Deathbird Stories

by Harlan Ellison

  And then, finally: I must know. I must know!

  …while he spun a fiber of melancholy down to a double-thoraxed insect-creature on Io, speared with dread a blob of barely sentient mud on Acaras III, pain-goaded into suicide an electrical wave-being capable of producing exquisite fifteen-toned harmonics on Syndon Beta V, reducing by half the pleasures of a pitiable slug thing in the methane caves of Kkklll IV, enshrouded in bitterness and misery a man named Colin Marshack on an insignificant planet called Sol III, Earth, Terra, the world…

  And then, finally: I will know. I will know!

  Trente removed the scale model of Earth from the display crate, and stared at it. Such a tiny thing, such a helpless thing, to support the nightwalk of a Paingod.

  He selected the most recent recipient of his attentions, through no more involved method than that, and used the means of travel his race had long since perfected to leave his encased cubicle hanging translucent against the stars. Trente, Paingod of the universes, for the first time in all the centuries he had lived that life of giving, never receiving, left his place, and left his Now, and went to find out. To find out…what? He had no way of knowing.

  For the Paingod, it was the first nightwalk.

  Pieter Koslek had been born in a dwarf province of a minuscule Central European country long since swallowed up by a tiny power now a member of the Common Market. He had left Europe early in the 1920s, had shipped aboard a freighter to Bolivia and, after working his way as common deckhand and laborer through half a dozen banana republics, had been washed up on an inland shore of the United States in 1934. He had promptly gone to earth, gone to seed, and gone to fat. A short stint in a CCC camp, a shorter stint as a bouncer in a Kansas City speak, a term in the Illinois State Workhouse, a long run on the Pontiac assembly line making an obscure part for an obscure segment of a B-17’s innards, a brief fling as owner of a raspberry farm, and an extended period as a skid row-frequenting wino summed up his life. Now, as now would be reckoned by any sane man’s ephemeris, Pieter Koslek was a wetbrain–an alcoholic so sunk in the fumes and vapors of his own liquor need that he was barely recognizable as a human being. Lying soddenly, but quietly, in an alley two blocks up from the Greyhound bus station in downtown Los Angeles, Pieter Koslek, age fifty-nine, weight 210, hair filthy gray, eyes red and moist and closed, unceremoniously died. That simply, that unconcernedly, that uneventfully for all the young-old men in overlong GI surplus overcoats who passed by that alley mouth unseeing, uncaring–Pieter Koslek died. His brain gave out, his lungs ceased to bellow, his heart refused to pump, his blood slid to a halt in his veins, and breath no longer passed his lips. He died. End of story, beginning of story. And he lay there, half-propped against the brick wall with its shredded reminder of a lightweight boxing match between two stumblebums long since passed into obscurity and the files of Ring Magazine, a thin tepid vapor of pale green came to the useless body of Pieter Koslek; touched it; felt of it; entered it; Trente was on the planet Earth, Sol III.

  If it had been possible to mount an epitaph on bronze for the wetbrain, there on the wall of the alley perhaps, the most fitting would have been: HERE LAY PIETER KOSLEK. NOTHING IN HIS LIFE BECOME HIM SO MUCH AS THE LEAVING OF IT.

  The thick-bodied orator on the empty packing crate had gathered a sizable crowd. His license was encased in plastic, and it had been pinned to a broom handle sharpened and driven into the ground. An American flag hung limply from a pole on the other side of the makeshift podium. The flag had only forty-eight stars; it had been purchased long before Hawaii or Alaska had joined the union, but new flags cost money, and–

  “Scum! Like sewer water poured into your bloodstream! Look at them, do they look like you, do they smell like you–those smells, those, those stinks that walk like men! That’s what they are, stinks with voting privileges, all of them, the niggers, the kike-jews who own the land and the apartments you live in, what they think they’re big deals! The spics, the Puerto Rican filth that takes over your streets and rapes your women and puts its lousy hands on your white young daughters, that scum…”

  Colin Marshack stood in the crowd, staring up at the thick-bodied orator, his shaking hands thrust deep into his sport jacket pockets, his head throbbing, the unlit cigarette hanging unnoticed from his lips. Every word.

  “…Commies in public office, is what we have got to be content with. Nigger lovers and pawns of the kike bastards who own the corporations. They wanta kill all of you, all of us, every one of us. They want us to say, ‘Hey! C’mon, make love to my sister, to my wife, do all the dirty things that’ll pollute my pure race!’ That’s what the Commies in public office, misusing our public trust, say to us. And what do we say in return, back to them, we say, ‘No dice, dirty spics, lousy kikes, Puerto bastards, black men that want to steal our pure heritage!’ We say, go to hell to them, go straight to hell, you dirty rotten sonsuh–”

  At which point the policemen moved quietly through the crowd, fascinated and silent like cobras at a mongoose convention, and arrested the thick-bodied orator.

  As they took him away, Colin Marshack turned and moved out of the milling group. Why is such hideousness allowed to exist, he thought bitterly, fearfully. He walked down the path and out of Pershing Square (“Pershing Square is where they have a fence up so the fruits can’t pick the people.”) and did not even realize the rheumy-eyed old man was following him till he was six blocks away.

  Then he turned, and the old man almost ran into him. “Something I can do for you?” Colin Marshack asked.

  The old man grinned feebly, his pale gums exposing themselves above gap-toothed ruin. “Nosir, nuh-nosir, I just, uh, I was just follerin’ along to see maybe I could tap yah for a couple cents tuh get some chick’n noodle soup. It’s kinda cold…’n I thought, maybe…”

  Colin Marshack’s wide, somehow humorous face settled into understanding lines. “You’re right, old man, it’s cold, and it’s windy, and it’s miserable, and I think you’re entitled to some goddam chicken noodle soup. God knows someone’s entitled.” He paused a beat, added, “Maybe me.”

  He took the old man by the arm, seemingly unaware of the rancid, rotting condition of the cloth. They walked along the street outside the park, and turned into one of the many side routes littered with one-arm beaneries and 40¢-a-night flophouses.

  “And possibly a hot roast beef sandwich with gravy all over the French fries,” Colin added, steering the wine-smelling old derelict into a restaurant.

  Over coffee and a bear claw, Colin Marshack stared at the old man. “Hey, what’s your name?”

  “Pieter Koslek,” the old man murmured, hot vapors from the thick white coffee mug rising up before his watery eyes. “I’ve, uh, been kinda sick, y’know…”

  “Too much sauce, old man,” said Colin Marshack. “Too much sauce does it for a lot of us. My father and mother both. Nice folk, loved each other, they went to the old alky’s home hand in hand. It was touching.”

  “You’re kinda feelin’ sorry for y’self, ain’tcha?” said Pieter Koslek. And looked down at his coffee hurriedly.

  Colin stared across angrily. Had he sunk that low, that quickly, that even the seediest cockroach-ridden bum in the gutter could snipe at him, talk up to him, see his sad and sorry state? He tried to lift his coffee cup, and the cream-laced liquid sloshed over the rim, over his wrist. He yipped and set the cup down quickly.

  “Your hands shake worse’n mine, mister,” Pieter Koslek noted. It was a curious tone, somehow devoid of feeling or concern–more a statement of observation.

  “Yeah, my hands shake, Mr. Koslek, sir. They shake because I make my living cutting things out of stone, and for the past two years I’ve been unable to get anything from stone but tidy piles of rock dust.”

  Koslek spoke around a mouthful of cruller. “You, uh, you’re one’a them statue makers, what I mean a sculpt’r.”

  “That is precisely what
I am, Mr. Koslek, sir. I am a capturer of exquisite beauty in rock and plaster and quartz and marble. The only trouble is, I’m no damned good, and I was never ever really very good, but at least I made a decent living selling a piece here and there, and conning myself into thinking I was great and building a career, and Canaday in the Times said a few nice things about me. But even that’s turned to rust now. I can’t make a chisel do what I want it to do, I can’t sand and I can’t chip and I can’t carve dirty words on sidewalks if I try.”

  Pieter Koslek stared across at Colin Marshack, and there was a banked fire down in those rheumy, sad old eyes. He watched and looked and saw the hands shaking uncontrollably, saw them wring one against another like mad things, and even when interlocked, they still trembled hideously.

  And…

  Trente, locked within an alien shell, comprehended a small something. This creature of puny carbon atoms and other substances that could not exist for an instant in the rigorous arena of space, was dying. Inside, it was ending its life cycle, because of the misery Trente had sent down. Trente had been responsible for the quivering pain that sent Colin Marshack’s hands into spasms. It had been done two years before–by Colin Marshack’s time–but only a few moment earlier as Trente knew it. And now it had changed this creature’s life totally. Trente watched the strange human being, a product of little introverted needs and desires. And he knew he must go farther, must experiment further with his problem. The green and transparent vapor that was Trente seeped out of the eyes of Pieter Koslek, and slid carefully inside Colin Marshack. It left itself wide open, flung itself wide open, to what tremors governed the man. And Trente felt the full impact of the pain he so lightly dispensed to all the living things in the universes. It was potent hot all! And it was a further knowing, a greater knowledge, a simple act that the sickness had compelled him to undertake. By the fear and the memory of all the fears that gone before, Trente knew, and knowing, had to go farther. For he was Paingod, not a transient tourist in the country of pain. He drew forth the mind of Marshack, of that weak and trembling Colin Marshack, and fled with it. Out. Out there. Farther. Much farther. Till time came to a slithering halt and space was no longer of any consequence. And he whirled Colin Marshack through the universes. Through the infinite allness of the space and time and motion and meaning that was the crevice into which Life had sunk itself. He saw the blobs of mud and the whirling winged things and the tall humanoids and the cleat-treaded half-men/half-machines that ruled one and another sector of open space. He showed it all to Colin Marshack, drenched him in wonder, filled him like the most vital goblet the Ethos had ever created, poured him full of love and life and the staggering beauty of the cosmos. And having done that, he whirled the soul and spirit of Colin Marshack down down and down to the fibrous shell that was his body, and poured that soul back inside. Then he walked the shell to the home of Colin Marshack…and turned it loose. And…

  When the sculptor awoke, lying face down amidst the marble chips and powder-fine dust of the statue, he saw the base first; and not having recalled even buying a chunk of stone that large, raised himself on his hands, and his knees, and his haunches, and sat there, and his eyes went up toward the summit, and seemed to go on forever, and when he finally saw what it was he had created–this thing of such incredible loveliness and meaning and wisdom–he began to sob. Softly, never very loud, but deeply, as though each whimper was drawn from the very core of him.

  He had done it this once, but as he saw his hands still trembling, still murmuring to themselves in spasms, he knew it was the one time he would ever do it. There was no memory of how, or why, or even of when…but it was his work, of that he was certain. The pain in his wrists told him it was.

  The moment of truth stood high above him, resplendent in marble, but there would be no other moments.

  This was Colin Marshack’s life, in its totality, now.

  The sound of sobbing was only broken periodically, as he began to drink.

  Waiting. The Ethos waited. Trente had known they would. It was inevitable. Foolish for him to conceive of a situation of which they would not have an awareness.

  Away. From your post, away.

  “I had to know. It has been growing in me, a live thing in me. I had to know. It was the only way. I went to a planet, and lived within what they call ‘men’ and knew. I think I understand now.”

  Know. What is it you know?

  “I know that pain is the most important thing in the universes. Greater than survival, greater than love, greater even than the beauty it brings about. For without pain there can be no pleasure. Without sadness there can be no happiness. Without misery there can be no beauty. And without these, life is endless, hopeless, doomed and damned.”

  Adult. You have become adult.

  “I know…this is what became of the other Pain-gods before me. They grew into concern, into knowing, and then…”

  Lost. They were lost to us.

  “They could not take the step; they could not go to one of the ones to whom they had sent pain, and learn. So they were no use as Paingod. I understand. Now I know, and I am returned.”

  Do. What will you do?

  “I will send more pain than ever before. More and greater.”

  More? You will send more?

  “Much more. Because now I understand. It is a gray and a lonely place in which we live, all of us, swinging between desperation and emptiness, and all that makes it worthwhile is caring, is beauty. But if there were no opposite for beauty, or for pleasure, it would all turn to dust.”

  Being. Now you know who you are.

  “I am most blessed of the Ethos, and most humble. You have given me the highest, kindest position in the universes. For I am the God to all men, and to all creatures small and large, whether they call me by name or not. I am Paingod, and it is my life, however long it stretches, to treat them to the finest they will ever know. To give them pain, and they may know pleasure. Thank you.”

  And the Ethos went away, secure that at last, after all the eons of Paingods who had broken under the strain, who had lacked the courage to take that nightwalk, they had found one who would last truly forever. Trente had come of age.

  While back in the cubicle, hanging star-bright and translucent in space, high above it all, yet very much part of it all, the creature who would never die, the creature who had lived within the rotting body of Pieter Koslek and for a few moments in the soul and talent of Colin Marshack, that creature called Paingod, learned one more thing, as he stared at the tiny model of the planet Earth he had known.

  Trente knew the feel of a tear formed in a duct and turned free from an eye globe–cool on his face.

  Trente knew happiness.

  About forty-five percent of this is a true story. Eat your heart out figuring which is real and which is phony. Or simply repeat to yourself. “For I am a jealous people,” and remember not to screw around with the supplicants, baby.

  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 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…