I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream Page 6

  “She says it’s a job.”

  Person nodded. His great head bowed slightly, and pits of shadow marked his eyes of grayness.

  “Is there anything you want?”

  Person slid down the wall, into the cool darkness, and answered softly, for he knew his father was without sight, even without the sight he possessed. “No, Father. I lack for nothing. I have my meal cakes and my ale. I have my shadows and my colors. And there is the smell of time passing. I need nothing more.”

  “How strange you are, my son,” the blind man said. Person gave a soft musky chuckle of amusement.

  “How strange I am indeed, Father.”

  The blind man got slowly to his feet, the bones of his legs cracking barely. “Soon, my son,” he said finally.

  “Go sweetly, my father,” Person said, using the words of the people of Topaz.

  “Stay softly,” replied his father, traditionally.

  Then he went out, carefully palm–locking the door and setting it to a fresh combination. Caution could not be too deep in this matter. Twenty years had shown that. Twenty years, during which time their son had remained alive, to roam at will in his world of strange blind–sight.

  The blind man climbed the ramp to the living floor, and sat cross–legged on his low platform, sending soft pipings flickering from a helix–shaped flute.

  He played without break for some time, until the porter glowed pink and Ordak took form in the bowl.

  “Wheeew!” She stepped out of the bowl and sank onto a nest of foamettes. “What a day. If I never smell another gardenia, it’ll be too soon. Good evening, dear. How was he today?”

  The blind man laid aside his flute, and extended his arms to the woman. He took her into their enfolding circle and held her dark hair against his neck. His answer was a grunt. She understood.

  “How will it be, Broomall? Tell me.”

  He put her from him gently, and sighed. “Ordak, how can I say it’ll be good, when it gets worse each day? You know he can’t go out, and you know we must live here…they would never tolerate him outside, even to the spaceport and off. We’re trapped here, my darling.”

  She stood up and smoothed down the front of her sweepspun tunic and skirt. Her hair was coiffed in such a way that the mole on her right cheek was covered. They knew of her deformity, of course, but not seeing it made it easier for them.

  She was standing there, wondering what would come from the future, her blind husband at her feet, when the future dropped from the sky.

  As she stood there, silent, and wondering, the force–bead drive of a cross–continent copter ruptured and the ponderous vehicle plunged down from its cruising level at twenty–five hundred feet. It fell two hundred yards from the split–level, demolishing the aboveground sections of the home without warning. Only the machine cellar was saved by a fluke of impact; saved for the searchmecks and analyzers that came later, to estimate the damage, and to extricate those left alive.

  Aboveground, no one was left alive. The last two known imperfects on Topaz had gone to a companionable rest; where beauty and ugliness had no meaning.

  But belowground…

  The terrible thing began in earnest. What had lain in wait for twenty years, now snarled, leaped, and threw itself at the throat of beauty on Topaz.

  They found him meditating.

  They came down through the rubble with forcepak beams that melted the twisted metal and fused plastic into solid, attractive walls of pastel, between which they picked their delicate way. When they came to the secret room—whose door was not in the least pleasing to the eye—they stopped, perplexed, and considered what to do.

  There were three of them, handsome men in the extreme. One was blond, with wide–set blue eyes and the air of an executive. He carried himself within his gold and copper–thread tunic with the calm assurance of a man who knows he is competent and handsome. In the extreme. The second was only a few inches shorter than the first man’s six feet, and his dark, tightly–curled head of hair swooped delicately down across a sculpted white forehead. He gave an immediate impression of Adonis–like proportions.

  The third man was the classic Greek ideal of virility and competence. His deep–set gray eyes snapped back and forth with authority and compassion. His walk was the walk of the legionnaire, his speech the measured cadence of the wise man. He would never go bald, his smile would never fade.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this, before,” said the curly–haired analyzer, whose name was Roul.

  “This isn’t standard in machine cellars, is it?” asked the leader, whose name was Prathe.

  The third man, Hold, shook his head. “No, and I must admit it’s an unpleasant arrangement. Unsprayed. Crude.” He gave a soft shudder.

  “Well, let’s open it,” suggested Prathe, hefting his forcepak.

  The other two did not answer, and that was a perfect sign of agreement, so he applied the beam. A wide arc of fruit–green streamed out and washed the door. In a few seconds it had fused along the sides, and run together in excellent symmetry. They stared through into the thrusting darkness.

  They found him meditating.

  When first the light filtered through from behind them, they could not discern that it was human. It was a gray heap hulked close to the angle of floor and wall, its great head hung down, and hands turned into the lap.

  Then, as the particulars became clear, each man in turn drew a shocked breath. Pathe was first into the room, and his voice was an almost–unpleasant mixture of wonder and revulsion.

  Roul followed, and as the form of Person grew specific, he uttered a round, pear–shaped, then suddenly, shattered cry of terror. “How vile!” And his face was unhandsome. In the extreme.

  Hold shone his light down into the corner, and away as quickly. In its wild travels, the beam covered the room completely: pallet, bare walls, small dish with gruel still in it, mat on the floor. Then back to Person again, but this time, the pool of brilliance was directed at the floor and the edge of the Person’s buttocks, so the full light did not fall on that face—Oh that face!

  The great head with its high unkempt crown of nearly white hair…spread out and in two huge tufts at either temple. The heavy–jowled face, with the mouth that was a wicked, slanting slash through the pale white flesh. The ears that hugged close and round to the head.

  Then the eyes…

  The eyes of dust…

  Two deep–nested pockets, where gray swirled. The gray of decaying bodies. The gray of storm clouds. The gray of feelings most unhappy, and of death. The eyes that seemed to see so deeply, yet could see nothing. Ugly eyes.

  They raised their forcepaks, and Person stirred.

  First there was light, and then there was no–light. First there was heat, and then there was no–heat. And—

  First there was love, and then there was no–love. But in its place did not come the absence of love, the emptiness that the going of light and heat had left. Another moved in to take its place.

  In its place came hate.

  Much later, when the suns had set, and the moons had come up to mourn balefully in silence over the world of beauty, Topaz, others came. They found the three bodies, so ugly in death, so unhandsome in crushed and battered death.

  Then they took him. They took him out, saying, “All this, all this.” And there was such revulsion and such cursing and hatred for him. He was anathema. Pariah! He was ugliness amidst beauty.

  “What will we do with him? How can we kill him?”

  Then one came forward. A poet whose meters were correct, whose images were gorgeous. He was slim and well–mannered and it fell to him to envision the right way of it. To create beauty from ugliness, good from evil.

  So they erected a straight silver pillar, and it rose shining and true toward the four moons, and they tied him to it, and set the faggots about. Then they lit him and watched him burn.

  But Person had eyes of dust, and the eyes of dust saw what could not be seen, and the soul
within was the sweet soul of the visionary.

  He had the audacity to weep and cry as he burned, wailing, “Do not kill me! There is so much for me to see, so much I do not know!” He sobbed for the knowledge and visions he would never glimpse.

  And it was good. The fire was beauty. (If only he had been wise enough not to scream!)

  When the ashes settled, they were melted, and there was a perfect pool of lustreless silver where the pillar and Person had been.

  It was beauty, as all was beauty.

  And there were none who would dispute it: everything was beauty on Topaz now, they said. Beauty and peace.

  But the night sky rang with the stifled and fading shrieks that would never entirely pass. And as the clouds passed before two of the moons, looking so much like the eyes of dust, it was clear that Topaz had cursed itself with ugliness.

  The pastel towers were hideousness imprisoned in crystal, the now clumsily arching bridges were offensive to the sight, and even the very air, the very sweet and moist air, had turned foul and rancid.

  To anyone who was weak and would admit it, it was obvious: eyes of dust could never be closed.

  Any number of followers of my work have asked me with creased brows, why I chose to have so many of my stories during the past three years appear in a “girlie” magazine called Knight. They feel, bless ’em, that anything I write should be first exposed in, maybe the Saturday Review or Harper’s or Evergreen Review. Well, by way of answering them, consider: Knight does not edit my stories but prints them untouched as I submit them; they get Leo and Diane Dillon (my friends and the cover artists of the original edition of this volume) to do the illustrations; then pay me much less than many other markets, but very much a top dollar as far as their own rates are concerned; they let me experiment. Also consider, the previously–noted magazines seldom use science fiction, and when they do, it is of a certain stripe. It has been my contention for several years, that science fiction and the mainstream are no longer distinctly separate branches of the literary swim. Science fiction has been integrated in many ways—some valid and worthwhile, some hideously corrupted and sterile. But the melding of the two forms seems to me of prime importance for the continued virility and growth of both. Vonnegut has showed us the way. And Anthony Burgess. And John Hersey in The Child Buyer; and Only Lovers Left Alive, flawed as it was; and Bernard Wolfe in Limbo; and there are others. One such minor attempt to meet this challenge, as I was allowed to face it in the pages of Knight, is the character study called

  WORLD OF THE MYTH

  Dragon’s breath! Fire split up the night sky; and out of the darkness silence a screaming erupted across the blue–black heavens. From the center of the fire–lick a speck of silver and gray careered across the horizon, finally losing its sidewise drive, and began to fall. A stone in the sky.

  Sliding down the backdrop of the billion stars, the speck hurtled toward the dark world below, spewing fire and flowers of black smoke, oily smoke, from its drive tubes. It dropped as though discarded by some God from His sky.

  It fell in swooping arcs, insanely, swinging back and forth across the silent night as though whoever piloted it was frantically trying to keep its leading saucer–edge up.

  It came down in one last swooping glide and roared over the edge of jungle that stretched nearly to the golden sea. The ship came down in the dunes, plowing a long, canary–colored furrow in the sand, and split like a ripe pod. A flare of red spat up from the ruptured tubes in one last gasp of power, but no explosion followed it.

  There was the tiny sound of metal popping, crackling, cooling. Then silence as the ship lay where it had crashed, crumpled into a weird shape, one fin thrown up like a dislocated arm; it lay spent and useless, sent to the ground.

  The sea rolled up; the dunes hummed emptily, softly; the jungle screamed; but nothing came near the ship to disturb its slovenly grave.

  Sunlight shafted through a great rent in the hull, sending a swath of gold across Cornfeld’s forehead and eyes. He lay unmoving for a time, then as the heat reached him, he stirred in his sleep–after–unconsciousness and threw an arm across his eyes. For a while longer he lay that way, till the heat grew oppressive; then he stirred. And began to move.

  He made his way across the rubble of the plot–cabin and without thought to Iris Crosse or even Rennert, he stopped, on hands and knees, head hanging down, and drew great deep breaths. Thoughts began to patter along the track of his mind…alive…the crash…he was alive…that was important…the other two were in here…perhaps alive, perhaps not…but he was alive…

  Consciousness came back fully now, and he stood up with unsteadiness. He pulled his ripped shirt loose from his jump–slacks and unsealed the front, He tossed the rag from him, and filled his lungs with air. Thank God. Alive!

  He took three steps, trying to walk, staggered forward, and fell heavily on his side.

  He lay that way for a few minutes, then stumbled to his feet.

  He found Iris Crosse in her cabin, pinned beneath a wall cabinet that had broken free. Both her legs were crushed, but she was alive; she didn’t seem to be bleeding internally. He managed to pull her out, and he carried her so light in his arms, back down the crazily–tilted corridor, to the rip in the ship’s skin.

  He laid her down gently on the soft yellow sand, in the deepest part of the shadow of the fin. Then he looked down at her. Her face, even in unconsciousness, held the same willful power that had helped wreck the ship. If she had not had the fight with Rennert and used her boot on him, he would not have fallen against the console and dumped the pile rods, causing the explosion.

  It had been merely chance that they had fallen to this planet. Had the accident occurred further out, they would have gone off into the deeps, forever—or until the tubes had split the ship with their fury. Had they been closer, he would not have been able to plow in with a dead console.

  A faint stirring in the golden sand drew his attention across the dunes, almost to the edge of the lush jungle. Only heat–dancers. He turned away.

  She was looking at him. There was glaze over her dark, piercing eyes, but she was looking at him. He saw her mouth work, and it looked so odd, for her lipstick had smeared across her mouth, onto one cheek. Her tongue came out and touched her lips, and then—in a chain reaction that began with the eyes widening—her face masked over with an expression of pain and torture. “No! W–Wayne…don’t…stop, Wayne! I, no, stop…you!” And she fainted again.

  Cornfeld sat down heavily in the sand, and his hands went to his long brown hair absently. He knew what fear had possessed her, and again he heard the sounds and saw the sights of the night Wayne Rennert had raped the woman.

  Five months out in a Surveyship was a long time, but there had been no call for it, no need for it, no explanation. Rennert was a peculiar person; amoral more than immoral.

  He dragged his thoughts away from the act as it had happened, and tried to slip himself into a scheme of reality for the situation at hand.

  They were down on an alien planet, without any help, and with Rennert dead…he stopped…dead? Was Rennert dead? He had not, for an instant, considered it any other way. Cornfeld’s mouth went very dry; he realized he had wanted Rennert to be dead. But was he? Was it the situation he desired: alone on a desert island with Iris, without the deep, collie–brown eyes and wavy hair of Rennert always about? Was that what he had wanted…and was that the way it had turned out?

  He got to his feet, feeling the sun beat down across his shoulders as he rose out of the tail fin’s shadowy cool. Once more he crawled into the ship, and tacked along its battered insides, searching for the body.

  There was no one in Rennert’s stateroom. There was no one in the galley, and no one anywhere else in the plot room or the corridors.

  He looked up at the downladder. It had been torn in half like a streamer of confetti, halfway down from its ceiling egress. In flight, the ladder lay on the floor, and the crew stepped over it when going from the lower h
alf of the ship to the upper. Planetside, it ran up and down through the vessel, and with it broken off, gaining access to the other half of the saucer–shaped vessel was a difficult task.

  He crawled back out through the rent in the hull, and did a careful tour of the ship. The saucer had plowed in snout first, leading edge first. The tail was in the air. The ship looked like a discus, imbedded in sand. In effect, it was. But whatever the comparisons, the lower half of the ship was in the air, and the upper section was thrust deep into the planet’s soil.

  Cornfeld went back inside. Rennert—if he was alive—was still up there in the sky–aimed half, and did he want to go get him? Did he want to find out if the man was alive, or did he want to balm his guilt with the thought Rennert had perished in the crash?

  But what if he had been in the stores room, or the collar between sections? Lying there, needing help?

  No! The answer came so distinctly, he was amazed to find himself stacking fallen lockers and equipment, in an effort to reach the snapped–off ladder. If he hated Rennert, why was he doing this? Let him lie there! He piled the debris higher.

  From somewhere above came the sound of metal straining, rasping along metal. And bits of wall–surfacing material fell from the opening above. He paused in his efforts, his face suddenly still, and looked up. The sound did not come again. Was it the ship settling? Or something else?

  After a moment, he dragged a console attachment to the tower of rubble, and heaved it up with difficulty, feeling every bruised bone in his chest and back. He supported himself on a dangling strut, hanging like a silver snake from the ceiling, and climbed to the summit of the heap. Once there, he was a foot beneath the ladder’s break–off, even with arms stretched high and tight.

  He was sure he could not negotiate a descent and reclimb without knocking down the pile.

  He bent his knees, and tested the pile. It shuddered beneath him, but held. He tensed, bent at the knees again, and holding his breath, he leaped!