Sci Fiction Classics Volume 4 (61 page)

I put his hand on my tingling erection. He didn't pull away. It just lay
there. "That's what it's for. That's how a human uses it!" He started
going away again. I slapped him. "Stay with me. Stay with me every
second." I pushed him on his back. The chain clattered on the floor. I
hooked his knees over my shoulders, watching his eyes the whole time. He
tried to go away a few times, but I slapped him back. I took a very long,
slow time and I enjoyed the hell out of it.

The next morning I drove down the mountain to the village and phoned the
Department. With direct dialing you can't tell where a long-distance call
is coming from. My father was worse and not expected to live much longer.
Yeah, too bad. I shouldn't be away much longer. Good-bye.

I started going to him every night. I hadn't meant to, but I couldn't
sleep without him. He didn't go away anymore and I didn't have to slap
him. The bruises on his face faded finally. He was there all right, but
that was all. I never succeeded in bringing emotion to his face.

Finally I began sleeping in the same bed with him, touching him all night,
feeling his hard nipples under the palms of my hands.

He woke me one morning, moaning. The window was gray with light, and I
could see his mouth moving. I touched his face. It was hot and dry. He
spoke, and the music in his voice was muted. "Why have you done this to
me? I never harmed you. I've never harmed anyone. All we ever want is to
survive until the birth."

"What's wrong with you?"

"It's time. The end of the cycle. The birth."

"Isn't that what you've been waiting for?"

"I'm not strong enough. I haven't collected enough life energy."

"I'll let you go. I'll take you back to L.A."

"It's too late. Too late."

He never said anything again. I watched him for three days. His fever got
worse, and the life went from his vibrant flesh. His skin flaked away in
gray scales. He was struggling with all his might against something. I
don't know what. But in the end he failed. His moans were so piteous that
I had to put my hands over my ears. But I couldn't take my eyes off the
disintegration of that magnificent creature.

And that's all he was, wasn't he? A creature. Something not human. It
wasn't my fault that, by some fluke, I could see them. I didn't know this
would happen. He never told me. On the second day a hump began forming on
his back. He was curling more and more into a fetal position as the hump
forced him over. He began bleeding at the mouth. I put the shower curtain
under him. When I rolled him over, my hands got covered with something
like ashes.

On the third day he began to quieten, and I knew it was almost over. He
hadn't moved in several hours except for ragged breathing. There was a
sharp cracking sound, like Carnehan biting into a new apple, only louder.
The now ugly body trembled violently for a few moments, and then nothing.
He lay facing me, his eyes open, the color of clay. The breathing stopped.
It was finished.

I got out of the chair and walked around to the other side of the bed. The
hump on his back had split, and something white was sticking out. I
reached down and pulled on it. It was a wing, a large, white wing covered
with feathers. No, not feathers. Soft, white, silky hair.

There was a second wing, but it was twisted and not properly developed. I
pulled away all of the body and exposed what was inside it.

I cleaned up the cabin so no one would know it had been occupied. I packed
everything back in the Dart. I buried them both in the woods, the body of
the dead winged thing and the husk that had held it. I drove back to
Hollywood. It seemed as if I passed a wreck every half mile. I went into
my apartment without noticing the apple cores in the yard. I unlocked the
door, went straight to the toilet, and vomited.

I was splashing cold water on my face when I heard her.

"Lou? Is that you?" She walked in wearing a slip, her eyes red from sleep
and her hair sticking out on one side where she'd been lying on it.

"Margaret! What the hell are you doing here?"

"Oh, Lou!" She pressed against me. "It's been
awful!
Alfred found
out about us!"

My head was spinning. "Who the shit is Alfred?"

She looked puzzled. "My husband!"

Jesus Christ! I'd forgotten Carnehan's first name. She was right. It was
awful. "What'd he do? Do they know at the Department?"

"He hit me!" She began to blubber on my shoulder. "I was afraid. I've been
hiding here for three
days!
He keeps pounding on the door, but I
stay quiet. He doesn't know for sure I'm here."

"How did he find out?"

"I don't
know!
He came home from work three days ago, screaming at
me and hitting me. Oh, Lou. I was so frightened." She kissed me and her
breath was bad.
His
breath had had no odor at all. "Come to bed
with me, Lou. It's been so long," she whined.

I felt her doughy flesh through the thin slip. But it was woman flesh, and
I had to forget about him. I led her to the bed and began undressing. I
was sticky. I hadn't bathed or shaved since he started... Stop it!

She pulled the slip over her head, unhooked her bra, and peeled down her
pantyhose. Her tits were beginning to sag, her thighs were puffy, and
there was a small roll of fat around her waist. Her skin looked muddy, not
clear like … Stop it!

She walked toward me, smiling coyly. I wish I had been able to see
… Stop it!

I pushed her roughly onto the bed, and she squealed. Margaret liked it
rough. I was about to make her very happy. She gasped deep in her throat
every time my pelvis slammed against her flabby flesh. It was good—but
… Stop it!

I lay on my back, half asleep. Margaret lay on top of me, licking my
nipples and trying to coax it back up again. It hadn't lasted long enough
for her, but she was wasting her time and she was heavy. I closed my eyes,
trying to stay awake. I felt her hair on my face. There was a noise and
her head hit mine. Her breath rushed out in one stale puff and I felt
something dripping on my cheek.

I focused my eyes. Carnehan was standing over us, his nightstick raised. I
couldn't move Margaret's dead weight. "Carnehan! Don't!" I yelled. The
stick came down. I remembered I hadn't locked the door.

When I came out of it, it was dark. I was in a moving car. My head hurt
and the car sounded as if it were driving in the bottom of a well. I could
feel dried blood in my left eye; maybe mine or maybe Margaret's. I tried
to wipe it away, but my hands wouldn't move. I heard the clink of
handcuffs and felt the door handle. My head was leaning against the glass.
It felt cool. I opened my eyes and saw brush going past and a sea of
lights spread out below. I could see a dozen fires burning. We must be
somewhere in the Hollywood Hills.

I turned my head and looked at Carnehan driving the car. He stared
straight ahead. "Carnehan, what do you think you're doing?" The words
didn't come out as forcefully as I had intended. He ignored me. "Carnehan,
Margaret doesn't mean anything to me." That was the wrong thing to say.
Think straight! "She's not worth it, Carnehan. I'm not worth it. Neither
of us is worth destroying yourself."

He wasn't listening. "You can't hope to get away with this." Of course he
didn't. "Why don't you just write it off as a mistake?"

The car had been bouncing around for a while. We must not have been on a
main road. I couldn't raise myself high enough to see ahead. After a bit
Carnehan stopped the car and got out. He opened the back door on my side
and began dragging out Margaret's naked body. She must have been already
dead, the way she flopped around like a rubber dummy. He dragged her a few
feet from the car and rolled her down a hill. I could hear her crackling
the brush, then silence.

Carnehan opened my door and the handcuffs pulled me out. I felt sharp
rocks digging into my butt and realized I was naked too. He pulled out his
revolver.

"Carnehan! Don't be a fool!"

He shot me in the stomach. Good old Carnehan. He remembered what we'd been
taught: always aim for the gut.

He unlocked the handcuffs and pulled me to the edge. All I had to do was
overpower him and get away, but I decided to wait because I was very
tired. I rolled down the hill like a sack of potatoes. I didn't feel the
prickly pears and sharp brush. The pain in my belly was too fierce. I hit
something hard, and I think my shoulder broke.

I was lying on my back, my head leaning against whatever I'd hit, looking
back up the hill. The car drove away. Carnehan, you bungler! I'm not dead!
You wasted it all!

The sound of the car died away. It was very quiet, just crickets and the
far-off rumble of traffic. You couldn't get away from that sound anywhere
in Los Angeles County. A slight wind was blowing, making some loose sheet
metal creak and groan somewhere near by.

I couldn't just lie here. I was bound to die if I didn't get help. I tried
to move and looked up. An immense "Y" loomed over me. I was under the
Hollywood sign. I couldn't see Margaret anywhere. Let me rest a moment
more and get my breath back. Damn fuckin' Carnehan. Are you gonna be
surprised when they haul you in and I'm there to point the finger. I
looked down at my stomach. A mistake. But it doesn't hurt so much anymore.
I must be in shock. I've heard that happens.

I can see my prick. It looks wrinkled and shrunken, even smaller than
Cunningham's. This is a hell of a time to be thinking about pricks! My
shoulder hurts worse than my gut. I can feel blood on the ground under my
back. I've rested long enough.

What's that noise? Sounded like a twig cracking somewhere in the darkness.
What if it's a coyote? I wonder if it will attack me. Probably not. Do
coyotes react to the smell of blood the way sharks do?

Footsteps. Not a coyote. People. More than one. I'm saved! Up yours,
Carnehan!

There are four of them: four redheaded young men who don't look a day over
twenty. Four perfect faces that I used to think were overwhelmingly
beautiful—until I saw the face of that dead winged thing. But I did
see it. And I had to cover it because the beauty was too painful to look
at.

Four magnificent bodies that only a few days ago would have sent the blood
rushing to my penis—if I hadn't seen the pale body of the winged
creature, all the more beautiful because it was sexless. A body I knew
would have gleamed had it been alive.

Now these four faces seem drab and plain and the four bodies might belong
to trolls.

But the eyes! They stand around me, watching me with eyes I still think
beautiful because the winged creature's eyes were closed in death.

Those four pairs of beautiful, bland eyes look at me the same way Carnehan
looks at an apple he's been saving for a special occasion.

The End

© 1975 by the estate of Tom Reamy; first appeared in
Orbit 17
,
ed. Damon Knight, Harper & Row, 1975; reprinted by permission of the
Author's estate and the estate's Agent, the Virginia Kidd Agency, Inc.

George Zebrowski

Sitting there, watching the Earth below him from the panel of Station Six,
Christian Praeger suddenly felt embarrassed by the planet's beauty. For
the last eight hours he had watched the great storm develop in the
Pacific, and he had wanted to share the view with someone, tell someone
how beautiful he thought it was. He had told it to himself now for the
fiftieth time.

The storm was a physical evil, a spinning hell that might reach the Asian
mainland and kill thousands of starving billions. They would get a
warning, for all the good that would do. Since the turn of the century
there had been dozens of such storms, developing in places way off from
the traditional storm cradles.

He looked at the delicate pinwheel. It was a part of the planet's ecology—whatever
state that was in now. The arms of the storm reminded him of the theory
which held the galaxy to be a kind of organized storm system which sucked
in gas and dust at its center and sent it all out into the vast arms to
condense into stars. And the stars were stormy laboratories building the
stuff of the universe in the direction of huge molecules, from the
inanimate and crystalline to the living and conscious. In the slowness of
time it all looked stable, Praeger thought, but almost certainly all
storms run down and die.

He looked at the clock above the center screen. There were six clocks
around the watch room, one above each screen. The clock on the ceiling
gave station time. His watch would be over in half an hour.

He looked at the sun screen. There all the dangerous rays were filtered
out. He turned up the electronic magnification and for a long time watched
the prominences flare up and die. He looked at the cancerous sunspots. The
sight was hypnotic and frightening no matter how many times he had seen
it. He put his hand out to the computer panel and punched in the routine
information. Then he looked at the spectroscopic screens, small rectangles
beneath the Earth watch monitors. He checked the time and set the
automatic release for the ozone scatter-canisters to be dropped into the
atmosphere. A few minutes later he watched them drop away from the
station, following their fall until they broke in the upper atmosphere,
releasing the precious ozone that would protect Earth's masses from the
sun's deadly radiation. Early in the twentieth century a good deal of the
natural ozone layer in the upper atmosphere had been stripped away as a
result of atomic testing and the use of aerosol sprays, resulting in much
genetic damage in the late eighties and nineties. But soon now the ozone
layer would be back up to snuff.

When his watch ended ten minutes later, Praeger was glad to get away from
the visual barrage of the screens. He made his way into one of the jutting
spokes of the station where his sleep cubicle was located. Here it was a
comfortable half-g all the time. He settled himself into his bunk and
pushed the music button at his side, leaving his small observation and com
screen on the ceiling turned off. Gradually the music filled the room and
he closed his eyes. Mahler's weary song of Earth's misery enveloped his
consciousness with pity and weariness, and love. Before he fell asleep he
wished he might feel the Earth's atmosphere the way he felt his own skin.