“You had a bad moment. Take it easy for a bit.”
Lanigan leaned back and tried to calm himself. The doctor was sitting at his desk, writing notes. Lanigan counted to twenty with his eyes closed, then opened them cautiously. Sampson was still writing notes.
Lanigan looked around the room, counted the five pictures on the wall, re-counted them, looked at the green carpet, frowned at it, closed his eyes again. This time he counted to fifty.
“Well, care to talk about it now?” Sampson asked, shutting a notebook.
“No, not just now,” Lanigan said. (Five paintings, green carpet.)
“Just as you please,” the doctor said. “I think that our time is just about up. But if you’d care to lie down in the anteroom—”
“No, thanks, I’ll go home,” Lanigan said.
He stood up, walked across the green carpet to the door, looked back at the five paintings and at the doctor, who smiled at him encouragingly. Then Lanigan went through the door and into the anteroom, through the anteroom to the outer door and through that and down the corridor to the stairs and down the stairs to the street.
He walked and looked at the trees, on which green leaves moved faintly and predictably in a faint breeze. There was traffic, which moved soberly down one side of the street and up the other. The sky was an unchanging blue, and had obviously been so for quite some time.
Dream? He pinched himself. A dream pinch? He did not awaken. He shouted. An imaginary shout? He did not awaken.
He was in the street of the world of his nightmare.
The street at first seemed like any normal city street. There were paving stones, cars, people, buildings, a sky overhead, a sun in the sky. All perfectly normal. Except that nothing was happening.
The pavement never once yielded beneath his feet. Over there was the First National City Bank; it had been here yesterday, which was bad enough; but worse it would be there without fail tomorrow, and the day after that, and the year after that. The First National City Bank (Founded 1892) was grotesquely devoid of possibilities. It would never become a tomb, an airplane, the bones of a prehistoric monster. Sullenly it would remain a building of concrete and steel, madly persisting in its fixity until men with tools came and tediously tore it down.
Lanigan walked through this petrified world, under a blue sky that oozed a sly white around the edges, teasingly promising something that was never delivered. Traffic moved implacably to the right, people crossed at crossings, clocks were within minutes of agreement.
Somewhere beyond the town lay countryside; but Lanigan knew that the grass did not grow under one’s feet; it simply lay still, growing no doubt, but imperceptibly, unusable to the senses. And the mountains were still tall and black, but they were giants stopped in mid-stride. They would never march against a golden (or purple or green) sky.
The essence of life, Dr. Sampson had once said, is change. The essence of death is immobility. Even a corpse has a vestige of life about it as long as its flesh rots, as long as maggots still feast on its blind eyes and blowflies suck the juice from the burst intestines.
Lanigan looked around at the corpse of the world and perceived that it was dead.
He screamed. He screamed while people gathered around and looked at him (but didn’t do anything or become anything), and then a policeman came as he was supposed to (but the sun didn’t change shape once), and then an ambulance came down the invariant street (but without trumpets, minus strumpets, on four wheels instead of a pleasing three or twenty-five) and the ambulance men brought him to a building which was exactly where they expected to find it, and there was a great deal of talk by people who stood untransformed, asking questions in a room with relentlessly white walls.
And there was evening and there was morning, and it was the first day.
UNCOLLECTED SHECKLEY
FIVE MINUTES EARLY
Suddenly, John Greer found that he was at the entrance to heaven. Before him stretched the white and azure cloudlands of the hereafter, and in the far distance he could see a fabulous city gleaming gold under an eternal sun. Standing in front of him was the tall, benign presence of the Recording Angel. Strangely, Greer felt no sense of shock. He had always believed that heaven was for everyone, not just the members of one religion or sect. Despite this, he had been tortured all his life by doubts. Now he could only smile at his lack of faith in the divine scheme.
“Welcome to heaven,” the Recording Angel said, and opened a great brassbound ledger. Squinting through thick bifocals, the angel ran his finger down the dense rows of names. He found Greer’s entry and hesitated, his wingtips fluttering momentarily in agitation.
“Is something wrong?” Greer asked.
“I’m afraid so,” the Recording Angel said. “It seems that the Angel of Death came for you before your appointed time. He has been badly overworked of late, but it’s still inexcusable. Luckily, it’s quite a minor error.”
“Taking me away before my time?” Greer said. “I don’t consider that minor.”
“But you see, it’s only a matter of five minutes. Nothing to concern yourself over. Shall we just overlook the discrepancy and send you on to the Eternal City?”
The Recording Angel was right, no doubt. What difference could five more minutes on Earth make to him? Yet Greer felt they might be important, even though he couldn’t say why.
“I’d like those five minutes,” Greer said.
The Recording Angel looked at him with compassion. “You have the right, of course. But I would advise against it. Do you remember how you died?”
Greer thought, then shook his head. “How?” he asked.
“I am not allowed to say. But death is never pleasant. You’re here now. Why not stay with us?”
That was only reasonable. But Greer was nagged by a sense of something unfinished. “If it’s allowed,” he said, “I really would like to have those last minutes.”
“Go, then,” said the angel, “and I will wait for you here.”
And suddenly Greer was back on Earth. He was in a cylindrical metal room lit by dim, flickering lights. The air was stale and smelled of steam and machine oil. The steel walls were heaving and creaking, and water was pouring through the seams.
Then Greer remembered where he was. He was a gunnery officer aboard the U.S. submarine Invictus. There had been a sonar failure; they had just rammed an underwater cliff that should have been a mile away, and now were dropping helplessly through the black water. Already the Invictus was far below her maximum depth. It could only be a matter of minutes before the rapidly mounting pressure collapsed the ship’s hull. Greer knew it would happen in exactly five minutes.
There was no panic on the ship. The seamen braced themselves against the bulging walls, waiting, frightened, but in tight control of themselves. The technicians stayed at their posts, steadily reading the instruments that told them they had no chance at all. Greer knew that the Recording Angel had wanted to spare him this, the bitter end of life, the brief sharp agony of death in the icy dark.
And yet Greer was glad to be here, though he didn’t expect the Recording Angel to understand. How could a creature of heaven know the feelings of a man of Earth? After all, most men died in fear and ignorance, expecting at worst the tortures of hell, at best the nothingness of oblivion. Greer knew what lay ahead, knew that the Recording Angel awaited him at the entrance to heaven. Therefore he was able to spend his final minutes making a proper and dignified exit from the Earth. As the submarine’s walls collapsed, he was remembering a sunset over Key West, a quick dramatic summer storm on the Chesapeake, the slow circle of a hawk soaring above the Everglades. Although heaven lay ahead, now only seconds away, Greer was thinking of the beauties of the Earth, remembering as many of them as he could, like a man packing provisions for a long journey into a strange land.