by John Boorman
He mounted the captured woman. He spent himself and rose, dragging her after him. She was fine booty, to be taken home across his saddle, to bear a child for Zardoz’s sake.
The image ran out of his mind and left blankness.
Zed cleared. The two women looked down at him. They had faces filled with disgust. It was as if the last scene had reversed itself. Zed was the weakling, trapped in an invisible net. The women were his captors, his future leaders and owners. He felt as the Brutals had felt, but he was still strong beneath it all. Although Zardoz had betrayed him, although he was captured deep within the Vortex by two women the like of which amazed him, he was alive.
His mind was being stretched back to that day beside the sea. The memory was drawn out of him by the two women.
“Zarday 312 – twenty-five Brutals exterminated. Took a woman in his name – Zardoz.”
He rose up from the girl and gazed out at the sea and sand. He had no word for “beach.”
“A place where the sea meets the land.”
He wrenched his mind to perceive the reality of the moment. The two women were draining his mind and projecting it onto a wall. He was their mental puppet, a plaything to be rewound and looked at in their own time. He struggled up through layers of their strength. The memory would stop.
The brown-haired one spoke.
“It’s blacked again, May. It seems to be able to control its memory.”
The other ignored her and commanded Zed.
“Show us more of your work.”
Zed felt his mind slipping again, back and back.
It was a wheat field. It was a sunny day. Twenty Brutals were working, rhythmically forward, to the sound of the drum. Zed’s mind could also see the room in which he lay, as well as relive those moments in that field.
The walls tapered upward. They were glassy black. Above him opened a slim black shaft set in the ceiling; it vanished into darkness. The walls seemed to pulse. Behind their glassy exterior was life, wet, fresh, and frightful. Yet on one wall was his life.
The two women, May and the other, were in some way drawing his thoughts from him as he lay on a slab in the center of the room. They were making them appear, as bright as his day had been. They talked into the rings they wore. That would be the machinery of his predicament. The crystal ring again, always at the center.
One of the Brutals stumbled. Zed raised his arm and fired. Shot him dead straight through his head. The man fell. The others continued digging. It was during the time of growing and planting. May spoke. “When is this, Consuella?”
“This is a more recent memory, cultivation has started.”
“Zardoz made us grow crops,” cried Zed.
The pressure on Zed’s mind lessened. The weights withdrew somewhat. The two women conferred, their wispy, fragile clothing contradicting their tough intent.
“Disturbed?” asked May.
“A little,” Consuella was more concerned than she would admit.
“The Outlands have to be controlled,” May might be somehow in his favor. Could she be an ally at a future date? Zed had surfaced into an argument about himself.
“I have always voted against forced farming”
“You eat the bread.” May again, sarcastic.
“We have to shut ourselves off – we have to – ”
May came back – to his aid?
“This is the first visual contact with the Outlands in years – as opposed to data – since Arthur was delegated to control them. It’s proper that we investigate.”
“It’s better not to know, these images will pollute us… Quench it! Quell it!”
Zed allowed himself to flash his eyes to the left, to gaze into the black depths of the wall. Within, there swam figures, naked mutilated bodies. Consigned there from the head perhaps. One body lacked a leg, around the stump a membrane protected what could have been a new limb, growing. Smaller and more hideous figures floated deep behind the first. He was buried in a liquid vault, trapped in a pocket of air, numbed and paralyzed while two icy beings discussed his life and death.
Zed followed the women with his eyes. May stood still gazing at the screen. Consuella padded up to her and took her in her arms, stroked her hair, kissed her, imploringly. May was cold, the images still fascinated her.
“Perhaps it can tell us how Arthur has vanished so mysteriously.”
“May, please.” Consuella put her hand on May’s shoulder, but May was moving to the screen.
“Is Arthur Frayn’s memory transmission still functioning?”
The familiar voice of the ring answered, smooth and calm. “Arthur Frayn ceased transmission three days ago.”
“Replay his last-memory moments.”
Zed had nowhere to run, even if he could have moved his legs. Terror filled him.
On the screen came the swirling fall of Arthur Frayn, the clouds, the rain exactly as it was before and yet distorted through a memory, as Zed’s had been. An elaborate reconstruction of reality; true to, yet larger than eye’s vision.
The ground rushed up and engulfed the viewers… blackness.
“Play back the preceding images so we can discover how he suffered this fall.”
The images on the screen went into reverse.
“It is permitted only to show the accident. No other memory-image may be played without the consent of the individuals concerned.”
The scene stopped, then rolled forward again.
“Arthur Frayn…died. Reconstruction has begun.”
May and Consuella moved over to examine the interior of one wall section. They illuminated a tiny fetus, growing behind the glass. Zed felt a chill of horror. May spoke, almost endearingly. “Ah yes. There.” Consuella swung around in anger, certain now that Zed should die.
“That’s an end to it! Kill it, May!”
“No.”
“May, for our love.”
“Consuella!”
“Don’t!” They struggled, one trying to embrace the other.
May held Consuella off. “I will invoke a community vote.”
Consuella responded. “The community will follow my intuition.”
“Then I’ll go to the Vortex,” May was adamant, Consuella anguished. “You’re hurting me!”
May was bending over Zed now. “This is an experiment, Consuella. We must find out how it came here. Where is Arthur Frayn? How did you come into the stone?”
Zed felt her eyes again and a veil rose over his mind. He could just feel the image of Zardoz, flying. The picture was displayed on the screen unerringly.
“Zardoz…the stone…”
The veil was drawn.
Once again Zed was hunting, unwillingly replaying his life. They rode out proudly, wearing the masks of Zardoz.
Carefully fashioned in the likeness of their God, the huge helmets had faces front and back, to horrify the Brutals and to praise their King. The Brutals broke in fear and ran from their swords, no terror masks were necessary. The Brutals scattered over the dunes in fright as the riders bore down on them.
“Those ridiculous masks.”
“But it’s so beautiful.”
Zed felt a new surrounding. He was standing paralyzed but for his past and a tiny section of his mind that could see out – into a large orange room, a new location.
Now there were others around him. The two women and others like them. The men were strangely like the women, effete, gilded, decorative. He felt them to be more passive than the females. They all crowded around the screen, laughing and applauding. This was the community, perhaps twenty-five in all. This was what he had come to see. He had penetrated the heart of a Vortex.
They were exotically caparisoned, men and women wearing variations of a single style. Head scarves revealed their faces but fanned out to cover their necks like spreading fans. Tight jackets, open at the throat and tied with bindings across their breasts, flowed out to winglike shoulders. They were girded with jeweled codpieces, heavily woven with metals and belts that sec
ured the wide divided skirts which stopped at the knee.
Brightly-shining buckled shoes completed their costumes. All were richly jeweled but in particular each wore a large crystal ring on the third finger of the left hand. This glowed with an inner life of its own.
The materials of their costume varied, some were as fine as butterfly wings, others gaudy, or lustrous with dark velvet and purple silk. It all spoke of much wealth in time, ingenuity, and construction.
Their tight bodices revealed lithe bodies rippling beneath the thongings. Slim-hipped and long-limbed, their dress showed them as beautiful and young, displaying their bodies for all love’s eyes and promises.
In addition some carried, toga-like, a length of the finest, most carefully patterned cloth thrown around them. Like colored smoke, it gave their bodies a blurred hue where it touched. Others wore this around them like long cloaks, while some sat inside of them, tent-like, and as the color washed their forms with soft light, so they seemed in tune with other worlds softer and more gentle than the harsh one Zed knew – cocooned, insulated, remote yet visible in their reverie.
His mind was pushed back into the past, his conscious- ness sank again.
It was the beach. He chased along in front of the others. The women Brutals tried to dissuade him from attack – they offered themselves, all three of them, inviting, enticing.
Zed could not resist. He leaped from his horse.
“My father was chosen…my mother was chosen…only we could breed…only the chosen…”
May’s voice cut across his memory. “Selective breeding, do you think? What has Arthur been doing out there all these years?”
Consuella answered: “He never discussed this in the Vortex. He will have to be thoroughly investigated. This is highly punishable behavior.”
“No one else wanted to run the Outlands… He’s an artist. He does it with imagination. Allow him that at least.”
The voice came from a languid man near Zed. Unlike the others, there seemed to burn another light within; cynicism, doubt perhaps.
The man was of middling height and looks. Strangely nondescript, yet familiar in face and form, a man with whom Zed had ridden, fought against, and killed a hundred score of times. A common man, yet spiked with the strong dye of the uncommon. His eyes drooped down like the corners of his mouth so that he looked morosely out upon the world at all times. Then the corners would twitch up quickly as his heart betrayed his mind. A man at once dangerous but resigned, highly intelligent but weak-willed. A second string to another’s bow. Zed sensed a cunning, something more devious than those who seemed to best him. His fawning and despair conceded a darker, stronger heart than most.
He looked boyish, almost too thin, his curling hair a trifle too effeminate for his bitter words. Double-edged and mean, his face flickered with warmth and wit, a humor he could not conceal from Zed’s sense-vision. A thinker, not a doer; a plotter, shifty, cunning, lean. He was a fox among wolves, but an old gray fox among young she-wolves, a male in a matriarchy. Zed saw that he so loved to be cutting that one day the edge would take off more than his tongue.
Consuella spoke.
“He is potentially renegade, as you well know, Friend.”
They are discussing Arthur Frayn again, thought Zed. Then more visions were pulled from him. He must fight to stop them leaving him. He must struggle not to betray himself.
He galloped over the dunes, once more at the head of his column. How good to feel the spray, the sun, the speed of his horse.
The watchers’ voices languidly floated in and over his reverie.
“It’s terribly exciting.”
“But the suffering.”
“Oh, you can’t equate their feelings with ours.”
“It’s just entertainment.”
Other voices drifted in.
“Where did the Brutals get those clothes?”
“They probably found them in some old whorehouse.”
Another sneering remark floated up across the first.
“They are very skillful.”
“Well, they are inspired with a religious fervor.”
Zed felt rather than heard the words, they imported too much meaning for him. Could his life be part of some larger purpose? Was he just an arm of some greater being following its own secret path? He could not comprehend the possible meanings at this time, for his mind was driven back again to reveal the past when he scourged the Earth of the Brutal horde.
Still the other voices floated in, remote but telling.
“It’s an absurd proposition.”
“There’s no precedent for this kind of intrusion.”
“Surely we have to investigate possibilities.”
They spoke as if he were a mere cipher, a pattern of lines to be erased and reorganized at a planner’s whim, but he was a man.
Zed pulled his mind from the past and pushed it up into the present. The screen grew dim and faded. The watchers groaned. Zed was fully conscious now. Friend was at his side, looking at him like a prospective buyer at a slave market.
“Obscenely decaying flesh. The sweet scent of putrefaction already in the air. But it’s a fine strong beast, dear May. What exactly do you want to do with it?”
May replied, addressing the community, pleading a case.
“A full genetic study. Break its DNA code, see if there are any structural or evolutional changes since ours were analyzed two-hundred years ago. Discover any new hereditary disease factors which may have emerged, that might result in broadening our immunization spectrum. Study its emotional and psychic elements in relation to its sociology.”
The audience had gradually followed Friend’s lead and were all around Zed now, poking, smoothing, and prodding him. He watched and waited. They were unlike him, though human. All had a curious, ageless look, yet none could have been over twenty; they were children in their movements and manner, yet their eyes were old.
Friend was older than the rest, just a few lines on his face to betray age, work, or worry; nothing more. Except for Zed no one in the room bore any marks of time; no wounds, no gray hairs, no sagging wrinkles marred their beautiful young bodies. Their minds were different. May and Consuella chaffed a long forgotten friendship that had been much more, social cuts and bruises barely on display, peeping under the trim clothing of community. Friend certainly showed a visible mental wound. He was more alert than the rest but lacked their languid, all-knowing poise. He seemed a man like Zed; someone who was other than he looked, a man with secret knowledge, a heresy that could lead to his destruction, but a secret that could spell the end for others.
Consuella answered May’s speech as if it had been a personal attack, but stilled herself and calmly addressed all present.
“That all sounds respectably scientific, but what is May’s underthought? Not long ago she was asking for new births, although we have no deaths. We are perfectly stabilized. We said ‘no’ to May. Now she wants to bring in this dangerous animal from outside. Think of our equilibrium. Remember the delicate balance we must maintain. Just the presence will disturb our tranquillity. May is a great scientist, but she has destructive tendencies.”
The crowd was pressing closer around their captive, fondling, squeezing, touching him. He felt hot, confused, annoyed, but held himself in control. The women were the most interested. He seemed to awake long forgotten memories in them; as they in him. May and Consuella continued to argue, oblivious of the crowd which now had only eyes, and hands, for him.
“We have adequate means of controlling it, surely we’re not so vulnerable…”
Consuella’s anger burst across May’s voice.
“Look at it! It knows its life is at stake, otherwise it would rape and kill as it always has.”
The Eternals glanced at one another in a mounting flurry of confused and differing responses to the seemingly simple man before them. They laughed, argued, but were divided and unsettled. Zed felt he had stayed the hand of execution yet again. If he could continu
e to divide them against themselves, if he could be a source of disruption to their unity, he would live longer. The flutter of excitement and dissension could be the beginning of a schism that might rend the heart of Vortex Four. He did not allow himself to show pleasure in their discontent, for this would betray that he was more than he seemed, and he had still to keep the face of ignorance. The babble of argument rose around him. Zed maintained his air of innocence.
Consuella’s voice was lost. “See the disrupting effect…”
Friend chimed in. “Let’s keep it, anything to relieve the boredom.”
Arguing broke out. They began to squabble like children over a new toy.
Consuella’s face calmed as she turned to another figure who had been watching, still and silent in the shadows. Zed followed her gaze. It was the girl he had first seen upon the white horse. The girl who had looked into his heart, who knew him to the core, and yet had not betrayed him then. Would she now?
The room became still, the attention fell away from Zed as the girl flowed silently across the room. The giant screen was now blank, and columns of bright gauze seemed to hang in midair, not unlike the vehicles for transporting the bodies which Zed had seen within the Zardoz head. Yet these were fine-woven tubelike shapes that seemed to lack a living center. They moved gossamer-like as she passed, as if in obeisance to her. She was regal but not haughty; very young but wise as time.
Consuella greeted her.
“This is a psychic disturbance. Avalow – what does it portend for the future?”
She gazed at Zed, and once again he felt unafraid and calm. She looked into him. She could see all of him, the man he had been, the present Zed, and perhaps the one to come. He knew now that she would never reveal him to the others. He saw trust and compassion in her face, emotions he had never known before, and-as he looked, she changed.