"No, no."
"And those are nothing but mud hovels."
"No," repeated Timor. He moved forward, pulling his friend who would not see. "Look, they"ve just deteriorated."
"In seven years?"
A low music came to Timor"s ears. Three of the lumps were humping closer. All dove-gray like himself, but it was hide, not silk, that bloated a elbows and knees. Gray splayed feet, and between them, under the bags of belly, the giant genitals of two of them leaving triple furrows in the soft mud. The third trailed a central row of great dugs. From their blue-black face holes came gentle glubbering sounds.
Dark gems, gold-crusted like the sad eyes of toads met his. The world sideslipped, folded into transparency. The music- A terrible clamor broke upon him. Timor whirled. The alien beside him was laughing, cruel barking teeth.
"Well, my crotty friend! So this is Paradise!" Santiago yelled, whooped. "Not even Crots! SUBCROTS!
"Speak to your friends, Crot," he gasped. "Answer them!"
But Timor did not understand. A thing was clysming from him, a thing of most careful construction which had almost killed him, dissolving out.
"It is absolutely necessary that this child be totally reconditioned," he said in a stranger"s voice. "He is Scout Timor"s son." But his words meant nothing to him, for he had heard his name in the music. His true name, name of his babyhood under the soft gray hands and bodies of his first world. The bodies that had taught him love, all in the mud, in the cool mud.
The thing beside him was making hurtful sounds.
"You wanted the beauty!" Timor screamed his last Human words.
And then they were down, tearing and rolling in the sweet mud, gray bodies with him. Until he found that it was no longer fighting but love-love as it always had been, his true flowing, while the voices rose around him and the muddied thing under him that was dead or dying slipped away in the gray welter, in the music of many, flowing together in Paradise in the dim ruby light.
Afterword.
Reading an afterword is like watching a stoned friend sail onto an interstate expressway. One can"t help looking and one is seldom made happy. Exceptions, sure. Our long-established favorites may safely peer around the edges of their monuments, even wave and wink. And we have also the walkie-talkie writers, the Pan troglodytes Pan troglodytes who verbalize every twitching moment and who are named Mailer and Wolfe when they"re good. To them are permitted forewords, afterwords, asides, superscripts, anything-because their separate stories are in fact only nodes, local swirls in a life-flow of words. who verbalize every twitching moment and who are named Mailer and Wolfe when they"re good. To them are permitted forewords, afterwords, asides, superscripts, anything-because their separate stories are in fact only nodes, local swirls in a life-flow of words.
But the rest of us, poor carnivores whose inwards meagerly condense into speech. Only at intervals when the moon, perhaps, opens our throats do we clamber up the rocks and emit our peculiar streams of sound to the sky. Good, bad, we do not know. When it is over we are finished. Our glands have changed. Push microphones at us and you get only grumbles about the prevalence of fleas or the scarcity of rabbits. And this is what makes most afterwords such nervous reading, gives rise to the suspicion that the baying itself was a cryptic complaint about rabbits.
We think not, of course. We think it was somewhat deeper in the blood. But we"re in no condition to argue. Push me at noon on the streets and I can only tell you-those d.a.m.ned rabbits are dying out and the fleas have us.
Peace?
About this story. A thermal vortex by the arbitrary name of Harlan Ellison has been bashing out a bit of free s.p.a.ce where writers who need some elbow-room can try. Count me among those currently running and flapping, dragging homemade fly-buggies up on cliffs and taking off with hope. The resultant is not of course a neat scene, nor necessarily art. Moreover, Ellison is instantly recognizable as that type of absolutely top guy whose friends all go around with tubes in their stomachs. But after all the Maalox has been gulped and the old ladies picked up and apologized to, I think a ragged cheer is in order. For the guy without whom everybody would have slept better and dreamed less.
THE END.
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Again, Dangerous Visions Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION.
An a.s.sault of New Dreamers
Introduction to THE COUNTERPOINT OF VIEW.
KEYNOTE ENTRY.
THE COUNTERPOINT OF VIEW.
John Heidenry Introduction to CHING WITCH!.
CHING WITCH!.
Ross Rocklynne Introduction to THE WORD FOR WORLD IS FOREST.
THE WORD FOR WORLD IS FOREST.
Ursula K. Le Guin Introduction to FOR VALUE RECEIVED.
FOR VALUE RECEIVED.
andrew j. offutt Introduction to MATHOMS FROM THE TIME CLOSET.
MATHOMS FROM THE TIME CLOSET.
Gene Wolfe Introduction to TIME TRAVEL FOR PEDESTRIANS.
TIME TRAVEL FOR PEDESTRIANS.
Ray Nelson Introduction to CHRIST, OLD STUDENT IN A NEW SCHOOL.
CHRIST, OLD STUDENT IN A NEW SCHOOL.
Ray Bradbury Introduction to KING OF THE HILL.
KING OF THE HILL.
Chad Oliver Introduction to THE 10:00 REPORT IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY...
THE 10:00 REPORT IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY...
Edward Bryant Introduction to THE FUNERAL.
THE FUNERAL.
Kate Wilhelm Introduction to HARRY THE HARE.
HARRY THE HARE.
James B. Hemesath Introduction to WHEN IT CHANGED.
WHEN IT CHANGED.
Joanna Russ Introduction to THE BIG s.p.a.cE f.u.c.k.
THE BIG s.p.a.cE f.u.c.k.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Introduction to BOUNTY.
BOUNTY.
T. L. Sherred Introduction to STILL-LIFE.
STILL-LIFE.
K. M. O"Donnell Introduction to STONED COUNSEL.
STONED COUNSEL.
H. H. Hollis Introduction to MONITORED DREAMS AND STRATEGIC CREMATIONS.
MONITORED DREAMS AND STRATEGIC CREMATIONS.
Bernard Wolfe Introduction to WITH A FINGER IN MY I.
WITH A FINGER IN MY I.
David Gerrold Introduction to IN THE BARN.
IN THE BARN.
Piers Anthony Introduction to SOUNDLESS EVENING.