N-Space

God was knocking, and he wanted in bad.
footfall, 1985

BORDERED IN BLACK



“Bordered in Black” is a nightmare vision.
If a vision were enough, it would have been sold at once. I wrote it as a vignette. Ed Ferman’s comment (months before my first story sale) was that it looked like an outline for a story. So I set it aside, and tackled it again a few years later. The version that appeared in F&SF was much changed.
If I wrote it today it would be changed again. A story needs more than the original idea…but the nightmare still shows through.
* * *
Only one figure stood in the airlock, though it was a cargo lock, easily big enough to hold both men. Lean and sandy haired, the tiny figure was obviously Carver Rappaport. A bushy beard now covered half its face. It waited patiently while the ramp was run up, and then it started down.
Turnbull, waiting at the bottom, suppressed growing uneasiness. Something was wrong. He’d known it the moment he heard that the Overcee was landing. The ship must have been in the solar system for hours. Why hadn’t she called in?
And where was Wall Kameon?
Returning spacers usually sprinted down the ramp, eager to touch honest concrete again. Rappaport came down with slow, methodical speed. Seen close, his beard was ragged, unkempt. He reached bottom, and Turnbull saw that the square features were set like cement.
Rappaport brushed past him and kept walking.
Turnbull ran after him and fell into step, looking and feeling foolish. Rappaport was a good head taller, and where he was walking, Turnbull was almost running. He shouted above the background noise of the spaceport, “Rappaport, where’s Kameon?”
Like Turnbull, Rappaport had to raise his voice. “Dead.”
“Dead? Was it the ship? Rappaport, did the ship kill him?”
“No.”
“Then what? Is his body aboard?”
“Turnbull, I don’t want to talk about it. No, his body isn’t aboard. His—” Rappaport ground the heels of his hands into his eyes, like a man with a blinding headache. “His grave,” he said, emphasizing the word, “has a nice black border around it. Let’s leave it at that.”
But they couldn’t, of course.
Two security officers caught up with them near the edge of the field. “Stop him,” said Turnbull, and they each took an arm. Rappaport stopped walking and turned.
“Have you forgotten that I’m carrying a destruct capsule?”
“What about it?” For the moment Turnbull really didn’t understand what he meant.
“Any more interference and I’ll use it. Understand this, Turnbull. I don’t care any more. Project Overcee is over. I don’t know where I go from here. The best thing we can do is blow up that ship and stay in our own solar system.”
“Man, have you gone crazy? What happened out there? You—meet aliens?”
“No comment.—No, I’ll answer that one. We didn’t meet aliens. Now tell your comedian friends to let go.”
Turnbull let himself realize that the man wasn’t bluffing.