While we were sleeping there had been tragedy aboard our mighty starship. Our captain, our leader, our guide for two full generations, had been murdered in his bed! “Let me see it again!” I insisted, and Timothy held out the hologram. Yes! No doubt of it! I could see the blood stains in his thick white hair, I could see the frozen mask of anguish on his strong-featured face. Dead! The captain was dead! “What now?” I asked. “What will happen?”
“The civil war has already started on E Deck,” Timothy said.
Perhaps what I really fear is not so much a dizzying multiplicity of futures but rather the absence of futures. When I end, will the universe end? Nothingness, emptiness, the void that awaits us all, the tunnel that leads not to everywhere but to nowhere—is that the only destination? If it is, is there any reason to feel fear? Why should I fear it? Nothingness is peace. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name, thy kingdom nada, thy will be nada, in nada as it is in nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee. That’s Hemingway. He felt the nada pressing in on all sides. Hemingway never wrote a word of science fiction. Eventually he delivered himself cheerfully to the great nada with a shotgun blast.
My friend Leon reminds me in some ways of Henry Darkdawn in De Soto’s classic Cosmos trilogy. (If I said he reminded me of Stephen Dedalus or Raskolnikov or Julien Sorel, you would naturally need no further descriptions to know what I mean, but Henry Darkdawn is probably outside your range of literary experience. The De Soto trilogy deals with the formation, expansion, and decay of a quasi-religious movement spanning several galaxies in the years 30,000 to 35,000 a.d., and Darkdawn is a charismatic prophet, human but immortal or at any rate extraordinarily long-lived, who combines within himself the functions of Moses, Jesus and St. Pauclass="underline" seer, intermediary with higher powers, organizer, leader, and ultimately martyr.) What makes the series so beautiful is the way De Soto gets inside Darkdawn’s character, so that he’s not merely a distant bas-relief—the Prophet—but a warm, breathing human being. That is, you see him warts and all—a sophisticated concept for science fiction, which tends to run heavily to marble statues in place of living protagonists.
Leon, of course, is unlikely ever to found a galaxy-spanning cult, but he has much of the intensity that I associate with Darkdawn. Oddly, he’s quite tall—six feet two, I’d say—and has conventional good looks; people of his type don’t generally run to high inner voltage, I’ve observed. But despite his natural physical advantages something must have compressed and redirected Leon’s soul when he was young, because he’s a brooder, a dreamer, a fire-breather, always coming up with visionary plans for reorganizing our office, stuff like that. He’s the one who usually leaves s-f magazines on my desk as gifts, but he’s also the one who pokes the most fun at me for reading what he considers to be trash. You see his contradictory nature right there. He’s shy and aggressive, tough and vulnerable, confident and uncertain, the whole crazy human mix, everything right up front.
Last Tuesday I had dinner at his house. I often go there. His wife Helene is a superb cook. She and I had an affair five years ago that lasted about six months. Leon knew about it after the third meeting, but he never has said a word to me. Judging by Helene’s desperate ardor, she and Leon must not have a very good sexual relationship; when she was in bed with me she seemed to want everything all at once, every position, every kind of sensation, as though she had been deprived much too long. Possibly Leon was pleased that I was taking some of the sexual pressure off him, and has silently regretted that I no longer sleep with his wife. (I ended the affair because she was drawing too much energy from me and because I was having difficulties meeting Leon’s frank, open gaze.)
Last Tuesday just before dinner Helene went into the kitchen to check the oven. Leon excused himself and headed for the bathroom. Alone, I stood a moment by the bookshelf, checking in my automatic way to see if they had any s-f, and then I followed Helene into the kitchen to refill my glass from the martini pitcher in the refrigerator. Suddenly she was up against me, clinging tight, her lips seeking mine. She muttered my name; she dug her fingertips into my back. “Hey,” I said softly. “Wait a second! We agreed that we weren’t going to start that stuff again!”
“I want you!”
“Don’t, Helene.” Gently I pried her free of me. “Don’t complicate things. Please.”
I wriggled loose. She backed away from me, head down, and sullenly went to the stove. As I turned I saw Leon in the doorway. He must have witnessed the entire scene. His dark eyes were glossy with half-suppressed tears; his lips were quivering. Without saying anything he took the pitcher from me, filled his martini glass and drank the cocktail at a gulp. Then he went into the living room, and ten minutes later we were talking office politics as though nothing had happened. Yes, Leon, you’re Henry Darkdawn to the last inch. Out of such stuff as you, Leon, are prophets created. Out of such stuff as you are cosmic martyrs made.
No one could tell the difference any longer. The sleek, slippery android had totally engulfed its maker’s personality.
I stood at the edge of the cliff, staring in horror at the red, swollen thing that had been the life-giving sun of Earth.
The horde of robots—
The alien spaceship, plunging in a wild spiral—
Laughing, she opened her fist. The Q-bomb lay in the center of her palm. “Ten seconds,” she cried.
How warm it is tonight! A dank glove of humidity enfolds me. Sleep will not come. I feel a terrible pressure all around me. Yes! The beam of green light! At last, at last, at last! Cradling me, lifting me, floating me through the open window. High over the dark city. On and on, through the void, out of space and time. To the tunnel. Setting me down. Here. Here. Yes, exactly as I imagined it would be: the onyx walls, the sourceless dull gleam, the curving vault far overhead, the silent alien figures drifting toward me. Here. The tunnel, at last. I take the first step forward. Another. Another. I am launched on my journey.