This Immortal

by Roger Joseph Zelazny

  The flames had almost reached the top.

  I saw Jason then, standing beside the cart, Bortan seated by his side. I backed away further. Bortan came to me and sat down at my right. He licked my hand, once.

  "Mighty hunter, we have lost us another," I said.

  He nodded his great head.

  The flames reached the top and began to nibble at the night. The air was filled with sweet aromas and the sound of fire.

  Jason approached.

  "Father," he said, "he bore me to the place of burning rocks, but you were already escaped."

  I nodded.

  "A no-man friend freed us from that place. Before that, this man Hasan destroyed the Dead Man. So your dreams have thus far proved both right and wrong."

  "He is the yellow-eyed warrior of my vision," he said.

  "I know, but that part too is past."

  "What of the Black Beast?"

  "Not a snort nor a snuffle."

  "Good."

  We watched for a long, long time, as the night retreated into itself. At several points, Bortan's ears pricked forward and his nostrils dilated. George and Ellen had not moved. Hasan was a strange-eyed watcher, without expression.

  "What will you do now, Hasan?" I asked.

  "Go again to Mount Sindjar," he said, "for awhile."

  "And then?"

  He shrugged. "Howsoever it is written," he replied.

  And a fearsome noise came upon us then, like the groans of an idiot giant, and the sound of splintering trees accompanied it.

  Bortan leapt to his feet and howled. The donkeys who had drawn the cart shifted uneasily. One of them made a brief, braying noise.

  Jason clutched the sharpened staff which he had picked from the heap of kindling, and he stiffened.

  It burst in upon us then, there in the clearing. Big, and ugly, and everything it had ever been called.

  The Eater of Men…

  The Shaker of the Earth…

  The Mighty, Foul One…

  The Black Beast of Thessaly.

  Finally, someone could say what it really was. If they got away to say it, that is.

  It must have been drawn to us by the odor of burning flesh.

  And it was big. The size of an elephant, at least.

  What was Herakles' fourth labor?

  The wild boar of Arcadia, that's what.

  I suddenly wished Herk was still around, to help.

  A big pig… A razorback, with tusks the length of a man's arm… Little pig eyes, black, and rolling in the firelight, wildly…

  It knocked down trees as it came…

  It squealed, though, as Hasan drew a burning brand from the blaze and drove it, fire-end forward, into its snout, and then spun away.

  It swerved, too, which gave me time to snatch Jason's staff.

  I ran forward and caught it in the left eye with it.

  It swerved again then, and squealed like a leaky boiler.

  … And Bortan was upon it, tearing at its shoulder.

  Neither of my two thrusts at its throat did more than superficial damage. It wrestled, shoulder against fang, and finally shook itself free of Bortan's grip.

  Hasan was at my side by then, waving another firebrand.

  It charged us.

  From somewhere off to the side George emptied a machine-pistol into it. Hasan hurled the torch. Bortan leapt again, this time from its blind side.

  …And these things caused it to swerve once more in its charge, crashing into the now empty cart and killing both donkeys.

  I ran against it then, thrusting the staff up under its left front leg.

  The staff broke in two.

  Bortan kept biting, and his snarl was a steady thunder. Whenever it slashed at him with its tusks he relinquished his grip, danced away, and moved in again to worry it.

  I am sure that my needle-point deathlance of steel would not have broken. It had been aboard the Vanitie, though…

  Hasan and I circled it with the sharpest and most stakelike of the kindling we could find. We kept jabbing, to keep it turning in a circle. Bortan kept trying for its throat, but the great snouted head stayed low, and the one eye rolled and the other bled, and the tusks slashed back and forth and up and down like swords. Cloven hooves the size of bread-loaves tore great holes in the ground as it turned, counterclockwise, trying to kill us all, there in the orange and dancing flamelight.

  Finally, it stopped and turned-suddenly, for something that big-and its shoulder struck Bortan in the side and hurled him ten or twelve feet past me. Hasan hit it across the back with his stick and I drove in toward the other eye, but missed.

  Then it moved toward Bortan, who was still regaining his feet-its head held low, tusks gleaming.

  I threw my staff and leapt as it moved in on my dog. It had already dropped its head for the death blow.

  I caught both tusks as the head descended almost to the ground. Nothing could hold back that scooping slash, I realized, as I bore down upon it with all my strength.

  But I tried, and maybe I succeeded, somehow, for a second…

  At least, as I was thrown through the air, my hands torn and bleeding, I saw that Bortan had managed to get back out of the way.

  I was dazed by the fall, for I had been thrown far and high; and I heard a great pig-mad squealing. Hasan screamed and Bortan roared out his great-throated battle-challenge once more.

  …And the hot red lightning of Zeus descended twice from the heavens.

  … And all was still.

  I climbed back, slowly, to my feet.

  Hasan was standing by the blazing pyre, a flaming stake still upraised in spear-throwing position.

  Bortan was sniffing at the quivering mountain of flesh.

  Cassandra was standing beneath the cypress beside a dead donkey, her back against the trunk of the tree, wearing leather trousers, a blue woolen shirt, a faint smile, and my still-smoking elephant gun.

  "Cassandra!"

  She dropped the gun and looked very pale. But I had her in my arms almost before it hit the ground.

  "I'll ask you a lot of things later," I said. "Not now. Nothing now. Let's just sit here beneath this tree and watch the fire burn."

  And we did.

  A month later, Dos Santos was ousted from the Radpol. He and Diane have not been heard of since. Rumor has it that they gave up on Returnism, moved to Taler, and are living there now. I hope it's not true, what with the affairs of these past five days. I never did know the full story on Red Wig, and I guess I never will. If you trust a person, really trust him I mean, and you care for him, as she might have cared for me, it would seem you'd stick around to see whether he was right or wrong on your final big disagreement. She didn't, though, and I wonder if she regrets it now.

  I don't really think I'll ever see her again.

  Slightly after the Radpol shakeup, Hasan returned from Mount Sindjar, stayed awhile at the Port, then purchased a small ship and put out to sea early one morning, without even saying goodbye or giving any indication as to his destination. It was assumed he'd found new employment somewhere. There was a hurricane, though, several days later, and I heard rumors in Trinidad to the effect that he had been washed up on the coast of Brazil and met with his death at the hands of the fierce tribesmen who dwell there. I tried but was unable to verify this story.

  However, two months later, Ricardo Bonaventura, Chairman of the Alliance Against Progress, a Radpol splinter group which had fallen into disfavor with Athens, died of apoplexy during a Party function. There were some murmurings of Divban rabbit-venom in the anchovies (an exceedingly lethal combination, George assures me), and the following day the new Captain of the Palace Guard vanished mysteriously, along with a Skimmer and the minutes of the last three secret sessions of the AAP (not to mention the contents of a small wallsafe). He was said to have been a big, yellow-eyed man, with a slightly Eastern cast to his features.

  Jason is still herding his many-legged sheep in the high places, up where the fingers of
Aurora come first to smear the sky with roses, and doubtless he is corrupting youth with his song.

  Ellen is pregnant again, all delicate and big-waisted, and won't talk to anybody but George. George wants to try some fancy embryosurgery, now, before it's too late, and make his next kid a water-breather as well as an air-breather, because of all that great big virgin frontier down underneath the ocean, where his descendants can pioneer, and him be father to a new race and write an interesting book on the subject, and all that. Ellen is not too hot on the idea, though, so I have a hunch the oceans will remain virgin a little longer.

  Oh yes, I did take George to Capistrano some time ago, to watch the spiderbats return. It was real impressive-them darkening the sky with their flight, nesting about the ruins the way they do, eating the wild pigs, leaving green droppings all over the streets. Lorel has hours and hours of it in tri-dee color, and he shows it at every Office party. It's sort of a historical document, spiderbats being on the way out now. True to his word, George started a slishi plague among them, and they're dropping like flies these days. Just the other week one dropped down in the middle of the street with a big splatt! as I was on my way to Mama Julie's with a bottle of rum and a box of chocolates. It was quite dead when it hit. The slishi are very insidious. The poor spiderbat doesn't know what's happening; he's flying along happily, looking for someone to eat, and then zock! it hits him, and he falls into the middle of a garden party or somebody's swimming pool.

  I've decided to retain the Office for the time being. I'll set up some land of parliament after I've whipped up an opposition party to the Radpol-Indreb, or something like that maybe: like Independent Rebuilders, or such.

  Good old final forces of disruption… we needed them down here amid the ruins.

  And Cassandra-my princess, my angel, my lovely lady-she even likes me without my fungus. That night in the Valley of Sleep did it in.

  She, of course, had been the shipload of heroes Hasan had seen that day back at Pagasae. No golden fleece, though, just my gunrack and such. Yeah. It had been the Golden Vanitie, which I'd built by hand, me, stout enough, I was pleased to learn, to take even the tsunami that followed that 9.6 Richter thing. She'd been out sailing in it at the time the bottom fell out of Kos. Afterwards, she'd set sail for Volos because she knew Makrynitsa was full of my relatives. Oh, good thing-that she had had this feeling that there was danger and had carried the heavy artillery ashore with her. (Good thing, too, that she knew how to use it.) I'll have to learn to take her premonitions more seriously.

  I've purchased a quiet villa on the end of Haiti opposite from the Port. It's only about fifteen minutes' skimming time from there, and it has a big beach and lots of jungle all around it. I have to have some distance, like the whole island, between me and civilization, because I have this, well-hunting-problem. The other day, when the attorneys dropped around, they didn't understand the sign: beware the dog. They do now. The one who's in traction won't sue for damages, and George will have him as good as new in no time. The others were not so severely taken.

  Good thing I was nearby, though.

  So here I am, in an unusual position, as usual.

  The entire planet Earth was purchased from the Talerite government, purchased by the large and wealthy Shtigo gens. The preponderance of expatriates wanted Vegan citizenship anyhow, rather than remaining under the Talerite ex-gov and working in the Combine as registered aliens. This has been coming for a long time, so the disposal of the Earth became mainly a matter of finding the best buyer-because our exile regime lost its only other cause for existence the minute the citizenship thing went through. They could justify themselves while there were still Earthmen out there, but now they're all Vegans and can't vote for them, and we're sure not going to, down here.

  Hence, the sale of a lot of real estate-and the only bidder was the Shtigo gens.

  Wise old Tatram saw that the Shtigo gens did not own Earth, though. The entire purchase was made in the name of his grandson, the late Cort Myshtigo.

  And Myshtigo left this distribution-desire, or last will and testament, Vegan-style…

  … in which I was named.

  I've, uh, inherited a planet

  The Earth, to be exact.

  Well-

  Hell, I don't want the thing. I mean, sure I'm stuck with it for awhile, but I'll work something out.

  It was that infernal Vite-Stats machine, and four other big think-tanks that old Tatram used. He was looking for a local administrator to hold the earth in fief and set up a resident representative government, and then to surrender ownership on a fairly simple residency basis once things got rolling. He wanted somebody who'd been around awhile, was qualified as an administrator, and who wouldn't want to keep the place for his very own.

  Among others, it gave him one of my names, then another, the second as a "possibly still living." Then my personnel file was checked, and more stuff on the other guy, and pretty soon the machine had turned up a few more names, all of them mine. It began picking up discrepancies and peculiar similarities, kept kapocketting, and gave out more puzzling answers.

  Before long, Tatram decided I had better be "surveyed."

  Cort came to write a book.

  He really wanted to see if I was Good, Honest, Noble, Pure, Loyal, Faithful, Trustworthy, Selfless, Kind, Cheerful, Dependable, and Without Personal Ambition.

  Which means he was a cockeyed lunatic, because he said, "Yes, he's all that."

  I sure fooled him.

  Maybe he was right about the lack of personal ambition, though. I am pretty damn lazy, and am not at all anxious to acquire the headaches I see as springing up out of the tormented Earth and blackjacking me daily.

  However, I am willing to make certain concessions so far as personal comfort is concerned. I'll probably cut myself back to a six-month vacation.

  One of the attorneys (not the one in traction-the one with the sling) delivered me a note from the Blue One. It said, in part:

  Dear Whatever-the-Blazes-Your-Name-Is,

  It is most unsettling to begin a letter this way, so I'll respect your wishes and call you Conrad.

  "Conrad" by now you are aware of the true nature of my visit. I feel I have made a good choice in naming you as heir to the property commonly referred to as Earth. Your affection for it cannot be gainsaid; as Karaghiosis you inspired men to bleed in its defense; you are restoring its monuments, preserving its works of art (and as one stipulation of my will, by the way, I insist that you put back the Great Pyramid!), and your ingenuity as well as your toughness, both physical and mental, is singularly amazing.

  You also appear to be the closest thing to an immortal overseer available (I'd give a lot to know your real age), and this, together with your high survival potential, makes you, really, the only candidate. If your mutation ever does begin to fail you, there is always the S-S series to continue linking the great chain of your days. (I could have said "forging," but it would not have been polite, inasmuch as I know you are an accomplished forger.-All those old records! You drove poor Vite-Stats half-mad with discrepancies. It is now programmed never to accept another Greek birth certificate as proof of age!)

  I commend the Earth into the hands of the kallikanzaros. According to legend, this would be a grave mistake. However, I am willing to gamble that you are even a kallikanzaros under false pretenses. You destroy only what you mean to rebuild. Probably you are Great Pan, who only pretended to die. Whatever, you will have sufficent funds and a supply of heavy equipment which will be sent this year-and lots of forms for requisitioning more from the Shtigo Foundation. So go thou and be thou fruitful and multiply, and reinherit the Earth. The gens will be around watching. Cry out if you need help, and help will be forthcoming.

  I don't have time to write you a book. Sorry. Here is my autograph, anyhow:

  –Cort Myshtigo

  P.S. I still dunno if it's art. Go to hell yourself.

  That is the gist of it.

  Pan?

 
Machines don't talk that way, do they?

  I hope not, anyhow…

  The Earth is a wild inhabitation. It is a tough and rocky place. The rubbish will have to be cleared, section by section, before some anti-rubbish can be put up.

  Which means work, lots of it. Which means I'll need all the Office facilities as well as the Radpol organization, to begin with.

  Right now I'm deciding whether or not to discontinue the ruin-tours. I think I'll let them go on, because for once we'll have something good to show. There is that certain element of human curiosity which demands that one halt in his course and peer through a hole in any fence behind which construction work is going on.

  We have money now, and we own our own property again, and that makes a big difference. Maybe even Returnism isn't completely dead. If there is a vital program to revive the Earth, we may draw back some of the ex-pop, may snag some of the new tourists.

  Or, if they all want to remain Vegans, they can do that, too. We'd like them, but we don't need them. Our Outbound immigration will be dropping off, I feel, once people know they can get ahead here; and our population will increase more than just geometrically, what with the prolonged fertility period brought on by the now quite expensive S-S series. I intend to socialize S-S completely. I'll do it by putting George in charge of a Public Health program, featuring mainland clinics and offering S-S all over the place.

  We'll make out. I'm tired of being a gravekeeper, and I don't really want to spend from now till Easter cutting through the Tree of the World, even if I am a Darkborn with a propensity for trouble. When the bells do ring, I want to be able to say, "Alethos aneste," Risen Indeed, rather than dropping my saw and running (ring-a-ding, the bells, clackety-clack, the hooves, etcetera). Now is the time for all good kallikanzaroi… You know.

  So…

  Cassandra and I have this villa on the Magic Island. She likes it here. I like it here. She doesn't mind my indeterminate age anymore. Which is fine.