Collected Short Fiction, page 736
Aboard the skipper, he was long-windedly boastful about the temple and the ceremonies of its consecration. Its building had taken a hundred years, ten billion tons of granite, the prayer and toil of every godly truman. In divine gratitude, the Lord Belthar was granting his physical presence there.
The black-domed temple looked impressive enough, as the skipper dived to it through the stratosphere. It crowned an artificial mountain, a truncated pyramid of red-gray granite rising a full mile out of the palm groves that grow between the bare brown dunes of the Libyan desert and the long white dunes of salt removed from the Mediterranean water that now filled the old Qattara depression.
Belthar was impressive too, when the ecclesiarch brought her to him in the cavernous banquet hall. The throne where he sat high above his mortal guests was an immense emerald block towering above one end of the vast hollow triangular table, which was three levels high. For this occasion his nimbus was a cloud of scarlet sparks, thinning into a radiant halo around the power of his muscular shoulders and the splendor of his red-bearded head. He rose courteously enough to greet her, smiling almost too warmly as he waved her into the seat of honor just below him.
His other guests sat facing them across the brightly-lit arena inside the table. His gigantic sons lounged along the nearest, highest level—there were no daughters, because the offspring of mortal and god were all sterile males. The chief prelates of the Thearchy sat along the second level, hushed and uncomfortable in their jeweled vestments as if embarrassed by this unaccustomed nearness to divinity. Below were the laymen: the secular ministers, the row of identical clone generals, the athletes and actresses and others who had somehow drawn his special favor, all leaning to look down into the central arena.
“Lord Belthar,” the goddess began, “what I came to ask—”
“Watch!” He was turning from her to the triangular pit inside the table. “A pretty match.”
Reluctantly, she looked down at two huge mumen flying to attack each other. Wearing null-G belts but armed only with the fangs and talons and killing eyes the genetic engineers had given them, they soared to the top of the barrier, paused and feinted, dived and struck. The arena lights burned on ruby scales, on sleek black crests and white dagger-fangs, on enormous claws. Pale pathseekers hissed from their armored lenses. When one of them found an opening, the crash of his blinding bolt echoed against the high vault.
She leaned to follow them, caught in spite of herself by a shocking incongruity. They were fearfully efficient machines of death, terrible but beautiful, lean and hard and bright, fighting without emotion. Yet, remotely, they were also human and divine. In the grace of their swift and merciless motion, she felt their kinship to the premen and to her. Appalled, she turned back to Belthar.
He was intent on the battle, blue eyes blazing through the nimbus with a joy that almost frightened her. Abruptly he rose, with one ringing clap of his great bronze hands, a signal that sent a wave of cheering around the table.
She caught a charred-flesh reek and saw the loser’s body sprawled in the air, kicking convulsively as it toppled slowly toward the sand, still almost supported by the gravitic belt. The winner stabbed it with another cracking bolt and mounted proudly toward the throne, grinning in bright-fanged delight at the god’s applause.
“A cruel thing!” she whispered. “Must they die?”
“They must.” Belthar gave her a momentary glance. “Since we killed the Creators, we ourselves must restore the old creative way of selection and survival. It works well. One of my mumen could outmatch a dozen of those the Creators left us.”
He sat again, watching the victor dive to drag the victim’s body away. Truman serving girls came running to spread the table with gemstone and precious metal, with flagons and platters and sculptured ices. She watched Belthar’s avid attack on a huge, red-oozing steak and turned suddenly away because it smelled too much like the beaten muman. He saw her aversion and waved a girl to remove her steak.
“Forgive me, goddess. I know our needs are minimal, but I enjoy the physical.” He paused to spear another bleeding morsel. “I like to make the most of both my biosystems, the primitive and the transvolutionary. I enjoy levitating a ten-ton boulder out of the atmosphere. But I also enjoy wresting a muman amazon to the death in the gym, with brute force alone.”
“I’m sure you do.” Her voice had an edge, which she tried to blunt. “But I hope you’ll listen—”
“Later, child.” Tolerantly benign, he paused to beckon at a girl with a tray of luminous fruit. “But this is my day. The celebration of my first great millennium. Nothing must mar it.”
Two more mumen had died in the pit, between courses of the banquet, before Belthar levitated himself with a careless wave to acknowledge the worship of his world and at last led Zhondra Zhey into an adjoining audience chamber.
“A more intimate place.” The glow of his aura brightened to show a low plain throne at the end of a long conference table. “Designed for private talks with my highest churchmen. Shall we sit?”
They sat. Placing himself companionably near, down on her own level, he let his nimbus fade to reveal his massive maleness, but she kept the cover of her own aura, a cool blue shimmer.
“Sorry, my child, to delay you,” he murmured easily. “But we’ve time enough now.”
Before she could speak, however, he had reached with a long pink tongue of his nimbus to lift a golden flask and two slender goblets from behind the throne. Nimble fingers of the aura filled them and offered one to her. She sniffed the unfamiliar fragrance of a glittering mist rising from the liquid and took one cautious sip. Though she liked its odd hot tang, she set it firmly on the table.
“Try it,” Belthar urged. “You’ll find it something new. I’ve been training truman creators of my own to invent new food animals and plants, new chemistries to offer new delights. The old human food and drink was never good enough for divine tastes or divine metabolism—”
“I want to talk,” she broke in resolutely. “About the premen.”
“Premen?” Startlement winked and vanished in his mantle. “My dear, I’ve finally solved the preman problem. An idea of Quelf’s. We’re relocating them on a frontier planet—”
“I’ve seen it.” Bitterness shadowed her nimbus. “My ship was chartered to land the first lot of them there. A dreadful, barren world, where Terran life can’t reproduce—”
“Quelf’s point.” Inhaling the bright mist from his drink, Belthar nodded expansively. “The premen are disposed of forever, with no violence to our old treaty obligations—”
“Would you murder our creator race?”
“Our destiny.” He beamed serenely through the dancing scarlet sparks. “The mortal races, like mortal individuals, are still subject to the laws of natural evolution. Through the old test of fitness, they are selected for survival—or sometimes not selected. We immortals are more fortunate.”
“Need we be so cruel?” the goddess said.
“If you must look for cruelty, blame the Creators. Premen themselves. When they made the first trumen greater than they were, they were condemning their kind to be replaced. Andoranda Five was already implied in their first efforts to unwind the double helix.”
“I dislike your logic.” Emotion brightened her blue halo. “I beg you to let me find some better planet—”
“There are gods enough to claim the better planets.” He surveyed her shrewdly. “My dear child, you yourself are evidence that we have sometimes been too forgetful of our own immortality, breeding more deities than we could discover attractive home worlds for.” He nodded persuasively at her fog-filled goblet. “Forget the premen, and let’s enjoy your visit.”
“I can’t forget them.” She darkened her aura against his boldly probing eyes. “There are two, especially, that I want to know about. Davey Dunahoo and the girl he called Buglet. Only children when I met them, years ago. I looked for them when I came for the first lot of their people, but they were off the reservation—”
“Demons!” Red violence flared through Belthar’s mantle, but he let it cool before he went on. “So Quelf believes. They’ve been terrifying him.” He chuckled heartily, golden sparks dancing through the scarlet. “He has just recaptured them. It seems they somehow tricked his muman guards into attacking one another. Four killed. Quelf is more than half-convinced they do belong to the demon breed. Actual survivors of the monstrous Fourth Creation, made to war against the gods. He can’t wait for you to take them on to Andoranda—”
“I won’t do that.” Her halo flashed. “I remember them too well. Naked, grimy, hungry little urchins, but proud as you are. When Quelf’s escorts killed their pet dog, they defied him—”
“You admire rebellion?”
“In them it was heroic.”
Watching her keenly, Belthar sipped his golden goblet and slowly smiled. “For your sake, my dear, I’ll spare them. Take the other stragglers on to Andoranda, along with your cargo of supplies for the lot you left there. And I’ll find some kinder fate for your two favorites. Agreed?”
“A kinder fate?” Peering into his bright halo, she nodded at last. “Agreed!”
When she was gone, Belthar sent for his black son.
“You honor me. Sire.” Quelf dropped to one knee, grinning to conceal a secret apprehension. “How may I serve?”
“Get back to Redrock.” Belthar beckoned him upright. “Attend to the two recaptured premen, Dunahoo and Jondarc. Clone General Ironlaw reports that they are proven heretics. You will see to their atonement. In keeping with a promise I have given to our visiting goddess, that must be quick and painless.”
“They are most dangerous heretics. But, Sire—” Quelf hesitated, blinking into the red-glinting nimbus. “Their atonement offers difficulty. Clone General Ironlaw says the Inquisition promised them safe passage to Andoranda—”
“Inform Ironlaw that the Inquisition has been overruled.”
“Your will, Sire.” Quelf shuffled uncomfortably. “But I foresee another difficulty. The heretics were able to kill four attacking mumen before they decided to surrender. The atoner may have trouble—”
“You will be the atoner,” Belthar boomed. “As Arch-Inquisitor, you’ll kill them yourself.”
Quelf shivered and stiffened. “Forgiveness, Sire!” He squinted shrewdly into the halo. “Wouldn’t my intervention seem to give the heretics the status of martyrs? Wouldn’t it be wiser to send them quietly on to die with their kinsmen?”
“Too slow for them. I want them glorified at once.”
“Surely, Sire, you aren’t—”
“I take no chances.” The nimbus darkened. “The premen have always cherished their legends of demons surviving from the Fourth Creation. Of multimen or ultimen who would return to chasten the gods. Pure myths, of course. Pitiful efforts at compensation for their own misfortunes. Yet I want no risk of any future struggle for survival. The Creators ended that old evolutionary game when they made us immortal, and I will not revive it.”
“I respect your wisdom, Sire.” Quelf bowed and paused to mop at his shining sweat. “But if these creatures have actually inherited demonic powers—”
“We’ll take no chances.” Belthar chuckled. “Here are your instructions.”
Controlling a shudder, Quelf bent to listen.
“The female is the more dangerous—so Ironlaw reports. He suspects that she has received support from some unknown ally more powerful than the preman boy, and he wants time to set a trap. We have granted him one more day.”
Quelf gasped and froze again.
“To avoid risk, you will keep our purpose secret. You will announce that we are gracing you with a physical visitation to Redrock, arriving tomorrow at dusk. Preparing a formal welcome, you will select the female to be my bride. Have her brought to the chapel of love. Inspecting the arrangements, you will glorify her with your demon-burner—with no warning that might alert any allies.”
Quelf moved as if to protest.
“When she is safely exalted, you will reveal her heresy. To prove it, you will display the weapon found hidden on her person, meant for us.” Belthar reached behind the throne with a red tendril of the nimbus to produce a black handgrip. “Here it is. A laser-dagger, one taken from an actual preman assassin.”
Stiffly, Quelf reached for the weapon.
“Though the preman boy seems less dangerous, we’ll handle him with equal caution. He will remain isolated in the Redrock jail until his Inquisition guards are informed of the girl’s atonement. At your signal, the jail will be attacked with force enough to make sure of him.”
Quelf nodded reluctantly.
“You will then tell our story. Your discovery of the dagger on the female led the Inquisition to a nest of preman heretics and demonists hiding in the jail. They have all been glorified.”
“A sound plan, Sire.” Quelf grinned bleakly, his misgivings not quite gone. “Your will be done!”
3.
Suspended between powerful arms, the godlet’s body was a gold furred triangle that tapered from muscular shoulders to useless doll-feet, the scowling face a second triangle, narrowed from bulging temples to pink baby-chin.
“I like you, Davey.” The voice from the red-lipped doll-mouth was the whine of a trapped insect. “I admire your remarkable Buglet. I have taken foolish risks to aid you—more risks than I can afford. I can do no more.”
“But I’m shut up in jail and desperate for Bug—”
“Sorry for yourself?” The annoyed whine cut him off. “Consider me. Misbegotten. The only creature of my kind, without parents or kin or hope of any lover. Forced to live forever in hiding from mortals who would fear me and gods who would destroy me.”
A huge tear welled out of the lone green eye.
“Drowned now like a rat out of my last refuge, with nowhere to go.” Supporting himself on one huge hand, he wiped at the tear with the other. “Can’t you see that I’ve troubles enough, without your leading Belthar to me?”
“We’re both in bad shape,” Davey agreed. “We’ve been tricked. Belthar’s inquisitors promised us passage to Andoranda—”
“Honesty was never his weakness.” The green eye darted about as if in search of danger and stabbed back at Davey. “But that’s your own problem. Really, you must go—”
“Help us, first. Show me—” Davey caught his breath. “Show me how you walk through stone.”
Pipkin hopped closer, his green squint almost malicious. “If you must ask, you wouldn’t understand the answer.”
“Buglet says we have latent gifts—”
“In fact, you do:” The baby-head nodded. “Or you wouldn’t be here.”
“You can help us learn to use them—please!” He was reaching out imploringly, but Pipkin hopped warily back. “I get visions like this one, but only sometimes. I’ve no control—”
“Your own misfortune. Perhaps you too are misbegotten.” Pipkin’s shrug tossed his body like a hanging banner. “What can I do?”
“Teach me. Help me break a barrier in my mind—the feeling that the powers we need are all impossible.”
“For mortals, they are impossible.”
“We’ve got to have them, anyhow. If you’ll just tell me what we must learn—”
“To see.” Pipkin opened that blind white eye, and he shrank from its chilling stare. “To reach. To grasp the multiverse—”
“Can you explain the multiverse? In a way I can understand? There were books in the commune that we tried to read—”
“Truman books.” Pipkin sniffed. “No truman understands the multiverse. The gods who do need no books.”
“The gestalts we read never looked possible.” Davey frowned. “If our own universe goes on forever, what can be outside it? That’s the sort of thing I need to understand.”
“I’ll say what I can,” Pipkin whined. “If you’ll leave when I’m done. But I’m afraid you’ll understand nothing. Nothing until you learn to see for yourself.”
“Tell me!” Davey nodded eagerly. “I’ll try hard to get it.”
“Your preman forebears had a theory of a single universe. An explosion of energy and mass, creating space and time as it swells to its gravitational limits, erasing them as it falls back into the point of its beginning, recreating itself as it explodes again—”
“That isn’t true?”
“True enough for premen. Or even for the stupid truman theologonists.” Pipkin’s shrug tossed his body. “But a bit too narrow for divinity. In fact the premen themselves were always inventing odd gods of their own, to explain more things than their reason could.”
To Davey’s relief, Pipkin had closed his wide blind eye.
“That theory is a fair enough fit for this one universe, which is all the premen and the trumen are able to sense, though it’s only an atom in the greater reality. The actual multiverse holds an infinity of such universes, all held within a wider domain of order that the gods can perceive and mortals cannot.”
“Infinities of universes?” Davey frowned, grappling with that awesome notion. “Side by side? Or following one another—”
“Stupid preman concepts.” Pipkin’s malicious shrilling cut him off. “Repetition implies time, as location implies space. But space and time exist within the universes, not between them. The laws and the nature of the multiverse are not expressible in your Terran language or your Terran math. They must wait for your parasenses—if you are going to have parasenses.”
“We’ve got to have them now.” Desperation shook his voice. “I’ve got to learn how they work.” His emotion blurred Pipkin’s image, and he paused to let it clear. “How is it possible for me to reach you here? Or to see Andoranda Five?”
Pipkin whistled a high bird-note of surprise.
“You can probe that far?” The green eye blinked and stared. “I can’t. Even Belthar can’t. The best of us can penetrate a single contact plane. Andoranda hangs beyond many of them, shifting so complexly that the most skillful pilot is taxed to take a ship there.”
