My Name is Legion

by Roger Zelazny

  They connected. I heard him grunt. Then he was gone.

  I heard him splashing about in the water. I also heard distant voices, calling, approaching us from across the islet.

  I regained my feet. I moved toward the edge. Then he screamed, a long, awful, agonized wail. By the time I reached the edge, it had ceased. When Barthelme came up beside me, he stopped repeating What happened? as soon as he looked down and saw the flashing fins at the center of the turmoil. Then he said, Oh, my God! And then nothing.

  In my statement, later, I said that he had seemed highly agitated when he had come to get me, that he told me Paul had stopped breathing, that I had returned with him to the dispensary, determined that Paul was indeed dead, said so, and asked him for the details; that as we were talking he seemed to get the impression that I thought he had been negligent and somehow contributed to the death; that he had grown further agitated and finally attacked me; that we had fought and he had fallen into the water. All of which, of course, was correct. Deponent sinneth only by omission. They seemed to buy it. They went away. The shark hung around, waiting for dessert perhaps, and the dolphin people came and anesthetized him and took him away. Barthelme told me the damaged sonic projector could indeed have been shorting intermittently.

  So Paul had killed Ruby and Mike; Frank had killed Paul and then been killed himself by the shark on whom the first two killings could now be blamed. The dolphins were cleared, and there was no one left to bring to justice for anything. The source of the diamonds was now one of life's numerous little mysteries.

  ... So, after everyone had departed, the statements been taken, the remains of the remains removed, long after that, as the night hung late, clear, clean, with its bright multitudes doubled in their pulsing within the cool flow of the Gulf Stream about the station, I sat in a deck chair on the small patio behind my quarters, drinking a can of beer and watching the stars go by.

  ... I needed to stamp CLOSED on my mental file.

  But who had written me the note, the note that had set the infernal machine to chugging?

  Did it really matter, now that the job was done? As long as they kept quiet about me ...

  I took another sip of beer.

  Yes, it did, I decided. I might as well look around a bit more.

  I withdrew a cigarette and moved to light it ...

  When I pulled into the harbor, the lights were on. As I climbed to the pier, her voice came to me over a loudspeaker.

  She greeted me by name, my real name, which I hadn't heard spoken in a long while, and she asked me to come in.

  I moved across the pier and up to the front of the building. The door stood ajar. I entered.

  It was a long, low room, completely Oriental in decor. She wore a green silk kimono. She knelt on the floor, a tea service laid before her.

  Please come and be seated, she said.

  I nodded, removed my shoes, crossed the room, and sat down.

  O-cha do desu-ka?' she asked.

  Itadakimasu.

  She poured, and we sipped tea for a time. After the second cup I drew an ashtray toward me.

  Cigarette? I asked.

  I don't smoke, she said. But I wish you would. I try to take as few noxious substances into my own system as possible. I suppose that is how the whole thing began.

  I lit one for me.

  I've never met a genuine telepath before, I said, that I know of.

  I'd trade it for a sound body, she said, any day. It wouldn't even have to be especially attractive.

  I don't suppose there is even a real need for me to ask my questions, I said.

  No, she said, not really. How free do you think our wills might be?

  Less every day, I said.

  She smiled.

  I asked that, she said, because I have thought a lot about it of late. I thought of a little girl I once knew, a girl who lived in a garden of terrible flowers. They were beautiful, and they were there to make her happy to look upon. But they could not hide their odor from her, and that was the odor of pity. For she was a sick little girl. So it was not their colors and textures from which she fled, but rather the fragrance which few knew she could detect. It was a painful thing to smell it constantly, and so in solitude she found her something of peace. Had it not been for her ability she would have remained in the garden.

  She paused to take a sip of tea.

  One day she found friends, she continued, in an unexpected place. The dolphin is a joyous fellow, his heart uncluttered with the pity that demeans. The way of knowing that had set her apart, had sent her away, here brought her close. She came to know the hearts, the thoughts of her new friends more perfectly than men know those of one another. She came to love them, to be one of their family.

  She took another sip of tea, then sat in silence for a time, staring into the cup.

  There are great ones among them, she said finally, such as you guessed at earlier. Prophet, seer, philosopher, musician, there is no man-made word I know of to describe this sort of one, or the function he performs. There are, however, those among them who voice the dreamsong with particular subtlety and profundity, something like music, yet not, drawn from that timeless place in themselves where perhaps they look upon the infinite, then phrase it for their fellows. The greatest I have ever known ... and she clicked the syllables in a high-pitched tone ... bears something like Kjwalll'kje'koothai'lll'kje'k for name or title. I could no more explain his dreamsong to you than I could explain Mozart to one who had never heard music. But when he, in his place, came to be threatened, I did what must be done.

  You see that I fail to see, I said, lowering my cup.

  She refilled it, and then, The Chickcharny is built up over the water, she said, and a vision of it came clear, disturbingly real, into my mind. Like that, she said.

  I do not drink strong beverages, I do not smoke, I seldom take medication, she said. This is not a matter of choice. It is a physiological rule I break at my own peril. But should I not enjoy the same things others of my kind may know, just as I now enjoy the cigarette we are smoking?

  I begin to see ...

  Swimming beneath the ashram at night, I could ride the mounting drug dreams of that place, know the peace, the happiness, the joy, and withdraw if it turned to something else ...

  Mike ... I said.

  Yes, it was he who led me to Kjwalll'kje'koothai'lll'kje'k, all unknowing. I saw there the place where they had found the diamonds. I see that you think it is near Martinique, since I was there just recently. I will not answer you on this. I saw there too, however, the idea of hurting dolphins. It seemed that they had been driven away from the place of their discovery, though not harmed, by dolphins. Several times. I found this so unusual that I was moved to investigate, and I learned that it was true. The place of their discovery was in the area of his song. He dwells in those waters, and others come to hear him there. It is, in this sense, a special place, because of his presence. They were seeking a way to ensure their own safety when they returned for more of the stones, she went on. They learned of the effects of the noises of the killer whale for this purpose. But they also obtained explosives, should the recording prove insufficient over a period of days.

  The two killings occurred while I was away, she said. You are essentially correct as to what was done. I had not known they would take place, nor would my telling of Paul's thoughts ever be admissible in any court. He used everything he ever got his hands or mind around, that man, however poor his grasp. He took Frank's theory as well as his wife, learned just enough to find the stones, with a little luck. Luck, he had that for a long while. He learned just enough about dolphins to know of the effects of the sounds of the killer whale, but not how they would behave if they had to fight, to kill. And even there he was lucky. The story was accepted. Not by everybody. But it was given sufficient credence. He was safe, and he planned to go back to, the place. I sought a way to stop him. And I wanted to see the dolphins vindicated, but that was of secondary importance the
n. Then you appeared, and I knew that I had found it. I went to the station at night, crawled ashore, left you a note.

  And you damaged the sonic, broadcast unit?

  Yes.

  You did it at such a time that you knew Paul and I would go down together to replace it.

  Yes.

  And the other?

  Yes, that too. I filled Paul's mind with things I had felt and seen beneath the ashram of the Chickcharny.

  And you could look into Frank's mind as well. You knew how he would react. You set up the murder!

  I did not force him to do anything. Is not his will as free as our own?

  I looked down into the tea, troubled by the thought. I gulped it. Then I stared at her.

  Did you not control him, even a little, near the end, when he attacked me? Or, far more important, what of a more rudimentary nervous system? Could you control the actions of a shark?

  She refilled my teacup.

  Of course not, she said.

  We sat for another silent time. Then, What did you try to do to me when I decided to continue my investigation? I asked. Were you not trying to baffle my senses and drive me to destruction?

  No, she said quickly. I was watching you to see what you would decide. You frightened me with your decision. But what I did was not an attack, at first. I tried to show you something of the dreamsong, to sooth you, to put you at peace. I had hoped that such an experience might work some mental alchemy, would soften your resolve ...

  You would have accompanied it with suggestions to that effect.

  Yes, I would have. But then you burned yourself and the pain pulled you back. That was when I attacked you.

  She suddenly sounded tired. But then, it had been a very busy day for her, all things considered.

  And this was my mistake, she said. Had I simply let you go on, you would have had nothing. But you saw the unnatural nature of the attack. You associated it with Paul's raptures, and you thought of me, a mutant, and of dolphins and diamonds and my recent trip. It all spilled into your mind, and then the threat that I saw you could keep: alluvial diamonds and Martinique, into the Central Data Bank. I had to call you then, to talk.

  What now? I asked. No court could ever convict you of anything. You are safe. I can hardly condemn you. My own hands are not free of blood, as you must know. You are the only person alive who knows who I am, and that makes me uncomfortable. Yet I have some guesses concerning things you would not like known. You will not try to destroy me, for you know what I will do with these guesses if you fail.

  And I see that you will not use your ring unless you are provoked. Thank you. I have feared it.

  It appears that we have reached something of a standoff.

  Then why do we not both forget?

  You mean, trust each other?

  Is it so novel a thing?

  You must admit you are possessed of a small edge in such matters.

  True. But it is of value only for the moment. People change. It does not show me what you will be thinking on another day, in some other place. You are in a better position to know that, for you have known yourself far longer than I.

  True, I suppose.

  I, of course, really have nothing to gain by destroying the pattern of your existence. You, on the other hand, could conceivably be moved to seek an unrecorded source of income.

  I can't deny that, I said. But if I gave you my word, I would keep it.

  I know that you mean that. I also know that you believe much of what I have said, with some reservations.

  I nodded.

  You do not really understand the significance of Kjwalll'kje'koothai'lll'kje'k.

  How could I, not being a dolphin or even a telepath?

  May I show you what it is that I am seeking to preserve, to defend?

  I thought about it for a time, recalling those recent moments back at the station when she had hit me with something out of William James. I had no way of knowing what manner of control, what sort of powers she might be able to exercise upon me if I agreed to some experiment along these lines. However, if things got out of control, if there was the least feeling of meddling with my mind, beyond the thing itself, I knew a way to terminate the experience instantly. I folded my hands before me, laying two fingers upon my ring.

  Very well, I said.

  And then it began again, something like music, yet not, some development of a proposition that could not be verbalized, for its substance was of a stuff that no man possessed or perceived, lying outside the range of human sensory equipment. I realized then that that part of me which experienced this had its place temporarily in the mind of the statement's creator, that this was the dreamsong of Kjwalll'kje'koothai'lll'kje'k, that I witnessed/participated in the timeless argument as he improvised, orchestrated it, drawing entire sections of previously constructed visions and phrasings, perfect and pure, from a memory so vital that its workings were barely distinguishable from the activities of the moment, and blending these into fresh harmonies to a joyous rhythm I comprehended only obliquely, through the simultaneous sensing of his own pleasure in the act of their formulation.

  I felt the delight in this dance of thought, rational though not logical; the process, like all of art, was an answer to something, though precisely what, I did not know nor really care; for it was, in and of itself, a sufficiency of being, and if one day it were to provide me with an emotional weapon at a time when I would otherwise stand naked and alone, why this was one of the things none has the right to expect, yet sometimes discovers within the recollection of such fragments of existence cast by a special seer with a kind of furious joy.

  I forgot my own being, abandoned my limited range of senses as I swam in a sea that was neither dark nor light, formed nor formless, yet knowing my way, subsumed, as it were, within a perpetual act of that thing we had decided to call ludus that was creation, destruction, and sustenance, patterned and infinitely repatterned, scattered and joined, mounting and descending, divorced from all temporal phenomena yet containing the essence of time. Time's soul it seemed I was, the infinite potentialities that fill the moment, surrounding and infusing the tiny stream of existence, and joyous, joyous, joyous ...

  Spinning, my mind came away, and I sat, still clutching my death ring, across from the little girl who had fled from the terrible flowers, now clad in wet green and very, very wan.

  O-cha do desu-ka? she asked.

  Itadakimasu

  She poured. I wanted to reach out and touch her hand, but I raised the teacup instead and sipped from it. She had my answer, of course. She knew. But she spoke, after a time: When my moment comes, who knows how soon?, I shall go to him, she said. I shall be there, with Kjwalll'kje'koothai'lll'kje'k. Who knows but that I shall continue, as a memory perhaps, in that tuneless place, as a part of the dreamsong? But then, I feel a part of it now.

  She raised her hand. We finished our tea in silence. I did not really want to go then, but I knew that I must.

  There were so many things that I might have said, I thought, as I headed the Isabella back toward Station One, my bag of diamonds, and all the other things and people I had left behind, waiting for me to touch them or speak to them.

  But then, I reflected, the best words are often those left unsaid.

  PART THREE. Home Is the Hangman

  Big fat flakes down the night, silent night, windless night. And I never count them as storms unless there is wind. Not a sigh or whimper, though. Just a cold, steady whiteness, drifting down outside the window, and a silence confirmed by gunfire, driven deeper now that it had ceased. In the main room of the lodge the only sounds were the occasional hiss and sputter of the logs turning to ashes on the grate.

  I sat in a chair turned sidewise from the table to face the door. A tool kit rested on the floor to my left. The helmet stood on the table, a lopsided basket of metal, quartz, porcelain, and glass. If I heard the click of a microswitch followed by a humming sound from within it, then a faint light would come on beneath th
e meshing near to its forward edge and begin to blink rapidly. If these things occurred, there was a very strong possibility that I was going to die.

  I had removed a black ball from my pocket when Larry and Bert had gone outside, armed, respectively, with a flame thrower and what looked like an elephant gun. Bert had also taken two grenades with him.

  I unrolled the black ball, opening it out into a seamless glove, a dollop of something resembling moist putty stuck to its palm. Then I drew the glove on over my left hand and sat with it upraised, elbow resting on the arm of the chair. A small laser flash pistol in which I had very little faith lay beside my right hand on the tabletop, next to the helmet.

  If I were to slap a metal surface with my left hand, the substance would adhere there, coming free of the glove. Two seconds later it would explode, and the force of the explosion would be directed in against the surface. Newton would claim his own by way of right-angled redistributions of the reaction, hopefully tearing lateral hell out of the contact surface. A smother-charge, it was called, and its possession came under concealed weapons and possession-of-burglary-tools statutes in most places. The molecularly gimmicked goo, I decided, was great stuff. It was just the delivery system that left' more to be desired.

  Beside the helmet, next to the gun, in front of my hand, stood a small walkie-talkie. This was for purposes of warning Bert and Larry if I should hear the click of a microswitch followed by a humming sound, should see a light come on and begin to blink rapidly. Then they would know that Tom and Clay, with whom we had lost contact when the shooting began, had failed to destroy the enemy and doubtless lay lifeless at their stations now, a little over a kilometer to the south. Then they would know that they, too, were probably about to die.

  I called out to them when I heard the click. I picked up the helmet and rose to my feet as its light began to blink.

  But it was already too late.

  The fourth place listed on the Christmas card I had sent Don Walsh the previous year was Peabody's Book Shop and Beer Stube in Baltimore, Maryland. Accordingly, on the last night in October I sat in its rearmost room, at the final table before the alcove with the door leading to the alley. Across that dim chamber, a woman dressed in black played the ancient upright piano, uptempoing everything she touched. Off to my right, a fire wheezed and spewed fumes on a narrow hearth beneath a crowded mantelpiece overseen by an ancient and antlered profile. I sipped a beer and listened to the sounds.