Harlan Ellison: Ellison Wonderland

But where the devil was this? I’d never seen any of the signs on the tiled walls before. They were all in gibberish, but they seemed to be the usual type thing: women, big bold letters in some foreign language, packaged goods, bright colors.

I lost interest in them and tried to figure out where I was.

I’d gone up through the Station and then down again into the subway. Then there’d been a long period of walking while reading that damned report, and thinking my practiced feet knew where they were going. It dawned on me that for the last few years I’d been letting myself go where my feet led me each morning. Yeah, but my feet were following the subconscious orders of my head that said follow the rest of the commuters. This morning I’d just followed the wrong batch.

A string of yellow lights spaced far apart in the ceiling, between the regular lights, indicated the way to a line of some sort. I followed the lights for a while until I looked down at my watch, for perhaps the hundredth time that morning, and realized it was past nine. I was late for the office.

Today of all days!

I started to get panicky and stopped a grey-suited man hurrying past with a sheaf of papers under his arm. “Say, can you tell me where the exit onto 42nd and Lex—”

“ Derlagos-km’ma-sne’ephor-july, esperind,” he drawled out of the comer of his mouth and stalked past.

I was standing there stupidly till the next couple people cast dirty looks at me for being in the way.

Foreigner, I thought, and grabbed a girl who was walking with typical hurried secretarial steps. “Say, I’m trying to get out of here. Where’s the 42nd and Lexington exit?”

She looked at me, amazedly, for a moment, shook my hand loose from her coat-sleeve, and pattered off, looking once over her shoulder. That look was a clear, “Are you nuts, Mac?”

I was getting really worried. I had no idea where the blazes I was, or where I was heading, or how to get out. I hadn’t seen an exit in some time. And still the people continued to stream purposefully by me. Subways had always scared me, but this was the capper.

Then I recognized the arrows on the wall. They were marked with the same kind of hyphenated, apostrophied anagrams on the billboards, but at least I got the message!

THIS W A Y TO SOMEWHERE!

I followed the crowd.

By the time I got to the train, I was in the middle of a swarm of people, all madly pushing to get into the cars. “Hey, hold it! I don’t want to—! Wait a minute!”

I was carried forward, pressed like a rose in a scrapbook, borne protesting through the doors of the car, and squashed up against the opposite door.

If you live in New York you will know this is not an impossibility. If you don’t, take my word for it. The doors slid shut with a pneumatic sigh and the train shot forward. Without a jar. That was when I began to sweat full-time.

I had wondered, sure, but in the middle of downtown Manhattan you just don’t expect anything weird or out-of-place unless there’s a press agent behind it. But this was no publicity stunt. Something was wrong. Way off- base wrong, and I was caught in the midst of it.

I wasn’t scared, really, because I didn’t know what there was to be afraid of, and there was too much familiarity about it all to hit me fully.

I had been in a million subway crushes just like this one. Had my glasses knocked off and trampled, had my suit wrinkled, had the shine taken off my shoes, too often to think there was anything untoward here.

But the signs had been in a foreign language. No one I’d been able to accost would talk to me in anything but gibberish, and most of them looked at me as though my skin was green. The train was definitely not an ordinary train. It had started without a jerking rasp. If you know New York subways, you know what I mean. That was unusual. That was fantastic!

I bit my lower lip, elbowed my way into a relatively clear space in the car, and for the second time in my life dragged out my square-folded lapel hankie to mop my face.

Then I saw Da Campo. He was sitting in one of the plush seats, reading a newspaper. The headline read: SELFGEMMEN-BARNSNEBBLE J’J’KEL-WOLO-BAGEDTAR!

I blinked. I blinked again. It was Da Campo all right, but that newspaper! What the Hell was it?

I made my way over to him, and tapped him on the shoulder, “Say, Da Campo, how the deuce do I—” “Good Tilburr all mighty!” he squawked, his eyes bugging, the newspaper falling to the floor. “How the— dwid olu—did you follow—Weiler!” He went off in a burst of that strange gibberish, gasped, and finally got out, “What are you doing here, for God’s sake, man?”

“Look, Da Campo, I got lost in the subway. Took a wrong turn or something. All I want is out of here. Where’s this train’s next stop?”

“Drexwill, you damned fool!”

“Is that anywhere near Westchester?”

“It’s so far away your best telescopes don’t even know it exists!” He was getting red in the face.

“What?”

“The planet Drexwill, you idiot! What the Hell are you doing here?”

I felt suddenly choked, hemmed in, like a fist was tightening around the outside of my head, squeezing it. “Look, Da Campo, this isn’t funny. I’ve got an appointment this morning, imd the office is waiting for me to—”

“Understand this, Weiler!” he snapped, pointing a finger that seemed to fill the universe for me. “You’ll never make that appointment!”

“But why? I can get off at the next sta—”

“You’ll never make another appointment back there.” His eyes flicked back toward the rear of the car and I found my own drawn in that direction. The fear was crawling around in me like a live thing.

He seemed to be grinding inside. His face was screwed up in an expression of distaste, disbelief and pity. “Why? Why? Why didn’t you leave well enough alone? Why couldn’t you believe what I told you and not follow me?” His hands made futile gestures, and I saw the people near us suddenly come alive with the same expressions as our conversation reached them.

I was into something horrible, and I didn’t know precisely what!

“Auditor! Auditor! Is there an Auditor in the car?” yelled Da Campo, twisting around in his seat.

“Da Campo, what are you doing? Help me, get me off this train, I don’t know where I’m going, and I have to be at the office!” I was getting hysterical, and Da Campo kept looking from me to the back of the car, screaming for an Auditor, whatever that was.

“I can’t help you, Weiler, I’m just like you. I’m just another commuter like you, only I go a little further to work every day.”

The whole thing started to come to me then, and the idea, the very concept, dried my throat out, made my brain ache

“Auditor! Auditor!” Da Campo kept yelling.

A man across the aisle leaned over and said something in that, hyphenated gibberish, and Da Campo’s lips became a thin line. He looked as though he wanted to slap his forehead in frustration.

“There isn’t one on the train. This is the early morning local.” He made fists, rubbed the thumbs over the tightened fingers.

A sign began flashing on and off, on and off, in yellow letters, over the door of the car, and everyone lowered his newspaper with a bored and resigned expression.

The sign blinked HUL-HUBBER on and off.

“Translation,” said Da Campo briefly, and then the car turned inside out.

Everything went black and formless and limp in the car and for a split split-second my intestines were sloshing around in the crown of my hat and my shoe soles were stuck to my upper lip. Then the lights came back on, everyone lifted his paper, the sign went dead, and I felt as though I wanted to vomit.