A Billion Days of Earth

by Piserchia, Doris

  “His name?”

  “He lives on Ujan Street and goes by the name of Cadam Rik.”

  “That means nothing to me,” said Filly One.

  The brown man regarded him sadly. “His wife’s name is Aril.”

  “Ah, yes, and there we have it.”

  “A family name. Filly Thirty-Two of Chin produced one named Aril by a woman he picked up in the streets. The child was sent here and placed in an orphanage. She was adopted by a young couple who had no children.”

  The expression of Filly One was blank. “And Aril grew and married and continued the Filly heritage.”

  “Her child is the seed of Filly Thirty-Two, watered down, but nevertheless a son of Satan.”

  “You’re so very eloquent.”

  “I’m a geneticist, sir, not a priest. If you recall, I was against this research from the beginning. I had no wish to work for a man bent on self-destruction.”

  “You are courageous. Or are you a fool?”

  The little man squared his shoulders. “Your line is finished. Not in the next generation, but now. The mixture of bad seeds has run its course and from now to eternity the family of Filly will produce monsters. It was written in the beginning that cousins shouldn’t marry. When men compound this error by marrying aunts and nephews, brothers and sisters, for generations upon generations, they reap the consequences.”

  Filly One sat, relaxed but watchful.

  The visitor trembled. “Do you think I don’t notice the men you’ve set to follow me? Confidences such as I have accumulated against the Filly family must be cut off at the source, because men like yourself can’t understand that another man might care nothing for what his knowledge was worth.” Again the visitor trembled. “I have a thing growing in my head. It’s going to kill me. It may happen quickly, but probably not before your men get to me, once you give them the word. I’d like to finish the life God gave me but that’s up to you. I care nothing for what I’ve learned, other than that it’s knowledge of a kind I’ve always sought. Genetics is my work and my passion. I know the Filly family has spawned each and every atavism on Earth. My disgust at this is impersonal.”

  “I have no wish for your death,” said Filly One.

  The little man’s expression remained grave. “I have nothing but my life, and I desire to continue it. The decision is in your hands. I believe you will decide against me. Still, I see no virtue in accepting death as if it were destiny. I’m asking you to let me live. Your secret is safe with me. It will never go from me to another living soul.”

  chapter iv

  Aril’s mind cracked the day the boy was born.

  He was still their son, she said to Rik. He was so small, so harmless, so innocent and helpless. Rik had to build a cage for their son before he was two years old.

  They adopted a little girl and named her Tene. Aril refused to put Sten away. He was so small, she said; so innocent and helpless, so harmless. Rik took him away where he belonged, and Aril tore up the house and screamed until he told her. She went after the boy and brought him back. She accused Rik of loving the wrong child. Tene had everything while poor Sten had nothing but her love.

  He could never decide how she really felt about the two, whether she loved Sten and hated Tene, whether she hated them all, whether she could differentiate between the two emotions.

  When Sten was six, he got out of his cage and killed his sister. Too late, Rik stopped listening to Aril. Too late, he took Sten to his rightful place. He buried his daughter and stood blankly, silently, and watched Aril make another grave for her lost son, watched her put his toys in it. Only when she turned her back on the real grave did he begin to give her up. She had forgotten the wrong child and he would never forgive her.

  That was all in yesterday. Today was now, and today he was going to the zoo.

  It covered two hundred acres. The grounds looked green and attractive from a distance, but before one drew near the entrance strong odors assaulted the senses. Curiosity stood fast against almost anything, so the zoo was rarely empty of visitors. There were plenty of sidewalks between the cages. Nobody walked on the grass. It had been ruined by animals who roamed around after closing hours. Outhouses were a common fixture, but the animals preferred to drop their britches wherever the inspiration found them, and visitors never sunbathed or had picnic lunches at the zoo.

  Nose filters were on sale at the admission stand. They cost a dollar apiece and were effective for about three hours. On a long weekend there were never enough filters to go around, so it wasn’t unusual to see a visitor suddenly drop everything and make a desperate dash for the exit.

  The first thing a visitor saw after stepping past the admission stand was a large pond. It stank, but it was necessary. A direct hosing had bad effects on some animals. The temperamental ones were taken from their cages after hours and tossed into the pond. The shock of hitting the water after baking all day took some of the starch out of them. Once in a while one or two went berserk and ran speeding through the grass, in which case they had to be chased down with a net and thrown back in the pond.

  A few yards farther were long rows of open cages. They were occupied by young animals of mixed genders. The older an inmate became, the more his savagery increased, so that by the time he reached puberty he lived alone. Infants or cripples who couldn’t feed themselves were cared for in a nursery which was not open to the public.

  Rik went to the zoo twice a month. He didn’t buy nose filters, didn’t stroll around the pond, didn’t stand by the cages and observe the animals at their play. His course was always the same: past the pond, by the open cages, through shade trees to a sandy path that led between closed cages and onward beyond the sight and sound of humanity.

  Today, as always, he headed for the maximum-security section. This building was wooden on the outside but the inside walls were of solid steel. Security wouldn’t have been so tight if an escaping animal could be depended upon to head for the desert and freedom. They never did this. Always they headed for the heart of the city where they holed up and preyed on night walkers and children.

  Animals seldom escaped from the maximum-security section. They weren’t taken from their cells. The floors were hosed once a day and the debris washed into wall gutters. Securing food was a problem. The zoo supervisor bought from anybody, and he usually received carcasses too ripe for the human market.

  The caretaker of maximum-security knew Rik by sight and didn’t ask for a pass. He stepped aside and watched as Rik walked into hell.

  Huge fans blew overhead but they couldn’t make the place cool. No recorded music could drown out the sounds, no nose filters could cope with the smell of maximum-security. The public couldn’t have coped with this section of the zoo. No one wanted to experience real hell, nobody had a desire to know real horror. In the raw, these were intolerable. Only the taste of them was needed. It was all right to approach and observe from a safe distance. Reality wasn’t a safe distance.

  The cages were large. Most were bare of furnishings. The straw ticks were ripped apart. There were exercise bars in some cages, some held rubber balls, some had unrecognizable objects in them. Rik walked down the aisle and stayed in the center of the passage. Something hurtled at him from the right. It loomed enormous in his peripheral vision, crashed against the bars with a terrible thud. A long arc of urine came from the cage to his left, spattered in front of him. He stopped and backed up, swerved and then froze as something touched his back. He knew it was the nail of a paw.

  He didn’t look at anything but the paw as he turned. Carefully he backed away a pace, turned again and oriented himself in the aisle. He walked ahead.

  An animal on the right leaned heavily against the bars of his cage. His body was plastered so snugly on them that there seemed to be no dividing line between metal and protoplasm. The animal yearned not for freedom but for the female in the cage across the aisle. Had they cut off his vision or put someone else in the cage that held his viscera and his mind
transfixed, he would have died. This was how he lived, in a constant state of excitation or agony, his madness focused, his motive singular: he must dissolve the metal bars with his will, arrive at his destiny and take and consume, first with his body and then with his long sharp teeth.

  Rik kept walking, and the light became dimmer until the things hurtling at him from every side were only shadowy shapes. Hell had different levels. The deeper a visitor descended, or the farther he went down the aisle, the more lost became the souls imprisoned there. Gloom was enhanced as shadows thickened. Sounds already sinister and tainted with despair became merely despairing. Here there was nothing that was known. Evil was a shadow within a shadow, weakened and tenuous when no light probed inward.

  Dimness flooded the aisle now, likewise silence, save for faint rustlings, furtive movement, watchful seeking, savage anticipation, cunning chuckling. Came the rasping of paws, and suddenly there was a cage in which there was only metal. Everywhere there was metal. Fat round pipes formed mazes that created an environment for a creature born millions of years ahead of its time.

  Furry hind, sleek and obese, backed out of a high tube, paws clutched and impaled steel surfaces with ease, long body emerged, barely discernible in the dimness but seen with dreadful clarity when observed by a stricken soul. Down the pipes, out of the hole, then emergence from pit-like night into half-day, paws touching the floor, head cocked, ears perked, nose twitching, eyes seeking, teeth bared, ferocity curdled in the throat like a dammed torrent. All at once came the quick sensing of a throbbing heart beyond the bars of home.

  Crouching on all fours, belly touching the floor, the thing’s two eyes blazed into two other eyes that blanched, flinched, cringed. Head cocked, the thing’s paws reached out and the body scaled the bars until it seemed to be standing at normal height. Light entered the eyes, penetrated the brain for a split second and incredibly the mouth opened to cut like a sword.

  “Da da da da da.”

  Rik stumbled back against another cage, stood listening to the howling in his mind, and all the while a strange tongue hungrily traced the outlines of his neck and head. Eager paws fumbled at his chest and tried to draw him closer. He pulled free.

  “He hasn’t done that in years,” said the caretaker, at the exit. “Hasn’t tried to speak, I mean.”

  “No,” said Rik.

  “He’s young, strong as a mountain. He’ll live a long time.”

  Rik gave him money and left.

  A dusty boulevard, a cobblestoned alley, shadows, a straight course for two blocks—these led to a lot filled with junk. A glittering step stuck out of the ground in one corner of the lot. No one but a God could have made such a step, so children stayed away from it. There were six more steps below the first and at the bottom was a piece of shiny metal. Pressure on the piece caused it to sink away out of sight, leaving a black opening. By descending another set of stairs, a visitor could enter the hidden room. The field was Rik’s property and the underground room was important to him. In it was his cache of hidden treasures, his collection of Godly material. The toy he had stolen from Tontondely was deposited in the room.

  Jak, the adopted brother of Rik, was a Leng. His kind lived far away, near Big Sulphur Lake, and he had left them because they were too backward and uncivilized. They had no artificial hands, they couldn’t make machines and they lived like animals.

  The Leng’s constitution was strong, otherwise he would have died before Rik found him. Lengs couldn’t tolerate temperatures below 60 and he had lain for hours out in the Bleaks where it was never more than that and sometimes went down to 50. The climate was hot around Big Sulphur Lake and Jak had never experienced anything like the Bleaks.

  But Rik found him, took him home and cared for him and later adopted him, even found a job for him at the factory. They made artificial hands.

  When Jak received his own metal appendages, he became a changed man. Now he lived in a civilized world. No more would he use paws to pick up his food. He would learn to write with a pen, dress himself, tie his shoes, shave the hair from his chin. He had a pair of hands. The thoughts made him dizzy with exultation. He was like the Gods now. What did they have that he didn’t have?

  To Rik, who walked beside him that day, Jak said, “Why do you always wear gloves?”

  Rik whirled on him, snarled, “None of your damned business!”

  The response startled Jak and put him in a bad mood. The next day he was still in a bad mood. He sat in Rik’s underground room with a book pinched between his metal fingers. He had been looking at the book for a long time.

  “I know how old this book is,” he said suddenly. “I’ve subjected it to a dozen tests. Its age is approximately two million years. The Gods preserved it by spraying it with something. Handled carefully, it will never wear out. They left it in one of their libraries when they took to the clouds and abandoned everything.” Looking at Rik, he said, “Do you know what this book is?”

  “Plato’s philosophy.”

  Jak laid the book aside, reached out and took another book from a table. “But this is Plato’s philosophy.”

  “It will take you a long time to understand.”

  “Try me.”

  “Read any book in this room and history is what you’ll be reading. Whether it’s a book written by a man or a God, the history will be the same, with only minor variations.”

  “Go on,” said Jak.

  “We’ve mimicked the Gods, copied them. It’s almost as if we’re reliving their early experiences. Our origin is shrouded in mysticism, as was theirs. Our development was slow for millennia, and then we suddenly leaped ahead, the same as they did a billion days ago. They had the Greeks and the Romans, the Renaissance, the industrial revolution, Hitler and a population explosion, as we did.”

  “But not the same names!”

  “Yes.”

  “Not the same people!”

  “People with the same qualities.”

  Jak struggled to sit straighter in his chair. “A man named Freud was born three million years ago?”

  “And a man with the same name was born a hundred and fifty years ago.”

  “Christ lived three million years ago?”

  “And two millennia ago.”

  “I won’t accept it,” said Jak, shaking his head doggedly. “It doesn’t make sense. It’s illogical, impossible and indecent.”

  “Too coincidental?”

  “No, that’s accident. This sounds like deliberate design.”

  “None of our historical figures were given the names they used later. The names their parents gave them were changed by someone.”

  “Themselves?” said Jak.

  “That would be too coincidental. They didn’t know the Gods’ history.”

  “Then who?”

  “Who else but the Gods?”

  “But why?” Jak said in surprise.

  Rik shrugged. “It amused them. They recognized that these men had the same qualities as their own historical figures. They gave new names to our individuals and forced us to accept them.”

  “But how could two separate species have people with the exact same qualities?”

  “I don’t know. They probably weren’t really exact. Maybe evolution always follows the same pattern.”

  Jak drummed his steel fingers on his knees. For several minutes he was silent Finally he said, “History being relived. We’re doing what the Gods did.”

  “Why are you smiling?”

  “Well, I don’t feel like crying over it.”

  “You should,” said Rik. “We didn’t have to do it all over again. We could have done it differently. We could have been better.”

  “That’s just theory.”

  “Tell me a more substantial way to commit suicide.”

  Jak grinned. “Some day men will be riding on clouds. Their worries will be over. I wish I’d been born a million years later.”

  “You’d like to be as they are?”

  “Sure.”
/>
  “Why?”

  Jak frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Just answer me.”

  “Damn it, wouldn’t you like to be riding around on a cloud?”

  “What for?” said Rik.

  “For heaven’s sake, what a silly question!”

  “If it’s so silly, let me hear you answer it.”

  “I thought you admired the Gods.”

  “I haven’t made up my mind what I think about them.”

  “What’s wrong with them? Put it in a nutshell for me.”

  “They make mistakes.”

  Jak burst out laughing. “You know what’s wrong with you? You want perfection. That’s illogical.”

  “Why? Who says so?”

  Ignoring the question, Jak said, “I don’t understand how history continues. I don’t see how people and Gods can keep going the way they do.”

  “I don’t either.”

  The Leng pounced on the statement. “Don’t tell me you agree with me about something?”

  “I can’t see how idiocy continues forever. That isn’t what you meant.”

  “What do you want? An avenger? Some omnipotent wrath that will give us all what we deserve?”

  Rik chuckled. “That one word: deserve. There’s something to it, you know.”

  “Justice?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Now is no time for men to receive justice.”

  “Why?”

  “It only functions where there’s sanity and morality,” said Jak. “If men were given justice today, there wouldn’t be anyone left alive.”

  “Is that a confession?”

  “Of my own evil? No, I simply classify myself with the rest of humanity.”

  “That may be one of your problems,” said Rik.

  Jak didn’t respond to the remark. He was lost in his imagination. “Do you suppose the Gods were the first species to evolve to real intelligence on the earth?”