In the Deadlands (16 page)

A surge of sudden fear caught them. Their eyes were white with the realization. As the rumbling sound grew louder, the cars looked at one another and knew the afternoon was over.

The trucks were coming.

AFTERWORD:

I think you have to live in Los Angeles to get it.

An Infinity of Loving

This is the other “terrible” story.

There was a reckless editor who had somehow managed to sell several dozen anthologies to various publishers. To fill them, he seemed to be buying every story that crossed his desk whether it was worth reading or not. A lot of writers sold a lot of their trunk stories in a very short time.

And that pretty much killed the anthology market for a while.

He wasn't a bad man, I'm sure he thought he was contributing to writers and to science fiction, but I don't think he understood the consequences of flooding the newsstands and bookstores with mediocrity.

At the beginning, he kept nagging me for stories.

I sent him two. I didn't think they were very good, so I hadn't sent them out anywhere. I expected (even hoped) that he would reject them. Then I would have a good reason for not sending him anything else.

He bought both the stories.

That was why I didn't send him any more.

Ironically, a year or so after it was published, some would-be plagiarist typed it up and submitted it to
Galaxy Science Fiction
magazine. It was rejected. And rightfully so.

Once she surprised him in the shower by climbing in with him.

Once he surprised her with a spray can of shaving lather and they made love, laughing in the foam.

Once they sat and looked at each other across the dinner table and forgot to eat.

Once she leaned over to him and kissed him gently on the eyelids.

Once they went swimming at three in the morning without bathing suits, and after they had dried each other off, they fell asleep in each other's arms.

Or, to put it another way, they were in love. Young and in love.

And in that, they were lucky, for consider the odds against it:

Consider, for instance, how slim the chances were that (a) this particular boy should meet (b) this particular girl in (c) this particular place and at (d) this particular time; and most important of all, (e) that each should be in a receptive state of mind, allowing them to respond favorably to each other.

Consider the alternate possibilities:

Suppose he had stopped at the post office first; he would have arrived at the Laundromat ten minutes after she had already left. Or suppose he had remembered for once to bring change, or that the change machine was not out of order; he would have had no reason to speak to her.

And consider: if she had not had trouble with her car that morning, necessitating a hasty call to the Automobile Club emergency road service, she would have already been finished with most of her chores, including her laundry. Or, if she had not just cashed a check that afternoon she would not have had the change he asked for. Or, if her period had come just a day later, she would not have been in any kind of a mood to respond to him.

Or consider what factors went into his choice of that particular Laundromat, or her choice of that particular college to attend, or his choice of that particular city to live in. Or consider the factors that allowed them both to be born in circumstances that were neither chronologically nor geographically opposed to their meeting and falling in love.

Consider, most of all, the mere fact that he should so delight in her and be able to delight her in return—that special sense of attraction that each held for the other and that special sense of sharing that enveloped them both.

Consider the fact that they
fitted
. Consider how lucky they were.

Of course, if it were not these two individuals meeting, then perhaps it would have been some other combination. There might have been some other girl that he could have loved as thoroughly; there might have been some other man that she could have loved so completely—but there wasn't. There was he and there was she and there was each other.

An individual is unique, existing only once and never again duplicated—a special flicker of personality that flashes briefly in the long darkness of nonexistence, glowing with its own particular radiance only for a bit before vanishing back into the nothingness. That
this
individual and
that
individual should both flicker into existence at just the right time and just the right place—well, that was a source of delight and amazement and continual surprise to both of them.

That they were young and attractive only enhanced its beauty, but if they had not been so favored, it still would have been beautiful.

Consider the great variety of possible human couplings that this could have been:

He old and she young.

She old and he young.

He black and she white.

She black and he white.

He born a female and she a male.

Or both born as males.

Or both as females.

Or one of them deformed. Or crippled, or retarded.

Consider the infinite number of combinations. Had it been any of these, it still wouldn't have lessened the beauty of what they shared. It would have only made it more difficult for others to comprehend.

But this was the ideal combination—easy to understand—easier still to be envious of.

He was handsome—a face not chiseled, but sculptured as in fine wood; clear skin; even features; short nose; brown hair with hints of lighter blond; and eyes so deeply blue that they were luminous.

Yes, he was slightly vain about his features—and his body too, which was adequate though not as immediately striking. He was trim, not skinny but neither well muscled. He was strong and beautiful in his own altogether way.

He had confidence in himself; he had a voice like soft velvet; and he had a mind that concerned itself with its surroundings. He acted upon life almost as much as it acted upon him.

That he had been favored by fate was apparent. He had been favored more than anybody had any right to be. He knew it and he was pleased by it; he had become accustomed to things working the way he expected.

And that was his biggest fault.

She—ah, yes—she had hair so red it glowed like silk in the sunlight, eyes so green (blue-green really) they flared like jewels, deep and mysterious. Her skin was so wonderfully fair that she wore little or no makeup at all and she seemed to glow from within.

She was afraid of the world—just a little bit—and its complexity. There were things out there that were hostile; they could hurt her if she were careless, so she admired him because of his self-confidence and his ability to do all those things she couldn't; her eyes showed it. And
because she worshipped him so, she delighted in doing things for him that he couldn't; things that she could do, things that would let her fill in the gaps and together the two of them could be as one.

To her, he was almost too good to be true; she watched him shamelessly, undressing and caressing him with her eyes.

And he, he realized this—and he couldn't believe it. That any girl/woman could so thoroughly immerse herself in his life was an overpowering joy; it was a confirmation that there was indeed something
lovable
in him. It was what he needed to be complete.

She was too good to lose—indeed too good to ever risk hurting. He went out of his way to do little things for her. And those little things made her love him even more.

One can't be loved until one is first lovable—and that each loved the other so much made them both more lovable. And that in turn made each more loving.

So they opened themselves to each other. He opened himself for the first time and so did she; they plunged headlong into sharing and confessed their secret fears, expunged their private hurts and traded their mutual fantasies.

Because he trusted her so fully, because she trusted him, because of what they shared together, they were creative in their lovemaking—and that very creativeness (which would have shocked them in any other partner) delighted/teased/pleased them to even greater heights. They were curious about each other's bodies and they satisfied that curiosity; they wanted to delight each other and they did that, too. They moved and touched with a joyous laughing lust.

And finally, came that moment:

She whispered, “I feel like I'm on the edge of death....” That ultimate ecstasy, when emotions become too great to be expressed, when words alone can't control the joy, can't
communicate it—that point even beyond gasps and giggles when only tears can release the overpowering intensity of happiness.

“I don't believe it,” she sobbed. “I'm so happy, I'm crying.” She could hardly get the words out.

He couldn't answer her because he was crying too. He held her tight and they cried together, and they laughed at the silliness of it all and their tears mingled on each other's cheeks.

The next time they cried, it was for a different reason.

A left front tire had blown out while traveling at seventy miles an hour in the far left lane of the freeway. The car had lurched—swerved, skidded, bumpety-bump-screeched across three lanes, narrowly missing a pickup truck.

A maniacal cultist and his band of followers massacred seven people in a suburban home.

The police fired into a crowd of demonstrating students, killing three of them.

A famous rock star died of an accidental overdose of drugs, and, a week later, a presidential candidate was assassinated.

Perhaps the two of them had been directly touched by some of these incidents, perhaps not—it didn't make much difference. The times were such that no one could long ignore the one recurring fact of human fragility—that
all
men are perpetually on the edge of death.

It touched him, how close he was to death, how close they both were. Suppose that pickup truck had been just a little faster. Suppose they had been visiting in Laurel Canyon.
Suppose they had turned out for the demonstration—or even for the political rally. How close would the bullet have come?

So he cried at the unfairness of it all. Trapped in life, they were thus condemned to death. The dreadful inevitability of it chilled his flesh and made him unable to speak.

She asked him what was the matter and he said, “I can't explain, I can't say—”

“Is it something I've done, oh dearest, please let me share your tears.”

He shook his head no, but she kept asking, so at last he whispered, “It's death—I'm afraid of it.”

“Oh, no, no—” She tried to deny it. “Death isn't to be feared. It's to be accepted.”

“I know, I know—but it's not just my own death I fear—it's the death of us. The death of our love.”

And at that, she felt the chill, although she did not yet know why she should feel so.

“We're two people,” he explained. “Two. Sooner or later, one of us will die and the other will be alone. And I can't bear that thought. I can't bear the thought of me without you—or the thought of you without me. I don't want to hurt you—ever.” And he cried again, great heaving sobs.

She cried too, for she could not stand to see him in such sorrow.

Perhaps it was a foolish thing to cry over. Perhaps not. The terrible part about love is that it is always doomed. Always. Even if it should last a lifetime, it has to end with death.

At last she kissed away his tears and whispered, “But my love—that's what makes it so precious. Because it's so impermanent. Because it can only happen once.”

He lay there and looked at her, but said nothing.

She said, “What we must be happy about is that we have each other now, that we have this happiness, and that nobody will ever be able to take it away from us. This love is ours.”

“But it's not, it's not,” he insisted. “It's only for a little while—and then time, that damnable thief, will steal it from us.” The tears were streaked on his face. “It's not enough. Why couldn't it last forever? Why shouldn't it? Why should we have to grow old? Will I still love you after years of watching your beautiful body decay? Will you still love me when I'm withered and wasted? Will we learn to hate each other because the familiar actions will have become so boring that they're contemptuous? Will death be only a blessed release from a painful binding? Or will it be a parting that—that destroys us?” His voice caught suddenly. “We could die tomorrow—either one of us, or both—” he realized. “An accident could rob us of our future; we could be cheated even of that. Oh, I love you, but we're doomed to sorrows.” And then the tears flowed again, because in the night, alone, with only the two of them in that big bed, with only each other, forever seemed like such an incredible vastness, a long, long emptiness—

They both cried that night, in each other's arms.

They were young, and the young are always slightly foolish. It gives a flavor of whimsy and zest to their lovemaking that the old can only remember and envy. There is an innocence and naiveté that only the young and the young at heart can experience.

But always after that night, that one eternal and aware night, always it seemed as if their lovemaking had an air of urgency about it—as if this might be the last time that they would hold each other, the last time that they would be able to look longingly into each other's eyes and be immersed in that beautiful intensity of emotion.

They were so very much in love.

There was an alternative to sorrow.

And in that they were lucky, too. For this was an age when the secret had been unlocked and the answer was there for the asking.

He brought up the subject first. She was hesitant, a bit scared—and very cautious. “Is it dangerous?”

“No,” he reassured her. “And it will bring us even closer together. The intensity of our love will never die out.”