Whatever Gods May Be (46 page)

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Before a man is about to die, a funny thing happens.

The memories of his life no longer follow a sequential line of recollection; events, dates and highlights of the past become chronologically invalid.  Instead, a man's life is suddenly witnessed as a whole; like an enormous wall mural within a circle that cares nothing for time.  All experiences, all trials and triumphs, sad or happy become magnified and viewed as an entirety of motion.  Nothing is missed or misplaced in the mind at this point; it is as if the entire brain is momentarily cleansed and awakened, only to be put to rest within seconds for the unconscious span of eternity.  And the pictures of the past are simply fused together for one, last vision of what took place between a sleep and a sleep.

For Zolan Rzzdik, the portrait of a lifetime could well have coalesced into a wash of grey; a misjudgment of nature, Zolan compounded the error by nurturing failure at nearly every point in his existence.  A bitter, intricate organism of warped compassion and hates, strengths and weaknesses, Zolan Rzzdik could well have died a complete non-entity within the cold, immense, and uncaring void of time and infinity.  And though perhaps - if there are such things as souls - Zolan Rzzdik had further adventures ahead of him, his occupation in the present universe would have passed as undistinguished and insignificant as any grain of sand, on any world, on any beach.

Yet, while some men are remembered for their deeds, or for their character, or sometimes, even for their mistakes, Zolan Rzzdik would be held in great esteem by fate for reasons other than the execution of some great feat or fiasco.  Destiny would be infinitely kind and cruel to Zolan Rzzdik simply for what he was -- a child of chance; a luck filled and luckless pawn of the cosmos, indiscriminately selected for greatness by the unseen forces of nature.

He would do nothing heroic; yet he was a hero.  He had never been kind; yet, he would never be cruel.  And while he had always doubted before, until the end of his days, he would never know anything but surety.

Zolan Rzzdik -- a man about to die, yet who would never really know death; a man protected by whatever gods may be.

The comwatch on his wrist blinked once, then twice; Zolan lowered his eyes away from the glaring vampires only inches in front of him and stared.

Now, what the hell .

"Good to see you again, Zolan.  You had me worried there for awhile."

Zolan felt the sweat grow cold on his body.  "Ro...Rover?" he stammered.  "Is that you?"

"Of course."

Zolan was now completely absorbed by the comwatch.  He neither noticed the distracted vampires ahead of him now -- or the thing materializing in the valley.  His eyes were perhaps the only ones, vampire, human or Stinger, that were not completely focused on the mountain-size nightmare ten miles away.

He could think of nothing to say for a moment.  His throat tightened up, and he felt dizzy, though he knew this time the Dark was not responsible for his malaise.

"I...I thought you were-" Zolan whispered intensely, almost petting the small red bulb on the wrist communicator.

"I thought the same about you Zolan," the Rover Starglide interrupted gracefully, "I'm glad we've both discovered how wrong we were."

Zolan laughed delightedly.

He then raised his head and looked out into the darkness.

"My god..." he choked, dropping his wrist to his side.  The oval moons of green that lit up the blackness stared with terrible intent toward all battle participants on the mountain.  The vague outlines of a nose and mouth of the hideous face were less discernible from such a great distance, but this was of little consequence.  The eyes said everything.  They were more than supernatural; it was as if the very fires of damnation and creation had come together to produce a single entity that was superior to both lights in every respect.

Zolan was as stunned and humbled as every other creature near him, yet he was able to focus once again on the comwatch when the Rover began speaking.

"I see it, Zolan," the Rover anticipated the man's unspoken query, "I've been watching it for some time now.  I wouldn't worry, though; His time is limited."

"The Resistor," Zolan sighed in amazement.

"Or whatever you please to call the core of evil.  Look at it, Zolan," the Rover urged in customary scientific amazement, though now, Zolan thought, with an odd touch of humanity he had not remembered the ship possessing before.  "Unchecked, and He would spread over this planet like a fungus, inflicting as much agony on those few species of life that could tolerate the abuse for as long as possible.  Then, once tired, He would look to the stars for further conquests."

But the Rover had mentioned something about stopping Him.  "

Yes," a new voice reverberated through the watch, "He will be stopped, 'Zolan.  Thanks to you and the Rover."

"Valry," Zolan shouted, making the dumbfounded vampire that had considered attacking him before the Resistor's appearance take renewed interest.  "You're safe," he said, tears coming to his eyes.

Phillips had awakened now -- for the last time.  Hearing Valry's voice, he battled his way to a resting elbow to listen further.  He could hardly breathe, as his lungs had been shredded by the vampire earlier, and blood was flowing rather freely from his chest, arm and mouth.  He did not try to speak...but a slow, almost knowing smile passed over his mauled face.

For Valry had come home once again after all.

"I'm fine, Zolan.  And I thank you for all your help."

"But I didn't do anything," Zolan defended meekly, wanting to talk about anything else aside from yet one more failure.

"That's not true, Zolan.  You're here, aren't you?" Valry asked gently.  "Without you, all would have been lost."

Zolan said nothing.

"Poor Zolan.  You still don't understand.  You still don't believe that your arrival here was more than accidental.  Perhaps it doesn't matter.  In time you will."

"Zolan," the Rover chipped in, "where do you think you are?"

Zolan remained silent.  He felt like he was about to begin a long sleep.

"We came back, Zolan," the Rover said, "to Earth."

Of course, Zolan thought numbly.  But didn't he always have that feeling; a feeling he had successfully been able to ignore up to now?

"We failed, my friend," the Rover spoke as gently as Valry now.  It had called him "friend." How was that, Zolan vaguely wondered; the Rover wasn't programmed for that.  It didn't matter.  The ship was his friend -- the best friend he had ever had.  "Yet it was a failure that was planned eons before you and I ever existed.  Like precision parts to an enormous, all-controlling machine, you and I were honed to perfection for the roles we had been created for this day a thousand million years ago."

Zolan found his voice, as he stared out at the glowing valley before him.  Everything seemed frozen around him; no movement took place and not a sound could be heard.  Only the haunting apparition of hate reigned supreme, though it too was oddly inactive.  It was as if he were trapped in a vacuum; time and space had stopped for everything else, except himself.

"Earth.  Through the Hall?" Zolan muttered sleepily.

The Rover sounded unmistakably sad.  "Yes.  It simply shifted us some nine hundred thousand years ahead in a matter of seconds.  We never left, Zolan."

And we'll never leave, Zolan finished the thought for his ship.

"All that you see here is the result of what we saw transpire that last day; which was for us, only forty eight hours ago."

"The War," Zolan answered automatically, "It did all this?"

"Not all, Zolan," the Rover said solemnly.  "In fact, it did very little compared to what...you and I are guilty of."

Zolan stared down at his watch in puzzlement.  "I don't understand, Rover."

"The Hall, Zolan," the ship spoke very slowly, "never sealed itself.  I was unable to effect any kind of closure.  And because it was essentially a sub-warp to the main Hall, it was a thing totally out of control, like a dismembered limb still animated by a series of nerves producing undirected energy.  My internal defenses were useless against the forces taking place within the Hall when we entered.  As a result, all my instrumentation was fused within seconds."

"Meaning?" Zolan asked; yet, now, he had the horrible feeling he understood all.

"Impact!" the Rover said simply.  "But the consequences of such a disaster were more far-reaching than I had anticipated.  You see, the Hall is basically a non-destructive entity.  By its very nature in this universe, it can barely maintain itself for any length of time.  The Hall is nothing-more really than an enormous hole in space; in our, three-dimensional space, that is.  Perhaps within the countless planes of a million other dimensions, it is something different completely.  But because of its relatively impotent makeup in this universe, very little in the way of physical damage can be inflicted."

"Which is why we weren't destroyed," Zolan finished.

"Or for that matter, the Earthship of Valry's father or the Thelerick Stingers," the Rover continued.

Zolan raised an admiring eyebrow.  There was no need to ask the Rover how he had acquired so much information; where Valry was concerned, anything was possible.

"Then what happened to the Hall?" Zolan asked.  The Rover remained uncomfortably silent for the next few seconds.

"The Hall is still here, Zolan.  This world has another name for it that is not entirely inappropriate."

No, no, Zolan collapsed inside.  The Dark!

"It's really quite fascinating, Zolan," the Rover rattled on with clear intrigue, "for without an extraordinary set of haphazard coincidences, the Hall would have probably passed right through Earth as harmlessly as a shower of microscopic meteorites.  As it was, however, and to use an old Earth saying, 'a lot of fuel was added to the fire,' to wreck insurmountable havoc."

Zolan's face hung slack and his eyes were stunned and tired slits staring at his comwatch.  He did not notice an approaching figure ten feet away from him.

"What happened?" Zolan asked, sounding like a spanked little boy.

"In the first few hours of the war, Earth's atmosphere absorbed nearly a hundred times its normal radiation balance from the resulting detonations.  There was also several million tons of pulverized ash circulating about than ever before.  Consequently, the heat generated in the upper stratospheric regions of the planet digressed and transformed itself into primarily electricity -- of which the decaying ozone layer helped immensely to produce.  When this supercharge of energy was absorbed by the concentration of ore and mineral fallout worldwide, a magnetic field formed in the atmosphere.  In short, Earth became in a matter of hours, or even minutes, an immense vacuum cleaner.  Anything within a hundred thousand miles was sucked downward."

"Dear God," Zolan muttered, "including the Hall?"

"Including the Hall.  And once exposed to an electromagnetic field - the only force known in nature stronger than gravity - it could no longer retreat into the primary Hall opening outside of the solar system.  Instead, it coiled itself around Earth like a snake." The Rover paused here as if to consider the marvel of it all before continuing.  "As time wore on, the initial feeble mass of the Hall - now highly electromagnetized - began to decay and disassemble itself."

"Ah," Zolan said in an enlightened tone of voice, "the black globules I first saw.  You mean they were actually still part of the Hall?"

"Exactly.  And all equally charged.  This would account for my complete paralysis shortly after entering the Hall, and subsequent failure of all operations."

"And the Stingers?" Zolan asked rather distantly.

"Like the Redeyes, as well as the Earthship Challenger, they were indiscriminately sucked up into this particular Hall entrance and then deposited here on Earth.  The Stingers, of course, were innocent passerbys, but the vampires had been released from an alternate plane somewhat similar to our three-dimensional universe.  As a result, their conquest of this world was relatively simple.  Furthermore, the Hall itself had physically altered.  I still cannot pinpoint exact differentiations, but I know that the transformation precipitated damaging and lethal effects on the entire atmosphere."

"Which is why," Zolan summed up quietly, "all the people are dying."

"For this reason, too, but also because the human race on this world has undergone severe and debilitating mutation.  The Hall has of course enhanced this deterioration, but the original fuel for disaster was still primarily the war."

So , it had all been spelled out to him.  He had never left Earth; he had single-handedly maimed an entire world; and, ultimately, he was responsible for the deaths of nine hundred thousand years of Earth ancestry .

"My fault," Zolan was lost in his own world now.  "I...did all of this." He sunk to his knees and stared out at the giant figure of the Resistor, still staring motionlessly miles away in the desert.

Time still seemed to have stopped for him; nothing moved, howled or hissed.  Only the words of his ship echoed through his mind.

Yet, he did notice a movement out of the corner of his eye...