Stalking the Nightmare Part 24

I died on December 11th, 1981.

I will die in 1986. Here is how it happened.

ALL THE LIES THAT ARE MY LIFE had been published in March. Book-of-the-Month Club had taken it as its April selection. The film rights were being negotiated by Marty. It looked to be the best year I'd ever had.

I was on a publicity tour for the book, fresh from a talk show over holovid. Oh, yes, 1 should mention holovid.

After two-dimensional depth television, Westinghouse developed "feelie," a rather euphemistic name for projected video, giving the vague impression of the actual presence in your living room of the actors. Then the cable people in conjunction with LaserScience, Ltd. of Great Britain combined holograms with 3-D projection techniques and came up with holovid, in which the viewer actually became a part of the show or studio audience.

I was in Denver, preparing to be choppered over to the studio, when 1 fell ill. I was using depilatory on my beard in the hotel suite's bathroom when 1 felt dizzy and suddenly keeled over. The publisher's rep and the PR woman heard me crash and came running. They got me to the hospital where the phymech took readings. (A phymech is a robot physician, used primarily for running physicals and determining the nature of the illness. Lousy bedside manner, but they've cut down the incidence of improper a.n.a.lysis by eighty percent over their human counterparts.) The judgment was cancer of the stomach.

I went into surgery the next morning. It had spread, running wild, not even the anti-agapic drugs would work.

I was listed as terminal. Perhaps two weeks, the last five of those days heavily sedated against the pain. It was a shame: the Cancer Society was on the verge of a major breakthrough. Had I lived another five years, I'd have seen cancer become no more serious than the flu.

I spent the last two weeks in a hospital bed, a typewriter propped on a little table. The newspapers came and did their interviews briefly... I was abrupt with them, I'm afraid. I didn't have too much time to talk, I had things to write.

I finished my last novel in that bed, but the final twenty thousand words were rather garbled, I was so drugged, going in and out of consciousness. But I finished it, and was saved the horror of having another writer complete the work from my notes.

When I died, I was not unhappy. I rather regretted being denied those last twenty years, though. I had such stories to write.

I died on my birthday, May 27th, 1986.

I died in 1977 when a right-winger shot me because I'd done an article in World magazine on President Goldwater, and how he should be indicted as a criminal for the war in Brazil.

I died in 1979 in a plane crash in Sri Lanka. I was on my way to see Arthur Clarke. We were going to go scuba diving off. the coast of coral. The plane exploded; I never knew what hit me. My fourth wife got the flight insurance.

I died in 1982 during the worst blizzard the East Coast had ever seen. I froze to death in my car on a lonely Connecticut road where I'd run out of gas. Some a.s.shole suggested that because I'd been frozen, they might try to preserve me cryonically for restoration later. Fortunately, he was ignored.

I died in 1990 from a sudden, ma.s.sive coronary. I was sitting at home on a Sunday afternoon and felt the slam of it, and had just a moment to realize I was dying the same way my father had died. But he would never have a postage stamp commemorating his achievements.

I died in 1998 from ptomaine poisoning in a sea food restaurant in the undersea resort city of Cayman. They had to wait three weeks to ship my carca.s.s out; it would have been simpler to turn me into fish food and let my soul wander the Cayman Trench. I always hated the lack of imagination of Those in Power.

I died in 2001 on my way back from Sweden. I died very peacefully, in my sleep, onboard the catamaran-cruiser Farragut, somewhere in mid-Atlantic. I died with a smile on my face, lying in bed, holding the n.o.bel Prize for Literature to my chest like a teddy bear.

I died in 2010 from weary old age, surrounded by grandchildren and old friends who remembered the t.i.tles of my stories. I didn't mind going at all, I was really tired.

Hey! You! The skinny sonofab.i.t.c.h with the scythe. I'm over here... Ellison. I saw you looking at me out of the comer of that empty socket in your skull-face, you sleazy egg sucker. Well, listen, m'man, understand this: since I know I'm going straight to h.e.l.l anyhow, and since I've always lived with the feeling that Heavens and h.e.l.ls are sucker traps for the slow-witted and one should get as much goodie as one can while one is breathing, you'd better get used to the idea that you're going to have to come and get me when my time's up. Kicking and screaming, you blade-bonedcrop-killer. Hand to hand or at gunpoint, you're going to have to fight me for my life.

Because I've got too much stuff yet to do, too many stories yet to write, too many places I've never seen, too many books I've never read, too many women to admire, and too many laughs yet to cry. So don't think I'll be a cheap acquisition, clatterframe! And if you do get me, I'll be the d.a.m.nedest POW you ever saw. I'll try and escape, and if I can't, I'll send back messages.

And it'll drive your bony a.s.s crazy, Mr. D., because I'll be the first one to write about what it's like over there in your country.

** This essay-fiction, written as a speculative lark for The Harlan Ellison Hornbook column in the now-defunct Los Angeles Free Press in January of 1973, recently almost became redundant. On May 20th, 1982, at approximately 2:45 PM, the Author, in company with his Executive a.s.sistant, Marly Clark, crashed his beloved 1967 Camaro (mileage 170,000) at a speed of 55 mph on the San Diego Freeway. Both the Author and Ms. Clark came as close as they have ever been to the boneyard, yet they escaped the wreck unscathed. Having now bypa.s.sed the first two demises in this essay, the Author contends he will live forever. This does not delight the Author's enemies.

Tracking Level

Claybourne's headlamp picked out the imprint at once. It was faint in the beam, yet discernible, with the telltale mark of the huge, three-toed foot. He was closer than ever.

He drew a deep breath, and the plastic air-sack on his breather mask collapsed inward. He expelled the breath slowly, watching the diamond-shaped sack expand once more.

He wished wildly for a cigarette, but it was impossible. First because the atmosphere of the tiny planetoid would not keep one going, and second because he'd die in the thin air.

His back itched, but the loose folds of the protective suit prevented any lasting relief, for all his scratching.

The faint starlight of shadows crossing the ground made weird patterns. Claybourne raised his head and looked out across the plain of blue saw-gra.s.s at the distant mountains. They looked like so many needles thrust up through the crust of the planetoid. They were angry mountains. No one had ever named them; which was not strange, for nothing but the planetoid itself had been named.

It had been named by the first expedition to the Antares Cl.u.s.ter. They had named it Selangg--after the alien ecologist who had died on the way out.

They recorded the naming in their log, which was fortunate, because the rest of them died on the way back.

s.p.a.ce malady, and an incomplete report on the planetoid Selangg, floating in a death ship around a secondary sun of the Partias Group.

He stood up slowly, stretching slightly to ease the tension of his body. He picked up the mola.s.ses-gun and hefted it absently. Off to his right he heard a scampering, and swung the beam in its direction.

A tiny, bright-green animal scurried through the crew cut desert saw-gra.s.s.

Is that what the fetl lives on? he wondered.

He actually knew very little about the beast he was tracking. The report given him by the Inst.i.tute at the time he was commissioned to bring the fetl back was, at best, sketchy; pieced together from that first survey report.

The survey team had mapped many planetoids, and only a hurried a.n.a.lysis could be made before they scuttled to the next world. All they had listed about the fed was a bare physical description--and the fact that it was telekinetic.

What evidence had forced this conclusion was not stated in the cramped micro-report, and the reason died with them.

"We want this animal badly, Mr. Claybourne," the Director of the Inst.i.tute had said.

"We want him badly because he just may be what this report says. If he is, it will further our studies of extra-sensory perception tremendously. We are willing to pay any reasonable sum you might demand. We have heard you're the finest wild-game hunter on the Periphery.

"We don't care how you do it, Mr. Claybourne, but we want the fed brought back alive and unharmed."

Claybourne had accepted immediately. This job had paid a pretty sum--enough to complete his plans to kill Carl Garden.

The prints paced away, clearly indicating the beast was heading for refuge in the mountains. He studied the flat surface of the gra.s.sy desert, and heaved a sigh.

He'd been at it three weeks, and all he'd found had been tracks. Clear, unmistakable tracks, and all leading toward the mountains. The beast could not know it was being tracked, yet it continued moving steadily.

The pace had worn away at Claybourne.

He gripped the mola.s.ses-gun tighter, swinging it idly in small, wary arcs. He had been doing that--unknowing--for several days. The hush of the planetoid was working on him.

Ahead, the towering bleakness of Selangg's lone mountain range rose full-blown from the shadows of the plain. Up there.

Twenty miles of stone jumbled and strewn piece on piece; seventeen thousand feet high. Somewhere in those rocks was an animal Claybourne had come halfway across the galaxy to find. An animal that was at this moment insuring Carl Garden's death.

He caught another print in the beam.

He stooped to examine it. There was a faint wash of sand across it, where the wind had scurried past. The foot-long paw print lay there, mocking him, challenging him, asking him what he was doing here--so far from home, so far from warmth and life and ease.

Claybourne shook his head, clearing it of thoughts that too easily impinged. He'd been paid half the sum requested, and that had gone to the men who were now stalking Garden back on Earth. To get the other half, he had to capture the fetl. The sooner that was done, the better.

The fetl was near. Of that he was now certain. The beast certainly couldn't go over the mountains and live. It had to hole up in the rocks somewhere.

He rose, squinted into the darkness. He flicked the switch on his chest-console one more notch, heightening the lamp's power. The beam drove straight ahead, splashing across the gray, faceless rocks. Claybourne tilted his head, staring through the clear hood, till a sharply-defined circle of brilliant white stabbed itself onto the rocl: before him.

That was going to be a job, climbing these mountains. He decided abruptly to catch five hours sleep before pushing up the flank of the mountains. He turned away, to make a resting place at the foot of the mountains, and with the momentary cessation of the tracking, found old thoughts clambering back into his mind.

Shivering inside his protection suit--though none of the chill of Selangg could get through to him--he inflated the foam-rest attached to the back of his suit. He lay down, in the towering ebony shadows, looking up at the clear, eternal night sky. And he remembered.

Claybourne had owned his own fleet of cargo vessels. It had been one of the larger chains, including hunting ships and cage-lined shippers. It had been a money-making chain, until the invers.p.a.ce ships had come along, and thrown Claybourne's obsolete fuel-driven s.p.a.cers out of business.

Then he had taken to blockade-running and smuggling, to ferrying slaves for the outworld feudal barons, gun-running and even s.p.a.ceway robbery.

Through that period he had cursed Carl Garden. It had been Garden all the way--Garden every step of the way--who had been his nemesis.

When they finally caught him--just after he had dumped a cargo of slaves into the sun, to avoid customs conviction--they canceled his commission, and refused him pilot status. His ships had been sold at auction.

That had strengthened his hatred for Garden. Garden had bought most of the fleet. For use as sc.u.m-ships and livestock carriers.

It had been Garden who had invented the invers.p.a.ce drive. Garden who had undercut his fleet, driving Claybourne into receivership. And finally, it had been Garden who had bought the remnants of the fleet.

Lower and lower he sank; three years as a slush-pumper on freighters, hauling freight into shining s.p.a.cers on planets that had not yet received power equipment, drinking and hating.

Till finally--two years before--he had reached the point where he knew he would never rest easily till he had killed Garden.

Claybourne had saved his money. The fleshpots of the Periphery had lost him. He gave up liquor and gambling.

The wheels had been set in motion. People were working, back on Earth, to get Garden. He was being pursued and harried, though he never knew it. From the other side of the galaxy, Claybourne was hunting, chasing, tracking his man. And one day, Garden would be vulnerable. Then Claybourne would come back.

To reach that end, Claybourne had accepted the job from the Inst.i.tute.

In his rage to acquire money for the job of getting his enemy, Claybourne had built a considerable reputation as wild-game hunter. For circuses, for museums and zoos, he had tracked and trapped thousands of rare life-forms on hundreds of worlds.

They had finally contacted him on Bouyella, and offered him the ship; the charter, and exactly as much money as he needed to complete the job back on Earth.

Arrangements had been quickly made, half the pay had been deposited to Claybourne's accounts (and immediately withdrawn for delivery to certain men back home), and he had gone out on the jump to Selangg.

This was the last jump, the last indignity he would have to suffer. After Selangg--back to Earth. Back to Garden.

He wasn't certain he had actually seen it! The movement had been rapid, and only in the comer of his eye.

Claybourne leaped up, throwing off the safeties on the mola.s.ses-gun. He yanked off the inflation patch with stiff fingers, and the foam-rest collapsed back to flatness in his pack.

He took a tentative step, stopped. Had he actually seen something? Had it been hallucination or a trick of the weak air blanket of Selangg? Was the hunt getting to him at last? He paused, wet his lips, took another step.

His scarred, blocky face drew tight. The sharp gray eyes narrowed. Nothing moved but the faint rustling of the blue saw-gra.s.s. The world of Selangg was dead and quiet.

He slumped against the rock wall, his nerves leaping.

He wondered how wise it had been to come on this jump. Then the picture of Garden's fat, florid face slid before his eyes, and he knew he had had to come. This was the ending. As he tracked the fetl, so he tracked Garden.

He quickly reviewed what he knew of the fetl's appearance, matching it with the flash of movement he had seen: A big, b.l.o.o.d.y animal--a devilish-looking thing, all teeth and legs. Striped like a Sumatran tiger, six-legged, twelve-inch sabered teeth, a ring of eyes across a ma.s.sive low brow, giving it nearly one hundred and eighty degrees of unimpaired straight-line eyesight.

Impressive, and mysterious. They knew nothing more about the beast. Except the reason for this hunt; it was telekinetic, could move objects by mind-power alone.

A stupid animal--a beast of the fields--yet it possibly held the key to all future research into the mind of man.

But the mysteries surrounding the fetl were not to concern Claybourne. His job was merely to capture it and put it in the custody of the Inst.i.tute for study.

However... It was getting to be a slightly more troublesome hunt now. Three weeks was a week longer than he had thought the tracking would take. He had covered most of the five hundred miles that comprised Selangg's surface.

Had it not been for the lessened gravity and the monstrous desert gra.s.slands, he would still be searching. The fetl had fled before him.

He would have given up had he not found prints occasionally. It had been all that had kept him going. That, and the other half of his pay, deliverable upon receipt of the fetl at the Inst.i.tute. It seemed almost uncanny. At almost the very instant he would consider giving up and turning back to the ship, a print would appear in the circle of lamplight, and he would continue. It had happened a dozen times.

Now here he was, at the final step of the trek. At the foot of a gigantic mountain chain, thrusting up into the dead night of Selangg. He stopped, the circle of light sliding like cool mercury up the face of the stone.

He might have been worried, were it not for the mola.s.ses-gun. He cradled the weapon closer to his protective suit.

The grapple shot hooked itself well into the jumbled rock pieces piled above the smooth mountain base.

Claybourne tested it, and began climbing, bracing his feet against the wall, hanging outward and walking the smooth surface.

Finally, he reached the area where volcanic action had ruptured the stone fantastically. It was a dull, gray rock, vesiculated like scoria, tumbled and tumbled. He unfastened the grapple, returned it to its nest in his pack, and tensing his muscles, began threading up through the rock formations.

It soon became tedious--but boring. Stepping up and over the jumbled rock pieces he turned his thoughts idly to the mola.s.ses-gun. This was the first time he had handled one of the new solo machines. Two-man mola.s.ses-guns had been the order till now. A solo worked the same way, and was, if anything, deadlier than the more c.u.mbersome two-man job.

He stopped for a moment to rest, sliding down onto a flat stool of rock. He took a closer look at the weapon.

The mola.s.ses-gun; or as it was technically known, the Stadt-Brenner Webbing Enmesher. He liked mola.s.ses-gun better; it seemed to describe the weapon' s function so accurately.

The gun produced a steel-strong webbing, fired under tremendous pressure, which coiled the strongest opponent into a helpless bundle. The more he struggled to free himself, for the webbing was an unstable plastic, the tighter it bound him.

"Very much like the way I'm enmeshing Garden," Claybourne chuckled to himself.

The a.n.a.logy was well-founded. The mola.s.ses-gun sucked the victim deeper and deeper into its coils, just as Claybourne was sucking Garden deeper and deeper into his death-trap.

Claybourne smiled and licked his lips absently. The moisture remained for an instant, was swept away by the suit's purifiers.

He started up again. The rocks had fallen in odd formations, almost forming a pa.s.sage up the summit. He rounded a talus slide, noting even more signs of violent volcanic activity, and headed once more up the inky slope toward the cliffs rising from the face of the mountain.

The fetl's prints had become less and less distinct as it had climbed, disappearing almost altogether on the faceless rocks.