Collected short fiction, p.727
Collected Short Fiction, page 727
“Make way!” the halfgod shouted. “Make way for Her Divinity!”
The boy looked five years old. Brown and thin, he wore only splashes and smears of drying mud. Planted at the center of the gold carpet, he stared up at the holy procession with dark wet eyes.
“You—” A sob racked and choked him. “You killed Spot!”
“Davey!” A tiny girl shrieked from the alley behind him. “Come away. Davey. Don’t let the deadeyes hurt you.”
The boy stood fast.
“Off!” the halfgod snapped. “Off the road!”
“Killer!” The boy shook his grimy fist. “I’ll make you sorry!”
“What?” Anger stiffened Quelf. “You insolent pup!”
He gestured at the scar-marked mumen. Both bent their lenses toward the boy. Violent pathmaker beams hissed around him. Yowling, the naked girl came splashing to him through the gutter.
“Hold everything!”
The goddess froze them with that gold-toned command. Levitating from the chair, she came sailing over the halfgod and the mumen and sank toward the carpet in front of the boy. Smiling, she paused to watch the girl, who was darting to pick up the dog.
“Who are you children?”
The boy studied her solemnly. “I’m Davey,” he said at last. “Davey Dunahoo.”
“But I have no name.” The girl came panting back to his side, lugging the limp body of the dog. which seemed heavier than she. “They call me—” In the reek of the charred brown fur, she sneezed twice. “They call me Buglet.”
“Don’t you have parents?”
“I never had a father.” Davey stopped to consider her again. “My mother was a girl at La China’s. A drunk man stabbed her.” Gravely, he nodded at the girl. “Spot found Buglet lying in the weeds beyond the dump. She was sick. She can’t remember who she is.”
“Where do you live?”
“Nowhere.” He shrugged. “Anywhere.”
“In the street,” the girl piped. “When it rains El Yaqui lets us sleep in his barn. Sometimes he finds a bone for Spot.”
“Mercy. Your Divinity.” The halfgod came striding around the mumen. “The reception is waiting for us.” He glowered at the muddy urchins. “I’ve warned you off the road.”
“You can kill dogs.” The boy stared back. “But you can’t kill the Multiman—”
“Blasphemy!” the halfgod roared. “Belthar will put a stop to that—”
The goddess raised a shining hand.
“Multiman?” She turned to frown at Quelf. “Who is Multiman?”
“A wicked heresy. Forbidden by the Thearchy, but still current among these stupid premen.” He grinned at the defiant children. “I believe their removal will put an end to it.”
She floated back to the children.
“Please forgive us.” She settled toward them, smiling. “I do want to help you. Won’t you tell me what you need?”
The boy stared blankly, but the girl crept forward with the dog in her arms.
“If you’re a goddess, please make Spot alive again.”
“I can’t do that.” She gave Quelf a quick wry glance. “Not even Belthar could reanimate your pet.”
“The Multiman could,” the boy insisted. “If he had come.”
He took the dog from Buglet’s arms. Silently he turned, to wade back across the ditch to the mud-walled alley. Buglet splashed after him. The goddess glided back to her chair, and the procession marched on again through the sharp sewer reek.
A few sun-browned children in blue-and-white uniforms watched from the schoolyard. At one corner, a withered woman sat on a wasted donkey, waiting impassively. At El Yaqui’s trading post, a dozen men looked up from the drinks and the games on their sidewalk tables, and a plump dark girl in a bright-red wrapper leaned from a second-floor window to stare at the passing goddess.
At the end of the carpet strip, on the clean green lawn beneath the white marble steps of the agency, the preman leaders and the truman agent waited, robed in official white.
Bowing to the chair, the agent humbly begged the favor of the goddess. The premen were eager to entertain their sacred guest in the agency garden.
Zhondra left her chair and levitated after him. to inspect the display of preman arts and crafts. A dark silent youth stood sweating beside a plow, the garden wall behind him hung with sample plants of cotton, corn, beans, and hemp. A one-legged smith bent over his anvil and forge, shaping hot metal, preparing to shoe a mule. Two shy girls in clean white gowns showed a relief map of the whole reservation, its red buttes and canyons modeled in clay. A row of silent matrons offered tacos and hamburgers and rice balls, with mescal and beer and tea.
The goddess tasted politely. When she asked to make the premen a gift.
the agent called for El Yaqui. A lean, grave man with brooding eyes and a far-off smile, he accepted the casket of gems with a silent bow that seemed indifferent.
“Your Divinity, these are the premen.” Following the goddess back to her chair. Quelf spoke with a covert satisfaction. “You’ll find no Creators among them.”
“Yet they look more unfortunate than harmful. I see no cause for their destruction.”
“But they aren’t to be destroyed,” the halfgod protested. “They are simply to be resettled. On a virgin world in the Ninth Universe.”
“Why?” Her violet eyes probed him. “Is Belthar afraid of heretics?”
“If my Lord Belthar dreads anything. I’m not aware of it. The problem is simply living space. The premen never accepted civilization. Out of place in our sacred culture, they’re dwindling away. Only a generation ago. the survivors from the other continents were gathered here. Now they’re too few to make efficient use of the land they occupy.”
“This wasteland? Who needs it?”
“The Lord Belthar has graciously approved an engineering project of my own.” He beamed with self-approval. “A dam across the lower canyon. Desalting-plants and tunnels to fill a wide new lake with Pacific water. The entire reservation will be flooded.”
“Your own project?” She looked away at the tall red buttes and the vast bare flats, and keenly back at him.
“The actual plans were drawn by truman engineers, but I’ll have a palace on the lake. And—”
“I see.” Her cool voice cut him off. “What about this Multiman.”
“Pure myth.” He chuckled. “Preman logic is the joke of the planet. Though the Lord Belthar has been their ruler for a thousand years, they still cling to irrational beliefs in their old imaginary gods. Buddha. Brahma. Allah—the list is endless. The Multiman heresy may well be a distorted folk recollection of the Fourth Creation.” He chuckled again. “The Lord Belthar took care of that.”
“Not if you ask Davey Dunahoo.” With a thoughtful glance at the straggle of huts, she levitated into her chair. “Perhaps Belthar is wise to get the premen out of his universe.”
2.
Zhondra Zhey went on to visit the Museum of Terran Evolution. She paid a formal at Belthar’s Asian Temple, but felt no regret when the god of Earth was not in residence.
Her starship loaded with a precious cargo of gum from the seed-pods of a mutant poppy that flourished on the Terran highlands, she took it on to dominions of the Thearchy in another universe, guiding it through contact planes that no mortal pilot could sense or penetrate.
She had left instructions, however, with the Redrock agent. San Six. He spoke to El Yaqui, who sent a preman magistrate to look for Davey Dunahoo and Buglet. They were found in the brush beyond the town dump, solemnly building a mud-mortared rock pyramid above the ashes of their dog. Silent and afraid, they were escorted to the agency.
“I don’t bite.” The genial agent came to meet them at the door of a huge room hung with bits of ancient preman art. “In fact. I’ve got good news for you.” He made them sit in hard chairs too big for them. “First, however. I must ask you something.” He leaned intently toward them across his bare enormous desk. “Who has spoken to you about Multiman?” Though he was smiling cheerily, his brown eyes seemed very keen.
“Everybody.” Davey squirmed on the hard chair and looked at Buglet. “But most people don’t believe.”
“Who does believe?”
“My mother did.” Davey stared up at a tall case full of rusty preman weapons. The agent sat and watched, till at last he went on: “She was born on the old Asian reservation. She was beautiful. A halfgod saw her and took her away to be a bride of Belthar. She was never chosen, but the halfgod took her for himself. When he didn’t want her any more, he sent her here. She worked for La China, and she used to say I had many fathers. She hated all the gods and the whole Thearchy. I guess that’s why she wanted to believe in the Multiman.”
“What exactly did she say?”
Davey looked at Buglet till she nodded.
“She said he was made in the Fourth Creation—but he’s no demon. He escaped Belthar’s attack. He lives in hiding. He’s immortal, waiting for his time and gaining power while he waits. When he comes out. he’ll be greater than all the gods—Master of the whole multiverse. My mother said he would bring justice to the premen.”
The agent reached to touch a button, and Davey guessed that some machine had been storing all he said.
“Thank you both.” The agent smiled again, leaning back in his tall chair. “It’s my duty to learn such things, but you needn’t be afraid. The Lord Belthar is more tolerant of heresy than your old preman deities used to be. He knows that you premen are afflicted with imaginations too strong for your perceptions of reality. Anyhow, the church has been instructed to overlook the insane faith so many of you have in your old imaginary gods and demons. After all, I suppose you couldn’t endure all the pains and dangers of your brief lives without your saviors and your saints, your werewolves and your warlocks.” His gaze grew sharper. “Of course, if anybody did believe in this Multiman. we would have to act.”
Davey moved uneasily in his chair, but Buglet shook her head. He shrugged and said nothing.
“Anyhow, there is good news for you.” With a wider smile, the agent waved all talk of heresy away. “The goddess remembers you. She regrets what happened to your pet. and she likes what she calls your irreverent independence. She wants the two of you to become special wards of the agency. We’re to see to your care and education.”
“Thank—thank her!” Buglet gulped. “She’s nice.”
“She’s kind.” Davey sat very straight. “But we don’t want anything.”
“Why not?” The agent squinted at them unbelievingly. “You premen! I’ve been your keepers for a dozen years, and I still don’t understand you.”
Davey looked down and said nothing. The trumen were too much of everything—too quick and too keen and too strong, too modest and too happy and too generous. The agent seemed too content that his race had been designed to replace the old imperfect premen, yet too careful not to hurt them with any display of his own superiority.
“We—we thank you, sir!” Buglet stifled a sob. “The goddess is good, but she couldn’t help Spot.”
They squirmed off the chairs and started for the door.
“Don’t go yet,” the agent called. “My son wants to meet you.”
San Seven was a stocky brown-eyed boy. their own age but inches taller. Warm with instant friendship, he led them off to the long gameroom and showed them his toys.
strange bright machines and moving models of men and gods and aliens. He showed them his books, which were filled with living pictures and mysterious symbolism. He took them into a great clean kitchen and filled them with foods and drinks they had never imagined. When he asked them to stay at the agency, so that they could really be his friends, Buglet accepted before Davey could say no.
Though they didn’t like being apart, there was a whole huge room for each of them. One tall wall in Davey’s room was a wonderful window that could open on starships in space or worlds in other universes. When San Seven was showing them the buttons that worked it. Davey asked to see the place where the premen were to go.
“Here’s the planet where my uncle lives.” Hastily. San Seven fingered the buttons to make a picture of jewel-colored towers clustered on smooth blue hills, with a double sun hung in the greenish sky. “My mother wants us to move there, when the agency is closed.”
“It’s lively!” Buglet said. “You are very lucky.”
“Please,” Davey insisted. “Show us our new home.”
“Another time.” San Seven began explaining again how to shift the pictures.
“Now.” Davey said.
With an unhappy shrug. San Seven punched the buttons to show them Andoranda V. It was all naked rock and mud flat and sand dune, with rivers of red mud staining the storm-beaten seas. The sky was yellow dust, spilling blood-colored rain.
Buglet turned white beneath her grime, and Davey clenched his fists.
“A very remarkable planet.” San Seven spoke fast without looking at them. “It’s off in Universe Nine. It does have creatures enough in the sea—I’ve seen great dark monsters fighting, things as big as starships. But its native life never adapted to dry land. You premen will have the continents all to yourselves.”
“No—no trees!” Buglet whispered. “No grass.”
“Not yet. But we’re working to establish Terran land-life.”
“I don’t like it.” Davey muttered. “We won’t go there.”
“You’ll own the whole planet.” San Seven tried to smile. “And we’re trying to improve it for you. We’ve had a pilot station there for several centuries.” The picture flickered to show a row of rusting metal huts around a circle of rock blasted flat for landing shuttles. The huts were banked high with dirty snow and nothing moved anywhere. “We’re trying to terraform the planet, but the engineers have run into problems. Terran plants die. Seeds don’t sprout. Even our engineers are sterile there—they’re reporting some unknown lethal factor that kills all desire.”
“So we’ll die there.”
“There won’t be children—but of course the starships will bring supplies. The Lord Belthar will preserve you.”
“We won’t go.”
“The Lord says you will.” As if to soften that hard finality, San Seven added. “Though you’ll probably be allowed to stay here till the lake begins to fill.”
He tapped the buttons again, to show them Quelf’s new dam, a dark ridge reaching from one bleak red mesa to another, construction machines still swarming over it.
“But we premen made you,” Buglet was whispering. “We made the mumen and the gods. Now you want to take the last poor scrap of our own world and send us off to die—”
“I’m sorry.” San Seven reached to touch her shoulder, but she shrank from his hand. “Our Lord is merciful.” he insisted. “You can’t blame him and you can’t blame us. My father says the whole trouble is that you premen just can’t compete, because too many of your ancestors were spoilt creations.”
Davey stiffened angrily.
“It’s only what my father says.” San Seven moved cautiously back. “After all. the Creators were still premen. Though I know they did make us and the gods, they often bungled. Their greatest failure was the Fourth Creation—the demons that the Lord Belthar had to destroy. But there were other misbegotten things, my father says, that escaped from the lab to corrupt the blood of the premen. By now, my father says, you’re all stepchildren of the Creators.”
Buglet caught Davey’s lifted arm.
“But of course you aren’t to blame, any more than we are.” He smiled at them gently. “Though it’s simply stupid to expect some new god to save you. I know the Creators were premen. but the Creation is over. The Lord Belthar won’t let it happen again.”
He hurried them back to the gameroom to let them play with his toys. Davey sat down instead to look at a book. The live pictures delighted him, changing scenes as he moved his finger along the edge of the page, but the text baffled him with many-colored patterns that flashed on and off too fast for him to see their shapes.
Hopefully he asked, “Can you teach me how to read?”
“Our symbology doesn’t work like preman print.” San Seven looked apologetic. “It isn’t linear, with one simple symbol after another. It’s multiplex, instead. Each display is a whole gestalt. I’m afraid it’s too hard for you. Come on down to the basement. There’s a free-fall gym you’ll enjoy.”
Trying to forget that they were premen, they followed him down to the gym. They did enjoy the null G-belts, flying as easily as levitating gods, till San Seven called them to meet his mother. A calm cheery woman, she made them wash themselves in a steamy, strange-smelling room and dressed them in her son’s clothing. She said they must start going to the preman school.
San Seven went with them on the first day to show them what to do, but his own training came from special machines in a room at the agency. When Davey asked to use these, he flushed and mumbled that they were too difficult for premen.
At the school, their fellow students were all bored and sullen. Their lessons were about all the other worlds of the Thearchy except Andoranda V, the only one that they could ever expect to see. They laughed at Davey and Buglet when they spoke of the Multiman—and sometimes jeered them for being the agent’s pets.
Davey asked the preman teachers about the Creators and the Multiman. but all they knew came from the words in the Book of Belthar. which the school chaplain droned every morning before their studies began.
With pocket money now for tacos and rice when they were tired of the strange foods at the agency, or a cactus ice at the sidewalk cafe, they made more preman friends in town. The wisest, people said, was La China.
She was El Yaqui’s wife, strange-odored. silent and black and nearly too fat to move. Shapeless in a faded blanket, she sat behind her ancient cash machine in the wide door of the trading post, taking money for meals and beer and mescal, for stuff off the shelves, for the girls upstairs. Her dark Asian eyes saw everything, but when Davey asked what she knew about the Multiman. her only answer was a sleepy smile.
