Killdozer! (Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon Book 3) by Sturgeon Theodore

Author:Sturgeon, Theodore [Sturgeon, Theodore]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780575109971
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2013-07-24T16:00:00+00:00

So I thought that I had to inventory everything I could trust, everything I knew positively. What were the things I knew?

The machine was there and true, and the gravel, and the bottom-dump that brought it. My being there was a real thing. You have to start everything with the belief that you yourself exist.

The job, the work, they were true things.

Where was I?

I must be where I should be, where I belonged, for the bottom-dump driver knew me, knew I was there, knew I was waiting for stone to spread. The airfield was there, and the fact that it was unfinished. “Airfield” was like a corollary to me, with the runway and the windsock its supporting axioms, and I had no need to think further. The people in the shining garments, and the girl—

But there was nothing about them here. Nothing at all.

To spread stone was a thing I had to do. But was that all? It wasn’t just spreading stone. I had to spread it to—to—

Not to help finish the airfield. It wasn’t that. It was something else, something—

Oh. Oh! I had to spread stone to get somewhere.

I didn’t want to get anywhere, except maybe to a place where I could think again, where I could know what was happening to me, where I could reach out with my mind and grasp those important things, like my name, and the name of the bottom-dump driver, Paco, or Cruz, or Eulalio or maybe Emanualo von Hachmann de la Vega, or whatever. But being able to think straight again and know all these important things was arriving at a state of consciousness, not at a place. I knew, I knew, somehow I knew truly, that to arrive at that state I had to arrive at a point.

Suddenly, overwhelmingly, I had a flash of knowledge about the point—riot what it was, but how it was, and I screamed and hurt my throat and fell blindly back in the seat of the tractor trying to push away how it was.

My abdomen kneaded itself with the horror of it. I put my hands on my face and my hands and face were wet with sweat and tears. Afraid? Have you ever been afraid to die, seeing Death looking right at you; closer than that; have you seen Death turn away from you because He knows you must follow Him? Have you seen that, and been afraid?

Well, this was worse. For this I’d hug Death to me, for He alone could spare me what would happen to me when I reached the place I was going to.

So I wouldn’t spread stone.

I wouldn’t do anything that would bring me closer to reaching the place where that thing would happen to me. Had happened to me. … I wouldn’t do it. That was an important thing.

There was one other important thing. I must not go on like this, not knowing my name, and what the name of the bottom-dump driver was, and where this airfield and this base were, and all those things.

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