The Road to Amber (19 page)

She looked away.

“It would have done no good,” she said. “They were determined to resolve the matter. And you must remember that they were monitoring, too. After the first death, they were as aware as I was of his state of mind, and of the danger.”

“Why didn’t you stop the first one?”

“I was…weak,” she said. “I was afraid. It would have meant telling them my story. They might have restrained me, to send me home for trial.”

“You wished to take the place of the first Alice.”

“I can’t deny it.”

“I suppose that is her upon the ground now.”

“Who else could it be?”

Nelsor and the new Alice opened their eyes at abour the same time.

“Is it you?” Nelsor asked softly.

“Yes,” she answered.

Nelsor raised himself onto his elbows, sat up.

“So long…” he said. “It has been so long.”

She smiled and sat up. In a moment they were in each other’s arms. When they parted and she spoke again, her words were slurred:

Aidon—message for you—to me gave,” she said.

He rose to his feet, helped her to hers.

“What is the matter?” he asked.

“‘Portant, ‘im, to talk to. World ending. Arrow.”

“It is nothing,” Nelsor said. “He shot it off in the wrong direction. What is wrong with you?”

“Cur-va-ture. Perfect vector,” she said, “to cir-cum-navi-gate small our uni-verse. Back soon. Other way.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s just an arrow.”

She shook her head. “It bears—an-other—dot.”

“What? It’s carrying a singularity around the universe on a collision course with Aidon?”

She nodded.

He turned away from her, to face Kalifriki.

“This is true?” he asked.

“This is true,” Kalifriki replied.

“I don’t believe it.”

“Wait awhile,” he said.

“It still won’t destroy Aidon.”

“Perhaps not, but it will destroy the programmed accretion disc and probably wreck your world that it holds together.”

“What did she pay you to do this?”

“A lot,” he said. “I don’t kill for nothing if I can help it.”

“The conscience of a mercenary,” Nelsor said.

“I never killed three women who were trying to help me—for nothing.”

“You don’t understand.”

“No. Is that because we’re all aliens? Or is it something else?”

Just then, the new-risen Alice screamed. Both men turned their heads. She had wandered to the niche where her skull had lain, and only then seemed to notice her scarred clone standing nearby.

“You!” she cried. “Hurt me!”

She snatched the hammer from the ledge and rushed toward the clone. The Alice dodged her assault, reached for her wrist and missed, then pushed her away.

“She’s damaged,” Nelsor said, moving forward. “She’s not responsible…”

The original Alice recovered and continued her attack as Nelsor rushed toward them. Again, the other dodged and pushed, struck, pushed again. The incomplete Alice staggered backward, recovered her footing, screamed, swung the hammer again as her double moved to close with her.

Nelsor was almost upon them, when a final push carried her backward to strike her calves against the lip of the well.

He was wellside in an instant, reaching, reaching, reaching, and catching hold of her wrist. He continued to lean, was bent forward, fell. He disappeared into the well with her, their cries echoing back for several seconds, then ceasing abruptly.

“Lost!” the remaining Alice cried. “She has taken him from me!”

Kalifriki moved to the edge of the well and looked downward.

“Another case of self-defense,” he said, “against the woman you wished to replace.”

“Woman?” she said, moving forward. “She was incomplete, barely human. And you saw her attack me.”

He nodded. “Was it Nelsor you really wanted?” he said. “Or this? To be the last, the only, the mistress—the original?”

Tears ran down her cheeks.

“No, I loved him,” she said.

“The feeling, apparently, was not mutual.”

“You’re wrong!” she said. “He did care!”

“As a clone. Not as his woman. Give up the memory. You are your own person now. Come! We should be leaving. I don’t know exactly when—”

“No!” she cried, and the ground shook and the chains rattled. “No! I am mistress here now, and I will reembody him without memory of her! I will summon the three recorded clones to serve us. The others were witless. We shall dwell here together and make of it a new world. We can bring in what we choose, create what we need—”

“It is too late for that,” Kalifriki said. “You brought me here to destroy a universe and I did. Even if it could be saved, you cannot dwell on the Killing Ground forever. It is already destroying you. Come away now, find a new life—”

“No!” she answered. “I rule here! Even now, I take control of Aidon! I remember the command modes! I have reached him! I hold this universe in my hand! I can alter the very physical constants! I can warp space itself to turn your silly arrow away! Behold! I have digested its flight!”

The lights in the sky flickered for the first time and jumped to new positions. “Change the topology and the geodesic will follow,” Kalifriki said. “The Dagger of Rama will still find you. Come away!”

“You! You have hated me all along for what I am! As soon as I told you I was a clone you knew I was something less than the rest of you! But I can destroy you now, assassin! For I am mistress of the dot! I can wish you away in any manner I choose! There is no defense!”

“So it comes to that again,” he said. “You would have me pit my Thread against a singularity.”

She laughed wildly.

“There is no contest there,” she said. “You have already described the entanglement that would result. I believe I will burn you—”

Kalifriki moved his wrist, slowly, to a position above the well.

“What are you doing?” she said. “How can you interfere with my omniscience? My omnipotence? You can’t touch me!”

“I told you that the circumference of the Thread is less than a full circle,” he stated. “I am cutting out a wedge from your disc.”

“That close? You can’t. If the warp extends to the hole you would violate thermodynamics. A black hole cannot shrink.”

“No,” he said. “The Thread would probably be caused to deliver energy to replace it and increase the mass and the radius in compensation. But I am being careful not to let it stray so near, and not to have to test this hypothesis. My sense is extended along it.”

“Then you will not die by fire,” she said, slurring her words slightly. “By bone—dot—and siphon—I summon you! Sisters! Destroy this man!”

Kalifriki’s head jerked to the left, the direction of her gaze.

The three Alices whose eyes focused were flickering into existence across the oval from him. Slowly, he withdrew his wrist beyond the well’s wall.

“Kill him!” she said. “Before he kills us! Hurry!”

The three Alices moved, wraithlike, even before they were fully embodied, rainbow’s light passing through them as they came on.

Solidifying before they arrived, they rushed past Kalifriki, to attack the one who had summoned them.

“Murderess!” one of them cried.

“Liar!” shrieked another.

“Cause of all our pain!” screamed the third.

The scarred Alice retreated, and Kalifriki shook out his Thread so that it fell among them. A wall of flame rose up between the Alices and their victim.

“There is no time,” he called out, “to stain this ground further! We must depart!”

He moved the Thread to enclose the three Alices.

“I am taking them with me,” he said. “You come, too! We must go!”

“No!” she answered, eyes flashing. “I will shunt your arrow. I will move this place itself! I will warp space even more!” The lights in the sky winked again, danced again. “I will avoid your doom, archer! I will-rebuild! I will—have—him—back! I am-mistress—here—now! Begone! I banish—the—lot—of—you!”

Kalifriki retreated with the three ladies, to the Valley of Frozen Time. There, in the place that is sculpture, painting, map, he laid his way home. He could not speak to explain this, for this was not a place for words (nor wind, music, cries, wailing), nor they to thank him, were that their wish. And while scarred Alice stood upon the Killing Ground and invoked the powers of dot, siphon, and bone against the rushing Dagger of Rama as it cut its way around the universe, Kalifriki transported the three Alices from the land behind the mirror in vanished Ubar, taking them with him to his villa near the sea, though he feared them, knowing that he could never favor one over the others. But that was a problem to be dealt with at another time, for the ways of the Thread are full of arrivals and departures, and even its master cannot digest its flight fully.

A
lice at the end of the rainbow stands upon the red stain and watches the sky. The siphon brings her nourishment as she plies powers against powers in her contest with the inexorable doom she has loosed. A dark-haired, short-bearded main of medium stature sits upon the edge of the well and seems to watch her. Occasionally, she takes her pleasure of him and he tells her whatever she wishes to hear. She returns, refreshed then, to her duel, though it sometimes feels as if the circle of her universe no longer possesses 360 degrees…

“In the present story, I did use a character I’d used before, though Kalifriki appeared in a very different sort of story in ‘Kalifriki of the Thread’—a piece inspired in part by the atmosphere of some of E. T. A. Hoffman’s stories. I knew when I finished the first one that I was not done with Kalifriki. As Chelsea Quinn Yarbro once remarked to me, ‘You know you’re not finished with characters if they’re still talking to you.’ And as I once said elsewhere, my characters come by and have morning coffee with me. When their stories are finally told, they generally stop visiting. And Kalifriki kept dropping in regularly. Everyone else herein is new and different.

“Why I should have thought of the Lewis Carroll and the Marquis de Sade in the same breath, I do not know. Once I did, however, the fox in me went looking for pieces to fit the characters and the impulse. And once they were located, I became the hedgehog for the duration [searching after ways to make everything fit its single, central vision].”
[1]

This story is the second of two tales that feature Kalifriki.

The story’s title and structure mirror the 1982 film
Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
. In that film, the Disciples of James Dean meet on the anniversary of his death and ponder their existence in the present and in flashback, revealing the truth in their complicated lives. Zelazny’s story also uses present and flashback to reveal the truth behind the Alices.

All the death-traps in the galaxy, and she has to walk into mine
and
Play it again, Alices
echo one of Zelazny’s favorite movies,
Casablanca
. Humphrey Bogart’s lines were, “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine” and “Play it Sam, play it” (often misquoted as “Play it again, Sam.”). A group of eight, the
octad
here is the Alices.

A
caravanserai
in Asia is an inn with a large courtyard.
Zen
Buddhism seeks enlightenment through meditation and by jarring the intellect with koans such as “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” A
Sufi
is a Muslim mystic.
Constantinople
, renamed Istanbul in 1930, was the capital of several empires (Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman). A
cosmic string
is a hypothetical one-dimensional flaw in space-time. The
Sea of Marmara
, Propontis in antiquity, connects the Black Sea to the Aegean Sea. There Jason and the Argonauts encountered a storm, came ashore, and mistakenly killed King Cyzicus.
Ubar
, the lost city that Lawrence of Arabia called the “Atlantis of the Sands,” was a shipping center for frankincense and other items. It was destroyed around 100 AD. The space shuttle
Challenger
located it through photos in 1984.

The Porch of the Maidens
on the Acropolis in Athens uses six statues of women (
caryatids
) as columns.
Arbor decapitant
means a tree that cuts off heads, featured in section 15. A
chamberlain
is the royal court’s steward, responsible for the monarch’s quarters. The
chakra
in yoga is one of the human body’s seven centers of energy. The
Ramayana
is the Hindu epic in which the demon
Ravan
kidnaps Lord
Rama
‘s consort
Sita
.
Bowers
are shaded trees.
Golden Horn
is an estuary in Istanbul near where Kalifriki was staying, and
The Moon’s
Golden Horn
is a classical music piece by Arthur Hill.
To eat the bird is not to digest its flight
suggests a Zen aphorism.
Shaddad ibn Ad
founded Ubar, also called
Iram
in the Koran.
Bessel functions
are solutions to some kinds of differential equations used in physics and engineering. Zelazny made up
twar
,
frogbart
,
gride
,
bropples
,
jankel
,
vum
,
slyth
and
fangrace-pair
. A
geodesic
is the shortest line between two points on any surface. The
35
sections of this story allude to numerology where number 35 indicates reality and mind; it may also refer to the 359 degrees that Aidon/Nelsor/Alice’s universe now has instead of the usual 360.

1. Amazing Stories
   , January 1992.