Harlan Ellison: Wonderbird

But—Skilton…

Silence, youngling! Do you want me to give you the Bird?

The Wonderbird?

THE Bird, fool!

The youngling retreated, cringing.

Skilton’s words were brave, and trusting of the Lams. Yet his thoughts could not help but be colored with doubt. He fought to submerge these unworthy feelings—the younglings must never doubt for an instant. If they did, the Performances would never come again. He was not quite certain what the Performances were—but they boasted a golden age for everyone on The Palace. He must deep-thrust his unworthy feelings, both for himself, for the younglings, and for the doubting, corroded-minded older tribers loping down the foothills toward them.

He looked back at the Wonderbird, as a blast of thought and sound struck him.

The thing was leaning through the skin of the Wonderbird, at the top of the reaching thing that stretched to the sand. He was calling—words still in the air…

“Marge! Yo, Marge! Come on out; we got us an audience, Awreddy!”

He turned and looked back over his shoulder at Skilton and the calf-pups. Skilton knew it was his head, knew it was his shoulder, simply enough. The thing thought.

Then why the words in the air?

Another thing came from the Wonderbird. It was a she; the first thing identified it as a she. She stopped at the top of the reaching thing (her thoughts called it a ramp) and looked at the flickering, color-changing skin.

She looked at the odd squiggles that formed the shapes:

MARGE AND ANDY PETERBOB!

COMEDIANS EXTRAORDINAIRE!

and in smaller squiggles…

HAVE TUX, TRAVEL

She opened her mouth wide (yawn, the first thing thought it). She scratched with one of her two paws at the space under her left arm. “Fix it?” she asked.

“What the hell’s it look like?” he answered.

“Cute, cute. Alla time with the wide-eyed, wise answers.” Her face grew annoyed—her thoughts grew annoyed. “Where’s the marks?”

The first thing pointed toward Skilton and the calf-pups on the edge of the plain.

“There they be, me sweet young pretty. There they be.”

She let her eyes follow his hand. Her eyes grew larger.

“Them? Them things? That’s what we’re gonna play to?”

He shrugged. “We got any better?”

“You use the civilcometer? Check, if there’s any culture?”

He nodded. “Not a trace of a city. If there’s life here, that’s it.”

She let her tongue lick her lower lip. “You sure this is the planet?”

He pulled a sheaf of odd, thin skin from a hole in his own skin, and unfolded it. He ran a finger down a column, said to her “The record says a show-ship came by here in ‘27…gave three hundred consecutive performances. Carted off a whole shipful of raw sogoth fiber. They called the place The Palace. Must be…only planet on these co-ords.”

She gave him a rueful look as he folded the skin away into his own baggy hide.

“I ain’t doing my act for them shaggy lap-dogs!”

“Aw, Marge, for Chrissakes, we done our act before worse than this. Them three-eyed slugs on Deepassa…or them little spike-balls on Garrity’s Hell…or them…”

She cut him off with a wave of her hand, sharp and final. “No!”

“Aw, Marge, for Chrissakes, you gotta at least test ‘em. You gotta see if maybe they ain’t intelligent.”

She screwed her face up horribly. “Take a look at the damned things…you can see they ain’t nothin’ but eight-legged mutts!”

At this point, Skilton felt things had advanced poorly enough. He sensed the rest of the tribe loping in behind them. Now was the moment for him to make his appeal to his gods, to the Lams who had come at last.

All the years of waiting and believing, of suffering the abuse of those who were unfaithful, were about to reach fruition. He would be the chosen of these great god Lams.

He let words float on the air.

The bellow welled up in his throat, coursed through his amplifier-baffle vocal cords, and erupted in the dusk.

“Bah -roooooooooooooo !”

The she-thing leaped off the top of the ramp, came back down trembling, her eyes even larger.

“Ta hell with you,” she squawked oddly, “that goddam thing wants me for supper. Uh-uh. Goo’ bye!”

The first thing was turned toward Skilton, also. His eyes were as large as the she’s. His mouth fluttered. But his thoughts said they must stay.

“But, look, Marge honey, you gotta… don’t let a little moan like that bother ya…uh…we’re out this far, honey, we gotta bring somethin’ back…pay the costs, you know…”

She started to say something, then her thoughts said: What’s the use? I’m gettin’ the hell outta here!

“Honey…it’s been a real slack season, we gotta… ”

She reached inside the Wonderbird’s skin, pulled out a weird square thing, and threw it at the man-thing. It hit him on the head.

“Goddamn it, Marge, why’d ya toss that thing at me? You know it’s part of the last borrow from that libraryship! It ain’t ours! Aw, come on, Marge! We gotta… ”

“We don’t gotta do nothin’! And if you don’t wanna get left standin’ right there with egg on ya kisser, ya better haul-ass in here and help me blast! I wanna go!”

She stared at him hard for a moment, casting strange looks every few seconds at Skilton and the group of younglings. As she did, the rest of the tribe appeared out of the foothills and fell hushed behind the emcee.

“Yaarghhh!” she bellowed, till it made Skilton’s antennae twitch. Then she bolted inside the Wonderbird, waving her arms in the air.

The man-thing cursed, and looked over his shoulder. When he saw the group on the moss-edge of the sanded plain had grown, his mouth flapped oddly and he stumbled clankingly up the ramp.

His thoughts flowed and boiled in his head, the words rolled and burned in the air.

Then he got into the Wonderbird, and they heard the sound of sounds on sounds, and the skin fastened tight to the rest of the skin.

They watched as the flickering colors dimmed, and the beating noises burst from the back of the Wonderbird. They let the primary lids slide over their eyes as the fire ripped from the Wonderbird. And then they watched terrified as it swept into the air, and left.

It blossomed and flickered and ticked and colored its way back over the Great Mountain, up toward the swirlers, and out of sight.

Skilton watched it with mixed feelings.

It was going, and with it was going the entire core of his beliefs. His religion, his thoughts, his very being had been sundered by the dusk’s happenings.

The Lams were not gods. They had not come again to do the Performances. They would not play The Palace again.

This was the end.

He kept the thoughts below scanning-level, so the tribe might not know what he thought. He felt their unease, and they waited for his explanation. How could he tell them the truth; that there was no Performance, and that all the years of waiting for the Time of the Prophecy were in vain. How could he tell them he had been deceived? How? How?

He began to summon the thoughts from their lower-level home, when he stopped, and forced them back down, keeping the surface of his mind clear and untroubled.

He saw the square thing on the silver-sanded plain, fallen where the man-thing had let it fall; fallen where the she had thrown it. Perhaps in that square thing there might be a clue to help him. A sign, a symbol, an omen to reinstate his belief in the Lams once more.

Skilton? The thoughts swam toward him from the awed tribe.