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

His thoughts were a million miles away. A lie. They were only arcology levels above and across London.

“You! What do you want?”

So he told her.

He would have preferred the other three not be there. The look of revulsion on their faces-even the zombie Mr. Robert Mossman's-made him defensive.

Lady Effim sneered. It did not become her. “You shall have it, Neil. As often as you care to go, God help you.” She paused, looked at him in a new way. “Six years ago…when I knew you…were you…”

“No, not then.”

“I never would have thought-of all the people I know, and you may be assured, dear boy, I know oddnesses beyond description-of all I know, I would have thought you were the last to…”

“I don't want to hear this.”

“Of course not, how gauche of me. Of course, you shall have what you need. When I have. What. I. Need.”

“I'll take you to it.”

She seemed amused. “Take me there? Don't be silly, dear boy. I'm a very famous, very powerful, very influential person. I have no truck with stolen merchandise, not even any as exotic and lovely as soul-radiant.” She turned to the killer. “Mr. Mossman. You will go with Neil and obtain three tubes from where he has them secreted. No, don't look suspicious, Neil will deliver precisely what he has said he would deliver. He understands we are both dealing in good faith.”

The twinkle said, “But he's…”

“It is not our place to make value judgments, darling. Neil is a sweet boy, and what he needs, he shall have.” To Mr. Robert Mossman: “When you have the three tubes, call me here.” To the thief: “When I receive Mr. Mossman's call, Fill will make the arrangements and you'll receive very explicit instructions where to go, and when. Is that satisfactory!”

Neil nodded, his stomach tight, his head beginning to hurt. He did not like their knowing.

“Now,” Lady Effim said, “goodbye, Neil.

“I don't think I would care to see you again. Ever. You understand this contains no value judgment, merely a preference on my part.”

She did not offer her hand to be kissed as he and Mr. Robert Mossman rose to leave the table.

The thief materialized on the empty plain far beyond the arcology of London. He was facing the gigantic structure and stared at it for minutes without really seeing it: eyes turned inward. It was near sunset and all light seemed to be gathered to the ivory pyramid that dominated the horizon. “Cradle of the sun,” he said softly, and winked out of existence again. Behind him, the city of London rose into the clouds and was lost to sight. The apartments of the Prince of Wales were, at that moment, passing into darkness.

The next materialization was in the midst of a herd of zebra, grazing at tall stands of deep blue grass. They bolted at his appearance, shying sidewise and boiling away from him in a mass of flashing lines of black and white. He smiled, and started walking. The air vibrated with the smell of animal fur and clover. Walking would be a pleasure. And mint.

His first warning that he was not alone came with the sound of a flitterpak overhead. It was a defective: he should not have been able to hear its power-source. He looked up and a woman in torn leathers was tracking his passage across the veldt. She had a norden strapped to her front and he had no doubt the sights were trained on him. He waved to her, and she made no sign of recognition. He kept walking, into the darkness, attempting to ignore her; but his neck itched.

He vanished; to hell with her; he couldn't be bothered.

When he reappeared, he was in the trough of a dry wash that ran for several miles and came to an end, when he had vanished and reappeared again, at the mouth of a cave that angled downward sharply into the ground. He looked back along the channel of the arroyo. He was in the foothills. The mountains bulked purple and distant in the last fading colors of dusk. The horizon was close. The air was very clear, the wind was rising; there were no sounds but those of insects foretelling the future.

He approached the cave mouth and stopped. He sat down on the ground and leaned back on his elbows. He closed his eyes. They would come soon enough, he was certain.

He waited, thinking of nothing but metal surfaces.

In the night, they came for him.

He was half-asleep. Lying up against the incline of the arroyo, his thoughts fading in and out of focus like a radio signal from a transmitter beyond the hills. Oh, bad dreams. Not even subtle, not even artful metaphors. The spider was clearly his mother, the head pink and heavily freckled, redheaded, and slanting Oriental cartoon eyes. The Mameluke chained between the pillars was bald and old and the face held an infinite weariness in its expression. The Praetorian with the flame thrower was himself, the searing wash of jellied death appearing and vanishing, being and being gone. He understood. Only a fool would not understand; he was weary, as his father was weary, but he was no fool. He burned the webbing. Again and again. Only to have it spring into existence each time. He came fully awake before the cone-muzzle of the weapon touched his shoulder.

Came awake with the web untouched, covering the world from horizon to horizon, the spider crawling down the sky toward the weary black man hanging between the pillars.

“You were told I'd be coming,” he said. It was only darkness in front of him, but darkness within a darkness, and he knew someone stood there, very close to him, the weapon pointed at his head.

He knew it. Only a fool would not have known. Now he was awake, and he was no fool.

The voice that answered from the deeper darkness was neither male nor female, neither young nor old, neither deep nor high. It sounded like a voice coming from a tin cup. Neil knew he had been honorably directed; this was the place, without doubt. He saluted Lady Effim's word of honor with a smile. The voice from the tin cup said, “you 're supposed to giving me a word, isn't it?”

“The word you want is Twinkle.”

“Yeah, that was to being the word. I'm to your being took downstairs now. C'mon.”

The thief rose and brushed himself off.

He saw movement from the comer of his eye. But when he turned to look, there was nothing.

He followed the shadow as it moved toward the cave mouth. There was no Moon, and the faraway ice-chips of the stars gave no heat, gave no light. It was merely a shadow he followed: a shadow with its weapon carried at port arms.

They passed into the mouth of the cave, and the dirt passage under their feet began to slope down sharply almost at once. There were two more shadows inside the mouth of the cave, hunkered down, looking like piles of rags, features indistinct, weapon barrels protruding from the shapeless masses like night-blooming flowers of death.

One of them made a metallic sound when it brushed against the wall. It. Neither he nor she. It.

Neil Leipzig followed the shadow down the steep slope, holding on to the rock wall for support as his feet sought purchase. Ahead of him, his guide seemed to be talking to himself very, very softly. It sounded like a mechanical whirring. The guide was not a domo.

“Here you'll stop it,” the guide said, when they had descended so deep into the cave passage that the temperature was cool and pleasant. He moved in the darkness and the thief saw a heat-sensitive plate in the rock wall suddenly come to life with light as the guide touched it. Then a door irised open in the rock wall, and light flooded out, blinding him for a moment. He covered his eyes. The guide gave him a shove through the iris. It was neither polite help nor surly indignity. He merely shoved Neil through to get him inside. It was an old-style elevator, not a dropshaft and not a light-ray tunnel. He had no idea how long it had been here, but probably before the arcology of London.