To Challenge Chaos, page 8
He knew which of the tiny little stars in the infinite vault of heaven was his birth star and learned to tell his fortune by virtue of its movement around the planet and the other planets that passed close to it. He visited it once with a heart full of wonder all ready to spill and watched it from space. It was a young star without planets, all white and regal.
The Julius Watchgod who ran cargo for King Fury did not believe. He had lost his faith and his luck, forgot his goddess and his destiny. He was a lost soul in a universe too big. He stopped believing in everything-He stopped believing in himself. How did it all happen?
Time was the greatest enemy. Time changes and doesn’t give you the option of reversing the change. Time changed Watchgod. It gave him the gifts of age, wisdom, and bitterness.
Mistakes were the other enemy. No matter how intelligent or how lucky a man is he will still make mistakes. Watchgod was sensitive about his mistakes; he didn’t have the character to carry them off with the proper dignity. Watchgod was hurt by laughter, and so his mistakes hurt him too much.
I could give you a long series of flashbacks and show you those mistakes, but there isn’t any point. You make the same mistakes yourself and maybe even don’t notice them. But think for a moment about any time you made a fool of yourself, and that was Watchgod. Whereas you probably lost a few harmless illusions, Watchgod lost his faith. He was taken from confidence to despair, and the fall was a permanent injury.
The despair wouldn’t have led him to Chaos X. Watchgod was no fool or maniac, and this was the days before the story of Richard Orpheus’ escape. King Fury came to him instead.
King Fury wanted Watchgod’s soul (to put it picturesquely). Watchgod couldn’t sell his soul to the devil because the bottom had fallen out of that market a thousand years before. The market had changed, and the deal had changed slightly.
The agreement was not a classic Faustian one, and it wasn’t signed in blood. The deal was fairly simple. Watchgod got ten years, and Fury got thirty. Fury had a slight advantage over the devil of old. He could take his souls to hell while they were still alive, and when they’d worked their stretch, they had the chance of getting out of hell again. That made the bargain so much more attractive. It allowed Fury to introduce the three-for-one bias. Mind you, Watchgod got a lot more during his ten years than Fury got in his thirty. And Watchgod got his in advance. Let no one think that Fury (like the devil before him) was a cheat.
There was nothing supernatural in the deal (unless you count Chaos X). Watchgod, during his ten years, was limited strictly to what money could buy. But then, money can buy such a lot. They say that money doesn’t buy
everything, but when you have access to all that it can buy, you don’t have a lot of time to miss the things it doesn’t.
Of course there was a slight catch in the other half of the deal. If Watchgod were to die in ultra, then he’d be bound to Fury forever, which might turn out to be a while longer than thirty years. On the other hand, the purpose of the contract from Fury’s point of view had nothing to do with the time. It concerned only the thousand cargoes. Fury was obliged to look after Watchgod until he had delivered his thousandth cargo. Watchgod was valuable alive and well (until he had delivered his thousandth cargo)….
Now. Strangely, Watchgod remembered very little of the ten years that Fury had given him as he carried his thousandth cargo across blackside on the long journey to Fury’s kingdom.
They seemed almost to be a dream (the dreams, seem much fainter …), separated by thirty years, had been everything he wanted, ample and in excess, it was all blurred now. He had enjoyed it, he knew, only a bitter taste remained afterward. It was like a hangover. It had all been hard to come by and left so big a gap when it was over that he could not imagine what had filled it. He wished that he could decide whether it had been worth it. He simply didn’t know. Those years seemed so transient, like ghosts, hard to measure against the thirty long and harshly real years that hung like millstones around his neck. But if he were offered the same deal again, would he turn it down?
At first, when he began to carry cargoes, he had lived on his memories like an automaton, but gradually memories had faded, and he had become more involved with his new work. Memories without flavor are hard to maintain, and Watchgod’s memories were flat and colored right from the day his thirty years began. King Fury owned his soul (metaphorically speaking), and it simply is not possible to live in memories without a soul. It was even difficult to learn to look forward.
Eventually Watchgod decided to completely ignore his glorious ten years and give his whole attention to Fury’s kingdom and Fury’s cargo. He was, he thought, more a prisoner than any man condemned to a life with stone walls and iron bars. For the prisoner of stone and metal there was inward escape if not outward. For Watchgod there was neither.
The only thing Watchgod had now—and he’d had to find that as well—was hope, hope for the moment when he drove his thousandth cargo into the mouth of the chromiasma and earned his freedom again.
With that hope, accumulating over the years that lay behind him, had come doubt. He knew how strong Fury was, that if the king of blackside refused to let him go, there was nothing Watchgod could do. All Fury had to do was kill him, and that was so easy. Then Watchgod was here for good. He’d be no good to Fury dead, of course, but would Fury care? Would Fury consider it a joke worth breaking his word for to condemn Fury on the eve of his freedom?
There was another doubt as well—a more insidious doubt and perhaps more fanciful. He asked himself, How can I know that I am alive? How can I know that since I last drew breath on brightside, I have not died of some poison, some disease, perhaps a heart attack? How can I be sure that my heart will beat again next time I go into space? Every time he opened his eyes on the sunlit side of the black mountains, he felt a long thrill of relief.
Always, when on brightside, he thought of escape. Just leave the planet and run. But it was no good. There could be no escape from Fury. Even before the days of advanced psychosurgery, there had been ways to take care of that. He couldn’t do it. King Fury had his soul.
He thought of dying, too, but he was not the sort of man to commit suicide. He was the kind of man who hopes forever, even in the grip of blackest despair. And he was not sure that Fury did not have that part of his mind, too.
Sometimes he prayed for a release of some kind, but that never worked. Julius Watchgod was no longer a believer.
But now, at last, he was carrying his thousandth cargo, and release waited somewhere nearby. All he wanted now was to get it over and start all over again.
Because it was his last cargo, he’d looked upon it as a special one. He’d wanted to know exactly what it was that he’d carried for thirty years. But it was no use because his cargo didn’t want to know him. He was simply the man who drove the ferry, a step in the journey, without relevance to their own problems and ambitions. They lied to him and hid from him. In a way it might somehow turn out better that way. If this cargo had taught him guilt, he might have had to live with his thousand cargoes for the rest of his life.
He felt no guilt about carrying his cargoes. The only guilt that he did feel was over his responsibility. He was committed to safeguarding and delivering his cargo. When John Wrath had walked away from the gondola in the metal forest, it was to do Watchgod’s work.
But out of fear for what might be barring the way, he had let John Wrath do his job. John Wrath was a hero, and Julius Watchgod was a coward.
As far as Watchgod was concerned, the big man was gone only a very short time. But for Wrath it had been a long time, and a lot had happened. When he returned, bleeding and soaked in ichor, Watchgod forced himself to face the man.
“It’s dead,” said Wrath.
“There was no need,” said Watchgod soberly.
John Wrath eyed him with something approaching disdain. Watchgod looked away. What am I? he asked himself. What have I done to myself?
page 68
The White Waste
The decaying waste moved like the skin of an albino toad. The ocean of fluid sand ebbed and flowed, circled and swelled. The trees stood lifeless and leafless, with white fungus cloaking the skeletal limbs. Like crucified Christs the alabaster trunks sagged, listless and hopeless, while the quicksand sucked at their roots. Big white birds without eyes perched on the rotten branches and screamed mournfully like wolves or babies.
The sparksharks made wakes with their tall dorsal fins as they arrowed in toward the black gondola. Watchgod watched them without interest as their snub snouts nudged the vessel, making soft, muted thuds against the hull. The white creatures tracked the gondola with a macabre dedication, leaping from the quagmire every now and then with flurries of wan mud and sluggish splashes as they landed.
White rocks protruded like broken reptiles’ teeth from the waste, the tops of buried mountains or atolls in a ghostly sea.
Above, the storm raged. White lightning illuminated the decaying waste with an unbearable brightness, and snow tumbled softly and unceasingly from the vacant sky. The respite after the hurricane in the metal forest had been brief. The storm had waited only for them to be clear of the protective canopy before breaking out again. This was a more sullen storm with more stamina. They would not see the end of this one so soon.
Craig Star Gazer stood with Donna Teredo in the bow of the gondola, their hair curtained with unmelting snowflakes, their masklike faces patterned with crystals. In his right hand Craig held the phial that Donna had planted on his person.
“What is it?” he asked, staring into the pale radiance.
“Light,” she replied dreamily. “Distilled sunlight. I’d like to give it to you for you to wear it.” Her dreaming eyes, with some sort of lingering life deep within them, roamed Craig’s frozen features.
“Why?”
“I want you to carry it. Without telling anyone. I can’t tell you why. It has something to do with the reason I came here. I want you to wear it around your neck without knowing why.”
She had chosen Craig wisely. When she mentioned reasons, he thought of reasons like his own. He was a romantic—a sick, gullible romantic. He would agree. He would trust her. His way of thinking wouldn’t permit him to say no.
He looked at the self-pity still etched deep into her face, into the line of her mouth and the wrinkles in her skin. Although he could never understand, he accepted. His artificial love was sufficient for any purpose he wanted to bend it to. His loyalty, though, was limited in its imagination. His loyalty was to Anna, but he couldn’t refuse what Donna asked of him. He shrugged his shoulders and put the phial away.
He turned away from her eyes. He had never liked being looked at. He always looked away instead of at because he was that sort of a man.
‘Will the storm never end?” she said.
He couldn’t give any answer to that. He contented himself with a shake of the head and continued to watch the sparksharks leap and twist in the airlessness of ultra.
Then he changed his mind and said, “From now there is no end. Even the dead live here.”
Donna was no longer listening. Her eyes had wandered to the silent figure of Watchgod, moodily staring into nowhere from his platform at the steering mechanism of the ship. She was suddenly struck by his loneliness. Craig’s eyes followed hers, and he moved to the older man’s side.
“What’s the matter?” asked Craig.
Watchgod turned and then looked back, searching for his piece of nowhere. The man meant it kindly, he knew, but Watchgod was not in the mood to welcome kindness from anyone.
“I wish it were over,” he said in answer.
“There’s no danger,” said Craig confidently.
“There’s always danger to be faced, or if it isn’t danger it’s something else. You can’t ever turn away. This is ultra, and in ultra, even if you can’t die, you can get lost. There is nothing at all holding you together except your will and your identity. If you turn away, you’ll find your will and identity slipping away, lost in the white waste or the singing sea, or somewhere similar, swallowed up by sparksharks.”
“We’ve survived so far.”
“Have you? Have I? I can’t even guess how much of me is left. I might be a shadow, a ghost. I might have left a bit of me in every mile of the long unmeasurable road from brightside to Fury’s kingdom.
“I’m talking nonsense, though. It’s this place. Maybe you’re right and we’re as good as safe home with what we came for.”
“Richard Orpheus got there,” said Craig.
“And where is Richard Orpheus? A legend—a man that nobody knows, known by a handful of words that might belong to anyone. Has anyone seen him? Who is he now?”
“Some of that handful of words relate to blackside. There are references to the black land and the chromiasma. There are references to rivers of tears and rains of blood which a lot of people think describe this place.”
“There are no rivers of tears. If it ever rained blood, it did so in Richard Orpheus’ eyes and in no one else’s. It’s true he might have been writing about blackside. Fury does not keep the existence of the chromiasma and black land a secret. What Orpheus wrote does not mean that he was actually here himself.”
“What about the phrase you claim the dead men attribute to him?”
Watchgod shrugged. “The dead men were living men once, men who followed the story of Orpheus. They could make such a phrase from nowhere and hang it on a name.”
“You can’t deny that Richard Orpheus was ever here. Have you been here so long that you know everything there is to know about ultra?”
“No, I don’t know anything. But think, Craig Star Gazer. You’re not a stupid man behind your delusions.”
Craig made no sign that he had felt the insult.
“I’m no fool,” he said.
“Nor am I. What makes your ideas better than mine?”
Craig paused. Watchgod had found his patch of nowhere again and was looking into it intently. Craig was about to speak again, but Donna’s hand on his arm stopped him.
Ahead was a large island, a great cone protruding from the dust and damp sand, its slopes torn and pockmarked with caves and gullies. Watchgod transferred his stare from nowhere to the cone of dull rock and scanned its slopes intently. His face, clear even in the snow, the drifting mist, and the half-darkness, reflected the white of the leprous surroundings. If the hope was still in his face, then it was lost in that reflection, buried in harsh contours of whiteness.
Inside Watchgod’s mind he was trying to reach a decision. The tension of the impending end to his years of slavery was building up inside him. He felt the need to let go, to exhaust himself in some violent exercise. His mind ran lightly over John Wrath, the hero, and what he had done in the metal forest, then jumped to the memory of King Fury’s face, the face that laughed and sneered.
Suddenly he locked the steering of the gondola on to a path that would clear them of all obstructions for the next few moments and ducked inside the cupola of the vessel.
Craig looked speculatively at the huge lump of stained ivory rock that had attracted Watchgod’s attention. The slightly altered path of the gondola would take the tiny boat very close to the island.
‘There’s something there,” he said.
“What of it?” the girl replied without interest.
Trouble,” muttered Nimrod, who had been listening.
Watchgod emerged carrying a dagger in his left hand and a coiled whip in his right.
“What are you going to do?” asked Donna.
“Something for myself,” replied Watchgod. “Just cause I want to. It won’t take long. I’m just going to kill something.”
page 72
The Torpedo Dragon
The black gondola lay motionless at the base of the ash-gray peak. Watchgod walked slowly up the slope to the caves, set back from the shore and some way above.
“What’s he doing?” asked Marc Coldflame, who had not realized anything was about to happen until the gondola stopped.
“I don’t know,” said Craig shortly. I think I do, though, he added to himself. He’s regaining some of his self respect. He wants to be sure that when he gets his freedom, it won’t be worthless.
“Should I help him?” asked John Wrath.
“Leave him alone,” advised Donna. That’s the last thing he needs, thought Craig.
They watched as Watchgod dropped the coils of the whip, then cracked it viciously. There was a snap like the breaking of a bone, and the white dust rose in a cloud to merge with the light ground mist.
“Come on,” yelled Watchgod, not to the silent cargo he had left behind in the gondola but to something hidden in the silent caves above him.
Something moved, something white and sluggish hidden in the dark shadow of a cave mouth, responding to Watchgod’s shouted challenge. There was a dull rattle inside the conical mountain, followed by a splash of lightning and a deep, long roar of thunder. Watchgod did not bother to look up.
The hidden beast began to emerge. It was long. Its bulk oozed from the cave, borne on short stubby legs that did not seem capable of lifting its vast belly from the ground. Its head was domed and many-eyed. Its teeth
overlapped its jaws, seeming to overflow the mouth. There were hundreds of teeth of various sizes and several shapes, all mixed up as though the creator of the improbable beast could not be bothered to sort them out and put them in properly. A long forked tongue flickered back and forth from between the glutinous lips. The thousand dead-white soft eyes bulged and subsided rhythmically.
Watchgod slashed forward with the whip, and the tip ran a red weal across the monster’s face. It reacted slowly, moving its head sideways as though away from a troublesome insect. The forked tongue searched for the wound to lick away some of the blood that trickled down its face.
