Alone Against Tomorrow Part 7

Thought: Lad-nar does not know what less age means, but why should let you go? You may have been sent by the Lord of the Heaven to see if I should lose my Essence. The Lord of the Heaven may be trying to take you back from me because I listened to your Unclean and Untrue sayings. Then I will have no feastings! Then I will lose my Essence!

Kettridge reminded himself that the beast was indeed clever. Not only did it fear the wrath of the Lord of the Heaven and his screaming death, but Lad-nar knew if he let the man go he would have nothing to eat during the coming cold days.

"Let me go, Lad-nar. I will bring you back a cat-litter for your feasting. I will show you that I can walk in the night and I will bring you food. I will bring back a cat-litter, Lad-nar!" He prayed, silently, it would work.

Thought: if you are a G.o.d, why do you speak to the Lord of the Heaven?

Kettridge bit his lip. He kept forgetting...

He stopped thinking. He blocked it off. He willed himself to stop thinking. He must let his instincts answer for him.

"Because I want the Lord of the Heaven to know that I am as great as he and not afraid of him and that my prayers to him are only to show that I am as great as he." It was gibberish, but it was a deep gibberish, and if he kept talking, the beast would shuck off the thoughts rather than try to fathom them.

The Earthman knew he had one factor in his favor: Lad-nar had never heard anyone speak against the G.o.ds, and so one who did it and did not get blasted must be a G.o.d.

Kettridge hit him with the appeal again, before the animal had time to wonder.

"I'll get you a cat-litter, Lad-nar. Let me go! Let me show you! Let me show you that you can walk in the storms as I do! I, too, am a great G.o.d!" There was so much at stake here, so little time, so deep a h.e.l.l waiting.

Thought: you will go away.

There was a petulance, a little child sound, to the objection, and Kettridge knew the first step had been achieved.

"No, Lad-nar. Here is a rope." He drew a thin cord of tough metal-plastic from his utility belt. His hand jiggled against the service revolver on his tool belt and he laughed deep inside once more as he thought of how useless it was.

Useless. Only in his wits was there salvation.

He would not have used the gun in any case. There was more at stake here than just his life.

"Here is a rope," he repeated, extending the coiled cord. "I will tie it about myself, like this...and...now! You take this end. Hold it tightly so that I can't escape. It is long enough so that I may go out and seek a cat-litter and show you I can walk abroad."

At first the native refused, eyeing the glistening, silvery cord with fear in his deeply-pooled eyes.

But Kettridge spoke on two levels, and spoke, and spoke, and soon the beast touched the cord.

It drew back its seven-taloned hand quickly.

The third time it grasped the cord.

You have just lost your religion, Kettridge thought.

Lad-nar had "smelled" with his mind. He had sensed a cat-litter fairly close to the cave. But he did not know where.

Kettridge stepped out of the dark mouth of the cave, into the roaring maelstrom of a Blestonian electrical storm.

The sky was a tumult of heavy black clouds, steel and ebony and ripped dirty cloth. The clouds tumbled over themselves and died split apart as a bolt crashed through. The very air was charged, and blast after blast of lightning sheared away the atmosphere in zig-zagged streamers.

Kettridge stood with legs apart, body tilted forward against the pull of the cord, hands shading his eyes against the glare, the almost continuous glare, of lightning eruptions.

He was a small, thin man, and had it not been for the cord, he might easily have been swept away by the winds and rain that sandpapered the rocky ledge.

Streamers, branches, forks-the illumination of the arcing bolts was something magnificent and terrible. The old man stood there with the pelting rain washing over him, obscuring his vision through the hood, leaving only the glare of the storm for him.

He took a step, two, three.

The bolt slashed at him through a rift in the mountains. It roared over the precipice and streaked at him. It materialized out of nowhere and everywhere, splintering the stones at his feet. The rock flew up in planed, smoothed slivers, shooting in every direction. Kettridge fell flat and the crack of thunder rolled in on him. He realized it had come with the lightning, that he had been listening to it for almost a minute, before he realized what it was.

The effect on his body was sudden.

Immediately he went deaf. His skin began to p.r.i.c.kle with the feel of a million tiny threads pushed into the flesh. His legs and hips were numb, his eyes reflected coruscating pinwheels of brilliance. He could see nothing but light on light inside light over light light light light...

There was a paralysis of his bladder.

Thought: Gad! You are no G.o.d! The Essence-Stealer has screamed and you have fallen!

The rope tightened and Kettridge felt himself being dragged back into the cave.

"No!" he screamed hurriedly. The pressure eased. "No, Lad-nar. That was the Essence-Stealer's scream. Now I shall have mine. I am a G.o.d, I tell you! Let me show you, Lad-nar!"

Then he seized on the lightning blast for his own purpose. "See, Lad-nar! The Essence-Stealer has struck me, but I am still whole. I will rise and walk again. You will see!"

Everywhere the lightning burned and crashed. The whole world was filled with the noise of frothing air and ripping jungle and screaming elements.

He clawed himself to his knees. His legs were weak and numb. The p.r.i.c.kling was still there, but lessened. His eyes were starting to unglare and focus again. He still could hear nothing. He half-rose, sank back to one knee, rose again.

His head felt terribly heavy and unanch.o.r.ed.

Then he stood erect. And he walked.

The storm raged about him. Lightning struck and struck again. Near him, to the side of him, behind him. One bolt sizzled down and struck him directly. The metal insulating suit served its purpose a second time. The bolt slashed, hit, and side-flashed off, exploding a small, wizened tree growing up through a crack in the rocks. The tree flew into the air, one whole side charred and burned, the other unscarred.

It fell with a crash directly across Kettridge's path.

The symptoms of lightning-stroke were multiplied many times in Kettridge, but there was no answering thought of scorn from Lad-nar. Obviously the beast had withdrawn from his mind, in fear.

And he walked.

Soon he came back to the cave.

Thought: you are a G.o.d! This I believe. But the Lord of the Heaven has sent his Essence-Stealers.

They, too, are mighty, and Lad-nar will lose his Essence if he walks there.

"No, Lad-nar. I will show you how to protect yourself." The old man was sweating and white from his walk, and the numbness extended through his body. He could hear nothing, but the words came clearly to him.

He began to unseal the form-fitting suit.

The storm had already lowered the temperature enough so that he knew he would not fry.

In a few minutes he had the suit off, and it had shrunk back to a pocket-sized replica of the full- sized garment.

Kettridge felt ill. He felt old and tired and used. It was time to go home, time to quit. It was all over. He had won.

"Lad-nar, take this. Here, give me your hand."

The beast looked at him with huge, uncomprehending eyes. The old man felt closer, somehow, to this strange creature than to anyone he had ever known. Kettridge pulled his glove on tighter and reached for Lad-nar's seven-taloned hand. He pulled at the arm of the form-fit suit, and it elastically expanded.

After much stretching and fitting, the beast was encased in the insulating metal-plastic.

Kettridge wanted to laugh at the bunched fur and awkward stance of the ma.s.sive animal. But again, the laughter would not come.

"Now, Lad-nar, put on the gloves. Never take them off, except when the storms are gone. Always put this G.o.d-suit on when the Essence-Stealers scream, and you will be safe."

Thought: now I can walk in the night?

"Yes. Come." He moved toward the cave's mouth. "Now you can get a cat-litter for yourself. I did not bring one because I knew you would believe me and get your own. Come, Lad-nar." He motioned the beast to follow him out onto the rocks.

Thought: how will you walk without the G.o.d-suit?

Kettridge ran a seamed hand through his white hair. He was glad Lad-nar had thought the question. The multiple flashes of a many-stroked blast filled the air with glare and noise.

Kettridge could not hear the noise.

"I have G.o.d-brothers who wait for me in the Great House From Across the Skies that will take me back to the Heaven Home. They will hurry to me and they will protect me."

He did not bother to tell the great beast that his search time was almost up and that the Jeremy Bentham's flitter would home in on his suit beam. It would have been useless homing, had he not secured time.

"Go! Walk, Lad-nar!" he said, throwing his arms out as he felt a G.o.d would. "And tell your brothers you have screamed at the Essence-Stealers!"

Thought: I have done this.

The great animal stepped cautiously toward the rocky ledge, fearful and hesitant. Then it bunched its huge muscles and leaped out into the full agony of the storm which crashed in futility about his ma.s.sive form.

"One day Man will come and make friends with you, Lad-nar," said the old man, softly. "One day they will come down out of the sky and show you how to live on this world of yours so that you don't have to hide."

Kettridge sank down against the inner wall of the cave, suddenly too exhausted to stand.

He had won. He had redeemed himself. If only in his own mind. He had helped take some life from a race, yet he had given life to another race.

He closed his eyes peacefully. Even the great blasts of blind lightning did not bother him as he rested. He knew Lad-nar had told his brothers.

He knew the ship was coming for him.

Lad-nar came up the incline and saw the flitter streaking down, lightning playing along its sides in phosph.o.r.escent glimmers.

Thought: G.o.d! G.o.d! Your G.o.d-brothers come for you!

He bounded across the scarred and seared rocks, toward the cave.

Kettridge rose and stepped out into the rain and wind.

He ran a few steps, waving his arms in signal. The flitter altered course and headed for the old man.

The lightning struck.

It seemed as though the bolt knew its target. It raced the flitter, sizzling and burning as it came. In a roar of light and dark and screamings it tore at the old man, lifting him high into the air, charring and burning and ripping.

The body landed just outside the cave, blistered and bleeding. The old man was still alive...

Thought: G.o.d! G.o.d! You have fallen! Rise, rise, rise! The Essence-Stealers...

The thoughts were hysterical, tearful, tom and wanting. Had the beast been able to shed tears, Kettridge knew it would have done so. The old man lay sightless, eyes gone, senses altogether torn from him. The Essence ebbed.

He thought: Lad-nar. There will come other G.o.ds. They will come to you and you must think to them. You must think these words, Lad-nar. Think to them, Show me a star. Do you hear me, Lad-nar? Do you...

Even as the great beast watched, the Essence flickered and died. In the animal's mind there was a lack, a s.p.a.ce of emptiness. Yet there was a contentment. A peace, and Lad-nar knew the Essence of the G.o.d Who Walked In The Light was soft and unafraid at Ending.

The aborigine stood on the rocks below the cave and watched the flitter sink to the stone ledge. He watched as the other G.o.ds From the Skies emerged and ran to the charred hulk lying on the stones.

Through his head, like the blind lightning, streaking everywhere, lightning, lightning, lightning, the words remained, and repeated...

Thought: Show me a star.

All the Sounds of Fear

"GIVE ME SOME LIGHT!".

Cry: tormented, half-moan half-chant, cast out against a whispering darkness: a man wound in white, arms upflung to roistering shadows, sooty sockets where eyes had been, pleading, demanding, anger and hopelessness, anguish from the soul into the world. He stumbled, a step, two, faltering, weak, the man returned to the child, trying to find some exit from the washing sea of darkness in which he trembled.

"Give me some light!"

Around him a Greek chorus of sussurating voices. Plucking at his garments he staggered toward an intimation of sound, a resting place, a goal. The man in pain, the figure of all pain, all desperation, and nowhere in that circle of painful light was there release from his torment. Sandaled feet stepping, each one above an abyss, no hope and no safety; what can it mean to be so eternally blind?

Again, "Give me some light!"

The last tortured ripping of the words from a throat raw with the hopelessness of salvation. Then the man sank to the shadows that moved in on him. The face half-hidden in chiaroscuro, sharp black, blanched white, down and down into the grayness about his feet, the circle of blazing-white light pinpointing him, a creature impaled on a shard of brilliance, till closing, closing, closing it swallowed him, all gone to black, darkness within and without, black even deeper, nothing, finis, end; silence.

Richard Becker, Oedipus, had played his first role. Twenty-four years later, he would play it again, as his last. But before that final performance's curtain could be rung, twenty-four years of greatness would have to strut across stages of life and theater and emotion.

Time, pa.s.sing.