Zardoz (5 page)

The Beginning of The End

Friend shoved him through the iron doorway of a cage and clanged it shut. Zed surveyed them and the scene beyond. Friend stood with a man Zed would come to know as George Saden, another victim of the system. They both presented their inscrutable Eternal faces to him.

“You’ll be working for me tomorrow, Monster. My other horse died last week.”

They turned and walked off past the other cages of curious animals, leaving Zed to contemplate the tumultuous events of his first day in the Vortex.

This antique farmyard was refitted as an animal prison. Male and female of all species that were hardy and of man’s Earth were here, his cattle and his beasts of burden; and tucked away into one tight corner, near a giant gateway that swallowed up all light, the smallest section of all, the hominids: lip-service homage to the Eternals’ ancestors, monkeys, an ape or two, and now, the prize relation, Zed.

At least he was almost out of doors. He would be able to see the moon and breathe fresh night air through the bars of his cage. The straw was clean as was the pitcher full of water; some grain mash lay there too. And there were three whole weeks before they killed him.

“Well, Monster. Up and time for work.”

The cage clanged open in the morning sun. Zed shuffled ahead of Friend, out of the courtyard and through the stone archway. Consuella and some others were feeding and grooming the animals. Zed was surprised to see them doing menial tasks – slave-work. As they crossed into the dark gate, Friend caught Zed’s back a blow with a whip, knocking him forward into the walls of the exit corridor. Zed spun back ready to strike but was quickly bit with a deadly look from Friend’s eyes. Not as strong as the one from May that had rendered him unconscious, but painful just the same.

“All right. Let’s stop all the nonsense, shall we? Where’s Arthur Frayn?”

Zed did not move or speak.

“You ever hear the expression ‘if looks could kill’? Well, here they can. There’s no need to pretend with me. I am not as the others – I know more than you think—I’m in Arthur Frayn’s confidence… Zardoz.”

He waited to see the effect of his speech, but Zed kept silent, neither his face nor body betraying a response.

“All right – we’ll wait and see…”

They walked toward an old clock tower that stood apart from the rest of the buildings, just as Friend was apart from the Eternals yet of them.

“Don’t be sullen – I’m going to look after you. Whenever you’re ready, ask me questions – anything you like.”

Friend passed his crystal ring across the doorway in a certain pattern. It swung back to show a long flight of stone steps running into the earth below. With a charming smile and a slight bow, Friend invited Zed to lead the way down.

“This is where you’ll be working each morning. Just menial tasks, nothing too taxing.”

Friend always concealed a second meaning in his taunting words. Was Friend offering himself as an ally?

The steps seemed almost as endless as the shaft into the pyramid. The air became cooler. They would soon be on a level with the interrogation room and its adjoining columns of darkness and mystery.

Zed turned to Friend. “Is this your God’s house?”

“Ah – it’s gods you’re seeking, is it?” He laughed. They had reached the bottom of the staircase.

The corridor opened out into a huge vaulted arena, its ceiling lost high in darkness. It was crammed with statues in countless poses, from every culture. They stood frozen, peering out at each other over partly emptied wooden crates that spilled smaller objects onto the floor. The huge area was stuffed with the museum art of centuries, the aspirations, the dreams, the art of a dozen civilizations.

“Here you are. Gods, goddesses, kings, and queens. Take your pick.”

They walked along a natural corridor formed from two rows of grotesque statues that walled back an infinity of further idols.

“But they’re all dead.”

“Dead?” Zed echoed.

“Died of boredom:” Friend began to laugh again, a melancholy bitter laugh that rattled off the dead stone around him.

Friend’s headquarters met with Zed’s approval. He had loosely assembled some favorite objects from the booty around him, pushed in some comfortable chairs, then let things grow around his trackways. They rested at the natural center of this mad maze. Where their paths intersected in the meanderings through the countless treasures was Friend’s living area; dusty, bitty, vivid. Piles of books, the first Zed had seen here, cluttered the floor. Even they had been gradually pushed into the surface of a landscape – Friend’s home.

Friend strode through it all, talking to Zed the while.

“This is where I work, Monster. I ferret around here looking for clues. It all started hundreds of years ago when I was younger than you see me now, not that it shows, of course. It was simply a scientific process – annotate, tabulate, draw conclusions from the past. But the deeper I burrowed, the more involved I became. I thought that all these treasures from other worlds held the secrets of their endings, but they only reflected the certainty of
our
own fall, while keeping
their
information to themselves. I must admit, I love it. The more I find, the less I know. Just as I get one set of notions organized, another situation disproves them. Everything is dissimilar and delightful, yet all things seem the same. It’s not a job, it’s a nonstop voyage. Once I was an ascetic academic, now I’m just a cynical treasure-finder. You wouldn’t understand that, would you – or is there more to you than just an ugly face?”

He stooped in his travels, and picked up a broom which he threw at Zed.

“We all must work, Monster, keep at it now. No slacking or you won’t go to Heaven.”

The master worked at his desk, while the servant Zed swept up in an idle, rhythmic, ineffectual way. But Zed found time to poke a finger through the eye of a painted portrait. Both men were happy in their work.

Friend was using his communicator ring to project pictures on the wall. Wheeled vehicles flashed on and off the screen, starting with cart-like carriages that Zed could see might have been useful if pulled by a horse. They flashed through many changes, the vehicles gradually growing smoother and glossier, sleeker and more metallic. Friend was angry with the pictures. He shouted into his ring. “That’s wrong!”

“It is catalogued according to your instructions.”

“I wanted you to analyze design growth across all makes of car—not just a chronological list from one manufacturer!”

“A much more complex program. Shall I seek Vortex consent for a longer program?” Dully the voice repeated its statement until Friend angrily barked “Yes!” to quiet it.

“It will take time,” the voice continued. “There is a stack-up on some circuits.”

Zed was enjoying the argument. Man against magic ring.

Friend’s beady eye swiveled and caught him smiling.

“Well, I’ve got time, plenty of it. Define three weeks!”

Zed started at this. It was a comment suddenly too close to his heart.

“Twenty-one days – 504 hours – 30,240 minutes – 1,814,400 seconds.”

As the figures defining Zed’s lifetime rattled forward, he picked up a clock that stood on a shelf and moved its hands back. A sudden whir preceded a clash of chimes that made Zed start and Friend laugh.

Friend leaned back, enjoying Zed’s discomfort. Should Zed trust this malicious creature? Could he confide in him? Zed sensed danger in that course. Something held him back.

Zed was once again May’s property. She led him through a tunnel and out into another, calmer room. They left the contemplation space where the cocoons rose to the ceiling and formed the high transparent dome Zed had seen the first time the house had come into his view. He connected the glittering bulges in the sunshine high above the building which surrounded it, and in which it was centered, with the room behind him.

They padded through the darkened way and entered the dining room.

A huge mirrored table was set for all the community. Simple foods and eating utensils were laid out around its edge. A huge vine grew up and over the table so that grapes hung from its lowering branches. The room was large and old, and had the look of an area that had been traditionally a place of gathering and good cheer for generations. It had nothing of the mystic and ascetic look of the room they had just left.

A gentle sound of tiny bells filled the air, as they swung in the light breeze wafting in the windows, sounding like the chimes that had so chilled Zed in Friend’s museum. Friend and a colleague chuckled as they saw Zed and May approach.

“You mean to say he never saw a clock before?”

Friend laughingly replied, “Obviously not.”

Consuella saw the couple, too, and asked, “Are you not taking food with us, May?”

Some others joined in the gentle derision, tittering and smirking.

“She is taking her studies seriously.”

“Well – she only has three weeks.”

May, like Zed, was unmoved in her path, and took his hand and led him on.

They went past another doorway, where skeins of transparent cloth made a rainbow film between the far window and the door. A place of weaving. May led him to the vaulted window across the black polished floor, then out into the green garden beyond, toward the shiny pyramid that sat among the statuary and the flowers.

Consuella watched them go. She and the others had followed through the dark avenue to the room of eating.

The group filed in and took up their accustomed places around the table. Consuella, too, was in hers now.

She watched the retreating couple with a glance that betrayed envy. Raising her crystal ring, she softly spoke into it.

“Do you know yet how the Brutal came here?”

“No conclusion; insufficient data received.”

They passed a loaf of bread from hand to hand, each kissing it in turn, in homage to the fruits of the field.

A ritual blessing and thanksgiving.

It was as if the Brutal had never been among them.

The prayer over, they fell to eating, chattering and laughing.

At the pyramid side, May beckoned to Zed. He approached warily.

“Go in.”

She moved her hand across the hard mirror surface, using the ring to point at certain places. The glassy surface parted as if it had been water. The flat surface changed to a dark shaft, vanishing into a void below his feet. There were traces of hard walls all around; no steps or handrail, just the pit.

“Go in.”

He felt a hard push and was falling down and down, into the center of the pyramid. He had entered at the tip, the only point which showed above the ground, and was falling faster and faster, with nothing to stop him. As he tumbled he caught a glimpse of May falling after him, straight and slim.

The tube yawned open and distended outward around him. He was falling into  the interrogation room; the room where Frayn was regrowing, straight as the slab on which he had lain before.

Zed’s arms flailed as he tried to stop his fall. He heard a low laugh, then May and he floated to a soft stop on the hard floor. She landed like a leaf on water, he, like a pole-axed ox.

The pyramid’s only gateway was the most cunning entrance through which he had ever passed. It knew all who came through, checking them first. The ring was a key and an identifying ornament. The sheer shaft meant the pyramid had absolute power over those entering. If it felt like killing, it could let those falling speed on to their certain deaths.

How did the damaged bodies get behind the glass? Perhaps the slab on which Frayn lay opened downward as a means of entry and exit; doubtless just as cleverly constructed and guarded. The pyramid, or whatever ruled here, was an impregnable fortress, doubly locked in all its cunning doorways.

Zed continued to reflect on this new enclosure. He must have been unconscious the first time he made his entrance down the shaft, still stunned by May’s look. She must have carried him, yet she looked so frail. The powers of these people seemed endless.

The other point on which he pondered was how he had left this place, before. The buffering device which had let them down so gently must be employed in reverse to lift them slowly up the shaft to the top, when the analysis was over. Again it showed how well-planned this place had been. He was powerless against it; one could be trapped forever down here, with those grim fetal creatures behind the glass. Arthur Frayn was regrowing fast right next to him.

Now May was bending low over Zed, using the ring as a viewing device. She looked at him as if he were a specimen from the,fields; a lowly creature, but one of more than passing interest. May could see things within him that he had not suspected.

“Keep still. Look into the ring.”

As he gazed into the thin flat front of the ring, he felt it scan his inner eye, and after a moment saw patterns of veins displayed on the screen in front of him. May froze them, or perhaps the ring kept the image still. Then she observed this plan in silence. Zed felt there were other rooms, other vaults within the pyramid. Could they contain the machinery of the ring? How could one gain access to it? Were there duplicates in other caves ready to take this one’s place should it be damaged? He felt there would be brother organisms, far from this place, ready, silent, and waiting. A worthy foe, a matchless army.

And yet if one could get to the soul of an enemy, it could be destroyed, even though it was almighty.

If the spirit was broken, the body would fall.

The bright latticework of blood vessels moved into life again, each one a living line of life.

“No retinal abnormalities. The fundus is normal. Disk and retinal vessels are normal. There are no hemorrhages or exudates. Macula area is clear.”

It was the familiar voice that had so frightened Zed in the cottage. It sounded too indifferent to be a leader, yet more confident than a slave. Did the owner of the voice live underground; nearby?

The picture came closer, one vein grew before Zed’s eyes.

May watched it impassively, then she muttered to the ring again and the picture jumped even closer, the blood cells themselves filling the screen. She froze the picture, spoke again as if noting a detail, and was again lost in the mechanics of discovery.