A Billion Days of Earth

by Piserchia, Doris

“I told you I was obvious.”

  “You told me this, you told me that! Why are you always telling me things?”

  “Because you’re always asking.”

  “Sheen has to be stopped!”

  “You can’t stop him.”

  “Surely someone can.”

  “Sheen can.” As Jak grew alert, Rik added, “Don’t count on it. He has no intention of doing things differently.”

  “You can’t know for certain, not in the absolute.”

  “I’ll put it another way. I’m as certain that Sheen won’t change his ways as I am that I won’t change mine.”

  He was hauling in a fat trout when Jak came up behind him.

  “Damn you,” said the Leng, and Rik looked around in surprise. “When I couldn’t find you, I swore to myself that it was because you were somewhere doing something about it.”

  “About what?”

  “You have the gall to ask! You can stand there fishing as if it were all you had on your mind. You can look at me as if I’ve lost my mind.” The Leng drew a furious breath. “Just what the hell is it? Tell me the secret. Maybe that’s the answer to everything. Maybe if you can make me understand, I can go tell everyone else.”

  “Tell you what?”

  Jak roared his reply. “How can you go fishing when the world is falling down around our ears?”

  “Oh, boy.”

  “Damn you to hell.”

  “Aw.”

  “You’re so logical you make me sick,” said Jak in quiet rage. “It isn’t human to see the extinction of your neighbors and not suffer. It isn’t human to watch the world go down the drain and not experience agony.”

  “How do you know what I feel?”

  “Does that mean you’re suffering, that all this is killing you as much or more than it’s killing me? You just won’t let go, will you? Is that it? You’re dying inside, but you won’t show it? You have to go fishing to prove to yourself that you haven’t cracked?”

  Rik took the trout off the hook and dumped it in a basket. “You want me to howl and wear sack cloth? What good will it do if I look the part?” Suddenly he swung his leg and kicked the basket of fish into the water. “Why do I have to react out loud?” he yelled. “What’s so human about a screech?”

  “You can try to do something to stop all this!” Jak shouted in his face.

  “Nobody can stop it!”

  “Shit,” said Jak, and stomped away. Over his shoulder, he cried, “Men didn’t get where they are by saying things were inevitable.”

  Rik glared at the retreating figure until it was beyond the dunes. He threw himself on the sand and stared out at the water. For a long while he lay and thought, and finally he climbed to his feet and went away to find Sheen. Eventually, he came upon a silver jare lying on a rock, sunning itself.

  “Peace!” cried Sheen.

  “Go to hell.”

  “Been there. Bored stiff.”

  “You still owe me from our deal, but never mind that now. I want you to come with me.”

  “Lead the way.”

  “Not all of you.” Rik took his knife and whacked off a piece of the jare’s tail. To his astonishment, the animal shrieked, and blood flowed from the wound.

  “Shame on you, you’ve hurt the poor beast,” said Sheen.

  “My God.”

  “If you wanted a piece of me, why didn’t you say so?”

  “Will the cut heal?”

  “The pain is already gone. Think nothing of it. If there’s one thing Sheen does, he takes care of his own.”

  “He also talks too much, and that’s why I only want a little bit of you.” Rik cut off a portion of the piece of tail and dropped the rest. Sheen glided over it, made it part of himself.

  “Feel free to take me. Anytime, anytime. Love you, really.”

  Satisfied that he had sufficient but non-talkative amount of specimen, Rik spent the next hour getting back to his underground cache. Once there and safely locked in, he set up his laboratory equipment for some extensive and intensive experimenting.

  He should have quit after the first test. A thing that couldn’t be weighed or measured wasn’t even present. He took the chunk of silver material and laid it on a small scale, but the chunk promptly slid off. He laid the piece on a cupped scale where it couldn’t slide or fall out. Carefully watching the indicator, it took him a full minute to realize it was registering nothing at all. The chunk of Sheen wasn’t coming in contact with the cup, which was impossible.

  Temporarily assuming that Sheen was a liquid, he heated him in a test tube. Nothing happened. Knowing it was useless, he tried to test the silver mass for surface tension. The objects he used wouldn’t touch it.

  Aware that substances were either acids, bases or neutrals, he tested Sheen as a base by dropping a chemical on him while he lay in a spoon. The drops of fluid didn’t change color, didn’t touch Sheen, didn’t prove anything. Doubting that the creature was an acid, he nevertheless tried to prove it with another test. It was a failure.

  He put the chunk in a can of water, heated it to the boiling point, screwed on the lid and placed the can in cold water. The can collapsed, but the chunk of silver remained untouched, unchanged, unharmed.

  Sheen was cooked over an open flame. He was tested for carbon content, protein and iron, but the tests were inconclusive, since nothing came in contact with him. The specimen was roasted in lime with no effect. Attempts to purify him with nitric acid did nothing at all. He didn’t moisten glass, and probably the most startling thing of all was that he suddenly made a suspended handkerchief sag when he was placed in the middle of it, as if he had tired of playing with gravity and decided to let some of his weight settle down.

  Rik mixed a batch of quick-drying concrete and formed it around the chunk. Sheen kept oozing out of the wet cracks, pushing air bubbles before him. Working faster, Rik slapped more wet concrete on the mass until he had a mound too large to hold. He laid it on the floor and watched it harden. He learned that Sheen could get out of dry concrete as quickly as he could escape from the wet kind.

  When his back felt like breaking, he looked at his watch. For seven hours he had been bombarding Sheen with everything he could think of.

  He set up his microscope and, placing a tiny bit of the silver on a slide, he bent over to look. A tiny silver man lay in plain view, with one leg propped on a knee, casually picking his teeth with a pawnail.

  “Hi,” said Sheen, waving up at him.

  “Oh, Christ!”

  “Amen, brother. What else have you got in mind? I mean, I don’t care that you’re trying to kill me. You had to try sooner or later.”

  Rik fell back into a chair. Glaring at the microscope, he said, accusingly, “You let me waste my time.”

  The microscopic bit of silver and the larger chunk said, in unison, “You had to learn it your own way.”

  Rik leaned forward. “How much do you weigh?”

  “You mean this little bit? Hmmm. Its atomic weight is four-five-nine-point-seven-two.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Maybe so, but that’s what it is.”

  “What are you made of?”

  “One part of every element there is.”

  “That’s also impossible.”

  “Tough,” said Sheen.

  “What holds it all together?”

  “Guts, boy.”

  “You have no brain.”

  “Tut, tut, preach me no Kant.”

  “You talk without a throat.”

  “That’s only one miraculous thing about me. I talk all over the place.”

  “How?”

  “In every part of me is a head and a body. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

  “How can I kill you?”

  “For shame, I thought we were friends.”

  “Answer me.”

  “Very well,” Sheen said gently, “though you worked at it for a thousand years, you couldn’t give me a hangnail. That includes you, and your d
oggie friend and every other human in the universe. But why ask the question when you already know the answer? You were right, my pal. Go fishing. Listen to the night wind and your thoughts. Count the stars. Don’t grieve over what you can’t change.”

  chapter xi

  One of Redo’s sons was missing, hadn’t been seen for four days. The man named Kream was dispatched to find him. The quest took Kream to the charnel shed, or the slaughterhouse for the zoo.

  The person in charge of the charnel shed was a mere step above the animals in the cages. His name was Meece. His job was to provide the feeders with feed. Meat was a product which was sometimes hard to come by. Meece accepted anything, even rotten carcasses.

  Kream arrived at the charnel shed in time to find Meece stuffing a boy’s rump and a girl’s torso into his big grinder. The shed was 20-by-20 and black as the pit, in all four corners. Wax candles and incense burned on wooden barrels. The place smelled like a whorehouse with overflowing toilets.

  Meece explained to Kream. He had been having a deal of trouble with the animal-protective society. They objected to his rounding up tares and zombas and killing them. Meece was almost seven feet tall, extremely hairy and not at all intelligent. Naked to the waist and sweating buckets, he prayed and frowned and cut up carcasses, day or night. He prayed that there was no Hell. Besides the trouble with the animal protectors, he had other reasons for slaughtering indigents, orphans and an occasional personal enemy. There were the orders from above.

  The animals in maximum-security preferred the taste of human meat and somebody up there liked those animals. Give them what they wanted, were the orders. Meece got his instructions from a man named Kast. Neither the feeders nor the supervisor nor anyone else connected with the zoo had a thing to do with certain crates of ground meat that came out of the shed; only Meece and the man, Kast.

  The boy and the girl who had just been destroyed were found necking in the back seat of a car half a mile from the zoo. Meece had passed by on his way to work. The car was an old piece of junk, the kids didn’t look important, it was dark and Meece needed them, so he twisted their necks and carried them to the shed.

  Before reporting to Redo, Kream contacted some people and commissioned them to find out who paid Kast. The answer he received was the Fillys. Why? He didn’t get an answer to that question. The animals in maximum-security—the atavisms—came from every part of the continent, or so it was said. Kream thought it was too bad that there had been so little research conducted regarding them. For instance, it would be interesting to know what kind of parents gave birth to atavisms.

  Redo sobbed and pulled out big tufts of his hair. He had learned that his son filled the bowels of the atavisms in the zoo.

  “Elu, my God, what kind of people are those Fillys? They have no hearts. Isn’t the human body sacred to them?”

  “You’ve been crying for four hours. Enough.” Elu had no real wish for Redo to stop crying. What he wanted to do was flee from his own house. He was aghast at the thought of the dead boy; he was also afraid because Redo had a favor coming to him.

  “Yes, enough of everything,” Redo said, and right away Elu began to tremble. The trembling never stopped, not for as long as Elu lived.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Fillys,” said Redo.

  “Where is your mind?”

  “You refuse me?” Redo was quiet now, he was calm, but in that moment Elu knew his friend was a fiend.

  “Refuse you, never. We are like brothers.”

  “You grow pale for nothing. Do you think me a fool?”

  Yes, yes! Elu cried in his head, but with his mouth he said, “You are a pillar of efficiency. Speak, only speak. I listen.”

  “You will do me a favor?”

  “I will do you a favor.”

  “You will investigate. You will learn which people have been commissioned to do a certain thing in all the Filly estates in the world. There will be many men and they will visit the five estates simultaneously. They are to do it soon. Find out who they are.”

  White and shivering, Elu said, “I will do it.”

  “Probably they will be obscure hoodlums, little bands of gangsters we’ve never heard of.”

  “When I do this thing, that is, after I make the investigation, is the favor done?”

  His eyes distant, Redo said, “Are favors ever done?”

  “You are right,” Elu said, humbly.

  “Listen carefully and don’t be confused. Filly Six has hired people to do a job in all the estates. Filly One learned about it and wishes the job to fail. He wants me and my people to interfere and veto those people, even as they are in the act of carrying out their orders. Do you understand?”

  Elu sensed the seething emotion in the steel-trap body of the man seated near him. “The will of Filly Six is to stand,” he said in a low voice. “You want me to use my people to stop your people. You want me to kill your group.”

  “As they are in the act of carrying out their orders. You don’t have to use your closest friends.”

  Sweating profusely, Elu forced himself to sit still. “You aren’t going to use your friends?”

  “I have no wish for them to die. The group I choose will be made up of strangers. You will kill them all.”

  “Yes,” said Elu.

  “With stealth, my friend, and with guile. It must look like a world-wide robbery attempt. The group hired by Filly Six is not to be touched. Your group and mine will clash.”

  “Why do you want Filly Six to be successful?”

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  “I am to kill your hired guns?”

  “With a great deal of silence and with noisy publicity afterward.”

  White and shrunken, Elu said, “To prevent Filly One from being certain you’re behind it.”

  “You have taken the oath.”

  “We sit here planning to assassinate our own hired men. What is the group of Filly Six going to do? Take away all my ignorance.”

  “No more questions. Sometimes we die that we may live again. Swear it.”

  “I swear,” said Elu.

  A moony night—bands of men moved like quiet snakes. All their lives they had practiced cunning. They were experts in the trade, could split a hairy throat as easily as a hairless one.

  Five hundred children died all over the world that moony night. The cultured variety, they slept in beds of pearls, and that was their crime.

  No one ever screamed at Redo.

  “You butcher!” screamed Elu.

  “Keep your voice down.”

  “Damn you!”

  “I expect He will.”

  “You rotten liar!”

  “Tell me one lie I told you.”

  “The ones you didn’t tell!”

  “I beg your forgiveness.”

  “May you rot in hell!”

  “I expect to.”

  Elu fell into his chair. His face was old. Ghosts rode in his eyes. “We grew up together,” he said faintly.

  “Yes.”

  “You were a good boy, so kind and considerate. Once, when I was too cowardly to confess stealing, you took the blame. You were beaten for me.”

  “I remember,” said Redo.

  Tears trailed down Elu’s cheeks. “You had no consideration for my soul. You have condemned me to eternal brimstone.”

  “You are innocent.”

  “I am guilty. The blood is on my hands.”

  “The crime was an indirect one.”

  “How well you lie! That you’ve always done well. Redo, Redo, don’t you understand? We murdered hundreds of children!”

  “Our hands were never raised against them.”

  “You lousy bastard. Do you think I’d have done what you said if I’d known Filly Six sent his group to assassinate all Filly young?”

  “If you don’t get yourself in control, the assassins will be after us.”

  “They will anyway! Do you think Filly One is a fool?”

  �
��He reads the papers. He will never be sure.”

  Elu screamed, “He doesn’t have to be sure!”

  “We’ve stabbed him in the heart. He is inactive.”

  “Oh, God, Redo, he’s always been inactive. What have any of them ever done but sit back and rape the world? It isn’t him but his power. He has the armies of the world at his disposal. He’ll wipe us out.”

  “He won’t,” Redo said.

  “You’re full of stupidity.”

  Bebe wasn’t conscious of the wind, the sun or the tares in nearby burrows. What he was conscious of was the emptiness in himself.

  “Hello,” said a voice, and the zizzy looked up to see a silver man walking toward him. The silver one looked like the man whom Bebe hated above all other men. The features were the same and the body had the same shape and build. He wore a pair of jeans and an old shirt. The difference was in the coloring. There were other differences, too, or Bebe wouldn’t have remained sitting on the park bench. Silver was harder than flesh but this shiny man was soft compared to the one named Rik. His gaze was hesitant, his step unsure, his shoulders couldn’t decide whether to be straight or drooping and the arms swung aimlessly.

  Bebe immediately liked this man. “I suppose you’re going to try and convince me you’re a human being,” he said, his tone morose.

  “Thank heaven you aren’t screaming or asking me silly questions.” Sheen lowered himself to the ground, crossed his legs and relaxed beside the park bench. He seemed to know how rarely Bebe got a chance to look down on anyone.

  “I don’t feel like pretending,” muttered the zizzy. “You don’t startle me. You’re a mutant but I know a man who makes you look like a cretin.”

  “Indeed?” Sheen stretched in the sun, enjoyed it.

  “You don’t like him either, do you?” Bebe was staring at the face and wondering how similarity and difference could coexist in the same space.

  “Who?”

  “Never mind. How can you speak to me? You aren’t a zizzy.”

  “Linguistics is probably my only talent.”

  “You’re being humble,” said Bebe.

  “Of course.”

  Bebe was silent for a minute and then he said, wistfully, “What is humility?”

  “The feeling you get when you realize two things—that you’re a total failure and that by the mere fact of your existence you’re entitled to the best of everything.”