THIS IMMORTAL by Roger Zelazny

	"YOU ARE A KALLIKANZAROS," SHE ANNOUNCED SUDDENLY.
	I turned onto my left side and smiled through the darkness.
	"I left my hooves and my horns at the Office."
	"You've heard the story!"
	"The name is ###omikos."
	I reached for her, found her.
	"Are you going to destroy the world this time around?"
	I laughed and drew her to me.
	"I'll think about it. If that's the way the Earth crumbles--"
	"You know that children born here on Christmas are of the kallikanzaroi blood," she said, "and you once told me that your birthday--"
	"All right!"
	It had struck me that she was only half-joking. Knowing some of the things one occasionally meets in the Old Places, the Hot Places, you can almost believe in myths without extra effort--such as the story of those Pan-like sprites who gather together every spring to spend ten days sawing at the Tree of the World, only to be dispersed at the last moment by the ringing of the Easter bells. {Ring-a-ding, the bells, gnash, gnash, the teeth, clackety-clack, the hooves, et cetera.) Cassandra and I were not in the habit of discussing religion, politics, or Aegean folklore in bed--but, me having been born in these parts, the memories are still somehow alive.
	"I am hurt," I said, only half-joking.
	"You're hurting me, too. ..."
	"Sorry."
	I relaxed again.
	After a time I explained, "Back when I was a brat, the other brats used to push me around, calling me "Konstantin Kallikanzaros.' When I got bigger and uglier they stopped doing it. At least, they didn't say it to my face--"
	"'Konstantin'? That was your name? I've wondered..."
	"It's 'Conrad' now, so forget it."
	"But I like it. I'd rather call you 'Konstantin' than 'Conrad'."
	"If it makes you happy..."
	The moon pushed her ravaged face up over the windowsill to mock me. I couldn't reach the moon, or even the window, so I looked away. The night was cold, was damp, was misty as it always is here--
	"The Commissioner of Arts, Monuments and Archives for the planet Earth is hardly out to chop down the Tree of the World," I rasped.
	"My Kallikanzaros," she said too quickly, "I did not say that. But there are fewer bells every year, and it is not always desire that matters. I have this feeling that you will change things, somehow. Perhaps--"
	"You are wrong, Cassandra."
	"And I am afraid, and cold--"
	And she was lovely in the darkness, so I held her in my arms to sort of keep her from the foggy foggy dew.
	In attempting to reconstruct the affairs of these past six months, I realize now that as we willed walls of passion around our October and the isle of Kos, the Earth had already fallen into the hands of those powers which smash all Octobers. Marshaled from within and without, the forces of final disruption were even then goose-stepping amidst the ruins--faceless, ineluctable, arms upraised. Cort Myshtigo had landed at Port-au-Prince in the antique Sol-Bus Nine, which had borne him in from Titan along with a load of shirts and shoes, underwear, socks, assorted wines, medical supplies, and the latest tapes from civilization. A wealthy and influential galactojournalist, he. Just how wealthy, we were not to learn for many weeks; just how influential, I found out only five days ago.
	As we wandered among the olive groves gone wild, picked our way through the ruins of the Prankish castle, or mixed our tracks with the hieroglyph-prints of the herring-gulls, there on the wet sands of the beaches of Kos, we were burning time while waiting for a ransom which could not come, which should never, really, have been expected.

Cassandra's hair is the color of Katamara olives,
and shiny. Her hands are soft, the fingers short, del-
icately webbed. Her eyes are very dark. She is only
about four inches shorter than me, which makes her

gracefulness something of an achievement, me
being well over six feet. Of course, any woman looks
graceful, precise and handsome when walking at
my side, because I am none of.these things: my left

4          ROGER ZELAZNY

cheek was then a map of Africa done up in varying
purples, because of that mutant fungus I'd picked
up from a moldy canvas back when I'd been disin-
terring the Guggenheim for the New York Tour;

my hairline peaks to within a fingerbreadth of my
brow; my eyes are mismatched. (I glare at people
through the cold blue one on the right side when I
want to intimidate them; the brown one is for
Glances Sincere and Honest.) I wear a reinforced
boot because of my short right leg.

Cassandra doesn't require contrasting, though.
She's beautiful.

I met her by accident, pursued her with desper-
ation, married her against my will. (The last part
was her idea). I wasn't really thinking about it, my-
self-even on that day when I brought my caique
into the harbor and saw her there, sunning herself
like a mermaid beside the plane tree of Hip-
pocrates, and decided that~I wanted her- Kalli-
kanzaroi have never been much the family sort. I
just sort of slipped up, again.

It was a clean morning. It was starting our third
month together. It was my last day on Kos-be-
cause of a call I'd received the evening before,
Everything was still moist from the night's rain, and
we sat out on the patio drinking Turkish coffee and
eating oranges. Day was starting to lever its way
into the world. The breeze was intermittent, was
damp, goosepimpled us beneath the black hulk of
our sweaters, skimmed the steam off the top of the
coffee.

"Rodos dactylos Aurora. ..." she said, point-
ing.

"Yeah," I said, nodding, "real rosy-fingered and
nice."

.,           THIS IMMORTAL          5

;  "Let's enjoy it."
,.  "Yeah Sorry."
^   We finished our coffee, sat smoking.

"I feet crummy," I said.
^ "I know," she said. "Don't."
. "Can't help it. Got to go away and leave you, and
that's crummy."

"It may only be a few weeks. You said so your-
?*elf. Then you'll be back."

-, "Hope so," I said. "If it takes any longer, though,
HI send for you. Dunno where alt I'll be, yet."
"Who is Cort Myshtigo?"

"Vegan actor, journalist. Important one. Wants
to write about what's left of Earth. So I've got to
show it to him. Me. Personally. Damn!"

"Anybody who takes ten-month vacations to go
sailing can't complain about being overworked."

"/can complain-and I will. My job is supposed
to be a sinecure."
"Why?"

"Mainly because I made it that way. I worked
hard for twenty years to make Arts, Monuments
and Archives what it is, and ten years ago I got it to
the point where my staff could handle just about
everything. So I got me turned out to pasture, I got
me told to come back occasionally to sign papers
and to do whatever I damn pleased in the mean-
time. Now this-this bootlicking gesture!-having
a Commissioner take a Vegan scribbler on a tour
any staff guide could conduct! Vegans aren't
gods!"

"Wait a minute, please," she said. "Twenty
years? Ten years?"
Sinking feeling.
"You're not even thirty years old."

6          ROGER ZELAZNY

I sank further. I waited. I rose again.

"Uh-there's something I, well, in my own reti-
cent way, sort of never quite got around to mention-
ing to you. . . . How old are you anyway, Cassan-
dra?"

"Twenty."

"Uh-huh. Well . .. I*m around four times your

age."

"I don't understand."

"Neither do I. Or the doctors. I just sort of
stopped, somewhere between twenty and thirty,
and I stayed that way. I guess that's a sort of, well
-a part of my particular mutation, I guess. Does it
make any difference?"

"I don't know. . .. Yes."

"You don't mind my limp, or my excessive shag-
giness, or even my face. Why should my age bother
you? I am young, for all necessary purposes."

"It's just that it's not the same," she said with an
unarguable finality. "What if you never grow old?"

I bit my lip. "I'm bound to, sooner or later."

"And if it's later? I love you. I don't want to out-
age you."

"You'll live to be a hundred and fifty. There are
the S-S treatments. You'll have them,"

"But they won't keep me young-like you."

"I'm not really young. I was born old."

That one didn't work either. She started to cry.

"That's years and years away," I told her. "Who
knows what will happen in the meantime?"

That only made her cry more-

I've always been impulsive. My thinking is usual-
ly pretty good, but I always seem to do it after I do
my talking-by which time I've generally destroyed
all basis for further conversation.

THIS IMMORTAL            7

Which is one of the reasons I have a competent
staff, a good radio, and am out to pasture most of
the time,

There, are some things you just can't delegate,
though.

So I said, "Look, you have a touch of the Hot
Stuff in you, too. It took me forty years to realize I
.wasn't forty years old. Maybe you're the same way.
I'm just a neighborhood kid .. ."

"Do you know of any other cases like your own?"

"Well . . ."

"No, you don't."

"No. I don't."

I remember wishing then that I was back aboard
my ship. Not the big blazeboat- Just my old hulk,
the Golden Vanitie, out there in the harbor. I re-
member wishing that I was putting it into port all
over again, and seeing her there for the first shiny
time, and being able to start everything all over
again from the beginning-and either telling her all
about it right there, or else working my way back
up to the going-away time and keeping my mouth
shut about my age.

It was a nice dream, but hell, the honeymoon was
over.

I waited until she had stopped crying and I could
feel her eyes on me again. Then I waited some
more.

"Well?" I asked, finally.

"Pretty well, thanks."

I found and held her passive hand, raised it to my
lips. "Rodos dactylos," I breathed, and she said,
"Maybe it's a good idea-your going away-for
awhile anyhow. ..." and the breeze that skimmed
the steam came again, was damp, goosepimpled us,

8          ROGER ZELAZNY

and made either her hand or my hand shake-I'm
not sure which. It shook the leaves too, and they
emptied over our heads.

"Did you exaggerate your age to me?" she asked.
"Even a little bit?"

Her tone of voice suggested that agreement
would be the wisest reply.

So, "Yes, "I said, truthfully.

She smiled back then, somewhat reassured of my
humanity.

Ha!

So we sat there, holding hands and watching the
morning. After awhile she began humming. It was
a sad song, centuries old. A ballad. It told the story
of a young wrestler named Themocles, a wrestler
who had never been beaten. He eventually came to
consider himself the greatest wrestler alive. Finally
he called out his challenge from a mountaintop,
and, that being too near home, the gods acted fast:

the following day a crippled boy rode into the town,
on the plated back of a huge wild dog. They
wrestled for three days and three nights. Themocles
and the boy, and on the fourth day the boy broke
his back, and left him there in the field. Wherever
his blood fell, there sprang up the stngeflcur, as Em-
met calls it, the blood-drinking flower that creeps
rootless at night, seeking the lost spirit of the fallen
champion in the blood of its victims. But
Themocles* spirit is gone from the Earth, so they
must creep, seeking, forever. Simpler than
Aeschylus, but then we're a simpler people than we
once were, especially the Mainlanders. Besides,
that's not the way it really happened.

"Why are you weeping?" she asked me suddenly.

THIS IMMORTAL            9

"I am thinking of the picture on Achilleus'
shield," I said, "and of what a terrible thing it is to
be an educated beast-and I am not weeping. The
leaves are dripping on me."

"I'll make some more coffee."

I washed out the cups while she was doing that,
and I told her to take care of the Vanitie while I was
gone, and to have it hauled up into drydock if I sent
for her. She said that she would.

The sun wandered up higher into the sky, and
after a time there came a sound of hammering from
the yard of old Aldones, the coffin-maker. The
cyclamen had come awake, and the breezes carried
their fragrance to us from across the fields. High
overhead, like a dark omen, a spiderbat glided
across the sky toward the mainland. I ached to
wrap my fingers around the stock of a thirty-oh-six,
make loud noises, and watch it fall. The only fire-
arms I knew of were aboard the Vamtze, though, so
I just watched it vanish from sight.

"They say that they're not really native to
Earth," she told me, watching it go, "and that they
were brought here from Titan, for zoos and things
like that."

"That's right."

"... And that they got loose during the Three
Days and went wild, and that they grow bigger here
than they ever did on their own world."

"One time I saw one with a thirty-two foot
wingspread."

"My great-uncle once told me a story he had
heard in Athens," she recalled, "about a man kill-
ing one without any weapons. It snatched him up
from the dock he was standing on-at Piraeus-

10 ROGER ZELAZNY

and the man broke its neck with his hands. They
fell about a hundred feet into the bay. The man
lived."

"That was a long time ago," 1 remembered,
"back before the Office started its campaign to ex-
terminate the things. They were a lot more around,
and they were bolder in those days. They shy away
from cities now."

"The man's name was Konstantin, as I recall the
story. Could it have been you?"

"His last name was Karaghiosis."

"Are you Karaghiosis?"

"If you want me to be. Why?"

"Because he later helped to found the Returnist
Radpol in Athens, and you have very strong
hands."

"Are you a Returnist?"

"Yes. Are you?"

"I work for the Office. I don't have any political
opinions."

"Karaghiosis bombed resorts."

"So he did."

"Are you sorry he bombed them?"

"No."

"I don't really know much about you, do I?"

"You know anything about me. Just ask. I'm re-
ally quite simple. -My air taxi is coming now."

"I don't hear anything."

"You will.'*

After a moment it came sliding down the sky to-
ward Kos, homing in on the beacon I had set up at
the end of the patio. I stood and drew her to her feet
as it buzzed in low-a Radson Skimmer: a twenty-
foot cockleshell of reflection and transparency; Hat-
bottomed, blunt-nosed.

THIS IMMORTAL            11

"Anything you want to take with you?" she
asked.

"You know it, but I can't."

The Skimmer settled and its side slid open. The
goggled pilot turned his head.

"I have a feeling," she said, "that you are head-
ing into some sort of danger."

"I doubt it, Cassandra."

Nor pressure, nor osmosis will restore Adam's
lost rib, thank God.

"Goodbye, Cassandra."

"Goodbye, my kallikanzaros."

And I got into the Skimmer and jumped into tl?e
sky, breathing a prayer to Aphrodite. Below me,
Cassandra waved. Behind me, the sun tightened its
net of light. We sped westward, and this is the place
for a smooth transition, but there isn't any. From
Kos to Port-au-Prince was four hours, gray water,
pale stars, and me mad. Watch the colored
lights. . . .

The hall was lousy with people, a big tropical
moon was shining fit to bust, and the reason I could
see both was that Fd finally managed to lure Ellen
Emmet out onto the balcony and the doors were
mag-pegged open.

"Back from the dead again," she had greeted me,
smiling slightly. "Gone almost a year, and not so
much as a Get Well card from Ceylon."

"Were you ill?"

"I could have been."

She was small and, like all day-haters, creamy
somewhere under her simicolor. She reminded me
of an elaborate actiondoll with a faulty mechanism
-cold grace, and a propensity to kick people in the
shins when they least expected it; and she had lots

12 ROGER ZELAZNY

and lots of orangebrown hair, woven into a Gordian
knot of a coiff that frustrated me as I worked at un-
tying it, mentally; her eyes were of whatever color it
pleased the god of her choice on that particular day
-I forget now, but they're always blue somewhere
deep deep down inside. Whatever she was wearing
was browngreen, and there was enough of it to go
around a couple of times and make her look'like a
shapeless weed, which was a dressmaker's lie if
there ever was one, unless she was pregnant again,
which I doubted.

"Well, get well," I said, "if you need to. I didn't
make Ceylon. I was in the Mediterranean most of
the time."

There was applause within. I was glad I was
without. The players had just finished Graber's
Masque of Demeter, which he had written in pen-
tameter and honor of our Vegan guest; and the
thing had been two hours long, and bad. Phil was
all educated and sparsehaired, and he looked the
part all right, but we had been pretty hard up for a
laureate on the day we'd picked him. He was given
to fits of Rabindranath Tagore and Chris Isher-
wood, the writing of fearfully long metaphysical
epics, talking a lot about Enlightenment, and per-
forming his daily breathing exercises on the beach.
Otherwise, he was a fairly decent human being.

The applause died down, and I heard the glassy
tinkle of thelinstra music and the sound of resuming
voices.

Ellen leaned back on the railing.

"I hear you're somewhat married these days.'*

"True," I agreed; "also somewhat harried. Why
did they call me back?"

"Ask your boss."

THIS IMMORTAL            13

"I did. He said I'm going to be a guide. What I
want to know, though, is why? -The real reason.
Pve been thinking about it and it's grown more
puzzling,"

"So how should I know?"

"You know everything."

"You overestimate me, dear. What's she like?"

I shrugged.

"A mermaid, maybe. Why?"

She shrugged.

"Just curious. What do you tell people I'm like?"

"I don\ tell people you're like anything."

"I'm insulted- I must be like something, unless
I'm unique."

"That's it, you're unique."

"Then why didn't you take me away with you
last year?"

"Because you're a People person and you require
a city around you. You could only be happy here at
the Port."

"But I'm not happy here at the Port."

"You are less unhappy here at the Port than
you'd be anywhere else on this planet."

"We could have tried," she said, and she turned
her back on me to look down the slope toward the
lights of the harbor section.

"You know," she said after a time, "You're so
damned ugly you're attractive. That must be it."

I stopped in mid-reach, a couple inches from her
shoulder.

"You know," she continued, her voice flat, emp-
tied of emotion, "you're a nightmare that walks like
a man.*'

I dropped my hand, chuckled inside a tight chest.

"I know," I said. "Pleasant dreams,"

14 ROGER ZELAZNY

I started to turn away and she caught my sleeve.

"Wait!"

I looked down at her hand, up at her eyes, then
back down at her hand. She let go.

"You know I never tell the truth," she said. Then
she laughed her little brittle laugh.

'*. , . And I have thought of something you ought
to know about this trip. Donald DOS Santos is here,
and I think he's going along."

"DOS Santos? That's ridiculous."

"He's up in the library now, with George and
some big Arab."

I looked past her and down into the harbor sec-
tion, watching the shadows, like my thoughts, move
along dim streets, dark and slow.

"Big Arab?" I said, after a time. "Scarred hands?
Yellow Eyes?-Name ofHasan?"

"Yes, that's right. Have you met him?"

"He's done some work for me in the past," I ac-
knowledged.

So I smiled, even though my blood was refrig-
erating, because I don't like people to know what
I'm thinking.

"You're smiling," she said. "What are you think-
ing?"

She's like that.

"I'm thinking you take things more seriously
than I thought you took things."

"Nonsense, I've often told you I'm a fearful liar.
Just a second ago, in fact-and I was only referring
to a minor encounter in a great war. And you're
right about my being less unhappy here than any-
where else on Earth, So maybe you could talk to
George-get him to take a job on Taler, or Bakab.
Maybe? Huh?"

THIS IMMORTAL            15

"Yeah," I said- "Sure. You bet. Just like that.
After you've tried it for ten years. -How is his bug
collection these days?"

She sort of smiled-

"Growing," she replied, "by leaps and bounds.
Buzzes and crawls too-and some of those crawlies
are radioactive. I say to him, "George, why don't
you run around with other women instead of spend-
ing all your time with those bugs?* But he just
shakes his head and looks dedicated. Then I say,
*George, one day one of those uglies is going to bite
you and make you impotent. What'11 you do then?'
Then he explains that that can't happen, and he
lectures me on insect toxins. Maybe he's really a big
bug himself, in disguise. I think he gets some kind of
sexual pleasure out of watching them swarm
around in those tanks. I don't know what else-"

I turned away and looked inside the hall then,
because her face was no longer her face. When I
heard her laugh a moment later I turned back and
squeezed her shoulder.

"Okay, I know more than I knew before. Thanks.
Ill see you sometime soon,"

"Should I wait?"

"No. Goodnight."

"Good night, Conrad."

And I was away.

Crossing a room can be a ticklish and time-con-
suming business: if it's full of people, if the people
all know you, if the people are all holding glasses, if
you have even a slight tendency to limp.

It was, they did and they were, and I do. So ...
Thinking inconspicuous thoughts, I edged my
way along the wall just at the periphery of human-

16 ROGER ZELAZNY

ity for about twenty feet, until I reached the enclave
of young ladies the old celibate always has hovering
about him. He was chinless, nearly lipless, and
going hairless; and the expression that had once
lived in that flesh covering his skull had long ago
retreated into the darkness of his eyes, and the eyes
had it as they caught me-the smile of imminent
outrage.

"Phil," I said, nodding, "not everybody can write
a masque like that. I've heard it said that it's a
dying art, but now I know better."

"You're still alive," he said, in a voice seventy
years younger than the rest of him, "and late again,
as usual."

"I abase myself in my contrition," I told him,
"but I was detained at a birthday party for a lady
aged seven, at the home of an old friend." (Which
was true, but it has nothing to do with this story.)

"All your friends are old friends, aren't they?" he
asked, and that was hitting below the belt, just be-
cause I had once known his barely-remembered
parents, and had taken them around to the south
side of the Erechtheum in order to show them the
Porch of the Maidens and point out what Lord
Elgin had done with the rest, all the while carrying
their bright-eyed youngsters on my shoulders and
telling him tales that were old when the place was
built.

"... And I need your help," I added, ignoring
the jibe and gently pushing my way through the
soft, pungent circle of feminity. "It*ll take me all
night to cross this hall to where Sands is holding
court with the Vegan-pardon me, Miss-and I
don't have all night. -Excuse me, ma'am.-So I
want you to run interference for me."

THIS IMMORTAL            17

, "You're Nomikos!" breathed one little lovely,
staring at my cheek. "I've always wanted to-"

I seized her hand, pressed it to my lips, noted
that her Camille-ring was glowing pink, said,
"-And negative Kismet, eh?" and dropped it,

"So how about it?" I-asked Graber. "Get me
from here to there in a minimum of time in your
typical courtier-like fashion, with a running con-
versation that no one would dare interrupt. Okay?
Let's run."

He nodded brusquely.

"Excuse me, ladies. I'll be back."

We started across the room, negotiating alleys of
people. High overhead, the chandeliers drifted and
turned like faceted satellites of ice. The thelinstra
was an intelligent Aeolian harp, tossing its shards of
song into the air-pieces of colored glass. The peo-
ple buzzed and drifted like certain of George
Emmet's insects, and we avoided their swarms by
putting one foot in front of another without pause
and making noises of our own. We didn't step on
anybody who squashed.

The night was warm. Most of the men wore the
featherweight, black dress-uniform which protocol
dictates the Staff suffer at these functions. Those
who didn't weren't Staff.

Uncomfortable despite their lightness, the Dress
Blacks mag-bind down the sides, leaving a smooth
front whereon is displayed a green-blue-gray-white
Earth insignia, about three inches in diameter, high
up on the left breast; below, the symbol of one's
department is worn, followed by the rank-sigil; on
the right side goes every blessed bit of chicken ma-
nure that can be dreamt up to fake dignity-this,
by the highly imaginative Office of Awards, Fur-

18 ROGER ZELAZNY

bishments, Insignia, Symbols and Heraldry
(OAFISH, for short-its first Director appreciated
his position). The collar has a tendency to become
a garrot after the first ten minutes; at least mine
does.

The ladies wore, or didn't, whatever they
pleased, usually bright or accompanied by pastel
simicoloring (unless they were Staff, in which case
they were neatly packed into short-skirted Dress
Blacks, but with bearable collars), which makes it
somewhat easier to tell some of the keepers from the
kept.

"I hear DOS Santos is here," I said.

"So he is."

"Why?"

"I don't really know, or care."

"Tsk and tsk. What happened to your wonderful
political consciousness? The Department of Liter-
ary Criticism used to praise you for it."

"At any age, the smell of death becomes more
and more unsettling each time it's encountered."

"And DOS Santos smells?"

"He tends to reek."

"I've heard that he's employed a former associate
of ours-from the days of the Madagascar Affair."

Phil cocked his head to one side and shot me a
quizzical look.

"You hear things quite quickly. But then, you're
a friend of Ellen's. Yes, Hasan is here. He's upstairs
with Don."

"Whose karmic burden is he likely to help light-
en?"

"As I said before, I don't really know or care
about any of this."

"Want to venture a guess?"

THIS IMMORTAL            19

^<" Not especially."

\ We entered a thinly-wooded section of the forest,
^sid I paused to grab a rum-and-other from the dip-
tray which had followed overhead until I could bear
fts anguish no longer, and had finally pressed the
acorn which hung at the end of its tail. At this, it
fead dipped obligingly, smiled open, and revealed
Ac treasures of its frosty interior.

**Ah, joy! Buy you a drink, Phil?"

"I thought you were in a hurry."

"I am, but I want to survey the situation some."

"Very well. I'll have a simicoke."

I squinted at him, passed him the thing. Then, as
he turned away, I followed the direction of his gaze
towards the easy chairs set in the alcove formed by
the northeast corner of the room on two sides and
the bulk of the thelinstra on the third. The
thelinstra-player was an old lady with dreamy eyes.
Earthdirector Lorel Sands was smoking his
pipe. ...

Now, the pipe is one of the more interesting facets
of Lorel's personality. It's a real Meerschaum, and
there aren't too many of them left in the world. As
for the rest of him, his function is rather like that of
an anticomputer: you feed him all kinds of carefully
garnered facts, figures, and statistics and he trans-
lates them into garbage. Keen dark eyes, and a
slow, rumbly way of speaking while he holds you
with them; rarely given to gestures, but then very
deliberate as he saws the air with a wide right hand
or pokes imaginary ladies with his pipe; white at
the temples and dark above; he is high of
cheekbone, has a complexion that matches his
tweeds (he assiduously avoids Dress Blacks), and
he constantly strives to push his jaw an inch higher

20 ROGER ZELAZNY

and further forward than seems comfortable. He is
a political appointee, by the Earthgov on Taler, and
he takes his work quite seriously, even to the extent
of demonstrating his dedication with periodic at-
tacks of ulcers. He is not the most intelligent man
on Earth. He is my boss. He is also one of the best
friends I have.

Beside him sat Cort Myshtigo. I could almost feel
Phil hating him-from the pale blue soles of his six-
toed feet to the pink upper-caste dye of his temple-
to-temple hairstrip. Not hating him so much be-
cause he was him, but hating him, I was sure, be-
cause he was the closest available relative-grand-
son-of Tatram Yshtigo, who forty years before
had commenced to demonstrate that the greatest
living writer in the English language was a Vegan.
The old gent is still at it, and I don't believe Phil has
ever forgiven him.

Out of the comer of my eye (the blue one) I saw
Ellen ascending the big, ornate stairway on the oth-
er side of the hall. Out of the other comer of my
other eye I saw Lorel looking in my direction.

"I," said I, "have been spotted, and I must go
now to pay my respects to the William Seabrook of
Taler. Come along?"

"Well . . . Very well," said Phil; "suffering is
good for the soul."

We moved on to the alcove and stood before the
two chairs, between the music and the noise, there
in the place of power. Lorel stood slowly and shook
hands. Myshtigo stood more slowly, and did not
shake hands; he stared, amber-eyed, his face ex-
pressionless as we were introduced. His loose-hang-
ing orange shirt fluttered constantly as his cham-

THIS IMMORTAL           21

;red lungs forced their perpetual exhalation out
anterior nostrils at the base of his wide ribcage.
nodded briefly, repeated my name. Then he
ned to Phil with something like a smile.
^^•^"Would you care to have me translate your
^jBiasque into English?" he asked, his voice sounding
4||&£ a dying-down tuning fork.
^ Phil turned on his heel and walked away.
^ Then I thought the Vegan was ill for a second,
'.ijSfttil I recollected that a Vegan's laugh sounds
-^wnething like a billy goat choking. I try to stay
^away from Vegans by avoiding the resorts.

"Sit down," said Lorel, looking uncomfortable
behind his pipe.

I drew up a chair and set it across from them.
Wfcay."

"Cort is going to write a book," said Lorel.
"So you've said."
"About the Earth."
I nodded.

"He expressed a desire that you be his guide on
A tour of certain of the Old Places. ..."

"I am honored," I said rather stiffly. "Also, I am
curious what determined his selection of me as
guide."

, "And even more curious as to what he may know
about you, eh?" said the Vegan.

"Yes, I am," I agreed, "by a couple hundred
percent."

"I asked a machine."
/, "Fine. Now I know."

I leaned back and finished my drink.
fr  "I started by checking the Vite-Stats Register for
Earth when I first conceived of this project-just for

22 ROGER ZELAZNY

general human data-then, after I'd turned up an
interesting item, I tried the Earthoffice Personnel
Banks-"

"Mm-hm/'Isaid.

*'-and I was more impressed by what they did
not say of you than by what they said."

I shrugged.

"There are many gaps in your career. Even now,
no one really knows what you do most of the time."

"-And by the way, when were you born?"

"I don't know. It was in a tiny Greek village and
they were all out of calendars that year. Christmas
Day, though, I'm told."

"According to your personnel record, you're
seventy-seven years old. According to Vite-Stats,
you're either a hundred eleven or a hundred thir-

ty"

"I fibbed about my age to get the job. There was
a Depression going on."

"-So I made up a Nomikos-profile, which is a
kind of distinctive thing, and I set Vite-Stats to
hunting down .001 physical analogues in all of its
banks, including the closed ones."

"Some people collect old coins, other people
build model rockets."

"I found that you could have been three or four
or five other persons, all of them Greeks, and one of
them truly amazing. But, of course, Konstantin
Korones, one of the older ones, was born two hun-
dred thirty-four years ago. On Christmas. Blue eye,
brown eye. Game right leg. Same hairline, at age
twenty-three. Same height, and same Bertillion
scales."

"Same fingerprints? Same retinal patterns?"

"These were not included in many of the older

THIS IMMORTAL            23

Egistry files. Maybe they were sloppier in those
fcys? I don't know. More careless, perhaps, as to
fho had access to public records. ..."

1^'You are aware that there are over four million
sons on this planet right now. By searching back
nigh the past three or four centuries I daresay
i could find doubles, or even triples, for quite a
of them. So what?"

'"It serves to make you somewhat intriguing,
, ttt's all, almost like a spirit of place-and you are
a» curiously ruined as this place is. Doubtless I shall
ttcver achieve your age, whatever it may be, and I
Wil® curious as to the sort of sensibilities a human
might cultivate, given so much time-especially in
vfew of your position as a master of your world's
hittory and art.

"So that is why I asked for your services," he con-
cluded.

"Now that you've met me, ruined and all, can I
go home?"

"Conrad!" The pipe attacked me.
"No, Mister Nomikos, there are practical con-
siderations also. This is a tough world, and you
have a high survival potential. I want you with me
because I want to survive."

I shrugged again.
, "Well, that's settled. What now?"
He chuckled.
"I perceive that you dislike me."
"Whatever gave you that idea? Just because you
insulted a friend of mine, asked me impertinent
-h questions, impressed me into your service on a
f- whim-"

i

"-exploited your countrymen, turned your
world into a brothel, and demonstrated the utter

24 ROGER ZELAZNY

provinciality of the human race, as compared to a
galactic culture eons older. ..."

"I'm not talking your race-my race, I'm talking
personal talk. And I repeat, you insulted my friend,
asked me impertinent questions, impressed me into
your service on a whim."

'' {Billy goat snuffle) I to all three! -It is an insult to
the shades of Homer and Dante to have that man
sing for the human race."
"At the moment he's the best we've got."
"In which case you should do without."
"That's no reason to treat him the way you did."
"I think it is, or I wouldn't have done it.-Sec-
ond, I asked whatever questions I feel like asking,
and it is your privilege to answer or not to answer as
you see fit-just as you did.-Finally, nobody im-
pressed you into anything. You are a civil servant.
You have been given an assignment. Argue with
your Office, not me.

"And, as an afterthought, I doubt that you
possess sufficient data to use the word 'whim' as
freely as you do," he finished.

From his expression, it appear that Lord's ulcer
was making silent commentary as I observed:

"Then call your rudeness plain dealing, if you
will-or the product of another culture-and justify
your influence with sophistries, and afterthink all
you like-and by all means, deliver me all manner
of spurious judgments, that I may judge you in re-
turn. You behave like a Royal Representative in a
Crown Colony," I decided, pronouncing the capi-
tals, "and I don't like it- I've read all your books.
I've also read your granddad's-like his Earth-
whore's Lament-and you'll never be the man he is.
He has a thing called compassion. You don't. Any-

THIS IMMORTAL            25

ing you feel about old Phil goes double for you, in
my book."

^ That part about grandpa must have touched on a
yore spot, because he flinched when my blue gaze
jglit him.

y, "So kiss my elbow," I said, or something like
Jphat, in Vegan.

Me, Sands doesn't speak enough Veggy to have
"^caught it, but he made conciliatory noises im-
,' mediately, looking about the while to be sure we
. were not being overhead.

"Conrad, please find your professional attitude
and put it back on.-Srin Shtgio, why don't we get
on with the planning?"

Myshtigo smiled his bluegreen smile.
**And minimize our differences?" he asked. "All
. right."

"Then let's adjourn to the library-where it's
quieter-and we can use the map-screen."
"Fine."

I felt a bit reinforced as we rose to go, because
Don DOS Santos was up there and he hates Vegans,
and wherever DOS Santos is, there is always Diane,
Ac girl with the red wig, and she hates everybody;

, and I knew George Emmet was upstairs, and Ellen,
too-and George is a real cold fish around strangers
(friends, too, for that matter); and perhaps Phil
would wander in later and fire on Fort Sumter; and
then there was Hasan-he doesn't say much, he
. just sits there and smokes his weeds and looks
,' opaque-and if you stood too near him and took a
.; .couple deep breaths you wouldn't care what the
iy. hell you said to Vegans, or people either.

.yr

|j^   I had hoped that Hasan's memory would be on

26         ROGER ZELAZNY

the rocks, or else up there somewhere among the

clouds.

Hope died as we entered the library. He was sit-
ting straight and sipping lemonade.

Eighty or ninety or more, looking about forty, he

could still act thirty. The Sprung-Samser treat-
ments had found highly responsive material. It's
not often that way. Almost never, in fact. They put
some people into accelerated anaphylactic shock for
no apparent reason, and even an intracardial blast
of adrenalin won't haul them back; others, most
others, they freeze at five or six decades. But some
rare ones actually grow younger when they take the

series-about one in a hundred thousand.

It struck me as odd that in destiny's big shooting

gallery this one should make it, in such a way.

It had been over fifty years since the Madagascar
Affair, in which Hasan had been employed by the
Radpol in their vendetta against the Talerites. He
had been in the pay of (Rest in Peace) the big K. in
Athens, who had sent him to polish off the
Earthgov Realty Company. Hc*d done it, too. And
well. With one tiny fission device. Pow. Instant ur-
ban renewal. Called Hasan the Assassin by the
Few, he is the last mercenary on Earth.

Also, besides Phil (who had not always been the
wielder of the bladeless sword without a hilt),
Hasan was one of the Very Few who could re-
member old Karaghios.

So, chin up and fungus forward, I tried to cloud

his mind with my first glance. Either there were an-
cient and mysterious powers afoot, which I
doubted, or he was higher than I'd thought, which
was possible, or he had forgotten my face-which
could have been possible, though not real likely-or

THIS IMMORTAL          27

he was exercising a professional ethic or a low
animal cunning. (He possessed both of the latter, in
varying degrees, but the accent was on the animal
cunning.) He made no sign as we were introduced.

"My bodyguard, Hasan," said DOS Santos,
flashing his magnesium-flare smile as I shook the
hand that once had shaken the world, so to speak.

It was still a very strong hand.

"Conrad Nomikos," said Hasan, squinting as
though he were reading it from off a scroll.

I knew everyone else in the room, so I hastened to
the chair farthest from Hasan, and I kept my sec-
ond drink in front of my face most of the time, just
to be safe.

EHane of the Red Wig stood near. She spoke. She
said, "Good morning, Mister Nomikos."

I nodded my drink.

"Good evening, Diane."

Tall, slim, wearing mostly white, she stood
beside DOS Santos like a candle. I know it's a wig
she wears, because I've seen it slip upwards on oc-
casion, revealing part of an interesting and ugly
scar which is usually hidden by the low hairline she
keeps. I've often wondered about that scar, some-
times as I lay at anchor staring up at parts of con-
stellations through clouds, or when I unearthed
damaged statues. Purple lips-tattooed, I think-
and I've never seen them smile; her jaw muscles are
always raised cords because her teeth are always
clenched; and there's a little upside-down "v" be-
tween her eyes, from all that frowning; and her chin
is slight, held high-defiant? She barely moves her
mouth when she speaks in that tight, choppy way of
hers. I couldn't really guess at her age. Over thirty,
that's all.

28         ROGER ZELAZNY

She and Don make an interesting pair. He is
dark, loquacious, always smoking, unable to sit still
for more than two minutes. She is taller by about
Five inches, burns without flickering. I still don't
know all of her story. I guess I never will.

She came over and stood beside my chair while
Lorel was introducing Cort to DOS Santos.

"You," she said.

"Me," I said.

"-will conduct the tour."

"Everybody knows all about it but me," said I. "I
don't suppose you could spare me a little of your

knowledge on the matter?"

"No knowledge, no matter," said she.

"You sound like Phil," said I.

"Didn't mean to."
"You did, though. So why?"

"Why what?"
"Why you? Don? Here? Tonight?"
She touched her tongue to her upper lip, then
pressed it hard, as though to squeeze out the grape-
juice or keep in the words. Then she looked over at
Don, but he was too far away to have heard, and he
was looking in another direction anyhow. He was
busy pouring Myshtigo a real Coke from the pitcher
in the exec dip-tray. The Coke formula had been
the archaeological find of the century, according to
the Vegans. It was lost during the Three Days and
recovered only a decade or so ago. There had been
lots of simicokes around, but none of them have the
same effect on Vegan metabolism as the real thing.
"Earth's second contribution to galactic culture,"
one of their contemporary historians had called it.
The first contribution of course, being a very fine
new social problem oTthe sort that weary Vegan

THIS IMMORTAL            29

philosophers had been waiting around for gener-
ations to have happen.

Diane looked back.

"Don't know yet," she said. "Ask Don."

"I will."

I did, too. Later, though. And I wasn't disap-
pointed, inasmuch as I expected nothing-
But, as I sat trying as hard as I could to
eavesdrop, there was suddenly a sight-vision
overlay, of the sort a shrink had once classified for
me as a pseudotelepathic wish-fulfillment. It works
like this:

I want to know what's going on somewhere. I
have almost-sufficient information to guess. There-
fore, I do. Only it comes on as though I am seeing
it and hearing it through the eyes and ears of one of
the parties involved. It's not real telepathy, though,
I don't think, because it can sometimes be wrong. It
sure seems real, though.

The shrink could tell me everything about it but
why.

Which is how I

was standing in the middle of the room,

was staring at Myshtigo,

was DOS Santos,

was saying:

"... will be going along, for your protection. Not
as Radpol Secretary, just a private citizen."
f   "I did not solicit your protection," the Vegan was
| saying, "however, I thank you. I will accept your
3 offer to circumvent my death at the hands of your
comrades"-and he smiled as he said it-"if they
should seek it during my travels. I doubt that they
will, but I should be a fool to refuse the shield of
DOS Santos."

30

ROGER ZELAZNY

"You are wise," we said, bowing slightly.
"Quite," said Cort. "Now tell me"-he nodded
toward Ellen, who had just finished arguing with
George about anything and was stamping away

from him-"who is that?"

"•Ellen Emmet, the wife of George Emmet, the

Director of the Wildlife Conservation Department."

"What is her price?"
"I don't know that she's quoted one recently."

"Well, what did it used to be?"

"There never was one."

"Everything on Earth has a price."

"In that case, I suppose you'll have to find out for

yourself."

"I will," he said.

Earth femmes have always held an odd attraction
for Vegans. A Veggy once told me that they make
him feel rather like a zoophilist. Which is interest-
ing, because a pleasure girl at the Cote d'Or Resort
once told me, with a giggle, that Vegans made her
feel rather like we 2.oophiliste. I guess those jets of air
must tickle or something and arouse both beasts.

"By the way," we said, "have you stopped beat-
ing your wife lately?"

"Which one?" asked Myshtigo.

Fadeout, and me back in my chair.

"... What," George Emmet was asking, "do you

think of that?"

I stared at him. He hadn't been there a second

ago. He had come up suddenly and perched himself

on the wide wing of my chair.

"Come again, please. I was dozing."
"I said we've beaten the spiderbat. What do you

think of that?"

THIS IMMORTAL             31

"It rhymes," I observed. "So tell me how we've
beaten the spiderbat."

But he was laughing. He's one of those guys with
whom laughter is an unpredictable thing. He'll go
around looking sour for days, and then some little
thing will set him /off giggling. He sort of gasps
when he laughs, like a baby, and that impression is
reinforced by his pink flaccidity and thinning hair.
So I waited. Ellen was off insulting Lorel now, and
Diane had turned to read the titles on the book-
shelves.

Finally, "I've developed a new strain ofslishi/'he
panted confidentially.

"Say, that's really great!"

Then, "What are slishi?" I asked softly.

"The slish is a Bakabian parasite," he explained,
"rather like a large tick. Mine are about three-
cithths of an inch long," he said proudly, "and they
burrow deep into the flesh and give off a highly
poisonous waste product."

"Fatal?"

"Mine are."

"Could you lend me one?" I asked him.

"Why?"

"I want to drop it down someone's back. On sec-
ond thought, make it a couple dozen. I have lots of
friends."

"Mine won't bother people, just spiderbats.
They discriminate against people. People would
poison my slishi.^ (He said "My slishi" very
possessively.) "Their host has to have a copper"
rather than an iron-based metabolism," he ex-
I plained, "and spiderbats fall into that category.
That's why I want to go with you on this trip."

32

ROGER ZELAZNY

"You want me to find a spiderbat and hold it for
you while you dump slishi on it? Is that what you're

trying to say?"

"Well, I would like a couple spiderbats to keep-
I used all mine up last month-but I'm already sure
the slishi will work. I want to go along to start the

plague."

"Which plague?"

"Among the 'bats.-The slishi multiply quite
rapidly under Earth conditions, if they're given the
proper host, and they should be extremely con-
tagious if we could get them started at the right
time of year. What I had in mind was the late
southwestern spiderbat mating season. It will begin
in six to eight weeks in the territory of California, in
an Old Place-not real hot anymore, though-
called Capistrano. I understand that your tour will
take you out that way at about that time. When the
spiderbats return to Capistrano I want to be wait*
ing for them with the slishi. Also, I could use a vaca-
tion."

"Mm-hm. Have you talked this over with

Lorel?"
"Yes, and he thinks it's a fine idea. In fact, he

wants to meet us out there and take pictures. There
may not be too many more opportunities to see
them-darkening the sky with their flight, nesting
about the ruins the way they do, eating the wild
pigs, leaving their green droppings in the streets-
it's rather beautiful, you know."

"Uh-huh, sort of like HaUoween. Whatll happen
to all those wild pigs if we kill off the spiderbats?"

"Oh, there'll be more of them around. But I fig-
ure the pumas will keep them from getting like Aus-
tralian rabbits. Anyway, you'd rather have pigs

THIS IMMORTAL            33

than spiderbats, wouldn't you?"

"I'm not particularly fond of either, but now that
I think of it I suppose I would rather have pigs than
spiderbats. All right, sure, you can come along."

"Thank you," he said. "I was sure you'd help."

"Don't mention it."

Lorel made apologetic sounds deep in his throat
about then. He stood beside the big desk in the
middle of the room, before which the broad
viewscreen was slowly lowering itself. It was a thick
depth-transparer, so nobody had to move around
after a better seat. He pressed a button on the side
of the desk and the lights dimmed somewhat.

"Uh, I'm about to project a series of maps," he
said, "if I can get this synchro-thing . . . There.
There it is."

The upper part of Africa and most of the Medi-
terranean countries appeared in pastels.

"Is that the one you wanted first," he asked
Myshtigo.

"It was-eventually," said the big Vegan, turning
away from a muffled conversation with Ellen,
whom he had cornered in the French History alcove
beneath a bust of Voltaire.

The lights dimmed some more and Myshtigo
moved to the desk. He looked at the map, and then
at nobody in particular.

"I want to visit certain key sites which, for one
reason or another, are important in the history of
your world," he said. "I'd like to start with Egypt,
Greece and Rome. Then I'd like to move on quickly
through Madrid, Paris and London." The maps
shifted as he talked, not fast enough, though, to
keep up with him. "Then I want to backtrack to
Berlin, hit Brussels, visit St. Petersburg and Mos-

34

ROGER ZELAZNY

cow, skip back over the Atlantic and stop at Boston,
New York, Dee-Cee, Chicago," (Lorel was working
up a sweat by then) "drop down to Yucatan, and
jump back up to the California territory."

"In that order?" I asked.

"Pretty much so," he said.

"What's wrong with India and the middle East-
or the Far East, for that matter?" asked a voice
which I recognized as Phil's. He had come in after
the lights had gone down low.

"Nothing," said Myshtigo, "except that it's
mainly mud and sand and hot, and has nothing
whatsoever to do with what I'm after."

"What are you after?"

"A story."

"What kind of story?"

"I'll send you an autographed copy."

"Thanks."

"Your pleasure."

"When do you wish to leave?" I asked him.

"Day after tomorrow," he said.

"Okay."

"I've had detailed maps of the specific sites made
up for you. Lorel tells me they were delivered to

your office this afternoon."

"Okay again. But there is something of which
you may not be fully cognizant. It involves the fact
that everything you've named so far is mainlandish.
We're pretty much an island culture these days,
and for very good reasons. During the Three Days
the Mainland got a good juicing, and most of the
places you've named are still inclined to be some-
what hot. This, though, is not the only reason they
are considered unsafe ..."

"I am not unfamiliar with your history and I am

THIS IMMORTAL

aware of the radiation precautions," he interrupted.
"Also, I am aware of the variety of mutated life
forms which inhabit Old Places. I am concerned,
but not worried."

I shrugged in the artificial twilight.

"It's okay by me . . ."

"Good." He took another sip'of Coke. "Let me
have a little light then, Lorel."

"Right, Srin."

It was light again.

As the screen was sucked upward behind him,
Myshtigo asked me, "Is it true that you are ac-
quainted with several mambos and houngans here at
the Port?"

"Why, yes," I said. "Why?"

He approached my chair.

"I understand," he said conversationally, "that
voodoo, or voudoun, has survived pretty much un-
changed over the centuries."

"Perhaps," I said. "1 wasn't around here when it
got started, so I wouldn't know for sure."

"I understand that the participants do not much
appreciate the presence of outsiders-"

"That too, is correct. But they'll put on a good
show for you, if you pick the right hounfor and drop
in on them with a few gifts."

"But I should like very much to witness a real
ceremony. If I were to attend one with someone
who was not a stranger to the participants, perhaps
then I could obtain the genuine thing."
<   "Why should you want to? Morbid curiosity con-
; cerning barbaric customs?"
/  "No. I am a student of comparative religions."
f   I studied his face, but couldn't tell anything from
it.

36 f       ROGER ZELAZNY

j^tt had been awhile since I'd visited with Mama
^Julie and Papa Joe or any of the others, and the
hounfor wasn't that far away, but I didn't know how
they'd take to me bringing a Vegan around. They'd
never objected when I'd brought people, of course.

"Well.. ."I began.

"I just want to watch," he said. "I'll stay out of
the way. They'll hardly know I'm there."

I mumbled a bit and finally gave in. I knew
Mama Julie pretty well and I didn't see any real
harm being done, no matter what.

So, "Okay," said I, "I'll take you to one. To-
night, if you like."

He agreed, thanked me, and went off after anoth-
er Coke. George, who had not strayed from the arm
of my chair, leaned toward me and observed that it
would be very interesting to dissect a Vegan. I
agreed with him.

When Myshtigo returned, DOS Santos was at his
side.

"What is this about you taking Mister Myshtigo
to a pagan ceremony?" he asked, nostrils flared and
quivering.

"That's right," I said, "I am."

"Not without a bodyguard you are not."

I turned both palms upward.

"I am capable of handling anything which might
arise."

"Hasan and I will accompany you."

I was about to protest when Ellen insinuated
herself between them.

"I want to go, too," she said. "I've never been to
one."

I shrugged. If DOS Santos went, then Diane
would go, too, which made for quite a few of us.

THIS IMMORTAL          37

So one more wouldn't matter, shouldn't matter.
It was ruined before it got started.
"Why not?" I said.

The hounfor was located down in the harbor sec-
tion, possibly because it was dedicated to Ague
Woyo, god of the sea. More likely, though, it was
because Mama Julie's people had always been har-
bor people. Agu6 Woyo is not a jealous god, so lots
of other deities are commemorated upon the walls
in brilliant colors. There are more elaborate hounfors
further inland, but they tend to be somewhat com-
mercial.

Ague's big blazeboat was blue and orange and
green and yellow and black, and it looked to be
somewhat unseaworthy. Damballa Wedo, crimson,
writhed and coiled his length across most of the op-
posite wall. Several big rada drums were being
stroked rhythmically by Papa Joe, forward and to
the right of the door through which we entered-
the only door. Various Christian saints peered from
behind unfathomable expressions at the bright
hearts and cocks and graveyard crosses, Hags,
machetes and crossroads that clung to almost every
inch of the walls about them-frozen into an after-
the-hurricane surrealism by the ampoteric paints of
Titan-and whether or not the saints approved one
could never tell: they stared down through their
cheap picture-frames as though they were windows
onto an alien world.

The small altar bore numerous bottles of alcohol-
ic beverages, gourds, sacred vessels for the spirits of
the loa, charms, pipes, flags, depth photos of un-
known persons and, among other things, a pack of
cigarettes for Papa Legba.

38

ROGER ZELAZNY

A service was in progress when we were led in by
a young hounst named Luis, The room was about
eight meters long and five wide, had a high ceiling,
a dirt floor. Dancers moved about the central pole
with slow, strutting steps. Their flesh was dark and
it glistened in the dim light of the antique kerosene
lamps. With our entry the room became crowded.

Mama Julie took my hand and smiled. She led
me back to a place beside the altar and said,
"Erzulie was kind."

I nodded.

"She likes you, Nomiko. You live long, you travel
much, and you come back."

"Always," I said.

"Those people . . . ?"

She indicated my companions with a flick of her
dark eyes.

"Friends. They would be no bother ..."

She laughed as I said it. So did I.

"I will keep them out of your way if you let us
remain. We will stay in the shadows at the sides of
the room. If you tell me to take them away, I will.
I see that you have already danced much, emptied
many bottles ..."

"Stay," she said. "Come talk with me during
daylight sometime,"

"I will."

She moved away then and they made room for
her in the circle of dancers. She was quite large,
though her voice was a small thing. She moved like
a huge rubber doll, not without grace, stepping to
the monotonous thunder of Papa Joe's drumming.
After a time this sound filled everything-my head,
the earth, the air-like maybe the whale's heartbeat
had seemed to half-digested Jonah. I watched the

THIS IMMORTAL            39

dancers. And I watched those who watched the
dancers.

I drank a pint of rum in an effort to catch up, but
I couldn't. Myshtigo kept taking sips of Coke from
a bottle he had brought along with him. No one
noticed that he was blue, but then we had gotten
there rather late and things were pretty well along
the way to wherever they were going.

Red Wig stood in a corner looking supercilious
and frightened. She was holding a bottle at her side,
but that's where it stayed. Myshtigo was holding
Ellen at his side, and that's where she stayed. DOS
Santos stood beside the door and watched ev-
erybody-even me. Hasan, crouched against the
righthand wall, was smoking a long-stemmed pipe
with a small bowl- He appeared to be at peace.

Mama Julie, I guess it was, began to sing. Other
voices picked it up:

Papa Legba, ouvn baye!

Papa Legba, Attibon Legba, ouvn bayS pou pou posse!

Papa Legba . . .

This went on, and on and on. I began to feel
drowsy. I drank more rum and felt thirstier and
drank more rum.

I 'm not sure how long we had been there when it
happened. The dancers had been kissing the pole
and singing and rattling gourds and pouring out
waters, and a couple of the hounst were acting
possessed and talking incoherently, and the meal-
design on the floor was all blurred, and there was
lots of smoke in the air, and I was leaning back
against the wall and I guess my eyes had been
closed for a minute or two-

40 ROGER ZELAZNY

The ^ound came from an unexpected quarter.
Hasan screamed.

It was a long, wailing thing that brought me for-
ward, then dizzily off balance, then back to the wall
again, with a thump.

The drumming continued, not missing a single
beat. Some of the dancers stopped, though, staring.

Hasan had gotten to his feet. His teeth were
bared and his eyes were slits, and his face bore the
ridges and valleys of exertion beneath its sheen of
sweat.

His beard was a fireshot spearhead.
His cloak, caught high against some wall decora-
tion, was black wings.

His hands, in a hypnosis of slow motion, were
strangling a non-existent man.

Animal sounds came from his throat.
He continued to choke nobody.
Finally, he chuckled and his hands sprang open.
DOS Santos was at his side almost immediately,
talking to him, but they inhabited two different
worlds-
One of the dancers began to moan softly. Anoth-
er joined him-and others.

Mama Julie detached herself from the circle and
came toward me-just as Hasan started the whole
thing over again, this time with more elaborate his-
trionics.

The drum continued its steady, earthdance pro-
nouncement-
Papa Joe did not even look up.
"A bad sign," said Mama Julie. "What do you
know of this man?"

"Plenty," I said, forcing my head to clear by an
act of will.

THIS IMMORTAL           41

"Angelsou," she said.

"What?"

"Angelsou," she repeated. "He is a dark god-
one to be feared. Your friend is possessed by
Angelsou-"

"Explain, please."

"He comes seldom to our hounfor. He is not
wanted here. Those he possesses become
murderers."

"I think Hasan was trying a new pipe mixture-
mutant ragweed or something."

"Angelsou," she said again. "Your friend will be-
come a killer, for Angelsou is a deathgod, and he
only visits with his own."

"Mama Julie," said I, "Hasan is a killer. If you
had a piece of gum for every man he's killed and
you tried to chew it all, you'd look like a chipmunk,
He is a professional killer-within the limits of the
law, usually. Since the Code Duello prevails on the
Mainland, he does most of his work there. It has
been rumored that he does an illegal killing on oc-
casion, but this thing has never been proved.

"So tell me," I finished, "is Angelsou the god of
killers or the god of murderers? There should be a
difference between the two, shouldn't there?"

"Not to Angelsou," she said.

DOS Santos then, trying to stop the show, seized
both of Hasan *s wrists. He tried to pull his hands
apart, but-well, try bending the bars of your cage
sometime and you 11 get the picture.

I crossed the room, as did several of the others.
This proved fortunate, because Hasan had finally
noticed that someone was standing in front of him,
and dropped his hands, freeing them. Then he pro-
duced a long-bladed stiletto from under his cloak.

42 ROGER ZELAZNY

Whether or not he would actually have used it on
Don or anybody else is a moot point, because at
that moment Myshtigo stoppered his Coke bottle
with his thumb and hit him behind the ear with it.
Hasan fell forward and Don caught him, and I
pried the blade from between his fingers, and
Myshtigo finished his Coke,

"Interesting ceremony," observed the Vegan; "I
would never have suspected that big fellow of har-
boring such strong religious feelings."

"It just goes to show you that you can never be
too sure, doesn't it?"

"Yes." He gestured to indicate the onlookers.
"They are all pantheists, aren't they?"

I shook my head. "Primitive animists."

"What is the difference?"

"Well, that Coke bottle you just emptied is going
to occupy the altar, or pe, as it is called, as a vessel
for Angelsou, since it has enjoyed an intimate mys-
tical relationship with the god. That's the way an
animist would see it. Now, a pantheist just might
get a little upset at somebody's coming in to his cer-
emonies uninvited and creating a disturbance such
as we just did. A pantheist might be moved to sacri-
fice the intruders to Ague Woyo, god of the sea, by
hitting them all over the head in a similar ceremo-
nial manner and tossing them off the end of the
dock. Therefore, I am not going to have to explain
to Mama Julie that all these people standing
around glaring at us are really animists. Excuse me
a minute."

It wasn't really that bad, but I wanted to shake
him up a bit. I think I did.

After I'd apologized and said good-night, I
picked up Hasan. He was out cold and I was the

THIS IMMORTAL           43

only one big enough to carry him.

The street was deserted except for us, and Agu^
Woyo's big blazeboat was cutting the waves some-
where just under the eastern edge of the world and
splashing the sky with all his favorite colors.

DOS Santos, at my side, said, "Perhaps you were
correct. Maybe we should not have come along."

I didn't bother to answer him, but Ellen, who
was walking up ahead with Myshtigo, stopped,
turned, and said, "Nonsense. If you hadn't, we
would have missed the tentmaker's wonderful dra-
matic monologue." By then, I was within range and
both her hands shot out and wrapped around my
throat. She applied no pressure, but she grimaced
horribly and observed, "Ur! Mm! Ugh! I'm
possessed of Angelsou and you've had it." Then she
laughed.

"Let go my throat or I'll throw this Arab at you,"
I said, comparing the orangebrown color other hair
with the orangepink color of the sky behind her,
and smiled.

"He's a heavy one, too," I added.

Then, a second before she let go, she applied
some pressure-a little bit too much to be playful-
and then she was back on Myshtigo's arm and we
were walking again. Well, women never slap me be-
cause I always turn the other cheek first and they're
afraid of the fungus, so I guess a quick choke is
about the only alternative.

"Frightfully interesting," said Red Wig. "Felt
strange. As if something inside me was dancing
along with them. Odd feeling, it was. I don't really
like dancing-any kind."

"What kind of accent do you have?" I inter-
rupted her. "I've been trying to place it."

44 ROGER ZELAZNY

"Don't know," she said. "I'm sort of Irish-
French. Lived in the Hebrides-also Australia,
Japan-till I was nineteen ..."

Hasan moaned just then and flexed his muscles
and I felt a sharp pain in my shoulder.

I set him down on a doorstep and shook him
down. I found two throwing knives, another stiletto,
a very neat gravity knife, a saw-edged Bowie,
strangling wires, and a small metal case containing
various powders and vials of liquids which I did not
care to inspect too closely. I liked the gravity knife,
so I kept it for myself. It was a Coricama, and very
neat.

Late the next day-call it evening-I shanghaied
old Phil, determined to use him as the price of ad-
mission to DOS Santos' suite at the Royal. The Rad-
pol still reveres Phil as a sort of Returnist Tom
Paine, even though he began pleading innocent to
that about half a century ago, back when he began
getting mysticism and respectability. While his Call
of Earth probably is the best thing he ever wrote, he
also drafted the Articles of Return, which helped to
start the trouble I'd wanted started. He may do
much disavowing these days, but he was a trouble-
maker then, and I'm sure he still files away all the
fawning gazes and bright words it continues to
bring him, takes them out every now and then,
dusts them off, and regards them with something
like pleasure.

Besides Phil, I took along a pretext-that I
wanted to see how Hasan was feeling after the
lamentable bash he'd received at the hounfor. Ac-
tually, what I wanted was a chance to talk to Hasan
and find out how much, if anything, he'd be willing
to tell me about his latest employment.

THIS IMMORTAL           45

So Phil and I walked it. It wasn't far from the
Office compound to the Royal. About seven
minutes, ambling-

"Have you finished writing my elegy yet?" I
asked.

"I'm still working on it."

"You've been saying that for the past twenty
years. I wish you'd hurry up so I could read it."

"I could show you some very fine ones . . .
Lord's, George's, even one for DOS Santos. And I
have all sorts of blank ones in my files-the fill-in
kind-for lesser notables. Yours is a problem,
though."

"How so?"

"I have to keep updating it. You go right on,
quite blithely-living, doing things."

"You disapprove?"

"Most people have the decency to do things for
half a century and then stay put. Their elegies
present no problems. I have cabinets full. But I'm
afraid yours is going to be a last-minute thing with
a discord ending. I don't like to work that way. I
prefer to deliberate over a span of many years, to
evaluate a person's life carefully, and without pres-
sure. You people who live your lives like folksongs
trouble me. I think you're trying to force me to
write you an epic, and I'm getting too old for that.
I sometimes nod."

"I think you're being unfair," I told him. "Other
people get to read their elegies, and I'd even settle
for a couple of good limericks."

"Well, I have a feeling yours will be finished
before too long," he noted. "Ill try to get a copy to
you in time."

"Oh? From whence springs this feeling?"

46 ROGER ZELAZNY

"Who can isolate the source of an inspiration?"

"You tell me."

"It came upon me as I meditated. I was in the
process of composing one for the Vegan-purely as
an exercise, of course-and I found myself thinking:

'Soon I will finish the Greek's."" After a moment,
he continued, "Conceptualize this thing: yourself as
two men, each taller than the other."

"It could be done if I stood in front of a mirror
and kept shifting my weight. I have this short leg.-
So, I'm conceptualizing it. What now?'*

"Nothing. You don't go at these things proper-
ly."

"It's a cultural tradition against which I have
never been successfully immunized. Like knots,
horses-Gordia, Troy. You know. We're sneaky."

He was silent for the next ten paces,

"So feathers or lead?" I asked him.

"Pardon?"

"It is the riddle of the kallikanzaros. Pick one."

"Feathers?"

"You're wrong."

"If I had said 'lead'.. . ?"

"Uh-uh. You only have one chance. The correct
answer is whatever the kallikanzaros wants it to be.
You lose."

"That sounds a bit arbitrary."

"Kallikanzaroi are that way. It's Greek, rather
than Oriental subtlety. Less inscrutable, too. Be-
cause your life often depends on the answer, and the
kallikanzaros generally wants you to lose."

"Why is that?"

"Ask the next kallikanzaros you meet, if you get
the chance- They're mean spirits."

We struck the proper avenue and turned up it.

THIS IMMORTAL           47

"Why are you suddenly concerned with the Rad-
pol again?" he asked. "It's been a long time since
you left."

"I left at the proper time, and all I'm concerned
with is whether it's coming alive again-like in the
old days. Hasan comes high because he always de-
livers, and I want to know what's in the package."

"Are you worried they've found you out?"

"No. It might be uncomfortable, but I doubt it
would be incapacitating."

The Royal loomed before us and we entered. We
went directly to the suite. As we walked up the
padded hallway, Phil, in a fit of perception, ob-
served, "I'm running interference again."

"That about says it."

"Okay. One'11 get you ten you find out nothing."

"I won't take you up on that. You're probably
right."

I knocked on the darkwood door.

"Hi there," I said as it opened.

"Come in, come in."

And we were off.

It took me ten minutes to turn the conversation to
the lamentable bashing of the Bedouin, as Red Wig
was there distracting me by being there and being
distracting.

"Good morning," she said.

"Good evening," I said.

"Anything new happening in Arts?"

"No."

"Monuments?"

"No."

"Archives?"

"No."

"What interesting work you must do!"

48 ROGER ZELAZNY

"Oh, it's been overpublicized and glamorized all
out of shape by a few romanticists in the Informa-
tion Office. Actually, all we do is locate, restore,
and preserve the records and artifacts mankind has
left lying about the Earth."

"Sort of like cultural garbage collectors?"

"Mm, yes. I think that's properly put."

"Well, why?"

"Why what?"

"Why do you do it?"

"Someone has to, because it's cultural garbage.
That makes it worth collecting. I know my garbage
better than anyone else on Earth."

"You're dedicated, as well as being modest.
That's good, too."

"Also, there weren't too many people to choose
from when I applied for the job-and I knew where
a lot of the garbage was stashed." She handed me a
drink, took a sip and a half of her own, and asked,
"Are they actually still around?"

"Who?" I inquired.

"Divinity Incorporated. The old gods. Like
Angelsou. I thought all the gods had left the
Earth."

"No, they didn't. Just because most of them re-
semble us doesn't mean they act the same way.
When man left he didn't offer to take them along,
and gods have some pride, too. But then, maybe
they had to stay, anyhow-that thing called ananke,
death-destiny. Nobody prevails against it."

"Like progress?"

"Yeah. Speaking of progress, how is Hasan
progressing? The last time I saw him he had
stopped entirely."

"Up, around. Big lump. Thick skull. No harm."

THIS IMMORTAL           49

"Where is he?"

"Up the hall, left. Games Room."

"I believe I'll go render him my sympathy. Ex-
cuse me?"

"Excused," she said, nodding, and she went
away to listen to DOS Santos talk at Phil. Phil, of
course, welcomed the addition.

Neither looked up as I left.

The Games Room was at the other end of the
long hallway. As I approached, I heard a thunk fol-
lowed by a silence, followed by another thunk.

I opened the door and looked inside.

He was the only one there. His back was to me,
but he heard the door open and turned quickly. He
was wearing a long purple dressing gown and was
balancing a knife in his right hand. There was a big
wad of plastage on the back of his head.

"Good evening, Hasan."

A tray of knives stood at his side, and he had set
a target upon the opposite wall. Two blades were
sticking into the target-one in the center and one
about six inches off, at nine o'clock.

"Good evening," he said slowly. Then, after

thinking it over, he added, "How are you?"

"Oh, fine. I came to ask you that same question.
How is your head?"

"The pain is great, but it shall pass."

I closed the door behind me.

"You must have been having quite a daydream
last night."

"Yes. Mister DOS Santos tells me I fought with
ghosts. I do not remember."

"You weren't smoking what the fat Doctor Em-
met would call Cannabis sativa, that's for sure."

"No, Karagee. I smoked a stirge-fleur which had

50 ROGER ZELAZNY

drunk human blood. I found it near the Old Place
of Constantinople and dried its blossoms carefully.
An old woman told me it would give me sight into
the future. She lied."

"... And the vampire-blood incites to violence?
Well, that's a new one to write down. By the way,
you just called me Karagee. I wish you wouldn't.
My name is Nomikos, Conrad Nomikos."

"Yes, Karagee. I was surprised to see you. I had
thought you died long ago, when your blazeboat
broke up in the bay."

"Karagee did die then. You have not mentioned
to anyone that I resemble him, have you?"

"No; I do not make idle talk."

"That's a good habit."

I crossed the room, selected a knife, weighed it,
threw it, and laid it about ten inches to the right of
center.

"Have you been working for Mister DOS Santos
very long?" I asked him.

"For about the period of a month," he replied.

He threw his knife. It struck five inches below the
center.

"You are his bodyguard, eh?"

"That is right. I also guard the blue one."

"Don says he fears an attempt on Myshtigo's life.
Is there an actual threat, or is he just being safe?"

"It is possible either way, Karagee. I do not
know. He pays me only to guard."

"If I paid you more, would you tell me whom
you've been hired to kill?"

"I have only been hired to guard, but I would not
tell you even if it were otherwise."

"I didn't think so. Let's go get the knives."

We crossed and drew the blades from the target.

THIS IMMORTAL

51

"Now, if it happens to be me-which is pos-
sible," I offered, "why don't we settle it right now?
We are each holding two blades. The man who
leaves this room will say that the other attacked him
and that it was a matter of self-defense. There are
no witnesses. We were both seen drunk or disorder-
ly last night."

"No, Karagee."

"No, what? No, it isn't me? Or no, you don't
want to do it that way?"

"I could say no, it is not you. But you would not
know whether I spoke the truth or not."

"That is true."

"I could say I do not want to do it that way."

"Is that true?"

"I do not say. But to give you the satisfaction of
an answer, what I will say is this: If I wished to kill
you, I would not attempt it with a knife in my hand,
nor would I box nor wrestle with you."

"Why is that?"

"Because many years ago when I was a boy I
worked at the Resort of Kerch, attending at the
tables of the wealthy Vegans. You did not know me
then- I had just come up from the places of Pamir.
You and your friend the poet came to Kerch."

"I remember now. Yes . . . Phil's parents had
died that year-they were good friends of mine-
and I was going to take Phil to the university. But
there was a Vegan who had taken his first woman
from him, taken her to Kerch. Yes, the entertainer

-I forget his name."

"He was Thrilpai Ligo, the shajadpa-boxer, and
he looked like a mountain at the end of a great plain

-high, immovable. He boxed with the Vegan cesti

-the leather strips with the ten sharpened studs

52 ROGER ZELAZNY

that go all the way around the hand-open-
handed."

"Yes, I remember. ..."

"You had never boxed shajadpa before, but you
fought with him for the girl, A great crowd came, of
the Vegans and the Earth girls, and I stood on a
table to watch. After a minute your head was all
blood. He tried to make it run into your eyes, and
you kept shaking your head. I was fifteen then and
had only killed three men myself, and I thought
that you were going to die because you had not even
touched him. And then your right hand crossed to
him like a thrown hammer, so fast! You struck him
in the center of that double bone the blue ones have
in their chests-and they are tougher there than we
-and you crushed him like an egg. I could never
have done that, I am sure-and that is why I fear
your hands and your arms- Later, I learned that
you had also broken a spiderbat.-No, Karagce, I
would kill you from a distance."

"That was so long ago.... I did not think any-
one remembered."

"You won the girl."

"Yes. I forget her name."

"But you did not give her back to the poet. You
kept her for yourself. That is why he probably hates
you."

"Phil? That girl? I've even forgotten what she
looked like."

"He has never forgotten. That is why I think he
hates you. I can smell hate, sniff out its sources.
You took away his first woman. I was there."

"It was her idea."

". . . And he grows old and you stay young. It is

THIS IMMORTAL            53

sad, Karagee, when a friend has reason to hate a
friend."

"Yes."

"And I do not answer your questions."

"It is possible that you were hired to kill the
Vegan."

"It is possible."

"Why?"

"I said only that it is possible, not that it is fact."

"Then I will ask you one more question only, and
be done with it. What good would come of the
Vegan's death? His book could be a very good thing
in the way of Vegan-human relations."

"1 do not know what good or bad would come of
it, Karagee. Let us throw more knives."

We did. I picked up ,thc range and the balance
and put two right in the center of the target. Then
Hasan squeezed two in beside them, the last one
giving out the sharp paincry of metal as it vibrated
against one of mine.

"I will tell you a thing," I said, as we drew them
again. "I am head of the tour and responsible for
the safety of its members. I, too, will guard the
Vegan."

"That will be a very good thing, Karagee. He
needs protecting."

I placed the knives back in the tray and moved to
the door.

"We will be leaving at nine tomorrow morning,
you know. I'll have a convoy of Skimmers at the first
field in the Office compound."

"Yes. Good night, Karagee."

". . .And call me Conrad."

"Yes."

54 ROGER ZELAZNY

He had a knife ready to throw at the target. I
closed the door and moved back up the corridor. As
I went, I heard another thunk, and it sounded much
closer than the first ones had. It echoed all around
me, there in the hallway.

As the six big Skimmers fled across the oceans
toward Egypt I turned my thoughts first to Kos and
Cassandra and then dragged them back with some
difficulty and sent them on ahead to the land of
sand, the Nile, mutated crocs, and some dead
Pharoahs whom one of my most current projects
was then disturbing. ("Death comes on swift wings
to he who defiles ..." etc.), and I thought then of
humanity, roughly ensconced on the Titan way-sta-
tion, working in the Earth-office, abasing itself on
Taler and Bakab, getting by on Mars, and doing so-
so on Rylpah, Divbah, Litan and a couple dozen
other worlds in the Vegan Combine. Then I
thought about the Vegans.

The blueskinned folk with the funny names and
the dimples like pock-marks had taken us in when
we were cold, fed us when we were hungry. Yeah-
They appreciated the fact that our Martian and
Titanian colonies had suffered from nearly a cen-
tury of sudden self-sufficiency-after the Three
Days incident-before a workable interstellar vehi-
cle had been developed. Like the boll weevil (Em-
met tells me) we were just looking for a home, be-
cause we'd used up the one we had. Did the Vegans
reach for the insecticide? No. Wise elder race that
they are, they permitted us to settle among their
worlds, to live and work in their landcities, their
seacities. For even a culture as advanced as the
Vegans' has some need for hand labor of the oppos-

THIS IMMORTAL

55

ing thumb variety. Good domestic servants cannot
be replaced by machines, nor can machine
monitors, good gardeners, salt sea fisherfolk, sub-
terranean and subsquean hazard workers, and
ethnic entertainers of the alien variety. Admittedly,
the presence of human dwelling places lowers the
value of adjacent Vegan properties, but then, hu-
mans themselves compensate for it by contributing
to the greater welfare.

Which thought brought me back to Earth. The
Vegans had never seen a completely devastated civ-
ilization before, so they were fascinated by our
home planet. Fascinated enough to tolerate our
absentee government on Taler. Enough to buy
Earthtour tickets to view the ruins. Even enough to
buy property here and set up resorts. There is a cer-
tain kind of fascination to a planet that is run like a
museum. (What was it James Joyce said about
Rome?) Anyhow, dead Earth still brings its living
grandchildren a small but appreciable revenue ev-
ery Vegan fiscal year. That is why-the Office,
Lorel, George, Phil, and all that,

Sort of why me, even.

Far below, the ocean was a bluegray rug being
pulled out from beneath us. The dark continent re-
placed it. We raced on toward New Cairo.

We set down outside the city. There's no real air-
strip. We just dropped all six Skimmers down in an
empty field we used as one, and we posted George
as a guard.

Old Cairo is still hot, but the people with whom
one can do business live mainly in New Cairo, so
things were pretty much okay for the tour. Mysh-
tigo did want to see the mosque of Kait Bey in the
City of the Dead, which had survived the Three

56 ROGER ZELAZNY

Days; he settled, though, for me taking him up in
my Skimmer and flying in low, slow circles about it
while he took photographs and did some peering. In
the way of monuments, it was really the pyramids
and Luxur, Karnak, and the Valley of Kings and
the Valley of Queens that he wanted to see.

It was well that we viewed the mosque from the
air. Dark shapes scurried below us, stopping only to
hurl rocks up toward the ship.

"What are they?" asked Myshtigo.

"Hot Ones," said I. "Sort of human. They vary
in size, shape, and meanness."

After circling for a time he was satisfied, and we
returned to the field.

So, landing again beneath a glaring sun, we se-
cured the final Skimmer and disembarked, moving
across equal proportions of sand and broken pave-
ment-two temporary tour assistants, me, Mysh-
tigo, DOS Santos and Red Wig, Ellen, Hasan. El-
len had decided at the last minute to accompany
her husband on the journey. There were fields of
high, shiny sugar cane on both sides of the road. In
a moment we had left them behind and were pass-
ing the low outbuildings of the city. The road
widened. Here and there a palm tree cast some
shade. Two great-eyed, brown-eyed children looked
up as we passed. They had been watching a weary,
six-legged cow turn a great sakieh wheel, in much
the same way as cows have always turned great
sakieh wheels hereabouts, only this one left more
hoofprints.

My area supervisor, Rameses Smith, met us at
the inn. He was big, his golden face tightly con-
tained within a fine net^of wrinkles; and he had the

THIS IMMORTAL           57

typical sad eyes, but his constant chuckle quickly
offset them.

We sat sipping beer in the main hall of the inn
while we waited for George. Local guards had been
sent to relieve him.     '

"The work is progressing well," Rameses told
me.

"Good," I said, somewhat pleased that no one
had asked me what "the work" was. I wanted to
surprise them.

"How is your wife, and the children?"

"They are fine," he stated.

"The new<me?"

"He has survived-and without defect," he said
proudly. "I sent my wife to Corsica until he was
delivered. Here is his picture."

I pretended to study it, making the expected ap-
preciative noises. Then, "Speaking of pictures," I
said, "do you need any more equipment for the
filming?"

"No, we are well-stocked. All goes well. When do
you wish to view the work?"

"Just as soon as we have something to eat."

"Are you a Moslem?" interrupted Myshtigo.

"I am of the Coptic faith," replied Rameses, not
smiling.

"Oh, really? That was the Monophysite heresy,
was it not?"

"We do not consider ourselves heretics," said
Rameses.

I sat there wondering if we Greeks had done the
right thing in unleashing logic onto a hapless world,
as Myshtigo launched into an amusing (to him)
catalog of Christian heresies. In a fit of spite at hav-

58 ROGER ZELAZNY

ing to guide a tour, I recorded them all in the Tour
Log. Later, Lorel told me that it was a fine and
well-kept document. Which just goes to show how
nasty I must have felt at that moment, I even put in
the bit about the accidental canonization of Buddha
as St. Josaphat in the sixteenth century. Finally, as
Myshtigo sat there mocking us, I realized I would
either have to cut him down or change the subject.
Not being a Christian myself, his theological com-
edy of errors did not poke me in the religious plex-
us. It bothered me, though, that a member of an-
other race had gone to such trouble doing research
to make us look like a pack of idiots,

Reconsidering the thing at this time, I know now
that I was wrong. The success of the viewtape I was
making then ("the word" which Rameses had re-
ferred to) bears out a more recent hypothesis of
mine concerning the Vegans: They were so bloody
bored with themselves and we were so novel that
they seized upon our perennially popular problems
and our classical problems, as well as the one we
were currently presenting in the flesh. They en-
gaged in massive speculation as to who really wrote
Shakespeare's plays, whether or not Napoleon ac-
tually died on St. Helena, who were the first Eu-
ropeans to set foot on North America, and if the
books of Charles Fort indicated that Earth had
been visited by an intelligent race unknown to them
-and so on. High caste Vegan society just eats up
our medieval theological debates, too. Funny.

"About your book, Srin Shtigo ..." I inter-
rupted.

My use of the honorific stopped him.

"Yes?" he answered.

"My impression," said I, "is that you do not wish

THIS IMMORTAL            59

to discuss it at any length at this time. I respect this
feeling, of course, but it places me in a slightly
awkward position as head of this tour." We both
knew I should have asked him in private, especially
after his reply to Phil at the reception, but I was
feeling cantankerous and wanted to let him know it,
as well as to rechannel the talk. So, "I'm curious,"
I said, "whether it will be primarily a travelogue of
the places we visit, or if you would like assistance in
directing your attention to special local conditions
of any sort-say, political, or current cultural
items."

"I am primarily interested in writing a descrip-
tive travelbook," he said, "but I will appreciate
your comments as we go along. I thought that was
your job, anyway. As it is, I do have a general
awareness of Earth traditions and current affairs,
and I'm not very much concerned with them."

DOS Santos, who was pacing and smoking as our
meai^was being prepared, stopped in mid-stride
and said, "Srin Shtigo, what are your feelings to-
ward the Returnist movement? Are you sympa-
thetic with our aims? Or do you consider it a dead
issue?"

"Yes," he replied, ^o the latter. I believe that
when one is dead one's only obligation then is to
satisfy the consumer. I respect your aims, but I do
not see how you can possibly hope to realize them.
Why should your people give up the security they
now possess to return to this place? Most of the
members of the present generation have never even
seen the Earth, except on tapes-and you must ad-
mit that they are hardly the most encouraging
documents,"

"I disagree with you," said DOS Santos, "and I

60 ROGER ZELAZNY

find your attitude dreadfully patrician."

"That is as it should be," replied Myshtigo.

George and the food arrived at about the same
time. The waiters began serving the food.

"I should prefer to eat at a small table by my-
self," DOS Santos instructed a waiter.

"You are here because you asked to be here," I
mentioned.

He stopped in mid-flight and cast a furtive look at
Red Wig, who happened to be sitting at my right
hand- I thought I detected an almost imperceptible
movement of her head, first to the left, then to the
right.

DOS Santos composed his features around a small
smile and bowed slightly.

"Forgive my Latin temperament," he observed.
"I should hardly expect to convert anyone to Re-
turnism in five minutes-and it has always been dif-
ficult for me to conceal my feelings."

"That is somewhat obvious."

"I'm hungry, "I said.

He seated himself across from us, next to George.

"Behold the Sphinx," said Red Wig, gesturing
toward an etching on the far wall, "whose speech
alternates between long periods of silence and an
occasional riddle. Old as time. Highly respected.
Doubtless senile. She keeps her mouth shut and
waits. For what? Who knows?-Does your taste in
art run to the monolithic, Srin Shtigo?"

"Occasionally," he observed, from my left.

DOS Santos glanced once, quickly, over his shoul-
der, then back at Diane. He said nothing.

I asked Red Wig to pass me the salt and she did.
I really wanted to dump it on her, to make her stay
put so that I could study her at my leisure, but I

THIS IMMORTAL          61

used it on the potatoes instead.
Behold the Sphinx, indeed!

High sun, short shadows, hot-that's how it was.
I didn't want any sand-cars or Skimmers spoiling
the .scene, so I made everybody hike it. It wasn't
that far, and I took a slightly roundabout way in
order to achieve the calculated effect.

We walked a crooked mile, climbing some, dip-
ping some. I confiscated George's butterfly net so as
to prevent any annoying pauses as we passed by the
several clover fields which lay along our route.

Walking backward through time, that's how it
was-with bright birds flashing by {dare! claret), and
a couple camels appearing against the far horizon
whenever we topped a small rise. (Camel outlines,
really, done up in charcoal; but that's enough. Who
cares about a camel's expressions? Not even other
camels-not really. Sickening beasts. . . .) A short,
swarthy woman trudged past us with a tall jar on
her head. Myshtigo remarked on this fact to his
pocket secretary, I nodded to the woman and spoke
a greeting. The woman returned the greeting but
did not nod back, naturally. Ellen, moist already,
kept fanning herself with a big green feather tri-
angle; Red Wig walked tall, tiny beads of per-
spiration seasoning her upper lip, eyes hidden be-
hind sunshades which had darkened themselves as
much as they could. Finally, we were there. We
climbed the last, low hill.

"Behold," said Rameses.

"/A/arfre de Diosf^ said DOS Santos.

Hasan grunted.

Red Wig turned toward me quickly, then turned
away. I couldn't read her expression because of the

62 ROGER ZELAZNY

shades. Ellen kept fanning herself-

"What are they doing? asked Myshtigo. It was
the first time I had seen him genuinely surprised.

"Why, they're dismantling the great pyramid of
Cheops," I said.

After a time Red Wig asked it.

"Why?"

"Well now," I told her, "they're kind of short on
building materials hereabouts, the stuff from Old
Cairo being radioactive-so they're obtaining it by
knocking apart that old piece of solid geometry out
there."

"They are desecrating a monument to the past
glories of the human race!*' she exclaimed.

"Nothing is cheaper than past glories," I ob-
served. "It's the present that we're concerned with,
and they need building materials now."

"For how long has this been going on?" asked
Myshtigo, his words rushing together.

"It was three days ago," said Rameses, "that we
began the dismantling."

"What gives you the right to do a thing like
that?"

"It was authorized by the Earthoffice Depart-
ment of Arts, Monuments and Archives, Srin."

Myshtigo turned to me, his amber eyes glowing
strangely.

"You! "he said.

"I," I acknowledged, "am Commissioner thereof
-that is correct."

"Why has no one else heard of this action of

lil

3"

yours r

"Because very few people come here anymore," I
explained. -"Which is another good reason for
dismantling the thing. It doesn't even get looked at

THIS IMMORTAL           63

much these days. I do have the authority to author-
ize such actions."

"I came here from another world to see it!"

"Well, take a quick look, then," I told him. "It's
going away fast,"

He turned and stared.

"You obviously have no conception of its intrinsic
value. Or if you do ..."

"On the contrary, I know exactly what it's
worth."

". . . And those unfortunate creatures you have
working down there"-his voice rose as he studied
the scene -"under the hot rays of your ugly sun-
they're laboring under the most primitive condi-
tions! Haven't you ever heard of moving machin-
ery?"

"Of course. It's expensive."

"All those men volunteered for the job, at token
salaries-and Actors' Equity won't let us use the
whips, even though the men argued in favor of it.
All we're allowed to do is crack them in the air near
them."

"Actors' Equity?"

"Their union. -Want to see some machinery?"
I gestured, "Look up on that hill."

He did.

"What's going on there?"

"We're recording it on viewtape."

"To what end?"

"When we're finished we're going to edit it down
to viewable length and run it backwards. 'The
Building of the Great Pyramid,' we're going to call
it. Should be good for some laughs-also money.
Your historians have been conjecturing as to exact-
ly how we put it together ever since the day they

64 ROGER ZELAZNY

heard about it. This may make them somewhat
happier. I decided a B.F.M.I, operation would go
over best."

"B.F.M.L?"

"Brute Force and Massive Ignorance- Look at
them jamming it up, will you?-following the cam-
era, lying down and standing up quickly when it
swings in their direction. They'll be collapsing all
over the place in the finished product. But then, this
is the first Earthfilm in years. They're real excited."

DOS Santos regarded Red Wig's bared teeth and
the bunched muscles beneath her eyes. He glared at
the pyramid.

"You are a madman!" he announced.

"No," I replied. "The absence of a monument
can, in its own way, be something of a monument
also."

"A monument to Conrad Nomikos," he stated.

"No," said Red Wig then. "There is destructive
art as surely as there is creative art. I think he may
be attempting such a thing. He is playing Caligula.
Perhaps I can even see why."

"Thank you."

"You are not welcome. I said 'perhaps.' -An
artist does it with love."

"Love is a negative form of hatred."

" *I am dying, Egypt, dying,' " said Ellen.

Myshtigo laughed.

"You are tougher than I thought, Nomikos," he
observed. "But you are not indispensable."

"Try having a civil servant fired-especially me."

"It might be easier than you think."

"We'll see."

"We may."

We turned again toward the great 90 percent

THIS IMMORTAL            65

pyramid of Cheops/Khufu. Myshtigo began taking
notes once more.

"I'd rather you viewed it from here, for now," I
said. "Our presence would waste valuable footage.
We're anachronisms. We can go down during coffee
break."

"I agree," said Myshtigo, "and I am certain I
know an anachronism when I see one. But I have
seen all that I care to here. Let us go back to the
inn. I wish to talk with the locals."

After a moment, "I'll see Sakkara ahead of sched-
ule, then," he mused. "You haven't begun dis-
mantling all the monuments of Luxor, Karnak, and
the Valley of Kings yet, have you?"

"Not yet, no."

"Good. Then well visit them ahead of time."

"Then let's not stand here," said Ellen. "This
heat is beastly."

So we returned.

"Do you really mean everything you say?" asked
Diane as we walked back.

"In my fashion."

"How do you think of such things?"

"In Greek, of course. Then I translate them into
English. I'm real good at it."

"Who are you?"

"Ozymandias. Look at my works ye mighty and
despair."

"I'm not mighty."

"I wonder. ..." I said, and I left the pan of her
face that I could see wearing a rather funny ex-
pression as we walked along.

"Let me tell you of the boadile," said I.
Our felucca moved slowly along that dazzling

66

ROGER ZELAZNY

waterpath that burns its way before the great gray
colonnades of Luxor. Myshtigo's back was to me.
He was staring at those columns, dictating an occa-
sional impression.

"Where will we put ashore?" he asked me.
"About a mile further up ahead. Perhaps I had
better tell you about the boadile.'*

"I know what a boadile is. I told you that I had
studied your world."

"Uh-huh. Reading about them is one thing . . ."
"I have also seen boadiles. There are four in the
Earthgarden on Taler."

". . . and seeing them in a tank is another thing."
"Between yourself and Hasan we are a veritable
floating aresenal. I count three grenades on your
belt, four on his."

"You can't use a grenade if one is on top of you

-not without defeating the purpose of self-defense,
that is. If it's any further away you can't hit it with
one. They move too fast."

He finally turned. *

"What do you use?"

I reached inside my galabieh (having gone
native) and withdrew the weapon I always try to
have on hand when I come this way.

He examined it.

"Name it." .

"It's a machine-pistol. Fires meta-cyanide slugs

-one ton impact when a round strikes. Not real
accurate, but that's not necessary. It's patterned
after a twentieth century handgun called a
Schmeisser."

"It's rather unwieldy. Will it stop a boadile?"
"If you're lucky. I have a couple more in one of
the cases. Want one?"

THIS IMMORTAL            67

"No, thank you," He paused. "But you can tell
me more about the boadile. I really only glanced at
them that day, and they were pretty well sub-
merged."

"Well. . . Head something like a croc's, only big-
ger. Around forty feet long. Able to roll itself into a
big beachball with teeth. Fast on land or in water-
and a hell of a lot of little legs on each side-'*

"How many legs?" he interrupted.

"Hm." I stopped. "To tell you absolute truth,
I've never counted. Just a second.

"Hey, George," I called out, to where Earth's
eminent chief biologist lay dozing in the shade of
the sail. "How many legs on a boadile?"

He rose to his feet, stretched slightly and came up
beside us.

"Boadiles," he mused, poking a finger into his
ear and leafing through the files inside. "They're
definitely of the class reptilia-of that much we're
certain. Whether they're of the order crocodilia,
suborder of their own, or whether they're of the or-
der squamata, suborder lacertilia, family neopoda
-as a colleague of mine on Taler half-seriously in-
sists-we are not certain. To me they are somewhat
reminiscent of pre-Three Day photo-reproduction
of artists' conceptions of the Mesozoic phytosaurus
with, of course, the supernumerary legs and the
constrictive ability. So I favor the order crocodilia
myself."

He leaned on the rail and stared out across the
shimmering water.

I saw then that he wasn't about to say anything
else, so, "So how many legs on one?" I asked again.

"Eh? Legs? I never counted them. If we're lucky
we might get a chance to, though. There are lots

68 ROGER ZELAZNY

around here. -The young one I had didn't last too
long."

"What happened to it?" asked Myshtigo.

"My megadonaplaty ate it."

' * Megadonaplaty ? *'

"Sort of like a duck-billed platypus with teeth," I
explained, "and about ten feet high. Picture that.
So far as we know, they've only been seen about
three or four tirhes. Australian, We got ours through
a fortunate accident. Probably won't last, as a spec-
ies-the way boadiles will, I mean. They're ov-
iparous mammals, and their eggs are too large for a
hungry world to permit the continuance of the spec-
ies-if it is a true species. Maybe they're just
isolated sports."

"Perhaps," said George, nodding wisely; "and
then again perhaps not."

Myshtigo turned away, shaking his head.

Hasan had partly unpacked his robot golem-
Rolem-and was fooling with its controls. Ellen
had finally given up on simicoloring and was lying
in the sun getting burnt all over. Red Wig and DOS
Santos were plotting something at the other end of
the vessel. Those two never just meet; they always
have assignations. Our felucca moved slowly along
the dazzling waterpath that burns its way before
the great gray colonnades of Luxor, and I decided it
was time to head it in toward the shore and see
what was new among the tombs and ruined
temples.

The next six days were rather uneventful and
somewhat unforgettable, extremely active, and sort
of ugly-beautiful-in the way that a flower can be,
with its petals all intact and a dark and runny rot-

THIS IMMORTAL           69

spot in the center. Here's how. . . .

Myshtigo must have interviewed every stone ram
along the four miles of the Way to Karnak. Both in
the blaze of day and by torchlight we navigated the
ruins, disturbing bats, rats, snakes and insects, lis-
tening to the Vegan's monotonous note-taking in
his monotonous language. At night we camped on
the sands, setting up a two hundred meter electrical
warning perimeter and posting two guards. The
boadile is cold-blooded; the nights were chill. So
there was relatively little danger from without.

Huge campfires lighted the nights, all about the
areas we chose, because the Vegan wanted things
primitive-for purposes of atmosphere, I guessed.
Our Skimmers were further south. We had flown
them to a place I knew of and left them there under
Office guard, renting the felucca for our trip-
which paralleled the King-GocPs journey from
Karnak to Luxor. Myshtigo had wanted it that
way. Nights, Hasan would either practice with the
assagai he had bartered from a big Nubian, or he
would strip to the waist and wrestle for hours with
his tireless golem.

A worthy opponent was the golem. Hasan had it
programmed at twice the statistically-averaged
strength of a man and had upped its reflex-time by
fifty percent. Its "memory" contained hundreds of
wrestling holds, and its governor theoretically pre-
vented it from killing or maiming its opponent-all
through a series of chemelectrical afferent nerve-
analogues which permitted it to gauge to an ounce
the amount of pressure necessary to snap a bone or
tear a tendon. Rolem was about five feet, six inches
in height and weighed around two hundred fifty
pounds; manufactured on Bakab, he was quite ex-

70 ROGER ZELAZNY

pensive, was dough-colored and caricature-fea-
tured, and his brains were located somewhere
below where his navel would be-if golems had
navels-to protect his think stuff from Greco-Ro-
man shocks. Even as it is, accidents can happen.
People have been killed by the things, when some-
thing goes amok in the brains or some afferents, or
just because the people themselves slipped or tried
to jerk away, supplying the necessary extra ounces.
I'd had one once, for almost a year, programmed
for boxing. I used to spend fifteen minutes or so
with it every afternoon. Got to thinking of it as a
person, almost. Then one day it fouled me and I
pounded it for over an hour and finally knocked its
head off. The thing kept right on boxing, and I
stopped thinking of it as a friendly sparring partner
right then. It's a weird feeling, boxing with a
headless golem, you know? Sort of like waking from
a pleasant dream and finding a nightmare crouched
at the foot of your bed. It doesn't really "see" its
opponent with those eye-things it has; it's all
sheathed about with piezo-electric radar mesentery,
and it "watches" from all its surfaces. Still, the
death of an illusion tends to disconcert. I turned
mine off and never turned it back on again. Sold it
to a camel trader for a pretty good price. Don't
know if he ever got the head back on. But he was a
Turk, so who cares?

Anyway-Hasan would tangle with Rolem, both
of them gleaming in the firelight, and we'd all sit on
blankets and watch, and bats would swoop low oc-
casionally, like big, fast ashes, and emaciated
clouds would cover the moon, veil-like, and then
move on again. It was that way on the third night,
when I went mad.

THIS IMMORTAL           71

I remember it only in the way you remember a
passing countryside you might have seen through a
late summer evening storm-as a series of isolated,
lightning-filled stillshots. . . .

Having spoken with Cassandra for the better part
of ah hour, I concluded the transmission with a
promise to cop a Skimmer the following afternoon
and spend the next night on Kos- I recall our last
words.

"Take care, Konstantin. I have been dreaming
bad dreams."

"Bosh, Cassandra. Good night."

And who knows but that her dreams might have
been the result of a temporal shockwave moving
backwards from a 9.6 Richter reading?

A certain cruel gleam filling his eyes, DOS Santos
applauded as Hasan hurled Rolem to the ground
with a thunderous crash. That particular
earthshaker continued, however, long after the
golem had climbed back to his feet and gotten into
another crouch, his arms doing serpent-things in
the Arab's direction. The ground shook and shook.

"What power! Still do I feel it!" cried DOS San-
tos. "Ole!"

"It is a seismic disturbance," said George. "Even
though I'm not a geologist-"

"Earthquake!" yelled his wife, dropping an un-
pasturized date she had been feeding Myshtigo.

There was no reason to run, no place to run to.
There was nothing nearby that could fall on us. The
ground was level and pretty barren. So we just sat
there and were thrown about, even knocked flat a
few times. The fires did amazing things.

Rolem's time was up and he went stiff then, and
Hasan came and sat with George and me. The

72 ROGER ZELAZNY

tremors lasted the better part of an hour, and they
came again, more weakly, many times during that
night. After the first bad shock had run its course,
we got in touch with the Port. The instruments
there showed that the center of the thing lay a good
distance to the north of us.

A bad distance, really.

... In the Mediterranean,

The Aegean, to be more specific.

I felt sick, and suddenly I was.

I tried to put through a call to Kos.

Nothing,

My Cassandra, my lovely lady, my princess. . . .
Where was she? For two hours I tried to find out.
Then the Port called me.

It was Lord's voice, not just some lob watch

operator's.

"Uh-Conrad, I don't know how to tell you, ex-
actly, what happened ..."

"Just talk," I said, "and stop when you're fin-
ished."

"An observe-satellite passed your way about
twelve minutes ago," he crackled across the bands.
"Several of the Aegean islands were no longer
present in the pictures it transmitted ..."

"No," I said.

"I'm afraid that Kos was one of them."

"No," I said.

"I'm sorry," he told me, "but that is the way it
shows. I don't know what else to say...."

"That's enough," I said. "That's all. That's it.
Goodbye. We'll talk more later. No! I guess-No!"

"Wait! Conrad!"

I went mad.

Bats, shaken loose from the night, were swooping

THIS IMMORTAL            73

about me. I struck out with my right hand and
killed one as it flashed in my direction. I waited a
few seconds and killed another. Then I picked up a
big rock with both hands and was about to smash
the radio when George laid a hand on my shoulder,
and I dropped the rock and knocked his hand away
and backhanded him across the mouth. I don't
know what became of him then, but as I stooped to
raise the rock once more I heard the sound of foot-
falls behind me. I dropped to one knee and pivoted
on it, scooping up a handful of sand to throw in
someone's eyes. They were all of them there: Mysh-
tigo and Red Wig and DOS Santos, Rameses, El-
len, three local civil servants, and Hasan-ap-
proaching in a group. Someone yelled "Scatter!"
when they saw my face, and they fanned out.

Then they were everyone I'd ever hated-I could
feel it. I saw other faces, heard other voices. Ev-
eryone I'd ever known, hated, wanted to smash,
had smashed, stood there resurrected before the
fire, and only the whites of their teeth were showing
through the shadows that crossed over their faces as
they smiled and came toward me, bearing various
dooms in their hands, and soft, persuasive words on
their lips-so I threw the sand at the foremost and
rushed him.

My uppercut knocked him over backward, then
two Egyptians were on me from both sides.

I shook them loose, and in the comer of my
colder eye saw a great Arab with something like a
black avocado in his hand. He was swinging it to-
ward my head, so I dropped down. He had been
coming in my direction and I managed to give his
stomach more than just a shove, so he sat down
suddenly. Then the two men I had thrown away

74 ROGER ZELAZNY

were back on me again. A woman was screaming,
somewhere in the distance, but I couldn't see any

women.

I tore my right arm free and batted someone with
it, and the man went down and another took his
place. From straight ahead a blue man threw a rock
which struck me on the shoulder and only made me
madder. I raised a kicking body into the air and
threw it against another, then I hit someone with
my fist. I shook myself. My galabieh was torn and
dirty, so I tore it the rest of the way off and threw it

away.

I looked around. They had stopped coming at
me, and it wasn't fair-it wasn't fair that they
should stop then when I wanted so badly to see
things breaking. So I raised up the man at my feet
and slapped him down again. Then I raised him up
again and someone yelled "Eh! Karaghiosis!" and
began calling me names in broken Greek. I let the
man fall back to the ground and turned.

There, before the fire-there were two of them:

one tall and bearded, the other squat and heavy and
hairless and molded out of a mixture of putty and

earth,                                                t
"My friend says he will break you, Greek!"      v-
called out the tall one, as he did something to the

other's back.                                      ^
I moved toward them and the man of putty and     H

mud sprang at me.                                j|
He tripped me, but I came up again fast and     H:

caught him beneath the armpits and threw him off     ^
to the side. But he recovered his footing as rapidly      A
as I had, and he came back again and caught me
behind the neck with one hand. I did the same to
him, also seizing his elbow-and we locked together

THIS IMMORTAL            75

there, and he was strong.

Because he was strong, I kept changing holds,
testing his strength. He was also fast, accommodat-
ing every move I made almost as soon as I thought
of it.

I threw my arms up between his, hard, and
stepped back on my reinforced leg. Freed for a mo-
ment, we orbited each other, seeking another open-
ing.

I kept my arms low and I was bent well forward
because of his shortness, For a moment my arms
were too near my sides, and he moved in faster than
I had seen anyone move before, ever, and he caught
me in a body lock that squeezed the big flat flowers
of moisture out of my pores and caused a great pain
in my sides.

Still his arms tightened, and I knew that it would
not be long before he broke me unless I could break
his hold.

I doubled my hands into fists and got them
against his belly and pushed. His grip tightened. I
stepped backward and heaved forward with both
arms. My hands went up higher between us and I
got my right fist against the palm of my left hand
and began to push them together and lift with my
arms. My head swam as my arms came up higher,
and my kidneys were on fire. Then I tightened all
the muscles in my back and my shoulders and felt
the strength flow down through my arms and come
together in my hands, and I smashed them up to-
ward the sky and his chin happened to be in the
way, but it didn't stop them.

My arms shot up over my head and he fell back-
ward.

It should have broken a man's neck, the force of

76 ROGER ZELAZNY

that big snap that came when my hands struck his
chin and he got a look at his heels from the back-
side.

But he sprang up immediately, and I knew then
that he was no mortal wrestler, but one of those
creatures born not of woman; rather, I knew, he
had been torn Antaeus-like from the womb of the
Earth herself.

I brought my hands down hard on his shoulders
and he dropped to his knees. I caught him across
the throat then and stepped to his right side and got
my left knee under the lower part of his back. I
leaned forward, bearing down on his thighs and
shoulders, trying to break him.

But I couldn't. He just kept bending until his
head touched the ground and I couldn't push him

any further.

No one's back bends like that and doesn't snap,

but his did.

Then I heaved up with my knee and let go, and
he was on me again-that fast.

So I tried to strangle him. My arms were much
longer than his. I caught him by the throat with
both hands, my thumbs pressing hard against what
should have been his windpipe. He got his arms
across mine though, at the elbows and inside, and
began to pull downward and out. I kept squeezing,
waiting for his face to darken, his eyes to bug out.
My elbows began to bend under his downward

pressure.

Then his arms came across and caught me by the

throat.

And we stood there and choked one another.
Only he wouldn't be strangled.

His thumbs were like two spikes pressing into the

THIS IMMORTAL

77

muscles in my neck. I felt my face flush. My temples
began to throb.

Off in the distance, I heard a scream:

"Stop it, Hasan! It's not supposed to do that!"

It sounded like Red Wig*s voice. Anyhow, that's
the name that came into my head: Red Wig. Which
meant that Donald DOS Santos was somewhere
nearby. And she had said "Hasan," a name written
on another picture that came suddenly clear.

Which meant that I was Conrad and that I was
in Egypt, and that the expressionless face swim-
ming before me was therefore that of the golem-
wrestler, Rolem, a creature which could be set for
five times the strength of a human being and proba-
bly was so set, a creature which could be given the
reflexes of an adrenalized cat, and doubtless had
them in full operation.

Only a golem wasn't supposed to kilt, except by
accident, and Rolem was trying to kill me.

Which meant that his governor wasn't function-
ing.

I released my choke, seeing that it wasn't work-
ing, and I placed the palm of my left hand beneath
his right elbow. Then I reached across the top of his
arms and seized his right wrist with my other hand,
and I crouched as low as I could and pushed up on
his elbow and pulled up on his wrist.

As he went off balance to his left and the grip was
broken I kept hold of the wrist, twisting it so that
the elbow was exposed upwards. I stiffened my left
hand, snapped it up beside my ear, and brought it
down across the elbow joint.

Nothing. There was no snapping sound. The arm
just gave way, bending backward at an unnatural
angle.

78 ROGER ZELAZNY

I released the wrist and he fell to one knee. Then
he stood again, quickly, and as he did so the arm
straightened itself and then bent forward again into

a normal position.

If I knew Hasan's mind, then Rolem's timer had
been set for maximum-two hours. Which was a
pretty long time, all things considered.

But this time around I knew who I was and what
I was doing. Also, I knew what went into the struc-
turing of a golem. This one was a wrestling golem.
Therefore, it could not box.

I cast a quick look back over my shoulder, to the
place where I had been standing when the whole
thing had started-over by the radio tent. It was
about fifty feet away.

He almost had me then. Just during that split
second while I had turned my attention to the rear
he had reached out and seized me behind the neck
with one hand and caught me beneath the chin with

the other.

He might have broken my neck, had he been able
to follow through, but there came another tremblor
at that moment-a severe one, which cast us both
to the ground-and I broke this hold, also.

I scrambled to my feet seconds later, and the
earth was still shaking. Rolem was up too, though,
and facing me again.

We were like two drunken sailors fighting on a
storm-tossed ship. . . .

He came at me and I gave ground.

I hit him with a left jab, and while he snatched at
my arm I punched him in the stomach. Then I

backed off.

He came on again and I kept throwing punches.
Boxing was to him what the fourth dimension is to

THIS IMMORTAL          79

me-he just couldn't see it. He kept advancing,
shaking off my punches, and I kept retreating in the
direction of the radio tent, and the ground kept
shaking, and somewhere a woman was screaming,
and I heard a shouted "Ole!" as I landed a right
below the belt, hoping to jar his brains a bit.

Then we were there and I saw what I wanted-
the big rock I'd intended to use on the radio. I
feinted with my left, then seized him, shoulder-and-
thigh, and raised him high up over my head.

I bent backwards, tightened up my muscles, and
hurled him down upon the rock.

It caught him in the stomach.

He began to rise again, but more slowly than he
had before, and I kicked him in the stomach three
times, with my great reinforced right boot, and I
watched him sink back down.

A strange whirring sound had begun in his mid-
section.

The ground shook again. Rolem crumpled,
stretched out, and the only sign of motion was in
the fingers of his left hand. They kept clenching and
unclenching-reminding me, oddly, of Hasan's
hands that night back at the hounfor.

Then I turned slowly and they were all standing
there: Myshtigo and Ellen, and DOS Santos with a
puffed-up cheek, Red Wig, George, Rameses and
Hasan, and the three plastaged Egyptians. I took a
step toward them then and they began to fan out
again, their faces filling with fear. But I shook my
head.

"No, I'm all right now,** I said, "but leave me
alone. I'm going down to the river to bathe." I took
A   seven steps, and then someone must have pulled out
^   the plug, because I gurgled, everything swirled, and

80

ROGER ZELAZNY

the world ran away down the drain.

The days that followed were ashes and the nights
were iron. The spirit that had been torn from my
soul was buried deeper than any mummy that lay
mouldering beneath those sands. It is said that the
dead forget the dead in the house of Hades, Cassan-
dra, but I hoped it was not so. I went through the
motions of conducting a tour, and Lorel suggested
that I appoint someone else to finish it out and take
a leave of absence myself.
I couldn't.

What would I do then? Sit and brood in some
Old Place, cadging drinks from unwary travelers?
No. Some kind of motion is always essential at such
times; its forms eventually generate a content for
their empty insides. So I went on with the tour and
turned my attention to the small mysteries it con-
tained.

I took Rolem apart and studied his governor. It
had been broken, of course-which meant that
either I had done it during the early stages of our
conflict, or Hasan had done it as he had souped him
up to take the fight out of me. If Hasan had done it,
then he did not just want me beaten, but dead. If
such was the case, then the question was. Why? I
wondered whether his employer knew that I had
once been Karaghiosis. If he did, though, why
should he want to kill the founder and first Secre-
tary of his own Party?-the man who had sworn
that he would not see the Earth sold out from under
him and turned into a sporting house by a pack of
blue aliens-not see it without fighting, anyhow-
and had organized about himself a cabal which sys-
tematically lowered the value of all Vegan-owned
Terran property to zero, and even went so far as to

THIS IMMORTAL           81

raze the Talerites* lush realty office on Madagascar

-the man whose ideals he allegedly espoused,
though they were currently being channeled into
more peaceful, legalistic modes of property-defense

-why should he want that man dead?

There, he had cither sold out the Party, or he
didn't know who I was and had had some other end
in mind when he'd instructed Hasan to kill me.

Or else Hasan was acting under someone else's
orders.

But who else could there be? And again, why?

I had no answer. I decided I wanted one.

The first condolence had been George's.
"I'm sorry, Conrad," he'd said, looking past my
elbow, and then down at the sand, and then glanc-
ing up quickly into my face.

Saying human things upset him, and made him
want to go away. I could tell. It is doubtful that the
parade consisting of Ellen and myself, which had
passed that previous summer, had occupied much
of his attention. His passions stopped outside the
biological laboratory. I remember when he'd dis-
sected the last dog on Earth. After four years of
scratching his ears and combing the fleas from his
tail and listening to him bark, George had called
Rolf to him one day. Rolf had trotted in, bringing
along the old dishrag they'd always played at tug-
of-war with, and George had tugged him real close
and give him a hypo and then opened him up. He'd
wanted to get him while he was still in his prime.
Still has the skeleton mounted in his lab. He'd also
wanted to raise his kids-Mark and Dorothy and
Jim-in Skinner Boxes, but Ellen had put her foot
down each time (like hang! bang! bang!} in post-

82 ROGER ZELAZNY

pregnancy seizures of motherhood which had lasted
for at least a month-which had been just long
enough to spoil the initial stimuli-balances George
had wanted to establish. So I couldn't really see
him as having much desire to take my measure for
a wooden sleeping bag of the underground sort. If
he'd wanted me dead, it would probably have been
subtle, fast, and exotic-with something like Div-
ban rabbit-venom. But no, he didn't care that
much, I was sure.

Ellen herself, while she is capable of intense feel-
ings, is ever the faulty windup doll. Something
always goes sprang before she can take action on her
feelings, and by the next day she feels as strongly
about something else. She'd choked me to death
back at the Port, and as far as she was concerned
that affair was a dead issue. Her condolence went
something like this:

"Conrad, you just don't know how sorry I am!
Really. Even though I never met her, I know how you
must feel," and her voice went up and down the
scale, and I knew she believed what she was saying,
and I thanked her too.

Hasan, though, came up beside me while I was
standing there, staring out over the suddenly
swollen and muddy Nile. We stood together for a
time and then he said, "Your woman is gone and
your heart is heavy. Words will not lighten the
weight, and what is written is written. But let it also
be put down that I grieve with you." Then we stood
there awhile longer and he walked away.

I didn't wonder about him. He was the one per-
son who could be dismissed, even though his hand
had set the machine in motion. He never held
grudges; he never killed for free. He had no person-

THIS IMMORTAL

83

al motive to kill me. That his condolences were
genuine, I was certain. Killing me would have noth-
ing to do with the sincerity of his feelings in a mat-
ter like this. A true professional must respect some
sort of boundary between self and task.

Myshtigo said no words of sympathy. It would
have been alien to his nature. Among the Vegans,
death is a time of rejoicing. On the spiritual level it
means sagi-completion-the fragmentation of the
psyche into little pleasure-sensing pinpricks, which
are scattered all over the place to participate in the
great universal orgasm; and on the material plane it
is represented by wsakundabad't-the ceremonial
auditing of most of the deceased's personal
possessions, the reading of his distribution-desire
and the division of his wealth, accompanied by
much feasting, singing, and drinking.

DOS Santos said to me: "It is a sad thing that has
happened to you, my friend. It is to lose the blood
of one's own veins to lose one's woman. Your sor-
row is great and you cannot be comforted. It is like
a smoldering fire that will not die out, and it is a sad
and terrible thing.

"Death is cruel and it is dark," he finished, and
his eyes were moist-for be it Gypsy, Jew, Moor, or
what have you, a victim is a victim to a Spaniard, a
thing to be appreciated on one of those mystically
obscure levels which I lack.

Then Red Wig came up beside me and said,
"Dreadful. . . . Sorry. Nothing else to say, to do,
but sorry."

I nodded.

"Thanks."

"And there is something I must ask you. Not
now, though. Later."

84

ROGER ZELAZNY

"Sure," I said, and I returned to watching the
river after they left, and I thought about those last
two. They had sounded as sorry as everyone else,
but it seemed they had to be mixed up in the golem
business, somehow. I was sure, though, that it had
been Diane who had screamed white Rolem had
been choking me, screamed for Hasan to stop him.
That left Don, and I had by then come to entertain
strong doubts that he ever did anything without
first consulting her.

Which left nobody.

And there was no real motive apparent. . . .

And it could all have been an accident. . . .

But ...

But I had this feeling that someone wanted to kill
me. I knew that Hasan was not above taking two
jobs at the same time, and for different employers,
if there was no conflict of interests.

And this made me happy.

It gave me a purpose, something to do.

There's really nothing quite like someone's want-
ing you dead to make you want to go on living. I
would find him, find out why, and stop him.

Death's second pass was fast, and as much as I
would have liked to have pinned it on human agent,
I couldn't. It was just one of those diddles of dumb
destiny which sometimes come like uninvited guests
at dinner-time. Its finale, however, left me quite
puzzled and gave me some new, confusing thoughts
to think.

It came like this. . . .

Down by the river, that great fertile flooder, that
eraser of boundaries and father of plane geometry,
sat the Vegan, making sketches of the opposite

THIS IMMORTAL

85

bank. I suppose had he been on that bank he would
have been sketching the one he sat upon, but this is
cynical conjecture. What bothered me was the fact
that he had come off alone, down to this warm,
marshy spot, had not told anyone where he was
going, and had brought along nothing more lethal
than a No. 2 pencil.
It happened.

An old, mottled log which had been drifting in
near the shore suddenly ceased being an old, mot-
tled log. A long, serpentine back end whipped sky-
ward, a bushel full of teeth appeared at the other
end, and lots of little legs found solid ground and
stared acting like wheels.

I yelled and snatched at my belt.
Myshtigo dropped his pad and bolted.
It was on him, though, and I couldn't fire then.
So I made a dash, but by the time I got there it
had two coils around him and he was about two
shades bluer, and those teeth were closing in on
him.

Now, there is one way to make any kind of con-
strictor loosen up, at least for a moment. I grabbed
for its high head, which had slowed down just a bit
as it contemplated its breakfast, and I managed to
catch my fingers under the scaly ridges at the sides
of that head.

I dug my thumbs into its eyes as hard as I could.
Then a spastic giant hit me with a graygreen
ship.

I picked myself up and I was about ten feet from
where I had been standing. Myshtigo had been
thrown further up the bank. He was recovering his
feet just as it attacked again.

Only it attacked me, not him.

86 ROGER ZELAZNY

It reared up about eight feet off the ground and
toppled toward me. I threw myself to the side and
that big, flat head missed me by inches, its impact
showering me with dirt and pebbles.

I rolled further and started to rise, but the tail
came around and knocked me down again. Then I
scrambled backward, but was too late to avoid the
coil it threw. It caught me low around the hips and

I fell again.

Then a pair of blue arms wrapped themselves
around the body above the coil, but they couldn't
hold on for more than a few seconds. Then we were
both tied up in knots.

I struggled, but how do you fight a thick, slippery
armored cable with messes of little legs that keep
tearing at you? My right arm was pinned to my side
by then, and I couldn't reach far enough with my
left hand to do any more gouging. The coils
tightened. The head moved toward me and I tore at
the body. I beat at it and I clawed it, and I finally
managed to tear my right arm free, giving up some
skin in the process.

I blocked with my right hand as the head de-
scended. My hand came up beneath the lower jaw,
caught it, and held it there, keeping the head back.
The big coil tightened around my waist, more pow-
erful than even the grip of the golem had been.
Then it shook its head sideways, away from my
hand, and the head came down and the jaws

opened wide.

Myshtigo's struggles must have irritated it and
slowed it some, giving me time for my last defense.

I thrust my hands up into its mouth and held its

jaws apart.

The roof of its mouth was slimy and my palm

.•^•'''
-.''?'•

^r-

THIS IMMORTAL          87

"began to slip along it, slowly. I pressed down harder
on the lower jaw, as hard as I could. The mouth
opened another half foot and seemed locked there.

It tried to draw back then, to make me let go, but
its coils bound us too tightly to give it the necessary
footage.

So it unwound a little, straightening some, and
pulling back its head. I gained a kneeling position.
Myshtigo was in a sagging crouch about six feet
away from me.

My right hand slipped some more, almost to the
point where I would lose all my leverage.
Then I heard a great cry.

The shudder came almost simultaneously. I
snapped my arms free as I felt the thing's strength
wane for a second. There was a dreadful clicking of
teeth and a final constriction. I blacked out for a
moment,

Then I was fighting free, untangling myself. The
smooth wooden shaft which had skewered the
boadile was taking the life from it, and its move-
ments suddenly became spasmodic rather than ag-
gressive.

I was knocked down twice by all its lashing
about, but I got Myshtigo free, and we got about
fifty feet away and watched it die. This took quite
awhile.

Hasan stood there, expressionless. The assagai
he had spent so much time practicing with had
done its work. When George dissected the creature
later we learned that the shaft had lodged within
two inches of its heart, severing the big artery. By
the way, it had two dozen legs, evenly distributed
on either side, as might be expected.

DOS Santos stood beside Hasan and Diane stood

88         ROGER ZELAZNY

beside DOS Santos. Everyone else from the camp

was there, too.

"Good show," I said. "Fine shot. Thanks."
"It was nothing," Hasan replied.

It was nothing, he had said. Nothing but the
death blow to my motion that he had gimmicked
the golem. If Hasan had tried to kill me then, why
should he have saved me from the boadile?

Unless what he had said back at the Port was the
overriding truth-that he had been hired to protect
the Vegan. If that was his main job and killing me
was only secondary, then he would have had to save
me as a by-product of keeping Myshtigo alive.
But then .. .
Oh hell. Forget it.

I threw a stone as far as I could, and another.
Our Skimmer would be flown up to our campsite
the following day and we would take off for Athens,
stopping only to drop Rameses and the three others
at New Cairo. I was glad I was leaving Egypt, with
its must and its dust and its dead, half-animal de-
ities. I was already sick of the place.

Then Phil's call came through from the Port, and
Rameses called me into the radio tent.
"Yeah?" said I, to the radio.
"Conrad, this is Phil. I've just written her elegy
and I should like to read it to you. Even though I
never met her, I've heard you speak of her and I've
seen her picture, so I think I've done a pretty good

job-"

"Please, Phil. I'm not interested in the consola-
tions of poetry right now. Some other time, per-
haps-"

"This is not one of the fill-in sort. I know that you

THIS IMMORTAL

89

'%
^•'1:

do not like those, and in a way I do not blame you."
My hand hovered above the cutoff toggle,
paused, reached for one of Ramses' cigarettes in-
stead.

"Sure, go ahead. I'm listening."

And he did, and it wasn't a bad job, either. I
don't remember much of it. I just remember those
crisp, clear words coming from halfway around the
world, and me standing there, bruised inside and
out, hearing them. He described the virtues of the
Nymph whom Poseidon had reached for but lost to
his brother Hades- He called for a general mourn-
ing among the elements. And as he spoke my mind
went time-traveling back to those two happy
months on Kos, and everything since then was
erased; and we were back aboard the Vanitie, sailing
toward our picnic islet with its semi-sacred grove,
and we were bathing together, and lying together in
the sun, holding hands and not saying anything,
just feeling the sunfall, like a waterfall bright and
dry and gentle, come down upon our. pink and na-
ked spirits, there on the endless beach that circled
and circled the tiny realm and always came back to
us.

And he was finished and cleared his throat a cou-
ple times, and my isle sank from sight, carrying that
one part of me along with it, because that was the
time that was.

"Thanks, Phil." I said. "That was very nice."
, "I am pleased that you find it appropriate," he
said. Then, "I am flying to Athens this afternoon. I
should like to join you on this leg of your tour, if it
is all right with you."

"Surely," I replied. "May I ask why, though?"

"I have decided that I want to see Greece once

90         ROGER ZELAZNY

more. Since you are going to be there it might make
it seem a little more like the old days. Fd like to take
a last look at some of the Old Places."

"You make it sound rather final."

"Well . . . I've pushed the S-S series about as far
as it will go. I fancy I can feel the mainspring run-
ning down now. Maybe it will take a few more
windings and maybe it won't. At any rate, I want to
see Greece again and I feel as if this is my last

chance."

"I'm sure you're wrong, but well all be dining at
the Garden Altar tomorrow evening, around eight."

"Fine. 111 see you then."

"Check."

"Goodbye, Conrad."

"Goodbye."

I went and showered and rubbed me with lini-
ment, and I put on clean clothing. I was still sore in
several places, but at least I felt clean. Then I went
and found the Vegan, who had just finished doing
the same thing, and I fixed him with my baleful

glare.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," I stated, "but one of
the reasons you wanted me to run this show is be-
cause I have a high survival potential. Is that cor-
rect?"

"That is correct."

"Thus far, I have done my best to see that it did
not remain potential, but that it was actively em-
ployed to promote the general welfare."

"Was that what you were doing when you at-
tacked the entire group single-handed?"

I started to reach for his throat, thought better of
it, dropped my hand. I was rewarded by a flicker of
fear that widened his eyes and twitched the corners

THIS IMMORTAL            91

of his mouth. He took a step backward.

"I'll overlook that," I told him. "I am here only
to take you where you want to go, and to sec that
you come back with a whole skin. You caused me a
small problem this morning by making yourself
available as boadile bait. Be warned, therefore, that
one does not go to hell to light a cigarette. Whether
you wish to go off by yourself, check first to see
whether you are in safe country." His gaze faltered.
He looked away. "If you are not," I continued,
"then take along an armed escort-since you refuse
to carry weapons yourself. That is all I have to say.

If you do not wish to cooperate, tell me now and I'll
quit and get you another guide. Lorel has already
suggested that I do this, anyhow.
"So what's the word?" I asked-
"Did Lorel really say that?"
"Yes."

"How extraordinary.. ., Well, certainly, yes. I
shall comply with your request. I see that it is a
prudent one."

"Great. You said you want to visit the Valley of
Queens again this afternoon. Rameses will take
you. I don't feel like doing it myself. We're pulling
out tomorrow morning at ten. Be ready."

I walked away then, waiting for him to say some-
thing-just one word even.
He didn't.

Fortunately, both for the survivors and for the
generations as yet unborn, Scotland had not been
hard hit during the Three Days. I fetched a bucket
of ice from the freeze-unit and a bottle of soda from
our mess tent. I turned on the cooling coil beside
my bunk, opened a fifth from out of my private
stock, and spent the rest of the afternoon reflecting

92           ROGER ZELAZNY
upon the futility of all human endeavor.

Late that evening, after I had sobered up to an
acceptable point and scrounged me a bite to eat, I
armed myself and went looking for some fresh air.

I heard voices as I neared the eastern end of the
warning perimeter, so I sat down in darkness, rest-
ing my back against a largish rock, and tried to
eavesdrop. I'd recognized the vibrant diminuendoes
of Myshtigo's voice, and I wanted to hear what he

was saying.

I couldn't, though-

They were a little too far away, and desert
acoustics are not always the finest in the world-1 sat
there straining with that part of me which listens,

and it happened as it sometimes does:

I was seated on a blanket beside Ellen and my
arm was around her shoulders. My blue arm. . . -

The whole thing faded as 1 recoiled from the no-
tion of being a Vegan, even in a pseudotelepathic
wish-fulfillment, and I was back beside my rock

once again.

1 was lonesome, though, and Ellen had seemed

softer than the rock, and I was still curious.
So I found myself back there once more,

observing. . . .

"... can't see it from here," I was saying, "but

Vega is a star of the first magnitude, located in what
your people call the constellation Lyra."

"What's it like on Taler?" asked Ellen.

There was a long pause. Then:

"Meaningful things are often the things people
are least able to describe. Sometimes, though, it is a
problem in communicating something for which

THIS IMMORTAL            93

there is no corresponding element in the person to
whom you are speaking. Taler is not like this place.
There are no deserts. The entire world is land-
scaped. But . . . Let me take that flower from your
hair. There. Look at it. What do you see?"

"A pretty white flower. That's why I picked it
and put it in my hair."

"But it is not a pretty white flower. Not to me,
anyhow. Your eyes perceive light with wavelengths
between about 4000 and 7200 angstrom units. The
eyes of a Vegan look deeper into the ultraviolet, for
one thing, down to around 3000. We are blind to
what you refer to as 'red,* but on this "white* flower
I see two colors for which there are no words in your
language. My body is covered with patterns you
cannot see, but they are close enough to those of the
others in my family so that another Vegan, familiar
with the Shtigogens, could tell my family and prov-
ince on our first meeting. Some of our paintings
look garish to Earth eyes, or even seem to be all of
one color-blue, usually-because the subtleties
are invisible to them. Much of our music would
seem to you to contain big gaps of silence, gaps
which are actually filled with melody- Our cities are
clean and logically disposed. They catch the light of
day and hold it long into the night. They are places
of slow movement, pleasant sounds. This means
much to me, but I do not know how to describe it to
a-human."

"But people-Earth people, I mean-live on
your worlds...."

"But they do not really see them or hear them or
feel them the way we do. There is a gulf we can
appreciate and understand, but we cannot really

94 ROGER ZELAZNY

cross it. That is why I cannot tell you what-Ta^er is
like. It would be a different world to you than the
world it is to me."

"I'd like to see it, though. Very much. I think I'd
even like to live there."

"I do not believe you would be happy there."

"Why not?"

"Because non-Vegan immigrants are non-Vegan
immigrants. You are not of a low caste here. I know
you do not use that term, but that is what it
amounts to. Your Office personnel and their fami-
lies are the highest caste on this planet. Wealthy
non-Office persons come next, then those who work
for the wealthy non-Office persons, followed by
those who make their own living from the land;

then, at the bottom, are those unfortunates who in-
habit the Old Places. You are at the top here. On
Taler you would be at the bottom,"

"Why/must it be that way?" she asked.

"Because you see a white flower." I handed it
back.

There was a long silence and a cool breeze.

"Anyhow I'm happy you came here," she said.

"It is an interesting place."

"Glad you like it."

"Was the man called Conrad really your lover?"

I recoiled at the suddenness of the question.

"It's none of your blue business," she said, "but
the answer is yes,"

"I can see why," he said, and I felt uncom-
fortable and maybe something like a voyeur, or-
subtlety of subtleties-one who watches a voyeur
watching.

"Why?" she asked.

THIS IMMORTAL            95

"Because you want the strange, the powerful, the
exotic; because you are never happy being where
you are, what you are."

"That's not true. . .. Maybe it is. Yes, he once
said something like that to me. Perhaps it is true."

I felt very sorry for her at that moment. Then,
without realizing it, as t wanted to console her in
some way, I reached out and took her hand. Only it
was Myshtigo's hand that moved, and he had not
willed it to move. I had.

1 was afraid suddenly. So was he, though. I could
feel it.

There was a great drunk-like, room-swimming
feeling, as I felt that he felt occupied, as if he had had
sensed another presence within his mind.

I wanted away quickly then, and I was back
there beside my rock, but not before she'd dropped
the flower and I heard her say, "Hold me!"

Damn those pseudotelepathic wish-fulfillments! I
thought. Swneday I'll stop believing that that's all they
are.

I had seen two colors in that flower, colors for
which I have no words. . ..

I walked back toward the camp. I passed through
the camp and kept on going. I reached the other
end of the warning perimeter, sat down on the
ground, lit a cigarette. The night was cool, the night
was dark.

Two cigarettes later I heard a voice behind me,
but I did not turn.

" *In the Great House and in the House of Fire,
on that Great Day when all the days and years are
numbered, oh let my name be given back to me,'"
it said.

96 ROGER ZELAZNY

"Good for you," I said softly. "Appropriate
quote. I recognize the Book of the Dead when I hear
it taken in vain."

"I wasn't taking it in vain, just-as you said-
appropriately."

"Good for you."

"On that great day when all the days and years
are numbered, if they do give you back your name,
then what name will it be?"

"They won't. I plan on being late. And what's in
a name, anyhow?"

"Depends on the name. So try 'Karaghiosis,'"

"Try sitting down where I can see you. I don't
like to have people standing behind me."

"All right-there. So?"

"So what?"

"Sotry'Karaghiosis."*

"Why should I?"

"Because it means something. At least; it did
once."

"Karaghiosis was a figure in the old Greek shad-
ow shows, son of like Punch in the European Punch
and Judy plays. He was a slob and a buffoon."

"He was Greek, and he was subtle."

"Ha! He was half-coward, and he was greasy."

"He was also half-hero. Cunning. Somewhat
gross. Sense of humor. He'd tear down a pyramid.
Also, he was strong, when he wanted to be."

"Where is he now?"

"I'd like to know."

"Why ask me?"

"Because that is the name Hasan called you on
the night you fought the golem."

"Oh ... I see. Well, it was just an expletive, a
generic term, a synonym for fool, a nickname-like

THIS IMMORTAL            97

if I were to call you *Red. *-And now that I think of
it, I wonder how you look to Myshtigo, anyhow?
Vegans are blind to the color of your hair, you
know?"

"I don't really care how I look to Vegans. Won-
der how you look, though. I understand that
Myshtigo's file on you is quite thick. Says some-
thing about you being several centuries old."

"Doubtless an exaggeration. But you seem to
know a lot about it. How thick is your file on
Myshtigo?"

"Not very, not yet."

"It seems that you hate him more than you hate
everyone else. Is that true?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"He's a Vegan."

"So?"

"I hate Vegans, is all."

"No, there's more."

"True.-You're quite strong, you know?"

"I know."

"In fact, you*re the strongest human being I've
ever seen. Strong enough to break the neck of a
spiderbat, then fall into the bay at Piraeus and
swim ashore and have breakfast."

"Odd example you've chosen."

"Not so, not really. Did you?"

"Why?"

"I want to know, need to know."

"Sorry."

"Sorry is not good enough. Talk more."

"Said all."

"No. We need Karaghiosis."

"Who's'we?*"

98 ROGER ZELAZNY

"The Radpol. Me."

"Why, again?"

"Hasan is half as old as Time. Karaghiosis is
older. Hasan knew him, remembered, called you
'Karaghiosis.' You are Karaghiosis, the killer, the      s
defender of Earth-and we need you now. Very     ^
badly. Armageddon has come-not with a bang,     ^
but a checkbook. The Vegan must die. There is no
alternative. Help us stop him."                      ^

"What do you want of me?"                     f

"Let Hasan destroy him,"                       f

"No."                                   I

"Why not? What is he to you?"                    f

"Nothing, really- In fact, I dislike him very much.      j
But what is he to you?"                               ir_

"Our destroyer."

"Then tell me why, and how, and perhaps 1*11
give you a better answer."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't know."

"Then good night. That's all."

"Wait! I really do not know-but the word has
come down from Taler, from the Radpol liaison
there: He must die. His book is not a book, his self
is not a self, but many. I do not know what this
means but our agents have never lied before. You've
lived on Taler, you've lived on Bakab and a dozen
other worlds. You are Karaghiosis. You know that
our agents do not lie, because you are Karaghiosis
and you established the spy-circuit yourself. Now
you hear their words and you do not heed them. I
tell you that they say he must die. He represents the
end of everything we've fought for. They say he is a
surveyor who must not be permitted to survey. You

THIS IMMORTAL            99

know the code. Money against Earth. More Vegan
exploitation. They could not specify beyond that
point."

"I'm sorry. I've pledged myself to his defense.
Give me a better reason and maybe 111 give you a
better answer.-And Hasan tried to kill me."

"He was told only to stop you, to incapacitate
you so that we could destroy the Vegan."

"Not good enough; not good enough, no. I admit
nothing. Go your ways. I will forget."

"No, you must help us. What is the life of one
Vegan to Karaghiosis?"

"I will not countenance his destruction without a
just and specific cause. Thus far, you have shown
me nothing."

"That's all I have."

"Then good night.'*

"No, You have two profiles. From the right side
you are a demigod; from the left you are a demon.
One of them will help us, must help us. I don't care
which one it is.'*

"Do not try to harm the Vegan. We will protect
him."

We sat there. She took one of my cigarettes and
we sat there smoking.

". . . Hate you," she said after a time. "It should
be easy, but I can't."

I said nothing.

"I've seen you many times, swaggering in your
Dress Blacks, drinking rum like water, confident of
something you never share, arrogant in your
strength.-You'd fight your weight in anything that
moves, wouldn't you?"

"Not red ants or bumblebees."

"Do you have some master plan of which we

100 ROGER ZELAZNY

know nothing? Tell us, and we will help you with
it."

"It is your idea that I am Karaghiosis. I've ex-
plained why Hasan called me by that name. Phil
knew Karaghiosis and you know Phil. Has he ever
said anything about it?'*

"You know he hasn't. He is your friend and he
would not betray your confidence."

"Is there any other indication of identity than
Hasan's random name-calling?"

"There is no recorded description of Karaghiosis.
You were quite thorough."

"All right then. Go away and don't bother me."

"Don't. Please."

"Hasan tried to kill me."

"Yes; he must have thought it easier to kill you
than to try keeping you out of the way. After all, he
knows more about you than we do."

"Then why did he save me from the boadile to-
day, along with Myshtigo?"

"I'd rather not say."

"Then forget it."

"No, I will tell you.-The assagai was the only
thing handy. He is not yet proficient with it. He was
not aiming to hit the boadile."

"Oh."

"But he was not aiming at you, either. The beast
was writhing too much. He wanted to kill the
Vegan, and he would simply have said that he had
tried to save you both, by the only means at hand-
and that there had been a terrible accident. Un-
fortunately, there was no terrible accident. He
missed his target."

"Why did he not just let the boadile kill him?"

"Because you had already gotten your hands

THIS IMMORTAL

101

upon the beast. He feared you might still save him.
He fears your hands."

"That's nice to know. Will he continue trying,
even if I refuse to cooperate?"

"I'm afraid so."

"That is very unfortunate, my dear, because I
will not permit it."

"You will not stop him. Neither will we call him
off. Even though you are Karaghiosis, and hurt, and
my sorrow for you overflows the horizons, Hasan
will not be stopped by you or by me. He is the
Assassin. He has never failed."

"Neither have I."

"Yes you have. You have just failed the Radpol
and the Earth, and everything that means any-
thing."

"I keep my own counsel, woman. Go your ways."

"I can't."

"Why is that?"

"If you don't know, then Karaghiosis is indeed
the fool, the buffoon, the figure in a shadow play."

"A man named Thomas Carlyle once wrote of
heroes and hero-worship. He too was a fool. He be-
lieved there were such creatures. Heroism is only a
matter of circumstances and expediency."

"Ideals occasionally enter into the picture."

"What is an ideal? A ghost of a ghost, that's all."

"Do not say these things to me, please."

"I must-they are true."

"You lie, Karaghiosis."

"I do not-or if I do, it is for the better, girl."

"I am old enough to be anyone's grandmother
but yours, so do not call me "girl.' Do you know that
my hair is a wig?"

"Yes."

102 ROGER ZELAZNY

"Do you know that I once contracted a Vegan
disease-and that that is why I must wear a wig?"

"No. I am very sorry. I did not know."

"When I was young, long ago, I worked at a
Vegan resort. I was a pleasure girl. I have never
fogotten the puffing of their horrid lungs against my
body, nor the touch of their corpse-colored flesh. I
hate them, Karaghiosis, in ways that only one such
as you could understand-one who has hated all
the great hates."

"I am sorry, Diane. I am so sorry that it hurts
you still. But I am not yet ready to move. Do not
push me."

"You are Karaghiosis?"

"Yes."

"Then I am satisfied-somewhat."

"But the Vegan will live."

"We shall see."

"Yes, we shall. Good night."

"Goodnight, Conrad."

And I rose, and I left her there, and I returned to
my tent. Later that night she came to me. There
was a rustling of the tent flap and the bedclothes,
and she was there. And when I have forgotten
everything else about her-the redness of her wig
and the little upside-down "v" between her eyes,
and the tightness of her jaws, and her clipped talk,
and all her little mannerisms of gesture, and her
body warm as the heart of a star, and her strange
indictment of the man I once might have been, I
will remember this-that she came to me when I
needed her, that she was warm, soft, and that she
came to me. .. .

After breakfast the following morning I was going

THIS IMMORTAL           103

.is

to seek Myshtigo, but he found me first. I was down
by the river, talking with the men who would be
taking charge of the felucca.

"Conrad," he said softly, "may I speak with
you?"

I nodded and gestured toward a gully.

"Let's walk up this way. I've finished here."

We walked.

After a minute he said, "You know that on my
world there are several systems of mental discipline,
systems which occasionally produce extrasensory
abilities. ..."

"So I've heard," I said.

"Most Vegans, at sometime or other, are exposed
to it. Some have an aptitude along these lines.
Many do not. Just about all of us, though, possess
a feeling for it, a recognition of its operations."

"Yes?"

"I am not telepathic myself, but I am aware that
you possess this ability oecause you usefi it on me
last night. I could feel it. It is quite uncommon
among your people, so I had not anticipated this
and I had taken no precautions to prevent it. Also,
you hit me at the perfect moment. As a result, my
mind was opened to you. I have to know how much
you learned."

So there apparently had been something ex-
trasensory connected with those sight-vision
overlays. All they usually contained were what
seemed the immediate perceptions of the subject,
plus a peek at the thoughts and feelings that went
into the words he made-and sometimes I got them
wrong- Myshtigo's question indicated that he did
not know how far mine went, and I had heard that
some professional Veggy psyche-stirrers could even

104         ROGER ZELAZNY

elbow their way into the unconscious. So I decided
to bluff.

"I gather that you are not writing a simple travel
book," I said.

He said nothing.

"Unfortunately, I am not the only one who is
aware of this," I continued, "which places you in a
bit of danger."

"Why?" he asked suddenly.

"Perhaps they misunderstand," I ventured.

He shook his head.

"Who are they?"

"Sorry."

"But I need to know."

"Sorry again. If you want out, I can get you back
to the Port today."

"No, I can't do that. I must go on. What am I to
do?"

"Tell me a little more about it, and 1*11 make sug-
gestions."

"No, you know too much already. . . .

"Then that must be the real reason Donald DOS
Santos is here," he said quickly. "He is a moderate.
The activist wing of the Radpol must have learned
something of this and, as you say-misunderstood.
He must know of the danger. Perhaps I should go to
him..."

"No," I said quickly, "I don't think you should.
It really wouldn*t change anything. What would
you tell him, anyhow?"

A pause. Then, "I see what you mean," he said.
"The thought has also occurred to me that he might
not be as moderate as I have believed. ... If that is
the case, then-"

"Yeah," I said. "Want to go back?"

THIS IMMORTAL            105

"I can't."

"Okay then, blue boy, you're going to have to
trust me. You can start by telling me more about
this survey-"

"No! I do not know how much you know and
how much you do not know. It is obvious that you
are trying to elicit more information, so I do not
think you know very much. What I am doing is still
confidential."

"I am trying to protect you," I said, "therefore I
want as much information as I can get."

"Then protect my body and let me worry about
my motives and my thoughts. My mind will be
closed to you in the future, so you needn't waste
your time trying to probe it."

I handed him an automatic.

"I suggest you carry a weapon for the duration of
the tour-to protect your motives."

"Very well."

It vanished beneath his fluttering shirt.

Puff-puff-puff, went the Vegan.

Damn-damn-damn, went my thoughtstrings.

"Go get ready," I said. "We'll be leaving soon."

As I walked back toward the camp, via another
route, I analyzed my own motives, A book, alone,
could not make or break the Earth, the Radpol, Re-
turnism. Even Phil's Call of Earth had not done that,
not really. But this thing of Myshtigo's was to be
more than just a book. A survey?-What could it
be? A push in what direction? I did not know and I
had to know. For Myshtigo could not be permitted
to live if it would destroy us-and yet, I could not
permit his destruction if the thing might be of any
help at all. And it might.

106

ROGER ZELAZNY

Therefore, someone had to call time-out until we
could be sure.

The leash had been tugged. I followed.

"Diane," said I, as we stood in the shade of her
Skimmer, "you say that I mean something to you,
as me, as Karaghiosis."

"That would seem to follow."

"Then hear me. I believe that you may be wrong
about the Vegan. I am not sure, but if you are
wrong it would be a very big mistake to kill him.
For this reason, I cannot permit it. Hold off on any-
thing you've planned until we reach Athens. Then
request a clarification of that message from the
Radpoi."

She stared me in both eyes, then said, "All
right."

"Then what of Hasan?"

"He waits."

"He makes his own choice as to time and place,
does he not? He awaits only the opportunity to
strike."

"Yes."

"Then he must be told to hold off until we know
for sure."

"Very well."

"You will tell him?"

"He will be told."

"Good enough."

I turned away.

"And when the message comes back," she said,
"if it should say the same thing as before-what
then?"

"We'll see," I said, not turning.

I left her there beside her Skimmer and returned
to my own.

THIS IMMORTAL            107

When the message did come back, saying what I
thought it would say, I knew that I would have
more trouble on my hands. This was because I had
already made my decision.

Far to the south and east of us, parts of
Madagascar still deafened the geigs with radio-
active pain-cries-a tribute to the skill of one of us.

Hasan, I felt certain, could still face any barrier
without blinking those sun-drenched, death-ac-
customed, yellow eyes . . .

He might be hard to stop.

It. Down below.

Death, heat, mud-streaked tides, new
shorelines. - . .

Vulcanism on Chios, Samos, Ikaria, Naxos. . . .

Halicarnassos bitten away. . . .

The western end of Kos visible again, but so
what?

. . . Death, heat, mud-streaked tides.

New shorelines.. ..

I had brought my whole convoy out of its way in
order to check the scene. Myshtigo took notes, also
photos.

Lorel had said, "Continue on with the tour.
Damage to property has not been too severe, be-
cause the Mediterranean was mostly full of
junkstuff. Personal injuries were either fatal or are
already being taken of.-So continue on."

I skimmed in low over what remained of Kos-
the westward tail of the island. It was a wild,
volcanic country, and there were fresh craters, fum-
ing ones, amidst the new, bright sea-laces that
crisscrossed over the land. The ancient capital of

108 ROGER ZELAZNY

Astypalaia had once stood there. Thucydides tells us
it had been destroyed by a powerful earthquake. He
should have seen this one. My norhtern city of Kos
had then been inhabited from 366 B.C Now all was
gone but the wet and the hot. There were no sur-
vivors-and the plane tree of Hippocrates and the
mosque of the Loggia and the castle of the Knights
of Rhodes, and the fountains, and my cottage, and
my wife-swept by what tides or caught in what
sea-pits, I do not know-had gone the ways of dead
Theocritus-he who had done his best to im-
mortalize the place so many years before. Gone.
Away. Par. . . . Immortal and dead to me. Further
east, a few peaks of that high mountain range which
had interrupted the northern coastal plain were still
poking themselves up out of the waters. There was
the mighty peak of Dhikaios, or Christ the Just,
which had overlooked the villages of the northern
slopes. Now it was a tiny islet, and no one had made
it up to the top in time.

It must have been like this, that time so many
years ago, when the sea near my homeland,
bounded by the Chalcidic peninsula, had risen up
and assaulted the land; in that time when the wa-
ters of the inland sea had forced them an outlet
through the gorge of Tempe, the mighty con-
vulsions of the thing scoring even the mountain
walls of the home of the gods itself, Olympus; and
those it spared were only Mr. and Mrs. Deukalion,
kept afloat by the gods for purposes of making a
myth and some people to tell it to.

"You lived there," said Myshtigo.

I nodded.

"You were born in the village of Makrynitsa,
though, in the hills ofThessaly?"

THIS IMMORTAL           109

"Yes."

"But you made your home there?"
"For a little while."

" 'Home' is a universal concept," said he. *'I ap-
preciate it."
"Thanks."

I continued to stare downward, feeling sad, bad,
mad, and then nothing.

Athens after absence returns to me with a sudden
familiarity which always refreshes, often renews,
sometimes incites. Phil once read me some lines by
one of the last great Greek poets, George Seferis,
maintaining that he had referred to my Greece
when he said, "... A country that is no longer our
own country, nor yours either1'-because of the
Vegans. When I pointed out that there were no
Vegans available during Seferis* lifetime, Phil re-
torted that poetry exists independent of time and
space and that it means whatever it means to the
reader. While I have never believed that a literary
license is also good for time-travel, I had other rea-
sons for disagreeing, for not reading it as a general
statement.

It is our country. The Goths, the Huns, the Bul-
gars, the Serbs, the Franks, the Turks, and lately
the Vegans have never made it go way from us. Peo-
ple, I have outlived. Athens and I have changed to-
gether, somewhat. Mainland Greece, though, is
mainland Greece, and it does not change for me.
Try talking it away, whatever you are, and my
klephtes will stalk the hffls, like the chthonic
avengers of old. You will pass, but the hills of
Greece will remain, will be unchanged, with the
smell of goat thigh-bones burning, with a mingling

no ROGER ZELAZNY

of blood and wine, a taste of sweetened almonds, a
cold wind by night, and skies as bluebright as the
eyes of a god by day. Touch them, if you dare.

That is why I am refreshed whenever I. return,
because now that I am a man with many years be-
hind me, I feel this way about the entire Earth.
That is why I fought, and why I killed and bombed,
and why I tried every legal trick in the book, too, to
stop the Vegans from buying up the Earth, plot by
plot, from the absentia government, there on Taler.
That is why I pushed my way, under another new
name, into the big civil service machine that runs
this planet-and why Arts, Monuments and
Archives, in particular. There, I could fight to pre-
serve what still remained, while I waited for the
next development.

The Radpol vendetta had frightened the ex-
patriates as well as the Vegans. They did not realize
that the descendants of those who had lived through
the Three Days would not willingly relinquish their
best areas of coastline for Vegan resorts, nor yield
up their sons and daughters to work in those re-
sorts; nor would they guide the Vegans through the
ruins of their cities, indicating points of interest for
their amusement. That is why the Office is mainly
a foreign service post for most of its staff.

We had sent out the call of return to those de-
scendants of the Martian and Titanian colonies,
and there had been no return. They had grown soft
out there, soft from leeching on a culture which had
had a headstart on ours. They lost their identity.
They abandoned us.

Yet, they were the Earthgov, de jure, legally
elected by the absent majority-and maybe de facto

THIS IMMORTAL         ill

too, if it ever came to that. Probably so- I hoped it
wouldn't come to that.

For over half a century there had been a
stalemate. No new Veggy resorts, no new Radpol
violence. No Return, either. Soon there would be a
new development. It was in the air-if Myshtigo
was really surveying.

So I came back to Athens on a bleak day, during
a cold, drizzling rainfall, an Athens rocked and re-
arranged by the recent upheavals of Earth, and
there was a question in my head and bruises on my
body, but I was refreshed. The National Museum
still stood there between Tossisa and Vasileos
Irakliou, the Acropolis was even more ruined than I
remembered, and the Garden Altar Inn-formerly
the old Royal Palace-there at the northwest cor-
ner of the National Gardens, across from Syndagma
Square, had been shaken but was standing and
open for business, despite.

We entered, and checked in.

As Commissioner of Arts, Monuments and
Archives, I received special considerations. 1 got
The Suite: Number 19.

It wasn*t exactly the way Fd left it. It was clean
and neat.

The little metal plate on the door said:

This suite was the headquarters of Konstantin
Karaghiosis during the founding of the Radpol and much of
the Retumist Rebellion.

Inside, there was a plaque on the bedstead which
read:

Konstantin Karaghiosis slept in this bed.

In the long, narrow front room I spotted one on
the far wall. It said:

112 ROGER ZELAZNY

The stain on this wall was caused by a bottle of beverage,
hurled across the room by Konstantin Karaghiosis, in cele-
bration of the bombing of Madagascar.

Believe that, if you want to.

Konstantin Karaghiosis sat in this chair, insisted
anoher,

I was really afraid to go into the bathroom.

Later that night, as I walked the wet and rubble-
strewn pavements of my almost deserted city, my
old memories and my current thoughts were like the
coming together of two rivers. I'd left the others snor-
ing inside, descended the wide stairway from the
Altar, paused to read one of the inscriptions from
Perikles* funeral oration-"The entire Earth is the
tomb of great men"-there on the side of the Me-
morial to the Unknown Soldier, and I studied for a
moment those great-thewed limbs of that archaic
warrior, laid out with all his weapons on his funeral
bed, all marble and bas-relief, yet somehow almost
warm, because night becomes Athens-and then I
walked on by, passing up Leoforos Amahas.

It had been a fine dinner: ouzo, giuvetsi, Kok-
kineli, yaourti, Metaxa, lots of dark coffee, and Phil
arguing with George about evolution.

"Do you not see a convergence of life and myth,
here, during the last days of life on this planet?"

"What do you mean?" asked George, polishing
off a mess of narantzi and adjusting his glasses for
peering.

"I mean that as humanity rose out of darkness it
brought with it legends and myths and memories of
fabulous creatures. Now we are descending again
into that same darkness The Life Force grows weak
and unstable, and there is a reversion to those

THIS IMMORTAL          113

primal forms which for so long existed only as dim
racial memories-"

"Nonsense, Phil. Life Force? In what century do
you make your home? You speak as though all of
life were one single, sentient entity."

"It is."

"Demonstrate, please."

"You have the skeletons of three satyrs in your
museum, and photographs of live ones. They live in
the hills of this country.

,k     "Centaurs, too, have been wen here-and there
•f   are vampire flowers, and horses with vestigial
^   wings. There are sea serpents in every sea. Im-
ported spiderbats plow our skies. There are even
sworn statements by persons who have seen the
black Beast of Thessaly, an eater of men, bones and
all-and all sorts of other legends are coming

^    alive-"

George sighed.

^      "What you have said so far proves nothing other
^    than that in all of infinity there is a possibility for

any sort of life form to put in an appearance, given
f,   the proper precipitating factors and a continuous
f   congenial environment. The things you have men-
t;   tioned which are native to Earth are mutations,
f.   creatures originating near various Hot Spots about
the world. There is one such place up in the hills of
Thessaly. If the Black Beast were to crash through
that door at this moment, with a satyr mounted on
its back, it would not alter my opinion, nor prove
yours."

I'd looked at the door at that moment, hoping not
for the Black Beast, but for some inconspicuous-
looking old man who might sidle by, stumble, and
pass on, or for a waiter bringing Diane an un-

114 ROGER ZELAZNY

ordered drink with a note folded inside the napkin.

But none of these things happened. As I passed
up Leoforos Amalias, by Hadrian's Gate, and past
the Olympieion, I still did not know what the word
was to be. Diane had contacted the Radpol, but
there had been no response as yet. Within another
thirty-six hours we would be slumming from Athens
to Lamia, then onward by foot through areas of
strange new trees with long, pale, red-veined leaves,
hanging vines, and things that brachiate up above,
and all the budding places of the strige-fleur down
among their roots; and then on, across sun-washed
plains, up twisty goat trails, through high, rocky
places, and down deep ravines, past ruined
monasteries. It was a crazy notion, but Myshtigo,
again, had wanted it that way. Just because I'd
been born there, he thought he'd be safe. Fd tried to
tell him of the wild beasts, of the cannibal Kouretes
-the tribesmen who wandered there. But he
wanted to be like Pausanius and see it all on foot.
Okay then, I decided, if the Radpol didn't get him,
then the fauna would.

But, just to be safe, I had gone to the nearest
Earthgov Post Office, obtained a dueling permit,
and paid my death-tax. I might as well be on the
up-and-up about these things, I decided, me being
a Commissioner and all.

If Hasan needed killing, I'd kill him legally.

I heard the sound of a bouzouki coming from a
small cafe on the other side of the street. Partly be-
cause I wanted to, and partly because I had a feel-
ing that I was being followed, I crossed over and
entered the place. I moved to a small table where I
could keep my back to the wall and my eyes on the
door, ordered Turkish coffee, ordered a package of

THIS IMMORTAL           115

cigarettes, listened to the songs of death, exile, dis-
aster, and the eternal faithlessness of women and
men.

It was even smaller inside than it had seemed
from the street-low ceiling, dirt floor, real dark.
The singer was a squat woman, wearing a yellow
dress and much mascara. There was a rattling of
glasses; a steady fall of dust descended through the
dim air; the sawdust was damp underfoot. My table
was set at the near end of the bar. There were may-
be a dozen other people spotted about the place:

three sleepy-eyed girls sat drinking at the bar, and
a man wearing a dirty fez, and a man resting his
head on an outstretched arm, and snoring; four
men were laughing at a table diagonally across
from me; a few others, solitary, were drinking cof-
fee, listening, watching nothing in particular, wait-
ing, or maybe not waiting, for something or some-
one to happen.

Nothing did, though. So after my third cup of cof-
fee, I paid the fat, moustached owner his tab, and
left the place.

Outside, the temperature seemed to have
dropped several degrees. The street was deserted,
and quite dark. I turned right into Leoforos
Dionysiou Areopagitou and moved on until I
reached the battered fence that runs along the
southern slope of the Acropolis.

I heard a footfall, way back behind me, at the
corner. I stood there for half a minute, but there
was only silence and very black night. Shrugging, I
entered the gate and moved to the tenemos of
Dionysius Eleutherios. Nothing remains of the tem-
ple itself but the foundation. I passed on, heading
toward the Theater.

116 ROGER ZELAZNY

Phil, then, had suggested that history moved in
great cycles, like big clock hands passing the same
numbers day after day.

"Historical biology proves you wrong," said
George.

"I didn't mean literally," replied Phil.

"Then we ought to agree on the language we are
speaking before we talk any further."

Myshtigo had laughed.

Ellen touched DOS Santos* arm and asked him
about the poor horses the picadores rode. He had
shrugged, poured her more Kokkineti, drank his
own.

"It is a part of the thing," he'd said.

And no message, no message. . . .

I walked on through the mess time makes of
greatness. A frightened bird leapt up on my right,
uttered a frightened cry, was gone. I kept walking,
wandered into the old Theater at last, moved down-
ward through it. ...

Diane was not so amused as I had thought she
would be by the stupid plaques that decorated my
suite.

"But they belong here. Of course. They do."

"Ha'"

"At one time it would have been the heads of
animals you had slain. Or the shields of your van-
quished enemies. We're civilized now. This is the
new way."

"Ha! again." I changed the subject. "Any word
on the Vegan?"

"No."

"You want hts head."

"I'm not civilized.-Tell me, was Phil always
such a fool, back in the old days?"

THIS IMMORTAL            117

"No, he wasn't. Isn't now, either. His was the
curse of a half-talent. Now he is considered the last
of the Romantic poets, and he's gone to seed. He
pushes his mysticism into nonsense because, like
Wordsworth, he has outlived his day. He lives now
in distortions of a pretty good past.

"Like Byron, he once swam the Hellespont, but
now, rather like Yeats, the only thing he really en-
joys is the company of young ladies whom he can
bore with his philosophy, or occasionally charm
with a well-told reminiscence- He is old. His writing
occasionally shows flashes of its former power, but
it was not just his writing that was his whole style."

"How so?"

"Well, I remember one cloudy day when he stood
in the Theater of Dionysius and read a hymn to Pan
which he had written. There was an audience of
two or three hundred-and only the gods know why
they showed up-but he began to read.

"His Greek wasn't very good yet, but his voice
was quite impressive, his whole manner rather cha-
rismatic. After a time, it began to rain, lightly, but
no one left. Near the end there was a peal of thun-
der, sounding awfully like laughter, and a sudden
shudder ran through the crowd. I'm not saying that
it was like that in the days of Thespis, but a lot of
those people were looking over their shoulders as
they left.

"I was very impressed also. Then, several days
later, I read the poem-and it was nothing, it was
doggerel, it was trite. It was the way he did it that
was important. He lost that part of his power along
with his youth, and what remained of what might
be called art was not strong enough to make him
great, to keep alive his personal legend. He resents

118 ROGER ZELAZNY

this, and he consoles himself with obscure
philosophy, but in answer to your question-no, he
was not always such a fool."

"Perhaps even some of his philosophy is correct."

"What do you mean?"

"The Big Cycles. The age of strange beasts is
come upon us again. Also, the age of heroes, demi-
gods."

"I've only met the strange beasts."

"'Karaghiosis slept in this bed,* it says here.
Looks comfortable."

"It is.-See?"

"Yes. Do I get to keep the plaque?"

"If you want. ..."

I moved to the proskenion. The relief sculpture-
work started at the steps, telling tales from the life
of Dionysius. Every tour guide and every member of
a tour must, under a regulation promulgated by
me, ". . .carry no fewer than three magnesium
flares on his person, while traveling." I pulled the
pin from one and cast it to the ground. The dazzle
would not be visible below, because of the angle of
the hillside and the blocking masonry.

I did not stare into the bright flame, but above, at
the silver-limned figures. There was Hermes,
presenting the infant god to Zeus, while the Cory-
bantes tripped the Pyrrhic fantastic on either side
of the throne; then there was Ikaros, whom
Dionysius had taught to cultivate the vine-he was
preparing to sacrifice a goat, while his daughter was
offering cakes to the god (who stood aside, discuss-
ing her with a satyr); and there was drunken
Silenus, attempting to hold up the sky like Atlas,
only not doing so well; and there were all the other
gods of the cities, paying a call to this Theater-and

THIS IMMORTAL

119

I spotted Hestia, Theseus, and Eirene with a horn
of plenty. . . .

"You burn an offering to the gods," came a
statement from nearby.

I did not turn. It had come from behind my right
shoulder, but I did not turn because I knew the
voice.

"Perhaps I do," I said.

"It has been a long time since you walked this
land, this Greece."

"That is true."

"Is it because there has never been an immortal
Penelope-patient as the mountains, trusting in the
return of her kallikanzaros-weaving, patient as the
hills?"

"Are you the village story-teller these days?"

He chuckled.

"I tend the many-legged sheep in the high places,
where the fingers of Aurora come first to smear the
sky with roses."

"Yes, you're the story teller. Why are you not up
in the high places now, corrupting youth with your
song?"

"Because of dreams."

"Aye."

I turned and looked into the ancient face-its
wrinkles, in the light of the dying flare, as black as
fishers' nets lost at the bottom of the sea, the beard
as white as the snow that comes drifting down from
the mountains, the eyes matching the blue of the
headcloth corded about his temples. He did not
lean upon his staff any more than a warrior leans on
his spear. I knew that he was over a century old,
and that he had never taken the S-S series.

"A short time ago did I dream that I stood in the

120 ROGER ZELAZNY

midst of a black temple," he told me, "and Lord
Hades came and stood by my side, and he gripped
my wrist and bade me to go with him. But I said
*Nay* and I awakened. This did trouble me."

"What did you eat that night? Berries from the
Hot Place?"

"Do not laugh, please.-Then, of a later night,
did I dream that I stood in a land of sand and
darkness. The strength of the old champions was
upon me, and I did battle with Antaeus, son of the
Earth, destroying him. Then did Lord Hades come
to me again, and taking me by the arm did say,
'Come with me now.' But again did I deny him, and
I awakened. The Earth was a-tremble."

"That's all?"

"No. Then, more recent still, and not at night,
but as I sat beneath a tree watching my flock, did I
dream a dream while awake. Pheobus-like did I
battle the monster Python, and was almost de-
stroyed thereby. This time Lord Hades did not
come, but when I turned about there stood Hermes,
his lackey, smiling and pointing his caducaeus like
a rifle in my direction. I shook my head and he low-
ered it. Then he raised it once more in a gesture,
and I looked where he had indicated.

"There before me lay Athens-this place, this
Theater, you-and here sat the old women. The
one who measures out the thread of life was pout-
ing, for she had wrapped yours about the horizon
and no ends were in sight. But the one who weaves
had divided it into two very thin threads. One
strand ran back across the seas and vanished again
from sight. The other led up into the hills. At the
first hill stood the Dead Man, who held your thread
in his white, white hands. Beyond him, at the next

THIS IMMORTAL

121

hill, it lay across *a burning rock. On the hill beyond
the rock stood the Black Beast, and he shook and
worried your thread with his teeth.

"And all along the length of the strand stalked a
great foreign warrior, and yellow were his eyes and
naked the blade in his hands, and he did raise this
blade several times in menace.

"So I came down to Athens-to meet you, here,
at this place-to tell you to go back across the seas
-to warn you not to come up into the hills where
death awaits you. For I knew, when Hermes raised
his wand, that the dreams were not mine, but they
were meant for you, oh my father, and that I must
find you here and warn you. Go away now, while
still you can. Go back. Please."

I gripped his shoulder.

"Jason, my son, I do not turn back. I take full
responsibility for my own actions, right or wrong-
including my own death, if need be-and I must go
into the hills this time, up near the Hot Place.
Thank you for your warning. Our family has
always had this thing with dreams, and often it is
misleading. I, too, have dreams-dreams in which I
see through the eyes of other persons-sometimes
clearly, sometimes not so clearly. Thank you for
your warning. I am sorry that I must not heed it."

"Then I will return to my flock."

"Come back with me to the inn. We will fly you
as far as Lamia tomorrow."

"No. I do not sleep in great buildings, nor do I
fly."

"Then it's probably time you started, but I'll hu-
mor you. We can camp here tonight. I'm Commis-
sioner of this monument."

"I had heard you were important in the Big Gov-

122 ROGER ZELAZNY

ernment again. Will there be more killing?"

"I hope not."

We found a level place and reclined upon his
cloak.

"How do you interpret the dreams?" I asked
him.

"Your gifts do come to us with every season, but
when was the last time you yourself visited?"

"It was about nineteen years ago," I said.

"Then you do not know of the Dead Man?"

"No."

"He is bigger than most men-taller, fatter-
with flesh the color of a fishbelly, and teeth like an
animal's. They began telling of him about fifteen
years ago. He comes out only at night. He drinks
blood. He laughs a child's laugh as he goes about
the countryside looking for blood-people's,
animals*, it does not matter. He smiles in through
bedroom windows late at night. He burns churches.
He curdles milk. He causes miscarriages from
fright. By day, it is said that he sleeps in a coffin,
guarded by the Kourcte tribesmen."

"Sounds as bad as a kalUkanzaros."

"He really exists, father. Some time ago, some-
thing had been killing my sheep. Whatever it was
had partly eaten them and drunk much of their
blood. So I dug me a hiding place and covered it
over with branches. That night I watched. After
many hours he came, and I was too afraid to put a
stone in my sling-for he is as I have described him:

big, bigger than you even, and gross, and colored
like a fresh-dug corpse. He broke the sheep's neck
with his hands and drank the blood from its throat.
I wept to see it, but I was afraid to do anything. The
next day I moved my flock and was not troubled

THIS IMMORTAL

123

again. I use the story to frighten my great-grand-
children-your great-great-grandchildren-when-
ever they misbehave.-And he is waiting, up in the
hills."

"Mm, yes. ... If you say you saw it, it must be
true. And strange things do come out of the Hot
Places. We know that."

". . . Where Prometheus spilled too much of the
fire of creation!"

"No, where some bastard lobbed a cobalt bomb
and the bright-eyed boys and girls cried 'Eloi' to the
fallout.-And what of the Black Beast?"

"He too, is real, I am certain. I have never seen
him, though. The size of an elephant, and very fast
-and eater of flesh, they say. He haunts the plains.
Perhaps some day he and the Dead Man will meet
and they will destroy one another."

"It Doesn't usually work out that way, but it's a
nice thought.-TTiat's all you know about him?"

"Yes, I know of no one who has caught more
than a glimpse."

"Well, I shall try for less than that."

"... And then I must tell you of Bortan."

"Bortan? That name is familiar."

"Your dog. I used to ride on his back when I was
a child and beat with my legs upon his great ar-
mored sides. Then he would growl and seize my
foot, but gently."

"My Bortan has been dead for so long that he
would not even chew upon his own bones, were he
to dig them up in a modern incarnation."

"I had thought so, too. But two days after you
departed from your last visit, he came crashing into
the hut. He apparently had followed your trail
across half of Greece."

124 ROGER ZELAZNY

"You're sure it was Bortan?"

"Was there ever another dog the size of a small
horse, with armor plates on his sides, and jaws like
a trap for bears?"

"No, I don't think so. That's probably why the
species died out. Dogs do need armor plating if
they're going to hang around with people, and they
didn't develop it fast enough. If he is still alive, he's
probably the last dog on Earth. He and I were pup-
pies together, you know, so long ago that it hurts to
think about it. That day he vanished while we were
hunting I thought he'd had an accident. I searched
for him, then decided he was dead. He was in-
credibly old at the time."

"Perhaps he was injured, and wandering that
way-for years. But he was himself and he followed
your track, that last time. When he saw that you
were gone, he howled and took off after you again.
We have never seen him since then. Sometimes,
though, late at night, I hear his hunting-cry in the

hills. . . ."

"The damn fool mutt ought to know it's not right
to care for anything that much."

"Dogs were strange."

"Yes, dogs were."

And then the night wind, cool through arches of
the years, came hounding after me. It touched my
eyes.

Tired, they closed.

Greece is lousy with legend, fraught with men-
ace. Most areas of mainland near the Hot Place are
historically dangerous. This is because, while the
Office theoretically runs the Earth, it actually only
tends to the islands. Office personnel on much of

THIS IMMORTAL           125

the mainland are rather like twentieth-century Rev-
enue Officers were in.certain hill areas. They're fair
game in all seasons. The islands sustained less dam-
age than the rest of the world during the Three
Days, and consequently they were the logical out-
posts for world district offices when the Talerites
decided we could use some administration. His-
torically, the mainlanders have always been op-
posed to this. In the regions about the Hot Places,
though, the natives are not always completely hu-
man. This compounds the historical antipathy with
abnormal behavior patterns. This is why Greece is
fraught.

We could have sailed up the coast to Volos. We
could have skimmed to Volos-or almost anywhere
else, for that matter. Myshtigo wanted to hike from
Lamia, though, to hike and enjoy the refreshment of
legend and alien scenery. This is why we left the
Skimmers at Lamia. This is why we hiked to Volos.

This is why we encountered legend.

I bade Jason goodbye in Athens. He was sailing
up the coast. Wise.

Phil had insisted on enduring the hike, rather
than skimming ahead and meeting us up further
long the line. Good thing, too, maybe, in a way, sort
of. ...

The road to Volos wanders through the thick and
the sparse in the way of vegetation. It passes huge
boulders, occasional clusters of shacks, fields of
poppies; it crosses small streams, winds about hills,
sometimes crosses over hills, widens and narrows
without apparent cause.

It was still early morning. The sky was somehow
a blue mirror, because the sunlight seemed to be
coming from everywhere. In places of shade some

126 ROGER ZELAZNY

moisture still clung to the grasses and the lower
leaves of the trees.

It was in an interesting glade along the road to
Volos that I met a half-namesake.

The place had once been a shrine of some sort,
back in the Real Old Days. I came to it quite often
in my youth because I liked the quality of-I guess
you'd call it "peace"-that it contained. Sometimes
I'd meet the half-people or the no-people there, or
dream good dreams, or find old pottery or the heads
of statues, or things like that, which I could sell
down in Lamia or in Athens.

There is no trail that leads to it. You just have to
know where it is. I wouldn't have taken them there,
except for the fact that Phil was along and I knew
that he liked anything which smacks of an adytum,
a sequestered significance, a sliding-panel view onto
dim things past, etcetera.

About half a mile off the road, through a small
forest, self-content in its disarray of green and shade
and its haphazard heaps of stone, you suddenly go
downhill, find the way blocked by a thick thicket,
push on through, then discover a blank wall of rock.
If you crouch, keep close to that wall, and bear to
the right, you then come upon a glade where it is
often well to pause before proceeding further.

There is a short, sharp drop, and down below is
an eggshaped clearing, about fifty meters long,
twenty across, and the small end of the egg butting
into a bitten-out place in the rock; there is a shallow
cave at the extreme end, usually empty. A few half-
sunken, almost square stones stand about in a
seemingly random way. Wild grapevines grow
around the perimeter of the place, and in the center
is an enormous and ancient tree whose branches act

THIS IMMORTAL            127

as an umbrella over almost the entire area, keeping
it dusky throughout the day. Because of this, it is
hard to see into the place even from the glade.

But we could see a satyr in the middle, picking
his nose.

I saw George's hand go to the mercy-gun he car-
ried. I caught his shoulder, his eyes, shook my head.
He shrugged, and nodded, dropping his hand.

I withdrew from my belt the shepherd's pipe I
had asked Jason to give me. I motioned to the oth-
ers to crouch and remain where they were. I moved
a few steps further ahead and raised the syrinx to
my lips.

My first notes were quite tentative. It had been
too long since I'd played the pipes.

His ears pricked forward and he looked all about
him. He made rapid moves in three different direc-
tions-like a startled squirrel, uncertain as to which
tree to make for.

Then he stood there quivering as I caught up an
old tune and nailed it to the air.

I kept playing, remembering, remembering the
pipes, the tunes, and the bitter, the sweet, and the
drunken things I've really always known. It all
came back to me as I stood there playing for the
little guy in the shaggy leggings: the fingering and
the control of the air, the little runs, the thorns of
sound, the things only the pipes can really say. I
can't play in the cities, but suddenly I was me
again, and I saw faces in the leaves and I heard the
sound of hooves.

I moved forward.

Like in a dream, I noticed I was standing with
my back against the tree, and they were all about
me. They shifted from hoof to hoof, never staying

128 ROGER ZELAZNY

still, and I played for them as I had so often before,
years ago, not knowing whether they were really
the same ones who'd heard me then-or caring, ac-
tually. They cavorted about me. They laughed
through white, white teeth and their eyes danced,
and they circled, jabbing at the air with their horns,
kicking their goat legs high off the ground, bending
far forward, springing into the air, stamping the

earth.

I stopped, and lowered the pipes.

It was not an human intelligence that regarded
me from those wild, dark eyes, as they all froze into
statues, just standing there, staring at me.

I raised the pipes once more, slowly. This time I
played the last song I'd ever made. I remembered it
so well. It was a dirge-like thing I had played on the
night I'd decided Karaghiosis should die.

I had seen the fallacy of Return. They would not
come back, would never come back. The Earth
would die. I had gone down into the Gardens and
played this one last tune I'd learned from the wind
and maybe even the stars. The next day, Kara-
ghiosis' big blazeboat had broken up in the bay at

Piraeus.

They seated themselves on the grass. Occasion-
ally, one would dab at his eye with an elaborate
gesture. They were all about me, listening.

How long I played, I do not know. When I had
finished, I lowered the pipes and sat there. After a
time, one of them reached out and touched the
pipes and drew his hand back quickly. He looked
up at me.

"Go," I said, but they did not seem to under-
stand.

THIS IMMORTAL           129

So I raised the syrinx and played the last few bars
over again.

The Earth is dying, dying. Soon it will be dead. ... Go
home, the party's over. It's late, it's late, so late. . . .

The biggest one shook his head.

Go away, go away, go away now. Appreciate the silence.
After life's most ridiculous gambit, appreciate the silence.
What did the gods hope to gain, to gain? Nothing. 'Twos
all but a game. Go away, go away, go away now. It's late,
it^s late, so late. . . .

They still sat there, so I stood up and clapped my
hands, yelled "Go!" and walked away quickly.

I gathered my companions and headed back for
the road.

It is about sixty-five kilometers from Lamia to
Volos, including the detour around the Hot Spot.
We covered maybe a fifth of that distance on the
first day. That evening, we pitched our camp in a
clearing off to the side of the road, and Diane came
up beside me and said, "Well?"

"'Well'what?"

"I Just called Athens- Blank. The Radpol is si-
lent. I want your decision now."

"You are very determined. Why can't we wait
some more?"

"We've waited too long as it is. Supposing he de-
cides to end the tour ahead of schedule?-This
countryside is perfect. So many accidents could
come so easily here. . . . You know what the Radpol
will say-the same as before-and it will signify the
same as before: Kill."

"My answer is also the same as before: No."

She blinked rapidly, lowered her head.

130

ROGER ZELAZNY

"Why don't you give him his walking papers
right now and save me some trouble?"

"I won't do that."

"I didn't think you would."

She looked up again. Her eyes were moist, but
her face and voice were unchanged.

"If it should turn out that you were right and we
were wrong," she said, "I am sorry."

"Me too," I said. "Very, very."

That night I dozed within knifing distance of
Myshtigo, but nothing happened or tried to. The
following morning was uneventful, as was most of
the afternoon.

"I can't do that."

"DOS Santos does as you tell him.'*

"The problem is not an administrative one!-
Damn it! I wish Pd never met you!"

"I'm sorry."

"The Earth is at stake and you're on the wrong
side."

"I think you are."

"What are you going to do about it?"

"I can't convince you, so I'll just have to stop
you."

"You couldn't turn in the Secretary of the Rad-
pol and his consort without evidence. We're too
ticklish politically."

"I know that."

"So you couldn't hurt Don, and I don't believe
you'd hurt me."

"You're right."

"That leaves Hasan."

"Right again."

"And Hasan is-Hasan. What will you-do?"

THIS IMMORTAL            131

"Please reconsider."

"No."

"Then do this much," she said. "Forget it. The
whole thing. Wash your hands of the affair. Take
Lorel up on his offer and get us a new guide. You
can skim out of here in the morning."

"No."

"Are you really serious, then-about protecting
Myshtigo?"

"Yes."

"I don't want you hurt, or worse."

"I'm not particularly fond of the idea myself. So
you can save us both a lot of trouble by calling it
off."

"Myshtigo," I said, as soon as we paused for
purposes of photographing a hillside, "why don't
you go home? Go back to Taler? Go anywhere?
Walk away from it? Write some other book? The
further we get into civilization, the less is my power
to protect you."

"You gave me an automatic, remember?" he
said.

He made a shooting motion with his right hand.

"All right-just thought I'd give it another try."

"That's a goat standing on the lower limb of that
tree, isn*t it?"

"Yeah; they like to eat those little green shoots
that come up off the branches."

"I want a picture of that too. Olive tree, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Good. I wanted to know what to call the pic-
ture. *Goat eating green shoots in olive tree/" he
dictated; "that will be the caption."

"Great. Shoot while you have the chance."

If only he weren't so uncommunicative, so alien,

132 ROGER ZELAZNY

so unconcerned about his welfare! I hated him. I
couldn't understand him. He wouldn't speak, un-
less it was to request information or to answer a
question. Whenever he did answer questions, he
was terse, elusive, insulting, or all three at once. He
was smug, conceited, blue, and overbearing. It real-
ly made me wonder about the Shtigogens' tradition
of philosophy, philanthrophy and enlightened jour-
nalism. I just didn't like him.

But I spoke to Hasan that evening, after having
kept an eye (the blue one) on him all day.

He was sitting beside the fire, looking like a
sketch by Delacroix. Ellen and DOS Santos sat
nearby, drinking coffee, so I dusted off my Arabic
and approached.

"Greetings."

"Greetings."

"You did not try to kill me today."

"No."

"Tomorrow, perhaps?"

He shrugged.

"Hasan-look at me."

He did.

"You were hired to kill the blue one."

He shrugged again.

"You needn't deny it, or admit it. I already
know. I cannot allow you to do this thing. Give back
the money DOS Santos has paid you and go your
way. I can get you a Skimmer by morning. It will
take you anywhere in the world you wish to go."

"But I am happy here, Karagee."

"You will quickly cease being happy if any harm
comes to the blue one."

"I am a bodyguard, Karagee."

THIS IMMORTAL

133

*•

r
?•

"No, Hasan. You are the son of a dyspeptic
camel."

"What is 'dyspeptic,' Karagee?"

"I do not know the Arabic word, and you would
not know the Greek one. Wait, 111 find another in-
sult.-You are a coward and a carrion-eater and a
skulker up alleyways, because you are half jackal
and half ape."

"This may be true, Karagee, because my father
told me that I was born to be flayed alive and torn
into quarters."

"Why was that?"

"I was disrespectful to the Devil."

"Oh?"

"Yes.-Were those devils that you played music
for yesterday? They had the horns, the hooves ..."

"No, they were not devils. They were the Hot-
born children of unfortunate parents who left them
to die in the wilderness. They lived, though, be-
cause the wilderness is their real home."

"Ah! And I had hoped that they were devils. I
still think they were, because one smiled at me as I
prayed to them for forgiveness."

"Forgiveness? For what?"

A faraway look came into his eyes.

"My father was a very good and kind and re-
ligious man," he said. "He worshipped Malak
Tawus, whom the benighted Shi'ites" (he spat
here) "calls Iblis-or Shaitan, or Satan-and he
always paid his respects to Hallaj and the others of
the Sandjaq. He was well-known for his piety, his
many kindnesses.

"I loved him, but as a boy I had an imp within
me. I was an atheist. I did not believe in the Devil.

134 ROGER ZELAZNY

And I was an evil child, for I took me a dead
chicken and mounted it on a stick and called it the
Peacock Angel, and I mocked it with stones and
pulled its feathers One of the other boys grew
frightened and told my father of this. My father
flogged me then, in the streets, and he told me I was
born to be flayed alive and torn into quarters for my
blasphemies. He made me go to Mount Sandjar
and pray for forgiveness, and I went there-but the
imp was still within me, despite the flogging, and I
did not really believe as I prayed.

"Now that 1 am older the imp has fled, but my
father too, is gone-these many years-and I can-
not tell him: I am sorry that I mocked the Peacock
Angel. As I grow older I feel the need for religion. I
hope that the Devil, in his great wisdom and mercy
-understands this and forgives me."

"Hasan, it is difficult to insult you properly," I
said. "But I warn you-the blue one must not be
harmed."

"I am but a humble bodyguard."

"Ha! Yours is the cunning and the venom of the
serpent. You are deceitful and treacherous. Vicious,

too."

"No, Karagee. Thank you, but it is not true. I
take pride in always meeting my commitments.
That is all. This is the law I live by. Also, you can-
not insult me so that I will challenge you to a duel,
permitting you to choose bare hands or daggers or
sabers. No. I take no offense."

"Then beware," I told him. "Your first move to-
ward the Vegan will be your last."

"If it is so written, Karagee ..."

"And call me Conrad!"

I stalked away, thinking bad thoughts.

THIS IMMORTAL

135

I

The following day, all of us still being alive, we
broke camp and pushed on, making about eight kil-
ometers before the next interruption occurred.

"That sounded like a child crying," said Phil.

"You're right."

"Where is it coming from?"

"Off to the left, down there."

We moved through some shrubbery, came upon
a dry stream bed, and followed it around a bend.

The baby lay among the rocks, partly wrapped in
a dirty blanket. Its face and hands were already
burnt red from the sun, so it must have been there
much of the day before. The bite-marks of many
insects were upon its tiny, wet face.

I knelt, adjusting the blanket to cover it better.

Ellen cried a little as the blanket fell open in front
and she saw the baby.

There was a natural fistula in the child's chest,
and something was moving inside.

Red Wig screamed, turned away, began to weep.

"What is it?" asked Myshtigo.

"One of the abandoned," I said. "One of the
marked ones."

"How awful!" said Red Wig.

"Its appearance? Or the fact that it was aban-
doned?" I asked.

"Both!"

"Give it to me," said Ellen.

"Don't touch it," said George, stooping, "Call
for a Skimmer," he ordered. "We have to get it to a
hospital right away. I don't have the equipment to
operate on it here.-Ellen, help me."

She was at his side then, and they went through
his medkit together.

136 ROGER ZELAZNY

"You write what I do and pin the note onto a
clean blanket-so the doctors in Athens will know."

DOS Santos was phoning Lamia by then, to pick
up on one of our Skimmers.

And then Ellen was filling hypos for George and
swabbing the cuts and painting the burns with un-
guents and writing it all down. They shot the baby
full of vitamins, antibiotics, general adaptives, and
half a dozen other things. I lost count after awhile.
They covered its chest with gauze, sprayed it with
something, wrapped it in a clean blanket, and
pinned the note to it.

"What a dreadful thing!" said DOS Santos.
"Abandoning a deformed child, leaving it to die in
such a manner!"

"It's done here all the time," I told him, "espe-
cially about the Hot Places. In Greece there has
always been a tradition of infanticide. I myself was
exposed on a hilltop on the day I was born. Spent
the night there, too."

He was lighting a cigarette, but he stopped and
stared at me.

"You? Why?"

I laughed, glanced down at my foot.

"Complicated story. I wear a special shoe be-
cause this leg is shorter than the other. Also, I un-
derstand I was a very hairy baby-and then, my
eyes don't match. I suppose I might have gotten by
if that had been all, but then I went and got born on
Christmas and that sort of clinched things."

"What is wrong with being born on Christmas?"

"The gods, according to local beliefs, deem it a
bit presumptuous. For this reason, children born at
that time are not of human blood. They are of the
brood of destroyers, the creators of havoc, the pan-

THIS IMMORTAL

137

ickers of man. They are called the kallikanzaroi.
Ideally, they look something like those guys with
horns and hooves and all, but they don't have to.
They could look like me, my parents decided-if
they were my parents. So they left me on a hilltop, to
be returned.'*

"What happened then?"

"There was an old Orthodox priest in the village.
He heard of it and went to them. He told them that
it was a mortal sin to do such a thing, and they had
better get the baby back, quick, and have it ready
for baptism the following day." -.

"Ah! And that is how you were saved, and bap-
tised?"

"Well, sort of." I took one of his cigarettes.
"They came back with me, all right, but they in-
sisted I wasn't the same baby they'd left there.
They'd left a dubious mutant and collected an even
more doubtful changeling, they said. Uglier too,
they claimed, and they got another Christmas child
in return. Their baby had been a satyr, they said,
and they figured that perhaps some Hot creature
had had a sort of human child and had abandoned
it in the same way we do them-making a swap,
actually. Nobody had seen me before then, so their
story couldn't be checked. The priest would have
none of this, though, and he told them they were
stuck with me. But they were very kind, once they
were reconciled to the fact. I grew fairly large fairly
young, and I was strong for my age- They liked
that."

"And you were baptised . . . ?"

"Well, sort of half-baptised."

"Half-baptised?"

"This priest had a stroke at my christening. Died

138 ROGER ZELAZNY

a little while later. He was the only one around, so
I don't know that I got the whole thing done prop-
er."

"One drop would be sufficient."

"I suppose so. I don't really know what hap-
pened."

"Maybe you had better have it done again. Just
to be safe."

"No, if Heaven didn't want me then, I'm not
going to ask a second time."

We set up a beacon in a nearby clearing and
waited for the Skimmer.

We made another dozen or so kilometers that
day, which was pretty good, considering the delay.
The baby had been picked up and dispatched di-
rectly to Athens. When the Skimmer had set down,
I'd asked in a large voice whether anyone else
wanted a ride back. There'd been no takers,
though.

And it was that evening that it happened.

We reclined about a fire. Oh, it was a jolly fire,
flapping its bright wing against the night, warming
us, smelling woody, pushing a smoke-stack into the
air. . . . Nice.

Hasan sat there cleaning his aluminum-barreled
shotgun. It had a plastic stock and it was real light
and handy.

As he worked on it, it tilted forward, moved slow-
ly about, pointed itself right at Myshtigo.

He'd done it quite neatly, I must admit that. It
was during a period of over half an hour, and he'd
advanced the barrel with almost imperceptible
movements.

I snarled, though, when its position registered in

THIS IMMORTAL            139

my cerebrum, and I was at his side in three steps.

I struck it from his hands.

It clattered on some small stone about eight feet
away. My hand was stinging from the slap I'd given
it.

Hasan was on his feet, his teeth shuttling around
inside his beard, clicking together like flint and
steel. I could almost see the sparks.

"Say it!" I cried. "Go ahead, say something!
Anything! You know damn well what you were just
doing!"

His hands twitched.

"Go ahead!" I said. "Hit me! Just touch me,
even. Then what I do to you will be self-defense,
provoked assault. Even George won'tbe able to put
you back together again."

"I was only cleaning my shotgun. You've dam-
aged it."

" You do not point weapons by accident. You were
going to kill Myshtigo."

"You are mistaken."

"Hit me. Or are you a coward?"

"I have no quarrel with you."

"You are a coward."

"No, I am not."

After a few seconds he smiled.

"Are you afraid to challenge me?" he asked.

And there it was. The only way.

The move had to be mine. I had hoped it
wouldn't have to be that way. I had hoped that I
could anger him or shame him or provoke him into
striking me or challenging me.

I knew then that I couldn't.

Which was bad, very bad.

I was sure I could take him with anything I cared

140 ROGER ZELAZNY

to name. But if he had it his way, things could be
different. Everybody knows that there are some
people with an aptitude for music. They can hear a
piece once and sit down and play it on the piano or
thelinstra. They can pick up a new instrument, and
inside a few hours they can sound as if they've been
playing it for years. They're good, very good at such
things, because they have that talent-the ability to
coordinate a special insight with a series of new ac-
tions.                                                ,„

Hasan was that way with weapons. Maybe some      ^
other people could be the same, but they don't go      |
around doing it-not for decades and decades, any-       ^
way, with everything from boomerangs to blow-
guns. The dueling code would provide Hasan with
the choice of means, and he was the most highly
skilled killer Fd ever known.

But I had to stop him, and I could see that this       ^
was the only way it could be done, short of murder.       '
I had to take him on his terms.

"Amen," I said. "I challenge you to a duel."

His smile remained, grew.

"Agreed-before these witnesses. Name your       *'
second."

"Phil Graver. Name yours."

"Mister DOS Santos."

"Very good. I happen to have a dueling permit
and the registration forms in my bag, and I've al-
ready paid the death-tax for one person. So there       ''•
needn't be much of a delay. When, where, and how
do you want it?"

"We passed a good clearing about a kilometer
back up the road."

"Yes; I recall it."

"We shall meet there at dawn tomorrow."          \

THIS IMMORTAL            141

"Check," I said. "And as to weapons . . . ?"

He fetched his knapcase, opened it. It bristled
with interesting sharp things, glistened with ovoid
incendiaries, writhed with coils of metal and
leather.

He withdrew two items and closed the pack.

My heart sank.

"The sling of David," he announced.

I inspected them.

"At what distance?"

"Fifty meters," he said.

"You've made a good choice," I told him, not
having used one in over a century myself. "I'd like
to borrow one tonight, to practice with. If you don't
want to lend it to me, I can make my own."

"You may take either, and practice all night with
it."

"Thanks." 1 selected one and hung it from my
belt. Then I picked up one of our three electric lan-
terns. "If anybody needs me, 111 be up the road at
the clearing," I said. "Don't forget to post guards
tonight. This is a rough area."

"Do you want me to come along?" asked Phil.

"No. Thanks anyway. I'll go alone. See you."

"Then good night."

I hiked back along the way, coming at last to the
clearing. I set up the lantern at one end of the place,
so that it reflected upon a stand of small trees, and
I moved to the other end.

I collected some stones and slung one at a tree. I
missed.

I slung a dozen more, hitting with four of them.

I kept at it. After about an hour, I was hitting
with a little more regularity. Still, at fifty meters I

142 ROGER ZELAZNY

probably couldn't match Hasan.

The night wore on, and I kept slinging. After a
time, I reached what seemed to be my learning
plateau for accuracy. Maybe six out of seven of my
shots were coming through.

But I had one thing in my favor, I realized, as I
twirled the sling and sent another stone smashing
into a tree. I delivered my shots with an awful lot of
force. Whenever I was on target there was much
power behind the strike. I had already shattered
several of the smaller trees, and I was sure Hasan
couldn't do that with twice as many hits. If I could
reach him, fine; but all the power in the world was
worthless if I couldn't connect with it.

And I was sure he could reach me. I wondered
how much of a beating I could take and still oper-
ate.

It would depend, of course, on where he hit me.

I dropped the sling and yanked the automatic
gun from my belt when 1 heard a branch snap, far
off to my right. Hasan came into the clearing.

"What do you want?" I asked him.

"I came to see how your practice was going," he
said, regarding the broken trees.

I shrugged, reholstered my automatic and picked
up the sling.

"Comes the sunrise and you will leam."

We walked across the clearing and I retrieved the
lantern. Hasan studied a small tree which was now,
in part, toothpicks. He did not say anything.

We walked back to the camp. Everyone but DOS
Santos had turned in. Don was our guard. He
paced about the warning perimeter, carrying an au-
tomatic rifle. He waved to him and entered the
camp.

THIS IMMORTAL

143

Hasan always pitched a Gauzy-a one-
molecule-layer tent, opaque, feather-light, and very
tough. He never slept in it, though. He just used it
to stash his junk.

I seated myself on a log before the fire and Hasan
ducked inside his Gauzy. He emerged a moment
later with his pipe and a block of hardened,
resinous-looking stuff, which he proceeded to scale
and grind. He mixed it with a bit ofburley and then
filled the pipe.

After he got it going with a stick from the fire, he
sat smoking it beside me.

"I do not want to kill you, Karagee," he said.

"I share this feeling. I do not wish to be killed."

"But we must fight tomorrow."

"Yes."

"You could withdraw your challenge."

"You could leave by Skimmer."

"I will not."

"Nor will I withdraw my challenge."

"It is sad," he said, after a time. "Sad, that two
such as we must fight over the blue one. He is not
worth your life, nor mine."

"True," I said, "but it involves more than just his
life. The future of this planet is somehow tied up
with whatever he is doing."

"I do not know of these things, Karagee. I fight
for money I have no other trade."

"Yes, I know."

The fire burnt low. I fed it more sticks.

"Do you remember the time we bombed the
Coast of Gold, in France?" he asked.

"I remember."

"Beside the blue ones, we killed many people "

"Yes."

144 ROGER ZELAZNY

"The future of the planet was not changed by
this, Karagee. For here we are, many years away
from the thing, and nothing is different."

"I know that."

"And do you remember the days when we
crouched in a hole on a hillside, overlooking the bay
at Piraeus? Sometimes you would feed me the belts
and I would strafe the blazeboats, and when I grew
tired you would operate the gun. We had much am-
munition. The Office Guard did not land that day,
nor the next. They did not occupy Athens, and they
did not break the Radpol. And we talked as we sat
there, those two days and that night, waiting for the
fireball to come-and you told me of the Powers in
the Sky."

"I forget. . . ."

"I do not. You told me that there are men, like
us, who live up in the air by the stars. Also, there
are the blue ones. Some of the men, you said, seek
the blue ones' favor, and they would sell the Earth
to them to be made into a museum. Others, you
said, did not want to do this thing, but they wanted
it to remain as it is now-their property, run by the
Office. The blue ones were divided among them-
selves on this matter, because there was a question
as to whether it was legal and ethical to do this
thing. There was a compromise, and the blue ones
were sold some clean areas, which they used as re-
sorts, and from which they toured the rest of the
Earth. But you wanted the Earth to belong only to
people- You said that if we gave the blue ones an
inch, then they would want it all. You wanted the
men by the stars to come back and rebuild the
cities, bury the Hot Places, kill the beasts which
prey upon men.

THIS IMMORTAL

145

"As we sat there, waiting for the fireball, you said
that we were at war, not because of anything we
could see or hear or feel or taste, but because of the
Powers in the Sky, who had never seen us, and
whom we would never see. The Powers in the Sky
had done this thing, and because of it men had to
die here on Earth. You said that by the death of
men and blue ones, the Powers might return to
Earth. They never did, though. There was only the
death.

"And it was the Powers in the Sky which saved us
in the end, because they had to be consulted before
the fireball could be burnt over Athens. They re-
minded the Office of an old law, made after the time
of the Three Days, saying that the fireball would
never again burn in the skies of Earth. You had
thought that they would burn it anyhow, but they
did not. It was because of this that we stopped them
at Piraeus. I burnt Madagaskee for you, Karagee,
but the Powers never came down to Earth. And
when People get much money they go away from
here-and they never come back from the sky.
Nothing we did in those days has caused a change."

"Because of what we did, things remained as
they were, rather than getting worse," I told him.

"What will happen if this blue one dies?"

"I do not know. Things may worsen then. If he is
viewing the areas we pass through as possible real
estate tracts, to be purchased by Vegans, then it is
the old thing all over again."

"And the Radpol will fight again, will bomb
them?"

"I think so."

"Then let us kill him now, before he goes further,
sees more."

146 ROGER ZELAZNY

"It may not be that simple-and they would only
send another. There would also be repercussions-
perhaps mass arrests of Radpol members. The
Radpol is no longer living on the edge of life as it
was in those days. The people are unready. They
need time to prepare. This blue one, at least, I hold
in my hand. I can watch him, leam of his plans.
Then, if it becomes necessary, I can destroy him
myself."

He drew on his pipe. I sniffed. It was something
like sandalwood that I smelled.

"What are you smoking?"

"It comes from near my home. I visited there re-
cently. It is one of the new plants which has never
grown there before. Try it."

I took several mouthfuls into my lungs. At first
there was nothing. I continued to draw on it, and
after a minute there was a gradual feeling of cool-
ness and tranquility which spread down through
my limbs. It tasted bitter, but it relaxed. I handed
it back. The feeling continued, grew stronger. It
was very pleasant. I had not felt that sedate, that
relaxed, for many weeks. The fire, the shadows, and
the ground about us suddenly became more real,
and the night air and the distant moon and the
sound of DOS Santos' footsteps came somehow more
clearly than life, really. The struggle seemed ridicu-
lous. We would lose it in the end. It was written
that humanity was to be the cats and the dogs and
trained chimpanzees of the real people, the Vegans
-and in a way it was not such a bad idea. Perhaps
we needed someone wiser to watch over us, to run
our lives. We had made a shambles of our own
world during the Three Days, and the Vegans had
never had a nuclear war. They operated a smoothly

THIS IMMORTAL            147

efficient interstellar government, encompassing
dozens of planets. Whatever they did was esthetical-
ly pleasing. Their own lives were well-regulated,
happy things. Why not let them have the Earth?
They'd probably do a better job with it than we'd
ever done. And why not be their coolies, too? It
wouldn't be a bad life. Give them the old ball of
mud, full of radioactive sores and populated by
cripples.

Why not?

I accepted the pipe once more, inhaled more
peace. It was so pleasant not to think of these things
at all, though. Not to think of anything you couldn't
really do anything about. Just to sit there and
breathe in the night and be one with the fire and the
wind was enough. The universe was singing its
hymn of oneness. Why open the bag of chaos there
in the cathedral?

But I had lost my Cassandra, my dark witch of
Kos, to the mindless powers which move the Earth
and the waters. Nothing could kill my feelings of
loss. It seemed further away, somehow insulated
behind glass, but it was still there. Not all the pipes
of the East could assuage this thing. I did not want
to know peace. I wanted hate. I wanted to strike out
at all the masks in the universe-earth, water, sky,
Taler, Earthgov, and Office-so that behind one of
them I might find that power which had taken her,
and make it too, know something of pain. I did not
want to know peace. I did not want to be at one
with anything which had harmed that which was
mine, by blood and by love- For just five minutes
even, I wanted to be Karaghiosis again, looking at it
all through crosshairs and squeezing a trigger.

Oh, ^cus, of the hot red lightnings. If/rayed, give it to me

148 ROGER ZELAZNY

that I may break the Powers in the Sky/

I returned to the pipe again.

"Thank you, Hasan, but I'm not ready for the Bo
Tree."

I stood then and moved off toward the place
where I had cast my pack.

"I am sorry that I must kill you in the morning,"
he called after me.

Sipping beer in a mountain lodge on the planet
Divbah, with a Vegan seller of information named
Krim (who is now dead), I once looked out through
a wide window and up at the highest mountain in
the known universe. It is called Kasia, and it has
never been climbed. The reason I mention it is be-
cause on the morning of the duel I felt a sudden
remorse that I had never attempted to scale it. It is
one of those crazy things you think about and prom-
ise yourself that someday you're going to try, and
then you wake up one morning and realize that it is
probably exactly too late: you'll never do it.

There were no-expressions on every face that
morning.

The world outside us was bright and clear and
clean and filled with the singing of birds.

I had forgotten the use of the radio until after the
duel, and Phil carried some of its essential entrails
in his jacket pocket, just to be sure.

Lorel would not know. The Radpol would not
know. Nobody would know, until after.

The preliminaries completed, the distance was
measured off.

We took our places at the opposite ends of the
clearing. The rising sun was to my left.

THIS IMMORTAL           149

"Are you ready, gentlemen?" called out DOS San-
tos.

"Yes," and "I am," were the replies.

"I make a Final attempt to dissuade you from this
course of action. Do either of you wish to re-
consider?"

"No, "and "No."

"Each of you has ten stones in similar size and
weight. The First shot is, of course, given to he who
was challenged: Hasan."

We both nodded.

"Proceed, then."

He stepped back and there was nothing but fifty
meters of air separating us. We both stood side-
ways, so as to present the smallest target possible-
Hasan fitted his first stone to the sling.

I watched him wind it rapidly through the air
behind him, and suddenly his arm came forward.

There was a crashing sound in back of me.

Nothing else happened.

He'd missed.

I put a stone to my own sling then and whipped
it back and around. The air sighed as I cut it all
apart.

Then I hurled the missile forward with all the
strength of my right arm.

It grazed his left shoulder, barely touching it. It
was mostly garment that it plowed.

The stone ricocheted from tree to tree behind
him, before it finally vanished.

All was still then. The birds had given up on their
morning concert.

"Gentlemen," called DOS Santos, "you have each
had one chance to settle your differences. It may be

150 ROGER ZELAZNY

said that you have faced one another with honor,
given vent to your wrath, and are now satisfied. Do
you wish to stop the duel?"

"No, "said I.

Hasan rubbed his shoulder, shook his head.

He put the second stone to his sling, worked it
rapidly through a powerful windup, then released it
at me.

Right between the hip and the ribcage, that's
where it caught me.

I fell to the ground and it all turned black.

A second later the lights came on again, but I was
doubled up and something with a thousand teeth
had me by the side and wouldn't let go.

They were running toward me, all of them, but
Phil waved them back.

Hasan held his position.

DOS Santos approached.

"Is that it?" asked Phil softly. "Can you get up?"

"Yeah. I need a minute to breathe and to put the
fire out, but 111 get up."

"What is the situation?" asked DOS Santos.

Phil told him. •-

I put my hand to my side and stood again, slow-

ty-

A couple inches higher or lower and something

boney might have broken. As it was, it just hurt like

blazes.

I rubbed it, moved my right arm through a few

circles to test the play of muscles on that side.

Okay.

Then I picked up the sling and put a stone to it.
This time it would connect. I had a feeling.
It went around and around and it came out fast.
Hasan toppled, clutching at his left thigh.

THIS IMMORTAL           151

DOS Santos went to him. They spoke.

Hasan's robe had muffled the blow, had partly
deflected it. The leg was not broken. He would con-
tinue as soon as he could stand.

He spent five minutes massaging it, then he got to
his feet again. During that time my pain had sub-
sided to a dull throbbing.

Hasan selected his third stone,

He fitted it slowly, carefully . . .

He took my measure. Then he began to lash at
the air with the sling. . . .

All the while I had the feeling-and it kept grow-
ing-that I should be leaning a little further to the
right. So I did.

He twirled it, threw it,

It grazed my fungus and tore at my left ear,

Suddenly my cheek was wet.

Ellen screamed, briefly.

A little further to the right, though, and I
wouldn't have been hearing her.

It was my turn again.

Smooth, gray, the stone had the feel of death
about it. ...

/ will be it, this one seemed to say.

It was one of those little premonitory tuggings at
my sleeve, of the sort for which I have a great deal
of respect.

I wiped the blood from my cheek. I fitted the
stone.

There was death riding in my right arm as I
raised it. Hasan felt it too, because he flinched. I
could see this from across the field.

"You will all remain exactly where you are, and
drop your weapons," said the voice.

It said it in Greek, so no one but Phil and Hasan

152 ROGER ZELAZNY

and I understood it, for sure. Maybe DOS Santos or
Red Wig did. I'm still not certain.

But all of us understood the automatic rifle the
man carried, and the swords and clubs and knives
of the three dozen or so men and half-men standing
behind him.

They were Kouretes.

Kouretes are bad.

They always get their pound of flesh.

Usually roasted.

Sometimes fried, though.

Or boiled, or raw. . . .

The speaker seemed to be the only one carrying a

firearm.

. . . And I had a handful of death circling high
above my shoulder. I decided to make him a gift of

it.

His head exploded as I delivered it.
"Kill them'" I said, and we began to do so.
George and Diane were the first to open fire.
Then Phil found a handgun. DOS Santos ran for his
pack. Ellen got there fast, too.

Hasan had not needed my order to begin killing.
The only weapons he and I were carrying were the
slings. The Kouretes were closer than our fifty
meters, though, and theirs was a mob formation.
He dropped two of them with well-placed stones
before they began their rush. I got one more, also.

Then they were halfway across the field, leaping
over their dead and their fallen, screaming as they
came on toward us.

Like I said, they were not all of them human:

there was a tall, thin one with three-foot wings cov-
ered with sores, and there were a couple micro-
cephalies with enough hair so that they looked

THIS IMMORTAL            153

headless, and there was one guy who should proba-
bly have been twins, and then several steatopygiacs,
and three huge, hulking brutes who kept coming
despite bullet-holes in their chests and abdomens;

one of these latter had hands which must have been
twenty inches long and a foot across, and another
appeared to be afflicted with something like
elephantiasis. Of the rest, some were reasonably
normal in form, but they all looked mean and man-
gy and either wore rags or no rags at all and were
unshaven and smelted bad, too.

I hurled one more stone and didn't get a chance
to see where it hit, because they were upon me then.

I began lashing out-feet, fists, elbows; I wasn't
too polite about it. The gunfire slowed down,
stopped. You have to stop to reload sometime, and
there'd been some jamming, too. The pain in my
side was a very bad thing. Still, I managed to drop
three of them before something big and blunt
caught me on the side of the head and I fell as a
dead man falls.

Coming to in a stiflingly hot place. . . .

Coming to in a stiflingly hot place that smells like
a stable. . . .

Coming to in a dark, stiflingly hot place that
smells like a stable. . . .

. . . This is not real conducive to peace of mind, a
settled stomach, or the resumption of sensory ac-
tivities on a sure and normal keel.

It stank in there and it was damn hot, and I
didn't really want to inspect the filthy floor too
closely-it was just that I was in a very good posi-
tion to do so.

I moaned, numbered all my bones, and sat up.

154 ROGER ZELAZNY

The ceiling was low and it slanted down even
lower before it met with the back wall. The one win-
dow to the outside was small and barred.

We were in the back part of a wooden shack.
There was another barred window in the opposite
wall. It didn't look out on anything, though; it
looked in. There was a larger room beyond it, and
George and DOS Santos were talking through it with
someone who stood on that other side. Hasan lay
unconscious or dead about four feet away from me;

there was dried blood on his head. Phil and Mysh-
tigo and the girls were talking softly in the far cor-

ner.

I rubbed my temple while all this was registering

within. My left side ached steadily, and numerous

other portions of my anatomy had decided to join in

the game.

"He's awake," said Myshtigo suddenly.
"Hi, everybody. I'm back again,'^ I agreed.
They came toward me and I assumed a standing

position. This was sheer bravado, but I managed to

carry it.

"We are prisoners," said Myshtigo.
"Oh, yeah? Really? I'd never have guessed."
"Things like this do not happen on Taler," he

observed, "or on any of the worlds in the Vegan

Combine."

"Too bad you didn't stay there," I said. "Don't

forget the number of times I asked you to go back."
"This thing would not have occurred if it had not

been for your duel."

I slapped him then. I couldn't bring myself to

slug him. He was just too pathetic. I hit him with

the back of my hand and knocked him over into the

wall.

THIS IMMORTAL           155

"Are you trying to tell me you don't know why I
stood there like a target this morning?"

"Because of your quarrel with my bodyguard,"
he stated, rubbing his cheek-

"-Over whether or not he was going to kill

you.

"Me? Kill . . . ?"

"Forget it," I said. "It doesn't really matter any-
how. Not now. You're still on Taler, and you may
as well stay there for your last few hours. It would
have been nice if you could have come to Earth and
visited with us for awhile. But things didn't work
out that way."

"We are going to die here, aren't we?" he asked.

"That is the custom of the country."

I turned away and studied the man who was
studying me from the other side of the bars. Hasan
was leaning against the far wall then, holding his
head. I hadn't noticed his getting up.

"Good afternoon," said the man behind the bars,
and he said it in English.

"/J it afternoon?" I asked.

"Quite," he replied.

"Why aren't we dead?" I asked him.

"Because I wanted you alive," he stated. "Oh,
not you personally-Conrad Nomikos, Commis-
sioner of Arts, Monuments and Archives-and all
your distinguished friends, including the poet
laureate. I wanted any prisoners whom they came
upon brought back alive. Your identities are, shall
we say, condiments."

"To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?"
I asked.

"This is Doctor Moreby," said George.

"He is their witch doctor," said DOS Santos.

?"

156 ROGER ZELAZNY

"I prefer 'Shaman* or 'Medicine Chief,' " cor-
rected Moreby, smiling.

I moved closer to the grillwork and saw that he
was rather thin, well-tanned, clean-shaven, and had
all his hair woven into one enormous black braid
which was coiled like a cobra about his head. He
had close-set eyes, dark ones, a high forehead, and
lots of extra jaw reaching down past his Adam's ap-
ple. He wore woven sandals, a clean green sari, and
a necklace of human fingerbones. In his ears were
big snake-shaped circlets of silver.

"Your English is rather precise," said I, "and
'Moreby' is not a Greek name."

"Oh goodness!" He gestured gracefully, in mock
surprise. "I'm not a local! How could you ever mis-
take me for a local?"

"Sorry," I said; "I can see now that you're too
well-dressed."

He giggled.

"Oh, this old rag.. . I just threw it on. -No» I'm
from Taler. I read some wonderfully rousing liter-
ature on the subject of Returnism, and I decided to
come back and help rebuild the Earth.'*

"Oh? What happened then?"

"The Office was not hiring at the time, and I ex-
perienced some difficulty in finding employment lo-
cally. So I decided to engage in research work. This
place is full of opportunities for that."

"What sort of research?"

"I hold two graduate degrees in cultural an-
thropology, from New Harvard. I decided to study
a Hot tribe in depth-and after some blandish-
ments I got this one to accept me. I started out to.
educate them, too. Soon, though, they were defer-
ring to me, all over the place. Wonderful for the ego.

THIS IMMORTAL            157

After a time, my studies, my social work, came to be
of less and less importance. Well, I daresay you've
read Heart of Darkness-you know what I mean. The
local practices are so-well, basic. I found it much
more stimulating to participate than to observe. I
took it upon myself to redesign some of their grosser
practices along more esthetic lines. So I did really
educate them, after all. They do things with ever so
much style since Fve come here."

"TAn^Suchas?"

"Well, for one thing, they were simple cannibals
before. For another, they were rather un-
sophisticated in their use of their captives prior to
slaying them. Things like that are quite important.
If they're done properly they give you class, if you
know what I mean. Here I was with a wealth of
customs, superstitions, taboos-from many cul-
tures, many eras-right here, at my fingertips." He
gestured again. "Man-even half-man, Hot man-
is a ritual-loving creature, and I knew ever so many
rituals and things like that. So I put all of this to
good use and now I occupy a position of great honor
and high esteem."

"What are you trying to tell me about us?" I
asked.

"Things were getting rather dull around here,"
he said, "and the natives were waxing restless. So I
decided it was time for another ceremony. I spoke
with Procrustes, the War Chief, and suggested he
find us some prisoners. I believe it is on page 577 of
the abridged edition of The Golden Bough that it
states, 'The Tolalaki, notorious head-hunters of
Central Celebes, drink the blood and eat the brains
of their victims that they may become brave. The
Italones of the Philippine Islands drink the blood of

158 ROGER ZELAZNY

their slain enemies, and eat part of the back of their
heads and their entrails raw to acquire their
courage.' Well, we have the tongue of a poet, the
blood of two very formidable warriors, the brains of
a very distinguished scientist, the bilious liver of a
fiery politician, and the interesting-colored flesh of
a Vegan-all in this one room here. Quite a haul, I
should say."

"You make yourself exceedingly clear," I ob-
served. "What of the women?"

"Oh, for them well work out a protracted fertili-
ty rite ending in a protracted sacrifice."

"I see."

"... That is to say, if we do not permit all of you
to continue on your way, unmolested."

"Oh?"

"Yes. Procrustes likes to give people a chance to
measure themselves against a standard, to be
tested, and possibly to redeem themselves. He is
most Christian in this respect."

"And true to his name, I suppose?"

Hasan came over and stood beside me, stared out
through the grillwork at Moreby.

"Oh, good, good," said Moreby. "Really, I'd like
to keep you around awhile, you know? You have a
sense of humor. Most of the Kouretes lack this ad-
junct to what are otherwise exemplary person-
alities. I could leam to like you ..."

"Don't bother. Tell me about the way of redemp-
tion, though."

"Yes. We are the wardens of the Dead Man. He
is my most interesting creation. I am certain that
one of you two shall realize this during your brief
acquaintanceship with him." He glanced from me
to Hasan to me to Hasan.

THIS IMMORTAL           159

"I know of him" I said. "Tell me what must be
done."

"You are called upon to bring forth a champion
to do battle with him, this night, when he rises
again from the dead."

"What is he?"

"A vampire."

"Crap. What is he really?"

"He is a genuine vampire. You'll see."

"Okay, have it your way. He's a vampire, and
one of us will fight him. How?"

"Catch-as-catch-can, bare-handed-and he isn't
very difficult to catch. He'll just stand there and
wait for you. Hell be very thirsty, and hungry too,
poor fellow."

"And if he is beaten, do your prisoners go free?"

"That is the rule, as I originally outlined it some
sixteen or seventeen years ago. Of course, this con-
tingency has never arisen. . .."

"I see. You're trying to tell me he's tough."

"Oh, he's unbeatable. That's the fun of it. It
wouldn't make for a good ceremony if it could end
any other way. I tell the whole story of the battle
before it takes place, and then my people witness it.
It reaffirms their faith in destiny and my own close
association with its workings."

Hasan glanced at me.

"What does he mean, Karagee?"

"It's a fixed fight," I told him.

"On the contrary," said Moreby, "it is not. It
doesn't have to be. There was once an old saying on
this planet, in connection with an ancient sport:

Never bet against the damn Yankees, or you'll lose
money. The Dead Man is unbeatable because he
was born with a considerable amount of native abil-

160 ROGER ZELAZNY

ity, upon which I have elaborated, considerably. He
has dined upon many champions, so of course his
strength is equal to all of theirs. Everyone who's
read Frazer knows that."

He yawned, covering his mouth with a feathered
wand.

"I must go to the barbecue area now, to supervise
the decking of the hall with boughs of holly. Decide
upon your champion this afternoon, and 1*11 see you
all this evening. Good day."

"Trip and break your neck."

He smiled and left the shack.

I called a meeting.

"Okay," I said, "they've got a weird Hot One
called the Dead Man, who is supposed to be very
tough. I am going to fight him tonight. If I can beat
him we are supposed to go free, but I wouldn't take
Moreby's word for anything. Therefore, we must
plan an escape, else we will be served up on a chaf-
ing dish.

"Phil, do you remember the road to Volos?" I
asked -

"I think so. It's been a long time. . . . But where
are we now, exactly?"

"If it is of any help," answered Myshtigo, from
beside the window, "I see a glowing. It is not any
color for which there is a word in your language,
but it is off in that direction." He pointed, "It is a
color which I normally see in the vicinity of radio-
active materials if the atmosphere is dense enough
about them. It is spread over quite a large area."

I moved to the window and stared in that direc-
tion.

"That could be the Hot Spot, then," I said. "If

THIS IMMORTAL

161

that is the case, then they've actually brought us
further along toward the coast, which is good. Was
anyone conscious when we were brought here?"

No one answered.

"All right. Then well operate under the assump-
tion that that is the Hot Spot, and that we are very
close to it. The road to Volos should be back that
way, then." I pointed in the opposite direction.
"Since the sun is on this side of the shack and it's
afternoon, head in the other direction after you hit
the road-away from the sunset. It might not be
more than twenty-five kilometers."

"They will track us," said DOS Santos.

"There are horses," said Hasan-

"What?"

"Up the street, in a paddock. There were three
near that rail earlier. They are back behind the
edge of the building now. There may be more. They
were not strong-looking horses, though."

"Can all of you ride?" I asked.

"I have never ridden a horse," said Myshtigo,
"but the thrid is something similar. I have ridden
thrid."

Everyone else had ridden horses.

"Tonight then," I said, "Ride double if you
must. If there are more than enough horses, then
turn the others loose, drive them away. As they
watch me fight the Dead Man you will make a
break for the paddock. Seize what weapons you can
and try to fight your way to the horses. -Phil, get
them up to Makrynitsa and mention the name of
Korones anywhere. They will take you in and pro-
tect you."

"I am sorry," said DOS Santos, "but your plan is
not a good one."

162 ROGER ZELAZNY

"If you've got a better one, let's hear it," I told
him.

"First of all," he said, "we cannot really rely on
Mister Graber. While you were still unconscious he
was in great pain and very weak. George believes
that he suffered a heart attack during or shortly af-
ter our fight with the Kouretes- If anything happens
to him we are lost. We will need you to guide us out
of here, if we do succeed in breaking free. We cannot
count on Mister Graber.

"Second," he said, "you are not the only man
capable of fighting an exotic menace. Hasan will
undertake the defeat of the Dead Man."

"I can't ask him to do that," I said. "Even if he
wins, he will probably be separated from us at the
time, and they'll doubtless get to him pretty fast. It
would most likely mean his life. You hired him to
kill for you, not to die."

"I will fight him, Karagee," he said.

"You don't have to."

"But I wish to."

"How are you feeling now, Phil?" I asked.

"Better, much better. I think it was just an upset
stomach. Don't worry about it."

"Do you feel good enough to make it to
Makrynitsa, on horseback?"

"No trick at all. It will be easier than walking. I
was practically born on horseback. You re-
member. "

" 'Remember'?" asked DOS Santos. "What do
you' mean by that, Mister Graber? How could Con-
rad remem-"

"-Remember his famous Ballads on Horseback/'
said Red Wig. "What are you leading up to, Con-
rad?"

THIS IMMORTAL            163

"I'm in charge here, thank you," said I. "I'm giv-
ing the orders and I've decided I'll do the vampire-
fighting."

"In a situation like this I think we ought to be a
little more democratic about these life and death
decisions," she replied. "You were born in this
country. No matter how good Phil's memory is,
you'll do a better job of getting us from here to there
in a hurry. You're not ordering Hasan to die, or
abandoning him. He's volunteering."

"I will kill the Dead Man," said Hasan, "and I
will follow after you. I know the ways of hiding my-
self from men. I will follow your trail."

"It's my job, "I told him.

"Then, since we cannot agree, leave the decision
to the fates," said Hasan. "Toss a coin.'*

"Very well. Did they take our money as well as
our weapons?"

"I have some change," said Ellen.

"Toss a piece into the air."

She did.

"Heads," said I, as it fell toward the floor.

"Tails," she replied.

"Don't touch it!"

It was tails, all right. And there was a head on the
other side, too.

"Okay, Hasan, you lucky fellow, you," I said.
"You just won a do-it-yourself Hero Kit, complete
with a monster. Good luck."

He shrugged.

"It was written."

He sat down then, his back against the wall, ex-
tracted a tiny knife from the sole of his left sandal,
and began to pare his fingernails. He'd always been
a pretty well-groomed killer. I guess cleanliness is

164           ROGER ZELAZNY
next to diablerie, or something like that.

As the sun sank slowly in the west, Moreby came
to us again, bringing with him a contingent of
Kourete swordsmen.

"The time has come," he stated. "Have you de-
cided upon your champion?"

"Hasan will fight him," I said.

"Very good. Then come along. Please do not try
anything foolish. I should hate to deliver damaged
goods at a festival.'*

Walking within a circle of blades, we left the
shack and moved up the street to the village, pass-
ing by the paddock. Eight horses, heads low, stood
within. Even in the diminishing light I could see
that they were not very good horses. Their flanks
were all covered with sores, and they were quite
thin. Everyone glanced at them as we went by.

The village consisted of about thirty shacks, such
as the one in which we had been confined. It was a
dirt road that we walked on, and it was full of ruts
and rubbish. The whole place smelled of sweat and
urine and rotten fruit and smoke.

We went about eighty meters and turned left. It
was the end of the street, and we moved along a
downhill path into a big, cleared compound. A fat,
bald-headed woman with enormous breasts and a
face that was a lava field of carcinoma was tending
a low and dreadfully suggestive fire at the bottom of
a huge barbecue pit. She smiled as we passed by
and smacked her lips moistly.

Great, sharpened stakes lay on the ground about
her.. . .

Up further ahead was a level area of hardpacked
bare earth. A huge, vine-infested, tropic-type tree

THIS IMMORTAL          165

which had adapted itself to our climate stood at the
one end of the field, and all about the field's per-
ipheries were rows of eight-foot torches, already
waving great lengths of fire like pennants. At the
other end was the most elaborate shack of them all.
It was about five meters high and ten across the
front. It was painted bright red and covered all over
with Pennsylvania hex signs. The entire middle sec-
tion of the front wall was a high, sliding door. Two
armed Kouretes stood guard before that door.

The sun was a tiny piece of orange-rind in the
west. Moreby marched us the length of the field to-
ward the tree.

Eighty to a hundred spectators were seated on
the ground on the other side of the torches, on each
side of the field.

Moreby gestured, indicating the red shack.

"How do you like my home?" he asked.

"Lovely," said I.

"I have a roommate, but he sleeps during the
day. You're about to meet him."

We reached the base of the big tree; Moreby left
us there, surrounded by his guards. He moved to
the center of the field and began addressing the
Kouretes in Greek.

We had agreed that we would wait until the fight
was near its end, whichever way, and the tribesmen
all excited and concentrating on the finale, before
we made our break. We'd pushed the women into
the center of our group, and I managed to get on the
left side of a right-handed swordsman, whom I in-
tended to kill quickly. Too bad that we were at the
far end of the field. To get to the horses we'd have
to fight our way back through the barbecue area.

". . . and then, on that night," Moreby was

166 ROGER ZELAZNY

saying, "did the Dead Man rise up, smiting down
this mighty warrior, Hasan, breaking his bones and
casting him about this place of feasting. Finally, did
he kill this great enemy and drink the blood from
his throat and eat of his liver, raw and still smoking
in the night air. These things did he do on that
night. Mighty is his power."

"Mighty, oh mighty!" cried the crowd, and
someone began beating upon a drum.

"Now will we call him to life again. ..."

The crowd cheered.

"To life again!"

"To life again."

"To life again!"

"Hail!"

"Hail!"

"Sharp white teeth...."

"Sharp white teeth!"

"White, white skin. ..."

"White, white skin!"

"Hands which break- ..."

"Hands which break!"

"Mouth which drinks. ..."

"Mouth which drinks!'*

"The blood of life!"

"The blood of life!"

"Great is our tribe!"

"Great is our tribe!"

"Great is the Dead Man!"

"Great is the Dead Man!"

"Great is the Dead Man!"

"GREAT IS THE DEAD MAN!"

They bellowed it, at the last. Throats human,
half-human, and inhuman heaved the brief litany
like a tidal wave across the Held. Our guards, too,

THIS IMMORTAL           167

were screaming it. Myshtigo was blocking his sensi-
tive ears and there was an expression of agony on
his face. My head was ringing too. DOS Santos
crossed himself and one of the guards shook his
head at him and raised his blade meaningfully. Don
shrugged and turned his head back toward the
field.

Moreby walked up to the shack and struck three
times upon the sliding door with his hand.

One of the guards pushed it open for him.

An immense black catafalque, surrounded by the
skulls of men and animals, was set within. It sup-
ported an enormous casket made of dark wood and
decorated with bright, twisting lines.

At Moreby's directions, the guards raised the lid.

For the next twenty minutes he gave hypodermic
injections to something within the casket. He kept
his movements slow and ritualistic. One of the
guards put aside his blade and assisted him. The
drummers kept up a steady, slow cadence. The
crowd was very silent, very still.

Then Moreby turned.

"Now the Dead Man rises," he announced.

"Rises," responded the crowd.

"Now he comes forth to accept the sacrifice."

"Now he comes forth- ..."

"Come forth, Dead Man," he called, turning
back to the catafalque.

And he did.

At great length.

For he was big.

Huge, obese.

Great indeed was the Dead Man.

Maybe 350 pounds' worth.

He sat up in his casket and he looked all about

168 ROGER ZELAZNY

him. He rubbed his chest, his armpits, his neck, his
groin. He climbed out of the big box and stood
beside the catafalque, dwarfing Moreby.

He was wearing only a loincloth and large,
goatskin sandals.

His skin was white, dead white, fishbelly white,
moon white - - - dead white.

"An albino," said George, and his voice carried
the length of the Held, because it was the only sound
in the night.

Moreby glanced in our direction and smiled. He
took the Dead Man's stubby-fingered hand and led
him out of the shack and onto the field. The Dead
Man shied away from the torchlight. As he ad-
vanced, I studied the expression on his face.

"There is no intelligence in that face," said Red
Wig.

"Can you see his eyes?" asked George, squinting.
His glasses had been broken in the fray.

"Yes; they're pinkish."

"Does he have epicanthial folds?"

"Mm ... Yeah."

"Uh-huh. He's a Mongoloid-an idiot, I'll wager
-which is why it was so easy for Moreby to do
what he's done with him. And look at his teeth!
They look filed."

I did. He was grinning, because he'd seen the col-
orful top of Red Wig's head. Lots of nice, sharp
teeth were exposed.

"His albinism is the reason behind the nocturnal
habits Moreby has imposed. Look! He even
flinches at the torchlight! He's ultrasensitive of any
sort ofantinics."

"What about his dietary habits?"

"Acquired, through imposition. Lots of primitive

THIS IMMORTAL         i69

people bled their cattle. The Kazaks did it until the
twentieth century, and the Todas. You saw the
sores on those horses as we passed by the paddock.
Blood is nourishing, you know, if you can learn to
keep it down-and I'm sure Moreby has regulated
the idiot's diet since he was a child. So of course
he's a vampire-he was brought up that way."

"The Dead Man is risen," said Moreby.

"The Dead Man is risen," agreed the crowd.

"Great is the Dead Man!"

"Great is the Dead Man!"

He dropped the dead-white hand then and
walked toward us, leaving the only genuine vampire
we knew of grinning in the middle of the field.

"Great is the Dead Man," he said, grinning him-
self as he approached us. "Rather magnificent, isn't
he?"

"What have you done to that poor creature?"
asked Red Wig.

"Very little," replied Moreby, "He was born
pretty well-equipped."

"What were those injections you gave him?" in-
quired George. '

"Oh, I shoot his pain centers full of Novocain
before encounters such as this one. His lack of pain
responses adds to the image of his invincibility.
Also, I've given him a hormone shot. He's been put-
ting on weight recently, and he's grown a bit slug-
gish. That compensates for it."

"You talk of him and treat him as though he's a
mechanical toy," said Diane.

"He is. An invincible toy. An invaluable one,
also--You there, Hasan. Are you ready?" he
asked.

"I am." Hasan answered, removing his cloak and

170 ROGER ZELAZNY

his burnoose and handing them to Ellen.

The big muscles in his shoulders bulged, his fin-
gers flexed lightly, and he moved forward and out of
the circle of blades. There was a welt on his left
shoulder, several others on his back. The torchlight
caught his beard and turned it to blood, and I could
not help but remember that night back at the houn-
for when he had enacted a strangling, and Mama
Julie had said, "Your friend is possessed of
Angelsou," and "Angelsou is a deathgod and he
only visits with his own."

"Great is the Warrior, Hasan," announced
Moreby, turning away from us.

"Great is the warrior, Hasan," replied the crowd.

"His strength is that of many."

"His strength is that of many," the crowd re-
peated-

"Greater still is the Dead Man."

"Greater still is the Dead Man."

"He breaks his bones and casts him about this
place of feasting."

"He breaks his bones. . . ."

"He eats his liver."

"He eats his liver."

"He drinks the blood from his throat."

"He drinks the blood from his throat."

"Mighty is his power."

"Mighty is his power."

"Great is the Dead Man!"

"Great is the Dead Man!"

"Tonight," said Hasan quietly, "he becomes the
Dead Man indeed."

"Dead Man!" cried Moreby, as Hasan moved
forward and stood before him, "I give you this man
Hasan in sacrifice!"

THIS IMMORTAL           171

Then Moreby got out of the way and motioned
the guards to move us to the far sideline.

The idiot grinned an even wider grin and reached
out slowly toward Hasan.

"Bismallah," said Hasan, making as if to turn
away from him, and bending downward and to the
side.

He picked it off the ground and brought it up and
around fast and hard, like a whiplash-a great heel-
of-the-hand blow which landed on the left side of
the Dead Man's jaw.

The white, white head moved maybe five inches.

And he kept on grinning. . . .

Then both of his short bulky arms came out and
caught Hasan beneath the armpits. Hasan seized
his shoulders, tracing fine red furrows up his sides
as he went, and he drew red beads from the places
where his fingers dug into snowcapped muscle.

The crowd screamed at the sight of the Dead
Man's blood. Perhaps the smell of it excited the idi-
ot himself. That, or the screaming.

Because he raised Hasan two feet off the ground
and ran forward with him.

The big tree got in the way, and Hasan's head
sagged as he struck.

Then the Dead Man crashed into him, stepped
back slowly, shook himself, and began to hit
him.

It was a real beating. He flailed at him with his
almost grotesquely brief, thick arms.

Hasan got his hands up in front of his face and he
kept his elbows in the pit of his stomach.

Still, the Dead Man kept striking him on his sides
and head. His arms just kept rising and falling.

And he never stopped grinning.

172 ROGER ZELAZNY

Finally, Hasan's hands fell and he clutched them

before his stomach.

. . . And there was blood coming from the comers

of his mouth.

The invincible toy continued its game.
And then far, far off on the other side of the night,

so far that only I could hear it, there came a voice

that I recognized.

It was the great hunting-howl of my hellhound,

Bortan.

Somewhere, he had come upon my trail, and he

was coming now, running down the night, leaping

like a goat, flowing like a horse or a river, all

brindle-colored-and his eyes were glowing coals

and his teeth were buzzsaws.

He never tired of runing, my Bortan.
Such as he are born without fear, given to the

hunt, and sealed with death.

My hellhound was coming, and nothing could

halt him in his course-
But he was far, so far off, on the other side of the

night. . . .

The crowd was screaming. Hasan couldn't take

much more of it- Nobody could.

From the corner of my eye (the brown one) I no-
ticed a tiny gesture of Ellen's.

It was as though she had thrown something with

her right hand. . . .

Two seconds later it happened.
I looked away quickly from that point of

brilliance that occurred, sizzling, behind the idiot.
The Dead Man wailed, lost his grip.
Good old Reg 237.1 (promulgated by me):

"Every tour guide and every member of a tour

must carry no fewer than three magnesium flares on

THIS IMMORTAL

173

his person, while traveling."

Ellen only had two left, that meant. Bless her.

The idiot had stopped hitting Hasan.

He tried to kick the flare away. He screamed. He
tried to kick the flare away. He covered his eyes. He
rolled on the ground.

Hasan watched, bleeding, panting.. . .

The flare burnt, the Dead Man screamed- . . .

Hasan finally moved.

He reached up and touched one of the thick vines
which hung from the tree.

He tugged at it. It resisted. He pulled harder.

It came loose.

His movements were steadier as he twisted an
end around each hand.

The flare sputtered, grew bright again. . . .

He dropped to his knees beside the Dead Man,
and with a quick motion he looped the vine about
his throat.

The flare sputtered again.

He snapped it tight.

The Dead Man fought to rise.

Hasan drew the thing tighter.

The idiot seized him about the waist.

The big muscles in the Assassin's shoulders grew
into ridges. Perspiration mingled with the blood on
his face.

The Dead Man stood, raising Hasan with him.

Hasan pulled harder.

The idiot, his face no longer white, but mottled,
and with the veins standing out like cords in his
forehead and neck, lifted him up off the ground.

As I'd lifted the golem did the Dead Man raise
Hasan, the vine cutting ever more deeply into his
neck as he strained with all his inhuman strength.

174 ROGER ZELAZNY

The crowd was wailing and chanting incoherent-
ly. The drumming, which had reached a frenzied
throb, continued at its peak without letup. And
then I heard the howl again, still very far away.

The flare began to die.

The Dead Man swayed.

. . . Then, as a great spasm racked him, he threw
Hasan away from him.

The vine went slack about his throat as it tore
free from Hasan*s grip.

Hasan took Ukemi and rolled to his knees- He
stayed that way.

The Dead Man moved toward him.

Then his pace faltered-

He began to shake all over. He made a gurgling
noise and clutched at his throat. His face grew
darker. He staggered to the tree and put forth a
hand. He leaned there panting. Soon he was gasp-
ing noisily. His hand slipped along the trunk and he
dropped to the ground. He picked himself up again,
into a half-crouch.

Hasan arose, and recovered the piece of vine from
where it had fallen.

He advanced upon the idiot.

This time his grip was unbreakable.

The Dead Man fell, and he did not rise again.

It was like turning off a radio which had been
playing at full volume:

Click. . . .

Big silence then-it had all happened so fast. And
tender was the night, yea verily, as I reached out
through it and broke the neck of the swordsman at
my side and seized his blade. I turned then to my
left and split the skull of the next one with it.

THIS IMMORTAL           175

Then, like click again, and full volume back on,
but all static this time. The night was torn down
through the middle.

Myshtigo dropped his man with a vicious rabbit-
punch and kicked another in the shins. George
managed a quick knee to the groin of the one
nearest him.

DOS Santos, not so quick-or else just unlucky-
took two bad cuts, chest and shoulder.

The crowd rose up from where it had been scat-
tered on the ground, like a speedup film of
bcansprouts growing.

It advanced upon us.

Ellen threw Hasan's burnoose over the head of
the swordsman who was about to disembowel her
husband. Earth's poet laureate then brought a rock
down hard on the top of the burnoose, doubtless
collecting much bad karma but not looking too wor-
ried about it.

By then Hasan had rejoined our little group, us-

ing his hand to parry a sword cut by striking the flat
of the blade in an old samuri maneuver I had
thought lost to the world forever. Then Hasan, too,
had a sword-after another rapid movement-and
he was very proficient with it.

We killed or maimed all our guards before the
crowd was halfway to us, and Diane, taking a cue
from Ellen, lobbed her three magnesium flares
across the field and into the mob.

We ran then, Ellen and Red Wig supporting DOS
Santos, who was kind'of staggery.

But the Kouretes had cut us off and we were run-
ning northwards, off at a tangent from our goal.

"We cannot make it, Karagee,'* called Hasan-

tt! know."

176 ROGER ZELAZNY

"... Unless you and I delay them while the oth-
ers go ahead."

"Okay. Where?"

"At the far barbecue pit, where the trees are thick
about the path It is a bottle's neck. They will not
be able to hit us all at a time."

"Right!" I turned to the others. "You hear us?
Make for the horses! Phil will guide you! Hasan
and I will hold them for as long as we can!"

Red Wig turned her head and began to say some-
thing.

"Don't argue! Go' You want to live, don't
you!?"

They did. They went.

Hasan and I turned, there beside the barbecue
pit, and we waited. The others cut back again,
going off through the woods, heading toward the
village and the paddock. The mob kept right on
coming, toward Hasan and me.

The first wave hit us and we began the killing.
We were in the V-shaped place where the path dis-
gorged from the woods onto the plain. To our left
was a smoldering pit; to our right a thick stand of
trees. We killed three, and several more were bleed-
ing when they fell back, paused, then moved to
flank us.

We stood back to back then and cut them as they
closed.

"If even one has a gun we are dead, Karagee."

"I know."

Another half-man fell to my blade. Hasan sent
one, screaming, into the pit.

They were all about us then. A blade slipped in
past my guard and cut me on the shoulder. Another
nicked my thigh.

THIS IMMORTAL            177

"Fall back, thou fools! I say withdraw, thou
freaks!"

At that, they did, moving back beyond thrust-
range.

The man who had spoken was about five and a
half feet tall. His lower jaw moved like that of a
puppet's, as though on hinges, and his teeth were
like a row of dominoes-all darkstained and click-
ing as they opened and closed.

"Yea, Procrustes," I heard one say,

"Fetch nets! Snare them alive! Do not close with
them! They have cost us too much already!"

Moreby was at his side, and whimpering.

"... I did not know, miord."

"Silence! thou brewer of ill-tasting sloshes! Thou
hast cost us a god and many men!"

"Shall we rush?" asked Hasan.

"No, but be ready to cut the nets when they bring
them."

"It is not good that they want us alive," he de-
cided.

"We have sent many to Hell, to smooth our
way," said I, "and we are standing yet and holding
blades. What more?"

"If we rush them we can take two, perhaps four
more with us. If we wait, they will net us and we die
without them."

"What matters it, once you are dead? Let us
wait. So long as we live there is the great peacock-
tail of probability, growing from out of the next mo-
ment."

"As you say."

And they found nets and cast them. We cut three
of them apart before they tangled us in the fourth.
They drew them tight and moved in.

178 ROGER ZELAZNY

I felt my blade wrenched from my grasp, and
someone kicked me. It was Moreby.

"Now you will die as very few die," said he.

"Did the others escape?"

"Only for the moment," he said. "We will track
them, find them, and bring them back."

I laughed.

"You lose," I said. "They'll make it."

He kicked me again.

"This is how your rule applies?" I asked. "Hasan
conquered the Dead Man."

"He cheated. The woman threw a flare."

Procrustes came up beside him as they bound us
within the nets.

"Let us take them to the Valley of Sleep," said
Moreby, "and there work our wills with them and
leave them to be preserved against future feasting."

"It is good," said Procrustes. "Yes, it shall be
done."

Hasan must have been working his left arm
through the netting all that while, because it shot
out a short distance and his nails raked Procrustes*
leg.

Procrustes kicked him several times, and me once
more for good measure. He rubbed at the scratches
on his calf.

"Why did you do that, Hasan?" I asked, after
Procrustes turned away and ordered us bound to
barbecue stakes for carrying.

"There may still be some meta-cyanide left on
my fingernails," he explained.

"How did it get there?"

"From the bullets in my belt, Karagee, which
they did not take from me. I coated my nails after I
sharpened them today."

THIS IMMORTAL            179

"Ah! You scratched the Dead Man at the begin-
ning of your bout ..."

"Yes, Karagee. Then it was simply a matter of
my staying alive until he fell over."

"You are an exemplary assassin, Hasan."

"Thank you, Karagee."

We were bound to the stakes, still netted. Four
men, at the order of Procrustes, raised us,

Moreby and Procrustes leading the way, we were
borne off through the night.

As we moved along an uneven trail the world
changed about us. It's always that way when you
approach a Hot Spot. It's like hiking backward
through geological eras.

The trees along the way began to vary, more and
more. Finally, we were passing up a moist aisle be-
tween dark towers with fern-like leaves; and things
peered out through them with slitted, yellow eyes.
High overhead, the night was a tarp, stretched tent-
wise across the tree-tops, pricked with faint
starmarks, torn with a jagged yellow crescent of a
tear. Birdlike cries, ending in snorts, emerged from
the great wood. Up further ahead a dark shape
crossed the pathway.

As we advanced along the way the trees grew
smaller, the spaces between them wider. But they
were not like the trees we had left beyond the vil-
lage. They were twisted (and twisting!) forms, with
seaweed swirls of branches, gnarled trunks, and ex-
posed roots which crept, slowly, about the surface
of the ground. Tiny invisible things made
scratching noises as they scurried from the light of
Moreby's electric lantern.

By turning my head I could detect a faint, pulsat-

180 ROGER ZELAZNY

ing glow, just at the border of the visible spectrum.
It was coming from up ahead.

A profusion of dark vines appeared underfoot.
They writhed whenever one of our bearers stepped
on them.

The trees became simple ferns. Then these, too,
vanished. Great quantities of shaggy, blood-colored
lichens replaced them. They grew over all the rocks.
They were faintly luminous.

There were no more animal sounds. There were
no sounds at all, save for the panting of our four
bearers, and footfalls, and the occasional muffled
click as Procrustes' automatic rifle struck a padded
rock.

Our bearers wore blades in their belts. Moreby
carried several blades, as well as a small pistol.

The trail turned sharply upward. One of our
bearers swore. The night-tent was jerked down-
ward at its corners then; it met with the horizon,
and it was filled with the hint of a purple haze,
fainter than exhaled cigarette-smoke. Slow, very
high, and slapping the air like a devilfish coasting
on water, the dark form of a spiderbat crossed over
the face of the moon.

Procrustes fell.

Moreby helped him to his feet, but Procrustes
swayed and leaned upon him.

"What ails you, lord?"

"A sudden dizziness, numbness in my
members. . . . Take thou my rifle. It grows heavy."

Hasan chuckled.

Procrustes turned toward Hasan, his puppet-jaw
dropping open.

Then he dropped, too-

Moreby had just taken the rifle and his hands

THIS IMMORTAL            181

were full. The guards set us down, rather urgently,
and rushed to Procrustes* side.

"Hast thou any water?" he asked, and he closed
his eyes.

He did not open them again.

Moreby listened to his chest, held the feathery
part of his wand beneath his nostrils.

"He is dead," he finally announced.

"Dead?"

The bearer who was covered with scales began to
weep,

"He wiss good," he sobbed. "He wiss a great war
shief. What will we do now?"

"He is dead," Moreby repeated, "and I am your
leader until a new war chief is declared. Wrap him
in your cloaks. Leave him on that flat rock up
ahead. No animals come here, so he will not be
molested. We will recover him on the way back.
Now, though, we must have our vengeance on these
two." He gestured with his wand. "The Valley of
Sleep is near at hand. You have taken the pills I
gave you?"

"Yes."

"Yes."

"Yes."

"Yiss."

"Very good. Take your cloaks now and wrap
him."

They did this, and soon we were raised again and
borne to the top of a ridge from which a trail ran
down into a fluorescent, pock-blasted pit. The great
rocks of the place seemed almost to be burning.

"This," I said to Hasan, "was described to me by
my son as the place where the thread of my life lies
across a burning stone. He saw me as threatened by

182 ROGER ZELAZNY

the Dead Man, but the fates thought twice and gave
that menace onto you. Back when I was but a
dream in the mind of Death, this site was appointed
as one of the places where I might die."

"To fall from Shinvat is to roast," said Hasan.
The carried us down into the fissure, dropped us

on the rocks.

Moreby released the safety catch on the rifle and

stepped back.

"Release the Greek and tie him to that column."
He gestured with the weapon.

They did this, binding my hands and feet secure-
ly. The rock was smooth, damp, killing without in-
dication.

They did the same to Hasan, about eight feet to

my right.

Moreby had set down the lantern so that it cast a
yellow semicircle about us. The four Kouretes were
demon statues at his side.

He smiled. He leaned the rifle against the rocky

wall behind him.

"This is the Valley of Sleep," he told us. "Those
who sleep here do not awaken. It keeps the meat
preserved, however, providing us against the lean
years. Before we leave you, though-" His eyes
turned to me. "Do you see where I have set the ri-
fle?"

I did not answer him.

"I believe your entrails will stretch that liar, Com-
missioner. At any rate, I intend to find out." He
drew a dagger from his belt and advanced upon me.
The four half-men moved with him. "Who do you
think has more guts?" he asked. "You or the
Arab?"

THIS IMMORTAL

183

t
•"•*--. •

r

Neither of us replied.

"You shall both get to see for yourselves," he said
through his teeth. "First you!"

He jerked my shirt free and cut it down the front.

He rotated the blade in a slow significant circle
about two inches away from my stomach, all the
while studying my face.

"You are afraid," he said. "Your face does not
show it yet, but it will."

Then: "Look at me! I am going to put the blade
in very slowly. I am going to dine on you one day.
What do you think of that?"

I laughed. It was suddenly worth laughing at.

His face twisted, then it straightened into a
momentary look of puzzlement.

"Has the fear driven you mad, Commissioner?"

"Feathers or lead?" I asked him.

He knew what it meant. He started to say some-
thing, and then he heard a pebble click about
twelve feet away. His head snapped in that direc-
tion.

He spent the last second of his life screaming, as
the force of Bortan's leap pulped him against the
ground, before his head was snatched from his
shoulders.

My hellhound had arrived.

The Kouretes screamed, for his eyes are glowing
coals and his teeth are buzzsaws. His head is as
high above the ground as a tall man's. Although
they seized their blades and struck at him, his sides
are as the sides of an armadillo. A quarter ton of
dog, my Bortan ... he is not exactly the kind Albert
Payson Terhune wrote about.

184 ROGER ZELAZNY

He worked for the better part of a minute, and
when he was finished they were all in pieces and
none of them alive.

"What is it?" asked Hasan..

"A puppy I found in a sack, washed up on the
beach, too tough to drown-my dog," said I,
"Bortan."

There was a small gash in the softer part of his
shoulder. He had not gotten it in the fight.

"He sought us first in the village," I said, "and
they tried to stop him. Many Kouretes have died
this day."

He trotted up and licked my face. He wagged his
tail, made dog-noises, wriggled like a puppy, and
ran in small circles. He sprang toward me and
licked my face again. Then he was off cavorting
once more, treading on pieces of Kouretes.

"It is good for a man to have a dog," said Hasan.
"I have always been fond of dogs."

Bortan was sniffing him as he said it.

"You've come back, you dirty old hound," I told
him. "Don't you know that dogs are extinct?"

He wagged his tail, came up to me again, licked
my hand.

"I'm sorry that I can't scratch your ears. You
know that I'd like to, though, don't you?"

He wagged his tail.

I opened and closed my right hand within its
bonds. I turned my head that way as I did it.
Bortan watched, his nostrils moist and quivering.

"Hands, Bortan. I need hands to free me. Hands
to loosen my bonds. You must fetch them, Bortan,
and bring them here."

He picked up an arm that was lying on the

THIS IMMORTAL

185

ground and he deposited it at my feet. He looked up
then and wagged his tail.

"No, Bortan. Live hands. Friendly hands. Hands
to untie me. You understand, don't you?"

He licked my hand.

"Go and find hands to free me. Still attached and
living. The hands of friends. Now, quickly! Go!"

He turned and walked away, paused, looked
back once, then mounted the trail.

"Does he understand?" asked Hasan.

"I think so," I told him. "His is not an ordinary
dog brain, and he has had many many more years
than even the lifetime of a man in which to learn
understanding."

"Then let us hope he finds someone quickly,
before we sleep."

"Yes."

We hung there and the night was cold.
We waited for a long time. Finally, we lost track

of time-
Our muscles were cramped and aching. We were

covered with the dried blood of countless little

wounds. We were all over bruises. We were groggy

from fatigue, from lack of sleep.

We hung there, the ropes cutting into us.

"Do you think they will make it to your village?"

"We gave them a good start. I think they have a

decent chance."

"It is always difficult to work with you,

Kara gee."

"I know. I have noticed this same thing myself."
". . . Like the summer we rotted in the dungeons

of Corsica."

ROGER ZELAZNY

186

'Aye."

"... Or our march to the Chicago Station, after
we had lost all our. equipment in Ohio."

"Yes, that was a bad year."

"You are always in trouble, though, Karagee.
'Born to knot the tiger's tail,'" he said; "that is the
saying for people such as you. They are difficult to
be with. Myself, I love the quiet and the shade, a
book of poems, my pipe-"

"Hush! I hear something!"

There was a clatter of hooves.

A satyr appeared beyond the cockeyed angle of
the light from the fallen lantern. He moved nervous-
ly, his eyes going from me to Hasan and back again,
and up, down, around, and past us.

"Help us, little horny one," said I, in Greek.

He advanced carefully. He saw the blood, the
mangled Kouretes.

He turned as if to flee.

"Come back! I need you! It is I, the player of the

pipes."

He stopped and turned again, his nostrils quiver-
ing, flaring and falling. His pointed ears twitched.

He came back, a pained expression on his near-
human face as he passed through the place of gore.

"The blade. At my feet," I said, gesturing with
my eyes. "Pick it up."

He did not seem to like the notion of touching
anything man-made, especially a weapon.

I whistled the last lines of my last tune.

It's late, it's late, so late. . . .

His eyes grew moist. He wiped at them with the
backs of his shaggy wrists.

"Pick up the blade and cut my bonds. Pick it up.

THIS IMMORTAL            187

-Not that way, you'll cut yourself. The other end,

-Yes."

He picked it up properly and looked at me. I
moved my right hand.

"The ropes. Cut them."

He did. It took him twenty minutes and left me
wearing a bracelet of blood- I had to keep moving
my hand to keep him from slashing an artery. But
he freed it and looked at me expectantly.

"Now give me the knife and I'll take care of the
rest."

He placed the blade in my extended hand.

I took it. Seconds later I was free. Then I freed
Hasan.

When I turned again the satyr was gone. I heard
the sound of frantic hoofbeats in the distance.

"The Devil has forgiven me," said Hasan.

We went far away from the Hot Spot as fast as we
could, skirting the Kourete village and continuing
northward until we came upon a trail that I recog-
nized as the road to Volos. Whether Bortan had
found the satyr and had somehow conned him into
coming to us, or whether the creature had spotted
us himself and remembered me, was something of
which I couldn't be sure. Bortan had not returned,
though, so I had a feeling it was the latter case.

The closest friendly town was Volos, a probable
twenty-five kilometers to the east. If Bortan had
gone there, where he would be recognized by many
of my relatives, it would still be a long while before
his return. My sending him after help had been a
last-ditch sort of thing. If he'd tried elsewhere than
Volos, then I'd no idea when he'd be back. He'd

188 ROGER ZELAZNY

find my trail though, and he'd follow it again. We
pushed on, putting as much road as possible behind
us.

After about ten kilo we were staggering. We knew
that we couldn't make it much further without rest,
so we kept our eyes open for a possible safe sleep-
site.

Finally, I recognized a steep, rocky hill where I
had herded sheep as a boy. The small shepherd's
cave, three-quarters of the way up the slope, was
dry and vacant. The wooden facade that faced it
was fallen to decay, but it still functioned.

We pulled some clean grass for bedding, secured
the door, and stretched out within. In a moment,
Hasan was snoring. My mind spun for a second
before it drifted, and in that second I knew that of
all pleasures-a drink of cold water when you are
thirsty, liquor when you are not, sex, a cigarette af-
ter many days without one-there is none of them
can compare with sleep.

Sleep is best. . . .

I might say that if our party had taken the long
way from Lamia to Volos-the coastal road-the
whole thing might never have happened the way
that it did, and Phil might be alive today. But I
can't really judge all that occurred in this case; even
now, looking back, I can't say how I'd rearrange
events if it were all to be done over again. The forces
of final disruption were already goosestepping
amidst the ruins, arms upraised. .. .

We made it to Volos the following afternoon, and
on up Mount Pelion to Portaria. Across a deep
ravine lay Makrynitsa.

We crossed over and found the others.

THIS IMMORTAL         189

Phil had guided them to Makrynitsa, asked for a
bottle of wine and his copy of Prometheus Unbound,
and had sat up with the two, well into the evening.

In the morning, Diane had found him smiling,
and cold.

I built him a pyre amidst the cedars near the
ruined Episcopi, because he did not want to be
buried. I heaped it with incense, with aromatic
herbs, and it was twice the height of a man. That
night it would burn and I would say goodbye to
another friend. It seems, looking back, that my life
has mainly been a series of arrivals and departures.
I say "hello." I say "goodbye." Only the Earth
endures. . . .

Hell.

So I walked with the group that afternoon, out to
Pagasae, the port of ancient lolkos, set on the prom-
ontory opposite Volos. We stood in the shade of the
almond trees on the hill that gives good vantage to
both seascape and rocky ridge.

"It was from here that the Argonauts set sail on
their quest for the Golden Fleece," I told no one in
particular.

"Who all were they?" asked Ellen. "I read the
story in school, but I forget."

"There was Herakles and Theseus and Orpheus
the singer, and Asclepius, and the sons of the North
Wind, and Jason, the captain, who was a pupil of
the centaur, Cheiron-whose cave, incidentally, is
up near the summit of Mount Pelion, there."

"Really?"

"I'll show it to you sometime,"

"All right."

"The gods and the titans battled near here also,"
said Diane, coming up on my other side. "Did the

ROGER ZELAZNY

190

titans not uproot Mount Pelion and pile it atop
Ossa in an attempt to scale Olympus?"

"So goes the telling. But the gods were kind and
restored the scenery after the bloody battle."

^A sail," said Hasan, gesturing with a half-
peeled orange in his hand.

I looked out over the waters and there was a tiny
blip on the horizon.

"Yes; this place is still used as a port."

"Perhaps it is a shipload of heroes," said Ellen,
"returning with some more fleece. What will they
do with all that fleece, anyhow?"

"It's not the fleece that's important," said Red
Wig, "it's the getting of it. Every good story-teller
used to know that. The womenfolk can always
make stunning garments from fleeces. They're used
to picking up the remains after quests."

"It wouldn't match your hair, dear."

"Yours either, child."

"That can be changed. Not so easily as yours, of
course. ..."

"Across the way," said I, in a loud voice, "is a
ruined Byzantine church-the Episcopi-which
I've scheduled for restoration in another two years.
It is the traditional site of the wedding feast of
Peleus, also one of the Argonauts, and the sea-
nymph Thetis. Perhaps you've heard the story of
that feast? Everyone was invited but the goddess of
discord, and she came anyhow and tossed down a
golden apple marked Tor the Fairest.' Lord Paris
judged it the property of Aphrodite, and the fate of
Troy was sealed. The last time anyone saw Paris,
he was none too happy. Ah, decisions' Like I've
often said, this land is lousy with myth."

"How long will we be here?" asked Ellen.

THIS IMMORTAL

191

"I'd like a couple more days in Makrynitsa " I
said, "then we'll head northwards. Say about a
week more in Greece, and then we'll move on to
Rome."

"No," said Myshtigo, who had been sitting on a
rock and talking to his machine, as he stared out
over the waters. "No, the tour is finished. This is
the last stop."

"How come?"

"I'm satisfied and I'm going home now."

"What about your book?"

"I've got my story."

"What kind of story?"

"Ill send you an autographed copy when it's fin-
ished, My time is precious, and I have all the mate-
rial I want now. All that 1*11 need, anyhow. I called
the Port this morning, and they are sending me a
Skimmer tonight. You people go ahead and do
whatever you want, but I'm finished."

"Is something wrong?"

"No, nothing is wrong, but it's time that I left. I
have much to do."

He rose to his feet and stretched.

"I have some packing to take care of, so I'll be
going back now. You do have a beautiful country
here, Conrad, despite.-I'll see you all at din-
nertime."

He turned and headed down the hill.

I walked a few steps in his direction, watching
him go.

"I wonder what prompted that?" I thought
aloud.

There was a footfall.

"He is dying," said George, softly.

*   «   *

192 ROGER ZELAZNY

My son Jason, who had preceded us by several
days, was gone. Neighbors told of his departure for
Hades on the previous evening. The patriarch had
been carried off on the back of a fire-eyed hellhound
who had knocked down the door of his dwelling
place and borne him off through the night. My rela-
tives all wanted me to come to dinner. DOS Santos
was still resting; George had treated his wounds
and had not deemed it necessary to ship him to the
hospital in Athens.

It's always nice to come home.

I walked down to the Square and spent the after-
noon talking to my descendants. Would I tell them
of Taler, of Haiti, of Athens? Aye. I would, I did.
Would they tell me of the past two decades in
Makrynitsa? Ditto.

I took some flowers to the graveyard then, stayed
awhile, and went to Jason's home and repaired his
door with some tools I found in the shed. Then I
came upon a bottle of wine and drank it all. And I
smoked a cigar. I made me a pot of coffee, too, and
I drank all of that.

I still felt depressed.

I didn't know what was coming off.

George knew his diseases, though, and he said
the Vegan showed unmistakable symptoms of a
neurological disorder of the e.t- variety. Incurable.
Invariably fatal.

And even Hasan couldn't take credit for it.
"Etiology unknown" was George's diagnosis.

So everything was revised.

George had known about Myshtigo since the re-
ception.-What had set him on the track?

-Phil had asked him to observe the Vegan for
signs of a fatal disease-

THIS IMMORTAL            193

Why?

Well, he hadn't said why, and I couldn't go ask
him at the moment.

I had me a problem.

Myshtigo had either finished his job or he hadn't
enough time left to do it. He said he'd finished it.
If he hadn't, then I'd been protecting a dead man
all the while, to no end. If he had, then I needed
to know the results, so that I could make a very
fast decision concerning what remained of his life-
span.

Dinner was no help. Myshtigo had said all he
cared to say, and he ignored or parried our ques-
tions. So, as soon as we'd had our coffee, Red Wig
and I stepped outside for a cigarette.

"What's happened?" she asked.

"I don't know, I thought maybe you did."

"No. What now?"

"You tell me."

"Kill him?"

"Perhaps yes. First though, why?"

"He's finished it."

"What? Just what has he finished?"

"How should I know?"

"Damn it! /have to! I like to know why I'm kill-
ing somebody. I'm funny that way."

"Funny? Very. Obvious, isn't it? The Vegans
want to buy in again, Earthside, He's going back to
give them a report on the sites they're interested
in."

"They why didn't he visit them all? Why cut it
short after Egypt and Greece? Sand, rocks, jungles,
and assorted monsters-that's all he saw. Hardly
makes for an encouraging appraisal."

"Then he's scared, is why, and lucky he's alive.

194 ROGER ZELAZNY

He could have been eaten by a boadile or Kourete.
He's running."

"Good. Then let him run. Let him hand in a bad
report."

"He can't, though. If they do want in, they won't
buy anything that sketchy. They'll just send some-
body else-somebody tougher-to finish it. If we
kill Myshtigo they'll know we're.still for real, still
protesting, still tough ourselves."

". . . And he's not afraid for his life," I mused.

"No? What, then?"

"I don't know. I have to find out, though."

"How?"

"I think I'll ask him."

"You are a lunatic." She turned away.

"My way, or not at all," I said.

"Any way, then. It doesn't matter. We've already
lost."

I took her by the shoulders and kissed her neck.
"Not yet. You'll see."

She stood stiffly.

"Go home," she said; "it's late. It's too late."

I did that. I went back to lakov Korones' big old
place, where Myshtigo and I were both quartered,
and where Phil had been staying.

I stopped there in the deathroom, in the place
where Phil had last slept. His Prometheus Unbound
was still on the writing table, set down beside an
empty bottle. He had spoken of his own passing
when he'd called me in Egypt, and he had suffered
an attack, had been through a lot. It seemed he'd
leave a message for an old friend then, on a matter
like this.

So I opened Percy B's dud epic and looked
within.

THIS IMMORTAL

195

It was written on the blank pages at the end of
the book, in Greek, Not modern Greek, though.
Classical.

It went something like this:

Dear friend, although I abhor writing anything I cannot
rewrite, I feel I had best tend to this with dispatch. I am
unwell. George wants me to skim to Athens. I will, too, in
the morning. First, though, regarding the matter at hand-

Get the Vegan off the Earth, alive, at any cost.

It is important.

It is the most important thing in the world.

I was afraid to tell you before, because I thought Mys-
htigo might be a telepath. That is why I did not go along for
the entire journey, though I should dearly have loved to do so.
That is why I pretended to hate him, so that I could stay
away from him as much as possible. It was only after I
managed to confirm the fact that he was not telepathic that
I elected to join you.

I suspected, what with DOS Santos, Diane, and Hasan,
and the Radpol might be out for his blood. If he was a
telepath, I figured he would learn of this quickly and do
whatever needed to be done to assure his safety. If he was not
a telepath, I still had great faith in your ability to defend
him against almost anything, Hasan included. But I did not
want him apprised of my knowledge. I did try to warn you,
though, if you recall.

Tatram Tshtigo, his grandfather, is one of the finest, most
noble creatures alive. He is a philosopher, a great writer, an
altruistic administrator of services to the public. I became
acquainted with him during my stay on Taler, thirty-some
years ago, and we later became close friends. We have been
in communication ever since that time, and that far back,
even, was I advised by him of the Vegan Combine's plans
regarding the disposition of Earth. I was also sworn to se-
crecy. Even Cort cannot know that I am aware. The old man

196 ROGER ZELAZNY

would lose face, disastrously, if this thing came out ahead of
time.

The Vegans are in a very embarrassing position. Our ex-
patriate countrymen have forced their own economic and cul-
tural dependence upon Vega. The Vegans were made aware
-quite vividly!-during the days of the RadRol Rebellion,
of the fact that there is an indigenous population possessing
a strong organisation of its own and desiring the restoration
of our planet. The Vegans too would like to see this happen.
They do not want the Earth. Whatever for? If they want to
exploit Earthfolk, they have more of them on Taler than we
do here on Earth-and they 're not doing it; not massively or
maliciously, at any rate. Our ex-pop has elected what labor
exploitation it does undergo in preference to returning here.
What does this indicate? Retumism is a dead issue. No one
is coming back. That is why I quit the movement. Why you
did too, I believe. The Vegans would like to get the home
world problem off their hands. Sure, they want to visit it. It
is instructive, sobering, humbling, and downright fright-
ening for them to come here and see what can be done to a
world.

What needed to be done was for them to find a way
around our ex-pop gov on Taler. The Talerites were not
anxious to give up their only claim for taxes and existence:

the Office.

After much negotiation, though, and much economic
suasion, including the offer of full Vegan citizenship to our
ex-pop, it appeared that a means had been found. The im-
plementation of the plan was given into the hands of the
Shtigo gens, Tatram in especial.

He finally found a way, he believed, of returning the
Earth proper to an autonomous position and preserving its
cultural integrity. That is why he sent his grandson, Cort,
to do his 'survey.) Cort is a strange creature; his real talent

THIS IMMORTAL         197

is acting (all the Shtigo are quite gifted), and he lows to
Rose. I believe that he wanted to play the part of an alien
very badly, and I am certain that he has carried it with skill
and efficiency. (Tatram also advised me that it would be
Corl's last role. He is dying of drinfan, which is in-
curable; also, I believe it is the reason he was chosen.)

Believe me, Konstantin Karaghiosis Korones Nomtkos
(and all the others which I do not know), Conrad, when I
say that he was not surveying real estate: JVo.

But allow me one last Bryonic gesture. Take my word
that he must live, and let me keep my promise and my secret.
You will not regret it, when you know all.

I am sorry that I never got to finish your elegy, and damn
you for keeping my Lara, that time in Kerch!-PHIL

Very well then, I decided-life, not death, for the
Vegan. Phil had spoken and I did not doubt his
words.

I went back to Mikar Korones' dinner table and
stayed with Myshtigo until he was ready to leave. I
accompanied him back to lakov Korones* and
watched him pack some final items. We exchanged
maybe six words during this time.

His belongings we carried out to the place where
the Skimmer would land, in front of the house.
Before the others (including Hasan) came up to bid
him goodbye, he turned to me and said, "Tell me,
Conrad, why are you tearing down the pyramid?"

"To needle Vega," I said. "To let you know that
if you want this place and you do manage to take it
away from us, you'll get it in worse shape than it
was after the Three Days. There wouldn't be any-
thing left to look at. We'd burn the rest of our his-
tory. Not even a scrap for you guys."

198 ROGER ZELAZNY

The air escaping from the bottom of his lungs
came out with a high-pitched whine-the Vegan
equivalent of a sigh.

"Commendable. I suppose," he said, "but I did
so want to see it. Do you think you could ever get it
back together again? Soon, perhaps?"

"What do you think?"

"I noticed your men marking many of the
pieces."

I shrugged.

"I have only one serious question, then-about
your fondness for destruction . . ." he stated.

"What is that?"

"Is it really art?"

"Go to hell."

Then the others came up. I shook my head slowly
at Diane and seized Hasan *s wrist long enough to
tear away a tiny needle he'd taped to the palm of his
hand. I let him shake hands with the Vegan too,
then, briefly.

The Skimmer buzzed down out of the darkening
sky, and I saw Myshtigo aboard, loaded his bag-
gage personally, and closed the door myself.

It took off without incident and was gone in a
matter of moments.

End of a nothing jaunt.

I went back inside and changed my clothing.

It was time to bum a friend.

Heaped high into the night, my ziggurat of logs
bore what remained of the poet, my friend. I
kindled a torch and put out the electric lantern.
Hasan stood at my side. He had helped bear the
corpse to the cart and had taken over the reins. I
had built the pyre on the cypress-filled hill above

THIS IMMORTAL           199

Volos, near the ruins of that church I mentioned
earlier. The waters of the bay were calm. The sky
was clear and the stars were bright-

Dos Santos, who did not approve of cremation,
had decided not to attend, saying that his wounds
were troubling him. Diane had elected to remain
with him back in Makrynitsa. She had not spoken
to me since our last conversation.

Ellen and George were seated on the bed of the
cart, which was backed beneath a large cypress,
and they were holding hands. They were the only
others present. Phil would not have liked my rela-
tives wailing their dirges about him. He'd once said
he wanted something big, bright, fast, and without
music,

I applied the torch to a comer of the pyre. The
flame bit, slowly, began to chew at the wood. Hasan
started another torch going, stuck it into the
ground, stepped back, and watched.

As the flames ate their way upwards I prayed the
old prayers and poured out wine upon the ground.
I heaped aromatic herbs onto the blaze. Then I,
too, stepped back.

"'. . - Whatever you were, death has taken you,
too,' " I told him. " *You have gone to see the moist
flower open along Acheron, among Hell's shadows
darting fitfully.' Had you died young, your passing
would have been mourned as the destruction of a
great talent before its fulfillment. But you lived and
they cannot say that now. Some choose a short and
supernal life before the walls of their Troy, others a
long and less troubled one. And who is to say which
is the better? The gods did keep their promise of
immortal fame to Achilleus, by inspiring the poet to
sing him an immortal paean. But is he the happier

200 ROGER ZELAZNY

for it, being now as dead as yourself? / cannot
judge, old friend. Lesser bard, I remember some of
the words you, too, wrote of the mightiest of the
Argives, and of the time of hard-hurled deaths:

'Bleak disappointments rage this coming-together
place: Menace of sighs in a jeopardy of time.. . .
But the ashes do not burn backward to timber.
Flame's invisible music shapes the air to heat, but
the day is no longer.' Fare thee well, Phillip Graver.
May the Lords Phoebus and Dionysius, who do
love and kill their poets, commend thee to their
dark brother Hades. And may his Persephone,
Queen of the Night, look with favor upon thee and
grant thee high stead in Elysium. Goodbye."

The flames had almost reached the top.

I saw Jason then, standing beside the cart,
Bortan seated by his side. I backed away further.
Bortan came to me and sat down at my right. He
licked my hand, once.

"Mighty hunter, we have lost us another,' I said.

He nodded his great head.

The flames reached the top and began to nibble
at the night. The air was filled with sweet aromas
and the sound of fire.

Jason approached.

"Father," he said, "he bore me to the place of
burning rocks, but you were already escaped."

I nodded.

"A no-man friend freed us from that place.
Before that, this man Hasan destroyed the Dead
Man. So your dreams have thus far proved both
right and wrong."

"He is the yellow-eyed warrior of my vision," he
said.

"I know, but that pan too is past."

THIS IMMORTAL            201

"What of the Black Beast?"

"Not a snort nor a snuffle."

"Good."

We watched for a long, long time, as the light
retreated into itself. At several points, Bortan's ears
pricked forward and his nostrils dilated. George
and Ellen had not moved. Hasan was a strange-
eyed watcher, without expression.

"What will you do now, Hasan?" I asked.

"Go again to Mount Sindjar," he said, "for
awhile."

"And then?"

He shrugged. "Howsoever it is written," he re-
plied.

And a fearsome noise came upon us then, like the
groans of an idiot giant, and the sound of splinter-
ing trees accompanied it.

Bortan leaped to his feet and howled. The
donkeys who had drawn the cart shifted uneasily.
One of them made a brief, braying noise.

Jason clutched the sharpened staff which he had
picked from the heap of kindling, and he stiffened.

It burst in upon us then, there in the clearing.
Big, and ugly, and everything it had ever been
called.

The Eater of Men. . . .

The Shaker of the Earth. . . .

The Mighty, Foul One. . . .

The Black Beast of Thessaly.

Finally, someone could say what it really was. If
they got away to say it, that is.

It must have been drawn to us by the odor of
burning flesh.

And it was big. The size of an elephant, at least.

What was Herakles* fourth labor?

202 ROGER ZELAZNY

The wild boar of Arcadia, that's what.

I suddenly wished Herk was still around to help.

A big pig. ... A razorback, with tusks the length
of a man's arm. . . . Little pig eyes, black, and roll-
ing in the Firelight, wildly. . . .

It knocked down trees as it came. . . .

It squealed, though, as Hasan drew a burning
brand from the blaze and drove it, fire-end forward,
into its snout, and then spun away.

It swerved, too, which gave me time to snatch
Jason's staff.

I ran forward and caught it in the left eye with it.

It swerved again then, and squealed like a leaky
boiler.

. . . And Bortan was upon it, tearing at its shoul-
der.

Neither of my two thrusts at its throat did more
than superficial damage. It wrestled, shoulder
against fang, and finally shook itself free of Bortan *s
grip.

Hasan was at my side by then, waving another
firebrand.

It charged us.

From somewhere off to the side George emptied a
machine-pistol into it. Hasan hurled the torch.
Bortan leapt again, this time from its blind side.

. . . And these things caused it to swerve once
more in its charge, crashing into the now empty
can and killing both donkeys.

I ran against it then, thrusting the staff up under
its left front leg.

The staff broke in two.

Bortan kept biting, and his snarl was a steady
thunder. Whenever it slashed at him with its tusks

THIS IMMORTAL          203

he relinquished his grip, danced away, and moved
in again to worry it.

I am sure that my needle-point deathlance of
steel would not have broken. It had been aboard the
Vamtie, though. . . .

Hasan and I circled it with the sharpest and most
stake-like of the kindling we could find. We kept
jabbing, to keep it turning in a circle. Bortan kept
trying for its throat, but the great snouted head
stayed low, and the one eye rolled and the other
bled, and the tusks slashed back and forth and up
and down like swords. Cloven hooves the size of
bread-loaves tore great holes in the ground as it
turned, counterclockwise, trying to kill us all, there
in the orange and dancing flamelight.

Finally, it stopped and turned-suddenly, for
something that big-and its shoulders struck
Bortan in the side and hurled him ten or twelve feet
past me. Hasan hit it across the back with his stick
and I drove in toward the other eye, but missed.

Then it moved toward Bortan, who was still re-
gaining his feet-its head held low, tusks gleaming.

I threw my staff and leapt as it moved in on my
dog. It had already dropped its head for the death
blow.

I caught both tusks as the head descended almost
to the ground. Nothing could hold back that scoop-
ing slash, I realized, as I bore down upon it with all
my strength.

But I tried, and maybe I succeeded, somehow, for
a second. .. .

At least, as I was thrown through the air, my
hands torn and bleeding, I saw that Bortan had
managed to get back out of the way.

204 ROGER ZELAZNY

I was dazed by the fall, for I had been thrown! far
and high; and I heard a great pig-mad squealing.
Hasan screamed and Bortan roared out his great-
throated battle-challenge once more.

. . . And the hot red lightning of Zeus descended
twice from the heavens.

. . . And all was still.

I climbed back, slowly, to my feet.

Hasan was standing by the blazing pyre, a flam-
ing stake still upraised in spear-throwing position.

Bortan was sniffing at the quivering mountain of
flesh.

Cassandra was standing beneath the cypress
beside a dead donkey, her back against the trunk of
the tree, wearing leather trousers, a blue woolen
shirt, a faint smile, and my still-smoking elephant
gun.

"Cassandra!"

She dropped the gun and looked very pale. But I
had her in my arms almost before it hit the ground.

"I'll ask you a lot of things later," I said. "Not
now. Nothing now. Let's just sit here beneath this
tree and watch the fire burn."

And we did.

A month later, DOS Santos was ousted from the
Radpol. He and Diane have not been heard of
since. Rumor has it that they gave up on Re-
turnism, moved to Taler, and are living there now.
I hope it's not true, what with the affairs of these
past five days. I never did know the full story on
Red Wig, and I guess I never will. If you trust a
person, really trust him I mean, and you care for
him, as she might have cared for me, it would seem

THIS IMMORTAL          205

you'd stick around to see whether he was right or
wrong on your final big disagreement. She didn't,
though, and I wonder if she regrets it now.

I don't really think 1*11 ever see her again.

Slightly after the Radpol shakeup, Hasan re-
turned from Mount Sindjar, stayed awhile at the
Port, then purchased a small ship and put out to sea
early one morning, without even saying goodbye or
giving any indication as to his destination. It was
assumed he'd found new employment somewhere.
There was a hurricane, though, several days later,
and I heard rumors in Trinidad to the effect that he
had been washed up on the coast of Brazil and met
with his death at the hands of the fierce tribesmen
who dwell there. I tried but was unable to verify this
story.

However, two months later, Ricardo Bonaven-
tura. Chairman of the Alliance Against Progress, a
Radpol splinter group which had fallen into dis-
favor with Athens, died of apoplexy during a Party
Tunction. There were some murmurings of Divban
rabbit-venon in the anchovies (an exceedingly
lethal combination, George assures me), and the
following day the new Captain of the Palace Guard
vanished mysteriously, along with a Skimmer and
the minutes of the last three secret sessions of the
AAP (not to mention the contents of a small
wallsafe). He was said to have been a big-, yellow-
eyed man, with a slightly Eastern cast to his fea-
tures.

Jason is still herding his many-legged sheep in
the high places, up where the fingers of Aurora
come first to smear the sky with roses, and doubt-
less he is corrupting youth with his song.

Ellen is pregnant again, all delicate and big-

206 ROGER ZELAZNY

waisted, and won't talk to anybody but George,
George wants to try some fancy embryos urgery,
now, before it's too late, and make his next kid a
water-breather as well as an air-breather, because
of all that great big virgin frontier down underneath
the ocean, where his descendants can pioneer, and
him be father to a new race and write an interesting
book on the subject, and all that. Ellen is not too
hot on the idea, though, so I have a hunch the
oceans will remain virgin a little longer.

Oh yes, I did take George to Capistrano some
time ago, to watch the spiderbats return. It was real
impressive-them darkening the sky with their
night, nesting about the ruins the way they do, eat-
ing the wild pigs, leaving green droppings all over
the streets. Lorel has hours and hours of it in tri-dee
color, and he shows it at every Office party. It's sort
of a historical document, spiderbats being on the
way out now. True to his word, George started a
slishi plague among them, and they're dropping like
flies these days. Just the other week one dropped
down in the middle of the street with a big splatt! as
I was on my way to Mama Julie's with a bottle of
rum and a box of chocolates. It was quite dead
when it hit. The slishi are very insidious. The poor
spiderbat doesn't know what's happening; he's
flying along happily, looking for someone to eat,
and then ^.ockf it hits him, and he falls into the
middle of a garden party or sombody's swimming
pool.

I've decided to retain the Office for the time
being. I'll set up some kind of parliament after I've
whipped up an opposition party to the Radpol-
Indreb, or something like that maybe: like Indepen-
dent Rebuilders, or such.

THIS IMMORTAL            207

Good old final forces of disruption ... we needed
them down here amid the ruins.

- And Cassandra-my princess, my angel, my
lovely lady-she even likes me without my fungus.
That night in the Valley of Sleep did it in.

She, of course, had been the shipload of heroes
Hasan had seen that day back at Pagasea. No
golden fleece, though, just my gunrack and such. It
had been the Golden Vanitie, which I'd built by hand,
me, stout enough, I was pleased to learn, to take
even the tsunami that followed that 9.6 Richter
thing. She'd l>een out sailing in it at the time the
bottom fell out of Kos. Afterwards, she'd set sail for
Volos because she knew Makrynitsa was full of my
relatives. Oh, good thing-that she had had this
feeling that there was danger and had carried the
heavy artillery ashore with her. (Good thing, too,
that she knew how to use it.) I'll have to learn to
take her premonitions more seriously.

I've purchased a quiet villa on the end of Haiti
opposite from the Port. It's only about fifteen
minutes' skimming time from there, and it has a big
beach and lots of jungle all around it. I have to have
some distance, like the whole island, between me
and civilization, because I have this, well-hunting

-problem. The other day, when the attorneys
dropped around, they didn't understand the sign:

BEWARE THE DOG They do now. The one who's in
traction won't sue for damages, and George will
have him as good as new in no time. The others
were not so severely taken.

Good thing I was nearby, though.
So here I am, in an unusual position, as usual.
The entire planet Earth was purchased from the
Talerite government, purchased by the large and

208 ROGER ZELAZNY

wealthy Shtigo gens. The preponderance of ex-
patriates wanted Vegan citizenship anyhow, rather
than remaining under the Talerite exgov and work-
ing in the Combine as registered aliens. This has
been coming for a long time, so the disposal of the
Earth became mainly a matter of finding the best
buyer-because our exile regime lost its only other
cause for existence the minute the citizenship thing
went through. They could justify themselves while
there were still Earthmen out there, but now they're
all Vegans and can't vote for them, and we're sure
not going to, down here.

Hence, the sale of a lot of real estate-and the
only bidder was the Shtigo gens.

Wise old Tatram saw that the Shtigo gens did not
own Earth, though. The entire purchase was made
in the name of his grandson, the late Cort Mys-
htigo.

And Myshtigo left this distribution-desire, or last
will and testament, Vegan-style . . .

... in which I was named.

I've, uh, inherited a planet.

The Earth, to be exact,

Well-
Hell, I don't want the thing. I mean, sure I'm
stuck with it for awhile, but I'll work something out.

It was that infernal Vite-Stats machine, and four
other big think-tanks that old Tatram used. He was
looking for a local administrator to hold the earth in
fief and set up'^a resident representative govern-
ment, and then to surrender ownership on a fairly
simple residency basis once things got rolling. He
wanted somebody who'd been around awhile, was
qualified as an administrator, and who wouldn't
want to keep the place for his very own.

THIS IMMORTAL            209

, Among others, it gave him one of my names, then
another, the second as a "possibly still living."
TTien my personnel file was checked, and more stuff
on the other guy, and pretty soon the machine had
turned up a few more names, all of them mine. It
, began picking up discrepancies and peculair simi-
larities, kept kapocketting, and gave out more
puzzling answers.

Before long, Tatram decided I had better be
"surveyed."

Cort came to write a book.

He really wanted to see if I was Good, Honest,
Noble, Pure, Loyal, Faithful, Trustworthy, Selfless,
Kind, Cheerful, Dependable, and Without Personal
Ambition.

Which means he was a cockeyed lunatic, because
he said, "Yes, he's all that."

I sure fooled him.

Maybe he was right about the lack of personal
ambition, though. I am pretty damn lazy, and am
not at all anxious to acquire the headaches I see as
springing up out of the tormented Earth and black-
jacking me daily.

However, I am willing to make certain con-
cessions so far as personal comfort is concerned. I'll
probably cut myself back to a six-month vacation,

One of the attorneys (not the one in traction-the
one with the sling) delivered me a note from the
Blue One. It said, in part:

Dear Whateoer-the-Bla^es- Your-Name-Is,

It is most unsettling to begin a letter this way, so I'll
respect your wishes and call you Conrad.

"Conrad," by now you are aware of the true nature of my
visit. I feel I have made a good choice in naming you as heir
to the property commonly referred to as Earth. Your affection

210 ROGER ZELAZNY

for it cannot be gainsaid; as Karaghiosis you inspired men
to bleed in its defense; you are restoring its monuments, pre-
serving its works of art (and as one stipulation of my will,
by the way, I insist that you put back the Great Pyramid!),
and your ingenuity as well as your toughness, both physical
and mental, is singularly amayng.

You also appear to be the closest thing to an immortal
overseer available (I'd give a lot to know your real age), and
this, together with your high survival potential, makes you,
really, the only candidate. If your mutation every does begin
to fail you, there is always the S-S series to continue linking
the great chain of your days. (I could have said "forging,"
but it would not have been polite, inasmuch as I know you
are an accomplished forger.-All those old records! You
drove poor Vite-Stats half-mad with discrepancies. It is now
programmed nev^r to accept another Greek birth certificate as
proof of age!)

I commend the Earth into the hands of the Kallikan^aros.
According to legend, this would be a grave mistake. How-
ever, I am willing to gamble that you are even a
kallikan^aros under false pretenses. You destroy only what
you mean to rebuild. Probably you are Great Pan, who only
pretended to die. Whatever, you will have sufficient funds
and a supply of heavy equipment which will be sent this year
-and lots of forms for requisitioning more from the Shtigo
Foundation. So go thou and be thou fruitful and multiply,
and reinherit the Earth. The gens will be around watching.
Cry out if you need help, and help will be forthcoming.

I don't have time to write you a book. Sorry. Here is my
autograph, anyhow:

-CORT MYSHTIGO

P.S. I still dunno if it's art. Go to hell yourself.

That is the gist of it.
Pan?

THIS IMMORTAL           211

• Machines don't talk that way, do they?

I hope not, anyhow. . . .

The Earth is a wild- inhabitation. It is a tough
and rocky place. The rubbish will have to be
cleared, section by section, before some anti-rub-
bish can be put up.

Which means work, lots of it.

Which means 1*11 need all the Office facilities as
well as the Radpol organization, to begin with.

Right now I'm deciding whether or not to discon-
tinue the ruin-tours. I think I'll let them go on, be-
cause for once well have something good to show.
There is that certain element of human curiosity
which demands that one halt in his course and peer
through a hole in any fence behind which construc-
tion work is going on.

We have money now, and we own our own prop-
erty again, and that makes a big difference. Maybe
even Returnism isn't completely dead. If there is a
vital program to revive the Earth, we may draw
back some of the ex-pop, may snag some of the new
tourists.

Or, if they all want to remain Vegans, they can do
that, too. We'd like them, but we don't need them.
Our Outbound immigration will be dropping off, I
feel, once people know they can get ahead here; and
our population will increase more than just
geometrically, what with the prolonged fertility pe-
riod brought on by the now quite expensive S-S
series. I intend to socialize S-S completely. I'll do it
by putting George in charge of a Public Health pro-
gram, featuring mainland clinics and offering S-S
all over the place.

We'll make out. I'm tired of being a gravekeeper,
and I don't really want to spend from now till

212 ROGER ZELAZNY

Easter cutting through the Tree of the World, even
if I am a Darkborn with a propensity for trouble.
When the bells do ring, I want to be able to say,
"Alethos aneste," Risen Indeed, rather than drop-
ping my saw and running (ring-a-ding, the bells,
ciackety-clack, the hooves, et cetera). Now is the time
for all good kallikanzaroi . . . You know.

So...

Cassandra and I have this villa on the Magic Is-
land. She likes it here. I like it here. She doesn't
mind my indeterminate age anymore. Which is
fine.

Just this early morning, as we lay on the beach
watching the sun chase away stars, I turned to her
and mentioned that this is going to be a big, big
ulcer-giving job, full of headaches and such.

"No, it isn't," she replied.

"Don't minimize what is imminent," I said. "It
makes for incompatibility."

"None of that either."

"You are too optimistic, Cassandra."

"No. I told you that you were heading into dan-
ger before, and you were, but you didn't believe me
then. This time I feel that things should go well.
That'sail."

"Granting your accuracy in the past, I still feel
you are underestimating that which lies before us."

She rose and stamped her foot.

"You never believe me!"

"Of course I do. It just happens that this time
you're wrong, dear."

She swam away then, my mad mermaid, out into
the dark waters. After a time she came swimming
back.

THIS IMMORTAL           213

^Okay," she said, smiling, shaking down gentle
rains from her hair. "Sure."
" I caught her ankle, pulled her down beside me
and began tickling her.

"Stop that!"

-"Hey, I believe you, Cassandra! Really! Hear
that? Oh, how about that? I really believe you.
Damn! You sure are right!" '
- "You are a smart-alecky kallikanz-Ouch!"

And she was lovely by the seaside, so I held her in
the wet, till the day was all around us, feeling good.

Which is a nice place to end a story, sic: