The Cemetery Man and Other Darkside Tales

Caius (with Barry N. Malzberg)

Caius watches the lights on the board, red, red, red, red, with eager eyes (not that he could be seen) and fast-beating heart (not that he could be monitored). Elbows on the table, headphones tight against his ears. Throat cleared to allow his mellifluous voice to draw slowly, exquisitely, the pulp of his listeners’ desires.

Jeremy, his engineer, picks one red light at random. No screening except for the FCC mandated seven-second delay — Caius does not need to have his calls screened. There is no listener, no heckler, no type of problem or question that he cannot address with knowledge, wit, perfect aplomb.

This caller, as usual, is one of the faithful. Stan in Cheyenne. How’re they screwing you, Stan, he asks, up there in the cold, cold Rockies? Stan mumbles, grumbles, spews harsh and bitter words into his ears. One and a half minutes of Stan is sufficient. Caius deftly cuts him short, waves to Jeremy to put on another caller.

Georgiana in Seattle. Yes, of course, he says to her, let’s talk about the rule of the gun and the rule of law, not that there’s any difference in these United States. He draws her out slowly, inexorably, tugging on and loosening the strangling rope of her consciousness.

“Now do you understand, Georgiana?” Caius says when her three minutes are up. “Do you know what must be done?”

“Oh, yes, Caius,” she says. Her voice is breathless, as if his words have brought her to orgasm. “Oh, yes!”

In the glistening glass wall of the engineer’s booth, he sees reflected the outlines of his own face. Strong jaw, ears like miniature radar scanners, eyes huge and glowing with testimony to his incontestable vision, his indomitable spirit. Caius, nomad of the Space Age airwaves. Caius, the man with the answers, the man with the power to strip away falsehoods and false fronts, to unburden and provide direction to so many in this age of inanition. Caius, the oracle of his times. How he has suffered for his art, his genius! How he suffers as confessor for these fools who know nothing of the gravity of his heart.

He feels their pain radiating through the headphones. He hears their murmuring voices, millions of voices, echoing through the corridors of his mind. He has come to give them what they need, not what they want, the difference accomplished through his own inextinguishable judgment.

We live in perilous times, he tells them again and again. Times in which the bad has been masked as good, in which destruction has been masked as compassion. Times which have taken from us what we might have had, what we should have received. Are they listening? Are you listening, Georgiana in Seattle, Stan in Cheyenne, Karl in Saginaw, Benjamin in Coeur d’Alene, all the rest of you?

Sometimes he thinks they ask too much of him, they ask more than he can give — he is, after all, only one man, one frail stanchion standing against the enormities of the present and the future. Sometimes he despises them, the puny, stupid ones unworthy of his benevolence. Sometimes he thinks it doesn’t matter what he does, for his power, always, is in what he could do if he wanted to.

Jeremy signals that another caller is on the line. Caius waves him off, indicates that it is time to cut to the usual recorded commercial messages. Sighs, removes his headphones. Enough for now. Enough. He needs a few minutes to regenerate himself before he once again takes the fools through the inconstancy of this world and points them in the right direction. One day he might even lead them, all of them, all his faithful, into the promised land.

Dazzled by the images of himself reflected from the glass walls, he stands, stretches. Caius, cloned and magnified, larger than life.

The door to the control booth opens and Jeremy comes in. Caius favors him, as he does all his minions, with a beneficent smile. “Going well tonight,” he says.

Jeremy nods. Jeremy nods at everything. A fawning youth, nothing like what Caius was at his age, no ambition for one thing, but he does his job and that is sufficient. If Caius needed more, he could have more. But he doesn’t. Why should he? Jeremy is no different than Stan in Cheyenne or Gail in Indianapolis, but Caius is kind to him nonetheless. He is kind to all the members of his flock. One of the obligations of power.

“As always,” Jeremy says. “You the man.”

“Caius, nomadic interpreter of all their secrets.”

“Absolutely right, that’s what you are. Not even Limbaugh can keep them coming back the way you do.”

“How many calls so far tonight?” Caius asks.

“Ninety-six.”

“Grand total to date?”

“Nearly a million since you’ve been on the air.”

“Six million listeners, one million calls.”

“Amazing record,” Jeremy says. “Amazing. It’s an honor to work with a great man like you, a real honor.”

An honor. That is what so many of them say when Caius releases them from the coffins of their unnecessary, irrelevant lives. What an honor to speak with you! What a thrill! Been listening to you for years, you taught me a lot, you make such good sense. Their praise, their unction coursing through him like the fever heat of his own blood.

“We need some sound bytes,” he says to Jeremy. “You have them ready on the roll, of course?”

“Yes, sir. Always. Ready when you are.”

“Numbers forty-two and fifty-seven,” Caius says. “Those are the ones I want tonight. First the one where the Pope attacks me personally, by name, then my clip at the Correspondents Dinner.”

“Forty-two and fifty-seven. Right.” Jeremy chuckles. “I remember that dinner clip. Pretty funny stuff.”

“Yes, very amusing.”

“You nailed the bastards in that one,” Jeremy says. “Nailed ’em right up there on the cross, just like Jesus.”

Just like Jesus.

And just like Jesus, Caius thinks, I have my disciples. My Caiusites. My Causations. My Causators. The groveling faithful that pour through all the tangled and whizzing lines of the nation directly into me, Caiusites drawing from the power which is mine.

In the early years he had traveled everywhere, spoke from the trenches and the front lines in all the gleaming, devastated parts of the nation, advancing to this destination in stages, in movements as careful and well planned as those on a chess board. He has a history, he sometimes likes to remind his listeners, his disciples, he didn’t get to this point without years of study, questing, humility, honor, suffering.

He heard their pleas then, the same ones he hears now: Tell us, Caius. Lead us, Caius. But he also heard, sometimes still hears, their bitterness and their spite. Why are you where you are, Caius, and we’re trapped down here in the swamps of human existence? How did you get the power instead of us? When he is confronted with such apostasy he thinks of sucking out their brains, the gray and spongy material which surrounds their tiny thoughts, and draping them on a line to wave in the breeze before he puts the torch to them. Blinding fire against the sky. Caius remembers John Lennon. First they ask for an autograph and then they come back and kill you. That Spider’s Kiss.

But Lennon’s fate will not be his. No, never. He is above such an absurd end to his life and his life’s work. He is destined to continue his mission for many more years to come. Caius, the invincible.

Jeremy gestures at the clock. “Almost airtime again,” he says.

“Yes, I see.”

The engineer leaves the booth quickly and quietly, and Caius sits again in his comfortable chair. Headphones on. Microphone on. Green light on. And here I am again, listeners, disciples, Caiusites, he thinks but doesn’t say. Go ahead, Ronald in Little Rock, he says. What’s on your mind this evening, Ronald? How can I help? How can I bring you the wisdom of Caius?

The board continues to light up with incoming calls, red, red, red, red, red. Jeremy makes his selection, Caius presses the button that opens the line. The voice of Elaine in Charleston drones in his ear. Tormented Elaine, until Caius’s words elevate her to new heights of consciousness and perception.

Another green light. Marvin in San Antonio. Another. Big Dave in Biloxi. Another. Linda and Jolene, mother and daughter, suffering in Corpus Christi. Help us, Caius. Lead us, Caius. Save us, Caius.

One after another he takes the calls, listens to the voices of the faithful and, now and then, the unfaithful. So many voices. Night after night. And after a while they begin to blend and flow together, to rise to a roar that pours through the headphones, through his ears, into the center of him. The voices of admiration, of love and approbation, these are what he lives for.

And yet—

And yet, the voices grow decibel by painful decibel until they fill him, swell him to the bursting point. Frantically he signals to Jeremy to cut off the new caller — Darlene in Thousand Oaks? Andrew in Sheboygan? — but the engineer ignores him. Caius rips off the headphones, claps his hands over his ears. The roar of the million voices continues to increase, louder, louder, louder, until it reaches a thunderous crescendo.

Caius’s vision dims when this happens, shifts, and the glass walls shimmer, Jeremy shimmers in the control booth, everything shimmers, blurs, fades, and then re-emerges as something other than the familiar surroundings of the studio, as white cushioned walls, white cushioned floor, bare cot, screens and bars, Jeremy in a white attendant’s uniform. The voices cease their babel; all at once he finds himself wrapped in a deep trembling silence. He cries out, but there is no one to hear him, he is alone. Alone. He understands then, the monstrous knowledge descends upon him with the force of a blow, and he screams, he screams—

— and the white room shifts, shimmers, fades, and then re-emerges as the interior of his booth at the studio, where he is once again sprawled in his comfortable chair, headphones on, microphone on, his mind as clear as the glistening glass walls. He looks at the board, red, red, red, red. Sees Jeremy signal from the control booth, then turn one flashing red to green. Smiles, winks, gives the thumbs up. And safe, secure, supremely confident as always in the efficacy of his genius, he takes a call from Eric in Council Bluffs.

Caius, nomad of the Space Age airwaves. Caius, oracle of his times. Caius, the man with the answers, the man with the power, the man who will one day show them all the way into the light, finally and forever into the light.