He Who Shapes

All science fiction writers know that reality is more fantastic

than any publishable fiction. Here is one proof. The story you

are about to read was tied on the first ballot with Brian W.

Aldiss's "The Saliva Tree." We accordingly
 
held a second

ballot. The result? Another tie.

Feeling that it would be fruitless to pursue this any further (as

well as illegalthe rules made no provision for a third ballot),

we gladly awarded Nebulas to both authors.

Here is another story only Zelazny could have written: an

intricate
 
and subtle
 
marriage
 
of reality
 
and hallucination,

delicate eroticism, horror,
 
all turning around a brilliantly

imagined new kind of psychialrist

Nebula Award, Best Novella 1965 (tied with "The

Saliva Tree," by Brian W. Aldiss)

HE WHO SHAPES

Roger Zeiazny

Lovely as it was, with the blood and all, Render could sense

that it was about to end.

Therefore, each microsecond would be better off as a minute,

he decidedand perhaps the temperature should be increased

. . . Somewhere, just at the periphery of everything, the dark-

ness halted its constriction.

Something, like a crescendo of subliminal thunders, was

arrested at one raging note. That note was a distillate of shame

and pain, and fear.

The Forum was stifling.

Caesar cowered outside the frantic circle. His 'forearm

covered his eyes but it could not stop the seeing, not this time.

The senators had no faces and their garments were spattered

with blood. All their voices were like the cries of birds. With an

inhuman frenzy they plunged their daggers into the fallen

figure.

All, that is, but Render.

The pool of blood in which he stood continued to widen. His

arm seemed to be rising and falling with a mechanical

regularity and his throat might have been shaping bird-cries,

but he was simultaneously apart from and a part of the scene.

For he was Render, the Shaper.

Crouched,
 
anguished and envious,
 
Caesar wailed his

protests.

"You have slain him! You have murdered Marcus Antonius

a blameless, useless fellow!"

Render turned to him, and the dagger in his hand was quite

enormous and quite gory.

"Aye," said be.

The blade moved from side to side. Caesar, fascinated by the

sharpened steel, swayed to the same rhythm.

"Why?" he cried. "Why?"

"Because," answered Render, "he was a far nobler Roman

than yourself."

"You lie! It is not so!"

Render shrugged and returned to the stabbing.

"It is not true!" screamed Caesar. "Not true!"

Render turned to him again and waved the dagger.

Puppetlike, Caesar mimicked the pendulum of the blade.

"Not true?" smiled Render. "And who are you to question an

assassination such as this? You are no one! You detract from

the dignity of this occasion! Begone!"

Jerkily,
 
the
 
pink-faced
 
man
 
rose
 
to
 
his
 
feet,
 
his
 
hair

half-wispy, half-wetplastered, a disarray of cotton. He turned,

moved away; and as he walked, he looked back over his

shoulder.

He had moved far from the circle of assassins, but the scene

did not diminish in size. It retained an electric clarity. It made

him feel even further removed, ever more alone and apart.

Render rounded a previously unnoticed corner and stood

before him, a blind beggar.

Caesar grasped the front of his garment.

"Have you an ill omen for me this day?"

"Beware!" jeered Render.

"Yes! Yes!" cried Caesar. " 'Beware!' That is good! Beware

what?"

"The ides-"

"Yes? The ides"

"-of Octember."

He released the garment.

"What is that you say? What is Octember?"

"A month."

"You lie! There is no month of Octember!"

"And that is the date noble Caesar need fearthe non-

existent time, the never-to-be-calendared occasion."

Render vanished around another sudden corner.

"Wait! Come back!"

Render laughed, and the Forum laughed with him. The bird-

cries became a chorus of inhuman jeers.

"You mock me!" wept Caesar.

The Forum was an oven, and the perspiration formed like a

glassy mask over Caesar's narrow forehead, sharp nose, chinless

jaw.

"I want to be assassinated too!" he sobbed. "It isn't fair!"

And Render tore the Forum and the senators and the

grinning corpse of Antony to pieces and stuffed them into a

black sackwith the unseen movement of a single fingerand

last of all went Caesar.

Charles Render sat before the ninety white buttons and the

two red ones, not really looking at any of them. His right arm

moved in its soundless sling, across the lap-level surface of the

consolepushing some of the buttons, skipping over others,

moving on, retracing its path to press the next in the order of

the Recall Series.

Sensations throttled, emotions reduced to nothing. Repre-

sentative Erikson knew the oblivion of the womb.

There was a soft click.

Render's hand had glided to the end of the bottom row of

buttons. An act of conscious intentwill, if you likewas

required to push the red button.

Render freed his arm and lifted off his crown of Medusa-hair

leads and microminiature circuitry. He slid from behind his

desk-couch and raised the hood. He walked to the window and

transpared it, fingering forth a jgjfg~e.

One minute in the ro-womb, he decided. No more. This is a

crucial one . . . Hope it doesn't mow till laterthose clouds look

mean...

It was smooth yellow trellises and high towers, glassy and

gray, all smouldering into evening under a shale-colored sky;

the city was squared volcanic islands, glowing in the end-of-

day light, rumbling deep down under the earth; it was fat,

incessant rivers of traffic, rushing.

Render turned away from the window and approached the

great egg that lay beside his desk, smooth and glittering. It

threw back a reflection that smashed all aquilinity from bis

nose, turned his eyes to gray saucers, transformed his hair into a

light-streaked skyline; his reddish necktie became the wide

tongue of a ghoul.

He smiled, reached across the desk. He pressed the second

red button.

With a sigh, the egg lost its dazzling opacity and a horizontal

crack appeared about its middle. Through the now-transparent

shell. Render could see Erikson grimacing, squeezing his eyes

tight, fighting against a return to consciousness and the thing it

would contain. The upper half of the egg rose vertical to the

base, exposing him knobby and pink on half-shell. When his

eyes opened he did not look at Render. He rose to his feet and

began dressing. Render used this time to check the ro-womb.

He leaned back across his desk and pressed the buttons:

temperature control, full range, check; exotic soundshe raised

the earphone check, on bells, on buzzes, on violin notes and

whistles, on squeals and moans, on traffic noises and the sound

of surf; check, on the feedback circuitholding the patient's

own voice, trapped earlier in analysis; check, on the sound

blanket, the moisture spray, the odor banks; check, on the

couch agitator and the colored lights, the taste stimulants . . .

Render closed the egg and shut off its power. He pushed the

unit into the closet, palmed shut the door. The tapes had

registered a valid sequence.

"Sit down," he directed Erikson.

The man did so, fidgeting with his collar.

"You have full recall," said Render, "so there is no need for

me to summarize what occurred. Nothing can be hidden from

me. I was there."

Erikson nodded.

"The significance of the episode should be apparent to you."

Erikson nodded again, finally finding his voice. "But was it

valid?" he asked. "I mean, you constructed the dream and you

controlled it, all the way. I didn't really dream itin the way I

would normally dream. Your ability to make things happen

stacks the deck for whatever you're going to saydoesn't it?"

Render shook his head slowly, flicked an ash into the

southern hemisphere of his globe-made-ashtray, and met

Erikson's eyes.

"It is true that I supplied the format and modified the forms.

You, however, filled them with an emotional significance,

promoted them to the status of symbols corresponding to your

problem. If the dream was not a valid analogue it would not

have provoked the reactions it did. It would have been devoid

of the anxiety-patterns which were registered on the tapes.

"You have been in analysis for many months now," he

continued, "and everything I have learned thus far serves to

convince me that your fears of assassination are without any

basis in fact."

Erikson glared.

"Then why the hell do I have them?"

"Because," said Render, "you would like very much to be the