Jonathan Lethem - The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye

“He’s a good one, boy,” said the robot maker. “I think he’s got a bit of your spark in him. This one’s got a fighting chance against whatever the Colonel’s got cooked up.”

It didn’t, of course. I couldn’t bring myself to look at the poor little mechanical terrier. It was about to be killed. But I didn’t say anything.

At this point in our hike through the grove the witch and the witch’s horse ride by. It’s another dependable part of my clockwork Hell. They turn up at about this point in my journey — the moon just up, a breeze stirring — whichever direction I choose. It’s a horrible sight, but it’s one I’ve gotten used to. Like just about everything else.

The horse is a lot more imposing freed from his stakes at the table. He’s huge and sweaty and hairy, his nostrils dilated wide, his lips curled back. He’s not wearing those funny glasses anymore. The witch rides him cowboy style, bareback. She bends her head down and grunts exhortations into the horse’s ear. She’s still beautiful, I guess. And I still love her — sort of. I feel mixed up about the witch when she rides, actually. A combination of fear and pity and shame. An odd sense that she wouldn’t do it if she didn’t somehow have to. That the horse is somehow doing it to her.

But mostly I’m just afraid. As they rode through the grove now, I stood frozen in place with fear, just like the first time.

The robot maker did what he always does: covered my eyes with his bony hand and muttered, “Terrible, terrible! Not in front of the boy!”

I peered through his fingertips, compelled to watch.

And then they were gone, snorting away into the night, and we were alone in the grove again. The terrier yipped after them angrily. The robot maker shook his head, gripped my shoulder, and we walked on.

The pavilion sits on a plateau at the edge of the woods. The base is covered with trees, invisible until you’re there. The battle area, up on top, is like a ruined Greek temple. The shattered remains of the original roof are piled around the edges. The pavilion itself is littered with the glowing, radioactive shambles of the robot maker’s wrecked creations. The pavilion is so infused with radiation that normal physics don’t apply there; some of the ancient robots still flicker back into flame when the wind picks up, and sometimes one of the wrecks goes into an accelerated decline and withers into ashes, as though years of entropy have finally caught up with it. The carcasses tell the story of the robot maker’s decline; his recent robots are less ambitious and formidable, and their husks are correspondingly more pathetic. Many of the newer ones simply failed on their way to the pavilion; their ruined bodies litter the pathway up the hill.

But not the terrier. He bounded up the hill ahead of us, reached the crest, and disappeared over the top. The robot maker and I hurried after him, not wanting him to lose his match before we even saw what he was fighting.

His opponent was a wolfman robot. As from an old horror movie, his face was more human than dog. It was a perfect example of how the robot maker’s creations were so badly overmatched: what chance does a house pet have against a wolfman? It was often like this, a question of several degrees of sophistication.

Standing on two feet, the wolfman towered over the terrier. He spoke too, taunting the little dog, who could only yip and growl in response.

“Here, boy,” cackled the wolfman. “Come on, pup. Come to daddy. Here we go.” He gestured beckoningly. The terrier barked and reared back. “Come on, boy. Jeez.” He looked to us for sympathy as we approached. “Lookit this. Here boy, I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m just gonna wring your fucking neck. Come on. COME HERE YOU GODDAMN LITTLE PIECE OF SHIT!”

The wolfman lunged, scrambling down and seizing the terrier by the neck, and took a bite on the forearm for his trouble. I heard metal grate on metal. “Ow! Goddammit. That does it.” He throttled the little robot, which squealed until its voice was gone. “This is gonna hurt me more than it hurts you,” said the wolfman, even as he tossed the broken scrap-metal carcass aside. The robot maker and I just stood, staring in stupid wonder.

“Ahem,” said the wolfman, picking himself up. “Boy. Where was I? Oh, well. Some other fucking time.” He turned his back and walked away, clearing his throat, picking imaginary pieces of lint from his body, tightening an imaginary tie like Rodney Dangerfield.

As soon as the wolfman was over the edge of the pavilion and out of sight, the robot maker ran to his ruined terrier and threw his skeletal body over it in sorrow, as though he could shield it from some further indignity. I turned away. I hated the robot maker’s weeping. I didn’t want to have to comfort him again. The sight of it, frankly, made me sick. It was one of Hell’s worst moments. Besides, hanging around the pavilion weeping over his failures was how the robot maker had soaked up so much radiation, and gotten so old. If I stuck around I might get like him.

I snuck away.

A few months after my brush with the support group I met another migrator in a bar.

I’d come back from Hell that afternoon, at work. I reinhabitated my body while I was sitting behind the mike, reading out a public service announcement. For once I kept my cool; didn’t tell anyone at the station, didn’t call Maureen at home. I stopped at the bar on my way home, just to get a few minutes for myself before I let Maureen and Peter know I was back.

I got talking to the guy at my right. I don’t remember how, but it came out that he was a migrator, too. Just back, like me. We started out boozily jocular, then got quiet as we compared notes, not wanting to draw attention to ourselves, not wanting to trigger anyone’s prejudices.

He told me about his Hell, which was pretty crazy. The setting was urban, not rural. He started out on darkened city streets, chased by Chinamen driving garbage trucks and shooting at him with pistols. There was a nuclear war; the animals mutated, grew intelligent and vicious. It went on from there.

I told him about mine, and then I told him about the support group and what I’d thought of it.

“Shit, yes,” he said. “I went through that bullshit. Don’t let them try to tell you what you’re going through. They don’t know shit. They can’t know what we go through. They aren’t there , man.”

I asked him how much of his time he spent in Hell.

“Sheeeit. I’m not back here one day for every ten I spend there. I work in a bottling plant, man. Quality control. I look at bottles all day, then I go out drinking with a bunch of other guys from the plant. Least that’s what they tell me. When I come back I don’t even know those guys. Buncha strangers. When I come back”—he raised his glass—“I go out drinking alone.”

I asked him about his wife. He finished his drink and ordered another one before he said anything.

“She got sick of waiting around, I guess,” he said. “I don’t blame her. Least she got me brought back. I owe her that .”

We traded phone numbers. He wasn’t exactly the kind of guy I’d hang around with under ordinary circumstances, but as it was we had a lot in common.

I called a few times. His answering machine message was like this: “Sorry, I don’t seem to be home right now. Leave a message at the tone and I’ll call you as soon as I’m back .”

Maureen told me he called me a few times, too. Always while I was away.

When I leave the robot maker at the pavilion, I usually continue north, to the shrunken homes in the Garden of Razor Blades. The garden begins on the far side of the pavilion. A thicket of trees, at the entrance, only the trees are leafed with razor blades. The moonlight is reflected off a thousand tiny mirrors; it’s quite pretty, really. The forest floor is layered with fallen razor blades. They never rust, because it never rains in Hell.