A Billion Days of Earth

by Piserchia, Doris

  “Was your life worth it?”

  Slowly, Brog lifted his head. A silver hand left the beam and brushed back the wet hair from the face.

  “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” came the whisper.

  For an instant, the energy in the mind behind the eyes flared like a torch. The energy flickered toward the sky, rested upon the forest of green trees, returned and settled upon Sheen with tranquil finality. Brog sighed as a silver palm covered his eyes. The palm of Sheen flowed, entered the skull, sought that which made man a living being, found it … and gently, quickly, mercifully, destroyed it.

  The world had always been insane. Filly Six looked out an upstairs window and had a fit. What the hell were all those people doing down there?

  He knew, of course, having been on many safaris in his dreams. The natives always did that whenever they were driving a zomba from a village, or whenever they wanted to trap or kill one.

  Filly Six went on safari now. But try as he might, he couldn’t get his body in the right position. He wanted to be with the natives who were driving the zomba ahead of them.

  Actually, there were dozens of zombas down there. Hell, there were hundreds. The natives drove them toward the desert by banging pots and pans. A few had guns, but the zombas were cunning and kept darting in and out of the foliage.

  There were approximately 20 natives in the group, and the zombas they drove toward the desert were damned funny looking zombas. They looked more like monsters, and every one of them had the face of Six’s long-dead uncle. In fact, they resembled the atavisms in the zoo more than anything else.

  “Stop it!” Six yelled, leaning from the window. “You damn commoners never did have any sense. Drive those animals in another direction. Can’t you see my damn castle is between them and the desert?”

  He would have to get help. “Legions, where are my legions?”

  The only subordinate he could find was his brother, One. A hell of a soldier was One, never took a bath these days, never changed his clothes or shaved or said good morning, just sat in that goddamn chair and stunk up the place.

  Six slapped himself on the forehead and got out of the room quick. He remembered now. He had ordered the servants to tie One in the chair and cut off his nose. He had forgotten to untie One and set him free.

  All over the castle there were little beds with little stinking lumps in them. Six remembered. He had hired men to kill all the children in the place because they weren’t Fillys. The damn servants hadn’t shoveled the dead brats out of the rooms.

  “I can’t stand the noise!” Six clamped his paws over his ears. The pots and pans outside made a hell of a din.

  “To heck with it, I’m going to bed.” He did, after hauling a few bodies out of his room.

  Where had everybody gone? Six pulled the covers up to his chin and scowled when his feet stuck out the bottom. It didn’t matter. A few cold toes made no difference. In bed was safety. The ghouls couldn’t bother him as long as he didn’t step off the property.

  Someone had been killing a lot of people in the castle. Who had done that? Nobody but Filly One had jurisdiction here. Oh, yeah, of course, Filly One—himself—had ordered it. Anybody complains, shoot ’em. Too bad that every single Filly in the household had complained, at the top of their lungs. Too bad they all had to get shot; all but a couple of the wives.

  The pots and pans and the dumb morons outside; didn’t want the atavisms loose in their town. Why not? There were plenty of excess morons. They had always bred like flies, leaped one another right in front of an audience. Why not let those poor, deformed Fillys have a few for lunch? Any Filly was better than a thousand commoners.

  “Papa,” said Six, and Papa appeared in a dark corner. “How did this all come about?” Six continued. “Were you so damn greedy that you had to have the whole world? What did it get you? When they buried you, it was in the same size hole as the morons got.”

  The downstairs windows were broken and the doors were open. The fleeing atavisms from the zoo sought refuge in the estate. Like all hungry animals, they were capable of eating on the run. Inside the castle was plenty of meat, but it was extremely ripe. About 50 animals prowled through the rooms, pawed stinking lumps, hurried into other rooms to paw and sniff at more stinking lumps.

  “Jub, bring me my breakfast!” yelled Six, forgetting that the servants who weren’t dead had deserted. “And shut the damned door, I feel a draft!”

  Arda hid among the blue roses. Their heady scent made her nauseous, but she didn’t leave their protective cover. Worse things than an upset stomach waited for her everywhere on the Filly estate. Looters and the Filly monsters were hunting for somebody who was still alive. Their kind of mentality was never satisfied with a corpse to abuse. They desired to hear shrieks.

  She didn’t fear death. She felt that she had been dead for a long time. What she feared was an ignoble passing, because her life had been ignoble and she wanted the end marked by something respectable.

  Crawling among the flowers, she found a cool, dry space large enough to accommodate her body in a supine position. The dirt tasted bitter. Resting her head on her arms, she breathed deeply and soon she went to sleep.

  A rough foot in her ribs awakened her. She looked up and gasped. The face was so ugly she couldn’t tell whether it was human or monster. When a steel claw darted down and ripped her dress, she knew. Away in the distance she heard savage growls. Then there came the sound of a voice calling her name. “Arda, Arda!”

  The man took her by the hair and dragged her into a thicket of thorns. Being a Filly, she hadn’t the strength of a normal woman, so instead of struggling, she made herself as stiff and heavy as possible. It didn’t stop him for a second. He cursed as the thorns pierced him.

  She knew she imagined the voice that kept calling her name, imagined the anxiety of the cries. Her existence had been without redeeming value and her death would be less than that. Rage made her lift her legs and kick the man in the face. In wonderment, she saw that he was old. Starved and full of hate, he also wanted to end his life doing something respectable. Violating a Filly—a member of a family that had violated him all his days—would be his way of gaining restitution.

  Savage growls sounded close by. The man paid no attention. Arda’s kick had knocked him back a few paces but he hadn’t lost his footing. Regaining his balance, he made as if to lunge at her. A gray shape hurtled through the thicket behind him and landed on his back. The atavism from the zoo’s maximum-security section opened its jaws and sank its teeth in the man’s neck. He shrieked and fell backward with the atavism under him. It embraced him with its animal arms and its animal legs, hugged him close and bit him deeper in the neck, ate a piece of his cheek, a chunk of his shoulder, scrambled on top of him and held him down with its greater weight. Sharp teeth tore away his shirt and stripped off sections of his chest.

  The atavism ate voraciously, but still the man wasn’t dead, or silent. The victim was thrown over and his soft buttocks were attacked. Bones split, broke, disappeared into a bloody maw to be ground up and swallowed. Her mouth open in a soundless scream, Arda left the thicket, rammed through the thorns and ran, leaped over the flowers, desperately headed for open ground, anywhere at all, and knowing full well that there would be no escape because there were gray shapes wherever she looked. A growl sounded to her left and she ran toward the right and then she faltered and backed up a few paces as something in the bushes ahead made loud rustling noises. A big gray thing leaped from the top of an arbor and rushed her way, another thing loped across the lawn beyond the garden and altered its course when it spied her, still another sat calmly on the porch of the east wing of the house and watched her approach. She couldn’t go backward because running paws made the ground vibrate behind her.

  “Arda!”

  The voice came from the arbor tunnel, a long and low cavern made by growing vines. Arda approached the entrance, hesitated for only a moment and then she was running into the dimness,
crying, “Wait, I’m coming!”

  Mr. Omega stood at the end of the tunnel, under a faint patch of light that pierced the thick vines. “Hurry!” he called, and watched her run to him. “Hurry! They’re everywhere!”

  Arda’s heart threatened to collapse. Her strength was nonexistent, her recuperative powers had never been at a lower ebb, but her hope was a live thing as she sped toward the silver man.

  “Don’t be afraid! I’ll take you to safety!”

  “Yes, yes!”

  “They won’t touch you! I won’t let them!”

  “Thank God for you!”

  She didn’t slacken her pace as she approached him, and at the last moment he guessed her intention.

  “No! You can’t love me!”

  He had no time to turn away or recede from her flying body. Arda was fast against him, with her arms tightly around his neck, and before he could cry out a warning, her mouth was against his. With a groan and a sob, Sheen held her in his arms, felt her as a living woman, and then he stood still while his substance slid from her mouth to her chin, around her head, down her body and clothed her in a glittering gown of silver.

  chapter xiv

  “I’m looking for my daughter,” said Redo. He spoke to a bum on a street corner. “Have you seen her?”

  “No,” said the bum.

  “Her name is Uda. She’s a beautiful girl. Four boys dragged her into a car and took her away. Have you seen her?”

  Bebe wept because he was afraid of dying. His beautiful body that had gone to fat was now truly maimed and brutalized. He had run out of human beings and animals; there had been no more victims to take to Sheen. What was a person to do? Bebe did the only thing left—he turned on his own kind and made them the victims. After a few thousand were destroyed, the troops mutinied.

  Now Bebe was borne aloft by his brothers, and as they flew, he wept in agony and remorse. His fantastically lovely wings were gone, ripped out by the roots, torn from his back by his unbelievably barbaric relatives.

  He cursed and cried and when they dropped him from a height of a thousand feet, he shrieked out his hatred of them, the world, and himself.

  This was the day he would die. Rik knew it as soon as he stepped out of the house and saw the lawn filled with silver figures. They sat in his trees, sprawled on his lawn, waited on the curb, lined the walk that led to his porch.

  He turned to go back into the house and found his way blocked by three silver men, who neither looked at him nor spoke but kept the door barred and refused to let him pass.

  As he glanced back at the yard, the men pressed forward and forced him down the steps. Silver bodies closed in around him from all sides, to prevent him from running. He lay down on the sidewalk, and they picked him up and placed him on his feet.

  They made him walk. For hours he trudged, and then he lost track of time, was barely aware of it when the pavement under him became hot, dry sand. They wouldn’t let him stop, paid no attention to his shouts, wouldn’t let him rest or turn back to the city. The sun pounded on his unprotected head as they walked for miles across the desert.

  At about noontime he gasped and fell. They picked him up and dragged him. When they suddenly let go of him, he fell again and this time he passed out.

  He woke up. His mouth was full of sand. He crouched and waited for them to pick him up. Once more he fainted. It made him angry when he came to consciousness with a clear head. His sense of well-being lasted only a moment before he was engulfed in red, hot reality. He realized that he was on his hands and knees. A scream came from deep in his throat.

  The first thing he saw was the rifle. There were sand, rocks, empty sky and vacant desert, there wasn’t a thing anywhere except himself and the killing land and a rifle that lay not three feet away.

  He lunged at the weapon. Rolling onto his back and spitting sand, he tore off his shirt and wrapped it around his head. He loosened his belt a notch and then he came up on his feet with a quick bound. He looked for something to kill. His need for a target was gravel in his throat, a throbbing inside his temples, a savage pulsing in his hands as he swung the rifle in a broad arc and let his finger hunger on the trigger.

  He sat on a rock and waited until he could breathe without hurting, after which he got up and started to walk. He headed across a mound of rocks. Behind him stretched the open desert.

  It took him two hours to get across the rocks to a little valley which he knew like the back of his hand. He had always liked this place. Now he hated it, loathed every gently sloping wall of it, despised the river of grass that flowed like water in the wind, hated the messages of peace made by currents of air that sniffed among the stones upon which he stood.

  He paused on the rock wall and let his fear rush outward across the valley, willed it to hold stationary the two figures who stood on the opposite wall. He raised the rifle into the air. “Sheen!” he screamed. “Today you die!” His body trembled as the sound of light laughter carried across the valley to him.

  Dropping ten feet to another rock, he quickly looked across at the wall and a howl of rage burst from his throat. Sheen and Aril were gone. Climbing down the rest of the wall, he jumped onto the river of green grass, ran across the valley and stayed close to the rocks while he checked the gun. There was plenty of ammunition and he had his strength back. The rocks on the other side of the valley were steep. He scaled them with ease, stood on the top for a second before plunging ahead toward the thousand and one gullies there. Once the rifle flew out of his hand, and he spent many minutes prying it from a crack.

  He was straightening up when he heard something that made him freeze. The sound didn’t come again, and he climbed onto a rock and squatted down. He was out in the open but it couldn’t be helped. He listened and frowned when he heard the sound again. It was too far away. Someone was moving damned fast toward a gully which he knew well. The gully was a trap, unless one had plenty of time to get out of it.

  Swiftly and silently he moved forward, knowing where he could safely place a foot, confident that pressure and stress had already been tested by his having traveled this way countless times before. He went with good speed and no noise until the course became a gradual descent. It was like going downstairs and it was so easy that he increased his pace.

  Rounding the last rock, he suddenly stopped. He hadn’t been following Sheen and Aril. His hand went out for some support, gripped stone and tried to pulverize it. Knees rubbery with fear gave way and he fell forward, pitched off the rock and landed on a sod-covered ledge. A sharp clod opened his scalp above the ear but he didn’t feel pain. Scrambling to his knees, he stared down into the gully, and he saw it again—the furry rear of a thing that was trying to dig into a cluster of rocks. The thing was seeking darkness where there was none, and Rik knew that any moment it was going to give up and come backing out of the crevice.

  His head jerked around as he heard a faint, low chuckle.

  There was no one on the rocks above him. He looked to the right and still saw nothing. Neither was there anyone to his left. Clutching the rifle, he leaned down and looked into the gully. He couldn’t see much of the bottom. The left end was almost directly below him but the real body of it ran far around to his right. He picked up a rock, took careful aim and hurled it at the patch of fur sticking out of the crevice.

  He wanted to shriek when his son came backing out of the hole. He wasn’t aware of his need, wasn’t aware of anything but the huge, snarling creature that snapped at thin air and whirled about with one agile thrust of its haunches. Rik was too frozen to shrink back, too sick to do anything but stand still, and that was why Sten didn’t see him.

  Sten wasn’t much as far as looks were concerned. He had fur. His canines were a quarter-inch too long, his feet had such short joints that he couldn’t stand up. His nose was deformed, almost a snout. His eyes were mostly dark iris with scarcely any white showing. He had a stubby tail. Also, he had brains. What he deserved was an excess of instinct and a paucity of gray
matter, but he had a great deal of both. As he backed out of the hole and sprang about, he wasn’t on the defensive. He wasn’t a cautious organism who would examine his environment and let it determine whether he would be a warrior or a tare. When Sten came about on his four tough paws, he was a predator hunting for prey. The only thing that brought him to a halt was the fact that he saw nothing to attack. His disappointment came clearly through in the low growl he gave as he climbed down the rocks to the gully bed.

  Rik was right behind him, a position he would have exchanged for almost any other. He wanted to run and never set foot in that patch of desert again.

  He continued to shadow the four-footed thing he had sired. Somewhere nearby on this hulk of sod was the unique body that had borne the four-footed thing, and she meant to kill its father. She, too, had a rifle, and she was an expert shot.

  As Rik ran along the gully, it began to narrow, and he lost sight of his quarry. The walls dipped around to the right too abruptly and he slowed. The last thing he wanted to do was go bursting at his target.

  Hugging the right wall, he crouched and made himself as small as possible. Sten was also taking it slow, and just then Rik caught sight of the gray body ahead. Then he didn’t see it. The gully was so narrow at this point that there was just enough room for him to turn and make a dash the other way. This was what he intended to do if the second glimpse of gray backside suddenly became a mouthful of teeth. He didn’t know if he could outrun Sten in a long stretch. For a short one, he could, because he could think faster. He would be able to stay in front until he saw a place where he could climb, and after that he could use the rifle.

  He kept up a steady monologue of useless thoughts. Way down under the gibbering, he knew that the first second he started thinking sanely, he was going to fall down and begin to scream. He lost all caution, took the corner of rock in a single powerful rush that ended in a long and hopeless slide that landed him in the open in the middle of the gully. From here, the ditch widened and ran off into two broad forks. Straight ahead was a high wall. On top of it stood Aril and Sheen.