Deus Irae

Sixteen

Pete Sands set up his radio gear by moonlight, working in the middle of a small glade about a quarter of a mile back along the road from the site of their encampment.

Neat, he thought, the way it worked out, Schuld’s suggesting what I was going to do anyway: take this walk.

He plugged in the earphone, cranked the transmitter.

“Dr. Abernathy,” he said, raising the microphone. “Pete Sands here. Hello?”

There followed a brief burst of static, then, “Hello, Pete. This is Abernathy. How is it going?”

“I’ve located Tibor,” Pete said.

“Is he aware of your presence?”

“Yes. We are traveling together now. I am calling from just outside our camp.”

“Oh. So you have joined him. What are your plans?”

“They are somewhat complicated,” Pete said. “There is a third party involved—a fellow named Jack Schuld. I met him yesterday. He saved my life, actually. He seems to have a pretty good idea as to Lufteufel’s whereabouts. He has offered to guide us to him. We may reach the place tomorrow.”

Pete smiled at the sharp intake of breath on the other end. He continued: “I have made a deal with him, however. He will not point him out to Tibor. He is going to confess to a case of mistaken identity and we will bypass the real Lufteufel and continue on.”

“Wait a minute, Pete. I do not understand you. Why go through all that in the first place then? Why go that route at all?”

“Well,” Pete said lamely, “he will do me this favor in return for our company on the way.”

“Pete, what ate you leaving out? It doesn’t make sense. There has to be more to it than that.”

“All right. He is an assassin. He is on his way to kill Lufteufel. He thinks he would seem less suspicious traveling in the company of an inc.”

“Pete! That makes you a party to murder!”

“Not really. I disapprove of murder. We discussed that earlier. And he may even have a legal right to do this—as an executioner. He is in the employ of a police organization—at least he says he is, and I believe him. Whatever, I am powerless to stop him, no matter what my feelings. If you got a good look at him, you would know what I mean. I thought you would be happy to learn—”

“—of a man’s death. Pete, I don’t like this at all.”

“Then suggest something else, sir.”

“Could you get away from this Schuld? You and Tibor sneak off during the night? Just go on by yourselves?”

“Too late. Tiber would not cooperate if I couldn’t give him an awfully good reason—and I can’t. He believes Schuld can show him his man. And I am certain we could not sneak off anyway. Schuld is too alert a fellow. He’s a hunter.”

“Do you think you could warn Lufteufel when you reach him?”

“No,” Pete said, “not now that I’ve set it up for Tibor to miss him completely or only to glimpse him without knowing who he is. I didn’t think you would take it this way.”

“I am trying to protect you from an occasion for sin.”

“I don’t see it as such.”

“… Most likely mortal.”

“I hope not. I guess that I am going to have to play it by ear now. I will let you know what happens.”

“Wait, Pete! Listen! Try to find some way to part company with that Schuld fellow as fast as possible. If it weren’t for him, you wouldn’t even be going near Lufteufel. You are not responsible for Schuld’s actions unless you are in a position to influence them by action or the withholding of action yourself. Morally as well as practically, you are better off without him. Get out! Get away from him!”

“And leave Tibor?”

“No, take Tibor with you.”

“Against his will? Kidnap him, you mean?”

There was silence, then a little static.

Finally, “I don’t know how to tell you to do it,” he said. “That is your problem. But you must look for a way.”

“I will see what I can do,” Pete said, “but it doesn’t look promising.”

“I will continue to pray,” Dr. Abernathy replied. “When will you call me again?”

“Tomorrow evening, I guess. I probably won’t be able to get off a call during the day.”

“All right. I will be waiting. Good night.”

“Good night.”

The static gave way to crickets. Pete disassembled the gear.

“Tibor,” Schuld said, stirring the fire, “Tibor McMasters, on his way to immortality.”

“Huh?” said Tibor. He had been staring into the flames, finding the face of a girl named Fay Blame who had been more than kind to him in the past. If He had left me those arms and legs, he had been thinking, I could go back and tell her how I really feel. I could hold her, run my fingers through her hair, mold her form like a sculptor. She would let me, too, I think. I would be like other men. I…

“Huh?”

“Immortality,” Schuld repeated. “Better than progeny, even, for they have a way of disappointing, embarrassing, hurting their begetters. But painting is ‘the grandchild of nature and related to God.’ “

“I do not understand,” Tibor said.

“ ‘Though the poet is as free as the painter in the invention of his fictions, they are not so satisfactory to men as paintings,’ “ Schuld said, “ ‘for, though poetry is able to describe forms, actions, and places in words, the painter deals with the actual similitude of the forms, in order to represent them. Now tell me which is the nearer to the actual man: the name of the man or the image of the man. The name of the man differs in different countries, but his form is never changed but by death.’”

“I think I see what you mean,” Tibor said.

“ ‘… And this is true knowledge and the legitimate issue of nature.’ Leonardo da Vinci wrote that in one of his notebooks. It feels right, too. And it will fit the present case so well. You will be remembered, Tibor McMasters, not for a passel of snot-nosed brats creeping toward eternity’s rim, dull variations on the DNA you’re stuck with, but for the exercise of your power to create the other image—the deathless similitude of a particular form. And you will be father to a vision that rises above nature itself, that is superior to it because divine. Among all men, you have been singled out for this measure of immortality.”

Tibor smiled.

“It is quite a responsibility they’ve given me,” he said.

“You are very modest,” Schuld said, “and more than a little naive. Do you think you were chosen simply because you were the best painter in town when the SOWs needed a murch? There is more to it than that. Would you believe that Charlottesville, Utah, was chosen to house the murch before it was your town? Would you believe that your town was chosen because you are the greatest artist alive today?”

Tibor turned and stared at him. “Father Handy never indicated anything like that,” he said.

“He gets his orders, as do those from whom he takes them.”

“You have lost me—again,” Tibor said. “How could you know these things?”

Schuld smiled and stared at him, head tilted upward, eyes half lidded, his face almost pulsing in the flame-light.

“Because I gave the first order,” he said. “I wanted you for my artist. I am the head of the Servants of Wrath, the temporal leader of the true religion of the Deus Irae.”

“My God!” said Tibor.

“Yes,” said Schuld. “For obvious reasons, I waited until now to tell you. I was not about to proclaim myself in front of Pete Sands.”

“Is Schuld your real name?” Tibor asked him.

“The name of a man differs in different countries. Schuld will do. I joined you at this point in your Pilg because I intend personally to see that you find the proper man. Pete will doubtless try to misdirect you. He has his orders, of course. But I will see to it that you are not misled. I will name Lufteufel, give you his form at the proper time. Nothing the Old Church can do will prevent it. I want you to be aware of this.”

“I felt there was something unusual about you,” Tibor said. Indeed I did, he thought. But not this. I know little of the hierarchical setup of the Servants of Wrath. Just that there is one. I had always assumed the murch represented a local decision in terms of ulterior decoration. It does make sense, though, when you think about it. Lufteufel is at the center of the religion. Anything involving him personally would warrant attention at the highest levels. And this man Schuld is the boss. If he were going to appear at all, this is the perfect time. No one else could have known, would have known, could have come up with that reason or effected this tuning. I believe him.

“I believe you,” Tibor said. “And it is somewhat—overwhelming. Thank you for your confidence in me. I will try to be worthy of it.”

“You are,” Schuld said, “which is why you were chosen. And I will tell you now that it may be a sudden thing, that I may have to arrange the encounter quite unexpectedly. Pete’s presence requires this. You must be prepared at any time from now on to record what I indicate, at a moment’s notice.”

“I will keep my camera ready,” Tibor said, activating his extensor and moving the device into a new position, “and my eyes, of course—they are always ready.”

“Good. That is all that I really require, for now. Once you have captured the image, neither Pete nor his entire church can take it away from you. The murch will proceed, as planned.”

“Thank you,” said Tibor. “You have made me happy. I hope that Pete does not interfere—”

Schuld rose and squeezed his shoulder.

“I like you,” he said. “Have no fear. I have planned everything.”

Stowing his gear, Pete Sands thought of Dr. Abernathy’s words, and he thought of Schuld, and of Carleton Lufteufel.

He cannot come out and tell me to kill Lufteufel, even though he knows that would solve our problem. He cannot even disregard Schuld’s intention in this direction, once he has heard of it. It is a damnable dilemma which cleaves all the way back to the basic paradox involved in loving everyone, even the carnifex about to poleax you. Logically, if you do nothing you die and he has his way. If you are the only one practicing such a philosophy, it dies with you. A few others—all right—he gets them, too, and it still dies. The noble ideal, caritas, passes from the world. If we kill to prevent this, though, we betray it. It gets Zen-like here: Do nothing and the destroyer moves. Do something and you destroy it yourself. Yet you are charged to preserve it. How? The answer is supposed to be that it is a divine law and will win out anyhow. I crack the koan simultaneously with an act of giving up on it. Then I am granted insight into its meaning. Or, in Christian terms, my will is empowered upon an especially trying occasion and I am granted an extraordinary measure of grace. I don’t feel any of it flowing this way at the moment, though. In fact, I begin to feel that I am beating my brains out against an impossible situation. I don’t want to kill Lufteufel, really. I don’t want to kill anybody. My reasons are not theological. They are just simple humanitarian things. I don’t like to cause pain. It may well be that if that poor bastard is still living, he has done a lot of suffering on his own already. I don’t know. I don’t care to know. Also, I’m squeamish.

Pete hefted his pack and moved on out of the glade.

With this, he thought as he walked, where is that caritas I am supposed to be practicing? Not too much of that around either. Can I love Carleton Lufteufel—or anyone—on such a plane that what they are, what they have done, counts for nothing? Where only the fact of existence is sufficient qualification as target for the arrow of this feeling? This would indeed be God-like, and is, I suppose, the essence of the ideal that we should strive to emulate the greater love. I don’t know. There have been occasions when I have felt that way, however briefly. What lay at their heart? Biochemistry, perhaps. Looking for ultimate causes is really an impossible quest. I remember that day, though, with Lurine. “What’s ein Todesstachel?” she had asked, and I told her of the sting of death and then oh God had felt it coming into my side piercing like a metal gaff twisting hooking oh Lord driving my body to an agonized Totentanz about the room Lurine trying to restrain me and up then looking along the pole from Earth to heaven ascending to the Persons then three who held me and into the eyes that saw oh Lurine the heart of my quest and your question there here and everywhere the pain never to cease and piercing the joy that is beyond and quickens as it slays again in the heart of the wood and the night oh Everyone I am here I did not ask to but I did—Ahead, he could make out the forms of Schuld and Tibor in the firelight. They were laughing, they seemed to be happy and that should be good. He felt something brush against his leg. Looking down, he saw that it was Toby. He reached out to pat the upturned head.

Alice held the doll, crooning to it, swaying. She rocked back and forth from one foot to the other. The corridor slanted gently before her. Squatting, she placed the doll on the truck. With a small push, she started it on its journey down the tunnel. She laughed as it sped away. When it struck the wall and turned over, she screamed.

“No! No! No! No!”

Running to it, she raised the doll and held it.

“No,” she said. “Be all right.”

She set the truck upright, reinstalled the doll.

“Now!” she said, pushing it again.

Her laughter followed it as it spun on its way, avoiding the obstacles which had collected in the corridor until it came to a crate filled with plastic tiles. When it struck there, the doll was hurled several feet and its head came off, to continue bouncing on down along the hall.

“No! No!”

Panting, she snatched up the body and pursued the head.

“Be all right,” she said when she had retrieved it. “Be all right.”

But she could not get the head to go back on again. Clutching them together, she ran to the room with the closed door and opened it.

“Daddy!” she said. “Daddy! Daddy fix!”

The room was empty, dim, disorderly. She climbed up onto the unmade bed, seating herself in its middle.

“Gone away,” she said, cradling the doll in her lap. “Be all right. Please be all right.”

She held the head in place and watched it through moist prisms which formed without sobs. The rest of the room came to seem so much darker.

The cow dozed, head depressed, beside the tree where she was tethered. In his cart, Tibor ruminated: Where then is the elation? My dream, the substance of my masterpiece, my life’s work—is almost within reach. It would have been so much more joyous a thing had He not appeared to me and done the things that He did. Now that I am assured the chance to frame Him in my art, the landscape of my joy divides and leaves me, not so dark as a silent house, but so confused, with my life gigantic, ripening to the point of bursting, with fear and ambition the last things left. To change it all to stone and stars—yes, I must try. Only, only now, it will be harder than I thought it would. That I still have that strength, that I still have it…

“Pete,” he said, as the other came into the camp, Toby at his heels, tail a-wag. “How was your walk?”

“Pleasant,” Pete said. “It’s a nice night.”

“I think there is a little wine left,” Schuld said. “Why don’t we all have a drink and finish it off?”

“All right. Let’s.”

He passed the bottle among them.

“The last of the wine,” he said, disposing of the empty flask over his shoulder and into the trees. “No bread left either. How long till the day when the last of you must say that, Pete? Whatever made you choose the career that you did, times being what they are?”

Pete shrugged.

“Hard to say. Obviously, it wasn’t a matter of popularity. Why does anyone choose anything and let it dominate his life? Looking for some sort of truth, I suppose, some form of beauty…”

“Don’t forget goodness,” Schuld said.

“That, too.”

“I see. Aquinas cleaned up the Greeks for you, so Plato is okay. Hell, you even baptized Aristotle’s bones, for that matter, once you found a use for his thoughts. Take away the Greek logicians and the Jewish mystics and you wouldn’t have much left.”

“We count the Passion and the Resurrection for something,” Pete said.

“Okay. I left out the Oriental mystery religions. And for that matter, the Crusades, the holy wars, the Inquisition.”

“You’ve made your point,” Pete said. “I am weary of these things and have trouble enough with the way my own mind works. You want to argue, join a debating team.

Schuld laughed.

“Yes, you are right. No offense meant, I assure you. I know your religion has troubles enough on the inside. No sense to dredging after more.”

“What do you mean?”

“To quote a great mathematician, Eric Bell, ‘All creeds tend to split into two, each of which in turn splits into two more, and so on, until after a certain finite number of generations (which can be easily calculated by logarithms) there are fewer human beings in any given region, no matter how large, than there are creeds, and further attenuations of the original dogma embodied in the first creed dilute it to a transparent gas too subtle to sustain faith in any human being, no matter how small.’ In other words, you are falling apart on your own. Every little settlement across the land has its own version of the faith.”

Pete brightened.

“If that is truly a natural law,” he said, “then it applies across the board. The SOWs will suffer its effects just as we do. Only we have a tradition born of two thousand years’ experience in weathering its operation. I find that encouraging.”

“But supposing,” Schuld said, “just supposing—what if the SOWs are right and you are wrong? What if there is really a divine influence acting to suspend this law for them? What then?”

Pete bowed his head, raised it, and smiled again.

“It is as the Arabs say, ‘If it is the will of God it comes to pass.’ “

“Allah,” Schuld corrected.

“What’s in a name? They differ from country to country.”

“That istrue. And from generation to generation. For that matter, given one more generation, everything may be different. Even the substance.”

“Possibly,” Pete said, rising to his feet. “Possibly. You have just reminded me that my bladder is brimming. Excuse me.”

As Pete headed off into the bushes, Tibor said, “Perhaps it was better not to antagonize him so. After all, it may just make him more difficult to deal with when the times comes to distract him or mislead him or whatever you have in mind for when we find Lufteufel.”

“I know what I am doing,” Schuld said. “I want to demonstrate how tenuous, how misguided, a thing it is that he represents.”

“I already know that you know more about religion than he does,” Tibor said, “being head of your whole church and all, and him just a trainee. You don’t have to show me that. I’d just as soon the rest of the trip went pleasantly and that we were all friends.”

Schuld laughed.

“Just wait and watch,” he said. “You will see that everything turns out properly.”

This is not at all the way that I envisaged this Pilg, Tibor thought. I wish that I could have done it alone, found Lufteufel by myself, taken his likeness without fuss or bother, gone back to Charlottesville and finished my work. That is all. I have a great aversion to disputes of any kind. Now this, here, with them. I don’t want to take sides. My feelings are with Pete, though. He didn’t start it. I don’t want a lesson in theology at his expense. I wish that it would just stop.

Pete returned.

“Getting a bit nippy,” he said, stooping to toss more sticks onto the fire.

“It is just you,” Schuld said, “feeling the outer darkness pressing in upon you, finally.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Pete said, straightening. “If you’re so damn gone on that dippy religion, why don’t you join it? Go bow down before the civil servant who gave the order that screwed things up! Model plaster busts of him from Tiber’s murch! Play bingo at his feet! Hold raffles and Day of Wrath benefit picnics, too, while you’re at it! You’ve still got a lot to learn, and that will all come later. But in the meantime, I just plain don’t give a shit!”

Schuld roared with laughter.

“Very good, Pete! Very good!” he said. “I’m glad the rigor mortis has left your tongue intact. And you’ve reminded me of something I must go do now myself.”

Schuld trudged off into the bushes, still chuckling.

“Damn that man!” Pete said. It is hard to keep recalling that he saved my life and that love is the name of the game. What has gotten into him that he is becoming my cross for today! That air-cooled, fuel-injection system with its absolutely balanced compression and exhaust cycle now seems aimed at running me down, backing over the remains to make it a perfect squash and leaving me there as flat and decorative as Tiber’s murch. I am just going to refuse to talk to him if he starts in again.

“Why did he get that way all of a sudden?” Pete said, half to himself.

“I think that he has something against Christianity,” Tibor said.

“I never would have guessed. Funny, though. He told me religion doesn’t mean much to him.”

“He did? That is strange, isn’t it?”

“How do you see what he was talking about, Tibor?”

“Sort of the way you do,” Tibor said. “I don’t think I give a shit either.”

Then they heard the howl, ending in a brief, intense yelp and a very faint whine. Then nothing.

“Toby!” Tibor screamed, activating the battery-powered circuit and driving his cart in the direction of the cry. “Toby!”

Pete spun about, raced to catch up with him. The cart broke through a stand of bushes, pushed past the gnarled hulk of a tree.

“Toby …” he heard Tibor say, as the cart screeched to a halt. Then, “You—killed—him—”

“Any other response would not have been personally viable,” he heard Schuld’s voice reply. “I maintain a standard reactive posture of nullification against subhuman forms which transgress. It’s a common experience with me, this challenge. They detect my—”

Flailing, the extensor lashed out like a snapped cable and caught Schuld across the face. The man stumbled back catching hold of a tree. He drew himself erect then. His helmet had been knocked to the ground. Rolling, it had come to a halt beside the body of the dog, whose neck was twisted back at an unnatural angle. As Pete struggled to push his way through the brush, he saw that Schuld’s lip had opened again and blood fell from his mouth, running down his chin, dripping. The head wound he had mentioned was also visible now, and it too began to darken moistly. Pete froze at the sight, for it was ghastly in the half-shadows and the ever-moving light from the fire. Then he realized that Schuld was looking at him. In that moment, an absolute hatred filled him, and he breathed the words, “I know you!” involuntarily. Schuld smiled and nodded, as if waiting for something.

But then Tibor, who had also been watching, wailed, “Murderer!” and the extensor snapped forward once more, knocking Schuld to the ground.

“No, Tibor!” Pete screamed, the vision broken, “Stop!”

Schuld sprang to his feet, half of his face masked with blood, the more-human half wary now, wide-eyed and twisting toward fear. He turned and began to run.

The extensor snaked after, took a turn about his feet, tightened and lifted, sending him sprawling once more.

The cart creaked several feet forward and Pete raced about it.

By the time he reached the front, Schuld had risen to his knees, his face and breast a filthy, bloody abomination.

“No!” Pete shouted again, rushing to interpose himself between Tibor and his victim.

But the extensor was faster. It fell once more, knocking Schuld over backward.

Pete rushed to straddle the fallen man and raised his arms before Tibor.

“Don’t do it, Tibor!” he cried. “You’ll kill him! Do you hear me! You can’t do it! For the love of God, Tibor! He’s a man! Like you and me! It’s murder! Don’t —”

Pete had braced himself for the blow, but it did not come. Instead, the extensor plunged in from his left and the manual gripper seized hold of his forearm. The cart creaked and swayed at the strain, but Pete was raised into the air—three, four feet above the ground. Then, suddenly, the extensor moved like a cracking whip and he was hurled toward a clump of bushes. He heard Schuld’s moaning as he fell.

He was scratched and poked, but not severely jolted, as the shrubs collapsed to cushion him. He heard the cart creaking again. Then, for several moments, he was unable to move, tangled and enmeshed as he was. As he struggled to free himself, he heard a bubbly gasp, followed by a rasping, choking sound.

Tearing at the twigs and limblets, he was finally able to sit up and behold what Tibor had done.

The extensor was projected out and up, rigid now as a steel pole. Higher above the ground than Pete himself had dangled, hung Schuld, the gripper tight about his throat. His eyes and his tongue protruded. The veins in his forehead stood out like cords. Even as Pete stared, his limbs completed their Totentanz, fell slack, hung limp.

“No,” Pete said softly, realizing that it was already too late, that there was nothing at all that he could do.

Tibor, I pray that you never realize what you have done, he thought, raising his hand to cover his eyes, for he was unable to close them or move them. It was planned, Tibor, planned down to the last detail. Except for this. Except for this… It was me. Me that he wanted. Wanted to kill him. Him. At the last moment, the very last moment, he would have shouted. Shouted out to you, Tibor. Shouted, “Ecce! Ecce! Ecce!” And you would have known, you would have felt, you would have beheld, as he desired, planned, required, the necessary death, at my hands, of Carleton Lufteufel. Hanging there, now, all blood and dirt, with eyes that look straight out, forever, across the surface of the world—he wanted me to do that for him, to him, with you to bear witness, here and forever, here and in the great murch in Charlottesville, to bear witness to all the world of the transfiguration of a twisted, tormented being who desired both adoration and punishment, worship and death—here revealed, suddenly, as I slew him, here transfigured, instantly, for you, for all the world, at the moment of his death—the Deus Irae. And God! It could have happened that way! It could have. But you are blinded now with madness and with hate, my friend. May they take this vision with them when they go, I pray. May you never know what you have done. May you never. May you never. Amen.