Zardoz (8 page)

“Get a move on, you silly beast,” Friend barked.

The others didn’t mind Zed. They rather liked him. Especially the girls. They smiled and tittered. Zed calmly carried on. Consuella would be next; she began to tremble with revulsion at his closeness.

“Friend! Put that thing outside!”

She flashed her look of hatred at them both. An ominous silence fell over the table. Friend sighed, provocatively sweet.

“Anyone else troubled? Let’s take another boringly democratic vote. Shall we…Consuella?”

Zed carefully proffered the potatoes to her, from the left. The steam from them traced its way before her eyes, settled on her brow, condensed. She shook, but throttled down her voice.

“It’s Friend’s day to make the food. He must do it without help as we all do. It is fundamental to our society that we do everything for ourselves on a basis of absolute equality, and Friend knows that perfectly well.”

Zed held a moist potato forward in its ladle, to her face.

“Yes or no!” His voice was strong.

She spun to face him, incensed at his interruption in the debate.

“Potatoes? Yes or no.”

Everyone laughed, except Consuella. As it subsided

Friend continued his dangerously sarcastic monologue. “Take a vote! I say get more Zeds to do the work. We have Eternal life and yet we sentence ourselves to all this drudgery. I tell you. I’m sick of two hundred years of washing up—and I’m sick of pitting my bare hands against the blind, brute stupidity of nature!”

His arm flung out to the somber garden. The evening light had faded into malignant darkness.

The chatter subsided, the air grew tense. The battle lines were drawing firmer. Zed felt he should stop the confrontation, but could not do it. Consuella and Friend would have their final battle soon and one would be expelled and fall: Renegade or Apathetic?

Zed would be pulled down with them. He moved to May.

“You’d better do something about this.”

It was her task to protect him now; they shared a secret which put her in jeopardy as well.

She nodded. He was valuable to her alive for longer than his sentence had to run.

“Consuella is right. Zed is being kept here for scientific study. He can earn his keep on the land, but he should not do the work of a servant.”

Consuella would not pick up this hand of friendship.

“Time enough has gone to finish your study, May. Destroy it. See how it disrupts our community.”

Could Zed detect a wider meaning in these words?

“It is almost over.”

The  agitation  around  the  table  proved  Consuella’s claim; they were disturbed, unserene. Out of character they looked quite insignificant and weak.

One girl spoke up.

“How can you speak like that in front of Zed? He feels—I sense that.”

“Vote!” cried Consuella.

Friend shouted back, “Yes, vote!” The two extremists faced each other. The short quick gestures of the Eternals’ private language clashed and burbled with the noises of dissension. Bickering and bitterness were breaking through. Squabbles started again that went back to other days. Had Consuella and Friend once been as one? How could they resolve an eternal, Fundamental division while locked forever in the same building? Old wounds were slowly opening wide.

The voting ended, one woman spoke; she had been the focus for the activity.

“May has been given seven days to complete her studies. Then Zed will be exterminated.”

Although their voting process had been thorough, many still continued their confused debate. Zed was horrorstruck by the news, but had to wait his chance for escape. The Eternals’ clamor rose.

Only Avalow was stable. She looked from Zed to May and understood. She rose quietly.

Her hands began to hover and flutter in front of her, a long low note, more than musical, grew from her. The members of the commune became still and gazed at her. They quieted and grew watchful. The arguing had stopped.

Zed could feel that all were seeping into one unseen person, gradually, inevitably.

“The Monster is a mirror.”

They all rose, almost floated to their feet, and their hands began to touch. Their eyes opened to see beyond the room and back into a general mind that came from all. Avalow was the initiator, the high priestess of their communion.

“When we look at him we look into our own hidden faces. Their natural eyes were quite blind. Their bodies, empty vehicles.

“Meditate on this at second level. ...”

Soft music issued from some. Others threw their transparent veils into the air so that they settled on their bodies, as if to insulate them against reality.

They were becoming one.

There was an exception—Friend.

He fought the communal mind, he still sat, and then spoke in a strangled voice.

“No, no, no, I will not go to second level. I won’t. I will not be one mind with you. I know what May wants with Zed. The Vortex is an obscenity… No! I hate all women! Birth—fertility—superstition. No, no!”

His words caused pain to the meditators.

They turned to him with their palms pointing to focus their thoughts onto him as he struggled. Their eyes widened, deadly and determined, as one. A great Cyclopean single eye. May spoke up; to stop him? Zed edged toward the window.

“Friend is beyond redemption.”

Friend shouted, “No!”

“Friend is Renegade! Cast him out! Cast him out!” all the Eternals chanted.

Zed felt the invisible, tremendous and unequal battle going on before him. The only outward signs were the stretched hands as they pointed at Friend. He seemed to buckle under waves of pressure, and fought back, trying to tear himself from a giant’s grip. Then Friend pitched forward onto the table, dead or wounded by a ghostly paralyzing force. The crystal ring fell from his finger, plucked by an invisible force.

The Eternals turned to face each other, slowly lowering their hands, paused, then continued with their groupings. They turned toward one another and touched, becoming the same blind creature that Friend had refused to join, and which had smitten him. His eyes rolled up, his mouth sagged open. Zed moved to his side. He picked up the leaden head. It fell from his fingers and thudded onto the cold tabletop.

Zed sensed death—his own. He ran.

Doomsday Approaches

Zed ran beyond his limit. The multiple mind was too much. Here was a mystery he could not begin to penetrate. May’s knowledge and intentions might now be known to all. They would vote him into instant oblivion, and were probably debating it at this instant. Could those looks really kill, or had Friend, poor lost Friend, been joking when he said, “Looks can kill here”? Might they be summoning up one long piercing bolt to catch him as he ran—or could they only stun what was in sight?

He pushed himself on; on and away from this place. Over the lush green fields, toward the edge of the Vortex. He glimpsed again the black bills edging the land through the trees; then as he ran toward the Frontier, he saw the edge of life.

A scorched furrow, some ten yards wide, stretched along his line of sight. It separated the ashen wastes he knew so well from the green Vortex as certainly as a knife across a throat cut life from death. He kept up his stride as he ran toward this line: he might just clear it with a jump, for it was surely poisoned and fatal if touched. A familiar voice began to echo on the wind.

“Caution, you are approaching the Periphery Shield. Caution, you are approaching the Periphery Shield.”

Then he felt a pull, as if he fell. Not down but back along the ground from whence he came. It was as if he hit a wall, hard and final. Picking himself up he ran along the edge, feeling the pressure always pushing him back, with more strength than ever he or his men could have mustered. Even the wind was stilled by it. A prison without bars, glacial and perfect. He peered up to the hillsides, perhaps for the last time. His hunting ground no longer. Three riders came from the distant crest and stared down at him—familiar warriors. Zed raised his arm in a salute. The lead horse reared. They fired a bright rocket in greeting, then turned and vanished, impassive.

Zed slipped back through the trees. He could not escape so he would attack. His only chance, however frail, was to do battle with the Vortex.

His men were nearby, but they might as well be a hundred miles away, until the wall was breached. If it did not fall, Zed would pull the Vortex down from the center—or die in the attempt. The prospect thrilled him. All the odds were stacked against him. It would be a fitting final contest for a great warrior.

He circled back. He followed the leafy path carefully, from the side so as not to meet any traveler. It was not well-used. It was green, showing signs of overgrowth. He ventured out and stepped along its way, following the rising hill.

He slipped away from the path and circled in closely through the bushes, then darted to the huge window that ran along one side from floor to ceiling, catching sunlight. He was back at the Renegades’ headquarters.

Inside the inky blackness, life stirred. Zed’s view was marred by the reflections of the trees. He moved closer and cupped his hand over his eyes, pressing his face to the glass.

The old people were dancing. Slowly they turned, couple by couple, around the ancient dance floor. One decrepit figure turned to Zed, his long bony arms slowly raised up and pointed at him; in recognition? The watery eyes and parrotlike toothless mouth quivered with the exertion. Zed felt stung, not as by an Eternal’s punishing look but by pity for these creatures. Admiration too, for they insisted on maintaining their ludicrous dance, keeping in step with time, apparently forever. He felt himself drawn to them and walked through the sliding door.

“I seek Friend. Have you seen Friend?”

They seemed not to hear him, but smiled maliciously back. Then there was Friend, dressed like the rest, but young. He turned. Half of his face had collapsed, sagging down in wrinkles, the eyes bagged, the mouth loose; even his hair was grayed and whitened on that side. His arm was limp, and the leg dragged. The giant had struck him hard.

“Friend.”

“Yes.” Friend turned to face Zed fully. “Old Friend! This is your doing!” He gestured to his ravaged face. The music stopped.

“Hear this, you old farts. Meet this creature from the world outside.” Vindictive, cynical, he raised Zed’s hand like a champion’s. “This man has the gift of death! He metes it out, and he can die himself. He is mortal.”

They crowded around him, curious and quavering; touching, fawning. An old woman tried to kiss him.

“Shall we give him back to death?”

The crowd screamed: “Yes!”

“Glorious death!”

“Yes!”

“Silent death!”

“Yes!”

They pushed closer now, not lovingly but violently. Pressing harder, boxing him in. He felt the horror of those old bones all around him and felt it would be easy to avoid them, but they crushed in with such vigor and ingenuity that he had to fight to get away. There were more to replace the first. Friend continued to whip them to a frenzy, and Zed was backed up against a wall, trapped, locked in tight.

“May, the scientist, wants to use him to spawn another generation to suffer our agonies!” So Friend knew of May’s thoughts even as Zed had suspected.

They howled in futile rage at this. Despite their infirmities, or because of them, they tried to tear Zed down. They clawed and scratched, jumping on him, submerging him in waves of decrepit energy; venomous but antique. Zed thrashed around, feeling the old crones. More replaced the ones he threw off. Like hunting dogs on a wild pig, they would not quit.

He managed to fight toward Friend, and leaped clear of them. He suddenly roared with power, “Stop!” It thundered across the room. They shrank from him. He could not get out, he would go farther in.

“What is it you want?” he asked Friend.

“Sweet death. Oblivion.”

For yourself or the whole of the Vortex?”

“For everybody. An end to the human race that has plagued this pretty planet for far too long!” Friend was almost poetic; at last here was something he felt deeply.

The Renegades had stopped to listen and cheered him through crackly throats.

Zed spurned them. “You stink with despair!”

“Yes!” Friend crowed.

“Fight back!” Zed countered.

The crowd applauded Zed as well as Friend now. Friend looked at him strangely, while they cheered and cheered.

“I thought at first you were the one to help, but it’s hopeless. All my powers are gone. They’ve even taken away my communicator ring.”

Friend’s spirits sank, but Zed shook him.

“Fight for death, if that’s what you want!”

They were all on his side now, old but allies nonetheless. He had touched them in their yearning for death. This was the secret weapon; if he could bring them death or promise it, they were his.

“Where is it…the Tabernacle?”

Friend shook his head. “The Tabernacle is…we can’t remember. How could that be?”

“Who made it? Someone must know how to break it.”

“Yes…him.” He pointed at the man Zed had first seen through the window. The bedridden man who had pointed at Zed so accusingly, so finally.

“One of the geniuses who discovered immortality. But he didn’t like it for himself. He didn’t conform, and this is what his grateful people did to him.”

Friend bent down and shouted into the old man’s ear, and prodded him with a stick. “We want to die! What’s the trick?”

Again the old man looked toward Zed and slowly raised his index finger to Zed’s eye. He smiled a toothless grin, then, wheezing, spoke.

“Death!”

The others recoiled, as if Zed had been designated Angel of Death by the Architect of Eternal Life. Zed held the old man’s watery gaze and looked deep into his eyes.

“May might know,” he croaked. “May.”

Friend trembled with excitement. Zed turned and left to find the woman who might know.

Zed knew the grounds well, and dodging through cover, he quickly reached the house, unseen.

Some of the Eternals had drifted from the central contemplation group into other places of private reverie.