Hasan was standing by the blazing pyre, a flaming stake still upraised in spear-throwing position.
Bortan was sniffing at the quivering mountain of flesh.
Cassandra was standing beneath the cypress beside a dead donkey, her back against the trunk of the tree, wearing leather trousers, a blue woolen shirt, a faint smile, and my still-smoking elephant gun.
“Cassandra!”
She dropped the gun and looked very pale. But I had her in my arms almost before it hit the ground.
“I’ll ask you a lot of things later,” I said. “Not now. Nothing now. Let’s just sit here beneath this tree and watch the fire bum.”
And we did.
A month later, Dos Santos was ousted from the Radpol. He and Diane have not been heard of since. Rumor has it that they gave up on Returnism, moved to Taler, and are living there now. I hope it’s not true, what with the affairs of these past five days. I never did know the full story on Red Wig, and I guess I never will. If you trust a person, really trust him I mean, and you care for him, as she might have cared for me, it would seem you’d stick around to see whether he was right or wrong on your final big disagreement. She didn’t, though, and I wonder if she regrets it now.
I don’t really think I’D ever see her again.
Slightly after the Radpol shakeup, Hasan returned from Mount Sindjar, stayed awhile at the Port, then purchased a small ship and put out to sea early one morning, without even saying goodbye or giving any indication as to his destination. It was assumed he’d found new employment somewhere. There was a hurricane, though, several days later, and I heard rumors in Trinidad to the effect that he had been washed up on the coast of ‘Brazil and met with his death at the hands of the fierce tribesmen who dwell there. I tried but was unable to verify this story.
However, two months later, Ricardo’ Bonaventura, Chairman of the Alliance Against Progress, a Radpol splinter group which had fallen into disfavor with Athens, died of apoplexy during a Party function. There were some murmurings of Divban rabbit-venom in the anchovies (an exceedingly lethal combination, George assures me), and the following day the new Captain of the Palace Guard vanished mysteriously, along with a Skimmer and the minutes of the last three secret sessions of the AAP (not to mention the contents of a small wallsafe). He was said to have been a big, yelloweyed man, with a slightly Eastern cast to his features.
Jason is still herding his many-legged sheep in the high places, up where the fingers of Aurora come first to smear the sky with roses, and doubtless he is corrupting youth with his song.
Ellen is pregnant again, all delicate and big-waisted, and won’t talk to anybody but George. George wants to try some fancy embryosurgery, now, before it’s too late, and make his next kid a water-breather as well as an air-breather, because of all that great big virgin frontier down underneath the ocean, where his descendants can pioneer, and him be father to a new race and write an interesting book on the subject, and all that. Ellen is not too hot on the idea, though, so I have a hunch the oceans will remain virgin a little longer.
Oh yes, I did take George to Capistrano some time ago, to watch the spiderbats return. It was real impressive—them darkening the sky with their flight, nesting about the ruins the way they do, eating the wild pigs, leaving green droppings all over the streets. Lorel has hours and hours of it in tri-dee color, and he shows it at every Office party. It’s sort of a historical document, spiderbats being on the way out now. True to his word, George started a slishi plague among them, and they’re dropping like flies these days. Just the other week one dropped down in the middle of the street with a big splatt! as I was on my way to Mama Julie’s with a bottle of rum and a box of chocolates. It was quite dead when it hit. The slishi are very insidious. The poor spiderbat doesn’t know what’s happening; he’s flying along happily, looking for someone to eat, and then zock! it hits him, and he falls into the middle of a garden party or somebody’s swimming pool.
I’ve decided to retain the Office for the time being. I’ll set up some kind of parliament after I’ve whipped up an opposition party to the Radpol—Indreb, or something like that maybe: like Independent Rebuilders, or such.
Good old final forces of disruption . . . we needed them down here amid the ruins.
And Cassandra—my princess, my angel, my lovely lady—she even likes me without my fungus. That night in the Valley of Sleep did it in.
She, of course, had been the shipload of heroes Hasan had seen that day back at Pagasae. No golden fleece, though, just my gunrack and such. Yeah. It had been the Golden Vanitie, which I’d built by hand, me, stout enough, I was pleased to learn, to take even the tsunami that followed that 9.6 Richter thing. She’d been out sailing in it at the time the bottom fell out of Kos. Afterwards, she’d set sail for Volos because she knew Makrynitsa was full of my relatives. Oh, good thing—that she had had this feeling that there was danger and had carried the heavy artillery ashore with her. (Good thing, too, that she knew how to use it.) I’ll have to learn to take her premonitions more seriously.
I’ve purchased a quiet villa on the end of Haiti opposite from the Port. It’s only about fifteen minutes’ skimming time from there, and it has a big beach and lots of jungle all around it. I have to have some distance, like the whole island, between me and civilization, because I have this, well—hunting—problem. The other day, when the attorneys dropped around, they didn’t understand the sign: BEWARE THE DOG. They do now. The one who’s in traction won’t sue for damages, and George will have him as good as new in no time. The others were not so severely taken.
Good thing I was nearby, though.
So here I am, in an unusual position, as usual.
The entire planet Earth was purchased from the Talerite government, purchased by the large and wealthy Shtigo gens. The preponderance of expatriates wanted Vegan citizenship anyhow, rather than remaining under the Talerite ex-gov and working in the Combine as registered aliens. This has been coming for a long time, so the disposal of the Earth became mainly a matter of finding the best buyer—because our exile regime lost its only other cause for existence the minute the citizenship thing went through. They could justify themselves while there were still Earthmen out there, but now they’re all Vegans and can’t vote for them, and we’re sure not going to, down here,
Hence, the sale of a lot of real estate—and the only bidder was the Shtigo gens.
Wise old Tatram saw that the Shtigo gens did not own Earth, though. The entire purchase was made in the name of his grandson, the late Cort Myshtigo.
And Myshtigo left this distribution-desire, or last will and testament, Vegan-style . . .
. . . in which I was named.
I’ve, uh, inherited a planet
The Earth, to be exact.
Well—
Hell, I don’t want the thing. I mean, sure I’m stuck with it for awhile, but DU work something out.
It was that infernal Vite-Stats machine, and four other big think-tanks that old Tatram used. He was looking for a local administrator to hold the earth in fief and set up a resident representative government, and then to surrender ownership on a fairly simple residency basis once things got rolling. He wanted somebody who’d been around awhile, was qualified as an administrator, and who wouldn’t want to keep the place for his very own.
Among others, it gave him one of my names, then another, the second as a “possibly still living.” Then my personnel file was checked, and more stuff on the other guy, and pretty soon the machine had turned up a few more names, all of them mine. It began picking up discrepancies and peculiar similarities, kept kapocketting, and gave out more puzzling answers.
Before long, Tatram decided I had better be “surveyed”
Cort came to write a book.
He really wanted to see if I was Good, Honest, Noble, Pure, Loyal, Faithful, Trustworthy, Selfless, Kind, Cheerful, Dependable, and Without Personal Ambition.
Which means he was a cockeyed lunatic, because he said, “Yes,
he’s all that.”
I sure fooled him.
Maybe he was right about the lack of personal ambition, though. I am pretty damn lazy, and am not at all anxious to acquire the headaches I see as springing up out of the tormented Earth and blackjacking me daily.
However, I am willing to make certain concessions so far as personal comfort is concerned. I’ll probably cut myself back to a six-month vacation.
One of the attorneys (not the one in traction—the one with the sling) delivered me a note from the Blue One. It said, in part:
Dear Whatever-the-Blazes-Your-Name-Is,
It is most unsettling to begin a letter this way, so I’ll respect your wishes and call you Conrad.
“Conrad,” by now you are aware of the true nature of my visit. I feel I have made a good choice in naming you as heir to the property commonly referred to as Earth. Your affection for it cannot be gainsaid; as Karaghiosis you inspired men to bleed in its defense; you are restoring its monuments, preserving its works of art (and as one stipulation of my will, by the way, I insist that you put back the Great Pyramid!), and your ingenuity as well as your toughness, both physical and mental, is singularly amazing.
You also appear to be the closest thing to an immortal overseer available (I’d give a lot to know your real age), and this, together with your high survival potential, makes you, really, the only candidate. If your mutation ever does begin to fail you, there is always the series to continue linking the great chain of your days. (I could have said “forging,” but it would not have been polite, inasmuch as I know you are an accomplished forger. —All those old records! You drove poor Vite-Stats half-mad with discrepandes. It is now programmed never to accept another Greek birth certificate as proof of age!)
I commend the Earth into the hands of the kallikanzaros. According to legend, this would be a grave mistake. However, I am willing to gamble that you are even a kallikan-zaros under false pretenses. You destroy only what you mean to rebuild. Probably you are Great Tan, who only pretended to die. Whatever, you will have sufficent funds and a supply of heavy equipment which will be sent this year—and lots of forms for requisitioning more from the Shtigo Foundation. So go thou and be thou fruitful and multiply, and reinherit the Earth. The gens will be around watching. Cry out if you need help, and help will be forthcoming.
I don’t have time to write you a book. Sorry. Here is my autograph, anyhow:
—CORT MYSHTIGO
P.S. I still dunno if it’s art. Go to hell yourself.
That is the gist of it.
Pan?
Machines don’t talk that way, do they?
I hope not, anyhow. . . .
The Earth is a wild inhabitation. It is a tough and rocky place. The rubbish will have to be cleared, section by section, before some anti-rubbish can be put up.
Which means work, lots of it.
Which means I’ll need all the Office facilities as well as the Radpol organization, to begin with.
Right now I’m deciding whether or not to discontinue the ruin-tours. I think I’ll let them go on, because for once we’ll have something good to show. There is that certain element of human curiosity which demands that one halt in his course and peer through a hole in any fence behind which construction work is going on.
We have money now, and we own our own property again, and that makes a big difference. Maybe even Return-ism isn’t completely dead. If there is a vital program to revive the Earth, we may draw back some of the ex-pop, may snag some of the new tourists.
Or, if they all want to remain Vegans, they can do that, too. We’d like them, but we don’t need them. Our Outbound immigration will be dropping off, I feel, once people know they can get ahead here; and our population will increase more than just geometrically, what with the prolonged fertility period brought on by the now quite expensive S-S series. I intend to socialize S-S completely. I’ll do it by putting George in charge of a Public Health program, featuring mainland clinics and offering S-S all over the place.
We’ll make out. I’m tired of being a gravekeeper, and I don’t really want to spend from now till Easter cutting through the Tree of the World, even if I am a Darkborn with a propensity for trouble. When the bells do ring, I want to be able to say, “Alêthôs anestê,” Risen Indeed, rather than dropping my saw and running (ring-a-ding, the bells, clackety-clack, the hooves, etcetera). Now is the time for all good kallikanzaroi . . . You know.
So . . .
Cassandra and I have this villa on the Magic Island. She likes it here. I like it here. She doesn’t mind my indeterminate age anymore. Which is fine.
Just this early morning, as we lay on the beach watching the sun chase away stars, I turned to her and mentioned that this is going to be a big, big ulcer-giving job, full of headaches and such.
“No, it isn’t,” she replied.
“Don’t minimize what is imminent,” I said. “It makes for incompatibility.”
“None of that either.”
“You are too optimistic, Cassandra.”
“No. I told you that you were heading into danger before, and you were, but you didn’t believe me then. This time I feel that things should go well. That’s all.”
“Granting your accuracy in the past, I still feel you axe underestimating that which lies before us.”
She rose and stamped her foot.
“You never believe me!”
“Of course I do. It just happens that this time you’re wrong, dear.”
She swam away then, my mad mermaid, out into the dark waters. After a time she came swimming back.
“Okay,” she said, smiling, shaking down gentle rains from her hair. “Sure.”
I caught her ankle, pulled her down beside me and began tickling her.
“Stop that!”
“Hey, I believe you, Cassandra! Really! Hear that? Oh, how about that? I really believe you. Damn! You sure are right!”
“You are a smart-alecky kallikanz—Ouch!”
And she was lovely by the seaside, so I held her in the wet, till the day was all around us, feeling good.
Which is a nice place to end a story, sic: .
THE LAST DEFENDER
OF CAMELOT
by Roger Zelazny
ISBN: 0-7434-7970-X
One of the greatest storytellers of our time, Roger Zelazny was a writer who created entire civilizations from whole cloth as masterfully as he explored mankind’s place in the cosmos. From the depths of space to the depths of the human heart, from our darkest nightmares to our most fanciful dreams, Zelazny wove colorful tapestries that presented the wonders of the universe to us all.
The Last Defender of Camelot is a collection of breathtaking stories that showcase these abilities, edited and with an introduction by award-winning author Robert Silverberg. Included are such tales as: “For a Breath I Tarry,” “Halfjack,” and the Hugo Award-winning “24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai” and “Permafrost,” and “Home is the Hangman.”
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ALICE, MY LOVE”
THE DOORS OF HIS FACE,
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ISBN: 0-7434-7922-X
Here is a collection of strange, beautiful stories covering the full spectrum of the late Roger Zelazny’s remarkable talents. He had a rare ability to mix the dream-like, disturbing imagery of fantasy with the real-life hardware of science fiction. His vivid imagination and fine prose made him one of the most highly acclaimed writers in his field. Twice he won the Nebula Award, and twice the Hugo Award, for excellence in novels and short fiction.
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