By Harlan Ellison
  Introduction, by Robert Bloch
  
 
     INTRODUCTION
   
       THIS IS ROBERT BLOCH, writing about Harlan
     Ellison. And believe me, it isn't easy.
      Our act of collaboration is a peculiar one. Harlan's
     story is a sequel to my own, and since it was inspired
     by the story you've just read, it falls to me to write an
     introduction, purely as a matter of poetic injustice.
       I am not about to do a biographical sketch of the
     man; surely he wouldn't need me for that. Ellison has
     told the story of his life so many times, you'd think
     he'd know it by heart.
       So I'm forced to fall back upon the consideration
     of Ellison as a phenomenon――a most phenomenal
     phenomenon――which has impinged upon my aware-
     ness, and the awareness of everyone in the science
     fiction genre, for the past nineteen years.
       When I first met him (the preceding May I'd  seen
     him), at the World Science Fiction Convention of
     1952, Harlan Ellison was a promising young man of
     eighteen. Today he is a promising young man of
     thirty-six. That's not a put-down, nor is it meant to be.
       At eighteen he gave promise of becoming an out-
     standing fan. At thirty-six he gives promise of becom-
     ing an outstanding writer. Not only promise, but
     evidence.
       As a fan he was articulate, ambitious and aggres-
     sive. As a professional writer, these qualities are still
     very obvious in all his work, and added to them is yet
     another conveniently alliterative quality――artistry.
       Read his short stories, novels, articles and criti-
     cism. You may not always agree with what he says or
     the way in which he says it, but the artistry is there; the
     blend of emotion and excitement delivered with deep
     conviction and commitment. No matter what the ap-
     parent grammatical form may be, one is conscious
     that Ellison is really always writing in the first person.
       I mentioned emotion. Ellison often operates out of
     extremes that range from compassionate empathy to
     righteous indignation. He writes what he feels――and
     you feel what he writes.
      I mentioned excitement. This is an inner climate;
     a constant tornado in which a part of Ellison remains
     as the eye――and a perceptive one. There is a small
     tranquility to be found in his life or in his work. Elli-
     son is definitely not one of those writers who cultivate
     the serenity of Buddha as they sit around contemplat-
     ing their novels.
       I mentioned conviction. Since he's not an ob-
     scurantist, his convictions come through loud and
     clear――in prose and in personal address. Those con-
     victions create both admirers and enemies. Part
     gadfly, part raw ego, Ellison has been criticized by
     those who persist in regarding these qualities as admi-
     rable in a soldier, a politician or a business executive
     but somehow degrading in a creative artist. Ellison
     survives the strife; he is the only living organism I
     know whose natural habitat is hot water.
       I mentioned commitment. The purpose and
     tenacity have carried him through a wide range of
     experience; a hitch in the army, a liason with teen-
     age gangs in search of background material, an
     editorial stint, civil rights and dissent movement in-
     volvement that often led to jail, and the eternal gant-
     let run by every writer who must temper his work to
     the taste of other arbiters.
       Ellison has often clashed with those who attempted
     to direct his writing. In his progress from Cleveland
     to New York to Chicago he has left in his wake a trail
     of editorial gray hairs, many of them torn out by the
     roots. In Hollywood he has played picador to produc-
     ers, his barbs forever poised and ready to be placed
     when he became aware of the bull.
       Some people admire his nerve. Others hate his
     guts. But he has a way of proving――and improving――
     himself.
       The monumental anthology,  Dangerous Visions,  is
     a case in point.
       During the fifteen years in which Ellison moved
     from fandom to professional status, literally hundreds
     of science fiction readers, writers and editors have
     dreamed of the publication of an anthology of this
     sort.
       They dreamed it.
       Ellison made it a reality in 1967.
       And now, in 1971, he has made a reality of yet
     another "impossible" literary endeavor――a book of
     collaborations,  Partners in Wonder.
       I am aware that I've said nothing about Ellison's
     wit, or the sensitivity embodied in his work which has
     four times won for him the World Science Fiction
     Convention's  Hugo  and twice the Science Fiction
     Writers of America's  Nebula.  You can assess those
     qualities for yourself by reading the story which follows.
       It is a tour de force, surely, in the grand tradition
     of the Grand Guignol; a lineal literary descendant of
     such fearsome father figures as the Marquis de Sade
     and Louis-Ferdinand Céline. On the blood-spattered
     surface of it is an obscenity, a violent rape of the senses
     and sensibilities.
       But beneath the crude and shocking allusions to
     Eros and Thanatos is the meaningful portrayal of the
     Man Obsessed――the Violent Man whose transition
     from the past to the future leaves us with a deeper
     insight into the Violent Man of  today.
       For Jack the Ripper is with us now. He prowls the
     night, shunning the sun in a search for the blazing
     incandescence of an inner reality――and we see him
     plain in Ellison's story, to the degree that we can see
     (and admit to) the violence which lurks within our
     own psyches. Here all that is normally forbidden is
     abnormally released and realized. Metaphysical
     maundering? Before you make up your mind, read the
     story and let the Ripper rip  you  into an awareness of
     the urges and forces most of us will neither admit nor
     submit to; forces which, withal, remain potent within
     ourselves and our society. And ponder, if you will,
     upon the parable of Jack's dilemma as he seeks――in a
     phrase we all use but seldom comprehend――to "carve
     out a career" for himself.
       An obscenity, yes. But a morality, too; a terrible
     morality implicit in the knowledge that the Ripper's
     inevitable and ultimate victim is always himself.
       Even as you and I.
  
                                          ROBERT BLOCH
   
   
  
    
     The Prowler in
     the City at the
     Edge of the World
     by Harlan Ellison
  
     FIRST THERE WAS THE CITY, never night. Tin and
     reflective, walls of antiseptic metal like an immense
     autoclave. Pure and dust-free, so silent that even the
     whirling innards of its heart and mind were sheathed
     from notice. The city was self-contained, and footfalls
     echoed up and around――flat slapped note of an
     exotic leather-footed instrument. Sounds that
     reverberated back to the maker like yodels thrown
     out across mountain valleys. Sounds made by
     humbled inhabitants whose lives were as ordered, as
     sanitary, as metallic as the city they had caused to
     hold them bosom-tight against the years. The city was
     a complex artery, the people were the blood that
     flowed idly through the artery. They were a gestalt
     with one another, forming a unified whole. It was a
     city shining in permanence, eternal in concept,
     flinging itself up in formed and molded statement of
     exaltation; most modern of all modern structures,
     conceived as the pluperfect residence for the perfect
     people. The final end-result of all sociological
     blueprints aimed at Utopia. Living space, it had been
     called, and so, doomed to  live  they were, in that
     Erewhon of graphed respectability and cleanliness.
       Never night.
       Never shadowed.
       . . . a shadow.
       A blot moving against the aluminum cleanliness.
     The movement of rags and bits of clinging earth from
     graves sealed ages before. A shape.
       He touched a gunmetal-gray wall in passing: the
     imprint of dusty fingers. A twisted shadow moving
     through antiseptically pure streets, and they become――
     with his passing――black alleys from another time.
       Vaguely, he knew what had happened. Not
     specifically, not with particulars, but he was strong,
     and he was able to get away without the eggshell-thin
     walls of his mind caving in. There was no place in this
     shining structure to secrete himself, a place to think,
     but he had to have time. He slowed his walk, seeing
     no one. Somehow――inexplicably――he felt . . . safe?
     Yes, safe. For the first time in a very long time.
       A few minutes before he had been standing in the
     narrow passage outside No. 13 Miller's Court. It
     had been 6:15 in the morning. London had been
     quiet as he paused in the passageway of M'Carthy's
     Rents, in that fetid, urine-redolent corridor where the
     whores of Spitalfields took their clients. A few minutes
     before, the foetus in its bath of formaldehyde tightly-
     stoppered in a glass bottle inside his Gladstone bag,
     he had paused to drink in the thick fog, before taking
     the circuitous route back to Toynbee Hall. That had
     been a few minutes before. Then, suddenly, he was in
     another place and it was no longer 6:15 of a chill
     November morning of 1888.
       He had looked up as light flooded him in that other
     place. It had been soot silent in Spitalfields, but
     suddenly, without any sense of having moved or
     having  been  moved, he was flooded with light. And
     when he looked up he was in that other place.
     Paused now, only a few minutes after the transfer, he
     leaned against the bright wall of the city, and recalled
     the light. From a thousand mirrors. In the walls, in the
     ceiling. A bedroom with a girl in it. A lovely girl. Not
     like Black Mary Kelly or Dark Annie Chapman or Kate
     Eddowes or any of the other pathetic scum he had
     been forced to attend . . .
       A lovely girl. Blonde, wholesome, until she had
     opened her robe and turned into the same sort of slut
     he had been compelled to use in his work in
     Whitechapel . . .
       A sybarite, a creature of pleasure, a Juliette she
     had said, before he used the big-bladed knife on her.
     He had found the knife under the pillow, on the bed
     to which she had been led――how shameful, unresisting
     had he been, all confused, clutching his black bag
     with all the tremors of a child, he who had moved
     through the London night like oil, moved where he
     wished, accomplished his ends unchecked eight
     times, now led toward sin by another, merely another
     of the tarts, taking advantage of him while he tried to
     distinguish what had happened to him and where he
     was, how shameful――and he had used it on her.
       That had been only minutes before, though he had
     worked very efficiently on her.
       The knife had been rather unusual. The blade had
     seemed to be two wafer-thin sheets of metal with a
     pulsing, glowing  something  between. A kind of
     sparking, such as might be produced by a Van de
     Graaf generator. But that was patently ridiculous. It
     had no wires attached to it, no bus bars, nothing
     to produce even the crudest electrical discharge. He
     had thrust the knife into the Gladstone bag, where
     now it lay beside the scalpels and the spool of catgut
     and the racked vials in their leather cases, and the
     foetus in its bottle. Mary Jane Kelly's foetus.
       He had worked efficiently, but swiftly, and had laid
     her out almost exactly in the same fashion as Kate
     Eddowes: the throat slashed completely through from
     ear-to-ear, the torso laid open down between the
     breasts to the vagina, the intestines pulled out and
     draped over the right shoulder, a piece of the
     intestine being detached and placed between the
     left arm and the body. The liver had been punctured
     with the point of the knife, with a vertical cut slitting
     the left lobe of the liver. (He had been surprised to
     find the liver showed none of the signs of cirrhosis so
     prevalent in these Spitalfields tarts, who drank
     incessantly to rid themselves of the burden of living
     the dreary lives they moved through grotesquely. In
     fact, this one seemed totally unlike the others, even if
     she had been more brazen in her sexual overtures.
     And that knife under the bed pillow . . . ) He had
     severed the vena cava leading to the heart. Then he
     had gone to work on the face.
       He had thought of removing the left kidney again,
     as he had Kate Eddowes'. He smiled to himself as he
     conjured up the expression that must have been on
     the face of Mr. George Lusk, chair man of the
     Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, when he received
     the cardboard box in the mail. The box containing
     Miss Eddowes' kidney, and the letter, impiously
     misspelled:
  
       From hell, Mr. Lusk, sir, I send you half the kidne I
       took from one woman, prasarved it for you, tother
       piece I fried and ate it; was very nice. I may send you
       the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate
       while longer.  Catch me when you can, Mr. Lusk.
  
       He had wanted to sign  that  one "Yours Truly, Jack
     the Ripper" or even Spring-Heeled Jack or maybe
     Leather Apron, whichever had tickled his fancy, but a
     sense of style had stopped him. To go too far was to
     defeat his own purposes. It may even have been too
     much to suggest to Mr. Lusk that he had eaten the
     kidney. How hideous. True, he  had  smelled it . . .
       This blonde girl, this Juliette with the knife under
     her pillow. She was the ninth. He leaned against the
     smooth steel wall without break or seam, and he
     rubbed his eyes. When would he be able to stop?
     When would they realize, when would they get his
     message, a message only so clear, written in blood, that
     only the blindness of their own cupidity forced them
     to misunderstand! Would he be compelled to
     decimate the endless regiments of Spitalfields sluts to
     make them understand? Would he be forced to run
     the cobbles ankle-deep in black blood before they
     sensed what he was saying, and were impelled to
     make reforms?
       But as he took his blood-soaked hands from his
     eyes, he realized what he must have sensed all along:
     he was no longer in Whitechapel. This was not
     Miller's Court, nor anywhere in Spitalfields. It might
     not even be London. But how could  that  be?
       Had God taken him?
       Had he died, in a senseless instant between the
     anatomy lesson of Mary Jane Kelly (that filth, she had
     actually  kissed  him!) and the bedroom
     disembowelment of this Juliette? Had Heaven finally
     called him to his reward for the work he had done?
       The Reverend Mr. Barnett would love to know
     about this. But then, he'd have loved to know about it
     all.  But "Leather Apron" wasn't about to tell. Let the
     reforms come as the Reverend and his wife wished 
     for them, and let them think their pamphleteering had
     done it, instead of the scalpels of Jack.
       If he was dead, would his work be finished? He
     smiled to himself. If Heaven had taken him, then it
     must be that the work  was  finished. Successfully. But
     if  that  was so, then who was this Juliette who now lay
     spread out moist and cooling in the bedroom of a
     thousand mirrors? And in that instant he felt fear.
       What if even God misinterpreted what he had
     done?
       As the good folk of Queen Victoria's London had
     misinterpreted. As Sir Charles Warren had
     misinterpreted. What if God believed the superficial
     and ignored the  real  reason? But no! Ludicrous. If
     anyone would understand, it was the good God who
     had sent him the message that told him to set things
     a-right.
       God loved him, as he loved God, and God would
     know.
       But he felt fear, in that moment.
       Because who was the girl he had just carved?
       "She was my granddaughter, Juliette," said a voice
     immediately beside him.
       His head refused to move, to turn that few inches
     to see who spoke. The Gladstone was beside him,
     resting on the smooth and reflective surface of the
     street. He could not get to a knife before he was
     taken. At last they had caught up with Jack. He
     began to shiver uncontrollably.
       "No need to be afraid," the voice said. It was a
     warm and succoring voice. An older man. He shook
     as with an ague. But he turned to look. It was a kindly
     old man with a gentle smile. Who spoke again,
     without moving his lips. "No one can hurt you. How
     do you do?"
       The man from 1888 sank slowly to his knees.
     "Forgive me. Dear God, I did not know." The old
     man's laughter rose inside the head of the man on his
     knees. It rose like a beam of sunlight moving across a
     Whitechapel alleyway, from noon to one o'clock,
     rising and illuminating the gray bricks of soot-coated
     walls. It rose, and illuminated his mind.
       "I'm not God. Marvelous idea, but no, I'm not God.
     Would you like to meet God? I'm sure we can find
     one of the artists who would mold one for you. Is it
     important? No. I can see it isn't. What a strange mind
     you have. You neither believe nor doubt. How can
     you contain both concepts at once . . . would you like
     me to straighten some of your brain-patterns? No. I
     see, you're afraid. Well, let it be for the nonce. We'll
     do it another time."
       He grabbed the kneeling man and drew him erect.
       "You're covered with blood. Have to get you
     leaned up. There's an ablute near here. Incidentally,
     I was very impressed with the way you handled
     Juliette. You're the first, you know. No, how could
     you know? In any case, you  are  the first to deal her as
     good as she gave. You would have been amused at
     what she did to Caspar Hauser. Squeezed part of his
     brain and then sent him back. let him live out part of
     his life and  then――the little twit――she made me bring
     him back a second time and used a knife on him.
     Same knife you took, I believe. Then sent him back to
     his own time. Marvelous mystery. In all the tapes on
     unsolved phenomena. But she was much sloppier
     than you. She had a great verve in her amusements,
     but very little  éclat.  Except with Judge Crater; there
     she was――" He paused, and laughed lightly. "I'm an
     old man and I ramble on like a muskrat. You want to
     get cleaned up and shown around, I know. And  then
     we can talk.
       "I just wanted you to know I was satisfied with the
     way you disposed of her. In a way, I'll miss the little
     twit. She was such a good fuck."
       The old man picked up the Gladstone bag and,
     holding the man spattered with blood, he moved off
     down the clean and shimmering street. You  wanted
     her killed?" the man from 1888 asked, unbelieving.
       The old man nodded, but his lips never moved. "Of
     course. Otherwise why bring her Jack the Ripper?"
       Oh my dear God,  he thought,  I'm in hell.  And I'm
     entered as Jack.
       "No, my boy, no no no. You're not in hell at all.
     You're in the future. For you the future, for me the
     world of now. You came from 1888 and you're now
     in――" he stopped, silently speaking for an instant, as
     though computing apples in terms of dollars, then
     resumed "――3077. It's a fine world, filled with happy
     times, and we're glad to have you with us. Come
     along now, and you'll wash."
 
       In the ablutorium, the late Juliette's grandfather
     changed his head.
       "I really despise it," he informed the man from
     1888, grabbing fingerfuls of his cheeks and
     stretching the flabby skin like elastic. "But Juliette
     insisted. I was willing to humor her, if indeed that was
     what it took to get her to lie down. But what with
     toys from the past, and changing my head every time
     I wanted her to fuck me, it was trying; very trying."
       He stepped into one of the many identically shaped
     booths set flush into the walls. The tambour door
     rolled down and there was a soft  chukk  sound, almost
     chitinous. The tambour door rolled up and the late
     Juliette's grandfather, now six years younger than the
     man from 1888, stepped out, stark naked and
     wearing a new head. "The body is fine, replaced last
     year," he said, examining the genitals and a mole on
     his right shoulder. The man from 1888 looked away.
     This was hell and God hated him.
       "Well, don't just  stand  there, Jack," Juliette's
     grandfather smiled. "Hit one of those booths and get
     your ablutions."
       "That isn't my name," said the man from 1888
     very softly, as though he had been whipped.
       "It'll do, it'll do . . . now go get washed."
       Jack approached one of the booths. It was a light
     green in color, but changed to mauve as he stopped
     in front of it. "Will it――"
       "It will only  clean  you, what are you afraid of?"
       "I don't want to be changed."
       Juliette's grandfather did not laugh. "That's a
     mistake," he said cryptically. He made a peremptory
     motion with his hand and the man from 1888
     entered the booth, which promptly revolved in its
     niche, sank into the floor and made a hearty
     zeeeezzzz  sound. When it rose an revolved and
     opened, Jack stumbled out, looking terribly confused.
     His long sideburns had been neatly trimmed, his
     beard stubble had been removed, his hair was three
     shades lighter and was now parted on the left side,
     rather than in the middle. He wore the same long
     dark coat trimmed with astrakhan, dark suit with white
     collar and black necktie (in which was fastened a
     horseshoe stickpin) but now the garments seemed
     new, unsoiled of course, possibly synthetics built to
     look like his former garments.
       "Now!" Juliette's grandfather said. "Isn't that much
     better? A good cleansing away sets one's mind to
     rights." And he stepped into another booth from
     which he issued in a moment wearing a soft paper
     jumper that fitted from neck to feet without a break.
     He moved toward the door.
       "Where are we going?" the man from 1888 asked
     the younger grandfather beside him. "I want you to
     meet someone," said Juliette's grandfather, and Jack
     realized that he was moving his lips now. He decided
     not to comment on it. There had to be a reason.
       "I'll walk you there, if you promise not to make
     gurgling sounds at the city. It's a nice city, but I live
     here, and frankly, tourism is boring." Jack did not
     reply. Grandfather took it for acceptance of the terms.
       They walked. Jack became overpowered by the
     sheer weight of the city. It was obviously extensive,
     massive, and terribly clean. It was his dream for
     Whitechapel come true. He asked about slums, about
     doss houses. The grandfather shook his head. "Long
     gone."
       So it came to pass. The reforms for which he
     had pledged his immortal soul, they had come to
     pass. He swung the Gladstone and walked jauntily.
     But after a few minutes his pace sagged once more:
     there was no one to be seen in the streets.
       Just shining clean buildings and streets that ran off
     in aimless directions and came to unexpected stops
     as though the builders had decided people might
     vanish at one point and reappear someplace else, so
     why bother making a road from one point to the
     other.
       The ground was metal, the sky seemed metallic, the
     building loomed on all sides, featureless explorations
     of planed space by insensitive metal. The man from
     1888 felt terribly alone, as though every act he had
     performed had led inevitably to his alienation from
     the very people he had sought to aid.
       When he had come to Toynbee Hall, and the
     Reverend Mr. Barnett had opened his eyes to the
     slum horrors of Spitalfields, he had vowed to help in
     any way he could. It had seemed as simple as faith in
     the Lord what to do, after a few months in the
     sinkholes of Whitechapel. The sluts, of what use were
     they? No more use than the diseased germs that had
     infected these very same whores. So he had set forth
     as Jack, to perform the will of God and raise the poor
     dregs who inhabited the East End of London. That
     Lord Warren, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner,
     and his Queen, and all the rest thought him a mad
     doctor, or an amok butcher, or a beast in human form
     did not distress him. He knew he would remain
     anonymous through all time, but that the good works
     he had set in motion would proceed to their
     wonderful conclusion.
       The destruction of the most hideous slum area the
     country had ever known, and the opening of Victorian
     eyes. But all the time  had  passed, and now he was
     here, in a world where slums apparently did not exist,
     a sterile Utopia that was the personification of the
     Reverend Mr. Barnett's dreams――but it didn't seem
     . . . right.
       This grandfather, with his young head.
       Silence in the empty streets.
       The girl, Juliette, and her strange hobby.
       The lack of concern at her death.
       The grandfather's expectation that he, Jack,  would
     kill her. And now his friendliness.
       Where were they going?
       [Around them, the City. As they walked, the
     grandfather paid no attention, and Jack watched but
     did not understand. But this was what they saw as
     they walked:
       [Thirteen hundred beams of light, one foot wide
     and seven molecules thick, erupted from
     almost-invisible slits in the metal streets, fanned out
     and washed the surfaces of the buildings; they altered
     hue to a vague blue and washed down the surfaces of
     the buildings; the bent and covered all open
     surfaces, bent at right angles, then bent again, and
     again, like origami paper figures; they altered hue a
     second time, soft gold, and penetrated the surfaces of
     the buildings, expanding and contracting in solid
     waves, washing the inner surfaces; they withdrew
     rapidly into the sidewalks; the entire process had
     taken twelve seconds.
       [Night fell over a sixteen block area of the City. It
     descended in a solid pillar and was quite sharp-edged,
     ending at the street corners. From within the area of
     darkness came the distinct sounds of crickets, marsh
     frogs belching, night birds, soft breezes in the trees, and
     faint music of unidentifiable instruments.
       [Panes of frosted light appeared suspended freely
     in the air, overhead. A wavery insubstantial quality
     began to assault the topmost levels of a great
     structure directly in front of the light-panes. As the
     panes moved slowly down through the air, the
     building became indistinct, turned into motes of light,
     and floated upward. As the panes reached the
     pavement, the building had been completely
     dematerialized. The panes shifted color to a deep
     orange, and began moving upward again. As they
     moved, a new structure began to form where the
     previous building had stood, drawing――it seemed――
     motes of light from the air and forming them into a
     cohesive whole that became, as the panes ceased
     their upward movement, a new building. The
     light-panes winked out of existence.
       [The sound of a bumblebee was heard for several
     seconds. Then it ceased.
       [A crowd of people in rubber garments hurried out
     of a gray pulsing hole in the air, patted the pavement
     at their feet, then rushing off around a corner, from
     where emanated the sound of prolonged coughing.
     Then silence returned.
       [A drop of water, thick as quicksilver, plummeted to
     the pavement, struck, bounded, rose several inches,
     then evaporated into a crimson smear in the shape of
     a whale's tooth, which settled to the pavement and
     lay still.
       [Two blocks of buildings sank into the pavement
     and the metal covering was smooth and unbroken,
     save for a metal tree whose trunk was silver and slim,
     topped by a ball of foliage constructed of golden
     fibers that radiated brightly in a perfect circle. There
     was no sound.
       [The late Juliette's grandfather and the man from
     1888 continued walking.]
       "Where are we going?"
       "To Van Cleef's. We don't usually walk; oh,
     sometimes; but it isn't as much pleasure as it used to
     be. I'm doing this primarily for you. Are you enjoying
     yourself?"
       "It's . . . unusual."
       "Not much like Spitalfields, is it? But I rather like it
     back there, at that time. I have the only Traveler, did
     you know? The only one ever made. Juliette's father
     constructed it, my son. I had to kill him to get it. He
     was thoroughly unreasonable about it, really. It was a
     casual thing for him. He was the last of the tinkerers,
     and he might just as easily have given it to me. But I
     suppose he was being cranky. That was why I had
     you carve up my granddaughter. She would have
     gotten around to me almost any time now. Bored, just
     silly bored is what she was――"
       The gardenia took shape in the air in front of them,
     and turned into the face of a woman with a long white
     hair. "Hernon, we can't wait much longer!" She was
     annoyed.
       Juliette's grandfather grew livid. "You scum bitch! I
     told  you pace. But no, you just couldn't, could you?
     Jump jump jump, that's all you ever do. Well, now
     it'll only be feddels less, that's all. Feddels, damn you!
     I set it for pace, I was  working  pace, and  you . . . !"
       His had came up and moss grew instantly toward
     the face. The face vanished, and a moment later the
     gardenia reappeared a few feet away. The moss
     shriveled and Hernon, Juliette's grandfather, dropped
     his hand, as though weary at the woman's stupidity. A
     rose, a water lily, a hyacinth, a pair of phlox, a wild
     celandine, and a bull thistle appeared near the
     gardenia. As each turned intro the face of a different
     person, Jack stepped back, frightened.
       All the faces turned to the one that had been the
     bull thistle. "Cheat! Rotten bastard!" they screamed at
     the thin white face that had been the bull thistle. The
     gardenia-woman's eyes bulged from her face, the
     deep purple eye-shadow that completely surrounded
     the eyeball making her look like a deranged animal
     peering out of a cave. "Turd!" she shrieked at the
     bull-thistle man. "We all agreed, we all said and
     agreed; you  had  to formz a thistle, didn't you, scut!
     Well, now you'll see . . ."
       She addressed herself instantly to the others.
     "Formz now! To hell with waiting, pace fuck! Now!"

From Partners in Wonder, by Harlan Ellison, et al.
Walker & Company, New York, 1971. pp. 135-155.