American Science Fiction

by Gary K. Wolfe

  Anyway—Hasan would tangle with Rolem, both of them gleaming in the firelight, and we’d all sit on blankets and watch, and bats would swoop low occasionally, like big, fast ashes, and emaciated clouds would cover the moon, veil-like, and then move on again. It was that way on that third night, when I went mad.

  I remember it only in the way you remember a passing countryside you might have seen through a late summer evening storm—as a series of isolated, lightning-filled still-shots. . . .

  Having spoken with Cassandra for the better part of an hour, I concluded the transmission with a promise to cop a Skimmer the following afternoon and spend the next night on Kos. I recall our last words.

  “Take care, Konstantin. I have been dreaming bad dreams.”

  “Bosh, Cassandra. Good night.”

  And who knows but that her dreams might have been the result of a temporal shockwave moving backwards from a 9.6 Richter reading?

  A certain cruel gleam filling his eyes, Dos Santos applauded as Hasan hurled Rolem to the ground with a thunderous crash. That particular earthshaker continued, however, long after the golem had climbed back to his feet and gotten into another crouch, his arms doing serpent-things in the Arab’s direction. The ground shook and shook.

  “What power! Still do I feel it!” cried Dos Santos. “Olé!”

  “It is a seismic disturbance,” said George. “Even though I’m not a geologist—”

  “Earthquake!” yelled his wife, dropping an unpasteurized date she had been feeding Myshtigo.

  There was no reason to run, no place to run to. There was nothing nearby that could fall on us. The ground was level and pretty barren. So we just sat there and were thrown about, even knocked flat a few times. The fires did amazing things.

  Rolem’s time was up and he went stiff then, and Hasan came and sat with George and me. The tremors lasted the better part of an hour, and they came again, more weakly, many times during that night. After the first bad shock had run its course, we got in touch with the Port. The instruments there showed that the center of the thing lay a good distance to the north of us.

  A bad distance, really.

  . . . In the Mediterranean.

  The Aegean, to be more specific.

  I felt sick, and suddenly I was.

  I tried to put through a call to Kos.

  Nothing.

  My Cassandra, my lovely lady, my princess. . . . Where was she? For two hours I tried to find out. Then the Port called me.

  It was Lorel’s voice, not just some lob watch operator’s.

  “Uh—Conrad, I don’t know how to tell you, exactly, what happened . . .”

  “Just talk,” I said, “and stop when you’re finished.”

  “An observe-satellite passed your way about twelve minutes ago,” he crackled across the bands. “Several of the Aegean islands were no longer present in the pictures it transmitted . . .”

  “No,” I said.

  “I’m afraid that Kos was one of them.”

  “No,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” he told me, “but that is the way it shows. I don’t know what else to say. . . .”

  “That’s enough,” I said. “That’s all. That’s it. Goodbye. We’ll talk more later. No! I guess— No!”

  “Wait! Conrad!”

  I went mad.

  Bats, shaken loose from the night, were swooping about me. I struck out with my right hand and killed one as it flashed in my direction. I waited a few seconds and killed another. Then I picked up a big rock with both hands and was about to smash the radio when George laid a hand on my shoulder, and I dropped the rock and knocked his hand away and backhanded him across the mouth. I don’t know what became of him then, but as I stooped to raise the rock once more I heard the sound of footfalls behind me. I dropped to one knee and pivoted on it, scooping up a handful of sand to throw in someone’s eyes. They were all of them there: Myshtigo and Red Wig and Dos Santos, Rameses, Ellen, three local civil servants, and Hasan—approaching in a group. Someone yelled “Scatter!” when they saw my face, and they fanned out.

  Then they were everyone I’d ever hated—I could feel it. I saw other faces, heard other voices. Everyone I’d ever known, hated, wanted to smash, had smashed, stood there resurrected before the fire, and only the whites of their teeth were showing through the shadows that crossed over their faces as they smiled and came toward me, bearing various dooms in their hands, and soft, persuasive words on their lips—so I threw the sand at the foremost and rushed him.

  My uppercut knocked him over backward, then two Egyptians were on me from both sides.

  I shook them loose, and in the corner of my colder eye saw a great Arab with something like a black avocado in his hand. He was swinging it toward my head, so I dropped down. He had been coming in my direction and I managed to give his stomach more than just a shove, so he sat down suddenly. Then the two men I had thrown away were back on me again. A woman was screaming, somewhere in the distance, but I couldn’t see any women.

  I tore my right arm free and batted someone with it, and the man went down and another took his place. From straight ahead a blue man threw a rock which struck me on the shoulder and only made me madder. I raised a kicking body into the air and threw it against another, then I hit someone with my fist. I shook myself. My galabieh was torn and dirty, so I tore it the rest of the way off and threw it away.

  I looked around. They had stopped coming at me, and it wasn’t fair—it wasn’t fair that they should stop then when I wanted so badly to see things breaking. So I raised up the man at my feet and slapped him down again. Then I raised him up again and someone yelled “Eh! Karaghiosis!” and began calling me names in broken Greek. I let the man fall back to the ground and turned.

  There, before the fire—there were two of them: one tall and bearded, the other squat and heavy and hairless and molded out of a mixture of putty and earth.

  “My friend says he will break you, Greek!” called out the tall one, as he did something to the other’s back.

  I moved toward them and the man of putty and mud sprang at me.

  He tripped me, but I came up again fast and caught him beneath the armpits and threw him off to the side. But he recovered his footing as rapidly as I had, and he came back again and caught me behind the neck with one hand. I did the same to him, also seizing his elbow—and we locked together there, and he was strong.

  Because he was strong, I kept changing holds, testing his strength. He was also fast, accommodating every move I made almost as soon as I thought of it.

  I threw my arms up between his, hard, and stepped back on my reinforced leg. Freed for a moment, we orbited each other, seeking another opening.

  I kept my arms low and I was bent well forward because of his shortness. For a moment my arms were too near my sides, and he moved in faster than I had seen anyone move before, ever, and he caught me in a body lock that squeezed the big flat flowers of moisture out of my pores and caused a great pain in my sides.

  Still his arms tightened, and I knew that it would not be long before he broke me unless I could break his hold.

  I doubled my hands into fists and got them against his belly and pushed. His grip tightened. I stepped backward and heaved forward with both arms. My hands went up higher between us and I got my right fist against the palm of my left hand and began to push them together and lift with my arms. My head swam as my arms came up higher, and my kidneys were on fire. Then I tightened all the muscles in my back and my shoulders and felt the strength flow down through my arms and come together in my hands, and I smashed them up toward the sky and his chin happened to be in the way, but it didn’t stop them.

  My arms shot up over my head and he fell backward.

  It should have broken a man’s neck, the force of that big snap that came when my hands struck his chin and he got a look at his heels from the
backside.

  But he sprang up immediately, and I knew then that he was no mortal wrestler, but one of those creatures born not of woman; rather, I knew, he had been torn Antaeus-like from the womb of the Earth herself.

  I brought my hands down hard on his shoulders and he dropped to his knees. I caught him across the throat then and stepped to his right side and got my left knee under the lower part of his back. I leaned forward, bearing down on his thighs and shoulders, trying to break him.

  But I couldn’t. He just kept bending until his head touched the ground and I couldn’t push him any further.

  No one’s back bends like that and doesn’t snap, but his did.

  Then I heaved up with my knee and let go, and he was on me again—that fast.

  So I tried to strangle him. My arms were much longer than his. I caught him by the throat with both hands, my thumbs pressing against what should have been his windpipe. He got his arms across mine though, at the elbows and inside, and began to pull downward and out. I kept squeezing, waiting for his face to darken, his eyes to bug out. My elbows began to bend under his downward pressure.

  Then his arms came across and caught me by the throat.

  And we stood there and choked one another. Only he wouldn’t be strangled.

  His thumbs were like two spikes pressing into the muscles in my neck. I felt my face flush. My temples began to throb.

  Off in the distance, I heard a scream:

  “Stop it, Hasan! It’s not supposed to do that!”

  It sounded like Red Wig’s voice. Anyhow, that’s the name that came into my head: Red Wig. Which meant that Donald Dos Santos was somewhere nearby. And she had said “Hasan,” a name written on another picture that came suddenly clear.

  Which meant that I was Conrad and that I was in Egypt, and that the expressionless face swimming before me was therefore that of the golem-wrestler, Rolem, a creature which could be set for five times the strength of a human being and probably was so set, a creature which could be given the reflexes of an adrenalized cat, and doubtless had them in full operation.

  Only a golem wasn’t supposed to kill, except by accident, and Rolem was trying to kill me.

  Which meant that his governor wasn’t functioning.

  I released my choke, seeing that it wasn’t working, and I placed the palm of my left hand beneath his right elbow. Then I reached across the top of his arms and seized his right wrist with my other hand, and I crouched as low as I could and pushed up on his elbow and pulled up on his wrist.

  As he went off balance to his left and the grip was broken I kept hold of the wrist, twisting it so that the elbow was exposed upwards. I stiffened my left hand, snapped it up beside my ear, and brought it down across the elbow joint.

  Nothing. There was no snapping sound. The arm just gave way, bending backward at an unnatural angle.

  I released the wrist and he fell to one knee. Then he stood again, quickly, and as he did so the arm straightened itself and then bent forward again into a normal position.

  If I knew Hasan’s mind, then Rolem’s timer had been set for maximum—two hours. Which was a pretty long time, all things considered.

  But this time around I knew who I was and what I was doing. Also, I knew what went into the structuring of a golem. This one was a wrestling golem. Therefore, it could not box.

  I cast a quick look back over my shoulder, to the place where I had been standing when the whole thing had started—over by the radio tent. It was about fifty feet away.

  He almost had me then. Just during that split second while I had turned my attention to the rear he had reached out and seized me behind the neck with one hand and caught me beneath the chin with the other.

  He might have broken my neck, had he been able to follow through, but there came another temblor at that moment—a severe one, which cast us both to the ground—and I broke this hold, also.

  I scrambled to my feet seconds later, and the earth was still shaking. Rolem was up too, though, and facing me again.

  We were like two drunken sailors fighting on a storm-tossed ship. . . .

  He came at me and I gave ground.

  I hit him with a left jab, and while he snatched at my arm I punched him in the stomach. Then I backed off.

  He came on again and I kept throwing punches. Boxing was to him what the fourth dimension is to me—he just couldn’t see it. He kept advancing, shaking off my punches, and I kept retreating in the direction of the radio tent, and the ground kept shaking, and somewhere a woman was screaming, and I heard a shouted “Olé!” as I landed a right below the belt, hoping to jar his brains a bit.

  Then we were there and I saw what I wanted—the big rock I’d intended to use on the radio. I feinted with my left, then seized him, shoulder-and-thigh, and raised him high up over my head.

  I bent backward, tightened up my muscles, and hurled him down upon the rock.

  It caught him in the stomach.

  He began to rise again, but more slowly than he had before, and I kicked him in the stomach, three times, with my great reinforced right boot, and I watched him sink back down.

  A strange whirring sound had begun in his midsection.

  The ground shook again. Rolem crumpled, stretched out, and the only sign of motion was in the fingers of his left hand. They kept clenching and unclenching—reminding me, oddly, of Hasan’s hands that night back at the hounfor.

  Then I turned slowly and they were all standing there: Myshtigo and Ellen, and Dos Santos with a puffed-up cheek, Red Wig, George, Rameses and Hasan, and the three plastaged Egyptians. I took a step toward them then and they began to fan out again, their faces filling with fear. But I shook my head.

  “No, I’m all right now,” I said, “but leave me alone. I’m going down to the river to bathe.” I took seven steps, and then someone must have pulled out the plug, because I gurgled, everything swirled, and the world ran away down the drain.

  The days that followed were ashes and the nights were iron. The spirit that had been torn from my soul was buried deeper than any mummy that lay mouldering beneath those sands. It is said that the dead forget the dead in the house of Hades, Cassandra, but I hoped it was not so. I went through the motions of conducting a tour, and Lorel suggested that I appoint someone else to finish it out and take a leave of absence myself.

  I couldn’t.

  What would I do then? Sit and brood in some Old Place, cadging drinks from unwary travelers? No. Some kind of motion is always essential at such times; its forms eventually generate a content for their empty insides. So I went on with the tour and turned my attention to the small mysteries it contained.

  I took Rolem apart and studied his governor. It had been broken, of course—which meant that either I had done it during the early stages of our conflict, or Hasan had done it as he had souped him up to take the fight out of me. If Hasan had done it, then he did not just want me beaten, but dead. If such was the case, then the question was, Why? I wondered whether his employer knew that I had once been Karaghiosis. If he did, though, why should he want to kill the founder and first Secretary of his own Party?—the man who had sworn that he would not see the Earth sold out from under him and turned into a sporting house by a pack of blue aliens—not see it without fighting, anyhow—and had organized about himself a cabal which systematically lowered the value of all Vegan-owned Terran property to zero, and even went so far as to raze the Talerites’ lush realty office on Madagascar—the man whose ideals he allegedly espoused, though they were currently being channeled into more peaceful, legalistic modes of property-defense—why should he want that man dead?

  Therefore, he had either sold out the Party, or he didn’t know who I was and had had some other end in mind when he’d instructed Hasan to kill me.

  Or else Hasan was acting under someone else’s orders.

  But who else could there be? And
again, why?

  I had no answer. I decided I wanted one.

  The first condolence had been George’s.

  “I’m sorry, Conrad,” he’d said, looking past my elbow, and then down at the sand, and then glancing up quickly into my face.

  Saying human things upset him, and made him want to go away. I could tell. It is doubtful that the parade consisting of Ellen and myself, which had passed that previous summer, had occupied much of his attention. His passions stopped outside the biological laboratory. I remember when he’d dissected the last dog on Earth. After four years of scratching his ears and combing the fleas from his tail and listening to him bark, George had called Rolf to him one day. Rolf had trotted in, bringing along the old dishrag they’d always played at tug-of-war with, and George had tugged him real close and given him a hypo and then opened him up. He’d wanted to get him while he was still in his prime. Still has the skeleton mounted in his lab. He’d also wanted to raise his kids—Mark and Dorothy and Jim—in Skinner Boxes, but Ellen had put her foot down each time (like bang! bang! bang!) in post-pregnancy seizures of motherhood which had lasted for at least a month—which had been just long enough to spoil the initial stimuli-balances George had wanted to establish. So I couldn’t really see him as having much desire to take my measure for a wooden sleeping bag of the underground sort. If he’d wanted me dead, it would probably have been subtle, fast, and exotic—with something like Divban rabbit-venom. But no, he didn’t care that much. I was sure.

  Ellen herself, while she is capable of intense feelings, is ever the faulty windup doll. Something always goes sprong before she can take action on her feelings, and by the next day she feels as strongly about something else. She’d choked me to death back at the Port, and as far as she was concerned that affair was a dead issue. Her condolence went something like this: