Deathbird Stories

by Harlan Ellison

  The building shifted, shaped itself, and inside its growing body Frank Stierman knew a moment of madness before he 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.

  Reality has become fantasy; fantasy has become reality, 35 mm constructs have more substance than your senior congressman, but Martha Nelson is real, no matter what you think. And the search for your soul in a soulless world requires special maps.

  Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans:

  LATITUDE 38°54’N, LONGITUDE 77°00’13”W

  When Moby Dick awoke one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed of kelp into a monstrous Ahab.

  Crawling in stages from the soggy womb of sheets, he stumbled into the kitchen and ran water into the teapot. There was lye in the corner of each eye. He put his head under the spigot and let the cold water rush around his cheeks.

  Dead bottles littered the living room. One hundred and eleven empty bottles that had contained Robitussin and Romilar-CF. He padded through the debris to the front door and opened it a crack. Daylight assaulted him. “Oh, God,” he murmured, and closed his eyes to pick up the folded newspaper from the stoop.

  Once more in dusk, he opened the paper. The headline read: BOLIVIAN AMBASSADOR FOUND MURDERED, and the feature story heading column one detailed the discovery of the ambassador’s body, badly decomposed, in an abandoned refrigerator in an empty lot in Secaucus, New Jersey.

  The teapot whistled.

  Naked, he padded toward the kitchen; as he passed the aquarium he saw that terrible fish was still alive, and this morning whistling like a bluejay, making tiny streams of bubbles that rose to burst on the scummy surface of the water. He paused beside the tank, turned on the light and looked in through the drifting eddies of stringered algae. The fish simply would not die. It had killed off every other fish in the tank–prettier fish, friendlier fish, livelier fish, even larger and more dangerous fish–had killed them all, one by one, and eaten out the eyes. Now it swam the tank alone, ruler of its worthless domain.

  He had tried to let the fish kill itself, trying every form of neglect short of outright murder by not feeding it; but the pale, worm-pink devil even thrived in the dark and filth-laden waters.

  Now it sang like a bluejay. He hated the fish with a passion he could barely contain.

  He sprinkled flakes from a plastic container, grinding them between thumb and forefinger as experts had advised him to do it, and watched the multicolored granules of fish meal, roe, milt, brine shrimp, day-fly eggs, oatflour and egg yolk ride on the surface for a moment before the detestable fish-face came snapping to the top to suck them down. He turned away, cursing and hating the fish. It would not die. Like him, it would not die.

  In the kitchen, bent over the boiling water, he understood for the first time the true status of his situation. Though he was probably nowhere near the rotting outer edge of sanity, he could smell its foulness on the wind, coming in from the horizon; and like some wild animal rolling its eyes at the scent of carrion and the feeders thereon, he was being driven closer to lunacy every day, just from the smell.

  He carried the teapot, a cup and two tea bags to the kitchen table and sat down. Propped open in a plastic stand used for keeping cookbooks handy while mixing ingredients, the Mayan Codex translations remained unread from the evening before. He poured the water, dangled the tea bags in the cup and tried to focus his attention. The references to Itzamna, the chief divinity of the Maya pantheon, and medicine, his chief sphere of influence, blurred. Ixtab, the goddess of suicide, seemed more apropos for this morning, this deadly terrible morning. He tried reading, but the words only went in, noting happened to them, they didn’t sing. He sipped tea and found himself thinking of the chill, full circle of the Moon. He glanced over his shoulder at the kitchen clock. Seven forty-four.

  He shoved away from the table, taking the half-full cup of tea, and went into the bedroom. The impression of his body, where it had lain in tortured sleep, still dented the bed. There were clumps of blood-matted hair clinging to the manacles that he had riveted to metal plates in the headboard. He rubbed his wrists where they had been scored raw, slopping a little tea on his left forearm. He wondered if the Bolivian ambassador had been a piece of work he had tended to the month before.

  His wristwatch lay on the bureau. He checked it. Seven forty-six. Slightly less than an hour and a quarter to make the meeting with the consultation service. He went into the bathroom, reached inside the shower stall and turned the handle till a fine needle-spray of icy water smashed the tiled wall of the stall. Letting the water run, he turned to the medicine cabinet for his shampoo. Taped to the mirror was an Ouchless Telfa finger bandage on which two lines had been neatly typed, in capitals:

  THE WAY YOU WALK IS THORNY, MY SON,

  THROUGH NO FAULT OF YOUR OWN.

  Then, opening the cabinet, removing a plastic bottle of herbal shampoo that smelled like friendly, deep forests, Lawrence Talbot resigned himself to the situation, turned and stepped into the shower, the merciless ice-laden waters of the Arctic pounding against his tortured flesh.

  Suite 1544 of the Tishman Airport Center Building was a men’s toilet. He stood against the wall opposite the door labeled MEN and drew the envelope from the inner breast pocket of his jacket. The paper was of good quality, the envelope crackled as he thumbed up the flap and withdrew the single-sheet letter inside. It was the correct address, the correct floor, the correct suite. Suite 1544 was a men’s toilet, nonetheless. Talbot started to turn away. It was a vicious joke; he found no humor in the situation; not in his present circumstances.

  He took one step toward the elevators.

  The door to the men’s room shimmered, fogged over like a windshield in winter, and re-formed. The legend on the door had changed. It now read:

  INFORMATION ASSOCIATES

  Suite 1544 was the consultation service that had written the invitational letter on paper of good quality in response to Talbot’s mail inquiry responding to a noncommittal but judiciously-phrased advertisement in Forbes.

  He opened the door and stepped inside. The woman behind the teak reception desk smiled at him, and his glance was split between the dimples that formed, and her legs, very nice, smooth legs, crossed and framed by the kneehole of the desk. “Mr. Talbot?”

  He nodded. “Lawrence Talbot.”

  She smiled again. “Mr. Demeter will see you at once, sir. Would you like something to drink? Coffee? A soft drink?”

  Talbot found himself touching his jacket where the envelope lay in an inner pocket. “No. Thank you.”

  She stood up, moving toward an inner office door, as Talbot said, “What do you do when someone tries to flush your desk?” He was not trying to be cute. He was annoyed. She turned and stared at him. There was silence in her appraisal, nothing more.

  “Mr. Demeter is right through here, sir.”

  She opened the door and stood aside. Talbot walked past her, catching a scent of mimosa.

  The inner office was furnished like the reading room of an exclusive men’s club. Old money. Deep quiet. Dark, heavy woods. A lowered ceiling of acoustical tile on tracks, concealing a crawl space and probably electrical conduits. The pile rug of oranges and burnt umbers swallowed his feet to the ankles. Through a wall-sized window could be seen
not the city that lay outside the building but a panoramic view of Hanauma Bay, on the Koko Head side of Oahu. The pure aquamarine waves came in like undulant snakes, rose like cobras, crested out white, tunneled and struck like asps at the blazing yellow beach. It was not a window; there were no windows in the office. It was a photograph. A deep, real photograph that was neither a projection nor a hologram. It was a wall looking out on another place entirely. Talbot knew nothing about exotic flora, but he was certain that the tall, razor-edge-leafed trees growing right down to beach’s boundary were identical to those pictured in books depicting the Carboniferous period of the Earth before even the saurians had walked the land. What he was seeing had been gone for a very long time.

  “Mr. Talbot. Good of you to come. John Demeter.”

  He came up from a wingback chair, extended his hand. Talbot took it. The grip was firm and cool. “Won’t you sit down,” Demeter said. “Something to drink? Coffee, perhaps, or a soft drink?” Talbot shook his head; Demeter nodded dismissal to the receptionist; she closed the door behind her, firmly, smoothly, silently.

  Talbot studied Demeter in one long appraisal as he took the chair opposite the wingback. Demeter was in his early fifties, had retained a full and rich mop of hair that fell across his forehead in gray waves that clearly had not been touched up. His eyes were clear and blue, his features regular and jovial, his mouth wide and sincere. He was trim. The dark-brown business suit was hand-tailored and hung well. He sat easily and crossed his legs, revealing black hose that went above the shins. His shoes were highly polished.

  “That’s a fascinating door, the one to your outer office,” Talbot said.

  “Do we talk about my door?” Demeter asked.

  “Not if you don’t want to. That isn’t why I came here.”

  “I don’t want to. So let’s discuss your particular problem.”

  “Your advertisement. I was intrigued.”

  Demeter smiled reassuringly. “Four copywriters worked very diligently at the proper phraseology.”

  “It brings in business.”

  “The right kind of business.”

  “You slanted it toward smart money. Very reserved. Conservative portfolios, few glamours, steady climbers. Wise old owls.”

  Demeter steepled his fingers and nodded, an understanding uncle. “Directly to the core, Mr. Talbot: wise old owls.”

  “I need some information. Some special, certain information. How confidential is your service, Mr. Demeter?”

  The friendly uncle, the wise old owl, the reassuring businessman understood all the edited spaces behind the question. He nodded several times. Then he smiled and said, “That is a clever door I have, isn’t it? You’re absolutely right, Mr. Talbot.”

  “A certain understated eloquence.”

  “One hopes it answers more questions for our clients than it poses.”

  Talbot sat back in the chair for the first time since he had entered Demeter’s office. “I think I can accept that.”

  “Fine. Then why don’t we get to specifics. Mr. Talbot, you’re having some difficulty dying. Am I stating the situation succinctly?”

  “Gently, Mr. Demeter.”

  “Always.”

  “Yes. You’re on the target.”

  “But you have some problems, some rather unusual problems.”

  “Inner ring.”

  Demeter stood up and walked around the room, touching an astrolabe on a bookshelf, a cut-glass decanter on a sideboard, a sheaf of the London Times held together by a wooden pole. “We are only information specialists, Mr. Talbot. We can put you on to what you need, but the effectation is your problem.”

  “If I have the modus operandi, I’ll have no trouble taking care of getting it done.”

  “You’ve put a little aside.”

  “A little.”

  “Conservative portfolio? A few glamours, mostly steady climbers?”

  “Bull’s-eye, Mr. Demeter.”

  Demeter came back and sat down again. “All right, then. If you’ll take the time to write out very carefully precisely what you want–I know generally, from your letter, but I want this precise, for the contract–I think I can undertake to supply the data necessary to solving your problem.”

  “At what cost?”

  “Let’s decide what it is you want, first, shall we?”

  Talbot nodded. Demeter reached over and pressed a call button on the smoking stand beside the wingback. The door opened. “Susan, would you show Mr. Talbot to the sanctum and provide him with writing materials.” She smiled and stood aside, waiting for Talbot to follow her. “And bring Mr. Talbot something to drink if he’d like it…some coffee? A soft drink, perhaps?” Talbot did not respond to the offer.

  “I might need some time to get the phraseology down just right. I might have to work as diligently as your copywriters. It might take me a while. I’ll go home and bring it in tomorrow.”

  Demeter looked troubled. “That might be inconvenient. That’s why we provide a quiet place where you can think.”

  “You’d prefer I stay and do it now.”

  “Inner ring, Mr. Talbot.”

  “You might be a toilet if I came back tomorrow.”

  “Bull’s-eye.”

  “Let’s go, Susan. Bring me a glass of orange juice if you have it.” He preceded her out the door.

  He followed her down the corridor at the far side of the reception room. He had not seen it before. She stopped at a door and opened it for him. There was an escritoire and a comfortable chair inside the small room. He could hear Muzak. “I’ll bring you your orange juice,” she said.

  He went in and sat down. After a long time he wrote seven words on a sheet of paper.

  Two months later, long after the series of visitations from silent messengers who brought rough drafts of the contract to be examined, who came again to take them away revised, who came again with counterproposals, who came again to take away further revised versions, who came again–finally–with Demeter-signed finals, and who waited while he examined and initialed and signed the finals–two months later, the map came via the last, mute messenger. He arranged for the final installment of the payment to Information Associates that same day: he had ceased wondering where fifteen boxcars of maize–grown specifically as the Zuñi nation had grown it–was of value.

  Two days later, a small item on an inside page of the New York Times noted that fifteen boxcars of farm produce had somehow vanished off a railroad spur near Albuquerque. An official investigation had been initiated.

  The map was very specific, very detailed; it looked accurate.

  He spent several days with Gray’s Anatomy and, when he was satisfied that Demeter and his organization had been worth the staggering fee, he made a phone call. The long-distance operator turned him over to Inboard and he waited, after giving her the information, for the static-laden connection to be made. He insisted Budapest on the other end let it ring twenty times, twice the number the male operator was permitted per caller. On the twenty-first ring it was picked up. Miraculously, the background noise-level dropped and he heard Victor’s voice as though it was across the room.

  “Yes! Hello!” Impatient, surly as always.

  “Victor…Larry Talbot.”

  “Where are you calling from?”

  “The States. How are you?”

  “Busy. What do you want?”

  “I have a project. I want to hire you and your lab.”

  “Forget it. I’m coming down to final moments on a project and I can’t be bothered now.”

  The imminence of hangup was in his voice. Talbot cut in quickly. “How long do you anticipate?”

  “Till what?”

  “Till you’re clear.”

  “Another six months inside, eight to ten if it gets muddy. I said: forget it, Larry. I’m not available.”
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  “At least let’s talk.”

  “No.”

  “Am I wrong, Victor, or do you owe me a little?”

  “After all this time you’re calling in debts?”

  “They only ripen with age.”

  There was a long silence in which Talbot heard dead space being pirated off their line. At one point he thought the other man had racked the receiver. Then, finally, “Okay, Larry. We’ll talk. But you’ll have to come to me; I’m too involved to be hopping any jets.”

  “That’s fine. I have free time.” A slow beat, then he added, “Nothing but free time.”

  “After the full moon, Larry.” It was said with great specificity.

  “Of course. I’ll meet you at the last place we met, at the same time, on the thirtieth of this month. Do you remember?”

  “I remember. That’ll be fine.”

  “Thank you, Victor. I appreciate this.”

  There was no response.

  Talbot’s voice softened: “How is your father?”

  “Goodbye, Larry,” he answered, and hung up.

  They met on the thirtieth of that month, at moonless midnight, on the corpse barge that plied between Buda and Pesht. It was the correct sort of night: chill fog moved in a pulsing curtain up the Danube from Belgrade.

  They shook hands in the lee of a stack of cheap wooden coffins and, after hesitating awkwardly for a moment, they embraced like brothers. Talbot’s smile was tight and barely discernible by the withered illumination of the lantern and the barge’s running lights as he said, “All right, get it said so I don’t have to wait for the other shoe to drop.”

  Victor grinned and murmured ominously:

  “Even a man who is pure in heart

  And says his prayers by night,