Deus Irae

Fifteen

Into the world, the day, spilling: here: the queries of birds, tentative, then self-assured: here: dew like breath on glass, retreating, gone: here: bands of color that flee the east, fading, fading, blue: here: like a wax doll, half melted: Tibor, soft in the collapsed cart; cock-eared hound by his side, watching the world come around.

A yawn then, a blinking, slow memory. Tibor bunched and relaxed his shoulder muscles. Isometrics. Stretching. Bunching. Relaxing.

“Good morning, Toby. Another day. This one will tell it, I guess. You are a good dog. Damn good. Best dog I ever knew. You can get down now. Hunt up breakfast if you know how. It’s the only way you’ll get any, I’m afraid.”

Toby jumped down, relieved himself beside a tree, circled the cart, sniffed the ground. Tibor activated the extensor and proceeded with his own simple ablutions.

I suppose I should try the bullhorn again, now, he thought. But I am afraid to. I really am. It is my last hope. If it fails me, nothing else remains.

He hesitated a long while. He searched the sky, the trees.

The blue jay? Is that what I am looking for? he wondered. I don’t know what I am looking for. I guess that I am not truly awake yet. There goes Toby into the brush. I wonder if I will ever see him again? I may be dead by the time he gets back. No telling what—Stop it! Okay. A cup of coffee would be nice. It would be so nice. A last cup… All right! I’ll try the horn. He raised it, turned it on, and called out: “Hallo! This is Tibor McMasters. I have had an accident. My cart is stuck. I am caught here. If anyone can hear me, I need help. Can you hear me? Can you help me? Is anyone there?”

Nothing. He waited for perhaps fifteen minutes and tried again. Again nothing.

Three more attempts. An hour drawn and quartered. Toby returned, discussed something with the cow, lay down in the shade.

Faintly… Was that a shout? Or a tricking of the ear? A thing compounded of hope, fear, background sounds? The cry of an animal?

He began to perspire, straining to hear through the natural noises, listening for it to come again. Toby whined.

Turning, Tibor saw that the dog had risen to its feet and was facing back along the trail, ears pointed, body tense.

He switched on the horn and raised it once again. “Hallo! Hallo! Over here! Up here! I am trapped! Caught in a collapsed cart! This is Tibor McMasters! I have had an accident! Can you hear me?”

“Yes!” The word echoed among the hills. “We are coming!”

Tibor began to laugh. His eyes were moist. He chuckled. At that moment, he thought he glimpsed the blue jay darting away among the trees. But he could not be certain.

“We are going to finish this Pilg yet, Toby,” he said. “We are going to make it, I think.”

It was another ten minutes before Pete Sands and Jack Schuld rounded the bend of the trail and came into view. Toby laid his ears flat and growled, backing up against the cart.

“It’s all right, Toby,” Tibor said. “I know one of them. He is here to do the Christian thing. Be a handy Samaritan and look over my shoulder afterward. And I need him. The price is right, whatever.”

“Tibor!” Pete called out. “Are you hurt?”

“No, it’s just the cart,” he answered. “Threw a wheel.”

They approached.

“I see the wheel,” Pete said. He glanced at his companion. “This is Jack Schuld. I met him on the trail yesterday. This is Tibor McMasters, Jack—a great artist.”

Tibor nodded.

“I can’t shake hands,” he said.

Schuld smiled.

“I’ll lend you mine,” he said. “We’ll have that wheel back on in no time. Pete has some lube.”

Schuld crossed to the wheel, raised it from the brush where it had come to rest, rolled it toward the cart.

Nimble, Tibor thought. All connoisseurs of the movements of the unmaimed would probably agree on that. What does he want?

Toby snarled as Schuld brought the wheel around to the front of the cart.

“Back up, Toby! Go away now! They’re helping me,” Tibor said.

The dog slunk off a dozen paces and sat down, watching.

Pete brought the lube around.

“We’re going to have to raise the cart,” he said. “I wonder… ?”

“I’ll raise it,” Schuld said.

As they worked, Tibor said, “I suppose I should ask what you are doing out this way.”

Pete looked up and smiled. Then he sighed.

“You know,” he said. “You left early because you didn’t want me along. All right. But I had to follow—just because of the possibility of things like this.” He gestured at the cart.

“All right,” Tibor said. “All right. As it turns out, I am not ungrateful. Thanks for showing up.”

“May I take that as an indication that I will be welcome for the balance of the journey?”

Tibor chuckled.

“Let’s just say that I can’t object to your presence now.”

“I guess that will have to do.”

Pete turned his attention back to the work.

“Where did you meet Mr. Schuld?”

“He saved me in an encounter with the Great C’s extension.”

“Handy,” Tibor said.

Schuld laughed and Tibor was jolted as the man crouched beneath the cart, then stood, raising it on his shoulders.

“Jack Schuld is handy,” he said. “Yes, he is,” and, “Indeed. Fit it on over the hub now, Pete.”

I suppose that I should feel happy to have people around me again, thought Tibor, after everything I have encountered recently. Still …

“There,” Pete said. “You can lower it now.”

Schuld eased the cart down, moved out from beneath it. Pete began tightening a nut.

“I am much obliged,” Tibor said.

“Think nothing of it,” Schuld replied. “Glad to be of help. Your friend tells me you are on a Pilg.”

“That’s right. Part of a commission I have—”

“Yes, he told me about that, too. Off to get a glimpse of old Lufteufel for your mural. Worthy project, I’d say. And I believe you are getting warm.”

“You know something about him?”

“I think so. There have been rumors, you know. I travel a lot. I hear them all. Some say that’s his town to the north. No, you can’t see it from here. But keep going this way and you’ll eventually come to a settlement. That’s the one—they say.”

“Do you believe the rumors?”

Schuld rubbed his dark chin and a faraway look came into his eyes.

“I would think the odds are pretty good,” he said. “Yes. I fancy I could find him there.”

“I don’t suppose he uses his real name anymore,” Tibor said. “He has probably assumed a different identity.”

Schuld nodded.

“I understand that to be the case.”

“Do you know it?”

“The name? No. The identity? I think so. I have heard that he is a veterinarian now, that he makes his home in a remodeled fallout shelter, has a feebleminded girl living there with him.”

“Is this place in the town proper?”

“No. Out a ways from town. Easy to miss—they say.”

Pete sighed and stood. He plucked a bunch of leaves and began wiping his hands. He finished the job on his trousers.

“There,” he said. “Now if we push and you can make the cow pull, we should be able to get it back on the trail. Then we can see how it holds up. Give me a hand now, Jack, will you?”

Schuld moved away, circling to the rear of the cart.

“All right, ready,” Pete said.

“Ready.”

“Push!”

“Giddap!” Tibor said.

The cart creaked, rocked forward, back, forward, forward, continued on along the ditch, caught the incline, rose with it. A minute later, they had it back on the trail.

“Try it now,” Pete said. “See how it moves on the level.”

Tibor set out.

“Better,” he said. “I can feel the difference. Much better.”

“Good.”

They continued on along the trail then, up, down, around, about the hills.

“How far are you going?” Tibor asked Schuld.

“A good distance,” the man replied. “I am going through that town we spoke of. We might as well go that far together.”

“Yes. Do you think you might have time to point that place out to me?”

“Lufteufel’s? Surely. I’ll try. I’ll show you where I think it is. You see, I want to help.”

“Well, that would be very helpful,” Tibor said. “When do you think we will reach it?”

“Perhaps sometime tomorrow.”

Tibor nodded.

“What do you really think about him?” he asked.

“A good question,” the hunter replied, “and one I knew you would get to sooner or later. What do I think of him?” He pulled his nose. He ran his fingers through his hair. “I have traveled widely,” he said, “and I have seen much of the world, both before and after. I lived through the days of the destruction. I saw the cities die, the countryside wilt. I saw the pallor come upon the land. There was still some beauty in the old days, you know. The cities were hectic, dirty places, but at certain moments—usually times of arrival and departure—looking down upon them at night, all lit up, say, from a plane in a cloudless sky—you could almost, for that moment, call up a vision out of St. Augustine. Urbi et orbi, perhaps, for that clear instant. And once you got away from the towns, on a good day, there was a lot of green and brown, sprinkled with all the other colors, clear running water, sweet air—But the day came. The wrath descended. Sin, guilt, and retribution? The manic psychoses of those entities we referred to as states, institutions, systems—the powers, the thrones, the dominations—the things which perpetually merge with men and emerge from them? Our darkness, externalized and visible? However you look upon these matters, the critical point was reached. The wrath descended. The good, the evil, the beautiful, the dark, the cities, the country—the entire world—all were mirrored for an instant within the upraised blade. The hand that held that blade was Carleton Lufteufel’s. In the moment that it plunged toward our heart, it was no longer the hand of a man, but that of the Deus Irae, the God of Wrath Himself. That which remains exists by virtue of His sufferance. If there is to be any religion at all, I see this as the only tenable credo. What other construction could be placed upon the events? That is how I see Carleton Lufteufel, how I feel he must be preserved in your art. That is why I am willing to point him out for you.”

“I see,” said Tibor, waiting for Pete’s reaction, disappointed when none was forthcoming. Then, “It does make sense,” he said, partly to irritate Pete. “The greatest painters of the Renaissance had a go at depicting the other. But none of them actually got to see their subject, to glimpse the visage of God. I am going to do it, and when men look upon that painting they will know that I have, for it will be true. They will say, ‘Tibor McMasters has seen, and he has shown what he saw.’ “

Schuld slapped the side of the cart and chuckled.

“Soon,” he said. “Soon.”

That evening, as they were gathering kindling for a campfire, Pete said to Schuld, “You took him in entirely, I’d say. That business about wanting to see Lufteufel preserved in his art, I mean.”

“Pride,” Schuld replied. “It was easy. Got his mind off me and onto himself quickly. Now I am a part of his Pilg: Guide. I will speak to him again later this evening, confidentially. Perhaps if you were to take a brief walk after dinner…”

“Of course.”

“When I have finished, any second thoughts he may have had as to my sincerity will be laid to rest. Everything should proceed smoothly afterward.”

The subtlety and sense of timing of a thermostat or a cardiac pacemaker, Pete decided—that’s what it takes to be a hunter—a feeling for the rhythm of things and a power over them. This is going well. Only Tibor must not really see Lufteufel…

“I believe you,” Pete said. Then, “I don’t quite know how to put this, though, so I will simply be direct: Do either of the two religions involved in this mean anything to you personally?”

A huge stick snapped between Schuld’s hands.

“No,” he said.

“I didn’t think so, but I wanted to clear that up first. As you know, one of them means something to me.”

“Obviously.”

“What I am getting at is the fact that we Christians would not be overjoyed at seeing Lufteufel actually represented in that mural.”

“A false religion, a false god, as you would have it. What difference does it make what they stick in their church?”

“Power,” Pete said. “You can appreciate that. From a strictly temporal standpoint, having the real thing—as they see it—would give them something more. Call it mana. If we suddenly had a piece of the True Cross, it would whip up our zeal a bit, put a little more fire into our activities. You must be familiar with the phenomenon. Call it inspiration.”

Schuld laughed.

“Whatever Tibor paints, they will believe it is the real thing. The results will be the same.”

He wants me to say that I believe in the God of Wrath and am afraid of him, Pete thought. I won’t do it.

“Such being the case, we would as soon it were not Lufteufel,” Pete said.

“Why?’

“Because we would look on that as blasphemy, as a mockery of God as we see Him. They would be deifying not just any man, but the man responsible for all our present woes, the man you yourself referred to as an inhuman monster.”

Schuld snapped another stick.

“Yes, of course,” he said. “He doesn’t deserve a neatly dug hole in the ground, let alone worship. I see your point. What do you propose doing?”

“Use us for your cover,” Pete said, “as you had planned. Locate him. Get as close as you feel necessary to satisfy yourself as to his identity. Then tell Tibor you were mistaken. He is not the man. Our ways part there. We go on, continuing our search. You remain behind or depart and double back—whichever is easier—and do what you must do. Lufteufel is thus removed from our field of consideration.”

“What will you do then?”

“I don’t know. Keep going. Maybe locate a substitute. I don’t know. But at least Carleton Lufteufel will be out of the picture.”

“That, then, is your real reason for being here? Not just the protection of Tibor?”

“It might have figured in the decision—a little.”

Schuld laughed again.

“How far were you willing to go to insure Tiber’s not seeing him? I wonder. Might it extend to actual violence?”

Pete snapped a stick of his own.

“You said it,” he said. “I didn’t.”

“I may be doing you people a favor just by doing my job,” Schuld said.

“Maybe.”

“Too bad I didn’t know about it sooner. If a man is going to labor for two masters, he might as well draw good wages from both of them.”

“Christianity is broke,” Pete said. “But I’ll remember you in my prayers.”

Schuld slapped him on the shoulder.

“Pete, I like you,” he said. “Okay. We’ll do it your way. Tibor doesn’t have to know.”

“Thanks.”

Beneath that Swiss movement, Pete wondered as they headed back, what is the spark—the mainspring—really like, hunter? The money they will pay you? The hate? Or something else?

There came a sharp yelp. Schuld had kicked Toby, who had emerged before him, snarling. It could have been an accident, but, “Damn dog!” he said. “It hates me.”