Deus Irae

Nine

This was not his first encounter with runners. Back in Charlottesville, runners came and went unmolested. Wherever runners could be found, a kind of peace prevailed, an idiomatic tranquility, engendered by the benign habits of the runners themselves.

The good-natured little faces peered up at Tibor. The creatures were not over four feet high. Fat and round, covered with thick pelts… beady eyes, quivering noses—and great kangaroo legs.

Amazing, these swift evolutionary entelechies, cast forth from what were essentially poisons. So many and so fast; so many immediate kinds. Nature, striving to overcome the filth of the war: the toxins.

“Clearness be with you,” the runners said, virtually in unison. Their whiskers twitched. “How come you don’t have any arms or legs? You’re very strange as a life-form.”

“The war,” Tibor said vaguely, resenting the pushiness of the runners.

“Did you know your cart is malfunctioning?” the runners asked.

“No,” he said, taken by surprise. “Doesn’t it run? It got me this far; I mean—” Panic flew up inside him.

“There is an autofac near here that still works a little,” the largest of the runners said. “It can’t do very much—not like it could in olden tunes. But it could probably replace the wheel bearings in your cart that are running dry. And the cost is not all that great.”

“Oh yes,” Tiber said. “The wheel bearings. They probably are running dry.” He lifted one wheel off the ground and spun it noisily. “You’re right,” he admitted. “Where’s the autofac?”

“A few miles north of here,” the smallest of the runners said. “Follow me.” The other runners scampered into a group that eased itself off. “Or rather,” the runner amended, “follow us. Hey, are you guys coming along, too?”

“Sure,” the body of runners said, whiskers twitching. They obviously did not want to miss out on any of the action.

To Potter and Jackson, Tibor said, “Can I trust them?” He held in his mind, at this moment, a nebulous fear: Suppose the runners led him off to some desolate region, then killed him and stole his cart? It seemed a distinct possibility, the times being what they were.

Potter said, “You can trust them. They’re harmless. Which is more than you can say for these damn bugs.” He kicked at a cluster of bugs; they scuttled away, avoiding his scaly foot.

“An autofac, an autofac,” the runners chanted happily as they raced off. Tibor cautiously followed. “We’re going to the autofac and get the limbless man a cheap repair. It’s guaranteed for a thousand years or a million miles; whichever comes first.” Giggling to themselves, the runners disappeared for a moment, then reappeared, beckoning Tibor genially on.

“Catch you coming back,” Jackson yelled after Tibor. “Make sure you get a written guarantee, just to be safe.”

“You mean,” Tibor said, “that I can expect tarrididdle from an autofac?” It must be a Russian one, he thought. The Russian autofacs were Byzantine in their convolutions of intellect. They seemed for the most part to be excellently built, however. If this one still functioned at all, it could undoubtedly repair his dry-running wheel bearings.

He wondered how much it would charge.

They reached the autofac at dawn. Brilliantly colored clouds, like the fingerpaintings of a baby, stretched across the sky. Birds or quasi-birds chirped in the weedy bushes growing on all sides of the runners’ fire-path.

“It’s around here somewhere,” Earl, the leader of the runners, said as he halted; his name, stitched in red thread on the bosom of his worksuit, declared itself to Tibor. “Wait; let me think.” He pondered at length.

“How about a bite to eat?” a runner asked Earl.

“We can get something from the autofac,” Earl said, nodding his shaggy head wisely. “Come on, inc.” He jerked an abrupt arm motion at Tibor. During the night, the click-clacking of the dry wheel bearings had become hideously loud; the assembly would not function much longer. “We make a right turn here,” Earl said, advancing toward a yarrow thicket, “then a sharp left.” Only his tail could be seen as he struggled into the stiff brush of the thicket. “Here’s the entrance!” he called presently, and waved Tibor to follow him.

“Will it cost very much?” Tibor said apprehensively.

“Won’t cost,” Earl said, thrashing about in the shrubbery a short distance ahead of Tibor. “Nobody comes this way anymore; it’s perishing. It’ll be glad to see us. These things, they have emotions, too. Of sorts.”

An opening appeared ahead of Tibor as he floundered about in his unwieldy cart. A weedless place, as free of grass as if it had been shaved. In the center of the open place he could make out a flat, large disc, evidently metal; clamped shut, it greeted him soundlessly, confronting him with its meaningful presence. Yes, he thought, it’s a Russian autofac that landed here in seed form from an orbiting satellite. Probably in the last days of the war, during which the enemy tried everything.

“Hi,” he said to the autofac.

A shiver passed through the runners. “Don’t talk to it like that,” Earl said, nervously. “Have more respect; this thing can kill us all.”

“Greetings,” Tibor said.

“If you’re pompous or boorish,” Earl said quietly, “it’ll kill us.” His tone was patient. As if, Tibor thought, he’s addressing a child. And perhaps that is what I am, vis-a-vis this construct: a baby who knows no better. This thing, after all, is no natural mutant. It was made.

“My friend,” Tibor said to the autofac. “Can you help me?”

Earl groaned.

“You call it, then,” Tibor said to him, feeling irritated. How many verbal rituals had to surround the summoning of the intelligence of this wartime human construct? Evidently a very large number. “Look,” he said to Earl, and also to the autofac, “I need its help but I’m not going to fall in a groveling heap and pray it to install new wheel bearings in my cart. It’s not worth it.” The hell with it, he thought. These are the entities which brought our race down; these did us in.

“Mighty autofac,” Earl said sonorously. “We pray for your good assistance. This wretched armless/legless man cannot complete his journey without your beneficent assistance. Could you take a moment to examine his vehicle? The right front wheel bearings have failed him in his hour of need.” He paused, listening intently, his doglike head cocked.

“Here it comes,” the smallest of the runners said in a rapt, appreciative tone of voice; he seemed awed.

The lid of the autofac slid back. A lift from beneath the entrance thrust up a tall metal stalk, on the end of which a bullhorn could be seen. The bullhorn swiveled, then lined itself up so that it directly faced Tibor.

“You are pregnant, are you?” the bullhorn brayed. “I can supply you with ancient cures: arsenic, iron rust, water in which the dead have been immersed, mule’s kidneys, the froth from the mouth of a camel—which do you prefer?”

“No,” Earl said. “He’s not pregnant. He has a wheel bearing that’s running dry. Try to pay attention, sir.”

“I’ll not be talked to like that,” the autofac said. A second rod jutted up, now. It appeared to have a gas nozzle mounted at ground level. “You must die,” the autofac said, and emitted several meager puffs of gray smoke. The runners retreated. “I require great amounts of freczibble…” The dour sounds emitted by the autofac faded into an indistinct mass of noise; something in the speech circuit had failed to function. The two vertical rods whipped back and forth in agitation, emitted a little more gas, harmlessly, then became inert. A curl of black Smoke ascended from the entranceway of the autofac, then a whine. Of gear teeth, Tibor decided.

To Earl, Tibor said, “Why is it so hostile?”

Immediately coarse clouds of black issued forth from the underground reality which was the autofac. “I’m not hostile!” the bullhorn honked with wrath. “You goddamn lying son of a bitch.” A hiss, like steam released in an emergency overload, and then a huge crashing roar, as if a tone of garbage-can lids had been upset by raccoons. Then—silence.

“I think you killed it,” the smallest of the runners said to Earl.

“Christ,” Earl said, witty disgust. “Well, it probably couldn’t have helped you anyhow.” His voice quavered, then. “It would appear that I have screwed everything up. I wonder what we do now.”

Tibor said, “I’ll continue on my way.” He flicked the cow with a manual extensor; the cow mooed, granted, and slowly resumed its march, back in the direction from which they had come.

“Wait,” Earl said, raising a furred hand. “Let’s try once more.” He searched in his tunic, and brought forth a notepad and a ballpoint pen of prewar vintage. “We’ll submit our request in writing, like they used to do. We’ll just drop it down into the hole. And if that don’t work, we’ll give up.” He painfully, slowly scribbled on the notepad, then tore the top page off, and walked slowly toward the inert entrance to the subsurface autofac.

“Once warned twice burned,” the smallest of the runners piped.

“Forget it,” Tibor said to the runners; again he nudged the cow electronically, and he and she moved off, groaningly, the dry wheel bearings of his cart clacking noisily.

“The trouble may have existed in the bullhorn,” Earl said, still trying to knit the situation together. “If we bypass that—”

“Goodbye,” Tibor said, and continued on.

He felt melancholy. A soothing sort, a land of inner peace. Had the runners managed that? He wondered. They were said to…the big runner Earl had radiated anything but peace, however. Very strange, he thought; the runners are like the calm eye of the storm that everyone talks about but which no one sees. Peace in the center of chaos, perhaps.

As his cart lumbered on, pulled by his tireless cow, Tibor began to sing.

He could not remember how-the rest of the old hymn went, so he tried another.

That didn’t sound right. So he tried the Old One Hundred, the doxology:

Or however it was that the hymn went.

He felt better, now. And then all at once he realized that his wheel bearing had stopped complaining. He peered down, and saw the grim news: the wheel had entirely stopped turning. The bearings had seized up.

Well, thus it goes, he thought as he reined the cow to a halt. This is as far as we go, you and I. He sat listening to the sounds around him, noises from the trees and shrubbery, little animals at work, even smaller ones at play: the offspring of the world, maimed and grotesque as they might be, had the right to frolic about in the warm morning sun. The owls had retired; now came the red-tailed hawks. He heard a far-off bird, and was comforted.

The bird sang words, now. Brighten up the corner, it called. Again it sang the few words, and then trilled out, Praise Him from whom the wing and trees, the rocks and thank you. Tweet, toodle. It started from the beginning again, tracing each previous outburst.

A meta-mutant bird, he realized. A teilhard de chardin: forward oddity. Does it understand what it sings? he wondered. Or is it like a parrot? He could not tell. He could not go that way; he could only sit. Damn that wheel bearing, he said savagely to himself. If I could converse with the meta-bird maybe I could learn something. Maybe it has seen the Deus Irae and would know where he is.

Something at his right lashed the bushes, something large. And now he saw—saw and did not believe.

A huge worm had begun to uncurl and move toward him. It thrust the bushes aside; it dragged itself on its own oily slime, and as it came toward him it began to scream, high-pitched, strident. Not knowing what to do, he sat frozen, waiting. The rivulets of slime splashed over tarnished gray and brown and green leaves, withering both them and their branches. Dead fruit fell from the rotting trees; there arose a cloud of dry soil particles as the worm snorted and swung its way toward him. “Hi there!” the worm shrieked. It had almost reached him. “I can kill you!” the worm declared, tossing spit and dust and slime in his direction. “Get away and leave me! I guard something very precious, something you want but cannot have. Do you understand? Do you hear me?”

Tibor said, “I can’t leave.” His voice shook; with his trembling body he engineered a quick movement; he brought forth his derringer once more and aimed it at the cranium of the worm.

“I came out of garbage!” the worm cried. “I was spawned by the wastes of the field! I came from your war, inc. It is your fault that I am ugly like this. You can see the ugliness about me—look.” Its straining head wove and bobbed above Tiber’s, and now a shower of slime and spit rained down on him. He shut his eyes and shuddered. “Look at me!” the worm shouted.

“Black worm,” Tibor grated; he fooled with the derringer, aimlessly. And squinched down to avoid what had to come. It would bite his head off; he would die.

He shut his eyes, and felt the forked tongue of it lap at him.

“I am poisoning you,” the worm declared shrilly. “Sniff the odor of my great eternal body. I can never die; I am the Urworm, and I will exist until the end of the Earth!” Coils of its body splashed forward, spilling over his cart, over the cow, over himself. He snapped on the electric field of his cart, a last-ditch, hopeless effort to protect himself and the cow. The field hummed and buzzed; it crackled with shimmering sparks, and, all at once, the head portion of the worm retreated.

“Did I get you?” Tibor said, with hope. “Can’t you endure a five-amp electrical charge?” He snapped the dial to peak power; now the field sparked wildly, sending out cascading handfuls of light.

The head of the worm drew far back, to strike. This is it, Tibor realized, and held up the derringer. The head slithered forward and the great beak of the thing crashed through the five-amp field at Tibor.

As it revealed its fangs the electrical field made it pause; it halted its forward motion. Looking up, Tibor saw the soft underside of its throat, and he fired the derringer.

“I want to sleep!” the worm howled. “Why do you disturb my rest?” It jerked back its head, lifted it high, saw the blood dripping down onto itself. “What have you done?” it demanded. It swooped at him once again. He reloaded the derringer, not looking up until he had swung the barrel back into place.

Once more the head descended,. Once more he saw up at the soft underside of its throat. Again he fired.

“Let me be!” the worm cried out in pain. “Leave me to my sleep upon my possessions!” It reared up, and then, with a tremendous crash, descended to strike the ground. Its heaping coils spread out everywhere; the worm breathed hoarsely, its glazed eyes fixed on Tibor. “What has been done to you,” the worm snarled, “that has caused you to murder me? Have I done any act against you, any crime?”

“No,” Tibor said. “None.” He could see that it had been badly hurt, and his heart stopped laboring. Again he could breathe. “I am sorry,” he said insincerely. “One of the two of us had to—” He paused to reload the derringer. “Only one of us could live,” he said, and this time shot the worm between its lidded eyes. The eyes grow and contract, he noticed. Bigger, brighter… then paling out to mere glimmers. Mere decay. “You are dead,” he said.

The worm did not answer. Its eyes still open, it had died.

Tibor reached with a manual extensor; he dipped his “hand” in the oily slime of the worm, an idea coming to his head. If the slime was truly oily, perhaps he could soak the wheel bearings with it, give them a shield of lubrication. But then something that the worm had said popped up within his mind, an interesting point. The worm had said, “Leave me to my sleep upon my possessions.” What did it possess?

He cautiously navigated his cart around the side of the dead worm, prodding the cow expertly with his pseudowhips.

Beyond the tangle of shrubbery—a cave in the side of a rocky hill. It reeked of the worm slime; Tibor got out a handkerchief and held it before his nose, trying to reduce the smell. He then snapped on his light, shone it into the cave.

Here, the worm’s possessions. An overhead fan, totally rusted and inactive, piled up on the top of the heap. Under it, the body of an ancient surface auto, including two broken headlights and a peace sign on its side. An electric can opener. Two wartime laser rifles, their fuel supplies empty. Burned out bedsprings from what had once been a house; he saw, now, the window screens from the house, like everything else, rusting away.

A portable transistor radio, missing its antenna.

Junk. Nothing of worth. He rolled his cart forward, picking at the cow; the cow swished her tail, turned her heavy head back in protest, and then stumped on, closer to the foul, rotting cave.

Like a crow, Tibor thought. The worm piled up everything shiny it could find. And all worthless. How long had it curled up here, protecting its rusting junk? Years, probably. Ever since the war.

He perceived other trash, now. A garden hoe. A large cardboard poster of Che Guevera, tattered and dim from long neglect. A tape-recorder, without a power source and missing its tape reels. An Underwood electric typewriter, bent with excessive damage. Kitchen utensils. A cat-carrying cage, caved in, its wire sides jabbing up like a garden of spikes. A divan, molting its Naugahide surfaces. A floor ashtray. A pile of Time magazines.

That did it. The worm’s wealth ended there. All that plus the springs from a bed. Not even the mattress: just the grotesquely bent metal coils.

He sighed, keenly disappointed. Well, at least the worm was dead, the great dark worm who had lived in this cave, protecting his worthless acquisitions.

The bird who had sung hymns came fluttering over the branches of the nearby trees. It hovered, then landed, its bright eyes fixed on him. Questioningly.

“You can see what I did,” Tibor said thickly. The corpse of the worm had already begun to stink.

“I can see,” the bird said.

“Now I’m able to understand you,” Tibor said. “Not just fragments repeated back—”

“Because you dipped your hand into the excretion of the worm,” the bird said. “Now you can understand all the birds, not just me. But I can tell you everything you need to know.”

Tibor said, “You recognize me?”

“Yes,” the bird said, hopping down to a lower, sturdier branch. “You are McMasters Tibor.”

“Backwards,” Tibor said. “Tibor is my first name; McMasters my second. Just turn it around.”

“All right,” the bird agreed. “You are on a Pilg, searching for the God of Wrath, so you can paint his likeness. A noble errand, Mr. Tibor.”

“McMasters,” Tibor said.

“Yes,” the bird agreed. “Anything you say. Ask me if I know where you can find him.”

“You know where he is?” Tibor said, and within his chest his heart labored once more, a fierce cold pressure that injured him by its presence. The idea of finding the Deus Irae paralyzed him, now; it seemed to be an actual presence, not a potential one.

“I know,” the bird said calmly. “It is not far from here; I can easily lead you there, if you wish.”