Man in a Cage

by Brian M Stableford

  Burning men swarm down to the plain, scattering.

  Black ash fills the air, choking me and sending me writhing to my knees, gagging, and fighting desperately for air.

  The bombardment ceases with a final squadron of cylindrical missiles riding white cones of flame, sweeping in shallow arcs to the roots of the mountains.

  And then the charge and the pursuit: here come the machines, out of the smoke, leaping and racing on thick-tired wheels, dancing on their caterpillar feet, sounding their war cries with klaxons and whistles and grinding gears. Shambling over the scarred, cratered surfaces come horde upon horde of the conquerors, with hard, jointed bodies like giant metal locusts, with cyclopean eyes and tentacles of rubber and steel.

  I stand alone against their cavorting advance, and they pass me by.

  I’m a hero.

  I discover an old man on the beach which borders a pale-colored, glass-faced sea. He is pouring water from a bowl, and the slack, languorous ripples which spread from the stream are the only blemishes upon the surface of the ocean.

  They are soon lost.

  “Who are you?” I ask him, feeling sure that I can penetrate his facelessness if he will only give me a clue.

  “My name is the name of the ocean,” the old man replies.

  “How old are you?” I ask.

  “As old as the ocean,” replies the ancient, his eyes rolling like gigantic waves to heave their surf-led humors from their contemplation of the sea to the time-thin sight of my shallow face.

  “Will that bowl never run dry?” I ask, marveling at the steady fall of crystalline liquid from the earthenware vessel.

  “I hope so,” whispers the old man, with a quiet tiredness. “I hope so.”

  I think I am getting used to infinity.

  It has three main characteristics:

  Transience.

  Diversity.

  Alternativity.

  I think I can afford to acquire a taste for desolation — or indulge a taste that I have already acquired. There is no trap to be feared there. It is where I fear traps that the danger lies. Whatever I try to keep bottled up inside me — that is what threatens to explode me.

  Titan Nine

  I’m Writing a Letter to Daddy, His Address Is Heaven Above

  I was writing letters to Canaan, and they were all wrong. I didn’t dare say a word. I could say I didn’t like it and I felt strange, but I couldn’t say a thing about titan, about Jenny, about Hurst. I couldn’t explain to them why I felt as I did, and that devalued the whole idea of telling them what I felt. But I knew I had to write and keep writing, keep distributing the letters to all the people I knew that were stuck in Block C. It was the only thing I could do for them — the thing they expected of me. The thing they needed from me if I was going to live on in their minds. And they needed me, no doubt about that. Every little thing that lived on in their minds instead of dying there was precious to them, necessary to them. I wrote to Sam and to Cain and to Manny and to Luis. Short letters all, but none identical, all individual, all meaning whatever I could put into them.

  Ten days into titan base, and I still hadn’t had a reply. I thought that was odd. I know what an unconscionable time mail takes. I knew how many sticky fingers it had to pass through before it reached me. But still, I was worried. I knew they’d have written at the first opportunity they could. Judas, anyway, and Luis — the people to whom I meant most. They’d have been careful, too. Not a word out of place until contact was established. They could take risks, play games with the censor, once they were sure they were tuned in. The first letters would be absolutely by the book. They’d reach me as fast as was humanly possible, if you consider all the hands they’d go through worthy of the name human.

  I had a neat stack of letters in front of me, all addressed, all stamped, and I was preparing to write one more. But the temptation overtook me, the anxiety made me pick up the phone and ring Henneker.

  Just like my letters, my phone calls had to pass through any number of hands before they got where they were going. It was slow work, getting hold of men at the top. But I had the pull to get through, eventually.

  “What is it?” asked the colonel.

  “It’s about my letters,” I said.

  “Come on,” he replied, “you know that’s not my department. I’m not the censor or the mailman.”

  “You’re the boss,” I said.

  “Are you making a complaint?”

  “I’m asking a favor.”

  “I can’t let any damn thing out of this camp that hasn’t gone through channels, and you know it.”

  “I don’t want anything out,” I said patiently. “It’s about letters coming in. I want to know where they’re stuck in the pipeline. That’s all. Just ask around for me. The prison, the boys at your end. I don’t want to interfere with the precious channels. I just want to know what the holdup is all about. Just find out for me, will you?”

  “It’s not my job,” he said. “Ask Hurst.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” I said. “You know as well as I do that anyone without rank doesn’t get answers. I’m not asking for much. Just a few lousy minutes. Just ask, that’s all.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll ask. But don’t get the idea you can ring me any hour of the day and ask me to call around for you. You have Hurst. He has channels.”

  “Great,” I said. “I’ll remember. But this is important. I need the answers, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said, and hung up.

  A quarter of an hour later, I had the inestimable pleasure of meeting Major Chalk for the first time.

  Chalk was a big, thickset man with wide knobby features and baby blue eyes. He looked like King Kong might have if he’d shaved. Yes sir, right down to the flat nose and the big mouth.

  “I thought I’d better stop by,” he said. Cheerfully. “Clear things up a bit.”

  “What things?” I asked.

  “Letters,” he said.

  “Those things,” I said. I opened wide the door. I invited him in. I was pleased to see him. Little did I know.

  He didn’t attempt to sit down. He reached into his inside pocket and he handed me a letter. I thought it was for me, from Block C. But when I opened it, without having paused to glance at its face, I found myself reading Dear Judas, I am addressing this letter to you because . . .

  “You can’t send it,” he said.

  “What do you mean, I can’t send it?” I demanded, no trace of belligerence yet creeping into my voice. But even before he began to answer, I knew damn well what he meant, and I wasn’t altogether surprised. Just sick.

  “I mean that I can’t allow it to go out of the camp.” He held it up like it was a dead rattler as I surrendered it to him without thinking. I reached out to grab it back. I took it in my hand, but he didn’t let go. We stood there, holding it between us like a tug rope.

  “You want it rewritten,” I said.

  “I don’t want it written at all,” he corrected me. “You can write letters to anyone outside of the prison — anyone on your official list of permitted correspondents, that is. But we can’t extend that list. You’re still under sentence, you realize. You aren’t free.” He had an unpleasant gleam in his eye. He was planning to hit me with a real sickener. He’d come himself instead of sending a messenger, instead of just telling Henneker so Henneker could pass it back over the phone. I could imagine his face when Henneker phoned him. Yes, sir, I’ll take care of it, sir. Yes, sir, I’ll see him myself, sir. Yes, sir, I’ll explain the position to him, sir. Did Henneker even know what the situation was? Did he have any power to alter it? I looked at Chalk and I knew he didn’t. Chalk was radiating now-I-got-ya-ya-son-of-a-bitch. Chalk had the responsibility, and Chalk was using it.

  “What about the incoming letters?” I asked flatly.

  “There are no incoming
letters. The army and the prison authorities both agreed that it would be best for security if we adhered to the letter of prison regulations and didn’t allow you or any of the men in Block C to extend their lists of permitted correspondents. There’s a provision . . .”

  “I know the regulations.” I interrupted him.

  “Well then, you can see that our hands are tied.”

  “Like hell,” I said. “I’m still under sentence, remember. Even under sentence I’m allowed to communicate with my fellow prisoners. You can’t deny me that. You can’t deny them that.”

  “I’m afraid we have to. Where matters of security are concerned . . .”

  “Security!” I spat the word out. “Are you going to tell me that the men in Block C are a security risk? Men serving life in a lighted tomb? The men imprisoned under conditions of perfect security? What the hell has security got to do with it? There isn’t a single secret in that letter, and you know it. Every goddam line is pure and harmless. You know that.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, being anything but. “We simply cannot let letters pass between the prison and yourself. There are regulations. There are matters of the utmost secrecy concerned. Your presence here is a secret. If one of your letters were to be intercepted, the signature would be enough.”

  “Hell, I’ll sign them ‘A friend’ if you want me to. But you must let me write something. You must let them write back.”

  “No.”

  “You bastard.”

  “Orders,” he said.

  I picked up the pile from the table. “Just so much rubbish,” I said.

  “I’m afraid so,” he replied, politely.

  I wanted to ram them down his throat. He wanted me to. He was twice my size, and I could see his fingers itching. Hurst was hovering not three feet away, beyond the door which still stood ajar. He was listening, ready to interrupt if anything troublesome should happen.

  I smiled. A real madman’s grin.

  “You don’t like me, do you?” I asked Major Chalk, sweetly.

  “I have no personal feelings,” he assured me. “I just do my job.”

  “And your job is to protect me. To cover me up completely. To make sure that the world and I do not meet, even for an instant.”

  “You can write to your official correspondents,” he said. “Provided you say nothing about . . .”

  “That’s not what I mean, and you know it,” I said, allowing a singsong note into my voice to protect the words from the biting malice they might otherwise have contained. That malice — that contained malice — would have pleased Major Chalk no end.

  He shrugged.

  “Can I have my letter back?” I asked him.

  “I brought it to show you,” he said. “I’ll have to take it away again. Regulations.”

  “Did he make up the regulation, Hurst?” I asked.

  The door opened a fraction wider. “I don’t know,” said Hurst, still hovering without.

  “Come in, you stupid bastard,” I said, “and shut the door.”

  But Chalk stepped backward, and took it in his left hand. His right was still clinging to the letter. “I have to go now,” said Chalk.

  “Will I ever see you again?” I asked him, politely, not letting go.

  “It’s likely,” he said. “I’ve been scanning through your files, and I find you’re a card player. I play a little myself. I’d like to find out if you’re as good as you think you are.”

  My mouth fell open. I’m not used to being startled. At first I thought he was a fool. Then I thought he was only a malicious bastard who wanted to see me beaten and beaten again.

  “Oh, I’d be glad to,” I said, putting real relish into my voice. “I’ll be glad to. Anytime. Bring your friends.”

  He smiled and pulled harder at the letter. I jerked it back. It tore in two, but not into halves. He was left with the bulk of it — I only had a tiny corner. He looked at it like an eagle might look at a rat. “You can keep that bit,” he said. “It doesn’t appear to have anything written on it.”

  And he left.

  Hurst came in and shut the door. He was my size, but younger. Fresh faced, like an army Whiz Kid. Keen, happy, and cookie-loving.

  “Hurst,” I said, “that man hates me. From really deep down. He really hates me. Now how can that be, d’you think?”

  “I think we have things to do,” he said.

  “Do you play poker?” I asked him.

  “Never,” he said.

  “You’re a real diplomat,” I told him. “A genuine American diplomat. How did we ever lose our Asian empire without you?”

  We went and did the things we had to do.

  Madman’s Dance

  Embracing Oblivion

  I walk down the slope of a vast, bubble-shaped depression. The bowl of the valley is a somber gray, unlightened by the leaden sky. The scene might seem drab to other eyes, but to me it seems hostile and aggressive. The far side of the crater appears not a simple shade of gray but an ugly and soul-breaking chaos of dying color.

  In the midst of depression, I feel fear. Part of it belongs to me, part of it is intrinsic in the scene, but all of it is real.

  The blasted landscape of the skull of titan ship is no less real and no more than the blasted landscapes which my mind perceived in the wreckage of that other world. This is hell, nor am I out of it. Freedom is a lie. One world does not exist within the lawless confines of another, but there are worlds without as well as worlds within. As I walk beneath the cold walls and the cloud-tipped peaks I am dreaming, but the fear in my guts is just the same.

  In the center of the giant wheel is an off-white patch of what looks like dirty snow or melted candle wax. It is, perhaps, a small blister burned on the filthy surface of the depression, emphasizing by contrast the blackness of the soil around it.

  Chopped-off peaks ring the crater, and reaching up to them all the way from the creamy hump radiate streaks of red-colored ore. The brighter-colored elements split the gray sea like red lightning. The boulders on the outskirts of the basin seem arranged almost as if in a pattern. It is as though they have been placed with infinite care and precision, but the wind and rain have displaced a few. Between the center and the first stones there is a saucer of sad gray mud, smooth and concave.

  Scabs of lichenous material trail thin fingers between the red scars. I avoid them, treading instead on the softly oozing black soil.

  The pit is like a sleeping beast, gray with age and diseased by decades. It is choking in the cloying phlegm of clay. Its slack, furrowed skin sags from its cheeks, and the sick white of its cyclopean eye is turned sightlessly to the gray firmament.

  I can hear the wingbeat of your angels of death.

  In the darkness of a starless night as I pass between the stones I hear voices, but I search in vain for their source. The sounds come from the earth, or from the monoliths, or from the dead and stagnant air.

  “I am sorry,” calls the first voice, sweet and deep.

  “I am sorry,” is the reply, flat and dead.

  “Please answer me,” says the first voice, after a hopeless pause. “Please answer me.”

  “I love you,” cries the first of the voices, fearful, the words as though torn from an unwilling throat.

  “I love you.” The reply.

  “Where are you?”

  “Where are you?” The reply.

  I go on my way, making no sound as my feet tread softly in the muck, and the voices die behind me in the feeble wind, and I forget them.

  I feel that I am poisoning myself with the prophetic venom of the pythoness. My heart is smoldering with the acid in my veins. I am contorted into strange shapes, consumed by thirst and pricked by corkscrew thorns. I am suffering, alone but not apart from hell, whose fires do not trouble only the unjust and the impure.

  I am
undemanding, and unrewarded.

  I am poor in spirit, and no kingdom recognizes me for its own.

  I mourn, and I am not comforted.

  I am meek, and I inherit sorrow and despair.

  I am merciful, and no one will grant me mercy.

  I am pure in heart, and I am blind.

  I have endured forever, and I have shrugged off the torments which I was consigned to endure. My fear and my suffering are dissipated in the sweat which has fallen from my brow to mark my way among the stars.

  The meadows of my wandering are fading in darkness, flowering with samphire and nightshade, and the only birds which nest in the stark trees are the carrion-crows.

  Let it come, I pray you, the end of our escape from oblivion, and the beginning of our escape into hell.

  I am ready. Call me neither coward nor hero.

  I have endured, like the green grass which grows still in the crevices of the Empire of Rome.

  I have neither won nor lost.

  I have neither succeeded, nor have I failed.

  I have traveled, and must return.

  My body is ready to rejoin my soul. (Who knows the spirit of man that goes upward and the spirit of the beast that goes downward to the earth?)

  I must leave this eternity where death and time and ego have no meaning, and return to the closeted, claustrophobic cage of darkness from which I thought to emerge. Vanity of vanities, I have discovered, vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

  All is vanity and vexation of spirit.

  My body must rejoin my soul.

  I am leaving such friends that I might have had long ago in the timeless tomorrow. I feel free for one of the very few times. I am being boosted high out of the depths.

  I have no weight. Free mass acceleration!

  Fast, I move.

  The mountain crumbles to a floor of glowing ashes. The trumpets of the sun toll like bells of flame.

  Midnight!

  I pity the poor, searching sea, which cannot beat its waves on shores as lonely as the sky, because there are no earthly shores unknown and unawakened.