This Immortal (8 page)

"You can't use a grenade if one is on top of you

-not without defeating the purpose of self-defense, that is. If it's any further away you can't hit it with one. They move too fast."

He finally turned. *

"What do you use?"

I reached inside my galabieh (having gone native) and withdrew the weapon I always try to have on hand when I come this way.

He examined it.

"Name it." .

"It's a machine-pistol. Fires meta-cyanide slugs

-one ton impact when a round strikes. Not real accurate, but that's not necessary. It's patterned after a twentieth century handgun called a Schmeisser."

"It's rather unwieldy. Will it stop a boadile?"

"If you're lucky. I have a couple more in one of the cases. Want one?"

THIS IMMORTAL 67

"No, thank you," He paused. "But you can tell me more about the boadile. I really only glanced at them that day, and they were pretty well sub-merged."

"Well. . . Head something like a croc's, only bigger. Around forty feet long. Able to roll itself into a big beachball with teeth. Fast on land or in water-and a hell of a lot of little legs on each side-'*

"How many legs?" he interrupted.

"Hm." I stopped. "To tell you absolute truth, I've never counted. Just a second.

"Hey, George," I called out, to where Earth's eminent chief biologist lay dozing in the shade of the sail. "How many legs on a boadile?"

He rose to his feet, stretched slightly and came up beside us.

"Boadiles," he mused, poking a finger into his ear and leafing through the files inside. "They're definitely of the class reptilia-of that much we're certain. Whether they're of the order crocodilia, suborder of their own, or whether they're of the order squamata, suborder lacertilia, family neopoda -as a colleague of mine on Taler half-seriously insists-we are not certain. To me they are somewhat reminiscent of pre-Three Day photo-reproduction of artists' conceptions of the Mesozoic phytosaurus with, of course, the supernumerary legs and the constrictive ability. So I favor the order crocodilia myself."

He leaned on the rail and stared out across the shimmering water.

I saw then that he wasn't about to say anything else, so, "So how many legs on one?" I asked again.

"Eh? Legs? I never counted them. If we're lucky we might get a chance to, though. There are lots 68 ROGER ZELAZNY

around here. -The young one I had didn't last too long."

"What happened to it?" asked Myshtigo.

"My megadonaplaty ate it."

'
Megadonaplaty ?
'

"Sort of like a duck-billed platypus with teeth," I explained, "and about ten feet high. Picture that.

So far as we know, they've only been seen about three or four tirhes. Australian, We got ours through a fortunate accident. Probably won't last, as a species-the way boadiles will, I mean. They're ov-iparous mammals, and their eggs are too large for a hungry world to permit the continuance of the species-if it is a true species. Maybe they're just isolated sports."

"Perhaps," said George, nodding wisely; "and then again perhaps not."

Myshtigo turned away, shaking his head.

Hasan had partly unpacked his robot golem-Rolem-and was fooling with its controls. Ellen had finally given up on simicoloring and was lying in the sun getting burnt all over. Red Wig and DOS

Santos were plotting something at the other end of the vessel. Those two never just meet; they always have assignations. Our felucca moved slowly along the dazzling waterpath that burns its way before the great gray colonnades of Luxor, and I decided it was time to head it in toward the shore and see what was new among the tombs and ruined temples.

The next six days were rather uneventful and somewhat unforgettable, extremely active, and sort of ugly-beautiful-in the way that a flower can be, with its petals all intact and a dark and runny rot-THIS IMMORTAL 69

spot in the center. Here's how. . . .

Myshtigo must have interviewed every stone ram along the four miles of the Way to Karnak. Both in the blaze of day and by torchlight we navigated the ruins, disturbing bats, rats, snakes and insects, listening to the Vegan's monotonous note-taking in his monotonous language. At night we camped on the sands, setting up a two hundred meter electrical warning perimeter and posting two guards. The boadile is cold-blooded; the nights were chill. So there was relatively little danger from without.

Huge campfires lighted the nights, all about the areas we chose, because the Vegan wanted things primitive-for purposes of atmosphere, I guessed.

Our Skimmers were further south. We had flown them to a place I knew of and left them there under Office guard, renting the felucca for our trip-which paralleled the King-GocPs journey from Karnak to Luxor. Myshtigo had wanted it that way. Nights, Hasan would either practice with the assagai he had bartered from a big Nubian, or he would strip to the waist and wrestle for hours with his tireless golem.

A worthy opponent was the golem. Hasan had it programmed at twice the statistically-averaged strength of a man and had upped its reflex-time by fifty percent. Its "memory" contained hundreds of wrestling holds, and its governor theoretically prevented it from killing or maiming its opponent-all through a series of chemelectrical afferent nerve-analogues which permitted it to gauge to an ounce the amount of pressure necessary to snap a bone or tear a tendon. Rolem was about five feet, six inches in height and weighed around two hundred fifty pounds; manufactured on Bakab, he was quite ex-70 ROGER ZELAZNY

pensive, was dough-colored and caricature-featured, and his brains were located somewhere below where his navel would be-if golems had navels-to protect his think stuff from Greco-Roman shocks. Even as it is, accidents can happen.

People have been killed by the things, when something goes amok in the brains or some afferents, or just because the people themselves slipped or tried to jerk away, supplying the necessary extra ounces.

I'd had one once, for almost a year, programmed for boxing. I used to spend fifteen minutes or so with it every afternoon. Got to thinking of it as a person, almost. Then one day it fouled me and I pounded it for over an hour and finally knocked its head off. The thing kept right on boxing, and I stopped thinking of it as a friendly sparring partner right then. It's a weird feeling, boxing with a headless golem, you know? Sort of like waking from a pleasant dream and finding a nightmare crouched at the foot of your bed. It doesn't really "see" its opponent with those eye-things it has; it's all sheathed about with piezo-electric radar mesentery, and it "watches" from all its surfaces. Still, the death of an illusion tends to disconcert. I turned mine off and never turned it back on again. Sold it to a camel trader for a pretty good price. Don't know if he ever got the head back on. But he was a Turk, so who cares?

Anyway-Hasan would tangle with Rolem, both of them gleaming in the firelight, and we'd all sit on blankets and watch, and bats would swoop low occasionally, like big, fast ashes, and emaciated clouds would cover the moon, veil-like, and then move on again. It was that way on the third night, when I went mad.

THIS IMMORTAL 71

I remember it only in the way you remember a passing countryside you might have seen through a late summer evening storm-as a series of isolated, lightning-filled stillshots. . . .

Having spoken with Cassandra for the better part of ah hour, I concluded the transmission with a promise to cop a Skimmer the following afternoon and spend the next night on Kos-I recall our last words.

"Take care, Konstantin. I have been dreaming bad dreams."

"Bosh, Cassandra. Good night."

And who knows but that her dreams might have been the result of a temporal shockwave moving backwards from a 9.6 Richter reading?

A certain cruel gleam filling his eyes, DOS Santos applauded as Hasan hurled Rolem to the ground with a thunderous crash. That particular earthshaker continued, however, long after the golem had climbed back to his feet and gotten into another crouch, his arms doing serpent-things in the Arab's direction. The ground shook and shook.

"What power! Still do I feel it!" cried DOS Santos. "Ole!"

"It is a seismic disturbance," said George. "Even though I'm not a geologist-"

"Earthquake!" yelled his wife, dropping an un-pasturized date she had been feeding Myshtigo.

There was no reason to run, no place to run to.

There was nothing nearby that could fall on us. The ground was level and pretty barren. So we just sat there and were thrown about, even knocked flat a few times. The fires did amazing things.

Rolem's time was up and he went stiff then, and Hasan came and sat with George and me. The 72 ROGER ZELAZNY

tremors lasted the better part of an hour, and they came again, more weakly, many times during that night. After the first bad shock had run its course, we got in touch with the Port. The instruments there showed that the center of the thing lay a good distance to the north of us.

A bad distance, really.

... In the Mediterranean,

The Aegean, to be more specific.

I felt sick, and suddenly I was.

I tried to put through a call to Kos.

Nothing,

My Cassandra, my lovely lady, my princess. . . .

Where was she? For two hours I tried to find out.

Then the Port called me.

It was Lord's voice, not just some lob watch operator's.

"Uh-Conrad, I don't know how to tell you, exactly, what happened ..."

"Just talk," I said, "and stop when you're finished."

"An observe-satellite passed your way about twelve minutes ago," he crackled across the bands.

"Several of the Aegean islands were no longer present in the pictures it transmitted ..."

"No," I said.

"I'm afraid that Kos was one of them."

"No," I said.

"I'm sorry," he told me, "but that is the way it shows. I don't know what else to say...."

"That's enough," I said. "That's all. That's it.

Goodbye. We'll talk more later. No! I guess-No!"

"Wait! Conrad!"

I went mad.

Bats, shaken loose from the night, were swooping THIS IMMORTAL 73

about me. I struck out with my right hand and killed one as it flashed in my direction. I waited a few seconds and killed another. Then I picked up a big rock with both hands and was about to smash the radio when George laid a hand on my shoulder, and I dropped the rock and knocked his hand away and backhanded him across the mouth. I don't know what became of him then, but as I stooped to raise the rock once more I heard the sound of footfalls behind me. I dropped to one knee and pivoted on it, scooping up a handful of sand to throw in someone's eyes. They were all of them there: Myshtigo and Red Wig and DOS Santos, Rameses, Ellen, three local civil servants, and Hasan-approaching in a group. Someone yelled "Scatter!"

when they saw my face, and they fanned out.

Then they were everyone I'd ever hated-I could feel it. I saw other faces, heard other voices. Everyone I'd ever known, hated, wanted to smash, had smashed, stood there resurrected before the fire, and only the whites of their teeth were showing through the shadows that crossed over their faces as they smiled and came toward me, bearing various dooms in their hands, and soft, persuasive words on their lips-so I threw the sand at the foremost and rushed him.

My uppercut knocked him over backward, then two Egyptians were on me from both sides.

I shook them loose, and in the comer of my colder eye saw a great Arab with something like a black avocado in his hand. He was swinging it toward my head, so I dropped down. He had been coming in my direction and I managed to give his stomach more than just a shove, so he sat down suddenly. Then the two men I had thrown away 74 ROGER ZELAZNY

were back on me again. A woman was screaming, somewhere in the distance, but I couldn't see any women.

I tore my right arm free and batted someone with it, and the man went down and another took his place. From straight ahead a blue man threw a rock which struck me on the shoulder and only made me madder. I raised a kicking body into the air and threw it against another, then I hit someone with my fist. I shook myself. My galabieh was torn and dirty, so I tore it the rest of the way off and threw it away.

I looked around. They had stopped coming at me, and it wasn't fair-it wasn't fair that they should stop then when I wanted so badly to see things breaking. So I raised up the man at my feet and slapped him down again. Then I raised him up again and someone yelled "Eh! Karaghiosis!" and began calling me names in broken Greek. I let the man fall back to the ground and turned.

There, before the fire-there were two of them: one tall and bearded, the other squat and heavy and hairless and molded out of a mixture of putty and earth, t "My friend says he will break you, Greek!" v-called out the tall one, as he did something to the other's back.

I moved toward them and the man of putty and H

mud sprang at me. j|

He tripped me, but I came up again fast and H: caught him beneath the armpits and threw him off ^

to the side. But he recovered his footing as rapidly A as I had, and he came back again and caught me behind the neck with one hand. I did the same to him, also seizing his elbow-and we locked together THIS IMMORTAL 75

there, and he was strong.

Because he was strong, I kept changing holds, testing his strength. He was also fast, accommodat-ing every move I made almost as soon as I thought of it.

I threw my arms up between his, hard, and stepped back on my reinforced leg. Freed for a moment, we orbited each other, seeking another open-ing.

I kept my arms low and I was bent well forward because of his shortness, For a moment my arms were too near my sides, and he moved in faster than I had seen anyone move before, ever, and he caught me in a body lock that squeezed the big flat flowers of moisture out of my pores and caused a great pain in my sides.