Harlan Ellison - Approaching Oblivion - Road Signs On the Treadmill Toward Tomorrow

Joe Bob attached the jumper cable, making certain it was circled out far enough behind and around him to permit him sufficient crawl-space without snagging the bull. He pulled the heavy-wire snippers from his rucksack, cut the fence in the shape of a church window, returned the snips to the rucksack, slung it over one shoulder and shrugged into it-once again reminding himself to figure out a new system of harness so the bullhorn and the rucksack didn't tangle.

Then, down on his gut; he pulled himself on elbows tight to his sides, through the electrified fence, onto the grounds of the University of Southern California. The lights from the guard towers never quite connected at this far comer of the quad. An overlooked blind spot. But he could see the State Trooper in his tower, to the left, tracking the area with the mini-radar unit. Joe Bob grinned. His bollixer was feeding back pussycat shape.

Digging his hands into the ground, frogging his legs, fiatworm fellow, he did an Australian Crawl through the nomansland of the blind spot. Once, the Trooper held in his direction, but the mini-radar picked up only feline and as curiosity paled and vanished, he moved on. Joe Bob slicked along smoothly. (Lignum vitae, owing to the diagonal and oblique arrangement of the successive layers of its fibres, cannot be split. Not only is it an incredibly tough wood-with a specific gravity of 1.333 it sinks in water-but, containing in its pores 26% resin, it is lustrous and self-oiling. For this reason it was used as bearings in the engines of early ocean-going steamships.) Joe Bob as lignum vitae. Slicking along oilily through the dark.

The Earth Sciences building-Esso Hall, intaglio'd on a lintel -loomed up out of the light fog that wisped through the quadrangle, close to the ground. Joe Bob worked toward it, idly sucking at a cavity in a molar where a bit of stolen/fried/enjoyed chicken meat had lodged. There were trip-springs irregularly spaced around the building. Belly down, he did an elaborate flat-out slalom through them, performing a delicate calligraphy of passage. Then he was at the building, and he sat up, back to the wall, and un Velcro-ing the flap of a bandolier pocket.

Plastique.

Outdated, in these times of sonic explosives and mist, but effective nonetheless. He planted his charges.

Then he moved on to the Tactics Building, the Bacteriophage Labs, the Central Records Computer block and the Armory. Charged, all.

Then he pullcrawled back to the fence, unshipped the bullhorn, settled himself low so he made no silhouette against the yawning dawn just tingeing itself lightly in the east, and tripped the charges.

The Labs went up first, throwing walls and ceilings skyward in a series of explosions that ranged through the spectrum from blue to red and back again. Then the Computer Block shrieked and died, fizzing and sparking like a dust-circuit killing negative particles; then together the Earth Sciences and Tactics Buildings thundered like saurians and fell in on themselves, spuming dust and lath and plaster and extruded wall-dividers and shards of melting metal. And, at last, the Armory, in a series of moist poundings that locked one after the other in a stately, yet irregular rhythm. And one enormous Olympian bang that blew the Armory to pieces filling the night with the starburst trails of tracer lightning.

It was all burning, small explosions continuing to firecracker amid the rising sound of students and faculty and troops scurrying through the debacle. It was all burning as Joe Bob turned the gain full on the bull and put it to his mouth and began shouting his message.

“You call this academic freedom, you bunch of earthworms! You call electrified fences and armed guards in your classrooms the path to learning? Rise up, you toadstools! Strike a blow for freedom!”

The bollixer was buzzing, reporting touches from radar probes. It was feeding back mass shape, indistinct lumps, ground swells, anything. Joe Bob kept shouting.

“Grab their guns away from them!” His voice boomed like the day of judgment. It climbed over the sounds of men trying to save other buildings and it thundered against the rising dawn. “Throw the troops off campus! Jefferson said, 'People get pretty much the kind of government they deserve!' Is this what you deserve?!”

The buzzing was getting louder, the pulses coming closer together. They were narrowing the field on him. Soon they would have him pinned; at least with high probability. Then the squirt squads would come looking for him.

“Off the troops!

“There's still time! As long as one of you isn't all the way brainwashed, there's a chance. You are not alone! We are a large, organized resistance movement...come join us...trash their barracks...bomb their armories...off the Fascist varks! Freedom is now, grab it, while they're chasing their tails! Off the varks...”

The squirters had been positioned in likely sectors. When the mini-radar units triangulated, found a potential lurking place and locked, they were ready. His bollixer gave out one solid buzzing pulse, and he knew they'd locked on him. He slipped the bull back on its harness and fumbled for the flap of his holster. It came away with a Velcro fabric-sound and he wrenched the squirt gun out. The wire-stock was folded across the body of the weapon and he snapped it open, locking it in place.

Get out of here, he told himself.

Shut up, he answered. Off the varksl

Hey, pass on that. I don't want to get killed.

Scared, mother chicken?

Yeah I'm scared. You want to get your ass shot up, that's your craziness, you silly wimp. But don't take me with you!

The interior monologue came to an abrupt end. Off to Joe Bob's right three squirters came sliding through the crabgrass, firing as they came. It wouldn't have mattered, anyhow. Where Joe Bob went, Joe Bob went with.

The squirt charges hit the fence and popped, snicking, spattering, everywhere but the space Joe Bob had cut out in the shape of a church window. He yanked loose the jumper cable and jammed it into the rucksack, sliding backward on his stomach and firing over their heads.

I thought you were the bigger killer?

Shut up, damn you! I missed, that's all.

You missed, my tail! You just don't want to see blood.

Sliding, sliding, sculling backward, all arms and legs; and the squirts kept on coming. We are a large, organized resistance movement, he had bullhorned. He had lied. He was alone. He was the last. After him, there might not be another for a hundred years. Squirt charges tore raw gashes in the earth around him.

Scared! I don't want to get killed.

The chopper rose from over his sight horizon, rose straight up and came on a dead line for his position. He heard a soft, whining sound and Scared! breezed through his mind again.

Gully. Down into it. Lying on his back, the angle of the grassy bank obscuring him from the chopper, but putting him blindside to the squirt squad. He breathed deeply, washed his lips with his tongue, too dry to help and he waited.

The chopper came right over and quivered as it turned for a strafing run. He braced the squirt gun against the bank of the gully and pulled the trigger, held it back as a solid line of charges raced up the air. He tracked ahead of the chopper, leading it. The machine moved directly into the path of fire. The first charges washed over the nose of the chopper, smearing the surface like oxidized chrome plate. Electrical storms, tiny whirlpools of energy flickered over the chopper, crazing the ports, blotting out the scene below to the pilot and his gunner. The squirt charges drank from the electrical output of the ship and drilled through the hull, struck the power source and the chopper suddenly exploded. Gouts of twisted metal, still flickering with squirt life, rained down across the campus. The squirters went to ground, dug in, to escape the burning metal shrapnel.