Whatever Gods May Be

by George P. Saunders

  The boy seemed to appreciate the humor and giggled.

  "Now tell me, Tom," Zolan asked abruptly, once again all business, "How did you get out of the City?"

  Tom shot one final glance towards the mired Thalick then pointed at the low up thrusts of salt hills that buffered the edge of the oasis. Zolan followed the boy's finger through the glade.

  A small cavern lay partly concealed by water ivy and assorted fruit-bearing brush - the likes of which, Zolan concluded, the boy must have survived on for the past several weeks. The cavern, Zolan surmised, was probably an access way to a much more extensive tunnel system lying beneath the sands. A vast network of these subterranean portals channeled out for miles around the Redeye City, extending as far as the border deserts and nearby sea. They had been constructed by the ancient civilization of Man for transportation and waste-flushing purposes; connected, they comprised several thousand miles of chamber space. Long ago, this tangled web of emptiness had provided mass-efficient transit for millions of human beings. Today, the only things that occupied the abandoned subways were salt water and fetid nothingness.

  It was clearly impossible that the boy could have made his way through the tunnels alone. For one thing, the Redeye City was fifty miles away; for another, the subways were completely darkened. Only Thalick, Jumpers and Redeyes could safely navigate through their stale interiors. Escaping the vampires and the rat-slaves had been an extraordinary feat; but to wander through the catacombs for miles in darkness and to resurface unscathed was simply too much for the boy to have accomplished. There was obviously more to his explanation than was immediately discernible.

  "You're very lucky," Zolan said magnanimously, "Did you stay down there all the way from the City?"

  "Yes."

  "And you could see where you were going?"

  "Yes, Grizz."

  Zolan relayed a quick message to Thalick.

  That's impossible, Bug. He must be lying.

  NEGATIVE, ZOLAN. BOY SPEAK TRUTH

  But how? Zolan transmitted again.

  NOT CLEAR, ZOLAN. BUT STRANGE STRANGE

  "You're damn right it's strange:" Zolan bellowed out loud, making the boy jump. Zolan chewed his gums and began to bluster. "Now, listen, Tom. How could you come through those tunnels alone without any light or anything?"

  "I wasn't alone, Grizz," Tom said nervously. Zolan sputtered and fought for words.

  "What?"

  "She helped me, Grizz," the boy said

  "She? You mean there was someone else down there with you?" Zolan asked astonished.

  Tom nodded shyly, not quite sure what to make of the old man's sudden shift of mood.

  Zolan began looking around the glade, shaking his walking stick in all directions.

  "Another survivor, Thalick," Zolan announced excitedly, "Female, I guess." Thalick rose out of the sand and again approached the glade entrance. Tom's eyes grew large and afraid, and he moved up against the face of the boulder behind him.

  "Where is she, Tom?" Zolan asked quickly, "Is she hiding? She doesn't need to be afraid of us. We want to help." Tom looked confused.

  "She's not here, Grizz. She went away." he said. Thalick had reentered the oasis and was immediately involved in performing a sensor scan of the entire glade. But aside from Zolan, himself and the boy, there was no evidence that anyone else had ever set foot in this place before them. The Stinger hissed in frustration, then informed Zolan of his findings.

  "Where, uh, did she go then, Tom? How long ago did she leave?" Zolan asked, bewildered.

  "When I came here first day, she went away."

  "Hell, that was weeks ago. She probably tried to get back to Zolansville," Zolan mused to himself. "But why didn't you go with her, Tom?"

  Tom shook his head emphatically. "No, no, Angel no go back to the city, Grizz. She just," he paused, trying to find the best way to explain what he had seen. Finally, he settled for a shrug, "She just went away." The boy could tell that this answer was very unsatisfying for Zolan, so he added quickly, "But she say that she will come back."

  "She did, eh? And her name is Angel?" Zolan asked cautiously.

  "No, Angel has no name," Tom said quickly, then added, "I call her Angel."

  WHAT IS ANGEL? Thalick interrupted with a rude, ugly hiss that caused Tom to sink against his rock in a terrified squat.

  Zolan stared at the boy long and hard. "Thalick," he said quietly, "are you sure that we're the only ones who have been here?"

  HSSSSSSSSSSSSSS-YES.

  Zolan nodded, then looked at Tom once again. "When is the angel coming back, boy?" he asked.

  "Tonight."

  Zolan swallowed hard. "Are you sure?"

  Tom nodded slowly, this time his eyes held Zolan's like magnets.

  "What else did she tell you," Zolan asked quietly.

  Now, Tom looked puzzled. The Master asked so many questions, he thought to himself in wonder. Strange, because he had always been told that the Master knew everything. Why, the Master could even talk to the Guardian. Tom gulped at this last thought as he regarded the silent Stinger only yards from where he lay helplessly balled up against the boulder.

  Perhaps it was a test, the boy deduced brilliantly, just like in school. Well, he would not disappoint the Master!

  "Angel come back tonight. She told me so. She want that I wait here." Tom answered a trifle more confidently.

  Zolan felt a twinge of pain stab at his chest. He began massaging it slowly, thinking briefly that this was the beginning. The pain ebbed momentarily, then returned, this time in stronger waves. He winced and staggered.

  Thalick moved up quickly behind Zolan, sensing the man's discomfort. Instantly, he recognized the dangerous thrombosis and proceeded to take action. He could do little to repair the damaged heart tissue, but he effectively transferred most of the pain to his own empathic system.

  Zolan was frightened by the attack, but at the same time, he kept hearing the boy's words over and over, keeping rhythm with the waves of agony that periodically clutched his chest like some relentless claw. Leaning on his walking stick, shaking his head in a fight for consciousness, Zolan whispered:

  "Why did she want you to wait?"

  Suddenly, he coughed and realized that he was falling. It seemed like the longest fall he had ever taken; the world swirled about him like a kaleidoscope, vague and twisted, plunging with him to the ground.

  Quickly, things started to get black; only a worried hiss from Thalick and the boy's voice remained.

  He passed out after that, but not before hearing Tom give the answer to his question.

  "She wanted me to wait for you."

  FIVE

  As twilight descended over the wastes, an eerie breeze invaded the glade. The oasis rustled and groaned as the sky grew dark; as Zolan listened, he thought that it was sobbing inconsolably for the light it would only miss for half a day.

  Sometimes, when Zolan would listen to the dusk winds at home, he thought he could hear voices. They were always sad voices, though, that were cold, hopeless awl always longing; the sounds, perhaps, of tortured souls that could only bay in torment under the shadow of nightfall. They were voices, Zolan felt, that he could understand very well and had heard before. Lonely, full of despair, they were the sounds of a thing or place that was dying - but had yet to die, which were allowed to cry only when the warmth of light disappeared and the dark was master.

  But as the night wind brushed against the palms and mesquite, crooning inexorably from one end of the world to the other, Zolan thought that tonight there was another sound riding the dark. A smile cracked his dried lips, and he blinked at the stars above. Tonight, Zolan knew, the night was singing to him. The sharp salt striking his cheek as the breeze increased, along with the brushing and blowing of fauna above and around him, were like the words and melodies and phrasings of a lullaby created just for him.

  Each breath was now more painful than the next for Zolan. His entire left side alternately experienced moments
of acute, pin-prickling agony with those of only numbness. After Thalick had revived him, he had not bothered to ask how serious the coronary had been; he knew that the end was very near. Now, though he should have remained resting as Thalick had instructed, Zolan struggled to his feet with great difficulty, using one of the Stinger's claws as a crutch. He grimaced, staggered and cried out softly, as each painful beat of his heart pounded itself into his brain. But at last he was able to make his way to the lagoon and the waters edge.

  Zolan turned to glance at the Stinger and Tom. The boy had been treated earlier to a protein concentrate the Stinger had concocted, and was now sleeping deeply. Tom adjusted to Thalick's presence quickly; within a few hours, the toy was crawling all over the Stinger, even helping himself at last, without Zolan's assistance, to the gummy extract that Thalick had produced for him.

  It was a peaceful scene to behold, but Zolan knew that Thalick, even at rest, was in the process of cleansing the boy's mind of all recent horrors encountered in the Redeye City. Thalick had more than once offered to liberate Zolan's more unpleasant memories for him, but the man had always good-naturedly declined such treatment; good or bad, his remembrances were things he wanted desperately to cling to for as long as he lived. However, for the sake of the boy's future adjustment and return to the world of the living, Zolan had decided that the Stinger's brainwash techniques were appropriate and beneficial for Tom. His mind would still unfortunately carry the scenes of recent grizzly happenings, but with Thalick's hypnotic therapy, such memories would be referred to only on the rarest occasions. As the boy matured, it was possible that the entire Redeye incident could be forgotten completely.

  A wave of guilt washed over Zolan. Even at the hour of his death, he was leaving yet one more responsibility for the old Stinger. Stabbing at the water with his stick, Zolan watched the waves ripple and lap across the surface to the surrounding shores. As the water calmed down once more, the soft reflection of the rising Little One crept into view.

  Zolan turned around to study the faint glow humping over the low hills. An hour from now, and the speeding sun would be flaring overhead for a few moments, before racing to its farthest point around the world, just in time to reappear by morning for a repeat performance.

  It would be a morning that Zolan would not live to see.

  Thalick watched the old man intently. He did not move from where he lay nestled near the entrance of the glade, nor did he attempt to communicate with Zolan. For just a few moments, he relied solely on senses he so rarely needed; all eight eyes simply stared at the man watching the evening sunrise.

  For Thalick, the day had been nothing short of dreadful. Due to Zolan's sudden heart attack, all question of travel back to the Mesa, or even to the nearer cities of Zolansville or New Phillips was out of the question. The man could not risk the stress. His heart had been, in a matter of seconds, critically damaged. Thalick doubted that the coronary was psychosomatic on Zolan's part, but regardless, it now appeared that Zolan's morning prediction concerning his own demise was no longer confined to the realm of the impossible. Zolan's heart was now as flimsy as paper; even the Stinger could not pinpoint accurately when the final blow would come.

  But the fact that Zolan's death was now verifiably imminent, gave the Stinger something akin to a throbbing migraine headache. Intense emotions flared within him, but puzzlement and helplessness were the two monsters that threatened to squash him completely.

  How Tom had survived in the tunnels for so long was no longer a mystery; but what allowed him to do so, and resurface safely, was far the more disturbing to contemplate. Even after a follow-up investigation of the immediate vicinity and tunnels below, Thalick could still not pick up evidence of any other life signs. Only Tom's markings registered, with no indication that even an outcast Redeye had occupied these remote sands or subways for centuries. Yet, something or someone had aided the boy along since his escape from the Redeye City, and furthermore had instructed him to remain in the oasis until Zolan's arrival.

  Was it possible, he wondered uncharacteristically, that she had actually returned?

  Thalick quickly disengaged himself from such ridiculous notions. He could not believe in such phenomenon. The dead could never return. Zolan was either deluding himself, or was truly mad, and such infectious diseases of the mind were affecting even the Stinger. Thalick had always rejected the concept of supernatural transpirations. Mysticism, magic, and even the primitive and ridiculous rituals that were performed by the people of this world to honor him were secretly beneath the level of merit to even incur a hiss of scorn from the Stinger. Apostates of either a heaven or a hell, like Angels or Devils, simply didn't exist.

  No, this angel was no ghost, Thalick insisted to himself. If it existed, it would corroborate under a careful probe antennae and have a definite origin other than the cloudy parameters of either heaven or its fiery counterpart.

  Still, so many questions remained. And these unanswered questions made the Guardian, the Great Thelerick - sometimes known as Thalick, the Stinger, very, very nervous.

  The sky gradually grew lighter, and Zolan's face was eerily silhouetted against the backdrop of brush and palm trees. Thalick could tell that his friend was in much greater pain now, though his face outwardly remained passive and calm.

  Zolan turned his head towards Thalick when he heard the familiar buzzing rumble through his brain that told him his friend wished to communicate.

  "Yes, Bug?" Zolan thought in question.

  PAIN BAD?

  Zolan closed his eyes. "Bad," he nodded.

  Thalick kept his hisses muffled, so as not to awaken the sleeping boy curled up against his side. For a moment, Zolan and Thalick only stared at one another, their minds completely open to the other. At last, the Stinger broke the peace.

  SHE IS DEAD, ZOLAN. SHE NO COME BACK

  Zolan turned away and refocused on the Little One peeking over the horizon. Thalick also snatched a glance at the half dome of fire hovering over the dunes. For the first time since its creation, the old Stinger actually feared and dreaded the Little One's arrival this evening.

  "She promised she would come back, Thalick," Zolan smiled, "She promised five centuries ago, and now she has promised again through the boy."

  VALRY DEAD, FRIEND ZOLAN, Thalick transmitted softly. Zolan could detect a rare quality of compassion in the Stinger's thoughts, and it touched him deeply. He had almost forgotten how much Thalick had also loved her, too.

  "She will come back, Bug," was all Zolan said.

  "She'll come back," a refreshed voice concurred near Thalick. Tom was stretching and leaping to his feet all at the same time. He squinted, looking into the face of the Little One rising into the sky.

  "Very soon. She promised."

  Zolan felt a chill pass through him as Tom spoke.

  "Were you talking to the Guardian, Master?" the boy asked curiously. Zolan walked slowly back to where Thalick lay. For the moment, the pain in his chest had subsided, so such movement was not terribly uncomfortable.

  "Yes, I was. As a matter of fact, we were talking about you. How do you feel?" Zolan asked.

  The boy was instantly absorbed with his new, giant playmate. Where he had been numb with terror only a few hours before, Tom was now perfectly content in the Stinger's close company. Youth, Zolan thought suddenly, and chuckled.

  "Fine," Tom answered off-handedly, clearly more interested in Thalick than talking with Zolan, "What does he eat?" he asked, test kicking one of the giant claws in front of him.

  Zolan was amused and just a little envious. He had not adjusted as quickly to the Stinger's presence so long ago, as the boy was now doing.

  "Not much, really. He's totally self-contained. Maybe a rock now or then, I suppose, but that's all,"

  "He's big." Tom said admiringly, petting the claw and hissing at the same time. "I have a Dalka that's big, but nothing like this."

  Thalick remained silent; Zolan was sure that his friend was probably not te
rribly pleased with being compared to a six foot long, flying marsupial that was a Dalka, but he gave no indication as to being even slightly offended.

  Zolan stared thoughtfully at the boy. He had a sudden old man's longing to talk to the young, to share with a life about to begin part of a life that was soon to end.

  Ah, what stories he had, Zolan applauded himself in recollection; and what stories needed to be told.

  Behind him, the Little One grew brighter. At night, the dwarf was even more spectacular than in the morning when it was forced to compete against Mother Sol for attention. But with only the dim and far-away twinkling of a million stars, one of which provided light and life to a world Zolan had left long ago, the Little One could charge masterdom over the entire night.

  "What do your people call that, Tom?" Zolan asked the boy, genuinely curious as to how the world's savior was referred to by the general population.

  Tom turned around from what he was doing, which was absently pulling a convenient mandible, the equivalent of a sensitive whisker on the human face for Thalick. The boy glanced at the full sun above, 'and replied indifferently.

  "God's Eye," he said tonelessly, teen went back to the important business of trying to separate Thalick's lower lip from the rest of his body.

  "Do you know how it got there, Tom?" Zolan persisted, not knowing for sure why he was starting this line of abstract questioning with a 10-year old boy who could never hope to comprehend the explanation behind it. Perhaps, he thought ruefully, he was attempting to arouse the lad's curiosity so that he could fulfill an old man's darkest wishes to be asked to tell a story.

  But Tom was disappointingly uncooperative. "Uh-uh," Tom said distractedly. He was by now far too absorbed with the way Thalick's mandible could be twisted into knots with rather boyish ease. A second later, however, a sharp hiss ceased further painful experimentation.

  "Good," Zolan replied enthusiastically, ignoring the boys' obvious disinterest and shuffling up to a claw and easing himself into a sitting position on top of it. "Then time for a little, old-fashioned education."