The Very Best of F & SF v1 (27 page)

Fight
him!

Stack rolled
onto his back, sending out cilia to touch the earth, and for an instant he
realized he was seeing through the eyes of another creature, another form of
life he could not even describe. But he was under an open sky and that produced
fear; he was surrounded by air that had become deadly and
that
produced fear; he was
going blind and
that
produced fear; he was... he was a
man...
fought back against
the feeling of being some other thing... he was a
man
and he would not feel
fear, he would stand.

He rolled over,
withdrew his cilia, and struggled to lower his pods. Broken bones grated and
pain thundered through his body. He forced himself to ignore it, and finally
the pods were down and he was breathing and he felt his head reeling...

And when he
opened his eyes he was Nathan Stack again.

... and the
third derangement struck:

Hopelessness.

Out of unending
misery he came back to be Stack.

... and the
fourth derangement struck:

Madness.

Out of raging
lunacy he fought his way to be Stack.

... and the
fifth derangement, and the sixth, and the seventh, and the plagues, and the whirlwinds,
and the pools of evil, and the reduction in size and accompanying fall forever
through submicroscopic hells, and the things that fed on him from inside, and
the twentieth, and the fortieth, and the sound of his voice screaming for
release, and the voice of Snake always beside him, whispering
Fight him!

Finally it
stopped.

Quickly,
now.

Snake took Stack
by the hand and, half-dragging him, raced to the great palace of light and
glass on the slope, shining brightly under the star pinnacle, and they passed
under an arch of shining metal into the ascension hall. The portal sealed
behind them.

There were
tremors in the walls. The inlaid floors of jewels began to rumble and tremble.
Bits of high and faraway ceilings began to drop. Quaking, the palace gave one
hideous shudder and collapsed around them.
Now,
Snake said.
Now you will
know everything!

And everything
forgot to fall. Frozen in midair, the wreckage of the palace hung suspended
above them. Even the air ceased to swirl. Time stood still. The movement of the
Earth was halted. Everything held utterly immobile as Nathan Stack was
permitted to understand all.

19

MULTIPLE CHOICE

(Counts for
½
your final grade.)

 1. God is:

A.
An invisible spirit with a long beard.

B.
A small dog dead in a hole.

C.
Everyman.

D.
The Wizard of Oz.

 2. Nietzsche
wrote “God is dead.” By this did he mean:

A.
Life is pointless.

B.
Belief in supreme deities has waned.

C.
There never was a God to begin with.

D.
Thou art God.

 3. Ecology is
another name for:

A.
Mother love.

B.
Enlightened sell-interest.

C.
A good health salad with granola.

D.
God.

 4. Which of
these phrases most typifies the profoundest love:

A.
Don’t leave me with strangers.

B.
I love you.

C.
God is love.

D.
Use the needle.

 5 Which of
these powers do we usually associate with God:

A.
Power.

B.
Love.

C.
Humanity.

D.
Docility.

20

None of the
above.

Starlight shone
in the eyes of the Deathbird and its passage through the night cast a shadow on
the Moon.

21

Nathan Stack
raised his hands and around them the air was still, as the palace fell
crashing. They were untouched.
Now
you know all there is to know
, Snake said,
sinking to one knee as though worshipping. There was no one there to worship
but Nathan Stack.

“Was he always
mad?”

From
the first.

“Then those who
gave our world to him were mad, and your race was mad to allow it.”

Snake had no
answer.

“Perhaps it was
supposed to be like this,” Stack said. He reached down and lifted Snake to his
feet, and he touched the shadow creature’s sleek triangular head. “Friend,” he
said.

Snake’s race was
incapable of tears. He said,
I
have waited longer than you can know for that word.

“I’m sorry it comes at
the end.”

Perhaps
it was supposed to be like this.

Then there was a
swirling of air, a scintillation in the ruined palace, and the owner of the
mountain, the owner of the ruined Earth came to them in a burning bush.

AGAIN, SNAKE?
AGAIN YOU ANNOY ME?

The
time for toys is ended.

NATHAN STACK YOU
BRING TO STOP ME?
I
SAY WHEN THE TIME IS ENDED.
I
SAY, AS I’VE
ALWAYS SAID.

Then,
to Nathan Stack:

GO
AWAY
. FIND A PLACE TO HIDE UNTIL I COME FOR YOU.

Stack ignored
the burning bush. He waved his hand, and the cone of safety in which they stood
vanished. “Let’s find him, first, then I know what to do.”

The Deathbird
sharpened its talons on the night wind and sailed down through emptiness toward
the cinder of the Earth.

22

Nathan Stack had
once contracted pneumonia. He had lain on the operating table as the surgeon
made the small incision in the chest wall. Had he not been stubborn, had he not
continued working around the clock while the pneumonic infection developed into
empyema, he would never have had to go under the knife, even for an operation
as safe as a thoracotomy. But he was a Stack, and so he lay on the operating
table as the rubber tube was inserted into the chest cavity to drain off the
pus in the pleural cavity, and he heard someone speak his name.

NATHAN STACK.

He heard it,
from far off, across an Arctic vastness; heard it echoing over and over, down
an endless corridor; as the knife sliced.

NATHAN STACK.

He remembered
Lilith, with hair the color of dark wine. He remembered taking hours to die
beneath a rock slide as his hunting companions in the pack ripped apart the
remains of the bear and ignored his grunted moans for help. He remembered the
impact of the crossbow bolt as it ripped through his hauberk and split his
chest and he died at Agincourt. He remembered the icy water of the Ohio as it
closed over his head and the flatboat disappearing without his mates noticing
his loss. He remembered the mustard gas that ate his lungs as he tried to crawl
toward a farmhouse near Verdun. He remembered looking directly into the flash
of the bomb and feeling the flesh of his face melt away. He remembered Snake
coming to him in the board room and husking him like corn from his body. He
remembered sleeping in the molten core of the Earth for a quarter of a million
years.

Across the dead
centuries he heard his mother pleading with him to set her free, to end her
pain.
Use the needle.
Her voice mingled with the voice of the Earth crying out in endless
pain at her flesh that had been ripped away, at her rivers turned to arteries
of dust, at her rolling hills and green fields slagged to greenglass and ashes.
The voices of his mother and the mother that was Earth became one, and mingled
to become Snake’s voice telling him he was the one man in the world—the last
man in the world—who could end the terminal case the Earth had become.

Use the needle.
Put the suffering Earth out of its misery.
It
belongs to you now.

Nathan Stack was
secure in the power he contained. A power that far outstripped that of gods or
Snakes or mad creators who stuck pins in their creations, who broke their toys.

YOU
CAN’T. I WON’T LET YOU
.

Nathan Stack
walked around the burning bush as it crackled impotently in rage. He looked at
it almost pityingly, remembering the Wizard of Oz with his great and ominous
disembodied head floating in mist and lightning, and the poor little man behind
the curtain turning the dials to create the effects. Stack walked around the
effect, knowing he had more power than this sad, poor thing that had held his
race in thrall since before Lilith had been taken from him.

He went in
search of the mad one who capitalized his name.

23

Zarathustra
descended alone from the mountains, encountering no one. But when he came into
the forest, all at once there stood before him an old man who had left his holy
cottage to look for roots in the woods. And thus spoke the old man to
Zarathustra:

“No stranger to
me is this wanderer: many years ago he passed this way. Zarathustra he was
called, but he has changed. At that time you carried your ashes to the
mountains; would you now carry your fire into the valleys? Do you not fear to
be punished as an arsonist?

“Zarathustra has
changed, Zarathustra has become a child, Zarathustra is an awakened one; what
do you now want among the sleepers? You lived in your solitude as in the sea,
and the sea carried you. Alas, would you now climb ashore? Alas, would you
again drag your own body?”

Zarathustra
answered: “I love man.”

“Why,” asked the
saint, “did I go into the forest and the desert? Was it not because I loved man
all too much? Now I love God; man I love not. Man is, for me, too imperfect a
thing. Love of man would kill me.”

“And what is the
saint doing in the forest?” asked Zarathustra.

The saint
answered: “I make songs and sing them; and when I make songs, I laugh, cry, and
hum: thus I praise God. With singing, crying, laughing, and humming, I praise
the god who is my god. But what do you bring us as a gift?”

When Zarathustra
had heard these words he bade the saint farewell and said: “What could I have
to give you? But let me go quickly, lest I take something from you!” And thus
they separated, the old one and the man, laughing as two boys laugh.

But when
Zarathustra was alone he spoke thus to his heart: “Could it be possible? This
old saint in the forest has not yet heard anything of this, that
God is dead!”

24

Stack found the
mad one wandering in the forest of final moments. He was an old, tired man, and
Stack knew with a wave of his hand he could end it for this god in a moment.
But what was the reason for it? It was even too late for revenge. It had been
too late from the start. So he let the old one go his way, wandering in the
forest, mumbling to himself, I WON’T LET YOU DO IT, in the voice of a cranky
child; mumbling pathetically, OH, PLEASE, I DON’T WANT TO GO TO BED YET. I’M
NOT YET DONE PLAYING.

And Stack came
back to Snake, who had served his function and protected Stack until Stack had
learned that he was more powerful than the god he’d worshipped all through the
history of Men. He came back to Snake and their hands touched and the bond of
friendship was sealed at last, at the end.

Then they worked
together and Nathan Stack used the needle with a wave of his hands, and the
Earth could not sigh with relief as its endless pain was ended... but it did
sigh, and it settled in upon itself, and the molten core went out, and the
winds died, and from high above them Stack heard the fulfillment of Snake’s
final act; he heard the descent of the Deathbird.

“What was your
name?” Stack asked his friend.

Dira.

And the
Deathbird settled down across the tired shape of the Earth, and it spread its
wings wide, and brought them over and down, and enfolded the Earth as a mother
enfolds her weary child. Dira settled down on the amethyst floor of the
dark-shrouded palace, and closed his single eye with gratitude. To sleep at
last, at the end.