This Immortal

by Roger Joseph Zelazny

  "All right then. Go away and don't bother me."

  "Don't. Please."

  "Hasan tried to kill me."

  "Yes; he must have thought it easier to kill you than to try keeping you out of the way. After all, he knows more about you than we do."

  "Then why did he save me from the boadile today, along with Myshtigo?"

  "I'd rather not say."

  "Then forget it."

  "No, I will tell you.-The assagai was the only thing handy. He is not yet proficient with it. He was not aiming to hit the boadile."

  "Oh."

  "But he was not aiming at you, either. The beast was writhing too much. He wanted to kill the Vegan, and he would simply have said that he had tried to save you both, by the only means at hand-and that there had been a terrible accident. Unfortunately, there was no terrible accident. He missed his target."

  "Why did he not just let the boadile kill him?"

  "Because you had already gotten your hands upon the beast. He feared you might still save him. He fears your hands."

  "That's nice to know. Will he continue trying, even if I refuse to cooperate?"

  "I'm afraid so."

  "That is very unfortunate, my dear, because I will not permit it."

  "You will not stop him. Neither will we call him off. Even though you are Karaghiosis, and hurt, and my sorrow for you overflows the horizons, Hasan will not be stopped by you or by me. He is the Assassin. He has never failed."

  "Neither have I."

  "Yes you have. You have just failed the Radpol and the Earth, and everything that means anything."

  "I keep my own counsel, woman. Go your ways."

  "I can't."

  "Why is that?"

  "If you don't know, then Karaghiosis is indeed the fool, the buffoon, the figure in a shadow play."

  "A man named Thomas Carlyle once wrote of heroes and hero-worship. He too was a fool. He believed there were such creatures. Heroism is only a matter of circumstances and expediency."

  "Ideals occasionally enter into the picture."

  "What is an ideal? A ghost of a ghost, that's all."

  "Do not say these things to me, please."

  "I must-they are true."

  "You lie, Karaghiosis."

  "I do not-or if I do, it is for the better, girl."

  "I am old enough to be anyone's grandmother but yours, so do not call me 'girl.' Do you know that my hair is a wig?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you know that I once contracted a Vegan disease-and that that is why I must wear a wig?"

  "No. I am very sorry. I did not know."

  "When I was young, long ago, I worked at a Vegan resort. I was a pleasure girl. I have never forgotten the puffing of their horrid lungs against my body, nor the touch of their corpse-colored flesh. I hate them, Karaghiosis, in ways that only one such as you could understand-one who has hated all the great hates."

  "I am sorry, Diane. I am so sorry that it hurts you still. But I am not yet ready to move. Do not push me."

  "You are Karaghiosis?"

  "Yes."

  "Then I am satisfied-somewhat."

  "But the Vegan will live."

  "We shall see."

  "Yes, we shall. Good night."

  "Good night, Conrad."

  And I rose, and I left her there, and I returned to my tent. Later that night she came to me. There was a rustling of the tent flap and the bedclothes, and she was there. And when I have forgotten everything else about her-the redness of her wig and the little upside-down "v" between her eyes, and the tightness of her jaws, and her clipped talk, and all her little mannerisms of gesture, and her body warm as the heart of a star, and her strange indictment of the man I once might have been, I will remember this-that she came to me when I needed her, that she was warm, soft, and that she came to me…

  After breakfast the following morning I was going to seek Myshtigo, but he found me first. I was down by the river, talking with the men who would be taking charge of the felucca.

  "Conrad," he said softly, "may I speak with you?"

  I nodded and gestured toward a gully.

  "Let's walk up this way. I've finished here."

  We walked.

  After a minute he said, "You know that on my world there are several systems of mental discipline, systems which occasionally produce extrasensory abilities…"

  "So I've heard," I said.

  "Most Vegans, at sometime or other, are exposed to it. Some have an aptitude along these lines. Many do not. Just about all of us, though, possess a feeling for it, a recognition of its operations."

  "Yes?"

  "I am not telepathic myself, but I am aware that you possess this ability because you used it on me last night. I could feel it. It is quite uncommon among your people, so I had not anticipated this and I had taken no precautions to prevent it. Also, you hit me at the perfect moment. As a result, my mind was opened to you. I have to know how much you learned."

  So there apparently had been something extrasensory connected with those sight-vision overlays. All they usually contained were what seemed the immediate perceptions of the subject, plus a peek at the thoughts and feelings that went into the words he made-and sometimes I got them wrong. Myshtigo's question indicated that he did not know how far mine went, and I had heard that some professional Veggy psyche-stirrers could even elbow their way into the unconscious. So I decided to bluff.

  "I gather that you are not writing a simple travel book," I said.

  He said nothing.

  "Unfortunately, I am not the only one who is aware of this," I continued, "which places you in a bit of danger."

  "Why?" he asked suddenly.

  "Perhaps they misunderstand," I ventured.

  He shook his head.

  "Who are they?"

  "Sorry."

  "But I need to know."

  "Sorry again. If you want out, I can get you back to the Port today."

  "No, I can't do that. I must go on. What am I to do?"

  "Tell me a little more about it, and I'll make suggestions."

  "No, you know too much already…

  "Then that must be the real reason Donald Dos Santos is here," he said quickly. "He is a moderate. The activist wing of the Radpol must have learned something of this and, as you say-misunderstood. He must know of the danger. Perhaps I should go to him…"

  "No," I said quickly, "I don't think you should. It really wouldn't change anything. What would you tell him, anyhow?"

  A pause. Then, "I see what you mean," he said. "The thought has also occurred to me that he might not be as moderate as I have believed… If that is the case, then-"

  "Yeah," I said. "Want to go back?"

  "I can't."

  "Okay then, blue boy, you're going to have to trust me. You can start by telling me more about this survey-"

  "No! I do not know how much you know and how much you do not know. It is obvious that you are trying to elicit more information, so I do not think you know very much. What I am doing is still confidential."

  "I am trying to protect you," I said, "therefore I want as much information as I can get."

  "Then protect my body and let me worry about my motives and my thoughts. My mind will be closed to you in the future, so you needn't waste your time trying to probe it."

  I handed him an automatic.

  "I suggest you carry a weapon for the duration of the tour-to protect your motives."

  "Very well."

  It vanished beneath his fluttering shirt.

  Puff-puff-puff, went the Vegan.

  Damn-damn-damn, went my thoughtstrings.

  "Go get ready," I said. "We'll be leaving soon."

  As I walked back toward the camp, via another route, I analyzed my own motives. A book, alone, could not make or break the Earth, the Radpol, Returnism. Even Phil's Call of Earth had not done that, not really. But this thing of Myshtigo's was to be more than just a book. A survey?-What could it be? A push in what direction? I did not
know and I had to know. For Myshtigo could not be permitted to live if it would destroy us-and yet, I could not permit his destruction if the thing might be of any help at all. And it might.

  Therefore, someone had to call time-out until we could be sure.

  The leash had been tugged. I followed.

  "Diane," said I, as we stood in the shade of her Skimmer, "you say that I mean something to you, as me, as Karaghiosis."

  "That would seem to follow."

  "Then hear me. I believe that you may be wrong about the Vegan. I am not sure, but if you are wrong it would be a very big mistake to kill him. For this reason, I cannot permit it. Hold off on anything you've planned until we reach Athens. Then request a clarification of that message from the Radpol."

  She stared me in both eyes, then said, "All right."

  "Then what of Hasan?"

  "He waits."

  "He makes his own choice as to time and place, does he not? He awaits only the opportunity to strike."

  "Yes."

  "Then he must be told to hold off until we know for sure."

  "Very well."

  "You will tell him?"

  "He will be told."

  "Good enough."

  I turned away.

  "And when the message comes back," she said, "if it should say the same thing as before-what then?"

  "We'll see," I said, not turning.

  I left her there beside her Skimmer and returned to my own.

  When the message did come back, saying what I thought it would say, I knew that I would have more trouble on my hands. This was because I had already made my decision.

  Far to the south and east of us, parts of Madagascar still deafened the geigs with radioactive pain-cries-a tribute to the skill of one of us.

  Hasan, I felt certain, could still face any barrier without blinking those sun-drenched, death-accustomed, yellow eyes…

  He might be hard to stop.

  It. Down below.

  Death, heat, mud-streaked tides, new shorelines…

  Vulcanism on Chios, Samos, Ikaria, Naxos…

  Halicarnassos bitten away…

  The western end of Kos visible again, but so what?

  … Death, heat, mud-streaked tides.

  New shorelines…

  I had brought my whole convoy out of its way in order to check the scene. Myshtigo took notes, also photos.

  Lorel had said, "Continue on with the tour. Damage to property has not been too severe, because the Mediterranean was mostly full of junkstuff. Personal injuries were either fatal or are already being taken care of.-So continue on."

  I skimmed in low over what remained of Kos -the westward tail of the island. It was a wild, volcanic country, and there were fresh craters, fuming ones, amidst the new, bright sea-laces that crisscrossed over the land. The ancient capital of Astypalaia had once stood there. Thucydides tells us it had been destroyed by a powerful earthquake. He should have seen this one. My northern city of Kos had then been inhabited from 366 B.C. Now all was gone but the wet and the hot. There were no survivors-and the plane tree of Hippocrates and the mosque of the Loggia and the castle of the Knights of Rhodes, and the fountains, and my cottage, and my wife-swept by what tides or caught in what sea-pits, I do not know-had gone the ways of dead Theocritus-he who had done his best to immortalize the place so many years before. Gone. Away. Far… Immortal and dead to me. Further east, a few peaks of that high mountain range which had interrupted the northern coastal plain were still poking themselves up out of the waters. There was the mighty peak of Dhikaios, or Christ the Just, which had overlooked the villages of the northern slopes. Now it was a tiny islet, and no one had made it up to the top in time.

  It must have been like this, that time so many years ago, when the sea near my homeland, bounded by the Chalcidic peninsula, had risen up and assaulted the land; in that time when the waters of the inland sea had forced them an outlet through the gorge of Tempe, the mighty convulsions of the thing scoring even the mountain walls of the home of the gods itself, Olympus; and those it spared were only Mr. and Mrs. Deukalion, kept afloat by the gods for purposes of making a myth and some people to tell it to.

  "You lived there," said Myshtigo.

  I nodded.

  "You were born in the village of Makrynitsa, though, in the hills of Thessaly?"

  "Yes."

  "But you made your home there?"

  "For a little while."

  "'Home' is a universal concept," said he. "I appreciate it."

  "Thanks."

  I continued to stare downward, feeling sad, bad, mad, and then nothing.

  Athens after absence returns to me with a sudden familiarity which always refreshes, often renews, sometimes incites. Phil once read me some lines by one of the last great Greek poets, George Seferis, maintaining that he had referred to my Greece when he said, "… A country that is no longer our own country, nor yours either"-because of the Vegans. When I pointed out that there were no Vegans available during Seferis' lifetime, Phil retorted that poetry exists independent of time and space and that it means whatever it means to the reader. While I have never believed that a literary license is also good for time-travel, I had other reasons for disagreeing, for not reading it as a general statement.

  It is our country. The Goths, the Huns, the Bulgars, the Serbs, the Franks, the Turks, and lately the Vegans have never made it go away from us. People, I have outlived. Athens and I have changed together, somewhat. Mainland Greece, though, is mainland Greece, and it does not change for me. Try taking it away, whatever you are, and my klephtes will stalk the hills, like the chthonic avengers of old. You will pass, but the hills of Greece will remain, will be unchanged, with the smell of goat thigh-bones burning, with a mingling of blood and wine, a taste of sweetened almonds, a cold wind by night, and skies as bluebright as the eyes of a god by day. Touch them, if you dare.

  That is why I am refreshed whenever I return, because now that I am a man with many years behind me, I feel this way about the entire Earth. That is why I fought, and why I killed and bombed, and why I tried every legal trick in the book, too, to stop the Vegans from buying up the Earth, plot by plot, from the absentia government, there on Taler. That is why I pushed my way, under another new name, into the big civil service machine that runs this planet-and why Arts, Monuments and Archives, in particular. There, I could fight to preserve what still remained, while I waited for the next development.

  The Radpol vendetta had frightened the expatriates as well as the Vegans. They did not realize that the descendants of those who had lived through the Three Days would not willingly relinquish their best areas of coastline for Vegan resorts, nor yield up their sons and daughters to work in those resorts; nor would they guide the Vegans through the ruins of their cities, indicating points of interest for their amusement. That is why the Office is mainly a foreign service post for most of its staff.

  We had sent out the call of return to those descendants of the Martian and Titanian colonies, and there had been no return. They had grown soft out there, soft from leeching on a culture which had had a headstart on ours. They lost their identity. They abandoned us.

  Yet, they were the Earthgov, de jure, legally elected by the absent majority-and maybe de facto too, if it ever came to that. Probably so. I hoped it wouldn't come to that.

  For over half a century there had been a stalemate. No new Veggy resorts, no new Radpol violence. No Return, either. Soon there would be a new development. It was in the air-if Myshtigo was really surveying.

  So I came back to Athens on a bleak day, during a cold, drizzling rainfall, an Athens rocked and rearranged by the recent upheavals of Earth, and there was a question in my head and bruises on my body, but I was refreshed. The National Museum still stood there between Tossitsa and Vasileos Irakliou, the Acropolis was even more ruined that I remembered, and the Garden Altar Inn-formerly the old Royal Palace-there at the northwest corner of the National Gardens, across from Syndagma Square, had been shak
en but was standing and open for business, despite.

  We entered, and checked in.

  As Commissioner of Arts, Monuments and Archives, I received special considerations. I got The Suite: Number 19.

  It wasn't exactly the way I'd left it. It was clean and neat.

  The little metal plate on the door said:

  This suite was the headquarters of Konstantin Karaghiosis during the founding of the Radpol and much of the Returnist Rebellion.

  Inside, there was a plaque on the bedstead which read:

  Konstantin Karaghiosis slept in this bed.

  In the long, narrow front room I spotted one on the far wall. It said:

  The stain on this wall was caused by a bottle of beverage, hurled across the room by Konstantin Karaghiosis, in celebration of the bombing of Madagascar.

  Believe that, if you want to.

  Konstantin Karaghiosis sat in this chair, insisted another.

  I was really afraid to go into the bathroom.

  Later that night, as I walked the wet and rubble-strewn pavements of my almost deserted city, my old memories and my current thoughts were like the coming together of two rivers. I'd left the others snoring inside, descended the wide stairway from the Altar, paused to read one of the inscriptions from Perikles' funeral oration-"The entire Earth is the tomb of great men"-there on the side of the Memorial to the Unknown Soldier, and I studied for a moment those great-thewed limbs of that archaic warrior, laid out with all his weapons on his funeral bed, all marble and bas-relief, yet somehow almost warm, because night becomes Athens-and then I walked on by, passing up Leoforos Amalias.

  It had been a fine dinner: ouzo, giuvetsi, Kokkineli, yaourti, Metaxa, lots of dark coffee, and Phil arguing with George about evolution.

  "Do you not see a convergence of life and myth, here, during the last days of life on this planet?"

  "What do you mean?" asked George, polishing off a mess of narantzi and adjusting his glasses for peering.

  "I mean that as humanity rose out of darkness it brought with it legends and myths and memories of fabulous creatures. Now we are descending again into that same darkness. The Life Force grows weak and unstable, and there is a reversion to those primal forms which for so long existed only as dim racial memories-"