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With Virgil Oddum
At The East Pole
By Harlan Ellison
Dedicated to the genius of
Sabotini Rodia
The day he crawled out of the dead cold Icelands, the glaciers
creeping down the cliff were sea-green; endless rivers of
tinted, faceted emeralds lit from within. Memories of
crippled chances shown 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 Iāve 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 Terminatorās
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 he intended
to eat it, I moved to him quickly and crouched in front of
him so he couldnāt get to it.
ćI wouldnāt put that in your
mouth,ä I said. ćItāll kill you.ä
He didnāt 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 didnāt 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 penance
on Meditation Island, I wasnāt so sure I wanted to make friends
with another human being. I was having a hard enough time
just communicating with fuxes. I certainly didnāt 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 Iād 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, ćPeanut butter sandwich?ä
I didnāt think
heād find it too funny.
So I pulled up the spillweed,
so he wouldnāt 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 donāt know.
His name was Virgil Oddum; but I didnāt know that, either,
at the time.
I didnāt ever know much about him. Not then, not later,
not even now. Itās 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 donāt
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 Iām 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, ćto stand outside oneself.ä 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 weād 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
heād 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 the 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 ćtalkä to Amos was like trying to get
a computer to create original, deeply meaningful poetry. Sometimes
I had the feeling he had been ćassignedä 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 fuxesā
religious relationship to Castor 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 before
me. At the same moment I felt a lessening of the ekstasis
between the fux and me. As though some other receiving station
was 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 didnāt know. Then Amos got up and walked away, with
that liquid rolling gait old male fuxes affect after theyāve
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
heād be another thing Iād have to worry about.
ćHey, hey,ä I said, ćtake it easy.ä
I helped him into the wickyup, and put him on his back
on the air-mattress. ćListen fellah,ä I said, ćI donāt want
to be cold about this, but Iām out here all alone, paying
my time. I donāt get another shipment of rations for about
four months and I canāt keep you here.ä
He didnāt say anything. Just stared at me.
ćWho the hell are you? Whereād you come from?ä
Watching me. I used to be able to read the most minute
expression very accurately.
Watching me, with hatred.
I didnāt even know him. He didnāt have any idea what
was what, why I was out there on Meditation Island; there
wasnāt any reason he should hate me.
ćHowād you get here?ä
Watching. Not a word out of him.
ćListen mister: hereās the long and short of it. There isnāt
any way I can get in touch with anybody to come and get you.
And I canāt keep you here because there just isnāt enough
ration. And Iām not going to let you stay here and starve
in front of me, because after a while youāre sure as hell
going to go for my food and Iām going to fight you for it,
and one of us is going to get killed. And I am not going to
have that type of situation, understand? Now I know this is
chill, but youāve 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.ä
Not a sound. Just watching me and hating me.
ćWhereād you come from? Not out there in Icelands. Nothing
can live out there. Itās minus thirty Celsius. Out there.ä
Silence. ćJust glaciers. Out there.ä
Silence. I felt that uncontrollable anger rising in
me.
ćLook, jamook, Iām not having this. Understand me? Iām
just not having any of it. Youāve got to go. I donāt give
a damn if youāre the Count of Monte Crespo or the lost Dauphin
of Threx: youāre getting the hell out of here as soon as you
can crawl.ä 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,
ćWhatād you say to the fux?ä
A double shadow fell through the door and I looked up.
It was Amos the Wise. Heād 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.
Iād been six months on Meditation Island. Every day
of that time Iād 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 Iād tried to catch 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
a half a dozen. I knew what the guy had said to him.
ćWho the hell are you?ä 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 wouldnāt have to care
for him. He didnāt say a word, just kept looking at me; but
the fux came inside the wickyup÷first time heād ever done
that, damn his slanty eyes!÷and he moved around between us,
the dartfish extended.
This guy had some kind of hold over the aborigine! He
didnāt say a thing, but the fux knew enough to get between
us and insist I take the fish. So I did it, cursing both of
them under my breath.
And as I pried off the six dartfish I felt the old fux pull
me into a flow with him, and stronger than Iād ever been able
to do it when weād done ekstasis, Amos the Wise let me know
that this was a very holy creature, this thing that had crawled
out of the Icelands, and Iād better treat him pretty fine,
or else. There wasnāt even a hint of a picture of what or
else might be, but it was a strong flow, a strong flow.
So I took the fish and put them in the larder, and I
let the fux know how grateful I was, and he didnāt pay me
enough attention to mesmerize a gnat; and the flow was gone;
and he was doing ekstasis with my guest lying out as nice
and comfy as you please; and then he turned and slid out of
the wickyup and was gone.
I sat there through most of the night watching, and
one moment he was staring at me, and the next he was asleep;
and I went on through that first night just sitting there
looking at him gonked-in like that, where I would have been
sleeping if he hadnāt showed up. Even asleep he hated me.
But he was too weak to stay awake and enjoy it.
So I looked at him, wondering who the hell he was, most
of that night. Until I couldnāt take it any more, and near
to morning I just beat the crap out of him.
They kept bringing food.
Not just fish, but plants Iād never seen before, things that
grew out there in Hotlands, east of us, out where it always
stank like rotten garbage. Some of the plants needed to be
cooked, and some of them were delicious just eaten raw. But
I knew theyād never have showed me any of that if it hadnāt
been for him.
He never spoke to me, and he never told the fuxes that
Iād beaten him the first night he was in camp; and his manner
never changed. Oh, I knew he could talk all right, because
when he slept he tossed and thrashed and shouted things in
his sleep. I never understood any of it; some offworld language.
But whatever it was, it made me feel sick to remember it.
Even asleep he was in torment.
He was determined to stay. I knew that from the second
day. I caught him pilfering stores.
No, thatās not accurate. He was doing it openly. I didnāt
catch him. He was going through the stash in the transport
sheds, mostly goods I wouldnāt need for a while yet, and items
whose functions no longer related to my needs. He had already
liberated some of those items when I discovered him burrowing
through the stores: the neetskin tent Iād used before building
the wickyup from storm-hewn fellner trees; the spare air-mattress;
a hologram projector Iād used during the first month to keep
me entertained with a selection of laser beads, mostly N?h
plays and conundramas. Iād grown bored with the diversions
very quickly: they didnāt seem to be a part of my life of
penance. He had commandeered the projector, but not the beads.
Everything had been pulled out and stacked.
ćWhat do you think youāre doing?ä I stood behind him,
fists knotted, waiting for him to say something snappy.
He straightened with some difficulty, holding his ribs
where Iād kicked him the night before. He turned and looked
at me evenly. I was surprised: he didnāt seem to hate me as
much as heād let it show the day before. He wasnāt afraid
of me, though I was larger and had already demonstrated that
I could bash him if I wanted to bash him, or leave him alone
if I chose to leave him alone. He just stared, waiting for
me to get the message.
The message was that he was here for a while.
Like it or not.
ćJust stay out of my way,ä I said. ćI donāt like you,
and thatās not going to change. I made a mistake pulling that
spillweed, but I wonāt make any more mistakes. Keep out of
my food stores, keep away from me, and donāt get between me
and the dromids. Iāve got a job to do, and you interfere .
. . Iāll weight you down, toss you in, and what the scuttlefish
donāt chew off is going to wash up at Icebox. You got that?ä
I was just shooting off my mouth. And what was worse
than my indulging in the same irrational behavior that had
already ruined my life, was that he knew I was just making
a breeze. He looked at me, waited long enough so I couldnāt
pretend to have had my dignity scarred, and he went back to
search through the junk. I went off looking for fuxes to interrogate,
but they were avoiding us that day.
By that night heād already set up his own residence.
And the next day Amos delivered two females to me, who
unhinged themselves on their eight legs in a manner that was
almost sitting. And the old neuter let me know these two÷he
used an ekstasis image that conveyed nubile÷would join flow
with me in an effort to explain their relationship to Maternal
Grandfather. It was the first voluntary act of assistance
the tribe had offered in six months.
So I knew my unwelcome guest was paying for his sparse
accommodations.
And later that day I found wedged into one of the extensible
struts Iāve used in building the wickyup, the thorny branch
of an emeraldberry bush. It was festooned with fruit. Where
the aborigines had found it, out there in that shattered terrain,
I donāt know. The berries were going bad, but I pulled them
off greedily, nicking my hand on the thorns, and squeezed
their sea-green juice into my mouth.
So I knew my unwelcome guest was paying for his sparse
accommodations.
And we went on that way, with him lurking about and
sitting talking to Amos and his tribe for hours on end, and
me stumping about trying to play Laird of the Manor and getting
almost nowhere trying to impart philosophical concepts to
a race of creatures that listened attentively and then gave
me the distinct impression that I was retarded because I didnāt
understand Maternal Grandfatherās hungers.
Then one day he was gone.
It was early in the crossover season and the hard winds were
rising from the Hotlands. I came out of the wickyup and knew
I was alone. But I went to his tent and looked inside. It
was empty as Iād expected it to be. On a rise nearby, two
male fuxes and an old neuter were busy patting the ground,
and I strolled to them and asked where the other man was.
The hunters refused to join flow with me and continued patting
the ground in some sort of ritual. The old fux scratched at
his deep blue fur and told me the holy creature had gone off
into the Icelands. Again.
I walked to the edge of Westspit and stared off toward
the glacial wasteland. It was warmer now, but that was pure
desolation out there. I could see faint trails made by his
skids, but I wasnāt inclined to go after him. If he wanted
to kill himself, that was his business.
I felt an irrational sense of loss.
It lasted about thirty seconds; then I smiled; and went
back to the old fux and tried to start up a conversation.
Eight days later the man was back.
Now he was starting to scare me.
Heād patched the heat-envelope. It was still cracked
and looked on the edge of unserviceability, but he came striding
out of the distance with a strong motion, the skids on his
boots carrying him boldly forward until he hit the mush. Then
he bent and, almost without breaking stride, pulled them off,
and kept coming. Straight in toward the base camp, up Westspit.
His cowl was thrown back and he was breathing deeply, not
even exerting himself much, his long horsey face flushed from
his journey. He had nearly two weeksā growth of beard and
so help me he looked like one of the soldiers of fortune you
see smoking clay pipes and swilling up boar piss in the spacer
bars around Port Medea. Heroic. An adventurer.
He slogged in through the mud and the suckholes filled
with sargasso, and he walked straight past me to his tent
and went inside, and I didnāt see him for the rest of the
day. But that night, as I sat outside the wickyup, letting
the hard wind tell me odor tales of the Hotlands close to
Argo at the top of the world, I saw Amos the Wise and two
other old dromids come over the rise and down to his tent;
and I stared at them until the heroic adventurer came out
and squatted with them in a circle.
They didnāt move, they didnāt gesticulate, they didnāt
do a goddamned thing, they just joined flow and passed around
the impressions like a vonge-coterie passing its dream-pipe.
And the next morning I was wakened by the sound of clattering,
and threw on my envelope and came out to see him snapping
together the segments of a jerry-rigged sledge of some kind.
Heād cannibalized boot skids and tray shells from the transport
sheds and every last one of those lash-up spiders the lading
crews used to tighten down cargo. It was an ugly, rickety
thing, but it looked as if it would slide across ice once
he was out of the mush.
Then it dawned on me he was planning on taking all that
out there into the Icelands. ćHold it, mister,ä I said. He
didnāt stop working. I strode over and gave him a kick in
the hip. ćI said: hold it!ä
With his right hand he reached out, grabbed my left
ankle, and lifted. I half-turned, found myself off the ground,
and when I looked up I was two meters away, the breath pulled
out of me; on my back. He was still working.
I got up and ran at him. I donāt recall seeing him look up,
but he must have, otherwise how could he have gauged my trajectory?
When I stopped gasping and spitting out dirt, I tried to turn
over and sit up, but there was a foot in my back. I thought
it was him, but when the pressure eased and I could look over
my shoulder I saw the blue-furred shape of a hunter fux standing
there, a spear in his sinewy left hand. It wasnāt aimed at
me, but it was held away in a direct line that led back to
aiming at me. Donāt mess with the holy man, that was the message.
An hour later he pulled the sledge with three spiders
wrapped around his chest, and dragged it off behind him, down
the land-bridge and out into the mush. He was leaning forward,
straining to keep the travois from sinking into the porridge
till he could hit firmer ice. He was one of those old holograms
you see of a coolie in the fields, pulling a plow by straps
attached to a leather band around his head.
He went away and I wasnāt stupid enough to think he
was going for good and all. That was an empty sledge.
What would be on it when he came back?
It was a thick, segmented tube
a meter and a half long. Heād chipped away most of the ice
in which it had lain for twenty years, and I knew what it
was, and where it had come from, which was more than I could
say about him.
It was a core laser off the downed Daedalus power satellite
whose orbit had decayed inexplicably two years after the Northcape
Power District had tossed the satellite up. It had been designed
to calve into bergs the glaciers that had gotten too close
to coastal settlements; and then melt down. It had gone down
in the Icelands of Phykos, somewhere between the East Pole
and Icebox, almost exactly two decades ago. Iād flown over
it when theyād hauled me in from Enrique and the bush pilot
decided to give me a little scenic tour. Weād looked down
on the wreckage, now part of a complex ice sculpture molded
by wind and storm.
And this nameless skujge whoād invaded my privacy had
gone out there, somehow chonked loose the beamer÷and its power
collector, and if I was right about the fat package at the
end of the tube÷and dragged it back who knows how many kilometers
. . . for why?
Two hours later I found him down one of the access hatches
that led to the base campās power station, a fusion plant,
deuterium source; a tank that had to be replenished every
sixteen months: I didnāt have a refinery.
He was examining the power beamers that supplied heat
and electricity to the camp. I couldnāt figure out what he
was trying to do, but I got skewed over it and yelled at him
to get his carcass out of there before we both froze to death
because of his stupidity.
After a while he came up and sealed the hatch, and went
off to tinker with his junk laser.
I tried to stay away from him in the weeks that followed.
He worked over the laser, stealing bits and pieces of anything
nonessential that he could find around the camp. It became
obvious that though the lacy solar-collector screens had slowed
the Daedalusās fall as theyād been burned off, not even that
had saved the beamer from serious damage. I had no idea why
he was tinkering with it, but I fantasized that if he could
get it working he might go off and not come back.
And that would leave me right where I started, alone
with creatures that did not paint pictures or sing songs or
devise dances or make idols; to whom the concept of art was
unknown; who responded to my attempts to communicate on an
esthetic level with the stolid indifference of grandchildren
forced to humor a batty old aunt.
It was penance indeed.
Then one day he was finished.
He loaded it all on the sledge÷the laser, some kind of makeshift
energy receiver package heād mated to the original tube, my
hologram projector, and spider straps and harnesses and a
strut tripod÷and he crawled down into the access hatch and
stayed there for an hour. When he came back out he spoke to
Amos, who had arrived as if suddenly summoned, and when he
was done talking to him he got into his coolie rig and slowly
dragged it all away. I started to follow, just to see where
he was going, but Amos stopped me. He stepped in front of
me and he had ekstasis with me and I was advised not to annoy
the holy man, and not to bother the new connections that had
been made in the campās power source.
None of that was said, of course. It was all vague feelings
and imperfect images. Hunches, impressions, thin suggestions,
intuitive urgings. But I got the message. I was all alone
on Meditation Island, there by sufferance of the dromids.
As long as I did not interfere with the holy adventurer who
had come out of nowhere to fill me with the rage Iād fled
across the stars to escape.
So I turned away from the Icelands, good riddance, and
tried to make some sense out of the uselessness of my life.
Whoever he had been, I knew he wasnāt coming back, and I hated
him for making me understand what a waste of time I was.
That night I had a frustrating conversation with a turquoise
fux in its female mode. The next day I shaved off my beard
and thought about going back.
He came and went eleven times
in the next two years. Where and how he lived out there, I
never knew. And each time he came back he looked thinner,
wearier, but more ecstatic. As if he had found God out there.
During the first year the fuxes began making the trek: out
there in the shadowed vastness of the Icelands they would
travel to see him. They would be gone for days and then return
to speak among themselves. I asked Amos what they did when
they made their hegira, and he said, through ekstasis, ćHe
must live, is that not so?ä To which I responded, ćI suppose
so,ä though I wanted to say, ćNot necessarily.ä
He returned once to obtain a new heat-envelope. Iād
had supplies dropped in, and theyād sent me the latest model,
so I didnāt object when he took my old suit.
He returned once for the death ceremony of Amos the
Wise, and seemed to be leading the service. I stood there
in the circle and said nothing, because no one asked me to
contribute.
He returned once to check the fusion plant connections.
But after two years he didnāt return again.
And now the dromids were coming from what must have
been far distances, to trek across Meditation Island, off
the bridge-land, and into the Icelands. By the hundreds and
finally the thousands they came, passed me, and vanished into
the eternal winterland. Until the day a group of them came
to me and their leader, whose name was Ben of the Old Times,
joined with me in the flow and said, ćCome with us to the
holy man.ä Theyād always stopped me when Iād tried to go out
there.
ćWhy? Why do you want me to go now? You never wanted me out
there before!ä I could feel the acid boiling up in my anger,
the tightening of my chest muscles, the clenching of my fists.
They could burn in Argo before Iād visit that lousy skujge!
Then the old fux did something that astonished me. In
three years they had done nothing astonishing except bring
me food at the manās request. But now the aborigine extended
a slim-fingered hand to his right and one of the males, a
big hunter with bright blue fur, passed him his spear. Ben
of the Old Times pointed at the ground and, with a very few
strokes, drew two figures in the caked mud at my feet.
It was a drawing of two humans standing side-by-side,
their hands linked. One of them had lines radiating out of
his head, and above the figures the dromid drew a circle with
comparable lines radiating outward.
It was the first piece of intentional art I had ever
seen created by a Medean life-form. The first, as far as I
knew, that had ever been created by a native. And it happened
as I watched. My heart beat faster. I had done it! I had brought
the concept of art to at least one of these creatures.
ćIāll come with you to see him,ä I said.
Perhaps my time in purgatory was coming to an end. It
was possible Iād bought some measure of redemption.
I checked the fusion plant that
beamed energy to my heat-envelope to keep me from freezing;
I got out my boot skids and Baāal ice-claw; and I racked the
ration dispenser in my pack full of silvr wrap; and I followed
them out there. Where I had not been permitted to venture,
lest I interfere with their holy man. Well, weād see who was
the more important of us two: a nameless intruder who came
and went without even a thank you, or William Ronald Pogue,
the man who brought art to the Medeans!
For the first time in many years I felt light, airy,
worthy. Iād sprayed fixative on that pictograph in the mud.
It might be the most valuable exhibit in the Pogue Museum
of Native Art. I chuckled at my foolishness, and followed
the small band of fuxes deeper into the Icelands.
It was close on crossback season,
and the winds were getting harder, the storms were getting
nastier. Not as impossible as it would be a month hence, but
bad enough.
We were beyond the first glacier that could be seen
from Meditation Island, the spine of ice cartographers had
named the Seurat. Now we were climbing through the No Name
Cleft, the fuxes chinking out hand- and footholds with spears
and claws, the Baāal snarling and chewing pits for my own
ascent. Green shadows swam down through the Cleft. One moment
we were pulling ourselves up through the twilight, and the
next we could not see the shape before us. For an hour we
lay flat against the ice-face as an hysterical wind raged
down the Cleft trying to tear us loose and swing us into the
cut below.
The double shadows flickered and danced around us. Then
everything went into red, the wind died, and through now-bloody
shadows we reached the crest of the ridge beyond the Seurat.
A long slope lay before us, rolling to a plain of ice
and slush pools, very different from the fields of dry ice
that lay farther west to the lifeless expanse of Farside.
Sunday was rapidly turning into Darkday.
Across the plain, vision was impeded by a great wall
of frigid fog that rose off the tundra. Vaguely, through the
miasma, I could see the great glimmering bulk of Rio de Luz,
the immense kilometers-long ice mountain that was the final
barrier between the Terminator lands and the frozen nothingness
of Farside. The River of Light.
We hurried down the slope, some of the fuxes simply
tucking two, four or six of their legs under them and sliding
down the expanse to the plain. Twice I fell, rolled, slid
on my butt, tried to regain my feet, tumbled again and decided
to use my pack as a toboggan. By the time we had gained the
plain, it was nearly Darkday and fog had obscured the land.
We decided to camp till Dimday, hacked out sleeping pits in
the tundra, and buried ourselves.
Overhead the raging aurora drained red and green and
purple as I closed my eyes and let the heat of the envelope
take me away. What could the ćholy manä want from me after
all this time?
We came through the curtain of
fog, the Rio de Luz scintillating dimly beyond its mask of
gray-green vapor. I estimated that we had come more than thirty
kilometers from Meditation Island. It was appreciably colder
now, and ice crystals glimmered like rubies and emeralds in
the blue fux fur. And, oddly, a kind of breathless anticipation
had come over the aborigines. They moved more rapidly, oblivious
to the razor winds and the slush pools underfoot. They jostled
one another in their need to go toward the River of Light
and whatever the man out there needed me to assist with.
It was a long walk, and for much of that time I could
see little more of the icewall than its cruel shape rising
at least fifteen hundred meters above the tundra. But as the
fog thinned, the closer we drew to the base of the ice mountain,
the more I had to avert my eyes from what lay ahead: the permanent
aurora lit the ice and threw off a coruscating glare that
was impossible to bear.
And then the fuxes dashed on ahead and I was left alone,
striding across the tundra toward Rio de Luz.
I came out of the fog.
And I looked up and up at what rose above me, touching the
angry sky and stretching as far away as I could see to left
and right. It seemed hundreds of kilometers in length, but
that was impossible.
I heard myself moaning.
But I could not look away, even if it burned out my
eyes.
Lit by the ever-changing curtain of Medeaās sky, the crash
and downdripping of a thousand colors that washed the ice
in patterns that altered from instant to instant, the Rio
de Luz had been transformed. The man had spent three years
melting and slicing and sculpting kilometers of living ice÷I
couldnāt tell how many÷into a work of high art.
Horses of liquid blood raced through valleys of silver
light. The stars were born and breathed and died in one lacy
spire. Shards of amber brilliance shattered against a diamond-faceted
icewall through a thousand apertures cut in the facing column.
Fairy towers too thin to exist rose from a shadowed hollow
and changed color from meter to meter all up their length.
Legions of rainbows rushed from peak to peak, like waterfalls
of precious gems. Shapes and forms and spaces merged and grew
and vanished as the eye was drawn on and on. In a cleft he
had formed an intaglio that was black and ominous as the specter
of death. But when light hit it suddenly, shattering and spilling
down into the bowl beneath, it became a great bird of golden
promise. And the sky was there, too. All of it, reflected
back and new because it had been pulled down and captured.
Argo and the far suns and Phrixus and Helle and Jason and
Theseus and memories. I had a dream of times past as I stared
at one pool of changing colors that bubbled and sang. My heart
was filled with feelings I had not known since childhood.
And it never stopped. The pinpoints of bright blue flame skittered
across the undulating walls of sculpted ice, rushed toward
certain destruction in the deeps of a runoff cut, paused momentarily
at the brink, then flung themselves into green oblivion. I
heard myself moaning and turned away, looking back toward
the ridge across the fog and tundra; and I saw nothing, nothing!
It was too painful not to see what he had done. I felt my
throat tighten with fear of missing a moment of that great
pageant unfolding on the ice tapestry. I turned back and it
was all new, I was seeing it first and always as I had just
minutes before . . . was it minutes . . . how long had I been
staring into that dream pool . . . how many years had passed
. . . and would I be fortunate enough to spend the remainder
of my life just standing there breathing in the rampaging
beauty I beheld? I couldnāt think, pulled air into my lungs
only when I had forgotten to breathe for too long a time.
Then I felt myself being pulled along, and I cried out
against whatever force had me in its grip, that would deprive
me of a second of that towering narcotic.
But I was pulled away, and was brought down to the base
of the River of Light, and it was Ben of the Old Times who
had me. He forced me to sit, with my back to the mountain,
and after a very long time in which I sobbed and fought for
air, I was able to understand that I had almost been lost,
that the dreamplace had taken me. But I felt no gratitude.
My soul ached to rush out and stare up at beauty forever.
The fux flowed with me, and through ekstasis I felt
myself ceasing to pitch and yaw. The color dimmed in the grottos
behind my eyes. He held me silently with a powerful flow until
I was William Pogue again. Not just an instrument through
which the ice mountain sang its song, but Pogue, once again
Pogue.
And I looked up, and saw the fuxes hunkering down around
the body of their ćholy man,ä and they were making drawings
in the ice with their claws. And I knew it was not I
who had brought them to beauty.
He lay face-down on the ice, one hand still touching
the laser tube. The hologram projector had been attached with
a slipcard computer. Still glowing was an image of total sculpture.
Almost all of it was in red lines, flickering and fading and
coming back in with power being fed from base camp; but one
small section near the top of an impossibly-angled flying
bridge and minaret section was in blue line.
I stared at it for a while. Then Ben said this was the
reason I had been brought to that place. The holy man had
died before he could complete the dreamplace. And in a rush
of flow he showed me where, in the sculpture, they had first
understood what beauty was, and what art was, and how they
were one with the Grandparents in the sky. Then he created
a clear, pure image. It was the man, flying to become one
with Argo. It was the stick figure in the mud: it was the
uninvited guest with the lines of radiance coming out of his
head.
There was a pleading tone in the fuxās ekstasis. Do
this for us. Do what he did not have time to do. Make it complete.
I stared at the laser lying there, with its unfinished
hologram image blue and red and flickering. It was a bulky,
heavy tube, a meter and a half long. And it was still on.
He had fallen in the act.
I watched them scratching their first drawings, even
the least of them, and I wept within myself; for Pogue who
had come as far as he could, only to discover it was not far
enough. And I hated him for doing what I could not do. And
I knew he would have completed it and then walked off into
the emptiness of Farside, to die quickly in the darkness,
having done his penance . . . and more.
They stopped scratching, as if Ben had ordered them
to pay some belated attention to me. They looked at me with
their slanted vulpine eyes now filling with mischief and wonder.
I stared back at them. Why should I? Why the hell should I?
For what? Not for me, thatās certain!
We sat there close and apart, for a long time, and the
universe sent its best light to pay homage to the dreamplace.
The body of the penitent lay at my feet.
From time to time I scuffed at the harness that would hold
the laser in position for cutting. There was blood on the
shoulder straps.
After a while I stood up and lifted the rig. It was much heavier
than Iād expected.
Now they come from everywhere
to see it. Now they call it Oddumās Tapestry, not the
Rio de Luz. Now everyone speaks of its magic. A long time
ago he may have caused the death of thousands in another place,
but they say that wasnāt intentional; what he brought to the
Medeans was on purpose. So itās probably right that everyone
knows the name Virgil Oddum, and what he created at the East
Pole.
But they should know me, too. I was there! I did some
of the work.
My name is William Ronald Pogue, and I mattered. Iām
old, but Iām important, too. You should know names.
Copyright Notice:
ćWith Virgil Oddum at the East
Poleä by Harlan Ellison. Copyright ©1984 by Harlan Ellison.
Reprinted by arrangement with, and permission of, the Author
and the Author's agent Richard Curtis Associates, Inc., New
York, N.Y. USA. All rights reserved.
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