This Immortal

by Roger Zelazny

  “Rises,” responded the crowd.

  “Now he comes forth to accept the sacrifice.”

  “Now he comes forth. . . .”

  “Come forth, Dead Man,” he called, turning back to the catafalque.

  And he did.

  At great length.

  For he was big.

  Huge, obese.

  Great indeed was the Dead Man.

  Maybe 350 pounds’ worth.

  He sat up in his casket and he looked all about him. He rubbed his chest, his armpits, his neck, his groin. He climbed out of the big box and stood beside the catafalque, dwarfing Moreby.

  He was wearing only a loincloth and large, goatskin sandals.

  His skin was white, dead white, fishbelly white, moon white . . . dead white.

  “An albino,” said George, and his voice carried the length of the field because it was the only sound in the night.

  Moreby glanced in our direction and smiled. He took the Dead Man’s stubby-fingered hand and led him out of the shack and onto the field. The Dead Man shied away from the torchlight. As he advanced, I studied the expression on his face.

  “There is no intelligence in that face,” said Red Wig.

  “Can you see his eyes?” asked George, squinting. His glasses had been broken in he fray.

  “Yes; they’re pinkish.”

  “Does he have epicanthial folds?”

  “Mm . . . Yeah.”

  “Uh-huh. He’s a Mongoloid—an idiot, I’ll wager—which is why it was so easy for Moreby to do what he’s done with him. And look at his teeth! They look filed.”

  I did. He was grinning, because he’d seen the colorful top of Red Wig’s head. Lots of nice, sharp teeth were exposed.

  “His albinism is the reason behind the nocturnal habits Moreby has imposed. Look! He even flinches at the torchlight! He’s ultrasensitive to any sort of actinics.”

  “What about his dietary habits?”

  “Acquired, through imposition. Lots of primitive people bled their cattle. The Kazaks did it until the twentieth century, and the Todas. You saw the sores on those horses as we passed by the paddock. Blood is nourishing, you know, if you can learn to keep it down—and I’m sure Moreby has regulated the idiot’s diet since he was a child. So of course he’s a vampire—he was brought up that way.”

  “The Dead Man is risen,” said Moreby.

  “The Dead Man is risen,” agreed the crowd.

  “Great is the Dead Man!”

  “Great is the Dead Man!”

  He dropped the dead-white hand then and walked toward us, leaving the only genuine vampire we knew of grinning in the middle of the field.

  “Great is the Dead Man,” he said, grinning himself as he approached us. “Rather magnificent, isn’t he?”

  “What have you done to that poor creature?” asked Red Wig.

  “Very little,” replied Moreby. “He was born pretty well-equipped.”

  “What were those injections you gave him?” inquired George.

  “Oh, I shoot his pain centers full of Novocain before encounters such as this one. His lack of pain responses adds to the image of his invincibility. Also, I’ve given him a hormone shot. He’s been putting on weight recently, and he’s grown a bit sluggish. This compensates for it.”

  “You talk of him and treat him as though he’s a mechanical toy,” said Diane.

  “He is. An invincible toy. An invaluable one, also. —You there, Hasan. Are you ready?” he asked.

  “I am,” Hasan answered, removing his cloak and his burnoose and handing them to Ellen.

  The big muscles in his shoulders bulged, his fingers flexed lightly, and he moved forward and out of the circle of blades. There was a welt on his left shoulder, several others on his back. The torchlight caught his beard and turned it to blood, and I could not help but remember that night back at the hounfor when he had enacted a strangling, and Mama Julie had said, “Your friend is possessed of Angelsou,” and “Angelsou is a deathgod and he only visits with his own.”

  “Great is the Warrior, Hasan,” announced Moreby, turning away from us.

  “Great is the warrior, Hasan,” replied the crowd.

  “His strength is that of many.”

  “His strength is that of many,” the crowd responded.

  “Greater still is the Dead Man.”

  “Greater still is the Dead Man.”

  “He breaks his bones and casts him about this place of feasting.”

  “He breaks his bones. . . .”

  “He eats his liver.”

  “He eats his liver.”

  “He drinks the blood from his throat.”

  “He drinks the blood from his throat.”

  “Mighty is his power.”

  “Mighty is his power.”

  “Great is the Dead Man!”

  “Great is the Dead Man!”

  “Tonight,” said Hasan quietly, “he becomes the Dead Man indeed.”

  “Dead Man!” cried Moreby, as Hasan moved forward and stood before him, “I give you this man Hasan in sacrifice!”

  Then Moreby got out of the way and motioned the guards to move us to the far sideline.

  The idiot grinned an even wider grin and reached out slowly toward Hasan.

  “Bismallah,” said Hasan, making as if to turn away from him, and bending downward and to the side.

  He picked it off the ground and brought it up and around fast and hard, like a whiplash—a great heel-of-the-hand blow which landed on the left side of the Dead Man’s jaw.

  The white, white head moved maybe five inches.

  And he kept on grinning. . . .

  Then both of his short bulky arms came out and caught Hasan beneath the armpits. Hasan seized his shoulders, tracing fine red furrows up his sides as he went, and he drew red beads from the places where his fingers dug into snowcapped muscle.

  The crowd screamed at the sight of the Dead Man’s blood. Perhaps the smell of it excited the idiot himself. That, or the screaming.

  Because he raised Hasan two feet off the ground and ran forward with him.

  The big tree got in the way, and Hasan’s head sagged as he struck.

  Then the Dead Man crashed into him, stepped back slowly, shook himself, and began to hit him.

  It was a real beating. He flailed at him with his almost grotesquely brief, thick arms.

  Hasan got his hands up in front of his face and he kept his elbows in the pit of his stomach.

  Still, the Dead Man kept striking him on his sides and head. His arms just kept rising and falling.

  And he never stopped grinning.

  Finally, Hasan’s hands fell and he clutched them before his stomach.

  . . . And there was blood coming from the corners of his mouth.

  The invincible toy continued its game.

  And then far, far off on the other side of the night, so far that only I could hear it, there came a voice that I recognized.

  It was the great hunting-howl of my hellhound, Bortan.

  Somewhere, he had come upon my trail, and he was coming now, running down the night, leaping like a goat, flowing like a horse or a river, all brindle-colored—and his eyes were glowing coals and his teeth were buzzsaws.

  He never tired of running, my Bortan.

  Such as he are born without fear, given to the hunt, and sealed with death.

  My hellhound was coming, and nothing could halt him in his course.

  But he was far, so far off, on the other side of the night. . . .

  The crowd was screaming. Hasan couldn’t take much more of it. Nobody could.

  From the corner of my eye (the brown one) I noticed a tiny gesture of Ellens.

  It was as though she had thrown something with her right hand. . . .

  Two seconds later it happened.

  I looked away quickly from that point of brilliance that occurred, sizzling, behind the idiot.

  The Dead Man wailed, lost his grip.

  Good old Reg 237.1 (pro
mulgated by me):

  “Every tour guide and every member of a tour must carry no fewer than three magnesium flares on his person, while traveling.”

  Ellen only had two left, that meant. Bless her.

  The idiot had stopped hitting Hasan.

  He tried to kick the flare away. He screamed. He tried to kick the flare away. He covered his eyes. He rolled on the ground.

  Hasan watched, bleeding, panting. . . .

  The flare burnt, the Dead Man screamed. . . .

  Hasan finally moved.

  He reached up and touched one of the thick vines which hung from the tree.

  He tugged at it. It resisted. He pulled harder.

  It came loose.

  His movements were steadier as he twisted an end around each hand.

  The flare sputtered, grew bright again. . . .

  He dropped to his knees beside the Dead Man, and with a quick motion he looped the vine about his throat.

  The flare sputtered again.

  He snapped it tight.

  The Dead Man fought to rise.

  Hasan drew the thing tighter.

  The idiot seized him about the waist.

  The big muscles in the Assassin’s shoulders grew into ridges. Perspiration mingled with the blood on his face.

  The Dead Man stood, raising Hasan with him.

  Hasan pulled harder.

  The idiot, his face no longer white, but mottled, and with the veins standing out like cords in his forehead and neck, lifted him up off the ground.

  As I’d lifted the golem did the Dead Man raise Hasan, the vine cutting ever more deeply into his neck as he strained with all his inhuman strength.

  The crowd was wailing and chanting incoherently. The drumming, which had reached a frenzied throb, continued at its peak without letup. And then I heard the howl again, still very far away.

  The flare began to die.

  The Dead Man swayed.

  . . . Then, as a great spasm racked him, he threw Hasan away from him.

  The vine went slack about his throat as it tore free from Hasan’s grip.

  Hasan took ukemi and rolled to his knees. He stayed that way.

  The Dead Man moved toward him.

  Then his pace faltered.

  He began to shake all over. He made a gurgling noise and clutched at his throat. His face grew darker. He staggered to the tree and put forth a hand. He leaned there panting. Soon he was gasping noisily. His hand slipped along the trunk and he dropped to the ground. He picked himself up again, into a half-crouch.

  Hasan arose, and recovered the piece of vine from where it had fallen.

  He advanced upon the idiot.

  This time his grip was unbreakable.

  The Dead Man fell, and he did not rise again.

  It was like turning off a radio which had been playing at full volume:

  Click. . . .

  Big silence then—it had all happened so fast. And tender was the night, yea verily, as I reached out through it and broke the neck of the swordsman at my side and seized his blade. I turned then to my left and split the skull of the next one with it.

  Then, like click again, and full volume back on, but all static this time. The night was torn down through the middle.

  Myshtigo dropped his man with a vicious rabbit-punch and kicked another in the shins. George managed a quick knee to the groin of the one nearest him.

  Dos Santos, not so quick—or else just unlucky—took two bad cuts, chest and shoulder.

  The crowd rose up from where it had been scattered on the ground, like a speedup film of beansprouts growing.

  It advanced upon us.

  Ellen threw Hasan’s burnoose over the head of the swordsman who was about to disembowel her husband. Earths poet laureate then brought a rock down hard on the top of the burnoose, doubtless collecting much bad karma but not looking too worried about it.

  By then Hasan had rejoined our little group, using his hand to parry a sword cut by striking the flat of the blade in an old samuri maneuver I had thought lost to the world forever. Then Hasan, too, had a sword—after another rapid movement—and he was very proficient with it

  We killed or maimed all our guards before the crowd was halfway to us, and Diane, taking a cue from Ellen, lobbed her three magnesium flares across the field and into the mob.

  We ran then, Ellen and Red Wig supporting Dos Santos, who was kind of staggery.

  But the Kouretes had cut us off and we were running northwards, off at a tangent from our goal.

  “We cannot make it, Karagee,” called Hasan.

  “I know.”

  “. . Unless you and I delay them while the others go ahead.”

  “Okay. Where?”

  “At the far barbecue pit, where the trees are thick about the path. It is a bottled neck. They will not be able to hit us all at a time.”

  “Right!” I turned to the others. “You hear us? Make for the horses! Phil will guide you! Hasan and I will hold them for as long as we can!”

  Red Wig turned her head and began to say something.

  “Don’t argue! Go! You want to live, don’t you! ?”

  They did. They went.

  Hasan and I turned, there beside the barbecue pit, and we waited. The others cut back again, going off through the woods, heading toward the village and the paddock. The mob kept right on coming, toward Hasan and me.

  The first wave hit us and we began the killing. We were in the V-shaped place where the path disgorged from the woods onto the plain. To our left was a smoldering pit; to our right a thick stand of trees. We killed three, and several more were bleeding when they fell back, paused, then moved to flank us.

  We stood back to back then and cut them as they closed.

  “If even one has a gun we are dead, Karagee.”

  “I know”

  Another half-man fell to my blade. Hasan sent one, screaming, into the pit.

  They were all about us then. A blade slipped in past my guard and cut me on the shoulder. Another nicked my thigh.

  “Fall back, thou fools! I say withdraw, thou freaks!”

  At that, they did, moving back beyond thrust-range.

  The man who had spoken was about five and a half feet tall. His lower jaw moved like that of a puppet’s, as though on hinges, and his teeth were like a row of dominoes—all darkstained and clicking as they opened and closed.

  “Yea, Procrustes,” I heard one say.

  “Fetch nets! Snare them alive! Do not close with them! They have cost us too much already!”

  Moreby was at his side, and whimpering.

  “. . . I did not know, m’lord.”

  “Silence! thou brewer of ill-tasting sloshes! Thou hast cost us a god and many men!”

  “Shall we rush?” asked Hasan.

  “No, but be ready to cut the nets when they bring them.”

  “It is not good that they want us alive,” he decided.

  “We have sent many to Hell, to smooth our way,” said I, “and we are standing yet and holding blades. What more?”

  “If we rush them we can take two, perhaps four more with us. If we wait, they will net us and we die without them.”

  “What matters it, once you are dead? Let us wait. So long as we live there is the great peacock-tail of probability, growing from out of the next moment.”

  “As you say.”

  And they found nets and cast them. We cut three of them apart before they tangled us in the fourth. They drew them tight and moved in.

  I felt my blade wrenched from my grasp, and someone kicked me. It was Moreby.

  “Now you will die as very few die,” said he.

  “Did the others escape?”

  “Only for the moment,” he said “We will track them, find them, and bring them back.”

  I laughed.

  “You lose,” I said. “They’ll make it.”

  He kicked me again.

  “This is how your rule applies?” I asked. “Hasan conquered the Dead Man.”r />
  “He cheated. The woman threw a flare.”

  Procrustes came up beside him as they bound us within the nets.

  “Let us take them to the Valley of Sleep,” said Moreby, “and there work our wills with them and leave them to be preserved against future feasting.”

  “It is good,” said Procrustes. “Yes, it shall be done.”

  Hasan must have been working his left arm through the netting all that while, because it shot out a short distance and his nails raked Procrustes’ leg.

  Procrustes kicked him several times, and me once for good measure. He rubbed at the scratches on his calf.

  “Why did you do that, Hasan?” I asked, after Procrustes turned away and ordered us bound to barbecue stakes for carrying.

  “There may still be some meta-cyanide left on my fingernails,” he explained.

  “How did it get there?”

  “From the bullets in my belt, Karagee, which they did not take from me. I coated my nails after I sharpened them today.”

  “Ah! You scratched the Dead Man at the beginning of your bout . . .”

  “Yes, Karagee. Then it was simply a matter of my staying alive until he fell over.”

  “You are an exemplary assassin, Hasan.”

  “Thank you, Karagee.”

  We were bound to the stakes, still netted. Four men, at the order of Procrustes, raised us.

  Moreby and Procrustes leading the way, we were borne off through the night.

  As we moved along an uneven trail the world changed about us. It’s always that way when you approach a Hot Spot. It’s like hiking backward through geological eras.

  The trees along the way began to vary, more and more. Finally, we were passing up a moist aisle between dark towers with fern-like leaves; and things peered out through them with slitted, yellow eyes. High overhead, the night was a tarp, stretched tent-wise across the treetops, pricked with faint starmarks, tom with a jagged yellow crescent of a tear. Birdlike cries, ending in snorts, emerged from the great wood. Up further ahead a dark shape crossed the pathway.

  As we advanced along the way the trees grew smaller, the spaces between them wider. But they were not like the trees we had left beyond the village. There were twisted (and twisting!) forms, with seaweed swirls of branches, gnarled trunks, and exposed roots which crept, slowly, about the surface of the ground. Tiny invisible things made scratching noises as they scurried from the light of Moreby’s electric lantern.