HARLAN ELLISON
The Deathbird
Beginnings and ends, ends and beginnings. How they tantalize us! This story, only ten thousand words, comprises not only the beginning and the end of this world, but also, perhaps even more relevant, the middle. The end is written in the beginning, and the middle is as inescapable as growing old. A tour de force that scans billions of years, and manages to focus on minute details with excruciating exactness, this is "The Deathbird."
1
This is a test. Take notes. This will count as 3/a of your final grade. Hints: remember, in chess, kings cancel each other out and cannot occupy adjacent squares, are therefore all-powerful and totally powerless, cannot affect one another, produce stalemate. Hinduism is a polytheistic religion; the sect of Atman worships the divine spark of life within Man; in effect saying, "Thou art God." Provisos of equal time are not served by one viewpoint having media access to two hundred million people in prime time while opposing viewpoints are provided with a soapbox on the corner. Not everyone tells the truth. Operational note: these sections may be taken out of numerical sequence: rearrange to suit yourself for optimum clarity. Turn over your test papers and begin.
2
Uncounted layers of rock pressed down on the magma pool. White-hot with the bubbling ferocity of the molten nickel-iron core, the pool spat and shuddered, yet did not pit or char or smoke or damage in the slightest the smooth and reflective surfaces of the strange crypt.
Nathan Stack lay in the crypt-silent, sleeping.
A shadow passed through rock. Through shale, through coal, through marble, through mica schist, through quartzite; through miles-thick deposits of phosphates, through diatomaceous earth, through feld-
spars, through diorite; through faults and folds, through anticlines and monoclines, through dips and synclines; through hellfire; and came to the ceiling of the great cavern and passed through; and saw the magma pool and dropped down; and came to the crypt. The shadow
A triangular face with a single eye peered into the crypt, saw Stack, and laid four-fingered hands on the crypt's cool surface. Nathan Stack woke at the touch, and the crypt became transparent; he woke though the touch had not been upon his body. His soul felt the shadowy pressure and he opened his eyes to see the leaping brilliance of the world core around him, to see the shadow with its single eye staring in at him.
The serpentine shadow enfolded the crypt; its darkness flowed upward again, through the Earth's mantle, toward the crust, toward the surface of the cinder, the broken toy that was the Earth.
When they reached the surface, the shadow bore the crypt to a place where the poison winds did not reach, and caused it to open.
Nathan Stack tried to move, and moved only with difficulty. Memories rushed through his head of other . lives, many other lives, as many other men; then the memories slowed and melted into a background tone that could be ignored.
The shadow thing reached down a hand and touched Stack's naked flesh. Gently, but firmly, the thing helped him to stand, and gave him garments, and a neck-pouch that contained a short knife and a warming-stone and other things. He offered his hand, and Stack took it, and after two hundred and fifty thousand years sleeping in the crypt, Nathan Stack stepped out on the face of the sick planet Earth.
Then the thing bent low against the poison winds and began walking away. Nathan Stack, having no other choice, bent forward and followed the shadow creature.
3
A messenger had been sent for Dira and he had come as quickly as the meditations would permit. When he reached the Summit, he found .the fathers waiting, and they took him gently into their cove, where they immersed themselves and began to speak.
"We've lost the arbitration," the coil-father said. "It will be necessary for us to go and leave it to him."
Dira could not believe it. "But didn't they listen to our arguments, to our logic?"
The fang-father shook his head sadly and touched Dira's shoulder. "There were . . . accommodations to be made. It was their time. So we must leave."
The coil-father said, "We've decided you will remain. One was permitted, in caretakership. Will you accept our commission?"
It was a very great honor, but Dira began to feel the loneliness even as they told him they would leave. Yet he accepted. Wondering why they had selected him, of all their people. There were reasons, there were always reasons, but he could not ask. And so he accented the honor, with all its attendant sadness, and remained behind when they left.
The limits of his caretakership were harsh, for they insured he could not defend himself against whatever slurs or legends would be spread, nor could he take action unless it became clear the trust was being breached by the other-who now held possession. And he had no threat save the Deathbird. A final threat that could be used only when final measures were needed: and therefore too late.
But he was patient. The most patient of all his people.
Thousands of years later, when he saw how it was destined to go, when there was no doubt left how it would end, he understood that was the reason he had been chosen to stay behind.
But it did not help the loneliness.
Nor could it save the Earth. Only Stack could. do that.
4
1 Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the held which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea hath God said, Ye shall not eat o every tree of the garden?
2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:
3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat o f it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
S (Omitted) .
6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
7 (Omitted)
8 (Omitted)
9 And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?
10 (Omitted)
11 And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof 1 commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?
12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and 1 did eat.
13 And the LORD God said unto the. woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and 1 did eat.
14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:
15 And 1 will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
GENESIS, Chap. 111
TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
(Give 5 points per right answer)
1. Melville's Moby Dick begins, "Call me Ishmael." We say it is told in the first person. In what person is Genesis told? From whose viewpoint?
2. Who is the "good guy" in this story? Who is the "bad guy"? Can you make a strong case for reversal of the roles?
3. Traditionally, the apple is considered to be the fruit the serpent offered to Eve. But apples are not endemic to the Near East. Select one of the following, more logical substitutes, and discuss how myths come into being and are corrupted over long periods of time: olive, fig, date, pomegranate.
4. Why is the word LORD always in capitals and the name God always capitalized? Shouldn't the serpent's name be capitalized, as well? If no, why?
5. If God created everything (see Genesis, Chap. I), why did he create problems for himself by creating a serpent who would lead his creations astray? Why did God create a tree he did not want Adam and Eve to know about, and then go out of his way to warn them against it?
6. Compare and contrast Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling panel of the Expulsion from Paradise with Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights.
7. Was Adam being a gentleman when he placed blame on Eve? Who was Quisling? Discuss "narking" as a character flaw.
8. God grew angry when he found out he had been defied. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, didn't he know? Why couldn't he find Adam and Eve when they hid?
9. If God had not wanted Adam and Eve to taste the fruit of the forbidden tree, why didn't he warn the serpent? Could God have prevented the serpent from tempting Adam and Eve? If yes, why didn't he? If no, discuss the possibility the serpent was as powerful as God.
10. Using examples from two different media journals demonstrate the concept of "slanted news."
5
The poison winds howled and tore at the powder covering the land. Nothing lived there. The winds, green and deadly, dived out of the sky and raked the carcass of the Earth, seeking, seeking: anything moving, anything still living. But there was nothing. Powder. Talc. Pumice.
And the onyx spire of the mountain toward which Nathan Stack and the shadow thing had moved, all that first day. When night fell they dug a pit in the tundra and the shadow thing coated it with a substance thick as glue that had been in Stack's neck-pouch. Stack had slept the night fitfully, clutching the warming-stone to his chest and breathing through a filter tube from the pouch.
Once he had awakened, at the sound of great bat
like creatures flying overhead; he had seen them
swooping low, coming in fiat trajectories across the
wasteland toward his pit in the earth. But they seemed
unaware that he-and the shadow thing lay in the
hole. They defecated thin, phosphorescent stringers
that fell glowing through the night and were lost on the
plains; then the creatures swooped upward and were
whirled away on the winds. Stack resumed sleeping with
difficulty.
In the morning, frosted with an icy light that gave everything a blue tinge, the shadow thing scrabbled its way out of the choking powder and crawled along the ground, then, lay flat, fingers clawing for purchase in the whisk away surface. Behind it, from the powder,
Stack bore toward the surface, reached up a hand and trembled for help.
The shadow creature slid across the ground, fighting the winds that had grown stronger in the night, back to the soft place that had been their pit, to the hand thrust up through the powder. It grasped the hand, and Stack's fingers tightened convulsively. Then the crawling shadow exerted pressure and pulled the man from the treacherous pumice.
Together they lay against the earth, fighting to see, fighting to draw breath without filling their lungs with suffocating death.
"Why is it like this . . what happened?" Stack screamed against the wind. The shadow creature did not answer, but it looked at Stack for a long moment and then, with very careful movements, raised its hand, held it up before Stack's eyes and slowly, making claws of the fingers, closed the four fingers into a cage, into a fist, into a painfully tight ball that said more eloquently than words: destruction.
Then they began to crawl toward the mountain.
6
The onyx spire of the mountain rose out of hell and struggled toward the shredded sky. It was monstrous arrogance. Nothing should have tried that climb out of desolation. But the black mountain had tried, and succeeded.
It was like an old man. Seamed, ancient, dirt caked in striated lines, autumnal, lonely; black and desolate, piled strength upon strength. It would not give in to gravity and pressure and death. It struggled for the sky. Ferociously alone, it was the only feature that broke the desolate line of the horizon.
In another twenty-five million years the mountain might be worn as smooth and featureless as a tiny onyx offering to the deity night. But though the powder plains swirled and the poison winds drove the pumice against the flanks of the pinnacle, thus far their scouring had only served to soften the edges of the mountain's profile, as though divine intervention had protected the spire.
Lights moved near the summit
7
Stack learned the nature of the phosphorescent stringers defecated onto the plain the night before by the batlike creatures. They were spores that became, in the wan light of day, strange bleeder plants.
All around them as they crawled through the dawn, the little live things sensed their warmth and began thrusting shoots up through the talc. As the fading red ember of the dying sun climbed painfully into the sky, the bleeding plants were already reaching maturity.
Stack cried out as one of the vine tentacles fastened around his ankle, holding him. A second looped itself around his neck.
Thin films of berry-black blood coated the vines, leaving rings on Stack's flesh. The rings burned terribly.
The shadow creature slid on its belly and pulled itself back to the man. Its triangular head came close to 'e Stack's neck, and it bit into the vine. Thick black blood
spurted as the vine parted, and the shadow creature ,y rasped its razor-edged teeth back and forth till Stack was able to breathe again. With a violent movement Stack folded himself down and around, pulling the a short knife from the neck-pouch. He sawed through the vine tightening inexorably around his ankle. It screamed as it was severed, in the same voice Stack had heard from the skies the night before. The severed vine writhed away, withdrawing into the talc.
Stack and the shadow thing crawled forward once again, low, flat, holding onto the dying earth: toward the mountain. High in the bloody sky, the Deathbird , circled.
8
On their own world, they had lived in luminous, oily-walled caverns for millions of years, evolving and spreading their race through the universe. When they had had enough of empire building, they turned inward, and much of their time was spent in the intricate construction of songs of wisdom, and the designing of fine worlds for many races.
There were other races that designed, however. And when there was a conflict over jurisdiction, an arbitration was called, adjudicated by a race whose raison d'etre was impartiality and cleverness unraveling knotted threads of claim and counter-claim. Their racial honor, in fact, depended on the flawless application of these qualities. Through the centuries they had refined their talents in more and more sophisticated arenas of arbitration until the time came when they were the final authority. The litigants were compelled to abide by the judgments, not merely because the decisions were always wise and creatively fair, but because the judges' race would, if its decisions were questioned as suspect, destroy itself. In the holiest place on their world they had erected a religious machine. It could be activated to emit a tone that would shatter their crystal carapaces. They were a race of exquisite cricket like creatures, no larger than the thumb of a man. They were treasured throughout the civilized worlds, and their loss would have been catastrophic. Their honor and their value was never questioned. All races abided by their decisions.
So Dira's people gave over jurisdiction to that certain world, and went away, leaving Dira with only the Deathbird, a special caretakership the adjudicators had creatively woven into their judgment.
There is recorded one last meeting between Dira and those who had given him his commission. There were readings that could not be ignored-had, in fact, been urgently brought to the attention of the fathers of Dira's
race by the adjudicators-and the Great Coiled One came to Dira at the last possible moment to tell him of the mad thing into whose hands this world had been given, to tell Dira of what the mad thing could do.
The Great Coiled One-whose rings were loops of wisdom acquired through centuries of gentleness and perception and immersed meditations that had brought forth lovely designs for many world-he who was the holiest of Dira's race, honored Dira by coming to him, rather than commanding Dira to appear.
We have only one gift to leave them, he said. Wisdom. This mad one will come, and he will lie to them, and he will tell them: created he them. And we will be gone, and there will be nothing between them and the mad one but you. Only you can give them the wisdom to defeat him in their own good time. Then the Great Coiled One stroked the skin of Dira with ritual affection, and Dira was deeply moved and could not reply. Then he was left alone.
The mad one came, and interposed himself, and Dira gave them wisdom, and time passed. His name became other than Dira, it became Snake, and the new name was despised: but Dira could see the Great Coiled One had been correct in his readings. So Dira made his selection. A man, one of them, and gifted him with the spark.
All of this is recorded somewhere. It is history.
9
The man was not Jesus of Nazareth. He may have been Simon. Not Genghis Khan, but perhaps a foot soldier in his horde. Not Aristotle, but possibly one who sat and listened to Socrates in the agora. Neither the shambler who discovered the wheel nor the link who first ceased painting himself blue and applied the colors to the walls of the cave. But one near them, somewhere near at hand. The man was not Richard Coeur de Lion, Rembrandt, Richelieu, Rasputin, Robert Fulton or the Mahdi. Just a man. With the spark
10
Once, Dira came to the man. Very early on. The spark was there, but the light needed to be converted to energy. So Dira came to the man, and did what had to be done before the mad one knew of it, and when he discovered that Dira, the Snake, had made contact, he quickly made explanations.
This legend has come down to us as the fable of
Faust.
TRUE or FALSE?
11
Light converted to energy, thus:
In the fortieth year of his five hundredth incarnation, all unknowing of the eons of which he had been part, the man found himself wandering in a terrible dry place under a thin, flat burning disc of sun. He was a Berber tribesman who had never considered shadows save to relish them when they provided shade. The shadow came to him, sweeping down across the sands like the khamsin of Egypt, the simoom of Asia Minor, the harmattan, all of which he had known in his various lives, none of which he remembered. The shadow came over him like the sirocco.
The shadow stole the breath from his lungs and the man's eyes rolled up in his head. He fell to the ground and the shadow took him down and down, through the sands, into the Earth.
Mother Earth.
She lived, this world of trees and rivers and rocks with deep stone thoughts. She breathed, had feelings, dreamed dreams, gave birth, laughed and grew contemplative for millennia. This great creature swimming in the sea of space.
What a wonder, thought the man, for he had never understood that the Earth was his mother, before this. He had never understood, before this, that the Earth
had a life of its own, at once a part of mankind and ,; quite separate from mankind. A mother with a life of
her own.
Dira, Snake, shadow . . . took the man down and let the spark of light change itself to energy as the man became one with the Earth. His flesh melted and became quiet, cool soil. His eyes glowed with the light that shines in the darkest centers of the planet and he saw the way the mother cared for her young: the worms, the roots of plants, the rivers that cascaded for miles over great cliffs in enormous caverns, the bark of trees. He was taken once more to the bosom of that
great Earth mother, and understood the joy of her life.
Remember this, Dira said to the man.
What a wonder, the man thought . . .
. and was returned to the sands of the desert, ..with no remembrance of having slept with, loved,
enjoyed the body of his natural mother.
12
They camped at the base of the mountain, in a green glass cave; not deep but angled sharply so the blown pumice could not reach them. They put Nathan Stack's stone in a fault in the cave's floor, and the heat spread quickly, warming them. The shadow thing with its triangular head sank back in shadow and closed its eye
and sent its hunting instinct out for food. A shriek . came back on the wind.
Much later, when Nathan Stack had eaten, when he was reasonably content and -well-fed, he stared into the shadows and spoke to the creature sitting there.
"How long was I down there . . . how long was the .' sleep?"
The shadow thing spoke in whispers. A quarter of a .. million years.
Stack did not reply. The figure was beyond belief. The shadow creature seemed to understand.
In the life o f a world no time at all.
Nathan Stack was a man who could make accommodations. He smiled quickly and said, "I must have been tired."
The shadow did not respond.
"I don't understand very much of this. It's pretty damned frightening. To die, then to wake up . . . here. Like this."
You did not die. You were taken, put down there. By the end you will understand everything, 1 promise you.
"Who put me down there?"
1 did. 1 came and found you when the time was right, and 1 put you down there.
"Am I still Nathan Stack?"
1 f you wish.
"But am I Nathan Stack?"
You always were. You had many other names, many other bodies, but the spark was always yours. Stack seemed about to speak, and the shadow creature added, You were always on your way to being who you are.
"But what am I? Am I still Nathan Stack, dammit?"
1 f you wish.
"Listen: you don't seem too sure about that. You came and got me, I mean I woke up and there you were; now who should know better than you what my name is?"
You have had many names in many times. Nathan Stack is merely the one you remember. You had a very different name long ago, at the start, when 1 first came to you.
Stack was afraid of the answer, but he asked, "What was my name then?"
Ish-lilith. Husband of Lilith. Do you remember her?
Stack thought, tried to open himself to the past, but it was as unfathomable as the quarter of a million years through which he had slept in the crypt.
"No. But there were other women, in other times."
Many. There was one who replaced Lilith.
"I don't remember."
Her name . . . does not matter. But when the mad one took her from you and replaced her with the other . . . then 1 knew it would end like this. The Deathbird.
"I don't mean to be stupid, but I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about."
Before it ends, you will understand everything.
"You said that before." Stack paused, stared at the shadow creature for a long time only moments long, then, "What was your name?"
Before 1 met you my name was Dira.
He said it in his native tongue. Stack could not pronounce it.
"Before you met me. What is it now?"
Snake.
Something slithered past the mouth of' the cave. It did not stop, but it called out with the voice of moist mud sucking down into a quagmire.
"Why did you put me down there? Why did you come to me in the first place? What spark? Why can't I remember these other lives or who I was? What do you want from me?"
You should sleep. It will be a long climb. And cold.
"I slept for two hundred and fifty thousand years, I'm hardly tired," Stack said. "Why did you pick me?"
Later. Now sleep. Sleep has other uses.
Darkness deepened around Snake, seeped out around the cave, and Nathan Stack lay down near the warming stone, and the darkness took him.
13
SUPPLEMENTARY READING
This is an essay by a writer. It is clearly an appeal to
the emotions. As you read it ask yourself how it ap-
plies to the subject under discussion.  What is the
writer trying to say? Does he succeed in making his
point? Does this essay cast light on the point of the
subject under discussion? After you have read this essay, using the reverse side of your test paper, write your own essay (500 words or less) on the loss of a loved one. If you have never lost a loved one, fake it.
AHBHU
Yesterday my dog died. For eleven years Ahbhu was my closest friend. He was responsible for my writing a story about a boy and his dog that many people have read. He was not a pet, he was a person. It was impossible to anthropomorphize him, he wouldn't stand for it. But he was so much his own kind of creature, he had such a strongly formed personality, he was so determined to share his life with only those he chose, that it was also impossible to think of him as simply a dog. Apart from those canine characteristics into which he was locked by his species, he comported himself like one of a kind.
We met when I came to him at the West Los Angeles Animal Shelter. I'd wanted a dog because I was lonely and I'd remembered when I was a little boy how my dog had been a friend when I had no other friends. One summer I went away to camp and when I returned I found a rotten old neighbor lady from up the street had had my dog picked up and gassed while my father was at work. I crept into the woman's back yard that night and found a rug hanging on the clothesline. The rug beater was hanging from a post. I stole it and buried it.
At the Animal Shelter there was a man in line ahead of me. He had brought in a puppy only a week or so old. A Puli, a Hungarian sheep dog; it was a sad looking little thing. He had too many in the litter and had brought in this one to either be taken by someone else, or to be put to sleep. They took the dog inside and the man behind the counter called my turn. I
told him I wanted a dog and he took me back inside to walk down the line of cages.
In one of the cages the little Puli that had just been brought in was being assaulted by three larger dogs who had been earlier tenants. He was a little thing, and he was on the bottom, getting the stuffing knocked out of him. But he was struggling mightily. The runt of the litter.
"Get him out of there!" I yelled. "I'll take him, I'll take him, get him out of there!"
He cost two dollars. It was the best two bucks I
ever spent. _
Driving home with him, he was lying on the other side of the front seat, staring at me. I had had a vague idea what I'd name a pet, but as I stared at him, and he stared back at me, I suddenly was put in mind of the scene in Alexander Korda's 1939 film The Thief of Bagdad, where the evil vizier, played by Conrad Veidt, had changed Ahbhu, the little thief, played by Sabu, into a dog. The film had superimposed the human over the canine face for a moment so there was an extraordinary look of intelligence in the face of the dog. The little Puli was looking at me
with that same expression. "Ahbhu," I said.
He didn't react to the name, but then he couldn't have cared less. But that was his name, from that time on.
No one who ever came into my house was unaffected by him. When he sensed someone with good vibrations, he was right there, lying at their feet. He loved to be scratched, and despite years of admonitions he refused to stop begging for scraps at table, because he found most of the people who had come to dinner at my house were patsies unable to escape his woebegone Jackie-Coogan-as-the-Kid look.
But he was a certain barometer of bums, as well. On any number of occasions when I found someone I liked, and Ahbhu would have nothing to do with him
or her, it always turned out the person was a wrongo. I took to noting his attitude toward newcomers, and I must admit it influenced my own reactions. I was always wary of someone Ahbhu shunned.
Women with whom I had had unsatisfactory affairs would nonetheless return to the house from time to time-to visit the dog. He had an intimate circle of friends, many of whom had nothing to do with me, and numbering among their company some of the most beautiful actresses in Hollywood. One exquisite lady used to send her driver to pick him up for Sunday afternoon romps at the beach.
I never asked him what happened on those occasions. He didn't talk.
Last year he started going downhill, though I didn't realize it because he maintained the manner of a puppy almost to the end. But he began sleeping too much, and he couldn't hold down his food-not even the Hungarian meals prepared for him by the Magyars who lived up the street. And it became apparent to me something was wrong with him when he got scared during the big Los Angeles earthquake last year. Ahbhu wasn't afraid of anything. He attacked the Pacific Ocean and walked tall around vicious cats. But the quake terrified him and he jumped up in my bed and threw his forelegs around my neck. I was very nearly the only victim of the earthquake to die from animal strangulation.
He was in and out of the veterinarian's shop all through the early part of this year, and the idiot always said it was his diet.
Then one Sunday when he was out in the backyard, I found him lying at the foot of the porch stairs, covered with mud, vomiting so heavily all he could bring up was bile. He was matted with his own refuse and he was trying desperately to dig his nose into the earth for coolness. He was barely breathing. I took him to a different vet,
At first they thought it was just old age . . . that they
could pull him through. But finally they took X-rays and saw the cancer had taken hold in his stomach and liver.
I put off the day as much as I could. Somehow I just couldn't conceive of a world that didn't have him in it. But yesterday I went to the vet's office and signed the euthanasia papers.
"I'd like to spend a little time with him, before," I said.
They brought him in and put him on the stainless steel examination table. He had grown so thin. He'd always had a pot-belly and it was gone. The muscles in his hind legs were weak, flaccid. He came to me and put his head into the hollow of my armpit. He was trembling violently. I lifted his head and he p looked at me with that comic face I'd always thought made him look like Lawrence Talbot, the Wolf Man. He knew. Sharp as hell right up to the end, hey old friend? He knew, and he was scared. He trembled all the way down to his spiderweb legs. This bouncing ball of hair that, when lying on a dark carpet, could be taken for a sheepskin rug with no way to tell at which end head and which end tail. So thin. Shaking, knowing what was going to happen to him. But still a puppy.
I cried and my eyes closed as my nose swelled with the crying, and he buried his head in my arms because we hadn't done much crying at one another. I was ashamed of myself not to be taking it as well as he was.
"I got to, pup, because you're in pain and you can't eat. I got to." But he didn't want to know that.
The vet came in, then. He was a nice guy and he asked me if I wanted to go away and just let it be done.
Then Ahbhu came up out of there and looked at me.
There is a scene in Kazan's Viva Zapata where a s close friend of Zapata's, Brando's, has been condemned for conspiring with the Federales. A friend that had been with Zapata since the mountains, since the revolution had begun. And they come to the but to take him to the firing squad, and Brando starts out, and his friend stops him with a hand on his arm, and he says to him with great friendship, "Emiliano, do it yourself."
Ahbhu looked at me and I know he was just a dog, but if he could have spoken with human tongue he could not have said more eloquently than he did with a look, don't leave me with strangers.
So I held him as they laid him down and the vet slipped the lanyard up around his right foreleg and drew it tight to bulge the vein, and I held his head and he turned it away from me as the needle went in. It was impossible to tell the moment he passed over from life to death. He simply laid his head on my hand, his eyes fluttered shut and he was gone.
I wrapped him in a sheet with the help of the vet, and I drove home with Ahbhu on the seat beside me, just the way we had come home eleven years before. I took him out in the backyard and began digging his grave. I dug for hours, crying and mumbling to myself, talking to him in the sheet. It was a very neat, rectangular grave with smooth sides and all the loose dirt scooped out by hand.
I laid him down in the hole and he was so tiny in there for a dog who had seemed to be so big in life, so furry, so funny. And I covered him over and when the hole was packed full of dirt I replaced the neat divot of grass I'd scalped off at the start. And that was all.
But I couldn't send him to strangers.
THE END
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Is there any significance to the reversal of the word
god being dog? If so, what?
2. Does the writer try to impart human qualities to a
non-human creature? Why? Discuss anthropomorphism in the light of the phrase, "Thou art God." 3. Discuss the love the writer shows in this essay.
Compare and contrast it with other forms of love: the love of a man for a woman, a mother for a child, a son for a mother, a botanist for plants, an ecologist for the Earth.
14
In his sleep, Nathan Stack talked.
"Why did you pick me? Why me . . :'
15
Like the Earth, the Mother was in pain.
The great house was very quiet. The doctor had left, and the relatives had gone into town for dinner. He sat by the side of her bed and stared down at her. She looked gray and old and crumpled; her skin was a soft ashy hue of moth-dust. He was crying softly.
He felt her hand on his knee, and looked up to see her staring at him. "You weren't supposed to catch me," he said.
"I'd be disappointed it 1 hadn't," she said. Her voice was very thin, very smooth.
"How is it?"
"It hurts. Ben didn't dope me too well."
He bit his lower lip. The doctor had used massive doses, but the pain was more massive. She gave little starts as tremors of sudden agony hit her. Im-
pacts. He watched the life leaking out of her eyes. ;I
"How is your sister taking it?"
He shrugged. "You know Charlene. She's sorry, but it's all pretty intellectual to her."
His mother let a tiny ripple of a smile move her lips. "It's a terrible thing to say, Nathan, but your sister Isn't the most likeable woman in the world. !'m glad you're here." She paused, thinking, then added, "It's just possible your father and I missed something from the gene pool. Charlene isn't whole."
"Can I get you something? A drink of water?"
"No. I'm fine."
He looked at the ampoule of narcotic pain killer. The syringe lay mechanical and still on a clean towel beside it. He felt her eyes on him. She knew what he was thinking. He looked away.
"I would kill for a cigarette," she said.
He laughed. At sixty-five, both legs gone, what remained of her left side paralyzed, the cancer spreading like deadly jelly toward her heart, she was still the matriarch. "You can't have a cigarette, so forget it."
"Then why don't you use that hypo and let me out of here."
"Shut up, Mother."
"Oh, for. Christ's sake, Nathan. It's hours if I'm lucky. Months if I'm not. We've had this conversation before. You know/ always win."
"Did I ever tell you you were a bitchy old lady?"
"Many times, but I love you anyhow."
He got up and walked to the wall. He could not walk through it, so he went around the inside of the room.
"You can't get away from it."
"Mother, Jesus! Please!"
"All right. Let's talk about the business."
"I could care less about the business right now."
"Then what should we talk about? The lofty uses to which an old lady can put her last moments?"
"You know, you're really ghoulish. I think you're enjoying this in some sick way."
"What other way is there to enjoy it."
"An adventure."
"The biggest. A pity your father never had the chance to savor it."
"I hardly think he'd have savored the feeling of being stamped to death in a hydraulic press."
Then he thought about it, because that little smile was on her lips again. "Okay, he probably would have. The two of you were so unreal, you'd have sat there and discussed it and analyzed the pulp."
"And you're our son."
He was, and he was. And he could not deny it, nor had he ever. He was hard and gentle and wild just like them, and he remembered the days in the jungle beyond Brasilia, and the hunt in the Cayman Trench, and the other days working in the mills alongside his father, and he knew when his moment came he would savor death as she did.
"Tell me something. I've always wanted to know. Did Dad kill Tom Golden?"
"Use the needle and I'll tell you."
"I'm a Stack. l don't bribe."
"I'm a Stack, and I know what a killing curiosity you've got. Use the needle and I'll tell you."
He walked widdershins around the room. She watched him, eyes bright as the mill vats.
"You old bitch."
"Shame, Nathan. You know you're not the son of a bitch. Which is more than your sister can say. Did I ever tell you she wasn't your father's child?"
"No, but I knew."
"You'd have liked her father. He was Swedish. Your father liked him."
"Is that why Dad broke both his arms?"
"Probably. But I never heard the Swede complain. One night in bed with me in those days was worth a couple of broken arms. Use the needle."
' Finally, while the family was between the entree and the dessert, he filled the syringe and injected her. Her eyes widened as the stuff smacked her
heart, and lust before she died she rallied all her strength and said, "A deal's a deal. Your father didn't kill Tom Golden, f did. You're a hell of a man, Nathan, and you fought us the way we wanted, and we both loved you more than you could know. Except, dammit, you cunning s.o.b., you do know, don't you?"
"I know," he said, and-she died; and he cried; and that was the extent of the poetry in it.
16
He knows we are coming.
They were climbing the northern face of the onyx mountain. Snake had coated Nathan Stack's feet with the thick glue and, though it was hardly a country walk, he was able to keep a foothold and pull himself up. Now they had paused to rest on a spiral ledge, and Snake had spoken for the first time of what waited for them where they were going.
"He?"
Snake did not answer. Stack slumped against the wall of the ledge. At the lower slopes of the mountain they had encountered slug-like creatures that had tried to attach themselves to Stack's flesh, but when Snake had driven them off they had returned to sucking the rocks. They had not come near the shadow creature. Further up, Stack could see the lights that flickered at the summit; he had felt fear that crawled up from his stomach. A short time before they had come to this ledge they had stumbled past a cave in the mountain where the bat creatures slept. They had gone mad at the presence of the man and the Snake and the sounds they had made sent waves of nausea through Stack. Snake had helped him and they had gotten past. Now they had stopped and Snake would not answer Stack's questions.
We must keep climbing.
"Because he knows we're here." There was a sarcastic rise in Stack's voice.
Snake started moving. Stack closed his eyes. Snake
stopped and came back to him. Stack looked up at the one-eyed shadow.
"Not another step." '
There is no reason why you should not know.
"Except, friend, I have the feeling you aren't going to tell me anything."
It is not yet time for you to know.
"Look: just because I haven't asked, doesn't mean I don't want to know. You've told me things I shouldn't be able to handle . . . all kinds of crazy things . . . I'm as old as, as . . . I don't know how old, but I get the feeling you've been .trying to tell me I'm Adam . . ."
That is so.
". . uh." He stopped rattling and stared back at the shadow creature. Then, very softly, accepting even more than he had thought possible, he said, "Snake." He was silent again. After a time he asked, "Give me another dream and let me know the rest of it?"
You must be patient. The one who lives at the top knows we are coming but 1 have been able to keep him from perceiving your danger to him only because you do not know yourself.
"Tell me this, then: does he want us to come up . . . the one on the top?"
He allows it. Because he doesn't know.
Stack nodded, resigned to following Snake's lead. He got to his feet and performed an elaborate butler's motion, after you, Snake.
And Snake turned, his flat hands sticking- to the wall of the ledge, and they climbed higher, spiraling upward toward the summit.
The Deathbird swooped, then rose toward the Moon. There was still time.
17
Dira came to Nathan Stack near sunset, appearing in the board room of the industrial consortium Stack had built from the family empire.
Stack sat in the pneumatic chair that dominated the
conversation pit where top-level decisions were made. He was alone. The others had left hours before and the room was dim with only the barest glow of light from hidden banks that shone through the soft walls.
The shadow creature passed through the walls-and at his passage they became rose quartz, then returned to what they had been. He stood staring at Nathan Stack, and for long moments the man was unaware of any other presence in the room.
You have to go now, Snake said.
Stack looked up, his eyes widened in horror, and through his mind flitted the unmistakable image of Satan, fanged mouth smiling, horns gleaming with scintillas of light as though seen through crosstar filters, rope tail with its spade-shaped pointed tip thrashing, large cloven hoofs leaving burning imprints in the carpet, eyes as deep as pools of oil, the pitchfork, the satin-lined cape, the hairy legs of a goat, talons. He tried to scream but the sound dammed up in his throat.
No, Snake said, that is not so. Come with me, and you will understand.
There was a tone of sadness in the voice. As though Satan had been sorely wronged. Stack shook his head violently.
There was no time for argument. The moment had come, and Dira could not hesitate. He gestured and Nathan Stack rose from the pneumatic chair, leaving behind something that looked like Nathan Stack asleep, and he walked to Dira and Snake took him by the hand and they passed through rose quartz and went away from there.
Down and down Snake took him.
The Mother was in pain. She had been sick for eons, but it had reached the point where Snake knew it would be terminal, and the Mother knew it, too. But she would hide her child, she would intercede in her own behalf and hide him away deep in her bosom where no one, not even the mad one, could find him.
Dira took Stack to Hell.
It was a fine place.
Warm and safe and far from the probing of mad ones.
And the sickness raged on unchecked. Nations crumbled, the oceans boiled and then grew cold and filmed over with scum, the air became thick with dust and killing vapors, flesh ran like oil, the skies grew dark, the sun blurred and became dull. The Earth moaned.
The plants suffered and consumed themselves, beasts became crippled and went mad, trees burst into flame and from their ashes rose glass shapes that shattered in the wind. The Earth was dying; a long, slow, painful death.
In the center of the Earth, in the fine place, Nathan Stack slept. Don't leave me with strangers.
Overhead, far away against the stars, the Death bird circled and circled, waiting for the word.
18
When they reached the highest peak, Nathan Stack looked across through the terrible burning cold and the ferocious grittiness of the demon wind and saw the sanctuary of always, the cathedral of forever, the pillar of remembrance, the haven of perfection, the pyramid of blessings, the toyshop of creation, the vault of deliverance, the monument of longing, the receptacle of thoughts, the maze of wonder, the catafalque of despair, the podium of pronouncements and the kiln of last attempts.
On a slope that rose to a star pinnacle, he saw the home of the one who dwelled here-lights flashing and flickering, lights that could be seen far off across the deserted face of the planet-and he began to suspect the name of the resident.
Suddenly everything went red for Nathan Stack. As though a filter had been dropped over his eyes, the black sky, the flickering lights, the rocks that formed the great plateau on which they stood, even Snake be-
came red, and with the color came pain. Terrible pain that burned through every channel of Stack's body, as though his blood had been set afire. He screamed and fell to his knees, the pain crackling through his brain, following every nerve and blood vessel and ganglion and neural track. His skull flamed.
Fight him, Snake said. Fight him!
I can't, screamed silently through Stack's mind, the pain too great even to speak. Fire licked and leaped and he felt the delicate tissues of thought shriveling. He tried to focus his thoughts on ice. He clutched for salvation at ice, chunks of ice, mountains of ice, swimming icebergs of ice half-buried in frozen water, even as his soul smoked and smoldered. Ice! He thought of millions of particles of hail rushing, falling, thundering against the firestorm eating his mind, and there was a spit of steam, a flame that went out, a corner that grew cool . . . and he took his stand in that corner, thinking ice, thinking blocks and chunks and monuments of ice, edging them out to widen the circle of coolness and safety. Then the flames began to retreat, to slide back down the channels, and he sent ice after them, snuffing them, burying them in ice and chill waters.
When he opened his eyes, he was still on his knees, but he could think again, and the red surfaces had become normal again. ,
He will try again. You must be ready.
"Tell me everything! I can't go through this without knowing, I need help!"
You can help yourself. You have the strength. 1 gave you the spark .
. . . and the second derangement struck!
The air turned shaverasse and he held dripping chunks of unclean rova in his jowls, the taste making him weak with nausea. His pods withered and drew up into his shell and as the bones cracked he howled with strings of pain that came so fast they were almost one. He tried to scuttle away, but his eyes magnified the shatter of light that beat against him. Facets
of his eyes cracked and the juice began to bubble out. The pain was unbelievable.
Fight him!
Stack rolled onto his back, sending out cilia to touch the earth, and for an instant he realized he was seeing through the eyes of another creature, another form of life he could not even describe. But he was under an open sky and that produced fear, he was surrounded by air that had become deadly and that produced fear, he was going blind and that produced fear, he was . . . he was a man . . . he fought back against the feeling of being some other thing . . . he was a man and ha would not feel fear, he would stand.
He rolled over, withdrew his cilia, and struggled to lower his pods. Broken bones grated and pain thundered through his body. He forced himself to ignore it, and finally the pods were down and he was breathing and he felt his head reeling . . .
And when he opened his eyes he was Nathan Stack again .
. . . and the third derangement struck:
Hopelessness.
Out of unending misery he came back to be Stack. . . and the fourth derangement struck:
Madness.
Out of raging lunacy he fought his way to be Stack .
. . . and the fifth derangement, and the sixth, and the seventh, and the plagues, and the whirlwinds, and the pools of evil, and the reduction in size and accompanying fall forever through submicroscopic hells, and the things that fed on him from inside, and the twentieth, and the fortieth, and the sound of his voice screaming for release, and the voice of Snake always beside him, whispering Fight him!
Finally it stopped.
Quickly, now.
Snake took Stack by the hand and half-dragging him they raced to the great palace of light and glass on the slope, shining brightly under the star pinnacle, and
they passed under an arch of shining metal into the ascension hall. The portal sealed behind them.
There were tremors in the walls. The inlaid floors of jewels began to rumble and tremble. Bits of high and faraway ceilings began to drop. Quaking, the palace gave one hideous shudder and collapsed around them.
Now, Snake said. Now you will know everything!
And everything forgot to fall. Frozen in mid-air, the wreckage of the palace hung suspended above them. Even the air ceased to swirl. Time stood still. The movement of the Earth was halted. Everything held utterly immobile as Nathan Stack was permitted to understand all.
19
MULTIPLE CHOICE
(Counts for 1/2 your final grade) 1. God is:
A. An invisible spirit with a long beard.
B. A small dog dead in a hole.
C. Everyman.
D. The Wizard of Oz.
2. Nietzsche wrote "God is dead." By this did he
mean:
A. Life is pointless.
' B. Belief in supreme deities has waned.
C. There never was a God to begin with.
D. Thou art God.
3. Ecology is another name for:
A. Mother love.
B. Enlightened self-interest.
C. A good health salad with Granola.
D. God.
4. Which of these phrases most typifies the profound.
est love:
A. Don't leave me with strangers.
B. I love you.
C. God is love.
D. Use the needle.
5. Which of these powers do we usually associate with
God:
A. Power.
B. Love.
C. Humanity.
D. Docility.
20
None of the above.
Starlight shone in the eyes of the Deathbird and its s passage through the night cast a shadow on the Moon.
21
Nathan Stack raised his hands and around them the air was still as the palace fell crashing. They were untouched. Now you know all there is to know, Snake said, sinking to one knee as though worshiping. There was no one there to worship but Nathan Stack.
"Was he always mad?"
From the first.
"Then those who gave our world to him were mad, '° and your race was mad to allow it."
Snake had no answer.
"Perhaps it was supposed to be like this," Stack said. He reached down and lifted Snake to his feet, and he touched the shadow creature's head. "Friend," he said.
Snake's race was incapable of tears. He said, 1 have waited longer than you can know for that word.
"I'm sorry it comes at the end."
Perhaps it was supposed to be like this.
Then there was a swirling of air, a scintillance in the ruined palace, and the owner of the mountain, the owner of the ruined Earth came to them in a burning bush.
AGAIN, SNAKE? AGAIN YOU ANNOY ME?
The time for toys is ended.
NATHAN STACK YOU BRING TO STOP ME? I SAY WHEN THE TIME IS ENDED. 1 SAY, AS I'VE ALWAYS SAID.
Then, to Nathan Stack:
GO AWAY. FIND A PLACE TO HIDE UNTIL I COME FOR YOU.
Stack ignored the burning bush. He waved his hand and the cone of safety in which they stood vanished. "Let's find him, first, then I know what to do."
The Deathbird sharpened its talons on the night wind and sailed down through emptiness toward the cinder of the Earth.
22
Nathan Stack had once contracted pneumonia. He had lain on the operating table as the surgeon made the small incision in the chest wall. Had he not been stubborn, had lie not continued working around the clock while the pneumonic infection developed into empyema, he would never have had to go under the knife, even for an operation as safe as a thoractomy. But he was a Stack, and so he lay on the operating table as the rubber tube was inserted into the chest cavity to drain off the pus in the pleural cavity, and heard someone speak his name.
NATHAN STACK.
He heard it, from far off, across an Arctic vastness; heard it echoing over and over, down an endless corridor; as the knife sliced.
NATHAN STACK.
He remembered Lilith, with hair the color of dark wine. He remembered taking hours to die beneath a rock slide as his hunting companions in the pack ripped apart the remains of the bear and ignored his grunted moans for help. He remembered the impact of the crossbow bolt as it ripped through his hauberk and split his chest and he died at Agincourt. He remembered the icy water of the Ohio as it closed over his
head and the flatboat disappearing without his mates noticing his loss. He remembered the mustard gas that ate his lungs and trying to crawl toward a farmhouse near Verdun. He remembered looking directly into the flash of the bomb and feeling the flesh of his face melt away. He remembered Snake coming to him in the board room and husking him like corn from his body. He remembered sleeping in the molten core of the Earth for a quarter of a million years.
Across the dead centuries he heard his mother pleading with him to set her free, to end her pain. Use the needle. Her voice mingled with the voice of the Earth crying out in endless pain. at her flesh that had been ripped away, at her rivers turned to arteries of dust, at her rolling hills and green fields slagged to greenglass and ashes. The voices of his mother and the mother that was Earth became one, and mingled to become Snake's voice telling him he was the one man in the world-the last man in the world-who could end the terminal case the Earth had become.
Use the needle. Put the suffering Earth out of its misery. It belongs to you now.
Nathan Stack was secure in the power he contained. A power that far outstripped that of gods or Snakes or mad creators who stuck pins in their creations, who broke their toys.
YOU CAN'T. I WON'T LET YOU.
Nathan Stack walked around the burning bush crackling impotently in rage. He looked at it almost pityingly, remembering the Wizard of Oz with his great and ominous disembodied head floating in mist and lightning, and the poor little man behind the curtain turning the dials to create the effects. Stack walked around the effect, knowing he had more power than this sad, poor thing that had held his race in thrall since before Lilith had been taken from him.
He went in search of the mad one who capitalized his name.
23
Zarathustra descended alone from the mountains, encountering no one. But when he came into the forest, all at once there stood before him an old man who had left his holy cottage to look for roots in the woods. And thus spoke the old man to Zarathustra.
"No stranger to me is this wanderer: many years ago he passed this way. Zarathustra he was called, but he has changed. At that time you carried your ashes to the mountains; would you now carry your fire into the valleys? Do you not fear to be punished as an arsonist?
"Zarathustra has changed, Zarathustra has become a child, Zarathustra is an awakened one; what do you now want among the sleepers? You lived in your solitude as in the sea, and the sea carried you. Alas, would you now climb ashore? Alas, would you again drag your own body?"
Zarathustra answered: "I love man."
"Why," asked the saint, "did I go into the forest and the desert? Was it not because I loved man all-too much? Now I love God; man I love not. Man is for me too imperfect a thing. Love of man would kill me."
"And what is the saint doing in the forest?" asked Zarathustra.
The saint answered: "I make songs and sing them; and when I make songs, I laugh, cry, and hum: thus I praise God. With singing, crying, laughing, and humming, I praise the god who is my god. But what do you bring us as a gift?"
When Zarathustra had heard these words he bade the saint farewell and said: "What could I have to give you? But let me go quickly lest I take something from you!" And thus they separated, the old one and the man, laughing as two boys laugh.
But when Zarathustra was alone he spoke thus to his heart: "Could it be possible? This old saint in the forest had not yet heard anything of this, that God is dead!"
24
Stack found the mad one wandering in the forest of final moments. He was an old, tired man, and Stack knew with a wave of his hand he could end it for this god in a moment. But what was the reason for it? It was even too late for revenge. It had been too late from the start. So he let the old one go his way, wandering in the forest mumbling to himself, I WON'T LET YOU DO IT, in the voice of a cranky child; mumbling pathetically, OH, PLEASE, I DON'T WANT TO GO TO BED YET. I'M NOT YET DONE PLAYING.
And Stack came back to Snake, who had served his function and protected Stack until Stack had learned that he was more powerful than the God he'd worshipped all through the history of men. He came back to Snake and their hands touched and the bond of friendship was sealed at last, at the end.
Then they worked together and Nathan Stack used the needle with a wave of his hands, and the Earth could not sigh with relief as its endless pain was ended
. . but it did sigh, and it settled in upon itself, and the molten core went out, and the winds died, and from high above them Stack heard the fulfillment of Snake's final act; he heard the descent of the Deathbird.
"What was your name?" Stack asked his friend.
Dira.
And the Deathbird settled down across the tired shape of the Earth, and it spread its wings wide, and brought them over and down, and enfolded the Earth as a mother enfolds her weary child. Dira settled down on the amethyst floor of the dark-shrouded palace, and closed his single eye with gratitude. To sleep at last, at the end.
All this, as Nathan Stack stood watching. He was the last, at the end, and because he had come to own-if, even for a few moments-that which could have been his from the start, had he but known, he did not sleep
but stood and watched. Knowing at last, at the end, that he had loved and done no wrong.
25
The Deathbird closed its wings over the Earth until at last, at the end, there was only the great bird crouched over the dead cinder. Then the Deathbird raised its head to the star-filled sky and repeated the sigh of loss the Earth had felt at the end. Then its eyes closed, it tucked its head carefully under its wing, and all was night.
Far away, the stars waited for the cry of the Deathbird to reach them so final moments could be observed at last, at the end, for the race of men.
26
THIS IS FOR MARK TWAIN