyo.

  He cursed Lady Effim’s word of honor.

  He said nothing as the killer came down on them. Mr. Robert Mossman stopped and aimed the weapon at Neil Leipzig’s left eye.

  “Hey!” Fursday said, seeing the silent killer for the first time. “You aren’t being to come down here! I’m me I told to bring him, this one down. Stop!”

  Mr. Robert Mossman tracked the pen-point muzzle of the pounder through mere seconds of arc and squeezed the butt of the weapon. Light slashed across the space between them and hit the gnome with the impact of a slammed door. The recoil shuddered the killer; the little metal man was lifted and slung along the ledge. He fell flat onto his back, his human arm hanging over the edge. Neil froze for only a moment, then made a movement toward the gnome’s weapon. He knew he would never make it. He could feel the pressure of Mr. Robert Mossman’s palm squeezing the pounder. He anticipated the slam of nova heat in his brain, and his eyes filled with light.

  But it didn’t come. He could not turn around. He knew the killer was savoring the moment. And in that moment Neil Leipzig heard the rush of displaced air, the most terrible scream in the world, and the sounds of a struggle.

  He turned in time to see the falcon tear away half the killer’s face and, pinions beating a blurred breast-stroke against the air, the falcon bore Mr. Robert Mossman over backward.

  The killer fell screaming to the rocks below. The falcon skimmed above him, observing, making note of finality, and when it was satisfied that its prey was dead, it dove, ripped loose a piece of meat, and arced back up into the air, banking and turning on a wingtip, and flew to rest on the Catman’s shoulder.

  The smoldering ember eyes of the two cheetahs stared back at the thief.

  The Catman came down the sloping ledge and helped his son to his feet. “Come home now,” he said.

  Neil Leipzig looked at his father, the lines of tension and sadness and weariness imprinted like circuits across the face. He moved a step closer and then he had his arms around the black man. They stood that way for seconds, and then the Catman’s arms came up and circled the thief’s back. They stood silently, holding each other.

  When they separated, Neil was able to speak. “You didn’t stay home, you followed me; all the way from the Five?”

  The Catman nodded.

  “But how?”

  “You to the meeting, then him after you. Come home.”

  “Dad, it isn’t your onshift, you can get yourself in a bad way. Go now, before anyone sees you.” The single dead eye of the gnome stared up at the hidden roof of the cavern. Neil thought of metal surfaces. His palms were wet. The air sparkled with scintillance; he stopped it.

  “You won’t come back with me?”

  “I can’t. Please, Dad.”

  “You’ve seen what this is like. You’re my son. I can’t let you do it.”

  “Dad, go away. Please! I know what I’m doing.”

  “Neil.”

  “Please, Dad! I’m begging you. Go away.”

  “And nothing up there matters more than this?”

  “You’re not turned away? It doesn’t make you sick? Not even here, not even seeing this, not even here will you make a stand? My God, Dad, can’t you see you’re more destroyed than I’ll ever be, no matter what I do?”

  “Make a stand? I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “Go away!” Then, trying to hurt him because he did not want him hurt, he said, “Your wife is waiting for you.”

  “Stop it, Neil. She was your mother once.”

  “The once and never mother to the pervert thief. And you, her consort. Lovely. You want me to come back to that? I won’t let my eyes see it again. Not ever.”

  “How long have you been—”

  “How long have I been like this?” He waved an arm at the great machine. “Three years.”

  “But there was Joice, we thought, your mother and I thought.”

  “It didn’t work. It wasn’t enough.”

  “Neil, please, it’s not for you. It’s—”

  “It’s what, Dad, it’s what? Perverted? Nauseating? Destructive? Pointless? I could apply them all to the way you live with her.”

  “Will they come up here after us?” He nodded toward the ledges of cave dwellings and the people moving about them.

  “I don’t think so, I don’t know, but I don’t think so. Everything was arranged. I don’t know why that one—” and he indicated the body of Mr. Robert Mossman below, “—I don’t know why he came after me. But that doesn’t matter. Go back. Get out of here. Your promotion, your job, it’s almost time for the permutations, God knows that bitch won’t give you a moment’s peace if she doesn’t get rejuvenated. You’re offshift, Dad! You’ve never even bent a reg before…please get the hell out of here and leave me alone.”

  “You don’t understand her.”

  “I don’t want to understand her. I’ve lived with her for twenty-eight years.”

  “You won’t come back with me?”

  “No.”

  “Then let me stay.”

  The cheetahs closed their eyes and dropped their heads onto their paws. The falcon shrugged and ruffled itself.

  “You’re out of your mind. Do you know what I’m here for…of course you know…go home!”

  So they walked down past the still body of the little metal and flesh gnome, down the ledge, down to the floor of the great cavern, the thief, the policeman and the animals padding along behind. They paused at the body of Mr. Robert Mossman, and Neil Leipzig, to make certain he knew what he was walking into, took the killer’s communcation phone from his ring finger, called Lady Effim, and told her what had happened. She said, “I apologize, Neil. My companions are, how can I put it meaningfully, devoted to me. Mr. Mossman was very much on his own. I regret his death, but I regret even more that this has caused you to doubt my word. You have my assurance everything was ordered correctly for your arrival. You won’t be troubled again. And again, I ask your pardon.” He turned her off and he went with his father to the village of the computer.

  “For the last time: will you leave now? I don’t want you to see this.”

  “I’ll stay. I’ll be right over here. Perhaps later…”

  “No. Even if I go back, I’ll only come here again. I know what I need.”

  “I’ll have to keep
tracking you.”

  “That’s your job.”

  The thief held a tiny inhalation tube filled with soft, feathery yellow dust. He had received it from the hand of the cyborg woman who ran the computer’s village. It was called The Dust, and spoken of reverently. It was much finer and looked more potent than any Dust Neil Leipzig had ever used. He knew what was going to happen, and could only guess at the intensity of the experience.

  The world aboveground was free, totally and utterly free. There were no boundaries, no taboos beyond causing other’s harm. And even in such a world, this was forbidden. The last, the final, the ultimate sexual experience.

  “I’ll wait.”

  He didn’t answer. He removed his clothes, walked to the towering bulk of the computer and touched it.

  The crackle-finish surface of its north flank was smooth and cool to his touch. He felt sensuality pulsing in the machine. They had exposed the leads for him, and he paused for a moment to consider what obligations they must owe Lady Effim for them to give him The Dust, to permit him Mekcoucher time with their love-partner. The dwellers in this subterranean hideaway. They were all like Fursday. Advanced stages of love commitment to this machine. Part metal, part human, totally the computer’s property. Helpless to deny their passion. He grabbed the leads.

  The blue lead went into the surgically implanted socket on the inside of his right thigh, the red input lead went into the socket on the inside of his left thigh. The “stim” electrodes found their proper areas though his hair and scalp. He merely placed the medusa cap on his head and they wriggled to their proper clips, sank their fangs, wire snakes. One lead hooked him into the plethysmograph and the Lissajous oscilloscope and the GSR galvanometer. The Velcro band containing a million black-dot photocells was ready and he wrapped it around his penis. Then he snorted The Dust, the yellow wonder from Barcelona.

  He lay up against the metal body of the machine, arms out cruciform, legs spread, cheek flat to the waiting surface. He could feel the expectancy in the computer, hungry lover.

  He thought of the first time he had made love to Joice, the feel of her flesh. It was not enough.