Zardoz (3 page)

They all spoke with familiarity and joked as they worked, but they were getting dangerously close to his hiding place.

The People

Zed ran lightly, through lush greenery, over unfamiliar plants until he felt it safe to stop. The trees were green with leaf, rich with blossom. Ahead through the branches he saw a larger house. Built of old, carved, and yellowed stone it still had an added strangeness. Tall transparent domes clustered to form a huge roof above the older structure. Zed watched and wondered, the unfamiliarity of habitations in good order being new to him. How unlike the smoke-blackened gaping windows were those in front of him. Glass glistened in every pane. How unlike the smashed tiles and rafters was the magical roof on the house before him. So far from the ruined cities of the Outlands. Everything was in exquisite order, even the plants underfoot seemed constructed, and neatly painted.

He picked one and held it to the ring.

“What is it?”

“Flower.”

“For what?”

“Decorative.”

The object “so neat and richly colored fell from his fingers.

There was a sound, high and hypnotic, that grew from the trees. A girl had appeared, like magic from the woods, bare-breasted, blonde, astride a white horse. She gazed at him, through him, her eyes penetrating his deepest places. She was one of the other people, yet she had not the disdain in her face, only infinite love and knowledge.

Zed checked his crystal ring – was this one of its hallucinations?

Then there were others, suddenly visible as their combined song rose. They sat in groups within the high branches and at the foot of one great tree, a giant cyprus. They were apart from him, in some other world that he could not see, joined by their song, their meditation.

Was the beautiful girl inviting him to join with them, to become one with their music? It could be no trap, Zed felt, yet it seemed to offer a new and infinite universe for him as he went forward, drawn toward it.

She waited on her horse, passive and all-knowing. She was no illusion but more beautiful than any of his vivid sleep-visions where such godlike women often walked.

Then she was gone, the spell broken. Leaves fluttered in another direction. The carriers of the maimed ones approached; Zed followed them closely, but still kept under cover. It brought him nearer to the house. The smooth green grass rolled out in front of him. In the center of the lawn stood a pyramid, as tall as he, made of a hard bright smooth substance that almost rang with reflected light. Those carrying the bodies walked behind the pyramid, and did not reappear, the long line somehow eaten up by this small structure.

Zed leaned back against a tree, gazed at the ring, the pyramid, the house. He breathed deep, and then moved quickly, running down through the woods, to something which he knew and needed – clear water.

Zed drank deep. The cold surface reassured him. It reflected the clouds and the dark lands beyond that he knew well. The icy liquid refreshed him3 clearing his thoughts. This was all real. At the lakeside Zed regained himself.

Someone approached silently along the water’s edge. A woman, moving on foot, evenly, directly at him, for him. He turned and swung toward her, gun aiming. He felt it was too late, although she was nearly naked, and unarmed, alone upon the beach. He was afraid.

Sharp blinding pain leaped from her eyes and into his. He staggered out into the shallows, the gun flying from him, whether thrown from his hand or drawn from it he could not tell, except that she was the source of his agony.

Disarmed, he faced her. She had a beauty like the other woman, yet it was stronger – there was a threat here. Her auburn hair flowed around her face, the eyes were slightly slanted and, like the corners of her mouth, they held a mocking certainty, a power and grace. She was an adversary.

“Do you know where you are?”

“A Vortex…”

“You come from the Outlands. You were told about the Vortex?”

“Zardoz says…” He looked about him nervously, the pain she had given him was real, he felt defenseless. What was her plan? Could she see into his mind, determine truth from falsehood? He must have time.

“What does Zardoz say?” Her eyes bored into his. He rose up.

“Zardoz says that if you obey him you’ll go to a Vortex when you die and there you’ll live forever…”

“Happily?”

“Yes.”

“So you think you’re dead?”

“Am I?”

He looked out over the silent dreaming lake. He who knew death so well was yet a stranger to it. Could this be the place beyond death?

He was still sweating but he felt more confident. He must avoid those painful eyes. She moved toward him. His back was to the lake, he could not run.

“You’re an Exterminator?” Another question-statement for him.

“I kill for Zardoz.” He could back away no farther, yet still she advanced.

“You came here in the stone head.”

”I don’t know.”

“It’s the only path and passage into the Vortex. You will show me how you come to be here.”

It was quiet. Light from the setting sun played on the water. A shaft of sunlight made a Jacob’s ladder between them. Her face was averted as she stood, deep in thought.

He was able to appraise her as a woman for the first time as the sun illuminated the line of her full breast, her narrow hip. Then she turned to face him. Conscious now of the change in him, she was unsettled. He felt more sure of himself, a feeling to be short-lived.

“You have a name.”

“Zed.”

“Zed,” she echoed.

The sunlight caught her left breast and seemed to separate it from her body. Zed was entranced with its beauty, paralyzed by its power. His eyes were drawn upward to hers, fearfully dragged there. A silent bolt of light flashed again from her eyes into his brain, worse than the first shock when he had lost his gun. This one drilled deeper than any bullet, yet he lived…but fell into the darkness and the void beneath his feet, skewered on the pin of light.

Subterranean Interrogation

Zed was at home again, hunting.

They galloped along by the sea’s edge, sometimes splashing through the breaking-foam, always scudding after the prey.

Spurts of sand kicked up by their horses’ hooves were echoed by the bullets plowing into the ground, the occasional shot that had gone wide.

It was more fun to use the lance, to spike the prey. Some preferred to cut with the saber. To Zed all three means were as one.

They scampered ahead, some falling, others turning off to try to draw the hunters away, the females trying to protect their young.

The tenacity with which these lower beings clung to life was great, and gave spice to the hunt.

Zed leaned forward and stuck the bobbing man in the back. The little figure stopped pacing his horse’s head and vanished from view. Another target. This man still carried the lance that had split his back, there was life in him still. Zed passed him up: live prey was best. He swung down and executed a perfect cut. The head flew from the shoulders of the Brutal below him.

He rose in his stirrups and cut down on the other side, severing another creature from his breath by hacking clean through from neck to hip. Zed’s men roared approval. It was a good day.

“I love one that puts up a good fight. I love to see them running. I love the moment of their death when I am One with Zardoz.” Zed heard his own voice speaking these words.

“Its coordination is exceptional.” Another voice came in to cloud Zed’s brain. Was this voice a dream from the past, or future? Was this life he could feel and breath itself a dream? The voice had a ring of memory: of an auburn-haired girl, by a lake.

Zed galloped past the main body of dead and dying, leaving them to his followers. He had his eyes on better game. The woman was fleet of foot. Like the others she was dirty, dressed in tatters, and she splashed along the sea edge.

Unlike the other females, she had not tried to offer herself, or to protect her young. She must be fresh and untried. A good specimen.

Zed leaned back in his saddle and drew his net. He cast it high and wide ahead of her. It snaked out, then spread, fanlike, around her. As it snapped shut at her thrashing limbs, Zed reined in, leaped from his horse, and was on her. He kissed her lip, then bit into it as she struggled less and less.

The dream returned to him. The auburn-haired woman who had hurt him had a friend, another woman like herself, proud and strong. She had pale eyes, brown hair, was dressed in green clothing. Taller than the first, she had an icy gaze and deep disdain of him. The two conferred, within a glacial, smooth windowless chamber, glancing down at him from time to time. He was pinioned, or so it seemed. The dream swam away.

He mounted the captured woman. He spent himself and rose, dragging her after him. She was fine booty, to be taken home across his saddle, to bear a child for Zardoz’s sake.

The image ran out of his mind and left blankness.

Zed cleared. The two women looked down at him. They had faces filled with disgust. It was as if the last scene had reversed itself. Zed was the weakling, trapped in an invisible net. The women were his captors, his future leaders and owners. He felt as the Brutals had felt, but he was still strong beneath it all. Although Zardoz had betrayed him, although he was captured deep within the Vortex by two women the like of which amazed him, he was alive.

His mind was being stretched back to that day beside the sea. The memory was drawn out of him by the two women.

“Zarday 312 – twenty-five Brutals exterminated. Took a woman in his name – Zardoz.”

He rose up from the girl and gazed out at the sea and sand. He had no word for “beach.”

“A place where the sea meets the land.”

He wrenched his mind to perceive the reality of the moment. The two women were draining his mind and projecting it onto a wall. He was their mental puppet, a plaything to be rewound and looked at in their own time. He struggled up through layers of their strength. The memory would stop.

The brown-haired one spoke.

“It’s blacked again, May. It seems to be able to control its memory.”

The other ignored her and commanded Zed.

“Show us more of your work.”

Zed felt his mind slipping again, back and back.

It was a wheat field. It was a sunny day. Twenty Brutals were working, rhythmically forward, to the sound of the drum. Zed’s mind could also see the room in which he lay, as well as relive those moments in that field.

The walls tapered upward. They were glassy black. Above him opened a slim black shaft set in the ceiling; it vanished into darkness. The walls seemed to pulse. Behind their glassy exterior was life, wet, fresh, and frightful. Yet on one wall was
his
life.

The two women, May and the other, were in some way drawing his thoughts from him as he lay on a slab in the center of the room. They were making them appear, as bright as his day had been. They talked into the rings they wore. That would be the machinery of his predicament. The crystal ring again, always at the center.

One of the Brutals stumbled. Zed raised his arm and fired. Shot him dead straight through his head. The man fell. The others continued digging. It was during the time of growing and planting. May spoke. “When is this, Consuella?”

“This is a more recent memory, cultivation has started.”

“Zardoz made us grow crops,” cried Zed.

The pressure on Zed’s mind lessened. The weights withdrew somewhat. The two women conferred, their wispy, fragile clothing contradicting their tough intent.

“Disturbed?” asked May.

“A little,” Consuella was more concerned than she would admit.

“The Outlands have to be controlled,” May might be somehow in his favor. Could she be an ally at a future date? Zed had surfaced into an argument about himself.

“I have always voted against forced farming”

“You eat the bread.” May again, sarcastic.

“We have to shut ourselves off – we have to – ”

May came back – to his aid?

“This is the first visual contact with the Outlands in years – as opposed to data – since Arthur was delegated to control them. It’s proper that we investigate.”

“It’s better not to know, these images will pollute us… Quench it! Quell it!”

Zed allowed himself to flash his eyes to the left, to gaze into the black depths of the wall. Within, there swam figures, naked mutilated bodies. Consigned there from the head perhaps. One body lacked a leg, around the stump a membrane protected what could have been a new limb, growing. Smaller and more hideous figures floated deep behind the first. He was buried in a liquid vault, trapped in a pocket of air, numbed and paralyzed while two icy beings discussed his life and death.

Zed followed the women with his eyes. May stood still gazing at the screen. Consuella padded up to her and took her in her arms, stroked her hair, kissed her, imploringly. May was cold, the images still fascinated her.

“Perhaps it can tell us how Arthur has vanished so mysteriously.”

“May, please.” Consuella put her hand on May’s shoulder, but May was moving to the screen.

“Is Arthur Frayn’s memory transmission still functioning?”

The familiar voice of the ring answered, smooth and calm. “Arthur Frayn ceased transmission three days ago.”

“Replay his last-memory moments.”

Zed had nowhere to run, even if he could have moved his legs. Terror filled him.

On the screen came the swirling fall of Arthur Frayn, the clouds, the rain exactly as it was before and yet distorted through a memory, as Zed’s had been. An elaborate reconstruction of reality; true to, yet larger than eye’s vision.

The ground rushed up and engulfed the viewers… blackness.

“Play back the preceding images so we can discover how he suffered this fall.”

The images on the screen went into reverse.

“It is permitted only to show the accident. No other memory-image may be played without the consent of the individuals concerned.”

The scene stopped, then rolled forward again.

“Arthur Frayn…died. Reconstruction has begun.”