Finchley’s smile froze. He frowned, hesitated, then scooped up another chunk of clay and set it on the stone. For the space of an hour he worked, shaping a graceful Irish setter. At last he tapped this, too, on the narrow skull and said:
“Live—”
Instantly the dog collapsed. It mewled helplessly and then struggled to shaking feet like some enormous spider, eyes distended and glassy. It tottered to the edge of the pedestal, leaped off and collided with Finchley’s leg. There was a low growl and the beast tore sharp fangs into Finchley’s skin.
He leaped back with a cry and kicked the animal furiously. Mewling and howling, the setter went gangling across the fields like a crippled monster.
With furious intent, Finchley returned to his work. Shape after shape he modeled and endowed with life; and each: ape, monkey, fox, weasel, rat, lizard and toad— fish; long and short, stout and slender—birds by the score—each was a grotesque monstrosity that swam, shambled or fluttered off like some feverish nightmare. Finchley was horrified and exhausted. He sat himself down on the pedestal and began to sob while his tired fingers still twitched and prodded at a lump of clay.
He thought: “I’m still an artist—What’s gone wrong? What turns everything I do into horrible nonsense?”
His fingers turned and twisted, and without his realizing it, a head began to form in the clay.
He thought: “I made a fortune with my art once. Everyone couldn’t have been crazy. They bought my work for many reasons—but an important one was that it was beautiful.”
He stared at the lump of clay in his hands. It had been partially formed into a woman’s head. He examined it closely and for the first time in many hours, he smiled.
“Why, of course!” he exclaimed. “I’m no shaper of animals. Let’s see how well I do with a human figure—”
Swiftly, with heavy chunks of clay, he built up the understructure of his figure. Legs, arms, torso and head were formed. He hummed slightly under his breath as he worked, and he thought: She’ll be the loveliest Eve ever created—and more— her children shall truly be the children of a god!
With loving hands he turned the full swelling calves and thighs, and cunningly joined slender ankles to graceful feet. The hips were rounded and girdled a flat slightly mounded belly. As he set the strong shoulders, he suddenly stopped and stepped back a pace.
Is it possible? He wondered.
He walked slowly around the half-completed figure.
Yes— Force of habit, perhaps?
Perhaps that—and maybe the love he had borne for so many empty years.
He returned to the figure and redoubled his efforts. With a sense of growing elation, he completed arms, neck and head. There was a certainty within him that told him it was impossible to fail. He had modeled this figure too often not to know it down to the finest detail. And when he was finished, Theone Dubedat, magnificently sculpted in clay, stood atop the stone pedestal.
Finchley was content, Wearily he sat down with his back to a jagged boulder, produced a cigarette from space and lit it. For perhaps a minute he sat, dragging in the smoke to quiet his jerking nerves. At last with a sense of chaotic anticipation he said: “Woman—” ~
He choked and stopped. Then he began again.
“Be alive—Theone!”
The second of life came and passed. The nude figure moved slightly, then began to tremble.
Magnetically drawn, Finchley arose and stepped toward her, arms outstretched in mute appeal. There was a hoarse gasp of indrawn breath and slowly the great eyes opened and examined him.
The living girl straightened and screamed. Before Finchley could touch her she beat at his face, her long nails ripping his skin. She fell backward off the pedestal, leaped to her feet and began running off across the fields like all the others— running like a crazy, crippled creature while she screamed and howled. The low sun dappled her body and the shadow she cast was monstrous.
Long after she disappeared, Finchley continued to gaze in her direction while within him all that futile, bitter love surged and burned with an acid tide. At length he turned again to the pedestal and with icy impassivity set once more to work. Nor did he stop until the fifth in a succession of lurid creatures ran screaming out into the night—Then and only then did he stop and stand for a long time gazing alternately at his hands and the crazy, careening moons that sailed overhead.
There was a tap on his shoulder and he was not too surprised to see Lady Sutton standing beside him. She still wore the sequined evening gown, and in the lurid moonlight her face was as course and masculine as ever.
Finchley said: “Oh . . . it’s you.”
“How are you, Dig, m’lad?”
He thought it over, trying to bring some reason to the dumb despair and yet ludicrous insanity that pervaded his cosmos. At last he said: “Not so good, Lady Sutton.”
“Trouble?”
“Yes—” He broke off and stared at her. “I say, Lady Sutton, how the devil did you get here?”
She laughed. “I’m dead, Dig. You ought to know.”
“Dead? Oh . . . I—” He floundered in a horror of embarrassment.
“No hard feelings, though. I’d have done the same m’self, y’know.”
“You would?”
“Anything for a new sensation. That was always our motto, eh?” She nodded complacently and grinned at him. It was that same old grin of pure deviltry.
Finchley said: “What are you doing here? I mean, how did—”
“I said I was dead,” Lady Sutton interrupted. “There’s lots you don’t understand about this business of dying.”
“But this is my own personal private reality. I own it.”
“And I’m still dead, Dig. I can get into any bloody damned reality I choose. Wait—you’ll find out.”
He said: “I won’t—ever—That is, I can’t. Because I won’t ever die.”
“Oh-ho?”
“No, I won’t. I’m a god.”
“You are, eh? How d’you like it?”
“I ... I don’t.” He faltered for words. “I ... that is, someone promised me a reality I could shape for myself, but I can’t, Lady Sutton, I can’t.”
“And why not?”
“I don’t know. I’m a god, and yet every time I try to shape something beautiful it turns out disgusting and loathsome.”
“As how, for instance?”
He showed her the twisted mountains and plains, the evil lakes and rivers, the distorted grunting creatures he had created. All this Lady Sutton examined carefully and with close attention. At last she pursed her lips and thought for a moment; then she gazed keenly at Finchley and said: “Odd that you’ve never made a mirror, Dig.”
“A mirror?” he echoed. “No, I haven’t—I never needed one—”
“Go ahead. Make one now.”
He gave her a perplexed look, and still staring at her, waved a hand in the air. A square of silvered glass appeared in his hand and he held it toward her.
“No,” Lady Sutton said, “it’s for you. Look in it.”
Wondering, he raised the mirror and gazed in it. He uttered a hoarse cry and peered closer. Leering back at him out of the dim night was the distorted, evil face of a gargoyle. In the small slant-set eyes, the splayed nose, the broken yellow teeth, the twisted ruin of a face he saw everything he had seen in his ugly cosmos.
He saw the distorted cathedral of heaven and all its unholy hierarchy of ribald retainers; the spinning chaos of crashing stars and suns; the lurid landscape of his Eden; each mewling, ghastly creature he had created; every individual horror that his brain had spawned.
Violently he hurled the mirror spinning and turned to confront Lady Sutton.
“What?” he demanded hoarsely, “what is this?”
“Why, you’re a god, Dig,” Lady Sutton laughed, “and you ought to know that a god can create only in his own image. Yes—the answer’s as simple as that. It’s a grand joke, ain’t it?”
“Joke?” T
he import of all the eons to come thundered down over his head. An eternity of living with his hideous self, upon himself, inside himself—over and over, re-repeated in every sun and star, every living and dead thing, every creature, every everlasting moment. A monstrous god feeding upon himself and slowly, inexorably going mad.
“Joke!” he screamed.
He flung out his hand and instantly he floated once more, suspended out of all contact with mass and matter. Once more he was utterly alone, with nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing to touch. And as he pondered for another ineffable period on the inevitable futility of his next attempt, he heard quite distinctly, the deep bellow of familiar laughter.
Of such was the Kingdom of Finchley’s Heaven.
III
“Give me the strength! Oh, give me the strength!”
She went through the veil sharp on Finchley’s heels, that short, slender, dark woman; and she found herself in the dungeon passage of Sutton Castle. For a
moment she was startled out of her prayer, half disappointed at not finding a land of mists and dreams.
Then, with a bitter smile, she recalled the reality she wanted.
Before her stood a suit of armor; a strong, graceful figure of polished metal edged with sweeping flutings. She went to it and stared. Dully from the gleaming steel cuirass, a slightly distorted reflection stared back. It showed the drawn, high-strung face, the coal-black eyes, the coal-black hair dipping down over the brow in a sharp widow’s peak. It said: “This is Sidra Peel. This is a woman whose past has been fettered to a dull-witted creature that called itself her husband. She will break that chain this day if only she finds the strength—”
“Break the chain!” she murmured fiercely, “and this day repay him for a life’s worth of agony.
God—if there be a god in my world—help me balance the account in full! Help me—”
Sidra stared, then froze while her pulse jerked wildly. Someone had come soundlessly down the lonesome passage and stood behind her. She could feel the heat—the aura of a presence—the almost imperceptible pressure of a body against hers. Mistily in the mirror of the armor she made out a face peering over her shoulder.
She spun around, crying: “Ahhhh!”
“So sorry,” he said. “Thought you were expecting me.”
Her eyes riveted to his face. He was smiling slightly in an affable manner, and yet the streaked blond hair, the hollows and mounds, the pulsing veins and shadows of his features were a lurid landscape of raw emotions.
“Calm yourself,” he said while she teetered crazily and fought down the screams that were tearing through her.
“But wh-who—” she broke off and tried to swallow.
“I thought you were expecting me,” he repeated.
“I ... expecting you?”
He nodded and took her hands. Against his, her palms felt chilled and moist. “We had an engagement.”
She opened her mouth slightly and shook her head.
“At twelve forty—” He released one of her hands to look at his watch. “And here I am, on the dot.”
“No,” she said, yanking herself away. “No, this is impossible. We have no engagement. I don’t know you.”
“You don’t recognize me, Sidra? Well—that’s odd; but I think you’ll recollect who I am before long.”
“But who are you?”
“I shan’t tell you. You’ll have to remember yourself.”
A little calmer, she inspected his features closely. Suddenly, with the rush of a waterfall, a blended sensation of attraction and repulsion surged over her. This man alarmed and fascinated her. She was filled with horror at his mere presence, yet intrigued and drawn.
At last she shook her head and said: “I still don’t understand. I never called for you, Mr. Whoever-you-are, and we had no engagement.”
“You most certainly did.”
“I most certainly did not!” she flared, outraged by his insolent assurance. “I wanted my old world. The same old world I’d always known—”
“But with one exception?”
“Y-yes—” Her furious glance faltered and the rage drained out of her. “Yes, with one exception.”
“And you prayed for the strength to make that exception?”
She nodded.
He grinned and took her arm. “Well, Sidra, then you did call for me and we did have an engagement.
I’m the answer to your prayer.”
She suffered herself to be led through the narrow, steep-mounting passages, unable to break free of that magnetic leash. His touch on her arm was a frightening thing. Everything in you cried out against the misery and disgust—and yet another something in you welcomed it eagerly.
As they passed through the cloudy light of infrequent lamps, she watched him covertly. He was tall and magnificently built. Thick cords strained in his muscular neck at the slightest turn of his arrogant head.
He was dressed in tweeds that had the texture of sandstone and gave off a pungent, peaty scent. His shirt was open at the collar, and where his chest showed it was thickly matted.
There were no servants about on the street floor of the castle. The man escorted her quietly through the graceful rooms to the foyer where he removed her coat from the closet and placed it around her shoulders. Suddenly he pressed his hard hands against her arms.
She tore herself away at last, one of the old rages sweeping over her. In the quiet gloom of the foyer she could see that he was still smiling, and it added fuel to her fury.
“Ah,” she cried, “what a fool I am ... to take you so for granted. ‘I prayed for you—’ you say. ‘I know you—’ what kind of booby do you think I am? Keep your hands off me!”
She glared at him, breathing heavily, and he made no answer. His expression remained unchanged.
It’s like those snakes, she thought, those snakes with the jeweled eyes. They coil in their impassive beauty and you can’t escape the deadly fascination. It’s like soaring towers that make you want to leap to earth—like keen, glittering razors that invite the tender flesh of your throat. You can’t escape!
“Go on!” she screamed in a last desperate effort. “Get out of here! This is my world. It’s all mine to do with as I choose. I want no part of your kind of rotten, arrogant swine!”
Swiftly, silently, he gripped her shoulders and brought her close to him. While he kissed her she struggled against the hard talons of his fingers and tried to force her mouth away from his. And yet she knew that if he had released her she could not have torn herself away from that savage kiss.
She was sobbing when he relaxed his grip and let her head drop back. Still in the affable tones of a casual conversation he said: “You want one thing in this world of yours, Sidra, and you must have me to help you.”
“In Heaven’s name, who are you?”
“I’m that strength you prayed for. Now come along.”
Outside the night was pitch black, and after they had gotten into Sidra’s roadster and started for London, the road was impossible to follow. As she edged the car cautiously along, Sidra was able at last to make out the limed white line that bisected the road, and the lighter velvet of the sky against the jet of the horizon. Overhead the Milky Way was a long smudge of powder.
The wind on her face was good to feel. Passionate, reckless and headstrong as ever, she pressed her foot on the accelerator and sent the car roaring down the dangerous dark road, eager for more of the cool breeze against her cheeks and brow. The wind tugged at her hair and sent it streaming back. The wind gusted over the top of the glass shield and around it like a solid stream of cold water. It whipped up her courage and confidence. Best of all, it recalled her sense of humor.
Without turning, she called: “What’s you name?”
And dimly through the chattering breeze came his answer: “Does it matter?”
“It certainly does. Am I supposed to call you: ‘Hey!’ or ‘I say there—’ or ‘Dear sir—’
“Very well, Sidra. Call
me Ardis.”
“Ardis? That’s not English, is it?”
“Does it matter?”
“Don’t be so mysterious. Of course it matters. I’m trying to place you.”
‘‘I see.’’
“D’you know Lady Sutton?”
Receiving no answer she glanced at him and received a slight chill. He did look mysterious with his head silhouetted against the star-filled sky. He looked out of place in an open roadster.
“D’you know Lady Sutton?” she repeated.
He nodded and she turned her attention back to the road. They had left the open country and were boring through the London suburbs. The little squat houses, all alike, all flat-faced and muddy-colored, whisked past with a muffled whump-whumpwhump, echoing back the drone of the engine.
Still gay, she asked: “Where are you stopping?”
“In London.”
“Where, in London.”
“Chelsea Square.”
“The Square? That’s odd. What number?”
“One hundred and forty-nine.”
She burst into laughter. “Your impudence is too wonderful,” she gasped, glancing at him again. “That happens to be my address.”
He nodded. “I know that, Sidra.”
Her laughter froze—not at the words, for she had hardly heard them. Barely suppressing another scream, she turned and stared through the windshield, her hands trembling violently on the wheel. For the man sat there in the midst of that howling turmoil of wind and not a hair of his head was moving.
“Merciful Heaven!” she cried in her heart, “what kind of mess did I—Who is this monster, this—Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy—Get rid of him! I don’t want him. If I’ve asked for him, consciously or not, I don’t want him now. I want my world changed. Right now! I want him out of it!”
Selected Stories of Alfred Bester Page 22