Meet Me at Infinity (11 page)

When the creatures heard this they looked at each other and at the man, and they understood, because the horn of legendary emergency had been blown. And the old badger of the cave whom nobody had ever seen before, advanced and spoke for them all, saying, Oh Man, we hear and understand! This is truly a time when we must stand together in battle for our lives. And we will! Moreover, it will be a sight never before seen, because behind us will arise the dread might and majesty of our Mother, the Earth, who is also the Mother of you men, though I have never understood why. She will strengthen us to invincible power. Even the soft wings of the mayflies and the very softest moles will take on the fury of our offended Mother. When your killing machines come they will be met by a terror never before seen and the men will know fear at last and flee!

To which the man said, So be it. I will stand with you.

And so one morning when the great yellow earth-gutting machines roared over the horizon into the little valley, there stood ready for them all the creatures of the forest. In the forefront the air was filled with moths and butterflies and every flying insect in waves and clouds, and underfoot the mice and the frogs and turtles in ranks, and all around them even the smallest blades of grass and leaves of the trees were drawn up and hard as spears. And behind them were the armies of woodchucks and squirrels and foxes unsmiling, right down to the raccoon babies unnaturally grim. And in their midst stood the proud stag of the forest with the sun gleaming on his antlers, and the man standing beside him. And every single one of them felt the power of their Mother the Earth surging through them, invincible at last, a thing which had never been known before. And swooping from the sky came the birds large and small in squadrons dazzling to the eye, and all this took place in perfect silence, which is the voice of Earth.

When the first bulldozer driver saw them he yelled through his transceiver, Hey, look at the birds! And the second driver bellowed back, kee-rist there’s a hell of a lot of animals in there! And the third driver shouted, Look out, maybe they’re rabid or something, I can’t see anything; my glass is covered with bugs. And they all lurched to a stop.

But the foreman came tearing up in his Jeep, yelling Gimme that shotgun, there’s a buck! By God, I haven’t shot a rack like that since I was a kid! And the support crew ran up after him and started shooting streams of chemical fog into the sky.

The first bulldozer driver said, I feel sick. If you’re sick go home, the foreman shouted, by Jesus I’m going to get that buck.

At that moment the man walked out of the woods and stood before them with his arms lifted, saying
Stop!
I command you in the name of our dread Mother, the Earth. This valley is under her protection forever. Turn and go!

The second bulldozer driver asked, What is that gray thing? Do you hear some kind of squeaking?

The foreman, sighting down his barrels told him, Nothing but a shadow, goddammit, you seeing ghosts?

When the man heard those words he felt draftiness and faintness. He looked down at his body and saw that the air was mingling through him; he was in fact only a gray shadow. And he groaned and said, Yes, it is true. I am only a ghost. I am dead. Now I remember.

And the foreman let off both barrels crash, blam, straight into the throat of the stag of the forest, and the great horns fell and gored the ground.

The first bulldozer driver jumped out and said, Screw you, I’m going home. But the foreman went and dragged the stag and he heaved him onto the Jeep and climbed in the bulldozer cab himself, howling Hit it! And the line of earth killers moved forward.

The foxes and raccoons and chipmunks and all the animals bared their teeth and called on the deep power of the Earth, standing their ground bravely around the ghost of the man, and the old badger dipped his heavy claws in the blood of the slain stag and charged. And the birds dived screaming and the baby quail and mice rushed into the treads to jam them and the butterflies and bees rained into the cabs, all calling on their Mother the Earth.

But the terrible machines ground forward uncaring and the fearful knives tore into the roots of the trees and tumbled them and the earth and the bones and bodies of the animals, into huge windrows, and other machines roared behind, shoveling everything together, oriole nests and badger teeth and mouse eyes and flowers and rocks and the milk of the squirrels all ground into a great heap of death down the center of the valley.

Next came the gravel trucks and the bluestone grinders and graders and the reinforcing rod layers, and they churned to and fro, flattening and mangling everything by day and by night, and the rains carried blood and mulm in a torrent to the sea. And presently a perfectly graded ribbon of concrete was spewed over the whole length of the murdered valley. And when it was all done the foreman said, Boys, it’s a great job, and I’m going to Florida this winter and sit in the sun and drink beer. Man, you should see how nice those horns turned out, I mounted them myself on walnut veneer.

After the valley was concrete from end to end the landscape crew sowed wire bunch-grass on the dead soil with tar mulch, and the contractor himself came out and said, Now that’s what I call pretty.

So the road was opened at last and all the people who had been impatiently awaiting the day started fiercely driving over it, exulting in their tremendous horsepower and noise and the speed with which they arrived at the next traffic jam, all the happy people in campers and hard-tops and Minis and Caddies and muscle-hogs and beetles and panels and cycles and ranch-wagons, and all air-conditioned too. They only open their windows to cast out paper and plastic and tin and broken glass, which nestles in the wire-grass roots to form burning lenses in the smoky sun, and when the rain falls it is carried off in cleverly engineered sluiceways so that the water dries up in the flesh of the earth and the sea is fouled. And the shining cars rush on smoothly night and day burning the black secret blood of the mother and sending its smoke upon the lifeless air.

The people are happy in their thrumming cars, on their fine new road. Only sometimes, as they zoom through the place where the valley was, their faces become strained and bleak and they have an absurd momentary fear that perhaps they cannot ever stop their engines or get out of their metal shells, but must roar on forever. But they know this is nonsense. Nothing will interfere with them. They will get where they are going.

And when they indeed and finally get where they are going some among them may have time to ask, Why did we come here?

Alii Sheldon’s
second
science-fiction-writing pseudonym, Raccoona Sheldon, first appeared August 25,1972, when she submitted “Angel Fix” (included in
Out of the Everywhere,
Del Rey 1981) to
Fantasy & Science Fiction.
The story was rejected, as were most of Raccoona’s.This frustrated Alii, because editors were begging Tiptree for stories but not interested in stories that they didn’t know were by the same writer. She had, however, deliberately given Raccoona minor stories that would seem to logically come from a beginning writer. And she had apparently forgotten that even “Tiptree,” whom she had considered an instant success, had sold only ten of thirty-three stories on initial submission.

The letter from Raccoona accompanying “Angel Fix” included this “autobiographical note”:

I used to sell feature reporting and travel type pieces. I guess my status peak was the
New Yorker.
Then I got locked into teaching and research, which shows in this story. But SF is my true love. Please be warned, I’m going to learn to write it,
ruat coeluml

Ed Ferman at
F&SF
returned it October 6, saying, “Sorry that this one did not appeal to me quite enough to take. I did like the writing, though, and I’d be glad to see others.” By then she had already sent him “The Trouble Is Not in Your Set” (on August 28) and “Press Until the Bleeding Stops” (on August 31), the latter with the short note: “This one is just bare-faced pain.” Ferman rejected that on October 31, and she sent it to Ted White at
Amazing
on November 22. When he rejected it, she retired the story.

In a letter to me on November 23,1973, Tiptree wrote:

Hey, I’ll tell you a secret. Being an incurable weirdo, I decided to send out a couple stories under an assumed name—sorry, I mean a nom de plume. So far neither have sold—the same editors who are ragging me for stuff bounced ‘em out of the slush-pile! Instructive, eh?… I’m just stubborn enough to keep on with it.

I’ll let you know if one sells. Private entre nous, right?

Earlier, in an undated letter to me (circa Sep. 72), Tiptree told me of:

… an old pal of mine who does drawings. She goes by the name of Raccoona, her own name having been, she feels, used up by a high-voltage media star so it no longer belongs to her. I enclose a sheet of doodles I extracted from her pad… I think she may try writing again, she did once. Doesn’t take herself seriously.

In my reply I said, “Perhaps some time the two of you might be able to work up some words and pictures collaboration. Some of her drawings look a lot like some of your writing.”

A year later, in the same November 23,1973, letter:

Oh, listen, before I end this—talk about the surprises of people, remember my asking you about drawing because of this Wisconsin friend, “Raccoona” Sheldon? Well, she never sent any drawings but she did send me, I mean, gave me when I was there, a couple very short pieces of writing. One I don’t understand too well, but the other is quite moving. A sort of ecology fantasy, only—pause for scrabbling in my cartoons—6V2 pages of real big type. Want me to send it along? Even if you have no use for it, she’d be delighted to hear any comments. As I think I mentioned, she’s a shy type. Retreated up there after god knows what. But cheerful. (All my
old
friends are cheerful. We have to be.) I dunno why no drawings, maybe she’s secretly into writing. She has a lot of nuisancy family to take care of—what the world puts on people…

The story was sent to me in January 1974. As usual, there were hand-corrections on it, and at the last minute Alii, afraid that I would recognize them as Tiptree’s, rolled the letter back into the typewriter and typed this out-of-alignment P.S.: “Looking it over I see my hash-tracks and recall I fixed it up a trifle. With her consent, I’m like you persnicky about other people’s mss. Maybe you like her version better.”

I accepted it a couple weeks later: “It’s really nice. Weird. I’ll keep it and run it in
Kyben
someday soon. I’ll drop her a line and tell her so. Thanks for passing it on.” I ended up publishing it in the first issue of a new fanzine,
Kha-tru,
in February 1975.

Scene: A deserted slaughterhouse, early Sunday morning

Heroine, stark naked except for a pair of thumbscrews, staggers out of a badly tousled bed. A large box of ten-penny nails falls to the floor. Bed bursts into flames.

Heroine: “Oh my God, the milkman!”

Struggles into a hair shirt, opens door.

Heroine, standing on doorstep: “The air! To breathe the diamond elixir of the great world! Oh, my electric nerves! Where is the milk?”

Snatches up scrap of lavender johnny paper.

Heroine, writing furiously: “I must have more milk! The smoldering fires in my bones must be quenched. My blind hunger must be assuaged. What do they call that stuff with the vitamin B in it? Oh, this struggle to communicate!”

Milkman is heard approaching. Heroine tears off hair shirt.

Milkman: “All right, Miss, what’ll it be?”

Heroine: “So! You too are committed!”

Flings herself around Milkman’s midriff.

Milkman: “Hey!”

Heroine, choking: “My love, my love! Mine! Loneliness is finished for us two! Your great eyes gaze at my flesh… Come, love!”

Milkman, bursting into flames: “Uggrrgrrg!” Rushes from scene.

Heroine, dejectedly picking up bottle of milk: “Oh, fool that I am! Now I’ll have to switch to Borden’s. My heart is a stone, a little black stone. A chip off the rock of death. There must be something wrong with my style. Where the hell is
The New York Times?”

Wanders over to a fresh grave in the front yard.

Heroine, drinking milk: “Ah yes, now I remember… That delivery boy.

Utter peace… My very hair stands on end, remembering the quivering intensity of his naked foot nakedly in the small of my back… Death, sweet friend, keep him safe for me… No! I am sentimental! It was my fault, my damned fault! Responsibility—that is the great word. I accept—Human responsibility. I stare at the facts. Expiation!… I will order the
Herald Tribune.”

Places empty milk bottle on grave, returns to house and commences to clean the floor, very humbly, with a blowtorch. Sings to herself.

Heroine: “I’m going to buy a paper dolly I can call my own …” Bursting out: “Me! Me! Me! That’s all I hear! What’s the use of being a schizoid if I can’t get away from myself? Hate and fear, fear and hate, miserable, puking, sniveling, groveling, ignominious snot-faced limpet that I am! What will I do when the papers give out, read the
Christian Science Monitor?
What’s the use of using six adjectives if I don’t express what I mean—the incommunicable quintessence of me? The stammering question of my blood, that’s what I mean, if I may say so, call it what you will, but those who know it, knowing naught else beside—what am I saying? I need light, although it will not improve matters much, it’s honest.”

Sets house on fire.

Heroine, reflectively: “Men—I hate men. Ugh, the brutality of them! Women are good. Why haven’t I some great women friends? I love women—I will find women! Christ, it’s hot in here. Water! Water for my fevered fetid flushed frenzied …”

Walks out, muttering. House burns to ashes, leaving heroine sleeping peacefully on grave.

Ghost of Ernest Dowson, reading a copy of
Gone with the Wind,
wanders in and sits down beside her. Several puking, snot-faced, etc., limpets emerge from grave and stare reproachfully at Heroine.