Strange Wine

by Harlan Ellison

  And then it was Stileen’s turn, and she readied the sound that would put an end to the Gathering.

  “And beyond–and in fact among–the last known animals living and extinct, the lines could be drawn through white spaces that had an increasing progression of their own, into regions of hearing that was no longer conceivable, indicating creatures wholly sacrificed or never evolved, hearers of the note at which everything explodes into light, and of the continuum that is the standing still of darkness, drums echoing the last shadow without relinquishing the note of the first light, hearkeners to the unborn overflowing.”

  W. S. Merwin, “The Chart”

  “There is no pleasure in this,” Stileen communicated, by thought and by inflection. “But it is the sound that I have found, the sound I know you would want me to give to you…and you must do with it what you must. I am sorry.”

  And she played for them the sound.

  It was the sound of the death of the universe. The dying gasp of their worlds and their suns and their galaxies and their island universes. The death of all. The final sound.

  And when the sound was gone, no one spoke for a long time, and Stileen was at once sad, but content: now the sleep would come, and she would be allowed to rest.

  “The delegate is wrong.”

  The silence hung shrouding the moment. The one who had spoken was a darksmith from Luxann, chief world of the Logomachy. Theologians, pragmatists, reasoners sans appel, his words fell with the weight of certainty.

  “It is an oscillating universe,” he said, his cowl shrouding his face, the words emerging from darkness. “It will die, and it will be reborn. It has happened before, it will happen again.”

  And the tone of the Gathering grew brighter, even as Stileen’s mood spiraled down into despair. She was ambivalent–pleased for them, that they could see an end to their ennui and yet perceive the rebirth of life in the universe–desolate for herself, knowing somehow, some way, she would be recalled from the dead.

  And then the creature she had passed in reaching out for her place on the agenda, the creature that had blocked itself to her mental touch, came forward in their minds and said, “There is another sound beyond hers.”

  This was the sound the creature let them hear, the sound that had always been there, that had existed for time beyond time, that could not be heard though the tone was always with them; and it could be heard now only because it existed as it passed through the instrument the creature made of itself.

  It was the sound of reality, and it sang of the end beyond the end, the final and total end that said without possibility of argument, there will be no rebirth because we have never existed.

  Whatever they had thought they were, whatever arrogance had brought their dream into being, it was now coming to final moments, and beyond those moments there was nothing.

  No space, no time, no life, no thought, no gods, no resurrection and rebirth.

  The creature let the tone die away, and those who could reach out with their minds to see what it was, were turned back easily. It would not let itself be seen.

  The messenger of eternity had only anonymity to redeem itself…for whom?

  And for Stileen, who did not even try to penetrate the barriers, there was no pleasure in the knowledge that it had all been a dream. For if it had been a dream, then the joy had been a dream, as well.

  It was not easy to go down to emptiness, never having tasted joy. But there was no appeal.

  In the Maelstrom Labyrinth, there was no longer ennui.

  INTRODUCTION TO: From A to Z, In the Chocolate Alphabet

  Nine years ago, letting my mind idle one day, I typed up a group of titles I thought I’d sometime like to write stories around. One of them was “The Chocolate Alphabet.” I had no idea what that meant; it just sounded good. I typed ten titles in all on that piece of paper. Over nine years I wrote nine of the ten stories. “The Chocolate Alphabet” was the last title on that sheet. The paper was torn off as I wrote each story until all I had left was a yellowing corner of paper with those three words on it. Fade out; fade in: Three years ago I was visited by San Francisco underground comix magnate Ron Turner and the extraordinary artist Larry Todd. You will remember Todd as the man who worked with the late Vaughn Bodé on so many projects, as the man who developed his own remarkable talent, and who now is considered one of America’s premier visual technicians. They visited for the day, and asked me if I would write an eight-page comic story to be used in one of the books Larry was doing for Ron at Last Gasp Eco-Funnies. As Larry was the man who created the dynamite strip “Dr. Atomic,” I said I’d be pleased to take a stab at it. Larry then gave me a four-color cover painting and suggested I write the story around it. (You will find that segment of the Chocolate Alphabet I wrote to go with the cover as N is for NEMOTROPIN.) The title of Larry’s painting was “2 Nemotropin.” Well, one thing and another happened, and the cover painting stood against the wall in my office for two years, and I never wrote the story. Fade out; fade in: in February of 1976, I offered to try something that had never been done before.…I like doing that kind of thing…it upsets people. What I offered to do was to sit in the front window of a bookstore for a full week, and to attempt to write a complete story each day for six days. The store I offered to do this gig for is the famous sf shop in Los Angeles, A Change of Hobbit (1371 Westwood Blvd., dial 213-GREAT SF), owned and operated by Sherry Gottlieb and a staff of bright, enthusiastic young sf fans. The promotional gimmick was that anyone who bought over $10 worth of books on any given day that I was in the window, would get an autographed copy of that day’s story. Six days, six stories, sixty bucks’ worth of merchandise. Gift certificates could be purchased against future merchandise. On the sixth day, Sherry scheduled a big Saturday autograph party at which all six of the original manuscripts would be offered for auction. The stories were bound together with whatever source material had first prompted me to think of each story, and the entire package would go to the highest bidder, proceeds to help support the store. (We here in Los Angeles who work in the genre feel very protective about A Change of Hobbit, and we like to help out when we can.) The first day I wrote a 300-word story titled “Strange Wine,” which appeared in the 50th Anniversary issue of Amazing Stories. That was Monday, February 23rd. As I prepared to leave my home for the store on Tuesday morning, February 24th–with no idea what I would write that day–I saw the painting Larry Todd had left with me two years before. Flashback: Two weeks earlier, LA had had the worst rainstorm in years, after many months of drought. Because I was having an addition to my office built and because they had ripped out the footing around my office (which is in my home) so they could break out a wall to extend the room, my office was flooded and everything resting on the carpet was soaked. Larry’s painting was one of those items. So I wanted to write the story and get the painting back to Larry as quickly as possible for repair. I took the now-waterlogged and furled painting with me to the store, climbed up in the front window, and stared at the two alien creatures having a duel. That was what “2 Nemotropin” was–a pair of lobsterlike aliens banging away at each other. I knew that would be Tuesday’s story, but I had no idea what it would be. I sat for an hour and a half before the idea came to me that I couldn’t think of an eight-page story that could be visually adapted to an underground comix book, that would also hold together as a publishable story, written around that damned cover (which I was now coming to despise). Suddenly, I remembered that title, “The Chocolate Alphabet.” I have no idea why it came to me just then. But it did. And I knew instantly that though I couldn’t write a long story about those warring aliens, I could do a sort of Fredric Brown short-short, a pastiche. And then I carried the thought a little further and thought Why not 26 pastiches? And I typed on the cover sheet of the manuscript, “From A to Z, in the Chocolate Alphabet.” Sadly, the idea was too big for one day. I was scheduled to sit in the Hobbit’s window from 10:30 A.M., when the store opens, till 5:00 when Sherry Gottlieb goe
s off duty (though the store stays open till 9:00). I wrote all that day, and by 5:00 I was up to H. Sherry went home. I kept on writing. By 11:00 that night, with the cops cruising past and shining their spots into the window trying to figure out what that idiot was doing in there, I was up to R. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. My back was breaking. Cramped in that damned window, I was spacing out. A day of having pedestrians gawking, of customers bugging me when I wanted to write, of having to think up a complete story for each letter of the alphabet had taken its toll. I crapped out and went home. I worked on another project I had in my typewriter at the office, a fantasy film script for ABC-TV, and finally got to bed about 2:30 A.M. I got up at 8:00 the next morning, went back to the typewriter to work on the script, and about 9:30, when I should have gone in to take my shower and get ready to go to the store, I suddenly thought what S should be. I didn’t get in to the Hobbit till 11:30 but I was on U at that point. I finished the story on Wednesday, the 25th of February, a little after 1:30 P.M., and sent it off that night to Ed Ferman for publication in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, as well as copies to Larry Todd and Ron Turner for translation into a comix book. Instead of giving Larry a story, I’d given him the crazy problem of illustrating twenty-six stories. And that, peculiar as it may seem, is how this story was written.

  Since that first writing-in-the-maelstrom stint, I’ve found occasion to repeat the practice. it’s becoming a filthy habit, but damned if I don’t get a lot of work done. I’m frequently asked how I can work under such conditions; conditions that other writers would find impossible to produce under. I wasn’t equipped to give a competent answer for quite a while. As Irwin Shaw put it once, “Honesty is not the issue. Understanding is.” I just shrugged and said, “I like to write, and when I write, the world I go into, the world of the story, is more real to me than the one where I sit doing the writing.” Then I ran across a quote from Barzun, and it explained the sensibility better than I could myself. I offer it here to answer all those who think one should, or can, only work in the Ivory Tower.

  From A to Z, In the Chocolate Alphabet

  “[It is not] enough to pay attention to words only when you face the task of writing–that is like playing the violin only on the night of the concert. You must attend the words when you read, when you speak, when others speak. Words must become ever present in your waking life, an incessant concern, like color and design if the graphic arts matter to you, or pitch and rhythm if it is music, or speed and form if it is athletics. Words, in short, must be there, not unseen and unheard, as they probably are and have been up to now. It is proper for the ordinary reader to absorb the meaning of a story or description as if the words were a transparent sheet of glass. But he can do so only because the writer has taken pains to choose and adjust them with care. They were not glass to him, but mere lumps of potential meaning. He had to weigh them and fuse them before his purposed meaning could shine through.”

  Jacques Barzun, 1975

  A is for ATLANTEAN

  Their science predicted the quake. There had been two centuries of warning temblors. With the acid of genetic engineering they began a return to the ocean. It would not be a lost continent; it would be an abandoned continent. And throughout the ages that followed, humankind would search for “lost” Atlantis, never realizing that when the earth split and the fires of the underworld seared the land, the Atlanteans would already have developed gill breathing and useful membranes. See, then: Krenoa, capital city of undersea Atlantis. Snug and secure at the bottom of the Maracot Deep. Towers of porphyry and malachite, lit with lambent flames from within; walls of seaweeds and kelp, altered by chemical means to retain their flexibility yet suitable for buildings; flying bridges and causeways all hollow and shimmering. Krenoa, beautiful beyond belief. And lying in a public square, an enormous lead cannister, split open and holding darkness. An alien object dropped into Krenoa from above. See, now: the Atlanteans. Pale blue and great-eyed, gentle expressions and wisdom in their open, staring, dead eyes. What God and Nature could not destroy, the inheritors of the Earth did.

  B is for BREATHDEATH

  It’s waiting for them when they reach space. It grows on virtually every world but the Earth. It is common as weed. The little black flower with the soft red bulb in its center. Its spores fill the atmosphere of gray planets circling yellow stars and burned-out cinders. When the last of the atmosphere has been drawn off into space, the spores will settle. But they will still kill. It is a lovely flower. If one stares into its center one can see many things, disturbing things. Until the aneurisms stop the visions and the blood bursts forth. There is a race on a far star that believes the breathdeath can be ground up and cut with various juices and consumed, and it will give eternal life. No one has ever tried the recipe. It waits.

  C is for CUSHIO

  When he was ten, he was savaged by a forest creature they had thought extinct thousands of years before. They killed the beast and put it on display in the largest museum of their world. The boy was taken to Regeneration and they rebuilt him with machine parts and soft things that had been flesh in other bodies. He grew up half-human, and thus never understood what humans wanted. He killed his first when he was fifteen. By his twenty-first year he ruled the continent with a guard of mercenaries as ruthless as himself. He went into space with an armada at the age of thirty and left behind him a route of road markers that had been lives and cities and thriving markets. The route of embers and mass graves. They stopped him near Aldebaran and space was littered with wreckage beyond the range of even the most sensitive sensors. They took him alive, and they encased him in amber and they imbedded him in the earth of the homeworld, with cameras that never shut down and never let him out of their sight. And there he stayed, forever. The Regenerators of his world had done their work well. He would live forever. And mothers of the homeworld, who desired their children to go to sleep, invoked the name of Cushio. They said, “Cushio will take you if you don’t do good.” And the children were too young to know that could never be.

  D is for DIKH

  He is sick. He writes his books in the lowest level of a deep labyrinthine grotto. His books are filled with things no one ever wanted to know. Unsettling things. He became part mushroom many years ago, but even the small lizards who come and feed off his body never realize he was once a man. If he were on a desert island he would write his awful stories and send them out in bottles. But there, deep in the grotto, no one will ever read a word he has written; written with shards of sharpened stone in the blood of lizards; written on walls that go deep into the earth. But one day they will need fossil fuels, and they will break through a wall of his grotto, and they will find the books, written on endless walls. And they will find the thing with a tormented face, growing in the moist soil of the underworld.

  E is for ELEVATOR PEOPLE

  They never speak, and they cannot meet your gaze. There are five hundred buildings in the United States whose elevators go deeper than the basement. When you have pressed the basement button and reached bottom, you must press the basement button twice more. The elevator doors will close and you will hear the sound of special relays being thrown, and the elevator will descend. Into the caverns. Chance has not looked favorably on occasional voyagers in those five hundred cages. They have pressed the wrong button, too many times. They have been seized by those who shuffle through the caverns, and they have been…treated. Now they ride the cages. They never speak, and they cannot meet your gaze. They stare up at the numbers as they light and then go off, riding up and down even after night has fallen. Their clothes are clean. There is a special dry cleaner who does the work. Once you saw one of them, and her eyes were filled with screams. London is a city filled with narrow, secure stairways.

  F is for FLENSER

  Among all the paranormals, the flensers are the most kind. They read minds, they are empathic, and they see all the anguish in those they pass. They wipe clean the slates of the minds they encounter. And for this
, they suffer a great isolation. They are the pale people whose socks fall down, the ones you see standing on street corners. They are the ones with pimples and odd conversation. Theirs is a terribly lonely existence. Every day they crucify themselves, endlessly, over and over. Be kind to the pale old ladies and the mumbling scrawny boys you pass in the drugstore. They may save you from the terrors of your past.

  G is for GOLEM

  Golems are goyim that always wanted to be Jewish. But they never suffered enough guilt.

  H is for HAMADRYAD

  The Oxford English Dictionary has three definitions of hamadryad. The first is: a wood nymph that lives and dies in her tree. The second is: a venomous, hooded serpent of India. The third definition is improbable. None of them mentions the mythic origins of the word. The tree in which the Serpent lived was the hamadryad. Eve was poisoned. The wood of which the cross was made was the hamadryad. Jesus did not rise, he never died. The ark was composed of cubits of lumber from the hamadryad. You will find no sign of the vessel on top of Mt. Ararat. It sank. Toothpicks in Chinese restaurants should be avoided at all costs.