Ellison Wonderland

by Harlan Ellison

  The hack ride was uneventful.

  The Frericks Foundation rose alabaster on the third tier of the New Portion. McCollum would have paused to clean Leon Packett’s face and innards, had not the Guard representatives spotted them as they left the hack at tier level. The gay uniforms of the Guard were ranked in the hall as McCollum steadied his sodden cargo into the building.

  “My God, purulent!” one Guardsman snorted sourly.

  “Is that Packett?” a dapper, balding Guardsman asked. His shoulders bore Commander boards. McCollum nodded. He tried to move past with Packett.

  The Commander stopped them. McCollum explained, “He was on the Strip. He’s not been well.”

  “Don’t cover for him, McCollum. He’s a waste, and there should be no glossing. The man is a waste. Can he talk?”

  McCollum shrugged, still supporting Packett, whose legs were taffy. “I suppose. I don’t know how much coherence you’ll get out of him, but I suppose he can talk.”

  The Commander nudged a thumb toward a conference room. “Bring him along.”

  They started toward the room, and Packett began to blather. Even as they thrust him into a chair, his words fumbled and roiled. “They with power . . . laws and can’t do, and do, and have this with what they let you do. I know! I’ve always known! The wheels with grinding down and they are afraid, so they rule you . . . rule . . . ”

  He went on ramblingly, almost semi–conscious, his words — more, his accents — tirades against authority and government. They had hampered him, but he would get even.

  The Guard listened closely, for after all, this was Packett, the inventor of Walkaway. They listened, and finally, the Commander put his gloved hand, his crimson gloved hand, across Packett’s mouth. “That will be enough, man,” he deep–throated, with suppressed fury.

  “Tell him what we want, McCollum,” the esoteric purulent–caller urged the Frericks man.

  McCollum’s eyebrows went up and his lips thinned with resignation. The military never could pull its weight in these matters. “Leon,” McCollum said, slipping to one knee beside Packett’s chair. “Leon, they want to take Walkaway back to the drawing boards. They think he has too much initiative. Leon? Can you understand — ”

  “No!

  “No, by God, damn their eyes, no! Not a touch. Not a wire. Nothing! He stays as he is! If they want to use him, damn them they’ve robbed me of my fortune, now they’d pick my brain work apart, no I say!”

  They argued and pleaded and cajoled and screeched at him for the better part of five hours. But he was firm. He still owned Walkaway. The Frericks Foundation employed Packett by grant, but Walkaway was still his own, and when it came down to it, not a military personnel at all. Walkaway was a free entity. A bond slave of metal set free. If they wanted him to go to Carina — as Packett had resolved it to himself — he would go as he was now, today, now.

  So the Guard had to accept it that way. They had to take Walkaway with his individuality . . . too much for a robot? And they had to send him on the first bounce to the stars, as a metal man with thoughts of his own.

  That was as it should have been.

  For had not Leon Packett created Walkaway?

  Had not Packett re–arranged the circuits to provide a hidden factor the Guard knew nothing about?

  Had it not all been planned that way?

  To results we know now.

  The ship was crazily–shaped. It was a sundial. With a thick trunk, and two clear face–plates at either end. Great face plates of clear substance, through which Walkaway could train his turret eyes, and see the universe as it whirled by in not–space. The drive apertures were set at angles around the thick trunk of the ship, and there were no sleeping compartments, no galley, no chairs, nothing a metal servant would find useless.

  The ship W–1 blasted free of Bounce Point on March 24th, 2111, its sole occupant a robot named Walkaway, whose face was a triple–turret tri–vid camera, and whose mind was the mind of a metal man with initiative. A certain initiative that only one man knew existed.

  The ship left on March 24th. On March 31st, Leon Packett gripped a pair of heavy scissors and thrust them deep into his neck.

  His will was a masterpiece of maudlin self–pity; but it released Walkaway from all human obligations, setting him in toto free. He was a singular now. Not an invention, but a civilian employee of the military Guard. He was to receive payment per diem for his work, and his accounts were to be handled by the Frericks Foundation.

  Whatever Walkaway earned, remained his own. The ship went out on March 24th 2111. It returned three hundred and sixty–five years later.

  And the future began.

  Oh, Lord! The records were covered with dust. But valid, that was the rub. The Frericks Foundation had sunk in its own mismanagement, and a pleasure sanctuary had risen on its whited bones. The New Portion was now called the Underside, for tiers had risen high on high to the fiftieth level above that tier. Now there was a planet–wide government, and the ship W–1 had become a legend. The robot Walkaway had become a myth. The ship had never been heard from again, and as will happen, with all cultures, time had passed the concept of star travel by.

  There was a broken–nosed statue of Leon Packett on the third tier, many miles from where the Frericks Foundation had stood. A statue that called him one of the great inventors of all time and all Mankind. There were no scissors in the statue.

  When the ship came down past the Moon, and its warning gear telemetered out the recog–signals, the Earth Central control tower was lost in disbelief. A sloe–eyed brunette who was in charge of deciphering and matching recog–signals with the call letters of those ships out, called for a checker. Her section chief, a woman who had been on the job for eighteen years, matched the recog–signals, and turned to the younger girl with a word lost on her lips.

  The call went in to Guard Central immediately.

  They denied landing co–ordinates to the W–1 and held it aspace till they had found the records in the sub–cellar of the pleasure sanctuary on the third level. When they had the files, they knew the story completely, and they sent word to berth–in the W–1.

  Walkaway looked the same.

  Huge and graceful, his face vaguely human, his body a sort of homo sapiens plus, he slid down a nylex rope from the cargo aperture of the sundial–shaped ship. He had not bothered to lower the landing ramp. As he came down the single strand, his metallic reflection shone in the smooth landing–jack’s surface. The reflection of Walkaway shone down and down and over again down as he slid quickly to the pad.

  They watched, as they might watch a legend materialize. This was the fabled robot that had gone out to seek the stars in Carina, and had returned. Three hundred and sixty–five years the W–1 had been away, and now it had returned. What would the vid–cameras of this perambulating robot show? What wonders awaited man, now that his interest was roused in the immensities of space? The Guard watched, ranked around the pad, as Walkaway slid down the nylex rope. The great sundial–shaped ship held high above them — unlike any other of the sleek vessels in the yard — tripod poised on its high–reaching legs.

  Then the robot touched Earth, and a shout went up.

  Home is the hunter, home from the hill . . .

  Three hundred and sixty–five years. No one was left who remembered this creature of flawless metal. No one who had seen Walkaway go out on the shuttle to Bounce Point.

  Bounce Point, itself now two hundred years dust. Gone in the struggle for the Outer Cold Ones.

  The robot came across the landing pad, his shining feet bright against the blackened pad–rock; his close–up turret-camera humming very quietly, taking in the reception ceremony for posterity.

  Before the Guard representative could issue forth with the practiced phrases of a hundred other receptions, the robot said clearly, “It is good to be back. Where
is Leon Packett?”

  How strange it was — they said later — a legend stood asking them about another legend. Paul Bunyan inquiring after Zeus. What could they say? Few of them even knew of the man named Leon Packett. Those who knew, were vague where he was concerned. After all, three hundred and sixty–five years. The Earth had changed.

  “I asked: where is Leon Packett? Which of you is from the Frericks Foundation?”

  There were no answers. And then someone in the front ranks of the Guard, someone who knew his history, said: “You have been gone three hundred years and more, robot.”

  “Leon Packett . . . ?”

  “Is dead,” finished the Guardsman. “Long dead. Where have you been so long?”

  And a circuit closed as data was fed to Walkaway.

  And the future was assured.

  Loneliness. Leon Packett had done his work well. Had they not tried to save a buck — actually, eleven million bucks — the wonderful glitch would not have escaped their notice. Taking Walkaway back to the drawing boards would have shown them what Leon Packett had actually accomplished. He had freed the robot’s soul completely. Not only legally, but in actuality. Walkaway felt great sadness. There had only been one other who knew his inner feelings. That had been Leon Packett. There had been empathy between them. The man a bit mad, the robot a bit man. They had spent evenings together, as two childhood friends might have; the man and the faceless metal creature, product of the man’s mind. They had not talked much, but a word had brought understanding of concepts, of emotions:

  “All of them.”

  The robot immobile, answering metallically, “Power.”

  “Someday, someday . . . ”

  “Checks.”

  “Balances. Oh, Walkaway. Someday, just someday!”

  “I know.”

  The nights had passed restlessly for Packett, while the sickness within him festered. The robot had been constructed in the image of the man. Seeing everything through its vid–eyes, hearing everything through its pickups, but saying little, working hard. Then Packett had known he would die, and Walkaway would live on. An extension of himself; the sword he would someday wield.

  He had worked long into the night, foreseeing where others would not foresee, could not foresee, though they had the knowledge. For Leon Packett had been gifted. Sick, but gifted, and he had left his curse, left his justice, left his vengeance, to live on after he was gone.

  Walkaway learned of Leon Packett’s death, and the circuit Packett had tampered with, that he had wanted to close at the knowledge of his death, snapped to with a mental thud that only Walkaway felt, that the universe was soon to know.

  The robot turned to the Guardsmen and made the one request no one would have considered, the one request that was his legally to make:

  “Pay me my wages.”

  Three hundred and sixty–five years on Earth. Nine months and fifteen days in space. The warp–drive had been better than ghosts had thought. Memories of McCollum and his fellows from MIT lived within the force bead, and had given it power. Better, far better, it had been, than their wildest imaginings. But Einstein had been correct. Mass, infinity, time zero. He had been correct, and Walkaway had earned three hundred and sixty–five years worth of wages. Per diem. Plus travel pay according to military regulations. They could not withhold it on grounds that he was using military transportation; Leon Packett had seen to that: Walkaway was a private citizen.

  Plus interest accrued.

  The sum was staggering. The sum was unbelievable. The sum could, would, must bankrupt the Earth government. It was unheard–of. The Prelate convened, and the arguments raged, but Walkaway needed no defense. He merely requested: “Pay me my wages.” And they had to do it.

  Oh, they tried to dodge their way out of it. They tried to ensnare him in legalities, but he was a man of alumasteel, and legalities could not affect him.

  The circuit had closed, and his life’s plan was set. In the mind of Walkaway burned the conscience and soul of his creator. Leon Packett was not dead. In his creation was re–born the intense, vibrant hatred of power and government and authority. In Walkaway was the perfect weapon; indestructible, uncaring, human as human it need be, inhuman as inhuman it must be, to bring about the downfall of that which Packett had despised.

  Fifteen years in a cellar laboratory had carried forth for over three hundred years, and the future was molded on printed circuits.

  Finally, they acceded. They paid him his wages. The government of Earth was bankrupted. The world belonged to a man of alumasteel. It was no longer Earth. Had he wished, he might have named it Walkaway’s World.

  For such it was.

  Leon Packett had foreseen much. He had applied Einstein’s equations, and he had known what would happen. The scientists of the Frericks Foundation had known, also, and they had considered it all. But the job had had to be done, in that era before Man had turned inward once more. They had feared what might happen, but not considered it an inevitability. They had looked on it the way the farmer looks on earthquake. Yes, it might happen, but that would be an act of God, not a thing that must be.

  But they had not considered Leon Packett. He had taken steps. He had altered his creation, and made it want its pay, when it knew he was dead. For dead he was dead, and alive he was dead. But in the soul of Walkaway he lived again.

  So he had created an act of God.

  Twisted in thought, crying in the darkness of his tormented mind, Leon Packett had changed the future. Changed it so irrevocably, evened the score so beautifully, Man would remember and curse and live with his name forever. They had known of the possibility, and they had tried to prevent it.

  “Let us take Walkaway back to the drawing boards,” McCollum — that shadow lost in the past — had cried. But Leon Packett had overruled him, “No!”

  He would not let his name and his future be stolen from him. There was no need for him to go on living out a worthless life. That was bitterness. He had a tool that would and could and needed to drive forward to his ordained destiny. He had Walkaway, and though they suspected what might be, what could be, they never thought it needed to be. They figured without the drive and thirst of Walkaway’s master. They figured without the hatred of a man for himself and for all other men.

  Walkaway wanted his wages.

  He got them, by getting the Earth.

  There was not that much money in the world. Nor was there that much property. But there was the government, and soon Walkaway was the government.

  That was the future Leon Packett built for himself, as the shrine of his memory.

  Walkaway was not vindictive.

  But Leon Packett was.

  There haven’t been many changes. Not many. Not for us. It has been the same for a very long time.

  Walkaway was fair, and carried forth Packett’s desires in the only way an alumasteel man could.

  Changes? No, not many.

  But you’ll forgive me, of course. I must hurry now. I’m quite overdue.

  I should have been at my lubrication hours ago.

  Man alone. Man trapped by his own nature and the limits of the world around him. Man against Man. Man against Nature. All of these inevitably come down to the essential question of how courageous a man can be in a time of massive peril. They all come down to how a man can survive, by strength of arm, by fleetness of foot, and most of all, by inventiveness of intellect. This has been the subject of much that I have written, perhaps because I see my Times and my culture in the most “hung–up” condition it has ever known. Each man, each thinking individual, for the first time in the history of the race, completely — or as near completely as prejudiced mass media will allow — aware of the forces hurling him into the future. The Bomb, ready to go whenever the finger jumps to the proper button, the ethics slowly but steadily deteriorating, the morality finding its lowest co
mmon level, and each man, each thinking individual, virtually helpless before the fluxes and flows of civilization and herd instinct. Yet, is he really alone? Ever? Or is the imagination and fierce drive to survive a tenacious linkage among us all? And if it is, then are we not brothers to the man who had

  Nothing For My Noon Meal

  There was a patch of Fluhs growing out beyond the spikes, and I tried to cultivate them, and bring them around, but somehow they weren’t drawing enough, and they died off before they could mature. I needed that air, too. My sac was nearly half–empty. My head was starting to hurt again. It had been night for three months at that time.

  My world is a small one. Not large enough to hold an atmosphere any normal Earthman could breathe, not small enough to have none and be totally airless. My world is the sole planet of a red sun, and it has two moons, each one of which serves to eclipse my world’s sun for six of the eighteen months. I have light for six months, dark for twelve. I call my world Hell.

  When I first came here, I had a name, and I had a face and I even had a wife. My wife died when the ship blew up, and my name died slowly over the ten years I have lived here, and my face — well, the less I remember, the easier it is for me.

  Oh, I don’t complain. It hasn’t been easy here for me, but I’ve managed, and what can I say? I’m here and I’m alive as best I can be here, and what there is, there is. But what there is not, is greater than mere complaining could bring back.

  The first time I saw my world was as a small egg of light in a plot tank on the ship I shared with my wife. “Do you think that has anything for us?” I asked her.

  At first it was good to remember her, for when I did, a sweetness came to me, burning away my tears and my hate. At first. “I don’t know, Tom, maybe.” That was what she said. “Maybe.” That was the sweet word, the way she said it. She always had a soft blonde way of saying maybe that made me want to wonder.

  “The ore hold could do with something to chew on,” I gibed, and she smiled with her full lips and her teeth that gently nuzzled her lower lip. “Have to pay for these damn honeymoons of yours somehow.”