A Farce To Be Reckoned With

by Roger Zelazny

  Causes and effects will no longer add up. Conclusions will no longer flow sweetly from their premises. As I told you, reality will fork into two branches. One branch will go on with the story of Europe and the Earth as if this pilgrimage had never taken place, while the other will continue what is going on now, bringing the results of the pilgrimage. It is that branch, that disaster, that will be sent to Limbo. There it will repeat itself over and over, in a loop bigger than all outdoors. We need to get the pilgrims out before that happens."

  But Charon was not to be found. Aretino and Azzie carried on, shepherding their pilgrims from one point to another, hoping to find a way to get them out. Some people were already trying to swim to the mainland and were drowning, many of them pulled under by other struggling swimmers. The few remaining gondoliers were already occupied with passengers. Those lucky enough to have gotten aboard had drawn their swords, and with these they menaced anyone who approached them.

  A tall, skinny old man with sunken jaws and preternaturally bright eyes came out from the little cabin into the torchlight. "Azzie!" he said. "You do pop up in some strange places!"

  "What are you doing in Venice, Charon, so far from your usual route on the Styx?"

  "We boatmen of the dead have been commanded to extend service to the area. I have it on good authority that there's going to be a die-off here like nothing anyone has seen since Atlantis foundered."

  "I'd like to hire your services now."

  "Is it really necessary? I was going to get a little sleep before the big evacuation begins."

  "This whole construct is in a lot of trouble," Azzie said. "I need your help to get my friends out of here."

  "I don't help anyone," Charon said. "I have my own rounds. There are plenty of deceased people still to ferry to the land of the dead."

  "You don't seem to appreciate the seriousness of the position."

  "It's not serious for me," Charon said. "However death comes, that's a matter for the Upper World. In the Kingdom of the Dead, all is serene."

  "That's what I'm trying to get across to you. It's not going to be that way for long, not even in the Kingdom of the Dead. Didn't it ever occur to you that even Death can die?"

  "Death die? What a ridiculous notion!"

  "My dear fellow, if God can die, then Death can die, too, and very painfully. I'm trying to tell you the whole construct is in trouble. You could be wiped away along with everything else."

  Charon was skeptical, but he allowed himself to be convinced. "What is it you want done?"

  "I must get the pilgrims out of here and restore them to their starting places. Only with that done will Ananke have a chance to get everything back to normal again."

  Charon was capable of moving with speed when he wanted to. Once the pilgrims were aboard he directed the boat, standing at the rear with the tiller under his arm, a cloaked scarecrow figure. The crazy old boat picked up speed, powered by the arms of the dead rowers who sat out of sight in the hold.

  Fires burned on all sides in the beleaguered city, shooting ghastly reds and yellows up into the blue-black skies. The boat crossed the arm of the bay, and soon they were gliding through reeds and marshes.

  Everything looked strange; Charon had taken a shortcut through a watery connection that joined one world to another. "Is this how it was at the beginning?" Aretino asked.

  "I wasn't there right at the beginning," Charon told him, "but close to it. This is how the world looked when there was no physical law and all was magic. There was a time before everything, when magic ruled, when reason was not. We visit it still in our dreams, that world of long ago. Certain landscapes elicit memories of that world. It is of the place older than God, older than creation. The world before the creation of the universe."

  Aretino asked if anyone had seen them. No one had since the ceremony with the candlesticks.

  Everyone else was aboard the boat — everyone except Azzie, who stood on the pier and unfastened the ship's line.

  "I can't find Kornglow or Leonore!" Aretino called to Azzie.

  "We can't wait any longer!" Charon said. "Death keeps to a strict schedule."

  "Go ahead without them," Azzie said.

  "But what about you?" Aretino asked.

  "There is that which will detain me," Azzie said. It was then that Aretino noticed the shadow at Azzie's back, which seemed to be gripping him by the neck.

  Azzie threw the line aboard. Charon's houseboat moved away from the shore and began to gain way as the oars of the dead dipped into the waters.

  "Is there nothing we can do for you?" Aretino called out.

  "No!" Azzie replied. "Just keep going. Get away from here!"

  He watched the houseboat glide into the shadowy waters until it vanished among reeds and marshes near to the other shore.

  The pilgrims made themselves as comfortable as they could, crowded in among dead rowers who were not the most congenial companions.

  "Hello," Puss said to the gaunt cowled figure who sat on the bench beside her.

  "Hello, little lady," answered that individual. It was a woman. She appeared to be dead, even though she was still somehow able to talk.

  "Where are you going?" Puss asked.

  "Our boatman Charon is taking us to Hell," the cowled figure said.

  "Oh! I'm so sorry!" Puss said.

  "No need to grieve," the figure said. "That's where it all winds up."

  "Even me?" said Puss.

  "Even you. But you needn't worry, it won't take place for quite some time."

  Quentin, on the other side, asked, "Is there anything to eat on this boat?"

  "I'd really like something sweet," Quentin said.

  "Be patient," Puss said. "Nobody gets to eat on the boat of the dead without forfeiting their lives. I think I see the shore ahead."

  "Oh, all right," Quentin said. He wished he were still acting as messenger to the spirits. That had been fun.

  PART ELEVEN

  Chapter 1

  Venice seemed doomed now. There might be a way Azzie could still save it, though. He would have to go to the Backstage Universe where the Cosmic Machinery was stored—in that part of the cosmos where symbology rules.

  To get there he would need to follow a set of instructions he had never used before—instructions he had thought he would never have to use. But now was the time. He found a sheltered place under a balustrade and made a complex gesture.

  A disembodied voice—one of the Guardians of the Way—said to him, "Are you sure you want to do this?"

  "I am," Azzie said.

  And disappeared…

  Azzie reappeared in a small waiting room. There was a long padded sofa against one wall, two chairs on the other. A big lamp cast a mellow glow over a stack of magazines on a nearby end table. Before the third wall was a receptionist, clad in a toga, sitting in front of what looked like an office intercom. The receptionist looked for all the world like a woman, except that she had an alligator's head on her shoulders. The sight of her convinced Azzie that he was indeed in the place where realism held no sway and where symbology ruled the world.

  "What can we do for you, sir?" the receptionist asked.

  "I'm here to inspect the symbolic machinery," Azzie said.

  "Go right in. You were expected."

  Azzie passed through a door into a space that had the dismaying qualities of being both enclosed and endless, a universal plenum filled with innumerable contents. It seemed to be a factory, or a derisive three-dimensional comment on one, for its volume was interminable to the eye. This place beyond space and time seemed entirely filled with machinery, with an endless variety of cogwheels and spindles, with belts to drive them, all of them apparently suspended in midair and working away with a zinging, hissing, clanging sound.

  The machines were piled up endlessly in all directions, separated by narrow catwalks. On one of these catwalks was a tall, gaunt man, wearing gray coveralls with a thin white stripe and a peaked cap of a similar material. He moved along wi
th his oilcan, making sure the machinery ran with a minimum of friction.

  "What's going on here?" Azzie asked.

  "Here all of Earth's time is compressed into a single narrow strip and passed through rollers. And it comes out here, a broad gossamer-thin tapestry."

  The old man showed him the broad rollers where the timelines were woven into a tapestry that represented and in some sense was the history of the cosmos up to that moment. Azzie examined it and found a botched place.

  "What about this?" he asked.

  "Ah, that's where Venice was destroyed," the old man said. "The city was one of the principal threads in the fabric of civilization, you see, and so there'll be a bit of a discontinuity in the cultural aspect of the space-time fabric until another city takes up its place. Or perhaps the whole tapes-try will lose luster for loss of one of its finest parts. It's difficult to predict the effect of a major fallout like this."

  "Seems a pity to leave it at that," Azzie said. He examined the threads that made up the warp. "Look, if we go back and pull out this one strand, Venice would be all right."

  He had found the strand where he had begun his golden candlestick game with the pilgrims, the point at which Venice's doom had been sealed. It was necessary to withdraw that action from the skein of causality in order to undo the cosmic damage.

  "My dear young demon, you know very well we can't mess with the skeins of time. I agree it would be easy. But I would not recommend it."

  "What if I did it anyhow?"

  "Try it and find out."

  "Are you going to stop me?"

  The old man shook his head. "My duty is not to stop anything. My task is solely to watch the spinning of the tapestry."

  Azzie reached out and with a firm motion pulled out the thread that marked his meeting with the pilgrims.

  The thread lit with sudden fire as it tore loose. He could see the result immediately on the slow-moving web of tapestry, which repaired itself at once. Venice was restored. It was as easy as that.

  Azzie turned to go, but he stopped when an icy finger tapped him on the back. He looked around; the watchman was gone.

  An ominous voice said, "Azzie Elbub?"

  "Yes. Who's there?"

  "Call me Nameless. It seems you've gone and done it again."

  "Done what?"

  "Produced another unacceptable anomaly."

  "Well… What's that to you?"

  "I'm the Anomaly Eater," Nameless said. "I'm the Special Circumstance that arises in the maw of the universe when things get too hairy. I'm the one Ananke was trying to warn you about. Through your actions you have called me into being."

  "Not good enough," Nameless said. "You're in for it this time, my lad. You've fooled around with the universal machinery once too often. And while I'm at it, I think I might as well destroy the cosmos and overthrow Ananke and begin everything all over again with me as Supreme Deity."

  "That's an overreaction if I ever heard one," Azzie said. "To destroy an anomaly you propose to produce a greater one."

  "Well, that's how the universe crumbles," Nameless said. "I'm afraid I'll have to destroy you."

  "I suppose you have to try," Azzie said, "but why don't you have it out with Ananke instead? She's top gun around here."

  "That's not the way I do business," Nameless said. "I'll start with you. After I've eaten your soul and washed it down with your body, I'll think about who to take on next. That's my agenda."

  Chapter 2

  Nameless waved what might have been an arm. Before he even had a chance to say good-bye to the watchman. Azzie found himself transported to an outdoor cafe table in a city whose architecture made it look very much like Rome.

  Azzie was impressed by the transition, which Nameless had effected without any visible apparatus, but he was careful not to show his admiration. Nameless seemed to have a swelled head anyway. Nameless was there with him, wearing an overweight human body with a green Tyrolean hat on top of it. A

  white-coated waiter came over; Azzie ordered a Cinzano and turned to Nameless.

  "Okay, now, about this fight. Are we going to have any rules, or is this going to be freestyle all the way?"

  Azzie knew he didn't stand a chance against Nameless, whom he suspected of being a just-born superdeity. But he was putting a bold face on it, trying to bluff his way to some advantage.

  "Which fighting style are you better at?" Nameless asked.

  "I'm known as a master of the contest without rules," Azzie said.

  "Is that so? Then I guess we'll have some rules."

  Rules were something Azzie knew he could deal with. He had been taking exception to them since he was born, so already he had an advantage. But he was careful not to gloat visibly.

  "What rules do you want to fight by?" Nameless said.

  Azzie looked around. "Are we in Rome?"

  Yes, we are.

  "Then let's go by regulation gladiatorial drill."

  No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he had a moment of vertigo. When his head cleared, he found himself standing inside a great amphitheater. Empty seats rose in a circle on all sides of him. Azzie was naked save for a loincloth; apparently the new deity was a bit of a prude. That was worth, remembering.

  found himself standing inside a great amphitheater. Empty seats rose in a circle on all sides of him. Azzie was naked save for a loincloth; apparently the new deity was a bit of a prude. That was worth, remembering.

  a standard Roman short sword.

  "That was fast," Azzie said.

  "I catch on quick," Nameless said, his voice coming from nowhere in particular.

  "What now?" Azzie asked.

  "Hand-to-hand combat," Nameless said. "Just you and me. Here I come!"

  A door slid open on one side of the amphitheater. There was a noisy snarling sound, and out rolled a large metallic object with tracks. Azzie had seen one of these before, during his visits to the First World War battlefields in France. It was a standard-sized army tank with the usual armor and cannon.

  "Are you in that tank?" Azzie asked.

  "I am the tank," Nameless said.

  "Not quite evenly matched, are we?" Azzie said.

  "Don't be a sore loser," Nameless said.

  The tank rumbled forward, its blue exhaust bleating out a chorus of challenge. Tentacles sprouted from its sides, each tentacle terminating in a whirring buzz saw. Azzie retreated until he felt the wall at his back.

  "Wait!" he cried. "Where's the audience?"

  "What?" the tank asked, coming to a stop.

  "Can't have a real gladiatorial contest without an audience," Azzie said.

  The stadium doors opened, and people started to enter the amphitheater. Azzie knew all of them. First came the Greek gods in their sculptured white sheets. Then came Ylith, and with her was Babriel. A few steps behind them came Michael.

  Nameless looked them over and apparently didn't like what he saw.

  "Just a minute," he said. "A short time-out, okay?"

  Azzie found himself in a nineteenth-century sitting room with Nameless.

  Chapter 3

  Now, look," Nameless said. "You can see that I've got you outclassed and outmatched. Nothing to be ashamed of. I'm the new paradigm. No one can oppose me. I'm the visible sign of "what is to come."

  "So kill me and get it over with," Azzie said.

  "No, I have a much better idea. I want to let you live. I want you to join me in the new universe I am going to create."

  "What do you need me for?"

  "I don't. Let's be very clear about that. It's just that once I'm established I'd like to have someone around to talk to. Someone from the good old days, which are now. Someone I didn't create. I suspect it gets boring when there's nobody to talk to but emanations of your own being. I imagine that's why your God went away—He got tired of having nobody to talk to. Nobody from the old days, I mean. Nobody who wasn't Himself in some way or other. I'm not going to make that mistake. You're another point of view,
and I can make use of that, so I'd like you to stay on with me."

  Azzie was hesitant. It was a great opportunity, of course. But still…

  "What are you delaying for? I can defeat you utterly, and rather easily, but now I'm giving you a chance to come to my side. You and you alone from this universe, Azzie, will live on after the destruction of everything else. We'll sweep them all away—gods, devils, humans, nature, fate, chance, the whole works. We'll start all over with a jollier cast of characters. You can help me plan it out. We can have it any way we want. You'll be in at the creation of a new universe! You'll be one of its founding fathers.

  Can't say fairer than that, can I?"

  "But everybody else…"

  "I'm going to kill them all. They all have to go. Don't try to change my mind."

  "There's a young boy named Quentin…"

  "He'll live in your memory."

  "There's a witch named Ylith…"

  "Don't you have a lock of her hair for a keepsake?"

  "Can't you keep her alive?" Azzie asked. "And the boy, too? Take the rest."

  "Of course I can keep her alive. I can do whatever I want. But I'm not going to let her live. Or the kid.

  Or anyone else. Only you, Azzie. It's a kind of punishment, you see."

  Azzie looked at Nameless. He had the feeling that things weren't going to be much different under the new cosmic management. But he wasn't going to be around to see it. It was time to fight, time to die.

  "No, thanks," he said.

  Chapter 4

  The tank rumbled forward. Now it was a beautiful machine made of an amalgam of anodized aluminum and glowing chrome. White-hot it glowed, and it moved toward Azzie. He dodged out of its way. Due to its melting state, its wheels sagged out of shape and it suddenly had a hard time moving. Nameless hadn't gotten that bit quite right.

  The tank fired its cannon. From the cannon's maw came a blobby plastic ball that split upon contact with the sand. Out of it came chiggers and baby mice. All together, they began to dig what looked like a barbecue pit. Azzie was careful not to judge: he didn't know what Nameless had in mind, if anything.