“Are you ready?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Sting said. His pack was almost empty—a change of clothing, a hatchet, a knife, some smoked fish, nothing else.
“Let’s go, then.”
As Sting and Leaf moved toward the exit hatch, Shadow scrambled up into the wagon. She looked tight-strung and grave; her nostrils were flared, her eyes downcast. Without a word she went past Leaf and began loading her pack. Leaf waited for her. After a few minutes she reappeared and nodded to him.
“Poor Crown,” she whispered. “Is there no way—”
“You heard him,” Leaf said.
They emerged from the wagon. Crown had not moved. He stood as if rooted, midway between wagon and wall. Leaf gave him a quizzical look, as if to ask whether he had changed his mind, but Crown took no notice. Shrugging, Leaf walked around him, toward the edge of the thicket, where the nightmares were nibbling leaves. Affectionately he reached up to stroke the long neck of the nearest horse, and Crown suddenly came to life, shouting, “Those are my animals! Keep your hands off them!”
“I’m only saying good-bye to them.”
“You think I’m going to let you have some? You think I’m that crazy, Leaf?”
Leaf looked sadly at him. “We plan to do our traveling on foot, Crown. I’m only saying good-bye. The nightmares were my friends. You can’t understand that, can you?”
“Keep away from those animals! Keep away!”
Leaf sighed. “Whatever you say.” Shadow, as usual, was right: poor Crown. Leaf adjusted his pack and moved off toward the gate, Shadow beside him, Sting a few paces to the rear. As he and Shadow reached the gate, Leaf looked back and saw Crown still motionless, saw Sting pausing, putting down his pack, dropping to his knees. “Anything wrong?” Leaf called.
“Tore a bootlace,” Sting said. “You two go on ahead. It’ll take me a minute to fix it.”
“We can wait.”
Leaf and Shadow stood within the frame of the gate while Sting knotted his lace. After a few moments he rose and reached for his pack, saying, “That ought to hold me until tonight, and then I’ll see if I can’t—”
“Watch out!” Leaf yelled.
Crown erupted abruptly from his freeze, and, letting forth a lunatic cry, rushed with terrible swiftness toward Sting. There was no chance for Sting to make one of his little leaps: Crown seized him, held him high overhead like a child, and, grunting in frantic rage, hurled the little man toward the ravine. Arms and legs flailing, Sting traveled on a high arc over the edge; he seemed to dance in midair for an instant, and then he dropped from view. There was a long diminishing shriek, and silence. Silence.
Leaf stood stunned. “Hurry,” Shadow said. “Crown’s coming!”
Crown, swinging around, now rumbled like a machine of death toward Leaf and Shadow. His wild red eyes glittered ferociously. Leaf did not move; Shadow shook him urgently, and finally he pushed himself into action. Together they caught hold of the massive gate and, straining, swung it shut, slamming it just as Crown crashed into it. Leaf forced the reluctant bolts into place. Crown roared and pounded at the gate, but he was unable to force it.
Shadow shivered and wept. Leaf drew her to him and held her for a moment. At length he said, “We’d better be on our way. The Snow Hunters are far ahead of us already.”
“Sting—”
“I know. I know. Come, now.”
Half a dozen Tree Companions were waiting for them by the wooden houses. They grinned, chattered, pointed to the packs. “All right,” Leaf said. “Go ahead. Take whatever you want. Take everything, if you like.”
Busy fingers picked through his pack and Shadow’s. From Shadow the Tree Companions took a brocaded ribbon and a flat, smooth green stone. From Leaf they took one of the ivory medallions, both copper coins, and one of his stickskin boots. Tribute. Day by day, pieces of the past slipped from his grasp. He pulled the other boot from the pack and offered it to them, but they merely giggled and shook their heads. “One is of no use to me,” he said. They would not take it. He tossed the boot into the grass beside the road.
The road curved gently toward the north and began a slow rise, following the flank of the forested hills in which the Tree Companions made their homes. Leaf and Shadow marched, mechanically, saying little. The bootprints of the Snow Hunters were everywhere along the road, but the Snow Hunters themselves were far ahead, out of sight. It was early afternoon, and the day had become bright, unexpectedly warm. After an hour Shadow said, “I must rest.”
Her teeth were clacking. She crouched by the roadside and wrapped her arms about her chest. Dancing Stars, covered with thick fur, usually wore no clothing except in the bleakest winters; but her pelt did her no good now.
“Are you ill?” he asked.
“It’ll pass. I’m reacting. Sting—”
“Yes.”
“And Crown. I feel so unhappy about Crown.”
“A madman,” Leaf said. “A murderer.”
“Don’t judge him so casually, Leaf. He’s a man under sentence of death, and he knows it, and he’s suffering from it, and when the fear and pain became unbearable to him he reached out for Sting. He didn’t know what he was doing. He needed to smash something, that was all, to relieve his own torment.”
“We’re all going to die sooner or later,” Leaf said. “That doesn’t generally drive us to kill our friends.”
“I don’t mean sooner or later. I mean that Crown will die tonight or tomorrow.”
“Why should he?”
“What can he do now to save himself, Leaf?”
“He could yield to the Tree Companions and pass the gate on foot, as we’ve done.”
“You know he’d never abandon the wagon.”
“Well, then, he can harness the nightmares and turn around toward Theptis. At least he’d have a chance to make it through to the Sunset Highway that way.”
“He can’t do that either,” Shadow said.
“Why not?”
“He can’t drive the wagon.”
“There’s no one left to do it for him. His life’s at stake. For once he could eat his pride and—”
“I didn’t say won’t drive the wagon, Leaf. I said can’t. Crown’s incapable. He isn’t able to make dream-contact with the nightmares. Why do you think he always used hired drivers? Why was he so insistent on making you drive in the purple rain? He doesn’t have the mind-power. Did you ever see a Dark Laker driving nightmares? Ever?”
Leaf stared at her. “You knew this all along?”
“From the beginning, yes.”
“Is that why you hesitated to leave him at the gate? When you were talking about our contract with him?”
She nodded. “If all three of us left him, we were condemning him to death. He has no way of escaping the Tree Companions now unless he forces himself to leave the wagon, and he won’t do that. They’ll fall on him and kill him, today, tomorrow, whenever.”
Leaf closed his eyes, shook his head. “I feel a kind of shame. Now that I know we were leaving him helpless. He could have spoken.”
“Too proud.”
“Yes. Yes. It’s just as well he didn’t say anything. We all have responsibilities to one another, but there are limits. You and I and Sting were under no obligation to die simply because Crown couldn’t bring himself to give up his pretty wagon. But still—still—” He locked his hands tightly together. “Why did you finally decide to leave, then?”
“For the reason you just gave. I didn’t want Crown to die, but I didn’t believe I owed him my life. Besides, you had said you were going to go, no matter what.”
“Poor, crazy Crown.”
“And when he killed Sting—a life for a life, Leaf. All vows are canceled now. I feel no guilt.”
“Nor I.”
“I think the fever is leaving me.”
“Let’s rest a few minutes more,” Leaf said.
It was more than an hour before Leaf judged Shadow strong enough to go on. The highway n
ow described a steady upgrade, not steep but making constant demands on their stamina, and they moved slowly. As the day’s warmth began to dwindle, they reached the crest of the grade, and rested again at a place from which they could see the road ahead winding in switchbacks into a green, pleasant valley. Far below were the Snow Hunters, resting also by the side of a fair-size stream.
“Smoke,” Shadow said. “Do you smell it?”
“Campfires down there, I suppose.”
“I don’t think they have any fires going. I don’t see any.”
“The Tree Companions, then.”
“It must be a big fire.”
“No matter,” Leaf said. “Are you ready to continue?”
“I hear a sound—”
A voice from behind and uphill of them said, “And so it ends the usual way, in foolishness and death, and the All-Is-One grows greater.”
Leaf whirled, springing to his feet. He heard laughter on the hillside and saw movements in the underbrush; after a moment he made out a dim, faintly outlined figure, and realized that an Invisible was coming toward them, the same one, no doubt, who had traveled with them from Theptis.
“What do you want?” Leaf called.
“Want? Want? I want nothing. I’m merely passing through.” The Invisible pointed over his shoulder. “You can see the whole thing from the top of this hill. Your big friend put up a mighty struggle, he killed many of them, but the darts, the darts—” The Invisible laughed. “He was dying, but even so he wasn’t going to let them have his wagon. Such a stubborn man. Such a foolish man. Well, a happy journey to you both.”
“Don’t leave yet!” Leaf cried. But even the outlines of the Invisible were fading. Only the laughter remained, and then that too was gone. Leaf threw desperate questions into the air, and, receiving no replies, turned and rushed up the hillside, clawing at the thick shrubbery. In ten minutes he was at the summit, and stood gasping and panting, looking back across a precipitous valley to the stretch of road they had just traversed. He could see everything clearly from here: the Tree Companion village nestling in the forest, the highway, the shacks by the side of the road, the wall, the clearing beyond the wall. And the wagon. The roof was gone and the sides had tumbled outward. Bright spears of flame shot high, and a black, billowing cloud of smoke stained the air. Leaf stood watching Crown’s pyre a long while before returning to Shadow.
They descended toward the place where the Snow Hunters had made their camp. Breaking a long silence, Shadow said, “There must once have been a time when the world was different, when all people were of the same kind, and everyone lived in peace. A golden age, long gone. How did things change, Leaf? How did we bring this upon ourselves?”
“Nothing has changed,” Leaf said, “except the look of our bodies. Inside we’re the same. There never was any golden age.”
“There were no Teeth, once.”
“There were always Teeth, under one name or another. True peace never lasted long. Greed and hatred always existed.”
“Do you believe that, truly?”
“I do. I believe that mankind is mankind, all of us the same whatever our shape, and such changes as come upon us are trifles, and the best we can ever do is find such happiness for ourselves as we can, however dark the times.”
“These are darker times than most, Leaf.”
“Perhaps.”
“These are evil times. The end of all things approaches.”
Leaf smiled. “Let it come. These are the times we were meant to live in, and no asking why, and no use longing for easier times. Pain ends when acceptance begins. This is what we have now. We make the best of it. This is the road we travel. Day by day we lose what was never ours, day by day we slip closer to the All-Is-One, and nothing matters, Shadow, nothing except learning to accept what comes. Yes?”
“Yes,” she said. “How far is it to the Middle River?”
“Another few days.”
“And from there to your kinsmen by the Inland Sea?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “However long it takes us is however long it will take. Are you very tired?”
“Not as tired as I thought I’d be.”
“It isn’t far to the Snow Hunters’ camp. We’ll sleep well tonight.”
“Crown,” she said. “Sting.”
“What about them?”
“They also sleep.”
“In the All-Is-One,” Leaf said. “Beyond all trouble. Beyond all pain.”
“And that beautiful wagon is a charred ruin!”
“If only Crown had had the grace to surrender it freely, once he knew he was dying. But then he wouldn’t have been Crown, would he? Poor Crown. Poor crazy Crown.” There was a stirring ahead, suddenly. “Look. The Snow Hunters see us. There’s Sky. Blade.” Leaf waved at them and shouted. Sky waved back, and Blade, and a few of the others. “May we camp with you tonight?” Leaf called. Sky answered something, but his words were blown away by the wind. He sounded friendly, Leaf thought. He sounded friendly. “Come,” Leaf said, and he and Shadow hurried down the slope.
TRIPS
During the most active phase of my career in the 1960’s and 1970’s I wrote novels with almost obsessive regularity, but after 1972 or so I often needed to be prodded into writing short stories. Every one of the fourteen stories in this volume was written at some editor’s direct request. It was all too easy, in that troubled era, for me not to write at all; but I had to write such novels as The Stochastic Man and Shadrach in the Furnace, even so, because I was contractually bound to do them, and I have always honored my contracts. Waking up in the morning and saying, “Hi ho, I think I’ll write a short story for somebody today!”—no, I stopped feeling such impulses decades ago. Only when some friend or colleague who was editing an anthology of new fiction asked me to contribute something could I push myself into tackling the job.
But I have always responded to a good challenge, and the one that came from Barry Malzberg and Ed Ferman in the winter of 1972-73 was a beauty. They were editing a book called Final Stage: The Ultimate Science Fiction Anthology, and each story in it was supposed to be the definitive statement of its theme—time travel, immortality, space exploration, robots and androids, the future of sex, etc. Malzberg and Ferman offered a list of themes to a select group of writers and asked them to pick the one that held the greatest personal appeal.
Isaac Asimov, of course, took robots, and who would begrudge that choice to him? Harlan Ellison and Joanna Russ tackled the future of sex from very different viewpoints. I wanted time travel, but I think Philip K. Dick beat me to it, or else I simply opted right away for alternative universes and left the time-travel theme free for him; I don’t quite remember. At any rate, I set about my task, which was to create close to a dozen alternative Californias in the space of some 12,000 words. And so I did, in March, 1973, with a profligacy of invention that would serve to fill a pair of trilogies today.
When the much-heralded “ultimate anthology” came out, I was appalled to discover that my story had been cut to shreds, the carefully calculated prose effects slashed, the elaborate historical backgrounds outrageously mutilated, three whole sections simply deleted. Harlan Ellison and Poul Anderson had had the same experience. I protested vociferously to editors Malzberg and Ferman, who replied that they hadn’t been aware of the heavy-handed revisions and were as annoyed as I was. They took the matter up with the publisher. “Well,” the publisher’s editor said, “the book was a little long, so I cut parts of some of the stories.” Without consulting the writers? “Yes,” she replied. “I figured, it’s only science fiction, so why would anyone care?” Back in those distant days before s-f routinely made best-seller lists, science-fiction writers were mere plantation hands, and we could be sold down the river without the slightest qualm. When the book was reprinted in paperback, the original texts were restored, but I carried a grudge against that editor—who eventually gave up editing and became a lawyer—to the end of her days. I suppose I carry it still. S
ometimes I wonder which circle of Hell she’s in now, the one for editors, or the one reserved for lawyers.
——————
Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. They are paths going through the bush, or into the bush. In my own life I could say I have traversed long, long paths, but I am not anywhere…Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn’t. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life.
THE TEACHINGS OF DON JUAN
1.
The second place you come to—the first having proved unsatisfactory, for one reason and another—is a city which could almost be San Francisco. Perhaps it is, sitting out there on the peninsula between the ocean and the bay, white buildings clambering over improbably steep hills. It occupies the place in your psychic space that San Francisco has always occupied, although you don’t really know yet what this city calls itself. Perhaps you’ll find out before long.
You go forward. What you feel first is the strangeness of the familiar, and then the utter heartless familiarity of the strange. For example the automobiles, and there are plenty of them, are all halftracks: low sleek sexy sedans that have the flashy Detroit styling, the usual chrome, the usual streamlining, the low-raked windows all agleam, but there are only two wheels, both of them in front, with a pair of tread-belts circling endlessly in back. Is this good design for city use? Who knows? Somebody evidently thinks so, here.
And then the newspapers: the format is the same, narrow columns, gaudy screaming headlines, miles of black type on coarse grayish-white paper, but the names and the places have been changed. You scan the front page of a newspaper in the window of a curbside vending machine. Big photo of Chairman DeGrasse, serving as host at a reception for the Patagonian Ambassador. An account of the tribal massacres in the highlands of Dzungaria. Details of the solitude epidemic that is devastating Persepolis.