Isle Of The Dead

by Roger Zelazny

  Now I had nothing to do but find a power-pull and rest until afternoon, when the _Model T_ would come gliding in from the west. I opened my mind and felt one, pulsing somewhere to the left of me. When I felt stronger, I sat up and straightened my leg with both hands. When the throbbing subsided, I cut away the trouser-leg and saw that the flesh was not broken. I bound it as best I could without a splint--which wasn't very--above and below the fracture, and turned slowly, slowly, onto my stomach and hands and began crawling, just as slowly, in the direction of the pull, leaving what was left of Shandon behind me in the rain.

  The going was not too bad, so long as it remained level. But when I had to pull myself up a ten-foot, forty-five degree slope, I was too beat even to curse for several minutes afterwards. The damned thing had been slippery as well as steep.

  I looked back at Shandon and shook my head. It was not as if he had not known he was born to come in second. His whole life was testimony to that, poor bastard. I felt a moment's pity. He had come close to having it made. But he had come into the wrong game at the wrong time and the wrong place, like my brother, and I wondered where his head and hand lay now.

  I crawled on. The power-pull was only a few hundred yards away, but I took a longer route that looked easier. One time, as I rested, I thought I heard a soft, sobbing sound. But it was gone too quickly for me to be sure.

  Another time, and I heard it again, louder, coming from behind me.

  I paused and waited till it came again. Then I headed toward it.

  Ten minutes, and I lay before a huge boulder. It was situated at the base of a high wall of rock, and there was lots of other rubble strewn about. The muffled weeping was somewhere near. A cave seemed indicated and I did not want to waste my time exploring. So I called out:

  "Hello. What's the trouble?"

  Silence.

  "Hello?"

  Then, "Frank?"

  It was the voice of the Lady Karle.

  "Ho, bitch," I said. "Last night you told me to pass on to my doom. What's yours like?"

  "I'm trapped in a cave, Frank. There's a rock that I can't move."

  "It's a honey of a rock, honey. I'm looking at it from the other side."

  "Can you get me out of here?"

  "How did you get in?"

  "I hid in here when the trouble started. I've tried to dig my way out, but all my nails are broken and my fingers are bleeding--and I can't seem to find any way around this stone... ."

  "There doesn't seem to be a way."

  "What happened?"

  "Everybody's dead but you and me, and there is only a little piece of the isle left. It's raining on it now. It was quite a fight we had."

  "Can you get me out of here?"

  "I'll be lucky to get myself out of here--the condition I'm in."

  "Are you in another cavern?"

  "No, I'm on the outside."

  "Then what do you mean by 'out of here'?"

  "Off this damn hunk of rock and back to Homefree is what I mean."

  "Then there is help coming?"

  "For me," I said. "The _Model T_ will be on its way down this afternoon. I've got it programmed."

  "The equipment aboard.. . Could you blast the rock, or the ground beneath it?"

  "Lady Karle," I said, "I've got a busted leg, a paralyzed hand and so many sprains, strains, abrasions and contusions that I haven't even bothered counting them. I'll be lucky to get the thing going before I pass out and sleep for a week. I gave you a chance last night to be my friend again. Do you remember what you said to me?"

  "Yes... ."

  "Well now it's your turn."

  I moved myself back on my elbows and began to crawl away.

  "Frank!"

  I did not reply.

  "Frank! Wait! Do not go! Please!"

  "Why not?" I cried.

  "Do you remember what you said to me then, last night ... ?"

  "Yes, and I remember your reply. All of that was last night, anyhow, when I was somebody else. --You had your chance and you blew it. If I had the strength, I would scratch your name and the date on the stone. So long, it's been good to know you."

  "Frank!"

  I didn't even look back.

  --_Your changes of character continue to amaze me, Frank_.

  --_So you made it, too, Green. I suppose you're in some other damn cave and want to be dug out_.

  --_No. In fact I am only a few hundred feet from you, in the direction in which you were heading. I am near the power-pull, though it can't help me now. I will call out when I hear you approaching_.

  --_Why?_

  --_The time is near. I will go to the land of death, and there my strength shall fail. I was hurt badly last night_.

  --_What do you want me to do about it? I've got problems of my own_.

  --_I want the last rite. You told me that you gave it to Dra Marling, so I know that you know the way. Also, you said that you had _glitten__--

  --_I don't believe in that any more. Never did. I only did it for Marling because_--

  --_You are a high priest. You bear the Name Shimbo of Darktree Tower, Shrugger of Thunders. You cannot refuse me_.

  --_I have renounced the Name, and I do refuse you_.

  --_You said once that if I helped you, you would intercede for me on Megapei. I _did_ help you_.

  --_I know that, but now that you are dying it is too late_.

  --_Then give me this thing instead_.

  --_I will come to you and give you what aid and comfort I can, save for the last rite. I am finished with such things, after last night_.

  --_Come to me, then_.

  So I did. By the time I reached him, the rain had just about let up. Too bad. It had been doing a fair job of washing away his body fluids. He had propped himself back against a rock, and the whiteness of bone shone through flesh in four places that I could see.

  "The vitality of a Pei'an is a fantastic thing," I said. "You got all that in that fall last night?"

  He nodded, then --_It hurts to speak, so I must continue in this fashion. I knew you still lived, so I kept myself alive until I could reach you_.

  I managed to get what was left of my pack off my back. Then I opened it.

  "Here, take this. It is for pain. It works for five races. Yours is one."

  He brushed it aside.

  --_I do not wish to dull my mentality at this point_.

  "Green, I am not going to give you the rite. I will give you the _glitten_ root and you can take it yourself if you wish. But that's all."

  --_Even if I can give you that which you most desire in return?_

  "What?"

  --_All of them, back again, with no memory of what has happened here_.

  "The tapes!"

  --_Yes_.

  "Where are they?"

  --_A favor for a favor, _Dra_ Sandow_.

  "Give them to me."

  --_The rite_ ...

  ... A new Kathy, a Kathy who had never met Mike Shandon, my Kathy--and Nick, the breaker of noses.

  "You drive a hard bargain, Pei'an."

  --_I have no choice--and please hurry_.

  "All right. I'll go through with it, this one last time. --Where are the tapes?"

  --_After the rite has begun and may not be stopped, then I will tell you_.

  I chuckled.

  "Okay. I don't blame you for not trusting me."

  --_You were shielding. You must have been planning to trick me_.

  "Probably. I'm not really sure."

  I unwrapped the _glitten_, broke off the proper proportions.

  "Now we will walk together," I began, "and only one of us two will return to this place ..."

  * * *

  After a cold, gray time and a black, warm one, we walked in a twilit place without wind or stars. There was only bright green grass, high hills and a faint aurora borealis that licked at the grayblueblack sky, following the entire circle of the broken horizon. It was as if the stars had all fallen, been powdered, were strewn upon the hil
ltops.

  We walked effortlessly--almost strolling, though with a purpose--our bodies whole once more. Green was at my left hand, among the hills of the _glitten_-dream--or was it a dream? It seemed true and substantial, while our broken, tired carcasses lying on rocks in the rain now seemed a dream remembered, out of times long gone by. We had always been walking here, so, Green and I--or so it seemed--and a feeling of well-being and amity lay upon us. It was almost the same as the last time I had come to this place. Perhaps I had always really been here.

  We sang an old Pei'an song for a time, then Green said, "I give you the _pai'badra_ I held against you, _Dra_. I hold it no more."

  "This is good, _Dra_ tharl."

  "I promised, too, to tell you something. It was of the tapes, yes. --They lie beneath the empty green body I was privileged to wear for a time."

  "I see."

  "They are useless. I called them to me there with my mind, from a vault where I had kept them. They had been damaged by the forces let loose upon the isle; and so, also, were the tissue cultures. Thus do I keep my word, but poorly. You gave me no choice, though. I could not come this way alone."

  I felt that I should be upset, and knew that for a time I could not be.

  "You did what you had to," I felt myself saying. "Do not be troubled. Perhaps it is better that I cannot recall them. So much has gone by since their times. Perhaps they would have felt as I once felt, lost in a strange place. They might not have gone on as I did, to embrace it. I do not know. Let it be as it is. The thing is done."

  "Now I must tell you of Ruth Laris," he said. "She lies in the Asylum of Fallon in Cobacho, on Driscoll, where she is registered as Rita Lawrence. Her face has been altered, and her mind. You must remove her and hire doctors."

  "Why is she there?"

  "It was easier than bringing her to Illyria."

  "All this pain which you caused meant nothing to you, did it?"

  "No. Perhaps I had worked with the stuff of life too long ..."

  "... And poorly. I am inclined to think it was Belion within you."

  "I did not wish to say it, because I did not want to offer excuses, but I feel this way also. This is why I tried to kill Shimbo. It was this part of me that you faced, and I wished to strike at it, too. After he left me for Shandon, I felt remorse for many of the things I had done. He had to be sent away, which is why Shimbo of Darktree came. Belion could not be permitted to create more worlds of cruelty and ugliness. Shimbo, who cast them like jewels into the darkness, sparkling with the colors of life, had to confront him once again. Now that he has won, there will be more such as these."

  "No," I said. "We can't operate without each other, and I've resigned."

  "You are bitter oven all that has happened, and perhaps justly so. But one does not easily abandon a calling such as yours, _Dra_. Perhaps with the passage of time ..."

  I did not answer him for my thoughts had turned inward again.

  The way that we walked was the way of death. However pleasant it seemed, this was a _glitten_ experience; and while ordinary people may become addicted to _glitten_ because of the euphoria and the brain-bending, telepaths use _glitten_ in special ways.

  Used by a single individual, it serves to heighten his powers.

  Used by two persons, a common dream will be dreamed. It, also, is always a very pleasant dream--and among Strantrians it is always the same dream, because this form of religious training conditions the subconscious to produce it by reflex. It is a tradition.

  ... And two dream it and only one awakens.

  It is, therefore, used in the death rite, so that one need not go alone to the place I've spent over a thousand years avoiding.

  Also, it is used for dueling purposes. For, unless agreed upon and bound by ritual, it is only the stronger who comes back. It is the nature of the drug that some sleeping parts of the two minds are set in conflict, though the conscious portions be all unaware of this.

  Green Green had been so bound, so I did not fear a last-ditch trick for the gaining of Pei'an vengeance. Also, even if it were a dueling situation, I did not feel that I had anything to fear, considering his condition.

  But as we walked along, I considered that I was probably hastening his death by several hours, under guise of a pleasant, near-mystical ritual.

  Telepathic euthanasia.

  Mental murder.

  I was glad to be able to help a fellow creature shuffle off in such a decent way, on the condition that he wanted it. It made me think of my own passing, which I am certain will not be a pleasant one.

  I have heard people say that no matter how much you love living, now, this minute, and think that you would like to live forever, someday you will _want_ to die, someday you will pray for death. They had pain in mind when they spoke. They meant they would like to go pretty, like this, to escape.

  I do not expect to go pretty, gentle or resigned into this good night myself, thank you. Like the man says, I intend to rage against the dying of the light, fighting and howling every damn step of the way. The disease that was responsible for my making it this far involved quite a bit of pain, you might even say agony, and for a long while, before they froze me. I thought about it a lot then, and I decided I would never opt for the easy way out. I wanted to live, pain and all. There's a book and a man I respect: Andr_ Gide and his _Fruits of the Earth_. On his deathbed he knew he had only a few days left and he wrote like blue blazes. He finished it in about three days and died. In it, he recounts every beautiful thing about the permutations of earth, air, fire and water that surrounded him, things that he loved, and you could tell that he was saying goodbye and did not want to go, despite everything. That is how I feel about it. So, in spite of my involvement, I could not sympathize with Green's choice. I would rather have lain there, broken-boned and all, feeling the rain come down upon me and wondering at it, regretting, resenting a bit and wanting a lot. Maybe it was this, this hunger, that allowed me to learn worldscaping in the first place--so that I could do it all myself, so that I could make more of it. Hell.

  We mounted a hill and paused on its summit. Even before we reached it, I knew what would be there when we looked down the far slope.

  ... Beginning between two massive prows of gray stone, with a greensward that started out as bright as that beneath our feet and grew darker and darker as I swept my eyes ahead, there was the place. It was the big, dark valley. And suddenly I was staring into a blackness so black that it was nothing, nothing at all.

  "Another hundred steps will I go with you," I said.

  "Thank you, _Dra_."

  And we descended the hillside, moved toward the place.

  "What will they say of me on Megapei when they hear that I am gone?"

  "I do not know."

  "Tell them, if they ask you, that I was a foolish man who regretted his folly before he came to this place."

  "I will."

  "And ..."

  "That, too," I said. "I will ask that your bones be taken into the mountains of the place that was your home."

  He bowed his head.

  "That is all. You will watch me walk on?"

  "Yes."

  "It is said that there is a light at the end."

  "So is it said."

  "I must seek it now."

  "Walk well, _Dra_ Gringrin-tharl."

  "You have won your battles and you will depart this place. Will you cast the worlds I never could?"

  "Maybe," and I stared into that blackness, sans stars, comets, meteors, anything.

  But suddenly there was something there.

  New Indiana hung in the void. It seemed a million miles away, all its features distinct, cameo-cut, glowing. It moved slowly to the right, until the rock blocked it from my view. By then, however, Cocytus had come into sight. It crossed, was followed by all the others: St. Martin, Buningrad, Dismal, M-2, Honkeytonk, Mercy, Summit, Tangia, Illyria, Roden's Folly, Homefree, Castor, Pollux, Centralia, Dandy, and so on.

  For some stupid re
ason my eyes filled with tears at this passage. Every world I had designed and built moved by me. I had forgotten the glory.

  The feeling that had filled me with the creation of each of them came over me then. I had hurled something into the pit. Where there had been darkness, I had hung my worlds. They were my answer. When I finally, walked that Valley, they would remain after me. Whatever the Bay claimed, I had made some replacements, to thumb my nose at it. I had done something, and I knew how to do more.

  "There _is_ a light!" said Green, and I did not realize that he had been clutching my arm, staring at the pageant.

  I clasped his shoulder, said, "May you dwell with Kirwar of the Four Faces, Father of Flowers," and I did not quite catch his reply as he drew away from me, passed between the stones, walked the Valley, was gone.

  I turned then and faced what had to be the east and began the long walk home.

  Coming back... .

  Brass gongs and polliwogs.

  I was stuck to a rough ceiling. No. I was lying there, face up on nothing, trying to support the world with my shoulders. It was heavy and the rocks poked, gouged. Below me lay the Bay, with its condoms, its driftwood, its ropes of seaweed, empty dories, bottles and scum. I could hear its distant splashing, and it splashed so high that it kept striking my face. There it was, life, slopping, smelling, chilly. I had had a real wild romp through its waters, and now as I looked down upon it I felt myself falling once more, falling back toward its shallows. Maybe I heard bird-cries. I had walked to the Valley and now I was returning. With luck I would evade the icy fingers of the crumbling hand once more. I fell, and the world twisted about me, resolved itself into what it had been when I left it.