The Very Best of F & SF v1 (24 page)

Then they began
to crawl toward the mountain.

6

The onyx spire
of the mountain rose out of hell and struggled toward the shredded sky. It was
monstrous arrogance. Nothing should have tried that climb out of desolation.
But the black mountain had tried, and succeeded.

It was like an
old man. Seamed, ancient, dirt caked in striated lines, autumnal, lonely; black
and desolate, piled strength upon strength. It would
not
give in to gravity and
pressure and death. It struggled for the sky. Ferociously alone, it was the
only feature that broke the desolate line of the horizon.

In another
twenty-five million years, the mountain might be worn as smooth and featureless
as a tiny onyx offering to the deity night. But though the powder plains
swirled and the poison winds drove the pumice against the flanks of the
pinnacle, thus far their scouring had only served to soften the edges of the
mountain’s profile, as though divine intervention had protected the spire.

Lights moved
near the summit.

7

Stack learned
the nature of the phosphorescent strings excreted onto the plain the night
before by the batlike creatures. They were spores that became, in the wan light
of day, strange bleeder plants.

All around them
as they crawled through the dawn, the little live things sensed their warmth
and began thrusting shoots up through the talc. As the fading red ember of the
dying sun climbed painfully into the sky, the bleeding plants were already
reaching maturity.

Stack cried out
as one of the vine tentacles fastened around his ankle, holding him. A second looped
itself around his neck.

Thin films of
berry-black blood coated the vines, leaving rings on Stack’s flesh. The rings
burned terribly.

The shadow
creature slid on its belly and pulled itself back to the man. Its triangular
head came close to Stack’s neck, and it bit into the vine. Thick black blood
spurted as the vine parted, and the shadow creature rasped its razor-edged
teeth back and forth till Stack was able to breathe again. With a violent
movement Stack folded himself down and around, pulling the short knife from the
neck-pouch. He sawed through the vine tightening inexorably around his ankle.
It screamed as it was severed, in the same voice Stack had heard from the skies
the night before. The severed vine writhed away, withdrawing into the talc.

Stack and the
shadow thing crawled forward once again, low, flat, holding onto the dying
earth: toward the mountain.

High in the
bloody sky, the Deathbird circled.

8

On their own
world, they had lived in luminous, oily-walled caverns for millions of years,
evolving and spreading their race through the universe. When they had had
enough of empire building, they turned inward, and much of their time was spent
in the intricate construction of songs of wisdom, and the designing of fine
worlds for many races.

There were
other races that designed, however. And when there was a conflict over
jurisdiction, an arbitration was called, adjudicated by a race whose
raison d’
ê
tre
was impartiality and
cleverness in unraveling knotted threads of claim and counterclaim. Their
racial honor, in fact, depended on the flawless application of these qualities.
Through the centuries they had refined their talents in more and more
sophisticated arenas of arbitration until the time came when they were the
final authority. The litigants were compelled to abide by the judgments, not
merely because the decisions were always wise and creatively fair, but because
the judges’ race would, if its decisions were questioned as suspect, destroy
itself. In the holiest place on their world they had erected a religious
machine. It could be activated to emit a tone that would shatter their crystal
carapaces. They were a race of exquisite cricketlike creatures, no larger than
the thumb of a man. They were treasured throughout the civilized worlds, and
their loss would have been catastrophic. Their honor and their value was never
questioned. All races abided by their decisions.

So Dira’s people
gave over jurisdiction to that certain world, and went away, leaving Dira with
only the Deathbird, a special caretakership the adjudicators had creatively
woven into their judgment.

There is
recorded one last meeting between Dira and those who had given him his
commission. There were readings that could not be ignored—had, in fact, been
urgently brought to the attention of the fathers of Dira’s race by the
adjudicators—and the Great Coiled One came to Dira at the last possible moment
to tell him of the mad thing into whose hands this world had been given, to
tell Dira of what the mad thing would do.

The Great Coiled
One—whose rings were loops of wisdom acquired through centuries of gentleness
and perception and immersed meditations that had brought forth lovely designs
for many worlds—he who was the holiest of Dira’s race, honored Dira by coming
to
him,
rather than commanding
Dira to appear.

We
have only one gift to leave them,
he said.
Wisdom. This mad one will come, and he will lie to them,
and he will tell them: created he them. And we will be gone, and there will be
nothing between them and the mad one but you. Only you can give them the wisdom
to defeat him in their own good time.
Then the Great Coiled One stroked the skin of Dira with ritual affection, and
Dira was deeply moved and could not reply. Then he was left alone.

The mad one
came, and interposed himself, and Dira gave them wisdom, and time passed. His
name became other than Dira, it became Snake, and the new name was despised:
but Dira could see the Great Coiled One had been correct in his readings. So
Dira made his selection. A man, one of them, and gifted him with the spark.

All of this is
recorded somewhere. It is history.

9

The man was not
Jesus of Nazareth. He may have been Simon. Not Genghis Khan, but perhaps a foot
soldier in his horde. Not Aristotle, but possibly one who sat and listened to
Socrates in the agora. Neither the shambler who discovered the wheel nor the
link who first ceased painting himself blue and applied the colors to the walls
of the cave. But one near them, somewhere near at hand. The man was not Richard
Coeur-de-Lion,
Rembrandt,
Richelieu, Rasputin, Robert Fulton or the Mahdi. Just a man. With the spark.

10

Once, Dira came
to the man. Very early on. The spark was there, but the light needed to be
converted to energy. So Dira came to the man, and did what had to be done before
the mad one knew of it, and when he discovered that Dira, the Snake, had made
contact, he quickly made explanations. This legend has come down to us as the
fable of Faust. TRUE or FALSE?

11

Light converted
to energy, thus:

In the fortieth
year of his five hundredth incarnation, all-unknowing of the eons of which he
had been part, the man found himself wandering in a terrible dry place under a
thin, flat burning disc of sun. He was a Berber tribesman who had never
considered shadows save to relish them when they provided shade. The shadow
came to him, sweeping down across the sands like the
khamsin
of Egypt, the
simoom
of Asia Minor, the
harmattan
, all of which he
had known in his various lives, none of which he remembered. The shadow came
over him like the
sirocco.

The shadow stole
the breath from his lungs and the man’s eyes rolled up in his head. He fell to
the ground and the shadow took him down and down, through the sands, into the
Earth.

Mother Earth.

She lived, this
world of trees and rivers and rocks with deep stone thoughts. She breathed, had
feelings, dreamed dreams, gave birth, laughed, and grew contemplative for
millennia. This great creature swimming in the sea of space.

What a
wonder
, thought the man, for he had never
understood that the Earth was his mother, before this. He had never understood,
before this, that the Earth had a life of its own, at once a part of mankind
and quite separate from mankind. A mother with a life of her own.

Dira, Snake,
shadow... took the man down and let the spark of light change itself to energy
as the man became one with the Earth. His flesh melted and became quiet, cool
soil. His eyes glowed with the light that shines in the darkest centers of the
planet and he saw the way the mother cared for her young: the worms, the roots
of plants, the rivers that cascaded for miles over great cliffs in enormous
caverns, the bark of trees. He was taken once more to the bosom of that great
Earth mother, and understood the joy of her life.

Remember
this,
Dira said to the man.

What a
wonder,
the man thought...

...and was
returned to the sands of the desert, with no remembrance of having slept with,
loved, enjoyed the body of his natural mother.

12

They camped at
the base of the mountain, in a greenglass cave; not deep but angled sharply so
the blown pumice could not reach them. They put Nathan Stack’s stone in a fault
in the cave’s floor, and the heat spread quickly, warming them. The shadow
thing with its triangular head sank back in shadow and closed its eye and sent
its hunting instinct out for food. A shriek came back on the wind.

Much later, when
Nathan Stack had eaten, when he was reasonably content and well fed, he stared
into the shadows and spoke to the creature sitting there.

“How long was I
down there... how long was the sleep?”

The shadow thing
spoke in whispers.
A quarter of a
million years.

Stack did not
reply. The figure was beyond belief. The shadow creature seemed to understand.

In the
life of a world, no time at all.

Nathan Stack was
a man who could make accommodations. He smiled quickly and said, “I must have
been tired.”

The shadow did
not respond.

“I don’t
understand very much of this. It’s pretty damned frightening. To die, then to
wake up... here. Like this.”

You
did not die. You were taken, put down there. By the end you will understand
everything, I promise you.

“Who put me down
there?”

I did.
I came and found you when the time was right, and I put you down there.

“Am I still
Nathan Stack?”

If you
wish.

“But
am
I Nathan Stack?”

You
always were. You had many other names, many other bodies, but the spark was
always yours.
Stack seemed about to speak, and
the shadow creature added,
You
were always on your way to being who you are.

“But what
am
I? Am I still Nathan
Stack, dammit?”

If you
wish.

“Listen: you don’t
seem too sure about that. You came and got me, I mean, I woke up and there you
were. Now who should know better than you what my name is?”

You
have had many names in many times. Nathan Stack is merely the one you remember.
You had a very different name long ago, at the start, when I first came to you.

Stack was afraid
of the answer, but he asked, “What was my name then?”

Ish-lilith.
Husband of Lilith. Do you remember her?

Stack thought,
tried to open himself to the past, but it was as unfathomable as the quarter of
a million years through which he had slept in the crypt.

“No. But there
were other women, in other times.”

Many.
There was one who replaced Lilith.

“I don’t
remember.”

Her
name... does not matter. But when the mad one took Lilith from you and replaced
her with the other... then I knew it would end like this. The Deathbird.

“I don’t mean to
be stupid, but I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”

Before
it ends, you will understand everything.

“You said that
before.” Stack paused, stared at the shadow creature for a long time only
moments long, then, “What was your name?”