Deus Irae Read online

  Tibor plucked at his chin with his left manual extensor and said, “Hmmm. I see. You’re sure?” It did sound familiar; possibly, in a better age, he had learned it some time ago.

  “Next question,” the Great C said.

  “This is more difficult,” Tibor said huskily. The Great C had answered about rain, but surely it could not know the answer to this question. “Tell me,” he said slowly, “if you can: What keeps the sun moving through the sky? Why doesn’t it fall to the ground?”

  The mobile extension of the computer gave an odd whirr, almost a laugh. “You will be astonished by the answer. The sun does not move. At least, what you see as motion is not motion at all. What you see is the motion of the Earth as it revolves around the sun. Since you are standing still, it seems as if the sun is moving, but that is not so; all the nine planets, including the Earth, revolve about the sun in regular elliptical orbits. They have been doing so for several billion years. Does that answer your question?”

  Tiber’s heart constricted. At last he managed to pull himself together, but he could not shake the pulsing prickles of cold-heat that had gathered on his body. “Christ,” he snarled, half to himself, half at the near-featureless female figure standing by his cart. “Well, for what it’s worth, I’ll ask you the last of my three questions.” But it would know the answer, as it had the initial two. “You can’t possibly answer this. No living creature could know. How did the world begin? You see, you did not exist before the world. Therefore it is impossible that you could know.”

  “There are several theories,” the Great C said calmly. “The most satisfactory is the nebular hypothesis. According to this—”

  “No hypothesis,” Tibor said.

  “But—”

  “I want facts,” Tibor said.

  Time passed. Neither of them spoke. Then, at last, the blurred female figure palpitated into her imitation of life. “Take the lunar fragments obtained in 1969. They show an age of—”

  “Inferences,” Tibor said.

  “The universe is at least five billion—”

  “No,” Tibor said. “You don’t know. You don’t remember. The part of you that contained the answer got destroyed in the Smash.” He laughed with what he hoped was a confident sound… but, as it came it wriggled with insecurity; his voice drained off into near silence. “You are senile,” he said, virtually inaudibly. “Like an old man damaged by radiation; you’re just a hollow chitinous shell.” He did not know what “chitinous” meant, but the term was a favorite of Father Handy; hence, he used it now.

  At this crucial moment the Great C vacillated. It’s not sure, he said to himself, if it answered the question. Doubt edged its voice as it quavered, “Come subsurface with me and show me the damaged or missing memory tape.”

  “How can I show you a missing tape?” Tibor said, and laughed loudly, a barking woof that spilled out searingly.

  “I guess you’re right, there,” the Great C muttered; now the female figure hesitated, drew back from his car and cow. “I want to feed on you,” it said. “Come below so I can dissolve you, as I have the others, the ones who came this way before you.”

  “No,” Tibor said. He sent his manual grapples into the inside pocket of his coat, brought forth the derringer, aimed it at the control unit, the brain, of the mobile extension confronting him. “Bang,” he said, and again laughed. “You’re dead.”

  “No such thing,” the Great C said. Its voice seemed more hardy, now. “How would you like to be my caretaker? If we go below you’ll see—”

  Tibor fired the single shot; the projectile bounced off the metal head unit of the mobile extension and disappeared. The figure closed its eyes, opened them, studied Tibor lengthily. It then glanced around doubtfully, as if unsure what it should do; it blinked and by degrees collapsed, lying at last among the weeds.

  Tibor gathered his four extensions above it, took hold, and lifted—or rather tried to lift. The object, folded up now, like a chair, did not move. The hell with it; there’s no value in it anyhow, even if I could lift it, he decided. And the damn cow couldn’t possibly pull such a massive and inert load.

  He flicked at the rump of the cow, delivering a signal to it; the cow lumbered forward, dragging his cart after it.

  I got away, he said to himself. The horde of black children ebbed back, making a way open to him; they had watched the entire interaction between himself and the Great C. Why doesn’t it dissolve them? Tibor wondered. Strange.

  The cow reached the road beyond the felled trees and continued slowly on its way. Flies buzzed at it but the cow ignored them, as if the cow, too, understood the dignity of triumph.

  Eight

  Higher and higher the cow climbed; she passed through a deep rift between two rocky ridges. Huge roots from old stumps spurted out on all sides. The cow followed a dried-up creekbed, winding and turning.

  After a time, mists began to blow about Tibor. The cow paused at the top of the ridge, breathing deeply, looking back the way they had come.

  A few drops of poisoned rain stirred the leaves around them. Again the wind moved through the great dead trees along the ridge. Tibor flicked at the cow rump ahead of him, and the cow once more shuddered into motion.

  He was, all at once, on a rocky field, overgrown with plantain and dandelion, infested with the dry stalks of yesterday’s weeds. They came to a ruined fence, broken and rotting. Was he going the right way? Tibor got out one of his Richfield maps, studied it, held it before his eyes like an Oriental scroll. Yes; this was the right way; he would encounter the tribes of the south, and from there—

  The cow dragged the cart through the fence, and arrived at last before a tumbledown well, half filled with stones and earth. Tiber’s heart beat quickly, fluttering with nervous excitement. What lay ahead? The remains of a building, sagging timbers and broken glass, a few ruined pieces of furniture strewn nearby. An old automobile tire caked and cracked. Some damp rags heaped over the rusty, bent bedroom springs. Along the edge of the field there was a grove of ancient trees. Lifeless trees, withered and inert, their thin, blackened stalks rising up leaflessly. Broken sticks stuck in the hard ground. Row after row of dead trees, some bent and leaning, torn loose from the rocky soil by the unending wind.

  Tibor had the cow move across the field to the orchard of dead trees. The wind surged against him without respite, whipping the foul-smelling mists into his nostrils and face. His skin was damp and shiny with the mist. He coughed and urged the cow on; it stumbled on, over the rocks and clods of earth, trembling.

  “Hold,” Tibor said, reining the cow to a stop.

  For a long time he gazed at the withered old apple tree. He could not take his eyes from it. The sight of the ancient tree—the only living one in the orchard—fascinated and repelled him. The only one alive, he thought. The other trees had lost the struggle… but this tree still clung to precarious semilife.

  The tree looked hard and barren. Only a few dark leaves hung from it—and some withered apples, dried and seasoned by the wind and mists. They had stayed there, on the branches, forgotten and abandoned. The ground around the trees seemed cracked and bleak. Stones and decayed heaps of older leaves in ragged clumps.

  Extending his front right extensor, Tibor plucked a leaf from the tree and examined it.

  What have I got here? he wondered.

  The tree swayed ominously. Its gnarled branches rubbed together. Something in the sound made Tibor pull back.

  Night was coming. The sky had darkened radically. A burst of frigid wind struck him, half turning him around in his seat. Tibor shuddered, bracing himself against it, pulling his log coat around him. Below, the floor of the valley was disappearing into shadow, into the vast nod of night.

  In the darkening mists the tree seemed stern and menacing. A few leaves blew from it, drifting and swirling with the wind. A leaf blew past Tiber’s head; he tried to grasp it, but it escaped and disappeared. He felt all at once terribly tired, as well as frightened. I’m gettin
g out of here, he said to himself, and nudged the cow into motion.

  And then he saw the apple, and it all was different immediately.

  Tibor activated the battery-powered radio mounted behind him in the car. “Father,” he said. “I can’t go on.” He waited, but the receiving portion of the two-way radio sent forth only the rushing noise of static. No voices. For a moment he tuned the receiver’s dial, hoping to pick up someone somewhere. Tibor the unlucky, he thought. A world, a whole world of sorrow—I have to carry it, that which can’t be carried. And within me my heart breaks.

  You wanted it like this, he thought. You wanted to be happy, unendingly happy… or find unending grief. And this way you achieved endless grief. Lost here at sundown, at least thirty miles from home. Where are you going now? he wondered.

  Pressing the button of his microphone, he grated, “Father Handy, I can’t stand it. There is nothing out here except what’s dead; it’s all dead. You read me?” He listened to the radio, tuning it on to Father Handy’s beam. Static. No voice.

  In the gloom, the apple from the apple tree glistened moistly. It looked black, now, but it was of course only red. Probably rotten, he thought. Not worth eating. And yet it wants me to eat.

  Maybe it’s a magic tree, he said to himself. I’ve never before seen one, but Father Handy tells about them. And if I eat the apple, something good will happen. The Christians—Father Abernathy—would say the apple is evil, a product of Satan, and that if you bite into it you sin. But we don’t believe that, he said to himself. Anyhow that was long ago and in another land. And he had not eaten all day, he had become famished.

  I’ll pick it up, he decided. But I won’t eat it.

  He sent a manual extensor after the apple, and, a moment later, held it directly before his eyes, a beam from his miner’s hat illuminating it. And somehow it seemed important. But—

  Something stirred at the periphery of his vision; he glanced swiftly up.

  “Good evening,” the leaner of the two shapes said. “You are not from here, are you?” The two shapes came up to the car and stood bathed in light. Two young males, tall and thin and horny blue-gray like ashes. The one who had spoken raised his hand in greeting. Six of seven fingers—and extra joints.

  “Hello,” Tiber said. One had an ax, a foliage ax. The other carried only his pants and the remains of a canvas shirt. They were nearly eight feet tall. No flesh—bones and hard angles and large, curious eyes, heavily lidded. There undoubtedly were internal changes, radically different metabolism and cell structure, ability to utilize hot salts, altered digestive system. They both stared at Tibor with interest.

  “Say,” one of them said. ‘“You’re a human being.”

  “That’s right,” Tibor said.

  “My name’s Jackson.” The youth extended his thin blue horny hand and Tibor shook it awkwardly with his front right extensor. “My friend here is Earl Potter.”

  Tibor shook hands with Potter. “Greetings,” Potter said. His scaly rough lips twitched. “Can we have a look at your rig, that cart you’re tied into? We’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

  Muties, Tibor said to himself. The lizard kind. He managed to suppress a thrill of aversion; he made his face smile. “I’m willing to let you look at what I have,” he said. “But I can’t leave the cart; I don’t have any arms or legs, just these grippers.”

  “Yeah,” Jackson said, nodding. “So we see.” He slapped the cow on its flank; the cow mooed and raised her head. Her tail, in the evening gloom, switched from side to side. “How fast can she pull you?” he asked Tibor.

  “Fast enough.” In his front left gripper he held his single-shot pistol; if they tried to kill him he would get one of them. But not both. “I’m based about thirty miles from here,” he said. “In what we call Charlottesville. Have you heard of us?”

  “Sure,” Jackson said. “How many are there of you?”

  Tibor said cautiously, “One hundred and five.” He exaggerated, deliberately; the larger the camp, the greater the chance that they would not kill him. After all, some of the hundred and five might come looking for revenge.

  “How have you survived?” Potter asked. “This whole area was hard hit, wasn’t it?”

  “We hid in mines,” Tibor said. “Our ancestors; they burrowed down deep when the Smash began. We’re fairly well set up. Grow our own food in tanks, a few machines, pumps and compressors and electrical generators. Some hand lathes. Looms.” He didn’t mention that generators now had to be cranked by hand, that only about half of the tanks were still operative. After ninety years metal and plastic weren’t much good—despite endless patching and repairing. Everything was wearing out and breaking down.

  “Say,” Potter said. “This sure makes a fool of Dave Hunter.”

  “Dave? Big fat Dave?” Jackson said.

  Potter said, “Dave says there aren’t any true humans left outside this area.” He poked at Tiber’s helmet curiously. “Our settlement’s an hour away by tractor—our hunting tractor. Earl and I were out hunting flap rabbits. Good meat but hard to bring down—weigh about twenty-five pounds.”

  “What do you use?” Tibor asked. “Not that ax, surely.”

  Potter and Jackson laughed. “Look at this here.” Potter slid a long brass rod from his trousers. It fitted down inside his pants along his pipe-stem leg.

  Tibor examined the rod. It was tooled by hand. Soft brass, carefully bored and straightened. One end was shaped into a nozzle. He peered down it. A tiny metal pin was lodged in a cake of transparent material. “How does it work?” he asked.

  “Launched by hand,” Potter said. “Like a blow gun. But once the b-dart is in the air, it follows its target forever. The initial thrust has to be provided.” Potter laughed. “I supply that. A big puff of air.”

  “Interesting,” Tibor said with elaborate casualness. Studying the two blue-gray faces, he asked, “Many humans near here?”

  “Damn near none,” Potter and Jackson mumbled together. “What do you say about staying with us awhile? The Old Man will be pleased to welcome you; you’re the first human we’ve seen this month. What do you say? We’ll take care of you, feed you, bring you cold plants and animals, for a week, maybe?”

  “Sorry,” Tibor said. “Other business. But if I come through here on my way back…” He rummaged in the sack of artifacts and tools next to him. “See this picture?” he said, holding up the dim piece of paper on which was printed a picture—of sorts—of Carleton Lufteufel. “Do you recognize this man?”

  Potter and Jackson studied the picture. “A human being,” Potter said. “Frankly, you all tend to look alike to us.” They handed the picture back to Tibor. “But the Old Man might recognize it,” Jackson said. “Come with us; it’s lucky to have a human being staying with you. What do you say?”

  “No.” Tibor shook his head. “I have to keep going; I have to find this man.”

  Jackson’s face fell in disappointment. “Not for a little while? Overnight? We’ll pump you plenty of cold food. We have a fine lead-sealed cooler the Old Man fixed up.”

  “You’re sure there’re no humans in this region?” Tibor said as he prepared to continue on; he slapped the rump of the cow briskly.

  “We thought for a while there weren’t any left anywhere. A rumor once in a while. But you’re the first we’ve seen in a couple of years.” Potter pointed west. “There’s a tribe of rollers off that way.” He pointed vaguely south. “A couple of tribes of bugs, too.”

  “And some runners,” Jackson said. “And north there’s some kind of underground ones—the blind digging kind.” Potter and Jackson both made a face. “I can’t see them and their bores and scoops. But what the hell.” He grinned. “Everybody has his own way. I guess to you we lizards seem sort of—” He gestured “Weird.”

  Tibor said, “What’s the story on this apple tree? Is this the tree from which the Christian-Jewish idea of the serpent in the garden of eden comes?”

  “It’s our understan
ding that the Garden of Eden is located around a hundred miles to the east,” Jackson said. “You’re a Christian, are you?” Tibor nodded. “And that picture you showed us–

  “A Christian deity,” Jackson said.

  “No.” Tibor shook his head firmly. Amazing, he thought; they don’t seem to know anything about the SOWs or about us. Well, he thought, we didn’t know much about them.

  A third lizard approached. “Greetings, natural,” it said, holding its open palm up in the air. “I just wanted to get a look at a human being.” It studied Tibor. “You’re not all that different. Can you live on the surface?”

  “Pretty well,” Tibor said. “But I’m not exactly a human; I’m what we called an inc—incomplete. As you can see.” He showed the third lizard the photo of Carleton Lufteufel. “Have you ever seen this man? Think. It’s important to me.”

  “You’re trying to find him?” the third lizard said. “Yes, it’s obvious that you are on a Pilg; why else would you be traveling, especially at night, and with you handicapped by virtue of the fact that you don’t have any legs or feet and no arms. That’s a smart car you’ve built yourself. But how did you do it, lacking hands? Did someone else build it for you? And if they did, why? Are you valuable?”

  “I’m a painter,” Tibor said simply.

  “Then you’re valuable,” the lizard said. “Listen, inc. Did you know that someone’s following you?”

  “What?” Tibor said, instantly tense and alert. “Who?” he demanded.

  “Another actual human,” the lizard said. “But on a machine with two big wheels, propelled by a chain-linked gear system, pedally operated. A bykel, I think it’s called.”

  “Bicycle,” Tibor said.

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “Can you hide me?” Tibor asked, and then thought, They’re making it up; they just want to get me into their settlement where they can absorb some of my luck.

  “Sure we can hide you,” all three lizards said simultaneously.