Strange Wine

by Harlan Ellison

  Grebbie and Berne watched from the dimly shadowed mouth of Chew Way. “I think they struck a deal,” Grebbie said softly. “How the hell can she do it with something looks like that?”

  Berne didn’t answer. How could people do any of the disgusting things they did to stay alive? They did them, that was all. If anyone really had a choice, it would be a different matter. But the girl was just like him: She did what she had to do. Berne did not really like Grebbie. But Grebbie could be pushed and shoved, and that counted for more than a jubilant personality.

  They followed close behind as the girl with the forever eyes took the credits from the alien and started off through the crowds of Courage Avenue. The foxmartin slid a sinuous coil around the girl’s waist. She did not look at the alien, though Berne thought he saw her shudder; but even from that distance he couldn’t be certain. Probably not: a woman who would service things.

  Dr. Breame sat in the far corner of the operating room, watching the movement of invisible life in the Knox Shop. His eyes flicked back and forth, seeing the unseen things that tried to reach him. Things without all their parts. Things that moved in liquid and things that tried to crawl out of waste bins. He knew all the clichés of seeing love or hate or fear in eyes, and he knew that eyes could reflect none of those emotions without the subtle play of facial muscles, the other features of the face to lend expression. Even so, he felt his eyes were filled with fear. Silence, but movement, considerable movement, in the cold operating room.

  The slug alien was waiting. It came up out of a belowstairs entranceway and moved so smoothly, so rapidly, that Berne and Grebbie froze in a doorway, instantly discarding their plan to knife the foxmartin and prong the girl and rush off with her. It flowed up out of the dark and filled the twisting passageway with the wet sounds of its fury. The foxmartin tried to get between Verna and the creature; and the slug rose up and fell on him. There was a long moment of terrible sucking sounds, solid matter being turned to pulp and the marrow being drawn out as bones caved in on themselves, filling the lumen with shards of splintered calcium.

  When it flowed off the foxmartin, Verna screamed and dodged away from the mass of oily gray worm oozing toward her. Berne began to curse; Grebbie started forward.

  “What the hell good can you do?” Berne said, grabbing his partner. “She’s gone, dammit!”

  Verna ran toward them, the slug alien expanding to fill the passageway, humping after her like a tidal wave. Yes, yes, she had seen that crushed, empty image…seen it a thousand times, like reflections of reflections, shadow auras behind the reality…but she hadn’t known what it meant…hadn’t wanted to know what it meant! Servicing aliens, as perverted and disgusting as it was, had been the only way to keep sane, keep living, keep a vestige of hope that there was a way out, a way off Earth. Yes, she had seen the death of the foxmartin, but it hadn’t mattered–it wasn’t a person, it was a creature, a thing that could not in sanity have sex with a human, that had to have sex with a human, in whatever twisted fashion it found erotic. But now even that avenue was closing behind her…

  She ran toward them, the slug alien making its frenzied quagmire sounds of outrage and madness, rolling in an undulant comber behind her. Grebbie stepped into her path and the girl crashed into him, throwing them both against the wall of the passageway. Berne turned and ran back the way he had come. An enormous shadow, the slug alien, puffed up to three times its size, filled the foot of the passage.

  Berne saw lights ahead, and pounded toward them.

  Underfoot, he felt a rumbling, a jerking of parts and other parts. There was a whining in his ears, and he realized he had been hearing it for some time. Then the passageway heaved and he was hurled sidewise, smashing face first into the melted window of a condemned building. He flailed wildly as the metal street under him bucked and warped, and then he fell, slamming into the wall and sliding down. He was sitting on the bucking metal, looking back toward the foot of the passage, when the slug alien suddenly began to glow with blue and orange light.

  Verna was lying so close to the edge of the creature that the heat it gave off singed her leg. The fat little man she’d run into was somewhere under the alien. Gone now. Dead. Like the foxmartin.

  But the slug was shrieking in pain, expanding and expanding, growing more monstrous, rising up almost to the level of second-storey windows. She had no idea what was happening…the whining was getting louder…she could smell the acrid scent of ozone, burning glass, boiling lubricant, sulfur…

  The slug alien glowed blue, orange, seemed to be lit from inside, writhed hideously, expanded, gave one last, unbelievable sucking moan of pain and burned. Verna crawled away on hands and knees, down the egress passage, toward the light, toward the shape of a man just getting to his feet, looking dazed. Perhaps he could help her.

  “The damned thing killed Grebbie. I didn’t know what was happening. All at once everything was grinding and going crazy. The power under the streets had been making lousy sounds all night, I guess it was overloading, I don’t know. Maybe that filthy thing caused it somehow, some part of it got down under the sidewalk plate and fouled the machinery, made it blow out. I think it was electrocuted…I don’t know. But she’s here, and she’s got what you need, and I want the full amount; Grebbie’s share and mine both!”

  “Keep your voice down, you thug. My patient may arrive at any moment.”

  Verna lay on the operating table, watching them. Seeing them. Shadows behind shadows behind shadows. All the reflections. Pay him, Doctor, she thought, it won’t matter. He’s going to die soon enough. So are you. And the way Grebbie bought it will look good by comparison. God bless and keep you, Sydni. She could not turn it off now, nor damp it with bowl, nor hide the images in the stinking flesh of creatures from other worlds of other stars. And in minutes, at best mere moments, they would ease her burden; they would give her peace, although they didn’t know it. Pay him, Doctor, and let’s get to it.

  “Did you have to maul her?”

  “I didn’t maul her, damn you! I hit her once, the way I hit all the others. She’s not damaged. You only want the eyes anyhow. Pay me!”

  The Knoxdoctor took credits from a pouch on his coverall and counted out an amount the pronger seemed to find satisfactory. “Then why is she so bloody?” He asked the question as an afterthought, like a surly child trying to win one final point after capitulating.

  “Creep off, Doc,” Berne said nastily, counting the credits. “She was crawling away from that worm. She fell down half a dozen times. I told you. If you’re not satisfied with the kind of merchandise I bring you, get somebody else. Tell me how many other prongers could’ve found you a pair of them eyes in gray-blue, so quick after a call?”

  Dr. Breame had no time to form an answer. The iris dilated and three huge Floridans stepped into the Knox Shop, moved quickly through the operating room, checked out the storage area, the consultation office, the power bins, and came back to stand near the iris, their weapons drawn.

  Breame and Berne watched silently, the pronger awed despite himself at the efficiency and clearly obvious readiness of the men. They were heavy-gravity-planet aliens, and Berne had once seen a Floridan put his naked fist through a plasteel plate two inches thick. He didn’t move.

  One of the aliens stepped through the iris, said something to someone neither Berne nor the doctor could see, and then came back inside. A minute later they heard the sounds of a group moving down the passage to the Knox Shop.

  26 Krystabel Parsons strode into the operating room and waved her guard back. All but the three already in the Knox Shop. She slapped her hands down to her hips, locking the exo-braces. She stood unwaveringly and looked around.

  “Doctor,” she said, greeting him perfunctorily. She looked at the pronger.

  “Greetings, Director. I’m pleased to see you at long last. I think you’ll find–”

  “Shut up.” Her eyes narrowed at Berne. “Does this man have to die?”

  Berne started to spea
k, but Breame quickly, nervously answered. “Oh, no; no indeed not. This gentleman has been most helpful to our project. He was just leaving.”

  “I was just leaving.”

  The old woman motioned to one of the guards, and the Floridan took Berne by the upper arm. The pronger winced, though the guard apparently was only serving as butler. The alien propelled Berne toward the iris, and out. Neither returned.

  Dr. Breame said, “Will these, uh, gentlemen be necessary, Director? We have some rather delicate surgery to perform and they can…”

  “They can assist.” Her voice was flat as iron.

  She dropped her hands to her hips again, flicking up the locking levers of the exo-braces that formed a spiderweb scaffolding around her withered legs. She strode across the operating room toward the girl immobilized on the table, and Breame marveled at her lack of reaction to the cold in the room: he was still shivering in his insulated coverall, she wore an ensemble made of semitransparent, iridescent flow bird scales. But she seemed oblivious to the temperature of the Knox Shop.

  26 Krystabel Parsons came to Verna and looked down into her face. Verna closed her eyes. The Director could not have known the reason the girl could not look at her.

  “I have an unbendable sense of probity, child. If you cooperate with me, I shall make certain you don’t have a moment of regret.”

  Verna opened her eyes. The Director drew in her breath.

  They were everything they’d been said to be.

  Gray and blue, swirling, strange, utterly lovely.

  “What do you see?” the Director asked.

  “A tired old woman who doesn’t know herself well enough to understand that all she wants to do is die.”

  The guards started forward. 26 Krystabel Parsons waved them back. “On the contrary,” she said. “I not only desire life for myself…I desire it for you. I’m assuring you, if you help us, there is nothing you can ask that I will refuse.”

  Verna looked at her, seeing her, knowing she was lying. Forever eyes told the truth. What this predatory relic wanted was: everything; who she was willing to sacrifice to get it was: everyone; how much mercy and kindness Verna could expect from her was: infinitesimal. But if one could not expect mercy from one’s own mother, how could one expect it from strangers?

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Ask and you shall receive.” She smiled. It was a terrible stricture. The memory of the smile, even an instant after it was gone, persisted in Verna’s sight.

  “I want full passage on a Long Driver.”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere I want to go.”

  The Director motioned to one of the guards. “Get her a million credits. No. Five million credits.”

  The guard left the Knox Shop.

  “In a moment you will see I keep my word,” said the Director. “I’m willing to pay for my pleasures.”

  “You’re willing to pay for my pain, you mean.”

  The Director turned to Breame. “Will there be pain?”

  “Very little, and what pain there is, will mostly be yours, I’m afraid.” He stood with hands clasped together in front of him: a small child anxiously trying to avoid giving offense.

  “Now, tell me what it’s like,” 26 Krystabel Parsons said, her face bright with expectation.

  “The mutation hasn’t bred true, Director. It’s still a fairly rare recessive–” Breame stopped. She was glaring at him. She had been speaking to the girl.

  Verna closed her eyes and began to speak. She told the old woman of seeing. Seeing directions, as blind fish in subterranean caverns see the change in flow of water, as bees see the wind currents, as wolves see the heat auras surrounding humans, as bats see the walls of caves in the dark. Seeing memories, everything that ever happened to her, the good and the bad, the beautiful and the grotesque, the memorable and the utterly forgettable, early memories and those of a moment before, all on instant recall, with absolute clarity and depth of field and detail, the whole of one’s past, at command. Seeing colors, the sensuousness of airborne bacteria, the infinitely subtle shadings of rock and metal and natural wood, the tricksy shifts along a spectrum invisible to ordinary eyes of a candle flame, the colors of frost and rain and the moon and arteries pulsing just under the skin; the intimate overlapping colors of fingerprints left on a credit, so reminiscent of paintings by the old master Jackson Pollock. Seeing colors that no human eyes have ever seen. Seeing shapes and relationships, the intricate calligraphy of all parts of the body moving in unison, the day melding into the night, the spaces and spaces between spaces that form a street, the invisible lines linking people. She spoke of seeing, of all the kinds of seeing except. The stroboscopic view of everyone. The shadows within shadows behind shadows that formed terrible, tortuous portraits she could not bear. She did not speak of that. And in the middle of her long recitation the Floridan guard came back and put five million credits in her tunic.

  And when the girl was done, 26 Krystabel Parsons turned to the Knoxdoctor and said, “I want her kept alive, with as little damage as possible to her faculties. You will place a value on her comfort as high as mine. Is that clearly understood?”

  Breame seemed uneasy. He wet his lips, moved closer to the Director (keeping an eye on the Floridans, who did not move closer to him). “May I speak to you in privacy?” he whispered.

  “I have no secrets from this girl. She is about to give me a great gift. You may think of her as my daughter.”

  The doctor’s jaw muscles tensed. This was, after all, his operating room! He was in charge here, no matter how much power this unscrupulous woman possessed. He stared at her for a moment, but her gaze did not waver. Then he went to the operating table where Verna lay immobilized by a holding circuit in the table itself, and he pulled down the anesthesia bubble over her head. A soft, eggshell-white fog instantly filled the bubble.

  “I must tell you, Director, now that she cannot hear us–”

  (But she could still see, and the patterns his words made in the air brought the message to her quite distinctly.)

  “–that the traffic in mutant eyes is still illegal. Very illegal. In point of fact, it is equated with murder; and because of the shortage of transplantable parts, the MediCom has kept it a high crime; one of the few for which the punishment is vegetable cortexing. If you permit this girl to live you run a terrible risk. Even a personage of your authority would find it most uncomfortable to have the threat of such a creature wandering loose.”

  The Director continued staring at him. Breame thought of the unblinking stares of lizards. When she blinked he thought of the membranous nictitating eyelids of lizards.

  “Doctor, the girl is no problem. I want her alive only until I establish that there are no techniques for handling these eyes that she can help me to learn.”

  Breame seemed shocked.

  “I do not care for the expression on your face, Doctor. You find my manner with this child duplicitous, yet you are directly responsible for her situation. You have taken her away from whomever and wherever she wished to be, you have stripped her naked, laid her out like a side of beef, you have immobilized her and anesthetized her; you plan to cut out her eyes, treat her to the wonders of blindness after she has spent a lifetime seeing far more than normal humans; and you have done all this not in the name of science, or humanity, or even curiosity. You have done it for credits. I find the expression on your face an affront, Doctor. I advise you to work diligently to erase it.”

  Breame had gone white, and in the cold room he was shivering again. He heard the voices of the parts calling. At the edges of his vision things moved.

  “All I want you to assure me, Dr. Breame, is that you can perform this operation with perfection. I will not tolerate anything less. My guards have been so instructed.”

  “I’m perhaps the only surgeon who can perform this operation and guarantee you that you will encounter no physically deleterious effects. Handling the eyes after the operation is something ov
er which I have no control.”

  “And results will be immediate?”

  “As I promised. With the techniques I’ve perfected, transfer can be effected virtually without discomfort.”

  “And should something go wrong…you can replace the eyes a second time?”

  Breame hesitated. “With difficulty. You aren’t a young woman; the risks would be considerable; but it could be done. Again, probably by no other surgeon. And it would be extremely expensive. It would entail another pair of healthy eyes.”

  26 Krystabel Parsons smiled her terrible smile. “Do I perceive you feel underpaid, Dr. Breame?”

  He did not answer. No answer was required.

  Verna saw it all and understood it all. And had she been able to smile, she would have smiled; much more warmly than the Director. If she died, as she was certain she would, that was peace and release. If not, well…

  Nothing was worse than life.

  They were moving around the room now. Another table was unshipped from a wall cubicle and formed. The doctor undressed 26 Krystabel Parsons and one of the two remaining Floridans lifted her like a tree branch and laid her on the table.

  The last thing Verna saw was the faintly glowing, vibrating blade of the shining e-scalpel, descending toward her face. The finger of God, and she blessed it as her final thoughts were of her mother.

  26 Krystabel Parsons, undisputed owner of worlds and industries and entire races of living creatures, jaded observer of a universe that no longer held even a faint view of interest or originality, opened her eyes.

  The first things she saw were the operating room, the Floridan guards standing at the foot of the table staring at her intensely, the Knoxdoctor dressing the girl who stood beside her own table, the smears of black where the girl’s eyes had been.

  There was a commotion in the passageway outside. One of the guards turned toward the iris, still open.

  And in that moment all sense of seeing flooded in on the Director of Minet. Light, shade, smoke, shadow, glow, transparency, opacity, color, tint, hue, prismatics, sweet, delicate, subtle, harsh, vivid, bright, intense, serene, crystalline, kaleidoscopic, all and everything at once!