Free Stalking the Nightmare by Harlan Ellison Page B

they could not contain their anxiety.
    “Akisimov? Gone?”
    They read her thoughts, so the girl said nothing. She nodded slowly, the pain in her stump shooting up to drive needles into the base of her brain. She moaned, then said, “He didn’t get away. He thought the worst was a term on Io; he’s wrong; he’s being punished.”
    They stared at her, as her thoughts swirled unreadably. They stared unknowing, wondering, but damning their own inefficiency. Akisimov had gotten away.
    They were wrong.

    blank .
    The ship popped into inverspace.
    blank . • .
    The ship popped out …
    In the center of a white-hot dwarf star. The sun burned the ship to molten slag, and Akisimov died horribly, flamingly, charringly, agonizingly, burningly as the slag vaporized.
    Just at the instant of death …
    blank…
    The ship popped into inverspace.
    blank …
    The ship popped out …
    In the center of a white-hot dwarf star. The sun burned the ship to molten slag, and Akisimov died horribly, flamingly, charringly, agonizingly, burningly as the slag vaporized.
    Just at the instant of death …
    blank …
    The ship popped into inverspace.
    blank …
    The ship popped out …
    Over and over and over again, till the ends of Time, till Eternity was a remote forgotten nothing, till death had no meaning, and life was something for humanity. The Driver had exacted her revenge. She had set the ship in a moebius whirl, in and out and in and out and in again from inverspace to out, right at that instant of blanking, right at that instant of death, so that Forever would be spent by Rike Amadeus Akisimov in one horrible way—ten billion times one thousand years. One horrible way, forever and ever and ever.
    Dying, dying, dying. Over and over and over again, without end to torment, without end to horror.
    blank …

SCENES FROM THE REAL WORLD I

    THE 3 MOST IMPORTANT THINGS IN LIFE
     
    I’ve looked everywhere, and I’ll be damned if I can find it, but I know I read that passage .somewhere; I think in Kerouac; but I can’t locate it now, so you’ll just have to go along with me that it’s there.
    Would I lie to you?
    It’s a scene in which a young supplicant, an aspiring poet, somebody like that, seeks out this knowledgeable old philosopher —kind of a Bukowski or Henry Miller figure—in Paris or New York or somesuch bustling metropolitan situs … and the kid comes to the old guru in his ratty apartment, and he sorta kinda asks him that old saw about the meaning of life. Correction: LIFE. He squats there and says to the old man, “What’s it all about? What’s it mean? Huh?”
    And the old man purses his lips and beetles his brow; he perceives the kid is really serious about this; it’s not just jerk-off time. So he nods sagely, and clasps his hands behind his back, and he walks to the window and stares out at the deep city for a while, just sorta kinda ponders for a while. And finally, he turns to the kid and he says, with core seriousness, “You know, there’s a lotta bastards out there.”
    Now that’s pretty significant. I think. On the other hand, I have never made my residence in a stalactite-festooned cave high up on the northern massif of Chomolungma (Everest to you). I have never been sought out by fawning sycophants, whimpering to abase themselves before my wisdom, hungering to prostrate themselves and to offer oblations at the altar of my Delphic insights. In short, unlike the Great Thinkers of Our Time who appear regularly on talk-shows—Merv Griffin, Debbie Boone, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Jim Nabors leap instantly to mind—I doubt that the Oxford Encyclopedia of Philosophy will ever crib from my notes.
    Nonetheless, having become something of an ingroup cult figure among those with a high death-wish profile and a taste for cheap thrills, I am often asked, “What’s the big secret, Ellison?” At college lectures, for instance, bright-eyed young people, the great hope of our society, come up to me and murmur in reverential