by Victor Koman
Glossy black gloves dripped blood in ceaseless vermilion rivulets.
I was in luck. He was only a few miles high this time.
"
All the creatures of the air and beasts of the sea
," He said as if repeating a creed. "
All that walks and runs and crawls and breaths. All that lives or has lived. All come here and end. All things stop here. Nothing moves. This is rest. This is
Eternity."
I gazed about unimpressed. "Sort of like a Republican Convention, then."
He didn't laugh. "
Even humor dies here
," He said. He held His hands at His side so that the blood ran down His legs in stripes as wide as those of a hotel bellboy's.
"But things that die," I said, "return to the earth. They may decay, but they are consumed to become part of new life."
"
Forget the earth. It too shall someday die.
"
"To become part of a new world."
"All worlds shall end," He droned on. "The universe shall die."
I took a gamble. It was a cosmological shot in the dark, but I had to try it.
"The universe shall die," I agreed with a placating spread of my hands, "and shall give birth to a new one." By now I had almost forgotten the stench and the bodies surrounding us. I had Him on the defensive.
"
Forget birth. It is an illusion of the Moon.
Her
doing. Nothing is born. There is only change.
"
"If nothing is born, nothing can die." I watched Him for evidence of any chinks in His armor. There were plenty.
"
Change can stop!
" He shouted, clenching and releasing His fists so that blood squirted out between the fingers of His slick gloves.
"To stop change is in itself a change. A change in change."
That got to Him. He flung His arms around in wide, haphazard motions.
"
Forget change! There is only Death! Death and nothing thereafter!
"
"I'm alive," I said quietly. I waggled my fingers at Him just to prove it. "I was born. Plants and animals were killed, fed to me, and converted again into living substance. That's what life is-change. Death is change, but it too leads to life and birth. It's a never-ending-"
"
Don't say it!
"
He screamed and threw His hands in front of Him. The blood dripped from His elbows. He jerked His head so that the mirror dropped in front of His face.
I said casually, "I was only going to say that it was a cycle-"
"
No!
"
"Like a wheel."
He shrieked the most horrifying yell I'd ever heard. The blood on His gloves curdled.
I had Him on the run.
"Ever-turning," I continued, "around and round. Circular. No beginning, no end-"
He stumbled backward over a mountain of corpses. The sky reddened to the same hue as before. A breeze whipped up behind me, carrying a scent of pomegranates and apples.
"
Stop!
" He cried pathetically. "
They're Mine! I keep them from the Wheel. I guard them from rebirth. Here, in My Land of Never-Change!
"
"Even You," I said, "are part of the Wheel." I grew to match His height. The wind blew even stronger. "Gods are born, and They die. Their influence waxes and wanes. You have reached Your own particular end."
"
No!
" He shouted, seeming to shrink away from me. The blood on His hands dried to brownish streaks. The wind seemed not to push at either one of us, yet the top layer of bodies began to roll with its force. They bounced past our legs. He tried to grab for them, to hold on to them.
"
No, no, no! You've invoked the Winds of Change!
"
The skeletons and carcasses flew by in a blur. The Winds lifted them up into the red sky, where each one disintegrated slowly, beautifully. The infinite plain had been swept clean of Death. Somewhere on the sweet-smelling Winds rang the gentle sound of pentatonic chimes.
The blood on His arms and hands caked and flaked away. His black gloves peeled off to reveal smooth, hard, cadaverously white skin.
A hand with long green fingernails reached around from behind me to slap a golden sickle into my grasp. I threw it forward with all my might.
It sailed on the Winds to ram into His chest, where it stuck and slipped down an inch. Out of the gap flew a thousand butterflies of every color imaginable.
"
I wanted peace
," He whimpered, crying tears that dissolved His hard face. "
Peace, not life-in-death.
"
He devolved. He became an ape, a reptile, a fish, a pile of bluegreen slop. From somewhere came His voice-astonished, but sad nonetheless. It was as if He had discovered something that had eluded Him for aeons. Something that He had discovered all too late.
"
Not a circle,
" He mused. "
A helix! An ascending helix!
"
Behind me, far away, a woman laughed. Where the corpses once had lain, new things began to grow in abundance.
Amongst it all, the old grey man sat pining.
"Now whose brains have I got to pick?"
"There's always your own," I said.
Just about then, the missile hit us and blew the world into a billion flinders.
26
The Endworld War
Everything exploded around me. I took a nosedive into a crater and buried my head in the mud.
Bullets cracked by overhead. Arrows flew back and forth. The lightning flash of a particle beam ionized the air a mile above the battle.
Someone tumbled into the hole to slide beside me. Mud covered Him from head to foot. One hand clutched a rifle. He grinned like a piano.
"We've almost got the sons of the Bitch now, eh, boy?"
He looked quite a few years younger than I. His calling me
boy
grated a bit.
"Almost got whom?" I asked politely.
The blinding green light of a high-energy laser sizzled across the lip of the crater. I didn't like it here. I wondered why He did.
"The enemy, boy. We've almost conquered the enemy!"
A boulder tumbled over us to land out of sight with a loud thump. Crossbow bolts ricocheted off it. A buzzbomb collided with a TIE fighter, destroying both. Some manner of plasma weapon beamed hot as the sun for an instant, descending on a town. Eerie screams howled from the outskirts.
"Glorious. Glorious!" He shouted.
"The death?"
"No-death is nothing. Destruction! The sudden change of a pound of gelignite into fire and gas. The house that's a home one moment and rubble the next. The man who changes from a walking, thinking being to a mass of gnarled, bleeding meat in the blink of an eye. Change. That's what you want, right?"
He thought He had me. Ideas raced through me like greyhounds after the elusive fake rabbit. He watched me.
"It's violent change," I said. "Unnatural."
He laughed with vicious delight. It was the sort of laugh one hears in psycho wards. "A hurricane is natural-and equally as violent."
"People try to minimize nature's destruction. In war, you increase it intentionally."
"By the use of science!" He yelled, tossing a hand grenade over the lip of the hole. "Better killing through chemistry!" The explosion shook mud loose from the walls of the crater. The air smelled of cordite and ozone.
"Science is value-free until it's applied," I said. A stone axe flew into the pit. I pointed at it. "An axe can fell a tree or murder a man. A drug can cure or kill. A blanket can warm or smother. There's not a thing in existence that can't be used for evil ends. Even change. War is change accelerated for the purpose of plunder and conquest. Trying to speed up the cy-"
>
"
Say it and die!
" He pointed the rifle at my head. Right between the eyes.
I raised my hands casually. "I've noticed that every war on record has had God on both sides. All sides. What's Your game? Divide and conquer?"
"And unite to rule. I'll always be the winner." He racked the action on the rifle to chamber a round. His aim returned to my forehead.
"Yet every time You win with one side, You lose with the other. The winner's faith is justified, but the loser's faith is diminished."
"It evens out," He said.
"Does it? Do You even gain a draw?" I sat back in the mud, lowering my hands to grasp the business end of a hookah that had appeared at my side. I took a puff, exhaled, eyed Him.
"If it evens out," I said, "why am I here with You now? Why do You retreat to any polylogical corner You can find? Why are You continuing to rely on Your two favorite tools-faith and force?"
"If you'd only trust me, I wouldn't have to force you."
I blew a cloud of smoke in His face. Whatever was in the hookah was good herb. "Your threat of force works only if I believe in Your power. Yet You refuse to provide evidence of Your power, asking me instead to believe the secondhand testimony of men dead for thousands of years. No holy book can serve as proof. I call Your bluff by demanding a demonstration of Your power. Which You refuse to provide unless I'm already convinced. With that scam, You lose every man or woman with the ability to think. And as history continues its
ascending helix-
"
"
Shut up!
" He screeched.
I didn't let it faze me. "Every contradiction, evasion, and betrayed promise becomes clearer and more evident to more and more people. You're losing-"
"
Never!
" He squeezed the trigger.
The bullet punched through my skull with a shattering impact to blow a fist-size chunk out the back. The effect was not much worse than being severely drunk. I kept talking.
"You style Yourself a God of Love, yet killers pray to You for victory in war. You call Yourself a Just God, yet promise to torture souls eternally for the most petty of transgressions, such as free thought."
"Propaganda. People have twisted My Word for their evil ends."
"Which You permit. A God who cared would correct all errors instantly and provide personal, on-the-spot instruction. You style Yourself the Father. Does a parent let a child maim itself playing with fire, waiting until it's dead to inform it of its mistake? Does a parent teach a child how to behave morally through the use of torment and pain? Eternal suffering? The only lesson we children learn is that God is insane and must be destroyed at any cost. Which is why I'm here!"
He inserted another magazine into the rifle and gave me a dozen rounds up and down my midline. I didn't quiet down.
"A good God is a metaphor for conscience. How does it feel to have one of Your own?"
"Shut up!" He said. "Lies. All lies. Lies of the Deceiver!"
"A Deceiver You permitted to exist. For the same reason a government allows an enemy government to exist. Without an external enemy, Your slaves would recognize the internal enemy. Without Satan to fear-whatever His name-humanity wouldn't see the need to give You the sacrifices You demand. So You keep Satan on as a silent partner."
I felt like jumping on Him and thrashing His brains out for all the evils done in His name. I knew, though, that He was crumbling without my help.
"You defraud the world by pretending that the executor of Your twisted vengeance is Your enemy. Your holy wars created hypocrites, not converts. Your inquisitions generated lies, not truth. Your jihads were gangland feuds. Your Exodus was a wild-goose chase. Your Prince of Peace became the God of Repression. Every seed You sow reaps misery and pain."
He dropped His rifle and slid to the bottom of the crater, weeping.
"Why?" He shouted over the whiz of bullets, stones, and electrons. "
Why?
"
"You lusted for a contradiction. You wanted us to love and accept You of our own free wills, yet You threatened us with ceaseless torment if we didn't. You provided for redemption at the last possible moment of life-before we have proof of Your existence-yet You made atonement impossible after death."
I knelt beside Him. "You confused us. You let others confuse us in Your name. You let us retain our faculties for logic, then asked us to worship You in the absence of any logical reason. You offered not even the merest shred of proof that You're something other than a demented prankster or cruel torturer. At least the back-alley thug who murders and rapes doesn't ask his victim to love him for it."
"Can I change?" He asked, hugging His rifle. The tears ran down his face, clearing the mud off in narrow streaks.
"It's too late," I said. "You've blown it. That I'm here at all, capable and willing to be Your assassin, proves that. That I could even consider killing God is proof that You're at the end of Your cycle."
He closed His eyes. "
She
," He whispered. "If only She-"
Before He could finished, the flash of a hydrogen bomb turned everything around me to the purest of pure, hard white light. I felt what it was like to be a star.
I novaed.
27
Revelation
I stood at the final doorway. It was one solid slab of ornately carved oak. I was about twenty pounds slimmer and wearing a well-cut double-breasted suit. I felt young. In command. I adjusted my hat and reached out to knock...
"Don't bother," said a tired, wasted voice. "You've got the key, Mr. Ammo. You've always had the key."
A light tap of my fingers pushed the door open. "Seems I don't need a key."
"You
are
the key."
"Cut the Hollywood pretensions," I said, looking around the study. All four walls were lined with bookshelves. The books were thick, leatherbound volumes. Though the room had no windows or lamps, light came from somewhere, soft and low. The sound of crashing waves reached in from outside.
I shut the door slowly behind me.
In the center of the room sat a high-backed chair on a fading rug, facing away from me. I stepped over to it.
"Tell me, Mr. Ammo," asked a voice from the chair, "how did an assassin ever come to be such a seeker after truth?"
I leaned on the back of the chair for a moment. "An assassin is one who doesn't accept myths, most notably the myth of power. He sees through the eyes of a hunter who is as mighty as his prey, yet is apart from the game being played. He participates in the events of history, turning them to his ends, yet he remains an objective viewer. That is, if he wants to stay in business. He sees clearly that any deified `leader' is as evil as any small-time hood-and a lot less honest."
I stepped around to the front of the chair to gaze into the eyes of a weary old man.
Neither lean nor fat, tall nor short, dark nor light. He looked like the commonest of the common men. Absolutely average. Except for His eyes. They bespoke the ennui of absolute power corrupted absolutely.
I felt myself drawn toward those eyes. Drawn downward. Sinking. Falling.
I shook it off.
He continued to look deeply into me. "A proud man." He nodded. "I made pride a sin."
"Having a good opinion of oneself should never be a crime."
"No man a villain in his own eyes, correct, Mr. Ammo?" He folded His hands, nodding lightly. "Why do you want to kill Me? Did you hate your father?"
"No," I answered truthfully. "Don't look to psychological roots in my actions. Look to my chosen values."
"You probably hated him," He continued. "Leaders are father figures."
"Proper fathers don't rule the lives of their children by force. My father never did. He never taxed me or tithed me or imprisoned me and said he was doing me a favor. He never made me feel guilty for being born his son."
"He never showed you anything to worship. He mocked your sense
of wonder."
"It survived." I found a pack of Marlboros in the left pocket of my jacket. Not my brand, but they'd do. Matches were in the vest pocket.
"What about your mother?"
"I didn't know You were a Freudian." I lit up and waved the first puff of smoke around. "Why don't we talk about
Your
Mother."
He pounded on the leather arm of the chair with a tightly balled fist. "I never had a Mother. Understand? Never! I am
God!
I am self-created! I am the Alpha and the Omega."
I shrugged mildly. "I don't know," I said. "If I can descend from an infinite number of ancestors going back down the evolutionary trail, I don't see why there can't be an infinite regress of gods and goddesses evolving through time. Perhaps when I see You, I'm looking at the next curve of the ascending helix of my own evolution-"
"Evolution." He almost spat the word out. "How I fought it. Change. I don't know why I bother. I tried saving things." He stared up at me with an imploring gaze. "I tried to make amends, but..." His hand made a futile gesture, like a dying bird.
"Yeah," I said. "I know. Christ died for our sins and all that."
His face turned three shades of purple as He shouted, "Christ didn't die for your sins! He died for
Mine!
" He began to weep. "What I did with the Flood was wrong. What I did to Sodom and Gomorrah was wrong. I'd violated My own commandment. Things weren't going the way I wanted, and I got angry. I said I was jealous." He paused, staring at the floor. "Doesn't it even things out that I let you kill My only Son? He died as Jesus and as Osiris and as Tammuz and as a dozen others. Won't you ever forgive Me?"
He looked at me with eyes that sagged under the burden of unbearable remorse. The tears rolled down His cheeks. He didn't bother to wipe them away.
I had to be merciless. I had gone too far to surrender to pity. How could you pity a God who had screwed up so monumentally?
"Every time a child starves to death," I said, "a mother discards her faith. Every time a crop fails, a farmer curses You. You've given us no reason to have faith in You. You tried to convince us that all we had to do was believe in You to be freed from the turning of the Wheel."
"Don't," He murmured. "I beg of you."