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

“Earn your pay,” the thief said. His voice was muffled. It would make a voice-print, but not an accurate one; it would be insufficient in a court of law.

The Catman made no move to touch the thief. There was no point to it. “You can't avoid me much longer.”

“Perhaps not.” He vanished as the panther slid toward him on its belly, bunching itself to strike.

“But then, perhaps I don't want to,” he said.

The Catman hissed again, and the falcon flew to his armored wrist. “Then why not come quietly. Let's be civilized.”

The thief chuckled deep in his throat, but without humor. “That seems to be the problem right there.” The cheetahs passed through space he no longer occupied.

“You're simply all too bloody marvelous civilized; I crave a little crudeness.”

“We've had this conversation before,” said the Catman, and there was an odd note of weariness in his voice…for an officer of the law at last in a favorable position with an old adversary. ”Please surrender quietly; the cats are nervous tonight; there was a glasscab accident on the thirty-sixth and they wafted a strong blood scent. It's difficult holding them in check.”

As he spoke, the pavane of strike and vanish, hold and go, pounce and invisibility continued, around and around the perimeter ring. Overhead, the Fuller Geodex absorbed energy from the satellite power stars DayDusk&DawnCo, Ltd., had thrown into the sky, converted the energy to the city's use, providing from its silver mesh latticework the juice to keep London alive. It was the Geodex dome that held sufficient backup force to keep the perimeter ring strong enough to thwart the thief. He dodged in and out of reach of the cats; the falcon tracked him, waiting.

“It's taking you longer to do it each time,” said the Catman.

The thief dematerialized five times rather quickly as the two cheetahs worked an inwardly spiraling pattern, pressing him toward a center where the panther waited patiently. “Worry about yourself,” he said, breathing hard.

The falcon dove from the Catman's shoulder in a shallow arc, its wingspread slicing a fourth of the ring at head-height. The thief materialized, laying on his back, at the inner edge of the ring behind the Catman.

The panther bunched and sprang, and the thief rolled away, the stretch suit suddenly open down one side as the great cat's claws ripped the air. Then the thief was gone…

…to reappear behind the panther.

The thief held the ladybug deranger in his palm. Even as the panther sensed the presence behind him, the thief slapped the deranger down across the side of the massive head. Then the thief blinked out again.

The panther bolted, rose up on its hind legs and, without a sound, exploded.

Gears and cogs and printed circuits and LSI chips splattered against the inside of the perimeter ring…bits of pseudoflesh and infra-red eyeballs and smears of lubricant sprayed across the invisible bubble.

The empty husk of what had been the panther lay smoking in the center of the arena. The thief appeared beside the Catman. He said nothing.

The Catman looked away. He could not stare at the refuse that had been black swiftness moments before. The thief said, “I'm sorry I had to do that.”

There was a piping, sweet note in the air and the cheetahs and the falcon froze. The falcon on the Catman's shoulder, the cheetahs sniffing at the pile of death with its stench of ozone. The tone came again. The Catman heaved a sigh, as though he had been released from some great oppression. A third time, the tone, followed by a woman's voice: “Shift end, Officer. Your jurisdiction ends now. Thank you for your evening's service. Goodspeed to you, and we'll see you nextshift, tomorrow at eleven-thirty P.M.” The tone sounded once more-it was pink-and the perimeter ring dissolved.

The thief stood beside the Catman for a few more moments. “Will you be all right?”

The Catman nodded slowly, still looking away.

The thief watched him for a moment longer, then vanished. He reappeared at the far side of the Geodex, and looked back at the tiny figure of the Catman, standing unmoving. He continued to watch till the police officer walked to the heap of matted and empty blackness, bent and began gathering up the remnants of the panther. The thief watched silently, the weight of the Antarean soul-radiant somehow oppressively heavy in the bag of confounders.

The Catman took a very long time to gather up his dead stalker. The thief could not see it from where he stood, so far away, but he knew the Catman was crying.

The air sparked around him…as though he had not quite decided to teleport himself…and in fact he had not been able to make the decision…and the air twinkled with infinitesimal scintillae…holes made in the fabric of normal space through which the displaced air was drawn, permitting the thief to teleport…the sparkling points of light actually the deaths of muons as they were sucked through into that not-space…and still he could not decide.

Then he vanished and reappeared beside the Catman.

“Can I help you?”

The Catman looked away quickly. But the thief saw the tears that had run down the Catman's black cheeks. “No, thank you, I'll be all right. I'm almost finished here.” He held a paw.

The thief drew in a deep breath, “Will you be home for dinner tonight?”

The Catman nodded. “Tell your mother I'll be along in a little while.”

The thief went away from there, in twenty level leaps, quickly, trying not to see a black hand holding an even blacker paw.

They sit silently at the dinner table. Neil Leipzig cannot look at his father. He sits cross-legged on the thin pneumatic cushion, the low teak table before him; the EstouDade de Boeuf on his plate vanishes and reappears. It is wallaby, smothered in wine sauce and “cellar vegetables” from sub-level sixteen-North. It continues to appear and disappear.

“Stop playing with your food,” Neil Leipzig's mother says, sharply.

“Leave me alone; I'm not hungry,” he says.

They sit silently. His father addresses his food, and eats quickly but neatly.

“How was your shiftday?” Neil Leipzig's mother says.

Neither of the men look up. She repeats the question, adding, “Lew.” His father looks up, nods abstractedly, does not answer, returns to his plate.

“Why is it impossible to get a civil word out of you in the evening,” she says. There is an emerging tone in her voice, a tone of whitewater rapids just beyond the bend. “I ask: why is it impossible for you to speak to your family?”

Keep eating, don't let her do it to you again, Neil Leipzig thinks. He moves the cubes of soybean curd around in the sauce madere until they are all on the right side of the plate. Keep silent, tough up, he thinks.

“Lewis!”

His father looks up. “I think I'll go downstairs and take a nap, after dinner.” His eyes seem very strange; there is a film over them; something gelatinous; as though he is looking out from behind a thick, semi-opaque membrane; neither Neil nor his mother can read the father's thoughts from those eyes.

She shakes her head and snorts softly, as though she is infinitely weary of dealing with those who persist in their arrogance and stupidity; there was none of that in what the father had said. Let him alone, can't you? Neil Leipzig thinks.

“We're out of deeps,” the mother says.

“I won't need them,” the father says.

“You know you can't sleep without a deep, don't try and tell me you can. We're out, someone will have to order more.”

Neil Leipzig stands up. “I'll order them; finish your dinner.”

He goes into the main room and punches out the order on the board. He codes it to his mother's personal account. Let her pay, he thinks. The confirmation tones sound, and he returns to the table. From the delivery chute comes the sound of the spansules arriving. He stands there staring down at his parents, at the top of his father's head, black and hairless, faintly mottled; at his mother's face, pale and pink, heavily freckled from the treatment machine she persists in using though the phymech advises her it is having a deleterious effect on her skin: she wants a tan for her own reasons but is too fair and redheaded for it to take, and she merely freckles. She has had plasticwork done on her eyes, they slant in a cartoon imitation of the lovely Oriental curve.