Partners in Wonder
Page 31
But Yolande Loeb pursed her lips, touched Laura’s shoulder, said, “No. Not consolation. Not at all.
“Courage or faith, perhaps,” she said, “but not consolation or resignation,” and, “‘Irresistible death invited me many times: / It was like salt occulted in the waves / and what its invisible fragrance suggested / was fragments of wrecks and heights / or vast structures of wind and snowdrift.’”
“What is that?”
“The beginning of Section Four.”
Laura dropped her eyes, then said, “Tell me the whole story.”
“‘From air to air, like an empty net,’” said Yolande, in her deep, impressive tones, and with a slight accent, “‘dredging through streets and ambient atmosphere, I came / lavish, at autumn’s coronation…’”
Laura listened, and some variety of truth seemed to be present there.
After a time she reached out and their fingertips touched, gently.
Yolande told her of her girlhood in a kibbutz, and of her broken marriage. She told her of her life after that thing, and of the suffering attendant thereto.
Laura cried, hearing of this misery.
She felt badly for days thereafter.
Yet these were not days to Carl Manos, who also had cause to feel badly. He met a girl whose company he enjoyed, until she said that she loved him. He dropped her like poison sumac and hot potatoes. After all, Time—their friend/their enemy—had a deal going with Laura and Carl. There was no room for intruders in this fated ménage à trois.
He cursed, paid his bills, and figured ways to make Time even more amenable to his bidding.
But suddenly he was in pain. He knew nothing of Pablo Neruda, or this Pasternak, Lorca, Yevtushenko, Alan Dugan, Yeats, Brooke, Daniels—any of them—and Laura spoke of them constantly these days. As he had no replies for this sort of thing, he just nodded. He kept on nodding. Time after time…
“You’re happy with the present arrangement?” he finally asked.
“Oh, yes! Of course,” she replied. “Yolande is wonderful. I’m so glad that you invited her.”
“Good. That’s something, anyway.”
“What do you mean—?”
“Yolande!” he cried out, suddenly. “How are you?”
Yolande Loeb emerged from the screened-off section of the apartment to which she discreetly retired during his visits. She nodded to him and smiled faintly.
“I am quite well, Mr. Manos. Thank you. And yourself?” There was a brief catch in her voice as she moved toward him, and realizing that her eyes were fixed on his beard, he chuckled within it, saying, “I’m beginning to feel a trifle like a premature patriarch.” She smiled, and his tone was light, but he felt pain, again.
“I’ve brought you some presents,” he went on, placing sealtite packages on the table. “The latest art books and tapes, recordings, some excellent film beads, poems which have been judged by the critics to be exceptional.”
Both women moved to the table and began running their fingertips down the sealstrips, opening the parcels, thanking him for each item as it was unwrapped, making little noises of pleasure and excitement. As he studied Yolande’s swart face, with its upturned nose, numerous moles, small scar upon the brow, and as his eyes moved on to Laura’s face, flushed now and smiling—as he stood there, both hands upon his walking-stick, reflecting that it was good to have chosen as he had—something twisted softly within him and he knew pain once more.
At first, he was unable to analyze the feelings. Always, however, they returned to him as accompaniment to his recollection of that tableau: the two of them moving about the package-laden table, leafing through the foil-pages of the books, holding the recording cassettes at arm’s length the better to study their dimensional-covers, chatting about their new treasures, excluding him.
It was a feeling of separation, resulting in a small loneliness, as well as something else. The two women had a thing in common, a thing which did not exist between Laura and himself. They shared a love for the arts—an area of existence for which he could allow himself little time. And, too, they were together in a war zone—alone in the room with the opponent Time laying siege. It had brought them closer together, sharing the experience of defying death and age. They had this meeting place where he was now a stranger. It was…
Jealousy, he decided suddenly; and was quite surprised by the notion. He was jealous of that which they had come to share. He was shocked at the thought, confused. But then, impressed as he always had been with a sense of personal unworthiness, he recognized it as another evidence of this condition. He then thought to banish the feeling.
But then, there had never been another Laura, or another ménage such as this.
Was it guilt that came now in response?
He was not certain.
He coded a fresh cup of coffee, and when it arrived, smiled into the eyes—his own, perhaps—which regarded him through the steam and darkness of its surface. His knowledge of the ancients stopped short with their legends and theories of Time. Chronos, or Time, had been castrated by his son, Zeus. By this—it had been contended—the priests and oracles meant to convey the notion that Time is incapable of bringing forth any new thing, but must ever repeat himself and be satisfied with variations of that which has already been begotten. And that is why he smiled…
Was not Laura’s disease a new thing come into the world? And was not his mastery of Time now to be the cause of another new thing—its remedy?
Guilt and jealousy alike forgotten, he sipped his coffee, tapping his fingers the while, to the beat of an unheard tune—as the particles and antiparticles danced before him in the chambers—and thus time was kept.
And when, later that evening, the viewer chimed, that evening as he sat there, white-smocked, before the Tachytron, archaic glasses pushed up onto his forehead, cold cup of coffee before him on the console, as he sat looking inside himself, he put aside remembered guilt for a premonition.
The viewer chimed again.
That would be one of the doctors…and it was…
The results of his latest experiments—rainbow journeys where no physicist had ever gone before—had been integrated with the work the doctors had been doing, and his premonition became a hallelujah reality.
He went to tell Laura they had won; went to the room outside which Time lay siege with growing frustration; went to restore the full measure of his love.
Where he found them, making love.
Alone, outside the room where Time now waited smugly, savoring the taste of victory finally, Carl Manos lived more lifetimes than any special room could hoard. There had been no scene, save in the tortured silences. There had been no words, save in the linear impressions of three who were surrounded by all that had happened in that room, locked invisibly in the walls.
They wanted to stay together, of course. He had not needed to ask that. Alone together in the timeless room where they had found love, the room Carl Manos could never again enter. He still loved her, that could never be changed. And so, he had only two choices.
He could work for the rest of his unworthy life, to pay for the power to keep the room functioning. Or he could turn it off. To turn it off he would have to wait. Wait for Time the Victor to turn his all-consuming love into a kind of hate that would compell him to stop the room’s functions.
He did neither. Having only two choices, he took a third course, a choice he did not have, had never had.
He moved to the console and did what had to be done, to speed up Time in the room. Even Time would die in that room, now. Then, unworthy, he went away.
Yolande sat reading. Neruda, again. How she always came back to him!
On the bed, what had been Laura lay decomposing. Time, unaware that all, including himself, would be victims, had caught up, had won victory finally.
“‘Come, diminutive life,’” she read, “‘between the wings / of the earth, while you, cold, crystal in the hammered air, / thrusting embattled emeralds apart, / O savage
waters, fall from the hems of snow.’”
Love, love, until the night collapses
from the singing Andes flint
down to the dawn’s red knees,
come out and contemplate the snow’s blind son.
She laid the book in her lap, then sat back in the chair, eyes closed. And for her, the years passed swiftly.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Introduction: “Sons of Janus” by Harlan Ellison. Copyright © 1971 by Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 1999 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.
“I See a Man Sitting on a Chair, and the Chair is Biting His Leg” by Robert Sheckley and Harlan Ellison. Copyright © 1967 by Robert Sheckley and Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 1995 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation and (The Estate of) Robert Sheckley.
“Brillo” by Ben Bova and Harlan Ellison. Copyright © 1970 by Ben Bova and Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 1998 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation and Ben Bova.
“A Toy For Juliette” by Robert Bloch. Copyright © 1967 by Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 1995 by (The Estate of) Robert Bloch.
“The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World” by Harlan Ellison. Copyright © 1967 by Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 1995 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.
“Scherzo For Schizoids: Notes on a Collaboration” by Harlan Ellison. Copyright © 1965 by Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 1993 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.
“Up Christopher to Madness” by Harlan Ellison with Avram Davidson. Copyright © 1965 by Avram Davidson and Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 1993 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation with (The Estate of) Avram Davidson.
“Runesmith” by Harlan Ellison and Theodore Sturgeon. Copyright © 1970 by Theodore Sturgeon and Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 1998 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation and Noel Sturgeon (The Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust).
“Rodney Parish for Hire” by Joe L. Hensley and Harlan Ellison. Copyright © 1962 by Joe L. Hensley and Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 1990 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation and (The Estate of) Joe L. Hensley.
“The Kong Papers” by William Rotsler and Harlan Ellison. Copyright © 1969 by William Rotsler and Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 1997 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.
“The Human Operators” by A.E. van Vogt. Copyright © 1970 by A.E. van Vogt and Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 1998 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation and (The Estate of) A.E. van Vogt.
“Survivor #1” (under the title “The Man With the Green Nose”) by Henry Slesar and Harlan Ellison. Copyright © 1959 by Henry Slesar and Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 1987 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation and (The Estate of) Henry Slesar.
“The Power of the Nail” by Samuel R. Delany and Harlan Ellison. Copyright © 1968 by Samuel R. Delany and Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 1996 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation and Samuel R. Delany.
“Wonderbird” by Algis Budrys and Harlan Ellison. Copyright © 1957 by Algis Budrys and Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 1985 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation and (The Estate of) Algis Budrys.
“The Song the Zombie Sang” by Robert Silverberg and Harlan Ellison. Copyright © 1970 by Robert Silverberg and Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 1998 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation and Robert Silverberg (Agberg Ltd.).
“Street Scene” (aka “Dunderbird”) by Keith Laumer and Harlan Ellison. Copyright © 1968 by Keith Laumer and Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 1996 by (The Estate of) Keith Laumer and The Kilimanjaro Corporation.
“Come to Me Not in Winter’s White” by Roger Zelazny and Harlan Ellison. Copyright © 1969 by Roger Zelazny and Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 1997 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.
Copyright © 1971, 1975 by Harlan Ellison
Copyright © 1983 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation
Renewed, 1999, 2003 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation
Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media
ISBN 978-1-4976-0441-4
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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