Incarnations of Immortality

by Anthony, Piers

  Was she prejudiced, she asked herself. The guitarist had a romantic relation with the succubus, and Orb could not fault it; Jezebel was a good woman in every human sense of the word, as long as her passions were under control. Why should Orb feel that the kind of relationship that was good for a fellow human being should be bad for her? She couldn't answer that, except to acknowledge that she could not accept it for herself with equanimity. Perhaps a relationship was possible, but she would first have to know for certain exactly what Nat was. If human, fine; if demon, she would have to consider longer before deciding how or whether to proceed. Yet when he had sung the Song of Awakening-ah, what a stirring there had been in her breast! There had been a seeming dawn within her awareness, as well as in the world. Who could say where this day might lead?

  "Mrs. Glotch has scheduled us for Hawaii," Betsy announced brightly, looking up from the pile of correspondence she was handling. "I've always wanted to see their pineapple farms." Orb pursed her lips. "I'm not sure that's wise. Jonah doesn't like to pass over large bodies of water."

  "Oh? Why not?"

  "He is cursed. He can not swim in water, and if anything should happen over the ocean, he would be in terrible trouble." Betsy's brow wrinkled. "Why? What could happen to him?"

  "Well-" But Orb found herself stumped. "What could happen to a creature cursed to be immortal until his punishment was terminated?"

  "Probably a lot of pain," Lou-Mae said. Orb nodded. That would be enough. "I suppose we'll just have to see whether Jonah will take us," she said. "If not, it's understandable, and we'll simply have to cancel the engagement."

  When the time came, they asked the big fish to go. Jonah hesitated at the verge of the ocean, then lifted high and braved it. They were on their way.

  At first it was intriguing, swimming above the great ocean, for they had never done this before. But it was a long swim, and soon the novelty dulled. They settled down to the routine of rehearsing, eating, talking, and sleeping.

  Lou-Mae came to wake Orb. "Something's wrong," she whispered urgently.

  Orb rubbed her eyes. "You quarreled with-?"

  "No, I mean with Jonah!"

  Now Orb was alert. "Jonah! How do you mean?"

  "He's swimming crazy. I think he's sick."

  What would it mean to be inside a sick fish? "Oh, I hope not!" Orb said sincerely. She flung on a housecoat and dug her toes into her slippers.

  Now it was evident: the big fish's course was erratic. He seemed uncertain where to go and kept changing course.

  "I wish we could talk to him!" Lou-Mae said nervously. "Ask him what's wrong ..."

  But Orb had discovered it. "There's a storm out there; I can see the lightning flashes through his scales," she said.

  "He don't much like storms!" Lou-Mae said.

  "He's trying to avoid the rain," Orb said. "But it has closed in all around. He's cornered, as it were."

  "But he can dive down underground and-oops, we're over the ocean!"

  "Now we know why he doesn't like to swim over the ocean," Orb said.

  "What happens if he gets rained on?"

  "I don't know. He is cursed to avoid water. I suppose it would be a violation of the terms of his curse. But what that means in a practical sense ..." She shrugged.

  Jezebel appeared, in her ravishing nocturnal aspect. "I have a notion. It strikes me that Jonah is much like a demon, during his curse. Demons don't die, but they can hurt. Probably every drop burns like fire. A moral would die pretty soon and be out of his pain, but for a demon it goes on and on."

  "How would that affect us?" Orb asked.

  "Well, he's sure to thrash around. You would, too, if someone kept poking you with a red-hot poker. It won't be too comfortable in here."

  The guitarist showed up, looking green. "Can't we get this tub out of the rollers?" he asked plaintively. "I get seasick."

  "Cheer up, lover, the worst is yet to come," Jezebel informed him maliciously. The news of their liaison had of course circulated quickly enough; the secret was only maintained against outsiders.

  "You're a demon!" he said.

  "I had noticed. Can I help you?"

  "Just pull out your blouse so I have somewhere to vomit," he said miserably.

  "Mortals have odd tastes," the succubus remarked as she pulled out her blouse, showing her full breasts. Others laughed appreciatively, but the guitarist for once had no interest. "Come on, sailor." She herded him off toward a bathroom.

  Orb gazed out through the scales. "We've got to do something," she said. "It's our fault Jonah got caught here."

  The organist appeared, with Betsy. "You conjured rain, Orb; can you make it go away?"

  "I could try. But I don't know the proper theme. I might just make things worse."

  "Better not risk it," he agreed. Then he had another notion. "You can keep us off the H when you have to; can you get Jonah off his problem with water? So he can swim in it again?"

  "Again, I could try, if I knew the theme. But if I got it wrong-"

  "Well, it's the Llano he's looking for, same's us. Maybe if you-I mean we could all try the Song of Morning, and maybe-"

  "I don't know," Orb said. Then the fish lurched, throwing her against the wall. "But then again-"

  They tried it. The guitarist was too sick to participate, but the drummer and Lou-Mae and the organist joined. Orb sang the Song of Awakening, and Lou-Mae made a harmony, and the others accompanied. The magic spread out strongly, animating them all, and it developed into the best rendition yet, with the darkness closing in so absolutely that stars appeared above.

  Jonah's lurching stopped. He relaxed, slowly sinking down through the turbulent atmosphere.

  But what would happen when he touched the restless surface of the ocean?

  Orb peered through the scales as the magic sunrise formed. She could see that it was raining now, outside, and the rain was washing across Jonah's surface. That meant that their song was enabling the fish to tolerate water. Perhaps the sea would be tolerable, too.

  They completed the rendition. Flowers bloomed across the floor, and the chamber was fragrant.

  "Sheez, we should do this number on the tour!" the drummer exclaimed.

  Lou-Mae considered. "Why not? So it's a piece of the Llano; it's the greatest music we know. Everybody should hear it."

  Orb nodded. "I suppose we could try it." She walked to the wall, to get a better view of the exterior.

  Jonah made a shudder. "Maybe we better sing it again," Lou-Mae said.

  "Try it without me," Orb said. "I'll try to help you with the magic. If we can do it in relays, maybe we can keep him quiet without wearing ourselves out."

  Lou-Mae and the drummer and the organist tried it by themselves. It wasn't as good as before, but it did quiet the fish.

  Orb watched as Jonah sank slowly toward the heaving ocean. The key point would be when he touched. If he could do that without damage, they would be all right.

  The fish shivered. They felt it as if it were an earth tremor: minor motion, but significant alarm.

  Jezebel reappeared. "Jonah's afraid," she said.

  Orb pointed down. "Of that?"

  "I don't think so. The song's calming him. It doesn't seem that he can't touch water, just that he's afraid to. The Llano helps quell his fear, but not all the way."

  "What could a creature like him be afraid of?"

  "I don't know, but I think we'd better not dismiss it till we know what it is."

  Jonah settled onto the water. His nervousness increased despite their music. Yet the water did not seem to be hurting him. He floated like a ship, rocking gently to the swells.

  Then the big fish jerked into motion. His side fins raked through the water like oars, and the bottom portion of his tail threshed the liquid into foam. He was not swimming, so much as stroking across the water.

  "Something's out there!" Jezebel said. "I'd better take a look." She strode to the wall and through it, startling Orb. But of course she was a demon
ess, able to dematerialize and walk through walls so she could reach her prey. She just hadn't done it openly before.

  Almost immediately the succubus reappeared. "There's something ugly out there," she reported. "There's a glow, and what look like ghosts, and Jonah's trying to get away from them. You'd better look."

  "I can't go out there," Orb protested. "I'd drown!"

  "I can take you to the top of the fish," Jezebel said. "It's pretty flat there, and you can hold on to a fin. I really think you should go."

  Orb trusted the succubus' judgment. She took Jezebel's hand, and they walked through the wall and up, coming out on the fish's broad back. The rain was pelting down, but the skin was rough, offering good traction, and Orb had no trouble keeping her feet.

  "There," Jezebel said, pointing.

  Orb looked. She saw the glow, and it was not a healthy illumination. Grotesque shapes moved within it. She squinted, brushing the spray from her face. "What is it?"

  "I think it's demonic," Jezebel said. "But there are different kinds of demons, as you know, and some in-between forms like zombies that-"

  "Zombies?"

  "Well, I'm not sure. What do they look like to you?"

  Orb continued peering. The fish was slowing, and the shapes were gaining, spreading their unhealthy light. "Skeletons."

  "Same thing, maybe. Do you think that's what Jonah's afraid of? Looks to me he can handle water, maybe not to swim in, but to float on, but those things are walking on it, which means they're supernatural, and I'd guess they're after him. If he knew it, he'd stay well clear if he could."

  "We've got to stop them!" Orb exclaimed.

  "The super-natural's hard to stop, when it's in its element. I don't want to scare you but-"

  "With the Llano!" Orb cried. "I've got to try!"

  The succubus shrugged. "I'd help you if I could, but you know my talent isn't singing."

  Orb started singing herself, trying the Song of the Morning, the only significant fragment of the Llano she knew.

  The skeletons marched right on, their bone legs walking across the water, their skulls facing Jonah. The song had no effect.

  "Worse," Jezebel murmured. "Now I see why he slowed. There're more on the other side."

  "Maybe if I had my harp," Orb said doubtfully.

  "I can fetch it for you."

  "Thank you." Orb was too distracted to say more.

  The dancing skeletons closed in inexorably. Jonah's shuddering became more violent. Orb had no reasonable doubt, now; this was the menace the big fish feared. "Jonah, I will try to protect you," she said aloud.

  The shuddering eased. Jonah had heard and understood.

  But could she do it? The Song of the Morning hadn't worked; what would? Sometimes the magic had worked with other songs-but what applied to skeletons?

  Their forms were coming clearer as they approached. They were not simply dancing; they were doing a crazy sort of jig. She would have thought it random, if they were not all doing it together, perfectly synchronized. Their bone legs moved this way and that, and their bone bodies seemed to lose balance and almost fall over before abruptly snapping back to the vertical. The effect would have been eerie, even if performed by fully fleshed folk.

  Jezebel reappeared, leading the drummer by the hand. Orb realized that she had done an absent-minded double take when the succubus chuckled. "No, I'm not two-timing my man," Jezebel said. "We figured you could use help, and there's no way to plug in the organ up here, so I brought the drummer instead." She handed Orb her harp.

  "But the rain will ruin the drums!" Orb protested.

  "No more than it will your harp," the drummer said. "What use will either be, if Jonah gets wiped out?"

  Orb acknowledged the validity of that. "I tried the Song of the Morning, but it didn't work."

  The drummer stared at the advancing horde. "Know any songs about skeletons?" he asked with a certain bravado.

  "Just one my father used to sing me," Orb said. "A joke, a Halloween kind of round."

  "Try it," he said, setting up his drums.

  "This is ridiculous!" Orb muttered as she took up her harp. But then, so were the dancing skeletons.

  "Say, isn't that the Drunken Sailor's Hornpipe?" Jezebel asked, gazing at the dancers.

  "The what?" the drummer asked.

  "It's a dance. I learned it about fifty years ago, when I worked a dancing group."

  "You were a dancer?"

  "I didn't say that."

  "Oh." He was disgruntled.

  Orb started to sing and play, and the drummer picked up the beat and amplified it powerfully. "Have you seen the ghost of Tom? Round white bones with no skin on!" It was a humorously grisly song, but it held nostalgia for her, taking her back to the years of her childhood when Pacian held her and tickled her and sang to her, and the orchestra of his magic presence filled her limited universe. Oh, she loved her father! Now he was gone, and if there were skeletons where he was, surely he was singing to them, too, and making them laugh.

  Orb was uncertain how much of the wetness on her face was rain and how much was tears.

  But the song wasn't stopping the skeletons. They were coming quite close, in seeming phalanxes, and the first phalanx was now quite near Jonah's huge tail.

  Orb tried another song, one from their repertoire, with no better effect. Music simply wasn't doing it.

  One skeleton separated from the lead phalanx. It danced crazily forward, toward the tail, its bone feet treading the water as if it were completely solid.

  "That is the Drunken Sailor's Hornpipe!" Jezebel said. "See, it's one of the few dances I can do." She went into the jig, and it was the same motion, lean and lurch as the skeletons were doing. "You step here and here, around and back, and that off-balances you, so you switch feet, so," she explained as she did it, her flesh heaving dynamically.

  The closest skeleton paused, its skull facing the succubus.

  "Hey!" the drummer said. "They're dancers! So they tune into dancing!"

  The skeleton resumed its forward motion. It came to the tail and reached out to embrace it. But at the touch, Jonah jumped as if receiving an electric shock, and indeed there was a flash at the point of contact.

  Then the skeleton was gone-and one section of Jonah's tail had become skeletal.

  "Geez," the drummer said.

  "I told you he'd have reason to fear demons," Jezebel -and I'll bet said. "They want to make him one of them there are enough of them to do it."

  Another skeleton detached itself from the phalanx and danced forward.

  "I've got to stop this!" Orb said, handing the succubus her harp and striding along the back of the fish. Part of her mind remarked on the confidence with which she gave her invaluable harp to a demoness-but she knew the harp would not tolerate the touch of a deceitful or evil creature, and Jezebel was neither, despite being of demonic stock.

  "Hey, don't!" Jezebel cried, following. "It'd only take one skeleton to convert you! I think they take out their own mass!"

  Orb paused. Obviously there was justice in this notion. What could she accomplish, if she became an instant skeleton? Yet how could she let this horror proceed without even challenging it? She was afraid and angry.

  "They're dancers," the drummer called, coming up behind them. "Orb, you know a dance that'd stop anything in its tracks."

  Orb stiffened. But now a realization came: the huge fish had accepted her after she had danced the tanana for him. Was this the reason? Insurance against these awful dancers?

  The second skeleton was approaching the tail. "Beat the cadence for the Song of the Morning," Orb said tersely to the drummer. "I'm going to dance to it."

  "Got it," he said, scrambling to set up his drums again.

  "I'll tell the others," Jezebel said, stepping down through the fish's flesh.

  He started the beat, and it was good, but not good enough. "With the magic," Orb said, touching his shoulder.

  As she did so, the magic came, her power transf
erring to him. "Got it," he repeated.

  The beat took hold, and there was indeed magic to it, creating the semblance of the song. Orb began to dance. She was conscious now of her housecoat plastered to her body, and dragging at her legs. Impatiently she struggled out of it and threw it aside, wearing only her nightie. She was aware that this was clinging to her torso like a wrinkled second skin, worse in its fashion than nakedness, but she had no choice; she had to have freedom of motion.

  She danced the tanana to the beat, addressing the skeleton. The thing paused, then matched her, switching from its hornpipe to the tanana. It coordinated with her motions, completing the dance. It leaped and spun and gazed sidelong at her with its bony sockets. There was no doubt that she had found the key to making the skeletons react. But where could this lead?

  Well, if the others did not advance until this one was through, and she distracted it long enough, the storm might clear, and Jonah would be free to swim back into the sky, escaping the skeletons.

  The beat of the drums intensified, seeming to pound against the entire universe. Boom, boom, BOOM, BOOM! The skeleton danced more wildly, matching the increasing emphasis-and then began to fall apart. The violence of this dance was becoming too much for it, and it was self-destructing!

  The bones flew off randomly, leaving the skeleton without part of one arm, then part of the other, then its skull. Finally the rest of it collapsed and fell into the water, sinking out of sight.

  Orb breathed a panting sigh of relief. They had done it! They had stopped the skeleton from touching Jonah!

  A new skeleton detached itself from the phalanx and danced toward the tail.

  Oops! The job wasn't finished! Orb set herself, the drumbeat resumed, and she began to dance again. She addressed the second skeleton, and it reacted as had the first. They danced together, and the skeleton was a marvelously fine dancer; she found herself picturing it as a handsome Gypsy man, strutting and posturing and turning on in the timeless manner.