It was neither anything so simple as Bertram Diebold's
cold pizza dinner weaving spice trails through his intestines, nor anything
so complex as some glowing, spectral presence tapping messages against
the little window beside his bed that set the dream into motion; all was
still, and the dream simply began:
A crowded city bus... dirty... loud... A multi-lingual
din raked the stale air around him as his fellow passengers chatted away
in frantic staccato bursts, in song-like phrases with too many vowels,
in rolled R's and wide gestures that never quite blended - a cacophony
without rhythm or meaning that stung his ears, that made his teeth hurt.
Bertram turned away from the motley assemblage of bag-ladies
and housewives, of long-haired boys in blue jeans and old blind men restlessly
tapping their canes to scan the street beyond through the dust-caked window.
The bus rounded a corner, and he spotted a street sign; the letters danced
and flowed in his vision, refusing to form into intelligible words.
From beside him, spoken English, a woman's voice: Pay
attention, you fool!
Bertram spun away from the window. "What...?"
He was alone in the seat - but now, clutched tightly
in his right hand was a slim, hardbound book. He scanned its gleaming cover,
but, again, the letters of its title flowed like mercury off the page.
Pay attention to what?
He tried to set the book onto the empty seat beside him,
but it refused to leave his hand. He folded his arms across his chest,
pushing the book deep under his jacket and out of sight.
Again the sourceless voice: Just pay attention.
"Fine," he said aloud. He straightened in the seat, cleared
his throat. "I will."
An argument broke out at the front of the bus. A heated
male voice, speaking in English, broke through the buzzing wall of conversation,
washing gradually over it, consuming it. The babble subsided until only
the one voice remained:
"Surely, you can't be serious," the voice boomed out.
"These so-called 'teachers' of yours tell you the universe is such and
such and so and so, you memorize their words... and, for you, what they
say becomes truth? The final word? What rubbish!"
The voice dropped to a reptilian stage-whisper:
"You appear to know a great deal, my friend, but you
know nothing. While you study the false world, the real world lies dying
at your fingertips. Your 'science' cannot save it. You know many great
words, but you are a fool!"
Bertram's breath quickened, his cheeks burned with rage.
I am, am I...?
He tried to stand, to seek out the source of this new
rude voice, but he could only turn his head; his body refused to budge.
Not yet, came the feminine voice beside him. It seemed
closer now. The words seemed to rise up from his own chest.
"But..."
The passengers in the seats ahead of him vanished and
Bertram suddenly had a clear view ahead:
In the first aisle seat on the right sat an enormous
man dressed entirely in black. His sharp jaw and muscular frame made him
seem formidably masculine - a classic Robert E. Howard Cro-Magnon thug.
Yet the finely tailored, black tuxedo - even the frilly shirt was black
- through which the muscles bulged gave him a strangely effeminate cast:
A European lord, a dandy, forced by circumstances to mingle with the ordinary.
He even appeared to hover a little over the seat, as if afraid of contamination.
Across from the shadowy man sat a small, equally-dark
woman. Bertram could make out nothing of her beyond her darkness. She seemed
not to have an existence separate from the dark stranger she faced, a mere
prop for the man's performance.
He's speaking to her, Bertram realized. He's attacking
that poor girl, and nobody's lifting a finger to stop him...
His paralysis broke as unseen hands lifted him from his
seat and rushed him to the woman's defense. He looked first to her, but
she refused to meet his gaze. He turned to her assailant.
From a distance, the man had appeared large; up close,
he was a giant. Bertram's breath froze in his chest as his indignation
turned to fear. He tried to turn away, to slink unnoticed back to his seat,
but his legs would not move. He felt his jaw dropping, listened with dread
fascination as strange words began to tumble in a frantic stream from his
own mouth:
"This is the other world!" Bertram heard himself exclaim.
"This is where the doorway leads - and I say we must not only open that
door, but pass through it, maybe even physically!"
The words made no sense. The burning intensity be-hind
them even less. What am I saying? What does this mean? As if in reply,
he heard his own voice continue:
"The world of Spirit is subject to the same natural laws
that shape the physical world! It can be saved!"
He felt his hand reaching into his jacket, raising the
nameless book over his head. His body stretched into the stiff pose of
a backwoods preacher punctuating the day's Gospel lesson with a final threat
of Eternal Damnation.
"And this," he proclaimed boldly, "is the key!"
The posture had transformed Bertram's fear back into
indignation, into self-righteous anger. He hung over the dark giant like
a fiery cloud, the book raised high, challenging the massive stranger to
respond.
The man continued to gaze past Bertram, staring through
him at the woman. He answered the intrusion with studied, silent indifference.
"Well?" Bertram demanded.
The stranger shook his head. He crossed his tree trunk
legs femininely, at the knee, and answered without looking up.
"Maybe so," he said. His lips twisted into a thin smile.
"Maybe so."
With ferocious power, the man shot from his seat and
gripped the collar of Bertram's jacket. He towered over Bertram, lifted
him free of the bus's metal floor.
Bertram's fire winked out; his burning cloud dissipated
back to gray, wispy fear. He looked to the bus driver for help, but the
man stared impassively ahead, seemingly unaware of the violent scene taking
place behind him. He swung back to face his attacker, and felt the book
fall away from his trembling fingers as he met the dark stranger's eyes...
The man had no eyes. Pools of blackness swirled like
oil in empty sockets.
Bertram choked as his breath stopped altogether. He could
not pull away from the man's dark gaze. The swirling pools engulfed him,
filled him with the same penetrating blackness...
"Yes, my friend, this is the other world," the stranger
rasped. "And I am the Gate, opened at last for you. Are you prepared to
cross?"
Bertram felt himself dissolving into the slow swirl of
the stranger's eyes. The bus, with all its passengers, faded around him.
They were now on the street. The once bustling city was
vacant - no people, no cars, no one to hear him should he find the strength
to cry out; a tumbleweed drifted lazily by. Bertram renewed his struggle,
but only flopped helplessly in the stranger's grasp. He surrendered and
the street, too, vanished.
He was surrounded by darkness; he had become darkness...
... And in the heart of the Darkness, Bertram saw the
Fish. A great golden fish hung suspended in the void. It glowed with a
throbbing, self-contained Light that did not penetrate the surrounding
Darkness. It stood alone, the only object in view, distinct from the vast,
endlessly uniform ocean surrounding it.
Bertram was now a part of that ocean, existing without
form. As he watched the Fish spinning in the Darkness, his heart pounded
with longing:
The Fish Was; the Darkness Was Not. Bertram longed to
Be. He longed to share in the Fish's individuality, its freedom to stand
proudly apart from the endless black sea...
The Fish exploded. The Light that had been contained
now burst over the void. Bertram felt his own dark nothingness penetrated
and set ablaze by the luminous onslaught as shockwaves rolled further and
further out from the center of the explosion.
He felt the Light and Darkness merge within him, becoming
something new - something that was neither fully Darkness nor fully Light.
Nor was it simply a mixture of the two. The new substance was solid; it
pulsated no longer with Light, but with Life...
Bertram was a new creature - a Living Being.
And suddenly he, too, was shaped roughly like a fish.
He had acquired form, individuality, freedom...
The Great Fish's fire burned deep within his being and,
with uncontrolled joy, Bertram thrashed his new-formed tail through the
dark ether in a frantic dance of celebration. All around him in the sea
of Darkness, an infinite number of softly glowing fish like himself danced,
jumped and played. Their motion was a song of joy, a hymn of gratitude
for this gift of shared Self...
At long last, the Light had come upon the Darkness, and
the Darkness had found it good.
The voice of the stranger boomed through the teeming
ocean of Life, filling it, echoing through and beyond the newborn Bertram:
"Witness, my friend, the mystery of Creation..."
Then Bertram heard his own tiny voice singing in reply,
but who is the Fish?
His song rippled out through the ocean of Life, but returned
to him unanswered.
Bertram bolted upright in the bed, suddenly wide awake.
He reached for the screaming alarm clock, but pulled back as cool morning
air hit the sweat that soaked his too-thin body. He shivered and pulled
the blankets up to his neck. He let the clock scream.
Who is the Fish? The words echoed in his mind. He closed
his eyes and tried to memorize the details of the dream before they faded
away; a chill snaked up his spine, a mild current like slow lightning...
It reached his head and seemed to push him gently forward. He was about
to remember something important, something vast...
Who is the Fish?
He sat, huddled forward, eyes tight, waiting for the
lightning to strike. But after a moment, the feeling passed. Whatever it
was, he had lost it.
* * *
MISTAH KURTZ - HE DEAD!
The spoon fell from Bertram's hand, splashing milk and cornflakes onto his newly arrived copy of Lit-World Weekly. He wiped the page frantically with his sleeve.
Renowned science fiction author H.F. Kurtz died this week, on March 2, victim of a massive stroke that left him paralyzed for three days before finally claiming his life. Kurtz is best known for his allegedly drug influenced "trip novels" of the 1960's, several of which won the science fiction community's highest honors - the Hugo and Nebula awards. He retired from writing throughout the '70s, then reappeared in 1981 with a new 2000 page novel, which was published as the trilogy Cosmogenesis, Voice of the Beloved and Reconciliato. These comeback novels, however, while embraced by a few loyal readers in hard-core SF circles, were universally rejected by critics as esoteric and unapproachable (see reviews, p. 48).
In the years following their publication, the Kurtz trilogy spawned an ill-defined, cult-like movement within science fiction, both its literature and its fandom, espousing Kurtz's esoteric rambling as factual, and calling themselves "Kurtzians." Kurtz, for his part, openly labeled the sub-culture "misguided," though it was rumored that he, clandestinely, had either founded the movement, or at least played an active roll within it. Kurtz publicly denied all such claims.
He retired again in 1982, after his trilogy was denied a second printing due to low sales and negative press. He spent his last years as a recluse, only occasionally stepping into the public eye to accept awards or to lambaste his fanatical following. Whether he wrote during these years of seclusion, whether posthumous works can be expected, is not yet known.
But his body of published works lives on. The unique spirit of H.F. Kurtz, approachable or otherwise, will be sorely missed.
But it was neither the article, nor its tasteless headline,
that had loosened the spoon from Bertram's fingers. Beside the obituary
was a grainy black and white photo of Kurtz - a massive, tall man wearing
a dark, finely tailored tuxedo; equally dark frills puffed ominously from
his muscled chest. He stood at a podium before a blurred sea of faces,
accepting, according to the caption, a Lifetime Achievement Award at the
World Science Fiction Convention of 1988. It had been his last public appearance
before his death.
Bertram stared into the picture, his jaw slack. He felt
the strange pressure in his head, pushing him forward. He struggled to
remember.
Was H.F. Kurtz the stranger in his dream? A dead science
fiction writer?
He searched the picture for a glimpse of the man's eyes.
The photo's poor quality left them in shadow, blurred like the uniform
sea of faces surrounding him. His eyes appeared empty, hollow, swirling
pools of darkness...
Bertram flipped quickly to the book review section, leaving
a finger to mark the obituary. Sure enough, the critics panned Kurtz's
final three novels - but, oddly, the article also announced their "long
awaited return" in paperback.
He turned back to the obituary and, for a long moment,
studied the shadowy picture. Then he closed the magazine, folded it, and
dropped it into the open briefcase on the floor beside him.
The cornflakes had turned to mush; he pushed them away.
* * *
Mounds of dirty snow still bordered the New Frontiers,
Ltd. parking lot as Bertram pulled in for the day. But the cleared blacktop
sparkled in the morning sunlight. The wind in his face as he traced the
cobblestone path toward the big glass door was warm.
Spring was coming. Bertram smiled.
When he reached his own small office on the fourteenth
floor, he made a valiant effort to pour through the latest "inspirational
novel" waiting boxed like a sealed prayer on his desk. But - while the
typeface didn't dance or flow like mercury, while each word was stable
- he still found it unreadable. The strange dream, the grainy photograph,
their disturbing connection danced instead in his mind, pulled his attention
away from the creaking prose of yet another housewife author with too much
time on her hands, a head full of New Age platitudes, and the mistaken
belief that anyone with half a mind to write a book should...
The mild current still tingled in his mouth - a tart
aftertaste, a physical memory. He kept expecting some-thing to happen,
either in the novel or in the room around him.
By page five of the manuscript, it was clear that nothing
was going to happen in either place. He dropped the pages back into their
box, signed a generic New Frontiers one-liner, Your manuscript has been
read..., then considered feigning illness and going home. He pulled the
copy of Lit-World Weekly from his briefcase, slapped it listlessly a few
times against his palm, scanned the back-page ad for yet another leather-bound
edition of Shakespeare's collected works...
"Hey."
Bertram dropped the magazine into his lap, and looked
up. His fiancée, Christine Asher, stood before him, a slender, golden-haired
angel - a sight as glorious to Bertram's tired eyes as...
As a perfect excuse. He broke into a wide grin. "Hey
back."
The girl dropped her purse wearily onto the desk.
"Seven A.M.," she started in, "and I wake up to Bootsie retching on the
bed, all over the apartment..." She plopped down beside the purse, grimacing.
"Bad tuna the vet says, and hands me a bill for fifty bucks! Fifty bucks
for bad tuna..."
Bertram glanced at his watch. "You took the whole day
off? You don't have to go in?"
"... and lost wages, too! That cat..."
Bertram clapped his hands, circled around the desk, and
pulled the girl to him. He kissed her then whispered something into her
ear.
Christy smiled and nodded. After Bertram had retrieved
his briefcase and the fallen magazine, she allowed him to lead her down
the narrow hallway. They stopped before an open door and Bertram peeked
tentatively inside.
"Big Emergency, Sid!" He pushed into the office, dragging
Christy with him. "It's... Ah... Christy's cat. He's dying."
"No kidding?" Sid leaned back into his chair and surveyed
the couple shifting nervously before him. He stowed a pencil behind his
ear, folded his hands across his chest.
"Is this true?" he asked the girl. "Bertram wouldn't
know a dying cat from an overfed guppy."
Christy nodded, mmmhmm'd through closed lips, then
looked away.
"Gotta go," Bertram prodded. "Okay?"
Sid smiled knowingly, then reached again for the pencil.
He began to scribble on the manuscript spread out on his desk. "Young
love..." He chuckled softly. "Go on, you two. Go save your cat."
Over lunch, Bertram described to his fiancée the
strange dream. Then he showed her the Lit-World article, the dark photograph.
The picture, again, drew him gently forward... He looked away.
"If it weren't for the picture," Bertram said, "I'd write
the whole thing off. Another weird dream. Big deal." He dumped a packet
of sugar into his tea, then went on without stirring it in. "But I'm telling
you, Christy, they're not just similar. It's the same guy. I know it."
The sugar hovered a moment on the floating ice, then
dropped in one lump to the bottom of the glass.
"I've got this feeling like I'm biting on tinfoil," Bertram
continued through clenched teeth. "It's physical. It won't let me just
forget."
Christy smiled. "My shrink would have a field day with
you, Bertram." She dropped a long spoon into his iced tea and began to
stir. The sugar spread the dark liquid in slow, swirling waves. "One weird
dream plus one blurred picture equals... what? Not all coincidences are
meaningful, you know."
Bertram watched the sugar swirl up, dissolve, the sugar
and tea combined, both changed in the process...
"And some are," he said. He clicked his teeth together
loudly. "Tinfoil. Ouch."
Christy frowned, released the spoon, and signaled for
the waitress.
As they walked toward the car - bright sunlight overhead,
his girl at his side, free for the day - Bertram's somber mood lifted.
Christy was probably right. Could he be certain he hadn't simply rearranged
his memory when he saw the picture, made some associative link, rather
than having dreamed, specifically, of Kurtz - a man he'd never before seen?
Might he have seen Kurtz's picture somewhere and forgotten it? He worked
for a publisher, for God's sake. He subscribed to Lit-World Weekly, Book
Review Quarterly, American Fiction...
So maybe Kurtz just fit a certain mold - a physical type,
a generic Archetypal figure. Exactly the brand of Dark Stranger he'd expect
his dreaming brain to dredge up when it needed one. Meaningless ...
"You're right," he said as he unlocked the passenger
door of the car and pulled it wide. "Much ado about noth-ing. I probably
just need some time away from inspired housewife authors and..."
He froze. The woman at his side, the woman now lowering
herself into the passenger seat of his car, was not Christy. A small, Oriental
woman with short, jet-black hair now sat in his car, watching him, a welcoming
smile on her strangely familiar lips. He felt himself being pulled gently
forward. He closed his eyes, took a breath.
"Well, you've got one day off," the dark woman said.
"And you've got me, you lucky man, to spend it with."
Bertram refused to open his eyes. He leaned against the
car door, shaking, unable to breath. "Who..."
"Bertram? Are you okay?"
Bertram rubbed his eyes, then stared down at the restored
Christy. He managed a weak smile.
"No," he said, "I am not okay." Then after a pause, he
added, "Read any good books lately?"
* * *
The alarm clock screamed and Bertram woke with a start.
He slapped wearily at the nightstand and managed to silence the little
box by knocking it to the floor.
00:L ... He rubbed his eyes and looked again - 7:00.
He'd been asleep less than an hour, but he had been dreaming. He peeled
back the covers and scrambled for the nightstand drawer, for the pen and
notebook he'd stashed there the previous evening:
I was again a golden fish swimming in the void. Within
me, inside my body, was a man. I knew I was the man as well as the fish,
but the man was unaware of me. He saw only himself, his own face reflected
back to him from the mirror-like walls.
I called out to him, be he couldn't (or wouldn't) hear
me. His full attention was snared by a series of dark, shifting images
that danced behind his reflection like a shadow-play. I could plainly see
that what he was taking for reality was only a mirage, a phantom of the
real world, my world, twisted and distorted by the thick screen of my fish
belly through which he viewed it all. His "reality" was but a dim, filtered
reflection of my own.
And superimposed over each shadow scene was the man's
own reflection. He stood there, smiling, smugly self-satisfied, master
of all he surveyed. An angry voice filled the void, proclaiming:
"An evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign, but no sign will be given
except the sign of Jonah..."
Bertram stopped writing and closed the notebook.
He dropped it back into the drawer, yawned, rubbed his tired eyes again,
then stood and shuffled off to the small kitchenette in search of strong
black coffee.
He poured his traditional cornflakes, added milk, then
moved to the counter to challenge the little Braun with ten scoops of Old
Judge. He leaned back and listened as it hissed and moaned, the warm scent
of brewing coffee holding him there, still half asleep, half dreaming.
This is the bachelor's life, he told himself sullenly.
And you almost got to keep it, Mr. Suave... Jesus.
Christy hadn't much liked his suggestion that they spend
their day off together book shopping. When he'd abandoned her in the magazine
aisle, then reappeared with two of Kurtz's reissued novels under his arm,
she'd stopped talking to him. When he'd complained that he was tired, that
he wasn't good company, and that he might as well go home and rest rather
than spoil her fun, she'd turned slowly away, taken a few steps, then spun
back - a thin smile frozen on her lips.
"Whatever you say, Father Diebold."
"Father Diebold?" he'd questioned cautiously.
The smile vanished. "A fitting title for a celibate mystic
like yourself."
"Ah," was the only reply Bertram had found to make.
But after the silent drive back to Christy's apartment,
as Bertram stood beside the car, watching her walk away, she'd granted
a reprieve. At the door of the brownstone building, she'd turned back,
yelled to him across the small yard, "You'll pay for this, Bertram!"
"I know," he'd called back. He'd never doubted that.
He'd only doubted whether he'd be offered a chance to try.
Then Christy had flashed him a sweet, unexpected smile.
She'd waved. "I'll see you Saturday?"
"Saturday..." But she had already disappeared inside.
He'd driven away, one hand on the wheel, one hand thrumming happily at
the shiny new books on the seat beside him, his heart pounding in his throat
with the sure knowledge that Christy was a better woman than he deserved...
The little Braun coughed loudly and died. Dirty mug in
one hand, steaming carafe in the other, Bertram moved back to the table.
The cornflakes had turned to mush, and he pushed them away.
It had taken a whole night to pour through the first
volume of Kurt's trilogy, Cosmogenesis. Staring at it now, holding it up
like a shield between himself and the drowned cereal, Bertram found it
hard to believe he'd read it at all, let alone finished it only an hour
before. Like the stranger's eyes in the dream, the book had sucked him
in, engulfed him, flooded him with images of Darkness and Light, with terror
that became joy, recognition that sank into confusion, then doubt, full
bewilderment - that burst through the novel's final pages into...
Nothing. For, also like the dream, he'd come out the
other side of Cosmogenesis less certain of what was going on than before
he'd started. Maybe the book and the dream - now dreams - were equally
meaningless, equally worthless; maybe obliqueness was the only genuine
connection between them...
He set the book aside, went back to the counter, dug
through the drawer until he found pen and paper, then returned to the table.
In block letters, at the top of the page, he wrote:
CONNECTIONS
Then he began a careful list of details from the book
that might, if written out, come together to help make sense of the last
twenty-four hours:
1) The Fish
Cosmogenesis had its Fish, but it wasn't really a fish.
It was a fish-shaped spaceship, The Icthus, from planet-unnamed, that appeared
one night to the novel's protagonist in a dream. The Good Ship Icthus,
the dream revealed, had entered Earth orbit carrying enough of some mystery
substance to do something to the planet - either blast it backward through
a zillion years of counter-clocked entropy to re-seed the original Big
Bang, or else forward through a zillion years of high-speed evolution to
some future point that amounted to pretty much the same thing, a new Big
Bang in circular time. Which of these outcomes would occur was never made
clear.
Whether anything was "really" happening at all was never
made clear.
2) Kurtz
The closest thing the novel's poor protagonist had to
a friend was a Mephistophelian science fiction writer Named H.F. Kurtz.
Kurtz had painted himself in the novel, at least physically, true to form
- a hulking shadow figure, an Archetypal Dark Stranger. The two met on
a city bus shortly after the initial dream. Throughout the novel, the Kurtz
character accompanied the protagonist through various levels of post-dream
anxiety, offering ultra-literate theories and "profound" philosophical
discourses about the State of the Universe, Mankind, and the protagonist's
"obvious psychosis." Mostly he re-peatedly explained, in Jungian terms,
that the dream, and all the trepidations that followed from it like toppling
dominoes, were inner experiences - either the pro-tagonist's Archetypal
journey toward individuation, or else his psychotic plummet into utter
madness. Which of these was the case was never made clear.
The rest of the novel seemed to have nothing to do with
Bertram's dreams:
The protagonist steals a spaceship and jets off to where
The Icthus claims to be hiding. When he gets there, he finds the ship,
all right, but it's "dead." It's about a zillion years old, a rusted out
shell, whose only functioning unit is the transmitter by which it originally
contacted the protagonist - and has been, apparently, contacting just about
anybody it can reach, including Kurtz. But the vast majority of those contacted,
being sane individuals, wrote their dreams off easily as meaningless and
went on with their lives. Only the protagonist and, as it turns out, Kurtz,
responded.
Bertram scribbled a crude Icthus in the margin of the
page, added around it a dozen tiny fish swimming and jumping in a dozen
directions, then jotted a final note:
3) Dreams
The novel had ended with the protagonist's return to Earth:
Kurtz meets him at the spaceport and conks him on the head with a wrench.
He wakes up in a hospital, where Kurtz convinces him it was all a dream,
that he's cracked completely, and that his only hope is to enter a monastery
and sort out, with God's help, his mixed up inner life.
Then Kurtz boards the stolen spaceship and dis-appears.
Where he's going, or why, is never made clear.
Dreams... Bertram refilled his mug, then rocked the chair
back on two legs. The whole book was written like a dream, illogical, ambiguous
- "objective" realities that turn out to be inner states, fugue-like fantasies
that turn out to be real, voices from nowhere, characters who seem to trade
roles, then switch back - like Christy and the oriental woman...
In "real" dreams it always, somehow, made sense. The
mind had ways of tricking a person into accepting absurdities so he doesn't
wake up, doesn't question. Suddenly Bertram's waking life had become dreamlike,
ambiguous. Something...
He frowned, and looked again at the page before him:
The Fish, Kurtz, Dreams. Three words. Nothing; it added up to nothing.
One dream plus one crazy novel equals... What? He should take another day
off, sleep, apologize to Christy - sanely write it all off and escape the
web now, before...
He crumpled the page of notes and hurled it out of sight,
toward the living room. Something shattered.
Impossible, Bertram thought. Paper couldn't...
The feather-light wad had toppled a decanter on the low
coffee table. Wine pulsed in rapid, red gurgles onto his magazines, newspapers,
a book...
Bertram darted across the room and snatched the book
from the growing puddle. He frantically wiped it dry on the sleeve of his
robe.
Voice of the Beloved. The cover, soaked through with
wine, tore away; Bertram felt himself pulled gently forward...
CHAPTER ONE: THE SIGN OF JONAH
The web closed. Bertram crossed slowly back to the kitchen,
the coverless, wine-stained book in his hands. He started another pot of
coffee, called in sick, then unplugged the telephone from the wall.
He didn't want to be disturbed.
* * *
For what seemed the first time ever, Bertram slept a full,
dreamless night. He woke up before the alarm sounded. He felt great.
Screw you, Kurtz, he thought giddily. He danced lightly
to the kitchen, ignored the little Braun, and poured, instead, a tall glass
of orange juice. He sat down at the table, picked up the tattered copy
of Voice of the Beloved, and smiled. He tossed it into the living room.
Nothing shattered.
The second book had been straightforward autobio-graphy
- sort of. In it, Kurtz claimed that Cosmogenesis had been autobiographical,
that The Icthus was real, and that he'd gone back, after the last pages
of the first novel, to reactivate it. The Icthus, once running, turned
out to be a sort of metaphysical teaching machine. Its computer banks contained
the original blueprints for Creation - a Creation which, after a zillion
years of entropy, was running down. Icthus' mission, Kurtz claimed, was
to start Creation over, to generate a New Creation, a new universe, using
Mankind as its source material. The mystery-substance Icthus carried was
refined evolutionary energy, stored as Cosmic Information. Once this info-energy
was absorbed by human beings, once ingested and understood, it would transform
Mankind into an equivalent energy - Cosmic Awareness. The two energies,
combined, would explode in a new Big Bang, a New Creation, a new, entropy-free
universe...
Reading Voice of the Beloved had brought a great relief.
Kurtz was insane. That obvious, simple fact explained more than any book,
any dream, any imagined vision ever could.
The book had been published in 1981. It must have been
written in the late Seventies. One could not, then or now, take a cab to
the nearest spaceport and commandeer a ship. Kurtz's science was so inaccurate,
his philosophy so "inspired..."
Bertram laughed. He doubted Kurtz could successfully
rewire a broken lamp, let alone an ancient, space-going teaching machine.
And his claims to Cosmic Knowledge, to Revelation, sounded so much like
the channeling housewife authors he rejected every day at New Frontiers...
He downed the orange juice and headed for the bathroom
to shower and shave. After two days of paranoid psychosis, he must look
like hell. He had to clean up. It was Saturday, and he'd been granted a
reprieve. He was meeting the warden of his heart for lunch; he had a debt
to repay.
He got to the restaurant early, ordered iced tea - no
sugar - and sat quietly at the table, studying a menu. The waitress came
and went, Bertram's Timex ground slowly past twelve o'clock, and there
was still no sign of Christy.
She was late. She was never late for anything. Bertram
pulled his sleeve down over his watch and began to seriously worry that
his sentence had been extended, that she'd changed her mind, that he'd
blown it with Christy for good...
Screw you, Kurtz, he thought again. He felt in no way
giddy. He felt sick. His stomach began to churn, and he dumped four packets
of sugar into the half-empty glass of tea. He stirred it in angrily, letting
the spoon clank loudly around the inside of the glass.
Damn you, Kurtz! he shouted in his head. Damn me...
Christy appeared at the front of the restaurant. She
spotted him, and hurried to the table. She was pale, shaking. Her always-perfect
golden hair hung loose over one eye, limp, unkempt.
"I tried to call you..." she started. She sat down, caught
her breath.
Oh, Christ... He'd forgotten to reconnect the phone line.
"Jesus, Christy, I'm sorry..." he said in a rush of guilty relief; she
was here, he had a chance... "I unplugged it. I was reading, and..."
Christy sat in silence, her hands folded before her.
She stared into them, moving her thumbs in slow, alternating circles. Her
eyes glistened; she had been crying.
"Christy?
"I had one of your dreams," she said. She looked up,
met Bertram's worried gaze. "Screw you, Bertram. You're infecting
me with this stuff."
"Kurtz is dead," Bertram insisted, as much to himself
as to Christy. "And he's nuts, too. None of this is happening. Let it go."
"Kurtz..." A bitter laugh. "This isn't about Kurtz. It's
about you."
"Me?"
She'd dreamed about a fish - a whale, technically, a gigantic
white whale - that washed up on the shore as she strolled alone down a
gray, stony beach. It had decided, it told her, that the ocean was just
too big; it was tired of struggling to comprehend such enormity. The whale
wanted, it claimed, to die on dry land, where it could at least see a stable
horizon. It wanted to enjoy the comforting illusion of a small, comprehensible
world - at least until the sun baked its skin to a crisp. It preferred
a happy, limited death to an agonizing life in the borderless sea...
But now that it had reached land, the whale had a problem.
It had noticed the sky - and that, too, was mighty big. Too big for comfort.
Could she, please, turn him over, so his eyes faced the sand, so the illusion
of a small world could be maintained for the few hours he had left...
"So I start pushing this enormous whale..." She clenched
hers hands together on the table and mimicked the giant fish, slowly rolling
over. "I've got it about half turned. I'm facing its huge, white stomach,
when the thing suddenly splits wide open, guts and water every-where..."
She spread her hands wide, then balled one up into a
fist, raised it toward Bertram.
"Then you, you bastard, stepped out like Jesus Christ
Almighty, glowing robes and all."
"Me?" Bertram repeated, his eyes on her trembling fist.
It's Jonah, not Jesus, he thought - then Damn you, damn you, damn you,
Kurtz! The second dream, the second book, now this...
His teeth hurt. He closed his eyes and saw a shark tracing
circles around a lone swimmer. The man paddled frantically for shore.
"Yes, you." Christy's voice was thin, controlled. Her
chair squeaked back from the table. "You told me to forget it. You said
it was meaningless. It was just a dream."
Gaping jaws. Teeth. The swimmer tiring, slowing...
"Then you laughed. You laughed at me for caring."
"I'm sorry," Bertram started, "but..."
Churning water. Slow swirling waves... He opened his
eyes.
"Well, I don't care," Christy said. She stood, gathered
her coat. "Go ahead and laugh. Laugh at yourself, fish boy. Good-bye."
Dreams... Bertram watched his fiancée wavering,
clutching the chair, on the brink of tears...
But not leaving. Waiting for him to stop her. He stood
and offered his hand.
"I care," he said softly. "Come on. I want to show you
something."
He took her to his apartment and showed her the transcript
of the Jonah dream, the wine stained book. She wouldn't have believed him
if he'd just told her. She'd have said he'd made it up, on the spot, to
save his own butt.
And she might have been right. He'd had to see it all
again himself - to touch the ruined book, to recognize his own handwriting,
to let the Lit-World picture pull him gently forward one more time - to
accept that it was all really happening. That he was awake. That the alarm
wasn't moments from sounding and he'd have to write it all down...
"Where's the third book?" Christy asked finally, after
reviewing the evidence, after shoving Cosmogenesis and Voice of the Beloved
into her purse for "safe keeping."
Bertram frowned. "There isn't one," he said. "Barnes
and Noble says the publisher got bought out. The Kurtz re-issues got canceled
before Reconciliato hit the presses. I was lucky to get those two." He
nodded toward her purse.
"What about the original hardback?"
Used... Used and Rare... Collectible... With each shop
they visited, with each subtle boost in clean shelves, Alistair Cook furnishings
and escalating price ranges, Reconciliato seemed to dance further and further
from feasibility, from existence in reality...
It was like a bad dream. "Haven't seen one in months..."
"Sold my last copy yesterday..." "Try me next week..."
Bertram left his name and phone number at every shop
they visited, with each doubtfully-nodding proprietor. But when the last
stores had closed and their shadows stretched East against darkening sidewalks,
they returned to Christy's apartment, empty-handed and sullen.
She let him spend the night.
* * *
Bertram followed the Oriental woman through a forest at
night. A massive, dark moving wall thundered relent-lessly behind them,
consuming trees and hills, sucking valleys and grassy plains under its
veil of shadow - an unstoppable, black glacier, a hungry, undiscriminating
void...
... that fell further and further behind them with each
leap, each turn. The mysterious woman navigated the forest like a wild
animal - sprinting up sharp inclines, sliding down invisible ravines, climbing
where there was no hold. And Bertram followed her easily, move for move.
Never did his hand slip or his foot falter. He matched her frantic pace,
and even narrowed the gap between them; he could almost touch her. They
bounded on, side by side, until the thundering wall was little more than
a distant echo...
Bertram touched the dark woman's hand and knew: He was
not running away from the black veil; he'd all along been running toward
this woman. She was the one created for him at the beginning of time. She
was his Anima, his Eve, his Mother-Daughter-Sister-Lover-Goddess, and he
worshipped her with complete abandon. The newfound skill with which he'd
fought to catch her, the new strength that surged through him as he'd seen
her just ahead, coming within reach...
The scene changed:
It was still night, but the forest was gone. Bertram
found himself standing in the soft pink glow of a streetlamp, alone, a
cold, drizzling rain slowly soaking through his shirt. He hugged himself,
shivering.
The Oriental woman stepped out of a shadow.
"We can run no further," she said. She moved into the
pink-lit circle, stood before him, her eyes focused on the wet pavement
at their feet.
"Then it's still coming?"
"Yes."
Bertram reached out to touch her; she stepped away. He
felt the mild pressure crawling up his spine, pushing him gently forward...
"This is a dream?" A lump rose into his throat as the
dark woman looked up, met his gaze, as her impossibly perfect lips formed
a soundless, Yes.
"And because I know it's a dream," he continued, wishing
he could stop, "I have to wake up now?"
He'd lost control. The words were coming of their own.
He fought to close his mouth, to clamp his jaw tight as the mysterious
woman nodded another silent affirmation.
"I don't want to go," he said finally. "I love you."
"If you love me," she answered gently, "you'll go." She
looked away; her eyes narrowed as she scanned the dark horizon. "Everything
depends on you, Bertram. Everything..."
The ground shook as thunder burst directly overhead.
The Darkness had found them. A sudden, swirling gale swept down, dividing
them. The dark woman clung to the lamppost, but the furious winds drove
Bertram back - away from the woman he loved, into the amorphous night...
"Who is the Fish?" his dark beloved called after him.
"You must remember, Bertram! Who is the Fish?"
He woke in darkness, his body twisted into a tight, fetal
ball, his face and shirt front wet with tears. He wrapped himself around
Christy, and sobbed against her neck.
"What is it?' she whispered. She rolled to face him in
the darkness. "What were you dreaming?"
"Damn you, Kurtz," he whispered back, whispered
to the darkness, the woman, Christy, the Black Wall... "I don't want to
go... I love you..."
"I love you, too, Bertram." She pulled him close and
rocked him till they both returned to sleep.
* * *
The alarm... Bertram opened his eyes; a telephone was
ringing faintly from the next room. He untangled himself from the still-sleeping
Christy, slid out of the bed, and slipped quietly from the bedroom. He
pulled the door gently closed behind him.
He snatched up the phone. "Do you have any idea what
time it is?"
A moment of silence. Static.
"Yes, Mr. Diebold. I know what time it is. If I'm disturbing
you..."
Bertram glanced down at his bare wrist. He scanned the
walls and table for a clock. Nothing... A band of light where the drapes
met: it was, at least, morning.
"Sorry," he said. "It must be later than I thought. Christy's
asleep, but I can take a message..."
"No," the voice on the line cut in. "I'm calling for
you, Mr. Diebold. I run Tollbooth Collectibles, Tenth and Pershing, Downtown.
You were here yesterday, looking for H.F. Kurtz's Reconciliato. I've got
one for you. First edition, too."
"They only made one edition," Bertram grumbled. Something
in the voice made Bertram's teeth hurt.
"Even better. Come on down."
More static, a series of clicks, a dial tone.
Christy shifted under the covers, even threw her arms
around his neck once, but she refused to wake up. He scribbled a note and
placed it on the nightstand next to the wine-stained Voice of the Beloved.
The highway was deserted. Even on Sunday there ought
to be people out... He glanced again at his bare wrist; he'd forgotten
to put on his watch. An ocean of dull gray clouds made the sun's position
unreadable. He took the Tenth Street exit and braked down to the speed
limit.
Nobody Downtown, either. He crawled along the empty street,
counting intersections: Olive... Grand... A sign he couldn't read, turned
the wrong way... Pershing. With no cops in sight, he parked illegally,
in a loading zone.
The bookstore was dark, its door locked. Bertram cupped
his hands around his eyes and pressed his nose to the dirty glass.
"Hey in there!"
A wiry young man, brown hair to his waist, stood behind
a small counter. He was sorting books under a tiny lamp, wiping their covers
with a rag, setting them back on the dusty counter... He looked up, nodded,
then moved toward Bertram. The lock turned.
"That was quick." He moved off again, putting the counter
between them as Bertram stepped into the shop. "Here's your book. Two hundred
dollars. Cash."
"I'll give you ten," Bertram said. Something in that
voice - arrogance, certainly, but... He saw the shark again, circling,
a shark with long brown hair, reaching through the water for a book...
"Find another one. The door's that way." The book vanished
from the counter and the man returned to his sorting. He smiled impassively,
smeared dust over covers in slow, swirling waves...
Bertram felt dizzy. He looked to the door, the book-shark,
the door...
"Can I write a check?"
The man pulled a receipt book from a drawer. The dull
smile broke into a sharp-toothed grin. "Kurtzians..." He shook his head.
"You're all alike."
"And we're everywhere," Bertram warned through clenched
teeth. He made out the check, signed it with a flourish, then handed it
to the smiling shark. He shoved the slender volume under his jacket. "Everywhere,
friend, Never forget that."
His car had been ticketed. There were still no cops in
sight - no other cars, no people. He snatched the ticket and crossed Tenth
Street to a row of empty phone booths. Maybe Christy would drive down and
meet him, bring the other books...
... What time was it, anyway?...
"Hello?" The girl's voice was still heavy with sleep.
"Good, you're up..."
"Bertram?" Bertram, where are you?"
Something in her voice brought a lump to Bertram's throat.
She sounded far away, lost... Static rose over the line like a gusting
wind, then faded away. Silence.
"Christy?" His pulse was suddenly racing. He swallowed
hard. "You didn't find my note? I've got the book. I got a call this morning,
and..."
"You got a call here? At my number?"
The mild current shot up his spine. It reached his head
and pushed him gently forward...
She was right. They hadn't left her number with Tollbooth
Collectibles or any other shop. Or had they? He could no longer remember...
"I can't explain. I don't get it either. I'll come home
now."
"Good."
Static. Silence.
"Christy, I love you," he said in a rush, "It's almost
over now. Thank you for being so good through all this... Christy?"
"Everything depends on you, Bertram. Everything..."
A series of clicks; the phone buzzed in his hand. Bertram
stared into the dead receiver, jaw slack, his brain reverberating with
what she hadn't said, what came next...
Who is the Fish? You must remember, Bertram! Who is the
Fish?
He stumbled from the phone booth and pushed his way onto
a crowded bench. There were people every-where, bustling through the city,
peering into closed shops. A small, Oriental woman pushed past him.
He lunged and missed. The woman scurried off through
the crowd, then vanished around a corner. Bertram shot after her, expertly
avoiding bystanders, dodging fountains, leaping benches - he reached the
corner just in time to watch her board a city bus.
"Wait!"
He ran into the street, waving his arms wildly, threw
himself into the path of the hulking vehicle.
The bus stopped. A door slid back, and Bertram climbed
abroad, paid his fare. He moved down the aisle, scanning the sea of faces
around him for the dark woman.
She wasn't there. He found a seat and stared out the
window as the bus pulled again into traffic.
Cars... People... Too many people for a Sunday... He
was back in the dream; he recognized that. Maybe he'd wake up soon, beside
Christy, shove the books down the garbage disposal before she woke up...
Or maybe it had all been one long dream. Maybe there
was no H.F. Kurtz, no trilogy. Maybe he was really Kurtz, dreaming he was
Bertram Diebold, dreaming...
Pay attention you fool!
"Why?" Bertram sighed, and waved a hand through the empty
air beside him. "I know what happens next. Kurtz conks me on the head with
a wrench, I enter a monastery, then..."
Just pay attention.
"No." He pulled Reconciliato from his jacket. "I'm going
to figure this out right now, then wake up and forget it ever happened.
Screw you."
He opened the book.
LISTEN
It was the only word on the page. The buzzing conver-sation
around him suddenly stopped. A deep male voice, speaking in English, boomed
through the bus:
"... You know many great words, but you are a fool!"
The passengers one row up shimmered and vanished; Bertram
had a clear view ahead. H.F. Kurtz sat in the first aisle seat on the right.
Opposite him was the Oriental woman. They seemed to hover over their seats,
watching him, waiting.
He turned a page, looked down.
GO
Unseen hands lifted him from the seat, dragged him toward
the dark couple, planted him before Kurtz. Bertram's breath caught in his
throat. His mouth opened, and strange words tumbled out:
"I... I really admire your work..."
Kurtz shot up from the seat and gripped Bertram's jacket,
lifted him high.
"This really isn't necessary..."
"Who is the Fish!" Kurtz demanded, his arms tremb-ling.
"Who is the Fish!"
Bertram floundered as Kurtz shook him violently. He couldn't
breathe. His teeth hurt. The book flew from his hands to land face-up and
open on Kurtz's vacated seat.
YOU ARE THE FISH
"I am the Fish!" Bertram screeched...
... And found himself standing again, the bus's metal
floor solid beneath his feet. He picked up the fallen book, closed it,
and handed it to Kurtz.
"That's right, Bertram." Kurtz nodded. He smoothed Bertram's
jacket with a large, friendly hand. "You are the Fish."
Kurtz shimmered, shrank, and became the Oriental woman.
She smiled.
"Thank you for remembering, Bertram. I knew you would."
She shimmered and became Christy.
"Everything depends on you, Bertram. Everything..."
Christy's eyes were hollow sockets, in which blackness
swirled like oil. Bertram kissed his fiancée gently on the cheek,
then met her gaze and let the darkness take him.
* * *
He became aware in slow stages. He was a man. He was a
Living Being. He was the Fish. He hung suspended in the void, the only
object in view, throbbing with a golden, self-contained light.
"I am the Fish," Bertram said again.
"We are the Fish," a voice echoed back from the void.
The voice was no longer angry. It was no longer strange.
It was H.F. Kurtz. It was the Oriental woman. It was
Christy. It was himself. He heard the voice and knew it was his own. He
heard the voice and knew it was them all.
"Yes," he agreed. "We are the Fish."
Bertram exploded.