The City on the Edge of Forever

by Harlan Ellison

  [9] That Source of All Wisdom, the recently-married Alan Brennert, has apprised me—subsequent to my having written those lines about Roddenberry plagiarizing Lucas and Foster—that Roddenberry’s claim about the origin of “In Thy Image” is at least partially correct. Alan’s belief is that it originated as a story idea called “Robot’s Return” in the bible Gene did for the Star Trek II series. Alan Dean Foster picked that as the episode he wanted to write, which became “In Thy Image.” But Roddenberry still stole it from John Lucas’s Nomad. This attempt at being punctilious about the facts comes to you through the courtesy of the Auctorial Honesty Network. At the tone, the time will be ten forty-two, and thirty seconds.

  [10] Hell, I’m tired of playing cutesy with you about who actually wrote the rewrite that aired. I’ve hinted at it, because to me it was a great revelation. But if you go to page 257 of the Afterwords section, you will find Dorothy C. Fontana’s comments, wherein for the first time in our more than thirty years of mutual respect and friendship, she cops to having worked on the teleplay after Gene Coon’s rewrite. Somehow, Dorothy didn’t know about the first rewrite, the gawdawful version written by the man who briefly replaced John D.F. Black…Steve Carabatsos. Dorothy makes no reference to it, but I had a copy of that version and it was the existence of that inept attempt to rewrite me that convinced me I should drag my ass back to Desilu, for no remuneration and damned little approbation, to do the three or four rewrites that you will find reprinted in this book.

  But what of Roddenberry’s claim to have penned the aired version? Well if we are to believe Gene Coon—whose words come to us through the lips of Glen Larson and others—he wrote that version. But now we know that Dorothy Fontana whacked at it after they were done with it. I assert that Roddenberry may have fiddled, but that he did no substantive work. At least, nowhere in the UCLA Star Trek archive do we find even one page of a “City” script with Roddenberry’s handwriting on it, or his typewriter’s identifiable print, or anything that confirms either Dorothy’s or his own contention that he rewrote on “City.”

  Peculiar, ain’t it? I was supposed to have written only a first draft, according to Gene, but the UCLA archive contains at least three complete drafts and any number of rewrites, all neatly dated and catalogued; but nary a whisper of a script on “City” that can be directly laid at the altar of the man who twisted the truth so many times he came to believe his own fanciful mythology.

  Gee, I wish everyone would buy into my untruths as they so happily did Roddenberry’s, without ratiocination, without question. Hell, with that kind of blind adoration, even I could make the trains run on time.

  [11] Subsequent to the publication of the limited edition of this book last year, one of my faithful readers called me on this bit of historical recollection. And impaled me on my own words. In one of my two books of television criticism (which White Wolf will be reissuing in the Edgeworks series, probably in 1997), THE GLASS TEAT, I mention in one of my columns from that period (circa 1968-70) that Bennett and Rita Lakin had solicited me to come in and pitch a story idea for The Mod Squad. Nothing more is said of this liaison, and though I’ve combed my own extensive (and orderly) files, and searched through Leslie Kay Swigart’s massive (but as yet unpublished) thousand-page-plus bibliography of all my writings, I find no Mod Squad treatment or teleplay or even story notes. So, to be precise, I was wrong when I asserted I had never been approached to work on that series. But as far as I can tell, my memory isn’t playing me too many tricks, because there’s no record of The Mod Squad request from Rita Lakin ever going any further.

  TREATMENTS

  21 March 1966

  13 May 1966

  March 21, 1966

  STAR TREK

  “The City on the Edge of Forever”

  written by Cordwainer Bird

  TEASER:

  FADE IN aboard the USS Enterprise somewhere out near the Rim. CLOSE ON a small isometrically-shaped metal container, as it is opened by a hand. CAMERA HOLDS CLOSE as the lid opens with tambour doors, so that the interior rises, and a strange dull light floods the frame. As the container opens, the black velvet interior slides up to reveal possibly half a dozen strange and wondrous glowing jewels. Yet they are not jewels. They are the infamous and illegal Jillkan dream-narcotics, the Jewels of Sound. They are faceted solids, but not stone, more like a hardened jelly that burns pulsingly with an inner light: gold, blue, crimson, orange.

  We HEAR a VOICE O.S., a voice that shakes slightly, trying to maintain a tenuous control. “Beckwith, give me one. Stop it, Beckwith!” and as the CAMERA PULLS BACK we see one of the Enterprise’s officers LT/JG LeBEQUE, a French-Canadian with a strong face; but a face that is now beaded with sweat. And holding the Jewels of Sound is RICHARD BECKWITH, another officer, a man whose face shows intelligence and…something else. Cunning, perhaps, or even subdued cruelty. Cruelty kept rigidly in check, channeled to specific uses. Beckwith smiles as he stares with fascination at the Jewels of Sound.

  “How long have you been my man, Lieutenant?” Beckwith asks, softly. He isn’t taunting, merely interested. “How long have you been hooked on the Jewels?”

  The Lieutenant’s face tightens. He isn’t a toady, neither is he a weak man. But the Jewels of Sound have been listed illegal throughout the Galaxy because only one exposure is needed to make a man a confirmed addict. Swallow one Jewel, experience the Circe call of the strange music and lights the Jewels offer, and you are lost forever. And so LeBeque will swallow his pride, and answer the man who holds the delight he needs so desperately, “You gave me my first taste on Karkow, that was a year ago. I need one, Beckwith, stop playing with me.”

  Beckwith extends one, a golden Jewel. But as the Lieutenant reaches for it, he closes his fist over it, closing off the light, and LeBeque winces, as though the loss of it physically hurts him. “I want to know our next putdown planet, and what the security log says about valuable commodities. I’ll want a landfall pass and I’ll want you to cover for me while I trade with the natives.”

  “After the slaughter on Harper Five, you’ll do it again? If Kirk finds out—”

  “He won’t find out, will he, LeBeque? He won’t find out, or you’ll never hear these Jewels inside you again. Remember that. I’m coming back from this a rich man, and I’ll never have to go to space again. Nobody’s going to get in the way of that, LeBeque. I want to live a quiet life, but that takes resources.”

  LeBeque gropes for words, “So you cheat aliens, get them hooked on illegal dream-narcotics, and steal what they could trade for cultural advances.”

  “Hooked like you, LeBeque. Hooked like you.”

  “Yes, like me. And I’m already paying.”

  “But you’ll pay a little more. Do I get what I need?”

  LeBeque nods slowly. Beckwith gives him the Jewel and the Enterprise Lieutenant swallows it. CAMERA HOLDS past Beckwith smiling knowingly at LeBeque, and as a look of almost orgasmic pleasure crosses the Lieutenant’s face we REVERSE ANGLE from LeBeque’s POV and we see THRU HIS EYES as Beckwith’s face begins to shimmer with weird lights, like a Van deGraaf generator. Then we HEAR the incredible music of the Jewels—sounds from another time, another space, sounds that reach into LeBeque’s head and strum the synapses of his brain, as the lights collide and merge and swivel and twirl and dance in patterns of no-pattern, and Beckwith’s face fades away with that damnable knowing smile, and for SEVERAL BEATS we SEETHRU the drug-drunken eyes of a man in the grip of an alien narcotic. Then, as we COME BACK INTO FOCUS we HEAR the VOICE of MR. SPOCK as he yells, “LeBeque! Damp that starboard unit, you’re running into the red! You’ll blow the entire drive! LeBeque!” and we COME BACK INTO FOCUS finding ourselves in the control central with LeBeque being dragged back away from the damping controls by Spock and several other crewmen.

  He reels back and the HIGH PIERCING WHINE of machinery stressing to implosion level subsides as Spock damps the units. The extraterrestrial spins on LeBeque and coldly informs him, “You
’ve been walking around this control country like a man under water for the past two hours. If you’re feeling unwell Mr. LeBeque, relieve yourself and leave the bridge.”

  “T-two hours…?” LeBeque murmurs, shaking his head as though to clear it. He excuses himself from the bridge and WE GO WITH HIM as he passes down cross-corridors in the ship, pausing to fight with himself, emotions playing across his face that tell us the man despises himself for what he has allowed himself to become. Then, making a decision, he heads for Beckwith’s cubicle and as we come to them in 2-SHOT, we hear LeBeque say, “I’ve had it. Whatever Kirk wants to do with me, I’ll deserve it; but I’m turning you in, Beckwith.”

  He turns to go, and has taken only two steps into the corridor when Beckwith, wild with panic, emerges from behind him and we ZOOM IN on Beckwith as he raises a massive block of green jade and swings it heavily again and again at LeBeque, out of the frame. Another ZOOM IN on a trio of crewmembers, two men and a woman as they round the junction of corridors and see the murder and then we HARD CUT TO

  The Assembly Salon of the Enterprise where a court martial is concluding. Kirk is presiding, with Spock and the SCOTTISH ENGINEERING OFFICER and THE MEDIC in charge. Much of the ship’s complement is on hand to hear CAPTAIN JAMES KIRK summarize:

  “The responsibility of those of us who come out from Earth is to come in peace, to spread the best of mankind among the other races of the stars. Those who seek to pervert this responsibility, to profiteer from the contact between races, to fill their own pockets at the expense of understanding and brotherhood, serve a devil that has no name. Richard Beckwith, by the evidence of this court-martial you have been proved guilty of fomenting insurrection on a less-advanced planet, of luring unsophisticated aliens into the vilest sort of narcotics addiction, of smuggling contraband and of murder in cold blood. The sentence of this court, by the articles of any justice applicable to these crimes, is that you be carried to the nearest uninhabited planet—for we would not sully the soil of a settled world by the imposition of your body—and there be put to death in the manner proscribed by the articles of punishment under which this ship goes to space. Do you have anything to say to this court?”

  Beckwith smiles. “I’ve always wanted to end this jaunt with a quiet, elegant life. What could be more elegant than an entire planet for my graveyard.”

  And as we HOLD ON Beckwith, we FADE OUT.

  ACT ONE:

  FADE IN the bulk of the Enterprise hanging above the silver-gray ball of a lost planet far out in the heart of The Coalsack. Kirk speaking: “Ship’s Log, star-date 3134.8. At last we have found a desolate mote in the emptiest reaches of nowhere between galaxies. Astrogators call it The Coalsack for stars are few and far between. We have found one such star, without a name, labeled merely with a number. And circling that dying sun is but a single planet. My men have seen it and turned their faces away. Most of the viewports have been made opaque; they don’t want to even think about a world so lost, so lonely, that it is only serviceable as an execution chamber for a creature not even worth calling a man. I am taking Spock and two other officers, and a firing squad of twelve men down.”

  They transport down to the surface of the dead world. It is a featureless ball of silver-gray mists and cold. They wear insulation suits and breatherpaks. But when they are down, and about to commence the execution, one of the techs in the group announces there is radiation from over the horizon. Kirk is troubled: the protocols of the ship’s articles postulate a courtesy of not executing criminals aspace, on an inhabited world. They must check it out before they can dispose of Beckwith.

  They strike out toward the source of radiation and in the far distance see a series of great mountain peaks, rising up like shards of glass from an ocean of silver. They get a distant impression of a great city on the furthest of those peaks, a series of spires that tower into the cadaverous gray sky without warmth or welcome.

  But they go toward the spires and soon they find themselves on a mountain top near the city. As they top a rise, they are astounded to see a group of men…but such men as the explorers from Earth have never known:

  Old they are. Old as the chill and dying sun that casts only shadows on this empty planet. Old as thought, old as time, old as the cinder on which they live. Nine feet tall, and shapeless beneath the long white robes that reach to the mist-laden ground. Even taller if one allows their mitered headpieces. Taller still by the lengths of their snow-beards, the only part of them other than their lined and weary faces that shows from their clothing.

  Kirk and Spock register astonishment at finding these ancient creatures, but the old men finally speak, after long beats in which their motionlessness makes us suspect they may be stone. And this is what they say:

  We are the Guardians of Forever. We have been here since before your sun burned hot in space, before your race came into being. We have been here when this area of space was so filled with young suns that it was always high noon from their light.

  “But why do you stay here when this world is cold and empty?” Mr. Spock demands.

  Only on this planet do the myriad pulse-flows of time and space merge. Only here do the flux lines of Forever meet. Only here on this empty corpse of a world is there a gateway to the past, where the time machine created by the Ancients can work. Only here. And we were set to watch the time machine, so many hundreds of centuries ago that even we do not have clear memories of it.

  The Guardians explain that they are almost immortal, that they have been guarding “the time machine” for so many eons that Kirk and his party are the first visitors they have had since two hundred thousand years before dinosaurs walked the Earth. Kirk expresses astonishment at the concept of a “time machine,” that he had always thought it was the fable of lab technicians when they had had too much pure grain to drink. The Guardians nod their heads in the direction of a shimmering pillar of light, set between the gray-silver rocks. The time machine. Built on lines of creation that mortal Man will not discover for a hundred hundred times the span of years he has been in existence. Created out of pure matter, and harnessed to this world where the passage of time and space meet just so. The pillar of light rises up and disappears. Into that fire of forever lies the passage to the past.

  Kirk advises one of his techs to bind Beckwith in a straitjacket of force-fields, till they have spoken more with these ancients, and made some decision as to whether the sentence can be carried out here, or they must go to space again, to find a truly uninhabited world.

  Beckwith is taken away and Kirk asks the Guardians if they would consider it an imposition to tell them more about the time machine. They smile a little wearily, and say they would be pleasured to do so. “We want to know,” Kirk says gently, and they answer: We have nothing to do but desire to show you. Uncounted millennia they have stood here, silent, and to exercise their craft is their delight.

  They explain how the time machine works, and then they offer to show Kirk the past. He asks if they can show him the past of any world, and they say yes. Kirk asks to see the past of Old Earth. They show him the time of the mastodons, the time of the clipper ships, the time of the Depression, 1930. And the men of Earth marvel.

  Is it possible to go back, they ask.

  Yes, it is possible to go back, but not wise. Man and non-Man must live in their present or in their future. But never in their past, save to learn lessons from it. If passage back is effected, the voyager may add a new factor to the past, and thus change everything from that point to the present all through the universe. It is dangerous.

  The time machine has been left set at the year 1930, Old Earth. As Kirk and Spock talk with the Guardians, the ancient men tell them that time moves at its normal pace all through the universe, but not here, not within the sphere of influence of the machine, for it is akin to standing on the king’s cross, a zone of no-time. Spock then says to Kirk, “You see how old they are, centuries older than any human or alien we have ever encountered? Yet they say that tim
e moves barely at all here. Can you imagine how old they must be to have aged so much.”

  The thought is staggering to Kirk, but he has barely a moment to think about it, for Beckwith manages to cleverly escape his guards, grabs a weapon and kills one of the guards as he makes a long run toward the time machine. Roused from their ruminations by the sounds of gunfire, Kirk and Spock plunge forward to stop Beckwith. He slams Spock across the jaw with the butt of the phaser rifle and keeps going, a broken-field dash that Kirk suddenly realizes is toward the time machine, Kirk takes a flying dive toward Beckwith, and manages to throw him off-balance. But Beckwith does a little dance-step of maneuvering and though he loses the phaser rifle, he hurls himself forward and in a whooooshing of space rushing to fill the vacuum where he has been Beckwith vanishes into the pillar of light, even as Kirk grabs up the phaser and fires a blast of coruscating energy at the pillar of light—now once again empty.

  Beckwith has gone back. Back to the past.

  Kirk dashes back to Spock. The extraterrestrial gets lumpily to his feet. He is all right. The Guardians of Forever are in a panic. They say the fact of adding Beckwith to the past has changed everything. Kirk says everything looks the same. Yes, here, on this world, everything is the same, they explain, but from here outwards everything is different. It is another universe out there.

  “How? How is it changed?” Kirk demands.

  They do not know. Only that the fabric of time has been warped, the river that is the time-flow has been diverted, and everything in the present has been altered. At that moment the Guardians’ city, high on one of the crags far behind them, begins to shimmer, and send out waves of light. The Guardians say they are being summoned by others, that the great ancient machines that govern the time pillar of light are registering traumas in time, and they must return to their city.