Flare

by Roger Zelazny

Ga-ah chased the little lizard on the ground, because that was where it went. She knew she could move faster up in the trees, where she could use both her gripping fingers and her curling toes for aid in the scramble, where she could literally fly from limb to vine to limb. But the lizard was on the ground, down among the leaf clutter, and she did not want it to escape. Lizards were good to eat. But lizards could also burrow down in the leaves and disappear, so Ga-ah had to chase it where it went, to keep it from getting away.

  Dart left, dart right, the lizard was quick. It knew Ga-ah was after it, and so it ran fast. So Ga-ah had to run fast. The lizard darted under a wall of bushes, and Ga-ah used her strong hands to bend back their branches, clearing space for her legs and hips.

  Her large, wide-set eyes, adapted to the shading of the high forest layers, could pick out subtle flashes of color. Lizard gray-and-green against the broader pattern of leaf gray-and-green. Ga-ah's deeply cupped ears, which stood away from her head, adapted to the conflicting breezes of the forest canopy, could detect the scuffling of lizard claws from the plainer rattle of leaves on the wind. But her snub nose, which was not adapted for anything special, could tell her little about the lizard's line of flight. Lizards did not have much smell, anyway, or they did not smell much different from the leaf-molds of the forest floor. So Ga-ah looked and listened, ignored her nose, and followed.

  Through the low-lying brush she went, her arms batting away the clutches of leaves, her feet stomping the hard soil. Was she following the lizard? Or was she driving it forward? Ga-ah could only tell that it was moving deeper into the bushes and moving more slowly, more warily now.

  The air around her became brighter, hotter… whiter. Sweat trickled down her face and stung her lips, tasting like blood but slightly sour. Tasting like fresh lizard. Ga-ah eagerly shoved another branch aside and pushed herself forward.

  Then she stopped.

  The world was still green, but it was a burning, whitely glaring green. The bushes faded out into the spiky stalks that Ga-ah sometimes found beside the forest streams. But these stalks, bending to a wind which did not flutter but blew straight, went on forever, as far as the eye could see, then even farther.

  Ga-ah covered her face with long, curling fingers. Too bright. This was like climbing to the very top of the forest, where the tree limbs became loose and springy and would not hold her weight. Where the great white showered down on the cool green, offending her eyes. Where the wind sang a loud, steady, thrashing song, offending her ears.

  She widened the space between one finger and another, peeking out through the thin shade. Still too bright, but at least Ga-ah could see for a little ways. She could see the lizard, a dark gray blot against the bright green of the bending stalks. It was running over their suppleness without any sound she could hear above the deep sighs of the dry wind.

  As if knowing it had won, the lizard stopped. Supporting its body upright on back legs and tail for a moment, it turned one eye over a sloping shoulder and flicked its tongue at her. Then the lizard raced on, incredibly staying on its rear legs, as if it drew energy and courage from the white-gold light falling all around it.

  Ga-ah looked up, past the lizard, to the half-dome of sky above. So big here. So hard and blue. One side was bounded by the trees at her back, the other side by nothing. This was a great piece of sky here. In the forest, she could only see little bits of this sky, revealed only when the wind tossed aside the branches, way high in the treetops.

  Something else was in that sky, too. Up higher, where she could not look. It was too bright for Ga-ah's wide-set, delicate eyes. Too bright. Pure white. Hurtful. It was something the lizard did not fear, but she did.

  Ga-ah put her hand back over her eyes, turned around, and pushed her way back through the screen of bushes. She disappeared into the more friendly forest gloom that was her heritage.

  But not her future.

  Bringing dogs and goats inside the fence

  Planting wheat and barley in the fields

  Harnessing horses and oxen to the plow

  Pulling cotton fibers and weaving fabrics

  Parsumash, circa 6500 B.C.

  Haddad watched his apprentices pound the green rocks to powder. Under his breath, he counted the ritual strokes of their pestles against the stone basin. He studied the flexing and tightening of the smooth, brown skin over their arms, the whip-snapping of tendons, the writhing of veins as those arms chopped at the fragments of malachite. Only when the green powder was as fine as the river silt could the next stage of the process begin.

  Then slaves brought out jars of charcoal—wood burned under a blanket of soil, so that it turned to hard, black nuggets instead of fragile, white ashes. These nuggets, too, had been ground to a fine powder. The slaves added handfuls of the charcoal to the malachite, still in its basin, and the apprentices mixed it evenly with their pestles. When the joining was done to his satisfaction, Haddad directed them to take up their reed pipes while the slaves ran to get torches of pitch pine.

  Breathe in through gapped mouths, blow out through hollow reeds. The apprentices exhaled their life-force gently, steadily into the pipes, whose ends were buried under the green-black mixture at the sides of the bowl. Meanwhile the torchbearers passed their burning wands over the powder's surface. Tiny sparks of charcoal flew up and ignited. The bearers dipped their flame lower, and the embedded grains began to glow.

  Soon the blowers were puffing out their cheeks, and their brows were furrowing, glinting sweat with their exertions. One of them weakened. Haddad looked up sharply, saw the man's eyes cross in his face, his mouth slacken, his hands flutter on the reed tube.

  Haddad gestured impatiently to one who stood in reserve. That one pulled the sagging man out of line, caught up the pipe, and resumed the steady blowing.

  In a few moments, the mixture in the basin caught fire.

  It always went like this. But only Haddad understood and directed the sequence, because he alone knew the numbers of handfuls of malachite and charcoal to mix, of strokes to make, of breaths to take, of torches to light. That knowledge was his contribution to the magic.

  The river watered the land's grasses, making them green, one of the colors of life. From the sky the sun's red fire—another life color—slew those grasses in the field, making them pale and brown, one of the colors of death.

  Sparks struck from the river rocks ignited those dried grasses, making them burn yellow-hot—more life color—like the sun. The rains watered the forest's trees, making them green, while the yellow-hot fire under the earth blackened their flesh, turning it the color of corruption.

  The malachite stone under the earth was green, color of life. When malachite mixed with the dead trees, in the presence of the body's breath and the yellow fire, then a new thing would be born. And behold, it would have the red color of life and of the sun.

  That was the principle: life and death, body and breath, in constant revolution, driven by the sun's everlasting power.

  Haddad concentrated hard on this burning mixture, furrowing his own brows. By expecting, hoping, and waiting, he tried to make the change come. And he was always vastly thrilled when it did.

  There!

  Death and corruption burned away in a thick smoke. It left, scattered across the bottom of the basin, a cluster of shimmering beads. These beads glowed first yellow like the newborn sun of morning, then red like the tired sun of evening. As the apprentices continued to blow and the last of the corrupt powders burned away, the beads scurried around on the smooth stone like live things. When one met another, they joined, forming a larger bead, red and yellow.

  Breathe in, breathe out, the apprentices continued to feed a fire that was no more. In its wake, the sunlike beads flowed together into a single, reddening lump. As their breath failed and the pipes sagged out of their mouths one and all, the lump flattened and grew darker yet.

  But that darkness was illusory, as Haddad knew. In a few more moments, when it was cool, he could take up the lump
and pound it against the face of the stone. And then, unlike any other substance of Haddad's experience, this "firerock" could be worked into smooth shapes. It would take these shapes more readily than a chip of flint or piece of river stone; it would hold them more certainly than a sliver of bone or cattle horn.

  Haddad could draw it into fine threads that were just as smooth but stronger than yarns of sheep's hair. He could make the metal into funny faces, or bowls, or bits of ornament. And, also unlike any other substance, the more he worked it, the brighter and redder and more like the evening sun it became. It would glitter and shine like nothing else, except perhaps the setting sun on the face of the river.

  That was the magic, and Haddad was extraordinarily proud of it.

  It would be another thousand years before Haddad's distant descendants would begin experimenting with the magic that he passed down to them. They would mix various sands and rocks with the base green malachite, altering the cycle of life and death. In the course of these additions, one artisan would sprinkle in a measure of tin—a soft, white metal with even less practical use than the copper that Haddad's magic created. Added in the right proportion, however—anywhere from five to twenty percent of the mix—the white metal would stiffen and strengthen the red copper, making a tough, durable slab that Haddad's descendants would call "bronze."

  This new metal was harder to work than the other, and it did not turn the same satisfying, sunlike red in return for their effort. But in just a few years more, another of Haddad's descendants would discover how easily this bronze took and held a cutting edge.

  Then the fun would begin.

  Invasion of Egypt by Hyksos horsemen

  Invasion of India by Aryan nomads

  Invasion of Britain by Celtic tribesmen

  Invasion of Greece by Achaean noblemen

  Thebes, 1374 B.C.

  If he was wrong about this, the Lord Osiris would surely eat him. Or feed him alive to jackal-headed Anubis.

  Amenhotep stared moodily outward from his seat in the shade, his eyes sweeping across the palace's inner courtyard.

  There, in the sun, upon the surface of packed sand, his women were playing. Each woman had three balls of leather stuffed with bran and tied up with string, all about as wide as Amenhotep's fist. The women threw them in the air in intricate patterns, sometimes crossing their arms between one throw and the next, sometimes jumping and kicking out with their legs before a throw. The object of the game, as Amenhotep understood it, was to catch the balls in succession. Anyone who failed at this then had to bend down and let another ride on her back as on an ass. The more skillful rode and threw their balls, until one of them also failed in the catching. Then she, too, bent and was ridden in humiliation.

  Women's games, played in idleness.

  Under the stern, ever-watchful eye of the sun.

  Amenhotep had been taught that the gods of his land were many and divided, like those flying skin balls. Their affairs were many and complex, like the game of tossing and catching, with arms crossed or legs kicking. And the forfeits in those affairs were complicated, like being ridden as an ass. All of this was because Khem, the land divided by the river and the flood, was a complex place and needed subtle and complicated guardians.

  Like Osiris, ruler of the underworld. Whose brother Set had killed him and scattered the pieces of his body into fourteen sacred places across the land. Whose sister-wife Isis gathered up the pieces and made him whole again. Whose son Horus in turn killed Set and became ruler of the divided land, becoming father-many-times to Amenhotep himself.

  But if the godhead were truly divided—like Osiris' body, like the community of Isis and Horus, Anubis and Maat, Nut and Set—then the land would also be divided. As the desert is separate from the fields of grain. As one bank of the river is separate from another. As the water is separate from the land. Yet Amenhotep knew this was not so.

  Could a man not walk from the wet fields into the dry desert and his feet never leave the land itself? Did the river not rise each year, in the great flood, covering the land with its body? Could a man not walk down the bank of the river into water rising above his knees, above his waist, and still his feet be upon the solid land? Was not the distant sea still more water that covered the land of the sea bottom, and did not the sailors feel the anchor stones thunk against it when they tethered their ships for the night?

  The land was all one thing, in flood or in drought.

  The cup of the land and its river of water was for the people, whether they were at work or at play or at rest.

  The dome of the sky with its river of stars was for the sun, whether he rose and lighted the land, or slept and iarkened the day.

  The land and its people were mortal and divided.

  The sky and its sun were immortal and singular.

  And, as the land went on under the river and beneath the sea, so the sky went under the land. The sun followed it down below when he disappeared for the night. Thus night and day were all one thing; they might appear to be divided only because the sun was in hiding for part of the time.

  Only the sun went on forever, unchanging.

  Only the sun was supremely powerful.

  Shining as Aton, he was merciful in his fruitfulness, drawing the green shoots from the mud. He was terrible in his heat, drawing the blowflies out of an improperly tended corpse. He was the rising of the river and the baking of the land. And, when he hid beneath the world, then men slept and for a time joined the dead in their blind confusions.

  Amenhotep had long understood this in his belly. Yet now the knowledge was also clear in his head, for he had worked it out by himself. The new idea stood in opposition to everything his father and his priests had told him about the gods. But still, he could see it so clearly.

  Only, if Amenhotep were wrong about it, Osiris would eat him with a great and toothful smile. And perhaps Osiris would not even wait for him to die and surrender himself for, judgment. So a prudent man, however much he believed in his newfound wisdom, would do well to take steps that would guard himself against calamity.

  Any peasant of the fields might smear mud on his doorpost, untell his name in the rolls of the priests, travel to another town, and be done with it. With another name, that man would then escape the wrath of the gods, unmade as they were.

  But Pharaoh's name was everywhere. The cartouche of Amenhotep-his-father, and now Amenhotep-the-son, was carved into every wall of the temples and cut on the steles at every crossroads and in every marketplace.

  What was Pharaoh to do?

  Change the name. For good luck and succor, he would take a new name under his new belief. He would call himself "Aton Is Pleased," and thereby seek protection and guidance from the all-ruler. And to make this conversion complete, he would strike the old name and add the new on every papyrus roll, incise it on every stone and into every wall. And thus the old gods, unmade as they were, would look and look for Amenhotep—and never find him.

  The change, such an amount of writing and carving, would require a great deal of work. But then, did not Pharaoh have slaves to command? And would not the scale of effort impress all the people of Khem with his sincerity?

  Still, the change would deface the stone of the temple walls, marring the royal likeness with the blot of scratching out and etching anew. But then, did not Pharaoh command the hands of the masons? They would simply have to cut a little deeper into the rock. Then the new name, "Ikhnaton," would cast a longer shadow among the blessings that Aton showered down upon his Pharaoh.

  And that was as it should be.

  Empire of the Persians

  Empire of the Athenians

  Empire of the Carthaginians

  Empire of the Romans

  Rome, 477 A.D.

  Beowin was busy smashing noses when Roderic found him.

  "Come on! There's gold still to get here," Roderic called. "And Alaric has a temple he wants to pull down. We need your strong back for that."

  Beowin squinted
up at him. "In a minute. Have to finish this."

  He had set the marble bust at a slight angle, tipped back on its base, with the nape of its neck resting firmly against a piece of stone. Beowin eyed the angle critically. "Needs to be just right," he explained. Then he hefted his war axe, taking a measured two-hand grip, with the blunt edge facing forward.

  If it was Roderic who was going to smash the statue, he'd have hit it from the side. And he'd have left it on the pedestal in the first place. Then one hard blow against the temple, reinforced by a couple of running steps, would shatter the whole thing. Or one sideways blow against the nostril if, like Beowin, he just wanted to take off the nose.

  But Beowin was doing it differently. And that made a kind of sense, for Beowin had a lot of practice at this.

  "Why do you spend so much time with the faces?" Roderic had once asked his friend. "And why the noses, particularly? Why not the eyes? Or the ears or lips?"

  Beowin paused to consider the matter seriously. "Someone will find them, one day," he said at last. "Maybe a friend or relative. Maybe someone who never knew them at all. And there they are, these Caesars, with their fancy noses all broken off." Beowin clamped his own nostrils between two fingers. "Abd den dey talk like dis!" He undamped his nose and laughed out loud.

  Evidently, Beowin imagined these stone forms were somehow spiritually linked to the bones of the dead. Maybe the Romans had thought so, to have made so many of them. Then one day the spirits would rise up and become abashed by their new deformities. So Beowin had made an art of breaking off just the noses.

  So he always took the bust down carefully, set it on the ground and braced it with a stone, then checked all the angles. Like an old Greek philosopher with a straight-edge and a compass. Now he was standing beside the statue's ear, bending over the face with great attention. His two-handed grip extended just the right length along the haft on his axe. He tapped the flat end against the tip of the cold, white nose. Then Beowin drew the axehead up in a high, half-circle swing, twisting his whole body with the effort. He brought it around and down.