The Top of the Volcano

by Harlan Ellison

  Gaspar stared at Minna’s grave. “At the end of April I lost an hour. If I die now, I’ll die an hour short in my life. I’ll have been cheated out of one hour I want, Billy.” He swayed toward all he had left of Minna. “One last hour I could have with my old girl. That’s what I’m afraid of, Billy. I have that hour in my possession. I’m afraid I’ll use it, god help me, I want so much to use it.”

  Billy came to him. Tense, and chilled, he said, “Why must that hour never toll?”

  Gaspar drew a deep breath and tore his eyes away from the grave. His gaze locked with Billy’s. And he told him.

  The years, all the days and hours, exist. As solid and as real as mountains and oceans and men and women and the baobab tree. Look, he said, at the lines in my face and deny that time is real. Consider these dead weeds that were once alive and try to believe it’s all just vapor or the mutual agreement of Popes and Caesars and young men like you.

  “The lost hour must never come, Billy, for in that hour it all ends. The light, the wind, the stars, this magnificent open place we call the universe. It all ends, and in its place—waiting, always waiting—is eternal darkness. No new beginnings, no world without end, just the infinite emptiness.”

  And he opened his hand, which had been lying in his lap, and there, in his palm, rested the watch, making no sound at all, and stopped dead at eleven o’clock. “Should it strike twelve, Billy, eternal night falls; from which there is no recall.”

  There he sat, this very old man, just a perfectly normal old man. The most recent in the endless chain of keepers of the lost hour, descended in possession from Caesar and Pope Gregory XIII, down through the centuries of men and women who had served as caretakers of the excellent timepiece. And now he was dying, and now he wanted to cling to life as every man and woman clings to life no matter how awful or painful or empty, even if it is for one more hour. The suicide, falling from the bridge, at the final instant, tries to fly, tries to climb back up the sky. This weary old man, who only wanted to stay one brief hour more with Minna. Who was afraid that his love would cost the universe.

  He looked at Billy, and he extended his hand with the watch waiting for its next paladin. So softly Billy could barely hear him, knowing that he was denying himself what he most wanted at this last place in his life, he whispered, “If I die without passing it on…it will begin to tick.”

  “Not me,” Billy said. “Why did you pick me? I’m no one special. I’m not someone like you. I run an all-night service mart. There’s nothing special about me the way there is about you! I’m not Ronald Colman! I don’t want to be responsible, I’ve never been responsible!”

  Gaspar smiled gently. “You’ve been responsible for me.”

  Billy’s rage vanished. He looked wounded.

  “Look at us, Billy. Look at what color you are; and look at what color I am. You took me in as a friend. I think of you as worthy, Billy. Worthy.”

  They remained there that way, in silence, as the wind rose. And finally, in a timeless time, Billy nodded.

  Then the young man said, “You won’t be losing Minna, Dad. Now you’ll go to the place where she’s been waiting for you, just as she was when you first met her. There’s a place where we find everything we’ve ever lost through the years.”

  “That’s good, Billy, that you tell me that. I’d like to believe it, too. But I’m a pragmatist. I believe in what exists…like rain and Minna’s grave and the hours that pass that we can’t see, but they are. I’m afraid, Billy. I’m afraid this will be the last time I can speak to her. So I ask a favor. As payment, in return for my life spent protecting the watch.

  “I ask for one minute of the hour, Billy. One minute to call her back so we can stand face-to-face and I can touch her and say goodbye. You’ll be the new protector of this watch, Billy, so I ask you please, just let me steal one minute.”

  Billy could not speak. The look on Gaspar’s face was without horizon, empty as tundra, bottomless. The child left alone in darkness; the pain of eternal waiting. He knew he could never deny this old man, no matter what he asked, and in the silence he heard a voice say: “No!” And it was his own.

  He had spoken without conscious volition. Strong and determined, and without the slightest room for reversal. If a part of his heart had been swayed by compassion, that part had been instantly overridden. No. A final, unshakeable no.

  For an instant Gaspar looked crestfallen. His eyes clouded with tears; and Billy felt something twist and break within himself at the sight. He knew he had hurt the old man. Quickly, but softly, he said urgently, “You know that would be wrong, Dad. We mustn’t…”

  Gaspar said nothing. Then he reached out with his free hand and took Billy’s. It was an affectionate touch.

  “That was the last test, young fella. Oh, you know I’ve been testing you, don’t you? This important item couldn’t go to just anyone.

  “And you passed the test, my friend: my last, best friend. When I said I could bring her back from where she’s gone, here in this place we’ve both come to so often, to talk to someone lost to us, I knew you would understand that anyone could be brought back in that stolen minute. I knew you wouldn’t use it for yourself, no matter how much you wanted it; but I wasn’t sure that as much as you like me, it might not sway you. But you wouldn’t even give it to me, Billy.”

  He smiled up at him, his eyes now clear and steady.

  “I’m content, Billy. You needn’t have worried. Minna and I don’t need that minute. But if you’re to carry on for me, I think you do need it. You’re in pain, and that’s no good for someone who carries this watch. You’ve got to heal, Billy.

  “So I give you something you would never take for yourself. I give you a going-away present…”

  And he started the watch, whose ticking was as loud and as clear as a baby’s first sound; and the sweep-second hand began to move away from eleven o’clock.

  Then the wind rose, and the sky seemed to cloud over, and it grew colder, with a remarkable silver-blue mist that rolled across the cemetery; and though he did not see it emerge from that grave at a distance far to the right, Billy Kinetta saw a shape move toward him. A soldier in the uniform of a day past, and his rank was Lance Corporal. He came toward Billy Kinetta, and Billy went to meet him as Gaspar watched.

  They stood together and Billy spoke to him. And the man whose name Billy had never known when he was alive, answered. And then he faded, as the seconds ticked away. Faded, and faded, and was gone. And the silver-blue mist rolled through them, and past them, and was gone; and the soldier was gone.

  Billy stood alone.

  When he turned back to look across the grounds to his friend, he saw that Gaspar had fallen from the shooting-stick. He lay on the ground. Billy rushed to him, and fell to his knees and lifted him onto his lap. Gaspar was still.

  “Oh, god, Dad, you should have heard what he said. Oh, geez, he let me go. He let me go so I didn’t even have to say I was sorry. He told me he didn’t even see me in that foxhole. He never knew he’d saved my life. I said thank you and he said no, thank you, that he hadn’t died for nothing. Oh, please, Dad, please don’t be dead yet. I want to tell you…”

  And, as it sometimes happens, rarely but wonderfully, sometimes they come back for a moment, for an instant before they go, the old man, this very old man, opened his eyes, just before going on his way, and he looked through the dimming light at his friend, and he said, “May I remember you to my old girl, Billy?”

  And his eyes closed again, after only a moment; and his caretakership was at an end; as his hand opened and the most excellent timepiece, now stopped again at one minute past eleven, floated from his palm and waited till Billy Kinetta extended his hand; and then it floated down and lay there silently, making no sound, no sound at all. Safe. Protected.

  There in the place where all lost things returned, the young man sat on the cold ground, rocking the body of his friend. And he was in no hurry to leave. There was time.

  A blessi
ng of the 18th Egyptian Dynasty:

  God be between you and harm in

  all the empty places you walk.

  * * *

  The author gratefully acknowledges the importance of a discussion with Ms. Ellie Grossman in the creation of this work of fiction.

  * * *

  With Virgil Oddum at the East Pole

  1986 Locus Poll Award: Best Short Story

  The day he crawled out of the dead cold Icelands, the glaciers creeping down the great cliff were sea-green: endless rivers of tinted, faceted emeralds lit from within. Memories of crippled chances shone in the ice. That was a day, and I remember this clearly, during which the purple sky of Hotlands was filled with the downdrifting balloon spores that had died rushing through the beams of the UV lamps in the peanut fields of the silver crescent. That was a day—remembering clearly—with Argo squatting on the horizon of Hotlands, an enormous inverted tureen of ruby glass.

  He crawled toward me and the ancient fux I called Amos the Wise; crawled, literally crawled, up the land bridge of Westspit onto Meditation Island. Through the slush and sludge and amber mud of the Terminator’s largest island.

  His heat-envelope was filthy and already cracking, and he tore open the Velcro mouthflap without regard for saving the garment as he crawled toward a rotting clump of spillweed.

  When I realized that he intended to eat it, I moved to him quickly and crouched in front of him so he couldn’t get to it.

  “I wouldn’t put that in your mouth,” I said. “It’ll kill you.”

  He didn’t say anything, but he looked up at me from down there on his hands and knees with an expression that said it all. He was starving, and if I didn’t come up with some immediate alternative to the spillweed, he was going to eat it anyhow, even if it killed him.

  This was only one hundred and nineteen years after we had brought the wonders of the human race to Medea, and though I was serving a term of penitence on Meditation Island, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to make friends with another human being. I was having a hard enough time just communicating with fuxes. I certainly didn’t want to take charge of his life…even in as small a way as being responsible for saving it.

  Funny the things that flash through your mind. I remember at that moment, with him looking at me so desperately, recalling a cartoon I’d once seen: it was one of those standard thirsty-man-crawling-out-of-the-desert cartoons, with a long line of crawl-marks stretching to the horizon behind an emaciated, bearded wanderer. And in the foreground is a man on a horse, looking down at this poor dying devil with one clawed hand lifted in a begging gesture, and the guy on the horse is smiling and saying to the thirsty man, “Peanut butter sandwich?”

  I didn’t think he’d find it too funny.

  So I pulled up the spillweed, so he wouldn’t go for it before I got back, and I trotted over to my wickyup and got him a ball of peanut cheese and a nip-off bulb of water, and came back and helped him sit up to eat.

  It took him a while, and of course we were covered with pink and white spores by the time he finished. The smell was awful.

  I helped him to his feet. Pretty unsteady. And he leaned on me walking back to the wickyup. I laid him down on my air-mattress and he closed his eyes and fell asleep immediately. Maybe he fainted, I don’t know.

  His name was Virgil Oddum; but I didn’t know that, either, at the time.

  I didn’t ever know much about him. Not then, not later, not even now. It’s funny how everybody knows what he did, but not why he did it, or even who he was; and until recently, not so much as his name, nothing.

  In a way, I really resent it. The only reason anybody knows me is because I knew him, Virgil Oddum. But they don’t care about me or what I was going through, just him, because of what he did. My name is Pogue. William Ronald Pogue, like rogue; and I’m important, too. You should know names.

  Jason was chasing Theseus through the twilight sky directly over the Terminator when he woke up. The clouds of dead balloon spores had passed over and the sky was amber again, with bands of color washing across the bulk of Argo. I was trying to talk with Amos the Wise.

  I was usually trying to talk with Amos the Wise.

  The xenoanthropologists at the main station at Perdue Farm in the silver crescent call communication with the fuxes ekstasis—literally, “to stand outside oneself.” A kind of enriched empathy that conveys concepts and emotional sets, but nothing like words or pictures. I would sit and stare at one of the fuxes, and he would crouch there on his hindquarters and stare back at me; and we’d both fill up with what the other was thinking. Sort of. More or less overcome with vague feelings, general tones of emotion…memories of when the fux had been a hunter; when he had had the extra hindquarters he’d dropped when he was female; the vision of a kilometer-high tidal wave once seen near the Seven Pillars on the Ring; chasing females and endlessly mating. It was all there, every moment of what was a long life for a fux: fifteen Medean years.

  But it was all flat. Like a drama done with enormous expertise and no soul. The arrangement of thoughts was random, without continuity, without flow. There was no color, no interpretation, no sense of what it all meant for the dromids.

  It was artless and graceless; it was merely data.

  And so, trying to “talk” to Amos was like trying to get a computer to create original, deeply meaningful poetry. Sometimes I had the feeling he had been “assigned” to me, to humor me; to keep me busy.

  At the moment the man came out of my wickyup, I was trying to get Amos to codify the visual nature of the fuxes’ religious relationship to Caster C, the binary star that Amos and his race thought of as Maternal Grandfather and Paternal Grandfather. For the human colony they were Phrixus and Helle.

  I was trying to get Amos to understand flow and the emotional load in changing colors when the double shadow fell between us and I looked up to see the man standing behind me. At the same moment I felt a lessening of the ekstasis between the fux and me. As though some other receiving station were leaching off power.

  The man stood there, unsteadily, weaving and trying to keep his balance, staring at Amos. The fux was staring back. They were communicating, but what was passing between them I didn’t know. Then Amos got up and walked away, with that liquid rolling gait old male fuxes affect after they’ve dropped their hindquarters. I got up with some difficulty: since coming to Medea I’d developed mild arthritis in my knees, and sitting cross-legged stiffened me.

  As I stood up, he started to fall over, still too weak from crawling out of Icelands. He fell into my arms, and I confess my first thought was annoyance because now I knew he’d be another thing I’d have to worry about.

  “Hey, hey,” I said, “take it easy.”

  I helped him to the wickyup, and put him on his back on the air-mattress. “Listen, fellah,” I said, “I don’t want to be cold about this, but I’m out here all alone, paying my time. I don’t get another shipment of rations for about four months and I can’t keep you here.”

  He didn’t say anything. Just stared at me.

  “Who the hell are you? Where’d you come from?”

  Watching me. I used to be able to read expression very accurately. Watching me, with hatred.

  I didn’t even know him. He didn’t have any idea what was what, why I was out there on Meditation Island; there wasn’t any reason he should hate me.

  “How’d you get here?”

  Watching. Not a word out of him.

  “Listen, mister: here’s the long and short of it. There isn’t any way I can get in touch with anybody to come and get you. And I can’t keep you here because there just isn’t enough ration. And I’m not going to let you stay here and starve in front of me, because after a while you’re sure as hell going to go for my food and I’m going to fight you for it, and one of us is going to get killed. And I am not about to have that kind of a situation, understand? Now I know this is chill, but you’ve got to go. Take a few days, get some strength. If you hike straight across
Eastspit and keep going through Hotlands, you might get spotted by someone out spraying the fields. I doubt it, but maybe.”

  Not a sound. Just watching me and hating me.

  “Where’d you come from? Not out there in Icelands. Nothing can live out there. It’s minus thirty Celsius. Out there.” Silence. “Just glaciers. Out there.”

  Silence. I felt that uncontrollable anger rising in me.

  “Look, jamook, I’m not having this. Understand me? I’m just not having any of it. You’ve got to go. I don’t give a damn if you’re the Count of Monte Crespo or the lost Dauphin of Threx: you’re getting the hell out of here as soon as you can crawl.” He stared up at me and I wanted to hit the bastard as hard as I could. I had to control myself. This was the kind of thing that had driven me to Meditation Island.

  Instead, I squatted there watching him for a long time. He never blinked. Just watched me. Finally, I said, very softly, “What’d you say to the fux?”

  A double shadow fell through the door and I looked up. It was Amos the Wise. He’d peeled back the entrance flap with his tail because his hands were full. Impaled on the three long, sinewy fingers of each hand were six freshly caught dartfish. He stood there in the doorway, bloody light from the sky forming a corona that lit his blue, furry shape; and he extended the skewered fish.

  I’d been six months on Meditation Island. Every day of that time I’d tried to spear a dartfish. Flashfreeze and peanut cheese and box-ration, they can pall on you pretty fast. You want to gag at the sight of silvr wrap. I’d wanted fresh food. Every day for six months I’d tried to catch something live. They were too fast. That’s why they weren’t called slowfish. The fuxes had watched me. Not one had ever moved to show me how they did it. Now this old neuter Amos was offering me half a dozen. I knew what the guy had said to him.

  “Who the hell are you?” I was about as skewed as I could be. I wanted to pound him out a little, delete that hateful look on his face, put him in a way so I wouldn’t have to care for him. He didn’t say a word, just kept looking at me; but the fux came inside the wickyup—first time he’d ever done that, damn his slanty eyes!—and he moved around between us, the dartfish extended.