by David Duncan
†††††
A fly buzzed in his ear, waking him. He opened his eyes and then closed them again quickly. Thatch?
It had not gone away.
There had been hospital, with its grave-faced doctors in white coats and tired-looking nurses with needles... familiar faces faking cheerfulness... flowers sent by the staff at the plant... smells of disinfectant and the sound of floor-polishers... IV bottles... pain and confusion and the damp heat of fever.
There had been dreams and delirium... fog and a giant of a man with brown skin and long black hair and a brutal face-a wide face, high cheekbones, broad jaw; barbarian tattoos on his forehead. He had seen that monstrous naked figure shouting at him, threatening.
He had seen that face again last night in the mirror.
Under the damp sheet he felt one arm with the hand of another. That body was still there. Wallie Smith had never had arms like that.
So it had not disappeared as he had hoped it would.
A bird was calling an idiotic two-note refrain not far away, and he could hear voices, more distant, and a rooster, ever hopeful.
"Ferry mule train!" That must be from near the bottom of the hill. Then a very faint bugle... and under it all was the deep rumble from the waterfall, most distant of all. The sound of hooves echoed into the little room. "Ferry mule train!" He wondered if mules looked like that absurd horse he had seen, camel face and basset-hound body.
It had not gone away. Encephalitis often produced strange mental effects, they had said. He had thought the delirium was over, the strange visions and the pain and confusion. Now it had become more real, more terrifying.
It did not feel like delirium.
He must remember that it was all hallucination. They would cure him, somehow, and drag him back to the real world, the world of hospital sounds and hospital smells; away from this madness of stink and mule hooves and roosters.
Reluctantly he opened his eyes again and sat up. Only the woman had gone. Now if she had been real.
She had felt real, deliciously, wonderfully real. Of course sexual hallucinations would be the most vivid, wouldn't they? That would make sense. Nothing else did. What sort of Oedipal garbage was he fantasizing with this super-jock body he had conjured up? And what subconscious nastiness was he revealing when his delusions invented slave girls? A little insecure, are we, Wallie-boy? Ugh!
He rose and stretched. He felt good, enormously good. He strode over to the mirror and studied that cruel, barbaric face with its tattoos of the seven swords. Was this how he fantasized himself, his subconscious desires exposed by delirium? Did he see himself as an inadequate wimp and want to be a big, strong, fantasy hero?
The foreskin bothered him more than anything else. If he pinched it, it hurt. How could he feel pain in something that had been cut off when he was a baby? There was no trace of his appendectomy, but he did have a red birthmark on his left knee and a conspicuous scar on his right shoulder and some faint little marks on his ribs, mostly on the right side. So he wasn't quite a perfect specimen, and somehow that was odd.
The mule train clattered closer and then stopped nearby. Again he heard the skinner make his call. He went over to the window and peered out, keeping back from sight. Two men were paying the skinner and climbing on mules, and there were half a dozen people mounted already. The mules were even more grotesque than the horse-long ears and camel faces. Then he remembered the rings he had seen in the night sky. It had been the rings that had finally cracked his precarious self-control. It was not only an imaginary country he was conjuring up in his madness; it was a whole imaginary world, a ringed planet.
And the people surprised him a bit-smallish, although that might be just because he seemed to be much larger than average. They had brown skins, all of them, with hair of light or dark brown. One of the women on the mules showed a reddish tinge, perhaps dyed. A neat, compact people, mostly slim and agile, they seemed to laugh and chatter a lot... features vaguely Amerindian to Caucasian. They might have stepped out of a documentary on the South American jungles, or perhaps southeast Asia. Beardless-he rubbed his chin and there was no trace of stubble, no hair on his chest or legs.
There were other people walking up and down the roadway-men in loincloths, and women in simple wraps that tied under their arms and hung to their knees, like bath towels. Jja's had been shorter, but then she was a whore. The muleskinner wore leather breeches. The old man had worn a robe that covered all of him except his head and hands. Then he saw a middle-aged couple going over to the mule train, and they were wearing robes, but sleeveless, so the amount of cover must be related to age. Not a bad idea; show off the good-looking youngsters and hide the old. Some of the men and women in his world could learn a thing or two here.
Wallie reminded himself sternly that this was an illusion.
Yet he felt so good! And curious! He wanted to explore this fantasy world... but he had no clothes. Could that be his subconscious mind telling him to stay in his hospital room?
He had nothing at all-he could not even see the wrap he had used the previous evening. Newborn naked! He had never been a great collector of possessions, for he had been too much of a wanderer. His childhood had been a continual bouncing from parent to parent, from aunt to uncle; then college; then a succession of jobs. Roots were something he had never had, and worldly goods likewise. But to have nothing but a bed sheet to cover himself...
Illusion! Delirium!
The mule train moved off. He watched the pedestrians for a while and then turned away. He thought of a test, and began by feeling his pulse carefully. It was slow, of course, an athlete's heartbeat, although he could not clock it. He dropped to the grubby, smelly flagstones and did fifty fast push-ups. Kneeling, he tried his pulse again. It seemed very little faster. Wallie Smith might have managed ten or fifteen, never fifty, and his heart would have gone into fits.
That did not prove much.
A fly buzzed at him, and he snatched it out of the air to see if he really could. He could, but that proved nothing, either.
A small boy walked in through the bead curtain and grinned at him. He was naked, nut brown, and skinny. He had curly brown hair and an impish face and a tooth missing. He looked about eight or nine and he was carrying a leafy green twig.
"Good morning, Mr. Smith!" His grin grew wider.
Wallie felt a twinge of relief-no more "my lord" stuff! He stayed on his knees, because that made their eyes more or less level.
"Good morning. Who are you?"
"I'm a messenger."
"Oh? To me you look like a small, naked boy. What should you look like?"
The boy laughed. "A small, naked boy." He pushed himself up on one of the chairs.
"I was hoping that you might be a doctor." But Wallie was unhappily aware of the dirt, the insects, the smells. Hospital?
The boy shook his head. "No more doctors. They call them healers here, and you're wise to stay away from them."
Wallie sat down and crossed his legs. The stone was cold and gritty on his buttocks. "Well, you did call me 'mister,' so maybe I'm starting to come out of it a little bit."
The boy shook his head. "Last night you were speaking the language of the People. You had Shonsu's vocabulary, which is why you couldn't say some words that you wanted to. He was a fine swordsman, but no intellectual."
Wallie's heart sank. "If you were really a small, naked boy you wouldn't know these things, nor talk like that."
The boy grinned again. He started swinging his legs, leaning forward on his hands and hunching tiny shoulders. "I did not say that that was what I was. I said that was what I was supposed to look like! I need to convince you that this is a real world and that you were brought here for a purpose."
His grin was infectious. Wallie found himself returning it. "You're not doing very well so fan"
The boy raised a mischievous eyebrow. "The woman did not convince you? I should have thought that she was very convincing."
Peeping Tom?
Wallie pushed down a surge of anger. This boy was merely one more figment of his deranged mind, so of course he knew what had happened in the night. "That was the most unreal of all," he said. "Every man has ambitions, sonny, but there are practical limitations. That was much too good to be true."
The boy sighed. "The men of the World are even lustier than the men of Earth, Mr. Smith, hard as that may be to believe. Walter Smith is dead. Encephalitis, meningitis... they're only names. There is no going back, Mr. Smith."
They all wanted to convince him that he was dead! And if he were? Who would care? No one special, he had told Jja, and that was a depressing thought. He had no roots, anywhere. No loved ones left except a sister he had not seen in ten years. If he were indeed dead, it would hardly matter to anyone. The plant would run as well without him-he had built a good team there, able to operate with no supervision. Harry would move into the comer office, and business would go on as before.
Neddy would mourn. But Neddy's mother had already taken him and moved back east. It had been on a farewell camping trip with Neddy that Wallie had been bitten by the damned encephalitis-carrying mosquito... in an area where mosquitoes had never been known to carry encephalitis before. Neddy would mourn him but would survive. Wally had to admit that he had done a good job on Neddy. The boy was in much better emotional shape to stand the loss than he would have been three years ago, when Wallie first became surrogate father to him. Neddy was already reconciled to their parting...
No! Start thinking like that and he would indeed be dead. The start of recovery was always the will to live. Remember that it was still delirium! It had to be.
He looked up and saw the little boy watching him with a mocking expression.
"This is heaven?" Wallie scoffed. "It doesn't smell the way I expected."
The little-boy's eyes flickered. They were extraordinarily bright eyes. "This is the World, the World of the Goddess. The People are preliterate, Mr. Smith. You should know from Earth that before the Age of Writing comes the Age of Legends. I am a legend myself."
"I'll believe that."
The boy nodded rather sadly and paused. "Let's try it from the other end, then. Shonsu was a swordsman, a remarkable swordsman. The Goddess had need of a swordsman. She chose Shonsu. He screwed up. He failed, and failed disastrously."
"What does that mean?" Despite his skepticism, Wale was intrigued.
"Never mind! He was punished for his failure, by death. He died yesterday of a fractured skull." He smiled once more as Wallie's fingers reached for the lump on his head. "Never mind that, either-it was cured. That body is in perfect working order, a remarkable specimen of the adult male. As you doubtless noted?"
"Let's leave that part of my fantasies out of this, shall we?"
"As you please." The boy waved his twig idly. "Shonsu is dead, then, but the task remains undone. You were available, Mr. Smith. Never mind how. You have been given that remarkable body, you have been given the language, and you have been given the highest possible rank in one of the two top-ranking crafts in the World. All crafts have their patron gods, but the priests and the swordsmen belong to the Goddess Herself... and they don't let anyone else forget it, believe me! Those are exceptional gifts you have received."
"And I am supposed to undertake the mission?"
The gap-tooth grin flashed briefly. "Exactly."
"Dangerous, I assume?"
The boy nodded. "Moderately, yes. So the body is at risk-but it was a free gift, remember! If you are successful, then you will be rewarded with long life and satisfaction and happiness. There are almost no limits on a swordsman of the Seventh, Mr. Smith-wealth, power, women. Anything you want, really. Any woman will accept you. No man will ever argue with you."
Wallie shook his head. "Who are you?"
"I am a god," the boy said simply. "A demigod, to be exact."
The big man looked around the squalid little cabin, smiled, and shook his head. "I think the asylum must be very full. They are doubling up the inmates."
The boy scowled angrily. The flies did not seem to buzz around him the way they did around Wallie. It was an insane conversation, yet Wallie had nothing better to do with his time.
"A swordsman is a soldier, is he?"
The boy nodded. "And policeman. And judge. And other things."
"I know absolutely nothing about soldiering."
"You can be taught, very painlessly. And taught to use a sword, too, if that is worrying you."
"That is not something I yearn for breathlessly. Let me guess, though. The mission was to kill this Hardduju character. Am I right?"
"No!" the boy snapped. "You are wrong! However, you should do that also. As an honorable swordsman, you should regard it as your duty to uphold the honor of your craft. Hardduju is venal."
Wallie rose and wandered over to sit on the bed. "He certainly seems to have more enemies than friends. It is none of my business, and no one has proved anything to me, anyway."
The boy twisted round on the chair to face him, looking furious. "You don't need a trial in his case, for he is a swordsman. All you need do is challenge. You need give no reason, and he cannot refuse. I assure you that he is no match for Shonsu."
Wallie laughed. "He would be for me! Except perhaps at tennis. Can I choose the weapons?"
The boy bared his teeth in anger. "You were given Shonsu's language, Mr. Smith-you can be given his skill as easily. The task is important! Much more important than shaving a few mils off the unit cost of polypropylene, say, or evaluating consultants' reports on alternative catalytic systems for hydrogenation."
"You've. been going through my IN basket, haven't you, figment? Well, prove it! Tell me what this so important task is."
"Gods do not beg!"
Wallie shrugged. "And I do not believe in gods."
"Ah! Now we have it, don't we?"
"Do a miracle," Wallie suggested, grinning. "Turn that chair into a throne."
The boy's face was shadowed, but the bright eyes seemed almost to flash. "Miracles are crude! And they are not done upon demand!" Then he returned to his grin again. "Besides, if I performed a miracle, it would hardly help you to believe that the World is real, would it?"
Wallie chuckled and agreed. He wondered when breakfast would be served. The boy leaned back in the chair. It was too big for him, and he bent like a banana, stared at Wallie with his chin on his chest. "Where does faith come from?"
He could bang the boy's ear and throw him out, but what would he do with the rest of his day? "Faith? It comes from upbringing."
The boy sneered at him. "That just pushes the problem back one generation, doesn't it?"
"True," Wallie agreed, amused. "Well, define faith as an attempt to attribute your own values to an omnipotent being. How's that?"
"Lousy," the boy said. "Why should you want to attribute etcetera, etcetera?"
Wallie felt that he was being nudged toward saying something he didn't want do, but he wasn't sure what. "To find a happy ending? To explain suffering by postulating a deeper meaning?"
It was growing hot already, although the sun was still low and the day young. Wallie could feel perspiration running down his ribs. The skinny boy seemed unaffected.
"Better," he said. "Now, how can we give you faith in the World? You had a taste of its joys. Would a taste of its suffering do any more-a taste of hell work better than a taste of heaven?"
"No." That was not an attractive prospect.
The dark eyes flickered again. "So you refuse the edict of the Goddess, do you?"
If it were not absurd, that small boy might be thought to be threatening...
"Tell your goddess to blow it out her ear," Wallie said firmly. "I have absolutely no intention of being a swordsman, in this or any other world."
The boy stared at him coldly. "I'm only a demigod-I shall tell Her no such thing. Why don't you come down to the temple and tell Her yourself?"
"Me? Bow to an idol? A clay idol-or stone?"
"Stone.
"
"Never!"
"Why not?" the boy asked. "You honored a cloth flag often enough."
Wallie felt he had lost a point somewhere. "But I believed in what the flag stood for."
Then the boy laughed and jumped off the chair. "There it is again! But we must move-there are assassins on their way here, so you should leave."
Wallie sprang to his feet also. "Kind of you to mention it. I need some pants."
The boy pointed to the bundle on the floor. "You haven't opened your present."
How had he missed that earlier? Wallie lifted the bundle onto the bed and unwrapped it.
"Put on the kilt first," the boy said, watching him. "A little short, perhaps, but it will do. Now the harness. The boots won't fit."
"No, they don't," Wallie agreed, struggling. He needed about a size thirty, he concluded.
"Cut the ends with the sword, then." The boy sniggered. "You can't be a swordsman with bare feet."
Wallie drew the sword. It was fearsome. "What do they use this for?" he asked. "Elephant hunting?" Holding the blade near its end with his fingertips, he used the point to slit the toes of the boots. Then he could get them on, but they pinched and his toes stuck out the ends. The boy giggled once more.
"Why don't I just leave the sword for now?" Wallie said.
The boy shook his head. "A swordsman without a sword would be a public scandal."
The scabbard was attached to the harness and hung down his back. When he tried to lift the sword high enough to insert the point, his hand hit the roof. He tried to sit on the bed and found he was sitting on the scabbard. He began to lose his temper, for the boy was grinning widely.
"You could kneel," he suggested. "Or bend over. Of course the scabbard will tilt to the side."
So it would, sliding on the straps across his back. Wallie could pull the top of the scabbard to one side and the bottom to the other and, with much cursing and almost losing an ear, he sheathed the sword.
"Not bad," the boy said, regarding him. "You have the guard on the wrong side. Shonsu is ambidextrous, so it doesn't matter, I suppose. Remember to take it with your left hand when you want to kill someone."