A Billion Days of Earth

by Piserchia, Doris

  She wasn’t looking his way. Rik almost yelled when her head began to turn. He couldn’t make a sound through his parched throat. All he could do was stand and watch the shock hit her as she completed her turn, looked down and saw Sten.

  It was as if a bolt of lightning had struck her. There was no chance that she didn’t see the crouching shape. It was then that she looked beyond Sten and saw Rik standing there. Another lightning bolt hit her, and she gave a high, mad scream.

  She was still screaming when Sten decided to move. He had come up against the wall, had seen the two. Something stopped him for a few seconds. Maybe he was just enraged that he couldn’t climb the wall. He made his move, started running in an easy lope down the left fork, and it was a good choice because the slope to upper ground was clean and gradual. Once he was on the top, he could either go left into more rocks or he could head right and circle around to the figures on the wall.

  Rik was watching every shudder of Aril’s body. He saw her frantically fumble with the bolt of her rifle, and then she was running, but he was faster. He ate up the few yards to the wall, where he took a second to hurl his rifle up at Sheen before he pelted down the left fork as rapidly as he could. Over his shoulder, he cried, “You won, you crummy bastard!”

  “No, you fool, come back!”

  Sten went to the left, up over the small rocks to some larger ones and then straight across and down an incline that should have broken his neck, it was so steep. Rik hurtled down the incline and landed with a jarring thud in a narrow crevice. For a moment he thought Sten had gone on ahead. Until he whirled and looked fifteen feet upward and saw his son. Sten was there, between two jagged ledges, and he could travel up or down, once he decided.

  “Beat it,” Rik said softly. “I’ve changed my mind. Get out of here.”

  Sten didn’t think that way. He took his time. His eyes riveted on the man directly below him. Then he looked up at the higher ledges that were within such easy reach.

  They both heard her coming at the same time. Sten jumped to a higher ledge and teetered there, growling.

  It was too late because of those few seconds. Sheen had won. Aril didn’t know Rik no longer carried his gun, that he had deliberately thrown it away. She was going to come down over those rocks, and she would have to kill him to keep him from hurting her son.

  “Sten, baby,” he called hoarsely, and Sten stopped growling and looked down.

  “Remember me, boy?” Rik whispered. “You know—da da da da da.”

  The savage eyes reacted, grew wider, narrowed suddenly to little pinpoints of ferocity.

  “Da da, you poor son of a bitch, you stinking, mindless bastard, come and get da da!”

  There was no more time left. The big gray shape plummeted at him like a deadly spear, all 200 pounds of it, the glittering canines starving for his naked throat, and he opened his mouth to give one last shriek.

  The teeth were drooling for him when the crack of sound came. Such a slight sound it was and then, incredibly, the 200 pounds of death twisted in the air, flipped completely over and crashed to the ground beside him.

  He lay and looked at Sten, watched the mad glow fade in the eyes that were fixed on his face. One paw came across the sand, groped and touched him. “Da da,” Sten whispered, and was dead.

  Aril walked down over the rocks, her face serene and calm.

  “What will we do?” said Rik.

  “Bury him once and for all.” She smiled faintly. “I’m all right now. I’m cured. I’m a gift to you from Sheen.”

  Jak marched straight to Sheen and stopped. His head was up and his shoulders were squared. “Here I am,” he said. “I guess you can take me now.”

  “Hmmm,” said Sheen.

  “I don’t know how to stop you,” the Leng continued. “I don’t know what’s going on, and there’s no use your telling me I have to find out. My brains are so scrambled nothing makes sense. You want me but you don’t want me, you hate me but you love me. I can’t stop taking people at their word. If they tell me something, I believe it. I’ve been told over and over again that I should be afraid of you because I don’t understand you. Well, I don’t know what you’re doing but I’m not afraid of you. I—I kind of like you. I enjoy living and I’d prefer to remain in my own skin, but I haven’t got a chance. Whatever you tell me, I’ll probably believe it until I have time to think it over. That’s the trouble with me. I’ll need more time than you’ll want to give me, and even if you give me more time, I’m likely to come up with the wrong answer. So, okay, go ahead and start lying. It will take you no time at all to convince me I’m standing on my head. In five minutes you’ll have me swearing life is the curse of the universe and that giving myself to you is the reason I was born. Go on, I’m ready, kill me.”

  Sheen lifted his face to the sky, spread his hands, said earnestly and painfully to nobody at all, “What can you do with a man like this?” The silver gaze lowered and focused on Rik, who stood nearby. “There’s something disgusting about innocence.”

  Rik was looking at a group of small children. They had been hidden in the desert and protected by Sheen. “I kind of like it,” he said.

  “They’ll grow up. Jak never will.”

  “He already has, and that’s the way he is,” said Rik.

  Sheen sighed. “Possibly.” To Jak, he said, “You’re safe until I can figure out just what it is you are.”

  The Leng smiled a ghastly smile. “That may take all my life.”

  “It might,” said the other with a frown.

  Rik heard the coughing sounds again, and this time they were accompanied by a weak cry.

  “Help!”

  He stepped onto his front porch in time to see a naked man stumble across the street. The man blundered into a hedge, fell on over it, crawled back into the street and sat and held his head.

  “I!” he said in a loud voice. “You! He! We! You! They!” Suddenly, he poked both paws down his throat, and then, bending over, he retched, loud and long.

  Rik ran to him and pulled his paws away.

  “No!” The man poked a paw down his throat, gagged again and then he spat out a large gob of something that landed at Rik’s feet. It was a wad of silver.

  “The damned stuff is all over me!” The stranger proved his statement by digging more silver from his ears. He snorted and silver came from his nose. He pried a hunk out of his navel. It was in his hair and between his thighs; there wasn’t a crease or crevice in his body that didn’t have silver lodged in it.

  Rik slowly bent down and picked up a piece, only to quickly drop it. “Who are you? Where do you come from?”

  The man stopped picking at himself and looked up with a blank expression. “I’m blamed if I can tell you!” He stared about him. “My God, I haven’t the faintest idea of who I am or what I’ve been up to.” All at once, he clasped his arms around his knees and began to shiver. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear I just walked out of Hell.”

  Rik helped him to his feet. “Come with me. I know someone who may have some answers for you.”

  Too bewildered to protest, the man allowed himself to be taken across the boulevard, up an alley and toward an open field. They started to pass by a tall hedge. Rik came to a halt as he saw a familiar figure lying in the shade.

  “Sheen, look what I found,” he called.

  Sheen opened one lazy eye and looked. “Oh, hello, Blok.”

  The man named Blok gave one glance in return, let out a bloodcurdling shriek, leaped the hedge in a single, impossible bound and took off across the field at top speed, bellowing all the while.

  Sheen was grinning wickedly. “He remembers now.”

  “So you did have him!” said Rik. “They can come back!”

  “There you go again, being optimistic. Don’t be. According to my infallible calculations, about one in a thousand will come back.”

  “How can they escape?”

  “By wanting to return.”

  “Good God, is
that all?”

  This time, Sheen sounded offended. “Certainly. What do you think I am, a fiend?”

  “Why do they stay?”

  “It isn’t easy to leave Heaven.”

  With a snort of contempt, Rik said, “It isn’t Heaven, it’s Hell.”

  “You’d be surprised at the number of people who will swear they’re having a ball while the brimstone flies around their heads.”

  Rik scowled and went away to find Blok before something else happened to him.

  “I can’t have me wandering all over the place,” Sheen said to the group of them. “I would be a distraction. Can you imagine how it would be to have me looking over your shoulder all the time?” When everyone present shivered, he nodded. “You can relax. I’m preparing an oasis for all my gutless wonders, one that nobody can get into without a ticket; a silver skin. It will be a grand place and I’ve chosen an appropriate name for it: The Garden of Eden.”

  “You can’t do that!” said Jak, his eyes filling with tears. “You mustn’t prolong their sentence that way.”

  “Who says?”

  “It’s heartless and cruel; so unjust.” Jak’s big brown eyes brimmed over.

  “I promised them an eternity of it,” Sheen said gently, and his eyes rested on the little man like light fingers.

  “Jak,” Rik began, and the Leng bristled with indignation.

  “Will you stop worrying about me? You can’t keep it up! My soul is my own and … damn it, damn it!” Jak looked at Sheen. “You don’t have to do it, or anything else except what you want to do. There’s another choice for you.”

  “Such as?” was Sheen’s lazy response.

  “Put an end to it. Give them the thing they’ve earned with their mortality. Let them die.”

  “What about those who might come back?”

  “Don’t play games. You know the ones who will eventually escape you. Preserve them but take the others out into the ocean and release them.”

  Sheen looked at them all. “There, ladies and gentlemen, is mercy at its most naked loveliness. But he’s right, you know. Immortality in the Garden of Eden will be no condition to envy. It would be more just and merciful to give them what they clamored for in the first place.”

  Jak pounced. “Will you do it?”

  “No.”

  “But why?”

  “I gave them my promise.”

  “My God!” said Jak. “Maybe you promised them, but what does that mean? Look at it another way. Put yourself in their shoes. If you demand something for nothing from someone, and he gives it to you with the promise that you can keep it forever, what right have you to receive it in the first place, let alone keep it? Why should you believe anything that person says, when you’ve been unjustified from the beginning? Hasn’t your very involvement created an environment of lies?”

  “I’ll be damned. How did you figure that out?”

  His face pink with frustration, Jak said, “I’m not entirely hopeless. I’m not stupid.”

  “You’re being logical for a change. I like logic. But I’m not too crazy about your idea. You think it would be just for me to be a liar. That’s what I’d be if I broke my word to them.”

  “No, no, no.”

  “There’s nothing more terrible than to give someone all they ask for and then refuse to take it back. There’s nothing more inhuman or cruel than to take someone at his word.”

  “But you’re leaving them to an eternity of damnation!”

  “I am.”

  “You’re just stubborn!” said Jak.

  “Am I? Destruction is almost always unjustified, except in this instance. Be damned to you if you can’t understand.”

  Rik sat in the park and watched the sky.

  “You’re as somber as a zomba in the winter,” said Sheen, behind him. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. I’m brooding a little.”

  “I see. I suppose it’s none of my business.”

  Turning away, Rik finger-painted in the dust on a table. “Their business is their own, too.” All at once he leaped to his feet and kicked the table. “I wish I could mind mine. Why don’t I? What do I care if they leave? The blasted hedonists.”

  “What in the world are you talking about?”

  “Some things I hate to admit. I love them. No, that isn’t right. I hate some of the things they do. No, that’s wrong, too. How shall I say it? I hate the fact that they have no purpose? But I’m not sure they have none. Am I angry because I don’t know the answer?”

  He turned to Sheen. “Is it that I’m jealous of them? Is that what’s eating me? It must be, else why does it hurt?”

  “Damn it, what hurts?”

  “The fact that they’re leaving.”

  “Who?”

  “The Gods. They’re leaving Earth.”

  It was the first time he had ever seen Sheen wounded. The silver man stumbled backward as if someone had placed a hand on his chest and shoved.

  “That’s impossible,” he said, and his voice was soft with shock.

  “Their ship is finished!” said Rik. “They’re boarding it this very minute. Maybe you didn’t pay close enough attention to them. They’re going to a green planet in the galaxy of Andromeda.”

  The last thing he saw was the bitter anguish on Sheen’s face, and then the silver man whirled and ran at a fast pace.

  Rik followed. He had decided that he wouldn’t go and watch, knew he wouldn’t like what he felt when he stood on the ground and saw the ship of the Gods fly away.

  They were all there in the open field, all the people who hadn’t succumbed to Sheen, and they stood silently and watched as the Gods filed one by one into the ship. There wasn’t a sound as the closed faces in the crowd observed and waited.

  Sheen was there, standing closest to the ship that was so bright it dimmed his brilliance. It was a rainbow creation, and its needle shape thrust into the sky like a beautiful, colored icicle.

  The Gods refused to glance at their audience. One by one they passed through the bottom door of the ship and disappeared inside. Slowly, gradually, those filing toward the door gave evidence that they saw the glittering man who stood only a few yards away. All at once the line stopped moving. Every God present turned to look at Sheen.

  “Don’t stop,” said a voice at the end of the line. “Keep going.” It was Vennavora who spoke.

  The Gods murmured, momentarily surged ahead before they again hesitated and came to a standstill.

  Again Vennavora spoke. “We’ve made our choice. Continue to move into the ship.”

  A trembling seized those ahead of her. They became like flimsy reeds that swayed ever so gently in the wind, and they were swaying toward the figure of Sheen.

  One of the Gods cried out. “Is he so beyond understanding? How can they who are so far beneath us be stronger than we?”

  Another God groaned and spoke. “Is it possible for such as these to succeed where Gods fear to try?”

  “Keep moving!” said Vennavora in a powerful voice. “He approaches us in power! There may be no more time.”

  A God said, “Shall we begin our journey to the stars on a question?”

  “I warn you, he grows!” said Vennavora.

  An abrupt silence captured the entire field, a vacuum that denied the smallest rustling of noise. On the face of Sheen was a frown. The frown deepened. The shoulders of Sheen straightened, the silver body arched and bent backward. The foremost God leaned forward, so did the second God, and then all the Gods leaned forward, including Vennavora who was at the end of the line. She was the only one who cursed as she obeyed the will of Sheen. The silver man slowly leaned forward and the line of Gods bent backward, and again Vennavora followed suit and again she did it with a curse.

  Sheen continued to frown, and the Gods moved their feet and took one, two, three steps away from the ship. The sun shone on glistening Godly faces. Vennavora gave way to the pressure ahead of her and on her face was a grimace of terror.

>   Suddenly all movement ceased, all sound faded, vacuum was in command, and so silent and still were the Gods that they might have been frozen solid in death. And then death was shattered by the words of Sheen.

  “I RELEASE YOU.”

  He cried it in a loud voice, lifted high his arms, allowed his body to grow taut with triumph.

  “Go!” he said. “From this day forward, you are orphans of the void with no place to lay your head. Go and find what you can, but watch for the day when the children of men seek the stars. Then you will not escape, because each of them will be accompanied by me. I have tasted the taste of satisfaction, and there is nothing sweeter. I will have none of you, for there are none among you who would stand against me. Do you hear, mighty Gods? Not one of you would do what those around me have done. Because of this, I release you!”

  Only Rik, who stood near Sheen, heard the last savage whisper. “And because I find I haven’t the heart for total destruction.”

  The Gods hurried into their ship, and then there was only Vennavora remaining outside. She stood in the doorway, faced the sky, spread her arms, and with tears coursing down her cheeks, she said, “Oh, Earth, you have become a scourge. You will go down in the record of the heavens as a world to shun. Killer of Its Babes will be your name. I, Vennavora, and all my brethren say the following, and may it echo forever in the air: We have love for Earth. Once you nourished our fathers, sustained them and held them up. To that Earth of a billion days gone, the Gods of now say farewell. Farewell to the sweet winds and streams of your body, goodbye to the sky and the sun, to the paths in the mountains and to the sparkling rain. Wherever we go, we will never find our home. It has cast us out.”

  The God whirled and entered the ship, the door slammed, and the children of the first men fled to the stars.

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