This Immortal

by Roger Zelazny

  He chuckled.

  “I tend the many-legged sheep in the high places, where the fingers of Aurora come first to smear the sky with roses.”

  “Yes, you’re the story teller. Why are you not up in the high places now, corrupting youth with your song?”

  “Because of dreams.”

  “Aye.”

  I turned and looked into the ancient face—its wrinkles, in the light of the dying flare, as black as fishers’ nets lost at the bottom of the sea, the beard as white as the snow that comes drifting down from the mountains, the eyes matching the blue of the headcloth corded about his temples. He did not lean upon his staff any more than a warrior leans on his spear. I knew that he was over a century old, and that he had never taken the S-S series.

  “A short time ago did I dream that I stood in the midst of a black temple,” he told me, “and Lord Hades came and stood by my side, and he gripped my wrist and bade me go with him. But I said ‘Nay’ and I awakened. This did trouble me.”

  “What did you eat that night? Berries from the Hot Place?”

  “Do not laugh, please. —Then, of a later night, did I dream that I stood in a land of sand and darkness. The strength of the old champions was upon me, and I did battle with Antaeus, son of the Earth, destroying him. Then did Lord Hades come to me again, and taking me by the arm did say, ‘Come with me now.’ But again did I deny him, and I awakened. The Earth was a-tremble.”

  “That’s all?”

  “No. Then, more recent still, and not at night, but as I sat beneath a tree watching my flock, did I dream a dream while awake. Pheobus-like did I battle the monster Python, and was almost destroyed thereby. This time Lord Hades did not come, but when I turned about there stood Hermes, his lackey, smiling and pointing his caducaeus like a rifle in my direction. I shook my head and he lowered it. Then he raised it once more in a gesture, and I looked where he had indicated.

  “There before me lay Athens—this place, this Theater, you—and here sat the old women. The one who measures out the thread of life was pouting, for she had wrapped yours about the horizon and no ends were in sight. But the one who weaves had divided it into two very thin threads. One strand ran back across the seas and vanished again from sight. The other led up into the hills. At the first hill stood the Dead Man, who held your thread in his white, white hands. Beyond him, at the next hill, it lay across a burning rock. On the hill beyond the rock stood the Black Beast, and he shook and worried your thread with his teeth.

  “And all along the length of the strand stalked a great foreign warrior, and yellow were his eyes and naked the blade in his hands, and he did raise this blade several times in menace.

  “So I came down to Athens—to meet you, here, at this place—to tell you to go back across the seas—to warn you not to come up into the hills where death awaits you. For I knew, when Hermes raised his wand, that the dreams were not mine, but that they were meant for you, oh my father, and that I must find you here and warn you. Go away now, while still you can. Go back. Please.”

  I gripped his shoulder.”

  “Jason, my son, I do not turn back. I take full responsibility for my own actions, right or wrong—including my own death, if need be—and I must go into the hills this time, up near the Hot Place. Thank you for your warning. Our family has always had this thing with dreams, and often it is misleading. I, too, have dreams—dreams in which I see through the eyes of other persons—sometimes clearly, sometimes not so clearly. Thank you for your warning. I am sorry that I must not heed it.”

  “Then I will return to my flock.”

  “Come back with me to the inn. We will fly you as far as Lamia tomorrow.”

  “No. I do not sleep in great buildings, nor do I fly.”

  “Then it’s probably time you started, but I’ll humor you. We can camp here tonight. I’m Commissioner of this monument.”

  “I had heard you were important in the Big Government again. Will there be more killing?”

  “I hope not.”

  We found a level place and reclined upon his cloak.

  “How do you interpret the dreams?” I asked him.

  “Your gifts do come to us with every season, but when was the last time you yourself visited?”

  “It was about nineteen years ago,” I said.

  “Then you do not know of the Dead Man?”

  “No.”

  “He is bigger than most men—taller, fatter—with flesh the color of a fishbelly, and teeth like an animal’s. They began telling of him about fifteen years ago. He comes out only at night. He drinks blood. He laughs a child’s laugh as he goes about the countryside looking for blood—people’s, animals’, it does not matter. He smiles in through bedroom windows late at night. He bums churches. He curdles milk. He causes miscarriages from fright. By day, it is said that he sleeps in a coffin, guarded by the Kourete tribesmen.”

  “Sounds as bad as a kallikanzaros.”

  “He really exists, father. Some time ago, something had been killing my sheep. Whatever it was had partly eaten them and drunk much of their blood. So I dug me a hiding place and covered it over with branches. That night I watched. After many hours he came, and I was too afraid to put a stone to my sling—for he is as I have described him: big, bigger than you even, and gross, and colored like a fresh-dug corpse. He broke the sheep’s neck with his hands and drank the blood from its throat. I wept to see it, but I was afraid to do anything. The next day I moved my flock and was not troubled again. I use the story to frighten my great-grandchildren—your great-great-grandchildren—whenever they misbehave. —And he is waiting, up in the hills”

  “Mm, yes. . . . If you say you saw it, it must be true. And strange things do come out of the Hot Places. We know that.”

  “. . . Where Prometheus spilled too much of the fire of creation.”

  “No, where some bastard lobbed a cobalt bomb and the bright-eyed boys and girls cried ‘Eloi’ to the fallout. —And what of the Black Beast?”

  “He too, is real, I am certain. I have never seen him, though. The size of an elephant, and very fast—an eater of flesh, they say. He haunts the plains. Perhaps some day he and the Dead Man will meet and they will destroy one another.”

  “It doesn’t usually work out that way, but it’s a nice thought. —That’s all you know about him?”

  “Yes, I know of no one who has caught more than a glimpse.”

  “Well, I shall try for less than that.”

  “. . . And then I must tell you of Bortan.”

  “Bortan? That name is familiar.”

  “Your dog I used to ride on his back when I was a child and beat with my legs upon his great armored sides. Then he would growl and seize my foot, but gently.”

  “My Bortan has been dead for so long that he would not even chew upon his own bones, were he to dig them up in a modern incarnation.”

  “I had thought so, too. But two days after you departed from your last visit, he came crashing into the hut. He apparently had followed your trail across half of Greece.”

  “You’re sure it was Bortan?”

  “Was there ever another dog the size of a small horse, with armor plates on his sides, and jaws like a trap for bears?”

  “No, I don’t think so. That’s probably why the species died out. Dogs do need armor plating if they’re going to hang around with people, and they didn’t develop it fast enough. If he is still alive, he’s probably the last dog on Earth. He and I were puppies together, you know, so long ago that it hurts to think about it. That day he vanished while we were hunting I thought he’d had an accident. I searched for him, then decided he was dead. He was incredibly old at the time.”

  “Perhaps he was injured, and wandering that way—for years. But he was himself and he followed your track, that last time. When he saw that you were gone, he howled and took off after you again. We have never seen him since then. Sometimes, though, late at night, I hear his hunting-cry in the hills. . . .”

  “The da
mn fool mutt ought to know it’s not right to care for anything that much.”

  “Dogs were strange.”

  “Yes, dogs were.”

  And then the night wind, cool through arches of the years, came hounding after me. It touched my eyes.

  Tired, they closed.

  Greece is lousy with legend, fraught with menace. Most areas of mainland near the Hot Places are historically dangerous. This is because, while the Office theoretically runs the Earth, it actually only tends to the islands. Office personnel on much of the mainland are rather like twentieth-century Revenue Officers were in certain hill areas. They’re fair game in all seasons. The islands sustained less damage than the rest of the world during the Three Days, and consequently they were the logical outposts for world district offices when the Talerites decided we could use some administration. Historically, the mainlanders have always been opposed to this. In the regions about the Hot Places, though, the natives are not always completely human. This compounds the historical antipathy with abnormal behavior patterns. This is why Greece is fraught.

  We could have sailed up the coast to Volos. We could have skimmed to Volos—or almost anywhere else, for that matter. Myshtigo wanted to hike from Lamia, though, to hike and enjoy the refreshment of legend and alien scenery. This is why we left the Skimmers at Lamia. This is why we hiked to Volos.

  This is why we encountered legend.

  I bade Jason goodbye in Athens. He was sailing up the coast. Wise.

  Phil had insisted on enduring the hike, rather than skimming ahead and meeting us up further along the line. Good thing, too, maybe, in a way, sort of. . . .

  The road to Volos wanders through the thick and the sparse in the way of vegetation. It passes huge boulders, occasional clusters of shacks, fields of poppies; it crosses small streams, winds about hills, sometimes crosses over hills, widens and narrows without apparent cause.

  It was still early morning. The sky was somehow a blue mirror, because the sunlight seemed to be coming from everywhere. In places of shade some moisture still clung to the grasses and the lower leaves of the trees.

  It was in an interesting glade along the road to Volos that I met a half-namesake.

  The place had once been a shrine of some sort, back in the Real Old Days. I came to it quite often in my youth because I liked the quality of—I guess you’d call it “peace”—that it contained. Sometimes I’d meet the half-people or the no-people there, or dream good dreams, or find old pottery or the heads of statues, or things like that, which I could sell down in Lamia or in Athens.

  There is no trail that leads to it. You just have to know where it is. I wouldn’t have taken them there, except for the fact that Phil was along and I knew that he liked anything which smacks of an adytum, a sequestered significance, a sliding-panel view onto dim things past, etcetera.

  About half a mile off the road, through a small forest, self-content in its disarray of green and shade and its haphazard heaps of stone, you suddenly go downhill, find the way blocked by a thick thicket, push on through, then discover a blank wall of rock. If you crouch, keep close to that wall, and bear to the right, you then come upon a glade where it is often well to pause before proceeding further.

  There is a short, sharp drop, and down below is an egg-shaped clearing, about fifty meters long, twenty across, and the small end of the egg butting into a bitten-out place in the rock; there is a shallow cave at the extreme end, usually empty. A few half-sunken, almost square stones stand about in a seemingly random way. Wild grapevines grow around the perimeter of the place, and in the center is an enormous and ancient tree whose branches act as an umbrella over almost the entire area, keeping it dusky throughout the day. Because of this, it is hard to see into the place, even from the glade.

  But we could see a satyr in the middle, picking his nose.

  I saw George’s hand go to the mercy-gun he carried. I caught his shoulder, his eyes, shook my head. He shrugged, and nodded, dropping his hand.

  I withdrew from my belt the shepherd’s pipes I had asked Jason to give me. I motioned to the others to crouch and remain where they were. I moved a few steps further ahead and raised the syrinx to my lips.

  My first notes were quite tentative. It had been too long since I’d played the pipes.

  His ears pricked forward and he looked all about him. He made rapid moves in three different directions—like a startled squirrel, uncertain as to which tree to make for.

  Then he stood there quivering as I caught up an old tune and nailed it to the air.

  I kept playing, remembering, remembering the pipes, the tunes, and the bitter, the sweet, and the drunken things I’ve really always known. It all came back to me as I stood there playing for the little guy in the shaggy leggings: the fingering and the control of the air, the little runs, the thorns of sound, the things only the pipes can really say. I can’t play in the cities, but suddenly I was me again, and I saw faces in the leaves and I heard the sound of hooves.

  I moved forward.

  Like in a dream, I noticed I was standing with my back against the tree, and they were all about me. They shifted from hoof to hoof, never staying still, and I played for them as I had so often before, years ago, not knowing whether they were really the same ones who’d heard me then—or caring, actually. They cavorted about me. They laughed through white, white teeth and their eyes danced, and they circled, jabbing at the air with their horns, kicking their goat legs high off the ground, bending far forward, springing into the air, stamping the earth.

  I stopped, and lowered the pipes.

  It was not an human intelligence that regarded me from those wild, dark eyes, as they all froze into statues, just standing there, staring at me.

  I raised the pipes once more, slowly. This time I played the last song I’d ever made. I remembered it so well. It was a dirge-like thing I had played on the night I’d decided Karaghiosis should die.

  I had seen the fallacy of Return. They would not come back, would never come back. The Earth would die. I had gone down into the Gardens and played this one last tune I’d learned from the wind and maybe even the stars. The next day, Karaghiosis’ big blazeboat had broken up in the bay at Piraeus.

  They seated themselves on the grass. Occasionally, one would dab at his eye with an elaborate gesture. They were all about me, listening.

  How long I played, I do not know. When I had finished, I lowered the pipes and sat there. After a time, one of them reached out and touched the pipes and drew his hand back quickly. He looked up at me.

  “Go,” I said, but they did not seem to understand.

  So I raised the syrinx and played the last few bars over again.

  The Earth is dying, dying. Soon it will he dead. . . . Go home, the party’s over. It’s late, it’s late, so late. . . .

  The biggest one shook his head.

  Go away, go away, go away Appreciate the silence. After life’s most ridiculous gambit, appreciate the silence. What did the gods hope to gain, to gain? Nothing. ’Twas all but a game. Go away, go away, go away now. It’s late, it’s late, so late. . . .

  They still sat there, so I stood up and clapped my hands, yelled “Go!” and walked away quickly.

  I gathered my companions and headed back for the road.

  It is about sixty-five kilometers from Lamia to Volos, including the detour around the Hot Spot. We covered maybe a fifth of that distance on the first day. That evening, we pitched our camp in a clearing off to the side of the road, and Diane came up beside me and said, “Well?”

  “‘Well’ what?”

  “I just called Athens. Blank. The Radpol is silent. I want your decision now.”

  “You are very determined. Why can’t we wait some more?”

  “We’ve waited too long as it is. Supposing he decides to end the tour ahead of schedule? —This countryside is perfect. So many accidents could come so easily here. . . . You know what the Radpol will say—the same as before—and it will signify the same as befo
re: Kill.”

  “My answer is also the same as before: No.”

  She blinked rapidly, lowered her head.

  “Please reconsider.”

  “No.”

  “Then do this much,” she said. “Forget it. The whole thing. Wash your hands of the affair. Take Lorel up on his offer and get us a new guide. You can skim out of here in the morning.”

  “No.”

  “Are you really serious, then—about protecting Myshtigo?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t want you hurt, or worse.”

  “I’m not particularly fond of the idea myself. So you can save us both a lot of trouble by calling it off.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Dos Santos does as you tell him.”

  “The problem is not an administrative one! —Damn it! I wish I’d never met you!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “The Earth is at stake and you’re on the wrong side.”

  “I think you are.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “I can’t convince you, so I’ll just have to stop you.”

  “You couldn’t turn in the Secretary of the Radpol and his consort without evidence. We’re too ticklish politically.”

  “I know that.”

  “So you couldn’t hurt Don, and I don’t believe you’d hurt me.”

  “You’re right”

  “That leaves Hasan.”

  “Right again.”

  “And Hasan is—Hasan. What will you do?”

  “Why don’t you give him his walking papers right now and save me some trouble?”

  “I won’t do that.”

  “I didn’t think you would.”

  She looked up again. Her eyes were moist, but her face and voice were unchanged.

  “If it should turn out that you were right and we were wrong,” she said, “I am sorry.”

  “Me too,” I said. “Very, very.”

  That night I dozed within knifing distance of Myshtigo, but nothing happened or tried to. The following morning was uneventful, as was most of the afternoon.

  “Myshtigo,” I said, as soon as we paused for purposes of photographing a hillside, “why don’t you go home? Go back to Taler? Go anywhere? Walk away from it? Write some other book? The further we get from civilization, the less is my power to protect you.”