[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
we gotta bring somethin
back...pay the costs, you know...
She started to say something, then her thoughts said:
What s the use? I m gettin the hell outta here!
Honey...it s been a real slack season, we gotta...
She reached inside the Wonderbird s skin, pulled out a weird square thing, and
threw it at the man-thing. It hit him on the head.
Goddamn it, Marge, why d ya toss that thing at me? You know it s part of the
last borrow from that libraryship! It ain t ours! Aw, come on, Marge! We
gotta&
We don t gotta do nothin ! And if you don t wanna get left standin right
there with egg on ya kisser, ya better haul-ass in here and help me blast! I
wanna go!
She stared at him hard for a moment, casting strange looks every few seconds
at Skilton and the group of younglings. As she did, the rest of the tribe
appeared out of the foothills and fell hushed behind the emcee.
Yaarghhh! she bellowed, till it made Skilton s antennae twitch. Then she
bolted inside the Wonderbird, waving her arms in the air.
The man-thing cursed, and looked over his shoulder. When he saw the group on
the moss-edge of the sanded plain had grown, his mouth flapped oddly and he
stumbled clankingly up the ramp.
His thoughts flowed and boiled in his head, the words rolled and burned in the
air.
Then he got into the Wonderbird, and they heard the sound of sounds on sounds,
and the skin fastened tight to the rest of the skin.
They watched as the flickering colors dimmed, and the beating noises burst
from the back of the
Wonderbird. They let the primary lids slide over their eyes as the fire ripped
from the Wonderbird. And then they watched terrified as it swept into the air,
and left.
It blossomed and flickered and ticked and colored its way back over the Great
Mountain, up toward the swirlers, and out of sight.
Skilton watched it with mixed feelings.
It was going, and with it was going the entire core of his beliefs. His
religion, his thoughts, his very being had been sundered by the dusk s
happenings.
The Lams were not gods. They had not come again to do the Performances. They
would not play The Palace again.
This was the end.
He kept the thoughts below scanning-level, so the tribe might not know what he
thought. He felt their unease, and they waited for his explanation. How could
he tell them the truth; that there was no Performance, and that all the years
of waiting for the Time of the Prophecy were in vain. How could he tell them
he had been deceived? How? How?
He began to summon the thoughts from their lower-level home, when he stopped,
and forced them back down, keeping the surface of his mind clear and
untroubled.
He saw the square thing on the silver-sanded plain, fallen where the man-thing
had let it fall; fallen where the she had thrown it. Perhaps in that square
thing there might be a clue to help him. A sign, a symbol, an omen to
reinstate his belief in the Lams once more.
Skilton?
The thoughts swam toward him from the awed tribe.
Skilton, tell us, oh worthy and far-seeing emcee, what does all this mean? Was
this the Performance?
He could only answer:
Page 134
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Come.
And they followed him...
Followed him off the moss-ground, away from the Great Mountain, onto the
silver-sanded plain, and toward the square thing. There they stopped and
looked and thought.
After a great long while, they asked Skilton, and he told them, and they knew
it was true, for they could see the square thing.
After a great while, they knew.
There was another thing. This was not the end. There would be a new beginning.
A new way of life...a new era.
When they got back to the borne of their births, they would discard the old
Tophatt rituals, and the
Jomillrjowks, and the new life would flower for them --and this time there
would be no doubting, for they had all seen the Wonderbird.
Skilton lowered his massive head and clamped the square thing in his toothless
mouth. He trotted back toward the foothills and the Great Mountain.
The younglings followed quickly, and the tribe followed them, and there were
no laggards, for they were all trying to reason out the meaning of the
squiggles on the new Truth.
The squiggles that declared the new religion. The squiggles that said:
The Complete Works of the
Marquis de Sade
ILLUSTRATED
Robert Silverberg and Harlan Ellison
THE
SONG
THE
ZOMBIE
SANG
INTRODUCTION
It isn t so much how or why this one got written, but what happened to it
after it got written.
I ve known Silverberg longer than all but one or two of my friends. He was the
first guy I saw when I came into New York, and the first to put me up till I
got a place to stay upon returning, a year later. We had only collaborated
once before, in all those years--which are rapidly approaching twenty--a
mystery story called Ship-Shape
Payoff for one of the
Manhunt-
style magazines, back in the mid-fifties. But it would have been impossible to
do this
book without a collaboration by myself and Bob. At least, for me it would have
been impossible.
So here s how it came to be. I was teaching writing at a major college
workshop last year (not Clarion, in this case), and one of the guest
lecturers, a magazine writer whose work I d admired for decades, was also on
the staff with me. But he was not the glamorous jet-setter his past glories
had led me to expect. He was a tired, old man, with too much booze in him and
too many bad relationships behind him, and though he was smashed drunk from
morning to night, falling down drunk so that he could literally not keep down
food, every morning he dragged himself to one of the three typewriters he had
ranked around the dorm room where he was billeted, and he would peck out a few
words on this or that article. It was a pathetic performance, and it haunted
me for months. Some time later, on a business trip to New York, I recounted
the story to Bob and Bobbie, his wife, and said it was as though he was a
Page 135
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
zombie, that he continued writing only as a reflex, the way a frog s leg jumps
when it receives a galvanic shock, that he might as well be dead and stored in
a vault except when he had to write. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl szamanka888.keep.pl
we gotta bring somethin
back...pay the costs, you know...
She started to say something, then her thoughts said:
What s the use? I m gettin the hell outta here!
Honey...it s been a real slack season, we gotta...
She reached inside the Wonderbird s skin, pulled out a weird square thing, and
threw it at the man-thing. It hit him on the head.
Goddamn it, Marge, why d ya toss that thing at me? You know it s part of the
last borrow from that libraryship! It ain t ours! Aw, come on, Marge! We
gotta&
We don t gotta do nothin ! And if you don t wanna get left standin right
there with egg on ya kisser, ya better haul-ass in here and help me blast! I
wanna go!
She stared at him hard for a moment, casting strange looks every few seconds
at Skilton and the group of younglings. As she did, the rest of the tribe
appeared out of the foothills and fell hushed behind the emcee.
Yaarghhh! she bellowed, till it made Skilton s antennae twitch. Then she
bolted inside the Wonderbird, waving her arms in the air.
The man-thing cursed, and looked over his shoulder. When he saw the group on
the moss-edge of the sanded plain had grown, his mouth flapped oddly and he
stumbled clankingly up the ramp.
His thoughts flowed and boiled in his head, the words rolled and burned in the
air.
Then he got into the Wonderbird, and they heard the sound of sounds on sounds,
and the skin fastened tight to the rest of the skin.
They watched as the flickering colors dimmed, and the beating noises burst
from the back of the
Wonderbird. They let the primary lids slide over their eyes as the fire ripped
from the Wonderbird. And then they watched terrified as it swept into the air,
and left.
It blossomed and flickered and ticked and colored its way back over the Great
Mountain, up toward the swirlers, and out of sight.
Skilton watched it with mixed feelings.
It was going, and with it was going the entire core of his beliefs. His
religion, his thoughts, his very being had been sundered by the dusk s
happenings.
The Lams were not gods. They had not come again to do the Performances. They
would not play The Palace again.
This was the end.
He kept the thoughts below scanning-level, so the tribe might not know what he
thought. He felt their unease, and they waited for his explanation. How could
he tell them the truth; that there was no Performance, and that all the years
of waiting for the Time of the Prophecy were in vain. How could he tell them
he had been deceived? How? How?
He began to summon the thoughts from their lower-level home, when he stopped,
and forced them back down, keeping the surface of his mind clear and
untroubled.
He saw the square thing on the silver-sanded plain, fallen where the man-thing
had let it fall; fallen where the she had thrown it. Perhaps in that square
thing there might be a clue to help him. A sign, a symbol, an omen to
reinstate his belief in the Lams once more.
Skilton?
The thoughts swam toward him from the awed tribe.
Skilton, tell us, oh worthy and far-seeing emcee, what does all this mean? Was
this the Performance?
He could only answer:
Page 134
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Come.
And they followed him...
Followed him off the moss-ground, away from the Great Mountain, onto the
silver-sanded plain, and toward the square thing. There they stopped and
looked and thought.
After a great long while, they asked Skilton, and he told them, and they knew
it was true, for they could see the square thing.
After a great while, they knew.
There was another thing. This was not the end. There would be a new beginning.
A new way of life...a new era.
When they got back to the borne of their births, they would discard the old
Tophatt rituals, and the
Jomillrjowks, and the new life would flower for them --and this time there
would be no doubting, for they had all seen the Wonderbird.
Skilton lowered his massive head and clamped the square thing in his toothless
mouth. He trotted back toward the foothills and the Great Mountain.
The younglings followed quickly, and the tribe followed them, and there were
no laggards, for they were all trying to reason out the meaning of the
squiggles on the new Truth.
The squiggles that declared the new religion. The squiggles that said:
The Complete Works of the
Marquis de Sade
ILLUSTRATED
Robert Silverberg and Harlan Ellison
THE
SONG
THE
ZOMBIE
SANG
INTRODUCTION
It isn t so much how or why this one got written, but what happened to it
after it got written.
I ve known Silverberg longer than all but one or two of my friends. He was the
first guy I saw when I came into New York, and the first to put me up till I
got a place to stay upon returning, a year later. We had only collaborated
once before, in all those years--which are rapidly approaching twenty--a
mystery story called Ship-Shape
Payoff for one of the
Manhunt-
style magazines, back in the mid-fifties. But it would have been impossible to
do this
book without a collaboration by myself and Bob. At least, for me it would have
been impossible.
So here s how it came to be. I was teaching writing at a major college
workshop last year (not Clarion, in this case), and one of the guest
lecturers, a magazine writer whose work I d admired for decades, was also on
the staff with me. But he was not the glamorous jet-setter his past glories
had led me to expect. He was a tired, old man, with too much booze in him and
too many bad relationships behind him, and though he was smashed drunk from
morning to night, falling down drunk so that he could literally not keep down
food, every morning he dragged himself to one of the three typewriters he had
ranked around the dorm room where he was billeted, and he would peck out a few
words on this or that article. It was a pathetic performance, and it haunted
me for months. Some time later, on a business trip to New York, I recounted
the story to Bob and Bobbie, his wife, and said it was as though he was a
Page 135
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
zombie, that he continued writing only as a reflex, the way a frog s leg jumps
when it receives a galvanic shock, that he might as well be dead and stored in
a vault except when he had to write. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]