Roger Zelazny - Engine At Heartsping's Center.pdf - Roger Zelazny - margozap

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ROGER ZELAZNY

The Engine at Heartspring's Center

Roger Zelazny had two Nebula-winning stories in the first Nebula Awards volume. It was a

spectacular beginning for a young man who had begun writing professionally only three years

before, at the age of twenty-five, while working full time for the Social Security Administration.

After winning Hugos for two early novels. . . And Call Me Conrad in 1966 and Lord of Light in 1968-

he graduated to the insecurity of full-time freelance writing. His most recent books are Damnation

Alley, Nine Princes in Amber, Jack of Shadows, The Guns of Avalon, Today We Choose Faces, To Die

in Italbar, and Sign of the Unicorn. He was guest of honor at the 1974 World Science Fiction

Convention in Washington, D. C. He returns to the tenth Nebula Award volume with a story about an

immortal man-machine in a time when euthanasia is a way of life.

Let me tell you of the creature called the Bork. It was born in the heart of a dying sun. It was

cast forth upon this day from the river of past/future as a piece of time pollution. It was

fashioned of mud and aluminum, plastic and some evolutionary distillate of seawater. It had spun

dangling from the umbilical of circumstance till, severed by its will, it had fallen a lifetime or

so later, coming to rest on the shoals of a world where things go to die. It was a piece of a man

in a place by the sea near a resort grown less fashionable since it had become a euthanasia

colony.

Choose any of the above and you may be right.

Upon this day, he walked beside the water, poking with his forked, metallic stick at the things

the last night's storm had left: some shiny bit of detritus useful to the weird sisters in their

crafts shop, worth a meal there or a dollop of polishing rouge for his smoother half; purple

seaweed for a salty chowder he had come to favor; a buckle, a button, a shell; a white chip from

the casino.

The surf foamed and the wind was high. The heavens were a bluegray wall, unjointed, lacking the

graffiti of birds or commerce. He left a jagged track and one footprint, humming and clicking as

he passed over the pale sands. It was near to the point where the forktailed icebirds paused for

several days-a week at most-in their migrations. Gone now, portions of the beach were still dotted

with their rust-colored droppings. There he saw the girl again, for the third time in as many

days. She had tried

before to speak with him, to detain him. He had ignored her for a number of reasons. This time,

however, she was not alone.

She was regaining her feet, the signs in the sand indicating flight and collapse. She had on the

same red dress, torn and,stained now. Her black hair-short, with heavy bangs-lay in, the only

small disarrays of which it was capable. Perhaps thirty feet away was a young man from the Center,

advancing toward` her. Behind him drifted one of the seldom seen dispatch machines-about half the

size of a man and floating that same distance above the ground, it was shaped like a tenpin, and

silver, its bulbous head-end faceted and illuminated, its three` ballerina skirts tinfoil-thin and

gleaming, rising and falling in-, rhythms independent of the wind.

Hearing him, or glimpsing him peripherally, she turned away from her pursuers, said, "Help me" and

then she said a name. ;

He paused for a long while, although the interval was undetectable to her. Then he moved to her

side and stopped again.

The man and the hovering machine halted also.

"What is the matter?" he asked, his voice smooth, deep,,` faintly musical.

"They want to take me," she said.

"Well?"

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"I do not wish to go."

"Oh. You are not ready?"

"No, I am not ready."

"Then it is but a simple matter. A misunderstanding."

He turned toward the two.

"There has been a misunderstanding," he said. "She is not: ready."

"This is not your affair, Bork, " the man replied. "The Center has made its determination."

"Then it will have to reexamine it. She says that she is not ready.'

"Go about your business, Bork."

The man advanced. The machine followed.

The Bork raised his hands, one of flesh, the others of other:

things. E

"No," he said.

"Get out of the way," the man said. "You are interfering."

Slowly, the Bork moved toward them. The lights in the'. machine began to blink. Its skirts fell.

With a sizzling sound it:

dropped to the sand and lay unmoving. The man halted, drew back a pace.

"I will have to report this-"

"Go away," said the Bork.

The man nodded, stooped, raised the machine. He turned and carried it off with him, heading up the

beach, not looking back. The Bork lowered his arms.

"There," he said to the girl. "You have more time."

He moved away then, investigating shell-shucks and driftwood.

She followed him.

"They will be back," she said.

"Of course. "

"What will I do then?"

"Perhaps by then you will be ready."

She shook her head. She laid her hand on his human part.

"No," she said. "I will not be ready."

"How can you tell, now?"

"I made a mistake," she said. "I should never have come here."

He halted and regarded her.

"That is unfortunate," he said. "The best thing that I can recommend is to go and speak with the

therapists at the Center. They will find a way to persuade you that peace is preferable to

distress. "

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"They were never able to persuade you," she said.

"I am different. The situation is not comparable."

"I do not wish to die."

"Then they cannot take you. The proper frame of mind is prerequisite. It is right there in the

contract-Item Seven. "

"They can make mistakes. Don't you think they ever make a mistake? They get cremated the same as

the others."

"They are most conscientious. They have dealt fairly with me."

"Only because you are virtually immortal. The machines short out in your presence. No man could

lay hands on you unless you willed it. And did they not try to dispatch you in a state of

unreadiness?"

"That was the result of a misunderstanding."

"Like mine?"

"I doubt it."

He drew away from her, continuing on down the beach.

"Charles Eliot Borkman," she called.

That name again.

He halted once more, tracing lattices with his stick, poking out a design in the sand.

Then,"Why did you say that?" he asked.

"It is your name, isn't it?"

"No," he said. "That man died in deep space when a liner was jumped to the wrong coordinates,

coming out too near a star gone nova."

"He was a hero. He gave half his body to the burning, preparing an escape boat for the others. And

he survived."

"Perhaps a few pieces of him did. No more."

"It was an assassination attempt, wasn't it?"

"Who knows? Yesterday's politics are not worth the paper wasted on its promises, its threats."

"He wasn't just a politician. He was a statesman, a humanitarian. One of the very few to retire

with more people loving him than hating him. "

He made a chuckling noise.

"You are most gracious. But if that is the case, then the minority still had the final say. I

personally think he was something of a thug. I am pleased, though, to hear that you have switched

to the past tense."

"They patched you up so well that you could last forever. Because you deserved the best."

"Perhaps I already have. What do you want of me?"

"You came here to die and you changed your mind-"

"Not exactly. I've just never composed it in a fashion acceptable under the terms of Item Seven.

To be at peace-"

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"And neither have I. But I lack your ability to impress this fact on the Center."

"Perhaps if I went there with you and spoke to them . . ."

"No," she said. "They would only agree for so long as you were about. They call people like us

life-malingerers and are much more casual about the disposition of our cases. I cannot trust them

as you do without armor of my own."

"Then what would you have me do-girl?"

"Nora. Call me Nora. Protect me. That is what I want. You live near here. Let me come stay with

you. Keep them away from me."

He poked at the pattern, began to scratch it out.

"You are certain that this is what you want?"

"Yes. Yes, I am."

"All right. You may come with me, then."

So Nora went to live with the Bork in his shack by the sea. During the weeks that followed, on

each occasion when the representatives from the Center came about, the Bork bade them depart

quickly, which they did. Finally, they stopped coming by.

Days, she would pace with him along the shores and help in the gathering of driftwood, for she

liked a fire at night; and while heat and cold had long been things of indifference to him, he

came in time and his fashion to enjoy the glow.

And on their walks he would poke into the dank trash heaps the sea had lofted and turn over stones

to see what dwelled beneath.

"God! What do you hope to find in that?" she said, holding her breath and retreating.

"I don't know," he chuckled. "A stone? A leaf? A door? Something nice. Like that."

"Let's go watch the things in the tidepools. They're clean, at least. "

"All right."

Though he ate from habit and taste rather than from necessity, her need for regular meals and her

facility in preparing them led him to anticipate these occasions with something approaching a

ritualistic pleasure. And it was later still, after an evening's meal, that she came to polish him

for the first time. Awkward, grotesque-perhaps it could have been. But as it occurred, it was

neither of these. They sat before the fire, drying, warming, watching, silent. Absently, she

picked up the rag he had let fall to the floor and brushed a fleck of ash from his flame-

reflecting side. Later, she did it again. Much later, and this time with full attention, she wiped

all the dust from the gleaming surface before going off to her bed.

One day she asked him, "Why did you buy the one-way ticket to this place and sign the contract, if

you did not wish to die?"

"But I did wish it," he said.

"And something changed your mind after that? What?"

"I found here a pleasure greater than that desire."

"Would you tell me about it?"

"Surely. I found this to be one of the few situations---perhaps' the only-where I can be happy. It

is in the nature of the place. itself: departure, a peaceful conclusion, a joyous going.

Itscontemplation here pleases me, living at the end of entropy and seeing that it is good."

"But it doesn't please you enough to undertake the treatment yourself?"

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"No. I find in this a reason for living, not for dying. It may' seem a warped satisfaction. But

then, I am warped. What of yourself?"

"I just made a mistake. That's all."

"They screen you pretty carefully, as I recall. The only reason they made a mistake in my case was

that they could not anticipate anyone finding in this place an inspiration to go on living. Could=

your situation have been similar?"

"I don't know. Perhaps . . ."

On days when the sky was clear they would rest in the yellow: warmth of the sun, playing small

games and sometimes talking of the birds that passed and of the swimming, drifting, branching,

floating and flowering things in their pools. She never spoke of herself, saying whether it was

love, hate, despair,.. weariness or bitterness that had brought her to this place. Instead, she

spoke of those neutral things they shared when the= day was bright; and when the weather kept them

indoors she watched the fire, slept or polished his armor. It was only much later that she began

to sing and to hum, small snatches of tune recently popular or tunes quite old. At these times, if

she felt his eyes upon her she stopped abruptly and turned to another thing. ;

One night then, when the fire had burned low, as she sat, buffing his plates, slowly, quite

slowly, she said in a soft voice,. "I believe that I am falling in love with you."

He did not speak, nor did he move. He gave no sign of having: heard.

After a long while, she said, "It is most strange, finding myself feeling this way-here-under

these circumstances .

"Yes," he said, after a time.

After a longer while, she put down the cloth and took hold of his hand-the human one-and felt his

grip tighten upon h et own.

"Can you?" she said, much later.

"Yes. But I would crush you, little girl."

She ran her hands over his plates, then back and forth from flesh to metal. She pressed her lips

against his only cheek that yielded.

"We'll find a way," she said, and of course they did.

In the days that followed she sang more often, sang happier things and did not break off when he

regarded her. And sometimes he would awaken from the light sleep that even he required, awaken and

through the smallest aperture of his lens note that she lay there or sat watching him, smiling. He

sighed occasionally for the pure pleasure of feeling the rushing air within and about him, and

there was a peace and a pleasure come into him of the sort he had long since relegated to the

realms of madness, dream and vain desire. Occasionally, he even found himself whistling.

One day as they sat on a bank, the sun nearly vanished, the stars coming on, the deepening dark

was melted about a tiny wick of falling fire and she let go of his hand and pointed.

"A ship," she said.

"Yes," he answered, retrieving her hand.

"Full of people."

"A few, I suppose."

"It is sad."

"It must be what they want, or what they want to want."

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