In the Deadlands

by David Gerrold

I knew what he was about to say. “I’m sorry. I should have thought of it sooner, but it’s too late now. The servants will have already destroyed it. It was contaminated, you know. Night-fungus spores. If something is neither alive nor made out of crystal, the servants will see it only as waste and they’ll destroy it.”

  “But you could have stopped them?” He was almost accusing.

  I shook my head. “I could have tried, but I think it would have been useless. They don’t understand anything but simple commands. They’re not here to obey me, only to provide for my needs. Only my needs—”

  I stopped in sudden realization. He looked at me. Waiting for me to go on.

  “—Perhaps that’s why you’re here....” I said slowly.

  “Huh?” He frowned.

  “Perhaps that’s why they rescued you—because—because I need companionship.” The words were difficult to say.

  “Go on—” In spite of himself, he had to hear it.

  “They’re keyed only to me—you saw that this morning. They respond to what I need physically—and emotionally too. They ignore everything else—maybe everybody else. If I hadn’t needed you—they might have left you there in the wreck of your ship—”

  He sat down slowly. His knuckles were white where they gripped the edge of the chair. He looked up at me. “Then in order for me to survive, I have to help protect your life. If you die—”

  I sat down too. Not knowing what to say.

  Our eyes were locked. “Control—” he breathed. “The ultimate control—”

  “No—” I said. “No!” But even as I tried to reject it, I knew it was true. “It’s trust! We have to trust—”

  He shook his head. Refusal. I stared at him while he picked at the arm of his chair, as if troubled by its crystal feel. He was painfully aware of my presence, though his glance was downward; the tumbled light cast flickering shadows across his face.

  How could I say it? What words—? He glanced up, our eyes met—

  “What—what can I do?” I managed to ask.

  “Who are you?” is his reply. His voice has the intensity of the insane.

  “.... Do you trust me?”

  “How can I?”

  “You have no choice.”

  A nod, he lowers his head in assent. Then, “Do you trust me?”

  A pause. “I don’t know. I don’t know....”

  “Do you want to?” There was pleading in his voice, a fear—not of the castle, nor of this world, but of me, of perhaps the thought that I might reject him, might refuse to feed him and shelter him, might even now at this very moment throw him out into the hungry night. “All right. I’ll tell you.”

  “Your name?”

  “Everything. Anything.” Who I am. Why this castle is here.

  Just three syllables.

  It is a slap across the face.

  His eyes widened, first in shock, then in disbelief, in realization, at last in fear. “Oh no—you can’t be. You can’t be.” He tries to deny what he already knows is true. “No, not you—your crime, it was...it was….”

  My crime! It is always my crime!

  Men believed me. They believed in me. They worshipped me. They called me a God! What kind of a crime is that? They did it of their own free will!

  And yet, still they persist in calling it my crime, my crime—because it was I who tried to control them. It was I, they claim, who forced my beliefs upon their world. I tried to regulate their actions. That was my crime.

  It made no difference, the thousands, the millions of other crimes that were committed in my name. The dark murders, the fiery genocides, the thundering wars, the exploitations and the countless soul-destroying enslavements of man upon man—these were all as nothing, as grains of sand compared to a granite mountain. These crimes were unimportant, hardly crimes at all. Mine was the worst. Mine was the initial offense. I had begun it; I was the source. I had tried to control the lives of others.

  Hypocrisy piled upon hypocrisy. Not only did I try to influence the course of their actions—but I dared to do it in the name of God—I tried to save their souls! I tried to save them from themselves!

  Is that so horrible?

  Ah, yes. It is the worst of all possible crimes.

  It made no difference whether I was right or not—nor does it make any difference that they gave their souls willingly—the crime was still mine because I let them do so.

  I do not remember any more if I even believed in what I did.

  They called me master, messiah, savior, God, and for that I must pay.

  So I am cut out of the body human—isolated, separated, placed apart. I am safe here; and they are safe too, protected from me, a shriveled wisp of a man who rots alone on a mountain.

  Here in my castle I am protected from all temptations; not a warm-blooded creature in my world to seduce my attentions. Not a soul. Not a soul! I am surrounded by soulless servants. I will never taint again.

  Or have I already tainted?

  This pale and gibbering young man before me—have I defiled him merely by existing?

  “Oh no! Oh no!” He repeats it over and over and over again, trying to deny what cannot be denied. This crystal castle, my prison, bears mute witness to the reality of my name, my horrible, horrible name.

  “Trust me, please! Trust me!”

  But his fear is too great; he backs away, arms in front of him as if to ward me off, as if my very glance will steal and suck the essence of his life. “Please, oh please, let it not be true. Oh, please God...please...” He blubbers in meaningless words. “Oh, God, let me out. Let me out, dear God, dear God, rescue me, rescue me! Oh my God, my God, why me? Why? Why? Why me?!!”

  Mute I stand, my mouth working over and over, forming words for which there are no sounds. “I won’t hurt you, I won’t. Just trust me! Trust me!” But it is a useless protest. Men trusted me once before. And I trusted them.

  He continues to retreat, back, ever back, until he comes up against the great bronze doors, the doors of death. He is startled by their sudden presence behind him; he puts his hand back, reaching eager and desperate. He catches at the clasp.

  “No!” It is a shout from me, fear and trembling. “Don’t open that door!” I take quick steps toward him, but he—MY GOD, WHY DO THEY ALWAYS MISINTERPRET?!!—thinks I am coming after him. Oh, God, I will not hurt you! Will you please let me help you!

  The plea is ignored. The bolt is pulled back even before the words have left my lips, and he is out into the night. I am running, running now, to the door, calling him to return. Screaming, I am screaming. Hoarse rage. Things batter at the bronze—black and leathery, with lidless eyes; red hate and desire—and I am pushing, pushing back the night. The vampires are shrieking; already some of them have gained entrance, whirling and flapping in the light, careening off the walls. And then, a final shove and the door is closed. Shut again to the night.

  A vampire dives at me, hits the door with a thump, and slides weakly to the floor, still flapping. The light drains it of its fury. Trembling, I hang against the door, arms stretched out along the bolt. I must save him and I can’t; I can’t; I know I can’t.

  We are separated by more than just the door. The gulf is too big. I can no more save him than I could save those myriads of others who wouldn’t believe in me. I can no more save him than I could save those who did.

  Again, failure is the bitter taste of ashes. Were I what I once believed I was, what others believed I was, I would throw back these doors and go after that lost innocent. Instead, I tremble in fear, spread-eagled on a great crystal bolt.

  I dare not go into the night. I can open neither the castle nor myself. I must and I cannot.

  He is out there. I can hear him screaming. Oh my God. His screams go on for hours.

  MY GOD, MY GOD! IS MY CRIME TRULY SO HORRIBLE THAT I MUST PAY FOR IT LIKE THIS? HOW MUCH MUST I ENDURE?!

  FATHER, FORGIVE ME!

  AFTERWORD:

  Anything I might say here would be redun
dant.

  In the Deadlands

  Saturday, April 2, 1966.

  I was working the graveyard shift at the post office, going from there to school, and then coming home to sleep in the afternoon. Summer arrived two months early and my metabolism was as messed up as the weather. Weekends were the only respite.

  I came home at eight in the morning, exhausted, never so glad to see my bed. Saturday and Sunday were for sleeping. And then, just as I collapsed into bed and closed my eyes and began the blissful dive into unconsciousness—the hospital called. Their timing was flawless.

  My dad had nicked his thumb with a power saw two weeks before. Not serious. He’d gone back to work. But the anti-coagulants had loosened a blood-clot in his leg. And one of them had apparently gone into his lungs, so he’d gone back into the hospital on Thursday, nothing to worry about, of course—

  —and then the phone rang Saturday morning. Can you come to the hospital RIGHT NOW?

  My mother panicked, of course. I pulled my clothes back on, we rushed to the hospital—the doctors were working on my dad, they didn’t say what the problem was, just that they were working on him. Maybe another clot had broken loose and gone to his heart—

  I went out to move the car out of the red zone and when I came back in, my mom and sister were sobbing. After that, everything was an anguished montage.

  Back home, the house started filling up with relatives almost immediately. (My great-grandmother had twelve children. By the time it reached my generation, there were over 300 of us in Southern California, with more on the way.)

  At some point in the afternoon, somebody sent me to bed. I’d gone more than thirty hours without sleep. Did I say my metabolism was messed up? Now it was upside down.

  I don’t know how long I slept, I fell in and out of a strange disturbing dream of a dry and empty landscape. When I awoke, I wanted to capture that feeling on paper. It was that anti-twilight just before dawn. I sat and typed the words that evoked the feeling—the dry emptiness of a place beyond life. Seven pages. I put them in the drawer and then went back to bed.

  Later, the next time I awoke, I was coherent enough to begin writing my father’s eulogy, but over the next few days and weeks I kept coming back to that strange fever dream. That desolate space kept calling me back to the keyboard. Seven pages grew to twenty-seven, then sixty-seven.

  Whatever it was, it wasn’t a story; it wasn’t a poem. Maybe it was a two-dimensional sculpture. The words weren’t words; they were musical beats. The empty spaces were shaping the narrative with visual silence. I wasn’t typing as much as I was discovering.

  I went as deep into the deadlands as I dared.

  And then, I could go no further.

  In the Deadlands

  Step...

  Step...

  Step...

  Twenty-three men.

  Step...

  Step...

  Step...

  And twenty-three uniforms

  of coarse brown wool.

  Step...

  Step...

  Step...

  Walking,

  in step,

  into the deadlands.

  i don’t like the deadlands. i never have.

  Step...

  Step...

  But i guess i’m not alone. Nobody likes the deadlands.

  i don’t think i’ve ever met anybody who likes the deadlands.

  Step...

  The floor of the deadlands is

  different.

  It’s like hollow brick. Walking into the deadlands is

  like walking into an empty tomb.

  Step...

  They say that the deadlands floor has been baked solid, but i don’t see how. The temperature in the deadlands hardly ever goes above 80°.

  They say that the deadlands floor is completely dry—that there’s no moisture in it at all.

  But i always thought that when ground became completely dry that it turned to dust—that it needed moisture to hold it together.

  i don’t know. There’s a lot of things that they say...

  Step...

  It’s all wrong.

  It is.

  It sounds hollow. Maybe it is.

  And it’s the wrong color too. Ground should not be orange and black and all run together and mottled.

  It should be soft and brown and

  gritty with little rocks in it,

  and things growing

  and

  Nothing grows,

  and there’s no sand...

  not even dust.

  You can walk out of the deadlands with the same shine on your boots as when you walked in.

  You would think that there would be sand in great curving dunes sweeping slowly across the deadlands.

  There should be.

  But there isn’t. The deadlands is barren.

  No dunes,

  no sand,

  no dust.

  Just the ground and the sky.

  Step...

  The deadlands sky is so deep it hurts.

  i mean, it’s empty.

  Nobody looks at the sky in the deadlands.

  There are no clouds in a deadlands sky. There never are.

  Just that deep empty blue.

  If you look at it long enough, it begins to seem like the sky is underneath you and the ground is above you

  and that you’re walking across a great rusty ceiling with nothing beneath you and any moment

  you are going to miss a step

  and slip

  and fall

  and go plummeting down endlessly into that deep empty sky, turning and twisting forever trying to grab onto something . . .

  something that isn’t there.

  It never is.

  Just that deep empty blueness.

  i mean, it’s empty.

  But that’s the way it is in the deadlands.

  Empty.

  Your eye searches for something to hang onto, but there isn’t anything.

  Except, of course, the great painful white of the sun.

  They say that it used to be yellow—the sun, i mean. i don’t know. You hear a lot of talk about the way it used to be.

  Like green.

  They say that there used to be a color called green.

  They say that all the plants were colored green . . . the grass and the leaves and the trees and the bushes. . .

  all were green.

  Not brown and orange and black

  —but green.

  Whatever that means.

  i don’t know. Maybe the stories are true.

  Probably they’re just folk tales.

  Although, when you’re in the deadlands, you can’t see how there ever was anything else but deadlands.

  The deadlands is eternal.

  i mean, if anything is eternal, the deadlands is.

  Step...

  There’s no wind in the deadlands.

  No. That’s wrong.

  There’s no wind in the deadlands now.

  Other times there is a wind.

  Mostly, it’s a hot breath on the back of your neck,

  but there are stories about the deadlands wind picking a man up and carrying him off.

  i guess the deadlands gets to you after a while . . . that sky and that barren floor.

  Funny thing about the floor. It’s rutted from horizon to horizon. It’s pitted and creased and scarred.

  Used...

  Corrugated like a sheet of rusty iron.

  In some places it’s scored as evenly as if it were done by a machine.

  Every step scrapes along the grooves of the deadlands floor.

  The ruts are shallow and just about the width of a man’s foot.

  Your boots stick in them.

  With every step you take, the deadlands catches and grabs at your feet.

  Step... (grab)

  Step... (grab)

  Step... (grab)

  We’ve been walking for about an hour now. It’s hard to t
ell. Not many of us have watches

  and in the deadlands, time is frozen by a white staring sun.

  Step...

  i guess i said that i don’t like the deadlands, but it bears repeating.

  Some of the guys say that you get used to it, but i don’t see how. i never have.

  They say that the deadlands has a weird kind of beauty.

  Actually, beauty is the wrong word.

  It’s not beauty. It’s a kind of...

  It’s a kind of...

  a kind of...

  There is no word.

  It’s like a feeling,

  an empty feeling,

  like something quiet

  waiting.

  Step...

  There are twenty-three of us on this patrol. There’s the commander and eleven “two”s.

  Twenty-three men.

  A double line, walking.

  Step...

  Step...

  Step...

  Eleven “two”s. They run us in “two”s because they want us to each keep an eye on our other half.

  Ha.

  i don’t think Carl and i have exchanged twelve words total.

  Step...

  i don’t know why they run the deadlands patrols anyway. It seems foolish,

  a waste of effort.

  They say that it’s to protect the borderlands from attack

  But nobody really expects anyone to mount an attack across the deadlands.

  Not really.

  Of course, nobody really knows what’s on the other side of it, either.

  We don’t even know that it has an other side.

  i mean, nobody’s ever seen it.

  That is, nobody’s ever seen it and come back across the deadlands to tell us about it.

  But,

  even if somebody did manage to cross the deadlands from the other side, we’d see them coming for a long time before they got to the borderlands. We’d see them from the balloons.

  . . .i was up in a balloon once.

  It was an anchored balloon—they all are now—but it was still a balloon. (The balloons have to be anchored; otherwise they go drifting into the deadlands.)

  This was a long time ago, but you could see twenty...maybe thirty miles into the deadlands.

  Strange...

  We were high—really high.

  We could look back to the west and see the gray roofs of Fort Borderlands and the gray barracks, and the distant village of thatched roofs, and the surrounding fields of brown and gray; and in the far distance, the black Eternal Mountains.