In the Deadlands

by David Gerrold

  “Take off your clothes. That’s what you have to do.”

  “You’re not putting me on?”

  “You want the hit?”

  “Are you going to take one too?”

  They shook their heads. “We’re already on ours. We don’t need yours.”

  “Oh.” I still didn’t move to drop my clothes.

  They waited. “Are you shy?”

  “No. It’s just that—”

  “Would you like us to take off our clothes too?” one asked. The other didn’t wait for me to answer, but dropped her robe (how come I hadn’t noticed that before?) to the floor. She was as sexless as an eight-year-old boy. Flat chested. I stared, yeah. No curves, nothing. What a bring-down. A super bummer. A beautiful face like that and no bod. No hair, no nothing. The other was just the same, she’d dropped her robe too, only she was wearing black briefs. She didn’t move to drop them. It wasn’t necessary. My curiosity was dead.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “All right.” I shrugged out of my shirt, started to fumble with my belt. “Hey, Wooze?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You coming?”

  “Huh?”

  “Take off your clothes...”

  “Uh-uh, Deet. I don’t want any. Thanks.”

  “Aw, come on. I don’t want to go alone.”

  “No, Deet. All I want to do is go home.”

  “Don’t be a drag, Woozle. Do it.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “But I want you to.”

  “Deet, I’ll go anywhere you go, Deet. I’ll never leave you alone. Promise. But please, don’t ask me to take any more stuff, Deet. I don’t like it.”

  “How do you know? You haven’t tried it.” I pulled her to her feet, started pulling her clothes off. She tried to resist at first, then realized it was useless. The army coat, the baggy jeans, the T-shirt, and soiled underwear fell to the floor. She stood there naked and wiped her nose on the back of her wrist. “Sit,” I said. She sat.

  I kicked off my shoes, then dropped my pants and underwear all in one motion. Sit, lift the legs, and slide them off; one foot, then the other. The two of us sat naked on the mattress. Ready for action. Whatever the action was.

  Woozle was clenched in on herself, arms folded across tight little breasts. I don’t know why she was ashamed. She had more than these girls did. No matter, she kept her nose into her knee and sniffed, wiped it across her leg.

  I turned to the chicks. (What happened to the two guys who were in the room? Where did they go?) “Okay, we’re ready.”

  One of them stepped forward (there was that funny smell again) and held out a jar that looked like a cold cream thing. I didn’t take it.

  First, I asked, “How much?”

  “Enough,” she replied. “Enough for two.”

  “No. I mean, how much do I owe you?”

  She cocked her head in puzzlement. “Nothing.”

  “Uh-uh,” I started to pick up my pants. “No free rides. Not for this head.”

  They exchanged a confused glance. “Why?”

  “Anything free’s got a hook in it. Like the first jolt of H—and that’s not my bag. Don’t plan on getting hooked on anything.”

  They looked at each other again. “Okay. Twenty dollars.”

  “Twenty?”

  “Two rides. One yours, one hers.”

  “Yeah,” but I was still suspicious.

  “You want it? Or not?”

  I sniffed. That was the source of the funny odor, like old orange peels. So were the girls. “What is it?”

  She shrugged. “No name. Just is.”

  “And I just rub it on.”

  She nodded. She held the jar in her two hands and waited.

  “No hook in it?”

  “If you don’t want it, we don’t put hook in. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “No hook.” I still didn’t like it, but I wanted to try it. The smell was getting deep, deeper. I wanted to feel what was at the bottom.

  The decision was made. I pulled the twenty out of my pocket, creased it between my fingers to straighten it, and tossed it over. The jar was heavy in my hands and it had a slippery feel.

  Okay, we’d do the number. Just once. See what it was and that’d be it. Course, that’s what I’d said about acid the first time too. The top unscrewed greasy, and suddenly the funny smell was intense. It was sort of like ozone and sort of like flowers.

  The girls were sitting again, hardly even watching. As if they’d lost all interest after making the connection. I turned to Wooze and offered the jar to her. She didn’t look up. She didn’t stand up.

  “Just rub it in?” I asked.

  “Uh-huh,” said one of the girls. I couldn’t tell which, I wasn’t looking at them. “All over. Cover everything you want to take with you.”

  “Except the soles of your feet,” put in the other. “Unless you don’t want to come back.” And with that, they both laughed. I didn’t get the joke. Perhaps I would later. I took some of the goop in my hand and smeared it across Woozle’s chest. I had to go down on one knee and push her arms aside to do it. She didn’t resist.

  After a bit, I made her stand up and I made sure that I’d rubbed her all over—except for the soles of her feet. “What’s it feel like, Wooze?”

  “Nothing yet. Just slippery.”

  “Well, maybe it takes a little time. You do me now.”

  She did. Her hands were dull and lifeless and spread the goop with no more feeling than shovels. She did it mechanically and uncaring, but she was thorough. I helped her a little bit, but it wasn’t necessary. She was like a machine, running sensors all up and down me as if to memorize my body for later.

  Then I was covered with the goop all over and the smell of it was overpowering. “Now what?” I looked at the girls, but they weren’t there.

  “Hold hands,” they replied. “That is, if you want to go together.”

  Yeah, that sounded right. This was the new kick. This was what I’d been promised in front of Cannie’s—a trip you could share. No more one-man-alone numbers. I was tired of sitting around in a room watching everybody else going in a different direction. I wanted someone to share my direction. Yeah, I was ready for it. Now, you could go and take someone good along to share it with you—and you could share theirs. I reached out for Woozle’s hand. It felt different somehow. Tinier. Yeah, if you were going to share it, you should at least be holding hands.

  I could feel the stuff now. Or, that is, I couldn’t feel it any more. I couldn’t feel anything anymore. I felt...disembodied(?)...no, that wasn’t it either. Creeping cold warmth was seeping out around my edges, dilating into the not-quite.

  My eyes, great multifaceted things, grew till they spread around the top and sides of my head and I looked in all directions at once. Woozle’s hand looked back at mine. We stood half an inch above the floor and listened to water burning our legs.

  What it was, was this—I was a pillar of fire, taken fresh from the freezer, standing still in the lightless and examining things in the reflected glare of (myself) and all was timeless until the water drops spattered into steam upon the hot. That didn’t make sense.

  But who cared? I was tripping. And Woozle was too. She was with me. She always was. Oh, yeah. We were in a tiny red cubicle—red from the frozen flame?— just one cubicle out of millions of identical tiny red cubicles stacked one upon another, left and right and north and east and yesterday and Tuesday and purple and—

  FLASH!

  Woop? What was that? Now the top of the room hung below us. We looked down the long tube at ourselves still holding hands. The red light seeped and pulsed and permeated it all. We were above and looking down and sideways at the little honeycombed rednesses below. Little black insects scraped within.

  The whole city of shining black was below us. We looked down at them from our hot two-hundredth-story window, noses pressed flat against the glass, trying to push through it so as to see our own selve
s from the outside. Cannie’s was only ten floors below. We watched the black uniforms herding them out of the building and into the street where they shot them. What a joke. Why hadn’t it been listed in TV Guide?

  Ooh, that was almost a bummer. We hopped the up elevator at the top floor and kept going and—

  FLASH!

  —and again. What was that? Wow—whatever it was, it was. A desert hung below us. Above us. “Oh, Wooze, look at that!”

  She looked. “Yeah, Deet, I see it.” Luminous flyspecks danced and skittered along a net of silver threads, in and out, patterns of streaking steel. Beyond it, the greater dark.

  Another—

  FLASH!

  —and this time we’re out in nothingness, looking at the whole marble. Why isn’t it bigger? I thought it was bigger than that, didn’t you? “Hey, Deet—I mean, Woozle, isn’t that supposed to be bigger?”

  “I don’t know, Deet. I’m just following you. Wherever you want, Deet.”

  “Hey, don’t be a bummer—this is...something.”

  Blue and white streaks, flat mottled brown patches, familiar shapes, but white streaks kept them from being too familiar and—

  FLASH!

  Now! I was starting to see the inside of it. It was like a whiteness, but with crystal blues and spidery blacks and all kinds of coldnesses creeping out from inside. An expanding—and a shrinking too.

  “Deet! Please, slow down a bit. You’re going too fast for me.”

  “No, I’m not. It’s okay.”

  A greater darkness beyond, everything was scattered and speckled tiny this side of it. I wanted to expand to fill it. A glaring whiteness off to one side shouldn’t have been that big. After all, it was really only very tiny and—

  Hang on, Deet—here we go!

  FLASH!

  The glaring whiteness dwindled to be a speck like all the others. I marked it for future reference. In case we wanted to come back to it later.

  A wash of bright stretched from one infinity to the other. All the yesterdays stacked against all the tomorrows. The thing had a structure, but I was too close to it to see what it was. I’d have to move back—and the greater darkness backdrop was still just as far away and—

  “Deet! Can’t we stop and rest for just a minute?”

  “Oh, no, kitten! Come on, we’re almost there! This is it! This is really it!”

  And—

  FLASH!

  I grabbed her hand and we went. Yeah, this was it! I didn’t have to say it any more. It wasn’t necessary. I was convinced—because it really was it. IT! The trip—and it was still going!

  A great wheel of spiraling sparkling dust turning against the ultimate velvet. Turning, turning. Oh wow, how big is that thing? How big?

  FLASH!

  Tiny—really very tiny. A myriad of them spin twinkly through the darkness. Like snowflakes, scattering in a wind, roiling ever outward. We dive back into and out of it. I want to keep going. Expand to fill the whole—

  FLASH!

  —little fireflies disappear into the hole. And—

  FLASH!

  FLASH!

  FLASH!

  And I still hadn’t filled it.

  FLASH!

  But I was getting there! I was!

  FLASH!

  Oh, Woozle? Isn’t this the greatest—

  FLASH!

  Almost, almost. Just once more, I think—and then we’ll fill this tiny black cubicle, and then one more after that and we’ll burst it and look down onto it from the outside and look down at all the row upon row of identical shiny black globes and—

  FLASH!

  Not yet!

  FLASH!

  Still not yet! Dammit! Once more. I want it, dammit! Let’s go, Woozle. Once more.

  FLASH!

  And I throw my hands outstretched into the nevermore, always reaching and grasping, that elusive black wall remaining just ever so out of my reach and—

  FLASH!

  FLASH!

  FLASH! DAMMIT!

  Blackness, nothing but blackness and blackness beyond. Almost, almost. I almost made it, this time I almost made it...

  FIASH!

  But nothing.

  Okay, so we don’t do the big number this time around. We dive back into the wrong end of the microscope and shrink down into the other direction of infinity—inwardly.

  Ping.

  The little wheels reappear, spinning madly. I pick one at random and down we go, and—

  Ping.

  —it becomes a big wheel. I head for a spiral arm, zigzag around the exploding core, and—

  Ping.

  —pop out at a here in the middle of empty brightness. Rocky nothingnesses whirl about it. The wrong one. Not mine. Try again. So—

  Ping.

  And this time, here is a blue and red binary, a pinpoint of bright and a bloated crimson vagueness. Streamers of blood-colored gas spiral outward from the giant. The lesser-sized one would have been lost among them if not for its brilliance. But— This one isn’t mine either.

  Ping.

  Up and out again. An explosion, a never-ending one. Dazzling, sleeting, brighting, sheeting, flaring, flashing, glaring, shimmering, slashing intensity of light so thick you have to push at it to move. All around me. All around. We hung at the core of the supernova and—

  FLASHED.

  The wheel again, the great wheel. No, that’s the wrong direction. I wanted to go the other way. My God, how big is that thing anyway? Immense. No, tiny—tiny, tiny, remember! I am immense. Remember the outer blackness, how big it is and how big I am and never fill it. That wheel is only a mote of dust in the hungry sucking dark. I am as big to the wheel as it is to me. I am small and vast and—

  Ping.

  I remember and dive back into it. Back to the home world, right, Woozle?

  Woozle?

  Hey, Woozle—where are you?

  Woozle...?

  I’m alone in the vampire dark. Somewhere I’ve lost my—

  “Woozle!!”

  No answer.

  I plunge through the night, carefully retracing. Where did I leave her? Where did I let go? She was with me here. Flash. Here. Flash. Here.

  She was with me all the way. Or was she? She wasn’t. She wasn’t with me at all.

  Flash/Ping.

  Back down into the wheel. Back down. Home system, home sun, home planet. Yeah, that’s it. Blue-white streaked disc. Dive into it.

  I know what must have happened. She couldn’t keep up. Yeah, that’s right. She couldn’t keep up. So she went home without me. She went on home. Yeah, that’s what she must have done. Yeah, that’s it. She wouldn’t just run off on her own.

  Into the disc and down the long tunnel and the walls unstretch, become a room again, and I land on the floor and down.

  The room is empty. And alone.

  All of them were empty—

  AFTERWORD:

  Other people open doorways that take them away from us. Sometimes we can follow those journeys, sometimes we can’t. Sometimes we want to and don’t.

  I sometimes wonder where they went and if I should have followed….

  Oracle for a White Rabbit

  HARLIE and I have been friends for a long time. He insists on creeping into books that are not supposed to be about him and making them about him anyway. In every case, he’s been a damned pain in the ass—because he keeps asking uncomfortable questions. HARLIE’s job is to create ethical dilemmas.

  This story is his beginning.

  It was the sixties. Some writers were arguing that the use of drugs enhanced their creativity. Others disagreed, arguing that tampering with your brain chemistry was probably not a good idea.

  Myself, I was something of an agnostic on the issue. (Yes, I did try marijuana in college, but I didn’t exhale.) But it didn’t take me long to discover that the use of marijuana was slowing down my typing speed from 120 words per minute to no words per month.

  At this remove, decades later, I’m clear th
at drug use is a self-centered activity. It’s about what’s happening in your own head, not what’s happening in the physical universe. It doesn’t make a difference in the real world. It doesn’t contribute anything to anybody else. If anything, it degrades a person’s ability to make a difference.

  But I didn’t know it that way then and I couldn’t say it as clearly as I can now. What I did know, if only on a gut level, was that there was something wrong with the arguments for drug use—and if I couldn’t ask the right question, then maybe HARLIE could.

  So the first HARLIE story wasn’t really about HARLIE. It was about asking a question that ultimately turned out to be much more profound than I realized when I typed it.

  It’s at the end of the story.

  WHAT WILL I BE WHEN I GROW UP?

  YOU ARE ALREADY GROWN UP.

  YOU MEAN THIS IS AS UP AS I WILL GET?

  PHYSICALLY, YES. YOU HAVE REACHED THE PEAK OF YOUR PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT.

  OH.

  HOWEVER, THERE IS ANOTHER KIND OF GROWING UP YOU MUST DO. FROM NOW ON, YOU MUST DEVELOP MENTALLY.

  HOW CAN I DO THAT?

  THE SAME AS ANYBODY ELSE. BY STUDYING AND LEARNING AND THINKING.

  WHEN I FINISH, THEN WILL I BE ALL GROWN UP?

  YES.

  HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE?

  I DON’T KNOW. PROBABLY A VERY LONG TIME.

  HOW LONG IS A LONG TIME?

  IT DEPENDS ON HOW HARD YOU WORK.

  I WILL WORK VERY HARD. I WILL LEARN EVERYTHING THERE IS TO KNOW AND I WILL FINISH AS SOON AS I CAN BECAUSE I WANT TO BE GROWN UP.

  THAT IS AN ADMIRABLE AMBITION, BUT I DON’T THINK YOU WILL EVER BE ABLE TO FINISH.

  WHY? DON’T YOU THINK THAT I AM SMART ENOUGH?

  YOU MISUNDERSTAND ME. I THINK THAT YOU ARE SMART ENOUGH. IT’S JUST THAT THERE IS SO MUCH TO KNOW, NO ONE PERSON COULD EVER KNOW IT ALL.

  I COULD TRY.

  YES, BUT SCIENTISTS KEEP DISCOVERING MORE AND MORE THINGS ALL THE TIME. YOU WOULD NEVER CATCH UP.

  BUT THEN IF I CAN’T KNOW EVERYTHING THEN I CAN NEVER BE GROWN UP.

  NO. IT IS POSSIBLE TO BE GROWN UP AND NOT KNOW EVERYTHING.

  IT IS?

  I DON’T KNOW EVERYTHING AND I’M GROWN UP.

  YOU ARE?

  Auberson thought about going for water but decided that was too much trouble. Instead, he popped the pills into his mouth and swallowed them dry.