Roger Zelazny - Engine At Heartsping's Center

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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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file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Roger%20Zelazny%20-%20Engine%20At%20Heartsping's%20Center.txt

"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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