Partners in Wonder

by Harlan Ellison

  Three little Saquettes came out of the tall grass and stood aimed at the antenna, quivering, belonging for a time to the vibration of a thing unseen…

  Peritonitis still takes only twenty-four hours to kill.

  And on the morning of the seventh day…

  INTRODUCTION

  Algis Budrys and Harlan Ellison

  WONDERBIRD

  It’s been so many years since I wrote this story with Ayjay Budrys, the circumstances blur in my memory. I recall we did it very rapidly, in one evening, at a party somewhere. But whether in New York or Chicago—it had to be one of those—I cannot recall. It was very probably New York, though, because I’d only recently gotten started as a professional at that time; maybe a year working in print.

  Algis, of course, was already established, and had behind him a string of memorable stories like “Nobody Bothers Gus” and “The End of Summer,” and he was getting assignments from magazine editors to write stories around covers—something I envied him more than I can say.

  I’d known Ayjay for some years. We’d met through a mutual friend, Dave Ish, a guy who started out like so many of us—a fan—and went on to what seemed like a promising writing career. (Dave is the only sf fan I know to actually sell a convention report to a major American publication. His short story, “The Fantasy People,” in an early number of New World Writing, the prestigious paperback literary magazine that predated New American Review, is virtually a fictionalized recounting of events that transpired at a World SF Convention in Philadelphia.) Sadly, and somewhat mysteriously, Dave never published another word, though he had contracts with several publishers. Saw him again, a few years ago, and he was writing copy for mail-order catalogs or somesuch damned thing. I remember thinking at the time what a truly fickle demon Fate is; Dave had been a much better writer than I, at the point-in-time when he’d sold “The Fantasy People.” But somewhere down the line that vicious demon took a dislike to him, ignored me, and now here we were ten years later, he was him and I was me, and there was no sense or order to what had happened to either of us.)

  (LATE BULLETIN FOR NEW EDITION: since this book was first published in 1971, I have heard from Dave. His letter makes me very happy, and as I was updating the copy for this new edition I felt I should include the latest installment of his life-story. Not just to balance the universal scales, but perhaps to fire a shot on behalf of the counter-argument that writing isn’t necessarily the holiest of chores (a belief I hold more dearly than any other).

  Dave hasn’t written much prose, by his own statement, but—on the other hand—he is still writing. So perhaps the shot is merely another defense of the holy chore concept, and I’m dissembling. It’s possible. I do that sometimes. What I do know for certain, is that Dave’s letter, and its uncomplicated last line, reinforce the belief that you can change your skin, you can take another path and find your way home. It may not be the home from which you set out journeying, but like the man said home is where the heart is, or somesuch awful platitude.

  Called Dave, just to make sure he didn’t mind my using the letter, and he okayed it, and I suggested maybe it would be nice to include a piece of his poetry. He liked that just fine. So here is a report in from the other life, just so you know it all ended well.

  November 10, 1974

  Dear Harlan,

  I received a note from my grandmother recently (yes, the old bird is still alive—about to enter her 87th year) saying you had run into my cousin and wanted to get hold of me. Well perhaps I can simply tell you what I’ve been up to for the last few years and that will dispel enough of the curiosity you might have to save you the trouble.

  Shortly after I saw you in ’67, I think it was—about a year after that—I packed in the business and house in the suburbs shot and went counter culture for awhile—headed out to California, wound up in Portland, Oregon and stayed there for about a year, drifted back East in my VW camper (still with my family intact), living in communes, spending a delightful summer in Vermont working as a carpenter’s helper and living out of my camper in a meadow ringed with mountains and a great creek for skinny dipping just beyond a grove of trees.

  I went back to New York for awhile after that and tried my hand at the business number again, lived in a really neat apartment on the upper East side—80th and Madison, just half a block from the Met and, of course, the park. Ina and I split up there and I headed for the Coast on a fast deal that had to do with a sort of elaborate sex club out around Topanga canyon called the Sandstone Foundation. I didn’t go through on it and went back East again, spending some time in upstate New York on a consulting assignment. Ina and my boy Howard wound up living in the northwest and Howard, who is now 15 (my God—that’s how old I was when we met!), is going to school back in Vermont.

  I headed back West again after upper New York State and started living very, very simply, day-to-day, out of my camper, doing casual labor for a couple of bucks an hour, sweeping floors, doing lawns and gardens, things like that, finding myself very, very high living that way, just one day at a time. Shortly after coming out West again, which is just about three years ago now, I met the people that led to my being here.

  At about this time, a little less than three years ago, when I was just living every day, letting go of everything, really, and just being in the moment, I began to write poetry. And as I wrote it I began to realize that was what I was designed to do—that was what I was made for. I had thought, when I was a kid, that I was to be some sort of writer—a novelist, I fancied—and although I had written some poetry I knew that it was no way to make money and so I excluded it. But when I let go of everything it began to come through. And, of course, it still does. I’ve enclosed a few pieces, some written awhile back and some from now as they will really tell you a bit more about where I am than this letter. Particularly the unfinished “Mystery School” which is the real reason I am here, in the interior of British Coumbia. The card, and the job which it identifies is really in a sense only a front—even though it keeps me busy 40 or more hours a week.

  Had pointed out to me a few years back the intro in your collaborative anthology to the story you wrote with A.J. in which you wondered aloud where I had made off to with my alleged talent and in what cruel direction I had been pointed by fate’s fickle finger.

  Let me tell you brother: I’m in heaven.

  Love,

  David

  VANISHING POINT

  Then suddenly, abundance.

  From all the poverty accrued,

  Richness of the present wine,

  Overflowing the vessel.

  From the bottomless pit

  The bottomless pitcher rescued,

  Whole, at the fountain,

  Flowing wine. The starved

  desire, the unslaked thirst,

  Relinquished dreams,

  All dreads of unmet needs,

  The grip of sleep,

  Slowly, over time relinquished,

  Bring us inexorably to this moment

  Of wine in sunlight,

  Clear in crystal,

  As with the blinking of the final tear

  The tiny, overwhelming mote is cleared,

  In the blinking of an eye.

  —David Ish

  Anyhow, Ayjay and I became friends, and we bummed around places like New York and Cleveland together, sorta, and I learned a great deal of what I know about writing from him. Through him I met Lester del Rey, and H. L. Gold, and George O. Smith, and even spent one insane day at the home of Fletcher Pratt, a few years before he died.

  When Ayjay married Edna, and I went off to college at Ohio State, virtually my only contact with the world of professional science fiction was in the letters AJ and I exchanged. I still have some of them, and they are as sharp and direct in terms of literary criticism today, as they were then. Every shitty story I wrote during that period—1954–55—was sent to AJ, and every one of them received his special attention. The help was invaluable. No Palmer or F
amous Writers hype could have approached it for relevance, and there was no comparison between the nonsense I was getting in my “creative writing” course taught by the deadly Dr. Shedd and the jewels in each letter from Budrys. It was AJ, finally, through the awarenesses of what it took to be a working professional I gleaned from his letters, who convinced me I should depart from the halls of Academe, and get into the arena.

  So I did, and some two years later I was a selling pro…getting cover assignments from editors.

  Finally, at a party one night, AJ and I did formally what we had been doing informally for years: we wrote together. AJ typed the title and started writing. I am convinced, from rereading the copy, that he didn’t have the faintest bloody idea where the story was going. Three paragraphs into the story, AJ got up from the typewriter, grinned maliciously and said, “Take it.”

  Take it?! Jesus, I didn’t even know what it was, much less where to take it. But AJ had given me some clues, and so I went from there. From the beginning of the fourth paragraph to the line, “Up above them, just past the peak of the Great Mountain, fire split the sky.” Then I got up, grinned even more maliciously (thinking I’d put him in an inescapable bind) and said, “Take it.”

  And so, my children, so it went, lickety-clickety and tickety-poo, on into the night, with Uncle Harlan and Uncle Ayjay alternating and trying to mess one another over. Finally, it got finished, don’t ask me how.

  There was a last line, typed by Ayjay, and I remember we both looked at it somewhat jaundicedly. We weren’t happy with it. About a week later, when I did the retype, I stopped short at the last line, and stared at it balefully. Finally, after considering and rejecting about a hundred possibilities in the space of a few minutes—all great writers think this fast—I hit on the ending you will find herein, and I typed it. Then I called Ayjay and told him what I’d done. He laughed and said it seemed right.

  Ayjay and I have grown apart in many ways since the night we wrote “Wonderbird” at that noisy party, and today the men whose names you find on that story are only remotely connected to the men who wrote it. I dedicated my first novel to Ayjay, for what he had done for me; I wish things had not happened as they did for us, for our friendship, so that the debt would not have been so easily discharged. But they did, and it was, and now we’re all three umbilically detached from each other…Ayjay, me, and Dave Ish.

  Fate, you monster, you’re a real clown.

  Wonderbird

  Time and again the fire had burned down in the fireplace-bowl, and the night had come too close. The cave had flickered dully with the dying light of the fire, and they had shivered.

  Skilton had cuffed the younglings out into the edge of the dark, to glean the fallen dead arms of the trees, to bring the fire to life again. But the younglings were awkward, and slow, and fearful of the waiting night. And the fuel was scanty. The darkness was close, and death with it. As emcee of the tribe, Skilton had been forced to use ruthlessness to spur them outward.

  We should never have come into this place, Skilton thought. We should have stayed in the valleys of our birth, where the trees are many and the death is thin.

  His thoughts were abruptly interrupted by an answering, inquiring thought from Lahr, one of the lesser members of the tribe.

  But, emcee, why have we come to this place?

  Skilton’s massive head turned on my hairy neck, and he stared deeply into the wide, double-pupiled eyes of Lahr. It is the Time of the Prophecy, he answered almost angrily. They were supposed to know that. Things were different in the tribe today. Before, there were many strytemin, who would ask him intelligent questions, such as Why does a hulfee cross the forest track? or Who was that she-tribe-member I sensed you with the past darkening?

  But now many of the old ones had had the death thicken in them, and they had gone away. The younglings were impudent, and their religion was a small thing to them.

  But how do you know this is the Time of Prophecy? Lahr insisted. He scratched his long muzzle with his right second paw.

  Skilton rose up in wrath, and towered over the smaller triber. Fool! he thought violently. Don’t you remember the words: “Never worry and never fear, your boy Alfie Gunsel’s here! I’ll be back when the moons climb behind the clouds!” This is that Time. This is the Time when the five moons have gone to counsel behind the swirlers, and the Performances will begin anew. The Lams will play the Palace once more!

  His thoughts had risen in violence as he had gone on, and now the words reverberated in the heads of the tribe. Skilton and his religion! They believed, of course, but, ah, well…

  He didn’t have to go this far: drag them from their burrows and send them halfway across the Palace to this spot of desolation on the edge of the silver-sanded plain and the Great Mountain.

  But…they were trapped here by the dark, and it was too late for second thoughts. They would have to wait out Skilton’s time and madness, till he realized the old religion was hoax, and there was no Time of the Prophecy.

  Up above them, just past the peak of the Great Mountain, fire split the sky.

  The darkness shuddered, and Skilton leaped to his feet, staring.

  Above the mountain, a shiny bird was glowing. Golden, thundering, flickering, shuddering, the Wonderbird beat its way downward on its blazoned wings. And Skilton saw the dark turn into light, the death retreat before the beat of heated wings, and then the younglings were huddled behind him as he lifted his thoughts in prayer. In a moment the rest of the tribe had murmured We believe, we believe! in their minds, and were joining him in the singing chords of the Tophatt ritual.

  June; the tune I croon to spoon—

  A loon too gooney in the Moon

  Light—

  you.

  Is only lonely in this homely

  Phoney though baloney may be

  Bright—

  Blue

  mood.

  They huddled on their triple-jointed knees a few moments more, letting the harmony tingle away in their minds, then Skilton was up and running. Again, the younglings were huddled behind him as he ran away from the cave, and the needless fire, toward the rocking Wonderbird.

  Skilton’s switch-antennae rose and quivered as he homed in on the Wonderbird. He thought a spark at the younglings, for they had always believed in him. The older tribers he left to their own resources—they would find the Wonderbird in time.

  Hurry! This is the Time we have waited to witness!

  And the younglings spurred themselves, their eight triple-jointed legs spinning beneath them as they strove to keep up with the old emcee. Somehow, he had drawn a reserve of sudden energy for the task, and was even outloping them. They left the rest of the tribe behind quickly.

  They covered the moss-ground rapidly, moved toward the silver-sanded plain. Long, loping strides, and the Wonderbird came closer.

  Skilton brought them to a halt at the edge of the silver-sanded plain. He looked back, far up the slope of the foothills and he saw the moving dots of the rest of the tribe. He would not wait for them—let them arrive in their own time. He had been true to the Lams, and he would be their first greeter. He would become their aide…and all the long years of belief would be paid back in full measure.

  Yet, he did not venture onto the silver-sanded plain.

  There was no sense being foolhardy about this.

  The Time! Yes; but perhaps not as they had been told in the Prophecy. Perhaps it might be different, the Prophecy and its meaning garbled by time. He must deal with caution.

  Was he not emcee of the tribe?

  The Wonderbird lay there, its many-colored flesh flickering. Blue, red, gold, amber, back to gold, and flowing, always flowing. Then…

  Sput! Peeeee-op!

  Little bunches of many-colored brightness erupted from the Wonderbird’s skin.

  It continued for a few minutes, and suddenly the skin of the Wonderbird sucked inward and a round hole appeared. A black hole, from which a long thing extended, that went down
to the silver sands.

  Then a—a—thing? leaped out of the Wonderbird, ran down the long extended thing, and stood on the silver sands, with its paws on its hips, staring at the Wonderbird.

  “Goddam, stinkin’, miserable electrical system!” the thing exploded. The words were in the air.

  Skilton’s antennae spun aloft. In the air? Not in the head, like the tribe’s thoughts, but on the air, like the screams of the ignorant hulfee they cut and ate? In the air? Yes, by Kan-Tor! In the air. This thing was not of their world, not of the Telling of the Prophecy, this was not even of the dreams that stole warmly in the night. This was…strange. He could thought-pluck no word that meant more. Strange. Gleez-Son!

  The thing was ripping a vine from a hole in the skin of the Wonderbird. Skilton tuned in on the thing’s mind, and there were thoughts! In addition to the sounds in the air, there were thoughts. How strange.

  He knew at once the vine was a “master electrical connection to the power banks of the skin displays” and the hole was a “repair cubby” but he could not decide what they were for. But they had to be for something, since he remembered the prime Lewus rule: Always build to your point. Never miss a step. Never do anything meaningless, and then hit ’em with the boffola!

  The thing closed a piece of skin over the skin, and the popping, erupting, noisy clash of exploding colors ceased.

  “That oughtta fix the goddam thing,” the thing said, looking with an odd expression at the skin. He radiated momentary contentment.

  What? thought the secondary youngling, a calf-pup named Culonah.

  Silence, Impertinence! Skilton tossed back instantly, scathingly. This is a blessed Lam! Never doubt them, never question them, never let your thoughts rise in objection, for they are all powerful and may strike you. Death will thicken in your tongue, if you do not heed what I say!