American Science Fiction

by Gary K. Wolfe

  “Conrad, you just don’t know how sorry I am! Really. Even though I never met her, I know how you must feel,” and her voice went up and down the scale, and I knew she believed what she was saying, and I thanked her too.

  Hasan, though, came up beside me while I was standing there, staring out over the suddenly swollen and muddy Nile. We stood together for a time and then he said, “Your woman is gone and your heart is heavy. Words will not lighten the weight, and what is written is written. But let it also be put down that I grieve with you.” Then we stood there awhile longer and he walked away.

  I didn’t wonder about him. He was the one person who could be dismissed, even though his hand had set the machine in motion. He never held grudges; he never killed for free. He had no personal motive to kill me. That his condolences were genuine, I was certain. Killing me would have nothing to do with the sincerity of his feelings in a matter like this. A true professional must respect some sort of boundary between self and task.

  Myshtigo said no words of sympathy. It would have been alien to his nature. Among the Vegans, death is a time of rejoicing. On the spiritual level it means sagl—completion—the fragmentation of the psyche into little pleasure-sensing pinpricks, which are scattered all over the place to participate in the great universal orgasm; and on the material plane it is represented by ansakundabad’t—the ceremonial auditing of most of the deceased’s personal possessions, the reading of his distribution-desire and the division of his wealth, accompanied by much feasting, singing, and drinking.

  Dos Santos said to me: “It is a sad thing that has happened to you, my friend. It is to lose the blood of one’s own veins to lose one’s woman. Your sorrow is great and you cannot be comforted. It is like a smoldering fire that will not die out, and it is a sad and terrible thing.

  “Death is cruel and it is dark,” he finished, and his eyes were moist—for be it Gypsy, Jew, Moor, or what have you, a victim is a victim to a Spaniard, a thing to be appreciated on one of those mystically obscure levels which I lack.

  Then Red Wig came up beside me and said, “Dreadful. . . . Sorry. Nothing else to say, to do, but sorry.”

  I nodded.

  “Thanks.”

  “And there is something I must ask you. Not now, though. Later.”

  “Sure,” I said, and I returned to watching the river after they left, and I thought about those last two. They had sounded as sorry as everyone else, but it seemed they had to be mixed up in the golem business, somehow. I was sure, though, that it had been Diane who had screamed while Rolem had been choking me, screamed for Hasan to stop him. That left Don, and I had by then come to entertain strong doubts that he ever did anything without first consulting her.

  Which left nobody.

  And there was no real motive apparent. . . .

  And it could all have been an accident. . . .

  But . . .

  But I had this feeling that someone wanted to kill me. I knew that Hasan was not above taking two jobs at the same time, and for different employers, if there was no conflict of interests.

  And this made me happy.

  It gave me a purpose, something to do.

  There’s really nothing quite like someone’s wanting you dead to make you want to go on living. I would find him, find out why, and stop him.

  Death’s second pass was fast, and as much as I would have liked to have pinned it on a human agent, I couldn’t. It was just one of those diddles of dumb destiny which sometimes come like uninvited guests at dinnertime. Its finale, however, left me quite puzzled and gave me some new, confusing thoughts to think.

  It came like this. . . .

  Down by the river, that great fertile flooder, that eraser of boundaries and father of plane geometry, sat the Vegan, making sketches of the opposite bank. I suppose had he been on that bank he would have been sketching the one he sat upon, but this is cynical conjecture. What bothered me was the fact that he had come off alone, down to this warm, marshy spot, had not told anyone where he was going, and had brought along nothing more lethal than a No. 2 pencil.

  It happened.

  An old, mottled log which had been drifting in near the shore suddenly ceased being an old, mottled log. A long, serpentine back end whipped skyward, a bushel full of teeth appeared at the other end, and lots of little legs found solid ground and started acting like wheels.

  I yelled and snatched at my belt.

  Myshtigo dropped his pad and bolted.

  It was on him, though, and I couldn’t fire then.

  So I made a dash, but by the time I got there it had two coils around him and he was about two shades bluer, and those teeth were closing in on him.

  Now, there is one way to make any kind of constrictor loosen up, at least for a moment. I grabbed for its high head, which had slowed down just a bit as it contemplated its breakfast, and I managed to catch my fingers under the scaley ridges at the sides of that head.

  I dug my thumbs into its eyes as hard as I could.

  Then a spastic giant hit me with a graygreen whip.

  I picked myself up and I was about ten feet from where I had been standing. Myshtigo had been thrown further up the bank. He was recovering his feet just as it attacked again.

  Only it attacked me, not him.

  It reared up about eight feet off the ground and toppled toward me. I threw myself to the side and that big, flat head missed me by inches, its impact showering me with dirt and pebbles.

  I rolled further and started to rise, but the tail came around and knocked me down again. Then I scrambled backward, but was too late to avoid the coil it threw. It caught me low around the hips and I fell again.

  Then a pair of blue arms wrapped themselves around the body above the coil, but they couldn’t hold on for more than a few seconds. Then we were both tied up in knots.

  I struggled, but how do you fight a thick, slippery armored cable with messes of little legs that keep tearing at you? My right arm was pinned to my side by then, and I couldn’t reach far enough with my left hand to do any more gouging. The coils tightened. The head moved toward me and I tore at the body. I beat at it and I clawed it, and I finally managed to tear my right arm free, giving up some skin in the process.

  I blocked with my right hand as the head descended. My hand came up beneath its lower jaw, caught it, and held it there, keeping the head back. The big coil tightened around my waist, more powerful than even the grip of the golem had been. Then it shook its head sidewards, away from my hand, and the head came down and the jaws opened wide.

  Myshtigo’s struggles must have irritated it and slowed it some, giving me time for my last defense.

  I thrust my hands up into its mouth and held its jaws apart.

  The roof of its mouth was slimy and my palm began to slip along it, slowly. I pressed down harder on the lower jaw, as hard as I could. The mouth opened another half foot and seemed locked there.

  It tried to draw back then, to make me let go, but its coils bound us too tightly to give it the necessary footage.

  So it unwound a little, straightening some, and pulling back its head. I gained a kneeling position. Myshtigo was in a sagging crouch about six feet away from me.

  My right hand slipped some more, almost to the point where I would lose all my leverage.

  Then I heard a great cry.

  The shudder came almost simultaneously. I snapped my arms free as I felt the thing’s strength wane for a second. There was a dreadful clicking of teeth and a final constriction. I blacked out for a moment.

  Then I was fighting free, untangling myself. The smooth wooden shaft which had skewered the boadile was taking the life from it, and its movements suddenly became spasmodic rather than aggressive.

  I was knocked down twice by all its lashing about, but I got Myshtigo free, and we got about fifty feet away and watched it die. This took quite awh
ile.

  Hasan stood there, expressionless. The assagai he had spent so much time practicing with had done its work. When George dissected the creature later we learned that the shaft had lodged within two inches of its heart, severing the big artery. By the way, it had two dozen legs, evenly distributed on either side, as might be expected.

  Dos Santos stood beside Hasan and Diane stood beside Dos Santos. Everyone else from the camp was there, too.

  “Good show,” I said. “Fine shot. Thanks.”

  “It was nothing,” Hasan replied.

  It was nothing, he had said. Nothing but the death blow to my notion that he had gimmicked the golem. If Hasan had tried to kill me then, why should he have saved me from the boadile?

  Unless what he had said back at the Port was the overriding truth—that he had been hired to protect the Vegan. If that was his main job and killing me was only secondary, then he would have had to save me as a by-product of keeping Myshtigo alive.

  But then . . .

  Oh hell. Forget it.

  I threw a stone as far as I could, and another. Our Skimmers would be flown up to our campsite the following day and we would take off for Athens, stopping only to drop Rameses and the three others at New Cairo. I was glad I was leaving Egypt, with its must and its dust and its dead, half-animal deities. I was already sick of the place.

  Then Phil’s call came through from the Port, and Rameses called me into the radio tent.

  “Yeah?” said I, to the radio.

  “Conrad, this is Phil. I’ve just written her elegy and I should like to read it to you. Even though I never met her, I’ve heard you speak of her and I’ve seen her picture, so I think I’ve done a pretty good job—”

  “Please, Phil. I’m not interested in the consolations of poetry right now. Some other time, perhaps—”

  “This is not one of the fill-in sort. I know that you do not like those, and in a way I do not blame you.”

  My hand hovered above the cutoff toggle, paused, reached for one of Rameses’ cigarettes instead.

  “Sure, go ahead. I’m listening.”

  And he did, and it wasn’t a bad job, either. I don’t remember much of it. I just remember those crisp, clear words coming from halfway around the world, and me standing there, bruised inside and out, hearing them. He described the virtues of the Nymph whom Poseidon had reached for but lost to his brother Hades. He called for a general mourning among the elements. And as he spoke my mind went time-traveling back to those two happy months on Kos, and everything since then was erased; and we were back aboard the Vanitie, sailing toward our picnic islet with its semi-sacred grove, and we were bathing together, and lying together in the sun, holding hands and not saying anything, just feeling the sunfall, like a waterfall bright and dry and gentle, come down upon our pink and naked spirits, there on the endless beach that circled and circled the tiny realm and always came back to us.

  And he was finished and cleared his throat a couple times, and my isle sank from sight, carrying that one part of me along with it, because that was the time that was.

  “Thanks, Phil,” I said. “That was very nice.”

  “I am pleased that you find it appropriate,” he said. Then, “I am flying to Athens this afternoon. I should like to join you on this leg of your tour, if it is all right with you.”

  “Surely,” I replied. “May I ask why, though?”

  “I have decided that I want to see Greece once more. Since you are going to be there it might make it seem a little more like the old days. I’d like to take a last look at some of the Old Places.”

  “You make it sound rather final.”

  “Well . . . I’ve pushed the S-S series about as far as it will go. I fancy I can feel the mainspring running down now. Maybe it will take a few more windings and maybe it won’t. At any rate, I want to see Greece again and I feel as if this is my last chance.”

  “I’m sure you’re wrong, but we’ll all be dining at the Garden Altar tomorrow evening, around eight.”

  “Fine. I’ll see you then.”

  “Check.”

  “Goodbye, Conrad.”

  “Goodbye.”

  I went and showered and rubbed me with liniment, and I put on clean clothing. I was still sore in several places, but at least I felt clean. Then I went and found the Vegan, who had just finished doing the same thing, and I fixed him with my baleful glare.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” I stated, “but one of the reasons you wanted me to run this show is because I have a high survival potential. Is that correct?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Thus far, I have done my best to see that it did not remain potential, but that it was actively employed to promote the general welfare.”

  “Was that what you were doing when you attacked the entire group single-handed?”

  I started to reach for his throat, thought better of it, dropped my hand. I was rewarded by a flicker of fear that widened his eyes and twitched the corners of his mouth. He took a step backward.

  “I’ll overlook that,” I told him. “I am here only to take you where you want to go, and to see that you come back with a whole skin. You caused me a small problem this morning by making yourself available as boadile bait. Be warned, therefore, that one does not go to hell to light a cigarette. When you wish to go off by yourself, check first to see whether you are in safe country.” His gaze faltered. He looked away. “If you are not,” I continued, “then take along an armed escort—since you refuse to carry weapons yourself. That is all I have to say. If you do not wish to cooperate, tell me now and I’ll quit and get you another guide. Lorel has already suggested I do this, anyhow.

  “So what’s the word?” I asked.

  “Did Lorel really say that?”

  “Yes.”

  “How extraordinary. . . . Well, certainly, yes, I shall comply with your request. I see that it is a prudent one.”

  “Great. You said you wanted to visit the Valley of Queens again this afternoon. Rameses will take you. I don’t feel like doing it myself. We’re pulling out tomorrow morning at ten. Be ready.”

  I walked away then, waiting for him to say something—just one word even.

  He didn’t.

  Fortunately, both for the survivors and for the generations as yet unborn, Scotland had not been hard hit during the Three Days. I fetched a bucket of ice from the freeze-unit and a bottle of soda from our mess tent. I turned on the cooling coil beside my bunk, opened a fifth from out of my private stock, and spent the rest of the afternoon reflecting upon the futility of all human endeavor.

  Late that evening, after I had sobered up to an acceptable point and scrounged me a bite to eat, I armed myself and went looking for some fresh air.

  I heard voices as I neared the eastern end of the warning perimeter, so I sat down in darkness, resting my back against a largish rock, and tried to eavesdrop. I’d recognized the vibrant diminuendoes of Myshtigo’s voice, and I wanted to hear what he was saying.

  I couldn’t, though.

  They were a little too far away, and desert acoustics are not always the finest in the world. I sat there straining with that part of me which listens, and it happened as it sometimes does:

  I was seated on a blanket beside Ellen and my arm was around her shoulders. My blue arm. . . .

  The whole thing faded as I recoiled from the notion of being a Vegan, even in a pseudotelepathic wish-fulfillment, and I was back beside my rock once again.

  I was lonesome, though, and Ellen had seemed softer than the rock, and I was still curious.

  So I found myself back there once more, observing. . . .

  “. . . can’t see it from here,” I was saying, “but Vega is a star of the first magnitude, located in what your people call the constellation Lyra.”

  “What’s it like on Taler?” asked Ellen.r />
  There was a long pause. Then:

  “Meaningful things are often the things people are least able to describe. Sometimes, though, it is a problem in communicating something for which there is no corresponding element in the person to whom you are speaking. Taler is not like this place. There are no deserts. The entire world is landscaped. But . . . Let me take that flower from your hair. There. Look at it. What do you see?”

  “A pretty white flower. That’s why I picked it and put it in my hair.”

  “But it is not a pretty white flower. Not to me, anyhow. Your eyes perceive light with wavelengths between about 4000 and 7200 angstrom units. The eyes of a Vegan look deeper into the ultraviolet, for one thing, down to around 3000. We are blind to what you refer to as ‘red,’ but on this ‘white’ flower I see two colors for which there are no words in your language. My body is covered with patterns you cannot see, but they are close enough to those of the others in my family so that another Vegan, familiar with the Shtigo-gens, could tell my family and province on our first meeting. Some of our paintings look garish to Earth eyes, or even seem to be all of one color—blue, usually—because the subtleties are invisible to them. Much of our music would seem to you to contain big gaps of silence, gaps which are actually filled with melody. Our cities are clean and logically disposed. They catch the light of day and hold it long into the night. They are places of slow movement, pleasant sounds. This means much to me, but I do not know how to describe it to a—human.”

  “But people—Earth people, I mean—live on your worlds. . . .”

  “But they do not really see them or hear them or feel them the way we do. There is a gulf we can appreciate and understand, but we cannot really cross it. That is why I cannot tell you what Taler is like. It would be a different world to you than the world it is to me.”